"Explication of a Prefix"--- (PG-13, House/Wilson)
Title: Explication of a Prefix
Author: aheartfulofyou
Rating: PG-13
Words: 6,733
Pairings: House/Wilson, Wilson/wives-and-girlfriends
Spoilers/Setting: Pre-show to S2, 2x6 “Spin” centric, spoilers up to 2x8 “The Mistake”
Notes: Owned by David Shore. Tennessee Williams reference belongs to-guess who?-Tennessee Williams. Dedicated to my gorgeous genagirl, whom I worship (unquestioningly and uncritically), as her Christmas present! Much thanks and love to my beta shadow__dragon, extrabitter for offering some suggestions, to shadowfax994 for being my Remus and agreeing with my theory, and to little_details and my mum for some medical rambling.
i
aspirate v. To draw air into the lungs; a rough breathing sound; medicine: matter removed by aspiration.
“Only an extremely emotionally insecure woman would ditch a great job just because she has unfulfilled emotional issues with it.”
“She’s a constitutional lawyer; she doesn’t need a job at a hospital. Mark didn’t need checkups here anymore, and-“
“You didn’t see her paycheck. There was no reason to leave, unless she still-“
“You shouldn’t have seen her paycheck. And she left because you’re an asshole, you were being an asshole to her and her husband, and would and will continue to be an asshole for the rest of her and your careers.”
House tapped his cane against the floor, biting thoughtfully at his bottom lip. Wilson leaned against the wall of House’s office, the solid, stoic surface hard and uncomfortable against his back, but something he was more than used to. He stopped gesturing, shifted, crossed his arms, and looked down at his lab coat sleeves. They were clean, but there was a slightly brighter white spot on the right side, through his own attempts at laundry, seeing as Julie had stopped feeding and clothing him.
House nodded, looking solemn. “Of course she’d leave.”
“You’re... okay?” He squinted his eyes, looking at House carefully.
He finally nodded. “I’m over her.”
“Yes. Of course.” Wilson tried to keep the slightly bitter-sounding dryness out of his voice. House was having trouble, after all.
“Now, Stacy’s mom.” Wilson rolled his eyes, ready for the punch line before it occurred. A sign of House’s internal grief: predictability. “She’s got it going on.”
Wilson sighed and shrugged, at a lack for what to say, as he had seemed to be generally when House rambled onwards of hours at a time over his obsession with Stacy. He stepped away from the wall, glanced backwards to make sure House would still be pensive or sarcastic in turn, but not switch to suicidal or maniacal. He seemed to be taking it all right. Wilson wasn’t sure whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that he wasn’t getting drunk off his ass, crying bitterly, or vainly trying to find a way to get her back again.
He was nearly run down by the cart as it entered the back ER entranceway, paramedics scrambling, the woman on the cart, shrieking, jerking from side to side, and scratching furiously at her skin with flailing hands. Deep gashes from her nails were visible atop a heavy red rash that covered all of her visible skin. Clinging curls were damp with sweat and stuck to her forehead, and even her lips were swollen with lumpy patches of irritated skin. He was surprised that they had managed to skive off anaphylaxis so far, and continued walking. If he were to talk to the family, of course he’d be gentle, frown at her agony. These days, however, he felt too tired to even empathize. Benadryl, a topical anti-inflammatory, maybe a stab with the EpiPen, and she’d be fine.
It was too simple of a case for House. He admitted to himself that when walking through the emergency room he tended to observe and see if there was anything interesting to take note of, something for the ceaseless puzzle House always needed to solve. Psychotic. He supposed that meant he was, too, or was at least contributing.
He felt someone grab his arm, and turned slightly. A heavyset man with dark hair and a drawn face was standing nearby, as though he had just come in the doorway, looking apathetic. His voice, however, sounded with at least a small amount of concern. “Doctor, what’s wrong with her?”
Ah, the real reason why House didn’t wear a lab coat. Wilson turned all the way. “I won’t actually be working on her case, sir, but I’d generally diagnose allergic reaction. A few medications and she should be back to normal.”
“Why the hell is she having allergic reactions?” He seemed to be on the offensive, like it was her fault. Wilson’s expression, however, remained gentle and partially indifferent.
“Most likely something she ate, such as peanuts, or possibly chemicals she may have been cleaning with.”
The man made a noncommittal noise, and turned back, to watch things quiet down. Her breathing was easier, she seemed to be talking to the staff, and shakily reached for a pill and a cup of water, which she downed. Right when Wilson was ready to turn, again, and walk away, he caught out of his peripheral vision the woman violently jerking up to a sitting position, vomiting, and then seizing, thrashing on the cart with several loud rattling sounds, and choking, gasping for breath. The paramedics scrambled back around her, yelling for IV diphenhydramine and a suction. Wilson frowned.
The man next to him had a furious expression on his face. “She didn’t do nothing when this started. Just standing and talking.”
Wilson rubbed a hand along the side of his face. “Can I get her name, and yours? I’ll look into it.”
It was the equivalent of a clinic case, but enough to give him a haughty look of determination again. Now all House had to do was think. And, of course, with thinking came rambling. Wilson munched on some extra-cheesy Doritos, and squinted to try and see the tiny score at the bottom of the television set, propped up on the glass table.
“I’m thinking about writing an epic poem about myself. The triumphant hero, larger than life, with the strength of ten men.” House gestured dramatically with his hands. “The tragic flaw of-“
“Pride? How original.”
House glared at him. “No. Succumbing to the desire for the beautiful but deadly Cudzilla.”
“Who is defeated by three beatings of the magnificent and enchanted cane of-“
“Hey, hey, hey. My inner thoughts have copyrights on them. You can’t just go and infringe like that.”
Cameron, Chase, and Foreman came scurrying into the room as Wilson smirked, and threw another chip into his mouth.
“You paged us?” Cameron asked, slightly breathless. House nodded, and sat up straighter.
“Simple case, allergic reaction, plus bad side affects to all the drugs we’ve been giving her. The only thing we don’t know is what caused it.”
Chase piped up with, “Uh, food borne? Peanuts? Shellfish? Could be any of the usuals.”
“Or, drugs. Drugs could easily present with the exact same symptoms.” Foreman’s arms were crossed, and he tapped a pen against his lab coat sleeve.
House nodded. “Do a drug screening, and go wipe some peanut butter on her arm.” Cameron looked skeptical, but all three of them turned to head out the door. Wilson took a glance at House, who looked thoughtful, rocking his chair back and forth on the back two legs, before:
“Hey!” The three turned to look at him. “Give her a bath, too.”
“A... bath?” He would’ve thought Chase would be used to such arbitrary instructions by now.
“And tell me what her hair looks like afterwards.” The team glanced at each other, and then went off down the hallway.
Wilson looked at House carefully, still not exactly sure, as always, how to fathom the way his mind worked. He turned up the volume on the TV, and House stole his chips bag, emptying the remaining crumbs into his mouth. At Wilson’s still-inquisitive stare, he gave a tiny smirk.
“You’ll see.”
ii
aspire v. To desire with ambition. pl. n. aspirations.
He and his first wife were married in a gigantic synagogue, where everything was draped in gold and the bride was a proper Jewish girl, Teresa. He was right out of med school, and everything was perfect, down to tiny little lace bows on the edges of the tablecloths, made by his mother. She ended up being a plate-thrower. During their fights, which occurred more and more from one year onward, she smashed all of the original wedding sets, as well as some of the blue flowered ones he had inconspicuously bought later, and gave him a tiny scar along his collarbone. His first marriage and first divorced seemed a little more natural and understandable than all the rest. No one blamed him for the failing bonds, nor the cheating. He had still retained hope.
As much as the first was the tantrum queen, Beth was a crier, who believed in second chances, and who cried a tear for every second he was late getting home from work. He had loved them both, he told himself, and the loss of his dog, two mansions, and the linen sets didn’t take away that love. He told himself the next time would be better. He still felt the residual guilt, but didn’t want to deal with it. After a few years, he was too tired to try and work at the relationships that somehow felt empty, despite white picket fences and family dinners.
About midway through the first marriage, he had gotten his job, first as oncologist, then Department Head, at Princeton-Plainsboro. Around the same time, he had met House, who strolled into his office looking for the ex-Head (to dump work on him); he’d sniped a bit, made a few sarcastic comments, and ended up cheating him out of a lunch. Somehow. They managed to eat lunch with each other every day following, and Wilson somehow progressed to being not only the only one who could tolerate House, but his only friend.
Then there were the girlfriends. After the first affair, it sprawled out of his control. He flirted, and had lunch with, and occasionally had sex with them, and earned the reputation of resident panty-peeler. It didn’t feel real, nor stable, but he managed to get used to invading lives to seek out a feeling he rarely felt. A feeling of happiness, content, giddiness, that all equaled out to the feeling of life. It was cheesy, it was ridiculous, but it was true, and infrequent. He could list them off: Ivy, Rachel, Gina, Patricia, Lauren, Jennifer. All called, respectively, Irma, Raquel, Georgia, Pamela, Lorraine, and Jackie by House, who tended to have some sort of false memory syndrome-be it through true neurological problems, or quite possibly on purpose.
The second marriage, then, had an end. Unburdening himself of guilt, like instantaneously ditching off a heavy load-which didn’t tend to actually work-he confessed everything to Beth. His cheating was simply the re-opening of the proverbial wound. She couldn’t understand his overwhelming need to sit by House’s hospital bed every day he could after the infarction. He had flown back to Jersey from his outing with her when Stacy had called, and that was the first major blow to Beth’s happiness. Even when House was out of the hospital, he insisted on going over to his place, to save House from the silence he constantly exposed himself to, by refusing to speak to Stacy.
By the time he got to his third wife, Julie, he honestly wanted to believe in the old cliché about third times. He tried hard with her, tried to keep the marriage going, wanted nothing more than to have a relationship with her that would last, and be consistent, and not fade into oblivion like all of his other marriages. This meant no flirting with the nurses, no flirting with the masseuse, being a good husband. She was a smart woman, nice enough, her mother had died from a brain tumor a year before. He hadn’t personally had the case, but heard about it. She had a stay-at-home job and the tendency to cook extravagant, elaborate meals, which tasted fine, though he didn’t particularly care for them.
He preferred a greasy slice of pizza to a casserole with random food objects and seasoning, but who was he to complain?
But for every day of a warm relationship, there were weeks of coldness, awkwardness, or times when he just couldn’t seem to care. Those were days when she would argue with him, though while still being infinitesimally gentle in the way she treated him. She would say that he didn’t pay attention to her, that all she wanted was for him to notice her. The flirting started up again, but there was never enough guilt to tell her anything-yet. He skipped out on family gatherings, preferring to spend the time in the dark warmth of House’s apartment, laughing over stupid things and eating Grade A heart cloggers, as Julie sometimes called the college all-nighter style foods House ate.
The cheating started again. Not a lot of it, just an accountant, blonde and more than willing, despite the fact that she-unlike many of the others-knew he was married.
He told Julie, of course. She cried and screamed and then told him they could work it out, which somehow made him feel more nervous than any of the other times, though it correlated with his pledge to actually work on this marriage. Still, he was used to instant divorce papers.
The moment when the holding off of divorce papers had a completely different motive was when he didn’t work it out as much as she tried to. The woman knew how to hold a grudge, and remain clinging. She stopped feeding him, she stopped clothing him; she sent him to the couch. But she made him live in the same space with her, anyway. They didn’t live together; they occupied the same cage. And he made as many excuses as he could to get out of it.
He had taken Brittany, one of his affair-ees, to an uppity seafood restaurant, and looked at her around the candle on their table. “What are your aspirations? What do you dream about?”
She placed her chin in her hands, elbows on the table in defiance of strict codes of conduct. Those were the sorts of things that ran through his head at times like this. She tilted her head and smiled at him.
“Nobody’s ever asked me that before. I’d love to make a living painting.” She licked the corner of her mouth carefully, as to not smear the glossy sheen. “Working at the hospital is one thing, it’s all good. But I’d just love to pick up a paintbrush and not worry about anything else.” She fixed him with a green-eyed stare, where he calmly observed the flickering of the candle, with a blithe smile on his face.
“That sounds great.”
“Case resolved?”
House looked smug as usual, but there were lines underneath his eyes that weren’t usually there. “Rambled off a list of chemicals in hair products. Thioglycolates, ammonium hydroxide, alkylphenol ethoxylates. They were so impressed. She’s gonna have to cross herself every time she walks by a hair salon.”
Wilson rubbed his eyes, and leaned back in his chair. “You’re wrecking the world’s economy as it stands.”
“I’ve teamed up with Darth Vader. It’s part of our ploy to take over the world.” House glanced at his watch. “General Hospital’s in two minutes. Discharge the patient for me and I’ll give you five hundred?”
“Five hundred of my own money. Where’re the underlings?”
“Foreman’s off stealing your car, and Sparky and Cameron are off breaking into Mrs. Acute Liver Failure’s house. Looking for some more meth, so they can get it on.”
Wilson sighed, and stood. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”
It didn’t take any length of time to get the proper forms signed and to the nurse, and to handle some of the prescriptions. He entered the room for a last checkup, finding Miss Ketter sullen but otherwise healthy, despite a few scars and fading marks running along her arms. Her husband also seemed gruff, and while Wilson preformed the general check of the stats, he muttered to her, “Why did you even get the damn perm in the first place?”
Wilson glanced briefly at them, then continued working. She muttered back to him, casting him a bitter glance, “I just wanted you to notice me.”
“You’re all set,” Wilson proclaimed, and gave them both a mild smile, before taking the charts, handing them to the nurse, then strolling back to House’s office.
The first time he cheated felt no less or more fake than all the other times. He continuously searched for meaning behind it all-House called it succumbing to the over-loving part of him, ever trying to help the needy.
She fiddled with her keys, three small silver ones, all contained on a simple, pink plastic rectangle, and ran a perfectly manicured finger up and down the jagged edge of the largest key, staring at it carefully, then looking up at him, with urgently hopeful eyes. “Want to come in? We could have some wine, or coffee, or something.”
He felt some sort of vague panic, that he was already taking steps in destroying a perfectly legitimate, fine marriage. “I had a great time, Ivy, but I should probably get going. I’ve got a heavy workload tomorrow.” He carefully and in a friendly manner made eye contact.
She squeezed his arm in a grip too tight and desperate to be either seductive, convincing, or reassuring. “Are you sure?”
Within a second, once small glance, he took in her slightly disheveled, though attempting to be neat, blonde hair. It was done up with precarious though painstaking effort. Her eyes were too wide for her pale face, ringed with dark eyeliner.
“No. Now that you mention it, I will.” He gave her a smile that seemed both self-degrading, kind, and up front, with a mild downturn to his head. In his eyes, he could feel that the expression was forced. He made a gesture as though to put his hands in the nonexistent lab coat pockets, and felt more like someone else than himself, less grounded.
They worked their way inside her apartment, and she set to kissing him, both fierce and needy, abandoning all pretense of post-dinner drinking or conversation. He was a gentleman, let her carry it as far as she wanted-which ended up being all the way-and noticed halfway through, in gently drawing away some piece of fabric-be it her skirt, or the bed sheets, he didn’t recall-that both hands felt exactly the same, there was no minute, extra weight on the ring finger of his left hand.
There was a moment when it all came together, not in a shining epiphany, but in a dull drop of his stomach and a pause in the noise surrounding his life.
Petra Gilmore, half-Jewish interviewee extraordinaire, checked in at his office a day after, thanks to his phone call. She walked into the room with neon purple heels, decidedly not Prada, but fashionable nonetheless. He glanced at the shoes decisively, and figured that House was right, though only House would be insane enough to analyze someone’s character through shoe styles. Insane enough to run a fashion-slash-horoscope magazine, or something. But, still, no one could be that confident and that cool under pressure, with a wall of smooth sarcasm, without having some sort of internal damage. He smiled at her.
“Dr. Gilmore.”
“Dr. Wilson.” She held out her hand, gave a smirking, half-smile that turned up the corner of her lipstick-burgundy mouth.
“If you’d like to have a seat?” He motioned to the chair in front of his desk, and she sat down, posture straight, attentive, and somehow casual.
He informed her of the basics, that the fellowship position had been filled, she questioned about his ‘bud’ and why he wasn’t the one doing the talking. Suddenly she was interviewing him: why he, as the head of oncology, was doing interviews for the diagnostics department, and telling him that she’d go talk to House personally to complain, though ever so coolly, that he wasn’t being a big boy and sending her a letter or telling her himself. He had no doubt she would do something of the sort.
In rapid-fire succession, then, with charm and with none of the inanity and playfulness he showed only to House, he offered her a job in the oncology department, which she turned down, and nearing the end of the conversation, offered to take her for lunch or dinner. It was an awkward lapse in the conversation, when she gave him a careful look, a tiny half-smile that made her seem more confident, more self-aware than he was, and turned him down. She shook his hand, and strode out of the office.
He sat at his desk, breathing and staring down at loose pens and ruffled papers, standing up and fixing the Vertigo poster’s frame, which was slightly crooked, and realizing he had gone too far, for far too long.
iii
aspersion n. False charges or slander; an unfavorable or damaging remark; blessing with holy water.
Wilson sat on the small couch in his office, eating a turkey sub, when House decided to stride in. Hooking his cane to the bookshelf, he sat at Wilson’s desk. Wilson felt a small twang of annoyance, that he never asked to enter, always just intruded, but the feeling passed. He took another bite and looked down, expecting whatever clever comment House would proclaim next.
“You’ve been apathy on legs, lately. I told you once and I’ll tell you again: you can’t let Stacy’s work habits rub off on you.” There it was.
“Hm,” was the only reply Wilson would give.
“Won’t talk, either. What’re you eating?”
“It’s turkey, House,” he said, exasperated.
“Watch out. Your shady turkey’s probably excreting poisonous chemicals through it’s gravy.”
He sighed. “Endocarditis wouldn’t result in-“
“Oh, so says the non-specializing oncologist.”
He flicked a stray piece of lettuce off the bread on to the napkin on his lap, and looked up. “What do you want, House?”
House’s face went serious. “Julie’s picture’s not on your shelf.”
He looked down again, suddenly not hungry, crinkling a corner of the sandwich wrapping. “I broke the frame; I took it down to get a new one,” he lied half-heartedly.
“No, you didn’t. She divorced you.”
Wilson stood and threw the rest of the sub in the small metal garbage bin sitting neatly at the edge of his desk. “Yeah, she did.”
“Well, now we’ll see all the truisms destroyed. What’ll be the charm, fourth or fifth time? You could always shoot for the Guinness Book-“
Anger cracking his voice, he turned and muttered brusquely, “House, don’t even start.”
House looked down and nodded, suddenly solemn. “Okay.” It was the closest thing to an apology that Wilson had ever gotten from him.
“Wilson.”
She used the same word for him that House did, but hers didn’t have years of back story and sometimes gruff, usually jibing, taken-for-granted lilts to it. In fact, it almost mirrored that, in all actuality. She used it because House did, and that was good enough for her. Similar to how he had gone from calling her Allison, to Dr. Cameron, when things progressed and he knew that he wouldn’t lift a finger to... what was it? Put the moves on her. And how that had progressed to plainly Cameron, after these heart-to-hearts, which was good enough for him. After all, it was what House called her.
He wondered vaguely if “Cameron” was her maiden name or married name-his wives always changed back, but she was a widow-and if what she really wanted, what she would have lied about, was if she wanted it to be Joe’s last name.
Or House’s.
She fiddled with the lapels on the pockets of her vest-coat, her bare arms pale and perfect-looking, with tiny sleeves of her white blouse only just poking out from under the top layer of clothing, and protruding out to cover the very top of her arms. She looked determined, softly but intrigued nonetheless, and there was a tiny gleam of hardness and thought in her eyes.
“Do you know Stacy well?” She sat down at the chair across from his desk, like it was tradition, like they’d been having these talks for the past twelve years. She folded her hands on her lap, crossed her legs, and tilted her head to look at him. He sighed and put down a folder, leaning back and looking at her, as well.
“Yeah.” He breathed out. “We’re pretty close friends. How come?”
She leaned forward, towards him, and the expression on her face made her less innocently pretty, but also less of an ingenue. He wasn’t certain which one was better, and was in no position to judge. Her eyes glinted with a certain manipulative quality, or maybe he was just being cynical. She looked at him decisively, knowingly, sharing a secret with him.
“Stacy’s the someone you talked about, isn’t she? You’re... in love with her?” Her movements themselves, her subtle gestures, were meant for encouraging and drawing out the truth, nudging and insisting.
Despite focusing his mind on other matters, he understood pitifully quickly what she was talking about. He gave her one of those bitter little smiles. She was warm, but hadn’t hit the target. “No.” He exhaled. “She’s, uh, she’s just a friend.”
“Oh.” Her eyebrows reclined downward, her eyes scrutinizing him again, trying to understand what she did not. She believed him-he was a terrible liar, anyway, and she should know that-and that added even more so to her confusion.
He gave her a pained smile, pushed his chair away from his desk and stood, pushing his hands into his pockets, and simulating distance and a mild curtness. “If you’ll excuse me, Dr. Cameron, I have an appointment at two-thirty.”
He was slightly surprised to see the confident form of Stacy, briefcase and all, walking down the hallway when he turned a corner. Even more startled after the recent conversation with Cameron.
He caught up to her. “Stacy.” She turned and gave him a smile.
“James.” He took in her intelligent eyes, arching, questioning eyebrows, and small little smirk. Cameron had a few half-truths written in her original psychoanalysis theories. Had she not stopped him from pushing the bounds of their platonic relationship, he probably would have slept with her, too, especially in the vulnerable years, during and after the infarction. She was always too emotionally healthy for her own good, however.
“Thought House said you had left. Stalking him?”
“I’m a lawyer, James, you should know. Can’t leave a paper trail all over the place; I had to clean up a little. Had to say goodbye to Lisa, too, and try to console her over the loss of somebody else to deflect Greg.”
“Ah, yes. Princeton-Plainsboro only kept their constitutional lawyer for a year. I’m sure she’ll love hiring another.”
“How’s Greg?”
He brushed some of the hair at the back of his neck with a hand, glancing off to the side. “Okay. Not too bad.” He noted the slight worry lines along he face appear. “Stop feeling guilty.”
“Who says I’m feeling guilty?”
“Who says I can’t tell when you are?”
She gave him a smirk. “Fair enough. I’m just worried for him. Just because I hate him doesn’t mean I don’t still love him.” She pointed a finger at him. “And don’t tell me that doesn’t make sense.”
“Fine, fine.” He let a tiny corner of his mouth twitch up in a smile. “He’ll be okay.”
She nodded, and let out a little sigh, then something sparked in her eyes, a recollection, that made her look a little mischievous, and made him feel a little wary.
“What?”
She smirked again. “Greg made an interesting announcement to me a few weeks ago.”
“God, please don’t tell me he proposed to you.” She whacked him on the arm lightly with her hand.
“James. No, he decided to proclaim that he has, er, homosexual tendencies, based on his obsession with shoes, and you.”
Wilson’s stomach clenched, but his voice was light and ironic. “Was this a candid, heartfelt discussion, then?”
“Of course not. He decided to yell it in a hallway full of people.”
“Of course.”
She then gave him a pointed look, with her vaulted eyebrows, and lightly commented, “Greg jokes about the things he cares about.”
They had worked their way to the front desk, where Stacy dropped off papers, and kissed him on the cheek. She looked carefully at him, still, eyes piercing enough to, for that second, almost make him believe what she was telling him. “Stay in touch, James. I’ll see you around sometime.” She gave a little half smile and pushed open the glass front doors onto the sidewalks.
He knew what she was trying to imply, though not why she was trying to imply it. Stacy herself was one of the reasons that voided her own statements. It was something he’d rather not think about, for that nauseated feeling. Things like that were better to ignore.
iv
asperity n. Roughness in manner; roughness or harshness, as of surface or sound.
House leaned back into the chair, a smug grin on his face, and threw his cane on top of Wilson’s desk, propping his right leg, first, on the desk, then crossing his feet. Wilson didn’t look up, only studied the papers in his hand carefully, and pushed the cane off his pad of sticky notes. He scribbled a note to the nurse on it, suddenly noting the absence of a wedding ring. It shouldn’t feel strange; it was rarely there even when he was married. But without even a metaphorical ring around his marital state, now, it-traditionally, of course, he’d been through it three times-felt odd.
“So, would you like me even better if I dyed my hair blonde?”
Wilson couldn’t help but let his eyes flicker up to House’s face for an instant, but then went back to rifling through papers. He set to work at charting on Gertrude Johnson, age 83, colon cancer.
“Yes, and recall that I prefer the L’Oreal brand, in shade Platinum B.” He was sure his face had the usual slightly annoyed, bemused, and partially serious expression on it. Possibility of treatment, age factors into terminality of condition.
“Or was that just part of the repression? No, of course, you would’ve gone after Chase if you weren’t such a messed up bastard and didn’t know what you wanted.”
Wilson looked up for longer this time, his stomach clenching slightly. What was House talking about? He couldn’t know... know what? There was nothing, the possibility of nothing. He had decided to ignore these statements, like he had for a while, because it was far too melodramatic. His life was melodramatic enough as it was, with people dying every day, to actually attempt to concern himself with it all. At least, outwardly. Three failed marriages, meaningless affairs, and one screwed-up friendship...
“Because I absolutely know what you’re talking about.” 10 months, top.
House swiveled the chair back and forth, yawned, and rubbed a hand against the stubble along the side of his face, grinning. “Cameron seems to think that you curl up and cry every night because of your unrequited love, pining for my boyish good looks, enough so that you hit up countless blonde babes. A womanizer, and yet not. Wilsonizer, even.” House had the expression still on his face that seemed almost maliciously arrogant, mimicking cheerfulness, but tense, unlike most of the low-key, casual, sarcastic exchanges of times before. “I could patent the term and make millions. No, wait. Did you corrupt an underling? Expanding the blonde thing to even Chase? Poor molested kid.”
“House, shut up.” He stared at the desk’s surface, not even the small smile still lingering on his face. House didn’t seem to notice, however; he took his feet down from the desk and leaned forward dramatically.
“Now do we have to go and try to wring a domestic partner plan out of Cuddy? This has gotta be good for our careers, though, you know. Another Vogler comes around, he tries to fire one of us, and bam, he’d be out before you can say sexual orientation discrimination. Hey, that could be a song-“
“House. Shut the hell up.” Wilson looked up, finally, eyes desperate, angry, with a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, a lurching dizziness in his mind.
House stopped talking, mid-sentence, and licked his lips, expression darkening, eyebrows knitting downwards. He looked at-or more like glared at, inspected-Wilson’s eyes, until Wilson dropped them to the ground, sighed, and rubbed the back of his neck with a hand, tilting his head around and taking in the whole room except for the one filled-in outline of empty space sitting before him. He knew he must look like he was seeking an escape route. House finally looked downward, too, all the harsh teasing abruptly out of his voice.
“It’s true?” he finally asked, his voice hoarse, eyes pacing a slow trace along the floor, then back up to Wilson’s face.
Wilson broke into a bitter grin, let out a laugh that had no natural or otherwise sounds of mirth in it at all. “Chase is still pure and uncorrupted.” He breathed out, looked down, stopped smiling. “Yeah. It’s true.”
He stood, and paced away from his desk, House swiveling his chair slowly around to face Wilson, posture suddenly straight and tense. Wilson stared at the small trickle of people coming and going down the hallway, clearing away, lights shutting off down the hallway.
Wilson slipped his hands into his lab coat pockets, and pushed open the glass door to House’s office. He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a shaky sigh. He didn’t know what he was doing. He had just destroyed a friendship, destroyed the reason of it all. Back to being in love with his stupid… messed-up work, back to watching people die, because there was no point. No point in trying to love everyone else, when the one person you did love stared you in the face, stole chips from you, rambled about his one true love, was a bitter, angry, tactless genius.
“Hey,” House said, softly, a noise barely there but picked up in any case. “About that ride home?”
Wilson let out a tiny bitter laugh, and couldn’t look back. “Yeah.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he just repeated it. “Yeah.” He shook his head, and walked out the door, down the hallway.
He was partially surprised he could even drive, when he took House home from work in silence, on the dark and half-empty roads; but in other ways, he didn’t even wonder. He was used to putting up fronts and sitting in calm; they weren’t really fronts, anyway, anymore, because inside he wasn’t raging in passion, he was just sickeningly composed.
He would have pulled up to the side of House’s apartment and left him there, if it weren’t for the nagging tiny voice inside his head that his limp might have been a little bit worse this day, and the insistence that he shouldn’t just ditch him at the bottom of the steps.
“We’re here,” Wilson said, in a joyless voice, trying to be cheerful and failing. He parked, and slammed the door behind himself, walking up on the sidewalk to the other side. He waited for House to get out of the car and walk up to the front door.
He stood on the porch, hands in his pockets, regretting every moment of everything he’d ever said. House opened the door, and Wilson was ready to turn and leave, when he heard his voice, sounding very uncommitted and quiet, but still speaking, at least. “You can,” he made a short throat-clearing sound, “come in.”
Wilson breathed in, out, and nodded. Where else could he go? Home? Maybe they’d work out a system for ignoring yet another little fact added to attempt to capsize their acquaintance. “Sure.”
House flicked on the lights in the dark apartment, shrugged off his coat, which dropped to the floor. Wilson, without even thinking, picked it up and hung it on a crooked wire hanger in the front, purely out of habit. When he turned again, and walked to the middle of the living room, trying to look everywhere but House, he caught the small glance House was giving him, a strange expression.
Wilson rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ll, uh, I’ll go.” House’s chin was tilted downwards, and he nodded vaguely. But as he turned, he felt a tiny touch along his wrist, and turned back. House was staring at his own hand, not at him, as though he couldn’t believe he had even reached out. Wilson, eyebrows creased downwards, tried to breathe normally, despite the sudden pressure surrounding him and trying to suffocate him. He wanted to act, but couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but stand there.
House was still staring at his hand, the light touch barely there. Wilson’s hand twitched. He heard House’s voice, softly but hoarsely. Matter-of-factly, almost: “We’ll screw this up. And then there won’t be anyone left. Except for Steve McQueen.”
“He’s a cowboy. That counts as five friends,” Wilson said, quietly, half-heartedly, stomach clenching. And then: “You think I want to screw this up?”
Slowly: “Do you?”
“I... already have.”
But within that second of words, they had moved closer, and without knowing who acted first, Wilson felt the roughness of House’s lips against his. He opened his mouth, gasping in, as he felt the stubble scraping against the side of his face, the chapped coarseness sliding forcefully along his bottom lip. He felt all his marriages and affairs and failings at everything sliding away into meaninglessness, and as House drew in a rough breath and let it out shakily, he pressed himself closer, desperate, his expression closed. He stumbled forward against House for a moment, and broke away, House wincing.
“You okay?” He could hear his heart pounding in his ears, thudding away painfully.
House looked up, eyes dark, lips slightly apart. “Fine. Bastard.” His voice was raw and hoarse.
He came closer, and Wilson’s glances near-wildly, and attempting-restrainedly grazed over House. House’s look could almost be mistaken for sullenness, but was utterly serious, dark, fixated and intensely concentrated, furiously and silently and insistently clinging on to self-control. Wilson wanted to think, wanted to over-think the situation, wanted to know why, besides years of companionship, House was even here with him. But his brain was insistently switching off, and all he knew was that at least it wasn’t pity, because House never followed sympathy’s doctrine. House reached out and loosened Wilson’s tie, dragging it off, hand brushing against Wilson’s stomach through his striped shirt in the process. Wilson leaned forward, gasping inward, and they pressed together again.
He walked outside on the balcony to see, to his horror, House attempting to climb over the wall separating the two portions. Sitting and balancing precariously on the bricks, he swung one leg, then the other, over it, throwing his cane on the ground on Wilson’s side, and slipping off the wall onto his left leg, hopping towards his cane.
“House, you’re gonna kill yourself one of these days,” Wilson called, shaking his head, and holding out his arm for House to hold as he grabbed his cane off the ground, balancing on one leg. The pressure of House actually using his arm for a support system, one of the first times of many, was welcome and a little unanticipated. House brushed his lips against the skin right under Wilson’s ear when he stood up straight again, and then pushed him away, mock-roughly, against the vertically challenged wall, to prove that he didn’t need the support.
“Stop living in the Middle Ages, Wilson. King’s horses and king’s men? We’ve got tanks and artillery now. And Cuddy.”
Wilson, leaning hazardously against the considerably short wall, ran a hand up House’s forearm, and then drew his eyes away from the fabric of House’s shirt, and up to House’s face. “Couldn’t you just walk around through my office?”
“Couldn’t the guy who climbed Everest have just used a Stairmaster?”
“Oh, so it’s a challenge. How could I have doubted your valor?”
“If you wanted a divorce, you could just say so.”
“Oh, just,” Wilson made a face, waved his hand, “Shut up.”
“Happily,” House said, and kissed him.
Author: aheartfulofyou
Rating: PG-13
Words: 6,733
Pairings: House/Wilson, Wilson/wives-and-girlfriends
Spoilers/Setting: Pre-show to S2, 2x6 “Spin” centric, spoilers up to 2x8 “The Mistake”
Notes: Owned by David Shore. Tennessee Williams reference belongs to-guess who?-Tennessee Williams. Dedicated to my gorgeous genagirl, whom I worship (unquestioningly and uncritically), as her Christmas present! Much thanks and love to my beta shadow__dragon, extrabitter for offering some suggestions, to shadowfax994 for being my Remus and agreeing with my theory, and to little_details and my mum for some medical rambling.
i
aspirate v. To draw air into the lungs; a rough breathing sound; medicine: matter removed by aspiration.
“Only an extremely emotionally insecure woman would ditch a great job just because she has unfulfilled emotional issues with it.”
“She’s a constitutional lawyer; she doesn’t need a job at a hospital. Mark didn’t need checkups here anymore, and-“
“You didn’t see her paycheck. There was no reason to leave, unless she still-“
“You shouldn’t have seen her paycheck. And she left because you’re an asshole, you were being an asshole to her and her husband, and would and will continue to be an asshole for the rest of her and your careers.”
House tapped his cane against the floor, biting thoughtfully at his bottom lip. Wilson leaned against the wall of House’s office, the solid, stoic surface hard and uncomfortable against his back, but something he was more than used to. He stopped gesturing, shifted, crossed his arms, and looked down at his lab coat sleeves. They were clean, but there was a slightly brighter white spot on the right side, through his own attempts at laundry, seeing as Julie had stopped feeding and clothing him.
House nodded, looking solemn. “Of course she’d leave.”
“You’re... okay?” He squinted his eyes, looking at House carefully.
He finally nodded. “I’m over her.”
“Yes. Of course.” Wilson tried to keep the slightly bitter-sounding dryness out of his voice. House was having trouble, after all.
“Now, Stacy’s mom.” Wilson rolled his eyes, ready for the punch line before it occurred. A sign of House’s internal grief: predictability. “She’s got it going on.”
Wilson sighed and shrugged, at a lack for what to say, as he had seemed to be generally when House rambled onwards of hours at a time over his obsession with Stacy. He stepped away from the wall, glanced backwards to make sure House would still be pensive or sarcastic in turn, but not switch to suicidal or maniacal. He seemed to be taking it all right. Wilson wasn’t sure whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that he wasn’t getting drunk off his ass, crying bitterly, or vainly trying to find a way to get her back again.
He was nearly run down by the cart as it entered the back ER entranceway, paramedics scrambling, the woman on the cart, shrieking, jerking from side to side, and scratching furiously at her skin with flailing hands. Deep gashes from her nails were visible atop a heavy red rash that covered all of her visible skin. Clinging curls were damp with sweat and stuck to her forehead, and even her lips were swollen with lumpy patches of irritated skin. He was surprised that they had managed to skive off anaphylaxis so far, and continued walking. If he were to talk to the family, of course he’d be gentle, frown at her agony. These days, however, he felt too tired to even empathize. Benadryl, a topical anti-inflammatory, maybe a stab with the EpiPen, and she’d be fine.
It was too simple of a case for House. He admitted to himself that when walking through the emergency room he tended to observe and see if there was anything interesting to take note of, something for the ceaseless puzzle House always needed to solve. Psychotic. He supposed that meant he was, too, or was at least contributing.
He felt someone grab his arm, and turned slightly. A heavyset man with dark hair and a drawn face was standing nearby, as though he had just come in the doorway, looking apathetic. His voice, however, sounded with at least a small amount of concern. “Doctor, what’s wrong with her?”
Ah, the real reason why House didn’t wear a lab coat. Wilson turned all the way. “I won’t actually be working on her case, sir, but I’d generally diagnose allergic reaction. A few medications and she should be back to normal.”
“Why the hell is she having allergic reactions?” He seemed to be on the offensive, like it was her fault. Wilson’s expression, however, remained gentle and partially indifferent.
“Most likely something she ate, such as peanuts, or possibly chemicals she may have been cleaning with.”
The man made a noncommittal noise, and turned back, to watch things quiet down. Her breathing was easier, she seemed to be talking to the staff, and shakily reached for a pill and a cup of water, which she downed. Right when Wilson was ready to turn, again, and walk away, he caught out of his peripheral vision the woman violently jerking up to a sitting position, vomiting, and then seizing, thrashing on the cart with several loud rattling sounds, and choking, gasping for breath. The paramedics scrambled back around her, yelling for IV diphenhydramine and a suction. Wilson frowned.
The man next to him had a furious expression on his face. “She didn’t do nothing when this started. Just standing and talking.”
Wilson rubbed a hand along the side of his face. “Can I get her name, and yours? I’ll look into it.”
It was the equivalent of a clinic case, but enough to give him a haughty look of determination again. Now all House had to do was think. And, of course, with thinking came rambling. Wilson munched on some extra-cheesy Doritos, and squinted to try and see the tiny score at the bottom of the television set, propped up on the glass table.
“I’m thinking about writing an epic poem about myself. The triumphant hero, larger than life, with the strength of ten men.” House gestured dramatically with his hands. “The tragic flaw of-“
“Pride? How original.”
House glared at him. “No. Succumbing to the desire for the beautiful but deadly Cudzilla.”
“Who is defeated by three beatings of the magnificent and enchanted cane of-“
“Hey, hey, hey. My inner thoughts have copyrights on them. You can’t just go and infringe like that.”
Cameron, Chase, and Foreman came scurrying into the room as Wilson smirked, and threw another chip into his mouth.
“You paged us?” Cameron asked, slightly breathless. House nodded, and sat up straighter.
“Simple case, allergic reaction, plus bad side affects to all the drugs we’ve been giving her. The only thing we don’t know is what caused it.”
Chase piped up with, “Uh, food borne? Peanuts? Shellfish? Could be any of the usuals.”
“Or, drugs. Drugs could easily present with the exact same symptoms.” Foreman’s arms were crossed, and he tapped a pen against his lab coat sleeve.
House nodded. “Do a drug screening, and go wipe some peanut butter on her arm.” Cameron looked skeptical, but all three of them turned to head out the door. Wilson took a glance at House, who looked thoughtful, rocking his chair back and forth on the back two legs, before:
“Hey!” The three turned to look at him. “Give her a bath, too.”
“A... bath?” He would’ve thought Chase would be used to such arbitrary instructions by now.
“And tell me what her hair looks like afterwards.” The team glanced at each other, and then went off down the hallway.
Wilson looked at House carefully, still not exactly sure, as always, how to fathom the way his mind worked. He turned up the volume on the TV, and House stole his chips bag, emptying the remaining crumbs into his mouth. At Wilson’s still-inquisitive stare, he gave a tiny smirk.
“You’ll see.”
ii
aspire v. To desire with ambition. pl. n. aspirations.
He and his first wife were married in a gigantic synagogue, where everything was draped in gold and the bride was a proper Jewish girl, Teresa. He was right out of med school, and everything was perfect, down to tiny little lace bows on the edges of the tablecloths, made by his mother. She ended up being a plate-thrower. During their fights, which occurred more and more from one year onward, she smashed all of the original wedding sets, as well as some of the blue flowered ones he had inconspicuously bought later, and gave him a tiny scar along his collarbone. His first marriage and first divorced seemed a little more natural and understandable than all the rest. No one blamed him for the failing bonds, nor the cheating. He had still retained hope.
As much as the first was the tantrum queen, Beth was a crier, who believed in second chances, and who cried a tear for every second he was late getting home from work. He had loved them both, he told himself, and the loss of his dog, two mansions, and the linen sets didn’t take away that love. He told himself the next time would be better. He still felt the residual guilt, but didn’t want to deal with it. After a few years, he was too tired to try and work at the relationships that somehow felt empty, despite white picket fences and family dinners.
About midway through the first marriage, he had gotten his job, first as oncologist, then Department Head, at Princeton-Plainsboro. Around the same time, he had met House, who strolled into his office looking for the ex-Head (to dump work on him); he’d sniped a bit, made a few sarcastic comments, and ended up cheating him out of a lunch. Somehow. They managed to eat lunch with each other every day following, and Wilson somehow progressed to being not only the only one who could tolerate House, but his only friend.
Then there were the girlfriends. After the first affair, it sprawled out of his control. He flirted, and had lunch with, and occasionally had sex with them, and earned the reputation of resident panty-peeler. It didn’t feel real, nor stable, but he managed to get used to invading lives to seek out a feeling he rarely felt. A feeling of happiness, content, giddiness, that all equaled out to the feeling of life. It was cheesy, it was ridiculous, but it was true, and infrequent. He could list them off: Ivy, Rachel, Gina, Patricia, Lauren, Jennifer. All called, respectively, Irma, Raquel, Georgia, Pamela, Lorraine, and Jackie by House, who tended to have some sort of false memory syndrome-be it through true neurological problems, or quite possibly on purpose.
The second marriage, then, had an end. Unburdening himself of guilt, like instantaneously ditching off a heavy load-which didn’t tend to actually work-he confessed everything to Beth. His cheating was simply the re-opening of the proverbial wound. She couldn’t understand his overwhelming need to sit by House’s hospital bed every day he could after the infarction. He had flown back to Jersey from his outing with her when Stacy had called, and that was the first major blow to Beth’s happiness. Even when House was out of the hospital, he insisted on going over to his place, to save House from the silence he constantly exposed himself to, by refusing to speak to Stacy.
By the time he got to his third wife, Julie, he honestly wanted to believe in the old cliché about third times. He tried hard with her, tried to keep the marriage going, wanted nothing more than to have a relationship with her that would last, and be consistent, and not fade into oblivion like all of his other marriages. This meant no flirting with the nurses, no flirting with the masseuse, being a good husband. She was a smart woman, nice enough, her mother had died from a brain tumor a year before. He hadn’t personally had the case, but heard about it. She had a stay-at-home job and the tendency to cook extravagant, elaborate meals, which tasted fine, though he didn’t particularly care for them.
He preferred a greasy slice of pizza to a casserole with random food objects and seasoning, but who was he to complain?
But for every day of a warm relationship, there were weeks of coldness, awkwardness, or times when he just couldn’t seem to care. Those were days when she would argue with him, though while still being infinitesimally gentle in the way she treated him. She would say that he didn’t pay attention to her, that all she wanted was for him to notice her. The flirting started up again, but there was never enough guilt to tell her anything-yet. He skipped out on family gatherings, preferring to spend the time in the dark warmth of House’s apartment, laughing over stupid things and eating Grade A heart cloggers, as Julie sometimes called the college all-nighter style foods House ate.
The cheating started again. Not a lot of it, just an accountant, blonde and more than willing, despite the fact that she-unlike many of the others-knew he was married.
He told Julie, of course. She cried and screamed and then told him they could work it out, which somehow made him feel more nervous than any of the other times, though it correlated with his pledge to actually work on this marriage. Still, he was used to instant divorce papers.
The moment when the holding off of divorce papers had a completely different motive was when he didn’t work it out as much as she tried to. The woman knew how to hold a grudge, and remain clinging. She stopped feeding him, she stopped clothing him; she sent him to the couch. But she made him live in the same space with her, anyway. They didn’t live together; they occupied the same cage. And he made as many excuses as he could to get out of it.
He had taken Brittany, one of his affair-ees, to an uppity seafood restaurant, and looked at her around the candle on their table. “What are your aspirations? What do you dream about?”
She placed her chin in her hands, elbows on the table in defiance of strict codes of conduct. Those were the sorts of things that ran through his head at times like this. She tilted her head and smiled at him.
“Nobody’s ever asked me that before. I’d love to make a living painting.” She licked the corner of her mouth carefully, as to not smear the glossy sheen. “Working at the hospital is one thing, it’s all good. But I’d just love to pick up a paintbrush and not worry about anything else.” She fixed him with a green-eyed stare, where he calmly observed the flickering of the candle, with a blithe smile on his face.
“That sounds great.”
“Case resolved?”
House looked smug as usual, but there were lines underneath his eyes that weren’t usually there. “Rambled off a list of chemicals in hair products. Thioglycolates, ammonium hydroxide, alkylphenol ethoxylates. They were so impressed. She’s gonna have to cross herself every time she walks by a hair salon.”
Wilson rubbed his eyes, and leaned back in his chair. “You’re wrecking the world’s economy as it stands.”
“I’ve teamed up with Darth Vader. It’s part of our ploy to take over the world.” House glanced at his watch. “General Hospital’s in two minutes. Discharge the patient for me and I’ll give you five hundred?”
“Five hundred of my own money. Where’re the underlings?”
“Foreman’s off stealing your car, and Sparky and Cameron are off breaking into Mrs. Acute Liver Failure’s house. Looking for some more meth, so they can get it on.”
Wilson sighed, and stood. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”
It didn’t take any length of time to get the proper forms signed and to the nurse, and to handle some of the prescriptions. He entered the room for a last checkup, finding Miss Ketter sullen but otherwise healthy, despite a few scars and fading marks running along her arms. Her husband also seemed gruff, and while Wilson preformed the general check of the stats, he muttered to her, “Why did you even get the damn perm in the first place?”
Wilson glanced briefly at them, then continued working. She muttered back to him, casting him a bitter glance, “I just wanted you to notice me.”
“You’re all set,” Wilson proclaimed, and gave them both a mild smile, before taking the charts, handing them to the nurse, then strolling back to House’s office.
The first time he cheated felt no less or more fake than all the other times. He continuously searched for meaning behind it all-House called it succumbing to the over-loving part of him, ever trying to help the needy.
She fiddled with her keys, three small silver ones, all contained on a simple, pink plastic rectangle, and ran a perfectly manicured finger up and down the jagged edge of the largest key, staring at it carefully, then looking up at him, with urgently hopeful eyes. “Want to come in? We could have some wine, or coffee, or something.”
He felt some sort of vague panic, that he was already taking steps in destroying a perfectly legitimate, fine marriage. “I had a great time, Ivy, but I should probably get going. I’ve got a heavy workload tomorrow.” He carefully and in a friendly manner made eye contact.
She squeezed his arm in a grip too tight and desperate to be either seductive, convincing, or reassuring. “Are you sure?”
Within a second, once small glance, he took in her slightly disheveled, though attempting to be neat, blonde hair. It was done up with precarious though painstaking effort. Her eyes were too wide for her pale face, ringed with dark eyeliner.
“No. Now that you mention it, I will.” He gave her a smile that seemed both self-degrading, kind, and up front, with a mild downturn to his head. In his eyes, he could feel that the expression was forced. He made a gesture as though to put his hands in the nonexistent lab coat pockets, and felt more like someone else than himself, less grounded.
They worked their way inside her apartment, and she set to kissing him, both fierce and needy, abandoning all pretense of post-dinner drinking or conversation. He was a gentleman, let her carry it as far as she wanted-which ended up being all the way-and noticed halfway through, in gently drawing away some piece of fabric-be it her skirt, or the bed sheets, he didn’t recall-that both hands felt exactly the same, there was no minute, extra weight on the ring finger of his left hand.
There was a moment when it all came together, not in a shining epiphany, but in a dull drop of his stomach and a pause in the noise surrounding his life.
Petra Gilmore, half-Jewish interviewee extraordinaire, checked in at his office a day after, thanks to his phone call. She walked into the room with neon purple heels, decidedly not Prada, but fashionable nonetheless. He glanced at the shoes decisively, and figured that House was right, though only House would be insane enough to analyze someone’s character through shoe styles. Insane enough to run a fashion-slash-horoscope magazine, or something. But, still, no one could be that confident and that cool under pressure, with a wall of smooth sarcasm, without having some sort of internal damage. He smiled at her.
“Dr. Gilmore.”
“Dr. Wilson.” She held out her hand, gave a smirking, half-smile that turned up the corner of her lipstick-burgundy mouth.
“If you’d like to have a seat?” He motioned to the chair in front of his desk, and she sat down, posture straight, attentive, and somehow casual.
He informed her of the basics, that the fellowship position had been filled, she questioned about his ‘bud’ and why he wasn’t the one doing the talking. Suddenly she was interviewing him: why he, as the head of oncology, was doing interviews for the diagnostics department, and telling him that she’d go talk to House personally to complain, though ever so coolly, that he wasn’t being a big boy and sending her a letter or telling her himself. He had no doubt she would do something of the sort.
In rapid-fire succession, then, with charm and with none of the inanity and playfulness he showed only to House, he offered her a job in the oncology department, which she turned down, and nearing the end of the conversation, offered to take her for lunch or dinner. It was an awkward lapse in the conversation, when she gave him a careful look, a tiny half-smile that made her seem more confident, more self-aware than he was, and turned him down. She shook his hand, and strode out of the office.
He sat at his desk, breathing and staring down at loose pens and ruffled papers, standing up and fixing the Vertigo poster’s frame, which was slightly crooked, and realizing he had gone too far, for far too long.
iii
aspersion n. False charges or slander; an unfavorable or damaging remark; blessing with holy water.
Wilson sat on the small couch in his office, eating a turkey sub, when House decided to stride in. Hooking his cane to the bookshelf, he sat at Wilson’s desk. Wilson felt a small twang of annoyance, that he never asked to enter, always just intruded, but the feeling passed. He took another bite and looked down, expecting whatever clever comment House would proclaim next.
“You’ve been apathy on legs, lately. I told you once and I’ll tell you again: you can’t let Stacy’s work habits rub off on you.” There it was.
“Hm,” was the only reply Wilson would give.
“Won’t talk, either. What’re you eating?”
“It’s turkey, House,” he said, exasperated.
“Watch out. Your shady turkey’s probably excreting poisonous chemicals through it’s gravy.”
He sighed. “Endocarditis wouldn’t result in-“
“Oh, so says the non-specializing oncologist.”
He flicked a stray piece of lettuce off the bread on to the napkin on his lap, and looked up. “What do you want, House?”
House’s face went serious. “Julie’s picture’s not on your shelf.”
He looked down again, suddenly not hungry, crinkling a corner of the sandwich wrapping. “I broke the frame; I took it down to get a new one,” he lied half-heartedly.
“No, you didn’t. She divorced you.”
Wilson stood and threw the rest of the sub in the small metal garbage bin sitting neatly at the edge of his desk. “Yeah, she did.”
“Well, now we’ll see all the truisms destroyed. What’ll be the charm, fourth or fifth time? You could always shoot for the Guinness Book-“
Anger cracking his voice, he turned and muttered brusquely, “House, don’t even start.”
House looked down and nodded, suddenly solemn. “Okay.” It was the closest thing to an apology that Wilson had ever gotten from him.
“Wilson.”
She used the same word for him that House did, but hers didn’t have years of back story and sometimes gruff, usually jibing, taken-for-granted lilts to it. In fact, it almost mirrored that, in all actuality. She used it because House did, and that was good enough for her. Similar to how he had gone from calling her Allison, to Dr. Cameron, when things progressed and he knew that he wouldn’t lift a finger to... what was it? Put the moves on her. And how that had progressed to plainly Cameron, after these heart-to-hearts, which was good enough for him. After all, it was what House called her.
He wondered vaguely if “Cameron” was her maiden name or married name-his wives always changed back, but she was a widow-and if what she really wanted, what she would have lied about, was if she wanted it to be Joe’s last name.
Or House’s.
She fiddled with the lapels on the pockets of her vest-coat, her bare arms pale and perfect-looking, with tiny sleeves of her white blouse only just poking out from under the top layer of clothing, and protruding out to cover the very top of her arms. She looked determined, softly but intrigued nonetheless, and there was a tiny gleam of hardness and thought in her eyes.
“Do you know Stacy well?” She sat down at the chair across from his desk, like it was tradition, like they’d been having these talks for the past twelve years. She folded her hands on her lap, crossed her legs, and tilted her head to look at him. He sighed and put down a folder, leaning back and looking at her, as well.
“Yeah.” He breathed out. “We’re pretty close friends. How come?”
She leaned forward, towards him, and the expression on her face made her less innocently pretty, but also less of an ingenue. He wasn’t certain which one was better, and was in no position to judge. Her eyes glinted with a certain manipulative quality, or maybe he was just being cynical. She looked at him decisively, knowingly, sharing a secret with him.
“Stacy’s the someone you talked about, isn’t she? You’re... in love with her?” Her movements themselves, her subtle gestures, were meant for encouraging and drawing out the truth, nudging and insisting.
Despite focusing his mind on other matters, he understood pitifully quickly what she was talking about. He gave her one of those bitter little smiles. She was warm, but hadn’t hit the target. “No.” He exhaled. “She’s, uh, she’s just a friend.”
“Oh.” Her eyebrows reclined downward, her eyes scrutinizing him again, trying to understand what she did not. She believed him-he was a terrible liar, anyway, and she should know that-and that added even more so to her confusion.
He gave her a pained smile, pushed his chair away from his desk and stood, pushing his hands into his pockets, and simulating distance and a mild curtness. “If you’ll excuse me, Dr. Cameron, I have an appointment at two-thirty.”
He was slightly surprised to see the confident form of Stacy, briefcase and all, walking down the hallway when he turned a corner. Even more startled after the recent conversation with Cameron.
He caught up to her. “Stacy.” She turned and gave him a smile.
“James.” He took in her intelligent eyes, arching, questioning eyebrows, and small little smirk. Cameron had a few half-truths written in her original psychoanalysis theories. Had she not stopped him from pushing the bounds of their platonic relationship, he probably would have slept with her, too, especially in the vulnerable years, during and after the infarction. She was always too emotionally healthy for her own good, however.
“Thought House said you had left. Stalking him?”
“I’m a lawyer, James, you should know. Can’t leave a paper trail all over the place; I had to clean up a little. Had to say goodbye to Lisa, too, and try to console her over the loss of somebody else to deflect Greg.”
“Ah, yes. Princeton-Plainsboro only kept their constitutional lawyer for a year. I’m sure she’ll love hiring another.”
“How’s Greg?”
He brushed some of the hair at the back of his neck with a hand, glancing off to the side. “Okay. Not too bad.” He noted the slight worry lines along he face appear. “Stop feeling guilty.”
“Who says I’m feeling guilty?”
“Who says I can’t tell when you are?”
She gave him a smirk. “Fair enough. I’m just worried for him. Just because I hate him doesn’t mean I don’t still love him.” She pointed a finger at him. “And don’t tell me that doesn’t make sense.”
“Fine, fine.” He let a tiny corner of his mouth twitch up in a smile. “He’ll be okay.”
She nodded, and let out a little sigh, then something sparked in her eyes, a recollection, that made her look a little mischievous, and made him feel a little wary.
“What?”
She smirked again. “Greg made an interesting announcement to me a few weeks ago.”
“God, please don’t tell me he proposed to you.” She whacked him on the arm lightly with her hand.
“James. No, he decided to proclaim that he has, er, homosexual tendencies, based on his obsession with shoes, and you.”
Wilson’s stomach clenched, but his voice was light and ironic. “Was this a candid, heartfelt discussion, then?”
“Of course not. He decided to yell it in a hallway full of people.”
“Of course.”
She then gave him a pointed look, with her vaulted eyebrows, and lightly commented, “Greg jokes about the things he cares about.”
They had worked their way to the front desk, where Stacy dropped off papers, and kissed him on the cheek. She looked carefully at him, still, eyes piercing enough to, for that second, almost make him believe what she was telling him. “Stay in touch, James. I’ll see you around sometime.” She gave a little half smile and pushed open the glass front doors onto the sidewalks.
He knew what she was trying to imply, though not why she was trying to imply it. Stacy herself was one of the reasons that voided her own statements. It was something he’d rather not think about, for that nauseated feeling. Things like that were better to ignore.
iv
asperity n. Roughness in manner; roughness or harshness, as of surface or sound.
House leaned back into the chair, a smug grin on his face, and threw his cane on top of Wilson’s desk, propping his right leg, first, on the desk, then crossing his feet. Wilson didn’t look up, only studied the papers in his hand carefully, and pushed the cane off his pad of sticky notes. He scribbled a note to the nurse on it, suddenly noting the absence of a wedding ring. It shouldn’t feel strange; it was rarely there even when he was married. But without even a metaphorical ring around his marital state, now, it-traditionally, of course, he’d been through it three times-felt odd.
“So, would you like me even better if I dyed my hair blonde?”
Wilson couldn’t help but let his eyes flicker up to House’s face for an instant, but then went back to rifling through papers. He set to work at charting on Gertrude Johnson, age 83, colon cancer.
“Yes, and recall that I prefer the L’Oreal brand, in shade Platinum B.” He was sure his face had the usual slightly annoyed, bemused, and partially serious expression on it. Possibility of treatment, age factors into terminality of condition.
“Or was that just part of the repression? No, of course, you would’ve gone after Chase if you weren’t such a messed up bastard and didn’t know what you wanted.”
Wilson looked up for longer this time, his stomach clenching slightly. What was House talking about? He couldn’t know... know what? There was nothing, the possibility of nothing. He had decided to ignore these statements, like he had for a while, because it was far too melodramatic. His life was melodramatic enough as it was, with people dying every day, to actually attempt to concern himself with it all. At least, outwardly. Three failed marriages, meaningless affairs, and one screwed-up friendship...
“Because I absolutely know what you’re talking about.” 10 months, top.
House swiveled the chair back and forth, yawned, and rubbed a hand against the stubble along the side of his face, grinning. “Cameron seems to think that you curl up and cry every night because of your unrequited love, pining for my boyish good looks, enough so that you hit up countless blonde babes. A womanizer, and yet not. Wilsonizer, even.” House had the expression still on his face that seemed almost maliciously arrogant, mimicking cheerfulness, but tense, unlike most of the low-key, casual, sarcastic exchanges of times before. “I could patent the term and make millions. No, wait. Did you corrupt an underling? Expanding the blonde thing to even Chase? Poor molested kid.”
“House, shut up.” He stared at the desk’s surface, not even the small smile still lingering on his face. House didn’t seem to notice, however; he took his feet down from the desk and leaned forward dramatically.
“Now do we have to go and try to wring a domestic partner plan out of Cuddy? This has gotta be good for our careers, though, you know. Another Vogler comes around, he tries to fire one of us, and bam, he’d be out before you can say sexual orientation discrimination. Hey, that could be a song-“
“House. Shut the hell up.” Wilson looked up, finally, eyes desperate, angry, with a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, a lurching dizziness in his mind.
House stopped talking, mid-sentence, and licked his lips, expression darkening, eyebrows knitting downwards. He looked at-or more like glared at, inspected-Wilson’s eyes, until Wilson dropped them to the ground, sighed, and rubbed the back of his neck with a hand, tilting his head around and taking in the whole room except for the one filled-in outline of empty space sitting before him. He knew he must look like he was seeking an escape route. House finally looked downward, too, all the harsh teasing abruptly out of his voice.
“It’s true?” he finally asked, his voice hoarse, eyes pacing a slow trace along the floor, then back up to Wilson’s face.
Wilson broke into a bitter grin, let out a laugh that had no natural or otherwise sounds of mirth in it at all. “Chase is still pure and uncorrupted.” He breathed out, looked down, stopped smiling. “Yeah. It’s true.”
He stood, and paced away from his desk, House swiveling his chair slowly around to face Wilson, posture suddenly straight and tense. Wilson stared at the small trickle of people coming and going down the hallway, clearing away, lights shutting off down the hallway.
Wilson slipped his hands into his lab coat pockets, and pushed open the glass door to House’s office. He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a shaky sigh. He didn’t know what he was doing. He had just destroyed a friendship, destroyed the reason of it all. Back to being in love with his stupid… messed-up work, back to watching people die, because there was no point. No point in trying to love everyone else, when the one person you did love stared you in the face, stole chips from you, rambled about his one true love, was a bitter, angry, tactless genius.
“Hey,” House said, softly, a noise barely there but picked up in any case. “About that ride home?”
Wilson let out a tiny bitter laugh, and couldn’t look back. “Yeah.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he just repeated it. “Yeah.” He shook his head, and walked out the door, down the hallway.
He was partially surprised he could even drive, when he took House home from work in silence, on the dark and half-empty roads; but in other ways, he didn’t even wonder. He was used to putting up fronts and sitting in calm; they weren’t really fronts, anyway, anymore, because inside he wasn’t raging in passion, he was just sickeningly composed.
He would have pulled up to the side of House’s apartment and left him there, if it weren’t for the nagging tiny voice inside his head that his limp might have been a little bit worse this day, and the insistence that he shouldn’t just ditch him at the bottom of the steps.
“We’re here,” Wilson said, in a joyless voice, trying to be cheerful and failing. He parked, and slammed the door behind himself, walking up on the sidewalk to the other side. He waited for House to get out of the car and walk up to the front door.
He stood on the porch, hands in his pockets, regretting every moment of everything he’d ever said. House opened the door, and Wilson was ready to turn and leave, when he heard his voice, sounding very uncommitted and quiet, but still speaking, at least. “You can,” he made a short throat-clearing sound, “come in.”
Wilson breathed in, out, and nodded. Where else could he go? Home? Maybe they’d work out a system for ignoring yet another little fact added to attempt to capsize their acquaintance. “Sure.”
House flicked on the lights in the dark apartment, shrugged off his coat, which dropped to the floor. Wilson, without even thinking, picked it up and hung it on a crooked wire hanger in the front, purely out of habit. When he turned again, and walked to the middle of the living room, trying to look everywhere but House, he caught the small glance House was giving him, a strange expression.
Wilson rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ll, uh, I’ll go.” House’s chin was tilted downwards, and he nodded vaguely. But as he turned, he felt a tiny touch along his wrist, and turned back. House was staring at his own hand, not at him, as though he couldn’t believe he had even reached out. Wilson, eyebrows creased downwards, tried to breathe normally, despite the sudden pressure surrounding him and trying to suffocate him. He wanted to act, but couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but stand there.
House was still staring at his hand, the light touch barely there. Wilson’s hand twitched. He heard House’s voice, softly but hoarsely. Matter-of-factly, almost: “We’ll screw this up. And then there won’t be anyone left. Except for Steve McQueen.”
“He’s a cowboy. That counts as five friends,” Wilson said, quietly, half-heartedly, stomach clenching. And then: “You think I want to screw this up?”
Slowly: “Do you?”
“I... already have.”
But within that second of words, they had moved closer, and without knowing who acted first, Wilson felt the roughness of House’s lips against his. He opened his mouth, gasping in, as he felt the stubble scraping against the side of his face, the chapped coarseness sliding forcefully along his bottom lip. He felt all his marriages and affairs and failings at everything sliding away into meaninglessness, and as House drew in a rough breath and let it out shakily, he pressed himself closer, desperate, his expression closed. He stumbled forward against House for a moment, and broke away, House wincing.
“You okay?” He could hear his heart pounding in his ears, thudding away painfully.
House looked up, eyes dark, lips slightly apart. “Fine. Bastard.” His voice was raw and hoarse.
He came closer, and Wilson’s glances near-wildly, and attempting-restrainedly grazed over House. House’s look could almost be mistaken for sullenness, but was utterly serious, dark, fixated and intensely concentrated, furiously and silently and insistently clinging on to self-control. Wilson wanted to think, wanted to over-think the situation, wanted to know why, besides years of companionship, House was even here with him. But his brain was insistently switching off, and all he knew was that at least it wasn’t pity, because House never followed sympathy’s doctrine. House reached out and loosened Wilson’s tie, dragging it off, hand brushing against Wilson’s stomach through his striped shirt in the process. Wilson leaned forward, gasping inward, and they pressed together again.
He walked outside on the balcony to see, to his horror, House attempting to climb over the wall separating the two portions. Sitting and balancing precariously on the bricks, he swung one leg, then the other, over it, throwing his cane on the ground on Wilson’s side, and slipping off the wall onto his left leg, hopping towards his cane.
“House, you’re gonna kill yourself one of these days,” Wilson called, shaking his head, and holding out his arm for House to hold as he grabbed his cane off the ground, balancing on one leg. The pressure of House actually using his arm for a support system, one of the first times of many, was welcome and a little unanticipated. House brushed his lips against the skin right under Wilson’s ear when he stood up straight again, and then pushed him away, mock-roughly, against the vertically challenged wall, to prove that he didn’t need the support.
“Stop living in the Middle Ages, Wilson. King’s horses and king’s men? We’ve got tanks and artillery now. And Cuddy.”
Wilson, leaning hazardously against the considerably short wall, ran a hand up House’s forearm, and then drew his eyes away from the fabric of House’s shirt, and up to House’s face. “Couldn’t you just walk around through my office?”
“Couldn’t the guy who climbed Everest have just used a Stairmaster?”
“Oh, so it’s a challenge. How could I have doubted your valor?”
“If you wanted a divorce, you could just say so.”
“Oh, just,” Wilson made a face, waved his hand, “Shut up.”
“Happily,” House said, and kissed him.