"The One in Which Wilson Plays a Mafia Punching Bag so House Can Comfort Him," NC-17, 2/3
Warning for Wilson-bashing.
Full header at the top of Part One
Wilson groaned around the gag, his body a throbbing mass of pain. He didn't know how long he'd been here, only that it had been hours and hours, possibly days. They'd taken the gag out to give him water and some bread a couple of times between beatings, and they'd let him up now and then to relieve himself in a pot in the corner. He'd slept once, too, albeit badly, woken with a stinging slap to the face. He was sore and tired and scared and pretty sure he was losing short stretches of time. He had no idea whether nightdog_barks was still in the room orchestrating this madness or if she'd left him at the gangsters' mercy. Sometimes he thought he heard typing mixed in with his cries or the clinking of his chains, but he didn't fully trust his senses anymore.
They'd taken his watch, and there weren't any windows in this godforsaken place, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway; the blindfold had gone on almost immediately after Arnello had announced what he planned to do with him. After they'd tied it on he'd heard a series of soft, chittering snaps, and it had taken a few moments for him to recognize them as a digital camera shutter. Arnello was taking pictures of him for House's "incentive" file. Swallowing down his panic, Wilson had tried to tell them that holding him hostage would only distract House from saving Joey's life, that it was normal for House's patients to flirt with death on the journey to a successful diagnosis, but the gag had muffled his words, and nobody'd moved to take it out.
Then they'd started to hurt him.
The rubber truncheon had come down with a startling blunt force, again, and again, and again, patternless. With the blindfold on, there was no way for him to tell where the next blow would fall or how hard it would hit. He'd grunted every time Lefty had struck, feeling the bruises bloom across his chest, abdomen, quads and arms. He'd barely stifled a yell when one particularly savage blow had landed on his nipple. He hadn't been able to hold back a scream when another strike lower down had grazed his balls. He'd sagged in his bonds as the agony whited out his mind, but the collar had forced him to kneel upright again or risk strangulation. Lefty hadn't paused in his assault.
There'd been a break afterwards for pictures, water and rest; long enough that Wilson figured Arnello had gone back to the hospital to deliver the folder and check in on his brother. Trembling with exhaustion and the remnants of adrenaline, he'd tried to regroup.
Inevitably, Arnello had returned, muttering something about a pig and a convertible. Wilson had still been trying to make sense of that when they'd untied him from the post. He'd moaned with relief when the collar and two pairs of cuffs loosened, only to find himself stripped of his shirt, turned around and restrained once again, still on his aching knees. "No," he'd tried to say, "No, please," but they'd just pushed his tenderized chest against the rough wood and stretched his arms out in front of him, attaching the cuff chain to some sort of bolt in the floor. At least they'd left the collar off.
He'd thought the truncheon was bad. The whip, though-when Righty had started in on him, Wilson had discovered a new level of pain. Stripes of fire had lashed across his back, singing up and down his spine. Every few strokes, the whip had curled around his ribs to bite at the bruises on his sides and front. It had laid stinging welts on the backs of his thighs. It had even snapped at his buttocks through his shorts. Wilson hadn't been grunting then, he'd been crying out, choking on the gag, fighting his chains, helpless tears wetting the blindfold. With his chest pressed up against the post, he couldn't arch away from the terrible lash.
He vaguely remembered through the haze afterwards that they'd taken more pictures and untied him again, let him curl up shaking on his side on the cold floor. After a while, he'd become aware that his wrists were tied in front of him and he'd been chained to the post by one ankle; as if he could have sat up, let alone tried to run away. His back had been smeared with something he hoped was an antiseptic. Arnello was gone once more. He'd heard the others playing cards and smelled them smoking on the other side of the room.
Fading in and out of consciousness, the sound of typing taunting at the edge of his awareness, he'd tried to focus on House and block out the pain and fear. nightdog_barks had said she wouldn't kill him, but then she'd come out with that far-from-comforting qualifier. Wilson had felt it was safer to trust in what he knew. House wouldn't let Joey die, he'd told himself. But he also knew House didn't work well when he was distracted, and he was distracted when the people he cared about were in danger.
Wison had had a sort of epiphany then, lying there in total darkness. House cared about him. He'd known it before, of course, intellectually, but he'd felt it then like one of Lefty's wallops to the gut, leaving him breathless. Arnello had said Wilson was the most important person to House besides Stacy; he was here because it would hurt House to lose him more than anyone else. Wilson had blinked behind his blindfold. If he got out of this, they'd probably hate each other for a while-he wouldn't have been here if not for House, and House wouldn't have been under so much pressure if he hadn't cared so much for Wilson-but afterwards, when the anger betrayed the fear beneath and then the fear gave way to something else... Who knew what might happen?
He must have faded out again after that; suddenly he'd been on his knees again with his screaming back scraping the splintery post, the awful collar snugged back on, and Lefty and his truncheon (he assumed it was Lefty; the soft grunts as the hardest blows struck home sounded the same as before) had gone another round with him.
Then they'd let him rest for a long time. Things with Joey must have been approaching critical, because Arnello had stayed at the hospital since the whipping and relayed all his orders by phone. They hadn't whipped him again, thank God (thank nightdog_barks? he'd wondered a little hysterically), only roughed him up a little once or twice with some punches to his face, ribs, stomach and kidneys. One of the attackers seemed to like kicking his knees out from under him and watching him struggle to regain his balance before the collar choked him.
That had been it for the last few hours. The other men were back at their card game. Wilson groaned again and squirmed around in an attempt to find the least uncomfortable position for his numb knees and aching shoulders. He was trying not to think about which part of him hurt the most.
The phone rang. The mafioso with the deep, scratchy voice who'd been taking Arnello's calls picked up. A few moments later, the group walked over, and something cool and hard pressed against Wilson's left temple above the blindfold and stayed there.
Wilson went stock-still. This was it, then. Joey had died, and he was about to join him. He was going to die tied up in a basement in his underwear with drool on his chin. They were going to shoot him in the fucking head and drag him out of this basement and stuff him in the trunk of their car and bury him in some unmarked grave in a landfill or maybe tie him to a cement block and dump him in a river and oh God what had been wrong with Joey that House couldn't figure it out and Christ now he'd never be able to tell House how he felt-
Seconds, minutes, half an hour ticked by, and nothing happened. Nobody spoke. Wilson's breaths came heavy and fast, and he sweated and shook with anticipation. Every time the man holding the gun to his head shifted, a thin, keening whine would escape Wilson's throat. His thoughts wound down to a cycle of Please, no, please, House, please, I don't want to die.
They waited.
A tableau:
Wilson, kneeling, nearly naked, bound, gagged, collared, struggling to stay still. Sweat-damp bangs falling over his blindfold. Bruised chest gleaming with perspiration in the dim light. Lips swollen around the strip of white cloth tugging at the edges of his mouth. Behind him, hands clenched into fists. In front of him, four men in a loose semi-circle: two at ease; one turning a cell phone over and over in his hand, slowly; the last pressing a pistol with infinite patience to Wilson's left temple.
And nightdog_barks saw that it was good.
nightdog_barks let Wilson wait an hour before Joey Smith, née Arnello, woke from his coma at the hospital. She allotted another fifteen minutes for Bill to visit his room and enjoy the mobster family version of a heart-to-heart. Five more minutes for House to accost him in the hallway and demand that he let Wilson go. Only then did she have Bill make the call.
Wilson flinched so hard when the phone rang that his head thunked audibly against the post. A moment later, a damp patch spread across the front of his shorts. One of the men snickered.
The thug Wilson called Lefty (his Dog-given name was Francis) was grunting assents over the line to Arnello. Something snapped in Wilson's chest, wrote nightdog_barks. He started babbling and couldn't stop: lame action-movie lines like, "Please don't, please don't kill me," and "Money, I have money," and even "Shooting me won't ruin House's life." Last words ripe for House's ridicule, and they were incomprehensible around the gag besides, but he was desperate to say something.
Wilson went quiet when Lefty snapped the phone shut. Lefty shook his head at Righty, who cocked the pistol up and away from Wilson's head. Wilson turned his head slightly from side to side as if straining to see what was going on.
"Congratulations, Doctor," Lefty rumbled. "Boss says you get to live."
Wilson slumped against the post with a long, sobbing exhale. As Righty tucked the gun away, Lefty went down on one knee in front of Wilson and placed his thick hands on the sides of Wilson's face. Wilson flinched back at Lefty's touch, but Lefty only reached around and untied the gag, pulling it almost gently from Wilson's mouth.
"Want some water?" Lefty asked. At Wilson's hesitant nod, he jerked his head for Righty to get one of the Evian bottles off the card table in the corner.
"Co-" Wilson began, then coughed. His voice was mostly gone. "Collar? Please."
When Lefty obliged, Wilson awkwardly maneuvered himself off his shaking legs and into a sitting position with a groan. Righty handed off the half-full water bottle; Lefty held it to Wilson's cracked lips and let him sip from it until it was empty.
"Thanks," Wilson whispered. In his head, nightdog_barks wrote, House snorted. 'James Wilson, ladies and gentlemen: thanking the mobsters who were ready to shoot him two minutes ago.'
"Need a piss?" Lefty asked. Wilson shook his head. Straightening, Lefty said, "Stay put, then, until he gets back. He wants to talk to you before you go."
Wilson would have pointed out that he couldn't very well have walked away while tied to the floor, but he was too shaken for anything coherent, nightdog_barks happily tapped away. They were going to let him go. He lay his pounding head against the wood and narrowed his attention down to each agonized part of his body in turn as the other men went back to their card game.
Arnello returned an hour later. Within minutes, Wilson's chain had been released from the floor bolt and he was dragged across the room and plunked in a chair with his wrists still bound behind him. For the first time since they'd begun their attacks, they took the blindfold off. He squinted in the sharp light of the desk lamp in front of him. One of his eyes was swollen from an earlier punch, and a nearly black bruise crept up from his cheekbone; the other eye was bloodshot and bleary. He swayed slightly.
"Dr. Wilson," Arnello said from the opposite seat. "Dr. House came through for us. Joey's gonna be okay. Now here's what you're going to do if you want to go home." He slid a set of 8x10 photos across the table. They were surveillance shots of men Wilson had never seen before. "Their names are Tim, Nick, Ray and Bobby. This is their ringleader; goes by Grey Eyes. They are the ones who abducted and assaulted you."
Brow furrowed, Wilson looked up at him, then at the thugs on either side of him, then back down at the photographs.
"Dr. Wilson. Listen carefully. These are the men you will identify to the police when you tell them what happened to you. Grey Eyes, Tim, Nick, Ray and Bobby. Take a good look. Commit their faces to memory. Listen to what I tell you about how they sound, where they took you and what they said. Do you understand me?"
Wilson swayed again; someone gripped his shoulder from behind to keep him sitting up straight. "Who...?"
"Bunch of dickheads playing on our turf who don't know what 'get lost' means. Don't worry about 'em. You just give the names and descriptions. I'll make sure they're indicted and found guilty. You won't even have to testify at the trial."
Wilson was looking dazed. "Trial...?"
"Hey." Arnello patted him a few times on his unbruised cheek. "Pay attention, Dr. Wilson. This is your story. They took you from the parking lot at your hotel. They roughed you up. They wanted money. You gave it to them. They let you go. Grey Eyes"-he pointed to the picture of a middle-aged man with a craggy face and appropriately grey eyes-"Tim, Nick, Ray and Bobby"-the last, a vicious-looking blond in his late teens.
Arnello stood, then, planted his fists far apart on the table, and leaned towards Wilson. His pink tie swung forward, brushing the pictures. "These are the only names that will come out of your mouth. To the cops, to your colleagues, and to your friends. If you in any way so much as suggest that someone else may have been involved, it's you we'll take everything from, piece by piece. And then we'll come for you. I'll ask you one more time: Do you understand?"
Wilson looked at Arnello and at the pictures. He licked his lips. "Grey Eyes, Tim, Nick, Ray and Bobby," he whispered.
"Very good, Dr. Wilson," Arnello said, and sat back down. "Now. Let's get started."
Part Three
Full header at the top of Part One
Wilson groaned around the gag, his body a throbbing mass of pain. He didn't know how long he'd been here, only that it had been hours and hours, possibly days. They'd taken the gag out to give him water and some bread a couple of times between beatings, and they'd let him up now and then to relieve himself in a pot in the corner. He'd slept once, too, albeit badly, woken with a stinging slap to the face. He was sore and tired and scared and pretty sure he was losing short stretches of time. He had no idea whether nightdog_barks was still in the room orchestrating this madness or if she'd left him at the gangsters' mercy. Sometimes he thought he heard typing mixed in with his cries or the clinking of his chains, but he didn't fully trust his senses anymore.
They'd taken his watch, and there weren't any windows in this godforsaken place, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway; the blindfold had gone on almost immediately after Arnello had announced what he planned to do with him. After they'd tied it on he'd heard a series of soft, chittering snaps, and it had taken a few moments for him to recognize them as a digital camera shutter. Arnello was taking pictures of him for House's "incentive" file. Swallowing down his panic, Wilson had tried to tell them that holding him hostage would only distract House from saving Joey's life, that it was normal for House's patients to flirt with death on the journey to a successful diagnosis, but the gag had muffled his words, and nobody'd moved to take it out.
Then they'd started to hurt him.
The rubber truncheon had come down with a startling blunt force, again, and again, and again, patternless. With the blindfold on, there was no way for him to tell where the next blow would fall or how hard it would hit. He'd grunted every time Lefty had struck, feeling the bruises bloom across his chest, abdomen, quads and arms. He'd barely stifled a yell when one particularly savage blow had landed on his nipple. He hadn't been able to hold back a scream when another strike lower down had grazed his balls. He'd sagged in his bonds as the agony whited out his mind, but the collar had forced him to kneel upright again or risk strangulation. Lefty hadn't paused in his assault.
There'd been a break afterwards for pictures, water and rest; long enough that Wilson figured Arnello had gone back to the hospital to deliver the folder and check in on his brother. Trembling with exhaustion and the remnants of adrenaline, he'd tried to regroup.
Inevitably, Arnello had returned, muttering something about a pig and a convertible. Wilson had still been trying to make sense of that when they'd untied him from the post. He'd moaned with relief when the collar and two pairs of cuffs loosened, only to find himself stripped of his shirt, turned around and restrained once again, still on his aching knees. "No," he'd tried to say, "No, please," but they'd just pushed his tenderized chest against the rough wood and stretched his arms out in front of him, attaching the cuff chain to some sort of bolt in the floor. At least they'd left the collar off.
He'd thought the truncheon was bad. The whip, though-when Righty had started in on him, Wilson had discovered a new level of pain. Stripes of fire had lashed across his back, singing up and down his spine. Every few strokes, the whip had curled around his ribs to bite at the bruises on his sides and front. It had laid stinging welts on the backs of his thighs. It had even snapped at his buttocks through his shorts. Wilson hadn't been grunting then, he'd been crying out, choking on the gag, fighting his chains, helpless tears wetting the blindfold. With his chest pressed up against the post, he couldn't arch away from the terrible lash.
He vaguely remembered through the haze afterwards that they'd taken more pictures and untied him again, let him curl up shaking on his side on the cold floor. After a while, he'd become aware that his wrists were tied in front of him and he'd been chained to the post by one ankle; as if he could have sat up, let alone tried to run away. His back had been smeared with something he hoped was an antiseptic. Arnello was gone once more. He'd heard the others playing cards and smelled them smoking on the other side of the room.
Fading in and out of consciousness, the sound of typing taunting at the edge of his awareness, he'd tried to focus on House and block out the pain and fear. nightdog_barks had said she wouldn't kill him, but then she'd come out with that far-from-comforting qualifier. Wilson had felt it was safer to trust in what he knew. House wouldn't let Joey die, he'd told himself. But he also knew House didn't work well when he was distracted, and he was distracted when the people he cared about were in danger.
Wison had had a sort of epiphany then, lying there in total darkness. House cared about him. He'd known it before, of course, intellectually, but he'd felt it then like one of Lefty's wallops to the gut, leaving him breathless. Arnello had said Wilson was the most important person to House besides Stacy; he was here because it would hurt House to lose him more than anyone else. Wilson had blinked behind his blindfold. If he got out of this, they'd probably hate each other for a while-he wouldn't have been here if not for House, and House wouldn't have been under so much pressure if he hadn't cared so much for Wilson-but afterwards, when the anger betrayed the fear beneath and then the fear gave way to something else... Who knew what might happen?
He must have faded out again after that; suddenly he'd been on his knees again with his screaming back scraping the splintery post, the awful collar snugged back on, and Lefty and his truncheon (he assumed it was Lefty; the soft grunts as the hardest blows struck home sounded the same as before) had gone another round with him.
Then they'd let him rest for a long time. Things with Joey must have been approaching critical, because Arnello had stayed at the hospital since the whipping and relayed all his orders by phone. They hadn't whipped him again, thank God (thank nightdog_barks? he'd wondered a little hysterically), only roughed him up a little once or twice with some punches to his face, ribs, stomach and kidneys. One of the attackers seemed to like kicking his knees out from under him and watching him struggle to regain his balance before the collar choked him.
That had been it for the last few hours. The other men were back at their card game. Wilson groaned again and squirmed around in an attempt to find the least uncomfortable position for his numb knees and aching shoulders. He was trying not to think about which part of him hurt the most.
The phone rang. The mafioso with the deep, scratchy voice who'd been taking Arnello's calls picked up. A few moments later, the group walked over, and something cool and hard pressed against Wilson's left temple above the blindfold and stayed there.
Wilson went stock-still. This was it, then. Joey had died, and he was about to join him. He was going to die tied up in a basement in his underwear with drool on his chin. They were going to shoot him in the fucking head and drag him out of this basement and stuff him in the trunk of their car and bury him in some unmarked grave in a landfill or maybe tie him to a cement block and dump him in a river and oh God what had been wrong with Joey that House couldn't figure it out and Christ now he'd never be able to tell House how he felt-
Seconds, minutes, half an hour ticked by, and nothing happened. Nobody spoke. Wilson's breaths came heavy and fast, and he sweated and shook with anticipation. Every time the man holding the gun to his head shifted, a thin, keening whine would escape Wilson's throat. His thoughts wound down to a cycle of Please, no, please, House, please, I don't want to die.
They waited.
A tableau:
Wilson, kneeling, nearly naked, bound, gagged, collared, struggling to stay still. Sweat-damp bangs falling over his blindfold. Bruised chest gleaming with perspiration in the dim light. Lips swollen around the strip of white cloth tugging at the edges of his mouth. Behind him, hands clenched into fists. In front of him, four men in a loose semi-circle: two at ease; one turning a cell phone over and over in his hand, slowly; the last pressing a pistol with infinite patience to Wilson's left temple.
And nightdog_barks saw that it was good.
nightdog_barks let Wilson wait an hour before Joey Smith, née Arnello, woke from his coma at the hospital. She allotted another fifteen minutes for Bill to visit his room and enjoy the mobster family version of a heart-to-heart. Five more minutes for House to accost him in the hallway and demand that he let Wilson go. Only then did she have Bill make the call.
Wilson flinched so hard when the phone rang that his head thunked audibly against the post. A moment later, a damp patch spread across the front of his shorts. One of the men snickered.
The thug Wilson called Lefty (his Dog-given name was Francis) was grunting assents over the line to Arnello. Something snapped in Wilson's chest, wrote nightdog_barks. He started babbling and couldn't stop: lame action-movie lines like, "Please don't, please don't kill me," and "Money, I have money," and even "Shooting me won't ruin House's life." Last words ripe for House's ridicule, and they were incomprehensible around the gag besides, but he was desperate to say something.
Wilson went quiet when Lefty snapped the phone shut. Lefty shook his head at Righty, who cocked the pistol up and away from Wilson's head. Wilson turned his head slightly from side to side as if straining to see what was going on.
"Congratulations, Doctor," Lefty rumbled. "Boss says you get to live."
Wilson slumped against the post with a long, sobbing exhale. As Righty tucked the gun away, Lefty went down on one knee in front of Wilson and placed his thick hands on the sides of Wilson's face. Wilson flinched back at Lefty's touch, but Lefty only reached around and untied the gag, pulling it almost gently from Wilson's mouth.
"Want some water?" Lefty asked. At Wilson's hesitant nod, he jerked his head for Righty to get one of the Evian bottles off the card table in the corner.
"Co-" Wilson began, then coughed. His voice was mostly gone. "Collar? Please."
When Lefty obliged, Wilson awkwardly maneuvered himself off his shaking legs and into a sitting position with a groan. Righty handed off the half-full water bottle; Lefty held it to Wilson's cracked lips and let him sip from it until it was empty.
"Thanks," Wilson whispered. In his head, nightdog_barks wrote, House snorted. 'James Wilson, ladies and gentlemen: thanking the mobsters who were ready to shoot him two minutes ago.'
"Need a piss?" Lefty asked. Wilson shook his head. Straightening, Lefty said, "Stay put, then, until he gets back. He wants to talk to you before you go."
Wilson would have pointed out that he couldn't very well have walked away while tied to the floor, but he was too shaken for anything coherent, nightdog_barks happily tapped away. They were going to let him go. He lay his pounding head against the wood and narrowed his attention down to each agonized part of his body in turn as the other men went back to their card game.
Arnello returned an hour later. Within minutes, Wilson's chain had been released from the floor bolt and he was dragged across the room and plunked in a chair with his wrists still bound behind him. For the first time since they'd begun their attacks, they took the blindfold off. He squinted in the sharp light of the desk lamp in front of him. One of his eyes was swollen from an earlier punch, and a nearly black bruise crept up from his cheekbone; the other eye was bloodshot and bleary. He swayed slightly.
"Dr. Wilson," Arnello said from the opposite seat. "Dr. House came through for us. Joey's gonna be okay. Now here's what you're going to do if you want to go home." He slid a set of 8x10 photos across the table. They were surveillance shots of men Wilson had never seen before. "Their names are Tim, Nick, Ray and Bobby. This is their ringleader; goes by Grey Eyes. They are the ones who abducted and assaulted you."
Brow furrowed, Wilson looked up at him, then at the thugs on either side of him, then back down at the photographs.
"Dr. Wilson. Listen carefully. These are the men you will identify to the police when you tell them what happened to you. Grey Eyes, Tim, Nick, Ray and Bobby. Take a good look. Commit their faces to memory. Listen to what I tell you about how they sound, where they took you and what they said. Do you understand me?"
Wilson swayed again; someone gripped his shoulder from behind to keep him sitting up straight. "Who...?"
"Bunch of dickheads playing on our turf who don't know what 'get lost' means. Don't worry about 'em. You just give the names and descriptions. I'll make sure they're indicted and found guilty. You won't even have to testify at the trial."
Wilson was looking dazed. "Trial...?"
"Hey." Arnello patted him a few times on his unbruised cheek. "Pay attention, Dr. Wilson. This is your story. They took you from the parking lot at your hotel. They roughed you up. They wanted money. You gave it to them. They let you go. Grey Eyes"-he pointed to the picture of a middle-aged man with a craggy face and appropriately grey eyes-"Tim, Nick, Ray and Bobby"-the last, a vicious-looking blond in his late teens.
Arnello stood, then, planted his fists far apart on the table, and leaned towards Wilson. His pink tie swung forward, brushing the pictures. "These are the only names that will come out of your mouth. To the cops, to your colleagues, and to your friends. If you in any way so much as suggest that someone else may have been involved, it's you we'll take everything from, piece by piece. And then we'll come for you. I'll ask you one more time: Do you understand?"
Wilson looked at Arnello and at the pictures. He licked his lips. "Grey Eyes, Tim, Nick, Ray and Bobby," he whispered.
"Very good, Dr. Wilson," Arnello said, and sat back down. "Now. Let's get started."
Part Three