Title: Half-Life
Author:
magie_05Pairing: House/Wilson
Rating/Warnings: idk, R?
Summary: Just one of those quick book-prompt challenges, using the first line from every tenth page of Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. Written in a desperate attempt to make myself stop sulking. Angst/smut/humor/drivel all rolled into ten short ficlets :)
10. I did what he said, like I almost always do.
It wasn't all about proving Wilson wrong.
After all, he'd been dead before. Objectively, there was no need to confirm what he already knew to be the answer, not on the word of some 'shroom-loving ex-frat boy, anyway.
But it would shut Wilson up, or give him something else to analyze. It would take away the unknown variable, even up the experiment. It would be proof, a few seconds of being right, of being nowhere, not thinking about escape or useless bodies. Just for a few seconds.
Ninety-seven of them.
20. But we’re stopping here for a twenty-minute break.
“Okay, so if we get back on the road by four, we should beat most of the traffic coming out of…House?”
“Hmm?”
“What are you doing?”
“It’s a rest area. I’m resting.”
“Well, your hand is ‘resting’ on my ass.”
“You know a better place for it?”
“House, this is a public rest stop, which we are leaving in exactly twenty minutes. It’s the definition of ‘neither the time nor the place.’”
“That’s a little glass-is-half-empty. The way I see it, we’re in an abandoned bathroom in the middle of nowhere with twenty whole minutes to kill. And since someone didn’t happen to leave room in his obsessively organized travel schedule for some good, old-fashioned male bonding - ”
“You know how creepy it is when you call it that? And we’ll be stopping at a hotel in a few hours. If we beat the traffic on the freeway, which we won’t if you…House, stop…someone could walk in on…ohgod...”
…
…
“So. What do you wanna do for the next 18-and-a-half minutes?”
30. They had no sense of time passing between then and now.
House shoves him to the bed, collapses on top of him, and accidentally scrapes Wilson’s cheek with the clasp of his watch in his haste to get back to the kissing.
Just like the first time.
It takes an awkward amount of time to get undressed: House’s fingers getting caught in Wilson’s tie, limbs tangling together, struggling to wrest the jeans down House’s constantly moving hips. On nights like these, he can almost pretend it’s the first time - same flurry of movement, same bruises on his hips, same fierce, demanding kisses.
Same vague sense of fear.
He feels House finish, warmth spreading deep inside him, the sensation bringing him instantly pushing him over the edge. Afterwards, feeling his heart slow, feeling House's arm settle over his chest, Wilson can breathe, can remember that it's been six months and he doesn't have to be afraid to open his eyes.
It isn't the first time, but a part of him knows that it could always be the last.
40. “Why did God do that?”
Dad used to tell stories.
Not at bedtime like Mom. Dad’s stories didn’t have princes or talking animals. Mom’s stories were Lies, but those were Okay Lies, because they were just pretend, like Santa and George Washington. Dad’s stories were real. They were mostly about The War. If Greg were a good boy, he could sit in Dad’s lap after dinner, hold the heavy medals in his small palm while Dad told the stories of what he did to earn them.
Sometimes the stories were scary, but boys weren’t supposed to be afraid.
Sometimes Dad’s eyes would close and he’d get real quiet, and he’d say that only God knew how they’d made it out.
But even though he listened carefully to all the stories, there was something that Greg didn’t understand.
“What about the other people?” he asked one night, holding a medal shaped like a star. The points pressed into his hand. “Did God help them too?”
Dad’s eyebrows made a funny shape. “What other people?”
“These ones,” Greg said, pointing at the red army men on Dad’s desk, still posed from where Dad had set them up as he was telling the story. Greg had gotten to be the paratrooper. Those were the guys with the parachutes.
He bounced Greg up and down in his lap even though Greg was getting too big for that. “Those are the bad guys, Greg.”
“How do you know?” The red guys didn’t think they were bad. The red guys were just like the green guys, except they were on the other team like in kickball. “How does God know?”
Dad looked frozen and gray, like the statues in the park. “Time for bed. Clean up your toys.”
He made Greg brush his teeth even though it was only seven and Greg was allowed to stay up until eight, because he was almost six now. Greg wanted Mom to tuck him in but instead Dad took him, and Dad always forgot to turn on the night-light. “Don’t ask so many questions,” Dad said quietly from the hall, and closed Greg’s door all the way.
Greg turned on his night-light when he heard Dad’s footsteps down the steps, and as he watched the shadows moving across the ceiling, he thought about Dad’s stories.
Maybe God was pretend, too.
50. “That’s right. It’s all about the weenie.”
House sent a beer-flavored burp into the stratosphere, scratched himself through his thin cotton pajamas and pressed Ruebeny lips to Wilson’s neck.
“Wanna do it?”
Wilson sighed and squirmed further away on the sofa, staring at a spot on the ceiling while House sloppily groped him. “I can’t tell you how tempting that offer is. The crumbs in your 5-week stubble are particularly irresistible.”
“I know what you like,” House said, then gave a giant sniff right next to Wilson’s ear. He could actually hear the phlegm siphoning into House’s throat, presumably to be swallowed. “C’mon. We hurry, we can still watch ‘I Married My Mother’ on Springer.”
He started massaging Wilson’s crotch with the same fingers he’d used not twenty seconds ago to pick his teeth.
“House.” He was about to slip off the couch to safety, but House’s arm snaked over his shoulder and rough lips scraped his jaw, sauerkraut breath across his cheek while slobbery kisses made their way towards the corner of his mouth. “Flattering as it is that you want to ‘do me’ during every other commercial break, do you think you could show a little more - ” House unzipped his pants and plunged a slightly greasy hand inside - “…restraint?”
Another phlegmy snort in his ear. “This from the guy who got so worked up on the way home from the airport last week that we had to find an empty parking lot?”
“Well, yeah, but…” House stopped palming the crotch of his underwear long enough to pull Wilson’s hand into his own lap. “It’s not all about s…er…you could be a little more…”
Now House stopped feeling him up. “A little more what? Romantic?”
Wilson huffed. “Your word; not mine. I’m just saying that it can be nice to…take things slow once in a while. I know we agreed to keep things casual, but…”
House gave a rough laugh through what sounded like a chest-full of mucus. “I want to suck your cock, not touch your soul.” His fingers wormed their way towards bare skin, rubbing the tip of Wilson’s reluctant erection as he spoke. “I know this goes against your entire sexual history, but it is possible to have sex just for fun, not because it’s meaningful.”
“I didn’t know the two were mutually exclusive,” he mumbled, accidentally pressing forward into House’s hand.
“Shut up and get naked,” House said, practically laughing.
Which probably played a big part in Wilson’s choice of actually going along with it.
It ended up taking two commercials breaks for House to ‘do’ him, by which time the first star-crossed incestuous couple had already started throwing chairs. Wilson waited for that hot mouth to pull back, for somewhat sticky fingers to slip out of him before peeling himself off the sofa and tumbling to the floor, pawing blindly at House’s fly, and sucking voraciously to the sound of distant cheers -
Afterwards, back on the sofa with his sweat-damp clothes hanging loosely off of him, one ass cheek falling asleep, pressed into the side of the couch while House snored and drooled contentedly against his chest, Wilson decided he could live with everything being about sex.
Because no matter what House said, it was never only about sex.
60. “Good luck, then,” he says.
“And thank you, again,” he burbles, trying and failing not to gaze into the blue eyes that had caught him completely off guard two nights ago. “I can honestly say this has been the most…interesting weekend of my life.”
House returns his handshake with an almost painfully firm grip of his own. “Nothing like inciting a riot to make the time pass.”
James laughs - a reaction that he would have thought impossible forty-eight hours ago. “Even jail is better than those Team Building lectures,” he adds, half-aware that he’s still holding on to House’s hand in the middle of a crowded terminal.
House tosses him a lopsided grin, revealing a dimple in one cheek. “Look me up if you’re ever in Jersey,” he says, his voice low and unassuming, as if he’s fully expecting never to hear from James again. “We could do some damage.”
“I will.” The slip of hotel paper with House’s number scribbled on it seems unnaturally heavy in James’s coat pocket. “Looking forward to it.”
The sweat he’s transferring to House’s palm forces him to let go. “Have a safe trip.”
“Yeah,” House says with a final nod. “See you around.”
James walks towards the gate in a kind of haze, like he’s just waking from some bizarre lucid dream, unable to separate fact from fantasy -
“Hey!”
He wipes the relieved/happy/excited grin off his face before turning around to watch House catching up to him with those long, athletic strides.
“Uh,” he blurts, and James memorizes this new expression and posture. “Just one more thing. Do you…” he squints and looks out the plate glass toward the runways. “D’you like monster trucks?”
Wilson smiles.
70. My left shoulder aches a little.
It wasn’t his fault Tritter had issues with anal penetration.
It wasn’t his fault that a guy he’d pegged as just your average clinic moron turned out to be a cop with enabler’s guilt, seeing his own failure in every shivering addict he pulled off the street. Giving in to him just because he went crying to Cuddy would have been hypocritical. So that part wasn’t House’s fault either.
He never asked Wilson to lie.
The fact that he had lied without hesitation said more about Wilson’s problems than House’s. And since it wasn’t his fault, there was no reason for Cameron to rush off every time Wilson need a script for some worthless cancer placebo - that would be the same as admitting fault, same as apologetically sucking Tritter’s poorly lubricated cock. He wasn’t doing it.
It was the pain’s fault he needed drugs. Wilson’s fault for not listening. For leaving the door unlocked.
For trusting him.
His shoulder didn’t hurt that much anyway, and he still had plenty of pills.
80. “I think I’ve got the gist of it.”
“House?”
“Hm?”
“Did you put this on my desk?”
“Wha?”
“This. This - plane ticket. Departing Thursday from Newark, non-stop to the Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans.”
“Huh.”
“Business class.”
“Nice.”
“You bought this?”
“Mm.”
“I don’t speak Grunt. What’s this all about?”
“The skyrocketing cost of airplane tickets?”
“House.”
“Apparently someone thinks you could use a vacation.”
“That’s generous of someone.”
“Someone could just think you look like crap.”
“So someone books me on a flight with more-than-reasonable accommodations to the city where I first met - someone.”
“Seems that way.”
“…Is someone coming with me or…?”
“Well, obviously the ticket and hotel reservations couldn’t be made in your name; you’re a wanted criminal down in the Bayou.”
“For a twenty-year-old misdemeanor. An exactly twenty-year-old misdemeanor this Friday, if my math is correct.”
“Interesting.”
“You mentioned something about hotel reservations? Seems unlikely that a total stranger would be so giving.”
“Maybe he took the money out of his now-defunct hooker fund. For which he probably expects total physical compensation. With interest.”
“Of course. So, just to summarize: you - er, someone is taking me back to the city where we first met on the eve of the twentieth anniversary of when we first met, thereby symbolically bringing our tumultuous relationship full circle and using his own money for this grand romantic gesture to express his affection and commitment, is that right?”
“Something like that.”
…
…
“Okay, then.”
90. I have no idea what to say.
He would never know how long he sat at House's bedside, listening to his electronic heartbeat, trying not to get used to the bandages on his thigh. House would say it was stupid, if he wasn't sleeping off anesthesia, if he hadn't asked to be put in a chemically-induced coma to sleep through uncontrollable pain.
He would say that Wilson is the guy who knows all the right words, who gets thanked for telling people they're dying. The guy who could hold his wife's hand, look into her eyes and tell her he was cheating.
Child's play, telling your best friend he was crippled.
He still has no clue what to say as the heart monitor speeds up, the breath freezing in his chest as he watches House's eyes fluttering open, registering his surroundings, his pain. His head spins with facts and excuses, I’m sorry I wasn’t here in time, She did it because she loves you, You’ll never walk normally again -
And he can’t silence the tiny, selfish part of himself screaming She did the right thing, she kept you alive -
“You're here,” someone says in House's voice.
For a moment, Wilson can pretend that that's enough.
100. It wasn’t time for it.
“In any case, Mrs. Scott, the more targeted radiation is your best bet at this stage. We're going to be monitoring your - ”
House burst in through the balcony door. “Gotta talk to you.”
Wilson felt his jaw drop. “Uh - little busy here,” he said pointedly.
House spun around to stare at Mrs. Scott like he'd never seen a cancer patient before. “What are you doing in here?”
She gave Wilson the look most people gave him when they realized he was friends with someone like House. “...Dr. Wilson?”
“I'm sorry, he was just leaving,” Wilson stood from the couch and grabbed House by the arm, squeezing a little harder than necessary as he attempted to steer House toward the door.
“I have to tell you something,” House said, not budging.
“Later.” It took a considerable display of strength to push House back across the threshold and onto the balcony, locking the door behind him. Wilson only caught a glimpse of glaring blue eyes before he drew the blinds.
“Now,” he said with false bravado, clapping his hands together, “where was I?”
It was an actual question, but his patient wasn't answering. “Who was that man?”
He hadn't even begun to brace himself for that long and painful answer when the main office door swung open, propelled by the end of House's cane.
“It's important,” House said firmly.
“No.” How House had gotten himself back across the divider, through his office, and out into the hall that quickly was a question best left to bored physicists. Wilson, meanwhile, simply shut the heavy door in House's face.
“What is going on here?” He looked back at one seriously high-strung and pissed-off cancer patient, who was already shouldering her purse. “If my appointment is getting in the way of your personal life - ”
“No, no, he's a doctor. I'm sure it's a medical...problem...but...it can wait!” he finished a little maniacally, train of thought completely derailed. “Let's just focus on your breasts. Your cancer!” Why did these things always have to happen during breast exams? “I mean...let's discuss your treatment.”
He was spared the trouble of removing his foot from his mouth by the sound of House's disembodied voice coming from the desk. “See, the thing is,” House said via the phone's built-in intercom, “this isn't something I can really keep to myself. Well, it is, but it's taken me this long to figure it out and if I don't tell you now, I'll decide it's a stupid idea and not think about it for another ten years until something happens and then I start the whole sordid process all over a - ”
Wilson picked up the phone's receiver and slammed it back down. He had no clue what House was rambling about, but he was quite certain it had nothing to do with Mrs. Scott's breasts.
“This is ridiculous,” she said, gathering her things. “I don't have the energy for this.”
He burbled apologies to her all the way to the door and was 99% he'd convinced her to let him stop by her room after her treatment...
As soon as he opened the door, House grabbed him by the hair and kissed him.
House kissed him for the first (several) times in full view of the hallway and Wilson's soon-to-be-former patient, a catastrophe of a gesture after a decade of bad timing.
It couldn't have been more perfect.