Housefic: Looking Glass (Chapter Two)
Title: Looking Glass (Chapter Two)
Authors: blackmare and nightdog_barks
Characters: House and Wilson, a few OCs
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: No
Spoilers: None
Summary: House knew they shouldn't have taken that exit. 2,800 words (in this chapter).
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Never will.
Author Notes: This AU story was sparked by this late 19th-century albumen print photograph. As Blackmare noted, "In my mind, the Camera Obscura becomes something inexplicable, perhaps a distant twisted cousin of the Wardrobe that leads to Narnia." So that's what we wrote, although in this fic, it's not quite Narnia. This is also a story in three parts. Chapter Three will be posted tomorrow night.
Beta: pwcorgigirl
Chapter Two: Ticket to Ride
Existential discussions, House decides, shouldn't be had over so little sleep and so much coffee. They've covered everything from, "Did you notice the license plates say 'Cranberry State' instead of 'Garden State'?" to the question of whether pancakes are really that bad in this universe, or just in this diner. Hardly the stuff of quantum physics.
They aren't going to discuss the way they spent the dark hours before sunrise, lying together in a good soft bed that might as well have been made of rocks, for all the real rest they got. No mention will be made of whatever nightmare woke Wilson at six, and caused him to curl sideways, inward toward House until the only good option House had was to put his arm around Wilson in return.
Wilson had been warm, dry, and safe -- a desperate bulwark against House's ice-water dreams, so House took it, and they slept at least a little while, and they're never going to talk about it.
"You could see your family," House says. "Your brother; maybe Danny's all right in this -- "
"My brother's dead in this world!" and for a moment House thinks Wilson's about to throw something, but no; he plonks the small pitcher of fake maple syrup back into its sticky ring on the table so hard the silverware rattles, and just like that, the outburst is over. Wilson covers his face with his hands and leaves them there.
"My brother's dead in this world," he says again, softly, and takes his hands away. "I remember going to his funeral."
"His ... "
Wilson's shoulders droop; one hand drifts up again and he scrubs at the back of his neck.
"I went to his funeral, and my wife went with me but barely spoke to me, and I went somewhere later and got wasted. Some bar. I'm ... remembering things," he says. "Remembering things I shouldn't, and ... forgetting. Forgetting my things." He shakes his head. "I'm here, House. There's a me in this world, and I'm remembering his life."
House stops moving with his fork in mid-stab. Another Wilson. Somehow, this possibility had failed to occur to him. There was another House; of course there would have been another Wilson. Would have been, and is.
He surrenders the battle against the stack of rubbery pancakes, and yells for the check.
He doesn't stop Wilson from tromping off on his own in the increasing heat of late morning, in an effort to find the doorway back from Narnia. He hands Wilson a $10 bill (not Hamilton's portrait, but Burr's) and instructs him to bring back ice cream. "Something without nuts," he says. "This may be a brave new world, but who knows what weird allergens lurk in the shadows."
And so, having bought himself $10 worth of time, House goes back to the offices of Ye Olde Pinke Shelle.
The Pink Shell's "executive business center" is neither executive nor a real business center, consisting as it does of a decrepit old printer that smells of ink, a desktop PC with a keyboard bearing the grime of countless smutty fingers, and, at one end of the cigarette-scarred desk, a rotary-dial telephone. House lifts the receiver, holds it close to his ear but not touching because along with the lack of amenities in this place, there are no Sani-wipes. The dial tone here is different -- instead of a steady buzz, it's an oscillating wee wee wee sound.
House replaces the handset on the phone base and sits down in front of the desktop. The internet is still mostly the internet -- the screen brightens at a tap of the space bar and he types in the password the front desk clerk gave him. Predictably, it's password.
For the first time, House is genuinely happy about the existence of Facebook.
Wilson had wandered down the shore until he found a clapboard stand with a loopy-lettered sign that read Ice Dreams. Three bucks later, he's got two nice big chocolate cones threatening to melt all over him, but the cabins are just over there and to hell with ice cream; back at the cabin, there's the rest of last night's bottle of whiskey.
The cabin door is locked, the interior silent, and one of the ice cream cones leaves a sad drip on the doorknob. He doesn't have a key; his friend must have them both. House. Whose first name he can't quite access right now, while he's shuffling through the sand and starting to eat the more critically-melty of the two ice creams. Maybe someone in this place's office will have seen House, and will know where he is.
If I'm lucky, Wilson thinks, he'll be at some bar. He shoulders open the office building door, steps inside, and remembers: Greg. House's name is Greg, and that's him over there in what looks like a janitor's closet, hunched unhappily at a too-small desk.
Wilson wastes no time interrupting House's unpleasant-looking solitude. He thrusts the untouched cone into House's view. "Here. Take yours before it turns into a puddle."
House reaches for it, refusing to look away from the computer monitor he's scowling at, and his fingers fumble against Wilson's. There's a jolt, not like electricity but like the dizzying turn of a rollercoaster, and Wilson steadies himself with a hand on House's shoulder.
The dizziness stops. His head clears; his brain stops whining at him for whiskey. He's curious now.
"You ... find something interesting?"
"That," House growls. "Look at that," and Wilson looks. At first he's not sure what's seeing, so he leans closer.
It's a black-and-white photo of a minivan, parked in front of a pond. Or ... not parked, exactly; the minivan's right front tire is blown, and the van lists to the side like a wounded animal. Mud and weeds streak the sides, and jagged glass litters the tarmac from several smashed windows. The photo's set against a black background, and above, in stark white letters, is printed G-MAN: A Song Cycle in Three Acts. The hint of a memory surfaces in Wilson's brain -- a child, a storm. G-man. A paternity test?
"Crandall?" Wilson ventures.
"He won a Vicky for this shit," House says.
"A ... Vicky?"
"A Victrola," House snaps. "It's like a Grammy here." He takes a bite of ice cream. "I knew this was a crap universe," he mutters. He punches a keyboard button, and now the monitor shows a wall of text. "My debt to Greg House," the title reads, and the first line is "I owe G-Man a debt I can never repay."
"Shit!" House yelps. "It's shit! I'm dead and he's famous!"
"You're -- "
"I was in that van," House says. "Crandall was driving."
Wilson is still trying to absorb the news that House is dead when House punches another button. A photo of Crandall, frozen on stage in mid-rock-star-windmill.
"That's my guitar," House says. "My favorite guitar. 'I had to try to save it, since I couldn't save him, you know?'" he recites in a creepy falsetto, obviously repeating something he's read from this interview or fan page or whatever it is.
"And then my mother gave it to him." He takes another lick of ice cream, not seeming to notice that it's starting to drip over his fingers. "That bastard got three platinum records and a Vicky with my guitar."
Wilson doesn't know what to say because all the things he wants to say don't sound like him. So? That wasn't really you; get over yourself. Or, Jealous much?, or worse yet, I don't care, which is truly bizarre because Wilson does.
So he puts his hand back on House's shoulder, and this time he leaves it there, and after a while House logs off and they trudge back to the cabin.
As it turns out, Dominic's doesn't just deliver pizza.
"One hot wing left," House says.
"You can have it. I'm still ... working on the nachos."
Wilson's face says otherwise. The truth is, both of them are flush to the gills with chicken wings, chicken nachos, Mexican beer and Texas wine. The television natters away in the background, showing the same kind of vacuous programming that is apparently common to parallel worlds at two o'clock in the morning. The Chamber of Commerce pocket map that House had picked up at the library lies unfolded on the coffee table.
"Okay," House says, squinting at the map. "We think the way back is ... here." He stabs with one finger at the quadrant he's circled in red. "And you ... are here." He stabs at another point, off the map, next to a dab of hot sauce.
"What?" Wilson says.
"You," House repeats. "Not you, but ... you."
It takes a moment for Wilson's brain to grind through the gears. "You mean him," he says.
"You."
"Him. The other me."
"Where is he?"
Wilson shakes his head. "Not a good idea, House."
"Where is he? Come on, I know you know."
"Chicago." Wilson rubs at his eyes. "It's still called Chicago here, but it's on Lake Nicolet, not Lake Michigan."
"Fine," House says. "We'll just take a detour before we go back -- "
"House," Wilson says, and House looks at him.
"You want to save him," Wilson says, "because ... because you're always trying to save me." Wilson looks so tired. "House, this guy, I told you. I remember his life. His whole life. He's a miserable asshole who hates himself and he doesn't have a real friend in the world, and you have to believe me that you can't help him."
"You don't know that." It's a hollow protest, though. He wants Wilson to be wrong, because the Wilson who is here is still Wilson, right? The same way Crandall was Crandall, and House was House. "You don't deserve to have such a crappy life. Not in any universe."
"Then mail him a self-help book and let's go home. Your concern is touching, truly, but has it seriously not occurred to you that this universe might kill me?"
House opens his mouth, then closes it.
"There's only room for one of us," Wilson says. "Who's to say which of us it will be?" He takes another swallow of wine. "He may be miserable. He may be an asshole. But he doesn't deserve to die."
"That's not how it works," House says. "He's the ... the established Wilson, so -- "
"House," Wilson says. "Listen to yourself. You're trying to make this something scientific. Something logical. I'm the one remembering his life. He'll disappear, and I'll take over." He sits back, a curious expression on his face. "So in a way ... I'll be dead. Because I'll be him. And I don't want to be him."
"That's a stupid theory. You're the transplant, so if the immune system is going to reject something, it'll be you, not him."
"And then I'll be not merely dead, but really most sincerely dead. It won't matter which of us is right, House."
Wilson does have a point there. And House still wants to ignore it, to go grab Wilson the Second and shake him and make him see. Which is doubtless a very, very bad idea.
"We need to leave before I do anything really stupid," House says. That wine looks very good, so he pours himself some. "Anything else stupid. Let's go find the shed. Now."
"Yes, at two in the morning." Wilson watches him gulp down what's in his glass, and then calmly refills it for him. "Because the smart thing is to go blundering around in the dark. When we don't know who or what is out there, or even where the damn shed was, and if we run into Buttercup, we will never see her coming."
"So what you're suggesting," House guesses, "is that we do it in the morning, with hangovers, instead."
"Like sensible people," Wilson says. "Yes."
House drains his glass again, nods, and holds it out for Wilson to pour him another. At least tonight they will get some kind of sleep.
They have, indeed, slept. Not well and not for as long as they would have liked, because the nightmare started again as soon as House's sleeping brain sobered up. He was yelling at Miller, their useless drummer, when he woke. Only it turned out that Miller was Wilson, half on top of House not because their shitty old van had flipped over a guard rail but because that was where Wilson had settled, drunk off his ass.
It's ten-something and the sun is high above the water by the time they shuffle down the street to the Best Little General Store. They're greeted outside the door by the store's namesake -- a chubby, child-sized wooden statue in a painted grey uniform with gold trim. The sad accessories include a Civil War-style Southern forage cap with a crossed-rifles badge on the front and a pair of lens-less glasses perching on its button nose. A white cotton beard combed to a point is glued to its chin. It's the demonic bastard love-child of Santa Claus and Colonel Sanders. House half-expects it to be holding out a bucket of crispy fried children.
They look at it, and at each other.
"You think they'll mind," Wilson says, "if I want my coffee black?"
They walk out with hot, strong coffee, and greasy breakfast biscuits wrapped in thin wax paper, served up by a blowsy blonde whose name tag reads Karlene, and who'd smiled and flirted with both of them. The biscuits are soft and light, flaky and buttery, enclosing fried chicken and fried eggs and slices of red, ripe tomato, all of it dripping from the crinkly wax paper and down House and Wilson's fingers. Good, so good that they're eating, walking, and unfolding their little map at the same time. So good that it takes House a moment to realize Wilson's not beside him anymore. He stops and looks back.
A woman in hair rollers and a bathrobe is trundling a bag of garbage to the curb. The only other sign of life is the small child pedaling a molded plastic car in furious circles on what is presumably his parents' lawn, while a pair of birds swoop and scold him.
Wilson is gone.
"No," House says, and the woman with the trash bag looks over her shoulder at him on her way back up her driveway. House hates her. He turns around slowly, looking.
"Wilson!"
Calm, he thinks. Calm, calm. He's got one bite left of his breakfast and he takes it, gulping it down as it sticks in his throat.
"Wilson!"
"Over here," comes the reply from somewhere to the left, and House is so relieved he thinks he might cry. Maybe he will, after he punches Wilson in the nose for vanishing on him here.
He finds Wilson standing over something large and dark, in the shallow ditch along a cross street.
"I found Buttercup," he says.
The dog is on her side, two mouths open and the other closed, with the tip of a still-pink tongue sticking out. The three eyes they can see are all shut. Whatever happened, it can't have been too long ago.
"I saw a bird fly up," Wilson says, "and ... a rabbit or something, in the grass. I came over to look ... "
"Doesn't even stink yet," House observes. His shadow falls over the body. "Doesn't make sense."
"The not-stinking part, or the part where -- "
"The part where there's no apparent cause of death." House wedges his foot beneath the dog's front legs, under the shoulder, and tries to lever it upward, but the weight of the solid, Akita-like body is too much. He crouches and grabs the legs instead. "Little help with the rear?"
Wilson grimaces, no doubt imagining all kinds of alternate-universe germs, but he does it. The body is either going into or coming out of rigor, and a couple ribs are showing; she'd been a little underweight. Other than that, nothing. No sign of injury, no marks, no evidence of disease.
"Three tails," Wilson says. "Can you imagine what that looked like in motion?" He sounds sad but House refuses to look at his face.
"Probably a genetic defect," he says instead. "You heard the bartender -- engineered pets are a big deal here. Heart attack, aneurysm, who knows? Most likely dead before she knew what hit her."
He wipes his hands with one of the Little General's paper napkins. "Too bad," he says, stepping away from the corpse. "Way cuter than I thought she'd be."
"I don't like it here," Wilson says quietly. "Let's go find the shed."
"Right," House says. "The shed," and then waits until Wilson's back is turned before he takes out his phone.
The shed, if they've guessed correctly, is some three blocks north.
To be continued ...
Authors: blackmare and nightdog_barks
Characters: House and Wilson, a few OCs
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: No
Spoilers: None
Summary: House knew they shouldn't have taken that exit. 2,800 words (in this chapter).
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Never will.
Author Notes: This AU story was sparked by this late 19th-century albumen print photograph. As Blackmare noted, "In my mind, the Camera Obscura becomes something inexplicable, perhaps a distant twisted cousin of the Wardrobe that leads to Narnia." So that's what we wrote, although in this fic, it's not quite Narnia. This is also a story in three parts. Chapter Three will be posted tomorrow night.
Beta: pwcorgigirl
Chapter Two: Ticket to Ride
Existential discussions, House decides, shouldn't be had over so little sleep and so much coffee. They've covered everything from, "Did you notice the license plates say 'Cranberry State' instead of 'Garden State'?" to the question of whether pancakes are really that bad in this universe, or just in this diner. Hardly the stuff of quantum physics.
They aren't going to discuss the way they spent the dark hours before sunrise, lying together in a good soft bed that might as well have been made of rocks, for all the real rest they got. No mention will be made of whatever nightmare woke Wilson at six, and caused him to curl sideways, inward toward House until the only good option House had was to put his arm around Wilson in return.
Wilson had been warm, dry, and safe -- a desperate bulwark against House's ice-water dreams, so House took it, and they slept at least a little while, and they're never going to talk about it.
"You could see your family," House says. "Your brother; maybe Danny's all right in this -- "
"My brother's dead in this world!" and for a moment House thinks Wilson's about to throw something, but no; he plonks the small pitcher of fake maple syrup back into its sticky ring on the table so hard the silverware rattles, and just like that, the outburst is over. Wilson covers his face with his hands and leaves them there.
"My brother's dead in this world," he says again, softly, and takes his hands away. "I remember going to his funeral."
"His ... "
Wilson's shoulders droop; one hand drifts up again and he scrubs at the back of his neck.
"I went to his funeral, and my wife went with me but barely spoke to me, and I went somewhere later and got wasted. Some bar. I'm ... remembering things," he says. "Remembering things I shouldn't, and ... forgetting. Forgetting my things." He shakes his head. "I'm here, House. There's a me in this world, and I'm remembering his life."
House stops moving with his fork in mid-stab. Another Wilson. Somehow, this possibility had failed to occur to him. There was another House; of course there would have been another Wilson. Would have been, and is.
He surrenders the battle against the stack of rubbery pancakes, and yells for the check.
He doesn't stop Wilson from tromping off on his own in the increasing heat of late morning, in an effort to find the doorway back from Narnia. He hands Wilson a $10 bill (not Hamilton's portrait, but Burr's) and instructs him to bring back ice cream. "Something without nuts," he says. "This may be a brave new world, but who knows what weird allergens lurk in the shadows."
And so, having bought himself $10 worth of time, House goes back to the offices of Ye Olde Pinke Shelle.
The Pink Shell's "executive business center" is neither executive nor a real business center, consisting as it does of a decrepit old printer that smells of ink, a desktop PC with a keyboard bearing the grime of countless smutty fingers, and, at one end of the cigarette-scarred desk, a rotary-dial telephone. House lifts the receiver, holds it close to his ear but not touching because along with the lack of amenities in this place, there are no Sani-wipes. The dial tone here is different -- instead of a steady buzz, it's an oscillating wee wee wee sound.
House replaces the handset on the phone base and sits down in front of the desktop. The internet is still mostly the internet -- the screen brightens at a tap of the space bar and he types in the password the front desk clerk gave him. Predictably, it's password.
For the first time, House is genuinely happy about the existence of Facebook.
Wilson had wandered down the shore until he found a clapboard stand with a loopy-lettered sign that read Ice Dreams. Three bucks later, he's got two nice big chocolate cones threatening to melt all over him, but the cabins are just over there and to hell with ice cream; back at the cabin, there's the rest of last night's bottle of whiskey.
The cabin door is locked, the interior silent, and one of the ice cream cones leaves a sad drip on the doorknob. He doesn't have a key; his friend must have them both. House. Whose first name he can't quite access right now, while he's shuffling through the sand and starting to eat the more critically-melty of the two ice creams. Maybe someone in this place's office will have seen House, and will know where he is.
If I'm lucky, Wilson thinks, he'll be at some bar. He shoulders open the office building door, steps inside, and remembers: Greg. House's name is Greg, and that's him over there in what looks like a janitor's closet, hunched unhappily at a too-small desk.
Wilson wastes no time interrupting House's unpleasant-looking solitude. He thrusts the untouched cone into House's view. "Here. Take yours before it turns into a puddle."
House reaches for it, refusing to look away from the computer monitor he's scowling at, and his fingers fumble against Wilson's. There's a jolt, not like electricity but like the dizzying turn of a rollercoaster, and Wilson steadies himself with a hand on House's shoulder.
The dizziness stops. His head clears; his brain stops whining at him for whiskey. He's curious now.
"You ... find something interesting?"
"That," House growls. "Look at that," and Wilson looks. At first he's not sure what's seeing, so he leans closer.
It's a black-and-white photo of a minivan, parked in front of a pond. Or ... not parked, exactly; the minivan's right front tire is blown, and the van lists to the side like a wounded animal. Mud and weeds streak the sides, and jagged glass litters the tarmac from several smashed windows. The photo's set against a black background, and above, in stark white letters, is printed G-MAN: A Song Cycle in Three Acts. The hint of a memory surfaces in Wilson's brain -- a child, a storm. G-man. A paternity test?
"Crandall?" Wilson ventures.
"He won a Vicky for this shit," House says.
"A ... Vicky?"
"A Victrola," House snaps. "It's like a Grammy here." He takes a bite of ice cream. "I knew this was a crap universe," he mutters. He punches a keyboard button, and now the monitor shows a wall of text. "My debt to Greg House," the title reads, and the first line is "I owe G-Man a debt I can never repay."
"Shit!" House yelps. "It's shit! I'm dead and he's famous!"
"You're -- "
"I was in that van," House says. "Crandall was driving."
Wilson is still trying to absorb the news that House is dead when House punches another button. A photo of Crandall, frozen on stage in mid-rock-star-windmill.
"That's my guitar," House says. "My favorite guitar. 'I had to try to save it, since I couldn't save him, you know?'" he recites in a creepy falsetto, obviously repeating something he's read from this interview or fan page or whatever it is.
"And then my mother gave it to him." He takes another lick of ice cream, not seeming to notice that it's starting to drip over his fingers. "That bastard got three platinum records and a Vicky with my guitar."
Wilson doesn't know what to say because all the things he wants to say don't sound like him. So? That wasn't really you; get over yourself. Or, Jealous much?, or worse yet, I don't care, which is truly bizarre because Wilson does.
So he puts his hand back on House's shoulder, and this time he leaves it there, and after a while House logs off and they trudge back to the cabin.
As it turns out, Dominic's doesn't just deliver pizza.
"One hot wing left," House says.
"You can have it. I'm still ... working on the nachos."
Wilson's face says otherwise. The truth is, both of them are flush to the gills with chicken wings, chicken nachos, Mexican beer and Texas wine. The television natters away in the background, showing the same kind of vacuous programming that is apparently common to parallel worlds at two o'clock in the morning. The Chamber of Commerce pocket map that House had picked up at the library lies unfolded on the coffee table.
"Okay," House says, squinting at the map. "We think the way back is ... here." He stabs with one finger at the quadrant he's circled in red. "And you ... are here." He stabs at another point, off the map, next to a dab of hot sauce.
"What?" Wilson says.
"You," House repeats. "Not you, but ... you."
It takes a moment for Wilson's brain to grind through the gears. "You mean him," he says.
"You."
"Him. The other me."
"Where is he?"
Wilson shakes his head. "Not a good idea, House."
"Where is he? Come on, I know you know."
"Chicago." Wilson rubs at his eyes. "It's still called Chicago here, but it's on Lake Nicolet, not Lake Michigan."
"Fine," House says. "We'll just take a detour before we go back -- "
"House," Wilson says, and House looks at him.
"You want to save him," Wilson says, "because ... because you're always trying to save me." Wilson looks so tired. "House, this guy, I told you. I remember his life. His whole life. He's a miserable asshole who hates himself and he doesn't have a real friend in the world, and you have to believe me that you can't help him."
"You don't know that." It's a hollow protest, though. He wants Wilson to be wrong, because the Wilson who is here is still Wilson, right? The same way Crandall was Crandall, and House was House. "You don't deserve to have such a crappy life. Not in any universe."
"Then mail him a self-help book and let's go home. Your concern is touching, truly, but has it seriously not occurred to you that this universe might kill me?"
House opens his mouth, then closes it.
"There's only room for one of us," Wilson says. "Who's to say which of us it will be?" He takes another swallow of wine. "He may be miserable. He may be an asshole. But he doesn't deserve to die."
"That's not how it works," House says. "He's the ... the established Wilson, so -- "
"House," Wilson says. "Listen to yourself. You're trying to make this something scientific. Something logical. I'm the one remembering his life. He'll disappear, and I'll take over." He sits back, a curious expression on his face. "So in a way ... I'll be dead. Because I'll be him. And I don't want to be him."
"That's a stupid theory. You're the transplant, so if the immune system is going to reject something, it'll be you, not him."
"And then I'll be not merely dead, but really most sincerely dead. It won't matter which of us is right, House."
Wilson does have a point there. And House still wants to ignore it, to go grab Wilson the Second and shake him and make him see. Which is doubtless a very, very bad idea.
"We need to leave before I do anything really stupid," House says. That wine looks very good, so he pours himself some. "Anything else stupid. Let's go find the shed. Now."
"Yes, at two in the morning." Wilson watches him gulp down what's in his glass, and then calmly refills it for him. "Because the smart thing is to go blundering around in the dark. When we don't know who or what is out there, or even where the damn shed was, and if we run into Buttercup, we will never see her coming."
"So what you're suggesting," House guesses, "is that we do it in the morning, with hangovers, instead."
"Like sensible people," Wilson says. "Yes."
House drains his glass again, nods, and holds it out for Wilson to pour him another. At least tonight they will get some kind of sleep.
They have, indeed, slept. Not well and not for as long as they would have liked, because the nightmare started again as soon as House's sleeping brain sobered up. He was yelling at Miller, their useless drummer, when he woke. Only it turned out that Miller was Wilson, half on top of House not because their shitty old van had flipped over a guard rail but because that was where Wilson had settled, drunk off his ass.
It's ten-something and the sun is high above the water by the time they shuffle down the street to the Best Little General Store. They're greeted outside the door by the store's namesake -- a chubby, child-sized wooden statue in a painted grey uniform with gold trim. The sad accessories include a Civil War-style Southern forage cap with a crossed-rifles badge on the front and a pair of lens-less glasses perching on its button nose. A white cotton beard combed to a point is glued to its chin. It's the demonic bastard love-child of Santa Claus and Colonel Sanders. House half-expects it to be holding out a bucket of crispy fried children.
They look at it, and at each other.
"You think they'll mind," Wilson says, "if I want my coffee black?"
They walk out with hot, strong coffee, and greasy breakfast biscuits wrapped in thin wax paper, served up by a blowsy blonde whose name tag reads Karlene, and who'd smiled and flirted with both of them. The biscuits are soft and light, flaky and buttery, enclosing fried chicken and fried eggs and slices of red, ripe tomato, all of it dripping from the crinkly wax paper and down House and Wilson's fingers. Good, so good that they're eating, walking, and unfolding their little map at the same time. So good that it takes House a moment to realize Wilson's not beside him anymore. He stops and looks back.
A woman in hair rollers and a bathrobe is trundling a bag of garbage to the curb. The only other sign of life is the small child pedaling a molded plastic car in furious circles on what is presumably his parents' lawn, while a pair of birds swoop and scold him.
Wilson is gone.
"No," House says, and the woman with the trash bag looks over her shoulder at him on her way back up her driveway. House hates her. He turns around slowly, looking.
"Wilson!"
Calm, he thinks. Calm, calm. He's got one bite left of his breakfast and he takes it, gulping it down as it sticks in his throat.
"Wilson!"
"Over here," comes the reply from somewhere to the left, and House is so relieved he thinks he might cry. Maybe he will, after he punches Wilson in the nose for vanishing on him here.
He finds Wilson standing over something large and dark, in the shallow ditch along a cross street.
"I found Buttercup," he says.
The dog is on her side, two mouths open and the other closed, with the tip of a still-pink tongue sticking out. The three eyes they can see are all shut. Whatever happened, it can't have been too long ago.
"I saw a bird fly up," Wilson says, "and ... a rabbit or something, in the grass. I came over to look ... "
"Doesn't even stink yet," House observes. His shadow falls over the body. "Doesn't make sense."
"The not-stinking part, or the part where -- "
"The part where there's no apparent cause of death." House wedges his foot beneath the dog's front legs, under the shoulder, and tries to lever it upward, but the weight of the solid, Akita-like body is too much. He crouches and grabs the legs instead. "Little help with the rear?"
Wilson grimaces, no doubt imagining all kinds of alternate-universe germs, but he does it. The body is either going into or coming out of rigor, and a couple ribs are showing; she'd been a little underweight. Other than that, nothing. No sign of injury, no marks, no evidence of disease.
"Three tails," Wilson says. "Can you imagine what that looked like in motion?" He sounds sad but House refuses to look at his face.
"Probably a genetic defect," he says instead. "You heard the bartender -- engineered pets are a big deal here. Heart attack, aneurysm, who knows? Most likely dead before she knew what hit her."
He wipes his hands with one of the Little General's paper napkins. "Too bad," he says, stepping away from the corpse. "Way cuter than I thought she'd be."
"I don't like it here," Wilson says quietly. "Let's go find the shed."
"Right," House says. "The shed," and then waits until Wilson's back is turned before he takes out his phone.
The shed, if they've guessed correctly, is some three blocks north.
To be continued ...