Author: resm
Title: Happy Slap
Pairing: None
Disclaimer: do not own
Summary: I was feeling particularly blue today so I mugged Wilson :(
Warning: Contains explicit imagery of grievous bodily harm
Unbeta'd so please forgive me. Hopefully not too OOC
It was his own stupid fault for trying to rush home. For forgetting their last anniversary. For not correcting the fact that House seemed to always come between them. He wasn’t even out of the hospital parking lot and she was already going to give him hell for being late. Hell, because he wasn’t entirely sure yet whether or not he was going to tell her what happened.
Call it pride, call it denial, surely it was better to let her think that he was tied up at work and had missed yet another anniversary than experience the utter shame of admitting that he had been attacked. Attacked by a group of delinquent youths that his handicapped best friend could probably fend off with nothing but a flailing cane and his quick wit.
He collapsed weakly with the taste of blood filling his mouth and tried to blink the tears out of his eyes. He couldn’t remember crying, moaning even, because he didn’t have ample time to gather air into his lungs to sob out desperately, but he couldn’t deny the moisture obscuring his vision.
She was making roasted chicken breast and stuffed peppers tonight because she knew that it was his favourite, and she told him as much at breakfast that morning. If catching him with a slice of toast between his teeth on the way out the door when she finally emerged from the bathroom counted as having breakfast together. Intermittent niceties between long spells of fighting and heavy work schedules was all their relationship could look forward to, so he would have to believe that they enjoyed breakfast with each other if he wanted to keep himself sane.
He kept trying to imagine her face and what the kitchen might smell like when he was due home to set the table, but he wasn’t sure how he was going to get back, and, if he did get back, how the hell he was going to hide this from her. The couch in his office was certainly sounding homier by the second, or House’s couch. He almost scoffed to himself, as if House’s place was an option! The guy was more invasive than his wife was.
Hands were suddenly on him and he struggled to raise his face from the cold hard ground, with only a vague fear in the back of his mind that they might swallow him up in a violent sea of black and beat him again. They had already made an exhibition of his pain when one of four snatched his own cell phone out of his hand and filmed the ensuing assault from the sidelines. So he wouldn’t be too surprised at all if he was due another round, for the internet’s sake.
He took a shuddery breath when he realised that they were too concerned with turning out his pockets instead. They pulled at his clothes with little regard. Shedding first his overcoat, then his suit jacket, his shoes. His dignity. Fingers were already sifting through his wallet and another pair of hands were dangling his keys above him tauntingly, probably contemplating whether it was smart stealing a car from a doctor’s designated parking space or not.
They rolled him onto his back and he felt his energy abandon him the instant the boot rested itself carefully on his trachea, pressing down gently. If he could hear anything beyond the fuzz of his own breathing and heartbeat, he might have been aware that they weren’t too impressed with the little cash he had on him. He had cards, and they took them. But they could be easily cancelled. Targeting a doctor seemed like a safe bet but they couldn't have banked on him having a financial black hole of a friend in one Gregory House.
The boot crushed down a little tighter before easing off him altogether and he was sure it was because he didn’t dare move beneath it. When, at first, he had determinately tried to defend himself, he had only sought a more aggressive attack onto him. So instead of kicking, struggling or screaming for all it was worth, which he knew was not a lot, he lay still except for the tremors running through his whole body. He clamped his eyes shut when the thug with his phone leant over him to expectorate with hacking force right in face. He wanted to wipe himself clean but he knew it was safer to just ignore the injustice. Pretend like it was the least of his worries.
Unfortunately, it was. It may have been only one of them, a few or all four crouching around him because he couldn’t bring himself to open his heavily blackened eyes, but for some reason he knew what the click and swish meant as soon as he heard it. He shuddered and tried to brace himself, and it was the fullness of time. A hand wrapped itself around his tie, pulling him up a little and letting him fall right back down again in a heap. His energy well and truly spent.
He didn’t know if he cared enough now about the chicken or the briefcase next to him with its spilled documents or the toast or the different couches that have supported him in his hours of need because in the end maybe none of that mattered. He wouldn’t be remembered for those things so he shouldn’t bother trying to remember them. House would remember him, and she would remember him. Maybe fondly. Cuddy would remember him, and some of his patients might even remember him too.
He breathed in with the penknife and convinced himself that it was dirty metal that he could taste and not roasted chicken or stuffed peppers or even coffee from House’s conference room. It had only penetrated the skin a few centimetres and was ripped roughly, hastily, as soon as he sounded his pain with an almighty roar; but it was still unbearable no matter how quickly it was over with. In fact it was so unbearable that he would beg to differ the matter of seconds in time that had actually past. It felt like a lifetime. A lifetime of missed anniversaries and dead patients.
He pressed his hand to the wound and grimaced quietly, knowing that his company had already disappeared long into the night. His world swirled as if he was being pulled down a plug hole and, finally opening his eyes to try to stem the dizziness, he noticed that they left his phone beside him - out of regret, panic, he didn’t care.
For the first time in a long time, he actually managed a genuine smile when his call was picked up after the first ring and he breathed his whereabouts and situation into the speaker. Even with a limp House could act faster than anything that would come of a 911 call. He happily closed his eyes to it all, comforted in the knowledge that his friend would make it all right again. Maybe his wife would cut them both a little slack too when she would begrudgingly have to admit that after tonight, if not for House, she wouldn’t have a husband at all.