Knots: Time (2/12)
Pairing: House/Wilson slash
Rating: Not suitable for children. MA, Adult, NC-17.
Warning: Describes a sexual assault in detail.
Summary: House struggles to get himself together after things go horribly wrong with a drunk Wilson. Follow up to Pitza’s Knots: Of Nuptials. Set in late 2001.
House leaves Wilson’s place before dawn. Time doesn’t matter; pain doesn’t matter. He can’t be there when Wilson gets up.
Besides, he wants a smoke so badly that he’d cut off his leg to get one. It’s been about ten years since he had a cigarette. That doesn’t matter, either. He pulls into the Open All Nite mini mart and asks the yahoo behind the counter for a pack of Camel straights and some matches.
The yahoo adds a bottle of water to his total. “Look like you need this, buddy,” he says. “You look like shit.”
He wants to tell the yahoo to go fuck himself, but he doesn’t care enough to do even that much. He pays, and leaves. He has to drag his right leg.
“You need some help?” the clerk calls after him.
Now he cares. “Fuck off,” he spits as he pushes the glass door open with his shoulder. His head aches. The Vicodin is at his apartment.
Outside, the sky is still dark. He leans against his car, panting with the effort he made to get there. He twists the cap off the bottle and drinks. The water feels as cold as the night air and tastes weirdly sweet in and around his mouth. He guzzles, then tosses the flimsy bottle across the parking lot before getting back in his car.
Every part of him hurts, he thinks it’s all coming from his leg until he realizes that his ass hurts, and remembers why. He’s numb, and he can’t think in clinical terms. The fact is that Wilson fucked his ass so hard that he thought he’d pass out. The fact is that he let it happen. He didn’t say no. He didn’t. That’s that.
He taps the cigarette pack against the steering wheel, pulls and tears the plastic wrapper, and finally gets to a point where he can light up.
He lets the match burn his fingers; that hurts, and he likes it. He draws smoke deep into his lungs, and that too, that hurts. He likes it. The nicotine releases a bunch of crap into bloodstream. His jaw burns, his mouth is slack. His head clouds and clears far too rapidly. He pulls over, opens the door, leans his head out; he vomits stomach acid and about half a liter of water.
Simple enough solution, he thinks, HCl plus H2O. It almost doesn’t burn. House can do the math. A little bit more water and it would have been neutral.
~~
Back home now, he takes two pills, because fuck it, he needs them.
He waits for Wilson to call, but the phone doesn’t ring. Coward. The morning sky goes from pale gray-white to fresh, pretty blue, and he’s still on the couch, wearing the same clothes. He reeks of the night before: smoke, sex, and that terrible bar.
House is not angry, which is the weirdest part. His brain seems to be stuck in overdrive as he reconsiders every decision he ever made in the space of two minutes. Maybe if I had. Maybe if I hadn’t. He warms up a cup of yesterday’s coffee; he tastes, and adds milk, which doesn’t really help. Dregs are dregs are dregs. He gives up and leaves the cup on the counter.
Thinking about last night does not occur to him until he sits down. He turns his head to look at the ceiling. He feels too tall for his chair. The muscles in his face gradually unclench, and he feels his skin sliding away. Sleep falls over him, unwanted.
Seeing the evidence on his body brings reality home to roost. Last night wasn’t a dream. The bruises are ugly and speak of the violence Wilson used to make them. If he had been able to give what Wilson took from him, House might see them differently. Right now, the dark spots shaped like Wilson’s mouth and fingers make him sick. The long pink abrasions bind him, not to the man who made them, but to the moment things went wrong.
House can’t pinpoint it, exactly.
He retches again.
He was concerned after getting a phantom call from Wilson’s mobile phone. No words, just the clamor of a bar in the background.
“What?” House said. “Wilson, what the fuck? Where are you? Hey!” The line stayed open for about a minute, and then went dead.
It could have been worse. Wilson could have accidentally called his ex wife, House thought. A quick call to a guy in the sheriff’s department he hasn’t pissed off and some crap story about needing to get hold of Wilson about a patient had the desired effect.
The phone company pinpointed the location of the repeater that made the connection. The call was placed from a not-great part of Trenton. Hell. He hoped Wilson had enough sense to stay put
Wilson was pretty easy to spot when House got there. He was sitting on the curb. Pale green light from a flashing sign and three too many drinks lent him an otherworldly look. He was dragging his outrageously expensive shoes on the street. The leather would be ruined.
“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a dump like this?” House asked. He had never seen Wilson so far gone, almost completely liquid. His gut told him to get Wilson to the nearest emergency room, but it was late, and Wilson was a healthy guy. There was no reason to think he wouldn’t just sleep this off and wake up with a headache the size of Texas and swear that he would never drink again.
In the car, Wilson leaned over clumsily and attached his mouth to House’s neck, which would be a distraction under the best circumstances. It seemed like Wilson thought of this as a kiss from the way he was moaning. In that moment, trying to drive with a drunk guy sucking and biting his neck was the worst thing House could imagine. Wilson’s shoulder bumped the steering wheel. The car swerved, and House fought to regain control.
“Settle down, honey, you need to let me drive,” House said, trying to mask his frustration.
Wilson was babbling. Death wish, maybe. That would explain a lot. House was grateful for the late hour, there was almost no traffic. Wilson’s hands were all over him, and he was not sure what he thought of that. Weird, definitely. He had never been opposed to weird before, but weird had never threatened to wrap his car around a tree, either. Gradually, Wilson shifted back into his own seat, placated with House’s right arm. Trying to concentrate on the road with Wilson nibbling at his fingers was much safer than having Wilson sitting in his lap, House rationalized.
He makes it through a shower without vomiting again. He’s glad to be clean, but the last day is catching up too fast. His boss is on vacation, and he’s supposed to be on 24-hour call tomorrow. The purpled bite mark on his jaw, the scratches on his neck make going to work impossible. What would he say, overly enthusiastic hooker? Cuddy would roll her eyes; patients would scream and faint in the lobby.
That might not be so bad, actually, but Infectious Diseases is under a lot of pressure since bioterrorism became a buzzword a couple of months ago, what with anthrax and smallpox all over the news. Laying low might be a better choice.
He dials Cuddy’s office number. She’ll be there. She’s the only person in administration who isn’t a nine-to-fiver.
“Dr. Cuddy, it’s Greg House,” he says. “I need you to get somebody to cover for me for the next couple of days.”
“That’s going to be difficult, Dr. House.” She thinks he’s playing around, which doesn’t surprise him. “Do you know how hard it is to run a hospital at this time of year?”
“Mmmmmm, no. That’s why you’re the high-priced executive and I’m the wage slave calling to beg you for time off.”
“Unless you’re contagious, you’re can suck it up, like the rest of us,” she tells him. “If nobody needs you, you’re off the hook and I might be willing to forget this conversation ever happened. Deal?”
“I can’t,” he says. He wants to make her understand without getting into specifics. “Something… happened. I need some time.” He pauses and affects a lighter tone. “Get Patel. Anybody who needs an ID consult this close to Christmas should appreciate his matinee idol hair. Do you think it’s a rug?”
“Dr. House,” Cuddy says with a sigh of defeat. “Take care of yourself.”
House takes another cigarette from the pack and lights it. Stupid. He has to make one more call before he can try to sleep. He’s going to sleep, but he has to keep it together for a few more minutes. He can do that.
The phone on the other end rings six times. House considers bailing, putting this off until tomorrow, or next month, or never, but he has to do the responsible thing this one time.
“Yeah?” Wilson answers.
“I need to know if you have any weird diseases I could have picked up after last night,” House says flatly. “I didn’t hear the telltale crinkle of a wrapper, and I don’t know where else your dick has been.”
“That’s not fair!” Wilson says.
“Let’s not get into fairness, I need to know.”
“Uh, there was no transfer of bodily fluids,” Wilson sounds sick and shameful.
“That you didn’t get off has little bearing on my health. For starters, you bit me.”
“Oh.” Wilson exhales. “You should see somebody about that.”
“Like a doctor? Forget it.”
“As far as I know, there’s nothing to worry about. What about you?”
“You know me. I’m ninety-nine and three quarters percent pure.” At least I was, House thinks. He’s not so sure any more.
There’s a tense silence. They can hear each other breathing. House smacks his lips around his cigarette as he inhales.
“Are you smoking?”
“Yeah.”
“Thought you quit.”
“So did I.”
There’s nothing else to say. House leaves Wilson to listen to the click that ends the call. He leaves his cigarette burning on a saucer, because he doesn’t have a proper ashtray.
~~
Day two breaks open, just like day one. It’s far too bright for winter, pale, but blinding. The leg isn’t so bad after a decent night’s sleep and more narcotics. He considers going to the mall to walk around, just to get some exercise, but that’s a bad idea. If the snot-nosed kids don’t get to him, the Salvation Army martyr squad will and he’ll be grumpy. Grumpier, that is.
House likes idling, but he prefers to idle while he has something that somebody else wants him to do: mission critical, job one, our highest priority. Only then is wasting time truly satisfying. Now he’s got plenty of time and he has no idea what to do with it. He remembers what life was like last year, when he couldn’t walk on his own. Life used to be so much simpler.
He fills the day with the mundane. He does laundry because it’s mindless enough that he doesn’t have to concentrate, but it requires enough presence of mind that he won’t get lost.
He makes lunch; he eats. He watches Oprah talk to Martha Stewart about holidays, which has got to be some kind of nexus of everything the American woman lives for. He drinks a lot of water. It’s not as good as the water that horrible little turd behind that counter forced on him. At that moment, the day is blown and he feels nausea rising in waves from his gut to his head. He breathes deeply until it subsides.
The irony of it all is that the one person he could talk to, the one person he trusts that completely, is Wilson. It’s absurd, black comedy.
House laughs so hard that he slips off of his chair, and then he lies on the floor until the sun goes down.
~~
He’s awake, flat on his back, in bed now. He’s fully dressed in layers of clothing. He’s can’t bear to take them off. His mind is as clear as it’s been in what seems like forever, until his body starts thinking on its own.
His skin remembers Wilson’s whole body pressing into his side, an arm carelessly moving over his torso, one hand, then the other, touching his belly; at first, the sensations hop back and forth over the line between right and wrong. Wilson makes no attempt to be gentle, but it’s not too bad. Then the hands are grabbing, pushing House over onto his stomach, slamming him against the mattress and pillows. The hands are hurting him.
His back and his lungs feel like it’s happening now, as if his central nervous system has gone back there, back in time, and there’s not a damned thing he can do about it. His legs are splayed out, both useless. Wilson has him pinned at the shoulders. House feels his arms flail. Wilson catches him, stops him.
Wilson falls forward, chest heaving against House’s back. Hot breath on his shoulder, and a wet, unsteady tongue gives way to teeth. Wilson’s whole body vibrates with his groan. House feels it pass into his own shudder. The teeth nip at his skin, then bite, then tear.
He feels Wilson’s erection drag against his thighs, hot and dry, tugging at his barely damp skin. Wilson fumbles, tightens his legs; falls again. His sternum bangs House’s spine. He jostles House’s hips, shoving something underneath him.
House feels something cold and wet drip on his back. It’s like an acid, burning through muscle and tendon. He bites the insides of his cheeks to keep from screaming.
Fingers dig into him. The sphincter resists, but not for long. He feels it stretch and rip. Intense pain follows House’s spine all the way to his neck, over his shoulders, down his arms to his hands. His fingertips throb as Wilson jams his dick in and out, in and out; in and out and in… and House is as hard as he’s ever been.
The clock on the wall says 8:15. He remembers: for an instant, he wanted to beg Wilson to kill him instead.
He turns on the TV and cranks the volume as high as it will go. Fuck the neighbors.
The clock on the wall says 11:30. He takes two more Vicodin. Fuck you, too, James Wilson, M.D.
He throws the bottle at the wall. It falls to the floor with a dull clatter.
He looks for the Yellow Pages. He turns off the TV. He thinks about all those people who died in the Twin Towers. Some of them jumped. He thinks he would have waited to burn to death. He knows whom he would have called, if he’d been up there on that day. He knows what he would have said. He holds the phone in his hand for a while. His hands start to sweat.
Shit happens, every day.
There’s a sound, and House jumps. He drops the phone. He grabs his cane. It wouldn’t be the best weapon, but it would be something. A knock. Maybe one of the neighbors called a cop. He freezes.
He walks to the door and looks. It’s not a cop. The last person he wants to see is on his doorstep, holding a small, white paper bag.
He opens the door, but does not step aside to let Wilson enter.
“I brought you an antibiotic, cephalosporin, it’s…”
“I know what cephalosporin is. Why are you really here?” House looks at Wilson’s jacket. It’s dark blue, casual, probably lined with an overpriced polymer. It’s not the one he wears to work. Wilson offers him the bag. He accepts it without acknowledgement.
Wilson looks down at his shoes and reaches into his pocket. He pulls out his keys. House thinks he’s leaving, but he doesn’t go. He fumbles with the ring for a second. He removes his gloves and House’s heart starts to pound.
Wilson slips a key off the ring and holds it out to House in his palm. “This is yours. Take it.”
House studies Wilson’s face; it’s pretty much the same as his own. Confused, sad, and stubborn.
“Keep it,” he says quietly.
“OK…” Wilson says. He steps back. “One of those pills BID for two weeks.”
“I know,” House says.
Wilson walks away. He turns back when he gets to the curb. House stands in the doorway, watching him. He pulls his gloves on and half raises his arms in a shrug.
House shakes his head, but he half smiles in return. He needs time, but he’s got time. He needs to figure this out.
Part Three
Notes:. I would never have written this of my own volition, but I could not resist the temptation to write House going through this hell. I researched the medical and psychological stuff, and interviewed a couple of friends who are rape survivors for some key points.
Rating: Not suitable for children. MA, Adult, NC-17.
Warning: Describes a sexual assault in detail.
Summary: House struggles to get himself together after things go horribly wrong with a drunk Wilson. Follow up to Pitza’s Knots: Of Nuptials. Set in late 2001.
House leaves Wilson’s place before dawn. Time doesn’t matter; pain doesn’t matter. He can’t be there when Wilson gets up.
Besides, he wants a smoke so badly that he’d cut off his leg to get one. It’s been about ten years since he had a cigarette. That doesn’t matter, either. He pulls into the Open All Nite mini mart and asks the yahoo behind the counter for a pack of Camel straights and some matches.
The yahoo adds a bottle of water to his total. “Look like you need this, buddy,” he says. “You look like shit.”
He wants to tell the yahoo to go fuck himself, but he doesn’t care enough to do even that much. He pays, and leaves. He has to drag his right leg.
“You need some help?” the clerk calls after him.
Now he cares. “Fuck off,” he spits as he pushes the glass door open with his shoulder. His head aches. The Vicodin is at his apartment.
Outside, the sky is still dark. He leans against his car, panting with the effort he made to get there. He twists the cap off the bottle and drinks. The water feels as cold as the night air and tastes weirdly sweet in and around his mouth. He guzzles, then tosses the flimsy bottle across the parking lot before getting back in his car.
Every part of him hurts, he thinks it’s all coming from his leg until he realizes that his ass hurts, and remembers why. He’s numb, and he can’t think in clinical terms. The fact is that Wilson fucked his ass so hard that he thought he’d pass out. The fact is that he let it happen. He didn’t say no. He didn’t. That’s that.
He taps the cigarette pack against the steering wheel, pulls and tears the plastic wrapper, and finally gets to a point where he can light up.
He lets the match burn his fingers; that hurts, and he likes it. He draws smoke deep into his lungs, and that too, that hurts. He likes it. The nicotine releases a bunch of crap into bloodstream. His jaw burns, his mouth is slack. His head clouds and clears far too rapidly. He pulls over, opens the door, leans his head out; he vomits stomach acid and about half a liter of water.
Simple enough solution, he thinks, HCl plus H2O. It almost doesn’t burn. House can do the math. A little bit more water and it would have been neutral.
~~
Back home now, he takes two pills, because fuck it, he needs them.
He waits for Wilson to call, but the phone doesn’t ring. Coward. The morning sky goes from pale gray-white to fresh, pretty blue, and he’s still on the couch, wearing the same clothes. He reeks of the night before: smoke, sex, and that terrible bar.
House is not angry, which is the weirdest part. His brain seems to be stuck in overdrive as he reconsiders every decision he ever made in the space of two minutes. Maybe if I had. Maybe if I hadn’t. He warms up a cup of yesterday’s coffee; he tastes, and adds milk, which doesn’t really help. Dregs are dregs are dregs. He gives up and leaves the cup on the counter.
Thinking about last night does not occur to him until he sits down. He turns his head to look at the ceiling. He feels too tall for his chair. The muscles in his face gradually unclench, and he feels his skin sliding away. Sleep falls over him, unwanted.
Seeing the evidence on his body brings reality home to roost. Last night wasn’t a dream. The bruises are ugly and speak of the violence Wilson used to make them. If he had been able to give what Wilson took from him, House might see them differently. Right now, the dark spots shaped like Wilson’s mouth and fingers make him sick. The long pink abrasions bind him, not to the man who made them, but to the moment things went wrong.
House can’t pinpoint it, exactly.
He retches again.
He was concerned after getting a phantom call from Wilson’s mobile phone. No words, just the clamor of a bar in the background.
“What?” House said. “Wilson, what the fuck? Where are you? Hey!” The line stayed open for about a minute, and then went dead.
It could have been worse. Wilson could have accidentally called his ex wife, House thought. A quick call to a guy in the sheriff’s department he hasn’t pissed off and some crap story about needing to get hold of Wilson about a patient had the desired effect.
The phone company pinpointed the location of the repeater that made the connection. The call was placed from a not-great part of Trenton. Hell. He hoped Wilson had enough sense to stay put
Wilson was pretty easy to spot when House got there. He was sitting on the curb. Pale green light from a flashing sign and three too many drinks lent him an otherworldly look. He was dragging his outrageously expensive shoes on the street. The leather would be ruined.
“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a dump like this?” House asked. He had never seen Wilson so far gone, almost completely liquid. His gut told him to get Wilson to the nearest emergency room, but it was late, and Wilson was a healthy guy. There was no reason to think he wouldn’t just sleep this off and wake up with a headache the size of Texas and swear that he would never drink again.
In the car, Wilson leaned over clumsily and attached his mouth to House’s neck, which would be a distraction under the best circumstances. It seemed like Wilson thought of this as a kiss from the way he was moaning. In that moment, trying to drive with a drunk guy sucking and biting his neck was the worst thing House could imagine. Wilson’s shoulder bumped the steering wheel. The car swerved, and House fought to regain control.
“Settle down, honey, you need to let me drive,” House said, trying to mask his frustration.
Wilson was babbling. Death wish, maybe. That would explain a lot. House was grateful for the late hour, there was almost no traffic. Wilson’s hands were all over him, and he was not sure what he thought of that. Weird, definitely. He had never been opposed to weird before, but weird had never threatened to wrap his car around a tree, either. Gradually, Wilson shifted back into his own seat, placated with House’s right arm. Trying to concentrate on the road with Wilson nibbling at his fingers was much safer than having Wilson sitting in his lap, House rationalized.
He makes it through a shower without vomiting again. He’s glad to be clean, but the last day is catching up too fast. His boss is on vacation, and he’s supposed to be on 24-hour call tomorrow. The purpled bite mark on his jaw, the scratches on his neck make going to work impossible. What would he say, overly enthusiastic hooker? Cuddy would roll her eyes; patients would scream and faint in the lobby.
That might not be so bad, actually, but Infectious Diseases is under a lot of pressure since bioterrorism became a buzzword a couple of months ago, what with anthrax and smallpox all over the news. Laying low might be a better choice.
He dials Cuddy’s office number. She’ll be there. She’s the only person in administration who isn’t a nine-to-fiver.
“Dr. Cuddy, it’s Greg House,” he says. “I need you to get somebody to cover for me for the next couple of days.”
“That’s going to be difficult, Dr. House.” She thinks he’s playing around, which doesn’t surprise him. “Do you know how hard it is to run a hospital at this time of year?”
“Mmmmmm, no. That’s why you’re the high-priced executive and I’m the wage slave calling to beg you for time off.”
“Unless you’re contagious, you’re can suck it up, like the rest of us,” she tells him. “If nobody needs you, you’re off the hook and I might be willing to forget this conversation ever happened. Deal?”
“I can’t,” he says. He wants to make her understand without getting into specifics. “Something… happened. I need some time.” He pauses and affects a lighter tone. “Get Patel. Anybody who needs an ID consult this close to Christmas should appreciate his matinee idol hair. Do you think it’s a rug?”
“Dr. House,” Cuddy says with a sigh of defeat. “Take care of yourself.”
House takes another cigarette from the pack and lights it. Stupid. He has to make one more call before he can try to sleep. He’s going to sleep, but he has to keep it together for a few more minutes. He can do that.
The phone on the other end rings six times. House considers bailing, putting this off until tomorrow, or next month, or never, but he has to do the responsible thing this one time.
“Yeah?” Wilson answers.
“I need to know if you have any weird diseases I could have picked up after last night,” House says flatly. “I didn’t hear the telltale crinkle of a wrapper, and I don’t know where else your dick has been.”
“That’s not fair!” Wilson says.
“Let’s not get into fairness, I need to know.”
“Uh, there was no transfer of bodily fluids,” Wilson sounds sick and shameful.
“That you didn’t get off has little bearing on my health. For starters, you bit me.”
“Oh.” Wilson exhales. “You should see somebody about that.”
“Like a doctor? Forget it.”
“As far as I know, there’s nothing to worry about. What about you?”
“You know me. I’m ninety-nine and three quarters percent pure.” At least I was, House thinks. He’s not so sure any more.
There’s a tense silence. They can hear each other breathing. House smacks his lips around his cigarette as he inhales.
“Are you smoking?”
“Yeah.”
“Thought you quit.”
“So did I.”
There’s nothing else to say. House leaves Wilson to listen to the click that ends the call. He leaves his cigarette burning on a saucer, because he doesn’t have a proper ashtray.
~~
Day two breaks open, just like day one. It’s far too bright for winter, pale, but blinding. The leg isn’t so bad after a decent night’s sleep and more narcotics. He considers going to the mall to walk around, just to get some exercise, but that’s a bad idea. If the snot-nosed kids don’t get to him, the Salvation Army martyr squad will and he’ll be grumpy. Grumpier, that is.
House likes idling, but he prefers to idle while he has something that somebody else wants him to do: mission critical, job one, our highest priority. Only then is wasting time truly satisfying. Now he’s got plenty of time and he has no idea what to do with it. He remembers what life was like last year, when he couldn’t walk on his own. Life used to be so much simpler.
He fills the day with the mundane. He does laundry because it’s mindless enough that he doesn’t have to concentrate, but it requires enough presence of mind that he won’t get lost.
He makes lunch; he eats. He watches Oprah talk to Martha Stewart about holidays, which has got to be some kind of nexus of everything the American woman lives for. He drinks a lot of water. It’s not as good as the water that horrible little turd behind that counter forced on him. At that moment, the day is blown and he feels nausea rising in waves from his gut to his head. He breathes deeply until it subsides.
The irony of it all is that the one person he could talk to, the one person he trusts that completely, is Wilson. It’s absurd, black comedy.
House laughs so hard that he slips off of his chair, and then he lies on the floor until the sun goes down.
~~
He’s awake, flat on his back, in bed now. He’s fully dressed in layers of clothing. He’s can’t bear to take them off. His mind is as clear as it’s been in what seems like forever, until his body starts thinking on its own.
His skin remembers Wilson’s whole body pressing into his side, an arm carelessly moving over his torso, one hand, then the other, touching his belly; at first, the sensations hop back and forth over the line between right and wrong. Wilson makes no attempt to be gentle, but it’s not too bad. Then the hands are grabbing, pushing House over onto his stomach, slamming him against the mattress and pillows. The hands are hurting him.
His back and his lungs feel like it’s happening now, as if his central nervous system has gone back there, back in time, and there’s not a damned thing he can do about it. His legs are splayed out, both useless. Wilson has him pinned at the shoulders. House feels his arms flail. Wilson catches him, stops him.
Wilson falls forward, chest heaving against House’s back. Hot breath on his shoulder, and a wet, unsteady tongue gives way to teeth. Wilson’s whole body vibrates with his groan. House feels it pass into his own shudder. The teeth nip at his skin, then bite, then tear.
He feels Wilson’s erection drag against his thighs, hot and dry, tugging at his barely damp skin. Wilson fumbles, tightens his legs; falls again. His sternum bangs House’s spine. He jostles House’s hips, shoving something underneath him.
House feels something cold and wet drip on his back. It’s like an acid, burning through muscle and tendon. He bites the insides of his cheeks to keep from screaming.
Fingers dig into him. The sphincter resists, but not for long. He feels it stretch and rip. Intense pain follows House’s spine all the way to his neck, over his shoulders, down his arms to his hands. His fingertips throb as Wilson jams his dick in and out, in and out; in and out and in… and House is as hard as he’s ever been.
The clock on the wall says 8:15. He remembers: for an instant, he wanted to beg Wilson to kill him instead.
He turns on the TV and cranks the volume as high as it will go. Fuck the neighbors.
The clock on the wall says 11:30. He takes two more Vicodin. Fuck you, too, James Wilson, M.D.
He throws the bottle at the wall. It falls to the floor with a dull clatter.
He looks for the Yellow Pages. He turns off the TV. He thinks about all those people who died in the Twin Towers. Some of them jumped. He thinks he would have waited to burn to death. He knows whom he would have called, if he’d been up there on that day. He knows what he would have said. He holds the phone in his hand for a while. His hands start to sweat.
Shit happens, every day.
There’s a sound, and House jumps. He drops the phone. He grabs his cane. It wouldn’t be the best weapon, but it would be something. A knock. Maybe one of the neighbors called a cop. He freezes.
He walks to the door and looks. It’s not a cop. The last person he wants to see is on his doorstep, holding a small, white paper bag.
He opens the door, but does not step aside to let Wilson enter.
“I brought you an antibiotic, cephalosporin, it’s…”
“I know what cephalosporin is. Why are you really here?” House looks at Wilson’s jacket. It’s dark blue, casual, probably lined with an overpriced polymer. It’s not the one he wears to work. Wilson offers him the bag. He accepts it without acknowledgement.
Wilson looks down at his shoes and reaches into his pocket. He pulls out his keys. House thinks he’s leaving, but he doesn’t go. He fumbles with the ring for a second. He removes his gloves and House’s heart starts to pound.
Wilson slips a key off the ring and holds it out to House in his palm. “This is yours. Take it.”
House studies Wilson’s face; it’s pretty much the same as his own. Confused, sad, and stubborn.
“Keep it,” he says quietly.
“OK…” Wilson says. He steps back. “One of those pills BID for two weeks.”
“I know,” House says.
Wilson walks away. He turns back when he gets to the curb. House stands in the doorway, watching him. He pulls his gloves on and half raises his arms in a shrug.
House shakes his head, but he half smiles in return. He needs time, but he’s got time. He needs to figure this out.
Part Three
Notes:. I would never have written this of my own volition, but I could not resist the temptation to write House going through this hell. I researched the medical and psychological stuff, and interviewed a couple of friends who are rape survivors for some key points.