Knots: Knowing (3/12)
Pairing H/W Slash
Rating: R for this chapter, for intensity
Warnings: Still not suitable for children. Alludes to a sexual assault, but no direct description. WIP.
Summary: Wilson tries to remember that fateful night with House, but he finds that forgetting would have been easier. Part three of an ongoing series. This will not make any sense if you have not read at least the second part.
Part Two
Wilson opens his eyes automatically, but getting them to focus takes more time and effort. Relentless sunlight seems to have set fire to the edges of everything in his bedroom. The brightness causes him physical pain. He rolls away from it and realizes two things: one, he’s naked; two, his head is about to implode. As he sits up, he thinks that he may still be a little drunk.
He puts his feet on the floor, feels the carpet underneath his feet. He hates the sensation of the fibers crushing under his weight as he stands. His hands pick at the film covering his skin, an unpleasant layer of slimy, sticky grime. He’s choked off from everything but the sunshine.
“Helll-oo?” he calls out, but no one answers. He’s alone, just like yesterday morning, just like every morning. The act of speaking tells him only that his tongue is thick and pasty, and that his throat hurts. Wilson is hung over. He hasn’t been so drunk that he felt it the next morning since his undergrad days, maybe fifteen years and two marriages ago. God, he feels old. He’s too young to say “fifteen years ago” and come up with things that happened when he thought of himself as a grown up.
He looks around the room. His keys, wallet, pager and phone are not in their usual spot on the nightstand, they sit in a pile on the dresser. That’s fine. He doesn’t remember much from last night, and right now, he doesn’t care to remember any more.
He examines his face in the mirror. His lower lip is red, as if he bit it at some point. He’s pale, and the shadows under his eyes are heavy. His hair needs to be washed, and his breath is foul.
Half an hour later, he’s clean and dressed, and if he’s not exactly raring to go, he knows he needs coffee. At least that’s a start.
He walks downstairs, slowly, trying not to hurt his head any more. He opens the front door and reaches into his pocket for sunglasses, because it’s far too bright for this time of year.
He turns toward the driveway, but it’s empty. His car is gone.
“Damn it!” He goes back inside and calls the police. Two officers arrive to take his statement, which consists of a description of the car, the tag number, and the last time he drove it, to the best of his recollection. His hospital ID helps him convince the officers to give him a ride downtown. He says he wants to arrange for a rental, but he knows he’s going to get coffee first.
“Rough night?” The girl at the cash register is talking to him. She’s there every morning. She must work the early shift. She smiles. A large clock on the wall tells him that morning is over. Wilson is not totally sure whether today is Saturday or Sunday.
“I, uh, maybe,” he says. He shrugs, and the girl looks sympathetic. He takes his triple espresso topped off with coffee and fills the cup to the top with cream. It’s good, better than good. He begins to feel human.
He grabs an abandoned sports section from an empty table and reads about the upcoming football playoffs. The coffee is great. He can’t make it like this at home. Honestly, he can’t make coffee at all. Sometimes he thinks that’s why he keeps getting married. How could he live without coffee?
His phone rings. He expects to hear House on the other end, but he doesn’t recognize the number. Wilson is disappointed.
On the other hand, the police have located his car in a parking lot in Trenton. There are no signs that it was ever stolen. Wilson jots the address on a napkin, thanks the officer, and hangs up.
He takes another sip. The coffee has cooled, and he realizes that he added too much cream. It’s heavy and greasy on his tongue. He considers calling House for a ride, after all, House owes him, but he decides he will be happier in the long run if House never finds out about this particular escapade, so he calls a cab instead.
When he gets to Trenton, Wilson hands the driver a hundred and tells him to keep the change. The guy has shockingly white teeth, and his smile shows every one of them. Wilson gets out of the cab. There’s his car. Seeing it, he begins to remember. He parked it here, in this very spot, about eight the night before. He went into a bar, and he drank a lot: double bourbons with beer chasers, and keep ‘em coming.
He was down, and he didn’t want to risk running into anybody he might know. He just wanted to drink, maybe find a willing somebody to drag home with him, no strings, one night only. The bar is right across the street. The place looks closed right now, but last night it was jumping.
Jesus. He hopes he paid his tab. He’s pretty sure he went home alone, despite his best efforts.
He gets in his car and starts the engine. It makes a perfect, smooth, beautiful sound. He turns right and begins the drive home.
He crosses a bridge, and a scene plays out his head.
He was in House’s car; House was driving. It was late, and he was drunk. House pushed him away. “C’mon, honey…” he said. The endearment caught Wilson’s fancy, and filled him with a strange sort of warmth. Wilson pulled House’s right hand from the steering wheel and played with the fingers, like a favorite toy.
The memory is strong, indelible. He is not the sort of man who is given to fantasy. He can’t remember the incident happening at any time during the past. Process of elimination says that it must have happened last night.
House found him in Trenton. House drove him home. He wonders if House remembers.
Wilson’s head hurts again.
He parks and gets out. The sound of the car door closing triggers another flash.
House was trying to get him out of the car, but he had trouble cooperating.
“My legs don’t want to work,” he said.
“Yeah, I feel your pain,” House said.
Wilson got his feet under him, stood up, lurched forward almost immediately. House caught him, somehow. They were upright, and Wilson tilted his head back to see House’s face. He wanted to confess. He wanted to tell House about the urges, the longing, but he was too distracted by the reality of House’s arm around his ribcage, holding him. He tried to rise up on his toes, to get close enough for a kiss, but he fell onto the grass.
“Get up, Jimmy,” House said. He looked angry and disappointed, which made two of them.
His shoes, the ones he wore yesterday, a pair of black loafers that his second former wife picked out, sit next to the stairs. The leather is wrecked, all scratched up. His suit is draped neatly over the back of a chair in the bedroom. The pants are stained with grass and dirt, and the jacket stinks.
Covers and pillows from the bed are scattered on the floor.
The sheets and some of the pillows are stained with blood. It looks like a crime scene from a TV movie.
He knows what happened. He had sex with his best friend in the world. It’s over. It’s done. He had sex with a man he’s wanted for at least three years, longer, if he’s being honest with himself. Apparently it didn’t go well. He had angry, unsatisfying sex with his best friend. House was barely there. He didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. The act itself was completely one-sided.
But what about the blood? Wilson checks himself again: no scalp wounds, no deep cuts, no abrasions. There’s nothing he can feel or see except a bruise on his knee. What the hell?
That’s House’s blood. House bled all over his sheets and his pillows.
No. No. God, no.
He leaves the bedroom quickly, slamming the door behind him, as if the room itself contains the memory of what happened there.
He sits in the dark for several hours, forcing himself not to think, and then the phone rings. It’s House. He knows that, even before he looks. He lets it ring. Of all people, House knows he’s home, or he would have called the cell.
“Yeah?” he answers. He sounds defensive, even to his own ears.
House sounds crisp and bitter, but strangely calm at first. He’s direct, as he always is. He’s asking about viruses, transmission. They didn’t talk about it last night, as far as Wilson knows, though they should have. That’s what you do, but they know each other.
Wilson is annoyed. There’s no danger. Why is House bringing this up? Wilson doesn’t want to talk about it, it’s not fair, and he says so.
They talk as if they’re having a normal conversation. It’s eerie. House’s calmness frightens Wilson more than he can say.
House stops talking, and that’s when Wilson starts to listen. There’s more than just breathing, a puff and a soft pop. He has never seen House with a cigarette, but somehow he knows that House is a former smoker. He hears the whoosh as House exhales.
He can almost feel the rush of nicotine in his own head. He listens. He asks. He listens, there’s a click. Wilson is glad to be alone again.
He didn’t ask last night. He let his hidden wounds rule his judgment. They were screaming to be shown. House just slipped into bed next to him, all the more tempting in his stillness.
House put himself within reach.
There’s no such thing as implied consent, not in the practice of medicine, and not in sex. Wilson knows that. He knows that.
He sleeps on the couch that night.
~~
Because it’s the holiday season, and because Hanukkah is over, not that he’s particularly observant these days, Wilson has a lot of hours scheduled for the end of December. All things considered, he’s glad to have something to do. Holidays are always a hard time on the oncology ward. Patients seem to feel their disease more when they ought to be home with friends and family. Loneliness and despair, the darkest days of winter, Wilson’s personal hubris does not extend to thinking he knows how they feel, not even now.
One of Brown’s patients has an infection that’s not responding to treatment. His chart lists allergies to sulfa drugs and penicillin. The patient finished a round of chemo last week. Wilson knows that he ought to page Infectious Diseases. He might be able to handle this on his own, but the man is not his patient. Protocol says that he should get a consult.
He walks to the nurses’ station. Nancy, the charge nurse, is sitting at her desk.
“I need an ID consult for 640, Mr. Simons,” Wilson says. “Who’s on call?”
Nancy checks the list. “Says Dr. House, do you want me to page him?”
Wilson mashes a hand against his face. He has to be professional about this. He and House have to work together, though he was hoping to deal with that hurdle some time in the distant future rather than today. The only reason Nancy asks is that she knows Wilson and House are friends. She probably expects him to say that he’ll find House himself.
“Yeah, I’ll leave the chart here,” he says as he walks away. “I’ll be in my office.”
Wilson works on charts until he hears a knock at the door. It startles him; House never knocks.
“I got your page,” Dr. Patel says. “What’s up?” Patel is a dark skinned, youngish guy. The nurses are fond of swooning over his thick, shiny hair and his easy smile.
Wilson stares at him. He hopes that he does not look relieved, but Patel wouldn’t know even if he did, so he lets himself relax a little. “I though House was on call today.”
“Apparently House got into some kind of trouble last night.” Patel says. “Cuddy asked me to cover for him, and I can’t…” Wilson doesn’t hear the rest over the white noise of panic and the sound of his own heartbeat. Patel grins, and looks at Wilson as if he’s supposed to agree with whatever it is he said.
Wilson can’t focus. He has to know what House told Cuddy. Does she know? Does everybody know? He starts to sweat as he wonders if House called the police. Maybe they’re on their way right now. House wouldn’t do that, though, but he did call somebody.
“Dr. Wilson?” Patel asks.
Does Patel know? Is that why he’s wearing that patronizing smirk?
“You’re hyperventilating,” Patel tells him. “If you’re sick, you shouldn’t be around immunocompromised patients, you know.”
“I’m fine, just, uh, I’m sorry. Did you pick up Mr. Simons chart?” Wilson gestures at a pile of papers on his desk. “I was in the middle of something.” He is lying. He’s about ready to jump out of his skin. He’s done something awful, and everybody knows that he is the trouble House got into last night.
Patel has the chart; he had it the whole time. “I’m going to repeat blood and urine cultures on Mr. Simons,” he says. “Let’s make absolutely sure what the bug is before we put him through anything else. I’ll take it from here.”
“Get those cultures stat. Nancy will help you if the lab can’t get anybody down here,” Wilson says. “I don’t want him to go septic because somebody fell down on the job.”
Patel nods. “I said I’ve got it.”
Wilson goes to the pharmacy to get antibiotics and Xanax. He lies to the pharmacist, saying that both prescriptions are for House, but the Xanax is for him. He’s too keyed up to scrounge around the hospital, and he doesn’t want anybody to know he needs it.
He has told so many lies in the last couple of hours. He believes in hell now.
~~
The drug helps, and he’s calmer now.
He wants to know what he managed to say last night, or the night before, whenever it happened. Plenty of words in his head, putting them together was the problem, so he tried to get his point across without them. Usually, that worked for him. He and House had been able to read each other for a long time. Part of him knew- knows-that if he said, I want you, House would not have stayed with him.
And if he said you owe me, House would have laughed. House always takes, dipping from a well that will never run dry. When House gives, he does so on an imperative that he alone understands. If Wilson said I need you to stay, if he had confessed that much, House would have stayed. One honest word might have changed what happened.
Wilson feels like his old self for a while, cool and rational. He wanted to hurt House for a thousand selfish reasons. He wanted to lash out, and he did. This time, Wilson did the taking. Now he has to make up for that.
He does not have a plan, except to deliver the pills that House is too stubborn to get on his own. The man will not ask for help. Wilson is genuinely sorry about the biting. He was out of his mind. He takes the steps to House’s door one at a time. He knows the buzzer doesn’t work. He has a key, but using it is out of the question.
He knows what he’s going to do now.
~~
Wilson met House almost five years ago. Sometimes, he thinks he knows every facet of the man, his best and his worst, but tonight, standing on House’s steps, he offered House freedom from the shadow of what happened between them, freedom from every step that brought them to that place.
Their eyes met, no longer than an instant, and Wilson was surprised to see something completely new.
Lurking among sorrow and suspicion, Wilson saw grace in House’s eyes, grace and patience. These things frighten him more than the anger and hatred he expected.
He held out his hand. All House had to do was reach out and take back the key to his front door. It would have been an easy out for both of them.
He sits in his car, in his driveway, for several minutes. Home cannot serve as a refuge when it’s the scene of the crime. He goes inside because he’s out of options. He gets a couple of black garbage bags from the kitchen and walks upstairs.
The air in the bedroom is heavy and stale. Moonlight comes in through a window; its brightness helps him see well enough to do what he must. Wilson begins with the suit he wore. The plastic rustles as he stuffs it into one of the bags. He removes the sheets from his bed. He stoops to the floor to gather up pillows and blankets, disposing of all the evidence. He knots the tops of the bags and carries them outside. He hoists them over the back fence. Out of sight, out of mind.
He takes another Xanax and stretches out on the couch. He drifts, wherever his mind goes, House is there.
If he ever thought he understood what he felt, the near obsession that he once called love, he knows now that he was lying to himself. By extension, he was lying to House, even though he never said a word.
But there was something, and that something was true. It may be the only truth Wilson has ever known. “If I didn’t love you then, I love you now because you’re better than I am,” he says bitterly, as if he’s willing House to hear him across the distance.
He sinks into a dark place that feels almost like sleep, even though he knows it’s not.
Part Four
Note: I changed one significant detail, which may be obvious. If it is, I meant to do that. Thanks to Pitza and Bibliosylph for their advice on this part.
Rating: R for this chapter, for intensity
Warnings: Still not suitable for children. Alludes to a sexual assault, but no direct description. WIP.
Summary: Wilson tries to remember that fateful night with House, but he finds that forgetting would have been easier. Part three of an ongoing series. This will not make any sense if you have not read at least the second part.
Part Two
Wilson opens his eyes automatically, but getting them to focus takes more time and effort. Relentless sunlight seems to have set fire to the edges of everything in his bedroom. The brightness causes him physical pain. He rolls away from it and realizes two things: one, he’s naked; two, his head is about to implode. As he sits up, he thinks that he may still be a little drunk.
He puts his feet on the floor, feels the carpet underneath his feet. He hates the sensation of the fibers crushing under his weight as he stands. His hands pick at the film covering his skin, an unpleasant layer of slimy, sticky grime. He’s choked off from everything but the sunshine.
“Helll-oo?” he calls out, but no one answers. He’s alone, just like yesterday morning, just like every morning. The act of speaking tells him only that his tongue is thick and pasty, and that his throat hurts. Wilson is hung over. He hasn’t been so drunk that he felt it the next morning since his undergrad days, maybe fifteen years and two marriages ago. God, he feels old. He’s too young to say “fifteen years ago” and come up with things that happened when he thought of himself as a grown up.
He looks around the room. His keys, wallet, pager and phone are not in their usual spot on the nightstand, they sit in a pile on the dresser. That’s fine. He doesn’t remember much from last night, and right now, he doesn’t care to remember any more.
He examines his face in the mirror. His lower lip is red, as if he bit it at some point. He’s pale, and the shadows under his eyes are heavy. His hair needs to be washed, and his breath is foul.
Half an hour later, he’s clean and dressed, and if he’s not exactly raring to go, he knows he needs coffee. At least that’s a start.
He walks downstairs, slowly, trying not to hurt his head any more. He opens the front door and reaches into his pocket for sunglasses, because it’s far too bright for this time of year.
He turns toward the driveway, but it’s empty. His car is gone.
“Damn it!” He goes back inside and calls the police. Two officers arrive to take his statement, which consists of a description of the car, the tag number, and the last time he drove it, to the best of his recollection. His hospital ID helps him convince the officers to give him a ride downtown. He says he wants to arrange for a rental, but he knows he’s going to get coffee first.
“Rough night?” The girl at the cash register is talking to him. She’s there every morning. She must work the early shift. She smiles. A large clock on the wall tells him that morning is over. Wilson is not totally sure whether today is Saturday or Sunday.
“I, uh, maybe,” he says. He shrugs, and the girl looks sympathetic. He takes his triple espresso topped off with coffee and fills the cup to the top with cream. It’s good, better than good. He begins to feel human.
He grabs an abandoned sports section from an empty table and reads about the upcoming football playoffs. The coffee is great. He can’t make it like this at home. Honestly, he can’t make coffee at all. Sometimes he thinks that’s why he keeps getting married. How could he live without coffee?
His phone rings. He expects to hear House on the other end, but he doesn’t recognize the number. Wilson is disappointed.
On the other hand, the police have located his car in a parking lot in Trenton. There are no signs that it was ever stolen. Wilson jots the address on a napkin, thanks the officer, and hangs up.
He takes another sip. The coffee has cooled, and he realizes that he added too much cream. It’s heavy and greasy on his tongue. He considers calling House for a ride, after all, House owes him, but he decides he will be happier in the long run if House never finds out about this particular escapade, so he calls a cab instead.
When he gets to Trenton, Wilson hands the driver a hundred and tells him to keep the change. The guy has shockingly white teeth, and his smile shows every one of them. Wilson gets out of the cab. There’s his car. Seeing it, he begins to remember. He parked it here, in this very spot, about eight the night before. He went into a bar, and he drank a lot: double bourbons with beer chasers, and keep ‘em coming.
He was down, and he didn’t want to risk running into anybody he might know. He just wanted to drink, maybe find a willing somebody to drag home with him, no strings, one night only. The bar is right across the street. The place looks closed right now, but last night it was jumping.
Jesus. He hopes he paid his tab. He’s pretty sure he went home alone, despite his best efforts.
He gets in his car and starts the engine. It makes a perfect, smooth, beautiful sound. He turns right and begins the drive home.
He crosses a bridge, and a scene plays out his head.
He was in House’s car; House was driving. It was late, and he was drunk. House pushed him away. “C’mon, honey…” he said. The endearment caught Wilson’s fancy, and filled him with a strange sort of warmth. Wilson pulled House’s right hand from the steering wheel and played with the fingers, like a favorite toy.
The memory is strong, indelible. He is not the sort of man who is given to fantasy. He can’t remember the incident happening at any time during the past. Process of elimination says that it must have happened last night.
House found him in Trenton. House drove him home. He wonders if House remembers.
Wilson’s head hurts again.
He parks and gets out. The sound of the car door closing triggers another flash.
House was trying to get him out of the car, but he had trouble cooperating.
“My legs don’t want to work,” he said.
“Yeah, I feel your pain,” House said.
Wilson got his feet under him, stood up, lurched forward almost immediately. House caught him, somehow. They were upright, and Wilson tilted his head back to see House’s face. He wanted to confess. He wanted to tell House about the urges, the longing, but he was too distracted by the reality of House’s arm around his ribcage, holding him. He tried to rise up on his toes, to get close enough for a kiss, but he fell onto the grass.
“Get up, Jimmy,” House said. He looked angry and disappointed, which made two of them.
His shoes, the ones he wore yesterday, a pair of black loafers that his second former wife picked out, sit next to the stairs. The leather is wrecked, all scratched up. His suit is draped neatly over the back of a chair in the bedroom. The pants are stained with grass and dirt, and the jacket stinks.
Covers and pillows from the bed are scattered on the floor.
The sheets and some of the pillows are stained with blood. It looks like a crime scene from a TV movie.
He knows what happened. He had sex with his best friend in the world. It’s over. It’s done. He had sex with a man he’s wanted for at least three years, longer, if he’s being honest with himself. Apparently it didn’t go well. He had angry, unsatisfying sex with his best friend. House was barely there. He didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. The act itself was completely one-sided.
But what about the blood? Wilson checks himself again: no scalp wounds, no deep cuts, no abrasions. There’s nothing he can feel or see except a bruise on his knee. What the hell?
That’s House’s blood. House bled all over his sheets and his pillows.
No. No. God, no.
He leaves the bedroom quickly, slamming the door behind him, as if the room itself contains the memory of what happened there.
He sits in the dark for several hours, forcing himself not to think, and then the phone rings. It’s House. He knows that, even before he looks. He lets it ring. Of all people, House knows he’s home, or he would have called the cell.
“Yeah?” he answers. He sounds defensive, even to his own ears.
House sounds crisp and bitter, but strangely calm at first. He’s direct, as he always is. He’s asking about viruses, transmission. They didn’t talk about it last night, as far as Wilson knows, though they should have. That’s what you do, but they know each other.
Wilson is annoyed. There’s no danger. Why is House bringing this up? Wilson doesn’t want to talk about it, it’s not fair, and he says so.
They talk as if they’re having a normal conversation. It’s eerie. House’s calmness frightens Wilson more than he can say.
House stops talking, and that’s when Wilson starts to listen. There’s more than just breathing, a puff and a soft pop. He has never seen House with a cigarette, but somehow he knows that House is a former smoker. He hears the whoosh as House exhales.
He can almost feel the rush of nicotine in his own head. He listens. He asks. He listens, there’s a click. Wilson is glad to be alone again.
He didn’t ask last night. He let his hidden wounds rule his judgment. They were screaming to be shown. House just slipped into bed next to him, all the more tempting in his stillness.
House put himself within reach.
There’s no such thing as implied consent, not in the practice of medicine, and not in sex. Wilson knows that. He knows that.
He sleeps on the couch that night.
~~
Because it’s the holiday season, and because Hanukkah is over, not that he’s particularly observant these days, Wilson has a lot of hours scheduled for the end of December. All things considered, he’s glad to have something to do. Holidays are always a hard time on the oncology ward. Patients seem to feel their disease more when they ought to be home with friends and family. Loneliness and despair, the darkest days of winter, Wilson’s personal hubris does not extend to thinking he knows how they feel, not even now.
One of Brown’s patients has an infection that’s not responding to treatment. His chart lists allergies to sulfa drugs and penicillin. The patient finished a round of chemo last week. Wilson knows that he ought to page Infectious Diseases. He might be able to handle this on his own, but the man is not his patient. Protocol says that he should get a consult.
He walks to the nurses’ station. Nancy, the charge nurse, is sitting at her desk.
“I need an ID consult for 640, Mr. Simons,” Wilson says. “Who’s on call?”
Nancy checks the list. “Says Dr. House, do you want me to page him?”
Wilson mashes a hand against his face. He has to be professional about this. He and House have to work together, though he was hoping to deal with that hurdle some time in the distant future rather than today. The only reason Nancy asks is that she knows Wilson and House are friends. She probably expects him to say that he’ll find House himself.
“Yeah, I’ll leave the chart here,” he says as he walks away. “I’ll be in my office.”
Wilson works on charts until he hears a knock at the door. It startles him; House never knocks.
“I got your page,” Dr. Patel says. “What’s up?” Patel is a dark skinned, youngish guy. The nurses are fond of swooning over his thick, shiny hair and his easy smile.
Wilson stares at him. He hopes that he does not look relieved, but Patel wouldn’t know even if he did, so he lets himself relax a little. “I though House was on call today.”
“Apparently House got into some kind of trouble last night.” Patel says. “Cuddy asked me to cover for him, and I can’t…” Wilson doesn’t hear the rest over the white noise of panic and the sound of his own heartbeat. Patel grins, and looks at Wilson as if he’s supposed to agree with whatever it is he said.
Wilson can’t focus. He has to know what House told Cuddy. Does she know? Does everybody know? He starts to sweat as he wonders if House called the police. Maybe they’re on their way right now. House wouldn’t do that, though, but he did call somebody.
“Dr. Wilson?” Patel asks.
Does Patel know? Is that why he’s wearing that patronizing smirk?
“You’re hyperventilating,” Patel tells him. “If you’re sick, you shouldn’t be around immunocompromised patients, you know.”
“I’m fine, just, uh, I’m sorry. Did you pick up Mr. Simons chart?” Wilson gestures at a pile of papers on his desk. “I was in the middle of something.” He is lying. He’s about ready to jump out of his skin. He’s done something awful, and everybody knows that he is the trouble House got into last night.
Patel has the chart; he had it the whole time. “I’m going to repeat blood and urine cultures on Mr. Simons,” he says. “Let’s make absolutely sure what the bug is before we put him through anything else. I’ll take it from here.”
“Get those cultures stat. Nancy will help you if the lab can’t get anybody down here,” Wilson says. “I don’t want him to go septic because somebody fell down on the job.”
Patel nods. “I said I’ve got it.”
Wilson goes to the pharmacy to get antibiotics and Xanax. He lies to the pharmacist, saying that both prescriptions are for House, but the Xanax is for him. He’s too keyed up to scrounge around the hospital, and he doesn’t want anybody to know he needs it.
He has told so many lies in the last couple of hours. He believes in hell now.
~~
The drug helps, and he’s calmer now.
He wants to know what he managed to say last night, or the night before, whenever it happened. Plenty of words in his head, putting them together was the problem, so he tried to get his point across without them. Usually, that worked for him. He and House had been able to read each other for a long time. Part of him knew- knows-that if he said, I want you, House would not have stayed with him.
And if he said you owe me, House would have laughed. House always takes, dipping from a well that will never run dry. When House gives, he does so on an imperative that he alone understands. If Wilson said I need you to stay, if he had confessed that much, House would have stayed. One honest word might have changed what happened.
Wilson feels like his old self for a while, cool and rational. He wanted to hurt House for a thousand selfish reasons. He wanted to lash out, and he did. This time, Wilson did the taking. Now he has to make up for that.
He does not have a plan, except to deliver the pills that House is too stubborn to get on his own. The man will not ask for help. Wilson is genuinely sorry about the biting. He was out of his mind. He takes the steps to House’s door one at a time. He knows the buzzer doesn’t work. He has a key, but using it is out of the question.
He knows what he’s going to do now.
~~
Wilson met House almost five years ago. Sometimes, he thinks he knows every facet of the man, his best and his worst, but tonight, standing on House’s steps, he offered House freedom from the shadow of what happened between them, freedom from every step that brought them to that place.
Their eyes met, no longer than an instant, and Wilson was surprised to see something completely new.
Lurking among sorrow and suspicion, Wilson saw grace in House’s eyes, grace and patience. These things frighten him more than the anger and hatred he expected.
He held out his hand. All House had to do was reach out and take back the key to his front door. It would have been an easy out for both of them.
He sits in his car, in his driveway, for several minutes. Home cannot serve as a refuge when it’s the scene of the crime. He goes inside because he’s out of options. He gets a couple of black garbage bags from the kitchen and walks upstairs.
The air in the bedroom is heavy and stale. Moonlight comes in through a window; its brightness helps him see well enough to do what he must. Wilson begins with the suit he wore. The plastic rustles as he stuffs it into one of the bags. He removes the sheets from his bed. He stoops to the floor to gather up pillows and blankets, disposing of all the evidence. He knots the tops of the bags and carries them outside. He hoists them over the back fence. Out of sight, out of mind.
He takes another Xanax and stretches out on the couch. He drifts, wherever his mind goes, House is there.
If he ever thought he understood what he felt, the near obsession that he once called love, he knows now that he was lying to himself. By extension, he was lying to House, even though he never said a word.
But there was something, and that something was true. It may be the only truth Wilson has ever known. “If I didn’t love you then, I love you now because you’re better than I am,” he says bitterly, as if he’s willing House to hear him across the distance.
He sinks into a dark place that feels almost like sleep, even though he knows it’s not.
Part Four
Note: I changed one significant detail, which may be obvious. If it is, I meant to do that. Thanks to Pitza and Bibliosylph for their advice on this part.