Merry Month of Masturbation 2013-Day 6- House MD House/Wilson Post-Series
Title: Every Day Sees Another Scar
Fandom: House MD
Pairings: House/Wilson (UST and Angst ONLY), Wilson/Julie, reference to House/Stacy
Rating: NC17
Wordcount: 4490
Warnings: Final Season Spoilers. Dark-fic, Cancer, Drug abuse, Drug addiction, IV Drugs, Angst, Gambling, Violence. Canon heterosexuality. Internalized homophobia. Possible triggers. Read at your own risk. Seriously folks, if you loved the finale and have a happy place involving House/Wilson together and hopes of healing cock---this ain't the fic for you.
Notes: Post finale fic. Written for MMOM Day 6. Prompt from petitecuriosity. Beta by my always amazing betagoddess.
Summary: Five times Wilson got a message and one time he left one.
Newsletter mods, please note this will be cross-posted to housefic, house_wilsonand house_slash.
Do you really want to spend the rest of your life babysitting a junkie?
House always said Stacy was smart. Even when he was calling her the most vicious names he could summon from the depths of his agony, he'd never called her stupid. So naturally she’d figured out that House had faked his death and managed to track down the cell phone that was registered in Wilson’s fake identity.
Nice timing too, Wilson was forced to admit. He got the text five minutes after a certain “clinic” in the abundantly not-nice Niceville, Florida opened. The day was already humid, leaving him feeling grubby. He’d wanted to shower before they left the motel, but House was on edge, claiming the previous day’s riding had aggravated the pain. There was always a reason; always a too much. Maybe Wilson should have pointed out months earlier that a motorcycle odyssey would put continual pressure on House’s leg. That was when he was still caught up in the illusion of freedom and the belief that being alone with Wilson would somehow alleviate House’s pain. Now he knew better.
House was in a make-shift trailer getting enough Oxy to feed his addiction for a few more days. Then they’d cast around for some new route to ride or an “adventure.” That was inevitably a chance for House to mock the pleasures of normal people, until it was time to settle into yet another motel room where they’d both hope for decent reception and maybe some Monster Trucks on ESPN. And that was a good day. A bad one would end with House scoring somewhere considerably less civilized and Wilson worrying about exactly what House was putting in his veins.
Wilson had made the decision that he would not be his cancer, because cancer was boring. It just hadn’t occurred to him that without his medical puzzles or even regular access to a piano, House would be nothing but his addiction.
He ran a hand over the beard he’d started growing because there was no reason not to, and felt sweat rolling down his neck. There’d been an incident in Bonifay. House’s bike ended up damaged and they had to get money wired for repairs. Maybe that was how Stacy had tracked them down. He trusted her not to tell anyone, but he’d never trust her not to want House back and even though he knew better, he’d never trust House not to want her. Wilson considered Stacy a friend, but on some level she was still a rival for House, at least as far as respect was concerned.
House came out of the trailer in his leather jacket, jeans and sunglasses. He leaned on the cane for a second, maybe trying to see through whatever opiate haze he was now in. This was his House, even if he was going by a different name and had given up everything else that gave his life meaning. He was now completely dependent on Wilson and drugs. It was a victory of sorts. Wilson texted quickly to let Stacy know he’d won.
Absolutely.
@@@@@@
It wasn’t the first time he’d woken up to the sound of House masturbating.
There was a kind of music to the deep-throated groans and the rhythmic jerking. Without his piano and guitars, House’s only instrument was himself and he played it expertly. Wilson would have offered to help out, but House was a soloist at heart.
Wilson could remember, with what had become a bitter nostalgia, the games he and House used to play. Back then he would kiss a barely awake Julie good-bye, with a whole scenario planned for the afternoon. It was all about planning to get caught, while still letting House think he was doing the catching. Making sure he gave Evelyn the afternoon off when he knew House was eavesdropping. Locking his office door, but making sure the window looking out the shared balcony was uncovered. The leisurely beginning of a session of self-pleasure that could seemingly last for hours, all based on the anticipation of the moment when he would look up, cock in hand, and find House staring through the window, eyes especially bright, expression rapt.
Nothing had ever made him hotter. He and House would stay there, staring into each other’s eyes, while Wilson kept going, stroking harder and faster, feeling release build through his entire body and finally groaning his way into a hot, sticky orgasm, all while seeing his own passion reflected on House’s face.
Good times, he thought, listening to House’s voice rise in pitch to a near-whimper.
Wilson reached under the waistband of his boxer shorts, just to see if House’s semi-private symphony might have woken up his own dormant dick. Nope. Nothing happening there. Not a surprise. He honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d had anything resembling some real wood.
He was tempted to offer a jocular “Want some help with that?” but couldn’t face a replay of their first night together after House’s “death.” They’d gotten as far as a Hampton Inn near the Delaware Water Gap, and made it through their first check in as “John” and “Kyle,” an act subversive enough on its own to nearly give Wilson an erection at the front desk.
After a stiff drink and a hot shower, he came out of the bathroom prepared to find out if all those games meant anything. He’d seen this man stare at him in the act of self-gratification. House had done his utmost to destroy every single meaningful relationship in Wilson’s life, making sure that even his closest friends were eventually estranged by having their true natures exposed. Why bother if there wasn’t an underlying desire beyond mere companionship? He’d already forced House to admit their emotional connection, down to the word love. If this was the price for the escape that House represented, Wilson was willing to pay it.
He'd found House sitting up in one of the double beds, a familiar Vicodin bottle next to him and an atlas open; it looked like Ohio was in their travel future.
They were already in a hotel room. The rest should be easy. Only this was House and nothing was ever easy.
“House,” he said in the voice he’d used to address so many women in similar circumstances. House looked up. Wilson raised his eyebrows and parted his lips at the same time, expecting House to rise and kiss him or be more aggressive and pull him down onto the bed.
Instead House shook his head and fixed him with a look that Wilson had once believed was reserved for members of his team who came up with a spectacularly misguided diagnosis, especially one based on emotion or--worst of all--trust. In other words, House was treating him like Cameron.
“Who do you think you are?” House asked, reaching for the bottle, his voice reflecting incredulity more than disgust. Wilson retreated to the second bed, absorbing the truth, and wondering whether he was more relieved or hurt. Maybe love didn’t mean what Wilson had thought it did. House had chosen to be with him to the bitter end, but they were still alone.
Listening to House let out the last groan of orgasm, he got the message again. House had never lied to him about the most important thing.
People don’t change.
@@@@@
Gregory House, MD, was dead; the man calling himself John Blythe wasn’t doing much better.
Wilson desperately wanted to give the doctors and nurses of Baptist Memorial Hospital a full medical rundown of their patient’s history and insert himself completely into his care. But of course, “Kyle Calloway” wasn’t a doctor and wouldn’t know the correct terminology or details. He was just a guy whose friend John had gotten roughed up by some local thugs; something about a back-room poker game.
There were so many things he couldn’t tell them, including the fact that “John” had been worked over by professionals after deliberately pissing them off, following a non-lovers quarrel instigated by House’s insistence that Wilson had been flirting with the blonde tour guide who showed them around Graceland. As if Wilson even had a fraction of his old mojo, even assuming Ginger had been interested.
He didn’t know whether to be furious at House or just worried about him. So what else was new? Except that this time House was jeopardizing everything. No, that was pretty much the same too. Maybe he’d been naïve to think that House would put his own death-wish on hold in deference to Wilson’s illness.
House probably hadn’t given any thought to the possibility of blowing their respective covers when he picked his moment to be an ass. . He’d been deprived of the ability to show off his intellect for too long and finding a mob boss with an obvious medical defect at the same time he needed to punish Wilson for daring to smile at a pretty girl must have been the ultimate temptation.
And being House, in his own sick way he’d won. Wilson was once again completely absorbed with House, while House got to sleep it off with his good friend, Sister Morphine, at taxpayers' expense since he’d come to the emergency room and been admitted with no health insurance. Wilson wondered how long they’d be able to get away with that one. Maybe a while. The pain had to be worse than excruciating. The bastard with the baseball bat had gone straight for House’s bad leg.
Wilson was pretty sure they were not going to make it to Nashville by Thursday, or even go to that blues club on Basin Street that House had been talking up just before the Ginger Incident. Even if House’s DNA didn’t ping an alarm somewhere, there was still the matter of a police report for his injuries or even the goodies that might turn up on the tox screen that must have been done before they decided to give a junkie his wet dream come true.
Something bad was going to happen; it was just a matter of what.
“Mr. Calloway?”
“Huh, who, what?”
He still wasn’t very good at being Kyle. Luckily the nurse who had woken him up was either too kind or too stupid to notice that he didn’t seem to recognize his own name. She was very pretty, reminding him a bit of Nancy, the peds nurse at PPTH. He’d managed to have an affair with Nancy while she was still seeing Foreman and use Foreman’s relationship as a cover so House never found out.
“There was a man looking for your friend.”
Wilson got a very sick feeling in his stomach that had nothing to do with his thymoma.
“What man?”
“He was wearing a suit and had white hair. He was asking after Mr. Blythe, but Dr. Benoit told him to come back with a warrant. He don’t like law enforcement types bothering his patients. The man said to give you his card. Said you’d know what it meant.”
“Thanks.”
As soon as he glanced at the card, Wilson knew that “John” was going to lose his lifeline to bliss a lot quicker than he’d planned.
“House,” Wilson whispered, “we have to get out of here.”
It would take more than that to wake House up at this point and Wilson didn’t know if he’d be able to whisper loudly enough to get the job done without attracting enough attention to impede their departure.
“It’s Tritter,” he said, a little louder, hoping the name of their old nemesis would do the trick. He looked at the card again, reading the message scrawled on the back, which said succinctly The jig is up, but that wasn’t the truly disturbing part. It was the agency emblem on the card itself that gave Wilson and Kyle a serious case of the heebie-jeebies just thinking about the “clinics” and the shooting galleries and even a certain dead junkie who House had thought was his way out.
“Tritter’s here… and he’s DEA now.”
@@@@@
“James?”
There was a certain catch to Julie’s breath when she was scared or guilty. He knew the message was from her, even before he heard her name. The hesitation was followed by conviction. She might be scared or guilty, but somehow she still knew she was right. That was Julie all over. Maybe she was just confused by the “Kyle” message, complete with fake hearty voice on his cell phone voicemail.
On the other hand if she had the number at all, she knew about the fake identity. Thanks, Stacy. He grimaced. Maybe he’d mentally declared victory a little too soon.
“James, it’s Julie. I know….we’ve been through so much. But I never stopped loving you. I never wanted the divorce.”
Too bad she hadn’t told her particularly avaricious lawyer that.
“I know you’re….sick. I don’t want you to be alone. Please come home. Let me take care of you.”
He wasn’t alone; he was with House. And he’d never felt so alone in his life.
“I love you. Please call me back.”
He was not going to call her. He wasn’t even going to think about her. House would be back any minute from the “beer run” he’d left on over an hour ago, and then they had plans to take a guided tour of locations from The Wire followed by a baseball game at Camden Yards.
They’d been lying low since their escape from Memphis and Wilson was starting to believe that the Tritter appearance might have been the conjuring of his own guilts and fears, although the card remained in the pocket of his leather jacket, untouched, but never quite forgotten.
Becoming Kyle meant leaving everything behind, so he had no pictures of Julie, but hearing her voice reminded him that she’d come to Amber’s funeral. He’d meant to offer perfunctory thanks and then ended up weeping in her arms and her ability to comfort him had led to a quick trip back to the house.
They’d gotten into a fight right afterwards. About House, naturally. Still, it was a good memory. He really had loved her and it was a shame things had gotten so screwed up. He couldn’t blame her for cheating; even he didn’t have the capacity for that level of hypocrisy. He could only blame himself for being a good doctor and a lousy husband.
Really?
That was the combined voices of House and Julie in his head. All three of them knew better.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to an empty motel room.
“Prove it,” said the Julie he had been determined not to think about.
“I can’t,” he said sadly, patting the front of his jeans, as if to show her that the thing that had gotten him in so much trouble was no longer a factor. Only, there it was. Not necessarily a throbbing erection, but the beginning of arousal. More than he’d produced in months.
He lay back on the bed and undid his fly to investigate further. If House came back and caught him…well it wouldn’t be the first time, would it?
He went back to the quickie after the funeral. Guilt and sorrow and lust and anger all in one great image of Julie on her knees, undoing the zipper on his black trousers. It had been a hot day in May; there were insects buzzing in the back yard, and Julie had a brooch on. He remembered her black silk blouse and the sun-tanned breasts with a sprinkling of freckles and how had he been stupid enough to get caught screwing around on her?
Fuck, he was hard! Take that, cancer, he thought, gripping his cock tightly, savoring the reminder that he was still alive. That someone still wanted him as a man.
He’d been so angry that day, and Julie had given him the perfect outlet, letting him thrust his rage at the world into her mouth before pushing him back onto the bed. It went fast after that.
This time he wanted to draw the experience out, but couldn’t. Old rhythms took over. He’d never been a hair-trigger guy before. Wilson had always prided himself on making sure his partner was satisfied before he let himself come.
Not that day though, and not this one. Today he sweated and grunted and brought himself off as quickly as Julie had. Maybe he felt just as smug at the familiar spurt of fluid as Julie had looked when she reached for a tissue to clean herself while Wilson was still half-dressed and flustered on what had been their bed. He wondered if smug looked as good on him as it used to look on House and if House would notice when he got back. Make that if he got back; he’d probably got completely sidelined scoring. Why bother with a fictional stash-house when he could go to a real one?
He wasn’t going to call Julie, but he certainly owed her something. He just wasn’t sure what.
@@@@@
It hadn’t been easy for Wilson to get the test results, but making himself look at them was even harder.
He’d had the blood drawn at a lab in Windsor, Ontario, having crossed the border using Kyle’s documents -- a slightly nerve-wracking moment, but a risk he had to take and one that produced nothing more frightening than an inquiry as to whether he was transporting any agricultural goods, followed by a cheery welcome to Canada.
From there, the blood had been sent overnight to one of Wilson’s former professors at McGill who had a long-running cancer study. Wilson knew his particular case barely qualified, but he managed to convince Professor Shapiro to look at “Kyle’s” sample in order for Wilson to provide a second opinion on a terminal diagnosis.
The really hard part was not only setting up a PO box, but making sure that House truly believed that a side trip to Ann Arbor was his own idea. It worked, but that left Wilson to wonder if House was getting bored with their aimless wandering.
There hadn’t been any repeats of Memphis or any Tritter sightings for Wilson to worry about. On the other hand, there had been more sulking and gambling. Wilson wasn’t above using any of House’s addictions to manipulate him. The Ann Arbor trip had been predicated on a nearby Indian casino, and Wilson knew he had time to check the results because he’d left House playing video poker at a bar near the campus. He might easily blow a thousand dollars before Wilson got back.
House could afford it, at least for a while, thanks to his father’s estate. Maybe that’s why he felt compelled to piss away as much money as possible on things the old man would disapprove of. The same old man whose first name he was now using and whom he’d get sentimental about if he climbed too deeply into the Maker’s Mark. Sadly enough, those were the moments when Wilson still felt the greatest emotional connection.
He stood outside Mailboxes Inc., nodding at the students who stopped to check out the bike and trying not to be too interested in some of the prettier coeds who couldn’t possibly be giving him the eye. Leaves were exploding in their last array of color before the desolation of winter set in.
Wilson hadn’t expected to be alive with the holidays just around the corner. It wouldn’t be the first Christmas he’d spent eating Chinese food with House, but it would be the first time he had no other options.
That’s what was nagging at him; the reason he’d gone behind House’s back to make sure. What if his diagnosis had been wrong, or he’d gone into remission? What if he’d given up his old life but was still doomed to live? He opened the envelope and pulled out the white pages, covered with lists of tests and the numbers that represented the results. His practiced eye ran over the numbers before turning to the prognosis section at the bottom. He started smiling, then giggling with relief.
He was definitely dying.
Six months, tops.
@@@@@
The shave made all the difference.
An old-fashioned shave, complete with hot towels, warm lather and an expertly wielded straight razor that had scraped every bit of Kyle’s patchy beard off his face. He’d never really enjoyed the feeling of that growth, but he’d let it go, simply out of laziness and lassitude and the feeling that it didn’t matter anyway.
“Butch drag,” House had cheerfully called the jeans and flannel shirts, along with the motorcycle jacket that he’d worn on their journey, and he had a point. It might be Kyle, and it was certainly House, but it wasn’t him.
He felt the cold wind of a Massachusetts December against his newly bare skin and it tingled; made him feel alive. Without House there to roll his eyes at the internal assertion of well-being when the facts were anything but, Wilson smirked at himself. He’d been so busy trying to die that he’d forgotten how much he loved life. That was the difference between him and House and why he’d finally made the decision.
The end of the road had come in Provincetown. Tourist season was long over, but House had found a small guesthouse still taking reservations. It was the final irony to be greeted as the couple they looked so much like, but never would be. The guesthouse owners took it for granted they were together, as did the boys at the Atlantic House, where they landed after dinner. The place had pretty much everything House could have wanted, including a pool table where he showed off some trick shots -- a few using the cane itself -- and a beat-up but functional piano where he banged out his repertoire of old blues songs. Wilson sat at the bar, nursing a beer, thinking this was what he’d come on the journey for. He’d never felt so at peace with his own impending death. He wondered if they could just stay here---like this, forever.
If House was this happy, maybe, just maybe, he could at least try to taper off the drugs.
He noticed a good-looking young man next to him, bringing his thigh awfully close in the crowded space and was prepared to shrug it off patiently, as he always did in those situations. Just because he’d been willing to try it for House didn’t mean he really had those impulses.
“Your boyfriend’s hot.”
Wilson nodded, not bothering to correct either assertion, because even if neither was true, in some way they both were.
That’s when he saw House get up and head for the men’s room. Nothing strange there. His new friends had been willing to buy beer as long as “John” kept them entertained. But he wasn’t going alone. There looked to be a whole party heading in that direction.
Was House about to have sex in the john, Wilson wondered, remembering the rejection at the beginning of their journey. Then he realized what was going on and sort of wished it was sex instead, especially when House emerged with the gang and it was clear they hadn’t been doing anything that could be passed off as pain relief or even addiction to opiates. It might have been cocaine, which he knew House had experience with, but he guessed it was meth. He felt sick and sad, having been reminded again that House wasn’t here to share Wilson’s death; he was there to make Wilson watch his.
Hours later House was still awake and wired and on one of his more brutal truth-seeking missions to unearth every lie Wilson had ever told him. This was House at his ugliest, the opposite of everything that had ever made Wilson want to be friends with him. House even made him admit that he genuinely liked watching House destroy other people because Wilson was too weak to do it himself, and that he’d been relieved when Amber died.
Finally he couldn’t take it anymore and started screaming at House to shut up.
“Awwww….can’t handle the truth, sweetheart. Don’t want the neighbors to hear what a wuss you are? Should I make some noises so they think we’re having make-up sex? Oh, but I forgot, you thought we were going to have sex, didn’t you? You thought I wanted to fuck you. “
“No, House, I thought you loved me. Clearly I was mistaken.”
That actually shut him up for a few minutes and Wilson was hoping this whole night would be over and they could get up in the morning and ride away and pretend it never happened.
“You lied about the threesome, didn’t you?”
“What?” He only vaguely remembered even mentioning a threesome to House.
“You told me you’d never had one. Got me to set one up for you…remember….Kyle?”
“For heaven’s sake, of course I lied. Why would you even believe such a stupid thing?”
“Because….” There was a painful pause. When he spoke again, there was raw resignation in his voice. “Because I wanted to.”
Wilson didn’t know when or if House ever fell asleep, but at least he stopped talking.
There were no apologies, just a shrug over coffee as if to say none of it had ever happened. Wilson nodded, but that afternoon he called Julie to find out if she’d been serious or just guilty. She said she’d come to Boston and get him.
He tried to warn her. House would probably come after him, maybe even drive a car through her living room.
“I can handle Greg House,” she said confidently.
“Well, I can’t anymore,” he confessed.
If House saw the clean shave, he’d know immediately, but he’d given House the slip by saying he was heading out early to buy whale-watching tickets and he’d meet him at Plymouth Plantation. Two more lies for House’s next meth binge, Wilson supposed, but the important thing was having their hotel room empty so he could leave a note before riding to Boston to meet Julie.
If he waited too long or thought too much he’d have second thoughts and the guilt would be overwhelming. He tried to remember that he had the right to be selfish, that this was his death, which House had tried to co-opt.
Finally he settled on something that, as much as it was going to hurt House, wouldn’t be a rationalization and wouldn’t be a lie. He left it on a pillow along with an extra bottle of Oxy that he’d brought along as back-up for when the pain got too bad for either of them. House was definitely going to need it when he read this.
I’m going home.
For all Wilson knew, it might be the last message he ever left for House.
He could live with that.
Fandom: House MD
Pairings: House/Wilson (UST and Angst ONLY), Wilson/Julie, reference to House/Stacy
Rating: NC17
Wordcount: 4490
Warnings: Final Season Spoilers. Dark-fic, Cancer, Drug abuse, Drug addiction, IV Drugs, Angst, Gambling, Violence. Canon heterosexuality. Internalized homophobia. Possible triggers. Read at your own risk. Seriously folks, if you loved the finale and have a happy place involving House/Wilson together and hopes of healing cock---this ain't the fic for you.
Notes: Post finale fic. Written for MMOM Day 6. Prompt from petitecuriosity. Beta by my always amazing betagoddess.
Summary: Five times Wilson got a message and one time he left one.
Newsletter mods, please note this will be cross-posted to housefic, house_wilsonand house_slash.
Do you really want to spend the rest of your life babysitting a junkie?
House always said Stacy was smart. Even when he was calling her the most vicious names he could summon from the depths of his agony, he'd never called her stupid. So naturally she’d figured out that House had faked his death and managed to track down the cell phone that was registered in Wilson’s fake identity.
Nice timing too, Wilson was forced to admit. He got the text five minutes after a certain “clinic” in the abundantly not-nice Niceville, Florida opened. The day was already humid, leaving him feeling grubby. He’d wanted to shower before they left the motel, but House was on edge, claiming the previous day’s riding had aggravated the pain. There was always a reason; always a too much. Maybe Wilson should have pointed out months earlier that a motorcycle odyssey would put continual pressure on House’s leg. That was when he was still caught up in the illusion of freedom and the belief that being alone with Wilson would somehow alleviate House’s pain. Now he knew better.
House was in a make-shift trailer getting enough Oxy to feed his addiction for a few more days. Then they’d cast around for some new route to ride or an “adventure.” That was inevitably a chance for House to mock the pleasures of normal people, until it was time to settle into yet another motel room where they’d both hope for decent reception and maybe some Monster Trucks on ESPN. And that was a good day. A bad one would end with House scoring somewhere considerably less civilized and Wilson worrying about exactly what House was putting in his veins.
Wilson had made the decision that he would not be his cancer, because cancer was boring. It just hadn’t occurred to him that without his medical puzzles or even regular access to a piano, House would be nothing but his addiction.
He ran a hand over the beard he’d started growing because there was no reason not to, and felt sweat rolling down his neck. There’d been an incident in Bonifay. House’s bike ended up damaged and they had to get money wired for repairs. Maybe that was how Stacy had tracked them down. He trusted her not to tell anyone, but he’d never trust her not to want House back and even though he knew better, he’d never trust House not to want her. Wilson considered Stacy a friend, but on some level she was still a rival for House, at least as far as respect was concerned.
House came out of the trailer in his leather jacket, jeans and sunglasses. He leaned on the cane for a second, maybe trying to see through whatever opiate haze he was now in. This was his House, even if he was going by a different name and had given up everything else that gave his life meaning. He was now completely dependent on Wilson and drugs. It was a victory of sorts. Wilson texted quickly to let Stacy know he’d won.
Absolutely.
@@@@@@
It wasn’t the first time he’d woken up to the sound of House masturbating.
There was a kind of music to the deep-throated groans and the rhythmic jerking. Without his piano and guitars, House’s only instrument was himself and he played it expertly. Wilson would have offered to help out, but House was a soloist at heart.
Wilson could remember, with what had become a bitter nostalgia, the games he and House used to play. Back then he would kiss a barely awake Julie good-bye, with a whole scenario planned for the afternoon. It was all about planning to get caught, while still letting House think he was doing the catching. Making sure he gave Evelyn the afternoon off when he knew House was eavesdropping. Locking his office door, but making sure the window looking out the shared balcony was uncovered. The leisurely beginning of a session of self-pleasure that could seemingly last for hours, all based on the anticipation of the moment when he would look up, cock in hand, and find House staring through the window, eyes especially bright, expression rapt.
Nothing had ever made him hotter. He and House would stay there, staring into each other’s eyes, while Wilson kept going, stroking harder and faster, feeling release build through his entire body and finally groaning his way into a hot, sticky orgasm, all while seeing his own passion reflected on House’s face.
Good times, he thought, listening to House’s voice rise in pitch to a near-whimper.
Wilson reached under the waistband of his boxer shorts, just to see if House’s semi-private symphony might have woken up his own dormant dick. Nope. Nothing happening there. Not a surprise. He honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d had anything resembling some real wood.
He was tempted to offer a jocular “Want some help with that?” but couldn’t face a replay of their first night together after House’s “death.” They’d gotten as far as a Hampton Inn near the Delaware Water Gap, and made it through their first check in as “John” and “Kyle,” an act subversive enough on its own to nearly give Wilson an erection at the front desk.
After a stiff drink and a hot shower, he came out of the bathroom prepared to find out if all those games meant anything. He’d seen this man stare at him in the act of self-gratification. House had done his utmost to destroy every single meaningful relationship in Wilson’s life, making sure that even his closest friends were eventually estranged by having their true natures exposed. Why bother if there wasn’t an underlying desire beyond mere companionship? He’d already forced House to admit their emotional connection, down to the word love. If this was the price for the escape that House represented, Wilson was willing to pay it.
He'd found House sitting up in one of the double beds, a familiar Vicodin bottle next to him and an atlas open; it looked like Ohio was in their travel future.
They were already in a hotel room. The rest should be easy. Only this was House and nothing was ever easy.
“House,” he said in the voice he’d used to address so many women in similar circumstances. House looked up. Wilson raised his eyebrows and parted his lips at the same time, expecting House to rise and kiss him or be more aggressive and pull him down onto the bed.
Instead House shook his head and fixed him with a look that Wilson had once believed was reserved for members of his team who came up with a spectacularly misguided diagnosis, especially one based on emotion or--worst of all--trust. In other words, House was treating him like Cameron.
“Who do you think you are?” House asked, reaching for the bottle, his voice reflecting incredulity more than disgust. Wilson retreated to the second bed, absorbing the truth, and wondering whether he was more relieved or hurt. Maybe love didn’t mean what Wilson had thought it did. House had chosen to be with him to the bitter end, but they were still alone.
Listening to House let out the last groan of orgasm, he got the message again. House had never lied to him about the most important thing.
People don’t change.
@@@@@
Gregory House, MD, was dead; the man calling himself John Blythe wasn’t doing much better.
Wilson desperately wanted to give the doctors and nurses of Baptist Memorial Hospital a full medical rundown of their patient’s history and insert himself completely into his care. But of course, “Kyle Calloway” wasn’t a doctor and wouldn’t know the correct terminology or details. He was just a guy whose friend John had gotten roughed up by some local thugs; something about a back-room poker game.
There were so many things he couldn’t tell them, including the fact that “John” had been worked over by professionals after deliberately pissing them off, following a non-lovers quarrel instigated by House’s insistence that Wilson had been flirting with the blonde tour guide who showed them around Graceland. As if Wilson even had a fraction of his old mojo, even assuming Ginger had been interested.
He didn’t know whether to be furious at House or just worried about him. So what else was new? Except that this time House was jeopardizing everything. No, that was pretty much the same too. Maybe he’d been naïve to think that House would put his own death-wish on hold in deference to Wilson’s illness.
House probably hadn’t given any thought to the possibility of blowing their respective covers when he picked his moment to be an ass. . He’d been deprived of the ability to show off his intellect for too long and finding a mob boss with an obvious medical defect at the same time he needed to punish Wilson for daring to smile at a pretty girl must have been the ultimate temptation.
And being House, in his own sick way he’d won. Wilson was once again completely absorbed with House, while House got to sleep it off with his good friend, Sister Morphine, at taxpayers' expense since he’d come to the emergency room and been admitted with no health insurance. Wilson wondered how long they’d be able to get away with that one. Maybe a while. The pain had to be worse than excruciating. The bastard with the baseball bat had gone straight for House’s bad leg.
Wilson was pretty sure they were not going to make it to Nashville by Thursday, or even go to that blues club on Basin Street that House had been talking up just before the Ginger Incident. Even if House’s DNA didn’t ping an alarm somewhere, there was still the matter of a police report for his injuries or even the goodies that might turn up on the tox screen that must have been done before they decided to give a junkie his wet dream come true.
Something bad was going to happen; it was just a matter of what.
“Mr. Calloway?”
“Huh, who, what?”
He still wasn’t very good at being Kyle. Luckily the nurse who had woken him up was either too kind or too stupid to notice that he didn’t seem to recognize his own name. She was very pretty, reminding him a bit of Nancy, the peds nurse at PPTH. He’d managed to have an affair with Nancy while she was still seeing Foreman and use Foreman’s relationship as a cover so House never found out.
“There was a man looking for your friend.”
Wilson got a very sick feeling in his stomach that had nothing to do with his thymoma.
“What man?”
“He was wearing a suit and had white hair. He was asking after Mr. Blythe, but Dr. Benoit told him to come back with a warrant. He don’t like law enforcement types bothering his patients. The man said to give you his card. Said you’d know what it meant.”
“Thanks.”
As soon as he glanced at the card, Wilson knew that “John” was going to lose his lifeline to bliss a lot quicker than he’d planned.
“House,” Wilson whispered, “we have to get out of here.”
It would take more than that to wake House up at this point and Wilson didn’t know if he’d be able to whisper loudly enough to get the job done without attracting enough attention to impede their departure.
“It’s Tritter,” he said, a little louder, hoping the name of their old nemesis would do the trick. He looked at the card again, reading the message scrawled on the back, which said succinctly The jig is up, but that wasn’t the truly disturbing part. It was the agency emblem on the card itself that gave Wilson and Kyle a serious case of the heebie-jeebies just thinking about the “clinics” and the shooting galleries and even a certain dead junkie who House had thought was his way out.
“Tritter’s here… and he’s DEA now.”
@@@@@
“James?”
There was a certain catch to Julie’s breath when she was scared or guilty. He knew the message was from her, even before he heard her name. The hesitation was followed by conviction. She might be scared or guilty, but somehow she still knew she was right. That was Julie all over. Maybe she was just confused by the “Kyle” message, complete with fake hearty voice on his cell phone voicemail.
On the other hand if she had the number at all, she knew about the fake identity. Thanks, Stacy. He grimaced. Maybe he’d mentally declared victory a little too soon.
“James, it’s Julie. I know….we’ve been through so much. But I never stopped loving you. I never wanted the divorce.”
Too bad she hadn’t told her particularly avaricious lawyer that.
“I know you’re….sick. I don’t want you to be alone. Please come home. Let me take care of you.”
He wasn’t alone; he was with House. And he’d never felt so alone in his life.
“I love you. Please call me back.”
He was not going to call her. He wasn’t even going to think about her. House would be back any minute from the “beer run” he’d left on over an hour ago, and then they had plans to take a guided tour of locations from The Wire followed by a baseball game at Camden Yards.
They’d been lying low since their escape from Memphis and Wilson was starting to believe that the Tritter appearance might have been the conjuring of his own guilts and fears, although the card remained in the pocket of his leather jacket, untouched, but never quite forgotten.
Becoming Kyle meant leaving everything behind, so he had no pictures of Julie, but hearing her voice reminded him that she’d come to Amber’s funeral. He’d meant to offer perfunctory thanks and then ended up weeping in her arms and her ability to comfort him had led to a quick trip back to the house.
They’d gotten into a fight right afterwards. About House, naturally. Still, it was a good memory. He really had loved her and it was a shame things had gotten so screwed up. He couldn’t blame her for cheating; even he didn’t have the capacity for that level of hypocrisy. He could only blame himself for being a good doctor and a lousy husband.
Really?
That was the combined voices of House and Julie in his head. All three of them knew better.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to an empty motel room.
“Prove it,” said the Julie he had been determined not to think about.
“I can’t,” he said sadly, patting the front of his jeans, as if to show her that the thing that had gotten him in so much trouble was no longer a factor. Only, there it was. Not necessarily a throbbing erection, but the beginning of arousal. More than he’d produced in months.
He lay back on the bed and undid his fly to investigate further. If House came back and caught him…well it wouldn’t be the first time, would it?
He went back to the quickie after the funeral. Guilt and sorrow and lust and anger all in one great image of Julie on her knees, undoing the zipper on his black trousers. It had been a hot day in May; there were insects buzzing in the back yard, and Julie had a brooch on. He remembered her black silk blouse and the sun-tanned breasts with a sprinkling of freckles and how had he been stupid enough to get caught screwing around on her?
Fuck, he was hard! Take that, cancer, he thought, gripping his cock tightly, savoring the reminder that he was still alive. That someone still wanted him as a man.
He’d been so angry that day, and Julie had given him the perfect outlet, letting him thrust his rage at the world into her mouth before pushing him back onto the bed. It went fast after that.
This time he wanted to draw the experience out, but couldn’t. Old rhythms took over. He’d never been a hair-trigger guy before. Wilson had always prided himself on making sure his partner was satisfied before he let himself come.
Not that day though, and not this one. Today he sweated and grunted and brought himself off as quickly as Julie had. Maybe he felt just as smug at the familiar spurt of fluid as Julie had looked when she reached for a tissue to clean herself while Wilson was still half-dressed and flustered on what had been their bed. He wondered if smug looked as good on him as it used to look on House and if House would notice when he got back. Make that if he got back; he’d probably got completely sidelined scoring. Why bother with a fictional stash-house when he could go to a real one?
He wasn’t going to call Julie, but he certainly owed her something. He just wasn’t sure what.
@@@@@
It hadn’t been easy for Wilson to get the test results, but making himself look at them was even harder.
He’d had the blood drawn at a lab in Windsor, Ontario, having crossed the border using Kyle’s documents -- a slightly nerve-wracking moment, but a risk he had to take and one that produced nothing more frightening than an inquiry as to whether he was transporting any agricultural goods, followed by a cheery welcome to Canada.
From there, the blood had been sent overnight to one of Wilson’s former professors at McGill who had a long-running cancer study. Wilson knew his particular case barely qualified, but he managed to convince Professor Shapiro to look at “Kyle’s” sample in order for Wilson to provide a second opinion on a terminal diagnosis.
The really hard part was not only setting up a PO box, but making sure that House truly believed that a side trip to Ann Arbor was his own idea. It worked, but that left Wilson to wonder if House was getting bored with their aimless wandering.
There hadn’t been any repeats of Memphis or any Tritter sightings for Wilson to worry about. On the other hand, there had been more sulking and gambling. Wilson wasn’t above using any of House’s addictions to manipulate him. The Ann Arbor trip had been predicated on a nearby Indian casino, and Wilson knew he had time to check the results because he’d left House playing video poker at a bar near the campus. He might easily blow a thousand dollars before Wilson got back.
House could afford it, at least for a while, thanks to his father’s estate. Maybe that’s why he felt compelled to piss away as much money as possible on things the old man would disapprove of. The same old man whose first name he was now using and whom he’d get sentimental about if he climbed too deeply into the Maker’s Mark. Sadly enough, those were the moments when Wilson still felt the greatest emotional connection.
He stood outside Mailboxes Inc., nodding at the students who stopped to check out the bike and trying not to be too interested in some of the prettier coeds who couldn’t possibly be giving him the eye. Leaves were exploding in their last array of color before the desolation of winter set in.
Wilson hadn’t expected to be alive with the holidays just around the corner. It wouldn’t be the first Christmas he’d spent eating Chinese food with House, but it would be the first time he had no other options.
That’s what was nagging at him; the reason he’d gone behind House’s back to make sure. What if his diagnosis had been wrong, or he’d gone into remission? What if he’d given up his old life but was still doomed to live? He opened the envelope and pulled out the white pages, covered with lists of tests and the numbers that represented the results. His practiced eye ran over the numbers before turning to the prognosis section at the bottom. He started smiling, then giggling with relief.
He was definitely dying.
Six months, tops.
@@@@@
The shave made all the difference.
An old-fashioned shave, complete with hot towels, warm lather and an expertly wielded straight razor that had scraped every bit of Kyle’s patchy beard off his face. He’d never really enjoyed the feeling of that growth, but he’d let it go, simply out of laziness and lassitude and the feeling that it didn’t matter anyway.
“Butch drag,” House had cheerfully called the jeans and flannel shirts, along with the motorcycle jacket that he’d worn on their journey, and he had a point. It might be Kyle, and it was certainly House, but it wasn’t him.
He felt the cold wind of a Massachusetts December against his newly bare skin and it tingled; made him feel alive. Without House there to roll his eyes at the internal assertion of well-being when the facts were anything but, Wilson smirked at himself. He’d been so busy trying to die that he’d forgotten how much he loved life. That was the difference between him and House and why he’d finally made the decision.
The end of the road had come in Provincetown. Tourist season was long over, but House had found a small guesthouse still taking reservations. It was the final irony to be greeted as the couple they looked so much like, but never would be. The guesthouse owners took it for granted they were together, as did the boys at the Atlantic House, where they landed after dinner. The place had pretty much everything House could have wanted, including a pool table where he showed off some trick shots -- a few using the cane itself -- and a beat-up but functional piano where he banged out his repertoire of old blues songs. Wilson sat at the bar, nursing a beer, thinking this was what he’d come on the journey for. He’d never felt so at peace with his own impending death. He wondered if they could just stay here---like this, forever.
If House was this happy, maybe, just maybe, he could at least try to taper off the drugs.
He noticed a good-looking young man next to him, bringing his thigh awfully close in the crowded space and was prepared to shrug it off patiently, as he always did in those situations. Just because he’d been willing to try it for House didn’t mean he really had those impulses.
“Your boyfriend’s hot.”
Wilson nodded, not bothering to correct either assertion, because even if neither was true, in some way they both were.
That’s when he saw House get up and head for the men’s room. Nothing strange there. His new friends had been willing to buy beer as long as “John” kept them entertained. But he wasn’t going alone. There looked to be a whole party heading in that direction.
Was House about to have sex in the john, Wilson wondered, remembering the rejection at the beginning of their journey. Then he realized what was going on and sort of wished it was sex instead, especially when House emerged with the gang and it was clear they hadn’t been doing anything that could be passed off as pain relief or even addiction to opiates. It might have been cocaine, which he knew House had experience with, but he guessed it was meth. He felt sick and sad, having been reminded again that House wasn’t here to share Wilson’s death; he was there to make Wilson watch his.
Hours later House was still awake and wired and on one of his more brutal truth-seeking missions to unearth every lie Wilson had ever told him. This was House at his ugliest, the opposite of everything that had ever made Wilson want to be friends with him. House even made him admit that he genuinely liked watching House destroy other people because Wilson was too weak to do it himself, and that he’d been relieved when Amber died.
Finally he couldn’t take it anymore and started screaming at House to shut up.
“Awwww….can’t handle the truth, sweetheart. Don’t want the neighbors to hear what a wuss you are? Should I make some noises so they think we’re having make-up sex? Oh, but I forgot, you thought we were going to have sex, didn’t you? You thought I wanted to fuck you. “
“No, House, I thought you loved me. Clearly I was mistaken.”
That actually shut him up for a few minutes and Wilson was hoping this whole night would be over and they could get up in the morning and ride away and pretend it never happened.
“You lied about the threesome, didn’t you?”
“What?” He only vaguely remembered even mentioning a threesome to House.
“You told me you’d never had one. Got me to set one up for you…remember….Kyle?”
“For heaven’s sake, of course I lied. Why would you even believe such a stupid thing?”
“Because….” There was a painful pause. When he spoke again, there was raw resignation in his voice. “Because I wanted to.”
Wilson didn’t know when or if House ever fell asleep, but at least he stopped talking.
There were no apologies, just a shrug over coffee as if to say none of it had ever happened. Wilson nodded, but that afternoon he called Julie to find out if she’d been serious or just guilty. She said she’d come to Boston and get him.
He tried to warn her. House would probably come after him, maybe even drive a car through her living room.
“I can handle Greg House,” she said confidently.
“Well, I can’t anymore,” he confessed.
If House saw the clean shave, he’d know immediately, but he’d given House the slip by saying he was heading out early to buy whale-watching tickets and he’d meet him at Plymouth Plantation. Two more lies for House’s next meth binge, Wilson supposed, but the important thing was having their hotel room empty so he could leave a note before riding to Boston to meet Julie.
If he waited too long or thought too much he’d have second thoughts and the guilt would be overwhelming. He tried to remember that he had the right to be selfish, that this was his death, which House had tried to co-opt.
Finally he settled on something that, as much as it was going to hurt House, wouldn’t be a rationalization and wouldn’t be a lie. He left it on a pillow along with an extra bottle of Oxy that he’d brought along as back-up for when the pain got too bad for either of them. House was definitely going to need it when he read this.
I’m going home.
For all Wilson knew, it might be the last message he ever left for House.
He could live with that.