Because He Can (5/5)
Title: Because He Can
Author: Magie
Word Count: 4,011
Pairing: House/Wilson established
Rating/Warnings:NC-17, language, smut. This chapter is pretty angsty.
Summary: A continuation of something I wrote for the get_house_laid prompt number 071: House/Wilson -- Smut that takes place before the Ketamine treatment wears off and House still has full use of his leg. Unusual positions are a plus! I can't believe this innocent little prompt got so out of hand on me. This chapter is mostly angst, and in my imagination, it leads straight into the events of Season 3. I didn't want it to get this angsty, but I think the ketamine failure was devastating to both of the boys. Thanks for sticking with me!
Betas: daphnie_1 and bmax67. Thanks for everything!
He wasn‘t going to let House give up.
He’d pick his battles, but House was not going to push him away now. Not for one missed case and a twinge of pain. Not when they were so close.
He just had to bide his time. That was all. It was the infarction all over again; it was forcing House to move on. It was dangerous, and Wilson knew House could wind up hating him, resenting him…but the alternative--
There was no alternative. He got to play House’s life raft, his protector, his…enabler. Well. At least this time, narcotics weren’t involved. Yet.
House had tried. Was trying. Was sitting with patients’ families and asking Wilson to move in. He’d run back to work convinced he could do anything. Dangerous for patients, even if some love-struck, less in-control part of Wilson’s brain believed House could do anything, could run ten miles a day and wake the living dead with one shot of Cortisol. But that kind of thinking got patients killed, made House reckless, got him shot.
He didn’t want House to change, not necessarily, not if he didn’t want to. But if House wanted meaning, if he needed it, if that was what it took to make him try for something…Wilson could go along with that. He just had to wait for his chance--
“Dr. Wilson?”
It was probably a bad sign that all the hotel staff knew his name.
“Hello, Katie.” He dragged out his wallet and tried not to notice the girl staring at him from behind the counter.
“Haven’t seen you around very much lately. Geoffrey said you were talking about leaving us.” She flashed eyes and teeth at him, flirting as a business tactic. Wilson sighed and tried not to look too pathetic, although half a year in this place, half a year of professionally personal interactions like this one made that pretty much a moot point.
The clerk watched him make a decision. He thought about tonight. He thought about how much he wanted to go back to House’s apartment and never look back at this place again. He thought about what House needed; if the pain was coming back, how easy it would be to resent the healthy, pain-free man you woke up with every morning. How easily he could end up like Stacy.
“I think…maybe just one more month.”
He saw his chance before Cuddy even had the sentence out.
He couldn’t let House know that he actually could do anything, that he’d made a miracle. Even if the thought of lying roiled in Wilson’s stomach and kept him awake that night.
Telling him made it okay for him to guess, to trust his instincts, when so often, those instincts were based on faulty assumptions or his bleak outlook on humanity. He’d get someone killed before he could accept that people can change or that not everybody lies all the time. Granted, these instincts, his pithy, cynical view of human nature were usually right…but ‘usually’ wasn’t good enough for House.
That was why lying was the only option. Curing the guy had been a one-in-a-million shot with less to do with logic than pure, dumb luck. Wilson had to lie. Someone had to keep House grounded. It made perfect sense to lie to him. If he knew what really happened, the only meaning he’d take from this would be that he should trust every whim that came his way.
Or that he could do anything, could fix anything, and then maybe he could forget all that he couldn’t do. Like change, be accepted.
Or walk.
Then House would have free reign to retreat into his own head and resume his role as everybody’s favorite crippled jackass, stop exercising and start taking the pills. He could cure the plague and yell at his fellows and forget about any meaning beyond the puzzle, beyond cold rationality. Forget nights of soft touches and wordless understanding. Forget love, because logic was so much easier. Forget he mattered outside the hospital doors.
Lie to him, and he’d remember he was human. Lie, and he’d be forced to look elsewhere for what mattered. Cover up the truth so House would have to find his own. Betray him to help him.
Wilson stopped himself. He was already turning into Stacy.
But she hadn’t had a choice, and he didn’t either, because they were playing with fire and ice. No gain without first losing something. Hurt House, or allow him to hurt himself.
It wasn’t really a choice, so Wilson found himself lying with soft sarcasm in House’s darkened, depressed office. House thought he was wrong and Wilson wondered why he didn’t feel guilty. This was the best thing for House, he told himself as he walked out, as House very loudly didn’t invite him over, this was the only way. This was the only meaning. If the pain was back, even in his mind, then the past two months had been for nothing, had made things worse.
Wilson wasn’t going to let that happen. He couldn’t accept that the past two months had been a waste, not when they had been so brutally happy. Something positive was going to come out of this, something had to change. If they couldn’t, if House couldn’t, then Wilson would settle for things not getting worse than they had been before. He didn’t want to imagine what could happen next.
So he lied to House, and went home to his hotel, and when the part of his brain that always stayed at work caught up with him, reminded him he’d left the balcony door unlocked again, Wilson just shrugged it off. Only one person besides him ever used that door, anyway.
But House found out, because House always finds out, and now the lie dripped like sweat off Wilson’s skin.
He didn’t bother with any real reason, preferring to let House draw his own conclusions, which inevitably led to him seeing the lie in the darkest possible way.
“God doesn’t limp” was his revenge and it went straight to Wilson’s chest, sinking his heart like a stone. That wasn’t what he meant; House should know that by now, should trust him. But since when had House trusted anyone, and since when did Wilson deserve it, and when had hurting House become a valid option?
In hindsight, he could have just let Cuddy tell the truth and dealt with House being blinded by his own work-related ego, being unable to see his importance to anything non-medical. In hindsight, the lie had done nothing but driven them further apart, strengthened the walls House was already trying to rebuild. In hindsight, Wilson was a fuck-up who had just given House the impression that he didn’t believe--didn’t care about the pain.
The limp was coming back, more pronounced each day, each hour, each step. The lines around his eyes and mouth were deeper. The familiar look in unfocused blue pupils, their personality weakened by pain. The pain was back, and it was real.
Whether or not it was worsened or even precipitated by some self-punishing part of House’s brain made no difference. It was here, probably for good, and now he got to watch House deal with it, toss back a reluctantly offered bottle of Vicodin as if he didn’t need it, hide behind his patient. Deny that he needed help because that was what he did, because it was a tradition.
But these were not the old days. Six years and shattered boundaries separated them both from the time when Wilson was there only as a friend, when it wasn’t as hard for House to call Wilson out of his wife’s bed, send a page with no message that simply meant he needed help. So he gave House two hours of distance before he packed up his office, tucked his prescription pad into his unlocked desk and headed after House, thinking-hoping-that maybe House needed him again.
He knocked, because it wasn’t his apartment and now he couldn’t even pretend. He waited for the TV volume to increase, for ‘Go away’ or ‘Use your key,’ but nothing came, so he knocked again. “House?”
The door opened suddenly with a swish of stale air, like House had been waiting just inside the door the whole time. The apartment over his shoulder was not quite dark enough to hide the pain in his features or the cane in his hand.
“Well, if it isn’t Daedalus,” he slurred after a long moment of staring ice-blue holes into Wilson’s chest. “About time you showed up.”
Wilson bit back the urge to kick himself for his hasty metaphor. “Can I come in?”
The fact that it was the first time Wilson had had to ask that question in nearly a year passed between them and fluttered to the floor, and a few years later, House moved back with an uncertain lilt.
Wilson slipped in slightly faster than the light from passing cars and was mentally cataloguing his lecture notes when House grabbed him by the collar.
He flinched like he was about to be hit and wondered if he deserved it. Then jolting, uneven steps urged him backwards and he was dangerously close to being molested by a doorknob. The cane handle pressed against his left ear when House grabbed his face, bit his slack lips until he tasted blood and whiskey.
“You’re drunk,” he murmured, since stating the obvious seemed appropriate, seemed like the only choice, since nothing was obvious with House.
“You’re pathetic,” the scrape of facial hair against his chin, “You’re Wilson. Which means you’re going to whine about morals and ethics, spout some self-righteous psychobabble and then agree to do this anyway,” unpleasantly pleasant bites against his pulse. Then a hand cupped his groin. “What do you say we just skip to the fun part?”
Past House’s moving jaw, the coffee table held an incriminatingly empty clear bottle with the label peeled off, reflecting little more than moonlight in the darkened apartment. He wriggled his hands out from between their bodies and grabbed House by the elbows. “Wait a minute.”
But apparently House had waited long enough, snatching Wilson’s shirttail out of his pants, throwing a silk tie over Wilson’s shoulder. “What’s the matter? This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”
This, this seemingly normal thing, this thing couples in love did, this thing that mattered. He let House rip his shirt open before he added, “Not like this, House. You need to stop.” But already and to his horror, his dick was putting up a strong protest.
“Like hell.” And his breath invaded Wilson’s mouth, vodka or whiskey or bourbon or all of the above riding down his throat with House’s kiss.
His body and mind existed on two separate planes, one more rational than the other, even if he couldn’t tell which was which. His body found ways to stall, hands under a worn t-shirt, lips to neck, tented slacks to an uneven pelvis. Meanwhile, his mind dissolved into explanation.
House was drunk. House was limping. House was hurt by the lie and this was his revenge, his forgiveness, his escape. Echoes from half-remembered Honors English courses resurged. Icarus flew too close to the sun. Icarus should have heeded his father’s advice. Icarus fell into the sea and drowned but Daedalus…Daedalus gave him the wings in the first place, didn’t he?
For a week, House thought he’d failed to fix another cripple, thought the brain cancer patient couldn’t be changed. There wasn’t hope. Life never worked that way. In the end, people went home unchanged and injured. Ketamine and Cortisol were meaningless.
So hide in your office, and go home to glass bottles, and sink back into pain and apathy. If you can’t have meaning, go with what works, go with what you’re more comfortable with, grope your only friend and hope it’s enough to make him stay.
In another universe, Wilson’s body was naked and bent over a leather couch, limbs splayed and head bowed, his entrance offered up to cold air. Then House was over him, alcohol seeping out of his pores, hands on Wilson’s hips with bruising need.
It hurt, and it didn’t mean anything, and Wilson never wanted it to end. It was all he was allowed to do, after all; it was better than goodbye. He’d given House enough rope to hang himself and now he was fixing it. Or not fixing it. Making it worse, putting off the fight, giving up and letting House take what he needed since you can’t always get what you want.
House’s chest was cold and rough against his back, rolling awkwardly, lopsided thrusts welcoming him back to real life. House loved him, hated him, needed him. If Wilson made noises, they weren’t groans of pleasure. They were discomfort and apologies. They were just part of the game.
It was over without kisses on the back of his neck or a helping hand around his cock. It was clumsy and awkward and perfunctory, and it meant nothing beyond physical release, physical retribution. They could have been strangers, just two lonely guys fucking in the living room because it was convenient. No reason to pretend it was anything more, no reason Wilson should feel like something was missing, no reason it should make him feel sick.
House slid off of him and started pulling his clothes back on with a swish of denim, because there was no reason to linger in post-coital bliss with some guy you worked with. Wilson kneeled over the back of the couch, his face on sweaty forearms, waiting for something, anything, scared to turn around. Scared that it was over and now it was time to say goodbye, time to go back to the hotel because that was all he could have.
The familiar thud of the cane, familiar kiss of rubber against hardwood as House moved away. Suddenly Wilson’s pants landed with a thud against his side.
“This actually isn’t ancient Greece,” House rasped in explanation, “You don’t get to hang around naked like they do in all those old paintings.”
Wilson fumbled into his boxer shorts and wondered why he felt so embarrassed. He couldn’t look at House, who limped slowly down the hall and disappeared into the bathroom.
It occurred to Wilson only now that he hadn’t come, not that it mattered. Not that he had expected to. He shouldn’t have come here tonight, shouldn’t have let House take what he needed. But, then, he shouldn’t have lied about the patient. He shouldn’t have wasted the last month since House asked him to move in. He shouldn’t be here, and this shouldn’t be happening to House again. Wilson wasn’t sure he could go back to the way things were before, not after that taste of the way they could be.
And he knew House couldn’t handle it.
No one could. A brief, euphoric drop in pain in the last hours, but I’m feeling so much better, Dr. Wilson, the deceptive loss of pain that made its return that much worse. Just because there was no pain, that didn’t mean the patient was getting better.
Palliative treatment.
It was what he did when his patients deteriorated into constant pain. It was the only thing he could do.
He slipped the bottle out of his pants’ pocket before putting them back on.
House wasn’t going to want him to stay, not tonight, maybe never again. But he walked down the hallway and sat on what used to be his side of the bed, hiding the bottle in loosely clasped hands. Just for now. Just to see what happened.
The bathroom door opened and after a long moment of silence, heavy, uneven steps moved towards the bedroom. House paused awkwardly in the doorway, leaning on the cane, staggering with pain and alcohol. He seemed confused by the sight of Wilson on his bed. For the first second under blue eyes, Wilson could have believed things would be okay…but then House dropped his gaze. “Still here? I would have thought you’d run back the hotel, get your money’s worth.”
Wilson let out a sigh from every muscle in his body. “It’s late,” he offered, when his throat would cooperate. His hand found the back of his neck and he gestured pathetically to the bedspread. “I could-“
“Sorry,” the bite of sarcasm as he swept across the room, cruel sarcasm, not the kind that left room for a lighthearted retort, “little crowded in here. You and your self-righteousness will have to clear out. That thing gets any bigger, you’ll have to shell out for a second room at the hotel.”
Right. Wilson remembered this. This was House when he thought he had no reason to try. Nothing new. It really shouldn’t hurt as much the second time around.
Wilson cleared his throat, stood up, and straightened his shirt, because there was nothing else to do. House was rummaging loudly for pajamas over Wilson’s shoulder.
“How bad is the pain right now?”
A drawer slammed shut. “Oh, you know how it is. Just the pangs of getting older, remember?”
“House.”
He turned around slowly, with difficulty, and Wilson bit the inside of his cheek. He couldn’t say ‘I’m sorry.’ Not now. House would be hearing that from all directions soon enough.
He brought House the Vicodin. Such an easy motion, take a few steps, extend an open palm. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
They both stared at it, as if it had something to say, for so long it was nearly comical.
“I assume that’s aspirin,” House muttered finally. “Wouldn’t want to overmedicate a pulled muscle.”
“Just take it, House.” Had it really been only a matter of months since he’d been desperate for House to cut down on them?
House looked him in the eyes for the first time that evening, the look more personal than anything that happened in the living room. He could hear what House would never vocalize. Life works that way, Jimmy. One day you’re healthy, the next you’re a crippled drug addict, and the day after that you’re starting the cycle again.
“Hmm, peer pressure.” He screwed up his face in mock thought, “Think I’m supposed to say ‘no’ and tell on you to my mommy.”
“Don’t do this,” because he was being forced to beg House to take Vicodin, forced to be a hypocrite, “You need to take something before it gets out of control.”
House exhaled a mirthless laugh. “Wouldn’t want that,” he sneered quietly, and his fingertips brushed Wilson’s palm, and he knew he wasn’t imagining that they lingered for far longer than was strictly necessary.
Wilson swallowed a ball of fear. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?”
He’d set himself up, but it still stung when House gently brushed Wilson’s hand off his shoulder. “Thanks for the drugs and the pity fuck. I’ll see you at work.”
Wilson had barely taken two steps down the hallway when he heard a loud pop and the rattle of pills.
He had just given House a bottle of Vicodin and all the excuses he would need to wall himself off. He had let his most guarded secret go, let House see what he wanted out of the relationship, let himself fall helplessly in love with no pretense. He’d lied to House and proven that hope was meaningless and change impossible. He’d invented wax wings and then taken them away.
Now House would have to find a new way to fly.
The pill was dry and metallic and bitter on his tongue. It was the best thing he’d ever tasted.
He was still drawing it back and forth between his teeth when he heard the front door close. Wilson was gone before swallowed the Vicodin. Never mind that he really didn’t need it right now. He had plenty to spare, after all.
He’d filled his own scribbled prescription with ridiculous ease at some hole-in-the-wall pharmacy on the other side of town. Not that he felt guilty, felt the need to hide. Why should he? He’d asked Wilson for a ‘valid’ script and gotten mocked in return. Only one recourse. It wasn’t stealing. It was taking something he needed. If tonight was any indication, Wilson was used to that idea.
Wilson had been miserable in the living room tonight, had gotten nothing out of it but friction burns. Welcome to the second semester of Doing a Cripple 101, class is in session. They both might as well get used to the idea, to the way his leg ruled even sex, to opiate impotence and boner-crushing pain. Better, then, that Wilson had never moved in. It would have made it harder not to miss him.
The last time in this room flashed ice-water memory behind his eyelids and he needed another pill to drown it out. He shut his eyes and inhaled latent scents from the pillowcase.
It was suddenly the day before he went back to work and Wilson was on the bed with him, both naked, still air cooling sweat-shined skin. Lying on his side with a scarred, ugly, but painless leg thrown over Wilson’s hips, chest to chest, hands in obsessively manicured hair and spent cocks touching. Pointless contact that once seemed so important.
Wilson was falling asleep mid-kiss, slack, mint-flavored mouth offering up no resistance, hands curling weakly against House’s ribcage.
“Boring you?” he asked, fingers finding relaxed muscles in Wilson’s back, never wanting to sleep.
“Mmm,” he woke up a little and kissed back briefly, “I’m just getting tired. Can you blame me, after a performance like that?”
Smug looked good on the bastard. Still, House had to concede. “It was alright. I guess.” He curled his right leg more tightly over Wilson’s hips and ass. He couldn’t go anywhere if he tried. “Give me a ride home from work tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
“Pot roast for dinner?”
“Okay.”
“Spend the night?”
“Mm-hmm.”
House had a theory. He spoke in the same, conversational manner into Wilson’s hair. “You enjoy wearing women’s underwear?”
“Yeah.”
He huffed a small laugh through his nose, hot breath in Wilson’s ear. The lamp was still on, and he had to pee, and his left ass cheek was going to fall asleep in this position, but, “‘Night, Wilson.”
“Hmmm. Night. Love you.”
The words were mumbled into his solar plexus from some sleep-addled part of Wilson’s brain, and Wilson wouldn’t remember a thing. But it didn’t make the words less real, on some night in a past life, with Wilson sickly content in his arms and an involuntary grin on House’s face. “Same here.”
Derision brought him back to reality, to lying alone on his bed with pain’s heartbeat in his thigh. Stupid to think about that. Stupid to let it happen at all. He’d done what he promised himself he’d never do again. Funny how losing his leg, or love, or whatever-losing it twice didn’t make it easier.
He sat up in the dark and his hand found its way to the nightstand. Wilson’s glasses and books and body weren’t in the way anymore; he found the pills with ease.
He takes two even though his head’s already spinning. There are plenty more where these came from, anyway: sixteen in the bottle in his jacket pocket, five loose in his jeans, another two in the zippered compartment of his wallet. And if he runs out, or low, or the next time Wilson leaves the door unlocked, he can always get more.
They slide chalk-bitter trails down his throat. It’s better to take them now. He’ll need them again in the morning, in an hour, for the rest of his life. He takes them now because he needs them. Because they’ll help him sleep. Because they’ll blur disappointment in dark brown eyes. Because numb is better, after all. Because more pills are just a balcony away.
Because he can.
Author: Magie
Word Count: 4,011
Pairing: House/Wilson established
Rating/Warnings:NC-17, language, smut. This chapter is pretty angsty.
Summary: A continuation of something I wrote for the get_house_laid prompt number 071: House/Wilson -- Smut that takes place before the Ketamine treatment wears off and House still has full use of his leg. Unusual positions are a plus! I can't believe this innocent little prompt got so out of hand on me. This chapter is mostly angst, and in my imagination, it leads straight into the events of Season 3. I didn't want it to get this angsty, but I think the ketamine failure was devastating to both of the boys. Thanks for sticking with me!
Betas: daphnie_1 and bmax67. Thanks for everything!
He wasn‘t going to let House give up.
He’d pick his battles, but House was not going to push him away now. Not for one missed case and a twinge of pain. Not when they were so close.
He just had to bide his time. That was all. It was the infarction all over again; it was forcing House to move on. It was dangerous, and Wilson knew House could wind up hating him, resenting him…but the alternative--
There was no alternative. He got to play House’s life raft, his protector, his…enabler. Well. At least this time, narcotics weren’t involved. Yet.
House had tried. Was trying. Was sitting with patients’ families and asking Wilson to move in. He’d run back to work convinced he could do anything. Dangerous for patients, even if some love-struck, less in-control part of Wilson’s brain believed House could do anything, could run ten miles a day and wake the living dead with one shot of Cortisol. But that kind of thinking got patients killed, made House reckless, got him shot.
He didn’t want House to change, not necessarily, not if he didn’t want to. But if House wanted meaning, if he needed it, if that was what it took to make him try for something…Wilson could go along with that. He just had to wait for his chance--
“Dr. Wilson?”
It was probably a bad sign that all the hotel staff knew his name.
“Hello, Katie.” He dragged out his wallet and tried not to notice the girl staring at him from behind the counter.
“Haven’t seen you around very much lately. Geoffrey said you were talking about leaving us.” She flashed eyes and teeth at him, flirting as a business tactic. Wilson sighed and tried not to look too pathetic, although half a year in this place, half a year of professionally personal interactions like this one made that pretty much a moot point.
The clerk watched him make a decision. He thought about tonight. He thought about how much he wanted to go back to House’s apartment and never look back at this place again. He thought about what House needed; if the pain was coming back, how easy it would be to resent the healthy, pain-free man you woke up with every morning. How easily he could end up like Stacy.
“I think…maybe just one more month.”
He saw his chance before Cuddy even had the sentence out.
He couldn’t let House know that he actually could do anything, that he’d made a miracle. Even if the thought of lying roiled in Wilson’s stomach and kept him awake that night.
Telling him made it okay for him to guess, to trust his instincts, when so often, those instincts were based on faulty assumptions or his bleak outlook on humanity. He’d get someone killed before he could accept that people can change or that not everybody lies all the time. Granted, these instincts, his pithy, cynical view of human nature were usually right…but ‘usually’ wasn’t good enough for House.
That was why lying was the only option. Curing the guy had been a one-in-a-million shot with less to do with logic than pure, dumb luck. Wilson had to lie. Someone had to keep House grounded. It made perfect sense to lie to him. If he knew what really happened, the only meaning he’d take from this would be that he should trust every whim that came his way.
Or that he could do anything, could fix anything, and then maybe he could forget all that he couldn’t do. Like change, be accepted.
Or walk.
Then House would have free reign to retreat into his own head and resume his role as everybody’s favorite crippled jackass, stop exercising and start taking the pills. He could cure the plague and yell at his fellows and forget about any meaning beyond the puzzle, beyond cold rationality. Forget nights of soft touches and wordless understanding. Forget love, because logic was so much easier. Forget he mattered outside the hospital doors.
Lie to him, and he’d remember he was human. Lie, and he’d be forced to look elsewhere for what mattered. Cover up the truth so House would have to find his own. Betray him to help him.
Wilson stopped himself. He was already turning into Stacy.
But she hadn’t had a choice, and he didn’t either, because they were playing with fire and ice. No gain without first losing something. Hurt House, or allow him to hurt himself.
It wasn’t really a choice, so Wilson found himself lying with soft sarcasm in House’s darkened, depressed office. House thought he was wrong and Wilson wondered why he didn’t feel guilty. This was the best thing for House, he told himself as he walked out, as House very loudly didn’t invite him over, this was the only way. This was the only meaning. If the pain was back, even in his mind, then the past two months had been for nothing, had made things worse.
Wilson wasn’t going to let that happen. He couldn’t accept that the past two months had been a waste, not when they had been so brutally happy. Something positive was going to come out of this, something had to change. If they couldn’t, if House couldn’t, then Wilson would settle for things not getting worse than they had been before. He didn’t want to imagine what could happen next.
So he lied to House, and went home to his hotel, and when the part of his brain that always stayed at work caught up with him, reminded him he’d left the balcony door unlocked again, Wilson just shrugged it off. Only one person besides him ever used that door, anyway.
But House found out, because House always finds out, and now the lie dripped like sweat off Wilson’s skin.
He didn’t bother with any real reason, preferring to let House draw his own conclusions, which inevitably led to him seeing the lie in the darkest possible way.
“God doesn’t limp” was his revenge and it went straight to Wilson’s chest, sinking his heart like a stone. That wasn’t what he meant; House should know that by now, should trust him. But since when had House trusted anyone, and since when did Wilson deserve it, and when had hurting House become a valid option?
In hindsight, he could have just let Cuddy tell the truth and dealt with House being blinded by his own work-related ego, being unable to see his importance to anything non-medical. In hindsight, the lie had done nothing but driven them further apart, strengthened the walls House was already trying to rebuild. In hindsight, Wilson was a fuck-up who had just given House the impression that he didn’t believe--didn’t care about the pain.
The limp was coming back, more pronounced each day, each hour, each step. The lines around his eyes and mouth were deeper. The familiar look in unfocused blue pupils, their personality weakened by pain. The pain was back, and it was real.
Whether or not it was worsened or even precipitated by some self-punishing part of House’s brain made no difference. It was here, probably for good, and now he got to watch House deal with it, toss back a reluctantly offered bottle of Vicodin as if he didn’t need it, hide behind his patient. Deny that he needed help because that was what he did, because it was a tradition.
But these were not the old days. Six years and shattered boundaries separated them both from the time when Wilson was there only as a friend, when it wasn’t as hard for House to call Wilson out of his wife’s bed, send a page with no message that simply meant he needed help. So he gave House two hours of distance before he packed up his office, tucked his prescription pad into his unlocked desk and headed after House, thinking-hoping-that maybe House needed him again.
He knocked, because it wasn’t his apartment and now he couldn’t even pretend. He waited for the TV volume to increase, for ‘Go away’ or ‘Use your key,’ but nothing came, so he knocked again. “House?”
The door opened suddenly with a swish of stale air, like House had been waiting just inside the door the whole time. The apartment over his shoulder was not quite dark enough to hide the pain in his features or the cane in his hand.
“Well, if it isn’t Daedalus,” he slurred after a long moment of staring ice-blue holes into Wilson’s chest. “About time you showed up.”
Wilson bit back the urge to kick himself for his hasty metaphor. “Can I come in?”
The fact that it was the first time Wilson had had to ask that question in nearly a year passed between them and fluttered to the floor, and a few years later, House moved back with an uncertain lilt.
Wilson slipped in slightly faster than the light from passing cars and was mentally cataloguing his lecture notes when House grabbed him by the collar.
He flinched like he was about to be hit and wondered if he deserved it. Then jolting, uneven steps urged him backwards and he was dangerously close to being molested by a doorknob. The cane handle pressed against his left ear when House grabbed his face, bit his slack lips until he tasted blood and whiskey.
“You’re drunk,” he murmured, since stating the obvious seemed appropriate, seemed like the only choice, since nothing was obvious with House.
“You’re pathetic,” the scrape of facial hair against his chin, “You’re Wilson. Which means you’re going to whine about morals and ethics, spout some self-righteous psychobabble and then agree to do this anyway,” unpleasantly pleasant bites against his pulse. Then a hand cupped his groin. “What do you say we just skip to the fun part?”
Past House’s moving jaw, the coffee table held an incriminatingly empty clear bottle with the label peeled off, reflecting little more than moonlight in the darkened apartment. He wriggled his hands out from between their bodies and grabbed House by the elbows. “Wait a minute.”
But apparently House had waited long enough, snatching Wilson’s shirttail out of his pants, throwing a silk tie over Wilson’s shoulder. “What’s the matter? This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”
This, this seemingly normal thing, this thing couples in love did, this thing that mattered. He let House rip his shirt open before he added, “Not like this, House. You need to stop.” But already and to his horror, his dick was putting up a strong protest.
“Like hell.” And his breath invaded Wilson’s mouth, vodka or whiskey or bourbon or all of the above riding down his throat with House’s kiss.
His body and mind existed on two separate planes, one more rational than the other, even if he couldn’t tell which was which. His body found ways to stall, hands under a worn t-shirt, lips to neck, tented slacks to an uneven pelvis. Meanwhile, his mind dissolved into explanation.
House was drunk. House was limping. House was hurt by the lie and this was his revenge, his forgiveness, his escape. Echoes from half-remembered Honors English courses resurged. Icarus flew too close to the sun. Icarus should have heeded his father’s advice. Icarus fell into the sea and drowned but Daedalus…Daedalus gave him the wings in the first place, didn’t he?
For a week, House thought he’d failed to fix another cripple, thought the brain cancer patient couldn’t be changed. There wasn’t hope. Life never worked that way. In the end, people went home unchanged and injured. Ketamine and Cortisol were meaningless.
So hide in your office, and go home to glass bottles, and sink back into pain and apathy. If you can’t have meaning, go with what works, go with what you’re more comfortable with, grope your only friend and hope it’s enough to make him stay.
In another universe, Wilson’s body was naked and bent over a leather couch, limbs splayed and head bowed, his entrance offered up to cold air. Then House was over him, alcohol seeping out of his pores, hands on Wilson’s hips with bruising need.
It hurt, and it didn’t mean anything, and Wilson never wanted it to end. It was all he was allowed to do, after all; it was better than goodbye. He’d given House enough rope to hang himself and now he was fixing it. Or not fixing it. Making it worse, putting off the fight, giving up and letting House take what he needed since you can’t always get what you want.
House’s chest was cold and rough against his back, rolling awkwardly, lopsided thrusts welcoming him back to real life. House loved him, hated him, needed him. If Wilson made noises, they weren’t groans of pleasure. They were discomfort and apologies. They were just part of the game.
It was over without kisses on the back of his neck or a helping hand around his cock. It was clumsy and awkward and perfunctory, and it meant nothing beyond physical release, physical retribution. They could have been strangers, just two lonely guys fucking in the living room because it was convenient. No reason to pretend it was anything more, no reason Wilson should feel like something was missing, no reason it should make him feel sick.
House slid off of him and started pulling his clothes back on with a swish of denim, because there was no reason to linger in post-coital bliss with some guy you worked with. Wilson kneeled over the back of the couch, his face on sweaty forearms, waiting for something, anything, scared to turn around. Scared that it was over and now it was time to say goodbye, time to go back to the hotel because that was all he could have.
The familiar thud of the cane, familiar kiss of rubber against hardwood as House moved away. Suddenly Wilson’s pants landed with a thud against his side.
“This actually isn’t ancient Greece,” House rasped in explanation, “You don’t get to hang around naked like they do in all those old paintings.”
Wilson fumbled into his boxer shorts and wondered why he felt so embarrassed. He couldn’t look at House, who limped slowly down the hall and disappeared into the bathroom.
It occurred to Wilson only now that he hadn’t come, not that it mattered. Not that he had expected to. He shouldn’t have come here tonight, shouldn’t have let House take what he needed. But, then, he shouldn’t have lied about the patient. He shouldn’t have wasted the last month since House asked him to move in. He shouldn’t be here, and this shouldn’t be happening to House again. Wilson wasn’t sure he could go back to the way things were before, not after that taste of the way they could be.
And he knew House couldn’t handle it.
No one could. A brief, euphoric drop in pain in the last hours, but I’m feeling so much better, Dr. Wilson, the deceptive loss of pain that made its return that much worse. Just because there was no pain, that didn’t mean the patient was getting better.
Palliative treatment.
It was what he did when his patients deteriorated into constant pain. It was the only thing he could do.
He slipped the bottle out of his pants’ pocket before putting them back on.
House wasn’t going to want him to stay, not tonight, maybe never again. But he walked down the hallway and sat on what used to be his side of the bed, hiding the bottle in loosely clasped hands. Just for now. Just to see what happened.
The bathroom door opened and after a long moment of silence, heavy, uneven steps moved towards the bedroom. House paused awkwardly in the doorway, leaning on the cane, staggering with pain and alcohol. He seemed confused by the sight of Wilson on his bed. For the first second under blue eyes, Wilson could have believed things would be okay…but then House dropped his gaze. “Still here? I would have thought you’d run back the hotel, get your money’s worth.”
Wilson let out a sigh from every muscle in his body. “It’s late,” he offered, when his throat would cooperate. His hand found the back of his neck and he gestured pathetically to the bedspread. “I could-“
“Sorry,” the bite of sarcasm as he swept across the room, cruel sarcasm, not the kind that left room for a lighthearted retort, “little crowded in here. You and your self-righteousness will have to clear out. That thing gets any bigger, you’ll have to shell out for a second room at the hotel.”
Right. Wilson remembered this. This was House when he thought he had no reason to try. Nothing new. It really shouldn’t hurt as much the second time around.
Wilson cleared his throat, stood up, and straightened his shirt, because there was nothing else to do. House was rummaging loudly for pajamas over Wilson’s shoulder.
“How bad is the pain right now?”
A drawer slammed shut. “Oh, you know how it is. Just the pangs of getting older, remember?”
“House.”
He turned around slowly, with difficulty, and Wilson bit the inside of his cheek. He couldn’t say ‘I’m sorry.’ Not now. House would be hearing that from all directions soon enough.
He brought House the Vicodin. Such an easy motion, take a few steps, extend an open palm. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
They both stared at it, as if it had something to say, for so long it was nearly comical.
“I assume that’s aspirin,” House muttered finally. “Wouldn’t want to overmedicate a pulled muscle.”
“Just take it, House.” Had it really been only a matter of months since he’d been desperate for House to cut down on them?
House looked him in the eyes for the first time that evening, the look more personal than anything that happened in the living room. He could hear what House would never vocalize. Life works that way, Jimmy. One day you’re healthy, the next you’re a crippled drug addict, and the day after that you’re starting the cycle again.
“Hmm, peer pressure.” He screwed up his face in mock thought, “Think I’m supposed to say ‘no’ and tell on you to my mommy.”
“Don’t do this,” because he was being forced to beg House to take Vicodin, forced to be a hypocrite, “You need to take something before it gets out of control.”
House exhaled a mirthless laugh. “Wouldn’t want that,” he sneered quietly, and his fingertips brushed Wilson’s palm, and he knew he wasn’t imagining that they lingered for far longer than was strictly necessary.
Wilson swallowed a ball of fear. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?”
He’d set himself up, but it still stung when House gently brushed Wilson’s hand off his shoulder. “Thanks for the drugs and the pity fuck. I’ll see you at work.”
Wilson had barely taken two steps down the hallway when he heard a loud pop and the rattle of pills.
He had just given House a bottle of Vicodin and all the excuses he would need to wall himself off. He had let his most guarded secret go, let House see what he wanted out of the relationship, let himself fall helplessly in love with no pretense. He’d lied to House and proven that hope was meaningless and change impossible. He’d invented wax wings and then taken them away.
Now House would have to find a new way to fly.
The pill was dry and metallic and bitter on his tongue. It was the best thing he’d ever tasted.
He was still drawing it back and forth between his teeth when he heard the front door close. Wilson was gone before swallowed the Vicodin. Never mind that he really didn’t need it right now. He had plenty to spare, after all.
He’d filled his own scribbled prescription with ridiculous ease at some hole-in-the-wall pharmacy on the other side of town. Not that he felt guilty, felt the need to hide. Why should he? He’d asked Wilson for a ‘valid’ script and gotten mocked in return. Only one recourse. It wasn’t stealing. It was taking something he needed. If tonight was any indication, Wilson was used to that idea.
Wilson had been miserable in the living room tonight, had gotten nothing out of it but friction burns. Welcome to the second semester of Doing a Cripple 101, class is in session. They both might as well get used to the idea, to the way his leg ruled even sex, to opiate impotence and boner-crushing pain. Better, then, that Wilson had never moved in. It would have made it harder not to miss him.
The last time in this room flashed ice-water memory behind his eyelids and he needed another pill to drown it out. He shut his eyes and inhaled latent scents from the pillowcase.
It was suddenly the day before he went back to work and Wilson was on the bed with him, both naked, still air cooling sweat-shined skin. Lying on his side with a scarred, ugly, but painless leg thrown over Wilson’s hips, chest to chest, hands in obsessively manicured hair and spent cocks touching. Pointless contact that once seemed so important.
Wilson was falling asleep mid-kiss, slack, mint-flavored mouth offering up no resistance, hands curling weakly against House’s ribcage.
“Boring you?” he asked, fingers finding relaxed muscles in Wilson’s back, never wanting to sleep.
“Mmm,” he woke up a little and kissed back briefly, “I’m just getting tired. Can you blame me, after a performance like that?”
Smug looked good on the bastard. Still, House had to concede. “It was alright. I guess.” He curled his right leg more tightly over Wilson’s hips and ass. He couldn’t go anywhere if he tried. “Give me a ride home from work tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
“Pot roast for dinner?”
“Okay.”
“Spend the night?”
“Mm-hmm.”
House had a theory. He spoke in the same, conversational manner into Wilson’s hair. “You enjoy wearing women’s underwear?”
“Yeah.”
He huffed a small laugh through his nose, hot breath in Wilson’s ear. The lamp was still on, and he had to pee, and his left ass cheek was going to fall asleep in this position, but, “‘Night, Wilson.”
“Hmmm. Night. Love you.”
The words were mumbled into his solar plexus from some sleep-addled part of Wilson’s brain, and Wilson wouldn’t remember a thing. But it didn’t make the words less real, on some night in a past life, with Wilson sickly content in his arms and an involuntary grin on House’s face. “Same here.”
Derision brought him back to reality, to lying alone on his bed with pain’s heartbeat in his thigh. Stupid to think about that. Stupid to let it happen at all. He’d done what he promised himself he’d never do again. Funny how losing his leg, or love, or whatever-losing it twice didn’t make it easier.
He sat up in the dark and his hand found its way to the nightstand. Wilson’s glasses and books and body weren’t in the way anymore; he found the pills with ease.
He takes two even though his head’s already spinning. There are plenty more where these came from, anyway: sixteen in the bottle in his jacket pocket, five loose in his jeans, another two in the zippered compartment of his wallet. And if he runs out, or low, or the next time Wilson leaves the door unlocked, he can always get more.
They slide chalk-bitter trails down his throat. It’s better to take them now. He’ll need them again in the morning, in an hour, for the rest of his life. He takes them now because he needs them. Because they’ll help him sleep. Because they’ll blur disappointment in dark brown eyes. Because numb is better, after all. Because more pills are just a balcony away.
Because he can.