Fic: Junior
Title: Junior
Summary: House visits his parents and family secrets from his childhood are revealed, prompting him to ask Wilson a question about the infarction that he’s been avoiding for years. House/Wilson established relationship.
Words: 4500
A/N: Special thanks to wonderful beta
starlingthefool. x-posted. Enjoy!
Shoulders tensed, head lowered, and eyes shut as soon as House checked the caller ID. The shift in posture was subtle, but unmistakable. Wilson wondered momentarily who was on the other end, until he heard House speak.
“I’m fine, just at work,” House said in a tone Wilson recognized fondly. His heart had swelled the first time House used it when speaking to him. It felt like House was saying ‘maybe I believe you love me, so I’ll try not to be such a shit,’ no matter what words he actually used. There was only one other person with whom House used that tone.
House’s fingers pressed firmly against his temples as the one-sided conversation came to a close. Wilson had seen a flash of dissent smolder in House’s eyes, but it went unvoiced. He wondered how he could harness the magic Blythe possessed that enabled her to preclude House from mounting an argument.
“All right mom, I’ll be there,” House said with a sigh. He sat unmoving after hanging up the phone, seemingly suspended between having to move forward with whatever he had just agreed to and wanting to finish his lunch.
“Clear your schedule Jimmy. We’re going on a road trip,” he said at last. Wilson knew better than to ask for explanation, having learned that waiting House out struck the best balance between getting the information he wanted and not fighting about it. It was a method he had applied frequently in the months since they started living together. He didn’t have to wait long this time.
“Grandpa House kicked the bucket. Funeral’s in Virginia on Tuesday,” House supplied before returning to his sandwich.
************************************************************************
The drive to Virginia had been uneventful, as had the funeral. House quickly realized that looking weepy and sullen hastened the pace of the train of family members he hadn’t seen in more than a decade and really didn’t care to see now. It was a convincing act, but it was, indeed, an act. House had barely known his grandfather. Apparently, crappy father-son relationships were ubiquitous in the House family.
They dutifully tossed their clumps of dirt onto the wooden box below. House waited to hear the satisfying, splattering “thunk” they made upon reaching their destination before he moved on. Wilson quietly observed that House’s leg wasn’t going easy on him after the lengthy drive, and was about to suggest they find a place to sit when John House came up to them.
“Walk with me Greg,” John said. House quickly pushed any signs of pain down deep as he gave Wilson a parting nod. A new sense of discomfort overtook the physical pain as he moved forward with his father.
“I know I was hard on you Greg, but I thought I had to be,” John began without preamble, the words holding the quality of a long-rehearsed speech. House’s interest was piqued. “I…I didn’t like the way my dad was with me. I swore to myself I was going to be different, and I was at first. But I was so busy trying not to be my father, I…” Whatever words had been intended to follow in the speech were caught in John’s throat as they came to a stop. House followed his father’s gaze.
Jonathan House Jr. 1957-1961, Beloved Son and Brother, the epitaph read. House’s eyebrows knit together in paradoxical confusion and understanding. Brother, his brother, but he didn’t remember. He was only two in 1961. He looked at his father, waiting for him to go on. The older man looked pained, sighing heavily before continuing.
“Your mom left to go to her sister’s for a few days when your cousin Judy was born. It was just us guys, you, me and Johnny. It was warm. I took you out to the beach. You got a little too much sun. You were crying. I was distracted, just for a minute. He didn’t know how to swim. I…he…you…It happened so fast,” he said haltingly. “We left the states a month after the funeral. Soon, you stopped asking for Johnny. I wished I could forget as easily as you had. You looked just like him too.” John paused, seemingly lost in the memories he could never quite outrun.
“I know I was hard on you Greg, probably harder than I should have been. I just felt like I’d rather have you here, hating me, than dead. I resented my dad a hell of a lot, but at least none of us had died on his watch, a fact he reminded me of every chance he got. I knew his way wasn’t the best, but that didn’t matter much in the face of my failure trying to be different. Either way, you didn’t deserve everything you got. I didn’t know a better way. I, I’m sorry Greg,” he said with a depth and sincerity that House didn’t think him capable of.
“Why are you telling me this now?” House asked, unsure of what to make of this graveside confession.
“I don’t want you to feel the way I do about my dad when I go.”
House didn’t know if he could accept. When he was a child, he had yearned for such an apology, for a reason to believe that there was more to his father, more to himself. The debate over whether he deserved it consumed him for longer than he cared to remember. When he was a teen, that desire had turned into a vague wish for something that would have been nice, but was never coming. He yearned instead for his father to be sent away on long trips. Finally, as an adult, he had let go of any vestige of hope for his relationship with his father. He had let go of the dream of an apology that would never come, and decided that it would make no difference even if it did. Now, a cacophony of thought and turmoil of emotion met its arrival as it simultaneously drew forth his child, teen, and adult selves.
House wasn’t sure how long he stood there with his father. The burning in his leg told him it was longer than he should have, but he remained unflinchingly until he felt his mother’s hand on his arm.
They stood there, the three of them, at his brother’s grave. Blythe feeling a peace she hadn’t felt in decades, House noting that the world had taken on a static faded quality of surrealism, and John feeling completely overwhelmed.
John felt raw. Years of running, trying to forget, trying to control the son he had left, becoming the man he hated in the eyes of the man he loved, it was all too much. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. He had to step away.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” House said gently, after his father had left them alone.
“Oh Greg, It wasn’t your fault. You were just a child,” she replied too quickly.
“I meant I was sorry for your loss. But…he blamed me, didn’t he? He told me he was distracted because I was crying.” Suddenly, the hostility and anger House never quite understood fell into place, as the great unknown offense came to light.
“No, he blamed himself, Greg. But the death of a child is a large cross to bear. I think he resented you more than he had a right to, for the part you played, for looking like John Jr., for not remembering or being affected by it. None of that is your fault. It wasn’t fair. You didn’t deserve it.”
“We don’t always get what we deserve,” House said matter-of-factly.
“No, we don’t, but you deserved better than the aftermath of that loss. You know I didn’t always agree with the way your father treated yo-”
“I know.” House had made his peace with his mother’s betrayal years ago. They had moved constantly--running from ghosts, he now understood. Without her, he’d have had no one. He overlooked her role in his father’s abuse because he had to. He wasn’t about to go back and place blame now.
“But I should have stopped him. I should have fought for you. I just…I was numb for a long time. I was afraid, we both were, afraid of getting too close, of losing you, afraid of that pain. It made us cling to you and hold you at arm’s length at the same time. It was wrong Greg. I was so afraid that if I challenged him, what was left of our family would fall apart too. I couldn’t bear to lose any more. None of us could. But you were and are very loved Greg. We both love you more than anything, always have,” she said tearfully.
He knew she believed that was true. He believed in her love, but he also believed that she didn’t love him more than anything--not more than the life she would have had with both her sons. He didn’t begrudge her that, though it did explain the intangible inadequacy he always felt in the face of that love. Now, he understood it was because he could not live up to the expectation for two sons when he was only one.
But it didn’t really matter any more. He was grown. It was over. He couldn’t suddenly blame his mother, any more than he could forgive his father.
“Hey, it’s okay Mom,” he said honestly; because, in a way, it was, even if in another way it wasn’t.
“No, it’s not, but we can’t change that now. I’d like to show you some photos. Actually, I…here,” she said digging through her purse. She handed him a well worn picture from inside her wallet. “This picture has been all over the world with us.”
House studied the photo. It was the four of them. John Jr. was sitting on John’s shoulders and Blythe held House in her arms. John Jr. was clutching a small brown bear that House recognized instantly as his own.
“That bear,” House said rubbing a thumb over it. He remembered taking it from country to country as a small child. His mother had even helped him make a teddy bear passport once to try to make him feel better about moving.
“You carried it everywhere with you for years. I always thought it meant you remembered Johnny on some level. Oh, you idolized him. You used to follow him everywhere. He was so happy the day we brought you home from the hospital. He kept thanking me for not bringing a girl,” she said with the sad smile borne of remembering joyful times past.
“John’s looking for you,” Wilson said to Blythe as he studied House. He had waited as long as he could, not wanting to encroach on family time, but he knew how much House had to be hurting by now.
Wilson watched House reach for his pills as soon as his mother walked away. “There’s a bench over there,” he offered. Wilson continued to study House as they made their way to the bench.
“You okay?” he asked once they were seated.
“It seems you don’t have the market cornered when it comes to secret brothers,” House said eyes fixed straight ahead.
Wilson remained silent, but couldn’t keep the curiosity off his face.
“John Jr., died when I was two. Drowned,” House said in the same detached tone he used when speaking of patients.
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t remember him, didn’t even know he existed,” House said, his voice tinged with emotion that he didn’t fully understand. Emotion’s defiance of logic had always held both his contempt and awe. Logically, the fact that he had a brother, that he had died, that didn’t change his childhood, but he could already feel it unearthing skeletons he had long ago buried, fueling renewed critical analysis of so many things.
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry just the same,” Wilson said putting an arm around House’s shoulder.
“Ready to head back to the house?” Wilson asked, seeing that the crowd had noticeably thinned. House simply rose from the bench in response.
House didn’t say anything as they walked to the car. Wilson didn’t push. House often vacillated between moody silence and needing to talk things out when he was grappling with heavy issues. Wilson simply assumed this was one of the quiet times. So, he was surprised when House turned down the volume on the car stereo.
“I remember,” he said as they pulled out of the cemetery parking lot. “I remember crying in the sand. It was too hot. I remember the feel of the sand. I remember the bear sitting next to me on the towel. I remember the feeling of him, the feeling of having a brother,” House revealed, though it still didn’t quite feel real. There was no way to be sure if these were true memories or the false fabrications the mind sometimes created. It didn’t make sense yet, and House was impatient. It was a strange circumstance to find one’s self in, being frustrated that the mind didn’t process things quickly enough.
“Give yourself some time House. That’s a lot to take in.”
“Yeah, just drive for a while before we go back,” House said, somehow making it sound like a question, even though it was a demand that he knew Wilson would not refuse. He needed time; time to think, to process, to allow his family members to go inside the house so that he could slowly climb the stairs outside in peace.
“Sure.”
House turned the stereo volume back up and watched the world from the vantage point of his car window as Wilson continued to drive around the Virginia suburb House’s parents called home.
“All right, the gawkers should be engaged in food and drink by now,” House declared after a half hour or so. “Let’s go.”
There was no parking right around the house. “Out,” Wilson said trying to mimic Blythe’s ‘no argument’ tone. It seemed to work, although the long drive, time House had spent on his feet, and flight of stairs remaining to be conquered might have also had something to do with it. House was nearly at the top of the stairs when Wilson got back from parking down the block.
“Food and booze, the only things that make family gatherings approach tolerable,” House declared as they entered his parents’ home. Wilson let House navigate him through the crowd, enjoying House’s running commentary. Hearing House spout intimate details about the lives of these people he hadn’t seen in years reminded Wilson of afternoons when House regaled him with the latest hospital gossip. It was part of House’s peculiar charm, taking pleasure in knowing everything about everybody while loathing actually interacting with them.
The empty glass bottles lining the kitchen floor next to the recycling bin told the tale of the House family tradition of toasting the dead. Or the House family dysfunction of needing to be drunk to stand each other, if one were inclined to trust House’s version of it, which Wilson was.
It was starting to get late, and he was about to get House’s thoughts on leaving when Blythe cornered him, demanding the details about her son’s life that he had refused to offer. House seemed to be engaged with his dad, so Wilson humored her. Raised voices from the next room cut into his story about House and Hector. He and Blythe stood frozen for a moment silently debating whether or not they should intervene.
“I said I was sorry. I told you about John Jr. I just don’t know what else you want, Greg,” John shouted.
“Somehow, the guise of trying to save me is supposed to excuse everything. I wasn’t drowning, Dad, just growing up,” House tossed back.
Wilson was running as soon as he heard the crash, Blythe close behind him. He roughly pulled John off House, dragging him into the kitchen. It took every bit of the self-control he had spent years cultivating not to clock the older man. He settled for dropping him into a chair, and standing in front of him, arms crossed, keeping him from moving back toward House.
“I’m trying here, Wilson, but he’s being unreasonable,” John complained after catching his breath.
“No, he isn’t,” Wilson said with gritty intensity, shocked by the gall of this man. “You lay on him the fact that he had a brother you never told him about and an apology, and you think that’s supposed to make you father of the year? These issues took decades to build. They’re not going to disappear in a few hours,” Wilson kept his voice low, but thick with anger.
“I just don’t want my son to hate me. Is that so much to ask?” John asked, sounding as pathetic as he looked, sitting there being babysat by his son’s partner. John didn’t know about their relationship yet, but one day he would, and it would burn him.
“Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t, but tackling him to the ground is definitely not going to help. It is a way to get me to jump on the hating you band wagon, though,” Wilson said, deadly serious, completely disgusted with the man in front of him. “For God’s sake John, you could have seriously hurt him.”
“I already have, haven’t I?” John said looking ashamed.
“Yeah, you have,” Wilson spat.
“Will you tell him I’m sorry?”
“He already knows.”
************************************************************************
“Greg dear, are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Mom,” he said sitting up. His dad had knocked the wind out of him, and he went down pretty hard, but he’d survived worse.
“You never could lie to me,” she said handing him his cane, ready to lend him a hand if he needed it. He didn’t.
“He had no right to hit you Greg. I’m sorry,” she said, hoping he understood that she meant ever, not just now.
“So is he, apparently. I’m just too thick to understand that that’s supposed to mean that I forget everything that’s ever happened between us,” House said angrily.
“Honey, no one expects that. He’s just so desperate for your forgiveness,” Blythe soothed unable to hide her own desperation to heal her family.
“And he’s drunk, and old patterns of behavior die hard,” House stated with less bitterness than even he expected. Immunity bred from long-term exposure to this cycle of theirs, he concluded.
“And that,” she said drawing him into a hug. “We can’t change the past Greg, but we can try to move forward,” she said releasing him, but keeping a lose grasp on his left hand. “Will you come tomorrow? I really do want to show you those pictures of your brother. It can be just the two of us if you prefer. Please say you’ll come.”
“I’ll come,” House said, feeling like a little boy clinging to his mother’s love all over again. The familiarity of it was nauseating, but then that could just as easily be the combination of alcohol, emotion, and having just been knocked to the ground.
They were still standing there, hands loosely connected when Wilson walked in. He had been waiting for their conversation to die down before entering.
“We should probably get going.”
House nodded, giving his mother’s hand a quick squeeze before stepping out.
“Good night, Blythe,” Wilson said clasping her hands in both of his before following House.
House was leaning back against the railing waiting for the Vicodin to take affect when Wilson stepped outside. “You okay?”
“I will be,” House said tersely, not in the mood to talk.
“I’ll get the car.”
Wilson took his time getting to the car knowing the stairs would be even tougher on House after being tackled.
House blasted the radio in the car. He didn't say a word on the way to the hotel or up to their room. He pulled out a tiny bottle from the mini bar as soon as they got into the room, placing it on the bedside table before stripping down to his boxers and sitting heavily on the bed. Wilson cautiously followed suit.
“So, it turns out my dad knew he was giving me no choice but to hate him growing up. Said he’d rather have me hating him than be dead. Stacy said the same thing during the infarction.”
“It’s a scary thing, thinking you might lose someone you love,” Wilson said placing a hand on House’s good leg.
House quickly downed the small bottle of liquor, figuring it’d hit him around the time the conversation he was about to start ended. He hoped he wouldn’t need to be drunk to deal with the results, but was unwilling to risk it. He braced himself, and then asked the question he had avoided asking for so long.
“Would you have done the debridement?” Self-preservation had prevented him from asking the question when it was most relevant. The anger and bitterness within him would have forced him to push Wilson away when he couldn’t afford to. He still couldn’t afford to, but he had to know. They stood on the precipice of a life together, and he had to know.
“Maybe, bu-”
“Well, I’m so glad I finally asked because maybe is so different from what I suspected. If it wasn’t a maybe in my head, I wouldn’t have asked,” House said testily. He couldn’t help it. The topic always made him edgy.
“Why bother asking questions if you don’t care to hear the answers? As I was saying, maybe, but not the way Stacy did. It wasn’t clear when she gave them the go-ahead. There was still a chance that you’d survive without the surgery,” Wilson said sincerely, holding House’s eyes with his own. He had thought about it many times before. He knew exactly what he would have done. He had long ago prepared for this conversation. He was only surprised it had taken House this long to ask.
“And if it was clear that I wouldn’t?”
“Yes, I’d have done it, but only if it were actually a call between life and death. Yeah, I’d rather you were alive somewhere hating me than dead.” He paused for a moment, trying to gage House’s reaction before continuing, silently hoping to avoid being lumped together with Stacy and House’s father for this admission. “Do you know why I find it harder when I lose Peds patients?” Wilson questioned.
“Because they’re cute and cuddly and it reminds you that it’s a cruel, cruel world?”
“Well, there’s that, and because I look at them, and I feel like we’re not just losing who that child is now, but unexplored potential of who he could be. With you…the loss of realized potential cuts just as deep. I’d have authorized the surgery if it was the only way you’d live, but not before then, and not without discussing it with you more. But yes, if it was clear that you’d die without it, and you still didn’t want it, I’d have authorized it anyway,” Wilson said his voice fading, growing softer and softer as he went on revealing the secret he had held from his friend and partner for so long.
“I’d have agreed, you know, if it were the only way,” House practically whispered. The bitterness that usually radiated whenever he discussed anything related to the infarction notably absent.
“I’ve always suspected,” Wilson said as they lay down.
“The trouble is that when people make that choice, when they think they’re choosing between you hating them or you dying, and you’re not actually dying, you still end up hating them,” House said thinking of both his father and Stacy. Wilson drew House’s head to his chest.
“I’m glad, you know? That you wouldn’t have done things the same way. I wouldn’t want to have to hate you,” House said feeling himself relax, not caring if it was because of the flood of relief or if the alcohol had started to mix with the extra Vicodin he had taken after the fall, before the stairs.
“Well, that’s good. I wouldn’t want you to have to hate me either,” Wilson replied contentedly.
“We should call Cuddy in the morning. Let her know we won’t be back till next week.”
“You want to stay here all weekend?” Wilson asked in surprise.
“Na, but my mom wants to show me pictures and stuff tomorrow. Figure we might as well take Friday off and have a long weekend. Maybe stop off somewhere on the drive back up.”
“That sounds like a good idea. I’ll call her first thing.”
“And don’t mention anything about, you know.”
“Of course not, that would violate the Secret Brother Club code,” Wilson said holding House closer.
“Oh yeah? This club have any other rules?” House asked playfully, definitely feeling the alcohol now.
“I don’t know. Up until now, I was the only member,” Wilson said feeling a lightness he wouldn’t think possible when talking about ‘their secret brothers’, a lightness he saw mirrored in House. The long-dreaded and avoided infarction conversation was over, without any bloodshed.
“Well, I think there should definitely be a sexual favors clause somewhere in the code.”
“Seriously?” Wilson couldn’t hide his shock, but then reminded himself that House was drunk.
“When it comes to sex? Always. All right fine, no sexual favors clause in that code. But I want to make a ‘Being With House Code,’ and that one will have nothing but sexual favor clauses.”
“I can live with that,” Wilson said smiling.
“And that Jimmy, is why I love you. Living and loving at the same time, so much better than the whole hating or dying thing. We should get married.” House said with the candor and flair for overstatement that only alcohol brought out in him.
“You are so wasted,” Wilson declared, and that was true, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t also right, or that he hadn’t just made Wilson consider the possibility of a spontaneous commitment ceremony that very weekend.
“Yeah,” House agreed because he was definitely not sober. But the happiness he felt, which was unexpected after a day so tense, was not borne of chemicals, but of life with Wilson.
“Let’s go to bed,” House said letting thoughts of childhood, and family, and long-dead brothers drift from his head -- that was probably the chemicals. Issues like those never went far. He would pick them back up again the next day. Turning, House gazed intensely at Wilson.
In one of those moments of collective consciousness that inexplicably happen sometimes, they each saw the simple thought they were having reflected back at them: Living and loving were definitely things to hold on to.
Summary: House visits his parents and family secrets from his childhood are revealed, prompting him to ask Wilson a question about the infarction that he’s been avoiding for years. House/Wilson established relationship.
Words: 4500
A/N: Special thanks to wonderful beta
starlingthefool. x-posted. Enjoy!
Shoulders tensed, head lowered, and eyes shut as soon as House checked the caller ID. The shift in posture was subtle, but unmistakable. Wilson wondered momentarily who was on the other end, until he heard House speak.
“I’m fine, just at work,” House said in a tone Wilson recognized fondly. His heart had swelled the first time House used it when speaking to him. It felt like House was saying ‘maybe I believe you love me, so I’ll try not to be such a shit,’ no matter what words he actually used. There was only one other person with whom House used that tone.
House’s fingers pressed firmly against his temples as the one-sided conversation came to a close. Wilson had seen a flash of dissent smolder in House’s eyes, but it went unvoiced. He wondered how he could harness the magic Blythe possessed that enabled her to preclude House from mounting an argument.
“All right mom, I’ll be there,” House said with a sigh. He sat unmoving after hanging up the phone, seemingly suspended between having to move forward with whatever he had just agreed to and wanting to finish his lunch.
“Clear your schedule Jimmy. We’re going on a road trip,” he said at last. Wilson knew better than to ask for explanation, having learned that waiting House out struck the best balance between getting the information he wanted and not fighting about it. It was a method he had applied frequently in the months since they started living together. He didn’t have to wait long this time.
“Grandpa House kicked the bucket. Funeral’s in Virginia on Tuesday,” House supplied before returning to his sandwich.
************************************************************************
The drive to Virginia had been uneventful, as had the funeral. House quickly realized that looking weepy and sullen hastened the pace of the train of family members he hadn’t seen in more than a decade and really didn’t care to see now. It was a convincing act, but it was, indeed, an act. House had barely known his grandfather. Apparently, crappy father-son relationships were ubiquitous in the House family.
They dutifully tossed their clumps of dirt onto the wooden box below. House waited to hear the satisfying, splattering “thunk” they made upon reaching their destination before he moved on. Wilson quietly observed that House’s leg wasn’t going easy on him after the lengthy drive, and was about to suggest they find a place to sit when John House came up to them.
“Walk with me Greg,” John said. House quickly pushed any signs of pain down deep as he gave Wilson a parting nod. A new sense of discomfort overtook the physical pain as he moved forward with his father.
“I know I was hard on you Greg, but I thought I had to be,” John began without preamble, the words holding the quality of a long-rehearsed speech. House’s interest was piqued. “I…I didn’t like the way my dad was with me. I swore to myself I was going to be different, and I was at first. But I was so busy trying not to be my father, I…” Whatever words had been intended to follow in the speech were caught in John’s throat as they came to a stop. House followed his father’s gaze.
Jonathan House Jr. 1957-1961, Beloved Son and Brother, the epitaph read. House’s eyebrows knit together in paradoxical confusion and understanding. Brother, his brother, but he didn’t remember. He was only two in 1961. He looked at his father, waiting for him to go on. The older man looked pained, sighing heavily before continuing.
“Your mom left to go to her sister’s for a few days when your cousin Judy was born. It was just us guys, you, me and Johnny. It was warm. I took you out to the beach. You got a little too much sun. You were crying. I was distracted, just for a minute. He didn’t know how to swim. I…he…you…It happened so fast,” he said haltingly. “We left the states a month after the funeral. Soon, you stopped asking for Johnny. I wished I could forget as easily as you had. You looked just like him too.” John paused, seemingly lost in the memories he could never quite outrun.
“I know I was hard on you Greg, probably harder than I should have been. I just felt like I’d rather have you here, hating me, than dead. I resented my dad a hell of a lot, but at least none of us had died on his watch, a fact he reminded me of every chance he got. I knew his way wasn’t the best, but that didn’t matter much in the face of my failure trying to be different. Either way, you didn’t deserve everything you got. I didn’t know a better way. I, I’m sorry Greg,” he said with a depth and sincerity that House didn’t think him capable of.
“Why are you telling me this now?” House asked, unsure of what to make of this graveside confession.
“I don’t want you to feel the way I do about my dad when I go.”
House didn’t know if he could accept. When he was a child, he had yearned for such an apology, for a reason to believe that there was more to his father, more to himself. The debate over whether he deserved it consumed him for longer than he cared to remember. When he was a teen, that desire had turned into a vague wish for something that would have been nice, but was never coming. He yearned instead for his father to be sent away on long trips. Finally, as an adult, he had let go of any vestige of hope for his relationship with his father. He had let go of the dream of an apology that would never come, and decided that it would make no difference even if it did. Now, a cacophony of thought and turmoil of emotion met its arrival as it simultaneously drew forth his child, teen, and adult selves.
House wasn’t sure how long he stood there with his father. The burning in his leg told him it was longer than he should have, but he remained unflinchingly until he felt his mother’s hand on his arm.
They stood there, the three of them, at his brother’s grave. Blythe feeling a peace she hadn’t felt in decades, House noting that the world had taken on a static faded quality of surrealism, and John feeling completely overwhelmed.
John felt raw. Years of running, trying to forget, trying to control the son he had left, becoming the man he hated in the eyes of the man he loved, it was all too much. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. He had to step away.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” House said gently, after his father had left them alone.
“Oh Greg, It wasn’t your fault. You were just a child,” she replied too quickly.
“I meant I was sorry for your loss. But…he blamed me, didn’t he? He told me he was distracted because I was crying.” Suddenly, the hostility and anger House never quite understood fell into place, as the great unknown offense came to light.
“No, he blamed himself, Greg. But the death of a child is a large cross to bear. I think he resented you more than he had a right to, for the part you played, for looking like John Jr., for not remembering or being affected by it. None of that is your fault. It wasn’t fair. You didn’t deserve it.”
“We don’t always get what we deserve,” House said matter-of-factly.
“No, we don’t, but you deserved better than the aftermath of that loss. You know I didn’t always agree with the way your father treated yo-”
“I know.” House had made his peace with his mother’s betrayal years ago. They had moved constantly--running from ghosts, he now understood. Without her, he’d have had no one. He overlooked her role in his father’s abuse because he had to. He wasn’t about to go back and place blame now.
“But I should have stopped him. I should have fought for you. I just…I was numb for a long time. I was afraid, we both were, afraid of getting too close, of losing you, afraid of that pain. It made us cling to you and hold you at arm’s length at the same time. It was wrong Greg. I was so afraid that if I challenged him, what was left of our family would fall apart too. I couldn’t bear to lose any more. None of us could. But you were and are very loved Greg. We both love you more than anything, always have,” she said tearfully.
He knew she believed that was true. He believed in her love, but he also believed that she didn’t love him more than anything--not more than the life she would have had with both her sons. He didn’t begrudge her that, though it did explain the intangible inadequacy he always felt in the face of that love. Now, he understood it was because he could not live up to the expectation for two sons when he was only one.
But it didn’t really matter any more. He was grown. It was over. He couldn’t suddenly blame his mother, any more than he could forgive his father.
“Hey, it’s okay Mom,” he said honestly; because, in a way, it was, even if in another way it wasn’t.
“No, it’s not, but we can’t change that now. I’d like to show you some photos. Actually, I…here,” she said digging through her purse. She handed him a well worn picture from inside her wallet. “This picture has been all over the world with us.”
House studied the photo. It was the four of them. John Jr. was sitting on John’s shoulders and Blythe held House in her arms. John Jr. was clutching a small brown bear that House recognized instantly as his own.
“That bear,” House said rubbing a thumb over it. He remembered taking it from country to country as a small child. His mother had even helped him make a teddy bear passport once to try to make him feel better about moving.
“You carried it everywhere with you for years. I always thought it meant you remembered Johnny on some level. Oh, you idolized him. You used to follow him everywhere. He was so happy the day we brought you home from the hospital. He kept thanking me for not bringing a girl,” she said with the sad smile borne of remembering joyful times past.
“John’s looking for you,” Wilson said to Blythe as he studied House. He had waited as long as he could, not wanting to encroach on family time, but he knew how much House had to be hurting by now.
Wilson watched House reach for his pills as soon as his mother walked away. “There’s a bench over there,” he offered. Wilson continued to study House as they made their way to the bench.
“You okay?” he asked once they were seated.
“It seems you don’t have the market cornered when it comes to secret brothers,” House said eyes fixed straight ahead.
Wilson remained silent, but couldn’t keep the curiosity off his face.
“John Jr., died when I was two. Drowned,” House said in the same detached tone he used when speaking of patients.
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t remember him, didn’t even know he existed,” House said, his voice tinged with emotion that he didn’t fully understand. Emotion’s defiance of logic had always held both his contempt and awe. Logically, the fact that he had a brother, that he had died, that didn’t change his childhood, but he could already feel it unearthing skeletons he had long ago buried, fueling renewed critical analysis of so many things.
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry just the same,” Wilson said putting an arm around House’s shoulder.
“Ready to head back to the house?” Wilson asked, seeing that the crowd had noticeably thinned. House simply rose from the bench in response.
House didn’t say anything as they walked to the car. Wilson didn’t push. House often vacillated between moody silence and needing to talk things out when he was grappling with heavy issues. Wilson simply assumed this was one of the quiet times. So, he was surprised when House turned down the volume on the car stereo.
“I remember,” he said as they pulled out of the cemetery parking lot. “I remember crying in the sand. It was too hot. I remember the feel of the sand. I remember the bear sitting next to me on the towel. I remember the feeling of him, the feeling of having a brother,” House revealed, though it still didn’t quite feel real. There was no way to be sure if these were true memories or the false fabrications the mind sometimes created. It didn’t make sense yet, and House was impatient. It was a strange circumstance to find one’s self in, being frustrated that the mind didn’t process things quickly enough.
“Give yourself some time House. That’s a lot to take in.”
“Yeah, just drive for a while before we go back,” House said, somehow making it sound like a question, even though it was a demand that he knew Wilson would not refuse. He needed time; time to think, to process, to allow his family members to go inside the house so that he could slowly climb the stairs outside in peace.
“Sure.”
House turned the stereo volume back up and watched the world from the vantage point of his car window as Wilson continued to drive around the Virginia suburb House’s parents called home.
“All right, the gawkers should be engaged in food and drink by now,” House declared after a half hour or so. “Let’s go.”
There was no parking right around the house. “Out,” Wilson said trying to mimic Blythe’s ‘no argument’ tone. It seemed to work, although the long drive, time House had spent on his feet, and flight of stairs remaining to be conquered might have also had something to do with it. House was nearly at the top of the stairs when Wilson got back from parking down the block.
“Food and booze, the only things that make family gatherings approach tolerable,” House declared as they entered his parents’ home. Wilson let House navigate him through the crowd, enjoying House’s running commentary. Hearing House spout intimate details about the lives of these people he hadn’t seen in years reminded Wilson of afternoons when House regaled him with the latest hospital gossip. It was part of House’s peculiar charm, taking pleasure in knowing everything about everybody while loathing actually interacting with them.
The empty glass bottles lining the kitchen floor next to the recycling bin told the tale of the House family tradition of toasting the dead. Or the House family dysfunction of needing to be drunk to stand each other, if one were inclined to trust House’s version of it, which Wilson was.
It was starting to get late, and he was about to get House’s thoughts on leaving when Blythe cornered him, demanding the details about her son’s life that he had refused to offer. House seemed to be engaged with his dad, so Wilson humored her. Raised voices from the next room cut into his story about House and Hector. He and Blythe stood frozen for a moment silently debating whether or not they should intervene.
“I said I was sorry. I told you about John Jr. I just don’t know what else you want, Greg,” John shouted.
“Somehow, the guise of trying to save me is supposed to excuse everything. I wasn’t drowning, Dad, just growing up,” House tossed back.
Wilson was running as soon as he heard the crash, Blythe close behind him. He roughly pulled John off House, dragging him into the kitchen. It took every bit of the self-control he had spent years cultivating not to clock the older man. He settled for dropping him into a chair, and standing in front of him, arms crossed, keeping him from moving back toward House.
“I’m trying here, Wilson, but he’s being unreasonable,” John complained after catching his breath.
“No, he isn’t,” Wilson said with gritty intensity, shocked by the gall of this man. “You lay on him the fact that he had a brother you never told him about and an apology, and you think that’s supposed to make you father of the year? These issues took decades to build. They’re not going to disappear in a few hours,” Wilson kept his voice low, but thick with anger.
“I just don’t want my son to hate me. Is that so much to ask?” John asked, sounding as pathetic as he looked, sitting there being babysat by his son’s partner. John didn’t know about their relationship yet, but one day he would, and it would burn him.
“Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t, but tackling him to the ground is definitely not going to help. It is a way to get me to jump on the hating you band wagon, though,” Wilson said, deadly serious, completely disgusted with the man in front of him. “For God’s sake John, you could have seriously hurt him.”
“I already have, haven’t I?” John said looking ashamed.
“Yeah, you have,” Wilson spat.
“Will you tell him I’m sorry?”
“He already knows.”
************************************************************************
“Greg dear, are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Mom,” he said sitting up. His dad had knocked the wind out of him, and he went down pretty hard, but he’d survived worse.
“You never could lie to me,” she said handing him his cane, ready to lend him a hand if he needed it. He didn’t.
“He had no right to hit you Greg. I’m sorry,” she said, hoping he understood that she meant ever, not just now.
“So is he, apparently. I’m just too thick to understand that that’s supposed to mean that I forget everything that’s ever happened between us,” House said angrily.
“Honey, no one expects that. He’s just so desperate for your forgiveness,” Blythe soothed unable to hide her own desperation to heal her family.
“And he’s drunk, and old patterns of behavior die hard,” House stated with less bitterness than even he expected. Immunity bred from long-term exposure to this cycle of theirs, he concluded.
“And that,” she said drawing him into a hug. “We can’t change the past Greg, but we can try to move forward,” she said releasing him, but keeping a lose grasp on his left hand. “Will you come tomorrow? I really do want to show you those pictures of your brother. It can be just the two of us if you prefer. Please say you’ll come.”
“I’ll come,” House said, feeling like a little boy clinging to his mother’s love all over again. The familiarity of it was nauseating, but then that could just as easily be the combination of alcohol, emotion, and having just been knocked to the ground.
They were still standing there, hands loosely connected when Wilson walked in. He had been waiting for their conversation to die down before entering.
“We should probably get going.”
House nodded, giving his mother’s hand a quick squeeze before stepping out.
“Good night, Blythe,” Wilson said clasping her hands in both of his before following House.
House was leaning back against the railing waiting for the Vicodin to take affect when Wilson stepped outside. “You okay?”
“I will be,” House said tersely, not in the mood to talk.
“I’ll get the car.”
Wilson took his time getting to the car knowing the stairs would be even tougher on House after being tackled.
House blasted the radio in the car. He didn't say a word on the way to the hotel or up to their room. He pulled out a tiny bottle from the mini bar as soon as they got into the room, placing it on the bedside table before stripping down to his boxers and sitting heavily on the bed. Wilson cautiously followed suit.
“So, it turns out my dad knew he was giving me no choice but to hate him growing up. Said he’d rather have me hating him than be dead. Stacy said the same thing during the infarction.”
“It’s a scary thing, thinking you might lose someone you love,” Wilson said placing a hand on House’s good leg.
House quickly downed the small bottle of liquor, figuring it’d hit him around the time the conversation he was about to start ended. He hoped he wouldn’t need to be drunk to deal with the results, but was unwilling to risk it. He braced himself, and then asked the question he had avoided asking for so long.
“Would you have done the debridement?” Self-preservation had prevented him from asking the question when it was most relevant. The anger and bitterness within him would have forced him to push Wilson away when he couldn’t afford to. He still couldn’t afford to, but he had to know. They stood on the precipice of a life together, and he had to know.
“Maybe, bu-”
“Well, I’m so glad I finally asked because maybe is so different from what I suspected. If it wasn’t a maybe in my head, I wouldn’t have asked,” House said testily. He couldn’t help it. The topic always made him edgy.
“Why bother asking questions if you don’t care to hear the answers? As I was saying, maybe, but not the way Stacy did. It wasn’t clear when she gave them the go-ahead. There was still a chance that you’d survive without the surgery,” Wilson said sincerely, holding House’s eyes with his own. He had thought about it many times before. He knew exactly what he would have done. He had long ago prepared for this conversation. He was only surprised it had taken House this long to ask.
“And if it was clear that I wouldn’t?”
“Yes, I’d have done it, but only if it were actually a call between life and death. Yeah, I’d rather you were alive somewhere hating me than dead.” He paused for a moment, trying to gage House’s reaction before continuing, silently hoping to avoid being lumped together with Stacy and House’s father for this admission. “Do you know why I find it harder when I lose Peds patients?” Wilson questioned.
“Because they’re cute and cuddly and it reminds you that it’s a cruel, cruel world?”
“Well, there’s that, and because I look at them, and I feel like we’re not just losing who that child is now, but unexplored potential of who he could be. With you…the loss of realized potential cuts just as deep. I’d have authorized the surgery if it was the only way you’d live, but not before then, and not without discussing it with you more. But yes, if it was clear that you’d die without it, and you still didn’t want it, I’d have authorized it anyway,” Wilson said his voice fading, growing softer and softer as he went on revealing the secret he had held from his friend and partner for so long.
“I’d have agreed, you know, if it were the only way,” House practically whispered. The bitterness that usually radiated whenever he discussed anything related to the infarction notably absent.
“I’ve always suspected,” Wilson said as they lay down.
“The trouble is that when people make that choice, when they think they’re choosing between you hating them or you dying, and you’re not actually dying, you still end up hating them,” House said thinking of both his father and Stacy. Wilson drew House’s head to his chest.
“I’m glad, you know? That you wouldn’t have done things the same way. I wouldn’t want to have to hate you,” House said feeling himself relax, not caring if it was because of the flood of relief or if the alcohol had started to mix with the extra Vicodin he had taken after the fall, before the stairs.
“Well, that’s good. I wouldn’t want you to have to hate me either,” Wilson replied contentedly.
“We should call Cuddy in the morning. Let her know we won’t be back till next week.”
“You want to stay here all weekend?” Wilson asked in surprise.
“Na, but my mom wants to show me pictures and stuff tomorrow. Figure we might as well take Friday off and have a long weekend. Maybe stop off somewhere on the drive back up.”
“That sounds like a good idea. I’ll call her first thing.”
“And don’t mention anything about, you know.”
“Of course not, that would violate the Secret Brother Club code,” Wilson said holding House closer.
“Oh yeah? This club have any other rules?” House asked playfully, definitely feeling the alcohol now.
“I don’t know. Up until now, I was the only member,” Wilson said feeling a lightness he wouldn’t think possible when talking about ‘their secret brothers’, a lightness he saw mirrored in House. The long-dreaded and avoided infarction conversation was over, without any bloodshed.
“Well, I think there should definitely be a sexual favors clause somewhere in the code.”
“Seriously?” Wilson couldn’t hide his shock, but then reminded himself that House was drunk.
“When it comes to sex? Always. All right fine, no sexual favors clause in that code. But I want to make a ‘Being With House Code,’ and that one will have nothing but sexual favor clauses.”
“I can live with that,” Wilson said smiling.
“And that Jimmy, is why I love you. Living and loving at the same time, so much better than the whole hating or dying thing. We should get married.” House said with the candor and flair for overstatement that only alcohol brought out in him.
“You are so wasted,” Wilson declared, and that was true, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t also right, or that he hadn’t just made Wilson consider the possibility of a spontaneous commitment ceremony that very weekend.
“Yeah,” House agreed because he was definitely not sober. But the happiness he felt, which was unexpected after a day so tense, was not borne of chemicals, but of life with Wilson.
“Let’s go to bed,” House said letting thoughts of childhood, and family, and long-dead brothers drift from his head -- that was probably the chemicals. Issues like those never went far. He would pick them back up again the next day. Turning, House gazed intensely at Wilson.
In one of those moments of collective consciousness that inexplicably happen sometimes, they each saw the simple thought they were having reflected back at them: Living and loving were definitely things to hold on to.