Fic: Timeliness, H/W
Fic: Timeliness
Author: Nakanna Lee
Pairing: H/W (also Wilson/wife)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 650
A/N: Thanks,
bethctg, who prompted it with “late”.
She’s had dates show up late before. She’s had dates not show up at all. Every woman has, she assures herself. She does the blame-traffic thing. She asks the headwaiter for his watch’s time in case hers is wrong. She panics that something happened, she frets that she isn’t important enough.
James is different.
James is never late.
It was early characteristic she liked about him.
But here she waits in an Italian restaurant lobby, between the faux pillars and Tuscan scenery painted on the walls, for an hour before he shows. Three parties of at least seven each pass through in the meantime. She’s watched several toddlers in booster seats dribble sauce on themselves, and a table of women drink grape-black wine and start flirting with their waiter, who looks profusely embarrassed.
James looks just as embarrassed when he arrives. He mixed up the days, is the official explanation.
When her car breaks down a week later, he doesn’t answer his cell phone until the tow is already there, the car has lurched off to the garage, and she’s standing alone trying to follow along to the mechanic’s explanation of what happened under the hood. She nods, understanding only that she’ll probably be ripped off by the end. Her eyes burn and she knows she’s disproportionately frustrated.
James shows up to take her home, but by then it’s a little too late.
He’s absolutely flawless in every other way, though. When he admits an affair a month later, looking rumpled and repentant and broken, she stares blankly. He looks odd. This doesn’t fit him.
She pages through the past few weeks. Never were there makeup smears on his clothes other than her rare own. He was never marked by other lips or teeth. He never slipped and said another name while he held her.
She blinks once and doesn’t really know if he’s let her see him at all.
He shifts from one foot to another and apologizes quietly. She’s numbed now, feeling betrayed and stupid, but there is silence and no tears. She’d heard before that he’d wander. When she married him, it wasn’t because she thought she could change him; it was that she never saw him as being anything other than what he presented to her. And he’d been spotlessly perfect.
So much so that he could bring the other woman in right now as evidence, and she thinks, for a moment, that even then she wouldn’t believe him.
* * *
What troubles Wilson the most is that it is never truly about a learning process.
He sees the same successes and mistakes in a cyclical fashion, in work and in private. There are recessions and then cancer comes back, metastasizing. There are weddings and plans for vacations, for family; and then there are the others he’ll care for, all with their own rising and falling cycles to commit to as well. There are detoxes and threats-by-cane.
What he shows and to who is not a matter of deception. It is not deliberate. It’s stretching himself too thin.
One day soon Wilson places both hands on House’s forearms. It doesn’t matter where. This is it and Wilson feels the eyes of everyone he’s touched fall from him and give him privacy. He feels strong.
“What are you doing?” House asks flatly, unmoving.
Suddenly Wilson’s never felt so practical, so on time. He’s looping his tie, making just the right knot. He’s found the shoes half-hidden under the couch. He’s made the correct call on medication and the patient is improving.
He presses his mouth to House’s, firm and steady. He wants tongue and is assured he’ll get it. He does.
“What are you doing?” House asks in the same tone when they break apart.
Wilson glances to their feet for a second, shuffling his thoughts. He’s grinning.
“Better late than never,” he says.
end