"My Mistress' Sparrow Is Dead", House MD, Chase, Wilson-centric
Title: My Mistress’ Sparrow Is Dead
Fandom: House MD
Characters: Wilson, Chase, House, Cameron, Foreman, Thirteen
Pairings: hints of Wilson/Amber, Chase/Cameron, and Wilson-Chase and Wilson-House friendship.
Challenge/Prompt: fanfic100 095. New Year and 100moods 069. Numb
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5105
Genre: Gen [het]
Copyright: Title is something to do with a kind of filthy poem by… Catullus? Something like that. But it seemed to fit this anyway.
Summary: Wilson is… well, no one is sure what Wilson is doing but it’s probably not healthy.
Author’s Notes: Spoilers for S4; this is a tie-in for Wilson’s Heart. ‘Cause I’m excessively morbid at the moment. Lots of intention run-on sentences and the conversations that go nowhere, since I like them so much :)
Where do you go with your broken heart in tow?
What do you do with the leftover you?
And how do you know when to let go?
Where does the good go?
- Tegan and Sarah
{one}
Life, as it turns out, is just one long hallucination, and death is just a bus ride with kind of dubious company.
Maybe he should've stayed in the band he started in his teens. That would've made a great pretentious song lyric and just maybe Amber would still be here. Or somewhere. You know. Being alive.
House has been dead several times but, like everything else, it just hasn’t stuck. Sometimes he cares about that and sometimes he doesn’t. The thing is that nothing is permanent but the big stuff that comes at the end, and no matter what he does the end just doesn’t linger; it’s not hard to develop a God complex.
Cuddy’s eyelashes are sprinkling crumbs of mascara down her cheeks and she’s asleep beside his bed; she looks like crap, but then House nearly fried out his brain so he suspects he doesn’t look good either. He seems to spend a lot of time looking his worst; he would wonder what that said about him, but of course he already knows. He always already knows.
When he is capable of moving about again, there will be things to deal with; things that are so big it makes him kind of relieved he’s currently incapacitated.
{two}
Chase smears a wet drink ring around with the bottom of his glass, creating another cleaning job for whichever thankless person cleans tables in this bar. He’s not trying to find words because he doesn’t want to say anything. Allison is sitting beside him, equally silent, locks of blonde hair tumbling around her shoulders. Chase finds himself wondering if he ever actually asked her why she felt the need to change her hair colour, and then remembers that he didn’t, if only because he didn’t want to know the answer.
“This sucks,” Foreman decides, mid-breakdown because someone has to be and Chase is too cold these days to care about anything and Cameron is just plain tired. Oh, Allison, right. He is getting there, but old habits die hard. And really, in his head, Chase isn’t sure Cameron ever stopped being Cameron; they just have sex more often now and claim to get on.
“It sucks,” Chase agrees, for lack of anything more interesting to say. Amber died and House nearly died (at Chase’s hands; but he’s not thinking about that ‘cause it’ll rip open this whole Pandora’s Box and he’s not in the mood, not tonight) and Wilson is… well, no one is sure what Wilson is doing but it’s probably not healthy given that his girlfriend just died and all.
Chase could say something about how the betting pool over whether Amber would be Wife Number Four is going to have to close and that’s pretty inconvenient seeing as how kind of a lot of money was pouring in, but he has learnt something about sensitivity over the past however many years, so he stays quiet.
“Just this once,” Foreman sighs. “Just this once; nobody lives.”
“It had to happen,” Chase mumbles, but it doesn’t help.
{three}
The woman who still calls herself Thirteen - because the anonymity is reassuring and anyway it’s not like House will ever consent to calling her by her actual name, although she is thinking about returning to Dr Remy Hadley because, you know, she’s got to get some business cards done - waits until Dr Cuddy leaves for a shower before going to see House. She’s not sure what she wants to say or if she wants to say anything, but Taub has gone home to the wife that he may or may not love, and Kutner is either being mildly grieving or perving over a porn video of a dead woman (she really can never tell with him) and so there isn’t anyone else. Thirteen doesn’t have a whole load of other people in her life.
House looks old and broken in the hospital bed, which she doesn’t like because that’s never been how she’s thought of him. Thirteen knows him well enough to resent him the way everyone does, but she doesn’t want him dead. She doesn’t know what she wants to happen to him, to be honest, but it probably wasn’t this.
She hesitates, and House’s eyes slowly open. They’re as bright as ever, wicked and determined and penetrating all at once, and he doesn’t need to say anything because the words fall out of Thirteen’s mouth instantly.
“I have Huntington’s.”
House is the first person she’s told because she really has no people to tell. He nods.
“Ok.”
Thirteen feels like this is an anti-climax, and then wonders when she wanted her terrifying inevitability to become some sort of party-trick. She hasn’t slept in kind of a while and everything hurts so much she can hardly breathe.
“Is that it?” she asks.
“What do you want me to say?” House’s voice creaks and Thirteen bites her tongue for a moment until she can get her mind cleared again.
“I don’t…” She wonders if she’s going to cry here, confess things that she’s never told anyone because then they won’t just be hers any more, but she doesn’t. “Is this you being nice?” she asks, instead.
“I’m never nice,” House tells her brusquely. “I am tired.”
She nods, fingers on the doorframe. “Ok. Well. Now you know.”
House sighs. “For what it’s worth-”
“Don’t.” Her eyes feel full and her throat is too tight. She can’t hear him say that he’s sorry, because he’s House, and she’s scared.
“I was going to say that I already knew.”
Thirteen’s knees threaten to buckle and give way entirely; her hand skids on the glass.
“Sealed test results and a trash can; never a good combination on a long evening.” House has the grace to look awkward, though possibly that’s just a slight trace of the nearly-dying left.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“You didn’t want to know.” House shrugs, which looks uncomfortable and makes his face crease in pain.
“I’m glad you nearly died,” Thirteen informs him, though it’s kind of childish to say it, and leaves him alone.
{four}
Wilson is in the doctor’s lounge in the evening, eating toast and peanut butter. Chase is out of surgery; he has a crick in his neck and his eyes are blurring and he has another operation scheduled in about an hour and a half. He hasn’t exactly had the best of experiences with Wilson in this lounge when bread and peanut butter are been present - like that time Wilson sold House out and no one said a word but Chase knows that it was his fault anyway - but he sits down because he doesn’t want Wilson to be alone. Wilson doesn’t thrive well when left alone.
The television is on, and Chase watches the screen listlessly for a few moments before realising that Wilson is actually watching Grey’s Anatomy. It’s… worrying.
“I hate this show,” Wilson murmurs a minute later. “And I hate all these people. They’re so… shiny. And pretty. People who work in hospitals don’t have time to do all their work and keep their hair that shiny and…” He trails off, falling back into silence.
Chase decides to indulge him, if only because he kind of played a part in all of this and Amber’s dead and no one’s sure what Wilson is going to do about that. Wilson has lost lots of people but he’s never had them taken from him and this is a whole new game with entirely different rules.
“I do lots of surgeries,” he suggests. “And I have very shiny hair. I’m pretty.”
Wilson casts a sidelong glance at him. “You are pretty,” he agrees perfunctorily, tone mechanical. “Are you having sex in the on-call room?”
Chase hates how death makes everything stupid and surreal. “Not often.”
Wilson sighs, eyes fixed on the screen. “I think I probably picked the wrong specialty,” he mumbles.
Now they’re getting somewhere. Chase isn’t sure that he should be the person to be here when the getting somewhere point is reached, but there isn’t anyone else. It might as well be him.
“Did you want to be a surgeon?” he asks, keeping his tone steady and light. “It’s not all shiny hair and sex in the on-call room, you know.”
“I’ve picked a specialty where I’m pleasantly surprised when people live,” Wilson replies. “Does that seem fucked-up to you?”
Chase wishes that he knew something about grieving that doesn’t involve accidentally killing hardworking mothers. His own grieving was badly-handled and awkward, and he doesn’t want Wilson’s to be.
“It seems fucked up,” he agrees, and is relieved when his pager goes off.
{five}
It takes time for Wilson to bring himself to go and see House; it takes a while for him to shuffle his emotions into neat piles that he can actually handle.
“I would have killed you to save Amber,” he offers, as a conversation opener. It’s not exactly a neutral topic (he could possibly have started with something like so, I nearly fried your brain. How’s that working out for you?) but he and House are pretty damn bad at neutral.
“Do you want to apologise?” House asks, raising an eyebrow.
Wilson smiles a little. “No. Not yet.”
“Good.” House smiles back, a real, genuine smile that Wilson’s reasonably sure he doesn’t deserve.
“You don’t mind?”
“You won’t mean it,” House replies. “You and Amber never got out of the honeymoon period. She was like being with me, only there was fun and niceness and… waterbeds, and we haven’t had that in years, have we?”
“…Waterbeds?”
House snickers quietly. “Fun. Niceness. Those foreign concepts.”
Well, at least when he’s mildly brain-damaged House doesn’t feel the need to play mind games. Wilson thinks that this might be a relief, although he really doesn’t know how he feels about anything at the moment.
“Oh.”
“You’d have hated her eventually,” House adds, waving a dismissive hand. “But you never got the chance to get there.”
Wilson’s mouth tightens; he can feel his lips pressing together from the determination not to say certain things that will probably hurt a little too much at this point in time.
“That’s not a winning argument,” he grits out.
House laughs, and there’s a bitter edge to it that hasn’t been there in a while. “Of course not. It’s the truth.”
Wilson doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, whether they’re meant to be fighting or crying on each other’s shoulders. Metaphorically of course; Wilson should have picked out some sympathetic friends for times like these. House is too self-absorbed for sympathy, and at the moment he probably has every right to be a little self-absorbed, what with the whole almost-dying thing. House’s fingers are plucking at his white covers; on anyone else the gesture would be anxious. But Greg House does not do anxious, and Wilson watches the long, slim fingers press against the blankets and doesn’t say anything.
“You should go,” House offers.
They’re going to have to do something about this eventually. But not today.
{six}
“Do you…”
Foreman’s question trails into silence. It’s about midnight, and it’s not like there are patients that need to be seen or anything. It’s not like House is going to come striding in in the morning with bagels that he won’t share and an unreasonable expectation for unattainable answers. Still, old habits die hard; or just don’t die at all.
Chase does his best attempt at a sympathetic and expectant look with his gritty eyes, a bitter instant coffee that he doesn’t want to drink still clenched in his hand.
“Do you miss…it?” Foreman asks.
Cameron is half-asleep on the couch, hair pulled untidily back. She got off her ER shift about six minutes ago, and she looks tired. They’re all tired, of course, stumbling through life with a sense of loss that doesn’t really belong to them.
“Sometimes,” she mumbles. There’s no need to define what ‘it’ is; if you have to ask then you don’t know. And God, do they all know. “But you never really escape, do you?”
“At least you both got out of diagnostics,” Foreman points out. “I’m still doing the same damn thing because nowhere else will have me. And the only time House really listened to me was because he was pretending we’d doused his creative spirit and knowledge with medication.”
“I miss the head games,” Chase sighs, putting the coffee down. “I find myself looking for other people’s agendas, and then it turns out that they’re not actually conducting an experiment, they really do want what they say they want, and by then I just look like a paranoid bastard.”
“You are a paranoid bastard,” Foreman reminds him.
“Yeah, but so are you,” Chase shrugs.
Cameron is quiet. They shouldn’t be having a relationship - it’s ripping at the corners and sooner or later someone’s going to notice - but they’re dragging it on because they don’t know what else to do with themselves.
“Amber might have lived if we’d all just managed to stay where we were,” Chase murmurs.
“This isn’t our fault,” Cameron insists quickly. Anything to get away from more blood on her hands.
“Maybe we were just the start of a line of dominoes,” Chase theorises.
“You got yourself fired,” Foreman reminds him. “Don’t start blaming this on us.”
“You were the one who rocked the fucking boat in the first place,” Chase snaps. “You were the one who handed in your notice and actually meant it.”
“We were brilliant,” Cameron decides. “The three of us in that claustrophobic office.”
“We were stale,” Foreman sighs.
Things are morbid and lengthy and tiring.
“Shouldn’t you be doing this with someone else?” Chase asks. “You know, with people you actually like?”
Foreman laughs. “I don’t have people, I have you two.”
“I pity you,” Chase tells him.
“Oh, and who do you have?” Foreman gives him a significant glare.
Chase sighs, knowing that he’s lost this round. He doesn’t have anyone; that’s the problem.
Still, at least he’s not the only one with this particular problem.
{seven}
Thirteen has never really liked Kutner and Taub, in the same way she doesn’t really like anyone at Princeton/Plainsboro. She didn’t even feel all that sad when she found out that Amber was going to die; she just felt… pity. Sour, self-centred pity.
Foreman laughs roughly when she confesses this. They’re drinking (House’s) scotch in the office, which still doesn’t feel like home. Thirteen kind of misses the echoing room with its chalkboards and its classroom qualities. Things are kind of too real in here.
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” he says. The blinds are drawn and it’s like being in a big box; still, at least it’s not a big glass box at the moment. “I got sick; Cameron temporarily lobotomised me and Chase still doesn’t like me. This is who you are now. Get used to it.”
The other guys spend their time in the clinic or harassing Cuddy to let them have a case. But Foreman doesn’t do that; he just sits around with medical journals, fills in crosswords, catches up on House’s paperwork, and generally procrastinates. It’s almost like he’s used to this sort of inactivity; and as soon as that thought crosses Thirteen’s mind, she has to ask.
“Something like this has happened before,” she murmurs.
Foreman grins ruefully, though he’s a little drunk now. “You know that stain on the carpet?” He gestures towards the brown-ish stain on the grey carpet that no one’s mentioned because no one really wanted to know the answer. Thirteen nods. “Well, that’s House’s blood. He got shot in front of us.”
Thirteen’s not sure how she managed to miss hearing about that, but she did, and she’s shocked.
“Oh,” she says. It doesn’t feel like enough, but she’s not sure what to say.
“Three months of sitting around in here driving each other crazy,” Foreman continues. “I’m good at functioning when House is incapacitated.”
Thirteen wonders about what else Foreman has seen and isn’t telling her about, but on the other hand she’s pretty certain that most of it would sicken her. She’s already seen House do some shitty things, she doesn’t want to know any more. She’s angry enough already.
“He pretended he had terminal cancer once,” Foreman tells her. “That was fun.”
Thirteen lets some more scotch burn in her throat before she speaks again.
“Amber died,” she says flatly. “Amber died, and I have Huntington’s.”
“Fuck,” Foreman mutters.
He pours her another glass.
{eight}
“I shouldn’t have woken her up,” Wilson decides at three a.m.
Chase hasn’t slept in thirty hours, and he’s not exactly sure how he managed to become Wilson’s confidante. Of course, the man needs someone now that House is still a bit incapacitated and anyway things are going to remain awkward in that area for the foreseeable future. Cuddy ought to be here; though Cuddy and Wilson may or may not have dated and may or may not have had sex and therefore things may or may not be awkward there too. Still, Chase would have thought that this would be Foreman’s place, not his.
Cameron’s out of the question because, if Chase is blunt, she and Wilson may or may not have had sex too. Or thought about having sex with each other. Or a myriad of other stupid things.
“I shouldn’t have woken her up,” Wilson repeats, and he looks crumpled.
You’re going to die; now deal with my pain. It’s not exactly sensitive, but Chase understands what made Wilson do what he did. He thinks that he would have quite liked to go and say goodbye to Amber, who played House’s game so well that she lost, and who made Wilson happy for the first time in the five years Chase has known him.
Five years is ages and Chase still doesn’t have the first clue what to say to the man.
“You got to say goodbye,” Chase points out. “She got to say goodbye. I think it was important.”
Wilson laughs; for a horrible second Chase thinks that it’s all going to crumble into crying. It doesn’t.
“It was selfish,” Wilson says. “She didn’t feel better for knowing. I don’t think I really felt better for wishing her luck wherever she ended up.”
Chase doesn’t know what to say, and he isn’t House, so he doesn’t get to tell Wilson to move on and get over himself. He feels paralysed and sick.
“And now…” Wilson sighs. “And now I’m left with a note on an envelope, some porn videos of a dead woman, and a mattress that I didn’t particularly want to begin with.”
Chase considers this. “It’s more than some people get,” he suggests.
“Maybe.” Wilson smiles bitterly, so Chase doesn’t tell him that whatever he was left with, it’s not like it would ever be enough.
{nine}
House is being discharged in two days. He was going to push for today, but for once Cuddy is holding firmly, and if he’s honest with himself he doesn’t really give a shit what happens to his body but he’d kind of like to keep his mind intact. It’s just about the only thing he has that’s really worth anything, though no one else seems to have noticed this. Cameron’s still kind of throwing herself at him under the guise of sympathy and Chase is playing the awkward I-nearly-fried-your-brain-and-I’m-having-issues-with-that game, which is really amusing. Everyone hates him, but they can’t stay away from him. It’s nearly enough, in a twisted sort of way.
Very late one night, House told Cuddy about the whole I pictured you in mildly glowing underwear poledancing on my crashing bus hallucination, mostly in an attempt to make her go away and stop caring about him. It didn’t work, and now he’s sort of intrigued as to where that particular avenue’s leading. Of course, it’ll end with him fucking it up, like everything ends, but it doesn’t stop him being curious.
“Are we ever going to talk about this?” Wilson demands. He shouldn’t be at the hospital, he looks absolutely dreadful. He can’t be seeing patients in that state, he can’t be. His miserable demeanour and trembling hands make House at his most stoned look reassuring.
House shrugs. “We’ve never talked about any of it,” he points out. “Why start now?”
Wilson plays with his tie for a moment. It’s uglier than usual; House thinks it might have been a gift from Bonnie, and if Wilson’s reaching that far into the back of his closet then they’re all in trouble.
“Because Amber’s dead,” Wilson snaps at last. “Because she’s dead and it’s probably your fault, and she wouldn’t be angry with you because she didn’t want to die angry, but I’m angry. I’m angry, ok?”
“Ok.” House doesn’t know how to play this, not that he’d ever admit it, so he lets Wilson take the lead.
“You’re the way you are and sooner or later someone was going to get hurt because of that, and it was Amber. Who will it be next time?”
“So you want me not to be me?” House asks. Wilson’s the only person he’d ever really consider changing for; not that he will, but the sentiment is there, barely hidden.
“I don’t know what I want,” Wilson mumbles. “What do you want?”
House considers not telling him, and then decides he might as well because Wilson has nothing right now and anyway, he can always use brain-damage as an excuse later. It’s a pretty good alibi, as alibis go.
“I don’t want you to hate me,” he says quietly, hoping that Wilson won’t hear. “I don’t want you to hate me because you’re kind of all I have.”
Wilson laughs for a while, cracked and worn. After a while, he manages to splutter: “You’re kind of all I have too.” He stops laughing abruptly. “This is a stupid relationship,” he adds, half to himself.
“So you don’t hate me?” House suggests.
“I’ll hate you for a while, and then I won’t. Isn’t that the way it’s always worked?”
Well, yeah, it is. Pretty much.
{ten}
“Are you trying me on for size?” Chase asks. “Because if you are you should at least try Foreman on too. Sometimes, he can make me look sensitive. And if you’re looking for a new-”
Wilson glares. “If you’re going to use the word ‘BFF’ in the near future I’ll find some reason to make Cuddy fire you. And then you’ll actually have to move to Arizona.”
“I’m sure Arizona has its redeeming features,” Chase says mildly. “Most places do.”
Wilson does a cross between a laugh and a shrug. “You hate everywhere,” he points out.
“Exactly.”
They sit in silence for a while, coffee ignored on the table between them. Chase is being here because he feels he ought to be, and Wilson is here because he’s despairing and needy and wants new scenery. The new scenery won’t be better than the old scenery and in time Wilson will work this out. Chase is willing enough to be there until he does.
“If you want to talk, talk,” Chase tells him at last. He has no time for House, but he’ll always spare a little for Wilson, if only because none of it has ever really been Wilson’s fault.
Wilson rubs at the back of his neck in that awkward way he has.
“Do you know how rare it is to find someone to buy a waterbed with?” he asks at last. “I mean, waterbeds suck and they give you motion sickness and it kind of just feels like you’re trying to have sex in a rowing boat or a big bowl of jello, but… you know.”
Chase finds himself wondering about the ‘big bowl of jello’ thing, and then realises that if the sex tape Kutner might possibly have of Wilson and Amber involved jello, he would know about it by now (and, you know, possibly even seen it). He’s gotten surprisingly good at keeping up with hospital gossip, now he generates slightly less of it himself.
He could point out that, at some point in the future, there will be other women and maybe even other water beds (the past has shown that sometimes Wilson just doesn’t learn), but now is not the time to say any of that. Instead, he smiles loosely.
“It is rare,” he says softly. “Amber was special.”
“Yeah, she was.” Wilson looks down at his hands and doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t cry either, though Chase surprises himself by realising that he wouldn’t mind if Wilson did.
{eleven}
House returns to work cheerfully enough. He’s a casual bastard and nothing’s changed but sometimes it feels a little strained. Thirteen can’t really bring herself to talk to him, Kutner and Taub alternate between being glad he’s not in a coma and then wishing his brain had burned out, and Foreman is tetchier than normal but the relief practically rolls off him in waves. Thirteen played this game and now she’s trapped here. She doesn’t particularly want to stay at Princeton/Plainsboro, where everyone is borderline psychopathic and her life seems to revolve around one man that she doesn’t even admire any more, let alone like, but it’s a battle of wills now. Thirteen will not be the one to leave first. She will not go until she is forced out, and she wonders if this means she’s inadvertently taken over from Chase. He couldn’t go either, until House pushed him.
“You should have told me that I had Huntington’s,” she tells House one evening, when the others are off running tests and House is attempting to go home. She knows that she’s being unreasonable, and she doesn’t particularly care.
“Are we going to keep rehashing this?” House enquires. “Because I had this for about a year with Chase, you know, why didn’t you tell me my dad had cancer, and it gets old really fast.”
Thirteen is reasonably sure that she doesn’t want to be Chase, but if she’s not Chase then she’s left with Cameron, which is an even more unpalatable option. Still, she shrugs, squaring her shoulders.
“Fine. Wanna have sex?”
At least she might get to work through her issues if she fucked House - literally - and really, she’s not in her right mind at the moment. She might not ever be again. It’s a scary looming prospect and one she wants to ignore as much as possible.
House smirks, and doesn’t even look slightly surprised, which is irritating. “I said ‘no’ to Cameron, and she’s prettier than you. I’m gonna say ‘no’ to you too.”
Thirteen smirks, and plays her trump card. “Yes, but you didn’t say ‘no’, did you?”
She doesn’t even know what this game is any more, but it is a game, which is the important part. Anything to keep herself from going mad over a sheet of test results and a horrific inevitability.
“Go and proposition Foreman,” House suggests, not missing a beat, although she sees a trace of something in his eyes. Everyone thinks that House and Cameron had sex at some point, although House and Cameron don’t think seem to. The amount of energy that they waste on denial.
At the door, Thirteen hesitates with her palm on the glass. “I’ve been thinking about quitting,” she confesses. She doesn’t want to tell House any of this, she always meant to keep herself at arm’s length, with her unlucky number name and a refusal to answer direct questions, but at the moment she just wants to unravel the enigma and have someone, anyone, know her.
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” House tells her. He almost smiles.
{twelve}
Other people’s grief is draining. Ultimately, no one cares that Amber got caught up in a bus crash and then fucked her body over with medication; House feels guilty, though of course he claims that he doesn’t, and everyone feels vaguely bad for Wilson. They empathise, but they barely sympathise, and Amber isn’t missed in the same way that none of them will be missed. It’s sad and stupid and futile, but that’s the way things are.
“Can you give me an estimation?” Chase asks on the roof at two a.m. He and Wilson are stood up there, staring at the stars that can barely be picked out amongst the city lights.
“An estimation for what?” Wilson asks, looking genuinely bewildered.
“For how long it’ll be before you forgive House,” Chase shrugs. “I’m just curious.”
“You want to open a betting pool,” Wilson murmurs, and looks almost amused. “You have no shame.”
“Presumably, when you forgive House, I’m out of the picture,” Chase explains. “And that’s ok, but an estimation would be nice.”
Wilson sighs heavily, and doesn’t look at him. “Nothing’s right,” he says at last. “Nothing’s fucking right.”
“No,” Chase agrees softly, because things haven’t been right in… forever. A downward curve of months.
“Tell me…” Wilson trails off, tired. “I don’t know, prove to me that sometimes this does all work out without divorce or death.”
“You’re talking to the wrong guy,” Chase mumbles.
“What about Cameron?”
Chase considers lying, but he doesn’t do that any more. Well, not as much as he used to, anyway. “We broke up,” he admits.
Wilson raises an eyebrow. “Why?”
Chase shrugs. “She wasn’t waterbed material.”
Wilson looks like he’s going to be sick, but laughs instead. He laughs a lot, and Chase wonders if he’s ever just sat down and cried. If maybe that would help more.
“It know it’s late, but… I’m really sorry,” he murmurs.
Wilson nods. Chase wonders what’s really going on in his head, how he really feels, what he’s really doing to deal with all this. Trapped outside, he has no idea what to do.
“Where… where do I go from here?” Wilson asks him. He sounds exhausted.
It’s only been a couple of weeks, and presumably it still stings like hell. Chase shrugs. “Forward,” he says. “Eventually. At the moment, I don’t think you have to go anywhere. It’s ok not to want to go anywhere.”
Wilson’s smile is rueful, and he turns away. “I think I should go and find House,” he murmurs.
Chase watches him go with interest. Things are so fluid right now that they might change, or they might not. This could be a start, or it could be an end. As usual, Chase probably won’t know until it’s too late.
“Best of luck, Cut-Throat Bitch,” he tells the dark sky, and closes the door behind him.
Fandom: House MD
Characters: Wilson, Chase, House, Cameron, Foreman, Thirteen
Pairings: hints of Wilson/Amber, Chase/Cameron, and Wilson-Chase and Wilson-House friendship.
Challenge/Prompt: fanfic100 095. New Year and 100moods 069. Numb
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 5105
Genre: Gen [het]
Copyright: Title is something to do with a kind of filthy poem by… Catullus? Something like that. But it seemed to fit this anyway.
Summary: Wilson is… well, no one is sure what Wilson is doing but it’s probably not healthy.
Author’s Notes: Spoilers for S4; this is a tie-in for Wilson’s Heart. ‘Cause I’m excessively morbid at the moment. Lots of intention run-on sentences and the conversations that go nowhere, since I like them so much :)
Where do you go with your broken heart in tow?
What do you do with the leftover you?
And how do you know when to let go?
Where does the good go?
- Tegan and Sarah
{one}
Life, as it turns out, is just one long hallucination, and death is just a bus ride with kind of dubious company.
Maybe he should've stayed in the band he started in his teens. That would've made a great pretentious song lyric and just maybe Amber would still be here. Or somewhere. You know. Being alive.
House has been dead several times but, like everything else, it just hasn’t stuck. Sometimes he cares about that and sometimes he doesn’t. The thing is that nothing is permanent but the big stuff that comes at the end, and no matter what he does the end just doesn’t linger; it’s not hard to develop a God complex.
Cuddy’s eyelashes are sprinkling crumbs of mascara down her cheeks and she’s asleep beside his bed; she looks like crap, but then House nearly fried out his brain so he suspects he doesn’t look good either. He seems to spend a lot of time looking his worst; he would wonder what that said about him, but of course he already knows. He always already knows.
When he is capable of moving about again, there will be things to deal with; things that are so big it makes him kind of relieved he’s currently incapacitated.
{two}
Chase smears a wet drink ring around with the bottom of his glass, creating another cleaning job for whichever thankless person cleans tables in this bar. He’s not trying to find words because he doesn’t want to say anything. Allison is sitting beside him, equally silent, locks of blonde hair tumbling around her shoulders. Chase finds himself wondering if he ever actually asked her why she felt the need to change her hair colour, and then remembers that he didn’t, if only because he didn’t want to know the answer.
“This sucks,” Foreman decides, mid-breakdown because someone has to be and Chase is too cold these days to care about anything and Cameron is just plain tired. Oh, Allison, right. He is getting there, but old habits die hard. And really, in his head, Chase isn’t sure Cameron ever stopped being Cameron; they just have sex more often now and claim to get on.
“It sucks,” Chase agrees, for lack of anything more interesting to say. Amber died and House nearly died (at Chase’s hands; but he’s not thinking about that ‘cause it’ll rip open this whole Pandora’s Box and he’s not in the mood, not tonight) and Wilson is… well, no one is sure what Wilson is doing but it’s probably not healthy given that his girlfriend just died and all.
Chase could say something about how the betting pool over whether Amber would be Wife Number Four is going to have to close and that’s pretty inconvenient seeing as how kind of a lot of money was pouring in, but he has learnt something about sensitivity over the past however many years, so he stays quiet.
“Just this once,” Foreman sighs. “Just this once; nobody lives.”
“It had to happen,” Chase mumbles, but it doesn’t help.
{three}
The woman who still calls herself Thirteen - because the anonymity is reassuring and anyway it’s not like House will ever consent to calling her by her actual name, although she is thinking about returning to Dr Remy Hadley because, you know, she’s got to get some business cards done - waits until Dr Cuddy leaves for a shower before going to see House. She’s not sure what she wants to say or if she wants to say anything, but Taub has gone home to the wife that he may or may not love, and Kutner is either being mildly grieving or perving over a porn video of a dead woman (she really can never tell with him) and so there isn’t anyone else. Thirteen doesn’t have a whole load of other people in her life.
House looks old and broken in the hospital bed, which she doesn’t like because that’s never been how she’s thought of him. Thirteen knows him well enough to resent him the way everyone does, but she doesn’t want him dead. She doesn’t know what she wants to happen to him, to be honest, but it probably wasn’t this.
She hesitates, and House’s eyes slowly open. They’re as bright as ever, wicked and determined and penetrating all at once, and he doesn’t need to say anything because the words fall out of Thirteen’s mouth instantly.
“I have Huntington’s.”
House is the first person she’s told because she really has no people to tell. He nods.
“Ok.”
Thirteen feels like this is an anti-climax, and then wonders when she wanted her terrifying inevitability to become some sort of party-trick. She hasn’t slept in kind of a while and everything hurts so much she can hardly breathe.
“Is that it?” she asks.
“What do you want me to say?” House’s voice creaks and Thirteen bites her tongue for a moment until she can get her mind cleared again.
“I don’t…” She wonders if she’s going to cry here, confess things that she’s never told anyone because then they won’t just be hers any more, but she doesn’t. “Is this you being nice?” she asks, instead.
“I’m never nice,” House tells her brusquely. “I am tired.”
She nods, fingers on the doorframe. “Ok. Well. Now you know.”
House sighs. “For what it’s worth-”
“Don’t.” Her eyes feel full and her throat is too tight. She can’t hear him say that he’s sorry, because he’s House, and she’s scared.
“I was going to say that I already knew.”
Thirteen’s knees threaten to buckle and give way entirely; her hand skids on the glass.
“Sealed test results and a trash can; never a good combination on a long evening.” House has the grace to look awkward, though possibly that’s just a slight trace of the nearly-dying left.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“You didn’t want to know.” House shrugs, which looks uncomfortable and makes his face crease in pain.
“I’m glad you nearly died,” Thirteen informs him, though it’s kind of childish to say it, and leaves him alone.
{four}
Wilson is in the doctor’s lounge in the evening, eating toast and peanut butter. Chase is out of surgery; he has a crick in his neck and his eyes are blurring and he has another operation scheduled in about an hour and a half. He hasn’t exactly had the best of experiences with Wilson in this lounge when bread and peanut butter are been present - like that time Wilson sold House out and no one said a word but Chase knows that it was his fault anyway - but he sits down because he doesn’t want Wilson to be alone. Wilson doesn’t thrive well when left alone.
The television is on, and Chase watches the screen listlessly for a few moments before realising that Wilson is actually watching Grey’s Anatomy. It’s… worrying.
“I hate this show,” Wilson murmurs a minute later. “And I hate all these people. They’re so… shiny. And pretty. People who work in hospitals don’t have time to do all their work and keep their hair that shiny and…” He trails off, falling back into silence.
Chase decides to indulge him, if only because he kind of played a part in all of this and Amber’s dead and no one’s sure what Wilson is going to do about that. Wilson has lost lots of people but he’s never had them taken from him and this is a whole new game with entirely different rules.
“I do lots of surgeries,” he suggests. “And I have very shiny hair. I’m pretty.”
Wilson casts a sidelong glance at him. “You are pretty,” he agrees perfunctorily, tone mechanical. “Are you having sex in the on-call room?”
Chase hates how death makes everything stupid and surreal. “Not often.”
Wilson sighs, eyes fixed on the screen. “I think I probably picked the wrong specialty,” he mumbles.
Now they’re getting somewhere. Chase isn’t sure that he should be the person to be here when the getting somewhere point is reached, but there isn’t anyone else. It might as well be him.
“Did you want to be a surgeon?” he asks, keeping his tone steady and light. “It’s not all shiny hair and sex in the on-call room, you know.”
“I’ve picked a specialty where I’m pleasantly surprised when people live,” Wilson replies. “Does that seem fucked-up to you?”
Chase wishes that he knew something about grieving that doesn’t involve accidentally killing hardworking mothers. His own grieving was badly-handled and awkward, and he doesn’t want Wilson’s to be.
“It seems fucked up,” he agrees, and is relieved when his pager goes off.
{five}
It takes time for Wilson to bring himself to go and see House; it takes a while for him to shuffle his emotions into neat piles that he can actually handle.
“I would have killed you to save Amber,” he offers, as a conversation opener. It’s not exactly a neutral topic (he could possibly have started with something like so, I nearly fried your brain. How’s that working out for you?) but he and House are pretty damn bad at neutral.
“Do you want to apologise?” House asks, raising an eyebrow.
Wilson smiles a little. “No. Not yet.”
“Good.” House smiles back, a real, genuine smile that Wilson’s reasonably sure he doesn’t deserve.
“You don’t mind?”
“You won’t mean it,” House replies. “You and Amber never got out of the honeymoon period. She was like being with me, only there was fun and niceness and… waterbeds, and we haven’t had that in years, have we?”
“…Waterbeds?”
House snickers quietly. “Fun. Niceness. Those foreign concepts.”
Well, at least when he’s mildly brain-damaged House doesn’t feel the need to play mind games. Wilson thinks that this might be a relief, although he really doesn’t know how he feels about anything at the moment.
“Oh.”
“You’d have hated her eventually,” House adds, waving a dismissive hand. “But you never got the chance to get there.”
Wilson’s mouth tightens; he can feel his lips pressing together from the determination not to say certain things that will probably hurt a little too much at this point in time.
“That’s not a winning argument,” he grits out.
House laughs, and there’s a bitter edge to it that hasn’t been there in a while. “Of course not. It’s the truth.”
Wilson doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, whether they’re meant to be fighting or crying on each other’s shoulders. Metaphorically of course; Wilson should have picked out some sympathetic friends for times like these. House is too self-absorbed for sympathy, and at the moment he probably has every right to be a little self-absorbed, what with the whole almost-dying thing. House’s fingers are plucking at his white covers; on anyone else the gesture would be anxious. But Greg House does not do anxious, and Wilson watches the long, slim fingers press against the blankets and doesn’t say anything.
“You should go,” House offers.
They’re going to have to do something about this eventually. But not today.
{six}
“Do you…”
Foreman’s question trails into silence. It’s about midnight, and it’s not like there are patients that need to be seen or anything. It’s not like House is going to come striding in in the morning with bagels that he won’t share and an unreasonable expectation for unattainable answers. Still, old habits die hard; or just don’t die at all.
Chase does his best attempt at a sympathetic and expectant look with his gritty eyes, a bitter instant coffee that he doesn’t want to drink still clenched in his hand.
“Do you miss…it?” Foreman asks.
Cameron is half-asleep on the couch, hair pulled untidily back. She got off her ER shift about six minutes ago, and she looks tired. They’re all tired, of course, stumbling through life with a sense of loss that doesn’t really belong to them.
“Sometimes,” she mumbles. There’s no need to define what ‘it’ is; if you have to ask then you don’t know. And God, do they all know. “But you never really escape, do you?”
“At least you both got out of diagnostics,” Foreman points out. “I’m still doing the same damn thing because nowhere else will have me. And the only time House really listened to me was because he was pretending we’d doused his creative spirit and knowledge with medication.”
“I miss the head games,” Chase sighs, putting the coffee down. “I find myself looking for other people’s agendas, and then it turns out that they’re not actually conducting an experiment, they really do want what they say they want, and by then I just look like a paranoid bastard.”
“You are a paranoid bastard,” Foreman reminds him.
“Yeah, but so are you,” Chase shrugs.
Cameron is quiet. They shouldn’t be having a relationship - it’s ripping at the corners and sooner or later someone’s going to notice - but they’re dragging it on because they don’t know what else to do with themselves.
“Amber might have lived if we’d all just managed to stay where we were,” Chase murmurs.
“This isn’t our fault,” Cameron insists quickly. Anything to get away from more blood on her hands.
“Maybe we were just the start of a line of dominoes,” Chase theorises.
“You got yourself fired,” Foreman reminds him. “Don’t start blaming this on us.”
“You were the one who rocked the fucking boat in the first place,” Chase snaps. “You were the one who handed in your notice and actually meant it.”
“We were brilliant,” Cameron decides. “The three of us in that claustrophobic office.”
“We were stale,” Foreman sighs.
Things are morbid and lengthy and tiring.
“Shouldn’t you be doing this with someone else?” Chase asks. “You know, with people you actually like?”
Foreman laughs. “I don’t have people, I have you two.”
“I pity you,” Chase tells him.
“Oh, and who do you have?” Foreman gives him a significant glare.
Chase sighs, knowing that he’s lost this round. He doesn’t have anyone; that’s the problem.
Still, at least he’s not the only one with this particular problem.
{seven}
Thirteen has never really liked Kutner and Taub, in the same way she doesn’t really like anyone at Princeton/Plainsboro. She didn’t even feel all that sad when she found out that Amber was going to die; she just felt… pity. Sour, self-centred pity.
Foreman laughs roughly when she confesses this. They’re drinking (House’s) scotch in the office, which still doesn’t feel like home. Thirteen kind of misses the echoing room with its chalkboards and its classroom qualities. Things are kind of too real in here.
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” he says. The blinds are drawn and it’s like being in a big box; still, at least it’s not a big glass box at the moment. “I got sick; Cameron temporarily lobotomised me and Chase still doesn’t like me. This is who you are now. Get used to it.”
The other guys spend their time in the clinic or harassing Cuddy to let them have a case. But Foreman doesn’t do that; he just sits around with medical journals, fills in crosswords, catches up on House’s paperwork, and generally procrastinates. It’s almost like he’s used to this sort of inactivity; and as soon as that thought crosses Thirteen’s mind, she has to ask.
“Something like this has happened before,” she murmurs.
Foreman grins ruefully, though he’s a little drunk now. “You know that stain on the carpet?” He gestures towards the brown-ish stain on the grey carpet that no one’s mentioned because no one really wanted to know the answer. Thirteen nods. “Well, that’s House’s blood. He got shot in front of us.”
Thirteen’s not sure how she managed to miss hearing about that, but she did, and she’s shocked.
“Oh,” she says. It doesn’t feel like enough, but she’s not sure what to say.
“Three months of sitting around in here driving each other crazy,” Foreman continues. “I’m good at functioning when House is incapacitated.”
Thirteen wonders about what else Foreman has seen and isn’t telling her about, but on the other hand she’s pretty certain that most of it would sicken her. She’s already seen House do some shitty things, she doesn’t want to know any more. She’s angry enough already.
“He pretended he had terminal cancer once,” Foreman tells her. “That was fun.”
Thirteen lets some more scotch burn in her throat before she speaks again.
“Amber died,” she says flatly. “Amber died, and I have Huntington’s.”
“Fuck,” Foreman mutters.
He pours her another glass.
{eight}
“I shouldn’t have woken her up,” Wilson decides at three a.m.
Chase hasn’t slept in thirty hours, and he’s not exactly sure how he managed to become Wilson’s confidante. Of course, the man needs someone now that House is still a bit incapacitated and anyway things are going to remain awkward in that area for the foreseeable future. Cuddy ought to be here; though Cuddy and Wilson may or may not have dated and may or may not have had sex and therefore things may or may not be awkward there too. Still, Chase would have thought that this would be Foreman’s place, not his.
Cameron’s out of the question because, if Chase is blunt, she and Wilson may or may not have had sex too. Or thought about having sex with each other. Or a myriad of other stupid things.
“I shouldn’t have woken her up,” Wilson repeats, and he looks crumpled.
You’re going to die; now deal with my pain. It’s not exactly sensitive, but Chase understands what made Wilson do what he did. He thinks that he would have quite liked to go and say goodbye to Amber, who played House’s game so well that she lost, and who made Wilson happy for the first time in the five years Chase has known him.
Five years is ages and Chase still doesn’t have the first clue what to say to the man.
“You got to say goodbye,” Chase points out. “She got to say goodbye. I think it was important.”
Wilson laughs; for a horrible second Chase thinks that it’s all going to crumble into crying. It doesn’t.
“It was selfish,” Wilson says. “She didn’t feel better for knowing. I don’t think I really felt better for wishing her luck wherever she ended up.”
Chase doesn’t know what to say, and he isn’t House, so he doesn’t get to tell Wilson to move on and get over himself. He feels paralysed and sick.
“And now…” Wilson sighs. “And now I’m left with a note on an envelope, some porn videos of a dead woman, and a mattress that I didn’t particularly want to begin with.”
Chase considers this. “It’s more than some people get,” he suggests.
“Maybe.” Wilson smiles bitterly, so Chase doesn’t tell him that whatever he was left with, it’s not like it would ever be enough.
{nine}
House is being discharged in two days. He was going to push for today, but for once Cuddy is holding firmly, and if he’s honest with himself he doesn’t really give a shit what happens to his body but he’d kind of like to keep his mind intact. It’s just about the only thing he has that’s really worth anything, though no one else seems to have noticed this. Cameron’s still kind of throwing herself at him under the guise of sympathy and Chase is playing the awkward I-nearly-fried-your-brain-and-I’m-having-issues-with-that game, which is really amusing. Everyone hates him, but they can’t stay away from him. It’s nearly enough, in a twisted sort of way.
Very late one night, House told Cuddy about the whole I pictured you in mildly glowing underwear poledancing on my crashing bus hallucination, mostly in an attempt to make her go away and stop caring about him. It didn’t work, and now he’s sort of intrigued as to where that particular avenue’s leading. Of course, it’ll end with him fucking it up, like everything ends, but it doesn’t stop him being curious.
“Are we ever going to talk about this?” Wilson demands. He shouldn’t be at the hospital, he looks absolutely dreadful. He can’t be seeing patients in that state, he can’t be. His miserable demeanour and trembling hands make House at his most stoned look reassuring.
House shrugs. “We’ve never talked about any of it,” he points out. “Why start now?”
Wilson plays with his tie for a moment. It’s uglier than usual; House thinks it might have been a gift from Bonnie, and if Wilson’s reaching that far into the back of his closet then they’re all in trouble.
“Because Amber’s dead,” Wilson snaps at last. “Because she’s dead and it’s probably your fault, and she wouldn’t be angry with you because she didn’t want to die angry, but I’m angry. I’m angry, ok?”
“Ok.” House doesn’t know how to play this, not that he’d ever admit it, so he lets Wilson take the lead.
“You’re the way you are and sooner or later someone was going to get hurt because of that, and it was Amber. Who will it be next time?”
“So you want me not to be me?” House asks. Wilson’s the only person he’d ever really consider changing for; not that he will, but the sentiment is there, barely hidden.
“I don’t know what I want,” Wilson mumbles. “What do you want?”
House considers not telling him, and then decides he might as well because Wilson has nothing right now and anyway, he can always use brain-damage as an excuse later. It’s a pretty good alibi, as alibis go.
“I don’t want you to hate me,” he says quietly, hoping that Wilson won’t hear. “I don’t want you to hate me because you’re kind of all I have.”
Wilson laughs for a while, cracked and worn. After a while, he manages to splutter: “You’re kind of all I have too.” He stops laughing abruptly. “This is a stupid relationship,” he adds, half to himself.
“So you don’t hate me?” House suggests.
“I’ll hate you for a while, and then I won’t. Isn’t that the way it’s always worked?”
Well, yeah, it is. Pretty much.
{ten}
“Are you trying me on for size?” Chase asks. “Because if you are you should at least try Foreman on too. Sometimes, he can make me look sensitive. And if you’re looking for a new-”
Wilson glares. “If you’re going to use the word ‘BFF’ in the near future I’ll find some reason to make Cuddy fire you. And then you’ll actually have to move to Arizona.”
“I’m sure Arizona has its redeeming features,” Chase says mildly. “Most places do.”
Wilson does a cross between a laugh and a shrug. “You hate everywhere,” he points out.
“Exactly.”
They sit in silence for a while, coffee ignored on the table between them. Chase is being here because he feels he ought to be, and Wilson is here because he’s despairing and needy and wants new scenery. The new scenery won’t be better than the old scenery and in time Wilson will work this out. Chase is willing enough to be there until he does.
“If you want to talk, talk,” Chase tells him at last. He has no time for House, but he’ll always spare a little for Wilson, if only because none of it has ever really been Wilson’s fault.
Wilson rubs at the back of his neck in that awkward way he has.
“Do you know how rare it is to find someone to buy a waterbed with?” he asks at last. “I mean, waterbeds suck and they give you motion sickness and it kind of just feels like you’re trying to have sex in a rowing boat or a big bowl of jello, but… you know.”
Chase finds himself wondering about the ‘big bowl of jello’ thing, and then realises that if the sex tape Kutner might possibly have of Wilson and Amber involved jello, he would know about it by now (and, you know, possibly even seen it). He’s gotten surprisingly good at keeping up with hospital gossip, now he generates slightly less of it himself.
He could point out that, at some point in the future, there will be other women and maybe even other water beds (the past has shown that sometimes Wilson just doesn’t learn), but now is not the time to say any of that. Instead, he smiles loosely.
“It is rare,” he says softly. “Amber was special.”
“Yeah, she was.” Wilson looks down at his hands and doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t cry either, though Chase surprises himself by realising that he wouldn’t mind if Wilson did.
{eleven}
House returns to work cheerfully enough. He’s a casual bastard and nothing’s changed but sometimes it feels a little strained. Thirteen can’t really bring herself to talk to him, Kutner and Taub alternate between being glad he’s not in a coma and then wishing his brain had burned out, and Foreman is tetchier than normal but the relief practically rolls off him in waves. Thirteen played this game and now she’s trapped here. She doesn’t particularly want to stay at Princeton/Plainsboro, where everyone is borderline psychopathic and her life seems to revolve around one man that she doesn’t even admire any more, let alone like, but it’s a battle of wills now. Thirteen will not be the one to leave first. She will not go until she is forced out, and she wonders if this means she’s inadvertently taken over from Chase. He couldn’t go either, until House pushed him.
“You should have told me that I had Huntington’s,” she tells House one evening, when the others are off running tests and House is attempting to go home. She knows that she’s being unreasonable, and she doesn’t particularly care.
“Are we going to keep rehashing this?” House enquires. “Because I had this for about a year with Chase, you know, why didn’t you tell me my dad had cancer, and it gets old really fast.”
Thirteen is reasonably sure that she doesn’t want to be Chase, but if she’s not Chase then she’s left with Cameron, which is an even more unpalatable option. Still, she shrugs, squaring her shoulders.
“Fine. Wanna have sex?”
At least she might get to work through her issues if she fucked House - literally - and really, she’s not in her right mind at the moment. She might not ever be again. It’s a scary looming prospect and one she wants to ignore as much as possible.
House smirks, and doesn’t even look slightly surprised, which is irritating. “I said ‘no’ to Cameron, and she’s prettier than you. I’m gonna say ‘no’ to you too.”
Thirteen smirks, and plays her trump card. “Yes, but you didn’t say ‘no’, did you?”
She doesn’t even know what this game is any more, but it is a game, which is the important part. Anything to keep herself from going mad over a sheet of test results and a horrific inevitability.
“Go and proposition Foreman,” House suggests, not missing a beat, although she sees a trace of something in his eyes. Everyone thinks that House and Cameron had sex at some point, although House and Cameron don’t think seem to. The amount of energy that they waste on denial.
At the door, Thirteen hesitates with her palm on the glass. “I’ve been thinking about quitting,” she confesses. She doesn’t want to tell House any of this, she always meant to keep herself at arm’s length, with her unlucky number name and a refusal to answer direct questions, but at the moment she just wants to unravel the enigma and have someone, anyone, know her.
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” House tells her. He almost smiles.
{twelve}
Other people’s grief is draining. Ultimately, no one cares that Amber got caught up in a bus crash and then fucked her body over with medication; House feels guilty, though of course he claims that he doesn’t, and everyone feels vaguely bad for Wilson. They empathise, but they barely sympathise, and Amber isn’t missed in the same way that none of them will be missed. It’s sad and stupid and futile, but that’s the way things are.
“Can you give me an estimation?” Chase asks on the roof at two a.m. He and Wilson are stood up there, staring at the stars that can barely be picked out amongst the city lights.
“An estimation for what?” Wilson asks, looking genuinely bewildered.
“For how long it’ll be before you forgive House,” Chase shrugs. “I’m just curious.”
“You want to open a betting pool,” Wilson murmurs, and looks almost amused. “You have no shame.”
“Presumably, when you forgive House, I’m out of the picture,” Chase explains. “And that’s ok, but an estimation would be nice.”
Wilson sighs heavily, and doesn’t look at him. “Nothing’s right,” he says at last. “Nothing’s fucking right.”
“No,” Chase agrees softly, because things haven’t been right in… forever. A downward curve of months.
“Tell me…” Wilson trails off, tired. “I don’t know, prove to me that sometimes this does all work out without divorce or death.”
“You’re talking to the wrong guy,” Chase mumbles.
“What about Cameron?”
Chase considers lying, but he doesn’t do that any more. Well, not as much as he used to, anyway. “We broke up,” he admits.
Wilson raises an eyebrow. “Why?”
Chase shrugs. “She wasn’t waterbed material.”
Wilson looks like he’s going to be sick, but laughs instead. He laughs a lot, and Chase wonders if he’s ever just sat down and cried. If maybe that would help more.
“It know it’s late, but… I’m really sorry,” he murmurs.
Wilson nods. Chase wonders what’s really going on in his head, how he really feels, what he’s really doing to deal with all this. Trapped outside, he has no idea what to do.
“Where… where do I go from here?” Wilson asks him. He sounds exhausted.
It’s only been a couple of weeks, and presumably it still stings like hell. Chase shrugs. “Forward,” he says. “Eventually. At the moment, I don’t think you have to go anywhere. It’s ok not to want to go anywhere.”
Wilson’s smile is rueful, and he turns away. “I think I should go and find House,” he murmurs.
Chase watches him go with interest. Things are so fluid right now that they might change, or they might not. This could be a start, or it could be an end. As usual, Chase probably won’t know until it’s too late.
“Best of luck, Cut-Throat Bitch,” he tells the dark sky, and closes the door behind him.