House M.D. Fanfiction: Back Story, Ch. 17
Title: Back Story
Author: pgrabia
Disclaimer: House M.D., its character’s, locations, and storyline are the property of David Shore, Bad Hat Harry Productions and Fox Television. All Rights Reserved.
Characters/Pairing: G. House, J. Wilson, L. Cuddy, other canon characters; House/Wilson pre-slash that will eventually become slash.
Genre: angst, drama, romance, intrigue, suspense, AU.
Spoiler Alert: All seasons including all of season 7. Some are quite specific and detailed. You’ve been warned.
Rating/Warnings: NC-17 for all the smexing as well as violence and serious adult subject matter including drug and alcohol abuse, sexual and physical abuse, and suicide ideation-though not all chapters will involve explicit description of sexual activity (just most of them ;^D) or gore.
A/N: This begins the morning after the last scene in episode 7x15, “Bombshells”. While it follows the Canon timeline, this story focuses on the happenings, thoughts and feelings going on in the story we don’t have access to (or my idea of what occurred and will occur on into season 8. Of course, this will run AU because spoilers about the first episode of season 8 are already out and point out that this is definitely not the official explanation for the baffling events that occurred in season 7). More warnings in author’s note for chapter one.
Back Story
Chapter Seventeen
Wilson entered the clinic in search of House. He’d heard that Arlene was willing to talk again and wanted to make certain House would take this new opportunity to peaceably settle the situation with her seriously. He spotted the diagnostician walking out of an exam room with a file he was reading.
“Janet… Hemorrhoid?” House called out to the patients waiting to be seen. One woman self-consciously rose from her chair and hurried over to him. Wilson couldn’t actually hear her, but he could read House’s lips well enough.
“That's not my name. It's why I'm here,” she told House on the down low. Wilson winced when he saw the mischievous gleam in House’s eye.
Loud as always, House replied, “Oh, I see. It goes across. We better make this fast, 'cause I'm about to lose my medical license for malpractice. It's nothing unusual. The head of the hospital's about to lose hers too.”
Janet slowly walked away from House upon hearing that, deciding, Wilson supposed, that she’d rather have hemorrhoids than something much more serious inflicted upon her by a ‘bad’ doctor. Wilson sighed-that’s exactly the reaction House had been looking for. He approached his best friend, who had stepped over to the reception desk to do some quick charting and grab a new patient file.
“I heard Cuddy quadrupled your clinic hours,” Wilson told him, referring to Cuddy’s penalty for House’s smart aleck remarks earlier around her mother. The woman had difficulty separating personal business and professional punishment-or was that personal punishment and professional business?
“Yeah, but you know what? I'm flying through patients,” House retorted, pleased with himself.
Yeah, you sure are, Wilson thought, mentally shaking his head. “Arlene wants another meeting.”
“I know; told my seconds to tell her seconds that she gets no second chance. Well, technically, it's a third chance, but I don't have thirds.”
Wilson nodded, not surprised. “Cuddy told her the same thing, more or less.” He glanced around the room, wondering if they were being watched by someone in the clinic at that very moment. He remembered how important it was that they behave like losing Cuddy was all House could obsess over, but it sucked having to carry on with this ridiculous pretense. He wanted the world to know how much he loved House and how lucky he was to be loved by the man in return. It had taken him a long time to get to this place, and having to continue to hide the truth was frustrating to say the least.
“So you got us on the same page after all,” House quipped.
“I've been thinking about your irrationality, and I've come up with a rational explanation for it,” Wilson told him. He sighed internally; the show had to go on and he knew that if the situation had been a ‘normal’ one, he would be saying and doing these same things.
“That's quite a challenge,” House replied sarcastically, but the look in his eye told Wilson that he knew what Wilson was up to and was ready for him.
The thing was, even as Wilson revealed his explanation he fleetingly wondered how close to the truth it really was. “You don't want to let go of Cuddy, so you're clinging to the negative interaction, because some small part of you thinks the bad stuff beats nothing at all.”
Wilson knew that had been true as far as he and House were concerned over the years. Wilson had many times sought out a confrontation with House just to have an excuse to be with him, to talk with him and have interaction when things hadn’t been going well for them in their friendship. The same could, theoretically, be true for House with Cuddy-that is, if Wilson hadn’t been told otherwise several times by his enigmatic lover.
There was amusement combined with frustration in House’s reaction to that. “You're almost making this work. All you got to do now is change reality. Perhaps if I was the one suing me….”
“You didn't start it,” Wilson argued, “but you had the chance to end it, and you didn't. You love her, House, and it's human to hang on, but you're blowing up not just your job but any chance of any kind of relationship with her again.”
Wilson wished that he was wrong, but he knew that House’s feelings for Cuddy were still more conflicted than he let on. Would House take her back if she changed her mind? Wilson didn’t think so, but that wasn’t reassuring enough; he wanted to know so without a doubt. Was he just being paranoid and pessimistic for the sake of it, because that’s the way he’d been toward House for so many years-reluctant to take his word at face value?
Regardless, he hoped that House’s handlers had overheard that conversation and they had been convinced that House and he were still no more than friends, or if they already knew that they were lovers, then they were convinced that House and he would carry on the charade to protect the operation House was being coerced into participating in.
House gave him a surreptitious wink when nobody seemed to be looking, his way of commending Wilson for a job well done. He then called another patient and disappeared into one of the exam rooms with him. Wilson sighed, shook his head in frustration, which wasn’t feigned. This whole situation was fucked. Wilson turned to leave and nearly walked right into a strange man in a charcoal suit walking behind him.
“I’m sorry,” Wilson apologized, looking at the other man. He looked familiar…but Wilson couldn’t think of where he had seen him before. It would probably come to him later, he assured himself.
The dark haired man shook his head and said simply, “No problem.” He walked away from Wilson, who watched him leave the clinic, and frowned slightly. There was something about him that made Wilson feel uneasy. With a mental shrug he sighed and left the clinic as well.
__
Wilson showed up at House’s apartment around seven that evening, knowing that his lover would be waiting for him. He carried a six pack with him, wondering if House would allow him any, especially if he smelled the bourbon that was already on his breath. He’d only had one, just to settle his nerves after a bizarre day. House’s patient, Cyrus, whom he’d diagnosed with a teratoma, actually had several when given a full-body MRI and PET scan and suddenly became Wilson’s patient; like his patient load wasn’t heavy enough. He would be biopsying the man’s tumors in the morning to see how many of them were malignant; he suspected at least one was.
He knocked on House’s door, but received no response from within. House’s bike was parked out front, as was his Chrysler, so he was home unless he’d gone for a walk, which seemed unlikely. That meant House had to be in the bathroom or bedroom where he couldn’t hear the knock. Wilson shrugged and let himself in with the replacement key House had given him. He walked into the living room and smirked; it was the cleanest Wilson had seen it since he’d stayed with House following his divorce from Julie. At least having Dominika around was good for one thing. House had said she would be away on ‘business’ for the weekend so he felt at ease being there.
“Greg?” Wilson called out, checking out the kitchen though he wasn’t certain why-his chances of finding House at work in there were slim (even though House had proven himself quite the cook after attending a single cooking class with him). Putting the six-pack into the fridge, he then headed for House’s bedroom. The bathroom door was closed but there was no light coming from under the door so House wasn’t in there, which meant he was in the bedroom. Sure enough, as Wilson approached the room he’d become quite familiar with lately he heard rustling around within.
Wilson opened the door, “Greg, do you want Chinese or pizza-?”
A dark-haired bulldozer hit Wilson’s gut as someone who was definitely not House lowered his body and used his shoulder to ram into him and send him back and against the corridor wall opposite the door. Every ounce of air was knocked out of him as Wilson hit the wall. He gasped for breath and didn’t have a chance to react before a fist slammed into his jaw. He thought he heard a pop; Wilson’s head snapped to the side as blinding pain stunned him and he fell on his ass on the floor. He tried to turn away from the assault only to be kicked hard in the small of his back. He cried out in agony and blacked out.
He awoke slowly to find himself lying on a treatment table in an ER bay, a curtain pulled around his space, and yet another penlight being flashed in his eyes. Wilson groaned as his brain began to register pain again. His jaw hurt like a sonofabitch, as did his gut and back. His head felt like someone was hitting it over and over again with a hammer as he lay there. When his eyes could see more than just spots from the penlight again he realized he was looking up at two faces, a female doctor and House. Both looked very concerned, but House also looked like he was sick to his stomach and would run out of the bay at any moment to throw up. It didn’t matter-Wilson was relieved to see that he was okay, that no one had hurt him, too.
“Dr. Wilson,” the other doctor said to him, “I’m Dr. Christine Woolliskraft. I’m the ER attending on duty tonight. You’re at the Princeton-Plainsboro ER. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
Wilson went to nod and then grimaced at the bolts of lightning like pain that shot straight to his brain from his jaw.
“Your jaw was dislocated and X-Rays have been taken to see if it’s broken but the films aren’t back yet, so don’t try to talk too much.”
“Wha’ haa-enn’?” Wilson tried to say, a tear escaping his eye from the pain it caused.
“We were hoping you could tell us,” Woolliskraft told him with a sympathetic smile, apparently understanding what he’d said. “The police will want to know, too.”
Wilson’s eyes shifted to House. Police? How did that jive with House’s ‘business partners’? House simply met his gaze with piercing, worried blue eyes.
“I need to run a neuro check,” Woolliskraft told Wilson. She turned her head to say something to someone out of Wilson field of view and he wasn’t about to risk agony to turn his head to see who it was. A pair of hands appeared long enough to hand the doctor a pad of paper and pen. Woolliskraft raised the head of Wilson’s bed enough to make it easier for him to take the items and use them. His belly hurt some as it happened but he barely felt it over the stronger pain in his neck, head, and back.
“Just write your answers to my questions,” the ER doc instructed him. She ran through a series of questions to measure the functioning level of his higher cognitive functions and then a couple of physical exercises he could perform while lying down to check his motor functions.
“You missed a couple of questions but for the most part you’re doing great, all things considered,” she told him. Wilson glanced at House for confirmation. His boyfriend nodded slightly and Wilson relaxed.
“Since you were unconscious for nearly four hours we also took head X-rays which we’re still waiting on,” she informed him. “You’re queued for a CT scan and should be going down for that within the hour. You have a giant purple bruise in the shape of a shoe on your lower back on the left side and there was a small amount of blood in your urine. Ultrasound didn’t pick up a bleed originating from your kidney but we’re monitoring you closely to be on the safe side. Dr. House concurs that it isn’t likely more serious than some bruising of the organ, so we’ll keep up with the ultrasounds to make sure nothing more serious develops. There are also bruises on your abdomen but there is no rigidity and no sign of trouble on the ultrasound. Your jaw was badly dislocated and bruised and the substantial swelling and continued pain suggests a fracture. If there is one you may require having the fracture set and your jaw wired until it’s healed. Sorry.”
Wilson closed his eyes and groaned; just what he needed.
“Look on the bright side,” House said wryly. “I get to listen to fewer lectures and you get to pig out on ice cream, smoothies, Ensure and if you’re a good boy I’ll blend up a roast or a steak for you. How does a baked potato milkshake sound?”
His response was to give House the finger. House grinned cheekily in response, but behind the smile there was fear that he couldn’t quite camouflage from Wilson. Woolliskraft smiled in amusement.
“You have a second degree concussion,” she told Wilson, continuing with the list of injuries. “You must have struck your head at some point, perhaps when you fell to the floor. You’re being admitted for observation. As soon as the films taken of your head are back, and I’m certain you don’t have anything more serious going on, I’ll give you something stronger than parecetamol for your pain. I have to go check on some other patients now but I’ll be back to talk to you more when the X-ray results return, okay?”
“Uh huh,” Wilson told her, moving his mouth as little as possible. “‘Hanks.”
She nodded and then left House and him alone, making certain that the curtain was closed to give them privacy. She gave House a knowing look right before she left that spurred Wilson’s curiosity, but he didn’t have it in him to ask about it just then.
House took his hands in his and then leaned down to kiss Wilson’s forehead tenderly. House was displaying a side of himself-the tender, loving side-that few people were lucky enough to see and which Wilson was still getting used to, but he definitely liked it.
“Do you remember anything that happened?” he asked Wilson.
Wilson thought hard for a few moments, and bits and pieces came back, which he was able to fit together to make a semi-cogent response. He began to write his answer down and then showed the paper to House.
“You honestly expect me to be able to read this chicken scratch?” House asked him, smirking. Wilson glared at him, in too much pain to appreciate his attempt at levity. House looked at the paper again.
I came by as planned. You didn’t answer door, I let myself in. Heard noise in bedroom-thought it was you. Was wrong. Knocked out of room by tall guy, black hair. He punched me in face. On floor now, he kicked me in back. I passed out then woke up here.
A pained expression flitted across House’s face as he read but then quickly disappeared as House reined in his emotions.
“Did you get a look at the guy’s face?” House asked somberly.
Wilson nodded, took paper pad back and wrote, Briefly. Seen him before twice. Once at resort, in lounge. Once at clinic earlier today. Think he’s been parked outside the condo a couple of times, when U R not there.
House read that and then swore softly and Wilson saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard. All color left his face.
“His name is Bohdan Boyko,” House told him softly, “Dominika’s quote-unquote boyfriend; her partner in crime. He’s Ukrainian, speaks limited English but reads and understands it well enough. If he’s been staking out the condo building, he suspects something. He’s watching you, you’re in danger.”
We knew that they’d be watching me ‘cause I’m your best friend, Wilson wrote. Doesn’t mean I’m in more danger than before, does it?
House looked at him as if he were an idiot. “You had the shit beaten out of you-what do you think?”
I caught him by surprise, Wilson argued. If I had been targeted, he would have attacked me on way home, or @ loft. He attacked to get away. Don’t like look in your eyes. What R U thinking?
“I can’t risk losing you,” House murmured. “Being around me is too dangerous now.”
No! Wilson scrawled and then underlined it twice. Too late to try to protect me. I’m in all the way. Won’t leave you.
“Wilson, use your head,” House told him, almost pleadingly. “If this is what they did to you because you caught Boyko off-guard, what will they do if they find out about us, that I told you about them?”
They already know-sure of it! Besides, doesn’t matter, Wilson insisted, his handwriting becoming less legible as his emotions intensified. U R thinking of dumping me to protect me-don’t. Please don’t push me away! Don’t need U to protect me! Risk I’m willing to take. I love U!
“I love you, too,” House whispered, swallowing hard again. “That’s why we can’t…we can’t be together anymore. I won’t be the reason somebody kills you.”
No! Wilson wrote frantically. House leaned in and kissed Wilson’s forehead again. Wilson grabbed him behind the neck, held him there.
“D’On’t ‘oo ‘dis,” Wilson pled, regardless of the pain, “‘Eese!” Tears were stinging his eyes.
House pulled Wilson’s hand away and straightened. He looked at the floor, his own eyes shining before turning and limping out of the bay, the curtain fluttering closed behind him. Wilson pounded the bed in frustration and pain, crying out throatily loud enough to bring a nurse to his bedside to check on him. He turned his head away from her, groaning in agony at the movement and squeezed his eyes shut in an attempt to hold back his tears. At that moment Wilson wished that Boyko ape had killed him.
Back to Ch. 16
To Ch. 18
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