House M.D. Fanfiction: All Choked Up
Title: All Choked Up
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.
Spoiler Alert: This story involves spoilers for all seasons of House M.D. up to and including Season 8, Episode 22: Everybody Dies.
Characters/pairings: House, Wilson, OMC, and a restaurant full of OCs. / House/Wilson friendship with strong UST.
Word Count: ~3800
Rating: PG-13(T)
A/N: Written for the Camp Sick!Wilson 2012 “Meet Me in the Mess Hall” challenge at the sick!Wilson community on LJ. It’s written from House’s perspective and some might say it includes sick!House as well as sick!Wilson. Food does figure as a primary focus point in the sick!Wilson aspect of this fic. Based in the same universe as my fics Once Bitten, Celebration, and Beating the Odds, from here forward known as the Bitten ‘verseJ
This is unbetaed, so I apologize for all the errors I missed after reading it through a couple of times.
All Choked Up
It was getting late when they drove their motorcycles into the parking lot of a non-descript mom and pop restaurant just off the interstate. Both House and Wilson were exhausted but they hadn’t eaten since breakfast. It had been important to Wilson that they reach Scottsdale by the end of the weekend, though he wouldn’t explain why. He’d told House that he wanted to try out some of the famous golfing in the Phoenix, Arizona area, but that didn’t explain the urgency. It wasn’t like they were going to roll up the golf courses and move them somewhere else before they got there. When House had demanded to know what the rush was about, Wilson had sighed heavily and rolled his eyes and House hadn’t had the heart to press the matter any further. His motto for this last adventure with his best friend before he died was ‘Whatever Wilson wants, Wilson gets’.
House was getting tired of fast food and greasy spoon restaurants, missing some of the delicious meals Wilson had prepared for them in the past, in the days BC, or Before Cancer. He also missed sitting on the sofa with his feet up, a beer in one hand, remote control for the TV in the other, and Wilson sitting next to him. At the time that kind of evening had been happening House had taken it-and Wilson-for granted, assuming that they had decades before either of them died and that House would be the first to go. Now the former diagnostician rued not valuing those simple times-and Wilson-more than he had. Life would never be that simple for either of them again.
The menu at that diner was ubiquitous with every other diner and truck stop they’d been to over the past couple of weeks since leaving Princeton behind them except for one item: Dragon’s Breath chicken wings. This diner boasted that they were the hottest wings anywhere. It was a bold claim to make-House loved hot, spicy food, the more scorching the better. Having moved around the globe as the child of a Marine pilot, from base to base, he’d been introduced to all kinds of exotic fare, including food hot enough to burn the lining out of one’s GI tract from mouth to anus if not accompanied by some other food or beverage item capable of neutralizing it somewhat. He was highly doubtful the owners of this out-of-the-way establishment could produce something that was hotter than anything he’d ever had before. Determined to prove it, House ordered a pound of Dragon’s Breath wings with a side of fries and a pint of draught Pale Ale. Wilson, thinking wings sounded good, ordered his medium hot with a glass of Budweiser.
“Wuss,” House accused his friend as the server left their table. “Wilson, you’re dying-live a little before you do.”
“I don’t want to spend the last five months of my life with a perforated stomach, thank you,” Wilson replied drily before rubbing his bewhiskered face with his hands and yawning tiredly. “We don’t all have cast iron intestines.”
House noticed how easily Wilson was tiring these days, an early sign of the disease not so slowly consuming him from within. He said nothing about it; it would have only caused Wilson to worry when there was nothing he was willing to do about it. Still, seeing such things was hard on House, provoking strong feelings of fear and helplessness, and House hated his own emotions. Still, he couldn’t help but feel protective of his best friend.
“There’s a turn off to a campsite about a half-mile down the line,” he told Wilson quietly as his eyes roamed the dining room without enthusiasm. “The next town with a motel is fifty miles from here. I’m ready to call it a night. I say we stop and tent it tonight.” He rubbed his damaged thigh, which was throbbing as usual, for effect. His eye found something interesting; an old player piano, an antique that appeared to have been taken care of, sat against the far wall. He wondered if it actually worked and if so, then whether it was one that could be played manually as well.
“Yeah,” Wilson answered, and the tone of his voice was odd enough to draw House’s attention back to him. The former oncologist was looking at him knowingly, a little frown with the eyebrows above fond burgundy-brown eyes. House knew he hadn’t fooled him; that he was suggesting they stop early and camp for the night not because of his own fatigue but because of Wilson’s. “Sounds okay. The sky is clear so it’s going to be a cool night, though.”
“Then we’ll have to zip our sleeping bags together and cuddle to keep warm,” House teased, watching Wilson for his reaction to the suggestion. Wilson stared at him for just a moment, but it was long enough to set House to wondering if the younger man hadn’t actually been considering it.
“I’m not sharing body heat or my sleeping bag with you no matter how well you wine and dine me,” Wilson told him, raising an eyebrow and exchanging suggestive look for suggestive look. Ah yes, House thought. Some things never changed. Wilson still, after all these years and all of the homoerotic jokes and comments House had made since returning to Wilson’s life after his stint in prison, thought he was only joking.
The truth of the matter, however, was that House was just about ready to make a serious and obvious pass at him when their server returned with their beers before rushing away again. He breathed suddenly and hard through his nose in disgust. The moment was gone…for now, anyway.
Wilson apparently noticed that. “Something wrong?”
House wanted to say yes, that everything was wrong and had been since that day a month before when Wilson had announced to him out of the blue that he had cancer, but he kept that to himself. House shook his head curtly before rising to his feet and grabbing his beer in his left hand, his cane in his right.
“Going to check that piano out,” he told Wilson softly. He limped across the room, feeling Wilson’s eyes bore into his back the entire way. He grabbed a cocktail napkin off the small bar along the way and used it under his mug when he set it down on the top of the piano. His long fingers traced the intricate carvings in the mahogany wood, then barely touched the genuine ivory and ebony keys as he silently played scales and imagined what it would sound like in his head. Just doing that brought a sad smile to his lips and a far-away look in his blue eyes. He startled when an unexpected voice spoke from directly behind him.
“It’s a beauty, ain’t it?”
House turned to face the author of those words, a small, elderly man who stood a foot shorter than he did and carried a cane of his own.
“Yes,” House agreed, looking back at the piano. “Do you know if it works?”
“Sure do,” the old fellow told him. “It was my grandmother’s. It works as good as the day it was made. I take good care of it. It plays itself or a lever can be flipped and a person can play it if they want to. I keep it tuned, though my rheumatiz keeps me from being able to play it myself and most folk don’t appreciate the music on the reels anymore. The name’s Jackson, by the way.” He held out a shaky, wrinkled hand that was obviously twisted and distorted from arthritis.
House looked at the hand for a moment and then gently shook it, conscious of the pain that Jackson must suffer from it. “May I try it?” House asked respectfully, recognizing another piano lover and musician at heart in the senior. “I play, but I’ve been on the road and haven’t had the chance, lately.”
The old man shrugged then nodded. “Sure, knock yourself out. Let me shift the lever for ya.” He shuffled toward the side of the piano and reached behind it, pulling on something. He then gave House what he assumed was supposed to be a thumbs up. House gave him a nod of appreciation, then pulled out the bench and sat down. He stretched his fingers a bit before deciding what he was going to play and placing them lightly on the keys. He could sense Jackson standing behind him, looking over his shoulder but ignored him. He closed his eyes and began to play flawlessly.
“Für Elise,” Jackson murmured approvingly. “I remember teaching my granddaughter how to play that.”
House didn’t care about Jackson or his granddaughter. He was playing this for Wilson.
He only stopped when he heard the crashing of a chair as it was overturned and hit the floor, a glass rolling off a table and shattering, and a few gasps and worried murmurs from across the restaurant. Spinning around on the bench, House could see Wilson standing up at their table, appearing to be choking and grabbing at his own throat. Their food had arrived, and apparently something had gotten lodged. Their server rushed to his side and began to pound on Wilson’s back.
House hopped across the room as quickly as he could, forsaking his cane.
“Stop that!” he snarled at her, pushing his way between Wilson and her. “You want it to lodge deeper?”
“I’ll call for an ambulance,” she told House, her eyes as wide as saucers, and hurried away. He knew there was no time to wait for an ambulance with a paramedic to save the day. As much as he had been trying not to draw attention to himself and his medical expertise (Dr. Gregory House was dead, after all), he wasn’t going to stand back and let Wilson die five months ahead of schedule.
Positioning himself directly behind Wilson, House wrapped his arms around his friend’s chest and formed a fist with both hands, placing it in position just below the sternum and up against Wilson’s diaphragm. He began to thrust shortly and forcefully upward and inward to Wilson’s body, performing the perfect Heimlich maneuver. He heard a couple of voices criticizing him, saying that he should wait for the professionals to do that. House rolled his eyes in disgust. Wilson’s face was already purple, his lips becoming cyanotic. By the time the ‘professionals’ got there he’d be dead.
“Come on, Wilson, give it up!” House muttered, keeping his panic in check and forcing a well practiced clinical calm over himself.
After several thrusts the offending item finally dislodged and came up and out of his windpipe, landing a few feet away in the floor. It was a chunk of chicken meat attached to one of the smaller bones.
A few people applauded, others warned him about possible lawsuits if House had broken any of Wilson’s ribs, but House ignored them; his complete focus was on his wheezing and coughing best friend.
“So hot!” Wilson croaked between coughs, flailing toward the table and discovering that his beer had been spilt in the mishap. “Burning! Need water, House! Please!”
“Forget the ambulance and bring him a glass of whole milk, quick!” House shouted at the server who was on the phone with an emergency dispatcher. He looked back to Wilson, righting his chair and helping him to sit in it. Wilson’s face was still beet red, his lips swollen, drooling, tears streaming down his cheeks unabated. If the situation hadn’t been so serious a few moments before, House would have found Wilson’s appearance and behavior hilarious.
“Ahh, burning so bad!” Wilson bemoaned pathetically.
Curious now, House picked up a wing from the plate set down in front of Wilson and sniffed it. Immediately his nose began to run and burn. He raised an eyebrow in surprise, then grabbed a wing from the plate at his place and sniffed it. There was no burning caused by that one at all. House sighed and rolled his eyes, now understanding what had happened.
“They gave you the Dragon’s Breath Wings that were supposed to be for me and put your wimpy wings at my place,” House told him whether or not Wilson was at all interested in hearing what he had to say. “You inhaled suddenly in shock the moment the burn from the chilies hit and drew that hunk of wing into your windpipe. Water will only spread the burn; you need something that will neutralize it.”
The server appeared as if on cue with a large glass of milk. House took it from her and handed it to Wilson, who began to gulp it down too quickly. House grabbed the glass from him.
“Easy, or you’ll choke on this, too, numbskull,” House told him, annoyed. He handed the glass back once he had Wilson’s attention. “Slow down, hold the milk in your mouth for a while, swish it around, then swallow and repeat. It can’t neutralize the capsaicin and coat your mouth if it goes straight down your throat!”
Wilson glared resentfully at him but followed House’s direction, nevertheless. After a few swallows he began to relax as the milk succeeded at neutralizing the worst of the burn.
“Nothing to see here, folks,” Jackson told the other diners, herding them back to their tables with a genial smile. “Free dessert for everybody.”
House sat down wearily in his seat and exchanged plates with Wilson.
“Careful, House!” Wilson said quickly in warning, his eyes open wide. “Those are incredibly hot!”
With a smirk House took a bite out of one of his wings. They call this hot? Bah! His eyes still defiantly staring into Wilson’s, House waved over the server.
“It needs something,” he told her. “Bring me the bottle of hot sauce.”
Wilson glared and shook his head at House, who found this very amusing. Wilson, gotta love him, House thought to himself. The man was a wimp, but he was his wimp and if anyone else called him that they would have House to answer to for it.
Jackson came up to their table, carrying House’s cane to him. “Meal’s on the house, gents,” he told them with an apologetic smile. “So’s dessert, and I promise that the apple pie is made with mild cinnamon and piled high with vanilla ice cream.”
…
It was nearly dark by the time they pulled up at their camping spot and pitched their tent using the light from their bikes’ headlamps and the pale light from the quarter-moon to see what they were doing. As Wilson had predicted, it was a chilly Colorado evening and the wind had picked up just enough to make it that much colder. House offered to build them a fire, but Wilson was tired and wanted to go straight to bed. House decided that wasn’t such a bad idea.
After finding a bush to relieve himself behind (the lone outhouse for the twenty-five site campground was too damned far away to bother heading to in the dark, as far as House was concerned), the former diagnostician joined Wilson in their three man tent which was barely big enough for the two of them. Wilson was already wrapped up in his cocoon-like sleeping bag with his back turned to House. He could hear Wilson’s teeth chattering.
“Wilson,” House said with a sigh.
“W-what?”
“I wasn’t kidding about zipping our sleeping bags together,” House told him. “Our shared body heat will keep us from hypothermia. I know that I’m irresistible but I trust you not to jump my bones while I’m sleeping.”
“As tempting as sharing body heat with you sounds,” Wilson responded in his patented sardonic way, “I’ll pass. You sleep in just your underwear and that makes me…uncomfortable. Go to sleep House.”
“Well, if you’re that insecure in your heterosexuality, then forget I said anything,” House taunted, pulling off his shirt and pants so that he was only in his boxers and a thin undershirt. He opened his sleeping bag and climbed in, using a pillowcase stuffed with some of his clothes as a pillow.
“Wha-? Insecure in my heterosex-? What is that supposed to mean?” Wilson huffed, rolling over to face him.
“It means that you’re intimidated about being under the covers with another man in his underwear because you don’t trust yourself not to get a boner, that’s what,” House told him, glad that it was pitch dark in the tent and Wilson couldn’t see the smile on his face. “It’s alright, I understand. A lot of men don’t realize their true sexual identity until middle age sets in. Then they are mystified by the truth because they’ve just spent the better part of their lives living in denial. You’re not alone, Wilson.”
“I am not insecure nor uncertain about my sexual identity,” Wilson told him testily. “I have not been living in denial. Now shut up and go to sleep.”
“Okay,” House replied, shrugging. “If you say so. ‘Night Wilson.” He stared up at the ceiling of the tent, waiting in silence.
House had counted to twenty before Wilson spoke up again. “You don’t honestly think I’m gay, do you?”
House turned his head in Wilson’s direction. “I think you are someone who’s spent his entire life trying to please everybody but himself and working at appearing to be normal, whatever the hell ‘normal’ is. For a little while, when you were trying to be Kyle Calloway, I had hoped you would cast off everyone’s expectations and decide to be the real you for once, but that didn’t happen. I don’t want you to be Kyle, but Jesus, Wilson! You’re dying and you still can’t be honest with yourself about who and what you are and what you really want out of life! If you can’t do that now, when can you? Time is running out-or are you going to keep yourself tied up in that pretzel of yours and die a phony? Tick-tock, Wilson. What’s it going to be?”
When Wilson didn’t reply, House figured he’d said too much, pushed too far-but damn it! It was time! It was bad enough that he was losing Wilson, but he didn’t want to lose him never being certain exactly who the real Wilson was or could have been. He loved him too much to let him die that way.
House swallowed hard against the grief that threatened to show itself. He loved Wilson, loved him more than he had ever loved anybody in his entire life, and the thought of being left behind, alone in this damned cold world without him in only a few months, was killing him, too. His best friend was so close, and yet still so far away. Why couldn’t Wilson be honest? Why couldn’t he change his mind about fighting to stay with House for as long as he possibly could? Why did life have to continue being shitty and hopeless? Earlier at the restaurant, when Wilson was literally choking to death, it had all become so clear to House how painful it was going to be when Wilson stopped breathing permanently.
With sobbing becoming a definite possibility, House crawled out of his sleeping bag, quickly pulled his clothes back on and hurried out of the tent. He hobbled to the other side of their site. In the dim moonlight he could see where he was going and sat down on a tree stump that had been left there after being used by someone to chop firewood on. He hugged himself against the chill and sobbed silently.
Why wasn’t he important enough to Wilson to fight to be with him for as long as possible? His entire life was Wilson, now. Actually, that had been the case for a very long time, but in the past he’d been able to distract himself from that fact by his work, his porno, his short and ill-fated dalliance with Cuddy, and his drugs. He didn’t have those things now.
As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Gregory House had burned to death in a warehouse fire. He’d forsaken everything for Wilson, to be there with him and for him at the end. When Wilson died, where would that leave him, House, the dead diagnostician who, if he were still ‘alive’ would be running from the law?
House knew it had been his choice to fake his own death, and yet he hadn’t really had much of a choice; rotting in prison for the last days of Wilson’s life hadn’t been an option. So here he was, watching the love of his life give up and die without a fight, without a second thought to how this was all impacting him and wishing for all the world that he could die before Wilson so he wouldn’t have to watch the life leave him and be left behind to grieve and try to carry on with the better half of his heart torn out and gone.
He covered his face with his hands, hiding his tears from even the darkness.
The weight of a hand coming to rest on his shoulder made him look up. Silhouetted against the quarter-moon, Wilson looked down at him. House could barely make out the serious expression on his face.
“What’s wrong?” House asked gruffly, wiping the tears off his face.
Wilson shrugged. “My throat still hurts from that bone I choked on. I was going to grab the water bottle out of my saddlebag.” His voice sounded strange-thick and husky.
“Okay,” House acknowledged, feeling incredibly uncomfortable having been caught crying like a baby. He’d promised Wilson he would accept his decision not to undergo treatment for his cancer, even if he hated it. House didn’t want Wilson to think he was trying to guilt him somehow. “I just…needed some air.”
Wilson nodded even though they both knew better; he chose not to push the issue, much to House’s relief. He grabbed the bottle from his bike and then headed back for the tent and stopped before going back inside. He turned to face House again.
“I was thinking about it,” Wilson said thoughtfully, his voice quiet, “and it makes sense-zipping the sleeping bags together. It’s a good survival technique. Just…just keep your pants on, okay? I’m too tired for honesty tonight.”
A smile tugged at the corners of House’s mouth, again thankful for Wilson’s subtle graciousness. He nodded.
“Okay.”
Wilson nodded, too, and went back into the tent. House could hear him zipping their sleeping bags together before settling down again. When he could hear Wilson’s quiet snoring House returned to the tent and climbed in to the sleeping bag with Wilson, pants on. He moved as close to Wilson’s sleeping form as he could without actually touching him; reveling in the warmth and comfort radiating from Wilson’s still living body, House allowed himself to drift off to sleep.
~fin~