Drabbles: A Part of Me
Title: A Part of Me
Fandom: House, MD
Pairings: House/Wilson, Wilson/f
Rating: G through R
Length: 1000 words
Beta: t_eyla
Spoilers: Vague spoilers and references through to "Merry Little Christmas"
Author's Note: Ten 100 word drabbles to accompany Kurt Nilsen's "A Part of Me" album, because one night I realised it was chock full of yummy Wilson angst.
A Part of Me
1. Singing the Song
Adjoining balconies offered strong acoustics, the music of the latest differential resonating around his office. Two of the ducklings had been sent away to supplement scans, samples and the patient’s story; the thud of a ball against a not-so-distant wall had been punctuated with a curt, “Get Wilson!” before the steady beat of footsteps that grew louder and closer.
Moments later Foreman moved around Wilson’s open door, apology dominating his demeanour. Wordlessly Wilson followed him around and through to Diagnostics, into a sea of loose papers, scattered books and unintelligible scribbles in marker pen.
House still didn’t have an answer.
2. Day Off
It took three patients dying in one morning for Wilson to cave into Cuddy’s suggestion that he take a day off. Which was why he found himself staring at a cloudless sky from his hotel room window early the next morning, wondering what he was going to do.
Some time later the door opened. “Room service!”
Before Wilson could protest, House pushed a probably stolen trolley inside, and got it over to the bed before poking Wilson with his cane.
“I’m doing an extra six clinic hours for this,” he said bluntly. Then, “Got a DVD player in here somewhere?”
3. My Street
Sometimes at the corner of Fifth and Victoria, Wilson would stop and look around. Lost in the rush hour pedestrianism, hoping to catch a face or two, maybe even one he recognised. He doubted that Peter ever came here anymore, or Rachel; his first wife, who had also liked to stop and look around, although she liked looking at people rather than for missing brothers, before she too had left.
House had followed him here once, and found out about Peter, although after all this time Wilson had kept the story of the first meeting with Rachel to himself.
4. Never Easy
Two days after Christmas, Wilson returned to House’s apartment. Let himself in with the key he’d never been asked to return, and was greeted by the sound of silence and the sight of sterility.
Tritter had been here. He could tell.
He found House sitting on the toilet, with the stolen, empty prescription bottle. Looked up at Wilson with a haunted look in his eyes.
“I don’t know how to change.” Quietly, like a whisper, and just like that the anger and fear and blame lessened to a dull, echoing roar.
Wilson stepped closer and took the bottle from House.
5. On My Mind
Looking back, Wilson knew why he hadn’t moved back in with House. The renewed closeness that had built up while he slept on a couch and tried to convince himself that with the right phrasing Julie would give them another chance - it had become almost suffocating.
In a matter of weeks, Wilson had gotten used to coming home after work to company, conversation and someone who appreciated his cooking.
And it was why he’d moved out. There was only so much of House - or anyone - that he could take without wanting... needing there to be something that wouldn’t be there.
6. Before You Leave
People often assumed that before the infarction House had somehow been different. He’d smiled more, occasionally petted kittens.
Wilson knew better though, that House had remained largely unchanged from before to after, the only real difference being the increasingly embittered reaction to what he couldn’t do instead of what he could, the Vicodin addiction fuelling the downward spiral.
So just as House put aside a few moments a day to torment Wilson about his love life or medical specialisation, so Wilson made it his mission to make House smile once a day, even if it was only on the inside.
7. For You
“Sex complicates things.”
It hadn’t stopped them. Late one Thursday night, tumbling onto the bed like teenagers, lasting about as long as well. Wilson didn’t know where the boundary between ‘need’ and ‘want’ had been in those ten, fifteen minutes, only that somewhere along the line he’d started concentrating on House’s movements, the noises he made low in his throat... and the hospital, hotel, everything left of his crappy life... everything forsaken for the moment.
It wasn’t love. Other four letter words, yes, but not that. The dynamics had shifted, the lines no longer parallel.
A new kind of complicated.
8. On the Road
Almost a year to the day after they’d split, Wilson found a “For Sale” sign outside his third marital home. Part of him was surprised it had taken Julie this long, the rest of him past caring anymore.
A week after that he’d called for his mail at the hotel’s reception desk to be told that his room had been leased to a ‘von Liebermann’ after Wilson’s apparent cancellation. He stormed up to Diagnostics that day, only to be stopped by a photograph of a couch covering the name on his office door.
Taped to the back was a key.
9. Part of Me
He wasn’t aware of the pattern until Julie. The number of lunchtimes and television marathons spent with House grew inversely proportional to the levels of affection given by his wife and moments not spent in arguments. Official functions became an exercise in strategy, keeping the wife and best friend apart for long enough that social mores could be made to others’ satisfaction.
The death knells of marriage were sounded by littered takeaway boxes in front of House’s television and green ties in office drawers; the worst part always that he’d left his wives long before they knew it was over.
10. No Excuse
The third mistake had been to tell House. The first had been to believe that a relationship opened the parameters to change, and the second mistake had been to accept that the first mistake was, in fact, a mistake, and he couldn’t change anymore than House could quit Vicodin.
He spent two lonely nights in the apartment before House reappeared on the second morning, scruffy and dirty. House limped into the bathroom without looking at him, and came out thirty minutes later, standing in the bedroom doorway while Wilson got dressed.
“Not everybody lies,” he told House quietly, who nodded.