lost that sense of balance
"The Night Swimmer"
House fic noir. Wilson's girlfriend is dead, and House is on the case. There's one thing to say about mankind: there's nothing kind about man.
Prelude.
When Allison Cameron was six and a half years old, she'd taken a small clay pot and filled it with dirt from the front yard. She kept it on the window sill in her bedroom and watered it every day for a week, until a slender green shoot slid up through the transplanted earth. As 16th century scientists believed in spontaneous generation, in flies produced by decay, so Allison believed that flowers simply came from the ground.
And as she grew older, the careless faith of childhood was replaced by the skepticism and knowledge of the well-educated adult; but still there remained the submerged belief that if only she were to wait, something might grow from the dry ground she stood upon.
1.
The phone rung sharply. He groaned and pulled the covers over his head. The phone rang again: three times, four times. He burrowed deeper into the bed.
In an adjoining room, the answering machine picked up the call.
House, for fuck's sake, answer your phone. I know you're there. Come on. It's important.
He swung his long slow body carefully off the bed, pressing his feet onto the carpet with reluctance. Light spilled through the gaps in the window shades. "Christ," he whispered, and dragged himself through the bedroom.
"Uh?" he said into the receiver.
"I need to talk," Wilson said. "Did I wake you up? It's three in the afternoon, House."
"I was awake. I, uh - "
"Can we meet somewhere?"
"I have today off. You're too much like work."
"House, please."
He could hear Wilson's heavy breathing, the slight rasping hitches and gulps. It meant somewhere not too public, but not too lonely, and he sure as shit didn't want to be stuck in his own apartment with Wilson crying into the sofa cushions.
"The bar near my place, half an hour from now. I'm charging you for my time. Working girls got to live too, you know."
He clicked the phone back down into the receiver without waiting for a reply. He hobbled over to a window and pulled the shades up, letting the warm sunlight flood the room.
"Well," he said to the world outside. "That's just great."
He huddled himself into a small corner of the room, keeping his whiskey close to himself and his eyes on the rest of the afternoon drunks. His leg was stretched out as comfortably as possible on the stiff leather seat, one hand on his glass and the other protectively wrapped around the bottle of pills in his coat pocket.
He knew all of them, and they never bothered to look at him, in the narcissistic seclusion of the alcoholic; if they had, it wasn't likely they would have come away with many firm memories. He was memorable when angry, and when smiling - which he rarely did. His hair was receding, shifting inevitably from brown to grey. He possessed an average face, in that worn-out sort of way: half soft indolence and half rough, unkempt passion, a beard bristling through his skin with the lazy defiance of the life-long bachelor. He dressed like he had no one to impress. There was a certain fierceness in the blue of his eyes, and maybe something pitiable in the tired wrinkles around them, and if anything were to stick in your mind that would be it, that gaze lingering somewhere in the back of your memory. That, and the limp: one lame leg and a hunched back like Atlas's, his tall frame compressed into something much less imposing, a polished-wood cane propping him up unevenly. He was fast-moving in his own awkward way, tending towards the hurried gait of wounded prey -
He wasn't the sort to want to be noticed.
The air freshened perceptibly, the front door opening and closing quickly with a short flash of sunlight. James Wilson crept in, hands shoved deep in his trouser pockets.
"Ahoy there, sailor," House said as he approached, and motioned to the single full glass in a small sea of empty ones. "I bought you a drink."
"I don't drink gin," he said, but he slid the glass closer to himself anyway, ducked his head into a shadow. His hair slid neatly over his eyes. "I've got a problem."
"You've got a thousand problems, Wilson."
"It's about Grace." His eyes flicked over to House and then back away again, resting on an unknown point; he rubbed the back of his neck with his hand and choked down half of his gin and tonic, spluttered (Amateur, House thought), pressed a thin wrist to his mouth. The exposed shirtcuff had the neat cut of expensive tailoring and the tell-tale bagginess of the professional worrier: it slid easily over his bones. He crossed his legs, uncrossed them, crossed again. His eyes skittered back to House, his thick eyebrows inching towards each other like love-struck caterpillars. "She's married."
"So are you."
"Only technically."
"So," House said slowly, stretching out the syllable. "Your new rose is growing on another man's vine. I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner. Adulterers get cancer too, you know."
"That's part A."
"And part B?"
Wilson twirled his glass in his hand, his fingers shaking; the dim light cast odd shadows on him, turning the sharply-pressed, quietly expensive shirt and immaculate haircut into something desperate, something strange and cruel.
House finished the last dregs of his whiskey and dug a crumpled pack of Camels from somewhere deep inside his coat pocket, lit a slightly bent cigarette with a practiced flick of his lighter. He waited.
"I - "
House leaned forward and tapped a small amount of ash into Wilson's empty glass.
"She's dead." Wilson pursed his lips and turned his head away, the caterpillars still struggling to meet in the pale smooth expanse of his forehead.
"You knew it'd happen." A small amount of empathy leaked into his voice, against his better judgement.
"I don't think it was - she was dying, but - "
He looked pointedly at House's cigarette; House, pointedly, took a slow deep drag.
"I don't know. I think I'm just being - "
House twisted the butt of his cigarette into the cracked wood tabletop and exhaled the last lungful of smoke into Wilson's face.
"- Paranoid," Wilson finished. He smiled crookedly, unhappily.
"Let me buy you another drink. You deserve it. Cry into a beer, make ridiculous confessions, fall off your chair. I'll drive you home."
"Mother told me never to accept gifts from strange men." He combed his fingers through his hair, tightened his tie, nodded at an unasked question. "I'll see you at work, House."
2.
Walking in through the front door, he caught his cane on a loose edge of carpeting and stumbled. Not enough to fall to the ground, but enough to feel the ghosting shudder where pain would have been, if not for the pills and morning pick-me-up - enough to be stared at.
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," he spat out, and most of the onlookers looked away. But Dr. Cameron had the ill grace to be there, and Dr. Cameron very rarely looked away.
"Are you okay?" she asked, her face fallen in that familiar way. Are you okay, how do you feel, I'm sorry for your loss; she committed the sin of misplaced compassion daily, as natural as drawing breath. It's a terrible waste of empathy, House thought - a terrible waste of love, she'll be empty before long.
Foreman, who had taken to tailing Cameron like a vaguely malevolent older brother, sniffed and sneered at her display. Emotions were very nearly unforgivable in the department, and he had no trouble following this rule; that, like many other things, he was sure to remember for the late hours when the holes in his memory began to bother him. Illness had made him forget more than he cared to admit, but at least - at the very least - he had not forgotten that.
"How do you feel?" Cameron persisted.
"I feel like a cripple," House said. "I feel like an asshole. I feel like eating a grilled cheese sandwich. Onwards and upwards, gentlemen." He pushed his way through the small crowd formed by Cameron's fear and Foreman's folded arms, tapped the elevator button with his cane.
Truthfully, he felt awful. The excitement of the previous night had eased into a thick cottony misery this morning; he smelled of cigarette smoke and Johnny Walker, his eyes were sore and bloodshot, his limp was more pronounced. He felt like hell, looked like hell, and when he forgot to not care, he pitied himself.
Once in the relative safety of his department, he folded himself into his favorite chair and half-listened as Foreman recited a list of possible patients. House waved a dismissive hand at some of them, stayed motionless at others - he was never interested, but it was best to look as if he was occasionally only pretending to be bored.
He thought of other things. He thought briefly about Cameron's vest ensemble that was approximately the same as all her other vest ensembles, and discreetly guided attention to her hips and breasts in approximately the same way; he idly imagined sliding the clothing off her body. He fell asleep somewhere after Cameron's lengthy story about a small boy with unexplained fainting spells. His closed eyes were hidden behind an opaque pair of sunglasses. He'd done it before, it was no matter. He was hardly needed at this idle stage of things.
He dreamt, dimly, that he was swimming, gliding through clean water - he used to swim, in the early stages of his rehabilitation. Stacy talked him into it, her breath hot on his neck, those lips promising everything in the world. Just for this one favor.
It was a long, long, very long list of indignities: struggling angrily out of his clothing and into swim trunks that weren't long enough to cover the scar; walking slowly to the pool, one hand braced against the wall for support, his physical therapist holding him up on the other side - some well-meaning boy fresh out of college, earnest and thickly muscled, hardly bending under House's weight. He'd hold his breath, and slip into the lukewarm water, his trainer's encouraging speeches echoing unpleasantly off the high tiled walls. His leg moved weakly below him, useless even when weightless.
He went at night, when the Social Security crowd had left and it was just him, the therapist, and a bored-looking attendant. It made no difference, except now he felt lonelier, smaller, floating below the cavernous ceiling, his labored breaths sounding tinny in his ears. He felt tired.
And afterwards, Stacy would drive him home, giving him surreptitious looks and asking quietly, carefully, "Was it nice?"
Swimming is supposed to be like flying: weightlessness, freedom: this is why old men in shower caps lower their unwieldy bodies into the shallow end of the pool: this is why House lowered his unwieldy body into the shallow end of the pool, feeling ridiculous and vulnerable, night after well-meaning night. Flying? He just felt like a cripple. Thoroughly grounded.
"It was awful," House said. "I hate swimming."
"You love swimming!" Stacy said forcefully, pursing her lips against the oncoming traffic, and the oncoming argument. It's expected of both of them by now.
"I used to love swimming," House grumbled, and he rolled his window all the way down. The wind pushed his hair back; he flipped off the first driver to catch his eye. "Back when I could do more than bobble around like a fucking buoy."
"House."
"Whatever."
"House" Foreman was staring down at him, his left eyebrow raised. "You paying attention?"
"I am paying exactly as much attention as needs to be paid."
He spent the rest of the day with the taste of chlorine in the back of his throat.
3.
"I think I stepped in something," Wilson said. He shifted in his seat and pulled up his leg to see the bottom of his shoe. "Yeah, okay, I don't know what that is."
"Is it a meat?"
"House, can we just - "
"Is it bigger than a breadbox?"
"House." Wilson tightened his mouth until his lips were flat and white.
He changed tactics. "So this girl. What makes you think someone kicked her bucket for her?"
"Nothing. I don't know. A feeling." He pushed his mashed potatoes around his plate, then bravely ate a forkful.
"See, this is why I get delivery. The people who work in this cafeteria are sadistic bastards who delight in making every food the same taste and consistency." House took an exaggerated bite of his roast beef sandwich and then started talking, spitting bits of meat and bread onto Wilson's tie. "So who'da dunnit?"
"What?"
"Whodadunnit?" He swallowed. "I thought everyone automatically showered cancer patients with rose petals and scented oils. And they're much too brave to off themselves."
"Her husband's weird."
"So he killed her? I thought you were supposed to be the normal one here. My landlady has a lazy eye, do you think she's got it in for me?"
"I shouldn't have said anything. Of course. I know that now, because in hindsight I realize that you're always an asshole instead of just frequently."
"Why must you malign me so, Jimmy?"
Wilson just shook his head, and left.
House finished his sandwich, and went over what they'd said. Wilson had a knack of making you feel as if you knew him without giving a single thing away. He had a wide, honest smile, but there was something vicious in his jawline, the tight knot of his tie. He had seven pens, six of which were completely unnecessary, tucked into his shirt pocket, and he talked in the same way: one thing was true, the other six statements were just distraction. House had the feeling that he was exactly where Wilson wanted him, doing exactly what he wanted him to do. House was predictable, he knew that much about himself. Whether Wilson thought House wouldn't notice any plays on his weakness for puzzles, or if he knew he'd notice but not care - House didn't know, and doubted he ever would. He doubted he even really cared. That, as he liked to say, wasn't the point. Not with Wilson.
4.
He had an appointment that afternoon with Cuddy; she was still on the fertility treatment. Once in a while he was tempted to throw out the syringe, push her over her desk, and get her pregrant the old-fashioned way. She was almost extremely attractive, but something indefinable kept him from ever actually laying a hand on her. The components were there, oh they were there: her sharp-heeled shoes, her artfully arranged hair, her impressive cleavage and strong legs.
She handed him the syringe and turned around. He didn't let his hands linger, though he didn't mind looking at the tense curve of her exposed thigh and calf, his mind resting for a short while on the determined, pinched expression almost certainly gracing her face. She was beautiful, but it was a cold and smooth beauty, no more sexual than a sculpture.
"You're done," House said. "Picked out your baby daddy yet?"
She smoothed down her shirt and skirt, then did it again. "I haven't decided."
"It's a selfish thing to do."
"What, picking sperm out of a bucket and trying to avoid the ones that look inbred?"
"No. The idea." He reached out and drew a line in the air, from her neck to her perfectly flat lower belly. He let his finger hover there. "You want to be wanted, need to be needed, and you need it to be unconditional. A husband is too much, a boyfriend's too much, and a one night stand would make you feel like shit - so you bypass it. None of the messy relationship issues, no sharing the remote or putting up with inlaws or condoms or blow jobs. No fucking."
He withdrew his hand slowly. "Creation without all the primordial muck. It's selfish."
"Go back to your patient, House."
"You know I'm right." He smiled wolfishly, and hobbled off.
He stormed the conference room, talking as he went. "So! Our patient! What's wrong with him? Any new symptoms?" He stopped in front of the white board, which had been wiped clean. "Whoa! Did Kim Jong-il stop by?"
Foreman raised an eyebrow and turned away.
"What's up?" House asked jovially.
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
Cameron sighed loudly. "We don't have a patient. We did, but it turned out to just be a mix-up in the paperwork, so we sent him back to the clinic, and I'm fairly certain he holds the record for quickest diagnosis here."
"Six minutes," Chase said. "Five to figure out that he was sent to the wrong department, one to shoo him onto the elevator." He tapped his pen against a half-finished crossword puzzle.
"Well, what was wrong with him?"
"Nothing. He's a hypochondriac."
"And why was he a hypochondriac?" House spoke slowly, as if trying to catch any stray bit of interest that might arise.
"Because he wasn't hugged enough as a child. Because he never got a damn pony. Who cares? It's out of our hands now, House. Go," Foreman flicked his fingers dismissively in the direction of House's office, "go play a video game or watch porn or something."
"Well. That's wonderful. First patient in a month and he's misplaced and/or faking; also, Dr. Foreman has an unnatural interest in my autoerotic activities. Does anyone have any real problems for me?"
Chase raised his hand. "Six letters, in the wake of each other."
5.
Allison Cameron was a good doctor, though she would never be a great one. It just wasn't quite in her. She'd come to accept it, if not consciously then subconsciously: she no longer stayed awake til the early morning studying journals, she no longer tried to impress. Still, she'd stay at home during the night, reading and replying to House's mail - each reply began with I regret to inform you and ended with the looping downsweep of the 'n' at the end of her name - and she made a point not to mention she'd done it unless asked - she was rarely asked.
She kept flowers: mums, gardenias, a small pot of Venus fly traps that would close gently beneath the press of her fingertip. She didn't have the space for roses, but she had a window box full of red and pink pansies. The one time she had mentioned her small indoor garden, House had laughed - she wasn't taken very seriously, in general - and then looked down at her and asked why.
She thought it was sad that he had to ask what the point of flowers was: "They're flowers, " she had said. "They don't need a reason."
House had told her once that she liked to fix things, but House was very often nearly right with emotional diagnoses, nearly but not quite: it was the loneliness that came with broken people that suckered her in, that made her throat close up with sentimentality. Anything, anything but loneliness, that creeping rotting resignation to living only in your own head. She had a deep, crippling sympathy for the unloved, the put-upon, the victims of injustice. She had a hard time doing anything about it, but figured it was the thought that counted. She kept a memory of each casualty she met, tended it like a plant, like a vine growing and growing inside her until there was no longer room for anything else.
She lived alone, but she herself was not lonely - at least, she hoped she wasn't; it seemed the sort of thing that could easily disguise itself as something else. Tiredness, or frustration. She had her plants, she had friends who would call. She had her job, her co-workers, she had her errands and knitting patterns and she had a hard time sleeping.
6.
House dreamt of metal, cold gleaming metal: machinery growing over his hands, closing his bones into a fist. He dreamt of the night, streets slick with rain and impossibly, impossibly black.
He woke up five minutes before his alarm went off.
"There's always free cheese in the mousetrap, Steve. Gotta be careful," he told his rat, and then got his coat.
It was cold in the morgue. He pulled the plastic from the body, a nervous girl in scrubs hovering behind him. He slid his gloved fingers along the cheek, jaw, neck; over the short hair and narrow bones.
"I had blood tests done," he said in a conversational tone. "Came up with some interesting stuff. Funny thing is, none of it was mentioned on the autopsy report."
The girl was silent.
"What's your name?"
"Sophia Lawson."
"You know, Sophia, sometimes I do stupid things because I can't think of anything else to do. Now, why would you do something stupid?"
"I don't know what you're talking about, Dr. House, I - "
"Because really, that was a dumb thing to do."
"He paid us," she said. "I've got bills to -"
"Who paid you?"
She trembled, sallow under the unforgiving morgue lights, looking small and lost in her grey-green scrubs.
He thought of making some buddy-buddy 'we're all crooks here' move, but instead he just pulled out his wallet and flicked though the crisp bills. "How much did he pay you?"
She turned her head, and he followed her gaze: they both stared for a minute. "When you can't speak, you can't lie," he said. She stayed silent.
"How about this. I keep my money, and instead give you the gift of never telling anyone you were involved with this."
He stopped off in a washroom and tried to get the smell of latex off his hands, rubbing the hot water into the spots of coldness lingering at his fingertips. He paged Chase, and then sat down on the bench, tapping his cane slowly against the tiled floor.
"You called, massa?" Foreman's arms were folded again. One day, House thought, they would stick like that.
House raised the handle of his cane to his chin. "How much money would it take to make you keep your mouth shut about a crime?"
"Depends on the crime," Foreman said.
"Not for all the money in the world," Cameron said.
"I'd do just about anything for ten million," Chase said.
"In dollars or pounds?"
"Oh ho ho ho, clever."
"Are you about to buy us out?" Cameron asked, hands on narrow hips, eyes bright.
"You can't be bought, remember?" He took a step forward. She took a step back. "I wonder, though."
"Everyone's got a breaking point," Chase said absentmindedly, leaning back against a sink. "Everyone's got a price."
7.
"Bleach," House said. "Plus a dozen other nasty household items. They really should regulate that stuff more."
"What?"
"Your girl drank bleach." House leaned over and took three of Wilson's potato chips.
"Well."
"Exactly."
"She wasn't the only woman I was seeing," Wilson said, apropos of nothing. "I slept with her, I slepth with - "
"Stop, please. I don't need to know how much of a slut you are. Besides, I can't imagine you naked. What do you do without all those pens to fiddle with?" He gestured at Wilson's pocket protector. "Without shoes to scuff in that aw-shucks way that women love? And why do you do it, anyway? One woman not enough?"
"We've been through this before, haven't we? I don't know. I get lonely. I get bored. Things happen."
"I can't tell if you're weak or just very, very cruel."
"Maybe I'm both."
"You're everything to everyone and nothing to yourself, Wilson. One of these days you're gonna wake up and realize you're fucked."
"Is that really worse than being nothing to anyone and everything to yourself?"
House paused, and thought for a moment. "No, but it still sucks."
8.
House sat outside Grace's widower's house in Wilson's plain grey Lexus - his own wheels were too memorable. His gun was heavy against his thigh. It was eleven at night, he'd been here for twenty minutes. He'd been waiting, maybe procrastinating, staring at the trees casting shadows against the street lamps, ducking and weaving in the wind.
"Here goes nothing," he said cheerfully, his voice flattening in the dry air of the newly-reupholstered car. He opened the door, stumped out, slammed the door closed and stumped up the walkway. He knocked on the door, once, twice, three times.
"I'd like to have a word," he said as soon as the door was opened, and pushed his way in. "I'm a friend of your dead wife's lover. Well, he wasn't her lover when she was dead, that's just creepy."
"What can I do for you, sir?" The man was drunk. His voice was thick and slurred, but his face seemed unfinished somehow, like an artist's rejected sketch, crumpled up and thrown in a wastebasket then rescued and smoothed back out. His eyes could have been eraser smudges, his mouth a rip in the paper. He wore a thick cable-knit sweater and an air of inexpressible tiredness. He offered House a drink.
"I'd like," House said, "to talk about your ex-wife."
As they talked, House tuned most of the conversation out: the words people say in this sort of situation are, for the most part, untrue. It's a given.
The man finished. He knew nothing, he said, knew nothing but suspected a lot of things. He said that occasionally they'd talked, or she'd talked and he'd tried to change the subject, about some sort of suicide but - he said with a rueful grin - that he hadn't the strength. To do it, to let her, to do anything at all. He offered House another drink, and refilled his own glass as well, and then again.
"I believe you," House said, then saw himself to the door.
As he walked stiffly down the walkway, he realized they hadn't even introduced themselves.
9.
He sat behind his desk, waiting. The lights were dimmed, his coffee grown cold: he held the pistol loosely in his right hand, clicking the safety on and off. Wilson was slumped in a chair in the corner of the office. He wondered, briefly, if he should tell Wilson. He decided against it. It wasn't worth it, not quite.
"So," Wilson said, and rubbed the back of his neck.
"Hitler painted roses," House announced.
"Right."
"The Unabomber probably bought a lot of Girl Scout cookies every year."
"Where's this going?"
"We're all afraid of the monsters under the bed. Maybe, maybe that's us."
"I'm not following."
House looked up and smiled. "No, you wouldn't." He looked at the gun, his hand. The streetlight reflected strangely off the metal. "But we never really know, do we. How much we're lying to ourselves."
Wilson's beeper went off. "All the time," he said, twisting to read the number at his hip. "As much as we can. I'll pick you up a set of watercolors, okay? I have to go."
House sat waiting, though now he wasn't sure what for.
10.
Cameron was exhausted, not from working but from the tedium of standing idle. She'd killed far too much time yesterday. House hadn't said a word, Chase had started on a new book of Sudoko, and Foreman had been looking for something, anything to do, even if that something was a fight. It'd been a long day, and she'd barely slept at all last night. It'd been long week, for that matter. Long day, long week, long year, a hell of a long life, though really so short in comparison with the rest of the world. She wasn't complaining, she was just - she was tired, that's all. She rubbed the muscles of her neck with her palms, leaving smudges of dirt and fertilizer on her skin.
But still, she worked. She pressed the last bits of dirt around a small cutting of a miniature rose bush, breathing in the smell of the earth. She wiped her fingers on a towel; she hummed a song she didn't quite know under her breath; she tipped a mug of water gently into the pot, watching the dirt clump up and break apart under the tiny rivers. The cutting grew, slowly.