Prompt #52 - The Photograph (PG)
Title: The Photograph
By:
daasgrrl
Rating: PG
Words: 1,615
Prompt: #52 Wilson as Dorian Grey in the modern world
Disclaimer: All hail David Shore
Notes: Thanks very much to
evila_elf for beta (and apologies for forgetting while trying to get all the formatting right!)
The Picture of Dorian Grey, for anyone unfamiliar with it, is the story of a young man who remains beautiful, despite his many vices and evil deeds. He has a painting of himself done in the prime of his youth, which he keeps in the basement (correction from
bloodanna: in the room at the top of the stairs), and it is the painting which ages and becomes ugly, instead of him. In the end the painting is destroyed, and so is he. Although this has obvious possibilities for Wilson, I didn’t want to retell the story; this fic is very much a variation on the theme rather than a straight rendering.
Written Feb/March 2006, hence before the fallout from Wilson's marriage breakup. Later became the basis for a separate, much longer fic, Nothing Left to Lose, which is why the themes may sound familiar if you’ve read that one.
***
There is a photograph.
A single subject fills most of the frame; it is not an informal snapshot, but a studied portrait. The man sits in a cream-colored leather sofa, smiling at the camera. It is not an open smile, speaking of warmth and friendship, but one tinged with cruelty, teeth bared not in submission, but displayed in triumph. It is the smile of a man accustomed to getting anything he wants; and the things he wants are many. He wears a dark, beautifully tailored suit with a white shirt and sober, striped, navy blue tie, and sits slightly angled to one side, one ankle crossed lightly over the other. His black shoes are visible in the bottom of the portrait, and are buffed to a soft gleam. One hand rests on the arm of the chair, and it is adorned with a plain, heavy signet ring made of gold.
His hair is dark and wavy, cut to accentuate the fine, pale, planes of his face, and he has correspondingly dark eyes. There is a finely veiled malice in them, almost a violence, as though the subject could stand up at any moment and strike the photographer to the ground. Despite the constricting suit, the casual pose, the subject nevertheless gives the impression of movement barely restrained. But for this moment he remains in the chair, afternoon sunlight streaming in through the long windows to one side, bathing him in a golden glow. The glow is reminiscent of angels, but the angel he resembles fell from Heaven long ago.
Wilson keeps this photograph at home, in his dresser. Lately, with the passing of another counted year, it has begun to haunt him.
Some nights, when Julie is asleep, he takes it out and looks at it. On the bad days, the days where it seems all he does is to tell one patient after another that they will suffer, and suffer, and most likely die. He tries to leave them with the thin silver thread of hope, and sometimes he speaks the truth, but more often than not they look into his eyes and understand that his words of comfort are exactly that, and no more. Sometimes he feels like Death personified, carrying a sheaf of medical reports instead of a scythe. He hates it when they thank him for their pain.
Or in the aftermath of another domestic argument - and those arguments have been increasing of late - about money, about the children not yet and possibly never to be born, about the house and its myriad of cracks and tiles and kitchen cabinets. About sex, or the lack of it. He has not strayed outside of this marriage, not yet, although he alternately flirts with and consoles many women both at work and outside of it, some of them very attractive. He likes the way they need him, and perhaps he likes the knowledge that if things with Julie become irreparable, that there are still possibilities for him to explore.
Or the days he returns home particularly exasperated with House, the other mainstay of his life. It’s not easy being his friend, and sometimes Wilson wonders why he does it. Part of it is knowing that House simply doesn’t have anyone else to depend on; that if he just walked away there would be no-one looking out for him at all. Perhaps there’s more vanity than truth to that assumption - Cameron’s still a little in love with him, after all, and Cuddy fusses over him and his doings with the air of an irate mother hen. Maybe he could leave House to his own devices, and he’d survive. And Wilson’s lunch trays, ego, and shins would all remain undamaged, for a change. But he’d miss House’s sharp wit, the way he sees things others miss, the rare, awkward shows of concern. The times he pretends to act like a real human being. He is, and has been for many years, just a little in love with House, long enough to know there is no hope of its return in kind. He knows that, and accepts it, the way he has accepted everything else about his life.
On those days, then, there is the photograph. It is set in a dark wood frame, with a thin groove inset a little from the edge to form a simple border. Wilson shuts the dresser softly and takes it into the living room, pours himself a glass of wine, sits down. He studies the image in the lamplight.
The man in the picture is the same age Wilson is now, but he would never have gone into oncology, nor any other field of healing. He would have been a lawyer, where intelligence and a certain greedy callousness were a positively ideal combination, and he would have sued the pants off every unsuspecting corporation that came his way.
This man would not struggle to keep his marriage intact, for fear of failing yet again, to endlessly discuss and negotiate, and compromise for the sake of peace. He would be the unquestioned head of the household, with an unhappy wife more likely to receive an open-handed slap than a display of concern. She would be beautiful, though, and they would have two picture-perfect children, and a fine house, and a gleaming, expensive car. And there would have been women on the side, many of them, played with and disposed of without regret, without guilt. He would express his wealth in holidays, and tasteful pieces of art, and a photographer to take pictures of himself and his family in their model home.
He doesn’t know what this man would have made of House. Would likely have hated him, mocked him, made his life miserable, as one asshole to another. Would certainly not have shared his company for a second longer than absolutely necessary.
The photograph makes Wilson count the choices he has made in his life, and why he made them.
This man would have gone into legal practice on his own after a dispute with his employer, only to have his business crumble and fail when he offended too many clients and angered too many judges with his arrogance and conceit. His wife would have divorced him, and taken the picture-perfect children, and the fine house, and he would have sold the gleaming, expensive car in order to afford to rent a place to live.
He would have started drinking.
He would have gone from dead-end job to dead-end job, his legal experience fast becoming whiskey-soaked and useless. An excess of time would lead to other, even less desirable addictions, which would lead in turn to fewer offers of work, and his rent falling further behind as he fell out with employer after employer. Eventually, he would be evicted.
And his family would gather around him - at least, those who had made the effort to stay with him through his slow descent - but he would be far too proud to accept anything from them. Because if a man had nothing else, he still had his anger and his pride. And then he would get up and walk away, leaving no forwarding address, and Wilson would watch him go, helpless. And the years of not knowing would pass, and then one day Wilson would be reminded, and pull the photograph from a dusty pile of memories, and realize the years had flown by so fast that the man in the picture could be his twin, a mere five years before the Fall. Could he have known then, at the height of his success, the bleak future ahead of him? Would he have done the same things, even knowing?
Wilson thinks that he would. The attitude of ‘full speed ahead, and damn the consequences’ has become increasingly, distressingly, familiar over the past few years. He sees living, breathing proof in front of him every working day. Wilson pushes the stray thought away and turns his attention once more to the man in the photograph, running one gentle finger over the glass, as though he could feel the textures of skin and cloth and leather through it, across the years. He brings it up to his eyes for a moment, as though studying his reflection in a mirror.
Even as the photograph brings Wilson both a sense of loss and a strange sense of comfort, it also evokes a small, powerful twinge of envy. To live the way you wanted to live, without compromise, even if it should lead to inevitable destruction. That’s not for Wilson. He is too sensible, too mature, too timid. He lives in uneasy truce with the emotional strains of his job, his wife, his friendship with House, and he tells himself it’s the best way. The only way. But that’s not strictly true. He could do it. He could leave his job, divorce his wife, go somewhere else and do something else, anything. He doesn’t know what he’d do about House. Either beat him senseless or pin him down to a bed in a cheap highway motel and fuck him. Possibly both, in succession. And he would die poor, and alone, and friendless. But he’d be free. Part of him thinks it would be worth it.
But he’ll never do it, and that’s why he looks at the photograph, and thinks about his brother, and the last time he saw him.