Fic: After Hours, part 1 (acts 1-5)
Fic: After Hours, in two parts, nine acts
Author: Nakanna Lee
Pairing: H/W
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: character death
A/N: My muse put House and Wilson in the park and told them to start talking. This is what happened.
"What is laid down, ordered, factual, is never enough to embrace the whole truth." -- Boris Pasternak
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PART ONE
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“…Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem, which states that any sufficiently rich form system must always contain statements that are neither provable nor disprovable. Given this, we have theoretical support for the common-sense observation that there will always be actions neither demanded nor forbidden by our principles, whatever they are, and even when they are supplemented by our own idiosyncratic fears, values, and commitments.” -Paulos, Beyond Numeracy
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1.
Foreman left last week when his fellowship was officially completed. He had a job in California lined up and waiting a month or more in advance, although he hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. House knew he was long gone way before then, though, when he surreptitiously grilled Wendy about future plans while managing to feign disinterest. The hospital now lacks an up-and-coming neurologist and a promising nurse.
Cameron and Chase still loiter around. Chase has secured a job with the intensive care unit, and Cameron is as of yet undecided as to what professional direction to take. Her personal directions keep leading her to House’s office, which he tolerates only when he’s run out of witty, scathing remarks that typically shut her up. She offers to stay and continue to do his filing, organize his mail. She’s gone through years of medical school to become a secretary, apparently. She keeps asking if he’s all right, if today is any better. At any random moment, House is counting how many steps away she is from the window, where maybe she can take a dive on a whim.
Cuddy calls often. There are cases, if he wants them, and new applicants for fellowships, if he wants those too. He should take them, she says. Any semblance of normalcy will be a good thing.
2.
The park closes at sunset, mostly because the city is fearful of crime rates going up, stolen purses and rapes, all that interesting stuff that now never has a chance to happen. House goes anyway, and there’s always that occasional jogger who thinks it’s a great idea to take their run in the dark, in a white tanktop and sweatpants, with orange reflectors on their sneakers for traffic’s sake. The same woman faithfully comes by every night, ten-thirty-two on the dot. Either she’s a workaholic during the day and can’t find a moment to run then, or she’s bodily-conscious and doesn’t want anyone to know she needs to exercise.
House knows all about her. At least he has his theories, each of which have the advantage of being not provable and so hypothetically correct as long as he doesn’t ask her directly. He can speculate all he wants, and he does, watching with sustained interest for the first couple days, then weeks, from his park bench. He can see her tight ponytail swinging as she rounds the bend. She’s a mother, judging by hip- and breast-size. Terrible taste in sportswear or not enough money to afford something that doesn’t look like it was sewn on by a blind man with some vendetta against her.
When the regularity of her appearances becomes grating, he acknowledges the plopping sound of rubber soles to pavement with a glance and not much else. The woman doesn’t look over anymore, either. She’s decided he isn’t going to jump her one time.
Her iPod ear pieces are blasting loud enough for House to catch the crinkling of a melody and some deep undulations of a bass when she jogs by, but only vaguely. He hasn’t yet discerned what exactly she listens to. And of course it could change regularly, but she strikes him as someone who clings to a schedule and doesn’t alter it much. Jogging at the exact same time. Same tracksuit. Same sneakers. She probably has the same playlist, too.
3.
Cicadas trill and hiss metallically in the trees. The summer has been especially muggy and windy, though, so the rustling of the leaves fight with their own raucous noise to drown out the bugs’ incessant chirping. The weird thing about cicadas is that they‘re disturbingly incognito for most of the time, unless a person’s looking for them. They do draw an extraordinary number of bats, the black winged ovals diving drastically against the sky, falling so quickly before swooping up again that at first glimpse they look more like shot birds, fate thrusting them to the ground.
The water from the park lake stays stagnant, despite the wind. House remembers Wilson offhandedly asking him months ago if he could skip stones. House boasted that he once got nearly ten skips in a row from one rock, a flat, gray thing that must have been slate. Wilson dared him to prove it but it was instigation out of boredom, nothing more. Besides, it was especially cold out that day and House’s leg hurt. Getting up wasn’t worth it. House simply retorted that he didn’t have to prove himself, and Wilson returned that humoring, remotely pleased expression that House found more convenient to push away sometimes, because it was pleasant and unquestioning and he didn’t quite know what to do with it.
4.
House hears the jogging again but doesn’t look up. He takes the rock and etches in another tally-mark on the underside of the bench tabletop, this one making fifty-three, accounting for the two months he’s made a trip out here after dusk, not including weekends. The days he’s missed were not his fault. Cuddy started inviting him out for dinner on Saturdays, and he’s spent the vast majority of the time hoping some of the spinach-artichoke dip appetizer falls down her shirt so he can watch her try to not look awkward as she awkwardly exhumes it. That never happens. Cameron tried the same thing-dinner, not the digging-through-her-blouse-but House turned her down. She could sort out his mail, not his psyche. He was still annoyed at having missed jogger-girl and having undone his research.
Her pace sounds odd tonight, something about the frequency of her sneakers. They lack their staccato brevity, tending to scuff instead with a longer period of silence in between. She’s taking longer strides. And there’s no music this time. House frowns and finishes his tally-mark before looking up.
“Hey.” Wilson slows to a stop, inhaling sharply and bending his knees to stretch. He swallows and shuffles back and forth for a moment. His creased shirt is probably just a little too tight, but the sweat isn’t exactly helping that cause. He does have the sweatpants, though. House would notice whether or not his sneakers came with orange reflectors too, but he’s just a bit distracted.
“Hey,” House says in reply. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
5.
Wilson sits down beside him on the park bench, and House can feel the weight on the wooden seat shift slightly, which would seem to defy the logic that metaphysical bodies can’t wield a physical presence. In fact, Wilson seems completely unfazed by House’s latest news; he’s checking his heart rate and frowning slightly down at his wrist, where his two fingers press in lightly. The skin gives. There’s no transparency.
“One-forty-two,” he concludes after his lips stop moving and the calculations are done. He smiles. “Not bad. Couple pulses lower than last week’s.”
House hasn’t said a word.
“Why are you out here at eleven at night?” Wilson asks, air still evasive as he breathes harshly.
“Why aren’t you six feet under?”
House can almost feel him raising his eyebrows, although the park is too dark to make out intimate specifics.
“Because I’m not dead?” Wilson suggests easily. He takes a steadying breath through his nose and wipes off some sweat that has accumulated on his brow before stretching out his legs, leaning his back against the side of the park bench’s tabletop. The tally-marks disappear. House can smell his sweet, tangy mix of Speedstick and sweat, much different from the overpowering lilacs that had been placed around his wooden casket.
House stares into his face, drawn in shadows, but if it’s a hoax it is a fantastic replica that sounds, looks, and behaves the same as its model.
“No,” House says slowly, looking out from under narrowed eyelids, “you’re dead. You’ve been dead for the past five months.”
Wilson’s laugh comes scoffing from the back of his throat. “Yeah, okay. You caught me. I got tired of lying flat and decided to get some blood flowing and take a run. Sorry, I’ll be on my way back to the cemetery now.”
“I saw you. I was there.”
“House.” Wilson scoots forward on the bench so as to face him more fully. His shirt creases in wet rows beneath his solarplex and along his stomach, with circles of perspiration along his neckline and under his arms. “Do I look dead to you?”
“You’re not the classic manifestation, no, I’ll give you that.” House regards him skeptically. “You don’t know you’re dead?”
“Stop saying that,” Wilson replies sharply, for the first time looking unsettled. “It’s not exactly what a person likes hearing.” He pauses to gather some sarcasm. “You sure this isn’t just wishful thinking on your part?”
“Fine. Let’s say you’re not dead. You just decide to appear now when I haven’t seen you in five months?”
“House, I just talked with you today at work.”
He stared. “I wasn’t at work. I took a sick day.”
“That’s impossible.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“No, you’ve been saying I don’t exist anymore. And that can’t be true, because how else would I still have those memories?”
“I’m not going to try and rationalize intangible concepts in an intangible being.”
“House, what the hell are you talking about? You really don’t think I’m here? Look, touch me, how can I be-”
Wilson takes House’s hand and presses it firmly against his forearm. Nothing gives. House’s palm dampens from the moisture on Wilson’s skin; he can feel the coarser hair softened and darkened by sweat and the muggy warmth of stressed muscles.
“You had ventricular fibrillation,” House tells him slowly, evenly, and he tells himself he’d be looking into his face if he could see it properly without shadows in the night air. “Non-ischemic cardiomyopathy led to the SCD. You were in your hotel room and nobody knew until the next morning.”
CONTINUED: http://nakannalee.livejournal.com/21094.html