Edge of Chaos (8.1/15)
Title: Edge of Chaos, Chapter Eight, Part One
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: PG-13
Characters: House, Cuddy, Wilson -- friendship between the three, maybe some Huddy if you squint...
Summary: Somewhere between order and chaos, House searches for meaning and healing in his life. Can he recover what he's lost? Can Wilson learn to forgive and ask for forgiveness? Can Cuddy bridge the gap between them both? Or are their friendships just another casualty of the bus accident?
Previous Chapters: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three (Part One), Chapter Three (Part Two), Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven (Part One), Chapter Seven (Part Two)
Disclaimer: I don't own the show!
Author's Note: Spoilers for "Wilson's Heart." This chapter is split into two parts for length. Reviews are greatly appreciated.
“The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree… As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications.” - Charles Darwin on evolution, 1859
He woke up to a dark, empty room, moonlight casting odd shapes and shadows onto one of the walls. Hot and sweating, parched and hungry, House groaned as he realized that he would not be able to fall back to sleep. His stomach rumbled almost as audibly as the rest of him had, almost as loudly as the noise rang in his ear and the ache screamed in his thigh.
Instinctively House reached out to his nightstand. A bottle of Vicodin and bourbon usually at the edge of his fingertips, it made him sigh when he came up empty handed.
That sucked, he lamented, trying hard to remember if he’d polished off that particular stash before the accident. But his head ached, and the haze his newly awoken mind was in made it impossible to think clearly. And instead of coming up with any real answer, he remembered something else:
Cuddy.
In her new role as a hotter Nancy Reagan, she’d said she’d taken everything.
Which meant it was possible, if not probable, that there were no stashes left for him to pillage. And that meant pain. That meant no sleep, no movement, no reprieve from the hot ache that always threatened to consume him.
Fear gnawing at his senses, it was certain now that he wouldn’t be sleeping until he had the chalky pills in his hand - or rather in his belly. So, determined, he swung his good leg easily off of the bed.
He immediately decided not to search his room or the bathroom; those were the most likely locations Cuddy would have checked, House thought. And while there might have been a couple bottles of Vicodin in the apartment still squirreled away, he couldn’t believe that they were in the most obvious places to hide drugs. Relief would be in the least likely spots, in the places that House himself probably rarely paid attention to.
And, lumbering out into the hallway, he realized that there were only a few hidey-holes in the apartment that qualified. In the aluminum tin of peppermint tea in the kitchen cabinet, under the thin layer of bedding in the now-dead Steve McQueen’s cage, or in the metal box on top of the bookshelf - if there were anything left, it would be in one of those spots. And if there was anything left, House was determined to find it.
But that determination fell short the second he stepped into the living room. Because even though the room was kind of dark, his eyes had adjusted, and he could see - Cuddy was still here.
He’d literally forgotten that she had said that she was staying.
Oh, his memory was still intact enough, his mind working just well enough for him to remember that she was… supposed to be here? No, that didn’t sound right, because where she was supposed to be was her own place. She was not supposed to be here.
And frankly her presence, even in the dark, was impossible to miss. Her pale skin practically glowed against the dark backdrop of the chaise. Her face, only slightly obscured by a few stray loose curls, was tucked into the hem of the chenille blanket covering her body, and even with the afghan over her mouth, he swore he could hear her soft breathing.
So too was he absolutely sure that he could smell her perfume in the air. The pungent scent just foreign enough to tickle his nose, House scowled as he stalked toward the kitchen. He’d get rid of her soon enough, he reasoned, beginning his search for Vicodin. He’d toss her out, and he’d relish doing it, but that would have to come later.
His pain had to be dealt with first.
As it always did and probably always would, thanks to the choices Stacy and Cuddy had made without him.
His right hand instinctively trailed down to his thigh, to what had been taken from him. Fingertips lightly pressing into the soft cotton of his pajama pants, he allowed himself a second to give into the sharp pain and resentment he was feeling. Letting it all just… be, he allowed each wave of pain beat against his senses. Unsure, even after all these years, as to whether it hurt more to give into the ache or deny it, House stood, frustrated, in the cool kitchen.
The last four steps to the kitchen cabinet that possibly had the Vicodin seemed so far now. Seemed farther than his leg could take, anyway, he lamented. But unless he wanted to be in more pain…
There was no other way.
But he’d barely lifted a foot when he heard her say groggily, “What are you doing?”
His step faltered a little, the momentary shift in his movement announcing that he’d heard her. And House was aware of that fact, even though he chose to ignore her; somehow he thought that doing that was far more biting than any sarcastic remark he could make.
And within seconds, it was obvious that he’d guessed right. As he opened the kitchen cabinet to see if his stash were still untouched, Cuddy asked, “House?”
Snatching the tea container, he could tell, just by holding it, that there was something other than peppermint and black tea leaves inside. He smiled to himself, sighed with relief. “Making tea,” House lied, trying to keep an affect of carelessness in his tones.
“At one in the morning?”
His reply was easy. “I was thirsty.”
His shaky fingers easily unscrewed the top, the drugs within reach. House could already tell that his body instinctively knew that relief was coming; already he felt better, the ache in his head and thigh waning a little.
And it was sick, he realized, that it should be that way, that he should react to the drugs before they were even in his system. But the pain had made him that way - and maybe that was what was really sick about the whole thing: that he should be so afraid of the pain that the mere allure off escape offered him the tiniest measure of peace.
Doesn’t matter, House told himself, violently shoving the thought aside in the same manner he pushed aside the tea leaves. His addiction was what it was; there was no point in fighting it anymore, he reasoned, and as long as the pills took the pain away, as long as there were still pills for him to take…
It wasn’t a problem.
Frankly, it wouldn’t have even been a problem if it weren’t for the idiotic notion accepted by everyone around him that he should handle his pain with a smile. That he should have to hide the drugs around the office and apartment at all was annoying, but not nearly as nagging as the idea that there had been days - and probably would be more days - where somebody decided he didn’t need the Vicodin.
But it didn’t matter, he told himself. His index finger hitting a pill he’d wrapped in cellophane and tea leaves, the anger rushed out of his body. What was the point in being pissed at his friends when he still managed to outsmart them?
It was such an addict thing to do, he conceded - taking pills and spending at least an hour to individually wrap each one, dip it in glue and loose tea leaves so that nobody would see them. But then it also seemed like an incredibly worthwhile thing to do, considering he was now about to benefit from it.
Well, as soon as Cuddy left anyway.
But almost as though she was sensing something was up, she stayed where she was. “You’re making tea,” she repeated doubtfully.
House rolled his eyes and finally turned to look at her. Careful to keep the pill in his hand out of her sight, he snapped, “That’s what I said.”
“You shouldn’t have caffeine.”
“That’s why it’s herbal tea.”
Her eyes narrowed, and there was suspicion in her voice when she pointed out, “You haven’t heated any water.”
“Oh, you caught me. I’m actually funding terrorism and plotting a gang rape. Like God, I like to communicate through tea leaves.”
The sarcasm was enough, it seemed, to distract her. Because instead of continuing the fight, Cuddy merely shot him a dark look. Her bare feet lightly padding on the linoleum toward the stove, she grabbed the tea kettle. As she filled the metal container with water, she mentioned carefully, “You know, I thought you didn’t like tea.”
He wasn’t paying attention to her, not really anyway, by that point. His brow knitted together as he began to silently unwrap the little gift between his thumb and forefinger, he was too focused to offer Cuddy any retort.
And it was that, he would suppose later on, that made her give him a second look. No sarcastic remark, no biting insult - yeah, House would think, that made him suspicious.
But at the time, his fingernail was just beginning to tear away at the protective coating on the pill. And he could see the peach color of the round pill, could tell that what he had in his hand was not Vicodin.
A smile appearing on his face, he didn’t remember getting his hands on the morphine in his grasp. Which didn’t really make any sense, because part of him could vaguely recall taking the time to painstakingly wrap each one.
But he shrugged the confusion off; it really didn’t matter now, he decided.
House began to pop the pill into his mouth… and then nearly dropped it on the floor when Cuddy spun around, her voice shrill and loud. “Morphine?” she snarled, the word echoing off the walls.
In all honesty, he would have smirked if not for her tone, which made his brain feel as though it were being smushed against his skull. Now in even more pain than before, he was helpless to move, helpless to do anything.
And that was all he needed to do in order for Cuddy to stomp forward and quickly snatch the tin and pills away from him. “Why would you risk your recovery by -”
“I’m in pain,” House snapped back, his fingers trying to make a grab for the drugs. “I know you enjoy that fact, but I don’t.” He took an uneven step towards her, but she did not relent.
“That’s not what this is about, House,” she said, dismayed, moving away from him.
“Oh, come on.” His gaze headed upwards for a moment.
His eyes focused on the finite cracks in the ceiling, he told her, maybe to allay whatever doubts she had, “I’m not going to overdose. I’m not going to operate heavy machinery, Mommy. I’ll be a good boy.”
She shook her head. “You have a brain injury,” she reminded him firmly. “You’ve had a heart attack, surgery, and a seizure. You could rescue a hoard of puppies and babies from a burning building, and I still wouldn’t let you have this.” As if to prove the point, she rushed toward the sink.
Her footsteps somehow louder than they should have been, she was too fast to stop. And he could only watch in horror as Cuddy quickly dumped the contents of the container and the single unwrapped pill down the drain. Her hand quickly flipping the faucet and garbage disposal on, any hopes he had of floating away on a morphine-laced cloud were promptly dashed.
The grinding noise pushing him over the edge, House shouted loudly, “You idiot. What do you expect me to do now? Pray to Jesus? Taste the rainbow? Pet puppies to take away my pain?” His cheeks burning, he could feel the veins in his neck tensing. “You think everything can be cured by a sunny disposition and your guilt.”
She turned the garbage disposal off. Her body spinning around to face him, her hands ended up on her hips. A look of disbelief flitting across her face, Cuddy began to say tersely, “If you want -”
“Oh, but it’s not about what I want,” he interrupted angrily. “This is obviously all about what you want. Baby the cripple, teach Greggie poo the dangers of drugs - this has nothing to do with me.”
But then she did the most unlikely thing he could even imagine. One of her hands dipping into her pajama pockets, she pulled out a bottle of pills. There was a faint rattle of the drugs smacking against their plastic confines. And the noise was slight enough that most people would have missed it. For him, though…
It was the most welcome sound House could think of.
Feeling not unlike a dog or cat running at the sound of the can opener, he stood there silently, obediently, waiting for her to take pity on him. Or more like hoping she would take pity on him, because, at this point, he couldn’t be sure that she’d give him anything.
Thankfully though, Cuddy sighed and opened the bottle in her hands. As she plucked a pill out, she told him gently, “I know that you think - that you honestly believe I’m only here to torture you.”
“Destroying all the morphine in the place does lend credence to the idea, yeah.”
She frowned. “Right now, you are on… almost a dozen medications. I realize, House, that the idea of toxic drug interactions doesn’t scare you, but I am not taking that risk.”
Cuddy closed the distance between them. With each step she took, House could see the sadness in her eyes. A melancholy flecking her grayish irises, it was a feeling he knew all too well. And seeing his own misery reflected in her own mood, knowing that what had happened was affecting her to, he couldn’t help but glance away, the movement jerky and obvious; he didn’t want to see anymore.
But ignoring her was impossible, not when she clasped his hand with her cool fingers. A pill wedged between the flesh of their palms, he instantly jerked his head back around and glanced down. “I know you think you have everything figured out,” she said coolly. “But you’re not right about this; you’re not right about me. If -”
“What is this?” he asked, popping the pill into his mouth. “A bribe? Something to prove that you’re really not all that bad?” His words were indignant even to his own ears, and although he had no intention of apologizing or taking back what he had just said… he couldn’t ignore the niggling feeling that he was being an unusually large ass to her.
“You’re in pain. I’m giving you your medicine,” she explained dryly. Adding a tiny amount of bitterness to her next words, Cuddy said roughly, “The right medication, so that you don’t die in your sleep.”
“Oh, relax, Nancy,” House replied with a scowl. “One pill of morphine isn’t going to -”
She shook her head so quickly that he got dizzy just looking at her. “You don’t even know what medications you’re taking,” she snapped, her voice high-pitched with emotion. “You have no idea what that morphine would or wouldn’t have done.”
He could feel his gaze on her soften a little. The truth spoken to him one he hadn’t even considered, it was one he had no desire to deny. Because… Cuddy was right; he didn’t have any idea what medications she’d put him on. He could barely remember the shape and size of each pill, much less what they actually were, and all of a sudden, an adverse reaction to the morphine didn’t seem unlikely.
Still, House wasn’t ready to call it a night. Agitation continued to course through his system hotly, and he couldn’t, not even if he wanted to, walk away calmly. “Then give me what I should be taking,” he told her irritably, his hand reaching out.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not? Don’t want me to take the morphine, fine. But what you have in your hand is Cuddy-approved.” But she slipped the drugs back into her pocket anyway, and he scoffed in response. “I see. So then you just don’t trust me.”
She looked at him sadly, with dismay. Her voice wavered as she said, “You got your hands on a bottle of morphine from who knows where. And then you hid the pills in a container of tea, so that no one would take it from you.” Folding her arms across her chest, Cuddy admitted, “You are an addict, House, and I don’t trust you - not with this.”
Her eyes became increasingly - suspiciously - bright while she stumbled over the last words. And House wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d started to cry then and there, although for the life of him, he couldn’t understand why she would want to or feel the need to. Because surely by now, she would have realized, accepted, that he was an addict.
But before he could consider the matter any further, she interrupted with a wave of her hand, “That’s beside the point, I guess.” Shaking her head, she sounded much colder, stronger when she spoke once more. “You’ve had head trauma; you’ve had brain surgery. Even if I could trust you, I wouldn’t right now.” Cuddy took a deep breath before telling him, “Until I know for sure that you’ll remember when you last took a pill - until I can trust your memory - you’re not going to have control over -”
“So what am I supposed to do?” he interrupted viciously. “Come crying to you every time something hurts? Say, ‘Mommy, I have a boo boo’?”
“You’ll get medication at regular intervals,” she explained, one of her eyebrows slightly raised as though to say, “I know the idea is foreign to you.”
House scowled. “Well, since my pain refuses to keep a schedule - ”
Repeating herself, Cuddy said, “You’ll get medication at regular intervals.” But this time, she added at the end, “But if you can’t wait, yes, come crying to me. Mama will kiss it and make it all better,” she told him with a mocking pout on her lips.
His retort was immediate. “In that case, I seem to have hurt my penis, and -”
She scowled. “Go to bed.”
The order was one he would have refused to obey if not for the exhaustion that was wearing on his resolve. The need for sleep overriding his disagreeable nature, House simply turned around and slowly began to head back towards the bedroom.
His feet shuffled unevenly, his limp more pronounced than usual. That often happened when he was tired, and right about now, he was as exhausted as he had ever been.
And he had barely done anything, he thought bitterly.
That shouldn’t have surprised him. The accident, a heart attack, brain stimulation - any one of those things would have left his body in desperate need of sleep, and it stood to reason that the three events combined would make him exponentially tired. But nonetheless, it seemed… shocking that his body could be so feeble, so ill-equipped, even after all these years, to deal with physical pain and the irritation Cuddy always brought with her.
As his head hit the pillow, House told himself that tomorrow he would do better. And almost immediately he realized what his goal was going to be:
Get rid of her.
Because right now, he was tired, and yet there was no chance of him being able to sleep; the muffled sounds of Cuddy moving around in the kitchen, most likely searching for drugs, kept shoving him back into consciousness. And really, it wasn’t fair for her to claim that she knew what was best for him when she couldn’t even shut up long enough for him to get some sleep.
But there was no stopping her; he was too tired to move, too exhausted to put in the minimum exertion of yelling at her. Which meant that his rage simply stalled inside of him. His teeth clenched together, it was all he could do at the moment besides pray for her to shut up, besides hope that she would exhaust herself quickly and that morning would find its way to him as slowly as possible.
In the end, morning announced itself at an especially early hour, the sun’s rays forcibly radiating through the drawn curtains. The smell of vomit being warmed through by the light attacked his senses, and Wilson awoke with a loud groan.
He felt awful, as though his body had turned itself inside out and been hung on a meat rack to dry in the hours he had slept. He was lying on top of the sheets; his limbs spread out on the comforter, he could only figure that he’d been too drunk to fully get in bed. And either way, it was okay, because he’d sweat through his clothes anyway.
The fabric of his jeans and t-shirt clung to him as though they were made out of elastic. Sweat had collected into fully formed beads dotting the length of his forehead, and his recently opened eyes stung with the few droplets that had slithered past his lashes.
He felt gross.
He was gross - and hung over.
And laying in his own vomit, he slowly began to realize.
The acrid smell had been noticeable the second he’d awoken. The taste had lingered in the back of his throat. But only now did Wilson understand: he was lying in it. Soupy chunks of who-the-hell-knew-what pooled on the mattress next to him, the outer edges of his puke beginning to dry.
As he stood up, careful not to stick his limbs anywhere near the mess he’d made, his head pounded. He’d been drinking pretty much non-stop since Amber had died, only taking a break for her funeral (she had deserved as much if not more). But even with his recent reincarnation into House, Wilson realized his binge last night had been particularly bad. So horrible, in fact, that, turning around, he knew he had gone too far.
Vomit all over the bed, the lingering scent of Amber in the sheets completely overpowered now by the smell of his own weakness, yes, he had gone too far. Because now the bedding needed to be changed; he needed to destroy one of the last few things he had of her.
The very thought of doing that made his stomach clench painfully. And knowing that it could have been avoided if he’d been just a little more careful…
It killed him.
Because he’d always believed that Amber was too good for him, but now it also seemed as though he weren’t even good enough to grieve for her. Really, if he were being honest with himself, he could admit that it seemed as though he had never been of any use to her, never would be, and now didn’t even deserve to be.
The proof on him and right in front of him, it was all he needed to see to know that:
He was the last person who should be in charge of her memory.
And suddenly feeling out of place, feeling as though he was tainting everything in the room, Wilson couldn’t help but remember that this had never been his. The bed maybe, but everything else - from the paint on the walls to the glasses in the kitchen cabinets - that had all been hers.
Which made him little more than an intruder; he was a trespasser, the odd man out even in the place that he’d thought had become his. He didn’t belong here without Amber. These things surrounding him weren’t his, no more than the apartment was. His name wasn’t even on the lease; that was something they hadn’t even talked about, something he hadn’t brought up, because he didn’t want to scare her away.
Looking around the room, Wilson thought with a sigh that it had worked.
He hadn’t scared her away.
But in the end, that didn’t matter, because she had left anyway.
And now it was his turn to leave, the empty apartment and his powerful memories no longer enough to keep him here. As Wilson headed towards the front door, he rationally understood that there was nothing, save for Amber coming back to life, that could keep him in this two-bedroom tomb. As much as he liked the layout and the location, there was just too much here that he could destroy. Too much he would destroy, he corrected himself, in an attempt to forget how much he wished…
House had been the one to die instead.
The front door clicking shut with a sense of finality, Wilson could only believe that Amber was changing him, had changed him… and not necessarily for the better.
As he headed to his car, he didn’t look back.
Read the rest of the chapter
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: PG-13
Characters: House, Cuddy, Wilson -- friendship between the three, maybe some Huddy if you squint...
Summary: Somewhere between order and chaos, House searches for meaning and healing in his life. Can he recover what he's lost? Can Wilson learn to forgive and ask for forgiveness? Can Cuddy bridge the gap between them both? Or are their friendships just another casualty of the bus accident?
Previous Chapters: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three (Part One), Chapter Three (Part Two), Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven (Part One), Chapter Seven (Part Two)
Disclaimer: I don't own the show!
Author's Note: Spoilers for "Wilson's Heart." This chapter is split into two parts for length. Reviews are greatly appreciated.
“The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree… As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications.” - Charles Darwin on evolution, 1859
He woke up to a dark, empty room, moonlight casting odd shapes and shadows onto one of the walls. Hot and sweating, parched and hungry, House groaned as he realized that he would not be able to fall back to sleep. His stomach rumbled almost as audibly as the rest of him had, almost as loudly as the noise rang in his ear and the ache screamed in his thigh.
Instinctively House reached out to his nightstand. A bottle of Vicodin and bourbon usually at the edge of his fingertips, it made him sigh when he came up empty handed.
That sucked, he lamented, trying hard to remember if he’d polished off that particular stash before the accident. But his head ached, and the haze his newly awoken mind was in made it impossible to think clearly. And instead of coming up with any real answer, he remembered something else:
Cuddy.
In her new role as a hotter Nancy Reagan, she’d said she’d taken everything.
Which meant it was possible, if not probable, that there were no stashes left for him to pillage. And that meant pain. That meant no sleep, no movement, no reprieve from the hot ache that always threatened to consume him.
Fear gnawing at his senses, it was certain now that he wouldn’t be sleeping until he had the chalky pills in his hand - or rather in his belly. So, determined, he swung his good leg easily off of the bed.
He immediately decided not to search his room or the bathroom; those were the most likely locations Cuddy would have checked, House thought. And while there might have been a couple bottles of Vicodin in the apartment still squirreled away, he couldn’t believe that they were in the most obvious places to hide drugs. Relief would be in the least likely spots, in the places that House himself probably rarely paid attention to.
And, lumbering out into the hallway, he realized that there were only a few hidey-holes in the apartment that qualified. In the aluminum tin of peppermint tea in the kitchen cabinet, under the thin layer of bedding in the now-dead Steve McQueen’s cage, or in the metal box on top of the bookshelf - if there were anything left, it would be in one of those spots. And if there was anything left, House was determined to find it.
But that determination fell short the second he stepped into the living room. Because even though the room was kind of dark, his eyes had adjusted, and he could see - Cuddy was still here.
He’d literally forgotten that she had said that she was staying.
Oh, his memory was still intact enough, his mind working just well enough for him to remember that she was… supposed to be here? No, that didn’t sound right, because where she was supposed to be was her own place. She was not supposed to be here.
And frankly her presence, even in the dark, was impossible to miss. Her pale skin practically glowed against the dark backdrop of the chaise. Her face, only slightly obscured by a few stray loose curls, was tucked into the hem of the chenille blanket covering her body, and even with the afghan over her mouth, he swore he could hear her soft breathing.
So too was he absolutely sure that he could smell her perfume in the air. The pungent scent just foreign enough to tickle his nose, House scowled as he stalked toward the kitchen. He’d get rid of her soon enough, he reasoned, beginning his search for Vicodin. He’d toss her out, and he’d relish doing it, but that would have to come later.
His pain had to be dealt with first.
As it always did and probably always would, thanks to the choices Stacy and Cuddy had made without him.
His right hand instinctively trailed down to his thigh, to what had been taken from him. Fingertips lightly pressing into the soft cotton of his pajama pants, he allowed himself a second to give into the sharp pain and resentment he was feeling. Letting it all just… be, he allowed each wave of pain beat against his senses. Unsure, even after all these years, as to whether it hurt more to give into the ache or deny it, House stood, frustrated, in the cool kitchen.
The last four steps to the kitchen cabinet that possibly had the Vicodin seemed so far now. Seemed farther than his leg could take, anyway, he lamented. But unless he wanted to be in more pain…
There was no other way.
But he’d barely lifted a foot when he heard her say groggily, “What are you doing?”
His step faltered a little, the momentary shift in his movement announcing that he’d heard her. And House was aware of that fact, even though he chose to ignore her; somehow he thought that doing that was far more biting than any sarcastic remark he could make.
And within seconds, it was obvious that he’d guessed right. As he opened the kitchen cabinet to see if his stash were still untouched, Cuddy asked, “House?”
Snatching the tea container, he could tell, just by holding it, that there was something other than peppermint and black tea leaves inside. He smiled to himself, sighed with relief. “Making tea,” House lied, trying to keep an affect of carelessness in his tones.
“At one in the morning?”
His reply was easy. “I was thirsty.”
His shaky fingers easily unscrewed the top, the drugs within reach. House could already tell that his body instinctively knew that relief was coming; already he felt better, the ache in his head and thigh waning a little.
And it was sick, he realized, that it should be that way, that he should react to the drugs before they were even in his system. But the pain had made him that way - and maybe that was what was really sick about the whole thing: that he should be so afraid of the pain that the mere allure off escape offered him the tiniest measure of peace.
Doesn’t matter, House told himself, violently shoving the thought aside in the same manner he pushed aside the tea leaves. His addiction was what it was; there was no point in fighting it anymore, he reasoned, and as long as the pills took the pain away, as long as there were still pills for him to take…
It wasn’t a problem.
Frankly, it wouldn’t have even been a problem if it weren’t for the idiotic notion accepted by everyone around him that he should handle his pain with a smile. That he should have to hide the drugs around the office and apartment at all was annoying, but not nearly as nagging as the idea that there had been days - and probably would be more days - where somebody decided he didn’t need the Vicodin.
But it didn’t matter, he told himself. His index finger hitting a pill he’d wrapped in cellophane and tea leaves, the anger rushed out of his body. What was the point in being pissed at his friends when he still managed to outsmart them?
It was such an addict thing to do, he conceded - taking pills and spending at least an hour to individually wrap each one, dip it in glue and loose tea leaves so that nobody would see them. But then it also seemed like an incredibly worthwhile thing to do, considering he was now about to benefit from it.
Well, as soon as Cuddy left anyway.
But almost as though she was sensing something was up, she stayed where she was. “You’re making tea,” she repeated doubtfully.
House rolled his eyes and finally turned to look at her. Careful to keep the pill in his hand out of her sight, he snapped, “That’s what I said.”
“You shouldn’t have caffeine.”
“That’s why it’s herbal tea.”
Her eyes narrowed, and there was suspicion in her voice when she pointed out, “You haven’t heated any water.”
“Oh, you caught me. I’m actually funding terrorism and plotting a gang rape. Like God, I like to communicate through tea leaves.”
The sarcasm was enough, it seemed, to distract her. Because instead of continuing the fight, Cuddy merely shot him a dark look. Her bare feet lightly padding on the linoleum toward the stove, she grabbed the tea kettle. As she filled the metal container with water, she mentioned carefully, “You know, I thought you didn’t like tea.”
He wasn’t paying attention to her, not really anyway, by that point. His brow knitted together as he began to silently unwrap the little gift between his thumb and forefinger, he was too focused to offer Cuddy any retort.
And it was that, he would suppose later on, that made her give him a second look. No sarcastic remark, no biting insult - yeah, House would think, that made him suspicious.
But at the time, his fingernail was just beginning to tear away at the protective coating on the pill. And he could see the peach color of the round pill, could tell that what he had in his hand was not Vicodin.
A smile appearing on his face, he didn’t remember getting his hands on the morphine in his grasp. Which didn’t really make any sense, because part of him could vaguely recall taking the time to painstakingly wrap each one.
But he shrugged the confusion off; it really didn’t matter now, he decided.
House began to pop the pill into his mouth… and then nearly dropped it on the floor when Cuddy spun around, her voice shrill and loud. “Morphine?” she snarled, the word echoing off the walls.
In all honesty, he would have smirked if not for her tone, which made his brain feel as though it were being smushed against his skull. Now in even more pain than before, he was helpless to move, helpless to do anything.
And that was all he needed to do in order for Cuddy to stomp forward and quickly snatch the tin and pills away from him. “Why would you risk your recovery by -”
“I’m in pain,” House snapped back, his fingers trying to make a grab for the drugs. “I know you enjoy that fact, but I don’t.” He took an uneven step towards her, but she did not relent.
“That’s not what this is about, House,” she said, dismayed, moving away from him.
“Oh, come on.” His gaze headed upwards for a moment.
His eyes focused on the finite cracks in the ceiling, he told her, maybe to allay whatever doubts she had, “I’m not going to overdose. I’m not going to operate heavy machinery, Mommy. I’ll be a good boy.”
She shook her head. “You have a brain injury,” she reminded him firmly. “You’ve had a heart attack, surgery, and a seizure. You could rescue a hoard of puppies and babies from a burning building, and I still wouldn’t let you have this.” As if to prove the point, she rushed toward the sink.
Her footsteps somehow louder than they should have been, she was too fast to stop. And he could only watch in horror as Cuddy quickly dumped the contents of the container and the single unwrapped pill down the drain. Her hand quickly flipping the faucet and garbage disposal on, any hopes he had of floating away on a morphine-laced cloud were promptly dashed.
The grinding noise pushing him over the edge, House shouted loudly, “You idiot. What do you expect me to do now? Pray to Jesus? Taste the rainbow? Pet puppies to take away my pain?” His cheeks burning, he could feel the veins in his neck tensing. “You think everything can be cured by a sunny disposition and your guilt.”
She turned the garbage disposal off. Her body spinning around to face him, her hands ended up on her hips. A look of disbelief flitting across her face, Cuddy began to say tersely, “If you want -”
“Oh, but it’s not about what I want,” he interrupted angrily. “This is obviously all about what you want. Baby the cripple, teach Greggie poo the dangers of drugs - this has nothing to do with me.”
But then she did the most unlikely thing he could even imagine. One of her hands dipping into her pajama pockets, she pulled out a bottle of pills. There was a faint rattle of the drugs smacking against their plastic confines. And the noise was slight enough that most people would have missed it. For him, though…
It was the most welcome sound House could think of.
Feeling not unlike a dog or cat running at the sound of the can opener, he stood there silently, obediently, waiting for her to take pity on him. Or more like hoping she would take pity on him, because, at this point, he couldn’t be sure that she’d give him anything.
Thankfully though, Cuddy sighed and opened the bottle in her hands. As she plucked a pill out, she told him gently, “I know that you think - that you honestly believe I’m only here to torture you.”
“Destroying all the morphine in the place does lend credence to the idea, yeah.”
She frowned. “Right now, you are on… almost a dozen medications. I realize, House, that the idea of toxic drug interactions doesn’t scare you, but I am not taking that risk.”
Cuddy closed the distance between them. With each step she took, House could see the sadness in her eyes. A melancholy flecking her grayish irises, it was a feeling he knew all too well. And seeing his own misery reflected in her own mood, knowing that what had happened was affecting her to, he couldn’t help but glance away, the movement jerky and obvious; he didn’t want to see anymore.
But ignoring her was impossible, not when she clasped his hand with her cool fingers. A pill wedged between the flesh of their palms, he instantly jerked his head back around and glanced down. “I know you think you have everything figured out,” she said coolly. “But you’re not right about this; you’re not right about me. If -”
“What is this?” he asked, popping the pill into his mouth. “A bribe? Something to prove that you’re really not all that bad?” His words were indignant even to his own ears, and although he had no intention of apologizing or taking back what he had just said… he couldn’t ignore the niggling feeling that he was being an unusually large ass to her.
“You’re in pain. I’m giving you your medicine,” she explained dryly. Adding a tiny amount of bitterness to her next words, Cuddy said roughly, “The right medication, so that you don’t die in your sleep.”
“Oh, relax, Nancy,” House replied with a scowl. “One pill of morphine isn’t going to -”
She shook her head so quickly that he got dizzy just looking at her. “You don’t even know what medications you’re taking,” she snapped, her voice high-pitched with emotion. “You have no idea what that morphine would or wouldn’t have done.”
He could feel his gaze on her soften a little. The truth spoken to him one he hadn’t even considered, it was one he had no desire to deny. Because… Cuddy was right; he didn’t have any idea what medications she’d put him on. He could barely remember the shape and size of each pill, much less what they actually were, and all of a sudden, an adverse reaction to the morphine didn’t seem unlikely.
Still, House wasn’t ready to call it a night. Agitation continued to course through his system hotly, and he couldn’t, not even if he wanted to, walk away calmly. “Then give me what I should be taking,” he told her irritably, his hand reaching out.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not? Don’t want me to take the morphine, fine. But what you have in your hand is Cuddy-approved.” But she slipped the drugs back into her pocket anyway, and he scoffed in response. “I see. So then you just don’t trust me.”
She looked at him sadly, with dismay. Her voice wavered as she said, “You got your hands on a bottle of morphine from who knows where. And then you hid the pills in a container of tea, so that no one would take it from you.” Folding her arms across her chest, Cuddy admitted, “You are an addict, House, and I don’t trust you - not with this.”
Her eyes became increasingly - suspiciously - bright while she stumbled over the last words. And House wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d started to cry then and there, although for the life of him, he couldn’t understand why she would want to or feel the need to. Because surely by now, she would have realized, accepted, that he was an addict.
But before he could consider the matter any further, she interrupted with a wave of her hand, “That’s beside the point, I guess.” Shaking her head, she sounded much colder, stronger when she spoke once more. “You’ve had head trauma; you’ve had brain surgery. Even if I could trust you, I wouldn’t right now.” Cuddy took a deep breath before telling him, “Until I know for sure that you’ll remember when you last took a pill - until I can trust your memory - you’re not going to have control over -”
“So what am I supposed to do?” he interrupted viciously. “Come crying to you every time something hurts? Say, ‘Mommy, I have a boo boo’?”
“You’ll get medication at regular intervals,” she explained, one of her eyebrows slightly raised as though to say, “I know the idea is foreign to you.”
House scowled. “Well, since my pain refuses to keep a schedule - ”
Repeating herself, Cuddy said, “You’ll get medication at regular intervals.” But this time, she added at the end, “But if you can’t wait, yes, come crying to me. Mama will kiss it and make it all better,” she told him with a mocking pout on her lips.
His retort was immediate. “In that case, I seem to have hurt my penis, and -”
She scowled. “Go to bed.”
The order was one he would have refused to obey if not for the exhaustion that was wearing on his resolve. The need for sleep overriding his disagreeable nature, House simply turned around and slowly began to head back towards the bedroom.
His feet shuffled unevenly, his limp more pronounced than usual. That often happened when he was tired, and right about now, he was as exhausted as he had ever been.
And he had barely done anything, he thought bitterly.
That shouldn’t have surprised him. The accident, a heart attack, brain stimulation - any one of those things would have left his body in desperate need of sleep, and it stood to reason that the three events combined would make him exponentially tired. But nonetheless, it seemed… shocking that his body could be so feeble, so ill-equipped, even after all these years, to deal with physical pain and the irritation Cuddy always brought with her.
As his head hit the pillow, House told himself that tomorrow he would do better. And almost immediately he realized what his goal was going to be:
Get rid of her.
Because right now, he was tired, and yet there was no chance of him being able to sleep; the muffled sounds of Cuddy moving around in the kitchen, most likely searching for drugs, kept shoving him back into consciousness. And really, it wasn’t fair for her to claim that she knew what was best for him when she couldn’t even shut up long enough for him to get some sleep.
But there was no stopping her; he was too tired to move, too exhausted to put in the minimum exertion of yelling at her. Which meant that his rage simply stalled inside of him. His teeth clenched together, it was all he could do at the moment besides pray for her to shut up, besides hope that she would exhaust herself quickly and that morning would find its way to him as slowly as possible.
In the end, morning announced itself at an especially early hour, the sun’s rays forcibly radiating through the drawn curtains. The smell of vomit being warmed through by the light attacked his senses, and Wilson awoke with a loud groan.
He felt awful, as though his body had turned itself inside out and been hung on a meat rack to dry in the hours he had slept. He was lying on top of the sheets; his limbs spread out on the comforter, he could only figure that he’d been too drunk to fully get in bed. And either way, it was okay, because he’d sweat through his clothes anyway.
The fabric of his jeans and t-shirt clung to him as though they were made out of elastic. Sweat had collected into fully formed beads dotting the length of his forehead, and his recently opened eyes stung with the few droplets that had slithered past his lashes.
He felt gross.
He was gross - and hung over.
And laying in his own vomit, he slowly began to realize.
The acrid smell had been noticeable the second he’d awoken. The taste had lingered in the back of his throat. But only now did Wilson understand: he was lying in it. Soupy chunks of who-the-hell-knew-what pooled on the mattress next to him, the outer edges of his puke beginning to dry.
As he stood up, careful not to stick his limbs anywhere near the mess he’d made, his head pounded. He’d been drinking pretty much non-stop since Amber had died, only taking a break for her funeral (she had deserved as much if not more). But even with his recent reincarnation into House, Wilson realized his binge last night had been particularly bad. So horrible, in fact, that, turning around, he knew he had gone too far.
Vomit all over the bed, the lingering scent of Amber in the sheets completely overpowered now by the smell of his own weakness, yes, he had gone too far. Because now the bedding needed to be changed; he needed to destroy one of the last few things he had of her.
The very thought of doing that made his stomach clench painfully. And knowing that it could have been avoided if he’d been just a little more careful…
It killed him.
Because he’d always believed that Amber was too good for him, but now it also seemed as though he weren’t even good enough to grieve for her. Really, if he were being honest with himself, he could admit that it seemed as though he had never been of any use to her, never would be, and now didn’t even deserve to be.
The proof on him and right in front of him, it was all he needed to see to know that:
He was the last person who should be in charge of her memory.
And suddenly feeling out of place, feeling as though he was tainting everything in the room, Wilson couldn’t help but remember that this had never been his. The bed maybe, but everything else - from the paint on the walls to the glasses in the kitchen cabinets - that had all been hers.
Which made him little more than an intruder; he was a trespasser, the odd man out even in the place that he’d thought had become his. He didn’t belong here without Amber. These things surrounding him weren’t his, no more than the apartment was. His name wasn’t even on the lease; that was something they hadn’t even talked about, something he hadn’t brought up, because he didn’t want to scare her away.
Looking around the room, Wilson thought with a sigh that it had worked.
He hadn’t scared her away.
But in the end, that didn’t matter, because she had left anyway.
And now it was his turn to leave, the empty apartment and his powerful memories no longer enough to keep him here. As Wilson headed towards the front door, he rationally understood that there was nothing, save for Amber coming back to life, that could keep him in this two-bedroom tomb. As much as he liked the layout and the location, there was just too much here that he could destroy. Too much he would destroy, he corrected himself, in an attempt to forget how much he wished…
House had been the one to die instead.
The front door clicking shut with a sense of finality, Wilson could only believe that Amber was changing him, had changed him… and not necessarily for the better.
As he headed to his car, he didn’t look back.
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