Edge of Chaos (15.6/15)
Title: Edge of Chaos, Chapter Fifteen (Part Six)
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: PG-13
Characters: House, Cuddy, Wilson -- friendship between the three, maybe some Huddy if you squint. This chapter also features some Foreman and Thirteen.
Summary: House wakes up from the deep brain stimulation to a life without Wilson. Now, as House's life begins to falls into chaos, he searches for meaning, forgiveness, and friendship. House/Cuddy, Wilson/Cuddy, and House/Wilson friendships
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), Chapter Eight (Part One), Chapter Eight (Part Two), Chapter Nine, Chapter Ten (Part One), Chapter Ten (Part Two), Chapter Ten (Part Three), Chapter Ten (Part Four), Chapter Eleven (Part One), Chapter Eleven (Part Two), Chapter Eleven (Part Three), Chapter Twelve, Chapter Thirteen (Part One), Chapter Thirteen (Part Two), Chapter Fourteen (Part One), Chapter Fourteen (Part Two), Chapter Fourteen (Part Three), Chapter Fourteen (Part Four), Chapter Fifteen (Part One), Chapter Fifteen (Part Two), Chapter Fifteen (Part Three), Chapter Fifteen (Part Four), Chapter Fifteen (Part Five)
Disclaimer: I don't own the show!
Author's Note: Spoilers for "Wilson's Heart." Some chapters are split into parts because of Livejournal's character/word limit.
The admission hung heavily; his words seemed to steal all of the oxygen in the air, and he had to struggle to breathe (the task made all the more difficult by the weight of Cuddy on his back) once he’d spoken something he’d only ever thought before.
He didn’t want her to leave, and he’d finally said it aloud, and now she knew precisely what it was that he’d been thinking. And to be completely honest, he expected her to use that against him.
Well, he expected anyone he said that to to use it against him. If only because he probably would have done just that if the situation were reversed, he anticipated anyone and everyone in Cuddy’s position to do the same.
She didn’t though.
She easily could have; she was certainly already smug enough to take pleasure in his admission.
But she didn’t use it against him.
Cuddy just calmly said, “Good… it’s nice to hear that… especially after being compared to venereal warts.”
“Fine. I’ll come up with a better comparison if it bothers you so much,” he said, sounding falsely put upon. Thinking about it for a second, he tried to come up with a simile she would be less offended by. Granted, he didn’t think she was actually offended now, but if he could come up with a better metaphor, he would certainly use it; if only to stop her from using this comparison against him for the rest of the week, he definitely thought it was worth trying to find something better.
Yet... nothing less offensive really came to mind.
He tried on for size, “All right. Cuddy. You’re the barnacle stuck to my -”
“I don’t have any desire to hear how you’re going to finish that sentence,” she said dryly. “And for the record, comparing me to a parasitic -”
“Barnacles aren’t parasites,” he corrected immediately. But he knew that wasn’t exactly true, so he amended, “Well, some are, but most -”
“Forget it,” she muttered into his t-shirt. “If you have to explain it, then it’s not a very good metaphor.”
“Well, I’m sorry.” He sounded and felt peevish. “You try coming up with something better after you haven’t slept in -”
“You didn’t sleep at all today?” There was light concern in her voice.
“No.”
“Did you try?”
The question was an annoying one, one that House couldn’t help but snap at her for. “No. I thought to myself, ‘Hey, this whole not sleeping thing is rather fun. Lets see how long I can do it without dying.’” After a beat, he asked her, “What the hell do you think?”
“Calm down,” she quickly admonished. “Ignoring the fact that you would, absolutely without question, go without sleep to prove a point, I was curious. I am curious.”
Pulling away from him, she sat up once more. Her gaze trained on him carefully, she began to explain, “If you tried to sleep and couldn’t, then perhaps the problem is related to a physical -”
“Perhaps?”
His mind immediately picked up on the verbal oddity. Although there were many causes of insomnia, most of those reasons fit into one of two categories: physical causes or mental ones. And if Cuddy believed that his inability to sleep was related to a physical problem, she would say so; that she’d used the word perhaps suggested to him that she didn’t believe that the issue was a physical one. And if she didn’t think it was physical, then…
“You think I’m crazy.” House had meant for the words to sound more like a question, but that wasn’t how it sounded to his ears. It didn’t even seem like an accusation, he thought miserably. Which he would have settled for, because even though he wasn’t feeling accusatory, it still had to be better than the way he’d spoken. The deduction one filled with defeat, it must have made her think he was pathetic.
It had to have, because if his words hadn’t given her that impression, she wouldn’t have been so quick to disagree with him. “I don’t think you’re crazy,” she said almost immediately, her voice firm but paradoxically gentle at the same time.
But then she cocked her head and conceded, “All right, I think you’re insane. However, I don’t think your insomnia is proof of that.”
House propped his head up on one of his hands so he could get a better look at her. What she was saying made sense, but part of him suspected that she was simply trying to placate him. And if she were doing that, he thought he would be able to see the lie in her eyes.
However, he didn’t get much of a chance to look at her carefully. Because as soon as he shifted on the bed, she was quick to suggest, “We can fight about this later… if you insist. Right now though, you should talk to Wilson.”
Folding her arms across her chest, she explained, “He’s not going to stay here for forever, and the sooner you talk to him, the sooner you’ll be able to sleep.”
From a rational perspective, he could see that everything she was saying made sense. Rip the bandage off the skin as quickly as possible and all that…. It made sense.
But he didn’t make a move to get out of bed; even though Cuddy stood up and reached out with a hand to help him, he stayed exactly where he was. Because her suggestion might have made sense, but it was still the last thing he wanted to do.
“Come on,” Cuddy coaxed to no avail.
He shook his head. “I’m tired.” And there was no doubt in his mind that that point had come through his tone effectively; every syllable of that sentence dripped with exhaustion - the kind of desperate ache for slumber that had become a familiar companion impossible to ignore.
“I know. But the sooner we get this over with, the sooner you can -”
“I’m not ready.” His voice cracked over the words, the doubt he’d been feeling bleeding through to the surface for her to see.
He hadn’t wanted her to see it.
His jaw clenching and unclenching repeatedly, he thought over and over that this was the last thing he wanted.
To need Cuddy.
To have her know about it.
To have her be the one to bring Wilson here.
To have to speak to Wilson when House knew they weren’t ready to be friends again.
To know that failure was the only way this could end…
House hadn’t wanted any of it.
If anything, he’d done everything he could to avoid all of these situations. He’d tried to avoid Wilson and Cuddy ever since the accident as best as he could. But House hadn’t succeeded by anyone’s measure.
Cuddy hadn’t let him.
And maybe - maybe - that was a good thing, but it hardly felt that way now. Truth be told, at this very moment, he didn’t think he knew how to resent her more. But then she said, “You’re going to have to be,” and he realized that he could definitely be angrier.
She wasn’t saying anything he didn’t already know; if he didn’t talk to Wilson now, House understood that he wouldn’t have another chance. Wilson would take the rejection as proof that House didn’t care, and he would leave, and that would be all there was to it to their friendship.
There was no denying that, no ignoring the truth in what she was saying. But House hated her for it. He hated her for the way she so blithely had decided that today was the day to bring Wilson over.
After all, shouldn’t that have really been House’s decision? Shouldn’t he have been the one to say, “Hey, Cuddy, I think I feel good enough to talk to Wilson, so why don’t you go shake your ass in front of him and use your milkshake to bring him to the yard”?
Or something like that.
The exact language escaped him, and it wasn’t important, because the point he was trying to make was that it should have been his choice. It should have been up to him. And because she hadn’t respected that fact, now House stood to lose all of it.
She was right: if he didn’t talk to Wilson now, it was over. But House couldn’t help but feel as though she’d stacked the dice against him to begin with.
“You shouldn’t have done this,” he muttered angrily.
Sadness graced her features, and he was relieved to see that she at least had the decency to look contrite. “I’m sorry that you’re tired and not feeling well,” she said in earnest. “Maybe today wasn’t such a great day for this.”
“You think?”
She wasn’t put off by the sarcasm. “But that doesn’t matter now. I can’t do anything about it. So you’re just going to have to talk to him.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off with a motion of her hand. “And,” she added harshly. “You can waste your time fighting me on this all you want. But we both know that you can’t deny what I’m saying. So you might as well save us both some time and get your ass out of bed.”
Surprising her, House obeyed the command. He forced himself to his feet like she wanted… but not without telling her, “I hope Hitler poops on your side of the bed.”
Her gaze immediately shifted to the black and white rabbit who was hopping along the middle of the bed. It was obvious that she was considering complaining about the animal; God only knew she’d bitched about it at least three or four separate times this week alone. Which was stupid in his opinion, since she’d been the one to buy the bunny to begin with.
But she didn’t say anything about the creature. Instead, Cuddy shook her head and looked back at him. The annoyance in her gaze was muted, and it was clear that she wasn’t going to fight him on the somewhat (okay, completely) immature remark.
“Come on,” she encouraged, placing her hands on his forearm and the small of his back. As she corralled him to the door, she tried to reassure him. “You’ll be fine. I’ll be with you the whole time.”
House would have liked to be able to say that her words bolstered his confidence. Granted, it would have made him feel like the world’s biggest pussy, but at least he would have felt better about talking to Wilson. House knew he would have felt better prepared to speak to Wilson if her words had meant something.
But the truth was there was nothing - absolutely nothing - to be said that could take House’s mind off of the reality around him. Cuddy could have been the most convincing woman on the planet, her tongue made of silver, but there was no way he could ignore that the odds right now were stacked against him; he’d killed Amber, and Wilson hated him for the inexcusable act, and there wasn’t much House could say to make it better.
And he supposed now was the time to rally behind the challenge, to look at winning Wilson back as the same kind of mental exercise sick people provided. But walking down the hallway, House couldn’t help but feel like a criminal being walked to the electric chair.
The pervading deadly silence of the living room did nothing but confirm that that comparison had its merits.
Wilson had laid out the food Cuddy had bought into an attractive spread on the coffee table. The take out boxes had been discarded, the meal neatly arranged on dishes and plates. Naturally, House wanted to make a joke out of the matter, because really, who gave a crap about take out presentation?
But he kept the comment to himself.
Aside from the fact that Wilson had probably put everything out out of boredom, House understood that the joke would fall on deaf ears. As difficult as it was sometimes to remember that Wilson hated him, as much as the impulse within him to tell Wilson things lived on, House knew the less he said the better.
He’d already come close to screwing everything up; if Cuddy hadn’t shown up when she had, Wilson would have absolutely left. Actually, if it hadn’t been for her, Wilson wouldn’t have come at all, and all of those circumstances were impossible to miss.
Just as it was impossible to miss the awful tension in the room and the way Wilson’s hateful gaze seemed to propel animosity through the air towards House.
Frozen he offered no fight when Cuddy guided him silently to the couch. His eyes trained on Wilson, House barely even noticed that she was moving him further into the room, and it was impossible to mount any defense against her when he was too concerned with what Wilson might do.
In the back of his mind, House reminded himself that the situation around him was precarious at best. Success lived on the edge of a knife; one wrong or miscalculated move, and they would all suffer for it. Wilson would hate him; Cuddy would be furious, and House himself would be relegated to continue in the miserable existence he’d found himself in for the last eight weeks.
And for all of their sakes, he was determined to avoid that future.
Of course, it seemed like such an inevitable thing at this point. Cuddy thought that she could fix this by scheming and manipulating them together, but the fact was:
Things were grim.
House knew he had to stave off the desire to capitulate and fight as hard as he knew how to against that reality. He knew that, if he wanted to make the next few months ones worth living for, he would have to go against the grain and make Wilson see the value in their friendship. And in order to do that, House also knew that it would take more than a few ill-considered platitudes.
He would have to focus all of his attention on Wilson as well.
Years of experience had taught House that more than half of any good conversation resulted from noticing and interpreting cues from the other person. Although he usually enjoyed telling people the stuff that would piss them off, he had always appreciated that saying the right thing depended on understanding how the other person was feeling. And he was determined to put that knowledge to good use now.
The thought plaguing him, he didn’t even notice Cuddy sitting down on the couch next to him until she broke the uncomfortable silence by suggesting, “Why don’t we eat?”
He noted almost immediately the dutiful tone in Wilson’s response of “All right.” It was so perfunctory that you would have had to have been completely unaware of human emotions not to notice it. Frankly it made House a little bitter and filled with melancholy, because even though it was unintentional, Wilson’s tone was proof that he was only here, only doing this, because Cuddy had clearly asked him to do it.
Of course, House had figured as much. But that didn’t mean he necessarily wanted to be reminded of it every time Wilson opened his mouth.
Then again, sitting here in silence as Cuddy dished an assortment of foods onto three plates wasn’t exactly much better. Wilson was watching him without saying a word, and House tried hard not to squirm under the other man’s intentional gaze. Which was hard to do, considering the serving spoons kept hitting the china, loud clinks bursting through the air like fireworks on a dark night.
The noise, in direct contrast to the annoying consistency of the rain, was always sudden, in time with some equation he didn’t instinctively know. Its unpredictability made him tense, his muscles constricting of their own accord. What he hoped would happen by doing that he didn’t know. The move wasn’t making Wilson’s heated gaze or the sound any easier for House to take; each scratch, contact, and clash with the dishware still made the ringing in his ears infinitely worse.
And he had half a mind to snap angrily at Cuddy. Hell, if Wilson hadn’t been there, House would have already. But since Wilson was there, House knew that yelling wouldn’t accomplish anything.
Or rather, it wouldn’t accomplish anything good, he mentally corrected. Because shouting at Cuddy to be more careful would get something done. It would make her pissy and send Wilson running from the room, convinced that nothing good could come of this. House had no doubts about that; barking would only make things worse for himself, so he kept quiet.
He’d probably explode with rage as soon as this conversation was over, but in the meantime, he would control himself. He would repress every bad feeling - bad being defined as something that wouldn’t help him win Wilson over - until things were back to the way they should have been.
Until Wilson accepted an apology and agreed to be his friend once more.
Anything less than that, no matter how much more likely it was to occur, was not grounds to let loose, and House refused to let himself believe otherwise.
Of course, he quickly realized that it could be a long time before things were righted between Wilson and him. Not entirely because there was a lot they needed to work through, mind you.
But because nobody was saying anything.
Cuddy was silently handing out plates of food; Wilson and he were taking the dishes without a word (House didn’t count Wilson’s muttered “Thank you” as speaking). And if the purpose of this meeting were to talk, they all seemed intent on doing the exact opposite.
Well, at least he’d been right in thinking that this wouldn’t be easy.
An admittedly small consolation, it was one he grasped hold of nonetheless. This meeting was proving to be as painful as imaginable, as he’d thought it would be. And if he couldn’t lessen his awareness of that unfortunate fact (or fix it quickly), then he sure as hell was going to take small victories where he could find them.
At this point any success was one he would appreciate.
However, that only got him so far on the House-happiness scale. He did feel better superficially, his satisfaction roughly on par with the first lick of a cherry lollipop or first sighting of Cuddy’s cleavage. It made him feel pleased for a brief moment, but it did nothing in the long run. It did nothing to warm the chill of shame, combined with knowledge of impending disaster, inside of him.
Suddenly feeling as though both Wilson and Cuddy could see those emotions inside of him, House broke his rule to look at Wilson constantly. As much as House needed to observe the other man’s cues, he felt the urgent, illogical fear inside of him whisper that that worked both ways. The voice said that Wilson knew, or would know, that House was desperate for their friendship and embarrassed that he should have ever lost it to begin with.
And for his purposes, he supposed that sharing that knowledge was a good thing in the long run. But it didn’t feel like that; he might have been pathetic, but there was still an inkling of pride within him. And as much as he probably should let Wilson know how he was feeling, House wasn’t a fan of the idea that he was or could be divulging information about himself without meaning to.
He was not a control freak like Cuddy could be.
He was not obsessed with being in charge for the sake of being in charge.
But he was also aware that quite a lot had been decided for him the last two months. So much had been taken from him without any consent on his part, without any awareness on his part. And on any given day, that was upsetting, yes, but today he resented it more than usual.
Whether that was because Cuddy had brought Wilson here or for some other reason, House didn’t really know. Maybe it was just the fear that he could share with Wilson something that would only make things worse, he thought. Either way though, he wanted to be in control of what Wilson knew, so he looked down at his plate of food.
Cuddy had given him a little bit of everything. Squid, tofu, and some sort of bird were all mingling together on the dish, the juices and sauces from each food mixing together to form a brown river of MSG, soy, curry, and who knew what else.
It should have been appetizing.
Considering how little he’d eaten today, he should have been stuffing his face full of food. Even if it was Malaysian, which he wasn’t a huge fan of, House thought he should have been hungry enough to eat with gusto.
But he wasn’t.
He wasn’t even interested in eating the noodles and rice Cuddy had put on his plate. Which was really surprising, because, aside from the bread on his Reubens (which he was so sick of at this point), he hadn’t been allowed much in the way of carbohydrates.
He hated having to put it that way - “he hadn’t been allowed.” It made him feel like a little boy denied soda and cookies at the dinner table or chocolate milk in the lunch line at school. It reminded him that Cuddy had had quite a bit of control over his every day life for the last extended period of time. And though he understood her motivation and probably would have denied himself the same foods if he were in her position, it still sucked.
It was still embarrassing.
And it should have been all the reason he needed to chow down now like his life depended on it.
But for whatever reason, it wasn’t, and he just sat there, picking at a jiggly piece of tofu with his fork.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Wilson, who was sitting on the chair that normally in front of House’s desk, eating with an awareness of the awkwardness around them. Every bite taken was careful, thoughtful, as though chewing too loudly would screw everything up and push them all over the edge. It seemed like an insane belief at first, but after a bit of consideration, House guessed it wasn’t that crazy; his tinnitus could very easily be aggravated by a noise like that, no matter how innocent it was, and that could set off the precarious calm that had settled over the room… though he doubted that that was what was motivating Wilson.
Cuddy, on the other hand, was eating with more earnestness - as she had for the last two days as a clear result of skipping lunch at work. She wasn’t inhaling the food; she was too delicate and polite for that kind of piggish behavior. But she was quick to shovel food onto her fork right after she’d taken the utensil away from her lips.
And yet her obvious hunger did nothing to stop her from giving House an imploring look the whole time.
He didn’t want to glance in her direction as he knew what to expect from her. And really, he didn’t need to look at her to feel her pained expression wafting his way as though it possessed a scent as pungent as the squid and curry.
She was silently asking him to talk, asking him to take the first step. Rationally, he had to agree with her that this was really something he had to initiate, because honestly, what was Wilson going to say to start off the conversation? “Hey, House, I think you’re a douche bag” didn’t exactly sound like a great way to begin matters, and he understood intuitively that, if he allowed Wilson to initiate things, then it would be a failure from start to finish.
Logically, House knew that he had to be the one to take that first step towards reconciliation.
But that was not an easy thing to do.
And to be frank, the tug of war within him, the desire to say nothing and everything, the need to fight and apologize, yell and cry - all of it made him feel absolutely insane.
He wasn’t.
This was not a matter of his brain injury or his apparent depression or any other mental or physical illness controlling him.
He was completely sane in this utter madness. Aware of every possible motivation and way he could behave, he knew that he was absolutely in control of his facilities - even as it all threatened to pull him in several directions.
He felt like a rubber band on the verge of being stretched to the breaking point. The invisible elasticity within him, the ability to manipulate any event to his advantage, was nearing the point of no return, he felt like things would either return to normal for him or never be anywhere near the same again after today. And the unfortunate thing was that no matter how he got there, no matter how things ended up…
He would be going there with all of the sanity he’d ever possessed.
There would be no hiding behind his illness, no hiding behind the lie that the universe had created this conflux of events.
There would be no hiding period.
And if he succeeded or failed, it would be success or failure of his own doing and nobody else’s.
Maybe that should have made him feel better; maybe knowing that he was in control should have made him feel like he could take Wilson on. But it didn’t; it just made him feel as though sitting here in the silence, making no move towards one direction or the other, neither gaining, nor losing any ground, was the best thing to do.
Cuddy clearly didn’t agree.
Clearing her throat, she suggested awkwardly, “Maybe one of you should say something.”
Wilson and House said nothing, perhaps a true testament to just how powerful she wasn’t in this situation.
Not that she was ready to believe that, much less throw in the towel.
Swallowing another bite of food, she tried to encourage them. “Come on. I know you both have plenty of things to say to one another…. Someone should start.”
Neither did.
And that made her sigh loudly, the exhale of air so big House thought he could feel it. “All right,” she said to no one in particular, leaning forward to put her plate on the coffee table.
Before she’d even had a chance to angle her body his way, House knew that she was going to make him talk. Well, she was going to try to make him talk, he corrected, somehow feeling slightly more confident by telling himself that she couldn’t make him do anything.
“House,” she said carefully, her knee brushing up against his leg as she brought her own legs up onto the couch. “Do you have something you would like to say to Wilson?”
Unbidden the memory of having to apologize to the neighbor for breaking her window with a baseball flitted through House’s mind. Back then, his mother had had the same kind of soft, condescending encouragement in her tone as Cuddy did now, and the forty years or so of time between the two events only seemed to accentuate how very little he’d changed. No more responsible than he’d been then, no more mature or willing to accept the help of others, he was proof that people did not change.
He was proof, all the reason Wilson needed to believe that they were better off not being friends. That Wilson himself was better off without him, House amended, because he knew in his soul that without Wilson…
House had very little.
Wilson didn’t need him, but he needed Wilson in his life.
Needed him, but didn’t deserve him.
Shaking his head, House answered Cuddy’s question silently.
She, however, didn’t seem to understand - or accept - that Wilson was better off, because she simply kept persisting. “I think you do have something to say,” she told him, audibly trying to prompt him into an apology. And when that didn’t work, she took a more direct route.
Instead of giving him the opportunity to pick his own words, Cuddy simply asked him, “Are you sorry about what happened to Amber?”
He didn’t want to dignify her verbal handholding with a response. What he wanted to do was to say screw Hitler, the middleman be damned, and take the dump he’d threatened Cuddy with earlier himself.
She was trying to help, yes, but he resented her so much in this particular moment. And he wanted to punish her for it, wanted her to know just how much he hated her for it.
But he couldn’t do that.
His anger might have been pervading through his entire body, but he was not so enraged as to miss the way Wilson’s eyes had narrowed on his form.
Wilson wanted an answer.
He was searching for one, for one that he could believe.
And if House allowed his ire towards Cuddy to get in the way of giving Wilson the truthful answer, House would have never forgiven himself for it.
In any emergency, you had to triage, he told himself. Vaguely recalling the time he’d taken Foreman and a patient hostage in an elevator, House remembered the words he’d said then: “You wake up in the morning; your paint’s peeling; your curtains are gone, and the water’s boiling. Which problem do you deal with first? None of them! The building’s on fire.”
That metaphorical building was on fire now. And he could waste his time getting angry at Cuddy; he could selfishly and childishly make this harder for her just to see how she would react to his stubbornness. He could react to the symptoms of the problem and choose to ignore the overarching cause.
There would be some sick pleasure in that. Not just in making Cuddy miserable, but also in fulfilling this prophecy he’d had that this would only end badly.
There would be sick pleasure to be had in being right.
But that wouldn’t make him happy in the long run. That wouldn’t fix the problem around them, and the metaphorical house would burn down, would be unsalvageable, if he reacted small mindedly.
Forced into a corner, he nodded his head. He didn’t say anything, but it was an admittance nonetheless.
An admittance that Wilson didn’t believe.
“You’re lying.”
The icy words made the sun-heated room suddenly seem cold, and both House and Cuddy shivered instinctively at his reaction.
And she was quick to defend him. “Wilson, I don’t think -”
“He’s lying.”
Wilson was so insistent that House found himself looking up from his plate and into angry, dark eyes that showed no hint of warmth or sympathy. House didn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t that.
He supposed he’d merely been hoping that the anger in Wilson’s words were a front, were a guise for some deeper desire for friendship.
It was clear though that that wasn’t even remotely the case.
And House had to wonder if there were any point in trying to convince someone who obviously hated him that a friendship was a good idea.
Cuddy, on the other hand, apparently, didn’t wonder that at all. She was quick once more to defend him. “Wilson, I promise you that he’s not lying to you. He wants -”
“I don’t give a damn what he wants,” Wilson snapped viciously, the sentiment making House set his fork down on his plate with a loud clang. “The entire time I’ve known him I’ve been concerned with him. With what would make him happy, what would make him miserable, and I’m so sick of it, Cuddy.”
Wilson sawed through a piece of what House had deduced was duck but did not eat it. But then again, he was pretty sure that Wilson had only cut through the food as a way to distract Cuddy and House from the fact that his hands were shaking with rage.
“I let him come between me and my wives… all of them. I didn’t spend as much time as I could have with my girlfriend, because I was afraid of upsetting him too much. I wasted so much energy and effort on making him happy, and it cost me the rest of my life with Amber,” Wilson accused with so much bitterness and pain in his voice that House felt as though he couldn’t breathe.
And in a way, it made him almost happy that Wilson hadn’t allowed him to see his suffering for the last two months. Because having to face it now, House wasn’t sure he could have handled that on a daily basis. The guilt, sadness, and indignation it inspired was terrifying and exhausting.
And confusing.
Sitting there, House felt as though his internal rubber band were being pulled once more to the brink. He could feel himself wanting to react in a number of ways; he wanted to apologize; he wanted to yell at Cuddy, at Wilson, at anyone and everyone in his vicinity.
He wanted it to stop.
But he didn’t know what he should do.
Maybe it should have been an easy decision to make. A sane, shrewd person would have argued that, if he wanted Wilson’s forgiveness, then the only option was to apologize with as much honesty and intent as possible.
For House though, it wasn’t that simple.
Oh, he was willing to apologize for all of the things he’d done to Wilson. He would apologize for killing CB; he would apologize for demanding so much attention that it had led Wilson to neglect some of the other areas of his life.
But - and maybe this had to do with the way Wilson was talking - it seemed like he wanted House to take responsibility for everything that had gone wrong in their lives.
And he wouldn’t do that.
It was not his fault that every one of Wilson’s wives had left. If they’d left, that probably had more to do with Wilson cheating on them or them cheating on him than anything else. And more than anything, even if House had tried to make himself the most important thing in Wilson’s life, at the end of the day, wasn’t it up to Wilson to prevent that from happening?
Didn’t he bear some responsibility for all of this?
House didn’t dare ask that question; just thinking it was all he intended to do, and it was all he needed to feel that he couldn’t be held accountable for every poor choice Wilson had made.
It was also all the motivation House needed to keep his mouth shut. At this point, he thought that, as much as all of this anger was about him, some of it wasn’t. Some of it was about lashing out against the shitty circumstances that they all found themselves. And House knew this because…
Well, because he was there himself right now; he’d been there for two months, and he was smart enough to know how to recognize that same kind of frustration in another person.
But Wilson interpreted his silence differently. “You see?” he asked so loudly that he almost sounded hysterical. “He’s not saying anything. He knows I’m right. He knows that this is all his fault.”
Cuddy leaned forward in Wilson’s direction, though she didn’t get up and go to him. “You can’t argue that he’s not sorry and then also say that he knows it’s all his fault,” she pointed out in a non-accusatory manner. She was clearly trying to make a point without upsetting Wilson, but House knew from experience that her intentions probably didn’t mean anything.
“Sure, I can. He knows it’s his fault; he just doesn’t care.” Wilson paused to rub the back of his neck with one of his hands, and the gesture made House think that he was more resigned and frustrated by the scenario than outright angry at the moment. Really, it just seemed like Wilson had thought to himself: Okay, this is the way House is, and he’ll never change, and I have to accept that and banish it (and him) from my life.
And that pissed House off.
Because if Wilson had already decided to move on, he should have never come here. He should have never agreed with Cuddy to talk to him. Granted, House was sure she’d given Wilson something he wanted - really wanted - to get him to come here but still.
If Wilson had already decided that there was nothing House could do or say, then this was just a waste of time. A painful waste of time, House amended, as his tinnitus seemed to pound on his skull and shatter his fracture even further.
And whether it was the pain or his irritation that finally loosened his tongue, House didn’t know. But he did speak then.
“Yeah, I just love it when people die at my hand,” he responded roughly, interrupting the tirade Wilson was clearly working towards. “I get off on it. And when I can’t kill someone, I think making you miserable is an acceptable substitute.”
The mocking tone was impossible to miss, and Wilson was temporarily taken aback by it. Which let House know that, for all of his anger, for all of his statements about House and how awful he was, some part of Wilson had believed - until now - that maybe House was repentant.
He screwed up.
The thought hit House immediately and repeatedly.
He had just screwed up.
Badly.
Whatever chance he might have had…
He’d just ruined it.
And Cuddy softly admonishing him by saying his name was proof of that.
He’d just made everything impossible for himself.
Yet Wilson didn’t get up and leave.
House had expected him to end the conversation right then and there. He’d anticipated a bunch of insults filled with an honesty that only feeling deep-seated rage would allow for and a flurry of activity as Wilson bolted and Cuddy tried to get him to stay.
But none of that happened.
For the life of him, House had no idea why. If the roles were reversed, he thought he would have left by now (although if the situations were truly reversed, House couldn’t deny that he probably would have never come, no matter how much Cuddy offered as compensation). But for whatever reason, Wilson stayed precisely where he was.
Wilson silently set his plate on the ground, allowing his now free hands to clench in and out of frustrated fists. House took special note of this. He didn’t necessarily think that Wilson would hit him, but House wanted to allow for all possibilities.
However, rather than use those fists, Wilson began to speak in slow, furious words. “Thank you, House, for proving to me that you are… exactly what I thought you would be like.” He gestured towards Cuddy, disdain somehow evident in the flick of his hand. “She kept saying you’d changed, that you felt bad about what happened. But once again, you have shown that humanity is something you have no capacity for.” With a mock bow of his head, Wilson finished by saying, “Thank you for showing me that I made the right decision by cutting you out of my life. You poison everything you touch.”
Cuddy looked like she wanted to say something to calm Wilson down, but House had no interest in that Lifetime television movie. Before she’d even had a chance to utter a single word, he railroaded over her. “Yeah, I’m the only one in this room who’s made a mistake,” House replied snidely.
He figured that there was no point in trying to argue his own virtue. Would anyone in this room believe him anyway?
He doubted it.
And so the only option left to him was to make sure that everyone else realized that he wasn’t the only one who had screwed up.
“Last I checked, I wasn’t the one who cheated on two of my three wives. I wasn’t the one who slept with a patient.” Of course, House didn’t particularly care about either all that much. The latter was probably more bothersome to him as the very idea of fraternizing with patients made House feel as though he were going to break out into hives.
But he didn’t really care.
Unlike Cuddy, who immediately said in a disgusted tone, “You slept with a patient?”
Both House and Wilson scowled at her, but the latter had no chance to speak as House once more started talking. “We all make choices - good and bad. Did I screw up? Of course. But you don’t want to hear me say how bad I feel about that. You don’t care if I tell you that I liked Amber - that she was my friend too or that I knew her long before you ever did - because you don’t want to even consider that this might not be as black and white as you think.”
Wilson jutted his chin out defiantly, obviously refusing to lend credence to anything House was saying. Even Cuddy was looking at him as though he’d lost his damn mind. Her hand covering one of his, it was a sign that he should shut up.
But he didn’t.
“You don’t want an apology. You want to hate me,” he said knowingly, his bright eyes trained on Wilson’s dark ones. “You want to make me out to be the big bad wolf? Fine. Consider this my final act of huffing and puffing. Consider your house blown down.”
Cuddy sighed next to him in exasperation. His gaze might have been trained on Wilson, but House couldn’t miss the movement out of the corner of his eye. She clearly thought he’d just screwed everything up… and perhaps he had; but more than anything, House felt as though Wilson had preemptively decided the outcome of this conversation. And that meant that there was no real way for House to succeed, much less screw up.
Besides, if Wilson were only willing to believe the worst in him, then why not give into his darker urges? Why not give Wilson everything he was obviously hoping to see?
“If you actually felt bad,” Wilson snarled. “You wouldn’t be such a -”
“If you actually wanted me to feel bad,” House interrupted loudly. “You wouldn’t be such a judgmental dick.”
“House,” Cuddy warned. She was clearly worried about where this was going, and he didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was already too late for him or that it didn’t matter what he said now.
Wilson stood up, but he made no move for the door. His face red, he told Cuddy, “Don’t bother. Just let him talk like he always does. There’s no point in trying to dress him up or put him in a nice package.” With disdain he looked at House. “He’s always going to be like that, and no matter how hard anyone tries to change him, he will still be the same disgusting piece of human waste that he has always been.”
Cuddy squeezed his hand, but it did nothing to stop the blood from draining out of House’s face. It did nothing to stop the feeling of failure from washing through him, as though the emotion itself had replaced the plasma suspending his blood cells. She was trying to keep him calm, give him some hope that he hadn’t had for at least a month now. But her efforts were worthless, her reassurances unable to touch the place inside of him riddled by his anger and fear and feeling of defeat.
“Sit down,” Cuddy ordered immediately, perhaps sensing that Wilson was ready to bolt.
However, he refused, shaking his head as fast and as hard as his neck would allow. “No.”
She sneered at him. “That wasn’t a request, Wilson. Sit down. Now.”
House almost laughed at how angry she was. Compared to his own and Wilson’s anger, hers was the equivalent of the fury a fuzzy kitten could create. Really, it was a pathetic output, given what both Wilson and House himself were capable of doing. But there was no denying that she was absolutely furious.
And apparently, despite its comparative weakness, her ire was still scary enough for Wilson to obey instantly.
“Nobody is going anywhere,” she informed them both in a cold tone. “And you both are going to stop insulting one another. I didn’t bring you here,” she told Wilson, “so that you could merely shout at each other until you’re blue in the face.”
Continue on to 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. This chapter also features some Foreman and Thirteen.
Summary: House wakes up from the deep brain stimulation to a life without Wilson. Now, as House's life begins to falls into chaos, he searches for meaning, forgiveness, and friendship. House/Cuddy, Wilson/Cuddy, and House/Wilson friendships
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), Chapter Eight (Part One), Chapter Eight (Part Two), Chapter Nine, Chapter Ten (Part One), Chapter Ten (Part Two), Chapter Ten (Part Three), Chapter Ten (Part Four), Chapter Eleven (Part One), Chapter Eleven (Part Two), Chapter Eleven (Part Three), Chapter Twelve, Chapter Thirteen (Part One), Chapter Thirteen (Part Two), Chapter Fourteen (Part One), Chapter Fourteen (Part Two), Chapter Fourteen (Part Three), Chapter Fourteen (Part Four), Chapter Fifteen (Part One), Chapter Fifteen (Part Two), Chapter Fifteen (Part Three), Chapter Fifteen (Part Four), Chapter Fifteen (Part Five)
Disclaimer: I don't own the show!
Author's Note: Spoilers for "Wilson's Heart." Some chapters are split into parts because of Livejournal's character/word limit.
The admission hung heavily; his words seemed to steal all of the oxygen in the air, and he had to struggle to breathe (the task made all the more difficult by the weight of Cuddy on his back) once he’d spoken something he’d only ever thought before.
He didn’t want her to leave, and he’d finally said it aloud, and now she knew precisely what it was that he’d been thinking. And to be completely honest, he expected her to use that against him.
Well, he expected anyone he said that to to use it against him. If only because he probably would have done just that if the situation were reversed, he anticipated anyone and everyone in Cuddy’s position to do the same.
She didn’t though.
She easily could have; she was certainly already smug enough to take pleasure in his admission.
But she didn’t use it against him.
Cuddy just calmly said, “Good… it’s nice to hear that… especially after being compared to venereal warts.”
“Fine. I’ll come up with a better comparison if it bothers you so much,” he said, sounding falsely put upon. Thinking about it for a second, he tried to come up with a simile she would be less offended by. Granted, he didn’t think she was actually offended now, but if he could come up with a better metaphor, he would certainly use it; if only to stop her from using this comparison against him for the rest of the week, he definitely thought it was worth trying to find something better.
Yet... nothing less offensive really came to mind.
He tried on for size, “All right. Cuddy. You’re the barnacle stuck to my -”
“I don’t have any desire to hear how you’re going to finish that sentence,” she said dryly. “And for the record, comparing me to a parasitic -”
“Barnacles aren’t parasites,” he corrected immediately. But he knew that wasn’t exactly true, so he amended, “Well, some are, but most -”
“Forget it,” she muttered into his t-shirt. “If you have to explain it, then it’s not a very good metaphor.”
“Well, I’m sorry.” He sounded and felt peevish. “You try coming up with something better after you haven’t slept in -”
“You didn’t sleep at all today?” There was light concern in her voice.
“No.”
“Did you try?”
The question was an annoying one, one that House couldn’t help but snap at her for. “No. I thought to myself, ‘Hey, this whole not sleeping thing is rather fun. Lets see how long I can do it without dying.’” After a beat, he asked her, “What the hell do you think?”
“Calm down,” she quickly admonished. “Ignoring the fact that you would, absolutely without question, go without sleep to prove a point, I was curious. I am curious.”
Pulling away from him, she sat up once more. Her gaze trained on him carefully, she began to explain, “If you tried to sleep and couldn’t, then perhaps the problem is related to a physical -”
“Perhaps?”
His mind immediately picked up on the verbal oddity. Although there were many causes of insomnia, most of those reasons fit into one of two categories: physical causes or mental ones. And if Cuddy believed that his inability to sleep was related to a physical problem, she would say so; that she’d used the word perhaps suggested to him that she didn’t believe that the issue was a physical one. And if she didn’t think it was physical, then…
“You think I’m crazy.” House had meant for the words to sound more like a question, but that wasn’t how it sounded to his ears. It didn’t even seem like an accusation, he thought miserably. Which he would have settled for, because even though he wasn’t feeling accusatory, it still had to be better than the way he’d spoken. The deduction one filled with defeat, it must have made her think he was pathetic.
It had to have, because if his words hadn’t given her that impression, she wouldn’t have been so quick to disagree with him. “I don’t think you’re crazy,” she said almost immediately, her voice firm but paradoxically gentle at the same time.
But then she cocked her head and conceded, “All right, I think you’re insane. However, I don’t think your insomnia is proof of that.”
House propped his head up on one of his hands so he could get a better look at her. What she was saying made sense, but part of him suspected that she was simply trying to placate him. And if she were doing that, he thought he would be able to see the lie in her eyes.
However, he didn’t get much of a chance to look at her carefully. Because as soon as he shifted on the bed, she was quick to suggest, “We can fight about this later… if you insist. Right now though, you should talk to Wilson.”
Folding her arms across her chest, she explained, “He’s not going to stay here for forever, and the sooner you talk to him, the sooner you’ll be able to sleep.”
From a rational perspective, he could see that everything she was saying made sense. Rip the bandage off the skin as quickly as possible and all that…. It made sense.
But he didn’t make a move to get out of bed; even though Cuddy stood up and reached out with a hand to help him, he stayed exactly where he was. Because her suggestion might have made sense, but it was still the last thing he wanted to do.
“Come on,” Cuddy coaxed to no avail.
He shook his head. “I’m tired.” And there was no doubt in his mind that that point had come through his tone effectively; every syllable of that sentence dripped with exhaustion - the kind of desperate ache for slumber that had become a familiar companion impossible to ignore.
“I know. But the sooner we get this over with, the sooner you can -”
“I’m not ready.” His voice cracked over the words, the doubt he’d been feeling bleeding through to the surface for her to see.
He hadn’t wanted her to see it.
His jaw clenching and unclenching repeatedly, he thought over and over that this was the last thing he wanted.
To need Cuddy.
To have her know about it.
To have her be the one to bring Wilson here.
To have to speak to Wilson when House knew they weren’t ready to be friends again.
To know that failure was the only way this could end…
House hadn’t wanted any of it.
If anything, he’d done everything he could to avoid all of these situations. He’d tried to avoid Wilson and Cuddy ever since the accident as best as he could. But House hadn’t succeeded by anyone’s measure.
Cuddy hadn’t let him.
And maybe - maybe - that was a good thing, but it hardly felt that way now. Truth be told, at this very moment, he didn’t think he knew how to resent her more. But then she said, “You’re going to have to be,” and he realized that he could definitely be angrier.
She wasn’t saying anything he didn’t already know; if he didn’t talk to Wilson now, House understood that he wouldn’t have another chance. Wilson would take the rejection as proof that House didn’t care, and he would leave, and that would be all there was to it to their friendship.
There was no denying that, no ignoring the truth in what she was saying. But House hated her for it. He hated her for the way she so blithely had decided that today was the day to bring Wilson over.
After all, shouldn’t that have really been House’s decision? Shouldn’t he have been the one to say, “Hey, Cuddy, I think I feel good enough to talk to Wilson, so why don’t you go shake your ass in front of him and use your milkshake to bring him to the yard”?
Or something like that.
The exact language escaped him, and it wasn’t important, because the point he was trying to make was that it should have been his choice. It should have been up to him. And because she hadn’t respected that fact, now House stood to lose all of it.
She was right: if he didn’t talk to Wilson now, it was over. But House couldn’t help but feel as though she’d stacked the dice against him to begin with.
“You shouldn’t have done this,” he muttered angrily.
Sadness graced her features, and he was relieved to see that she at least had the decency to look contrite. “I’m sorry that you’re tired and not feeling well,” she said in earnest. “Maybe today wasn’t such a great day for this.”
“You think?”
She wasn’t put off by the sarcasm. “But that doesn’t matter now. I can’t do anything about it. So you’re just going to have to talk to him.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off with a motion of her hand. “And,” she added harshly. “You can waste your time fighting me on this all you want. But we both know that you can’t deny what I’m saying. So you might as well save us both some time and get your ass out of bed.”
Surprising her, House obeyed the command. He forced himself to his feet like she wanted… but not without telling her, “I hope Hitler poops on your side of the bed.”
Her gaze immediately shifted to the black and white rabbit who was hopping along the middle of the bed. It was obvious that she was considering complaining about the animal; God only knew she’d bitched about it at least three or four separate times this week alone. Which was stupid in his opinion, since she’d been the one to buy the bunny to begin with.
But she didn’t say anything about the creature. Instead, Cuddy shook her head and looked back at him. The annoyance in her gaze was muted, and it was clear that she wasn’t going to fight him on the somewhat (okay, completely) immature remark.
“Come on,” she encouraged, placing her hands on his forearm and the small of his back. As she corralled him to the door, she tried to reassure him. “You’ll be fine. I’ll be with you the whole time.”
House would have liked to be able to say that her words bolstered his confidence. Granted, it would have made him feel like the world’s biggest pussy, but at least he would have felt better about talking to Wilson. House knew he would have felt better prepared to speak to Wilson if her words had meant something.
But the truth was there was nothing - absolutely nothing - to be said that could take House’s mind off of the reality around him. Cuddy could have been the most convincing woman on the planet, her tongue made of silver, but there was no way he could ignore that the odds right now were stacked against him; he’d killed Amber, and Wilson hated him for the inexcusable act, and there wasn’t much House could say to make it better.
And he supposed now was the time to rally behind the challenge, to look at winning Wilson back as the same kind of mental exercise sick people provided. But walking down the hallway, House couldn’t help but feel like a criminal being walked to the electric chair.
The pervading deadly silence of the living room did nothing but confirm that that comparison had its merits.
Wilson had laid out the food Cuddy had bought into an attractive spread on the coffee table. The take out boxes had been discarded, the meal neatly arranged on dishes and plates. Naturally, House wanted to make a joke out of the matter, because really, who gave a crap about take out presentation?
But he kept the comment to himself.
Aside from the fact that Wilson had probably put everything out out of boredom, House understood that the joke would fall on deaf ears. As difficult as it was sometimes to remember that Wilson hated him, as much as the impulse within him to tell Wilson things lived on, House knew the less he said the better.
He’d already come close to screwing everything up; if Cuddy hadn’t shown up when she had, Wilson would have absolutely left. Actually, if it hadn’t been for her, Wilson wouldn’t have come at all, and all of those circumstances were impossible to miss.
Just as it was impossible to miss the awful tension in the room and the way Wilson’s hateful gaze seemed to propel animosity through the air towards House.
Frozen he offered no fight when Cuddy guided him silently to the couch. His eyes trained on Wilson, House barely even noticed that she was moving him further into the room, and it was impossible to mount any defense against her when he was too concerned with what Wilson might do.
In the back of his mind, House reminded himself that the situation around him was precarious at best. Success lived on the edge of a knife; one wrong or miscalculated move, and they would all suffer for it. Wilson would hate him; Cuddy would be furious, and House himself would be relegated to continue in the miserable existence he’d found himself in for the last eight weeks.
And for all of their sakes, he was determined to avoid that future.
Of course, it seemed like such an inevitable thing at this point. Cuddy thought that she could fix this by scheming and manipulating them together, but the fact was:
Things were grim.
House knew he had to stave off the desire to capitulate and fight as hard as he knew how to against that reality. He knew that, if he wanted to make the next few months ones worth living for, he would have to go against the grain and make Wilson see the value in their friendship. And in order to do that, House also knew that it would take more than a few ill-considered platitudes.
He would have to focus all of his attention on Wilson as well.
Years of experience had taught House that more than half of any good conversation resulted from noticing and interpreting cues from the other person. Although he usually enjoyed telling people the stuff that would piss them off, he had always appreciated that saying the right thing depended on understanding how the other person was feeling. And he was determined to put that knowledge to good use now.
The thought plaguing him, he didn’t even notice Cuddy sitting down on the couch next to him until she broke the uncomfortable silence by suggesting, “Why don’t we eat?”
He noted almost immediately the dutiful tone in Wilson’s response of “All right.” It was so perfunctory that you would have had to have been completely unaware of human emotions not to notice it. Frankly it made House a little bitter and filled with melancholy, because even though it was unintentional, Wilson’s tone was proof that he was only here, only doing this, because Cuddy had clearly asked him to do it.
Of course, House had figured as much. But that didn’t mean he necessarily wanted to be reminded of it every time Wilson opened his mouth.
Then again, sitting here in silence as Cuddy dished an assortment of foods onto three plates wasn’t exactly much better. Wilson was watching him without saying a word, and House tried hard not to squirm under the other man’s intentional gaze. Which was hard to do, considering the serving spoons kept hitting the china, loud clinks bursting through the air like fireworks on a dark night.
The noise, in direct contrast to the annoying consistency of the rain, was always sudden, in time with some equation he didn’t instinctively know. Its unpredictability made him tense, his muscles constricting of their own accord. What he hoped would happen by doing that he didn’t know. The move wasn’t making Wilson’s heated gaze or the sound any easier for House to take; each scratch, contact, and clash with the dishware still made the ringing in his ears infinitely worse.
And he had half a mind to snap angrily at Cuddy. Hell, if Wilson hadn’t been there, House would have already. But since Wilson was there, House knew that yelling wouldn’t accomplish anything.
Or rather, it wouldn’t accomplish anything good, he mentally corrected. Because shouting at Cuddy to be more careful would get something done. It would make her pissy and send Wilson running from the room, convinced that nothing good could come of this. House had no doubts about that; barking would only make things worse for himself, so he kept quiet.
He’d probably explode with rage as soon as this conversation was over, but in the meantime, he would control himself. He would repress every bad feeling - bad being defined as something that wouldn’t help him win Wilson over - until things were back to the way they should have been.
Until Wilson accepted an apology and agreed to be his friend once more.
Anything less than that, no matter how much more likely it was to occur, was not grounds to let loose, and House refused to let himself believe otherwise.
Of course, he quickly realized that it could be a long time before things were righted between Wilson and him. Not entirely because there was a lot they needed to work through, mind you.
But because nobody was saying anything.
Cuddy was silently handing out plates of food; Wilson and he were taking the dishes without a word (House didn’t count Wilson’s muttered “Thank you” as speaking). And if the purpose of this meeting were to talk, they all seemed intent on doing the exact opposite.
Well, at least he’d been right in thinking that this wouldn’t be easy.
An admittedly small consolation, it was one he grasped hold of nonetheless. This meeting was proving to be as painful as imaginable, as he’d thought it would be. And if he couldn’t lessen his awareness of that unfortunate fact (or fix it quickly), then he sure as hell was going to take small victories where he could find them.
At this point any success was one he would appreciate.
However, that only got him so far on the House-happiness scale. He did feel better superficially, his satisfaction roughly on par with the first lick of a cherry lollipop or first sighting of Cuddy’s cleavage. It made him feel pleased for a brief moment, but it did nothing in the long run. It did nothing to warm the chill of shame, combined with knowledge of impending disaster, inside of him.
Suddenly feeling as though both Wilson and Cuddy could see those emotions inside of him, House broke his rule to look at Wilson constantly. As much as House needed to observe the other man’s cues, he felt the urgent, illogical fear inside of him whisper that that worked both ways. The voice said that Wilson knew, or would know, that House was desperate for their friendship and embarrassed that he should have ever lost it to begin with.
And for his purposes, he supposed that sharing that knowledge was a good thing in the long run. But it didn’t feel like that; he might have been pathetic, but there was still an inkling of pride within him. And as much as he probably should let Wilson know how he was feeling, House wasn’t a fan of the idea that he was or could be divulging information about himself without meaning to.
He was not a control freak like Cuddy could be.
He was not obsessed with being in charge for the sake of being in charge.
But he was also aware that quite a lot had been decided for him the last two months. So much had been taken from him without any consent on his part, without any awareness on his part. And on any given day, that was upsetting, yes, but today he resented it more than usual.
Whether that was because Cuddy had brought Wilson here or for some other reason, House didn’t really know. Maybe it was just the fear that he could share with Wilson something that would only make things worse, he thought. Either way though, he wanted to be in control of what Wilson knew, so he looked down at his plate of food.
Cuddy had given him a little bit of everything. Squid, tofu, and some sort of bird were all mingling together on the dish, the juices and sauces from each food mixing together to form a brown river of MSG, soy, curry, and who knew what else.
It should have been appetizing.
Considering how little he’d eaten today, he should have been stuffing his face full of food. Even if it was Malaysian, which he wasn’t a huge fan of, House thought he should have been hungry enough to eat with gusto.
But he wasn’t.
He wasn’t even interested in eating the noodles and rice Cuddy had put on his plate. Which was really surprising, because, aside from the bread on his Reubens (which he was so sick of at this point), he hadn’t been allowed much in the way of carbohydrates.
He hated having to put it that way - “he hadn’t been allowed.” It made him feel like a little boy denied soda and cookies at the dinner table or chocolate milk in the lunch line at school. It reminded him that Cuddy had had quite a bit of control over his every day life for the last extended period of time. And though he understood her motivation and probably would have denied himself the same foods if he were in her position, it still sucked.
It was still embarrassing.
And it should have been all the reason he needed to chow down now like his life depended on it.
But for whatever reason, it wasn’t, and he just sat there, picking at a jiggly piece of tofu with his fork.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Wilson, who was sitting on the chair that normally in front of House’s desk, eating with an awareness of the awkwardness around them. Every bite taken was careful, thoughtful, as though chewing too loudly would screw everything up and push them all over the edge. It seemed like an insane belief at first, but after a bit of consideration, House guessed it wasn’t that crazy; his tinnitus could very easily be aggravated by a noise like that, no matter how innocent it was, and that could set off the precarious calm that had settled over the room… though he doubted that that was what was motivating Wilson.
Cuddy, on the other hand, was eating with more earnestness - as she had for the last two days as a clear result of skipping lunch at work. She wasn’t inhaling the food; she was too delicate and polite for that kind of piggish behavior. But she was quick to shovel food onto her fork right after she’d taken the utensil away from her lips.
And yet her obvious hunger did nothing to stop her from giving House an imploring look the whole time.
He didn’t want to glance in her direction as he knew what to expect from her. And really, he didn’t need to look at her to feel her pained expression wafting his way as though it possessed a scent as pungent as the squid and curry.
She was silently asking him to talk, asking him to take the first step. Rationally, he had to agree with her that this was really something he had to initiate, because honestly, what was Wilson going to say to start off the conversation? “Hey, House, I think you’re a douche bag” didn’t exactly sound like a great way to begin matters, and he understood intuitively that, if he allowed Wilson to initiate things, then it would be a failure from start to finish.
Logically, House knew that he had to be the one to take that first step towards reconciliation.
But that was not an easy thing to do.
And to be frank, the tug of war within him, the desire to say nothing and everything, the need to fight and apologize, yell and cry - all of it made him feel absolutely insane.
He wasn’t.
This was not a matter of his brain injury or his apparent depression or any other mental or physical illness controlling him.
He was completely sane in this utter madness. Aware of every possible motivation and way he could behave, he knew that he was absolutely in control of his facilities - even as it all threatened to pull him in several directions.
He felt like a rubber band on the verge of being stretched to the breaking point. The invisible elasticity within him, the ability to manipulate any event to his advantage, was nearing the point of no return, he felt like things would either return to normal for him or never be anywhere near the same again after today. And the unfortunate thing was that no matter how he got there, no matter how things ended up…
He would be going there with all of the sanity he’d ever possessed.
There would be no hiding behind his illness, no hiding behind the lie that the universe had created this conflux of events.
There would be no hiding period.
And if he succeeded or failed, it would be success or failure of his own doing and nobody else’s.
Maybe that should have made him feel better; maybe knowing that he was in control should have made him feel like he could take Wilson on. But it didn’t; it just made him feel as though sitting here in the silence, making no move towards one direction or the other, neither gaining, nor losing any ground, was the best thing to do.
Cuddy clearly didn’t agree.
Clearing her throat, she suggested awkwardly, “Maybe one of you should say something.”
Wilson and House said nothing, perhaps a true testament to just how powerful she wasn’t in this situation.
Not that she was ready to believe that, much less throw in the towel.
Swallowing another bite of food, she tried to encourage them. “Come on. I know you both have plenty of things to say to one another…. Someone should start.”
Neither did.
And that made her sigh loudly, the exhale of air so big House thought he could feel it. “All right,” she said to no one in particular, leaning forward to put her plate on the coffee table.
Before she’d even had a chance to angle her body his way, House knew that she was going to make him talk. Well, she was going to try to make him talk, he corrected, somehow feeling slightly more confident by telling himself that she couldn’t make him do anything.
“House,” she said carefully, her knee brushing up against his leg as she brought her own legs up onto the couch. “Do you have something you would like to say to Wilson?”
Unbidden the memory of having to apologize to the neighbor for breaking her window with a baseball flitted through House’s mind. Back then, his mother had had the same kind of soft, condescending encouragement in her tone as Cuddy did now, and the forty years or so of time between the two events only seemed to accentuate how very little he’d changed. No more responsible than he’d been then, no more mature or willing to accept the help of others, he was proof that people did not change.
He was proof, all the reason Wilson needed to believe that they were better off not being friends. That Wilson himself was better off without him, House amended, because he knew in his soul that without Wilson…
House had very little.
Wilson didn’t need him, but he needed Wilson in his life.
Needed him, but didn’t deserve him.
Shaking his head, House answered Cuddy’s question silently.
She, however, didn’t seem to understand - or accept - that Wilson was better off, because she simply kept persisting. “I think you do have something to say,” she told him, audibly trying to prompt him into an apology. And when that didn’t work, she took a more direct route.
Instead of giving him the opportunity to pick his own words, Cuddy simply asked him, “Are you sorry about what happened to Amber?”
He didn’t want to dignify her verbal handholding with a response. What he wanted to do was to say screw Hitler, the middleman be damned, and take the dump he’d threatened Cuddy with earlier himself.
She was trying to help, yes, but he resented her so much in this particular moment. And he wanted to punish her for it, wanted her to know just how much he hated her for it.
But he couldn’t do that.
His anger might have been pervading through his entire body, but he was not so enraged as to miss the way Wilson’s eyes had narrowed on his form.
Wilson wanted an answer.
He was searching for one, for one that he could believe.
And if House allowed his ire towards Cuddy to get in the way of giving Wilson the truthful answer, House would have never forgiven himself for it.
In any emergency, you had to triage, he told himself. Vaguely recalling the time he’d taken Foreman and a patient hostage in an elevator, House remembered the words he’d said then: “You wake up in the morning; your paint’s peeling; your curtains are gone, and the water’s boiling. Which problem do you deal with first? None of them! The building’s on fire.”
That metaphorical building was on fire now. And he could waste his time getting angry at Cuddy; he could selfishly and childishly make this harder for her just to see how she would react to his stubbornness. He could react to the symptoms of the problem and choose to ignore the overarching cause.
There would be some sick pleasure in that. Not just in making Cuddy miserable, but also in fulfilling this prophecy he’d had that this would only end badly.
There would be sick pleasure to be had in being right.
But that wouldn’t make him happy in the long run. That wouldn’t fix the problem around them, and the metaphorical house would burn down, would be unsalvageable, if he reacted small mindedly.
Forced into a corner, he nodded his head. He didn’t say anything, but it was an admittance nonetheless.
An admittance that Wilson didn’t believe.
“You’re lying.”
The icy words made the sun-heated room suddenly seem cold, and both House and Cuddy shivered instinctively at his reaction.
And she was quick to defend him. “Wilson, I don’t think -”
“He’s lying.”
Wilson was so insistent that House found himself looking up from his plate and into angry, dark eyes that showed no hint of warmth or sympathy. House didn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t that.
He supposed he’d merely been hoping that the anger in Wilson’s words were a front, were a guise for some deeper desire for friendship.
It was clear though that that wasn’t even remotely the case.
And House had to wonder if there were any point in trying to convince someone who obviously hated him that a friendship was a good idea.
Cuddy, on the other hand, apparently, didn’t wonder that at all. She was quick once more to defend him. “Wilson, I promise you that he’s not lying to you. He wants -”
“I don’t give a damn what he wants,” Wilson snapped viciously, the sentiment making House set his fork down on his plate with a loud clang. “The entire time I’ve known him I’ve been concerned with him. With what would make him happy, what would make him miserable, and I’m so sick of it, Cuddy.”
Wilson sawed through a piece of what House had deduced was duck but did not eat it. But then again, he was pretty sure that Wilson had only cut through the food as a way to distract Cuddy and House from the fact that his hands were shaking with rage.
“I let him come between me and my wives… all of them. I didn’t spend as much time as I could have with my girlfriend, because I was afraid of upsetting him too much. I wasted so much energy and effort on making him happy, and it cost me the rest of my life with Amber,” Wilson accused with so much bitterness and pain in his voice that House felt as though he couldn’t breathe.
And in a way, it made him almost happy that Wilson hadn’t allowed him to see his suffering for the last two months. Because having to face it now, House wasn’t sure he could have handled that on a daily basis. The guilt, sadness, and indignation it inspired was terrifying and exhausting.
And confusing.
Sitting there, House felt as though his internal rubber band were being pulled once more to the brink. He could feel himself wanting to react in a number of ways; he wanted to apologize; he wanted to yell at Cuddy, at Wilson, at anyone and everyone in his vicinity.
He wanted it to stop.
But he didn’t know what he should do.
Maybe it should have been an easy decision to make. A sane, shrewd person would have argued that, if he wanted Wilson’s forgiveness, then the only option was to apologize with as much honesty and intent as possible.
For House though, it wasn’t that simple.
Oh, he was willing to apologize for all of the things he’d done to Wilson. He would apologize for killing CB; he would apologize for demanding so much attention that it had led Wilson to neglect some of the other areas of his life.
But - and maybe this had to do with the way Wilson was talking - it seemed like he wanted House to take responsibility for everything that had gone wrong in their lives.
And he wouldn’t do that.
It was not his fault that every one of Wilson’s wives had left. If they’d left, that probably had more to do with Wilson cheating on them or them cheating on him than anything else. And more than anything, even if House had tried to make himself the most important thing in Wilson’s life, at the end of the day, wasn’t it up to Wilson to prevent that from happening?
Didn’t he bear some responsibility for all of this?
House didn’t dare ask that question; just thinking it was all he intended to do, and it was all he needed to feel that he couldn’t be held accountable for every poor choice Wilson had made.
It was also all the motivation House needed to keep his mouth shut. At this point, he thought that, as much as all of this anger was about him, some of it wasn’t. Some of it was about lashing out against the shitty circumstances that they all found themselves. And House knew this because…
Well, because he was there himself right now; he’d been there for two months, and he was smart enough to know how to recognize that same kind of frustration in another person.
But Wilson interpreted his silence differently. “You see?” he asked so loudly that he almost sounded hysterical. “He’s not saying anything. He knows I’m right. He knows that this is all his fault.”
Cuddy leaned forward in Wilson’s direction, though she didn’t get up and go to him. “You can’t argue that he’s not sorry and then also say that he knows it’s all his fault,” she pointed out in a non-accusatory manner. She was clearly trying to make a point without upsetting Wilson, but House knew from experience that her intentions probably didn’t mean anything.
“Sure, I can. He knows it’s his fault; he just doesn’t care.” Wilson paused to rub the back of his neck with one of his hands, and the gesture made House think that he was more resigned and frustrated by the scenario than outright angry at the moment. Really, it just seemed like Wilson had thought to himself: Okay, this is the way House is, and he’ll never change, and I have to accept that and banish it (and him) from my life.
And that pissed House off.
Because if Wilson had already decided to move on, he should have never come here. He should have never agreed with Cuddy to talk to him. Granted, House was sure she’d given Wilson something he wanted - really wanted - to get him to come here but still.
If Wilson had already decided that there was nothing House could do or say, then this was just a waste of time. A painful waste of time, House amended, as his tinnitus seemed to pound on his skull and shatter his fracture even further.
And whether it was the pain or his irritation that finally loosened his tongue, House didn’t know. But he did speak then.
“Yeah, I just love it when people die at my hand,” he responded roughly, interrupting the tirade Wilson was clearly working towards. “I get off on it. And when I can’t kill someone, I think making you miserable is an acceptable substitute.”
The mocking tone was impossible to miss, and Wilson was temporarily taken aback by it. Which let House know that, for all of his anger, for all of his statements about House and how awful he was, some part of Wilson had believed - until now - that maybe House was repentant.
He screwed up.
The thought hit House immediately and repeatedly.
He had just screwed up.
Badly.
Whatever chance he might have had…
He’d just ruined it.
And Cuddy softly admonishing him by saying his name was proof of that.
He’d just made everything impossible for himself.
Yet Wilson didn’t get up and leave.
House had expected him to end the conversation right then and there. He’d anticipated a bunch of insults filled with an honesty that only feeling deep-seated rage would allow for and a flurry of activity as Wilson bolted and Cuddy tried to get him to stay.
But none of that happened.
For the life of him, House had no idea why. If the roles were reversed, he thought he would have left by now (although if the situations were truly reversed, House couldn’t deny that he probably would have never come, no matter how much Cuddy offered as compensation). But for whatever reason, Wilson stayed precisely where he was.
Wilson silently set his plate on the ground, allowing his now free hands to clench in and out of frustrated fists. House took special note of this. He didn’t necessarily think that Wilson would hit him, but House wanted to allow for all possibilities.
However, rather than use those fists, Wilson began to speak in slow, furious words. “Thank you, House, for proving to me that you are… exactly what I thought you would be like.” He gestured towards Cuddy, disdain somehow evident in the flick of his hand. “She kept saying you’d changed, that you felt bad about what happened. But once again, you have shown that humanity is something you have no capacity for.” With a mock bow of his head, Wilson finished by saying, “Thank you for showing me that I made the right decision by cutting you out of my life. You poison everything you touch.”
Cuddy looked like she wanted to say something to calm Wilson down, but House had no interest in that Lifetime television movie. Before she’d even had a chance to utter a single word, he railroaded over her. “Yeah, I’m the only one in this room who’s made a mistake,” House replied snidely.
He figured that there was no point in trying to argue his own virtue. Would anyone in this room believe him anyway?
He doubted it.
And so the only option left to him was to make sure that everyone else realized that he wasn’t the only one who had screwed up.
“Last I checked, I wasn’t the one who cheated on two of my three wives. I wasn’t the one who slept with a patient.” Of course, House didn’t particularly care about either all that much. The latter was probably more bothersome to him as the very idea of fraternizing with patients made House feel as though he were going to break out into hives.
But he didn’t really care.
Unlike Cuddy, who immediately said in a disgusted tone, “You slept with a patient?”
Both House and Wilson scowled at her, but the latter had no chance to speak as House once more started talking. “We all make choices - good and bad. Did I screw up? Of course. But you don’t want to hear me say how bad I feel about that. You don’t care if I tell you that I liked Amber - that she was my friend too or that I knew her long before you ever did - because you don’t want to even consider that this might not be as black and white as you think.”
Wilson jutted his chin out defiantly, obviously refusing to lend credence to anything House was saying. Even Cuddy was looking at him as though he’d lost his damn mind. Her hand covering one of his, it was a sign that he should shut up.
But he didn’t.
“You don’t want an apology. You want to hate me,” he said knowingly, his bright eyes trained on Wilson’s dark ones. “You want to make me out to be the big bad wolf? Fine. Consider this my final act of huffing and puffing. Consider your house blown down.”
Cuddy sighed next to him in exasperation. His gaze might have been trained on Wilson, but House couldn’t miss the movement out of the corner of his eye. She clearly thought he’d just screwed everything up… and perhaps he had; but more than anything, House felt as though Wilson had preemptively decided the outcome of this conversation. And that meant that there was no real way for House to succeed, much less screw up.
Besides, if Wilson were only willing to believe the worst in him, then why not give into his darker urges? Why not give Wilson everything he was obviously hoping to see?
“If you actually felt bad,” Wilson snarled. “You wouldn’t be such a -”
“If you actually wanted me to feel bad,” House interrupted loudly. “You wouldn’t be such a judgmental dick.”
“House,” Cuddy warned. She was clearly worried about where this was going, and he didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was already too late for him or that it didn’t matter what he said now.
Wilson stood up, but he made no move for the door. His face red, he told Cuddy, “Don’t bother. Just let him talk like he always does. There’s no point in trying to dress him up or put him in a nice package.” With disdain he looked at House. “He’s always going to be like that, and no matter how hard anyone tries to change him, he will still be the same disgusting piece of human waste that he has always been.”
Cuddy squeezed his hand, but it did nothing to stop the blood from draining out of House’s face. It did nothing to stop the feeling of failure from washing through him, as though the emotion itself had replaced the plasma suspending his blood cells. She was trying to keep him calm, give him some hope that he hadn’t had for at least a month now. But her efforts were worthless, her reassurances unable to touch the place inside of him riddled by his anger and fear and feeling of defeat.
“Sit down,” Cuddy ordered immediately, perhaps sensing that Wilson was ready to bolt.
However, he refused, shaking his head as fast and as hard as his neck would allow. “No.”
She sneered at him. “That wasn’t a request, Wilson. Sit down. Now.”
House almost laughed at how angry she was. Compared to his own and Wilson’s anger, hers was the equivalent of the fury a fuzzy kitten could create. Really, it was a pathetic output, given what both Wilson and House himself were capable of doing. But there was no denying that she was absolutely furious.
And apparently, despite its comparative weakness, her ire was still scary enough for Wilson to obey instantly.
“Nobody is going anywhere,” she informed them both in a cold tone. “And you both are going to stop insulting one another. I didn’t bring you here,” she told Wilson, “so that you could merely shout at each other until you’re blue in the face.”
Continue on to the rest of the chapter