Characters: Gen, with House, Wilson, Mod Squad
Rating: PG, for one slightly off-color Aussie idiom that I found online.
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Length: 1,200 words

Notes: From housefic_pens Kickstarter Number Two, prompt 2 “I’m not cleaning this thing out again. It’s somebody else’s turn.”
I wanted to write something silly and light. Call it Goofy Without Plot. Standard disclaimers apply.


Chase spat a mouthful of brownish liquid back into his mug and dropped it in the sink. "Either of you got any gum? Or a toothbrush?"

"Like I'd lend you my toothbrush," Cameron glanced over her shoulder at Chase then went back to the latest issue of International Immunology.

Foreman concentrated on the Wall Street Journal. "You know the coffee's lousy. Why don't you stop for some decent stuff on the way like I do?" He lifted his white paper cup and took a long drink. "Caramel latte, sweet and delicious."

Chase pulled the basket from its holder and sniffed at the coffee grounds. "It’s not the coffee; it's the water. Or the pumping mechanism. It could be bacterial."

"You're doing a differential on lousy coffee?" Cameron moved to join him next to the machine.

"This is beyond lousy, it's a brown-eyed mullet."

Cameron and Foreman turned to Chase with curious eyes. "What? It's a figure of speech."

Foreman shook his head as he joined his colleagues in front of the coffee pot. He stuck his finger in the grounds and sniffed the contents of the pot. "I have no idea what your figure of speech means, but the grounds are cold; that means somebody turned on yesterday's coffee to warm it up instead of making another pot; that's the problem."

"But it doesn't smell like burnt coffee; it smells like… vomit," Cameron said, leaning in to take another whiff.

"Whatever, it needs to be cleaned," Chase insisted. He glanced at Foreman; they both leaned toward Cameron.

“I’m not cleaning this thing out again. It’s somebody else’s turn,” she said. "You always expect me to do the clean-up because I'm a woman."

"No," Foreman said. "We expect you to do the cleaning because you always do it." He would have high-fived Chase, but their pagers sounded and the mystery of the bad coffee was forgotten while they checked their latest patient.


House arrived to an empty office. He considered walking across the balcony to bug Wilson, but he decided to putter around the office and wait for his fellows. The Mod Squad would turn up soon enough.

"Heath, Linc," House greeted Chase and Foreman. "What's on the burner this morning?"

"Huh? Our patient is vomiting, coffee grounds," Chase stated, eying the steaming mug as House raised it to his lips.

"Ah, here's Julie, one step behind, as usual. What do you know?"

Cameron stepped into the room a few seconds behind her colleagues and made a face at House. "I wouldn't drink that if I were you."

Foreman grumbled. "He probably has a bleeding ulcer, we need to get him into surgery ASAP."

"When did you start pronouncing acronyms as words?"

"What does that have to do with the coffeemaker?" Cameron puzzled.

"You," House addressed her, "are falling down on the job." Cameron blinked several times. "I had to make a fresh pot when I got here."

"Yeah, something's… wrong with it," Chase said. "Cameron was supposed to clean it out."

"Hey!" she said. "We got paged."

"Whatever. Hold on the surgery; order a 24-hour urine test for creatinine clearance, and do a head CT," House ordered.

"On the coffeemaker?" Foreman gaped.

"On the patient."

House wrote a few symptoms on the whiteboard and then lost interest. He wandered the few steps to Wilson's office and poked his head in the open door. "Hey, you hungry?"

"It's 9:30. Didn't you eat breakfast?" Wilson asked, not looking up from his papers.

"What can I say? I miss your pancakes."

"I'm about finished with chart review. Meet you down there in ten minutes?"

House squinted with one eye, then the other, but he made his way to the first floor alone.



"There's no chance it's renal," Chase said with a satisfied look on his face. "We ran a chem panel and his kidney function looks completely normal. Potassium, calcium and phosphorus in normal ranges." He walked toward the back of the room as House crossed "renal" from the list on the whiteboard.

"CT showed significant bleeding in the sinuses. It's probably polyps, and if one of them ruptured, that could account for the blood in his vomit," Foreman announced.

"Great, so our guy is suffering from the mother of all post-nasal drips," House said. He was about to suggest shuffling their patient to those saps in ENT when Chase spat into the sink again.

"Bloody hell! I told you something was wrong." Cameron and Foreman jumped up and the three of them examined the machine.

"Leave this to a professional." House brushed them away with his cane and sniffed at the contents of the pot, then the reservoir, then the filter. "I smell a rat, or a rat fink."

"Please tell me you didn't drown your pet in there," Cameron winced.

House rolled his eyes. "Didn't any of you take chemistry in junior high? No Child Left Behind..."

"Hey!" Chase said. "I wasn't even educated here."

House narrowed his eyes for a split second, focusing on a quirk, something that didn't fit. "I know somebody who was," House murmured as he glanced down at Chase's cup. He filled it and left the room quickly.


"Eighth grade chemistry lab," House said as he stalked toward Wilson's desk. He waved the cup under his friend's nose. "Brings back memories, doesn't it? One day after school, Dave Bryant and I broke into the lab and swiped a bottle of butyric acid. Foul smelling stuff," he reflected. "The couch in the teacher's lounge didn't smell the same for months. We never got caught."

"House, why are you telling stories about your misspent youth?" Wilson struggled to keep his face calm. He turned his head to keep House from noticing that his dimples were showing.

"Why have you been spiking the coffee in my conference room?"

Wilson looked at House and they stared at each other for a good, long minute before Wilson's resolve failed and he shrugged and sat back, finally letting a grin spread over his face. "How did you know it was me?"

House just smiled and tapped Wilson's shoulder with the head of his cane. "Come on, we can watch Divorce Court. Yesterday, Judge Mablean made a stripper pay alimony to her deadbeat ex-husband."

"Once again, the American dream is crushed under the wheels of jurisprudence," Wilson said as he pushed away from his desk.

"Sucks to be you."

"Every time."

They walked toward the elevator, elbows almost touching, each silently wondering how long House's fellows would take to figure out that there was nothing at all wrong with the coffeemaker that a good scrubbing wouldn't fix.

Pairing: House/Wilson
Rating: NC-17
Warning: Lots of sex, and House makes fun of fat people
Summary: Nights before, mornings after, and a few moments in between the days before Wilson gets married. A brief history of an on-again-off-again thing.
Author's Notes: This was originally written for Remix Redux IV. It has been significantly edited from the version that appears there. The story was remixed from Wandering Widget's "Fallback," but this (final) draft bears very little resemblance to the original work. Thanks to bibliosylph for the beta. She helped get the sappy out. Also, I had all kinds of problems with spacing when I ported this to LJ. Keeping my fingers crossed that it's legible.

---

Elm Terrace


Everything was OK, more or less, when Wilson left House the first time.

He had gone to bed alone and woke some time later to the feeling of a tongue flicking over the head of his cock and sound of a muffled grunt.

"House? What the--" a gasp, or a protest, though not much of a protest.

"My people call this a blowjob." House went back to what he was doing. Wilson could only watch House's head bobbing up and down, up and down until his heart reached the edge of its ability to beat and he came without warning.

House smoothed his hands over Wilson's chest before he got up to go back to his own bedroom. He paused at the door. "I think you should find some place else to live."

Wilson wondered if he'd breached an untold etiquette that governed coming in your roommate's mouth.

Every time Wilson tried to figure it out, he remembered the things House could do with his tongue and thought he should feel guilty because the memory always got him hard. When that happened, he showed up at the door he still thought of as theirs.


"I see that nothing has changed here," Wilson said. In roughly sixteen hours, he'd be married. His brother, Tom, would stand up with him. He'd declined the traditional bachelor party in favor of an evening with his best friend. The people who patted him on the back and called him ‘such a nice, responsible young man' obviously didn't know House very well.

"I moved most of my books into the bedroom that used to be yours," House responded.

His almost-wife's name was Lois. She was a small brunette who made a great first impression. Wilson had known her for almost four months; she wasn't the same woman he'd shacked up with after House threw him out. "Nice thing about a small girl, you won't have to worry so much about gravity," House said. "Unless she gets fat. How big is her mother?"

"House…" Wilson shook his head in dismay. "Only you—" He couldn't say any more, not with House's mouth covering his.

Wilson didn't close his eyes; he couldn't look away. This was it. He was going to be good from this day forward. He could feel House's fingers working at the buttons of his shirt, and the only thing he really knew right now was that he wanted his shirt off, so he could feel House's hands on his skin.

"You make me crazy." He leaned in and pulled House's t-shirt over his head, all the while thinking how much easier it was to separate a man from his clothing if you didn't have to mess with buttons.

"I do not." House took Wilson's face in his hands and kissed him again, slowly, a little like goodbye. Then they laughed, as if they both knew that none of this was real enough to merit a farewell.

Wilson forced details into sharp focus, to keep them: the soft thump of a pillow hitting the floor, the tingle in his feet when House sank his teeth into a nipple, the wave of heat that crashed over his skin as House pushed inside. House crushed their fingers together when he came. That was the best part about sex with House: Wilson never had to ask whether he was good enough.

He rolled over and looked at the clock. In roughly fourteen hours, he'd be married. Tom would give a toast and tell some embarrassing story from when he was eight. He'd look for House, and he would let himself remember how their bodies locked together, this one last time.

"Get some sleep," House said in a normal voice. "You have to get married tomorrow."

"It's already tomorrow. I'm getting married today." House slid an arm around his waist and spooned up against him, but he didn't say another word.

The next thing Wilson sensed was the smell of hot coffee, House's coffee. He'd remember that, too.


A little more than a year passed before he fucked up his nice little life. He wasn't quite sure how he'd ended up being unfaithful to the woman he married and the man he kept wanting to fuck in one fell swoop. He told Lois. About the only comfort he could find as he escaped her yelling and crying was the idea that he wouldn't have to tell House.

No strings pulled every bit as tight as his marriage vows, and he called House anyway. He was too drunk to say anything.

"I know it's you," House barked at the silence. "Where the hell are you?"

"Westin," Wilson slurred. "It's… nice."

"It's all the way out in the suburbs." House hung up.


By the time he heard the pounding at his door, Wilson had finished another beer and the call had conveniently slipped his mind.

"I know you're in there, you coward," House shouted. "Open the fucking door."

Wilson had little choice. House's fist hung in the air, ready to strike again. He said nothing before stumbling into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. He didn't want to see House.

"You're an idiot," House said as soon as Wilson came back.

"I know." Wilson stared at the dresser and counted the beer bottles. One, two, three, four… eight. Damn.

"Knowing isn't enough to stop you." House had taken off his jacket and his shoes. He flung himself onto the bed and moved to turn off the lamp.

Wilson tripped over his own feet and fell forward, the mattress cushioned his landing. House slipped an arm around his waist and pulled him close. When they woke, Wilson was sober and House was calm. It was enough to get them back to House's place in one piece.


North Tenth Street

The apartment was empty when he let himself in after work, which sucked. The long, boring day made him hornier than usual. He fidgeted as he scrolled through channels in search of something that might provide the visual stimulus to inspire him to jerk off, but it was too early for soft-core porn on cable, and a random episode of Baywatch wasn't doing anything for him: too much David Hasselhoff and not enough Pam Anderson.

It was clear to Wilson that he'd been hanging out with House too long. He settled for a cold shower, which didn't help either, then he gave up went to bed early. He had no idea how long he'd been asleep when he heard shuffling in the front room.

"House?" he called out. "I'm back here…"

House appeared in the doorway and flipped the lights on. "What are you doing in bed so early?" Wilson pulled back the covers and crooked a finger.

"Waiting, not very patiently," Wilson said. "Take your clothes off and get over here."

House smiled and raised an eyebrow as he started to undress.

"About time you showed up," Wilson said as House crawled over to him.

"Sorry, I had a date," House confessed, running his fingers through Wilson's hair.

"Guess she didn't put out." Wilson felt House's teeth nipping his neck, biting his shoulder, and let a delicious shiver take him.

"Nope. You wouldn't be wrong to call it an unmitigated disaster," House said. "But never say never." He pushed Wilson into the mattress, pinning his arms over his head and straddling his hips in a series of movements so fluid that they played as one.

"Why'd you waste your time on a maybe?" Wilson muttered between breaths. "I was waiting for you."

"You don't have to get sentimental with me," House said. "We both know I'm your safety school. You'll be out of here as soon as you get a better offer." House bent his head to dart his tongue between Wilson's lips, teasing and playful.

Wilson gripped the bottom of the headboard and lost himself in the sensation of his heels rubbing and pressing against the backs of House's legs. He heard a word over and over again: harder. It slipped from his throat to his ears in the guise of a stranger's voice.
When he slept that night, Wilson dreamed of a great bird swallowing him whole.

When he woke up, he packed his things to leave before House could do it for him.


"At least you know this one's going to get fat," House said the night before Wilson's second wedding. "But I think she's got the height to pull it off, so you won't have to worry so much about a few extra pounds making her look frumpy before her time." He chewed his steak with gusto and then took up a forkful of potatoes.

The next almost Mrs. Wilson was Lily, voluptuous beauty who shone on Wilson's arm. "Give it up, House. You're not going to scare me out of getting married."

House refilled his wine glass and Wilson's. "My couch is always open if she porks out," he said with a slight chuckle. "You staying with me tonight?"

Wilson speared a couple of slender green beans with his fork. "What, and make your girlfriend sleep on the couch? Women are a lot less flexible about that kind of thing than you seem to be."

"Stacy's not the jealous type; that's part of the reason we fit so well together."

"Lily is staying at her sister's tonight. Come back to my place," Wilson suggested. He thought of his arms wrapped around House's back, their chests pressed close together, almost melting into each other. "I mean, if you want to."

"How about I stop by in the morning and make you some coffee." It wasn't a question.


As Wilson listened to the rabbi talk about duty, House caught his eye. He was smiling.


Lindsay Place


Wilson knocked on House's door with a sense that the earth had flattened out. He'd spoken to Stacy; he'd come directly from his lawyer's office. He noticed a faint black streak on his pinky, where his fingers dragged over his signature.

He stood out in the hall for what felt like a long time and wondered what he'd find if House let him in.

"What?" House said as he finally opened the door. His voice was rough, almost garbled. He had been crying, or yelling, or drinking. Maybe all three.

"I need a place to stay," Wilson told him. He dragged a modest sized suitcase into the living room and parked it next to the coat closet. "Thought I could sleep on your couch."

"It's three in the afternoon." House hadn't bothered to get dressed. He was listing dangerously to the left, leaning hard on his new cane. Wilson let his coat drop to a chair and slid an arm around House's waist.

"Perfect time for a nap," he said evenly.

"You're taking me to bed?"

"I'm putting you to bed, and then I can make us something to eat." Wilson lifted House's arm around his neck. They started across the room, a couple of steps at a time; every few seconds, Wilson shifted House's body a little straighter.
He made a few calculations in his head: four or five steps to the couch versus at least twenty to the bedroom. "Let's rest a while."

"I can make it to the bed," House snarled.

"I know you can," Wilson said. "Not so sure about me."

"She left a real mess," House said without looking up. "Everything's different now."

Wilson rubbed a hand through his hair, tried to keep himself from yelling. Dealing with House since the infarction was a real struggle, and now he was in it alone. Stacy was gone; Lily was gone. He and House remained alone together on the couch in this wreck of a room.

"Not everything," he said after a couple of minutes. He placed his left hand over House's right and figured he was deluding himself.


"Seems like it's about time you got married again," House said. "What's it been, six months? You must be sick of sleeping on my couch by now."

It was true that they no longer shared a bed, but Wilson felt like he ought to protest.

"Although my couch might be more comfortable than that skeleton you've been seeing." House made air quotes around the last word.

"Julie is a very attractive woman," Wilson said. "She works very hard to…"

"I've never seen her eat anything but lettuce," House said.

"Only you would mock somebody for sticking to a nutritious diet."

"For a rabbit, maybe." House made a childish face and Wilson shook his head as he stirred sugar into his coffee. "But at least you know she can't gain weight since she maintains a calorie deficit."

"Every time I go on a third date, it seems like you become obsessed with what she's going to look like a few years down the road. Why is that?"

"Because love is blind," House said. "Somebody has to look out for your future. Eventually one of your little liaisons is going to last. Law of averages. And I'd hate to see a nice guy like you saddled with a fat girl."

Wilson spread a second slice of toast with jam. "So if I were to ask you again, to be my best man, you'd say yes?"

House just looked at him. "Don't you know any better men than me?"


Baker Street


Wilson opened his eyes shortly after sunrise and shifted on the couch. The place was so quiet; House was still sleeping. He couldn't stop himself seeing the things that remained. House had a hard time letting go of souvenirs of his past. Wilson scanned the familiar titles on the bookshelf and thought back to the time when they'd lived together in that cramped apartment, before his first marriage. The stuff on the walls, on the shelves, they were Wilson's mementos, too, in a way.

He sat up. The wood floor was cold under his bare feet. He rose, stretched, and rubbed his hands over his arms. The last time he slept here was in House's bed, a long time ago. He picked up the blanket, wrapped it around his shoulders and walked into the kitchen.

Rain rolled in the night before he married Julie. House was almost certainly high, or low; either way, he wasn't quite himself. They ate in a diner, omelets the size of Rhode Island, and came back here.

Wilson filled the coffee pot with cold water and poured it into House's complicated German coffee machine.

He would have gone back to his own place for a responsible night's sleep, alone. But House asked him to stay, one last time, to say goodbye properly. He actually said the word: goodbye. He'd never done that before.

His kisses were slow and soft, very nearly gentle, as if House was trying to make sure they would last as long as they had to. Wilson let Stacy's shadow cross his mind as he wondered whom House was kissing, but he didn't care that much. The right to be here, in House's bed, enjoying his kisses, belonged only to Wilson now.

He found the filters in a drawer and measured out four scoops of grounds, adding a fifth for good measure.

Wilson covered House's body with his and never broke contact; they simply kept touching each other, moving against each other until Wilson rested his head on House's chest to listen to the blood moving the valves in his heart.

He took two mugs from a cabinet and filled them.

He didn't love House, and House didn't love him. Love was a baby bird screaming in the nest, struggling to leave it for the first time, not quite understanding that spreading its wings to catch the air made the difference between falling and flying. Whatever he and House had, it was something else. House was the nest he didn't want to leave, even though he let himself be pushed out when House wouldn't allow him to stay. Wilson used his shoulder to open the door to House's bedroom. House was still sleeping.

They fell asleep and woke in the same position, as if the night before had sapped the will to move from them.

"You should take a shower, Jimmy," House grumbled. "You can't get married smelling like sex."

"Why do we always end up like this when I'm about to walk down the aisle?" House shrugged and reached for his pills. "You only want me when I'm unavailable," Wilson said. "That's so fucked up."

"OK, say I asked you to stop thinking you can be Mr. Respectable Married Guy. If I asked you to, would you leave Julie standing at the altar and stay with me?"

Wilson sat down on the edge of the bed and set the mugs on the nightstand. House was no more than half a foot away.

"Is that what you want?"

"I want you to decide already," House yelled. "I couldn't make you happy for more than a couple of weeks."

"You don't know what you want."

"And you do?"

He didn't, not really, so Wilson took a shower. He went back to his apartment and changed clothes, and then he did what he thought he wanted to do. He got married again.

He felt a hand on his back, and heard a mumbled curse. "I brought you some coffee."

"Breakfast in bed? Are you feeling guilty?" House sat up and took the cup that Wilson offered. "Nothing says ‘I'm sorry' like a good blowjob."

Wilson laughed out loud, but stopped himself. "What's in it for me?"

"What if it's for your own good?" House said.

"You always think you're right." The coffee was too hot. Wilson blew over his cup and wished he'd remembered to add sugar. He set his cup back down and took House's from him before he squirmed into the narrow space between House and the edge of the bed.

"I'm one of the lucky few who can learn from experience." House shifted over enough for Wilson to stretch out. They lay there together, not touching, not looking at each other, and not speaking until the clock in the hall struck six times.

"Do you think we could fly?" Wilson asked. "If we tried?"

"You think we should jump off the roof waving our arms in the air like idiots?"

"Something like that, I guess."

"Sure, that sounds like big fun," House said. He raised himself up and looked down at Wilson's eyes. "Stay out of my pills."

Prompt: “There are worse things than this,” he said softly, and she shook her head. Fromhousefic_pens Kickstarter Number 1.
Warning: Written in about 90 minutes of working time, then edited once. Please consider this a draft. Word count is about 1,000.
Notes: I have never tried writing these characters before, but the idea that became the guts of this piece has been at the back of my mind for some time now, and it's good to get it written. Thoughts on characterization are welcome in the thread here. Comments closed.

---

"You're off tomorrow?" Foreman asked near the end of the shift one Saturday afternoon. He and Cameron were alone in the conference room finishing paperwork on their most recent case.

"I think Chase is on call," she said. "Not that it matters. The Elephant Man died and we never pick up new patients over a weekend. House wouldn't stand for it."

Foreman laughed. "Before I started working here, I'd never met anybody who could make medicine a nine-to-five job."

"Oh, that's not fair." Cameron looked at her colleague and slowly let a broad smile spread across her face. "It's more like noon-to-whenever."

Foreman smiled, too. They sat quietly, writing notes on charts, shoving stacks of paper at each other every so often, until he got up and stretched.

"I should get going," he said. "Got a date tonight."

"Is it Traci again? Go home, Foreman. Don't keep the lady waiting if you don't have to. I can finish this…"

Foreman shrugged his jacket over his arms and lightly patted Cameron's shoulder. "Leave it for Chase, something to remember us by." They looked at each other and willingly went their separate ways.


Cameron slept well and woke up early. The day that spilled through her window was bright and sunny. She pressed one hand to the glass and decided it was just warm enough to go for a run outside.

She pulled on a sports bra and a sweatshirt, laced up her shoes, locked her front door and jogged at a moderate pace for half a mile before breaking into a full run.

She loved running for the reminder that she controlled her own body, made it do what she wanted. Trees and houses passed through her peripheral vision as she went on. Seeing the distance as more than numbers on a display helped Cameron push herself that much harder. Running outside was much nicer than plodding along on the treadmill in her living room.

That was a compromise, a sacrifice she made to her career. She'd always known that medicine would cost her. On the day she proudly walked across the stage to accept the diploma that allowed her to call herself "Alison Cameron, M.D.," she didn't consider how high that cost would rise.

She stopped at a corner store to pick up a newspaper and walked the last mile back to her apartment. It was a good, responsible cool down and when she got back inside, she was ready to enjoy her old Sunday morning ritual.

It started with coffee. She poured a cup and breathed in the aroma. "I take it black, like my men," she said, snickering at the joke from an old movie she'd seen too many times. She thought about her brother, and the time since their last conversation. Maybe she'd call him later; it had been too long.

She set her cup on a table next to the couch and flopped down to read her paper. She liked the sensations of reading an actual newspaper: the crinkle of the pages as she turned them, the smell of the newsprint floating gently toward her face, the smudges on her fingers from the printer's ink.

She thought of her mother. When Cameron had a chance to settle in with the paper, she always thought about her mother, who wanted to be a reporter, but got married and raised a family instead. She was happy, wasn't she? Things are different now. Women really can have it all.

She turned to the obituary section at the back of the Metro section. This was where the ritual started to mean something to her. She scanned the written obits: Pauline Graham, 82, Public School Teacher, after complications from surgery. John Lewis Meyerson, 60, Advertising Executive, killed in a one-vehicle traffic accident. Bettye Ann Piltz, R.N., 72, of pancreatic cancer. She is survived by her husband, Rupert; a daughter, Lisa Piltz-Monroe; a son, Jason; two sisters and five grandchildren.

She often found the paid obits more satisfying. She read every word of every notice, keeping an eye out for anybody who might remind her of Mike, but today, on this day, there's nobody. There's nobody else's grief to soak up, to dilute what she still hasn't let go.

She rattled the Metro section closed and set it aside for the Arts section. Today belonged to her; she should do something.

When she looked up, the sky was twilight and she realized that she hadn't spoken aloud in almost twelve hours. "That's… really pathetic, Cameron," she lowered her voice to mimic her boss, then she coughed from the effort.


Foreman bounded into the conference room Monday morning, more cheerful than usual. "Ali C MD inna house!" he exclaimed.

"I guess somebody got lucky," Cameron said.

"You think?" Foreman was beaming.

"You always try to talk street after a good date." She sighed and began to pull her hair into a ponytail.

"Hey, what's up with you? Please tell me you didn't come in on your day off."

Cameron glanced around the room as if she was reassuring herself that they were alone. Chase wouldn’t be in before nine and House would show up when he got around to it.

"No, same old same old Sunday," she said. "But sometimes I think… I think that all I have is, you know, this." She gestured around the room: this job, this hospital, this friend she talked to every once in a while.

“There are worse things than this,” he said softly, and she shook her head.

"And there are better," she replied. She allowed herself a moment of eye contact with Foreman. He seemed so well adjusted, so balanced. She liked being around him because she hoped some of it might rub off on her. Right now, he looked happy. "So, since it's just you and me, feel free to dish about your date."

Part One (By Pitza)
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten
Part Eleven

Author's note: This is the end, told from House's point of view. I'll include a few acknowledgments, but there will be a longer piece on the process of writing this series on housefic_meta soon. So, thanks to namasteyoga for a very quick sort of beta on the final two chapters. She pointed out several things that weren't clear in my sixth or so draft. Thanks also to maryhatchbailey and pwcorgigirl for listening to me whine and bitch about how badly my writing was going over the last couple of months. Very special thanks to logastellus for never easing up on the questions. The ending probably would have turned out very differently without her.

My deepest thanks to pitza. She let me take over her story and blow it way beyond what I ever imagined it would be.

Thanks to all who read, waiting patiently for me to write something new, and made comments and observations. I appreciate them and felt your praise for this twisted little story very deeply. You all inspired me in different ways, and pushed me beyond what I thought I could do with borrowed characters.

---

House hears Wilson’s plaintive words through the haze of too many beers and wonders if Wilson remembers hearing them that night, before everything went to hell. He watches the sky as Wilson drives. He lets his eyes focus on the moon as stray clouds pass through his field of vision: clear, blurred, clear, and then gone. Now it’s back again.

He feels himself humming, but he doesn’t recognize the tune in his throat, it’s just there blocking his thoughts. He’s glad, even grateful. His fingers tap against his leg.

The car comes to a halt. They’re home, House thinks. Wilson gets out without a word and opens the door for him.

“Come on, House. Get up.” Wilson sounds sharp, the way he sounded while he was pushing House to walk during his recovery.

“Wait, OK.” House stands up, feels his feet under him, and leans on the cane. He feels Wilson’s arm go around his waist. “Don’t! I can walk.” Wilson follows anyway. They shuffle up the steps slowly. House looks over his shoulder. “I can’t get rid of you,” he says.

Wilson unlocks the door and pushes it open. “Whatever,” he says.

“You don’t want to come in for a nightcap?” House asks. He falters as he looks at Wilson’s face. He can’t read anything there.

“Not a chance,” Wilson says. He takes the steps quickly. House slams the door between them before Wilson reaches his car.


He calls in sick the next day, and the day after that. His problem is more than a hangover, he’s in more pain than usual. He takes Vicodin two at a time instead of one; his head feels useless and fuzzy. Cuddy is sympathetic and cuts him a little slack. He sort of wishes she’d stop doing that, but not right now, not while her bias works in his favor.

He sits in front of the television. He changes the channel every few minutes because the action keeps him from sliding into oblivion. He jumps from a news program in Chinese, to an exploration of the excesses of some washed-up rock band, to a shopping channel. He gives up when the hostess presents a ceramic clown figurine and peers at it as if the object were her child, or her lover. He can’t decide which image is more disturbing.

He pulls himself into the kitchen with his cane and spreads some peanut butter on a slice of almost stale bread. He takes two bites and leaves the rest on the counter.

He looks around his apartment at the mess. Fuck it, just go to work. Work has a whole department full of people who don’t speak much English who get paid to clean things up when they get out of hand.


The first thing he sees on his desk when he walks into his office the next morning is an envelope. He opens it, and a silvery key falls on the floor in front of him. A note has only an address with an apartment number. It might confuse House, if not for Wilson’s inimitable scrawl.

He picks up the key, holds it in front of his eyes; studies it. Apparently Wilson has moved. He slips it on the ring next to the key to his front door. He almost keeps the old one, as a souvenir, a fetish to remind him that anybody can make mistakes, but he rejects that idea and throws the key across the room. Its arc takes it to the wastebasket next to the door; it rustles the plastic liner when it falls out of the air.

His phone seems to be ringing a lot, but he doesn’t pick up. He doesn’t feel like talking about the bug any more, and he really doesn’t want to talk to Gorman today.

He manages to avoid everybody until Cuddy comes to see him.

“How’s your leg,” she asks bluntly.

“It’s fine. I’m fine, I had a bit of a cold, maybe.”

“You have to be careful, House,” she starts. He waves her off and goes back to the magazine he was reading.

“You can lay off, Cuddy,” he says. “I’ve got a fancy degree that says I’m capable of looking after myself.”

“I did have a reason for coming to see you,” she says. “Dr. Gorman faxed me a formal letter of resignation this morning.”

And? He knows all about Gorman’s plan, everybody in the department knows.

“He also asked my permission to talk to you about a permanent job with the World Health Organization. It seems that your efficiency impressed some people over there,” her tone says that she doesn’t think that’s possible.

“Well, my iron didn’t work over there, either; they must have different standards,” he says. He knows there’s more, so he waits.

“As a preemptive strike, how’d you like to run the infectious diseases department?” she offers. “I can make it worth your while…”

“I don’t think you can, not if Tucker is planning on sticking around, which he is. I couldn’t manage him, he hired all the residents we have now, and the most of the other staff. Gorman was really hands off the last couple of years.”

“He hired you then gave up,” she says. “But I’d like you to stay.”

He looks at Cuddy’s face. She means it.

“I honestly don’t want to run a big department, Cuddy,” he says. “What about Wilson?”

“Wilson’s an oncologist. I’m not going to hire him to run ID,” she says, like she’s talking to a med student.

“I’m not sure I want to work at a hospital that would let a hotshot like Wilson get away because of… personalities.” House sits back in his chair to challenge her. “Hell, his publications alone should be enough to get you fighting to keep him on staff, and you’re trying to push him out the door to find his way among the bikini babes on South Beach.”

“How did you hear about that?” Cuddy seems shocked.

“Crazy Irv Gelb and my advisor from Hopkins go way back. You know how the old boy network is,” House pauses for a moment. “Or maybe you don’t.”

“What do you want, House? Should I bring in somebody from outside? You know a new guy isn’t going to put up with your quirks the way Gorman did. Of maybe I’ll offer it to Tucker, that would be fun for you.”

He takes a moment to look thoughtful, although he knows exactly what he’s going to say. “There’s a new thing in European hospitals where they have a department to handle diagnostics. I worked with the one at Canton, and it was interesting. I’d stick around here to work on something like that,” he says.

“I’ve read a few articles about diagnostics as a specialty. Obviously you’d need to be certified before I’d seriously consider giving you a brand new department,” she begins. He thinks she’s trying to make it sound like a problem, but it won’t be.

“Greg House, M.D.—he’s certifiable,” he says. “I read something like that in the men’s room the other day.”

“As far as Wilson goes, I don’t know what to tell you,” she says. “I’m not pushing him out. Your old boy network is wrong if it’s telling you I want to lose Wilson, but it’s his decision.” And that’s the bone of contention. He can’t explain it to Cuddy, because he doesn’t fully understand it himself. There’s a feeling of guilt that he didn’t expect. He never wanted anybody’s help with this whole thing, it should have been his secret, his and Wilson’s. He let it out.

“The whole hospital loses if Wilson decides to go,” House says.

“Maybe you should tell him that,” Cuddy shoots back.

House allows his anger to surface. “It’s his choice to make.”

“Yes, this is Wilson’s decision.” Cuddy throws up her hands in frustration. “Not mine, and not yours.”

As House leaves for the day, he thinks he sees Wilson several yards ahead of him. He calls out, but the figure keeps going. It must be somebody else, somebody who looks like Wilson, walks like him, turns down the hallway that leads to Wilson’s office.


Getting home in rush hour traffic takes all of House’s energy. He leans his head against the door as he fumbles for his keys. He’s sick of the winter, sick of the darkness and the cold. Most of all he misses his old life. He misses believing he knew what would happen next; he misses knowing how he would react, no matter what.

This is what hell is like, he thinks. All he wanted was for things to go back to normal, whatever that is. He wants to have lunch with his friend, or go to a movie. He wants to sit in the same room with Wilson again, and know that if neither of them says a word for three hours, it doesn’t mean anything is wrong between them.

The rush of warm air on his face as he moves inside feels so good, and he almost can’t take it. A different sort of man would weep with joy, but he’s just vaguely relieved to be out of the cold as he shuts the door behind him.

He’s tired of feeling. He’s tired of not feeling. In his own head, he’s trapped. He knows it’s not real: he’s his own man; he has choices.

House can’t remember how he got through the months after his infarction. It must have been worse than this. Those months seem like ancient history, but Wilson was there, with him. He tells himself that made it all easier.

He sits down at the piano and pushes the cover away from the keys, white and black in staggered order. He presses three at a time to make a chord, then another The sounds he makes seem to take the chill out of House’s bones. He finds himself picking out a phrase from a Chopin etude that he learned a long time ago.

He stops in the middle and thinks about how music always makes sense, even when nothing else does. Notes fall together in a certain order to make a song; the brain tells the fingers where to go, and when. How the brain remembers how to make the fingers make songs from noise, that’s the puzzle.

The pattern lit up for House when he was about six years old. He remembers Miss Whatever Her Name Was, his first piano teacher. She had brown hair and strong, demanding fingers. He never knew her first name, or whether she had a boyfriend, or anything about her, except that she told him that “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” was really an old tune by some guy named Mozart.

He remembers how he giggled for a full five minutes when she told him the composer’s first name was Wolfgang. Now, that memory brings a peaceful smile to his face. He plays the song simply at first, to prove to himself that he can be just like everybody else. He adds a bit of Mozart’s counterpoint because he knows he’s different, and he likes that.

He begins to feel like himself again, the way he was before the leg, the pills, and everything else. House sleeps well that night and walks with something like a spring in his step the net day.


There’s no reason to think Wilson will be at home, but House makes a visit anyway. Either they’re going to settle things between them, or they’re not, and one of them will end up leaving. The situation sounds very simple when he puts it that way.

He knocks on Wilson’s door, and waits.

“Are you here?” he hollers. “I came by to see if this thing works.” House can hear some noise behind the door. Wilson opens up, he wears a bathrobe and holds a towel in one hand. His hair drips water onto his face.

“Are we still friends?” House asks.

“I’m not talking to you until I’m dry,” Wilson insists. House walks into the front room to wait for Wilson to dress.

He takes a moment to survey the place. The post-war building is on the crappy side, but it’s close to the hospital; that’s got to be why Wilson chose it, There could be no other reason.

The front room is small. Its wood floor shows signs of wear, it needed to be sanded down and sealed two or three tenants ago. The place smells of fresh paint, but renter’s flat white isn’t a very attractive color. There’s a couch, a table and two chairs, and a TV that sits on the floor. The set is much bigger than the one Wilson had at his old place, it must be a recent acquisition, like the rest of the furniture. Good for Wilson.

He pokes his head into the kitchen. The appliances are reasonably new, all shiny white. They look out of place with the old, painted cabinets.

“This place is a dump,” House yells. “How long have you lived here?”

Wilson answers through the closed door of his bedroom, but House can’t make out the words. It’s not like they matter.

There’s a bookshelf built in to one wall, but there’s nothing on the shelves. He glances at the small pile of boxes in the corner and wonders how long they will sit there.

House notices a stack of mail on the table and goes to rifle through it. Most of it is marked with yellow change of address stickers. It’s pretty much the same as his mail, bills and junk. One of the bills seems to be from a physician in New York.

Interesting. House ticks back through facts in his head; Wilson mentioned a therapist, looks like he was serious. He drops the pile as Wilson comes back from the bedroom. He is dressed casually, House recognizes the clothes. The jeans probably date back to med school, they’re a little bit tight. The sweater was a gift from his mom, maybe three years ago.

“Nice couch,” House says. “And I love your entertainment center.”

“I haven’t been here long, couple of weeks, ” Wilson says. “I sold the house--well, selling. Supposed to close on Monday unless something happens.”

House wonders if Wilson is making clean break from the past. He looks at his face for a clue, but there’s nothing to find. “It won’t. You probably made out like a bandit.”

Wilson stuffs his hands in his pockets. His elbows stick out. “Yeah, maybe. I guess.” He sits down at the table.

“You splitting it with Ellen?” House asks.

“I offered; she doesn’t want anything from me.”

House sits on the couch and beats out a rhythm with his hand on one knee. “What was the stupid thing you did?”

Ice cubes drop into a plastic bin in the freezer. The sound moves through the kitchen toward the front door. House looks up.

“Uh, I’ve done lots of stupid things,” he says. “Which one are you talking about?”

“When Ellen left, you told me you’d done something stupid. I need to know what it was.”

A siren screams outside. Wilson gets up and walks to the window to watch an ambulance pass. “You know, you know how the worst thing you can do to a woman is to call her by somebody else’s name in bed?” he says after a moment. “It was something like that. I lied to her, I told her it didn’t mean anything, but she didn’t believe me. My wife was blowing me; I was thinking about you. I wanted it to be you, your mouth on me, instead of hers.”

There’s nothing House can do to stop him from talking, so he does not try. He gets up and moves to stand next to Wilson, looking out at the street. There’s nothing happening now. “I thought it might have been something worse,” he says.

“Admitting to your wife that you have sexual fantasies about a man, a man you actually know, isn’t the worst thing that can happen in a marriage?”

House continues to stare. “I thought you might have… forced her. I was looking for some kind of pattern.”

“You and your fucking puzzles. You thought I raped my wife?”

“So I was grasping at straws,” House admits. He starts to feel like coming here was a bad idea.

Wilson turns around and heads into the kitchen. He opens a couple of cabinets and shuts them, hard enough to rattle the contents. He’s clearly annoyed, but he does come back.
“Why are you here, House?”

“I told you, I want to know if we’re still friends.”

“That’s not my decision,” Wilson shouts.

“Well, it sure as hell isn’t mine,” House shouts back. He looks at Wilson. He looks at the table, then at the couch, and stays where he is. His leg doesn’t hurt, he’s far too pissed off for that.

“You shouldn’t have to protect yourself from me.”

That’s probably true, but he won’t require Wilson to do it for him.

“Look, what happened, happened. I let it happen. It’s as much my responsibility as yours,” House says. He wants to make sure Wilson sees his point of view.

“I hurt you,” Wilson says.

“I could have stopped you.” He’s almost ashamed that he has to remind him. “You were fucked up, Wilson; I could have fought you off,” he says.

“Why did you stay with me?”

He’s about to say something alcohol poisoning, but they would both know that’s an excuse, a damned lie. He respects what they are to each other, or what they once were, too much to tell it. “You needed something from me, you wanted something that I could give you… just once.” House stops to swallow some of his self pity. “I wanted you to owe me something. You said you wanted to fuck me, so I decided I’d let you.”

Wilson sputters, almost chokes. “That’s sick,” he says. “Sure, I did want to fuck you, but when I got in your car that night, and until you took my clothes off, all I wanted was a kiss. I kept trying to kiss you, and you kept pushing me away. When you undressed me, I don’t know, something changed.”

A kiss. He wanted a kiss. House almost believes him. Wilson looks like he believes himself.

House leans his head forward and motions to Wilson. The sound of his steps is heavy on the floor; a board creaks beneath his feet. House feels it give just a little under the soles of his shoes. They make eye contact, drill into each other for the split second before House reaches out to take hold of Wilson’s sweater.

“Is this what you wanted?” he breathes. He keeps his eyes open; there’s no romance in what he’s about to do. Wilson’s eyes are closed, like he’s scared, even terrified, of what he said. If he’s lying, House will expose that lie.

House bumps his nose hard on Wilson’s as their faces smash together. A bolt of pain shoots through his eyes and down the back of his neck. He sucks Wilson’s lower lip into his mouth, hard, feels the tissue fill with blood.

He bites, and tastes.

A sound comes from Wilson’s throat as House grabs at his head. The protest spurs him on. House seals his mouth over Wilson’s, maybe to shut him up, but there’s a weird sense of jealousy, too. He craves the kind of power that Wilson had over him. Wilson can’t struggle now, not when House is giving him what he asked for.

House feels his knuckles crack as he makes a fist in Wilson’s hair. He twists his hand just enough to hurt; he knows it hurts, and he’s glad. He jerks Wilson’s head back and forces his mouth open all the way, pushes his tongue against Wilson’s teeth until his jaw releases.

Wilson clamps down on House’s tongue, and pushes back with his own. House breathes hard through his nose.

Something inside House breaks. This isn’t right. He relaxes his hand on Wilson’s skull, feeling the full weight of his head. He eases his lips back, but he can’t let them go, not yet.

When Wilson opens his eyes, House lets his close. The kiss ends by degrees: their tongues draw back, their lips separate; their spines line up and they stand away from each other.

House and Wilson look at each other without judging.

Wilson goes back to the kitchen; House sits and wishes for a table to prop up his feet. He wipes his mouth on the back of one hand and examines the red-pink streak that the motion leaves behind. He hears Wilson approach, and he reaches the other hand up and over without looking. It meets a cold, plastic bottle.

House settles it between his legs. He screws off the top and gulps; the water feels good on his throat.

Wilson sits. House picks up the remote and presses a couple of buttons. Nothing happens.

“Does this thing have cable?” House asks.

“Supposed to, the guy came last night.”

House pushes a few more buttons and begins to mutter.

“It’s the red one.”

House finds it; a picture appears. He finds an old movie and they watch it.


“You going to Miami?” House asks. He yawns and stretches his arms over his head.

“Gelb’s crazy. I had to hear that he wanted to hire me from Cuddy. I’ve never actually spoken to the man,” Wilson says. He takes a sip of water and sets his bottle down on the floor. “Taft is thinking about retiring, and I have a lot invested here..”

“That’s true,” House says. He looks over at Wilson, who’s looking at the remote. “You might get his job, but you’ll never get a better parking space than mine.”

“I was thinking I could have your spot for a couple of weeks if I sprained an ankle or something.” Wilson looks at House, and hesitates. “Does that mean you’re not moving to Switzerland?”

“I considered it, but I don’t ski,” House says. “I told Gorman thanks, but no thanks.”

“He must have been disappointed.”

“A little, but I don’t think he was surprised.”

Another movie starts. House mentions that Ginger Rogers won an Oscar for her performance; Wilson doesn’t believe him. They watch it anyway.

“So, are we still friends?” House asks a third time. Wilson looks at him again.

“Let’s get out of here, go get a cheeseburger or something, I’m starving.”

They leave the apartment together and walk down the hall to the elevator. It takes a while.

“Wait, I need to lock up,” Wilson says. He turns back, but House stops him. He moves back to Wilson’s door, slides his key into the lock and throws the bolt.

“That’s why I came over, to see if this thing works,” House says. Wilson rolls his eyes and follows House into the elevator car.

“Don’t lie,” Wilson says.

House tilts his head. He doesn’t have to say anything; Wilson already knows.

Part One (By Pitza)
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten

Wilson makes his way across the lawn; the grass under his feet is faded, but the ground feels squishy, as if it is starting to thaw. He won’t have to worry about the lawn any more. Bonus. There’s not much Wilson likes about being a homeowner, except maybe the tax deduction, and he doesn’t think about that much. He hasn’t done his own taxes in a long time.

Most of the stuff is gone from the old place; The estate sale people took care of that. He moved a few things to his new apartment, the rest of it will go to the Salvation Army, and that’s why he’s here today. He could have asked the sale crew to take it away, but wanted one last look.

He walks from room to room, too slowly. He feels strange as he notices a pale spot above the fireplace. A mirror used to hang there. He wonders about the person who bought it, how much they paid. He hopes they… something. He doesn’t know what he hopes. Right now, Wilson is living from one day to the next, not really caring about other people, but he still wonders about them.

It’s funny how so many people mistake impersonal interest for real concern; it’s funny how a life in medicine can kill a person’s willingness to care, but it might be that something in Wilson died along the way. He doesn’t know any more.

He walks through the dining room. The rug is gone, and the sound of his steps bounces off the walls. He knows that lots of good dinners happened there; he doesn’t need to remember them. He stretches his arms up to touch entrance to the kitchen. Now that the place is empty he notices flaws: a cracked floor tile next to the refrigerator, a stain on the countertop next to the sink, shaped like a thyroid; and a truly ugly light fixture.

A cardboard box filled with mismatched dishes and unwanted cookware sits open on the floor. His knees pop as he crouches next to it, the junk clacks together as he rummages. Apparently the etched glass mugs from the 1998 Oncology Congress were no more attractive to bargain hunters than the bright green salad spinner.

There’s a forceful knock at the front door. A big man on his porch looks down at him, and back to his clipboard. “Is this the Wilson residence?” Wilson looks past him at the red and white truck parked at the curb.

“Yes, everything is ready to go.” Wilson steps away from the door. The big man motions to the truck, and two guys get out of the cab and grab a dolley out of the back.

“Everything goes in the truck?”

“Most of the boxes are back there, and a few things upstairs,” Wilson says. He feels out of place as the men work quickly. He has nothing to do but stand and watch them as they handle the remains of his life, to haul it away, to be sold in a dingy little store somewhere, the proceeds will support a charitable network. He wonders whether the guys are recovering drug addicts, or maybe alcoholics. What happened to make them cogs in that machine? He can’t tell by looking at them.

“About the mattress upstairs, there’s a stain, we can’t take it,” the big man tells him.

Wilson chides himself for thinking that getting rid of the damned thing would be as easy as making a phone call. He grasps his wallet and pulls it out, trying not to let his desperation show “Two hundred bucks if you’ll take it to the dump for me.”

The man checks his watch and looks like he’s considering the offer. He’s good.

“Three hundred,” Wilson suggests. He counts out several bills and extends the wad of cash. The man shrugs and takes it.

Wilson doesn’t watch as they drag the mattress down the stairs. The big man waits until they are outside and hands Wilson an official Salvation Army receipt for a donation of miscellaneous household items. The line marked “value” is blank. Later that night, he laughs bitterly as he writes in $300. His accountant won’t get the joke.


He has known this day will come, but he made himself push it out of his head. Now it’s here and Wilson is scared because he is not mentally ready to face Cuddy. He wishes they had settled things before he left. He wonders if she still hates him for what he did to House.

He drives straight to the hospital. He waits in her reception area and flips through the latest JAMA. He pretends that it’s fascinating. A shrill sound comes from the intercom. Wilson looks up in time to see the assistant, or secretary, or whatever they’re called these days, gesture that he can go in now.

“Coffee?” Cuddy offers. Either she’s being polite, or she doesn’t know what to say any more than he does. They drink for a while. Wilson grows less comfortable with each passing second.

“Do you know Dr. Irwin Gelb?” she asks.

Wilson searches his memory to come up with an answer. Gelb is the director of the cancer center at the University of Miami. He’s one of the best-known oncologists in the country.

“Only by reputation,” he says.

“Well, he knows you, and he’s interested. I didn’t realize you were thinking about leaving Princeton.”

Wilson feels his head bob up and down. He’s embarrassed more than anything. “I didn’t know for sure that he had my information,” he says. “I did a little bit of networking while I was off.”

She taps her pen on the blotter for a few seconds. “I was surprised to get his call.”

Cuddy is being so reasonable about all this. “I’m as surprised as you,” Wilson tells her. “Ron, my friend from med school, said I should send my CV, but I had no idea that he gave it to his boss. I didn’t, I mean, I’m not necessarily looking to leave, but I thought....”

“Well, I gave you a good reference,” she says.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Wilson says.

“I was honest, that’s all.” She exhales and smiles for the first time since he came in. “If Gelb were to make you an offer, U Miami would be a good career move for you. You’re under no moral obligation to stay here.”

He doesn’t know how to respond. He pauses for a few beats and remembers why he wanted to see her. “Dr. Cuddy, I’d like to come back to work. You said six weeks when you suspended me, if I’m remembering right.”

“You can start back on Monday,” she says calmly. “We could use the help.”

“What about the thing with the prescription?” Asking the question makes his stomach lurch, but he does not want any more surprises. He can’t handle that right now. “Will there be a disciplinary hearing?”

She shakes her head. “No, nothing like that. Let’s just try to forget about it.” She looks at him, looks into him. “But be careful.”

“I was seeing a therapist, while I was off,” he says. “I think she helped.”

Cuddy shrugs, then goes back to her work. Wilson knows that the meeting is over.

He almost can’t feel his body as he leaves her office and makes his way out into the day. The air feels like water. He struggles to catch his breath; his head pounds for the first time in a couple of weeks. Cuddy might be right, but the reality of it, that he could leave this place… He almost wants a Xanax, but he settles for a couple of deep breaths. He read somewhere that they’re supposed to be calming.


He arrives early Monday morning, pressed , tied, and looking exactly like his old self. He feels like an impostor, but his key still opens the door to his office. It looks smaller than it did before he went away. He stares at the clean desk for what feels like an hour, as if a stack of case files and memos will appear out of thin air, as if House will limp in with some wild-assed guess about a new case, but nothing happens. He has no idea where to start.

Coffee seems like a good idea, then he walks up to the ward to let the charge nurse know that he’s back from where ever they were told he was.

“It’s good to see you, Dr. Wilson. Did you enjoy your vacation?” Nancy is on day shift. She looks exactly the same as she did the last time he saw her. “We thought you’d have a tan to show for it.”

“It wasn’t really that kind of vacation.” He studies the nurse’s face, hoping for some insight about what his colleagues said about him while he was away. He’s pretty sure that only House knows the truth. He would guard that secret like it was one of his own. Nancy’s expression is as bland and pleasant as ever.

“The duty roster says you’re on consults today, so it should be a nice, easy day for you,” Nancy says. “Get you back in work mode.”

“Believe it or not, I missed working,” he says. Nancy starts to laugh. “Well, I missed it a little.”

Wilson sits in his office until noon. Colleagues come and go with greetings and vague good wishes. He catches up on journal articles; he is lost in a treatise on blood replacement in last month’s Trauma. He might as well be reading a spy novel. When his pager chirps, he’s grateful for the distraction.

Robinson is one of the newer physicians in ID. Wilson knows her a little. She is a plain woman, and she speaks quietly. He recollects that she is married and has at least one child. She is looking at a radiograph on a light box; a file sits open on the table behind her.

“I noticed some abnormalities in the plasma on one of my patients,” she says, gesturing to the table. “And look at these lesions on the left side.”

Wilson picks up the file and scans the results of Robinson’s battery of tests. “Did you check for OAF?” he asks. “Look at the cytoplasm for immunoglobulin?”

She shakes her head and looks embarrassed.

“Did you run this by House? I’m sure he would have told you to do a bone marrow biopsy before you scare the patient any more than you have to.” He stops for a moment to look at the woman.

“Dr. House is in New York today,” she says. “I didn’t see him this morning, and I felt like this couldn’t wait any longer…”

“Well, your patient also has elevated serum calcium,” Wilson looks back at the patient’s blood work, wishing he had a slide and a microscope here so he could see the questionable cells. “What is House doing in New York?”

“Some meeting at the U.N. that Dr. Gorman set up. And he was interviewed last week after he got back from Geneva,” she says. “Some science reporter from the Times, Dr. House is the big news these days.”

House is probably more annoyed than ever, Wilson thinks. That’s a good reason to stay away from him for a few days.

“Your patient probably has multiple myeloma. I’ll take the file.” Wilson closes the folder. “In the mean time, continue to treat whatever got him admitted. He looks back at the light box. “Pneumonia, I assume.”

“Yes, he didn’t respond to a course of Zithromax, that’s when we got the case.”

Wilson thinks about it for a few seconds. “Try a second course, sometimes it works better the second time around.” He starts to leave, but Robinson’s voice stops him.

“We’re going to try to drag Dr. House out tonight, to celebrate his return. I know you and he are friends; if you’d like to join us, he might actually show up.”

Out, that means a bar. Wilson hasn’t been to a real bar since that night. “If you want to make sure House shows up, tell him somebody else is picking up the check,” he says.

“As a matter of fact, Dr. Gorman said he’d pay for it,” Robinson says, showing a hint of a smile. “It was his idea.”

“I can’t turn down free drinks any more than House can,” Wilson says. “But I’ve got a lot of catching up to do from my, ah, vacation.”

Robinson writes something on a slip of paper and hands it to him. He put it in his pocket as he walks away.

He debates going out longer than he needs to, he’s still wondering if he should be there as he pushes the door open and steps inside. On the other hand, it’s a cold night, and one drink won’t make an idiot out of him. He tells himself that he’s here for the company, but he knows that he came because he needs to see House.

Wilson spots the group from the hospital easily. There’s an empty chair across from House, who has clearly taken advantage of his boss’ generosity.

“You just missed Cuddy,” House announces.

“I saw her earlier, but I haven’t seen you in a couple of weeks,” Wilson says.

Patel returns to group carrying two pitchers of beer. They slosh as he sets them on the table. Wilson moves his arm too late, his sleeve is already wet. House is looking at him with an expression he can’t identify, then pushed his glass across the table. “When that settles down, I need a refill,” he says. Then he belches loud enough for the whole bar to hear him.

Wilson raises his eyebrows. “You going to do that again if I pour you another beer?”

They stare at each other for a second before House starts to laugh. “Pour me two more beers and I might get up on the table and dance.”

This already feels like a long night. Wilson fills House’s glass and a clean one for himself. The beer is cool and almost refreshing, but the second time he drinks, it seems to turn rancid in his mouth. He swallows hard and grimaces.

“So, Dr. House, are you going to desert us to find your fame and fortune in Switzerland with Dr. Gorman?” Patel asks.

“I haven’t really thought about it,” House says. He raises his glass and looks directly at Wilson. “Here’s to avoidance.”

Robinson’s pager hops on her belt. The table falls silent for a moment as they all look at her; the noise of the bar buzzes around them. “It’s my nanny,” she says with a small chuckle. “Nothing for the rest of you to worry about.”

Wilson’s face is hot from House’s toast. He wishes somebody would fill the void. “So, uh, House, how was Europe?” he asks.

“Full of Europeans,” House says. “I wandered around, I treated a patient, I wandered around some more, and I came home.” He shrugs and makes a face. “No big deal. Nobody would care except for the new monster bacteria, that’s science fiction shit, you know?”

He doesn’t, not really. He can read about it in the paper just like everybody else.

A few of the other doctors leave. A waitress stops to pick up an empty pitcher and a few glasses. Wilson asks for some water.

“We have to finish this pitcher before we can go home,” Patel announces as he grabs Wilson’s half full glass.

“Jimmy’s on the wagon,” House says.

Patel looks at Wilson with sympathy and pulls the beer back. “Oh God, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Shut up, House.” He turns to Patel and rolls his eyes. “He’s kidding, but I want to be able to drive myself home.”

Patel exhales and mentions calling a cab as he drinks again.

Wilson and House are alone. House drains his glass and slams it down. The table wobbles between them. They haven’t spoken in several minutes, they just look at each other over the remnants of a celebration that neither one of them cares about.

“I can drive you,” Wilson offers.

“I can drive myself.” House reaches for his cane, but he knocks a chair over instead.

“Hey, do you two need a cab?” the bartender calls to them. “It’s free if you’re drunk.” House starts to say something.

“I’m sober,” Wilson interrupts. “I’ve got this under control.” He walks around the table and rescues House’s cane from the puddle of beer where it landed. He wipes the shaft with a napkin. “This place is pretty disgusting, let’s get going.”

“Seems like your kind of crowd,” House slurs.

Wilson ignores him and stands behind him until he rises from his chair. “House, put your coat on, or I’ll put it on for you.”

He shouldn’t be angry, but he can’t deny that he is. It’s not House, it’s everything. Wilson is just plain mad as he guides House outside toward his car and opens the door. “Get in,” he mutters.

House sits down on the seat, but his feet remain on the ground.

“I’m sorry, Jimmy,” he says, looking up. He’s drunk, and he looks like he’s going to cry. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

Wilson crouches in front of the door, places his hands on House’s hips and tries to force him to scoot back. “Turn,” he says. House drags his left leg into the car. Wilson reaches for House’s right leg, slips both hands under his thigh and push-pulls the leg as gently as he can until it sits next to the left, where it belongs.

Wilson shouldn’t have to move House’s leg for him. Stacy shouldn’t have left. Ellen shouldn’t have left. He shouldn’t have lost his mind that night. Damn it, damn all of it. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this at all. We’ve had a lousy….” He looks up at his friend’s face and sees deep pain written on it. House must be exhausted. He’s done too much today.

“I’ll take you home.”

Read Part Twelve

Part One (By Pitza)
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine


Notes: This was supposed to be the final chapter, but there was a change of plans because I have a couple of loose ends that need to be tied up from Wilson’s POV, and I need to let the last scenes between House and Wilson stand pretty much alone in order to make them work. This part is about 2,300 words. Parts 11 and 12 are about the same length, which is too much material for one post. I promise that I won’t take another month.


The superbug is real; the patient’s strain of Staph A does not respond to Vancomycin, or anything else. House shudders as he looks at the microbiologist’s report. On one hand, this is a bad development for medical professionals all over the world. On the other hand, it’s better to know what you’re fighting if you’re planning on beating it.

Gorman’s team at the WHO is trying to work out where and when the patient contracted the bacteria. House wishes them luck. They’ll never be able to pinpoint the source, this case involves three hospitals on two continents, and their work won’t make any difference in his, so he chooses not to care about the source. The team at Canton University Hospital hasn't helped the patient, not one bit. If House cared about professional courtesy, he'd say that he's surprised.

His plan is to go back to square one. The others have little choice but to agree. House knows that it’s a long shot, but he takes the patient off all drugs except painkillers for 48 hours while he analyzes what hasn’t worked so far.

“Tazobactam is our best shot, it’s a new penicillin derivative,” House tells a room full of doctors. “Please tell me that stuff is legal here…” he stops, knowing full well that he wouldn’t be able to prescribe the drug in New Jersey without pulling some strings and twisting some arms. He’s not sure his bullying will translate well enough to work in a country known for knives and neutrality.

“This drug is approved since six months,” one of them says in halting English. “We have not the politics in our drug approval process…”

“Spare me the commentary and write the order,” House snaps. “And somebody get me some coffee.” The white coats scatter. One of them returns with a cup. House doesn’t thank the person he suspects is a student, but he nods, and that seems to be enough.

“You don’t have to try to frighten these people,” Gorman tells him. “They’re scared enough as it is.”

“They should be,” House says, taking a sip. The coffee is smooth and strong, much better than he’d get in any American hospital. “You wouldn’t have asked me to come over here if you didn’t need this patient to survive.”


House sits alone in a lounge studying the chart, He enjoys the leisure of working on single case, which rarely happens in his regular practice. When one of the staff doctors enters the lounge, House notices, but he sees no reason to let the guy know.

“Since the change in antibiotic, the patient’s symptoms are not improved, and the culture remains positive,” the man says. House looks up at him; he’s the same one who wrote the drug order.

“Who are you?”

“Pardon,” the man says. “I am Michel Levasseur, I direct the program for diagnostic medicine here. Frederick has mentioned your name so often that I feel I know you already.”

House takes a moment to remember that Frederick is Gorman’s first name. “Gorman talks a lot, he’s a little, you know…” He makes a face and wiggles a finger in the air. “The tazobactam isn’t working…”

He falls silent for a moment. “What do we know about his treatment in Vietnam? Are we talking about some hut in the middle of a rice paddy?”

“No no, Saigon Grall Hospital is a modern facility…” Levasseur continues to sing the praises of Asian medical care. If the patient had a post-surgical line infection, the chart would say so, but there is no such notation. The high fever and vomiting that indicated an infection showed up after the patient returned to France.

The facts of the case tell him that the infection is localized, but the damned thing is hiding, and the patient’s vitals are not helping with the answer. Pressure slightly low, but acceptable. Temperature slightly elevated, controlled with acetaminophen, sats at ninety-three percent.

He wanders away from Levasseur’s monologue. He wasn’t listening, anyway. He walks around the hospital for a while wishing he had an underling to abuse. If he were back at PPTH, each aimless step would bring him closer to the answer, but every object and every person is new to him; his active mind does not shut off the way it does at home.

That he needs familiar surroundings, that he needs anything, bothers House. What he needs is to stop thinking so much.

“The trouble with a new strain of bacteria is that we don’t know how it’s supposed to behave,” House tells Gorman shortly before lunch. “Even I can’t come up with an answer unless I know the question.” He pulls his hair in frustration. “Tell somebody to get Patient Zero another chest CT and we’ll see if that gives up any clues.”

House starts to wonder whether he is going to be able to solve this one. He doesn’t care that much about patients, but doesn’t believe the adage about a losing battle being a learning experience. An honest man admits that losing always sucks, and House is an honest man.

“I’m going out,” he says. He leaves without looking back.


He ends up across the river, at the train station. Bodies move in their own language, and he figures that the comings and goings will free him up to think properly. His leg does not bother him today, it never does when his mind is engaged with something else, but he feels each step.

He walks to the front of the station and gets into a cab, tells the driver to go; he doesn’t care where. Low blood pressure, low oxygenation, and low-grade fever means the antibiotic is not working. The infection is more than the new drug can fight, but the drug was developed before VRSA was imagined, so that’s not a surprise.

The cab stops at a light. House glances out the window. A woman leans against a wall about ten feet away. She stoops to scratch her leg. House notices that her nipples show through her tight white shirt. She makes no effort to hide them.

He has heard that Geneva has a red light district; this must be it. He motions for the driver to pull over and fumbles for a verb. “Arrêtez,” he says after a moment.

He gets out and walks down the block, losing himself in the anonymity of the Rue de Berne, which looks perfectly ordinary other than the people that walk with him. It’s odd to see hookers during daylight hours. They lose a bit of their mystique in the sun, if they have any to begin with.

He notices one of them, a small, frowzy woman who looks a little too old for the street trade, yelling at a man in a leather coat. The man grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her; maybe he’s her pimp, or maybe he’s a john. It’s none of House’s business and their dispute fades out of his head as he soon as moves past them.

He chooses a shop from the block’s wide selection and goes in. At home, this kind of place is called dirty; it is a solitary building on the edge of Anytown, USA, where the parking lot is always full. Here, colored light flashes from signs in the windows, beckoning like the girls who stand outside fidgeting and teetering.

Faces stare at him from magazine covers and video cases, distorted in something that’s supposed to look like pleasure.

Every kink is covered. He slips a movie out of the rack in front of him. An unnaturally smooth man stands behind an unnaturally blonde woman. She’s bent over, her large breasts swing out from the force of her partner’s thrust; his fingers cut into the flesh of her hips, but she’s looking at House with wanton eyes and a gaping mouth. He wonders if she’s a moaner or a screamer.

He reminds himself that the blonde is looking at a camera, not at him. She wants him to wonder about her; she wants to sell him something. He likes porn, the same way he enjoys sex with hookers: it’s all on the level. It does not to pretend to involve matters of the heart. He returns the case to its place on the shelf. There’s no shame in satisfaction until you are forced to understand what gets you off.

Matters of the heart.... He takes half a step and pauses. A body shuffles past him in the aisle. He pulls his steps along with his cane, back to the street. He hears the bell on the door jangle as he leaves. He listens to the distant chatter from a couple of the girls and tells himself that he’ll come back later.


“Where’s the Vietnamese guy, the patient?” he barks. House can’t believe he’s actually saying this, but Levasseur does not question him. House is practically leading the way as they reach the patient’s room.

House approaches the bed and reaches for the man’s mouth, roughly pulling his lips away from his gums. “Nice teeth.”

“What are you doing?” Levasseur asks. Both he and the patient seem bewildered, even beyond the language barrier.

“When was the last time you had your teeth cleaned?” House demands. The patient spits out a few syllables of gibberish around House's fingers. Levasseur says something about calling a Vietnamese translator.

House rolls his eyes and tries again. “Vous avez rendu visite un dentiste récemment?”

The patient looks from one doctor to the other and nods his head.

“The bug, it’s hiding in his heart,” House says. “Get a trans-esophageal echo, which will almost certainly show vegetation on one or more of the valves.”

“Bacterial endocarditis?” Levasseur says. “You would make a good career in diagnostics, Dr. House.”

House simply shrugs. He’s got a job. He’s tired, and he needs time to let himself fall back into place. He leaves Levasseur to order the test, not caring much about the results. If the TEE is negative, he’ll think of something else, but it won’t be negative. He’s not wrong, not this time. He can feel it.


“Two valves replaced,” Gorman tells him. “Mr. Hua is recovering very nicely. You probably saved his life.”

“Great,” House says. “Make sure to put him on Zyvox when he’s released. That’s what we’d do for a MRSA case, and I’m out of better ideas. I’m sure your do-gooders can make sure he actually gets the medication and understands that he has to take them.”

“You’re not going to stay to follow the case?”

House looks at Gorman’s expectant face. He has not much reason to go home, really; but he has no reason at all to stay in Geneva. “I’m sure you can handle it.” He smiles, because he can’t think of any other response.


His nerves are shot by the time he changes planes at Heathrow. He hates flying, can’t even blame that on his leg. House has always hated being trapped in a slow-moving herd. The so-called pre-boarding process takes so long that by the time House reaches his seat, his head hurts more than his leg. He fits himself into his seat and waits. The rest of the passengers file past with aching slowness. Their wheeled bags bump into his armrest every half-minute or so. He clenches his teeth and tries to breathe through the annoyance without snapping.

The sooner the American family with its four children and the British tourist lured to New York by the promise of discounts are seated and buckled, the sooner he can have a drink. Early drink service is the one thing that makes the higher cost of first class worth every penny. The thought gets him through the rest of the boarding process.

A few minutes before takeoff, House crunches a Vicodin between his teeth because his leg doesn’t care that stewardess hasn’t come around yet. The narcotic takes about seven minutes to kick in; he timed it once out of curiosity.


House removes the last of his clothing and leaves it in a pile on the dresser. He sees himself in the mirror; behind him, he sees Wilson's nude body stretched out on top of the covers, smoothing his hands over his torso. It’s mesmerizing.

“You still want to fuck me?” House asks the mirror.

Wilson never stops moving his hands, but says nothing. House watches the image in the glass and understands that the answer is yes. The answer has always been yes; there’s no reason to think otherwise. He crawls onto the bed and settles next to Wilson because there’s no reason not to.

Wilson crawls on top of him and rears back. “I’m going to hurt you, we both know you’ll let me.”

Light from the window makes a shadow of Wilson’s erection on his right thigh; it’s huge. There’s no way.

House stays a few feet away from the bed, facing the mirror. He watches the scene behind his back unfold before his eyes.

Wilson flips him over and mounts him; the muscles in his back and shoulders tense as he pushes in and out. He sees his legs move apart and twitch. One leg kicks back through the air and bounces when it falls back to the bed. Wilson doesn’t notice; he keeps moving, pushing and grabbing until he collapses. “I thought you told me it was going to hurt,” House says to his reflection.

Wilson sucks on the skin at the back of his neck. “Can I get you anything, sir?” he murmurs.

House watches his body turn toward the bed and shuts his eyes tight. As he opens them, the dream dissolves. Wilson is gone. The plane has leveled out and a sour faced woman has come for his drink order. He struggles to focus for a moment. He has no idea how long he was asleep.

“Double Scotch, no ice,” he says automatically as presses his eyes with his hands.

By the time his drink comes, nothing remains from his dream but an undefined sense of motion.

<http://extrabitter.livejournal.com/5268.html">Part Ten</a>

Part One (By Pitza)
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight


The small room is furnished with a table and chair. Its walls are painted a non-confrontational pale yellow, and there are two inoffensive prints to break up the monotony. Wilson knows that the incandescent lighting and the décor are supposed to manipulate him into feeling comfortable. It would be working if he wasn’t aware of the desired effect. He sits in front of a stack of papers, filling in the blanks.

Name, that one’s easy. He looks at the line for his address longer than he should, there’s no good way to say “state of flux” on a form. He lets the line go in and out of focus, then writes out the address of the place that he lived with Ellen. He wonders if the doctor has somebody observing him; she might learn something from watching this exercise.

After what seems like a long time, he gives his papers to a nurse, along with his insurance card. He has no idea about the status of his health plan under his suspension. It doesn’t matter. Wilson might live beyond his means emotionally, but he’s always been sensible about money. It’s not like the divorce set him back. Ellen wanted nothing from him in the settlement; she just wanted out.

Suddenly, he knows exactly how she must have felt. The moment of kinship with the woman who was his wife disturbs him. He has barely thought of her since their divorce was final.

She would laugh if she found out he was in therapy.

When the nurse comes back, he is resting his head on the table.

“Dr. Janssen will see you now,” she says briskly. “If you’ll follow me?”

Thora Janssen seems like the ideal therapist for Wilson’s purposes: deal with this thing that happened with House, then get out. He doesn’t want to be in therapy for the next ten years; he just needs to be able to move on.

She is in her early fifties, graying, with large features crowded onto a small face. Wilson does not find her physically attractive. She has no ties to Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital: she does not have privileges there, she has no friends from med school there as far as he can tell, and only a few association memberships in common with its psych staff.

She practices in New York, which seems like another planet, one where he does not have to fear for his confidentiality. Eight million stories in the city; one of them is mine, he tells himself. Wilson sits in a chair and wishes he had something to do with his hands as the therapist looks at him for the first time.

“Why are you here?” she asks.

Wilson blinks. What kind of question is that? Janssen smiles at him, and it’s almost a smirk. He fears for a moment that his paranoia about privacy has led him to the therapist in the Tri-State area that is most like House.

“I like to start the first session with a new patient by asking that question,” she tells him. “It doesn’t get to the heart of the matter; the patient is almost always wrong, but the answer sometimes tells me what the patient thinks is his most important issue.”

Damn. He takes a deep breath, but it doesn’t help.

“A couple of weeks ago, I had a weird sexual encounter with my best friend,” he says neatly, and he continues with a bit more pertinent information. “Who’s a guy. It, uh, it didn’t go well. It shouldn’t have happened.”

“So why are you here?” the therapist repeats.

He stares at her. Therapy is weird, and this is a mistake, but he feels obligated to make it. “I forced sex on a person who trusts me, and I don’t know why,” he says, gaping a bit. “And I’m not sure I’m ever going to be able to trust myself to have sex again. This thing was so random and bizarre, and the fact that I did it scares me. I don’t…”

“That’s a rather long answer to a short question,” she cuts him off. “Now forget about that and tell me a little about yourself, whatever comes to mind first.”

He doesn’t know where to start. He pulls out random facts, a few memories and settles into an unnatural rhythm. He feels like he has barely started when he notices Janssen looking at her watch. “That’s it for today. We psychiatrists work on a fifty-minute hour.”

Either this therapist is brilliant, or she’s crazy.

She reaches to her desk and picks up a notebook. “I’ll see you twice a week.”

He feels like he ought to object, but he can’t come up with a reason to do it, and it’s not like she gave him a choice. He nods and schedules his sessions on his way out.


He sits on House’s sofa, alone. The room is quiet but for a faint, electric buzz, the ever-present sound of modern world. Life slips into the space between the whirring and whining. He leans his head back and looks up. His eyes catch a bit of a cobweb where wall meets ceiling.

House is in his bedroom. He must be sleeping by now.

Wilson blows the air from his lungs and stretches his arms over his head. He could go and check, just to make sure. He wants to take House’s pulse one more time, even though his better judgment tells him that all is well, that House’s panic was momentary. He’s fine now.

Still, he wants to know. He walks toward House’s bedroom and sees the door either half open, or half closed. He doesn’t care to philosophize. He moves to one side to look into the room, but he does not enter.

House is lying on top of the covers, flat on his back. One arm stretches toward the window. His eyes are closed, his face slack, his breathing audible in a faint, whistling snore. Wilson knows too well that when House wakes, he will not feel refreshed, but some time will have passed, and that’s all that really matters.

He can’t stay. He can’t be here when House comes to, because he’ll say something stupid. He’ll try to apologize, and House will yell at him. He can hear it happening in his mind.

He scrawls a few words on a scrap of paper and leaves it next to the saucer filled with cigarette butts. House will find it there when he gets up.

He lets himself out and locks the door behind him.


When he hears the phone ring, he wants House to be on the other end of the line so badly he can taste it. The hint of the way things used to be teases at his nerves.

“Jim, it’s Ron Granholm returning your call,” a pleasant voice says. “I haven’t talked to you in a while, what’s up?”

Wilson has to shake himself to remember that he called his friend from med school. “Not a lot,” he lies. “I’m… I’m thinking about leaving Princeton. I’d like to move to a university with a dedicated cancer center, so I wanted to ask you about Miami.”

“My boss would flip if you were available,” Granholm says. “Hell, people are impressed when they find out that I went to school with you.” There’s a note of envy in his voice. It makes Wilson deeply uncomfortable. He has never tried to impress anybody; he just does his job.

“I wouldn’t say I’m available,” Wilson says. “Let’s just say I’m following up on a New Year’s resolution to explore my options.”

“Well, I’m not a decision maker, but send me your current CV, couldn’t hurt my rep any.” Granholm chuckles. “And we’d be lucky to get you.”

They talk for a few minutes until Wilson’s nerves get to him. Thinking about leaving is one thing; taking the first step toward doing it is much more serious. He’s still thinking about House when he hangs up, and wondering whether he’ll have a job to go back to once his suspension is over. Maybe he will send his CV.


“I saw Greg the other day,” Wilson tells his therapist. “It was…” He’s searching for the right word, but it won’t come. “I ran into him at lunch.”

“Did you approach him? Did you speak to him?”

He isn’t sure how to answer, because it wasn’t like that. The thought of revealing any detail about House’s medical condition chills Wilson. He’s too well known.

“He had some trouble, and I took care of him,” he says. “It felt normal, and then I got nervous. I actually took his pulse with my thumb. Anybody who’s ever taken a CPR class knows not to do that.” He is more than a little embarrassed to admit that to another physician. “And then I took him home.”

He pauses. He needs to collect his thoughts and make them into something coherent. “It was good, but I haven’t talked to him since then.”

“Any subsequent panic attacks?” the therapist asks. Her pen is poised over her pad, as if she expects him to say yes.

“I gave him the rest of the Xanax,” he confesses. “We didn’t really talk about it.”

“How did he take that?”

Wilson almost snaps at Janssen, until he reminds himself that this is therapy; making him talk about things he’d prefer not to discuss is her job. All the same, he doubts she would understand House’s reaction; he doubts that anybody would understand, but he does. At least he thinks he does. Calm filters through his body. Greg House is his own man; he makes his own decisions without concern for how they might be received.

He’s true to himself, and that’s what makes him so attractive.

“It wasn’t a big thing.” Wilson thinks it should have been a big thing.

Janssen taps her pen against leg for a few moments. “What about you?”

Leaving House’s place felt like a breakthrough, but he doesn’t think he can say that without starting to cry. He grits his teeth and shrugs.

Janssen sighs. “Call the office if you want a new scrip.”


The real estate agent arrives to see Wilson’s house promptly at 1:30. She looks exceptionally well put together. Her earrings match her necklace; her shoes match her purse. Her coat complements her suit; her hair and lipstick are flawless. She moves around the room touching windowsills and doorframes, marking them with her scent, like an animal.

Wilson is frightened of her. She must be very good at her job.

“This is a very desirable neighborhood,” she remarks, scanning the walls and ceilings of the living room. “Are you positive you want to sell?”

He is. “I found an apartment, I’m kind of in a transition period right now.” He doesn’t know why he feels like he has to explain himself to this viper, but he does.

“How many bathrooms?” Her words are muffled as she examines the coat closet.

“Three,” he says. “One down here, two upstairs.”

“Four would be better,” she says. “Is the basement finished?” Wilson does not care, and the woman continues to poke around.

He follows her upstairs. Selling the place is the right thing to do, but the thought of leaving the past behind, getting what he wants, makes him queasy. They stop in front of a closed door.

“What’s this room here?” The agent looks at him. He reads suspicion in her eyes.

“That’s the master bedroom, “ he mumbles.

She opens the door and steps inside without hesitating. He does not follow her in.

“It’s big, very nice. Oh, and an en suite, that’s a big plus,” she says. “You don’t use it?”

“Not any more.” He barely gets the words out. He feels cold. His things are in the guest room now. He sleeps on the couch most nights. He ought to politely excuse himself, but he can’t. The viper can snoop all she wants, but he doesn’t want to watch any more. He bounds down the stairs as if he’s trying to outrun a ghost.

When he hears her car pull out of his driveway, Wilson wonders if he’ll be able to drive down this street without choking on his memories.


“When we ended our last session, you were talking about your attraction to your friend, Greg.”

He has made a point of referring to House only by his first name, but hearing another use House’s name so casually makes him shudder, as if this woman has no right. She does, of course; she calls his friend Greg because he does.

“I remember,” he says quietly.

“As far as you know, was he aware of this attraction, before the night you got drunk and raped him?” she asks, expecting an answer

“I thought he was, sometimes,” Wilson admits. “Apparently I was wrong.”

“Did you tell anybody else? Perhaps another friend?”

Wilson blushes. The idea that he would have confessed his desires and fantasies to a third party is so ridiculous that he has to stop himself from laughing at the question. He does smile, though. “The funny thing is that he’s the only person I would have told about something like that. Even my wife didn’t guess.” He’s not proud that he is so good at deception and subterfuge. He wonders if he ought to say so, but decides not to.

“Do you think he knows about it now?”

House could do the math, and he had. “He does, he kind of said he did.”

“Why did you go out drinking that night?” she asks abruptly.

“I had to get away from my fucked up life,” he says. He stops for a second, stunned that he told the truth. “I wanted to stop pretending that I’m a perfectly nice, trustworthy, likeable guy every minute of every day. I wanted to go out and be the manipulative jerk that I really am.”

“That’s good,” Janssen says. She makes a few notes. “You were drinking that night. Quite a lot, you said.”

“I drank as much as I could, as fast as I could,” he admits. “I wanted to get away from my head.” He wonders what the transcriptionist will think of the notes.

“What else do you remember?” Janssen is looking at him, not smiling. Her pen is poised over her pad.

“Not much, it’s all hazy until I woke up the next morning,” he confesses. “I’m not sure what’s real, and what’s guilt. I know that I hurt Greg, and that I wanted to hurt him because he wasn’t responding to me.”

They have already covered this.

“Something puzzles me about that, actually,” she changes gears.

Wilson shifts in his chair.

“In all the talking you’ve done about your friend, your male friend, and your sexual attraction to him, you haven’t mentioned any insecurity about your sexual identity.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” he croaks. He realizes that if he were really attracted to House for all the reasons he’s given himself—that their bond was so tight, that House’s personal magnetism drew him in, and that he reached a point where he began to think about how those two things might lead to sex unlike anything he’d ever experienced—it ought to have bothered him.

“You were sexually attracted to a man and married to a woman. You never thought you might be gay?”

“I’m not really attracted to men in general, but,” he stops himself short. He won’t reveal House’s full identity, not for anything. “It’s just Greg. It didn’t seem to have anything to do with my sexual identity.”

“But you wanted to have sex with him,” Janssen states.

“It’s more than that!” He pinches the bridge of his nose to distract himself from the extreme discomfort. This session isn’t going well. “I know him. The things I love about him are… it’s not really a physical thing.”

“You haven’t previously denied having a physical, sexual attraction,” she says. “What’s different now?”

If he is a butterfly, she is a collector with sharp pins and a board.

Wilson stops moving, stops breathing. He sees white for an instant, a flash of rage. “You’re trying to make me say that I wanted to hurt him, and that I raped him because I knew that was the worst thing I could do, ever. You want me to say that I was trying to destroy him, but that’s not true!” Wilson wipes at his face, though there are no tears to dry.

“Is that what you think?” she asks mildly.

“I wanted something from him,” he says after a moment of silence. “I wanted to know that I wasn’t alone. I had to get away from myself, and the only way I could do it was by going through him, literally.” The tears come now, without ornamentation.

Janssen hands him a tissue. He swipes it across his cheeks and crushes it in his fist.

“I wanted to slip into somebody else’s skin for a while, forget the mess I’d made of my life. I knew Greg would let me.” Wilson hears the therapist’s pen scratching against paper.

“I wanted it to be different. I didn’t enjoy what happened, and he must have been in hell. I just kept pushing, and at some point I started punishing him because I wasn’t getting off.” Wilson wants to run all the way back to New Jersey, back to House. He wants to collapse at his friend’s feet.

The thing is, House has already forgiven him. He knows that too well. He doesn’t really want forgiveness; he wants absolution.

He rises and shoves the wad of tissue into his pants pocket.

“You told me that Greg has forgiven you.”

“He has,” he confesses. “And I don’t know why.”

“Classic guilt. So, if the situations were reversed, if he had come to you wanting sex and forced you to give in, would you have forgiven him so easily?”

Wilson looks out in the direction her desk: there’s a blank computer screen, a lamp, some vague photographs. He sees only shapes.

“It wasn’t easy,” he whispers.

Janssen is silent for a moment. “You have to stop projecting if you want to deal with your own emotions in such a way that you can move forward. You say that Greg has forgiven you. You have to let him forgive you; that’s his decision,” she says. “You have to give Greg control of his own emotions.”

The way she says it, the whole thing sounds so easy, like he should have figured it out himself. But he didn’t. Wilson’s head is stuck in the first person: all he can process comes back to I… I… I….

Janssen is right. He’s certain of that. He leaves her office not knowing if he will return for his next session. He’s pretty sure he can handle this.


He is swept up in a tide of commuters at Penn Station, trying to get home. The crowd moves past two newsstands, three bars, and a doughnut shop then down the escalator. He finds the track for the Metroliner in time to catch the 4:50 back to Trenton. He’s relieved to be back on the train; he settles into a worn but comfortable seat and breathes a sigh of relief.

As the train leaves the station and crosses the river, he looks out over the New York skyline at the gaping hole where the towers used to stand. He remembers how the present seemed to go on forever, as if time stopped along with all those lives.

The dead were the only ones at peace that day. The living remained to wring their hands and worry their heads and ask how it happened. Wilson thinks about the goodbyes that the dead never got to say, because they all woke up that morning not knowing that they should.

He is turned around in his seat, watching the city get smaller as the train moves forward. As the image fades into twilight, all that remains is the bright, empty space. He leans back when it’s gone and tries not to make a metaphor out of the whole thing.

It’s after six by the time he gets back to New Jersey. He drives to House’s place on an impulse. He won’t say anything, he tells himself; he just wants to be in the same room with his friend for a few minutes to see how that feels now.

The windows are dark as he pulls up to the curb and parks. It’s possible that House is still at the hospital. He goes to the door and knocks, but no answer comes.

Wilson stands on the steps, fidgeting with his keys in his pocket. The one that will open the door seems to burn his hand. He carefully inserts it into the lock and turns. The door catches on a pile of mail.

“House?” he calls out. “It’s me. Are you here?”

He steps over the pile and enters the quiet, stuffy room. Everything is in its place, but House hasn’t been here in several days.

“Where are you?” he wonders aloud, though there’s nobody to hear him. This doesn’t make sense. He slips away from the apartment leaving no evidence that he was ever there.

He sits in his car until he is cold. Only then does he start the engine to drive.



Wilson sorts through some of the junk that collected around him while he and Ellen were married. He doesn’t know why so much of it stuck; Ellen was a bit of a minimalist when they met, but he has always liked to have things around him. Most of the things are clearly his, souvenirs from a life that he sees differently from the perspective of a person going through what’s left behind.

He pulls out a box filled with programs and ticket stubs from things he’s seen. He pulls out a few of them. He knows that he took his parents to see Miss Saigon on Broadway several years ago, but he doesn’t remember much about it, except that he was paged about half way through, and that his mom loved the show, if only because her son made the effort to do something special.

He remembers the Sunday afternoons at the Meadowlands with House, watching the Jets lose again; he can almost taste the cheap beer and soggy nachos, even now. He can hear the crowd roaring and a band playing at halftime. He can feel House jumping out of his seat, shaking his fist in the air after an interception.

He can’t bring himself to throw away all the little bits of paper. Someday, this will be all that remains to tell the story of his life. On the other hand, he won’t have room for everything.

Ellen’s office number is no longer on speed dial. He has to call directory assistance to get the number for the agency where she works, which seems appropriate. He knows she does not want to talk to him.

“Crenshaw Group, how may I direct your call?” a crisp female voice answers.

He gives the receptionist his former wife’s name and identifies himself by his professional title, though it sounds foreign rolling off his tongue at this point. Dr. James Wilson is somebody else, but he knows the name will get his call through without question, even if the receptionist recalls that Ellen used to be married to a doctor.

He waits for a moment and thinks about the difference between his working self and the ordinary guy he’s tried to be for the past few weeks.

“I’m surprised to hear from you,” his former wife says with forced cheer. “I hope nothing’s wrong.”

It’s weird to hear her voice after all this time. It has been a while, they haven’t spoken since the day they signed the papers.

“No, everything’s OK,” he says, wishing that were the whole truth. “I, uh, was going through some things and found a couple of photo albums that are obviously not mine and…”

“I thought I got all my stuff from your place when I left.” Ellen does not sound happy about the news.

“Uh, um, well, do you want to come out here and pick them up, or I can send them.” He has a hard time completing his sentence. He doesn’t want to see her, much, but a small part of him hopes that she will make a trip to New Jersey to get her things. “There’s a box of sweaters, too,” he adds.

“What, have you been doing deep cleaning in the middle of winter?” she asks. “That’s so unlike you.”

“I’m selling the house, supposed to close March 1 and you know how much junk there is in this place,” he says. “If there’s anything you want, furniture or anything, let me know in the next couple of weeks, I guess.”

She pauses. Wilson lets his fingers curl into a tight fist to control his nerves.

“I’ve never been much for mementos,” she says. “You can send the photo albums to my office. Do you want my FedEx number?”

“I’m sending the wedding album to my mom, unless you want it,” he tells her. “She still likes you, and I’m pretty sure your mom hates me as much as you do.”

He doesn’t know what else to say. The static between them proves that his former wife has nothing to say to him, and that’s more painful than his fingers crushing into his palm. “Anyway, I’ll get the package out next week and give anything else I find to the Little Sisters of the Poor. “ He’s about to hang up when she speaks again.

“Wait, James, what’s going on? You don’t sound like yourself at all.”

That’s funny; he doesn’t feel like himself, either. Then again, Ellen is in no position to know how he ought to be right now.

“I’m, I don’t know. I kind of screwed up my life in December. I did something… bad,” he admits. He won’t say more than that. “You were right to get out when you did, you know.”

“Let me know where you’re going, if you’re leaving,” she says. There’s pity in her voice. It churns through his brain down to his gut and he can’t help but think of House.

“I don’t know,” he says. She ought to remember enough about him to understand what he’s saying. He doesn’t know where he’s going, or what he’s doing, and he’s not sure he’ll tell her when he figures it out.

“All right, then.” There’s another long pause, as if Ellen wants to say something.

“Look, James, it wasn’t all your fault, that we split up,” she says.

“Yeah, OK,” he says, but he doesn’t believe her. As he breaks the connection, Wilson is fairly sure that he’ll never speak to her again.

He lies down on the floor and looks at the ceiling. He raises his left hand and wiggles the finger where he used to wear a ring. Light spills out from a fixed point and surrounds his outstretched arm, his hand is dark against it, the same hand that pushed House over an invisible breaking point, when all he meant to do was pull himself back from it. I never wanted to hurt you, and I’m sorry that I had to, but I had to. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what else to do.

He lets his arm drop over his eyes, then he begins to scream. No words come; the sounds are made of mangled letters. He could make words out of them; they would be lies.

He howls until the all the letters fall from the air. His throat is raw; his eyes hurt. Even his dead tissues seem to throb and ache.

When he pulls himself up to stand on two legs, he feels human.

Part Ten

Part One (By Pitza)
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven

House needs to take a second to parse what Wilson told him. Simons is dead. Simons, the cancer patient with the bacterial infection that was really a virus; the patient who got the right drug starting yesterday, is dead. Just like that, it happens sometimes, but House doesn’t have to like it.

Viruses are so much more predictable in the lab. House thinks it’s a shame that lab work bores him. His gifts have always played out best on the human body, which is also a shame, since he can’t stand most of the people that live in them.

Wilson stands in front of his desk, staring blankly. His arms hang loose at his sides, and he looks like he has lost his own name. He’s as good with people as he is with disease. House wonders sometimes if that’s a gift, or a curse.

He hears Wilson’s tone, a dark, weary timbre. The words don’t matter all that much.

“Give them some time,” House tells him. As much as House does not care about Mr. Simons and his family, he sees that Wilson is in no shape to deliver this kind of news now. He’s on the verge, he needs to wait until he can step back, or get somebody else to do it. The guy wasn’t his patient, either. He’s struck by the irony that they are friends, and the only reason they’re speaking to each other right now is a random dead guy.

He looks up at Wilson’s face and rests on his eyes. The pain he finds there is too familiar. He’s seen it in his own eyes, on waking, before the narcotics kick in. He noticed it first when he was learning how to walk again.

The silence between them is like an egg, whole and fragile, but perfect.

He could tell Wilson that he knows, that he understands, but House will not break the connection to form a simple sentence and speak it aloud. Anyway, Wilson knows. He has always known.

House has no idea how much time passes before Wilson turns and walks away without saying goodbye.


Four days ago, House would not have guessed that he wouldn’t see Wilson again. He ought to be relieved, but his friend’s absence is stranger than his presence. Being here at the hospital carries extra weight without the escape that Wilson provided. House doesn’t use it now, but the potential of some small break from routine kept him on track.

Now, that potential is missing, and he doesn’t know why. He feels like people are trying to protect him from something, and that annoys him. He’s been snapping more, his co-workers are looking at him funny, like they know something is going on. They can’t know what, but House still hates the vague pity that radiates from everybody around him.

He moves into the Infectious Diseases suite and pauses before going all the way into his office. His bad leg is worse today. His problem was vascular, not orthopedic, but the whole leg has changed. Its muscles no longer work together; its joints seem to snag. It has limits now; he has limits. Sometimes he thinks that acknowledging the limitation is what cripples him. But that’s in his head; the physical pain sucks, too.

He blames the cold. Last winter, he wasn’t really walking, and he rarely went outside. Now that his life is back to so-called normal, winter slaps him in the face every time he leaves his apartment.

“You authorized brain surgery on my meningitis patient!” A voice bellows from behind him.

“You’re welcome,” House says. He’s fully aware that Tucker is not thanking him, though he should.

“You could have killed him,” Tucker says. His face is red, but that’s normal. His hair was turning white before House went out on medical leave, but his capillaries don’t seem to know that. Tucker still flushes like the redhead he once was when he gets mad, which seems to happen a lot.

“There’s no guarantee he’s going to survive, you’re correct,” House says. “But on the off chance he does, I figured he might like to be able to wipe his own ass, tie his shoes, twist the cap off a beer bottle. You know, those little things you can’t do when you’re brain dead.”

“I’m calling Cuddy,” Tucker says.

“That will be the highlight of her day,” House says. He wanders upstairs to check out the lounges, thinking to himself that something sweet would complement his morning coffee, but really, he doesn’t want to deal with his annoyed colleague any more.


“I was just coming to find you,” Cuddy greets him in the hall.

“Did you bring me a danish?” House asks.

They make their way to the cafeteria through a crowd. Cuddy walks in front of House, to clear a path.

“So, what about this craniotomy?” She quizzes him.

“Medically necessary, standard treatment,” House says. “The kid has resistant bacterial meningitis. Brain surgery sounds very dramatic., but you know, and Tucker knows it’s not that big a deal. The real risk was not doing it.”

Cuddy shoots him a look. “House…”

“I wasn’t showboating. Tucker was home with his family,” House says. “The patient had two seizures. CT showed significant swelling, and we had to relieve the pressure. It was my call.”

House examines a blueberry muffin for a few seconds and then walks away from the line. The cafeteria does not have what he wants, and cafeteria coffee sucks, anyway. Cuddy follows him.

“Are you all right, Dr. House,” Cuddy asks. “I mean, how are you holding up?”

He is tired of the question, even though Cuddy is the only person in the hospital who actually asks. He should be grateful for that, but he’s just not that big a person. He knows that she’s expressing ordinary concern, but he still thinks of it as interference.

“Never better,” he says. He feels a little like he’s going to choke. “If I could just get Tucker off my back, my life would be perfect.”

“I was talking about your other problems,” she offers.

“You mean the ones that are none of your business?” House asks.

“I’ll talk to Tucker,” Cuddy offers. “Maybe I can get him to leave you alone.”

“I can do that myself,” House says. “I don’t want you playing him for sympathy on my behalf. He’s not concerned about this case, he’s jealous because Gorman left me in charge. It’s not your problem.”

“If you can’t resolve the issues Dr. Tucker has with you, hand it over to me,” she says. “He’s going to run to me every time you make a treatment decision, and that makes it my problem.”

House closes his eyes and shakes his head. Whatever, Cuddy. Don’t try to make things easy, I can do my job, he thinks. He’ll deal with it but he’ll do it later. Tucker will be just as pissed off after lunch.

Right now, rounds appeal to him. He’ll seem to be working, but if he can find Robinson or Patel, he won’t have to do anything more complicated than half-assed listening.


He leaves the hospital around lunchtime. He goes to a coffee place downtown and waits at the counter. He asks for a large coffee to go. The guy behind the counter has the sort of skin that makes House envy the young. The guy looks like he’s about twenty-five, maybe a grad student in something sensitive like English lit. He is untouched, almost surreal in his smoothness. House was never so young. The guy is almost unbearably attractive.

House catches himself wondering what the coffee guy looks like without the stupid apron. That sort of speculation is supposed to be reserved for flight attendants, nurses, and Cuddy. He feels self conscious, as if everybody in the world knows that he’s checking out a guy who works in a coffee shop.

“Be a few minutes, the Double A is brewing,” the guy says. “Do you want to wait?” He shows perfect white teeth and small dimples. His eyes crinkle just enough to confirm his smile. House pays for his coffee and moves to the side to wait and watch.

The guy turns around. His jeans fit entirely too well, and he’s got a nice ass.

“What the hell is wrong with me?” House whispers. He’s been looking at men differently over the past week or so, as if he’s trying to figure out what Wilson wanted from him. That makes a little bit of sense, but not much.

He jumps when something heavy knocks against his back. He follows the movement of the object and sees two girls with backpacks stuffed full slung over their shoulders. They do not apologize to him. Their packs thump against the floor as the girls sit at the bar and begin to talk.

A bell on the front door clangs as a group comes inside. They bring the cold air with them. One of them is describing a party, how she drank too much champagne and woke up the next morning in a complete stranger’s bathtub. Her voice pierces the air like a car alarm. Her companions laugh, because this sort of behavior must be typical for the loud one.

House drums his fingers on the countertop as the newcomers take a break from their conversation to order. One of them can’t decide.

“Latte or mocha, latte or mocha, what do I want?” the straggler asks his friends.

“Just order something!” The two men in the group punch each other in the arms. One of them lurches sideways and bumps into House. “Hey, sorry dude.”

House rolls his eyes.

“I’ll have the chai,” the straggler decides.

There’s a clock on the wall, above an open door that leads into a darkened room.

House freezes there. His eyes travel in record time between from the white circle to the black rectangle. His is blood races and his heart pounds. His breathing is heavy, and he can’t move. House feels like the events of a year are being sucked into right now.

“Large coffee to go.” The guy behind the counter sets a paper cup in front of him.

His cane falls to the floor as the scents of clove and cardamom waft over him. The chatter in the shop subsides to a white static. House can’t breathe.

This is it. He’s sure he’s dying. He leans over the counter for support. “Somebody call 911! I think this guy’s having a heart attack…”

He feels himself being pulled back, but he does not fall. There’s a pair of strong arms, and a chair.

“It’s OK, I’m a doctor. Give him some room, and bring me some water.” The voice is so familiar that it might not be real. Fingers on his neck and a steady hand on his head, the noise fades as the crowd moves away.

“You’re tachy at 150. Any tingling in your left arm?”

“Dunno…no.” House opens his eyes.

Wilson is not a hallucination. He is there, not six inches away, cuing House’s involuntary actions. “Breathe. You’re having a panic attack, you’ll be OK.”

How is Wilson so calm? What is he doing here? “Take this.” He hands over a white pill, more oval than his usual Vicodin.

“Take it, Greg. It’ll help.” Wilson looks at him with concern and certainty. House swallows the pill. They sit quietly for several minutes. Wilson reaches for his wrist. “I have to check your pulse again.”

House nods. Wilson feels for his radial artery and presses his thumb over it. “Better,” he says, obviously relieved. “I gave you Xanax so you don’t have another attack later.”

House sees the bottle sitting between them; his name is on the familiar hospital pharmacy label. Wilson looks guilty and contrite. House is puzzled for a moment, then the pieces fall into place.

“I was wondering what happened to these,” he says. He picks up the vial and shakes it. “I’ve been taking a lot of them.”

Wilson gets it. “Yeah, I, you... had some trouble there for a while, after…”

House understands. “Yeah, so if I needed any more of these, I would just tell you?”

“Your, uh, shrink can write for you, that would probably be best,” Wilson says slowly. “You needed it.”

“I’m… you’re right.” They look at each other. House smiles a little as he slips the bottle into his coat pocket.

It’s no surprise that Wilson is in therapy. He should be, after all that’s happened in the last year. He needs help, and House is glad he’s getting it. He wants to ask how everything’s going, but he can’t ask that simple question because he’s afraid Wilson won’t answer. He’s equally afraid that Wilson will answer. For once, he allows it to be none of his business.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“Everybody eats lunch,” Wilson says. “I’m not stalking you, if that’s what you’re really asking. This is my regular coffee place.”

House fidgets a little. “I guess I should get back to the hospital.”

“You can’t drive right now,” Wilson tells him, “Benzodiazepine is a sedative, and you should take it easy for once. Call your office, and tell them you’re taking the rest of the day.”

Wilson is right, but House isn’t happy about it. “I’m not leaving my car here overnight.”

“I’ll take you home then get a cab back here.”

House hesitates. Wilson isn’t going to budge on this. He knows the effects of the medication, and House could use a break, even if he doesn’t want to take one. He has pushed himself so hard because that’s the only way he knows how to stay functional at this point. Lying down might be a really good idea.

“OK,” he says. He places his keys on the table and slides them toward Wilson. This will be a good test of his nerves, a barometer on whether they’re going to be able to be friends again. If Wilson is willing to spend time in the same space with him, if he feels like he can do that…

Wilson smiles. Is that relief on his face?

Wilson parks in House’s usual space, and pulls his phone out of his bag. House hears him giving the address to a taxi service.

They get out, and Wilson hands over the keys. His fingers are cool and smooth. House has always admired Wilson’s hands; they care so much. They look at each other again. House doesn’t know what to say. Goodbye? This almost feels like the end of something, like the weight of all the things they can’t say has crushed what little they will say to each other.

The air is cold against House’s face, a gust stings, and his eyes blur.

“You can wait for your cab inside, if you want,” House says. “It’s cold out here.”

They walk to the door. House drops his stuff on the floor next to the piano. Wilson sits down at the table near the window, to watch and listen. Several minutes dribble away. As much as House tells himself that everything is going to be all right, he doesn’t believe it. He wraps his arms around his middle, to quell the urge to throw up, but it’s not working.

He opens his mouth and a horrific, almost animal noise comes out. House hears the scrape of Wilson’s chair and the hurried rush of his shoes against the floor. He arrives too late.

Wilson crouches near the brownish puddle to examine it as only a doctor would. “No coffee grounds, and no red blood, so no GI bleed,” he says. House moves to get up. He’s unhappy when anybody sees him in a weakened state.

“I don’t have an ulcer, Dr. Wilson,” House says. “I don’t have esophageal varices or gastric erosion; it’s garden variety stress.”

“Or a reaction to your meds,” Wilson suggests as unravels a length of paper towels and spritzes cleaner from a bottle. It smells of orange peel.

House watches Wilson crouch before him, cleaning up after him, wiping vomit off the floor. He looks so determined.

“No white fragments,” House says. “I haven’t taken anything in the last hour.”

“From the looks of this, you haven’t eaten anything, either.” He finishes his chore. House hears the water in the kitchen sink, and some rustling. Wilson sits down on the couch, maybe a foot away from House. “Here, crackers and ginger ale. This looks like the stuff I bought the last time you were sick.”

House doesn’t want it. He doesn’t need to be comforted or coddled; he’s not six years old. He makes a face.

“One cracker won’t kill you.”

He takes the offered food, but grumbles about it. Wilson is watching him. Neither of them is comfortable.

“I’m, uh,” House hesitates. “I don’t always know who I am these days.” He takes a sip of the ginger ale. “When I freaked out, I was looking at the guy who works at the coffee shop.”

Wilson seems surprised at his confession. He obviously wasn’t expecting it.

“Huh,” Wilson says. He nods so subtly that House wouldn’t have noticed it if Wilson were across the room. “He’s a nice looking guy, it’s perfectly normal to notice.”

“It was more than that,” House says.

“Yeah,” Wilson says. “I… I’m sorry.”

“What for?” He hopes Wilson has the good sense not to answer that. He stuffs a couple of crackers into his mouth and crushes them. “Where’s your cab?” he mumbles through the food.

“I cancelled it,” Wilson says quietly. “I guess I should…” House thinks that he’s asking if he can stay.

“I still feel pretty bad,” House admits.

“You should get some rest.”

House gets up slowly and moves toward his bedroom. He plants the cane and leans heavily into each step. Wilson doesn’t try to help him.

“Will you be here when I wake up?” House wants to know. The words sound like pleading. He feels lousy, and he’s sick of being alone.

“I can stick around for a little bit.”

As House lays down on his bed, as he lets the aches and pains of his daily life come up against the softness of his bed, he thinks that Wilson is acting the same way he did when he started physical therapy last year, doing a lousy job at pretending that there’s not a gorilla in the corner. No wonder he needed the Xanax.

He’s not like House, who nurses a grudge for a bit, then makes shrapnel of it, would shoot the gorilla and mount its head as a trophy to hang above his fireplace. They’re different, he and Wilson. One is shadow, one light. He’s no longer sure which of them is which. For some reason, this makes him laugh, though it’s not exactly funny.

His eyes shut as his head sinks into the pillow. He allows the chemicals to take him believing that Wilson will be sitting on his couch, probably reading a journal, when he comes back to life.

He is wrong. When he wakes from his long sleep, the apartment is empty. Wilson is gone. There’s a note on the table, signed with one initial. If you’re going to smoke, get a real ashtray.

The saucer is still filled with butts. House looks for his cigarettes. They’re exactly where he left them on the coffee table. He taps one out of the pack, rolls it between his thumb and forefinger until the thin white paper cracks and threads of tobacco spill out.

This is as good a time as any to quit. He places the saucer, the pack, and his disposable lighter into a plastic grocery bag and knots it at the top. He walks out his front door and throws the small bag in his garbage can.

There, that’s done. House knows he won’t need that stuff any more. He’s OK now. He feels good.

He picks up the note again; it’s exactly as it should be. Wilson never says goodbye.


Cuddy lingers at the desk in the clinic, checking the roster for the day. “Dr. House, I should schedule you for clinic duty; seeing some ordinary patients would keep you on your toes,” she suggests. She sounds almost hopeful. He smiles a little.

“My leg is the problem, not my toes,” he tells her.

“I can get you a stool.”

“Actually, I came to set the record straight. I forgot about the Xanax. I do have it, but I wasn’t taking them when you asked.”

She grabs him by the elbow and pulls him toward her office.

“What?” Cuddy demands.

“Did you fire Wilson?” House asks.

She shakes her head. “He’s not fired, not yet; he’s suspended for self prescribing a controlled substance.”

“Oh? So you tested him,” House is fairly sure he’s got Cuddy by the short hairs.

“No,” she admits. “But he confessed.”

“You have no evidence to support that confession.” House pulls the bottle from his pocket. “Should have run the tests.”

Cuddy takes the pills from House and examines the label. She looks confused, even angry. “He admitted everything, and I have pharmacy records showing that…”

“He wrote me a prescription for Xanax because he was concerned about my well being. Wilson’s a bit of a sucker for a hard-luck case.”

“Why are you trying to protect him?”

House shrugs. “What happened didn’t affect our working relationship, and that’s as far as you have any right to be concerned.”

“But he…”

“Leave it alone, Cuddy,” House insists. “Don’t be a girl about this. Call Wilson and unsuspend him. You can give him my clinic hours.”

She refuses. House glares at her and stays in his office for the rest of the day.



Gorman has been trying to reach him for two days. House owes him the courtesy of a return call, though he isn’t looking forward to the conversation. To his surprise, Gorman has an interesting case.

“A superbug?” House asks. “How did you diagnose it?”

“You’ll love this: we used the House method,” Gorman says. “Shots in the dark to exhaust the possibilities, and when we didn’t get an adequate response to any drug, we called in some crazy Italian biologists to run some molecular comparisons. It looks for all the world like Vancomycin-resistant staph A. We’ve been trying to isolate this bug for years!” Gorman sounds giddy, even through a sketchy phone connection and thousands of miles of ocean.

“OK, but how are you treating it?” House is very curious, almost to the point of envy. He hasn’t had a case this good in a long time.

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you. How would you feel about coming over to Switzerland? The guys over here are dying to meet you.”

Two days later, he boards a plane to London, where he’ll connect to Geneva. He hates to fly, but this is too good to pass up. There’s nothing for him in New Jersey, at least not right now.

He glances out the window as the plane takes off. The tarmac stays put as the plane takes flight, and gravity presses his head to the back of his seat. House wonders how long he ought to stay away.

How long before the gorilla gets tired of being ignored and leaves?

Part Nine

Part One (By Pitza)
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six


Wilson enters the lounge as quietly as possible. He’s trying to leave well enough alone, and if he can avoid talking to anybody, bonus. Nancy is finishing up charts from her shift. She ought to be home with her family by now. He supposes she’s getting double time and a half for working this overnight, so he doesn’t feel sorry for her.

“Merry Christmas, Dr. Wilson,” she says. “I’m glad you’re here.”

This can’t be good. “Busy shift?” he asks. “Or just the usual holiday business.”

“We had a bit of excitement earlier,” she tells him. “It probably could have been prevented, but the nurses’ station was unattended…”

Wilson heads for the coffee, pours a cup and dunks a whitish bell-shaped cookie sprinkled with shards of red sugar into it. “Go on,” he says with his mouth half full.

Nancy gives him the rundown and his hopes for an easy day fall to pieces.


“Simons died last night,” he announces as he walks into House’s office. House has his legs propped up on the desk. He looks up from whatever he’s reading, it’s too colorful to be a journal.

“Good morning to you, too,” House says. His brows close in and his forehead wrinkles. “Wait, Simons is the CMV guy? I thought his fever was coming down. He can’t die, just like that.”

Wilson shrugs. “Picked the wrong night to flat line. Cardiac arrest, skeleton staff, he was dead before the code team got to him.”

“Well, don’t beat yourself up about it,” House says. “One more casualty of the holiday season.”

“I have to let the family know.” Wilson turns his head away from House’s irritation and studies the floor. A minute or so passes in silence.

“Give them a little time,” House says quietly. He looks up at Wilson. Their eyes meet and hold steady. Wilson knows that they could be stay here, watching each other just like this, until one of them drops dead. House knows it, too.


Cuddy finds him after rounds. She walks with him and closes the door to his office behind them. It’s a bad sound. Wilson retreats to his desk and gestures that she should sit. He’s trying to remind her that he still works here.

“Alton Stewart is coming in from Philadelphia to cover for you starting tomorrow,” she says, still standing. “You’ll be on unpaid administrative leave for six weeks. I want your charts in my office before you go.”

“What’s going to happen after that?” Wilson loads several questions into one. He should ask more specifically, but the look on her face scares him. He’s almost positive he doesn’t want to hear the answers, but he’d be a fool not to ask. “Will I have a job to come back to?”

“That remains to be seen,” she says. “I have to do what’s in the best interest of this hospital.”

Wilson shivers.

His last patient of the day has chrondosarcoma and breakthrough pain; an admit from the emergency department. Despite her regular medication, despite a dose of a stronger narcotic in the ER, the woman is in agony. He has to work quickly and calmly. He has to get it right.

“I know you’ve heard this before, probably even today,” he says. “On a scale of one to ten…”

“The meds aren’t working, this is worse than being in labor.” She groans as she exhales. “Feels like knives. I wish I were dead.”

“OK,” he sits down on a stool near the bed. “Tell me about your holiday, did you have family come to visit?”

The woman seems to struggle for the first few minutes. She talks about the meal she prepared, how her daughter helped, and her father. Gradually, she settles in to an easier pattern. She relates details as they come to her. Wilson listens intently, and watches her posture. Every so often, he asks another question in a low, friendly voice. He keeps her talking.

“I made my husband do the dishes, since I put that damned bike together,” she says. They both laugh.

“How’s the pain now?” he asks.

“Better,” she says. “Does this mean I’m dying?”

“No,” he says. “This kind of pain is happens to a lot of patients. It can come at any stage of treatment, possibly due to plain, ordinary stress.”

“I feel better now. How’d you do that?”

If she were younger, he would tell her it was magic. “Distraction works for some patients, or the fentanyl may have taken a little longer than usual to kick in.”

“But I’ll have to stay tonight.”

“You’ll need to see a pain management specialist before you go home, but the nurses are pretty lax about visiting hours on holidays,” he smiles at her. “Tell somebody to bring you some leftovers.”

Wilson leaves the room. There must be some good left in him, somewhere.

He stops at House’s office again before leaving; he wants to say goodbye, but House isn’t there, and nobody has seen him. He considers leaving a note, but what would it say? None of the pithy, insincere phrases that cross his mind come close to what he really wants to tell House: I never wanted to hurt you.

Wilson makes a face as he realizes he said those same words to too many women at one time or another, but he’s almost sure he’s never meant them until right now.

He spends the first day of his suspension working around the house, keeping busy so he doesn’t go nuts. He does not leave the house, and by the end of the day, it looks like a grown-up lives there.

He spends the second day driving to nowhere; he likes to drive. The hum of the engine is louder than his thoughts as he speeds down Route 1 going south. It’s a long road, an old road, and there’s nothing much to see. Every so often he passes a strip mall. The parking lots are crowded with people who are probably waiting in line to return gifts that did not satisfy them. He thinks about his wives, and how easy it seemed for them to end an unsatisfying marriage. He’s really a lousy husband. He cares only about himself.

By the time he looks up, Wilson is in Maryland, almost to Baltimore.

He pulls off the road at a diner. His fingers unclench, and he pulls his hands away from the steering wheel. God, he’s stiff. He gets out of the car and stretches his arms into the air. He feels every muscle shifting and stretching. He fills his lungs with cool air that smells of traffic and wood smoke; he lets it out with a jumbled sound. He blinks, and blinks again, as if he thinks he’ll recognize the surroundings the next time he opens his eyes.

The flashing colors of a huge neon sign reflect in the damp pavement. Must have rained earlier. The Big Chief Diner looks like the sort of place his dad would have stopped on one of those family trips, the long summer drives with all three boys piled into the back of the station wagon on the way to visit Grandma. He has never been here, but it has the kind of basic familiarity that he needs. Warm light streams from the windows into the almost dark.

The interior is aqua blue and beige with vinyl booths and speckled tabletops. Caddies with little tubs of jam, glass bottles of ketchup, paper napkins in metal dispensers sit at the far end of each one. A case near the door has desserts, pies and cakes gleaming as the shelves rotate. All of it is perfect; this place has probably looked exactly the same since before he was born.

The waitresses, they’re all women, wear matching uniforms, the same blue as the upholstery. A man in a white shirt and a bland, dark tie waits near the door, at the cash register, and leads him to a booth that’s supposed to seat four.

He orders an open-faced turkey sandwich covered in gravy. There’s a lump of stuffing under the meat and a puddle of sweet cranberry sauce on the side, right next to the mashed potatoes.

Wilson silently thanks the road that brought him here. He can almost persuade himself that it’s 1962, that he pulled up in a giant Chevrolet rather than his sleek German driving machine, that his parents haven’t even met. That he has never hurt anybody, either by design or by accident.

“Everything all right, hon?” the waitress asks. She’s about 60. Her salt-and-pepper hair is pulled away from her face, and her face breaks into wrinkles as she smiles at him. The blue of the uniform flatters her. She’s probably somebody’s grandmother.

“Mmm, yes. It’s very good,” he says. “I didn’t realize how hungry I was.”

“Are you on your way home?” she asks. She’s just making conversation. The diner is close to empty.

“Home’s where you hang your hat, right?” He smiles and shrugs. “Though, I don’t have a hat.”

She laughs, because he made it sound like a joke. She fills his cup with coffee and reminds him to save room for dessert.

He starts to wonder when he became the kind of man who could destroy people he claimed to love, all without not realizing he was doing it.

At least he knows now, that’s got to count for something. His phone makes a sound that tells him there’s a new message.

Message received December 25 at 1:49 a.m. Hey, OK, I… I figured something out, and I was going to tell you. OK.

Two days ago? Hearing House’s voice is enough to send him spiraling back into doubt. He slept through the call, just like he slept through the page when Mr. Simons died. At this distance, there’s nothing he can do. After forty-eight hours, nothing really matters.

Over a slice of apple pie with ice cream, he decides to stay in Baltimore for the night. New Jersey can do without him.


Waking up in a real bed, with a soft pillow clinging to the side of his head, is almost a revelation. The last time he woke up in a bed, he was alone, even more alone than he is now. House was gone; House is still gone. It’s better that way, for both of them. If things had worked out differently that night, if he’d managed to kiss him in the yard instead of slipping. If what happened had been closer to the comfort he needed than the crime he committed… if. If…

He can get back in his car, keep driving south. Eventually, he will get to Florida. He can hire somebody to pack up his stuff and move it. Or he could have it all burned. Miami sounds like a good idea. He’s got a friend from med school at University of Miami Hospital, or he could get an HMO job, assuming he doesn’t lose his medical license. Cuddy will be glad to get rid of him, but she might prefer to have his head on a plate.

Assuming the worst, assuming he does lose his license, he can move to Miami and get a job teaching health to high school students. And then there will be a big expose in the newspaper about how a rapist who lost his medical license over prescription fraud is teaching in a Miami school. Everybody will know.

His thoughts move at light speed. He has to find a way to slow down. He has to be able to stop his head from running. He knows that he has to run before he can walk, walk before he can stand still. He has to stand still before he’ll be able to breathe.

He crosses to the dresser and grabs the vial. It’s nearly half empty. He sees the label: the date, and their names printed in tidy black letters.

Wilson is using Xanax as a crutch. It dulls the contrast between then and now. One more piece of ground he shares with House. He sets the vial back down. He wonders if House knows about his bloodless crime, the one that’s actually going to cost him.

He wonders what he’s going to do. Sure, he could keep driving; he could go anywhere, but sooner or later if he keeps running, he will collapse and nobody will be left to help him up.

He spends a couple of hours walking around the Baltimore Aquarium, which seems to be a popular destination for kids who are already bored with their Christmas gifts. A gang of them stands near the shark exhibit, comparing the Great Whites to their math teacher. Their words bounce between the glass tanks and dissipate into the high ceilings.

The shark moves around its tank, menacing but graceful. Wilson moves off to the side and examines the beast’s face. The shark opens its mouth, not too wide, but the kids giggle nervously. One of the girls shrieks.

His mind is blank for an instant, and then he knows something. His head is clear, and he knows; he did mean to hurt House. He intended every blow he laid down as punishment for the condescending silence. He tried to make House understand what he wanted, and when that didn’t work he took it, hurting House for what he didn’t feel, hurting himself for what he did.

House should have gone to the police. He wonders if he could turn himself in, if that would mean anything. There’s no evidence, but he’s guilty nonetheless.

He walks to the end of a pier and watches the dull gray water below him. Gulls squawk in the distance. House has always been an enigma. The things he says obscure the things he doesn’t say, ever.

“Why do you stay with me? I’m completely fucked up.” House said. Stacy had been gone for about two weeks. Wilson thought the worst was over, but he was wrong.

He pulled a napkin from a paper bag and handed it to House. “Right now, I’m staying because you’re on a pity bender. I want to be able to hold it over your head,” he said. “Usually I stick around because it’s cheaper than buying my own Scotch.” He raised his glass and glanced over at his friend’s pathetic face.

“Really?”

“No.” Wilson waited.

House leaned over to rest his head on the arm of the couch and closed his eyes. “It hurts, Jimmy. My whole body hurts. It all hurts.” His voice was flat, but he was speaking the truth.

“I know.”


The wind picks up, fluttering his coat, cooling his hot cheeks.

Maybe he can make it home by dark.

Part Eight

Part One (By Pitza)
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

Being in Wilson’s office makes House a little queasy. He’s not afraid, he’s not thinking about anything other than the patient, but Wilson is. It’s that obvious. His eyes are glassy, as if he’s getting plenty of sleep, but no rest. He needs a haircut. His bangs reach almost to his eyebrows, which is unusual for Wilson. He always looks so tidy.

House doesn’t sit down. He doesn’t want to be tempted to stay, to let this back and forth drift into one of those rambling conversations that they’ll carry on for days in three-minute snippets. It’s way too soon for that.

Wilson is right there, seated behind his desk. For half a second, House misses him with such power that it ought to knock him down, but it doesn’t. He stands near the couch as they talk about anti-virals and the patient’s prognosis. House grips the head of his cane so tightly that his knuckles ache.

His eyes survey the junk that clutters Wilson’s shelves: books, trophies, a few photographs. He focuses on a picture of Wilson and his father, taken on a sunny day, maybe ten years ago. It must have been about the time he got out of med school. They stand arm in arm, both holding golf clubs. Both men are smiling.

Wilson looks like his dad. House remembers the elder Wilson as a great guy, hell of a golfer. That’s why his son plays golf to win.

“I’m not wrong,” he says. He has to concentrate on the present, that’s important.

“I know.” Wilson sounds pleased, but sad. He’s about to say something else, House can feel it. He asks about dinner. House can’t say yes, but he won’t say no. He’s stuck in a spot where he knows what he ought to want, to get far away from Wilson as fast as he can. But what he does want is something else, a middle ground.

Scar tissue. House is waiting for scar tissue.

“Maybe some other time,” he says. Compromise sucks. Compromise means that everybody loses, but that’s all he can offer at this point. He hopes Wilson understands.


For House, Christmas Eve is about standing by, watching the surrounding chaos of all the things that other people want to get done so they can run off to their real lives. What they have, what they want, whatever: it’s all a bunch of noise.

House’s answering machine is flashing. He does not care who called. He’s not in the mood to talk right now. No one who would call him has anything to say that he wants to hear, just clutter that people feel like sharing in December. He has no desire to be a part of it.

He’s thinking about Wilson’s wife. He liked Ellen well enough, though he had no particular need to like her. He doesn’t need to like anybody, and he doesn’t want anybody to like him. Friends just complicate your life.

Ellen was a terrible cook, he remembers; she and Wilson ate out a lot, and House liked that about her. After the first year or so, she worked in the city. He wonders how the sex was, between them. Wilson rarely spoke of it; House supposes that means they had plain, ordinary, married people sex with lights off.

He decides to start a fire, as some kind of twisted nod to the holiday. Christmas is a pagan festival. They were all about fire. Maybe it’s just something to do.

He wads up a bunch of newspaper because he has no kindling. He kicks an ottoman toward the fireplace and sits down to get a couple of logs. They’re light and dry from sitting there the way Stacy stacked them more than a year ago, a half-assed effort to make the place look cheery. A fine layer of dust comes up from the pile as House disturbs it.

He brushes the dull powder from his hands. It leaves pale streaks on his knees in the shape of his fingers.

He finds the fireplace lighter behind the pile of wood and touches the flame to the paper, then he wonders if the flue is open. He’ll find out soon enough.

The wood begins to catch after a little while, and the room does not fill with smoke. Lucky break. He likes this fire. He should have fires more often.

He gets up and grabs a couple of catalogs from the coffee table. He rips pages and moves them over the logs, holding each one as it burns. He feels the flames lift each page and watches the glossy colors and the pretty words light up, then crumble, as they turn black. He thinks about chemistry until his face and hands are too warm too stay there.

He moves on to the couch. The chill in the air settles on his bare arms; he’s surprised at the gooseflesh. He rubs his arms with his hands in an attempt to feel warm again. It’s not working.

He pulls himself up and goes to the kitchen for a glass of water to take his evening pills. House wants to be tired enough to sleep. He’s sick of thinking. He takes two Vicodin, even though his leg isn’t bothering him that much. He hears the wood crackling in the fireplace as he opens the refrigerator. His apartment is too quiet. There’s nothing but church on TV, nothing but cheesy holiday songs on the radio, and he does not feel like making his own music. He hasn’t touched the piano in almost two weeks.

Cuddy’s note from the other night falls to the floor. The muscles in his back protest and he feels a tug in his hamstrings as he bends at the waist. The funny thing is, if she had given him her number, he might call her, just to have somebody to talk to. He is morbidly curious about the number she did give him. She seemed to have no trouble placing what happens between him and Wilson in a clearly defined box. He’s not so sure.

It’s possible that Cuddy made a valid point, talking to somebody more familiar with the basics of sexual assault might help him make up his mind. House has never been a fan of stasis.

“Hotline.” The voice belongs to a woman, young, but not girlish. She sounds somber and professionally concerned. She’s here to help. House almost loses his nerve. He was so sure as he was dialing, speaking is a little more difficult.

“Hi. This is anonymous, right?” he says. “I mean, I don’t have to give you my name and social security number.”

“No sir,” the woman says. Now, she sounds a little nervous, as if she’s talking to her father. He’s not that old. “The hotline is completely confidential, you don’t have to tell me your name unless you want to, and I can’t report anything you say. ”

“OK, good.” House exhales, and nods, as if he is sitting across from this young woman. “So, can you tell me something about how you know that you’ve been sexually assaulted?”

“The law in New Jersey says--”

“I don’t care what the law says, I want to know what you think. Do you people have some kind of checklist?”

“Sir, do you think you were sexually assaulted?”

“Are you working from a script?” he asks.

“I’ve been trained to answer calls from people who are concerned about sexual assault, sir.” The woman sounds annoyed and defensive.

“Great, that’s why I called. My boss thinks that I was sexually assaulted, but I have my doubts.” House is proud of himself for having summed up the whole thing so neatly.

The woman sighs. House wants to know what her name is, but he isn’t about to ask. She probably wouldn’t tell him, even if he did.

“The way we handle calls is that if a person claims to have been raped, we believe them,” she says. “As I was about to say, New Jersey law defines sexual assault as forcible sexual contact.”

“See, that’s where I get confused. He didn’t exactly force me. I decided to get into bed with him of my own free will,” he says. “My choice. I could have just left him there.”

“If you said ‘no’ at any time, that’s rape.”

“I didn’t,” House says. “I didn’t say anything.”

“That’s the same thing as saying no,” the woman tells him.

“Do you really believe that?” he says. “If you think about it, silence is the same thing as saying yes.”

“No, it’s not.” The woman pauses. House can almost hear her attempt to form an argument. “I’m assuming that you had a relationship with this person prior to the assault?”

He wonders how much it matters. “Not that kind of relationship, he’s my friend. I--” He was about to explain to a random stranger exactly how he feels about Wilson, and the thing is, if somebody asked that question directly, House wouldn’t know how to answer. “I don’t know if I could have got away from him, after things started to get weird.”

The issue is that he does not know if he wanted to get away. He knew that Wilson wanted to fuck him, he said as much on the drive home, but House figured he wouldn’t be in any kind of shape to follow through.

“What do you mean by ‘weird’?” she asks. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

House doesn’t, but he tries. He’s fine until he gets to the part about Wilson pressing a knee against his bad leg, pressing down on his shoulders, smashing his face against a pillow. Wilson didn’t mean to do any of this. He was too drunk to know what he was doing. House thought he was going to suffocate.

He gulps for air.

“I’m sorry,” he pants. “I shouldn’t have called you.”

“Sir, please don’t hang up.” She sounds desperate to keep him on the line.

“Greg,” he says. “My name is Greg.”

“Greg,” she repeats. “Look, if you were physically distressed, that’s aggravated sexual assault. It’s a first degree felony,” the girl tells him. She has recovered her confidence, and she’s back on book. “I really think you should report this assault. I know that’s not an easy thing to do, but this sounds like a good case. You could make a difference.”

He looks at the stacks of mail on the table in front of him. He’s let it go too long. Maybe he should burn it. “You’re a law student, aren’t you?”

“First year, at Rutgers. How did you know that?” she says.

House smiles to keep himself from laughing. That figures. “My ex is a lawyer. You’ve got the self-righteous patter down. Congratulations.” He pauses for a second. “You think this is a case, but I think that what happened to me is nothing more than sex that shouldn’t have happened.

“Rape is not about sex!” She is emphatic about this, which makes sense. “The actor uses sex as a weapon against the victim. It didn’t happen because your friend wanted to have sex with you, it happened because he wanted to hurt you.”

“Yeah, he hurt me, but there’s a lot more to it than that,” House says. “Don’t worry, you’ll figure out that lousy sex isn’t actionable some time before you get to be a junior assistant district attorney.”


House studies the dark wood around his fireplace. His eyes move over the carvings and the screen, to the pokers and brooms in their brass stand, and he focuses on the flame. He grabs a pad of paper and a pen. At the top of the page he writes Wilson’s name in big letters, draws a thick line underneath, and writes words as they come to him.

Symptoms. He has to know the symptoms before he can identify the disease.

The last year was hard on him, and it seems like Wilson was with him every minute, going through the big setbacks and the small victories as if they were his own. That can’t have been easy. A twinge runs through his leg; it registers as guilt. He never asked for devotion, not from anybody. He never asked Wilson to stay, never expected that he would, but at the same time, he has to admit that he wouldn’t have made it without somebody.

Stacy was the one who forced him to live, but Wilson saved his life. House knows that, even if he never said so.

The effort cost Wilson, too much. House didn’t know much about his first marriage, except that it might as well have been over before it started. What he does know is that the second marriage was for love. James and Ellen were well suited, and he thought nobody would be good enough to marry his best friend. Ellen was independent, she was smart, and she was a realist. That’s why House thought she was all right.

Why did she move out in July? Suddenly, House needs to know. Was there something, some night she wasn’t in the mood and Wilson pressed the point a little too hard, and ordinary sex with the lights off turned into something savage?

Her departure came without warning: one day, about a week after House returned to work, Wilson came into his office, clearly upset. They spent an hour getting a few pieces of the story out in the open, then came back here and drank themselves blind.

Wilson passed out on the floor between the couch and the coffee table. House tossed a blanket over him; even in the middle of the summer, his apartment gets cold at night.

All Wilson would say when House asked what happened was that he did something incredibly stupid. That something, it could have been anything. It could have been a pattern that House missed.

He doesn’t know if being the only one to suffer at Wilson’s hands would be better or worse. It’s a singular moment of clarity, but it fades, leaving only trouble in its wake.

He could have looked harder, or more closely. That’s what he does: he peels away the lies until the truth comes to light. That’s how he solves his puzzles. Every word Wilson has ever said to him must be called into question.

Everybody, everybody lies. They lie to each other, and they lie to themselves. They’re human, he and Wilson both. They can’t help themselves. Maybe all of this was inevitable. House gets off the couch, he doesn’t want to sit any more. He limps back and forth around the living room. It’s not pacing, but it has the same effect.

The lingering chemicals in his bloodstream fight with the oncoming Vicodin. He needs to focus. He catches himself pinching the bridge of his nose. It’s one of Wilson’s gestures.

He curses bitterly as he lights a cigarette, and the nicotine distracts him. He’ll know it’s time to lay off the smokes when he stops feeling. His head circles rather than spins, and he knows he’s cutting it close.

He wants another hypothesis, so what if Wilson’s wife got tired of waiting for an absentee husband who spent every minute, spare or not, prodding his gimpy friend to walk with a half-dead leg. What if she decided her man wasn’t coming home and just gave up? That’s so much more likely that House wants to slap himself because he didn’t consider it first.

What if those days and hours added up to be the incredibly stupid thing? Wilson would be justified in placing blame for the breakdown of his marriage in what’s left of House’s lap.

‘If’ is the hardest word, not ‘sorry.’ If House is correct, he is sorry. He never meant for any of this to happen, but intent can’t absolve him, any more than it absolves Wilson.

House takes a deep breath and lets it out. His head feels right on his neck and shoulders. He’s right. He knows he’s right.

He’s always right. This is good. He knows what happened. Anger met guilt. Obsession met obligation. Add sexual frustration, a liberal amount of booze and a few barbs? Spontaneous combustion.

It all makes sense now. It was nobody’s fault. He wants to tell Wilson, let him know that they’re going to be OK. He’s not nervous as he makes this call. He’s fine, or at least he’s getting there.

Wilson does not respond, not even to a page. House is surprised and disappointed. This is probably better, he thinks. It’s Christmas, and even though the day signifies nothing to them…

Thinking of himself and Wilson as plural, as a one made of two, is so automatic to House that he never stops to wonder why he does it. Before now, he never had to. One is less than two. It was always easier. Two wasn’t any harder to deal with than one, really. House doesn’t need friends, but he needs somebody he doesn’t have to think about so much.

Besides, blowing off busybodies that want to help, telling them that being alone doesn’t bother him is much easier when they’re wrong, when solitary is a choice.

He turns on the TV. There’s a choir singing on PBS. A woman’s voice stands out, rich and dark. He recognizes music of Handel immediately. Fucking great. He won’t be able to do much better than that.

He wonders whether wishing or praying is more pathetic. At least when you wish, you know nothing will come of it. He’s heard about people who truly believe that their prayers will be answered.

House doesn’t know how to pray, so he wishes.

He watches the fire as it subsides. As the televised concert ends, he covers the glowing coals with a last sheet of paper.

It rests there for a minute, maybe more; crinkles from the intense heat.

The page and the words he wrote catch, flame, and die.

Part Seven