Wonderful: Alternate ending to Dying Changes Everything and AU in which Wilson does not deserve to be shot and then stabbed in the eye. Wilson thought that he could just drive over to House's apartment, walk up to the door, knock, then his friend would instantly forgive him, and everything would go back to normal, but he knew it wasn't that easy, from the moment he parked his car. So, he just sat there, thinking. Warning, spoilers for Dying, and everything before it, slash, swear words, references to child abuse, AU, OOC, etc.
"I close my eyes when
I get too sad
I think thoughts that I know are bad
Close my
eyes and I count to ten
Hope its over when I open them
I want
the things that I had before
Like a star wars poster on my bedroom
door
I wish I could count to ten
Make everything be wonderful
again," Everclear
I could have gone to see House a million times over the summer, but I didn't. Part of me tried to convince myself that he should have come to see me, only. Only, I knew I'd never have let him past the door. I just wanted the guy to try for once. When he stammered into my office the first time, I thought he actually was—and who knows, I thought, maybe this is him trying. Then he actually started talking. Greg turned into himself, and so did I. We fought. I pushed him away; he pushed back. We probably would have fallen off the balcony from all that pushing if Thirteen hadn't interrupted us when she did. The second time he came, he refused to bother with the formalities. The thing with Cuddy probably made everything worse, which isn't all that unusual with the woman. The third time he came into my office, I saw how much he was hurting too, and I almost hugged him, but then he threw a temper tantrum instead of trying to be nice to me. He's doing the best he can. What do you want; you expect him to run the New York marathon with a giant sign on his back that says, please don't leave me? I was mad. And I was hurting, and told myself I was going to run away and never come back. But I still found myself sitting in the car outside of his apartment for three hours. Then he hobbled over to the space and knocked on my window.
"I've got pizza inside—unless you wanna sit here until you starve to death, which by the way would be another brilliant step on your new ladder of stupidity." What he really meant by this was come inside, please.
"If you say one word; I'm leaving," I explained, climbing out of the car. "And I'm not spending the night." He nodded, silently. "How's your head?" This time he shrugged, looking at something across the parking lot that was most definitely not me. "I didn't actually mean the thing about talking."
"I know." Boy, you sure are making this easy, I thought, even my mind was snapping at him.
"I didn't mean the other thing either. The thing you're too afraid to mention." You don't think he's ever going to believe anything you say to him again, do you? My mind taunted me, and I hated myself for doing this to him.
"Yeah, you did," he whispered. House stretched out on the sofa, leaving no space for me to sit anywhere close to him. I tried to hang out on the armrest, but he pushed me again, physically this time.
"I think I'm gonna stay here tonight, sleep—wherever you…don't think it's a good idea…I'm not ready to leave yet."
"Either get the hell away from me and stay there, or bring all your stuff inside. I'm not gonna kill myself, but—yo-yoing is stupid and it makes my stomach hurt. I don't think I can do it okay?"
"I feel like crap. I'm not thinking straight. I'm saying stuff I don't mean, hurting the only people in my life that actually give a shit about me. I hurt you, for no good reason, and what's worse—"
"Shut up," he said, even more quietly than his last comment.
"You are the most insecure person I have ever met, and I don't know what caused it. You were gonna tell me something, In my office one of those times, I'm not—they all sort of blurred together."
"I'm sorry..." He meant that one. "Just go. It'll hurt a lot worse if you try and stick it out for a couple of days and even more if we talk about—something." Just tell me that your dad beat the crap out of you, or molested you, or whatever the fuck he did. Tell me, and I won't have to leave, and eventually we'll forgive each other. You'll get over it, because I'll do something amazing to make up for it, but you won't get over it if you don't talk to me! I really, really wanted to say that, but he was in so much pain, it would have only hurt him more to tell me what he was holding back. "Any chance you can see the way to not hating me someday?"
"I don't hate you. I don't. I love you. I just. You need something from me, but won't talk about it. I can't give you—whatever you need, unless I know what the something is. I'm trying to treat a paitent without a complete medical history."
"Get out!" I barely heard those two words, but they had a lot of force behind them.
"I can't do that." House stood up, limping towards his bedroom, but I raced over, grabbing his cane. Don't do it. Don't say it! He's never gonna forgive you; never gonna get over it, my brain screamed out at me. "You have this look in your eyes. I've seen it on other people. Usually it's a kid's face though, a paitent, and it always ends with a call to the department of human services."
"I don't need child services, or whatever, you moron," he sapped.' I touched a nerve, and was getting close to the thing he was hiding. "I thought I told you to get out of here. Go, now!"
"You're a grown up now, so no, you don't need protecting, but forty years ago, maybe little more, maybe a little less, could have really used somebody with a badge."
"Go to Hell," he shouted, dropping the cane, trying to get away without it. Greg tripped, falling to his knees, screaming in pain, and then sitting down completely, hugging his leg. "I hate you! I hate you!" I took a step back, just enough so that he could have the physical space he needed, but did to back down.
"It was your dad, wasn't it?" I asked softly. He lowered his face into his arms. "Do you need help getting back to the couch?" He shook his head again. "Tell me what happened. If you can do that that, maybe I can help you—we can help each other."
"You met him; guy thinks he could make a burnt out light bulb work if he yells at it enough. But I was a kid. I did kid stuff, screwed up, horsed around, made a mess, you know…all the time. Oh come on. You can't handle this right now. We'll both be. No, what—what do you mean, no? Stop shaking your head. I dunno if I can." House was quiet for a while, but then sighed. "He had all these rules, and I was just a kid I couldn't help it. I got in—why am I even telling you this?"
"Because I can help. I can—because I'm gonna stay here, for you. I'm gonna take care of you, love you, help you. I'm gonna do my thing. Can't fix it all, but maybe you won't hurt so much, maybe I won't either." He looked up at me as if to say, fuck you. "If you really didn't want to tell me you wouldn't. I'm far enough away that you could easily get away, lock yourself in there, and—"
"If I don't do this, you're gonna leave, forever. If that happens, don't know what's gonna happen to me."
"No. Hey. Hey, look at me. I'm not leaving. If you're not ready or not able to talk about this, then—we'll just wait until you can, okay? See? Just like I said. Didn't mean a word of it."
"Yes you did."
"Yeah, well, maybe sort of at the time, I meant parts of it, but I love you. That will never change. You're—you need me, and I need to be needed. We're buddies. We're guys. We're human. Each of us is bound to screw up once in a while. It was my turn."
He thought about this long and hard before saying, "I got in trouble a lot. I was a bad, and, little—I just couldn't be good, and when I wasn't, he would. Sometimes he yelled, sometime spankings or—worse. He called them spankings no matter what he used, and he'd use whatever was around. You ever been in a bathtub full of ice? I wasn't sick, didn't have a fever. Just…bad. Sometimes didn't feed me, wouldn't let me sleep inside. And…well I think you got the other thing figured out."
"I'm pretty sure…yeah. I know, but you'll feel better if you tell me about it." Another sigh, two actually, one from each of us this time. "How old where you when it…"
"Five, well no. I was almost five. I think it was right around my birthday. Yeah," he sort snorted when I gasped, "Went on until I was 12." I sat down right beside, but didn't actually touch him
"Maybe I can live here and commute to work."
"Cuddy doesn't have a replacement yet. We walk in hand in hand or—whatever, she'll pretend it never happened. Unless you don't wanna work with me. Or don't feel like going back there…it sucks, staying someplace where everybody knows what crappy thing you've been through." He definetly understood, but that wasn't my main problem. I was worried about him—a lot, and I was worried about myself, a lot. "Whatever you wanna do," he said, trying to sound like he didn't care, reaching into his pocket for his Vicodin.
"You got enough of those? I'm—I shouldn't have left you in the lurch like that." He shrugged another; I don't give a shit gesture. "Tell me what you think." I asked, gently stroking the side of his face.
"What do you want from me?" he asked, half desperately. "Just tell me what to say, and I will, or better yet, tell me what to do and I'll do it."
"Do you want me to come back to the hospital, and don't turn this into—don't say, 'I won't be able to get my pills if you go.' Obviously you're fine on that one, so just tell me what you want. This isn't that hard."
"Yes it is. That's a trick, and I may not know what the right answer is, but you just told me not to say the thing that I'm worried about." I told myself not to yell at him, that the guy couldn't help it. House had shut down—completely, a long time ago and I wasn't going to change that in one night.
"How is it testing you to ask for you opinion?" I pushed him, knowing that I wasn't gonna get an answer, not a real one anyway.
"Because if I say I don't care or tell you its okay to leave, and I don't mean it, you'll go away anyhow, and if I ask you to stay but you won't…well you get the picture, right? There is no answer to that on. No good answer anyway."
"From what I understood out of that long-winded, mostly insane answer you want me to stick around, here and at the hospital, but you're afraid to tell me, afraid that I won't believe it, afraid you'll get hurt." House started to stand up, but then stopped, sat back down, and move d closer to me, all without saying a word. "Do you want me to shut up and let you just stare at the TV until we fall asleep on the couch" He seemed to think this over for a long time, touching his hair, scratching his cheek, looking in every direction except mine, and lastly sort of banging against the wall. "Don't—don't hurt yourself, okay?"
"You're okay with me—with—its okay?" he asked, like a little kid asking for something he wasn't supposed to have. "We should probably keep talking, probably got a lot of stuff you need, or something." I took both of his hands, and put them between mine.
"I said some things today—stuff I knew better than to tell you and it wasn't even true. We've both been having tough times lately. I'll make you a deal. I'm gonna go get myself a really big drink, and the two of us can sit together, not talking, not thinking, just concentrating as hard as we can on something that doesn't hurt like Hell." I could see House preparing to tell me that our experiences couldn't be compared but then something amazing happened. He held his tongue.
"You want one of my pills" he asked, offering me the bottle, once again just like a four-year-old. "It helps and it doesn't help. When I'm here by myself, and I take one or two or four more than I oughta—I get to this point, and it's like my brain is stuck in first gear. Only really able to think simple thoughts, most of the time it's way up in third or even fourth. Doctor Stuff is—well my mind morphs from a car to jet engine." He liked that line, laughing at it.
"Can I have more than one?" Again he nodded, handing me the whole vial. I took two, put the id on it, took it off, and grabbed a third, chewing this one the way he did. "Oh, God," I coughed. "That is disgusting."
"Think you could cook something from the stuff I've got in my fridge and cabinets?"
"Only if you want a whiskey sour. Anything more complicated than that, probably gonna be, cooking is probably one of those higher skills, in second gear to borrow your metaphor."
"I'm okay, I had a couple of drinks and—stuff before I worked up the nerve to go out and talk to you." You knew I was out there? I wanted to ask, but my mind was already sort of sludgy, and before I had the chance another thought came to me. He always knows. "For what it's worth, I hate all your girlfriends when you first start seeing each other. Hate almost everybody—but—when your happy, sometimes, get to the—never really loved any of them, but—probably would have—you know. Eventually."
"Don't do that. Whatever you think you're doing for me, you aren't. It's just…noise." He nodded, silently, standing up and making his way towards the couch. For six hours neither one of us said a single word. He was right, the combination of booze and pills almost completely shut down my brain. For the first time in two months, I wasn't thinking about Amber. This wasn't one of those times when I would remember something good, and get so caught up in the memory that I'd forget about the pain for a while. It was like I was standing outside in the snow, completely naked, but had gone so far beyond being cold. My ears, nose, fingers, and other body parts no longer burned. I was numb, all over. No wonder he takes so many pills, I thought. It didn't feel good—although for a long time there I wondered if anything ever would—but more importantly it didn't hurt.
Part of me wished I could stay like that that forever, but unlike House, I found no comfort in being empty. I was relieved to lose the pain for a while, to get away from the grief and the overwhelming sadness, but I couldn't live there. I knew if I tried I'd either end up dead, or in a coma, or rehab. That's the problem with having more than one person who cares about you. House would have let me disappear, because for him the nothingness, not feeling at all was close to good as he thought he could get. My other friends—the ones who didn't hate me now—and family, however, would never let me get that far gone. As the pills started to wear off, I was the one to break the silence.
"So-um…do you think sometimes…did you dad punish you sometimes because he actually wanted to do those things, like maybe he over reacted to –the sort of behavior most parents would just ignore, or call an accident or something?"
"You're only making me talk about this 'cuz it's easier than dealing with your own pain," he whined, hoping to distract me. I nodded, telling myself that it didn't matter how much he complained, I wasn't going to drop this.
"You've been hurting a whole lot longer. I'll be alright for a while. After today…what I did to you. I was almost afraid of what I'd find when I came by. That's part of the reason I was in that parking space so long."
"I thought about," House paused, pulling one hand up over his head, the other around his neck in an exaggerated gesture. "But thought I had a better chance of making you not hate me…yes, to your question. Used to get into…dunno. Once I spilled a drink at dinner, kicked the crap out of me. Sort of thing happened a lot."
"And the…other stuff?" I wondered if I couldn't bring myself to say the words, sexual abuse, if it was even fair to expect him to actually talk about it. "Was that used as punishment, or did he have a—I'm not sure what I'm saying here."
"That came later. I was supposed to be asleep, but after a couple of times, started to figure it out. Knew when he was gonna come into my room much later, couldn't get myself to close my eyes—not that I could sleep anyway. There were a couple times when he wasn't around. Got deployed once, and never…almost never got in trouble when he was gone. Even when I did," he sort of shivered. "Normal punishments, you know…when they went on vacation, I stayed with my grandmother; she let me do whatever I wanted. Anyway, when he wasn't—calmed down, smiled sometimes, behaved myself, if enough time went by, even the nightmares weren't so bad. I think he knew that I sensed t. So he'd torture me, keep me waiting until 2:00 or 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. Always said...nice stuff during the…that I was…he said the…you know what I mean?"
"He told you he loved you?" I asked, moving back to the couch so I'd be closer to him, and maybe Greg would let me put my arms around his body. "It's okay," I whispered. "I won't let anybody hurt you ever again. No one's going to be mean to you like I was today either."
"Good luck on that one. Even you don't like me. Look, I don't care about anybody, sept maybe you. All of those morons could go to Hell, I wouldn't notice. You were nice to me. Used to listen when I got freaked out 'cuz I woke up at 2:00 AM just knowing that he was there, felt his hands and his breath, and...even when I didn't tell the truth, you still listened." He was close to tears, so I just let things happen however they were going to happen. "You came and got me. You…didn't hate me. Nothing else counted. I always knew that no matter how bad it got, I could call Jimmy and he might yell at me for a minute but then he'd come over…everything would get better." He was quiet for a long time, before finally telling me the most important thing. "I was gonna tell you about my dad the night…went to some random bar, to get some courage. That's why I ran away. That's why I deserve for you to leave. If I wasn't such a coward, we'd be okay, because she'd still be here, and I wouldn't be a murderer" I wasn't completely sure if he believed it, but the way he'd said it, using those specific words, I was pretty sure he did.
"We will be okay again," I promised, wrapping my arms around his sobbing body, just barley containing my own tears. "You aren't a chicken, and you sure as Hell don't deserve any of this. I'll make everything like it used to be. You'll see. We're gonna be okay. Do you trust me??"? House nodded, and soon we were both curled up on the sofa, two totally damaged people swimming around in the big swimming pool of life, without anything to keep us from drowning but each other. We're screwed, I thought, but didn't dare say out loud. Now what? I asked myself in the darkness, after Greg had cried hard enough to make himself fall asleep. "I don't think I can do this without you," I whispered in the darkness, praying that the words would make it to the right ears. "Please, we need you; we both do. He said he was sorry, what more do you want?" But of course, nobody answered me.
