Based on the James Alan McPherson short story The Story of a Scar, only told from the POV of James Wilson while looking at House's naked body for the first time. Anyway, House/Wilson slash story, some sex, mild language, and some description of child abuse.

"I can't let you be
cause your beauty won't allow me
wrapped in white sheets
like an angel from a bedtime story
shut out what they say
cause your friends are fucked up anyway
and when they come around
somehow they feel up and you feel down," The Red House Painters.

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The fist time I saw Gregory House naked was one night, about a week after Stacy left the first time, and the things I noticed most were the physical scars, the ones anybody could have seen, the only ones he had chosen to show me. I was too worried about the incredibly intense pain it would cause so I didn't touch his leg. The stitches had been removed, but the skin was bright reddish pink, thin, rough, and it hurt me just to see it. I remember examining him, not as his doctor, or his friend, but as his lover, finally his lover. We had fucked—that's what House called it. He forbid me from calling it anything even remotely romantic.

The other new scar, the one on his heart, had not healed, maybe it would never heal. House's heart was pretty damaged, and I wondered if he could ever be okay again. Some how, once, he had shared with me some facts. I was lucky, he said, because my father never even spanked me, or my brothers. I'm lucky, he explained, to have never known the sharp sting of a belt buckle on my bare skin, I was never slammed into a wall head first, never forced to sleep in the backyard without a tent, or a sleeping bag, or a pillow, blanket, nothing. For me, the idea of camping is fun, exciting, and adventurous. I have never been called, worthless, stupid, weak, careless, no good—not by a parent anyway. He told me that once, and refused to discus it further, "and no I haven't told her. It's not the right time. Maybe when things get better," he said.

And so Stacy left, never completely sure as to why House acted the way he did, and when everything fell apart, he called me, but I can't see those scars, the shattered pieces of his heart that have been glued together carefully, and dropped, and re-glued, and stabbed, smashed, crushed, beaten, slapped, frozen, sliced open, squeezed, thrown, and put back together as best as possible, but everyone—at least those of us who know—were aware that he probably couldn't handle much more damage. You can only fix a broken vase so many times before you have to buy a new one. I lay there staring at his half drugged, half sleeping body, focusing on his chest, and thinking about his heart, and his beautiful, damaged soul.

This was when I noticed another scar, two of them actually. There was one soft pink line drawn neatly across the lower right quadrant of his abdomen. It was well healed, and neatly stitched up, an appendix scar, god knows that's the one thing any first year could recognize regardless of what they had seen, learned, or heard. I wasn't as surprised to see this scar as I was by the other one. This last scar, high up on his chest, between the shoulder and the armpit on the other side of his body, a long, curved scar that wound its way around to his side, and I guessed, to his back. I thought, or couldn't think rather, what it was. It was unidentifiable. It was stiff, and warn, and probably had been treated by someone with little to no real medical knowledge, but the main difference between this scar and the other two was that I couldn't for the life of me figure out where or how he got it.

Now, like I said before, I'd been staying at House's place for a week, but the most he'd felt up to before that day was letting me hug him a couple of times. In fact, I wondered if he had only slept with me to keep me from making him talk about the fact that his girlfriend left him. When he and Stacy had a fight, she usually left, and went to her sister's for the night, or a weekend. Then House would call me up and I'd come over and help him calm down. The last time, I assumed things were the same as always, at least I did at first. I heard him screaming all the way outside, and when I stepped through the door, and found him lying on the ground.

"I feel," he told me, quietly, after I asked him what happened. "I might need you some-to give me help on getting me up again." It wasn't unusual to find him drunk, especially on nights like this, so I didn't even make a comment. I wasn't surprised when he grabbed my ass, while reaching for my hand, or hen he swallowed a fist full of pain pills after collapsing on the bed. "Stacy's gone," he sobbed.

"She'll be back, you know that already, Man. That's why you called me. I'm the guy who comes over so you can yell and scream and not worry about pissing off your pretty girlfriend." I took a deep breath and decided to change the subject. "You see the Sox's game last night?"

"She took all her stuff…not coming back. I screwed up, big time, Jimmy. I knew she was mad, but I kept pushing and pushing, and fighting. Didn't even call you. Though, what's her name might be mad if I called again."

"What's her name is always mad. Things at home suck. I'd much rather be her, especially if it means—how do you know she's gone for good? Stacy's not like that. You'll see. Give it a few days."

"I fell chasing after her, she didn't even help me up. See, told ya so. Told ya." I sat with House, wrapped my arm around his shoulder, rubbed his back when he cried, ran my fingers through his hair, and held him while he slept. For three days, we talked and cried, but I was still expecting Stacy to come back. On the fourth day, I got up long before he did and called the bitch.

"You left him on the floor? Dumping a guy you just crippled is bad enough but…what the hell is wrong with you? How could you just leave a guy who can't even walk just laying on the ground?"

"I didn't…I wouldn't have. I was already out the door when he started to scream at me. I figured it was just a ploy. I'm sorry—look, tell Greg I love him, but I just can't do this any more."

"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm gonna tell him. If you call back, I'll have the number changed, and if you try to write him a letter I'll find anything you send and forward it right back to you. Stay the Hell away from him."

"Sorry, but I can't—I think it would be better if we don't talk anymore," Stacy said, and hung up. I never told House about the phone call, but as I lay there staring at his sleeping body it was one of the many thoughts running through my head.

"The fuck you staring at?" he asked groggily. I leaned in and kissed his cheek, softly. "My—it's not going to get much better, you sure as hell better get used to the way that looks."

"So, am I going to have a chance to see your—leg again?" I asked, sitting up and starting to act like I was worried about that so he would tease me and I could sneak up on him with my question.

"Aww, poor Jimmy, isn't getting any at home, is he? I'm not—you don't expect me to feel sorry for you because of that, do you?" House laughed, and I tired to smile and look embarrassed, but I guess he wasn't as out of it as I originally thought. "It's an appendix scar," he lied, but the weird thing is I could tell right away what he was doing, which meant he was doing a really shitty job of it. I knew him well enough to be able to read the expression on his face. "Drop it," he said without speaking.

"I don't, is—it must have happened when you were a kid, based on the level of deterioration I'd say it's a lot older than the one you got when you had the appendectomy."

"Oh shut up, you're not me," House moaned, leaned in and kissed my forehead, left cheek, right cheek, nose, lips, mouth, and I knew it was a trick. He was trying to distract me, so I pushed him away even though I wanted to make out more than I wanted to see him cry, and I knew this was going to hurt him, a lot.

"You told me about your da—you told me about the other stuff. Was this one of the things your, I mean is—did you get it the same way you—I um, well I guess I'm not really sure how to phrase this…"

"When I was about seven we had this fireplace in our house, and out back we had a stump, and we had to—he had to chop all the wood himself, and I knew better than to play with the axe. I mean hell, he even smacked me on the ass with the thing a couple of times, but I kept playing with it."

"And he chopped into your shoulder for screwing around with an axe? I mean, yeah a kid shouldn't do that, they could get hurt, but how the hell does hurting somebody teach them not to—he it doesn't hurt does it?"

"I'm only going to tell you to shut up one more time, and then I'm not talking about this ever again, got it?" he asked, and I almost said yes, but nodded instead. "I screwed up. He said he was teaching me a lesson. It was a test, and I failed. He said I had to prove my bravery. He made me lay down on my back, stretched over the stump, holding a log on my stomach, straight up, and he was just supposed to pull his arm back. He wasn't going to bring it down on me, he said so, but I flinched and dropped the log, and he couldn't stop in time and…actually that's it."

"And he was so freaked out by the fact that h nearly cut his own kid in half that he had to stitch it up himself, rather than admit that he might have a problem?" I didn't want to yell, but I couldn't help myself. House looked like he wasn't sure if he should be more afraid of his father or me. "Sorry. I just—I don't know." Now I was crying, a little, and when I kissed his hair, the words came to me suddenly. "Your father had no right to do any of those things to you, but chopping up a seven-year-old kid, for acting like a seven-year-old. Would you mind if I took an axe to his shoulder the next time I run into the guy?" I suggested, and he shook his head.

"I know he—I know it's not my fault but, can you, I mean would you really do that? For me?" There were slow tears running down his cheeks and mine and when I nodded, he buried his face in my shirt. The two of us lay there for what seemed like a really long time, me just holding him, him just barely holding on. Amazingly things seemed to get a little bit better after that day, but I couldn't help but wonder if maybe I did push him too hard.