Disclaimer: Happily, I had no hand in the House season finale; blame David Shore & Co. Song lyrics in the title and summary are from "Anna Begins" by Counting Crows.
Thirteen gives up at the end of the third week, takes Wilson aside and tells him that she isn't going to drive him around to monitor the darkest dives of Princeton anymore. Wilson rubs his hand over his face and thinks about this. "All right," he says finally. "Thanks for all of your help."
Her face takes on that maddeningly blank look she gets when she's not thinking about something and then smoothes itself over into an expression of sympathy. "Hey," she says, and touches his shoulder. "House will be found when he wants to be found."
"Sure," he agrees, already turning to go.
"Wilson, wait. Listen. He hasn't been picked up by the police, he's not in any of the local hospitals, and he hasn't been home." He doesn't need to ask her how she knows this. "He's not here. He's… I don't know, off somewhere, getting his head together. He'll come back when he's ready."
"Sure," Wilson says again, and tries not to flinch away when she steps forward and hugs him. Remy is one of the most beautiful women he's ever met, but right now all he can see in her is his own failure. He refuses her offer of a ride home and waits for a bus instead.
He still has House's key, of course. When he lets himself in, Wilson senses at once what she must have meant. There's a stale, sterile quality to the air, and everything is still slightly askew from when the police had searched the place. Wilson walks around for a while, telling himself that he's just straightening up, but he knows that he's looking for some sign, something that others might have overlooked. But there are no obvious clues, and nothing seems to be missing – no overnight bag, not toiletries, nothing but the clothes on House's back and the cane he was carrying.
The chair is still by the window where House left it. Wilson goes and sits in it for just a few seconds before falling asleep. When he opens his eyes, House is standing in front of him looking pale and haggard, with dark shadows under his eyes. Wilson can smell the stench of infection even before he sees the pus and blood seeping through the dirty bandages around House's thigh. "Wilson," House intones, and reaches out to wrench his wrist.
He wakes up, gasping, and finds himself clutching his cast so hard it hurts. His hands are shaking. He has trouble letting himself back out of the apartment.
He manages to stay away for almost a week. He can't sleep in the condo, he can't sleep on the couch in his office, and he thinks that he might be going crazy. He sees House everywhere – in a certain shade of blue on a stranger's shirt, in a dingy Dodge cutting around a corner, in the bottles of liquor he deliberately locks away. He's caught himself snapping at his patients. Cuddy has already asked him once if he needs to take a leave of absence.
When he goes back, he brings his toiletries case and a change of clothes. He doesn't make a conscious decision to stay the night, but he wants to be prepared.
It turns out to be a good idea because his accumulated exhaustion hits him almost the moment he crosses the threshold. He had planned to order some takeout and watch TV on the slippery leather sofa, but he can barely keep his eyes open.
He's already in the hall closet rummaging for a set of sheets and spare pillows when he realizes that this is silly. House isn't here, and he has a perfectly good bed just down the hall.
Once in the bedroom, Wilson nearly changes his mind. The bed has a size and solidity to it that make it a little intimidating, especially in its current, achingly empty, state. There's a long, lean hollow in the mattress on the left side of the mattress where the fitted sheet has stretched beneath the weight of House's body. After a moment's hesitation, Wilson crosses to the opposite side of the bed and seats himself gingerly on the edge of the mattress.
The pillowcase covers are none too fresh; the top one especially is a little oily and smells strongly of House's shampoo. Wilson thinks about changing them for about half a second before he finds himself climbing into bed and curling himself around one. He falls asleep inhaling House's scent and dreams, for some reason, of a vast, isolated beach with a trail of footprints along the water's edge disappearing under the incoming tide. When he opens his eyes in the morning, he can still taste the salt spray at the corners of his mouth.
After that, Wilson moves into House's apartment. He doesn't call it that, he doesn't have his mail forwarded or bring any furniture over, but he packs a suitcase full of work clothes and several pairs of shoes, and he spends every night in House's bed. At some point he stops being able to smell any last trace of House on the sheets, at which point he strips the bed and launders everything, but he keeps sleeping there, and clasping the top pillow to his chest at night is still strangely comforting.
He doesn't stop searching. Night after night, he rides the buses around town, checking bars he knows damned well he shouldn't be in. No one gives him any trouble, though. Maybe they can tell that he's a walking dead man and therefore dangerous. He doesn't linger long in any one place, either, never even lets himself have a drink, although sometimes he'll slap down a couple of bills if the bartender is particularly patient with his questions. Most of them recognize him now. He's developing a reputation.
One afternoon Chase bumps into him in the elevator and asks him in a friendly way if he'd like to get a drink sometime – he knows this woman, a friend of a friend, who- Wilson says no thanks, firmly and, he hopes, politely. In fact, he hasn't dated anyone since House left. He hasn't even so much as jerked off. He thinks that maybe this should worry him a little, but he can't bring himself to care.
The mail keeps coming. Wilson intercepts it, sorts it into piles, and recycles the junk mail. A month of polite reminders regarding the overdue bills is followed by a month of much less polite ones, and Wilson finally breaks down and pays them. He encloses a series of notes explaining that the homeowner is very ill, and to his relief, his own checks are accepted without argument.
He doesn't consciously question why he's chosen to do this, but he knows that he's still operating under some vague sense that House is still alive, and that when he does come home, he'll expect everything to be here, just as he left it.
One day Wilson comes across a postcard with a picture of a beach, a stunning crescent cove lined with palm trees and curving around ridiculously clear water. He figures that it's from Crandall and almost sets it aside, but then on a sudden impulse flips it over. Seeing that it's addressed to James Wilson makes him go hot, then cold. There is no message, just his name and House's address and a smudged postmark over a brightly colored stamp. But he knows the handwriting like he would know a tall silhouette at the end of a hallway or a melancholy melody on the baby grand under his friend's agile fingers.
House is alive.
And if he were here right now, Wilson wouldn't hesitate to strangle him.
That night he finally allows himself to get drunk, really really drunk, because House isn't collapsed in a back alley someplace waiting to be rescued, and because Thirteen was right even though he's the one who has known House half a lifetime, and because that selfish bastard definitely doesn't deserve Wilson's vigilant sobriety. He does it at home, quietly, and he wakes up in the morning on the bathroom floor with his cheek stuck to the sticky rim of the toilet bowl, and he tells himself sternly even as he heaves and spits that he's done with waiting.
Two weeks later he's in his office when the door opens, and it's House, looking tanned and angular and infuriatingly smug. Wilson meets his eyes, and then suddenly a heavy glass paperweight is smashing into the wall beside House's head, and that can only be because he has thrown it. And House's expression changes, although Wilson can't tell to what because he clearly doesn't know this man, doesn't know one fucking thing about him, and then he's crossing over to the desk and Wilson is rising, maybe to slug him, maybe to run right out of the room, except that now House is folding him in his arms and squeezing hard enough to crush the breath out of him, and surely that must be where the gasping and sobbing sounds are coming from.