By: Oldach's Dream
Summary: House goes to group therapy. Kind of. Completely shrink free. Can be read as humor or angst. Or both. One-shot. No pairings, with a side helping of House/Wilson friendship.
Timeline: Set somewhere in late season two. There's only two vague references to 'Clueless' and 'Distractions'
A/N: I was in a funky mood.
Disclaimer: I tried to buy House and Wilson on E-bay. I'm waiting to see if I've been out-bid yet.
o0o0o
Labyrinth
People only see what they want to see. He'd decided this. Knew it was a fact. Kept it stored as a philosophy.
"You have a blind eye." The old man with the sour expression and the horrendous limp told the bartender handling the bottle of brown liquid.
"I got twenty-twenty vision." The other old man - with the beer belly and the scar on the side of his face - responded.
"You all have blind eyes." Gimpy went on, swirling the liquid in his glass, holding it up with one elbow propped on the bar counter, trying to look insightful, managing to look deranged.
"I bet." Bartender man snorted, a certain understanding seeping into his tone. "You want some more of this?" He offered the bottle sacrificially.
"Nah..." Blue eyes got unfocused, seeing a world no one else could. "You got somethin' stronger?"
"Maybe." Scar face set the glass object down. "I'm closin' in a few minutes. Wanna hang around?"
The question was moot, as the rounder man was already moving away, shooing the last of the lonely soles out of his establishment.
Still, the broken man cracked an answer, "I got nowhere else to be."
o0o0o
The apartment above the bar was currently housing a collection of miserable people. Four of them, to be exact. House may have been lost in a world all his own, but he could still manage basic math.
"Four." He decided to share. "There's four of us."
"Five." The bartender from earlier grunted, using his cigarette to point to a corner of the room. A small brown dog was curled up, sleeping peacefully. House snorted.
"Five, then." He amended.
The other two men were quiet. A young kid - twenties, maybe even late teens - standard disclaimer there. The other looked more familiar.
"You look like Jimmy." He shared his thoughts. "Same tie and everything." He took a long drag on what he was assuming was some super-boosted form of pot. "This is good."
"Purple haze." The bartender - Derrick - told him. "Only the best for nights like tonight."
"Who's Jimmy?" Kevin... House was pretty sure his name should be Kevin, asked. His words were slurred. Their own language, really. That was okay, though, because House had always been good with foreign languages.
"Jimmy's a guy who sees the world in shades of gray." He answered. "Gray matter. He lives in gray matter."
"Where do you live, then?" Derrick-the-deranged seemed interested in his philosophy.
"Everything's gray." House hit the rapidly fading joint, and paused, inhaling as much as he could.
The skinny kid with the crew cut who was nursing his seventh or eighth - maybe twelfth - beer bottle, started talking during House's lapse. "Nothing's ever set in stone." He declared, speaking that slurred language they all seemed to understand. "Everything's gray because black and white don't exist."
House finally exhaled, coughing a little, as he reached automatically for his magic little helper. "Everything's gray." He repeated to the tilting room. "Until you open your blind eye. Then it's just a whole lot of colors. Every life is a different color. Every circumstance is a different color. Every decision is a different color. Black, white, even gray - they get wiped out."
"Gimme one of them." Derrick-the-drunk held out a shaky hand. House squinted at him uncertainly.
"The pills." Faceless depressed teenager clarified at House's confusion. "Me too."
House couldn't reach any of the other men from where he was sitting - on a recliner by the one window in this dimly lit apartment's living room. Derrick was on the couch several feet across from him, the kid was sitting against the wall to his right and Jimmy's wannabe was resting his chin on the back of a kitchen chair.
Rectifying the situation, House tossed the pill bottle to Derrick-the-dick, who tossed it around their makeshift circle until it was his again. A decade had passed in the time it had taken each of them to pop off the cap and take what they wanted. Time was not a fixed concept here.
"I'm gonna be late for work." House confided, placing the considerably less full container back in his jacket pocket.
"It's three...forty...something in the morning." Kevin-going-on-Jimmy told him, squinting at his wristwatch and swallowing a Vic with a swig of beer.
Beer. House had forgotten that he too had a bottle of beer next to him. He reached for it and soon the contents were sliding down his throat. He had no memory of lifting the bottle of choosing to swallow.
Blind decisions. Blackout moments.
"You work morgue shift?" The kid asked, looking grateful for the narcotic.
"Not for seventeen years." House remembered the morgue. Remembered working there during his residency. He'd pissed a lot of people off. Autopsy assignments were what full-grown doctors did to the new kids they didn't like. Especially when the new kid was smarter than they were.
"Then where you work?" Kevin asked. House was having a hard time keeping up.
"Why?"
"You just said you were gonna be late." Derrick snapped.
"You sound like my father." House thought. Then the words came out audibly. Funny, he mused; he hadn't meant to say them.
"What's wrong with your father?" Kevin asked. But Kevin wasn't looking at House.
Oh. House smirked to himself, to his now dead joint sitting in an ashtray beside him. The kid had said that. The kid had read his mind.
Cool.
"Nothin'." Kid shook his head.
Liar. House knew.
"Dude. What the hell was that?" This time someone was talking to him. Not for him.
He wasn't completely sure which of the other three guys had posed the question, but he knew it was his question to answer. He decided to answer the dog. The dog had probably asked it anyway.
"Vicodin." House responded automatically. "For the leg."
"Which leg?"
"My leg."
"Your leg?"
"The right one."
"Your leg's right?"
"One is."
"Is the other one wrong?"
The deepest voice of the choir decided to interrupt them at this point. House wasn't sure how the dog could mock so many tones. Especially while he was drooling so impressively over there.
"You fuck heads are giving me a migraine."
"Take some LSD." House spoke to a human this time. The guy with the scar. "Makes your head float away."
"I know that." Derrick grumbled, opening up a new bottle of beer that House couldn't recall him getting up or going anywhere to get. He was upset until he realized that he too had a cold bottleneck in his fist. "I don't have any."
"Have any what?" The fake Jimmy's tie was orange. Dark orange.
"LSD." Derrick-the-dude-who-echoed-the-worst-father's-of-the-world-voices snapped. "Man, you're acting stupid."
"I am stupid." Jimmy would never say that. This was Kevin. "I think gimpy has to go to work."
"Don't insult the dude who just gave you drugs. Dude." House bit back. He could feel ground-up pill residue between his teeth. He swished some alcohol between them.
"You can't go to work." Derrick-the-drug-supplier looked at him firmly. His eyes were firm. Well, one of them was, anyway. The other, of course, was blind. Yet they were both deep, dark brown. "You'd fall over. Kill your other leg."
"My leg's not dead." House defended.
"I think it is." The kid was smiling. Or smirking. Or cringing. What was the difference, really?
"It is." House decided to not fight that. "Stacy killed it."
"Who's Stacy?" Kevin inquired, looking around as if she might appear from behind one of the broken or molding pieces of furniture around them.
"The one who killed his leg." The kid answered for him. "Duh."
"Stacy's just a color." House declared. He looked down at his hand. Where'd the rest of his beer go?
"Again with the colors." Derrick-the-damned snapped. "Are you sure you don't have LSD?"
"Everything in the world is a different color. We don't have enough names for all the colors there really are. Crayola's got the right idea though. Apple-pie Peach. Deep ocean Blue. Only we need more. Blood in your vomit Red. Kidneys shutting down Brown. Your fingers just changed colors because I proved you're trying to kill your husband Purple." House's rant was accepted, digested and contemplated by his three new buddies.
The kid was the first to respond. "Shit..." he dragged out. "I'm freaking starving."
House grinned. He was Cuddy's breasts Perky. He was Wilson just lied to his wife and doesn't have to crash on House's couch Relieved.
He was trashed out of his forever contemplating, never resting, hard-wired to have opinions about everything under the sun, mind.
He was relaxed.
"Me too." He agreed. "I wanna taco."
Derrick and Kevin got up and stumbled their way into the kitchen. Things clattered and crashed for some time. House got bored and looked down to where the kid was still sitting on the floor.
"No one ever listens to me." House told him. "No one bothers me until they need me. It's just another color."
"You know," the kid looked up at him, squaring his gaze over the knees that were drawn up to his chest and the arms that were wrapped around them. "If you mix too many colors together, everything just turns out black."
The depths of human nature Black.
"Yeah," House leaned back against his chair, head falling onto a duck-taped patch. "I know."
o0o0o
Two days later and it was Monday again. House had no real recollection of anything after Friday night. Except that Friday night had segued into Saturday morning and eventually he'd woken up in his bed at home. Alone.
His bike had been parked outside when he'd checked later that afternoon. He didn't bother wracking his brain cells for the memory of riding, or getting ridden, home. He did eventually check for dents, blood and human hair, though.
He'd found none, and that was good enough for him.
"House!" He heard his name bellowed as soon as he walked through the doors of the hospital.
The revolving door that is life. These are the days of our lives.
"Wilson." He responded when the younger man caught up to him, instinctively falling into step next to him as they made their way across the hall and onto the elevator. It was a scene so well established that it no longer deserved recognition.
"Hey. I tried to call you this weekend. Where were you?" He started faux-casually enough.
I met your twin. Well, your drunken, doped-up, twin.
"Nowhere, really." He shrugged, securing his bag on his shoulder with one practiced move.
"Sure." No way was Wilson buying that. "I tried your cell too. It die again?"
Nope. Just shoved it under a couch cushion when it wouldn't shut up.
"Switched it to silent." He answered aloud. "Why? I miss something important?"
Now it was Jimmy's turn to shift uncomfortably. "Something came up." Brown eyes wouldn't meet blue. "I might have to move in with you again."
House shrugged.
No one bothers me until they need me. It's just another color.
"Sure. Whatever. As long as you bring your ability to cook."
"It's kind of built in." Wilson snarked, but in a happy way.
"Then we're good to go." House thought of tacos. He'd have to put that on the list of things he wanted Jimmy to make for him. He'd bet anything that Jimmy could make one mean taco.
"Good," Wilson smiled his goofy, genuinely at ease with the world, happy smile. They were stopped outside House's office by now. "Thanks."
"Don't mention it." Really, please don't.
Yet Wilson still didn't move.
"That was your cue to walk away." House reminded him. Just incase he'd forgotten his role.
"Where really were you this weekend?" There was a subtle quality to his tone. It wasn't an outright demand. More like a hidden promise. Talk to me about it now, or I'll bug you as much as I can. And you just agreed to let me sleep on your couch for an undetermined amount of time.
Jimmy's glowing angel halo Gold.
"I... Ah..." Oh, what the hell? "I went to group therapy."
Wilson was immediately torn between disbelief, surprise and suspicion. "Here?"
"No." House shook his head. "This other place someone recommended. Small group. Lasted a while."
Push it, Jimmy. C'mon. You know you wanna push it.
"Oh." Raised eyebrows, an attempted neutral expression, still hiding the disbelief, the uncertainity. "Did it help any?" He was playing it cool so as not to scare his best friend away from this elusive and - up until just then - avoided subject.
"A little." He consented. Not bothering to wonder if Jimmy really believed him at all.
"Okay..." His right hand clenched at his side, physically resisting the urge to clasp the back of his neck. "You gonna go back?"
Jimmy Wilson's bright and shining hope White
Greg House's take on life Black.
Black overrides white. Taints it. Turns it black. Even a drop of black in an all white pool shades everything. Infects it all for life.
Only white can fight back. Make some of the colors alive again, when they get tossed together and turn ugly. And sometimes, enough white can lighten even the darkest depths of this metaphor.
Greg House smiled back at his friend. "No." He decided. "I don't think so."
Fin.