A/N: I wrote this especially for today!
No slash!
HAPPY INTERNATIONAL FRIENDSHIP DAY!
Providence
All his life, he had thought about God as someone who was beyond him, a spectator who was only worth talking to when life grew tragic. And even then – he wasn't sure if he was being listened to. He warred with himself, tempted to be cynical by the prayers that had gone unanswered for years (his lost brother and his best friend's misery and his marital status) and yet never shedding his boyish hope that as long as there's a tomorrow, there's a chance for change. He's questioned himself enough times to be deemed insecure, but he's found nothing.
When he shouts at House in the street, he thinks he's overcome his skepticism about God's love for man – until House looks at him and murmurs that God knows where to find him, eyes resigned and tone indicative of only one man-God interaction. All he can think about, in the seconds between House's words and the cell phone ring, is that night he spent on the couch in his own urine. He had left his hand in the water while watching the shadows move on the ceiling. He had thought then that God was never going to be someone he could take refuge in. He could approach the deity with some level of faith, need, and hope – but God was in another world as long Wilson lived. A spirit's arms were useless around a world's body.
He had thought, lying there and listening to the strange silence, that House was the only presence he could believe in that his eyes and ears would absorb. House was the only figure that would answer Wilson's disguised prayers with a voice, a look. Wilson had been a casual Jew all his adult life, but in the last twelve years, he had been a devout follower of Gregory House.
He had thought, looking into darkness, that this friendship was the only institution he had never neglected or failed. This friendship – twisted and sickly as it was – had become his religion. It was the primary reason why he still spoke to God at all, why he woke up on time every morning.
When House is shot down weeks later, Wilson finds himself confirming this conclusion. He sits in the hospital, head in his hands, and he tries to compose himself.
"You must've brought us together for a reason," he whispers. "Don't separate us now... I need more time."
And he arrives upon the greatest religious revelation of his life, heart stinging and mind sagging with exhaustion. He realizes that God brought House – miserable, drug-addicted, misanthropic House – into his life to be the physical presence that God never could be during Wilson's lifetime. He realizes that God brought him to House because God had known, years before the infarction, when Stacy and House were the happiest couple Wilson had ever seen, that she wouldn't stay forever. God had known about all the divorces, House's socially vacant future, and the ability of both men to stay with each other when no one else would. God had brought them together because they did need each other – but not in a pathological, vampire-esque way, as House had suggested of Wilson. They needed each other the way any average person might think romantic soul mates do – for completion. For something Wilson couldn't describe. He had always believed that the potential for such a union existed, but he had never thought to look for it in his friendships. He had been searching in women, in his wives. He had tried to treat each of his marriages as his life's divine match, and perhaps that had been a contributing factor to each divorce. He had been expecting something out of each marriage that had been there in the first place. It had been in House, all along.
"Oh," Wilson sighs, fingers digging into his hair. "You can't take him now. We haven't finished with each other."
And God won't take House this time; He'll leave Wilson to worry and oversee his friend's recovery. He'll give House a few precious months free of pain because of the ketamine, and when it wears off, He'll watch Wilson do what Wilson was designed to do – gracefully take abuse and use unrelenting love as a balm for House's soul. And God will give Wilson good days besides the bad, where House eats lunch with him and seems to forget his misery for half an hour. Wilson will never confess to House or anyone else that he thinks their friendship is the spiritual union of his lifetime – but when he next goes to temple, he'll finish his prayer with new words.
"And thank You – for House. Thank you. And forgive me for doubting Your love."