"Addict: A Workweek"
by Princess of Pain
Monday, as always, is TiVo night. This knowledge surprised his former roommate, who had quite naturally assumed (what with his habit of watching television incessantly at work) that every night was TiVo night. But the fact was that he had his very own schedule, as he had his own set of personal rules in his life... and woe betide the beeper, cell-phone, or doctor who might interrupt it.
He starts the long evening by poking through the fridge, checking to see if his apartment's former co-resident had left behind any of his cooking. He already knows that James, being as obsessed with cleanliness as he himself is obsessed with unpredictability, cleared out the fridge of any leftovers. He also knows this because this is the third day in a row that he's checked for any remnants of actual home-cooking. But the looking is becoming habit, and though he finds nothing, there's an odd sort of comfort in the ritual.
Left once more to survive his own cooking skills.
He microwaves a box of something-or-other, and when it's hot, he kicks back on the couch and starts to flip through his TiVo library. There are still episodes of Blackadder that he hasn't gone through yet. He'd actually started watching that when his ex-roommate had pointed out that one of the actors could have been his twin. He flips past them all, and settles down with his (is this supposed to be meatloaf, or a segmented wiener-dog?) dinner and a lacrosse match he's already watched.
Later, when the match is over, he tries to flip it to something else--maybe some of the SpongeBob episodes, find one he hasn't seen--but his fingers slip, and he re-selects the same lacrosse match. What the hell, he thinks, and falls asleep on the couch twenty minutes later, a move which both he and his back come to regret.
-----
The only day in the clinic when House is destined not to be seen playing his NDS (or passing said NDS to another patient) is on Tuesday, because that's the night set aside for nothing but. And when he has been bringing it around, it hasn't been with his copy of Prince of Persia. That game is his. No one else may play it. When James was still there, he had moved the cartridge when he was dusting off the piano. He'd been forced to hold his (former) roommate's hair-dryer hostage until the other had been able to find it.
Now, though, he can't find it himself. He knows he left it on the piano, next to the old coaster that holds his usual night-cap, but it's not there now. He wanders, almost purposeless, through his apartment, absently lifting things up and setting them down again without more than a cursory glance beneath them. He's already realized what used to be next to both the coaster and the cartridge: Wilson's personal calendar. Classy, leather-bound, and not very different in color from the Prince of Persia's cartridge-case. He'd picked it up on accident. Well, he'd like to think that his old roommate had done it on purpose -- pulled a prank to drive him absolutely crazy Tuesday night -- but Wilson was never cruel on purpose, and that was the problem.
Huhn. That went to a weird place.
He takes an extra Vicodin for good luck, and goes to be early.
-----
Wednesday is piano night. He orders from Chef Chu's, and while he's waiting for his lo mein to arrive, he turns on the television and watches whatever catches his eye. To the untrained eye, especially in its starting stages, Wednesday can look suspiciously like Monday. However, he is watching one of those shows that appears to be one long montage of accidents and explosions. This is clearly not lacrosse, which has plenty of accidents, but no explosions. Anyone with an eye can tell that it is Wednesday.
When the lo mein arrives, he watches and eats for a few minutes. A rather garish car-accident at a race track sends one of the cars sailing into the stands. He tries to imagine the sort of depraved creature who tunes in to programs like this, and smiles briefly when his mind summons up a picture of himself.
Then, the box is empty. He cracks open the fortune cookie and drops the empty halves into the box. He's never liked them--too sugary. Typically, his old roommate had been the one to vacuum up that kind of crap.
He looks over the fortune. "In bed," he adds aloud, and cracks a grin as he drops it and hobbles over to the piano.
He stops thinking of this Wednesday, for a moment, and ponders the Wednesday before--only about a hundred and seventy hours ago, really. They'd ordered out--him with his lo mein, and his former roommate with his mushu beef and pancakes. They'd eaten, talked about nothing. The other doctor had rolled his eyes with long-suffering good humor when he'd dutifully tacked "in bed" to James's, "You will have great success at work; keep at it." Or had that been embarrassed guilt? Sometimes, he thinks he knows. Mostly, he just goes about his business.
He trails his fingertips over the piano keys for a moment, producing a soft whisper of accidental notes. The last time that any notes had rung forth, there had been two sets of ears to catch them. He decides that his hands feel too stiff to play correctly, and he sits back down before the television.
-----
Thursday is normally bar night.
Before James had moved in, Thursday hadn't exactly been "bar night". It had been something closer to "drink high-tension booze while listening to his blues collection night". He never drunk himself to oblivion, not on a weeknight, but it was always fun to show up Friday morning looking like he hadn't slept in three days (and, on one spectacular occasion, still smelling of Scotch). That hadn't lasted long after his then-roommate's arrival.
The first Thursday found them both drinking until three, having a deep and earnest philosophical discussion about whether or not a bionic SuperWoman who was a conglomerate of all of Wilson's wives and lovers would be capable of ruling the entire universe, or just New Jersey. That had not gone over well the next day, when his friend had been unable to complete his usual morning routine. His hair had not been parted straight, his shoes were scuffed, he accidentally wore the same tie as the day before, and he sported a five o'clock shadow to rival House's normal scruff.
This, his overly-neat friend had decided, would not do.
Next Thursday, when he'd broken out the vinyls and bottles, James had quietly suggested that they attend a bar. The idea of sitting in a room that smelled like peanuts and beer-farts while attempting to drink watered-down swill had not appealed to him, and he was more than ready to inform his ex-roommate of this, until James stunned him with some kind of weird alien ray. At least, that was how it had seemed to his objective mind, for in a matter of minutes, he found himself in a disturbingly classy, Cheers-esque watering-hole. Just the sort of place that only James would want to be caught dead drinking in.
It wasn't that he loved the place, or anything... but, damn it, his fellow doctor had been right. It was a good bar. The juke had never heard of a record that wasn't jazz, the bartender never opened his mouth or tried any of that fake bar-chatter, and Wilson and he turned the place into a bloodbath when a quiz was going on. Best of all, in his friend's eyes, was that they quickly developed the habit of getting home before the p.m. shifted into the a.m., which gave him plenty of time to do all that girly stuff he needed to do in the mornings.
Thursday is bar night. And he's sitting on his couch, flipping past the Blackadder again, wondering if he should give up and drop by the bar anyhow. He knows that if James is there, he won't be with his new, super-special patient. In addition to the fact that said patient is probably still frail as glass, and not up to the rigors of Quiz Night, his friend does not believe in getting drunk around his lovers. Drunkenness is only for one-night-stands. And House.
He does not have time to redirect that train of thought to safer tracks. Luckily, he doesn't have to. His beeper sounds. A few seconds later, his cell phone rings. On any other night, he'd blow both of them off. But it's Thursday, so he picks up, assents, heads off to the hospital. When he actually limps through the doors to the patient's room, Cameron looks like she might well die of shock.
Later, when it's far too late for bar-hopping and he's ready to leave, she asks him what could possess him to work so late. He grins and tells her that he'll get Cuddy to kick it off his clinic hours on Friday.
-----
Friday is, or so it seems, 'be an unforgivably stupid bastard' night.
He argues in favor of cutting and running early. Cuddy, who is just as surprised at House's willingness to put in extra hours as Cameron, actually agrees without much of a fight. He spends his few hours in the clinic avoiding anything resembling work. He's out and on his own by three in the afternoon. On any other Friday, he'd have been so bowled over by his lucky streak that he'd wonder if he was going to be stuck by lighting (or a car -- when it came to calamity, he knew the odds of something spectacular just weren't that great, but one could hope).
Of course, this is not another Friday. It's an extra three hours to ponder... well...
He buys lunch at a deli he's never been to before. He picks at it for a minute, then plants one of his own hairs in his sandwich, so that he can demand a refund. He thinks of seeing a movie; he guns his 'cycle and heads home. He looks at his bookshelves. Nothing there calls to him. He dry-swallows a Vicodin, tilts his head to the ceiling, and thinks about the piano he doesn't feel like playing.
He wanders for a few minutes before happening upon his NDS.
At four, he stands and gives his legs a stretch.
At five, he has a piss. While in the bathroom, he steps on something hard beneath the rug. He pulls it out -- it's that little cuticle-cutter his old roommate used. He drops it in the trash.
At six, the victory music plays forth, and he shuts off the NDS. Cameron might be off work now. He could give her a call. Not that she was exactly going to comprehend his situation. He barely got it himself. He goes to the kitchen, microwaves a box of shit-on-a-shingle, and sits down before the television.
At eight, he turns it off. He has relentlessly flipped channels and has found nothing of interest. He has lingered on no station for longer than five minutes. He dwells on the idea of helping another pretty co-ed pay for her education, one empty hour at a time.
Now it's eleven-thirty, and he can feel the stagnation paradoxically creeping through his brain. Friday is the worst, because Friday has always been no day in particular. A man like him liked routines, but he also liked to break them. The workweek could not be disturbed, but his weekends had always been his, damn it, and he was free to do whatever the hell he wanted. That had been before James had moved in, though, and the weekdays and weeknights and weekends had started to mutate from "Dr. Gregory House's time he was graciously donating to Wilson", to "House and Wilson's free time". It was disgusting, and all the more so because it had been so damned involuntary. Now it's his time again, his life, and James had only been here for a few weeks, and he has already forgotten was Friday night was supposed to be, all on its own. He can't have drunk, or played the piano, or listened to music, or toyed with his games, or stared at the TV--those were all in other places.
God damn it, he's lived alone for years. He should know how to cope with... this. He should try the TV one more time. Or buy a hooker. Maybe two. Or throw a hard drunk. Yeah, and toss in a few handfuls of Vicodin, while he's at it. He can pack them in martini olives. Or grind them up and cook them in a spoon.
The house phone rings. He doesn't move from the couch. Inspecting the ceiling in the silent and shadowed apartment is clearly more important than the telephone.
The machine gets it. He does not have a personal greeting recorded. A robotic voice tells the caller to leave his or her message after the tone.
"... Hey."
No It's James. No Greg tacked on after the hey. No hi, hello, how you doin'. Nothing pleasant and nothing fake. Usually--not always, but usually--Wilson is the only man on Earth who didn't try to spin things around. At least, not with House. And no one else matters.
"I know you're there. And you're not going to pick up. To be honest, I wouldn't want to talk to me either." He clears his throat. "I know it's late. But I, ah, wanted to remind you. Don't forget to do your laundry. I know you're not an idiot, but you seemed to get used to having me in your laundry room on Friday nights. And I'm pretty sure those socks I didn't get to before are still there. Are they declaring themselves their own country yet?"
An attempt at a laugh. House does not laugh with him.
"Listen."
He listens. He can hear the micro-filament of tape whirring in the answering machine. He can hear the hum of electricity radiating from the television. He can hear the self-destruction in the way that James is breathing. In that silence, there is everything.
"... never mind. Get some sleep, for God's sake. I suppose I'll see you on Monday."
Click. No "take care", no "goodbye", no "I was at the bar on Thursday", no "I still have your game", no "I (insert meaningless analgesic of a word here) you". Just click. No pretenses. And no words needed, really, because everybody lies, and words are little more than lies in utero. Just click. And that is fine. Because he needs nothing else. Everyone knows that.
He looks down at his hand. He is holding his bottle of Vicodin. He doesn't remember having taken it out of his pocket in the first place.
No one knows anything. They're all jackasses. Because there are some things he still needs, whether he likes it or not.
He goes to the answering machine. He replays the message twice. His index finger taps incessantly on the button marked "delete", and once, he actually begins to depress it. As it sinks down, he thinks about all the other messages he's deleted on this machine, the real-estate agents and their "Someone else has a better offer"s, and about how James must have known after a time what he was doing. The other doctor was a fool about many things, but he had to have known. Had to.
He shrugs at the empty room, and his intention shifts along with the careless motion. He tells the machine to save it.
He goes to his laundry room, looks around, and sets about the task of not turning all his socks and underwear pink.
-end-
