Title: There's Nothing Here to Run From
Author: Shelli
Pairing: House/Wilson
Rating: PG
Summary: Wilson is tired and House is tiring, taking up space on his sofa while he takes his life out of boxes and stacks them in this new, lifeless apartment. Memories of his wives and his failures run circles in his mind and he just needs something. But the figure on his couch is silent and so he is too.
Disclaimer: I REGRET NOTHING. ahem I own nothing.
There's Nothing Here to Run From
There's nothing here to run from
And, yeah, everybody here's got somebody to lean on
Don't Panic – Coldplay
"Did you ever think when I asked you to help me move that I'd want you to…I don't know…help me move?"
House is draped over a sofa with boxes piled around him and his cane stretched out beside him, his hands buried in a box of CDs and records. Wilson has a fine trace of sweat across his forehead and a coating of red on his cheeks, and he drops a box to the floor with a thud. House doesn't look up, drops a CD and picks up another.
"I am helping. I'm improving your music taste."
Wilson drops a sigh and leaves the room. There are four more boxes in the car; the moving van left a few hours earlier after depositing what furniture Julie thought he ought to have—all relics from his previous marriages—and he wonders if House has become a new sort of cushion to lie upon his sofa and offer cantankerous decoration for the room, like a disgruntled parrot that bites more than it talks.
It's when Wilson collapses onto the couch beside House with a beer that he turns to him, nose wrinkled, holding a CD.
"The Cure?"
He shrugs, tired, raises the beer to his lips. House snatches it from his hand and Wilson glares, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "Greg." He lets it come out a warning, but House takes a swig and hands it back, nearly letting some of it spill onto the couch. He sighs again, tilts his head back. Another few hours ahead of him, unpacking his life again, and he suddenly wants to be alone but the idea of silence dropping in to fill the gap terrifies him. And he finds himself reaching for the remote to flip it onto some news channel because suddenly the quiet reminds him too much of the night he'll have later—without even a cold goodnight, without the dying sounds of a fight in his ears—and maybe, maybe this is worse.
And House is shifting beside him, objects in a box sliding over each other with a gentle sound, going through a music collection he has to be familiar with by now. And he watches for a few seconds, out of the tiredness as the fatigue of the day and the divorce settles into his bones. Silent, engrossed, brow furrowed. It's nearly laughable, House so focused on this trivial thing. He bites his lip, takes a sip of beer, wonders if he's losing his mind when the hysterical urge to laugh swells into him.
He forces himself to his feet, ignoring the fire in his back, stooping over a box and carrying it into the kitchen. He lets the clatter and clang of pots settle him as he puts them away, shutting his eyes tightly, wetting down a dishtowel and dragging it across his face and over his neck. Sleep, he just needs some sleep. Hasn't had a good night of it in a while. His mind burns with unspoken words and he knows he doesn't need sleep, but he won't let himself look back out to find House rifling through his books, uncaring and bitter. Doesn't let his mind replay the moment when he asked for a friend and House turned away from him.
What're years of friendship to him anyway?
But these are dangerous thoughts and he drops a pan onto the counter, scaring them away with the noise, shoving the cookware into the cabinets. Julie didn't want any of this; he smirks as he puts them away, finding some thread of humor in there, something along the lines of who had an affair and who got left with the kitchen utensils. It's dark and bitter but he runs with it, letting the smile play on his lips. A smile is a smile and he isn't being picky.
He's sure by now House has finished his original drink, so he grabs another one and goes on in silence, ignoring the man on his couch, wondering if he'd be better off without the reminder of his loneliness taking up residence in his apartment. He compares House to Julie as he snatches the music box away from him, organizing the CDs now by the stereo in the corner with the books that will come next—once House is done looking through them. She'd sit and ignore and not care about him like this, toward the end, when she started having an affair. He guessed it wasn't anything different from how he was; he wondered if these looks he's giving House now were anything like the looks she gave him in the beginning.
He's tired and this train of thought that his mind is racing around a curving track is a product of that. He swallows hard, shutting his eyes tightly and praying for some sort of alcohol-induced buzz to come in his head. He doesn't want to think right now, is tired of thinking, has had too much of it. He drags a hand over his eyes, leans against the bookshelf he built earlier—as House sat on a collection of boxes and flipped through his medical journals. Just what the hell did he ask House over here for?
But he doesn't say anything. He brushes past him, grabbing a box from the floor and carrying it into the bedroom. The walls are bare and wide and white and for a second he feels swallowed and shattered and is this where his life is going to take him? Three wives and no kids and here he is, beer on his breath in an apartment, unpacking his things—things that have spent so little time between being repacked and shuffled to another place—with a man he isn't even sure can really be counted as a friend parking his ass on his sofa.
He's tired. He admits it to himself as he falls onto his bed—he still needs to put the covers on, and his pillows are in some box out there in the living room—and throws an arm over his face. He blocks out sound and sight and smell and tries to apply the same idea to his mind. He aches and he just wants it to stop. A light rain falls haphazardly against the window he still needs to buy curtains for. The idea of a shower creeps into his mind but he's settling into the bed now—hard and uncomfortable; the mattress from the guest room, from his second marriage—and he reminds himself to buy a mattress topper or something tomorrow.
Something soft lands hard on his chest and he jumps, arm flying off his face as he sits straight up, winces, and falls back, pain shooting through his overexerted body. House looms in the door, blocking the light from the living room, leaning against the frame casually as if he has every right to stand there, complacent and with his arms crossed as he studies Wilson with his withdrawn eyes, like they know something more than Wilson knows, and he finds himself wanting to throw something harder than a pillow at him.
Irritated, he puts it behind his head and lays his arm back over his eyes. How is it he knows just when to come bother him—just when he doesn't want to be bothered? How is it he can just sit there and go through the TV Guide instead of talking to him about his life that's going to pieces before him? And how can he still let himself depend and hope and wish that he i would /i turn and say that it'll be alright, he'll get through it, and maybe next time things will go better? He wonders who he hates more in this situation as he feels the bed depress beside his hip.
"You can't always get what you want."
He sighs heavy in his chest, squeezes his eyes behind his arm. "Is that the only advice you ever have to give?"
His hand is curling in the fabric of his pants and he tries to quiet the roar in his head. He wants another sip of beer, maybe something stronger, because he wants to drown himself in something physical. He's tired of the metaphoric.
"Sometimes." He stops and Wilson waits, rain pattering along the wood of his new apartment, empty and echoing with the reminder of his latest failure. "You get what you need." There's a weight in his voice, gravelly and thick and low and he wonders if he's cracked into another beer.
He snorts, wonders what the hell that's supposed to mean. He needs to be alone? He needs to feel as if he's being ripped apart because this shell of a life he's set up is shattered and scattered to the four winds? He needs to wonder why the hell he just can't settle down and let himself love someone and hold them and keep them without his eyes wandering and his mind wanting something better?
He doesn't say as much. He knows it wouldn't do any good. House would just get up and walk away, run away from this too personal narrative to flee into his safe bubble, away from pain and the intricacies of the daily life of other humans. He'd follow if he could trust himself not to come running back to the warmth of touch and the breath against his neck and the sound of another person beside him in bed.
He wonders just what the hell this is, anyway, and something shifts beside him and warmth is pressing into his body. And just as he starts to think that this friendship is what's ruining his life—what's left; for the moment—he feels something soft and persistent pressing against his lips, trapping his arm between them, a hand sliding up his side. His eyelashes brush against his sleeve and House leans heavily against him.
But then he's up and gone, and he disappears into the other room. Wilson lets his arm fall to his side and stares at the door. His thoughts have crashed into each other, lying in broken fragments in his mind. Cardboard is ripped and boxes are shoved and he's sure some of his things have been spilled onto the floor, but House returns with a blanket and another pillow and he throws the pillow onto the bed, sits down onto it, takes his shoes off. The light is out in the living room now and the room is silvery dark. Wilson watches his shape in the dark, wondering, unmoving.
He regains thought when House is lying back on his bed, a bottle of Vicodin propped on the nightstand, and he's raising his eyebrows at Wilson and patting the bed beside him. Mechanically, Wilson repositions himself farther up on the bed, places his pillow beside House, kicks his tennis shoes off. Once he lies down, House throws the blanket over the both of him and turns on his side, facing the wall.
"Greg?" he breathes, heart racing now and he watches House shift, slide an arm under the pillow.
"Go to sleep, Jimmy."
Wilson blinks at the back of House's head, mind sluggishly starting up again, running with questions, endless and tiring as they work their way into his previous troubles. The echo of the taste of House dances on his lips and he takes a breath, starts to talk.
"Fuck, this bed is hard." The grunt is low and tired; sleep is already dragging itself over House. He turns, wincing, yawning, eyes clamped shut. His hand falls on Wilson's side, possessive, protective. Not comforting, not warming, but the presence of it itches its way into Wilson's mind and he lets himself think it is for now. This is a lie.
"Greg…"
House grimaces and squeezes his eyes, lets his hand fall from Wilson's side. "Don't."
Wilson takes a breath and wonders if this is the glue that can rebuild his life again, if only for a little while until it slips from his grasp and onto the floor to be shattered again, the pieces to be assembled in boxes and moved to another apartment. He wonders what he'll take out of this relationship when it crumbles, if any of it will be packed away into a box or if it'll all be crushed into pieces too fine to salvage.
He takes a breath.
And takes a leap.
"Goodnight, Greg."
And he lets it drop.
Twenty minutes later it's House with his eyes open and on Wilson as he lies there, quiet and unsure and asleep in the dark. And it's House who, claiming what's been his for too long but out of his grasp, slides his arm along Wilson's side. This is a lie. But he needs it. He wonders if this is the glue that can hold his life together for a little while, fragile as it balances on the end of a cane. He closes his eyes. He takes a breath before he presses his lips against Wilson's.
He lets it out.
"Goodnight, Jimmy."