Title: Head over Heels
Author:pgrabia
Genre: Hurt/comfort, sick!Wilson
Pairing(s): House/Wilson pre-slash
A/N: Written for the Ordinary Things Challenge for the Camp Sick!Wilson at Sick!Wilson community on LJ. What happens to Wilson ahead is based on what happened to me in real life. I was going to write a drabble, but I think that I'm biologically unable to do so! I didn't proofread but I didn't find a beta because I was in a hurry to post this before the deadline! So if you find mistakes (and it's inevitable that you will) please forgive me. Also, if anyone is willing to be a beta for me, please let me know!
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for all of S. 6 up to and including episode 6:22 "Help Me!"
Word Count: 5187
Rating: PG-13 for coarse language.
("~*~")
"Enough!" Dr. James Wilson yelled, not caring if the neighbors could hear him or not. "I'm sick of your lies!"
"It wasn't a lie!" Sam Carr retorted just as loudly as she marched out of the kitchen and into the living room. "I just didn't think it was a big deal, that's why I didn't tell you."
"Not a big deal?" the oncologist echoed incredulously. "You went to House and told him that the only reason I was seeing a psychiatrist was because of the stress he's caused me by opposing my relationship with you. You know that's not the truth. Now he's not talking to anyone, not even Cuddy! They were going to move in together but now that's off. He can't do his job and today I smelled alcohol on his breath at noon while he has a case!"
"Come on, James," Sam said cynically, "you know that he's just doing this to guilt you for moving on with your life. He's a master manipulator—you've said so yourself. And you're seeing Dr. Collins is largely due to House. He deserved to know that. All I did was ask him to bow out of your life so you could get healthy again. I was looking out for you."
"He's not the only person in my life who's a master manipulator, Sam," Wilson growled angrily, standing with one hand on his hip and the other gesticulating. "You've just proven that."
Wilson turned on his heels and headed for the foyer and put on his jacket. He grabbed his keys.
"Where are you going?" the blonde demanded of her ex-husband/boyfriend. Her voice sounded like the screech of a hawk. "We've got to finish talking this out!"
"If you haven't noticed," Wilson answered snidely, "we're not talking, we're yelling. That's par for the course these days."
He opened the loft's front door and took a step out into the outside corridor but was stopped by Sam grabbing his arm to restrain him. He turned to glare banefully at her; Sam was taken aback by the look and hesitated a moment before speaking.
"Whose fault is that?" she demanded petulantly. "Ever since you found out that House was dating Cuddy you've been treating me like garbage. He's just manipulating you again but you're too blind to see it."
"No," Wilson said adamantly, shaking his head and poking a finger in her face accusingly. "I've been blind to you, Sam. He warned me about you but I was too proud to listen. I guess leopards really can't change their spots."
He made to go again before she could protest. She kept a tight grip on his arm.
"That goes for House too, you know!" she informed him accusingly.
Wilson nodded, his face screwing up in bitter disgust when he looked at her. "You're right—but at least he's honest about it. You've been deceiving me from the moment you poked me on Facebook. Now let go of me before I'm forced to make you."
Sam hesitated a moment but then realized that the oncologist wasn't kidding. She released her grip and Wilson quickly marched out of the loft. As he strode down the corridor towards the stairs he heard her call out to him from the door.
"I don't have to put up with this kind of treatment, James! You'll regret this!"
"Fuck off," he muttered under his breath as he took the stairs two or three at a time to the parkade level. He punch the unlock button on his key fob as soon as he could see his vehicle parked in its stall. He quickly covered the distance and jumped into the Volvo, slamming the door shut angrily, the sound of which reverberated off of the cavernous concrete walls of the underground parking garage.
For a moment he simply sat there behind the wheel, gripping it white-knuckled with both hands and forcing himself to take in slow, deep breaths to calm himself. He didn't want to try to drive with his entire body shaking, panting for breath, the blood in his veins pumping loudly through his brain. It took a couple of minutes but eventually he had calmed himself enough that he felt capable of driving.
The question was, to where was he driving? He started his car and pulled out of his stall, then drove out of the garage. The sky outside was already black but it looked even darker due to the fact that it was overcast with heavy clouds that were pouring out cold rain onto the earth below. It had been raining on and off for the past three days but this was the heaviest it had been. It amazed Wilson how the weather seemed to reflect the mood he'd been in for several weeks now. He was glad he'd left his cell phone in his jacket pocket the night before or else he would have left it behind at the loft. He pulled it out and pressed speed dial. House's answering machine picked up.
"I'm sorry," the diagnostician's recorded voice said, sickeningly sweet, "I can't come to the phone right now because I'm too busy self-gratifying but if you'll leave a message I'll be certain not to return your call." It was followed by a beep.
"Jesus, House," Wilson said out loud, shaking his head in disapproval but smiling slightly, "can you be any cruder? If you're there, I'm coming over so don't go anywhere."
Wilson hung up and then pressed a second speed-dial button. His call was answered on the third ring.
"Hello?" came the slightly stressed voice of Dr. Lisa Cuddy. In the background he could hear Rachel screaming unhappily. The oncologist was mildly surprised that the toddler was still awake at this time of night.
"It's Wilson," he told her succinctly, not wanting to take up too much of her time. That, and he felt uncomfortable talking to her since she and House had become a couple. "Is House over there by any chance?"
Cuddy was silent for a heartbeat before sighing in frustration and replied, "I haven't seen House since yesterday, Wilson. He avoided me all day today. He's probably holed up in his apartment or in some bar somewhere getting drunk."
The oncologist was hesitant to ask but the question had been plaguing him for a while now so he went ahead and did. "How long has he been drinking so heavily, Cuddy?"
"For months…I just didn't pay much attention to it until last week," she answered honestly, sounding both angry and resigned. "Look, Wilson, this is not a good time. I have to go." She hung up on him.
Wilson hung up as well and tossed the phone onto the passenger's seat, shaking his head. His thick dark eyebrows knit together over his chocolate brown eyes and the muscles in his jaw tensed almost painfully. How could she not notice something like that? They were sleeping together, practically living together—and she missed something as significant as that?
He headed in the direction of House's apartment. How had things regressed for the older doctor after such a promising start following his release from Mayfield nearly a year ago? He tried to think back and find the time or event that may have been the beginning of his decline. Before his breakdown and subsequent hospitalization at Mayfield Wilson had missed clues that something was seriously wrong with his friend and apparently, he had been doing the exact same thing now. He had promised himself—and House's therapist—that he would keep a better watch over his friend. He'd failed to do that. In his effort to build a normal, stable relationship and move on in a positive direction with his life, he'd abandoned his long-time friend.
He acknowledged this error mentally, forcing himself to stop justifying his own selfishness, but his emotions hadn't caught up to that yet. He was, however, very concerned about the state his friend was in right now, and was determined to do right by him this time. There had never been any question that he loved House; Wilson simply had difficulty putting someone else first before his own needs. It wasn't that he couldn't do so, it just wasn't natural for him.
It bothered the oncologist now that his selfishness—yes, selfishness, James!—could be at the heart of House's problems now. He didn't want to hurt House because House was his best friend and his loss would be very hard on him—perhaps harder than he could deal with. And he loved him—he really did. He wanted to feel guilty this time.
Before he knew it he was pulling up out front of his friend's apartment on Baker Street and parking the car. He raced from his car up the small walkway to House's apartment building. The steps were slippery and he nearly lost his footing but grabbed the rail on time. He entered the building and then raced up the stairs to the second floor, stopping at the door of apartment B. He rat-a-tat-tatted on the door, waiting less than a minute and then anxiously knocked again, louder.
From within he heard a voice but couldn't make out what it was saying. He tried the door knob and to his surprise it turned easily and the door opened without any problem. He stepped inside House's apartment. On the black leather sofa House sat watching TV, his ruined leg up on a cushion on the coffee table. On said table was an old fashioned, empty. In House's hand was a bottle of Maker's Mark from which he was drinking directly. Wilson could tell that he was already drunk, or perhaps that was still. He entered the apartment completely and shut the door behind him.
House didn't look up, but took another swig from the bottle. Wilson approached the sofa, his hands in his jacket pockets, shifting on his feet a little uncomfortably.
"Did Lisa send you over to try to talk some sense into me?" the diagnostician asked him, slurring his words. He was no lightweight so when he slurred you knew that he'd had a considerable amount to drink.
"Nope," Wilson said, removing his jacket, tossing it over the arm of a chair and then sitting down on the other end of the sofa. "I needed to get out of the loft. Found myself out driving and decided to come and crash here for a couple of hours."
House looked over at him, bleary-eyed. "Who is she?"
The oncologist looked at him quizzically. "Who is who?" he asked.
"The woman you've been sleeping with behind Sam's back," House answered with a smirk.
Wilson sighed. Of course his best friend would assume that he and Sam were having problems due to his infidelity. He'd be angrier at the assumption than he actually was if he hadn't had the history to back up the suspicion.
"Oh," Wilson said, shaking his head. "Actually, there is no woman."
"Yeah, right," House snorted, and took another drink.
"His name is Troy," Wilson dead-panned, staring at the TV as if he was enthralled with the mating habits of the elephant; House had it tuned to the Discovery channel. "I met him at the clinic."
House looked over at the oncologist again, smiling—but his eyes were scanning the younger man's face for any sign of deception. Wilson focused hard on keeping his voice and face normal.
"Why Wilson," the diagnostician said sarcastically, "all those rumors about you floating around the hospital are actually true."
"You mean the ones you started?" Wilson inquired, keeping a straight face. "At first I was scared that my secret had been found out somehow until I found out it was just you pranking me. That was a relief."
They sat quietly for a while before the oncologist spoke up. "So what's up with the booze?"
"The price," the older doctor retorted. "Don't go to Pete's Liquor Mart—he's a gouger."
"I'll remember that the next time I drive all the way over here to buy my alcohol rather than from the liquor store just down the block from the condo," Wilson told him. "Come on, House. What's really going on? You've always been a drinker, but in all of the years I've known you I've never seen you come to work drunk and jeopardize a patient's welfare as a result."
"Fuck," House muttered, rolling his eyes. "Which one was it that ratted me out? Foreman? Taub? It wouldn't be Chase because I've got the goods on him and Thirteen's run away from home. Had to be Taub."
"It doesn't matter who," Wilson told him. "The point is this has become a real problem for you, hasn't it?"
"Don't worry about me, Jimmy," House slurred. "I'm not your problem, okay? You need to take care of yourself."
"I am, House," the younger doctor told him. "You're my friend, not my problem." He paused a moment before adding, his voice softening somewhat. "This is going to sound incredibly narcissistic, but…is it because of me? Is it because I asked you to move out of the loft?"
House set the bottle down on the table and sat up, bringing his leg down. He grabbed the remote control and turned off the TV, then rose unsteadily to his feet and began to limp towards his bedroom without his cane. Wilson looked around for it but couldn't see it anywhere. He began to follow House.
"I'm going to bed, you can let yourself out," the diagnostician told him. He was weaving all over the place and with his unsteady leg; Wilson could see him falling and getting hurt. He caught up with his friend and wrapped an arm around his waist to steady him.
"Wilson, I'm flattered but you already have a girlfriend and a boyfriend," House sniped at him, but was apparently too drunk to fight him off, "and I'm not in the mood."
"Funny, House," Wilson told him mirthlessly, helping him to his bed and then dumping him unceremoniously onto it. "You didn't answer my question. Did my asking you to leave the loft contribute at all to your drinking problem?" He pulled House's Nikes off followed by his socks, and set them neatly beside the bed.
The diagnostician was trying to take his t-shirt off but somehow got his head and arms tangled up in it instead. "My only drinking problem is one mouth, two hands." He giggled at his own joke. House only giggled when he was wasted. The mirth quickly gave way to frustration when he couldn't free himself from the T-shirt. "Fucking shirt! Goddamnit, Wilson, give a fucking hand to the cripple, will you?"
Hesitating a moment the oncologist allowed himself a chuckle at his friend's expense; he went to work trying to free the man from his clothing.
"Don't fucking laugh at me, you idiot," House groused, squirming around and fighting against the efforts to help him.
"Quit squirming!" Wilson said; his face was screwed up in frustration. He'd seen some of the nurses in the oncology ward once trying to undress one of his eight year old patients and struggling with him very much like he was with House.
"I'm not squirming," the other man argued, his voice muffled by the cotton material. "Quit fucking around and get it off already."
"I'm trying, but you're not making it easy!" Wilson told him. He held on tight to the shirt and then with one hard pull jerked on the shirt. It came off suddenly, causing Wilson to stumble backwards a couple of steps. He wouldn't ordinarily have fallen but his foot landed on something hard that rolled beneath him and sent him flying backwards. His dark-haired head was the first part of his body to hit the hardwood floor, followed quickly by the rest. He was certain he heard his brain slosh from one part of his cranium and slamming into the opposite side. The pain didn't register until the falling snow cleared from his vision.
Wilson lifted his head and looked to see what it was he'd slipped on: House's cane. Perfect. Well, at least now they knew where it was. His head felt like someone was pounding on it with a hammer. He managed to sit up; the room was still spinning. He could see House sitting on the edge of his bed, shirtless. At first he'd looked concerned but as soon as Wilson sat up the older doctor began to laugh, falling back onto the mattress and holding his sides.
The oncologist didn't think it was all that funny. He just felt queasy.
"Shut up, you jerk!" Wilson snarled at him, reaching back with a hand and gingerly rubbing the back of his head. He hissed when the tips of his fingers brushed across the point of impact. Oh, yes…there was definitely going to be a goose egg there. "You can take your own goddamned shirt off next time."
House continued to laugh and the sound of it was absolutely infectious. In spite of the painful throbbing of his head Wilson began to laugh too. After a minute or so their merriment calmed.
"I haven't laughed like that in months," Wilson commented, looking fondly at the diagnostician.
"We haven't hung out together in months without one or both of our women chaperoning, that is," his friend pointed out. They were silent for about thirty seconds before House said softly. "I miss this. I miss the way it was right after Mayfield. You, me, driving each other insane. I actually thought everything was finally going to turn out okay back then."
"It still can," Wilson told him. "You've got Cuddy now. You've only wanted that for years."
Staring up at the ceiling House shook his head and answered pensively, "You've wanted that for years. I just wanted you to butt the hell out of my personal life. Fat chance of that!"
"There was obviously an attraction there," Wilson defended. The room was still spinning and he still felt nauseous. "You two flirted for years!"
"Attraction, flirtation, yeah," House told him with unusual candor. He was talking more openly than Wilson had heard him do in—well, actually, he couldn't remember ever hearing House talk this openly. It could have been due to the booze, but the oncologist doubted it; House had been loaded many times before and hadn't opened up to him like this. He certainly didn't want to do anything to shut him down now.
"All I ever wanted was to fuck her," House continued. "It's not like it was true fucking love. But you kept pushing and pushing…."
Wilson frowned. "I just wanted you to be happy," he explained. "I thought you could find happiness with Cuddy."
"So did I," the older doctor said, sounding sad all of a sudden. "But in Mayfield I figured out what I really wanted; problem was, I knew I could never have what I wanted and I didn't want to be alone. Even fucking Nolan was pushing me onto Lisa. I figured she was better than loneliness so I pursued her, until she humiliated me with Lucas. Fortunately for me, that pissed you off too, so you quit playing matchmaker. I felt like everything was good the way it was—just you and me and that's all I needed. That's all I ever needed."
Wilson thought about that for a while. It hadn't occurred to him that House didn't want Cuddy, that he was fine without her, that he was better with…him.
"Then the Harpy flew in the window and shit on my parade," House told him, imitating the flight of a bird with his hands. "Suddenly, you didn't need me anymore. Jesus, Wilson, you fucking paid off my team to date me so I wasn't around you and that bitch. I'd already quit trying to break you two up, it wasn't necessary."
"I didn't mean to hurt you by doing that," Wilson defended. "I just wanted you to realize that you can make other friends and that you don't need to be totally dependent on me."
"Are you going to follow me around for the rest of my life buying friends for me?" House asked harshly. "Good fucking plan. Did you ever stop to think that I may not want other friends? You didn't do it for me. You did it for you and for Sam. Shit, I probably would have done the same thing if I'd been in your shoes. Who can handle more than one needy person at a time? You made the logical choice from your perspective; you picked the one who would fuck you."
"House-." Wilson began to say when his friend cut him off.
"What you didn't know was that I'd have fucked you too, if you had asked."
Wilson stared incredulously at the diagnostician who was staring at him now with those two incredibly blue eyes. They were so open, not hiding anything, and they looked amazingly clear and lucid for a man who had drunk as much as he had that evening. What they spoke made Wilson's stomach flip.
"You're not kidding, are you?" the younger doctor asked the older in a hushed tone.
"Why the fuck would I lie about that?" House asked. He then went back to staring at the ceiling. "Not that it matters. Sam landed and you pushed me out of the nest. I wasn't only losing a roommate; I was losing the most important person in the world to me. But what the fuck…just so long as you were moving on and making a sane life for yourself, which naturally meant there was no place in it for me.
"My leg started hurting more than ever right around then and the ibuprofen was useless. It was either the alcohol or I go back to popping Vicodin—and I really didn't want to tango with that bitch again. The alcohol helps dull all of my pain. It's the only fucking friend I've got left."
Wilson felt overwhelmed by everything House was telling him. For nearly two decades House had kept his thoughts and feelings hidden and refused to share them with him except for the very brief, very rare occasion; on those occasions the oncologist was only allowed a glimpse before the walls were erected again.
"But House, I don't understand," the younger doctor insisted. "If you didn't want Cuddy, then what changed your mind? Why are the two of you together right now?"
The diagnostician turned his head to stare at him again with those all-seeing eyes.
"Because after the crane disaster, when I was ready to piss away a year of sobriety because I couldn't take the loneliness anymore, she showed up and was there for me. You didn't. She was better than nothing, which at that point was all I had. But I kept hoping that you would be the one to come to me and tell me…that you love me, not her. That's what I discovered at Mayfield. I didn't love her—only you."
Wilson was speechless. He had to look away from House's gaze. All these years he had believed that he didn't matter to House; that the older man didn't care about him and only hung out with him because he was the only one who could tolerate the misanthrope. He'd wanted his friend to reassure him by telling him that he cared, that he loved him but it had never come, confirming in his mind that House didn't care about anybody; he'd been wrong. If only he'd known.
"Why didn't you tell me this before now?" the younger doctor demanded angrily, looking back to House. The older doctor didn't hear him because he'd fallen asleep. Wilson sighed. His mind was spinning as quickly as the room around him was. He needed time alone to think about this with no Sam and no House and no pressure. He decided he would rent a room at a hotel for the night instead of heading back to the loft and then call in sick to work tomorrow.
Wilson slowly rose to his feet, the dizziness and nausea only getting worse when he moved. He wondered if he was going to be able to drive and if he didn't, in fact, need to go to the hospital. He managed to rise to his full height and took a step towards House's bed to pull his feet up onto the bed and cover him with the comfortable before leaving him there. His body didn't seem to be getting the proper signal from his brain and Wilson stumbled forward, unable to get sure footing or even stop himself as he propelled himself head first into House's bedside table. He heard himself yelp and then there was nothing at all.
("~*~")
Wilson woke up with a headache. He looked around him groggily and realized he was in a private hospital room, likely at PPTH. A single bag of saline hung from an IV pole above his head and flowed through the plastic tube that had been stuck into his arm. The lighting in the room was low but from the activity he could hear outside of the room he figured it was daytime. Someone snored softly from somewhere in the room. He lifted his head up slightly (it felt like it weighed a ton) and looked around. The room wasn't spinning and his vision wasn't too blurry.
Sitting in the recliner next to his bed was House, sleeping lightly. He was the only one in the room with him. Sam wasn't.
"Hey," Wilson said quietly. "House."
The diagnostician stirred and then opened his eyes and sat up. He rubbed his face with his hand and then looked at Wilson. He smirked but his eyes were smiling.
"Only you can give yourself a second degree concussion by removing a shirt. You're a klutz, you know."
Wilson glared at him, not amused. "It's not my fault your cane was left lying on the floor to step on."
"That doesn't explain the second lump on the top of your head," House replied, and then sobered. "You're lucky to wake up. You were still unconscious when I woke up around noon."
"I don't feel lucky," Wilson groaned queasily. "I feel like death warmed over."
"I know what you mean," the other man commiserated. He looked as bad as Wilson felt; the younger doctor had no sympathy for him. House's problems were self-inflicted. His own were accidental.
Something dawned on Wilson. "Hey, don't you have a case?"
"Nope," House answered, shaking his head. "Solved it; the kiddies are administering the treatment. You're not getting rid of me that easily."
Smiling, Wilson relaxed into the firm hospital mattress a little more. The smile faded quickly, though. "Sam didn't show?" The question was rhetorical.
Looking away briefly the older doctor shook his head slightly. "Lisa wasn't able to reach her. I checked out the loft. There was a note." He handed the oncologist a slip of folded paper from his jeans pocket. Wilson opened it and skimmed over it, sighed silently and then crumpled the paper up into a little ball and tossed it across the room.
"She's sending for the rest of her things," Wilson told his friend emotionlessly. He couldn't muster up any regret at all. He'd known it was over for a couple of weeks already but had been trying to convince himself he was wrong.
House looked uncomfortable, shifting in his chair. "I'm sorry."
That caused the younger doctor to look at him in surprise. There was a hint of guilt in his eyes. "Why? I'm not. It's nobody's fault except mine…for thinking Sam and I could make it work this time. You warned me."
"I did," the diagnostician agreed but it lacked his usual smugness.
The men sat in silence for a minute or two before Wilson broke it.
"House, do you remember our conversation last night?"
Frowning the older doctor nodded slightly. He looked a little embarrassed which, of course, he tried to cover with a smirk.
"Did you mean it?"
Wilson waited anxiously for his friend to answer his question, expecting him to deflect, evade and change the subject; the oncologist was mildly surprised when he did none of those things.
He sighed. "Yes."
"Why didn't you tell me that before now?" Wilson demanded. "If you knew already at Mayfield, why did you keep it quiet?"
House looked at him and raised a doubtful eyebrow. "If I had told you immediately after I was discharged, what do you think your response would have been? Would you have allowed me to live with you if you'd known that I was..."
"In love with me," the oncologist filled in the blank for him.
"Yeah, that," House said, squirming and looking down at his Nikes for a moment or two.
Wilson forced himself to be honest with himself. Just talking about it right now made him uncomfortable; a year ago he probably would have reacted badly, but a lot had happened since then. The subject was still difficult, but he wasn't about to flee from it, either.
"I'm not the same person," Wilson told him. "At least…I'm trying not to be. Now…now I'm just glad to know that I actually mean something to you."
"You've always meant something to me," was House's solemn reply, "and for the past couple of years you've meant a lot more."
Wilson reached out and grabbed his friend's hand and squeezed it lightly. "I'm sorry for being such an idiot." He sighed and shook his head. "I was getting…certain feelings again and it scared me shitless. When Sam contacted me I thought it was the perfect way to avoid the discomfort. I just want a normal life, House."
"Normal's boring," the diagnostician told him with a sly smile, "and you're not. Why fight it? Doesn't it get tiring?"
"Exhausting," Wilson told him with a thin smile. As if on cue he yawned. "I need time to think about this. Besides, you're with Cuddy now."
Nodding House sighed and replied, "I'm sleeping with her…well, I was. Not a lot of action lately. We're not even living together. That won't happen now. I'm pretty sure Lisa has reached her limit. I know I have."
Wilson nodded again, "That will make things…difficult at work."
House shrugged. "We knew this was a possibility when we started dating. She's a professional, and I don't have any hard feelings. We'll work it out."
There was a pregnant pause.
Wilson took a deep breath; it was time, he decided. As frightening as it was to face it, avoiding the truth hadn't made his life any better; perhaps facing it was the best course of action.
"I…," the younger doctor began. His mouth suddenly felt parched. "I guess you could say I've fallen head…over heels…for you."
Groaning at the horrible pun, House then chuckled. "That was the gayest thing I've heard you say in months!"
Chuckling as well, Wilson caught House's gaze and held it.
"Well, you would know," he winked.
~fin~