Long pianist's fingers splay on thigh,
Feeling soft worn denim and beneath it,
The uneven ridges of muscle removed.
Pain is everywhere,
His leg, his hip, his shoulders, his head.
Eight o'clock in the morning and already
Two Vicodin,
A shot of bourbon.
But narcotics don't work anymore.
What he needs is
Brown hair falling over eyes that are spellbindingly, impossibly dark.
There is a slightly angular, boyish face
With a small, almost unnoticeable mole
Low and to the left of that wide and innocent mouth.
Like hell that mouth is innocent;
It's seen three wives,
Innumerable mistresses,
And once, even House himself.
But that was a long time ago
And they act like they don't remember.
Convenient amnesia, and Wilson has convenient narcolepsy
Every time House even looks like he wants to talk about it.
But House and Wilson have been a bonafide couple for years.
And everybody can see it except House and Wilson.
Being alone is too lonely.
The silence is too loud.
House needs company, even if he has to pay for it.
-
She is a pretty girl, a brunette,
With dark eyes that remind him of other dark eyes,
And calloused fingertips that fire his nerve endings
And drag memories from his fogged brain
About other fingertips
And the feel of another mouth on his overheated body.
It was a long time ago.
House closes his eyes and pretends he doesn't remember.
-
Wilson brings him coffee, awkwardly.
One sugar and a dash of creamer,
But Wilson has thickened his own with a mountain of sugar
And enough milk to turn it almost white.
House complains about his coffee even though it is perfect,
And Wilson mentions that he and Amber are having dinner tonight.
House swallows the pain and the rising bile of nausea,
And finds himself in the hated clinic.
Of all things, maybe he can find distraction in curing disease,
Never mind that for most of his clinic patients
That could be done by a monkey with a bottle of Motrin.
Decapitated strands of muscle twitch
With an agonizing acid burn.
Morphine could not help him now.
His leg throbs in time to the beat of his wayward heart,
Beating out of time.
Cardiac arrhythmia is not a good sign,
And between gasps of pain and half-choked breaths,
House manages to scream out Wilson's name
Before the blackness descends.
-
"Neuropathic pain."
Well, for Christ's sake.
House would applaud sarcastically
At a diagnosis a pre-med student couldn't have missed
But he is instead twisting on the bed and hitting the button
For more ineffective morphine.
He moans for something stronger than Vicodin,
And Wilson snaps that sure, he'll just pull out his stash of cocaine.
But then House grips white-knuckled handfuls of sheet,
And Wilson wipes sweat from his forehead with his bare hand
And orders Foreman to get methadone.
It won't be available until tomorrow,
But that's okay.
House has something better anyway.
-
Electric blue eyes open,
Pupils dilated wide despite the fluorescent lights overhead.
House sees music,
Wilson's voice merging with it to look like synthesizers,
And brilliant green and aqua flecks of light explode into earshot.
There are hidden depths to those dark eyes that no one else can see.
Sparkling with copper and gold,
Shot through with tinted light.
The edges of Wilson's hair and face glow,
As though he is lit from behind by the heavens themselves.
Eyelashes go on forever,
And when Wilson asks him how he is
House finds it hard to string two words together
With Wilson standing there looking so fucking otherworldly.
"You're beautiful."
Wilson's eyes focus on House's with dizzying golden clarity.
"You're hallucinating."
"Yes. And you're beautiful."
Wilson touches his forehead,
Ostensibly to check for fever,
And his touch sends rivulets of fearful desire
Through House's overloaded body.
He reaches for Wilson's arm and misses,
But Wilson leans down and House wraps his fingers around the oncologist's wrist.
"Kiss me," House breathes in a fog of LSD-inspired transparency.
Wilson's face contorts momentarily;
With what House can't be sure.
"You're high."
"I remember."
Wilson's eyes are black.
He knows what House means.
For a moment his eyebrows knot, and his hands fist,
And then the next moment he is on top of House in the bed
And fire is spreading from mouth to the ends of House's hair,
Flooding his entire body with pleasure
That feels almost like pain.
In a matter of seconds,
House is a speechless, boneless slab of human.
"Jimmy -"
"Shut up."
And for once in his godforsaken life,
House does.
-
House inhales,
And the familiar dark incense smell fills his nostrils
With all that is Wilson.
He purses his lips against soft dark hair,
And a hand drifts over skin;
House cannot be sure who is touching whom.
"What do we do now?"
The whisper is like a shout
In the darkened room.
After a pause that goes on too long,
The perfect answer comes,
Rising from sleepy, slurred, perfect lips.
"Remember."