Author:IsayToodlePip
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Set after Season 4's finale
He's stuck in the hospital for a few days, then stuck in his apartment for more than a few days. He's hardly ever alone, but apart from a mild resentment (and that should worry him, since when were his resentments ever mild?), he doesn't care. When he can finally leave, he's stuck with public transport, and since he can't take the bus (he'll say the stop is too far away from his apartment, though it's not), and has never liked spending money on things he actually needs, he's stuck in Taub's BMW and Kutner's Scion and, when the mood strikes them, Foreman's Ford Explorer ('This is so NOT ghetto fabulous,') and Cuddy's Mercedes. He has to remind himself (and that should worry him, too) that he never liked the Volvo.
He has Taub take him to the headshop for a new cane. Kutner would have appreciated the place too much, would have pointed at things enthusiastically like the teenage kid he was, would have ogled the mermaid's breasts and tried on all the hats and sunglasses. Would have smiled and bounced and remind him too much of…
He buys the bull penis cane ('Penis canes are murder,' he remembers, and he thinks, it wouldn't be the first…). He buys the bull penis cane and hopes that maybe, when he goes back to work and sees him again, maybe Wilson will notice and his eyes will laugh and they'll both have one minute where Wilson isn't wishing House had died instead of Amber.
But when he goes back to work, that does not happen. Wilson sees him, and there's a ripple of…something, running through his eyes, and then it's gone. There's a nod, because he's a colleague and a professional and, yeah, they were friends, best friends, once, and the bastard deserves a nod, but…
House needs to stop thinking he knows what Wilson is thinking when he looks at him. He does remember that he'd gotten it wrong before. All the time.
House is stuck in his office, because he's refused to go back to doing his clinic hours. Cuddy had threatened him, he'd mocked and whined, they did their normal dance of jackassery, but at some point he had deflated and just said, in the most honest tone he could muster, 'No.' She'd left it at that for approximately five hours, and he'd considered it a minor triumph. But she came back to him. 'Do it or you're fired.' He knew she didn't mean that, just as he knew he meant it when he said, 'I honestly don't care.' And then, she left him alone for good.
At least on that issue.
Thirteen has been scarce. He hadn't see her at all during his recovery, and even when he goes back and they are all trying to be normal again, she just does her job and then vanishes, before their very eyes. He knows what's going on. Doesn't need to break into her personal file to check the lab work (and he would have been surprised if she actually left a paper trail). Part of him wants to pull her aside, tell her she can still do her job, tell her all the things she already knows about Huntington's ('you'll have decades, maybe, and that's after the first symptoms present'). But another part of himself wants to pull her aside and gloat about having been right, about how knowing trumped everything. So he leaves her alone, lets her walk through the hospital thinking she's a ghost already. Better that than subject her to him.
He's stuck with Cameron and Chase for 'friends,' though Chase has been tight-lipped and standing a little too watchful when Cameron is in the room, and House wonders if he's causing another relationship to crash and burn (and he pictures the bus and the red scarf, repeated patterns of leg wounds and loss, and he wishes he could remove whole pages of words from the English language. And the six other languages he's fluent in.). When Cameron speaks to him, he's stuck listening to Stones lyrics in his head. Occasionally time, and grieving, and he'll come around break through his distractions, but he shuts his eyes and runs his hand through his thinning hair, finds the scar and remembers – no. Some things, you can't move past.
Things go on. Nobody's trauma is ever powerful enough to stop the world. Thirteen must have made a decision, because one day she's refusing to laugh at one of Kutner's few funny stories, and the next she's smirking at House's Jew jokes again. It's like nothing had happened at all – only it isn't. Her name is Remy Hadley, now.
Cuddy drives him to and from work ('if you won't do your clinic hours, you're damned sure going to get here on time'), at least on days when he isn't living out of his office, working on a case.
Cameron leaves Chase, and Chase leaves Princeton. She stops talking to him about Wilson. She stops talking to him about most things, really, and when House walks to the cafeteria and sees her and Wilson eating lunch at what used to be his and Wilson's table, part of him thinks, good. And all of him wants to get the hell away.
Foreman tells him that Wilson and Cameron are just friends. Taub makes a snide remark about a certain breed of woman being able to sense mourning from miles away and that if Wilson can hold out for another month, he could bag anyone he wanted. It almost makes House smile. Hadley saying 'I'd tap that,' kind of kills the mood.
It was inevitable that he'd be stuck with Wilson himself before either of them are ready. It's the way things go. One minute House is mocking Kutner's taste in Enterprise captains, the next his mom's on the phone, his dad is dead, and he's committed to going to the funeral of someone he'd hated for forty years. And change.
House stays to finish the Cpt. Archer smackdown, then goes to find Cuddy. As he walks to the elevator bank, he catches a glimpse of Foreman leaving Diagnostics and heading towards Wilson's office. He might have stopped him (no, you wouldn't have, he thought, later) but the doors open and he has to move on.
Cuddy makes him stop moving and sit down when he reaches her office and tells her his bastard father is dead. Bastard. She talks at him, maybe pats him on the shoulder, maybe holds his hand or his gaze, but not his attention. Not until she offers to help him book the flights.
'I want to drive,' he says.
'Why?' she asks, and he's pathetically grateful she didn't just say no.
Because it's only a three hour trip. Because he wants to hit Philadelphia on the way back. Because he might need a car to help his mom arrange things. Because I want to speed towards this end, because I want a sore leg when I'm done, because I want to drive my Dodge into the Chesapeake and take a long-needed break, because I want to be stuck in a car with just myself, because I need some space to figure out if I'm actually upset or if I just don't want to have to pretend that I am.
'It's not that far,' he shrugs.
'Probably too far for that junkheap you drive,' she reminds him. Then, she offers to swap cars.
House barely nods before she's on the phone, doing whatever it is an administrator does in times like these. He's about to leave when she calls out to say, 'You should get someone to drive you home. I'll come by later tonight and we can make the exchange.'
He almost asks if they could exchange more than just car keys, but it isn't worth it.
He tells his staff that he's taking a few weeks off. 'Don't kill anybody important.' Kutner looks like he's going to cry. There's no way he's asking him for a ride home.
The E.R. isn't busy. He sits in the ambulance bay and for the first time in over a year he makes himself remember what it felt like to run home.
'You need a ride?' Cameron asks at his shoulder, and he's surprised he hadn't picked up on her aura of concern.
'Doesn't anyone work around here?'
'Lunch break. Come on,' she answers. He tells her he's waiting for a cab, but she's already walking towards the parking lot.
'I wish you'd talk to me,' is all she says on the ride home.
He suddenly remembers all of the crap that she's been spouting since he woke from his coma to a world with no Amber and no best friend and practically no peripheral vision. He remembers her whispers about PTSD, and his succinct 'Moron.'
'How is he?' he asks.
'He'll be fine. Will you?'
He swears he sees her smile as he leaves the car, like he passed some sort of test just by asking.
He tries to pack his bag, but is stuck for ten minutes, a pair of jeans in one hand, slacks in the other. He'd thrown his one decent jacket into his stuicase, the blue shirt Cuddy said made him look 'nice', the tie his mom had bought him last Christmas ('you look so smart in a tie, Greg'), but he can't decide on what damn pants to wear to his father's goddam funeral, with a thousand lost arguments coursing through his head.
There's a knock at the door, hours earlier than he'd expected, and he tosses the jeans into the bag. It doesn't feel like an easy victory. He plans on asking Cuddy about that exchange, anything to keep his mind off of what's next, but when he opens the door, she isn't there.
Wilson is.
'Let's go,' he says.
'What?'
'You can't drive yourself all the way to Maryland. And if we leave now, we'll hit Philly in time to see the fireworks.'
It's only then that House remembers today is the 4th of July.
There isn't much in way of conversation for the first leg of the journey. Wilson says, 'Your radio stations are still programmed.' Wilson says, 'Let me know if you want to stop.' Wilson says, 'If you don't mind, I'll take us to this place I went last year. Amazing lobster mashed potatoes.' House just grunts and nods and stares out the window and tries not to read too much into the fact that he is there and Wilson is there and it's pretty ok.
House doesn't actually say anything until they're sitting in the Continental, poking at their food, and Wilson says, 'I'm sorry about your dad.'
'That makes one of us.'
The mashed potatoes are actually pretty decent.
'They have good cocktails here,' Wilson says, pointing to the drinks menu.
'They use Tang?'
They leave two hours later, orange mustaches and a little lighter than either has been in weeks. In the distance they see smoke trails, whisps of starburts, and then a flash. The fireworks were still going, and now there was brass and jazz carried on the wind. 'Happy Independence Day, Wilson.'
They go to the same restaurant in the morning, because Wilson had spotted some French toast on the menu and House had noted a cheeseburger with his name on it. 'He was 70, three months ago,' House says, mouth full of food.
'How did…'
'Heart attack. Mowing the lawn, of all cliches.'
'How is your mother handling it?'
'How do you think?'
They are on the road for another half-hour before the conversation starts up again. 'I never wished he'd die on a mission.'
'Uh…good?' Wilson asks.
'I should have. After what he did, I should have.'
'What?'
'Not important. I wonder if there will be a color guard.'
'Hope not.'
'Why?'
'Guns make me nervous.'
They are quite for a while, and House's fingers brush against his neck as he leans against the window. His father hadn't come to see him, after he'd been shot. Probably knew that he wouldn't be able to stop himself from asking, 'What the hell did you do this time?' It was a rare moment of consideration, and one House would never thank him for. Not that he has the chance, now.
It doesn't take long to reach Cape St. Claire, and it doesn't take long for Wilson to step up and be the good son. House lets him, seeing as the guy's a pro at burying people.
There are a few awkward moments. His mother crying into his chest. His mother knowing nothing about who Amber was, to House or to Wilson. Knowing nothing about the bus crash, the cracked skull, the heart attack, the seizure, the coma. The vision loss and all of the other losses. He doesn't want her to worry about him, but that's one of the many things beyond his control. 'It's fine,' he repeats when she gently touches his scalp, when she asks him how he feels, when she mentions that he'll be sleeping in the guestroom upstairs. With Wilson.
'That's fine,' Wilson repeats, because the panic House had been trying to hide at that must have shone through, the twin of the panic he felt the night before, sitting in his hotel room and knowing Wilson wasn't really just one wall away.
There is a color guard. Wilson and his mother flinch every time a shot is fired. He just closes his eyes and remembers. Not some hallucination, not some anonymous madman, but John House, showing off his gun collection to his thirteen year old son, showing him how to polish, how to dismantle, and, a year later, how to aim and fire and stand his ground. Back in the present, he almost smiles, and if he had peripheral vision, he's sure he'd see Wilson looking on him with concern. That thought makes him want to smile even more.
The funeral parade gone, Wilson and House tour the Chesapeake. They drink a lot of wine, get some sun. Every conversation is about House's childhood, and normally he'd hate that but he considers the alternatives and he gives his past up to Wilson's curiosity. It's the least he could do, and what does it matter, anyway?
There are lists of things floating in the air. Ice baths. Spiders in the backyard. Belts. Backhands. Hours at attention. Hours scrubbing a pristine kitchen floor. Piano lessons and lacross practices ruined by taunts about imminent failure and damnit, son, just not good enough. Shooting ranges. His first beer. Being led out into the garage to learn how to change a tire. How to fine tune an engine. How to juggle. Being led into the bedroom to learn how to tie a tie. Being given his uncle's Purple Heart.
'That sounds good,' Wilson says.
'Just not good enough.'
They make their way back to Princeton and House is always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Only, it never does. They are back at work and sometimes they meet for lunch and sometimes they don't. Sometimes, Wilson turns up at his place and they're almost the same as they were before, only a bit quiter, a bit more wary of the edges around things it's best not to talk about.
Wilson never mentions Amber. He leaves that to Cameron.
House can see why. One day, he gives in to her requests and joins her for dinner. 'I'm glad you and Wilson are better,' she says over a beer and steak.
'Yeah.'
'You don't talk about it, do you?'
'What?'
'What happened. I'm guessing your conversations have an Amber-shaped hole in them, right?'
'Why the hell would we want to talk about that?'
'At least he talks to me about her.'
'Again, why would I care? She wasn't my girlfriend.'
'No. You just killed her.'
She catches up with him ten minutes later, because it's not very hard to catch a cripple in a foot race.
'See?' she says, panting, grabbing on to his sweating forearm. 'You honestly think you were responsible! You need to talk to him. If anyone can convince you it wasn't your fault, it'd be him.'
'Who says I need convincing?'
'House.'
'I don't want to hear it, Cameron. We're fine. I killed his girlfriend. He chose her over me and would have let me die. I'd call that close enough to even, so leave it alone.'
There are whispers about survivor's guilt, but he doesn't stand around to wait. For the first time since the accident, he takes the bus.
Things go on, and he's stuck with the knowledge that things will never be the same between them. But Wilson is…resilient. He'd have to be. House can be resilient, too. It's going to be good enough, those scattered conversations in offices and halls and apartments. So what if he has to hold his breath every time he says something thoughtless and cruel? Not so different from ice baths and spiders in the grass, and he got through that relatively whole. Sometimes, he closes his eyes and runs his fingers through his hair, finds the scar and remembers…whisps of starbursts and jazz on the wind, the taste of childhood summers on his lips and the smile in Wilson's eyes at a rest stop outside of Trenton when he finally noticed the cane in House's hand.
It's not the first time in his life that he's found himself praying, 'please, just let this be good enough.'