What if Amber had been sitting somewhere else on the bus? Wilson has to take care of an injured girlfriend and boyfriend. Can his two loves get along for the sake of their man? House/Wilson, Wilson/Amber and possible House/Wilson/Amber relationship in later chapters, slash, swearing, violence, mentions of child abuse, AU, some OOC, and warnings/spoilers for House's Head, and I got rid of the stupid driver thing.

"So maybe I shouldn't have called
Was it too soon to tell?
Oh what the hell
It doesn't really matter
How do you redefine something that never really had a name?
Has your opinion changed?
Because I don't know you anymore
I don't recognize this place
The picture frames have changed and so has your name
We don't talk much anymore
We keep running from the pain
But what I wouldn't give to see your face again," Savage Garden

1.

"You should sit next to me," House said, straightening himself up, and being careful not to slur his words. It was bad enough that she was dating Wilson, his Wilson, but now her royal bitchiness was disregarding his orders, preventing him from spending an evening, an insignificant amount of time, with the man. "And why did you follow me? You're not my mother' I don't need any help riding the bus." If he couldn't have James now, then there was no way he'd let CTB see him acting all weak and pathetic.

"Wilson would never forgive me if you got lost and passed out in a ditch somewhere," she explained, as she sneezed again. "Do you have a tissue? I think I'm getting that flu that's going around."

"I've got a sleeve," he offered. "Sit in my seat unless you want some smelly wino trying to cop a feel while I sit here and laugh." House didn't know why he was offering Amber the spot, but at the time it seemed important.

"And I would be better off next to you, because?"

"I don't smell." He sighed, watching as Amber picked up an orange prescription bottle and took a flu pill. "Here, hold onto these. If I start to screw up, toss them out the window."

"You've got more Vicodin in your apartment. What difference does it make if I get rid of these?" she asked, but moved over next to him all the same. Maybe he did have a point. Sitting next to a homeless guy on a dirty bus seat was not exactly what she'd had in mind for her night off.

"My place is, like, forty minutes away from here, but my leg hurts now. Do you have any idea how much it would torture me if I had to wait?" Greg was amazed when she slipped his pills into the inside pocket of his jacket, her fingers brushing up against his stomach. He felt himself smiling, despite know how wrong this was. Suddenly being so close made him uncomfortable. Maybe if he stared out the window for the rest of the ride, nothing would happen, and he wouldn't remember any of this in the morning. "Why didn't you get Wilson like I asked?"

"He's on call tonight; can't leave the hospital." Greg shrugged, as if to say, so, he'd leave for me. "You two are really close. He loves you, House—but I always wonder whether you feel the same way." Greg said nothing, just looked away. Please don't do this. "Do you?" Luckily he never had to answer the question. That was less than a minute before the garbage truck smashed into them. His world rolled around and around, and then everything went black.

2.

"House, wake up. Wake up. Come on, I need you to open your eyes and look at me. House!"

"Leave me alone. Headache. What are you doing here?"

"House, were in an accident. I think you have a concussion, and you can't go to sleep right now."

"What?" he moaned, trying to open his eyes. "Where are we?"

"I'm not sure. No, no, no, wake up! Come on, please, no, no, no, damnn it! Wilson is going to kill me—oomph. Hey, hey, hey, hey, stay with me! Stay with me! Talk to me! TALK TO ME!"

"Go away."

"House, if you stay awake and talk to me, I'll let Wilson stay over at your place on Wednesday nights. All night long. Okay? Is that better?"

"I want four nights a week. You can have weekends, or whatever. Doesn't matter."

"I'll give you two."

"Three—three nights." Amber smiled, trying to force House's eyelids open.

"Okay, three nights a week, I promise. Open your eyes, and keep talking to me." House groaned. "Do you know where you are?" He thought this over for a long time and then shook his head. Then he reached up, clutching it. "What's the last thing you remember? A shrug. "I'm going to give you five words. I want you to repeat them back to me. Um, let's see, pen, orange, mustache, fire, clock, and bicycle."

"Bike, and uh, fire, and, um…um, crap."

"That's not one of them. The paramedics are coming, just hold on, okay? Keep talking to me. Tell me about Wilson. Tell me anything. Call me a bitch, whatever, just stay conscious."

"Can you get up?" he whispered, looking up at her helplessly, and scared. "Get somebody?"

"I'm pretty sure my leg is broken."

"Want one of my pills?"

"Its okay, doesn't really hurt that much," she explained. House moaned, and she pressed her hand against his forehead. "If I give you a Vicodin, you can't go to sleep, okay? Stay conscious until you get to the hospital, please."

"Why are you being so nice to me?"

"You saved my life. If I had been sitting on the other side of the bus that truck would have hit me head on."

"I didn't know that. You're being stupid."

"Obviously, things aren't working out. I can't let something like this happen again. No, no, no, no, don't go to sleep. Stay with me. House? House!"

"Miss?" a tall, slightly overweight man in a white shirt and blue jacket asked, lowering his stretcher. "Are you alright? Do you need medical assistance? I'm going to examine you now, alright?"

"I'm fine, probably a fractured tibia, but he hit his head when the bus flipped over. LOC five minutes, and he seems to be having some short term memory problems. This is Dr. House. You have to take him to PPTH." The EMT looked at her oddly. "I'm a doctor you moron! I know what the Hell I'm talking about."

3.

"House? House, wake up! Open your eyes," I asked, more gently, and as Greg slowly woke up, he felt all around him. "Do you know where you are?"

"Ridiculously small, lumpy mattress, IV in my arm is a dead give away, uncomfortable pillow, scratchy blanket, throbbing, albeit slightly drug-numbed, headache. I'm in the hospital," he smirked, proud of the fact that he was able to come up with snarky comebacks while in so much pain.

"Do you know how you go here?" This time there was no snappy comment, no laugh, nothing. He just stared at me.

"Did I crash my bike?" he asked, scrunching up his forehead.

"Do you seriously not remember what happened, or are you faking to get this attention?" Amber asked, from her bed, just a few feet away from his. I knew it wasn't a brilliant idea keeping them that close, but otherwise I'd have to run back and forth from room to room. I shot him the I'm sorry, look, and prayed that he'd at least pretend to be nice for a minute…or two.

"What happened to her?" Greg sat up slowly. "Ow! What happened to my head?"

"You were in a bus accident. Amber broke her leg. She's going to be fine, though. You hit your head pretty hard, fractured your skull, it's a small one. As long as you relax, and don't do anything insane, it should heal on its own."

"I know; I went to medical school too. Explains and the pain and—mmph, memory loss. But how did we get hit by a bus?" he asked, trying to sit up, flitching, and giving up. I gently laid my hand on his forehead. "And why was I with the bi—why was I with her?'

"You got drunk; the bartender took away your keys, so you called Wilson for a ride. But he's working tonight, so I went instead. Apparently, my presence was less than welcome, and you got on a bus to get away from me. I followed you, and three minutes later, a garbage truck barreled into it."

"What about everyone else? Is someone sick or something?"

"I have the flu," Amber explained. "I told you that right before we crashed." Ah-ha, his face read. I sat down beside him, gently stroking Greg's hair.

"Probably shouldn't be doing that in front of your girlfriend."

"She already knows," I whispered, which only seemed to embarrass him more. "It's okay. It's okay. I'm not sure how I'm going to take care of both of you, racing back and forth from apartment to apartment. I don't think I'm gonna get much sleep, not gonna eat," I chuckled.

"You guys can stay at my place. I've only got one bed though, which might make it a bit difficult. We'll all have to cuddle up real close."

"Tell him to shut up. Now, I'm getting a headache," she cried out, like an annoyed ten-year-old. Don't get me wrong, I love them both like crazy, but even at their best, Both Greg and Amber are incredibly annoying to deal with, selfish, sarcastic, and rude. "He shouldn't be talking right now anyway. He has a cracked open head." For some reason he didn't respond to this at all. "You can stay in the guest bedroom at my place. Otherwise Wilson's gonna go nuts."

"I'm not completely sure. That might be kind of cool to watch." They both laughed at this, looking at each other with huge smiles on their faces. I think it was the first time the two of them had spent more than five minutes together without fighting or arguing. "This sucks, but he will do just about anything for us, especially if we say we're in pain, or something."

"Have you ever gotten him to cook for you"? Amber asked, and while I knew this wasn't going in a good direction, it was better than listening to them bicker.

"Oh yeah, but I only found out how good he is at it until about two years ago, when he moved in with me after he and Julie got separated. You think that's cool, I can teach you how to make him do all the chores, especially washing dishes and stuff."

"Okay, that's enough. I think it's great that the two of you have found something you agree on, but can you at least wait until I'm out of the room before you start trashing me?"

"Why?" House. "You never made me do that before. In fact, you usually hang around no matter how mean I am." This was true for House and Amber, but the two of them injured in a room together, is a lot to deal with, even more when they were both picking on me.

"Is that what you do when you're alone with House? I mean, it's gotta be pretty easy to make fun of someone like me, isn't it?"

"There's no good way to answer that question, is there?" I asked turning back and looking at Greg. He shrugged, smiling as he watched me starting to freak out. "No offense, sweetheart, but I can't—you don't actually expect me to—House give me a hand here."

"No offense, sweetheart, but that's a load of bullshit." Amber and he both laughed. "And you never said a word about my offer. Come and stay with us while your eggshell heals over. You know, I'm surprised that your head broke, though. You are so thick skulled, it's amazing anything got through."

"Some idiot dropped a bus on my head. By all logic I should have been squashed to death. What happened anyway?" Amber and I both stared at each other awkwardly. "I don't mean how did I get here. You just told me that. I didn't forget. What? My head hurts, can't—not sure what I was trying to ask," he explained, as I started to stand up and check on Amber. Greg grabbed my hand weakly. The last thing I wanted to do was get involved in the argument, mainly because I wasn't sure who I should be more afraid of. House, when he felt like it, could do serious damage to my body, my property and possibly even cost me my job. Amber, on the other hand, might do anything from forcing me to sleep on the couch to dumping me. Plus, if House made me piss the bed when she was with me….well, I didn't want to think about that. "How much does she know, about me and my—about me?" he asked, turning his face away from us nervously, "Need to know."

"Not much, at least, nothing that happened before you met me."

"But you're gonna tell her, right? I mean, eventually, you're gonna tell her everything, isn't that how these relationships and whatever work?" His question would have been funny, if it weren't so pathetic.

"Your history is your business and yours alone. If you want me to know that's good. It means I can help you, but other than that, no one else ever has to know, alright?' He nodded, but naturally, all this talk of privacy, Greg's history, and everything else roused suspicion in Amber and she wanted to know what we were talking about. He refused to tell her. The two argued amongst themselves for over an hour, and then turned to me, angrily.

"You'd better tell me," she said.

"It's nothing," I lied. "Really. Greg tells me things, personal things that he never tells anybody about, and the only reason he talks to me is because he knows I'm not going to tell anyone else." Amber gave me the look and for half a second I almost let myself start to believe the things every person who knew about us had told me. I almost thought, my God, she is sort of a bitch. "It's his decision to make, not mine. Make that face at him, if knowing is so important to you." Although I had been planning to sit at her side for a while, I knew I had to stay with him, both for his sake and to get her to lay off.

"I'm not going out with House," she snapped, but I couldn't—wouldn't—betray my best friend, and the only man I'd ever slept with, for some girl, no matter how much I loved her.

"You could be," he chuckled. She rolled her eyes, halfway intrigued. "Don't knock it 'till you try it, sweetheart." A minute passed. "Hey you know what I just realized? Your girlfriend has never seen me naked, has she, Jimmy?"

"Shut up, House," we both said at almost the exact same time. It was a brilliant idea really, he'd distract a person from getting close by simultaneously grossing them out and starting an argument. By the time they were done yelling at him, whoever it was would have forgotten the original conversation, and with any luck, probably wouldn't ever speak to him again. I knew the routine but almost always wound up shocked, just the same. "Please drop it," I pleaded with her futilely.

"That's alright, Wilson. You don't have to do this for me. I knew when I told you that eventually someone else would find out. Guess I haven't got any more choice over who hears my secrets than who you date. She's gonna get mad, and punish you, and eventually make you tell." House was trying to act vulnerable, which was hard because he spent the majority of his life hiding how he felt and so when e really needed to show emotion, it never really worked.

"I'm not telling her, no matter how mad she gets," I swore to Greg, upping his morphine. "And this is none of your business," I explained to my—probably soon to be ex—girlfriend.

"The Hell it isn't! For all I know he could be a cannibalistic serial killer."

"He isn't! This—his secret is about," I stammered. "It happened when he was a little. You don't need to know about this, Amber, really. And it's nothing; this is not a big deal."

"Then why are you turning it into one? If it actually was nothing then you'd just tell me already. The fact that you're both working so hard to hide it means that whatever he's hiding is huge."

"Oh, shut up," I shouted, without thinking about it. As soon as the words flew out of my mouth, I wished I had a net or fishing poll so that I could get them back. It was hard to say which one of the two was more shocked. House got slightly uncomfortable when people started yelling, especially men, even more so with me. Amber and I had argued before, but usually one of three things would happen. Either she would get quiet, walk away from me, seething, or we'd disagree until I agreed and apologized, or she calmed down and we were able to discuss whatever the fight had been about. Even though we'd been through the motions, and had serious blowouts, I had never yelled at her before. "I'm sorry, but you really need to let this go."

"I'm gonna tell her—maybe it'll feel better to tell someone. I don't know. Is that weird?"

"No, it's not weird. I've read a book or two on the subject—'cuz I thought they might help—and it said one of the reasons these things have such a lasting effect on people like you is the secrecy aspect of… You weren't allowed to talk about it for years, and so it built up more and more, but now, you get to control it by telling or not telling whoever you chose. And the more you decide to talk about it, the less power the secret has."

"Aww, was someone mean to itty, bitty baby House," she taunted, but then stopped upon seeing the distressed look on his face. "Oh." The word came out short and flatly. "Oh boy."

"Yeah." Greg looked at me for a long time, then sighed, ran a hand through his hair, scratched his chin, and depressed the button to deliver more painkillers "It's not that big of a deal, at least it shouldn't be. All of this happened a long time ago. I was scared out of my mind when I was a little kid, as I should have been, but…all grown up now," he murmured. I was about to tell House that he didn't have to talk if he didn't want to, when he finally blurted it out. "My dad used to beat the crap out of me and stuff."

"And stuff?" Amber pressed, bordering on gentle. This was a side of her that (until now) I had been the only person to see, but that one instance of kindness wasn't enough to get through to him. He simply shrugged. "Okay—um, you talk to Wilson about this, right?" He nodded. "I don't know why I just did that. It was stupid of me."

"No kidding," House said, laughing a little, only he hadn't calmed down, not even close. Greg just wanted her to think he was okay so she would leave him alone for a while. In reality he was freaking out, but he'd been hiding his true feelings for years, and was really good at it.

"Yeah, sure, go ahead, be mean to me, but if you're not careful, I won't keep that promise I made in the bus." I knew Greg didn't remember this, and it was the first I had heard of it, so we were both confused. "I was trying to keep him conscious. So, I said that if he kept taking to me, I said that if he stayed awake, I'd let you stay at his place three nights a week." As though hearing this for the first time, House's eyes practically lit up.

'I'd like that," he said quietly. "But how do—I don't believe you, sorry."

"You wanna sign a blood oath?' she suggested, in that overly sarcastic tone. I think that was the biggest problem between them, the excessive use of sarcasm. It kept the two from making a real, personal connection. "We can figure out a schedule when we're both healthy enough to spend a night alone."

"What if I have a bad—what if I can't sleep, or have a—what if I need him when it's not my turn?"

"If you don't abuse the privilege, we can make a condition that if either person needs him and it's not our turn, they can have him. If all of these things are alright with you, that is. Are they?" I had to admit that this was actually a brilliant compromise. I never would have considered asking either one of them for it myself, mainly because—before this—neither one would have agreed to it. I don't know if it was the bus accident, the fact that they were both injured, and on pain medication, or maybe it had just taken them a while to figure out how to deal with each other, but finally the two were starting to get along. Sort of.

"Yeah, I think that's a great idea. I can't believe you're both agreeing on anything, but I'm glad. I mean, uh, this is good, and I know that House sometimes needs to spend time with me, for more than an hour or two, and so—this is really good."