Title: Illusions
Author: Tubesox
Pairing: House/Wilson, House/Cuddy (implied)
Rating: R for language and content
Disclaimer: They aren't mine, and no amount of wishing can make it so.
Summary: Wilson and Cuddy try to piece together the past after House has a second infarction.
Author's Note: I'm going to come out and say that this is OOC. I did it deliberately, and I'm not sure how well it works, but I'm still glad I tried. I wanted to pull out some elements from canon and really exaggerate them to see where it could lead. The results aren't very pretty. In fact, they're quite ugly so let that serve as a major angst warning. Plus, I played around with structure, both in the timeline of the piece and in the spacing.
---
"It's wrong, you know," Cuddy murmured. Wilson looked down at the cold hand held tightly between his, at the clean-shaven face of an unconscious Gregory House, at the empty space where a leg should have been. So much of what he saw was wrong that he couldn't begin to respond.
"You're his prescribing physician," she hissed, and Wilson couldn't believe it had come to this, with all the years between them.
"Do you really want to point fingers here?" he growled, making a show of interlacing Greg's fingers with his own. Cuddy's face crumbled and he had a moment of regret, but he couldn't bring himself to comfort her. He knew what she'd done. He might have done the same thing if given the chance, and that only made him resent her more.
"Don't you dare pin this on me!' she yelled, making him hold onto House's hand just a bit tighter. "You agreed to the surgery."
"I'm not talking about the surgery."
---
Eight months earlier…
"I'll get a syringe," Cuddy told him, before slipping out of her office. She made it to an empty exam room before she broke down. Years. It had been years since she had seen that scar and years since he had thrown it in her face like that. Sure, casual references to his bum leg weren't really casual, but he'd never used their past against her because he knew it was out of her hands, just as it was out of his. And now…she almost wished he was doing this to get back at her for something petty like clinic hours. Or even for something as huge and unforgivable as…but no. As much as he flaunted his pain and his pills, he hid any real weaknesses. He grew quiet when he should ask for help. For him to come to her like that, so needy, so pathetic, he must have been in trouble.
So she pulled herself together, got the syringe of morphine, and went back to him.
"Take off your shirt," she quietly instructed as she lowered the blinds.
She let her fingers dance across his back as she looked for the injection site, taking what she wanted before giving him what he needed. He wouldn't have noticed, his muscles tense from the stress of pain, his skin hot from shame. And God did she miss his skin. In another life, her fingers would have been clinging to him here. It was a possibility that had been stripped from them with every layer of tissue they stripped from his thigh.
"Take an hour before going back to work," she said as he buttoned his shirt.
"You know I can't," he answered, before shutting the door behind him.
Cuddy and Wilson sat in the cafeteria after hours, drinking lukewarm coffee and talking about House.
"Stacy's going to screw up what little progress he made after detoxing. It's going to be just another excuse to up the meds," Wilson sighed.
"You don't think anything's wrong?" she asked, frowning. Wilson didn't know about House's visit to her office.
"I didn't see any changes in his labs," he shrugged.
When House came to her later, needing another dose, she couldn't convince herself that the timing didn't look bad. That he hadn't played her for a fool.
"It was saline," she lied. It was a test. When he didn't come back a third time, he failed.
---
Cameron finally convinced Wilson to go home, eight hours after House's surgery. He'd wanted to wait until Greg woke up but he'd agreed that keeping him under until morning was the best way to manage the pain. Or to simply manage him. With the leg gone, everyone was hopeful that the pain would be gone too. Sitting in their apartment in the dark, Wilson wished it could be that easy.
When Cuddy had confronted him, he dismissed it as ridiculous. True, James wrote House's scripts, but he wasn't exactly his primary care giver. But as he sat with Greg, long after Cuddy left, he couldn't help but imagine and re-imagine what had been happening between them since he'd moved in three months ago. Everything had changed so fast. Had he blinked and missed it?
Unable to just sit there and pick through his memories, Wilson launched himself from their couch and started tearing the place apart. He wasn't sure what he was looking for. A journal? What? All he found was evidence that this was now his home. His things in Greg's closet. Their books mingling on the shelves. Drawers filled with both of their clothes. And finally, a near-empty bottle of Vicodin with both of their names on the label. It was too much. When had it become so much?
---
"You really shouldn't," Wilson sighed, watching House down two Vicodin with a mouthful of Scotch.
"And you shouldn't still be sleeping on my couch, but do I throw that in your face?" House responded, pushing the bottle of Scotch towards him with a grin.
"Only every day," Wilson grumbled, himself another glass. It was a Saturday night and he felt good for once. Despite the frustrations that came with living with House, he couldn't deny that he felt…younger these days. House had the remarkable gift of making him forget the world outside of this apartment, if only for a few hours at a time. His failed relationships disappeared. Cancer disappeared. Here, the biggest worries were dirty dishes and juvenile pranks and what to watch on TV. And the uncomfortable fact that House looked incredibly tempting, stretched out on their couch, shirt tight against his chest and a loose smile on his face. A week earlier, drunk in the parking lot of a local bar and still shocked that divorce could cause so much pain, Wilson had stumbled against his best friend and kissed him. To shock him. To steal his warmth. To shut him up. House didn't kiss him back, but he didn't push him away or whack him with his cane either, and neither of them had mentioned it again.
"I'm running low," House announced, interrupting Wilson's musing with a shake of his pills.
"Forget it," Wilson slurred, the Scotch and beer catching up to him. "I just wrote for you."
Instead of arguing, House simply downed another finger of Scotch and passed the bottle back to him.
"You'll let me know if it ever gets really bad, won't you?" Wilson asked him, not expecting an honest answer but hoping for one just the same.
"Why? So you can tell me it's all in my head? Give me a placebo?" House answered.
"I wouldn't do that," Wilson answered, rolling his eyes.
Hours later, Wilson had joined him on the couch, his feet held tight against House's left shoulder.
"I think I'm gonna spew if you don't move your stinky feet," House grumbled, ineffectually twisting on his side to get more comfortable and a better view of the TV.
Wilson moved his feet, pulling them up and trying to maneuver them around House's legs. One ended up on the floor. The other ended up in House's lap.
"Jesus!" House gasped, fumbling his half-empty bottle of beer and letting it fall to the floor.
"Sorry," Wilson mumbled, and House stared at his blushing friend as Wilson flexed his toes once, twice, before moving his foot to the floor. Wilson wouldn't meet his eyes, but he didn't exactly look ashamed. House turned away, glancing off into the distance, and Wilson wonders now if he was looking at that near-empty bottle of Vicodin on the table.
"Come on," House finally said, sitting up and dragging his leg around before standing unsteadily and making his way to his bedroom.
In the morning, Wilson had awoken in a tangle of limbs and to a nightmare of pain. House's back was sleek with sweat and his hands were digging into Wilson's arm as he gasped for air and tried to curl in upon himself.
"Ow!" Wilson yelped, trying to pry Greg's fingers from his arm. "House, what the fuck?!"
"Vicodin!" he half-gasped, half-shrieked, and as Wilson bounded out of the room to fetch the pills, he looked over his shoulder and saw the towel on the floor next to House's side of the bed. When had he taken a shower? And was that blood?
When they drove together to the hospital that Monday, Wilson wrote a prescription for nearly double the amount of Vicodin that he normally gave House. And eventually, Greg stopped showering immediately after they made love.
---
Wilson couldn't stay in the apartment. He'd torn everything asunder. Everything, including his hope that he'd been building something with House in the last few months. He wouldn't assume that House had been lying the whole time, faking it all to score more drugs, until he actually spoke to the man. But he couldn't help feeling that everything was a lie. He couldn't help but hate Greg for ruining it all. It would make it easier, if he could hate him. When Greg woke up and saw what they'd taken away from him, he'd never forgive them. He'd never forgive them.
So James drove back to Princeton Plainsboro. At four in the morning, the halls were still dark and nearly empty and no one bothered him as he stood outside House's room, staring at his best friend. He was still unconscious, and Wilson found it odd that what was more disconcerting was how Greg's face was so young without the scruff. The day before, a nurse new to the hospital had given him a shave. A new face to go with the new body.
Unable to keep staring and keep quiet, Wilson went up to his office to read the file that he'd read a hundred times since Greg had collapsed. A list of pills. A deceptive MRI. But it was an entry that didn't belong there that caught his eye again. That damned morphine. While the surgeons had been amputating House's leg, Wilson had been obsessing about this morphine, the only thing he could do at that point. Everything else was history. He knew what would happen next. He clung to Greg's file and hoped that if he somehow found the answer to this nightmare, he'd spare himself. It's not my fault, he kept telling himself as he stared at the file. He can't leave me if it's not my fault.
"I didn't think you'd come back so soon," Cuddy said. Wilson hadn't heard her come in.
"Why are you here?"
"Just because I'm not sleeping with him doesn't mean I can't care about him," she snapped.
"You mean anymore," Wilson accused.
---
"Did you miss me?" he asked her. This was after their brief fling in college, and before either of them had met Stacy. They'd noticed each other at a conference and after a few well-aimed barbs and lewd remarks, they drove down to the cape for dinner and a chance to catch up. Now, they were full of crabs and wine and a too-rich chocolate torte. Lisa was making faces at the cigar smoke circling in the air and he was trying to blow smoke rings.
"You were never boring," she replied. A non-answer, but Greg let it go.
"I could keep you entertained," he leered. "Floor show is notoriously cheap but quite a spectacle."
"Dancing poodles? Acrobatic feats?"
"I've kept myself trimmed," he smirked, stealing the last sips of her wine.
"Pity," she purred, surprising herself, but only a bit, as she stroked his smooth cheek with her cold palm. "I always like it a bit rough."
"Please. I've never met someone so adamant about the missionary position," he teased, grabbing her hand and leading her fingers to his mouth.
"I've picked up a few things. Anatomy classes. Enlightening."
"Oh, now you're speaking my language."
"One of six?" she asked, still impressed. By his brain. By his wit. By his tongue on her fingertips. His smell, his eyes, his ability to hold his liquor.
"Seven," he corrected.
"I thought it was six?"
"Everybody lies."
"Do you?"
He had been playing with her hair, wrapping the curls around his long fingers and releasing them, taking pleasure in their soft elasticity. In the residue of sweat clinging in a film to his fingertips. But her question made him look up. He tried to be an honest man. Not because of some moral code, because that sense of self-righteous superiority was what sickened him about his father, but because he dealt in truths in his profession. There was no room for white lies, for false hope, for embarrassing secrets. They slowed him down, and that was something he couldn't bear. But did he ever lie? Of course. He wasn't very good at it, he'd admit. He'd often try to work around the truth with words, counting on short attention spans and lack of discernment to see him through. If it was something important he was lying about, he nearly always got caught. But little things...if he spent seventy percent of his day speaking with a sarcastic tone, it became difficult to differentiate between being an asshole and being a liar.
"I can," he finally answered.
Later, he gasped, "I could love you." As his heartbeat slowed and her grip on his shoulders loosened, he wondered if the fact of him being inside her was proof enough of a lack of discernment. As he fell asleep, he imagined himself as an infection, and ran through a differential diagnosis in his head.
---
"Why are you so angry with me?" Cuddy demanded, wishing she could just not care about the answer. House had never been hers. Certainly, Wilson hadn't.
"It's your fault!" Wilson shouted, tossing House's chart at her chest. They stared as the papers cascaded to the floor.
"You were writing for him!" she accused, unwilling to be blamed this time. "You should have seen that he was taking more. You were fucking him, for Christ's sake!"
"And you shouldn't have lied about the morphine!" he yelled back, voice cracking from grief and rage.
"What –."
"I know what you did. He thought it was a placebo."
"So I didn't want the morphine to become a habit. You said it yourself months ago. It didn't look like anything was wrong!"
"You lied to him! If you…maybe he would have said he needed help!"
"I thought he did," she answered softly. "You didn't believe him either."
---
"Come on. If you want me to drive, we're leaving in ten minutes."
"Yes, mom."
"No reason to antagonize Cuddy further. You know she knows about us."
"And whose fault is that?"
"I didn't hear you complaining at the time."
"My leg hurts."
"Excuses, excuses. Will you get out of bed already?"
---
"Is it still bad?"
"---."
"Maybe you just pulled a muscle."
"You gonna call that hooker for me? Make nice?"
"She was a masseuse."
"You just don't want to share your toys."
"I don't play well with others."
"Tell me about it. You bite and everything."
---
"How about a wheelchair race to the lobby?"
"Oh no. Last time you almost railroaded me into Brenda!"
"I'll stay in the lines this time. I'll even give you a head start."
"Forget about it. You'd probably just ram your cane into my spokes and we'd have a pile-up on our hands."
"We can enlist a pit crew. Gurney derby! I'll take the wombat, you get the girl, and Foreman can be the cheering section. Where's a decent poodle skirt when you need one?"
"If I'd be stuck with Cameron I may as well forfeit now."
"Oh, you'd have a fighting chance. I've seen her run."
"Maybe, but where's the upper arm strength?"
"Good point. Cuddy?"
"She'd just push me down the stairs. Are you sure you guys never –?"
"She's always jealous when people are gettin' some. I wouldn't take it personally. Cameron, though. You might want to watch out there. You don't need upper arm strength to kick someone in the balls."
"And with that lovely thought, let's go. On foot."
"Pussy."
"House."
"Go on ahead. I'll meet you down there in a few."
---
"Not tonight."
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong. I just don't feel like it."
"You haven't felt like it in a week."
"You're welcome to find another outlet for your pent up lust, Wilson. Wouldn't want you to feel deprived."
"Is it the Vicodin? I know you've been taking more."
"Just because I don't feel like fucking doesn't mean I'm incapable of it."
"Fine. Sorry."
"Just go to sleep."
"I'm serious. About the pills."
"Christ! Persistent little bastard, aren't you?"
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
"Fine. Get over here. How is it that we've gone from me holding out to you holding out?"
"Three wives. I know how it's done."
"If you take away my candy, I'll take away your candy?"
"Something like that."
"Fine. Let's get this over with."
"Now that's the sweet talk I've come to expect from you."
"Don't complain too much or I'll start calling you Sweetums. In the Oncology ward."
"Whatever you say, honey bunny."
"Nice. Pulp Fiction reference is your idea of foreplay. Surprised you haven't moved on to bring out the gimp."
"Where's a ball-gag when you need one?"
---
Cuddy and Wilson stared at the history scattered on the ground. House's history. Now, both could imagine what had happened. The pain got worse. The morphine helped. But Cuddy told him it was a placebo, and suddenly House was stripped of the only control he'd ever had over his pain - this knowledge that it was real and that it was manageable. For a while, he could pretend that it wasn't really worse. He could convince himself that it was in his head, that the thing with Stacy had fucked him up in more ways than he'd thought. But he couldn't ignore it forever. His leg hurt. So he started taking more and more pills, washing them down with more and more booze. Then Wilson had moved in with him and the relief of company fought against the relief of narcotics, but only for a little while. Soon, he was lying to get what he needed, hoping that he could just make himself happy enough that he wouldn't hurt so bad. Because it was all in his head, wasn't it? Everything was a lie, even his pain, so what did it matter that he lied to himself to make it better? What did it matter that he lied to Wilson? They both got what they needed. But by then, House was taking so much Vicodin that he didn't even notice the new pain, this teardrop in an ocean. Maybe if he had, they could have caught it in time.
---
"House?" Foreman repeated.
"You three take care of it," House commanded, turning on his Gameboy and pointedly ignoring them until they left his office.
He couldn't remember what they were saying. New patient, new symptom, new failure? He couldn't concentrate. His body ached and his stomach was churning and his head…he just couldn't concentrate and he felt sick and heavy and it was all wrong. Suddenly, everything felt all wrong. He couldn't work and he couldn't breathe and when he thought that he should find Wilson, he started hyperventilating. He lowered his forehead to his desk and tried to think it all out. Was he sick? He felt pain when he should be feeling nothing, with all those pills he'd swallowed upon waking up. Waking up with Wilson's arms around him. So wrong. And he couldn't breathe, and he wondered if he was finally cracking up. Was it all in his head? It couldn't be the thing with Wilson. True, it didn't feel right, but it did feel good. Except the mornings. I could tell him to be more gentle, he thought, quietly laughing to himself. But maybe that was it. Maybe their nights had been a bit too rough lately. He wasn't as young as he used to be. Maybe he was just all fucked out. Maybe he needed a break. Or his leg needed a break. He was fine, he was sure. All in his head, this blind panic he felt now and again. But again, maybe it was the drugs. So many pills. It wasn't right. He should have been back to normal by now. He rarely thought of Stacy. He rarely thought of anything beyond cases and when the next prescription would be filled. He remembered the week he detoxed, the talk he had with Wilson. Breathe, god damnit. Was he still functional? Why did he let his team just walk away with a case? Why the hell did he feel so heavy? Maybe he should get Wilson. Wilson, whom he did love, only not in the way that he perhaps should. But Wilson would worry and ask questions or maybe just say it was nothing House go get a hooker anything get thee a wife anything but no more pills no more no more just have another beer get me one too and let's go to bed I'll make you feel good. Maybe he should go to Cuddy, but what would she do? She already thought he was pathetic and who could blame her, going into her office like that and begging like a dog with a broken heart. He was just having a bad week. His leg was acting up. Maybe it was the cold. The rain. This last case. This last year. Maybe he just needed some coffee. Where was Cameron? Where was everyone? Where was his leg?
---
Wilson's pager went off and he was out the door, foot sliding a bit when he stepped on the papers but he held his ground, Cuddy close behind him.
"My leg hurts," House groaned when they came into his room.
"Greg - ," Lisa began, but she just couldn't go on.
"James, my leg hurts," he went on, eyes closed tight against the pain and the light in the room.
"Greg. It's gone," Wilson soothed, grabbing hold of Greg's hand, wincing at the flinch.
"I need my pills," Greg begged.
"Up the morphine," Wilson whispered to Cuddy.
"It's saline," Greg answered. "I need something real."
"This is real," Cuddy corrected, pushing the morphine.
"Where's my leg?" Greg whimpered. Words washed over him as the morphine flooded his veins. Another infarction. Too much waste. All was wasted. All was gone.
---
"You were right," Wilson said, walking into her office and trying not to stare as Cuddy wiped the tears from her cheeks. "It is wrong. I just didn't realize how…I didn't see what I was doing."
"I shouldn't have said anything," she answered. "Especially not now. I don't know why I did."
"Yes you do."
"I never thought we'd be here again," she sighed, staring again at the file they had both practically memorized over the past two days. In a funny way, she realized, House was their Ester. But she couldn't see how they would ever make this right.
"He can't blame you for this," Wilson said, taking a seat across from her.
"It's my hospital."
"It was my call."
"So he'll blame both of us."
What we need is to put up a united front
Absolutely
We don't let him walk all over us
He could detox here as an inpatient
And we'll get him into PT
And a support group
And a support group
You think we should keep his team away from him for a while
Cameron probably wouldn't help
Or should we let him jump back in to work
If he wants to stay here
He'll stay
I don't see that he has much of a choice
We don't let him push us away
We give him some space
But stay at his place
He'll be fine in a few months
"He'll never be fine."
"He'll never forgive us."
"We both did what we thought was best."
He can't leave us if it's not our fault.