They think they all know, but they don't.
Wilson, especially.
House drops onto his couch with a grunt and lays his can of beer on the coffee table. He turns on the television. He sets his cane down beside him and automatically reaches inside his pocket. His fingers close over his constant companion; he fishes out the amber bottle of Vicodin.
People keep saying that the handsome oncologist is probably the only one who knows him best and cares for him the most, and that he's a fool and a bastard for making the sweet, charming, mild-mannered doctor go through all that crap just for him. He doesn't deserve Wilson. He's a lousy friend, and he doesn't care about anyone but himself.
House snorts.
People are stupid. Well, no surprise there. But yeah, people are stupid, and their analysis of his screwed-up friendship with the Boy Wonder is no exception. Wilson himself is no exception. Wilson is the stupidest of them all.
Stupidest. Crap. That's not even a word. Or is it? House shakes his head and pops open the bottle of pills. Wilson has to stop hanging around him – his stupidity is starting to be contagious. Maybe he should seriously begin to consider that as part of a differential diagnosis…
He rolls the pills on his palm and he stares at them for a while. Then he shrugs and downs them in one gulp. He replaces the lid on the amber container and throws it on his coffee table. The loud rattling indicates his supply is diminishing.
They say he's a complicated man and he likes being in pain. That's because he enjoys hating life, and he chooses to be miserable. Wilson himself said so. House snorts again. Jimmy may be a brilliant doctor – after all, why would House even consider hanging out with someone who has an I.Q. lower than Chase (which isn't an insult to Chase, really) – but Jimmy conveniently forgets the principle of Occam's Razor when it comes to House.
He props his left foot on the coffee table. Then, with a grimace and a muttered curse, he takes his right leg in both hands and hoists it on the table.
People like complicating him. Wilson, especially. They like believing that there's so much more to Gregory House than what they see in the surface. It's like he's a damn onion that has many layers and makes people cry. They'd rather look at him as a tangy bulbous plant than a human being.
House huffs. Human beings are ridiculously easy to understand; he wonders why people keep insisting on complicating their understanding of him. The complications are simple, really. He's in pain. Constant pain. Unbearable pain. He knows pain – it's more intimate with him than his own shadow. That's why he, of all people, wants to eliminate pain, particularly his. Why else is he taking those damn Vicodin pills? Do people actually believe that he likes them because they're not bitter pills, really, they taste like candy – never mind that they're trashing his liver? Because he uses his pain as an excuse to become an addict? Bullshit. People are stupid. Wilson is stupid.
He grabs his can of beer and takes a long gulp. He exhales with a long, satisfied sigh, which is broken shortly by a loud burp. He picks up the remote from the couch and flicks mindlessly on channel after channel until he grows bored and turns the TV off. He takes the beer and drinks again.
People may be stupid, but not too much to actually want pain. Why else do doctors use anesthesia? Why else do couples proclaim wedding vows even if they really love each other? Why else do people never forget to pack a box of tissues or an extra hanky before they go to a wake or a funeral?
Because they know cutting the skin with a blade or a needle or some other piece of metal hurts. Because they know there's always the option of divorce and the possibility – heck, the inevitability – of extramarital affairs. Because they know that when they see the coffin or the vase that contains the cremated remains, they'll remember that it used to be a human being and they'll cry because damn it that used to be someone they love who pays the bills for them. People know they'll experience pain, but they don't want to, and that's why they try to find ways to eliminate pain – or at least make them forget it exists, even for a short while. Pain never ceases to make its presence known – it's as stubborn as Wilson. Stupid Wilson.
House takes the amber bottle, pops it open, pauses for a moment to consider, before he sighs and replaces the lid. He tosses it back to the table.
It's funny how people like to believe he's an exception. Oh sure, he may be cooler than God sometimes, but House knows he's human. He's not stupid enough to think otherwise. And like every human being, he doesn't want to be in pain. He's crazy enough to kill a patient so he can bring her to life again – isn't it cool how he can do the modern-day Lazarus thing? – but he's not crazy enough to actually seek pain. Even addicts do drugs to escape pain. The phrase applies just a bit more literally when it comes to him.
Human beings are simple to understand. Pain is a bit more complicated.
He drops his head against the couch and stares at the ceiling. The constant tick, tick, tick, of the wall clock resounds in the room. After a while, he decides he can't take the silence anymore and turns on the TV again.
There are two kinds of pain. There's the kind you can't control (you couldn't have stopped the truck that crashed into your wife's car and killed her), and the one you can control (but you can take out your gun and shoot the drunk driver in the head – if he isn't already dead). And because human beings are simple-minded idiots, they'd rather face the pain they can control – and that's why they hurt themselves. It's not because they're masochistic or altruistic (shyeah right, House thinks, there's no such thing); it's because dopamine lights up in their brain and brings them pleasure because of their self-inflicted pain. It's because the pain they can control gives them an excuse to forget the pain they can't control – or at least delay its coming.
House frowns as he realizes he's out of beer. He grabs his cane and hoists himself up with a grunt. He hobbles to the kitchen, opens the refrigerator door, peers inside, frowns, and takes out the whole six-pack. He hobbles back to the living room, curses loudly as he bumps his knee on the corner of a cabinet, puts the six-pack down beside his bottle of Vicodin, and drops back to the couch.
People wonder why he chooses to be alone. He pushes away everyone who dares to get too close – Wilson being the most persistent and most stubborn among them. House doesn't understand why a supposedly smart doctor like Wilson can't take a very obvious hint. Anyone else would have gotten the message by now and get out of House's way whenever he's within a two-mile radius, but no, Boy Wonder likes to annoy him by staying. Boy Wonder just can't get the hint that House doesn't want him to stay.
He opens his second can of beer. He considers putting his feet back up again, but decides that it's too much trouble if ever he needs to go to the bathroom to pee. He sits back on the couch with a resigned sigh.
He remembers Wilson telling him how he likes testing their friendship. The younger doctor said something about House wanting to prove the theory that he doesn't need human relationships in order to live. House snorts again as he gulps down a mouthful of beer. He can't believe how utterly stupid Wilson is. His reasoning alone is already faulty. House knows he needs to connect to another human being. He once sought that connection, found it it, treasured it, and had been happy – and had that happiness cruelly taken away from him. He isn't testing anything. He knows what's going to happen, and he's doing his damnest to protect Wilson from it.
The cold liquid slides down his throat, warming the insides of his gut. It's a warmth that isn't felt by the rest of his body.
He couldn't stop Stacy from screwing his leg and then screwing his heart by leaving him. He couldn't control the pain that brought – the pain it still brings. His cane and his empty bed is a constant reminder of that. He doesn't want to one day walk into the office of the Head of the Oncology and find that the letters embossed on the door now bear an unfamiliar name. He wants to control the pain that might bring while he still can.
And damn Jimmy isn't cooperating.
The living room is momentarily rocked by sounds of an explosion coming from the television set. House stares unseeingly at the shoot 'em up movie playing on cable, watching as the colors of ashes and fire and burnt metal flicker over the screen.
He doesn't blame Stacy for leaving. If he's being honest to himself, he doesn't even really blame her for making him a cripple for life. It had been the kind of thing that neither of them can control – life just sucks that way. But more than his leg, more than Stacy marrying another man, it's what she told him when she returned – only to leave him again – that hurt him the most.
"With you, I was alone."
He doesn't want to be miserable. He doesn't want to be alone. He doesn't want to be in pain. But apparently, that's all he's made of. That's all he ever could be, no matter how much he doesn't want to be. And he never wanted to be contagious, never wanted to make other people be miserable, alone, and in pain just like him – but then again, this is the kind of pain he can't control.
"With you, I was alone."
The pain of knowing that when he lets himself be happy, he makes the people he love miserable.
"With you, I was alone."
Wilson will choose to stay with him. He's an idiot that way. But sooner or later, he'll feel alone too. And House would have to deal with the fact that his presence – his mere existence – made another person feel alone just because that person cared for him. And House knows that's not a fair deal. He may be a gambler, but he doesn't cheat. And he knows there's only one way to win this game.
He has to choose the pain he can control.
His gaze lingers to the amber bottle on the table. It reflects the inferno burning the screen, making it seem as if it, too, is on fire.
He has to shut people out of his life. He has to bear the pain in his leg – and everything else that comes with it – by himself, because this is the kind of pain he can control, the kind of pain he's already familiar with. He has to deliberately hurt Wilson, to push him away, to break him if that's what it takes to make him finally leave, because then House will know that there is precisely a reason for Wilson to be angry at him, to be disappointed in him, to be saddened by him. House would take comfort in knowing that when he finally succeeds in pushing Wilson away, Wilson's eventual hatred of him is justified. House would rather push Wilson out of his life and know Wilson felt alone for a reason, than let Wilson in his life completely and make him feel alone without even trying, without even meaning to, without even knowing why.
House would rather be the cause of Wilson's misery, because if he knows the cause, he can take it away. Stacy had been enough. He doesn't want to be helpless to Wilson's misery too.
"With you, I was alone."
Unwittingly, his hand begins to massage his right thigh. The effect of the Vicodin is wearing off – his leg is beginning to hurt again. His body's tolerance of the narcotic is steadily rising, and soon it will reach a point when it won't help with the pain anymore. Oddly enough, he is comforted by this. This is how he wants things to be. He chooses to live with the pain that will never leave him than to live with the happiness that can. Perhaps then… he does choose to be miserable. But he takes comfort in knowing why, and knowing he has protected Wilson from it.
The movie abruptly ends and credits begin to crawl upward on the screen. House blinks at the can of beer in his hands and wonders at the direction his thoughts had led him to.
Huh, he thinks vaguely. Maybe I AM a complicated man.