"I hope you're not crying. You should be watching this at my funeral, if all goes to plan. God that sounds weird still. Funeral plans. I'm not even fifty. But it's time. I know I said that yesterday, but there were things I had to do. I couldn't… I have to do his alone."
Wilson sighed, shivering a little through his two sweaters.
"I couldn't do this to him. I couldn't ask him to help, because he would. He would help me end my life, but I cannot get him into any more trouble than he's already in, and I would like to mention that so there are witnesses. He has no idea. Well, actually, he probably does. It is him after all. God, I'm so sorry."
He wiped a tear from his cheek. Just the one. He'd cried enough at the beginning, he wasn't going to bow out in floods of tears.
"He's going to do the right thing and hand himself in once this is over. He probably thinks I've forgotten that he promised to do so. I couldn't forget. He's probably sitting with you, if they've let him come… Oh god, he won't be able to come. Crap."
Two tears was the limit. He was not going to cry properly.
"I thought he'd be there to make jokes about how pathetic I'm being. He means it in a good way, deep down. Deep, deep down, he's actually a truly decent guy. He's someone I'm proud to have known, someone I've spent the best times in my life with. House, I'm sorry, and I love you. Don't crash your car into anything after I've gone."
Wilson stopped the recording, and then watched the two clips through. He saved it, and left it open for House to find when he came back. He knew it wouldn't be a big enough apology, but he was not going to let this thing kill him slowly anymore. His time was up.
House approached the front door to their apartment. They'd lived there for the last month. Before then, they'd gone all over the country under different aliases, always incognito. Wilson was getting too weak anymore. House knew the time would end soon. Wilson would die, and he'd hand himself over with faking his death added onto his sentence. That would be fun.
He could hear "Under Pressure" finish, and then begin again.
"You know, I could never figure out which of us was the Bowie and which was Freddie Mercury."
House walked in as he spoke, opening his mouth to explain his reasons for Wilson clearly being Freddie Mercury when he saw him.
Still, pale, slumped in such a way that House knew instantaneously that he wasn't asleep, even before he looked at the now empty bottle of Vicodin in Wilson's palm.
"That's my poison, not yours. You did that deliberately, didn't you? Always fucking self-sacrificing. I hate you, best bud. I really do." House curled up next to Wilson's cooling body, brushed the hair off his forehead and planted a singular kiss to it.
"Wait for me."