AN: the first bit is sort of a flashback, just in case you couldn't tell. Also, sorry about the sad, sort of cliffhanger ending, but I didn't want to try and do too much at once.
"I dunno, Greg. It's not that I don't wanna do it, I'm just not sure this is the best time for…well, that," I explained, staring at House—who was practically naked in my bed, and staring up at the ceiling as if something fascinating were up there. "What does it feel like?" My cheeks and neck suddenly felt ten degrees warmer.
"Might as well ask me what it feels like to walk on the moon, for all the good a description would do you. This is just one of those things you've gotta experience for yourself, Jimmy." I'd nodded, nervously, as I climbed onto the mattress beside him. "And you need to relax, majorly. If you don't chill out, you're not only going to not have fun, but it's going to turn tonight into a major bummer." I started to apologize, but he didn't seem to care. "I brought my bong too, not—I'm just thinking that pot will calm you down a little, and since I already dropped, I probably shouldn't be working so hard to get you to join in. First time it's usually better to have a 'babysitter,' just in case."
"Oh," I said. Thank God, I thought. "So it's scary the first time?" House waved his hand back and forth. Then, he started flapping it around, in front of his eyes. He had smiled, watching the trails that I believed to be coming off his fingers.
"If you're not interested, you're not interested," Greg said, sitting up and turning to face me. 'More for me." I sighed, whishing he would at least try and explain it to me so I could make a somewhat informed decision. I'd only known him for about a year, but I already understood that he—unlike me—tended to jump into stuff without any sort of forethought believing that he would figure things out eventually, 'or die with a smile on my face,' as he'd once said. I tended to be more cautious, reserved, and—according to House—chicken.
"Can I do like half of one—you know, thing?" He laughed, of course, but ripped the stamp in two, handing a piece over. Nearly an hour passed. After a while, I was starting to think that maybe half an acid tab wasn't enough to do anything. I got up to go to the bathroom. That's when I saw it. I remember feeling startled, but I didn't realize that I had turned and peed all over the floor until the next afternoon. "House," I called, nervously, and he ran over, making some snide comment bout how my dick wasn't half as big as I currently perceived it to be, but when he saw my face (which must have seemed as terrified as I felt) he changed his tune. "I think the bath tub is on fire." On his face, I saw stifled laughter, but Greg was nice enough to wait until I came down to mock me. He only asked why I thought this. "It's all full of smoke, can't you see? It's like it's the smoke is water, sort of, but not really. The stuff's gotta be coming from somewhere. You know what they say, 'where there's smoke, there's fire.'"
"Well, that is a possibility, but before we dial 911, you might wanna remember that while you only ingested the world's smallest dose, you're still, technically, high on LSD," he explained, kindly—coming from him—as he patted my shoulder.
"So that's just in my head," I asked stupidly. He nodded, smiling a little, but continuing to hold back hysterical laughter. "Are you seeing it too? Too bad; this is so cool. I could stand here and watch it all day."
"Just don't forget to look down before you zip up," House exclaimed. "Or you could just do the safe thing and get naked, like me." I did take my clothes off, but we didn't have sex that night. Even though we haddone it before, he said something about being to out of it to screw me. It took years to realize that he was trying to protect me. We spent a lot of the night in bed, holding hands and watching the lightshow on my ceiling.
Back then, I was under the impression that House + hallucinations would always = fun. When Greg first came to me about the new hallucinations, I was almost able to make myself believe that this might be a new game. Maybe he'd given himself another migraine and was taking street drugs again, or something. Then, I saw the look in his eyes. Danny used to get the look a lot—I was pretty sure he still got it, but didn't see him enough to know for sure. For days, I prayed for it to be the pills. A sober House wouldn't be half as much fun as I'd gotten used to, and he'd been in pain all the time, but we'd learn to live with it. I prayed for anything except Schizophrenia, because I wasn't sure I could deal with having to see him make that face every day, for the rest of his life.
I told him all of this on my second (and his fifth) day in his new hospital. "Sorry, Jimmy," Greg said, mostly because he had absolutely no idea what I wanted from him and was still searching for the right response.
"It's okay. Technically, I think I was apologizing to you," I confessed. He looked more like he was angry, surprised, or both because I was apologizing again for something that wasn't my fault and didn't require an apology. "I guess I just don't like these places much. Hurry up and get better so we can go home," I taunted, trying to be extremely careful so that he wouldn't be too—whatevered—by my comments.
"Frankly, I'd be worried about you if you didn't hate this place. It's not Disneyland; it's a nuthatch. Don't get me wrong, they try their best to make us crazy people feel comfortable, but even the," he cut himself off. "This isn't supposed to be a permanent home. It's designed to build us back up as close to functioning, healthy, normal people as possible, so we can go home. So we can get back to our lives."
"Yeah, but it's gotta suck for you, knowing that that is never going to happen. Your team can't even ask you for official consults, because if something went wrong—even something you had nothing to do with—the hospital would be liable, and…well, you know." He shrugged, but his eyes had that far away expression, and I knew he was deep in thought. So, I stayed at his side all morning, watching as he picked at his breakfast, took his meds, and then I waited during his session with the shrink, after which he was even more quiet than he had been before it. In the day room, Greg let me sit with him and use the colored pencils from his table. I suspected this was, mostly, because it meant he didn't have to share with the other patients. I doodled little hearts, and smiley faces and things, without really looking at them, while he worked on a drawing of his own. He insisted on covering the paper up, hiding it from me, until he was "finished." He wasn't done by bedtime, and made me swear I wouldn't look overnight. So, I didn't. The next day, I had to leave for a while around 10:00, to deal with some work stuff, freeing up my schedule so I could spend more time with House and not have to worry about getting calls all day.
Then, I called in every favor anyone had ever owed me—and a few that I had yet to earn— to get the hospital to allow me to bring Steve McQueen to the hospital and allow House to keep the rat in his room. Unfortunately, he was not happy to see us. "Why are you bringing him here? I'm all weird, and messed up, and doped to the gills, and drooling! I don't want him to see me like this."
"His brain is the size of a peanut. I highly doubt he's going to notice that you're different than usual. Although I am pretty sure he knows the difference between us. Unless, he pees all over you when you try and feed him too." Greg smirked.
"Well, he's used to me, but I'm still much, much, much, much bigger than him, and once in a while, he does get a little freaked out by me. But mostly, I think he likes me. Probably 'cuz I give him cheese and peanut butter crackers all the time. He seems to like me, seems to try and climb all over me, and jumps up onto my arm and walks all the way up my arm. I think he thinks it's some kind of a game, but I'm not—or maybe he just likes climbing stuff." A minute went by. "I tried to let him go free once. I put him in his little ball, and 'accidentally' left the latch open. He got out, but just scurried over to me, and sat by my hand, waiting to get picked up." I was about to tell him just how sweet I thought that was when he made a sad, little face. "He's a wild animal. He should want to escape."
"I think you're projecting. You don't want to be here, but you know you have to, and so you don't even think about running or stuffing your meds into a little slit in the mattress, or planning to overthrow the hospital. Now, Steve—on the other hand—is a rat. He lives to eat, sleep, crap, pee, and climb on stuff. Sometimes all at once." I made this joke, as I watched his face to make sure he wasn't offended or hurt. "I think he stayed because he remembers whet it was like to be alone, cold, hungry. Even living with you and sleeping in a cage is preferable to being homeless and scared."
"Now who's projecting," he mocked. This time House watched me before continuing. "You can relax, Wilson. I'm not gonna run away. If they every put Vicodin in vending machines, then you might be in trouble, but until that day, you're stuck taking care of me. And, I know, you don't see it that way. Neither do I. Not really." I wrapped my arm around his shoulder.
"Greg, I love you," I whispered. "I'm sorry; but I just…this situation sucks. I'm terrified of losing you, but it's always been like that. First I thought you'd just get hurt and die, from some weird, crazy thing you tried. Then, with the pills—I thought…you know, and now I'm afraid that I'm gonna lose you to this and I—but I can't put this kind of pressure on you…" Even Greg saw how bad I seemed to be doing. "I'm so sorry. I guess we're both freaking out a little, which is especially bad because I'm supposed to be the one taking care of you."
"Jimmy, the people at this hospital supposed to be the ones taking care of me. That's their job. You're my best friend. Okay, you're my only friend but if I had more than one friend you'd still be number one. Your job is to hold me, and talk to me, and tell me jokes, and pretend like this never happened—to the best of your ability. I'm gonna be fine, regardless of how freaked out you get. But I don't want you to get an ulcer because I'm sick. We're gonna be okay," he promised, and then showed me a big, fake smile. "I finished the picture. Well, finished isn't quite the right word, but this is about as good as it's gonna get. So, might as well let you have it now."
"I can—you're letting me keep it?" He had spent so much time working on this drawing, and had been so determined to keep me from seeing it; I thought that it had to be private, personal. I was amazed he was letting me see it, let alone giving it to me.
"Well yeah. I was making it for you, Jimmy. That's why I worked so hard. Um—one thing, before you see it. I still feel like—I didn't realize until it was almost finished, but I made myself a little kid again. You're in this one, but you're still you though. I—it's us…I dunno. Probably stupid, but you make me feel so good and maybe even a little…nevermind." I smiled, gently and kissed his cheek. I wanted to say something reassuring, but knew it wouldn't help. "So, do you want me to whip it out or what?" I chuckled, and pressed my lips against his face again.
"Come here," I sort of ordered, rubbing his back a little more. "I love you, Greg. I'd really, really like to see your drawing, especially if it makes you feel better having me around—or you know—whatever you want." He made that I'll do whatever you want me to do face, and I didn't know what to tell the poor guy. Finally, he took the piece of paper out and decided to let me look at it.
This picture showed the same little boy from before, only now he had a little smile on his face. I was holding the little guy in my lap, with my arms wrapped around him, and while there were still some shadowy figures (monsters) around the edge of the picture, there was a protective bubble of yellow and gold sparkling light all around us. He had even found some sort of glitter and mixed it in with the crayon and colored pencil shine. It was amazing. I smiled, gently. "Does it make you feel…different in any way, to draw stuff? I mean, uh, sometimes when people talk about something that's bothering them, it helps just getting the stuff out, and I thought that maybe this gives you the same sort of, uh, release—which is why I thought you've been doing it a lot lately." I'm not sure why I thought he might be bothered by what I'd said. House didn't like to let people see him show any sort of emotion. Before he got sick, he barely spoke to me about how he felt or what happened to him as a kid. Now that he was talking to the shrink, he flat out refused to say anything of any real substance to me.
Greg sighed, patting the rat as it sat on his left knee. Steve stood up part way, as if leaning into his touch. A few minutes went by. McQueen squeaked, eating bits of crushed crackers straight out of his hand, and I started to wonder if my question had been forgotten.
"I guess I like drawing more than talking. I don't really know how to describe the way having you round makes me feel. When you're around, I think I'm—I feel sort of "safe," but that's not even the half of it. And—I can't believe I'm saying this. I sound like a three-year-old—the bad things don't bother me as much when you're—when I'm with you." His eyes, which had been staring into mine, shifted down, ashamedly. "I lied. Sort of. You asked me if they turned into monsters and I knew what you meant. You were asking if I was 'seeing' him but I let myself believe that you were asking if I was hallucinating vampires or werewolves or something. Sometimes," he started to say, but stopped himself. "I've only been here for five days and you spent all of last night and most of today with me…at night—when you're not here—he… I think the part of him that's still in my mind—which is what I'm actually seeing—is afraid of you. Or maybe it's because I know you won't let anyone or anything hurt me, which means that the hallucination of him knows it too, which means that I can trick myself into feeling safe enough to not see it anymore." When I tried to say, I understood, he continued. "See, that took like twenty minutes and it's not—I…the picture shows all of it, everything I can't say, and all the stuff I just did, right?"
"Yeah, I mean, look at this guy," I said, pointing to a monster in his picture. "He—it—was flying or running towards you, but it hit the shield, making him—it—bounce back like Wylie Coyote. I'm not trying to trick you into talking to me, I was just…this is, wow. I had no idea I helped you so much. If you need it, I can take some time off work and stay here all the time all day every day until you're ready to come home. And don't say I can't do this. What I can't do is sit back and watch you decompensate. Besides, I'm not gonna be any good to my patients if I'm too worried about you to listen to or treat them." By then, he was actually starting to relax, even fighting back laughter
"Jimmy, I was just gonna say that I like your idea. Obviously part of my mind likes you, or trusts you, or whatever. That's why I never see him when we're together. Just like in the drawing. I'm probably being stupid," he murmured. "You took off so much time last year. If you do it again, Cuddy might fire you. We can't live without money. I have no job, no insurance, nothing."
"House, calm down. Cuddy said I should do whatever I have to, for you, for us. I think she wants to be able to have you around if your team needs advice…on patients. Obviously, she can't keep you on as a doctor, but anyone can give advice and everyone else can decide whether or not to listen, decide how much of your advice to take. She'd give me the next twenty years off, with pay, to make sure I play ball," I explained, pressing my lips to his temple once more. I'm so proud of you, I thought. Most people—if they'd gone through what House had—probably wouldn't even bother if their mind turned against them too, but Greg kept going. "Let's talk about something good okay?" He smiled, squeezing my shoulder, and looking into my eyes. "Remember that time we dropped acid together?"
"Can I have a half of one," he recalled, mocking the younger me. "I almost broke my neck putting up those little glow in the dark stars on the ceiling. Looked like a meteor shower in your dorm room."
"Hey, yeah! I forgot about that part. You always have such great ideas. It's almost impossible to spend time with you and not have fun, even when you're making me miserable." His smile got a tiny bit bigger. "I still love you." He didn't seem to believe me. "I know. This is probably like a million times harder for you, being smart is pretty much all you've got. Or so you think. That's—you're not any less brilliant now. You will always be the same guy who loves to steal my food, who put embarrassing little notes on my desk, in my files and books, and who used to send me those emails." He looked a tiny bit relieved to see that I could do what he wanted and needed. "I bet when you are finally okay to stay at home while I go to work, you're still gonna find ways to mess with me. In fact, I bet you've already thought of stuff." He stared past me again, looking somewhat uncomfortable. "And you don't believe me, do you?" Greg shrugged. "I know; this is a really, really tough disease to learn how to adjust to, but," I started to explain.
"Like you know anything!" I sighed, leaning back, softly stroking his hair, and I said, tell me then. "No! I can't! I just…you've been on the outside of this before. You're even doing exactly the same thing as before. You wanna make up for not being able to take care of your brother. That's why you're taking care of me. It's the only reason."
"I love you. I wouldn't be here if I didn't. I wouldn't have the strength to take care of you. This has nothing to do with Danny. I'd prove it, but I think—I mean—I don't think you're really up for sex stuff, unless it's just kissing and…" He shrugged some more, partially angry, partially too tired to care. I kissed him on the mouth gently, but also with passion and he kissed back for a little while. "See? I could never do that with my baby brother now could I?"
"Well, maybe you two just have a special relationship," he mocked. "Would explain why you blame yourself for doing what every single person in the history of the universe would have done, why you reacted so badly afterwards."
"Danny used to rely on me, like you. Of course I feel bad about what I did, because of what happened as a result. You're right, anyone else would have done what I did, or something else similar to it, and Danny would have done exactly the same thing he did. That has nothing to do with why I'm here. You are not my penance. Got that?" He made another half-assed shrugging gesture.
"I have this—what am I gonna tell my mom?" I sighed once more, rubbing his shoulders and giving him gentle pats her and there. "I mean, how's she gonna feel when she hears that I'm—she's my mom and I'm…I don't want her to know this," he whispered, pressing even closer up against me, burring his face in my shirt again. He wanted to have a relationship with his mother (or so he said) but had yet to do anything about it. If he couldn't trust her to try and help when he was sick, then—I thought—it would never happen.
"I think she could help you. Having people you can trust, is really helpful in these situations. Plus, then I don't hafta hire a nurse to stay at home with you, if you don't wanna be alone when I'm at work or whatever. Or I could just retire and stay home to take care of you full time."
"Oh, that's a good career move," he teased, and pressed his lips against my stomach, and blowing, softly. "Can we at least wait 'til I stop having hallucinations of her dead husband raping me? I don't want her to know what he did, ever." I nodded, and promised I wouldn't make him tell her, or do it myself. "Too bad I can't calculate when I'm gonna be seeing stuff, so you can actually have a life instead of sitting around and watching me drool all day."
"If it wasn't so depressing and disturbing, I'd probably think it was sexy," I said, partially because the idea of him drooling over me—even thought that's not what this was—did seem cute, but mostly to get him to smile or laugh or make fun of me, or something, anything, but he just stared. "Okay, that came out differently than I meant for it to, and now you think I'm a huge jerk."
"Welcome to my world," Greg said, quietly. I touched his hand, and he squeezed mine back. "Can you really take all that time off to be with me?" He was trying to sound uninterested but we both knew how important this was. House was silent for a minute, as I thought it over, but he spoke up again before I could say anything. "'cuz you said you think my mom might wanna help, and I dunno, maybe she, maybe just having someone around who makes me feel secure is all it takes to keep me calm enough to make me okay." I wasn't sure (as often happened with House) what exactly he was trying to do, but I had it limited to a few possibilities. He might have wanted to see how quickly I'd bail on or abandon him, or he may have wanted what he said, to see if his mom would help. He had wanted a relationship with her for years but couldn't have had one because of her husband. There were other possibilities, he also might have wanted me to say it wouldn't work, or for me to get her to come, only for it not to work out. This was a complicated situation. "You look like you're worried about something," he offered, trying to sound helpful.
"I'm not sure what you really want. So, for the most part. I'm trying to figure that out. I don't want to make everything worse." This received a hearty laugh. "Really want me to call and try to ask her to come?"
"I figure, if anybody can work it out, that's you. It's gonna be bad when you tell her, though. Real bad. I'm her," he started to say something, probably a nickname she'd had for him when he was little. "Just wish you could get my mom out here, without her having to find out I've lost my mind." I nodded again, pressing my lips against his forehead. "You're supposeda say, 'she's you're mother, she's gonna love you no matter what.'"
"And then you say, 'that's the biggest load of crap I ever heard,' and I say something like…I dunno. I'm just gonna call her, okay?" Greg shrugged again, rolling onto his side, possibly to give me some privacy, but more likely because he still couldn't stand for me to see him crying, or whatever he was doing. "If I go out in the hall, to talk to her, will you be okay?" No response. "I just—this is gonna be one Hell of a conversation, but I guess it's okay to talk in front of you." He nodded some more, but didn't seem to be paying much attention to anything besides the TV.
House's mom reacted almost exactly as I'd expected. I had no idea how to break the news to her, so I didn't say right off the bat what was happening. She knew I wasn't calling to say that Greg had been nominated for a Nobel Prize. When I finally did tell her he'd been diagnosed with Schizophrenia, she asked what that meant. I explained. It's different for every person, I said. I told her—although I had not originally planned to—what symptoms, exactly, he was experiencing and how it was going to be controlled, helped. Near the end of our conversation, he started to push at my shoulder, and even said something like, "Jimmy, tell your stupid girlfriend to shut up," more to get my attention than because he was having a problem. I patted his hand gently, covered the phone, and told him I would only be a few minutes longer. Then, Blythe said she wanted to come and see her son as soon as possible. And after that, she insisted on talking to him. I knew this could cause problems, but let it happen because. Greg said he could handle it.
"Hi, Mom," he said, leaning against me, and fidgeting a little. "No—I…I dunno…you don't hafta bring anything, I'm not….I know…yeah, okay…um, maybe chocolate chip, or something with peanut butter in it…okay….no, really…I'm okay, I guess…well, yeah, but still okay…it's not so bad…no, really…yeah…actually, Jimmy's been a big help with that, so it's not really not terrible at all…well, I didn't say that….I dunno, I'm not a big fan I mean, I don't like how I look in pictures…oh, he's not in them. Well, then, I guess so….Oma? Yeah, I'd like it a lot then. Thanks, Mom…Okay…me too…bye," he said and handed back the phone. She and I talked a little longer, and then I was able to go back to giving House my full attention. "Boy you're really going all out, my rat, my mom, what's next, a bundle of balloons? Ohh! Maybe you could get personalized ones. 'So sorry you've completely lost touch with reality and are now seeing dead people. Get well soon.'" He smiled a little, curling up around my side.
"Of course. I must be up to something. Chocolate chip cookies…that's one of the signs of the apocalypse, isn't it?" He let out a small smile. "You're in a mental hospital; you can never do your job again; you're scared—don't make that face at me, I'm trying to explain something important—and all I'm trying to do is make you feel beter. Do you want me to stop? Because, if you do, I can sit here and stare up at the TV set, and pretend like you don't exist."
"Don't do that," he practically whimpered. "I'm having a hard enough time convincing myself that you're really, the real you…if you act too much like me, and not enough like yourself, I might never be able to tell."
"Maybe I should get a tattoo," I teased, gently. "Just nothing too big. How do eight inch letters, across my chest sound?" He shrugged, looking towards, but not actually at me. "Hey—hey. It's alright. I promise. We're gonna figure this thing out. We're gonna figure everything out." Instead of saying, 'I don't believe you,' as I was expecting, Greg just nodded, and gave me an insty, little smile. "What's that?"
"My mom's making me cookies, and…she's bringing these pictures, and stuff from when I was little" he said, a little proud, a little excited. "She wanted to make brownies, but I only really like those if they've got weed in them."
"Please tell me you didn't actually say that to your mother." He didn't bother to defend himself. He knew I had heard the conversation, and he also knew I only said that because I was trying to treat him like nothing was wrong, and was thusly being 'nice,' to him.
"Say something to me. Something that'll help me forget where I am, and what's going on," he practically begged. I wasn't sure there was anything in the world that would do that, and it took me a little while, but eventually I came up with a comforting lie, which is what he claimed to want.
"We're gonna figure this out, really, really soon. The meds are starting to work. Right?" House nodded, his gaze fixed on something across the room, and part of me wondered if he'd ever be comfortable talking to me again. "It's okay. You don't have to tell to me anything. You just talk to the doctor," I whispered, stroking his hair. "He knows what to do. And he, and. your mom and you, and me…we're gonna make everything okay." When he made his I dunno face, I wrapped my arms around him more tightly. "I know you don't really want to, which means you have two choices then. You can talk to him and be honest, but it'll take a while to get used to stuff, because he's not me and he doesn't know everything about you. You can talk to me and I will know stuff but, I'm not exactly impartial, so I'll—you know." Greg sighed and nodded. "We will figure this all out, and then everything is gonna be alright," I promised, but he just stayed quiet and let me hold him, watching TV, staying lost in his own little world until he fell asleep around midnight. I felt bad promising him things when I wasn't sure if they were possible or not. I'd sworn to him that I'd make everything okay, but when I was alone, I prayed for what I said to be true. He needed to get better. The meds and therapy had to work, because he couldn't live with the hallucinations and monsters and I couldn't live without him.
