AN: I don't think I'm finished, but it might be a couple of days before I have an update. I'm not really sure where to go from here. Obviously House and Wilson are never going to have a happily ever after, so how good can I make things?

"I thought I was smart - I thought I was right
I thought it better not to fight - I thought there was a
Virtue in always being cool - so when it came time to
Fight I thought I'll just step aside and that the time would
Prove you wrong and that you would be the fool," The Flaming Lips

One of the things I've discovered after years of spending the night at House's place, is that when I stay here, I rarely get any real rest. Most nights I stay up, just watching him sleep and I worry. To night there's a lot for me to think about—especially what with him going to all the trouble of faking cancer without ever telling me, without saying a word.

I'm worried, not because of anything he's done specifically, or rather what he almost did. What concerns me is the fact that he didn't even think about coming to me first; he never came to me. I never thought it was this bad, not in a million years. I only even found out on accident, and if I couldn't see this coming how am I ever going to see something bigger? How can I expect to see him slipping when I'm so easily blinded, distracted, fooled?

"You're staring again," House informs me, groggily lifting his head up from the pillow. "Why?" Then he turns, looks over at the clock, and moans in a loud voice. "It's 6:00 am. Did you know that? Now I'll never get back to sleep."

"I'm—sorry about that, but it's probably a good thing you're up. We need to talk. Don't—don't roll your eyes at me. I just got—I was thinking…you never answered my question, by the way."

"Which question?" he asks, sitting up and reaching for the bottle of Vicodin. "You ask me a lot of questions. So you'll need to be more specific." I can't tell whether or not he's being truthful right now. Actually, I can only tell one lie in about a thousand. He's the one who can spot a lie with his eyes closed and both hands tied behind his back, not me.

"I asked, just how depressed are you? You made one of your usual annoyingly sarcastic jokes, but you didn't answers me, you didn't even make an attempt to."

"I'm not. I just wanted to see what it was like. It's the same reason I do everything else. I'm in pain, and all I'm trying to do is make that stoop, or at least take my mind off of it for a while."

"I'm not going to pretend I understand how you feel. The level of pain you're in—I can't even imagine what that would be like to deal with for a day, let alone all the time, but that doesn't just explain every…"

"Okay so, I piss some people off, but I've been doing that ever since I learned how to talk. Nobody likes me. I don't expect them to. I don't even really care either way. The drugs take away my pain just enough to let me do my job."

"And your solution to being in pain was what? You were about to let someone crack your skull open and inject drugs into your brain. Did you think you could just come back to work like nothing had happened? Did you think I wasn't going—did you think nobody would notice?" I ask. House shrugs, reaches over to touch my face, but drops his hand when I don't respond. "I'm scared. You could have—that could have killed you, and…do you even care?"

"Sure I do. No matter what you may think, I wasn't trying to kill myself this time. I figured—I just thought I could make myself feel a little better and then maybe everything else would be easier as well."

"If this was just about the pain, you would have come to me. You always come to me, almost always. You come to me for just about out everything. Why didn't you just say something?"

"Because I knew you would make a big deal out of it, and part of me," he stops, taking a deep breath. "I didn't want anyone to know how bad it had gotten."

"You take enough Vicodin before you go to work in the morning to put most people into a blind stupor, and you keep doing that all day long. I don't think anyone, patients or doctors, who hasn't seen you. And besides, you don't give a rat's ass what people think."

"I don't care what just anybody thinks but I do care—I care about. I didn't want you to know; there I said it, satisfied?" He says this calmly, but he's upset, a little angry and even a little bit scared.

"I'm the one who sticks by you through everything. I've lost three wives to be with you. I was prepared to give up my job and go to prison for you. I love you. That has to count for something, and you know it. Why would you hide this form me?"

"I didn't want anything to get in my way. I didn't want you to try and stop me, because you would have. If you had found out, if I had told you, you would have done everything in your power to stop me."

"How do I know you aren't going to go out and try to something completely insane like that again? And don't use the fact that you'll never get into this trial as an excuse because we both know there are other things—other ways for you to get what you want."

"You think I'm desperate enough to go to some back alley surgeon, so I can get crazy cool brain drugs? I'm not an idiot. Besides, you made me promise not to do it again anyway. So what exactly are you worried about here, anyway?"

"You! I'm scared to death that I'm going to lose you. There are plenty of stages we've been through. You've pulled a million crazy stunts before this, but I've never seen you go from zero to brain surgery without at least some warning. I'm scared because I didn't see this coming. I had no idea that you were even thinking of doing something like this."

"The only problem with your logic is that I'm not at zero. I wasn't. I don't think I ever have been. On the other hand, had you bothered to pay attention you would have noticed that I've been going through my prescriptions twice as fast as usual the past few weeks."

I feel myself closing my eyes, as I'm trying to visualize how many pills he takes every day, and whether that number has in fact increased any time recently, but I honestly can't tell either way.

"Was that another test? You wanted to get caught, wanted me to stop you, call you insane, or anything, and I wasn't paying close enough attention. I'm sorry." He looks over at me and sighs. "Is the pain worse or was this whole thing a new form of an attention getting technique?"

When I ask this question, he doesn't say anything, not right away, at least. For a while, he just looks at me, and then he turns away, staring at his leg. I don't know what to tell him right now. I wish I had noticed, and had said or done something. I'm pissed at myself more than I'm angry at him. I should have known that he was up to something.

"My leg hurts. What difference does it make how much or how little?" he asks. "More pain means I have to take more pills, and when it's not as bad I don't." I'm not even going to bother with that one. I mean, really what's the point of us arguing about the pills?

I always say that the small things don't get to me, that I can let his little problems go because we have bigger problems, or because there aren't any big ones and so I don't want to rock the preverbal boat. The problem, of course, is that the small things always seem to turn into something big.

Last year he comes to me, after the Ketamine treatment, and he says that he's in pain, and can he have some Vicodin. I said no and he sulked for a while, and seemed to forget about it. Only he didn't. The pain got worse and he really did need prescriptions and forgot he even asked the first time. Then he gets himself arrested and it snowballed even worse from there, especially when I found out about the forged prescriptions.

I think the same sort of thing is how we got to where we are right now. The truth is that I can't ignore anything anymore, no matter how small I think it is. I have to watch him like a hawk, but before that I need to make up for having completely missed a whole shitload of little things that built up to him almost—I have to make up for having hurt him.

"I'm sorry. I screwed up again. I ignored all of the signs. I let you push me away, and I hurt you. I'm sorry, again, for that. What do you way we take the day off, hang around here, talk, relax, or should I just give up and go back to my hotel and start preparing myself for…whatever you're gonna try next?"

"You can stay," he tells me, getting up slowly, and making his way to the bathroom. Then he calls over his shoulder. "But you have to make me breakfast, and wash the dishes."

"I think I can handle that," I tell him, as I walk into the kitchen. When House joins me again, there's a small smile on his face, and I think that we just might be able to make it after all.