House watched him fidget, hands alternating from sitting with barely controlled tension on his hips to tenderly probing the cut on the back of his head, all the while those dark and worried eyes fixed on the thickening air that was pooling around their ankles.
His ears had stopped ringing and it had taken them both some time to recognise the sound of far off screams and cries below them, echoing up the elevator shaft with the rising smoke. He'd looked at Wilson then, caught up the doleful stare that seemed to tug at his heart more than the sounds of anguish. He always took it personally, always invested himself to the extremes and House had spent far too many nights mopping up the damage of a patient's death, he could feel his desperation, read it in every tight line of his body as he tried to pace within their confines, breath short and sharp as he braced a clenched fist against the wall, the sounds of anguish perfectly punctuated by the flickering and unpredictable light that seemed at every second to be on the brink of failing.
He'd rolled his eyes as Wilson had punched at the alarm button, its perforated speaker as silent as House had predicted it to be. He'd had to physically stop him from attempting to open the doors, explaining with the air of one talking to someone mentally unstable that they were probably stuck between the floors, and he didn't fancy filling the already toxic air with a rushing influx of asphyxiating smoke.
Wilson had slouched off, as far as he could under the circumstances and now he stood leaning into the corner of the lift, chewing pensively on a thumbnail and flinching with every miniscule noise that filtered up towards them.
House prodded at the ceiling with his stick, some vain and foolish hope expecting a hidden panel to pop free and welcome them to rescue. He scanned the dim cell, eyes wide and alighting on every surface and corner waiting for the answer to appear.
Help wouldn't come.
He knew that.
He was right, whatever had happened below them was no accident, there was nothing he could remember that would cause that much damage, even the O2 tanks were stored and transported in such a way that should anything happen the most someone would get would be a decent singing and long wait for their eyebrows to grow back. He thought about the news report this morning, grunting in discomfort as he shifted his weight as he punished himself for not having paid more attention. So what that there had been information provided to the police. So what that they had already found two devices. So what that there were armed police on the way to the bus terminal and the airport had been put on alert. These things happened every day, the news was full of this crap every day and he was pretty damn perfect at being a nay saying doom mongerer without the added benefit of sketchy overhyped paranoia.
He'd been paying too much attention to figuring out when he'd be able to remove the slats from Wilson's bed.
They were on their own, whatever emergency services wouldn't be coming to the lift. Hell, they were the emergency services. There would be too much panic, no room for thought to realise that 'Hey, I haven't seen those doors open for a while'.
"Shit." He muttered, allowing the full seriousness of their situation to settle it. The air between him and Wilson was misting, either that or he unwittingly cracked his own head on his unexpected trip to the floor.
"We've gotta get out of here." Wilson mumbled.
House fought the urge to roll his eyes and call him Captain Obvious.
"Even if we're between the floors we could still reach the doors, we could either climb up or drop down." He postulated, looking earnestly up into House's face.
"Gonna give me a leg up?" House quirked, swinging his cane and as he faced the reality that he was going to have to concede. He wafted his hand in front of his face to clear the air around him, the acrid taste of smoke cloying at his mouth.
"I'm serious." Wilson exclaimed. "It's not as if we can stay in here. I open the door, you hold it while I get the outer ones."
It would have been a much better convincing argument had he not stumbled forward the moment he pushed away from the wall, hand grasping and groping at House's shoulder as he lunged to catch him, the sudden and unexpected weight bringing them both to the floor and he had just enough presence of mind to cup his hand to the back of Wilson's head to shield it from another good blow as he full body slid down his chest, landing awkwardly with Wilson staring up at him in shock from where he'd come to rest half across his lap.
"Oh yeah, you're a real action hero." House muttered drily, yanking his leg out from under his weight, betraying himself and his bitterness with the gentle slide of his hand to Wilson's neck, careful not to jostle him as he swallowed around the sudden thickness in his throat as his watched the flutter of his eyes. "Hey, come on." He snapped, all focus drawn to him as Wilson sobered before his eyes.
"Not my best moment." Wilson conceded, dragging himself ungracefully to his feet with much mussing of House's shirt as he leant heavily against him.
"You okay?" House looked at him, hand on his shoulder as he cast a fervent eye over the other man's face which hand rounded on him with its own expression of concern.
"Wow." Wilson brushed at his lab coat, straightening out no existing creases as he fought to school his expression. "Asking me if I'm okay? ...And all it took was a concussion and a burning elevator." He laughed awkwardly.
House paused, his hand frozen on Wilson's shoulder. "Not my best moment." He retorted slyly, a paltry attempt to maintain his composure. Wilson was looking at him with a strange intensity that rattled him and caused him to snatch his hand away, snapping his focus to the elevator doors.
"How about I pry and you hold?" He tried to ignore the itch between his shoulder blades, the point where he could feel Wilson's eyes on him as he dug his fingers into the soft rubber seam, coughing with exertion and smoke inhalation as he tugged and pulled until with a slow and grinding, juddering motion the doors slipped in their runs and the smoke came pouring in.
In years to come he would always remember that moment, no matter what happened afterwards, the twisting images of blood and charred remains, it would always be those terrifying moments when the light vanished from the room and the air was stolen from his lungs.
The heat that blasted up from the side of the shaft enveloped him in a fiery cloud, the light of the flames licking the bare industrial walls with a harrowing light as he fought to keep his grip on the door as his lungs exploded with choking agony.
His fingers slipped but the doors remained, and it took one precious moment for him to realise that Wilson had managed to wedge himself into the narrow gap that he'd afforded, pushing with his legs against the opposing door and together they worked to prise the opening wider.
The darkness was enveloping, all consuming in is visceral intensity. It tore at his throat, burned his eyes seized his lungs. He coughed, spluttering and choking as he pressed a sleeve against his face, trying in vain to suck in a measure of clean air through the material. He could hear Wilson, himself erupting into a fitful series of pained and hacking coughs. There was a grasping hand against his thigh, hand hot and heavy as it twisted its grip into his jeans and House felt a terrible surge of some untamed emotion as he realised just how terrified Wilson must have been to actually reach out for an anchor.
He forced himself to open his eyes, to bear them to the stinging cloud that billowed and snaked around them as they froze dumbly under the sudden onslaught.
'This was a fucking stupid idea'. House cursed himself, regretting immediately the very idea of trying to help themselves.
He chanced a look down, peering in the gap that the odd tilt of the lift had opened up. They were two and half floors up and he could just make out through squinted eyes the caved in remains of the doors that opened up into the lobby, the torn and jagged metal glinting in the light of the burning detritus that cluttered the pit of the shaft.
Abandoning his cane entirely he all but collapsed to knees, his hand reached out, blindly landing and staying pressed to the wild thump of his heart, an odd pin point of focus in his otherwise skewed world. The hand on his leg tightened and he heard his name choked out.
Of all the ridiculous whacked out situations they could have ever found themselves in, it couldn't possibly get any worse. It was like someone had put a list of Wilson's nerve shattering and all consuming, nightmare inducing fears in front of his eyes and the words 'claustrophobia' and 'fire' had been highlighted several times in different coloured markers.
"House?" harsh and rasping, he felt his name more in the vibration of his hand pressed against him than in the brittle crack of his tremulous voice.
There were screams and shouts floating up to meet them, chaos and fire and destruction heating the air inside the metal furnace they had trapped but all he could see was Wilson, all he could hear was the laboured and panicked breath and the fierce struggle he fought to keep himself calm.
"You're okay." He nearly had to shout the words to get them out. "You're fine." He coughed violently, like knives shredding his lungs. He clapped his hand to Wilson's face, part of him hoping he'd just see it as a cavalier half hearted effort at trying to comfort him, but for the most part he wished he'd read it deeper with the way he let his hand linger for longer than it should, his fingers tracing the line of his jaw as he pulled his hand away and turned his eyes back to the door.
Even at this moment he could bring himself to let his walls fall down.
Nudging at Wilson's leg he leant forward, the angle extreme and impossible to work at the outside door and his fingers cramped and screamed as he twisted and turned and ignored the blistering agony that was exploding in his leg, and the only thing that was keeping him sane, keeping him grounded was that hand on his leg, that tremulous link that make him work harder because damn it, if he couldn't get himself out, he was sure as hell going to get Wilson out.
Spots and stars in front of his eyes and his throat was torn as he tried to cry out, fingers stressed and damn near broken and then finally, wonderfully his superior strength gave in, the door gave way and he fell backwards as his hands slipped from their grip.
He flung his arm across his face and grabbed Wilson to pull him back as the back draft sucked the fiery air from beneath them past the door and out into the second floor corridor.
The tempest was followed by the sweetest scent of clean fresh air, blessed heart thumping relief that spilled through his veins like the light from the corridor permeating their little smoke filled cage.