In his dream, he was running, he could always run in his dreams, and it's so real that he can feel the wind blowing through every bit of stubble on his face, through every strand of hair on his head, through his eyelashes, making his eyes tear up. He could feel the wind blowing over every fiber of his body, like a caress. It felt so good.
Sweat dripped down his face, his arms, and his legs, which were working, all in tandem with the other. He had never sweat this much working this hard on a case; he hadn't been pushed this hard since that time when he was put into a ketamine-induced coma and wanted to make his leg strong again.
The process of strengthening his leg was like trying to make something from absolutely nothing, though, and it hurt like death. But the profits were like none he could ever have hoped for. His leg was killing him, but only because he was running. The rest of him hurt just as bad.
As he ran, he passed the world so quickly that it all felt even more insignificant than it ever did before. He could feel the wind, hear it howling.
"House."
The TV was on. The voice was Wilson's, and was just enough to snap him out of his… what was it, a day-dream? He was on the couch, just watching the television, as it would appear to Wilson, who was standing at the door. This all felt so sudden.
"Leave the flowers at the door," House muttered as America's Next Top Model swam into focus. His cane was in his hands, with the bottom firmly planted on the floor.
"Did you…" Wilson trailed off as he let himself in. "Are you using your cane?" he voiced in genuine concern.
House shook his head. "Habit," he said, curling his finger protectively around the handle.
"Well it's time to stop dramatizing and do something about it. Get over it" Wilson said, stepping between House and the TV. "Want to go for a walk?"
House peered up at him curiously. "Do you even realize how much you sound like the nurses in PT?"
"I doubt the nurses in PT ever called you pathetic."
"Come on, now, on your feet! It's an up-hill climb!" House said sarcastically. "Pearls of wisdom which I have cherished so dearly these past few years. And don't-"
"Is encouragement really that bad?" Wilson cut him off. "Does it hurt that much?"
"Don't call me pathetic," House repeated, and then added as a defense, "I was shot."
"In your leg?"
House clicked the TV off and stood up unassisted, with Wilson hovering close by, just in case, until an unfriendly and threatening glare made him take a step back.
"It's humiliating. Much like being seen in public wearing jogging pants." Now he was back to talking about being encouraged. Following House's mental tangents was harder than it looked, and Wilson could only manage complete conversations with him because of how long they'd been friends.
"Which I am bestowing on you," Wilson said. "The humiliation, I mean. Not the pants."
"But I like your pants."
All through the first stages of recovery, Wilson refrained from rushing. Ketamine was a risky treatment, one whose effects weren't even entirely known. There were all kinds of dangers that went along with it, not to mention five years of emotional baggage for House, and what might as well have been ten years of liver damage.
So now that there was a real chance to get better, an actual window this time instead of a postcard, there was no time to waste to see if that window was going to stay open.
The hardest part for Wilson was to accept that what they were doing, what they had been doing for the past two weeks, was not wasting time but taking time.
He just hoped that House would go walking with him. Yes, he wanted House's leg to get better, and he wanted him to be perfectly healthy and off drugs and maybe even happy every now and then. But right then, he really just wanted House to walk with him.
Well, you can't always get what you want. But House did go out for a walk with Wilson. He just ignored him, grabbing his i-pod on the way out and not saying a word until they had made it back to his doorstep, which was almost two hours later.
The next day, Wilson brought his own i-pod, and the mood was mellow, relaxed, lighthearted, until House pushed his ignorance even further and broke into a slow, choppy, but not at all cautious jog.
As he ran, his leg ached, but so did the rest of him, and with equal intensity; he could feel the wind in his face.
---
"I always thought… I don't know, that you just liked to suffer," Wilson said later, under the delusion that House had changed. They had stopped to rest on the stoop of a townhouse. Both men were sweaty and breathing heavily, so that neither felt inclined to deny the break.
"That it wasn't just the leg?" House guessed, turning the tables on his friend's usual guerilla psych assessment. "Or that I liked the pain?
"It was pain that you were used to, a constant, which had completely changed your life. I thought that you didn't want your life to change that drastically again, so you almost embraced the pain."
"Would you embrace it if I killed and tore out the majority of the muscles in your thigh?"
Wilson's silence was enough of an answer.
"There is a flaw in your logic, Jimmy."
"I based my judgment on the fact that you never tried to get off the vicodin, not even when it stopped working." Wilson said, noticing that House was rubbing his thigh with his right hand. "You would lose yourself in your work… you intentionally broke your fingers; I knew you weren't a masochist, so… that was it."
House waited patiently for the silence to follow, and then waited some more, testing the length of Wilson's performance as the strong silent type. "Are you done? Because I am."
"Do you need me to get my car? I can go back and drive here."
"No, not that!" House waved his hand dismissively. "I'm done with being a cripple. You fixed me anyway. The treatment worked."
"What is this? Is this…" Wilson could barely keep from smiling, "optimism?"
"No, idiot. It's rationality." The smile on Wilson's face was nauseatingly happy; House pinched the bridge of his nose and continued;
"I had the treatment, and it worked. I no longer have pain, thus, I no longer need the cane. Hmm… that rhymed, didn't it?"
"So now you're a poet."
"But that's really all there is to it. Cause and effect, and the effect is that I can walk."
"Cause and effect is a nice change," Wilson pointed out. "Refreshing, even, after all the doom and gloom."
"You are disgustingly cheerful."
"Do you want to keep going?" Wilson asked, and House nodded, bracing himself to stand when a hand appeared in front of him, a hand attached to an oncologist who seemed all to pleased with himself, a hand that was there to help him up.
House ignored it and stood on his own. "Are you kidding me?" he said, and took off down the sidewalk, pushing a little harder, to see that Wilson had to push even harder still to catch up with him.
---
His head swam, like he had run too far and was now dehydrated. But it was more like a pain, like the pain in his leg, except it was right between his eyes. It wasn't a migraine, though. Like Wilson had said earlier, it was a pain that he was perfectly accustom to – House recognized it immediately – so naturally, it did not let him think.
"Do you want to run?" Wilson asked from the top of the bookshelf, though he had left over an hour ago.
"Do you want to run?"
Now he was in the kitchen, nagging him, urging him into his sneakers again and back outside where the wind blew much too loudly.
The sick part was, as sure as House was that he was alone in the apartment, he felt compelled to answer.
"I already ran with you. Go away."
"No, House!" Wilson called, coming from what sounded like the bathroom (House could hear his voice echo). "What I mean is…"
And then his face was inches away, his breath uncomfortably warm on House's face. They were so close that House could hear Wilson's thoughts before he ever said them;
"Do you want to run?"
TBC