Thank you all for the wonderful reviews! I'm still responding to them, sorry it's taking me for friggin' ever. Real life is such a downer, interfering with fic and all that. Screw it. :P
Anyway, here's the next part. Warnings for the second half - References to abuse and non-con, pretty vague but there. It may prove disturbing for some readers. Feel free to PM me if you have concerns or want a more descriptive warning.
All Wilson could cram through his head was a mantra reminding himself that House didn't jump off the balcony, no one found him spattered on the cement patio stones below, he didn't jump, he just cut through Wilson's office and walked off somewhere…
"Look, there he is." Foreman pointed to one of the monitors that the head of PPTH security was using to play back recent camera footage.
Wilson left off wringing his hands and braced himself on the back of the chair that the guard was sitting in. Less than half an hour had passed since he had realized House was gone and paged Foreman with a 9-1-1. It was sad to think that of all the people in the hospital acquainted with Wilson, Foreman was the first one he thought of after Cuddy, who he didn't want anything to do with right now. She was standing with them anyway – it was her hospital, after all. She played at being outwardly concerned, but Wilson knew her well enough to recognize impatience in the set of her hips, and the tension of her crossed arms where she clenched her elbows in her fingers. She thought this was one of House's games, or a stunt, or just him being inconsiderate.
Cuddy leaned closer to get a clear view of the monitor, and then she rolled her eyes. "He's having a smoke."
The security guard indicated the time stamp in the corner of the screen. "That was over twenty minutes ago, ma'am, and the current feeds don't show him anywhere within coverage areas on the hospital grounds. Just watch."
Wilson exchanged a worried look with Foreman before fixing his gaze back on the screen. They were only here, pouring over security footage, because Foreman had pointed out to Cuddy that he had technically not discharged House yet, and House had not signed himself out AMA; the hospital was liable for anything that happened to him on account of his late night escapade. Not even Cuddy could weasel her way out of that, nor could her lawyers. Wilson would see to that if he had to, god forbid.
"There," the guard announced, just in case anyone wasn't paying adequate attention.
Wilson bent farther over the guard's shoulder in an effort to see past the poor stop-frame quality of the footage. The board should set aside funds to upgrade the surveillance systems; they were still using antiquated equipment, like video cameras that functioned by taking still frames every three seconds. Considering the amount of money the hospital brought in, this oversight was appalling. Or perhaps that was just Wilson's ulcer talking; he couldn't really tell. Did other hospitals use this sort of system? He should find out, and then he should find a way to get back on the board even if he had to resort to bribery and blackmail to do it, and then he could fix at least this much.
On the monitor, House limped away from the hospital wall he had been leaning against to flick his cigarette off into a hedge, a series of still shots rendering him choppy. Cuddy grumbled again, something about littering in her landscaping, but Wilson ignored her. The next stills showed House lighting a second cigarette, and then shoving his left hand in his jeans pocket, his weight going to his cane and back as he situated his good leg, a prelude to standing in place for a while; Wilson had seen it often enough to know it. House cocked his hip and peered toward the parking lot, cane dangling in the crook of his right elbow as he smoked, his figure shifting by millimeters on the monitor as each new frame appeared. He was probably tapping his foot, but Wilson couldn't tell from the overhead angle, and House had his back to the camera, blocking Wilson's view of his feet. And then a still frame showed House straighten, and in the next, he had backed up a step.
"There's someone off the edge of the camera," the guard explained. He traced a finger over a shadow that didn't seem to fit in the landscape. "Doctor House appears to be talking to him, and then…watch here."
Wilson's eyes watered with the effort not to blink; he was absurdly afraid that he might miss a crucial part, even though the frames were spaced so that he could have blinked several times and missed nothing. Still, he had no idea what had happened to the second cigarette, because House wasn't holding it anymore, and for some reason, figuring out where it went had become paramount in Wilson's distracted head. On the screen, House extended his cane and jabbed it up toward the camera mounted on the wall behind him as if he were threatening his visitor with its presence.
Foreman swore. "We need to call the police."
The guard admonished, "Keep watching."
The camera footage clicked through stills of House ambling forward, glancing over his shoulder and up into the camera as if to make sure he was still in range, and then the second person came into view, just the edge of an arm and a foot. House reached out to take something from him.
"There's a tattoo on the guy's forearm," Foreman remarked.
The guard nodded. "I already saved that frame for enhancement. The police might be able to make something of it."
This whole thing felt like a bad cop show, and Wilson could only ignore it all. Anything else may have left him wrenching his hair out. Instead, he demanded, "What did he give him?" No one replied, but it didn't matter; Wilson was only paying minimal attention to the other people in the room.
House's body blocked their view of whatever he held in his hands, and a half dozen frames revealed him bowing his head over it, examining the offering with his cane hooked over his wrist. In the next several frames, House stood taller, rigid, and then both figures strode off camera in halting stills like shoddy claymation.
The security guard flipped off the monitor. "None of the other cameras picked him up after that." He directed an apologetic look at Wilson, who continued hovering over his shoulder, his unseeing eyes trapped on the dark monitor.
"Call the police," Cuddy said, her voice grim. "And get your people out searching the grounds."
"They're already looking," the guard replied, still respectful but edging on affronted. "A nurse thinks she saw them getting into a silver car. A newer model sedan. I'll get the police on a line now. Excuse me."
Wilson's knees gave out without warning; somehow, when he fell back, a chair caught him. He immediately tucked his head down between his knees and struggled to breathe. Beside him, the guard lifted a phone and electronic boops filled the air as he dialed.
A large hand fell to Wilson's shoulder, and Foreman's voice floated close above him. "Wilson. You okay?"
Wilson laced his fingers over the back of his neck and fixated on a tiny puff of black dust on the floor near the tip of his right shoe. It reminded him of the dirty dust motes that used to collect on the bristles of the fake trees glued into the old fashioned electric train table that his father used to play with in their basement. The trees had fit into the palm of Wilson's chubby little hand, prickling his skin in a thousand different places until it tickled. Out of sheer desperation, Wilson fumbled in his coat pocket for his cell phone, then punched auto-dial one. It rang and flipped to voicemail, and Wilson put the phone to his ear just to hear House's voice on the recording. I pay by the minute for this shit, so if you leave me a stupid message, I'm billing you for it. The line beeped and Wilson hit the end button just so that he could dial again. I pay by the minute for this shit…
Everything passed in a blur after that. Wilson didn't register how silent he had become until he found himself in the main lobby, slumped listlessly on a padded bench with House's backpack clutched to his stomach and Chase kneeling in front of him. "Wilson. You have to talk to me unless you want Cuddy admitting you." Chase's hand rested on Wilson's leg, more than low enough to be platonic. "Here. I want you to drink some of this." He picked a coffee cup up off the floor and tried to pry one of Wilson's hands loose to make him take it. "I didn't even drug it. Promise."
All Wilson said was, "Tell me he's coming back."
Chase looked stricken for a moment, and then he looked down. The proferred coffee cup dropped along with his gaze, and Wilson turned his head to peer blankly at the front entrance. At least Chase didn't say it, maybe for fear of lying and dishing out false hopes.
There were police in the lobby too, Officer Morrow among them. At some point, Wilson heard Cuddy using her indignant administrator tone in an effort to browbeat them, for some reason. He chose not to hear Morrow explaining that House didn't appear to have been coerced or forced into following the man, based on the surveillance footage. Or that considering the investigation, this all looked bad for House, walking off with a drug dealer. And the guy from the footage was a drug dealer, according to the whispers running amuck around the lobby. Apparently, the tattoo had identified him as one of Lyamone's men, a money guy or something. Launderer? Wilson had no idea what the collectors were called.
He squeezed House's backpack tighter and felt the contents shift. He wished Foreman would come sit with him, but he hadn't seen Foreman since he left the security office. And Chase was gone again too; Wilson glanced around with little interest and spotted him near the stairwell with Cameron and Kutner. All Wilson wanted was to go home, to 221B, and have a drink. He should have listened when House said not to lose his temper. He should have dragged House out by his lapels, without their coats or personal effects, picked up his keys from the reception desk where the nice cop from this morning had dropped them off for him, and then driven House away from here. No, scratch that; he should have dragged House off days ago. Weeks, even. Far away to the Mutter Museum where House had half-promised to take him for a break from the tedium of a stressful life in New Jersey. Pickled body parts in display cases. Anywhere but here.
A tingling against his hip jolted Wilson back for a moment, but he slid off into abstractions once he realized that his phone was vibrating in his pocket. On autopilot, Wilson fished it out, juggling the backpack so that he didn't have to set it down. His eyes wandered to the display and blinked over House's name. Wilson bolted to his feet, the backpack crashing to the floor, and flipped the phone open brutally enough to risk breaking it. "House!" His voice rang foreign and shrill to his own ears, but he didn't bother concealing the outright terror. "Where are you? What the fuck happened?"
A beat of silence, and then, "Wilson?" As if his tone were so far off normal that House hardly recognized him.
"Yes!" Wilson jittered around to face the wall, as if anyone could have missed his behavior or the fact that he had practically shouted at the phone. "Where are you?!"
"In a cab. Are you still at the hospital?"
Wilson covered his eyes with his free hand and fought not to pass out from the relief and panic assaulting him in waves. "Yes. Please, tell me you're coming back."
"I'll be there soon, okay? Unclench."
"House – "
"I took care of it."
Wilson sucked in shallow breaths and tried to ignore the people gathering around him. Morrow told him to ask House something but Wilson waved her off with an angry swat at the air to his left. "What do you mean, you took care of it?"
"I'll explain when I get there."
Wilson started to yell out of fear-based fury, but House interrupted with a few grumbled words and Wilson stammered, "You…what?"
"I'm not saying it again," House snapped.
The phone line rustled and Wilson yelled, "Don't hang up!" He was too late, though; the line clicked and went dead and Wilson gaped at the bench in front of him, the phone still plastered to his ear. Slowly, he lowered it, then stared at the dark display.
Morrow slipped around to stand in front of him, capturing his gaze with a gesture. "What did he say?"
Wilson's eyes fell back to the phone cradled in the palm of his hand like a prickly plastic tree. "He said he loves me."
"As nice as that is, it won't help us find him. I meant the rest of the conversation. Where is he?"
Wilson lifted his eyes to glare at her. "Apparently, out doing your job." His voice had taken to shaking and Wilson's eyes flit away from Morrow to find the fallen backpack. He stooped to grab it, his limbs shivering in a pale approximation of shock, and elbowed past her to get outside.
He felt like he was floating, but not in a good way; he felt like a walking Jello Jigglers commercial, his body holding its own shape and yet prone to bouts of instability. Like the air was cotton all around him and he might suffocate on it, or fall through it, and yet it was the only thing holding him up. Wilson stood on the sidewalk near the drop-off area, light-headed and paradoxically sharp, waiting. Everything seemed too bright at the edges, a world etched in crystal. He knew it was oxygen deprivation; he was hyperventilating because he couldn't control his respirations, and he didn't care.
When the cab finally pulled up, it did so far away near the bus stop. That was probably a good thing, because if it had stopped in front of him, Wilson would have dove straight in the door just to get his hands on House and prove to himself that he was really there. As it was, Wilson didn't even notice until the cab was gone and House was standing next to him. "Hey."
Wilson glanced to his right, swallowed, and then lunged, House's backpack falling forgotten to the sidewalk.
House staggered with a surprised grunt, and then somehow righted them both with Wilson hanging off of him. "Okay," House said, his voice a soothing rumble in his chest. He fumbled around the arms that Wilson had locked in a vice around his neck and ribcage, and sort of petted Wilson's back with one hand. The other gripped the head of his cane hard to keep them both vertical. "Wilson, it's okay." They swayed a little. If asked, House would probably blame his leg for it.
Wilson ignored the words and clutched him harder, digging his neatly trimmed fingernails into House's shoulder blades, still slightly in shock and dry-eyed, and too relieved to really be relieved, if that made any sense. It didn't even matter that House wasn't returning much of the affection, more just standing there and letting Wilson give serious thought to squeezing the life out of him like a caricature straight out of John Steinbeck's head.
"Wilson?"
"You son of a bitch. I thought you were dead."
"I wasn't even gone that long." House sounded contrite, at least, even if he didn't apologize.
"You were gone two hours!" But even as he yelled right in House's ear and felt him flinch, Wilson refused to let go of him. "With a drug dealer, you - you - jerk!"
"Okay." House stopped stroking his back and moved to pry one of Wilson's arms off. "We're making a scene."
"That's what you get, asshole."
Eventually, Wilson did calm down enough to release him, and the cops herded them both back inside where House demanded hot coffee and Wilson wouldn't even let him go to the restroom alone. It took far too long to sort things out with the police, mainly because House refused to say a damn thing to them without a lawyer, and then he refused to call a lawyer in the middle of the night because that was just inconsiderate, waking somebody up like that. The police couldn't charge him with anything anyway, not yet, and House plainly invited them to continue investigating him prior to fucking off. Finally, the hubbub died down well past one in the morning. The police cleared out after issuing warnings to House to stay in town, and a number of other cliches that concealed their hostility for someone who appeared to have gone off to have dealings with a drug dealer, thereby wasting their time. The gawking staff members meandered away once the excitement had died down, leaving Wilson standing next to the reception counter where House had hoisted himself up to sit. Chase had perched himself nearby as well but Foreman had disappeared yet again. The rest of the lobby loomed large, dim and empty, save for echoes.
After seeing the last of the officers out, Cuddy walked back to them, careful in her heels on no-doubt sore feet, and regarded House with tired annoyance. "You can't just pretend nothing happened."
House merely peered back, cold and wary. "The cops can figure it out on their own, and I don't need the lot of you knowing my business."
"Business?" Cuddy echoed in disbelief. "House, you had better not – "
"What is it with you?" House cut in. "You should go cozy up with the cops if you really think I'm involved in that shit."
Wilson glanced over at House and then down again, his fingers twisting the seams inside his pants pockets. Since the scene he had made on the sidewalk, all but mauling House with his tangible relief, they had maintained a painful buffer zone of at least six inches from each other. It made Wilson twitch even though he wasn't normally a clingy person. It was just that normally, even though neither of them were very tactile, they brushed shoulders or stood closer. They touched all the time, actually, since way before the sex had started. It held little meaning beyond the fact that they walked or stood or sat too near to each other, but it had always been there. A brush of arms here, tap of knees there. Things they didn't even consciously notice because it happened so often that they were inured to it. Being separate yet within sight like this hurt.
Cuddy tilted her head, that stern administrator face seeping out of her very pores like a warning. As if she had that power over House anymore.
House shook his head, irritated, and looked away. "I paid them off, okay?" He fidgeted with his cane, swishing it back and forth where it dangled down between his legs, and then explained, "I got a hundred fifty thousand dollar advance from Harvard Med when they commissioned the book. That plus my savings…" He shrugged, made a point of looking toward but not at Wilson, and summed up, "A little over two hundred grand total. It's over; they'll go away now."
"But…" Wilson tried to make sense of that in his head. It wasn't House's debt. "Why? Why would you do that?"
This time, House did look at Wilson, but only at his leg. "I figured I could make it all better."
Wilson absorbed that for a moment and then swallowed as he looked away. He remembered that conversation in House's trashed apartment, just a week ago. What, you want me to make it all better or something? "That's not the whole reason, is it?"
"It's the important part, Wilson. Just shut up already."
No one had anything to say after that. House slipped down from the counter in a fairly coordinated mess, but he nearly ended up on the floor, regardless. After he hobbled off to the bathroom, moving more stiffly than normal due to the late hour, Foreman appeared out of nowhere to corner Wilson where he waited near the door. He pressed a prescription bag into Wilson's hand and told him that the 'other' test results would be in tomorrow; he would call Wilson as soon as he got them. Then he listed the medications in the bag, all for House: a refill on the Depakote at a slightly higher dosage, plus gabapentin, both to handle the seizures. Wilson asked about the gabapentin since House had seemed against taking it again due to the vertigo, but Foreman confessed to being leary of trying something like Topamax, which tended to cause weight loss. House was at a good weight for once, probably thanks to the Depakote's side effects over the course of the past eight months, and Wilson agreed that it wouldn't make sense to jeopardize that. Topamax also tended to trigger short term memory problems and mental 'fuzz,' which would merely result in House refusing to take the pills and eschewing treatment altogether.
The script bag also contained three prefilled syringes of lorazepam, just in case House had another violent flashback or generalized seizure. Lastly, Foreman had prescribed a refill of Warfarin, which House still took to prevent future blood clots, and he told Wilson to throw out whatever Amitriptyline was left. With the Depakote and gabapentin controlling the seizures, Foreman figured that the lingering anxiety and depression would go away too, either because the seizures were causing those issues or because Depakote would treat it; it didn't matter which.
Foreman also mentioned that he thought House may have been susceptible to seizure disorders before now, just based on his personality quirks and the odd behavior he had exhibited over the years. TLE could be a strange disease, and often missed because of the elusive nature of the seizures; often, they passed completely without notice. Foreman wanted to see House again within a few days to assess the effectiveness of the treatment, and he passed on a message from Ngyen that House should get his sorry ass in there to talk about alternative pain therapies, since Foreman insisted he should discontinue the Vicodin to avoid lowering his seizure threshold any farther.
House padded out of the bathroom at that point, trailed by Chase, which seemed to piss House off. Wilson heard him snap that he didn't need a babysitter, and then he took in Wilson's slightly dazed stance, a leftover from the evening's unexpected events. "All those pills for me?"
Wilson merely nodded, bid Chase and Foreman goodnight, and held House's backpack out to him. A sour look crossed House's face as he eyed the prescription bag, but he merely took his pack without a word and stumped away. Wilson didn't hold the door for him as they exited because he didn't know if that would be appreciated or not, even though they often alternated holding doors for each other. But if House's leg were bothering him, he would read the kindness as pity, rather than gentlemanliness.
The two of them slogged their way through the dark to find Wilson's car where the officer from that morning had parked it in the guest lot, and then they climbed inside, exhausted. Wilson worked the keys into the ignition but slumped back without turning the car on to ask, "What really happened?"
House kept his face angled away, though Wilson swore that House was looking at him in the reflection on the windshield. With a sigh, House reached into his coat to draw something from his blazer pocket, and then he passed Wilson an envelope.
Wilson took it, puzzled, and folded back the flap to find a photograph of himself on the oncology floor, filling out a chart. Behind that was another photo, Wilson in the cafeteria with a sliver of House's arm in the edge of the frame. Then one of Wilson leaving his office, Wilson in the parking lot that weekend, Wilson entering the hotel in House's shadow… Ten photos in all. He couldn't seem to look away from the photo of himself standing in line at the coffee cart with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, worrying over his own private hell. That one had been taken just that morning before House regained consciousness; Wilson still had on the same clothes. In the surveillance footage, the perp had handed House something. This.
Beside him, House expelled a soft breath, fogging the window in an irregular oval near his lips. "All they wanted was money, Wilson. It wasn't worth it."
"They…" Wilson croaked to a halt, cleared his throat, and then finished, "They threatened you?" He looked up to see if he could read anything in House's carefully constructed demeanor.
"No, moron." House's voice held no venom, despite his words; merely an abundance of exhaustion. "I'm only in, like, two of those."
"Oh." Wilson's eyes fell back to the envelope and let his fingers linger over the edges of the photos. "What happened to the real money, though? Theirs?"
House shrugged. "I think the mom cleaned it out to pay for her kid's treatment. Who knows? The police will check the bank and billing records eventually."
"You didn't have to pay this."
"Yeah, Wilson. I did."
Wilson felt like he had swallowed a brick. Somehow, House risking his life at Wilson's request hadn't driven home the notion that House really did care about him, that he would do close to anything for him. House paying two hundred thousand dollars to keep him safe, because of an idle threat… That did. Yeah, House took care of it. It being Wilson. "You meant it."
House lifted his head, gaze still directed out the passenger window, and then he shifted to look at Wilson.
"What you said on the phone," Wilson clarified. "You meant it."
House's gaze drifted down to Wilson's hands and then away out the windshield. Gruff and perhaps annoyed that Wilson had brought it up, House tersely replied, "I always meant it." Then he paused to thump his cane against the floor mats and groused, "Every time I said it. You're a cynical fucking bastard if you couldn't see that."
"I didn't…realize," Wilson admitted.
"That's because you say it too often."
Yeah, Wilson thought; after a while, those three words tend to wear out. He took one last look at the photos and then stuffed them back into the envelope, swallowing thickly. "House, I don't know if I can do this."
That got House's attention. All of it. He threw a startled look out the windshield and then twisted to see Wilson better, his face a study in inscrutability, eyes hooded.
"There's no breaking point with you," Wilson said. "No line to cross."
House moved one shoulder, rolling his head away in the process to keep Wilson from reading anything into his expression.
"You really would have given that kid up to save me."
House shrugged, uneasiness written into the outline of his profile against the window. "It's sorta moot now. Besides, you didn't let me, remember?"
Wilson looked down at the envelope yet again, the edges worried and soft around the outline of the photographs. "I have limits." He didn't need to mention that Tritter had found one of them once, and that someday someone else might find another to drive a wedge between them.
"I know," House replied. "And I'm starving. Find a Denny's or an IHOP, or something." He tapped the underside of the dashboard with his foot. "You're buying cuz, you know... I'm broke for real now."
"House, you don't – "
"I need you." House cringed over the tail end of his pronouncement, and then glanced sheepishly over at Wilson as if to make sure that the sappiness hadn't made him nauseous. "Half the time, I only know I'm doing the right thing because it's what you told me to do, Wilson. That's my limit. You do not owe me. I didn't do this to earn brownie points with you; I did it because I'm selfish and I don't share my toys, and if a wire transfer is all it takes to keep you here, in one piece, then - " House broke off, scrunched his face up in annoyance, then snapped, "Just stop it, okay? I have no money, no job, no health insurance as of Friday, the police are investigating me, I'm tired, my leg hurts, and I want pancakes. So just shut up and drive."
Wilson blinked at him, then stretched his neck up to flex his jaw. "Fuck IHOP. I'm cooking you pancakes."
House narrowed his eyes. "On what, a hot plate?"
"Nope." Wilson grinned even though he still felt sort of sick. "I have a surprise for you." He toed the brake and switched on the ignition before glancing over at House.
House grinned back in a similar fashion. "Cool."
Wilson shifted into reverse but didn't let up on the brake right away. "And, House?"
A long-suffering groan rolled through the car. "Now what?"
"Next time you disappear on me like that, leave a post-it."
* * *
As Wilson drove, a cold sort of heaviness seemed to seep through the car, coating it in silence. House wasn't brooding, per se, but he certainly wasn't getting any happier. He didn't even pester Wilson to tell him what the surprise was, though that fact didn't hit Wilson until after they had stopped at a twenty-four market and House failed to make fun of the poofy MC Hammer pants sported by a nearby bum like a bad acid trip back to the early nineties. Looks like the recession hit Ringling Bros. Must be a shame to have to turn away a perfectly good freak. Wilson could practically feel reality crashing down around them. The full impact of what House had done had not hit either of them yet.
When they finally arrived at 221B, Wilson kept a surreptitious eye on House while gathering the fresh groceries from the back seat; anything left in House's fridge, aside from condiments, would have to be thrown out. When House didn't even unbuckle his seatbelt, Wilson poked his head in the open back door and contemplated the thinning patch at the crown of House's head. A faint trace of stubble blurred the edge of House's face in rear profile, dusted by the glow of a streetlight. "Hey. You staying out here all night?"
"Maybe."
Wilson's brow crinkled. "House, come inside."
House ducked his head, hiding under the pretense of tapping the rubber tip of his cane against the underside of the dash. "In a minute."
Wilson lifted his eyes to watch over the roof of the Volvo as another car passed them by. Then he shut the back car door and yanked House's open. "Look, if you want me to leave you alone for a little while, then fine. But not out here. Just…come in." Behind a locked and alarmed door, Wilson added mentally. "Please."
A mere handful of heartbeats passed in relative silence, punctuated by cars passing out on the main road and House's sneaker thumping the door frame. Then House stuck his cane out of the car and jabbed it into the pavement close enough to Wilson's foot that Wilson danced out of the way. House hauled himself out of the car with help from the car door, then slammed it shut and limped across the sidewalk.
Wilson trailed him uneasily inside, unable to prevent himself from wondering if House's apparent anger came from regret over what had transpired that night. He had paid those men off on a whim; there had been no thought or reconsideration. In retrospect, House must have been thinking the same things that Wilson had been thinking throughout the entire the car ride home. They could have told the police about the threat, they could have hired a bodyguard, they could have left town, they could have bought guns and hunkered down in the hotel room and just shot anyone who came near. So many other options that involved less expense, even if they carried an implicit threat of danger. Was an illusion of safety worth two hundred grand? A few hours ago, yes, it had been. House hadn't been able to take that risk with him.
Once Wilson unlocked the apartment door with the new set of keys sent to his office by courier that afternoon, he fairly dropped all the groceries to fumble at the freshly installed keypad inside the door. No teasing met his ears about the overkill of buying a security system for an old one bedroom apartment, so Wilson punched in the disarm code in peace. That done, he turned around to survey the place in the light of the single floor lamp that House had switched on near the piano.
It looked good. Neat and tidy, smelling of disinfectant and dust polish, books, and the underlying pervasive hint of House. The cleaners had done their best to put the place back together. The furniture was in the right places, but little things had inevitably been moved. Their positions on the floor after the break-in would not have hinted at their rightful places. Wilson smiled, though, to find a bill organizer on House's desk. Wilson's bill organizer, which he distinctly remembered bringing over after separating from Julie. House must have been appalled by it's presence in his disordered domain and stashed it someplace dark. Perhaps it had intruded on House's fen shui, or upset his third chakra or something.
"It's all wrong," House said. He wandered up to the piano and rested a hand on its lacquered surface. Then he removed it and studied the print left behind before he shuffled off toward the couch. He picked up a wooden box along the way and deposited it on the end table, where it belonged. After that, he paused to rake his eyes over the bookshelves, which appeared to be well ordered by genre, but Wilson already knew that House had arranged those books in a meticulous fashion understood only by him. It would have to be redone.
"Well, I know it's not perfect," Wilson began defensively. He figured that he should feel affronted over House's way of making favors seem like impositions, something Wilson often did feel, but he only felt inadequate, as if he couldn't even make this place comfortable for House, and that felt like a failure to care enough.
House dropped a book he had slid free and watched it fall aflutter on the floor. Then he seemed to register Wilson's tone, and he turned to face him, lowering his eyes almost immediately after locking onto Wilson. "No, I mean, it just isn't…um. It's good. Nice of you."
Wilson frowned and looked down, feeling faintly sick, his hands perched loosely on his hips. "Don't do that."
"But it is." House sounded nervous, as if he weren't sure about how to say that, only that he needed to. "You didn't have to do this."
"We have time to rearrange everything," Wilson put in. He couldn't seem to stop searching for appeasements, all of a sudden. "Get it back to the way it was."
"Wilson, it's fine." Sharper now. "Better than a hotel any day."
Wilson studied him for a second, his own mouth downturned at the edges. He felt stupid all of a sudden, for doing this. He had been on the verge of insisting that they stay the night somewhere proven unsafe, security system or not. If circumstances hadn't played out as they had, this place would have been a voluntary prison. And House wasn't pointing that out to him. House always pointed his own idiocy out to him.
"I'm gonna take a shower."
"Okay," Wilson replied. He watched House amble away down the hallway, then winced when an innocent knick knack of some sort loudly became a casualty on the bathroom floor. It must not have belonged in there.
Wilson busied himself in the kitchen, first clearing the refrigerator of any lingering foodstuffs, and then with mixing batter. Truth be told, he wasn't hungry anymore, and every time he opened a drawer or cupboard in search of a cooking utensil, it wasn't there at hand, the way he had left it a week ago. The whole apartment seemed comfortable on the surface, familiar, but underneath it was all wrong, just as House had stated. And that was disconcerting, because if Wilson didn't feel at home in 221B, where else was there?
With the stove on and a pan heating in preparation for melting a pad of butter, it occurred to Wilson that House had been in the shower for over half an hour now. It wasn't unusual for him to spend protracted periods in the bathroom, but if he did, it was to take a bath. His leg couldn't handle standing still for that long with little to brace himself against the slippery tub except the water pipes and the curtain rod. Wilson could still hear the shower running, though, and he wondered how long it would take for the spray to run cold. There were also no irregular splashes and slaps of water to betray the activity of someone actively washing.
Wilson padded softly down the hall, his shoes discarded in the kitchen, and peered through the cracked-open bathroom door. He couldn't see House's shadow through the thin shower curtain, but he also couldn't see the whole tub from where he stood. The absence concerned Wilson enough to push the door open farther with one finger and stick his head in.
There was a part in the curtain, just a sliver between the edge of the plastic and the tile shower wall. Wilson approached it and looked down, craning his neck to see through into the shower. House sat slumped on his ass in the bottom of the tub, his right leg straight out and his left knee raised. He had propped his right elbow on the edge of the tub against the wall, forehead resting on his fisted hand, and then twisted to rest his left hand over his damaged thigh. The long slope of his back faced Wilson, vertebrae knobbed in a straight line down the middle. House breathed slowly, deep breaths that expanded his ribs with each inhale. He didn't appear to be distressed, merely worn out. Wilson could well imagine him telling himself to just keep breathing; his entire body practically screamed of it, that it was all he could do right now. He looked…small.
Wilson backed out of the bathroom on stealthy feet, leaving the door as it was because he didn't want a creak alerting House to his presence. Every nerve in Wilson's body itched to go back in, turn off the water, and gather House up into a little ball in his lap. Not only would that be difficult, seeing as how House was not by any means little, but Wilson would probably lose a limb for his troubles. If House had wanted an audience, he would have stayed in the living room, or dragged Wilson into the shower with him. House may have been improving in the whole affectionate and comforting touch department, but he was like a rehabilitated stray dog: even if its temperament improved, you still didn't leave it alone in a room with a child. House still couldn't abide being vulnerable if he could help it.
A few minutes later, the water shut off with a rattle of pipes, and Wilson tuned an ear to the sound of House hauling himself out of the tub. The expected grumbling was absent, but Wilson heard enough stomping and slamming to make up for it. When the muffled thumps and cane-falls passed into the bedroom, Wilson set down the fork he had been obsessively whipping in the bowl of pancake batter, turned off the stove without cooking anything, and padded down the hall. He arrived at the bedroom door in time to watch House upend the soft suitcase of their dirty laundry from the hotel stay, scattering its contents all over the floor. Then House shifted the pile around with one foot and his cane, walking over it and spreading it out according to some private design. Wilson watched in silence as House turned around to poke his cane at a stack of magazines and journals on the floor near the closet door, then shove some of them at random so that they made a mess in front of the dresser. House was in the process of kicking a few random objects underneath the bed when he spotted Wilson, and then he scowled as he returned to his work.
"House?"
"It's too perfect in here. I can't sleep in perfect."
"Okay." Wilson rubbed absently at the back of his neck as House tore a comforter off the bed – albeit one that House never used; the cleaners must have found it in the bottom of the linen closet. House's well worn bedspread was folded on the floor with their luggage from the hotel. The comforter found a home in the corner that House mashed it into, and then he seized the bedspread and fluffed it into a ball on the bed so that it looked recently slept in. It took Wilson a second to understand that House was just trying to make the room look like it normally did: lived in. But when House started grabbing things that didn't belong in the bedroom and flinging them out into the hall –books, trinkets, game cartridges, even shoes – Wilson reached out to stop him.
"It looks like a god damn Good Housekeeping magazine," House spat, wrenching his arm from Wilson's grip. "Since when do I live in a display room? And where's my rug?" House stabbed his cane into the floorboards next to his side of the bed, where he used to have a throw rug.
"They put it out in the hall, House. You had to walk on it to get in here."
House shouldered Wilson aside and stormed out into the hall to see for himself, then grabbed the edge of the rug and dragged it back in with him.
Wilson watched helplessly from the foot of the bed as House threw it down, flopping it up at the edges, and then tried to straighten it out without bending down again. The curses he muttered under his breath when that didn't work made Wilson cringe lightly and avert his eyes, one hand braced on his hip while the other weakly massaged his neck. "House…"
"I can't find my charger. It was right there, and now it's not." House pointed at the wall socket next to the nightstand where his iPod charger was supposed to sit, perpetually plugged in and waiting.
"Okay," Wilson soothed. "I can see you're freaking out."
"I'm not freaking out – I want my fucking charger!" Of course, then second he realized that he was sort of losing it a little, House balked, dropped whatever he was holding, and immediately turned to face the bed. Wilson watched him hesitate, free hand fidgeting randomly at his side, and then he mechanically went through the motions of going to bed. Pull back the covers, situate a pillow, hook the cane over a bedpost, climb in. He glanced over his shoulder to the place on the nightstand where his Vicodin used to lie, then at the ceiling, and finally settled on his left side, his back to Wilson, unnaturally still.
Wilson approached with care and laid a hand over House's bony shoulder, which stuck up due to the manner in which he had huddled down. House stiffened under his hand, but didn't move as Wilson reminded him, "You didn't take all of your meds yet."
"I know, Wilson. Just go away, please."
Wilson let his hand slip from House's shoulder and relocated it to the back of his own neck. "I'll bring them to you." Then he padded from the room before he did something stupid, like react to the tiny break in House's voice when he had said please, like a scratchy old phonograph churning out the hollow strains of a Chopin piece that could barely be heard above the crackles and spits.
He gave House plenty of time to compose himself by tending to the mess he had made in the kitchen. The batter would keep overnight, so Wilson Saran-wrapped it prior to thrusting it blindly into the fridge. He had to scour the pan he had been heating because the butter had scorched in the bottom of it, which took another few minutes. When he finally got around to shutting off lights on his way to the hall, he wasn't sure how he felt about everything that had transpired that night. He knew that House was out of sorts because his home didn't feel like home anymore, and it was all wrong, and strange people had been in here, pawing at his stuff. Even with the security system in place, Wilson knew that House couldn't feel safe here right now.
Wilson felt out of place too, like something was off, just slightly skewed, and it was. The place was familiar, but nothing was where it belonged. It was just abnormal enough to raise hairs on Wilson's arms. The riotous mess they had walked in on before had felt more normal than this flimsy illusion that everything was peachy keen again. Wilson hadn't realized how terribly he wanted his old screwed-up life back until he stood in House's living room, staring around and cataloguing everything that wasn't exactly where it should be, all the way down to the pile of sheet music that wasn't strewn haphazardly on the floor behind the piano. He could well understand House's impulse to untidy the bedroom; Wilson experienced a similar urge to go fish everything out of the piano bench and fan it out on the floor.
By the time Wilson crept back to the bedroom, House had coiled himself around a lump of pillows and blankets in the center of the bed that roughly conformed to the shape of a second person. Wilson chose to overlook it as he rummaged through the dresser in search of his own matched pajama sets, then took one to the bathroom and readied himself for bed. He doled out House's new medications last, adding a Vicodin to the mix because he didn't think House had taken one in a while, and then scooped the pills into a Dixie cup, which he brought back to House.
"Here." Wilson held the cup in front of House's nose, mildly disconcerted by the blank stare he got in return. "House, you need to take your meds." House blinked again at the cup before he took it. Wilson passed him some water as well, waited until House had swallowed everything, and then threw the paper cups into the trash can on his own side. After switching off the light, Wilson poked House's arm and gestured to the other half of the bed. "Scoot over."
House looked at him and deliberately settled in right where he was, though it wasn't snark or habitual obstinance that painted his features. Wilson didn't actually know what that was.
Wilson frowned. "House, move."
"Sleep on the couch."
"What? Why?" Wilson reached out to touch House's cheek, but House ducked into the pillow to evade him. He barely suppressed the urge to recoil at the rejection and demanded, "What did I do?"
"Nothing. I just need you to go."
Wilson stared at him for a second. "No."
House glared and refused to make room for him, so Wilson rounded the bed and climbed in behind him. House must have thought he was leaving at first, because he jumped when the bed dipped, and then tried to wriggle away from the arm that Wilson had already draped over his waist. "What are you doing?"
"I'm going to bed," Wilson replied as if this should have been self evident.
House twisted in a vain bid to get Wilson off of him. "I thought I told you to sleep on the couch."
"And I told you no."
"Let go of me!"
"No." Wilson spooned up to him and cinched his arm tighter over House's waist.
House contorted himself to shove at Wilson, to no avail, so he resorted to words instead. "I just dropped two hundred grand on your sorry ass – you think I want you anywhere near me? I have nothing thanks to you!"
Wilson winced, but he knew that for the meaningless barb that it was. Softly, he replied, "You don't have 'nothing,' House."
Impotent fury had never gone well with House's features. "I don't want you here!"
"I just paid to have a cadre of maids make this place livable again. I'm staying." Wilson made himself dead weight to prove this assertion.
That just made House try to push him off the mattress again. "I want you to leave."
"Not happening." Wilson scooted closer when House rolled away into the pile of blankets.
"What the hell is wrong with you? Get out!"
With perfect calm, Wilson simply replied, "No."
An indeterminate sound ripped itself from House's throat, and then he started fighting for real. Wilson held on and burrowed in against House's back as House twisted and shoved, and then finally pried at Wilson's arm and tried to kick at Wilson's legs. He was in a bad position for it, not to mention lame in one leg, and he couldn't reach enough of Wilson to properly hurt him. The whole thing came off as more of a tantrum than anything else, and Wilson found himself speaking softly to calm House down. To his surprise, it worked, though not as he had intended. House left off with a glancing blow to Wilson's shin, threw himself forward to claw at the pillows he had previously been wrapped around, and then stilled abruptly, breathing hard. Wilson calmly fit himself back around House's shivering form, pulling House back against him, and sighed in what he hoped sounded like contentment. At the sound, House went rigid for a moment and then tucked himself deeper into the pillows, but at least he didn't try to pull away again.
Blandly, Wilson inquired, "Are you done?" He didn't realize what all the shivering and the erratic breathing meant until House's ribcage hitched under his arm. Wilson opened his eyes all the way, instantly alert, and tightened his grip. "House?"
"Why can't you go away?"
Alarmed, Wilson struggled up on an elbow to lean over House in the hopes of catching a glimpse of his face. "You know why. Talk to me."
"I said no!"
Wilson ignored that and tried to mold himself closer. He didn't think that was possible, but he tried anyway. House's stomach muscles jumped and clenched under Wilson's hand. "House, please." He paused, then added weakly, his tone low, "You can say anything; I won't get mad."
House vigorously shook his head, his face stuffed into a pillow.
"Do you regret it?" Wilson asked, somewhat desperate and terrified of the possibility that House might resent him for the payoff, though Wilson had had nothing to do with it, and he wouldn't have approved of it if he'd known beforehand. Still, the fact that House had done it shone as proof of how invested he had become in Wilson, and that was easily worth two hundred grand. "I'll pay you back, if that's it. I don't mind. You shouldn't have had to do it in the first place."
"No!" House yelled, but the pillow stifled most of it. "I don't want your fucking money."
"Then what?" Wilson demanded. He inched forward when he realized that House had gained a miniscule distance. "House, please. You're upset. I need to know why."
"No." House curled over his pillow and refused to loosen up, like a sun-dried pill bug stuck crisp and dead in a window. "Sleep on the couch," he begged, his voice strung out and small somehow, strangled.
Wilson rested his forehead against the back of House's neck, between his hairline and the line of his shoulders, then shook it, eyes slipping closed of their own accord. He knew House was desperate to get rid of him; he could only imagine that House wanted him to go so that he wouldn't be tempted to say anything damning – anything sincere. Wilson couldn't tell if House were actually crying or not, but the stuttering muscles beneath his hand hinted at choking up. He made a point of spreading his fingers out across House's abdomen, silent acknowledgment of unwanted emotions, and murmured, "I'm not leaving."
House merely kept on breathing in fits and starts, catching and holding air in his lungs only to have it explode from him, followed by a gasp or a hard swallow. Wilson stroked his fingers up and down House's stomach, resting his hand over House's chest at random intervals, waiting and breathing steadily in his own turn. It sounded like House was crying, but when Wilson snuck a glance, he could see no tear tracks shining in the ambient light from the hall. Wilson didn't know of anyone else who could do that, cry without shedding a tear. It was surreal, and it broke his heart a little bit. Somewhere in the farthest corners of his mind, Wilson conjured an approximation of John House scornfully declaring that he would give House something to cry about.
Eventually, House quieted, slowly sinking into the mattress with Wilson safe at his back. His breathing evened out for the most part, though it was still fraught with the occasional hitch, and House would lick his lips afterward as if that helped. Wilson had moved on to stroking the side of House's face, smoothing the hair at his temples and running over the stubble lining his jaw, his arm a solid weight crooked over House's. House didn't react much to this, and Wilson could see his eyelashes move as he blinked at intervals too long to indicate actual relaxation, or normal awareness.
Wilson leaned in and pressed his lips behind House's ear, an easy enough spot to reach. "Better?"
A fine tension coursed through House's body, disguised as a shiver. "I wasn't thinking."
"You're not supposed to think in a situation like that. Not with your head, anyway."
"I blew it."
"It's not like you dropped it all on a pony," Wilson replied, a hint of wry sarcasm encroaching on his speech. "You think I'm not flattered? Grateful?"
"It was stupid. They couldn't get you, not right away. You were safe in the hospital."
Ah. Reason sets in, at long last. Stupid thing, that. Wilson often wondered how much guilt House bore out of attacks of reason.
"I should've gone back inside. We shoulda called the police."
Perhaps so, Wilson thought. But what he said aloud was, "You're the only person I know who would have done this for me, House." Wilson had no idea what they would do now. He had three alimony payments to keep up on; he'd been doing alright for a while since he made good money, but he wasn't rich. Thrift had served him for a long time now. He would have to get rid of Amber's apartment, let the lease expire, move in here and encroach properly on House's space. That might not work; they were still oil and water on so many issues, but he wouldn't let House go bankrupt for acting from his heart. He wouldn't let him lose whatever else he had left now. "Let it go. It's only money."
House snuffed, coughed unexpectedly, and then angled his face into the crook of his arm. Wilson watched creases stretch across House's temple and realized that House had squeezed his eyes shut. Slightly muffled but still clear, House said, "They kept saying what they would do to you. They knew I didn't take their money, but I got Lyamone arrested, so it was my fault, and they kept…describing…"
"Okay." Wilson stopped him by returning his arm to House's waist and squeezing. "You don't have to justify it to me."
House's voice dried up into a thin mewl, and then burst out on the tail end of a sob. "They didn't wanna kill you; they said they'd just take you someplace and make you get on your knees and ask for it – "
"House, it's okay. That won't happen." Wilson held him tighter, pressed up all along the rounded line of House's body.
But House either couldn't, or wouldn't stop now that he'd started talking. "They knew about us. They heard nurses talking. They said they'd – "
Just to drown out the rest of the sentence, Wilson insisted, "You don't have to tell me."
"Said you were pretty enough," House mumbled. "They asked if I'd still want you after." Then his voice squeaked into a higher register as he forced himself to keep speaking. "Not you. Wilson, I couldn't let them."
"You didn't," Wilson reminded him. On the outside, he marveled at how staid he sounded, but inside, he was horrified to imagine what House must have been thinking to hear those threats. "House, I'm fine. You're fine, everything's fine."
Even House's breath had grown thick by then, probably thanks to mucous building in the back of his throat, but he managed to choke out, "Can't let you to know what that's like." And then he finally dissolved completely.
It took about thirty second for Wilson's mind, preoccupied with cooing empty words into House's ear, to completely unravel all of the subtle undertones to that final pronouncement. He stopped breathing for a second when he realized what House had actually told him, and then he ducked his nose into the back of House's shoulder, inhaling warm cotton, his eyes open and staring. "Because you do know?"
House wasn't crying so much as just letting his eyes water and his nose run into a pillow, but Wilson could still feel the heat radiate off of him.
"Okay," Wilson breathed, and then he hooked his chin over House's shoulder and tried to smother him. "Okay, it's okay." It's not okay. Emphatically not. "Nothing happened to me. I'm fine. You're fine too." He pressed his lips to House's jugular and kept offering banal comforts.
House kept on insisting that he couldn't let that happen to Wilson, not Wilson, not him, because he was good and he didn't deserve it, and then House suddenly started apologizing for it.
"No," Wilson hissed. "Don't say you're sorry. Don't. You didn't do anything wrong."
Some sort of denial rushed from House's mouth, but he buried it in the bedding and started talking into the bunched bedspread, his words too garbled for Wilson to understand them. Then that degenerated into a harsh, unintelligible litany of noise, interspersed with piteous hiccups in lieu of breathing.
Wilson gathered stray bits of House to his chest and held on as if he could make things better by sheer force, could keep House from splintering into a dozen pieces. He just kept repeating that it was okay, that House was okay, Wilson was okay, everything was okay when it wasn't, and House had fallen as near to hysterical as Wilson had ever seen him. It scared the shit out of him, the force with which House was capable of breaking, when he got that far. Every time Wilson had seen him out of sorts – stressed or in pain or worried, angry, cornered, staring rehab and Tritter down the throat, even an hour before chugging bourbon laced with a full bottle of oxy – he had never understood the restraint that House exercised. When House lost his temper, he probably didn't actually lose it all the way. Even after the infarction, chewing Stacy out or screaming from the pain, the uncontrollable agony-induced tears, the fear, Wilson realized that House had never lost control. In all of House's adult life, he had probably refrained from ever opening up enough to risk it, because if he did it once, he might do it again, and then things like this would come out and House wouldn't be able to stop.
Half of Wilson wanted to shush House, but the other half didn't dare. If he stifled House now, House might stay that way, locked in a tiny corner of his own head, and all Wilson would see is that old shuttered House who never revealed anything beyond a smirk and a sad, mysterious frown. The lonely little scared House who snapped and bit to keep people far enough away that they'd never guess at how afraid he really was, how easily they could tear him down.
It was all over in a matter of perhaps a minute. House latched onto his pile of pillows and stilled his trembling with a monumentous effort, his respirations evening out a bare moment after. Wilson blinked at the long body furled up in front of him, House's head tucked into the crook of Wilson's elbow, uncannily quiet. For a moment, he actually thought that House had passed out just from the stress of shedding a few tears, but no; when Wilson tried to elbow House's head up for a look, a flash of glittery azure accosted Wilson before House shifted to better work his nose into the folds of bedding. House had merely stopped himself cold.
This was a more disturbing development in Wilson's mind than the breakdown itself. The only evidence of House's former distress was the very slight elevation of his pulse rate, thumping in his carotid under Wilson's cheek. How could a person just cease to emote like that, just shut down as if they had a kill switch? It wasn't normal, but then again, so few things about House were.
"Hey." Wilson thumbed at the damp spots under House's right eye and then craned his neck down to put their mouths within reach. That was as far as he went, and even then, he only did it for the vantage point, hoping that House would look at him. He didn't, though; House blinked in that slow, distracted manner particular to cats and people stoned on good weed, eyes open and unseeing, focused far away. "House."
"No." Just one word, flat and forbidding, and completely without dimension.
"Okay," Wilson replied. "That's fine." He had no idea what he was agreeing to, but he would have said anything at this point to wipe that hollow look off of House's face.
House fell four shades short of snark, or even of a petulant whine, when he complained, "Will you go away now?"
"Uhhh…no. No way in hell."
"You have issues."
"Nice transference. Learn that on your psych rotation?"
If House found their usual form of banter appealing, strained as it was, he didn't show it. He didn't show anything, really. "Let go now?"
Wilson considered that request a tad more carefully. "Give me a reason." If the embrace made House uncomfortable, made him want to squirm inside his own skin, he would back off without comment. But if that were the case, he wanted House to admit it. Was that self-serving?
"You're crushing my leg."
"Oh." Wilson balked, peered down their bodies to where he had intertwined his legs with House's at some point to prevent him from kicking Wilson more, and then gingerly went about extracting himself.
As soon as he was able, House half-rolled, half-scrabbled over the twisted mass of bedding he had been wrapped around, and shoved it against Wilson to keep him on the other side of the bed, trapped where House usually slept.
Wilson stretched his neck up to peek over the mound of blankets and pillows, his heart fracturing at the edges as he watched House curl into himself and hug his own body, lying mostly on his stomach with his face planted in the mattress like a freezing little boy forced to sleep on frosted ground. "House?"
"No touching."
A single tear escaped as Wilson swallowed past the golf ball lodged in his throat. "At least take a blanket." Wilson fought with addled fingers to drag a throw blanket from the twisted remains of their neatly made bed, and then held out an edge, his arm trembling. "House, please. Take it." He shook the soft fabric as if movement might entice House to accept it. Developmental biology and evolution implied that he might, at that; children instinctively grabbed for moving objects.
An eyeball appeared from under House's lid, mistrustful, as if he were being stalked.
It nearly killed Wilson to say it, but he added, "Take it and I'll go sleep on the couch like you asked."
House appeared to consider that for a moment, and then his gaze turned inward. He reached a tentative hand toward the blanket, hesitated, and then let his fingers close over air before he drew his fist back and tucked it under his chest.
Wilson could barely contain his reaction to that, a House-ish plea to stay put. He moved slowly to toss the blanket over House's shoulders and spread it over as much of the man as it could reach, one bit at a time without touching him, and then withdrew to House's usual side of the bed. Wilson sunk down behind the barrier House had shoved between them and drew his knees up a little so that he rested comfortably on his side, facing House through a buffer zone of bedding that smelled like happier pieces of both of them. Wilson doubted that anyone would believe that depression carried a sour scent all its own, but it did; he could smell it. Desperate unhappiness and fruitless hope. It sort of smelled like the terminal wards, the subtle part underneath the latex and body odors and disinfectant.
"'Night, Wilson."
Wilson bit his lip; he didn't want House to know how upset he was, and no way would he sleep now. Once he was certain that his voice wouldn't betray him, Wilson murmured, "'Night, House." And then he kept watch over the space between them until a pink dawn showed at the window.
--TBC