A/N:This... came out of nowhere. I was thinking and thinking of Wilson, trying to find him and get inside his head. I don't know if I did that or not, but this is definitely something I like... Hopefully, you will too.
No slash intended. Please read and review.
Listen to "Road to Perdition" from the Road to Perdition soundtrack.
The Secret Life of Sunflowers
He spends all his time wanting.
When he rides the elevator alone, he wants House close beside him and a silence between them that stings with love. When he walks the empty hallways by himself, he wants House echoing his footsteps without a cane. He wants his friend to hug him, when he stands at dying children's beds and when he feels alone in his own house and when he looks at his life and believes that he's failed. He wants something that he's never seen, something he's never felt but knows must exist. He wants House to love him the way he loves House – and no one could possibly understand that. Certainly not House himself.
He knows he thinks too much, but he can't stop. It's this understanding that leads him to write the prescriptions again and again. He is one more dependant with a list of addictions that destroy him and keep him sane. He needs to be needed, he needs to be appreciated, he needs to think and wonder what could've been, what should be, what will happen in the future he has no control over. He needs to be loved – but the need isn't being filled.
He thinks he can make life balance out if he wishes hard enough, if he squints and drives alone to nowhere. He saves Sunday mornings for those journeys to pure earth. He prefers the beach over the forest and the forest over the fields. The trees make him feel lost in the way he should be – encased in God's fingerprints. Fields make him feel small – too small to expect any answers. The beach – the beach makes him feel whole. He falls asleep in the sand before New Jersey wakes, listening to the tide and burying his fingers and falling in love with the twilight. He imagines it's the same sort of high Greg gets from the pills – the throbbing calm washing into him, the stationary floating.
Sleeping in the sand is a better version of riding the city bus with his hand pressed against the window, as summer melts into fall. The warmth bleeds into his skin, and he can almost imagine what it would feel like if it could envelope his whole body. It's a silent glow, flowing into his palm and intoxicating his fingers. He is so desperate for warmth, he turns to windows; this makes his heart droop.
He imagines being touched. Not the way women touch him in bed. Not the way doctors touch patients they don't need. Not the way bastards hit bastards out of anger. He imagines being touched in ways that make him feel love. He imagines being touched in ways that heal him. He imagines pure fingertips and tender hands and skin that asks for nothing in return. When he's alone, he shuts his eyes and quivers at his secret ache to be held before he dies.
He finds himself yearning for a second accident, after the bagger brushes his hand at the grocery store. Adrenaline rushes into his brain, makes his eyes wide and his heart jump. He doesn't ask. He doesn't get in the way. But his hand tingles where another human being reassured him that he exists. He mumbles a "thank you," as he pushes his cart away and out into the parking lot; he loads up the car but separates one bag from the others – the one with three bottles of champagne, a box of chocolates, and sunflowers rising out.
He leaves the chocolates on his kitchen counter for the wife who doesn't love him anymore, because he feels that he owes her compensation for being unhappy. He carries the sunflowers in a vase to his office, where he can cry over them privately; they have always been his favorite but no one ever thinks to give him any.
He takes the champagne to House.
"One for you, two for me," he says. House stares at him but asks no questions; he knows something's wrong, and he knows he's incapable of fixing it.
They drink champagne in the afternoon. It's Sunday, and this is where Wilson should be. On his way back from the beach, he thought about taking a wrong turn and escaping to the last place at the edge of the world, where he could find someone to love him the way he needs to be loved. He doesn't know the name of this love, but maybe that someone could.
Instead, he drove to the grocery store and made it to Greg's on time.
He's drunk after finishing both bottles, and House hasn't even made it halfway through his own. He watches Wilson carefully, searching for the problem in his best friend's system. He fails; James is too muddled.
"Why are you like this?" he asks.
And James looks at him. He looks at him – with those soft, brown eyes. And they glisten. His lip doesn't quite shake, but House knows what's coming. He knows his own shortcomings as a friend are part of Wilson's pain, and if he knew how to fix it, he would. If he knew that all that James wanted sometimes was a hug, he might forsake his dignity and oblige. But he doesn't know. He doesn't know and he doesn't ask and Wilson keeps his secrets.
James is the one man House can watch cry without feeling unnatural, and his friend does it well. There is no sobbing, no bawling, no sniffling. He cries quietly, just as he lives, and his heart trembles in his chest.
"No one gives me sunflowers," he says.
House bows his head and looks into his lap. He doesn't know how to love; if he did, he would be Wilson.