A/N: Nobody said it stunk—thanks guys xD—so I thought I might add a bit more. Everybody, Wilson included, deserves some real closure.

IV.

It was about six o' clock that evening when Cuddy ran into two of her most valuable doctors—oh, how she hated to admit that—on their way out. If it were not for the solemnity of the situation, she would have burst out laughing; as it was, she found restraining herself was no simple matter.

While, ordinarily, Dr. Wilson had to match his steps and stride to Dr. House's, today it was the other way around. Wilson was dressed in his original clothes again—sans tie—looking slightly more normal, but he had a cast on his left ankle due to the—er—accident with the door, he was supporting himself with a pair of crutches, and though he was covering them with sleeves and slacks again, she knew the wounds he had which weren't going to heal. For a moment she wondered if House had been right about the injuries being the fault of Julie Wilson, and she contemplated the satisfaction of bashing the woman's face to shreds with a few nice, well-placed blows. Unfortunately, Deans didn't do such things.

That was, she thought, altogether too bad.

House, on the other hand, looked dapper and dashing in comparison to Wilson for once. His gait seemed to have improved; he wasn't limping as heavily as per his usual. The humor of the moment lay entirely in the way the two of them looked together. Cuddy knew they were friends, but it wasn't often that they matched.

As she watched them approach, she noticed a few things which hadn't seemed so obvious before; Wilson stayed a pace further away from House, rather than moving shoulder-to-shoulder with him; in turn, House seemed to have a pretty good idea when Wilson was becoming uncomfortable, and would either lower his voice a bit or move slightly apart again. Cuddy felt a rush of guilt for failing to understand what was going on previously, but she consoled herself with the reminder that she wasn't really to blame—after all, who had figured it out? If House couldn't, the odds were no one could have.

"We don't need any more Girls Gone Wild," House said to Wilson in an abnormally loud stage whisper as they came within hearing range, "we have the hottest Dean in fifteen counties." Wilson sighed and shook his head, but he was still hard put to keep himself from grinning. Even though they'd been talking about her, Cuddy found herself wanting to grin too.

"Wilson?" she said, nearly putting a hand on his arm before she caught herself.

"Yes?" he replied, pausing gingerly and flashing her another of his shy smiles. (With those, she understood the basis for his reputation.)

"The janitors did a remarkably quick job of removing your papers from the air vents," Cuddy said, smiling, "and you can have them back. I believe they're all here." From the bottom of a drawer, she removed a rather thick sheaf of documents, and then she paused, uncertain as to what to do with them; it was clear Wilson couldn't carry them, and House was already halfway to the door. Wilson was suggesting he try to fix the clasp back on his briefcase when House heaved an exceedingly loud sigh and limped over to them again.

"Give 'em to me," he said. "Cane only takes one hand."

Wilson shrugged and grinned to Cuddy when House was leaving again. "Thanks," he said, quietly, and then he made a valiant attempt at hobbling, in a dignified manner, away.

When the door swung shut behind them, Cuddy sat down and indulged herself in a private smile. They were good men, both of them; good men, good doctors, and good friends, and when they were with each other, she knew they were in good hands. And that was lucky, because, for a Dean of Medicine with far more lawsuits than she felt she deserved, she needed every reassurance she could get.

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Wilson hobbled alongside House until they reached the parking lot, when he found himself faced with a rather problematic conundrum. They had arrived in separate cars; as such, they should leave in separate cars, and the odds were that once they did they would wind up returning to their separate homes. Wilson's problem was that he did not want to go back to the house where he lived. In fact, as he stood, balanced somewhat precariously with his crutches, and touched his hand to the door of his car, he realized he was terrified of it. He glanced at House, who was a few spaces down heading toward his Corvette, and let out a weary sigh. It seemed he would have no other choice.

He'd just rested his crutches against the side of the car so he could begin the process of climbing in when he heard an engine behind him and a very familiar voice.

"You going to stand there all night," it said, "or come watch good porn, eat pizza 'till you puke, and drown your poor angsty teenage troubles in beer?"

To Wilson, a comfortable night on the couch under a blanket in his own boxer shorts (not an annoying hospital gown) while House griped about his latest case and noodled away on the piano sounded like a much better idea, but regardless of what they wound up doing, he knew he didn't want to go back to Julie. So he grabbed his crutches again, hobbled over to the passenger side, and clumsily climbed inside when House flung open the door. For a moment, he was able to forget why he didn't want to go home—and for that, he was grateful.

House glanced over at him after he'd dumped his crutches in the back seat and settled himself with one or two quiet sounds of relief. At first Wilson thought that House was going to say something about Julie, but he was comfortably silent on that topic and instead remarked, "You still look like hell."

"Gee, thanks," Wilson said.

At the next stop light, House took his eyes off the road again and said, "You can still look cool in this baby if you're sleeping in it, you know. It is that awesome."

Wilson took the hint. The leather of the seat was astonishingly soft, not at all like that of the restraints used at PPTH (he already feared he might have nightmares about those), and it wasn't more than two blocks before he'd dozed off. He did not so much as snore or stir until they reached House's place, where House rather unceremoniously blasted Bohemian Rhapsody to provide an incredibly effective wake-up call. Wilson dreamed about nothing at all. It was the best sleep he'd had in a year and a half.

They went inside and amiably bickered for a few minutes over what Chinese to order, as they always did. Wilson examined the contents of House's medicine cabinet so he could change the bandage on his shoulder; when he removed the dressing, he was pleased to notice that the wound had stopped bleeding and begun to clot. The night before she'd flung a fork at him over the dinner table with a surprising amount of force; he hadn't been able to dodge it in time and had had to remove it from his arm later. The next thing she threw, though, he'd deflected with her favorite china plate, and that brought an end to the flying cutlery fairly soon.

House was watching The Princess Bride when Wilson got back to the living room; it was probably House's all-time favorite movie, which, if you thought about it, was really rather odd, but Wilson didn't care; for at least one night, he didn't have to go back. He didn't plan on thinking about the next until he had to.

House, on the other hand, had altogether different ideas.

Different, Wilson thought idly. Now there was House in a nutshell.

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Whenever House thought about the events of the day, as he could not stop himself from doing a few times too many for comfort, he wondered about the same thing, and it was beginning to plague him. He and Wilson were, if anything, like brothers. Wilson was the only one who had never left him, and the only one House almost felt he could trust—even then, there were many times when he was still afraid, felt the need to push the boundaries, to see if maybe, if he just pushed hard enough, Wilson would leave anyway. Like everybody else. But House pushed and Wilson stayed, and House pushed and Wilson stayed, and after a time, though House knew he could never fully trust Wilson—probably could never fully trust another human being again—he also knew he could come close enough. It was comfortable. Wilson needed to be needed, and now Wilson was the one doing the needing, and House had never before quite realized how nice it felt to be depended on by someone else. Not that he'd turn nice and become Wilson or anything. Ties that ugly? They'd have to kill him first.

As such, the question that plagued him was this: why hadn't Wilson told him?

In the same abrupt fashion House did everything else (life was so much more fun that way), he turned to Wilson and asked.

"What?" sputtered Wilson, dropping his chopsticks into his lo mein. "What was that?"

As Westley helped Buttercup through the Fire Swamp, House repeated his question. "So why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?" Wilson asked.

"That Julie beat the shit out of you."

"I never said Julie had anything to do with anything. That was all your idea."

"So go home to her," House said. "Prove she has nothing to do with anything."

House had not known anyone's face could lose color quite that quickly.

"I can prove my side," he said, with a smirk which was not as pesky as his usual. He leaned over and fished a form from the pocket of his leather jacket. It was, oddly enough, the same form which had been sucked through the air vents at the time Wilson fell.

"See this?" House said, pointing to a telling spot of something red in the upper right-hand corner. "Looks an awful lot like blood, doesn't it?"

Wilson sat and stared at him. He was utterly silent.

"I bet if I ran this through the lab, I'd have plenty of evidence for you, pal. Like that, for starters. Unless you recently decided to dye your hair blond, I'd be willing to bet—" House jabbed a finger at something on the paper "—that isn't yours. The blood, on the other hand, is much easier. Speaks for itself really."

Wilson moved not a muscle, only shifted his gaze to the television. It was time for the wild dog to die in Count Rugen's Machine.

"You should know better than to fight near work from the hospital," House said, and then went back to munching his food. Well, he was done. Whether or not Wilson wanted to talk, the ball was in his court. And Wilson had better take advantage of it damn soon, because House didn't do listening, didn't do mushy friendship stuff. This time, though, he was beginning to realize that he might actually care. For years, Wilson had cared about him; maybe it was finally up to him to return the favor.

House figured, after all the crap he put Wilson through, he owed him at least that.

And so he muted the movie.

There was silence in his living room for a few minutes and he was contemplating giving up and going to the piano, saying screw the whole thing, he was no therapist, when Wilson spoke brokenly into the quiet.

"I was afraid."

House didn't turn to look at him, kept staring at the soundless television screen.

"I didn't tell you because I was afraid."

"Of what?" House said. He resisted, with less difficulty than he'd expected, the urge to tell a joke, to cover up feeling with humor again. It wasn't the time.

"Of—of her," Wilson said. "It was her, it is her. I was afraid to tell you, and I was ashamed."

More silence. Inigo and Fezzik were reunited, and Fezzik began trying to cleanse Inigo of brandy. House realized he knew the lines to the film by heart and could say them in his mind along with the characters. He wondered why he still felt the need to watch it.

"I started to believe her. Started to think, after a while, that what she said was true. Started to—to doubt myself," Wilson said, and trailed off. About ten minutes passed.

"How long?" House asked.

"Few years."

"How often?"

"Whenever I deserved it."

At that, House put his hand on the arm of the couch and turned to face Wilson. "Haven't you learned anything today?" he asked, trying, for Wilson's sake, not to become too angry.

"That it's easier than it sounds to convince people you're suicidal?" Wilson offered weakly.

"That you didn't deserve it. Didn't deserve any of it. Nobody," House said, "and damn it, I mean nobody, deserves that. Not even Vogler, though he might come close. Do you understand me?"

"I get it," Wilson said, and he sounded exhausted. "It's just—it's not easy."

"What about New Year's?" House asked, a few minutes later.

Wilson didn't reply, but House got the idea.

"Listen to me closely," he said, "because you'll only hear this once in your lifetime. I care about you. And I owe you. A lot. You hear me?"

Wilson gave a quick, abrupt nod.

"It's like—I don't know, it's like a brother thing, okay? The only one allowed to beat the shit out of you is me."

"I'm not going to leave," Wilson said quietly. Now it was House's turn to be surprised.

"I'm not going to leave," he repeated. "I know you think I will, but I'm not going to leave." And House knew what he meant.

"Okay," House said. "Okay." So, he thought. This is how it feels to trust someone.

Wilson sighed, long and deep. He felt he was finally providing his problems with a means of escape, letting them into the open air to evaporate in puffs of gas. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the couch.

"You don't have to go back. Court—you can sue. File for divorce. Like I said, you have all the evidence you need." House wasn't good at comforting, but he was willing to give it a shot.

"House?"

House glanced over at Wilson, who was limp. Drained. Pretty much half-dead. And… undeniably relaxed. Maybe even at peace.

"Yeah, Wilsie?" he said, throwing a fortune cookie at Wilson's head. It made contact with a small cracking sound and split. Wilson reached up and extracted the fortune from his crumb-filled hair.

YOUR LIFE WILL CHANGE FOR THE BETTER.

BE READY.

02146784431190602394587

He grinned and tiredly flicked it back at House.

"Thanks," Wilson said. He meant it for more than the cookie, and somehow he knew House understood.

House turned the volume back up, and they watched the rest of the movie together, with House running his own quirky commentary every chance he got. When the credits began to roll, Wilson grabbed a blanket from the closet and carefully stretched out on the couch. House wandered over to his piano and began to play.

Wilson drifted off to sleep on the strains of Paper Moon, and he dreamed again of nothing at all. And as the last quiet note faded into the darkness, floated up to the waiting stars, he smiled a drowsy smile at the ceiling and knew, for the first time in years, how it felt to be happy.