A/N: the chapter quotes here are shortened significantly from the HF version. I'm a believer in equal opportunities quoting. This chapter is shorter than the others, and I had the most trouble with it in terms of syntax and stuff, so bear with me. It gets better, I believe.
Disclaimer: I don't own House. Nor do I own the books mentioned.
Other fiddly stuff: the beginning of chapter one.

Thanks to all who reviewed.


TWO.

Everyone laughs and I dunno what's so funny.

Tim Winton – That Eye, The Sky.

There is a fairly regular order in which the dimensions accelerate; leg length as a rule reaches its peak first, some 6 to 9 months ahead of trunk length. Shoulder and chest breadths are the last to reach their peaks. Thus a boy stops growing out of his trousers (at least in length) a year before he stops growing out of his jackets.

J.M. Tanner - Foetus into man: Physical growth from conception to maturity.


As Wilson had supported him while they dashed to his car (House's arm draped over Wilson, with Wilson holding his wrist and side in a death grip, House limp like a piece of overcooked spaghetti, just tall enough to overbalance Wilson but not tall enough to bang the top of his his head with his pointy chin), House had heard the snow crunch under his feet, and had thought that it had sounded funny.

As they drove the puddles splashing seemed to have some kind of rhythm, and then when they had driven past a corner store with neon lights and a bright fluorescent interior, the lights had followed as an afterimage in the corner of his eye. He thought that if he was a little bit more out of it, he would have heard those lights, and the steady splish-splash of the puddles would increase in volume until it was all he could hear.

As it was, he had experimented with opening and closing his eyes (because they felt scratchy) until he realised that they were closed, and he was falling asleep.

When House was fifteen, he had carried Ronnie Dexter up the hill at the end of their street.

It had happened like this: Ronnie Dexter was eight, and had red hair, a very pale complexion, and freckles. Gregory House was fifteen, and he was already tall. He had thought that maybe his sharp angles would decrease as he got taller, but he was still as lanky as ever, still with the same bony knees and elbows and runner's build. He was taller than his dad now, his Dad with his thick army physique.

It was Saturday afternoon, and Greg was walking home from work, work being plunking away at a tinny old piano down at the old folk's home while the old people wharbled away. It wasn't riveting, and the hall at the retirement home smelled like lino wax and disinfectant, a smell he associated with the halls at school and the dank passages of his Dad's base, but it paid OK, and the ladies let him come and play the piano afternoons if he wanted. Last week when he had arrived home his Mum had asked him how it was, and he had replied that it beat playing in a whorehouse, Mom, and his Dad had taken away his money.

(He'd already made himself clear that he would rather his son worked in the supermarket stacking shelves, or spent his Saturdays marching with the Cadets down at the Base for twelve hours). Two years ago he probably would have swatted Greg around the ears with his Newspaper. Last Saturday he had just taken Greg's cheap wallet wordlessly and emptied it, throwing it back to his son roughly with his library and school card slipping out, the foreign notes he had in there even though he didn't need to spend them any more.

Greg was walking through the park at the bottom of the hill he'd have to walk up to be home, the hill the type that kids could crash billycarts on , the park hardly more than a small patch of trees connecting two streets.

He thought that he might have found the park a lot cooler when he was smaller, because he'd never really lived near a real park before, the type with grass and benches, and drinking fountains, and a bandstand, but they weren't living here then, so he didn't know that for sure.

He'd just dropped in at the used book store, and he was carrying a old senior Chemistry textbook (because he made a little extra in the side writing essays for dumb football players doing remedial work, and it was interesting), and a dog-eared Lew Archer private eye mystery with a Scotch bottle on the front.


He was walking along the wet path, scuffing his joggers before him and reading his book, when he heard a dense thud, like a sack of wet laundry hitting a tiled floor, and a short piercing scream, a little-child scream, a ball-shrivelling shriek. He stopped dead, a nervous shiver prickling it's way over his front.

In the patch of trees just ahead of him Ronnie Dexter was lying, screaming his head off, cradling one elbow in the other hand, kicking his legs and arching his back so his shirt rode up and showed his white stomach, his belly button.

Greg didn't know what to do. He thought if he left the kid here he might scream until he choked or something, and he was out of earshot of the street, with the sounds of the nearby main road and the thick trees muffling anything.

Within two seconds of staring at Ronnie Dexter, and within ten seconds of hearing that first thud, Greg had dropped his books and shrugged off his coat and bag in one movement, and come to a skidding stop on his knees next to Ronnie, the wet ground just starting to send cold through the thin knees of his jeans.

He noticed that Ronnie's straight red hair was parted to one side so he could see a line of pure white scalp, and he thought that Ronnie's mum must have done his hair this morning, combing it and saying "Now run along and play Ronnie, but don't mess up that hair for Auntie So-and-so this afternoon".

Ronnie wouldn't stop screaming, and when Greg called his name (he hoped that was it) he just screamed 'Nuh, Nuh' and rolled over onto his obviously injured arm, and started to kick his legs. Greg tried to hold him down, stop him moving for a second so he could get his attention, but he just kicked harder, and Greg knew he didn't even know who it was.

This wasn't working.

Before Greg knew what he was doing (he didn't even know the kid, really), he had cradled his hands under Ronnie's knees and back. He didn't feel anything but the numbness of an adrenalin rush when he lifted Ronnie clear from the ground and got to his feet in one quick movement, his toes dragging and scrabbling for purchase, but when he woke the next morning he would have an ache in his upper arms and a knot in his back. It was awkward, not only to carry the kid while he struggled, but to pick him up like this at all. He didn't know the kid. This sucked.

That's what he thought the next morning as he lay in bed late for once, hearing his Dad's feet stamping around the house trying to get him out of bed, feeling the ache in his arms. That sucked. I felt like a sap. How could it ever feel good to cradle someone else in your arms when you still tried to pull away when people put arms around your shoulders? Would he always be such an awkward fool?

He had rubbed his shoulders and smelled pancakes and thought about how in the space of one minute Greg House, Jockbait who had knocked down the school shithead on his first day, had scooped the child up and run with him through the park and up the street.

Ronnie lived one down and across from Greg, and Greg came sprinting, running for his life, flat-out exhaustion hit-the-wall running up the steep hill, Ronnie screaming in his arms, his legs bruising Greg on the ribs and side. At first he screamed and kicked his legs, but then his body went limp, and Mr Dexter looked up from his lawnmower to see Greg House from across the road, his face wide-eyed and suddenly boyish, run up to him with Ronnie screaming in his arms, his limbs flopping, one brown leather shoe unlaced and loose.

As Mrs Dexter had run out, Greg had breathed again and thought "I carried him up the road." His hair was suddenly wet and cold on his brow. As Ronnie pulled away he left four perfectly circular finger-bruises on his arm. The first time he had to pick up a hot feverish child, he had thought of Ronnie Dexter again.

(As soon as Ronnie could come outside again he had knocked on the House's door to get Greg to sign his cast. Greg's mum had shown Ronnie to his room, grinning, telling him that he had a fan. Ronnie had hung around and annoyed him and finally kicked his shins until he folded and signed the damn cast.

Ronnie hadn't gotten that House was a jerk, fifteen years old, an expert on everything, rude, contrary and abrasive, and above all fucking wierd, and until they moved away again he had come over regularly, looking up to House, trailing him when he walked to the bus stop. House could never shake him, so he went along with it, corrected his grammar, made sarcastic comments about things he said, told him just what to say to the kid who teased him about his hair, asked him if it worked.)

When they moved away Mrs House wrote to Ronnie's mum, and once Greg got a postcard from some holiday destination, covered in messy childlike handwriting. Their mothers were still friendly - Ronnie owned a fishing tackle shop, he was married with two kids. He had sent Greg a get-well card when he was still laid-up in Rehab, obviously working through the Mother News Network, but House hadn't really spoken to him at the last family wedding he had grudgingly attended, still with Stacy. He had just nodded, saluted sardonically with his cane. He had been fifteen, for God's sake, and he'd never wanted anything in return for carrying Ronnie Dexter up the hill.

He hadn't wanted to in the first place. Why? Just because he didn't want to touch him. But he had. It was like that.


Cuddy click-clacked her Dean Of Medicine shoes over to the main desk, didn't bother walking to the phone in her office, got a room for House and asked for the admissions people to meet them there. She then called Curtis from Lungs, an old guy with a couple of research papers under his belt, who was competent and cared more for the hospital golf draw than office politics. He had never brushed up against House, and knew him by reputation only, both professionally and socially. Perfect. House would hate that he was being treated by him, but at least he wasn't being treated by someone who hated his guts.

She couldn't get a single room, but she managed to avoid all parts of the hospital that he'd resided in before. That was also a bonus, the thing she had been worried about, and Wilson too.

Just as she had been about to leave his apartment (she had turned around and was just looking at the Gameboy and what she assumed to be game cartridges scattered on the table near the door), when Wilson had said "Lisa, uh, whatever you do, don't get him a room near where he was when It-happened-with-his-leg. Not even on the same wing, if you can help it."

She had nodded, and he had sighed and said that the last thing they all needed was House depressed and feeling sorry for himself any more. Amen to that, Wilson. He would, actually, never forgive her for putting him even near the room he had died in.

The first or second week he'd been back at work, he'd been walking through the corridor with Cuddy, arguing about something and limping like the devil stepped on his heels. He was walking fast, and following Cuddy as she headed toward the ICU. He hadn't been watching where he was going, and she had turned around to hold the doors for him as he walked into ICU's wing. All of a sudden he had trailed off in the middle of a sharp retort about the Clinic, and as he had realised where he was and looked around (because it had seemed to be the overhead paging system that had alerted him first, some doctor needed urgently) he had paled visibly. But that was all. He had paled, looked around, opened his mouth like he was about to say something but thought better of it, finished the conversation with Cuddy abruptly and turned around as soon as it was finished, trying to look as if he wanted to spend the smallest amount of time in the ICU possible because he had things to do, actually looking as if the place set him on edge.

The only other time she had seen a similar reaction in House was the first time he'd seen a patient code (she assumed) after he returned to work. House had been called in to consult on a man with unexplained rapid heartbeat, he'd just been examining the rash on the guy's belly, griping about the fact that he had to do work at all, when the guy had arrested just like that. House had moved automatically to do the things that doctors are conditioned to do when a patient arrests, but then he had stared at the paddles in his hands for a microsecond and handed them to the patient's attending.

Cuddy had rushed down the corridor (she'd only dragged him there to see the patient five minutes before) to see him standing at the doorway, staring, a carefully blank expression on his face, and when Cuddy had stood near him he had seemed to realise where he was. She had heard the squeak of his shoes as he turned rapidly, his urgent steps as he pushed his shoulder against the door of the Men's bathroom across the hall and down.

The patient was stabilised. The attending could handle it, so she had cracked open the door of the Men's room, and said that she hoped everyone was decent before she stepped in. It was only a small room, one of the little alcove ones that they had, and House was the only person in it. His feet and ankles were visible poking out of the closest stall, and she had heard him breathing quickly as she stepped closer. He hadn't even had time to close the door. He was sprawled on the floor of the stall, arms straining as they supported him on the toilet bowl. She could see the muscles in his back and shoulders. He must have been in a hurry by the time he got to the bathroom, because his cane had clattered almost all the way into the next cubicle, and he looked like he'd almost collapsed where he was. Cuddy walked behind him, and he groaned and spat again. He whispered, Christ Almighty, into the bowl.

She had briefly wondered what to say, had asked if it was bad sushi.

He said leave it, Cuddy, his breath heavy, and she had thought that he wouldn't say anything more, but as she stood behind him he had shifted, slowly brought his knees closer to the bowl, touched his cheek against it briefly, asked if his arms had jerked like that.

When she had said she didn't know he had finally started to get up again, actually turning his sweaty face to her before turning around and retching again compulsively.

Curtis was on his way. Cuddy was getting worried. They should be almost at the hospital. She thought that Wilson must have had trouble getting him up after all, but Wilson rang and said they were close.

Thank God. They were almost there.

They manhandled him out of the car, but after he had leaned against it for a couple of minutes, their breath rising above their heads, he insisted on walking into the hospital on his own two feet.

So they walked to the room, albeit unsteadily.

The worst part of it was that he didn't even ask where they were going, just walked between Wilson and Cuddy, with Cuddy's hand hovering at his elbow. They took him as quickly as they could, hurrying through the partially darkened hospital with House beside them, feverish and half-grunting as he walked, his chest shaking as he tried not to cough, because when he had to they had to stop.

She thought, He's gonna break that cane someday, but she (and Wilson too, she assumed) just weren't in the mood for fighting House into a wheelchair, because she was sure that in his current frame of mind he would drag his feet and arch his back and trail his feet on the floor every step of the way.

Once, when he was in Rehab, when he'd just started walking on the crutches (so it was early, very early on, he still couldn't walk any distance), she'd seen him push a metal spoon into the spokes of the wheelchair Stacy was pushing, just long enough to bring the cheap hospital chair to an ungraceful stop, and for House to push himself to his feet with a grimace, almost falling on his face. Yes, Greg House wore stubbornness around his shoulders like a stage costume.

They tried to hurry him to the room as quickly as possible.

Cuddy noticed as they stood in the lift that he was winded after the short walk from Emergency. By the time they got to the right floor he was hunching forward to ease his breathing and the pain in his chest.

She kept thinking that he'd go down on his knees, that he would flop down onto the floor like he had in his first week at work, just going weak at the knees and flopping down with his chest and face first, arms loose at his sides or clutched around his thigh, legs tensed, but he didn't.

As they went through the admissions procedure, fixed to be VIP rushed by Cuddy, he started coughing with more severity, and when he spat something streaked with red into a tissue and slumped forward like he was about to pass out, eyelids drooping, things happened a lot faster.

They finally got him into the room and into one of those cheap moulded plastic chairs (Wilson guided him as his legs gave out, actually), and he sat there quietly for a couple of minutes, breathing and looking around impassively, the fingers of one hand fiddling with the frayed cuff of his shirt, until he jerked his chest, gave a massive cough before regurgitating what little he had eaten recently and a large quantity of sickly looking phlegm, over himself and his shoes and the floor and Wilson's shoes, before slumping forward into the Nurse's arms, amid shouts of 'OK', and the squeak of shoes on the floor, the dry clatter of his cane on the floor.

The nurse was helping him change, so she stepped out of the room as she drew the curtains, and as she stood there, more than a little shaken and feeling shocked with the sudden silence, being away from House and his sickness, she realised that Wilson was standing outside the room too, leaning against the wall. She breathed out. Wilson rubbed his face, laughed a little surprised chuckle, more like a grunt or a momentary constriction of his vocal cords.

It didn't seem like he was going to say anything else, so she said it.

"Shit."

"Yeah."

Now he was in bed, and Curtis had breezed into the room smelling of Old Spice and carpark and cold. House was semi-conscious, cycling through sleeping and jerking awake and gazing dazedly through half-open eyes. He was shivering again. He hardly reacted at all as Curtis listened to his chest, but when he mentioned that he was hot, House mumbled something unintelligible, swatted at the stethoscope on his chest.

As the nurse slipped the oxygen cannula around his ears his eyes opened and he made to grab at it, a panicked look on his face, but Wilson grabbed his hand and told House that it was best to get in before his lips went blue. House nodded, and he fell asleep. He looked as if he'd just remembered where he was.


Cuddy went home. Wilson was going to, but he realised that he had work to do and he wouldn't have much time tomorrow, so he told the nurse to call his office if there was any change in House's condition, looked through the door into House's room. The curtains were drawn around his bed, and as Wilson peeked through the curtains he saw that House was asleep, his chest rising and falling slowly, his eyes flicking wildly under their lids. There were two other patients in the room – one was in his twenties with long hair and a patchy goatee, asleep, the other was a skinny middle-aged man with an oxygen mask and a bald head. The bald man looked apprehensively towards House's cubicle, and as Wilson was about to go out the door he heard that cough again.

He watched as the nurse tended to House, but she gave him a dirty look, because visiting hours were over and there was nothing that a meddling doctor friend could do, but hover, annoyingly, so he scuttled back to his office, spent a gritty couple of hours doing paperwork and crashed out on the couch in his office.


House had a bad night. At least he was no longer hallucinating and sweating in his bed at home, but as the night wore on he had more and more dreams, he slept less and less and coughed more, until he was practically delirious and didn't know the bedsheets from a circus tent.

He hardly remembered being admitted, the car ride only slightly, but he slept soundly for a couple of hours (he could have said that he had slept like a log, except logs don't wake up periodically with sweat pooled under their backs) before waking with a hot, throbbing feeling in his groin and an image of Stacy in his mind, someone, him or her, calling.

He could hardly think, knew nothing but headache and pain and heat, but he had a perfectly clear running dream, an early-morning running on frosty grass dream, until he dreamed that his nose was bleeding, that he was running with a warm drip on his chin and blood streaming from his nose, breathing heavily through his mouth. He woke and couldn't go back to sleep, except because he was sick being awake was the same as sleeping. Everything was backwards.

Around 5:30 the pain in his chest diminished a little bit and he finally slept, really slept. He jolted himself awake not long after when his leg twitched, and freaked out suddenly because of the oxygen at his nose. He spent the rest of the morning drifting.


Wilson awoke with his cheek pressed to the leather couch at about six am, judging by the cold and the light filtering through the window into his office. He groaned. He had practically melted onto the leather, and it was actually painful to pull his face and forearms off the surface of the couch. He sat up, and his head pounded. He thought about House.

Typical. It could never be enough to just have a little cold, some flu. House had to leave it until he could hardly breathe, until he was practically delirious with fever until he let on that he was sick. Wilson felt guilty. He should have realised sooner. That was their problem, then. House didn't care enough, and Wilson cared too much.

That still didn't account for the fact that House had waited until he could hardly stand up to do something about the fact that he was sick, so Wilson factored in that House was an idiot. Doctors were the worst patients, and treating House (who had to be the worst of the worst) was an exercise in 'I will not scream. I will not scream.'

Wilson thought: First priorities: drink some water, eat something… have a shower. He thought that he should have some clothes around here somewhere... He grabbed a shirt from the bag he kept under his desk, sprayed some deodorant.

He headed for the locker room and showers, thinking that he could really use a sick day dozing on the couch in front of TV and eating ice-cream from the carton.

He hurried through the change rooms, disliking the slight ammonia smell, sweat and disinfectant and pee. He took a quick glance at the noteboard the various hospital sports organizations had, but didn't see anything that interested him. They were calling for people to apply to run the New York Marathon again. Wilson wondered if he'd try again, this year. House had been a far better runner than he was (according to House it was because Wilson 'breathed wrong and stuck his butt out'), and unless House was going to pull him out of bed at 5AM every morning there was no way he'd be motivated enough to train. Oh well. It really wasn't healthy to get competitive with House, Wilson decided, unless you were talking about sitting still or housekeeping.

The shower room was empty. He stripped off and showered quickly, because it was cold and he seemed to have miraculously chosen the cubicle that never turned up past lukewarm. He quickly used the cheap soap from the dispenser, lathering his hair and skin. He stood for a second with his head in the spray, trying to wake up, then stepped out of the shower gingerly, his bare feet slapping on the tiled floor, Wilson trying not to think about all of the gross foot fungus he could be picking up. He dressed in a hurry, grateful for the towels that the hospital provided, smelling of heavy-duty washing powder and chlorine from the pool.


House woke when the nurse came into his room. He did as he was told. He held his breath while they took an X-ray and breathed out while the nurse clapped her hands on his back. He spluttered while a young, nauseatingly cheerful lung guy came and held him with his chest down, coughing disgusting things up.

He went to sleep and woke up a short while later with someone holding his chest from the side, the touch uncomfortably impersonal, the hands always cold and smelling of antiseptic soap, the patronising wake-up call annoying and invasive.

He was grouchy.

House lay in bed. His lungs hurt, but it was easier to breathe now, with the extra added plus of him not being fevered out of his mind any longer. Being sick was scary enough… too sick to make his own medical decisions… that was just too ten years ago, really.

It was that mid-morning lull in the television. All of the Nice Morning Programs had ended, and it was nothing but infomercials and other cheesy programs until the soaps began. He'd already watched one and a half cycles of the ad for The Amazing Blow-Up Mattress That You Can Use Six Ways, and there was a documentary about Ancient Greece that he considered mildly interesting, until he realised that watching TV for this long still made his head spin a bit.

He lay back and closed his eyes, shut off the TV with the remote by his hand, cutting off the narrator's plummy accent mid-sentence.

Oh. A wake of nausea broke over him. He waited uneasily to see what would come of it, and nothing did, thank God. He looked around for the emesis basin near the bed, and grabbed it anyway.

A cough started deep in his chest, and he tried to hold it off, but soon he was sputtering and retching, breathing sharply, his chest hurting with the exertion. He coughed something into the basin, managed not to throw up this time, and lay back, exhausted, wiping something off his chin with a tissue. Gross.

He could feel the other people in the room, Asthma guy and Lip Piercing Guy respectively, gazing at him, and he wished he could draw the curtains for privacy.

First of all, they'd heard him referred to as Doctor, so they knew he was one of Them, as well as being one of Us.

Secondly, yesterday when he had gotten up to go to the toilet, his skimpy hospital gown, the likes of which were always too short for him anyway, had ridden up on the edge of the bad and revealed the scar on his leg. The sudden touch of the edge of the fabric had been shocking, the air cold, so he had made the mistake of hissing and grabbing at it, looking up after a moment to see Lip Piercing guy's eyes jerking away from his own, his cheeks reddening.

Well. He was mighty sick of being interesting to these people, that was for sure.

He lay back, thinking of all the things he was sick of. He was sick of winter. It just made mobility that much harder, he couldn't be out in the cold that long, and he was perpetually afraid of the kind of fall that you can't get up from. He was sick of going to sleep with a hot water bottle clamped to his leg. He was sick of lying in bed, sick of the rough feeling of the cotton hospital blanket. The novelty of being in pain 24/7 had lasted about as long as an Alka-Seltzer. He was sick of Donald Trump and the insult to rugs everywhere perched on his head. He was sick of the oxygen at his nose. He was sick of having to eat frozen peas.

He was sick of the voice of the guy who advertised those rug liquidation sales on TV. He was sick of the tss tss sound of the Lip Piercing Guy's headphones, and the fact that he had listened to all of his own music ad nauseum.

He was very sick of the lack of privacy he had here: as soon as some fool walked by and saw him, as soon as some slackjaw from Imaging peeked in the room and saw him, it was around the place like shit through a goose that he was in the hospital, like, actually a patient, yuk yuk, and Wilson and the nurse had to turn away their visits and cards, or House had to pretend not to see through the glass wall as they took the long way around to see if he was really there. Hadn't they got that he was an antisocial prick already?

The thing he was sick of most of all, that he was thinking about now, was how his reputation had to precede him. If someone who wasn't a doctor, who didn't know him by his reputation, was being introduced to the hospital, he had heard what they would say about him. He would walk by, animatedly arguing with someone or stand in his office bouncing a ball against the wall, and they would say Oh, that's Doctor House, in the same tone of voice they'd use to say That's the vomit stain on the carpet, or that he's a cripple we have to feel sorry for him tone. That's what happens if you don't wear a bike helmet, if you drink and drive, if you don't wear safety glasses, if you smoke, if you fuck up, kids, watch out. Cautionary. He had even felt the tone that Cuddy had, half matter-of-fact, half apologetic.

Now, it was almost worse if the person being introduced was a doctor, because he'd hear snatches of conversation like: That's doctor House? I read his article in So-And-So, didn't realise he was… dot dot fucking dot or Oh yeah, I saw him six months back at that conference. Good presentation, mind you, we were all worried he'd fall up those stairs… He left before the dinner, they want him to present again… I wondered what he was doing with himself… Missed the conference in June... Will he present again?... Heard he's a real jerk, isn't he the guy that...He's really taking a break, isn't he?

He just lay there, trying not to think about anything, waiting for something. The nurse came in and handed him the phone, told him a call had been run through.

He sat up a bit, adjusted the pillows under his back, moved his leg up onto a small one in the bed.

He put the receiver to his ear, looking at the pattern of the cheap insulation tiles on the ceiling, drew up enough breath to croak a hello out.

"Hi Greg. it's Mom."

Warm.

Not many women could make him smile on the phone.

Oh. Huh. He smiled a little bit, just to himself. "Oh, Hi."

He motioned to the nurse for a little bit of privacy, and she took away his basin, checked the oxygen and withdrew, closing the curtains.

He waited for his Mum to say something, and he knew that she would, because talking on the phone to Greg was like pulling teeth with tweezers, she said. Like drawing blood from a stone.

He felt good. It was actually good to be talking to his mother. He felt just like a kid.

There was a brief silence, and he could hear clothes rustling, like she was making herself comfortable. The TV was going in the background, up high, because Dad was a little bit deaf, and just before she spoke he heard a roar of laughter from his father.

He closed his eyes for a second. God, he was fucked. He shouldn't be thinking like this, and he thought that he should make an excuse and put down the phone and watch TV, think himself into oblivion, except that never worked and now he was talking to his mother while he could still talk.

Oh. Right. She was actually saying something, he had just been listening to her voice and wanting.

He suddenly felt a strong blunt pain at the back of his throat, like he'd swallowed a large ice-cube and it just wouldn't go down, and damn, he was breathing really deep and quick and wet. He swallowed.
The pain was still there, and he cleared his throat, feeling the weakness. His hands were shaking. He said Hi to his mum and put the phone away from his ear for a minute and put his head back and squeezed shut his eyes so hard it hurt. They were tearing. The ceiling was blurry. Something warm fell down his cheek. Fuck. He said it. Fuck.

It came out as a whisper, and then he was talking to his mum, and she was doing what she had done when he was five, cradled him in her arms and stroked his hair, except her son was so far away, she had never got him back, what were they going to do with that boy? Even when he had been thrown out of preschool for writing a dirty word all over the bathroom, he was her special boy. Always, through fights and silences and Greg walking home shamefaced in his undershirt with his bloodied shirt in a bag. Now he was... What was the word? Damaged. Well, they had all tried their best. She had always tried. He didn't want to let her down, but he did. House was an anomaly, that one fuck-up, SNAFU, and what could she do with her boy? She could soothe her forty-plus year old son as he cried on the phone. She could tell her husband that he was too sick to talk, that he had fallen asleep. She would talk with him until it was back to everyday things, he would get bored, maybe he'd fall asleep. It was all she could do.


Wilson talked to the nurse, the one with the squeaky shoes. Dr House was on the phone, she said. She wasn't sure if he still was, but he had requested a little privacy.

Wilson stepped carefully towards the curtains, announced himself. House didn't tell him to go away. Wilson heard him murmuring something, to the phone he assumed, so he opened the curtains slightly and put his head and shoulders through.

House looked up in surprise, a look of genuine hurt and shock on his face, like Jimmy had punched him in the gut. Slapped him in the face. The look was so un-masked, so instinctive, that he looked like he was dumb for a minute, like he didn't know his own name.

His blue eyes were red, so red, and swollen. He sniffed, and stared at Wilson, his face flat, not hiding anything, because how could you hide anything like that? He had been crying. Wilson thought he would be happy if the roof caved in on him. Fuck. He was a heel.


Wilson left. House didn't think anything, just put his hands to his face and cried like a baby. Wept, the hollow, compulsive, uncontrollable shuddering of depression and grief.

He didn't know what he was grieving for, just that the need had settled down on his chest like a weight, the same weight that was always waiting to ambush him. Hence the thought that he was Fucked Up Beyond All Belief.

He could feel his cold fingertips, the callus on the side of his right thumb and forefinger rough against the side of his cheek, his face wet to his hands. He could taste salt as the tears ran into his mouth. He tapped his fingers a little bit on his skull, flattened one hand against his forehead and hit it with the other, finally whispered FUCK into his hands until he wasn't crying any more. He felt empty. Thank God. He turned on his side, curled up as much as he could (assisted by some pillows) and, indulging in this position, fell asleep thinking of the floor. Thinking of opera singers who fake sob as they come off into the wings.


Wilson murmured an apology, withdrew, and when House didn't mention it, neither did he.

He had only once seen House crying before this time, and that had been harrowing as well. As everyone well knew, House wasn't someone to wear his heart on his sleeve.

House was still living with Stacy. Infarction time Plus three months, five days. They had invited him over, House saying that he wanted to actually sit at the kitchen table and eat something, maybe they could go out after and play a few games of Foosball. One, if he was too tired.

Stacy saying that it would be good for him to do something structured, not sit around and play Nintendo. When she had said that she had looked at Wilson, given him a slightly critical look, like she thought that Wilson could do more for his friend than sit around and let him win at Mario Kart.

Wilson had turned up at their place fifteen minutes early, wearing something other than sweatpants to set an example for House. He had parked his car and walked towards the door, but as he strode along the footpath he had heard raised voices. Angry voices. He couldn't hear what they were arguing about, but as he agonised over going in or not, it sounded violent and crazy and angry.

He heard Stacy, and House, strident, in his Yeah-of-course-I'm-pain-fuck-you-for-asking voice.

He stood there and heard House say something like go ahead, leave, go FUCK someone. Stacy saying he was ridiculous, stop it, Greg.

Or maybe that was how he had remembered it.

Before he could move, Stacy had opened the door and flown down onto the path, looking so angry that Wilson felt scared and angry at House at the same time. Her hands were shaking. He heard a shout from within, a strangled cry, and Stacy had said she needed to get away, they didn't have any sour cream, besides. Wilson had tried to say something, but she had just sighed and motioned inside their apartment and said that he should see what he was doing, she was sorry it-was-both-their-fault-it-was-hard-something-stupid-snowballed-she-needed-to-get-away. Wilson had said be safe, and Stacy had set off to the corner store not too far away from their apartment, on foot, he had noticed.

He had stepped into the apartment, hearing a familiar grunt and a sniff as he closed the door, and peeked into the living room to see House there on his hands and knees, his elbow crutches five feet away, his eyes red, his teeth showing as he grimaced. His cheeks were flushed and wet.

He had simply said Not Now Wilson, and Wilson had hightailed it to the kitchen, hearing House slam the door on his heels and scream vile obscenities. FUCK HIM, he had yelled, FUCK ME, COME FUCK ME! He had heard a half laugh, half sob, and House had stayed in the Living Room until Stacy was home, which was when they had dragged him out. Forcibly. It had been hard for Wilson to forget House glaring at him with his bare back against the couch, his left knee drawn to his chest, his chest still scarred from hospital, white and thin, little pink scars. He hadn't mentioned that again, either. The day Greg went bugfuck.