All the dreams sing their song

Wilson had said it was done and over with.

Maybe it was, for him.

House couldn't sleep: insomnia was his old buddy from way back when, and it came back to visit whenever he had something to puzzle out or a thought process he needed to digest. He'd long since learned to not even bother going to bed on nights like these.

After Wilson left, he pulled up the cover of his piano, removed the cloth covering the keys. While he was a slob (his apartment being testimony to this fact) he took care of what mattered. The piano was clean, regularly tuned. It was comforting, that. As a place where he often went to when he had problems, it was good to have it in fit condition.

Not yet having picked out what to play, his left hand, the one that could still feel Wilson's thumb running over it, trailed along aimlessly, tinkering out a benignly boring set of notes. His right one followed along with the melody. Eventually he settled down for a lento version of Norwegian Wood.

Wilson's guilty demeanor this evening implied embarrassment, and the way he had been all but running away these past few weeks indicated fear. Wilson was usually bold with his conquering (and House would know, having witnessed him do so, so many times); that he wasn't this time around meant he thought House would mock and reject him.

And he might. He was still working on that.

His hands, always so sure, hit a wrong note, then another one. He cursed and started over from the beginning.

This had to be a recent development, since Wilson hadn't previously exhibited any signs of physical affection, or, at least, no embarrassment over them. Probably dated back to the day he decided to move out, which would explain his sudden and overwhelming urge to get the hell out. Epiphanies, what bitches they are, never letting you live your life the same.

What about himself, where did he stand in all this? Did his life have to change too?

He had to admit, he was dreadfully curious. He had watched the last few years' worth of Wilson's romances (sometimes with a bucket of popcorn) and had a fair idea of the general plot. They meet in some quaint way that bears the retelling a dozen times over. There is instant attraction, followed by conversations over long lunch hours, which leads to dinner invitations. The length and content of the middle part varied, but whatever it was, the ending was always the same. House had seen this movie before. But he'd never been I in /I it, never been the costarring actor. And unless he was wrong, the plot wasn't the same. He wouldn't fit into any of the pretty dresses, for one. And he knew what Wilson was like. There couldn't be the shocking scene wherein the heroine realizes her lover's dark past, because House had already met all the skeletons in Wilson's closet. In fact, he had put some in there himself.

He didn't know the ending to this film, and it was his to make. He could let it finish here, and that would be that. Over before it started. But that was too boring. He wanted to write that script, see where it led. Wanted to be in the scene, to feel what it was like, for once, instead of sitting in the audience, looking at his watch and wondering when he could leave.

At some point his playing had gone from lento to presto.