VII. You and I – Tennessee Williams (House on Wilson, after pain comes back)
Who are you?
A surface warm to my fingers,
a solid form, an occupant of space,
a makeshift kind of enjoyment,
a pitiless being who runs away like water,
something left unfinished, out of inferior matter,
Something God thought of.
Nothing, sometimes everything,
something I cannot believe in,
a foolish argument, you, yourself, not I,
an enemy of mine. My lover.
Who am I?
A wounded man, badly bandaged,
a monster among angels or angel among monsters,
a box of questions shaken up and scattered on the floor,
A foot on the stairs, a voice on the wire,
a busy collection of thumbs that imitate fingers,
an enemy of yours. Your lover.
He found it because of Chase, of all people. He'd asked his youngest fellow why he didn't just transfer to peds and Chase had muttered something about feeling like a monster among angels. House made an expected jab about pedophilia and had left it at that, but the phrase kept playing over and again in his mind until finally he just googled it. And found this poem.
If he were a different man, he'd print it out and give it to Wilson. It would be easy, wouldn't it? Maybe fold it into a paper airplane and send it over the balcony. Apology, air mailed. He is certainly lazy enough to let someone else take care of his dirty work. And hadn't he let Wilson apologize about trying to hide his vegetable's recovery by adding a playlist featuring high-spirited groveling to his iPod? Not to mention pirate chanteys (he was still trying to untangle the metaphor behind that choice…)
But House knows a poem isn't enough. Not when he hasn't spoken to Wilson in four days. Not when Wilson is sequestered in a meeting with Cuddy about his legal culpability in House's prescription fraud. And anyway, what kind of apology would this make? So what if it's how he feels, most days? Could he trust Wilson to understand what it meant? That even though they were both assholes, both of their stories ended in the same place. With them, together.
He can't tell Wilson that. Not because he's some martyr at the hands of love, willing to set Wilson free rather than crush him with his ego and stubbornness and self-centeredness. It is…fear. That's what it always boils down to with him. He'd honestly believed that they would end together. And he'd honestly believed that he'd be the first to go. Which meant that something fundamental in Wilson would change, once House was gone. And now, with Wilson leaving him, he can't just come out and admit that he'd never be the same. He can't give Wilson that power over him.
It's all bullshit. He knows this. He knows that soon, maybe tomorrow, he'll meet Wilson in the cafeteria and he'll steal his chips and Wilson will roll his eyes and sigh. And maybe there will be an awkward silence and maybe he'll want to leave, but he won't because Wilson won't make him. And House will take advantage of Wilson's aversion to making scenes and he'll pretend everything is back to normal after a small but inadequate "I'm sorry." It's what they do. And if something has changed so much because of this one failure to do the right thing, then he'll convince himself that there's nothing left to save, just long enough to do something that Wilson can never forgive. Because that's what he does. He makes a show of pushing people away. And he never lets them go.
But it won't be today. Wilson's brown bagging it. So House takes his Vicodin, scowling at Chase's name on the bottle. He sees Wilson walk past his office, talking to one of his nurses. Wilson looks up. Looks at him. Lets him know that the meeting went ok. Lets him know that he doesn't have to worry about him. But he doesn't smile. And he keeps walking. Running away like water. Because he's everything. Like water.
House will fix this. Maybe it'll never be the same. But he won't let them end here.