TWICE THE MAN

Part V

Summary: Wilson/House centric. Paranormal-ish. Episodic, sort of. Implied character death. Wilson suspects there is something very wrong with House.

Pairing: House/Wilson Bromance.

Rating: General. Some language.

Disclaimer: Gregory House is not mine, dammit!

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Cuddy sighed, exasperated. "There's nothing wrong with Doctor Wilson, House."

"Yes there is. There has to be."f

"No there doesn't have to be. You're looking for an excuse, a way out, to explain your own recent bizarre behavior. If Wilson is sick, then - Look everyone! - House was right again. About everything!" Cuddy slammed her backside down onto her office chair. "House, if Wilson was sick the way you think he is, he would have asked for a leave of absence, or a few days off. He would have told me, because an employee has to tell me if their medical condition changes. Wilson hasn't. His regular billing came through my desk, unlike yours, on schedule and as right as rain. So I don't care what you think you know - you don't know. Leave him alone. It's pleasant to have one doctor in this hospital at least who puts in his billing on time. I'd like to keep it that way."

Cuddy looked down at her own paperwork. "I want you to take a leave of absence."

House stopped pacing. "What the hell for?"

"Because I'm putting in the paperwork right now. you need to go home, rest, recuperate, watch television, drink - whatever it is you need to do to stop obsessing. If you refuse, I'll recommend a suspension to the Board for any number of reasons you've given me lately. As you probably are aware, they would hardly argue against the idea."

-

-

By the time he reached his office, the numbness in his leg had returned once more. Wilson sat in his swivel desk chair and thought about it. He thought about a lot of things. Houses' patient had all but vanished from the equation, it seemed, because House had not mentioned him in over a day - the patient House thought Wilson had sent to him, the patient House was trying but unable to diagnose.

What or who was House trying not to see by seeing me?

Wilson stood to pace but felt a terrific dizziness come over him. The room spun and he fell hard on his backside, which so knocked the breath out of him he had to sit and get his bearings for a moment. However, at the same moment, something in his inner world straightened out. Wilson sat staring at his hands and feet, trying to place them back in their correct positions and order in his head.

His mind refused to acknowledge them. Then its' momentary lapse of reason passed and he felt himself again, whole and set right.

Wilson stood on feet that shook but a mind that was now seeing the world through Houses' special vision - specifically himself in that world - and he understood. Everything - Houses' mysterious patient (Wilson hesitated to call them hallucinations now), visions of himself talking to House when he was in fact nowhere near the diagnostician, his own foots' stubbornness to wake up, the ever returning dizziness, his lingering exhaustion, the frequent dropping of things and all the other tiny clues he had been dismissing while targeting House with mostly misplaced worry and assumptions. . .

His own eyes were suddenly open wide where before they had refused to look anywhere, even for a moment, for an explanation beyond the health issues he was so certain had belonged to House alone. Wilson understood the why of it now and it was his Why, because no matter where he looked all the whys looked back at him.

Wilson eased himself back into his seat. It had to be, didn't it? It made sense. As the room ceased its spinning and he settled into the padding of his chair, he wondered if really he had know known all along? Gripped by terror of the why and the unknown that was its companion, Wilson made his quiet confession to the walls. "House. I don't know how or why, but I think I understand what you've been trying so hard not to see. "

And I know which idiot has been even more blind than you.

-

"Chase, would you mind checking this?" Wilson handed him a tiny vial with a single hair in it.

Chase took the tiny vial in his fingers and directed a puzzled look at Wilson. "We already did Houses' DNA check. The results were negative."

"Just please check it for me, same parameters. There's no hurry, I'm pretty sure I already know the results."

"Okay. Couple of days."

-

Cuddy did not speak for a moment. "Are you absolutely certain?"

Wilson nodded. Finally, he was. "Yes. Chase did the tests for me. I'm positively certain."

"I'm sorry." She sat at her desk with a heaviness this kind of news brought. Wilson sympathized. It really knocked the breath out of you. "Are you going to tell him?" She asked.

They both knew to whom she was referring and Wilson smiled ironically. "Maybe I don't have to." Or maybe I just don't want to. "I'm more concerned that he isn't . . .that someone keeps . . .an close eye on him."

"I'll make sure he's okay." Cuddy said. "We all will."

Wilson watched Houses' team wandering around the conference room. Since their boss had been granted a short leave of absence, they found themselves adrift with nothing but clinic duties and so no specific purpose for being there. The patient, the real one, the child, was better and had been discharged but without Houses' charged presence and direction, there were no challenges for them. Whatever type of an ass House was, whatever outspoken thing escaped his lips at their expense, they were all astute enough to recognize they were working under a man who was worth the trouble. As big a jerk as House sometimes was, he grew on you until, when he was no longer there, you felt less without him.

Chase and Cameron had proved the point even more so by leaving. Since that time, Cameron sought out opportunities to be around House and for reasons beyond her doe- eyed feelings.

And Chase, despite House firing him, went out of his way to assist House in any way he could. Inexplicably, they cared for him. House was a man you either hated or loved. There seemed to be little in between. Even Foreman, all protestations to the contrary, still held a solid respect for the man.

Wilson was not in any way surprised. He'd been away from House for months trying to wash his conflicting emotions over House out of his system and had failed miserably. He'd come back to the relationship even more caught up than before. He'd felt empty after Amber died. But he'd felt emptier without House.

Wilson sighed. He'd already called his parents, he'd already made an appointment with Doctor Helfin the specialist and in a weeks time he'd be in California. He was going to tell House of course, just not everything and not right away. House had already seen enough people walk out on him in his life. But this wasn't a walk out. In this he had no choice.

-

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-

-

Several days off and a few bottles later, House poured a tumbler half full of scotch and socked back half of it. He was surprised Wilson had not followed him home to make sure he got there all safe and sound and sane or come over to lecture him on his drink and other vices. There was nothing wrong. Wilson was just being even more Wilson than usual.

"I have."

House jumped up from the couch as fast as his leg would allow. His cane he had left hooked over the edge of his piano and it was out of his reach. Wilson, standing there inside his apartment, door already closed to the outside, looked pale and tired.

"How the hell did you-?"

"-House." Wilson said gently. "Look."

Wilson was dragging his left leg slightly. House stared at his friend. "What the hell is going on? Cuddy thinks I think I know someth-"

"House, look at me. I'm Wilson."

House swallowed his apprehension, believing but not. Eyes open but refusing to see. "I know who you are. What are you-? Are you oka-?"

"-it's me, House. I'm the one who's been hiding."

"Hiding?" House watched the erratic movements of his friend around the couch as he soundlessly approached him. Other than his voice Wilsons' movements were silent, even his breathing remained as mute as his meaning. "You think so too."

"I didn't want you to worry. I didn't want you to have any more pain because of me."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"I'm going away. I will tell you it's my family but we both know that's not the reason."

House looked further, deeper into his friend, the physical part, the psychological part, the part that never admitted when he wasn't handling everything just right. House stared to the center of the man he had known more deeply than anyone else in his life and knew. He saw and hated that he recognized the truth. "No. I'm wrong. This doesn't make sense. It can't be you."

But hadn't he known all along? He, the man who hated not knowing, had seen what was happening not to a nameless man, not to himself, but to his friend. Was this man his friend? Was this even a man or...?

Wilson said, "Wow, humility for me? You really do love me. But I want to protect you. I don't want to walk away again because-"

"- because this time you're not coming back." This time he can't come back. House switched his mind over to clinical details because the other things, the parts that made his insides swell in dread and pain, he refused to acknowledge. He, the man who said it often: Everybody dies.

No. Not this man.

"You were in denial just as much as I was." Wilson laughed. "We each believed it was the other."

"Why wouldn't I want to know you were sick?"

"Because it's something you can't treat. Can't cure. Because you would want to save me and you know that's impossible but that wouldn't stop you from almost killing yourself trying. Because you can't bear to face losing me, just like I couldn't bear losing you."

"You don't have ALS. And even if you did, there are treatments, programs, trials..."

"I had my own DNA checked. I have the markers, I have the symptoms. There are treatments and programs and trials and I'll use them all but...I'm going home." Wilson walked nearer, his slightly shuffling gate underlining that House could deny all he liked, but Wilson was telling him the truth, boldly, nakedly - and it hurt!

"Come on, House. You were convinced it was ALS when "Elvis" was on the table. You're the Diagnostic Master. You know you're right and you know there's nothing you can do about it."

Wilson walked ever nearer but not close enough to touch. Wilson had never touched him, he recalled, during all the weird clandestine meetings they had held together. Wilson had always stood apart. House swallowed his fear and doubt but how he despised that distance now.

House did not try to close the gap now. In fifteen years, they had hardly ever touch each other. Wilson was now far beyond his reach and that made Houses blood run cold.

"I don't want you to know." Wilson said. "I want to spare you from the pain. I really am a girl, aren't I?"

Wilson stared into Houses' eyes with his brown, eerily Wilson-perfect manifestations. "Talk to me. Wish me well, ask me to say hello to my parents for you. Pretend I'm coming back. I'll tell you all the truth you want when the time is right for me."

"When will that be?" House asked bitterly, "When you're halfway around the world where I can't help you?"

"When I'm strong enough to bear it. Go say goodbye to your best friend, House. That's all you can do you know. The diagnosis is done. There is no treatment, there's only words. I know you hate lies. But this one last time, I need you to lie for me. I need to believe you'll be okay."

House made neither a move nor a promise.

Wilson was close now, just a few feet away. House could smell no cologne, could feel no breath, could hear no beat of his heart. "Who - what are you?"

"I need for you to be okay or I never will be."

House looked away, not wanting his almost belief to make him really, actually crazy. Because no one believes in ghosts or astral projections or Doppelgangers. "Just tell me one thing - are you Wil-?"

House stepped forward to touch his friend but he found himself, in the wink of second, alone in his apartment. His heart raced to the awful finish and insisted that what he had seen was real. His mind protested and said it was the contents of the bottle on the coffee table, his broken skull or his sleeping pills.

It could be nothing else, but then again, there are no atheists in fox holes.

House would prove it was all just a dream because Wilson cannot be sick.

-

-

-

"The door's open." Wilson said at the gentle, almost timid knock.

It was House.

Houses' appearance in his office, never an unexpected occurrence, was this time out of the ordinary in its' nature. House was wearing his usual jeans and tee-shirt but his manner was anything but casual.

Wilson wanted to smile, wanted to laugh and pretend this was just another time - one of those times - when House was doing or had done something outrageous or just frankly stupid and landed himself in hot water with Cuddy, a rich benefactor or a bad-ass cop. Or when House was running around like a maniac with a head injury or a toxic combination of drugs and alcohol in his system, and crashed hard, leaving the unhappy nurse assistants with the job of rooter-rootering the various pipes through out Houses' body in order to flush it all out.

Wilson wished it was one of those times, where House had squeaked through and was ready to scarf down several unhealthy hamburgers and imbibe a beer or six to wash them down. Or Tai food night, or Christmas eve' when House wasn't crumbling beneath his own stubbornness or even if he was. Because this time Wilson wouldn't leave. He'd stay and make sure the lovable, idiotic, juvenile SOB was okay.

He wished for new good old days.

But House was here, just after a week on the psyche ward claiming no hallucinations after which he had spent the previous weeks talking to another Wilson who wasn't there and who, ironically, stubbornly refused to go away and leave Greg House alone.

Duhlman had sprung him but Wilson could imagine the wrinkle that had formed between Cuddy's eyebrows when she'd found out and her clipped, weary words: "Who'd you bribe?"

"Going home huh?"

Wilson nodded, wondering how House had found out so soon but not all that surprised that he had. "Yeah. For a while. You going to take Duhlmans' recommendation of therapy while I'm gone?"

"Nope. He's too expensive and the only thing I have to trade is my body and that's mine until you buy me a ring."

House came all the way in and Wilson didn't stop packing his boxes. He felt like he had spent half his life packing boxes. Always moving on even when, like now, he didn't want to.

"How are you?" House asked. He didn't sit and Wilson felt unsettled about that. House was hovering, a thing he did when he was digging, sifting, attempting to uncover what was covered. His restless feet, crippled leg or not, matched his restless mind.

"Okay. I'm-"

"-Yeah." House finished. "I know. Cuddy told me. Tomorrow."

Wilson tried desperately to keep his manner casual, even bored, and his voice as level as a salt water lake. "I haven't spent any time with my family for years. I decided to take a six month leave of absence and try to do that." Wilson closed the box of books he intended to take away with him. "Before they get too old."

House nodded, his silence a killing air.

"This is surreal." Wilson said, trying to stuff the great emptiness of his soul with talk. "You're standing in the middle of my office, just after a stint on psych ward - where you were because you were hallucinating -"

"-Not hallucinating." House acceded with a small head tilt. "Not really."

"Then what have you been doing - scaring us all to death for a laugh?"

"I've been trying to work something out."

"Did you?" Wilson closed the last box. "Work it out?"

"Yes."

"So? What's the big answer to the question we've all been asking?"

"I'm over-worked, the leg's been worse, the crack in my skull, day-dreams, take your pick - why now?"

Wilson very carefully didn't look at him. "I need to see them. You're dad died and it got me to thinking about my parents. My oldest brother's running his business, youngest brothers' gone God knows where..." Wilson stopped squirreling away items into his briefcase and stood, hands on hips, trying to relax while all the time he felt if House accidentally bumped him, he'd snap in two. "They need me."

"I need you." House blurted, then looked down at his hands. Wilson was floored to see House actually fidget. He was nervous. More than nervous, he was desperate. "n' you need me."

Wilson nodded. "I know." He stared at House and something, a flicker, a flash of insight was there in Houses' eyes and so in his own. A shared knowledge too hard to voice.

But House knew, Wilson was sure of it. But if he didn't speak of it, maybe House would let him get away clean. He might be able to make this break without wanting to cling to House like a child wishing the world would just start spinning backwards until everything was right again. House would mock such a wish.

But, - god - at the very least, for a moment he would wish for it. Then he wished they were, right then, in a bar somewhere, laughing like they used to, he listening to Houses' animated run-down of his case and what the "idiot" fellowships had done or neglected to do, idiot being just a word they had all come to know was a House word. No one took it seriously anymore.

Instead he was sick and without any debate, was going to get sicker. He was going away and would not be coming back. His parents and his insurance would take care of his future...care.

And he would never see his friend again. If House acknowledged that he knew the truth and begged Wilson to stay, Wilson was certain he would never be able to put one foot in front of the other and make his exit. He would stay for House and House would have to watch him get sick and die and he would have to watch House kill himself trying to save him. Wilson could bear the idea of Houses' death even less than his own. However ignorant it was to the reality, the world was a much better place with House in it.

House was sick too, but the Palinopsia he would probably recover from, if that's what was wrong. House would be okay.

House watched Wilson move around the room. The minutes were ticking by and the clock steadily reminded them both it was almost time for Wilson to go. "So California huh?"

Wilson looked at his friend with tenderness. If House knew, he wasn't saying. House had read the lie and understood its true meaning. A parting gift from House and Wilson loved him for it.

Wilson nodded. "Yeah. San-Francisco."

"You'll send me a number and address?" House wasn't going to say either. He was going to keep the heart of the lie beating for as long as Wilson needed it.

House was not being himself for Wilson, not demanding an answer. Instead before his eyes House metamorph-ed into that gentle creature he sometimes became to let Wilson go with kindness - free him from the burden of having to explain why he would never return and why the only way he could stand the thought of that was to lie about it to his face.

Now his heart was breaking. "Sure. 'Course." Wilson assured him and if House would have allowed it, he would have kissed him right then. But this small orbit of friendship is how it would be. This is the way they each had to say goodbye to half a lifetime of friendship. Wilson, to the man he loved above almost any other being on the planet, to his daily reason and joy.

"Just in case anything happens . . ." House added. "If Hector dies and you need me to come out and help you soak your troubled soul in alcohol..."

Wilson smiled at the joke outwardly for House while silently wondering when House had worked it all out. House knew he was sick. House not only knows, he probably knows I know he knows.

And still House demanded nothing from him. He was free to go. House loved him enough to watch him go and even, if necessary, to give him wings.

Come with me. Wilson wanted to say but -

House stood up, breaking through Wilsons' thoughts, shattering the possibility. How many unspoken things, he wondered, had spilled out all over the floor while House observed from his quiet perch? The sweet, lovable, miserable, marvelous son-of-a-bitch is playing his best card and I won't be around to tease him about it later. "I'll call you as soon as I can."

House looked at his cane like it was only mildly less interesting than everything else that was in the room. "-Wish you didn't have to go."

Wilson heard the quick, clipped words. That must have hurt, letting that huge vulnerability peek its head out so far. That much sadness made visible implied a mountain of grief still buried. I love you, you genius bastard. His eyes stung and his throat ached from holding back a sob.

Wilson answered back just as quickly - even quicker, before his eyes and heart decided that this was just too much to pass up and cranked full open the waterworks. "Me too." Almost one syllable too many. He cleared his throat and the dam was locked tight.

It was time to go. This time he was not walking out of Houses' life to punish or cleanse or purge. This time he was doing it for a right reason. Still he hated having to. Still he wished House could just, could just . . .

This, them, was nothing that was ending on purpose, only the things that had to an end in a certain way beyond his will. And it wasn't really ending, not really. Things like he and House...kept going, even if only in a fading memory.

Wilson slipped into his jacket and held out his hand for House to shake.

House looked down at it, taking it in an almost reverential manner, then gripped it tightly.

But suddenly Wilson knew with perfect clarity and good purpose that a handshake wouldn't be enough. Not from this man and not for this man. House was worth ten hands and arms and everything he could give if it would make it easier. But all Wilson had to give was to draw House into a bear hug and say into his ear, "I love you. You know that, right?" He gave an extra squeeze on the last word.

He let him go and House stared back at him with those eyes so crystal blue and Wilson wondered how they managed to do that; look so goddamn beautiful and so goddawfully sad all at once. There was a touch of the supernatural in them, Wilson was convinced. Maybe in House too. "Right? You know that?"

House nodded and nibbled his bottom his lip, making Wilson wonder just what words he had bit down on.

Wilson gathered up his small box of private items under one arm, reached out, snatched Houses' head in one hand and planted one firm kiss on his forehead. Then he walked away without looking back, not slowing down at all in hopes of making the hurt fade for both of them that much quicker. He feared if he stopped, even once, he would not be able to start again and House would dive in with all his brilliant mind and frail body trying to save Wilson from the inevitable, contrary to even his own convictions that everybody dies, so he dared not pause for even a second. It would change nothing and he could not do that to House.

He loved the idiot too much.

-

House watched his friend walk away down the hall. Suddenly Cuddy was at his side. She laced gentle fingers in his and squeezed. "But me a drink?" She asked.

House didn't tear his eyes away from Wilson until his friend turned a corner and was gone from sight. Then House looked down at his boss with watering eyes. His grief was simple and true and no surprise to Cuddy.

He nodded, sniffed and stood straighter. "Sure."

Cuddy walked with him in the opposite direction. It was still early but House had heartily earned an afternoon off.

Houses' eyes looked ahead. His limping stride was sure.

"Think Taub or Kutner," He asked "or any of those idiots might want to come?"

Cuddy held on tight. "I'm positive."

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END