Disclaimer, etc. in chapter 1.
I don't know if this scene works or not. Please let me know. For reference, it takes place one night and one day after the scene in the last chapter.
Need
For the second night in a row, a noise woke Wilson out of an exhausted sleep. Last night on his mind—morphine cravings, God, House, always at night—he got up quickly and steeled himself for a confrontation.
The noise came again as he opened the bedroom door: loud, the sound of metal hitting metal.
"House," Wilson called, hurrying toward the living room.
House said nothing. The noise came again.
Wilson skidded to a stop, nearly tripping over House, who was seated on the floor with the metal box and a hammer. The front of the box was dented in a few places. House hit it again, hard, not interested in Wilson at all.
"Stop!" Wilson commanded.
"You changed the combination," House said in a quick, high voice that didn't belong to him. He was panting and shaking.
"What did you expect me to do?" Wilson asked, not sure if he should try to take the hammer from House or kick the box out of his reach. This was not his House. This House would hurt anyone who got in his way right now. So Wilson stood a few feet from him, hoping to talk him down.
"I trusted you," House said in his most betrayed, nasty tone.
He slammed the hammer down on the lock again, but his aim wasn't very good. Wilson could see dents in the wood flooring.
I trusted you, too, Wilson thought bitterly, though he knew better than to think that. House was vulnerable right now; he didn't know what he was saying; he didn't mean it. Two days—three days now—since he'd been weaned off of the methodone that was supposed to bring him down from morphine dependence slowly; he was over the physical withdrawal. Now, according to the rehab counselor, the real battle began: getting over the worst of the psychological dependence. It wasn't going that well so far.
"I had to do it," Wilson said calmly. "You know I had to. You're okay. You can get through this."
With an inarticulate cry of frustration, House brought the hammer down again—and again and again until Wilson grabbed his arm.
"No, dammit, no," House spat, struggling against him.
Wilson tried to hold him, but not wanting to hurt him either, let House push him away.
House stared wildly at him, hammer drawn back to strike the box again, panting heavily.
"It's okay," Wilson said soothingly, "you can beat it. You don't need it. You're stronger than this."
"You have no idea," House growled, and spread his left hand out on the floor. Intent flashed clearly, quickly in his eyes: if you won't let me have it, I'll make you let me have it.
Wilson tackled him before he knew what he was doing. House hit the floor with a grunt, dropping the hammer in surprise, and immediately tried to push Wilson off of him. Calmly, methodically, Wilson pinned House's shoulders to the floor with his knees and held House's wrists, sitting lightly on his stomach. House cursed and spat and struggled, but he was still weak from surgery and two weeks in bed before that. Wilson out-weighed him by at least thirty pounds, too, they both knew, but House continued to fight.
"Goddamn you, goddamn you," House snarled, his voice cracking.
"I'm not going to let you hurt yourself," Wilson said evenly.
"It's my body," House protested, writhing wildly beneath Wilson. "You have no right."
Wilson grunted as House kneed him square in the back, but found that he was able to resist House's knee and still keep him pinned. House simply wasn't in any shape to fight.
"You told me last night when I found you not to let you do it again," Wilson reminded him.
Calm, even tone. Hold him still without hurting him. The rehab counselor knew his stuff, Wilson realized. He'd been horrified at the prospect of having to physically restrain House when the counselor had talked to him alone yesterday, but he was more horrified at the way he'd found House last night: sprawled out on the sofa, high on a big dose of morphine but still sane enough to beg Wilson not to let him give in to the cravings again. Now House was snarling and snapping underneath him; cursing, begging, threatening—doing anything he could to get a hit. Hard as it was to have to restrain him, Wilson found this so much easier than handling the docile, high House of last night.
"I don't love you, I never loved you, let go of me!" House spat at the end of a long tirade.
The knee House had been driving into Wilson's back vanished and Wilson sensed a change of tactic just before he saw it in House's eyes.
"Ow," House cried, suddenly limp, "you hurt—agh—my leg." He banged his head against the floor and tried to grab one of Wilson's wrists for comfort. "My leg—oww—get off—really—"
Wilson held him carefully, allowing him some movement while still keeping him pinned. He didn't sense any real pain in House's body—he knew that tension better than anyone else—and he could see the deceit in House's eyes.
"It hurts," House whined, pouring all he pain he could into his voice. "Jimmy. Please." He looked up at Wilson with wet eyes.
"If it hurts, you can take a Vicodin," Wilson said stolidly.
"No, no, no." House shook his head frantically back and forth like a child throwing a tantrum. "That's not enough. It really hurts." He stopped shaking his head and fixed tearful eyes on Wilson again. "Please. Jimmy. Please. You're hurting me."
"No, I'm not," Wilson said calmly. He knew he wasn't. His muscles strained with the effort of keeping his full weight off of House.
House let his head hit the floor again and beseeched the ceiling. "I need it."
"You don't," Wilson countered softly.
"You have no idea!" House snarled through his teeth. He tried to push Wilson off again, but this effort was considerably weaker than the last.
"Tell me," Wilson said. "Then I'll know."
"You can't know," House said quietly to the ceiling.
"All right, I can't," Wilson conceded. "But that doesn't mean you can't try to tell me."
House licked his lips and turned his head sideways. For a moment, Wilson thought he actually might try to put his experience into words. Instead he groaned heavily.
"Gonna puke," he said thickly. "Get off."
"You're fine, House," Wilson said, not moving at all. "Even if you make yourself sick. You're still fine."
House closed his eyes in extreme frustration and pain. Then he tried to shake Wilson off again.
"Goddammit, get off me!" he shouted.
Wilson held him down firmly. "I will when you stop acting like this."
House shouted another curse and struggled weakly, but he was too tired to get his knee up to Wilson's back again, much less lift Wilson off of his upper body.
He threw his head back, eyes closed, and began sobbing soundlessly.
Wilson felt him shaking with internal pain, frustration, and need, and watched tears track down his temples and into his hair. For a few long moments he kept House pinned to the floor.
Finally, without a word, he let House's wrists go and took his knees off of House's shoulders. When House remained still, Wilson got up, gathered the box and hammer, and went to the kitchen. The least he could do was let House lick his wounds in private.
Keeping his mind blank, Wilson pried the box open with the back of the hammer. House had nearly gotten it open. He removed the two vials of morphine—somehow still intact when the compazine vial had shattered—and dropped them in a plastic bag. The bag he placed in the sink and with one quick blow smashed the glass. He made an opening large enough to let the liquid run out but too small to let any glass fragments escape. Water from the tap washed the morphine down the sink. Assured that no narcotic was left, Wilson sealed the bag and tossed it in the trash.
He resolved that if House's pain ever became bad enough that he needed morphine again, they would simply have to go to the hospital to get it. And while they were there, they'd get any tests done so that he wouldn't end up shooting the stuff for two weeks first. Shooting it because he, Wilson, had given it to him to shoot. Wilson cursed himself for letting that happen in the first place. For enabling dependence. He stared at the counter top for a long time, angry at himself for causing House pain, everything inside him throbbing with the knowledge that he let this happen.
Eventually, Wilson let himself up from the psychological pin and put the hammer away. He re-checked the box for any remaining narcotics and decided to leave it in the kitchen for the time being. Drained mentally and physically, he wanted to curl up with House and make everything go away for a few hours. Tomorrow, they would have the same talk they had yesterday morning about how to deal with the cravings. But not right now. He couldn't do it right now.
Wilson poured himself some water to allow House more time to pull himself together and hoped that House would be able to go back to work in the next day or two. Having something to do would help. House had an early PT session in the morning and a rehab session shortly after it, so he'd be around until noon at least. Maybe he'd be content to sit in Wilson's office all day and play his video games. Wilson worried about leaving him alone now, even though he'd been incredibly honest about his morphine use last night and had actually asked Wilson to accompany him to his drug rehab session. The trust he'd displayed was immense. Wilson hoped he wouldn't take it all back now. He hoped too that House wouldn't really hurt himself to get a hit from some gullible ER doc. Briefly, he considered hiding the hammer, but he knew that if House was going to hurt himself, he'd find some way to do it no matter how many dangerous tools were hidden. He added that topic to the list of Things We Need to Talk About Tomorrow Morning.
Tired, aching, Wilson filled another glass with water and went to sit on the couch, purposefully not looking at House as he passed. House had turned on to his side at some point, facing away from the room and Wilson. If Wilson didn't know him so well, he'd think House was asleep.
"I'm sorry I had to do that," Wilson said after a while.
The lump that was House breathed in more deeply and spoke to the wall he was facing. "Don't apologize," he said hoarsely. "I asked you to do it."
Wilson looked down at his bare feet. "Yeah."
Silence passed between them. House kept staring at the wall; Wilson kept staring at his feet.
Finally, Wilson spoke again. "The floor isn't very comfortable."
"No," the lump agreed.
Wilson drew a line in the condensation on the glass. "If I go back to bed, the sheets will be cold," he said, as though he were talking to himself. "I hate cold sheets."
"You do."
But the lump didn't move.
Concluding that House would come to bed if and when he wanted to come to bed and not a moment before, Wilson got to his feet.
"Gonna piss first," he announced.
The lump was silent.
Wilson took his time in the bathroom, but the bed was empty when he climbed in. He closed his eyes and tried not to think.
Later—how much later, he wasn't sure, but it didn't feel like very much later—he heard House enter the room and felt the mattress dip. Once House was settled in, Wilson reached out tentatively, half-expecting a rebuff. Instead, House's hand came up to take Wilson's and gently tugged. Wilson slid closer and House put an arm across his chest, rolling on to his side. Sighing with contentment, Wilson let House pull him close. The scratch of stubble against his neck, the soft flutter of House's breathing, the arm holding him in place—Wilson's mind cleared for sleep.
Tomorrow they would talk. Tomorrow.
