My life has been hell in a hand-basket lately, and this was set much farther back on my mental priority list than I would have liked.
The next morning, Wilson was up early. The furniture would have to be set up today, and he wanted to have it done by the end of the night. First things first, though, he had to make breakfast. House wouldn't function without it.
House, much to his surprise, was already up. He walked into the kitchen to find the man sipping at a black coffee and reading the newspaper.
"House, why are you up?"
He finished reading the sentence, and then looked up. "Woke up early. I made breakfast."
Wilson blinked. It looked like a small bomb had gone off in the kitchen, but there was a stack of pancakes on the counter next to a tray of eggs and sausage.
Wilson shrugged and filled his plate, scooting in across from House. He chewed, thinking.
"You're leg's bothering you," he deadpanned, watching for House's reaction. House stiffened, the newspaper fluttering a bit.
"No it isn't."
"Yeah it is. Otherwise, you wouldn't be up, and you wouldn't have cooked."
House took a deliberately long sip of his coffee, avoiding Wilson's eyes.
"Has it gotten worse lately?" he continued, ignoring House's silence.
House set his coffee down lightly. "It's just the weather, Wilson."
"Aha! So it is bothering you."
House frowned. "Didn't you just come to that conclusion?"
"I was guessing. But you confirmed it for me, so thanks."
House scowled at him as Jacob trudged into the kitchen, his hair messed up and his clothes wrinkled. "Morning," Wilson called, and Jacob held up a hand lazily. He practically fell into a chair and rested his head on his hands, closing his eyes.
He hadn't gotten much sleep last night. Most of the time he should have been sleeping had been spent thinking, worrying. Now, though, he was dead tired.
Wilson fixed him a plate of food without comment, watching him closely. It looked as though neither of them had gotten much sleep that night.
"You sleep alright, Jacob?" Wilson asked nonchalantly, focusing on the boy so he wouldn't miss his body language.
Funnily enough, it was very similar to House's. "Yeah, I slept fine."
Wilson shook his head. "Yeah, okay," he muttered, letting it go for the moment. It seemed like Jacob was already House's kid, with the way he ignored emotional problems.
Suddenly, his mouth twisted, and he turned away from the table to hide his expression. Wasn't the reason that they both did that linked to childhood trauma? House had said himself that no show of emotion had ever been allowed in his house. He wondered if it had been the same for Jacob. These two were more alike that he'd previously thought, and it equally intrigued and repulsed him. He hated to think about it that way, but, in spite of himself, he was curious. Would watching Jacob give him an insight into House's head?
"Wilson," House said, sounding annoyed. "Wilson!"
"What?"
"I called your name like five times," House said suspiciously, squinting his eyes at his friend. "What's going on in that head of yours?"
Wilson tried to keep his expression neutral. "Oh, nothing. Just thinking about trying to get all this furniture put together, it's going to be a long day."
House shrugged. "Come on, it can't be that difficult."
Wilson smirked. "If I remember right, someone has a seeming inability to read and or follow simple instructions when putting together furniture, so it might take longer than you think."
House narrowed his eyes at him, while Jacob tried to stifle a snort. "Fine then, boy wonder, you can do it yourself. I'll supervise."
And supervise he did. Throughout the afternoon, House sat himself in a comfy chair and watched his friend attempt to assemble various furniture items with growing amusement.
"Wilson, that screw doesn't fit," he taunted, pretending to read a trashy magazine.
Wilson gritted his teeth, counting backwards from ten in his head. Ironically, this didn't seem to help much. It was rather like a rocket launch being counted down. Or maybe a bomb blast.
10… 9… 8…
"Maybe you should just get a nail gun, and skip all this screwy business," House said with a smirk. "I know it's hard for you, Wilson."
7… 6… 5…
"You know what? Forget nails, you might, I don't know, shoot yourself in the foot. Let's just superglue everything together."
4… 3… 2…
"Maybe if I superglued the instructions to your forehead – "
1.
"ENOUGH!" Wilson erupted, tossing down the instructions. They fluttered away unsatisfactorily, so he stood up and kicked a screwdriver across the floor for good measure. "Dammit, House!"
House seemed absolutely unfazed by his outburst, but Jacob was another story. Both men turned to see him pressed up against the wall, eyes wide.
The anger flooded out of Wilson in an instant, and he felt a stabbing pain in his stomach. "Oh, Jacob, I didn't…" he tried, taking a step closer to him.
Jacob scrambled away from Wilson and out the door, his heart pounding. He was all too familiar with that kind of senseless rage, and it never ended well for him. The only thought in his mind at this point was – get away.
House, quicker than Wilson thought possible, was out the door and after Jacob in an instant.
The front door was wide open, and House cursed. The boy had bolted. Not even sparing a breath to tell Wilson where he was going, he limped as fast as he dared out the door.
He got out the front just in time to see Jacob running around the corner.
He cursed again. What the hell was he supposed to do? He couldn't exactly take off running after the kid.
He tapped his foot, frustrated, his jaw set.
Wilson was sitting on the couch, his head in his hands, when House got back. Without a word, the diagnostician began putting his backpack together.
"Where is he?" Wilson asked miserably.
House visibly kept himself from exploding on Wilson. As much as he wanted to, he knew that Wilson would never have done something like that intentionally, and that the oncologist was already beating himself up over it.
"I don't know. You stay here in case he comes back. I'm going to go look."
Wilson nodded, looking like he was about to be sick. House didn't have time to reassure him. He threw his phone, wallet, and some granola bars in his bag and was out the door.
House slammed the palm of his hand on the steering wheel, his frustration mounting. He'd been all over town, looking for a brown haired skinny kid in a hoodie, but nothing had shown. It'd been almost three hours.
His phone rang, and, sighing, he pulled over and answered it.
"What?" he snapped, at his wit's end. Worry, in spite of what he'd tell anyone else, had begun to consume him as the hours ticked by.
Wilson sounded wretched on the other end of the line. "No sign of him?" he asked, sounding like he was going to break down.
"…No," House sighed after a moment, forcibly calming himself down. "Not yet."
Wilson was silent for a long moment.
"House, what if you – "
"I will," House snapped, cutting him off. "I'll see you soon."
He hung up the phone, pulling out.
"Now, if I were a freaked out 14 year old, where would I go…"
Jacob would probably want to be somewhere quiet, calming, secluded… somewhere he felt safe.
He pondered for a minute, and then took a chance.
House limped into the local library, somewhere he'd never spent much time before. If he wanted a book, he could buy it. Not to mention the fact that, if he ever had checked out a library book, it had long been forgotten under piles of papers and research in his old apartment.
He adjusted his hat as he walked in, his eyes scanning the sparse population among the shelves.
Something caught his eye, and he limped over. With an enormous, breath-taking sense of relief, he saw Jacob curled up on one of the scattered padded chairs, his eyes focused on something distant and his arms crossed over his chest.
House closed his eyes for a moment, and then limped over to Jacob. He sat down next to him. The kid didn't even look up.
House picked up his cane, and gently prodded Jacob in the shoulder with it. He whipped into attention, instantly tense. House saw with a small amount of panic that his face was tear streaked.
Jacob looked at him in disbelief. "House? How did you…?"
"Took a wild guess," House summed up.
Jacob wiped the remaining tear streaks from his face. "Why did you bother to even look?"
House rolled his eyes. "You think we'd just let you run around on the streets by yourself?"
Jacob shrugged. "I've been doing it since I was nine. It isn't that big of a deal, I can take care of myself."
House looked skeptical. "Really. What have you eaten since breakfast?"
As if in response, Jacob's stomach growled, and he blushed.
House tossed him a granola bar, ignoring the acid look he received from a prune of a librarian. He waited until Jacob had started eating before he began talking.
"Wilson would never lay a hand on you, Jacob," he said eventually, looking at the ceiling. "He couldn't if he tried."
Jacob swallowed thickly. "I… I know that. It was just…"
"Instinct kicked in," House finished for him.
Jacob nodded, fidgeting with the granola bar wrapper. "I couldn't even begin to calm myself down, or think through what I was doing. It was just… a flight instinct."
House was silent for a long moment. "Well… I wish I'd known where you flew to, kid."
Jacob looked stricken. "I know I shouldn't have taken off like that. I'm sorry, it's just what I'm used to."
House nodded silently. "Not that I don't love the library and everything," he said after a moment, "But can we go home now? My leg hurts. And Wilson is about to pull his hair out."
Jacob unfolded himself from the chair, following House quietly out the door. To say the very least, he was ashamed and embarrassed, but with each passing moment, at least the embarrassment was fading. House didn't seem to find odd at all that he'd taken off. In fact, he seemed like he had expected it.
"I'm sorry," Jacob said miserably as he got into the car. "I didn't mean to make you go all over the place like that."
House shrugged, flipping on the radio. He was relieved that he'd found the kid, but his leg was really screaming at this point, and he just wanted to get home. Curiously enough, he wasn't upset with Jacob at all.
"You're fine," he said, gruff but kind. "Just try to let Wilson know that you aren't afraid of him, please, or the guy's going to worry to death."
Jacob slid farther down into his seat. "I'm not afraid of him," he muttered. "Just of how he was acting…"
House spoke up over his musings. "We're going to have to watch our tempers, then, aren't we."
When they got back inside, Wilson half stood up, hope in his eyes. When he saw Jacob, there was simultaneous relief and fear crossing his face.
House stood back, watching curiously.
"Hey," Jacob said awkwardly. "I know you didn't mean to freak me out… I'm sorry that I took off like that…"
His cheeks were beet red. Wilson stood quickly. "No, no, Jacob. That wasn't your fault, it was mine. I shouldn't have lost my temper and yelled like that, I should have been more careful."
Jacob visibly relaxed with each word that Wilson spoke, his tense muscles releasing their grip on him. "It's okay," he said, and the words broke.
Wilson was in front of him instantly, hugging him in both love and apology. Already, this boy had wormed his way into the oncologist's heart, and he hated that he'd hurt him in any way shape or form. Jacob was already crying, sniffing on Wilson's shoulder. The doctor couldn't have cared less.
Maybe the next update will come sooner than this one did...