Wilson held up two ties and peered at himself in the full-length mirror on the back of his bedroom door. Blue with brown stripes, or brown with blue diamonds? Unhelpful to the extreme, House slunk into the bottom corner of the reflection, probably under the mistaken impression that he was incognito with his belly slithering along the floor, and regarded the two dangly things with a purpose. Wilson only glanced down in time to see his whiskers twitch and catch the faint chirp-clicking specific to cats prowling at prey with far too much misplaced excitement oozing from their pores. Ten minutes later, Wilson went with the blue diamonds, but only because House had mangled the striped tie. That might qualify as a good deed on his part; Wilson hadn't decided yet.
"Okay," Wilson announced. He clapped his hands together and rubbed his palms, then adjusted the knot in his tie once more. Once he had satisfied himself that his hair was pretty damn good too, Wilson turned and spread his arms out. "Well? I look good, right?"
House glanced at him, but he preferred gnawing on the partially shredded silk tie to giving two craps about Wilson's appearance.
Wilson tipped his head with a tolerant, bemused smile that said he had expected nothing less. "You're too kind, House. Too kind."
House flicked an ear back and ignored him.
"Alright," Wilson sighed. He smoothed his clothes, straightening the tie yet again, and then turned to close his suitcase. "Three days, okay?" He glanced back at House, but he could never be sure if House were actually ignoring him, or just pretending to. "House. I'll be back in three days. Mrs. Whetherly will let you in and out, okay?"
House's nose twitched but he didn't react beyond that.
"You know Mrs. Whetherly," Wilson rebuked. "You even like her." Mrs. Whetherly was the sweet old lady from the first floor; she kept buying House catnip mice even though catnip didn't have any effect on hybrid cats. Wilson had tried to discourage her, but Mrs. Whetherly was half deaf and mostly blind, and completely enamored of House. It was beyond Wilson's comprehension; House tolerated her and splutter-purred for her on occasion, but that was about it. Apparently, not even a moody hybrid cat had it in him to be mean to a sweet little old lady.
House huffed into the remains of the tie and settled his chin between his paws, bored by all accounts.
"Be good for her, okay? She thinks you're a nice cat."
A snort greeted that one, but Wilson couldn't tell if House were reacting to the words or merely expressing his annoyance over the fact that Wilson was talking to him in the first place.
"Right." Wilson set his luggage on the floor and extended the handle to roll it behind him. House raised his head at that, and then followed Wilson out of the room in a flurry of concern. Over his shoulder, Wilson reminded him, "It's only three days, and I promise I won't enjoy them at all." As far as medical conferences went, this one promised to be tedious at best.
Wilson ignored the claws snagging at his pant leg as he left the apartment, House hot on his heels. He would have preferred to leave House locked inside while he was gone – it would certainly be easier for Mrs. Whetherly to come up and feed him twice a day than go outside and call him back in every night, not to mention easier on Wilson's nerves – but the one time he had tried to keep House indoors while he went to work, Wilson had come back to find his kitchen in ruins, and his recliner shredded down to its springs, its remains enthroning one supremely pissed off House. Who had also marked it as his property. Several times. Obviously, House did not approve of being a kept cat.
When Wilson crossed the sidewalk to the waiting cab, House stood beside the car door, expectant if puzzled; he knew that this was not Wilson's car, and the presence of the cabby seemed to unsettle him a little bit. Wilson cupped House's jaw in an expression of affection, but used it to nudge House backward until he had to either move, or fall over. "No, House."
House sat back on his haunches and stared at him, oblivious to the cab driver, who eyed them both as he loaded Wilson's luggage into the trunk.
"I told you," Wilson said sharply. "You're staying here. Mrs. Whetherly will look after you."
When Wilson opened the cab door, House gave him a disbelieving look and tried to climb in before him.
Wilson grabbed him under the arms and forced him back more roughly than he would have liked. "House, no. You're not coming with me."
House became dead weight in Wilson's grasp, but when Wilson let him slither to the ground, House twisted unexpectedly and tried again to dart into the open car.
"No!" Wilson hauled him back, and then dragged him to the front stoop of their apartment building. He shoved House down to sit on the steps and then held him in place by the shoulders when he struggled to get free. Oddly enough, there was no hissing involved; Wilson wondered at the silent defiance, but didn't linger on it. "House, stay. You cannot come with me. I know it's Saturday, I know I'm supposed to take you on errands with me, but I have to go to Montreal, and you can't come. I told you at the beginning of the week, remember?"
Wilson withdrew but had to plant his feet and shove House back yet again. This time, House stayed put, but the look on his face tempted Wilson to beg off of the conference. He pushed House's shoulder once more for good measure and then turned his back.
The cabby appeared uninterested in the miniature drama, but Wilson caught the tightness of his features, that transparent cover for disgust. Great; the idiot was probably a purist. That was all Wilson needed. "Airport, please."
"That thing yours?"
Wilson did his best not to glare at the back of the guy's head. "Hardly," he replied. Which was true – House didn't belong to him, per se – but the cabby took it as he chose and grunted in approval.
As the cab pulled away from the curb, Wilson glanced out the window in time to see House push himself up precariously on his hind legs like a person, hand-paws braced on the concrete railing of the front entrance. He peered after the cab as if he couldn't understand what had just happened. Wilson lost sight of him a few seconds later when they turned the corner.
The conference wasn't quite as boring as Wilson expected. First off, there was the paper that some oncologist from Los Angeles gave on cancer presentation in hybrid species, which Wilson had not been expecting. Halfway through, when Wilson realized that the man's experiments had not involved hybrids that naturally acquired cancerous lesions, but animals that he had given cancer to, Wilson left. Then, later that night, the PITA people had shown up – god, those guys were everywhere nowadays – to protest the cancer research, and Wilson had spent a rather entertaining hour on the balcony of his hotel suite, watching them harass various doctors as they came and went.
For no good reason other than lack of mental stimulation, and perhaps loneliness, Wilson sauntered downstairs around sunset, and when the PITA people accosted him too, he whipped out his Blackberry and showed them all pictures of House. Of course, being who he was, Wilson magically found himself with a date about ten minutes later, and pretending to be a full-fledged vegan for one night did have its advantages. He found himself craving tuna salad, though, and told himself that it had nothing to do with Saturday being grilled tuna night for House.
All in all, he ended up having a decent time, and when he disembarked back in New Jersey on Monday night, he felt oddly relaxed. It was late enough that House should have been inside by now, probably sharpening his claws on something he shouldn't. Wilson was looking forward to not caring if he had destroyed anything, at least until tomorrow; he wanted to dump his suitcase in a corner and curl up on the couch to be purred all over.
Wilson pushed through the apartment door, weighed down by his briefcase and dragging his luggage behind him, then stopped. "House?" He set his things down and took a few more steps, his eyes roving over the immaculate apartment. It was far too quiet.
"Doctor Wilson?"
Wilson jumped into the wall and then exhaled in relief. "Oh god. Mrs. Whetherly, I didn't even hear you come upstairs."
Mrs. Whetherly didn't waste any time on apologies. "I tried to call you, but I must have written your phone number down wrong."
It was staggering, how quickly Wilson's insides knotted. "Why? What happened? Where is he?" A memory flooded behind his eyes, of coming home from the hospital to find that House had been struck by a car – the official story had been an accidental hit and run, not that hitting an animal was cause for a manhunt, but a bystander kept insisting that House had been run down deliberately. Police cars had been flashing in front of the apartment building, but no one had been doing anything to help. Wilson had – thank god – arrived in time to stop the police officers from shooting House in a misguided bid to end his misery, as if he were just a deer thrashing around at the side of the interstate. Aside from letting Wilson have his way, however, they had done nothing. Hospitals didn't treat animals, they had told him. Who had he expected them to call? All of this while House howled in the middle of the road and tried to curl around his broken leg.
"I don't know, dear." Mrs. Whetherly laid a hand on Wilson's shoulder, the gesture maternal in spite of her being nearly two feet shorter than he was, startling Wilson from his unpleasant thoughts. "Everything seemed fine Saturday. He came home at dinner time and I let him in and gave him one of the meals you left in the fridge. He wouldn't eat it, but I didn't worry; my little Sasser used to fast whenever my husband was away, you know."
Sasser, Wilson already knew, was the dog she had owned when she had first gotten married; it had died over forty years ago, and her husband had been gone for nearly as long. And of course House hadn't eaten it – Wilson had told her that she had to take a bite in front of him, or he wouldn't trust it. Like monkeys and red berries in the wild. Wilson held his tongue, though; he could hardly justify berating an old lady after the damage had already been done.
"Anyway, I heard him moving around all night – pacing, I suppose – but he seemed fine again in the morning when I let him back out."
Wilson fought for a modicum of patience and bit out, "Mrs. Whetherly. What happened?"
Mrs. Whetherly wrung her hands and then whispered, "He didn't come back Sunday. I went out and called for him, but you know how he is. I thought he'd show up in the morning. He's stayed out all night before."
Wilson was already grabbing his coat and keys. "I have to go."
"I tried to call you – "
"Thank you," Wilson called without looking back. It was stupid to thank her under the circumstances, but what the hell else was he supposed to say?
"Doctor Wilson – "
"I have to go. Good night. I'm – I'll find him. It's fine; I'm sure he's fine." He stabbed at the elevator button and shrugged his coat back on, keys jangling.
Mrs. Whetherly barely moved fast enough to follow him into the elevator. "Here. I found it in the alley by the dumpsters."
Wilson blinked a few times before his eyes focused on the fuzzy red and gray lacrosse ball. House took that thing everywhere. Wilson rarely actually saw him with it, but it seemed that whenever House got bored, the ball appeared, no matter where they were.
Mrs. Whetherly held it out to him and Wilson let her tip it into his hand. "Those brutes have been skulking around the neighborhood again. Genie warned me last week."
"What brutes?" Wilson fingered the ball and swallowed.
"The purists, Doctor." She practically hissed the word, like a curse. "You know."
Wilson nodded, sick to stomach. "Yeah, I know." He vividly recalled the night House had shown up bitten and scratched over a month ago; the implication of what must have happened that day stood further out in his mind than the dubious activity they had engaged in together in the shower. They had groomed each other repeatedly since then, but never with similar results. And House had stayed closer to home after that than was normal for him.
Mrs. Whetherly gently grasped Wilson's hands where they clenched House's ball. "He's smart. I'm sure he's holed up somewhere safe."
Wilson nodded, but no one could have mistaken him for reassured. "I should have taken him with me."
"Oh, how, dear? You know the hotel wouldn't have let you bring him inside."
Wilson flared his nostrils as the elevator dinged its arrival on the ground floor. He could imagine House pacing the apartment Saturday night, all night long, looking for him in every room over and over again. Yes, House could have been run off by a gang of idiot genetic purists, but Wilson couldn't shake the picture House had struck, standing up on the front stoop, his bad leg probably killing him at being made to take so much of his weight as he stared after Wilson's departing cab.
"Go on," Mrs. Whetherly enjoined, once again jolting him from his thoughts. She shooed him out into the hallway. "Go find him."
"Yeah," Wilson agreed numbly. "I will."
Wilson drove for hours, until a blaze of pink colored the eastern sky around the silhouettes of the buildings he passed, every window of his Volvo rolled down, driving ten miles per hour and calling House's name. At noon, he returned home alone.
A horrible week passed, and whenever one of Wilson's coworkers asked him what was wrong, he told them that his roommate had disappeared. He talked about House all the time, so Wilson didn't have to hide much of anything. The fact that most of them assumed him to be Wilson's human friend was of no consequence. Every night, Wilson drove or walked into the wee hours of the morning, visiting and revisiting every alley and park that he had ever known House to haunt.
After eight days, Wilson took to scouring the police blotters to see if anyone had discovered the body of a hybrid; those things usually made the papers. He called around to hospitals and morgues in spite of their vehement insistence that they did not handle hybrids, and when that yielded nothing, Wilson moved on to veterinarians. By day nine, Wilson found himself stopping to examine dumpsters and refuse heaps – he even pulled over on the interstate because a pile of road kill had the right color fur. It turned out to be a dog – a shepherd, probably – but when Wilson climbed back into his car, his nerves were already shot. He told himself that getting so upset over a sometimes-pet made no sense, and then he found a bar to get sloshed in. When the bartender asked why he seemed so bent on polluting himself, Wilson replied that he'd lost his House and then giggled hysterically when the bartender cursed the plunging real estate market.
Two weeks in, Wilson made himself realize that House was probably gone for good. In three weeks, he allowed himself to wonder if House were dead, and then he slept with all of House's toys piled on the bed beside him.
Three and a half weeks after the conference, Wilson stopped going out to look for him.
After a month, he threw out all of House's toys, but by the time trash day rolled around, he ran out to the dumpster at three in the morning in his pajamas and slippers to get the lacrosse ball back because he could only imagine the look on House's face if he ever found out that Wilson had thrown it away.
The blankets on the bed and the pillows on the couch only smelled like Wilson now.
It was the not-knowing that was slowly killing him.
"Did you ever find out what happened to House?"
Wilson glanced across the table at Cuddy, then went back to picking over his salad. It was beautiful outside – springy and cool, though a little too wet for his tastes. A few patches of snow still lingered in the shadows of the campus grounds. "No," he replied flatly.
He had thought that his tone carried enough warning to make her back off, but Cuddy pressed, "The police don't have any leads?"
"The police aren't looking for him." Wilson dropped his fork into the lettuce and closed the plastic lid of his salad container. "Can we talk about something else?"
"Why aren't they looking for him? Didn't you file a missing person's report?"
Wilson rubbed his temples and then slid a hand around to knead the back of his neck, his eyes trained on nothing in the distance past Cuddy's left shoulder. "You don't get it," he muttered.
"Get what?" Cuddy leaned forward a few inches, as if he would listen better that way. "The way you talk about him, I figured he was a little…you know. Slow? I mean, it's not like you ever say it, but it's kind of obvious you're his caretaker. The police usually stay on top of cases like that."
Wilson stared past her while he worked out what she meant, and then he canted his head and fixed her with a hard stare. "You think that House is my retarded ward?"
"I never said retarded," Cuddy replied quickly, her hands held up to ward off the un-politically correct word. "I said he was – "
"Fuck you." Wilson shoved his chair back.
"James, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have – "
Wilson spun back toward her, index finger stabbed in her direction; boss or no, she'd crossed a forbidden line for him. "He's not the least bit slow. He's incredibly intelligent, and playful, and happy – he's always so…so innocent, but he can be so protective, and – and he makes me laugh – the way he moves, you'd never realize he has a bum leg – and he's – " Wilson could hear his own voice disintegrating, but the words were already there, so he just kept going. "He's so soft, and when he's sleeping, he smells like – like him, and – "
"Oh… Oh my god. James." Cuddy shoved to her feet and rushed around the table to ease him back into his chair when he started to crumple. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize. I'm so sorry." She sat next to him and hugged him, awkward affair that it was. Wilson sat stiffly in her arms and all but gouged his eyes with the napkin he used to stop the tears from coming.
He had no idea what she was going on about, but it didn't make much difference. Once he'd collected himself enough to be able to find his way back to his office, he disentangled his arms and stalked off without acknowledging her apology, leaving the remainder of his uneaten lunch behind. It took him an hour to realize that Cuddy now thought he was gay and that House was the lover who ran out on him. He broke his desk lamp about two seconds later because while technically inaccurate, her assumptions bore an undercurrent of truth. Wilson did love him, and he was gone.
Wilson left the office early that day, concentration shot to hell. His assistant almost moved to stop him on his way out, but apparently, his glare made her think better of it. He drove through the streets on auto pilot, and after he pulled into a parking space in front of his apartment, he just sat there with the engine idling for a while. It shouldn't hurt this much. A month had passed; he should be over it by now. He shouldn't be able to feel his sinuses fill every time someone mentioned House's name; he shouldn't still be stopping at the side of the road every time he passed a dead animal with fur close to the same color.
Wilson switched the car off with a long, shuddering sigh, gathered his things off the passenger seat, and then groaned on his way to the sidewalk. His keys jangled as he shook free the one to the foyer door, and he had to kick some piece of trash off the top step. A scrap of cloth, he noticed. Striped cloth. Wilson jiggled the lock and then shouldered the door open, too weary to care that he smudged his jacket in the process. In front of the mailboxes, he suddenly froze, and then he dropped everything in his arms without any sort of caution. Some other tenant looked at him as if he were crazy, but Wilson was too busy scrambling back outside to care. He grabbed the scrap of filthy silk off of the stoop and ran it between his fingers – blue and brown strips, snagged and torn.
Wilson hardly dared to breathe. "House." He straightened and hopped down the stairs, eyes scanning left and right. "House? House!"
"Doctor Wilson?"
"Yes!" Wilson whirled around, fumbling in his pocket for his Blackberry as he went. He didn't bother with a greeting, merely keyed up his photo album and thrust the phone under the woman's nose, no matter who she was. "I'm looking for my – for – " My cat? My best friend, my… Wilson paused and actually looked at the woman. "Wait. Don't I know you?"
The woman arched an eyebrow, but the sense of irony she exuded by the gesture stalled. "We met at a medical conference…" She rolled her hands in the air and prompted, "That moron with his cancer research, and you doing a decent job of faking vegan…"
Wilson pointed the Blackberry at her. "PITA girl!" Then he balked. "Oh my god. What are you – not important." He held his hands up and shook his head, backing up as he did so. "House – my cat, the big – never mind. You know already. He's been missing, and I found this on the stairs…" Wilson wagged the mangled tie in the air, somehow gesturing with it at the stoop. "He was here!" An hysterical laugh dribbled out between the halted speech. "Today, he was here – I need to find him."
An inscrutable expression passed over the woman's face. "They already took him."
Wilson merely stared, his whole face stuttering as he tried to process that lacking explanation.
The woman's eyebrows inched upwards again. "Animal control. Someone called to complain that a hybrid was menacing people on this block, and they came for him."
It just didn't compute. "They…took him – took him where? House doesn't menace people; he was waiting for me – he came back – "
"A friend in the system contacted me when the original call came through. That's why I'm here." She appeared apologetic as she admitted, "You raised some red flags when we met. We sort of watch people who claim to keep hybrids as pets, and – "
Wilson practically spit, "House is not a pet."
"I know." PITA girl bobbed her head in agreement. "But we wanted to make sure, and – "
"What were you planning to do?" Wilson demanded, incensed and worried; he needed an outlet and this nosy little animal rights freak was the only target available. "Kidnap him if I didn't feed him the right brand of food, and release him in the wild? You're – "
" – not the enemy! Doctor Wilson, I swear, we're on the same side." She paused for a beat. "And incidentally, I don't think you're the sort to try and feed Kibble to a creature that's eighty-five percent genetically human."
Wilson gaped, then exploded, "Where is he?!"
The woman drew a calming breath; Wilson could tell he was trying her patience. "The pound."
The pound. That was just across town. He could have House back in an hour.
As if she could read his mind, the woman shook her head and said, "It's not that easy." She crossed her arms and wandered a few steps while Wilson peered wildly around, willing House to just appear, willing it to be morning, willing himself late for work… "Doctor Wilson, we've pretty much been keeping an eye on you since you got back from the conference. The way you reacted when you found out he was gone… It's obvious you care for him a lot. We've been looking too, only because he's not a wild hybrid and he probably couldn't survive very long on his own." She hesitated and her voice dropped into a darker register. "It broke my heart when they told me you were trolling the interstate for road kill. I can't even imagine…"
Wilson sank down on the apartment steps, his legs suddenly nerveless. "I can get him back, right?" He looked up at her, imploring her to have the answer he wanted. "It's not his fault he got caught. He thought I abandoned him. That's why he didn't come back. He knows words, but he doesn't understand abstract things. I thought…I tell him my work schedule every week, so he knows what days I have off, and he knows which ones those are. He wakes me up earlier than normal because he knows he gets to run errands with me, or drive out to the beach…" Wilson looked down and found himself pressing the shredded tie to his face, and god…he'd almost forgotten what House smelled like. "I thought he understood," Wilson choked out, his chest hitching. "I thought he knew I'd be back Monday, but he didn't. He thinks I left him."
From somewhere in front of him, the woman told him softly, "They don't let people adopt the hybrids they get in. If no one from the government research labs wants them, they're…they're put down."
Wilson started shaking his head, peripherally aware that the rest of him was shaking too. "No," he moaned. He didn't know which was worse – House dead, or House back at a facility. Wilson already knew that House was first gen – a test-tube hybrid, one of the first batches, branded with a logo like cereal boxes. And he swore that when House howled and struggled in his sleep, he was dreaming of that place. "He'd be better off dead. If I had to, I'd kill him myself to keep them from taking him back there." This woman was PITA; she'd understand him saying that.
Her face took on a practiced scrutiny, to which she subjected an increasingly distraught Wilson for nearly half a minute. Then she snorted as if she couldn't believe she was actually looking at him. "You're the real thing, aren't you." She wasn't asking a question, merely musing out loud. "You love him. You actually consider him a friend – a person."
Wilson tried to look stern and disapproving of her annoyingly self-serving rhetoric, but he could feel himself failing to maintain the expression. With a weary sigh, he looked down at his hands and picked at a few dirt stains from where he had scrabbled about on the stoop. It took a while, but Wilson eventually managed to nod and croak out a thoroughly reluctant, "Yeah. Even when he pees on my stuff. I usually deserve it anyway."
It came as no surprise that she laughed at that, but the tinkle of sound grated on Wilson's nerves; this was no time for laughter. House was locked up in some pound, about to either be euthanized or imprisoned somewhere far worse. It hurt more than he wanted to admit; now that he knew that House was alive, somehow the urgency pierced even deeper than when he had feared the big cat dead.
A hand appeared on Wilson's shoulder, squeezing gently. "How far are you willing to go, Doctor Wilson?"
Wilson stopped rocking and lifted his eyes to meet hers. "Anything. Please. Just tell me what I need to do."
The people she took him to meet two days later – and her name was Janice; he remembered that somewhere between his apartment and the pound – these people looked like terrorists. They were American, obviously, but they dressed all in black and carried ski masks in their pockets, and some of them had tasers and guns strapped into hip holsters. Not to mention the guy with the tool belt, and the other guy with a breast pocket full of sedative darts to load the tranquilizer rifle he kept religiously polishing, and the other other guy with the cyber-age lock picking kit…animal rights militants. It was slightly terrifying, tagging along with this lot. Like National Geographic meets Jack Bauer.
"Here we are," Janice told him from her seat beside him in the back of the van.
There were no seats aside from the two in front, and Wilson was huddled on the floor by the rear doors, gripping a strap to keep himself from being thrown around each time their driver – the one with the taser – took a corner.
Wilson nodded and focused on settling the churning in his stomach. He was about two minutes away from becoming a criminal. It was the fact that he didn't mind that had his insides tied up in knots. All he wanted was House, back home and safe. He didn't care how anymore. The past two days, which he had been told to spend acting as if nothing were the matter, had been next to impossible; he'd been forced to take vacation time and plead the flu because he couldn't even focus on opening email. Cuddy seemed to consider it a grieving leave after the scene he had made to her, and let him be about it. A second later, he felt compelled to ask, "You guys have done this before, right? I mean, it's not gonna be like amateur night at the comedy club?"
The guy in the front passenger seat – the black guy with the lock picks – chuckled with a sort of arrogant if self-deprecating mirth. It was an odd combination. "Yeah, we got experience."
Janice added more soberly, "Foreman's the best we have for search and rescue."
Wilson glanced at Foreman and then cast Janice a dubious look as the van glided to a relatively gentle stop, considering that the majority of their ride had been anything but. "How so?"
"B-and-E and car jacking," Foreman replied. The pride in his voice came mingled with some subtle brand of shame, however. "These guys got to me right after I left juvie."
"We recruit certain sorts of talent," Janice explained. "I'm sure you can understand."
Wilson raised an eyebrow but offered no opinion on that. If he alienated these people, House would be the one to pay for it, not him. Janice had already informed him that House was slated for euthanization, and PITA wasn't prepared to endorse a felony unless Wilson really wanted House back. The price for Wilson wasn't even that high; they had only requested prescriptions for antibiotics and such, probably to be used to treat their own members when they couldn't afford the suspicion raised by visiting an emergency room. Wilson didn't really care what they did with the medications, and if he were ever confronted about writing the scripts, he would simply have to lie.
They didn't leave the van right away, parked inconspicuously as it was in a dark corner of the shelter parking lot, blending into a row of similar vans that all bore the emblem of the city pound. Foreman and tranquilizer-gun-man crowded around the windows in the rear doors, waiting for the night staff leave. Once they left, one of the guys would go out and cut power to the building, at which point they would have about fifteen minutes to get to House before the alarm company sent someone to investigate the outage. Janice had explained all of this to Wilson as they drove around picking up crew members, but it didn't stop him itching at the need to wait even longer to get his hands on House.
After what seemed like hours, Foreman perked up and nodded back at them to indicate that the night staff was on its way out. Shortly thereafter, several car engines roared to life on the other side of the parking lot and they all waited in varying degrees of agitation for the sounds to die away. Taser Man went back up front and started the van as the guy with the tool belt – an electrician, perhaps – ducked out the back and made for the telephone pole a few feet away. Wilson poked his head out the open rear door to watch him scale a chain link fence and reach up to grab the first wrung on the pole. Janice pulled him back inside as the guy shimmied up out of sight, and as soon as the animal shelter went dark, Taser Man backed the van right up to the rear entrance. The countdown was on.
Wilson exited the van first, but only because he was overeager and fraught with nerves, and happened to be sitting right against the doors. He fidgeted and combed hands through his hair to grip savagely at the back of his neck while Foreman went about picking the locks, wishing vaguely for a weapon, or the ability to kick down steel doors. Finally, the door swung open, and Wilson crowded into the shelter on Foreman's heels, a few of the other guys slipping past him to scout about as he wondered where they were holding House.
"Let's try big dogs," Janice suggested, pointing down a hallway adorned with an overly cheerful mural combining rainbows with kittens and puppies, highlighted by the stylized renderings of sycophantic children fawning all over them. It was nearly enough to make Wilson go into sugar shock.
The troupe moved quickly down the hall and Foreman had to kneel once again at the door with the reinforced plexiglass window to ply his singular trade with his picks. One of the men announced the four minute mark and Foreman told him to fuck off just as the lock gave way. Wilson stepped right over him without a word of apology for knocking him sideways, and shot off down the first aisle on legs that he refused to acknowledge as wobbly. Captive dogs lifted their heads and whined as he passed; some even barked or jumped at the bars. Wilson ignored them all and rounded to come up the second aisle. He was brought up short when the electrician hissed and pointed from the end of the furthest aisle.
Wilson ran over, lungs in his throat, and shoved past him. Flashlights did little to illuminate the gloom, and at first Wilson thought that the man must have been mistaken to identify the creature in the big cage as House. He looked like a lumpy pile of mangy fur all tangled up in the corner, unmoving except for the shallow, arrhythmic expansion of his ribcage as he breathed. The shock wore off an instant later and Wilson tore the latches open, collapsing on his way in to grab the first arm that he saw. House didn't wake when Wilson rolled him over.
"Drugged," Foreman announced.
Wilson glanced over his shoulder to find him examining the bowl of cheap pet food sitting just inside the door, picked over but at least partially eaten. "They were probably afraid he'd manage to escape. He can open just about anything."
As Wilson turned back to paw at House's whiskery cheeks and shake him, he heard the clang and scatter of kibble as Foreman flung it somewhere in disgust. "We have to go."
Wilson nodded, but he couldn't seem to move. House was filthy, and he'd lost so much weight that Wilson could see ribs protruding from under the soft if matted fur of his belly. For no real reason, Wilson announced, "He's covered in fleas." Then he clapped his hand over his mouth and tried not to be sick as he crumpled over House's limp body. He could see them in the high beam of his flashlight, scores of tiny bugs crawling over House's shoulder and around his ears to find warm shadows.
Janice grabbed his shoulder and tugged him upright. Wilson dragged House's upper body with him. "We have to go," she insisted, voice laced with urgency. "Ten minute mark."
Wilson nodded with no actual idea of what he was doing and allowed one of the other men to help him get House up off the floor. He was light enough that Wilson could carry him all by himself, though under protest from his touchy lumbar muscles. They made it out of the building and into the van without incident, and Taser Guy had them headed for the street before Janice had even gotten the doors closed.
Foreman kept watch out the back windows, and a few seconds after they turned out of the parking lot, he whistled. "There they are. Alarm guys." He paused, perhaps to check his watch, and then griped, "Four minutes early. We're gonna have to adjust our estimates next time."
Taser Guy pressed harder on the gas pedal and Wilson gripped House's heavy frame to his chest, too stunned to be relieved. He accepted the scratchy wool blanket that Janice held out to him and wrapped it around House's pitifully thin frame in an effort to stem the shivers set up by the cool night air. When they finally climbed the on-ramp and merged onto the interstate, Wilson sagged against the side panel and expelled a breath that he had been holding for over a month now. He didn't care that he could feel the fleas venturing onto himself, even though it turned his stomach just a little; he had no desire to let go, even for that.
They were halfway home when House began to stir in Wilson's arms, and he tucked House up against his chest so that when he woke, the first thing he would notice was Wilson's scent. A clatter over on the other side of the van drew Wilson's gaze for a moment, and he stiffened violently to find the electrician preparing a hypodermic. "That's not necessary."
The electrician eyed him with obvious distrust. "Look, I know you think he's tame, but – "
"He is tame!" Wilson shouted. The clap of his voice caused a few of them to wince as it rebounded in the confined space of the van. House shifted a bit and mewled, but he couldn't pry his eyes open yet.
"With you, maybe," the electrician shot back heatedly. "He doesn't know us, and I have no intention of getting mauled for my good deed."
Wilson puffed up, his shoulders hunched around his ears in unconscious imitation of House's most intimidating pose. "If you touch him with that thing, I swear to god I'll hurt you."
Janice laid a hand on the electrician's arm to push the needle down from where he'd been holding it as if it were a weapon to stab someone with. "If we have to, we'll shoot him with the tranq gun, okay?"
The man holding said weapon twisted around in the front seat upon hearing this, then eyed Wilson and the big cat mewling in his grasp. "Just say the word."
Wilson glared daggers, but he couldn't sustain it because House chose that moment to twitch and paw at him as if trying to push him off. "Hey," Wilson cooed, his attention completely focused on House now. "It's me. It's just me."
House twisted feebly in his arms and then emitted a soft, breathless howl, his eyelids still too heavy and gummy for him to open.
"You're safe," Wilson whispered, his lips pressed to House's ear in spite of the infestation. "I'm taking you home. You're safe now."
House coughed weakly against Wilson's chest and then noticed the scent of the man restraining him. He began sniffing earnestly at Wilson's sweatshirt, an irregular series of inquisitive if frightened sounds welling up from deep within House's chest.
"That's right," Wilson encouraged, tightening his grasp to keep House as close as possible. "It's me. You know me."
Some sort of pained noise gurgled in the back of House's throat, and then Wilson caught a glimpse of liquid blue peering up at him as they passed under a light pole.
Wilson grinned, even if the laugh he attempted came out rather strangled and wet. "Miss me?"
House went still and merely stared at him, expression blank and devoid of recognition.
Wilson's smile faded so quickly that he could feel the sudden pit yawn in his stomach as an aching burn. "House…"
House blinked at him in a second blaze of blue reflecting the light they passed beneath, and then he planted his face in Wilson's chest with a long, keening sigh.
The moment of recognition was sweet enough in its own right, but it was the staggered attempt to purr that finally broke Wilson's composure. He folded over House and probably crushed him a bit, if the wheeze of escaping air were anything to go by. "I'm sorry," he wailed into the patchy fur, his voice little more than a mournful whisper. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I thought you understood, I'll never do it again…" He rocked back and forth, mindless of his own dignity or the fact that he had an audience as he repeated himself over and over again. He needed to say it – he needed too badly for House to know it.
House groaned in some sort of discomfort, and then the purring ratcheted up in volume. Wilson could tell that it was forced for his benefit – that House didn't actually feel contentment or pleasure right now – but he didn't care. He hardly felt the paw slip up to curl around the back of his head, holding his freely running nose down in the crook of House's neck, fleas be damned, or the arm that wrapped around his flank and over his shoulder until House was squeezing him back with what little strength he could muster. The purring petered out quickly, probably because it was too draining to maintain, but in its absence, Wilson could hear the softer, gravelly sorts of sounds that he was making, a low rumble that percolated in his throat, as if he were murmuring reassuring things under his breath, for Wilson's ears only, in whatever language House was capable of. Coos and grumbles vibrated against Wilson's collarbone where House's throat was pressed, interspersed with gentle chirrups and a few faint meows. An uncoordinated tongue started licking his face a moment later, sandpapering off the salty moisture staining Wilson's cheeks – or the one within his reach, anyway.
When Wilson realized what was happening, his throat closed up and he choked for a moment before he could manage a deep, shuddering breath. And then another. There it was – the old familiar scent of him, hidden beneath god-knew how many layers of accumulated grime and the fouler scent of captivity and ammonia from the pound. House tried to purr again for him, tightening his grip on Wilson as if alarmed by Wilson's reaction, but he sounded and felt like a dying lawnmower engine. As if he knew it, House switched to kneading at him instead, a hint of prickly claws in Wilson's scalp and between his shoulder blades, and Wilson mustered himself enough to tell House that he was okay. House made some sound of assent or agreement, and went back to simply holding him.
"Hell," the electrician muttered, his voice colored in awe. "I ain't never seen the like of that before."
House started at the unexpected voice and his arms tightened around Wilson as he roused himself to glance at his surroundings. Wilson lifted his head too, but only to give the electrician a baleful look that, from Wilson's perspective, left the man streaked and blurred. Upon finding so many strangers watching them, House emitted a feeble, uncertain hiss and twisted to huddle back against Wilson.
A current of tension seemed to run like electricity through the PITA brigade, but Wilson murmured something about them being friends, and House subsided with nothing more than an irritated growl. A moment later, he affected not to notice them at all and began scratching at himself – arms first, then belly, and then he clawed at his ears with a fair amount of agitation.
Wilson spent the remainder of the drive trying to keep House from scratching himself silly as his faculties returned in the wake of the drugs he'd been fed, and by the time the van pulled up in front of Wilson's apartment, House was complaining loudly and biting his own tail in spite of Wilson's attempts to calm him. Wilson almost regretted making such a scene about the sedative, because he was starting to reconsider it simply to save House the discomfort. At least the patchiness of his fur and the tender, nearly raw patches of skin that bordered on lesionous could be explained as nothing more serious than the side effect of scratching at parasites. Wilson spared a moment of thanks for the fact that House no longer had any issue with the walk-in shower, because they would both need a flea bath before they could get any rest.
Foreman climbed out the front and came around the van to open the rear door for Wilson, who had his arms full at the moment. Between them, they got House out, and Wilson supported most of his weight on the way inside because not only was House squirming on his feet at the terrible itchiness pervading his entire being, but the drugs had left a residual weakness in him that left him unable to even walk on all fours as he was wont to do with his right leg being what it was. Wilson dragged House into the elevator and let him crumple on the floor as they rode up, squawking and spitting about his supreme discomfort the whole time.
Once the elevator creaked to a halt, Foreman took Wilson's apartment keys so that Wilson himself could gather House upright as much as possible and haul him straight into the bathroom. He deposited House in the shower and turned around with the intention of thanking Foreman for his help, since he had heard the man following them down the hall, and found himself face-to-face with a huge bottle of flea shampoo.
Wilson grimaced and accepted the gift with a nod of wry thanks. "Look," Wilson started. "I just wanted to thank you – "
"I don't like hybrids," Foreman cut in sharply. Wilson balked but before he could ask the inevitable question, Foreman continued. "The breeding programs are wrong, and they should be shut down. That's why I'm with PITA – I don't like the way we're playing God, or that people think it's okay to mistreat them just because they're a created species and the property of whoever made them. They're not property. They're sentient, and they should be treated that way. But they shouldn't exist in the first place."
Wilson blinked a few times and then shrugged. "Um. Okay."
Foreman jerked his head down in a nod, and then softened just enough that Wilson could see it. "Take good care of him this time."
Wilson bristled, but in his own mind, wracked with guilt as it still was, he hardly had room to protest the scolding tone that Foreman had just taken with him. His voice nonetheless tight, Wilson promised, "I will." Then he considered a moment before tacking his original, "Thank you," back onto the end of that.
"Sure," Foreman replied. He gazed past Wilson's shoulder for a moment, into the bathroom where Wilson could hear House rubbing himself against any available surface in search of a modicum of relief. "That's, um…" His chin jutted in House's direction, and then Foreman mumbled, "…special. What you've got there." Then he made a few additional nervous gestures as if he needed to negate what he'd said, and took his leave without another word.
Wilson listened to the front door close behind Foreman, then took what felt like the first deep breath he'd managed since Mrs. Whetherly had handed him House's lacrosse ball. Behind him in the bathroom, House stopped his frantic squirming all over the place and took up an angry, impatient yowling no doubt directed at Wilson to tell him to get his ass in there and wash the itchies off.
Against his better judgment – since he knew that it would only further antagonize House – Wilson grinned and backed into the bathroom with his industrial-sized bottle of flea shampoo. House complained in the most strenuous tones for the next hour, after which he finally fell into an exhausted if fitful doze under the warm shower spray with Wilson still combing the mats and dead fleas from his fur.