Poison and Wine

Epilogue

House hated funerals. He hated the flowers, he hated the sermons, he hated the incessant sobbing that interrupted any possible moment of peace. More importantly, he didn't see the point of doing anything that he didn't want to do.

So when they held Wilson's funeral, he didn't go.

He should have foreseen the consequences, but a few beers and a questionable number of pills later, none of it seemed to matter. Even when Cuddy knocked on his door, he didn't much care.

"How could you?" she whispered. Her eyes were red, her hand full of used tissues. Pathetic.

"How'd it go?" he asked casually.

"House…" Cuddy shook her head, torn somewhere between sheer exhaustion and total incredulity. "You were his…you loved him. How could you purposely avoid his funeral?"

"Happy state the obvious day." House moved aside to let her into the apartment, swinging the door shut before limping back to living room and collapsing onto the couch. "Beer?"

"House." Cuddy rounded the couch, towering over him. "You should have been involved. You should have been there."

"His parents offered to arrange it," House shrugged. "Funerals are for attention-whoring morons, anyway. As if crying tears of agony in public makes you a better person."

Something changed in Cuddy's expression, and House braced himself. "If you won't grieve in public, fine," she began, "but you have to at least grieve privately." She hesitated, holding his gaze. "You have been grieving, haven't you?"

He didn't answer, and her face fell.

"My God, House. Have you even cried?"

Times like these, Cuddy was damn lucky to be a woman. House would've socked her otherwise.

"Crying's for sissies," he muttered.

Cuddy pursed her lips. "Look, I called Nolan the other day, and he said you could come by at any – "

"You had no right!" House stood angrily from the couch, ignoring the relief that came with feeling something. Anything.

"You need to talk to someone. If you can't talk to Nolan, then talk to me."

"You're my boss, not my shrink," House snapped. "Stick to your damn job and let me do mine."

Cuddy crossed her arms. "You won't have a job until you talk to someone."

"I told him I'd go back to work," he argued. "Barring me from the hospital goes against his explicit wishes for – "

"I'm doing this as much for Wilson as I am for you," Cuddy said, her voice firm but softening. "You know that, House."

House recoiled at the mention of Wilson's name, slowly sitting back down on the couch. "You need to leave," he muttered.

"But – "

"I said leave. Now. Maybe I'll cry over the unbelievable lameness of this conversation once you're gone."

With a sigh, Cuddy slowly made her way to the door, pausing briefly as she reached for the doorknob. "I'm sure you promised him a lot of things, House," she said quietly. "But I don't think this was one of them."

He didn't bother turning around to watch her go.

It's not that he didn't care. Anyone who actually thought he didn't care could go fuck themselves, and see how much he cared about that.

It's just like he said – funerals were for morons. A body was a body. You could dress it up, talk about it, cry over it all you wanted, but it wasn't waking up and coming back to life. He didn't need to watch them lower a corpse, dressed in a characteristic suit and questionable tie, into a six-foot-deep hole for fertilizer and worm food. There was just no point. Wilson wasn't there.

Which was probably because Wilson was here, in the form of a brand spanking new organ that had taken the place of House's old piano.

Wilson had apparently added it to his will, a last-minute gift of which Stacy and Cuddy had overseen the deliverance. House had brushed away their attempts to keep him informed about Wilson's legal whatevers, but in addition to some extra cash, it seemed that the organ had made its way into his living room, whether he liked it or not.

"He was so excited about it, and I remembered how music always made you look at the world differently," Stacy had said, her eyes still gleaming in that God-awful pity that House hated. "I told him I thought it was a wonderful idea."

It had taken House two days to even look at the damn thing.

Cuddy was still keeping the hospital off-limits, so eventually House had sat down and let his fingers run over the keys – in sheer boredom, of course. In front of him, the Poison and Wine sheet music he'd printed off waited quietly for his attention. He focused only on the notes, his eyes skimming over the chords as his fingers effortlessly followed. The lyrics, printed in small font between the staff lines, remained out of his line of sight.

He had to admit, it sounded nice. Wilson would like a sappy, pretty melody like this.

Resting his hands, House glanced over at the stereo, where a new album lay waiting to be heard. But he'd hit play another time.

The voicemails were getting old.

Cuddy, the team, even Stacy and Nolan – no one seemed to understand that all he wanted to do was eat, sleep, and occasionally play his new organ in peace.

"You can come back to work," Cuddy would say, her voice tinged with exasperation and a hint of surrender. "You know that's what he'd want. Just call Nolan back, House. One session. That's all we ask."

Sometimes she'd remind him that she was doing this for Wilson, too, and that's when he'd delete her message before it was even over.

He'd actually been spending most of his time regretting a particular promise he'd made regarding full bottles of Vicodin and playing copy-cat. He'd pop a pill or two, then three or four or five more, and then he'd physically need to separate himself from the rest before he poured them down his throat. He wasn't even in that much pain – he'd spent the past week sitting around eating beans out of a can and watching reruns of The Biggest Loser – and he wasn't even upset. He wasn't sad, he wasn't angry, he wasn't disappointed. He felt nothing at all, and he was bored out of his mind, and gulping down what was left of his stash was becoming more and more appealing. Even his few attempts at masturbating had been pathetic, embarrassing fails.

But a promise was a promise. And a body was a body, and a death pact was a death pact, and a miserable existence was a miserable existence.

Another thing you have to promise me: no regrets.

Between his obvious failure in that regard and his inability to go back to work, staying alive was the only way House could keep himself from being a complete lying asshole.

The lyrics…God, those lyrics…You should look it up sometime, maybe find the chords.

Glancing back at the organ, he furrowed his brow in thought. He hadn't exactly made a promise there, but…

Too tired for his usual mental list of pros and cons, he limped over to the stereo and set the album to the fifth song, easing himself onto the organ seat as the CD whirred to the requested track.

The beginning of the now-familiar melody filled the air. House's fingers silently hovered above the corresponding keys, unprepared for the way the subsequent words made them freeze in their tracks.

There was this song I heard out in LA…And the whole time, all I could think about was you.

It didn't matter that Wilson's body was in a cemetery somewhere, surrounded by dirt and topped with a stone like everyone else whose time had come to an end. House had been right – Wilson was here. Wilson was everywhere, in everything House that felt – in the smooth wood of the organ that he gripped, in the words of the song that slid into his ears and sliced through his chest, in the sudden thickness of the air that he could barely breathe. He couldn't tell the difference anymore between reality and song, between what he'd heard before and what he was hearing now.

I wish you'd hold me when I turn my back

The less I give, the more I get back…

House closed his eyes and let himself become lost, falling into crystal clear images of a past he'd worked so hard to forget. Wilson walking away from his hospital bed, Wilson trying to talk on the phone over Amber's voice in the background, Wilson's handwriting on a postcard whose desperation was masked by indifference.

Wilson's number illuminating House's cell phone screen after five years of agonizing silence.

"I'm thinking about coming home."

"Funny. If it were me, I'd want to be anywhere but home."

"If you think it's a bad idea – "

"No. Forget it. You can catch the next flight out and stay with me."

"Really? You'd be okay with that?"

"You know it's over when Boy Wonder Oncologist gets terminal cancer, and I'm gonna need a buddy if it's the end of the world. Bum leg, and all that."

"House…I don't know what to say."

"Talking's overrated. Just get your ass over here and I'll order Chinese."

"Just like old times, huh?"

"Would you have it any other way?"

"I'll see you soon, House."

He opened his eyes, inhaling sharply as he came up for air.

I don't have a choice, but I still choose you.

He breathed as if he hadn't breathed in years, clutching the sides of the organ like a life raft. The song was winding down, the final chorus coming to a close.

I don't love you, but I always will.

For a moment there was silence, and as the notes of the next song began to drift through the air, House bent his head and let the first tears fall.

The next day, the packed suitcase waited patiently at his side as he sat by the organ again, his cell phone in his hand.

Cuddy answered almost immediately. "House?"

"Hey," he said. "I need you to do me a favor."

"Are you alright? What do you need?"

"I need a ride."

Cuddy hesitated. "You have your motorbike and Wilson's car. Where are you going that you need me to take you?"

"Mayfield," House replied simply, and waited for the inevitable surprise to leave her enough cognitive ability to speak again.

"Is this…something that you told him you'd do?"

You know I hope you'll find it in yourself to get clean again one day. But I'm certainly not going to dump you for it now.

"Nope," he shrugged. "But I'm doing it."

"House, I think that's wonderful. I really do."

"So get over here. Are we doing this for Wilson, or what?"

And on the other end of the line, he could feel Cuddy's smile matching his own.

Fin