A/N: As I have started writing this chapter, I am already crazy excited for you guys to read it! I hope you like it as much as I do!
Disclaimer: I don't own House and I don't own the song Scars.
Finally in Clinic Exam Room Two, House popped himself up onto the exam table and rubbed his thigh out, waiting quietly for Wilson to set his things down.
"Well, aren't you just being a model patient for me today?" Wilson commented, noting how quiet his typically obnoxious friend was being.
Scoffing up at the brown-eyed oncologist, House gave Wilson a glare with his piercing blue eyes and returned to the activity of massaging out a cramp in his leg.
"Alright House, let's get this over with," Wilson said while he pulled out his penlight and flashed it over House's eyes. "Pupils are of equal size and aren't dilated, so you don't have a concussion."
"Thanks, I'm a doctor, too," House bit up at the oncologist. He just wanted to go home. There was no reason for him to be here, seeing as his headache was far better than it had been this morning and there was minimal pain besides the usual burn in his thigh.
Ignoring the diagnostician, Wilson began feeling at the back of House's head, noting several small cuts just above his hairline. Getting a better look, the brown-eyed man wandered around to the back of House and reassessed the cuts, noticing more and more small, papercut-like lines on his friend's neck and hidden by his hair. Deciding they were not a serious injury but still curious as to how they got there, Wilson piped up, "Where'd the cuts on the back of your head and neck come from?"
Wilson's question, unbeknownst to him, shot House back into two memories: One he'd tried to hide from for thirty-five years, and one that he'd just recovered from his drunken state last night. "Probably got cut up on some ice or the sidewalk or something last night," House answered after some hesitation.
Inferring that the already vulnerable diagnostician had most likely fallen, Wilson made a mental note to do a routine examination on House's thigh to make sure he hadn't injured it further. Wilson pulled out some cotton swabs and an antiseptic. "Gonna burn," he murmured before pressing a soaked cotton ball into the cuts on House's neck. Surprisingly, the older man didn't even flinch away from the stinging sensation.
"Take your shirt off, I need to see if you have any abrasions or other open wounds if you fell last night," Wilson instructed.
House deflected with, "Wilson, if you're gay for me and want to see me half-naked, just tell me. I promise I won't judge you." He smirked and waited for Wilson's response.
Rolling his eyes at his friend's childish antics, Wilson growled down at his patient and repeated, "House. Shirt off, now." Wilson never could understand why his best friend had to be so damn difficult all the time.
Looking down, House told Wilson, "I don't want to and there is nothing wrong with my back. Besides, if I fell on my back, I'd have a shirt on, therefore it would not be scraped up, therefore not susceptible to any type of infection like open cuts on my neck would be. Let it go." House hoped this would be enough to literally keep Wilson off his back.
"House, I am younger than you, stronger than you, and more put-together than you right now. Remove your shirt or I will do it for you," Wilson said in that stern tone only Wilson himself could do.
Get yourself into the tub or I will do it for you. Put your hands against the wall and stay still or I will do it for you. Wrap the rope around your hands or I will do it for you. Drag yourself up those stairs and into your room or I will do it for you. Memories of House's father and his threats all came rushing back to the blue-eyed diagnostician, but most powerful of all was to take off that shirt so I can belt you, or I will do it for you.
Seeing that House had zoned out and assuming that he was just stalling for time and being his regular self, Wilson grabbed the back of House's shirt and pulled it up quickly, causing House to snap into a full-fledged panic attack. Pushing Wilson away and ducking and rolling off the exam table onto his left leg, House backed himself up against the wall of the exam room and darted his eyes from left to right. "Don't touch me, don't touch me, don't touch me," House mumbled over and over again, trying to keep what he thought were his father's hands off of him.
[Line Break]
House had slid to the floor now and his eyes had a lost-and-kicked puppy look in them. "Please Dad, don't," he whimpered to himself, burying his head in his arms, but never crying.
Wilson wondered if he had heard right as he watched House fold in on himself; however, after several minutes of watching his friend mumble to himself and bite through his lips, the oncologist had decided it was time to bring House out of his panic attack. "House! House it's me, it's Wilson. Come on. Uncover your ears, House. You're okay. Come on," the oncologist repeated as a mantra to his friend, hoping to break him out of this episode. "House!"
[Line Break]
"House!" His last name resonated in his mind, ricocheting off the walls of his cranium and bouncing home into the center of his brain. "House!" he heard again, and looked up to see Wilson there, peering straight into his eyes. "House! Come on, let's get you back up onto the exam table," Wilson told him, standing up and gently pulling up on House's forearm. Following blindly, the diagnostician stumbled back up and sat back down on the table, never looking up. He had realized what just happened and was horribly ashamed of the panic attack he had in front of Wilson. "God damn it, now he's obviously going to figure out everything! Way to keep control of yourself, dumbass," House berated himself.
"Hey, it's alright. Let's get this done with and we'll talk later," the brown-eyed man calmed his older friend, then proceeded to slowly lift up the back of House's light blue shirt, then gently pulled it over his head and discarded it on a nearby chair. "It's alright," he told House when he noticed the man becoming agitated again. Deciding to make quick work of this process, Wilson quickly doused some scrapes on House's lower back in an antiseptic and worked up from there, treating a few scattered cuts.
House could feel his friend's eyes burning into every scar his father had left. The one from being pushed through a screen door when he was only six that was positioned upon his right shoulder. The perfect circle of a cigarette burn implanted in the middle of his back at age fifteen. The bright white one put across his back with a horse whip when he was eleven. Countless other scars littered his muscular back. House knew Wilson was not only looking at his recent injuries, but his old ones as well.
House was right. Wilson pored over the older man's back, swallowing at every scar he saw there. He had no idea how they had gotten there, but there were so many of them. Trying to focus on cleaning up an abrasion on his patient's right rib, Wilson caught his eyes continually straying over to some of the more prominent scars on his friend's back, wondering again how he came to have so many of them. "Was he really saying 'dad' earlier?" Wilson asked himself, hoping he wasn't right. An abuse case hidden under thirty-some years of other screwed-up aspects of House's life was not something he could handle on his own.
"Okay, House, you can put your shirt back on now," Wilson reassured his still-trembling, still-numb friend as he tossed him his button-down.
"Thanks," House mumbled, trying to make his stupid, shaking fingers button his shirt up, not wanting Wilson to see him like this any longer.
Quietly jumping in as he would do if House was drunk, or detoxing, or suffering from breakthrough pain, Wilson reached over and buttoned up House's shirt for him. "House, do you feel any pain other than your leg or the cuts on your head, neck, and back?" Wilson inquired of his friend, hoping to be almost done with this exam. House just shook his head and looked down until Wilson reached the top of his shirt, then looked up as he was instructed to do so.
"Do you wanna talk about it?" Wilson asked, knowing that House knew what he had seen all over his back and connected it to his panic attack, wondering now what had set it off, as well as what had set off the panic attack that had caused him to strike Wilson earlier that day.
Again, House shook his head and edged off the exam table and onto his left leg, where he hop-dragged himself to his cane and put his jacket back on. "I'm tired. Take me home. I'll pick up my keys tomorrow," House mumbled. The diagnostician already felt violated enough for the day, and the panic attacks, nightmares, exam, and the strenuous events of pulling himself all over hell that morning were all catching up to him. Really, he just wanted to go home to his apartment to lay on his couch, pretend to watch his porn, and drink his whiskey.
"Fine, but you need to talk to someone about this," Wilson insisted while he opened the door for House. He didn't realize it was so late, as the clinic was already shut down. "Come on," the oncologist said as he and his friend stepped out of the building entirely into the frosty, February air.
A/N: Hey, this is actually being updated really fast! Let me know what you guys think, I hope you liked this chapter! I hope I didn't get too OOC with the characters here, but I feel like even though House is definitely guarded, he'd be more willing to make himself vulnerable in front of Wilson than in front of any other character.