Wilson looked up as his office door opened and House slipped inside quickly, shutting the door behind him. House looked almost... relieved? Wilson noted sadly that his coveralls were stained in many places, and there were lines of exhaustion and pain etched on his face. His first day had obviously not been easy for him.
They'd known it would be difficult. Many of the staff at the hospital had been here when House had worked here, and House had never been known for his ability to get on with people. Wilson was sure that House had been the target of some verbal abuse and harassment during the day. He'd need to keep a close eye on the situation and make sure it was nothing that House couldn't handle.
"Time to go," House said quietly. He looked tense and anxious.
Wilson glanced at his watch. It was right on five o'clock. He had promised House they would leave at that time but he'd forgotten just how much work always built up when he'd been away from the hospital for a few days. He couldn't possibly leave.
"I need at least another hour," he said. "Take a seat, and I'll be done as soon as I can." He waved a hand towards his couch. House could stretch out there while he was finishing up.
"You promised," House blurted out to Wilson's surprise. "You said we could leave at five."
"I know, but I really need to get this done. I'm behind after all the time off."
House's shoulder slumped and he moved towards the door without another word.
"You don't have to go, you can wait here."
House shook his head. "No, I can't. When I'm here I have to be working remember? Unless I'm on a consult to diagnostics. We can't risk it, not on the first day. I'll come back in an hour."
Wilson stood up. "No, we'll go. I can finish this at home." He grabbed his case and began putting his files into it. He wasn't going to make House go out there again. The look of relief on House's face was all he needed to see.
House stuck closely to Wilson's side as they made their way back down to the reception area. The leash was in Wilson's coat pocket but he sure as hell wasn't going to use it until they were outside. The guard at the hospital's main doors stopped them.
"Need to search the slave, Doctor."
"Is that really necessary? I'll vouch for him."
"Standard procedure, sir." He turned to House without waiting for Wilson's okay. "Hands on your head, slave. Spread your legs."
House handed his cane to Wilson and obeyed. The guard quickly patted him down, running his hands along his legs, groin, chest and then under his arms.
"Open your mouth," he ordered when he was done and House did. The guard checked his mouth and then stood back.
"Are you done?" Wilson asked, his voice cold. This was ridiculous. The guard was unmoved.
"Yes, sir."
Wilson handed House his cane back. "Come on, let's get out of here."
The hated leash was clipped on as soon as they were outside and they quickly made their way to Wilson's car. House had survived his first day back at the hospital.
Back at the apartment Wilson closed the door behind them with a sigh of relief. They couldn't completely relax - the prospect of an SAC inspection was always there - but at least they were alone for now.
"Why don't you go and get changed out of that..." Wilson waved his hand at the orange 'slave' coveralls. "I'll start something for dinner."
When House returned his hair was wet and he was dressed in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Wilson was happy to see that he was looking better than he had.
"How was your day anyway? Security didn't drag you back to me after the first incident so I guess you must have kept out of trouble." Wilson put a plate of food in front of him. As usual House waited until Wilson had sat down and begun eating before he started eating himself.
"I cleaned a few bathrooms, emptied some trash," House said, his voice casual but his eyes wary. There was something he didn't want Wilson to know. Probably something humiliating to him. "At least I didn't have to do clinic duty. Couldn't go getting slave cooties on the patients." He was trying to joke but there was bitterness in his voice. Wilson was pretty sure he'd swap a lifetime of clinic duty for what was happening to him now.
When he was finished eating Wilson pushed away his plate and took a fat file out of his case.
"Cuddy sent these to me. They're all the requests for consult the diagnostics department has had over the six months. Most of them are still open. The kids have been doing their best but they're not you. Look these over. Mark any of them which have promise and Cuddy will get in touch with the patients to come in. We need to get diagnostics busy so you can be called in to consult regularly."
Wilson could have had Foreman look the cases over of course, but his ulterior motive was to get House back into the groove as quickly as possible. He hadn't been working as a doctor for three years and for the last two of those years he'd been mentally and physically abused in many ways. He'd shown that his old skill was still there to some degree but the more medicine he could do the better. For everyone.
House took the file, staring at it for a moment before opening it up and taking out the first letter. He was quickly absorbed in reading and Wilson got out his own work to do. They worked side by side for another couple of hours. When House picked up a pen and began scribbling on the letters Wilson relaxed a little. House had written 'moron' next to one doctor's name.
House's next couple of days at the hospital went better than his first. Now that he knew Ayersman was a threat he took care to stay away from that area of the hospital whenever he could and not get cornered again. Wilson and his former fellows all contributed towards getting him called away from the janitorial department as often as possible - to the extent that House's new boss complained to Cuddy about it. Wilson had been called into that meeting and later related to House that the man had been briskly informed that House would continue to be at the beck and call of the diagnostics department - the primary business of the hospital being saving lives, not having the cleanest bathrooms on the East coast.
Minor harassments by the other staff continued of course, as did the daily humiliation of being led into the hospital on a leash, and being searched when he left at night, but there were no other incidents of abuse like he had suffered on the first day. If it kept at this level he could easily tolerate it. He'd had far worse abuse in his time working for Rent-A-Slave. Even Ayersman paled next to what some of the supervisors there had done to him. At least now he had Wilson, Cuddy and his former fellows on his side, a home to go back to at night, with good food, pain meds and a warm bed. And Wilson. Just having a friend there made a difference - even if at the same time he hated Wilson seeing him like this.
The return to at least some degree of practising medicine also helped a lot. When he'd walked away from PPTH three years ago he had thought he was finished with medicine, and diagnostics, forever. After the first few months of being enslaved he feared he was and that he would never again be anything but a broken slave. Finding out that underneath all the fear and conditioning his mind still functioned, and his gift was still there, was a relief. Compared to that some name calling, and some minor abuse was nothing.
As Thursday approached however even the small amount of peace he'd been able to achieve crumbled as he contemplated the upcoming 'meeting' with Tritter. It wasn't going to be easy getting away by himself - and impossible to accomplish without arousing Wilson's suspicions - but he had to do it. Tritter had both influence and knowledge. With a word in the right place he could shatter the current arrangement and get House sent back to the SAC and Wilson into trouble. It wasn't beyond him to set something up so that Wilson would be charged with aiding a slave - a charge which could result in Wilson being sentenced to slavery himself.
The thought of Wilson with a collar around his neck sickened House. He could never let that happen. He'd do whatever Tritter demanded, because he had to. He was already lost; he wasn't going to drag Wilson down with him.
"I'm going out for a walk," he said on Thursday night, after dinner, in as casual a tone as he could manage. Wilson looked up at him, startled.
"You... what?"
"I'm going for a walk," House repeated, his heart pounding. "I need to get out of here, I need to get some air and think." He pulled on a warm coat and a scarf which would conceal his collar.
"Okay," said Wilson, getting up and grabbing his jacket. "Let's go, then."
"You are not going anywhere, I am going... alone. That's the difference between 'I am' and 'we are'. Subtle but it's there."
Wilson stood there in what House privately dubbed his 'superman' pose - hands on hips. "You can't go out for a walk by yourself."
"But Moooom, I know the way back home. And I have this nice shiny tag with your name on if I get lost. Please, Mom, I have to go." House pleaded, a childish whine in his voice.
"House, you can't," Wilson said again. "It's crazy."
House knew it was crazy, but he needed to get out - Tritter wasn't going to wait forever. Time to play the big guns.
"Why can't I go out? Because I'm a slave?" He went from frowning to looking sad in a second; Wilson was always a sucker for a sad and vulnerable person. "You told me you weren't going to treat me like I was a slave... like your slave. If you order me not to go out I'm your slave and I have to obey. If I don't you can beat me, is that what you want?"
Wilson looked flustered and rubbed the back of his neck, as he always did when he was agitated.
"House... of course I don't want to treat you as my slave. But it's dangerous for you to go out by yourself. You know that. Maybe you can hide the collar but there's a tattoo on your cheek. It's dangerous, for you and for me." Wilson was almost pleading. House knew he was right, but Wilson didn't know about Tritter who posed a much more immediate threat to their safety.
"You're right, but I can take care of myself. It's dark; I'm just going to walk for a few blocks. I just need to get out and just be myself for a bit. I haven't been able to do something like that for two years. I'll be back in a couple of hours. I can take a cell if you want."
Wilson was visibly torn but in the end he had to give in. His only other option was to exercise his authority over House, for real and House knew that he didn't want to do that. In Wilson's eyes he was only pretending that he was House's owner - that's the only way he could cope with it. For him to refuse House permission to leave the apartment would be to acknowledge that he really did own him.
"Okay," he said at last, his reluctance obvious. "But please be very careful." He disappeared into the bathroom and came back with a large plaster. "Put this over the tattoo."
House went over to the mirror and put it over the tattoo. He couldn't help but notice that it was the same place Wilson had one, to cover the stitches from the coffee table incident. He looked at himself in the mirror. He almost looked like a normal person. His hair had grown a little, he had a two day beard, and neither the collar nor the tattoo could be seen. He straightened up, feeling a surge of confidence.
"Thanks, Wilson. I'll be careful. I won't do anything stupid."
Wilson nodded, his face still showing his worry and with an effort House left him and walked out of the door.
Walking down the road by himself was a strange sensation. On the one hand he was voluntarily going to meet up with someone who was going to abuse him, on the other he was walking down the street like a free person for the first time in years. If he could only slip into the night and never be seen again it would be perfect.
A black car pulled up beside him after he'd gone a couple of blocks and he swallowed heavily. The sensation of freedom instantly vanished.
The window rolled down and those cold blue eyes looked at him.
"Good evening, Doctor House, please join me."
He opened the passenger side door and entered the car. It was too late to turn back now.
"Good boy," Tritter said, locking both windows and door from his side. A chilling cold pierced House's spine at the words.
Tritter started the car again and pulled smoothly away from the kerb.