Hi everyone!
I'm re-posting this chapter for the third time
as it didn't appear in the home screen when I
updated a couple of days ago two times over.
Hoping it's my fault and it's fixed now - third
time lucky! My sincere apologies to those who
have already read and reviewed, thank you
very, very much, I just don't want anyone to
miss a chapter! :D xxx
'Keep your feet ready, heartbeat steady…
Keep your eyes open.
Keep your aim locked, the night goes dark…
Keep your eyes open.'
{Taylor Swift: Eyes Open}
'Wilson?'
House's hushed voice was little more than a whisper as he cautiously poked his head around the bedroom door for the second time today, the Diagnostician uncharacteristically grimacing with every creak of the floorboards that announced his entry into his shadowed bedroom as he crept over to his unintentionally slumbering friend, a task not so easy given that every other limping step sent a flare of pain shooting hotly through his right thigh.
Normally, he wouldn't have thought twice about barging in here and waking Wilson up via some ethically questionable method. Normally, at his very politest, he may have knocked. May have.
Of course, both of them options were long inaccessible, given that things were the very opposite of 'normal' and the execution of either could send Wilson into a panic attack at the very least.
The Oncologist hardly stirred when House slowly lowered himself to sit on the edge of the bed next to him, his feathery breaths altering for only a second with the dip of the mattress as he frowned slightly before settling again, curling up that little bit tighter under the blanket House had thrown over him a good few hours ago now. With his knees practically hugged to his chest, as they appear to have been since House discovered him sleeping here this morning, it was clear to any onlooker just how exposed Wilson felt at the moment. Even in his sleep, it quite clearly plagued him, shattering every defense until an exhausted Wilson was no more.
How had they come to this?
How could this boy-wonder Head of Oncology, the strongest, most decent, loving man House had ever known, be reduced to this? This vulnerable shell of the friend who had less than two days ago been so insistently caring, so at ease with his lot in life, so stable, so unassuming in everything he did? He asked for nothing, gave his all with each and every one of his patients, gave his all with House, never bothered others with the fundamental fuck ups in his life, keeping it all to himself… and had been rewarded by the powers that be with this.
The universe's cruel, twisted version of karma.
The phrase 'bad things happen to good people' just didn't really cut it here. Because what had happened to Wilson wasn't just 'bad'. It was catastrophic. And the thought of anyone seeing Wilson as just 'good' was clearly laughable. Well, to House it was, anyway.
And as he silently observed Wilson now, so unbearably young in his sleep, yet so undeniably tainted, the bruises to his face highlighted horribly by the suffering etched into every crevice, House had to determinedly blink away the now familiar burn behind his seething gaze. Because Wilson was so much more than 'good'. He had been so innocent, really. So endearingly naïve at times. So hopeful. Not nearly as cynical as the Head of his specialty, hell, as a man of his age, should be. Always searching for the best in people, for the common sense route, very rarely getting caught up in the tedious bitchiness that came with the hospital territory. And if he did, it was more often than not in an attempt to settle an argument. Probably standing up for, or up to, his best friend, yet again. Like he always did. Watching House's back at every turn. Not really expecting anything in return.
Not really expecting to get fucking raped for no apparent reason.
House couldn't help it, the sharp inhale of breath sticking horribly in his throat with the wave of now familiar sadness that rushed through him as he closed his eyes tight shut, settling coldly in his chest like a physical weight, crushing his heart with every angered beat it took. Because this wasn't fair. Life wasn't playing fair. If he was honest, life had never really played fair, but this… well, quite frankly, this shitty little interlude just took the biscuit.
House hadn't even realized he was gripping Wilson's hand through the blanket until he felt the desperate squeeze back, opening his eyes to surprisingly find those sleepy, dark brown counterparts still safely hidden behind the closed lids of their owner. Even asleep, there was no way around the fact that Wilson was totally lost, clinging to anything that could keep him anchored somehow.
And there was no way around the fact that, consequently, they were practically holding hands.
In a gesture of comfort, yes.
In a voluntary gesture of comfort.
And after everything they'd gone through over the past two days, after the clear, inevitable crumbling of the physical boundaries between the two friends, after the seemingly endless embraces House had rightly held an exhausted Wilson in, catching him every time he'd fallen so hard, well… he couldn't lie here.
His first instinct, selfishly, surprisingly perhaps, was to drop Wilson's hand like a hot potato.
A very, very hot potato.
Because this wasn't them.
He could count on one hand the number of times they'd shown any sort of physical indication of the depth of their friendship. As in hardly ever. Actually, as in never. Oh, there was the odd time they'd inadvertently invaded the other's personal space. Usually resulting in a somewhat intimidated Wilson and a berated, pissed off House. Both, in their own way, usually ending up a little flustered with those unintended, close encounters.
But this… this was almost intimate. In a moment where both men where sober, clear-headed and grieving for the stricken turn their lives had taken, this tight grip they had on each other, to a fully conscious House anyway, was positively terrifying. Because Wilson currently wasn't hysterical with fear, he wasn't crying, he wasn't yelling, he wasn't amidst the throes of a panic attack… he was sleeping. Quite steadily so, considering. There was no reason for any sort of physical contact.
Wilson wasn't even aware that House was there.
And yet he was finding more and more that he couldn't let go of Wilson's hand.
And it was precisely that that scared him shitless. That heady notion that went against his first, innately Housian instinct to drop Wilson's hand, that reflex to keep tight hold of his best friend over the force of habit thinking that had initially ordered him to drop it, the two conflicting desires intertwining as irrevocably as their hands were.
He didn't want to let go. More to the point, he didn't think Wilson would want him to let go. Because if he felt anything vaguely similar to what House felt, then he'd hold on for dear life, clinging to this precipice of physical reality when, mentally, they both knew he was slipping away, falling endlessly with no safety net.
And House would not be the one to let him fall.
He would not be the one to let him go.
He wouldn't.
And now, almost obsessively, he was driving himself insane with this endless analysis. Of a simple gesture that, really, wasn't entirely unjustified given the circumstances.
In fact, if Wilson had been awake, he would have been proud of that little psychology session thought House drily, annoyed with himself and sighing noisily as he leant over to shake Wilson gently by the shoulder, like he should have just done in the first place, his hand still notably enclosed in Wilson's.
'Wilson? Wilson, it's me. Wakey, wakey sunshine.'
Wilson finally did stir a little at that, squeezing House's hand that he still didn't know he had clutched in his own, before scrunching his nose up in that way that House fondly realized was just another Wilsonism he wasn't all to familiar with, until the Oncologist finally squinted up very sleepily from the warm depths of the blanket.
And promptly freaked as his vision swam with the image of someone leaning over him, not even registering that it was just House, only knowing that he'd been pinned underneath a sweaty, revolting man against his will once before and had wished himself no less than dead as a result.
There was no way he could go there again, no fucking way on God's Earth could he go there again, his usually calm, measured voice morphing into a horrible sound that was practically a scream, a guttural scream that made the hairs on the back of House's neck stand on end as he found his hand violently flung right back at him.
'NOOOO! Nooo! No, no, no, no, no, no-'
'Whoa – Wilson! Wilson it's me!' yelled House as Wilson practically vaulted him off the bed to the floor, the terrified Oncologist seeming to half fall, half scramble, backwards over the bed with his blanket, twisting the sheets beneath him as he dissolved from a protesting, terrified string of pleas into heart-wrenching sobs, sobs that only grew far harsher when he took a dizzying second to let his frightened gaze lock onto a bewildered House for a moment, his swimming eyes growing wide with the shattering apprehension that'd he'd just more or less succeeded in throwing none other than his best friend from the bed.
His crippled best friend no less, who couldn't help the color-draining wince that flashed across his face as he wearily pulled himself up to sit himself back on the edge of the mattress, clutching his thigh that had obviously jarred badly in the whole sorry process, no words needed for a thoroughly mortified Wilson to see the damage he'd done.
'Oh- oh, God,' choked out Wilson hoarsely, lost for words and crawling forwards slightly before falling back again, so utterly ashamed that he just didn't know what to do with himself, the tears streaming down his face as tried to speak, tried to say anything, with no words able to make it past the sheer helplessness that had him floored, his hands as they instinctively reached out to House falling back again as he buckled under the panic.
He didn't even realize he was folding in on himself until he had done, scrabbling backwards into the pillows with his eyes squeezed shut and his face buried in his arms as he curled into the tightest ball possible, blocking out everything with his hands as they gripped the sides of his head, covering his ears to some vague, primal noise that he faintly registered, with a horrifying sense of realization, seemed to be coming from him.
He didn't need anyone to tell him he was going mad. He didn't need anyone to tell him that he was losing it, that he'd probably lost whatever 'it' was when that bastard had left him broken on his own condo floor. He didn't need anyone to tell him because he already knew.
Overwhelmingly, heartbreakingly, pathetically even… the crushing fact was, he already knew.
And it was killing him.
'Wilson, stop,' pleaded House as he gritted his teeth to crawl over the bed towards his wreck of a best friend, the burn in his thigh nothing compared to the pure torture that could only come in instances such as this, the pain of seeing Wilson so stripped of any sort of self-control, pain that couldn't simply be dimmed with the aid of Vicodin, crippling in its own right.
Wilson was inconsolable.
'I'm fine, Wilson. I'm fine. Listen to me, please Wilson! Look at me!'
His words were doing sweet fuck all to get through to Wilson, and House knew it. He didn't have a clue what the best thing to do here was, struck suddenly by the harrowing memory of that young girl he'd treated for Chlamydia a few years back in the clinic. She'd been the first patient that day to have actually contracted a sexually transmitted infection, expectedly breaking down in tears on the examination table when he'd informed her of this arbitrary fact and then promptly flipping when he'd stepped towards her with the prescribed meds, savagely smacking the pot from his hands to send them scattering across the room.
She was barely more than a child, scruffily dressed and with lank, unkempt dirty blonde hair that fell in greasy waves around her pale face.
But as she'd looked up to him, defensive upon his threatening invasion of her personal space and silently daring him to take one step closer, she'd had that look. That look of innocence tainted by something unspeakable, something that had forced her to grow up far quicker than anyone should have to, something that made her look positively feral.
A look that, frighteningly, House had just witnessed firsthand being mirrored in every feature of Wilson's face upon his awakening.
He hadn't needed to ask to know that she'd been raped. Fuck knows what she was like before it had happened, but House could vouch firsthand that she was more than fucked up as a result, seeing as she'd latched onto him and only him when it came to trusting someone enough to rein back some control over her life.
He'd turned to everyone that day, Cuddy, Wilson, Cameron, Foreman, Chase… they'd all offered him conflicting advice on how to handle her.
She's looking to connect with you, and that's what's scaring the hell out of you.
Those had been Wilson's insightful words of wisdom, uttered way back when rape was a tragic life event that his best friend's patient was having to deal with. Uttered way back when he was still a pitying observer of the aftermath of rape, limited, thankfully, to only imagining the horror from the somewhat distant Doctor side of the table.
Uttered way back when he didn't have firsthand experience of just how devastating rape fundamentally is, parked right in the middle of the most definitely patient side of the table.
And looking at Wilson now, crying, curled up, shaking and as far away from House as he could possibly be without falling messily from the bed, House had to wonder if Wilson back then had ever imagined that it would be him walking in the footprints of that patient in just a few years time.
Because it had certainly never crossed House's mind. Nor Cuddy's, he was sure.
House remembered the discussion he, Wilson and Cuddy had had once… Eve? Was that her name? Well, once she'd been discharged anyway, he could recall quite clearly what they'd talked about. He and Wilson playing Foosball, neither distacted by Cuddy walking in. Her saying that he'd done good, because he'd gotten Eve to tell him what had happened. Him muttering in reply that they'd got the girl to cry by dragging out her story, yes, but that didn't necessarily mean that he'd helped her, that he'd healed her.
Then why did you…?
That had been Wilson again. He'd suitably paid for that predictable moment of distraction when House had immediately taken advantage and scored before looking up to meet the questioning gaze of those curious brown eyes.
He'd told Wilson something then that he barely ever said, four words that made him feel totally inadequate, helpless even, whenever they crossed his lips.
Because I don't know.
And he was right – he didn't know. He may have helped her. Equally, he could have just made things ten times worse. Eve could be happy with someone right now… or she could have taken a shedload of something a whole lot worse than Benzodiazepines at the first opportunity and succeeded the second time in attempting to take the high road out of this crappy world. Either way, he'd never know.
He'd headed for the door then, but not before Wilson had asked if he was going to follow up with her.
And he'd taken a moment before replying, muttering four words that, that time, had drawn a line in how much he was obliged to care.
One day, one room.
In other words, Eve was gone. She was no longer his priority, as stipulated by her own philosophy:
I'm gonna base this moment on who I'm stuck in a room with. It's what life is. It's a series of rooms. And who we get stuck in those rooms with adds up to what our lives are.
But what about those people whose rooms you visited whenever you could, knocking on their doors to limp in, distract them from their note-taking and steal half of their sandwich before throwing yourself onto their office couch to harp on about the stupidity of the latest Diagnostics Department patient, usually under the cover of an Oncology consult?
What about those people who are there so constantly that you end up going for bloody breakfast together after the Valentine's night shift, who you end up taking in when they've broken up with their latest wife, who's the only person in the world whose voice you want to hear when your stuck in a mental institution, who you end up living with in a Condo that was bought, really, to cater to your needs, who you end up receiving a fake, public proposal of marriage from in a bid to stop you from sleeping with your hot neighbor?
What about those people whose rooms you wish you were in even when you're not?
What about Wilson?
Because the fact of the matter was, his and Wilson's rooms, through choice, weren't really all that separate.
And as a result, House didn't have a clue what he was meant to be doing here, relying on his gut instinct to do what felt right. Because Wilson wasn't simply a patient, he wasn't someone he was professionally obliged to act in the best interests of.
Wilson was the most important person in his life, the single person he'd let in, the single person who chose to be with him voluntarily and not because he worked for or with him.
He was the single person House actually gave a damn about.
It was just a pity it had taken something like this to make him realize that, Wilson's drink-fuelled, but no less harsh, words from last night still ringing in his ears.
So House said nothing, only moving to shuffle closer to Wilson on the double bed until he was right up next to him, doing his best to ignore the pain that throbbed in his protesting leg. He didn't miss the flinch that ran through Wilson's trembling body when he froze at House's touch, nor the sharp intake of breath in between muffled sobs as House carefully slid his arm around Wilson's tensed shoulders, where it took only the slightest of pressure to persuade the Oncologist to gratefully lean into him with a shuddered sigh, curling up tightly into his side as House wrapped his other arm around Wilson too, pulling him in closer still.
House had no idea how long they stayed like that for, focused on nothing but the lessening sobs that tore through Wilson's body as the tension slowly but surely drained away, Wilson's breathing balancing out again with the steady pattern that House's hand ghosting up and down his arm unintentionally provided, automatically reverting to the tried and tested method of breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth without any words needed from his friend.
It was a routine that both of them knew, with dreaded certainty, would play out again at numerous points in the future for a long, long time.
This was just the beginning of a journey that, at this point, where Wilson was just so hopelessly lost, seemed nothing short of unfathomable.