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"How do you do it House?"
He'd been standing in the doorway for a couple of minutes, he knew that because he'd spent the night ensconced on the couch listening to Wilson toss and turn, his dreams plagued by whatever phantom images that day had dredged from his traumatised mind until he'd woken with a start, his breathing laboured and easily heard from where House sat in the darkened lounge.
He looked up; turning his head slowly and raising his gaze to take in the mussed hair and clothes in disarray. He was mildly surprised that Wilson had even had the energy to change before collapsing into bed, his entire countenance had radiated lethargy when they had finally been given leave to go home, the cameras and news crews clogging up the parking lot behind the row of police tape and uniformed officers, their faces becoming illustrations for the evening news and late run prints of the evening press.
Wilson had showered, but House preferred the long slow soak of the tub, emptying the water four times before it finally stayed clear, the smoke and blood washed from his hands and face with methodical deliberate movements that served to distract him as he tried to turn his thoughts away from what he had witnessed.
It was like some bizarre Freudian dream, a waking hallucination.
The entire corridor was deserted.
Not just empty, but silent.
He could hear himself breathe, less steady and more wary of the way his chest ached and itched from the inside. The smoke was thin in the air out here, lending a misty and greying quality, a stagnant dreamlike haze that captured and refracted the thin light that eked in through open doors. His hands were stiff and frozen where they'd curled around Wilson's arms, the man's forehead pressed firmly to the centre of his chest as he shook and trembled, the last vestiges of paralysing fear that had nearly crippled him at the crucial moment where House had had to damn near drag him from the lift doorway, his leg protesting from his own awkward jump and his eyes refusing to look anywhere other than Wilson's blank face. He certainly wasn't going to be looking down again anytime soon, into the black void of the lift shaft with its fire tinged recess, and he certainly wasn't going to admit to his own sudden fear of being sliced in half by a falling lift. Damn you Hollywood.
He stood that way for what felt like an hour, ignoring the pain in his leg, fighting the itch in his hands that made him want to thread his fingers through the hair that ruffled with every unsteady breath that shook his smoke damaged lungs, calming the insistent urge to offer uncharacteristic platitudes of comfort. He'd spent years fighting it, what was another five minutes.
There was no alarm. This was what struck him as odd.
It should have been screaming off the walls by now with the amount of smoke that was pouring up and into the corridor, pooling and crawling along the ceiling in expanding dark waves.
He pushed Wilson back and motioned towards the staircase with his head. He let the wavering stare that heated his face as it ran over him wash through him with the residual lingering relief of being out of immediate danger. Never mind that they were about to meet the after effects head on.
The stairwell was dark, lit only by the emergency lighting that dimly infused the hazy darkened air. House winced, how long had it been since he'd taken the stairs? His movement was awkward, each step its own particular challenge as he tried to remember to physics of simply walking down the stairs, his hand holding on to the banister for dear life.
Each step down brought warmer air into their faces, like a sickly midsummer wind in some stagnant third world hell hole finding its insidious way into every fold of their clothes, saturating them with its fetid stink.
The door was hanging from its hinges at the bottom, blackened and charred and edged with licking flames so that they had to cross the threshold sideways, just in time to get a thorough drenching from a fire hose.
House spluttered, breath held in surprise at the sudden blast of freezing water drenching through his clothes, dripping from his hair, droplets clinging to his eyelashes so his had to blink and wipe his face before he could look up and focus.
Wilson swore lowly beside him, his own hand hovering from where it had wiped at his face, eyes unflinching and opened wide at the utter carnage that spread out before them.
He'd sat up watching the news. Frenzied reports of a city under siege, a well planned and co-ordinated attack, defiantly clever in its motives.
They had taken out the most publicly accessible places first, a chain of explosions that had rocked malls, colleges, tourist attractions, places impossible to screen with any sort of high level security due to the constant ebb and flow of people that swarmed and congregated such areas. And then afterwards, in the ensuing panic, they had taken out the means with which to help. Fire stations, local precincts and hospitals.
Thirty two locations in all. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people injured or dead. And no word yet on who was responsible.
House turned his darkened gaze back to the television where some young blonde reporter was yelling into the mike, her hair whipping in the rain that had started to pour, its effect present and hammering on the window lending credence to the images on the screen.
Absolute chaos. The noise hit them like walking into a wall of sound.
"How do you just switch off?" Wilson accused, hands on his hips as he moved into House's peripheral vision.
He twirled his cane, fingers familiar with the warmth within the wood.
"Switching off would mean I could sleep." He muttered lightly, he didn't know why he said it, maybe to stave off Wilson's eventual tirade that he'd heard a thousand times before, spitefully bringing up that the other man had just awoken from a sleep that he'd had no problem falling into.
Not that Wilson had really slept, he couldn't call the restless twitching limbs and the pained frown that lined his face any sort of semblance of peace. But he could still remind him of it, could pretend that it had nothing to do with having a head injury, that it was his choice. But it would also mean admitting that he had watched him sleep, had stood in the doorway and measured every breath he'd taken.
Slow motion.
Stepping over a chunk of the reception desk, his cane slipping in a puddle of something oozing out from beneath the wooden panel.
Blood on Chase's face, in Cameron's hair. Looking up at him with wild eyes.
"You haven't said anything since we came home." Wilson pointed out.
House wanted to ask why that mattered, it wasn't as though Wilson had been in any fit state to hold a coherent conversation. What would he say anyway?
He'd only been allowed to leave because they were both fit to drop, relentless hours of blood and gore passing before his eyes until he couldn't remember a single face of one of the victims before him, like meat on a butcher's block, as soon as he was done with one he was handed another.
Waves of them, ambulances pulled up around back, their lights flashing and throwing coloured shadows against the wall where the crowds blocked their light.
They were operating in the parking lot.
House sighed and tossed his cane onto the other sofa. He used the arm of the couch to drag himself up and limped towards the kitchen, eyes on the coffee that hadn't quite boiled dry.
"I told Cuddy I'd go back as soon as you were up." He said, reaching for a mug and pouring the remains of the triple strength concoction he'd created earlier on that night.
He was being obtuse and he knew it, he'd refused to speak to Wilson in the car on the way home, despite it having taken them over an hour just to get out of the parking lot.
Another pair of gloves peeled off and discarded in the corner, health and safety be damned, they'd done away with it hours ago, some having given up on the gloves entirely as they hung coloured tags around necks, green meant they could stand to be seen last, orange was for those who'd live, red for those who had a few hours.
Those red tags piled up throughout the day, stacked on the counter when they were no longer needed, swapped for black and shipped downstairs.
"Fine." Wilson sighed. "I'll get dressed."
House downed the rest of his coffee, lips smacking against the taste, it tasted acrid. Reminded him of smoke. "You're to stay here." He dropped the mug into the sink.
"What?" cue Wilson's patented look of confusion.
"Cuddy's orders." He bit back. "You got yourself a head injury there. I just had to stay long enough to make sure you didn't die in your sleep." He limped his way back to the sofa, throwing himself down and reaching for his sneakers.
"I'm going with you." Wilson argued.
"You lost consciousness." He reminded him, gut clenched. "Got some bad boy stitches and a scar to show to the ladies." He tugged on his sneaker.
He'd found him in one of the corridors by chance, struggling to walk against the tide of chaotic milling, nurses scrambling and orders being barked. And there he was, perched on the edge of a bed that he was sharing with a soot coloured man, a nurse holding a compress to the back of his head and Cuddy standing with a stern fix to her body.
He'd passed out, keeled over backwards and only just saved from another blow to the head by Cameron who had happened to be standing next to him.
Cuddy gave the order to take him home, they didn't have a bed to spare, a superficial excuse that he needed to be watched over that was clearly code for 'you look like shit and you need to rest'.
He'd gotten Cameron to do the stitches. His hands shook too much.
"I'm fine."
"No you're not." House countered. He'd seen the look in Wilson's eyes. He really did care too much, couldn't turn that switch in his brain that stopped him from becoming so emotionally involved.
"I'm coming with you." Wilson shook his head, scrubbing at his face which looked even more tired than when he'd stumbled through the living room door.
"You're dead on your feet." House argued.
"And you're not?" arm's spread wide. "How long have you been up?"
He'd lost count. It had been the twenty four hour mark when they'd actually left the hospital, faces downturned and trying to ignore the fact that people were still coming in, news that the other hospital had been so damaged that they'd had to shut their doors, everything was coming in to them, people were still being dragged out from the impact zones.
"You're not going Wilson. You're supposed to be resting." He didn't really have the strength to argue, but if he showed up with Wilson staggering around Cuddy would have his ass. "Besides, I don't think your delicate sensibilities could handle it." He grabbed his cane from the other chair, letting his weight fall on it for one blissful moment of reprieve.
Wilson looked at him sternly. "I feel fine, I don't even have a headache. I didn't faint, i didn't get the vapours. I just want to help and do my job."
"And the deer in the headlights look when i found you?" He looked around for his jacket.
"So what now? I can't take a moment to collect myself?" He exclaimed.
"Just stay home." House muttered. "No-one needs a doctor that looks more terrified than they are."
He might as well have slapped him for the same looked he'd have on his face. Wilson spluttered, his eyes hardening. "Are you serious?" he straightened, hands on hips. "We can't all be like you House." He pointed towards the TV where a visceral multicoloured montage of video and picture was playing, tears and blood and horror. "We can't all ignore our basic instincts." He looked momentarily triumphant as a the screen was filled with an image of Chase, his scrubs stained and hands cracking with dried blood as he rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, his eyes red. "You can say what you want House, but you can't tell me you don't feel anything, that you weren't scared." He looked at him with something akin to pity before he turned away.
Something snapped in House, his blood suddenly on fire and rushing in his ears. "Scared!" Wilson stopped on his way back to his room. "I was fucking terrified."
Wilson turned, brows knotted in a frown at his sudden outburst.
'Stop' his own mind was shouting at him.
"Not for that." He pointed at the television. "Not for those hapless idiots. For you." He shifted his grip on the cane, his knuckles white.
Wilson seemed frozen, bewildered stare fixed on his face.
"I can't let you go back into that when I'm the one who'll have to clean up the mess later." He looked away from the impact his words left on Wilson's face. "I want you here, I want you safe." The words reverberated around the room until the echo was replaced by the low pitch of the news channel.
"House?" There was an odd timbre to Wilson's voice.
"They were an accident. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time." He sighed heavily. "We weren't. We were targeted. You think I'm going to let you walk back into that kind of risk." The presenter perfectly illustrated his point as she reiterated the threat of following attacks after a credible tip off had been phoned in. "Stay here." It almost sounded like he was asking.
He really wished Wilson wouldn't look at him like that, the tilt of his head and that wonderful open look on his face as he assessed him. He'd said too much.
He'd taken his lab coat from him, sliding it off his shoulders and down his arms, the thing was a mess. He was half tempted just to throw it in the bin nearby and be done with it, but he knew how pissy Wilson could get about these things, so instead he folded it, pausing for a moment as he reached for the handle of the back seat. Blood and soot had combined to obscure part of his name, the needlework embellishment cut down to just his first name.
James.
The sight of it struck him in the chest. Made his heart pause.
How long had they hid behind the impersonal names, when had he become so afraid of all boundaries.
He looked at the passenger seat where Wilson sat with his hand covering his face, shielding himself from the glare of the news crews' lights. He looked so tired, so vulnerable.
House felt the name press against his teeth, perched on the edge of his tongue. If he could say it then he would know, he knew that with the one utterance of that never used word he could convey without having to explain just why it was he couldn't let him walk out of the door.
To say it would be to admit he cared.
To say it would be to fall.
He bit his tongue and turned, making sure the door slammed behind him as he left.