One More Beat

Chapter 1

*Trigger Warning*: Gun violence


It started off like any other Tuesday.

In fact, it was so normal that neither man nor living participant in this grand thing called life at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital would have thought anything of it.

Ordinary. Boring. Run of the mill Tuesday.

Who knew so much terror could be in its wake of what was yet to come?

Certainly neither Dr. Gregory House nor Dr. James Wilson.

And so, the white yellow rays of sunlight came through the red and orange leaves of autumn, licking up the sidewalk as House step-thumped his way into the hospital of which he's always worked.

His night had been unpleasant, to say the least.

He had taped one of his soap operas, looking forward to finding it out whether Marlene had found out about Professor Morgen, but when he'd finally sat down with some food Wilson had naturally left behind (for himself, not House), House had been let down by the TiVo not having recorded his soap in the first place.

Further irritation came when he couldn't fall asleep right away due to the pain in his leg and after one too many Vicodin, he'd finally managed to drift off at 2am, only to be awakened by a call from his team of idiots twenty minutes later.

So far, this day wasn't looking great for Greg as he'd stubbed his toe after groggily awakening again at 9am; he'd discovered his check engine light was on; he had a raging headache and today was his day to make up a month's worth of clinic duty.

To say this Tuesday sucked was an understatement of mass proportions.

How the hell did anybody expect him to work, let alone work well, under all these conflicting and stressful condemnations?

And so, he had whined, naturally to Cuddy, when the fifth of his clinic patients stormed off with such a huff that the Dean of Medicine had only to raise one perky eyebrow in challenge and escort Dr. Gregory House to her office, why she would be seeing an influx of patient complaints in her office inbox by eleven.

"And so, you'll completely understand why today I am in no shape but to skirt these clinic hour duties in favor of lessening the mail in your inbox and carrying on with my day as per course." He flashed Lisa a cheeky grin, blue eyes falling down her exceptional cleavage today.

"Are you done?" she asked in a clipped tone, denying herself to heave the sigh she wanted to unleash.

"No," House stated in defiance. He skipped a beat. Re-evaluated. "Yes."

"Okay then," came Cuddy's reply as she rearranged some papers on her desk. "Get back to work."

"My case hasn't—"

"I meant your clinic duty." She implored further.

House opened his jaw in put on surprise.

"You can't be serious." He defended but Cuddy slicked right in with, "Oh, I can be very serious. You're not the only doctor with a sob story in this hospital." She frowned, blinked, and readjusted her tone. "Look, your clinic hours are no less important than anyone else's. If I gave everyone the number of chances to screw me over like you so consistently have, I wouldn't have a hospital to run. So, instead of whining to me about how you can't behave like a decent human being or like a professional doctor with many years of schooling behind him, then I guess I'll have to look elsewhere for another brilliant and sustainable diagnostician."

She waved her hands to her office doors.

"Now out. I have a meeting in three."

House stared back at her with such a blank expression, she wasn't sure his soul was still in there or if he had even heard her through his skull. When she was about to say something else, the nudge she had internally to cave, he blinked, sighed and spun around, shouting back over his shoulder, "Doesn't mean I have to like it!"

One battle had been won.

She'd try for the other six by noon.


A floor up from the front entrance of the hospital, rested an equally as tired James Wilson on the long side of his black office couch. He, too, was nestling a headache the size of the sun. He wasn't exactly sure what began it but the intense perfume of one of his patients certainly hadn't helped it.

It's like she doused herself in it with thirty baths, James thought, groaning quietly and rubbing at his forehead. He'd take something for it if he weren't so stubborn and believing he didn't need it. He sighed and adjusted his position. If he could just calm the waves of pain long enough to do his job, he could entertain the thought of going home early, sleeping off the worst of it and trying again tomorrow.

New day, new experiences.

It was worth a shot.

The only thing that might get in his way would be an insistent House trying to annoy him further and incidentally inciting more of Wilson's agony if not just for the headache but for reasons the oncologist was too sick to think up clearly for the time being.

He couldn't help the quirk of a smile that upturned his lips though. House was a giant pain in the ass, but Wilson loved him for it. Beyond it. Things had never been easy for them, and Wilson didn't always want to fix House, just encourage him to be better, and the last year with Tritter hadn't been kind to their relationship but Wilson still cared deeply for House and would probably do anything for him.

He wasn't always sure if House knew that or realized the depth of Wilson's care. His smile faded into a frown; House knew, right? Knew how much he cared?

It wasn't exactly something their bro code allowed for them to say out loud or in many words. And the sting of that wasn't lost on Wilson, but what could he do? Short of professing love and care to House with a bottle of Vicodin and a boom box outside of his apartment… Wilson wasn't even sure he meant quite as much to House.

House had an odd way of showing love. He'd mock and belittle more than he'd give someone a hug.

And it wasn't that Wilson wanted or expected a giant cuddle party, but sometimes, just knowing for sure, would help the nights he'd be worried sick about Greg and whatever new self-destructive path he was considering taking himself on.

Wilson didn't totally understand it, or more likely, he lied to himself and said he didn't understand House's innate ability to drag himself to hell, back and over again into an even deeper chasm but, well, Wilson wasn't much to talk for the several failed romantic relationships in his life.

Truly, Wilson was probably just as messed up as House.

It's probably why they got along so well and that their relationship has persevered through all things.

Their fuckedupness evened each other out.

Wilson took one long, deep breath, then powered himself upright and with the world slightly off kilter, he rummaged his body back behind his desk. He'd decided, his pain had won, and he'd be going home early. House would, no doubt, have a field day and come up with some excuse to Cuddy as to why he had to leave, too, and "take care of Wilson" and Wilson would have to pretend not to be tickled pink by it.

For how brilliant the diagnostician was, he could also be incredibly oblivious. But Wilson, as he does, shut down that train of thought, swallowed it, sighed, and returned to work. Because that's what he knew how to do best. The more he ignored it, the happier he'd be. If House was destined to be alone, so would Wilson. At least in that pursuit, they wouldn't be alone and would keep each other company.

He glanced at his clock: 10:52am.

He'd give himself 'til one before he squirmed his way out the door.

For now, some last bits of work are in order. He dived back in because not only did his patients and his schedule needed him to, but he did as well.


Cole Burger was a young, scraggly looking twenty-five year old man just trying to get by in life. He'd never been taken too seriously in his life, a deadbeat father who disappeared when he was eight and a mother too intent on her next Oxy fix to bother taking care of him. He'd had his older brother Kyle until Kyle couldn't be there anymore and had moved state, joined some dumb fuck church group, and started a life for himself that never involved Cole.

Cole managed his way through school for as long as he could but dropped out after flunking his way through the end of tenth grade. He'd been living on the streets and renting rooms in cheap motels whenever he could, but he barely made enough money to help with that front for the last ten years.

So, when he'd seen an opportunity for himself to become something more, within the last year, he was well on his way to taking it. Destined, to be exact. Cole had never really had anybody, but when he'd found out about a group online that shared in the message he'd been given, the times he was able to get his hands on a computer or make it up to a street friend to be there for them or a pity trip some nice, sexy, freshly eighteen year old chick felt comfortable with him borrowing her phone, he'd get involved and read up where he could.

He hadn't taken much convincing. Society had fucked him over and it was time now that they paid.

It didn't really matter where he took things. A school, a church, a city-wide parade, some bullshit pride festival—it didn't matter. Society had to pay for his lack of a life. His lack of a future got tainted too soon, too early, forever changing him, forever leading up to this moment.

But it was time to take back his promise. Take ownership of his anger. And in his freezing cold state, with calculating green eyes housed under dark black, brooding, and disheveled hair, a stony frown set deep in his face, he'd rolled up to the hospital.

The day was his for the taking. Finally. After all these years.

And he'd make someone proud. Even if he didn't know who. He'd give his life for the mission. His name, Cole Burger, would live on in infamy.

He cocked his pistol, slipping the extra magazines into his hefty jacket pocket. He was wearing a lot of layers because pockets were a gunman's favorite thing.

He smirked, looking at the hospital sign: Princeton Plainsboro whatever dumb shit. He was ready.

There would be bloodshed today.

For no other reason than because he could.

Because he could, and he wanted to, and it'd give him a blissful state of peace. Peace in chaos. Death in life. A full circle. As all things should be.


Time.

How much one individual could get so hung up on time.

Time to fear, time to learn, time to be, time to grow. Time… to lose.

Time.

We're only ever given so much of it.

As the stocky young man trailed fingers down the sides of the walls he passed, he thought about this. Considered it.

He'd been ever so careful thus far. He'd shown no signs of weakness, no sense of the brutality he was about to unfurl to the world, just because he wanted to. Simple as that. Society had to pay for fucking him up so irreparably and it was now his time to make something else unrepairable. This power, this … joy, it was something he hadn't felt in months. Ever since he had uncovered his true purpose, it made the world around him spin in a way that it never had before. It made his eyes glitter, a spark in them for the first time ever.

Some people found love. Some people found fulfilling jobs. Some people wanted that and more.

Cole… Cole maybe was never going to be one of those people. Not in the way, especially now, how his life played out. But Cole could be that now, for the time being: powerful, mighty, the precipice he dangled on between life and death, that he would be the ultimate Time Wielder, the ultimate man in charge.

And it felt good.

It felt really good. Writing about it would never have sufficed, not for long enough. He was on a high that only murder could breed. Only murder of the most innocent, the most unjust population, the most… sick population could ever suffice.

He smiled to himself, and he chuckled.

If only they knew the danger they were in. He glanced around the first floor; he'd already been tempting fate by walking along the ER and the clinic, with no real reason from an outsider's point of view.

He smirked. Maybe this is what freedom felt like. Maybe this is why people could laugh and laugh heartily.

Time. A precious thing. What a time to be alive; what a time to die in.

He glanced at the nearest clock, 11:47am.

Soon.

He laughed again.

Very soon.


"You're missing something!" House was shouting now, his anger unlocking another third degree burn he'd forgotten he could produce by sheer words alone.

His team, the idiots, had hit another roadblock in their shitty diagnostic skills having diagnosed Whipple's (for what reason they had thought that was a good idea was beyond House at the moment) and now their patient of the week was vomiting blood, with no way for them to be sure if it were a new symptom or a side effect of something they had actually done.

House sighed, rubbing his forehead. "Do any of you have any actual news for me?" He was mildly impressed when he looked to them and Camera was gawking, Foreman was rolling his eyes and Chase looked perplexed.

"What?" He didn't mean for it to come out so biting but he also decided he didn't give a shit in that moment, either. "Are you people even doctors?" He cried out, slapping a hand to the whiteboard so much so that it shook and threatened to topple over. "Do none of you have a sense of urgency?" He clasped fingers to the bridge of his nose. "If you're all going to stare at my dazzling figure in silence, I'm better off without you and this patient will die while you idiots sit back and wonder why."

"House, but—" Cameron began, and Chase shot her a look of disapproval that she noticed and decided to heed (the sex must be glorious between them if only one look could shake her decision-making). Greg would have to talk crap about her to Wilson to get a bet going on how long their relationship was bound to last. The smallest of smiles satisfied House's anger when a sudden noise echoed in the room like a small, contained siren.

Their pagers were all going off in unison.

House even felt the vibration of his own in his jeans pocket that he thought, for the briefest of moments, was rather strange. Normally if it was just their patient, the ducklings' pagers would go off and not House's, so something seemed a smidge ominous. House mentally shook his head, because he must have been losing it, connecting dots where they didn't exist.

"Think our patient's dead?" he inquired, and Foreman was the first one to pucker his lips, brows drawing together deeply like a cavern in the Grand Canyon as he opened his mouth to say something—his gaze still on his pager—when a commotion sprang into life out in the hallway.

There were sudden screams and running feet. People started to dive for cover that wasn't there, and some unknown woman was screaming her head off.

Within the next moment, there was a security guard and he seemed to be yelling in one specific direction, his weapon out and—pop!

But not just one.

Two pops.

Three.

And he was falling back, a stain of red spreading across his shirt.

Another pop and a bullet went into his leg and if House hadn't known it for sure, he'd have been easily convinced he was a young boy again in his father's ice bath punishments, but, no, he wasn't. He was an adult male who had been shot before, he'd fought for his bloody carpet back (literally) and he found himself now frozen in the spot where he stood, craving to just get this next bullet hole over with because suspense and tension were quite the bitch.

He'd do anything for it to all be over with already.

He couldn't tell which footfalls were the gunman's or which were the vacating hallway of people and he would have believed he wasn't even breathing or the cane wasn't falling from his hand when, somehow, maybe it was his Spidey senses, but he thought he heard a voice that he recognized, a voice he knew well and the sky dive into panic, dread and rage was so unique, he could have written three hundred essays on the matter all by himself.

"What's going—?"

The leading voice was asking, and House knew, though he hated it, the tears were pinpricking his eyes as he realized just where the hubbub was located now and why it sounded so clear. He held his breath, he was sure of it, but if he tried to move or tried to do anything, he was sure his friend would be in no better position than if House continued acting like a coward hiding in his own office.

His ducklings may have been in the room still, and they may have been speaking, but he didn't hear any of it. He couldn't. All his attention was on that voice of an oncologist he called a friend in his office with the gunman.

With the gunman.

It was a nauseating premise.

"…it's okay."

House wasn't sure which part he'd managed to miss but the small whimper he let loose hearing Wilson's voice reassure a gunman wasn't exactly something he'd ever thought he'd live to see (or hear, as it were).

"Shut up!"

A foreign voice. House couldn't place it.

"You don't want to do this."

Wilson! Shut the fuck up, House thought, pleading in his mind.

This person was not one to be a conscience of.

They clearly lacked one to shoot up a hospital.

"Oh? Don't I?" the voice responded. "Do what? Do this?"

A shot pierced the air.

House gasped.

The disembodied voice, cold and chill, stated easily, "Pretty sure I want to do this."

The pause was brief.

"Why?"

"Because it's my destiny." A laugh. "And it's fun. It makes me happy. Don't you want to be happy?"

Don't answer that, House thought, and he willed for the Universe to hear him once and spare his best friend and he thought, for a second, it'd be a wish granted from a wishing well until he heard another pop. A pained cry. A small crash of furniture disturbed. A body collapsing.

"Damn, I'm almost out. Well, C'est la vie."

A pop.

House waited half a second, then two, until he was striding so fast out of his office, across their shared balcony, and straight into Wilson's office before he could ever even hear his team say anything about his decisions or try to scold him out of it.

"Wilson!" He couldn't be sure whether he flung the door open in a rush or if he'd stood there a moment and took stock of the situation, but, noticing himself now, he forced himself to slow down, take a breath he wasn't sure how he was taking and move forwards with calculated caution.

"Wilson!"

Blue eyes found their friend, but his heart clenched at the sight that registered of him and his office.

House recognized a bullet hole in Wilson's desk. Not the greatest, of course, but it could be replaced.

Wilson himself was strewn about before his black couch, lying between it and the balcony door. House forced his eyes to scan the room further, falling upon the gunman who was bleeding from his head, a dark stain spreading in the carpet and the gun lying half a foot away from his hand.

House instinctively kicked it further away, dragged his two fingers to find a pulse (which there was one) and quickly patted down the gunman where he found another gun, that he unloaded, and kicked it across the opposite side of the room before turning on his heel to attend to the only person in the room he really gave a crap about.

"Wilson?" House was starting to feel hopeful, despite the situation and probably getting ahead of himself, as he hastily knelt beside his friend.

The lack of a response absolutely rang with foreboding and gutted House.

There was a silence that filled the room, so deafening, even though House could barely register it over the panicked panting of his own breaths. His hands shook as they landed on the solid shoulder of Wilson's. His friend was still warm, a notion he never could have imagined feeling so much comfort by.

He didn't know why he was asking Wilson's name out into the ether so many times, but he found the name slipping through his lips easily as he carefully, maybe even moronically, shifted his friend over to his back.

He gasped in more fear than he thought himself capable of, registering the rush of air leaving his body as his worst fears were materialized in front of his eyes.

Wilson had been shot.

It felt like some fever dream, a nightmare of all sorts, and he would have allowed himself to believe it and believe in that lie if Wilson wasn't the one bleeding on his office carpet, a red stain growing across his chest. It seemed absurd the more House thought about it, and it was like his thoughts running through his head were slowed and caustic, acidic and unhelpful to many degrees, to many lengths. But through action, in reality, he was immediately placing hands onto his best friend's shirt, attempting to staunch the bleeding to not make a dire situation even worse.

His fingers slipped through the hole that the bullet had launched its way through into his friend that meant the world to him in more ways than one. House felt the nausea and disgust roll around in his stomach the more he swallowed each time and the tears that came to his eyes at the cruelty that could prevail so frequently in this life.

Wilson didn't deserve this. There was nothing Wilson could ever do, in House's eyes, to deserve being shot.

Yeah, maybe his interactions with a gunman weren't exactly the best, but did he deserve to be shot over his own self-righteous, seeing the best in everyone, kind of heroic nature? No. Not at all.

Wilson could be an idiot and an immense pain in House's ass, but it never really occurred to House, until this moment, that House could lose the oncologist. He bit his lip hard, and reprimanded himself that he wasn't going to lose Wilson over this to a crazed gunman on a power trip of delusion and insanity. Wilson was stronger than that, and House needed him (he wondered to himself which of those came first, but he could analyze that thought process later, in safer circumstances), and he wouldn't let Wilson go—

The quick swallow he had when it dawned on him that this situation had officially gone from worse to fucked was this crystallized instance of clarity so stark and blinding, he almost willed for it not to be the case at all. His blue-eyed gaze studied his best friend's face, the ever-paling complexion of his cheeks with eyes closed and heavy breathing passing through his open lips.

Wilson had been shot. But not only had Wilson been shot—worse, if House's fingers plugging the hole meant anything to go by with the red organ beating in Wilson's chest, his best friend, it turns out, had won the lucky lottery of being shot through the heart. House was sure his own face had paled by three degrees as he stated with dread, "Fuck."


A/N: Hi there! I know, I know, I probably shouldn't be starting new stories buuuuuut I wrote this one day from a dream I had TWICE in one day (thank goodness too, because I would never have remembered it later) back in spring 2023 and it is finally, finalllllly with a first chapter completion that is going up online a whole 6 months later hahaha I didn't write throughout all those 6 months but I'm glad that it is up and done with for now, until the next Muse strikes and I can continue it even further forwards.

I was originally going to have Cole die from his injuries, until it occurred to me the increased angst I could have with House and Wilson if I kept him alive (he won't be living in the same cognitive capacity, at least) so that's been my adjusted plan for this story! No idea the length of what this story will be—I want to explore all the details of Wilson's surgery, recovery and coming to find peace and maybe some House-related love in his future. It's going to be nasty and rough, and I was inspired and influenced to some degree by the fanfic "Aftershocks" by black_cigarette (a total must read, by the way! I still have to finish it myself and it's been ages but there are many parts I go back to and reread often enough. So much love to that user!)

Any who, I still have to think up a summary to this story that I haven't even conceived at any other point in time haha. I'm hoping that both FFN will keep my fancy page breaks (grrrr: spoiler, it didn't, sigh) and actually load my views for stories and tracking stuff soon, because it's been a month of statistical blindness and that's a major pain in the ass.

No promises on when I'll be able to update this story. I can say it will be imperfect. Because waiting for perfect means it takes me 6 months before I release a story or chapter and really, who has the time for that? Certainly not you readers and really not myself anymore either.

I shall raise a toast to you for reading this through! More updates and more writings to come in the future. Happy spooky season!

Background music: "Crash" by Sum 41, "Darkness" by Eminem and "I Love Me" by Demi Lovato

Written: 4.23.2023, 6.22, 6.24, 6.25, 7.17 and 10.23.23

Typed: 4.23.23, 6.22, 6.24, 7.18.23

Edited: 6.22.23, 6.24, 7.17, 10.12, 10.23.2023