In Order to Breathe Again

Chapter 2

**Trigger Warning:** Self-directed pain, angst, sad reveal

"It didn't work."

There was a suddenness to the phrase that knew no bounds and knew no places of existing; not, not in this reality.

House felt if he'd had anything in his hands, it would have crumpled to the floor and shattered, breaking into a million pieces because his heart was breaking looking at his best friend in his hospital bed, clearly having a breakdown, palms thrust deep in his eye sockets as his cries got louder and more painful.

"What?" he managed to utter lowly, slowly, but Wilson didn't seem to hear him.

Wilson didn't seem to be here.

"Oh god," Wilson whined, voice hitching partway in his throat, and he gasped for air that didn't seem to come and he was just repeating over and over, mewling cries getting louder. "It didn't work, shit, why didn't it work?"

House stared at Wilson in such depths of shock and confusion he knew only vaguely that he wasn't even breathing. Not, not all the way, not in any way that really mattered.

"Oh god," Wilson removed his hands from his eyes, the skin there reddening from the friction and tears, and he just managed the smallest of glimpses at his friend before he was even aware that his hands were outstretched towards House as he proclaimed, "House, I-. Oh, Jesus, fuck. I-I—" his hands flapped in the air like he were a small bird just attempting to take flight.

Anguish broke anew over Wilson's face but there was something so dark about that pain in his eyes that he couldn't manage to hide all the way and this new flare of potential realization that was dredging up within House's soul that he felt, suddenly and incredibly, he was going to be sick if he looked at Wilson any longer.

Wilson grazed House's sleeve with his fingers, but House jerked away, as though he were stung.

A flash of immense loss entered Wilson's gaze.

House was bringing his numb hands into his lap and away from Wilson and it seemed to shift everything into focus: anger and fear and a mixture of some small amount of grace fought in Wilson's stare but House, House still couldn't seem to make much sense of it, if at all.

He just felt himself retreating inwards and dying internally as he saw it rip and shred through Wilson with levels of intensity so large, House could never have imagined the oncologist facing this. He'd thought he would never have to. He'd thought he never had to worry about Wilson in the way that Wilson worried about House. It was…unnerving, to say the least.

"House, please—"

And House wondered, for a moment, if Wilson thought this was House turning away from him, of House distancing himself, of House about to leave.

And he couldn't lie—he kinda wanted to leave. He wanted to sulk into his office and try to make sense of everything that had happened, everything that no longer made any lick of sense and didn't seem like it was going to any time soon. He wanted to yell at Wilson, cry at Wilson, choke Wilson if he had to, scream and lose control and shout and fall apart.

But he sensed, somehow, that he couldn't quite. Not yet. Not here. Not now. And that made something inside his chest crumple and if he hadn't been seated, he knew he would have fallen to the floor completely.

Because Wilson had said it hadn't worked.

Wilson had said it hadn't worked.

He whispered it so softly, he was sure Wilson's sobbing and exasperation was going to completely cover up his words, "Was it intentional?"

And he needed this confirmation. He needed it like air or like water. He had to receive it. Had to know it clearly, had to know what it was he was now facing. What it was he was now dealing with no matter how much he wanted to run away from it all. What did it mean?

He hoped his expression was passive enough, void enough of all feelings because it was becoming clearer to House now that Wilson wasn't capable of dealing with all of his own feelings plus all of House's, so he hoped his facial features didn't betray the brokenness within his chest as he stared at his best friend, still in shock, still stoic, still… cold.

It was so difficult to not feel or express or claw his way back towards Wilson.

But he had a job to do and a job to perform at and he knew what would come next from this new juncture, he just really, really wished he hadn't.

Wilson struggled to meet House's gaze, but when he did there was a chasm, an abyss of such deep pain swirling in those chocolate brown eyes and his bottom lip trembled and tears slid down his cheeks as he said in a mixture of calmness and elite dread, "Yes."

And House sucked in a long breath through his nostrils, and he scooted back in his chair, the squeals of the legs reverberating the formality residing in the hospital room.

Blue eyes refused to meet brown and it took all of House's might to not look his friend in the eyes as the stranger he'd now become. Even his hearing had grown distant as he made to leave his chair.

"House!" Wilson called out to him, reached for him, but House was somewhere else, somewhere else altogether.

He stood on shaking legs and ventured a step or three in the opposite direction, away from Wilson, until he landed within a foot's distance from the door of Wilson's hospital room where he remained frozen.

It was almost like the slower he moved, the less things felt so confusing and the more time he bought himself to have a different answer, reach a different conclusion, live in the lie that he'd known Wilson better than himself—as if such denial of the truth meant he could escape reality for a little while longer.

"Greg."

And Wilson never called him Greg. And that made something in him stir, pause, re-evaluate. Bought him time.

"Please, Greg, please. You have to underst—"

He didn't realize how dismal it sounded, how grim, how sad, but he said it anyways, "I'll page psych."

"Please, House," Wilson's voice cracked, fractured in thirty pieces. He was sitting up in his hospital bed (if House were looking at him, he'd see it too, if House were to spare a glance in his very direction instead of having his back to him, white knuckling his cane, stripped bare of his personality and falling into a deep shadow of himself, a shadow Wilson truly felt he'd become lately, too) then he would see how much Wilson was craving for House to turn around and admonish him for how stupid he was being, how cruel and uncharacteristic it was of Wilson to be in this predicament. But, instead, his friend didn't turn around, and his friend didn't say anything, and his friend just wasn't there, emotionally, and god, he'd just wanted some release for once in his life—why was that always so hard to receive in his entire existence?

"Greg," he hated saying it as he said it, but he felt he had to say it anyways, "I-I swear, I'll kill myself if you leave."

House shifted to him sideways, and their eyes met once more.

A moment, or thirty, passed between them.

Tears welled up in Wilson's eyes. There was a heaviness and a pleading in his sight that House felt was becoming increasingly unfamiliar. He wanted to whisper James's name, to have something more beneficial to say, but he just couldn't even bear to be in the same room as someone he no longer recognized, and that hurt, it cut deeply into him and he just couldn't—if, if he said the wrong thing, which was likely to happen, he might lose Wilson forever and that could genuinely and actually come into existence as a very real and stark and deadly outcome. So, it was just better if he left. It was better if he just walked away from his only friend and left him to sort out his own shit, because House had his own crap to deal with too, he didn't really need to add Wilson's to all of it.

His resolve cracked a little when he noticed Wilson glancing around in a panic, his movements slow and time staking. A hollow distance accompanied House's understanding as he realized Wilson was searching for any next thing he could use to hurt himself. And that made House very sad. So, when their eyes locked again and there was that need there that House knew he'd never be able to fill, not, not in this moment, House chose instead to swallow thickly and limp step back over to Wilson's bedside.

Wilson was shaking, trembling, crying, breaking. And House could barely do a thing about it. He vaguely heard James saying, "I'll, I'll do it, I swear. I'll kill myself."

Greg propped his cane to the side and placed one of his hands over Wilson's left wrist. With the other, he pressed the call button for the nurse's station. Next, he placed his other hand over Wilson's right wrist and held his friend like that, saying over his bowed head, "You already did, Wilson. That already happened." In a smaller voice, more somber, "And like hell I'll let you do that twice." He skipped a beat. "You need help, Wilson. Clearly, more than me at the moment, which says a lot. For now, being restrained is the next step."

For what it was worth, James didn't really fight him on it. Instead, he sagged to the side, tears still leaking from his eyes, his head resting on House's form.

"I'm sorry," he croaked out between sobs.

House nodded minutely, "I know."

A/N: Well, hello there! Welcome back to another installment of this story. What did we think about the plot twist reveal? It was sooo hard to write the content warning for this chapter because I wanted it to be officially more revealed later in the text rather than right at the start but I also don't want to fool anyone that this story touches on dark subject matters, soooo, it was a balancing act.

Originally, when I started this story I actually wasn't thinking it would be a suicide attempt at all, but then the idea of the twist came to me and I knew it was too tempting and too sad not to dabble with.

Anyways, no idea when the next updates will happen but these are the stories I have in progress at the moment: ALU, CeC, DWYPLH, NT.

In a perfect world, I would have added more to this chapter than what I did but I'm trying to challenge my perfectionism and I'm also too eager to see what people think of this instead of just waiting and waiting for something that may not come in a timely fashion, at least. Writing this chapter was a nice release of my emotions too. I hope you enjoy this and feel free to leave ideas or requests in the comments!

Thanks so much for reading and I hope you have a good rest of your day. Be safe out there, friends.

Written: 2.4.2023, 2.7, 2.8.23

Edited: 2.7, 2.8.2023