Chapter 65 — Past and Future Ruins

A/N: Thank you to BrySt1, Musikrulesok, HopeForDuende, QuirkyKim, HeatherSS1, Visitkarte, SoleFaith, Robin, Meme, and wsmith for their reviews on the last chapter!

I dragged my feet through the door to the apartment at a quarter to midnight, every bone in my body exhausted. I'd gotten up early to study, gone to classes from 8am to 4pm, as Wednesday was my long day, had an hour break to eat dinner and change, then went and worked 5pm to 11pm at Ryan's. I'd been subsisting on coffee and breakfast bars, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd snatched more than four hours of sleep.

I was surprised to find the apartment absent House, but Wilson sat on the couch, watching a telenovella and looking half asleep.

"Uh...hi?" I greeted dimly, stripping off my stethoscope and hanging it on the coat rack next to my warm-up jacket. "Everything okay?"

Wilson ran a hand over his face. "Yes?"

"I like the confidence." I practically collapsed on the couch next to him, still in my scrubs. "Good to see you, by the way. I was starting to forget what you looked like." Between Zach and still trying to spend some amount of time keeping an eye on House, I'd seen Wilson far less than I had before. I'd missed his presence. Wilson was a foil to the constant crude and caustic nature of day-to-day life with House, a relief when the threads of my sanity started to fray.

"That comes with the territory. Be grateful you ended up not going to med school, you'd forget what everybody looked like. You would know only caffeine and pain," Wilson told me, and with a faint smile he added, "I missed you too. How are you doing?"

I let my hair out of its ponytail, shaking it out. "I mean, I like it. I'm learning about stuff that interests me. I love Anatomy and Physiology, love Microbiology and Mathematics less. The nursing specific stuff is pretty straight-forward right now. I'm just...I'm tired all the time, my back fucking hurts. I feel like I haven't had a second to breathe in over a month."

"When do you start clinicals?" he asked, muting the television.

"Next semester. I think I've got psych rotation first, but I'm not sure. At least I'll be doing all of my clinicals at PPTH. Home turf," I told him, curling into the couch and clutching the pillow to my chest. "God, my fucking back hurts."

"It'll all be worth it in the end. At least that's what my professors always told me when I was in school."

"I keep telling myself it's only a year," I replied blearily. "Nine months, technically. That's nothing." I reached blindly for my backpack. "Fuck, that reminds me. I've got anatomy homework." I emptied my textbooks out on the coffee table.

Wilson raised an eyebrow. "No wonder your back hurts."

I pulled out my anatomy study guide. "How well do you remember skull structure?" I asked, muffling a yawn with my hand.

Wilson leaned over to look at my homework. "I guess we'll find out."

Twenty minutes later, with my eyes barely open, I finished off the last question. "There are two parietal bones and two...two temporal bones, right?" I glanced at Wilson for confirmation.

The oncologist, now armed with a bottle of beer, nodded. "Yep." He patted my shoulder. "Good job."

I stuffed the paper back in my folder and shoved everything back into my backpack. I didn't have to work tomorrow, and only had afternoon classes—mercifully. I was going to sleep hard tonight. "So, you gonna tell me why you're here?"

"Can't I just be innocently stopping by to visit my favorite nursing student?" Wilson asked tiredly.

"One, you here before I got home. Two, House isn't here, which means three: you would rather be alone in House's apartment than with Julie at your house. What's going on?"

Wilson took a long inhale in through his teeth, then admitted, "Julie's...not exactly speaking to me right now."

I quickly did the math as to where we were in the timeline. "She's mad you loaned House 5,000 dollars, I take it?"

"How did you know—" Wilson broke off. "Right. Yeah. She's not happy."

"So you're hiding here." I scooched a bit closer to Wilson. "It's better than a hotel room..." He wouldn't look at me, but I leaned, searching for his eyes. "Wilson, hey."

With a sigh, he glanced up. Expecting some kind of brow-beating, but I wasn't House. "Are you okay?"

Something in his shoulders seemed to snap when I said that, and he sagged forward, lowering his head into his hands. "Once the train is off the rails, there's no getting it back on. I'm just...watching everything fall apart, and doing nothing. Hell, I'm helping it along. But I—I feel like I can't do anything else. I couldn't do anything with Sam or Bonnie. And nothing's changed since then. I haven't changed."

"Then why not just walk away? If there's no saving it, if it's headed on the same trajectory as your other marriages, why not just end it before you both hurt each other more?" I asked gently, trying to ask what House would without going about it in his signature full frontal dick fashion.

"Because then it's over," Wilson said helplessly. "Again." He was quiet for a moment, then added, "You know, don't you? That it doesn't work out?"

There was really no point in lying to him, now. He knew the answer already, he just wanted confirmation. Maybe that's what would finally kick him in the ass and get him to stop delaying the inevitable with Julie. "You get divorced at the end of season two," I said, revealing more than I usually would. "You kind of beleaguered the process."

"Is that your way of telling me I shouldn't beleaguer it this time?" Wilson sighed, running a hand through his tousled hair.

"That's all up to you, Wilson. I'm nineteen. Future knowledge or not, I'm not exactly a font of marriage advice." I watched him with a frown, wishing I could offer something to him, any kind of comfort that wouldn't seem hollow. "Wilson, tell me if I'm prying here, but...what exactly went wrong with you and Julie? The show was never clear. Just from meeting her, she seems kinda perfect for you. What happened?"

Wilson stared down at his hands, limp in his lap. "I..."

"It's okay to tell me to fuck off, by the way," I put in, not wanting him to feel pressured.

"No, no...it's just...at first, it was perfect. We had fun, we understood each other. Would you believe she and House even got along? At least tolerated each other. Julie and Stacy were friends. We did things together. But..."

I could tell it was hard for him to talk about this, both in the respect that it hurt and that he was so emotionally repressed that this was probably the first time in awhile he'd actually expressed something like this to someone. House wasn't big on heart-to-hearts, and it seemed like Wilson and Julie had only had a handful of conversations with each other in the past year that didn't end with Wilson sleeping on a couch somewhere.

"But?"

"It was right after House's infarction," Wilson continued quietly. "We found out we were pregnant."

I was dumbfounded. "You...a baby?"

"Yeah, we, we uh—" he let out a short, broken laugh, "we were so excited, you have no idea. Baby names, nursery colors, the books...we were looking at preschools, for God's sake."

This story doesn't have a happy ending, does it?

"Wilson..."

"Three months," he said, barely loud enough to hear. "She miscarried after three months, and I...I ran away. I buried myself in House, in all his needs, and his leg, and the mess Stacy left behind...I did anything I could to avoid thinking about it. It was sometime around then that I lost Julie. She needed me more than ever, and I was—" that same unnerving, mirthless laugh, "—I was here!" He slammed a hand against the back of the couch. "Of course, I was fucking here."

I reached out a hand and touched his shoulder hesitantly. "Hey," I murmured, not knowing what to say beyond that, just wanting to defuse the sudden anger that seemed to have possessed him.

"I'm sorry," Wilson apologized almost immediately, a miserable exhale escaping him. He looked at me, eyes holding a sorrow I couldn't begin to understand. "This is the first time I've talked about it."

"With anyone?" I questioned, giving his shoulder a brief squeeze before letting go.

"Yeah. My parents don't even know. We wanted to wait until we knew the gender to tell anyone, and...we didn't get that far." He looked to the ceiling, almost pleadingly. "And God knows this isn't something I can talk to House about."

I understood that. House put ostensible value on human life, sure—once it was out of the womb. Before that, he couldn't grasp the sentimentality, or the loss a parent would feel...a father would feel. Is that why Wilson had seemed so affected when I'd told him he would be a good dad, when he'd been sitting by my bedside after the events of Mob Rules? Because he'd almost been a father, but had the rug pulled out from underneath him?

"It means a lot to me that you told me," I told him. "Can I tell you something, now?"

He glanced at me, a dim sheen in his eyes, waiting for me to speak.

"You're gonna find someone you won't want to run away from," I said carefully. "Ever. You just gotta be patient." Seeing Wilson like this: lost, empty, and questioning everything, made me wish for season four to come as fast as possible. And this time, he wouldn't lose Amber. I would make sure of that.

Wilson blinked, a bemused frown twisting his mouth. "Any chance I could convince you to be less vague?" A look of horror crossed his face. "Oh God, it's not House, is it?"

I burst out laughing in spite of myself, finally lifting the crushing melancholy that had settled on the two of us. "I mean, I would never dissuade you from that, but uh...he's not who I was talking about, no."

Wilson seemed relieved by that much. "At least that's something to be grateful for." He eyed me skeptically. "You're just telling me to have faith, then?"

"Do I ever tell you anything besides that?"

"No, not really." Wilson rose from the couch, stretching with a groan and a wince. "Well, House isn't home. I'm claiming the bed." Wilson glanced around the apartment then, as if really seeing it for the first time. "Do you think we could ever convince House to move out of here?"

"I could tell him that he'll die in a fire due to faulty wiring in the walls, but something tells me he wouldn't believe me," I said with a thin smirk. "Anything's possible if we browbeat him enough, but hasn't House lived here for like fifteen years?"

"About ten, but yeah. He hates change. He's been driving the Dynasty since '91. Any sane man would have scrapped it years ago."

"No one's ever accused House of being sane."

Wilson trailed his hands over the back of the couch. "You deserve a bed. A bedroom."

"If I tell House that, he'll just tell me to move in with Zach."

Wilson snorted. "Oh please. He'll never let you leave." Wilson turned and headed to House's room.

"What do you mean? I annoy the hell out of him."

Wilson stopped just short of House's door. "He came back for you when you were staying with me, didn't he?"

"I mean...yeah."

"He was insufferable while you were gone," Wilson said. "House pretends that he craves solitude, that he doesn't need or want human contact outside of someone he can pay by the hour, but he likes having you around."

"He pays Cameron by the hour?" I asked with a quirk of my head.

"You know what I mean," Wilson said. "He'll never tell you, but...he'd hate it if you left."

Wilson slipped into House's room and closed the door, and I heard a muffled yawn through the wall. I sat on the couch, rubbing sleep from my eyes and trying to process the conversation we'd just had. Wilson and Julie, ripped apart by the death of their unborn child, Wilson coping by tying his life up inextricably with House's. Wilson's pathological fear of facing his own trauma head-on, choosing always to focus on someone else's. Was this why he was an oncologist? Because how could he possibly focus on his own life when his entire profession was comprised of astounding emotional labor?

How did he have anything left in him when he came home at night?

Maybe he doesn't.

I flicked my eyes around the apartment with an exhausted sigh. "Maybe we do need an upgrade," I mumbled to myself, before lying down, throwing an arm over my eyes, and promptly falling asleep.

"Wake up, kid."

I groaned unintelligibly into the couch, my first conscious thought dedicated to noting the drool leaking out of my mouth. "Whatever it is, it can wait until morning, House."

"This can't wait." He was tugging at my wrist like a small child trying to get their parent to buy them candy at the supermarket. "Come on."

"Wilson's asleep in your bed, go wake him up," I told House, militantly refusing to lift my head.

"Wilson's already awake," I heard Wilson's groggy voice from nearby.

Oh jolly. I sat up with an irritated growl deep in my throat.

House snapped his fingers in front of my face, forcing me to finally open my eyes. I grinned wide. "I like your jacket."

Finally. House had bought the motorcycle jacket with the red stripe across the breast. This was the mental image I had carried in my head for years when I thought of House at his finest: smirk on his face, cane at the ready, wearing that damn jacket and blue eyes blazing with mischief.

"That was a quick attitude adjustment," House observed. Wilson stood next to him, in his boxers and a t-shirt, looking only half conscious at best. House tugged on my wrist again. "Now come on!"

He herded Wilson and I outside. Sitting on the curb, glistening from a fresh rain fall, was an orange crotch-rocket with a large scrape down the side. House's new bike.

"What happened to your old bike?" Wilson asked through squinted eyes.

"Trade-in," House replied happily. "That and 5,000 dollars was just enough to drive it off the lot."

Wilson's eyes opened wide at that. "You—you borrowed that money to buy yourself a new bike?"

I looked at Wilson. "What did you think he was going to spend it on?"

"I—I don't know! Paying off a gambling debt to Albanian loan sharks, something—I assumed it was to get himself out of trouble, not get into more trouble. That thing is a death trap," Wilson stammered out, gesturing wildly at the motorcycle.

"She is not a death trap, she's a Honda CBR1000RR Fireblade." House spun his cane and pointed at the bike. "With a Repsol finish. 999 CC liquid-cooled four-cylinder. She drives like a dream."

I smiled at House. "Self-care is important. I think it was a good purchase."

House shot an 'I-told-you-so' look at Wilson. "See? At least someone supports me."

"Aren't you supposed to talk him out of things like this?" Wilson said, leaning past House to look at me.

"Not if it makes him happy." I rethought that statement after a moment. "...Within reason."

"When do I get my five thousand dollars back?" Wilson asked, crossing his arms and shivering as a wind blew through the cool fall night.

House shrugged, heading back to his bike. "I don't know. She does need some body work. The former owner died on her." He waved over his shoulder. "Don't wait up for me."

"You're the one who woke us up!" Wilson called after him as House threw a leg over the Fireblade.

"Can't hear you!" House said, revving the engine. Without another word, he roared away from the curb and soon became a speck in the distance.

"You knew he was going to do that," Wilson accused after House left.

"Yeah," I acknowledged cheerfully. I was just happy House had still gone out and bought something new, something just for him. House was such a creature of habit, anytime he stepped outside of his usual vices and trappings, it was a good sign. A sign he felt...alive, inside. A shadow of the old House, before the entropy his life had fallen into after the infarction.

"A little warning would've been nice," he told me pointedly.

"New episode starts soon, Wilson." I patted his back, turning to head inside. "You'll get the money back. Don't worry."

"It's House. Not worrying isn't an option."

I couldn't argue with him on that account.