Chapter 69 — Time Marches On
A/N: Thank you to BrySt1, OldSFfan, Musikrulesok, JackslovesHilson, HeatherSS1, Robin, SoleFaith, hilsonforlife, Meme, MiaEther, and all the guests for their reviews on the last chapter! I'm sorry this one took a bit, but sometimes churning these suckers out is like pulling teeth. I hope it turned out alright.
Later that week, I came home to House in the kitchen, feeding a rat small bits of one of the yogurt cups I usually took for breakfast at school. I stood by the oven, out of sight. House was talking to the rat.
"There you go, bud. Tastes good, doesn't it? It's—" House checked the label. "Key-lime pie flavor. You know these things are three dollars a pop? And she buys like ten of these a week."
"You get what you pay for," I called, stirring House out of his reverie. He didn't seem bothered, still having his fun feeding our new house guest. The rat was large, brown with a few splotches of white in his fur, and in a relatively large cage with a wheel, feeding bowl, water bottle, and a couple of chew rings. "Is that Steve McQueen?"
"I'd ask how you know, but that line of questioning is getting kind of tired at this point," House replied. "I got him from—"
"Stacy's house," I cut in. "You helped her catch him."
"Helped? Please. I did all the work."
I went to House's side, reaching inside the cage to pluck Steve out. I settled him on my shoulder, where he happily buzzed around my hoodie, head, and chest, sniffing everywhere and anywhere. House merely lifted an eyebrow.
"Maura had rats. Six of them. I'm used to having the little guys crawling all over me." Steve settled in my hood, head occasionally poking out. I smiled softly, flooded with happy memories of home. They hurt, like they always hurt, but the pain wasn't so sharp as usual, replaced by a kind of aching nostalgia.
House fed him the last of the yogurt, then tossed the cup in the trashcan. "Well, go on. Time to yell at me about Stacy."
"I'm sure Wilson already did," I said. "And you know better, but that doesn't change much, does it?" I sighed, leaning against the counter, my hood still squeaking. "What are you doing, House? You don't do anything without an ulterior motive."
"Maybe I just want to be her friend."
"I wished that you or I really believed that," I responded dryly. "Does Cameron know?"
"Yes," House said firmly.
I just stared.
"Okay, no. But why does she need to? We're dating, not married. She doesn't need to know my day planner," House shrugged, tapping the stopper of his cane on the linoleum.
"The only reason not to tell her is because there's a REASON not to tell her," I insisted. House went to grab another one of my yogurt cups from the fridge, no doubt to offer to Steve McQueen, but I snatched it from him. "They make yogurt bites for rats, you know."
"Just because I don't want the confrontation doesn't mean I'm hiding anything," House replied, returning to the fridge. "I'm heating up the leftover pizza from last night."
"Fine. And yeah, shying away from confrontation sounds exactly like you." I jumped up on the counter, perching on the edge. Steve McQueen scrambled on top of my head. "Ooof, jeez—you got nail clippers for him, I hope?"
"Rats need nail clippers?" I didn't know whether he was genuinely ignorant or feigning it for the purpose of being annoying. With House, it was anyone's guess.
"Oh come on. It's 2005. Google exists. Do your research before you get a pet," I chastised him, scratching behind one of Steve's ears.
House rolled his eyes. "It's a rat, not a baby, I don't need a guide on how to take care of it."
"Whatever. And you know, confronting things is a healthy part of a relationship, where you engage in an open dialogue and you can both understand one another better, so you can both grow—"
"Oh GOD, have you been reading the little pamphlets in Outpatient Mental Health again?" House asked loudly, pulling out the pizza box we'd hastily shoved in the fridge the night before. Buffalo chicken, and only half was left, but both of us had been way too lazy to cook lately. House was juggling two patients, a rarity for him, and I of course had school and work to deal with. The fact that we were managing to still have meals together at all was a bit of a marvel. "There's nothing to talk about, or else I would talk with her about it."
"What do you and Cameron even talk about when you're together?" I asked, sincerely curious.
"About how irritating you are, what else?" House retorted easily, shoveling a piece of pizza into his mouth.
"At least microwave it, you animal. And it's just difficult to imagine the two of you like...having a non-work related conversation." I put two pieces of pizza on a paper plate and stuck it in the microwave.
"I don't know. What do you and I talk about? What do Wilson and I talk about?" House said through a mouthful of chicken.
"You and I argue back and forth about your personal life and then higher philosophical concepts. I don't know what you talk about with Wilson when he's not nagging you about something and you're not making fun of his marital problems," I replied, and the microwave beeped.
"You just can't believe in a relationship that didn't get screen-time," House accused.
"You wouldn't hear me complaining if you and Wilson started doinking each other," I shot back. "Not that I'm complaining about you and Cameron, either. You're getting me sidetracked. I'm chastising you about Stacy. I think."
"Consider me chastised," House said, snaking one of my pieces of pizza as I pulled the plate out.
I slapped his hand, but he'd already gotten away with it. "Bastard." I contented myself with my single piece as House wolfed down his.
"You really think I'd cheat on Cameron?" House asked after a few beats of just the two of us chewing. I cocked my head, considering him. House's eyes sparked with interest; he wanted to know the answer.
"'I'm not always faithful to the women I date,'" I quoted. "That's from season three, I think. It's getting blurry at this point."
"So that's a yes?"
"Look, I never saw you cheat on anybody. But to say you and Stacy have a complicated history is seriously underselling it." And while I didn't know if House would cheat on Cameron, I knew with confidence that Stacy would cheat on Mark.
"But you understand the depth of that complicated history far better than me, the person who was there," House said sarcastically.
"I was there for a little bit of it," I pointed out.
"Emphasis on little." Steve McQueen scurried off my shoulder and onto the counter, bee-lining for House's pizza. House scooped the pizza box out of the way just in time, but Steve didn't seem deterred, attempting to crawl up House's side. "Shit, get him off! He's relentless!" House was trying to simultaneously keep the pizza out of reach, keep a hand on his cane, and shake Steve off. "Ah, ah, it tickles!"
Just as I went to save the pizza box, House lost his footing and went down. I tried to dive to break his fall, but ended up slipping on the floor and colliding into House, both of us ending up on the ground in a heap of arms and legs. House swore loudly, his cane clattered somewhere off to the side, and the pizza box skittered under the dinner table.
House and I looked at each other. His hand massaged his thigh, but luckily it seemed he hadn't hurt himself in the fall. About two seconds passed, and we both broke out into a fit of laughter. I rolled away from him, my back against the kitchen floor, unable to contain my giggles, and House was actually chuckling. Audibly. I couldn't remember if I'd ever seen him do anything more than snort in amusement.
"Wait, the pizza—" House managed, and we both directed our attention to where the open pizza box sat. Steve sat among the remnants, munching away without a care in the world. "We just lost to a rat."
"That's what you get for stealing. This is karmic retribution," I told him, clambering up from the floor and going to House's side. I made to help him up, and he slapped my hands away.
"I'm a big boy."
"Shut up and let me help you," I said, grabbing him by the arms and helping him to his feet. I steadied him before bending down and snatching his cane, passing it back to him. "And I mean that both literally and metaphorically. If you need to talk about any of...this...you know I'm here. I'm not trying to breathe down your neck, I'm just trying to, you know. Do what I always do."
House sighed, our rare moment of mirth slipping away. "Make sure everybody in the world is as happy as humanly possible at all times?"
"Something like that."
"I have Wilson to talk about girl problems with. Get in line," House said. "And I'm still hungry. We're going to go raid Wilson's fridge. Julie's got women's Bible Study tonight."
"I'm full."
"Come anyway." House slowly squatted to retrieve Steve from the box. "We can freak out Wilson, too. Two for one deal."
I rolled my eyes. "Fine."
House deposited Steve in my hoodie. I shot him a questioning look. "He likes it there," House said with a one-shouldered shrug.
Steve writhing around in my hood, I followed House out of the apartment, leaving the abandoned pizza box on the floor.
A few weeks later found me, House, and Wilson in the apartment for a movie night. I set down a box of lo mien in front of House, a single candle taped to the side. I placed an identical one in front of Wilson. Wordlessly, I reached down and took a lighter to both.
House stared up at me, eyes squinted hard. "...Okay."
"You know what today is?" I asked the two of them happily.
"Tuesday?" House asked.
"It's November 16th. I've been here for a year." I sat down between the boys, my own box in hand. "We had Chinese the first day I showed up. Seemed fitting."
"God, has it really been a year already?" Wilson seemed surprised.
"And yet it feels so, so, so much longer," House griped.
"Time goes quicker when you're older," Wilson said with a faint shake of his head.
"Time doesn't go quicker. Your life is just a meaningless late-capitalist hell, so every day blends into the next because every day is exactly the same as the one before it, as opposed to when you were a child and each day held new and infinite possibilities. Welcome to middle age," House said, blowing out his candle and digging into his noodles.
Wilson just blinked. "Thanks, House, you really know how to cheer me up."
"Anytime."
"So, where are we in season two, exactly?" Wilson asked, flipping through the channels.
"I made it so episode eight wouldn't happen, so we're in a weird gap between episode seven and nine. Deception's in December sometime. It was like the Christmas episode."
"Sick of doing this yet?" House said. "Feel like going fountain diving?"
"You're not getting rid of me that easily." I started digging into my dinner. I was more inclined to agree with House than Wilson on this one: it felt like I had been inside the House universe for much, much longer than a year. I didn't know whether to chalk that up to me being invested in this world long before I ended up getting sucked into it, or if I'd just gone through so many extreme life changes that it had made twelve months seem like seven years. If I ran into the person I was when I stepped out onto the porch that warm summer day in 2012, I didn't even know if I'd recognize her.
"Here's to another year," Wilson said, lifting his beer in the air. I tapped my water bottle against his beer bottle.
"Hopefully no kidnappings this year," House commented. "Somebody needs to step their game up."
Hopefully no gunshots either. "I'd like to think that was a fluke."
"I'd hate to see what your next fluke is like."
"Next time I'll actually get killed. Maybe this is all just a Groundhog Day thing and when I die it'll just reset," I theorized. I certainly hoped not. I mean, I didn't want to die, but I also didn't want to repeat season one again. Talk about trial by fire.
"If that's the case, maybe you drowned in that pool, and you're just in Hell," House reasoned.
"Does that make you the devil?"
"Do you even need to ask?"
"This is getting too Biblical. We're watching Battlefield Earth," Wilson said, settling on a channel and leaning back into the couch.
"You want us to watch two hours of John Travolta with dreadlocks?" House asked. "Maybe you're the devil. They always told me Satan would be attractive."
"I don't think Satan is a Jewish oncologist with a nice jawline," I said, but I relaxed too, pulling the throw blanket over myself and curling into the corner of the couch. I actually had the full day off tomorrow—no class, no shift at work, nothing. And that rare treasure meant I could really relax tonight. Time spent with both House and Wilson was growing more and more infrequent, so I tried to value it when it actually happened. Tomorrow I'd get to just chill with Zach and not think about school for a few hours.
Wilson looked at House. "She thinks my jawline's nice," he bragged.
"She thinks her sole purpose in life is to protect me from all the horrors of the world," House shot back. "Now shut up. It's starting."
"I thought you didn't want to watch this?"
"Why wouldn't I want to watch John Travolta in dreadlocks? This is the most underrated comedy of all time."
"It's not a comedy."
"That's what you think."
House and I both failed to make it through the movie, passing out somewhere around the halfway mark. However, when Wilson got up to toss his beer bottle after the credits rolled, it did jostle me out of sleep, while House remained snoring and sprawled over most of the couch. I followed Wilson to the kitchen with a languid stretch, feeling my head swim from the rush of standing up too fast.
"You two are lightweights," Wilson joked quietly, trying not to wake House.
"House eats narcotics like candy, and I'm in nursing school. I'm surprised we both stayed up as long as we did." I yawned loudly, eyes watering. "House always falls asleep way easier when you're here."
Wilson seemed taken aback by that, but he recovered quickly. "Wow, I didn't realize I bored him to sleep."
"We can pretend that's the reason." I leaned over the kitchen table and scratched Steve's face through the bars of his cage. "He likes to pretend he prefers being alone, but between alone and you, he's always going to pick you."
"I see your master plan now; get House to forget about both Cameron and Stacy, and then he'll fall in love with me." Wilson grabbed another beer. "You evil genius, you."
"This is more of my evil plan to get you to move in with us," I admitted.
"I thought we established that was...inevitable," Wilson said slowly, growing serious.
"Yeah, but I know you well enough to know that me telling you it's inevitable has just made you fight even harder."
Wilson pursed his lips, seeming to weigh his words carefully. "I'm not sure what exactly it is I'm fighting for anymore."
"Then maybe it's time to stop fighting," I said softly. "Look, I'm not gonna badger you about it—but I am going to try to convince House to move out of here into someplace bigger, and I need to know whether to peer pressure him into a two bedroom or a three bedroom apartment."
"He'll never leave this place."
"You underestimate just how annoying I can be."
Wilson sighed. "I...I'm going to wait it out, for now. See how Christmas goes. After that," he shook his head. "Only time will tell."
I clapped him on the shoulder. "You know we're here for you."
The oncologist nodded, rubbing a hand down his face. "Thank you, Anya. I mean that. But for now, I'm going home."
I stepped away from him. "I'll see you soon. Hopefully."
Wilson gave me a sad smile. "Hopefully."
"CHRISTMAS BREAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAK," I yelled, traipsing into the differential room and trailing salt and packed snow with me. Zach followed just behind.
"It's 9am, lower the volume," Foreman requested from the kitchenette, where he was doing some backed up dishes. "How long are you off for?"
"Until January 12th," I provided happily. "I'll be around to bother you guys way more for awhile."
"Just Foreman and Cameron for the most part, actually," Chase said, looking up from a case file he was reading over. "I'm going home for a few weeks once we finish up this case that isn't a case."
"Case that isn't a case?" Zach questioned. "Schrodinger's case?"
"House has us treating a Munchausen's patient," Cameron supplied.
"Because he's bored and he's intrigued by her," Foreman tacked on, elbow deep in the sink.
"What's Munchausen's?" Zach asked, the two of us taking up residence at the differential table.
"Google it," Chase said, not looking up as he turned a page.
With so little spare time on my hands, I'd been showing up at the hospital more and more with Zach in tow, so the ducklings had gotten used to my boyfriend over the past few months. Cameron genuinely liked Zach—unsurprising, Cameron liked most people, even people that nobody else liked—Foreman was indifferent to him, and Chase...well, Chase tolerated Zach, but the two didn't get along half as well as I'd expected them to. I figured their different backgrounds played into it; Zach had grown up poor, and Chase had...not. To put it mildly. Beyond that, while Zach by all appearances found House's brand of flagrant egoism charming, Chase's more subtle arrogance didn't impress him.
Maybe they'd warm up to each other. Eventually. But I wasn't holding out hope. Some people were just too different on the surface to bother to get to know what was beneath. I had a feeling they weren't going to have a heart to heart about the pains of growing up with absent fathers and alcoholic mothers anytime soon.
"It's a mental disorder," Cameron told Zach, looking up at him. "You fake illnesses so you'll be admitted to a hospital. It's like a pathological need for attention, a need to be cared for."
"There's people who actually want to spend time in hospitals?" Zach bounced in eyebrows in surprise.
Chase snorted. "Says the kid spending his free time in a hospital."
"Well, yeah," Zach huffed. "But, we're not like, in the hospital. We're visiting."
"I just don't get why House is having us all waste our time," Foreman complained. He finished up the last dish and set it on the rack to dry off. "There's nothing wrong with her that she didn't do to herself."
I leaned back in my chair, propping my feet up on the table. "House can scoff at psychologists all day, but he's fascinated by all the things that can go wrong with the brain. Notice the only time he goes around patients, other than to browbeat them, is when they're mentally ill—he finds it easier to connect to them."
"Because he's mad, too?" Chase asked with a thin smile.
"Pretty much," I replied.
"House isn't mad," Cameron said dubiously. "Off-the-wall thought processes, sure. Genius IQ, a little stand-offish...but he's not mentally ill."
We all stared silently at Cameron.
"What?" she demanded, voice taking on an edge of irritation. "A psychologist would tell House he's a jerk and he needs to get out of the house more and then send him home."
"You're right," Chase agreed, feigning a very serious face. "They definitely wouldn't say anything about the pills."
"Or the narcissism," Foreman added.
"Or the anti-social behavior," I said.
"The half a fifth of bourbon he drinks every night," Zach joined in.
"Or the inability to form attachments to other people—"
"The textbook case of ODD—"
"Depression—"
Cameron held up her hands. "Enough, enough. I get it."
Did she, though? Cameron even suggesting that House was just a grumpy but well-adjusted guy was...absurd, on its face. Did she have that much of a fundamental misunderstanding of who he was at this point in the timeline? I thought I remembered her wising up a bit by season two and starting to see past her affections for House. Then again, in the original season two, they weren't dating, so that probably meant those rose-colored glasses were still glued to her face.
I mean, I definitely had a biased view of House—but Cameron blew me out of the water. I paid more attention to the good things about him, because the good in him mattered far more to me than the bad, and always had. But I was still painfully aware of his flaws in spite of that.
"House likes people who are fucked up because he's fucked up too," I continued. "And I don't mean that in a bad way. I think...he's looking for answers for himself, when he takes on patients like this. What makes people the way they are, because I still don't think he fully understands the way he is."
Zach blinked at me. "You spend a lot of time thinking about House's psyche, don't you?"
More than I should. I shrugged. "I worry about him."
"Someone has to," Foreman sighed.
We lapsed into an uncomfortable silence after that. Foreman retreated to the clinic, Cameron departed without saying where she was going—leaving Zach, Chase and I alone together.
"We're uh, we're gonna go try to find House," I said, clearing my throat.
"I gotta piss, gimme a second," Zach rose from his chair and dipped out into the hallway for a moment.
"So, you're flying to Australia? Are you staying with your sister?" I asked, glancing at Chase.
"Yeah, for about two weeks. We're going to Dad's old house, try to box up his things and get them in some kinda order. And I just want to spend some time with Liza, try to..." he shook his head, the next words seeming difficult for him to say, "try to keep her from, ah, ending up like Mum. She's been hitting the bottle hard since Dad...I need her to stay in school. I need her to not screw up her life. I can't watch...that...again."
"You didn't turn into your mom. You're obviously doing something right," I told him, with a small, sad smile.
"I just turned into Dad instead," Chase said, a dull note of bitterness in his voice. "Liza's better than our parents and she's better than me. Always has been. If she can make it through this to the other side, there's no telling how far she'll go."
"She's got a good big brother to look out for her." If I was happy for anything that I'd affected in this timeline, it was Chase going to spend that six weeks with his father in Australia. Things seemed to have changed so much for him; he was closer to his sister, closer to Foreman and Cameron. He seemed like he'd grown up, almost. Faster than he ever did in the show. "And you're not your dad," I told him. "You're you. Just you."
"Just me?" Chase almost seemed amused. "Can I be a little better than just me?"
"Only you," I amended.
Chase smiled at me, his demeanor lightening. He opened his mouth to say something, but Zach pushed back into the room at that precise moment. "Ready?" he asked me.
"Yeah." I stood up, meeting Chase's eyes before heading for the door. "If I don't see you again before you leave...Merry Christmas, Happy New Year...and send me a postcard."
Chase practically beamed at me. "It's only two weeks."
"Yeah, well, I want to start a collection."
Chase nodded. "Alright then. Postcard it is."
I did eventually find House, in the midst of hijinks to convince Vogler and Cuddy to let him continue treating his Munchausen's patient—which proved unnecessary, once her condition worsened. Zach and I tailed him around for most of the day. Zach left for a night shift at Ryan's around four, and House eventually ran out of things he could currently do at the hospital, as right now they were just waiting on the results of Anica's pancreas biopsy.
So, we headed home. And we were surprised to find someone had beaten us there; Wilson sat on the couch, staring blankly at the TV, his hands limp in his lap. His eyes were bloodshot. He'd been crying.
"It's Christmas Eve," House noted.
"Yeah," Wilson said, voice hoarse.
"You're supposed to be with Julie."
"Yeah."
That was when I noticed the duffel bag sitting on the recliner.
Wilson looked between the two of us, a picture of misery.
I took a deep breath. "So," I said. "Who gets the couch?"