Housefic: A Devil Put Aside
Jun. 16th, 2014 08:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nightdog_barksTitle: A Devil Put Aside
Authors:nightdog_barks and blackmare
Characters: Wilson, House, a few OCs
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: No
Spoilers: None
Summary: Wilson's had all he can stand. It's time to step away. 3,624 words.
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Never will.
Author Notes: I started writing this fic in September, 2009, after "Broken" aired, and diverges from canon after an already-traumatic event in the episode goes even more wrong here.
A Devil Put Aside
September, 2009
It's after midnight when Mitzi Gaynor dies, and three in the morning when Wilson stumbles back into his dark, deserted office and stands there, swaying a little from exhaustion as he stares into the shadows. Second patient this week, and normally that wouldn't be so bad, if someone dying could ever be considered in those terms, but nothing's normal these days. Her name hadn't really been Mitzi Gaynor, of course, but she'd been one of those eternally cheerful people, always bright-eyed and full of energy, and she'd even starred in an off-Broadway revival of South Pacific, and so Wilson had taken to calling her Mitzi Gaynor when he talked to House, because House understood.
But House isn't here. He isn't even at Mayfield, where they were supposed to cure him, or at least put the pieces back together enough so that he was a functioning head case, instead of a psychotic mess holding extended conversations with his best friend's dead girlfriend and hallucinating sex with his boss.
No, House isn't here. He's facing a seventy-two-hour hold in the closed ward at Winslow, transfer to the Forensic Center in West Trenton, and a charge of negligent homicide against someone who called himself Freedom Master.
Wilson stares at his hands, the fingertips resting on the polished wood of the desk top, and faces the truth.
House isn't coming back, because he's never getting out.
Wilson's legs tremble; his stomach turns over, and he finds that he's still upright only because he's bracing himself against his desk. His cell phone chooses that moment to ring. A part of him wants to throw it across the room, but instead he fishes it from his pocket and flips it open. To his bleak surprise, it's not Dr. Nolan, telling him House has murdered someone else or set the asylum on fire.
It's the doctor on call at King's Point. The other psychiatric hospital in his life, Danny's hospital, and what was it Wilson's dad used to say? If it's not one thing it's your brother, and he'd say that while Danny was standing right there, with their mother making little tsk'ing sounds while she'd give Wilson the stink-eye.
Wilson listens to the sincere, sympathetic voice at the other end of the line, absorbing the news with a numb detachment. When the voice stops speaking, he says thank you because that's the kind of person he is.
He snaps the phone shut and sets it on the desk. He lays his hospital i.d. beside it, and his pager -- in a neat row, not tossed down in a way that might scratch the polish, because after all, that's the kind of person he is.
The darkness is soothing, a friendly cloak Wilson can pull about himself while he thinks about the cascade of failures that have led to this point.
Approximately four hours after Mitzi Gaynor dies, Wilson runs away from home, because the kind of person he is can't take this any more.
One year later
Wilson's standing on the street corner, smiling his best, most ingratiating smile while General Grant plays a penny whistle. It's not his real name, of course, but as far as Wilson's concerned he can call himself any damn thing he wants as long as he keeps playing. It's what they've found works best -- the combination of the General's warbling and Wilson's friendly, open smile seems to put people at ease, makes them pause for a moment to listen to Wilson's appeal and, finally, toss their pocket change or a few wadded-up dollar bills into the kettle. Sometimes they get lucky and it's a five, or very lucky and it's a ten. So far nobody's thrown a gold coin into the kettle, like he's heard of from the Sallies who work the corner a block down. Still, it's something, even if none of it is his. It all goes back to the shelter, just like all those big-ticket donations had flowed back to the hospital.
He frowns and shoves the memory back into its box.
General Grant drops the penny whistle. "Galileo, Galileo," he sings in his mournful, high falsetto. "Galileo, Figaro."
This is Wilson's life now, and that's what he's doing, smiling at the pedestrians, the ones who stop, the ones who hurry on by, their eyes sliding past his, the General's jinky little version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" dancing in his left ear, when he glances up and across the street and sees him. The guy who looks like House, standing there, staring back.
Wilson takes a step back. His breath catches painfully in his throat, and he's vaguely aware of General Grant's hand on his arm.
The guy who looks like House takes a matching step forward; an angry horn blares, and the guy's yanked back from the curb by another pedestrian a half-second before being flattened by a taxi. The light's against him -- Wilson's got a precious moment to make it count.
He turns and runs.
The detective keeps chewing on a toothpick, and House briefly contemplates telling her that 64% of all tracheotomies are necessary due to mindless cows swallowing toothpicks. It's a statistic he just made up; he wonders if he could get away with it if he left out the "mindless cow" part. In the end he decides to keep silent while she finishes rummaging through her file folders.
"Here he is," Detective Kasparov announces as she takes the toothpick out of her mouth, and House instinctively looks up as if she's actually produced Wilson in some sleight-of-hand that only law enforcement officers know. Rabbits out of hats, missing oncologists out of thin air.
"Folks on the street call him Doc," Kasparov continues.
"And his friends?" House snipes. "What are they called? Sneezy, Happy, and Bashful?"
Or maybe they're called Dry Cleaner, Tax Accountant, and Bus Stop Guy, a tiny voice says from the back of his mind. House smothers it and concentrates on the detective's words. She's ignored his gibe and is summarizing whatever bullshit report some cop on the beat wrote down.
"Popped up on our radar a little more than a year ago," she says. "Dragged another homeless guy into the Saint Peter and Paul Hospital ER. Gunshot wound, when questioned by the nurses, the 'good Samaritan' gave his name as Evan James and fled the scene." She peruses the open folder a little longer; a few desks away, a male detective is mumbling into an office phone. Despite the warm California sun banking through the high windows, there are shadows in this place, corners where the lamplights don't quite reach.
"Since then he's been volunteering at the soup kitchen on Mateo and Kendrick. Helps out with the Department of Health guys at the free clinics." Detective Kasparov looks from the folder to House with a thoughtful glance.
"Can't keep himself from caring," House murmurs. The detective doesn't say anything, and House realizes she's waiting for him to say more. He shifts in his chair -- why don't places like this ever put cushions in the damn things?
"His name's James Evan Wilson," he says. He drags his wallet from his hip pocket and flips it open; the familiar face stares up at him. He slides the hospital i.d. from the clear plastic sheath and tosses it onto the desk. "And he really is a doctor."
Kasparov picks up the license and taps it with one forefinger. Her nails are cut short, blunt and unpainted.
"How did you get this?" she asks.
House shifts again. His leg is starting to ache from his little sprint earlier.
"I told you," House says. "He left it behind. He left everything behind."
The detective studies him carefully -- her eyes are cornflower-blue, House notices, and he imagines still waters under endless Russian skies.
"And until you came here, to your -- " She glances at her notepad. " -- medical conference, you ... "
"Have you listened to anything I've said?" House snaps. "I was ... hospitalized. And instead of getting better, I got worse. I screwed up. And when I finally got out, Wilson was gone." He pauses, suddenly aware that the detective a few desks away has stopped talking and is watching him. House swallows and forces himself to slow his breathing. Should he tell her about Amber? About how Daniel Wilson stepped off a chair with a noose made out of bedsheets to hold him up?
"I didn't know where he was," he continues after a moment. "Until now."
Kasparov appears lost in thought, then slaps the folder closed.
"He bunks at the shelter on Spy Street," she says. She pushes away from the desk, then stops. "At least, he did up until today. If he ran from you -- "
"No," House says. "He should still be there."
"Are you sure?"
House shakes his head. "I'm sure. I've done the one thing he thought I'd never do."
The detective looks puzzled.
"I've gone to the cops for help," House says.
Wilson feels as if he's been running on autopilot all day. He'd apologized profusely when General Grant had returned to the shelter, but he hadn't been able to shake his unease. And then Sarah had stopped by, and said they could use an extra hand serving tonight, and he'd put down the book he'd been pretending to read and followed her out into the teeming, bustling, common area.
He's lost track of how many times -- dozens, surely -- he's imagined seeing House here, in this warm, clean place with the long trestle tables and the guilt-free plastic utensils. It's disturbing how many people look just enough like him, and how many of those people are vagrants.
There, he thinks each time, goes James Wilson's best friend. Former best friend, who probably sits and stares at the locked door of his padded room all day. If he hasn't already just stepped off a roof or slit his wrists, or goaded a bigger, stronger inmate into an attack and gotten his head slammed into a wall a few times.
Wilson's too afraid to find out, so he stays away from newspapers, the Internet, even the beaten-up old TV in the common room that his fellow shelter mutts keep tuned to soap operas and Judge Judy. He can hear House scoffing and mocking him for it, but he just can't risk facing the ultimate, concrete proof of his own inadequacy.
Instead, he helps men who look vaguely like House, ladling out chili on Wednesdays, chicken stew on Friday, whatever donated stuff the Chapin bank brings the rest of the week.
Some nights he studies all the faces in the line, making himself think of them at five years old and imagine who they once were, who they might have been, and whether they will ever be anything other than what they are now.
Tonight is not one of those nights. Tonight is one of the other kinds of nights. On nights like this one, he keeps his eyes down on the food and on his hands, gloved in thin latex like they were when he was still a doctor. Other hands, rough hands, female hands, male hands, children's hands, pass by with their trays like the cars of a train.
"Is this crap all you've got?" asks a voice -- a voice he knows -- and the whole damn thing comes off the tracks.
This time, there's nowhere to run.
Peripherally, vaguely, House is aware of a ring of mostly-unwashed humanity forming around them; there's a radius of hesitation, people standing at a distance they calculate as safe. All those eyes watching, while Wilson's eyes dart this way and that, searching for an escape route.
This is not the Wilson he knew. This Wilson is a man in a secondhand -- hell, a thirdhand Padres t-shirt and a hair net -- a hair net, drumming the metal spoon against the side of the tray because his hand is trembling, a minute tremor that would be a bitch if Wilson were operating, and it's not because he's turned into a junkie. House has been watching him; his motions have been rote, but steady and sure, Wilson-like, until now.
Now he's not Wilson at all.
"Calm down," House says. But Wilson doesn't calm down -- instead he takes a step back from the serving line and raises that stupid metal spoon like he's going to use it to defend himself.
"Everything okay here, Doc?"
It's a huge, rumbling voice, belonging to a huge, rumbling guy who's materialized at House's side -- a biker dude, eyes hidden behind wraparound shades and his jacket conveniently left off so he can flash the colorful tattoos on his massive arms. The meaty bicep closest to House's nose carries a crimson heart dripping blood; across it is scrawled the legend MUTHA. House wonders for a moment if there's a matching tat on the other arm that says FUCKA, because surely that's what a biker dude who's cool enough to wear sunglasses at night would have, but he's more concerned by the fact that this is a guy who could have him down and kicked in the head in a heartbeat.
"Hi," House says. "You must be Grumpy."
The guy crosses his tree trunk arms on his chest; the cobra on his right forearm seems to uncoil and raise its hood in a menacing challenge.
"Wilson," House says, "come on, tell Lou Ferrigno here that everything's okay."
Nobody moves, and House is really starting to regret telling Detective Kasparov he could handle this by himself when yet another voice speaks up.
"Hello," the voice says, and House looks around. The owner of this voice is a guy about House's height, wearing a dark jacket. A patch of white at the throat. This guy's not a biker dude, he's a --
"I'm Father Desmond. I don't believe we've met."
-- he's a priest.
It's like talking to the cop all over again, except House keeps thinking he should say five Hail Marys and two Our Fathers, and he's not even Catholic. And so far he's done all the talking, while Wilson stares at his shoes and Father Desmond nods every now and then and murmurs "And then what?" and "Go on."
It's like the priest has heard it all before, and maybe he has. That's the thing about priests.
They're in the priest's office, a sad little affair with a banged-up desk, two chairs, an even more banged-up file cabinet in the corner. On the wall above that is a calendar, two years out of date.
"So," Father Desmond says at last. "Do you want to go home, Doc?"
And still Wilson sits there and stares at his shoes.
"Of course he does," House snaps.
"No, I don't," Wilson says, so softly that at first House doesn't hear him. He raises his head, then, and replies, not to House, but to Father Desmond.
"Not if everything's the same as when I left."
"Cuddy's not there, if that's what you mean," House says. The memory still stings. "Foreman's in charge."
"Is he in charge of you?"
"Is he ... "
"Are you still there?"
House swallows. This was a stupid idea, the little voice in his head taunts. The priest is doing that priest-y thing, eyes half-closed like he's weighing House's soul on the scales of the Inquisition.
"No," House says. "No, I'm not."
"Because you're dead."
House is aware of his mouth opening and closing.
"You were dead," Wilson continues. "Up here -- " He makes a vague gesture with one hand, finger pointing to his temple, bang! " -- you were dead."
The priest raises an eyebrow but says nothing.
"What was I supposed to think?" Wilson says. "What am I supposed to think now?" And then he sits back and scrubs at his eyes with his fists. He looks exhausted from speaking, like this is the most he's said at one time in years.
"What am I supposed to do now?" Wilson says. Because it's coming from behind his hands it sounds like "Wha amI spssd tdo nw?", but House has had decades of experience in interpreting muffled Wilson-speak, so he knows there's only one answer.
"You're supposed to come home with me," House says.
Father Desmond rises easily from behind the desk. "I'll be outside," he says. He gives House a pastoral pat on the shoulder and murmurs something House can't catch in Wilson's ear. House stares at the outdated calendar and tries to remember what he was doing in July 2008. Whatever it was, it was probably a lot more fun than what he's trying to do now.
It's quiet in the little office with the priest gone. House stares at the calendar some more but it doesn't change. He taps his cane on the floor. It doesn't change, either.
"I'm sorry about your brother," he says, hoping it's the right thing to say, and apparently it is because Wilson doesn't snap his head off for being a year behind.
"Thanks," Wilson says, then he stares at the calendar for a while. "I didn't go to his funeral," he says eventually. He says it matter-of-factly. "Or the unveiling."
"He probably didn't care," House says, and immediately kicks himself.
Wilson doesn't seem to mind. "No, he probably didn't."
They sit quietly for a few minutes.
"Look," House says. "What I said before -- I want you to come back with me."
Wilson shakes his head.
"I don't know," he says. He shakes his head again, starts to get up. "Don't push me on this, House."
I'm losing him, House thinks. He reaches into his pocket.
"Here," he says. "Take this. When you're ready, call me."
Wilson looks at the tab of pasteboard in his hand like he's never seen a business card before.
"What's this?" he says.
"It's the place where I'm staying."
Wilson studies the card.
"This is an RV park," he says.
"It's a long story."
"I've got time."
Outside, something rumbles, a low distant sound. Thunder. A truck going by. The blood pounding in House's ears. He doesn't fucking care.
"Okay," House says. "Okay." He begins to talk.
There's no telling how it will end.
EPILOGUE
House comes to dinner at the shelter for a week.
What that really means is: He eats elsewhere, then comes and drinks crappy coffee while Wilson has dinner, because shelter food is, let's face it, shelter food.
The first night, Wilson picks and scowls at his meal like he's hoping it will sit up, roll over, shake. When he's not doing that, he's toying with a disintegrating paperback novel, something he dug out of a bin somewhere, its cover torn off when the bookstore threw it out. It might be Moby-Dick or The Godfather, House can't tell which.
"I don't know what else to tell you," Wilson says. "I got in my car and I ... drove. And you weren't you, you were dying, you were dead."
"I feel pretty good, for a dead guy." House gets up. "See you tomorrow, Wilson."
On the second night, he brings dessert. Ice cream, butter pecan, a whole pint for each of them because he's seen how much space Wilson wants now, and "let's share" is a boundary he won't push.
Also, he knows how much ice cream Wilson can eat.
This time, Wilson puts down that damn book and decides he can have dessert first. "It'll melt," he explains, looking guilty as hell.
They don't talk.
By the fifth night, Wilson can almost look straight at him.
"I don't want to go where you're staying," Wilson says, on night six. "But I'll show you how it is here." He's scooting a single pea around his tray in a slow-motion chase. "I failed," he says. "I couldn't get it right. But I'm useful, to these people."
House gets up and leaves before he says what he wants to say.
It's for the best anyway, because Lou Ferrigno, who still watches his every move, would have killed him.
He spends day seven helping Wilson's ragtag crew of volunteers repaint the whole damn cafeteria.
It's boring-ass beige, though the five-gallon buckets are labeled Sandstone Fireplace, and they -- some of the volunteers who are not House -- are painting a giant cartoon rainbow across the east wall. Scatterbrained Steve wants to add a pot of gold, talks about it the whole time, but it isn't going to happen. Nobody on the crew can draw.
When it's done, with the fruit-stripe arch growing improbably up out of the floor, Wilson looks at him. Finally, really looks at him, and all the sudden it's really Wilson, with pale paint-freckles on his face, in his hair, caught in his eyebrows and even his lashes.
"I'll buy Chinese," House says.
"Okay."
And just like that, Wilson plunks his paint roller into the open bucket and heads for the door. It's weird; it's not like him, leaving it to someone else to clean up the mess. Except for that one time he did before, but hey, who's counting?
Wilson's no longer the universal donor. House would be delighted by this breakthrough if he weren't so pissed.
His leg is on fire, he's thirsty, and Wilson's moving a little too fast, a step ahead of him, eyes forward. No magic-rainbow transformations here in real life. The fortune cookies probably won't have any answers for him, either.
Wilson might, if and when Wilson eventually decides they can talk.
He reaches for the pills in his pocket, because it's that or ask Wilson to stop. He's swallowing a dose when Wilson looks back. There's no Wilsonian Are you okay?, not even a change in his expression, but he slows just enough to let House come up beside him.
It's almost all right, this way. Wherever they're walking, he'll cope.
~ fin
Authors:
nightdog_barks and blackmare Characters: Wilson, House, a few OCs
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: No
Spoilers: None
Summary: Wilson's had all he can stand. It's time to step away. 3,624 words.
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Never will.
Author Notes: I started writing this fic in September, 2009, after "Broken" aired, and diverges from canon after an already-traumatic event in the episode goes even more wrong here.
A Devil Put Aside
September, 2009
It's after midnight when Mitzi Gaynor dies, and three in the morning when Wilson stumbles back into his dark, deserted office and stands there, swaying a little from exhaustion as he stares into the shadows. Second patient this week, and normally that wouldn't be so bad, if someone dying could ever be considered in those terms, but nothing's normal these days. Her name hadn't really been Mitzi Gaynor, of course, but she'd been one of those eternally cheerful people, always bright-eyed and full of energy, and she'd even starred in an off-Broadway revival of South Pacific, and so Wilson had taken to calling her Mitzi Gaynor when he talked to House, because House understood.
But House isn't here. He isn't even at Mayfield, where they were supposed to cure him, or at least put the pieces back together enough so that he was a functioning head case, instead of a psychotic mess holding extended conversations with his best friend's dead girlfriend and hallucinating sex with his boss.
No, House isn't here. He's facing a seventy-two-hour hold in the closed ward at Winslow, transfer to the Forensic Center in West Trenton, and a charge of negligent homicide against someone who called himself Freedom Master.
Wilson stares at his hands, the fingertips resting on the polished wood of the desk top, and faces the truth.
House isn't coming back, because he's never getting out.
Wilson's legs tremble; his stomach turns over, and he finds that he's still upright only because he's bracing himself against his desk. His cell phone chooses that moment to ring. A part of him wants to throw it across the room, but instead he fishes it from his pocket and flips it open. To his bleak surprise, it's not Dr. Nolan, telling him House has murdered someone else or set the asylum on fire.
It's the doctor on call at King's Point. The other psychiatric hospital in his life, Danny's hospital, and what was it Wilson's dad used to say? If it's not one thing it's your brother, and he'd say that while Danny was standing right there, with their mother making little tsk'ing sounds while she'd give Wilson the stink-eye.
Wilson listens to the sincere, sympathetic voice at the other end of the line, absorbing the news with a numb detachment. When the voice stops speaking, he says thank you because that's the kind of person he is.
He snaps the phone shut and sets it on the desk. He lays his hospital i.d. beside it, and his pager -- in a neat row, not tossed down in a way that might scratch the polish, because after all, that's the kind of person he is.
The darkness is soothing, a friendly cloak Wilson can pull about himself while he thinks about the cascade of failures that have led to this point.
Approximately four hours after Mitzi Gaynor dies, Wilson runs away from home, because the kind of person he is can't take this any more.
One year later
Wilson's standing on the street corner, smiling his best, most ingratiating smile while General Grant plays a penny whistle. It's not his real name, of course, but as far as Wilson's concerned he can call himself any damn thing he wants as long as he keeps playing. It's what they've found works best -- the combination of the General's warbling and Wilson's friendly, open smile seems to put people at ease, makes them pause for a moment to listen to Wilson's appeal and, finally, toss their pocket change or a few wadded-up dollar bills into the kettle. Sometimes they get lucky and it's a five, or very lucky and it's a ten. So far nobody's thrown a gold coin into the kettle, like he's heard of from the Sallies who work the corner a block down. Still, it's something, even if none of it is his. It all goes back to the shelter, just like all those big-ticket donations had flowed back to the hospital.
He frowns and shoves the memory back into its box.
General Grant drops the penny whistle. "Galileo, Galileo," he sings in his mournful, high falsetto. "Galileo, Figaro."
This is Wilson's life now, and that's what he's doing, smiling at the pedestrians, the ones who stop, the ones who hurry on by, their eyes sliding past his, the General's jinky little version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" dancing in his left ear, when he glances up and across the street and sees him. The guy who looks like House, standing there, staring back.
Wilson takes a step back. His breath catches painfully in his throat, and he's vaguely aware of General Grant's hand on his arm.
The guy who looks like House takes a matching step forward; an angry horn blares, and the guy's yanked back from the curb by another pedestrian a half-second before being flattened by a taxi. The light's against him -- Wilson's got a precious moment to make it count.
He turns and runs.
The detective keeps chewing on a toothpick, and House briefly contemplates telling her that 64% of all tracheotomies are necessary due to mindless cows swallowing toothpicks. It's a statistic he just made up; he wonders if he could get away with it if he left out the "mindless cow" part. In the end he decides to keep silent while she finishes rummaging through her file folders.
"Here he is," Detective Kasparov announces as she takes the toothpick out of her mouth, and House instinctively looks up as if she's actually produced Wilson in some sleight-of-hand that only law enforcement officers know. Rabbits out of hats, missing oncologists out of thin air.
"Folks on the street call him Doc," Kasparov continues.
"And his friends?" House snipes. "What are they called? Sneezy, Happy, and Bashful?"
Or maybe they're called Dry Cleaner, Tax Accountant, and Bus Stop Guy, a tiny voice says from the back of his mind. House smothers it and concentrates on the detective's words. She's ignored his gibe and is summarizing whatever bullshit report some cop on the beat wrote down.
"Popped up on our radar a little more than a year ago," she says. "Dragged another homeless guy into the Saint Peter and Paul Hospital ER. Gunshot wound, when questioned by the nurses, the 'good Samaritan' gave his name as Evan James and fled the scene." She peruses the open folder a little longer; a few desks away, a male detective is mumbling into an office phone. Despite the warm California sun banking through the high windows, there are shadows in this place, corners where the lamplights don't quite reach.
"Since then he's been volunteering at the soup kitchen on Mateo and Kendrick. Helps out with the Department of Health guys at the free clinics." Detective Kasparov looks from the folder to House with a thoughtful glance.
"Can't keep himself from caring," House murmurs. The detective doesn't say anything, and House realizes she's waiting for him to say more. He shifts in his chair -- why don't places like this ever put cushions in the damn things?
"His name's James Evan Wilson," he says. He drags his wallet from his hip pocket and flips it open; the familiar face stares up at him. He slides the hospital i.d. from the clear plastic sheath and tosses it onto the desk. "And he really is a doctor."
Kasparov picks up the license and taps it with one forefinger. Her nails are cut short, blunt and unpainted.
"How did you get this?" she asks.
House shifts again. His leg is starting to ache from his little sprint earlier.
"I told you," House says. "He left it behind. He left everything behind."
The detective studies him carefully -- her eyes are cornflower-blue, House notices, and he imagines still waters under endless Russian skies.
"And until you came here, to your -- " She glances at her notepad. " -- medical conference, you ... "
"Have you listened to anything I've said?" House snaps. "I was ... hospitalized. And instead of getting better, I got worse. I screwed up. And when I finally got out, Wilson was gone." He pauses, suddenly aware that the detective a few desks away has stopped talking and is watching him. House swallows and forces himself to slow his breathing. Should he tell her about Amber? About how Daniel Wilson stepped off a chair with a noose made out of bedsheets to hold him up?
"I didn't know where he was," he continues after a moment. "Until now."
Kasparov appears lost in thought, then slaps the folder closed.
"He bunks at the shelter on Spy Street," she says. She pushes away from the desk, then stops. "At least, he did up until today. If he ran from you -- "
"No," House says. "He should still be there."
"Are you sure?"
House shakes his head. "I'm sure. I've done the one thing he thought I'd never do."
The detective looks puzzled.
"I've gone to the cops for help," House says.
Wilson feels as if he's been running on autopilot all day. He'd apologized profusely when General Grant had returned to the shelter, but he hadn't been able to shake his unease. And then Sarah had stopped by, and said they could use an extra hand serving tonight, and he'd put down the book he'd been pretending to read and followed her out into the teeming, bustling, common area.
He's lost track of how many times -- dozens, surely -- he's imagined seeing House here, in this warm, clean place with the long trestle tables and the guilt-free plastic utensils. It's disturbing how many people look just enough like him, and how many of those people are vagrants.
There, he thinks each time, goes James Wilson's best friend. Former best friend, who probably sits and stares at the locked door of his padded room all day. If he hasn't already just stepped off a roof or slit his wrists, or goaded a bigger, stronger inmate into an attack and gotten his head slammed into a wall a few times.
Wilson's too afraid to find out, so he stays away from newspapers, the Internet, even the beaten-up old TV in the common room that his fellow shelter mutts keep tuned to soap operas and Judge Judy. He can hear House scoffing and mocking him for it, but he just can't risk facing the ultimate, concrete proof of his own inadequacy.
Instead, he helps men who look vaguely like House, ladling out chili on Wednesdays, chicken stew on Friday, whatever donated stuff the Chapin bank brings the rest of the week.
Some nights he studies all the faces in the line, making himself think of them at five years old and imagine who they once were, who they might have been, and whether they will ever be anything other than what they are now.
Tonight is not one of those nights. Tonight is one of the other kinds of nights. On nights like this one, he keeps his eyes down on the food and on his hands, gloved in thin latex like they were when he was still a doctor. Other hands, rough hands, female hands, male hands, children's hands, pass by with their trays like the cars of a train.
"Is this crap all you've got?" asks a voice -- a voice he knows -- and the whole damn thing comes off the tracks.
This time, there's nowhere to run.
Peripherally, vaguely, House is aware of a ring of mostly-unwashed humanity forming around them; there's a radius of hesitation, people standing at a distance they calculate as safe. All those eyes watching, while Wilson's eyes dart this way and that, searching for an escape route.
This is not the Wilson he knew. This Wilson is a man in a secondhand -- hell, a thirdhand Padres t-shirt and a hair net -- a hair net, drumming the metal spoon against the side of the tray because his hand is trembling, a minute tremor that would be a bitch if Wilson were operating, and it's not because he's turned into a junkie. House has been watching him; his motions have been rote, but steady and sure, Wilson-like, until now.
Now he's not Wilson at all.
"Calm down," House says. But Wilson doesn't calm down -- instead he takes a step back from the serving line and raises that stupid metal spoon like he's going to use it to defend himself.
"Everything okay here, Doc?"
It's a huge, rumbling voice, belonging to a huge, rumbling guy who's materialized at House's side -- a biker dude, eyes hidden behind wraparound shades and his jacket conveniently left off so he can flash the colorful tattoos on his massive arms. The meaty bicep closest to House's nose carries a crimson heart dripping blood; across it is scrawled the legend MUTHA. House wonders for a moment if there's a matching tat on the other arm that says FUCKA, because surely that's what a biker dude who's cool enough to wear sunglasses at night would have, but he's more concerned by the fact that this is a guy who could have him down and kicked in the head in a heartbeat.
"Hi," House says. "You must be Grumpy."
The guy crosses his tree trunk arms on his chest; the cobra on his right forearm seems to uncoil and raise its hood in a menacing challenge.
"Wilson," House says, "come on, tell Lou Ferrigno here that everything's okay."
Nobody moves, and House is really starting to regret telling Detective Kasparov he could handle this by himself when yet another voice speaks up.
"Hello," the voice says, and House looks around. The owner of this voice is a guy about House's height, wearing a dark jacket. A patch of white at the throat. This guy's not a biker dude, he's a --
"I'm Father Desmond. I don't believe we've met."
-- he's a priest.
It's like talking to the cop all over again, except House keeps thinking he should say five Hail Marys and two Our Fathers, and he's not even Catholic. And so far he's done all the talking, while Wilson stares at his shoes and Father Desmond nods every now and then and murmurs "And then what?" and "Go on."
It's like the priest has heard it all before, and maybe he has. That's the thing about priests.
They're in the priest's office, a sad little affair with a banged-up desk, two chairs, an even more banged-up file cabinet in the corner. On the wall above that is a calendar, two years out of date.
"So," Father Desmond says at last. "Do you want to go home, Doc?"
And still Wilson sits there and stares at his shoes.
"Of course he does," House snaps.
"No, I don't," Wilson says, so softly that at first House doesn't hear him. He raises his head, then, and replies, not to House, but to Father Desmond.
"Not if everything's the same as when I left."
"Cuddy's not there, if that's what you mean," House says. The memory still stings. "Foreman's in charge."
"Is he in charge of you?"
"Is he ... "
"Are you still there?"
House swallows. This was a stupid idea, the little voice in his head taunts. The priest is doing that priest-y thing, eyes half-closed like he's weighing House's soul on the scales of the Inquisition.
"No," House says. "No, I'm not."
"Because you're dead."
House is aware of his mouth opening and closing.
"You were dead," Wilson continues. "Up here -- " He makes a vague gesture with one hand, finger pointing to his temple, bang! " -- you were dead."
The priest raises an eyebrow but says nothing.
"What was I supposed to think?" Wilson says. "What am I supposed to think now?" And then he sits back and scrubs at his eyes with his fists. He looks exhausted from speaking, like this is the most he's said at one time in years.
"What am I supposed to do now?" Wilson says. Because it's coming from behind his hands it sounds like "Wha amI spssd tdo nw?", but House has had decades of experience in interpreting muffled Wilson-speak, so he knows there's only one answer.
"You're supposed to come home with me," House says.
Father Desmond rises easily from behind the desk. "I'll be outside," he says. He gives House a pastoral pat on the shoulder and murmurs something House can't catch in Wilson's ear. House stares at the outdated calendar and tries to remember what he was doing in July 2008. Whatever it was, it was probably a lot more fun than what he's trying to do now.
It's quiet in the little office with the priest gone. House stares at the calendar some more but it doesn't change. He taps his cane on the floor. It doesn't change, either.
"I'm sorry about your brother," he says, hoping it's the right thing to say, and apparently it is because Wilson doesn't snap his head off for being a year behind.
"Thanks," Wilson says, then he stares at the calendar for a while. "I didn't go to his funeral," he says eventually. He says it matter-of-factly. "Or the unveiling."
"He probably didn't care," House says, and immediately kicks himself.
Wilson doesn't seem to mind. "No, he probably didn't."
They sit quietly for a few minutes.
"Look," House says. "What I said before -- I want you to come back with me."
Wilson shakes his head.
"I don't know," he says. He shakes his head again, starts to get up. "Don't push me on this, House."
I'm losing him, House thinks. He reaches into his pocket.
"Here," he says. "Take this. When you're ready, call me."
Wilson looks at the tab of pasteboard in his hand like he's never seen a business card before.
"What's this?" he says.
"It's the place where I'm staying."
Wilson studies the card.
"This is an RV park," he says.
"It's a long story."
"I've got time."
Outside, something rumbles, a low distant sound. Thunder. A truck going by. The blood pounding in House's ears. He doesn't fucking care.
"Okay," House says. "Okay." He begins to talk.
There's no telling how it will end.
EPILOGUE
House comes to dinner at the shelter for a week.
What that really means is: He eats elsewhere, then comes and drinks crappy coffee while Wilson has dinner, because shelter food is, let's face it, shelter food.
The first night, Wilson picks and scowls at his meal like he's hoping it will sit up, roll over, shake. When he's not doing that, he's toying with a disintegrating paperback novel, something he dug out of a bin somewhere, its cover torn off when the bookstore threw it out. It might be Moby-Dick or The Godfather, House can't tell which.
"I don't know what else to tell you," Wilson says. "I got in my car and I ... drove. And you weren't you, you were dying, you were dead."
"I feel pretty good, for a dead guy." House gets up. "See you tomorrow, Wilson."
On the second night, he brings dessert. Ice cream, butter pecan, a whole pint for each of them because he's seen how much space Wilson wants now, and "let's share" is a boundary he won't push.
Also, he knows how much ice cream Wilson can eat.
This time, Wilson puts down that damn book and decides he can have dessert first. "It'll melt," he explains, looking guilty as hell.
They don't talk.
By the fifth night, Wilson can almost look straight at him.
"I don't want to go where you're staying," Wilson says, on night six. "But I'll show you how it is here." He's scooting a single pea around his tray in a slow-motion chase. "I failed," he says. "I couldn't get it right. But I'm useful, to these people."
House gets up and leaves before he says what he wants to say.
It's for the best anyway, because Lou Ferrigno, who still watches his every move, would have killed him.
He spends day seven helping Wilson's ragtag crew of volunteers repaint the whole damn cafeteria.
It's boring-ass beige, though the five-gallon buckets are labeled Sandstone Fireplace, and they -- some of the volunteers who are not House -- are painting a giant cartoon rainbow across the east wall. Scatterbrained Steve wants to add a pot of gold, talks about it the whole time, but it isn't going to happen. Nobody on the crew can draw.
When it's done, with the fruit-stripe arch growing improbably up out of the floor, Wilson looks at him. Finally, really looks at him, and all the sudden it's really Wilson, with pale paint-freckles on his face, in his hair, caught in his eyebrows and even his lashes.
"I'll buy Chinese," House says.
"Okay."
And just like that, Wilson plunks his paint roller into the open bucket and heads for the door. It's weird; it's not like him, leaving it to someone else to clean up the mess. Except for that one time he did before, but hey, who's counting?
Wilson's no longer the universal donor. House would be delighted by this breakthrough if he weren't so pissed.
His leg is on fire, he's thirsty, and Wilson's moving a little too fast, a step ahead of him, eyes forward. No magic-rainbow transformations here in real life. The fortune cookies probably won't have any answers for him, either.
Wilson might, if and when Wilson eventually decides they can talk.
He reaches for the pills in his pocket, because it's that or ask Wilson to stop. He's swallowing a dose when Wilson looks back. There's no Wilsonian Are you okay?, not even a change in his expression, but he slows just enough to let House come up beside him.
It's almost all right, this way. Wherever they're walking, he'll cope.
~ fin