Chapter Text
House woke up to an empty bed. He tried not to feel like he messed the most important thing in his life up irreversibly. He tried not to think about how good he felt, and how hopeful Wilson made him. The pain in his leg reminded him he didn’t have to think about those things.
He took two vicodin.
He had been trying to wean off for the past month but it was difficult. He needed some sort of pain medication that was stronger than over the counter. Wilson was writing his scripts and would write him whatever he wanted, provided he had reason for it. But House didn’t want to do research about what other medications he could switch to, because that meant he would have to talk to Wilson.
He would have to see Wilson look proud and hopeful. Wilson didn’t understand how painful that could be. He would try to hide it often, knowing that House didn’t like to be noticed when he did good things, but he didn’t understand. House knew Wilson noticed whether or not he showed it.
House took a third vicodin for good measure.
Because he had been weaning himself, taking his usual dose actually did quite a lot for his leg. He was feeling pretty high, and if he ignored this morning’s walk of shame, he could pretend it was because he got laid so well yesterday.
Which, by the way, House never thought would happen. At the most, he thought they’d exchange handjobs, or if one of them was drunk enough, a blowjob. But House got properly railed last night. By Wilson! Married-to-his-third-wife Wilson!
House wondered just how much of this had to do with pain management. He had suspected Wilson was (probably subconsciously) manipulating him into finding a better outlet than vicodin. House wasn’t an idiot. He knew if he had approached im innocently and asked if they wanted to fuck, Wilson not only would have denied but also been a little homophobic about it. He also would have never taken it seriously, but that was beside the point.
Still, House didn’t stop it. How could he? This was the most he ever could get. And trying to have a real relationship would most likely destroy them both, if Wilson were out of the closet enough to actually commit to it. It was fine. He would take what he could get.
Work went okay. The ducklings noticed he was distracted which was annoying. He normally would have gone to Wilson at least once today, but the patient coded at lunch time, so he had to eat late.
Cameron sat with him for lunch, which was also annoying.
“Is something going on between you and Wilson?”
House rolled his eyes. “Why, are you afraid my undying love for him will interfere with your chances with me?” He said sarcastically.
Cameron scoffed.
“I meant you haven’t gone to see him once today.”
The thing about Cameron was that because of her infatuation, she was particularly attentive to House’s moods and actions. It wasn’t that he cared about that particularly, and if House had been younger, nicer, and less damaged, he would have probably gone for her ages ago. But had he been those things, she wouldn’t have been interested in him in the first place.
“And you think if I don’t check up on him every 10 minutes, he’ll forget I exist?”
“Something’s going on with you, House. I’m not saying you have to talk to me about it, but usually you talk to him.” She paused, really looking into his eyes. He knew she could see how dilated they were.
“You’ve been high all day. You’re taking much more than you have been.”
House averted his eyes. Why does she have to care so much? Her unrelenting gaze felt like it was burning his skin.
He tried not to show it. He pointed a fry at her. “It’s really none of your business. You only care because you think you can fix me. And that gets you off.”
“No,” she said. There was anger in her voice but it was bracketed by sincerity. “You being high as hell does put all of us at risk. Even when you were regularly using much more, you were always laser-focused on the patient. Today, she coded and you didn’t even care!”
This is why he kept them all at arms length. It always came back to this same argument. “It doesn’t matter if I care! It matters if I do my job. The patient is stable, our new diagnosis is about to be confirmed. How I’m feeling has no bearing—“
“Should have no bearing, but it does, House. You can’t pretend that your emotions don’t affect the world, or that the world doesn’t affect your emotions, just because you don’t want them to.”
She was talking to him like a toddler. He rubbed at his temples. “You know, it’s a shame your husband died before he could knock you up, because this would be a great lecture for a five-year old.
There was the fire, fully erupted in her eyes. He didn’t particularly enjoy upsetting her, but he didn’t hate it enough to value her emotional state more than his own. He needed this conversation to end.
It worked. Cameron never was very formidable when it came to these kind of conversations. He was surprised she lasted this long. She got up and left without another word. When she was out of the cafeteria, he put his head in his hands and sighed. He wanted to pop another vicodin, but knew that he was pushing it dosage wise. He didn’t need to OD because he couldn’t handle a little argument with his underling.
...
As it turned out, the diagnosis was not confirmed. And the treatment they had put the patient on gave her a new symptom, which was good for her diagnostician, but not really pleasent for her. House had it narrowed down to a few possibilities, but it was hard to think with his team blabbering in the background.
“What causes pulmonary edema?”
“It could be the drugs we put her on, the stress on her kidneys could cause the fluid back up,” Foreman said pointedly. House ignored him.
“Could be cardiomyopathy, myocarditis, really any heart problem that could have been hiding.” Cameron said.
“Would’ve shown on the EKG. Maybe she threw a clot after surgery. It’s an embolism.” Chase said.
Cameron argued, still holding tight to her heart idea. “Run the EKG again, see if something’s changed. Maybe the drugs we put her on—“
House cut her off, unhappy with all their ideas. “What else?”
Chase was the only one brave enough to say something stupid. “She was kinda out of it earlier. Took a few times to get her attention.”
“Heart rate?”
“A little high but within normal range,” Chase replied.
“High is high. If she’s having simple partial seizures, that could be what we’re missing. Do a CT and an EEG,” House said.
“She has had no trauma,” Cameron said, “No history of seizures.”
House ignored her. He turned away to indicated that his instructions were instructions and not an argument.
“Oh, and check for clots while you’re at it.” He said. Chase and Foreman looked at each other and then left to do their jobs.
Cameron, annoyingly, stayed behind.
“You’re mad at me.”
“No, your ideas are stupid. Did I forget to mention that? Do you want me to say it in front of the class next time?” House was writing on his white board the new symptoms.
“You usually do,” Cameron muttered under her breath.
“What causes simple partial seizures, muscle weakness and elevated BP?” House said.
“We don’t know that she’s having simple partial seizures.”
“Humor me.”
“Could be autoimmune.”
“ANA was negative.”
“Could be metabolic, an endocrine disorder, alcohol withdrawal,” Cameron said.
House turned back toward her and nodded, “Go talk to the patient, check her calcium. If it’s parathyroid then it could explain why she came in with fractures in the leg. Get images of her neck, 30 bucks says there’s a tumor.”
Cameron just sighed and nodded, running off to do her job, finally.
House went to sit in his office. Technically, he could go home now. The team are running their tests, and they are most likely right on this diagnosis. If the patient was having partial seizures, that would be explained by a tumor on the parathyroid. If that wasn’t it then they were all shit outta luck.
The vicodin bottle was tempting him from his jacket pocket. It had been a hard day, and Cameron wasn’t even wrong which was the worst part. The drugs did affect his work. He should have caught this this morning. Had he spent time with the patient, or if his team wasn’t so oblivious that they missed the simple partial seizures, this could have been a good day for all parties involved.
House fiddled with the bottle, the sound of the few pills rattling around tickled something in the recesses of his brain. It made him feel like pavlov’s dog. The comparison made him think of Wilson. He grimaced. He really was gay for his best friend.
He thought about marching over to Wilson’s office like he had been these past few weeks, demanding a little masochism to manage his state. Wilson would already think it was weird that he hadn’t stopped over, especially because they had sex last night. That would be hard enough for Wilson to compute on a normal day. One where House is avoiding him?
That’s why he wasn’t surprised when Wilson walked into his office.
“Shouldn’t you be home to your wife by now?” House said with a level of bitterness that he was not expecting to express. He wanted to push Wilson away to avoid this whole conversation, but he was shocked at how much he actually felt what he said.
The concerned, open expression Wilson had been wearing faded into blank and irritated. Good, this was familiar territory. This was something House could control.
“Cameron told me you were high today,” Wilson said.
“That snitch! That’s the last time I ask her if she wants a bump of my cocaine,” House said sarcastically.
Wilson just rubbed at the bridge of his nose, but he wasn’t waylaid by House’s levity.
“If you are avoiding me because of what happened yesterday, that’s fine. We don’t have to do that again. But you don’t have to stop coming to me altogether,” He said.
It made House seethe. “How very grown up of you, to fuck me in the ass and then throw me away,” He meant it, but said it mostly for the shock factor. He knew Wilson wouldn’t take it at face value. He continued on about what this really was about, “It’s real mature to write me a prescription for vicodin and then condemn me for using it.”
House knew that Wilson indulging House’s masochist-like tendencies was another cheap ploy at trying to fix him. That was clear from how sweetly Wilson had treated him, how generous he was as a lover. To admit that he knew this was also admitting that he was desperate enough to still run to him for it anyways.
The look of shock on Wilson’s face was too raw. It was good, because it meant that hopefully this conversation would end faster. It was also painful to look at.
Wilson trudged on as best he could. “I told you that your sobriety has nothing to do with—“
“Bullshit!” House stood up. “If it wasn’t for my attempt at sobriety, none of this would have happened. You just want to relieve your guilt for enabling my addiction all these years.”
Wilson moved closer to him, not backing down like House expected. He put his hands up defensively.
“Sorry for caring about you! Sorry for seeing you suffer and wanting to help!”
House was reminded of Cameron’s conversation earlier, how simliar the two were. Too moralistic, too caring to see that their love was painful. Was sometimes cruel.
The difference between Cameron and Wilson, despite both being attracted to him for his brokenness, was that Wilson didn’t want to fix him, not really. Where Cameron was idealistic, Wilson was pragmatic. It’s why he was an oncologist. He needed to face the worst of things.
The epiphany came together cleanly, slotting all of their previous interactions into context.
“What, House?” Wilson said to House’s distant gaze, “Are you about to bust out of here and save your patient?”
“You like me because you can’t fix me. You like me because I’m broken.” House said.
They stared at each other in silence. Wilson opened his mouth a couple times, as if to say something, then closed it.
House left Wilson standing in his office and went home.