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House had had the feeling that it was going to be a bad pain day around lunchtime.
Given the lack of a case, he’d sent his team down the clinic and the ER. This served the purpose of both finding him a new distraction and getting them off his back, so that at least was a double win. Normally on days like this, he’d go and bother Wilson to take his mind off things, but Wilson had made him promise not to bother him all morning in exchange for a week off chores and macadamia nut pancakes. So here he was, holed up in his office watching his little television and pretending to be doing paperwork in case Cuddy walked in.
It was a fairly standard and dull morning, and House found himself glancing at the clock, wishing the minutes would crawl along just a little faster so that lunch would finally arrive. Apart from morphine, distractions were the best thing on days like this. Wilson, in particular, seemed to be one of the best distractions. Wilson had been a mystery to him ever since he’d met him, and the mystery had only increased year by year. This was especially true since they’d started dating. Wilson was an enigma, and on these sort of days an enigma was exactly what House needed.
Which is why a case would have been appreciated, if only his bastard team could manage to find one.
Of course, nobody from his team showed their faces, and so the minutes continued to drag slowly onwards. Television quickly became boring and he clicked it off, opting to toss his oversized tennis ball against the wall. When he failed to catch it and it rolled slowly over and bounced back against the door, coming to a stop in the middle of the floor, he found he couldn’t face getting up and so decided to get a nap in, whilst he still could. It wasn’t like he’d be sleeping much that night.
Mercifully midday finally arrived with a gentle knock on the door. House, who hadn’t really been sleeping, lifted his head from his desk just in time to see Wilson poking his head around the door.
“Ready for lunch?” the oncologist asked. House nodded as he mentally steeled himself for standing up. He of course fortified this with a couple of pills before grabbing his cane, taking a deep breath and standing.
Almost immediately his leg gave way beneath him, and he found himself glad that he hadn’t moved from behind his desk so he didn’t end up on the floor. He let out a low grunt as he collapsed back down into his office chair. Wilson’s brow furrowed in that infuriatingly worried way and he came fully into the office, shutting the door behind him. “You okay?” he said.
“Fine,” House muttered. He gestured to his leg. “Leg just... fell asleep.”
“Uh huh,” Wilson said. He didn’t sound convinced. “Nothing to do with the fact you’ve been taking way more pills than normal and can barely stand?”
“I am fine,” House said through gritted teeth. Wilson gave him a look then, a particular look that House both loved and loathed.
“I’ll get lunch and bring it up here,” he said. Closing his eyes and looking away, House nodded. Wilson came over, leaning down and pressing a soft kiss to his lover’s lips. “You want me to send your team up here so you can look over the cases then yell at them for being idiots?”
“I love you,” House said as he opened his eyes. Wilson smiled at him, kissing him quickly again before heading out of the office.
House put his head down on the desk, and tried to ignore the pain gripping his thigh.
***
Lunch helped: a little. Talking to Wilson and listening to him witter on about some patient or other helped take his mind off his leg for a short while, at least. He’d been intending to yell at his team, but then Kutner had produced an interesting file out of nowhere and so the afternoon had been spent deciphering the patient’s surprisingly long and extremely patchy medical history. It had been something to do and it had stopped his leg hurting.
Until the patient stabilised, the medication he’d prescribed was actually working and the pain returned with a vengeance.
He’d been half-expecting the medication to fail (undiagnosed cystic fibrosis had been a long shot anyway) and so had been planning on spending the night at the hospital. He’d even texted Wilson to warn him that he might not be home that night. The patient stabilising meant that he had no excuse to stay at the hospital, and luckily he managed to catch Wilson in his office.
“Need the ride after all,” he said as he limped into his boyfriend’s office. Said boyfriend looked up from his paperwork.
“Patient stabilised?” he asked.
“Somehow.”
“What, you don’t think you’re right?”
“I don’t know.”
At this point House began to pace the short length of the office, as his leg kept complaining if he kept it in one position for too long. He could feel Wilson’s concerned gaze on him as he pulled out his Vicodin bottle and popped a couple of pills.
“You okay?” Wilson asked.
“Fine,” House lied.
The pain, of course, only got worse from here on in. That was always the way it was. Throughout the remainder of the evening (Wilson had patient files to finish up) he continued to pace up and down the corridor, his own office and anywhere else he could find really, taking more and more pills. He kept taking them even after they stopped working and became pretty much ineffective, serving no purpose except pushing him one step closer to something dangerous.
He was sitting on the floor in the corridor, massaging his leg with one hand and staring at his whiteboard through the glass walls when Wilson finally emerged. The oncologist gave his partner a strange look, glancing between him and the office in confusion. Then he shrugged and came over, lowering himself down to sit next to him.
“Staring at the board won’t change the fact that the patient’s getting better,” he said.
“Something’s going to happen,” House said, staring determinedly at the board.
“Maybe you’re just right first time,” Wilson reasoned, leaning his head back against the wall and looking at his boyfriend. House mumbled something inaudible in reply as he shook his head. “It does happen sometimes, you know.”
“But not to me,” House replied, his voice tight.
“You’re in pain,” Wilson said. House groaned, finally looking away from the whiteboard to lean his head back and look at the ceiling. “You want this to be a complicated case because then you don’t have to think about your leg.”
“Or I don’t want this patient to die,” House said. He accompanied this with a glare. Wilson rolled his eyes.
“You can’t do anything here,” he said. “So are you coming home or are you going to sit here and wallow in self-pity all night?”
There was a pause.
“I’ll come home,” House muttered. Wilson gave him a small smile, getting up from the floor and offering his hand to House. The diagnostician took it for once as he struggled upwards, leaning more heavily on his cane than normal.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Wilson asked.
House thwacked him in the shins with his cane.
***
The couch had never looked more comfortable, House thought when they finally got home.
“What do you want for dinner?” Wilson asked as he dumped his briefcase by the door and headed towards the kitchen. House shrugged, hanging up his cane on the ceiling beam and limping over to the couch. He was tempted to throw himself down onto it, but he didn’t want to jar his leg any more than it already was and so gently eased himself down onto it, propping his leg up on the arm of the couch. “We can get takeout...”
“I don’t care...” House said, trailing off purposefully and glaring at his boyfriend. Wilson rolled his eyes.
“Well, I’m going to get Chinese. I’ll order you some in case you decide to stop being an ass.”
Normally House would have glared or shot back some snarky remark, but all of his energy was being spent on trying to ignore the pulsing pain in his thigh and so he just kept quite. Over in the kitchen Wilson furrowed his eyebrows and tried not to worry himself too much.
The night progressed how most others in the House-Wilson household did. That is to say, they ate dinner in front of the Discovery Channel (well, Wilson ate dinner and House stole the occasional forkful from his boyfriend’s plate), they had the small inevitable argument about the dishes and then Wilson gave House a quick kiss on the lips and traipsed off to bed.
House waited until he heard Wilson’s soft snores start to drift through the apartment (almost two hours after Wilson had left the living room) before he let out a low grunt of pain, digging his fingers into his mangled thigh. The pain was reaching a crescendo now, coursing through not just his leg but his entire body, even through his mind. It was a strange sensation, one which House had tried to explain to Wilson many times but had yet to succeed in doing so successfully. It was like everything in the world dulled, except for his leg which burned bright like white-hot iron against everything else.
He wasn’t sure how long he ended up sitting there, gripping his thigh whilst he cursed Stacy and the surgery and the blood clot and everything else he could think to blame this shitty existence he was living in on. In fact, the only non-shitty thing was Wilson.
It always came back to Wilson, in the end. Every time, without fail, when something happened it always came back to Wilson. After the infarction, when he woke up from the coma to an explosion of pain and with Stacy unable to face him? Wilson was the one slumped in a chair in the corner fast asleep, having cut his research trip short. When Stacy left for good, leaving him crippled and alone? Wilson moved in to make sure he didn’t hurt himself any more than he was already hurt. The one, two suicide attempts? He’d always woken up to Wilson and an impending lecture at his side. It was always him.
House loved him, in some messed-up way Wilson loved him back and that was what kept him going.
A rustling startled him from his brooding thoughts. He looked around the room, realising the only light in the room was that of the television, which was now playing shitty late-night infomercials. A quick glance at his watch told him that it had just gone two a.m. Ugh. It was too late for this shit. He tried to shift, but the pain flared and he let out a strangled cry.
Then, like a knight in shining armour, Wilson appeared in the doorway.
Well, it was less knight-in-shining-armour and more exhausted-oncologist-in-pyjama-pants-and-nothing-else, but honestly House was more appreciative of the latter. Wilson kissed him and had sex with him and made him pancakes, and all the former could do was clunk around the apartment and knock stuff over. No, Wilson was definitely preferable to a knight.
“Still up?” Wilson mumbled as he rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand. House nodded, moving his head back on the arm of the couch to look at his boyfriend.
“Can’t sleep,” he said. His voice was low and gruff.
“Is it your leg?”
He nodded. Wilson made a slight face as he stumbled over and sat himself down on the floor next to the couch. House had noted over time that Wilson was particularly calm when he was half-asleep. It was a look he liked on his boyfriend. Wilson leaned over and put his head where House’s arm was sitting on the couch. Unconsciously the diagnostician stretched his fingers out and began to fuss with Wilson’s hair. “You’re so brave,” Wilson mumbled. “I don’t think I could deal with it.”
“You could,” House said. “You’d probably deal with it without being addicted to pain pills.”
Wilson made a small noise, flapping his hand in a way that was equally dismissive and incredibly homosexual. It made House smile a little.
“You’re great,” Wilson said. He was so asleep that House wasn’t quite sure if he meant it or not, but somehow the words will still comforting.
“Thanks, Wilson.”
“No problem.” The oncologist yawned a little, turning his head to the side and nuzzling into House’s hand. “Mm. I’m gonna sleep.”
“Go back to bed, you’ll hurt your back sleeping like that,” House said concernedly. Wilson shrugged, waving his hand again.
“Wanna make sure you’re okay.”
House allowed himself a small smile. Yeah. Maybe he would be okay. Wilson was here. Everything always turned out okay when Wilson was here.
“I’ll be fine,” he murmured. “Go to bed.”
Wilson shook his head.
“Love you,” he whispered. “Gotta make sure you’re okay.”
House smiled, allowed the issue to slip and finally started to feel the leg pain recede a little.