Chapter Text
Heat Wave
"What are you doing?" House says, although it's pretty obvious what Wilson is doing with that silvery tri-fold contraption.
And sure enough, Wilson says "What does it look like I'm doing? I'm getting a tan," and he adjusts the foil just a tad so that the reflection shines more evenly on his jawline.
It's the last summer on Earth, and they're on the hospital roof with a pitcher of vodka martinis. It's warm in the sun, with the tar baking off, and it's reminding House of the time he spent working for the State of Florida when he was sixteen, patching potholes on US 41. There had been a woman there, a blue uniform, supervisor of something or other. She'd worn aviator glasses, had dark hair, a sweet laugh, a Spanish name ... House relaxes into the memory and is just beginning to drift into a pleasant nap when he hears the soft skritch! of a match.
"What are you doing now?" he grumbles, although this is just as obvious as before. Wilson takes a long drag on his cigarette.
"Smoking," he says. He blows the smoke out and it hangs in the sunlit air. "Should've started this a long time ago," he mumbles.
"Yeah," House says. "Would have been great, except for that whole lung-cancer thing."
Wilson laughs. He holds the cigarette between thumb and forefinger, inspecting it.
"Well," he says, and replaces the cigarette between his lips, talking around it. "What does that matter now?"
And there's really no answer to that question, so House doesn't.
The news had come four months ago, although no one was really sure what the news was, only that it was bad. The sun had a mote in its great golden eye and was dying. Or it was getting hotter. The Earth was going to blacken to a cinder. The Earth was going to freeze in a giant globular popsicle. Either way it was doomsday. If House really thinks about it, which he doesn't like to do, it reminds him of the Twilight Zone episode from when he was a kid, the one where you thought you knew what was happening until the very end when Rod Serling pulled the rug out from under you. The bastard.
House stands in the California/Chile aisle of the liquor store, trying to decide between a Cabernet and a Cabernet.
"Hello!" one of the wine guys says brightly. "Can I help you find something today?"
It's not the wine guy House has talked to in the past, the guy with hornrim glasses who's almost tolerable.
"You're not the guy," House says, and this guy blinks. "You're not the guy I usually talk to," House clarifies, and why he's even bothering with this he can't say.
The wine guy -- Leopold, his name tag says, and who the hell names their kid Leopold? -- blinks again. Then his eyes brighten and his expression clears.
"Oh, you must mean Anthony!" he says. "Yeah, Anthony!"
"Anthony."
"Like in the prayer, you know," Leopold hastens to explain. "The lost things prayer."
House stares at him.
"You know," Leopold insists. "Something's lost and can't be found; please, Saint Anthony, look around."
"Uh huh," House says.
"Well," Leopold says. He shifts a little on his feet, seems suddenly to remember he's in a liquor store, aisles full of bottles of dark wine with fanciful labels. "Well. He's ... not here anymore, sir. He went to Canada." His eyes flick once, toward the overhead sign reading Brandy/Cognac/Port/Sherry. "Canada," Leopold repeats. "It's cooler there."
House decides to forego the Cabernet and buys a bottle of bourbon instead, but when he gets home there's no ice in the freezer and he has to drink it neat.
It burns his throat going down.
"Why is everyone going to Canada?" House says.
Cuddy doesn't look up from her paperwork. "It's cooler there," she says. Now she does glance up, one appraising look, then returns her attention to Form 1060-1A. "Why? Are you thinking about going?"
"What?" House deadpans. "And leave this tropical paradise?"
It's dark in her office, and almost cool, with the shutters closed again the sun.
There are ice cream places opening in what used to be shoe stores or cell phone shops. Lines form, lines of wilted people with their faded umbrellas reflecting watery heat waves back at the burning sky.
He thinks he'll grab a couple cones, a cherry for himself and a butter pecan for Wilson, and then he remembers it'll melt before he gets back to the hospital, and then he remembers Wilson isn't there anymore. Why does he keep forgetting? He'd gone to Wilson's office, then his apartment, and they'd both been the same -- empty rooms, no furniture, no Wilson.
Canada, says the building manager.
Was it yesterday? Maybe it was last week.
He gets two cones anyway.
As he comes out of the makeshift shop -- it wasn't here last week and there may not be a next week -- a little girl stands bawling on the sidewalk. Damp curls are flattened against her forehead, and her face is tinged blue by the light coming through her tattered Spongebob parasol. She is wailing for her mommy, who seems not to be around.
Canada, House thinks, barely pausing his stride. Mommy probably caught the last train north.
He's at the doors of PPTH when it dawns on him that he's got two hands full of rapidly melting ice cream, and no cane. And no limp. It's been how long since he last took a pill? He keeps forgetting that, too.
He eats the second cone out of spite. Fuck Wilson, leaving without him like that. They probably don't even have butter pecan in Canada.
House goes back to the liquor store, but his new best friend Leopold isn't there. Not only is Leopold not there, nobody's there. The liquor bottles -- gin, vodka, tequila -- glitter down the long aisles. The empty aisles.
"Hello?," House says, just to hear himself. "Hello?" The red eye of a security camera blinks at him, and he waves at the lens. He keeps waving, faster and faster, and has to make himself stop.
The Oncology lounge is empty, too, but its sofa -- provided by Wilson and therefore truly comfortable -- remains, and so does the nice big TV, and thus it's an ideal place to sit and drink the bottle of bourbon he maybe stole, or maybe simply took. It's hard to tell the difference anymore.
The television works, but there are only a handful of stations still on the air, and half of those are broadcasting live from abandoned studios, the cameras forgotten or deliberately left rolling, aimed at empty desks and chairs.
Somewhere in Canada, it turns out, the crew from CNN soldiers on.
House sips at his last glass of bourbon as he watches the last TV broadcast on Earth. He knows this because CNN keeps running a crawl in bright red panic-mode letters at the bottom of the screen saying LAST BROADCAST ON EARTH.
"We're at the North Pole, and it's our last broadcast on Earth!" Wolf Blitzer declares, adding to the redundancy rumpus.
The North Pole looks awfully warm for this time of year -- the crowds of people behind good old Wolf are in various stages of undress, wearing everything from shorts to bikinis to full-body wetsuits. Most of them are celebrating, drinking alcoholic beverages in neon-bright colors with tiny parasols stuck in the glasses. Far in the background, white blobs with black noses amble around on the green grass; House supposes they may be bewildered polar bears. He hopes half-heartedly that one of them will eat Wolf Blitzer.
"Our science correspondents are telling us," Wolf proclaims, then pauses to take a healthy slurp from a straw of what appears to be a frozen strawberry daiquiri, "our science correspondents are telling us that there's less than an hour left until -- "
But whatever might happen in that less than an hour is lost as the TV suddenly fades to black, Wolf and the polar bears and the celebrants at the end of the world all gone as the picture dwindles to a tiny white dot and then disappears completely.
Ideally, House would like to just stay here, drinking until the sky fills up with the biggest barbecue ever, but he can't. His glass is empty and so is the bottle.
So he might as well go out and face whatever's out there.
The north side of the university campus is as deserted as everywhere else. Not everything is gone, though -- birds are singing, and a pair of squirrels follow him from a safe distance, hoping for peanuts or popcorn or some other human treat.
He's approaching Firestone Library, its double-arched doors outlined in sharp black shadows, when he sees the elderly man standing on the steps of the harp sculpture out front. Somehow House is not surprised that it's his father.
"What do you think of this?" John House gestures toward the sculpture. "This ... thing?"
"It's a Jacques Lipchitz," House says.
The old man shakes his head. "Lipchitz, shitchitz," he grumbles. "Modern crap." He turns away, the Cubist work beneath his contempt.
"You'll never find it," he says to House.
House sighs. "Never find what, Dad?"
John House shakes his head again. "You'll never find it," he repeats.
The birds have stopped singing. The wind rises.
House feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, the hairs on his arms prickle.
It's coming, he thinks, even as the sky cracks open, even as the light blinds him to everything, a photo flash so bright he shields his eyes and squints against the shadows.
It's coming it's coming it's coming --
Wilson's face hovers above his own, except Wilson is wearing ... a white feather boa ... no, wait, it's a hood, a red hood with a white fur ruff. Wilson's ...
"Esk'mo," House rasps, and god, his throat is so dry and sore. "Wils'n."
"What?" Wilson says. "House? Are you awake?"
"Wilson," House says, but maybe it's only in his mind that he says it. "You went to Canada. The North Pole. You killed a polar bear."
Are you listening to yourself? an exasperated voice in his head says. Wilson killed a polar bear?
"Eskimo," House says, clearly, he hopes. "You ... you went to Canada. Became an Eskimo."
Wilson sighs. "As much fun as that sounds, I didn't go to Canada. I've been here the whole time."
Somewhere a choir is singing, children's voice and chiming hand-bells.
Hell, House thinks. I'm in Hell, and that's the Hell choir.
He tries to reach for Wilson's fur ruff; his hand trembles, but Wilson takes it and guides it gently to the white fur ... which isn't real fur. It takes House a moment to see it, but when he does, it all becomes clear.
"Ho ho ho," Wilson says with a crooked smile, because Wilson isn't an Eskimo.
He's Santa Claus.
"I promised the kids," Wilson says.
"You promised the kids," House repeats, still stuck on processing the possibility that James Wilson is actually a jolly fat man with a pack of reindeer.
"The Oncology kids," Wilson says.
"The Oncology kids," House says.
"For Christmas," Wilson says. "Next week is Christmas, House. Santa RSVP'd for the party for the kids."
House isn't terribly surprised. Wilson would do anything for the Pediatric Oncology patients, up to and including shaving his head one memorable year in solidarity with one of the Lollipop League Cancer Guild Munchkins. Still, he has to make sure.
"So," House says, " ... the Earth isn't falling into the Sun? It's not 134 degrees outside?"
Wilson blinks. "I think I'd have noticed if it was." He nods toward the window. "And I don't believe it would be snowing."
House turns his head. Slowly. Everything aches, and his joints need oiling. Fat white flakes drift past the window.
"This is real," House murmurs. "Is this real?"
"It's real," Wilson says. "House, it's real." He still has hold of House's hand.
He could hold it forever, as far as House is concerned.
to be continued December 31st