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It's Christmas and he's still alive.
Grateful? Yes. Of course! But also… suspicious.
"What did you do?" he asks House over breakfast, in the house on the shore they’ve ended up in, rented by the week. His money's on being slipped oral chemo in his morning orange juice, along with anti-nausea meds; he's checked his chest for scars and is 97% sure House didn't drug him and operate on him one night. But you never know.
"Last night? Blew you, don't you remember?" House adds hand gestures, in case Wilson has forgotten.
"Not that."
"Good. I'd like to think I'm moderately memorable."
Extremely memorable. Knees still a little trembly from it. But that's not the point. "Have you been drugging me?"
In some relationships this question would be an unusual one. In theirs, it means it's a day ending in y.
"I handed you one beer! Why am I the bad guy?"
"Not last night. In general. Have you been - treating me?"
"Only to my rocking bod." House blinks. "Are you serious?"
"I'm still here," Wilson says. "I feel - okay. Not great, but pretty spry for a dead man."
House sighs dramatically. "Don't make me explain this to you. Cancer is so boring."
"You don't think it's interesting that I'm still hanging around?"
"I think there's endless journal articles about why people beat the odds. Didn't you have a scrapbook for them?"
Wilson did not have a scrapbook, because he is not a twelve-year-old girl. He may have had a folder in his filing cabinet. Sometimes - back in those days when he was a doctor and not a patient - he needed to be reminded that miracles could happen. He needed to be able to help other people believe they might, alongside helping them survive when they didn’t.
"But why me?" he says. He hasn't been undergoing treatment, or eating particularly healthily, or been surrounded by a warm loving family. He knows what survival stories look like, and motorbiking cross-country with your best friend and spending half your time in bed together is not it.
House exhales. "Meta-analysis of all those little fuzzy feel-good stories tells you what? What are the two key things that correlate with longer survival?" He's almost yelling by the end of it.
Oh. "Oh."
He's been thinking about the individual stories. House, of course, has been thinking about the complete data set.
The first key factor that correlates with longer survival rates, with out-living what is always an estimate anyway, is a dramatic lifestyle change.
He gave up a stressful, demanding job where he hardly saw sunlight to go and - live his life. He hikes. He runs. He gobbles up nature and the world and new experiences like there's no tomorrow, because there isn't. He laughs far more than he cries, even though this disease has given him plenty to cry about.
The second key factor is love. Being loved. Having someone to care for you. To stick around for. It's correlation, not causation, let’s be clear on that; he's seen too many deeply-loved patients die to imagine otherwise.
"Okay," he says softly, nodding.
"Do you want your Christmas present or not?" House says impatiently.
"Should I get undressed?"
"Later, you perv." House hands him a book.
D'entre les morts, 1954. A first edition, using the original title. After the film adaptation, four years later, the English editions used that title exclusively. Vertigo.
"House." Wilson traces a finger along the spine. "Thank you." He opens it up to the first page, wishing his French was better - but of course (of course) House has a plan involving reading-aloud-to-him as foreplay and of course (of course) it works.
A week later, he welcomes in a new year, a date on the calendar he was sure he'd never see.
He picks out the Carver poem in February, suspects by April it's almost time for it. In May, House mutters "I love you" into his hair. That's when he knows.
A week or so before he dies, he finds himself thinking about Tucker. “What an idiot,” he murmurs.
“What?” House doesn’t leave his side now.
“Tucker.”
“Who?”
“You remember. My friend who -”
“Yeah, yeah, he has half your liver and a fucking child-bride. Does he know your name yet, Jim?”
“Not a chance, Apartment.” Wilson presses a kiss into the crook of House’s arm. “He said this thing - about how the people you want around you when you're dying aren't…"
He's cut off by House sticking his fingers in his ears and insisting loudly "Can't hear you!", which is the latest go-to response for whenever Wilson acknowledges what's happening.
Wilson reaches out and puts a hand on the back of House's neck, ever so gently, the tiniest of touches to say, this is serious. It's the one thing that immediately stills him.
"I feel sorry for him," Wilson says.
House stares at him. "That creep has a hot piece of ass to come home to and a piece of your fucking liver keeping him alive and you feel sorry for him?"
"Yeah."
"This is more moronic than usual. Even for you." House leans over and inspects his pupils. "It doesn't look like a stroke."
“Looks can be deceiving,” Wilson says with a sigh. And then, “House. I’m tired. I’m - I’m ready.”
“I’m not,” he growls back immediately.
“I know.”
House presses a kiss to his forehead. “Not tonight. I have a headache.”
Wilson smiles. “Not tonight.”
He lasts another few weeks. His unease with becoming more dependent on House is counterbalanced by kisses, whispers, reassurances. Things he’d thought would never be okay become okay.
But. He is vanishing from this world and he wants to do it on his own terms.
You’ll never have as much time as you want, Amber whispers.
“I love you,” he tells her ghost.
“I love you,” he tells the world.
“I love you,” he tells House.
Everybody dies.
But he thinks, he was loved. He thinks, he did it right. He thinks, despite all his sins, he was loved.