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Wilson supposes it all started with his mirror. Or his scales. His razor? It all blurs together into an obscurity he doesn’t like to think about. It’s paradoxical, how he’s easily one of the most detail-oriented in the hospital, and yet he throws back pills at home once the focus is too vivid, too piercing.
Hypocrite, House had said, acerbic, after spotting an empty pill bottle in Wilson’s bin.
You're a racoon, he had shot back. Get out of my trash.
House pointedly shrugged, and Wilson had changed the subject to his latest case.
(Despite what Wilson wants to believe, House notes down signs, catalogues Wilson's symptoms. He's found one pill bottle already, and he hasn't had lunch with Wilson in two weeks. He's always wearing his lab coat, even in the stickiness of the hospital in summer. Outside of work, he usually wears his McGill sweatshirt, or something with long sleeves.
House knows that everything Wilson does is pointing to the deep end of the swimming pool, a danger zone, but sometimes Wilson's so smart about how he hides it, House can barely get a mothering jab in sideways before the topic switches, or the door clicks shut, or a pager goes off.
He's experienced, House realises over time, and it’s a fact which kindles something much too raw and overwhelming—worry spiraling like a helix around him, concern quietly lacing his voice.
House doesn't think anyone notices it. Hell, he even tries not to notice it himself.)
The eye of a hurricane, he nearly announces drily one evening—he's sick of turning a blind eye to Wilson's dangerous habits, tired of going to bed with it heavy on his mind, replaying and replaying and replaying every tilt of his head or quiver of his fingers.
Noting Wilson's knowing stare at the table, House decides to use a different tactic.
“Admit it,” he starts, leaning forward. Wilson chews on his cheek, hands twisting in his lap. “Admit it, admit it, admit it—”
“Is that really your plan?” Wilson interrupts. “Torturing the truth you want to hear out of me?”
“You want to hear it too,” he says sharply.
Wilson stares at nothing but the blue of House’s eyes, cradling silence between his fingers. He mulls over what House has just said, his nails carving small crescents into his palm.
“You want to,” House repeats, leaning back onto the chair. He’s not proud of the truth he’s extracted out of Wilson’s silence; he’s sad, almost. Melancholic. Wilson can almost smell it brewing in the air like coffee, something bitter. “You can’t say it to yourself, you need someone else to tell you.”
Wilson looks down at his hands again, streaked with blotchy red. The pale skin over his knuckles is stretched, making his bones ever more prominent, and he thinks he might collapse if this reminds him about the number of ribs he can see in front of his mirror, or the cut of his hips that he skims his fingertips over so often every night. The scars that make him wonder what it would feel like if his blade touched more than blood, more than flesh. Bone.
House stares at him, and Wilson wishes he could actually read what’s going on in his head. The ringing in his ears carries on, until all that’s left is a blurring echo pulsing right in the corner of his sternum.
Wilson realises that he’s hungry, and he tries to swallow it down with spit. It tastes like acid. He tries to get accustomed to the taste.
“You’re hungry,” House observes, pushing forward a plate. It’s not too full, there’s two slices of white bread. One hundred and fifty, Wilson’s mind supplies. That’s probably too much. He could always eat less than that, he’s done it before. Maybe only one piece of bread, without the crust. House would never let that go, though.
“I can’t eat that,” he says, pushing it back. If House notices his shaking fingers, he doesn’t say anything, thankfully.
“I thought you might say that.” House reaches into his bag, pulling out an apple. He studies the younger man’s fixed look at the table. “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” he recites, deadpan. “Eat this and I’ll leave you alone.”
Wilson knows what he’s doing. “House, stop it.”
“What, your mama never made you eat an apple?”
“You’re not my mom.”
“Well, that would make the sex uncomfortable,” House says loudly.
“House,” Wilson hisses.
“Wilson,” House imitates, throwing the apple into Wilson’s hands. “Bullseye.”
Carefully, Wilson turns over the apple, fitting snugly in his palms, fingertips drifting over the rises and dips of the fruit. He tilts his head, eyelids sinking, as he tries to scramble together fleeting numbers and percentages. If he eats the whole thing, that would be—
“Seventy calories, give or take,” House finishes for him, raising his eyebrows as he rattles off the statistics. “Point eight grams of fat, around seventeen grams of carbs, nearly one gram of protein.”
“Wh—why are you telling me this?”
House shrugs. “Sorry, I figured you were trying to replace food with numbers.”
Wilson wonders if he's as translucent as the old glass shards on his bathroom floor—House is seeing right through him, as Wilson expected him to eventually do, but it's too sudden. He hasn't mentally prepared himself well enough to be pieced apart by House's annoyingly perceptive observations. Especially not in his own home, where he knows House could stay as long as he likes without any interruptions, picking at threads until the entire fucking tapestry gets unravelled.
He swallows, pulling his sleeves down, and carves space for a perfect lie in the stone wall of his mouth.
“I’m not trying to starve myself, House,” he bites out, tone perfect, before his teeth dig into the apple.
The sweetness is almost sickly, slipping straight to his stomach. Wilson imagines the red staining his lungs, his veins. Spreading faster than he can stop it. Viral, his mind whispers. Whispers, or screams? All he can feel are an arachnid’s legs, crawling and scattering, multiplying out of his control. Too much.
It's all too much.
"Relax," House says, studying him. "You barely made a dent in it. You're fine."
Like all other moments, the nausea passes as Wilson places the apple back on the table. His heartbeat seems to have receded back into the confines of his ribs in the span of a few seconds, unsettling him.
The silence that follows is tangible—Wilson wonders how much of his panic House saw through, resorting to cracking his knuckles and relishing the click as a distraction.
"Jimmy," House says carefully, and it unnerves Wilson. "Take another bite."
No, he almost screams. He already feels mismatched, smudged like a rushed oil painting, the silhouettes of his organs tainted with too much food. His skin itches, the spiders wrapping lithe limbs around him.
"Why?" he says instead. "I'm fine, House, you saw me eat it."
"I saw you eat it and nearly throw it up," House corrects. "I'm starting to get an idea of what this really is."
"Please," Wilson scoffs, getting up from the table, "you already know."
Maybe his patience is waning like his bitten nails, and the hand holding his mask is more than trembling, but Wilson can't find it in himself to care.
(Despite what House wants to believe, Wilson spots his worry, more than regularly. He hears the edge of his one-liners, the concern that hides behind his shadow.
Wilson knows it holds him at gunpoint, the purposeful lilt of his questions, so he avoids them. For all the times House calls him needy, Wilson increasingly prefers to be alone, shutting himself up in his office and drowning in someone else's expiry date. Something's coming on, he reasons. A cold, perhaps.
Wilson doesn't think anyone notices it. Hell, he even tries to ignore it himself.)
The light's reflection on his bathtub is fluorescent as Wilson lowers himself in, the water clinging onto him and his clothes like a second skin, possibly a third. He doesn't keep count of the lies that cloak him.
Once the sting fades away, the water comforts him, numbing the spider legs. House won't find another empty pill bottle in the bin—Wilson thinks he prefers the palpable chill of a cold water bath to pills that keep him in anticipation, shameful longing.
He sinks in a little deeper, watching his tie float, his rolled up sleeves feeling tighter by the second, before his head retreats under the surface as well. If he focuses enough, he can almost hear the ebb and flow of his pulse, throbbing loud enough for his to get a headache. The cuts on his wrist are painless, sated.
A drift creaks open the bathroom door ever so slightly, and Wilson realises he forgot to lock it. Deciding that the chance of House finding him like this is uncomfortably high, he braces himself to get up and lock the door.
His hands tremble as they push off the sides of the bathtub, skin burning from the sudden temperature change, but his lips curve into a wide grin. It has a similar effect to when he first climbed into the bath—sharpening his blurry edges, honing his focus, chasing the feeling further. Addictive.
That's his last thought before his knees buckle, the cold seeping into his bone marrow, abruptly overwhelming him.
"House," is his last word he hears.
"Wilson!" feels like the first.
He cracks his eyes open, already missing the monochrome of his eyelids. Someone turned off the lights, so the bathroom looks doused in rather lucid shadows, bleeding into one another. It's easier on his eyes, at least, but he shuts them again once he sees House's cane on the floor next to him.
"What did you do?" House asks in that same careful tone, practically wrapped in gauze. Wilson doesn't know if that's something he should be looking further into.
"Took a bath," he replies, the syllables heavy on his tongue.
"Looks more like you took a walk," House says bitterly and god, Wilson hasn't felt this drained since last year, easily. "Let's get you up, Jimmy."
The movement shakes his periphery enough for him to instinctively grab onto House's elbow, and there's no sarcastic jab about being too needy. He's probably dripping water across his apartment, but he can't focus on more than the struggle they both face to get to his bedroom.
Once they get there, Wilson drops onto his unmade bed, wincing from the creak, the noise that screams too much. House follows suit.
With a sigh, he states matter-of-factly, "you're still hungry, Wilson."
Wilson shivers, dragging a hand over his face, weighing up the possible things he could reply to that.
"I'm still hungry," he repeats emptily, too tired to argue. The word hunger seems to pull on something raw and quaking—feverishly, he adds, "but House, don't make me eat, please—"
"That bad, huh?" House mutters, thankfully interrupting Wilson's shaking voice.
"Not now, House, not now."
"That's fine," he says, and yet the magnitude of it all still hovers, the prospect of later staring at them in the face.
They sit side by side, House forgetting about finding answers and remedies, Wilson swallowing down his hunger. His eyes drop, and he leans against House's shoulder without a word.
"Honey, you're home," Wilson thinks he hears him say sarcastically, the dry edge of his voice unfamiliarly soft somehow, and he smiles into House's shirt.
(Despite what the other wants to believe, they both notice the tangible warmth of the space they share, and they let it linger.)