Chapter Text
Wilson’s body is cold, no matter how many hot tears spill onto the slowly fading skin nor how many blankets House covers him with. Wilson’s body lies on a bed in the cabin they’d bought after they ran away, limp. He’s been dead for almost twenty-four hours. His pulse had faded almost twenty-four hours ago.
Wilson’s body is left with a content expression on his face. His lips are slightly parted, eyes shut (House had closed them; Wilson was looking at him when he died). House remembers his breathing evening out into a soft hitch of the breath; and then nothing.
Wilson’s body had been held in House’s trembling hands for the first few hours after his death. He had still been warm. House couldn’t bear to touch him once the warmth had faded, once the blood had stopped running, once his heart had stopped beating.
Wilson’s body is lied on his side, a position Wilson often took up while sleeping peacefully. Normally. Something House would never see again.
Wilson’s body had deteriorated slowly and painfully. Wilson had woken up crying into his hands, crying into House’s chest. House is wearing the same shirt he had been wearing almost twenty-four hours ago when Wilson had sobbed into his tee, knowing today was the day. Wilson had known, by the way he was pale, clammy, cold, exhausted, by the way he could barely keep his head up that today was the day he would die.
Wilson and his body had died in House’s arms. It was a cold, cruel death them both, Wilson having to suffer the feeling of his own body betraying him - his immune system fighting itself until it killed itself - and House having to watch the light fade from his best friend’s eyes as he pressed a final kiss - a final kiss that held more than they’d ever acknowledged between them - to Wilson’s forehead as his pulse tip-toed, and then stopped.
House has to tuck himself under the covers, alone and just as cold as the body next to him as metal presses against the side of his head.
House has never believed in a God or a Satan, but he prays now that Wilson will be in hell with him.