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wanderingwidget has, is, and does not plan in the future to make any money on any of the fics here archived. They were written and are provided for pure entertainment purposes.
author: wanderingwidget
rating: R
pairing: House/Wilson - established relationship
word count: 4492
warnings: disturbing themes and very little exposition
summary: House is falling apart and Wilson is trying to hold it all together.
ONE -
From the first day he pulled himself to his feet - stood with one chubby baby hand gripping the edge of the coffee table and the other reaching, reaching, reaching - Gregory House knew one immutable fact. He didn’t remember it happening, but his mom had told him about it so often that he could see it in his mind as clear as day. His toe-head curls would have been a white-fro mess, his baby mouth pressed into a line of baby concentration, and he would have reached with all of his might, straining towards one of Mom’s porcelain tea cups, towards the delicate flower painted on the side, towards the captivating wisps of steam drifting above it.
Reaching. Grasping. For something he couldn’t have. Something he shouldn’t have wanted. Experience has always been a harsh teacher, but Greg was an equally perverted student, and he’d never had any problem learning what he wanted to learn.
At first James told himself that he didn't notice it, because it had to be in his head. Three divorces and a lifetime of repression and self-denial were just conspiring to give him a complex. A little therapy, a couple of beers, a little more time and he'd see that it was all in his head. He was paranoid, he was over analyzing, he was doing what he'd accused Greg of doing half a dozen times in the last three months. For the first time in his life he was happy and that terrified him and so he was looking for something to be wrong where there was nothing to find.
It wasn't perfect, but he'd never expected a relationship with Greg to be perfect, he'd never expected a relationship with him at all. The fact that he could thank former Detective Tritter for the worst and best moments of his life was just another ironic twist in the course of their lives. He'd been frustrated, angry. No matter where he turned everything he had, everything he'd built his life around, was breaking into tiny little pieces. So he'd lashed out against Greg the only way he could. He'd kissed him.
He'd never expected Greg to kiss him back.
Three months later their lives were finally, officially, Tritter-free and they were looking for a bigger apartment with handicap access and a functioning dishwasher. They were also dealing with the facts that his parents weren't speaking to him, Cuddy had finally managed to get herself knocked up, and Cameron was under the impression that they needed to get married as soon as possible and she was the perfect woman to plan their wedding. Greg's response had been cynical acceptance, cynical avoidance, and cynical aggression, respectively. James hadn't been at all surprised.
At first it had been subtle, so subtle, and so easy for him to overlook. It was the look in Greg's eyes, the almost imperceptible way he'd shift whenever James touched him, not quite fear, not quite flinching, but certainly not lust or enthusiasm. He'd ignored it, called it the last vestiges of Greg's homophobia and repression hanging on. Greg liked to be miserable, it wasn't at all out of character for him to cling to the safety of his well worn self-loathing. It would go away, he told himself, if it was even really there to begin with.
At the time he'd been convinced that Greg was just being a vindictive little bastard and that the random violent thrashing was just the release of months worth of pent up frustration and anger. After all, aside from one or two minor bruises to his torso it hadn't been like Greg was actually hurting him, mostly it'd just been annoying, and it hadn't been every night. There'd been a couple of bad weeks, here and there, but even they had only had three (maximum) bad nights apiece. Aside from them there were only a handful of times scattered through their nights together.
Two months after he'd moved into Greg's apartment he'd still been convinced that it was just Greg releasing his feelings in the only way he knew how: physically. James was sure that it wasn't the healthiest way to go about reconciliation but he hadn't been willing to jeopardize the tenuous balance of their newborn relationship. If Greg felt the need to whack him every once in a while in the middle of the night then so be it.
It took an elbow to his right eye to wake James up to the reality that Greg wasn't even aware of what he had been doing.
"Jesus fuck Greg!" James swore as he rolled over and snapped on the lamp, shoulders hunched as Greg kept thrashing behind him. Still cursing under his breath James managed to roll out of bed and stumbled back to glare at the bed. Obviously it was time for him to have a chat with Greg about his less-than-passive aggressive behavior. Except the sight that greeted him wasn't Greg's pissed face, innocent face, or even his pseudo-sleeping face, and the thrashing hadn't stopped when he'd rolled out of bed.
"Shit," James muttered. "Wake up. C'mon Greg, wake the fuck up already." He carefully crawled back into their bed and - after dodging several surprisingly well-thrown limbs - managed to get his arms around Greg so that his back was pressed to James's chest and his arms were pinned to his sides.
"Wake up, wake up, wake up," he chanted, lips pressed to the skin just behind and below Greg's ear. He tightened his arms as Greg kicked back and connected with his knee. It hurt, but not as much as it should have, and James belatedly realized that he'd used his bad leg. He knew Greg would end up hurting himself if this kept up, if he hadn't already, and - while a certain part of him was rather pleased at the notion - there was a larger part of him that was more concerned about what havoc any injury Greg incurred would wreak upon his own social schedule. Greg didn’t put out when he was in pain, physically, emotionally, or socially, a phenomenon which had been increasing with startling regularity.
The thrashing finally stopped. It left Greg limp in James's arms, and both of them sore and panting and covered in a fine layer of sweat.
"You okay?" James murmured, lips now pressed against the side of Greg's neck.
Greg didn't answer, only shrugged him off and stumbled blurrily to his feet and towards the bathroom. James rolled onto his back and frowned at the sound of something hitting the floor before the shower was started and the door closed. Now that he wasn't being actively attacked the skin around his eye felt like it was bloated and tender, his knee had started a protest rally, and his lower ribs had formed their own independent democracy.
He didn't want to get up, but he had to get up, or risk ridicule when Greg emerged to find him with his wounds still untreated. He could hear him in his head. "Whatever happened to that whole 'Doctor heal thyself,' shtick?" he'd say.
Greg stayed in the shower for longer than was strictly necessary but James supposed that, after a whopper of a nightmare like the one he'd had, he deserved to drain the hot water heater once. Forty minutes later, the shower was still going and he was fairly certain that the hot water was gone, he was half afraid that Greg had done something stupid in there, half afraid that he'd fallen back asleep under the spray, and half afraid that he'd gone and climbed out the window. Each possibility had merit, mostly because he'd caught Greg doing all three of them at one time or another. However, James was fairly certain that he'd removed all illegal substances from the bathroom and its vicinity, he didn't think that even Greg could sleep through an impromptu cold shower, and he was positive that Greg wouldn't go running out into the streets in only his bare skin.
He hovered because he didn't know what else to do. If he knocked then he'd probably only piss him off. Unfortunately for him not knocking meant that he didn't know that everything was alright. So, he hovered, and did his best to make hovering look cool. At least he made it look as cool as he could, given the fact that he was sitting in the hall with his back to the wall and a bag of frozen green peas pressed over his eye.
That was how Greg found him, twenty minutes later, as he emerged wrapped in his raggedy white and blue-striped robe and a pair of eyes which (after evaluating him from top to bottom) seemed to find the white plaster of the wall above James's head endlessly fascinating. He didn't say anything, but he didn't move either.
It took James a full minute to realize that he wasn't moving because he couldn't (or wouldn't) step over James's extended leg. He sighed and pushed himself to his feet, let the bag of peas slide down into his hand and planted the other on his hip.
"Yes, of course I'm alright Greg, no need for you to worry yourself. After all, you only attacked me in your sleep," he said.
Greg opened his mouth, then snapped his teeth together and rolled his eyes. "I'm going for a ride," he muttered as he brushed past James on his way to the bedroom.
James gaped at him until he'd disappeared through the doorway, then he let his head thud back against the wall - once, twice - before he pushed away and went after him. The robe had been discarded across the foot of the bed and Greg already had his jeans on.
"That's your answer, you're going to run away?"
"Well, it's worked so well for you I just have to try it. And you should be laying down, you're lucky you don't have a concussion. You haven't been feeling dizzy, have you?"
It occurred to James that he was being handed the perfect excuse to keep Greg in the apartment, but it also occurred to him that he'd only be able to keep Greg convinced for an hour, maximum, and it wouldn't be worth the attitude he'd get in return. Greg had apparently given up on locating whichever shirt he'd been searching for and - instead - had settled for stealing on of James' undershirts, and his McGill sweatshirt from the laundry.
"I don't want you to leave," he tried, lamely. The words left a funny taste in his mouth, a little like the hideous menthol aftertaste he'd gotten from kissing Julie during the last year of their marriage.
Greg grabbed his cane from where it was propped on the bedside table and pivoted to face him. He had his chin tucked low and peered up at him through his eyelashes. "I'm-" he started, then bit his lip and turned his head away. "I'll see you at work," he finished.
He could have stopped him, could have blocked the doorway or faked a concussion or a migraine, he could have begged. All he did was step back and watch as Greg grabbed his keys off of the hallway table and slammed the door behind him.
TWO -
“Look, Mrs. House, we understand how difficult it must be for Gregory. Even so, we must insist. Either you make him understand that his actions are inappropriate or we will have to take measures. You must understand, the safety of the students has to be our highest priority.”
“Really, Greg wouldn’t hurt a mouse.”
“Even so, the fact remains that he’s been found setting fires on two separate occasions.”
“He’s a boy, boys like to play with matches.”
“Mrs. House.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll talk to him again.”
“Thank you.”
The next day Greg successfully avoided him for almost eight hours. James finally caught him out on the balcony. The Diagnostics office was dark, everyone else gone for the night, and he'd only been passing by on his way to the elevators. There was no way that he was the bad guy in this situation but he’d found himself pondering what to make for dinner in order to smooth things out with him anyways. He didn't know why he looked up then, right at that moment, but he did just long enough to catch the glow of a red taillight highlighting the curve of Greg's jaw.
James let himself in and made his way - slowly - out to the balcony. Greg stood with his back to the door, elbows on the wall and shoulders hunched. All of the details were blurred by the darkness but there was enough ambient light coming up from the parking lot lamps for James to make out his silhouette.
He approached quietly, slipped an arm around Greg's middle and tried his very best to ignore the flinch that got him in response.
"You okay?" he asked, fully aware of the stiff way that Greg held his body but unwilling to back off.
The air escaped from his lungs on a short burst of cynical laughter. "You're the one with the black eye. Shouldn't I be asking you that?"
He shrugged and brought his other arm up to wrap around him. "Ready to come home?"
"I've got a patient."
"A patient with multiple sclerosis and an annoying boyfriend. Boring, and nothing you need to stay here for."
"Someone ratted to Mommy?"
"Or I bugged your offices, pick whichever theory amuses you more."
The tension slowly bled out of Greg's body. It started at his neck then cascaded downwards until he was finally leaning back into James's embrace.
James' mother and father hadn't been understanding of their relationship. His mother's exact response had been, "Oh, honey, you'll find the right woman someday, you've just got to have faith." Greg had pulled James into a kiss right in the middle of his parents’ living room. After that stunt his father had asked them to leave in the same tone of voice he'd used when he was half a minute away from getting out the belt and laying it on James for getting caught smoking behind the school gym.
They drove all night to get home and as soon as they pulled in Greg went straight for the scotch, and James joined him. It'd seemed appropriate, and the way Greg had almost seemed to be shaking had been a mirror of his own shaking. When they finally crawled into bed they fell asleep wrapped in each other’s arms and woke up with twin hangovers from hell. James had gotten over it, eventually, he'd never expected his parents to understand. They'd been his primary reason for staying miserable his whole life. Greg didn’t, and James hadn't been cruel enough to force him to go through with telling his own parents.
He did not flinch when he heard Greg throwing something in the entryway, he'd already moved that ugly vase Greg hated to the kitchen and if he wanted to break the entryway table then he could damn well go out and buy a new one. He listened to Greg bang around the apartment, first back to the bathroom, then the bedroom, then the living room. The TV clicked on and he breathed in relief. He hadn't noticed holding his breath.
"Food," he explained and shoved the bowl in his face.
Greg looked up at him, then down at the contents of the bowl, but took it and the spoon he provided. James settled next to him on the couch, their shoulders brushing, and dug into his own bowl. On the TV the doctors of General Hospital were dramatically trapped in an elevator with a dying child and no equipment.
Greg snorted when the buxom nurse’s bosom failed to jiggle with the appropriate stressful emotion then, strangely, dropped his head to rest on James' shoulder. He held perfectly still, painfully aware of how small the gesture was, and how much it meant. This was new, strange, exhilarating, terrifying and he wished that he knew what to do, but nothing his brain supplied was applicable. So he stayed still.
THREE -
The Zippo had called to him from the moment he’d seen it, shining and silver, on display behind glass at the corner gas station. He’d gone by at least once a week, just to stare at it under the guise of picking up some penny candies with his allowance. There were others next to it, decorated with engravings and inlays of almost every fantastical sort, but it was always the simple silver one that his eyes returned to.
Thirteen years old and his fingers practically itched to hold it, he just knew it’d feel good in his hand, but he knew just as well that he wouldn’t be allowed to have it. Ever since Pritchett, the damn counselor at his last school, had sicced his parents on him lighters and matches had been added to the list of Things Greg Can’t Have. It was funny how he didn’t remember wanting them so bad before, but now they were almost all he ever thought about.
He didn’t remember ever really wanting to start fires, not before, but now it felt like just the idea was consuming him from the inside out. Some days he thought he’d spontaneously combust. Other days he tried to bury himself in books at the library.
At night, when he woke up shaking, he thought of that lighter and bit his knuckle to keep from crying out for his Mom. Fire, he told himself, is clean and hot and perfect. It didn‘t scream, or cry, or feel pain. It only was, a force of man and nature combined. At night, he wanted to be fire.
He arrived home to find the apartment wrecked and Greg passed out on top of the covers on their bed. He'd emptied the shelves, scattered the knickknacks he'd collected on top of the piano and across the mantel, knocked the liquor cabinet on it's side and kicked the coffee table completely over. When he found him James' first thought was that he was too late, that he'd made a horrible mistake.
Then Greg rolled onto his back and started to snore, and James was hit with the overwhelming desire to throttle him.
He spent most of the night alternately berating and soothing his monumentally stupid lover and woke to the unmistakable sound of him puking his guts out. Thankfully the horrible noises were coming from the bathroom and, when Greg finally managed to stumble back to bed, James fuzzily noted that he'd managed to rinse his mouth out, at least. He crawled under the covers but lay on his side, turned away from him.
In a fit of contrariness James pressed himself to his back, wrapped his arm over his side, and threaded their fingers together. Greg shuddered against him, but didn't try to pull away.
James was woke up to Greg thrashing beside him, screaming incoherently.
"Greg, Greg wake up," James muttered, only half-awake, already reaching out to pull Greg to him.
That had been exactly the wrong thing to do, and earned him an elbow to the corner of his mouth. He ended up with a brand new black eye and a cracked rib before Greg had finally managed to scream himself awake. They got looks at Princeton General, and the nurse who wrapped his ribs slipped him a pamphlet on spousal abuse. He tossed it in the trash before Greg could come back and see it.
He wouldn’t look James in the eye. Instead he stayed in the doorway and stared at the tip of his cane, stayed conspicuously distant from him and uncharacteristically silent until he'd parked the 'vette in front of the apartment. He cut the engine and sat perfectly still, hands wrapped around the wheel, eyes fixed somewhere past the end of the hood.
"I think," he started, then choked himself off. "I think I - " he managed. Then he jerked the door open and slammed it behind himself.
James found him laid out on the couch, pretending to be asleep, faced away from the room, shoulders hunched. He sighed and stopped next to him.
"You need help, Greg."
"Says you. You've been trying to drag me into couples counseling ever since Cameron started showing up with fabric swatches. Now if you want to talk about what I need, how about getting Cuddy to ban me from Clinic duty."
"Come to bed."
Greg's shoulders tensed, but he gave no indication of having heard. James sank onto the armrest and suppressed a wince as he threaded his fingers into Greg's hair. With no room left to pull away from him Greg lay perfectly still.
"Come to bed," he repeated. "Please."
Greg spent the remainder of the night stone cold awake, perfectly still next to him in bed. He knew because he stayed awake too.
"We should talk," James said as he walked in the door.
Greg, with a slick move that James would have sworn was impossible, managed to pin him up against the door before he could finish his statement. "Okay," he breathed against James's ear. "You wanna know exactly how I'm going to fuck you?" He leaned down to press a kiss to his mouth, then huffed in disappointment as James turned his head away.
There was a part of James, a very big part, which was convinced that this - all of it - was directly his fault. Greg's nightmares had led to his violent outbursts. The violent outbursts had led to his insomnia and his stubborn refusal to fall asleep in their bed. Weeks had passed and things had only gotten worse.
With muttered words to the tune of “waste of time” Greg pulled away from him and limped into the living room where he dropped onto the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table and did his best to look more attentive than horny. He could picture James exploding all over the apartment, a volcanic force of nature, and he wasn’t sure whether he would hit him or kiss him or walk out with a shouted curse. He didn’t want to have this discussion, or talk, or Talk.
All he wanted was for James to let it go and come to bed and help him believe that everything was okay. A glance up proved the futility of such hopes and he had to look away, had to get a grip on himself, because there was the fire he’d been looking for right in front of him, and he couldn’t have it, not like this. He didn’t want it like this. He made a mental note to forward James that e-mail ad for the Amazing Myron’s Mind Reading Handbook.
James came to a stop in the middle of the room, on the other side of the coffee table, with his hands on his hips and his chin resting on his chest. When he looked up he was wearing his serious face, which coincidentally also happened to be his ‘oh my God I love the taste of your skin’ face. Greg didn’t bother to banish that thought.
“This, this thing,” he started. “It’s a problem.”
Not what he wanted to hear, not what he wanted to think about, not what he knew how to deal with. “First you were mad because my nightmares were waking you up. Then you were mad because I wouldn’t sleep with you. Now what are you mad about?”
“I’m not mad!” The hands came up at the elbows, fingers splayed, his eyebrows rose with his voice.
“Then what’s the problem?”
“You really have to ask? You want a list?” He started to tick off his fingers. “You’ve barely slept in the last week. You’ve barely talked to me in the last month. You’re not eating, you keep disappearing in the middle of the night, you’re drinking too much.”
“Oh, there it is,” Greg rolled his eyes and pushed himself up. “It’s never enough with you, is it, if I turned into a teetotaler you’d probably start in on me about the narcotic qualities of salt.”
“This isn’t about that.”
“Then what’s it about? What do you want me to do? If I sleep on the couch it pisses you off. If I drink before bed you kick me to the couch. If I try to sleep with you I…” He turned away and headed for the kitchen, knuckles white around the cane’s handle.
“You what,” James called after him, arms now crossed over his chest.
Greg reappeared, beer in hand, he gulped half of it down before he trusted his voice enough to speak. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
He sighed and moved to him, took the beer and set it on the side table, ignored Greg’s flinch and pulled him into his arms. The warmth of his body pressed against Greg’s skin like smoke, but he couldn’t make himself move, couldn’t make himself reach out to touch it.
“What do you want from me?” he whispered, head bowed.
James tilted his face up, pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, then pressed their foreheads together. “I want you to know that you can talk to me,” he sighed against Greg’s mouth, “and I want you to know you don‘t have to. I know.”
He tightened his grip when Greg tried to pull away. “It’s okay,” he whispered, and pulled Greg to him when he started to shake. They slid to the floor gracelessly, a combination of Greg’s leg giving out and James trying to catch him. He held on, even though Greg never lifted a finger to pull him to him, and kept whispering to him as the shaking slowly gave way to a gentle, almost subconscious rocking.
Finally Greg pulled in a deep breath and James loosened his arms enough for him to pull slightly back. His face was dry, eyes red, lips slightly parted. “You could’ve told me sooner,” he muttered. “Saved us both this chick flick moment.”
Of course the nightmares didn’t stop just like that, Greg didn’t dry himself out, and they didn’t live happily ever after. For all their lives occasionally seemed like the trumped up plot-line to one of Greg’s soaps James knew better. Cameron kept hounding them about setting a date for their non-existent wedding. Cuddy’s ultrasound revealed that she was carrying twins, a boy and a girl, and Greg got shit-faced one night and came out to his parents over the phone, long distance. They were still waiting for the fallout from that. But the nightmares got better, less frequent, less violent, until one day James remembered them and realized that it’d been months since the last one. That, he figured, was a victory all on its own, not that he’d ever tell Greg.
THE END
