Leave (PG-13)
Feb. 16th, 2009 04:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deelaundryPosted to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
house_wilson and housefic
Title: Leave
Author: Dee Laundry
Pairing: House-Wilson friendship (Wilson/Amber mentioned)
Rating: PG-13
Words: 1477
Summary: What strange hand of fate decreed that a department head and Board member could get eight full weeks of bereavement leave, Wilson will never know.
Notes: Takes place between Season Four and Season Five. Spoilers through episode 5-1. Thank you to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
daisylily for beta and Early Readers for support.
Wilson lies on top of the extra-long twin bed ignoring the ancient Steiff bear poking him in the back and the “AV” carved over and over again in the light fixture, in the room that smells of pride and disuse and root beer Bonnie Bell Lip Smackers, and wonders what House would say about this.
Then he wonders why it matters.
Then he falls asleep.
***
The Volakis family is very nice to him, but none of them ever looks at him. At first, he felt guilty about this, because surely they blamed him for their daughter’s death. Why wouldn’t they? Really, honestly, he can’t think of a reason why they wouldn’t.
But then Peter said something and Eleni said something else and Yaya Em cried into his shirt, and now he knows that by some odd miracle they don’t blame him. For her death. Yaya Em’s peeved that he never gave Amber any children before she died, so he’s got effective birth control to feel guilty about, but not Amber’s death.
They still won’t really look at him, though. It must be a family thing. He didn’t put a ring on Amber’s finger so he’s not really family. That’s why they won’t look at him, even as they’re all embracing him in giant bear hugs and kissing his cheeks and bundling him up even though it’s almost eighty outside and making sure he has enough (way too much) food for the trip home. Not family, that’s why.
He sleeps under his father and mother’s roof for two nights before he realizes they don’t look at him either.
He had learned how not to be seen.
***
House has always had a blast hassling Wilson about his divorces (plural), but never teases him about the failed engagements, which are even more plural than the divorces. Wilson doesn’t know why. He teased Wilson at the time of each breakup, of course, but he never seems to bring them up after.
It’s a mystery, but Wilson never thought about it much. The only reason he’s thinking about it now is that he’s back in his own place (even though all the things in here that are his, outside the kitchen and the closet, could fit into an accordion folder) and he’s got a small Moleskine notebook in his hands.
It had been the idea of the counselor he saw with Kim, back when he was hoping to salvage his reception deposit. Doctor Danny recommended a Recognition Journal. “Don’t just guess! Chart your progress in acknowledging your faults and supporting your partner.”
He and Kim broke up three weeks later, and the Pegler Westbrook Inn kept his money.
In the eleven years since, Wilson has apologized to House 742 times. Fifty of those were in the first three months or so, until House yelled at him to quit being a toady; 73 were in the two months right after the infarction, until House yelled at him to shut up with the pity crap; 619 were spaced out over the rest of the ten-plus years. Those 619 haven’t made much of an impression, Wilson assumes, given that House never says anything back like, “OK,” or “It’s all right,” or even “Stuff your sorry apologia,” but Wilson keeps going because it’s what he knows how to do.
Over the same time, House has apologized to Wilson ten times. He said, “I’m sorry,” one additional time, during the DBS procedure, and Wilson has tried to make that an apology, but try as he did, he couldn’t find anything to apologize for in House’s medical treatment of Amber so that has to be a condolence.
Wilson has thanked House 1,371 times.
House has thanked Wilson 82 times. Wilson has a vague recollection that some of those may have had a slightly sarcastic tone, but he still considers them valid.
The “I love you” count stands at one each: Wilson sloppy, sloppy drunk, right before he fell down that huge flight of stairs to the amusement of House and the consternation of his fiancée (Johanna, that time); House in blistering pain (literally) and giddy with anticipation of more drugs.
The laughs aren’t in the book, and Wilson wishes now that they were. House is ahead on that, always ahead from the day they met, no matter how hard Wilson tries to catch up. It’s a difficult thing, to make Greg House laugh. Wilson has felt a buoyant, preening pride every time he’s managed it.
***
Two weekends before he’s due back at the hospital (and what strange hand of fate decreed that a department head and Board member could get eight full weeks of bereavement leave, Wilson will never know), Wilson sees something ridiculous on TV. What springs to mind is a rejoinder that only someone familiar with existentialism, classic Japanese literature, and the ’64 Mets would get, and Wilson has dialed six digits of House’s number before he realizes his mistake.
House isn’t speaking to him. Or maybe he’s not supposed to be speaking to House. Either way, they are incommunicado, strict radio silence since the night Amber died. Wilson was listening to Amber’s mother cry, and the line beeped, and Wilson slipped to the other line with a thousand justifications and a “Damn, this phone has always been a problem” excuse at the ready.
“Wilson,” House said – and he slurred. Not much. The “L” was slightly unrealized, with a small drag from the L to the S. Not much at all, the physician side of Wilson’s mind pointed out, for a man who’d just spent two days playing handball with his brain, going into overtime on a desperate friend’s plea. Completely understandable.
Drunk, screamed Wilson’s amygdalae, and his chest clenched, and he ground out, “I can’t do this now, House.” The line died; Wilson switched back to Amber’s mother’s tears.
House hasn’t called again. The first week Wilson was alternately too busy with arrangements and too sunk in grief to call House. The second week it would’ve been impolite to Amber’s parents to take his attention off them. The third week there was some other excuse that amounted to Wilson waiting for House to be the one to call, the one to make the overture, which would prove... something. He can’t remember what any more.
Since then, Wilson’s been kept from calling by feeling alternately spiteful, grief-stricken, resigned, angry, hopeful, rejected, blasé, tired, frustrated, annoyed, agitated, exasperated, tired, tired, tired.
In grieving Amber, the steps of grief have come like clockwork. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression... and he has to think that acceptance will come one day.
In grieving his relationship with House, the steps have been cockeyed, in any damn order they please, with previously felt stages popping up again at unpredictable intervals, completely ruining any sense of progress Wilson had felt, demanding his attention now, now, NOW.
Wilson doesn’t like it but finds it entirely fitting.
***
There’s a cut on his skin that won’t stop bleeding. It’s on a soft patch of skin high on his left inner thigh, and it’s very small, a couple of millimeters, but it just won’t clot.
It was a careless accident, the cut, a tiny slip of the scissors during a perfectly normal and not at all vain grooming (shut up, shut up), and the jewel-like welling startled him. He caught the blood before it rolled too far, and pressed a square of tissue to the cut, thinking it’d be a minute and then be done. It didn’t even hurt, really. Only, when he pulled the tissue away there was a momentary searing and the red welled up again, stark against his pale, pale thigh.
He put a circle Band-aid on it (right tool for the right job, no sense creating waste by being excessive) and forgot about it. But ten minutes later in the shower, he was looking at his feet and noticed a pale pinkish drop hit the tub.
There were faint streaks on his thigh: the circle Band-aid had been inadequate for the job. It was full, overflowing.
The large Band-aid worked, though. Worked fine. He was confident when he took it off a few hours later, that the problem was solved.
Now it’s three days later, the morning he goes back to work, and there’s a dark spot in the middle of the latest Band-aid.
He has to get out of here. He’s never going to be happy here. He has to go somewhere else, where he can be somebody else. Start fresh, do it right from the goddamn beginning, be right from the beginning, avoid bad influences that twist him all around until every move he makes is wrong.
He’s been living in a funhouse hall of mirrors for years, and he doesn’t even know which reflection is him any more.
Now he just has to figure out how to tell House he's leaving.
house_wilson and houseficTitle: Leave
Author: Dee Laundry
Pairing: House-Wilson friendship (Wilson/Amber mentioned)
Rating: PG-13
Words: 1477
Summary: What strange hand of fate decreed that a department head and Board member could get eight full weeks of bereavement leave, Wilson will never know.
Notes: Takes place between Season Four and Season Five. Spoilers through episode 5-1. Thank you to
daisylily for beta and Early Readers for support.Wilson lies on top of the extra-long twin bed ignoring the ancient Steiff bear poking him in the back and the “AV” carved over and over again in the light fixture, in the room that smells of pride and disuse and root beer Bonnie Bell Lip Smackers, and wonders what House would say about this.
Then he wonders why it matters.
Then he falls asleep.
***
The Volakis family is very nice to him, but none of them ever looks at him. At first, he felt guilty about this, because surely they blamed him for their daughter’s death. Why wouldn’t they? Really, honestly, he can’t think of a reason why they wouldn’t.
But then Peter said something and Eleni said something else and Yaya Em cried into his shirt, and now he knows that by some odd miracle they don’t blame him. For her death. Yaya Em’s peeved that he never gave Amber any children before she died, so he’s got effective birth control to feel guilty about, but not Amber’s death.
They still won’t really look at him, though. It must be a family thing. He didn’t put a ring on Amber’s finger so he’s not really family. That’s why they won’t look at him, even as they’re all embracing him in giant bear hugs and kissing his cheeks and bundling him up even though it’s almost eighty outside and making sure he has enough (way too much) food for the trip home. Not family, that’s why.
He sleeps under his father and mother’s roof for two nights before he realizes they don’t look at him either.
He had learned how not to be seen.
***
House has always had a blast hassling Wilson about his divorces (plural), but never teases him about the failed engagements, which are even more plural than the divorces. Wilson doesn’t know why. He teased Wilson at the time of each breakup, of course, but he never seems to bring them up after.
It’s a mystery, but Wilson never thought about it much. The only reason he’s thinking about it now is that he’s back in his own place (even though all the things in here that are his, outside the kitchen and the closet, could fit into an accordion folder) and he’s got a small Moleskine notebook in his hands.
It had been the idea of the counselor he saw with Kim, back when he was hoping to salvage his reception deposit. Doctor Danny recommended a Recognition Journal. “Don’t just guess! Chart your progress in acknowledging your faults and supporting your partner.”
He and Kim broke up three weeks later, and the Pegler Westbrook Inn kept his money.
In the eleven years since, Wilson has apologized to House 742 times. Fifty of those were in the first three months or so, until House yelled at him to quit being a toady; 73 were in the two months right after the infarction, until House yelled at him to shut up with the pity crap; 619 were spaced out over the rest of the ten-plus years. Those 619 haven’t made much of an impression, Wilson assumes, given that House never says anything back like, “OK,” or “It’s all right,” or even “Stuff your sorry apologia,” but Wilson keeps going because it’s what he knows how to do.
Over the same time, House has apologized to Wilson ten times. He said, “I’m sorry,” one additional time, during the DBS procedure, and Wilson has tried to make that an apology, but try as he did, he couldn’t find anything to apologize for in House’s medical treatment of Amber so that has to be a condolence.
Wilson has thanked House 1,371 times.
House has thanked Wilson 82 times. Wilson has a vague recollection that some of those may have had a slightly sarcastic tone, but he still considers them valid.
The “I love you” count stands at one each: Wilson sloppy, sloppy drunk, right before he fell down that huge flight of stairs to the amusement of House and the consternation of his fiancée (Johanna, that time); House in blistering pain (literally) and giddy with anticipation of more drugs.
The laughs aren’t in the book, and Wilson wishes now that they were. House is ahead on that, always ahead from the day they met, no matter how hard Wilson tries to catch up. It’s a difficult thing, to make Greg House laugh. Wilson has felt a buoyant, preening pride every time he’s managed it.
***
Two weekends before he’s due back at the hospital (and what strange hand of fate decreed that a department head and Board member could get eight full weeks of bereavement leave, Wilson will never know), Wilson sees something ridiculous on TV. What springs to mind is a rejoinder that only someone familiar with existentialism, classic Japanese literature, and the ’64 Mets would get, and Wilson has dialed six digits of House’s number before he realizes his mistake.
House isn’t speaking to him. Or maybe he’s not supposed to be speaking to House. Either way, they are incommunicado, strict radio silence since the night Amber died. Wilson was listening to Amber’s mother cry, and the line beeped, and Wilson slipped to the other line with a thousand justifications and a “Damn, this phone has always been a problem” excuse at the ready.
“Wilson,” House said – and he slurred. Not much. The “L” was slightly unrealized, with a small drag from the L to the S. Not much at all, the physician side of Wilson’s mind pointed out, for a man who’d just spent two days playing handball with his brain, going into overtime on a desperate friend’s plea. Completely understandable.
Drunk, screamed Wilson’s amygdalae, and his chest clenched, and he ground out, “I can’t do this now, House.” The line died; Wilson switched back to Amber’s mother’s tears.
House hasn’t called again. The first week Wilson was alternately too busy with arrangements and too sunk in grief to call House. The second week it would’ve been impolite to Amber’s parents to take his attention off them. The third week there was some other excuse that amounted to Wilson waiting for House to be the one to call, the one to make the overture, which would prove... something. He can’t remember what any more.
Since then, Wilson’s been kept from calling by feeling alternately spiteful, grief-stricken, resigned, angry, hopeful, rejected, blasé, tired, frustrated, annoyed, agitated, exasperated, tired, tired, tired.
In grieving Amber, the steps of grief have come like clockwork. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression... and he has to think that acceptance will come one day.
In grieving his relationship with House, the steps have been cockeyed, in any damn order they please, with previously felt stages popping up again at unpredictable intervals, completely ruining any sense of progress Wilson had felt, demanding his attention now, now, NOW.
Wilson doesn’t like it but finds it entirely fitting.
***
There’s a cut on his skin that won’t stop bleeding. It’s on a soft patch of skin high on his left inner thigh, and it’s very small, a couple of millimeters, but it just won’t clot.
It was a careless accident, the cut, a tiny slip of the scissors during a perfectly normal and not at all vain grooming (shut up, shut up), and the jewel-like welling startled him. He caught the blood before it rolled too far, and pressed a square of tissue to the cut, thinking it’d be a minute and then be done. It didn’t even hurt, really. Only, when he pulled the tissue away there was a momentary searing and the red welled up again, stark against his pale, pale thigh.
He put a circle Band-aid on it (right tool for the right job, no sense creating waste by being excessive) and forgot about it. But ten minutes later in the shower, he was looking at his feet and noticed a pale pinkish drop hit the tub.
There were faint streaks on his thigh: the circle Band-aid had been inadequate for the job. It was full, overflowing.
The large Band-aid worked, though. Worked fine. He was confident when he took it off a few hours later, that the problem was solved.
Now it’s three days later, the morning he goes back to work, and there’s a dark spot in the middle of the latest Band-aid.
He has to get out of here. He’s never going to be happy here. He has to go somewhere else, where he can be somebody else. Start fresh, do it right from the goddamn beginning, be right from the beginning, avoid bad influences that twist him all around until every move he makes is wrong.
He’s been living in a funhouse hall of mirrors for years, and he doesn’t even know which reflection is him any more.
Now he just has to figure out how to tell House he's leaving.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-16 09:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-16 11:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 12:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-22 10:34 am (UTC)-
Great story Deelaundry. Poor Wilson. I especially loved the funeral scene between Wilson and the Volakis family... You really captured how alone he would have felt. He wasn't part of Amber's family, the people who worked with Amber hated her, his best friend was partially responsible for her death. Those 4 months of grieving would have been terrible for him. It would have been awesome to have seen something like this in the show.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-05 05:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-16 10:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-16 11:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-16 11:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-16 11:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 04:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 03:39 am (UTC)This was great. I especially loved the comparison between how Wilson's grieving for Amber compares with his grieving for his friendship with House.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 11:21 am (UTC)Thanks.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-16 10:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-16 11:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-16 11:17 pm (UTC)That's just denial, right there -- and it's insulting, to me, that Wilson automatically assumes that House is drunk. He didn't ask, didn't say anything but complain about the fact that he called House and his callee's brain was too scrambled to form the greeting he expected.
I will try to maintain a neutral stance on this since canon has destroyed this pairing for me, thus far, but the medical facts I can't ignore like Wilson and Cuddy do all the time and continue to, to this day.
No, this does not simply encompass House. Listening to Cuddy complain about what a hassle a child is is appalling.
That said, I can totally see Wilson in this piece, except that you probably brought out the opposite reaction in me that you expected. I have no pity for him and, at this point, think both he and House are pathetic in that they refuse to appreciate themselves more than one another even after everything that's been shown to them that they should.
And this is me actually not being angry with Wilson, I find, even though it's been a chore enjoying his presence for a very long time now. This is me mourning two of my favorite characters -- three, if you count Cuddy, which I don't expect you to -- and the parting of their ways that, to me, was very poorly mended.
These are very complex characters, full of contradictions and wonderful things about them -- that they're all continually boiled down to such basic blocks is heartbreaking to me and probably why I'm currently unable to watch anymore.
I'm definitely thankful I can still stomach fanfiction, though. Odd, that...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-16 11:46 pm (UTC)The point is that Wilson knows House is not drunk. Knows it completely. The amygdalae is the "lizard brain," the seat of emotion, and Wilson's emotions reacted as if House was drunk and overwhelmed Wilson with adrenaline. Wilson couldn't handle it at that moment (remember he had Amber's mother on the other line), and that's what he said to House. House interpreted it as complete rejection and never called again.
(Also, Wilson didn't call House. Wilson heard the beep of call-waiting while he was on the line with Amber's mother, and flipped to that line to take the incoming call. Which happened to be from House.)
I didn't write this for anyone to pity Wilson. I wrote it to explain my view of him, what he might have been thinking during his two-month leave, and how screwed-up and lonely and human he is.
If you don't enjoy his presence, then I'm afraid I don't have anything else to say.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 12:02 am (UTC)I miss being a House/Cuddy/Wilson Ot3'er and the enjoyment of each pairing and what they brought to the table, so to speak.
And I miss House who hadn't given up, Cuddy who had a brain...so many things...
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-23 07:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 12:25 am (UTC)Doesn't this just sum them up? Poor, messed up Wilson tried to make sense of the universe and House ramming through all his stages of grief and leaving them askew. I just love the way you portray these characters. Thanks!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 11:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 03:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 11:24 am (UTC)Thanks. : )
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 04:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 11:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 04:22 am (UTC)And it makes total sense that Wilson would keep a relationship journal for House!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-18 05:10 am (UTC)Wilson didn't originally intend to keep the journal for House, but Kim was gone, and he had the notebook (and it'd been three weeks, which is supposedly the amount of time it takes for a habit to form). : )
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 08:39 am (UTC)Lovely writing, Dee!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-18 05:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 12:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-18 05:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 03:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-19 03:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 08:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-19 03:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-17 09:02 pm (UTC)He had learned how not to be seen.
Wilson keeps so much of his pain to himself that Amber's death seemed to diffuse all that he'd kept bottled up with no way to contain it. *mems*
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-19 03:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-18 08:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-19 03:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-21 11:14 am (UTC)That's such a great way to go about such an incredibly saddening thing.
There's such great insight into Wilson's character here -- his many proposals, the pedantic way he'd add up thanks and apologies, the knee-jerk response to House's slurred words. Well done.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-21 03:04 pm (UTC)Interestingly, I had a defensive reaction to Wilson's relationship journal being called "pedantic," but on reflection, I see how it could be seen that way. He didn't approach it as a "tit for tat," though; he really was following Doctor Danny's idea to measure his own statements. He'd started it with Kim, got in the habit, and kept it up with House. It's not stated in the fic, but this is the first time Wilson has added the numbers up. He's had the visual of the hash marks to go by, but didn't know the precise numbers.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-07-12 07:26 pm (UTC)That is all <3