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Wilson borrows the screwdriver from Nora. He tells himself it's because he wants an opportunity to see her braless, himself, although when he knocks on her door she's still in her work clothes, neatly professional and, despite everything, genuinely concerned about making the condo safe for House.
And, then, since he has the right tool, he might as well reinstall the safety rail for real.
“Wuss,” House says when he emerges into the living area, screwdriver in hand.
Wilson shrugs. “Better on the wall than let you keep it as a potential weapon,” he says. “I don't want to be bludgeoned in my sleep.”
“We've plenty of other things I could bludgeon you to death with,” House protests. “Your lack of imagination is tragic.”
*
It's an experiment. House has stopped using Wilson’s bathtub while he's at home, but Wilson suspects he's using it when he's not. It takes a few weeks to properly assess the situation. House is cleaning up after himself instead of leaving the place half-flooded or otherwise chaotic.
That's a worrying sign. Unless House knows he's going to worry about this, and it's part of a master plan.
My leg hurts, House said the first time Wilson caught him in there. That's a line Wilson hasn't been able to trust in years. He knows the pain is real. He knows, too, how much of it is psychological rather than physical, how badly House handles his pain. How quickly he reaches for things to numb it, and how quickly he reaches for it itself as an excuse for his crappy behavior.
Just because he's been through rehab doesn't mean he's not still an addict. In the past few months Wilson’s watched him get obsessed with cooking, laundry, trash television (well, new varieties of it). With medical cases and drugging him at conferences and tormenting his fellows (but that's familiar enough). Messing with Wilson’s bathtub could be some new strategy, some new weird high.
And then he comes home early one day and House is in the tub. Not singing. Not cheerful. Just lying there with his eyes squeezed shut.
Wilson has been deliberately quiet in his approach, so he gets a few seconds of witnessing House before the performance kicks in. As soon as House knows he's there, there's a cheeky grin on his face. “Whoops. Couldn't resist the bubbles.”
Wilson isn't sure how to play this. He wants to ask if his leg hurts. He knows it's the worst question he could ask. If House isn’t offering it up as an excuse, it's bad.
“Stop hogging the hot water,” he grumbles instead. “I need a shower, I'm using yours.”
In House's bathroom - shower only, with a stool in the corner and various rails installed at different points on the wall - he thinks, I'm a dick.
Should've given House his room, his bathroom. The bedrooms are basically the same size. Bonnie pointing out his as the master bedroom shouldn't have been enough to make him pull rank, to establish himself as the alpha dog in their relationship. What was he trying to prove?
*
A few days later House is lying on their ugly couch in the dark, which is less unusual than a normal person might imagine. The weird part comes when he doesn't respond to Wilson’s arrival by acting like a Bond villain, stroking an imaginary cat. He just pretends to be asleep.
Wilson watches him for a moment. Anyone who didn't know House well might imagine he really was sleeping. They might miss the tightness of his fingers clutching his own elbows, the grit of his jaw, the aura of misery - signs Wilson hasn't seen as raw and naked as this in many years.
House is good at finding ways to treat his pain, at numbing himself. This is new.
“What do you need?” Wilson asks, trying to sound world-weary and impatient rather than caring.
“Mmm?” House feigns sleepiness.
“You're in pain. What do you -” Wilson stops. This could all be a ploy. A way to wrangle Vicodin out of him all over again.
And yet. He looks at his friend and it hurts him, to see him like that. It's genuine. Isn't it?
“Maxed out on the meds,” House says, shaking his head.
“There’s got to be something else…”
House laughs. “Yeah, if I want to go back to the cuckoo's nest.”
Wilson gets an electric blanket, for the heat, and turns it up to the max. It's the sort of thing House would have ridiculed, before. Now he just accepts it, silently.
*
It could still be a ploy. House might be playing the long game.
Or. Or the pain is that bad.
Wilson is a doctor. He tries to make people's pain less, rather than more. There are times when treatments hurt in order to heal, every oncologist knows that, and so you weigh it up. Is it worth it?
What level of House suffering in agony is worth him being clean?
*
He has the medication in his pocket weeks before he needs it. House, in his bathtub again.
“You need a Vicodin?” Wilson asks.
“Funny,” House snaps, reaching for and then failing to grab the safety rail.
Wilson steps in, helps him up, politely looks away from House's junk. Once House is wrapped up in a towel, his heart rate calms down.
“Seriously,” Wilson says, as though they're discussing the weather, “you need one?”
House blinks, hovering at the threshold between bathroom and bedroom. “You're testing me.”
“No!” Yes. Maybe. “Are you in enough pain to - need it?”
House stares at him, and Wilson’s not sure but it feels like something’s crumbling.
Then House is speed-limping his way back to his own bedroom, dripping water, and the door slams shut behind him, and Wilson knows he's messed up somehow.
*
Three days of silence, at home and at work. And then, over morning coffee: “It always hurts,” House mutters.
*
A few nights later, sharing a couch and a bottle or two of wine (they're both in agreement that light booze doesn't count, sobriety-wise), Wilson asks, “How bad is it?”
House groans. “Are you conducting a study?”
“I'm trying to -” Wilson shrugs. He's trying to understand. Trying to figure out what it all looks like, now that House is off the Vicodin.
It seemed like the right choice, at the time. Nothing else was working. Vicodin was what Wilson knew, what he gave to patients. Vicodin worked. He didn't think House would be in such pain for so long. He thought it'd ease up, become less relentless. Or maybe that House would get used to it - that he'd understand that this was his life now.
Wilson sometimes thinks that writing that first prescription is the worst thing he's ever done, professionally and personally. Other times he asks, furiously, impotently, what else could I have done?
*
He can't sleep. He needs to sleep - work tomorrow, always demanding - but he can't.
He can't sleep because House is in pain in the next room. It's only the occasional soft moan that makes it through the walls, a far cry from their months in the old place (Amber's place), but it’s enough.
Wilson shoves the bottle of Vicodin in his pajama pocket and pads his way to the door. “House?”
A pause. And then, “yeah?” Faux-impatient, faux-annoyed.
“Can I come in?”
There is no response, which he takes as a yes. He pushes the door open. House is underneath the blankets, feigning okayness, but Wilson sees how he's desperate.
“Take the damn drugs,” he snaps.
“I can't,” House growls back.
“You shouldn’t have to be in this much pain -”
“Right! I shouldn't! But I am.” House stares at him.
Wilson doesn't know what to do. “There’s - meditation,” he says weakly, and then suddenly they're both giggling like kids.
“Get in,” House says, indicating the bed, a softness to his face that Wilson doesn't see often enough (even though he sees it more than most people). So he gets in.
It's not cuddling. Not at first. Just another warm body. Just companionship.
*
Wilson wakes to House sucking in breath sharply and jabbing his thumbs into his thigh muscle, or what's left of it.
He sits up. Works the leg with his own hands, until House is able to breathe easier. Until it passes.
He does this several times over the course of a few weeks and then he lets himself think it's not that bad. It's manageable.
House exaggerates the physical pain because it's easier than tackling all the emotional pain. Hasn't he always known this?
And then there is a night and House is chewing on his fist so as not to cry out and Wilson tries his best and it doesn't work and all he has left to offer are the drugs and. And. And he wants so badly for House to take them.
“I can't,” House snaps.
“They'll make you feel better,” Wilson urges. “We can worry about the rest later.”
“I can't,” House repeats, shaking his head. “I'm broken, Wilson. If I have one, I'm gone.”
Wilson wants to believe this is not true. He wants to believe in a world where there is logic. Person in pain - treat them.
He doesn't realize he's crying until House puts a finger to his cheek and says, “Get a grip.”
*
“What helps?” Wilson asks, fake-sleepy. Easier to get under House's skin this way, he imagines.
House's impatient sigh suggests he knows exactly what Wilson is up to. “Not asking bullshit questions.”
He doesn’t know what else to do. He rolls over and into House, snuggling almost, and clutches at him like he's a safety preserver.
This is how they fall asleep.
*
“I forget what it's like to not be in pain,” House says one night, and Wilson forces his mouth shut about ageing and creaking bones and no one being like how they were in their twenties anymore. This is not that. He's starting to understand just how much it is not that.
“How bad is it right now?” he asks instead.
House shrugs. “S'okay. Not the worst.”
Wilson tightens and then untightens his fists. He wants so badly to fix this. In cancer there is progress, movement. Improvement or decline, not this ongoing drudge of sameness. “Okay,” he says.
*
There are things he can't stop himself from doing. They're sharing a bed. Of course he crawls over to whisper, it's okay, it's okay.
Sometimes House snarls that it’s not, or kicks him away. Mostly, though, he allows it.
*
He knows it's fucked-up and codependent but then again, isn't that so much of their relationship?
*
One night House is in a lot of pain. Booze and heat and massage and over-the-counter pills won't do it, and Wilson loses it. “Just take the damn Vicodin,” he growls, and god, he wouldn't do this with a patient, but he can't bear this. There's something they know that works and House is refusing it. They can monitor it more closely this time, it won't be like before...
“I'm going to call Nolan,” House mutters, getting out of bed and moving into the bathroom. Wilson listens, hearing snippets through the walls.
When House comes back, he says, “I need you to dump the Vicodin. Can't have it here.” He's looking at anywhere but Wilson.
And Wilson knows this is the right thing. He does. He just hates the unfairness of all this.
“Okay,” he says softly. “You're right.” He sighs. “I couldn't - what you're doing. I couldn't do it.”
House looks like he's been slapped. The shock of it. Wilson realizes this might be the first time he's expressed this feeling. Not weary relief that House has finally done the right thing in terms of his drug problem. Pride. Awe.
“Yeah?” House asks, very quietly.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” He crawls back into bed, and Wilson curls up into him.
I love you, he thinks. God, I love you. I love you so much.
He'll say it someday. For now he's content to lie here, the two of them tangled together, their breath in sync.