FicWad

Turn Off The Night
Chapter one: /Turn Off The Night/


"Do you need anything before I go?"

"No."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

You feel Wilson's hand smoothing your hair back once and if you weren't so doped up on narcotics that you can hardly move a muscle, you'd slap his hand away. "Call me," Wilson says, sounding a million miles away from you, "if you need anything."

/Fuck off/, you want to tell him. Your face is pressed into the pillow, your jaw slack, your body so heavy it feels like it's going to sink into the mattress. You sluggishly lick your chapped lips, your tongue tasting as dry as cotton wool, and you struggle to open your eyes to look up at Wilson standing over you beside your bed.

"Sleep," Wilson quietly orders.

Yeah, sleep, the way it's pressing down on your mind and your body, you know you're not going to be able to fight it much longer. The pain in your leg, it's still there, right there, right beneath the surface like an infected itch that you can't reach, burning and throbbing in a taunting hum.

/It hurts/, you want to say to Wilson. /My leg, Wilson, it hurts/. You struggle to try and open your eyes again to look at him, snatching a blurry image of the back of Wilson through your heavy eyelids before your eyes fall shut again. You can hear his footsteps on the floorboards, retreating from the bed towards the door; a dull echo in your ears.

You can't fight the desire to sleep, though. It's stronger than you are at the moment. Everything's starting to fade around the edges as you feel yourself being swallowed into drug-induced darkness.

"I'll be back later," you hear Wilson's voice say, hollow and distant, like you're in a tunnel and he's at the other end, calling out to you.

/Okay/, you want to say. /Okay/... Your thoughts are waning into a swirl of blackness, though. Receding, slipping away from you. You just... can't... keep...

You don't hear the bedroom door close as Wilson leaves.


+++

It's been almost a year since the infarction; a long, torturous, angry year.

The little things that you still struggle to do on your own are the things that frustrate you the most: dressing yourself, especially pulling pants on, showering, going to the toilet, even wiping your own god damn ass. You never realised before the infarction just how much you use your leg muscles, how unaware of them you were. But now, every move you make reminds you of what you can't do, and you hate the word can't/. You hate it because /can't means defeat. Can't means weakness, giving up, failure, and the more you struggle to fight against can't/, the more you find you /can't do the things you wish you could still do.

Which is why Wilson's always there, always helping you on the days that your home help the hospital arranged for you upon discharge several months ago isn't here to help you. Really, you should be grateful because you have no one else. You should be grateful that Wilson's there to help you with your clothes and to help you into the shower, and to help you onto the toilet. But, fuck, you can't be grateful because you hate how humiliated your own body makes you feel.

/Can't/. That word again.

Sometimes when you're in the shower and you're sitting down on the seat that was installed for you before you came home, you stare down at your thigh. At the disfiguring scar, the huge dent in your flesh, all twisted and gnarled. You remember Cuddy talking about amputation and find yourself picturing looking at a stump. You remember telling Cuddy you wanted a bypass, and find yourself picturing your leg as it was before /this/.

You can wash the top half of your body without a problem, but it's the bottom half you need help with. You look at Wilson with utmost resentment as Wilson rolls his sleeves up to his elbows and reaches into the shower for you, grips your arm while your other hand grasps fiercely at the bar installed on your shower wall. He often gets wet from the spray of the water ricocheting off your body onto his; dampening his hair and sometimes soaking his shirt. He helps you without complaint, though, holding you up as you wash your dick and your ass with the soap. You want to spit angry, venomous words at him because of how humiliated you feel, wanting to place the blame on Wilson for how horrible and miserable you feel. In fact, sometimes you do - sometimes you tell him to get fucked, to stop treating you like you're an invalid, to stop doing everything for you like you're /incapable/.

He usually ignores you, or says something so passive aggressive that you want to punch him; something like, "Fine, don't take my help, then" - which just corners you into having no choice but to accept his help because you really are useless without him.

Or those times you're stuck on the toilet, struggling to shit because the painkillers bind you up so much you can't do a crap worth goat pebbles. Constipation wouldn't be such an issue if you weren't on such a high dose of hydrocodone - and you wouldn't be on such a high dose of hydrocodone if you weren't suffering neuropathic pain. Sometimes the constipation cramps are so fucking bad, you're almost doubled over with pain in your side or your lower belly. You can't even shit right anymore. Sometimes you're on the toilet for more than half an hour, straining and grunting in frustration, your asshole stinging with haemorrhoids from pushing so much.

It's where you are now: on the toilet, your boxers down around your ankles, your elbows propped on your knees as you stare fiercely down at the floor in concentration. You've been here about fifteen minutes, maybe twenty - long enough that your ass is going numb from being on the hard toilet seat, at least. You can hear the television in the living room, Wilson surfing through the channels slowly while he waits for you to call out for him to get you.

You've been trying to shit properly for the last three days. In your right side, you can feel a dull cramping sensation, something you're getting more and more desperate to relieve. You're sick to death of chugging down bowel relaxants and eating high fibre food to try and have a simple, basic bowel motion. Especially seeing these fucking painkillers stunt your appetite.

That's not all they do, either. Sometimes you break out into clammy sweats, feel shaky and dizzy without warning, fatigued and weak. You can't even get a hard on sometimes because the drugs have shot your sex drive to hell. Or maybe that's just the pain in your leg. Or maybe that's your self-esteem, shattered to pieces. Maybe it's all three of those things.

You grunt, straining to make something happen, your fist now pressed against the wall. It's no use, though, and in a fit of frustration, you thump your fist hard against the wall and let your head fall forward. You thump your fist against the wall again, and again.

Wilson obviously thinks you're calling out to him, because you hear the television switch off, followed by Wilson's footsteps approaching down the hall. /Go away/, you think resentfully to yourself.

"House?" Wilson asks, quietly knocking on the door.

You pause a moment, giving another half-hearted strain, then call back in an annoyed voice, "What?"

"You okay?"

"Yeah," you reply bitterly, "just trying to take a dump. As usual."

Wilson pauses. "Can I come in?"

No/, you want to snap. /No, fuck off. You're going to need help off the toilet, though, at least to pull your pants up, so you sigh and say in a reluctant voice, "Yeah."

Wilson hesitantly opens the door and glances at you before quickly looking away as he enters the bathroom. He moves across to the bathroom sink and busies himself with tidying up some things which don't really need tidying at all, to give you some privacy. You find yourself strangely grateful that Wilson at least lets you maintain what little amount of dignity you have left.

You watch his back for a moment. "I can't shit," you say wearily.

"Large, four-hourly doses of Vicodin'll do that to you," Wilson agrees lightly.

You snort. You prop your elbow onto your knee and cover your face with your hand, a sudden feeling of frustration welling in you, welling in you so much that you feel your eyes start to prickle and burn with the threat of tears. You pin your fingers and your thumb to your eyes as if to physically hold back the sudden desire to cry because /you just want to take a fucking dump/.

"Yeah," you finally reply.

You hear Wilson stop fiddling around with the things on the bathroom sink, followed by the sound of his feet scuffing on the tile floor as he turns to look at you. /Don't look at me/, you think to yourself. /Don't fucking look at me/.

"You okay?" he asks again.

You rub your eyes, desperately willing the burning in your eyes to stop. You drop your hand away from your face and look up to Wilson, feeling helpless. Probably looking just as helpless and desperate, too. It's even worse that Wilson's looking at you /like that/, all annoyingly concerned, while you're sitting on the fucking toilet of all fucking things. Not that this is anything new, really - he's seen you at your lowest, time and time again, something you should be used to by now, except you're not used to it because getting used to this would mean accepting how much of a sad, miserable, pathetic bastard you've become.

"No, not really," you admit.

Wilson sighs, leans back against the sink and crosses his arms over his chest. "Anything I can do?"

You smile humourlessly. "You want to pull a turd out of my ass? That'd be a big help."

Wilson doesn't smile back. "Emollient laxative? Softens the stool and--"

"I know what it /does/," you snap. You sigh irritably. "I want to shit /now/, not in twelve hours' time."

Wilson watches you for a long moment. You know that look on his face; it's the same look he gets when he's lecturing you. "The laxatives you've taken should work," he begins. "The whole reason they haven't is because you don't move around anywhere near as much as you should. You don't even do your physiotherapy exercises properly like you're supposed to."

"Don't start," you warn.

"There's no reason," Wilson continues, ignoring you, "why bulk-forming laxatives shouldn't work."

"It's called long-term opiate use," you say darkly.

"You can't rely on drugs alone just to help you function," Wilson argues.

You shoot Wilson a sinister look. "Try telling that to your cancer patients."

"Cancer and palliative care are completely different things to your situation!"

"It's opiate use, whether it's for palliative care or neuropathic pain," you retort, anger starting to rise within in you. Fighting while you're sitting on the toilet trying to take a dump with Wilson standing there in front of you: such an exalting experience. "Causes constipation, no matter what!"

Wilson throws his hands in the air. "You need to get off your ass more, House. Move around, get your body--"

"I /need/," you yell, "to shit!"

The word 'shit' echoes loudly in the bathroom and throughout your apartment. Wilson stares at you with a look of frustration on his face, until he sighs and looks away. "Fine," he concedes meekly. "Suppositories, then."

"Still takes too long," you gripe.

Wilson rubs the back of his neck. "Bisacodyl suppository. Works in fifteen minutes, usually. Or an enema: almost instant effect."

You glower at Wilson. Just the mere thought of needing a suppository or an enema fills you with indignation - but if you want an instant result, a suppository or enema is what you're going to need. The worst part of that is you're not going to be able to administer the suppository or enema yourself. You'll need someone's help, Wilson's help. If showering you and helping you off the fucking toilet aren't degrading enough, getting Wilson to stick things up your ass to help you shit is definitely a whole new level of low.

But what choice have you got? It's either accept that you need to forego your dignity in order to be able to crap, or remain in discomfort with bowel and stomach cramps.

"Okay," you agree in a surly tone after a long pause. No use trying to crap now, not while you've been trying to for the last half an hour without success. You wave at Wilson to come over to you, bracing one hand against the wall while you hold your other arm out to him. Without hesitation, he pushes away from the sink and takes your arm, and you grunt in pain as you push yourself up from the toilet. Wilson stoops down to snatch your boxers and tugs them up your legs until they're within your reach for you to pull up over your hips yourself.

"You okay?" Wilson asks, still clutching your arm.

"That's the third time you've asked me that," you snap.

"I'll take that as a yes," Wilson sighs, reaching for your cane propped by the toilet.

You take the cane and begrudgingly let Wilson guide you out to the living room. He tells you he'll go to the drug store and asks if you want anything else. You tell him to get fucked.

He slams the door behind himself loudly as he leaves your apartment.


+++

You're slumped on the sofa, staring at the television blankly as you wait for Wilson to return.

You're so fucking sick of television. Same shit, day in and day out; Oprah Winfrey, Ricky Lake, Law and fucking Order, Melrose Place, Quantum Leap reruns. You're fucking sick of Wilson. You're fucking sick of not being able to shit properly, not being able to function like a normal human being, not even being able to jerk off like you sometimes want to - not because you really feel that aroused but because, despite how much everything in your life has crumbled away, you want to prove to yourself that you still have blood pumping through your veins.

You're sick of Wilson's cooking, you're sick of takeout, you're sick of bed, you're sick of the pain that won't go away in your leg, you're sick of /everything/. It frustrates you so much sometimes that you want to throw things, punch things, punch Wilson when he's in your face about something you really don't give a shit about. Like how it's time you left the apartment to integrate yourself back into the world, get back into the routine of normal life.

You can't bear that thought. You can't bear the thought of leaving the sanctuary of your apartment; it's become a security blanket for you, a safe, warm place that keeps you bitterly complacent in your misery. You hate it when people come to your door, you hate it when the phone rings, feel paranoid every time your answering machine clicks on to take a message for you - in case it's someone's voice you don't want to hear, like Mom wanting to know how you're holding up.

Or Stacy. Not that she's called you in a long while. But every time the phone rings, you think it might be her and you sometimes find yourself holding your breath, expecting to hear her voice after the beep on the answering machine. You're not sure why you expect it to be her - maybe there's a part of you that somehow hopes it's her. Because you miss her, you miss her like crazy. You miss her, and hate her, and love her, and there've been moments since she left you where you've felt so full of despair at having lost her that you've wanted to cry.

You scrub your hands over your face. You don't want to think about Stacy. That's one good thing the Vicodin's useful for - dulling your mind into a fog, forgetting about Stacy, forgetting about your anger and your bitterness. But at times like this when you're lucid in between doses of medication, you can't help but find yourself thinking about her. Wondering what she's doing, where she is, if she misses you, if she's hurting - and you hope to god that she is. Hurting as much as you're hurting.

You snatch the remote up from your lap and start angrily firing through the channels to find something else to watch, something, anything other than Ricky fucking Lake, and just as you settle on a crappy Love Boat rerun, you hear the front door opening.

"About time," you snap at Wilson.

"Hello to you, too," Wilson says wearily. You hear plastic bags rustling before the front door closes, and look over your shoulder to see Wilson struggling into the kitchen with bags of groceries.

"You went shopping."

Wilson turns to look at you evenly, shaking his hand as though the bags he'd been carrying had cut into it painfully. "Actually, no, these bags are just a figment of your imagination. The groceries aren't really here, and neither am I."

You roll your eyes and look back to the television. "I've been sitting here, waiting for an opportunity to shit, and you go shopping."

"Food, you know," Wilson replies dryly as he starts to put the shopping away into the cupboards. "Funny how the human body can't live without it."

"The human body can't live without the natural act of shitting, either."

You hear Wilson give a sigh of irritation. "I was out, knew there was no food here," Wilson argues, "figured I might as well kill two birds with one stone."

"I need to shit."

Wilson slams the cupboard door shut, loudly. It makes you jump, and you snap your head in Wilson's direction and see him standing there with his hands on his hips and a look of exasperation on his face. "Tell me again you need to shit," he says challengingly.

"I-- Wilson--"

"Tell me again, House," he cuts you off. "Tell me another ten times, twenty times. Hell, tell me another hundred times if it makes you feel better, so I get the message that you need to take a crap and you can get it out of your system how I'm doing wrong by you."

You open your mouth to retort, then think better of it and close it again. You turn your attention back to the television to escape the dark glare Wilson's giving you, trying in vain to ignore the conflicting stab of guilt and anger simmering in your veins. God damn Wilson, you think to yourself, god damn him. Fucking asshole, helping you and doing all this stuff for you that leaves you feeling both useless and indebted to him. It's a horrible feeling, being so dependent on someone when it's not in your nature to be dependent at all. You resume channel surfing to distract yourself, so you don't have to think about how guilty you feel for treating Wilson like shit sometimes, when all he's trying to do is help you.

Wilson seems to get over it, though; he comes out to the living room after putting everything away, the small box containing the enema in his hand. "You want it now?"

You look up at him and reluctantly nod; no, you don't want the enema. But you do want to shit and relieve this terrible constipation pain in your gut. He holds his hand out to help you up from the couch.

"Fuck you," you say to him and to the offered hand.

"Fuck you, too," Wilson replies petulantly.

You glare at him for a moment while he watches you with annoyance. You relent and take his hand.


+++

There's nothing more humiliating, you decide, than the idea of lying on your side with your white, naked butt facing your best friend in order for him to give you a quick rectal examination.

"No way you're sticking your finger up my fucking ass," you declare.

"I'm going to be sticking an enema up there in a minute, what difference does it make?" Wilson exclaims.

"Enema bottle," you reply, pointing to the small box with Fleet Ready-To-Use Bisacodyl Enema in Wilson's hand. You then hold your middle finger up at him. "Appendage. Two completely different things."

He ignores your rude gesture. "I'm a doctor, not some anal-probing deviant."

"You're my /best friend/," you reply sharply as you drop your arm back to your side. "Or supposed to be."

The look Wilson gives you is somewhere between incredulous and like he'd just been slapped hard across the face. You probably should feel regret for saying what you'd just said, except right at this moment you don't care. "Supposed to be," Wilson echoes. "Right, so I'm just helping you out here, bending over backwards for you because I'm supposed to be your friend, but I'm not really."

You rub your hand over your face, feeling a pang of guilt because Wilson's right, in all his passive aggressive glory - he's been bending over backwards for you for all this time and where would you be without him? Without another word, you climb awkwardly onto the bed and shift onto your side, pushing your sweatpants and boxers down over your ass.

Wilson sighs. "House..."

"Shut up and get on with it," you snap.

You listen to Wilson moving about the room, snapping gloves on, popping the bottle of lubricant open to smear his finger up and then feel the bed dip under the weight of Wilson's knee pressing down onto it. He lays a hand on your hip as he reaches his other hand down to your backside; his finger's cold and slimy, wholly uninvited as far as you're concerned, as he pushes it into your ass to feel the tightness of the anal muscles. You try your hardest not to jerk away from him or elbow him in the face.

"A lot of fecal matter impacted in your rectum," he announces as he pulls his finger out.

You want to yank your pants up and shy away from Wilson ever touching you again, you feel so stripped of your dignity. "You don't have to talk to me like I'm your patient."

"What do you want me to say, House?" Wilson replies, his voice sharp with irritation. "Your ass is packing shit?"

"Well, it is, by the sound of it," you say dryly.

Wilson snorts. "Guess that means I can say that you're full of shit and actually mean that literally for once."

In spite of yourself, you give a quiet snort of laughter. "You saying you think I'm full of shit?"

"You are now, at least, yes."

"But you think I'm the shit, otherwise."

"I think you're a shit," Wilson argues. "Everyone thinks you're a shit."

"We all got to be something," you say in your defense.

"'We all got to be something, even if that means some of us are nothing but shit'," Wilson echoes with feigned incredulity. "Gee, what a profound statement on the purpose of human existence."

"What can I say - I'm the shit, like I said."

"You're a shit," Wilson corrects you.

"'A shit', 'the shit'," you argue with a shrug. "Semantics."

You hear Wilson give a laugh equal parts amused and frustrated and for the first time in a long while, even though Wilson just had his finger up your ass, you feel a little better. You're even smiling.

Not for long, though. Wilson helps you tug your sweatpants and boxers off so you're now lying on your side without anything on except your t-shirt. "Shift over a bit a moment," he tells you.

You do as you're told and feel a towel being laid out and wedged underneath your hip; something to soak up any mess you might accidentally make. You swallow back the urge to make a biting remark to Wilson about how you're not a god damn baby, for fuck's sake.

"Draw your leg up to your chest."

"I know how to do this," you reply crossly, feeling your dignity quickly stripping away from you again because any minute now that enema's going to be in your ass and who knows if you'll even make it to the toilet in time.

"Yeah, I know," Wilson says patiently. "I'm just... telling you."

You know what?/, you want to snarl. /Fuck off. Don't touch me. Get lost, don't ever come back, you asshole. You bite your tongue and carefully grasp your thigh in your hand, and slowly draw it up towards your chest as far as you can make it go and, fuck, it hurts, it hurts so badly. You gulp back a sound of pain threatening to escape from the back of your throat.

Wilson obviously notices you're in pain, maybe from the way you're suddenly tense and hunching your back over. "You okay?"

"Jesus Christ, stop asking me that!"

"Okay, okay," Wilson relents, and you can just picture Wilson holding his hands up in self defense at you.

You manage to get your knee as close to your chest as you can, your muscles shaking and your forehead breaking out in a mild sweat from how much it fucking /hurts/. This beats showers where you can't stand up to wash your ass, and wiping your ass after taking a dump. Especially when you feel the spongy tube being pushed into your anus, followed by the cold squirt of the enema being administered into your rectum; a strange sensation of irritation and fullness that your rectum instantly responds to by contracting slightly. At least Wilson's quick - you feel the tube being pulled back out almost straight away, followed by Wilson's hand bracing against your hip to keep you on your side.

"You--"

"Don't ask me that question again," you say menacingly.

Without any warning, you feel a sudden rush in your ass, a swift almost uncontrollable desire to push. You clench your ass as tight as you can to retain the enema, fisting a hand into the pillow beneath your head. Your stomach and bowels starts to cramp; the enema working faster than you expected to. You grit your teeth and breathe through your nose to control the urge to expel everything.

"Fuck," you gasp at the cramping pain twisting in your gut, an almost excruciating sensation of bearing down rippling through your rectum as the urge to shit gets stronger and stronger.

"It's okay, House. Just breathe. Try to hold it in."

You don't last ten minutes. You're too desperate to get to the toilet to relieve the cramping in your gut to really notice the small mess you'd made on the towel - but god, the relief once you finally, finally shit; you almost cry with relief.

You're sitting slumped on the toilet by the time Wilson comes back to check on you after ten minutes or so. He helps you up, flushes the toilet, helps you wipe your ass and then hauls you into the shower to help you wash off the mess that had dribbled down your legs when you were making your frantic way to the bathroom. You feel debased, stupid, undignified and humiliated, again, and perhaps Wilson is aware of this because he doesn't say a word; just silently crouches down to assist in washing your feet and just as silently backs away when you fire a rejoinder at him to fuck off. You've been saying that to him a lot lately.

By the time you're helped back to the bedroom when you're dry, you find the soiled towel gone, the bed sheets changed and a clean change of clothes waiting for you on the bed. You feel too detached from yourself out of shame to react to how much Wilson's going out of his way for you. In fact, you'd become detached and despondent the moment your bowels were empty and you had nothing left to do except sit on the toilet and look down at your shit-streaked legs, wondering to yourself how it was possible that a year ago you were an athletic, active man with a woman you loved like crazy, and now you're nothing but a useless cripple.

Wilson asks you if you want food once you're dressed; you shake your head as you climb into the bed. You just want to rest, put the whole embarrassing situation behind you, have Wilson out of your sight, just be left alone in your own misery because you feel nothing but low and pathetic now.

He comes back into your room with your pills and a glass of water, and watches you swallow the Vicodin. It doesn't take too long for them to start working: you feel your body slackening, your head growing heavy, your eyes blurring over and your body slowly melting into a feeling of leaden bonelessness.

You tell Wilson, again, to fuck off in a slurred voice, and you want to argue with him when you feel the bed dip under Wilson's weight as he sits down beside you on the bed. "I'm not going anywhere," you hear him say, but he sounds as far away from you as the east is from the west.

/Stubborn fucking.../, you start to think. Stubborn fucking asshole, you'd wanted to say. The thought drifts off into blackness, though, along with the rest of you.

You don't feel his hand stroking your hair as you slip into a deep, dreamless sleep.


+++

Sometimes, when you wake up after having taken your pills, you find you'd fallen asleep in an awkward angle that leaves your neck aching so much you can barely move it. Or sometimes you wake up on your arm, which feels dead from the circulation being cut off. Sometimes you wake up drooling, or wake up bathed in sweat, or wake up so thirsty your throat feels like it's been scrubbed with sandpaper.

You'd come out to the living room after your nap and blanked out in front of the television, Wilson asking if you needed anything before he went to work. You ignored him. He left your pills on the coffee table, along with a jug of water and glass, and then silently left your apartment. Same old same old: you channel surfed, going through endless rounds of watching Oprah, Ricky Lake, crappy midday movies flashing before your eyes as you fired away at the TV with the remote before finally settling on some foreign movie you couldn't follow.

You don't remember falling asleep on the couch after taking your pills, and you don't remember the blanket being draped over you. And you don't realise Wilson's sitting in the room with you, watching television with his dinner on his lap, until you grunt in pain.

"Hey," he greets quietly.

You try to crane your neck to look at him perched in the armchair adjacent to you, but your neck muscles have seized up. You lick your lips, which are chapped and scaly from the medication. The corners of your mouth are cracked with papercut-like sores. So many horrible effects of long-term use of narcotics.

"What time is it?" you ask. Your voice is croaky and your tongue feels as dry as cotton wool.

"Evening," Wilson replies.

"How late?"

"Almost seven. You hungry? I made you some dinner."

"No."

"You sure?"

You groan as you try to shake the sluggish feeling the nap you'd had has left you with. "Need to piss."

"Want help up?"

"Fuck off."

Wilson sighs before you hear his fork scratching over his plate. "Suit yourself," he says.

You rub your face, trying to rub the grogginess away and then awkwardly shift yourself up into a proper sitting position. Oh god, your leg, your leg is aching badly, as well as your neck. You clutch at your thigh and rock back and forth slightly with your eyes squeezed shut, wishing to hell the pain would just stop for five fucking seconds. You can feel Wilson's eyes on you, watching you, and you can almost feel Wilson's urge to ask / 'you okay?' /.

"Haven't you got a wife to go home to?" you ask in a tight voice.

"She knows where I am," Wilson replies before mouthing a forkful of food.

You snort. "What, not even lying to her about staying late at work anymore?"

Wilson looks at you. "How can I," he asks, "when you're always calling me whenever I'm home?" You can't tell if Wilson's saying that out of annoyance or just stating blunt truth. He then shrugs as he cuts himself another bite of food. "Bonnie doesn't seem to have an issue with it. She knows you're... you know."

"Crippled," you finish for him, bitterly.

"More or less."

You stare at Wilson for a long moment before you reach for your cane and struggle with all your might to get up from the couch - not without cursing and hissing in pain, and you feel like shoving Wilson back from you when he's suddenly at your side and helping you to your feet.

At least he returns to his meal as you limp stiffly down the hall. When you reach the toilet, you brace one hand against the wall while holding your dick in your other hand. If one thing is going right, you can piss properly and without hindrance. You flush and move across to the sink where you wash your hands and take to studying your face in the mirror.

Maybe it's just the glare of the light, the way it shines down on your face at unflattering angles, but you notice how old you look: haggard, tired, pale, bags under your eyes, your stubble starting to turn into a beard. You feel so /ugly/. You never thought you were the most attractive man alive, but you know you used to look better than this. If there's to be yet another reason to hate yourself and what you've become, this is it - how horrible you look, as horrible as you feel.

You slap the light off in disgust as you leave the bathroom and resume your seat on the couch. Wilson asks again if you want food; you agree, just to shut him up, and when he returns from the kitchen he sets a plate of meat and vegetables on your lap. You're not actually that hungry, but you eat anyway for something to do, not truly tasting it because of how dry your mouth is. It hurts to eat, too; the small cuts in the corners of your mouth stinging every time you open your mouth to take in a bite of food.

Wilson brings you out some chocolate ice cream once you've eaten your meal, sitting beside you with his own bowl of the stuff and you eat in silence. He brings your pills out with a glass of water when you're finished and not long after you've taken them, you start to feel groggy again. Some life this is, being constantly doped up, living according to how the pills affect you and how your pain dictates your every move. This isn't even living; this is existing because you have no choice, and you wonder if life is ever going to get any better ever again. You'll return to work when you're well enough, that much you're sure of. Maybe one day you won't be in so much pain, maybe one day you'll get your life back on track and put this whole nightmare behind you.

Maybe. But not likely. You don't want to fill yourself up with false hope.

"I'm going to bed," you announce when you feel too doped to really focus on the TV anymore.

"Okay," Wilson says, watching you struggle up from the couch. "I'll be in to help you in a minute. And don't tell me to fuck off."

"Fuck off."

"Thought as much," Wilson sighs.

You make your way into the bathroom to brush your teeth and then move into the bedroom. You've got your shirt off by the time Wilson's walking into the room. You toss your shirt to the floor as he crouches down in front of you to tug your shoes off.

"You going home tonight?" you ask.

Wilson looks up at you, a little surprised. "I was planning to."

You nod. Of course; he has a wife. Not that you really care, but it's Wilson's choice to do something stupid like marry a twitchy, ferrety person like Bonnie.

"Why?" Wilson asks after a beat.

You shrug. "Just asking."

Wilson watches you as he strips your socks off and then stands up to help you take your sweatpants off. He pulls them down your hips and you sit back onto the edge of the bed. Stripped down to your boxers, Wilson stands back up and helps you get under the covers, helps you prop your pillows up and you ignore him when he wishes you good night. You roll awkwardly onto your side as he switches the light off and the room plunges into darkness.

Night time is the time you dread most. When you can't sleep, you find your mind drifting, thinking, pondering over the way things used to be and how they could've been, and how it is now. You think about Wilson, about Stacy, about everything you once were and everything you've become and how much you hate that. How out of control your life is now, how empty you are, how lonely you are. Even if you have Wilson to help you, you still feel incredibly lonely and alone, and you miss the person you used to be.

You miss Stacy, too, god you miss her. And hate her. It's the little things you miss about her, though; waking up in the morning with her, the way she'd smile at you, the way she'd scowl indignantly at you when you were being a deliberately annoying asshole, the way she'd sometimes rub your back at night as she snuggled up close to you. Yeah, you miss that. How can you not? She was the most important person in your life and now she's gone. And you hate her for that. You hate her for betraying your choice, too. You hate her so much, you miss her, you still love her, you hate her.

You push your face into the pillow and try to snuff the thoughts from your mind. You can't even think of good things to occupy your mind with - music, that's about all you have at the moment. Music and Wilson. That's it. Not even medicine right now, seeing you're still too unfit to work.

Thank god for Wilson, you think sullenly, because without him you have no idea where you'd be. You're pretty sure he doesn't like you most of the time, and rightly so. You don't even like yourself, so you don't expect Wilson to like you any better. That doesn't stop you from needing him, though. You hate how much you need him; you hate admitting to yourself that you need him, too.

You shift restlessly on the bed, trying to get comfortable, wishing that your drugs made you sleep when you actually want to sleep. You roll onto your back and stare up at the ceiling, watching the way the moonlight streams a pale glow across it. You can still hear the television playing in the living room and the faint sound of dishes being washed in the kitchen sink. Wilson will probably leave after he's finished cleaning up and you'll be left listening to the silence of your apartment, while the hours drag by. It was why you asked Wilson if he was going to stay the night - even if he slept in the living room, at least you'd know he was /there/.

You turn your head to the side to peer across at the wardrobe and without really thinking about it, you reach your hand down to your limp dick. You grope it, squeeze it, rub your palm across it without any actual desire to masturbate. You're just touching yourself because... you're a sad fucking bastard, and all you have that's remotely pleasurable is your penis. You push your hand into your boxers and take your cock in your hand, rub your thumb over the tip and then give your cock a few half-hearted tugs before you grope at your balls.

This is sad. And pathetic. And pointless. You pull your hand back out of your boxers and roll back onto your side, deciding to try and sleep again. The sound of Wilson washing up in the kitchen has stopped, and you hear the TV being switched off. Wilson's footsteps move around the living room before they start to move down the hallway and you think to yourself that Wilson's probably going to use the bathroom before he goes home.

Much to your surprise, you hear Wilson's footsteps moving into your bedroom and approaching the bed, where they stop. You force yourself to stay still when silence abruptly falls in the room. You're trying to work out what Wilson's doing - maybe he's... you have no idea. What could he possibly want?

You hear something that sounds like shoes being quietly dropped to the floor. You startle when the bed dips under Wilson's weight. "What're you doing" you ask in alarm, forgetting about keeping silent.

Wilson falters, and then continues to shift onto the bed. "What does it look like?" he asks in a hushed voice, as though he doesn't want to be overheard - even though it's just the two of you in your room.

"I don't know what it looks like," you reply warily, "but it feels like you're getting into my bed."

"/On/to your bed."

"Same thing."

You lie there, feeling confused as to what the hell Wilson's doing. Even more confused when you feel Wilson's hand on your back. The bed covers pull tight around your body as Wilson settles on top of them. He's still fully dressed, as far as you can tell. Which you're glad of. Actually, you're not sure if it really makes any difference, seeing /he's lying on your fucking bed with you/. He settles close behind you, his breath against the back of your neck and his hand now resting on your upper arm.

"Wilson," you begin.

"House," he cuts you off warningly.

You ignore him. "What're you--"

"Just shut up, for once."

You snap your mouth closed. Wilson sighs deeply and drops his hand from your arm, tucking himself in against your back securely and you feel his face nestling just against the back of your neck. You should be freaked out by this, you really should be, because Wilson's never done this before and you don't know how to respond or react, or even feel. But the thing is, Wilson's seen so much of you, has seen you at your absolute lowest, even squirted an enema up your god damn ass to help you shit, that you can't bring yourself to even feel freaked out. Confused, yes. But not freaked out. Maybe the freaked out part will come later. Or maybe you're just too stoned to be able to react right now. Maybe it's a range of different reasons.

Whatever the reason, you find yourself slowly, very slowly, relaxing. Wilson doesn't touch you anywhere else, doesn't do anything assuming, just rests against you and you find his warm, firm presence behind you strangely reassuring and comforting. You listen to his steady breathing, your own breathing falling into rhythm with his.

"Don't tell me to fuck off," Wilson murmurs after a long stretch of silence, and you flinch in surprise at the unexpected sound, "because I'm not going anywhere."

You can't bring yourself to say anything at first. You open your mouth, then close it again, and swallow quietly. You stare across at the window, watching the shadows of the tree branches moving about in the breeze outside.

"I know," you finally reply.

You didn't realise Wilson was tense until you feel him suddenly relax against you at your admission, as though he's scared you're going to bite his head off, tell him to get fucked like you've been saying to him at every opportunity. And it's like he reads your mind: "What, no 'fuck off' this time?"

You pause. This, Wilson getting onto your bed after you asked him if he was going home tonight, has happened so suddenly and unexpectedly that you're still trying to puzzle over why Wilson would do this. You'd been very vaguely aware of the times Wilson stroked your hair when you've been on the brink of sleep - or maybe you only dreamt those things happening. It's always hard to tell when you're slipping into drug-induced sleep. "When I asked if you were going home tonight, this isn't what I had in mind."

"You want me to leave?" he asks quietly.

"You just said not to tell you to fuck off."

Wilson snorts softly. "Since when have you ever listened to me?"

You pause once more. "Never."

"Well, then, like I asked - no 'fuck off' this time?"

You swallow again. A part of you wants to tell him to fuck off, partly out of habit, mostly because you don't know what he's doing here on your bed, pressed up against you like this. Another part of you wants him to stay because it's been a long time since you've felt someone spooning up against you like this, secure and warm. It makes you realise how exhausted you feel and you decide, for now, for once, that you can't be bothered fighting with Wilson, fighting against Wilson. You want him to stay, even if it's just until you fall asleep.

"Next time," you say in a tired voice. "Maybe."

"Next time," he agrees.

You nod almost imperceptibly and wearily close your eyes.


end