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“If you could go back in time, what would you do?”
“You’re posing hypotheticals now, really?”
“Just answer the damn question.”
“Alright, fine. I would’ve gotten this cough checked out sooner.”
House looks across the room to where his cane is resting on the floor and sighs. His fingertips trace the outline of the handle, but he makes no move to actually go after it. His limbs are heavy and his head feels tumultuous, buzzing with the tail ends of a thousand thoughts per second; he flops back against the wooden bedframe behind him instead.
“Hilarious,” House mutters, the words collecting on the tip of his tongue before they tumble out over his bottom lip. “That’s the last time you get any kind of genuity from me.”
“That’s not a word, House.”
“You suck.”
There’s an exhale and a shifting of weight on the floor and Wilson is beside him in one fluid motion. “Okay,” he says, and House can almost hear his teeth sink into his lip as he thinks. “Okay. I would… well, the thing I said before still stands. I really would have gotten an earlier workup on the cough.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Wilson’s hand finds the back of his neck. “I was scared.”
House nods slowly. “What else?”
Wilson crosses one leg over the other and rests his hands on his bent knee, a pose House doesn’t even have to see to know what it means. It’s relaxed defensive. A perfectly enigmatic sitting choice. Wilson only breathes in response for a moment before his resolve visibly strengthens and he says, “I would have kissed you sooner.”
Another small, barely perceptible nod. “Yeah. We didn’t have a lot of time to do much of that,” his vision blurs and he blinks, hard. “It’s a shame, really. All those years of obsessively putting on chapstick sure did wonders for those pretty little lips of yours.”
Wilson snorts derisively but says nothing else. There’s a sound like the popping of fabric; he’s picking at the seams on his pants. That’s a new habit. House wonders briefly where he picked it up, until the thought floats to the farthest unreachable parts of his mind.
The parts he
can
still reach are getting farther and farther away by the seconds.
“Okay, I got one,” Wilson says, moving to sit crisscross applesauce instead. “If
you
could go back in time, what would you do?”
“That’s the same one I just asked.”
“Hence the emphasis on
you.”
“... I would have given you chemo instead of propofol.”
Wilson understands; he always understands.
“I’m tired, Wilson,” House says, a fact that's creeping into his voice now. It’s not the yawning kind of tired, though— this is something much different. Bone chillingly so. “Am I ready yet?”
It’s not raining outside, but as House waits for a response, he almost wishes it was. It would be a welcome accoutrement to his current state. Instead, he gets mostly sunshine with a few dark clouds scattered here and there, thick with promises of rain he will not be around to see.
Wilson is checking an imaginary watch as House starts to check back into reality. He
tsks,
then looks over and tries fruitlessly to catch House’s eye. “Just about, buddy,” his tone is sickeningly sweet, dripping with honey-like concern, disguising the tar lingering underneath. House recognized it as the same one he used for all his cancer kiddies. It’s infuriating. “Do you feel ready?”
House looks down, examines his cuticles in a very Wilsony fashion. “No,” he admits, punctuated with a shrug to dispel any offers to take back what’s already been done. Only Wilson would try to reverse a collapsing building in motion. “But I have to be.”
Wilson hums his assent. His polished French shoes gleam in the lamplight. There’s something off putting about them and how clean they are when he feels so dirty, something irritating. House chooses to ignore it in favor of shutting his eyes tight and swallowing against a sudden swell of emotion. Or nausea. The lines are too far blurred to distinguish.
“Somethin’ I wanted t’ tell you,” House slurs. He’s losing his grip on reality. He wraps his hands around it tighter and yanks it close. “I know you always loved me best.”
“Of course,” Wilson replies without missing a beat. “Over anyone. House, I always chose you over everyone who needed me more.”
“Not her,” House’s head is falling. He can’t hold it up any longer. Two hands cup his face, but he barely registers them. Just a little longer. Coma is setting in. Lovely. “Not… Cuddy. Poor Wils’n… never could resist the ladies.”
House wishes he had the strength to say something more scathing. He wishes he had the strength to care that he can’t.
“Have them write that as my epitaph,” The voice is so far away now. Like an echo in a cave. It’s too loud, too, but the effort it would take to tell Wilson to quiet down is too large to risk spending. “Or I’ll do it. Maybe we should leave a note?”
“Can it,” House says, and then slumps. The world tilts as the floor comes up to accommodate him. The carpet molds perfectly to his numb shoulder. “I’m… slipping, Wilson.”
It startled him that that thought comes out almost perfectly lucid. A last moment of
hey, I’m still here
before he isn’t.
“I know,” Lips brush feather light across House’s sweaty forehead. “Just sleep now, Greg. I’m gonna catch you when you come out on the other side.”
“Says you,” House says. It’s the last thing to ever come out of his mouth, just before the rush of breath that shudders out of his lungs as they close for commission.
Wilson stands and opens a window, for safe passage.
Two bodies lie still in the hotel room, one in the bed in a pool of congealing bronchial blood, the other on the floor in a pool of self-pity. Both are equally as dead. The byproduct of two morphine tinctures syringes on the nightstand on top of a note that reads,
James Wilson: his cheating finally caught up with him. His estranged lover was always smarter.
Finally, it begins to rain.