Every Artist Is A Cannibal

“You’ll be fine, you’ll- you’ll be okay,” his voice breaks. Why does it hurt so bad? House pushes the question away.

I’ll have the time to figure it out later, House thinks as he gets to his feet. The prosthetic leg chaffes against his skin. Long hours of running has taken its toll, it seems.

Re-adjusting his bag-strap over his shoulder, he offers a hand to Wilson, who just stares up at him. There’s something swirling like a storm in gaze. House is afraid. He doesn’t want to know what that look means, but it reveals itself to him anyways. Wilson stares up at him, and in his eyes he sees pity and longing, and under it, the fear and the desperation. Wilson doesn’t take his hand.

“Time to wake up and go-go, Jimmy.”

The joke doesn’t sit right in House’s chest.

“Two hours,” Wilson chokes out. His throat fills with overwhelming anguish, threatening to spew out his trembling lips. He can almost feel the tendrils of cordyceps creep through his veins, finding its greedy way to the host’s brain.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

House’s hand is still outstretched insistently.

“I have two hours, House.” Wilson’s voice is soft like an apology, almost a whisper. He pats the ground next to him. The grass is wet and muddy. “Sit, please.”

The neurons in House’s head fires signals at their own clumsy and desperate accord. They tell him to run. They tell him to yell. They tell him to yank Wilson to his feet. They tell him to sit. But sitting feels too difficult. He just stood up. Shouldn’t they be walking away by now? His mind echoes with the mangled remains of Wilson’s words.

Two hours.

“You could have eight hours,” House points out, and something in him rips itself apart. He adknowledged it. It’s real, it’s happening.

“I’m giving myself two hours.”

And so House sits. Wilson tenderly holds his hand, as if House is the one who’s dying.

Fuck the oncologist and his stupid oncologist habits.

The first thing Wilson does is lean in and kiss him. His lips are soft, and they tremble slightly.

From emotion, not from the infection, House reminds himself. He kisses back, and he knows that will be the very last time they do it. Better now than risk infection when the fungus eventually invades the trachea, growing and spreading till it crawls out Wilson’s mouth. House shudders at the thought.

“I’m sorry,” Wilson says after the kiss breaks. He mutters into their interlocked hands, “I’m sorry.”

“If you plan to spend your two hours apologising, please tell me. I’ll happily shorten it to five seconds.”

Wilson laughs. House wonders how he still has the strength to form anything resembling a smile, much less a laugh.

For a long moment, they just sit in silence, bloody fingers brushing and circling tender goodbyes on bruised knuckles. The need for words had left their relationship long ago. If there’s anything that needed to be said, they’d have said it already.

In this moment, Wilson’s presence reads like a sad song. Or perhaps it reads like the macadamia nut pancakes that will never be made by his hands ever again. A cold and lonely winter awaits Gregory House.

House can’t help but resort to earlier memories for comfort. He sinks deep into his own head.

The night he bailed Wilson out from jail. House had felt the thrill of having a complete stranger to pick apart in front of him. Wilson owed House, and so he let himself be picked apart. Too soon, House found himself stuck in the rabbit hole of Wilson, and apparently Wilson had done some picking and digging of his own as well.

He moves forward in time. The day the infection had begun its ruthless attack on humanity. Wilson had dragged him out of the hospital and drove him home. Chase’s wheezing and gasping breath still haunts his mind.

Then, there came the day, three years later. Wilson begged him to amputate his bad leg. He’d just came into contact with a doctor specialising in prosthetic limbs. Turned out that Wilson had been searching for one for a year.

“Please, House,” Wilson begged. “You'll die if you can’t run.” I can’t afford to lose you.

“That’s ableist,” House joked, but he knew Wilson was right. He usually was. And so after one night of quiet sobbing, he finally agreed. Wilson held House’s head close against his chest, fingers caressing tufts of hair. “Thank you.”

House threw all his painkillers he’d gotten from trading that day.

House’s mind returns to the the present. He pulls Wilson closer, allowing him to rest his weary head on his shoulder. His hand found its way to the back of Wilson’s neck, toying softly with the soft strands of hair.

House doesn’t know when, but Wilson’s hands had begun to tremble.

He tightens his grip, trying to quell the twitching muscles, only for Wilson to pull his hands away.

“No.”

The word slips out of House’s lips involuntarily. His voice is small, weak.

With unsteady hands, Wilson unzips his bag, and pulls out his gun. He presses the cold metal into his hands.

House evaluates Wilson’s state. He shakes his head, attempting to push the gun away. “You still have time.”

“Yes,” Wilson makes sure House’s hands held firm on the weapon. “So you can take your time.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t,” Wilson doesn’t miss a single beat. Yeah. No, he didn’t.

“Why do you want me to do it?” House doesn’t want to stop talking. It’ll be just like the old times, where House would say something stupidly genius, and Wilson would say something geniusly stupid in retaliation, then life would go on.

“I need to know if you can m…move on,” Wilson guides House’s hands up, until the gun is aimed at his forehead. “If you can do this, you can move on.”

“I’ll shoot myself after I shoot you,” his hands shakes, as do Wilson’s, but for painfully different reasons.

He sighs. “I can’t stop you, but, please… please d-don’t,” Wilson swallows, and he swears he can feel tendrils creeping up his throat. It’s getting hard to talk, like he’s forgetting how.

Wilson wonders if his memory is starting to fade. He can’t remember the last time House cried like he does now.

He sees the amalgamation of grief, anger and loss in his tears. And yet, there is acceptance. He reaches out a hand to dry the other's tear-stricken face. House will go on without him.

"I love you."

"This is such a chick flick moment," House manages through his tears. "I love you, too."

Wilson smiles, and it reaches his eyes. "I know."

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