I slightly changed the ending where Wilson finds out House isn’t dead and they run away together. I don’t like the tragic ending where one person dies alone in pain. I want a happy ending. I think Wilson is just too cute, and House is human too.
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“I hate you, House. You’re a complete bastard. Whenever you feel like it, you push away and mock the love from everyone who cares about you without a second thought. You will never, ever have a partner who truly loves you.” Wilson shouted. His hands were shaking, his whole body trembling. He couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or from rage.
When Wilson learned that his lifelong best friend, his only friend, had been reduced to black char in that explosion, half his body blown to dust, never to be found. No one knew how long he stood in front of that burning house. The friend who had promised to face death with him had lied again, just like before, abandoned him without hesitation.
“What gives you the right to die so selfishly, so carelessly, leaving me here to live in pain alone?”
Tears streamed down Wilson’s face. He sat down. The leaping flames had died out, the surroundings slowly cooling, leaving only the lingering ash and the smell of burnt wood in the air. He felt so cold. He wanted to put on the coat he’d taken off, only to remember he’d long draped that expensive new lambskin coat he’d bought with House over House’s half-burned body.
“How stupid,” he muttered to himself.
Wilson slid down against the railing, sitting right where the beam had collapsed. The sound of fire truck sirens faded away, and the surrounding noise gradually died down. Wilson felt a part of his soul being torn from his body, dissipating.
He couldn’t understand how House could end his own life so easily, how he could make someone feel so desperate without effort. He thought House hated him. Even in his last five months, House had made him watch the flames devour his body. The second the fire-spewing beam crashed down, Wilson’s heart shattered.
He’d been in the deep ocean, forced to see a distant shore. When he swam for his life, House’s death hit like a giant wave, bringing him twice the misery.
He could never hate Dr. House. Even if House might have gotten Amber killed. If House had lowered his guard even once, shown his fragile side just one time, Wilson would have returned without hesitation to House’s thorny embrace.
As an oncologist, he knew better than anyone that his body would only become a breeding ground for tumors. He did not want to go gentle into that good night, but he was beyond saving. In his final days, he only wanted to spend the remaining months happily, unreservedly, with House.
But this fire, this cruel fire, this cruel man, had personally strangled his last bit of hope.
He pulled a stack of papers from his pants pocket and tore them to pieces over and over. It was their vacation plan. It had the pyramids of Egypt written on it—House had always wanted to see how mummies were made. And Australia, which he’d always wanted to visit. He wanted to watch House fight kangaroos freely.
Three years ago, he’d bet House three hundred dollars. Wilson had bet he would lose.
He didn’t want to die. He wasn’t an atheist. He didn’t believe death was endless nothingness and eternal sleep. But he couldn’t accept the death of his best friend, his own death. It wasn’t fair.
Together, he and House had saved more people than ninety-nine percent of the doctors in the world. Why them? He had done wrong things, but in House’s words, their combined contributions were enough to get a hundred praying losers into heaven.
“Too bad heaven probably wouldn’t take a bastard like you,” Wilson smiled. “You’d definitely be in hell bargaining with demons, trying to suffer less and scam some painkillers on the side.”
He had always tried to make House find passion for life again. This wasn’t just advice from a doctor—it was deep love for his best friend.
Before he got sick, he thought he understood House’s pain. He saw House moaning in agony every night and day from withdrawal, insulting and mocking every inch of the world and despising God to raise his spiritual flag, even resorting to self-harm to numb the emotional pain.
Countless times, his heart softened and he wanted to give him a painkiller, but he held back. All he could do was stay with him, listen to his endless, never-repeating curses.
But now that he felt this piercing pain himself, he had no idea how House had endured it. All he wanted now was a single bullet to escape the suffering. Just one, and he could go to House.
They had always been drifting apart, coming closer, then apart again. Somehow, he couldn’t. He would never be House. He couldn’t do something so crazy.
If he killed himself, that would just prove House was right—that in his rotten life, someone always took responsibility for him. He couldn’t spoil him forever.
He knew House was a terrible person, a complete scumbag. He was sharp-tongued and cruel, like fighting windmills in seventeenth-century armor. He flirted with prostitutes, abused drugs recklessly, deliberately mentioned a husband’s affair in front of his wife, talked openly about sleeping with him in front of his assistants, holding nothing back…
But were they lovers? No. Wilson pushed the thought away.
“Good boy…” He remembered the tenderness of that night. He’d liked how it felt, but they still weren’t lovers. They were just friends, or best friends. One step further—it was fate.
His head hurt. His chest hurt. Every inch of his body felt squeezed. The pain grew sharper. Wilson felt like he couldn’t breathe. He began to retch, bringing up a little stomach acid mixed with bright red blood.
He touched his abdomen. He didn’t know if it was just in his head, but he felt a four-centimeter lump inside. The scythe of death.
He didn’t know if the tumor was making him hurt this badly. Maybe it was God’s punishment—a little penalty for trying to redeem a high-IQ antisocial bastard. Too bad the penalty was too heavy for him. He was going to die.
“If I could go back, I never would have wanted to meet you.”
He thought about the piano he’d bought for House, the songs he played and his long fingers, and the electric guitar. It had been really expensive, but You Can’t Always Get What You Want sounded so good.
He remembered every email House had sent him, even the pranks. House would photoshop his genitals onto a late-stage lung cancer patient’s CT scan and send it to him to embarrass him at work.
He’d once replaced House’s painkillers with sugar pills, swapped the sugar in his coffee for antidepressants, lied that he didn’t like monster trucks when he was actually going on a date. But House always read his mind perfectly and retaliated by any means necessary.
Their bets always ended with Wilson losing, but Wilson didn’t mind. It made House stop acting like a seven-year-old.
Wilson’s vision blurred. Blood rushed to his head. Was this how it ended?
“Wouldn’t it be ironic if the best oncologist in the country collapsed in the dark like this?”
Wilson hallucinated. He saw House.
“I knew you’d mourn for me.”
“What?” Wilson looked up. House was wearing that expensive thousand-dollar lambskin coat he’d bought. “Honestly, I think you got the size wrong. You’ve put on quite a bit of weight over the years.”
“Wait…” Wilson held his head. “Wait… you’re House.”
He was trying to figure out if this was a hallucination. The splitting headache made it hard to think.
“You forget me while my bones are still warm? That hurts.”
“Who else knows about this? Foreman?” Wilson’s head felt like it was splitting.
“I don’t think he’s that stupid. Still, I can’t accept him stepping over me. It’s ridiculous. Cuddy took the entire board’s brain with her when she left.
And you, my friend—cancer has slowed your mind. Doesn’t matter. I’ll haunt you until I drag you to the grave.”
“What the hell are you trying to do? Make your friend watch you die and live in pain, then come back waltzing like nothing happened? What is this, a performance? To satisfy your sick need for control?”
Wilson was truly angry. He strode forward and grabbed House by the collar.
“I thought you were dead. I really did.” He gritted his teeth, fighting the urge to slap that infuriating face.
“Legally, I am dead. I just needed an excuse to skip a six-month prison sentence. After all, without chemo, you’ll most likely be dead in five months. If I waited, I’d have to rob your grave to see you.”
“Or did you want me to take your ashes to Egypt and let the mummies see what ‘not resting in peace’ looks like?”
He paused, pulled out his phone and waved it.
“Don’t worry, though. I transferred all my money to you—vacation fund. Don’t even think about keeping it for yourself. Every expense has to be reported to me.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?!”
“You would’ve said no. You’d put on that angel face of yours, lecture me for hours, prove you’re a good person until the day you die, just like when I skipped work to go see monster trucks.
I don’t have three hours to listen to you nag. Your time is precious. Mine too.”
Wilson fell silent. He could be bitter and mean in his final days, just like House. But in front of his lifelong best friend, he couldn’t bring himself to say it.
He slowly let go, sat on the stairs, and rubbed his temples.
“Fine. Good thing I have a digital copy of the plan.”
“Digital copy? You actually had a backup?” Wilson raised an eyebrow. The anger in his chest hadn’t faded, but the corner of his mouth twitched upward against his will.
“I should’ve known you bastard always have a plan B. So I just tore up a bunch of useless paper?”
House rolled his eyes. The fur collar of the lambskin coat tickled his neck.
“Better than someone tearing paper like a rabid dog. Shakespeare said ‘what’s past is prologue.’ You almost tore our prologue to shreds.”
He paused, his tone not softening at all.
“Besides, I don’t trust your pathetic willpower. If you’d actually shot yourself, I’d have to complain at your tomb until dawn. I’d have to carve ‘World’s Most Sensitive Oncologist’ on your stone.”
“Please. You just don’t want to lose someone who cleans up your messes, someone who takes you to the ER when you overdose, someone who bets three hundred dollars you’ll get beaten up by a kangaroo.”
“Correction,” House said, picking up his cane and walking over. “It was a strategic retreat.
And don’t act like you’re irreplaceable. You’re just the least intolerable idiot I could find.”
House held out his hand to Wilson.
Wilson took it, pulling himself slowly to his feet. Both their hands were cold, but they gripped tightly, as if holding onto each other’s last salvation.
“Let’s go,” Wilson said. “But I’m driving. I don’t want to ride in a car with someone who just died. I’m afraid the cops will report me for riding with a ghost.”
House rambled on about the mummy remains, complaining about how shoddily some of them were made.
“You’re lucky they can’t get up and argue with you. They’d turn you into a new mummy.”
“Then I’d drag you down with me. Let archaeologists dig us up someday and marvel at the joint tomb of the naggiest oncologist and the biggest bastard diagnostician in history, with a note: ‘Spent entire lives arguing over a three-hundred-dollar bet.’”
In the Australian grasslands, Wilson kept his bet. He actually found a wild kangaroo. He watched House throw a left hook—only to get punched right in the eye socket.
House saw stars instantly and fled in embarrassment. The three hundred dollars went straight into Wilson’s pocket.
“Fools think they’re wise; the wise know their limits,” Wilson laughed, waving the money. “Shakespeare didn’t lie. House, you’re the fool who thought he could beat a kangaroo.”
House ground his teeth. “Just wait. Next time I’ll bring tranquilizers and show this damn thing who’s boss.
And give me back the money. It’s my well-deserved bravery consolation prize. I tested the kangaroo’s strength for you.”
Wilson stuffed the money into his pocket.
“Not a chance. A bet’s a bet. You lost.”
Wilson’s condition suddenly deteriorated one early morning. Severe abdominal pain curled him up in bed, cold sweat soaking his pajamas.
He gritted his teeth, not wanting to wake House in the next room. But when he rolled over, he accidentally knocked a glass off the nightstand. The sharp shatter instantly brought footsteps.
“What the hell?” House pushed open the bedroom door and saw Wilson curled into a ball.
“How long did you think you could hide this? Wilson, you’re an oncologist, not an actor. Even if you were, your acting is terrible—worse than the patients who fake sickness to scam painkillers from me.”
“It’s just… a little indigestion.” Wilson forced a smile.
House sneered, lifted his shirt, and looked at him. His face turned deadly pale.
“Indigestion? Do you take me for a three-year-old? Or do you think I’m blind and can’t see the tumor throwing a party?”
He turned, rummaged at the bottom of the suitcase, pulled out painkillers, and tossed two pills over. His voice held suppressed rage.
“Take them. Then tell me—how much longer do you want to hold on? Long enough to watch me win back that three hundred dollars another way?”
“You actually hid painkillers.”
“I’m not doing chemo.” Wilson caught the pills and swallowed them, his voice hoarse but firm.
“House, I told you a long time ago. I’d rather be like this than lie in a hospital full of tubes, listening to you insult the nurses.”
“Like this?” House’s voice rose sharply. “Watch you hurt like a dog run over by a car and then die? Wilson, you’re the most stubborn idiot I’ve ever met!
To be or not to be—you chose the most pathetic way not to be!”
His eyes reddened, but he still spoke harshly.
“You think this is brave? It’s cowardice! You just don’t want to face the pain of treatment, don’t want me watching you rot away—and you get me to remember you forever. How selfish.”
“Maybe,” Wilson coughed. He squeezed House’s hand tightly, trembling slightly.
“I’d rather be with you. Somewhere without hospitals, without patients, without boards. Quietly finish my last journey.
House, this is my only request—don’t make me listen to you yell in a place that smells like disinfectant.”
House didn’t argue anymore. He just squeezed his hand so hard his knuckles turned white.
He did as Wilson wanted: rented a small seaside villa. Of course, he put it on Wilson’s bill—House was legally dead, after all.
It had white walls and a blue roof. Open the window, and you could smell the salt of the sea wind—even though House complained every day, “This place is nothing but wind and salt.”
Wilson grew weaker and weaker. Most of the time, he slept. When awake, he listened to House complain.
In his final days, pain consumed almost all of Wilson’s senses.
“I’m sorry, House…” Wilson breathed weakly.
“It’s okay,” House held his cold hand, his voice low and hoarse. He poured a handful of sleeping pills from the bottle on the nightstand, swallowed them with water, then held Wilson tightly.
“I’ll be with you, wherever we go. Even hell won’t be too boring with you nagging me.”
“Why wouldn’t I be in heaven?”
“Because you’d be too worried about me being alone in hell.”
This time, they didn’t drift apart. They didn’t draw closer. They didn’t fight.
They just walked together into the long night without pain.