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To overcome something, you need to understand what a perfect machine it is – that’s how you fight disease. House has cut through a hundred coronary arteries and a thousand more right ventricles, yet he never quite knew the way around Wilson’s heart.
He finds this out not by purpose or three shots deep in bourbon but by accident (the word even makes his brain feel like acid is seeping through his cerebral).
“Cut-throat bitch?” The words slipped out of his mouth faster than he could even think.
“I call her Amber,” is Wilson’s simple response, like the confession doesn’t mean anything – like the confession isn’t even a confession, like he didn’t just seal House’s fate with a kiss that probably stinks of nicotine. It almost makes too much sense in his brain, neurons firing and wires flaring with the heat of a thousand suns, scorching the death sentence into his body. Kate’s words come to him like a cool lap of salty water, how she questioned House and Wilson’s relationship as if to say how could he possibly be friends with you if he’s that nice? If you spend two clear minutes looking into Wilson’s eyes, you’ll know that he isn’t that nice, which is the only reason he sticks around House for so long in the first place–
which is also why Amber makes too much sense.
House likes Wilson, Wilson likes House. Wilson also has other friends, he has ex-wives (too many to count), and women he’s also courted frequently. Wilson isn’t a show-er, Wilson is looking at Amber–
House is in love with Wilson.
Oh.
Oh.
The strong scent of ethnic spices is still burnt into House’s nostrils when he gets back to his apartment, the sound of lips smacking running laps around his head – House is in love with Wilson.
How do you go from ‘Wilson is looking at Amber’ to ‘House is in love with Wilson’?
Trick question, the answer is you don’t. There is an illogical jump somewhere rotting beneath his skin, necrosis leaking into his cells and killing every functioning part of his brain. There are facts to this, just like any other case, symptoms, reasons, lies.
Everyone lies, everyone has something killing them – no one is truly healthy, they’re just all clumps of organs and flesh with no clue which one is a ticking time bomb, that’s because no one has two brain cells to rub together – everyone is miserable. This is what he’s offered to the world, this is what House is made of. He’s heard patients dying thoughts – life is a series of rooms, life is what your actions are, blah blah blah – it all sounds romantic when you’re dying, means less when you’re actually out there living. House’s arguments make sense, they always have no matter how hard the world tries to strip it away from him.
This can’t be love.
This isn’t anything like the gross gooey feeling of warmness around Stacy. She made his shoulders slack and his eyes thankful for every muscle that let him see. Watching Wilson was like watching Stacy go for the second time, a pain so sharp it stabbed into his gut like daggers.
There’s some metaphor here – House on the operating table, Wilson holding a scalpel too big for his hands, something along those lines. The room is probably unsterile, every infection fighting for the cells in House’s blood like there’s anything left to corrupt, and that scalpel is definitely covered in rust. Faintly, House realizes, there’s no anesthesia – opiate overdose most likely, because he feels every single incision but can’t even open his mouth to scoff.
This is not love, so then what?
Wilson, for one, is beautiful. Even now, as he digs the scalpel deeper into House’s chest and pulls down his skin (metaphorically, of course), he is. Wilson isn’t wearing scrubs, gloves, or anything that would put a barrier in between them, it’s just his fingers raw against House’s skin – good, Wilson looks prettier covered in House’s blood anyway.
Something could have easily jumbled in House’s brain. It’s no surprise to anyone that Wilson is the closest thing House has, and House knows more than anyone else how easily the brain can lie to get out of the truth.
“Am I interrupting something?” Thirteen asks him, a blank expression on her face as she waits for his response.
“A very important metaphor,” House sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose. The office is empty beside the two of them, and the sky is dark outside the window. “Is it 4 am or 9 pm?”
Thirteen looks at him with the guilt of a man who’s just killed another for the first time. “New patient, says his heart is going to explode. Nothing on the scans, blood, MRI, anything...he thinks he’s going to die and all he wants to do is see his ex-wife.”
The patient is another moron who’s got his pants on backward (not that House would know that considering the patient is wearing a hospital gown, he just guesses and nicknames the guy Jean). Jean’s in his late twenties, healthy and young with opportunity, and yet he’s dying. He spins stories about this beautiful girl he was married to until their divorce not so long ago. Like House gives a damn.
“You should,” Jean said, staring at the ceiling. House looked up from the floor, watching his patient lay still on the bed and weep. “I wouldn’t be dying if I didn’t love her.”
It’s too on the nose. House orders Taub to get a heart biopsy from the guy (“that’ll kill him–”) and waits.
The heart in front of him is made up of nothing but cardiomyocytes and connective tissue, there is nothing else under this microscope. House doesn't know what he’s looking for, doesn’t know if he really believed you could die from something as stupid as love. He sends the patient home, the diagnosis already leaving the tip of his tongue in dissatisfaction like a rotten aftertaste.
*
So really, how do you go from ‘Wilson is looking at Amber’ to ‘House is in love with Wilson’?
It isn’t rhetoric, it isn’t a prognosis, it’s a problem that’s eating House and leaving nothing but his bones for the crows.
“Why are you asking me this?” Cameron looks at him with pity. “If you’ve already accepted that you love him, then you know how you got there, House.”
Yeah, that sounds about right.