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sick_wilson2007-06-01 02:58 am
Mr. Well-Adjusted
Title: Mr. Well-Adjusted
Author: slashmetwice
Rating: R for language and themes
Word Count: 3,310
Pairing: House/Wilson friendship
Spoilers: Everything up to 3x24
Summary: Wilson isn't as well-adjusted as he seems
Disclaimer: House, MD was created by David Shore and is owned by Fox; thus I don't own the show, the characters, or anything related to them.
Note: My first fanfic. Yay.
Mr. Well-Adjusted
-----
"I met someone. They made me feel - funny," he'd told her. "Good. I didn't want to let that feeling go."
She'd stared at him, brown eyes big and incredulous. He knew that look - there was judgment in it. It was a look he'd gotten used to over the years.
What he hadn't told her - what he hadn't told anyone - was why he didn't want to let that feeling go. He knew his reputation as a lady's man, a womanizer, a cheater. He knew that to many of the hospital's employees, Dr. James Wilson was the man who couldn't keep it in his pants. It was a reputation that wasn't helped by the constant attention paid to him by members of the nursing staff, nor by House's less than subtle comments about his supposed string of sexual conquests.
He didn't try very hard to change his reputation. He let them talk, let them laugh, let them press their lips together and shake their heads when he wasn't there.
"You'd be surprised what you can live with," he'd told her as he turned to leave Diagnostics. It was what he always told himself.
-----
Wilson had learned early on that even unconditional love was sometimes conditional. There was always a breaking point, always a line that could be crossed, beyond which you were out in the cold – beyond which you couldn’t go back.
For a long time, he hadn’t been sure of where he’d learned that lesson. It seemed like something he’d always known, just a piece of not-so-conventional wisdom that wormed its way into every aspect of his life, whether he wanted it to or not.
It was only when he found himself vigorously advocating for House’s homeless patient that he realized where that knowledge had come from.
“I have two brothers,” he’d told House that night, sitting on the street, bundled up against the cold winter air. House had met the younger of the two, Michael, the surprise baby who’d been born when Wilson was twelve. He hadn’t met David.
David was three years older than James. He’d always had a tempestuous personality. When they were boys, he’d often bullied his younger brother, calling him names, taking his things, tackling him to the ground and pinning him beneath his bigger, bulkier form. But nothing David did could make him anything less than golden in James’s eyes. James had worshipped David and tried to emulate him in all things. When David tramped through the woods behind their house, James had followed, trying to imitate his brother’s long strides. When David dressed as an action hero for Halloween, James had wanted a red cape and a spandex unitard too.
There had come a point, though, when the things David did became things James wasn’t sure he wanted to emulate.
It had started innocently enough – taking candy bars and comic books from the local store. Then it had been cigarettes, which David smoked on the way home from school and late at night, leaning out the bathroom window and glaring up at the dark sky with a bitterness James didn’t quite understand.
Next it had been cans of beers, then slim bottles of vodka. David had started coming home with glazed eyes and an unsteady gait, going straight up to his room and ignoring both their parents’ stern looks and James’s own pitiful attempts to talk to him. Now when James wanted to follow him into the woods, David said no, yelling at him and shoving him away. Now when James waited at the elementary school at 3 pm, David didn’t show up to walk him home.
James had always been a shy kid. Without his brother, who had been his closest friend, he retreated further into his books. Their house, which had always been fairly harmonious, began to be filled with angry voices as their parents became first concerned, then angered, over David’s behavior. James started going to the library after school and staying until it was nearly dark in order to delay returning to that tension-filled environment. At night when he sat in his room tying to do his homework, he’d hear the sound of the front door slam as David walked in. Then the angry voices of their parents would rise up, demanding to know where David had been, and who he’d been with.
The fights got longer and louder as time went on. James would sit at his desk, his body tense, his notebook half-filled with algebra problems, unable to do anything but listen. The fights usually ended with David storming upstairs to his room. The shared wall between the brothers’ bedrooms shook when David slammed the door. Then his parents’ voices would continue downstairs, shouting now at each other rather than at their son. Sometimes, one of them would follow David upstairs and bang on his door, continuing to yell.
As the situation with David grew worse, James learned to make himself as small and quiet as possible, lest some of his parents’ anger be turned on him. There’d already been one time when he’d been unlucky enough to be caught downstairs during one of the fights. When it was over and David’s heavy footsteps could be heard pounding up the stairs, his father had continued to yell, but this time at James. Though he hardly remembered what had been said, the full force of his father’s anger had made James feel as small and worthless as the flies his father swatted against the screen door in the summer to remove them from the house. Every time the fights continued upstairs, James would retreat to his bed and pull the covers over his head, praying that his door would not be opened next and the angry voices be directed at him.
Besides keeping out of the way, James tried his hardest to do what he thought would make his parents pleased. Both his mother and father had always praised him for his schoolwork, and when he started high school with a full schedule of honors courses, he felt sure they would be proud. But that was the year David had stopped coming home at all some nights, and there was little time spent in the Wilson household praising fourteen-year old boys for their schoolwork. When James had come home with a perfect score on his first trigonometry test, he couldn’t help but bounce up to his mother with the same enthusiasm he’d had when bringing her spelling tests, proudly displaying his accomplishment. But his mother, with her face drawn and her voice sharp, had snapped at him that she was tired, and asked if he knew where his brother was. James had shook his head, and retreated quickly up the stairs to his room. Once inside, he tried to stop the tears from spilling onto his cheeks. There were, he knew, more important things to worry about than trigonometry tests. He should have known better than to bother his mother with something so trivial, when she was clearly tense. He’d been stupid and selfish. He wouldn’t do it again.
-----
“You don’t just have a fetish for neediness, you marry it.”
House’s voice had been harsh and disdainful as he had spat those words. Wilson, standing on the sidewalk outside his friend’s apartment, had let him say them, let him believe them. After all, it was true, in a sense. He did tend to marry needy women – a whole string of them. There was something about their need that let him forget his own. If he could play the part of protector, it let him forget how much he craved protection himself. There was almost a sense of masochistic self-sacrifice about the whole thing – he buried his own pain in the act of caring for theirs. It made him feel decent and kind; made him half-believe that he really was the man his wives thought he was.
Maybe his relationship with House had something of the same character to it. House’s pain ran deep, deeper even than his own. It wasn’t just his leg, wasn’t just Stacy’s perceived betrayal and abandonment. James knew that however bad his own childhood had been, House’s had been infinitely worse.
Enough nights of drinking too many beers and watching too many episodes of the L word had led to a series of confessions. Wilson had been surprised, but glad, when House opened up to him the night after dealing with Eve, his rape patient.
“I told her a story,” House had said in response to Wilson’s persistent questioning.
Slouched on his friend’s couch, his fifth beer resting comfortably on his lap, Wilson had raised his eyebrows dubiously. “A true story? Or a story starring Carmen Electra in various states of undress?”
House had glanced at him and rolled his eyes, but there was something in his face that made Wilson start to wish he hadn’t been quite so persistent with his questioning.
“Yes, a true story,” House said, his voice tinged with something like bitterness. “Not at first, but eventually.”
Wilson swallowed thickly. “What was it about?” he asked quietly.
House had dropped his eyes, avoiding Wilson’s piercing gaze. His voice shook slightly as he spoke. “I told her that…I told her that when I was a kid, my – my grandmother abused me. Made me take ice baths and sleep in the yard.”
Wilson stared at his friend, his stomach knotting unpleasantly. “What part of it was true?” he whispered.
House looked back up at him, and Wilson was shocked to see that his blue eyes were rimmed in red.
“All of it.” House raised his beer to his lips, but didn’t drink. Pausing long enough for Wilson to see his hesitation, he finally said, “Except it wasn’t my grandmother. It was my dad.”
Wilson had sat transfixed, not knowing what to say. Thoughts swarmed sluggishly through his inebriated brain. He struggled to turn them into coherent sentences. “How old were you?” he managed to ask.
House’s shoulders rose in a slight shrug. “Started when I was four or five. He kept it up until I left for college – after that I didn’t come home again.”
Wilson’s breath caught in his throat – four or five years old. He gripped his beer tighter. “Did your mom know?”
House looked down again. “She saw what she wanted to see. He was a military man. Discipline was a part of the culture.” When he raised his eyes back up, Wilson saw that they were filled with hurt. “She didn’t try to stop him, though. Some of it she could overlook, I guess – physical punishments were pretty common back then.” He shrugged. “But most of it…I don’t know.”
Wilson reached out his hand to touch his friend’s arm, persisting even when House instinctively flinched away from him. A shudder went through the older man’s body as he allowed Wilson’s hand to settle onto his arm.
“Greg,” Wilson said, looking into his eyes. “Greg, I – I’m sorry.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say.
House held his gaze for a second before breaking it and lowering his head, nodding slightly. “It’s okay,” he said, the strain in his voice indicating otherwise. “It – it was a long time ago.”
Wilson wished he could do more than just sit there in silence, but he knew House would allow little else. He wished he could tell him that he knew that even things that happened a long time ago could still hurt like they had happened yesterday.
-----
The night David left, there had been a fight. James was in his room, trying to focus on his ninth grade Western Civilizations textbook. His eyes moved over a sentence describing the Crusades five times before he caught himself and moved onto the next one. His insides felt tight and he closed his eyes, the triad of angry voices ringing in his ears. He abandoned the Crusades completely and pushed his chair away from his desk, nearly tripping over his feet as he hastened to his bed and buried himself beneath the covers.
He wished the fights would stop. He wished his parents would be nice again. He wished David would pay attention to him and walk him home like he used to.
James didn’t know how much time had passed before he realized that the voices had ceased. He pushed the covers off and sat up in bed, a sickening sense of apprehension churning in his stomach. He hadn’t heard David’s footsteps on the stairs, hadn’t heard the door slam. He slipped out of bed and cracked open the door to his room. The hallway was empty, the house quiet.
His anxiety mounting, James walked as quietly as he could through the hallway and down the stairs. Peeking through the doorway into the kitchen, he saw his mother sitting at the kitchen table, her head in her hands. His father stood leaning against the counter behind her, his arms crossed over his chest.
Their faces were so grim and the air in the room so charged that James almost turned and ran back up to his room. But he summoned his courage, swallowing hard and asking: “Where’s David?”
He jumped as his father’s hand slammed down on the countertop. “Fuck if I know!”
“Mitch!” his mother scolded, raising her face from her hands and glaring at him. “That isn’t necessary.”
“No, I’ll tell you what isn’t necessary!” his father shouted in return. “What isn’t fucking necessary is that drug-addicted son of yours living under my roof! I hope he never fucking comes back!”
His mother screamed something back at him, but James didn’t hear what she said, his mind fixated on his father’s words. Was David gone?
He didn’t realize he’d said the words aloud until both his parents’ attention came to rest on him. He stared at them, feeling very small and defenseless in his socks and oversized sweatshirt – a sweatshirt that was a hand-me-down from David.
Without warning, his mother burst into tears, her head sinking down to the tabletop, her body shaking.
“Now look what you’ve done!” his father shouted at James, his voice hard and furious as he reached out to put an arm around his wife. “Go to your room.” When James hesitated, his voice became louder. “I said, go to your room! Now!”
James spun around and fled up the stairs, trying to shut his ears against his mother’s tears and his father’s anger. In his room, he climbed back into his bed and pulled the covers over himself again. His father’s words rang in his ears – I hope he never fucking comes back.
That’s when he knew that there were no guarantees, that love could be used up and hearts hardened. He trembled to think of his father ever saying those words about him. Remembering the tone of his voice as he had banished him to his room, he knew it could happen.
This time he didn’t try to fight his tears, only shoved his comforter into his mouth to muffle the sobs racking his slight frame.
Finally, his body exhausted, James drifted into a restless sleep, where he dreamed of David’s face and his mother’s arms and his father’s hand slamming down on the kitchen counter.
-----
“Mr. Well-Adjusted is as messed up as the rest of us! Why would you keep that a secret? Are you ashamed of recognizing how pathetic your life is?”
House may not have meant the words to hurt, but they did, mostly because they were true. But he didn’t want House to know that.
“It’s not a secret. House, it’s, it’s – it’s personal!” Wilson had insisted, angered by House’s inability to simply let things be.
He couldn’t tell House why he took the antidepressants. Everything in his life seemed so inconsequential compared to what House had been through. As time had gone on, House told him more and more about his childhood. Wilson had listened silently to each torturous tale, offering small touches or words as tokens of condolence for something too big and terrible to be healed in such a way. Since House kept talking, though, he figured that was what his friend wanted – just for someone to listen.
Sometimes Wilson wanted to follow up House’s words with a confession of his own – but anything he had to say seemed small and trite compared to what House had experienced. He had a good life, had always had a good life. While House had grown up on military bases around the world, constantly packing up his life in suitcases and moving away just as he started to get his footing in a new place, Wilson had lived in the same two-story Colonial for his entire childhood. He’d been surrounded by sidewalks and perfectly tended yards, the epitome of comfortable, safe, white suburbia. He had no reason to be as messed up as he was.
Sure, his parents had yelled, but they’d never abused him. Sure, he had a brother living on the street, but every family had its black sheep. Sure he’d been divorced three times, but at least he’d been in love – or something close enough to resemble love, close enough to get him down the aisle and into the arms of three equally beautiful and equally damaged women.
Deep down, Wilson knew he was just as messed up as House – only he was sure he didn’t deserve to be. He didn’t like burdening other people with his problems. It was just that one night, sitting in his dimly lit hotel room and listening to the sound of cars rushing by on the highway, he had felt so fucking empty he could barely motivate himself to draw in his next breath. So he had called a psychiatrist and gotten a prescription. He’d declined the offer of psychotherapy, because paying someone to listen to his problems for an hour each week had seemed like the epitome of narcissism. There were more important things, he knew, than trigonometry tests or whatever was bothering him at work on a given day. People were sick, people were dying; people were homeless and living on the street. The pills let him get up in the morning without a fight. They let him do his job without complaint. They dulled his pain just enough to let him help others without allowing himself to get in the way.
Sometimes, though, while sitting in his office with paperwork on his desk or in his hotel room after another long day, Wilson’s mind drifted into conversations with an imaginary therapist. He stalwartly ignored the fact that in these fantasy sessions, the therapist was always an unshaven man with lanky limbs and a pronounced limp.
So, tell me, why did you cheat on your wives, Dr. Wilson?
I met someone. They made me feel – funny. Good. I didn’t want to let that feeling go.
The imaginary therapist twisted his gaunt features into a disapproving frown. Bullshit. You know that’s bullshit.
Wilson lowered his head in shame, forgetting for a moment that his fictive analyst couldn’t actually see him.
I know. I know. It’s just – it’s just they did make me feel good. They all did, in the beginning. But I guess – I mean, that can’t last. Everyone’s got a breaking point. Everyone’s got a point beyond which unconditional love becomes conditional. And when they got to that point, they’d want to leave. Because everyone leaves, or is left. So I – I just did the leaving before they could. There was always someone new to start over with, someone new to feel good with for a little while. That’s all it was.
The therapist shook his head, pointing one long finger in Wilson’s direction. That’s pretty sick, you know that, right, Jimmy?
Wilson sighed. I know, House. I know.
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Nicely written - definitely want to read again!
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And therein lies so many people's resistance to therapy, their refusal to discuss anything, how they try to seek comfort in everything from substance abuse to overachievement.
This works really well. So well I could almost overlook the whole 'James and Greg' thing.
I hope you post more! This was nicely done.
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(Anonymous) 2007-06-02 01:39 am (UTC)(link)One tiny flaw, in the first paragraph. Cameron's eyes are blue.
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Thanks. Bookmarking it. Definitely going to re-read it.
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(Anonymous) 2007-06-02 04:06 am (UTC)(link)I'm really impressed. In character, emotionally powerful, fantastic writing and Damn! I'm going to say it again, it just seems right!!
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Well, also major kudos if you've written stuff before, because this is really great. You managed to really get behind Wilson's character in this one. It's a very precise and sound profile of him. I enjoyed reading it very much. Thanks for sharing :).
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(Anonymous) 2007-06-11 01:08 pm (UTC)(link)That's probably a good enough indication of what i think :)