'Canon' Dæmonverse (Prologue-Part Two)
Aug. 2nd, 2008 05:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lit_luminaryThis is the 'canon' version of the dæmonverse (i.e., sans the societal elements of Pullman's His Dark Materials), collected for those of you whose interest was caught by the alternate version. The 'verse is House/Wilson slash (although "Vigil" is preslash) and rated R for mature content.
Wilson replaced the phone in its cradle with exaggerated care, fighting the urge to slam it down. That made three phone calls to House, and maybe he was just ignoring him—considering the kind of betrayal House would have perceived in his arranging the deal with Tritter, it was more than possible—but how many of those unknown pills had he taken? Four? Six?
More?
Too many.
Rona, already pacing by the front door, gave a whine that echoed his unease, her anxiety intensifying his own. “James, for God’s sake, stop calling him! He’s pissed at us and higher than a kite—how likely do you really think he is to pick up?”
They both knew the answer: if he hadn’t by now, he wasn’t going to.
“And Minerva—didn’t you notice how he was carrying her earlier today?”
Yes, and two days ago he’d noticed how she’d hissed at him every time he’d been in earshot—worse, somehow, than any of House’s vicious words. “He was detoxing; she feels his pain,” he said simply. “If he didn’t want to be on his feet, it makes sense she wouldn’t—”
“Would you forget his damn leg for five minutes? If he was vulnerable enough that he needed to hold her that close, vulnerable enough that they didn’t care who saw him do it—and besides, didn’t you notice how little she moved tonight, even after he put her down? How quiet she was?”
Cold dread snaked through him: Minerva normally mirrored House’s frenetic energy and caustic wit. For her to be so still…
He snatched up his keys and all but ran to the door, throwing it open with a bang and letting Rona bound out ahead of him before locking it behind them and heading for the car.
How could he have been so fixated on the damn deal and whether or not House took it that he hadn’t noticed? How could he have assumed it was just physical pain when it might be so much worse?
He’d seen House’s anger, the aborted flippancy, the inevitable desire for the drug. He’d seen the smug all-but-giddiness when House had gotten his hands on whatever it was he’d been taking.
He hadn’t seen any real feeling from Minerva since the anger. Hadn’t stayed close enough to House that Rona could watch her, either.
I should have. I should have stayed close and damn whether they wanted me there or not.
If Minerva were hurt, it meant House had been deeply—maybe mortally—damaged.
God, what had he done? He’d been trying to help, trying to force House to accept help—and forgotten, in his zeal, that House would self-destruct rather than be forced. Idiot, Wilson! Idiot!
House at his most scathing couldn’t have mustered half the scorn of his inner voice at that moment.
The windshield wipers swished frantically over rain-spattered glass; he was driving as fast as he dared, not caring about the weather or traffic ordinances or anything but the terrible fear and a soul-deep conviction that something was wrong.
Rona leaned close, rubbed her head against his side, but he couldn’t accept comfort, didn’t deserve comfort, not when he’d done so much damage.
Finally, finally he reached House’s apartment, threw the car into park and sprinted to the door. Rona was still faster, though, and an instant’s pain gripped their hearts before he closed the distance—
“House?” He knocked on the door. No answer. No sound. Deathly sil— Don’t think that! “Are you okay? I called three times…” Nothing. He slipped his copy of the key into the lock, opened the door and went in, Rona at his side—he heard her whine, smelled alcohol and the sour stench of vomit—
No. No. Please God, please no—
For an endless moment they were both still, frozen by the possibility of too late; then Rona padded around the empty couch, and when no howl of grief answered his dread, he moved to join her.
House was sprawled out on the floor beside a puddle of vomit—his body, at least, had had the sense to reject whatever he’d poisoned it with—his eyes half-open, glazed and dilated, unseeing. Minerva lay at his side, unconscious beneath a limp hand but present and breathing, clear reassurance that House was alive; and Rona’s eyes shone with the same pure, joyous relief that filled Wilson’s heart.
He maneuvered House onto his side, checked his pulse—slower than it should be, but stable, thank God—then noticed the amber pill bottle abandoned on the floor and picked it up.
Oxycodone. Prescribed to his own dead patient.
Empty.
Suicide attempt, said some small, detached part of his mind, and what else could it be? One or two of those pills would have stopped the detox, eased the pain, so it hadn’t been about that. House had to have known what he was doing; a doctor couldn’t down an entire bottle of pills with alcohol and not know that he’d probably end up—
That was it.
That was absolutely the last straw.
House did not get to throw Wilson’s best attempt to help him back in his face, insult and offend his patient’s grieving widow, OD on stolen pills and nearly kill himself, and then have Wilson pick up the pieces. No.
Let House’s stubborn pride melt his wings, let him plummet—if he preferred impact to steadying arms, then why should Wilson bother to break his fall? Why keep trying in vain to save a man who didn’t want it?
He tossed the bottle aside in disgust and stood up. Rona followed him as far as the door, but when he walked out, intending to go home and leave House to the grim fate he’d chosen for himself, he found himself stopped a few feet from the car by the sharp, wrenching pain of heart drawn between ribs, left hand flying involuntarily to cover it as he conceded a few backward steps, turning to face his dæmon. “Rona—?”
She snarled at him, bristling, her teeth bared; and he felt his jaw drop, because of course they’d had the occasional disagreement, but she’d never, never done that before. “James, you will get back in here, or I swear to God I will drag you!”
Surely she didn’t mean that, wouldn’t take that pain so lightly. “Rona—!”
“He may be a proud, stupid ass,” she broke in, holding his gaze unflinchingly, “but he’s still ours! Now move!”
And he did move, because damn it all, she was right: he knew that once the anger had cooled, he would never have been able to live with himself if he’d left House now. It had been easy to rationalize infidelities against Samantha, against Bonnie; to excuse himself for neglecting Julie.
But House…
House, he couldn’t abandon.
Back in the apartment, he dropped to his knees a few feet from House and clutched Rona hard against him, pressing her to his heart. God help him, he needed an anchor now, when the world was spinning so fast he thought he’d fly apart…
“I’m sorry.” All the heat had gone from her voice; he recognized the same gentle, soothing tone he used so often with patients and tried to laugh, but it splintered against the lump in his throat and came out as a choked sob. “I’m sorry. But I just—we couldn’t—”
“I know,” he said. “You’re right, but…God, Ro, what happened? We only wanted—he just—how—?” He knew he’d never have real answers unless House deigned to give them, but bewilderment clamored for expression and he had to ask, had to say something to bring stability out of the chaos.
“They’re too stubborn to bend,” she said softly. “They’ll break themself first.”
No. No, that couldn’t be, because if House had honestly intended to commit suicide, he wouldn’t have failed. He would have known that he had a decent chance of surviving an OD, especially when he’d taken the pills with alcohol, increasing the likelihood of vomiting. And he would have known, offhand, a dozen different measures from which he could not have been revived.
But then what the hell was this? Some insane version of Russian roulette? Spin the wheel, live or die; it’s all the same?
He felt his stomach clench and swallowed hard, trying to suppress rising nausea and the memories of too many incidents that, together, might have pushed House here. He’d had a hand in many of them—all with good intentions, but…
Hell was this moment in House’s living room.
“Shouldn’t you clean him up, move him?” Rona asked after a moment. “The bedroom would be too far, with Minerva passed out, but maybe the couch…”
He shook his head. “I’m not cleaning up after this. The last thing I want to do is send the message that it’s somehow…acceptable.” A pause. “Pretending this is okay, that we’ll just…”
That wasn’t any more help than walking out would have been. He could watch, make sure House survived what he’d done, but he couldn’t condone it. Not without encouraging him to be even more reckless with his life.
“How could they do this?” she murmured. “How could they do this? Don’t they know we—did they even care?”
“Don’t.” They were his heart’s questions, but he couldn’t listen to them, not when they were already roaring in his head. “Not now. Please.” He felt his eyes sting, but he wouldn’t cry, dammit, wouldn’t go to pieces because he couldn’t afford that until House was more or less all right and he could go home (and never mind the part of him that said this was).
If he gave in now, where he could see House and Minerva ill and insensate, the image would feed his pain so he’d never be able to pull himself together, and if House woke up and saw him like that…
He laughed humorlessly: it wasn’t like those vacant eyes saw anything. Even if Wilson released a trapped scream, House wouldn’t respond. He was damn lucky he was still breathing.
There were times when House’s survival relied entirely too much on luck.
“What are we going to do with them?”
It was a rhetorical question, but Rona answered anyway. “Love them,” she said simply. “And pray to God that’s enough.”
It didn’t seem like it could be, not when actions taken out of love had done so much harm, but what else could he have done when House seemed heedless of the heat of a vendetta on fragile wings?
And what was he supposed to do now?
He wanted to wait for House to wake and hold him as tightly and close as he was holding Rona now; to have the illusion, for as long as the embrace lasted, that he wasn’t in danger of losing House to their combined mistakes.
Impossible, of course. House would never allow it; and anyway, it just wasn’t something they did.
So he pressed his cheek into the slightly coarse warmth of Rona’s fur and watched House breathe, checking his pulse every so often, and finally left when he stirred and Minerva showed signs of waking.
The drive home was mechanical, and at the end of it, he changed into pajamas, slid between cold sheets, arranged his body around his dæmon’s and closed his eyes tightly.
Crying, after all, had never solved anything.
END.
Bonus content: the above as a sonnet.
Icarus Falling
The anger at betrayal’s hot as flame,
And bright enough that it can only blind.
What else to do but return whence he came,
And leave the wrecked shell of his friend behind?
But when he tries, his soul’s sharp reprimand
Commands him stop and heed a truer call:
Though House’s plight he fails to understand
He cannot stand aside and watch him fall.
His nature isn’t made to turn away
From one it’s long since named and bound as pack;
Though it’s difficult to forgive and stay
His heart forbids him take another tack.
And so they keep their vigil through the night
And pray that fragile wings be spared sunlight.
“This is stupid.”
House glanced over at Minerva, whose eyes were lambent in the darkness and glaring at him from the front passenger seat. “She’s twenty-six, she’s hot, and we don’t get out much. This is an opportunity.”
“She’s an idiot,” his raccoon dæmon said disdainfully. “She’s a squirrel, for God’s sake! We have higher standards than to stoop to a squirrel just because you won’t put the effort into a functional relationship.”
House braked for the light. “You’re just mad because if I do get lucky with her, it’ll be casual sex and you won’t get anything out of—ow!” She’d nipped his hand. Not hard enough to break skin, but it’d still hurt. “What the hell was that for?”
“Because you’re not even interested in sex with her, and we both know it. This is just avoidance.”
The light changed, and he drove a little farther up the road before pulling over. If his dæmon’s tone were anything to judge by, this wasn’t a talk they should have while he was trying to drive. “Avoidance of what?”
“Maybe the fact that we could’ve seriously hurt Wilson when we laced his coffee with amphetamines? We didn’t pull his file to check what antidepressant he was on or what else he was taking; we didn’t monitor him—”
He gave her a look. “This attack of conscience might’ve been a little bit more helpful before the fact, don’t you think?”
She climbed over the gearshift—thankfully not jostling it out of ‘park’—and onto his lap, letting his fingers trace absent designs in gray-brown fur. “We were curious. And when we’re working on a puzzle, we never let it go or give a damn about ethics. That’s who we are.” A short pause. “But that doesn’t mean, now that we have the answer, we can’t feel guilty about how we got it.”
All right, fine, so maybe he did, but still… “And he shouldn’t feel guilty about dosing us with antidepressants for weeks?” The last thing he needed was to worry about Wilson drugging his food, especially considering how much of his food was bought by or stolen from Wilson in the first place.
“Considering we faked cancer awhile ago to get them implanted directly into your brain,” she said dryly, shuffling back off his lap and returning to her seat, “I can see how he might think we wouldn’t be completely opposed to taking them.”
“As pain control, not for depression,” he reminded her. “We’re not depressed.”
“No, we’re garden-variety miserable,” she retorted. “But we have a friend who is depressed, for a reason he wouldn’t tell you and Rona wouldn’t tell me.” He was silent, considering, so she went on, “We knew when he was having an affair, we knew all those times he was divorcing, we figured it out when he was sleeping with his patient, but this he wants to hide?”
Point taken: that was definitely more interesting than a couple of hours in a bar with Honey the Flaky Vegan. If it were bigger than the myriad marital woes, bigger than that screwed up liaison with Grace, then it was sufficiently important to warrant his full attention.
And this seemed like the ideal time to address the matter: it wasn’t like Wilson would be asleep, not after a dose of amphetamines that high, and House wasn’t so tired yet that he couldn’t assemble puzzle pieces if he had to. “Fine,” he agreed, pulling back onto the road and turning in the direction of Wilson’s hotel. “But just because I happen to be carrying that key card I pilfered from his wallet.”
Twenty minutes and a little haranguing of the desk attendant later, he and Minerva took the elevator up to Wilson’s floor. She shuffled along at his left side, so his cane couldn’t accidentally catch her tail (they’d only needed to make that mistake once), and fidgeted with impatience in front of Wilson’s door while he dug in his wallet for the key card, then shoved it into the slot and waited for the buzz that signaled the engagement of the mechanism before bursting in.
“You really need to get an apartment,” he said without preamble, switching on the lights and smirking when Rona whined and Wilson pulled a pillow over his eyes. “I just wasted”—he checked his watch—“five minutes of my valuable time convincing the idiot at the desk I had a valid reason to see you at two in the morning.”
“It’d better be,” Wilson groaned, his voice muffled by the pillow, “because the residual amphetamines in my system are doing a fine job of screwing with my sleep without your help. Can you at least be merciful and turn the lights down?”
He dimmed them by about half, then went and sat down on the foot of the bed, lifting Minerva up beside him to save her the trouble of climbing the bedclothes.
Rona’s penetrating lupine gaze rested on him for a moment, then she nudged Wilson’s arm with a paw, and he sat up, the pillow dropping to his lap. He looked bleary-eyed and exhausted, like he’d been fighting for sleep there was no way he was going to get, and the rumpled sheets suggested tossing and turning.
“What’re you doing here?” Rona’s eyes had taken on an eldritch glow in the half-dark, and her words, spoken around a yawn, only emphasized Wilson’s obvious fatigue.
“Same thing I do when I’m too far away from her,” he said, tilting his head in Minerva’s direction. “Closing distance.”
His dæmon moved from beneath his hand to settle a few inches from Rona’s outstretched forepaws. She didn’t get too close, since Rona had arranged herself around Wilson’s body, but the approach was enough. “Dosing you with amphetamines was over the line,” she said for them both. “We weren’t actually trying to hurt you.”
Rona moved forward a bit and bent her head, touching her muzzle to Minerva’s smaller one, and he relaxed: if she’d do that, he and Wilson were essentially okay.
“I know,” Wilson said, only a little ruefully. “I should’ve just told you I was on them, knowing the insane things you do when you’re curious.”
“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity,” Minerva said, affronted.
“And you don’t need us to tell you which side of it you were on today,” Rona countered, curling her lip slightly to expose a glint of teeth. “In the future, there are better, less lethal ways of expressing concern, all right?”
“I tried to just ask you,” he reminded Wilson. “You were the one who wouldn’t talk.” Which was more than slightly hypocritical, considering how much good he seemed to think candid conversation would do House.
“We’ve been over that,” Wilson said dryly, “and given the object lesson, I won’t forget it any time soon. Any chance you might let me not-sleep in peace tonight?”
He made a show of exchanging a glance with Minerva, like he was actually considering it, then shook his head. “I still want to know why you went on them in the first place. You’ve had practically a boatload of reasons to be depressed all year—outside of your regular, extremely depressing practice—so why now? What’s pushed you over the line into pharmaceutical aid?”
Wilson narrowed his eyes. “You completely blew off the handout of ‘respect for others’ privacy’, didn’t you?”
“Of course,” he said. “I went back for seconds in the ‘devastating wit and charm’ line instead.”
“They threw in twice the usual amount of ego for free,” Minerva added, giving House a sharp look and saying, Either help me or shut up. Then, returning her attention to Wilson, she jerked a paw at Rona and said, “We’re trying to take her advice here. Spill.”
Wilson sighed and leaned back against Rona’s flank, too tired to muster more than a modicum of annoyance. “Did it occur to you—plural—that it might not kill you to respect my wishes for once and leave it?”
“’Course it wouldn’t kill us,” Minerva said. “Do I look like a cat to you?” She took a step or two closer to the wolf dæmon and wheedled, “Come on, Ro. Please?”
Rona looked to Wilson, then back at Minerva and shook her head. “Look. It’s nice that you’re making an effort for not completely selfish reasons, but we’re not on the verge of a breakdown, and other than that, it’s not your business.”
“Can we not talk in circles?” House said testily, breaking in before Minerva had to argue again that it was indeed their business. “It’s late. We’re tired. But we’re here because you’re on antidepressants and we do, in fact, give a damn about you—so just tell us why you’re on them so we can all drop this and go to bed.”
When there was no response, he said matter-of-factly, “You know I’ll find out in the end—I always do—so you might as well get whatever it is off your chest without making me dig and save us both the trouble.”
There was a long, weighty silence; then Wilson sat up, exchanged a look with Rona that House couldn’t read and gave a very slight nod. She moved from behind him, a few padding steps closing the distance between them, and House felt his stomach clench, realizing what was about to happen only an instant before she bent her head and maneuvered it beneath his left hand, slightly coarse fur and warmth in an utterly unfamiliar shape.
Unfamiliar, but not unwelcome, considering what it meant.
He heard Wilson’s breathing hitch and lifted his hand so the sensations flooding the other man’s body would stop and let him think straight. “Okay. Can I have something less grand gesture, a little more verbal?”
“I felt…and I was uncomfortable with it,” Wilson said, his voice admirably steady. “Especially since—for God’s sake, House, you may hate the Icarus metaphor, but most of this year it looked like you were falling and convinced impact was preferable to letting me catch you.”
He held Wilson’s eyes, guiding Minerva against him with the hand that wasn’t suspended above Rona’s head. “Contrary to what you seem to think,” he said deliberately, “it’s not your job to break my fall. I almost let you once, and I didn’t like the result.” Tritter had nearly broken Wilson’s life because House had been too stubborn to bend, defying Wilson’s advice and Cuddy’s and even Minerva’s. If he fell again, he wasn’t crushing Wilson under him.
“I’m not saying I’m going to martyr myself for you,” Wilson retorted. Then, more quietly, “I want you to let me in—if not that way”—he indicated Rona, his gaze lingering for just a second too long on the hand over her—“then just what we had and I’ll understand, but I’m sick of being walled out.”
“And between that and being afraid I’d reject this”—no need to pin it down with a name—“you worked yourself up so much you needed antidepressants. Right?”
Wilson nodded.
“And she didn’t just do that because your judgment is coming off drugs?”
Wilson shook his head, and House let his hand fall, threading his fingers through the thick ruff of fur at Rona’s neck and listening, satisfied, to Wilson’s gasp and Rona’s tail thumping softly against the sheets before nudging Minerva forward with his free hand and watching her move, scrambling over Rona’s back and reaching to close nimble digits around Wilson’s fingers.
Heat shot down his spine to pool in his groin and House managed not to gasp, but just barely: there’d been sex after Stacy, certainly, but most of it had been purchased and none of it meaningful, so Minerva had refused to be touched.
He’d told himself then it didn’t matter, that physical pleasure was enough, but this particular intimacy was one he’d missed.
Wilson’s free hand stroked Minerva’s back, and he grinned when she purred and House stifled a groan. “Tease.”
Reaching over Rona, he closed his hands around Minerva, taking her from Wilson and setting her on the floor before giving Rona a nudge. “Not room for four. Off the bed. Off!” He could hear Minerva chirping, obviously as impatient as he was, and the moment Rona was out of his way he toed off his shoes and scooted up to the head of the bed, crushing his lips against Wilson’s and sliding his hands beneath fabric, exploring the planes of back and torso and delighting in the hot exhalation into his mouth.
He let his lips part and his tongue glide over teeth and then past them, stroking Wilson’s tongue and palate; the other man’s mouth was stale and faintly sour with broken sleep but the kiss, warm lips and tongue moving against his own, was fully satisfying and—oh, definitely not enough; his jeans were becoming uncomfortable and Wilson’s hands beneath his shirt weren’t helping matters.
He could hear their dæmons by the bedside, Minerva’s chattering and purring and Rona’s whining and it was loud, but not louder than the pounding of his pulse in his ears and the rustle of the sheets on the bed. Finally, they broke for air, haste-clumsy hands fumbling with clothing, and House was glad of his jeans and t-shirt because they came off as easily as they’d gone on.
And then skin met skin, sensitized and flushed and Wilson’s hand closed around him with just enough pressure—he reached forward to reciprocate; Wilson was hot and hard and slightly slick in his fist. The angle was a bit awkward when they moved and his right wrist collided every so often with Wilson’s left; but it was only a minor annoyance.
Wilson’s breathing was ragged and he managed a strangled, “Ohmigod!” before House resumed the kiss, matching the rhythm of tongue against tongue to that of feverishly stroking hands and rocking hips—heat and need and—oh!—not enough contact—and apparently Wilson thought the same, because he felt the other man’s free arm encircle his torso, pull him closer; and he reached with his own unoccupied hand to cup the back of Wilson’s head, insinuating his fingers into soft hair and feeling warm, sweat-slick skin against the heel of his hand—awareness began to fall away as sensation promised to consume everything—
Faster—faster—exquisite heat and friction and tension coiled tight and mouth devouring mouth and then—ah!—ecstasy ecstasy ecstasy—wet heat was spilling over his hand and Wilson was shuddering against him, twin cries smothered between them, and then they broke apart, gasping in the hazy warmth of the afterglow.
“God,” Wilson breathed. “Oh God.”
He couldn’t resist. “Yes?”
“General statement,” Wilson managed, “not an address.” He moved a little, resting his head on House’s shoulder and an arm on his torso. “All right?”
“To lie on me after sex?” He raised an eyebrow. “Generally, you’re supposed to okay the less intimate thing first and move up, but it’d still be kind of stupid if I decided to have issues now.”
Wilson chuckled, shook his head faintly. “I didn’t mean—I meant…never mind what I meant,” he said at last. “It’ll—everything’ll wait tlil morning.”
“We’ll be here,” Minerva promised, sounding as blissfully sated as he felt. “And it was more than all right.”
“I know.” Rona’s voice was affectionate, but Wilson’s exhaustion was there, too, and House glanced over the edge of the bed to see Minerva nestled into the curve of Rona’s flank, eyes half-lidded. Rona’s were already closed, and he could hear Wilson’s breathing slowing and deepening with coming sleep.
He wiped his sticky hand on the edge of the bedspread and pulled the covers in around them, then reached for a pillow and shoved it under his head, feeling…peaceful. Obviously, the combination of post-orgasmic endorphins and the company of a—friend? Partner? Figure it out in the morning—was excellent against restlessness.
He could sleep, and they’d figure everything else out in the morning.
END.
Author's Note: Those interested in the meanings of Minerva's and Rona's names and forms, please see this post.
Wilson woke in the dim light of early morning to tangled sheets and the now-unfamiliar sensation of a human body arranged around his, long and lanky with sprawled limbs, one of them thrown over his own torso, and for a split second his sleep-fogged mind was startled; but then the memory of the previous night rushed back and he relaxed. Not entirely, of course; there were still too many unanswered questions for that, but for the moment he was content to lie still.
House’s face was relaxed in sleep, most of the lines pain and stress had etched into his craggy features softened; and if Wilson craned his neck a little, he could see Minerva dozing on the floor opposite his bedside, half-curled into a ball that fit neatly into the curve of Rona’s flank.
She didn’t speak—they didn’t want to wake House, after all, and Minerva with him—but the amber-bright eyes that held his were smiling, and he felt the knot of remaining anxiety loosen just a little as he remembered the feeling of House’s hands on her; of Minerva’s paws, smaller but similarly dexterous, clasping his fingers and the warmth of her fur beneath his palm, coarse but still softer than he might have expected.
All the years of that carefully undefined something between them, the little innuendos and significant looks, and now…what? House wasn’t a man to whom one made declarations of love, wasn’t a man who would respond well to the sentimental gestures Wilson generally followed first times with—and anyway, having repeated that cycle three times over made it feel tawdry. House deserved—
But that wasn’t the question, was it? The question was, how much would he be willing to accept?
When Rona had touched House, he hadn’t dared to hope for House to do more than withdraw his hand without insult and not as though burned—reciprocation of the gesture had been off the map of all possibility, and now Wilson had no idea where they were.
The mattress shifted as House rolled over with a sound halfway between a grunt and a groan—born of early morning fatigue more than pain, Wilson hoped—but no; he was awake now, and Minerva was moving away from Rona and to the discarded heap of House’s jeans at the foot of the bed, paws reaching deftly into a pocket to retrieve the amber bottle of Vicodin, which she deposited in House’s waiting hand before climbing onto the bed and settling down between them.
Two pills later, House put the bottle down on the bedside table and turned over to face him, one upraised hand supporting his chin and the other absently stroking Minerva’s fur. Wilson heard his own dæmon’s padding footsteps, and next moment she’d gotten up herself, sprawled at the foot of the bed with the weight of her outstretched forepaws resting on his shins.
“Now what?” she asked, speaking for them both.
“I’m not having one of those stupid ‘morning after’ talks,” House said flatly. “Last night filled my deep conversation quota for at least a month.”
Minerva gave an exasperated little ‘whuff’ and met his eyes. “I don’t let just any idiot touch me,” she said. “I let you. That says enough.”
“I know,” he said, “but—is this it? Two friends and a one-night stand neither ever talks about again? Or—something else? Lasting?”
“We’ve been ‘lasting’ longer than all of your marriages put together,” House said. “I push, you preach, we annoy the hell out of each other on a daily basis—but we work. Screwing with you is not going to screw with that.”
He laughed despite himself, because House wouldn’t be House if he weren’t tactless. Not romantic words, certainly, but he could think of them as endearing without too much of a stretch. “Okay. I know you hate to talk about feelings, but I don’t need that—I just need a label for this. I need to know what it is.” A short pause. “You of all people should understand that.”
Contemplative silence. “It was a risk,” he said at last.
“And what is it now?”
“It’s not a regret,” Minerva said to him, “and it wasn’t a mistake.”
To that, House added, “Obviously, sleeping with you threw the House-to-Wilson translation widget out of whack. This is a ridiculous amount of effort to establish that I still respect you in the morning.”
Wilson breathed an inward sigh of relief: Minerva’s word might have been the last one on the subject if House hadn’t spoken and given him an opening. “House, I’m not talking about respect.” He paused, deliberated, decided to take the risk of being explicit. “You’re not some woman—”
“So glad that detail didn’t escape you.”
Wilson ignored that. “—I’m going to wine and dine and have an emotionally barren marriage with. I’m not expecting poetry and flowers, but it—it was important. It meant something—”
“Why are you suddenly under the impression I’m slow on the uptake?” House said testily. “If it didn’t mean something, you’d have kissed me, slept with me, whatever, but Rona wouldn’t’ve gotten involved and neither would Minerva.” Then, with a little less asperity, “Just because I’m not committing left, right and center doesn’t mean I can’t recognize signals you want a committed relationship.”
He didn’t entirely trust himself not to make a misstep, so he looked over at Rona, and she stepped in for him. “Frankly, when we’re naked in bed with you and thinking of you in the context of ‘potential partner’, it’s not the best time to bring up our screwed up relationship history. But aside from that…” She paused, met Minerva’s eyes and held them. “You’re not wrong.”
“I’m usually not,” House said. Not gloating, just matter-of-fact. “Look. If I want casual sex, I watch porn or pay a hooker. Since last night involved neither of those things, the logical conclusion you seem to be having difficulty coming to is that it was not casual sex.”
“I know that—I know you.” He made a vague gesture encompassing House and Minerva, clarifying he meant House in totality. “What I don’t know—”
“Can you quit dissecting this?” Minerva broke in. “You care, we care, it’s pretty much a fait accompli by now—or do you even know how it works with dæmons and sex?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “Point is, we’re on the same page here, so stop the goddamn agonizing.”
There was a silence.
“You done?” House asked.
“Yeah. That was what I wanted.” He’d heard most of it, but for Minerva to admit caring was what he’d needed: to know that there had been an emotional basis beyond their friendship and a whim. “You couldn’t have said it in the first place?”
“And pander to your post-coital insecurity? She said it to shut you up.”
That might have been true, if House had said it, but they both knew Minerva’s words carried more weight. Wilson let it pass. “So…what now?”
“You stop talking, we sleep a little more, we go to work, and then you can come back here and move your ass out of this stupid hotel.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And do what, move in with you?”
“I certainly wouldn’t mind,” House said, with a leer he knew was meant to camouflage underlying sincerity. “But seriously—wherever you go, you need to get out of here.” He gave the room a cursory glance that Wilson knew still managed to take in everything. “I mean, no wonder you’re depressed.”
“Thanks so much.”
“Hey, friends don’t let friends live surrounded by ugly florals.”
He shared a look with Rona, remembering the previous time they’d lived with House; remembering hidden dirty dishes transferred to the sink, an uncomfortable three hours on the stoop, stolen food and deleted messages. “We don’t live together well, remember? And I can’t find a place immediately on such short notice.”
“Who said we didn’t?” House narrowed his eyes a little. “I said I wanted you to stay.”
All right; in retrospect, maybe all those pranks had been House’s particular twisted brand of affection, but still… “The message would’ve been clearer if you’d been a little more conventional about it,” he said. “Then I might’ve felt…wanted, and not like a toy you were playing with.”
“You were supposed to play along,” House said, as though this should have been obvious. “What, you think I was going to give you space to wallow in the misery of a third failed marriage?”
Rona gave him a sharp look. “Considering we’re going to have to make some fairly drastic revisions to our sexual self-identification, could you do us a favor and drop the damn marriages? Because I think it’s obvious you no longer have to worry about fending off Mrs. Wilson the fourth.”
“Fine. But really, you can’t tell us you never saw this coming,” Minerva said. “You’ve touched me more than any of his wives’ dæmons, and he’s spent more time with Greg than he ever wanted to spend with Julie or Bonnie or—who was the first one?”
“Samantha,” he supplied. “And all right, there was an…attraction, but—"
“But God forbid you should act on it and save me the trouble of dressing up in a stupid suit to play best man,” House said sourly. “Three times. The throwing-the-bouquet thing? They should’ve just skipped that and passed it to you.”
“I apologize,” Wilson said dryly, “for the colossal imposition of expecting you to wear a tuxedo.” Really, he reflected, it should’ve been a warning signal when he’d noticed how handsome House had looked before sparing a thought to Julie’s smile and gleaming silk gown. “And I’m not going to waste my breath defending my exes.”
House smirked. “I assume alimony has soured your affections?”
“More like I’ve stopped lying to myself about how much affection was there to begin with,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t have put up with from any of them a tenth of what I get from you, and that…speaks volumes.”
“So you’re just selectively masochistic.”
Anyone else, he would have corrected, but he knew better than to use the particular words that would have required with House. “Call it what you want,” he said. “You know what it is.”
House’s half-smile was mirrored in Minerva’s jet-dark eyes. “Yeah,” she said. “We do.”
“Remind me again how you talked me into this?” Wilson said, motioning Rona in ahead of him so he could maneuver his bulky suitcase through House’s door. Even though packing hadn’t been that much of an effort, he was tired—not least because House had been badgering him all day. “Because I could’ve sworn I knew better.”
Moving into an apartment of his own was a welcome idea in principle—he wanted a home again, not the hotel’s impersonal, manufactured hospitality—but moving in with House in the interim… Been there, done that, had that phone message deleted.
“You never know better,” House said, dropping heavily onto the couch and lifting his right leg onto the coffee table. Minerva climbed up and assumed her usual place beside him, flank pressed against his left thigh and head resting on the corresponding knee. “And with sex in the mix,” he continued, “apparently you’re downright stupid.”
Rona just shook her head as she moved to sit down beside the vacant half of the sofa, and Wilson let the remark pass, because it’d been the rare flash of sincerity underlying House’s sarcasm that afternoon that had done the convincing—that and Minerva’s assurance that he was welcome and there wouldn’t be any pranks this time. “Isn’t sex one of those things you say people are always stupid about?” He heaved the suitcase the rest of the way in and shoved it to one side, along with the question of whether he should put it nearer the couch or the bed.
“That and money,” House conceded, and Wilson joined him on the couch, leaning back into the cushions with a sigh as he put up his own feet beside the other man’s, one arm dangling over the arm of the couch so his hand rested at the base of Rona’s neck. “But considering how much we’ve screwed each other metaphorically,” House said, “literal screwing is rational by comparison.”
Wilson grinned despite himself. “I stopped trying to apply logic to this relationship years ago, and I’m not starting again now. If anything, it just got more complicated.”
“Different complications,” House contradicted, and Wilson heard the relish in his voice that usually accompanied the recording of a new symptom on the whiteboard. “Not more. And it’ll help if you agonize over them less.”
“As you’re so fond of pointing out,” Rona said quietly, “our past relationships haven’t turned out well…and we didn’t care about that as much as we should have. But if something goes wrong with this—”
“Nothing’s going to go wrong,” Minerva said, and Wilson envied House’s conviction. “Because we’ve both invested enough in this thing that we’re not going to break it.”
He met House’s eyes, remembered an earnest, ‘Maybe I don’t want to push this till it breaks.’ “All the issues that were there before this are still there,” he said. “Sleeping together didn’t fix them.”
“I’m not one of those morons skipping along in rose-colored glasses,” House deadpanned, a couple of chirps and a huff from Minerva betraying irritation. “I know that. But it bridged the gap—we’re communicating, the cold shoulder has thawed, and the harbingers of the apocalypse are nowhere in sight. So far, I’d say it’s all good.”
“It won’t necessarily stay that way.” They’d still argue, fight, get on each other’s nerves; all this year’s festering wounds would have to be lanced and drained…but maybe now the forgiving would be a little easier. He hoped.
House narrowed his eyes. “Insert that cliché about never having promised you a rose garden,” he said sourly.
“I’d suspect an underlying pathology if you did,” Wilson countered, because House would never stoop to such a banal display of sentimentality. “But it’s a lousy metaphor, because you know the thing about roses?”
“I get the feeling I’m about to.”
Rona looked up at him, amber gaze meeting blue. “They’re very pretty, right up until the petals fall off and force us to acknowledge the thorns we’d ignored in the first place.” Then, grinning, she added, “It made more sense to give up on them and get an honest cactus.”
“I repeat: you’re masochistic.” There was mirth in House’s eyes, though, and he said it without venom. “Anyone with an ounce of self-preservation would’ve run screaming years ago.”
“I’m not claiming to be any prize either, House,” he said with a crooked smile. “But after all these years, I think we’re committed.”
“And if we’re not, we will be,” House said, his smirk making it clear he wasn’t using the word in the same sense Wilson had. “And on that note—bed.”
Normally, dinner would have been an excuse to stay up later and continue the conversation, but he’d thoughtlessly suggested they eat before leaving work to save himself the trouble of piecing together a meal from the limited contents of House’s kitchen.
Then again, it was better to end it on a quasi-meaningful note than try to extend it beyond its natural limits. “Should I take the couch?”
“You should take half the bed, provided you want to sleep,” House said. “It’s big enough.”
“And you mean ‘sleep’ in which sense?”
“The boring, with-clothes one,” he said matter-of-factly. “Although I warn you I’ll be very difficult to live with if that’s always the case.”
“Right, and you’re a regular Mr. Congeniality under all other circumstances,” he countered, getting up and moving to unzip his suitcase and retrieve a pair of pajamas. This was good: there’d been banter the last few months, sure, but it hadn’t felt so comfortable in much too long. “But seriously, I want to feel we’re stable where we are, because rushing things hasn’t done wonders in any of my past relationships.”
“Depends where you’re rushing to,” House pointed out. “And this doesn’t exactly fall into the same vicious cycle you got into with the wives.”
“No,” Rona agreed, and then sighed. “We have our own cycle, and part of it is that when you make a mistake that really hurts us—or vice-versa—we sweep it under the proverbial rug and never bring it up again. And that has to change, or else one day we’re going to wake up and resent the hell out of each other.”
Minerva regarded her for a moment, then met Wilson’s eyes. “You know exactly how well those conversations are going to go,” she said. “What’re you hoping to accomplish?”
“If we stopped ignoring the damage,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “and acknowledged what caused it, maybe we could avoid repeating those mistakes.” A pause. “You can’t tell me you’d be happy to see a reprise of this year.”
“No.”
“You can’t expect us to change,” Minerva said. “You know what we’re like—to borrow your metaphor, cacti don’t turn into perfect, spineless flowers.”
“True,” he said, looking House in the eye. “But I don’t think it’d kill you to be a marginally healthier cactus, and for me to be a better—whatever the hell I am.”
“You’re a rosebush,” House said flatly, “who’s wised up and stopped producing flowers.” He slid his legs off the coffee table, shifted his weight to the cane and stood up, Minerva following him toward the bedroom. “Now shut up and come to bed.”
END.
Vigil
Wilson replaced the phone in its cradle with exaggerated care, fighting the urge to slam it down. That made three phone calls to House, and maybe he was just ignoring him—considering the kind of betrayal House would have perceived in his arranging the deal with Tritter, it was more than possible—but how many of those unknown pills had he taken? Four? Six?
More?
Too many.
Rona, already pacing by the front door, gave a whine that echoed his unease, her anxiety intensifying his own. “James, for God’s sake, stop calling him! He’s pissed at us and higher than a kite—how likely do you really think he is to pick up?”
They both knew the answer: if he hadn’t by now, he wasn’t going to.
“And Minerva—didn’t you notice how he was carrying her earlier today?”
Yes, and two days ago he’d noticed how she’d hissed at him every time he’d been in earshot—worse, somehow, than any of House’s vicious words. “He was detoxing; she feels his pain,” he said simply. “If he didn’t want to be on his feet, it makes sense she wouldn’t—”
“Would you forget his damn leg for five minutes? If he was vulnerable enough that he needed to hold her that close, vulnerable enough that they didn’t care who saw him do it—and besides, didn’t you notice how little she moved tonight, even after he put her down? How quiet she was?”
Cold dread snaked through him: Minerva normally mirrored House’s frenetic energy and caustic wit. For her to be so still…
He snatched up his keys and all but ran to the door, throwing it open with a bang and letting Rona bound out ahead of him before locking it behind them and heading for the car.
How could he have been so fixated on the damn deal and whether or not House took it that he hadn’t noticed? How could he have assumed it was just physical pain when it might be so much worse?
He’d seen House’s anger, the aborted flippancy, the inevitable desire for the drug. He’d seen the smug all-but-giddiness when House had gotten his hands on whatever it was he’d been taking.
He hadn’t seen any real feeling from Minerva since the anger. Hadn’t stayed close enough to House that Rona could watch her, either.
I should have. I should have stayed close and damn whether they wanted me there or not.
If Minerva were hurt, it meant House had been deeply—maybe mortally—damaged.
God, what had he done? He’d been trying to help, trying to force House to accept help—and forgotten, in his zeal, that House would self-destruct rather than be forced. Idiot, Wilson! Idiot!
House at his most scathing couldn’t have mustered half the scorn of his inner voice at that moment.
The windshield wipers swished frantically over rain-spattered glass; he was driving as fast as he dared, not caring about the weather or traffic ordinances or anything but the terrible fear and a soul-deep conviction that something was wrong.
Rona leaned close, rubbed her head against his side, but he couldn’t accept comfort, didn’t deserve comfort, not when he’d done so much damage.
Finally, finally he reached House’s apartment, threw the car into park and sprinted to the door. Rona was still faster, though, and an instant’s pain gripped their hearts before he closed the distance—
“House?” He knocked on the door. No answer. No sound. Deathly sil— Don’t think that! “Are you okay? I called three times…” Nothing. He slipped his copy of the key into the lock, opened the door and went in, Rona at his side—he heard her whine, smelled alcohol and the sour stench of vomit—
No. No. Please God, please no—
For an endless moment they were both still, frozen by the possibility of too late; then Rona padded around the empty couch, and when no howl of grief answered his dread, he moved to join her.
House was sprawled out on the floor beside a puddle of vomit—his body, at least, had had the sense to reject whatever he’d poisoned it with—his eyes half-open, glazed and dilated, unseeing. Minerva lay at his side, unconscious beneath a limp hand but present and breathing, clear reassurance that House was alive; and Rona’s eyes shone with the same pure, joyous relief that filled Wilson’s heart.
He maneuvered House onto his side, checked his pulse—slower than it should be, but stable, thank God—then noticed the amber pill bottle abandoned on the floor and picked it up.
Oxycodone. Prescribed to his own dead patient.
Empty.
Suicide attempt, said some small, detached part of his mind, and what else could it be? One or two of those pills would have stopped the detox, eased the pain, so it hadn’t been about that. House had to have known what he was doing; a doctor couldn’t down an entire bottle of pills with alcohol and not know that he’d probably end up—
That was it.
That was absolutely the last straw.
House did not get to throw Wilson’s best attempt to help him back in his face, insult and offend his patient’s grieving widow, OD on stolen pills and nearly kill himself, and then have Wilson pick up the pieces. No.
Let House’s stubborn pride melt his wings, let him plummet—if he preferred impact to steadying arms, then why should Wilson bother to break his fall? Why keep trying in vain to save a man who didn’t want it?
He tossed the bottle aside in disgust and stood up. Rona followed him as far as the door, but when he walked out, intending to go home and leave House to the grim fate he’d chosen for himself, he found himself stopped a few feet from the car by the sharp, wrenching pain of heart drawn between ribs, left hand flying involuntarily to cover it as he conceded a few backward steps, turning to face his dæmon. “Rona—?”
She snarled at him, bristling, her teeth bared; and he felt his jaw drop, because of course they’d had the occasional disagreement, but she’d never, never done that before. “James, you will get back in here, or I swear to God I will drag you!”
Surely she didn’t mean that, wouldn’t take that pain so lightly. “Rona—!”
“He may be a proud, stupid ass,” she broke in, holding his gaze unflinchingly, “but he’s still ours! Now move!”
And he did move, because damn it all, she was right: he knew that once the anger had cooled, he would never have been able to live with himself if he’d left House now. It had been easy to rationalize infidelities against Samantha, against Bonnie; to excuse himself for neglecting Julie.
But House…
House, he couldn’t abandon.
Back in the apartment, he dropped to his knees a few feet from House and clutched Rona hard against him, pressing her to his heart. God help him, he needed an anchor now, when the world was spinning so fast he thought he’d fly apart…
“I’m sorry.” All the heat had gone from her voice; he recognized the same gentle, soothing tone he used so often with patients and tried to laugh, but it splintered against the lump in his throat and came out as a choked sob. “I’m sorry. But I just—we couldn’t—”
“I know,” he said. “You’re right, but…God, Ro, what happened? We only wanted—he just—how—?” He knew he’d never have real answers unless House deigned to give them, but bewilderment clamored for expression and he had to ask, had to say something to bring stability out of the chaos.
“They’re too stubborn to bend,” she said softly. “They’ll break themself first.”
No. No, that couldn’t be, because if House had honestly intended to commit suicide, he wouldn’t have failed. He would have known that he had a decent chance of surviving an OD, especially when he’d taken the pills with alcohol, increasing the likelihood of vomiting. And he would have known, offhand, a dozen different measures from which he could not have been revived.
But then what the hell was this? Some insane version of Russian roulette? Spin the wheel, live or die; it’s all the same?
He felt his stomach clench and swallowed hard, trying to suppress rising nausea and the memories of too many incidents that, together, might have pushed House here. He’d had a hand in many of them—all with good intentions, but…
Hell was this moment in House’s living room.
“Shouldn’t you clean him up, move him?” Rona asked after a moment. “The bedroom would be too far, with Minerva passed out, but maybe the couch…”
He shook his head. “I’m not cleaning up after this. The last thing I want to do is send the message that it’s somehow…acceptable.” A pause. “Pretending this is okay, that we’ll just…”
That wasn’t any more help than walking out would have been. He could watch, make sure House survived what he’d done, but he couldn’t condone it. Not without encouraging him to be even more reckless with his life.
“How could they do this?” she murmured. “How could they do this? Don’t they know we—did they even care?”
“Don’t.” They were his heart’s questions, but he couldn’t listen to them, not when they were already roaring in his head. “Not now. Please.” He felt his eyes sting, but he wouldn’t cry, dammit, wouldn’t go to pieces because he couldn’t afford that until House was more or less all right and he could go home (and never mind the part of him that said this was).
If he gave in now, where he could see House and Minerva ill and insensate, the image would feed his pain so he’d never be able to pull himself together, and if House woke up and saw him like that…
He laughed humorlessly: it wasn’t like those vacant eyes saw anything. Even if Wilson released a trapped scream, House wouldn’t respond. He was damn lucky he was still breathing.
There were times when House’s survival relied entirely too much on luck.
“What are we going to do with them?”
It was a rhetorical question, but Rona answered anyway. “Love them,” she said simply. “And pray to God that’s enough.”
It didn’t seem like it could be, not when actions taken out of love had done so much harm, but what else could he have done when House seemed heedless of the heat of a vendetta on fragile wings?
And what was he supposed to do now?
He wanted to wait for House to wake and hold him as tightly and close as he was holding Rona now; to have the illusion, for as long as the embrace lasted, that he wasn’t in danger of losing House to their combined mistakes.
Impossible, of course. House would never allow it; and anyway, it just wasn’t something they did.
So he pressed his cheek into the slightly coarse warmth of Rona’s fur and watched House breathe, checking his pulse every so often, and finally left when he stirred and Minerva showed signs of waking.
The drive home was mechanical, and at the end of it, he changed into pajamas, slid between cold sheets, arranged his body around his dæmon’s and closed his eyes tightly.
Crying, after all, had never solved anything.
END.
Bonus content: the above as a sonnet.
Icarus Falling
The anger at betrayal’s hot as flame,
And bright enough that it can only blind.
What else to do but return whence he came,
And leave the wrecked shell of his friend behind?
But when he tries, his soul’s sharp reprimand
Commands him stop and heed a truer call:
Though House’s plight he fails to understand
He cannot stand aside and watch him fall.
His nature isn’t made to turn away
From one it’s long since named and bound as pack;
Though it’s difficult to forgive and stay
His heart forbids him take another tack.
And so they keep their vigil through the night
And pray that fragile wings be spared sunlight.
Not Just a Puzzle
“This is stupid.”
House glanced over at Minerva, whose eyes were lambent in the darkness and glaring at him from the front passenger seat. “She’s twenty-six, she’s hot, and we don’t get out much. This is an opportunity.”
“She’s an idiot,” his raccoon dæmon said disdainfully. “She’s a squirrel, for God’s sake! We have higher standards than to stoop to a squirrel just because you won’t put the effort into a functional relationship.”
House braked for the light. “You’re just mad because if I do get lucky with her, it’ll be casual sex and you won’t get anything out of—ow!” She’d nipped his hand. Not hard enough to break skin, but it’d still hurt. “What the hell was that for?”
“Because you’re not even interested in sex with her, and we both know it. This is just avoidance.”
The light changed, and he drove a little farther up the road before pulling over. If his dæmon’s tone were anything to judge by, this wasn’t a talk they should have while he was trying to drive. “Avoidance of what?”
“Maybe the fact that we could’ve seriously hurt Wilson when we laced his coffee with amphetamines? We didn’t pull his file to check what antidepressant he was on or what else he was taking; we didn’t monitor him—”
He gave her a look. “This attack of conscience might’ve been a little bit more helpful before the fact, don’t you think?”
She climbed over the gearshift—thankfully not jostling it out of ‘park’—and onto his lap, letting his fingers trace absent designs in gray-brown fur. “We were curious. And when we’re working on a puzzle, we never let it go or give a damn about ethics. That’s who we are.” A short pause. “But that doesn’t mean, now that we have the answer, we can’t feel guilty about how we got it.”
All right, fine, so maybe he did, but still… “And he shouldn’t feel guilty about dosing us with antidepressants for weeks?” The last thing he needed was to worry about Wilson drugging his food, especially considering how much of his food was bought by or stolen from Wilson in the first place.
“Considering we faked cancer awhile ago to get them implanted directly into your brain,” she said dryly, shuffling back off his lap and returning to her seat, “I can see how he might think we wouldn’t be completely opposed to taking them.”
“As pain control, not for depression,” he reminded her. “We’re not depressed.”
“No, we’re garden-variety miserable,” she retorted. “But we have a friend who is depressed, for a reason he wouldn’t tell you and Rona wouldn’t tell me.” He was silent, considering, so she went on, “We knew when he was having an affair, we knew all those times he was divorcing, we figured it out when he was sleeping with his patient, but this he wants to hide?”
Point taken: that was definitely more interesting than a couple of hours in a bar with Honey the Flaky Vegan. If it were bigger than the myriad marital woes, bigger than that screwed up liaison with Grace, then it was sufficiently important to warrant his full attention.
And this seemed like the ideal time to address the matter: it wasn’t like Wilson would be asleep, not after a dose of amphetamines that high, and House wasn’t so tired yet that he couldn’t assemble puzzle pieces if he had to. “Fine,” he agreed, pulling back onto the road and turning in the direction of Wilson’s hotel. “But just because I happen to be carrying that key card I pilfered from his wallet.”
***
Twenty minutes and a little haranguing of the desk attendant later, he and Minerva took the elevator up to Wilson’s floor. She shuffled along at his left side, so his cane couldn’t accidentally catch her tail (they’d only needed to make that mistake once), and fidgeted with impatience in front of Wilson’s door while he dug in his wallet for the key card, then shoved it into the slot and waited for the buzz that signaled the engagement of the mechanism before bursting in.
“You really need to get an apartment,” he said without preamble, switching on the lights and smirking when Rona whined and Wilson pulled a pillow over his eyes. “I just wasted”—he checked his watch—“five minutes of my valuable time convincing the idiot at the desk I had a valid reason to see you at two in the morning.”
“It’d better be,” Wilson groaned, his voice muffled by the pillow, “because the residual amphetamines in my system are doing a fine job of screwing with my sleep without your help. Can you at least be merciful and turn the lights down?”
He dimmed them by about half, then went and sat down on the foot of the bed, lifting Minerva up beside him to save her the trouble of climbing the bedclothes.
Rona’s penetrating lupine gaze rested on him for a moment, then she nudged Wilson’s arm with a paw, and he sat up, the pillow dropping to his lap. He looked bleary-eyed and exhausted, like he’d been fighting for sleep there was no way he was going to get, and the rumpled sheets suggested tossing and turning.
“What’re you doing here?” Rona’s eyes had taken on an eldritch glow in the half-dark, and her words, spoken around a yawn, only emphasized Wilson’s obvious fatigue.
“Same thing I do when I’m too far away from her,” he said, tilting his head in Minerva’s direction. “Closing distance.”
His dæmon moved from beneath his hand to settle a few inches from Rona’s outstretched forepaws. She didn’t get too close, since Rona had arranged herself around Wilson’s body, but the approach was enough. “Dosing you with amphetamines was over the line,” she said for them both. “We weren’t actually trying to hurt you.”
Rona moved forward a bit and bent her head, touching her muzzle to Minerva’s smaller one, and he relaxed: if she’d do that, he and Wilson were essentially okay.
“I know,” Wilson said, only a little ruefully. “I should’ve just told you I was on them, knowing the insane things you do when you’re curious.”
“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity,” Minerva said, affronted.
“And you don’t need us to tell you which side of it you were on today,” Rona countered, curling her lip slightly to expose a glint of teeth. “In the future, there are better, less lethal ways of expressing concern, all right?”
“I tried to just ask you,” he reminded Wilson. “You were the one who wouldn’t talk.” Which was more than slightly hypocritical, considering how much good he seemed to think candid conversation would do House.
“We’ve been over that,” Wilson said dryly, “and given the object lesson, I won’t forget it any time soon. Any chance you might let me not-sleep in peace tonight?”
He made a show of exchanging a glance with Minerva, like he was actually considering it, then shook his head. “I still want to know why you went on them in the first place. You’ve had practically a boatload of reasons to be depressed all year—outside of your regular, extremely depressing practice—so why now? What’s pushed you over the line into pharmaceutical aid?”
Wilson narrowed his eyes. “You completely blew off the handout of ‘respect for others’ privacy’, didn’t you?”
“Of course,” he said. “I went back for seconds in the ‘devastating wit and charm’ line instead.”
“They threw in twice the usual amount of ego for free,” Minerva added, giving House a sharp look and saying, Either help me or shut up. Then, returning her attention to Wilson, she jerked a paw at Rona and said, “We’re trying to take her advice here. Spill.”
Wilson sighed and leaned back against Rona’s flank, too tired to muster more than a modicum of annoyance. “Did it occur to you—plural—that it might not kill you to respect my wishes for once and leave it?”
“’Course it wouldn’t kill us,” Minerva said. “Do I look like a cat to you?” She took a step or two closer to the wolf dæmon and wheedled, “Come on, Ro. Please?”
Rona looked to Wilson, then back at Minerva and shook her head. “Look. It’s nice that you’re making an effort for not completely selfish reasons, but we’re not on the verge of a breakdown, and other than that, it’s not your business.”
“Can we not talk in circles?” House said testily, breaking in before Minerva had to argue again that it was indeed their business. “It’s late. We’re tired. But we’re here because you’re on antidepressants and we do, in fact, give a damn about you—so just tell us why you’re on them so we can all drop this and go to bed.”
When there was no response, he said matter-of-factly, “You know I’ll find out in the end—I always do—so you might as well get whatever it is off your chest without making me dig and save us both the trouble.”
There was a long, weighty silence; then Wilson sat up, exchanged a look with Rona that House couldn’t read and gave a very slight nod. She moved from behind him, a few padding steps closing the distance between them, and House felt his stomach clench, realizing what was about to happen only an instant before she bent her head and maneuvered it beneath his left hand, slightly coarse fur and warmth in an utterly unfamiliar shape.
Unfamiliar, but not unwelcome, considering what it meant.
He heard Wilson’s breathing hitch and lifted his hand so the sensations flooding the other man’s body would stop and let him think straight. “Okay. Can I have something less grand gesture, a little more verbal?”
“I felt…and I was uncomfortable with it,” Wilson said, his voice admirably steady. “Especially since—for God’s sake, House, you may hate the Icarus metaphor, but most of this year it looked like you were falling and convinced impact was preferable to letting me catch you.”
He held Wilson’s eyes, guiding Minerva against him with the hand that wasn’t suspended above Rona’s head. “Contrary to what you seem to think,” he said deliberately, “it’s not your job to break my fall. I almost let you once, and I didn’t like the result.” Tritter had nearly broken Wilson’s life because House had been too stubborn to bend, defying Wilson’s advice and Cuddy’s and even Minerva’s. If he fell again, he wasn’t crushing Wilson under him.
“I’m not saying I’m going to martyr myself for you,” Wilson retorted. Then, more quietly, “I want you to let me in—if not that way”—he indicated Rona, his gaze lingering for just a second too long on the hand over her—“then just what we had and I’ll understand, but I’m sick of being walled out.”
“And between that and being afraid I’d reject this”—no need to pin it down with a name—“you worked yourself up so much you needed antidepressants. Right?”
Wilson nodded.
“And she didn’t just do that because your judgment is coming off drugs?”
Wilson shook his head, and House let his hand fall, threading his fingers through the thick ruff of fur at Rona’s neck and listening, satisfied, to Wilson’s gasp and Rona’s tail thumping softly against the sheets before nudging Minerva forward with his free hand and watching her move, scrambling over Rona’s back and reaching to close nimble digits around Wilson’s fingers.
Heat shot down his spine to pool in his groin and House managed not to gasp, but just barely: there’d been sex after Stacy, certainly, but most of it had been purchased and none of it meaningful, so Minerva had refused to be touched.
He’d told himself then it didn’t matter, that physical pleasure was enough, but this particular intimacy was one he’d missed.
Wilson’s free hand stroked Minerva’s back, and he grinned when she purred and House stifled a groan. “Tease.”
Reaching over Rona, he closed his hands around Minerva, taking her from Wilson and setting her on the floor before giving Rona a nudge. “Not room for four. Off the bed. Off!” He could hear Minerva chirping, obviously as impatient as he was, and the moment Rona was out of his way he toed off his shoes and scooted up to the head of the bed, crushing his lips against Wilson’s and sliding his hands beneath fabric, exploring the planes of back and torso and delighting in the hot exhalation into his mouth.
He let his lips part and his tongue glide over teeth and then past them, stroking Wilson’s tongue and palate; the other man’s mouth was stale and faintly sour with broken sleep but the kiss, warm lips and tongue moving against his own, was fully satisfying and—oh, definitely not enough; his jeans were becoming uncomfortable and Wilson’s hands beneath his shirt weren’t helping matters.
He could hear their dæmons by the bedside, Minerva’s chattering and purring and Rona’s whining and it was loud, but not louder than the pounding of his pulse in his ears and the rustle of the sheets on the bed. Finally, they broke for air, haste-clumsy hands fumbling with clothing, and House was glad of his jeans and t-shirt because they came off as easily as they’d gone on.
And then skin met skin, sensitized and flushed and Wilson’s hand closed around him with just enough pressure—he reached forward to reciprocate; Wilson was hot and hard and slightly slick in his fist. The angle was a bit awkward when they moved and his right wrist collided every so often with Wilson’s left; but it was only a minor annoyance.
Wilson’s breathing was ragged and he managed a strangled, “Ohmigod!” before House resumed the kiss, matching the rhythm of tongue against tongue to that of feverishly stroking hands and rocking hips—heat and need and—oh!—not enough contact—and apparently Wilson thought the same, because he felt the other man’s free arm encircle his torso, pull him closer; and he reached with his own unoccupied hand to cup the back of Wilson’s head, insinuating his fingers into soft hair and feeling warm, sweat-slick skin against the heel of his hand—awareness began to fall away as sensation promised to consume everything—
Faster—faster—exquisite heat and friction and tension coiled tight and mouth devouring mouth and then—ah!—ecstasy ecstasy ecstasy—wet heat was spilling over his hand and Wilson was shuddering against him, twin cries smothered between them, and then they broke apart, gasping in the hazy warmth of the afterglow.
“God,” Wilson breathed. “Oh God.”
He couldn’t resist. “Yes?”
“General statement,” Wilson managed, “not an address.” He moved a little, resting his head on House’s shoulder and an arm on his torso. “All right?”
“To lie on me after sex?” He raised an eyebrow. “Generally, you’re supposed to okay the less intimate thing first and move up, but it’d still be kind of stupid if I decided to have issues now.”
Wilson chuckled, shook his head faintly. “I didn’t mean—I meant…never mind what I meant,” he said at last. “It’ll—everything’ll wait tlil morning.”
“We’ll be here,” Minerva promised, sounding as blissfully sated as he felt. “And it was more than all right.”
“I know.” Rona’s voice was affectionate, but Wilson’s exhaustion was there, too, and House glanced over the edge of the bed to see Minerva nestled into the curve of Rona’s flank, eyes half-lidded. Rona’s were already closed, and he could hear Wilson’s breathing slowing and deepening with coming sleep.
He wiped his sticky hand on the edge of the bedspread and pulled the covers in around them, then reached for a pillow and shoved it under his head, feeling…peaceful. Obviously, the combination of post-orgasmic endorphins and the company of a—friend? Partner? Figure it out in the morning—was excellent against restlessness.
He could sleep, and they’d figure everything else out in the morning.
END.
Author's Note: Those interested in the meanings of Minerva's and Rona's names and forms, please see this post.
And Come Daylight
Wilson woke in the dim light of early morning to tangled sheets and the now-unfamiliar sensation of a human body arranged around his, long and lanky with sprawled limbs, one of them thrown over his own torso, and for a split second his sleep-fogged mind was startled; but then the memory of the previous night rushed back and he relaxed. Not entirely, of course; there were still too many unanswered questions for that, but for the moment he was content to lie still.
House’s face was relaxed in sleep, most of the lines pain and stress had etched into his craggy features softened; and if Wilson craned his neck a little, he could see Minerva dozing on the floor opposite his bedside, half-curled into a ball that fit neatly into the curve of Rona’s flank.
She didn’t speak—they didn’t want to wake House, after all, and Minerva with him—but the amber-bright eyes that held his were smiling, and he felt the knot of remaining anxiety loosen just a little as he remembered the feeling of House’s hands on her; of Minerva’s paws, smaller but similarly dexterous, clasping his fingers and the warmth of her fur beneath his palm, coarse but still softer than he might have expected.
All the years of that carefully undefined something between them, the little innuendos and significant looks, and now…what? House wasn’t a man to whom one made declarations of love, wasn’t a man who would respond well to the sentimental gestures Wilson generally followed first times with—and anyway, having repeated that cycle three times over made it feel tawdry. House deserved—
But that wasn’t the question, was it? The question was, how much would he be willing to accept?
When Rona had touched House, he hadn’t dared to hope for House to do more than withdraw his hand without insult and not as though burned—reciprocation of the gesture had been off the map of all possibility, and now Wilson had no idea where they were.
The mattress shifted as House rolled over with a sound halfway between a grunt and a groan—born of early morning fatigue more than pain, Wilson hoped—but no; he was awake now, and Minerva was moving away from Rona and to the discarded heap of House’s jeans at the foot of the bed, paws reaching deftly into a pocket to retrieve the amber bottle of Vicodin, which she deposited in House’s waiting hand before climbing onto the bed and settling down between them.
Two pills later, House put the bottle down on the bedside table and turned over to face him, one upraised hand supporting his chin and the other absently stroking Minerva’s fur. Wilson heard his own dæmon’s padding footsteps, and next moment she’d gotten up herself, sprawled at the foot of the bed with the weight of her outstretched forepaws resting on his shins.
“Now what?” she asked, speaking for them both.
“I’m not having one of those stupid ‘morning after’ talks,” House said flatly. “Last night filled my deep conversation quota for at least a month.”
Minerva gave an exasperated little ‘whuff’ and met his eyes. “I don’t let just any idiot touch me,” she said. “I let you. That says enough.”
“I know,” he said, “but—is this it? Two friends and a one-night stand neither ever talks about again? Or—something else? Lasting?”
“We’ve been ‘lasting’ longer than all of your marriages put together,” House said. “I push, you preach, we annoy the hell out of each other on a daily basis—but we work. Screwing with you is not going to screw with that.”
He laughed despite himself, because House wouldn’t be House if he weren’t tactless. Not romantic words, certainly, but he could think of them as endearing without too much of a stretch. “Okay. I know you hate to talk about feelings, but I don’t need that—I just need a label for this. I need to know what it is.” A short pause. “You of all people should understand that.”
Contemplative silence. “It was a risk,” he said at last.
“And what is it now?”
“It’s not a regret,” Minerva said to him, “and it wasn’t a mistake.”
To that, House added, “Obviously, sleeping with you threw the House-to-Wilson translation widget out of whack. This is a ridiculous amount of effort to establish that I still respect you in the morning.”
Wilson breathed an inward sigh of relief: Minerva’s word might have been the last one on the subject if House hadn’t spoken and given him an opening. “House, I’m not talking about respect.” He paused, deliberated, decided to take the risk of being explicit. “You’re not some woman—”
“So glad that detail didn’t escape you.”
Wilson ignored that. “—I’m going to wine and dine and have an emotionally barren marriage with. I’m not expecting poetry and flowers, but it—it was important. It meant something—”
“Why are you suddenly under the impression I’m slow on the uptake?” House said testily. “If it didn’t mean something, you’d have kissed me, slept with me, whatever, but Rona wouldn’t’ve gotten involved and neither would Minerva.” Then, with a little less asperity, “Just because I’m not committing left, right and center doesn’t mean I can’t recognize signals you want a committed relationship.”
He didn’t entirely trust himself not to make a misstep, so he looked over at Rona, and she stepped in for him. “Frankly, when we’re naked in bed with you and thinking of you in the context of ‘potential partner’, it’s not the best time to bring up our screwed up relationship history. But aside from that…” She paused, met Minerva’s eyes and held them. “You’re not wrong.”
“I’m usually not,” House said. Not gloating, just matter-of-fact. “Look. If I want casual sex, I watch porn or pay a hooker. Since last night involved neither of those things, the logical conclusion you seem to be having difficulty coming to is that it was not casual sex.”
“I know that—I know you.” He made a vague gesture encompassing House and Minerva, clarifying he meant House in totality. “What I don’t know—”
“Can you quit dissecting this?” Minerva broke in. “You care, we care, it’s pretty much a fait accompli by now—or do you even know how it works with dæmons and sex?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “Point is, we’re on the same page here, so stop the goddamn agonizing.”
There was a silence.
“You done?” House asked.
“Yeah. That was what I wanted.” He’d heard most of it, but for Minerva to admit caring was what he’d needed: to know that there had been an emotional basis beyond their friendship and a whim. “You couldn’t have said it in the first place?”
“And pander to your post-coital insecurity? She said it to shut you up.”
That might have been true, if House had said it, but they both knew Minerva’s words carried more weight. Wilson let it pass. “So…what now?”
“You stop talking, we sleep a little more, we go to work, and then you can come back here and move your ass out of this stupid hotel.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And do what, move in with you?”
“I certainly wouldn’t mind,” House said, with a leer he knew was meant to camouflage underlying sincerity. “But seriously—wherever you go, you need to get out of here.” He gave the room a cursory glance that Wilson knew still managed to take in everything. “I mean, no wonder you’re depressed.”
“Thanks so much.”
“Hey, friends don’t let friends live surrounded by ugly florals.”
He shared a look with Rona, remembering the previous time they’d lived with House; remembering hidden dirty dishes transferred to the sink, an uncomfortable three hours on the stoop, stolen food and deleted messages. “We don’t live together well, remember? And I can’t find a place immediately on such short notice.”
“Who said we didn’t?” House narrowed his eyes a little. “I said I wanted you to stay.”
All right; in retrospect, maybe all those pranks had been House’s particular twisted brand of affection, but still… “The message would’ve been clearer if you’d been a little more conventional about it,” he said. “Then I might’ve felt…wanted, and not like a toy you were playing with.”
“You were supposed to play along,” House said, as though this should have been obvious. “What, you think I was going to give you space to wallow in the misery of a third failed marriage?”
Rona gave him a sharp look. “Considering we’re going to have to make some fairly drastic revisions to our sexual self-identification, could you do us a favor and drop the damn marriages? Because I think it’s obvious you no longer have to worry about fending off Mrs. Wilson the fourth.”
“Fine. But really, you can’t tell us you never saw this coming,” Minerva said. “You’ve touched me more than any of his wives’ dæmons, and he’s spent more time with Greg than he ever wanted to spend with Julie or Bonnie or—who was the first one?”
“Samantha,” he supplied. “And all right, there was an…attraction, but—"
“But God forbid you should act on it and save me the trouble of dressing up in a stupid suit to play best man,” House said sourly. “Three times. The throwing-the-bouquet thing? They should’ve just skipped that and passed it to you.”
“I apologize,” Wilson said dryly, “for the colossal imposition of expecting you to wear a tuxedo.” Really, he reflected, it should’ve been a warning signal when he’d noticed how handsome House had looked before sparing a thought to Julie’s smile and gleaming silk gown. “And I’m not going to waste my breath defending my exes.”
House smirked. “I assume alimony has soured your affections?”
“More like I’ve stopped lying to myself about how much affection was there to begin with,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t have put up with from any of them a tenth of what I get from you, and that…speaks volumes.”
“So you’re just selectively masochistic.”
Anyone else, he would have corrected, but he knew better than to use the particular words that would have required with House. “Call it what you want,” he said. “You know what it is.”
House’s half-smile was mirrored in Minerva’s jet-dark eyes. “Yeah,” she said. “We do.”
***
“Remind me again how you talked me into this?” Wilson said, motioning Rona in ahead of him so he could maneuver his bulky suitcase through House’s door. Even though packing hadn’t been that much of an effort, he was tired—not least because House had been badgering him all day. “Because I could’ve sworn I knew better.”
Moving into an apartment of his own was a welcome idea in principle—he wanted a home again, not the hotel’s impersonal, manufactured hospitality—but moving in with House in the interim… Been there, done that, had that phone message deleted.
“You never know better,” House said, dropping heavily onto the couch and lifting his right leg onto the coffee table. Minerva climbed up and assumed her usual place beside him, flank pressed against his left thigh and head resting on the corresponding knee. “And with sex in the mix,” he continued, “apparently you’re downright stupid.”
Rona just shook her head as she moved to sit down beside the vacant half of the sofa, and Wilson let the remark pass, because it’d been the rare flash of sincerity underlying House’s sarcasm that afternoon that had done the convincing—that and Minerva’s assurance that he was welcome and there wouldn’t be any pranks this time. “Isn’t sex one of those things you say people are always stupid about?” He heaved the suitcase the rest of the way in and shoved it to one side, along with the question of whether he should put it nearer the couch or the bed.
“That and money,” House conceded, and Wilson joined him on the couch, leaning back into the cushions with a sigh as he put up his own feet beside the other man’s, one arm dangling over the arm of the couch so his hand rested at the base of Rona’s neck. “But considering how much we’ve screwed each other metaphorically,” House said, “literal screwing is rational by comparison.”
Wilson grinned despite himself. “I stopped trying to apply logic to this relationship years ago, and I’m not starting again now. If anything, it just got more complicated.”
“Different complications,” House contradicted, and Wilson heard the relish in his voice that usually accompanied the recording of a new symptom on the whiteboard. “Not more. And it’ll help if you agonize over them less.”
“As you’re so fond of pointing out,” Rona said quietly, “our past relationships haven’t turned out well…and we didn’t care about that as much as we should have. But if something goes wrong with this—”
“Nothing’s going to go wrong,” Minerva said, and Wilson envied House’s conviction. “Because we’ve both invested enough in this thing that we’re not going to break it.”
He met House’s eyes, remembered an earnest, ‘Maybe I don’t want to push this till it breaks.’ “All the issues that were there before this are still there,” he said. “Sleeping together didn’t fix them.”
“I’m not one of those morons skipping along in rose-colored glasses,” House deadpanned, a couple of chirps and a huff from Minerva betraying irritation. “I know that. But it bridged the gap—we’re communicating, the cold shoulder has thawed, and the harbingers of the apocalypse are nowhere in sight. So far, I’d say it’s all good.”
“It won’t necessarily stay that way.” They’d still argue, fight, get on each other’s nerves; all this year’s festering wounds would have to be lanced and drained…but maybe now the forgiving would be a little easier. He hoped.
House narrowed his eyes. “Insert that cliché about never having promised you a rose garden,” he said sourly.
“I’d suspect an underlying pathology if you did,” Wilson countered, because House would never stoop to such a banal display of sentimentality. “But it’s a lousy metaphor, because you know the thing about roses?”
“I get the feeling I’m about to.”
Rona looked up at him, amber gaze meeting blue. “They’re very pretty, right up until the petals fall off and force us to acknowledge the thorns we’d ignored in the first place.” Then, grinning, she added, “It made more sense to give up on them and get an honest cactus.”
“I repeat: you’re masochistic.” There was mirth in House’s eyes, though, and he said it without venom. “Anyone with an ounce of self-preservation would’ve run screaming years ago.”
“I’m not claiming to be any prize either, House,” he said with a crooked smile. “But after all these years, I think we’re committed.”
“And if we’re not, we will be,” House said, his smirk making it clear he wasn’t using the word in the same sense Wilson had. “And on that note—bed.”
Normally, dinner would have been an excuse to stay up later and continue the conversation, but he’d thoughtlessly suggested they eat before leaving work to save himself the trouble of piecing together a meal from the limited contents of House’s kitchen.
Then again, it was better to end it on a quasi-meaningful note than try to extend it beyond its natural limits. “Should I take the couch?”
“You should take half the bed, provided you want to sleep,” House said. “It’s big enough.”
“And you mean ‘sleep’ in which sense?”
“The boring, with-clothes one,” he said matter-of-factly. “Although I warn you I’ll be very difficult to live with if that’s always the case.”
“Right, and you’re a regular Mr. Congeniality under all other circumstances,” he countered, getting up and moving to unzip his suitcase and retrieve a pair of pajamas. This was good: there’d been banter the last few months, sure, but it hadn’t felt so comfortable in much too long. “But seriously, I want to feel we’re stable where we are, because rushing things hasn’t done wonders in any of my past relationships.”
“Depends where you’re rushing to,” House pointed out. “And this doesn’t exactly fall into the same vicious cycle you got into with the wives.”
“No,” Rona agreed, and then sighed. “We have our own cycle, and part of it is that when you make a mistake that really hurts us—or vice-versa—we sweep it under the proverbial rug and never bring it up again. And that has to change, or else one day we’re going to wake up and resent the hell out of each other.”
Minerva regarded her for a moment, then met Wilson’s eyes. “You know exactly how well those conversations are going to go,” she said. “What’re you hoping to accomplish?”
“If we stopped ignoring the damage,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “and acknowledged what caused it, maybe we could avoid repeating those mistakes.” A pause. “You can’t tell me you’d be happy to see a reprise of this year.”
“No.”
“You can’t expect us to change,” Minerva said. “You know what we’re like—to borrow your metaphor, cacti don’t turn into perfect, spineless flowers.”
“True,” he said, looking House in the eye. “But I don’t think it’d kill you to be a marginally healthier cactus, and for me to be a better—whatever the hell I am.”
“You’re a rosebush,” House said flatly, “who’s wised up and stopped producing flowers.” He slid his legs off the coffee table, shifted his weight to the cane and stood up, Minerva following him toward the bedroom. “Now shut up and come to bed.”
END.
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no subject
Date: 2011-07-13 10:42 am (UTC)Icarus Falling
The anger at betrayal’s hot as flame,
And bright enough that it can only blind.
What else to do but return whence he came,
And leave the wrecked shell of his friend behind?
But when he tries, his soul’s sharp reprimand
Commands him stop and heed a truer call:
Though House’s plight he fails to understand
He cannot stand aside and watch him fall.
His nature isn’t made to turn away
From one it’s long since named and bound as pack;
Though it’s difficult to forgive and stay
His heart forbids him take another tack.
And so they keep their vigil through the night
And pray that fragile wings be spared sunlight.
---
I can conceptualize what you're saying as far as Italian meter, but it seems as odd to me as iambic pentameter does to you. Odd, but still fascinating; I'll have to see if I can find a poem that uses something like the meter you're describing in English.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-13 10:53 am (UTC)I learned little about meters in school, and mostly because I was interested, we weren't made to study much. But the music of the endecasillabo is a deep part of my brain: the whole of the Divine Comedy, the whole of Ariosto, much of Leopardi are written like that. I became familiar with it early in life, before reading, and it's the only meter when I can hear if it's right or wrong without counting on my fingers.
[And an endecasillabo has ten syllables if the accent is on the last, so in that sense at least the count matches the iambic pentameter.]
no subject
Date: 2011-07-13 11:04 am (UTC)Incidentally, what you described above--the differences in accent--is closest to what the English language calls masculine (accent on the ultimate syllable) and feminine (accent on the penultimate) rhyme. From what you're saying, masculine rhyme is rare in Italian; similarly, feminine rhyme is rare in English.
This is a quatrain from Shakespeare's sonnet 20 that uses feminine rhyme. Does it make more sense to you than the masculine rhymes I was using?
"A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted,
Hast thou, the master mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion..."
no subject
Date: 2011-07-13 11:45 am (UTC)Glad to have clarified that (and thank you for being such a good scholar that you could fish out a whole quatrain with feminine rhyme!)
Just to give you a comparison, in the Divine Comedy (with about 40+ rhymes per canto - chapter) you have to go down to halfway in Canto III to get a masculine rhyme; I went through the first three Canti of the Orlando Furioso and found none. It's really rare.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-13 11:56 am (UTC)I understand it far better, too, because when I read that feminine-rhymed quatrain--well, it's Shakespeare; it can't be wrong, but it sounds odd. The music of the meter isn't the same when the pattern of the stresses changes, and that's distracting, even though I understand all the words perfectly.
(And evidently masculine rhyme is even rarer in Italian than feminine is in English.)