Fic: "Not Quite..." Wilson/Chase pre-slash [R]

Title: Not Quite…
Author: Nuala
Pairing: Wilson/Chase pre-slash
Rating: Softish R.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Not making any money.
Warnings: Canadian spellings. Timeline might be a little off. Pretty much AU after recent episodes. Spoilers for Season 1 and early Season 2.
Summary: Wilson wants to love and be loved. You can’t always get what you want, as the philosopher Jagger said, but sometimes you get what you need.
A/N: Prompt #44:
some small and clammy being
not quite yet an angel
is on my back
playing the strings of this nervous system
not quite yet a harp

- Albert Goldbarth

***

Some diagnoses are determined by elimination. If it's not this thing, or that thing, then it must be Diagnosis X. And this will be as close as anyone can get to certainty. Diagnosis by elimination.

Uncertainty can be a comfort. James Wilson knows this. Not dead is better than dead, even if it's only not yet. He deals with a lot of people whose only hope is not yet. It's a scanty and slender hope. Still. Better than none.

Wilson's marriage is entirely dead. Not not dead, nor not yet dead. Completely and utterly dead. The cancer has metastasized and spread to the lungs, the prognosis is nonexistent, the patient has flatlined. Julie's lawyer served him the papers two months ago. It's already finished. His first divorce took almost a year to complete. This one took less than six weeks. He's getting better at it, he supposes. Practice makes… well, not perfect, really, but it sure makes things go more smoothly once the shit hits the fan.

He figures he's a much better doctor than a husband. Percentage-wise, he keeps more cancer patients alive than marriages (not that that's saying much -- scoring higher than zero isn't much of a challenge).

Today he's not much of either. The sparsely furnished one-bedroom apartment he woke up in (alone) and the awful coffee he made himself (he still hasn't figured out the new machine) mock his failure as a husband. He misses his king-size bed, misses Julie's perfectly-made cappuccinos. When he gets to work, he finds that Rowan Chase has moved into the stage of actively dying. There’s not even any point in moving him into palliative care. There's nothing Wilson can do. There was little enough he could have done at any time. They found it too late, and it moved too fast. Wilson just wasn't good enough.

Wilson pages Chase fils to his father's room and leaves before he arrives, sensing that Chase will want privacy. In the office, he tries to work on a new paper but the stats he's looking at swim in front of his eyes. Caffeine, he thinks, closing the file.

The oncology lounge is filled with his staff, and he is just not in the mood to make small talk with them. He can't be charming all the damn time. Feeling restless, he wanders aimlessly for a minute before heading for the diagnostics department. House doesn't have any cases right now -- not that that's ever stopped his visits -- and Wilson feels the need for some bracing conversation. Between the hollow loneliness of his apartment and the hushed solemnity of the oncology department, Wilson is constantly on edge, his nerves quivering with tension all day long.

House isn't in the office, where Wilson sees Cameron opening mail. He waves to her through the glass, and heads straight to the meeting room next door. There he finds Chase, peering intently into a mug of coffee. He grips a pencil very tightly in one hand. He is sitting perfectly still, and Wilson is struck by the oddness of this. Chase always fidgets.

Wilson walks in.

"Chase? What are you doing here?"

Chase manages to look both listless and challenging. "Having coffee," he says.

"I paged you. Your father…"

"Is dying. Maybe dead. I don't… know."

"Chase. Go see him. It's the least you can do."

Chase's eyes flash with annoyance. "Actually, the least I can do it nothing."

Wilson sighs. "Will you just go?"

"He won't be conscious."

"No. But you will."

Chase fixes Wilson with a stare. Wilson can't identify the emotion in his eyes. Not quite yet anger. Then he pushes away from the table and stalks past Wilson, not quite knocking him with his shoulder as he goes by. After Chase is gone, Wilson investigates the coffee he'd left behind. Not hot, but tolerably warm. Wilson sips it experimentally, makes a face at the bitterness, and begins rooting around for the sugar packets he knows House keeps somewhere.

He hears the door open behind him, hears Cameron's soft footfalls. She opens a drawer by the window, pulls out several sugar packets and hands them to him.

"Thanks," he says.

"You're welcome," she replies automatically. Wilson sugars the coffee and stirs it with his finger. "Is he… did he… pass away?" Cameron asks hesitantly. "I have no right to know," she goes on hurriedly, "but I'm worried about Chase."

Wilson sips the coffee, and wishes caffeine worked faster. "Not quite yet," he says, his tone clipped. He strides past Cameron, her face a distraught moue, walks out through the balcony, somehow scrambles over the low divider without spilling the coffee, and goes into his own office.

He is able to sit at his desk and focus on the paper for about thirty seconds. Then Wilson's up again, through the hallway, and outside Rowan Chase's room. The blinds are drawn, but the door is open a few inches.

Wilson has seen a lot of death. He's seen a lot of people who are as good as dead, past the point of no return. Rowan Chase has been drifting in and out of consciousness for at least a week. When Wilson came in today, Rowan's organs were shutting down. It would be only a matter of time before the death rattle shook the life out of the man's skeletal frame.

That moment has come and gone. The room is silent. Wilson wonders if Chase even came, or if he let his father die alone. He pushes the door open and stops in his tracks.

With a pang, Wilson sees Chase standing in the corner of the room. He looks tired, and very young. His eyes are wide. He is staring intently at a point somewhere above Rowan's head.

"Chase," Wilson says.

"Seven minutes ago," Chase says. His expression never changes. "I called it."

Wilson's eyes widen. "You…"

Chase's eyes meet Wilson's. Wide eyes stare into wide eyes, crackling emotion hanging in the space between them. Chase's eyes are dry, to Wilson's surprise. Chase shrugs. "I was here," he says.

"Oh," Wilson says, helplessly. The familiar feeling washes over him, the need to heal and resolve issues, to make death better. He is drawn to Chase; the pull is actually physical. He catches himself making the motions to hug Chase, and stops himself in time, settling for clasping the younger man's arm. "I'm sorry," he says honestly.

Chase shrugs again, effectively dislodging Wilson's hand. "Thanks." He clears his throat. "I'd better get going. Everything's taken care of here. Um. Thanks." Shaking his hair across his face (obscuring his eyes) he walks around Wilson into the hallway.

Wilson sighs, and moves to pull the sheet over Rowan's face, covering the sunken eyeballs and protruding cheekbones. Let the dead rest in peace. The living certainly can't.

As Wilson walks back into his office, he gets stopped three times by residents seeking consults. He feels his nerves winding up again, like a harp strung too tight. Wilson wonders how much more he can take before something snaps.

The day passes slowly. Wilson's head begins throbbing midmorning. He refuses to take anything for it, even Tylenol. Coffee helps the headache, but makes the tension worse. He finishes half the paper, diagnoses two consult patients (neither terminal, or not quite yet), and makes the rounds of his ward.

Lunch with House is stimulating. His headache goes away, for a little while.

"I suppose Chase's daddy issues are now a thing of the past," House remarks as he limps to the elevator after they've finished eating.

Wilson shakes his head. "You really are an asshole. Can't you show even a little respect? The body's probably not even cold yet."

"Actually, Chase's body is particularly hot. Not that I'm into that sort of thing. Oh wait, did you mean Rowan Chase?" House raises his eyebrows, mocking.

Wilson sighs as he feels the twang of pain along the back of his head, nerves suddenly strung too tight again. "House, I am not in the mood today."

"You have to admit, Chase is pretty hot."

"House…."

"And I know for a fact that you're not too picky when you're drunk and lonely --"

"I have clinic duty now," Wilson interrupts. "You coming?"

"Much as I'd love to, there's a GameBoy in my office that needs tending to. Plus I feel it's only fair to warn Chase that you've got your eye on him. You're quite a libertine, and I'd hate to see you ruin his reputation." House hobbles out of the elevator, leaving Wilson to ride alone to the main floor.

That afternoon, Wilson puts in two hours at the clinic. Normally, he finds dealing with minor aches and pains to be calming. Today, it just makes the headache worse. After the clinic, he takes one last stab at finishing the paper. Five games of computer solitaire and two hours of staring at the same paragraph later, he sighs and gets up. Home is not likely to be more relaxing, but at least the TV and bed are there.

He picks up Vietnamese take-out on the way home. He automatically picks up enough for two, even though it’s just him tonight.

It's almost dark when Wilson pulls up to the squat little apartment building he's living in these days. Clutching the warm paper bag to his chest like a talisman, he fumbles with the lock. He just wants to get in, eat, zone out in front of the television, and go to sleep.

Wilson finally manages to get inside. As the door swings shut behind him, someone stops it with a foot wedged in the jamb. Wilson doesn't turn -- tenants aren't supposed to let uninvited people into the building, but Wilson just can't be bothered right now.

"Dr. Wilson?"

The accent and inflection are familiar, and startling enough to stop Wilson in his tracks. He turns. Chase doesn't look… he doesn't look like someone whose father just died. He doesn't look tired or pained. No slouch, no circles under the eyes, no drawn mouth. If anything, he looks angry. Wilson supposes Chase is here to yell at him. He sighs. Anger is part of the process, he reflects. He’s been yelled at enough in the last two months that he doesn’t really care anymore. Might as well let Chase get it out of his system.

“Chase. Are you all right?”

“Not really.” Chase’s tone is almost petulant.

“Okay. Do you want to come in?”

This elicits a startled look. An invitation was obviously not what Chase expected. “Uh. Yeah. All right.”

Wilson nods and leads the way to his apartment. He experiences a brief flash of embarrassment. This place is hardly luxurious. The walls of the hallway are painted cinder blocks, the carpet is an institutional brown, half the fluorescent lights are missing from the ceiling, and the place smells persistently of cigarette smoke and industrial cleaner. Not the kind of place a wealthy doctor would live in, unless that wealthy doctor was supporting an increasingly staggering number of alimony settlements and legal bills.

Chase glances at the missing lights, and keeps casting curiously accusatory glares at Wilson, but remains silent. Wilson is grateful. He lets himself into his apartment and motions Chase inside. He sets the bag with the food in it on the counter and toes off his shoes. Chase watches him from the doorway. He doesn’t look around the sparsely furnished apartment, but instead watches Wilson with a steady gaze.

“You can close the door,” Wilson tells him. “Have you eaten?”

Again, Chase looks startled. “No.”

“Do you like Vietnamese?”

“…I don’t know. It smells all right.”

“It’s a pretty good restaurant.” Wilson takes out two unmatched bowls from the cupboard, and a bunch of spoons from a drawer. “Can you use chopsticks?”

“Yeah.”

He hands Chase a set of little chopsticks from the bag. He fills one bowl with small amount of each dish and hands it to Chase. “Try that, see if you like it.” He serves himself, not taking much. He never has much of an appetite after work. “You want a beer?”

“No,” Chase says, unconvincingly. Then, “Yes,” sheepishly. And, “Thanks.”

Wilson nods and grabs a six-pack out of the fridge. The fridge contains nothing but beer and leftover takeout of dubious vintage. Snagging the six-pack with a thumb, hoisting his own bowl and grabbing the carton of Singapore noodles, he walks to the couch in the living room. “Come sit,” he calls to Chase. “Bring the rest of the food, will you?”

Chase silently gathers the cartons and sits on the far corner of the couch. They arrange the food on the coffee table. Wilson turns on the television. He flips to a show Julie always watched. Wilson used to hate it, but now he finds he was inadvertently sucked into the storyline. Now he seldom misses it. Tonight’s show is a repeat, but Wilson wants to see it anyway.

Chase snorts. “Gilmore Girls?” he asks.

“Is there something you’d rather watch?” Wilson asks, mildly embarrassed for the second time in less than twenty minutes.

Chase shrugs, and bites the end off a spring roll.

They watch in a silence that is not quite comfortable. It’s not like eating with House. House is chatty and relatively immobile. Chase doesn’t speak. He watches the show, but doesn’t react to it. And he fidgets. He plays with the chopsticks while he chews, twining them around his fingers. He taps his toes to some rhythm that only he hears. He flips his hair, he flutters his eyelashes, and he licks his lips. Wilson watches him out of the corner of his eye. Chase does all these things quite un-self-consciously, as far as Wilson can tell.

After Gilmore Girls, Wilson flips them to a multi-episode marathon of The Antiques Roadshow. Chase eats most of the food, for which Wilson compensates by drinking most of the beer. When they finish the six-pack -- rather, when Chase finally finishes sipping his second beer, after Wilson had impatiently downed four, Wilson brings another six-pack from the fridge. He also tosses Chase an ice cream bar from the freezer. Chase raises an eyebrow.

“Dessert on a stick,” says Wilson, alternating bites of his own bar with sips from his beer. “What? This isn’t the Ritz.”

Chase snorts. “Yeah,” he agrees, but the ice cream bar vanishes quickly enough.

Wilson drinks five beer. Chase has one. They watch ugly dressers and uglier china kittens and strange old umbrellas being assessed. When he finishes the six-pack, Wilson opens a bottle of whiskey that House gave him as a “divorce gift,” pours himself a glass. Chase is still nursing his beer.

By the time the show is over, Wilson is very drunk. He’s a blunt man when sober, but he does have some inhibitions. Alcohol removes the inhibitions but leaves all the bluntness intact.

“Shouldn’t you be mourning?” Wilson asks after the TV has been off for less than five seconds.

“What?” Chase asks, not quite angry in his utter astonishment.

“Don’t you have family to be with? Arrangements to make?”

Chase stiffens and glares. “Fuck you,” he says.

“I just think it’s odd that tonight, of all nights, you end up at my place, eating my food, drinking my beer…”

“Dammit!” Chase stands angrily and throws his beer can at Wilson. He misses, but there’s a few mouthfuls left in the can. Beer splashes on the couch, spatters the sleeve of Wilson’s shirt. “You… you’re worse than he is!”

Wilson doesn’t really need to ask who.

Chase goes on. “Everyone thinks he’s the asshole, but you’re worse. You’re a… a manipulative, mean bastard, but everyone thinks the sun shines out of your ass! Everyone thinks you’re the nice one. And you just let them, don’t you?”

Wilson shrugs and finishes the whiskey in his glass. Even drunk (very drunk), Wilson realizes it’s best to let Chase take out his anger and frustration now.

Chase snorts in disgust. “You’re pathetic, really. Worse than he is. At least he’s got the leg to deal with. You’re an asshole all on your own. I’m beginning to see why House is the only person who can stand being your friend.”

Wilson ponders pouring another drink, but it would probably just make Chase angrier. Wilson wants him to be able to get this out of his system.

“You’re bollocks as a friend, obviously. And bollocks as an oncologist. For God’s sake, my father died in your care!”

Wilson rolls his eyes. He’s used to survivors yelling at him.

Chase changes tactics. “And how many times have you been married?”

Wilson blinks. “Hey now…” he begins.

Chase isn’t stupid, and he wants to hurt Wilson. “This one was, what? Number three? You’re rich and good-looking, and you can’t even keep a woman.”

Wilson tries to tamp down his anger. He knows Chase is only baiting him. The alcohol is making it hard to maintain control, though. He can feel each nerve in his body singing with tension.

“Completely pathetic. I mean, there is nothing in your life that you aren’t failing miserably at.”

Without thinking, Wilson shouts “You let your father die alone!”

“I visited him!” Chase yells back. “I went to see him as often as I could! More often than I wanted to!”

“He was dying! I -- ” Wilson stops abruptly. He takes a breath. “Look,” he says. “All I’m saying is you really gave the impression that you don’t care.”

Chase stares down at Wilson, who is still on the couch. “I don’t,” he replies tonelessly.

“He was your father.”

“He was never part of my life.”

“Did that really matter?”

“Yeah. Of course it matters. I was a kid. My mother was helpless. He left. Nothing else matters.”

Wilson rubs the bridge of his nose. “I wish…”

Chase turns away. “Thanks for the food,” he says in a clipped voice.

Wilson sighs and hauls himself off the couch, swaying a little. “Wait,” he says. But Chase is already halfway to the door. Wilson lurches after him. “Just… wait.”

Chase stops and turns around, his expression petulant and haughty. Wilson struggles to remember what he had been about to say. The words have fled. He didn't think he was that drunk, but he can barely stand upright. Looking into Chase’s eyes, he feels the day’s tension tugging at his nerves, pulling them taught. Something in Chase’s expression touches that tension, somehow. He doesn’t ease it, that’s for sure. It’s as though Chase is running his hands, his elegant fingers, over the taught strings of Wilson’s nerves. Playing him. Making something that is not quite music.

Wilson stares at him, at a loss.

Chase snorts with something like disgust and walks away. He closes the door behind him. Wilson can hear him drive away. He sways and leans against the wall for support. What, he wonders, just happened here? He closes his eyes briefly, but the room spins invisibly around him.

He walks slowly and carefully to the bathroom. It’s nothing like the large, clean bathroom in the house he shared with Julie. It’s small and cramped, and Wilson hasn’t cleaned it since he moved in. But the water pressure’s decent, so it’s not too bad. Wilson turns on the shower. While he waits for the hot water, he strips, piling his clothes haphazardly on top of the hamper.

He turns the water as hot as he can stand, letting it roll over his head and shoulders, trying to relax. His back and neck are tense as a bowstring, the arrow digging into his brain.

Wilson washes carefully, hoping the motions will loosen his nerves. Instead, they just get wound more tightly. His whole body is completely rigid with it. Wilson looks down, almost against his will, and sees that his cock is hard. He’s even a bit surprised, given how much he’s had to drink.

His hand drifts unconsciously along the length of it. He shivers, despite the steam; his nerves tighten. He wraps his hand firmly around his cock, pulling harshly. Get this over with.

It takes a long time. He has had a lot to drink. But he needs this. Needs some kind of relief or he’ll never get to sleep tonight. He rolls through all his usual fantasies in his head. He tries out different mental images, memories of touches or glances, dreams and desires that only ever existed in his mind. He’s at the edge, right at the edge, his whole body stiff as stone, aching for release. He moans in frustration.

Then he thinks about Chase’s hands. His face. In an instant, Wilson imagines Chase spread on Wilson’s bed, spread for him, rosy lips open, begging. He imagines holding Chase down, fucking him from behind, pulling his head back to kiss him.

It’s enough. Wilson’s cock pulses in his hand, spurting ropes of come onto the tile. After, he shakes and can barely stand. The tension is completely gone. He barely remembers stumbling into bed and collapsing, not even bothering to pull on boxers and a tee-shirt, and falling asleep.

The next morning, Wilson recognizes this as a minor miracle. He hasn’t slept through the night in months.

At the hospital, Wilson goes through the day in a good mood. He charms all the nurses and residents. He finishes the paper he’d been working on. His consults go well, though the clinic is a welcome break. But even dealing with death isn’t so bad today.

All day, Wilson is aware of Chase watching him. It’s immeasurably uplifting. He doesn’t like Chase, not really. But having this young, unsure and arrogant child on his back makes things bearable. Chase will never soothe his strung-out nerves. But somehow, without (Wilson suspects) actually being aware of it, Chase plays his nerves, plucks them and plays them, making something not quite musical. He’s not quite an angel, and Wilson is not quite a harp, but absolute definitions are overrated as far as Wilson is concerned.

He meets Chase’s wide gray eyes. He scowls at being noticed and walks off. Wilson smiles as he contemplates the comforts of uncertainty.

***
My beta reader abandoned me at the eleventh hour! Please report any typos, and I’ll fix them.