The request I filled was for a Jack Sparrow/Elizabeth Swann/James Norrington threesome about ‘The similarities and differences between the two men.’ It went AU because it was the only way my brain could make that threesome work.

Elizabeth despairs of making James understand. Her Commodore cannot comprehend why she would break faith with him for one such as Sparrow. To spend her time with Will would make sense, her fondness for Turner having long preceded his piracy; James even shares her fondness to some degree. He has commented that should Will ever wish to turn respectable again and avoid the gallows, he would gladly put in to get him a letter of marque.

But Sparrow… Jack Sparrow is unredeemable chaos, no orderly lines, no fine sense of honour, nothing at all to temper his illegal activities, to make him remotely acceptable to an English officer, and so she fears that James will never understand.

She loves James, of course, he truly is a fine man, a good husband. Undoubtedly he will be a fine father to the child that grows within her. And she is quite grateful to have married James and not Will, for all that Will is a fine man and dear to her heart, James is stability in a way that Will cannot be for her now. And that is what a home and children require, stability.

It is a quiet life, and a good one, that she leads, for James is not so boring as she might have feared and neither is being his wife. But for all that it is good, for all that at least the sea has not been stolen from her, she misses things she can no longer have. And so, she spends her time with Sparrow, and knows that her husband keeps a watchful eye on her. He is, at least, forgiving of this fault of hers, this fascination with pirates and chaos that lingers even now, even as her belly swells with child and the responsibilities that will come when the girl is born. (Somehow, she knows both that the child is James’s and that the child will be female. She supposes it is no stranger than a medallion of cursed gold calling out to the men damned by it.)

Some days, she feels like asking him to come along to show him that it is not an attempt to escape her responsibilities for a day, but a way to remember what the salt air tasted like on a ship not bound by any government’s orders or duty to anything but one’s own self. It is a reminder of the trade that she has made—and that, perhaps, as wistful as she may be at times, it was not a bad trade. Sparrow has a way of infuriating her without even trying, usually on the topic of Will.

She dances around the subject of Will during her visits, for Will is an uncomfortable subject for her, and Sparrow usually ignores her evasions completely. He likes making people uncomfortable, even the ones he’s about to sleep with. Perhaps, she thinks, especially those. It amuses whatever perverse demons that possess his soul and make him quite mad and daft. Will is, unfortunately, neither one thing nor the other, not quite a respectable blacksmith and not quite a dashing rogue, but Sparrow says he has finally begun to truly fight dirty and it only took an ugly scar on his cheek and nearly losing his eye to a dagger. Elizabeth is too aware that she has played a large part in shaping Will from the blacksmith she knew and respected and loved into, of all things, a pirate—a thing she also loved but that was not him; too aware of the unspoken promises she could not keep and the chasm that lies between them now.

Perhaps it would make sense to fall into Will’s bed, to think of the man who got away, but Elizabeth has hardly ever done the sensible and obvious thing in her life, so it is Sparrow she kisses and Sparrow she fucks and James she loves and James she thinks of even as Sparrow is in her. She supposes in a fantasy world she would have them both in her bed, light and dark, order and chaos, a perfect balance.

She does not live in a fantasy world, as fantastic as her world has been. She lives in a world where compromises must be made, where duty and freedom barely hold an uneasy truce and one can not blithely slip from one to the other without a price to be paid. James is forgiving, but distrustful and worries at her, concerned for her and the child. Sparrow hardly cares at all, he has many beds he can sleep in aboard his ship and on land, and it is only that she is an intriguing mystery that she has him at all.

In another world altogether she might have spurned her engagement to James and none of this would be—in another world it would most likely be that she would share Sparrow’s bed with her husband, Will Turner. But this is not another world. She argued for their lives, argued to let them free, but she stood with her husband-to-be and watched as the two men disappeared over the same ledge that she had tumbled from herself. Her heart is a complex device not so simply defined as one thing or another and it had ached to watch them go, but it would have ached just as painfully to stand with them, to carve such a wound into James’s heart.

Perhaps James will understand, some day. Sparrow is not as different from him as might be. The sea is in their blood, at least, and to cut either off from it would just as surely kill them as a bullet between the eyes. Perhaps her fantasy world is not so impossible as it seems, not so impossible as the might-have-beens in that seem to follow her everywhere. Perhaps she will feel the scratch of Sparrow’s dreads as he sucks at the hollow of her throat and James spreads her thighs, perhaps she will feel James’s soft lips against her breast and rough hands on her hips while Sparrow sinks into her, perhaps she will whimper as two men bring her pleasure and she brings them the same.

Perhaps. But most likely not.

He is the Commodore, after all, and Sparrow is the Pirate.

“Crazy skies all wild above me, now
Winter howling at my face
And everything I held so dear
Disappeared without a trace.
Oh, all the times I’ve tasted love
Never knew quite what I had.” — lyric prompt
 

The telegram comes and it is the worst day in BJ’s life. Worse than the day his draft notice came and rended him from his wife, his family, his life. Hawkeye is in the hospital, attempted suicide. They don’t think he’s likely to make it.

Odd, maybe, that he’d choose to cut his wrists, not eat a gun–Hawkeye of all people knows anatomy, knows the best way to guarantee self-inflicted death. Eat a gun, eat a bullet, have it bounce around the brain, death comes quick and assuredly. But with Hawkeye, Hawk, everything’s symbolic. BJ’s quite sure that he picked his wrists and slit them open to try and bleed out every last drop of Korea.

Peg finds him curled over the letter, tears wet on his face. Wipes them dry, takes the telegram, sets it on the kitchen counter. Holds his hands. “Honey,” she starts, and BJ cuts her off with a laugh. It’s not hysterical, not quite, hovering just on the edge. “Peg, don’t. Please,” he begs. “I can’t deal with this right now.”

“Erin will be home from practice,” she says, instead. “Why don’t you go wash up?”

BJ laughs, again, still hovering. “Why? So I can wash away the dust? The blood? They’re on me, Peg, they aren’t ever coming off, even if I bleached and scrubbed she’s all over me.”

Peg grips his hands a little tighter. “I know you don’t mean that, dear,” she says. “You’re in shock and you need to go wash up and we’ll eat dinner. You’ll think clearer for it.”

This time the laughter is bitter as BJ yanks his hands away from her. “Yes, I will. I don’t want to think clearly, Peg, clear thinking is what has Hawk lying in a hospital. Clear thinking sent us all home and back to our neat lives where we all fitted back, even if we didn’t, because clear thinking said that it was all much better than clinging to the ties we forged over there. But Hawkeye couldn’t, he didn’t have a life to go back to, so he choked on it, drowned in it, and no one to see it happening.”

Peg sighs. “BJ, you’re not making sense,” she says, patiently.

“No,” BJ says. “I’m not. Not to you. It doesn’t make sense, any of it,” and he grabs his coat and his keys and leaves his wife in the kitchen to explain to their daughter that he’s run off.

Erin blinks up at Peg, “What do you mean Dad’s not here? He’s always home by now,” she points out, reasonably. “Is he hurt?”

Peg chokes back a laugh of her own, swallows down her tears. “I don’t know. He might be. He wasn’t particularly himself when he left. I don’t know when he’ll be home, either, dear. Hopefully some sense will knock its way into that thick skull of his and he’ll be home tonight.”

“What happened?” Erin asks, wide eyes, worry and concern.

“He…” Peg pauses. “He received a telegram. About Hawkeye. Apparently he’s been hospitalised. They don’t think he’s going to make it” she says. “I think your father went to visit him.”

Erin swallows back anything she might have said, and hugs her mother. “He’ll be back, Mom. He’s upset, he just needs to clear his head, I’m sure,” she says.

They eat dinner, and they wait and worry. For three days. And then the phone rings, and it’s BJ. There’s screaming and crying, and BJ isn’t coming home, he’s staying until the funeral and he’s scattering the ashes back in Crabapple Cove.

When he comes home, a month later, Erin punches him. BJ absently rubs at his jaw, bruise already sprawling across it. “I suppose I deserved that,” he says blankly. “Where’s your mother, Erin?”

“She’s at work,” Erin spits. “We’ve had to do something to keep paying the bills. The hospital’s been pretty understanding, considering, but not very forthcoming with the pay.”

BJ flinches slightly at that. “I see,” he says and crumples himself onto the couch.

“I remember Hawkeye,” Erin says suddenly. “I liked him. He didn’t coo at me and he had a nice laugh. He meant a lot to you, I remember. Kept you sane, you always said.”

“Yeah,” BJ says quietly. “He did.”

“I really hate you right now,” Erin says flatly. “You walked out on me and on Mom. Needing to visit Hawkeye and all, that’s understandable. But you walked out. Nothing, not so much as a word for three days and you only now show back up.”

“I’d say I’m sorry, but it wouldn’t do much good,” BJ says tiredly. “I am sorry, for whatever it’s worth.”

Erin laughs bitterly. “I’m sure,” she says, and turns around in disgust. “Didn’t know what you had was worth until it was gone, did you?” she spits.

“No,” BJ says. “I didn’t.” He stands and pulls her into a fierce hug and kisses her soft blonde hair before letting her go. She stares at him, anger crinkling her forehead.

“But now I have nothing at all,” he says. “So I suppose you’re even, Erin.”
 
 
I have peace to weigh your worth, now all is over,
But if to praise or blame you, cannot say.
For, who decries the loved, decries the lover;
Yet what man lauds the thing he’s thrown away?

–He Wonders Whether to Praise Her or to Blame Her, Rupert Brooke

 
 
She is a very graceful girl, that Miss Susan, and if you’d watch her wander the gardens and sing those pretty songs of hers, you’d scarce believe she belongs in a place like this. But then you look in her eyes and you see the hollow in them, and you know that perhaps she does.

What happened to her is just terrible, losing all her family like that. I gather she was fairly close to her siblings, or had been, she mutters to herself of the fairytales they made up as children and how she misses them. What strikes me as so very remarkable is that she hasn’t taken refuge in those childhood dreams, an escape from the horrible things in her life.

She never once took refuge in delusion, which gives the doctors hope, especially as we all watch her get stronger every day. Well, I suppose any person, even a very strong one, might suffer a breakdown when struck with such a blow. She’ll be on her feet again, soon enough.

I do wonder, sometimes, for if you catch her eyes in the light you see more than just the hollow her family left in her soul. There’s something else, another pain, but then she’ll move and it’s not there anymore. Dr. Dyson gave me the oddest look when I tried to ask him if he’d ever seen it in her before, and he muttered of the fancies of women. Well, I was quite offended and he’s not had a hot meal in a week because of it. It’s not my imagination and I thought that the doctors ought to know about it if they expect her to make a full recovery.

Sometimes, I do wonder about doctors. All textbooks and knowledge and not a lick of sense among them. I suppose that’s what they have us nurses for.

Susan is lovely–magnificent in green, her hair piled up atop her head so beautifully even her brothers gasp to see her when she walks down the staircase. Her skin is flawless and her cheeks are ever so lightly flushed, the way they might be were she riding hard in the woods, though she walks with the sedate grace of a true lady.

She learned the trick of the blush, dusting it on ever so lightly, at school from the girls her age. They’d giggled as they showed her, and she’d bit back an impatient order to hold their tongues for making her head ache for she is not in Narnia any longer. Narnia, she fears, is little more than a dream that four terribly bored and powerless children told themselves. Certainly she’s seen nothing of that world since they all tumbled back out of wardrobe and has little reason to believe she ever will. And if she never will then she may as well apply herself to this world she lives in now.

She always was the practical sort, gentleness tempered with pragmatism–she’d been quite a capable hunter. She still is an excellent archer but she hadn’t been when she’d picked back up a bow and arrow. She’d missed the target entirely and gritted her teeth against the jeers of the boys. She is not Queen, and to behave as though she is would be most rude and unlike the good English girl Susan Pevensie is.

She walks down the staircase, prepared to go out on her date with that polite Thomas Faugh. She has her pick of the boys of town, of course, but only Thomas has approached her with the proper courtesy–she may not be Queen, but certainly she appreciates a boy who wishes to treat her like one.

Peter had frowned so prettily when she had informed him that she was going dancing, she thinks perhaps remembering his own memories that cannot be, but he’d managed a bright smile when she lay her hand on his and explained gently that, after all, she is 17 already and he need not worry quite so much about her now. Still, Susan quite thinks he took Thomas off to give him a few brotherly bits of advice on how to handle his sister before she came down for Thomas has a slightly glassy look to his eyes and Peter a certain smug twist to his mouth. She laughs to herself, for brothers will be brothers, and she sees a pinch to Edmund’s mouth as well suggesting, perhaps, that he joined in on the brotherly discussion.

Lucy, of course, is quite delighted with her sister and speaks of how noble and wonderful she looks. Susan smiles inwardly and suppresses a sigh. Lucy is still young, for all that her breasts have begun to swell, her hips to widen, blood flowing from them each month commensurately. Susan cannot quite decide whether she wishes Lucy would grow up as quickly as she so she might have a conversational companion again, or that she wishes Lucy to never grow up so she might remember herself what it is to still believe in fairytales. It is painful to think of Narnia, where she might yet speak a word and have a faun dance and sing or a dryad braid her hair to look lovelier still than it does piled so delicately atop her head, and here where she lives where she might have a boy dance but no magic to drift in the air along with.

Thomas takes her hand so gently and courteously, Susan feels the deepest pang within her chest, as he might have been one of her courtiers so polite he is. But she keeps her face clear and pleasant for that is something she must do, a Queen or no, for she is the loveliest girl in Finchley and most aware of her manners. She curls her hand delicately around his and smiles brightly, so brightly, the smile that dazzles everyone, even her brothers, and Thomas whisks her away to his automobile–Thomas Faugh is 19 and rather rich, having inherited his father’s monies when Jeremiah Faugh was struck by a heart attack two years ago. That may be part of why Peter was quite so brothersome, so careful to ascertain Thomas’s good wishes, that he is rich and of an age with Peter.

Susan enjoys the night out, away from her family, though of course she loves them all dearly in their own way, Edmund being quite lovely to talk with since he straightened out. But they are not her future, not here and now in a bustling England. She has a husband to find, a life to build, and children of her own to bear. She has no great personal desire for children, for the swelling and stretching of her belly, the further spread of her hips–she wishes a great deal that they would straighten again, cease bleeding, but that is the life ahead of her and she may as well make the best of it. She will love her children, she is certain, and they will grow up strong and true, as intelligent as her siblings and her siblings will be fine aunts and uncles, she believes. Lucy will keep her children bright and cheerful and Edmund will keep them fair and Peter, of course, will keep them right and true.

It is not the future she once thought of but it is the only future she has left and while she might wish to weep there’s no sense in that and no purpose to be served. It will not make Narnia real and Aslan will not carry her off to distant wondrous lands nor breathe life into her cold and sad life. She must make her own warmth, she must live this life. No one asked if she wishes to be strong, merely expected it, and she may resent it but she will be damned if she will show weakness by permitting her resentment to show, much less fail to be strong.

She dances with Thomas and buries her face in his hair which is soft and fair but not as soft and fair as Peter’s much less the fur of a mythical lion she never knew. She does not weep into his hair, does not mourn her lost childhood, but dances with him and graces him with a kiss upon his cheek, a devout gratitude for his true chivalry that is something she has so rarely found except within her brothers.

He takes her back to her home, where Peter waits just within the door, and watches as Susan bids Thomas goodbye. She is rather tempted to kiss Thomas full on the mouth simply to watch her brother squirm so amusingly, but she has not the energy within her to handle the conversation that would follow so she allows him to kiss her hand and ask her when they might go out again and replies that she is rather busy so it might not be until next quarter. She sees a light flicker within his eyes and wonders if he will indeed be her husband and the father of her children for he seems the least objectionable prospect so far and is willing to pursue her properly.

She wonders if Peter sees the despair within her soul at her bright and shining future. The magic has gone from her life and she has only the motions left to follow. She will perform them exquisitely all the same, no matter how deep the despair and how meaningless the motions be. Nothing less could be expected of her.

That is why she most certainly does not find herself weeping upon her older brother’s shoulder once Thomas’s sleek car has disappeared, because she is not so weak as to require his comfort and therefore he has no need to soothe her with kisses upon her forehead. But if she did so weep and he did so soothe, it would be because he too knows the loss of childhood, of wonderful memories turning to dust and ashes within his mouth, and of the great envy to be found within of their younger siblings who can still yet believe in things greater than this world with all the heart of a child.

 
 
My daddy was a good man, I know he was. Momma never explained why they divorced, just said ‘We couldn’t live with each other anymore, and it was better for us all. I didn’t want you growing up in a broken home, and we would have been more broken if I’d stayed with him.”

Daddy only ever said it was cos of a lesson he still didn’t learn ’til too late. Made fun of himself for being so slow, not like me with my straight As at college. I’m going to nursing school, see. I saw him look over at that postcard, and then I knew. I remembered him and his fishing buddy, and the way Momma’d cry.

I looked at him, and he looked back, and I guess he saw I knew, cos he shivered under his coat. “Never learned that lesson ’til it was too late,” he repeated and fell quiet again.

He looked so tired and lonely. “Daddy, I worry about you, up in this trailer with no furniture and nobody else besides. I know you don’t like the city none, but please at least come and visit your granddaughter, for Christmas? Kurt wouldn’t mind at all. And Momma can just hush her mouth, because I want my girl to know her Granddaddy.”

He smiled, but still looked so damn lonely.

I know he hurt my Momma. If Kurt did something like that to me, I doubt I’d manage quite so well as Momma did. But I know my daddy’s a good man, too, and he’s miserable enough to make up for it. At least Momma got to move on, make herself happy.

Well, Daddy came and visited little Jennifer Watts–we named her after my sister–and he loved her, like I knew he would, and he went back to that crappy little trailer, like I knew he would. I kinda hoped he’d change his mind about the city, come here and live closer to us, but he won’t ever. He’s gonna die lonely, dreaming of Jack Twist. I’m just surprised he ain’t died yet of that broken heart.

I worry about him, and I wish he’d go visit my sister. I’ve tried dropping hints, but I guess I’m just gonna have to tell him outright. Momma’s cut Jenny off, won’t have nothin’ to do with her, cos Jenny’s been talking about moving into an apartment with her dormmate, Elisa, and I guess I know now why she’s so dead set against it all, why it’s so personal. It’s a shame, Elisa’s a good girl, and well, if it ain’t what you’d expect, they’re happy. I can’t ask for more than my little sister being happy. And I bet it’d do Daddy and Jenny both good to talk. Won’t make Momma happy, but she’s got a life of her own to live now, and she already done disowned Jenny, ain’t like she got much say left.

Maybe she’ll come round in time. She’s a good woman, she really is, and I don’t think she’s stopped loving Jenny. Just doesn’t know what the hell to do with her, and there’s a whole hell of a lot of hurt still there. But given time, maybe she’ll see Jenny’s just looking to be happy, and ain’t no one else being hurt by this. I hope she will, because I hate seeing my family this broken.

We been shattered enough, no sense letting ourselves be scattered too.

 
 
There was no quiet death for James Tiberius Kirk.

He did not die properly the first time, which is fitting for a man who refused to play by the rules–the first student to win the Kobayashi Maru scenario. When he truly died… I felt him pass on.

I had never known what to make of the fact that I could not sense his death the first time, when all other evidence said that he was dead. It was a relief, in some ways, to hear of his second death. It was painful in others.

He did not pass peacefully, and I do not believe he has found quiet respite in his passing. He has died, but a ghost remains, a small part of himself that can never pass on as it will always be seperated from normal space-time, always apart.

Jim cannot find peace, nor his ghost.

He was a restless man, and it is perhaps most fitting that he not rest in death when he did not rest in life.

It is odd, when all is fitting and appropriate, when it has been decades since I resigned myself to his unsensed death, but I find that I miss him more now than ever. I miss his restless impatience.

I do not think I will find peace, when I pass on. But I may be fortunate enough to find something better–my friend. And perhaps we shall search again, together.

Peace is, I find, overrated. An illogical thought in an Ambassador, particularly a Vulcan one, but…

I miss Jim. Perhaps that is enough to explain my illogic–emotion operates on its own logic.

 
 
House limped into Cuddy’s office with an unusually evil smirk on his face. It’s going to be one of those days, Cuddy thought to herself.

“I thought you might like to know,” House said casually twirling the simple gold band on his finger. “I’m off the market. No more ass-grabbing in the hallways, you minx!”

Cuddy raised an eyebrow. “And who, pray tell, is the lucky woman? I need to buy her a consolation present.”

“Interesting,” House said. “Heternormative assumption. Not a woman, my dear, but an oncologist.”

Cuddy blinked. And thought for a second. And then blinked again. “Wilson?” she asked, disbelieving. “…isn’t that bigamy? Or bigandry? Or… some thing?”

House snickered. Cuddy grabbed a bottle and shook out four Aleve to help combat the impending migraine and dry-swallowed them. “House? Go do your clinic duty and for once in your life try not to terrorise the patients.”

“Wilson,” Cuddy said. “What the hell is up with House and you?”

“What, beyond the fact that I’m pretty much his only friend?”

“House just came into my office complete with wedding ring and declared that he’d married you.”

Wilson patted at his pockets. “Damn it! So that’s what he was mugging me for. He said it was for a few quarters for the coke machine.”

Cuddy blinked. “You’re not concerned at all about this?”

“Well, the sloppy public goodbye kiss in the cafeteria was a little unusual, but no not really. He’ll have his fun and be bored with it in a day or so.”

“…a little unusual,” Cuddy said flatly. Wilson started to reply but she held her hand up. “No, no, I don’t want to know. I really really don’t.” She rubbed at her temples and wandered back off.

Wilson sighed and went back to his office to take another look at that leukemia case.

A couple of hours later, Cameron accosted Wilson. “Is it true? That’s… god! You and House? And it’s illegal!”

Wilson pinched his nose and felt a small wave of sympathy for House’s vicodin addiction. If he had to deal with Cameron all the time, he’d be pretty tempted too. “Cameron, I am not actually insane enough to marry House. House is, however, insane enough to steal my wedding ring and go fuck with Cuddy’s head for shits and giggles.”

“…oh.”

“I find it intriguing that you believed it,” Wilson said, with a slight eyebrow.

“The lunchlady said he frenched you!”

“Oh, like that’s anything new,” Wilson said, with exasperation.

“My point exactly!”

Wilson coughed. “…to be clear, here, I was talking about him taking insane liberties with his colleagues in the name of amusing himself, but, all right.”

Cameron sighed. “So, seriously, is this why the whole thing with me and him went so spectacularly badly?”

Wilson shook his head slightly. “Believe it or not, I’m not actually having an affair with House. And no, things went badly because House is, well, House.”

Cameron sniffed dubiously and stalked off, probably to go gossip with the oncology nurses. Wilson muttered to himself, “Also because you’re you, Cameron, and because House never actually cared about you that way.”

Chase wandered into House’s office during break, coffee cup in hand and grinned. “Hey, heard the good news. Congratulations!” And promptly wandered back off to check up on a patient who’d been having unexplained breathing difficulty.

House pointed after him. “See? If you all were that cool about it, it wouldn’t be any fun.”

“But if we don’t react, you just escalate,” Wilson said, reasonably.

“Details!” House said, with an airy wave of his hand.

“I am going to go check on my patient’s bowel movements, now, it’s less traumatic than this whole conversation,” Foreman said. Cameron followed him out, probably still angsting about the supposed affair underneath the practical joke, Wilson thought tiredly.

Cuddy rubbed her temples and regretted bitterly having turned down that massage therapist who’d been looking to do a study on stress in healthcare workers. “Look, Mr. Andrews. He’s not gay, he’s just playing a practical joke on everyone today. Including his supposed ‘husband.’”

House smirked and god, nobody would blame her if she socked him cripple or no, would they? “How do you know it’s not both?” he said.

“House, is there some reason you really don’t want to treat this guy?” she said, almost managing calm.

“What, other than that he’s an annoying bigot? That’s not enough?”

Cuddy sighed and turned to the patient who was a fairly bright shade of red. “Go get some therapy, stop repressing, and drink some damn tea. Eat some soup. If you want, I can write you a scrip for a low-level antibiotic but it’s not going to do anything the tea and the soup won’t. And stop chewing that damn gum. Now go away and stop bothering me.” She turned and glared at House. “Happy now?”

“Delirious,” House said, leaning in with a leer. “Also, shocked that you noticed the gum,” as he straightened up.

“Yes, well, we can’t all be the great medical detective but I did actually finish medical school, hard though it is for you to remember,” Cuddy said, and kicked him out of the office. It was only by the grace of God she restrained herself from doing so physically.

Wilson rubbed his forehead and sighed. “I find it slightly distressing how many people were, after thinking about it, not that surprised by the concept of us getting married.”

“…oh, I’m sorry, did I kick you out of the closet? Whoops,” House said.

Wilson sighed. “No, not really, I’m just concerned that people seem to think I am insane enough to marry you. Without having divorced Julie!”

“It just goes to show, you’re only the good one by comparison, and people know it.”

Wilson scrubbed at his face.

“Well, that’s what you get for being such a ho,” House said, casually.

Wilson looked at him for a long moment, and decided not to comment. “…Yeah. So, drinks at your place?”

“Sure,” House said. “I’ve still got that girly shit you like to drink.”

 
 
Most days, Chase likes everybody. Likes House for his acerbic wit and ability to just say whatever he’s thinking. Likes Cameron for her utterly amusing still-extant crush on House and her attempts to repress and deny the disaster that it has turned out to be. Likes Foreman for his quiet stoicism and backbone. Likes Wilson for his ability to ameliorate House on tear and his easy companionability.

Most days, people like Chase back. He’s easy-going, laid-back. Doesn’t care too much about anything, doesn’t get too worked up. He’s not complicated.

He learned that lesson a long time ago. Learned that if you don’t care too much, you don’t show too much, you don’t get hurt. People don’t go away. Nothing to see then there’s no reason to leave.

But that’s most days.

He’s heard what Foreman said back when everything with Vogler was going down. That Chase wanted the job, but didn’t appreciate it. Heard the subtext there–the rich boy doesn’t know what he’s got, doesn’t know what it’s like to work hard to get somewhere in life..

At one point, that might’ve bothered Chase. But it’s just water off his back, it’s nothing. It’s easier to smile wide, easier to shrug it off. Play the part, the careless rich boy who doesn’t know what he has. It’s easier not to care. Rowan Chase taught him that lesson.

It’d be even easier to swig back his tequila and let it burn away all the feelings that make him want to care. But he learned all about that from Anna Chase, so instead he just tucks them away in a box that no else can see.

House, he thinks, knows about the box, though. House sees what everyone else misses, the tiny details, and he stitches them all together. But even House hasn’t seen it, just deducted its existence.

And that was where he’d gone wrong. He’d started caring about it, when House had been poking around at his raw edges, the places that the box wore at.

And then there was the angio he’d screwed up and what burned most wasn’t House’s disgust, but his own bile. His own defenses, his complacency, had bit him in the ass as a doctor. Ironic–it was practically autoimmune.

He’d wanted to protect his fellowship and risked it in the process.

You forget a lesson that Daddy taught you, life’ll beat it back into you. He’s remembered it: always take the path of least resistance. Fighting never gets you what you want. Not in life, anyhow. And neither will anything else.

And if you can’t win, why bother tiring yourself out?

 
 
Wilson and House have been drinking. House really shouldn’t, especially given that his tolerance is shit compared to what it used to be, but that’s never stopped him before. He has gone through about a third of a bottle of very nice single-malt. Blair Athol, to be specific, brought back as part of his duty-free from a convention over in the land of boring food and royal scandals, if it matters, which it doesn’t.

Wilson has had several large tumblers of something terribly girly and mixed, which he claims gets him drunk much faster. It does, actually, but House likes mocking him. But House keeps the girly-drink booze in his liquor cabinet, and the juice in his fridge. The loose, sprawled lines of Wilson’s body and the comfortable patina of not-quite-smashed are too appealing not to.

It’s not actually surprising when Wilson tilts his head back that extra bit more to look at House and says, contemplatively, “You know, at least half of my nursing staff thinks we’re sleeping together,” but House wasn’t expecting it either.

He shrugs. “They’ve thought that for years.”

“Yes, well, considering that god knows neither of us are getting any anywhere else, it’s a wonder we aren’t,” Wilson says.

House snorts. “Are we going to get another ‘my marriage sucks’ sob on again, Jimmy? Because I’m really not dressed for it—I left my caring face at the cleaners.”

Wilson lets his head fall to the side and snickers into the couch. House can feel the vibration in his ass, which is surprising since his ass is usually numb by now. “No, I think we’ve pretty well established that my marriage sucks. We could recap, but it’d be boring and you’d go hide in the bathroom. …what does it say about me that you can successfully hide from me in the bathroom and not Cuddy?”

“That you are the nice one. Or is it cowardly? I always get those two confused.”

“Rahr,” Wilson says. “Well, you’d be the Tin Man, the man without a heart. Does that make Cuddy the Wicked Witch of the West?”

“Yes, but that would make Cameron Dorothy and it’s far more amusing to picture Chase in the blue gingham.”

Wilson snorks on his drink and looks up at House in a glare.

House grins. Chase will get that cute crinkle between his brow tomorrow when he tries to figure out why Wilson is stifling laughter around him all day.

Wilson twists around and says, “Move over.” Complete with showily indignant sniff. House blinks down at him.

“Why would I give up space on my very comfortable couch?”

Wilson pokes him in the side. “Because, I told you to.”

“And I actually listen to you… since when, exactly?”

“Well, normally you don’t, which I might add is really annoying, but 1) I am drunk and 2) I know where all your trigger points are and am not afraid to use them, see number 1.”

“…you make a persuasive argument, Tonto,” House says, and lets his good leg’s calf fall off the couch. Wilson smiles, satisfied, and crawls up onto the couch. He promptly sprawls out, head pillowed on House’s good thigh. House rolls his eyes. “And this is why I don’t let you sit with me, James.”

Wilson laughs and says nothing, because victory speaks for itself, or some other self-satisfied shit. House ignores the fact that he doesn’t actually mind Wilson curled up with him and takes another drink

Wilson looks… disturbingly angelic, his already boyish face relaxed. Sleep is clearly threatening to take over. Thank god House is comfortable because it looks like he isn’t going anywhere.

Wilson blinks up at him sleepily and mutters something completely unintelligible before… dear god, before actually snuggling into House’s thigh. Wilson hasn’t been this wasted in a long while.

“Comfy?” House asks, sarcastic.

“Mmph,” Wilson says into his thigh before turning his head. “Well, I was, before you decided to make me attempt higher brain functions like speech.”

“You’re awfully articulate for someone that claims to be that drunk,” House points out.

“Oh, you know me, the articulate drunk. I can write love sonnets worthy of Shakespeare while blasted, but try me sober and you get ‘roses are red’.”

“Well, that would explain your marriages.”

Wilson rolls his eyes. “I suppose it would. Now, shut up and let me sleep. I have clinic duty at 8:00 in the morning and need at least a few hours sleep to be able to fake being a responsible and competent medical professional.”

“But where’s the fun in that?”

“Yes, well, I know the concept of dressing professionally has completely left your wardrobe, but some of us do still have standards. Even Chase is more professional looking than you, which considering what he was wearing today is just sad.”

“Yeah,” House mutters, “but I looked cooler.”

“Oh, definitely. And if this were high school that might actually matter,” Wilson says. “Amazingly, though, it’s not.”

House mock-glares. “Keep it up and I’m voting you off the island. But I’m sure you’ll greet the floor very professionally.”

Wilson burrows back in without replying which isn’t surprising. He has clinic duty in the morning and a bizarre desire to be awake for it. House can’t imagine why—he does his level best to be as unaware as possible. Maybe it’s that whole caring-oncologist shtick at work.

And, really, he should be annoyed, or at least faking it, but he’s drunk enough to really not care, because Wilson is comfortable and he is comfortable, which pretty much means all is as right in the world as it will ever be.

Well. Possibly it will be righter when Wilson actually stops avoiding the issue and divorces Julie already, because Wilson will stop telling House he doesn’t want to talk about it and House will stop having to bite back his sarcastic comments. He’s really, really bad at that, and it’s incredibly annoying to feel compelled to even try.

But… well. The loose lines of a drunk Wilson curled up in his lap, and his bad leg blessedly non-existent. There’s really just not much to complain about, here.