verbal_kint | Fic: Famous Last Words

Title: Famous Last Words
Characters: House
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The story behind the bar fight in "Baggage." Spoilers, obviously.
Words: 672

You realize, chugging one of too many malt liquor grenades, that you’re okay. That’s the problem.

This time, there will be no late-night bus rides, no sung seductions by dead passengers of said bus rides. Nobody’s going to blow their brains out. Nobody’s going to chop off your leg. Nobody’s going to slam the door in your face and call you a bastard. So now you sit on the third stool from the right wishing someone would.

The bartender’s name is Rusty or Dusty, or something else you’d find on the collar of an old golden retriever. The bar is slow and tired and functionally locals-only, but you’re slow and tired and you fit right in. Around you, beers fizzle like the only friendship you ever cared about. Two months out, you can see it: Wilson knocking on your door to tell you it’s over, that Sam moved on to bigger dicks and looser tempers, that he’s sorry. And things will hover around normal in time. You’ll move back in; you’ll eat his food. But it will be boring.

You tilt your head back as the rest of the grenade slides down your throat. Your stomach churns; you think far too much to be drunk. It’ll be boring like this is boring. There’ll be no explosion, no helicopter beams, no Joker, no Lex Luthor, no concrete calamity to which you can attach the general feeling of wrongness in your gut. Because you’ll be okay. You’ve been okay for a year.

And yet, Vicodin wants a stomach, Amber wants to talk, motorcycles want to crash, and you want Wilson to be there. To see the mess he’s making. To pick it up and drive it to his place. To put an extra sheet on the couch. To call it their place.

A man collapses into the stool next to you. He stinks of whiskey and sets his wedding band on the table next to his drink, which is a double. It isn’t captivating, but anything to quell your racing mind.

Your tongue spews words without permission—slow, slurred vowels working fervently together to form, “She left you?”

He turns to face you, his sad blue eyes looking somewhat like your own. “Bitch cheated,” he grumbles.

You bare your teeth through a slow, dopey grin. “Really? Didn’t mention it. She was a pretty good fuck though.”

He grabs your throat in a swift, rapidly sober motion, and suddenly you’re standing. Your right leg grazes the wooden floor as your left struggles for purchase on the ground and then in his groin. He lets you go and you land right-legged on the floor with a thud.

A growl escapes your mouth as pain envelopes you through the fog of alcohol and Tylenol PM. Hot, sharp pain—pain like electrified railroad spikes. You can smell his breath; he’s close enough to whisper. “What the fuck did you say?”

You take a few breaths, making sure your voice will make it out at all. “I said,” you wheeze, “she begged for more.”

You’re answered by the thump of boot on bicep, and the dull soreness that follows. You close your eyes, free to feel the blaze in your thigh radiating up your spine and into your hips and shoulders. Free to feel the spit on your cheek and the vomit in your throat. You hear voices, all garbled by the ringing in your ears and the tobacco in their lungs. A firm hand scoops you up by the forearm and drags you five feet out of the bar and onto the pavement, which is a shame: you’re not nearly drunk enough.

You dial blindly, matching tones with their corresponding numbers and creating a seven-note symphony. Wilson answers on the second ring.

“I need you to pick me up.”

There is a pause on the other end—Wilson calming himself enough to ask how much your bail is. Instead you hear, “Are you okay?”

You lie down, letting the wet gravel soak through to your bare back.

“No.”

-------------------
Title and LJ-cut from "Famous Last Words" by Billy Joel.