Title: Who Can Love You And Still Be Standing?
Fandom: House
Pairings: Wilson/wives, Wilson/Chase, Wilson-House
Rating: PG (bad language. As ever)
Genre: Het/Slash
Prompt: 093. Thanksgiving
Summary: Everyone takes something from Wilson.
Copyright: Title from Tori Amos’ Another Girl’s Paradise
Author’s Notes: Well, when I took on Wilson/Chase for this challenge, I realised that I could write as much about Chase’s issues as I wanted (mummy mommy, daddy, priests, kink etc) but that I ought to give Wilson’s issues some coverage (I didn’t write much with Wilson before I started this challenge. I wrote House/Chase, you see). So I want Wilson’s relationship with his previous wives covered. They’re his issue after all. They should be people. So I mention them. Things about them. I have characters and names for them. So I feel that there should be notice taken of this. And this was written pretty late at night so it should make amusingly no sense in a good way. Besides, I’m British; I don’t have a clue what good Thanksgiving is.

And now I’ve bored you senseless…



Laura took your innocence, crushing it neatly into a box and taking it away with her, in the pocket of her Levi 501s as mascara sprinkled its way down her cheekbones, sobbing “it’s been such a long day” as the divorce finally came through. You hugged her tight, burying your face in her long, dyed-crimson hair, and you whispered “it’s been such a long year”. She raised her green-eyed gaze to yours and smiled slightly and made you promise that you’d wreck many more women before you retired from the world of casual sex, and it was strange because you could have sworn she was the one who wrecked you, as she stood there outside the court with her black coat pulled up around her neck to hide the lovebite House gave her, the final straw that snapped the camel’s back as you unknotted your tie and tucked it into your pocket and gave up on her for the last time as you walked away.

Rose took your faith in any goodness you might once have had because what you did to her was almost unforgivable and you all know it, and even House mentioned the riot act from time to time. She had a lot of black hair and the iciest blue eyes, framed by beautiful eyelashes and she was so pretty and so innocent and the antidote to Laura because she was so very very different. You can’t remember if you even loved her, you must have done, but she used to make you feel so very guilty, and, in fact, she still does. She started out so excited about married life, but by the time you’d messed her around and stopped speaking to her and spent too much time working and fucked three different nurses a night for nearly a week until she caught you, her face crumpled and all that was left was a pile of mismatched and jagged edges.

Julie took your belief in marriage and that was pretty much it, as she murmured “I’m so sorry James but…”, which was odd because normally it was the other way around, and you’d given that speech yourself so many times that you were practically reciting it yourself along with her shaking voice. And you were angry, which was ridiculous, because it was just turnabout of what you’d already done. Julie’s brown eyes and brown hair weren’t like your other wives and you both wanted different things and the marriage was over before the champagne at the reception had even started to go flat, which as House once pointed out was a personal record and you didn’t speak to him for a week. Really, Julie was a mistake, but by no means was she anywhere near the Top Ten List Of The Worst Mistakes You Ever Made, so you deserve snaps for that.

House took your independence away and you’ve never even slept with him, which makes a change, but you realise you’re living for him as much as yourself now and no one will ever realise what a masochist you are, you little damaged man with no self-esteem but a really fucking huge collection of ties and three different wedding albums all with wives whose smiles seem to shrink. House is about eight parts of you, and everyone else keeps taking pieces of you until you realise that you need House to be there because someone has to breathe on your behalf and you’ve got nothing going for you. You love him, you think, but in a different way and one that has quite a bit of self-pity and hate mixed into it, and you’re fairly sure Laura would be proud.

Chase is in the process of taking your convictions away and packing them neatly into the incinerator downstairs, because you’ve never considered yourself as gay and yet you’re kissing him and whispering promises that you won’t make him be wife number four, unless he really wants to. He has a smile like sunshine that you never see and eyes that are blue but not blue like Rose’s, which you have to be grateful for because you’re guilty for enough things as it is, his lips at the corner of your mouth as you wonder whether you’ll go to hell for all this infidelity and try to calculate how deep your faults run while Chase whispers that you’re not God and you never will be and that he doesn’t really mind, and you wonder how long you can keep giving yourself away and really feeling it every time until all you’ll be left with is a bruised heart that no one will want because they’ve all already owned it.



Ma table