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WIP: Untitled as of yet, Part 9
The feeling of relief that sight triggered in him was more profound than he liked to acknowledge. He pushed himself off the bed and scrambled to his knees. "Wilson," he said and reached out to touch the other man's shoulder. "C'mon Wilson, let's get you back to bed."
Wilson, whose eyes had closed by now, only gave an unwilling grunt, his head sinking to the side against the wall. House let out an sharp breath. "Wilson. Hey, Mr. Oncologist. Come on. I can't get you back in bed without your help."
Wilson didn't react, and from the way his breathing had slowed down and grown very regular, House suspected that he was as good as asleep. House sat back a little, pausing for a moment before he shook his head and reached for his cane, awkwardly getting to his feet. He grabbed Wilson's pillow and blanket from the bed and, ignoring the slightly indignant grunts, pushed and poked the other man until Wilson was lying on his side, his head resting on the pillow. House spread the blanket over him, grateful that Wilson was at least lying on the bedside rug instead of the blank wooden floor.
House straightened up and stood, gritting his teeth and cursing silently as the muscles in his leg cramped again. He held onto the wall until he was sure the leg would support his weight and then limped around the bed to get the pills that were sitting on his night stand.
He propped the cane against the wall and dropped down on his side of the bed. With a sigh, he rested his elbows on his knees and rubbed his hands over his face. You idiot, he thought. You complete utter moron. Slipping people acid without forewarning them. You're getting old.
He was. During his college days, one of his top ten acid rules had been never to force a trip onto somebody else. LSD was one of the strongest hallucinogens there were, and those things it made you see could be scary as hell if you weren't prepared. People did the most idiotic things on acid, especially when they had no idea what was going on. Jumping an experience like that onto someone who was already exhausted from trying to fight off a killer headache for the last twelve hours was more than irresponsible. It was dangerously stupid.
House lay down on his back and stared at the ceiling for a few moments, listening to the quiet breathing that was coming from somewhere behind him. After a while, he turned around on his stomach to be able to see Wilson as well as hear him. Wilson was lying with his back against the wall, his hair mussed, and despite the fact that he was asleep, the expression on his face looked as exhausted as House had only seldomly seen it. The guilty feeling in House's stomach twisted a little, and he dropped his face into the mattress.
Great. Now that Wilson had finally shut up and gone to sleep, House had a feeling that to himself, sleep wouldn't come any time soon. He slid underneath his blanket anyway, hoping that maybe the exhaustion of the day, or possibly the hydrocodone, would catch up with him.
Somehow, he couldn't get comfortable, though. He wasn't quite sure what was wrong, until he rolled over once more and realized that the bed simply felt too empty. Not that Wilson was always next to him when he fell asleep; Wilson was frequently away on some conference or other, or some kind of emergency or his paperwork kept him in the hospital for long hours into the night.
On those occasions, House had no trouble falling asleep at all. This, however, was different; knowing that Wilson was curled up on the hard wooden floor, ruining his back, instead of sleeping in his accustomed place in the bed made for a very uncomfortable emptiness beside House.
After he didn't know how many minutes of tossing and turning and not falling asleep, House let out a sigh and sat up. He turned on the bedside lamp and morosely stared at the heap of blankets in the corner that was Wilson. After a few moments, he shook his head in defeat and muttered, "Screw this." He grabbed his pillow and the blanket and got up to limp around the bed to the other side. As an afterthought, he snatched his pills from his nightstand and stuffed them in his pocket.
He dumped his pillow and blanket next to Wilson on the floor and awkwardly lay down beside the other man. He pummeled his pillow until it supported his head and then edged as close to Wilson as he could, throwing an arm over the other man, who didn't even give the slightest indication that he was aware of House's presence.
"There," House muttered, shifting around until he'd found a more or less comfortable position on the carpeted floor. "Maybe I can get some sleep now, yes?"
Despite the way the floor was pressing against his hipbone and the way his leg protested against his every move, the warmth of another body so close to his own soon made him feel drowsy, and it wasn't long before House had drifted off, as well.