misanthrope_md

Phedre often shadowed House during his clinic hours - handy, since he'd taught her how to do much of the trivial stuff straight away, like cleaning a wound or pulling out a splinter. But that wasn't really an environment for the heavy learning, considering that they were constantly being interrupted. For the most part House's teaching style consisted of giving her a massive amount of reading material and then quizzing her mercilessly on it.

It was time for the latter now, with Phedre seated at the desk in his hut and House laying back on his bed (why get out of bed, even for teaching, if you don't have to) with his eyes closed. He was grilling her on one of his favorite topics, infectious disease, having given her a textbook a couple of weeks ago.

"What is the term for animal diseases that can be transmitted to humans?"

[continued from here]

House plucked the joint out of Gwen's fingers and tossed it into a glass of water on the nightstand. Then he slid a hand onto her leg and kissed her.

He wasn't doing this because it could annoy the hell out of Jack, but it was a nice potential bonus.

House had almost forgotten that he'd told Logan he could come to his clinic hours on Sunday. So when he arrived, it was with a book in hand as usual, entirely prepared to be bored out of his skull. If he was lucky he might get a runny nose or - excitement of excitements! - stitches.

He slid into a chair by one of the exam tables and kicked his feet up, twirling his cane in one hand.

It was a few days after New Years and House had spent some time in the clinic that afternoon. Mostly he was waiting for the damn snow to melt; based on past experience, it should be any day now. Sure, it was new and different for a while, but after a month of his cane skidding on ice he was about ready to shoot Frosty the Snowman in the head.

About to head back to his hut, he ducked into the bathroom first - but before he could step up to the urinal, he heard someone retching from one of the stalls. Ugh. He ignored it and went ahead and pissed, though after zipping up his jeans and turning around, he caught sight of the figure in the partially open stall.

It was Dodge.

Guilt slammed into House's chest - which was not a feeling he liked. But it had been building up ever since he'd woken up sober (and hungover as hell) on New Year's day and found the kid gone, and stubbornly refused to think about what had happened the night before.

He sighed, and stepped over, pushing he stall open the rest of the way with the head of his cane.

"You're going to get dehydrated if you're not careful," he said.

It wasn't exactly a bad pain day. It was a bad pain month.

There were two things that helped with the pain, that had once been in House's life and no longer were: the first was drugs, and the second was sex. He blamed the island for both. No pharmacies and no prostitutes.

He wouldn't blame Pam for the second, since he knew she was a hell of a lot better off without him, especially since she'd gone back on the wagon. He'd been a bad influence on her, and though he didn't want to admit to himself that he was actually doing a selfless act, making himself scarce after what had happened on New Years was probably the best thing he could have done for her. After all, he hadn't had sex sober since before he'd gone off the heroin, and he had no intention of starting now.

Of course, that would presume that he was having sex with anyone. Well, anyone besides his right hand. Besides, he'd seen Pam with that guy. He should have known she was a cougar at heart.

So. Bad pain month. But it was the middle of the night and he couldn't sleep and it was the last fucking straw. "Come on, Fucker," he muttered, slipping into his shoes and watching the big dog run in a circle in the hut and then taking him outside into the night air.

It was one of those nights when it seemed like walking was better than being still, if only because the movement in his muscles distracted him from the aching in them. He didn't really have a destination in mind, so he just let Padfoot lead him. It wasn't until they were halfway up the path toward it that he realized the dog was leading him straight to Bohemia.

"Traiter," he muttered to the dog, and started to yank on his leash and turn them back around, but his eye caught sight of the bathhouse. The one he hadn't been in because, well fuck, because Jack built it.

But it was the middle of the damned night and if walking didn't help his leg, maybe hot water would. So he walked over and tied Padfoot's leash to a skinny tree. The dog immediately lay down, looking as if he were just as happy to go back to sleep.

House slipped into the bathhouse then. It was empty, obviously, and so he turned on the water and watched the tub fill and heat. He had to hand it to Jack, really. Okay, no he didn't. But that didn't mean he couldn't enjoy it.

He slipped out of his clothes and sank into the water then, trying to force his body to relax. All he wanted was to be something other than one big knot of pain.

It was a short walk to House's hut (previously Cameron's hut) as he certainly hadn't been about to park his bike somewhere far away. He'd been right, he wasn't having trouble walking - in fact, being high made it a bit easier since his leg wasn't throbbing like usual. He and Pamela kept up their usual banter on the way, but mostly it was him making blind jokes and innuendos - she didn't seem to mind.

When they got there, he said, "Home sweet home. Here's the tour: bed is five paces straight in front of you."

As if it wasn't bad enough that his leg hurt like a bitch, he was out of drugs, and pretty much hated his life, House also hadn't had sex since before he'd detoxed. Sure, he'd moved back in with Cameron, and sure, they were sharing a bed, but there had been no bed-appropriate activities (besides sleeping) - not even during the three days of temporary insanity in which she'd rebuffed his attempts to coax her into deep, meaningful love-making.

True, aside from those three days, House hadn't made so much as a move. But she was the one who'd kicked him out, and he was pretty sure that a big part of her was still pissed off at him. And frankly, he thought that if he came onto her she might kick him out. Which would be a very bad thing considering he had no idea what he'd do if he ended up homeless right now. He couldn't go back to Phedre's, she'd done enough. And... oh, yup, that pretty much exhausted his friend base.

... plus he wouldn't give Jack the satisfaction of getting his dog back if House ended up on the streets, so to speak.

So here he was, still in pain, extremely horny, and as he lay in bed with Cameron next to him reading a book, he was pretty sure he could see the outline of her nipples through her shirt.

When House had finally returned to the hut after the blow-up with Mark and Cameron, he had done so under the presumption that he was going to be kicked out. So he was surprised to find when he got there that it was Cameron who had left. Though not all of her things were gone, there was enough missing to make it obvious that she had cleared out. He wasn’t sure whether to feel guilty that she apparently hated him enough to leave her own home to avoid him and yet still wouldn’t turn him out, or just think she was an idiot for not insisting he leave instead.

His pride was nearly enough to make him go anyway. But at this point, said pride was so pounded down that another blow seemed redundant. And considering the decision he’d just made, it was more important to him to not be (a) homeless, or (b) stuck in the clinic.

The decision was that he was going cold turkey on the heroin. Whether this was wise was debateable, but he also knew that if he tried to wean himself off of it he might lose his nerve. House was the type of person that would prefer to be near-death for two weeks than increasingly miserable for two months.

He’d thought about bringing what was left of the brick to Mark. But he didn’t want to deal with him, and moreover, he didn’t really want anyone to know what he was doing. Even though the cat was out of the bag to Cameron now, House had a feeling that Mark wouldn’t go around blabbing to everyone what House had been doing--but if he knew he was detoxing, he probably would tell someone (and probably Chase, god forbid).

But he also didn’t want the temptation. He made this decision even before he’d left the compound that day after leaving the clinic, and so he went down to the basement and grabbed some laundry detergent. Then he made his way to tree by his motorcycle were the stash was hidden. He poured the detergent into the box with the remaining heroin, then brought it back to the hut and set it on the dresser. Useless now. What a waste.

Was he sorry for what he’d done? No. Absolutely not. No matter what Mark thought about his motivations, Mark didn’t fucking understand. He’d never have done heroin if he’d had Vicodin. And he wouldn’t have if he hadn’t been in pain--at least not habitually. Mark might not believe it, might think he was just another junkie, but House knew it was true. He’d done the junkie thing, to some degree. Most of his disposable income in med school had gone up his nose. And he’d quit when he’d realized that it was affecting his performance as a doctor. If House didn’t have his intellect, he had nothing. Being able to solve a puzzle that no one else could solve was more important to him that getting high, certainly. And… it was more important than not being in pain, too.

Which was exactly why he was doing this now. Pernicious anemia. Jesus. When was the last time he’d performed a diagnostic without thinking to, oh, look in a patient’s mouth? Of course, Mark was wrong about something else, too; it wasn’t because he was high, it was because he’d already started detoxing. The thing was, the addiction was so much worse than with Vicodin that the point inevitably came where he physically couldn’t use enough of it (without guaranteeing an overdose) to keep up with his body’s demand. He’d known the day would come, the moment he’d taken the brick from Mark’s room. And he’d made the calculated decision that the months of relief would be worth the weeks of hell later. Wasn’t it Mark that was always spouting all that “no day but today” shit? He should understand that. Of course, the problem now was whether the months of relief were also worth completely alienating the few people left here who cared about him.

The bottom line was, it didn’t matter now. He’d made the decision, he’d done it, and now he’d made a decision to end it, evidenced by the detergent-heroin blob sitting on the dresser. But now that it was nearly two days in and he was alone, his decision-making months ago seemed fundamentally flawed in retrospect.

This was far worse than when he’d done it with Jack taking care of him, worse than when he’d done it with James taking care of him, and even worse than when he’d done it on his own. Because apparently heroin withdrawal was a hell of a lot worse than Vicodin withdrawal.

He could tick off the symptoms, a running list in his head, and he was experiencing all of them: watery eyes, runny nose, dilated pupils, loss of appetite, panic attacks, chills, nausea, muscle cramps, insomnia, stomach cramps, vomiting, shaking, sweating. Add to that the fact that the normal amount of pain in his leg was magnified by about five times (more like ten if you took into account the fact that it had been so much less while he'd been on the drugs), and he could barely move.

In the next 24-48 hours the symptoms would be at their peak, and after that should start to subside, to the point where he could at least make it to the compound to get some food. But in the meantime, he'd just lie here, staring at the ceiling and feeling like he wanted to die. He'd give his right nut for some methodone.

[continued from here]

It happened so quickly that House was surprised to find himself suddenly inside an unfamiliar room... and then almost as quickly, pinned up against another wall. "Afraid someone's going to rescue me?" he growled at Jack, even as he started feeling his heart pounding in his chest.

House wanted to prescribe the increase in the pain in his leg to a lot of things - the increased distance from Cameron's hut to the Compound, the missing endorphins that he'd been used to getting from regular sex, hell, even just any of the random physiological reasons. He didn't want to admit that it could be even partially psychosomatic... because in the end did it even matter? Whatever the cause, it still fucking hurt. Wasn't as if he could do an MRI, or even self-medicate. Honestly? The first thing he'd do if he decided it was psychological would be to hunt down some drugs. Because there's nothing like treating fake pain with fake pleasure.

In any case, right now he had no answers and no drugs and he'd just woken from another fucking dream about Jack. He couldn't even remember what the dream was about, he just woke up with his heart pounding, equal parts infuriated and aroused, with the image of Jack's face prominent in his mind.

That combined with the blinding pain in his leg was enough to make him sit up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and breathing heavily. He looked over his shoulder at Cameron. She was curled up on the other side of the bed, so close to the edge. It was still surreal to be sharing a bed with her, even if they hardly touched.

He turned back, dropping his head. Trying to think happy thoughts. Anything but pain or sex or Jack.