for Jack

For two days now, House had been taking Vicodin. Not as much as he'd been taking when he'd left Princeton - having cleaned it out of his system, it didn't take as much to make the pain go away. Though he knew it was only a matter of time before he started to build up a tolerance again.

In the meantime, he saw no reason to tell anyone. Certainly not Wilson or Chase, who would probably try to talk him out of it. What did they know? They didn't understand. Sure, he functioned. And he might be a jerk, but he still came off as a normal human being most of the time. But he was still in constant pain.

And he hadn't told Jack just because... well, he wasn't sure why. Maybe it was just easier if he kept it completely to himself. Like it didn't really exist. Because then he wasn't doing anything potentially stupid or selfish.

But despite all the misgivings, he felt great. Better than he'd felt in six months.