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It wasn’t the first time that James had driven them somewhere.
It wasn’t the 500th; the 500,000th; wasn’t the first time in that utterly dour mood, or the first where James had had to miss something incredibly important for him.
It was the first in a while, where it wasn’t a prank, or a whim, wasn’t one where House tried scrabbling at the windowpanes to escape, and wasn’t annoying the hell out of him on purpose.
It was the first anything in a while where he wasn’t being annoyed the hell out of on purpose.
House was quiet.
He wasn’t talking, and he wasn’t thinking.
He didn’t gossip, or tease, or grumble, and he didn’t feel the need to fill in any silences, he was just…
Gone.
He hadn’t said a lot since they’d walked him out to the car and settled him into the front seat. Lisa had said goodbye. She had promised Chase and Cameron she would go to the wedding, and Rachel needed to be taken care of.
House had hummed. Nodded his head vaguely, and said: “Can you…?”
Cuddy had held on to his cane while James got him into the car, and her hands clasped it protectively against her. They shook a little, still, in shock, and James could have recited House’s usual jab for that.
Instead, he hummed and held a gentle hand towards her and said: “can you…?”
He was sure Cuddy’s unease looked the same as his, though he wasn’t very up for checking in the wing mirror.
James nodded at her, hoping to relay the understanding that House would be okay with him, that she could leave, and take care of her own life, and he would deal with House. That, he always did. He gave her a small, sympathetic smile that was usually aimed at patients, and meant ‘we’re doing everything we can’. She sighed and passed the cane over.
He hadn’t said much before that either, when James sat behind his desk and watched as the asshole followed Cuddy’s hovering hand, protective and leading, pulled by her blackened and tangible worry with his head hung like a beaten dog. He stood, bent and small, his face sharp and gray, eyes wide and red, and the thing that dragged James up off his seat and over to him, the one thing that truly stopped his heart and his thoughts, made the world around that face stutter, was the fear. His fear wasn’t new, it wasn’t even uncommon, but for once it didn’t hide under his spite, or tiredness, or pain. House was not unpracticed at hiding it, and yet House, to any idiot wandering the halls, would have been known to be terrified.
He had been a shell in that doorway, hunched, and still. The blue in his eyes had always been that electric, bright, violent, and the unhealthy red in his sclerae had never changed it. They were mad when they were bloodshot. Tired and savage.
The red changed it now.
He turned away from the road to search for House’s blue. House was turned away from him, though, towards the window, and his eyes slid across the rails outside, unmoving through the flickering lamplight. James had known those eyes for long enough that he knew the way they’d illuminate in that sickly, yellow light, brightened as lazily as the catseyes he’d turned away from.
“Look at the road.”
He did.
He could recite the jab that accompanied that, too. Something about crashing. Probably something about suicide, and Kutner. If they weren’t driving where they were driving to for the reasons that they were going there, he would have mocked Amber somehow.
They were, though. And House kept staring at the mirror showing his backseat.
He felt another prickle along the back of his neck every time House did that. The gentle run of someone’s knuckles, and a thumb brushing the hair behind his ear. He could almost feel her breathing lightly, teasing him with that awful smile. She would kiss him soon, but she’d make him ask for it, and he always asked.
He blinked, hard, and relaxed his fingers, gripping the wheel unsurprisingly. He didn’t ask. He wondered (he often did) which one of them was the madman. He didn’t answer, either.
He’d started to believe his mind would stop doing that to him, but, of course, even when he wasn’t being objectionable, House could bring out the worst in him.
His companion twisted his neck around, forcibly away from the backseat, and James jumped, eyes wide. He saw his face, and the bloodshot blue just made him look waterlogged- worried and embarrassed. House’s eyes flicked away again to stare at the motionless windscreen wiper, jaw clenching unbearably hard, and both his ears now faced away from the back, despite being closer to James’s talking.
James knew when not to speak, though. Even if silence killed him.
The quiet sound of the wheels against tarmac took over the ride- the humming and the weirdly loud indicator- and James’s skin buzzed uncomfortably. In the corner of his vision, he glanced a hidden shudder, and the hint of furrowed eyebrows: one of the ghosts that accompanied them had apparently interrupted House’s silence. James blinked hard again. He wasn’t sure which of the four of them the tears were.
He sighed and dropped a hand from his regular 9 and 3 o’clock down to his lap, warily, as you would move next to a cat. A raggedy, homeless, graying, ginger cat, with his claws sharp and covered in arsenic, who had a habit of stealing all of his livelihood and well-earned sanity.
He glanced again for caution’s sake and moved his hand away from its resting place steadily. His eyes stayed on the road, the catseyes burning in the gloom, and his knuckles knocked hollowly against the wood of the cane resting between them. It was smooth against his wrist, and his fingertips gentle as they rubbed the denim of House’s knee. James’s thumb pressed absent circles into him as he waited patiently for the sting once House’s fangs bit frantically at that soft affection.
House let him stay.
And they drove.
And they breathed.
In the quiet of the car, two ghosts flickered behind them, shouting and silent, the prickle on the back of his neck, and James glanced occasionally at the map even while fully aware of the turnings.
James tensed as the cautious, calloused hand wavered slightly above his own, touching, but not relaxing quite yet.
He kept staring at the big, straight road, one hand dutifully positioned for 9 o’clock.
And breathed.
He did not turn his hand around to let House clasp on to it, ground himself, to quiet it’s tremble, pull over to the edge of the road and let him sob into his shoulder, look into his eyes and promise that he would be okay. That they would both be okay.
His honey-chocolate eyes stared forward, instead, and House’s violent blue did the same. James felt House’s tremble while it hovered, until House let himself relax- and then he only felt the flinches. He kept his thumb moving distractedly and both their wrists rubbed against the cane’s smooth, wooden handle.
His indicator clicked right, and they turned.
He placed his hand back on 9 o’clock and they straightened again.
“… Greg?”
House’s hand almost recoiled.
He said nothing.
Nor did James.
They drove.
And kept breathing.