House fic: Brother

[triedunture]

Title: Brothers in Arms
Rating: G
Warnings: None. Maybe a little angsty, but not really.
Summary: House finds Wilson's missing brother.
Words: 2300

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House found Wilson’s missing brother on accident, which is the usual way that one finds things that have been missing. He did not set out that morning to find him, had not even thought much about that strange puzzle piece from Wilson’s past since Wilson had told him about it years ago, never to mention it again.

This is how that morning started: It was a weekend in November, and the campus was quiet again. House woke up with nothing in particular to occupy his time. He scrolled through his Tivo list while sipping reheated coffee and downing some pills, but nothing captured his attention for more than a minute or two. He showered, but as he was drying off he noticed the bathroom sink was dripping.

House watched it drip for a moment, clad only in socks to protect his toes from the chilly hardwood floor. He knew how to fix it, but he wondered if he lacked 1) the tools and 2) the will to actually do it. Shrugging, he limped to the hall closet without bothering to tug on his clothes. The apartment was warm, and he sort of liked walking around naked with the cane. He imagined it gave a classy air to his lounging, a kind of niche-market burlesque.

He poked his cane into the closet, turning over stacks of books and mismatched sneakers until he saw a beat-up blue toolbox. The lid was unlatched, and he flipped it open, still using the cane.

For some reason, it was filled with canned food instead of tools.

House nodded as if he expected this. The sink could wait; he didn’t really give a damn about it anyway. He grabbed the closet door to swing it shut, but a faded record cover caught his eye. He hooked his cane in the crook of his elbow and bent carefully to pick it up, turning it over in his hands to examine the sun-streaked markings.

The artist’s name had long since been washed away from the thick paper, but a few colorful illustrations remained, along with wisps of track titles. House recognized one of them and he hummed a few bars of the half-remembered blues tune.

He tapped the sharp corner of the cover against his forehead and said to the empty room, “Who wrote that stupid song?”

He sang out the chorus without using words, just ba dum da di, ba dum baddaba. But still, no name came to him. He peered into the fold of the cover, shaking it to unearth its contents, but it was empty.

“This is going to bother me,” he growled. He glanced at his dusty laptop, which was playing host to a number of unwashed plates and cups on a bookshelf in the corner. He thought of Googling the piece of the track title, but the only words left on the faded paper were “The something something Travels of Jack something.”

Not the most useful keywords.
But now the song was stuck in his head, and House began to form a vague plan. He stomp-limped his way to his room and dressed in his usual haphazard fashion. He threw on his bike jacket, grabbed his New Jersey Transit disabled fare card, and stuffed the old record cover into his backpack before swinging out the door.

He would have taken the bike on his little afternoon adventure, but it was low on gas and he didn’t feel like stopping at the filling station. Plus, he wasn’t in any special rush to get down to the record store; riding the bus and mentally diagnosing every scratch and sniffle of the passengers would be a welcome distraction.

House walked the half block to the bus stop and eased himself onto the small bench under a shady tree. He propped his cane between his knees and sniffed at the crisp air. Someone was cooking on an outdoor grill; the whole neighborhood smelled like barbeque.

A woman soon approached the bus stop and leaned against the sign that listed the scheduled stops. She preoccupied herself with texting on her cell phone and didn’t even glance at House. Another man walked up from the other side of the street and nodded to House.

“You got a game going this week, Doc?”

“Yeah, bring the pretzels,” House said.

Bus Stop Guy agreed just as the 600 came rumbling up to the stop. House and the girl climbed on, but Bus Stop Guy had to wait for the 605 going towards Trenton.

Once on the bus, House’s cane became a golden ticket for his choice of seats. (In the event of complete douchebaginess, House often rapped the offenders on the ankle with his cane and then pointed to the sign that read Preferred Seating for the Elderly and Disabled.) The front seats were empty, though, so House sprawled across two of them. He studied the faces of the other passengers and waited for the driver to call out his stop.

They bumped along the road headed generally south, away from campus and the hospital, until the sparkling clean townhouses disappeared and more worn neighborhoods appeared outside the giant windows.

“Junction!” the driver hollered into his microphone. House waited until the bus ground to a halt before climbing to his feet and padding down the steps onto the sidewalk. The record store was two blocks east of the railroad, hidden in a part of town that had recently been reclaimed by aging artists and dreadlocked ex-students armed with guitars and weed. It had been months since he’d last been here, and House was trying to remember if there was a diner or a sandwich shop somewhere nearby when he saw Wilson’s brother.

At first, House thought he was just another homeless person, layered in unseasonable jackets and waiting to be ignored. But upon closer inspection, he held no cup, no dish to collect coins. And his face looked recently shaven. And he stood on the corner across the intersection like he owned it, and when he looked up at the blue sky and opened his mouth, a beautiful tenor belted out the lyrics to “It’s a Beautiful Morning.”

Even that would not have been too unusual as to catch House’s eye, but he noticed something else under the shaggy brown hair: sharp cheekbones that had little to do with malnourishment, bloodshot brown eyes that seemed familiar, and a pair of bushy eyebrows.

“He’s here?” House mumbled to himself, incredulous at the odds. All those years living on the streets like Wilson had described, and the older brother wasn’t dead? Hadn’t moved on to New York or another busier metropolis? Not on the fringes as Wilson had feared, but right under their noses at the 600 Junction stop?

House stood on the opposite corner, waiting for the walk signal to change, and watched the man across the street. Other pedestrians called out hellos and how are yas at him. Some stopped to chat or bump fists with him. At each new arrival, Wilson’s brother (for House was certain it could be no other) would sing out another snatch of a song that seemed to fit the occasion. A smiling girl in a long patchwork skirt handed the homeless man an apple from her messenger bag, and the vagabond sang the chorus of “Brown-eyed Girl” to her delight before she went on her way.

The light changed, and House limped across the street towards him. As he got closer, he could see the man’s clothes were worn and tattered along the edges, but not very dirty. So someone was taking care of him, then.

Wilson’s brother caught sight of House coming towards him, and he glanced at the wrinkled Stones logo on House’s chest, stamped on the tee that peeked out from behind the open bike jacket.

“Pleased to meet you,” he crooned in a fair imitation of Mick Jagger. “Hope you guess my name.” He smiled widely at House, pleased with himself.

A closer study of the man’s face only solidified House’s belief that this was Wilson’s kin. Take Wilson out of his suit and put a few more gray hairs at his temples, and House could take them for twins. He’d met Wilson’s younger brother several times, and he knew the family resemblance was strong there too.

But like any good poker player, House didn’t want to show his hand just yet.

“You sing for money?” he asked, stuffing one hand into his coat pocket as if to pull out a bill later.

The brother shook his head. “Sir, I don’t need your money,” he sang to his own tune. “I don’t even need your time. I just want to drink and smoke and sing some songs!” He opened his arms wide and tipped his head back, singing with all the power in his lungs. “And that don’t cost me a dime.”

House raised an eyebrow. “You need money to buy things to drink and smoke.”

“The people around here take good care of me,” Wilson’s brother said, his cheeks flushed red. “If I need something, they give it to me. Good kids around here, good kids.”

As if to prove his point, a boy with a bushy ponytail shouted a greeting at them and handed Wilson’s brother a can in a brown paper bag.

“Now don’t go spoiling your dinner, Big Zee,” the kid laughed.

“Aw, Johnny, you know me,” the man said with a grin, waving him off. “Go, Johnny, go, go!” He did a little shuffling dance. “Johnny be good!”

“I will,” the boy said before turning the corner.

House watched him crack open the can and take a long swig before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he seemed to realize that House was still there, staring at him, and he smiled again.

“Zee?” House prompted.

“That’s what the kids call me: Big Zee, man of the street,” he answered.

“Short for Zachary Wilson?” House shifted his weight against his cane. “Your brother’s been looking for you.”

Zee’s grin faltered for a moment, and the hand that held the beer can fell to his side. “You know Jamie?” he asked.

House’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “Jamie?”

Zee rolled his eyes. “Mom used to call him Jamie. Maybe she still does, I don’t know.” He pursed his lips in thought, staring hard at the concrete beneath his boots. Then he seemed to remember his paper-wrapped can and took another swallow. “Step into my office, will you?” he said gallantly, gesturing to a park bench a few steps away.

House sat down with him on the warm metal slats and cupped his hands over the head of his cane, waiting for him to finish drinking down the can.

Zee sighed in satisfaction and tossed the empty into a wire mesh trashcan. “I didn’t know Jamie was still in Jersey,” he said.

“He doesn’t know you’re still here either,” House said, leaning his chin on his hands, a totem pole stacked on his cane. “For all he knows, you might be dead or in China or something.”

“Look, let me play this all out for you,” Zee said. “You go to Jamie and say you know where I am. He flies down here in his sedan with a billion air bags. He tells me to come with him, get cleaned up, blah blah blah.” He waved his hand in the air in tight circles. “I’ll tell him to get lost, just like last time. He’ll get mad and drive off, and by the time he calms down and comes back to find me, I’ll be gone. But I really like this corner, so give me a break and don’t tell him.”

“Why?” House asked. He eyed the skin of Zee’s face and neck, sun-brown and dry from the elements.

Zee picked a thin line of grime from under his thumbnail. “People like seeing me on the corner every day. They don’t care if I wanna get high, if I wanna get drunk. I’m honest! That’s what I wanna do.” He slapped his hand against his thigh in frustration. “I know my brother means well, they all do. All the folks who’ve offered to get me into a home, into subsidized housing, into a program or whatever.” He glanced sideways at House, his brown eyes glazed and half-lidded. “But I don’t want to do that. I just want to do what I want to do.”

“You’d rather live out here?” House tapped his cane against the hard ground.

Zee shrugged and sang, “Don’t need no money, fortune or fame.” He grinned. “It beats paying bills and holding down a crap job, pretending I’m clean when I’m not.” His eyes narrowed and focused on House once more. “So what do you say? Do us all a favor?”

“Tell you what,” House said. “Name this tune, and I won’t say a word about this to anyone.”

With a boastful crack of his knuckles, Zee chuckled, “Shoot.”

House hummed a few bars, and Zee broke into song once more, his voice low and mournful, “The dark road travels of Jack Blacktrap, he left his wife and filled up his rucksack, where he went don’t nobody know, but sure as sin he ain’t coming home.” He finished by drumming out a percussion solo on his knee. “That’s an old one. Dusty Williams.”

House snapped his fingers. “Dusty Williams. God, I couldn’t remember for the life of me.”

“So you won’t say anything?” Zee prodded. “Don’t get me wrong. I love my little brother, but he can’t stand to see me this way, so I don’t let him.”

“Yeah.” House nodded a little. “I won’t.” From far down the road, the 600 bus roared to a stop at a red light. House stood, saying, “That’s my ride.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Zee sang to his retreating back, the Stones song fading away into the sounds of traffic.



fin.