Many thanks to my awesome beta, hwshipper and to geekygecko for suggesting the perfect ringtone. [H]ouse is not mine and never will be.

Um... this story has quite a bit of angst, but be not afraid…

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Buzzed on blue ocean and booze with the occasional Vicodin to maintain his current cruising altitude, he congratulated himself on severing his relationship with Cuddy. He was a free man.

Why he kept his cell phone singing in his pocket rather than chucking it at an oncoming foamy wave was a mystery. There was no one he wanted to speak or listen to. On second thought, he did enjoy the games.

But much of his pleasure was offset with Wilson's futile attempts to reach him. Wilson. Wilson. Wilson. Never leaving messages. Always showing up on his call list. Name and number iterated like a multiplicity of images reflected in a hall of mirrors.

In the beginning calls arrived in frantic bursts, then they subsided into hypnotic regularity, no different from the breakers crashing outside his hotel. Fantasizing whether Wilson was calling due to concern or anger made little difference. Either way the vibration in his pocket felt good.

By the end of the sixth day, there was a decided drop-off. The Dancing Queen had slowed down to a waltz. House deduced that Wilson was containing his efforts to before work, lunch, and late evening. By the end of the second week, three compressed into one—what House gauged as a halfhearted attempt usually around 2:00 a.m. Based on his experience as Wilson's roomie, that was when he usually rolled off his bed to pee out the contents of a heavy after dinner drinking session. Did holding his dick remind Wilson of a walking and talking one? House squirmed on his barstool and adjusted his pants. Might be time to find that cabby who intimately knew where the fleshy underbelly was in this corner of paradise.

At first it did not register that the calls had stopped. According to his phone's records, the silence began three days before. After the realization dawned, he could hardly think of anything else. A nagging sensation like an icy incoming tide seeped into his bones. He migrated to the phone after every shower and as soon as he woke up. Nothing.

When the phone finally trilled, he was perched in his favorite seat at the tail end of his favorite bar, watching the sunset blush the horizon; however, the tune was not the one he expected. Another One Bites the Dust, pulsed from his pocket.

The song throbbed insistently for a number of bars as he considered answering. Uncomfortably aware for the last few days that his voluntary isolation might be getting the better of him, he snapped it open. "This better be important."

"Did you forget your promise?" As usual, Thirteen wasted no time with small talk.

"You're not dying today, are you?"

"You dropped out of sight. Cuddy locked up your office, and emailed a job announcement that there's an opening in Diagnostics for a new department head. Foreman and Chase are psyching out each other, acting as if they aren't interested, but each asked me privately to look over their resumes."

The events were a natural trajectory of what had come before, but that made it no easier to hear. He liked the last part. "Get them to shell out a hundred bucks to see what the other wrote."

"I got two-fifty."

House smiled into the phone.

"Seriously, House. Does this mean you aren't coming back?"

"You have nothing to worry about. Wilson is my backup. He knows what to do."

He heard an intake of breath, or maybe the sound was the sigh of the surf tumbling to shore.

"About Wilson. The day after you disappeared he showed up for work with a cast on his wrist and a "don't ask" expression on his face. He spoke to no one except Cuddy. Taub heard them shouting in her office when he signed in for clinic duty. Wilson stormed out of her office a few minutes later and left the hospital. After three days, when he didn't show up, Cuddy asked Chase and me to investigate."

He detected compassion in the Thirteen's voice as she said, "House, we were too late."

A chill coiled up House's spine. "What are you saying?"

"I'm sorry. He left envelopes addressed to his parents, Cuddy, and one with your name on it."

Downing his drink to steady his nerves, he beckoned the bartender for another.

"Are you there, House? House, speak to me."

"Where's the letter?"

"We gave all of them to Cuddy."

Fuck, fuck, fuck. House's heart went into meltdown.

"Since then, she's spent most of her time holed up with lawyers. She spared five minutes and called us into her office. Demanded we find you and relay a message. On Wilson's instructions, she is to hand his letter over to you in person. She's not pressing charges because of… for Wilson's sake. But after that, she said, you can go screw yourself."

"Preaching to the choir. I'll be in touch."

He disconnected and dropped the hand-warmed phone onto the bar. He drummed his fingers against the exotic wood while he absorbed the information. Wilson followed in Kutner's footsteps, but with a twist: playing matchmaker from the grave. Maneuvering him and Cuddy into one more get together.

As the sun dipped into the blood-red sea, he snatched up the phone and punched a number.

A voice greeted him with skewed grunt.

House replied, "Chase, what's going on?"

Other than getting the day and time of Wilson's funeral, speaking to Chase, Taub, and Foreman left him unenlightened. Desperate, he attempted to reach Cuddy several times during the night and into the morning. Every call detoured to voicemail.

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Before the sun set on another day, House boarded a flight to New Jersey. Normally, his biggest concerns were avoiding his leg cramping and wangling an extra bag of peanuts from the flight attendant. This time the personnel might have been invisible for all the attention he paid them, and breakout pain would have been preferable compared to his turbulent thoughts.

A litany inside his head droned along with the engine. Wilson is dead. Why did he do it? What did he write in his suicide note?

He seesawed between anger and remorse. How dare Wilson do this to him, knowing how he was hurting after his breakup with Cuddy.

But Wilson had his own bad patch with Sam, and although House had ditched him, he survived; albeit there were a few sightings of dark eyes verging on tears.

When House stared into the porthole he saw Wilson's reflection gazing back. Dumb incomprehension stamped on his features, holding his injured arm. A wounded dog incapable of understanding his owner's cruelty.

And what did he do? Smiled and walked away, never once looking over his shoulder, or answering his calls.

Following upon this latest anger-guilt cycle, a wave of nausea curled inside him. He hunched over in his seat until it passed. He wanted to chalk it up as a souvenir from his partying in Never Neverland, but his honesty blocked the delusion. It was a smoke signal from his conscience. He might as well have done the job properly and run Wilsonofabitch over instead of crashing into Cuddy's house. The result would have been the same.

That maneuvering S.O.B. knew him too well. He had to find out what was in the letter, but he vowed to avoid Wilson's trap and spend as little time with Cuddy as possible.

The queasiness waned shortly before the seat buckle light binged, warning of the final approach. House straightened, and ran his hand over his eyes, wiping moisture onto his jeans.

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Weaving and bobbing through the jumble of travelers, House threaded his way to the baggage area. Thirteen was off to the side, her arms folded in front of her. As soon as she saw him, she took hold of a wheeled suitcase and met him halfway.

He nodded toward the case. "If that's a portable bar, I'll take my martini straight up."

"I'm headed for Fiji, thanks to Wilson."

Had Wilson bequeathed her money? Before he could question her, she pulled out an envelope from beneath her jacket and handed it to him. "Here's what you wanted."

House's name was written in Wilson's backhanded scrawl. "I hope you had the good sense to set up the nanny cam before doing Cuddy."

A knowing smile flicked over her face. "I pulled fewer strings than you would imagine." She glanced up at the departure board. "I gotta go. I'll be back in one week. We can talk then if you're still here."

Alone in the crowd, he hastily tore open the envelope. A travel gift card nested inside, the amount easily covering his last destination and then some. He flipped the envelope over and shook it. Nothing else fluttered out. That was it? What was Wilson thinking before he hung up his lab coat for the last time? Fulfilling a fetish by role-playing a travel agent?

Staring numbly at the card as if it could speak, he mumbled, "This is what I came for?"

"Actually, that's the MacGuffin."

The familiar voice shocked House as effectively as a set of paddles. A very alive looking Wilson with his lips compressed into a satisfied smile stood no less than five feet in front of him. His mind immediately flew to his previous experience with seeing dead people. Fortunately, a businessman jostled Wilson with his briefcase while dashing for a taxi and nodded an apology.

"Back from the dead, you manipulative sonaofabitch," he said slowly, dragging out every syllable in order to disguise his pleasure.

Wilson shrugged. "God works in mysterious ways."

"No, you and Hitchcock work in mysterious ways."

"Because you think in mysterious ways. You wouldn't answer your phone when I called to tell you Cuddy dropped all charges. She's leaving for another position at Boston Medical at the end of the week and wanted to ensure you didn't follow by giving you your old job back."

"You had nothing to do with it?"

"I might have called in a few favors," Wilson shifted uneasily on his feet.

"You could have left a message."

"And you'd immediately conclude I was lying."

"So instead you tricked me, and almost gave me a heart attack."

Wilson raised his right arm, showing off his cast. "You almost ran me over and reduced me to a pauper in order to save your miserable hide. Paying Cuddy's house repairs to fend off her filing a claim with her insurance, and bribing your team to play along with my charade cost me financially, not to mention literally, an arm and a leg." Wilson lifted the right hem of his neatly pressed slacks to display an ace bandage peeking out from under his sock. "Hairline fracture. We're more than even."

"Boohoo." House said, his eyes wide with mock sympathy, but inside he was inordinately pleased that Wilson still cared enough to clean up his mess, and not hold a grudge.

Waving his injured hand toward the pocket where House had stashed the gift card, Wilson said, "Now that you heard me out, if you don't want to stay, you can return to whichever community of debauched inhabitants willingly put up with you."

House counted ten beats before pulling his backpack off and passing it to Wilson. "Not ready for another flight. I'll stick around."

With his good hand, Wilson took it and grinned. House followed behind as Wilson shambled toward the glass doors.

In the parking lot, House inhaled the heady aroma of burning exhaust before climbing into Wilson's car. Within the confines of the leather interior he asked. "How's the wrist?"

"It's mending. What about you?"

He solemnly contemplated the question as Wilson cautiously steered the car out of the parking spot with his good hand. Loyal, dependable Wilson… House brightened with an epiphany. If Wilson had forgiven him, perhaps rebuilding a bridge or two was a possibility.

"I'm mending."

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Thank you so much for reading. :-)

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A/N: Hitchcock's MacGuffin: according to Wikipedia the defining aspect of a MacGuffin is that the major players in the story are (at least initially) willing to do and sacrifice almost anything to obtain it, regardless of what the MacGuffin actually is. In fact, the specific nature of the MacGuffin may be ambiguous, undefined, generic, left open to interpretation or otherwise completely unimportant to the plot.