Chapter Text
On the outside, it looked like Kutner had everything he wanted. He had a well-paying job. Hell, he worked for House. He had nice-enough colleagues and was able to come home just in time to play a couple of rounds on Halo.
At least that’s what everyone thought about him, anyway.
No one really knew him that well, did they?
Kutner smiled bitterly as he closed his locker, looking around the room for the last time. After the case—his last case—had finally been solved. The Locked-In Syndrome guy—who had been a hell of a patient to deal with, considering his only way of communication was his eyes, and when he lost that, thinking “up” on a computer.
It seemed like a millennium when the correct diagnosis was found. Leptospirosis, from the rats in the basement that the guy had been around in secret. Technically, his idea. Taub had taken credit for it.
Taub at least had the decency not to say anything as he left the room. Leaving Kutner and House. House cocked his head suspiciously at him.
“You’re fine with that?” He mused.
Kutner couldn’t bring himself to care when he was going to be gone tomorrow anyway. Taub was the one who was scared for his job, and the one who needed it after today.
He just nodded quickly, watching House give him a look and a shrug before leaving.
Leaving him alone with his thoughts. He turned towards his locker again, before completely emptying it for whoever would occupy it after him. It was the nice thing to do.
He trudged down the hall for the last time (his brain seemed quite adamant on whispering those four extra words at the end of every thought he had), watching Foreman and Thirteen laugh as they walked together. I wish… The thought trailed off when he didn’t know what he was quite wishing for. Someone who would finally look at him as more than an annoying colleague? Someone who would finally look past the happy-go-lucky façade and notice how he was breaking apart at the seams? To finally be okay?
Killing himself had always been a stubborn thought living in the back of his mind. Ever since that fateful night in the corner store. He looked at the corpses of his parents and wondered if sticking a bullet in himself would somehow balance out in Heaven. It was a sick perception of retribution for a six-year-old, but then again, watching your parents get shot and killed right in front of you has a reputation for fucking you up.
But all of that had been simple fantasies, a passing thought before he was distracted by Star Wars or Star Trek or whatever he was watching. It was this month, though, where he’d finally circled the date on his calendar and cleared everything afterwards.
Snapping out of autopilot mode, Kutner found himself in front of his car, McCar (named after Leonard McCoy). He remembered seeing him for the first time in the driveway after his adoptive parents had handed the keys to him on his sixteenth birthday. He’d loved the car to death. Refused to replace him even after a decade. Which means now, McCar crackled to life when Kutner turned the key and groaned awkwardly when going over 50 miles per hour.
“A shame it’s my last drive with you,” Kutner muttered offhandedly, placing his things in the passenger seat, before turning around and getting into the driver’s seat.