Archive of Our Own

Movie night. It was nearly midnight, halfway through Blood Simple and most of the way through a mid-tier bottle of scotch when House felt the mood shift. When Wilson came back from the bathroom, he sat with one leg folded up so his knee brushed House’s thigh.

It wasn’t uncommon in the second half of a bottle for them to sit a little closer, another boundary that blurred and thinned over the years in a way neither of them would admit. Wilson had also shown up in jeans and a sweatshirt, which meant he’d showered after work, and that he was open to getting drunk enough to sleep on House’s couch. It was all patterns, little networks of tells that House cobbled into a bigger picture. 

He went back through the day for signs: nothing they were fighting about that mattered, and nothing they were avoiding fighting about. Nothing they were pretending they weren’t fighting about. House hadn’t had a patient in two days and it was making him squirrely, and it was a bad week for pain, but there was nothing that he was specifically making Wilson’s problem. Wilson’s divorce from Julie was in process, but that wasn’t new. Grace was gone and Wilson seemed to have made his peace with that. If he was mad about something, it was something that flew under House’s radar entirely, which, while unlikely, wasn’t impossible. 

After another minute, Wilson leaned over and took House’s drink from him.

There was something in the way he held the glass, delicate yet deliberate, that tipped off House before anything else. He thought—he knew, for certain—he’s up to something.

Wilson put House’s glass on the end table next to the couch, and his own, too. He leaned all the way over him to set it down, and it brought them close. House could smell him, shaving cream and conditioner, clean sweat and scotch on his breath. 

He lingered like that for a beat too long, leaning over, so close House could watch his pulse beat in the soft skin of his neck. Eighty beats per minute and climbing. Wilson turned his head as he drew his arm back and moved away, but slowly. Intentionally. They were face to face and his lower lip was pink on the inside, bitten raw.

House said, “I was drinking that.” He kept his voice low, reading the room.

Wilson braced a hand on the arm of the couch and said, in a quiet rumble, “It’ll keep.”

Then he ducked his head and put his face in House’s neck, brushing his mouth against that soft spot under his ear.

House’s eyes rolled shut. He tipped his head back a fraction of an inch—automatic, physical, not thinking—but otherwise didn’t move. This was new; patternless and wild.

“Hey.”

Admonishing, but soft. Wilson ignored him. He breathed out warm and sweet and nuzzled back behind House’s ear and let his teeth graze his skin. His hand left the couch to trail down House’s arm, skin on bare skin below the sleeve of his t-shirt. Wilson’s hand was clammy and House’s hands were very carefully and intentionally not on Wilson.

“Hey,” House said again.

Wilson just hummed. His hair smelled good. He kissed and nipped at House’s neck with a slow, teasing, barely-there gentleness. House knew he had to stop him. He could. He would. But he was human, for the most part, and it’s not like it didn’t feel good. He couldn’t be blamed for stalling.

Wilson’s hand dropped off House’s arm and slid up his good thigh. He rolled it in and cupped House’s dick through his sweatpants.

House’s hand shot out and grabbed his wrist, hard.

They both froze. House didn’t pull Wilson’s hand away, he just held it there. He was at ninety beats per minute, give or take.

“What are you doing?”

House meant to sound commanding, but it came out all thin and weird. He was getting hard under Wilson’s palm.

“Uh.” Wilson was still leaning over him, hovering over his neck, but his shoulders had gone tense. The low, sultry tone was gone. “I thought that was obvious.”

House slowly pulled his hand off him and Wilson sat back. His face was blotchy and red and mortified.

“I’m…” Wilson lost his nerve and looked down. “I’m going for it, I guess.” He scrubbed a hand over his jaw, not looking at him. “This isn’t exactly the response I expected.”

House picked up his drink and handed Wilson his. House finished his in a single gulp.

He said, “You know I find it endearing when you’re weird and awkward, but you’re doing this whole suave, sexy, ‘let’s just roll into bed without talking about it’ thing. That means you didn’t care about my response in the first place. You’re doing it for you.”

Wilson sighed and squeezed his eyes shut. “Look. I—”

“You’re trying to make yourself feel better. Don’t pretend it’s about me.”

House wasn’t angry, but he was… underwhelmed. After so many years of the insane, sexually tense cat-and-mouse thing they had going on, Wilson blew his load on that. It was a shitty first move by any measure, and now any move House might have wanted to make would forever be a second move. So, maybe he was angry.

Wilson was frowning at him. House didn’t see what right he had to be pissed off. 

“I’m telling you I’m… attracted to you,” Wilson said carefully. “That doesn’t surprise you?”

Yes and no, House thought, but he wasn’t going to tell him that. He stood and hobbled over to the decanter on his desk; Wilson swiveled around on the couch to watch him. House filled his glass, then leaned against the desk.

“You do this every time,” he said.

“When have I ever—”

“Oh, come on.” House knocked back the entire drink and set the glass down. “Every breakup, every botched swing at some pretty nurse, every divorce,” he stressed, “you make eyes at me. For about a week on average.”

Wilson’s jaw worked for a second. “I do not.”

“You do. Sometimes it’s a few days, sometimes a few weeks, but you get all giggly. You make excuses to touch my hands, you laugh at my stupid jokes. You get smitten. The dick-grabbing is new, but, hey—progress.”

“Don’t,” Wilson snapped. He turned around. “Don’t joke. Not about this.”

House went back to the couch. “You make a pass at me during a movie like a fifteen-year-old boy, and you want me to take you seriously?” 

He sat in the chair across from Wilson and they spent a moment staring at each other. Wilson’s jaw was clenched in furious humiliation, leaning forward on the couch with his elbows on his knees. Flushed and awkward, his hair fluffy and clean and un-coiffed, looking insanely boyish in his sweatshirt—he looked good. He usually did. It wasn’t helpful. 

House would be lying if he said he didn’t look forward to Wilson’s tiffs and breakups because of that tantalizing period of time afterwards where Wilson flirted with him more emphatically than usual. It was pathetic—for both of them, for different reasons—but it was fun. He always wondered how much Wilson meant by it.

“Why now?” House asked quietly. “What’s different this time?”

That put the burden of proof back on Wilson. He put on airs, but he wasn’t much better with the feelings thing than House was, not when it mattered. It made sense that he’d want to fall into it, mess around and deal with the consequences later. It was tempting—House knew that better than anyone—but it was also stupid, and Wilson wasn’t stupid. Maybe it was a test. Maybe he wanted to get turned down.

Wilson sighed noisily and fell back into the couch, drank his drink, rubbed his mouth. Stalling. House watched his throat move as he swallowed.

“I don’t know,” Wilson said finally, tired, gazing off into the dark kitchen. “I thought…”

He trailed off and shook his head, and anger, heat, stabbed at House’s gut. 

“Fine. If you’re gonna play dumb, I’ll tell you why.” He leaned in and spoke slow. “You’re reeling after a breakup. You want stability. You want someone who needs you, and you know you couldn’t get rid of me if you paid me, so—when you’re feeling particularly pathetic after yet another botched relationship, I become an especially desirable kind of low-hanging fruit.”

Wilson was staring at him, mouth open a little in surprise. House went on.

“You want to be wanted more than you want to want anyone, and you know it. It doesn’t matter that it’s me who’s doing the wanting. You’d fuck your pizza delivery guy if you thought you could make him depend on you.”

He knew he sounded bitter, but he didn’t appreciate the false pretenses. Going for it, Wilson said, like it was something he actually wanted and not a convenient, edgy distraction.

Wilson was staring at him, incredulous. It was a good look on him: finally silent, nothing smart-ass or saccharine to say. House waited. He wouldn’t rescue him from having to make one honest statement.

“You…” Wilson cleared his throat, stumbling. “You want me?”

Of course he’d miss the point. House grabbed his cane and stood, crossed over to the couch and took Wilson’s drink from him. Wilson rose, expectant, mouth open, but House drank the rest of Wilson’s scotch and turned away.

“What I want is for you to go home.” He put the glass on the coffee table. “I’m not mad, just disappointed. Lock the door on your way out.”

He made his way down the hall to his bedroom, and the weird thing was, Wilson didn’t chase after him. He didn’t insist that they had to talk or chew House out for avoiding it. House got to his bedroom and shut the door behind him, and after a minute, he heard the front door open and close. 

When he went out later, all the lights had been turned off and their glasses were in the sink, so Wilson couldn’t have been that hurt about it. House fell asleep thinking about his mouth on his neck and his hand between his legs. Nobody would believe him if he told them, or else they all would.

Wilson was waiting for the elevator when House got to the hospital the next morning. Wilson looked over his shoulder, their eyes locked, and he made a face House could only describe as deeply chagrined before he turned back around.

The elevator doors opened as House approached and they both got on, between three people already riding up from the parking garage. Wilson had his hands shoved into the pockets of his coat, hunched and awkward like a scolded kid.

The tension was stifling. House thought the least he could do was break it. He tilted his head towards Wilson.

“If you’re treating me differently because I spurned your advances, I think that counts as an HR issue. Don’t make me tell Cuddy, she’ll want all the juicy details.”

Wilson physically winced. He turned around and looked at the other people in the elevator, two nurses and a doctor House didn’t know.

“He’s joking.”

They looked with interest from House to Wilson and back and said nothing. Their faces said they didn’t think he was joking. Everyone would know by noon.

The elevator pinged on their floor and they got off, plus one of the nurses. Wilson fell into step next to House and grumbled, “You can’t be that mad if you’re already making jokes.”

“Who said I was mad?”

“Come on. You kicked me out.”

House tried to speed up and lose him. For obvious reasons, Wilson was able to easily follow. He said—too huffy for House’s liking—“I thought we were on the same page.”

“We’re not.”

“Because you don’t—”

“Because you’re rebounding. You’re virtually never not rebounding, the way you live, but this is about as self-destructive as a rebound gets. You should be thanking me.” 

His office was in sight. Wilson sputtered indignantly.

“Jesus, I’m self-destructive? If you’re not— Look, if you don’t want to, then say that, but you’re not a guy who says ‘no’ for its own sake.”

“You’re calling me easy?”

“I’m saying you snort risk. You’re not saying no because it’s a bad idea. If you’re pissed off because you think I’m rebounding—”

“I said I’m not mad.”

“—then you’re pissed off because you think I didn’t mean it, which means you… want me to mean it?”

House stopped in front of the door to his office and spun around. Wilson was so close behind him that for a moment before he reared back, they were nearly nose to nose.

“I’m giving you an out. Take it before you make an ass of yourself.” House stepped into his office. “Would you rather I make it weird? Trust me, I can make it weird.”

He shut the door in Wilson’s face, but the whole glass walls thing made it less satisfying than it should have been. He dropped his bag in his office and crossed through into the meeting room. The three were already gathered. 

Cameron watched Wilson walk down the hall outside. “What was that?”

“Lover’s spat. You find me a patient yet or not?”

Without a patient, the whole thing got to House more than it should have. Everything did. Nothing felt right, nothing was easy, his leg was killing him and he was bored. Under normal circumstances, the lack of an interesting patient became the perfect opportunity to bother Wilson more than normal, pick a thing in his life and get his nails up under the edge of it, but House didn’t want to go anywhere near that can of worms, mostly because he really, really did. So he wandered the halls like a spectre, simultaneously looking for trouble and hoping it didn’t find him. 

He knew if Cuddy found him she’d put him in the clinic, so he stayed holed up in his office watching TV for as long as he could before eventually taking a late lunch. He stuck his head out into the hall and scanned for Wilson—all clear—then headed for the cafeteria.

He didn’t plan on avoiding the guy forever, but he could outlast him. That’s the way it always went: Wilson got on a soap box about something and bothered House about it until he eventually lost interest and moved onto the next thing. House had outlasted him through a dozen different arguments over the years, everything from ‘you can’t not know how to cook, you’re a grown man’ to the oft-repeated ‘you need therapy more than anyone’s ever needed anything,’ and House survived each one on sheer stubbornness and the convenient way Wilson’s attention span was easily hindered by women.

‘We should have sex’ was admittedly outside of what they normally argued about, but not by much. Wilson would get over it. In a week, it would be another lost battle that they’d chuckle over in their quiet moments.

House made it halfway through the cafeteria line before Wilson spotted him and cut in line behind him. He didn’t even spare an apologetic glance to the woman he’d cut in front of.

House said, “I thought it was ‘rude’”—air quotes—“and ‘unprofessional’ to cut in line at our place of work.”

Wilson shoved in next to him shoulder to shoulder and moved House’s tray out of the way with his own. “Only when it’s you.”

Wilson got pasta, House got a soggy ham sandwich. They slid down the line towards the register.

House said, “I’ve avoided more awkward conversations than you’ve ever had. Don’t try me.”

“It’s not awkward. You’re a grown man.”

“You’re really gonna air our dirty laundry in the cafeteria line?” He raised his voice. “In front of everyone?”

Wilson sighed. He nudged House down the line and paid for both their meals without being cajoled or berated into it.

“Go.” He bumped his tray into House’s back, herding him like a dog. “Back corner, table. Go.”

“Ooh, bossy. You know I like that.”

The table at the back was secluded enough—or, not really, but Wilson seemed happy enough to lean across the table and hiss like they were mobsters discussing a particularly contentious hit.

“You’re avoiding me? And you called me immature.”

“We’re discussing your crush on me like two tittering schoolboys. We’re both immature.”

That got a blush out of Wilson, which was always a particularly sweet victory; it was just his ears that went red, and a flush down his throat. It looked good on him. Even better, House knew he hated it.

“It’s not a—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning and the last thing you think about before you fall asleep. You’re not rebounding on your easy, crippled friend, you’re in love. You mentioned.”

Wilson scowled and stabbed a piece of rotini with his fork. “Trust me, nothing about you has ever been easy.”

His ears were incandescently red, though. House was wrong to avoid him all morning when he could be having this much fun.

“Okay.” Wilson glanced away at the next nearest table, where two tired nurses slurped at soup. The motion exposed the sharp line of his jaw. House looked at that instead. “I’ve been thinking—”

“Dangerous habit.”

“—you haven’t denied that you’re attracted to me. You haven’t said I’m wrong.”

House tore off a chunk of bread from his sandwich and chewed it noisily. “That’s not the point.”

“Yes it is! It’s the main point!”

“I don’t have friends I wouldn’t have sex with. I also don’t work with people I wouldn’t have sex with.” Another oversized bite of sandwich, as ugly as he could make it. “I try to look at hot people as often as possible. It’s just good business.”

Wilson watched him chew with a mortified sort of squint. 

“So we’re just… two friends, who want to have sex with each other, who aren’t going to do anything about it.”

Spoken with the incredulity of a beautiful person with low impulse control. House wondered for one glorious second what it would be like to be the type of guy who could get anyone he wanted, and then experienced a sharp stab of gratification when he realized that he was the one who got to tell Wilson no. He could be smug about this for a long time.

“We’ve been that for years. Why mess with success?”

He sucked mayonnaise off his thumb and expected Wilson to grimace, but he just… watched. That wasn’t good. It was mayonnaise. 

Wilson said, “I don’t think what we’re doing qualifies as success.”

Something shifted. Maybe it was the fact that House still had his thumb in his mouth, and that Wilson was looking at his mouth, but whatever it was, House had the sinking realization that he could also be smug if he didn’t tell him no, because he could be smug about successfully getting Wilson into bed instead, and that had the added bonus of… getting him in his bed. It would be easy. He was asking.

House’s brain clicked and whirred like some old machine booting up. Cogs grinding, the hot smell of old wiring and burning dust. It was a fire hazard.

Wilson said, “You know you are capable of being wrong, right?”

House took his thumb out of his mouth with a pop.

“Sure. Not about you, though.”

House’s pager went off. Foreman. Exceedingly convenient. He pushed back his chair and stood.

“Duty calls. Not that it isn’t sexy to hear you beg.”

When he put a hand on his cane, Wilson grabbed his wrist. He had a good grip. Enough to make a guy’s mind wander.

He hissed, “You’re the one who’s always pushing. How the hell have I found the one stupid, selfish, risky thing you’ll say no to?”

House looked down at him. They were close. He always liked being those few crucial inches taller; it was satisfying to look down at him, some leveling of a playing field that his leg made permanently crooked. He wondered if Wilson liked looking up at him.

“You should be flattered,” House said quietly, twisting his wrist out of Wilson’s grip. “There’s not much I care about ruining.”

Wilson was looking at his mouth again. It would be so, so easy. House had to tear himself away.

The patient turned out to be a non-patient, some entry-level thing that House solved on his first try, and it left him blue-balled and short-fused. 

He made it through the day, but a new day dawned and he still needed a case, he needed a puzzle, he took a few more pills than he might have on a normal day and it left him gauzy and floating and a little too relaxed. It made it too easy to drift and scatter. He avoided Wilson all morning, and in the mid-afternoon, he hid out in an unused clinic room to watch his soaps. Thought-wise, Wilson followed him there, too.

It didn’t matter that House wanted him, because that had, to some degree, always been true—not something House looked at directly very often because it was pathetic and uncomfortable and irrelevant, but it was always there. House had eyes, and a dick that (usually) worked, and James Wilson was a beautiful, promiscuous thing. He was the hospital succubus. The part that mattered was that it would be less detrimental to House’s health for him to stick his dick in a bear trap than to get it anywhere near Wilson, and he knew that. Wanting him didn’t matter because House also needed him, and he needed them to be good, and that would be harder to get if he let himself want him. It would feel good in the short term—it would feel fucking great, if Wilson’s own testimony about his sexual exploits could be trusted—and now that House was thinking about it, maybe the rest didn’t matter all that much. They’d bounced back from worse than a little fooling around. That was becoming tantalizingly easy to believe.

Cuddy found him just as he was considering masturbating in the bathroom to take the edge off. 

He’d been in that exam room for an hour and hadn’t seen a patient, so he expected to hear about that, but instead, Cuddy said, “What’s going on with you and Wilson?”

House rolled his eyes. “If you’re looking for spank bank material, there’s this thing called the internet. You can watch two guys doing it, instead of perving on your underlings. They’re better endowed, too.”

Cuddy shut the door behind her. “So something did happen.”

“What have the people been saying?”

“That there have been a lot of tense, breathy conversations. A lot of innuendo. Sexual tension you could hack at with an axe.”

“We’re always like that.”

“Yes, but you’re also avoiding him. You’re normally doing everything you can to trick or coerce him into spending time with you.”

Couldn’t be offended if it was true. Cuddy looked pleased with herself, trying not to smile, and that was… unexpected.

House said, “I’m impressed. You’re really holding it together. I can barely tell that you’re heartbroken at the thought of me being unavailable.”

She laughed. “Please, I’ve wanted this for years. I’m just glad you two are finally figuring it out.”

House held out his hands like he was reading a headline. “Chief Administrator at the prestigious Princeton-Plainsborough Teaching Hospital openly advocates workplace affairs! ‘Only if they’re both hot,’ says Dr. Lisa Cuddy. ‘No uggos.’”

“You’ve been responsible for more malpractice suits in the last year than most doctors see in their whole career. I’m not going to balk at a conflict of interest that you’ve actually disclosed to me.”

“I’m not disclosing anything. Wilson and I remain gal pals.” House switched off his TV and got to his feet. “What did he tell you?”

House wasn’t anyone’s first pick when they wanted to know something, so he knew she’d asked Wilson first. She also hesitated for a beat too long. “That nothing’s going on. But I don’t believe him, either.”

She was lying. He thought about calling her on it, then realized he didn’t really want to know what Wilson told her. Whatever it was, he wouldn’t hear it from Cuddy.

“Hey, not for lack of trying. Jimmy comes on strong.”

He made his way to the door. Cuddy stepped aside.

“You’re the one putting on the brakes?”

“Weird, huh? Why wouldn’t I want to bump uglies with the serial divorcé with a rich history of infidelity?”

Cuddy followed him through the clinic. “Well, I think you should.”

“And here I thought you’d be proud that I’m finally starting to self-preserve. Is that advice from my friend, or my boss?”

“Both.” Over by the nurse’s station, she put her hand on his arm. He stopped. “See it my way: you’d be less miserable if you were getting laid, and our nursing staff would get more done if Wilson were off the market. It’s a win-win.”

“Married wasn’t off the market enough?”

“They didn’t know his wives. They know, and fear, you.”

House liked the thought of that, although Cuddy’s approval made the whole thing a little less sexy and clandestine. He rolled his eyes dramatically.

“Nice try, but I know you’re just gunning for a threesome. Again.” The nurse behind the desk swiveled around to look at them and House winked at her. “A girl can dream.”

Still no case by midday, even though House yelled about it. Some weeks, nothing interesting came in, and that’s when the cracks in the foundation showed. Chase, Foreman and Cameron made themselves scarce, helping in the clinic or with students, and House opened a bottle of tequila and sat on his balcony with his feet up.

It was cold and bright in the last reaches of sunlight on a fall afternoon. The tequila was shit, but he had a pretty good buzz going. It helped and it didn’t. Wilson hadn’t been in his office for hours, House could see through the door. Again, he considered jerking off and didn’t. 

He still knew it would be a disaster to go for it, he was just finding it harder to care. He was mortal and, secretly, more fallible than most. Wilson wanted it or at least said he did, and House knew he couldn’t believe him, but God, it would feel good to pretend. It would be a very good couple of weeks, followed by a very bad rest of his life. It wasn’t worth it, but given a few more days of Wilson looking at him like that, he was pretty sure he could convince himself that it was.

The door behind him creaked open. 

“I couldn’t see the tequila from inside, and for a second I thought you were just wholesomely enjoying a fall day.”

House tipped his head back to look at Wilson upside down. 

“You know me better than that.”

“It’s freezing out here, get inside.”

House wagged the bottle at him. “Didn’t notice.”

He got up anyway and headed in, offering only an eye-roll when Wilson held the door open for him.

The blinds around his office were shut, on both walls. The room was dark, the only light from the hall through the slats in the blinds and the waning sun.

House went, “Huh.”

“What?”

The cleaners usually shut the blinds when they came through. “Nothing.”

He sat at his desk and took off his jacket; it pulled across the shoulders, and the room was warm. Wilson motioned for the bottle and House passed it to him.

“Liquid courage?”

Wilson scoffed, but he didn’t deny it. He took a drink and House watched his throat work.

“Let me guess.” House took the bottle back and set it down. “You want to talk.”

Wilson gave him a particularly suffering look. He dragged a chair around to the side of his desk before he sat down, so it felt less like a consult.

“Yeah, I want to talk.”

The tequila made everything a little easier, especially on top of the pills. Everything seemed like a good idea. Wilson wasn’t wearing his lab coat and he’d rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, which was always pretty persuasive. It made House feel like a chaste Victorian pervert, noticing a wrist, a forearm, any glimpse of skin. 

He took another drink. While he still had the bottle to his lips, Wilson said, “I didn’t know you liked men.”

House snorted and almost coughed. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 

“Yes, you did. You didn’t know you liked men. Or, you haven’t admitted it. Same difference.”

No rebuttal. House passed him the tequila and he just stared down at it. He was such a drama queen. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

He sounded stung. House picked up the ball off his desk, shrugging, and bobbled it between his hands.

“I have a certain… flair. A certain joie de vivre, if you know how to look, that gives me away. You, on the other hand, are the biggest pussy-hound in the tri-state area, complete with that uniquely heterosexual drive to put up with what you’re given. How was I supposed to know you were over-compensating?”

Wilson had the decency to look embarrassed. “But you did know.”

“I had a hunch.” House spun towards the window. Less intense to not look at him, easier to talk. “So. How long have you been batting for the other team, slugger?”

Wilson didn’t answer. House looked over his shoulder.

“You haven’t,” he said slowly, realizing.

Wilson slunk down in his chair. He still had the tequila, and started picking at the label. “Does it matter?”

House ignored him. This was interesting.

“Let me guess. If you were seen with a man, it might damage the hospital heartthrob image you’ve so carefully cultivated. Women might think you’re off the table, because our society doesn’t deal in gray areas. This means you get less attention, and that means you’d wither and die like a neglected houseplant inside of three months.”

“You could try, just once, to have an ounce of faith in me.”

“No. But, counterpoint: if the guys around here knew you were on the table, your net levels of attention might even out. There’s more of us than you think.”

“Right. You’ve added gaydar to your diagnostic toolkit.”

“That twiggy kid who works in the ER is always batting his lashes at me. If you tap that, tell him he’s not my type. Too tall.”

He motioned for Wilson to drink, impatient; he had some catching up to do. This was a bad idea, House was realizing—at the end of the day with nowhere to be, staff in the hospital thinning out, the two of them passing a bottle back and forth in his dark office and the spreading warmth in his gut that wasn’t entirely the liquor. It was dangerous. He was slipping.

Wilson sighed and took another drink. He cradled the bottle in his hands and left his face tipped up towards the ceiling.

“I just… haven’t had the opportunity. It’s not easy.”

“Don’t act humble, you sound like an idiot. You look like if God let a teenage girl design the perfect man. Your life is one big easy.”

Wilson quirked a smile, but didn’t take the bait. He huffed and looked out the window. “Women are the default. I like them. It’s uncomplicated.”

“Right. And your sex life is—”

“Abundant, thank you very much.”

“And dry as toast. If you keep them happy, you don’t have to think about what you want, right? Been there.” House slipped the bottle from Wilson’s hands, and if their fingers brushed, it wasn’t intentional. He set it down on his desk. “When was the last time you really yearned? Woke up with a sore jaw and came to work two hours late with a spring in your step. Blacked out a little it felt so good. Did something that would make your mother cry.”

“I try, okay? I’ve thought about it. Men don’t see me like that.”

“Again with the humble. Knock it off.”

“I’m serious. A few years ago—last year, I don’t know, don’t judge me—I went up to this guy at a bar, and I asked what he was drinking, and—and he asked if I was a cop.”

House cackled. “That’s good.” 

He imagined Wilson in some dive bar in his pressed khakis and tie, trying to pick up rough guys with lip rings. The thought pleased him endlessly, but still—he thought back, wondering, when last year, which night, specifically which night and where the hell was I?

He forced his frantic need to die down, but it didn’t go away. If Wilson had never been with a man, then House could be his first, and that was… not a terrible thought. He started tossing his ball again.

“See, your problem is, you don’t see men as partners. You just like theoretical dick.”

Wilson guffawed. “I’m sorry, how many men have you been in relationships with? I don’t know how I missed that one, wow. I’m a bad friend.”

“None yet, but I know what I am. I don’t go around getting all offended about it.” Toss, catch. Toss, catch. “I’ve never been with a guy, so I can’t know. Easy as that. But it’s a possibility. You’re too caught up in the trappings of gender to see that. But for all I know, I’m just waiting for my prince charming.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“Why? I can see it. Imagine how insufferable I could be if I really dipped into my reservoirs of catty, gay charm.” Toss, catch. Best to keep his hands busy. “Me and some twenty-something himbo who looks like Chase, bullying nurses at the office Christmas party until they cry. And if anyone says boo, I get to sue them for discrimination. Fits me like a glove.”

“You already threaten to sue for discrimination.”

“Yeah, but I could double dip. Gay and disabled? I’d qualify for grants.”

Toss— Wilson stood and caught the ball. He was standing above him again, and House tipped his head back to look. Even looking up his nose, he was attractive. It was a problem. 

The look on Wilson’s face was also a problem. It was wantonly sincere.

“Okay. Yeah. I can see it.” He stepped back and leaned on the edge of House’s desk; House spun his chair around to look at him. “Free from the trappings of your incredibly misogynistic views on women, you find someone—a guy—who you can actually kind of, occasionally, relax with. You have some small amount of respect for him. He’s got as unhealthy a relationship with his job as you do, so you don’t see him enough to get bored. You stay in, get wasted, listen to records. Eat Chinese food.”

“So, you, then.”

Wilson shrugged a helpless, embarrassed shrug. He wasn’t looking right at him.

“I’m just saying, I can see it.”

He’d gotten quiet. Nobody had walked down the hall outside in over a minute. They were closer now, House sitting, Wilson’s hip propped on his desk. It was getting close and breathy and risky, and House was the dumbest man alive.

“And this hypothetical man of mine,” he started, and watched Wilson’s eyebrows go up. “He gives up his revolving door of easy, perky-titted women to spend his nights rubbing off a cantankerous old addict with a bum leg?” Too sincere by a mile. By five miles. “Hypothetically,” he tacked on, feeling stupid.

Wilson slid closer, such an infinitesimally small movement that House would have missed it if Wilson didn’t also reach out and brush his fingers against House’s bent knee, and if he hadn’t been staring at his hands already. Wilson cleared his throat.

“Hypothetically… yeah, he does. Maybe the old addict has a… striking, grizzled kind of charm that makes him very, very attractive. Maybe the addict thing isn’t a deal-breaker. Yet.” Wilson set the backs of his knuckles against House’s knee. They were both staring at it. “Maybe he’s tired of perky tits.”

House’s heart was beating so hard his head hurt. “Nobody’s tired of perky tits.”

“House—Greg. Come on.” Wilson sighed. “Am I insane for even asking?”

Again, his knuckles moved, a soft rub back and forth, and that one point of contact was more erotically charged than some sex acts House had paid good money for. He couldn’t remember the last time Wilson touched him on purpose. They didn’t hug. Maybe that was because of this.

“No,” House said, still not able to look away from that hand, “or, yes, but. Good insane.”

It sounded too much like permission. Before he could claw it back—deflect, ruin, apply cruelty and forget about it in the morning—Wilson’s hand unfurled and he slid it up House’s knee and that was it, that was too far, they were going somewhere he couldn’t drag them back from. 

House rolled his chair back and stood, too quick, stumbling and bracing a hand against his desk for balance. The usual spike of shame drove through him, almost washing out the rest, until Wilson moved the chair out of the way and got in close. 

“I know you’re considering it,” he said quietly.

Standing meant that House actually had to look at him. He stalled by glancing at the door instead, the half slice visible past the edge of the blinds, bright out there and dark in here and some nurse hurrying by. All she’d have to do was look in. They were closer than they could explain with anything else.

“How do you figure?” House said to the door. 

He heard Wilson swallow and it drew him back, and Jesus, he looked good up close. His pupils were huge in the dark and his throat was flushed all the way down to the starched white collar of his shirt. He was close enough that he had to tip his chin up to meet House’s eyes, and that did something for him. Too much.

“The cafeteria yesterday,” Wilson mumbled. He looked dazed, hardly blinking. “You get this look on your face when you’re thinking about saying something honest. You get all… soft. And hungry.”

House’s eyes cut towards the hall again. “You shut the blinds.”

Wilson didn’t answer. His eyes were somewhere near House’s throat. 

“You think I’d make a pass at you if I wasn’t sure? I see how you look at me. When you think I’m not paying attention.”

His voice was hot and low and smooth in a way House wouldn’t have thought he was capable of. Wilson floundered, Wilson was sweet and twitchy, he wasn’t— Still, something overrode the self-preservation instincts of all those women and made them think it was a good idea to sleep with a married man. It was this. Distantly, House was furious that he wasn’t immune.

He said, “I look at everyone like that. I’m a pig.”

“This is different, and you know it.”

“Narcissism’s a bad colour on you.”

It came out all flat and thin and he hated himself for it. His head and leg were throbbing. His hands were curled around the edge of the desk behind him to keep from doing something worse. Wilson was all the way in his space now and leaning up, smelling like cheap tequila and work sweat and it was a fucking aphrodisiac. 

House watched—slower than anything, horrifying, like a car crash—as Wilson reached up and cupped his jaw.

His skin was absurdly soft, which House filed away to make fun of him for some other time when he wasn’t holding his breath. Wilson’s fingers fumbled along his cheek, rasping against stubble, his thumb pulling at the corner of his mouth.

“I think you like it,” Wilson said, faintly surprised. “I think you like me.”

His thumb slid along House’s lower lip. He drew it down, gentle pressure, and House’s eyes nearly closed, as much in anguish as the other thing. Wilson was close enough that he couldn’t focus on him, his head turned down, a blur of peach and perfectly tousled auburn. 

House could think of something to say. There was something, cutting and dismissive, that would gain him back a desperate inch. He just couldn’t think of it then.

Wilson, the bastard, said, “You’re being unusually pliant.”

And he tapped his thumb against House’s lower teeth. House thought about biting him. He thought about sucking his thumb. Shoving him down onto the desk, or worse than all that, kissing him.

House mumbled, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

Talking made his tongue brush Wilson’s thumb, and he felt Wilson’s fingers flex against his face when it did. It was electric. His whole body was tense and it made his leg ache but he couldn’t relax, couldn’t let go—he had to think of something, there was a way out that didn’t end up with them on the floor, there was lost ground that could be gained, there was—

Wilson slid his hand over his throat and down his chest, slow, with plenty of time for House to stop him. He didn’t. Wilson’s hand bumped over his belt and over the front of his jeans, and fit neatly against his dick.

House hadn’t appreciated it properly the first time, it turned out. He took a long, slow breath, dizzy and aching, and put his hand on Wilson’s forearm, a punishing grip, not pulling away and not pulling in. He was already hard. Like some desperate virgin, he’d been half hard since Wilson started touching his knee.

Wilson worked him with the heel of his hand. House could hear him breathing, choppy, felt sweat prickle between them where his fingers were wrapped around his arm. Either his own sweating palms or Wilson. It didn’t matter. House’s shoulders curled in and he closed his eyes. His jeans were tight.

Wilson twisted back, hooked a foot around the desk chair and dragged it over. He pressed his whole body in close against House’s front and the shock of the contact, the intimacy, had the intended effect and House reared back, hit the chair and sat in it. Wilson’s hands were at his belt, fast, like he wanted to get in under the wire.

“Call it a test drive,” he said, and dropped to his knees.

House grabbed Wilson’s head with both hands. He didn’t remember deciding to do it.

“It’s not about that,” he blurted out, like Wilson didn’t know.

Wilson got his belt free. His hands felt huge on House’s thighs (careful about the right, polite) and he kept his face down, watching. House clutched at his head, but he didn’t stop him, didn’t even start to try to pull him away. It was one hell of a view, him on his knees like that. House wished he had his lab coat on, pocket protector and everything.

“Sex is easier than the rest of it,” Wilson said, kind of hoarse, and unzipped House’s fly. “Humour me. I’ve always wanted to do this.”

He took him out, took him in his mouth. House closed his eyes. Easier not to look.

He kept his hands in Wilson’s hair, to feel him move and because he didn’t think he could physically let go. Anything lacked in skill was made up for by sheer eagerness, and House couldn’t remember the last time he’d had eager. Panic made the pleasure that much better and his heart was going fucked-up fast, mouth open and breathing, toes curling in his sneakers.

Voices in the hall and a shadow across the blinds as a group walked by. He’d never fooled around in his office before, which didn’t seem right, but it was. Wilson knew he wanted to, he realized dimly; this was targeted, smart, intentional. He had to try not to lift his hips into the wet heat of Wilson’s mouth or shove him down. He was new and trying his best.

House fumbled a hand to his face—felt his jaw work, a hollowed cheek—then fisted it in his shirt, wrenched it up over his shoulder. House was sweating in the column of his spine, in his curled hands. His knee drew up and his head fell back and it had only been a couple minutes—embarrassing, but better to be too quick than to take an hour—and it would have been polite to give some kind of warning, but— he came in Wilson’s mouth with a strangled gasp, knuckles clenched to white.

It was glorious. He heard Wilson choke on it, and the sound of some hitting the floor. 

House had shifted forwards in the chair during it and his whole body was numb and buzzing. Wilson jerked him softly a few times and let him go; pressure on his good leg, Wilson’s hand or elbow as he sat back. House slowly came back to himself, pleasure receding, and he made himself move, slide upright, look down, face the facts.

Wilson knelt between his legs, looking vaguely mortified. His lips were swollen and red and his hair was rucked up from House’s hands and House could hardly stand to look at him. 

He grabbed Wilson’s arm and shirt in two hands and dragged him to his feet, fast, not thinking. Wilson stumbled into him. He was hard (a relief—worst case scenario, House imagined this as some sick kind of sexless obligation) and he had a wet spot on the front of his khakis, which gave him ideas.

He curled a hand around the back of Wilson’s neck—Wilson hunched over him and grabbed at the arms of the chair as it banged back into the desk—and palmed his dick with the other.

Wilson’s face hung near his. The shudder that went through him was intensely satisfying.

“Wait,” Wilson panted, turning his head in so his mouth mashed against House’s temple. His hands flew to his own belt. “Wait wait wait, let me—”

House stroked him roughly through his slacks. The panting in his ear was nice, the way the chair creaked noisily as Wilson wrenched on it, his knee buckling into the inside of his. If he was as close as he thought—

“Don’t,” Wilson panted, breath wet against House’s cheek. He grabbed House’s wrist and tried to pull him away. House fought him. “Don’t. Don’t.”

He broke off and swore and House felt his teeth against his cheekbone as his lips pulled back in a grimace, a wordless snarl, and his back hunched in and he came under House’s hand. He felt the wet heat of it and tilted his head down to watch. Wilson dug his nails into his wrist.

“Son of a bitch,” Wilson breathed, lax pleasure and genuine frustration all at once.

House’s heart thumped in his ears like a war drum. He started to ease Wilson back and felt him tense, and for one terrified second, he thought he might try to kiss him. But he let House move him away.

Wilson stumbled back and leaned against the cabinet, breathing hard, his whole face red. The dark spot stood out beautifully against his khakis, dripping obscenely down his leg. It was hugely incriminating. Not much else that could be.

“Jesus Christ.” Wilson wiped his hands over his face and kept them there. “I haven’t come in my pants since… I don’t know, puberty. You’re an ass.”

“Gotta keep you humble,” House said faintly, but his heart wasn’t in it.

He tucked his dick away and it looked shriveled and sad after the fact. His leg was killing him from being tense for so long. He put his jacket on and found his pills in the pocket, dumped two into his palm and tossed them back. All of that took about ten seconds, and after that, he was out of reasons to not look at Wilson. He looked up.

There was little better than seeing someone so obsessively manicured looking rumpled and used, but—House didn’t know what he felt, looking at him. He didn’t have a word for it. Regret, or something equally sour. The angle of Wilson’s eyebrows said he was also concerned, though maybe not for the same reason.

Wilson said, “Uh. So.”

There was a long, tense silence. House couldn’t stand it. There had to be a joke, something to break the tension—you could have won a lot of arguments with that, you’ve been hiding your light under a bushel—but nothing came out. Whatever Wilson had to say, wherever they went from there, he couldn’t hear it then. Every synapse in his brain told him to run, and he cared about that more than anything else.

He struggled to his feet, grabbing his cane from where it hung on his desk. “You’ve got scrubs in your office?”

“Uh. Bottom drawer. You don’t?”

“They’re in the wash. Allow me.”

Wilson stuttered something as House made his way out of the office, but he kept going; Wilson wouldn’t chase him out with his pants like that. He stopped in front of the door to Wilson’s office, but he kept going, and he left the building. Once he was outside, he could breathe. His phone rang twice on his ride home.

He called in sick for the first time in years. Not so much ‘called in sick’ as just didn’t show up, but he said he was sick when Cuddy called.

“Sick with WHAT? You came in when you got food poisoning. You called your team from the men’s room.”

He was laying on his couch with all the lights off, nursing a Bloody Mary. He’d stayed up until four in the morning and worked his way through a fifth of whiskey watching Columbo. 

“Don’t make me go to the press with this one, too. Forcing doctors to work while infectious is worse than encouraging workplace fraternization.”

“That might matter if you ever actually saw your patients. What’s going on?”

I’m a coward, House didn’t say, squinting into a slice of sun coming in between slats in the blinds. Like the light from the hallway last night. Ask Wilson, he also didn’t say, because there was no version where that ended well.

He said, “I’ve got enough banked sick days to last me years. If the three stooges actually find us a patient, they can call me.”

He hung up. She didn’t call back. He knew he was right.

House didn’t have a long term plan, he just needed a day. He didn’t know why he ditched Wilson more than he knew why he did anything, he just knew that if he looked into that infuriating, dimpled face for one more second, he’d do something they would both regret. 

He was man enough to admit that he fucked up. The whole dark, warm, intimate thing got to him, passing a bottle back and forth and brushing hands—Wilson played him and won. House was furious, but mostly, he was defeated. He deserved it. He didn’t trust himself not to get defeated again, and he didn’t fight battles he wasn’t sure he could win.

Chase called him at noon with a prospective patient. House listened to the symptoms, gave a diagnosis and said, “If it’s not that, call me back in twenty minutes and I’ll owe you fifty bucks.” 

He didn’t hear back. Cameron called him at two. 

“Does this have something to do with Dr. Wilson?”

He was on speaker. In the background, House heard Foreman go, don’t ASK him!

This at least got House to pause the TV. A half-eaten pizza sat cold on the coffee table, next to a greasy coffee mug and glasses that previously contained the aforementioned Bloody Mary and a subsequent Screwdriver. He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling.

“What makes you think this has something to do with Wilson?”

There was a pause, and the sounds of distant bickering. It was Foreman who answered.

“He was in here looking for you. He seemed pissed. Cameron thinks it’s something, but everyone else knows you two fight like an old married couple. MOVING ON, we’ve got a forty-year-old woman who had a seizure while brushing her teeth. Shows NO signs of—”

House listened. It wasn’t as dumb as Chase’s thing, but there were only a couple possible avenues to explore. He gave them a few diagnoses and they came up with a few of their own, then ran off to barrage the patient with tests. House called them back a minute after hanging up and gave them a few more.

They called back and forth a few times. House couldn’t find a notepad and wrote symptoms on a flattened-out takeout container with a ballpoint pen. He would have gone in if there was anything he couldn’t do from home, but there wasn’t, and then the patient was getting a biopsy that would take a while and House was left to stare at his takeout container—and his napkin, and second napkin, and two pages of a ULINE mail-order catalog—and think about it all. It was the longest he’d gone without thinking about Wilson in days and it was a rich luxury.

Then, somehow, it was six PM and there was a knock at his door.

House got to his feet, aching from sitting for so long. The sun had gone down without him noticing and he turned on lights as he made his way to the door. 

Outside his door was Wilson, standing there looking tense and sheepish in his big coat. 

There was something about a guy standing on a doorstep in autumn that made him look all windswept and handsome. There were leaves swirling around his feet and everything. Navy slacks, a light blue shirt and something that wasn’t really a smile.

Wilson said, “Playing hooky to avoid talking to the boy you like. Very freshman year.”

House categorized the look on his face as annoyed but affectionate. He also looked tired, dark under the eyes, like he hadn’t slept well either. House shrugged against the door jamb.

“Who says I like you?”

“Don’t be cute.”

“You started it.”

Wilson frowned and shook his head, put off at himself. “You’re an asshole. I had to go out into the hall like that, and some nurse saw me and I had to tell her I had a—a medical thing, and I peed myself. Everyone’s gonna think I’ve got prostate issues.”

House dutifully ignored the awkward way he said prostate . He wagged his cane at Wilson’s crotch.

“Piss would have gone farther down your leg.”

“Right, because that turns out better for me if I tell her it’s come.”

“You also could’ve hopped over the balcony into your office.”

“I… didn’t think of that.” Wilson paused for a long time. “I can’t decide if you’re taking this better or worse than I thought. You haven’t taken a swing at me, but you also haven’t made eye contact.”

House didn’t answer. Wilson looked over his shoulder at the dark apartment beyond. “Can I come in?”

House glanced out at the street. A man walked by, his eyes flicking over to the two of them as he passed.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“You don’t.”

House could hear the indignation in Wilson’s tone without having to look. He shuffled his feet. His leg was acting up. He couldn’t think of a lie fast enough.

He said, “If you come in, I’m not going to do the right thing.”

Wilson sighed noisily. “And let me guess. The right thing is the thing you want, not the thing I want.”

House nodded. He couldn’t make his eyes land on any one thing and glanced over Wilson’s shoulder, at the seam of his coat, at the lamp post outside. He took a slow breath.

“When I don’t know what a normal person would do—what’s kind, or right, when it matters—I follow your lead. You’re usually right when it comes to the… human stuff.” He shifted his weight back and forth, wincing, distracted. Embarrassed. “But I can’t trust you on this.”

“And why is— Jesus, you could at least look at me.”

House made himself look. It was excruciating. Wilson’s cheeks were going ruddy in the cold and the wind flipped his hair over the wrong way so it fell over his forehead and again, he looked cripplingly sincere. None of that made it easier to tell him no.

House said, “You looked at my arms when I took off my jacket, in my office. And—”

“I also blew you. You’d think that one would hold more weight. What—”

“And,” House went on, “I don’t have good arms, which means you’re not being objective. Which means you just… like me. And it’s clouding your judgment.”

Wilson shrugged, exasperated.

“That’s kind of how this thing goes. It’s cloudy. No one’s objective about—” A woman walked past with her kids. She gave them an interested look as she went by and Wilson shut up fast. “Could you not make me spill my guts out on your front stoop? Please?”

“You’ve gotta admit, it’s very ‘Hallmark movie’.”

House stepped aside anyway and swept out his arm, and Wilson glared at him and hurried in. He was pissy about it, which, fair enough. House had knives in his gut, hackles up, and wasn’t much better himself.

He shut the door behind them, watched Wilson take off his coat and drop it over the couch. He watched him notice the mess, the takeout and empty glasses and socks balled up on the floor, bits of paper and magazines splayed open everywhere bearing House’s scribbled diagnoses. House saw the exact moment he decided it wasn’t a battle he wanted to fight.

Wilson cleared his throat. “Yesterday. Was…”

“Two friends who want to have sex with each other, to quote you.” House made his way slowly through the room. “It probably shouldn’t happen again.”

“Don’t tell me it was bad. You came in nothing flat, I know it wasn’t bad.”

“At least I got my pants down first.” Through the doorway into the kitchen, not that he needed anything from the kitchen. He couldn’t imagine sitting still. “And, I told you. Not the issue.”

Wilson hadn’t followed him. House made an aimless lap through the kitchen and came back to find him still standing off to the side of the couch, staring blankly. He looked out of place in the mess, in his nice shirt and tie. As if on cue, he worked the knot of his tie loose. House leaned in the kitchen doorway and watched his hands. It was a disease. He shouldn’t have let him in.

“It’s not because I get desperate,” Wilson said finally, not looking at him, “after breakups. That’s not why I start…”

Flirting, House supplied. Wanting. He made his way to the couch, sat at one end and snatched his pill bottle off the table. “No?”

Wilson shook his head.

“It’s because every time, I think—” He laughed a thin, derisive laugh. “I think— God, just talk to him. Maybe it’ll be a train wreck, but at least you’ll know. Ask him. The worst he can do is say no.”

House thought he hid the sharp shock of adrenaline that coursed through him pretty well. He’d imagined being with Wilson the way he imagined winning the lottery or getting his thigh muscle back, but the idea that Wilson had thought about being with him pointedly, in units of almosts and nearlies, took him out at the knees.

Instead of sharing anything like that, he said, “Actually, the worst I can do is humiliate you for it in front of dozens of your closest friends and colleagues.”

“House,” Wilson snapped, then sagged in on himself and scrubbed a hand over his face. He rested a hip on the arm of the couch. It took him a while to start going again. “Did it ever occur to you that, because you’re you—cruel, thoughtless and insufferable, and hell bent on being miserable and alone and dragging everyone else down with you—”

“You charmer, you.”

“—that I could have no possible other motive for wanting to be with you other than the fact that I really, really want to? That that’s already been my motive for our entire fucked-up friendship?”

House had considered it, on bad nights. His ruminations on why Wilson stuck around, why they both needed each other more than anything smart or healthy, landed on the same few points each time: Wilson thought he needed House because House convinced him that he did. Wilson’s self-worth was just as bad as his, and if it weren’t, Wilson wouldn’t want him, so House kept him down. Wilson thought he wanted him all of his own volition—the way he did now—because House made absolutely sure that he did. All of that felt nearsighted now.

“This is different,” House said quietly. 

“It’s not.”

“It is. You want a relationship. You want long weekends and Valentine’s Day cards. Dinner with your mom.” He popped the cap on his pill bottle and peered in. His recent avoidance of Wilson meant he was running low. “I can’t give you that. I… wouldn’t even know where to start.”

He was wearing thin, getting sloppy and desperate and honest, and worse, he knew Wilson could hear it. He usually did. 

House dumped two pills out into his hand. Wilson leaned all the way over the couch and put his hand over his.

Wilson said, “Don’t. I want one halfway sober conversation with you. You owe me that much.”

Ignoring the fact that House hadn’t been fully sober in years, he had a thousand arguments at the ready, old fights to be rehashed about pain and addiction, and they were all good arguments, but he didn’t feel like saying any of them. He felt… thin. 

He slid his hand out from under Wilson’s and dropped the pills back into the bottle.

“You have weirdly soft hands,” he mumbled. “Like a girl.”

Wilson didn’t laugh. He slid off the arm of the couch and into a seat.

“Who said I want… long weekends and moms? I know you, I know what I’m getting into. I’m not expecting a white picket fence. I’m not Cameron.”

“You say you don’t want it, but you’ll resent me when you don’t get it.”

“I’m not Stacy, either.”

The need to start pacing set in again. House stood. “This isn’t about her.”

“Everything is about her, she was your only serious relationship. House. Stop it.”

Wilson blocked his path, behind the TV. The closeness wasn’t good. Something about Wilson was inherently grabbable and House wanted his hands on him, wanted to spin him around and slam him back into things like a movie, like a porno, like some dreams he’d had. Wilson was so goddamn earnest, it was hard to look at.

He said, “Don’t tell me this is all logic. You’re all over the map.”

He knew where to hit. House took a step back, scowling, and turned to go the other way. Wilson followed.

“First you say it won’t work because I’m not being serious about it, which means you want me to be serious. You want me to want you, you want this to be something. And now when I tell you it is, you tell me it won’t work because of you. Because you’re too broken to be happy.”

House made it around the couch. Wilson sidestepped and swiveled in front of him again, but this time he put a hand on House’s chest to make him stop. Again, the closeness made something that had gone dormant in House’s brain grind to life. The touch. It was almost a shove, which only made it better.

“So, which is it?” Wilson said, pushy, flaring. “Who’s the problem, me or you?”

House looked down at him. He worked his jaw for a moment, thinking, both of us, and then a dangerous concept came to the surface: you’re reaching. You have to consider that he’s right.

He took Wilson’s hand and lifted it off his chest. Wilson’s fingers curled around his briefly before breaking free.

House said, “You should go.”

Like sawdust in his mouth. He said it, but he wanted Wilson to fight him, he wanted some fucking teeth—

Wilson shoved him, hard.

“No. Listen to me—you’re scared, and I get it, but”—House turned around and went the other way, and Wilson followed him again—“you’re lying and looking for excuses, because when you strip that away, the truth is that you’re being a fucking coward.”

Consider that he’s right. House made his way around the living room again, the slowest game of cat and mouse. Every time Wilson stepped in front of him, he went the other way.

“I’m being realistic,” he snipped. “People think you’re this big sweetheart, but you’re not. You’re just as nasty and fucked up as me, except you’ve got hope, and a pathetic sense of obligation.” Another reversal. His leg ached. Anything was better than sitting still. “It’s the hope that’s going to get you in trouble. You’re miserable, but you think it’ll get better. I know it won’t.”

“At least I’m trying! Would you stop—”

By the bookshelves, Wilson grabbed House’s arm and wrenched it off his cane, which clattered to the floor. He stumbled back into the shelves and had to grab Wilson’s arm to stay upright.

“Jesus—”

Wilson held him up against the shelves and yelled at him.

“You’re shutting this down because you can’t prove you’re right! You don’t know how it’ll go, so you don’t want to do it at all!”

“Of course I want it!” House shouted back. “I want lots of things I don’t get, join the fucking club!”

He had a forearm across Wilson’s chest, to brace himself up and keep him back. Wilson shook him.

“You don’t get to say no and then make my life hell for it, we’ve already done that. You hate anyone I’m in a relationship with because you’re terrified that they’ll take me away from you, and now I’m telling you that that person could be you! That I want it to be! And that terrifies you just as much, because then who would you hate?”

The rambling certainty of a speech he’d been thinking about for a long time. House scoffed and shoved him back, panic mounting despite himself, helplessness and shame at being pinned. He grabbed at a shelf behind him, heavy books thumped over onto his hand and pain shot up his leg from the weight on it. Wilson grabbed his arms to keep him still.

“If you get me,” Wilson hissed, “if you tick every possible box of human relationships in my life, then you could have everything you’ve ever wanted, except you’ve centered your entire sense of self around being miserable and you don’t know who you’d be if you were happy. Am I wrong?”

“Spot on,” House spat, “you should charge by the hour. Now get out of my house.”

“No. This has always been you, since the first second we met.”

House got his good leg under him. Wilson crowded in close and the anger made him a furnace, blistering heat all up House’s front. House’s head was pounding, his mouth was dry, he couldn’t do it for much longer.

“Let go,” he said, as level as he could manage, but Wilson wasn’t listening anymore. He shook him, dug his fingers in under House’s ribs.

“You need to get your grubby little hands into everything that’s mine and make it about you, and I’m telling you it works and you don’t even care.” He groped a hand up House’s arm and hung onto his neck, sweaty and hot, wild-eyed and furious. “You want to be my friend, my boyfriend, my boss—”

“Wilson—”

“—my brother, my wife, my fucking mother, you’re sick—”

House kissed him. He was still talking and their teeth clacked, mouths crushing together, both of them frozen with shock. House knew he was going to kiss him the second he stepped inside, but he didn’t know exactly when until he did it.

Everything went slow. Wilson’s hands clutched at him hard enough to hurt and he took a sharp breath, held it, let go. Let himself be kissed. None of the reasons not to were enough anymore.

Wilson pulled back after a moment, nose to nose. House realized Wilson’s thumb was pressed to his jugular, feeling for his pulse out of habit; House knew it was racing, betraying him, blood rushing like static in his ears. Wilson was too close for him to see his face—long eyelashes, the cliff of a sharp cheekbone—but House heard him go, “Oh, God,” in that aggrieved way he had before he tilted in and kissed him again.

Wilson’s fingers fumbled along his face and wrenched his jaw down; it kicked up instantly into a ravenous, angry kiss, crushing and breathless. House hooked an arm around Wilson’s neck to stay up and drag him in, hold on, take him. Wilson could kiss. No surprise there. There was a tremble in his jaw as he moved, either fear or careful restraint, and the thought that it might be restraint sent something thrilling down House’s spine.

Wilson held him back, both hands on his face, breathing hard. “What—”

“You’re right. Okay? Don’t make me say it again.” Dragging Wilson with him, still attached at the mouth, House bent down and slapped around on the floor for his cane. Wilson put it in his hand. “You love being right, now shut up and enjoy it.”

Wilson huffed a laugh. He pulled House to his feet, pinned him back against the bookshelves and kissed him again, getting with the program, letting it dawn. House leaned into him and gripped the back of his neck. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been kissed like this, could hardly remember the last time he got kissed on the mouth at all, such a rare and beautiful pleasure that he’d made himself forget how good it was. That was ruined now that he’d been reminded. He was fine with it.

“Well,” he said, biting at Wilson’s mouth, tilting his face with his hands, “you’re not right, but I’m prepared to be wrong.” Another fevered kiss and a soft, hungry sound in the back of Wilson’s throat. “You want me or not?”

“Uh”—disorientation as House started walking him backwards through the living room, stumbling together—“want. Definitely—want.”

House untucked Wilson’s shirt and started on his belt as best as he could with one hand. Wilson took over with a frantic speed that House found deeply flattering.

“Cool.” He kept moving them back towards the hall, unwilling to let go or do anything that took Wilson’s mouth off his. “Take your clothes off. If you get to be right, I get a consolation prize.”

The consolation prize wasn’t coming down Wilson’s throat, all laid out in his own comfortable bed, although that was very, very good. It was jerking Wilson off with one hand and fingering him with the other and reducing him to incoherent babbling that really felt like success.

Wilson was on his back, gorgeous and bare. He was covering his face, sweating and twisting away, bucking up under House’s hands.

“Good?” House asked, to be annoying. Wilson made a garbled noise behind his hands that sounded positive. 

House thought about his leg (he usually did during sex—all the things he could do with better leverage, the acrobatics of his youth), worked his fingers inside him slick with lube and let him shift his hips up into his other hand. It was something House had only ever been on the receiving end of until now, but the reviews seemed good. He spat into his hand and picked up the slick with his fist, and Wilson made a sound that sounded like agony but wasn’t.

One of Wilson’s legs was splayed and bent over his. House bent down and bit at the inside of his thigh just above his knee and got something that was almost a shout, and felt his cock pulse in his grip. He kept the edge of his teeth against Wilson’s skin for the contrasting point of pain, the sandpaper scrape of his stubble. He wished he had more hands so he could press one flat against his belly, grip his thighs, pry fingers into his mouth; he wanted to be everywhere and have him everywhere, and nothing else would ever be enough. He wanted to push him, see how far he’d let him go.

“Relax.” Sweat poured down House’s neck. He curled his fingers, learning. “Let go.”

Wilson tried to close his legs and House jammed an elbow into the inside of his knee to keep them apart. He felt him get tighter around his fingers, harder in his grip. Nobody appreciated Wilson properly. Nobody gave him what he needed, he didn’t even know what he needed. Thank God he had House.

Wilson sobbed and arched up and came. He was still covering his face, which was a shame. Next time. 

He collapsed boneless to the bed, panting behind his hands, red all over. House let him go, drew out his fingers and wiped his hands unceremoniously on the sheets. He sat back against the footboard and adjusted his leg—still wearing sweats; he’d pulled them down earlier, hadn’t taken them off—but didn’t make Wilson untangle himself. The weight was nice and the view was better.

After a while, Wilson took his hands down and wiped the sweat from his face. He was grinning.

“I knew it’d be…” He laughed and pushed his hair back off his face. “God. Nevermind.”

“What?”

He wagged a hand at House, eyes closed, still all blissed out and goofy.

“Being at the center of that—that galaxy you call a brain, for a few minutes.” His hand flopped down and landed on House’s knee. “Just as dangerously intoxicating as I thought it would be.”

House thought about moving out from under his hand. He thought about saying something honest and sloppy like you’re always pretty close to the center, or you look good when you stop thinking.

There were no safe answers. Sweat cooled on the back of his neck and he wiped it away.

“If any of your wives knew how to keep a man, they would’ve gone wrist-deep on date number three.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“You shouldn’t have to, it’s your due. Beautiful people get things the rest of us are rarely privy to. More opportunities, higher salaries…”

“Prostate orgasms.”

“Prostate orgasms,” House agreed.

Wilson took his arm off his eyes and tilted his head to look down at House, at the foot of the bed. House could tell by the faint tension in his thigh that he was thinking very hard about how House was letting his leg lay over his, and letting his hand rest on that leg, and he was trying not to scare House off by drawing attention to it.

“You don’t count yourself in the ‘beautiful person’ group,” Wilson said. 

House shrugged. “I’m just charismatic. That means if someone finds me charming, their hormones trick them into thinking I’m beautiful. Everyone else thinks I look like an old wino.”

Wilson opened his mouth. House cut him off.

“Don’t say something you’ll regret.”

That got another smile out of him. It was an infectious smile, something to do with the dimples.

House gingerly lifted his leg and Wilson gave him room to shuffle up the bed. He fluffed a pillow and lay down, arms folded over his middle, and closed his eyes. He felt Wilson shift next to him, not intentionally touching, but close enough that the mattress made them roll together anyway and Wilson’s arm sat warm and tacky against his.

House said, “I still think this is a bad idea.”

Wilson chuckled. “Yeah, you clearly hated that.”

“When I’m divorce number four, you’ll remember I was against the whole thing.”

It was supposed to be a joke, but he cracked an eye and looked over to check, and Wilson was looking at him all… glittery. House filed it away to never mention again. Better to not give him any ideas.

He sat up and started to say, “Want a drink?” when Wilson leaned over him and kissed him. 

It was sated and unhurried, post-coital and intimate, and House curled an alarmed hand against Wilson’s arm on reflex, ready to push him back, but… it was nice. It felt good. He forced himself to close his eyes. Wilson sifted a too-gentle hand through his hair and it was excruciatingly earnest, the way his thumb traced the shell of his ear. A kiss you gave a girl on her doorstep after a date, two stupid kids with all the time in the world: slow, deep and soft, made your heart feel like someone grabbed it in their fist.

They broke apart and Wilson said, “Uh,” quick and breathless against House’s mouth. A little pathetic and a little heartbreaking. He sounded nervous.

House shook his head—a silent it’s fine—and climbed out of bed and left the bedroom, grabbing his cane as he went. He picked up his t-shirt from the hallway floor and pulled it on, detoured to the living room to pop two Vicodin and check his phone, then made his way to the kitchen.

He got two glasses from the cupboard and set them down, then braced his hands on the counter and stared down at them. Dread crept in. Uncertainty. The don’t go in there feeling of watching a soon-to-be slaughtered horror movie lead creep through a dark house. 

He pushed it down. He tried to replace it with trust. It wasn’t a great fit, but he could at least try to make it work. He’d be damned if he let Wilson, of all people, call him a coward.

He figured an old fashioned was as good a drink as any to say ‘thank you and sorry’ to your best friend after fingering him to completion. He fixed two and brought them back into the bedroom, the glasses pinched precariously in his left hand. 

Wilson was right where he’d left him, except he’d put his underwear back on (black boxer briefs, nice material, flattering enough). He reached up and took his drink when House offered it, and watched as House went back around the foot of the bed.

“Do you”—Wilson started, then hesitated—“want me to go?”

House frowned at him. He sat down on the edge of the bed and took a drink. “Do you want to go?”

Wilson looked at his watch, like that was what they were talking about. It wasn’t late. It was offensively early.

He said, “You don’t strike me as a ‘spend the night’ type guy.”

House lifted his leg into bed and sat up against the headboard, ankles crossed, drink resting on his thigh.

“I’m not,” he admitted, and let that sit for a moment. He ran his fingers through the condensation on his glass. “If you want, we can do the whole… I make you leave now, I keep you at arm’s length for a few weeks, we keep fooling around but I don’t let you fuck me because of some stubborn masculine pride”—out of the corner of his eye, he saw Wilson’s eyebrows go way up—“and I invent reasons to get mad at you because I’m scared of letting you in, thing. Or.” Another drink, stalling. The Vicodin was hitting him and he rubbed his leg appreciatively. “Or, we skip all that and go straight to the part where you make me breakfast tomorrow.”

Wilson was quiet for a moment. He was only sitting up enough to drink his drink, which put his face near House’s hip. House looked down. Wilson was squinting up at him, wary.

“You want me to make you breakfast in your kitchen.”

“You know you don’t want any breakfast I’d make.”

They shared a long look. House wasn’t sure what it meant, but it didn’t seem bad. Exasperated, fond, worried. Cautiously optimistic.

He took Wilson’s drink from him and set it on his nightstand, leaned over him and hung his face over his.

“If you need convincing,” House said, and trailed off. Wilson sighed a long-suffering sigh, folded his arms around House’s neck and pulled him down for a kiss.

Twenty minutes later, House was laying face down in the sheets and incoherently pleased with every decision he ever made that got him to where he was. Wilson was behind him, fucking him, slow and so deep he could feel it all the way up his spine, in his throat, in his buzzing hands. Wilson was losing his mind and that was the best part, the sounds he was making as good as any chemical high, better. House’s hands pulled into fists, pulled up the sheets.

His phone started to ring.

Wilson groaned and buried his face in the crook of his neck, slowing but still grinding inside him. House leaned over the side of the bed and slapped around for his pants, found his phone in a pocket and put it to his ear.

“What?” he barked.

“Hey. The patient hasn’t—”

It was Foreman. House turned his face into the bed for a second before coming back up. “Is she dying?”

“Uh, not QUICKLY. You told us to you call once we—”

“That was before I was busy getting laid. Call back in ten”—Wilson slid his fingers up House’s throat and over his lips, into his mouth, and House had to bite at him and spit his fingers out before going on—“twenty minutes.”

There was silence on the line. House twisted his free arm back and buried it in Wilson’s hair, palming the back of his head. They were plastered together, not an inch of space, and Wilson shuddered, rode into him, gripped his hips. 

Foreman said, “You’re not.”

House said, muffled, “Okay, you got me, I’m furiously masturbating. Tell me what you’re wearing, I’m almost there.”

Foreman hung up. House threw the phone down.

“You’ve got ten minutes,” he said to Wilson. “Make ‘em count.”

He did. House was laying spread out in bed afterwards, hot all over, aching and blissful and now completely sure that any lingering voices in his head that told him this would end poorly were just jealous, because nothing so decadently hedonistic could be a bad idea. Worst case, he’d learned that male escorts might be more bang for his buck than what he was used to. He hadn’t had a full, coherent thought in twenty minutes and it was nothing short of heaven.

Wilson was in the bathroom. House called out, “You thought I was annoying before, now I know you can do that. Quit your job, I’ll pay you to service me.”

“You can’t afford me,” Wilson said. “And you left a mark with that bite.”

“So? You’re the office slut, you’re supposed to show up for work all marked up.”

“You bit my fingers, nobody’s going to think that’s from sex.”

House smiled up at the ceiling. “Didn’t hear you complaining.”

Wilson appeared in the doorway, nude and practically glowing. He shoved at House until he moved over to the far side of the bed.

“You want people to know.”

“No, I think it would be funny if people knew. There’s a difference.”

Foreman called back. House found his pad of paper and wrote with it braced on Wilson’s back as he lay next to him and dozed, on his stomach with his arms folded under a pillow. Wilson eavesdropped and lifted his head once in a while to offer ideas that House passed off as his own. It was nicer than it had any right to be.

Three weeks later, middle of the night. Two phones on the nightstand. One started to ring. 

There was movement on the other side of the bed—still new enough to be startling, the dip and roll of the mattresses as another body moved next to him, and a heavy one—and Wilson reached an arm over House to grope blindly around the nightstand for his phone.

He flipped it open and put it to his ear. He flopped his head down on House’s bare chest all heavy and warm and House made a grumbling noise of protest but bore the weight bravely.

“H’lo?” Wilson answered. 

His hair was soft under House’s chin. House kept his eyes closed, let his hand wander up Wilson’s arm to sift his fingers through the hair at his nape, knowing he was still too asleep to call him on such a ludicrous display of affection.

“House?”  

Cameron. Wilson dropped the phone like it burned him. House picked it up. 

“Yeah?”

Wilson sat up. House’s free hand fumbled for the lamp and turned it on; Wilson’s mouth was pressed into a thin, nervous line, and he was looking off into the dark, shaking his head.

The patient of the week hadn’t responded as expected to treatment, which meant it was something else. House fired off a few suggestions and said he was on his way. He dropped his phone into the sheets and stretched.

“Is it just me, or is her voice shriller at three in the morning?” 

Wilson rubbed a hand over his eyes. “You changed your ringtone to mine.”

“It’s the default one.”

“We don’t even have the same phone. What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m cutting out the middleman. We need an oncologist anyway.” House sat up and kissed Wilson’s head. It had only taken him three weeks to perfect the gesture into something infantilizing and infuriatingly placating. “Get your pants on. I’ll start your car.”

They shuffled half asleep into House’s office. Chase had his head resting on his folded arms at the table, Foreman was making coffee and Cameron looked alarmingly awake.

Before House could open his mouth, Cameron asked, “Who answered your phone?”

“Male prostitute.” House shucked his jacket and threw it over a chair. “I get them to wear my father’s cologne and fuck me from behind while they tell me they’re proud of me.”

Chase sat up at that and rubbed his face. “Then why’s Wilson here?”

Wilson shrunk into his coat. For a guy extremely well-versed in workplace affairs, he had a shitty poker face when it mattered. The good news was that it didn’t really matter, because despite Wilson’s insistence that they’d been careful, the team mostly already knew. Foreman definitely knew, Cameron was so deep in denial that she didn’t know she knew, and it was possible that Chase hadn’t thought about it until now.

“Completely unrelated.” House uncapped the whiteboard marker and brandished it. “Come on, new symptom. What causes hallucinations, internal bleeding and kidney failure?”

They took turns suggesting diagnoses and ruling out others, but Cameron was strangely quiet. House followed her gaze to where Wilson leaned against the counter at the kitchenette nursing a coffee, and specifically, to Wilson’s chest: visible in a thin slice past his open coat was a black t-shirt with some faded graphic on the front. Once she saw that, she didn’t take her eyes off House.

They dispersed to run more tests; Wilson went with Chase to help get permission related to a kidney biopsy. House sat down and stared at the whiteboard, tapping the pen against his teeth, thinking.

Cameron said, “You just happened to swing by Dr. Wilson’s place on your way over?”

He hadn’t noticed that she didn’t leave with the others. He nodded slowly.

“It might be cancer.”

“We’re pretty sure it’s not cancer.”

House looked at her with an over-the-top concerned face. “We’re talking about a man’s life, and you want to take chances?”

No dice. She was frowning at him with gravity, like who House drove in with at three in the morning was life or death and not related to her insatiable desire to know everything there was to know about him, especially if it involved sex. He was surprised it took her three weeks to get this far.

“And in this carpool scenario,” Cameron said slowly, “you brought him one of your shirts?”

“Alright, you caught me. He sleeps with it under his pillow because it smells like me.” House stood and headed for the coffee maker. “It helps calm him down, like a nervous dog. Far be it from me to begrudge a man his coping mechanisms.”

“You wore it last week. It’s from some barbecue place in Houston.”

“Right. Because Wilson doesn’t sleep with it under his pillow, that was a lie. Nothing gets past you.” He got his mug and poured a cup of coffee. Set his jaw. Made a decision. “He grabbed it off my bedroom floor in the dark. He stays over more nights than not because we’ve been screwing like rabbits and his apartment is uglier than mine.”

It wasn’t smart, but lying would make it look like he cared whether she knew, and he didn’t. The quicker the secret was out, the quicker it would become a non-issue and less gossip-worthy.

Cameron didn’t answer and House glanced over. She was standing there with her arms crossed, glaring at him, which— he expected a more satisfying rise out of her. Thinly veiled jealousy, prying questions about his sexuality and, if he was lucky, a borderline-homophobic lecture on safe sex. The possibilities were endless, but quiet resignation wasn’t among them. Not Cameron’s strong suit. 

“Not the answer you were looking for?” he tried.

She huffed and rolled her eyes at him, then turned on her heel, ponytail swinging.

“Fine. Don’t tell me.”