Work Text:
It happens on the drive home.
Six months after Mayfield, they’ve quietly returned to a new normal. The dust is settling, House’s addiction appears to be—hopefully, optimistically, knock on wood— gone for good. They have new routines, reminiscent of the old ones; not similar enough to draw House back into old habits, but not so severely different that they scare him away from what can become comfortable.
House takes his non-narcotic pain killers, Wilson takes his mood levelers, they argue over who gets the shower first, sometimes they argue in the shower, sometimes they do less arguing and more of something else, and they move on. They drive to work. They drive home.
They have an apartment now. It’s an apartment, as in, its theirs, and they both signed their names, and they turned in paperwork to Cuddy and pointedly ignored how she tried and failed to hide her giddiness. It’s an apartment, as in, not just one of theirs, always owned and always occupied, accompanied by the occasional extra body on the couch, who eventually became an extra body in the bed; who incidentally stopped periodically sleeping on the couch during bad spats with spouses and instead started permanently sleeping in the bed with his arms wrapped around it’s long-time occupant.
They have quiet methods. Poker nights and lazy mornings. Afternoons reserved for soap operas and evenings reserved for lovemaking. House won’t adhere to any sort of schedule or assignment, so who cooks and who cleans is a nightly discovery. House can usually be coerced into dishwashing with a make-out session, although sometimes it takes the effort of Wilson dropping to his knees. Wilson knows when House is on call; House won’t admit to knowing when Wilson is on call, but maybe that’s because he’s only subconsciously memorized his schedule. He couldn’t repeat it if he tried, but when it’s after nine and House is left alone with a glass of whisky and his piano, he knows where Wilson is. He never has to call.
Currently, Wilson is checking things off in his head, outwardly responding to House’s tangents about his latest patient, and inwardly running down a mental to-do list. It’s cold out, and he’s driving slow, just in case, and he even convinced House to staying off the motorbike; it wasn’t that terribly difficult, the chill makes House’s leg ache.
The list in Wilson’s head is long and vague and keeps slipping away from him. He’s an organized person, but always bad at lists. The one thing he could never quite get the hang of; he’d start them and then stop them, forget and lose them, leave them lying around in the most baffling places. Sam always found it charming, Bonnie always found it stressful, Julie always found it annoying, and House wouldn’t know because Wilson has long since given up trying to put a list down on paper.
There are a lot of things about this particular marriage that make it different from the others, and certainly not keeping lists isn’t a factor in why this one seems to be working out so much better, but, well, ironically, it can be on the bottom of the list.
Wilson chuckles to himself over the thought, and they makes it all the way home before he even realizes why that thought isn’t exactly correct.
He pauses getting out of the car, mulling this over, mildly distressed. He turns the thought over in his head as he pulls out his keys and they make their way upstairs, until finally, as he unlocks the door, he comes to a decision. If this marriage isn’t like all the others, why should it start the same way?
“House,” Wilson says as he shuts the door behind him, then thinks and decides maybe a smidge more intimacy would be appropriate. “Greg.”
House turns, looking at him, his curiosity mildly piqued. Wilson clears his throat somewhat awkwardly, and says, “Let’s get married.”
House clearly tries to hide his immediate shock, but Wilson catches the slightest glimpse of it before it disappears under a snarky remark. “Took you long enough. When you didn’t ask on the second date, I started to worry.”
Wilson grins and steps forward and kisses him tenderly, and House returns it without much argument. It means more paperwork and more signatures and more of Cuddy’s giddiness, but they’re all quiet methods towards a new normal.