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“You’re twitchy today,” House says conversationally over his morning coffee. “Something’s making you nervous.”
Wilson gives him a long-suffering look from over his newspaper. “You should try saying ‘good morning’ one of these days. It won’t kill you.”
“I don’t waste my time on idiotic pleasantries,” House says. “You should know this about me. Is it your caseload? I didn’t think it looked that bad this week.”
Wilson sighs, but doesn’t look up from his newspaper this time—House tries not to be disappointed. “Why do you know what my caseload looks like?”
House always looks up Wilson’s caseloads. He likes to know when to show up unannounced at Wilson’s office. Wilson’s less interesting when he’s genuinely stressed about a patient.
House brushes Wilson’s socked foot under the table with his own foot. Wilson jerks so violently that his knees knock against the table. He glares at House, newspaper abandoned.
“See?” House says victoriously. “Twitchy. In response to touch. Weird. Skin condition? Fabric allergy? No, can’t be, you’ve worn those slacks for the last eight months and we haven’t changed our laundry detergent. Take off your pants. I need to see if you have a rash.”
“House,” Wilson says, in a forbidding tone. “Stop.”
Over the years, House has cataloged the way Wilson says his name. There are times when Wilson acts like he wants House to back off when what he really wants is to see how far House will really go. Those are fun. Then there are the times when Wilson really wants House to back off and House has no choice but to take it as a challenge.
Well, challenge accepted.
#
Wilson gets lunch with some other doctors from the oncology department that day. House sits in the corner of the cafeteria partially obscured by a hideous ficus tree and observes.
People tend to touch Wilson a lot. An unnecessary amount, House would say. A hand on his arm, a brush against his shoulder. One doctor, older and fatherly looking, even ruffles Wilson’s hair at one point. House almost snaps a spoon in half.
The point is—the point is that Wilson never reacts the same way as when House had touched him earlier that day. In fact, if House really bothers to think a little further into the haze of pain and Vicodin that was the earlier part of the week, it might have been going on for longer than that. Wilson’s been acting weird. And it has something to do with House.
Fascinating.
#
“You’re dating me,” House accuses.
Wilson cuts into his patient’s pancreas and asks a nurse for a pair of scissors. “We’ve been over this,” Wilson says evenly. “We’re not dating.”
House turns to one of the physician assistants. “Hey, you. Don’t you think we’re dating?”
“Leave my PAs out of this,” Wilson says. He makes another incision, his hands steady.
The physician assistant’s eyes are on the vitals monitor, but he still shrugs. “Half of oncology thinks you two are dating.”
House can’t be as smug as he’d like to be with the surgical mask on, but he does his best.
“House,” Wilson says, his voice low and serious. He meets House’s eyes from across the surgery room, his hands still entwined in the bloody guts of his patient. He looks like a stranger; he’s the only person in the world House wants to know.
“If you and I were dating,” Wilson says, “I’d make sure you knew.”
House swallows. “Would you?”
“Yes,” Wilson says, a promise and a threat. “Now go away.” And then, like House isn’t even there, Wilson asks one of the assistants for a hemostat and continues with the surgery.
House is backing up out of the room before he’s even consciously made the decision.
#
Living with Wilson is a complete barrage on the senses. House hates change—he’s willing to admit it sometimes. He should hate Wilson’s things in his space, his food in his fridge, his strange habits, the way he hums under his breath when he cooks, the way he nags House about taking his shoes off before putting his feet up on his coffee table.
“We work in a hospital,” Wilson reminds him, as if House could ever forget. “You’re tracking tuberculosis all over the furniture.”
“Please,” House says, rolling his eyes. “Tuberculosis is laughably easy to diagnose. A first year could do it. You really think I’d waste my time on that?”
“My mistake,” Wilson says dryly. He draws House’s feet off the table and into his lap so that he can untie House’s shoes.
House goes still. Wilson isn’t acting like he’s doing anything strange. And House figures it’s actually not that strange—Wilson compulsively does acts of service for virtually everyone around him. He’s painfully desperate to be useful, to be needed. It’s what makes him an exceptional physician and a terrible boyfriend.
Wilson’s hair is falling into his face and House can’t read any answers in it. He wants to solve this, the strange energy in the room, the mystery that House hates the most because he can’t even name what it is.
Wilson’s sleeves are rolled up; his tie is half undone. House reaches over and brushes Wilson’s elbow with his fingers just to see what will happen.
It’s nothing dramatic, but for House it’s so puzzling that he can hardly breathe. Wilson’s mouth goes slack. House hears him exhale, just on the side of shaky. After a moment, Wilson looks up at House, his eyes wide and questioning. He doesn’t look at all like he did when his stupid band of oncologists touched him. He’s not untying House’s shoes anymore. His thumb is pressing, just a little too tightly, into the jut of House’s ankle.
“I can do that myself,” House snarls, yanking his feet out of Wilson’s lap. He moves too quickly—pain shoots up his bad leg and he bites back a swear, his vision going in and out for a moment.
“You’re right,” Wilson says quietly. He suddenly sounds tired. “Want to watch something on TV? I think they’re showing reruns of that awful soap you like.”
House snaps open his bottle of Vicodin and swallows some pills. What he wants is to leave, but unfortunately, he lives here and he hates sleeping in the hospital.
“I’m going to bed,” House tells Wilson, even though it’s barely ten at night. He gets off the couch anyway. “Watch whatever you want. I don’t care.”
He’s not sure who he’s punishing. He’s not sure of anything anymore.
#
Wilson kissed House once, at the hospital Christmas party in 2003. House doesn’t like to think about it.
Not that it was a bad kiss. House isn’t even into guys—all right, he’s not into guys ninety percent of the time—and even he can admit that it wasn’t a bad kiss. Wilson ambushed him in a corner under some ill-advised mistletoe that should’ve been some kind of health hazard. Wilson had laughed a little, soft and embarrassed like it was all some inane joke, and then kissed him, just as easy as that.
It was quick, just a little sweet, more than a little sloppy, probably because Wilson had drank three glasses of Dr. Stanley’s notoriously lethal mulled wine at that point. And that was it. Wilson had pulled away, nuzzled his cold nose into House’s neck, quietly wished him a merry Christmas, and then stumbled off to rejoin the party.
House doesn’t really remember the rest of that night. He doesn’t even know why he’s remembering it now. He should be focusing on his patient’s symptoms—green discoloration under the eyes, sporadic loss of hearing, no signs of neurodegeneration or brain trauma, no relevant medical history. His team is screening for hormone imbalances now. House is alone in his office. He has time to think. He has time to figure it out.
When Wilson finds him in his office, House hasn’t made any progress except to beat his personal best score on how many times he can throw a ball at that strange stain on the ceiling.
“You look more miserable than usual,” Wilson says, sitting down with a tired sigh.
“I’m not miserable,” House says. “That was just my thinking face. Now it’s my ‘what are you doing here’ face. And pretty soon it’s going to be my ‘get out of my office’ face.” He throws his ball at the ceiling again. This time, he misses.
“You told my floor staff I had avian flu,” Wilson says. “I don’t have avian flu. I was stuck in quarantine today for three whole hours until they figured out I was fine. Are you avoiding me?”
House looks at Wilson with wide eyes. “Why would I be avoiding you?”
Wilson pinches his nose. “I don’t know,” he says, sounding frayed. “Why do you do anything? You’ve been acting weird all week. Look, whatever mind games you’re playing with me right now, you can stop, all right? It’s not funny.”
“I’m not playing mind games,” House protests. “When I play mind games I like to brag about them, and I haven’t bragged about anything. I’m not the one who’s been acting weird.” He points his cane at Wilson. “That’s all you.”
Wilson slaps the cane away. “If you’re not playing mind games, then you’re upset about something,” he says. “Something that I’ve done. And I don’t remember doing anything to you.”
House waves his hand dismissively. “You’ve been flustered and awkward,” House says. “You’ve been smiling too much. You’re hiding something from me, and I don’t know what it is, and frankly, it’s distracting.”
Wilson starts to laugh. He keeps laughing. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and tilts his head up at the ceiling and keeps laughing.
“I don’t believe this,” Wilson says. He gets up to leave.
House follows him to the door, something like panic rising in his chest. “Hey, do you remember that Christmas party where you kissed me?”
Wilson grabs the front of House’s shirt and pushes him into the wall. He’s not laughing anymore. In fact, Wilson looks genuinely angry, like House somehow managed to actually piss him off. Wilson doesn’t get pissed off very easily—House should know, he’s made a pastime out of pushing Wilson’s buttons. When Wilson is actually angry, he gets very cold and intense, just like he is now.
None of this makes any fucking sense.
“I said it’s not funny, House,” Wilson tells him, his voice gone dangerously low. “I know you like to pretend you’re above all this, but the rest of us are allowed to be actual human beings with feelings, you know. You can stop torturing me.” He’s still pressing House into the wall, fingers fisted into House’s t-shirt.
“I wasn’t the one who started laughing uncontrollably,” House says. Maybe if he stalls long enough, if he can keep Wilson here, he can figure this out. “Why do you think I’m torturing you?”
Wilson squints at him. He takes a step closer, until they’re practically sharing the same space. “Oh my god,” Wilson says. “You actually don’t know. You’ve been acting like an asshole and you don’t even know why.” Wilson laughs again, this time in disbelief.
House must be having a stroke. Or Wilson’s having a stroke. Maybe they’re both having a stroke together.
Wilson lets go of House’s shirt. He traces a hand up House’s chest, grips the part where House’s neck meets his shoulder. House shivers.
“You were remembering that Christmas,” Wilson says conversationally, like he’s discussing a differential. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” House says.
Wilson searches House’s eyes. He smirks, pushing away from the wall, giving House his space back. House can suddenly breathe again.
“You’ll figure it out,” Wilson says, again with that infuriating smugness. When Wilson knows something that House doesn’t know, he’s always insufferable about it. Wilson checks his watch. “I’m due in surgery. I’ll be home late. Don’t wait up.”
#
House doesn’t mean to get stabbed on the way home. It just kind of happens.
He’s walking into the alley behind the hospital where he parks his bike so that he won’t have to pay for a parking pass. The guy is lying in the street, pretending to be injured, calling for help in a weak voice. House blames Wilson, really, for infusing in him the kind of idiotic niceness it would take to actually fall for the act.
The man kicks House’s cane from under him, steals his wallet, and stabs House for good measure when House tries to hit him.
For a few minutes, House lies in the street and considers the banality of existence. Then he examines the stab wound. The knife didn’t go in too deep. The guy was only concerned about getting away and didn’t manage to apply enough force. And by a stroke of luck—House doesn’t tend to get many of those—the knife missed major organs and arteries. As far as stab wounds go, this one’s almost trivial.
House pops a Vicodin, gets on his bike, and heads home.
By the time Wilson gets there, House has managed to get two stitches into sewing himself up. There’s a clatter at the door as Wilson drops what he’s holding and runs into the room, taking in the bloody mess that House has made of the living room.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” House says cheerfully.
Wilson looks stricken. “You’re bleeding on the couch,” he says. “What the hell happened?”
“Got stabbed,” House says. “Guy took my wallet. It was all very melodramatic. You would have loved it.”
Wilson falls to his knees next to House, moving House’s hands aside so that he can look at the wound, the edges of his sleeves trailing in blood. In his head, House thought this would be much funnier. He wasn’t prepared for Wilson to look so—devastated.
“Stop doing that with your face,” House says, irritated that Wilson isn’t playing along. “You’ve seen me worse than this. Four more stitches and I’ll be fine.”
“Let me do it,” Wilson says viciously. House lets him take the needle from his hands.
“You’re in love with me,” says House, “aren’t you?”
“Of course I’m in love with you,” Wilson says angrily. The needle goes in, and House hisses between his teeth. “I thought you knew this whole time and you were just tormenting me. Turns out you had no idea. Idiot.”
The needle goes in again, and it fucking hurts, again. Wilson isn’t being remotely gentle with him. House kind of loves him for it.
He doesn’t say that last part out loud.
House keeps his mouth shut while Wilson finishes his stitches, cleans up the blood, and tapes gauze over the wound. When Wilson finally looks like he’s about to start bitching at him again, House retaliates first by tugging Wilson down by his tie.
“I hate you so much,” Wilson says, and kisses him. He kisses the way he sutures—a little too mean, a little too sharp. House tries to sit up and Wilson keeps him down, a hand on his hip so that House can’t aggravate his stitches. It startles a rough noise out of House.
“Stop doing this to me,” Wilson says, biting House’s jaw. “I’ve had enough near death experiences from you.”
“You love it,” House says, his voice unsteadier than he would like it to be. “You love it when you can put me back together. You love having something unfixable to try to fix anyway.”
Wilson is quiet after that. They both know that House is right, and anyway, kissing Wilson feels too good, like a drug that House hasn’t tried yet.
It’s a long time until they break apart. Wilson, wincing, complains about his stiff knees and sits down on the floor next to the couch. He still looks wild-eyed, his hair disheveled, his tie half-undone. There’s blood on his white shirt. House can’t make himself look away from him.
He should probably tell Wilson how he feels. That House is in love with him too.
He knows he won’t.