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It’s just sex.
That’s what House tells himself every time it happens.
It’s just sex.
Just sex after a monster truck rally, drunk on beer, testosterone and diesel fumes.
Just sex when they end up in bed together after a bad week, or bad day.
Just sex when Wilson turns up at his apartment with a suitcase and red-rimmed eyes. Julie has left him, and Wilson has nowhere else to go. Not that he would go anywhere else, they both know.
Only that night, they don’t have sex. They climb into Houses’s bed, kiss hungrily for a few minutes, then fall asleep with Wilson’s shaky breaths and almost-tears between them and House’s arms around Wilson.
House wakes up alone to the frustratingly familiar sound of Wilson’s hair dryer. He wonders, not for the first time, whether Wilson left it under his sink or hidden behind books or somewhere else in the apartment, but he’s looked, so he knows that Wilson must have one in his car, because he always has one when he stays over.
When did it go from fucking to staying over? House knows the answer, of course. He always knows the answer. It was after Stacy left him, when he was in the darkest place of his life, when all he could do was cling to Wilson and fuck him until his leg screamed in so much pain that he could justify the amount of Vicoden he shook out onto his palm.
He pretends to be asleep when Wilson comes by the bed to say he’s going to work, and Wilson lets him pretend because he’s too tired and emotionally wrung out to protest.
House avoids him after that, as much as is possible for two men living and working together. Wilson sleeps on the couch. They don’t have sex. He complains about the pranks, he gets angry, he becomes resigned. He files halfway through House’s cane, and the resultant fight lands them at home, in Houses’s bed, fucking as if their lives depend on it.
Knowing them, House muses, it probably does.
House is always on top. Has always been on top, ever since that first night when House bailed him out of jail because he thought Wilson was ‘not boring.’ It had nothing to do with Wilson’s eyes, House tells himself. And certainly nothing to do with the way Wilson looked at him with those eyes, or the suddenly indrawn breath when they actually saw each other for the first time.
House is always on top. No negotiation, no protest, no question. Except tonight he’s on the bottom, the pain in his leg far too much to bear his weight as he fucks Wilson. So Wilson climbs on top of him and sinks down onto his cock, and House has nowhere to look except Wilson’s face. It’s become a far too familiar position of late, House thinks, even as he races towards climax.
As orgasm comes upon Wilson, House studies his face, as much as is possible when he’s moments away from his own completion. It’s the first time he’s ever looked so closely. Wilson’s mouth is wide open, his eyes squeezed shut, and a tear trickles down his cheek.
A purely biological response, House tells himself. Besides, it’s just sex.
Another tear falls, and he sees the shape of his own name on Wilson’s lips and hears the whispered breath. House has always suspected that Wilson wants more, but now he knows.
He knows, and he’s terrified. Terrified of trying and failing. Terrified of losing the dream, the hope that they could make it work. Terrified that Wilson would grow tired of taking care of him, the way Stacy did.
Despite his leg, House brings a warm, wet washcloth when he comes back from the bathroom and silently hands it over. Wilson accepts it with a frown, because House has never, in all the years they’ve been doing this, done such a thing, but cleans himself off, drops the towel to the floor, and moves over to give House room on his side of the bed.
And since when did he and Wilson have their own sides of the bed?
They don’t talk about it. They go about their usual morning rituals and complaints and arguments, sounding to anyone who might be listening like the old married couple Cuddy calls them when she’s being particularly spiteful.
At work, nothing has changed. House steals Wilson’s french fries at lunch, barges into Wilson’s office loudly, mocks him about his tie and what it means about his sex life to House’s team.
He might have gone a bit far with that last thing, he thinks when Wilson simply turns and leaves rather than responding with words. Whatever intimacy there had been between them fizzles in that instant, and House feels his leg cramp so badly he needs an extra Vicoden or three just to manage it.
Wilson moves out.
House won’t admit that he misses having Wilson in his apartment. He won’t concede that he prefers knowing that Wilson is on his couch or in his bed at the end of the night instead of out with some nameless woman. He won’t back down and ask Wilson to come back. His pride won’t let him. Besides, sex is just sex, isn’t it?
Wilson comes back anyway, after the debacle with Grace. House fucks him in the entryway, then on the couch, then in his bed. His leg feels like it’s been hit by lightning and gone through a meat grinder at the same time, but neither of them mention the extra Vicoden. Neither of them let themselves think of what the Vicoden has done to House’s libido, and the miracle it is that he’s able to do that much in a single day. They spend the morning scowling at each other and ignoring each other, until House’s patient and his fellows get on his last nerve and he bursts into Wilson’s office to yell about how everyone’s a liar and an idiot and Wilson’s the worst of them all.
Wilson’s laugh startles House, as does his insistence that House is, in fact, the bigger idiot. House stalks away in a fury when Wilson won’t clarify that statement. They fuck roughly that night, with teeth and nails and more curses than usual. Wilson’s back on the couch the next day.
Tritter ruins everything. It takes Wilson being arrested on the way to House’s father’s funeral and remembering how they met for the ice to thaw between them. It’s not easy, but afterwards, House wonders if they’ll be able to be friends again, even if the sexual part of their relationship remains a memory.
They kiss for the first time in three months in Wilson’s office, in the middle of an argument about House’s Vicoden use, which has been getting out of hand again. Wilson scrambles to lock the door and shut the blinds while House makes sure the balcony is free of fellows or spying nurses. They’ve never had sex at work before, but they find that Wilson’s couch isn’t half-bad as a substitute for the bed they both wish they were using.
When House finds out that Wilson is dating Amber, his stomach flips in that uncomfortable way he’s come to expect when he knows who Wilson is doing. What he doesn’t expect is the spasm in his heart that rivals the usual one in his leg. He remembers the last time he and Wilson had sex, and the fight that left them both with blue balls. He thinks about how he feigned sleep when Wilson got on his knees by his bed in the middle of the night and kissed his scar with such tenderness that House cried himself to sleep and couldn’t look at Wilson the next morning. It’s been over a month since then, and House suddenly understands that Amber is the one who got between him and Wilson.
They’d started seeing each other the next day.
It has nothing to do with House refusing to acknowledge the tender gesture.
House is lost when Wilson leaves after Amber’s death. He never realized how much he counted on his friend.
His lover.
That’s what they’ve become, House admits to himself in the middle of the night. They were lovers, but now it’s fucked up and they haven’t seen each other in months and he cries himself to sleep again, this time because he was too much of a stubborn asshole to notice what Wilson has tried to offer, over and over again. What Wilson will never offer again, after this.
He would be stupid to offer when I’ve rejected every overture, House snarls at himself.
“I love him,” House tells Dr. Nolan on the night when he cajoles a pass out of Nolan and visits Lydia’s house. He’d almost left for Wilson’s apartment after her rejection, but knew he couldn’t handle two rejections in one night, and it wouldn’t be about sex, anyway. “I don’t know what that means.”
When House turns up on Wilson’s doorstep after his stint in rehab is finished, there’s no question of Wilson kicking him out. Wilson looks him up and down once, then grabs his bag in one hand and House’s shoulder with the other and propels him inside. Wilson offers the bed, quipping that House probably hasn’t been in a real bed in months, and House declines rudely, not wanting to be anywhere near the bed where Wilson had sex with Amber. Not after having hallucinations about her for so long. Not after realizing that he actually loves this man.
House wakes up in the middle of the night to find Wilson sitting on the coffee table in his pajamas, watching him sleep with sad eyes.
“I got a new mattress,” Wilson says. “Just so you know.” It’s as much of an offer as Wilson’s willing to make, and the old House might have accepted it and followed him to bed, but House has had a lot of time to think while in rehab, and he’s changed.
“We can’t go back to how it was,” House replies, shocking them both with his straightforwardness. “I want different things.”
“What do you want?”
House looks away. After a long time, Wilson gets up and returns to bed alone. “Everything,” House whispers into the darkness.
It’s easy for them to fall back into their usual routine. They’ve had fights before, gone months without sex before. No one at the hospital knows about that aspect of their relationship, and they’re both happy to keep it that way. House gets used to the couch.
When Wilson buys the loft that Cuddy wanted for her and Lucas to get back at her for hurting House, House falls even more in love with his friend, though he refuses to admit it, even to himself. They’re not having sex any more, after all, and there’s no telling what Wilson would do with that particular bit of information. Still, he sits by his bedside after the surgery he didn’t want Wilson to have, and comforts him when Tucker turns out to be the same asshole House predicted he would be.
They sit on the couch holding each other for a long time, not talking. They kiss once before going to bed, where they wrap their arms around each other and go to sleep, House curled protectively around Wilson. Wilson wakes to the feather-light touch of House’s fingers as he strokes Wilson’s new scar, and he can’t stop the tears. He’s always been more of a crier than House, but, for once, House doesn’t mock him.
They make love slowly and gently, and Wilson is late for work for the first time in a very long time. House tells everyone that they were entertaining hookers the night before, and everyone ignores him, as he intended.
The truth is stranger than fiction.
Things come to a head when Wilson admits he’s interested in Nora. House, cynical though he is, had hoped that the renewal of the sexual relationship with Wilson means more than Wilson seems to think it does. His hopes of a better relationship, of turning sex into something more, crumble. His head fills with jealousy, and he gets mean. He reacts. He tells Wilson that he’s interested in her, too, and creates a plan on the spot about pretending to be gay to win her.
Only, he doesn’t think it’s pretend, and Nora believes him.
“I love this man,” Wilson says, in front of Nora, in front of an entire restaurant full of people. “And I am not wasting another moment of my life denying that!” Wilson finishes. House watches with wide, surprised eyes as Wilson goes down on one knee and opens a jewelry box. Nestled inside is a ring House recognizes as Wilson’s grandfather’s. He’d seen it once at Wilson’s mother’s house, and she’d confided that she was hoping Wilson would want it one day. House has spent years trying to convince himself that she wasn’t telling him she was ok with him being with her son, but wonders, now, if that’s what showing him the ring was actually all about.
“Gregory House, will you marry me?” Wilson asks, his voice firm and serious, though House knows him well enough to know that he doesn’t expect House to accept. It’s all a joke to Wilson, an attempt to humiliate House, to end anything he might be having with Nora. Little does he know that there’s nothing to end.
“Wow. I didn’t expect this,” House says, to give himself time, to give himself a moment to analyze Wilson’s face, his own feelings, what he knows of the man in front of him. Wilson raises an eyebrow in entreaty. Maybe he’s not joking, House muses.
Before he can second guess himself, House stands, wobbly with nerves, one hand on the table to keep himself upright. He holds out his other hand to Wilson, who takes it, and pulls just enough that Wilson would have to get up or risk House’s bad leg buckling and dragging him down. Wilson lets House win, climbing to his feet. House releases the table and touches Wilson’s cheek in a tender move they’ve only done a few times with each other, always in the middle of the night, alone, in the dark, and never in public. Wilson’s eyes widen in surprise.
He didn’t expect this, House thinks as he leans in to kiss Wilson on the mouth. He didn’t expect it, but he’s not upset. He doesn’t expect Wilson to wrap his arms around him and kiss him back with such passion. They’re both out of breath when they pull back for air.
“James,” House says, his eyes locked on Wilson’s, his fingers still stroking his cheek. “James.”
“Greg,” Wilson replies, and House is entranced by the way he says his name, by the passion in his voice, by the warmth in his eyes. “Is that a yes?”
House looks around, sees the people for the first time in a long while. He sees Nora holding a hand to cover her ecstatic smile, her eyes watering.
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”