Work Text:
If House tries hard enough, if he practises cognitive dissonance to the highest degree, he can almost pretend that this… whatever this is with Wilson is something more. That Wilson is here to stay, that they live together because they want to. That this isn’t just cohabitation while Wilson is going through divorce number whatever. That they’re sitting at the dining table — the table! not sprawled on the couch in front of the TV, switched on to some soap opera that he hasn’t been able to follow the plot of for at least a half hour — and eating food that was actually cooked in House’s apparently not-decorative kitchen, because they’re… what? A couple? In love?
He can almost pretend that this is his life for good, not just some pit-stop into happiness to stretch his legs and piss into a bush before merging back onto you’re-going-to-die-alone-and-you’ll-deserve-it highway.
But his own desire mortifies and disgusts him, and so he vows not to think about it.
And then he promptly fails that vow, and goes right back to this hopeless and disgusting desire that he has become so intimately acquainted with. However against his will it may have been. Because House doesn’t know a world in which he does not want and need James Wilson. He does not know how to carry himself without the innate knowledge that he is in love with his best friend.
And House is never going to tell him.
Will never admit, at least not out loud, to wanting him around — to wanting the easy domesticity of Saturday morning breakfast (eaten at the table; pancakes washed down with orange juice squeezed fresh; Wilson in an apron, maybe some curlers, yellow dish washing gloves pulled up to the elbow; House hiding his fondness behind the morning paper, timestamped: 1953, mid-July.)
It’s almost pathetic, this facsimile of wholesome family values that House has created in his mind. That he can’t help but crave, so long as it’s Wilson who was his pretty little house-wife. House would even take him zonked out on Quaaludes if it meant having this but more.
He shovels pasta into his mouth, chewing and swallowing more on the instinct of food in front of you rather than actually eating to taste it. Wilson is talking at him more than to him, ranting and raving about something House hadn’t bothered to pay any mind to. He says something and his words pitch up at the end followed by an expectant pause. House grunts, less of an answer more than a placation that he’s listening, even if they both know that he’s not. Wilson scoffs, this House hears, but continues talking anyway.
He’s good like that.
Let’s House’s mind wander to wherever it needs to go, and doesn’t fault him for it. House is content to let Wilson’s words wash over him as he eats. As he pretends it’s enough. As he hunkers down in the comfort of the fantasy he’d built in his mind.
The one where Wilson loves him enough to stay. The one where Wilson sleeps in his bed, not on his couch. Where he kisses House when they part ways at work, right in the middle of the hospital’s hallway, and kisses him hello when they join again for lunch. The one where Wilson cooks him dinner every night, and breakfast on Saturdays, and, somehow, that’s all that matters. It’s a nice little fantasy. It’s nice. House isn’t allowed nice.
Still, this is not the first time this story has been told. There are no ways else to tell it except to tell it: House will carry this secret to his grave.
It is better, he thinks, to love him at a distance than go through the mortification and loneliness of the inevitable separation if he ever opened his stupid mouth and let those stupid words fall out. Instead he thinks them. Thinks them so hard that sometimes he’s sure Wilson can hear them anyway. He always could read House’s mind, anyway. House wonders if it’d matter if he knew, anyway, and then he remembers.
He thinks them when Wilson does the dishes, soapy water sloshing over the side of the sink and wetting the hem of his shirt. He thinks them in the morning, tendrils of sleep still curling at the edges of his vision as he slowly blinks his eyes open, wrestled awake by the sound of Wilson’s hairdryer. He thinks them when Wilson says something inane and suddenly House knows what’s wrong with whichever nameless-faceless patient he’s seeing.
Thinks, so obvious and straightforward in the language, because what else could he say that would sum it up quite so much as: I am in love with you.
I love you. And you can never know.
He thinks, this will not end well.
Silence is better than the slaughter.
Wilson’s voice is a comfort, like a half-remembered melody that settles in the back of House’s brain. Something hauntingly familiar, like an old friend, like a gospel. House thinks that he will always be in tune to Wilson’s voice, that particular radio dial always tee’d up and ready. A lighthouse in a battering storm, dark rocks wet and jagged reaching out to the wood of a boat they want to claim, a path eked out with oscillating golden light against dark, dark blue. Wilson; a light on in the hallway, a set of keys on the hook by the door, an orange in two perfect halves.
“…and then Cuddy — who, as we’ve previously established, is the witch in my office — cursed me to turn into this Kafkaesque bug man, tormenting me for supernatural magic crimes.”
What?
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Oh, so now you want to listen to me.”
House rolls his eyes, turning bodily to face Wilson. He puts his head in his hand and flutters his lashes exaggeratedly, “I always listen to you, princess.”
“Hm,” Wilson replies with a bitchy eyebrow and droll tone, “clearly.”
Still, he starts to speak again and this time House does his best to actually pay attention.
House is tired.
That’s the long and short of it.
It’s a bone-weariness that has burrowed deep into him; dug right down to the marrow, rooted itself into the muscle. Tired is a state of being that House doesn’t know how to escape from. It’s all he’s got left, this tiredness, this everyday ache. He’s in his office chair, feet planted on the ground, but he swivels side to side the best he can. His head is thrown back as far as it can go, staring at the ceiling, not really thinking about anything of importance. Just staring.
Really, it’s insane the amount that he gets paid to spend hours upon hours just sitting in his office chair, unblinking gaze trained on the sterile-white ceiling.
As he always does, when faced with ample time to let his mind wander, House can’t help but think about Wilson. He’s upstairs in his office, so close but so impossibly far. House could go and bother him, but he’s with a patient right now. Not that that usually stops House, and anyway Wilson wouldn’t mind, even when the dying cancer patient inevitably starts crying in the armchair across from his desk. (“It’s a comfort in the face of their own mortality,” or whatever Wilson had said when House first made fun of him for buying it.) House knows that Wilson wouldn’t mind, but he doesn’t make any effort to move, any effort to go see Wilson like he wants to.
He wants to, and that’s why he doesn’t.
Because wanting is a state that House is familiar with. Wanting and taking and hoarding but not keeping. House knows a lot about taking but not keeping. Stacy taught him a lot about taking but not keeping. If there is one thing that House knows he needs with Wilson it is to keep him. House is not allowed to keep the things he wants, that’s what the universe has always told him. The minute he touches things with the full breadth of his desire, they turn to shit. He turns things to shit. So he has to keep Wilson at arms length. He has to. It’s the only work around, the only way to keep him.
House will die before he lets Wilson go. Wilson is not a want but a need, so House will keep his mouth shut and bleed with desire and keep him for it.
Besides, the depth of his desire is the whole issue. The issue with him is that this desire is what makes him so monstrous. His desire — the Wilson problem, as he has taken to calling it — bleeds into everything he does, a low thrumming undercurrent that tints every word he says, every action and every emotion and every thought. God, he wants so badly he’s almost stupid with it. It’s almost painful. It’s humiliating.
At home, when they’re sitting on the couch, bottles of beer slick with condensation that slides in fat drops down the brown glass to pool against his knuckle, his thigh tingles where Wilson’s is close enough to share heat. When they’re talking over cold fries in the hospital cafeteria, his hands shake with the desire to reach out, to grab Wilson’s own hand in his, just to feel it, just for the sake of touching. When he slips his fingers into the pocket of Wilson’s suit jacket and pulls out the worn leather wallet Wilson has carried around for years and years at this point, he aches with the desperate need to lean in and kiss the exasperation off of his lips. House wants to kiss his cheeks, his forehead. He wants to hold his hand while they walk the two streets from his apartment to the diner for a late lunch on a Sunday. He wants to go out to fancy restaurants for dinner neither of them will enjoy as much as the one that Wilson throws together with whatever he can find in House’s kitchen, just so that he can fall in love with the way the orange glow of candlelight flickers and dances across the planes of Wilson’s face.
The door opens and he doesn’t move to see who enters.
He waits for them to start speaking, eyes tracing a trail of dark spots peeking through the paint near the light fixture for the who-knows-how-manyth time.
“Working hard?” Wilson says, because he always could read House’s mind, and House can picture his stance a second before he turns to look — leaning hip to shoulder against the door frame, one leg over the other, arms crossed and eyebrow raised, as it seems to perpetually be when in House’s presence.
Yep.
There he is. Exactly as House imagined him. Fuck, he looks perfect.
The familiar itch spreads through his body like a summer wildfire after a Californian drought. House has never been to California. He thinks maybe he should go; ride the long streets atop his motorbike. Forget for half a second the brown hair and brown eyes that seem to be tattooed on the front lobe of his brain. But House is not in California. Has never been in California. He’s in New Jersey, and here Wilson is, ripe for the taking, coming to bother House.
“Need something?” he responds after a long, unbroken moment of eye contact, fraught with something House doesn’t know the name of.
“You haven’t come to bother me in almost two hours. Was starting to think you’d finally died.”
“You’d like that.”
He hums, a casual sort of agreement, and says, “I could finally get some peace and quiet around here.”
House’s hand flexes against the arm of his chair. He’s gripping it with white knuckles, holding himself back so hard that he hopes Wilson doesn’t notice just how obvious the desire within him is.
He wants.
He hates that. He hates wanting, doesn’t know how to do anything but.
“Why have you sequestered yourself away in here, House?” Wilson asks and his voice is that same gentle tone that he uses late at night when they’re both halfway to asleep on the couch, but House hasn’t excused himself to bed — when House has allowed the greed and selfishness that curls full-fisted around his body to keep him sat inches too close to Wilson, hours ticking further and further into the night.
“Working.”
They both know it’s a lie. House tries to convince himself of it anyway. It’s the only way he gets out of this with his sanity.
Wilson, as he always does, raises a single, perfect eyebrow and House feels the familiar clenching of his stomach, the bottomless falling, the swooping, the plummet. Wilson doesn’t question him, lets him get away with the lie with just a look and a minute flicker of concern in his eyes.
“…Case?”
“Nothing of interest. I’m sure someone will start the death march in a fun way soon enough. Have the ducklings doing rounds until something good falls into my lap.”
Wilson picks at the skin around his thumbnail, a nervous habit he’s had as long as House has known him, and House tracks the movement with his eyes. As he always does. He wants to pull Wilson’s hand away, hold it in his lap instead, stop him from tearing at skin that’s only just grown back. As he always does. Instead, he watches and shakes his head as Wilson rips a piece of skin off and quickly sticks his finger in his mouth as a drop of red blood swells up. For a second, House isn’t sure if he wishes he were the finger or the blood. He shakes his head again, wills away that thought, the too honest one. They haven’t said anything for a while, just watching each other. It should be weird, but it isn’t.
House huffs, “You always draw blood.”
“Yeah, I know,” Wilson says around his thumb. He wipes the saliva off onto his coat before sticking his hands in his pockets with an easy grin. He cocks his head, “lunch?”
House has never been good at denying himself, anyway. He wants and he wants and he wants until it swallows him whole and spits him out. He takes and he takes and he takes until the universe tells him that he’s had enough, but it never feels like enough. He wants, and he takes, and he does not keep. But he takes again, and wants forever.
“Sure. You’re buying.”
“Naturally,” Wilson says, and he’s not even angry about it.
House throws him a cocky grin, leans on his cane a bit more than usual when Wilson smiles back, and pretends the skipping of his heart is tachycardia.
“You’re jealous,” Cuddy says.
House glances at her, sidelong. They’re in the clinic — Wilson is on the other side of the room, one hand resting on the counter as he leans into the space of the newest, prettiest nurse. She’s short; southern accent and an easy smile, red hair pulled back into a loose ponytail.
Wilson is a flirt.
This is not new information.
House knows exactly just how often Wilson likes to flirt with the nurses. He has an itemised list of exactly which ones are still charmed by him, and which ones are still bitter over learning that Wilson never actually wants anything with them. Because he doesn’t. In the beginning, it was because he was married. He was a flirt, not a cheater, or so he told House. He doesn’t even do it for his own gain, never asks them for anything even remotely ethically ambiguous. He just likes the thrill of the chase.
House hates them. Seethes about it silently. Wishes they would die, wishes, for a brief moment, that Wilson would die because then at least he could be grieving something real.
Now, with the whole getting divorced again, sleeping on House’s couch again thing, House doesn’t know what to think. Now, he says it’s because not looking for the next Mrs. Wilson, doesn’t have the money to go through even more divorces. But he flirts. Sometimes, House thinks that the only reason Wilson even comes into work is to flirt with the nurses. The depth of his desire disgusts him. The fact of the matter is House wishes that Wilson was flirting with him. Still, even disgusted, House wants quietly, and hates himself for it. And hates Wilson for it.
“I’m not jealous,” he responds finally.
Cuddy scoffs. “You clearly are. You can’t take your eyes off him. I know you.”
“I’m not jealous,” he repeats. “I’m envious. Wilson isn’t mine for someone to take.”
“That’s pedantic and you know it.”
“Pedantry is my passion.”
“Wilson’s ass is your passion,” she grumbles.
“Do you need something?”
“A million dollars in funding, an eight-week paid vacation and you to do your job instead of yearning after my head oncologist.”
“Mm, sounds boring. I think I’ll keep yearning.”
Cuddy scoffs in disbelief, but seems to give up, “Fine. For now. Just don’t terrorise the nurses.”
She walks off, leaving House to his thoughts. Leaving House to watch how Nurse Red inches closer to Wilson. How Wilson’s smile widens, just slightly, just creeping toward the edge of flirtatious.
House grips his cane, knuckles turning white as he watches.
The fluorescent lights give him a headache.
Something like apathy tries to drip down his spine. A weak defence mechanism — it doesn’t work. It never has. House isn’t sure he’d ever be able to achieve apathy when in regards to James Wilson. He’s never been good dividing his attention. He sticks to things. Gets caught up on them, turning people into problems he can solve in his head. He is very, very good at solving problems.
Solving the Wilson problem? Not so much.
Wilson leans an arm against the counter. He says something. She laughs. He smiles, that dazzling win over the nurses smile that House hates so much. Clinic patients pass between them; seats fill, seats empty. House doesn’t know how much time passes. The only constant is this: Wilson flirts with the nurse, and House watches. A voyeur in the way of passing by a car crash, unable to help but look for a dead body.
Chasing a ghost.
Wilson glances up then, and his eyes catch on House. It’s like a magnet. He looked up, and now he won’t look away. House thinks this may be worse. The weight of Wilson’s full attention on him has never been a particularly comfortable thing to live with, no matter how much he craves it. It’s like trying to fight the wind on a cold winter’s day by setting yourself on fire. But House wants to be on fire.
Wants.
There is something holy to the desire. Something sacred.
House wants to kneel at the altar of Wilson. To take him into his body. To drink him down like communion. To taste him, to consume him, to hold him inside his ribs and let Wilson do the same.
He tilts his head, and House watches a thousand thoughts flicker across his face. He’s always been so open, to House, it’s always been so plain to see the cogs as they whirr in his brain. House watches as he reaches whatever conclusion he was searching for, the hint of a smirk teasing at the corner of his lip. Nurse Red says something. He laughs, and touches her arm, and his eyes never stray from House.
The grip on his cane is so tight it also hurts, the varnished wood digging into his palm. He can’t stay. He’s giving too much away if he leaves.
He leaves anyway. Pushes his way past patients and nurses and doctors alike. Brushes past Wilson and Nurse Red without so much as a word. Ignores when Wilson calls his name.
Walks out door and into the parking lot. The orchestra plays on, the world spins. The church bells toll, communion swirls down the drain.
The air is cold outside, and somewhere — more of a memory — House can smell the kerosene.
#
He’s in his office. It can’t be more than twenty minutes after he left the clinic. There’s still no case, still no sign of the ducklings. Cuddy has been and gone in a flurry of high heels and disapproval. There’s a knock at the door. It opens before he has a chance to tell whoever it is to go away. He knows it’s Wilson before he looks.
The worst part is, it’s not even like House doesn’t want to see Wilson. He doesn’t even have a good excuse for why he’s so… angry. He doesn’t get to lay claim on Wilson’s attention. Doesn’t get to be jealous, that’s not something he’s allowed to feel. But he feels it. Because he wants. It all comes back to that, the wanting. The craving. The desire wrapped around his bones, suspended in his blood stream, burrowed in his lungs. There is no House without this desire; it is a part of him he doesn’t know how to be rid of.
“Knock knock,” Wilson says as he enters, like a loser. God, he’s such a loser.
House wants him so bad.
“You left in a hurry,” he’s saying, face still so open. He’s confused. A little concerned, even. House hates him almost as much as he… well.
He’s admitted it to himself once today. He doesn’t have to rehash it.
“Had things to do.”
Wilson glances over him; office chair swaying, tennis ball in hand, Game Boy on the desk still playing the main menu music. “Clearly.”
House doesn’t say anything. He wants to look away. Sometimes, just looking at Wilson hurts. He doesn’t look away. The thing about Wilson is that he’s beautiful. He’s got this simple sort of beauty. Soft hair, swooping over doe eyes; lips always a soft pink; his intrinsic, natural, genuine kindness has transformed him into this cherub, this angel of pure and simple loveliness. He’s so beautiful it’s heartbreaking. He’s magnetic. Addictive. So incredibly attractive that it makes complete sense how everyone who has ever met him falls completely over themselves for even a second of his undivided attention. House wishes he was better than that. He will never be better than that.
If Wilson notices the awkwardness to the silence, he doesn’t mention it. House feels it. It chokes him. Squeezes at him until all that he can feel is the gripping uneasiness wrapped around his throat, pressing against trachea, crushing his larynx. Anxiety seeps into him, a coldness that rinses over the back of his skull, a ringing in his ears. He doesn’t know what the fuck is wrong with him. Something is always wrong with him. This is why he does not get what he wants. This is why he does not deserve it.
It takes a long time to get his breathing back under control. It takes a long time for the water to stop rising.
Wilson is speaking. His voice is soft, but not quiet. Gentle, but not condescending. He’s always been good at filling the silence when House wanders off into thought, even better when he gets wrenched into an anxiety-spiral. He’s always been good at recognising when all that House needs is the reminder that someone is near him, that someone cares enough to block out the noise in his head.
He doesn’t tune into the words, but House knows that Wilson has seen the shift. Wilson keeps talking. He talks for long enough that the ducklings make it back to the office and leave again. He talks for so long House barely registers the gentle herding until he’s in the passenger seat of Wilson’s Dodge Neon.
Wilson drives them home, keeping up the running commentary for the entire trip. Home. House’s home. Not Wilson’s. Not really. But still, it’s Wilson’s car parked out front. It’s Wilson’s toothbrush in the cup next to House’s, Wilson’s money spent on groceries, Wilson, Wilson, Wilson.
And House wants him so much he almost doesn’t know what to do with himself. Wants, and wants, and wants until he’s filled with nothing else. Wishes it was real, wants it to be. Knows it can’t be.
Wants it anyway.
They go inside and Wilson sits him down on the couch. He leaves the TV off, but turns on the CD player. The music fades into the background, just enough to keep out the silence. And, look. House is fine. Seriously, he is. He’s very good at being alone. He’s used to it, by now. He doesn’t need Wilson to do all of this. But he likes it. He’s not going to stop Wilson fussing over him.
At some point Wilson comes back into the living room and hands him a beer, sitting on the couch next to him and cracking his own open.
“Ready to talk yet?” he asks softly.
House grunts and takes a long sip before he responds, “Not much to talk about, really.”
Wilson looks at him. Really looks at him, eyes roaming House’s face until he feels like he’s on fire. And then he hums, “Okay.”
And then he moves on.
Because he’s good like that.
In the end it falls into place as easy as it always was going to. That is to say that House fights it every step of the way, and Wilson is long-suffering and irritated but fond about it anyway. It’s not some great big revelation. Not a fight. Nothing dramatic happens. The pieces just fall into the puzzle as they were always going to. This is not the first time this story has been told.
It goes like this: Wilson starts looking for a place to live. It continues like this: House wants him to stay.
It all comes back down to want.
#
There are onions sweating off on the stove, the smell of melted butter and crushed garlic wafting from the dutch oven pot.
Wilson has some music playing softly in the background, something bluesy that House couldn’t name if he tried. House is leaning against the counter watching as Wilson cuts carrots and potatoes into neat little squares, steady and perfect with his knife skills as if he were a surgeon and not an oncologist. Out the window, the sky is darkening from a burnt red to a dusky purple-blue. It’s a clear night, and House is sure there would be stars if the streetlights of New Jersey weren’t quite so abundant. It’s nice. The kitchen is warm, gently lit by the yellow-globe above them, and House is running his mouth while Wilson listens, focused on cooking.
He has a dish towel slung over his shoulder as if it’s imperative he has it constantly at hand, and House can’t even bring himself to mock him for it. Instead, he’s hopelessly endeared, watching as Wilson moves around the tiny kitchen like he owns it — like an executive chef hustling for that lucrative third tyre-company star.
He brings it up in a lull of words, eyes trained on the task at hand. He’s searing off the beef; onions, potatoes and carrots already in the pot with the red wine and tomato paste. It’s so domestic that House isn’t prepared at all for what comes out of his mouth.
“I’ve been talking with a realtor,” he says casually, as if House’s world doesn’t end before he’s even finished his sentence.
House responds with a noncommittal grunt, as if that’s an acceptable answer.
Wilson is content enough to pretend it is, and keeps talking, “I’ve got my eye on a few apartments not too far from the hospital. Couple of blocks away from here. I’ve put in an offer for one of them, it’s looking pretty promising. I can be out of your hair soon enough.”
“Oh.”
Wilson looks up from the beef. “Oh?”
House shrugs and doesn’t offer much more. Wilson stares at him for a long moment, broken only by a drop of oil spitting out of the pan to land on the tender flesh of his hand. House watches the skin bloom red, and wishes he could just reach out. Wilson brings his knuckle to his mouth, licking over the oil burn with pink tongue House longs to know the taste of.
“Spit’s not going to do much. Go run it under water, idiot. I can watch the pan.”
Wilson raises an eyebrow but follows his direction without argument. House wishes he knew how to be softer, how to be gentle. Wishes it came naturally to him, as it did to Wilson. Wishes, but wishes only for Wilson.
House turns the beef over. The oil crackles in the pan, the water runs down the drain.
A long time passes like that, the only noise ambient, and then House breaks the silence. “What do you want me to say?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve put in an offer. Why are you telling me?”
“I thought you wanted me gone!”
House scoffs but doesn’t say anything.
Wilson looks up at that, and it’s like a switch has flipped. His words are angry when he speaks, “and what’s that supposed to mean?”
“What do you want it to mean?”
“Are we going to have this whole conversation in questions?”
“Do you want to?”
It diffuses the tension, but only a little bit.
House sighs, there’s not a lot of time or space left to hide. “I know you were looking at a place. Your realtor left a message on the machine.”
“What message? I don’t remember getting a message from him.”
“I deleted it. You didn’t get the place. Someone else was willing to pay more. You would’ve had to have counter-offered with something even better by Monday.”
“Why the fuck would you do that? Why’d you delete the message? Oh my god, I could’ve given him a better offer. I could’ve gotten that apartment!”
“Because!” he says, voice and shoulders raised, a wet cat hissing on the street.
“That’s not an answer, House! You can’t just say ‘because’ and have it all magically make sense to me.”
House is cornered. He can’t find a way out of this. The words spill out of his mouth before he can stop them, entirely without his permission, “Because- Because I wanted you to stay. Alright? I want you to stay. Here. With me.”
Wilson shuts off the faucet. House moves the beef from pan to plate and kills the flame. The stew still bubbles away on the back burner. Wilson turns to face him, taking measured steps until they’re toe to toe.
“Why?”
“Why do you think.”
“I know what I think. I want you to say it.”
Want is something that House is intimately familiar with. It’s something he’s lived with it under his skin for a decade. It’s simple, now, the want.
House wants Wilson. House doesn’t think he should be allowed to have him.
“Because,” he whispers, and begs Wilson not to make him say it.
“That’s not an answer, House,” Wilson whispers back, and his gaze drops from House’s eyes to his lips and back again.
He’s going to make House say it. He’s going to make him.
House has never known a day in the last ten years where he did not want Wilson in some way. He isn’t sure he’ll ever know a day like that again. He wants, and he wants, and he wants. He shouldn’t be allowed to take. He takes anyway.
House kisses Wilson with the full breadth of his ugly desire and Wilson cradles his face in his palms as if he were a fragile, precious thing. His hands are warm against House’s cheeks, his lips soft against his lips. For once, House thinks maybe he can have this. Maybe he can eat his cake and have it too.
Maybe, for once, just maybe.
When they part, there is a fizzle of electricity between them. An electromagnetic current drawing them ever closer and closer. There is no space between their bodies, and House still feels as though they are too far apart. He wants to sit inside of Wilson’s rib cage, to consume him and to be consumed. He wants every part of Wilson to coincide with every part of himself. He wants their names said forever in the same breath. And when they die — and House will have to die first, or they will have to die within the same second, because he refuses to live in a world in which James Wilson is not alive — he wants their bones to be so intimately combined that no archaeologist would be ever able to separate them.
Wilson draws him back into another, equally as heady kiss, and House is so overwhelmed he doesn’t know where to put his hands. They skirt over Wilson’s hips, his waist, they rest on his shoulders for a moment, against his chest, they journey up to cup his cheeks, before settling around his neck, his fingers creeping into his hair. Wilson smiles against his lips, a breath of a laugh escaping between them, and pulls back again. He doesn’t go far, instead opting to rest his forehead against House’s and let his eyes flutter open.
“Hi,” he says, and his voice is so soft, so adoring that it almost hurts.
“Hi,” House says, and it’s maybe the truest thing he has ever said.
Love is a fickle and funny thing, and silence is worst at slaughter. All the words have already been said, but let him say them anyway. They have been here before. They will be there again.
Really, there was no other ending to this story.
House leans over and takes Wilson’s hand, and that, for once, is enough.