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House had done a lot of stupid things his life, so the motorcycle definitely wasn’t the stupidest. It didn’t even make the top one hundred. But with House now cursing and sweating, doubled over in pain, Wilson cursed the damned thing as if it held sole responsibility for all of House’s suffering.
The evening had started off well enough. Wilson’s car had been in the shop for some brake work. He’d intended to take a cab home. But then House, of course, broomed in on his loudly orange bike in his motorcycle jacket, braked mere feet ahead of Wilson’s path, and then revved the engine several times for good measure, just in case it was somehow physically possible for Wilson not to notice his existence.
“C’mon, I’ll give you a ride home. Hop on, you know you want to.”
“No,” Wilson had said.
“I got me a bitch-pad,” House had been relentless as always and patted the seat behind him, “for my bitch.”
“No,” Wilson had insisted as vehemently as he could.
It never was truly vehement with House, though.
They’d driven halfway around the state (House had an extremely loose definition of “ride home”, unsurprisingly) by the time night had fallen. Stopped in two bars along the way, one of which had been a biker bar where House had promptly insulted one of the other fine patrons and which might technically have resulted in House’s death, if Wilson hadn’t rushed in at the last second and floored the other guy. Which technically meant that Wilson had also insulted that same patron in a way which might technically have resulted in his death, except that the other bikers were apparently so impressed that the mild-mannered looking man with the textbook haircut and suit and tie had tried to pick a fistfight with a biker gang in a bar, that instead they just laughed and gave Wilson a round of applause, and House and Wilson another round of beers.
“Maybe I should be the bitch,” House had said when he raised his glass to Wilson.
“Does that mean I get to ride in front?”
“Nope! But I’ll let you grind up against my butt, as close as you like.”
Riding on a motorcycle with House while tipsy was an even worse idea than riding on a motorcycle with House in general. Wilson did it anyway, until they’d gone hopelessly far and had zero chance of making it in to work tomorrow before noon. And only then, finally, did House stop outside what was probably the country’s shittiest-looking MotoLodge and clutch at his leg with an audible hiss of pain.
Wilson took over, as he always did: got them registered, acted as a crutch and hobbled House over to their room, heaved House onto the bed and onto his back. By that point, House’s brow was just starting to break out in a sweat from the pain.
“You overdid it again,” Wilson accused.
“Yes, mother!” House snapped. “Now, less of the lecture, more of the pain-killers, please?”
Wilson found the pills in House’s motorcycle jacket and forced House to take them with an actual glass of water for once, even though House rolled his eyes at Wilson’s insistence. Wilson watched from his seat on the far bed as House’s leg twitched and spasmed, and House half-screamed in response.
The guy in the room next door started banging on the wall and yelled, “Keep it down in there, for fuck’s sake! My kids are in the other room!”
“Then maybe you should scream ‘fuck’ some more!” Wilson shouted right back. With a weary sigh, he rose from his bed and sat on House’s instead.
“No,” House insisted.
“You’re cramping up. That’s not just going to go away on its own.”
“It will eventually. What do you think I am, a perpetual motion device?”
“Of pain?” Wilson considered. “Possibly. We should report you to the nearest physics lab. They can power the whole country on your idiocy.”
“No,” House repeated vehemently.
Wilson just raised his eyebrows. “You know you’re going to take off your pants for me.”
It turned out that House was never truly vehement when it came to Wilson, either. Wilson had House’s pants off only a minute later, with comparatively little trouble. Although, with House, ‘comparatively little’ only meant that Wilson didn’t need to rush himself to the ER and probably wouldn’t even have a black eye tomorrow.
“I don’t want you…” House was gasping now, and clutching the gaping scar in his thigh with both hands. “…To tell all your buddies…” He clenched his teeth tight, and a shudder ran all through his body, forcing him to throw his head back. “…That I’m…easy…” Nevertheless, he stubbornly finished his defensive barb against genuine intimacy.
"No one has ever called you easy,” Wilson said, and forced House’s hands away from his leg, “I promise. Now shut up and put out.”
Wilson had never actually seen House’s scar until now. Wilson had certainly never touched it. House had been stereotypically belligerent about hiding it, even after he’d first come out of the hospital from his initial infarction. Other than the “butchers” who had created the scar in the first place, Wilson didn’t know that anyone had ever seen it. House was just the sort of idiot who would handle all his “follow-up appointments” personally.
It said something about the level of House’s pain that he let Wilson see and touch it now.
Wilson might have been a doctor, but this wasn’t his area of expertise. He still had his basic anatomy, though (helpfully honed through House’s semi-annual “medical-quiz strip poker” nights at which, completely unbafflingly, Wilson had been the sole attendant for the last decade).
“Does this hurt?” Wilson asked, only a little maliciously, and dug his thumb into the muscle of House’s thigh above the scar.
House screamed in pain.
Their next-door neighbor banged on the wall again. “What are you two doing in there?”
Wilson looked at House, but House’s eyes were flitting rapidly back and forth behind his closed lids, and he clearly wasn’t capable of answering. So Wilson answered for him, “Your mother!”
House didn’t even crack a smile. Wilson started to panic. House had had plenty of episodes of pain before, but Wilson had never seen one this bad.
With nothing else to do, Wilson pressed into the knot of cramped muscle in House’s thigh again and began to massage it slowly. Wilson was worried enough that he tried to be gentle at first, but that didn’t seem to cause House any less pain, so instead Wilson went for hard. The pain seemed equal, but hard meant that the worst of the cramp eased up faster. Wilson saw a shaky gasp escape House’s parted lips just as he felt the worst of the knot give under the driving pressure of his thumbs.
The most painful part over, Wilson kneaded his fingers, one after the other in slow, rhythmic succession, in and out of the muscle of House’s thigh. The sweat cooled on House’s brow as Wilson worked, and it seemed to Wilson that the feverish overheated emanations from House’s skin also settled back into the normal warmth of the human body temperature. House no longer felt like the screaming embodiment of pain to Wilson’s hands, but instead like a man who’d simply been through too much.
As House’s spasms quieted and drew further apart, Wilson moved one hand lower. He kept one thumb on the pulse above House’s scar, of course, to head off any twinges heading back up through House’s nervous system. His other hand began massaging its way downwards, though. It felt almost profane to touch House’s scar, the living embodiment of all House’s suffering and yet strangely not the cause of even half of it, but Wilson thumbed it carefully up and down, top to bottom, in three long, slow strokes.
Wilson hadn’t known what to expect, but the flesh itself had healed as much as it ever would. The wound itself wasn’t what prevented anyone from touching House. It clearly could be better cared for, though. Wilson massaged it gently, and the twisted remains of House’s thigh sagged almost as if with relief. It was an ugly slice taken out of House’s thigh – no way around that – but still it needed tending. The tissue eased noticeably with Wilson’s touch. This was a wound that needed attention, not something to be medicated into a failed attempt at oblivion.
“You really should see a regular masseur,” Wilson said despairingly.
House muttered something under his breath that Wilson couldn’t make out.
Wilson sat up, suddenly more alert. House attempting to talk was a huge relief after his complete loss of consciousness earlier. “Hookers don’t count,” Wilson tried.
House’s lips moved around the ghosts of words, but he still couldn’t manage to speak.
“I know, I know,” Wilson filled in House’s side of the conversation, “I said it myself. You, certainly, are too much of a gentleman to call me a hooker to my face.”
House’s lips twitched, and the lines around his eyes softened into the hint of a smile, the hint of a laugh.
Wilson let out a long, unsteady breath. It seemed like he’d gotten House through this, somehow. Methodically, his one thumb kept pressing circles into House’s thigh while his other traced up and down House’s scar, soothing him.
House tried to speak again, but his voice cracked, and he gestured toward the empty plastic MotoLodge cup on the bedside table. Wilson hurried to get up, fill it in bathroom sink, and rush it back to House’s side. House managed to half raise himself up against the headboard and drank the entire cup in one long, slow pull. Wilson watched the stubble rise and fall on House’s throat in time with his swallows and let his mind go blissfully blank.
One done, House coughed twice to clear his throat, and then demanded – still hoarsely – “Did you really make a ‘yo momma’ joke?”
Wilson let out a borderline-hysterical laugh. “That – that – is all you have to say?”
“Way uncool, so last decade,” House insisted, shaking his head sadly at Wilson. “Here, help me up. I need to pee.” He paused pointedly. “And, no, you’re not invited to come in with me.”
Wilson rolled his eyes. “I’ve already copped my feel. My stealing another base or two won’t kill you.” He helped House up anyway and let the idiot stagger his own way into the bathroom. “I’m calling Cuddy!” Wilson shouted at the closed bathroom door. “You’re not going in to work tomorrow.”
“Why not?” House shouted back. “Hoping for another opportunity to get a look at my wiener?”
Wilson didn’t even honor that with a response. Cuddy picked up on the fourth ring and swore at Wilson a whole lot before she even let him speak.
“House and I are calling in sick.”
A poignant pause. “Both of you?” she finally repeated incredulously. “What did you do?”
Wilson sputtered. “Why do you think it was my fault?” he demanded, quite logically he thought.
“Because,” Cuddy said, “if it was House’s fault, he wouldn’t have even called in the first place. You two would just have not shown up. But the fact that you’re calling means you feel guilty, which means that this is all your fault. You’re an incurable enabler, you know.”
“I am not!” Wilson sputtered. “This wasn’t my idea!”
“She’s not wrong,” House’s voice sing-songed from the bathroom.
“Oh, you be quiet!” Wilson snapped back. “And didn’t you say just this morning that Cuddy is categorically, by definition, wrong about everything in perpetuity throughout the entire universe?”
“Cuddy is wrong about everything in perpetuity throughout the entire universe,” House confirmed agreeably. “Except this.”
“You know what?” Cuddly said wearily. “I’m going back to bed. You two do…whatever it is you need to do tomorrow, and I’ll see you Thursday.” She hung up on Wilson with extreme prejudice.
“Oh, I give up.” Wilson let out an exhausted sigh and flopped back on the bed.
“You—” House began. And then there was a clatter from the bathroom, followed by a clash. House swore loudly.
Wilson was up off the bed and had flung open the bathroom door before he even realized it.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” House said, but he wasn’t splayed out on the floor in agony the way Wilson had feared. Instead House was trying desperately to inch himself down onto his knees and sending trembling spasms back up through his thigh as he did so.
“What are you doing?” Wilson demanded, and launched himself bodily at House to keep him from falling. “Stop that!”
“I dropped—” House trailed off with a frantic little laugh. “I—”
It was clear House was too humiliated to say the words, but Wilson looked and saw how half a dozen little pills had fallen into the toilet and were even now slowly dissolving in the water. “Forget about it,” Wilson insisted and tried to pull House away. “Come on.”
“Forget about it?” House shouted at him in disbelief. And there was the neighbor – third time’s the charm – banging on the wall again. “Can you even begin to understand what it’s like? The pain? I—”
“No,” Wilson shut him up, “I have no idea, but it doesn’t matter because I have this.” He waved a second bottle of Vicodin in House’s face. “So, just for tonight, can we not go toilet diving?”
The pill bottle placated House so quickly and completely that Wilson debated carrying one to dangle in front of House’s nose like a carrot at all times. Wilson got the toilet flushed, House’s hands mostly washed, and House settled back into bed in record time. (He even got a peek at House’s wiener before he kindly pulled House’s underwear back up.)
House settled back onto the creaky mattress almost docilely once Wilson had fed him his magic pills, and Wilson flopped down beside him. The second bed was there, unused, but Wilson didn’t dignify it with even a glance. Of its own accord, Wilson’s hand drifted down to House’s thigh and resumed its massage, sleepily this time, with no further sense of urgency.
“You didn’t know I would abduct you this evening,” House finally said into the dark of their motel room.
“Mmm-mmm,” Wilson concurred with a yawn.
“You were planning to take a taxi home.”
“Mmm…”
“There was no reason for you to have a spare bottle of Vicodin on you. You had no way of knowing that you would even see me.” House’s words had the accusing edge to them that they always did when he was trying to solve a mystery.
“’Course I did,” Wilson snuffled a laugh into House’s shoulder.
“How?”
Wilson raised his head long enough to give House an incredulous look. “I know you, House!” he exclaimed and then flopped right back down onto the pillow.
“So, in preparation, you decided to carry around spare meds, just in case?” House shot back, equally incredulous.
“If this is surprising to you, apparently you don’t know me,” Wilson retorted.
House was silent for some time, but it definitely was not due to sleep. It was heavy, poignant, so much so that it prevented Wilson from being able to sleep either.
“What?” Wilson finally demanded.
“Marry me.”
The silence suddenly got ten times heavier, more poignant, and less sleep-inducing.
“…If you’re not married already, that is,” House finally hedged. “It’s so hard to keep track, after all.”
Wilson draped his free arm around House’s waist. “When Cuddy told us to do whatever it is we need to do, I don’t think she meant getting married.”
“No,” House agreed, “she meant fucking. But I just don’t feel comfortable giving it away before marriage. I’m worried you won’t respect me anymore if you think I’m a slut.”
Wilson laughed, and then House laughed too – genuinely this time – and even if they didn’t get married (despite House’s insistence that Vegas was “only a 38-hour ride”), at the very least House didn’t kick or scream or bite when Wilson touched him.
Well, not much.