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“Guy’s peeing all the time,” House tells Wilson regarding his patient, who sits helplessly on the exam bed, looking a little lost at the double conversation House is holding. “Play. Interested?”
Wilson really shouldn’t be standing in the doorway of the clinic exam room—patient privacy, and all—but this play business is interesting.
Wilson likes plays. He would enjoy going to one with House, he thinks, nodding internally at his sound reasoning. It’s heaps better than a monster truck rally (though he would obviously never tell House that). And the tickets cost $168; it’d be a shame to let them go to waste.
“Sure. Want me to pick you up?”
“I’m not going.”
“You said two tickets,” Wilson says, flummoxed.
House rolls his eyes. “You thought this was a date?” Then, to the patient: “Any other symptoms?”
The patient looks relieved to be addressed. “My stomach hurts. I have back pain and muscle aches...”
Did Wilson think it was a date? No! Of course not! Not until House mentioned it—blurted it out so blatantly like that—but now that he has, Wilson can’t stop thinking about it and—
“Uh, I really—I really should go,” he stammers, attempting to escape, to collect his thoughts away from House’s piercing, all-knowing gaze.
House fishes out two slips of paper, waving them casually in Wilson’s direction. “Want the tickets or not?”
And Wilson hesitates. He asks, “Why don’t you wanna go with me?”
“It’s a play,” House says, like that explains everything. “Dudes only go to plays if they’re dragged by women they’re hoping to see naked.”
Of course. Very House-ian logic. “So why are you giving them to me?”
“Maybe there’s someone you want to see naked.”
Oh, how generous of him—
Good God, why does the image of a naked House flash through Wilson’s mind in that exact moment?
Thrown by the intrusive thought—and the full-body reaction that came with it—Wilson snatches the tickets from House’s hand. “Alright,” he mutters, and he flees.
~
Wilson stares at the tickets lying flat on his desk, his elbows on the wood, fingers threaded through his hair as he thinks and thinks and thinks.
Yeah, so maybe it’s finally out of hand now, this attraction to his best friend that’s lain dormant for more than a decade.
No, “dormant” isn’t right. Wilson has spent years actively suppressing it—reminding himself of his wife (wives) whenever he was married, or when that failed (because God knows he’s not above infidelity), of his unimpeachable record of heterosexuality. Laughable, really.
The trump card, though, was always the same: This is House—emotionally allergic, pathologically unattached, and more than ready to mock Wilson into silence if he ever said anything real.
So Wilson beat him to it, beating his own feelings into forcible submission.
But if the image his mind supplied him with earlier—along with the boner that took way too long to calm down—is anything to go by, he’s clearly done beating it down.
He’s reminded of when he first met House—right after his first divorce, fresh off his one and only night in jail, vulnerable in the sights of the attractive older man who’d taken an interest in him. There was a moment, swaying drunkenly at the door of his cheap hotel room, when Wilson had leaned forward, eyes half-lidded, expecting…
The man had pressed a hand against Wilson’s chest, pushing him back. “You don’t want this, Wilson.”
He had scowled—pouted, really. “James,” he corrected.
House’s hand stayed firm on his chest, holding him in place. Something unreadable flickered across his face before he leaned in, voice low and sardonic.
“Still don’t. Wilson.”
And then he’d stepped back, turned, and left Wilson standing there, half-drunk, half-hard, and entirely humiliated in the hallway of a crappy New Orleans hotel.
When they met for breakfast the next morning, it was like that moment had never happened. Neither brought it up again, and they moved on.
Similar moments popped up here and there, sure. There was that time at his second bachelor party, thrown by House, when the man had leaned in behind him at the bar to yell over the music, hot breath against his neck, “If this one dumps you too, I’m claiming you on my taxes.” Or that time they argued in Wilson’s office, and House had shoved him, and Wilson shoved him back, his hand fisting in House’s shirt, their noses almost touching—before Wilson abruptly jumped away, with House storming out seconds later. Or that time on House’s couch—
Alright, that’s it, Wilson decides, staring at the tickets hard enough to set them on fire. He’s done pretending. No more ignoring those moments, moments like the one that sent him bolting back to his office to contemplate all this in the first place.
Did you think this was a date?
Yes. Yes, he did.
And he’s going to make sure House thinks so, too.
~
He finds House in his office, tossing his bouncy ball against the wall and catching it with practiced ease. He doesn’t spare Wilson a glance.
“Time travel is theoretically possible,” House says by way of greeting.
“Uh, not really,” Wilson replies, scrunching his face in confusion. “Does this have to do with your six-year-old patient?”
“Not six. I have reason to suspect that she’s actually a 72-year-old consciousness from 2087 that quantum-leaped into a first-grade host body during a tachyon storm.”
“Right,” Wilson says, suppressing a sigh. This is the guy he’s in love with. Well, there’s definitely no denying it anymore. He pulls the tickets from his jacket pocket and doesn’t miss the way House fumbles—just barely losing the ball on the next catch.
He’s still not looking at him when Wilson says, “So, the play’s tonight.”
“Who’s the lucky lady?”
“You.”
Now House stops, the ball thudding against the wall and rolling into a corner. He slowly turns toward Wilson, a cruel smirk twisting his lips. “Ah, you caught me. I was assigned female at birth. You find my birth certificate?”
“House.” Wilson steps closer, relishing for once that he’s taller than House. It gives him a confidence boost, and he places his hands on his hips. “I’m serious. Go with me.”
House stares up at him—and this is what Wilson was scared of: his piercing blue eyes, cold and calculating and seeing into the very depths of Wilson’s soul.
But Wilson is resolute. He stares back.
House narrows his eyes, the same look he gets right before solving a case. “Dudes only go to plays if they’re—”
Wilson finishes with “—dragged by someone they’re hoping to see naked.” He grins at House, waving the tickets at him tantalizingly. “That’s your theory.”
“Are you putting it into practice?”
“What do you think?” Wilson steps closer, now between House’s legs, looming over him. He leans down to whisper near his ear, “You told me that maybe there was someone I want to see naked. You’re supposed to be the genius. Figure it out.”
Suddenly, House yanks Wilson lower by his tie. His pupils are blown, and his voice is gravelly when he says, “Do we have to see the play first?”
~
They watch until the intermission—barely. By the time the actors are getting their standing ovation, House’s shirt is half-buttoned, Wilson’s tie is on the floor of his apartment, and neither of them remembers what the play was even about. The tickets are crumpled on the nightstand—paid bail ten years ago and $168, apparently, was the price of this.