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It starts as ordinary as ever.
House wakes up before Wilson, like he tends to do. Or get up before him, at least. He hasn’t been sleeping well since Mayfield—he doesn’t know why, he’s just been kind of restless. It got a little better after he and Wilson moved into the new apartment, but he still likes to wake up early.
He groans, rubbing his eyes, and slides out of bed, holding his leg as he limps over to grab his cane from where it's hanging on the door frame. He yawns, making his way towards the kitchen. That’s what he does when he wakes up early like this, which is most mornings at this point. He cooks breakfast.
It’s not for Wilson. He cooks for Wilson, but he’s not doing it just for him. He’d be doing it even if he were still living on his own, back in his apartment.
He turns on the burner and slips his apron over his head, tying a (admittedly not very well constructed) knot on the back. He leans his cane against the oven door and bends down to get the frying pan out of the cabinet. He tries to be at least a little quiet, because he knows that Wilson is still asleep, but he’s also not too concerned. If he wakes up because he’s clanking around in the kitchen, so be it. Wilson is the one who chose to cohabitate with House, not the other way around.
Swinging open the fridge door, he scans what they have stocked up—eggs, bacon, half a gallon of milk. A quarter of a leftover pizza sitting alone on the middle shelf. Wilson needs to go grocery shopping again soon, he notes, grabbing the carton of eggs and shuffling back to the stove, letting the fridge door close on its own.
House yawns and absently cracks an egg into the skillet, absently tossing the shell on the counter. This is much more entertaining than lying in bed for two more hours doing nothing.
Distantly, he hears a thud. That’ll be Wilson waking up, then. It’s a quarter to seven; a bit earlier than normal. Oh well. There’s not really a good way to make cooking a quiet process.
A few minutes later, Wilson emerges from his bedroom already fully dressed, sparing half a glance towards House. “You don’t have to make my portion,” Wilson says, running a hand through his hair as he speed walks to the foyer. “I have to go in early.”
House leans his elbows on the counter, watching as Wilson scrambles to pull on his jacket and grab his briefcase. “You know,” House muses as he watches a frazzled Wilson search for his keys, “You wouldn’t be in this position if you didn’t schedule meetings in the asscrack of the morning.”
Wilson doesn’t bother to look up as he rummages through the pockets of the pants that he wore the day before. “It was the time that worked best for the patient.” He frowns, turning up empty in his valiant search effort. He moves on to his jacket, shaking it vigorously. House hums to himself privately, gaze following him as he rubs his forehead, exhausted. “Besides, you’re the one who wakes up at six in the morning.”
“But I don’t go into work until it’s almost noon,” House counters. “So your point is pointless.”
“Just because you’re a lazy ass who doesn’t want to do his job doesn’t mean we all are.”
“Once again. Your point? You’re the authority here. You can fit that meeting into your schedule, not theirs.”
“I’m telling the patient they have cancer. I’m not postponing that because I want to sleep in a couple more hours.”
“Exactly why I think you’re a soft-hearted wuss.”
Wilson opens his mouth to retort, and just when House thinks he might be in the clear, he pauses and sighs, closing his eyes. He shrugs his jacket back on properly and pinches the bridge of his nose, taking a moment to breathe. House smiles innocently.
“House.” Wilson holds out his hand.
He grins and pulls the keys out of his cooking apron wordlessly, dangling them above the kitchen counter.
With a sigh, Wilson sets down his briefcase and walks over, snatching the keys out of his hand and stuffing them into his inner coat pocket. “I can’t believe I’m living with an eleven year old boy,” he huffs. “You’ve kept me here long enough with your meddling tricks. I have to go to my meeting. I’ll see you at lunch.” He pecks House on the cheek. “Love you.”
Pause. Halt. Cease. Record scratch.
What.
House blinks, mouth opening slightly in surprise. He stares at Wilson. Wilson freezes and stares right back at him, big brown eyes darting back and forth as if he’s weighing his options. His options, at this point, really boil down to jumping out the window (it wouldn’t be the first time) and pretending he’s having a mental break. Both of which House is fully convinced would not be effective in the slightest.
Neither of them says anything for a good moment. House doesn’t know what to say, he’s still caught off guard, and Wilson looks like he’d rather be anywhere else. Case and point, three seconds later, he bolts. He trips over his own shoes the moment he makes it out the door, before he makes a beeline for the exit.
…Huh. Interesting.
House touches his cheek with the pads of his fingers, furrowing his brow. Usually, he would think it was just another one of their jokes, but the way Wilson panicked led him to think otherwise. That was the kind of reaction that was out of the ordinary.
He glances at the front door. Wilson’s briefcase sits on the floor, forgotten.
He’ll return it at lunch. Probably.
—
House shows up at the hospital at eleven in the morning, cane in one hand and Wilson’s briefcase in the other. There’s some case about a fourteen year old boy ingesting tubes of sharpie ink, exacerbating some underlying medical condition that they can’t figure out, but he’s barely able to focus. Wilson’s expression is stuck in his mind, frozen with panic, wide, wet eyes looking at him like House just caught him with one hand in the cookie jar.
It’s a fascinating dilemma. The kind that House will gnaw on for a while before inevitably coming up with some kind of psychoanalyzation for it, like he always does. That’s what he’s good at. Admittedly, he doesn’t quite know how to go about analyzing this. Because there’s an obvious answer, but it’s an answer he’s not quite sure how to feel about.
He pops two Ibuprofen. All of this is making his leg hurt.
“Are you even paying attention to anything we’re saying?” Thirteen asks. House finally jolts back into reality.
“What does it mean if someone kisses you and runs away?”
Chase blinks. “Cuddy?”
“No.”
“A hooker?”
“Bingo. We have a winner.” Wilson is very decidedly not a hooker. Unless there’s something that he’s not telling him.
Chase snorts. “What kind of hooker runs away from doing their job?” He looks back down at the patient file. “The patient is experiencing hallucinations. Those aren’t consistent with just the ink poisoning. It’s gotta be something working in tandem with it.”
“You’d be surprised at the amount of them who are all bark and no bite,” House says. “Literally.”
“Parkinson’s Disease,” Taub suggests. “And if you’re so pressed about this hooker, just pay her for another hour. What is she gonna do, turn down her only source of income?”
“That’ll be easier said than done,” House mutters, but luckily he’s drowned out by Thirteen responding to Chase.
“The normal onset time is from ages 50-60. You really think this 14 year old boy has Parkinson’s?” Thirteen’s eyes dart to House, as if to see if he’ll pitch in with an idea, sighing when he doesn’t. “At the very least, let's treat the ink poisoning alone.”
“Give the patient activated Charcoal to eliminate the poison. Once that’s gone, we should be able to see what symptoms are related to the underlying condition,” House says finally, leaning back in his chair. “Go ahead.”
The team stands up and files out the door, clipboards in hand, and only Thirteen lingers an extra moment, as if trying to decide whether or not she should say something. House isn’t dumb. He knows that if anyone would figure out his problem before he said anything, it would be Thirteen. She’s smart. And also swings both ways.
She ends up not saying anything and following the rest of the team. House doesn’t even bother looking at the door. He touches his cheek again, like perhaps if he thinks about it hard enough then he can recreate the feeling of it. Even though it had been just for a split second, the sensation sticks in his mind like toffee to teeth.
House stands up and grabs his cane, making his way to his office. He drops off Wilson’s briefcase on his chair before lying down in his recliner, placing the patient file over his face. It makes for an incredibly fashionable sleep mask, if he says so himself.
He ignores the fact that he could quite easily walk over to Wilson’s office to give him back his bag. He’s already made up his mind that he’ll give it back at lunch.
—
Wilson didn’t show up to lunch.
House waited for fifteen minutes, but he never ended up coming to the cafeteria. A sour feeling settles in his mouth as he leaves, bag still in hand. Normally he’d assume Wilson was doing his regular routine of being a crutch to some patient, but that morning—
The way that Wilson had run made him assume otherwise.
Instead he goes to the patient’s room. Thirteen is standing outside, while Chase and Taub are inside holding up a pack of playing cards and three cigarettes very seriously. House stands beside her, watching through the glass walls. “Any news?”
“We found cards painted with lead. The cigarettes for obvious reasons.”
It’s silent for a little while, a comfortable one, the two of them just standing beside each other. If anyone was going to understand his problem, it was probably going to be her. Taub was shit at relationships, obviously, Chase had never had to confront his feelings a day in his life, and he’s pretty certain that Foreman had never had a girlfriend the entire time that he’d known him. Or a boyfriend. Not that he thinks that Foreman would. He’s just progressive like that.
Eventually, he speaks up. “It was Wilson. Not a hooker.”
Thirteen puts her hands in the pockets of her lab coat. “I thought that might be the case. And because you’re not gay, it's much better to lie and say your hooker fell in love with you. What a fascinating thought process.”
“I didn’t say she fell in love with me. And if you really think about it, Wilson is just a hooker that I don’t pay for and who doesn’t have sex with me. I’m not seeing the lie.”
Thirteen snorts and rolls her eyes, finally looking at him properly. “What’re you gonna do? I notice you’re not at lunch, so I assume Wilson wasn’t there.” She softens a bit, and opens her mouth to say something else, but jumps back suddenly as Taub suddenly bolts out of the room, the patient chasing him down the hall with a lit cigarette. Chase is close behind, coughing and sputtering as he tries to catch up to them.
“O-o-okay.” Thirteen looks over her shoulder, bemused. “Ignoring that for a moment. Back to my question.”
House shifts his weight a bit. “He’s avoiding me, clearly. Nothing I can do about that. We live together, anyway, he’ll have to see me eventually.”
“Or you could talk to him. Make an effort to reach out. He doesn’t have friends, he has a friend, and that’s you,’” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Return his bag. Tell him however you feel about the situation. It’ll take a lot more to get him to leave you.”
“If I knew how I felt about the situation, I would have already done that,” House says, twirling his cane around in his hands. “Why else do you think I approached the resident queer?”
Thirteen stares at him for a moment. “You don’t know how you feel about it. Meaning you actually didn’t mind it.” She nods in approval. “That’s great. Really. Sounds like you have something good going for you.”
“Saying that I ‘don’t know how I feel’ does not immediately equate to me also swinging both ways. That’s just wishful thinking on your part.”
“How about this,” Thirteen says, smiling at him. “Come with me to a gay bar after work. I’d be going anyway. I’ll give you some more advice. I would do that now, but I’m kind of supposed to be doing my job. And we should probably check on Chase and Taub.”
“Remember last time when I said your life is awesome?”
House doesn’t refuse the offer. It’s not like he has any better options.
—
Thirteen texts him the address of the gay bar late that afternoon. When House shows up, he notes that it’s right next to the strip club tastefully named the Bump n’ Grind, which he notes as a potential future stop. That is entirely beside the point.
The air outside immediately smells like alcohol and a whiff of nicotine. It doesn’t look nearly as intense as some of the clubs that House has been to, but there are flashing lights pouring through the windows. He sighs, tapping his cane on the ground a few times, contemplating whether or not this is really worth it for some peck from Wilson that morning, but Thirteen is already waiting for him inside.
Fuck it. Whatever.
He pushes the door open with his cane and spots Thirteen sitting at the bar right away. The second thing that he notices is the fact that it’s all men. Look, he may not be an expert in the field of homosexuality, but he’s fairly certain that gay men don’t sleep with women. Which makes it very confusing as to why Thirteen is there in the first place.
Wandering over to sit beside her, he pulls out his stool with the hook of his cane. “I don’t know what your angle is here, but I don’t think a bunch of gay men are going to sleep with you. Although if someone were going to turn them, you’re a good contender.”
Thirteen snorts, sliding him a glass of scotch. “We’re here for you, not for me.”
House narrows his eyes. “You said you’d be coming here anyway.”
“Everybody lies.” She takes a sip of her drink.
“How are we here for me? If you’re trying to get me laid, I promise it won’t work. Unless you’ve got Megan Fox back there, in which case awooooga, amirite?”
“I’m not trying to get you laid. Look out at the dance floor. Any of these guys attractive to you?”
He pretends to scan the crowd like he’s really thinking about it, even though he’s already dismissed everybody in the building. The guys he does see are too sparkly for him, and also at least ten years younger. At least Wilson has the advantage of being a relatively grounded guy who is around his age.
“Yeah, twink number four hundred and ninety two really gets my gears going.” House rolls his eyes and downs his scotch. It barely burns his throat on the way down. “What kind of scuffed ‘Am I Gay?’ quiz is this?”
Thirteen sighs, but she smiles as she moves the ice in her glass around with her finger. “I’m gonna be honest. I think you’ve loved Wilson for a long time. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s loved you for a long time, too.”
“He did say that. Alongside the whole smooching part.”
“You didn’t say that before! He said that he loves you? Dude.”
“Is this the part where I tearfully admit I wasn’t kidding about being a nail polish-remover bisexual?”
She shrugs. “Doesn’t have to be. Unless you weren’t.”
House leans back against the bar and lazily surveyed the dance floor again. He still has no real interest in any of the people there, but it was more interesting than just staring at the shelves behind the counter like always.
It’s not like he has any problem with being gay, or bisexual, or any of those things. He’s known he’s bisexual for a fairly good amount of time, really. It’s just not like anyone has ever really asked him. They assumed his heterosexuality off of his constant utilization of hookers. He supposes that that isn’t the most stereotypical gay pastime, paying women to sleep with you.
So. For that reason he can’t exactly blame them.
It’s a whole lot of Chase lookalikes wandering around, maybe one or two older men that have gazes that are far too predatory for House to look at them with anything but wariness. He gives out a couple of wolf whistles at the nicer looking guys that wander by, because he’s not blind. He can appreciate a good-looking man when he sees one.
He’s about to turn back to say something to Thirteen when he spots a guy swaggering towards him, glass of scotch in hand and a cigarette snug between his fingers. He’s scruffy in a bad way. House sighs, takes a long sip of his scotch, and turns to the man, who is now eyeing his cane with an odd expression.
“I don’t like it up the ass, and if I were into homeless men I’d go onto the street and toss my wallet in the air to see who comes the fastest,” House offers. “Heh. Get it. Who comes the—”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve got a pretty good idea.” The guy eyes Thirteen, frowning but not quite deterred. “Girlfriend?”
“Do you think either of us would be here if we were dating?”
“Touche. So you’re single,” he says. “Care to have a dance?”
“Dancing is a synonym for grinding here, so no, I don’t. I’m also seeing someone. Aren’t the people here meant to be open-minded?”
Thirteen furrows her brow and looks at him bemused. House kicks her in the shin pettily.
“They’re not here,” the man says, taking a drag of his cigarette. “C’mon. You look like you don’t know what you’re doing here. I can—”
House hits him over the head with his cane. The man stumbles back, choking on the smoke from his cigarette as he inhales it wrong. “Jesus!” He rubs his head and House shoves him back with the tip of his cane. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Perks of being a cripple!” House shouts after him as he stalks off. Well. That went great, if he does say so himself.
He turns back to Thirteen and grins, twirling his cane between his fingers before finishing off his scotch.
“So? What’s the plan?” she asks, leaning one elbow on the bar and resting her chin on her fist. “I’m sure the two of you could ignore it if you wanted to. You guys have gotten through worse before.”
“I’m not gonna ignore it,” House says, as if it should be self-evident already. “As fun as that sounds, from what I’ve learned about relationships, you’re generally not meant to repress things. I hear it doesn’t end well.”
“You’re learning so fast.”
“He was the one who ran, though,” House muses. “I was going to say something but he booked it before I could. Maybe he should be the one who has to talk to me.”
“God, you’re an idiot. He probably ran because he thinks you’re straight, which I thought too until this afternoon. If he does love you, he doesn’t wanna mess things up.”
House raises an eyebrow. “He couldn’t mess things up if he tried.”
“Exactly. If you fumble him, I’ll be genuinely amazed,” she says, flagging down the bartender with a quick raise of her hand. “You’re gonna go back to your apartment and talk to him about it, okay? I better see at least three hickeys when you come in tomorrow.”
“Bold of you to assume that I will not be the one popping his blood vessels.”
Thirteen wrinkles her nose, but her smile betrays her. “Gross. Go away. I’m gonna head to the lesbian bar across the street, anyway.” She stands up and downs the rest of her drink quickly, pushing a twenty across the counter and coming to walk with him to the exit. “You’re right. None of these guys are going to sleep with me. The women over there, though? Hell yeah.”
—
House gets on his motorcycle and immediately drives back to the hospital. It’s late now, just a bit past seven, and Thirteen is under the impression that he’s headed back home. He is not going back home. Unless he counts the hospital. He does spend more time there than he does at his apartment, to be fair.
When he wanders into the office, he sees Chase in the other room nursing a black eye and Cuddy pacing the room, balancing her phone on her shoulder. She looks like a mom picking up her child from elementary school after they got into a fight, and it’s kind of cute.
The corners of his mouth curl upwards as he comes up to Chase. “Didn’t realize you joined the WWE in the past three hours.”
Chase rolls his eyes. “I didn’t get into a fight. It was dumb, honestly.”
Cuddy covers the phone with her hand. “Shut up. I’m on the phone with our patient’s lawyer because he’s trying to sue the hospital for ‘the stress’ of having our doctors work on his case. And Chase got punched in the face by said patient. Stop pestering him.”
“Why are you here, anyway?” Chase asks, lowering his voice a bit. “It’s late. Got something for the diagnosis?”
“Nope. I just felt like hanging out with my dearest coworkers.”
“Did you and Wilson have a fight or something? I haven’t seen him around today, now that I think about it.”
“Something like that.”
“Don’t tell me I need to be a couples counselor again,” Cuddy says without looking at either of them. He faintly hears some boring, generic song, and assumes she must be on hold.“The last time I had to do that was way more stressful on my part than it needed to be.”
“We’re not a couple,” House says. “And we don’t need your counseling, either.”
“Close enough to one.” Cuddy shrugs and checks her phone, frowning. “These lawyers are jank. They didn’t even tell me they were going to put me on hold.”
“Was the fight about that hooker you mentioned earlier?” Chase asks, pressing an ice pack to his eye. “The one who ran off?”
House grimaces. If he says yes, it’s entirely possible that either one of the two could work out that there was no hooker to begin with. On the other hand, it’s not like they’re in the middle of a differential anymore, and it isn’t like they wouldn’t end up finding out later.
“Something like that,” he says dismissively. “It was ridiculous. Wilson will come to his senses soon enough. In the meantime—”
“No, no, hold on.” Chase squints his eyes and looks at House like he’s studying him. “There was no hooker, was there? It was him! That’s why Thirteen said she was taking you out to one of her favorite spots! You,” he says triumphantly, jabbing a finger at House, “were bonding over being gay with Thirteen. I’ve seen right through you.”
When House doesn’t immediately deny it, Cuddy turns to look at him. “What?”
“It’s not a big deal. So Wilson kissed my cheek this morning—”
“Huh?!”
“And then ran away. It happens. We’re bros.”
“It happens?!” Chase interjects. “This isn’t the first time?!”
House sighs. “Obviously that’s not what I meant. I’m not—we’re not together.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” Chase mumbles, wincing as House rips the ice pack he was holding to his eye away from him and dangles it away from him. “I’m just saying. You guys do lots of things that could come off kinda…” He makes a kissing motion with his hands.
Bewildered at the mere notion, House turns to Cuddy, hoping that she’ll see some reason. She just shrugs in response. “I don’t blame him.”
House laughs disbelievingly. “Come on! We’re just—”
I think you’ve loved Wilson for a long time.
Damn Thirteen for being right. She’s probably right about most of the things she said, now that he really thinks about it. She’s more likely to know how to handle this than he is—he’s experienced in fucking up everything that he touches. And maybe Thirteen is too, but at least she’s not as bad as him, for the most part. He’s been looking at it wrong the whole time.
Wilson has always been a constant for him, the kind of person who he expects to be there and always is. He’s never thought too hard about it because he never noticed anything shift.
He turns around without saying a word to either Chase or Cuddy, pushing the door open and moving towards the elevator as quickly as he can. He has a Wilson to catch.
—
It’s nearly eleven when he ends up going home (he ended up stalling by sitting at a bar for an hour, contemplating whether or not he really wanted to blow up his only real relationship like this, before deciding that if he didn’t they would both be miserable.) There’s two ways this could go: either Wilson is asleep and they continue to avoid each other into the next day, at which point House has no real idea of when the cycle would end, or Wilson is awake, and they end up talking. He’s not sure which one he’s hoping for more. He supposes that Wilson could be awake and they would both ignore it, but part of him almost wants to confront it.
House opens the door and walks in like nothing's wrong. He drops his backpack off by the closet, locks the door, and shuffles out of the foyer. Out of the foyer and into the living room, where Wilson is standing, toothbrush in his mouth and his collared shirt unbuttoned and hanging off his torso. House looks him up and down. He looks…nice. Annoyingly domestic, really.
It’s around then that they lock eyes. For a moment, House thinks he won’t try to run, and he tentatively takes a step forward. Alas Wilson, panicking yet again, goes straight for the door like a scared puppy.
House blocks his way with his cane.
Wilson deflates, shoulders slumping, clearly too tired to make much of an effort to escape.
“Were you really going to try to run away for a second time?”
Wilson almost opens his mouth to speak, before remembering that he is, in fact, still in the midst of brushing his teeth. He frowns to himself and tosses his toothbrush in the mug they’ve repurposed as a key holder. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Of course I was going to run!”
“Why would you—”
“It was an accident, okay? Don’t you dare play with me and tell me that it wasn’t. I was in a rush, I got distracted and I did it without thinking. And I wasn’t about to stick around and listen to you go on and on about how I should know better when I had a meeting in half an hour anyway!”
“Why would I tell you about how you should know better?” House asks, cane dropping from the wall. “You didn’t give me a chance to respond.”
“You’re an ass. What else was I supposed to think would happen?”
“That I would flutter my eyelashes and twirl my hair and tell you I love you too?”
Wilson jabs a finger at him. “See! I knew you would pull this bullshit, stringing me along for your own amusement. But no, no, I won’t sit by and have my feelings played with.” He laughs incredulously. “If you don’t want me to be a doormat then I won’t be! Take that!”
“What?”
“It was a mistake, so you have no right to—”
“Are you stupid or just incredibly dense?”
Wilson’s arms drop and he stares at him. “You’re choosing right now to insult me?”
“It may have been an accident, but I don’t think you didn’t mean it. That being said, if I genuinely thought you were into me and disliked it, I would be moving out right now.” House pointedly looks at his backpack, still sagged against the wall where he had dropped it. “I am quite obviously not moving out.”
“...You’re straight,” Wilson points out dryly.
“Clearly you didn’t read your patient history. I am a bisexual to the highest degree. I think Thirteen is copying me, actually. I should sue.”
“You—” Wilson blinks a couple of times and makes a face. “You’ve never had male hookers before. And I’ve never seen you with a guy. Are you just saying this to, what, comfort me somehow? It’s not working.”
“This is not to comfort you. I was at a gay bar earlier today.”
“Oh my god. You’re not kidding.” Wilson rubs his forehead and paces around. He doesn’t say anything for a good minute after that; House supposes he must be processing. He watches Wilson for a little while, before deciding that he would probably walk until his legs turned to stubs if he kept going at this rate. Which would be funny, but also inconvenient, so House decides that he’ll interrupt before that can happen.
He limps over to the kitchen and peers into the fridge. “Did you already eat?”
Wilson pauses mid-step, staring at him dubiously. “You’re thinking about dinner right now?
“Would you rather I kiss you so we’re even?” House frowns at the fridge, not bothering to look at Wilson. “I’m ordering Chinese.”
“Aren’t we supposed to talk about this kind of thing?”
“Ordering Chinese? I think I know your order by now.”
“Don’t be intentionally dense. You know what I mean.”
“You have a thing for me, I have a thing for you, we’re best friends, labels are for insecure men whose girlfriends are probably cheating on them anyway.” House swings the fridge closed and pulls out his phone, sparing a glance to Wilson just to make sure he hasn’t spontaneously combusted in the ten seconds since he last spoke. He hasn’t.
“I’m a label guy,” Wilson says, a little more defensively than he meant to.
“Then use your brain and figure out what it is.”
That’s the last thing he says before he turns away and dials the restaurant. He was a bit snappy, more so than he intended, but it got his point across. It’s tame in the grand scheme of things.
After he orders the food, he wanders from the kitchen over to the couch. Wilson is sitting there, running a hand through his hair. He’s still much too stressed. House takes the opportunity to lie down, head resting on his lap, kicking his feet up on the arm of the couch opposite of them.
Wilson stares down at him. House stares back up at him and cracks a smile.
And that’s that.