Chapter Text
June 3rd, 2006
The first strange thing is that Wilson wakes up in House’s bed.
The second strange thing is that his clothes are fully on, button-down and all, though he did manage to pull off his tie before climbing in last night.
He’s close to House—not touching, but they clearly shifted closer to each other during the night. The expanse of House’s back faces Wilson, whose hands are stretched out on the mattress between them, as if he’s reaching for him across some undefinable divide.
Wilson tentatively reaches out, but stops himself from touching House or waking him. The fact that he’s asleep is a good sign; it means the pain has subsided from last night.
Last night…
Wilson’s gaze falls on the dirty soup bowls piled on the nightstand before his mind can wander that way, and he finally tears himself from bed to pad to the kitchen and clean them.
He ends up mindlessly doing all of House’s dishes so that his sink doesn’t become a festering petri dish by the time House ambles out of the room, bleary-eyed and limping. But not as heavily as yesterday, Wilson notes.
“Thanks, wife,” House mumbles, getting past him to shove a coffee pod into the machine.
Wilson smiles, soapy suds all the way up to his elbow as he scrubs some guck off a pan. So things are back to normal, he thinks, relieved. Whatever line they had crossed last night hasn’t really changed anything between them.
So he jokes, “Well, if my husband weren’t such a bum, maybe I’d be happier in this relationship.”
House stiffens. Wilson stops scrubbing.
“Yeah,” House says eventually, his voice gruff. The coffee machine finishes spitting out his drink, and he snatches up the red mug, bringing it to his lips as he turns and limps away.
Desperate, Wilson asks, “Are you—feeling better?”
“Just peachy,” he tosses over his shoulder.
“House,” Wilson calls, and something in his voice clearly makes House stop his runaway. “I… meant what I said last night. About helping you.”
House turns his head just slightly. After a loaded beat of silence, he concedes, “I feel better today.”
Triumphant, Wilson beams at House’s retreating figure and speeds up his cleaning.
So last night was real. For both of them. Wilson losing it on House, spilling his guts out, messy and tender and loving, all for House to see, and House meeting him there. House holding his hand under the sheets. House’s harsh breathing evening out as he fell asleep.
It was real, but what does it mean? Are things really back to normal? Does he want them to be?
He hops in the shower as House lazes around, an interesting phenomenon considering House would usually go back to sleep, only to show up at work around his usual post-meridian hours. Wilson gets the sense that House is waiting for him, watching him, as he finishes knotting his tie in the entryway mirror.
So Wilson takes a shot at it. “I was thinking of getting coffee at Pete’s today before heading in.”
House perks up from his seat on the couch, and Wilson preens internally at the reaction to his favorite coffee place, or more accurately, Wilson’s knowledge that he would obtain that reaction. House yawns dramatically and pushes himself off the couch, scratching his head in slow, pensive thought. “I guess I can grace Pete with my presence.”
“You say that like you’re friends.”
“Better than friends. I taught that man everything he knows about oat milk.”
“Gross.” Wilson rolls his eyes fondly and keeps up easy conversation with House as he waits for him to get presentable. In the meantime, he busies himself with tidying things in the apartment: wiping down the kitchen counters, adjusting a few stray books on the shelves, moving the sneakers out of the way so that nobody trips.
Wilson drives them, and House only puts up a bit of a fight about not taking the bike (“You can squeeze my waist really tight, don’t worry”). They park, grab their coffees. House gets a phone call from his fellows that he takes at an obnoxiously loud volume, scaring the old lady in front of Wilson in line as he yells, “Drill into her skull, goddamnit!” Eventually, though, they make it through the hospital’s front doors with plenty of time before Wilson’s first appointment, just how he likes it. It has not escaped his notice that House has fully cooperated to make this possible, but he doesn’t mention it.
“Don’t wait up.”
At the elevator doors, Wilson lets House press his coffee into his spare hand, forcing him to drop his briefcase with a clatter. “House—wh—?”
“Don’t wait!”
With that, House limps off towards Cuddy’s office, and Wilson breathes out a resigned sigh. He’s been here before. House clearly has to go harass Cuddy about some dangerous test.
He checks his watch impatiently, then motions for the two nurses behind him to enter the elevator instead and stands outside. Leaning against the wall, he makes a show of tapping his foot, sighing up at the ceiling, and gesturing helplessly toward Cuddy’s office as his colleagues pass by. But from the disinterested looks they give him, he can tell they know exactly who he’s waiting for.
It’s no secret that House and Wilson are best friends. Who even has best friends when they’re middle-aged? For normal people, by then, best friends have been replaced by husbands and wives—or God, for those celibate holy people Wilson will never understand. Of course House has to be different. And of course, Wilson’s been sucked into it, becoming a guy in his late thirties with a best friend and three divorces under his belt.
Living with House, the best friend, has shaken things up for Wilson. For one, he knows he’s gay—very, very homosexual, and repressing it like it was a full-time job his entire life, except for that phase in college. The fact that House, his best friend, is the one who made him realize that he is, in fact, attracted to men has not been lost on him: he’s clearly attracted to House in particular. (Well, who wouldn’t be, with those sharp blue eyes and scruffy beard?) The question now is this: is he willing to risk this—this mess of a friendship they have right now—for the sake of attraction, no matter how strong it may be? Whenever Wilson thinks about that scenario—the one where he says something earnest and genuine to House, who is so disgusted or scared that he walks out—he feels his chest tighten with panic.
Never mind last night. Last night was about the Vicodin. This morning suggests that, really, nothing’s changed. The two of them holding hands and sleeping chastely in the same bed didn’t mean they were suddenly a couple, obviously. Obviously!
But all that is forgotten when he sees House striding towards him, a smile—a real smile!—gracing his face. He takes his coffee from Wilson’s hands, and if his fingers linger a little longer on Wilson’s, well, surely Wilson’s just imagining that.
Wilson returns the smile and says, “Cuddy approved the test?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why are you smiling?”
The elevator doors ding open, and together they step inside.
“I’m not smiling,” House says, and puts on a scowl so unconvincing Wilson almost laughs.
“You absolutely are.”
House leans in just slightly, and Wilson offers a prayer of thanks that the elevator is empty. “You’d know.”
“Yeah,” Wilson says, voice suddenly shaky. And that’s when the elevator doors open on their floor, and Wilson escapes into the fresh air, thankful that he has a leg up on House in terms of walking speed.
But House manages to catch up to him. “Lunch?”
Back on familiar ground, Wilson thinks about his calendar and says, “It’ll have to be after one. I have a consult at noon.”
“Hmm,” House declares. “We’ll see about that.”
Wilson can recognize a House-ian threat when he hears one. “House,” he warns. “Do not make my sick patients reschedule because you want to eat earlier.”
House reaches his office door and swings it open. “We’ll see,” he repeats. “Toodle-loo!”
~
“Dessert?”
Wilson glares at the bag of Skittles House tosses on the table between them. “Not in the mood.”
“Oh, come on. You were all about them a few weeks ago,” House says, tearing into his own bag with his teeth and dumping a bunch in his mouth.
“I should be having a consult—”
House interrupts, words slurring as he struggles to chew the candies, “Mr. Cardenas was more than happy to reschedule for tomorrow.”
“—right now,” Wilson continues. “So that I don’t have to work over the weekend.”
“Work-life balance is for suckers,” he says, finally swallowing the mouthful. “There’s no divide between work and life. You have your life, and you choose what to do with it. And you simply chose the most boring medical specialty.”
“When did you start quoting bumper stickers?” Wilson mutters, resigning himself to his lunch and picking at his salad.
“Someone’s gotta be the smart one in this friendship.”
House shakes the Skittles bag at him, and Wilson’s reminded of that time a few weeks ago when he innuendo’d his way into a—what, coming out? Okay, it was odd, even for him. But he was too scared to say anything directly and wanted to test the waters with House. It was stupid and careless, and he hates Skittles more than anything right now.
“Come on,” House insists. “Just one.”
“I’m not in the mood.”
“You’re always in the mood of Skittles.” House picks out a red one and holds it up between two fingers, studying it with great seriousness. “This one’s got your name on it.”
“House,” Wilson snaps. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
Wilson opens his mouth, then closes it. House is watching him with that expression that could mean anything—boredom, curiosity, something else entirely—and Wilson has absolutely no idea, which is the problem. It’s always been the problem.
“Wasting both our lunch breaks,” he says finally.
House considers this, then holds the red Skittle out across the table. Not shaking the bag this time. Just offering it, plainly, watching Wilson’s face.
He returns to his salad. “How’s the leg?”
Something in House’s face falls, and he pulls his hand back, popping the red Skittle into his mouth. He takes his time chewing it, considering, before finally saying, “Better today.” He pauses for an uncharacteristically long moment, and Wilson glances up at him in question. “I’m seeing my physical therapist tomorrow. Eleni. You could come with me.”
And there it is, a reminder of last night. This is a rare moment of vulnerability, House cracking open the door just a bit for Wilson to peer inside. It’s what Wilson so desperately asked for last night.
But last night was dark and quiet and easy to take back in daylight. House hasn’t looked at him differently this morning, hasn’t said anything that couldn't be explained away by exhaustion or Vicodin or the specific chemistry of two men who’ve known each other for a decade. Wilson doesn’t trust it yet. He can’t trust that whatever happened means what he wants it to mean, or that House, if pressed, would call it anything more than a bad night that got out of hand. Asking to come to Eleni’s, agreeing to this, might just be House being House: generous in small, deniable ways, but easy to walk back if Wilson reads too much into it.
Right now, it’s just too much.
“Maybe next week.”
Now, something in House’s posture deflates, and Wilson scrambles, pointing his fork at House. “You were the one that rescheduled my patient for tomorrow.”
“Right.” House opens his mouth to say something else when his pager starts going off. With surprising alacrity, he springs up and checks it. “Seizures,” he explains flatly.
“You should check on that.”
“Yeah.”
He walks away, and once he’s out the door, Wilson slams his forehead on the table. House isn’t smiling anymore, and it’s Wilson’s fault.
~
Wilson takes his time getting back home. When House storms into his office in the evening, demanding he drive them back, Wilson tosses him the keys without looking up and tells him to go on without him; he’ll take a cab.
The truth is, Wilson is stalling.
He sits in the unnerving quiet of his office, registering faintly how the light dims outside the shared balcony with House. At some point, he hears a gaggle of people talking outside his door, saying their goodnights, and Wilson finds himself acutely aware of how he must look compared to them: tie loosened, files untouched, sitting in the dark thinking about his best friend.
He can’t stop thinking about House, about last night, about what he wants, what he can handle, what’s realistic. It’s all such a knot inside him, and he’s just so confused.
Wilson doesn’t know where House ends and his fear begins anymore. He wants—God, he wants so much—and that wanting has been growing so long he can’t remember what it felt like not to live with it. But House is detoxing and still having bad pain episodes, and Wilson has spent enough time in other people’s crises to know what it looks like when someone is held together by very little. He can’t be the thing that undoes that. He won’t.
The problem is that he also can’t keep doing this—the Skittles, the elevator, House’s fingers on his in the coffee line this morning, the hand under the sheets last night. Every small thing is adding up to something Wilson knows House can’t handle or doesn’t want, but he doesn’t want to go back either.
He takes the long way home, opting for public transport instead of a cab. By the time he makes it back to House’s place, it’s nearing midnight, and there’s a single lamp on in the living room. Out of habit, he checks the couch for his makeshift bed—and sees it empty.
So, they’re doing the bed thing again. He breathes. Okay.
Wilson can do this. In fact, when he thinks about it a little more, he realizes he wants to do this. For one, he sleeps much better on a real bed than on House’s piss-soaked couch. It also helps that he’ll be sleeping next to House. Maybe they’ll wake up spooning or something will lead to—
On second thought, maybe it doesn’t help that he’ll be sleeping next to House.
But it’s the only option he has right now, so he steels himself and approaches House’s open bedroom door, peering inside. House is propped up against the headboard in his pajamas, reading a book. He looks over his reading glasses at Wilson and says, “Late night, huh?”
Wilson swallows, sure that House can see right through him. “Yeah. Had some files to catch up on before the next board meeting.”
House nods, his gaze returning to the book. But Wilson can tell that he’s not really reading the words when he clears his throat and says, “I slept much better last night. I was thinking we could repeat the arrangement.”
Shocked by the honest admission, Wilson stammers out an equally honest “Me too.”
Half an hour later, Wilson is freshly showered and slipping into the sheets beside House, who shuts off the reading light and turns over with a grunt. His back is to Wilson, as much space as is physically possible between them on the bed, and Wilson’s head hurts with his conflicting desires. He wants to reach for House, but he can’t, House hasn’t asked him to, and it would ruin everything—
“Stop thinking so loud. I can’t sleep.”
Wilson exhales a laugh at the ceiling and closes his eyes. He takes another breath and prioritizes the thought that this is nice. All in all, he enjoys being in bed with House, the proximity, the easy domesticity of it all, and he’ll take this over last week’s distance any day.
“Goodnight, House,” he says quietly.
“G’night, Wilson.”
~
When he wakes up, it’s in House’s arms. Warm and comfortable and tender, he rouses but decides to keep his eyes closed and prolong the moment.
“Mm,” he hears behind him, close to his ear. “I know you’re awake.”
Wilson says nothing, because saying something would mean acknowledging this, and he’s not ready to do that. In the silence, he feels House shift behind him, his body pressing more firmly against Wilson’s. Then a hand starts to trail down beneath the sheets.
Wilson’s eyes fly open. He holds his breath until he feels House’s fingers slip beneath the waistband of his boxers—and where’d the pajamas from last night go?—and then he bolts upright, smacking House’s hand away.
“House! Wh—what the fuck?”
House blinks up at him as Wilson clutches at the sheets like a maiden protecting her modesty. He’s clearly at a loss for words, which is rare, but Wilson is too upset—shocked, aroused, hopeful?—to fully enjoy it.
Eventually, he gestures vaguely southward and says, “Thought you’d enjoy that sort of wake-up call.”
There are just so many thoughts rushing through Wilson’s head. “That that is not— you can’t just—” Wilson sputters, gesturing wildly with his free hand.
And that’s when he sees it.
On his left hand, fourth finger, there’s the unmistakable gold glint of a wedding band.
He stops mid-sentence and cautiously, reverently, brings his hand close to his face, examining the ring. It looks like any other wedding ring—and God knows he’s familiar with those—except for the crucial fact that he’s clearly not waking up with any of his wives. He’s in bed with House.
“Oh.” House’s voice cuts through his reverie. “That’s new for you, isn’t it?”
Wilson’s gaze snaps to House, who’s shirtless under the sheets, he notices now. Wilson struggles to focus on the important things. “How’d—how’d you know?” A possibility dawns on him. “House, is this a prank?”
“Some prank,” House says with a yawn as he gets out of bed. And when the sheets fall away, Wilson realizes with a suddenly dry mouth that House is naked. Completely, starkly naked. With a smirk and a flourish, House shows him his own left hand, with the only thing adorning his body right now: a gold wedding band.
“If this is a prank,” he says, “apparently I wrapped myself up in this one too.”
Wilson stares at him for a long moment.
“House,” he says finally, measuring the following words very carefully. He can hardly believe it even as he’s saying it: “Are we… married?”
House tilts his head, considering, as though this is an interesting differential rather than the most destabilizing sentence Wilson has ever produced. Then he reaches for his cane.
“We should probably talk.”