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“What are you doing here?” House asked when he opened the door to see Wilson standing there. “Don’t you know I’m on vacation?”
“Well, Cuddy said your flight to Vancouver would have taken off an hour ago, so I thought I’d come by with beer,” Wilson explained, holding up a six-pack of House’s current favorite. “Figured you might want company.”
“You think you know me so well…”
Wilson smiled and waited, knowing House would cave. He could never pass on free beer, and they’d hardly seen each other all week, so House would want him around, at least for a few hours. Eventually, House got tired of trying to wait out Wilson’s waiting and opened the door all the way for him.
“Did you take the week off, too?” House wondered a few hours later over Chinese take-out.
“Of course.”
“Gonna spend it here with me?”
“Thought I might.”
“Feeling mellow yet?”
“Yeah,” Wilson said with a sigh. He put the last of his food on the coffee table and leaned back against the couch, stretching until his back popped. He hadn’t felt so relaxed in a while.
House reached in his pocket and pulled out a joint. “Want some?”
“Sure.” Wilson extended his hand but missed when House pulled it away.
“Not yet,” House said. “You gotta pay the toll.”
“There’s a toll?”
“Kiss me. And make it a good one.”
“Ok,” Wilson said without hesitation and leaned over to press his lips to a startled House’s.
Though he hadn’t expected Wilson to agree, House wasn’t one to miss an opportunity like this one. He swiped his tongue along Wilson’s bottom lip and was rewarded with a gasp that left Wilson’s mouth just open enough. Wilson growled and kissed him harder, shifting on the couch so he could get to House from a better angle. House didn’t let him keep the advantage for long, taking Wilson’s face in his hands and holding him still while he plundered his mouth. Wilson melted under the onslaught, leaning back and bringing House with him until they were sprawled out across the couch, House on top, their lips still locked in a passionate kiss.
The switch from a British voice actor on the nature documentary to a screaming child in a potato chip commercial broke the mood, and they pulled far enough away that they could focus their eyes on each other. House remained pleasantly pressed against Wilson, gravity providing enough pressure to allow him to feel Wilson’s interest.
“Putting out for pot,” House said with a half-smile, half-smirk. “That’s a new low, even for you,” he continued, shifting his hips to show Wilson his own interest.
Wilson gave a breathy laugh. “That’s just an excuse, and you know it. I don’t care about the pot.”
“More for me, then,” House replied, smirk morphing into a full blown grin. He thrust gently against Wilson again.
“Shut up and kiss me,” Wilson demanded.
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“Where did that come from?” Wilson asked later as they sat in bed smoking the joint.
House opened his mouth to answer and closed it again. He knit his brow in concentration as he tried to find the words that would explain all he’d been thinking that day, that week.
“When I was in the OR, and that baby put his hand on my finger…” He trailed off. “I’d been calling it a fetus to distance myself, to stay objective, but when he touched me… I felt something, Wilson. I felt something I haven’t felt in years.”
Wilson waited, taking a hit and passing the joint back.
“I felt hope,” House admitted.
“That’s a heady feeling,” Wilson commented.
“That’s not all of it, though. It was what Cuddy said that made me risk asking for a kiss.”
“What did she say?”
“She said: You’re trying to have a life. You’re trying to enjoy yourself.”
“In that condescending voice she sometimes gets?” Wilson asked.
“Exactly. As if I didn’t have a life, as if I couldn’t enjoy myself.” He ran his fingers through his thinning hair and took another hit. “I thought, maybe she was right. Maybe it had been too long since I’d really enjoyed anything…” He trailed off.
“Huh.”
They finished the joint in silence. Wilson squirmed until he could rest his head on House’s shoulder. House took his hand and started naming all the bones, tracing them with his fingers as he did so.
“If hope actually exists, maybe I should take a chance,” House murmured. “That’s what I was thinking.”
“You didn’t expect me to kiss you,” Wilson said with sudden understanding. “You were willing to risk whatever fallout of asking would happen, even though you didn’t expect me to kiss you. And neither of us were drunk.” He paused. “Wow. Hope really is a heady thing.”
“It’s time I stopped trying to live and started living,” House said. “I want you to be part of that.”
“Always,” Wilson promised.
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“Why did you kiss me?” House asked over breakfast — in bed, which Wilson had made.
“Curiosity, mostly. I figured it was time to see what all the hype was about,” Wilson answered, cutting his pancakes into bite-sized, geometrically-shaped pieces. He glanced over at House. “Gay sex,” he explained. “Who else would I have gay sex with, if not you?”
“Stranger?” House suggested. “Someone you’d never see again?”
“That might work with women, but I don’t think I’d be able to do that with a man. It requires too much trust.”
House shoved a huge bite in his mouth. “You trust me?” he mumbled around the food.
“I let you do me,” Wilson replied.
“You begged me to do you,” House corrected after a swallow of coffee.
“Yeah, but I still let it happen.”
House ruffled his hair with sticky fingers.
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“So,” Wilson began, looking at House in the mirror as he tied his tie. “Now that we’e been sleeping together for an entire week, and we’re about to go back to work for the first time since we started…”
“Oh, God. Do we have to talk about feelings? Again?” House asked from where he was picking through his t-shirt collection. “Before breakfast?” he whined.
“If you want me to keep sucking your dick before breakfast, yes,” Wilson answered.
House pulled on a t-shirt and gave a theatrical sigh. “Fine, you can wear my letter jacket.”
Wilson grinned. “I’d rather have your class ring on a chain to show off my cleavage,” he replied without missing a beat. He watched in amusement as House seemed to think this through.
“Ok,” House said, nodding his head decisively. He left the bedroom to root around in the hall closet for a few minutes, returning with a slightly tarnished gold ring with the John Hopkins Medical School emblem on top carved in a black stone with his graduation year on the side. He offered it to Wilson. “You’ll have to supply the chain.”
Wilson took it from his palm reverently, turning it in his fingers. “Does this mean we’re going steady?” he asked, trying to hide his astonishment under a patina of sarcasm.
“I don’t want to hear about you kissing any other boys,” House admonished. “Or girls,” he added. “When Greg House dates a girl, he doesn’t mess around.”
“I’ll be on the phone immediately to let all my girlfriends down,” Wilson said, tucking the ring in his breast pocket for safekeeping.
House walked over and put his hands on Wilson’s shoulders. “I’m serious, James. If this is more than a fuck-buddy thing…”
Wilson reached up and grabbed one of his hands, squeezing it gently. “I know. All teasing aside, I want to date you. You and me, we could never do a just-sex thing, not after this week. If we’d done it just once, maybe, but now? This? This is real.”
House nodded and bent to kiss him.
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“Cuddy wants me to go to Singapore,” House declared as he sat down across from Wilson in the cafeteria. “Give a speech.”
Wilson looked up from his salad. “I know. I wrote it.”
“You wrote my speech?”
“Three and a half minutes should be about all you’ll be willing to do, right? I’ll email it to you.”
House tilted his head, his eyes narrowing as he studied Wilson.
“I’ll even do your clinic hours while you’re away,” Wilson offered.
“Ok, what’s in it for you?” House demanded.
“Aside from a few nights of peace and an ass that doesn’t ache all day?”
“Ha, ha.”
“I know you don’t care about this kind of thing, but being accredited by the World Health Organization is important for the hospital. You giving a three-minute speech at an international conference is one way to keep that accreditation.”
“Any monkey in a white coat can give a three-minute speech. Why me?”
“It might have something to do with your international reputation?” Wilson suggested. House grunted and fished a tomato out of Wilson’s salad, popping it in his mouth. “Fine. Fine! You caught me. My divorce hearing is next week and I want you out of the country so you can’t sabotage it, ok?”
“You’re already divorced.”
“Not legally.”
House pulled back in his seat, stunned. “What?” he snarled. “I thought you took care of that last year!”
“The thing with Tritter put everything on hold,” Wilson said with a frown. “I didn’t want to bother you with it.” House glared. Wilson squirmed.
“Why would I sabotage my boyfriend’s divorce hearing?” House demanded, getting to his feet.
“Because you’re you!” Wilson responded, standing so House didn’t loom over him. “You’ve spent your whole life denying yourself happiness! I didn’t want to get caught up in that crossfire when I have the opportunity to give you a little of it.”
House crossed his arms over his chest and looked down his nose at Wilson. He glanced quickly around the room.
“Attention everyone!” House shouted, and Wilson braced himself for whatever humiliation was coming. From the corner of his eye, Wilson saw House’s three fellows look over from where they shared a table across the room, then the flicker of motion that was Cuddy in the check-out line. House grabbed his shoulder painfully tightly.
“This is Dr. James Wilson,” House continued in his loud, crowd-voice. He pointed at Wilson. “And I want everyone in the whole hospital to know that —“
“House,” Wilson hissed, trying to move away and make a smaller target of himself. House clenched down harder on his shoulder and kept him in place.
“— Jimmy Wilson is the best boyfriend ever!” House finished in a high, overly-enthusiastic falsetto.
“What?” Wilson asked in a startled huff of breath. He felt his cheeks heating. People were staring… at them… at him…
“And if any of you bozos try to horn in on my territory while I’m gone, I will make your lives a living hell when I get back!” House finished triumphantly.
Before Wilson could fully-recover from the surprise of House’s declaration, House kissed him on the mouth. Just as he felt himself getting lost in the moment, House pulled away, his eyes bright and happy in a way Wilson had forgotten he’d ever seen.
“Any questions?” House asked. Wilson shook his head, returning the smile.
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