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Goodnight
by Basingstoke
James was leaning on the piano, wine glass in one hand and cigar in the other, and Greg was playing "You Must Remember This," which always made James feel like a movie star. The lights were low. There were piles of books on the table, on the sofa, on the piano at his back, knee-deep on the floor; it was cozy, like being surrounded by pieces of Greg's brain.
It was a good night. Spicy shrimp, a fortune cookie that said "You will have great luck," and nobody had paged him all night.
Not even his wife. So she had probably gotten his message, both the overt and the subtext.
James leaned back to tap into the ashtray and Greg caught his eye. "Play it again, Sam," James said.
Greg launched into something jarring and modern, because he was a bastard. James wrinkled his nose, but as Greg kept going, he realized to his horror that he recognized it. "You're not playing Britney Spears," he said.
"Kiss me, baby, one more time!"
"I'll hurt you."
Greg shifted to Philip Glass, which he knew drove James up a wall. Too repetitive. It reminded him of work: Test after test, patient after patient with only minor changes between them, and the music didn't have the human factor to keep him engaged. "How much wine do I have to pour in you before you play Christmas carols like a good goy?" James asked.
"More than I have in the cabinet."
"Then enough with the Philip Glass."
Greg smirked a little, but stopped. He picked up the lighter and his cold cigar from the ashtray. The lighter guttered and went out as House tried to relight his cigar; he flicked it a few more times, but the thing was spent. "Can you buddy-light a cigar?" James asked, walking around the piano. He sat beside Greg backwards on the bench and offered his cigar.
Greg touched the tips--he took James's wrist lightly to hold them steady--and puffed carefully. James's cigar went out as well. Greg shrugged with his eyebrows, just a quick flick of expression. "Guess not."
James stretched backwards to deposit his cigar in the ashtray and ended up propping an elbow on the music-stand ledge and leaning his head in his hand. He was drunk enough that sitting up straight was a burden and soul-baring was the order of the day. "I have a confession to make."
Greg started playing again: "Stormy Weather." "You don't want to go home," Greg said.
James sighed.
Greg shut his mouth and kept playing. After the second refrain, James couldn't stand it any more and said, "No pithy remarks? No words of wisdom? No cutting remarks about counting to three?" Three wives, one, two, three, and his marriages all ended the same way, and he was going to make himself insane if he thought about it any more.
"I don't have a guest room," Greg said, "but it's a king-size."
"I know. You dragged me to the store when you got it." But that was it, apparently that was it, that was all?
"Right. Good bed. Supportive mattress." Greg gave him a wine-softened glance and James folded up, his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands, not crying but thinking thoughts that cut up his stomach like glass. Why he'd rather be sleeping in an alley than at home right now. Why Greg was his best friend, and his own wife wasn't.
Again.
Greg kept playing. Soft, yearning music; he didn't have to sing, it didn't matter what the words were anyway.
"Have you ever been married?" James asked. It was probably a stupid question--he'd known the guy more than a decade--but he realized that he'd never asked straight out and Greg never talked about his love life. He didn't have much of a love life, even before the incident of his leg.
"Never so much as engaged," Greg said.
"You put your lives together. You become one person with two heads. Divorce--you have to go and find your other arm and leg again." Which Greg knew, at least from the outside. James had dragged him to Ikea to help get new furniture for each bachelor pad. "At least I won't have to--" James stopped dead.
Wouldn't have to go to Ikea again, because he hadn't thrown out his bachelor furniture this time. His bed and chest of drawers were in the guest room. His wire-frame shelves were in the basement. His desk was in the media room, covered in Julie's art supplies. He was already braced to fail again.
James took the two steps to the coffee table and retrieved the bottle of wine. He sat back on the bench, leaning on one hand, drinking straight from the bottle, reading the titles on the nearest stack of books: Buzzed. Great Expectations.
Greg wandered off the tune into fillips and improv. Gray's Anatomy in an antique leather binding. Neuromancer. Boy George's Take It Like A Man, and James laughed. He drained the bottle to its gritty grape-skin dregs and leaned against Greg's shoulder.
Greg hit a sour note and stopped playing. "Bed?" he asked.
"Yeah." James rubbed his temples clumsily with both hands. When he opened his eyes, Greg was standing there with one hand outstretched. James took it and let Greg pull him up.
He was definitely weaving. That last glass of wine was hitting his bloodstream fast. He was glad that he didn't have to try to talk when they got to Greg's bedroom--which was frankly messy, with stacks of books beside the bed, ties and pill bottles strewn across the dresser, and dirty shirts and socks only half inside the hamper. James kicked his shoes off under a chair and sat on the bed to deal with the rest.
Greg was steadier on his feet than James was at the moment, and he'd had just as much wine on only one and a half legs. It didn't seem right.
They both rolled into bed in boxers--James's soft black cotton, Greg's burgundy silk. At least, James thought they were silk. They looked like silk.
Greg turned out the light and James couldn't sleep. Couldn't close his eyes. He stared at the ceiling and thought about Julie's wedding dress.
Her first wedding. His third. They got china from her side of the family and towels from his. She'd been beautiful, was still. He thought he'd waited long enough, that he'd figured out what he'd done wrong, but they didn't even have a joint checking account.
Was Greg really wearing silk? James slipped a hand under the sheet and rubbed the fabric between his fingers. Yes. Silk. Weird.
"Dr. Cuddy, you minx..." Greg mumbled, and James laughed softly.
"Silk doesn't seem like you," James said.
"Anything else would just ruin the line of my pants--actually, my leg gets sensitive. I thought these would help."
"Do they?"
"No."
"That sucks."
"Yeah."
His eyes adjusted. The ominous shadows of the ceiling light resolved into a pyramid of steel and glass centered over the bed. James turned over and stared at the blinds instead; then he turned the other way and stared at Greg's still profile.
"Want a Vicodin?" Greg said without opening his eyes.
"I had half a bottle of wine. But if I'm looking to kill myself, I'll let you know."
Greg wrinkled his nose. "I can't sleep until you sleep."
"Sorry." James tucked his hands under his cheek and tried to lay quietly, but he still couldn't shut his eyes. The alarm clock glowed over the bridge of Greg's nose: 1:42.
1:43.
1:44.
He'd rented a tuxedo for his first wedding, bought a suit for his second, and bought a fancier, designer tux for his third. He didn't know what meaning that held, but it felt important.
"I'm serious," Greg said. "One of my exes had to sleep in a different room, which is probably why she only lasted six months."
James groaned and rolled onto his back. "I'll call a cab." He wasn't sure where he would tell the driver to go, but... He propped his elbows underneath him.
Greg stopped him with a hand on his stomach. "You're thinking too hard. You're triggering adrenaline and blood flow, your basic fight or flight. But you can't run from your own head and punching yourself in the face, while entertaining, wouldn't do much."
James dropped his head back. "Sleep disorders are not my specialty," he said.
"Lay down. Try the House method. Close your eyes."
James obeyed, though it felt like his lids were spring-loaded. "House method?"
"Foolproof."
James rested his arms at his sides and tried to relax, and Greg moved his hand down, sliding over his abdomen--oh, so that was the House method.
"I'll write you a prescription later," Greg said, and James laughed again and slid his hand across the sheets to Greg's silk-covered hip. Their elbows tangled, but James hitched himself closer and they found a way to lock together, arm and leg and hand and dick. His shin bumped up against Greg's--hair against hair--and Greg's dick felt interestingly unfamiliar in his hand. Different shape. Different temperature.
Sweat prickled up on James's body before he felt it on Greg's. Greg's belly felt cold for a moment, but then he caught up; Greg raised his good knee and pushed his dick into James's hand while James's instinct was to let Greg do the work. James felt sluggish, numb from the wine, but newness--new bodies, new skin--always had that special charm. His arousal grew and he slowly thrust into Greg's hand.
Greg panted when he did it. James shifted his grip and gave Greg a new angle that made him buck and made his hand tighten on James. Good--the best part--the back and forth.
God, he was dizzy--the bed felt like it was revolving. But it didn't matter, because Greg wasn't going anywhere. Greg shivered, held his breath, then gasped harder--coming, James guessed, and Greg lifted his hips and shot into his palm.
"I win," James whispered. Greg snorted and brought him off with two hard jerks.
Then they lay tangled up together. James's muscles twitched and settled like a car engine ticking over.
Greg shifted and handed James a Kleenex. James didn't really want to move--Greg's belly was comfortable, fuzzy--but he took the Kleenex and wiped his hand. Greg took it back and tossed it somewhere.
They both stretched a little. James rolled onto his stomach and slid his other hand onto Greg's belly, just because it felt good. He slept like that.
*
James lurched out of the bathroom wearing Greg's blue bathrobe and followed the smell of coffee. His brain felt slow and rubbery, like a tension headache minus the pain, and he couldn't quite seem to focus.
Greg was sitting at the small round table with coffee, scrambled eggs, toast, and bacon at his left hand and the New York Times scattered over the rest of the table. He was wrapped in a heavier terry plum-colored bathrobe. "What's your position on bacon?" Greg asked.
James slid into a chair, rested his elbows on the business section, and rubbed his temples. "I'm only kosher at Grandma's house."
Greg lurched to his feet and opened the fridge. He deposited a bottle of Gatorade under James's nose. James hated Gatorade, especially the emphatically-not-orange flavor, but Greg had a point: Rehydration. He wrinkled his nose and took it like a man.
He watched Greg assemble breakfast--toast in the toaster, eggs scrambled in a bowl and poured into the pan, bacon in the other pan--with his good leg and his cane planted and his bad leg bent and relaxed. Nearly everything was within arm's reach in the little kitchen. Apparently, Greg had paid more attention when they first saw this apartment than James had thought at the time; Greg had looked in every room, said, "I like the windows," and then given the agent his security deposit five minutes into the tour.
Smart guy. James always forgot how fast his brain worked.
James looked at Greg's legs beneath his bathrobe, his knobbly bare feet on the wooden floor. He was starting to show a musculature difference in his calves. "You should go to PT more often," James said.
"Are you ogling me, Dr. Wilson?" Greg twitched his hips, sh-boom-boom.
"Professional interest."
Greg looked over his shoulder, the hint of a smile on his face, then turned and handed James his plate. Greg went back to the front page of the Times, occasionally taking a forkful of eggs. He made good eggs.
"Are you going to tell your wife?" Greg asked. He caught James's eye and tapped a slice of bacon against his lip meaningfully.
James coughed, raised an eyebrow, and swallowed his bite of toast before he choked. "I hadn't planned on it," he said. Hadn't planned on thinking about it at all. He was too old to have an identity crisis, especially one that involved his best friend's dick.
"Warn me if you do. You like temperamental women and I need time to duck." Greg waggled his eyebrows and James shook his head.
"I hurt her enough unintentionally," James said, trying for a laugh, but failing as his mouth went dry and he realized just how true that was.
Greg looked at him seriously, then tugged another section from under his plate and passed it to him. It proved to be the crossword puzzle with the top half filled in. "I saved you the rest," he said.
End.
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Legal Disclaimer: The authors published here make no claims on the ownership of Dr. Gregory House and the other fictional residents of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Like the television show House (and quite possibly Dr. Wilson's pocket protector), they are the property of Fox Television, David Shore and undoubtedly other individuals of whom I am only peripherally aware. The fan fiction authors published here receive no monetary benefit from their work and intend no copyright infringement nor slight to the actual owners. We love the characters and we love the show, otherwise we wouldn't be here.
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