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thou mayst in me behold
by leiascully
The arrangement was Wilson's idea and that startled all of them.
"Enough," he said wearily one night. "Enough of this. Let's do something new."
"There's nothing new under the sun," House said, his arm slung over the back of the booth, almost around Cuddy's shoulders, and his leg stretched out so that his foot rested against Wilson's hip. He twirled one finger lazily in Cuddy's curls to irritate her. She tossed her head a little, hampered by House's hand tangled in her hair, and bared her teeth at him as she lifted her glass to her lips.
"Don't you ever wish things would change?" Wilson asked her. "Lisa? A little warmth after all this cold?"
She shifted at the sound of her name, put her shoulder against House's ribs under the crook of his arm. He let his fingertips brush the tender skin under her ear and all of them pretended not to notice. "We're too old to change," she said.
"We're not too old," House countered, "just too us. Too set in our ways. Adaptability is overrated." His free hand cradled the glass of scotch and he rolled it in his palm so that the liquid pulled in the light from the dim lamp overhead the same way that House had always gathered light to himself, though neither whiskey nor man gave up darkness. They all watched the glints shift across the facets of glass and liquid as House stroked Cuddy's neck, his calf warm against Wilson's thigh. Her pupils grew and shrank as the whiskey light changed and a flush rose on her cheeks, springtime coming back to what dreamed itself winter.
"So we're old," said Wilson, "at least we know our minds." He dropped a hand and let his fingers curl around House's ankle, moved his foot so that it rested against under Cuddy's toes where she'd shed her shoes under the table.
"Are you suggesting three-way couples therapy or a round of spin the bottle?" House asked, and Cuddy sighed into her vodka and tonic as his thumbnail traced her earlobe.
"Willful misinterpretation never was your handsomest habit," said Wilson, sliding his shoe under the arch of Cuddy's foot.
"True," House agreed easily. "Problem is, you love me anyway."
"Problem is," Wilson agreed. "I love you both."
"Pathologically," House toasted, and winced. Cuddy's bicep flexed prettily under the short sleeve of her shirt as she tightened her grip on whatever part of House she was gripping. "Loving everyone isn't a cardinal virtue," he complained, glaring at her.
"Neither is it a cardinal sin," she said. "For God's sake, House, you have to let someone in. Look at us. Three marriages between us, all Wilson's, and no kids. We've got nothing left but each other." The light gleamed on the silver beginning to thread through her hair.
"Better you than Judas," he said, but Wilson knew the sting was faded from that betrayal after two years. Rehab had mellowed House. "I thought you were straightlaced."
She lifted her shoulders, shrugging against his side. "I'm tired. I'm lonely. Consider it a victory of attrition. The longest, slowest seduction of your life. You conquered me. You conquered Wilson, however unintentionally. Will you feel better if we pretend it's all your idea?"
"Drawing me into your web of sin," House grumbled, but he didn't shake off Wilson's hand or Cuddy's. "How long have you two been planning this?"
"Sometimes things just happen," Wilson said, and kneaded along the back of House's ankle. "Something old, something new."
"Bullshit," said House comfortably. "And the fact that I've never shown any interest in men doesn't faze you?"
Wilson shrugged. "If it was ever going to be anyone, it was going to be me," he said. "You and your adventuring spirit only go so far." He pushed his fingers further up under the cuff of House's jeans.
"Flatterer," House said without pulling away. He nudged the toe of his sneaker into Wilson's hip. "I knew you weren't a choirboy but I didn't know you sang both parts."
"God, you've got a way with words," said Cuddy, rolling her eyes, but her arm had relaxed, the little muscles playing against each other in a way that Wilson thought boded well though he couldn't see her hand.
"By the way," House said to her, "I never thought you were straightlaced."
"He says these things as if he expects me to be shocked," she confided to Wilson across the table, "as if I don't know he was hoping I was fucking Cameron."
"Lisa Cuddy, listen to the mouth on you," House said.
"You like it," she said.
"I love it," he agreed.
"Look at us. We're too us," Wilson said, "who else is there? Who else would have us?"
"Speak for yourself," House said. "Not all of us went to seed." He pushed his toes affectionately into Wilson's stomach. "And you want both of us? But Jimmy, you know how jealous I get."
"We'll share," Wilson promised.
"Sweet and sour," Cuddy said fondly, the hand that had been in House's lap going to cup his cheek. "A combination platter."
"You haven't even tasted anything yet," said House, leering at her, and Wilson knew he'd won. "Something to seal the deal?" House asked, and snapped his fingers at a bored waitress. "Champagne, the good stuff. We're getting married."
"House," said Wilson warningly, but the waitress had heard it all before. She cracked her gum and went behind the bar, coming back with a bottle and three flutes.
"To inevitable conclusions," House toasted, but Wilson refused to believe that he'd been played again, that this was all part of House's master plan. Possession being nine-tenths of the law, or so it was said, and necessity being the mother of invention but never House's excuse, and Wilson was the one with his hand around House's ankle like a loving shackle, reading the anxious tender curiosity in the little wrinkles around House's eyes. No, this wasn't inevitable, but it was good. He lifted his glass to House and to Cuddy and drained it. Mastery had never been his deepest longing, but he'd take it since it was freely given.
+ + + +
There were rules. There had to be rules. It was Cuddy, after all, and she liked things tidy and regulated, even the messy impossible arrangement they'd fallen into.
+ + + +
Rule One: First names in the bedroom. "Why should we? It'll be weird. You never call me Greg," House pointed out, and Wilson shifted uncomfortably at the thought of being called "Jim" again, reminder of all those failed marriages.
"First names," said Cuddy firmly. "I can't call you House and Wilson in the bedroom and the boardroom."
"God, that's such a cliche," House complained as his hand wandered up Wilson's thigh and he leaned in to kiss Cuddy's neck. "You're going to induce some kind of schizophrenia in me with all this multiple identity crap. Have you considered making a visit to the third floor?"
"As if either of us could screw your mind up worse than it already is," said Wilson, with his hand inside House's shirt. "The infamously insane Gregory House."
"Yeah, I'm the one who decided we should start living in sin," House quipped as he pulled Wilson against him.
"Oh, give up," said Cuddy, and curled against them both on the couch, her feet in Wilson's lap and House's arm around her.
+ + + +
Rule Two: No references at work to nudity or any mutual activities. Not even dinner and I mean it, House, keep your mouth shut or you're going to find yourself very lonely very soon.
"You two spoil all my fun," said House.
"We are your fun," said Wilson, and leaned too close over House's shoulder as he put the casserole dishes on the table, his lips grazing House's ear.
"More like his salvation," said Cuddy, fishing for silverware. House pressed his shoulder into Wilson's chest, fast and sweet, and they both watched Cuddy lay out forks and knives with her customary fussy precision.
+ + + +
Rule Three: No regrets.
Wilson, who was Jimmy when the door closed, fucked Lisa against the wall because he knew Greg wanted to and couldn't, and Greg watched and waited. Greg fucked Lisa until she screamed, and all the while he kept one hand on Jimmy, somewhere, anywhere. Lisa left both of them panting, her mouth on one and her hands on the other, while they kissed above her head and cradled her breasts. Greg slid against Jimmy while Lisa wriggled against them, urging them on. Sometimes it was the three of them in the bed in a tangle of beloved limbs, always remembering whose hand was whose, whose leg was pressed between whose, not trying to forget or to be lost. That was the difference, Jimmy thought, between this and his youth. He was never trying to be somewhere else when he was in bed with Lisa and Greg (and it was strange to call them that, but it felt more and more normal to come home to them). He was happy.
Lisa usually slipped out in the middle of the night, trying to retain her professional integrity, she said, because if she stayed she'd never want to get up, and Jimmy knew that morning tenderness, the perfection of the sleeping lover, the way it made you soft, and Lisa still had to be Cuddy in the daylight. She couldn't afford to give them everything. She couldn't risk losing the last thing she had all to herself. They understood. On the weekends it was easier, and they lounged and bathed and cooked and were together or not as they pleased.
In the mornings, when it was just the two of them, Jimmy made love to Greg, slow and gentle to ameliorate the years of hurt between them, and he thought there had never been a sweeter victory, however long and difficult the siege had been until House had realized he was starving for love. He looked at how long they'd kept themselves from each other, how foolish that had been, and he felt a little sorry for the Wilsons and Cuddys and Houses of the past in their lonely orbits.
All things came to fruition in their own time. If there was one thing he'd learned over the years of treating cancer and cheating death, it was that no man could change the schedule of a certain thing.
No regrets.
+ + + +
After a year or so, they had all moved into Cuddy's big house (there had been too many rooms for her quiet life and Wilson was tired of the commute). "You're too damned old to be playing around like this," John House said on the infrequent occasions he could be cajoled by Blythe into speaking to any of them on the phone, but they paid him no mind. Cuddy spoke sometimes, wistfully, of adopting (and House said back, "You want to wish him on some poor grandchild?") but they knew that time was past, and settled for belonging to each other and waiting for one of the fellows (who inexplicably prolonged their contracts over and over) to have children.
"Unconventional" they heard sometimes, and "out of line" other times, as it slowly became public knowledge that the heads of Diagnostics and Oncology had moved in with the Dean, but even in her happiness, Cuddy hadn't lost the knack of glaring down or talking away any objections, and anyway, House was retiring early (maybe, possibly, probably not).
"That's my girl," he said admiringly to Cuddy, "steamroller them with lies. I'm never retiring. I want to die in my office and be laminated and left there forever."
"Now that's a healthy attitude," she said from within the circle of Wilson's arms. "Come here, Greg."
"We're not," he began to protest. "Ah, I see."
"For a genius, you're a real idiot sometimes," she said and Wilson laughed because God, he loved them, these two prickly impossible people with their particular ways, and it turned out that love was enough to get through the autumn.
+ + + +
A/N: Written for savemoony.
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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 NBC/Universal, 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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