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Untitled House/Wilson Fic
by Nuala
Wilson knows he's avoiding going home. All day he's been nervous, restless, feeling uncomfortable in his own skin. Some days are like that. They're coming more frequently lately, but he knows how to handle it.
He's making himself busy around the hospital -- it isn't that hard to do -- when House finds him.
House quickly sidles up to him, looking more like a dishevelled English lit professor than a medical doctor, and links his free arm in Wilson's.
"C'mon, gorgeous," House says, tilting his head and smirking, "dinner's on me."
"I'm busy," Wilson replies, glancing at the pile of charts at the nurses' station.
"No you aren't," House points out reasonably, drawing him toward the elevator.
Wilson can't argue with that.
They walk to the elevator, House's arm linked in Wilson's. House glares at a middle-aged nurse who looks at them askance, going so far as to mutter, "Bigot," just audibly enough to be heard.
Wilson smiles and shakes his head. This is one of House's favourite jokes of late. It's starting to get them a reputation around the hospital.
Once in the elevator, House disengages his arm and punches the floor number that will take them to the cafeteria.
"So. Burning the midnight oil?" House asks him.
"Something like that."
"You're certainly an inspiration to us all, Dr. Wilson."
Wilson looks at him with raised eyebrows, taking in the rumpled jacket. "I wish I could inspire you to wear a tie, or at least a lab coat."
"Over Cuddy's dead body."
"It would make your life easier," Wilson goes on.
"It would make Cuddy's life easier," House replies archly. "You ought to know my contract prohibits that."
"Really. That explains a lot. Does it also say you have to insult at least three patients per day?"
"That stipulation's only applicable when I work four consecutive hours in the clinic."
"When was the last time that happened?"
House affects an innocent look, lifting his eyebrows and puckering his mouth a little. Wilson wants to frown, but somehow he smiles instead.
The elevator door opens with a soft ping. Wilson steps forward with some idea of holding the door open for House, but House must be really hungry tonight because he moves forward just as quickly, faster than usual. Despite the wide door, they end up knocking against each other. Wilson grabs House's arms instinctively, waits for a gasp of pain, but it doesn't come -- he didn't jostle House's leg, then. But House is staring at him, intently, and doesn't pull away. This close, Wilson can see very clearly the lines etched around his eyes and mouth, the grooves in his forehead, worn by pain and stress. Wilson remembers House's face before those lines.
He only realizes he's staring when House blinks, breaking the spell. House tilts his head, and puts his free arm on Wilson's shoulder. "Shall we dance?" he asks in a singsong voice.
Wilson half-smiles, shaking his head. House pulls away, out of Wilson's arms. "Don't dawdle, Astaire," he calls without turning his head. "I hear a sandwich calling my name."
They head to the nearly empty cafeteria. House picks up his usual Rueben sandwich, while Wilson grabs a cup of coffee. He's not very hungry.
They take a table in the back, out of the way. Wilson watches House settle his cane against a chair, which he then sits in. House doesn't just sit down -- he swings his body around and pivots, to keep his weight off his bad leg, and glides down onto the seat, taking an unreasonably large bite of his sandwich in the same motion.
Wilson knows things about House that probably no one else in his life knows. For example, Wilson knows that House was an excellent dancer. He danced with all the bridesmaids at Wilson's first wedding. Stole the bride's thunder. He was incredible.
Wilson can't believe that no one knows House is a dancer. House moves like a dancer, despite the cane. Wilson thinks he'd mange to move like a dancer if he were paraplegic.
"What?" House asks peevishly through a mouthful of sandwich.
Wilson realizes he's staring, again. "You have sauerkraut on your face," Wilson replies.
"Good," House says. "I have to maintain my image." But he wipes around his chin anyway, and Wilson smiles again. He sits across from House and sips his coffee. Now that he's here, with House, he's feeling better than he has all day. Like things are falling into place, like he's breathing fresh air for the first time today. He realizes he's been looking forward to this.
Between bites, House complains about Cuddy, the clinic, the state of the road between his place and the hospital, his staff, the texture of the bread in his sandwich, and the longevity of the battery in an iPod.
Wilson banters back easily, like he always does. It's amazing to him, sometimes, how well they fit together, how naturally they balance one another. They're not the same, and they're not opposites, but they somehow complement each other. Like Fred and Ginger, all that carefully choreographed push and pull, but always together.
He stares momentarily into his empty coffee cup, wondering why on earth he's being so introspective. Well, it has been a long day.
They stay in the cafeteria long after House finishes his sandwich, getting into a more or less heated argument about music. They go through another four cups of coffee. House casually pops some Vicodin. Wilson barely notices anymore, or tries not to notice. He always feels a vague guilt about it -- House takes too much, too often -- like he should be doing something about it. But what he could do for House, he doesn't know.
"Your taste in music bites," House tells him in a perfectly jovial tone.
"At least I have good taste in friends," Wilson replies, his mouth quirking up.
House snorts. "Even your ownership of Celine Dion's entire oeuvre can't compare to your... masochistic taste in friends," he tells Wilson.
"Maybe I like it rough," Wilson rejoins.
House emits a playful growl. "Why Dr. Wilson, I had no idea." He leans forward in his chair and waggles his eyebrows at Wilson.
"There are some things even you don't know, House."
"No there aren't," House scoffs.
"Please. You're not omniscient."
"Try me."
"Name one thing you know that I don't."
"Cuddy's secretly in love with me."
Wilson rolls his eyes. "One, you've been telling me that for months. I already knew. Two, if she's in love with you, she has an odd way of showing it."
"Come on. 'Pompous jackass' is an endearment."
"Really? Then the entire Board is in love with you, along with the clinic staff and half the nurses on your floor."
"Of course they are. I'm adorable."
Wilson snorts. "Pompous jackass."
"See? Not even you can resist me."
"You found me out," Wilson jokes. "No use resisting any longer. Your place or mine?"
"My bed's too small. But your place is too dangerous. If Julie catches us in flagrante delicto on your nuptial bed, she's likely to amputate certain body parts I know you're rather fond of."
"How about your office?" Wilson asks, playing along, enjoying himself.
"Hm. No. If Cameron catches us, it'd break her heart."
That abruptly harshes Wilson's buzz. He tries to tamp down his annoyance. "Yes, she's such a delicate soul," he says. He's aiming for a light tone, but it sounds venomous even to his own ears. House raises his eyebrows. Wilson shrugs.
Wilson doesn't know why House's infatuation with Cameron bothers him. Why he has to pretend to be gleeful and tease House about it when he "lets it slip." Why their little dances around each other make him want to yell. Wilson knows flirtation inside out -- it seems to be Wilson's default mode, after all. He flirts with the nurses, with the fellows, with the other oncologists, with the board members; he flirts with the dry cleaner and the barrista and the pretty young man who tends bar at Winston's Pub. It doesn't mean anything. It shouldn't mean anything. Wilson knows this.
Still. It bothers him. House and Cameron.
House is still looking at him oddly, trying to figure out what the hell Wilson's problem is. "What's the matter, Wilson?" he's asking. "Jealous of Cameron's undying devotion to me?"
Wilson swallows. That's not exactly true. But it feels somehow close to the truth and Wilson suddenly doesn't want to be having this conversation.
House looks far too delighted. "Oooh, you are jealous. What is the world coming to, when the handsome young Head of Oncology is jealous of the despicable old cripple?"
Wilson knows that he's ribbed House about this kind of thing often enough. And that turnabout is fair play. Still. "Shut up," he says petulantly.
"Your maturity blows me away."
Wilson settles for glaring at House, who is grinning like a cat with a mouthful of canary.
"You are jealous," House announces with a combination of astonishment and victory. "You li-ike Cam-eron," he sings, like a five-year-old.
"No, actually, I don't!" Wilson says it louder than he'd intended. No one else in the place pays any attention, but House is looking at him with startling intensity. Wilson can almost hear the wheels whirring in his mind, putting it together.
"You don't like Cameron," House says, and it's a statement of fact. "You're jealous, though." Wilson is getting unaccountably nervous. House may be a pompous jackass but he is impossibly good at reading people, plucking truths out of masses of emotional ramblings with flawless precision.
House's eyes widen, and he stares at Wilson. Wilson arrives at the same conclusion as House, but about a second later.
Yes, he's jealous.
He's jealous of Cameron.
Oh fuck, thinks Wilson. His mind whirls. He wants to tell House he's got it wrong, that he's platonically jealous of the amount of time House spends with Cameron, or some other bullshit story that House will see right through. He wants to say something, anything, but his tongue seems to be suffering an odd temporary paralysis.
House is still staring at him, his piercing eyes impossible for Wilson to read. Mercifully, House's pager goes off, the shrill electronic chirp breaking the spell. House glances down at it. "Oh. Right. That." He glances back at Wilson. "I have to..."
Wilson nods stiffly. "Don't worry about it."
House seems to be about to say something else, but then just nods back. He stands, a graceful reversal of the twist that he uses when he sits, and hobbles out of the cafeteria without looking back.
Wilson sits for a few minutes longer, feeling numbness beat back the panic that's gnawing at the edges of his consciousness. Eventually, he gulps the last of his coffee -- it's cold and bitter -- then walks slowly up to his office.
He considers hiding. Not for long, though. House knows every place to hide on the entire grounds. If House wants to find him, he will. He considers leaving, but he doesn't know where to go except home, and he really doesn't want to deal with Julie right now. He'll just go about his business as usual, he decides. He often works late. Nothing unusual here, folks. Nothing to see.
Wilson makes a quick call home from his office. The answering machine picks up, like he knew it would. He's still grateful. He tells Julie he won't make it home tonight, and not to worry. Not that she would, he thinks as he hangs up. Not these days. He leans on his desk for a moment, thoughts twisting in his mind. He's good at analysis, usually. He sees patterns and causal relationships that others miss. Take his three marriages. It's the same pattern -- all begun with the same tone of hopeful blindness, all slowly souring, interest waning on both sides, until the inevitable collapse.
But Wilson could never see the initial cause of the collapse. He'd been missing something, something drawing him to women he'll end up hating, something that invisibly broke down his marriages from the inside, something so much like a cancer. He's lain awake at night pondering it. He's spent days, days like today, going through the motions, wondering why he could spot the subtlest diseases in unfathomable patients but fail to identify the driving factor in his life.
Mystery solved, he thinks bitterly. He hates it when figuring something out doesn't solve anything, when it just makes life more complicated.
Wilson collapses into his chair and puts his head in his hands. People think he's successful, think he has everything that he wants, but Wilson knows that all he really has are three things. Job. Marriage. And House. At least his job is more or less secure without Vogler's loyalty games. But his marriage is broken beyond repair, and now it looks like his friendship with House is doomed too. He doesn't want to think about it.
In need of something straightforward to occupy his mind, Wilson runs some stats and makes a few notes towards another paper. His specialty can be a messy one, with no easy answers or sure-fire solutions, but the numbers are comforting sometimes. Clear dichotomies and faceless statistics help make sense of the messiness. Things like survival rates and white blood cell counts don't always tell the whole truth, but they never lie.
Wilson loses himself in the analysis. When he glances up, over four hours have gone by.
He's weighing the advantages of going home to change and shower before his real shift starts against the possibility of running into Julie at home when House clatters into his office. He plants himself in front of Wilson's desk, leaning on the cane, and glares.
Wilson swallows around a sudden tightness in his throat. He looks at House with something like fear. House just shakes his head and makes an exasperated noise.
"You know," he says conversationally as he limps around the desk, "even after all this time, and despite all your marriages, and everything..." House stops beside Wilson, putting a hand on his shoulder and looking down at him. "...I never realized how utterly stupid you are."
Wilson opens his mouth to protest when House swoops down and kisses him square on the lips.
House pulls back, taking in Wilson's shell-shocked expression. He shakes his head, and mutters, "Thick as a brick," before moving in again. This time he goes more slowly, swiping his tongue along Wilson's, moving his hand up to cup Wilson's face.
Wilson's mind just stops. He's got nothing, nothing to hold onto except the tactile reality of House's tongue and lips, the hand along his cheek, the noises their mouths make as they slide together. He can't do anything but kiss back, can't conceive of doing anything other than this.
House pulls back, and fixes Wilson with the same intense gaze he's used a million times before. Wilson can feel himself staring like a kid, wide-eyed, slack-jawed. His lips still tingle from the kiss.
Wilson's skill with patterns suddenly asserts itself. In his mind, little pieces of his life suddenly resolve themselves into a meaningful whole. House teasing him about his flirtations with a new nurse, with an undertone of bitterness. Every one of his wives saying at least once, "Why don't you just marry him?" The long evenings together, with House carefully angling his body towards Wilson's on the couch while they watch crappy movies. Yes, of course. A million insignificant gestures and expressions now all take on meaning, all pointing to something Wilson feels he should have known, should have noticed before. He thinks, absurdly, that House would have figured it out sooner.
House is still looking at him. He must like what he sees, because he grins wryly and winks. It's bizarre and, Wilson thinks, totally adorable. House kisses Wilson again, once, on the mouth, and says, "I told you your taste in friends bites."
Wilson smiles weakly. "You said my taste in music bites. And that my taste in friends is masochistic."
"Can't it be both?" House asks, then leans in and gently bites Wilson's nose. Wilson gives a startled laugh.
"To further revisit our earlier conversation," House goes on, "will it be your place or mine?"
Wilson blinks a few times. This is going incredibly fast, it seems. "I'm busy," he says, stalling.
"No you aren't," House replies, leaning in and kissing him lavishly.
Wilson really, really can't argue with that.
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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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