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Leave This Harbor For The Sea
by Otter
House was never the kind of friend who'd help you move, even when he'd had two good legs, not to mention two good arms perfectly capable of lifting boxes. He'd always been the sort of friend who'd stop by while you were packing, make cutting remarks about the failures of your romantic relationships, and use all the half-filled boxes as an excuse to root through your things. It should've been a completely unbearable personality trait -- like so many of House's habits that Wilson inexplicably found amusing rather than irritating -- but House always did have the foresight to bring pizza and beer.
Wilson guzzled down two beers right off the bat and tried not to dwell on the fact that he seemed to be moving in and out of co-habitation situations frequently enough that pizza and packing had become as much a ritual as Superbowl Sunday. House was certainly treating it like a spectator sport, anyway.
"You could help," Wilson pointed out, because he pointed that out every time and he figured there was no reason to break with tradition now.
"Nope. Leg's acting up again. Coach told me to walk it off." House limped -- without his cane, but with an extra-large helping of dramatic license -- to Wilson's work table, where he helped himself to another slice of topping-laden supreme pizza.
Wilson sighed, folded the top shut on another box, and said, "Well, your eyes still work. You can help me find the tape."
House leaned over one of the open boxes, eyeballing the contents as if searching earnestly for the missing tape, and said, "I can't believe you still own 8-tracks." He reached a hand into the box and pulled out one of the cassettes, waving it in Wilson's direction. The looping "G" in "Grease" was obscured by House's finger, and Wilson wondered if he could pretend that particular recording was Julie's. "I got chills," House said, accusingly. "They're multiplyin'."
"I hear they make a cream for that," Wilson said. He found the tape -- as it turned out, it was sitting exactly where he'd left it five minutes ago -- and sealed off another box, adding it to the growing stack in the corner.
"I wonder," House said, in that way he always did when he was way past wondering and already had a diagnosis. "Do your wives leave you when they find your hidden stash of Broadway musical memorabilia, put the pieces together and figure out that you're gay?" He took another bite of his pizza and rooted a little deeper into the box, one-handed, skimming titles for a moment and signaling his horror and dismay with his eyebrows. "Or do they marry you thinking that you are gay? Do they see you as the perfect homosexual soul-mate, all the benefits of marrying a rich doctor without the yucky bodily fluid exchange? Are they crushed when they find out that you love having sex with women, just not the ones you're married to?"
"No, they're fine with all that," Wilson said. "But I have yet to find the girl who will really share my passion for yodeling." He threw a couple of reference books -- woodworking, because he'd long ago banned all medical volumes from his so-called home office -- into a box with more force than was strictly necessary. "And as I recall, you were the one who insisted on a trip to New York last year to see 'The Man of La Mancha.'"
"That was your birthday present," House parried. "Frankly, I was a bit scandalized by the homoerotic subtext. Was it just me, or was Sancho Panza a little too devoted to Don Quixote?" He polished off his slice of pizza and licked the oil from his fingers, then wiped them against his pants. Having exhausted the comedic potential of the 8-tracks, he picked up one of Wilson's model boats -- a painstakingly hand-carved Grand Banks Dory, circa marriage number two -- and brandished it in Wilson's direction. "You see?" he said. "You're surrounded by phallic objects. It's no wonder your women abandon you in search of straighter pastures."
Wilson took the boat out of House's hands and replaced it with a beer bottle. "I hate to point out the blatantly obvious, House," he said, "but it really seems to me like you're the one with the dick fixation. Is there something you'd like to share with the class? I promise nobody will judge you."
House had already twisted the beer open and tossed the cap into one of the open boxes as if he'd mistaken it for a garbage can. He leaned back against the work table with a posture that managed to look both casual and tense. "Well, now that you mention it..." he said, and took a long pull off his beer, like maybe that wasn't a joke.
Wilson's first wife had once told him that he was too cautious, not spontaneous enough, didn't buy her enough flowers and never stopped by her office to invite her to lunch. She'd ended up having an affair with the rock climbing instructor from her gym, who had only ever climbed fake walls. Wilson had never made an effort to be more impulsive; he hesitated now, with the Dory still held delicately between his hands, staring at House the same way he might stare if he were looking into a microscope where cancer was curing itself.
House pulled a face that was half wince and half grimace, put down the beer, and said, "That was a joke, in case you missed it."
There were tiny little oars inside the model boat, and a little cloth sail wrapped up neatly around a little wood mast. They clattered angrily between the bulkheads, like the warning rattle of a snake, when Wilson shifted the Dory in his hands. "No it wasn't," Wilson said, and he didn't hesitate then; he said it with the kind of certainty that he could feel deep in his chest, like it was nesting in his ribcage. "You're serious. Are you... coming out, to me?"
House's grimace deepened, entrenching itself against the threat of bombardment. His head dropped and his eyes drifted to his cane. Wilson wondered sometimes why House's staff had such a hard time reading the man, because House had always been open like this: obvious, if you had eyes and were looking.
He stepped sideways, between House and the cane, cutting off the retreat that House had been pondering, and said, "You are. What brought this on?"
House said, "I'm not coming out," the same sort of petulant half-whined denial that Wilson's five-year-old nephew was known to utilize when told that one day he'd actually like girls. Taking the current situation into account, maybe they'd been wrong to tell him that. Maybe Adam would only ever like boys.
"So what are you?" Wilson asked, genuinely interested and more than a little fascinated with the way House actually seemed to be blushing. "Gay? Bi? Curious? I hope your next revelation won't be anything about barnyard animals."
"Cute," House said. The look he was giving his cane was almost longing. "I see you didn't pay any attention to this year's hospital-wide sensitivity training seminar. I believe there was a heavy emphasis on avoiding labels."
Wilson snorted. He really wanted to put his hands on his hips, but he was still holding the boat, and to put it down he'd have to move back toward the bookshelf. "Like you'd know," Wilson said. "You left after the first Powerpoint slide for a two-hour bathroom break."
"Yeah, I should really take something for that," House said. He shifted his weight like he was considering trying to break left and get around Wilson, which was either wishful thinking or sheer desperation, but Wilson shifted his weight too, keeping the route blocked.
"Come on, House," Wilson said. "You're the one who brought it up. You're the one who's been making all the gay remarks. You wanted me to know. So what's the point? You want me to tell you it's okay, that you're still my friend? Of course you are. I mean, I'm surprised you've never mentioned any of this before, but your orientation isn't any reflection on--"
"Oh, stop," House said. He waved a hand sharply and his expression was almost pained. "I don't need a PC cuddle-fest. Forget I said anything."
"Ah," Wilson said. "It's constantly open season on my private life, but we're not allowed to talk about the fact that you're apparently gay." He waved one hand in a vaguely exasperated gesture, and had to concentrate on relaxing the other so he wouldn't crush his boat into kindling. "So you don't need a cuddle-fest. Okay. What do you need? Why did you finally, after all this time, decide to tell me at all?"
House said, "I wasn't--" and then snapped his mouth shut as if biting off the rest of his words. He pushed himself away from the work table and limped swiftly toward his cane.
"You weren't what?" Wilson pressed. House put his head down, like if he couldn't go around Wilson he'd go through him. Wilson didn't put up any resistance, though; he just turned and kicked the damned cane across the room. It clattered to rest against the base of the bookshelf.
House stumbled to a stop and said, "Well, that was juvenile."
He was close enough to touch, so Wilson did. He reached out a hand and wrapped his fingers around House's arm, partly to keep House from trying to leave and partly just to keep him on his feet.
"You weren't what?" Wilson repeated. His hand was squeezing too hard at House's arm; he could leave marks in the shape of his fingertips.
House sighed, and it was a bone-deep tired sound. When he finally answered, his voice was the low murmur of a man talking in his sleep, speaking against his own will. "Nothing." He took a step back, twisted out of Wilson's hand, and then stood there, unable to leave and unwilling to stay.
He'd always been a coward, Wilson thought, in all matters but medicine. As long as Wilson had known him, he'd always been scared shitless.
That was fine, though. Wilson could be brave enough for the both of them.
"It's alright, Greg," he said, and closed the distance himself. "I get it."
When House said, "What?" with a kind of skeptical, suspicious rasp in his voice, Wilson was close enough to feel the word brush against his own cheek. He let the model boat slide from between his fingers as if it were drifting out of the slip and into the harbor; it hit the floor with a loud crack, splintering. House flinched, so Wilson steadied him, reached out with his empty hands and settled them on House's waist. His right index finger caught the hem of House's t-shirt and fumbled underneath, inadvertently finding warm skin, like Columbus edging along the coast of definitely-not-India.
House jumped again, and he was almost quivering under Wilson's hands, but he didn't move away.
"This," Wilson said, more sigh than speech, and he leaned in to kiss House's mouth.
As life-changing experiences went, the moment certainly lacked profundity. House inhaled sharply between his teeth and turned his head, just enough that Wilson missed his mark, and his lips grazed instead across the corner of House's mouth and the warm flesh of a stubbled cheek. It wasn't even a kiss. Not really. He tightened his fingers on House's hips and thought that maybe he should try again; when he turned his head, his cheek pressed against House's jaw.
House's body was braced against the impact, as if he could see the collision coming but couldn't possibly turn away in time. He said, "Fuck," like he'd already crashed, like everything underneath the skin was broken. When he said, "What're you doing?" Wilson felt the flex of muscles in House's jaw as if the words were being shaped in his own mouth.
Wilson didn't answer, didn't have a witty reply or a sarcastic comeback. All he had were his fingers on House's hips and his mouth against House's cheek and the frantic rush of blood in his own ears, clearly trying to resupply his brain before he did something really stupid.
Too late. Too late.
House said, "Jimmy," and his tone wasn't pleading or longing or even warning, it was a low ragged hiss of something Wilson couldn't name. He had a hand fisted in Wilson's t-shirt, his knuckles skimming against Wilson's stomach.
"Isn't this what you wanted?" Wilson asked. He pulled House a little closer, and the heat filling up the space between them was difficult to breathe through.
House let out a startled little gasping laugh that had probably started out as a moan, and half-heartedly tried to pull back. "Since when is this what you wanted?"
Wilson sighed against House's shoulder, and from the corner of his eye he could see the rest of the room: the wreckage of the model boat on the floor, the half-empty bookshelves, the scattered remains of his life waiting to be packed away.
He didn't know what he wanted, obviously. He only knew he'd never had it.
The noise he made was inarticulate and frustrated, and he turned his head again, eyes half-open so he could see just well enough to find his target this time, catch House's lips with his own and demand cooperation. His tongue skimmed across House's teeth, and when House jerked minutely backwards, he followed, more aggressive and spontaneous and completely insane than he'd ever been in his life. For a moment he was sailing, as if the wind was at his back and pushing him forward, into House and into something else that his life had never been before.
Then House pushed back, and it was like stumbling out of the calm center of the world and into the hurricane. House shifted and pulled Wilson in closer, tighter, gripped the back of Wilson's neck and turned the kiss around. It was like being seized by the undertow and swept out to sea, like breathing in expecting oxygen and filling his lungs with saltwater instead.
Wilson broke away with a gasp, a swimmer breaching the surface; he clung to House, trying desperately to swallow around the panic in his throat. House eased his grip, and they stood like that for a few long moments, with their ragged breathing the only sound between them.
House sighed after awhile, and his breath rushed past Wilson's ear, leaving a trail of heat in its wake. "You have no idea what you're doing, do you?" he said. He'd always been a bit of a mind-reader; it was one of his more irritating qualities. But he sounded amused rather than annoyed, which was probably a good sign.
Wilson dropped his head, forehead against House's collarbone, and said, "Absolutely none. Sorry."
House patted Wilson's back awkwardly, and his sigh ruffled Wilson's hair. "Don't feel bad," he said. "Happens to everybody; I'm just irresistible like that. You should've seen Foreman on his first day of work. Guy was like an octopus. I had to give him a stern talking-to about appropriate workplace behavior."
Wilson laughed, which felt surprisingly good considering that he was maybe standing on the edge of hysteria. He thought he might've been hallucinating too, because it felt an awful lot like House was hugging him, albeit a little gingerly.
But the moment was over almost before it had begun, as if it had never happened. House stepped back, put a little space between them, and said, "Hand me my cane, would you?" He gave Wilson's shoulders a last squeeze and then dropped his hands entirely.
Wilson said, "Yeah," with a half-broken voice, and cleared his throat, as if he could get his equilibrium back that way. He turned around and retrieved the cane, delivering it into House's hands much more gently than he'd cast it away.
"I'll uh... let you get back to your packing," House said. He was looking at the floor, and leaned on his cane with comfortable familiarity, like he'd missed it and wanted to welcome it back to the family. "You still going to crash with me for awhile?"
"Yeah." Wilson nodded and looked at the floor too. The Dory was still there, shipwrecked against the edge of the world. "I mean, if you still want--"
"Yeah," House said. "I do. Just come over whenever you're done here. And bring some dinner with you."
"Alright," Wilson said. "I'll just, um..." He waved a hand at the open boxes, waiting patiently to be filled and sealed and shipped away.
"Right," House said. He finally looked up from the floor, caught Wilson's eye and tapped his cane against the floor like he was thinking of saying something else. But he turned and walked out without speaking, leaving the silence in the room when he went.
Wilson went back to his packing and tried not to dwell too much on whatever it was that had just happened; he wasn't going to think about it because he really, really didn't want to know. Maybe he could call it divorce-induced insanity. But when he licked his lips they tasted faintly of House's skin, and the pizza smell that still permeated the room had been on House's breath too, and inside his mouth.
Wilson stooped to clean up the wreckage of his model boat, and pretended he couldn't taste the saltwater.
the 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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