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Need
by Michelle Christian
After Cuddy's exit, the party was pretty much over. Foreman left for the night, Chase went to his paperwork, Wilson left to put his things back in his office, and House pretended to look at things for his next consult. But the champagne had turned flat in his blood, and the excitement and happiness of having won tasted sour. The alcohol mixed with Vicodin meant that he had trouble tracking the images on the x-ray. It did not, however, seem to stop his brain from wandering over all sorts of territory it normally avoided.
So when Wilson returned to his doorway an hour later, he took the unspoken invitation and simply followed him to his car. There was no discussion about who would drive, because there was no question about who was capable of driving at the moment. Wilson had had two Dixie cups of champagne, and no Vicodin, which made him much more sober than House. It was just another non-exchange in a long line of discussions House and Wilson never had.
House watched the scenery go by as Wilson drove closer and closer to his apartment and the end of the evening. This should have been a celebration. They should have been laughing and punching the air and driving all over town looking for trouble. They'd triumphed over Goliath again, done things their own way, and come out on top. Instead the quiet stretched between them, and what should have been their normal comfort in each other's company was strained with everything that had happened, both over the past week and the past year. Hell, possibly the last ten years.
Their relationship worked, House thought, because they never had to talk. They could bitch and snipe and joke until doomsday, and what was important never got said. Wilson never asked for what House couldn't give, and House didn't throw his heaviest ammunition at Wilson. He'd thought it was the reason they got on so well -- until today.
Because House was a show-don't-tell kind of guy, and he was the first to admit he sucked at showing -- which is how they'd ended up in this mess in the first place.
When Wilson had talked about leaving, when it seemed that he was gone and it was House's fault, House felt his stomach drop, as if he'd fallen off a cliff and was just waiting for the ground to come up and meet him.
The first thing Vicodin had taught him, however, was that not all sensation is real. Even if it is sometimes preferable to the alternative.
The second thing that Vicodin and Wilson had taught him was that whatever, or whoever, saves you owns you.
And he didn't want to be owned. He didn't want to need it. But Wilson, like Vicodin, was too good to leave behind. More accurately (be sure to be exact in your diagnosis, doctor), it hurt too much without them. House wondered what Wilson would say about the comparison.
So, differential diagnosis: Wilson was unhappy in everything but his job. House was unhappy in his life, period. Wilson almost lost his job because of House. Wilson had nothing to keep him here except his job. House and Wilson want the same thing.
So much for the diagnosis. What was he going to do about it?
Wilson kept a steadying hand on him as he closed the door of the condo, so it was easy to lean in to kiss him, but Wilson jerked back. "You didn't have that much champagne," he said with a nervous laugh.
House would have let it go on any other night, would have let it pass as the joke they both knew it wasn't, but the fear of going through with this was finally losing to the fear that he'd always missed this chance, that he'd almost lost his last tether to the world (almost free, a small voice in the back of his head whispered), so instead he didn't say anything and took hold of Wilson's jacket and pulled him in.
This...wasn't what he expected. When Wilson started returning the kiss, he realized it wasn't what he'd bothered to hope for. So he had a moment of revelation, standing in his doorway at the age of forty-five and kissing his best friend. (Diagnosis confirmed; patient responding well to treatment.)
"Stop," Wilson said, turning away and taking a few steps. House could hear his gasps for breath and could still feel Wilson's heartbeat from across the space between them.
"Why?" House asked, taking a step towards him. He was forgetting why he was doing this and only knew he needed to touch Wilson again, feel him, prove that he was real.
"I don't want this."
House could taste the retort in his mouth, the comment on the obvious evidence that Wilson did want this. But the better part of him, the part he tried to ignore and occasionally stomp on, the smarter part, told him to stop, to wait. Told him that if he pushed, Wilson would go and not come back this time. (A smaller part of him, the one usually stomping on the other part, said, "Make him go. You'll never hurt again if he goes.")
"You don't get to do this just because you can't say you're sorry," Wilson said, more softly, but more firmly. The bitterness of it shouldn't have startled House, but it did, and he finally looked into Wilson's eyes. Wilson held the gaze for a minute, then smiled, a small and twisted expression. "Besides, if I wanted sex that was about pretending nothing was wrong, I'd go home to my wife."
Wilson held him up, held him away, and guided him back to the bedroom, House noted with the small part of his brain not floating on booze and melancholy. Wilson carefully settled House into his own bed, in his own apartment, and House couldn't feel any warmth.
"You're drunk and you're high and you're feeling more god-like than usual because you won today," Wilson said, standing close and looking down at him, though House didn't look back. "I'll get you some water and leave you to get some sleep."
Wilson started to move away, but House put out his hand, clamping it to the back of Wilson's thigh and nearly over-balancing him.
"Don't," he said, not looking at Wilson. Don't go. Don't make me say it.
"House..." Wilson sounded tired and hurt, and his leg was iron underneath House's hand.
House had never wanted that, never wanted to hear that sound in Wilson's voice. House hurt people every day and didn't care, but he'd never meant to turn it on Wilson. Not like this, not now.
He rubbed the leg beneath his hand, moving it firmly and higher, massaging deep, and waited for Wilson to stop him again.
A hand gripped his shoulder, but it didn't push him away. House chose to take that for encouragement. He moved his hand up and around the thigh, almost to Wilson's groin. He never looked up, but he couldn't let go.
And then he turned his face into the cloth covered groin and let out a sound that might have been a moan.
The hand on his shoulder gripped him harder, and it might have registered as pain if he hadn't been mouthing Wilson's cock through his pants. If he could have registered anything but the feel of Wilson against his lips, the shape and the warmth radiating through the wool. If his nose hadn't been overwhelmed by the smells of sweat and Wilson and all the accumulated antiseptic and septic smells that saturated their clothes after working all day.
And House realized this was about want, not need. He wanted Wilson like he wanted the pain gone and his leg back. He wanted him like he wanted to breathe. Wanting was fine and good and nothing like need, and he let himself feel that to the fullest.
If he thought he couldn't want more, he realized how wrong he was when he heard Wilson moan. It acted like a trigger in his brain, and he was tearing at Wilson's pants, desperate to get to flesh.
Then it was in his hand, in his mouth, and Wilson's hands were both clutching at his head. Maybe Wilson was accepting this because he had always wanted it as much as House thought, as much as House did himself. Maybe he was accepting it because he knew what House was trying to say without actually speaking. Maybe he was accepting it because the only blowjob a man ever turned down was the one that wasn't offered. House didn't know or care. Right this moment, right now, they both wanted it.
"House..." Wilson gasped again, but there was no chance he meant to stop it this time and no way House was going to free his mouth to protest.
Because Wilson tasted better than any pill on his tongue, the bitterness balanced and subtle, rather than overwhelming. He felt it all hitting his bloodstream, making it bubble more than the champagne and pills cocktail had. It was sensation that wasn't pain and it was so intense he wanted to run away from it. But he took it inside, instead, swallowed it down and made it a part of him. If Wilson could risk his job for him, House could do this.
As if this was a sacrifice at all.
Wilson thrust into his mouth, as if whatever had held him back had been cut away, choking House in the process. But House smothered his own gag reflex and swallowed through it. Soon, Wilson groaned and House had much more to swallow.
House was nearly crushed from the awkward angle as Wilson let himself slump, hunched over House's head and shoulders. House quickly reached up and eased Wilson down onto the bed next to him, limp with release and surrender. What he was surrendering to, House wasn't quite sure, but was merely grateful it made him easier to move.
House had not gotten hard once, which shouldn't have mattered, if this was really about Wilson, but he couldn't help feeling a little angry about it, which covered some of his embarrassment. Fortunately, Wilson wasn't even attempting to reach for that part of him, probably having already noticed the lack of response. Instead, he lay on his side, looking at House, as House looked at him. Searching for something, maybe. Whatever he found seemed to make him, if not happier, then at least more peaceful, as he finally reached across the inches and threw an arm around House's side. Not snuggling, but grounding.
"Yeah," was the last thing House heard, the arm squeezing him the last thing he felt, as he slipped into sleep.
***
Wilson should have been with House as they waited for the final axe to fall, should have been giving moral support and dragging him away to go get drunk, but he'd had nothing left to give after the meeting that morning and the confrontation with House earlier that day. Instead, he stayed in his office, boxing up a career, and a life at this hospital, trying not to think of where he was going next or how he was most likely going there alone.
House had come into his office, practically skipping, if that were physically possible. He was triumphant and glib before he even spoke, and Wilson felt an inkling of hope, even as he wished he could smash House's face in.
The wash of relief that flooded through him buoyed him along through the impromptu party that followed. He'd gone out and bought his own celebratory champagne and plastic cups. They'd won, they'd killed Goliath, and they were kings again. Al least for a little while.
Almost exactly twenty minutes.
As soon as Cuddy left, the weight of everything that had happened, everything that had almost happened, settled back on his shoulders. The relief he'd felt settled in his stomach, and now all he wanted to do was go home to sleep. Hopefully Julie would be asleep already, and he could hold off any post-mortem of the day until the morning. Because he knew that the next time they talked about anything, they were going to argue about House, as they so often did anymore, even when the argument wasn't actually about House.
The euphoria was well and truly gone, leaving him with an overtired mind, a need to collapse, and a desperate desire to not think about the man he was going to tuck into bed once he'd assured himself House wasn't going to choke on his own vomit. Fortunately, House was far more quiet than usual, and Wilson made himself not worry about what that might mean.
Somehow, he got them to House's condo without killing anyone, and even up the stairs to his door with no serious injury. When House leaned forward to kiss him, he wished he could say he wasn't expecting it. After all, he'd been waiting for it for seven years.
He tried to laugh it off. House was drunk ("Not that drunk," echoed in his head), and Wilson was tired and had little resistance to him tonight, his own bitterness acting as a barrier between them this time, instead of House's, but not a strong enough one, he feared.
Wilson had always wanted this, always craved it, but he resisted it. He beat down the impulse to reach for him every time House solved a case and had that self-satisfied look for days; every time he lost a patient and looked beaten and lost, not knowing it showed; every time he turned that smirk and serrated blade of a tongue on him.
He wanted this possibly more than anything -- but he didn't want to need it. He didn't want to be chained to this, to be the only person this mangled animal would let near enough to feed him, even if he attacked Wilson, too, on occasion. He wanted House to want this, too, and most times, when he lay in bed next to his wife and thought about it, Wilson was fairly certain he did. But he didn't want House to need him. Need only him.
He didn't know what would be left of him once House took everything.
"You don't get to do this, just because you can't say you're sorry," he heard himself say, and why couldn't House ever just say anything and mean it? He talked all the time, meaning half of what he said, meaning more of what he didn't say, and while Wilson was pretty good at House-to-English, sometimes he didn't want to work that hard. Sometimes, he just wished they weren't the men they were and they could just ignore all the patterns they'd made for themselves over years and just say what they meant.
His wife would be so amused to hear him say he wanted to talk about his feelings. Right before she stabbed him with the cooking shears.
Wilson was proud of himself for resisting, and let himself hope that House would let it drop, that they would ignore this as they had so many other things over the years. He got House onto the bed, and almost reached out, wanting to touch, yet not letting himself because he knew it wouldn't stop there. So instead he had turned to walk away when he felt the hand on his leg.
"Don't," House said, sounding more vulnerable than Wilson had heard him since Stacy left, and something inside Wilson broke at the word.
I can't. I can't do this. I can't give you any more. He didn't know if he actually said any of it. He didn't think it would matter if he had.
The hand moved against his leg, clutching too hard to be pleasurable, too desperate for the other man to be getting pleasure from it. And Wilson resisted one moment more before reaching down with one hand and touching House's shoulder, less tenderness than surrender.
The diagnosis had been made long before they'd gotten to this point, long before House turned his face into Wilson's groin and breathed, and there was nothing he could about it. Nothing left to do but make himself comfortable. Give into what he'd always wanted.
Don't. Don't. Don't. thrummed through him in time with House sucking on his dick. But not even Wilson could convince himself that his hand on House's head was trying to keep him away. There was no more resistance in him, beaten by all the rest of him into an uneasy disquiet that kept this from being the joy he wished it were.
His orgasm was close, the near-pain in his balls a counterpoint to the ache in his chest. He knew he had to give in to it or die, had to give in to the pressure from inside and outside, and he fell, and let himself be swept along.
The position hurt his back, but he couldn't make himself move, until he felt House lower them both back on the bed.
A quick look confirmed that House had had too much to drink and too much emotion to need anything from him, for which Wilson was guiltily grateful. He felt limp and raw, and he had no more immunity to House, all his T-cells and resistance gone, and he didn't think he could reciprocate the way House might want just now.
Wilson gathered enough energy to turn on his side and look at House to see that self-satisfied smile that was about the sex, and yet wasn't. It was the smile House got when he won.
He knew these stages, saw them played out everyday on different faces; he just hadn't known he could feel them all at once. Didn't know this moment, which should have been happiness, could just lead to peace, the aftertaste only slightly bitter. And he reached out because he couldn't not touch House at the moment, looking smug and happy and content.
"Yeah," he said, not sure what he was agreeing to as he let the day slip away, and he closed his eyes and tried to convince himself to sleep.
--30--
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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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