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Swallowing Smoke
by wanderingwidget
Rating: Hard R (for sex and swearing)
Pairing: House/Wilson; Wilson/various; House/omc
Word Count: ~3858
Summary: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Warnings: Angst, son of angst, bride of angst, and the incestuous babies of the son and bride of angst.
Author's Notes: unbeta'd, only on-the-fly spellchecked, possibly the first in a series and possibly standing alone. The last three pages or so written after midnight, a tall glass of wine, and hallucinatory exhaustion had set in. ETA:: Re-read and several mistakes fixed, if there are any more then feel free to point 'em out to me ^^. ETA2:: Thanks to rosewillread, conunduh">, and leaper182 for comments about the grammar ^^ ::passes out teh cookies::
The first time House caught him at it he wasn't surprised (at least, that's what he told himself) and if something was stinging his eyes then it was vindication, not betrayal, because - after all - he'd known this was coming from the start. Hadn't he? Wilson had been in the Fawkes wing with a patient's sister - some buxom, blonde, puffy-eyed female in need of a comforting shoulder to cry on - and House had been passing by on his way to bitch out the moles in the lab for screwing up his test results for the third time in a row. Screw propriety, compassion, and the fact that it was five in the morning and they had to run the tests for the entire fucking hospital. If they couldn't do their freaking job then they belonged behind the counter at Wendy's not in his lab.
To this day he doesn't remember why he stopped. Maybe his shoelace had come free, maybe he'd heard Wilson's voice and had hoped to bitch, maybe his ears had been burning, maybe a lot of things. The point was that he had stopped, and he'd heard, and he'd seen.
He'd stopped just past the branching hall where Wilson and his latest target had sequestered themselves.
He'd heard her sobbing about not being ready to lose her sister and Wilson offering the same meaningless words of comfort he'd tried on him after the infarction.
He'd seen the comforting arm he'd wrapped around her shoulders, the look in those coffee brown eyes that had practically screamed insincerity, and the kiss. Yeah, he'd seen the fucking kiss.
And then he'd walked away. Mr. Purple-Rash/Kidney Failure wasn't going to wait for the lab moles to fuck up a fourth time and he really needed to learn better ways to deal with homicidal rage but if making the techs cry was the most catharsis he was going to get then - by God - he was going to enjoy every damn minute of it. After them he went after Purple-Rash/Kidney Failure and made him cry too. The fact that the crying led to confessing which led (of course) to the goddamn answer was secondary to the fact that he got to forget who he was really angry at for a few hours.
***
That night House dragged an unresisting Wilson into bed. "I want you to fuck me." He whispered into his ear, one hand on his hip and the other wrapped around the back of his neck.
Wilson shuddered against him, then pulled his head down to capture his lips.
House had known what to expect, but he hadn't been ready. Every breath scorched his lungs, every touch burned, every beat of his heart pumped acid through his veins and each of Wilson's thrusts drove him further and further away. But Wilson was good at sex and, before long, he had House arching beneath him, meeting his thrusts and moaning against his shoulder. He came first and then lay there, drowning in the adrenaline rush, until Wilson froze above him.
Afterwards, wrapped up in tired, sated Wilson, House stared at the moonlight leaking in through the curtains and did his best not to think about anything.
***
It took Wilson almost two months to work up enough guilt to come to him for absolution. From the minute House walked in the door he'd known it was coming. He could smell lasagna (which he loved and Wilson loathed) from the kitchen. In the split second between realization and Wilson appearing in front of him House very much wanted to turn around and walk right back out the door. He didn't know exactly where he planned on going but he knew that he couldn't - wouldn't - have this conversation. Not now, not tonight, not ever if he had any control over things. If neither of them said it then it wasn't real and he didn't have to deal with it. Not that he cared, because he didn't, really.
Wilson was a young, pretty, horny bisexual man. Just about the only thing he could count on him to do with any regularity was charm the pants off of anything even remotely related to the species. He'd known that coming into this relationship.
"Greg." Wilson said. He was wearing the same guilty face he'd been wearing for the last week, but it was sharper now, more focused. Like a mask ready to be ripped off. "We need to talk."
"About what?" He said. He'd meant it to be a quip, meant to sound scornful, as if he couldn't believe that they actually had anything to talk about. He'd meant a lot of things in his life.
A sigh, and Wilson's hands planted themselves on his hips. "I slept with another woman. Shit. I mean I slept with a woman." He ducked his head and stared at his feet. He was wearing sneakers, House noted, and he seemed to find them endlessly fascinating.
Anger had long since given way to the slow simmer of expected betrayal. It still burned, but it wasn't the same kind of burn, it didn't make his eyes sting anymore. He stood in front of the door and tried to work up the righteous indignation to turn around and storm out, or to yell something, or to say something cruel and cutting. But his throat had closed up and his stomach was clenching and the ghost of a tension headache was starting to coalesce behind his eyes.
Wilson waited. When it became obvious that House wasn't going to do or say anything he risked a glance up. Just as quickly he looked away. "It was a mistake. I'm an idiot. It'll never-"
"They're replaying the Chrismakkuh episode on the O.C. tonight." House cut him off. "Don't want to miss it again."
He tried to walk past Wilson and into the living room but Wilson wasn't having any of that. He grabbed his arm and held him in place.
"Greg, talk to me."
House quirked an eyebrow and leaned back. "What do you want me to say? You want me to yell and scream and miss my show just so you can feel better about it?"
Wilson let him go.
"Sorry, I missed this episode once because of you, not gonna happen again. Unless you want to have sex. I think I've still got a blank VHS around here somewhere."
"That's not-"
"So that's a `no' on the sex then? Good, because I can't remember where the damn tape is." He said, and then he went for the couch and flopped down onto it with all of the grace of an armadillo in a tutu.
***
After that Wilson didn't try to confess again. He found other, more creative, ways to let him know what he'd been up to. The occasional late night. The occasional missing button. The occasional bite, scratch, or hickey. Some nights he came home smelling like cheap perfume and expensive booze. One night he didn't come home at all.
House stayed up until it was time to go to work. Then he called in sick and called up Heather, the lady who scheduled discreet business transactions between rich, old, men like him and obedient, pretty, young things like Paula. She even took credit.
"Greene Temp Agency." Heather answered the phone.
"Hello. This is Greg House, I need someone for the night shift."
He listened to the sound of her fingers on a keyboard. "Paula's free tonight."
That wasn't what he wanted. "We're doing some heavy lifting tonight, I was actually thinking about Justin."
"Ah." More typing. "Justin's on another job tonight, but I have Richard free, if you're interested, I assure you he's very good at heavy lifting."
"Perfect."
***
Richard (Dick) had asked how he wanted it when he'd let him in. He'd answered and led the way to the bedroom and ignored the pang of not-guilt in his stomach. Dick probably took instructions well but he was also surprisingly prescient. The only instruction he'd had to give was. "Ignore it." In reference to his thigh. Dick took him at his word and fucked him into the mattress that smelled like Pert Plus, and Wilson's cologne, and those little sheet things you threw in the dryer to kill the static.
Not only was Dick smart, and pretty, he was good. Good the way that no one that young had a right to be. His dick seemed to have a prostate homing device attached to it and his mouth and hands seemed to know where to go on auto-pilot. He even talked dirty. Dick and his dick were too good to be true, and too good for House to last long, which turned out to be a good thing after all.
"What the fuck?" Wilson said.
He was standing in the doorway, his eyebrows going for the high-jump record, his mouth hanging slightly open.
House grunted as Dick pulled out and then waved towards his dresser and the four hundreds sitting on top of it. "Hey honey, you're home early." He said.
Wilson looked from him, to Dick, then back to him. Then he threw his hands up and turned away, stomping out through the living room and into the kitchen where he started throwing things around. Loudly.
"Thanks." Dick said. He was already wearing his pants and slipping the cash into his pocket.
"You can find the door?"
Dick nodded.
When House limped into the kitchen Wilson was leaning over the kitchen sink, his shoulders hunched into rigid lines. House thought he could see broken glass against the stainless steel, but he couldn't be sure from the doorway and he didn't feel like coming any closer until he was sure that his boyfriend wouldn't explode all over him.
"How was your day?" He tried.
Wilson threw himself around so that he could glare at him. His eyes were narrowed and glittering with what House would have called tears if he hadn't known better. Anger, he'd almost forgotten what that looked like, it was good to be reminded. He waited.
He didn't have to wait that long.
"What the hell was that?" He pointed towards the bedroom.
The front door opened and shut, just loud enough to be heard.
"I thought that was obvious."
"Okay. Alright." He rubbed at the back of his neck. "I guess I deserve this." He was trying to be a martyr.
House rolled his eyes. "Oh, give it a rest."
"Then what. Why?"
"You weren't here and I had the sudden urge for a good fucking."
"Is that all I am to you, a live-in fuckbuddy?" Wilson said.
"Yeah, the decade worth of non-fucking friendship was just me biding my time until you came around to the arrangement. Christ, get over yourself."
"Well what else am I supposed to think when I come home to find you with another man?"
"'What's for dinner.' How the fuck should I know? You don't get the moral high ground in this discussion."
"You were with him in our bed!"
"Oh, and because you had the decency to take them to a Motel 8 you're somehow better than me? Please."
They'd moved towards each other until they were face to face, both of them flushed, neither willing to back down.
"I haven't been with another man since you."
"Which doesn't mean jack since you've been with enough women to staff the clinic for a month."
Wilson almost flinched, caught himself, and then looked back up at him with the puppy eyes. "I thought you were okay with it." He said, quieter, eyes sad. "You never said anything..."
House remained silent, unwilling - unable - to speak. He wanted to kick Wilson out of his apartment and tell him not to bother coming back. He wanted to pull him into a kiss and promise that things could stay the way they were, that nothing would change. But he couldn't - wouldn't - and so he was left there, staring at anything but Wilson.
Wilson sighed, his breath pushing against House's face, and stepped back. "I can't deal with this right now." He muttered, then stepped around House and walked out of the kitchen.
"You're leaving?" House asked, not turning to face him. Of course he was leaving, it was what he always did, it was what everyone did, eventually.
"I need space. We, need space. I'll be back." That was the last thing he said before disappearing down the hall.
House waited until he heard the front door quietly pulled shut. He stood in the kitchen, head bowed and silent, until something inside snapped and he snorted in disgust. This was what he got for trying to be human.
***
Mexican standoff.
Both sides were armed, both sides were dug in, but Wilson was the only one with reinforcements. Really annoying reinforcements in the form of every employee at the hospital (or so it seemed to House). He couldn't go ten feet down any hall without being accosted by a betrayed glare from someone he hardly knew. He wasn't sure, but he suspected that Wilson had even armed the cancer freaks against him, because the glares he got from them were definitely worse than usual.
Then there were the kids. House understood better than most that when parents fought the children were always caught in the middle, but intellectual knowledge hadn't prepared him for the triple-threat of Cameron's heartfelt gaze, Foreman's amusement, or the Wombat's half-sincere concern.
The first day he got Cameron, because she was the only one of them stupid enough to try and get involved over what could still be a `spat.' "Are you and Wilson fighting?" She asked, having invited herself into his office in blatant violation of the Minion Handbook. He hadn't locked the doors, but he'd pulled the blinds shut in a clear non-verbal message which read: if it's not dying right now I don't give a damn about it.
"Yes." He said, because he figured that honesty was the quickest way to get rid of her. "I wanted to invite you for a threesome but he's dead-set against it. Seems Jimmy-boy's a possessive lover. But don`t worry, give me a few more weeks and Hell might freeze over." Honesty and blatant sexual references, he mentally amended, and congratulated himself for a game well played because Cameron turned bright red and stalked out of his office on her cute little kitten heels.
Nobody messed with him on the second day, because on the second day he called in sick with the plague and stayed in bed nursing the Hangover from Hell (or one of it's suburbs at least). His whole body had turned against him: leg, heart, and skull all throbbing to the same cadence. The metal box, locked and shoved on top of his shelf, had never looked so inviting. If he'd been capable of getting to his feet, he knew, he'd already be floating on the ceiling and thinking about the fantastic fuchsia color of a D7 chord, but he couldn't get to his feet and so he was left with the Ghost of Wilson Lectures Past echoing in his brain.
Day three he came in late and threw his ball at Chase's face as soon as it appeared between his blinds. Chase, being a wombat and therefore stupid and slow, didn't duck in time. House amused himself by picturing the bruise no doubt forming over his minion's right eye until even that lost its novelty and he was left staring at his empty balcony trying to will Wilson to appear.
Wilson didn't appear (of course) and even if he had House knew that he wouldn't have been wearing the appropriate expression of contrite begging puppy eyes. This was the end, period, and the sooner he dealt with that the sooner he could move on with his life. He'd have to find a new best friend, but that shouldn't be too hard. There was this dude who showed up at the bus stop near his place every Wednesday and Saturday. He looked like he'd enjoy weekly games of poker and the occasional monster truck rally. He left early and definitely did not see the concerned look that Cuddy tried to shoot him on his way out. Concerned looks were up there with Death Star lasers as far as he was concerned and Cuddy's were the worst of the lot.
That night he called Heather and asked for Richard and his magic dick again. Dick didn't even watch him inject the morphine, obviously intravenous drugs weren't that interesting, and when House told him what he wanted he didn't flinch or look away or shift uncomfortably.
The next day (day four? Day five? He didn't care anymore) Cuddy cornered him on his way to his office.
"Whatever the hell is going on with you and Wilson I want you to fix it!" She hissed, following him onto the elevator.
"I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Yeah, I bet, you have no idea why my Head of Oncology's been sleeping in his office all week, and you're just acting like this for fun."
"I always act like this."
"No, you don't. Whatever's wrong with you two: fix it." She sounded pissed, and concerned. Concerned and pissed, a new secret weapon in the she-devil's arsenal. Obviously he had to pull out the big guns.
"Why do you care, Mom? You gonna make us split the kids up, give me one weekend a month and summers? Or are you just worried that, if we split up, you'll have to find a new poster couple for your `we're so accepting of our doctor's lifestyles' campaign?"
She stared at him, mouth hanging open. "Why are you doing this?"
"Doing what?" The elevator doors dinged open on his floor and he limped out.
She followed. "Trying to sabotage the one thing that's made you happy."
"Wilson is hardly the only thing to make me happy. There're drugs, and Hendrix, and annoying you."
***
Wilson appeared at lunchtime. He didn't look contrite, he didn't look concerned, he didn't even look like shit. For a man who'd been living out of his car and sleeping on a love seat in his office he looked good. Who was House kidding? He looked great. If he hadn't know better House would've sworn on a stack of bibles that there was nothing wrong with him. It was completely and utterly unfair.
"You can pick up your stuff whenever you want, but I'm keeping the skillet." He said before Wilson could even open his mouth. Pre-emptive strike, so to speak.
"You don't even cook!" Wilson shot back, his voice rising and cracking on the end. He shook his head and planted his hands on his hips. "We need to talk."
"About what? Seems to me things are pretty much done, don't you think?"
"You, you're doing it again. You're just going to keep pushing and pushing until I give up and walk away, like everyone else. Is that it?"
"Yeah, sure, this is completely my fault. It has nothing to do with you, I'm just a horrible person. But - don't worry - we can still be friends."
"You never said anything!"
"And you took that as carte blanch to fuck anything with tits. It all makes perfect sense."
"I thought you were okay with it."
"Got that the first time around, thanks. You know what, strike that `anytime,' I'm entertaining tonight and it'd be a little awkward having you moving out in the middle of the festivities. How's next week?"
"So that's it? You're just going to throw in the towel, kick me out, and go on with your life?"
"Uhm, yeah."
"And what am I supposed to do?" Wilson asked, he looked like a little boy lost, his hands dangling at his sides.
"I don't care." He didn't, really, he didn't. He didn't care he didn't he didn't. Maybe if he repeated it enough times it would come true. "Now, unless you've got a patient to discuss, get the hell out of my office."
His big brown eyes glistened with unshed tears, and his hands clenched at his sides. He stood there, silently, for a minute before nodding sharply and turning on his heel. The door shut softly behind him, caught on the hydraulic hinge, and the blinds settled so quickly that House could almost fool himself into believing that he'd never been there at all.
He'd tried being human, it wasn't worth it.
***
Things settled into a new pattern slowly. It took the people around him time to adjust to the new rules. That was okay, he was adjusting too.
Bus-Stop-Guy turned out to be Eric, or maybe it was Erin, or maybe Ethan. It was an `e' name anyways, and House was thoroughly unattracted to him, which was just as well. Look of the mess he'd made of every friend he was attracted to. Crandall, Cuddy, Stacy, and now Wilson. Better to stick to someone he wanted nothing to do with, someone to sit in on poker games and watch the occasional death match with, maybe catch a beer at the bar. Better to be friends with a nobody, to be a nobody to his friend, than to end up with a mess again.
He wasn't miserable, he didn't spend hours staring at his empty balcony (he spent them watching General Hospital, playing videogames, hacking around the firewall that kept him from downloading porn at work, and treating the occasional patient), he didn't lie awake at night and wallow in the misery of being cold and alone (the drugs kept him company), he didn't stop eating (Monday was pizza, Tuesday Chinese takeout, Wednesday he made grilled cheese on Wilson's skillet...). Everything had changed, but life went on almost exactly the same as before.
If he kept telling himself that, he was sure, it would become the truth. And then one day. months later, Wilson showed up on his doorstep red eyed and soaking wet and ruined everything all over again. House didn't know whether to be annoyed or relieved. He settled for both and pulled him into the apartment with a grimace.
It wasn't that he didn't think it would happen again. It wasn't that he thought Wilson had learned and grown as a person. It wasn't that the void in his soul had brightened just a little when he'd opened the door to find him there. If he had to label it, House supposed, he'd say that it was being too tired to do anything else.
As he peeled Wilson out of his clingy, cold, dripping clothes he couldn't help but notice that he'd lost some weight around his ribs. And when Wilson pulled him into a kiss it was hot and sweet and desperate, and when he pushed him down onto the bed it wasn't happily ever after. It was weakness, and masochism, and hypothermia.
And if he told himself that often enough - House was convinced - eventually he'd believe it.
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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