(no subject)
Title: House Keeping: Make the Yuletide Gay (1/3)
Author: magie_05
Word Count: ~3,000 this part
Pairing: House/Wilson domestic
Rating/Warnings: LOL UMM WELL THERE'S BONING ;) It's like 'light' NC-17 this part
Summary: This is another installment in my random little series of fics that takes place after House and Wilson have decided to live together. This one is based on a lovely suggestion from the lovely 2801rosie: “How about their first holiday in their new house. Maybe with parents visiting.” Uh-oh. This means ‘original’ characters. It’s broken up because I’m not sure I could ask anyone to read all this in one sitting.
I know it's sort of Christmas/Hanukkah-y, but there's no way I can stare at this for another nine months, lol.
“My-parents-are-flying-in-tomorrow,” Wilson says, and then comes all over House’s chest.
He makes a noise of horrified shock and barely resists the instinct to push Wilson off his lap. “Tell me you didn’t just say that,” he pants, fingertips digging into Wilson’s sweaty hips. “Now would be a really inconvenient time for my genitals to retreat into my abdomen.”
“Gimme about thirty more seconds.” His eyes are dark and his voice is rough as he leans in, pressing House’s back firmly against the headboard, pressing his mouth to that spot on House’s neck…
Despite what is potentially the least sexy image he can think of creeping into his head (that of Wilson’s parents wearing cameras around their necks and holding suitcases, pointing at things and complaining in loud voices about their shmendrik of a cab driver), House finds he can be no less enthusiastic about fucking their son.
His eyes flutter shut, hands sliding up Wilson’s back as their hips rock together. Taste of sweat at the place Wilson’s neck meets his shoulder, short moans into damp skin as slick, hot muscles tighten around him, breath leaving him in a gasp as that thing Wilson does pushes him over the edge -
He finishes babbling - er, verbally expressing his approval into Wilson’s neck and takes a deep breath to clear his features, grabbing Wilson’s shoulders and pushing him back. “You couldn’t have waited until later to ruin my evening?”
“I wanted to tell you…while you were in a good mood,” Wilson pants, holding House’s face still with both hands and kissing him briefly on the forehead before starting to extricate himself. “Figured now was probably my best shot.”
He winces as he pulls himself up and clamors to his side of the bed, sitting down and stretching out his legs. “They’ll be here for a week,” he adds, sliding his palms up and down his thighs to work out the tension. “I’m taking tomorrow off to try and get this place ready before I go pick them up at the airport.”
House has listened in stunned horror up until this point, staring slack-jawed at Wilson’s back. “You’re actually serious.”
He gets that maddening look of disapproval thrown at him over Wilson’s shoulder. “House, you know my parents’ holiday rotation schedule. Last year, they were at my brother’s; the year before that, the holidays were at their house. Three years ago, it was that lodge in Colorado. Now it’s my turn.”
He starts groping around on the bed, presumably looking for his shorts. “You should be thankful it’s just them. She wanted me to invite my brother and his whole clan; I had to convince him to tell them he couldn’t make it.”
“Oh, I should be thankful I get to spend seven days getting wardrobe advice from your mother and listening to your dad expound on the finer points of politics and bass fishing?”
Abandoning his search, Wilson grabs a pair of (House’s) pajama pants from the floor and slips them on over his bare hips, which only distracts House for a second. “Tell me you’re at least putting them up in a hotel.”
Wilson pulls one leg onto the bed and turns, his head dropping to one side resignedly. “You try explaining to my mother why they should stay thirty minutes away in some over-priced, over-crowded hotel when we have a perfectly good guest room and she hasn’t even seen the house yet.”
House feels his stomach shrivel with all the excess bile. “Well, then, are you going to put me up in a hotel?”
“Listen, I can’t say I’m thrilled about this either,” Wilson soothes, half-crawling back up to House on the bed. “But it’s only a few days with my parents. I think we’ve both survived worse.”
House wants to be angrier. He wants to rant and whine and generally make Wilson’s life miserable for this atrocity.
But he’s just gotten rather emphatically laid. Blissful remains of that ridiculous orgasm are still spreading through his muscles, in his chest, down his arms and legs. Plus, he’s staring at a half-dressed body settling in next to him, the dark, kiss-shaped spots on Wilson’s chest and shoulders, the way House’s pants are slightly too long on him, slipping down his hips -
A great warrior knows when he’s defeated. “Just so you know: if either one of them breaks out the camcorder, I’m out of here.”
Wilson looks at him with the spark of victory playing around his eyes, which he quickly turns into bland approval. “Deal.” He grabs House’s wrist and squints to see his watch, the time reading somewhere around 8:30. “Go and start us a shower,” he says, kissing House’s shoulder. “I’m just going to phone them, make sure everything’s set up for tomorrow.”
He pulls himself up heavily, and House notices with some primal satisfaction that Mommy’s little boy winces very slightly as he scoots his ass across the bed. “I’ll be in there in a minute,” he says with a vague smile, walking (a little stiffly) out of the bedroom.
While House isn’t one to question getting to see Wilson naked again, he can’t help but be suspicious. Highly enthusiastic sex right after a dinner of House’s favorite foods, just so Wilson could cheat his way out of getting bitched at. Wearing House’s pants, which was just unfair. And now a nice post-coital shower with soap and hot water and those sponge thingies?
As he turns on the water in the bedroom’s adjoining bath, it occurs to House that he is being shamelessly bribed.
But he later decides, as he is comfortably installed on the tub’s wide shelf watching bubbles roll down Wilson’s back, that Wilson can manipulate him in this way any time he wants.
Hours later, he is in that idyllic place between sleep and consciousness, warm under the covers and happily dream-watching a naked Wilson fiddling with a microscope in a dark room with red light and fog. At the same time, he can feel himself smiling into the sheets, can smell a combination of Wilson and fabric softener as he peacefully burrows into his pillow -
Which is rudely yanked out from under him. “Wha -?”
“Who sleeps through two alarms and someone shaking them? Get up!”
“Tenmoreminss.”
“No, House. I need to change these sheets and I can’t do that with you in them.”
House’s eyes snap open. “Oh, God. Are you cleaning?”
From a most pleasant dream to his worst nightmare: he opens his eyes to see Wilson in a worn t-shirt and jeans, a look of barely restrained panic on his face, smelling of furniture polish and clasping dark blue fabric to his chest. “Their plane gets here in six hours.”
Christ. So not fair that he has to deal with Wilson having an episode. He’s a cripple, for god’s sake. “And you’re changing the sheets in this bed because…?”
“They’ll want a tour of the house, alright?” He starts peeling up a corner of the sheets. “For once in your life, can you just try to see things from my perspective?”
House nearly rolls off the edge of the bed as the tugging (and the ranting) continues. “The last time my parents came to stay, Julie was taking care of all this.” House gets to his feet the second before the bed is stripped down to the mattress, one hand braced on the bedpost.
“They’ve already had to accept that I really am living with you for good,” Wilson goes on. “The least I can do is try to make this as normal as possible.”
In approximately thirty seconds, Wilson is tucking the corners of the sheets under the corners of the mattress in a way that would make any nurse jealous. “This is normal?” House asks as Wilson starts attacking the pillowcases.
“As far as my parents are concerned, yes.” There’s a dull clatter as Wilson grabs the last pillow. They both turn to look at the empty bottle of lubricant dislodged from somewhere near the headboard and flung halfway across the bedroom, spinning innocently on the floor.
Wilson looks at House like this is all his fault. “Perfect.” He blushes as if his parents are already in the room with them and snatches up the bottle, rushing into the bathroom and babbling something about flight delays.
The hotel thing is looking better and better.
He spends the rest of the morning watching Wilson have a nervous breakdown.
Knick-knacks are dusted. The TV is Windexed. The fringe on the rug is meticulously straightened. House holds his tongue (with Vicodin) until the sound of vacuuming drowns out the TV.
Luckily, the vacuum cleaner’s power cord is just close enough to reach with his cane.
He entertains himself briefly by watching Wilson look around in confusion, squatting on the living room rug, jabbing the button on the vacuum cleaner with increasing force. “Finally burn the motor out on that thing?”
“I don’t know!” Wilson says, stressed, tipping the vacuum over to look underneath. “It was working fine until…”
He keeps rambling distractedly and House gets that vague tinge of indigestion that someone else might misinterpret as ‘guilt.’ He holds the power cord end up to his face right around the time Wilson starts postulating whether or not he sucked up a dime. “Call me crazy, but - ”
The fact that Wilson yells at him more for this than that time House got drunk and accidentally called Julie long-distance in the middle of the night carries a disturbing implication. “Wouldn’t you rather go and set the bedroom curtains on fire, get it over with?” he finally snaps a few minutes later, grabbing the vacuum cord out of House’s hand and tugging him off the couch, grumbling about sabotage. House is barely to his feet when Wilson starts grabbing at the sofa cushions.
House watches the process with an increasing sense of nausea. He doubts that it will help to inject any kind of logic into Wilson’s blind hysteria, but: “Your mother’s not going to check under our cushions.” Then again, she did contribute half of Wilson’s genetic material…“Is she?”
“That’s not the point.” Wilson’s voice is muffled by the sofa springs. “There are just certain things about us I’d rather my parents not know about. Or ask about. Or…think about.”
House studies the surprising amount of crumbs Wilson is preparing to vacuum away with some obscene-looking attachment. “That we eat Cheese Nips?”
Wilson scowls and sits back on his heels, a pair of his own used underwear dangling between two fingers, crumpled and wrinkled, recovered from the depths of the sofa.
Those underwear evoke a multitude of feelings that all run through House’s body at once: chagrin on Wilson’s behalf, both amusement and annoyance at his reaction, plus a sense of fond pride as he remembers how the garment got there. “Your mom and dad are adults,” he mutters after he recovers from the memory. “Pretty sure they know you have sex. It’s going to be more worrying to them when they find out you’ve had a psychotic break.”
Soft cotton hits House in the face. “Just forget it. I don’t know why I bother trying to defend myself to you.”
To his horror, House realizes that he gets it. It wasn’t long ago that Mr. and Mrs. Wilson sat down to a nice dinner with their bragged-about, doted-on middle child only to find out that their boy had started nailing his crippled, older, non-Jewish male friend. While over the months, Estelle and Gerry have accepted all this in principle (bland, courteous dinners at bland, courteous restaurants, ‘Greg’ scribbled next to Jimmy’s name on holiday cards and care packages), this will be the first time the finer details of this decidedly homosexual relationship are shoved right their sixty-five-year-old faces.
House stares longingly at the undergarment in his hand and sighs. Wilson is still digging around inside the sofa as he limps off in the direction of the laundry hamper.
Hours later, he finds himself gazing despondently out of an airport window.
Wilson is squirming in the seat next to him, uncomfortably close in the tradition of all airport seating. He’s been trying to act casual, looking around the lobby with an exaggeratedly blank expression on his face, making soft clucking noises with his tongue. He fiddles with his sleeves and straightens his hair, his elbow brushing against House’s side every few seconds, buzzing around House’s periphery in a way that his iPod can’t drown out. When Wilson’s private vortex of nervousness starts to run thin, he leans over to mumble useless information like “It’s 12:43” or to steal a Lifesaver out of House’s coat pocket. These he will slurp loudly while finger-drumming March of the Nutcracker on the back of House’s chair.
It only takes about ninety seconds before the stereotyped waiting mannerisms start to get under House’s skin. After ten minutes, he’s trying to figure out where to bury the body, how to make it look like an accident. Another half-hour after that, House’s only alternative is to do the unthinkable.
He turns to Wilson, whose knees are bouncing up and down rapidly as he chews on his bottom lip. “You keep that up, security’s going to think you have something stashed up your -”
A sharp glare cuts him off. “What? I’m not doing anything. And didn’t we talk about toning down the anal-centered humor in public?”
House forces himself to continue, pushes through the pain. “You need to relax before you rupture something.” He exhales slowly before opening Pandora’s Box of Horrors. “What’s the matter with you?”
He watches denial flicker over those perplexed-looking features momentarily, before Wilson’s eyes darken in defeat and he pushes a hand through his hair. “Alright. Look. My parents…have certain expectations. About the kind of person I am, the kind of life I have.” A flush creeps into his cheeks. “And…well, they haven’t exactly gotten to know you yet, at least not this new…context.”
Well, he doesn’t like where this is going. “And…?”
Wilson stares down at his own lap for a moment. “I just want this visit to go as smoothly as possible. For everyone.” He looks up and continues with the air of a man who has spent the past two weeks rehearsing this speech in the bathroom mirror. “To that end, I think it would be better if you and I established some…ground rules.”
A miniature staring contest takes place, neither blinking for several seconds. “Rules,” House finally repeats. “In my own home.”
His face remains impassive. “Yes.”
House’s stoniest glare is met by a look of cold resolve. “Like…?”
“Well, for starters,” Wilson says, taking on that maddening tone of moral superiority, “we both need to watch what we say around them. They don’t really appreciate dirty jokes or dark sarcasm.”
“So, basically, no talking. Got it. Next?”
Guilt flickers through Wilson’s expression, but he manages to turn it into exasperation. “I didn’t say that. I want you to be yourself, just…less…obvious about it.” House snorts, but Wilson plows onward. “Secondly, I’d prefer it if you would actually get dressed everyday, even if we’re not leaving the house. My mom has this thing about hanging around in your pajamas all day; I think I might have seen her in her nightgown twice in my whole life.”
House rubs his neck under the over-starched collar of the pink shirt Wilson had ‘suggested’ he wear this morning with a slightly murderous glint in his eyes. He weighs the option of censoring his speech and wearing clothing on his off days against the possibility of being killed and fed to Wilson’s office plants.
Neither alternative is a clear winner.
“Also,” Wilson goes on, distracted because people have started filing out of his parents’ gate, “I need for you to stay reasonably sober. We don’t need a repeat of last Christmas when you locked yourself half-naked out on the patio.”
“That was half your fault. Those sissy martinis didn’t make themselves.”
But misdirection gets him nowhere at this stage. Wilson keeps talking like House isn’t even there, something he thinks he might need to get used to for the upcoming week. “We’ll be going out to dinner at least one night and you’ll be wearing a suit, so go ahead and get the homicidal urges out of your system now. And don’t get freaked out and start over-analyzing if I refer to you using your first name; it’s just weird for me to call you House when they don’t.”
This requires a Vicodin. It’s not that he hates his first name so much as the connotations behind it. Wilson has called him by his last name since the day they met, yelled it angrily at him, laughed it out over a beer, moaned it into the sheets. ‘Greg’ is usually followed by something he doesn’t want to hear.
“What else?” Wilson asks himself, still craning his neck to search for a familiar bright scarf or receding hairline. “Oh, no Jew jokes. Actually, try to avoid the topic of religion at all costs. Save the holiday rants for your patients. Also, no hiding in the bedroom, playing your guitar at midnight, doing anything involving silly string, plastic wrap, condoms...”
House snorts. “Don’t you have all this typed out in triplicate for me to sign in blood?”
“Left it at home,” Wilson deadpans. “I’m sure you’ll do your best to remember.”
“What if I say no to all this?” he asks, curiosity (and indignation) having finally gotten the better of him. “You’re basically asking me to lie to my sort-of not-really in-laws. You don’t see a problem with that?”
“This is not about you,” Wilson says, looking him in the eye for the first time since they got here. “Just help me get through this week, alright?” He stands and starts searching the throng of exiting passengers, reaching down and patting House absentmindedly on the shoulder. “You’ll be rewarded.”
House intends to make Wilson regret that promise, scowling at the empty space in front of him. He winces when Wilson adopts that creepy ‘you’re-not-going-to-die’ smile and waves across the terminal.
He plants the cane heavily to the floor, standing slowly to face his doom. “Hi,” Wilson calls out brightly next to him, already transforming into that strange version of himself he becomes around waitresses and patient’s families. Suddenly he lays one hand on House’s slumped shoulder and leans in to speak right next to his ear. “Oh, and obviously, while my parents are here, we’re not having sex.”
“What?”
But it’s too late. Wilson is already walking off to greet his mom and dad.
part two
Author: magie_05
Word Count: ~3,000 this part
Pairing: House/Wilson domestic
Rating/Warnings: LOL UMM WELL THERE'S BONING ;) It's like 'light' NC-17 this part
Summary: This is another installment in my random little series of fics that takes place after House and Wilson have decided to live together. This one is based on a lovely suggestion from the lovely 2801rosie: “How about their first holiday in their new house. Maybe with parents visiting.” Uh-oh. This means ‘original’ characters. It’s broken up because I’m not sure I could ask anyone to read all this in one sitting.
I know it's sort of Christmas/Hanukkah-y, but there's no way I can stare at this for another nine months, lol.
“My-parents-are-flying-in-tomorrow,” Wilson says, and then comes all over House’s chest.
He makes a noise of horrified shock and barely resists the instinct to push Wilson off his lap. “Tell me you didn’t just say that,” he pants, fingertips digging into Wilson’s sweaty hips. “Now would be a really inconvenient time for my genitals to retreat into my abdomen.”
“Gimme about thirty more seconds.” His eyes are dark and his voice is rough as he leans in, pressing House’s back firmly against the headboard, pressing his mouth to that spot on House’s neck…
Despite what is potentially the least sexy image he can think of creeping into his head (that of Wilson’s parents wearing cameras around their necks and holding suitcases, pointing at things and complaining in loud voices about their shmendrik of a cab driver), House finds he can be no less enthusiastic about fucking their son.
His eyes flutter shut, hands sliding up Wilson’s back as their hips rock together. Taste of sweat at the place Wilson’s neck meets his shoulder, short moans into damp skin as slick, hot muscles tighten around him, breath leaving him in a gasp as that thing Wilson does pushes him over the edge -
He finishes babbling - er, verbally expressing his approval into Wilson’s neck and takes a deep breath to clear his features, grabbing Wilson’s shoulders and pushing him back. “You couldn’t have waited until later to ruin my evening?”
“I wanted to tell you…while you were in a good mood,” Wilson pants, holding House’s face still with both hands and kissing him briefly on the forehead before starting to extricate himself. “Figured now was probably my best shot.”
He winces as he pulls himself up and clamors to his side of the bed, sitting down and stretching out his legs. “They’ll be here for a week,” he adds, sliding his palms up and down his thighs to work out the tension. “I’m taking tomorrow off to try and get this place ready before I go pick them up at the airport.”
House has listened in stunned horror up until this point, staring slack-jawed at Wilson’s back. “You’re actually serious.”
He gets that maddening look of disapproval thrown at him over Wilson’s shoulder. “House, you know my parents’ holiday rotation schedule. Last year, they were at my brother’s; the year before that, the holidays were at their house. Three years ago, it was that lodge in Colorado. Now it’s my turn.”
He starts groping around on the bed, presumably looking for his shorts. “You should be thankful it’s just them. She wanted me to invite my brother and his whole clan; I had to convince him to tell them he couldn’t make it.”
“Oh, I should be thankful I get to spend seven days getting wardrobe advice from your mother and listening to your dad expound on the finer points of politics and bass fishing?”
Abandoning his search, Wilson grabs a pair of (House’s) pajama pants from the floor and slips them on over his bare hips, which only distracts House for a second. “Tell me you’re at least putting them up in a hotel.”
Wilson pulls one leg onto the bed and turns, his head dropping to one side resignedly. “You try explaining to my mother why they should stay thirty minutes away in some over-priced, over-crowded hotel when we have a perfectly good guest room and she hasn’t even seen the house yet.”
House feels his stomach shrivel with all the excess bile. “Well, then, are you going to put me up in a hotel?”
“Listen, I can’t say I’m thrilled about this either,” Wilson soothes, half-crawling back up to House on the bed. “But it’s only a few days with my parents. I think we’ve both survived worse.”
House wants to be angrier. He wants to rant and whine and generally make Wilson’s life miserable for this atrocity.
But he’s just gotten rather emphatically laid. Blissful remains of that ridiculous orgasm are still spreading through his muscles, in his chest, down his arms and legs. Plus, he’s staring at a half-dressed body settling in next to him, the dark, kiss-shaped spots on Wilson’s chest and shoulders, the way House’s pants are slightly too long on him, slipping down his hips -
A great warrior knows when he’s defeated. “Just so you know: if either one of them breaks out the camcorder, I’m out of here.”
Wilson looks at him with the spark of victory playing around his eyes, which he quickly turns into bland approval. “Deal.” He grabs House’s wrist and squints to see his watch, the time reading somewhere around 8:30. “Go and start us a shower,” he says, kissing House’s shoulder. “I’m just going to phone them, make sure everything’s set up for tomorrow.”
He pulls himself up heavily, and House notices with some primal satisfaction that Mommy’s little boy winces very slightly as he scoots his ass across the bed. “I’ll be in there in a minute,” he says with a vague smile, walking (a little stiffly) out of the bedroom.
While House isn’t one to question getting to see Wilson naked again, he can’t help but be suspicious. Highly enthusiastic sex right after a dinner of House’s favorite foods, just so Wilson could cheat his way out of getting bitched at. Wearing House’s pants, which was just unfair. And now a nice post-coital shower with soap and hot water and those sponge thingies?
As he turns on the water in the bedroom’s adjoining bath, it occurs to House that he is being shamelessly bribed.
But he later decides, as he is comfortably installed on the tub’s wide shelf watching bubbles roll down Wilson’s back, that Wilson can manipulate him in this way any time he wants.
Hours later, he is in that idyllic place between sleep and consciousness, warm under the covers and happily dream-watching a naked Wilson fiddling with a microscope in a dark room with red light and fog. At the same time, he can feel himself smiling into the sheets, can smell a combination of Wilson and fabric softener as he peacefully burrows into his pillow -
Which is rudely yanked out from under him. “Wha -?”
“Who sleeps through two alarms and someone shaking them? Get up!”
“Tenmoreminss.”
“No, House. I need to change these sheets and I can’t do that with you in them.”
House’s eyes snap open. “Oh, God. Are you cleaning?”
From a most pleasant dream to his worst nightmare: he opens his eyes to see Wilson in a worn t-shirt and jeans, a look of barely restrained panic on his face, smelling of furniture polish and clasping dark blue fabric to his chest. “Their plane gets here in six hours.”
Christ. So not fair that he has to deal with Wilson having an episode. He’s a cripple, for god’s sake. “And you’re changing the sheets in this bed because…?”
“They’ll want a tour of the house, alright?” He starts peeling up a corner of the sheets. “For once in your life, can you just try to see things from my perspective?”
House nearly rolls off the edge of the bed as the tugging (and the ranting) continues. “The last time my parents came to stay, Julie was taking care of all this.” House gets to his feet the second before the bed is stripped down to the mattress, one hand braced on the bedpost.
“They’ve already had to accept that I really am living with you for good,” Wilson goes on. “The least I can do is try to make this as normal as possible.”
In approximately thirty seconds, Wilson is tucking the corners of the sheets under the corners of the mattress in a way that would make any nurse jealous. “This is normal?” House asks as Wilson starts attacking the pillowcases.
“As far as my parents are concerned, yes.” There’s a dull clatter as Wilson grabs the last pillow. They both turn to look at the empty bottle of lubricant dislodged from somewhere near the headboard and flung halfway across the bedroom, spinning innocently on the floor.
Wilson looks at House like this is all his fault. “Perfect.” He blushes as if his parents are already in the room with them and snatches up the bottle, rushing into the bathroom and babbling something about flight delays.
The hotel thing is looking better and better.
He spends the rest of the morning watching Wilson have a nervous breakdown.
Knick-knacks are dusted. The TV is Windexed. The fringe on the rug is meticulously straightened. House holds his tongue (with Vicodin) until the sound of vacuuming drowns out the TV.
Luckily, the vacuum cleaner’s power cord is just close enough to reach with his cane.
He entertains himself briefly by watching Wilson look around in confusion, squatting on the living room rug, jabbing the button on the vacuum cleaner with increasing force. “Finally burn the motor out on that thing?”
“I don’t know!” Wilson says, stressed, tipping the vacuum over to look underneath. “It was working fine until…”
He keeps rambling distractedly and House gets that vague tinge of indigestion that someone else might misinterpret as ‘guilt.’ He holds the power cord end up to his face right around the time Wilson starts postulating whether or not he sucked up a dime. “Call me crazy, but - ”
The fact that Wilson yells at him more for this than that time House got drunk and accidentally called Julie long-distance in the middle of the night carries a disturbing implication. “Wouldn’t you rather go and set the bedroom curtains on fire, get it over with?” he finally snaps a few minutes later, grabbing the vacuum cord out of House’s hand and tugging him off the couch, grumbling about sabotage. House is barely to his feet when Wilson starts grabbing at the sofa cushions.
House watches the process with an increasing sense of nausea. He doubts that it will help to inject any kind of logic into Wilson’s blind hysteria, but: “Your mother’s not going to check under our cushions.” Then again, she did contribute half of Wilson’s genetic material…“Is she?”
“That’s not the point.” Wilson’s voice is muffled by the sofa springs. “There are just certain things about us I’d rather my parents not know about. Or ask about. Or…think about.”
House studies the surprising amount of crumbs Wilson is preparing to vacuum away with some obscene-looking attachment. “That we eat Cheese Nips?”
Wilson scowls and sits back on his heels, a pair of his own used underwear dangling between two fingers, crumpled and wrinkled, recovered from the depths of the sofa.
Those underwear evoke a multitude of feelings that all run through House’s body at once: chagrin on Wilson’s behalf, both amusement and annoyance at his reaction, plus a sense of fond pride as he remembers how the garment got there. “Your mom and dad are adults,” he mutters after he recovers from the memory. “Pretty sure they know you have sex. It’s going to be more worrying to them when they find out you’ve had a psychotic break.”
Soft cotton hits House in the face. “Just forget it. I don’t know why I bother trying to defend myself to you.”
To his horror, House realizes that he gets it. It wasn’t long ago that Mr. and Mrs. Wilson sat down to a nice dinner with their bragged-about, doted-on middle child only to find out that their boy had started nailing his crippled, older, non-Jewish male friend. While over the months, Estelle and Gerry have accepted all this in principle (bland, courteous dinners at bland, courteous restaurants, ‘Greg’ scribbled next to Jimmy’s name on holiday cards and care packages), this will be the first time the finer details of this decidedly homosexual relationship are shoved right their sixty-five-year-old faces.
House stares longingly at the undergarment in his hand and sighs. Wilson is still digging around inside the sofa as he limps off in the direction of the laundry hamper.
Hours later, he finds himself gazing despondently out of an airport window.
Wilson is squirming in the seat next to him, uncomfortably close in the tradition of all airport seating. He’s been trying to act casual, looking around the lobby with an exaggeratedly blank expression on his face, making soft clucking noises with his tongue. He fiddles with his sleeves and straightens his hair, his elbow brushing against House’s side every few seconds, buzzing around House’s periphery in a way that his iPod can’t drown out. When Wilson’s private vortex of nervousness starts to run thin, he leans over to mumble useless information like “It’s 12:43” or to steal a Lifesaver out of House’s coat pocket. These he will slurp loudly while finger-drumming March of the Nutcracker on the back of House’s chair.
It only takes about ninety seconds before the stereotyped waiting mannerisms start to get under House’s skin. After ten minutes, he’s trying to figure out where to bury the body, how to make it look like an accident. Another half-hour after that, House’s only alternative is to do the unthinkable.
He turns to Wilson, whose knees are bouncing up and down rapidly as he chews on his bottom lip. “You keep that up, security’s going to think you have something stashed up your -”
A sharp glare cuts him off. “What? I’m not doing anything. And didn’t we talk about toning down the anal-centered humor in public?”
House forces himself to continue, pushes through the pain. “You need to relax before you rupture something.” He exhales slowly before opening Pandora’s Box of Horrors. “What’s the matter with you?”
He watches denial flicker over those perplexed-looking features momentarily, before Wilson’s eyes darken in defeat and he pushes a hand through his hair. “Alright. Look. My parents…have certain expectations. About the kind of person I am, the kind of life I have.” A flush creeps into his cheeks. “And…well, they haven’t exactly gotten to know you yet, at least not this new…context.”
Well, he doesn’t like where this is going. “And…?”
Wilson stares down at his own lap for a moment. “I just want this visit to go as smoothly as possible. For everyone.” He looks up and continues with the air of a man who has spent the past two weeks rehearsing this speech in the bathroom mirror. “To that end, I think it would be better if you and I established some…ground rules.”
A miniature staring contest takes place, neither blinking for several seconds. “Rules,” House finally repeats. “In my own home.”
His face remains impassive. “Yes.”
House’s stoniest glare is met by a look of cold resolve. “Like…?”
“Well, for starters,” Wilson says, taking on that maddening tone of moral superiority, “we both need to watch what we say around them. They don’t really appreciate dirty jokes or dark sarcasm.”
“So, basically, no talking. Got it. Next?”
Guilt flickers through Wilson’s expression, but he manages to turn it into exasperation. “I didn’t say that. I want you to be yourself, just…less…obvious about it.” House snorts, but Wilson plows onward. “Secondly, I’d prefer it if you would actually get dressed everyday, even if we’re not leaving the house. My mom has this thing about hanging around in your pajamas all day; I think I might have seen her in her nightgown twice in my whole life.”
House rubs his neck under the over-starched collar of the pink shirt Wilson had ‘suggested’ he wear this morning with a slightly murderous glint in his eyes. He weighs the option of censoring his speech and wearing clothing on his off days against the possibility of being killed and fed to Wilson’s office plants.
Neither alternative is a clear winner.
“Also,” Wilson goes on, distracted because people have started filing out of his parents’ gate, “I need for you to stay reasonably sober. We don’t need a repeat of last Christmas when you locked yourself half-naked out on the patio.”
“That was half your fault. Those sissy martinis didn’t make themselves.”
But misdirection gets him nowhere at this stage. Wilson keeps talking like House isn’t even there, something he thinks he might need to get used to for the upcoming week. “We’ll be going out to dinner at least one night and you’ll be wearing a suit, so go ahead and get the homicidal urges out of your system now. And don’t get freaked out and start over-analyzing if I refer to you using your first name; it’s just weird for me to call you House when they don’t.”
This requires a Vicodin. It’s not that he hates his first name so much as the connotations behind it. Wilson has called him by his last name since the day they met, yelled it angrily at him, laughed it out over a beer, moaned it into the sheets. ‘Greg’ is usually followed by something he doesn’t want to hear.
“What else?” Wilson asks himself, still craning his neck to search for a familiar bright scarf or receding hairline. “Oh, no Jew jokes. Actually, try to avoid the topic of religion at all costs. Save the holiday rants for your patients. Also, no hiding in the bedroom, playing your guitar at midnight, doing anything involving silly string, plastic wrap, condoms...”
House snorts. “Don’t you have all this typed out in triplicate for me to sign in blood?”
“Left it at home,” Wilson deadpans. “I’m sure you’ll do your best to remember.”
“What if I say no to all this?” he asks, curiosity (and indignation) having finally gotten the better of him. “You’re basically asking me to lie to my sort-of not-really in-laws. You don’t see a problem with that?”
“This is not about you,” Wilson says, looking him in the eye for the first time since they got here. “Just help me get through this week, alright?” He stands and starts searching the throng of exiting passengers, reaching down and patting House absentmindedly on the shoulder. “You’ll be rewarded.”
House intends to make Wilson regret that promise, scowling at the empty space in front of him. He winces when Wilson adopts that creepy ‘you’re-not-going-to-die’ smile and waves across the terminal.
He plants the cane heavily to the floor, standing slowly to face his doom. “Hi,” Wilson calls out brightly next to him, already transforming into that strange version of himself he becomes around waitresses and patient’s families. Suddenly he lays one hand on House’s slumped shoulder and leans in to speak right next to his ear. “Oh, and obviously, while my parents are here, we’re not having sex.”
“What?”
But it’s too late. Wilson is already walking off to greet his mom and dad.
part two