Because He Can (3/?)
Title: Because He Can
Author: Magie
Word Count: 4,664
Pairing: House/Wilson established (kind of)
Rating/Warnings:NC-17, language, smut, and some very unseemly emoticons ;)
Summary: A continuation of something I wrote for the get_house_laid prompt number 071: House/Wilson -- Smut that takes place before the Ketamine treatment wears off and House still has full use of his leg. Unusual positions are a plus! I’ve had this finished for a couple of days now, but I thought I’d wait until after the finale to post. It’s purely ridiculous fluff and smut, and it’s not really going to help with the angst most of us are probably feeling right now, but I hope you’ll enjoy it :)
Betas: daphnie_1 and bmax67 . I love you guys!
Wilson thought he should be suspicious of this surreal, pain-free, vaguely happy creature that had replaced House.
Of course, this task was much harder to accomplish when said creature had him pressed against the desk in his hotel room and was currently doing a very thorough job of screwing him senseless.
He could speak only in expletives or religious worship, occasionally offering up instruction and shouted suggestions. Things of this nature seemed to be spouting out of his mouth quite often recently, and even more so in the past month since House had gotten his leg back. Not that a fully functioning leg made that much difference; sex with House had been incredible even when it was only in fantasies. Wilson suspected the difference came more from House’s renewed self-confidence than anything purely physical.
But he was sure House would beg to differ, thrusting roughly, evenly, driving a spike up Wilson’s vertebrae, pain/pleasure ripping embarrassing, high-pitched noises from Wilson’s throat. He could feel fingertip-shaped bruises blossoming on his hips, his palms sliding into hotel stationary and pens, barely able to support each thrust with fire building in his muscles. Groaning, he tossed his head back, sweaty hair falling on a damp, bare, moving shoulder, practically sobbing his approval over the wet noise between them, rewarded by hands moving up to his chest. He was babbling incoherently about House and deities when the final slam against his prostate was followed by hot, liquid warmth.
House stayed and shuddered until it was over, biting the muscles in Wilson’s neck, his moans absorbed into the flesh. Still-hard, but aching, Wilson found himself being released, being emptied, being turned and shoved gently into the desk chair.
Gorgeous pain made him lean awkwardly on the edge of his seat, his weight on his lower back, his dick comically perpendicular to the ceiling. House collapsed into a kiss, his hot, rapid breath filling Wilson’s lungs, as intense now as he was in anything that really mattered to him. Wilson took it as the compliment it was, threaded his fingers into House’s hair, and came spectacularly seconds after House’s mouth closed over his cock.
Body weak from orgasm, he sank to his knees, falling with House to the beige Berber carpeting, falling anywhere with House.
“Unbelievable,” House remarked in a low tone, before insecurity could catch up with his senses, arms around Wilson on the prickly, lamp-lit floor.
“Shit,” Wilson added breathlessly, relieved that another, more dangerous four-letter word hadn’t slipped out.
It was bound to happen, he knew. One of these intense, passionate nights, he wouldn’t be able to hide it. Hard to restrain the only words he’d been thinking about.
Of course, he’d loved House for years, loved him before the sex, loved him in ways mere words could not describe. But these past weeks, the unrestrained affection House had been finally reciprocating…it drove Wilson slightly mad. Only his fear held him back.
For the moment, he just savored the peace, boneless in House’s grip, at his mercy. A congratulatory tongue wound into his mouth and he was grateful for the opportunity to think.
House’s leg was not the only thing that stood between them; he was just as closed-off now as ever. Healing him physically did not magically change him. Wilson knew all of this intellectually. But part of him couldn’t help but wonder, couldn’t help but blame the infarction, the pain, the damn drugs for everything.
Maybe House thought that way. Maybe letting go of pain and pills freed his mind for other distractions, allowed him to slide careful, affectionate fingertips over Wilson’s cheek, kiss slowly after orgasm like this, like it was so important.
“You’re so easy,” House mumbled into his mouth. “I bring you one pizza and you let me do you standing up.”
Wilson jerked his shoulders. “I really like pizza.”
House smiled at him and he felt like he was sinking farther into the floor.
“Got plans for the weekend?” And it was exceedingly hard to focus on House’s question when suggestive fingers were on his ass.
“Depends. What are yours?”
The second smile in thirty seconds sent a rush of blood through his heart and to his spent, futile groin.
“Thought I’d go for a run. And have increasingly pornographic sex with you.”
Wilson grinned at the possibility of those aspirations. “Sounds good.”
House’s smile faded with meaningful slowness, his thumb tracing pensively over Wilson’s lips.
“I hurt you,” he murmured as Wilson’s eyes drifted closed in contentment.
“No, you didn’t,” and it was an easy lie, because the pain from sex wasn’t pain at all.
“I meant…in the dream. I hit you.”
He snapped back to awareness. House had conveniently omitted that part of the recounted hallucination. “You didn’t tell me that.”
House fixated silently on Wilson’s chest, fingers tracing poorly defined pectorals, “You went behind my back. Sided with Cuddy.”
“Saved your life?” Wilson supplied.
“Screwed me over.”
Wilson rolled his eyes. “Right. I forgot. Those two things are synonymous in your mind.”
House quieted; his mouth became a slanted line, studiously considering Wilson’s right nipple. His voice was heavy with confession. “I’d rather be able to think than be able to run.”
“I know,” Wilson conceded. “But this isn’t your dream. This way, you have both.
Why can’t you trust that?” he asked, even though he already knew the answers.
He couldn’t trust his leg, because six years ago it had suddenly tried to kill him. He couldn’t trust Wilson because he was convinced that anyone he got close to was eventually going to betray him, another scar he tried to hide.
Telling House he was wrong, making promises, pretending he wouldn’t have done exactly what the dream version of himself had done…it wouldn’t help. It would mean nothing. House wouldn’t be able to accept it any more than he could accept the three words on Wilson’s tongue.
So he pushed them aside for later examination, changed the subject so House could hide behind it. “Should get a shower,” he said, omitting the sentence’s subject in hopes that House would invite himself. Sighing, he began to pull himself up, muscles burning in protest, sweat and carpet fibers clinging to his back. He hesitated in the space over House’s lips, in that triangle of distance, where either rejection or a kiss swam in possibility, where boundaries were drawn and broken.
He smiled foolishly when House closed the gap, kissed him softly on the floor of his hotel room when it probably wouldn’t lead to anything. When in the early days, he had done everything he could to keep that distance, to pretend the sex hadn’t brought them closer. He was acting differently now; he was acting like it meant something.
Or maybe sex with House just made Wilson crazy.
He knew he shouldn’t be this happy. He knew there was still a good chance the ketamine and this new, deeper relationship would fail. He knew that House agreeing to stay the night with only one half-hearted jibe about Wilson wanting to ‘shack up’ shouldn’t have made him grin. He knew that hope set him up for disappointment.
But it was already too late.
“I’m getting too old for this.”
“Come on, Jimmy, faster. We’re almost there.”
“You really are trying to kill me. Just…stop a minute…”
“Nope. We need to improve your stamina.”
“House, just…wait up…”
Wilson panted against the trunk of the closest tree, night air cooling his sweat-soaked skin underneath the borrowed running clothes, lungs protesting this sudden exercise craze.
Although, he had to admit, it was a great night for a run. The breeze was like ice to sore muscles. He took several breaths to try and calm the fire in his chest, tasting fresh earth and flowers and summer, the glow of endorphins in his blood. There were no cars out at this hour-an obscene one for a jog-only blue moonlight reflecting off parked trucks, puddles, and House’s skin.
Wilson knew he must look like hell, his hair sweaty and mussed from the wind, red blotches of oxygen deprivation on his face, leaning weakly against the tree.
It was simply unfair that exercise made House look that good.
He jogged back to Wilson, across the fifteen feet that had seemed to separate them since they’d left the apartment, a smirk on his lips, eyes absorbing all the blue the moon could pour out and glittering with amusement. Sweat curled his hair and seeped triangular patterns on his oversized t-shirt, which obviously needed to be taken off as soon as possible. He took long, deep breaths as he slowed, his mouth open, his tongue darting out to catch a bit of sweat from his upper lip. Wilson was sure it tasted like salt and bittersweet skin.
“Had enough?” he asked gruffly with raised eyebrows, and Wilson forced his mouth to close and his eyes to shrink.
“Um,” he cleared his throat since he couldn’t clear his mind of certain thoughts, “I just need a minute. This is a lot harder than it was five years ago.”
“Speak for yourself,” House grinned.
“No pain?” Wilson gasped out, his own joints throbbing, leaning forward against the tree to grasp his knees, air entering his chest like ice water.
He could hear House’s smug, god-like amusement. “I think at this point, you should be more concerned about keeping yourself breathing than anything else. When’s the last time you went for a run?”
In truth, Wilson didn’t see a point in running or playing sports alone. He got plenty of exercise chasing House around all corners of the hospital, and there was no need to count calories when half of his lunch was stolen, anyway. If he sometimes missed long afternoons of inexpert basketball outside his first garage with his first wife looking on, trying not to pretend it was normal to miss blocking opportunities because he was too busy staring at the muscles in his best friend’s neck and shoulders, it was only because it was something else House’s leg had changed. Mentions of anything physical, anything requiring two legs, anything from his old life became taboo around House, until they finally stopped mattering.
But letting House know he was the subject of sensitivity could only lead to intense agony, so Wilson just shrugged, jarring the stitch in side, and let House’s comment about all those vomit-stuffed peppers being a mistake on more than one level wash over him. “I’m dehydrated,” he muttered, dimly aware of how pathetic he sounded.
“Can’t have that,” and how House managed to pack so much sexual innuendo into three random words, Wilson would never know. In any case, he felt a flush that had nothing to do with running a mile as House grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him back up onto the sidewalk. “There’s a park about a block ahead.”
A few minutes’ tired jogging found them leaving the sidewalk for a gentle slope, dew from well-manicured grass dusting their ankles. House found the water fountains with ease; Wilson wondered how many times House had run this particular route.
Then again, watching him drink his fill, water dripping like stars from his chin, followed by the handful he ran through his already-soaked hair to cool off-that made anything else seem pretty irrelevant.
Damn it.
“Can we rest here for a minute?” Wilson mumbled, for some reason sheepish, both of them aware that this was the first time in six years that Wilson had suggested a break because he needed one, not because he knew House did.
“Weakling,” but it was with no real complaints that Wilson found himself on his back in wet grass, obscenely at ease, watching House move slowly back and forth on the swing set a few feet away.
Deliciously cool water and grass stains were seeping onto his back, but he was already dirty and they were House’s clothes anyway. He was struck by the amount of earth around him, the smell of it, the blanket of clear, black sky, the sound of crickets and wind through the trees behind him. “Nice night,” rolled out of his chest before he could censor it, endorphins making him hazy.
“Yeah.” The lack of sarcasm made him glance over, rolling his head to the side. House was looking into dark grove of moving trees that lined the park, unconsciously digging his tennis shoe into the damp sawdust at his feet. “I ever tell you about the house in North Carolina?”
Wilson’s heart started pounding again. “Yeah. First house you can remember, right?”
A gust of wind picked up and for a moment, Wilson was sure that whatever House wanted to say was lost in it somehow. “It was in the middle of nowhere,” he said finally. “Up this hill. Dirt road; bumpy as hell. My mom wouldn’t drive on it. The place was surrounded by woods.”
Wilson sat up on his elbows, as transfixed on House as he was on the clump of trees. “Real woods,” he clarified, “not these pansy, municipal woods. We’re talking about the constant threat of bears and getting lost and being found as a pile of bones by hunters years later.”
“An optimist even at that age.”
House threw him a small grin. “I was never indoors. There was just…always something to do out there. Everything seemed so important. Drove my parents crazy.”
He could imagine House disappearing for hours, seeing everything he could, climbing trees and jumping into creeks just to see what it felt like.
“We left when I was about eight. He got transferred for the first time since I was born. Moved to a military-issue house with military-issue trees here and there. Not much for a kid to do.” He twisted his hand in the swing’s chain.
Wilson felt strangely dejected. “You ever live near woods again after that?”
House shrugged. “Didn’t really matter, did it? It was irrelevant. They were just places. Everything got easier once I figured out that no matter where we were, inside the house, it was always the same.”
Wilson sat up fully, head spinning, his throat tight. “It was relevant. It could have been relevant, if you wanted it to be. Change isn’t always a bad thing. It doesn’t make your past experiences irrelevant.”
“Oh, God,” House muttered, “just forget I said anything,” but no way was Wilson letting this one go.
“You live your life based on what might go wrong. People don’t change, but situations do. And you don’t trust either of them. You’re so obsessed with how you think things will end, that you can’t just accept what you have.”
House was staring at him. “You’re saying I should blindly accept that my leg is all better now? Forget the past six years?”
“No,” he sighed the word, “but you can’t just anticipate eventually being miserable, fulfill your own damn prophecy. You deserve to enjoy this.” Whether or not the ketamine would last.
He watched House think, like always, watched him try to find the flaw in Wilson’s theory, some empirical proof that he really did deserve to be miserable. Decades later, it seemed, he pulled himself up easily, casting one last glance toward the toy woods before stepping up to Wilson’s patch of grass.
He kneeled. “I’m enjoying it,” the words low like a confession, like they were something dirty. He snaked cool fingers over Wilson’s temples and kissed him on the ground in the middle of a public park.
In his head, Wilson was caught between images of House’s childhood, advice, and vague fears. He was thinking about grass stains and theoretical park security guards. His body was aching in numerous ways, tired, dirty, and completely overwhelmed by all the recent physical activity.
It wasn’t really a contest, no matter how much Wilson thought it should be.
He sank back into the grass. “Well, this is just clearly illegal,” he chastised half-heartedly, all the tension from the evening building up between his legs, his muscles quivering, asking him what the hell he was thinking trying anything like this after running all night.
Later, he’d find it interesting that House’s hand around his cock gave him such a remarkable second wind.
Did you know Adolf Hitler had only one testicle?
House, I know you’re bored without work and Vicodin, but you have to stop sending me text messages every thirty seconds.
Like you’re doing anything important.
I’m WORKING.
And yet you’re keeping your personal cell phone on. You’d go crazy if you didn’t have me annoying you.
Thanks, I’ve never been psychoanalyzed via text message before.
Ha, you just proved me right. How many bald kids died while you typed out ‘psychoanalyzed?’
I’m ignoring you now.
({i})
That’s your revenge? Punctuation?
Aww, Jimmy, has it really been that long for you? It’s a vagina: ({i})
You have got to find less annoying hobbies. How long did it take you to come up with that?
Don’t like it? Try this on for size: (.Y.)
Cuddy would be so jealous. Now if you’re finished acting like a 13-year-old, I actually have some real breasts to examine.
You’re complaining? You’re the one that chose to look at lumps for a living.
You’re the one sexually fixating on parentheses.
Hey, if you’re gonna get snippy, I’ve got pointier symbols to play with here. We both know you like that better anyway.
Stop, all this syntax is turning me on.
So come over here. And I mean that literally, of course
Fun with wordplay again. Im busy
Not yet, you’re not.
Later
I want you to help me test a new theory.
Purely in the interest of science, I assume
I figure if my leg is strong enough to make you make those noises, the same principle should hold true the other way around.
What do you think, Doctor?
Sounds like a valid hypotesis
You spelled hypothesis wrong. And you’re foregoing your usual obsessive punctuation. Getting a little restless?
No. I’m getting annoyed.
I’ll be over there at 6
Stopping by the hotel first? As much fun as it is doing you in your giant metaphor of denial,
it’s starting to get a little inconvenient
You have a point? Other than to remind me how screwed up my life is?
Just think it’s stupid for you to pay that much money for a place you hardly ever stay anymore
I’m open to suggestions
Theoretically if you stayed here these experiments could run full time
Are you asking me to move back in?
Do what you want
Not an answer
House? You’ve been running up my bill with your random facts and female anatomy lessons, and NOW you’re not going to answer me?
3====>
A dick. Very fitting. You want me to move back in or not?
Could be interesting
Could be hell. For both of us.
Look at it this way: I’m not going to set your hand in warm water if you’re in my bed.
How sweet
Shut up. You gonna move in here or what?
Are you trying to figure out how to make the emoticon for sexual identity crisis?
I need to think about this
Which is precisely why you’re so miserable. You think too much
One of us has to
Well, think faster, Doc. This test I want to do is getting more and more critical
Can we talk about this, I don’t know, in person? Stop hiding behind electronic devices
Fine. AFTER my theory is tested. Of course, we might need a few trial runs. Make sure we can trust the results
Did you replace the Vicodin habit with Viagra? :)
What was THAT?
A smiley face, see :) You’re telling me you know how to make genitalia with punctuation and you didn’t recognize a smile?
That surprises you?
Point taken.
<3
A carrot?
No
Something is less than 3?
Nope. Tilt your head and use your imagination: <3
a heart
What? No. It’s a scrotum.
:) Right, House.
In Wilson’s admittedly biased opinion, the tests were a remarkable success.
Sex was pure sensory overload, especially now, especially with him. The sight of House on the bed beneath him, the wide, dilated blue eyes, mouth open, sweat reflecting yellow lamplight. Taste of salt and drops of kissed-won blood, the way stubble and skin and nipples felt under his tongue, the hot, wet interior of House’s mouth that was mirrored and outdone below in another tight space. Smell of sex and aftershave and a familiar hair conditioner. Sounds, God, the sounds, which must have sounded so ridiculous, would have sounded ridiculous on their own, but were at the moment a cheering crowd: wet slapping, faster and louder, bed creaking, ‘Wilson’ ripped like a prayer from an atheist’s mouth.
He was buried in House, in many dimensions, figurative and literal, forgetting even his own name as he pushed in farther. Possessive hands tore at his hair, drew bruises on his back, and strong, equal thighs were searing into his waist. Somewhere lost in pleasure, it occurred to him that he was actually fucking House, who was in no pain, who wanted him to move in. It was too good to last.
He dug into House’s shoulders and shuddered in release, dimly aware that House had finished just seconds earlier, warmth gluing their abdomens together. He was pretty convinced that he was dead for the first few seconds, unable to breath or move or care that he was shaking violently against House’s chest.
But in truth, he was just too alive, too content, too pleased with himself. He made a noise too close to a purr when House combed sleepy fingers through his tousled hair.
“We’ll have to write that one up for the journals,” he mumbled, voice deepened by orgasm. “They’ll put it in textbooks.”
“Mm,” was Wilson’s brilliant and well-thought-out response, using every last shred of muscle coordination to kiss House with closed eyes and roll off of him. He was practically asleep before he collapsed into the bed, his side of the bed, too sated to consider the possible repercussions of using House’s shoulder for a pillow.
When he awoke, it was because House had left the door open and the light on and turned the TV volume up, and he was perversely relieved that House was still a jackass, happily annoyed as he pulled on boxers and an undershirt.
He felt the surreal grogginess of waking up in the middle of the night, rubbing his eyes sleepily as he made his way down the hall. House was on the couch, his right leg curled underneath him, noisily eating some kind of sugary breakfast cereal out the box, transfixed on some kind of questionable talk show, watching an achondroplastic dwarf tackle an obese man into a puddle of what appeared to be butterscotch pudding in retaliation for some complicated wrong.
Wilson leaned against the living room doorway, allowing himself a voyeuristic view of House just being himself when he thought no one was watching, laughing in his throat at the TV, his hand rattling loudly in the cereal box, dumping large amounts of sweetened grain into his mouth. A second later, he started digging around on his lap, when a wayward puff escaped its fate. Wilson couldn’t help but grin.
Yeah. Sex with House definitely made Wilson crazy.
“How can you watch this crap?” he asked, sorry to intrude, as the crowd on TV starting chanting in approval of the clearly staged fight.
He knew he didn’t imagine the tiny smile that replaced the look of surprise on House’s face. “What do you mean? This show is all you need to know about human nature.”
Wilson squinted and read the tiny white print at the bottom of the screen, apparently the topic of tonight’s freak show, “‘I'm Pregnant by a Transsexual?’” He snorted, and took his place next to House on the sofa. “This holds some great universal truth?”
House shrugged. “It’s got dwarves.”
Wilson rolled his eyes lightly and leaned into the cushions, pretending not to notice House staring at him.
“Tomorrow’s ‘I'm Pregnant but I Still Want to Strip.’ Tell me you don’t wanna stick around to see that.”
“Not that that’s not a compelling argument,” Wilson said in a low voice, “but I think we’re going to need a little more than that if we’re going to live together.”
House crunched on his cereal.
Wilson sighed. “First of all,” bleeps of expletives from the TV were sprinkled over his words, “why now? Why do you all of a sudden want me to move in? What’s changed?”
“I never said you had to move out in the first place.”
“Yeah. You made me feel so welcome while I was here.” He rubbed at his brow as a woman with a Southern accent threw a chair across the stage to roaring approval. “I just…this isn’t something you just decide on a whim through text message.”
House gave him a long, sidelong glance, then watched Jerry Springer and said nothing.
It was like living with a child. It was House’s way of saying this was not a whim and he was offended that Wilson thought so.
“House-"
He snorted. “If you don’t want to move in, just say so; you don’t have to let me down easy.”
“Of course I want to move in,” he blurted.
Totally, batshit insane.
House looked at him for a long moment, as if he were an interesting symptom. The TV clicked off. “But?”
“But I just….I want you to be damn sure you want this. Because if I move in…what’s going to happen if you ever want me to move back out?”
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t have what he’d always wanted and then lose it, a tortuously brief window to what it felt like to be happy. He didn’t know what it would feel like to have a taste of something he’d always wanted, and then have it snatched away. He was afraid of what might happen.
House was staring at the floor, unconsciously running a thumb and forefinger over his lips. “You’re only seeing what might go wrong, not what is,” and Wilson was instantly aware that House was using his own words against him. “Seize the day and all that crap, right? Isn’t that what you’ve been telling me? To just shut up and be happy?”
He wanted to say this was different, that House’s leg wasn’t going to fail, that moving in and getting closer was so much more of a risk. He wanted to say he understood why House asked him to move in and he was grateful for it, pleased that House could even consider taking that chance. He wanted to shut up and be happy himself.
But he was Wilson, and in relationships, Wilson is the one in control. He’s the voice of reason, the great compromiser, the one who gets blamed if it all goes to hell. He is the caretaker, the one who’s needed. He’s the one who doesn’t care if he’s happy, so long as the other person is protected.
“Look,” he croaked, knowing that now was the dangerous part, as House often saw middle ground or compromise as rejection or betrayal, “my room’s paid until the end of the month. In the meantime, maybe you can get all your hairdryer jokes out of your system. We’ll just…wait and see.”
House grinned without looking up. “So all that carpe diem crap, telling me to trust this, that really was as meaningless as it sounded?”
Wilson flushed. “No…”
House grinned wider. “You’re such a hypocrite,” and he pulled Wilson in for a Crunchberry-flavored kiss.
Maybe the affectionate insult was accurate; maybe Wilson being unable to trust the relationship was no different than House being unable to accept his mobility. But he figured, as House dozed off against his chest, there were worse things than being a hypocrite.
A/N: Yes, I really did take the time to make sure the text-message thing was accurate; that it was within a typical phone's character limits and that House's little symbols were possible to make. Yes, I have way too much time on my hands.
Tomorrow I'm going to have to write an angsty post-ep for Wilson's Heart. Damn it.
Next
Author: Magie
Word Count: 4,664
Pairing: House/Wilson established (kind of)
Rating/Warnings:NC-17, language, smut, and some very unseemly emoticons ;)
Summary: A continuation of something I wrote for the get_house_laid prompt number 071: House/Wilson -- Smut that takes place before the Ketamine treatment wears off and House still has full use of his leg. Unusual positions are a plus! I’ve had this finished for a couple of days now, but I thought I’d wait until after the finale to post. It’s purely ridiculous fluff and smut, and it’s not really going to help with the angst most of us are probably feeling right now, but I hope you’ll enjoy it :)
Betas: daphnie_1 and bmax67 . I love you guys!
Wilson thought he should be suspicious of this surreal, pain-free, vaguely happy creature that had replaced House.
Of course, this task was much harder to accomplish when said creature had him pressed against the desk in his hotel room and was currently doing a very thorough job of screwing him senseless.
He could speak only in expletives or religious worship, occasionally offering up instruction and shouted suggestions. Things of this nature seemed to be spouting out of his mouth quite often recently, and even more so in the past month since House had gotten his leg back. Not that a fully functioning leg made that much difference; sex with House had been incredible even when it was only in fantasies. Wilson suspected the difference came more from House’s renewed self-confidence than anything purely physical.
But he was sure House would beg to differ, thrusting roughly, evenly, driving a spike up Wilson’s vertebrae, pain/pleasure ripping embarrassing, high-pitched noises from Wilson’s throat. He could feel fingertip-shaped bruises blossoming on his hips, his palms sliding into hotel stationary and pens, barely able to support each thrust with fire building in his muscles. Groaning, he tossed his head back, sweaty hair falling on a damp, bare, moving shoulder, practically sobbing his approval over the wet noise between them, rewarded by hands moving up to his chest. He was babbling incoherently about House and deities when the final slam against his prostate was followed by hot, liquid warmth.
House stayed and shuddered until it was over, biting the muscles in Wilson’s neck, his moans absorbed into the flesh. Still-hard, but aching, Wilson found himself being released, being emptied, being turned and shoved gently into the desk chair.
Gorgeous pain made him lean awkwardly on the edge of his seat, his weight on his lower back, his dick comically perpendicular to the ceiling. House collapsed into a kiss, his hot, rapid breath filling Wilson’s lungs, as intense now as he was in anything that really mattered to him. Wilson took it as the compliment it was, threaded his fingers into House’s hair, and came spectacularly seconds after House’s mouth closed over his cock.
Body weak from orgasm, he sank to his knees, falling with House to the beige Berber carpeting, falling anywhere with House.
“Unbelievable,” House remarked in a low tone, before insecurity could catch up with his senses, arms around Wilson on the prickly, lamp-lit floor.
“Shit,” Wilson added breathlessly, relieved that another, more dangerous four-letter word hadn’t slipped out.
It was bound to happen, he knew. One of these intense, passionate nights, he wouldn’t be able to hide it. Hard to restrain the only words he’d been thinking about.
Of course, he’d loved House for years, loved him before the sex, loved him in ways mere words could not describe. But these past weeks, the unrestrained affection House had been finally reciprocating…it drove Wilson slightly mad. Only his fear held him back.
For the moment, he just savored the peace, boneless in House’s grip, at his mercy. A congratulatory tongue wound into his mouth and he was grateful for the opportunity to think.
House’s leg was not the only thing that stood between them; he was just as closed-off now as ever. Healing him physically did not magically change him. Wilson knew all of this intellectually. But part of him couldn’t help but wonder, couldn’t help but blame the infarction, the pain, the damn drugs for everything.
Maybe House thought that way. Maybe letting go of pain and pills freed his mind for other distractions, allowed him to slide careful, affectionate fingertips over Wilson’s cheek, kiss slowly after orgasm like this, like it was so important.
“You’re so easy,” House mumbled into his mouth. “I bring you one pizza and you let me do you standing up.”
Wilson jerked his shoulders. “I really like pizza.”
House smiled at him and he felt like he was sinking farther into the floor.
“Got plans for the weekend?” And it was exceedingly hard to focus on House’s question when suggestive fingers were on his ass.
“Depends. What are yours?”
The second smile in thirty seconds sent a rush of blood through his heart and to his spent, futile groin.
“Thought I’d go for a run. And have increasingly pornographic sex with you.”
Wilson grinned at the possibility of those aspirations. “Sounds good.”
House’s smile faded with meaningful slowness, his thumb tracing pensively over Wilson’s lips.
“I hurt you,” he murmured as Wilson’s eyes drifted closed in contentment.
“No, you didn’t,” and it was an easy lie, because the pain from sex wasn’t pain at all.
“I meant…in the dream. I hit you.”
He snapped back to awareness. House had conveniently omitted that part of the recounted hallucination. “You didn’t tell me that.”
House fixated silently on Wilson’s chest, fingers tracing poorly defined pectorals, “You went behind my back. Sided with Cuddy.”
“Saved your life?” Wilson supplied.
“Screwed me over.”
Wilson rolled his eyes. “Right. I forgot. Those two things are synonymous in your mind.”
House quieted; his mouth became a slanted line, studiously considering Wilson’s right nipple. His voice was heavy with confession. “I’d rather be able to think than be able to run.”
“I know,” Wilson conceded. “But this isn’t your dream. This way, you have both.
Why can’t you trust that?” he asked, even though he already knew the answers.
He couldn’t trust his leg, because six years ago it had suddenly tried to kill him. He couldn’t trust Wilson because he was convinced that anyone he got close to was eventually going to betray him, another scar he tried to hide.
Telling House he was wrong, making promises, pretending he wouldn’t have done exactly what the dream version of himself had done…it wouldn’t help. It would mean nothing. House wouldn’t be able to accept it any more than he could accept the three words on Wilson’s tongue.
So he pushed them aside for later examination, changed the subject so House could hide behind it. “Should get a shower,” he said, omitting the sentence’s subject in hopes that House would invite himself. Sighing, he began to pull himself up, muscles burning in protest, sweat and carpet fibers clinging to his back. He hesitated in the space over House’s lips, in that triangle of distance, where either rejection or a kiss swam in possibility, where boundaries were drawn and broken.
He smiled foolishly when House closed the gap, kissed him softly on the floor of his hotel room when it probably wouldn’t lead to anything. When in the early days, he had done everything he could to keep that distance, to pretend the sex hadn’t brought them closer. He was acting differently now; he was acting like it meant something.
Or maybe sex with House just made Wilson crazy.
He knew he shouldn’t be this happy. He knew there was still a good chance the ketamine and this new, deeper relationship would fail. He knew that House agreeing to stay the night with only one half-hearted jibe about Wilson wanting to ‘shack up’ shouldn’t have made him grin. He knew that hope set him up for disappointment.
But it was already too late.
“I’m getting too old for this.”
“Come on, Jimmy, faster. We’re almost there.”
“You really are trying to kill me. Just…stop a minute…”
“Nope. We need to improve your stamina.”
“House, just…wait up…”
Wilson panted against the trunk of the closest tree, night air cooling his sweat-soaked skin underneath the borrowed running clothes, lungs protesting this sudden exercise craze.
Although, he had to admit, it was a great night for a run. The breeze was like ice to sore muscles. He took several breaths to try and calm the fire in his chest, tasting fresh earth and flowers and summer, the glow of endorphins in his blood. There were no cars out at this hour-an obscene one for a jog-only blue moonlight reflecting off parked trucks, puddles, and House’s skin.
Wilson knew he must look like hell, his hair sweaty and mussed from the wind, red blotches of oxygen deprivation on his face, leaning weakly against the tree.
It was simply unfair that exercise made House look that good.
He jogged back to Wilson, across the fifteen feet that had seemed to separate them since they’d left the apartment, a smirk on his lips, eyes absorbing all the blue the moon could pour out and glittering with amusement. Sweat curled his hair and seeped triangular patterns on his oversized t-shirt, which obviously needed to be taken off as soon as possible. He took long, deep breaths as he slowed, his mouth open, his tongue darting out to catch a bit of sweat from his upper lip. Wilson was sure it tasted like salt and bittersweet skin.
“Had enough?” he asked gruffly with raised eyebrows, and Wilson forced his mouth to close and his eyes to shrink.
“Um,” he cleared his throat since he couldn’t clear his mind of certain thoughts, “I just need a minute. This is a lot harder than it was five years ago.”
“Speak for yourself,” House grinned.
“No pain?” Wilson gasped out, his own joints throbbing, leaning forward against the tree to grasp his knees, air entering his chest like ice water.
He could hear House’s smug, god-like amusement. “I think at this point, you should be more concerned about keeping yourself breathing than anything else. When’s the last time you went for a run?”
In truth, Wilson didn’t see a point in running or playing sports alone. He got plenty of exercise chasing House around all corners of the hospital, and there was no need to count calories when half of his lunch was stolen, anyway. If he sometimes missed long afternoons of inexpert basketball outside his first garage with his first wife looking on, trying not to pretend it was normal to miss blocking opportunities because he was too busy staring at the muscles in his best friend’s neck and shoulders, it was only because it was something else House’s leg had changed. Mentions of anything physical, anything requiring two legs, anything from his old life became taboo around House, until they finally stopped mattering.
But letting House know he was the subject of sensitivity could only lead to intense agony, so Wilson just shrugged, jarring the stitch in side, and let House’s comment about all those vomit-stuffed peppers being a mistake on more than one level wash over him. “I’m dehydrated,” he muttered, dimly aware of how pathetic he sounded.
“Can’t have that,” and how House managed to pack so much sexual innuendo into three random words, Wilson would never know. In any case, he felt a flush that had nothing to do with running a mile as House grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him back up onto the sidewalk. “There’s a park about a block ahead.”
A few minutes’ tired jogging found them leaving the sidewalk for a gentle slope, dew from well-manicured grass dusting their ankles. House found the water fountains with ease; Wilson wondered how many times House had run this particular route.
Then again, watching him drink his fill, water dripping like stars from his chin, followed by the handful he ran through his already-soaked hair to cool off-that made anything else seem pretty irrelevant.
Damn it.
“Can we rest here for a minute?” Wilson mumbled, for some reason sheepish, both of them aware that this was the first time in six years that Wilson had suggested a break because he needed one, not because he knew House did.
“Weakling,” but it was with no real complaints that Wilson found himself on his back in wet grass, obscenely at ease, watching House move slowly back and forth on the swing set a few feet away.
Deliciously cool water and grass stains were seeping onto his back, but he was already dirty and they were House’s clothes anyway. He was struck by the amount of earth around him, the smell of it, the blanket of clear, black sky, the sound of crickets and wind through the trees behind him. “Nice night,” rolled out of his chest before he could censor it, endorphins making him hazy.
“Yeah.” The lack of sarcasm made him glance over, rolling his head to the side. House was looking into dark grove of moving trees that lined the park, unconsciously digging his tennis shoe into the damp sawdust at his feet. “I ever tell you about the house in North Carolina?”
Wilson’s heart started pounding again. “Yeah. First house you can remember, right?”
A gust of wind picked up and for a moment, Wilson was sure that whatever House wanted to say was lost in it somehow. “It was in the middle of nowhere,” he said finally. “Up this hill. Dirt road; bumpy as hell. My mom wouldn’t drive on it. The place was surrounded by woods.”
Wilson sat up on his elbows, as transfixed on House as he was on the clump of trees. “Real woods,” he clarified, “not these pansy, municipal woods. We’re talking about the constant threat of bears and getting lost and being found as a pile of bones by hunters years later.”
“An optimist even at that age.”
House threw him a small grin. “I was never indoors. There was just…always something to do out there. Everything seemed so important. Drove my parents crazy.”
He could imagine House disappearing for hours, seeing everything he could, climbing trees and jumping into creeks just to see what it felt like.
“We left when I was about eight. He got transferred for the first time since I was born. Moved to a military-issue house with military-issue trees here and there. Not much for a kid to do.” He twisted his hand in the swing’s chain.
Wilson felt strangely dejected. “You ever live near woods again after that?”
House shrugged. “Didn’t really matter, did it? It was irrelevant. They were just places. Everything got easier once I figured out that no matter where we were, inside the house, it was always the same.”
Wilson sat up fully, head spinning, his throat tight. “It was relevant. It could have been relevant, if you wanted it to be. Change isn’t always a bad thing. It doesn’t make your past experiences irrelevant.”
“Oh, God,” House muttered, “just forget I said anything,” but no way was Wilson letting this one go.
“You live your life based on what might go wrong. People don’t change, but situations do. And you don’t trust either of them. You’re so obsessed with how you think things will end, that you can’t just accept what you have.”
House was staring at him. “You’re saying I should blindly accept that my leg is all better now? Forget the past six years?”
“No,” he sighed the word, “but you can’t just anticipate eventually being miserable, fulfill your own damn prophecy. You deserve to enjoy this.” Whether or not the ketamine would last.
He watched House think, like always, watched him try to find the flaw in Wilson’s theory, some empirical proof that he really did deserve to be miserable. Decades later, it seemed, he pulled himself up easily, casting one last glance toward the toy woods before stepping up to Wilson’s patch of grass.
He kneeled. “I’m enjoying it,” the words low like a confession, like they were something dirty. He snaked cool fingers over Wilson’s temples and kissed him on the ground in the middle of a public park.
In his head, Wilson was caught between images of House’s childhood, advice, and vague fears. He was thinking about grass stains and theoretical park security guards. His body was aching in numerous ways, tired, dirty, and completely overwhelmed by all the recent physical activity.
It wasn’t really a contest, no matter how much Wilson thought it should be.
He sank back into the grass. “Well, this is just clearly illegal,” he chastised half-heartedly, all the tension from the evening building up between his legs, his muscles quivering, asking him what the hell he was thinking trying anything like this after running all night.
Later, he’d find it interesting that House’s hand around his cock gave him such a remarkable second wind.
Did you know Adolf Hitler had only one testicle?
House, I know you’re bored without work and Vicodin, but you have to stop sending me text messages every thirty seconds.
Like you’re doing anything important.
I’m WORKING.
And yet you’re keeping your personal cell phone on. You’d go crazy if you didn’t have me annoying you.
Thanks, I’ve never been psychoanalyzed via text message before.
Ha, you just proved me right. How many bald kids died while you typed out ‘psychoanalyzed?’
I’m ignoring you now.
({i})
That’s your revenge? Punctuation?
Aww, Jimmy, has it really been that long for you? It’s a vagina: ({i})
You have got to find less annoying hobbies. How long did it take you to come up with that?
Don’t like it? Try this on for size: (.Y.)
Cuddy would be so jealous. Now if you’re finished acting like a 13-year-old, I actually have some real breasts to examine.
You’re complaining? You’re the one that chose to look at lumps for a living.
You’re the one sexually fixating on parentheses.
Hey, if you’re gonna get snippy, I’ve got pointier symbols to play with here. We both know you like that better anyway.
Stop, all this syntax is turning me on.
So come over here. And I mean that literally, of course
Fun with wordplay again. Im busy
Not yet, you’re not.
Later
I want you to help me test a new theory.
Purely in the interest of science, I assume
I figure if my leg is strong enough to make you make those noises, the same principle should hold true the other way around.
What do you think, Doctor?
Sounds like a valid hypotesis
You spelled hypothesis wrong. And you’re foregoing your usual obsessive punctuation. Getting a little restless?
No. I’m getting annoyed.
I’ll be over there at 6
Stopping by the hotel first? As much fun as it is doing you in your giant metaphor of denial,
it’s starting to get a little inconvenient
You have a point? Other than to remind me how screwed up my life is?
Just think it’s stupid for you to pay that much money for a place you hardly ever stay anymore
I’m open to suggestions
Theoretically if you stayed here these experiments could run full time
Are you asking me to move back in?
Do what you want
Not an answer
House? You’ve been running up my bill with your random facts and female anatomy lessons, and NOW you’re not going to answer me?
3====>
A dick. Very fitting. You want me to move back in or not?
Could be interesting
Could be hell. For both of us.
Look at it this way: I’m not going to set your hand in warm water if you’re in my bed.
How sweet
Shut up. You gonna move in here or what?
Are you trying to figure out how to make the emoticon for sexual identity crisis?
I need to think about this
Which is precisely why you’re so miserable. You think too much
One of us has to
Well, think faster, Doc. This test I want to do is getting more and more critical
Can we talk about this, I don’t know, in person? Stop hiding behind electronic devices
Fine. AFTER my theory is tested. Of course, we might need a few trial runs. Make sure we can trust the results
Did you replace the Vicodin habit with Viagra? :)
What was THAT?
A smiley face, see :) You’re telling me you know how to make genitalia with punctuation and you didn’t recognize a smile?
That surprises you?
Point taken.
<3
A carrot?
No
Something is less than 3?
Nope. Tilt your head and use your imagination: <3
a heart
What? No. It’s a scrotum.
:) Right, House.
In Wilson’s admittedly biased opinion, the tests were a remarkable success.
Sex was pure sensory overload, especially now, especially with him. The sight of House on the bed beneath him, the wide, dilated blue eyes, mouth open, sweat reflecting yellow lamplight. Taste of salt and drops of kissed-won blood, the way stubble and skin and nipples felt under his tongue, the hot, wet interior of House’s mouth that was mirrored and outdone below in another tight space. Smell of sex and aftershave and a familiar hair conditioner. Sounds, God, the sounds, which must have sounded so ridiculous, would have sounded ridiculous on their own, but were at the moment a cheering crowd: wet slapping, faster and louder, bed creaking, ‘Wilson’ ripped like a prayer from an atheist’s mouth.
He was buried in House, in many dimensions, figurative and literal, forgetting even his own name as he pushed in farther. Possessive hands tore at his hair, drew bruises on his back, and strong, equal thighs were searing into his waist. Somewhere lost in pleasure, it occurred to him that he was actually fucking House, who was in no pain, who wanted him to move in. It was too good to last.
He dug into House’s shoulders and shuddered in release, dimly aware that House had finished just seconds earlier, warmth gluing their abdomens together. He was pretty convinced that he was dead for the first few seconds, unable to breath or move or care that he was shaking violently against House’s chest.
But in truth, he was just too alive, too content, too pleased with himself. He made a noise too close to a purr when House combed sleepy fingers through his tousled hair.
“We’ll have to write that one up for the journals,” he mumbled, voice deepened by orgasm. “They’ll put it in textbooks.”
“Mm,” was Wilson’s brilliant and well-thought-out response, using every last shred of muscle coordination to kiss House with closed eyes and roll off of him. He was practically asleep before he collapsed into the bed, his side of the bed, too sated to consider the possible repercussions of using House’s shoulder for a pillow.
When he awoke, it was because House had left the door open and the light on and turned the TV volume up, and he was perversely relieved that House was still a jackass, happily annoyed as he pulled on boxers and an undershirt.
He felt the surreal grogginess of waking up in the middle of the night, rubbing his eyes sleepily as he made his way down the hall. House was on the couch, his right leg curled underneath him, noisily eating some kind of sugary breakfast cereal out the box, transfixed on some kind of questionable talk show, watching an achondroplastic dwarf tackle an obese man into a puddle of what appeared to be butterscotch pudding in retaliation for some complicated wrong.
Wilson leaned against the living room doorway, allowing himself a voyeuristic view of House just being himself when he thought no one was watching, laughing in his throat at the TV, his hand rattling loudly in the cereal box, dumping large amounts of sweetened grain into his mouth. A second later, he started digging around on his lap, when a wayward puff escaped its fate. Wilson couldn’t help but grin.
Yeah. Sex with House definitely made Wilson crazy.
“How can you watch this crap?” he asked, sorry to intrude, as the crowd on TV starting chanting in approval of the clearly staged fight.
He knew he didn’t imagine the tiny smile that replaced the look of surprise on House’s face. “What do you mean? This show is all you need to know about human nature.”
Wilson squinted and read the tiny white print at the bottom of the screen, apparently the topic of tonight’s freak show, “‘I'm Pregnant by a Transsexual?’” He snorted, and took his place next to House on the sofa. “This holds some great universal truth?”
House shrugged. “It’s got dwarves.”
Wilson rolled his eyes lightly and leaned into the cushions, pretending not to notice House staring at him.
“Tomorrow’s ‘I'm Pregnant but I Still Want to Strip.’ Tell me you don’t wanna stick around to see that.”
“Not that that’s not a compelling argument,” Wilson said in a low voice, “but I think we’re going to need a little more than that if we’re going to live together.”
House crunched on his cereal.
Wilson sighed. “First of all,” bleeps of expletives from the TV were sprinkled over his words, “why now? Why do you all of a sudden want me to move in? What’s changed?”
“I never said you had to move out in the first place.”
“Yeah. You made me feel so welcome while I was here.” He rubbed at his brow as a woman with a Southern accent threw a chair across the stage to roaring approval. “I just…this isn’t something you just decide on a whim through text message.”
House gave him a long, sidelong glance, then watched Jerry Springer and said nothing.
It was like living with a child. It was House’s way of saying this was not a whim and he was offended that Wilson thought so.
“House-"
He snorted. “If you don’t want to move in, just say so; you don’t have to let me down easy.”
“Of course I want to move in,” he blurted.
Totally, batshit insane.
House looked at him for a long moment, as if he were an interesting symptom. The TV clicked off. “But?”
“But I just….I want you to be damn sure you want this. Because if I move in…what’s going to happen if you ever want me to move back out?”
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t have what he’d always wanted and then lose it, a tortuously brief window to what it felt like to be happy. He didn’t know what it would feel like to have a taste of something he’d always wanted, and then have it snatched away. He was afraid of what might happen.
House was staring at the floor, unconsciously running a thumb and forefinger over his lips. “You’re only seeing what might go wrong, not what is,” and Wilson was instantly aware that House was using his own words against him. “Seize the day and all that crap, right? Isn’t that what you’ve been telling me? To just shut up and be happy?”
He wanted to say this was different, that House’s leg wasn’t going to fail, that moving in and getting closer was so much more of a risk. He wanted to say he understood why House asked him to move in and he was grateful for it, pleased that House could even consider taking that chance. He wanted to shut up and be happy himself.
But he was Wilson, and in relationships, Wilson is the one in control. He’s the voice of reason, the great compromiser, the one who gets blamed if it all goes to hell. He is the caretaker, the one who’s needed. He’s the one who doesn’t care if he’s happy, so long as the other person is protected.
“Look,” he croaked, knowing that now was the dangerous part, as House often saw middle ground or compromise as rejection or betrayal, “my room’s paid until the end of the month. In the meantime, maybe you can get all your hairdryer jokes out of your system. We’ll just…wait and see.”
House grinned without looking up. “So all that carpe diem crap, telling me to trust this, that really was as meaningless as it sounded?”
Wilson flushed. “No…”
House grinned wider. “You’re such a hypocrite,” and he pulled Wilson in for a Crunchberry-flavored kiss.
Maybe the affectionate insult was accurate; maybe Wilson being unable to trust the relationship was no different than House being unable to accept his mobility. But he figured, as House dozed off against his chest, there were worse things than being a hypocrite.
A/N: Yes, I really did take the time to make sure the text-message thing was accurate; that it was within a typical phone's character limits and that House's little symbols were possible to make. Yes, I have way too much time on my hands.
Tomorrow I'm going to have to write an angsty post-ep for Wilson's Heart. Damn it.
Next