Civilization and its Discontents (House, MD fic)
Title: Civilization and its Discontents (the Shut My Mouth remix)
Word Count: ~2.4K
Pairings/Rating: R; House/Wilson established relationship.
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit.
Summary: Tonight, Wilson couldn’t stand any more talk. He needed to push pass the wall of words to the truth of flesh and bone.
a/n: This is a remix of dee_laundry’s In Which Wilson is, by Some Definitions, a Troglodyte. Originally posted here.
a/n: Set early in S6.
a/n: Title from the book by Sigmund Freud.
a/n: Many thanks to anniehow, calamitycrow, and debbiel66 for the House-calls and slash-beta'ing.
a/n: Through the vagaries of timing, this is both my first remix and my first House!fic, since I wrote it before Safety Lights. I’m afraid it kind of shows, on both counts….so, um, apologies in advance, and a big thank you to dee_laundry for being so generous about the whole thing.
Civilization and its Discontents
What could he do but say hello? It was only after the words had left his mouth that Wilson realized it was a set up.
When he did, though, he kicked House, hard, under the table.
It had taken a lot of brow-beating and knife-twisting and even some judicious withholding of sexual favors before he'd finally won-or thought he'd won-House's grudging consent to doing this Wilson's way, doing it properly: face-to-face with the people who needed to know-no tricks, no coyness. Straightforward because they had nothing to be ashamed of. Out in the open in the clear light of day.
But he should've known that he would end up here: tumbling head first into doing it House's way. In the Olive Garden, of all places.
Because of course it turned out that House had ignored him completely, had dangled some kind crude lure in front of Chase and Cameron---wanna see who Wilson's dating?--had reeled them in, straight to the restaurant, until they stood there, eyes wide and mouths gaping, like fish who couldn't believe they had lucked into such tasty bait.
Why? Wilson asked himself, and then mentally smacked himself for even wondering. Knowing House, it could easily have been for the sole purpose of deploying the particularly infantile double entendre he was now unleashing, eyes glinting like a twelve-year-old with a skin mag.
Chase and Cameron squinted at them, brows furrowing in a weirdly identical way, trying to figure out if the situation really was what it appeared to be. And, if it were, what would be the safest way to react.
Wilson stared back, caught off guard himself for a moment. But then something about their slightly pained, quizzical expressions-as if the scene were a collection of unusual symptoms they couldn't quite put together-threw him into the spirit of the thing, because really, who could have worked with House for so long and still be so slow on the uptake? They deserved whatever they got.
Wilson launched a barb of his own. House had to know that once you started comparing parts of the male anatomy to wind instruments, you'd opened up a whole orchestra pit of metaphors. Many of which were less flattering to the organ in question than the one House had used to begin with. Belittling even. Like the piccolo, for instance.
House, predictably, feigned injury, called Wilson out for brutishness. And then they were off, a mock battle of semantics while the younger doctors looked on, slowly getting their minds around the fact that what they had thought was cohabitation was really, well, cohabitation.
Not the way Wilson had planned for this particular life-changing moment to go, but, hey, now that it was here, he figured he might as well enjoy himself.
Chase cottoned on, joined in the fun, while Cameron still claimed confusion. Winding her husband up to see what would happen, Wilson thought, though Chase seemed to be taking her cluelessness seriously.
House was having a ball now, but Wilson remained irked that his careful planning had gone for naught. All of PPTH would know within ten minutes of Chase and Cameron leaving the restaurant. Maybe faster. Wilson toed off his right loafer. No reason House shouldn't have to work a little for his fun.
The repartee went on around him. Cameron claimed the next round when she succeeded in getting House to drop the smutty euphemisms and announce the anatomically correct term to the room at large. Several heads swiveled in their direction, and Wilson winced at the muted chorus of smothered giggles.
On second thought, maybe the round belonged to House. Maybe he'd been waiting to shout that word in a crowded chain restaurant for years.
Under the table, Wilson slid his sock-clad foot up his friend's leg, keeping up his part in the wordplay while simultaneously probing gently, searching with his toes for just the right spot, the one he knew would get a response.
House, heroically, didn't break verbal stride, though Wilson thought he could see the flush starting under his skin, his breath come just a tiny bit quicker. Wilson threw out one last metaphor, and simultaneously curled his toes just so.
Taken by surprise, House gasped, a quick, sharp affirmative, the blood leaping brighter in his cheeks. Wilson allowed himself a secret smile. Maybe this round went to him.
Chase was caught up in a private reverie about what clever mouths could do to sensitive instruments, but Cameron's eyes widened as she placed the meaning of the sound House had just made. She looked at Wilson sharply, half shocked, half admiring, and tugged at her husband's sleeve, muttering hasty goodbyes.
Apparently they'd gotten the answers they were looking for. And then some.
++++++
Dinner didn't last much longer after that. House started to say something as they got into the car-not an apology, Wilson was sure of that-probably a few choice remarks about why his way had turned out to be the right way after all. Whatever it was, Wilson didn't want to hear it. He gunned the engine, drowning out the words. As they pulled out of the parking lot, he laid a proprietary hand on House's thigh. Because that was what it was all about, wasn't it? If House wanted a public relationship, he could bloody well have one, bells, whistles and everything.
It was early, barely dusk, and on an ordinary evening, Wilson might have moved his hand when they pulled up at a light next to a harried-looking mom with a mini-van filled with kids. But tonight he had a point to make, so he edged it up a little higher instead, a little closer to the inseam of House's jeans.
Eventually, the woman glanced over at them, clearly wise to the situation. House gave her his patented look of smug contempt, but she just rolled her eyes, informing them she had more important things to think about than what two middle-aged guys got up to in their high-end, late-model import. It was House who squirmed a little when the toddler in the back seat started making googly-eyes at them, took refuge in his best, mock-innocent "Who, me?" expression. Wilson smirked, figuring his work was done. But he didn't move his hand.
++++++
They barely made it up the apartment. Something about the evening, about the new feeling of publicly claiming his lover, about the way House was letting him do it, was hitting Wilson in unexpected ways, making him a little wild. House, too, judging by the way he'd gone quiet, body taut as a bow string. Wilson felt remade, re-wired, currents streaming down unfamiliar channels, triggering new impulses, new desires. He seriously contemplated jamming the emergency stop button in the elevator, pushing House up against the metal siding, and finishing things there. But he kept his hands to himself until they got to the condo.
Then he kicked the door shut behind them and crowded House into the wall, taking most of his weight with an ease born of long practice. House's cane clattered to the floor. He seemed as uncharacteristically willing to cede control tonight as Wilson was to take it. Wilson got a knee between his legs, rucked up his t-shirt searching for skin, and felt a sharp tug of desire in his belly as House tipped his head back against the wall, eyelids dipping shut in surrender.
It wasn't enough. Tonight Wilson needed more, needed House's gaze on him, needed to know that House was seeing him and only him. He slid his hand farther under House's shirt, felt the heat of his skin, the almost imperceptible tremor in the muscles of his stomach, sent his fingers climbing up the ladder of his ribs. He brushed over the nipple, circling it with his thumb, then tweaked it hard. Wilson grunted in satisfaction as those blue eyes snapped open-pupils blown, glazed with lust. But all the lust in the world couldn't cloud the naked trust there, the recognition.
Time blurred for a while under that fierce regard. Wilson grappled with the buttons to House's jeans, focused on getting his fingers under the waistband of his briefs, cupping his ass. He wasn't allowing House much space to move, to reciprocate, but it didn't matter, he was hard now himself, hard just from the idea of the whole world knowing this was his.
Vaguely, he heard House start to say something, some sardonic remark about his unusual ardor, no doubt. And that would have been par for the course, the kind of verbal sparring they'd been doing in the restaurant playing out in private as well. But tonight, Wilson couldn’t stand any more talk. He needed to push pass the wall of words to another truth-the truth of bone and flesh. Unbidden, he thought of gagging House, of taking off his tie and binding his mouth with it. He wondered how House would react to that kind of light bondage, it wasn't anything they'd tried before. It didn’t matter, though: the image alone sent a dizzying surge of hunger through him, and he closed House's mouth with a bruising kiss instead.
House got a hand free, deft fingers on the buckle of Wilson's belt, but Wilson stopped him, made an executive decision that they were going to finish this in bed: what he wanted was better done horizontal.
It wasn't smooth, by any means, getting back to the bedroom, House leaning heavily on him, hands tangled in each other's shirts, almost tripping over each other's feet. But they made it, most of their clothing shed along the way.
They switched up, by mutual agreement, though the process by which they came to said agreement was often lengthy. Sometimes the negotiations were as much of a turn on as the sex itself; sometimes they drained the fun right out of things. Tonight, though, there was no negotiating. House seemed to sense Wilson’s need-or, better yet, was too far gone to care.
Wilson's breath went ragged as House allowed himself be pushed back onto the bed, let himself be positioned on his side, bad leg propped on a pillow. These moments of pliancy, were so rare, so unexpected when they came, that they always bowled Wilson over; the knowledge that he was their only recipient, their own only witness, leaving him speechless with wonder. Wilson fished lube and condom out of the bedside table drawer, and readied them both, trying to be slow about it, careful, but a little rough despite his best efforts, sloppy in his urgency.
He fit himself in behind House, and pushed in, gently, setting a rhythm. He buried his face in House's neck, one hand bracing himself against House's shoulder. He reached around with the other hand, still slippery with lube, to find the familiar curve of House's erection, fingers settling into the pace and pressure he knew would bring House off. House was rock hard in his grip, making tiny, desperate, sounds of want.
Rocking in deeper now, Wilson worried a patch of skin just above House's shoulder blade with his lips, grazing it with his teeth, just enough to leave a mark, a secret flag raised on his territory. He tasted the salt tang of sweat, drank in House's familiar scent under the sharp harshness of hospital soap. House groaned more loudly as Wilson's thrusts hit the sweet spot, and the sound pulled Wilson a little closer to his own edge.
It was perfect, buried in balls-deep, the world beyond their joined bodies fading into nothingness. The only problem was that he couldn't see House's face, had to imagine it instead: lines of exhaustion and pain smoothed out, lips half-parted, wet, and his eyes still open, still clear, all the gamesmanship chased away, no room for anything but desire, no room for anything but Wilson.
Thinking of it, Wilson climaxed with a force that left him panting, and moments later felt House spilling over his hand.
++++++
“Troglodyte,” House said, with dry affection, when Wilson came back to bed with a wet washcloth, "dragging me back to your cave, having your way with me." At least that's what Wilson thought he said; half the words were lost into the pillow. A few perfunctory swipes at cleaning up, and House was asleep.
Propped on one elbow beside him, watching tiny snores ripple across his face, Wilson decided House was right.
When everyone learned the truth-okay: now that everyone knew the truth, Chase and Cameron had surely gotten busy with their cell phones by now-they would probably assume that he had tamed House, reined him into domesticity: kept him off the hard stuff and taught him the right way to load the dishwasher.
And yet the opposite was also true. The niceties and promises of civilization could only get you so far. And when the verbal castles-the shiny edifices in which Wilson lived most of his life-tumbled down, as they did with horrifying regularity, he needed someone who could withstand the crash. Who could accept whatever darkness, whatever crazy need, lurked in the ruins. Someone who could bear witness to those hidden things with the same dispassionate clarity that allowed him to confront, unfazed, the most brutal forms of death. Who could watch the occasional whiskey bottle fly past and never flinch. Someone with whom Wilson could acknowledge, even enjoy, the savagery and barbarism inherent in the world-and in himself.
Smiling, he shifted House's leg into a position that wouldn't leave it aching too badly in the morning, and settled himself for sleep.
fin
Word Count: ~2.4K
Pairings/Rating: R; House/Wilson established relationship.
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit.
Summary: Tonight, Wilson couldn’t stand any more talk. He needed to push pass the wall of words to the truth of flesh and bone.
a/n: This is a remix of dee_laundry’s In Which Wilson is, by Some Definitions, a Troglodyte. Originally posted here.
a/n: Set early in S6.
a/n: Title from the book by Sigmund Freud.
a/n: Many thanks to anniehow, calamitycrow, and debbiel66 for the House-calls and slash-beta'ing.
a/n: Through the vagaries of timing, this is both my first remix and my first House!fic, since I wrote it before Safety Lights. I’m afraid it kind of shows, on both counts….so, um, apologies in advance, and a big thank you to dee_laundry for being so generous about the whole thing.
Civilization and its Discontents
What could he do but say hello? It was only after the words had left his mouth that Wilson realized it was a set up.
When he did, though, he kicked House, hard, under the table.
It had taken a lot of brow-beating and knife-twisting and even some judicious withholding of sexual favors before he'd finally won-or thought he'd won-House's grudging consent to doing this Wilson's way, doing it properly: face-to-face with the people who needed to know-no tricks, no coyness. Straightforward because they had nothing to be ashamed of. Out in the open in the clear light of day.
But he should've known that he would end up here: tumbling head first into doing it House's way. In the Olive Garden, of all places.
Because of course it turned out that House had ignored him completely, had dangled some kind crude lure in front of Chase and Cameron---wanna see who Wilson's dating?--had reeled them in, straight to the restaurant, until they stood there, eyes wide and mouths gaping, like fish who couldn't believe they had lucked into such tasty bait.
Why? Wilson asked himself, and then mentally smacked himself for even wondering. Knowing House, it could easily have been for the sole purpose of deploying the particularly infantile double entendre he was now unleashing, eyes glinting like a twelve-year-old with a skin mag.
Chase and Cameron squinted at them, brows furrowing in a weirdly identical way, trying to figure out if the situation really was what it appeared to be. And, if it were, what would be the safest way to react.
Wilson stared back, caught off guard himself for a moment. But then something about their slightly pained, quizzical expressions-as if the scene were a collection of unusual symptoms they couldn't quite put together-threw him into the spirit of the thing, because really, who could have worked with House for so long and still be so slow on the uptake? They deserved whatever they got.
Wilson launched a barb of his own. House had to know that once you started comparing parts of the male anatomy to wind instruments, you'd opened up a whole orchestra pit of metaphors. Many of which were less flattering to the organ in question than the one House had used to begin with. Belittling even. Like the piccolo, for instance.
House, predictably, feigned injury, called Wilson out for brutishness. And then they were off, a mock battle of semantics while the younger doctors looked on, slowly getting their minds around the fact that what they had thought was cohabitation was really, well, cohabitation.
Not the way Wilson had planned for this particular life-changing moment to go, but, hey, now that it was here, he figured he might as well enjoy himself.
Chase cottoned on, joined in the fun, while Cameron still claimed confusion. Winding her husband up to see what would happen, Wilson thought, though Chase seemed to be taking her cluelessness seriously.
House was having a ball now, but Wilson remained irked that his careful planning had gone for naught. All of PPTH would know within ten minutes of Chase and Cameron leaving the restaurant. Maybe faster. Wilson toed off his right loafer. No reason House shouldn't have to work a little for his fun.
The repartee went on around him. Cameron claimed the next round when she succeeded in getting House to drop the smutty euphemisms and announce the anatomically correct term to the room at large. Several heads swiveled in their direction, and Wilson winced at the muted chorus of smothered giggles.
On second thought, maybe the round belonged to House. Maybe he'd been waiting to shout that word in a crowded chain restaurant for years.
Under the table, Wilson slid his sock-clad foot up his friend's leg, keeping up his part in the wordplay while simultaneously probing gently, searching with his toes for just the right spot, the one he knew would get a response.
House, heroically, didn't break verbal stride, though Wilson thought he could see the flush starting under his skin, his breath come just a tiny bit quicker. Wilson threw out one last metaphor, and simultaneously curled his toes just so.
Taken by surprise, House gasped, a quick, sharp affirmative, the blood leaping brighter in his cheeks. Wilson allowed himself a secret smile. Maybe this round went to him.
Chase was caught up in a private reverie about what clever mouths could do to sensitive instruments, but Cameron's eyes widened as she placed the meaning of the sound House had just made. She looked at Wilson sharply, half shocked, half admiring, and tugged at her husband's sleeve, muttering hasty goodbyes.
Apparently they'd gotten the answers they were looking for. And then some.
++++++
Dinner didn't last much longer after that. House started to say something as they got into the car-not an apology, Wilson was sure of that-probably a few choice remarks about why his way had turned out to be the right way after all. Whatever it was, Wilson didn't want to hear it. He gunned the engine, drowning out the words. As they pulled out of the parking lot, he laid a proprietary hand on House's thigh. Because that was what it was all about, wasn't it? If House wanted a public relationship, he could bloody well have one, bells, whistles and everything.
It was early, barely dusk, and on an ordinary evening, Wilson might have moved his hand when they pulled up at a light next to a harried-looking mom with a mini-van filled with kids. But tonight he had a point to make, so he edged it up a little higher instead, a little closer to the inseam of House's jeans.
Eventually, the woman glanced over at them, clearly wise to the situation. House gave her his patented look of smug contempt, but she just rolled her eyes, informing them she had more important things to think about than what two middle-aged guys got up to in their high-end, late-model import. It was House who squirmed a little when the toddler in the back seat started making googly-eyes at them, took refuge in his best, mock-innocent "Who, me?" expression. Wilson smirked, figuring his work was done. But he didn't move his hand.
++++++
They barely made it up the apartment. Something about the evening, about the new feeling of publicly claiming his lover, about the way House was letting him do it, was hitting Wilson in unexpected ways, making him a little wild. House, too, judging by the way he'd gone quiet, body taut as a bow string. Wilson felt remade, re-wired, currents streaming down unfamiliar channels, triggering new impulses, new desires. He seriously contemplated jamming the emergency stop button in the elevator, pushing House up against the metal siding, and finishing things there. But he kept his hands to himself until they got to the condo.
Then he kicked the door shut behind them and crowded House into the wall, taking most of his weight with an ease born of long practice. House's cane clattered to the floor. He seemed as uncharacteristically willing to cede control tonight as Wilson was to take it. Wilson got a knee between his legs, rucked up his t-shirt searching for skin, and felt a sharp tug of desire in his belly as House tipped his head back against the wall, eyelids dipping shut in surrender.
It wasn't enough. Tonight Wilson needed more, needed House's gaze on him, needed to know that House was seeing him and only him. He slid his hand farther under House's shirt, felt the heat of his skin, the almost imperceptible tremor in the muscles of his stomach, sent his fingers climbing up the ladder of his ribs. He brushed over the nipple, circling it with his thumb, then tweaked it hard. Wilson grunted in satisfaction as those blue eyes snapped open-pupils blown, glazed with lust. But all the lust in the world couldn't cloud the naked trust there, the recognition.
Time blurred for a while under that fierce regard. Wilson grappled with the buttons to House's jeans, focused on getting his fingers under the waistband of his briefs, cupping his ass. He wasn't allowing House much space to move, to reciprocate, but it didn't matter, he was hard now himself, hard just from the idea of the whole world knowing this was his.
Vaguely, he heard House start to say something, some sardonic remark about his unusual ardor, no doubt. And that would have been par for the course, the kind of verbal sparring they'd been doing in the restaurant playing out in private as well. But tonight, Wilson couldn’t stand any more talk. He needed to push pass the wall of words to another truth-the truth of bone and flesh. Unbidden, he thought of gagging House, of taking off his tie and binding his mouth with it. He wondered how House would react to that kind of light bondage, it wasn't anything they'd tried before. It didn’t matter, though: the image alone sent a dizzying surge of hunger through him, and he closed House's mouth with a bruising kiss instead.
House got a hand free, deft fingers on the buckle of Wilson's belt, but Wilson stopped him, made an executive decision that they were going to finish this in bed: what he wanted was better done horizontal.
It wasn't smooth, by any means, getting back to the bedroom, House leaning heavily on him, hands tangled in each other's shirts, almost tripping over each other's feet. But they made it, most of their clothing shed along the way.
They switched up, by mutual agreement, though the process by which they came to said agreement was often lengthy. Sometimes the negotiations were as much of a turn on as the sex itself; sometimes they drained the fun right out of things. Tonight, though, there was no negotiating. House seemed to sense Wilson’s need-or, better yet, was too far gone to care.
Wilson's breath went ragged as House allowed himself be pushed back onto the bed, let himself be positioned on his side, bad leg propped on a pillow. These moments of pliancy, were so rare, so unexpected when they came, that they always bowled Wilson over; the knowledge that he was their only recipient, their own only witness, leaving him speechless with wonder. Wilson fished lube and condom out of the bedside table drawer, and readied them both, trying to be slow about it, careful, but a little rough despite his best efforts, sloppy in his urgency.
He fit himself in behind House, and pushed in, gently, setting a rhythm. He buried his face in House's neck, one hand bracing himself against House's shoulder. He reached around with the other hand, still slippery with lube, to find the familiar curve of House's erection, fingers settling into the pace and pressure he knew would bring House off. House was rock hard in his grip, making tiny, desperate, sounds of want.
Rocking in deeper now, Wilson worried a patch of skin just above House's shoulder blade with his lips, grazing it with his teeth, just enough to leave a mark, a secret flag raised on his territory. He tasted the salt tang of sweat, drank in House's familiar scent under the sharp harshness of hospital soap. House groaned more loudly as Wilson's thrusts hit the sweet spot, and the sound pulled Wilson a little closer to his own edge.
It was perfect, buried in balls-deep, the world beyond their joined bodies fading into nothingness. The only problem was that he couldn't see House's face, had to imagine it instead: lines of exhaustion and pain smoothed out, lips half-parted, wet, and his eyes still open, still clear, all the gamesmanship chased away, no room for anything but desire, no room for anything but Wilson.
Thinking of it, Wilson climaxed with a force that left him panting, and moments later felt House spilling over his hand.
++++++
“Troglodyte,” House said, with dry affection, when Wilson came back to bed with a wet washcloth, "dragging me back to your cave, having your way with me." At least that's what Wilson thought he said; half the words were lost into the pillow. A few perfunctory swipes at cleaning up, and House was asleep.
Propped on one elbow beside him, watching tiny snores ripple across his face, Wilson decided House was right.
When everyone learned the truth-okay: now that everyone knew the truth, Chase and Cameron had surely gotten busy with their cell phones by now-they would probably assume that he had tamed House, reined him into domesticity: kept him off the hard stuff and taught him the right way to load the dishwasher.
And yet the opposite was also true. The niceties and promises of civilization could only get you so far. And when the verbal castles-the shiny edifices in which Wilson lived most of his life-tumbled down, as they did with horrifying regularity, he needed someone who could withstand the crash. Who could accept whatever darkness, whatever crazy need, lurked in the ruins. Someone who could bear witness to those hidden things with the same dispassionate clarity that allowed him to confront, unfazed, the most brutal forms of death. Who could watch the occasional whiskey bottle fly past and never flinch. Someone with whom Wilson could acknowledge, even enjoy, the savagery and barbarism inherent in the world-and in himself.
Smiling, he shifted House's leg into a position that wouldn't leave it aching too badly in the morning, and settled himself for sleep.
fin