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In the car, after a few minutes of driving, Wilson says — words carrying a rehearsed quality, as if he’d been considering them carefully — “I know a nice facility outside Philly.”
House stares out the passenger-side window at the moving scenery, the trees, buildings, vehicles, sliding away. Stripes of light slice through the car at intervals in the evening gloom.
A facility. Rehab. Getting clean. Aching, ripping, searing pain for the rest of his life, the kind that gets his patients killed, or near enough for discomfort. Wilson had discouraged electroshock therapy because he correctly observed that House’s mind was all he cared about, but what Wilson didn’t understand was pain could render you just as senseless.
But his mind lingers on the image of Wilson trailing him throughout the day, seeming to temper Amber’s presence. Wilson at his hospital bedside, his hand gentle against House’s forehead, the lines of his palm familiar by touch. How many times had he done that, now — appeared by House after various brushes with death and injury, haloed by sterile white light? Touched House’s face, his broken hand, with unearned gentleness, undeserved worry in those doe-ish windows to the soul?
“I went to undergrad with one of the directors,” Wilson tells him.
Right: rehab. House looks over, quiet a moment. “Thanks.”
Wilson keeps his eyes on the road, calm as ever, hand on the wheel. Comfortable with House’s moods of silence, he allows the ambient road-noise to fill up the car. House thinks about asking him to keep talking; the steady sound of Wilson’s voice is oddly mooring. Then, catching white at his peripherals, turns around fully to eye the backseat.
Amber smiles back at him.
Guilt pings against his heart like rain on aluminum, his mind dragged towards death, gunshot, an open casket, black molasses blood.
House loses his train of thought, and the words on his tongue.
—
Wilson fields the call about the patient, and lies when asked, which House appreciates.
What House appreciates less is the apparition of Amber, languorous on his bed and cleaving cruel comments between the gaps of his and Wilson’s conversation. He wishes she’d picked this moment to be the sensible part of his brain instead of the addict part — but then, he thinks, she’s a piece of his mind, which means she’s all addict.
“You’ll always find a way to cheat,” she purrs from on top of his covers. It feels horribly wrong. All of it does, down to House’s floating numbness — a lidocaine lack of fear in his blood.
He had lazily picked through his shirts, but House has stopped now, eyeing the hallucination. He stands stock-still by the bed, turning his gaze to Wilson, who’s waiting for him to finish packing.
“It won’t work,” House says. “Rehab.”
“You want it to work this time.”
“I can’t go.”
“House,” he says, quiet, heavy. “It’s your only option.” He steps closer, dark brown eyes imploring. Hands rise at his sides in an aborted motion, but rethinking it — as if House is a feral animal, liable to startle into aggression at sudden movements — Wilson tucks his hands into the pockets of his long coat. “You told me you weren’t scared.”
Maybe he is. Maybe Wilson had been right — he doesn’t know what he’s feeling, can’t tell hallucinations from reality, can’t peel his thoughts away from each other. His mind is a drain and everything spirals down into the darkness, into blood and death and guilt.
“Hey.” Hands on his shoulders. House startles back into himself. Wilson’s eyebrows are furrowed, lips pressed into a frown. It is what House mentally refers to as his determined martyr expression: it says, I will save you whether you like it or not.
“I’m gonna find a way out of whatever they do,” House says, feeling like he’s making a confession. He’s smart but he’s an addict and he can’t think right like this. It doesn’t matter if he wants to be sober now, because he won’t later, and Wilson’s director buddies won’t stand a chance. “Think I’d have better luck with electroshock.”
“Do you want to know how much Vicodin was in your blood? You—”
“Wilson,” House interrupts him. He doesn’t want to hear it all again. His eyes rove over Wilson’s face, his jaw, his worry-tousled hair looking soft in the low lighting. “Stay with me.”
Seemingly caught off guard, Wilson blinks, his loose grip on House slowly falling away. “What?”
“You want me clean, well, I can’t do it alone. Or in rehab. You,” he says, “you know me. You’re not gonna fall for anything. Just a day, I’ll be in the clear from the worst of it.” The more he speaks, hears his idea said out loud, the more faith he has in it. Wilson can be stubborn — they've known each other for this long. He won’t budge, no matter what House tries.
“I think a structured environment would be good for you." Wilson looks concerned. “They’re professionals. They’ll know how to help you.”
“Structure?” House echoes incredulously, feeling petulant and small. “ You know how to help me. You always have.”
Wilson opens his mouth to say something, then shuts it, furrowing his eyebrows. He’s so close to agreeing, just for how earnest House is being, but he still seems doubtful. “House, I don’t know if this is…”
“Wilson,” he entreats him. “I need you.”
He watches Wilson’s resolve shatter in real-time.
“Okay,” he says. “I— okay. Okay.” Wilson pauses, searching House’s face. Then reaches his hand out.
“What, you want to shake on it?”
“The pills, House. Whatever you’ve got on you.”
House grimaces. The bottle is a reassuring weight in his pocket. He’s wanted to get clean at the very least since a manifestation of guilt had begun haunting him, but finally coming to that undeniable crossroad, taking the first step, gives him pause. He reaches for it, then just brushes his fingers against the familiar plastic. He knows every ridge on the cap. The size of the label.
“You said you wanted me to do this.” Wilson’s voice is firm.
“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” House mutters, and after clinging on for just another second, gives up the bottle and deposits it into his hand.
Wilson nods. Puts the pills in his own pocket. “Where’d you hide the rest?”
House looks at him. “If I tell you, are you still going through my stuff?”
“Of course.”
“Why waste my breath?”
Wilson’s about to protest, but reconsiders. Sighs. “I suppose it just wouldn’t be you if you made it easy for me,” he mutters. “Here, come on, just sit down. When did you last take them?”
“This morning, maybe.” House tries to remember as Wilson walks about the room, looking through containers, in crevices and tops of shelves, making no comment as he finds small caches of pills in their hiding places.
He sits on the edge of his bed, watching Wilson drain his only source of pain relief one-by-one. Damn it , he thinks, leaning forward on his elbows and wondering when the withdrawals will start. Damn it.
—
The answer, it turns out, is too soon.
His body is wracked with aches. It isn’t unbearable — his tolerance is high, having dealt with this for too long — but it’s getting close, closer than it should be so soon. The pain isn’t limited to his leg, it radiates throughout every muscle left on his body, every string of sinew, as if his blood cells themselves are slamming his nociceptors in higher numbers every second.
His bedroom had begun to feel too stuffy, and he kept feeling a phantom weight pressing the other side of the mattress. Terrified of looking over and seeing the woman he’d killed, he had moved onto the couch, only fit for one. His skin is hot with pain and cold with a sheen of sweat, eyes dewy and perpetually watering.
Wilson, as he had been doing for most of the day (and most of their friendship), practically affixed himself to House’s side — so when House wandered, restless and shivering into the living room — he followed. He staked a spot on the recliner in the corner. Then, anxious, pulled the recliner (and lamp) closer to the couch.
“I’m not,” House says in a shaky breath, eyes closed, “going to die if you’re,” exhale, inhale, he grits his teeth against the nausea of speaking, “not on top of me.”
His sardonic remarks lose their normalcy when he has to fight so hard to get them out.
“Doesn’t hurt,” Wilson says, starting to leaf through a book.
House hurts all over. He has no energy left to retort with, though, so he sighs and tries to contort on the couch and throw his arm over his eyes in a way that might let sleep come for him, so that maybe he can pass through the most difficult part.
Of course, sleep had never been easy, even without withdrawals. It would not be kinder to him now.
Turning on the couch, habitually throwing off and replacing the blanket over his shoulders, all House can think about is Vicodin. Or any drug that would relieve this. He needs it to stop, more than water, air, honor. What is sobriety in his empty, fucked-up life, anyway?
He might as well be happy. Why is he denying himself such meager table-scraps of happiness?
“What can I do?” Wilson asks from his chair. He keeps his voice blunted, mindful of his volume.
“Vicodin,” House says. “I don’t see Amber anymore, I’m done. She’s gone.” He is lying on his back. Above him, leaning over from the back of the couch, Amber nods at him with a little smug smile. He closes his eyes.
“This was about you getting clean,” Wilson reminds him slowly and deliberately. “I know it’s hard now; it’ll pass. You’ll get through it.”
House grits his teeth and barely stops himself from begging, so the energy diverts to anger, a wild fury trapped inside of him, coming alive and biting at his ribs. Wilson is far from the totally-together, well-adjusted image he tries to project, but his drug problems only go as far as his faith in drinks prepared by House.
That is to say, Wilson doesn’t know. He can’t begin to imagine what this feels like.
“I guess you would understand withdrawals," House bites out against the platitude, even if full sentences are more effort than they’re worth. “When’s the last time you slept with a patient?”
“You’re in pain.” Wilson in psychoanalytical mode. “You’re in pain, and you’re lashing out at the wrong target. That’s okay.”
House is too old to be handled with kid-gloves. “Or maybe when you said you ‘knew’, you meant you had experience dealing with junkie fuck-ups like your brother.”
Wilson inhales sharply. House had gathered some time ago — an off-day, Wilson avoiding him, phone logs to homeless shelters around the area — that Danny had disappeared again. House had never mentioned it. Never found an opportune moment.
Until now, he supposes.
There’s a pause.
He waits for Wilson to storm out, already planning on checking his best Vicodin hiding spots. They’ve known each other for a while, but hopefully House hasn’t lost himself so much that Wilson would accurately find each one. There was something somewhere in this place and it would make all of this end.
But when House looks at Wilson’s face, searching for any trace of anger, he finds him unperturbed and — worse — solemn. “I don’t know what withdrawals are like,” Wilson says. “I don’t. But I know they end eventually. And I know you’ll find out for yourself.”
After years of observing this expression utilized on difficult patients, it feels odd to be on the receiving side of it. Disquieting.
House glowers. “Inspiring,” he spits bitterly, and shifts to face the back of the couch again, shivering and waiting for sleep or death. He hears the soft sound of paper scratching paper as Wilson returns to the book he was reading.
—
Neither of them sleep. Although House doesn’t spend the whole night staring at Wilson (the inverse is not true), he hears Wilson’s breaths never grow deeper.
They stew in awake, prolonged silence across from each other without speaking. It reminds him of being in bed with Stacy after an argument. Or the drop in air pressure right before a hurricane. House keeps his eyes closed, waiting for the storm.
“I’ll be right back,” Wilson says after some time, followed by the soft sound of his book shutting. “Just going to the bathroom.”
Irritation tears through House. “Oh, no,” he says, dripping in acerbic, sarcastic concern. A break from Wilson’s constant surveillance, startling every time House moves? Heaven forfend. “You’re not leaving, are you?” He has no other words to express his contempt for the condescension. I’ll be right back. He isn’t one of Wilson’s wives, pawing at his sleeve to come back to bed. He’s not going to combust if left to his own devices.
“Ha,” Wilson says, with surprisingly little humor. “Think I’d have to die to get away from you.”
House opens his mouth to return a retort, but falls flat. Struck momentarily silent by the sentiment. Then: “Why are you even doing this?”
“Because you asked me to,” Wilson says. House has no answer. After a few moments, he repeats, “I’ll be right back, okay?”
Brief flash of irritation extinguished, House becomes newly aware of the chills, the pain, the nausea. He exhales. “Okay,” he says, tired down to the bones.
The sound of his footsteps fading down the hall. Immobilized, trapped in his mind, House tumbles through memories. To the itinerary — Amber, Kutner, Dad — his mind adds Wilson.
—
“I’m gonna,” House struggles to say.
Wilson is already on his feet, looking around the room wildly for a bin and probably cursing the lack of foresight. “I’ll get you a—”
“Just,” he says, with effort, “bathroom.”
Wilson gets the hint. Not knowing where House last put his cane, he helps him limp hurriedly down the hall and into the bathroom, where his knees crack against the floor and he empties his stomach into the toilet. All acid. Withdrawals have a way of killing your appetite.
After vomiting more than House knew his stomach could hold, he crumples away from it and against the wall, breathing hard and shaking like he’s been shaking for the past hours.
Wilson sits across from him, watching him. Then — bafflingly — leans to tear off a couple squares of toilet paper, folding them over once or twice and using it to wipe House’s face. An action he has no energy to deflect.
House huffs a laugh. Only the exhausted first syllable of one, for fear of kicking up his nausea again. “Why are you here?” he asks, leaning his head back against the wall and leveling him a stare.
“You asked me to stay,” says Wilson.
“That’s it?”
He shrugs slightly. “I guess you bailed me out of jail.” Offers a smile.
House isn’t so easily distracted by nostalgia. “What if I get clean, and I relapse?” he presses. “What if I ask you to stay again?”
“You will be okay. I’m getting you through this.”
“ Why?”
“I eat neediness, remember?” Wilson says, exasperated with this line of conversation. (House may have been asking why some dozen times already, feverish and paying little attention to the words coming out of his mouth, but he can’t recall every moment.) “I love dragging people kicking and screaming through withdrawals on my weekends.”
House frowns, dissatisfied. He’ll probably ask Wilson why he’s here, again, but first — his body has, apparently, produced more projectile acid, and it will not wait for twenty-questions. His hands cling to the edge of the toilet bowl as he hunches over again. Wilson scoots closer and places a tentative hand between his shoulderblades, palm rubbing back and forth and back.
—
The next restroom break Wilson takes, he comes back to the couch-recliner centerpiece of the living room and finds House lying on the floor, searching under the couch.
“Checked there already,” Wilson tells him on his return. No disappointment in his tone. Just passivity.
House slams his fist against the ground and stops searching but doesn’t get up, either, just draws his arm back into himself and lies still on the floor until he starts shaking again. He can’t think. Can’t register sensations anymore. All he knows is that he needs it to end. That people aren’t supposed to die from opioid withdrawal, usually, but maybe he’s one of the exceptions.
“Let me help you.”
Wilson’s footsteps approach, sounding closer and closer until he stops by House’s head. When House opens his eyes, Wilson’s crouching and lowering a hand in offer.
House isn’t sure if his leg will hold, but he has no words. It’s a moment-by-moment existence of physical sensation. He takes the hand, and Wilson grabs him by hand and bicep, pulling his near-ragdoll form up, until House has one-and-a-half legs’ worth of weight on the floor, almost toe-to-toe with Wilson. But he stays there, holding onto House, as if making sure he’s stable.
“Don’t throw up, okay?” Wilson asks with a tiny, wry grin — a desperate prayer for levity.
House drags his sight from looking blurrily across the room to finally meeting Wilson’s eyes. Tension draws like a bowstring across House’s shoulders, and feeling out-of-control, pain in his body with nowhere to go, blind to his inhibitions or senses, he feels his hand curl up into a fist at his side.
Wilson sees it. His eyes flit down and then back up, and his grip on House’s bicep tightens just for a moment. “Hey,” he says warningly, eyebrows furrowing.
House thinks of Amber and Kutner and Dad and Stacy and Wilson and Vicodin and the last time he felt warm. All in flashes. Maybe he’ll be sick again.
“House?”
House leans forward unseeingly, dropping his chin on Wilson’s shoulder and his free arm around him, squeezing him tightly. His eyes are watering. He tries to remember how to breathe, God, he just wants this to end. The thoughts and the feelings and this endless detox. Reliving the same torturous minute sixty times per hour, for however many hours he’d been here.
House clings to him in feverish desperation, in a silent supplication to be saved.
“Oh,” Wilson breathes, his whole body tensing up in surprise before relaxing on the exhale. He lets go of House’s arm and draws it out from between them, returning the embrace. One arm comfortingly around the small of his back, the other drawing up by his shoulders. He rests his head on House’s shoulder in turn. “I’ve got you.”
The dewiness in House’s eyes overflows and drips down his face.
If Wilson notices, he doesn’t say.
—
The glimpses of Amber retreat to tatters of white labcoat in his periphery, and then reduce to nothing. He hasn’t seen Amber in a long time and he’s sick of the couch. It feels as though every square inch of it has been sweated on, its surface unpleasantly tacky and hot against his skin.
Wilson has since stopped reading, and still isn’t asleep. Seemingly just staring into the shadows at the edges of the room. He rouses when he notices House getting up. “Where—”
“I’m going to bed.” He feels unsteady, but better than the worst of it.
House lets Wilson help him to the room. By now, his bed is empty of ghosts, so he collapses into a pile of weak limbs, minding his leg — in pain still, but abated from agony to a just-bearable-enough he can work with.
Wilson closes the door and sits in the chair at his desk.
Sleep leaves him abandoned on the covers. House, jilted, lies still, in a sort of half-fugue-state. The windows behind him are starting to emit just a little dawn-brightened light. His body still feels flu-wracked and heavy, unmanageable.
“Why are you here?” he asks Wilson.
“I told you I—”
“That you’d have to die to escape, yeah, I got that. But you could leave.” While he hadn’t been speaking the whole time during his withdrawals, often lapsing into silence, he had plenty of time to simmer in his spiraling thoughts.
“Yes,” Wilson says, his thousand-saint-patience wearing thin, “I stayed here because I don’t care if you overdose and d—”
“You said I should’ve been alone,” House interrupts. Wilson’s expression opens up a little, in the low light. The hollows of his eyes like dark circles. Does he remember? In the silence, he continues, haltingly. “On the bus.”
Wilson cringes, dog-eyed guilt on his face, then says, insistently, “I’m not leaving you, House.”
House’s lip curls up in a sneer, pain and spite blackening the blood in his heart. He thinks of the bus. Of cold, bloody Amber. “Careful,” he says. “Might get you killed.”
Silence descends upon the room. House watches Wilson’s expression turn stony until he can’t bear to anymore, the feeling of cold water streaking through his soul — then he turns his gaze to his empty ceiling, his skin burning all over. He had thought detoxing with Wilson would be easier. He thought wrong. Perhaps rehab was the right move after all.
The quiet seems to go on, timeless and senseless, flooding the room and robbing it of air.
A heaviness weighs on House’s chest. He does this. Ruins things.
He thinks of Amber and Kutner and Dad and Wilson. Stacy and Cuddy. His life a long list of names he will never be forgiven by.
House parts his lips, testing the movement of speaking. “...Wilson—”
“I shouldn’t have said that to you,” Wilson says, cutting him off.
He stares up at the ceiling, then rolls over to prop himself up on a forearm, looking at Wilson. Desperate to be heard. “That’s not— I meant, I’m s—”
“Don’t.”
House shuts up.
“Just save it for when you’re through this.”
He asks, for the hundredth time: “Why?”
Wilson looks pained. “It’ll mean something, when you’re sober.”
House slowly lowers his gaze, and then the rest of his body back to bed, thinking longingly of the dark, dreamless space of unconsciousness, in which there were no pains, no exchanged barbs, no words at all.
—
He slips into awareness disoriented. Had he fallen asleep? Blinking rapidly and rubbing his knuckles into his eyes, he looks to the side and sees how much sunlight is coming through the windows. More than last time. The withdrawals have loosened their vice-grip on his body, still aching, but subjugated from the fore to the background of his mind.
His bedroom after the war. Casualties: Wilson’s presence. The chair he had been barely keeping himself from nodding off in was now empty by his desk. As usual.
His cane is resting against his nightstand. He watches it for a while, summoning the mental fortitude to get up, before taking it.
Limping out into the living room, he hopes to see Wilson asleep on the couch, but it’s empty, and the recliner and lamp are both pushed back to their original places. Leave it better than you found it. Wilson, ever the boy-scout. A surge of fondness in his chest is quickly dashed by the bitterness of being left.
He heads to the bathroom. Brushes his teeth. The itch to look for Vicodin isn’t gone from his mind, but he knows rationally that this would’ve been the first place purged of the pills and — he doesn’t want to go through what he went through again. And what Wilson had done…
…where had Wilson gone? House is watching the tap water run into the drain, but he glances up at his own haggard reflection as a thought occurs to him.
Perhaps Amber hadn’t disappeared — only taken a different shape.
House puts the toothbrush back and combs through his smeared-lens memories, fragments of conversation, how it had been hard to process reality as it happened to him, much less remember it the next morning. The withdrawals had rendered him practically senseless. Had he been talking to himself, keeping himself going?
The thought terrifies him. He stares at his bathroom drawer. If the place hasn’t been picked through… if there are pills in there… if he had hallucinated the touch on his back or the fervent promises to stay, then...
With growing dread, the din in his mind climbs to a crescendo, and he reached his hand towards the drawer. He yanks it back like ripping away a bandaid, wincing preemptively.
Silence. He waits for the sound of rattling pills in plastic, but it’s silent. A spare box of toothpaste looks back at him.
As he watches it, trying to remember what hope is supposed to feel like — comparing that emotional paint swatch to this moment, whatever is happening in his heart now — he hears the front door open.
“House, you up?” Wilson calls. “I got Chinese. I found a place that opens at 8 AM.”
Yeah, it’s hope. House takes his cane and joins Wilson in the living room, observing boxes of takeout. “Not sure how much I’m eating right now,” he says, thinking of the night he spent hunched over the toilet. He appreciates the effort, though.
Wilson looks back at him, as if he hadn’t fully thought it through. “Oh. Right.” He looks back at the food, then at House again, with determination. “There’s white rice. We can try.”
House tries and fails not to smile.
They sit closer than usual on the couch, sorting through folded white boxes. Wilson’s probably ordered too much food, but House isn’t gonna start complaining about leftover takeout now. He tests his nausea with white rice and, thankfully, is met with a partially-returning sense of appetite. He slowly branches out to heavier foods, wordlessly enjoying Wilson’s presence, trying not to think about his leg (worse than usual, better than it had been last night).
“I think it’s mostly out of my system now,” House says to break the silence.
“Congrats for making it out the worst of it,” Wilson says sincerely, bumping his shoulder. “You looked like shit.”
“Rude,” House smirks. But his face falls neutral again. “Vicodin’s out now, so.” He pauses. “I’m sorry.”
Wilson doesn’t interrupt him this time.
“I shouldn’t have said…” He tries to sift through the sands of memory. What he recalled most vividly weren’t the words themselves, but the raging intent to hurt. “Your brother, or Amber. And whatever else I said. I shouldn’t have.”
“Addiction’s an illness,” Wilson says quietly. “That wasn’t you.”
“I’ve probably said worse before.”
“You were on Vicodin before. Maybe… maybe it wasn’t you then, either.”
House looks at him. “I’m an asshole,” he reminds him, hoping to temper the expectation. “I’ll still be an asshole.”
Bafflingly, Wilson smiles at this.
House feels raw and exposed, like a wound leaking blood into the air, his feelings pulsing out of him with nothing to staunch them with. He looks at Wilson, really looks at him, every inch of his familiar face, his dark circles, his eyelashes, his hair in all directions.
What had he done to deserve such loyalty? Posting bail for a stranger? What were the chances it would have been this stranger, his friend who would stay awake for hours to stay with him no matter what vicious insults were hurled at him, so much goodness in his heart that he’d give up the shirt off his back, money, an organ if someone needed it.
But he isn’t just good. He’s fun. More scheming than people ever expect. He thinks of retaliatory pranks, Wilson flipping through an obviously-destroyed newspaper, his stupid kidnapper-style scrap-paper letter, the time he sawed through House’s cane. The turn of his lips, the sparkle of mischief in his eyes, when he’s exacted revenge.
Wilson says, “I’m sorry I said you should’ve been alone on the bus.”
House thinks that’s pretty tame, all told. He tilts his head. “I don’t care,” he tells him, although he does, a little. It doesn’t make sense to be hurt by it if he lashes out so much worse.
But Wilson says, “And for asking you to risk your life for her.”
House startles a little bit. He had assumed it was one of those things that wouldn’t be brought up unless they were in the throes of a good fight. “Oh,” he says, for lack of anything better.
He breaks eye contact with House. “I— I don’t know. I wanted to save her, and you, you’ve always been invincible, you’ve… you’ve never had a problem playing hard and fast with your life, House, I thought…” His exhale is shaky. He seems to have run out of words.
House says, “I did it on my own. You didn’t tie me down, Wilson.” He pauses. “Although I wouldn’t have said no to that, either.”
Wilson, not having expected the joke, snorts, looking at House again. But his face slowly falls. “I still don’t feel good about it. I’m sorry.”
House waves a hand in a dismissive gesture. “I lived. You helped me detox. Why don’t we call it even?”
“Ha. That works,” Wilson agrees with a tentative smile, looking across House’s face.
Their thighs brush side-by-side on the couch and neither move away. Wilson is painfully beautiful in the morning. That raw-wound feeling stirs up in House’s chest again. An impulse emerges from the depths of his mind. Wilson’s face just a lean away.
House closes the distance and kisses him.
The air seems to still, then, as if the moment has crystallized a thin ice through all the air, all thought, all heartbeats. Wilson doesn’t move and House doesn’t want to pull away yet, but is thinking of ways to explain this away: withdrawals have him confused, he thinks of saying. (Even if this moment is the clearest he’s felt since the last Vicodin he took.)
Then — stupefyingly — Wilson returns the kiss. He begins to lean toward House, Wilson’s hand finding his knee, but then he freezes and stops. Pulls back. As expected.
House had prepared excuses for when he was pushed away, but he had no responses ready for being kissed back.
“House…”
“I’m,” House says. He sighs. “I guess I have to apologize for that, too. Sorry.”
“No, just—” Wilson catches his eye. “Just hold on. Why?”
“I don’t know,” he says flippantly. “I need you. You need to be needed.”
Wilson retracts his hand. “It’s not… I wouldn’t do this for anyone else.”
“Right,” House says, drawing out the first letter. “Because you’re fresh out of wives and patients.”
“ No, House, this isn’t a… why did you kiss me?”
House hits a dead end where he’s exhausted all other words, and all that remains is the truth. He shrugs with an insouciance he doesn’t feel. “Because I’ve always had a thing for you and I thought it’d be easier to get away with now.”
Wilson furrows his eyebrows at him, searching his face. As if he can see a label of truth or lie written across it — but then, maybe he can. He’s always been adept at reading House. Then, his expression morphs into softness. “Huh,” he says.
House stares at the boxes of takeout on the counter. He’s scared to look back at Wilson.
“You kept asking me why I was here,” Wilson says. “I’m here because I love the hell out of you.”
The word stuns him. He stares straight ahead. His heart stutters in his chest and patiently waits to be broken.
Wilson adds, “You don’t have to say anything.” House already knows this — is perfectly comfortable dragging silence out to disquiet others — so Wilson must be saying it out of nerves.
Genuine. Wilson is being genuine.
House looks at him again, finally, and thinks everything can be worth it if he just learns how to do this. How to be sober and not let this, Wilson, slip through his fingers like so many fractured relationships from the past. Everything will have been worth it if he learns how to treasure this.
So House doesn’t say anything. He answers in motion: closing the distance, kissing Wilson again, leaning into him. The embrace feels familiar. Wilson smiles into his mouth.
House brushes his fingers into Wilson’s hair like he’s wanted to for years, other arm going around him, and after some moments, he breaks off the kiss and just leans into Wilson’s shoulder again.
Wilson is breathing unevenly. “Oh,” he says, feeling disconcerted by the change in gears. “Okay. Hi.” His arms around House.
“I love you too,” House forces out, despite the lump in his throat. It needs to be said. It isn’t the first time saying it, but perhaps the first sober time. “Obviously.”
Wilson cracks into surprised laughter, and holds onto House tighter. House thinks why are you here and a memory of Wilson’s voice says I love the hell out of you and that, finally, is enough of an answer.