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Wilson has no complaints about their relationship.
Truly, he doesn’t. They waited so long to finally confess their feelings, the words you’re it for me it’s always been you everyone else was just a step in denial on the way to falling so head over heels in love with you I can’t ever dig myself back out tumbling out of their mouths one late night at their condo.
The words might not have been exactly that, but the meaning was the same, and what more have they ever needed?
Wilson has nothing to complain about, and he never would. It’s bliss every second of every day, and dating House is everything he ever dreamed of.
However, it’s House he’s dating, so Wilson has every reason to be suspicious. Just because he’s now dating the madman doesn’t mean that he’s going to let go of more than a decade of wariness and self-preservation instincts.
After all, no one is safe from the ineffable agenda of Gregory House.
It begins when Wilson walks into his office one morning after doing his rounds and discovers House already within. House, in his usual Housian way, has claimed Wilson’s chair at his desk and refused to give it up. At least he’s bothered to keep his feet off the desk this time, resembling something like a human instead of an animal.
He’s sitting with his hands crossed behind his head, obviously waiting. He even offers a jovial smile when Wilson shoots him a withering look. Wonderful. The criminal has come to terrorize. At least now, Wilson finally has a good retaliation strategy that he can use in practice, not just in fantasy: sitting firmly on House’s lap in hopes he’ll move.
This doesn’t work, however. House smirks self-satisfied like this is what he wanted all along, wrapping his arms around Wilson’s waist and interlocking his hands.
He pulls Wilson closer until heat is all that Wilson can feel along his back, and House presses a kiss to the side of his neck that he now has supreme access to. For god’s sake, he rests his chin on Wilson’s shoulder.
Wilson raises an eyebrow, twisting around to look his captor in the face. “Comfortable?” He wonders if he should bother asking what House came in here for in the first place.
House shows no sign of discomfort at his strange behavior being called out. In fact, he’s smiling, a small and slight thing that shows from the ease on his face to the openness of his baby blues.
“Quite,” he replies, tightening his python hold and cuddling in closer. He rests his head against Wilson’s back and sighs contentedly. Wilson can feel how loose and relaxed House’s body is. Not a hint of stress or thought or pressure. No hidden agenda. Just…contentment.
Affection flutters in Wilson’s chest, though he still feels like he’s caught in a trap which he’s yet to identify. He wants to get up and check for hidden cameras or wait for Cuddy to barge in and hand over whatever money House has now won from her. However, he doesn’t want to risk disturbing this moment on the off chance that it’s real.
House, surprisingly, doesn’t bother him while he fills in his patient charts and updates himself on the new cases joining the ward. House doesn’t lick his neck like a juvenile boy, he doesn’t hum or tap his feet obnoxiously, he doesn’t even move. He lets Wilson work in peace.
He’s not sleeping, as Wilson knows what it looks and sounds like when House lets his guard down that much. He’s just sharing the space with Wilson in silence, a rarity for him. It’s peaceful. It’s wonderful. The weight around Wilson’s waist is comforting, heavy and warm.
When Wilson gets paged for a patient’s upcoming kidney transplant and he has to get up, House lets him go. Wilson raises an eyebrow as he pulls his coat back on, wondering what exactly the great demon wants, what the price of this peaceful twenty minutes will be. Maybe House has been higher than normal this whole time, explaining how normal and low energy he appears.
But House just smiles lazily at him and winks lasciviously, obnoxiously, as if reading Wilson’s mind. Reassuring him that all is well. Wilson’s gaze lingers on him, but House says, “Wouldn’t do for the star oncologist to be late to that kidney,” thus proving he’s been paying attention. The first word either of them have spoken in twenty minutes.
Wilson hurries away.
#
House’s oral fixation is well known. Wilson is and always has been painfully aware of the way he sucks on lollipops and straws and fork tines. It’s driven him crazy over the years, and even crazier now that he can actually do something about it. Now that he has to continue exercising control when he sits across from House at lunch and watches him fellate his straw, knowing it wouldn't do for the head of oncology to accost the head of diagnostics for an inopportune fifteen minutes in the janitor's closet.
He's better than that. He has to think of their schedules, of what Cuddy would say if she caught them. Wilson is supposed to be the voice of reason, the one holding the leash. House infallibly tugs on it.
However, when Wilson is in the middle of describing the latest gossip with his patient’s family to House, House takes Wilson’s hand in his to—to simply hold at first, admiring their joined hands as if studying a foreign specimen. And then once Wilson’s recovered from that through a stuttering fit, House lifts his hand to his lips.
How romantic, he’s giving Wilson a hand kiss—and then House sucks one of his fingers into his mouth, because he is an animal who knows no manners and also every possible way to drive James Wilson wild with madness and crazed lust beyond anything he’s felt before.
Oh, god, Wilson thinks, faintly strangled, before he can’t think at all. He can’t tear his eyes from House to check who is staring at them in the very crowded cafeteria. This is not Wilson’s fault, but again, he has been dubbed House’s keeper and the holder of his leash, so the blame will be put on him regardless. He can’t win.
He has to sit here with House holding his left hand on the table with almost high school levels of sweetness and sucking his pointer finger into his mouth on his right hand, and pretending that he’s not getting rapidly hard under the table.
As Wilson is frantically formulating an escape plan, neither able to tear his finger from House’s mouth or look away, House asks, “Then what she’d do?” making eye contact as he takes Wilson’s finger from his mouth to speak. “After her sister denied the treatment?”
Bastard.
Wilson dreams of torturing him slowly as he continues to fellate Wilson’s finger . Wilson speaks, though he doesn’t hear what he says. All he can do is stare at House in vague shock. House seems content to just hold it in his mouth, just like his lollipop sticks.
Wilson isn’t sure if he prefers to be the newest subject of House’s oral fixation or not. It’s all his fantasies come true. Also, somehow, a nightmare.
House finally removes Wilson’s finger from his mouth, evidently satisfied with whatever he wanted to achieve. And then he goes back to holding it on the table in front of him, smiling as Wilson tells his gossip story that stopped being interesting five minutes ago. Sadist, Wilson thinks. Child. A thousand other ugly words come to mind as the criminal stands up. "Gotta run," he says when his pager goes off, sauntering away with a self-satisfied air.
#
It carries on. Hand holding, cuddling, lap sitting—once House plops himself down into Wilson’s lap on his chair in the middle of his own sentence, ignoring Wilson’s sigh—and stays there while Wilson can do nothing to work. Thankfully the finger sucking instance is not repeated.
It’s not just at work. At home in the kitchen, House crowds up on him. At night, House maneuvers so that he's wrapped in Wilson's arms and then says nothing about it. On the couch watching TV, Wilson absently throws his arm around the back of the couch like he always does, and House slides into the circle of his arm.
The cherry on top is when House pages him to his office one afternoon for a possible cancer diagnosis of his patient--Wilson doesn't really need to be there, but he had a free twenty minutes and he wanted to amuse himself. He knows by now when House just wants him there for an excuse to annoy him. Or, in this case, accost him the moment he sits down on the couch in House's conference room.
House continues rattling off diagnoses and the way they might interact as he tucks himself into Wilson's side, making an obnoxious show of cuddling up close. Wilson rolls his eyes and simply folds an arm around House's back, desensitized by now. The fellows look at them like they've grown a second head but know better than to say anything.
At least, until fearless Foreman furrows his brow and asks, "Why are you cuddling Wilson?"
House pouts and simpers, "I get lonely." He shoots up off the couch a moment later when epiphany strikes, and shocker, it was never cancer at all. The four of them peel out of there in moments, leaving Wilson on the couch with his head in his hands.
At first, Wilson thought it was a joke. A prank. A Canterbury Tales style test. No way in the seven layers of hell is House actually this affectionate in a relationship.
Wilson has seen him in relationships—which, okay, was notably just with Stacy back in the day—but he’s sure that House didn’t do this with her, doesn’t do this with his endless stream of sex workers. He has to accept the strange reality he's discovered:
Gregory House is physically affectionate in relationships.
Once he’s decided upon this conclusion, Wilson decides he needs to take the investigation further. He’ll run experiments and record his observations. House would be proud.
House doesn't mind doing it in public. Is it a shock factor thing? Testing Wilson's responses as well as his fellows'? He's never cared what anyone thinks of him. Likely, this is just another method of amusing himself. But why would House do it at home, in bed at night, if he truly wanted to evoke shock factor? Sometimes Wilson goes to bed first and he'll wake up to House wrapped in his arms. That's not in line with his suspicions.
He’s going crazy. He needs to talk to someone about this.
Wilson knocks and then opens the door to Cuddy’s inner office. She’s bent over her desk with her head buried in some paperwork. Without looking up, she says, “If I can’t sign it, approve it, or fire it within ten seconds, get out.”
Wilson winces. “I’m sorry, Lisa, but I really need to talk to you.”
She sighs and gives him the grace of glancing at him. “At least you ask first. Just talk at me and use my noises of acknowledgement to get an epiphany. What has he done this time?”
“How’d you know—”
“Oh, come on. It’s always about House.” She signs something on the papers in front of her and flips to the next one. Once she waves him to continue, he starts speaking.
“House. In the last few weeks, he’s always—touching me. All the time.” He waves his hands by his head. "Doesn't matter the time or place."
Cuddy snorts. “I know spending fifteen years with House makes you forget how society behaves, but generally in relationships—”
“He’s always sitting in my chair so that I’ll sit in his lap, and making me spoon him at night—”
“Making you?”
“And now it’s using me like a koala while he’s talking to his team. He’s paged me twice just to do that.” He sighs.
She frowns.
“This is House,” Wilson snaps. “The alien who is allergic to any and all forms of affection, physical or otherwise. He couldn’t spell romance with the word in front of him to reference. There is simply no other explanation than he’s pulling a prank on me, or a bet, or a test that I don’t know about. Otherwise everything I know about the man has been a lie.”
“Then that’s it.”
Wilson chuckles humorlessly. “Well, then, what kind of bet wouldn’t he do this for—”
“No, the other one.”
Wilson double takes to stare at her. “How—how wouldn’t I know that? I’ve seen him in relationships before and so have you. He’s never been like this.”
“You’re different.” Cuddy’s voice softens. She scoots her chair back to look him in the eye. “You’re the love of his life. He knows what he has to lose. He also knows what he has to gain. Some part of him knows that no matter what vulnerable underbelly he shows you, you won’t stab it. No matter what he does, you'll always stay.
“He can relax around you in ways he’s never been free to do before, with anyone else. He knows you value connection. He knows you treasure it when he reveals things about himself to you. He added all of that up, included his probably long repressed love of touchy-touchiness, and…there you have it.”
Wilson swears the room is spinning. “So, what does it mean, that he’s touching me all the time now?”
Cuddy shrugs, her paperwork truly forgotten now. “It means he’s comfortable with you.”
Wilson swallows. “He was comfortable with Stacy.”
“He was comfortable alone with Stacy. You weren’t there in their bedroom at night. Not physically, at least. You don’t know what they did.”
Wilson’s cheeks heat, and he shakes that off. “He would keep that from me? We tell each other everything whether we want to or not, whether we actually say it or not.”
She laughs. “This is House. The master of deceiving himself. He probably repressed those wants so long ago that he pretended he never had them. You should feel honored. He’s showing you parts of himself that he’s never trusted with anyone else.”
Wilson nods slowly, backing out toward the main lobby. “Thank you, Lisa. Thank you so much.”
“You can thank me by getting House to do his clinic hours,” she calls after him. “You’ll find a way.”
#
The only natural course of retaliation is first displayed when Wilson comes home.
He had to work late. House’s patient was cured by his magic touch hours ago, so he left sharply at six. Wilson, however, had to stay at the bedside vigil of one of his patients who’d suddenly taken a turn for the worse, a girl too unstable to leave without her doctor present for the night.
Only after talking to House on the phone about it, amid the typical cancer’s boring, did Wilson have his own epiphany about what could stabilize her. He hung up overjoyed half an hour ago to administer treatment. He’s now walking in the door in as good a mood as anyone can be.
Wilson comes in to where House is standing at the kitchen counter making…dinner? Wilson is too tired and hungry to question it. He wraps his arms around House’s waist without a word, burying his face in the back of House’s neck.
Wilson feels as House goes very, very still, but doesn’t shrug him off or protest. “Ugh. Hello.” Wilson presses a kiss to the back of House’s neck and squeezes House’s waist. “Sorry I’m late.”
Wilson rambles aimlessly about his day while they eat, aware that House isn’t paying attention to a word of it except to insert the occasional gossipy comment, but needing to fill the air. He’s overjoyed with his earlier patient victory, and the ease of being in House’s smiling company is enough to give any man an ego boost.
His good mood gives him the courage to finally have the conversation he’s been having with himself in his head for weeks now. After dinner, he pushes his bowl away and says, “House, uh, I want to talk to you about something.”
“Is it why your friendly neighborhood recluse has turned into your cuddly koala?”
Wilson stares.
House smiles with something like pride. “Three weeks, two days, almost twelve hours. That’s how long it took you to break.”
Wilson rolls his eyes. “I’m not mad, and I don’t want it to stop…but you know that already. I just want to know why for curiosity’s sake. Nothing more than that.”
“I already knew that. I’ve watched your every thought about it the past three weeks. It’s so interesting.” The passion in House’s voice is equated to any other person saying I love you, you’re so sexy. Knowing that’s what it means since he’s fluent in House-ology speak, Wilson smiles, smitten.
“So it was just a game,” he says, sighing. His good mood is slightly dampened, but it was to be expected. He shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up. Same old House, just playing with him. Cuddy was wrong.
A flash of hurt passes through House’s eyes. He breaks eye contact, and after a long moment, he murmurs, “It grounds me,” fiddling with the tablecloth. “Your touch. Makes my mind…shut up. Sometimes I need that.”
“Is it just touch?” Wilson asks, stepping closer. “Or is it my touch?”
House meets his eye again. “You need to know.” It’s a statement, not a question.
Wilson nods.
“What a stupid question.” House takes his face in his hands and kisses him hard, as if forcing the answer into his mouth. Idiot. Don’t you see? How could it be anyone else?
Words don’t matter, only actions do.
When House lets him go, Wilson is breathless and lightheaded. He notices the way a sort of comfort passes over House's features when Wilson pets his arms, running his fingers idly up and down. "And the finger sucking?" he asks wryly, tilting his head. "Was that really necessary?"
"Two parts quieting my head, one part driving you so crazy you'll snap and fuck me later. Win win."
Wilson rolls his eyes and smiles. House tries to pull away but Wilson keeps a grasp on his wrist, keeping him closely trapped against the counter. "You want your dinner?" House teases, eyes glittering. "Or your dessert?"
"God, never use cheap lines like that on me again. Just ask me to touch you instead."
"Why would I ask when I can do this?" House takes Wilson's arms and folds them around his waist, kissing him hard.
As if Wilson needs a reason to touch House often after all these years of pining. "I can feel you thinking devious thoughts up there," House murmurs into his mouth, and indeed, Wilson is contemplating all the revenge he can exact. All the touches he can inflict now that he knows House wants them just for what they are. "I like it."