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House wondered at how they’d gone so smoothly from nagging to restraining-order-bait to titillating fantasy shower sex. He also wondered if James could possibly look as good as he sounded. Because if there was even a chance, then House would be remiss in not seeking an opportunity to meet this gorgeous hunk with his unexpected dark side in the physical and visual world—
“Why aren’t you here?” James asked.
“What?” House’s sexy sweat turned cold. How the hell did James know exactly what he was thinking? Were House’s earlier idle wonderings about psychic abilities actually genuine concerns? Did House need to invest in tinfoil headgear?
“Why aren’t you here, in my bed, right now.”
James’ voice was honeyed and welcoming, sated with their escapades but only on the surface. House mobilized all his highly evolved emotional distancing muscles to keep his shit cool. “Murdering you?”
“Sure.”
“You need therapy.”
“Doubtless. You’re cheaper.”
“Wow. It takes a lot to offend a phone hooker, you should be proud.”
James sighed, neither gratified nor chastened. “You wouldn’t come over here in person, anyway.”
“Why not?” House snapped back, instant and predictable.
“Hmm. I guess there’s no reason you shouldn’t.” The smug smile hidden by the lack of visuals was nonetheless in full auditory evidence.
“Except for the perennial concern about serial killers shopping for victims in the vulnerable sex trade.”
“But you’re the serial killer, here. You just disemboweled me to completion in your shower, remember? You’d be safe.”
“You wouldn’t be. Interesting. Doctor with a compulsion to risk his health for others. What’s your specialty, infectious diseases?”
“I could be a deeply committed proctologist. Looking to enhance my fieldwork.” (House snorted.) “Or…I could just be really horny.”
“Even after the murder-orgasm?”
“They say you get a taste for being killed.”
God, House wanted him.
Time for truth or dare. Say something real—his name (“I’m Greg” sounded too awful for words, but “Call me House” sounded like caveman James Bond), his place of work (“I’m a doctor too, betcha never considered this as an alternate line of income”), whatever. And then they could go on a date, or whatever normal people did. All House had to do was tell the truth and this could become a grown-up relationship with physical contact and full names and all those bells and whistles.
Or he could say nothing. And go over to James’ place and fuck him in daring silence.
“Text me your address.”
“…Really?”
“Yeah, really. Unless you’re too chicken.”
House’s phone beeped. The screen blinked with a new message, bearing an unsettlingly proximate street and apartment number.
“Fuck,” House whispered, bitch-slapped by his own mockery.
“You don’t have to do it,” James comforted, clearly an expert in that trade. “I know it’s not—”
“I can be there in ten minutes.”
“Fuck,” James agreed. “Okay. Um. Do you…want to maybe…”
“Be waiting outside. I wanna make sure you’re not Quasimodo or some shit before I agree to get naked with you.”
“There’s no reason a hunchback couldn’t be a wildcat in bed.”
“True. You should probably have your dick out for easy drive-by viewing.”
“I won’t be doing that, or our first time would have to be behind bars. But there’s a bus stop in front of my building. I’ll be there, on the bench, with a newspaper.”
“No red rose?”
“Middle of the night. Give me more notice next time.”
“Already dreaming of next time, huh?”
“You said ten minutes,” James reminded him. “I’ll be checking my watch.” A pause, the click of lips parting. “If you don’t want…well. I’ll give up on you after twenty minutes. Save my pride.”
“You’ll be waiting outside all night.”
“Yeah,” James sighed heavily, “probably.”
House hung up.
He stood. He grabbed his keys and was halfway out the door before it occurred to him to do an outfit check, and then to remember that he always wore the same damn thing, and wouldn’t be changing for some hook-up anyway. James could admire his worn denim and metal band tee or he could very well fuck himself—he was an old hand at that.
House made it nearly to his bike before his second realization, that it might be a good idea to let someone know where he was headed, just to make things easier for the inevitable police report when his corpse was discovered.
House: im gonna go fuck a random guy from the phone line btw
if I turn up murdered his name is James :)
Cuddy: looking forward to your obituary
But James??
Do you know how may James are in NJ???
H: No, do you?
C: A FUCKING LOT I’D GUESS
srsly don’t get murdered tho
I’m too busy to hunt this guy down and revenge kill him
H: roger
you want me to kill him instead
C: NO.
Also too busy to help you bury a body
Just go enjoy your doggie style and dish about his dick tmrw
H: I’ll have my ruler at the ready
Leather jacket in place and his newly acquired vintage Nike LD 1000s snug and styling, House slung his bad leg heavily over the bike and jammed his cane into its holder. Revving the engine for his long admiring (suffering) neighbors’ benefit, he blazed off to his destiny, or his doom, or maybe the worst of all: a disappointment.
House had overestimated the ETA. Unless James had a dreadful real estate agent or even more dreadful sense of direction, he was closer to PPTH than any other medical center in the city—the statistical chances that House’s doctor boo was a colleague were getting uncomfortably high. (Ah, well, it’s not like House ever spoke to his colleagues, anyway!) He was on a stealth approach angle in just over seven minutes, shifting down gears until he purred to a halt with his nose peeking around the battered brick building diagonal from the stated address to conduct surveillance.
There was a man sitting on the bus bench.
The circular glow of the streetlight illuminated his soft brown hair from above and shadowed his features. He wore dark slacks and a light button up, rolled to the elbow and undone just at the collarbone, with a patterned tie slung through his loosened collar. One leather shoe gleamed where it was propped on his knee, the newspaper tucked in hands balanced on his shin. House squinted. Straining his eyes, further details began to fill in.
Definitely a touch of the dork to the guy. Unfortunately, it looked good on him—softened those otherwise unapproachable good looks into something House could imagine getting his grubby hands on without setting off the museum proximity alarms.
Oh, and another important note. He was Cuddy’s new pet genius hire at fucking PPTH.
Fuck House’s entire life.
Or not?
It had been a possibility ever since he deduced their mutual profession. If House hadn’t wanted to run this risk, he should have passed James on to one of his Friendly Voices colleagues and gone back to his one-and-done principle. (As if there’d ever been a chance of ditching once James got his evil, gorgeous hooks in him.) This could be a positive development. After all, why should it be a problem that the guy he’d been phone-banging and was now potentially transitioning into real-world-banging was his brand new colleague, situated snugly next door on his beloved fourth floor? Frankly, that was just convenient.
Uh huh. And if House repeated that to himself enough, he just might, possibly, almost, believe that not even a tiny goddamn bit.
Unless…the sex on the material plane was as good as it was in the auditory dimension. Then House could just solve all his problems with a healthy daily serving of oncologist dick! Yay!
Or the sex would be mediocre after nights of imagined flaming passion untethered by reality and House would be forever stuck sipping coffee and conducting DDXs next to That Guy He Fucked Once And It Was Just Okay.
The simultaneous and inverse urges to flick his bike into reverse to sneak back around the corner and to hurl it into high gear to break the sound barrier on his way to Doctor “James” Wilson and his hypothetically excellent cock battled ferociously through his chest cavity for an unsettling four seconds.
Then, he released the clutch and yanked the throttle so he could accelerate dangerously—and look unbelievably cool—as he roared up to his freshly embodied booty call.
He choked the handles as the bike screamed to a stop, the front wheel perfectly aligned between where James’ feet were frozen on the sidewalk, and flicked up his helmet visor.
“Hello.” His mouth spoke the commonplace while his mind was still lagging a few yards behind in his slipstream. When his brain arrived, all it had to offer was: ‘Is it me you’re looking for?’ Which: not helpful, Lionel Richie.
Fuck, he should have been workshopping seductive-yet-snarky opening lines the whole drive over here! He’d been wasting his time fantasizing about the exact shade of brown James’ eyes might turn out to be—and oh, they were such a deep dark cocoa, almost black in the tangerine gloom of urban night—instead of prepping to make himself seem as debonair and irresistible as possible.
“Hello,” James replied. His voice was so familiar and yet rendered alien in its dimension, the timbre, so rich and detailed without the limits of audio technology stripping out the frequencies above and below the standard threshold of human hearing. (This at least had the favorable result of confirming that House wasn’t accidentally pouncing on a genuine stranger in some sort of comical misunderstanding.)
“Come here often?” House tried, and immediately wished he’d just quoted the fucking song lyrics instead, at least that might have had an edge of humor—
“Yes,” James caught the fumble effortlessly, “I usually spend my one AMs pretending to read yesterday’s paper at vaguely piss-scented bus stops.”
Fed with such nutritious starter material, House’s sarcasm machinery leapt to life. “The urine is what gives it that authentic public-transit quality. I don’t know where you used to live, but here in Jersey, we value the genuine article.”
“Ah, and here I’d been making do with Philly’s imitation excrement. There’s so much to learn about my new home.”
House’s grin escaped confinement and he didn’t call for the guards. The votes were in. He was gonna fuck this guy’s brains out of his damn skull tonight.
“And…” James trailed off indelicately, “so much to learn about the svelte biker and part-time phone sexer who just rolled up on my curb. Maybe starting with a name?”
House’s lips pursed in a ‘fair enough’ moue. “Greg.”
“I thought we weren’t using fake names anymore.”
“That’s my real name! Take it up with my parents.”
“What do people actually call you?”
He shrugged. His leather creaked, exaggerating the gesture. “A few people use my last name. House.”
“How many people?”
House pretended to consider it. “All of them. What about you? James?”
“People really do call me James.”
“Then I won’t.”
Those big brown eyes widened incrementally. Pupils dilated. “It’s…James Wilson. Dr. Wilson at work.”
“Alright, doctor,” House rolled his eyes, but couldn’t help trying out the complete nomenclature of his telephonic dream man on his tongue. “James Wilson…hmm, James Wilson…”
Wilson. It was funny, the surname had immediately slotted into place as the correct sobriquet, overwriting the inauthentic intimacy of ‘James’ with ease.
“You like hearing me say your name, Wilson?”
James-no-more Wilson had to swallow hard before getting the words out, his whole body responding. “You know I do.”
Wicked grin stretching his lips, electricity sang along House’s skin with his newfound power. “I hear they discourage creaming your pants at public bus stops.”
“Then you’d better come upstairs with me. So we don’t scandalize my new neighbors.”
“For the neighbors,” House agreed.
“Assuming you don’t want your prize hog to be towed away next time the Route 5 turns up…” Wilson gestured from the bus stop to a guest parking spot just inside the modest apartment complex’s main driveway. He had to shuffle-jog a bit to meet House there as he removed the key and dumped his helmet.
House pulled his injured leg up over the hump of the engine as surreptitiously as he could (which wasn’t very). There was no point covering as he grabbed his cane.
Noting how Wilson’s eyes caught on the curve of the handle as he put his weight on it, House snapped up his potential lover’s gaze with a pointed stomp of the rubber foot on the cracked concrete. “This gonna be a problem?”
Wilson shook his head and continued towards the entry, no part of his body language suggesting even a hint of the hated elbow-grabbing-the-cripple impulse. “Not unless you’re gonna start swinging.”
“I won’t, unless you get fresh. Wait.” House pretended to think as he followed, “That’s not right. Unless you don’t get fresh?”
“If I don’t get fresh with you, I’ll need a good cranial reset with a blunt object,” Wilson assured him as he unlocked the foyer and directed House to the elevator.
It was a perfectly nice building. Probably. House’s mind instinctively catalogued the architectural style, degree of cleanliness, modernity of interior design, and so on as input for the calculus of Who This Wilson Guy Was, but his brain then neglected to share the results with his conscious self. He just stared at Wilson’s gorgeous fingers as they pressed the ‘up’ arrow to summon the elevator, and wondered how they’d taste in his mouth.
The apartment unit Wilson finally led him into was so sparse and violently devoid of individuality that it snapped House out of his adrenaline/lust haze. He’d been expecting well-appointed and tasteful, judgment drawn from Wilson’s middle-of-the-night attire which matched such a description, but the only aesthetic at play here was...desolation. Depletion. Not even the blandness of HGTV or Better Homes and Gardens mimicry. Just a mirror with nothing to reflect.
“Did a band of thieves make off with all your earthly possessions? Or did the last Mrs. Wilson get your personality in the divorce?”
“It’s not that bad,” Wilson demurred, but his feet shuffled in quiet agreement.
“If we hadn’t already established that I’m the serial-killer-in-waiting in this relationship, then this,” House gestured grandly to the bare walls, tragic little hastily assembled blond wood IKEA dining set, and single battered cardboard box that comprised the entry panorama, “would be the world’s reddest flag.”
Wilson beamed. “Is this a relationship?”
House faltered. “It’s an accusation.”
That seemed to please Wilson even more, because he downed a shot of bravery and initiated touch with a hand low on House’s back. Wilson couldn’t know, but it was the best possible first contact he could have made—unmistakably sexual without being crass, avoiding romance or coddling for an intriguing sprinkle of possessiveness.
Looking at House from under dark brows, Wilson murmured, “I’m not sure if I’m supposed to offer you a tour and a glass of wine or…”
“A blowjob?”
“Sure.”
“Well, there’s not much to tour,” House suggested implicitly.
Wilson closed the already shrinking distance between them with a kiss. He gave House maybe one and a half seconds to judge the first gentle press of lips before he came in tight for a second round, hot, wet, open-mouthed and filthy.
Thank god. House was starving for it. Banter was great but they were headed for a persiflage overdose and the only detox was to bring all four neglected senses in to complete the sonic profile. Wilson smelled unfairly good. Felt that way too. He tasted clean and mouthwash-fresh. Definitely panic-tidied himself in the forty-five seconds he had before dashing down to appear unconcerned yet early at the bus stop, but his kiss was all confidence. Right. Cheater royalty. Lots of practice.
“Not your first time seducing a vulnerable young hottie in the dead of night, huh?” House whispered, because it was never too early to start sabotaging a relationship.
“Half your beard is gray and you’re armed,” Wilson whispered back, kissing a silvery patch of stubble at the line blending chin and jaw, “but I’ll sign off on ‘hottie.’” His thumb stole beneath the hem of House’s tee, rubbing the microscopic friction of fingerprint along skin.
House parried with a twist of the neck, leaving Wilson no choice but to kiss at his cheek, his ear, to nuzzle into his hair with the point of his nose. “I’d say ‘hottie’ is your main hook-up criteria, but I think you were just that disinterested in your wives.”
“Think I’ll take just anyone home?” Wilson retorted, expression still hidden away in the business of making House’s toes curl and thus denying House essential facial data. House could work with it. He’d spent this long judging Wilson on voice alone, and now there was all this touch to consider.
“Hmm…not anyone.” House’s eyes flicked around the spare, sad room, diving into his mental rolodex of facts on Doctor + James + Wilson. “You’re looking for a forever person in all the wrong places. Molding yourself to whoever needs you most, but it’s only surface deep. There’s still a real someone underneath who wants things for himself and just can’t bear to admit it.”
“How do you figure all that? Are you a detective?” Wilson teased, droll but not distracted. His hands were gaining ground under House’s shirt.
“Phone sex operator by night, PI also by night.”
Wilson laughed low, sound vibrating into House’s flesh before he pulled back and House could abruptly see every bit of playful, nervous, hopeful joy and curiosity on that compelling face.
“I’m not crazy, right?”
House’s brow elevated and held his eyes open wide. “You just let a stranger into your house. Some guy whose name sounds fake, carrying a possible weapon, and being an asshole the entire time. You’re certifiable.”
“But I’m not crazy to think…this is really hot.”
House’s answer was to let himself be kissed up against the doorframe. He opened his mouth to Wilson’s tongue and let his lips be gently bitten and his waist caressed and he gathered his courage to let his cane tumble free of his palm so he could grip Wilson’s face in both hands to properly return the embrace. Wilson sighed in total contentment at the rough grab. House felt like he’d tripped and stumbled into some alternate universe where really good things happened to people who didn’t deserve them.
Which was just this universe, really. If people who never touched a cigarette could die of lung cancer, then misanthropic old codgers with all the charming personality of rusty barbed wire could find their arms full of real, solid, handsome, sly, disturbed, mischievous, unbelievable man.
Their lips parted with a shared eagerness to pass comment and reintegrate the role of voice into their simmering encounter.
“Do you remember, that first night on the phone…” Wilson began. As if House’s brain didn’t play back every single moment of their time together on a non-consensual loop whenever he wasn’t totally occupied. “You pretended to be my hook-up for the night.”
“Not pretending anymore.”
Wilson’s breath hitched. He grabbed for House’s shifting hips and the words tumbled free, “Let me do it like we did, let me suck you off.”
House feigned acquiescence and let Wilson kiss down his neck before he grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around. Wilson’s turn to be slammed against the door as House roughened the kiss and started nipping at his neck, “We’ll do it like we did. Which means I go down on you first.”
House knew his limitations. He traded elegance for efficiency and crashed down at Wilson’s feet, using his hips as an anchor. It was a little painful but it got his mouth to Wilson’s belt buckle, so, objective achieved.
Wilson wasn’t resisting—he was frozen. Likely with desire, but still. House grabbed Wilson by the shell shocked wrist and smacked that palm down on his own head. ‘Pull my hair if you like what you feel,’ were the next directions he intended to impart, but Wilson gripped him tight without needing to be told, and went to undo his pants with trembling free fingers. Oh, fuck, yes.
He held House still as he clumsily parted his clothing and dragged his cock into first view.
House nearly crossed his eyes with the intensity of his desire to see, finally. Here it was, that lovely dick he’d spent such delicious hours imagining, enticing, stroking with his voice.
Time for sound waves to retire. Good old fashioned touch was back in town.
“Oh, very nice,” House murmured, palm wrapping around velvet skin—a perfect fit.
“Glad you approve,” Wilson replied, voice already husky as House felt his careful way along the stiffening shaft.
“Mmm…” he murmured vaguely as he brought the tip to his lips for a taste.
Wilson bit down on a wail as the vibration hit him hard in the sensitive center of his early pleasure. House felt his own cock twitch in response and redoubled the torture. His tongue flashed out to lick under, over, against the throbbing head, humming all the while to give the attention a bass undertone.
“God. Fuck. It wasn’t just a line,” Wilson panted, halfway to wrecked and he was barely breaching House’s lips. “You do love to use your mouth.”
House obscured his answering smile by shoving cock in it. Wilson keened and thrashed against the door. The rule of Loud they’d established over the phone was clearly still in effect, and it made House’s blood rush through his veins. He swallowed around all he could and finally felt the satisfaction of Wilson’s fingers tightening in his hair. It wasn’t as gentle as he would have guessed. James—his Wilson—was too hungry for it to remember he was supposed to be a nice guy.
His face was shoved suddenly inward and he choked hard on the length filling him. Wilson let him pull off and cough with a dazed look, like he was as surprised as House that he’d acted on the impulse. Soft fingers petted House’s stubble, and instead of the predicted apology, it was a murmured request: “Will you let me fuck you tonight?”
Voice scratchy, House played for time. “Looking for a rematch after I railed you in the imaginary shower?”
“Not trying to even any score. I just really want it.”
“What if I don’t?” House growled back, churlish.
Wilson shrugged, making his dick bob comically before House’s nose. “I’ve had lots of practice jerking it when I can’t have your body.”
House fingered the erection before him thoughtfully. “I did come all the way here. And I do like what I see…” He blew a sharp, freezing, pursed-lip exhale onto damp skin and then kissed it in the telling aftermath. “Yeah, you can fuck me.”
He tried to fill himself up with dick again so he wouldn’t have to think about the ramifications of offering himself up to a stranger like this (not a stranger, James), but the target of his oral fixation left the sucking range.
Wilson crumpled to the floor. It wasn’t an unplanned move—he flattened House onto his back and kissed him over the uncomfortable ridge of hardwood demarcating hall from room. His wet, hard dick rubbed against the rising stripe of skin revealed by House’s shirt riding up, assisted in its northern journey by hands from both sides, until Wilson could rut fully against him while he tried to navigate House’s own button and zipper without the benefit of sight.
After a final, heavy kiss, Wilson scrabbled down House’s body and get serious about introducing himself to House’s cock. Vision and only slightly shaky touch combined to finally flick open House’s belt and then his pants, and then Wilson was digging for the jackpot in his briefs. He pulled House’s dick free with caution and near reverence, which was uncalled for. House didn’t feel that any human being’s body improved upon extended inspection under bright lights, but Wilson seemed fascinated.
House snapped. “The real deal as good as you imagined?”
Wilson nodded slowly.
“Then make your purchase, already,” House chided, snide to obscure minor terror.
Now, Wilson met his eye. Stole his gaze. Kept them connected as he moved in. Parted his lips. Licked with excruciating care over the rigid, flushed flesh before him. He refused to change gears out of Brutally Slow, savoring the erection on his tongue to the edge of House’s tolerance.
At last relenting for the necessity of speech, Wilson stroked him gently—southpaw, why was that hot too?—as he spoke, “I’d like to get you in my bed and suck you while I finger you. Okay?”
House had no objections to this schedule of events. He said so with a fierce nod.
Wilson stood with a comforting sort of wince and clicking of knees, and helped House up to his feet. Desire and days of budding friendship (yuck) dampened the self-consciousness of dangling dicks and middle aged joints. Goofy grins bubbled up and they were both giggling with the absurdity of it all by the time they stumbled, drunk on 2 AM desire and improbably good fortune, through Wilson’s bedroom door.
There was carpet here, thank god, because it made the barren space seem fractionally less hollow. Though House didn’t much care about the fucked-up feng shui once he spotted that there was 1) a bed and 2) that was it, nothing else mattered.
Kicking off shoes and peeling off socks was straightforward enough once House gave in and clung to Wilson for balance. Going in for Wilson’s shirt was a treat: the skin he found beneath was so pale and soft, it was easy to imagine it untouched and waiting just for him. Wilson’s responding shiver when House ran his hands over vulnerable nipples and traced down the inviting plush of his stomach made it seem true.
House didn’t mind the removal of his own grubby tee, and he certainly approved of the wet kisses Wilson laid down his sternum and between his pectorals, but the proper dispatching of all clothes south of the border in quick succession rendered him vulnerable before he’d sealed his defenses.
Wilson didn’t pretend to ignore the infarction site—which would have been a reaction vile in its dishonesty, if comforting in its delusion—but probed it with a touch that threatened the physician’s chill, warmed by a curiosity that House only slightly preferred.
“You gonna say, ‘it doesn’t look too bad’?” House split the difference between a simper and a snarl.
“I was actually gonna go for, ‘that looks like it hurts,’ but then I remembered I shouldn’t be a total fucking idiot in front of the hot guy I’m trying to get naked.”
“You’ve succeeded in the naked part,” House allowed the conversation to reroute.
“I sure have,” Wilson murmured. “And I won’t talk about your injury since you clearly don’t want to, if you promise you’ll tell me if I do something that hurts you. Okay?”
House forced out a grim nod. Not contractually obliging.
“I hope you like it on your back,” Wilson detoured casually, “because I can’t take it right now. My L5 is on strike after lugging all those moving boxes.”
“All two of them.”
“There are at least three.”
“And I love it on my back.”
“Thank fuck,” Wilson mashed their mouths together and guided House’s hands to the final stitch of clothing between them, his own pants, holding on to his hips for dear life.
House ripped them down with vicious glee and, after a moment for unobstructed dick-admiring, got in on the backside-grabbing business with gusto.
“I knew you had a nice ass,” House squeezed, pleased.
“Did my voice give away my measurements?”
“Yes,” House bullshitted to cover his workplace snooping, “it’s a rarely known fact that if you take the derivative of the human voice’s pitch you can compute the geometric roundness of the corresponding ass cheeks.”
Wilson’s pleased giggle-nuzzle combo made House feel like the stand-up comedian of the century. Screw Vicodin (sorry, Vicodin!), this was what a real high felt like.
Kissing clumsily and clamped onto each other’s newly accessible bodies, they tumbled onto the bed, House beneath Wilson’s welcome weight. Wilson advertised his significant bedroom experience by managing not to knee House anywhere sensitive or crush him even temporarily as they situated their wriggling, naked selves in the center of the mattress. His aggressively affable nature kept the incommodious feelings of embarrassment usually endemic to first-time hook-ups at bay. The blazing inferno of ‘oh Jesus, so this is what sexual compatibility feels like’ burned off the rest.
House growled—a real growl, not just the irritated yap he used at work—when Wilson shifted off of him. Wilson swung his center of gravity back to kiss House down into the pillows and then complete his trip.
“Things we didn’t need in voice fuck fantasy land,” Wilson noted dryly, retrieving the lube and condoms he’d left out on the bare bedside table—extra obvious in the sparse setting.
“You doctors and your safe sex fetishes,” House leered, internally grateful that he didn’t have to ask for either, as a doctor with a safe-sex-fetish himself when it came to being penetrated by virtual strangers.
“Oh, I’m very kinky,” Wilson said, voice light but eyes dark as he slicked his fingers and settled down between House’s thighs. He pressed his whole face into House’s groin without agenda, not sucking or stroking, just sensation and exploration. House held his breath as Wilson mouthed and kissed along sensitive stretches of skin. He knew Wilson could name every ligament he brushed and nerve he sparked.
“Describe it. What you want.”
Wilson’s request—demand? Plea?—sliced into House like a bolo punch.
He closed his eyes to stop the world flooding in and drowning him. His lips parted but the words piled up at the exit, confused and disorganized.
“It’s okay,” Wilson murmured, kissing along the peak of his hip bone, “you’ve done this with me before. It’s nothing new.”
“It’s everything new.”
“Yeah,” Wilson exhaled shakily, and the splinter of agitation calmed House with its reciprocity. “That’s why I need your voice to guide me. This has to be perfect. I know you can do that for us.”
House shuddered and Wilson took a quick frenzied suck at his throbbing cockhead and House felt around wildly in the musty caverns of his mind and finally got hold of his hooker façade and jammed the vinyl onto his voice box.
“Just as you’re ready to finger fuck me for the first time, you start nuzzling my cock.” House sounded deep and cool, distant even to himself. But then Wilson followed his orders and vaporized that distance with soft brushes of lip and cheek and it was like House’s resolve was never there in the first place. The next steps in his own destruction came out cracked and needy. “Your fingertip breaches my hole. You’re sliding inside me but I’m not inside you yet. Just rubbing against me like an animal.”
Wilson slipped his index finger inside House to the second knuckle and whined, face buried in House’s flesh and musk but mouth empty.
“Let me have another taste,” Wilson pleaded.
House stroked Wilson’s hair thoughtfully (it was so soft and pullable, he may never let go), like he might say other than what he did: “You suction those whore lips around my length and go down as far as you can stand.”
Wilson moaned and arranged his pretty pink whore lips around House’s desperate length and forced his mouth down an impressive number of inches before choking attractively. He fucked House’s tip into the back of his throat with near aggression, bobbing and gagging, only pulling back to suck in gasps of oxygen and manage the thick sheen of wetness gathering and dripping around House’s cock and down between his legs to join Wilson’s pumping fingers.
He had two digits in House now, and House could hardly notice when he was busy whispering, “Oh, just like that, you suck me just like that…your noises are so—oh…fuck, it’s so good, yeah, so fast, neither of us can wait—ahh!”
House’s hips nearly came off the bed and Wilson was prepared because the hand working House’s cock abruptly flattened against his abdomen to keep him on the mattress. His other hand was three fingers buried in House’s hole and had just dug up treasure.
Wilson massaged his prostate in furious rhythm with the fuck of his mouth. House couldn’t keep up. “You…take me so deep…” It was no longer prescriptive, just a trailing description of the lovely and terrible things Wilson was doing to him. His legs spread instinctively, his balls were so heavy—
“I have to pause,” Wilson pulled off, kissed House’s stomach and smiled serenely. “You’re getting too close. I can tell. I know when you’re going to come, and that’s not allowed until I’m pumping my cock in you.”
“Then what’s the hold up?” House wheezed, frustration keeping a stranglehold on his lungs.
Evidently, just one last layer of bureaucracy. Wilson palmed a condom, ripped the wrapper, and rolled it on with the careful persistence of someone just barely keeping themselves in check.
House wanted Wilson out of control.
“You’re rubbered up, but are you ready?” House sneered in a TV announcer’s voice. “My expectations are sky high after days of flawless phone sex, and you’re worried your dick’s not up to the job…”
Wilson wiped his hands on the sheets to then better manacle House in his unrelenting grip. “Wrong. And you’ve been so good about reading my mind.”
He guided himself into House with a slow, firm, unyielding stroke. Breathing was a bear market all of a sudden, and House held Wilson’s shoulders like the last stone in the storm as he was filled to capacity.
House expected to immediately receive more confident thrusting than his credit could handle, but the debt didn’t materialize. Oh, fuck. Wilson was waiting for him to continue the narration.
Lips dry, throat collapsed, House coughed, “You tell me…how it feels.”
“Oh, House. It’s like your body is crying out for me. It’s so good…the way you pull me in…”
House’s limbs contracted, drawing Wilson deeper into his web. Wilson held himself back from fully writhing, but even the slight shiver wracked House’s body with barely tempered pleasure.
“Fuck, fuck, you start moving.” House safely managed to exhale the words. “You start to fuck me. Like you mean it. Do you mean it?”
Wilson delicately maneuvered House’s knees up and out and teased House’s tongue with his own. “You’ll see just how much I mean it,” he murmured sweetly.
Gentleness turned to ownership and Wilson revved the engine on his new lease and took House’s body out for a ride. Hips rolling, he filled House over and over with his inches, shifting so the friction of his body just barely alighted on the throb of House’s own cock.
“You…tell me…how it feels…” Wilson spoke through gritted teeth.
“Big,” House’s reply came honest and dazed. “Fuck. Big. Fast. Hard. Everything you want…from a hot stranger’s cock.”
Evidently, it wasn’t what Wilson wanted to hear. He yanked the reins on all the criteria he could, thrusts slowing and gentling (Jesus, there was nothing he could do about size, though). The unpleasant pulse of damaged nerve and muscle in House’s personal hell-zone threatened to rise to the fore as the violence subsided.
Oh shit, a voice warned in House’s head. “Oh shit,” he murmured aloud, but the sound was captured in Wilson’s plunder of his mouth. The stabbing wrench in his thigh quieted as Wilson reshaped their embrace to hitch House’s knee up over his hip, taking gravity’s bite out of his vulnerability and leaving them even more closely entwined. Now, House could only focus on the pleasure he received—both unequivocally better and far more dangerous.
“I can’t help it,” Wilson whispered against his lips, “I’m obsessed with how it feels to be inside you.” A long thrust. “I want to take all of you, as fast as I can…” his cock, tormenting House from the inside, his hands doing the work on his skin, “but I need to make it last. I’m terrified this will be the only time you let me touch you like this.”
“You kidding?” House slurred as Wilson’s flesh stimulated him deep and so different from the easy, cheap thrill of his own hand on his prick. “I’m gonna need this nightly. You’re on the payroll, pal.”
Agonies of desire pinched Wilson’s features. They’d played too fast and loose with their early morning assignation, and neither of their—ahem, distinguished—bodies could string this out much longer. A thrilled tingle told House he’d pushed Wilson right up to the finish line.
Then Wilson did the same: “Imagine how good this will feel when we know each other even better.”
House countered the checkmate with a wanting groan and a grab to Wilson’s hair, kissing him messily, the only way their sex-slackened mouths would allow.
“House, oh god…” Wilson kept saying House’s name, reveling in the ecstasy of knowledge, in the privilege of being able to say it at all and especially here and like this. “House.”
Every invocation of his name tonight had been magma to House’s brittle bones, but this one ran even deeper—a desperate, grasping longing satisfied in humbling completeness. Like House was giving Wilson more than he even knew he wanted, just by spreading his legs and giving some dirty directions.
That wasn’t fair—it was more than that. It has been more than that since the moment House accepted James’ call, and they’d lost the option to ever go back in the moment House set eyes on Wilson.
Fusing the role of operator with that of his plain old self, House eagerly finished the scene.
“My body is too much for you. My hole is so tight…your cock is throbbing…you’re going to come and come and come inside me and you’ll be begging and moaning my name the whole time—”
“House!”
Wilson, as always, did what the voice in his ear told him to. He begged and moaned and thrust hard and came. His whole body fucked into House, not just the cock spurting release inside him, but his features melding into House’s neck, his hands melting through House’s skin, the tangle of limbs getting too complicated to determine what belonged to who.
House revealed in Wilson spinning out. He’d put his oil under Wilson’s tires and the inferno was all his to enjoy, and god, did he need some more fire—his own race was almost run, he just needed a push…
Wilson’s cock slipped free and House yelped with dismay as Wilson’s whole body seemed intent on moving south for the winter. Then Wilson’s pretty little pink dimpled mouth settled against House’s raging erection and his fingers filled his ass to the breaking point.
He stroked House with a palm barely responding to orders, fucked his hole in lazy overdrive, lips speaking against desperate skin as he panted out the words that could carry House over the edge with him.
“C’mon, House, please come for me. I’ve gotten to see you and touch you but it’s not enough, I have to taste you…swallow you…” he rubbed his cheek, just gritted with pre-morning-shave stubble, along House’s length. Kissed the head again. His tone shifted into command as he positioned his lips against House’s slit: “Come inside me.” He swallowed House as deep as his clumsy, post-orgasmic looseness would allow and House came half-sobbing inside him.
Ragged breathing on both sides. The pleasurable blur of recovery. Wilson’s body disengaging but still keeping House’s vulnerable skin warm with his closeness.
“Don’t take this personally,” Wilson wiped a runaway dribble from the corner of his mouth with a smear of his thumb, “but that was better than a phone call.”
The grin didn’t require cracking in his spaghetti-limber body, House could just smile. “Not offended. ‘S good. I’m House, and I approve this fuck.”
“Chair of the bedroom?”
“Player on the streets, Mayor in the sheets.”
Their nonsense patter dissolved into laughter again and House was still too trashed on endorphins to resent how instantly irreplaceable the sensation of Wilson’s hair brushing his shoulder as he snorted became to his internal repertoire of contentment.
House was torn between rolling into and away from the line of human heat burning his flank. The resulting snake slither reminded his body that it had just undergone a great deal of uncharacteristic exertion, and it wasn’t altogether pleased about it.
Nose wrinkling, Wilson swiped at the sweat gathered at his neck. “Shower?” he offered.
“Meds,” House countered.
Wilson asked a silent ‘huh?’ with raised brows and House clarified through abruptly clenching teeth, “Pills. Jacket pocket.”
Giving House’s chest a worried pat, Wilson pushed off the bed and ventured back out into his lifeless living-dining room, to return with the signature diaphanous orange of House’s prescription bottle. (Distantly, House was grateful that he’d accidentally brought one of his legit ones, not the pilfered or fraudulent kind that populated the nooks and crannies of his home in wait of a rainy day.)
House snatched it from his grasp without a thank you, popping the top with practiced ease and knocking back a single dry dose before Wilson could return from his second trip for a glass of water.
A vague contrail of thought suggested that Wilson being a doctor meant House’s medically vindicated drug habit might become an insta-problem, dissuading him from doubling up even as his thigh muscle seized up. The psychic pressure of fearing pain—contrasted even worse than average against the bright paint of their pleasure—had House thumbing the child-proof opening-tab nonetheless because fuck when had he ever cared what people thought or tried to avoid contention.
Wilson took a cleansing swig of water for himself in contemplative silence. He looked like he wanted to pass Vicodin-related comment, but maybe he was doing his own mental arithmetic on what their fragile liaison could stand, because he just said, “How about that shower? Maybe the hot water will help.”
“Yeah, standing on hard tile for long periods is known to be super effective for mobility disabilities.”
“Then a bath would probably be better,” Wilson peeled politely alongside the topic, “unfortunately, this place didn’t come with a tub.” He laid a hand over the gnarled scar with the quiet insistence of absent permission. “Does contact hurt or help?”
“Depends,” House answered out of sheer truth.
Nodding encouragement, Wilson increased the intensity from a questioning touch to a cautious massage. “Helping or hurting?”
“Are those your only two options?”
“I could say ‘chocolate or vanilla,’ but it seems less relevant.”
“Why do you keep doing that?” House demanded to know.
“Doing what?”
“Saying the right thing when I say the wrong thing.”
“You’d rather I said the wrong thing?”
“Most people are more concerned with the part where I say the wrong thing.”
“Well, I don’t ask most people to come in my mouth, either. But maybe I’ve been doing socialization wrong.”
That wrung an instinctive smirk from House, which cooled the prickling threat of dissension he’d tried to whip up between their pleasantly hormone-blanketed bodies. “Who are you, really? Aside from a guy who likes to swallow and doesn’t mind that I’m a dyed-in-the-wool ass?”
“Aren’t those characteristics enough to be getting on with?”
“Maybe. Or maybe you’ll turn out as devoid of meaning as this apartment is of furniture.”
“Homes…and people…are made by their relationships with other people. Except you, of course,” Wilson cut in to his own reply on House’s behalf, “I’m sure you’re a one-hundred-percent self-made man who’s never been affected by other people at all.”
“And you want to be shaped by other people. You welcome it. What, so you don’t have to contend with your own thoughts?”
“I don’t mind my own thoughts. For instance, right now, I’m thinking that I’d like to install a nice, big, opulent bathtub.”
His fingers dandled House’s scar like a plaything instead of a viper. It didn’t feel poisonous. The touch of this man who wanted to shake up his whole personal world to better suit House after a few days’ conversation and one admittedly spectacular fuck.
“You’re crazy,” House declared.
“And that is a personality trait all my own.”
House took Wilson’s face in both hands and kissed him until he could stand to stop.
“You like ‘em broken,” House realized. “Well. I’m a fire sale in that category.”
Wilson clasped his face in response. Checkmate for checkmate. “Stay.”
“The night?”
“To start with.”
“I’m all sweaty and stinky.”
“Stay stinky. Or shower with me. Or not.”
“I didn’t pack my toothbrush and jammies.”
“You can borrow mine.”
“You know the full girlfriend experience costs extra.”
“I’ll pay you whatever you want, if that’s what you want. Or, if you’d be insulted by money, then stay and I’ll pay you in breakfast. I’m famous for my pancakes.”
“Famous with phone sex operators you lure to your domicile with promises of breakfast?”
“Yes. It’s a large group, you’ll fit right in. Stay.”
House whispered, “How can I stay?”
Wilson whispered back, “How can you not?”
House thought of Stacy, and the story she always liked to tell of how they had moved in together after just five days. What even she didn’t know was that he was ready after one—when she still was annoyed by him and thought their first date had bordered on a bust, he was trying to figure out where to fit in a whole woman’s wardrobe among his bursting drawers and shaggy closets. There had never been an option that didn’t include her in his future.
He thought he’d rid himself of this troublesome predilection to attachment.
Wilson’s sonar pinged against House’s rumbling discontent and he chummed the waters. “You guessed—deduced—that I didn’t cheat in my marriages with just anybody. I was looking for something.”
House sank his teeth in, relieved. “You think you found it?”
“You’re the first thing I’ve wanted for myself in a long time. Calling that phone line at all…it was so selfish. And if it had been anyone but you, I would have regretted it.”
“So, I’m a thing you don’t regret and selfishly want. Romance coming down in buckets, over here.”
“If you wanted romance, you wouldn’t have picked up that phone.”
“You’re right. I man the lines because I like sex.”
“I’ll give you sex. And pancakes. And cash.” Wilson stroked along the side of House’s face, touch as delicate as a sculptor caressing his marble. “Let me buy your time.”
Want and fear and inconceivable circumstance riptide-roared in House’s ears and he retreated into cynicism. “It’s on your dime.”
Wilson pressed a dainty kiss to his lips, not cynical at all.
And House let himself be cossetted and cuddled and folded into Wilson’s arms, where that familiar voice in his ear rocked him into pacific slumber.
EPILOGUE: The Punchline After
House awoke alone. The normalcy of this scuttled the initial threat of nerves, and the smell of something inconceivably delicious wafting in from the kitchen settled the second round. Wilson reappeared with food while House was still blinking the sleep from his eyes.
Checking the clock, he found it was a positively heinous hour of the AM—and when he’d been taking his host’s cock until three in the morning, abominable!—but he felt strangely well rested. Probably it was the aforementioned healthy helping of cock and a night-night dose of the good stuff. Not the…other, dangerous stuff.
“Hey,” Wilson was all smiles as he bustled in bearing a tray and wearing a pilled blue robe over striped pajamas he definitely had not been sporting during his lichen act the night previous. “Thought you’d be hungry. And irritable. Figured the promised pancakes could make a dent in both.”
He settled the tray, complete with cutlery, pancakes, syrup, whipped cream, and a little bit of fruit snuck hopefully in along the perimeter, over House’s lap, and settled himself alongside.
House picked up a pancake between thumb and forefinger (forks were for suckers and amateurs) and nibbled cautiously along the pale edge limning the perfectly browned surface. “Wow,” was his ruling. “Breakfast of champions!” He folded the pancake into neat quarters, soaked it with syrup and a dab of whipped cream, and then shoved it whole into his mouth. He waggled his eyebrows at Wilson as if to say, ‘and you’re going in here next,’ and Wilson just laughed.
“My prince charming,” he drawled, stealing a strawberry.
“That’s doctor charming,” House tried to say, but his mouthful of half-chewed carbohydrates tripped up his mistake before it could escape. Remembering their whole secretly-co-workers thing was a minor damper on his happy morning wood and delicious brekkie situation.
Maybe they could finish eating and have sex again before broaching that topic. In case the pancake-and-ass supply line dried up as a result.
“Coffee,” Wilson realized aloud, and scurried back to the kitchen to retrieve a couple mugs of America’s favorite legal addictive stimulant.
House took the opportunity to grab his phone (definitely abandoned in his clothes last night, thank you Sir Wilson for being so obliging as to clean up and set it conveniently bedside), and found texts from Cuddy waiting:
Hey
R U dead?
He grinned through his response:
yea
C: Cool
I can’t wait to replace you
H: But if you’re curious who did the deed…
C: Not really
H: …it was your sparkly new boycrush Dr James Wilson!!
C: WHAT
YOU’RE SCREWING WITH ME
H: always :’)
but not this time
I can now vouch for the impeccable quality of his ass
C: come in to work right now
so I can get all the details
even the gross ones
Even the gross ones, huh? House thought, that makes two reasons to arrive at the hospital on time for once.
Wilson returned with caffeine and House flipped his phone face-down so no ill-timed messages would spoil the surprise. A sip of the coffee would have been enough to inform House that Wilson had been to med school, even if he didn’t already know—only someone who’d scraped by on four hours a night and the burnt offerings of the communal lounge pot would give this sugared gasoline to a guest with a straight face. House drank it gratefully.
“So. I assume you woke me up at this godforsaken hour to ravish me again. Or do you want to kick me out while we’re still technically under cover of darkness?”
“I do have to go in to work, soon,” Wilson announced with a note of regret. “Bad form to be late my first week. But…I do have time for a quick shower.”
It wasn’t quick.
Freshly cleaned and orgasmed, House dressed in yesterday’s threads and pondered. What was the funniest way to reveal their mutual place of employment? What was the least-mean-yet-still-tolerably-House-like way? If he chose the funny way, would he be denied dick forever? Would that loss be worth how fucking funny it would be?
“I’d offer you a ride,” Wilson cut into his thoughts, “but I know you brought your own.”
“Yeah,” inspiration crackled inside House’s cranium, “I did. Wanna hop on?”
“Your…motorcycle?”
“Unless you wanted to ride me in to work.”
“Then I’d really be late.”
“C’mon,” House grabbed his cane and smacked Wilson’s ass, “let’s go! My bike’s faster than whatever pansy sedan I’m sure you own.”
“My pansy sedan’s airbags and intact windshield are very masculine. I did specify I’d like to get there alive?”
“Don’t worry, I like my men still breathing.”
Wilson stuck his nose bravely in the air and marched to the door. “Fine.” That confidence flagged as he was confronted with the tiger-striped Repsol in the harsh light of day.
“Are you sure it’s…” he trailed off.
“It’s not safe,” House answered the question anyway, “and that’s not the point.” He pulled a matching helmet from its tight fit in the baggage shell—Wilson didn’t need to know that he’d be the first to wear it. (They’d come cheaper as a set, so sue him!) Wilson strained a calming exhale, then accepted the helmet with grim finality. He shoved it on over his delightful floof of carefully blow-dried hair and grimaced out at House through the open visor.
House bounced forward and kissed him before either of them could think better of their actions.
Wilson’s adorkable little briefcase clipped into the rack next to House’s cane. House inserted the key and set the engine rumbling. Wilson seemed to be waiting for an engraved invite to hop aboard.
Finally, he declared, “If I die, please tell my parents it was doing something less idiotic than getting on the back of some guy’s Harley.”
“This isn’t a Harley.”
“Oh, well, I’m in the clear then. My mother was very brand-specific in her warnings about strange men and their unsafe vehicles.”
“Am I strange?”
“Deeply,” Wilson smirked. His nerves melted into his body slinging smoothly in behind House’s on the hump of the backseat rider. “I think I’m developing a taste for it.”
House reached over his shoulder to flick the visor down over Wilson’s dangerously grinning features. “Let’s see what else you can develop a taste for.”
Wilson’s arms closed around House’s waist. House gave the wrists clamped over his abdomen a checking pat and then revved the throttle.
To Wilson’s credit, he didn’t scream or perform a medically unnecessary Heimlich on House’s midsection as they roared down the sleepy dawn street towards the closest thoroughfare. He just held on with appropriate tightness, the heave of his chest the only indication that his respiration was spiking. He really was developing a taste for it.
They dipped onto the 614 long enough to shoot them past university traffic and then peel off onto city streets for the final blocks into the hospital’s sprawl of parking structures and donor-named wings.
In addition to the sheer pleasure of having Wilson wrapped around him in faintly terrified awe, this bike-shock strategy had the positive externality of distracting Wilson from the gaping logic-hole re: where was House even taking him? How could House know where he worked? Unless…
The Repsol screamed past the main staff and clinic entrance, as well as House’s usual front-row handicapped parking slot, to slide into the doctor’s garage and into—yes, please hold your applause—Wilson’s freshly labeled reserved parking stall.
House killed the engine and flicked down the kickstand. “Door to door service. Make sure to leave a good review.”
Wilson struggled free of his helmet (his hairstyle had mostly survived the ride, and the minimal damage was frankly adorable), lowered his feet onto stable ground, and let the breath he’d been holding out slowly. “Wow. Honestly wasn’t sure I’d live to see the other side of this trip. I can’t wait to never do it again.” He fumbled his way fully off the bike to stand alongside it like a shipwrecked sailor resuming his sea legs.
House was—well, to put it politely, he was fucking miffed.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re excused,” Wilson said politely.
House fumed through a razor glare. “No way the penny hasn’t dropped for you. I don’t screw people with IQs that low.”
“No, you don’t.”
House carried on the deduction out loud, “You didn’t tell me which hospital you worked at. If you even worked at a hospital.”
“Doctors can work lots of places,” Wilson agreed, “which you would know, being one too.”
He crossed his arms and tapped his foot and dared his motorcycle-straddling lover on with a heated look. House ripped his own helmet off to better focus the entirety of his scowl on this rascally rabbit, pretending to be so innocent with his gleaming Oxfords and silk Foulard tie.
“How…” House narrowed his eyes, the wind being taken from his sails applying directly to newfound arousal at how unbearably sexy a smug Wilson was turning out to be.
The sliver of a grin grew into a full-blown smirk. “The Dean of Medicine warned me that my office would put me next to some sort of psychotic prankster genius named Doctor Gregory House.”
“Cuddy!” House swore her name, throwing up both hands to the parking structure’s cobwebbed rafters.
“And then I found out that your name is Greg House,” Wilson carried on with false humility. “It wasn’t Nobel material to figure out that there weren’t two scary, sexy, identically named cane-wielding geniuses in a twenty mile radius.”
“But you didn’t even flinch when you heard my name,” House glared, jabbing Wilson in the chest.
“It’s called shock. The most handsomely grizzled bad boy I’d ever seen outside a James Dean movie had just roared up between my legs on a motorcycle, after agreeing to meet in person following days of him—” Wilson lowered his voice self-consciously, “phone fucking me into oblivion. Surprise was my baseline. You turning out to be my work neighbor barely registered.”
“You—” House heaved himself off his bike and made a motion like he just might strangle Wilson for his genial impudence.
Wilson leaned into the semi-attack and kissed the hell out of House, which was a very good move on his part.
“But it was gonna be such a good prank,” House groaned once his lips were his own again, already mostly mollified by the generous application of tongue and palm. “Your face when you found out you’d been paying a world-renowned diagnostician for the audio-nasty! God, it would’ve been an all-timer. Museum-worthy. You probably would have fallen to your knees in worship.”
Wilson grinned against his mouth, “Don’t worry, you can have me on my knees whenever you want. And I’m sure you’ll get me next time. Unless I get you, again…”
House gripped Wilson by the upper arms and kissed him deeply until a passing pickup truck honked at them, and then he kissed him a little more, but this time with his middle finger raised at their audience.
“Walk me to my office?” Wilson half-asked, half-dared.
House met his challenge with a defiant tug on Wilson’s cuff and a heavy step onto his cane. He harrumphed. Wilson swallowed a soppy grin.
They made it up to their shared floor in suspiciously intimate proximity to find House’s staff milling around the conference room in the usually tranquil hours before their boss bothered to make an appearance. Cameron immediately clocked something odd in House’s gait as well as the sheer fact of his presence, Chase had jealousy radar almost as well-attuned as House’s that locked on to Wilson, and Foreman peered out just to see with his own eyes the miracle of a House on time.
“Wanna give them a show?” Wilson murmured casually, two fingers brushing House’s sleeve.
“Oh, yeah.” House answered with a sweeping embrace, very Disney royalty chic, nearly knocking them both off their feet with his unwise enthusiasm on the slippery linoleum.
After a very, very long minute of waltzing around an R-rating, House broke the kiss with a wet noise of satisfaction, keeping their mouths close. “I’m gonna go tell my team you were a spousal hire.”
“For you, or are we committing crassly public imaginary adultery right now?”
House laughed in pure delight, “I didn’t even think of that! Now I’ll have to decide which is more fun: secret husband or not so secret married side piece.”
“Let me know what you decide so I can play my part right.”
“I will. Lunch?” House posed the offer as lightly as possible, a feather whose breezy destination he wasn’t attending to, rather than a weighty slab of stone poised to tip and flatten him dead like an unfortunately three-dimensional cartoon character.
“Grab me when you head to the cafeteria,” Wilson agreed, with the exact same mixture of surface chill and underlying gravity. He gave House’s backside a parting pat and escaped into his office.
House allowed himself a moment to just look at Wilson’s name on the door. Doctor James Wilson. His joke husband. His real…boyfriend? Partner? Semi-permanent booty call? …Friend? Someone he could talk to whenever he wanted, and not just on the phone. Someone he could touch. Someone he could lean on as he stepped into the shower and as he stepped into a shit-scary new world, who didn’t make him feel weak or burdensome.
Another uncharacteristically genuine smile—he was really blowing through his yearly allowance of cheery expressions—spawned on his lips. He should call Cuddy up from her dean-cave for a bestie debrief. Let her know she should fire up her U-Haul, and maybe get a jump on drafting her best man’s speech.
He’d never looked forward to a lunch hour more.