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“How long have you gone without vicodin?”
“Does it matter?” House presses his hand onto Wilson’s forehead, presses Wilson into the couch. His thumb tracks the tear lines staining his cheeks as he draws his hand down to Wilson’s jaw.
“Why are you-” Wilson turns his face away from House’s to cough - chest shaking with the exhaustion of it, with the burden of draining, constant sickness.
“You need it,” House says, like that’s enough to explain it.
“You’re in pain.” It’s not a question. House climbs onto him, slitting a leg between his thighs. The bottle of vicodin pills rattles in his pocket. Wilson runs his fingers over the rotting muscle at House’s calf and tries to ignore the way he flinches.
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you’re self-serving.” He trails his fingers upwards, to the back of House’s knees. He doesn’t look at House when his hands reach his thighs, looking down into the couch cushions as he coughs into them.
He knows how House is looking at him now, like he always does. With eyes that look like they used to be blue before dust settled over it in hues of ashy gray.
“But you’re in pain. And there’s an orange box full of painkillers in your pocket.” He swallows hard, trying to finish what he’s saying before the coughing shakes his throat and his mind and the words dissipate. “You could take them. All the pain could go away - at the cost of selfishness.” The cough wracks his body again. “You’ve always been willing to lose anyone, anything at that cost. Cuddy and stacy and-”
“I’m losing you either way.” He brushes a thumb over Wilson’s lips. “This time I want to do it right.”
“You want to lose me ‘right?’”
“I love you,” House breathes, and his voice is just like Wilson’s - ragged with pain.
“You don’t mean it.” Wilson pauses. “I want you to mean it. I need you to-” He takes in a shaky breath and grips House’s thigh.
House kisses Wilson’s temple, over the hair plastered over his skin by a sheen of sweat. His lips aren’t soft like they used to, they’re chapped, broken over the past month of digging his teeth into them. “I love you.”
“You don’t. Because if you did, you’d have a good thing in your life. You don’t like that - you’re scared of it.”
“Only for the next four months.” Wilson flinches. He hates it, the constant reminder of time. House found him once, crying over a clock he broke in a delirious anger, fingers bloody and shining from glass shards. He hates the steady ticking, the way he only minutes and hours and days and months that pass too fast, the way he’s used up all his years.
“Is that why? Because then, you won’t have to commit.” Wilson’s voice is bitter, soured by time he doesn’t have, by the rot in the air that he breathes in heaving gasps. “Then, you can still be miserable, even if you have-”
“Is that really how you see me?”
Wilson’s fingers brush the stubble along House’s jaw as he pulls him closer. He can smell the caffeine on his breath. He presses his lips to the corner of House’s mouth, hands trembling too much to do it properly. “No.” He kisses closer to House’s mouth. “I think of you like god.”
The hand on House’s jaw falls limply to his side, but he presses his other hand so hard into the flesh of House’s thigh that he feels his fingers shake with exhaustion.
“Gods don’t limp.” And then, “If I were your messiah, I’d keep you alive.”
“I want to die.” He leaves his grip on House’s thigh and finds the vicodin in his pocket and grabs the water at the table beside the couch.
House takes the pills and the water from his hands. He is too weak to protest.
“Don’t take them, please,” is all he can say.
House just looks at him with a sad, blank look that he cannot bear before putting the pill on his tongue, and tipping his head back to take the water. Ten seconds pass, and he does not swallow. Wilson lets out a breath he did not know he was holding.
House presses his fingers into Wilson’s lips, slides a thumb into his mouth and over his tongue, pushing his mouth open. Wilson coughs onto House’s fingertips, covered in his spit and sweat that he can’t quite wipe off on his jeans.
House kisses him slowly. Everything they do nowadays seems slow, always dragging on to the beat of every steady, maddening tick of the clock, slowly while time marches relentlessly. Even once Wilson swallows, House slowly presses his tongue into Wilson’s mouth, and slowly moves his lips, and slowly, sickeningly threads his hands through Wilson’s hair. Like he’s something fragile. He doesn’t want to be fragile.
“The vicodin on your tongue… was it tempting?” He presses his fingernails into House’s calf, giving house a look of pity that he knows House does not want.
House doesn’t answer. When he doesn’t want to answer, he makes a joke, pretends like he has words for a feeling too big for him to comprehend. But now, he stays silent, breathing hard and blinking fast.
“Does it hurt?”
House doesn’t talk. Wilson wishes he did; he only has so long to hear House’s voice.
“Say something.”
“I hate when you see me like this.” He kisses Wilson’s jaw, at the edge of the stubble from Wilson forgetting to shave. Or maybe not wanting too. They’ve both lost in them to care for themselves, they can only hope that the other cares for them instead.
Wilson fumbles desperately with House’s belt, hands shaking with the need to hold something tight and close.
When House presses his forehead to Wilson’s, he can feel the feverish, sick heat laying just below his skin.
“I don’t want to die,” Wilson murmurs against the skin of House’s neck. “I don’t want to die,” as he unbuttons house’s shirt.
“You haven’t loved me enough. I’m not ready to die.” He says all his words slowly as he fucks house slowly as they rot from the inside out in a slow, steady, second by second march.
“I don’t want to die,” as House tries to wash the layers of sweat and frantically made love off their skin.
“Why do I have to die,” as he kisses up the length of House’s bum leg, too slowly, watching the clock out of the corner of his eye. And then, sadder, “why do I have to die in your arms?”
“You don’t have to.”
“We both know I do.”