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It had only really started recently—House would wake up to Wilson facing away from him or his grumbling incoherently in the middle of the night and wriggling out of House’s grasp. Nothing as of recent could have annoyed Wilson to get the point of withdrawal, considering that being House's significant other required an inhuman amount of patience. House props himself onto his forearm.
Wilson stirs, curling in on himself, cheek pressed into the cool fabric of the pillow, facing House, hair mussed and features soft, unmarred by the usual array of worries he carried for two. He looks angelic, bathed in the scant moonlight filtered through the blinds—so much so that House merely lies there and observes, unwilling to ruin the lovely chiaroscuro sleeping beside him.
He parsed his memory of the past few weeks: Wilson yelling at him to do the dishes (House ordered takeout for the next week to avoid it); Wilson complaining that House forgot to pick up their dry cleaning (which he promptly compensated for with good—no—incredible sex); Wilson preemptively buying an egregiously large pallet of Kleenex from Costco and creating a barricade at the foot of the bed.
A wave of guilt threatens to wash over him. Yes, he was objectively a shitty boyfriend for losing sleep over some stranger’s nonsensical symptoms and not Wilson’s, however minor and trivial they were. No time like the present, then, to get on with it. The incentive was inherent — getting Wilson to snuggle with him again.
House reaches out, gently sweeping Wilson’s tousled bangs aside, the back of his hand kissing his forehead. A feverish warmth inundates his skin, from his knuckles to the tips of his fingers. Wilson’s brows furrow, his face contorting imperceptibly into an expression of mild discomfort, before he quickly eases back into rest with a quiet sigh.
He etches LOW-GRADE FEVER onto his mental whiteboard in Expo chicken scratch. In his head, the marker’s a neon pink, fluorescent and glow-in-the-dark. Maybe he’d bother the fellows next week (or if they’d had enough, Wilson or Cuddy) to cover the expenses for a more colorful array of colors. He only had himself to parry with or throw insults at tonight, but it would have to suffice.
Wilson’s nose is swollen; he’d find mottled red blooming at the apex, if he was cruel enough to turn on the lamp. SINUSITIS. He knows exactly what Wilson has, of course he does, but it’s more fun to gather all the constituent pieces of the jigsaw first. Maybe he’s just playing with his food. Either way, Wilson isn’t actively dying, so there’s no harm in placating his own boredom with a differential.
An unpleasant, scratchy hacking snaps House out of his reverie. Wilson settles again, sniffling and exhaling wearily through parted lips. He adds a messy, squiggly arrow underneath SINUSITIS: CONGESTION.
Poor thing.
House’s internal monologue uses two different inflections for those words. The first, a genuinely sympathetic lilt. Wilson was so infuriatingly pitiful when he was sick, blowing snot bubbles and flashing tired, pleading puppy-dog eyes to guilt trip House into doing his bidding. Even then, it couldn’t really be guilt tripping when it was merely giving House an impetus to stop evading his domestic responsibilities.
The second, a mocking, derisive tone that was far more likely to come out of his mouth. In what sort of sick, perverted world does pretty privilege trump being a cripple in chronic pain? Still, House felt less sympathy for his terminal patients than he did for Wilson.
“You’ve known me for how many years?” House murmurs softly, reaching over for a tissue and dabbing at Wilson’s nose. “Somehow, this is the first time you’ve managed to bore me. Congratulations. You have the most common of colds. Thank the aptly named rhinovirus.”
Wilson snuffles and squirms only briefly before his body relaxes again.
“Must feel good to breathe through your nose for a few seconds again, I know, but I can’t do this all night for you. Blow it yourself,” House quips, pressing a chaste kiss to a flushed cheek before reclining back, tucking the sheets over them both. “And while you’re at it, blow me.”
***
Wilson wakes to a dark tundra.
Okay, fine. That’s a dramatic exaggeration, even for him.
It is, however, a dreary autumn morning, and Mother Nature weeps, her tears flooding the streets. The place is devastatingly cold, from the outside layer of the duvet to the edges of the pillow that Wilson’s fever couldn’t penetrate. He shivers, burrowing himself in the layers up to his nose. It’s 9 a.m., and Wilson’s bedside is vacant, save for the noticeable imprint of House’s frame in the valleys of rumpled sheets. When he rubs the sleep from his eyes, he sees the tail end of a crinkled Shoprite receipt tucked under House’s pillow.
For a second, he thinks the worst, lethargy eclipsed by dread. Squinting, Wilson slides the thin slip out and orients it sideways, to decipher the tiny scrawl in the negative space between transactions and along the borders:
THE COLD IS A BITCH
SO IS MY PATIENT TODAY
BACK SOON I ♡ YOU
Wilson’s eyes soften, thumb smearing the red ink on the last three words. The heart is messily filled in, the sides a bit lopsided. House is scarcely up this early, so it must have been urgent. Or he’s screwing with him.
His stomach does a strange little flip as he reads it. Then rereads it. Five, seven, five. A haiku and an explicit “I love you”? This early? Now he was sure—House had to be fucking with him. Trying to appease him for some nefarious reason that would be made crystal-clear very soon.
Wilson had already called yesterday to let Cuddy know he wouldn’t be in for at least the next day or so, but the guilt was overwhelming. His patients needed him, if not as a doctor, as a friend, and not just that, but his assistants, too, that he promised—
You’re not a doormat. So don’t lie down and capitulate.
Paraphrased, most likely, but House was right.
Unfortunately, the cold seems to kill the rest of his thoughts as they swim across his psyche, slowing first before they atrophy and rupture.
With a defeated sigh, Wilson finally stumbles out of bed, limbs stiff and head heavy as he staggers to the kitchen, beelining for the medicine cabinet, dragging the sheets along like a bridal train.
***
Clinic duty is stupid.
And the sky is blue.
“Google celebrated its eleventh birthday last month,” he remarks, leveraging himself against the nurses’ station. The nurses mill about, doing what they do best: ignoring him. “You’d think people might try to use some of this newfangled technology before they came here.”
Cuddy’s heels clack across the linoleum in a tiresome staccato. He doesn’t bother looking behind him, fidgeting with his cane idly. He swears his midback tingles like a sort of Spider-sense, feeling the file hovering just shy of his back in her outstretched hand.
“House.”
“Wait. Don’t tell me. Another terrifying rhinovirus that infects millions of people every year?” Reluctantly, he swivels around. “Boring.”
“The nurse’s station,” she chastises him, shoving the patient chart into his chest, “is not your soapbox. You have ten more hours to make up this week. Go.”
He takes it, hobbling toward an exam room indignantly. “I’ll make up the other nine-and-three-quarters next week,” he snarks, holding the door with his cane. “My boyfriend is sick, and you want me to be Mother Theresa for well-off, sheltered white middle-class families and their snotty kids.”
The door shuts with a creak.
A wide-eyed, sniffly kid knocking his knees together on the exam table and his mother offer him matching blank stares.
“Dr. House, his nose has just been running nonstop since this morning, and—"
House limps over to the blinds and draws them up with a flourish of his wrist. “See that across the street? It’s a CVS.” He enunciates each letter, drawing out the syllable condescendingly.
“But how will I know—”
House hobbles over to the door, fishing his phone out of his pocket and waving it on his way out. “Magic brick. Use it, lady. Thank Steve Jobs.”
“But—”
Slam.
***
The door swings open at 3:48 p.m.
A harsh draft whips at his skin as soon as he shuts it. He shakes his sneakers off and trudges toward the inert Wilson-shaped lump on their sofa, a patchwork nest of threadbare throw blankets, their bed’s duvet, and House’s heavy winter coat.
He probes at the mound with the end of his cane as if it were a tumor, earning a disgruntled huff. “Stop it.”
“Good to see you too, honey,” House says, eyes full of mirth. His cane topples to the ground as he drapes himself over the princess-and-the-pea-esque layers of fabric separating them, limbs akimbo. Wilson grumbles something unintelligible into the pillow in protest but doesn’t—can’t—move. “I clocked out early for you. Couldn’t you at least pretend to be happy to see me?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Wilson snaps, the force of his outburst blunted by his fatigue. “It’s just that it feels more like Siberia today than Jersey.”
House raises his head briefly to sift through the layers, exposing Wilson’s turned head. “It still beats waking up to you soaking our sheets. Not in the good way.”
Wilson doesn’t dignify the comment with a response, but he flushes.
“Anyways—our heat’s busted,” Wilson rasps nasally. “Call HVAC, or you’re a shitty boyfriend.”
“Don’t pull that card on me,” House retorts, pinching his nose to mimic him. “It’s been raining and windy all day. We’ll be fine by tomorrow.”
“House.”
House rolls off him unceremoniously with a petulant groan. “Fine. I’ll call them later, if it so appeases you.”
“Call them now.” He knows House’ll forget if he doesn’t enforce an ultimatum.
House makes a show of it, taking out his phone and pointedly tapping the numbers on the keypad, letting the line ring as he fleetingly presses a kiss to Wilson’s exposed head and steps into the bedroom. He shuts the door, knowing that Wilson might construe it as a sweet, thoughtful gesture to give him some peace while he’s sick.
His intentions are not at all that benevolent. “Hello, HVAC!” He says loudly, slouching against the door.
“House, you called me, it’s Ch—”
“HVAC, when are you coming to fix my heat?”
“I’m about to go into the O.R., can this wait?” Chase reminds him, as if it would make a difference. “Patient just coded.”
“Not until next Monday? That’s a shame,” House laments. “Well, thanks anyway.”
He hangs up quickly, appearing from the bedroom to bother Wilson again. “The HVAC guy said they’re backlogged until Monday.”
Wilson is crestfallen when he breaks the news—eyes wet, thick brows knit in worry, the corners of those lovely, plush lips downturned—so much so House almost comes clean. Instead, he deflects. “You look like the poster child for a Victorian orphanage.”
“Go out and buy space heaters,” Wilson mumbles against the mountain of throws. “It’s for your own good, too.”
“Or,” House looks up thoughtfully, as he digs Wilson out of the nest he’s swaddled in, only to better crush him under his weight, “you could hump my pant leg until you start a fire. They ripped that page out of your Boy Scout Handbook, didn’t they?”
Wilson squirms, balling up to conserve heat, pulling whatever blankets he could scrabble at toward him. “No. You’ll get sick, and it’s already miserable taking care of you when you’re perfectly well. Go away.”
“Just a suggestion.” House mutters, unable to resist kissing his cheeks. Wilson’s face scrunches up in irritation, eyes screwed shut, but the tips of his ears redden. A tell House had relied on for years.
***
At night, it was far worse.
It really was cold. And Wilson still swatted him away at some point, because his forearms were numb in the morning. He turns to his side, groaning, limbs struggling to resist rigor mortis. Covered with a few throw blankets that clearly weren’t doing much, Wilson is shivering in the fetal position, but his hair is matted with sweat, bangs plastered to his forehead.
But his own legs are fine. Which is strange, because—oh.
His legs are meticulously cocooned in their thickest comforter. Undoubtedly Wilson’s doing.
House’s heart does a strange little swoop imagining Wilson, sick and trying not to drip snot all over their new premium down IKEA duvet, worrying about the state of his bad leg if left to rot in the cold for hours unattended.
Quietly, he unfurls his swaddled legs, tucking Wilson into the blanket. Like a plant to the sun, he folds into the warmth, the wretched shivering finally ceasing. House swipes the sweat off his skin with weathered hands. Wilson presses against his palm like a stray with a soft, sleepy whimper, lashes fluttering.
On top of Wilson being his boyfriend (the word still soured in his mouth; he’d rather just start calling him his husband, anyhow), the years of venting to comatose patients had likely conditioned House to get all sappy in the moment.
“You’re too sweet,” House whispers, an affirmation that he secretly hopes Wilson internalizes subliminally. The vulnerability frightens him. “I don’t deserve you.”
Don’t you?
Wilson would say, if he were conscious, but House wouldn’t believe him. Or, at the very least, we deserve each other. We’re terrible for every woman we start a relationship with.
Wow. He really did have to put a ring on it soon, if Wilson was supplanting the narration for House’s inner voice and hypothetical scenarios. He wanted to do it—after all, Wilson’s proposed four times but never proposed to.
Soon, if he wasn’t such a coward about it.
***
House returns from the hospital with Cuddy’s voice ringing in his ears like a bad case of tinnitus. Clinic hours, clinic hours, clinic-hours, clinichours… the syllables blurred together into a mess of haphazard phonics that had since lost their meaning.
And it’s cold in the house, to make matters worse. Oh, and there’s a hurricane watch.
Their latest case is a doozy: a 34-year-old man with schizophrenia who internally bleeds, but only when he’s sleeping. They can’t even piece together the borders of the puzzle yet. It doesn’t help that he’s uncooperative, or that the team has to painstakingly sift through his hallucinations to speculate about his other symptoms.
He lets work drift into the darkest recesses of his mind as he saunters into the bedroom, shedding his jacket. Wilson is wearing their entire closet and then some.
It also smells like someone sprayed every Bath and Body Works fragrance at once. Musk, jasmine, sandalwood, cherry blossom, and bergamot. It’s horrific.
Breathing solely in and out of the mouth, House sidles up to him on the bed, gently knocking his knuckles against where he knows his ass is, by virtue of a well-used muscle memory. “Nice King Tut cosplay,” he deadpans, “I’d say the most realistic part is that his sarcophagus comprises a university sweatshirt and a dozen winter woolies.”
That earns a soft snort and coaxes Wilson to poke his head out. “Had to make do with all of those candles you impulse-bought at the mall.”
“They’re not meaningfully contributing to the temperature,” House says, blowing them out with a short puff, shooing the tendrils of aromatic smoke away. “Now I’m cold and dizzy.”
House limps over to the window, hand bracing his thigh, and pushes the window up with a quiet grunt. The wind whips at the curtains, rain pattering the windowsill and dampening House’s shirt.
“House, there’s a hurricane!” Wilson shouts as best he can, scarcely louder than a croak.
“Would it really kill Ida to enjoy some synthetic fragrances?” He yells louder.
***
The candles are back where they should be, and House is lugging freshly washed and dried laundry back to the living room.
“Strip,” House orders, dropping the basket in front of the sofa. When Wilson doesn’t budge, glaring at him like he’d murdered his firstborn, he sighs, wearily, rolling his eyes. “C’mon. Humor me.”
Wilson reluctantly peels off each layer like a nested Russian doll, each article of clothing that dropped to the floor revealing a slightly less bulky item on his person. House watches him reverently, as if Wilson were giving a striptease in lingerie, arms slung over the back cushions of the sofa.
“Stop it,” Wilson grits through his teeth, awkwardly angling away from House and the amused smirk he’s wearing, gesticulating wildly toward the flatscreen. “Just…watch the TV. There’s nothing remotely interesting about what I’m doing.”
“Nothing remotely interesting,” House remarks dryly, cocking his head, “about you taking your clothes off?”
Wilson shoots him a withering glare off-set by kind eyes, clothes strewn on the floor in a heap. “Remind me why I’m doing this, other than for your pleasure?”
“Believe it or not, I am capable of altruism,” House pats the cushion beside him expectantly before digging for something in the laundry bin. Wilson beelines for the couch immediately, cursing his innate desire to please. “Knew you couldn’t stay away.”
Head pounding from the sudden movement, Wilson slumps against House’s side with a defeated sigh, his eyes fluttering shut. Warmth and weight suddenly supplant pain, enveloping him head to toe.
When he opens an eye to see what’s changed, he notices first that House’s boxers are tucked beneath his chin like a bib. All their laundry, in fact, is dumped on top of him like a landfill.
Wilson grimaces, gingerly pinching the seam of the boxers and tossing them toward House. “Really?”
“Yeah, really. It’s clean!” House exclaims in thinly veiled yet barely-there exasperation, rolling his eyes as he throws the underwear back into the basket. “Don’t be such a prude. Your temperature rises by point-five and suddenly you forget all the times you’ve gotten my dick wet through these.”
Wilson’s cheeks pink. If his temperature were point-five Fahrenheit lower, he’d have an equally snide comment to make.
Softer, unrecognizably so, House tucks the warm bedsheet around them both and murmurs, “Is that any better?”
Wilson nods, forehead nudging against the crest of House’s ribs.
I win, is all House thinks, his hand hanging loosely around the softness of Wilson’s shoulder. Sort of.
***
Wilson’s fever breaks, miraculously, overnight. Whether or not the cold played a part, Wilson would never admit to.
He was still achy and groggy — getting older meant he didn’t bounce back quite as easily. Come Monday he’d be back and ready to go — he had to be.
The heat also must have come back sometime overnight. Consequently, Wilson woke up in a puddle of his own sweat, his shirt unbuttoned and pants discarded.
House is nowhere to be found. There’s no note, and it’s Friday, and more than that, sunny, so there’s no way he went into work this early unless his team gave him one hell of a reason to.
A distant sneeze confirms his suspicions.
Wilson staggers out of the bedroom, yawning. The door to one of their closets in the hallway is open and there’s a muted click-click.
“House?”
The man in question swivels around on his heel, and despite the blank, unreadable expression gracing his face, Wilson knows something’s off, other than the nascent signs of an emerging cold. “You’re up early.”
Without missing a beat, House replies, “HVAC called me and told me to troubleshoot before they come tomorrow.”
Wilson’s brows knit in confusion, hands coming to his hips. “I thought you said HVAC couldn’t come until Monday. Tomorrow’s Saturday.”
“Your addled brain must’ve heard me wrong in the throes of your illness,” House deadpans, voice dripping with sarcasm. “They’re coming tomorrow, and—”
“Wait,” Wilson puts up a hand to cease his rambling. House sniffles. “Okay, first of all—you’re trying to gaslight me, but that’s beside the point—what were you doing in our closet?! It’s seven-thirty in the morning!”
In response, House limps into the closet, shutting the door, then opens it with a dramatic flair, his delivery unwaveringly monotone: “I’m gay.”
A wave of unwanted affection threatens to suffocate Wilson, who drags a hand down the length of his face to hide the minute upward curl of his lips. “I’m— I mean, well, that’s great, honey, but you didn’t answer my question.”
House droops lazily against the door, feigning ignorance. “What was the question, again?”
Wilson doesn’t entertain House’s antics any further, (gently) pushing House away from the closet door and going inside. There was nothing in it—just a few dust bunnies near the vent, and the circuit breaker.
The circuit breaker.
It suddenly clicks, like one of House’s epiphanies for all his seemingly impossible-to-crack cases. The prevaricating. The lack of urgency to fix the heat. The inexplicable sweetness that was otherwise unwarranted. The power trip alone is enough to sway Wilson toward switching departments.
Wilson animatedly shoves his index finger against House’s chest, chuckling cockily as he shook his head in disbelief. “Oh-ho, you’re…you’re really—really something for doing this to me.”
House’s poker face remains intact as he furrowed his brows in confusion. “Care to enlighten me?”
Wilson gently nudges House aside, meeting little resistance, from the closed door to open it. The panel door to the circuit breaker was ajar, he notes, as he swings it open.
His gaze pans to the labels they’d messily scrawled out to remind themselves which switch was which. All of them were toggled on, save for — wait for it — HVAC.
Flicking it back on again with an incredulous scoff, Wilson turns around slowly to savor the look on House’s face, now that he’d got him cornered. How could he possibly defend such an action that—
Slam goes the closet door that shuts in Wilson’s face, the room dark apart from the thin slivers of sunlight seeping through the louvered door. He tries the doorknob; it holds fast, rattling uselessly. He opts to pound on the wood with his fists instead.
“You’re an ass,” he shouts, the groan of the wood under his curled hand punctuating his words. “Why the hell would you turn off the heat when I was sick?!”
House is strangely hesitant, his tone unfamiliar, and not because his voice was scratchy in the morning or because he was getting sick. The stint wasn’t even remotely close to the worst thing he’s done to Wilson.
“I was trying to MacGyver it. Turning it off and on like IT does with our laptops after I give them all viruses.”
Wilson’s incessant hammering ceases abruptly, as the gears turn in his head, which, as they both very well knew, was governed by the whims of his heart. He bends down, settling down on the floor to peek at House (more accurately, merely the latter half of his legs) through the slats. “You sound guilty, House. Why?”
A stagnant silence follows, barring the rickety hum of the heat kicking in again. House is rolling back and forth on the balls of his feet, favoring his good leg. No quick jabs or acerbic ribbing. For years, Wilson nagged House for a few seconds of peace and quiet, but now that he has it, he’s not so sure he even prefers it.
It’s so uncomfortable that Wilson breaks the quiet instantly.
“I’m not mad at you, y’know that, right, House?” He murmurs, hoping that he’ll earn an offhanded insult by virtue of how tenderly he’s speaking to House, the same way he might coax a skittish stray to seek shelter.
He wants to see House’s face, those sharp, rugged features weathered by cynically furrowing his brows and wrinkling his forehead. Anything that would hint at a prevailing feeling threatening to break him down.
The door unlocks with a quiet click as if somehow knew what he wanted, his eyes at once assaulted by bright daylight. He gets up, stumbling a bit, with a groan, leaning against the doorframe for support.
House is staring at him, intensely and unwaveringly, but not in that menacing, derisive way that he reserved for, well, everyone else. Nor was it the lusty Kubrick stare that reconfigured the neurons in his brain to confuse fear for arousal. His eyes, rimmed red, lashes wet and eyes glossy. Wilson was reading into it too much—it could have been nothing.
“Oh, Christ, House…” Wilson drawls, voice just as soft as the palm coming to rest on a stubbled cheek, thumb tracing the bone. His eyes crinkle faintly when House leans into it. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve assumed you were screwing with it instead of trying to help—”
“I wasn’t.” The syllables tumble out unevenly, blunt-edged, bypassing the whetstone that rendered all his words sharp enough to kill.
Noting Wilson’s bewilderment, House says, voice clipped and averting his gaze, “I turned it off.”
Wilson blinks, dumbly. “Why?”
“Why do you think?”
Exasperated, he shrugs, searching House’s gaze. It wasn’t a prank—he knew that much because the lack of central heat was just as detrimental to House as it was to him.
“Just—House, tell me.”
An easy feat for the most emotionally constipated man that he knew. House’s gaze is distant, in the way it is when that brilliant mind of his pulverizes his emotions into cold, objective slop. Patience wasn’t a strong enough word for Wilson’s mental fortitude.
“Am I doing something wrong?” House asks, trying so very hard to keep his voice level and unfeeling.
“Other than you turning our condo into the Arctic, and potentially prolonging my symptoms?” Wilson inquires, tilting his head. “I have a laundry list of grievances, but none of them have bothered you until now.”
“Not a good time to psychoanalyze me.” House hobbles over to the couch to sit, massaging his leg. Wilson follows like House has some sort of gravitational pull on him.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not enough to jeopardize my secret stash,” He shoots back, face contorting into that practiced sneer, masking a wince as he plants his bad leg onto a pillow. “I carved a little crater into the wall at crotch height for it. Doubles as a glory hole, y’know. Thought I could indulge both our vices.”
Although House was impressively talented at maintaining that lackadaisical, devil-may-care attitude, he had a tell like anyone else. Remorse manifested as physical pain for House, suppressed emotions funneling down to the only place he’d admit could feel something on a regular basis. Well, not the only place, clearly.
Wilson doesn’t entertain House’s crude quips. He lets House nestle his head in his lap, eyes shut, breathing steady. Sooner or later House will find the silence unnerving and say something fleetingly introspective.
“You keep pulling away from me.” House says.
The clue House gives is infuriatingly vague and no better than a trace of footprints that tapers off halfway through the woods.
“House, I need you to be more specific,” Wilson groans. “Emotionally? Physically? When? Where?”
“It was you, in the bedroom, with the candlestick.”
That earns a frustrated scoff from Wilson, who is painstakingly trying to corroborate House’s vague clues and motives by racking his own memory of the past few days, stringing bits and pieces together on an imaginary corkboard with red twine.
“I wish I chose a different career right about now,” Wilson grumbles. “Seriously, help me out here.”
“Must I spell out everything for you?” House chimes, turning his head to rest his cheek on the softness of Wilson’s thigh. “I’ll cut you some slack since you were probably unconscious. You refused to remain comfortably entangled in my arms until morn.”
“Are you serious?” Wilson queries, staring down at him incredulously, hand still gently carding through House’s short, cropped graying hair even in his anger. “I was sick and didn’t want to snuggle up with you for a few days. Forgive me for pushing you away—in my sleep—when…when I was fighting an infection!”
House’s eyes narrow. “So you admit it.”
He brings Wilson’s free hand to rest atop his own over his chest.
“What?! House—”
“You’re a shittier boyfriend than me.”
Wilson’s thumb brushes the back of House’s hand.
“You pretended our heat was busted for the past week!”
House brings Wilson’s knuckles to his lips, brushing over them tenderly.
“Oh, please. Neither the cold nor your cold was even remotely close to being fatal.”
Wilson glares at House with a weary fondness usually reserved for old married couples.
Christ.
In this moment, Wilson wants this misanthropic, selfish, grumpy, crippled old man pushing fifty to be his “better” half. It’d be his fourth marriage and the final entry on a long list of lovers, yes, but House would also be his first and only husband; Wilson would be the same in relation to House. He understood 13-year-old girls who planned their weddings at sleepovers with their friends now.
Wilson conveys all this daydreaming in a very House-ian manner: “You’re an idiot.”
His hand migrates from House’s hair to the persistent wrinkles across his forehead, tracing over them before his palm settles on the curve of his cheek. “I can’t believe you did all that just to get me to cuddle with you. I was sick. I didn’t want to get you sick.”
And Wilson had clearly failed, no thanks to House’s clinginess, because he was already sniffling and slightly feverish as he had been a few days ago.
“A lesser man than I would have impeccably communicated my frustrations and resolved all of this within the hour,” House murmurs as he presses into Wilson’s palm, ungracefully smushing a stubbled cheek against it. “But that’s boring.”
“If you wanted a dopamine rush, we could have just…”
“Fucked?” House finishes for him. Wilson’s cheeks flush. “The thought of you dripping both snot and semen all over me is titillating.”
Wilson clamps his hand over House’s mouth. “Enough.”
But something warm and moist drags over the inside of his palm, and he jerks his hand back instinctively, wiping it on the side of House’s sweats. “What the hell?!”
House sits up with a grunt, orienting himself next to Wilson. “Works every time,” he says, nonchalantly. “Say, did you jerk off last night? This morning? I swear I can still taste–“
Wilson smothers him with a pillow, heat rushing to his face. “Shut up.”
He really hopes there’s a return policy on the ring.