Chapter Text
The hospital's bachelor auction progressed with the same disastrous luck the evening had started with.
Cuddy had decided to keep all the bachelors on the stage as the auction progressed, a reminder of the prizes the bidders had already lost to encourage them to bid higher maybe. Or maybe she hadn't thought about it either way and it was just random bureaucracy that trapped Wilson somewhere behind and to the right while House stood before the auctioneer. Wilson could hear House's voice in his ear replacing auctioneer with executioner. Guilt settled around his shoulders for causing this mess in the first place.
Wilson could see the tension, expertly hidden, but still inescapable. Something about the way House shifted his weight, the angle of his cane, the flex of his fingers. Something about how the more apparent House's anxiety (though House would never call it that, reasonable concern, maybe, or scientifically justified paranoia) became, the larger Wilson's guilt swelled.
And his fear.
(Not that their friendship was unsalvageable, it had been through worse crimes that a bit of lies, manipulation, and public humiliation)
(No, Wilson was worried about the way House's expression had shuttered when Cuddy walked in. For a moment, something had been on the table and it wasn't a question of how much Wilson wanted it, but whether he would survive being the one who ruined it)
But House remained outwardly pleased as punch about the bidding war being fought in his name while Wilson clenched and unclenched his hands in his lap, knowing that in another world he might've been down there on the floor to save House from Wilson's own scheme.
He wasn't though. And House was sold to the blond millionaire bimbo and Wilson watched as House made his way off the stage with a three-legged saunter so he could loop his arm in hers with a theatrical flourish that felt uncannily directed back at Wilson.
That was the last of House that he saw. Mrs. Merrick swooped in to claim her dinner date and Wilson was ushered away.
That was another problem with his whole plan to manipulate House into coming to the benefit, as if it wasn't already rife with them: by necessity they had driven separately. It was the only way to keep up the ruse. So it wasn't until Wilson was leaving, hours later, tipsy on mediocre benefit wine, tired of pretending to be the kind of man that Merrick wanted to have dinner with, that he realized that he couldn't even be sure House would be at home.
He could've escaped to his office, or a bar, anywhere to avoid Wilson and the crime he had committed this time.
For a moment, panic eclipsed the guilt. He drove too-fast the whole way home, as if the difference of a few minutes might be enough to catch House before he disappeared.
He spent the whole drive panicking and trying to put together a list of places to look, until Wilson had nearly convinced himself House wouldn't be home.
And yet, House's bike was in the driveway and House's keys were by the door, and House, beautiful bastard that he was, was sipping at a finger of whiskey on the couch, still in that tux that had nearly stopped Wilson's heart.
"I'm surprised Merrick released you from her geriatric clutches any time before midnight." House sounded…normal, initiating conversation when Wilson was almost positive he was in for at least a couple days of the patented House-cold-shoulder. Was he pretending nothing had happened? Shoving it under the rug like every other deeper emotion?
"I was worried I might need to amputate." Wilson could play along, act like this was any other evening. He dropped his keys in the bowl, slipped out of his shoes, stared at the back of House's head and tried to guess how hard he would have to grovel before House would forgive him. "How was your date?"
"If by date, you mean a kidnapping orchestrated by the man who claims to be my best friend, then it was fine." House paused, he still hadn't turned to face the door but Wilson could picture the look of betrayal on his face. The question was how much of it was being played up for the drama, and how much was real. "Where fine means worse than the time those frat boys convinced me to drink beer out of a shoe." So fifty-fifty.
The proper response was easy, some comment about all boobs and no brains, or suffering for the sake of a nice view, but the tension in House's voice, in his back, in the fact that he won't look at Wilson, had every siren blaring Danger. Instead, he softened his tone, nearly pleading. "I'm sorry, I didn't think it would bother you so much. Cuddy asked me find a way get you to come to the benefit in a tux and this was the best way I could come up with."
"So we’ve reached the groveling part of the evening. I wonder, is this how your wives felt?" all his usual snark, nearly hiding the sliver of hurt that Wilson had glimpsed back in Cuddy's office. "You thought you could lure me in with dirty letters about a sexy doctor riding me into oblivion only to humiliate me with that farce of an auction."
"I'm sorry, alright. I fucked up. I shouldn’t have impersonated Cuddy to trick you into dressing nice for once." Wilson doesn't even know what he's trying to apologize for. For the heavy-handed letter he wrote to trick House into a charity benefit? That was an every-other-Tuesday prank for House. He wasn't sorry for that, House made blatant sexual come-ons at Cuddy on a daily basis, turn-about was only fair play.
"I didn't think you were cruel enough to dangle a prize like that only to take it away. Cuddy would never have written a note like that, but at least if she had, she would've had the decency to follow through." There was a thread of tension in his voice, something that sounded a little like anger, a little like pain.
But he wasn't mad about the note, not really. He didn’t even seem to be mad that Wilson was the one behind it all, he had already figured it all out before he ever walked in the room. House was just mad the wild sex bait was a lie.
"To be honest, I didn’t think you would realize it was me so fast." But he had. House hadn't been surprised to see Wilson.
"What, like it was hard?" There was a quirk to House's voice as he leered at his own joke.
And then it dawned on Wilson, that snippet of information clicking into place and turning everything he thought he knew on its head. Like the light of the sun peeking up over the horizon and casting everything in a new glow. Nothing had changed, but suddenly everything looked different.
He had known.
House knew Wilson had wrote the letter.
House knew Wilson had wrote the letter and he had--
"But you came. You knew it was me and you came anyway." Wilson could feel the innuendo on the tip of House's tongue, but it was immaterial in the face of this revelation. "You- you--" Wilson couldn't even complete the thought around the sense of wonder that stretched his mouth into a smile. House had figured out, in that genius way of his, that Wilson was behind the letter, that Wilson was the one who wanted to see House in a tuxedo, wanted to kiss him senseless and bend him over and every single stupid fantasy that had dogged Wilson's thoughts since the beginning -- House had known it all and he had still rented a tux.
And finally. Finally, House was turning around. Standing up from the couch so he could look Wilson in the eye.
"And what of it." His face was expressionless, but with the kind of rehearsed neutrality that Wilson usually wasn't subjected to. Wilson couldn't help looking for other clues, trying to figure out what was going on in that wild mind, trying to understand. House's fingers were tight around the whiskey glass, his other hand white on the handle of his cane. It wasn't just his face that was harsh with tension, his whole body was poised and on edge. He looked, well he looked nervous.
Which meant that whatever Wilson did next mattered. What Wilson had done, mattered.
More thoughts ricocheted around Wilson's head, and another clicked into place. House wasn't mad that Wilson wrote the note. He was mad that Wilson wrote the note and didn't mean it.
And suddenly it all made a horrible kind of sense. The guilt welled up unbidden, all that tension in House's frame, the pain in eyes hours ago, that was all his fault. Oh fuck, if he had known…
"I made a mistake writing that letter--" From across the room, Wilson could feel House's blood pressure spike, and he rushed to continue "Not! Because I didn't mean it. I meant it all." Wilson willed House to hear the sincerity in his voice, met his impassive gaze and tried to telegraph his earnestness with those puppy-dog eyes everyone claimed he had. "It was a mistake, because if I had known that you wanted this, I would've-" The possibilities spiraled out behind Wilson's eyes, crawling into House's lap on the couch to kiss him, pulling him into one of their offices to confess how beautiful he looked when he solved a case, telling him to wear a tux and then taking him to dinner and then peeling him out of it afterward, wining, and dining, and flowers, and a million ways he could've tried to woo House -"I would've seduced you properly, if I had known."
And something in his words or his face, or the way he couldn't help reaching over the back of the couch just to be that little bit closer, must've swayed House, because the ice behind his expression melted and --finally-- Wilson could see flickers of tells. Twitches at his eyebrow, a softening of his eyes, even as his frown grew more pronounced, the way it did when he was trying hardest not to make some other expression.
"I would've done it right is all," Wilson said with a sigh. It didn't much matter now what he would've done, did it? He had mucked it up already.
"I think your seduction worked just fine. I'm here, aren't I?" And he gestured at himself in the room.
And it sounded like I'm still here
and you haven't lost me
and I forgive you.
But it was also House pointing at his tux, which he was still wearing even though he must have beat Wilson home by at least an hour, even though he could've changed as soon as he walked in the door, and it sounded like you wanted me in a tux, well here I am.
Like I knew it was you and I came anyway.