attaboy

by ratsplendor

Summary:

Drunk Wilson has a thing for praise.

Notes:

hi friends! this is an old draft that i had laying around and was sick of seeing unfinished + poking around at without really getting anywhere, so i'm giving it to you now. enjoy!

It’s been said that man contains multitudes, and among those men, James Wilson is no exception. Well…he’s the exception to some things, chief among them House’s often-caustic social isolationism, but this is certain: Wilson surely does contain multitudes, and House takes great glee in provoking as many of them as possible.

What’s funny is that most people see Wilson as one thing: the caretaker, the overachiever, the shoulder to cry on, the tender oncologist, all wrapped up into one. He’s stable, responsible, competent.

But it’s not even half the story. It’s the one he tells the world, even the one he tells himself, but House knows the rest: the Wilson with the face screwed up in hurt, throwing beer bottles through mirrors; the beaten Wilson shivering in a jail cell, eyes unseeing…. Lest one imagine it’s all the ugly things House hoards, it’s not just that: there is the Wilson lit up in rare, childish, mischievous glee when he can be convinced to be selfish and just have a little fun; there is the stupid, soppy Wilson who’s overly moved by one movie or another. There is even a Wilson he remembers well from a night pre-infarction, camped out on top of a mountain during the Pleiades, just a bit stoned and staring with quiet awe as the cosmos rained down overhead.

Don’t get it twisted. He’s not a romantic. He’s just selfish and monomaniacal and has only ever stuck with one person, and he wants as much of that one person as he can get. Especially parts of that one person that House and only House really gets.

His favorites tend to change with the seasons. Well, that’s not true. If you asked him, he’d usually switch up between saying Pissed Wilson and Shitlord Wilson. But the full truth is that Drunk Wilson is his favorite.

Two Beers In Wilson is just a bit cozy, a bit unguarded, a bit spacey—that’s not the same. Truly Drunk Wilson is another story. He’s grins like a goofball, or cries like a toddler, sometimes alternating between the two depending on the night. He tends to lean his weight on whatever’s nearest, which is often House, by House’s own design. Sometimes he throws hissy fits over the weirdest, tiniest inconveniences. Drunk Wilson is a delightful hybrid of some of House’s favorites, but the real reason Drunk Wilson is the all-time best: he’s inebriated enough to not hide as deeply how terribly, pitiously needy he is.

For the most part, Wilson thrives off being needed. Which is why it’s so thrilling to see him like this, and House would’ve brought it up to torment him the very second he realized it if not for one thing: Drunk Wilson has a thing for praise. A sexual thing.

The first time House got a real taste of drunk/needy Wilson without being too inebriated himself to understand it was after Bonnie, after the infarction, after Stacy. A true triangle of absolutely fucked-up proportions, like a dark, shitty answer to Maslow. When Wilson was with Bonnie, he barely drank—something about her daddy issues. And while he was trying to prop House back on his feet (heh), even kicking and screaming, he was hypervigilant, cutting loose the last thing on his mind.

So the first time House could finally be convinced to go out to a bar, Wilson kind of went crazy. House didn’t, because, back then, he hadn’t quite struck the balance between Vicodin and alcohol (or, rather, achieved a Nirvanan equilibrium of wastedness + functionality). So he got to see Drunk Wilson in all his true glory, a state that only really happens when he’s unattached, or doesn’t want to be.

They stumbled home. Wilson followed him through the apartment like a lost puppy as House tried to get ready for bed. In the bathroom, while House skipped the toothbrush and just swished mouthwash around because fuck being on his feet a second longer than he had to, it was as if the sight of a toilet reminded Wilson that drunk-nausea existed, and he plopped down in front of it pitifully and threw up, then promptly started to cry.

“Wilson…the hell do you have to cry about,” House grumbled, but swiped the glass he kept in the bathroom from off the counter and filled it with tap water. He tried to hand it to Wilson, but Wilson slurred, “Can’t leggo the toilet, everything’s…so spinning,” and so House awkwardly leaned his cane against the counter and went down on the good knee to hold the glass to Wilson’s face. “Attaboy,” House muttered without thinking, because it was late and he was tired and the Vicodin was finally kicking in, and Wilson’s eyes flew open above the rim of the glass and glittered needily up at him.

House’s first thought was The fuck? And his second was Oh. OH.

He might’ve panicked a little. Who wouldn’t have goddamn panicked at that. And so when Wilson went to pull back from the rim of the glass, looking a little like he wanted to say something, House moved his hand, following his retreating face. “Drink some more,” he insisted. “You’ll feel better. C’mon—good, buddy, you’re good.” And Wilson…made a noise.

God. Fuck.

What was House to do but snag the mouthwash (and if his hand was shaking a little bit it’s because chronic pain, and fuck you) and pour some into the little cup thingy that came with it, which he never used, and hold it out to Wilson. Wilson started to move a sluggish hand to take it from him. House said “Nuh-uh,” and Wilson’s lip trembled like he was gonna cry again. “You’ll just spill it all over.” Lie. I want to accidentally brush your lips with my knuckles like a pervert freak. “C’mere, you ready? Here we go.”

He tipped it into Wilson’s mouth. He did, indeed, “accidentally” brush his knuckles against his best friend’s lips, and they were as soft as they looked, and warmer still. “Don’t swallow it, Wilson, swish it around, there you go, and now spit.” Had he ever talked to anyone that way, all goddamn encouraging and shit? Whatever.

And then Wilson raised his heavy head back up, his eyes half-crossed and pooling up at House, and said, “I diddit,” stupid and a little pleading, and House cleared his very dry throat and said, “Yeah, you did it, Jimmy.” The Jimmy slipping out unbidden and rare, but this night—this night. House could both stomach striking it from the record and keeping it forever, because if man contained multitudes, such were two of his.

House was not surprised when Wilson unsteadily peeled himself off the tile floor and his pants were looking a little tighter than usual. Rather, House was in a state of tired, dissociated, but wickedly gleeful awe over the whole thing, and he followed Wilson halfway down the hall just to make sure he took some aspirin and settled on his side on the couch before going to bed himself.

And there’s an idea people have that House is the one who always takes the dare. If Wilson is responsible, stable, controlled, then House is vicious, dogged, and bitter, and he never lets something go until he’s bled it dry of everything it contains. In large part, this is true, but Wilson, so often his exception, woke up the next morning and asked House if he’d “done anything weird” last night with a look in his eye that told House he’d bolt if the answer was “yes.”

And he’d be back, of course he’d be back; Wilson always comes back to him—but they were both still nursing their respective wounds. House had lost two of very few sure things in his life: his body, and Stacy. He could not bear to lose Wilson, too, not for a matter of weeks, not even for a matter of days.

So he said, “Other than throw up and then cry into the toilet, like the blonde sorority pledge I always knew you were?” Wilson swallowed his look of naked relief in a millisecond, but House didn’t miss it.

“That’s what I thought,” Wilson sighed, lying through his teeth. “Just wasn’t sure how you’d react to me being my true self for once.”

“It’s the year 2000, I say fuck it up, Bethany,” House deadpanned, and that was that. As if by silent agreement, House exercised a rare moment of restraint and decided not to show his hand, and Wilson reinforced his habit of destructive compartmentalization and conveniently allowed himself to forget.

And the years, as they are wont to do, kept passing.

Throughout, House hoarded different Wilsons like trading cards; people liked to call it “bringing out the worst in others,” whereas House would contend it was how he showed he cared. And in stolen flashes, House got more Drunk Wilson here and there, and the addiction crept up on him as life raged on around them until he was so deep into it that he couldn’t remember a time before it existed.

Drunk Wilson warm and heavy against his side after an ill-advised trivia night (House got banned from that bar, which was another story), saying “House, I was good at that, right?” “Yeah, Jimmy, you did all right,” he said; Wilson grinned woozily up at him and House almost felt like the other man was about to try and kiss him, but then Wilson fell face-first into a snowbank and started crying because he was too cold.

Drunk Wilson sleeping at House’s place after a New Year’s thing that House only begrudgingly went to. Oh, that was a good one. He had kicked his pants off somewhere, and his dress shirt hung rumpled and sloppy over his boxers; House was trying to keep Wilson from leaving Julie voicemails that would definitely get him in trouble and get Wilson angry at House the next day. House found himself holding a bottle of Gatorade to Wilson’s lips just to keep him quiet and hopefully head off the worst of the next day’s hangover, and when he had finished it he leaned his head against House’s shoulder and said, “House…I haaate sleeping in my buttons.” “Take it off then, Jimmy,” House said. Like House giving him permission was all he needed, Wilson struggled out of the button-down and collapsed exuberantly backwards onto the couch. “Thanks, House,” he slurred, voice so sweet with affection that it sort of hurt. Not really. But sort of.

Drunk Wilson after a rough day in the oncology wing, having just one more beer and then another, markedly not calling his wife to let her know he wouldn’t be home, just slumping lower and lower on House’s couch until his ass was almost at the edge. “House,” he’d lisped softly as the TV cut to commercial, “I sorta feel like…like…I’m doing everything in my life wrong.” And when House looked over at him, Wilson had those puddly eyes, the ones that told House that Wilson would choose an awful lot of things not to remember in the morning, so House sighed and pinched his cheek in a rough way that would come off as patronizing and sardonic in tomorrow’s non-memory. “You’re doing just fine, Jimmy,” he grumbled, and Wilson made a sound and followed his fingers when he pulled them away, smushing them between his face and the back of the couch. “Yeah?” Wilson whimpered, which, okay, House would be thinking of that in the shower soon, and House rolled his eyes and said “Yeah, idiot,” and ruffled the top of his head condescendingly.

And later, when he untied Wilson’s shoes for him, he was not surprised to notice Wilson was slightly hard. Not enough for most other people to notice, but House had spent years ogling the exact outline of Wilson’s bulge, as much as it could be discerned through the fabric of various pairs of pants, and he knew.

By the time of Wilson’s third divorce, House is thus swimming in addiction so thick that one thing is clear: he is going to snap at some point and they are going to fuck and it’s going to be brutal for both of them. The questions are when, and whether it will break something irreparably forever.

Call House reckless, grandiose, and self-centered: on the latter point, his money is on no. But then again, he’s not against weighting the dice; with few exceptions, after all, the house always wins.

Wilson’s sleeping on his couch, and there are a great many drunken nights. Not always majorly drunk, not always enough for his favorite version of Drunk Wilson to show, but weeks go by and Wilson stays and stays, and, here and there, House starts to catch Wilson looking at his mouth at varying degrees of sobriety.

And the question of when seems to start narrowing down.

They’re in the cafeteria in the middle of the day when Wilson gets a text from one of his patients (yes, a text; he really has to stop giving out his phone number to the half-dead masses) and he says, “I’ll answer when we’re done here,” and House says “Attaboy,” his voice dripping with sarcasm but his eyes sharp, and Wilson chokes on a piece of lettuce. And House feels his heart in his throat, oh god, oh god; what is he doing? Is when now? Soon?

And then one night Drunk Wilson, without prompting, slides his head down to rest on House’s good thigh with a sleepy mumble, and, over the roar of a monster truck rally playing on screen, House hears his own heart throttling viciously. He sits frozen, in lieu of doing something stupid like putting his arm around Wilson or, alternatively, growling like a territorial dog, until Wilson starts trying to drag his blanket over himself and failing miserably. “Quit it,” House tsks, like his hands aren’t fucking shaking, shoving Wilson’s hands down to rest on the couch cushions. Wilson breathes a little harder and makes a complaining noise, but then quiets as House unsnarls the blanket and drops it over him. “Are you good now, Jimmy?”

“Hehhh,” Wilson says. And possessed by the looming when, House flicks the top of Wilson’s ear, and he whines.

“That wasn’t a word.” And if his voice is husky then fuck you. “You wanna try again?”

“Wh…wha’s the question?” Wilson rolls his head slightly, his eyes lolling dopily up at House, as if the sight of him looking up from lap height won’t just kill House in his sleep.

“I asked if you’re good.”

“I’m tryin’ to be,” Wilson says desperately, which is. Okay. Not what he meant. Jesus fuck.

“Okay, then you are. Jesus fucking Christ.”

“Yer mad at me,” Wilson whines, and House sinks his face into his palms and breathes wetly for a moment.

“No I’m not, Wilson. You’re being ridiculous. Go to sleep.”

“Don’t be mad at me, House.”

“I’m not, for the last time, I’m not. Just…go to sleep.” Wilson mumbles something incoherent, but his eyelids are already flagging, and House holds himself very still until his best friend’s breathing evens out to a drunken deepness before extracting himself out from under him.

The next day, he’s expecting the sheepish, anxious, roundabout inquiries that follow the most damning appearances of Drunk Wilson, but…they don’t come. Wilson keeps looking at House out of the corners of his eyes at lunch, like it’s on the tip of his tongue, but he keeps not asking. Did I do anything weird last night? or Sorry if I was clingy or Was I being an idiot again? And the effort it clearly takes him to keep from talking about it (without talking about it) feels like a hit of capsaicin to the throat.

Hot under the collar, House escapes to his office to obsess, his head whirling. If the little deprecations the next day are Wilson giving himself permission to rug-brush things, to affirm that the totally hetero-bro nature of their relationship remains untarnished, then by not asking, he’s not repressing.

Then again, it’s possible Wilson is so anxious that one of these days House won’t play along that he’s keeping from talking about it. Thus meaning it’s, in effect, double-repression.

When feels like a thing he can taste, but he absolutely has to be sure. Because it’s never been easy to pry Wilson out of repressing something, even if, deep down, he wants it to happen; because House wants to win at this, and not lose him in the process; because he’s a selfish bastard, and he won’t settle for a one-time thing.

He has to back Wilson into a corner and make him feel good about staying there while House does all kinds of unspeakably sexy and blackmail-worthy things to him. What most often works with Wilson is being unbearably blunt about something and then leaving him sputtering and helplessly mulling it over afterwards, then repeating the process when he comes back later and tries to have a conversation about it.

“You need someone to dom you,” is what House ends up going with, after barreling into Wilson’s office one morning and stealing half his bagel.

Wilson’s cheeks pink up adorably, but he valiantly continues chewing. “Three alimonies in, I’m feeling pretty well dominated,” he answers glumly. “What—what the hell is this, anyway, House?”

“It’s me giving you solid life advice. Something I realized recently is my responsibility. Y’know, as your best friend and all.”

“Is that so. What makes you think I need life advice? I’m living the dream,” Wilson deadpans, staring House in the eye as if he didn’t roll off House’s couch this morning.

“Not yet you aren’t. The fact of the matter is, I think what’ll make you truly happy is being put on your knees and told you’re a good boy. Maybe slapped around a little, if you ask nicely.” House shrugs as if that isn’t the wackiest thing he’s ever said before sauntering out without a backwards glance, despite the fact that Wilson’s coughing around a chunk of bagel, despite the fact that his own pulse has skyrocketed. 

Yeah. A surgical touch, baby.

He almost thinks Wilson is going to avoid the topic completely, until they’re standing together after a DDx, the kids scattered all over the hospital, and Wilson says, totally straight-faced, “What on earth makes you think that I wouldn’t be the dominant one in bed after all the times you’ve called me a control freak?”

“Well, that’s exactly it,” House says evenly. “You always have to be the one in control. At some point, something’s gotta give. I already know you don’t even let loose properly in the bedroom, thanks to Bonnie—” Wilson reddens again— “so…really, I’m doing this out of worry. When you do finally go full sub, you’re gonna be a wreck.”

“How—I—that doesn’t make any sense,” Wilson stutters. “I…just because some people prefer stability, and, and order doesn’t make them control freaks, first of all, and second, I’m a human being, not a powder keg.”

“Aren’t you?” House twirls his cane in his fingers to hide the way they’re twitching. “No, you’re more like a 2-liter soda bottle that’s been shaken repeatedly…sometimes you leak out bits of carbonation, here and there on a drunken night….” The flush spreads up until it’s almost kissing Wilson’s hairline. “One of these days, you’re gonna get yourself into trouble.”

Wilson chokes in air like a gasping fish. “You don’t…I j—I—”

House’s pager starts whooping at him, and he hurries out of the room, but he peeks backwards to the sight of Wilson with his back turned, one hand fretting shakily through his own hair. Heart in his throat, he blunders on through the rest of his day.

It’s 50/50, if that, whether Wilson will retreat for awhile at this point, or keep up the momentum. Either way, things are getting precarious with House’s current case, which involves three neighbors intermittently experiencing precipitous BP crashes and seizures, so he knows he isn’t going home tonight. There’s no point. He blows into Wilson’s office intending to crash on his couch at nearly 11, head whirling, to find the man still there. Wilson jumps in startlement, and House huffs and flops down on the couch.

“Sleeping here tonight,” House sighs. “No point driving back and forth half the night.”

Wilson clears his throat, then says, “That bad?”

“Bad enough.” House cracks an eyelid open, silently reveling in the disheveled state of Wilson’s hair, a sure sign he’s been stressed to hell today. House hopes it’s because of him and not the patients. “What’re you still doing here? Wife mad at ya?”

Wilson gives him a watery glare. “Paperwork. It’s all the rage with people who do their jobs.”

“God bless those crazy kids. Hey, Jimmy.”

“Yeah?” House doesn’t miss the way he swallows thickly right beforehand. House almost never calls him that these days, it’s only for Drunk Wilson.

“You should sleep in my bed tonight. At least one of us ought to.”

“Why?” Wilson squeaks—actually squeaks. Damned if House isn’t doing god’s work right now.

“So it doesn’t get any ideas and run away,” House answers acridly. “Jesus! Because why the hell should you sleep on a couch when there’s a perfectly good bed waiting for you to warm it up? This is what I’m saying, Wilson. You’re so far up the ass of your own caretaker narrative that you can’t imagine creature comforts anymore.”

“Relating this to the weird kinks you, for some reason, want me to have is a reach even for you,” Wilson sulks.

“Ha. ‘For some reason.’ That’s cute,” House drawls.

“I—what? What are you—what do you—I just, I—”

“Jimmy. Don’t have an aneurysm. Just get the hell out of here and let a man get some sleep for once.” He keeps his eyes closed, listening to the sounds of Wilson harriedly gathering his things and stumbling towards the door, not trusting himself not to show everything on his face if their eyes meet.

Wilson pauses. House tries not to breathe too hard. “I c…I mean. Maybe it would be nice to sleep on a mattress tonight.”

“Attaboy,” House answers lazily, and Wilson squeaks, “Goodnight, House,” trotting out the door and down the hallway before House has time to answer.

All in all, House spends a grueling 44 hours at PPTH before the case is solved and the latest round of administrative resentment for his methods has simmered down (he may have forced Chase to commit identity fraud to get into a locked psychiatric ward for intel, who the fuck’s asking?). Wilson steers clear of him the day after that first confrontation, but House does wake up on the office couch with a fresh change of clothes on the ground beside him.

In the time between then and his eventual homecoming, Wilson does fall into stride with him in the cafeteria. House, head still half in the case, doesn’t push the subject. When he does go home, he takes a brief, bare-bones shower before falling into bed and sleeping for about eighteen hours, waking twice to pop Vicodin and crash again.

The next day, rested, fed, and bathed, he flops around the apartment and plots lazily for how he’s gonna seal the deal with Wilson when he gets home.

That is…assuming Wilson is coming back here. House has the alarming thought that Wilson might very well bolt—check into a hotel, pick up his next wife in a bar somewhere, and/or play keep-away at work for weeks on end. House takes a cursory catalogue of the belongings of Wilson’s that are still here: gym clothes, toothbrush, several pairs of shoes—yeah, he’ll come back here at some point. He’ll have to, as House will absolutely hold his things hostage if it's necessary to force the issue.

Either way, there’s no point in worrying about it just yet, so he doesn’t. Much. In any case, close to 7, there’s the sound of Wilson’s key in the door, and they pick up their evening together as if nothing unusual has happened; Wilson is out of the shower by the time the pizza gets there, already in sweatpants and a t-shirt, as if that’s fair to anyone.

It’s a Friday, House remembers dimly, as Wilson opens his whiskey without asking and pours a couple of glasses. He finishes his over the course of pizza and banter and the latest General Hospital, then pours another. House, however, deftly plucks it from his hand once he’s halfway through, having caught what’s going on. “You are cut off, my friend,” he says, knocking it back, the bottle already caged between his body and the arm of the couch.

“Oh, come on, bartender, I’ll even give you my keys.”

“If you finished that, you would be drunk.”

“Okay? And? It’s a Friday night, what are you, my mother?” House turns his head and looks Wilson full in the eyes, finding a belligerence there, a touch of panic as well.

“Why d’you wanna get drunk tonight, Wilson?”

“I have to have a reason? I’ll buy you another bottle, House.”

House props his elbow on the arm of the couch and his head on his hand and narrows his eyes at Wilson, who rolls his own and rakes a hand through his damp hair. “I don’t get you,” Wilson sighs.

“You didn’t answer my question. Why do you want to get drunk?”

“Because it’s Friday? Because I’ve had a long fucking day? Because I’m an adult? For someone who’s been after me to let loose so much lately, I’d think you’d be encouraging this.” Wilson’s cheeks tinge pink the second he’s said it, and House lets it settle for a moment, biting back a smirk.

“Then go to a bar,” he says finally.

“Maybe I will. Oh, come on, don’t be such an ass.”

“I’m serious. If it were just about getting drunk, you could just go to a bar. Instead, you want to be drunk on my couch at night, with just me.”

“Drinking alone at a bar is so depressing.”

“And drinking next to an ass while soaps play on the TV isn’t.”

“Will you just spit it out! What the hell’s your problem?” Wilson throws his hands up at House, flustered, and House focuses on breathing slowly.

At last, he holds the bottle out by the neck. Wilson huffs a flustered breath and reaches for it, but House snatches it back just a little, and just a little more, until Wilson’s half-stretched across the couch, ass in the middle, leaned over, House trying not to laugh at how red his face has gotten. “What the fuck, House,” Wilson pants, and instead of answering House pops the bottle open and holds it out again.

But when Wilson holds a hand out, House swats it away. Wilson says, “I—wh—you,” and House just raises his eyebrows and waits for him to understand.

He sees it the second it happens. A slight widening of the eyes as Wilson figures out what House is waiting for, an endless loading circle of indecision, and then, finally, a guilty quickening of the breath—Wilson’s tongue flicks nervously against his Cupid’s bow—and then he’s letting House press the opening of the bottle to his mouth, and House tilts it up enough to give him a good mouthful before whispering, “Attaboy,” snatching the bottle away just as Wilson chokes mildly. House just leans against the arm of the couch placidly until Wilson’s caught his breath, and then Wilson looks up.

He looks…caught. Guilty. Scared. Nervous. “House,” he says miserably, and the wickedest parts of House careen around with glee.

“I’m not letting you get drunk tonight,” he says. “I don’t want you having any excuse to try and forget this in the morning.”

“Forg…forget what?” Wilson almost whispers, looking like he wants to die, or run away.

House leans in, their faces inches apart, if that, and Wilson doesn’t lean away, and he smells like House’s bath products. His dark eyes flick down to House’s mouth, then back up, then away, then back to his mouth again, and House bites back a laugh, then says, “You know what, Jimmy.”

Wilson’s the one who breaks, in the end—who kisses first. His lips are slick and whiskey-warmed against House’s, who immediately winds his fingers through the back of Wilson’s hair and keeps control, laughing into his mouth as the younger man sighs brokenly. Wilson actually whines when House pulls back, using his grip to keep Wilson from following. “Tell me I’m wrong about you, and we can end this right here and now,” House says. As close to an out as Wilson’s getting after that little display.

“I. I don’t, I don’t know,” Wilson breathes.

“Okay. I can work with that. Tell me why you wanted to be drunk tonight.”

“Why?”

“I wanna know what you get out of it so I can use it against you.” Wilson’s mouth falls open just a little, and he blinks a few times like his brain is reloading.

“Well…I…oh, I can’t, House—”

“This isn’t going any further until you say it.”

“Fuck—you’re just nice to me,” he blurts. “And I like it when you’re nice to me. Okay? You’re nice to me, a—you, you’re never nice to people, and even if I get—I don’t know, weird, or…uncoordinated, you just—you take care of me. So.” He heaves a deep breath. “God, that’s, I sound so stupid.”

“‘Weird. Uncoordinated.’ You’re still dancing around, but you get half points,” House informs him. “You get needy, Wilson. That’s the word you’re looking for.” Wilson looks like he’s about to bolt, so House kisses him again until Wilson’s clutching at the neck of his shirt. “When you’re drunk,” House continues, “you drop the control freak act. See, deep down inside, some little part of you just wants someone to tell you what to do. Tell you you’re doing all right.” Instead of confronting the obvious truth in that statement, Wilson kisses him again, his mouth desperate, and House takes advantage of the distraction to haul at Wilson’s hip and thigh until the other man is straddling his lap.

When Wilson breaks the kiss, House says, “I swear to god, you better not ask me about my leg. I want you to stop thinking about it. Right now.” He looks like he’s gonna argue, so House yanks his hair a little until he yelps, his neck extended and just begging to be marked up, which House quickly obliges. When his stubble rasps against soft skin, Wilson whimpers and clutches at his shoulders, his weight unconsciously dropping further onto House’s thighs.

“You’ve never done this with another guy before, have you?” House accuses in his ear. “Let me guess: you could never imagine it any other way except with them in charge, but you didn’t know what to do with that. You didn’t know how to give up control.”

“I hate you sometimes, I really do,” Wilson gasps, which is enough of an answer.

“And yet you’re here. You feel safe with me, Jimmy?”

“Yeah,” he whines, shivering as House runs a hand up under his shirt, squeezing at the soft planes of his hip, his ribcage.

“You really shouldn’t,” House answers, and then he sucks hard at the side of Wilson’s neck and feels him grind down against House’s lap, which feels sinfully good.

Wilson’s a mess of nerves, trembling like an over-excited dog, and isn’t that quite the mental comparison. Under House’s tongue, the other man’s pulse races strong and hard, and House fights back the momentary flashes of panic (because this is Wilson, his best, maybe only friend, oh god, holy fuck) and leans into the flush of power that’s soothing the ache in his leg to a distant hum. “Maybe I shouldn’t,” Wilson pants, “but I can’t help it. I just, I can’t. I’m gonna be a stupid bastard where you’re concerned, maybe forever—”

“You talk too damn much, anyone ever tell you that?”

“Then shut me up, House. Shut me up.” He looks like he wants the ground to swallow him up as he says it, and at the same time like he’s relieved. This is a pissing yourself after hours of holding it type of face. It’s maybe the prettiest James Wilson has ever looked, and that’s saying something.

House digs his nails lightly into Wilson’s ribcage, watching his eyes unfocus. “Ask nicely.”

There’s a moment where the air feels charged. Like this is time turning a monumental page, the part in the choose-your-own-adventure book where you’re set forever into one path or another, no going back, like somehow, despite everything, if things ended here, they could go back to being the same old House and Wilson in no time. No homoerotic inclinations exercised, no lingering looks at chests or asses or mouths. There’s a moment where House almost thinks Wilson might scramble off his lap and spring silently out the door and go back into his favorite little closet.

But he says “Please,” so hoarsely that it’s mostly air, and House knows he’s got this boy on the hook for a long damn time. And instead of examining that little pitfall of commitment, he squeezes Wilson’s cheeks in one hand and makes him say it again because it makes him sound like he does when he’s drunk off his ass.

“Yeahhh, that’s exactly what you sound like when you’re wasted and whining for me to help you figure out your cufflinks and tuck you into bed.” That was a good one, too: fresh off the last New Year’s Eve party at the hospital that Wilson tricked him into attending.

“No I don’,” Wilson mumbles, his cheeks hot with embarrassment under House’s squeezing fingers.

“I could just record you next time, but, oh, god…the idea of you drunk and me recording. I can’t guarantee I wouldn’t do horrible things to you, or that you wouldn’t like it.” Wilson bites down on half of a word that might be fuck and House feels his hips twitch just the tiniest amount, but it’s enough, the tiniest reaction from Wilson is enough for House to see inside his brain nowadays. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you. Over here skulling down liquor just to have an excuse to fall all over me—though, last time almost made me think you wanted to be caught. Is that what you wanted?” He gasps, playing up scandalized shock. “Jimmy.”

“No, I d—mm, House—” Wilson’s eyes glaze over, his hands clutching indiscriminately at the arm of the couch, the sleeve of House’s shirt, as House lets go of his jaw and puts his hand down Wilson’s pants instead. It’s not like House couldn’t tell with a lapful of the guy: he’s ragingly hard under House’s palm, filling out the front of his underwear obscenely, but what’s really perverse is the wet spot on the cotton clinging to House’s fingers.

“No?” House draws the word out, luring Wilson into a state of stupid, mind-numbing lust with the slow massage of his hand over the front of his underwear, even though the angle’s hell on his wrist. Wilson doesn’t need to know that. “I’ve got your dick in my hand right now, you’d better think really carefully about how you answer me.”

Wilson shudders with—House would guess—two parts fear, one part arousal, which is enough for most sluts, and finally says, “Maybe I, I mean—sort of subconsciously, and maybe semi-consciously, maybe, yeah, I was hoping you’d catch me. Or I knew you would and I—I wouldn’t stop you.” He’s too beside himself with shame to look House in the eye much, but his gaze keeps flicking back up, waiting, hoping for—

“Good boy,” House says, first one of the night, and Wilson’s head twitches like he’s trying to shake it no, even while his hips jerk against House’s hand. House ignores the reflexive bit of weirdness that comes when calling a thirty-something year-old man a good boy; he’s never been one for societal conventions, anyway. Wilson’s wide, dark eyes say, plain as spoken words, oh no. He’s a rabbit in House’s jaws and he goddamn loves it, and House’s own erection clamors against his inseam distractingly enough that he has to spend a minute biting at Wilson’s mouth just to get his head on straight.

“Please—House—please,” Wilson chokes out in between, a nice little House sandwich where begging is the bread. He’s visibly making an effort not to keep grinding against House’s hand, which remains pinned between their bodies, fingertips damper still with the precum that’s soaking through his underwear. Wilson’s hands flutter uncertainly around them, landing shakingly on bits of the couch and bits of House’s arms and shoulders, aimless.

“Please what, Jimmy? What do you need?”

“I dunno,” he strains, humming out a wrecked sound as House’s free hand gropes at his ass, god, he’s easy. “Touch me, keep touching me—”

“No, idiot, that’s what you want,” House chides, squeezing harshly at his groin for a second just to watch him whimper. “I asked you what you need.”

Wilson furrows his brow in that slow, childish, adorable way he does when he’s drunk—and he’s not drunk, House made sure of that, whatever’s inebriating him now is all House—and then sputters for a second, like he’s fighting it. Come on, let go, House thinks madly. He deserves this (no, not really, but yes, he does), he wants this—Wilson the way nobody else ever gets him, every version of him there is.

Wilson’s whole body is seized up and trembling, but he manages to bite out the words, his eyes anywhere but on House’s: “I need. I need you to—to tell me what to do, House.” The shiver that goes through him loosens him a little, like the words were pulling everything tight.

“Attaboy.” Wilson keens needily as House rewards him with another squeeze. “You’re so wet for me, Jimmy. If I knew you’d be this easy I’d have had you years ago.” He pulls his hand out, fingertips still damp, and smears them demeaningly across Wilson’s stomach under his shirt. Wilson whimpers sadly at the loss of pressure, his thighs already flexing, looking for purchase, desperate for touch. House uses a mix of manhandling and grumbling to get him shifted over so he’s straddling just House’s good thigh, his face adorably perplexed, caught between embarrassment and the urge to process this moment, which just won’t do.

“Listen to me. Look at me, Wilson, there you go.” His face is red and will stay red for the rest of the night. “You wanna get off?”

“Yeah,” he bleats.

“How bad do you want it? Don’t answer that, I can see it all over your face. You’re a mess, aren’t you?” Wilson ducks his head, and House pinches hard at the soft skin just above his iliac crest, causing a yelp. “I said look at me. Are you paying attention?”

“Yeah—yes,” he gasps, and House could swear sir is on the tip of his tongue, which, dear god, he’s just gonna have to set some time aside to deal with that later. He’s busy, goddammit.

“Good. If you wanna get off so bad, you’ll do it just like this.”

“Like wh—I don’t understand, I—” Wilson cuts himself off with a coughed-out sound as House takes hold of his hips and presses him down into a rough grind against his thigh. His dark eyes are endorphin-frosted, brown just barely visible around the sucking pit of pupil in the middle. “No,” he gasps out when House lets up, but it sounds uncertain.

“No?”

“House, I c—just, just—”

“You can’t even finish a sentence, you’re a fucking wreck. Do you want me to stop, Jimmy? Huh? This can stop anytime you want.” It’s true. There’s no fun in it unless Wilson lets go willingly, lets House crack his head open and disassemble him of his own volition.

“That’s not what I meant,” Wilson pants, the most coherent string of words he’s said in awhile, which is a damn good indicator. “I just—do I have to, to—”

“Get off humping my leg like a yappy little dog?” Wilson shudders, distress and need mixing decadently on his features, and House feels the familiar bone-aching flash of yet another new addiction starting. With most other things, the first hit is always the sweetest. But Wilson’s always been a trend-breaker. “Let’s put it this way: do you want to be a good boy?”

Wilson starts to talk, but it runs away from him in a pleading, drawn-out sound as House flexes his thigh up into the hot mass between his legs. “Good boys do what they’re told,” he continues, living, for a moment, in the way Wilson’s long lashes flutter stupidly. “And—oh, isn’t this lucky: you just said you needed to be told what to do. Didn’t you.”

Wilson doesn’t answer, except in a choking little sob as his hips give an aborted jerk, driving his bulge clumsily against House’s leg. “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Just give in, Jimmy. Stop thinking.”

“I just want you to touch me, House,” he complains breathily, but when House squeezes his hips again, he rolls them of his own volition, tossing his head in half-hearted protest.

“This isn’t about what you want.” House would swear he feels Wilson’s dick throb through the layers of fabric separating them. “Here in a minute, you’re gonna do exactly as you’re told. You’re gonna take exactly what I give you, and nothing more. Do you know why, Wilson? Because deep down you have always wanted to be good for me. Haven’t you.” He may be a narcissistic bastard, but he’s right: in his best friend’s face, he sees a tiny shred of resistance dying. His blood sings with an almost-familiar victory of getting some piece of James Wilson that nobody else in the world ever does—though, he’s never had him quite like this.

With one more distressed groan, Wilson starts to inelegantly work himself against House’s leg, his fists clenched in the couch to either side of House’s head, his eyes squeezing shut—House leaves him be for a moment, scrambling to rearrange what is surely a very intense expression on his own face, before tugging roughly at his hair with an order to keep his eyes open. Wilson whimpers pleadingly in response to the command, but obeys.

“Good boy. Oh, look at you.” House can’t resist palming himself through his own pants, his other hand still wound through Wilson’s hair. He makes an obscenely pretty picture, his clothes bunched up strangely around his erection from all of the back-and-forth movement, his face red, eyes shining wetly, dazedly, his mouth half-open and bitten to a ripe flush. House dimly realizes he’s said something stupid about Wilson’s ridiculous prettiness, and how he looks like he was made for this, but he can’t even bring himself to mind much because it gets Wilson making a whole lot of stupid, desperate noises and grinding with more urgency.

“Hhh—House,” Wilson pants after a few moments, “can’t. I can’t cum like this—”

“You’re not gonna get anything by whining.” The dry disappointment in his tone absolutely devastates the man straddling him, which is, frankly, a perverse delight—normally Wilson couldn’t give two shits. His bottom lip actually trembles a little bit, like a kid about to cry, which maybe he is, and wouldn’t that be something—and House figures out all at once that lying to him is probably the furthest thing from Wilson’s mind. He’s, quite simply, too far gone for any attempt at manipulation. “Stop for a sec. You really can’t, can you?”

Wilson licks his lips shakily. “I’m trying,” he whispers.

“Of course you are, Jimmy, always trying so hard, aren’t you?” His voice comes out with less sarcastic condescension and more gentle doting than he would like to goddamn admit, so he simply won’t. Wilson nods frantically, and House cannot be thinking words like “adorable” about this man so frequently, yet here they are. “You did a good job. You want some help?”

“Please—mm—” Wilson’s like a live wire, lighting up under House’s hands, one squeezing firmly at his ass and the other flattening over the top of his erection, pressing it more firmly to his thigh. It was either this, or slide further towards horizontal, thereby losing some of the remove at which he can so greedily take in the sight of him. Wilson mewls breathily, what House would like to believe is an ultimately grateful sound, and very well-behavedly keeps his eyes open, though they’re so hazy and faraway that their level of function is anyone’s guess.

“Get back to it, sweetheart—” Jesus fuck, and why had he said that word and how had it not rightfully burned his mouth coming out—oh god, this is bad, but hell, it doesn’t matter because either Wilson’s too far gone to remember any of this, or it’s the reason he’s now rutting hotly between House’s palm and thigh and House will straddle both worlds and refuse to entertain a third option. “—yeah, there you go, Wilson, Christ, look at you.” The wet spot’s soaked through to his sweatpants, hallelujah. The tightness in his motions and the way his breath sticks in his throat tells House they’re not far off, now. “First time I get to see you cum and it’s gonna be in your pants like a virgin—” First time I get to? First time I GET TO??

Wilson, if I lose my edge forever after this, I’ll never forgive you. Maybe he will, actually. No, of course he will, it’s Wilson, and it’s Wilson absolutely desecrating House’s name as his fabric-choked dick pulses out a copious load all over pants and skin and all of god’s creation. The way he says “House” is just sacrilege, the H too breathy to be a consonant, the OU too throaty to be vowels, and yet it would almost convince a guy that the mispronunciation has been every time his name isn’t said like that. The E trails off into an arrangement of hiccuped sobs, the staccato of which House might chase down in a piano composition if he ever manages to think around this roaring boner he’s got.

Wilson’s such a good boy he gives dogs a run for their money: his eyes don’t stray from House’s face, and there’s a dopey kind of awe in them, still deep in the throes of an endorphin storm that House suddenly, viciously, desperately wants him to stay in forever because there is a version of this where Wilson comes to his senses and never comes back. Spit films his bottom lip, a tiny bubble of it swimming in the middle, and House is a selfish bastard who isn’t above seizing at perhaps the one chance he gets at this.

Wilson’s kneeling in front of House before he’s halfway through telling him to do so, and House thinks darkly that even if Wilson maybe surfaces from this little high, he’s too polite and eager to please to pull off before House’s finished. Not that it takes very long: the tactile reminder of what’s just gone down smeared across his palm, coupled with the sight of Wilson’s slack mouth around his dick, make sure of it.

Hell. Jesus fucking Christ, what the fuck. House swipes Wilson’s spent glass from the table and holds it in front of his mouth, and Wilson spits with a guilty relief in his faraway eyes, then sips puppetlike from the bottle of whiskey again when House holds it in front of him, his hands laying docile on the tops of his folded legs. As soon as he’s finished his sip, his head flops over against House’s leg, just above the knee.

“Can I stay here for a sec?” Wilson rasps, drowsy.

Is this a good sign? What would that even look like? “Sure, Jimmy.”

Wilson wriggles around clumsily until he’s facing the other way, his cheek smushed into House’s leg, only the back of his head visible, and House worries it’s because Wilson doesn’t want to look at him right now, but then the younger man reaches blindly behind him until he finds one of House’s hands. He promptly drags it forward until it’s resting on the top of his head, then sighs contentedly. Okay. All right, sure. This is fine.

House doesn’t know what the hell to do, but preliminary trials at running his fingers through Wilson’s hair yield promising hummed exhales, so he keeps at it and tries to catch his breath. It is a little surreal to realize the television has continued playing this whole time, House having long ago lost the ability to hear anything besides Wilson panting and whining and stuttering, but sure as day, a drug ad is painting the room silvery: some things never change. But other things do, and fucking each other is one of the activities liable to change things.

So, some indeterminate period of time later, when he hears Wilson’s breathing pick up, it’s all he can do not to start hurling insults as some kind of preemptive defensive strategy. And a good thing, too: when Wilson says “House?” and House says, “Yeah?” trying—and probably failing—to sound casual, Wilson says, “I’m s—I’m sorry I…well, I’m just sorry.”

“For the last time, leg’s fine.”

“No—I mean, I’m glad, but—I meant for. For—” He gestures shakily at the whiskey bottle, and House tightens his grip on the arm of the couch thinking, for a second, that Wilson has realized he regrets this whole thing. But then Wilson presses his face further into his leg and House figures it out.

“Oh my god, are you serious? You’re sitting down there feeling guilty for—what, not just ‘talking it out?’ And say what? I basically had to torture it out of you, if your whining is to be believed.”

“I was getting drunk under false pretenses,” Wilson says, his fingers knotting in the calf of House’s pants. “Like an idiot—”

“Yeah, it’s fucked-up, Wilson. That what you want to hear? Jesus Christ. I like fucked-up. Fucked-up gets me off.”

“House,” he grumbles, but his fingers are loosening.

“It’s way more fucked-up that I like you drunk and vulnerable, anyway, give me some goddamn credit here.” Wilson lets out a watery snort at that, finally rolling his head to peek back at House out of the corner of his eye.

“So—are we good, then?” God, so many times one of them’s asked the other that question, usually in the fraught moments after a prank or a round of silent treatment or a shouting match. This—yeah, this one’s new. And it kind of pisses House off, though that may just be because he’s feeling weirdly split open right now, and not in the fun way.

“Depends. Are you gonna run off and pretend this never happened tomorrow?” It comes out a whole lot more prickly than he’d like, and Wilson turns more fully, furrowing up at House, sitting up and resting an elbow on House’s knee.

“What, that you didn’t just rewire my entire sexual identity over the course of about twenty minutes?” Oh, please, he’s always been gay! Still, House feels his defenses lower quite without his say-so. Goddamn you, Wilson. “Get real. I meant, are we—obviously this sort of…changes things.”

House deeply hopes they’re on the same page about exactly how this changes things. “Doesn’t have to. Much. It’s a fifteen-year-old friendship, now with more touching.”

“Sexy touching, even.”

“Perhaps even sex.” From between his knees, Wilson tries desperately to keep a straight face, and House can read it all on him anyway: relief and anxiety and bashfulness and a deep urge to burst out laughing. “If the lady wishes.” That seals the deal, a husky giggle House’s reward. Getting Wilson to giggle has always felt that way, and okay, that’s enough thinking about that now. Jesus Christ.

“Which of us is the lady in this scenario?”

“If it’s either of us, which is highly doubtful to begin with, then it’s both of us. We’re lesbians, Wilson.”

“Okay. Are we bed-sharing lesbians?” At House’s look of scorn and discontentment, Wilson rolls his eyes. “I’m not proposing, for god’s sake. I could just use a break from couch cushions.”

“Get a hotel then.” Why this is the part where he balks, as if this isn’t something he’s wanted without admitting to himself for, oh, fifteen goddamn years, he doesn’t know. It should be easy, it almost feels like—some things with Jimmy should be easy in a way they aren’t with the rest of the world, but…perhaps not this. The James Wilson effect: intimacy feels easy, feels safe. It’s how he’s caught wives, lost them just as easily; it’s how he’s kept House, always at a remove by his own nature.

Wilson only sulks for a second, all for show. Maybe knowing all of this as well as House does. “Fine. But…hey, just because I’m not staying here—”

“For god’s sake, don’t make me spell it out. Don’t be such a girl.”

“Already, I’ve regressed. Only a moment ago, I was a lady.” House snorts.

“You were never a lady.” Between his knees, Wilson’s big brown eyes sparkle with mirth and relief, and House just knows this is gonna turn out all right.

Notes:

there might be more chapters at some point; i have about half of another one written. however, it probably won't be anytime soon, and i thought this stood on its own as a one-shot quite well for the time being :)

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