Chapter Text
“Could you at least try not to blow through all the legal funds I have set for you in two months!!!” Cuddy furiously asked House.
“Hey! It was two rich assholes, what was I supposed to do?” He replied.
”Maybe tone it back a bit when you knew they were going to sue you!”
”It’ll be fine, this is like my 5th time getting sued this year.”
”It’s February!!!” She shouted back indignantly.
“Exactly, that’s only a rate of 2.5 per month. That’s certainly an improvement from a couple years ago.”
Cuddy just sighed and pinched her nose. “Paying these legal fees are getting expensive, you either need to stop harassing people-”
”Not happening!” House chimed in with a cherry tone.
Cuddy just sighed again. “I know. Which is why I was going to suggest we find a way to stop losing these cases.”
House raised an eyebrow in response. “And how do you suggest we do that? We’ve had this conversation before, “he treats everybody like that!” doesn’t hold up in court.”
”I know. That’s why I’m asking you to figure out a way to win. You made these messes and it’s about time you start cleaning them up. I’ve been having to pay our lawyer overtime for years.”
“You’re forgetting something though, I studied for the MCAT, not the LSAT.”
Cuddy just smiled in response. ”Oh I’m sure you’ll figure something out. You like puzzles, right? This’ll be something for you to think about while you put up with clinic duty.” She paused for a moment while she checked the time. “Now get out, I have a meeting in five minutes and you’re giving me a headache.”
It took House all day to come up with a solution. After a couple hours, he had completed clinic duty for the day and was sitting in his room, thinking while bouncing the ball against the wall.
How was he going to get out of being homophobic? He could use the fact he was bisexual but he didn’t really have much proof of that because didn’t talk about it with anyone. To him it didn’t really matter that much, plus he liked to have everyone think he was straight so he could properly make fun of people for being gay. Which, he didn’t actually care whether someone was gay or not, he made fun or everyone for anything he could think of, the fact that someone was gay just happened to be a funny and an easy target.
House wasn’t sure how long he sat there thinking. Eventually Wilson came in and interrupted him.
“I thought you didn’t have a patient right now,” Wilson said.
“I don’t. Cuddy tasked me with finding a way out of my lawsuit” He let the ball bounce a couple more times before he stopped it and set it back on his desk.
“Huh”. Wilson said, sounding mildly surprised. “Well good luck with that, in the meantime where do you want to grab dinner tonight? We could do our usual chinese but I was thinking…”
Wilson kept rambling on about dinner, but House didn’t hear any of it because he was struck with a realization. What if he pretended to date Wilson? It was perfect. Half the people at the hospital already believed they were dating, it was perfect! House supposed he needed Wilson to agree to this but he had no doubt he would. Wilson was too much of a doormat not to agree to this to save Cuddy money.
House suddenly stood up, and rushed out of the room. Wilson, who was used to his sudden realizations, simply moved out of the way and yelled to him down the hall “I’ll call you!”
Cuddy was still in the office working on paperwork at this hour because of course she was. But hey, her overworking tendencies often worked in his favor so House wasn’t going to complain.
”I’ve just solved the case.” He announced proudly.
Cuddy looked up at him, unimpressed. “Really? This fast?” Clearly she thought he was about to propose a stupid idea just to mess with her, which, admittedly that’s what he had planned to do anyways before he came up with an actual solution.
“Wilson is my boyfriend. That’s the solution. How can I be homophobic when I’m gay?”
Cuddy opened her mouth to say something but quickly closed it. Her eyes were staring in the distance, and she was clearly thinking very hard about this. “You know, as crazy as that sounds, it might actually work.”
House was actually a little surprised at how easily she accepted this plan. “Really? You’re just gonna go with it? What about the lying on the stand? Plus I would roping Wilson into all this. AND he would need to agree.”
Cuddy just laughed. “Oh please, you’ve been lying in court for years and this one is barely even a lie. You guys have practically been dating for years. And of course Wilson is going to agree. He gets roped into your madness whether it involves him or not anyways, so this is just speeding up the process.”
That was pretty much all the same logic House had used, but something wasn’t adding up. Cuddy should be concerned about lying, or some other annoying ethical thing. It was weird that she was going along with this so easily.
House shot her a suspicious look but she just gave an annoying smile in return and said “Alright, it’s Thursday so you should go and watch monster trucks with your boyfriend like you do every week.” She gestured at him to leave and turned back down at her papers. Before House could leave though she said “oh and you should probably use this time to inform him of your relationship. I want both of you to have your stories straight so we can meet with the lawyer tomorrow.”
House was sitting on the couch trying to figure out how to tell Wilson about his plan. He could, of course, just not tell him until the day of the trial but that could cause issues. It would be fun to watch him flounder and try to come up with lies on the spot but that always held the risk of getting House and Wilson in jail. House would be fine risking himself, but as much as he would never admit it he would prefer to not risk Wilson like that.
So, that brought House right back to the problem of how he was going to tell Wilson about this.
Well, he might as well be direct, house supposed. That was usually how he went about doing things, why would he change it up now?
“Hey Wilson,” he started. Wilson turned his face away from the TV and looked at House in acknowledgement. “You’re gonna be my boyfriend for a bit”
Wilson, unfazed by House’s antics, simply said “uh huh, for what? Are you pranking your fellows or something?”
”For my trial.”
House suspected that if Wilson had been drinking something at that moment that he would have spit it out. His eyes went comically wide and he said “WHAT?!?”
”Yeah, for the annoying gay couple that’s suing me. You can’t get in trouble for being homophobic if you’re gay.”
“Wha- but…” Wilson took a couple seconds to compose his thoughts. “I’m not lying on the stand for you!”
“Oh please, it’d barely even be a lie. We’re practically married” He said, echoing Cuddy’s words from earlier.
“I’m not going to risk jail time just so you can get out of another deserved lawsuit!”
”Oh come on!” House protested. “Pleeeeeeeease???” He said, giving Wilson the best impression of puppy dog eyes he could muster.
“Absoluelty not.”
”Come onnnnn.” House whined. He suddenly stoped as a new idea popped into his head. “20 bucks says you wouldn’t last a day as my boyfriend.”
”Are you seriously trying to get me to lie in court for you by challenging me to a game of gay chicken?” House just smiled in lieu of a response and Wilson sighed dramatically. “I’m not taking the bet because this is stupid —but for the record I totally could.”
House grinned. “Sounds like you’re scared”
”You are so childish. I am not scared. I’ve dealt with you as best friends for 15 years now. I could absolutely handle you in a romantic relationship.” House just continued grinning at him. Wilson just sighed dramatically again. “I hate that this is working” he muttered under his breath. “Fine. I’ll do this but for the record I think this is stupid and if I go to jail I’m saying you coerced me.”
”Fine by me” House said.
“Also make it 50 bucks and a week.” Wilson crossed his arms and looked back at the TV.
”mmmm how about 20 bucks for every day you can last but when you lose you owe me 50.”
”Fine but you owe me 50 if you decide to back down. Also we need to clarify the rules. We are not telling anyone outside of the fellows, Cuddy, and the people at the courtroom about this. I am not about to walk into work one day to find you with a megaphone shouting to everyone about how we’re together.”
”But that was going to be how I proposed!” House protested. Privately, House thought to himself that if he were going to propose to Wilson he would do it right. Probably at one of his favorite stupid fancy restaurants or something.
Wilson shot him a look. House sighed. “Fine, Fine. No telling anyone else.” He paused before asking “But I gotta ask, how gay are we talking this chicken?"
”What do you mean?” Wilson asked.
”Well, the ducklings aren’t gonna believe us without a little proof. I mean even if we do make out in front of them foreman still probably won’t believe us.”
“That’s fine, I’ve been friends with you this long, I don’t think a little kissing is going to ruin our friendship.”
”True but how far are you willing to take this thing? Like are we stopping at kissing or going all the way to sex because I’ll take this as far as I need to to win my 50 bucks back.
Wilson turned a little pink but he looked at House and smiled. “Oh I think it’s gonna take a bit more than that to get me to back down.”
God, Wilson looked stupidly hot right now. Well, now was as good as a time as any to come up with an excuse to kiss him. “Well…we might as well practice now….you know…so it doesn’t look so unnatural in front of-” Wilson cut him off by leaning forward and kissing him. Fuck, Wilson was such a good kisser. He’d heard as much from Wilson’s ex-wives, and he’d spent frankly an embarrassing amount of time imagining what it might feel like, but still. Fuck House was not prepared for this.
Unfortunately, it felt like as soon as it had started it was over. Wilson pulled away and went back to watching TV as House hopelessly tried to get his composure back.
After about a minute House said “I gotta admit Wilson, I’m a bit surprised here. Who knew the man with three wives was so gay.”
“Shut up.” Wilson shot him a quick glare before returning his gaze to the TV. “I’m not gay…and I did theater in high school. Learned a bit about acting and I…experimented."
House raised an eyebrow. “Uh huh. And you’re sure you’re 100% straight?”
”Yes.” He shot back quickly. “None of it…worked out.” He said awkwardly. After a pause Wilson quickly changed the topic and started making comments about the monster trucks they had both been ignoring.
The rest of the evening passed like that. Simple, meaningless conversation that they enjoyed every week. However, once it was time to go to bed things changed again.
As Wilson was getting his makeshift bed set up on the couch House spoke up. “Oh come on, since we’re boyfriends you can’t just sleep on the couch!”
House carefully watched Wilson’s expression. A little bit surprising to House, he smiled, Wilson said “Well alright then” his smile faded. “You better not keep me up just to make me lose this bet.”
House put his hands up in a surrendering motion. “I won't, I promise! I can’t promise no cuddling though.”
Wilson just smiled again. “You seem to have forgotten that we’ve already done this. Remember that conference in Norway?”
”Ug.” House said in disgust. “How could I forget? Stupid country with their stupid broken heater.”
That night House got the best sleep he had in years.