Worth the Risk

House looked as if he were seeing his friend for the first time. Sadness, he found, brought out Wilson’s eyes. This time, however, it was House’s fault, and it detracted markedly from the beauty of the emotion in the brown eyes before him. Wilson gone? If it had been anyone else House could have shrugged it off, maybe apologized, but mostly a snarky comment and a dismissing wave would be their luck. He’d go back to the lung cancer lady with just one more moral bruise on his conscience, but for whatever reason, this time he had the strongest urge to kill Vogler, suddenly violently and all over the place.
Wilson hated House in this moment. He knew it showed all over his face, but he’d never been able to lie to the man anyway. He’d find another hospital, but there wouldn’t be a sarcastic, limping, albeit attractive, miserable bastard there, and that is why he wanted to punch something. Maybe throw something at House’s head, do anything to make the man before him give a good goddamn. His thoughts suddenly made and angry appearance in their conversation, “Two things work for me, this job and this stupid screwed up friendship, and neither of them mattered enough to you to make one speech.” He glared, both surprised and gratified by his own words. For an instant he allowed House to see the hurt. Then shock overtook both doctors with the muttered response: “They matter.”
“What the fuck are you thinking?!” House’s brain roared at him in the stunned silence that ensued.
“What did he just say?” Wilson had never allowed himself to hope before. Hope that the extended glances in the hallways, or the way House’s eyes seemed to thaw ever so slightly when he looked at him, meant something; that maybe he wasn’t just making things up. The hope lasted all of thirty seconds before a file landed on his desk. If he wasn’t miserable before… “I’ll make some calls,” Wilson’s voice was resigned. House, with one last confusing look limped out of Wilson’s office, and Wilson laid his head in his hands. Damn Gregory House to hell, damn him for not caring, and damn him for not being whom Wilson thought, and hoped, he was.
House stopped outside the window that Wilson had shuttered, and leaned his head against the glass wall. “This is all your fault,” taunted the nasty voice in the back of his head. He turned his head until his forehead rested against the glass, “Shut up shut up shut up.” He tried in vain to see through the white blinds to the man beyond, all that came from the room was an extended sigh and more sounds of various knick-knacks and diplomas hitting the bottom of a cardboard box. In retrospect House’s decision was made long before he walked back through the door.
Wilson heard the signature steps and didn’t move from his chair where he had his back to the approaching visitor, but he did stop breathing. “Wilson…”came an uncharacteristically unsure voice. Wilson turned slowly and met eyes with the man who was somehow right in front of him now, though Wilson hadn’t heard nearly enough of those steps, had he? “I’m sorry,” the usual melodic bass held an almost unnoticeable quiver. Wilson looked at the unshaven doctor before him, his eyes showing surprise. House looked tired, and his clothes were obviously straight from the red gym bag he kept under his desk. Premature worry lines had set in; he was looking at a man with nothing else. “Nothing but this,” a voice in the back of his mind concluded. Now he understood the confusing look from before; it was the look a drowning man gives a raft that was being yanked away, desperate longing.
House wouldn’t let his eyes leave Wilson’s face even as he saw the realization dawning there. For once in his goddamned life he was going to take an emotional risk, because this was worth it. Wilson was worth it.
Wilson stepped around the desk. “Oh, fuck it,” House growled as he closed the distance in two limped steps crashing their bodies together, their mouths following. Wilson fell into the desk behind them with House’s unsteady momentum, but House didn’t care. Desperately trying not to lose contact with the paradise offered him he nearly crawled atop Wilson’s desk supporting their weight with his good leg. His hands grabbed at Wilson’s slender hips as he ground their lower halves together while demanding entrance to Wilson’s mouth.
His touch was desperation incarnate. Wilson’s mind clouded with the taste invading his senses. If this was what is meant to be the raft to House’s drowning man then he’d float until it killed him. He knew how hard those few steps back to his desk had been for this man, and he tried to show his gratitude with his body. Gratitude at being House’s one and only risk. He felt a sting as House bit his lower lip. Bliss
“Greg,” came the hissed response to the bite House delivered. He couldn’t get enough; he’d waited so long. Impatient hands tore at Wilson’s lab coat. It fell, forgotten, to the floor as he was already clawing Wilson’s pristine button-down shirt free of his pants. He growled as it cleared Wilson’s waistband and he was allowed access to the smooth skin beneath. He ran his hands up the flat stomach and both groaned into the mouth of the other as Wilson reciprocated, slipping his own hands under House’s thin t-shirt. “God, James, can’t be leaving,” House finally panted out. Possessively grabbing Wilson’s hips hard enough to bruise. The thought was physically painful. This man was his, thought House, still not letting Wilson’s mouth go, though they both needed air. Separating them for a stolen breath left just enough time for House to choke out “Your not leaving.” He tried to push them back together, whining a little when Wilson’s strong hands restrained him from their perch on either side of his face. “Even if I leave this hospital,” he panted, “I am not leaving you.” House knew that grown men, especially the miserable bastard variety, didn’t cry; instead he welded his mouth and body to the angel of mercy in front of him. Rubbing himself against the half naked body unashamedly. After a few more moments of heated kissing House separated them once again and laid his forehead against Wilson’s.
Wilson knew better than to say anything, and then House took a deep breath, the kind that meant he’d decided something. In an infinitely surer voice than before, “you’re not leaving,” and with a last chaste kiss Wilson was left alone with the mess that was his clothing and his arousal.
~
A while later and after many hours of pleading with Cuddy House lay on the couch in Wilson’s office with said doctor, half naked and very satisfied. “This job and this stupid screwed-up friendship…” Wilson recalled his earlier words. “They matter,” House, whispered back, affirming his own words from their fight, “they matter.”

End