Chapter Text
“Do you want to get dinner tonight, before the meeting?” Cameron asks. Chase and Foreman both sigh and shrug and generally agree, shuffling papers and adjusting pagers on their way out of the office. They’re heading to the peds unit to shake down a dad for more details about his wife’s untimely death. Does that have anything to do with why the son is suddenly swollen like a balloon and can’t stop shivering? Probably not, but it’ll be fun to watch.
“I don’t have anything better to do,” Foreman says. He’s been wearing a new cologne lately, and House is 99.9% sure he’s started moisturizing with some kind of girly new lotion, so that’s probably a lie. Foreman probably does have something–or someone–better to do, but he’s not willing to tell the team just yet. Interesting, but not interesting enough to hold House’s attention for long.
“House, you in?” Cameron asks, turning the full force of her long eyelashes and pouty look onto House.
“Not the first time a young lady has asked me that,” he says without really thinking about it, and then kicks himself. He could have had a way more lewd comment at the ready if he’d been paying more attention, but he’s still half-wondering about Foreman’s new secret lady love. There’s a new labor and delivery nurse that seems his type.
Cameron only rolls her eyes and holds open the door for Chase and Foreman to slip through. “Dinner before the meeting? We can try the bar that just opened around the corner. Some of the cardiac nurses were raving about it.”
“What meeting are you assuming I’m going to?” House asks. He leans a little too close to Foreman when they round a corner, trying to look for hickeys. Nothing.
“The diversity and inclusion meeting?” Chase offers, and laughs at House’s blank look. “Of course you forgot. Why would you want to learn about diversity and inclusion?”
“Um, excuse me, I know plenty about diversity and inclusion. I work with a woman, a black guy, and a foreigner every day. That ticks like, all the boxes. Plus, Wilson’s definitely metrosexual, and I’ve never even hate crimed him, not once,” House says.
Foreman stops to push the button on the elevator, and smiles apologetically in advance at the little old couple that’s inside. “I’m pretty sure most of what you guys do to each other would count as a hate crime.”
“He likes it,” House says dismissively. “Anyway, what time’s the meeting? I’m sure I could swing by.”
“You’re not invited,” Cuddy says firmly, later, when House is trying to hobble past her as fast as he can on his way into what he’s sure is going to be the most fun forty five minutes of his life. The meeting is in one of the huge lecture halls that’s usually used for crowds of miserable med students, but today, it’s packed full of doctors and nurses here to get a professional development credit. A captive audience.
“What? But I want to learn!” House whines, quickly fumbling with the zipper on his jacket. If she sees his shirt now, it’ll ruin the fun he’s going to have later.
“No you don’t,” Cuddy says. “You wouldn’t know what to do with a pronoun if it bit you in the ass.”
“That’s extremely hurtful, Miss She/Her McBigtit*.”
“That’s Doctor She/Her McBigtit* to you, and are you trying to prove me right?” With a sigh, Cuddy leans closer, and House makes sure to leer. She rolls her eyes at him and lowers her voice. “Look, I just want this meeting to go smoothly. We both know it’s going to be boring and mostly useless, but it’s good publicity. I don’t need you to ruin this for us.”
“So sponsor a float in the pride parade! Nobody in that room is suddenly gonna have a lightbulb moment and stop being hom*ophobic! Either they’re already gung-ho for the gays, or they’re gonna be determined not to change their minds.”
“Which is why you’re here to make things worse for everyone?”
“You say worse, I say more interesting,” he says, and tries to break away from her while she’s busy pinching the bridge of her nose. Unfortunately, gimp legs tend to make fleeing quickly a moot point, because Cuddy is easily able to grab onto the sleeve of his jacket and put an end to his daring escape. House pouts at her. She’s unmoved.
“I can see your browsing history when you use a work computer, you know. Which shirt did you end up with?”
A slow grin spreads across House’s face, and he unzips his jacket to reveal the neon pink monstrosity that says, in trans pride flag colors, Equal Opportunity puss* Eater.
Cuddy groans. “Go home, House. People are going to think you’re transphobic, and I’m not going to save your ass when the pitchforks and torches come out.”
“Excuse you, I’m the least transphobic person I’ve ever met. Chicks with dicks are like the best of both worlds! And don’t even get me started on dudes with boobs!”
Cuddy shushes him desperately, but a few passers-by stop to throw dirty looks their way. House stifles a laugh, and Cuddy whacks him on the arm. He only grins at her in response.
“I’m serious,” Cuddy hisses. House can sense that he’s got her on the ropes, based on the way he can feel her nails digging in where she’s still gripping the sleeve of his jacket. Her nostrils are flaring in the way they usually do before she starts using clinic hours as bargaining chips.
“Hi serious, I’m an ally,” he says, batting his baby blues. The vein in Cuddy’s neck starts to throb. It’s hot, in a weird, dominatrix slash hot for teacher kind of way.
“Why are you doing this,” she demands.
“Because it’s fun! Oh, and because I think performative activism is stupid. There’s plenty of racists and misogynists and hom*ophobes and transphobes on staff, and this isn’t going to do anything for them!” House makes sure to pitch his voice up so that the gaggle of donors walking past can hear him. He gets a few scandalized looks and a frantic shushing noise from Cuddy as a reward.
“You keep this up, I’m going to assume you’re one of them,” she tells him.
“Oh, come on. I already told you I love trans people!”
“You do? Name one.” The response is childish, and it’s clear that she knows it, but House is always down for some childish antics. He sticks his tongue out at her, expecting another scolding, but Cuddy only raises her eyebrow and waits.
“Laverne Cox,” House says. “Beautiful woman. Excellent actress. Perfect–”
“Anyone you know personally? And aren’t regularly horrible to?” Cuddy asks sweetly. Oh, she’s getting on his nerves now.
“Okay, you name a trans person you know and aren’t horrible to!” he fires back. It’s immature, but she does that to him.
Cuddy blinks, confused. “I’m not the one who’s always horrible to Wilson.”
The world shifts on its axis a little bit, and all House can say is, “Wilson?”
A brief look of horror flashes across Cuddy’s face before she quickly schools it into boredom, but the damage is done. House is reeling, the rug ripped out from under him, his metaphorical cane snapped at the base just like that time Wilson filed it down. Wilson, who is…? No, he’d have mentioned it. Wouldn’t he? Didn’t he trust House?
House throws that thought in the garbage. He knows that answer.
“Who said anything about Wilson?” Cuddy asks, the brilliant little actress. “I have to go moderate the event. Please take your shirt and go home.”
“Hold on, you can’t just tell me Wilson has a secret vagin* and run away!” House insists.
“I guess you’ll never know,” Cuddy says around a smile, and click-clicks her way across the marble floor too fast for him to follow. Instead, he stands there stupidly, watching her perky ass leave, feeling like he’s somehow the only one missing out on the punchline of a cosmic joke. Because it’s a joke, right?
It’s gotta be a joke. No way Wilson would keep something that big from House.
Right?
Well, only one way to find out.
House has to get Wilson naked.
(“He didn’t already know?” Wilson laughs, his voice tinny through the phone. Cuddy can feel her heart pounding out of her chest, but he’s being remarkably calm for a man who was just accidentally outed, so maybe it’s alright.
“I’m so, so sorry, James,” she says, pacing back and forth in her office. She’s going to wear a hole in the carpet one of these days, and it’s going to be House-and-Wilson’s fault.
“No, don’t be! This is going to drive him insane! Oh my god, this is going to be so fun!”
“You’re deranged,” Cuddy says. Wilson just cackles and hangs up.)
So. House has known for the past few years that he would absolutely not turn down the opportunity to get Wilson in the sack, but now that’s beside the point. Now, it’s not just some carnal attraction to his best friend and his soft hands and long eyelashes and high cheekbones and twisted-up sense of ethics. No, now it’s a puzzle, and House loves a puzzle.
He also loves the way Wilson’s ass looks in this particular pair of slacks, which is a fun bonus to all the crotch staring he’s been doing today.
“Are you doing okay? You and Wilson’s tie have been having quite the staring contest,” Cameron says when she finds him leaning against the wall, half hidden behind a fake ficus, watching Wilson laugh with some of the oncology nurses and run a hand through his perfectly tousled hair. House, an old expert at ignoring how badly he wants to ruin that hair, refocuses on trying to develop x-ray vision and peer past Wilson’s fly.
“Not his tie,” he says. Cameron nods, as if that explains anything.
“Okay. Well, our patient is seizing,” she tells him.
“And you’re here telling me instead of making him stop seizing?” House demands.
Cameron only rolls her eyes. “Yeah, totally. Foreman and Chase are standing by, waiting for you to tell them to make the seizures stop.”
“Good call,” House says. He breaks eye contact with Wilson’s pants to give Cameron a wink. “Wouldn’t want them to screw anything up without us.”
When House looks back, Wilson is gone, so he sighs and pushes himself off the wall. He uses his cane to motion for Cameron to lead the way to the seizing kid, who is way less interesting than Operation Get Wilson Naked.
“Is there a reason the entire contents of my desk have been replaced with tampons?” Wilson asks the next morning. He’s tapping his foot impatiently and the muscle in his jaw is jumping the way it always does when House is causing a spike in blood pressure. Wilson’s pretty brown eyes follow the trajectory of the tennis ball that House is tossing around. His arms are crossed over his chest, which sucks, because it means House can’t purposefully ogle. He’d given up on trying to scope Wilson’s dubious genitalia through the slacks yesterday, which is probably a good thing, considering Wilson is currently wearing a pair of boring gray ones that do nothing for his figure.
“Never know when they might come in handy,” House says.
“Great, now I’m prepared for nosebleeds and bullet wounds. Where is my stuff?”
“Dunno, ask the tampon fairy,” House replies. “Hey, would cancer cause a kid to swell up, shiver, and then seize?”
“If it was in the brain, maybe. Where did the tampon fairy put my stuff?”
“Let’s go check my kid’s brain.”
House leverages himself out of his desk chair, reaching for his cane, but he’s too busy trying to get a good look at Wilson’s chest to realize he’s overbalancing. The hand grabbing for the cane closes around nothing, and House has a split second to mentally swear at himself before he’s seeing the carpet rush up way faster than he wants it to.
Before he can even twist to try and land on the good leg, there are strong, soft hands lifting him up. House looks up and finds himself eye to eye with Wilson, who has that worried little crease between his eyebrows that House always wants to smooth away with his thumb. They both exhale, their breath mingling, and Wilson grunts a little as he works to get them both back standing upright.
“You okay?” Wilson asks, pressing the cane into House’s hand.
House blinks, wrapping his fingers around the cool handle as an idea forms. “Peachy. Just got really lightheaded there for a second.”
Wilson frowns, reaching out to put a hand on House’s shoulder, and that’s when House makes his move. Like a blonde woman in a bodice ripper, he swoons right into Wilson’s chest, going almost completely limp in Wilson’s arms.
“House!” Wilson half-yells, the word rumbling through the sturdy chest that’s pressed to House’s cheek.
House hums, half to keep up the lightheadedness ruse, half at the feeling of being cradled so tightly. He shakes himself and tries to get back to his feet, but Wilson has other ideas, and House is lowered gently into his desk chair. Warm fingers press to his neck to take his pulse.
“Let me get you some water,” Wilson says, frown still in place as he hustles down the hall to the staff lounge.
House watches him go, mulling it over. Flat, solid chest. Huh.
House doesn’t make any progress for the next few days. Well, he makes medical progress. It turns out their patient has a brain tumor and an autoimmune disease, which wraps up nicely without too much peril. Wilson sticks around to consult on getting the kid treatment for the tumor, but House can’t figure much else out beyond the fact that he’s rocking a flat chest and that none of his pants are tight enough to see any bulge, or lack thereof.
The tampons find their way into House’s desk, so he spends an afternoon camped out on the roof, soaking them in maple syrup stolen from the cafeteria and dropping them onto passersby.
When he gets bored with that, he goes back to brainstorming Operation Get Wilson Naked. Clearly, taking the gentle approach isn’t going to work. He hasn’t learned anything from any of his surveillance, and the one time he’d tried getting some nurses to gossip, he’d gotten a bedpan dropped onto his shoes, so that’s out. He tries hacking into Wilson’s medical records to look for hormone prescriptions, but Wilson must get his meds under a fake name, because the only thing in there is an antibiotic from almost twenty years ago.
So the hands off approach isn’t going to work. That’s fine. House is really, really okay with the hands-on version of investigation.
He plans to make his move that weekend. He’s lured Wilson into coming over with promises of baseball, takeout, and cheap beer, and when Friday night rolls around, Wilson collapses onto the couch with a deep, heartfelt sigh.
“You know, I almost miss this couch,” he muses, tipping his beer back in a way that makes House’s gaze snap to the smooth column of his throat. House watches Wilson’s throat bob and feels his mouth go a little bit dry, so he fixes the situation with a long pull of his own drink.
“No, you don’t,” House says.
“No, I don’t,” Wilson agrees.
They’re halfway through the game, tired and loose-limbed, when House puts his plan into action. He scoots closer under the guise of reaching for the remote to fiddle with the volume, but settles back into the couch just that little bit closer to Wilson. During the next commercial break, he reaches across the coffee table to steal a drink from Wilson’s bottle, and ends up even closer. During the eighth inning, he rests a hand on Wilson’s knee.
Wilson, who had been completely ignorant to House’s slow creep into his personal space, stiffens, but, well. In for a penny, in for a pound.
“We should have sex,” House says.
Wilson sputters. “We should what?”
House bats his eyelashes and pouts, decidedly ignoring the way his stomach is twisting itself into knots. “C’mon, don’t tell me you don’t want to. I see the way you look at me, Jimmy.”
“Don’t call me that. And I do not look at you,” Wilson insists, but House isn’t blind to the way his hand is still resting on Wilson’s knee, and the way Wilson seems content to let it. A small smile starts at the corners of House’s lips, but he can’t give up the game yet. He can’t let Wilson know he’s got him right where he wants him.
“Oh, you totally do. It’s okay, though, I look at you too,” House tells him, shifting his hand just an inch or so higher. Wilson’s breath kicks up, his cheeks going an adorable shade of red. His pupils are wide and the light of the television sparkles in them, baseball announcer long forgotten.
“You do not,” Wilson protests weakly.
“Methinks the oncologist doth protest too much,” House says, and leans in.
It’s weird. He knows Wilson, and he likes Wilson, and sometimes when he’s alone at night and the throbbing in thigh is keeping him awake he can even admit that he like-likes Wilson. He’s spent tons of time fantasizing about kissing him, usually when he’s supposed to be listening to Wilson talk about tumor suppressors or oncogenes. But none of that had given him any ideas as to what it would actually be like.
It’s slow, to start. Wilson completely freezes, lips dry and immobile against House’s, but House is nothing if not persistent. He moves his lips slightly, coaxing, and Wilson gradually unthaws and comes to life.
Wilson is a good kisser. He’d have to be, to have slept his way through several hospital departments, both within and outside the bounds of holy matrimony. That’s a fact that House has had filed away in the box of Wilson Facts in his brain for years. He’s spent many a night mentally going over the files in that box, pulling folders out one by one and reading every detail until he’s got it memorized the same way he knows the symptoms of yellow fever, the causes of encephalopathy.
But there’s no amount of fantasizing in the world that could have possibly prepared House for how this feels.
Wilson’s mouth is moving in a way House had no idea it knew how to. It’s almost filthy, the way Wilson sucks and bites at House’s lips, and House can’t hold back a small gasp when Wilson lets out a breathy little moan, bitten off and quiet.
Wilson’s hands are fisted in the back of House’s t-shirt, but the angle is awkward, twisted and sideways. House reaches behind himself to take hold of Wilson’s wrists and tug, leaning himself backwards and trying to pull Wilson with him.
“Your leg–”
“Is going to be a lot happier when I’m not twisting sideways to make out with you,” House finishes for him, tugging again. Wilson gives him a grin, lips red and wet, and moves to settle himself onto House’s lap.
The weight does hurt a little, actually, but that’s negligible in light of the rest of this entire situation. It’s like every fantasy and nasty dream House has ever had rolled into one, sitting here on his couch in his dark living room, Wilson on his lap, backlit only by the light of the TV. Wilson tastes like beer and Chinese food and he smells like expensive cologne, which should be a gross combination, but House finds himself leaning in like he can’t get enough.
“You have no idea how much I’ve thought about–”
Wilson doesn’t finish his sentence, breaking off into a surprised moan when House slides a hand all the way up his thigh. Wilson leans into the pressure where House cups him, and–
“A-ha! Cuddy wasn’t lying!” House says triumphantly.
Wilson blinks, and the shattering of his expression sears itself into House’s mind. Wilson stands quickly, taking a step back, leaving House reaching for him and grabbing onto air.
Wilson’s face is unreadable, shut down and dangerously blank. “So that’s why you’re doing this. You’re just trying to figure me out.”
“Which I just did. So come back here so we can get to the good part,” House says without thinking. All the blood in his body is somewhere other than his brain, right now.
“You’re disgusting,” Wilson says darkly. “To think I actually thought…”
Wilson grabs for his wallet where it’s sitting on the table, and House suddenly realizes the severity of the situation. He has to do something, and fast, before Wilson walks out the door and maybe never comes back. Even House realizes that this is a situation that can go very, very wrong.
“Hey!” he tries, but Wilson is ignoring him. “Wilson!”
“f*ck you, House,” Wilson says tiredly.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” House shouts.
Wilson blows out a sigh, yanking at a fistful of his hair. House is jealous. It should be him, ruining that hair. He wants nothing more than to go back to a few minutes ago, when Wilson was warm and heavy and perfect on his lap.
“Okay. I’m trans. And I’m a little bit in love with you. Are you happy now? Is that what you wanted?” Wilson asks. His voice is small, his shoulders hunched. House’s heart is pounding in his chest. His cane is across the room but he doesn’t care; House shoves himself to his feet and ignores the screaming muscle in his thigh as he grabs two handfuls of Wilson’s shirt and pulls.
They topple to the couch, Wilson landing heavily on House, who has to fight a little bit to keep the other man from immediately getting back up.
“Let me go,” Wilson demands, struggling, but House holds on tight.
“Not until you listen to me,” he says.
“No! I don’t owe you anything!”
“I’m not doing this just to find out what’s in your pants!” House shouts. Wilson stops struggling, pulling back to look at House incredulously. House shrugs. “I mean, that’s a fun side effect, but mostly? I really, really want to do this.”
Wilson’s jaw goes a little slack, his eyes searching. “You’re serious.”
“No, I’m Greg,” House says, and finally manages to snag a hand in Wilson’s hair.
They meet in another sloppy kiss, Wilson melting back against House’s chest, breathing heavily into House’s mouth. House savors it.
Wilson pulls back. “You seriously don’t care one way or another. You’re not disappointed, and you’re not a chaser.”
“It’s just you,” House says simply.
Wilson’s grin is blinding.
