Standard Disclaimer
wanderingwidget has, is, and does not plan in the future to make any money on any of the fics here archived. They were written and are provided for pure entertainment purposes.
Author: wanderingwidget
Pairing: House/Wilson
Rating: R(sex)
Warnings: angst, angst, introspective James, and more angst
Summary: Some things just can’t be put back together.
Author's Notes: Unbeta'd, but spellchecked, I don't like the ending, and if any of you lot have any pearls of wisdom to impart please feel welcome to, because it ain't coming out from behind the flock until I think it's ready. And now for laundry and more paper whining.
James remembered what Greg was like before. Before the infarction, before Stacy, before he’d hit critical mass and exploded into a thousand razor-edged little fragments of the man he used to be. Every once in a while James liked to pretend that he could put him back together, could sweep up the pieces of Greg House and somehow, with care and tweezers and crazy glue, reform him. But it was only every once in a while, because James wasn’t naïve enough to think that Greg would let him - would let anyone else - close enough to try. It was a fancy, a daydream, something James pulled out to make himself feel better when Greg started shutting him out again.
Greg was shutting him out again. It was in every line of his body: the stiffness of his shoulders, the clenched jaw, the way his eyes danced from the space over James’ right shoulder to the desk to the space over his left shoulder. It was like rereading the last scene in a book, the one where the hero throws away his chance to be happy, and James couldn’t help wanting the words to change themselves, to rewrite the ending.
“Don’t do this.”
“Do what, it’s five, I’m outta here.” Greg waggled his eyebrows and shoved his gameboy into his bag with a little more force than necessary. Stiff, jerky movements. “Pizza and Pamela wait for no man.”
James looked away, rubbed at the back of his neck. “Damn it Greg it wasn’t your fault.”
Greg froze, not for long, maybe just for a tenth of a second. “I know that.”
“But you don’t believe it.”
He stared down into the contents of his bag, giving James a lovely view of the thinning spot on the top of his head. “I don’t need you to psychoanalyze me Wilson.”
“So, what, your answer is to go home and try to pickle your liver? Like that’s healthy.”
Greg’s eyes, when he looked up, weren’t angry like James had expected. “What do you want me to do?”
The emptiness in Greg’s eyes wasn’t cutting, gut wrenching, or glittering. It was suffocating - soft - like being wrapped in a giant baby blanket. More fucking metaphors. “Come home with me.”
“Won’t the little demon object?”
“She’s staying with her sister in Vermont.”
“I didn’t know she had a sister in Vermont.”
“Now you do.”
They stared at each other for a long second, Greg’s eyes still suffocating and James’ probably telegraphing too much as usual.
“Okay.” Greg said.
The drive home was far from silent but - between James trying to figure out what to do, and Greg’s running commentary on every radio station he could find - it was tenser than his last dinner with Julie. Things had been so much simpler before. Before the infarction, before Stacy, before Erica (his second wife). James hadn’t appreciated how simple they were until they’d changed.
If Greg won, proved to the world that he was - in fact - the genius he claimed to be, snatched yet another life out of the animatronic jaws of death, then he wanted to have sex. Sex for Greg - James had discovered - tended to include dinner and tended to take all night. The romantic in James would call it ‘making love,’ except the Greg in James had beaten the romantic with a metal baseball bat and left it bleeding and broken in a back alley.
Greg won more than he lost, that was a given, but he lost his share too. And when Greg lost all he wanted was to get fucked up and get fucked, and he didn’t seem to care who did the fucking. They’d never had an exclusive relationship, not even between Anne and Erica, before Julie. James had had his girlfriends and Greg… James hadn’t thought much about what Greg did. They didn’t live together, but James had the key to Greg’s place, and he hadn’t thought anything about using it that morning.
He hadn’t expected to find Greg passed out in bed with another man.
But that had been a long time ago. Before Julie, before Stacy, before their fucked up friendship had evolved into its current incarnation of Don’t Ask, Don’t Ask.
“What the hell are you doing?” Greg demanded when, just inside the front door, James grabbed him and pulled him into a hard kiss.
“What do you think?” He asked.
“Let go of me Wilson.”
He didn’t let go. “Is that what you really want.”
Another one of those too soft, suffocating looks. Another not-silence, James’ pulse beating in his ears and Greg’s breath in his mouth. “No.” Greg said.
“Good.” Because he hadn’t been about to stop. James kissed him again, hard and sharp, backed him into the wall and held him there as Greg kissed back, hard and sharp. As if hard and sharp was the only way they could let themselves have this.
James found himself stumbling over the sharp notes, fingers catching on the edges he didn’t remember, the edges that hadn’t been there before. But they still fit together like poetry, his hands tracing couplets down Greg’s sides, lips pressing punctuation to the hollow of his throat. He pushed and Greg pulled and when Greg came it was with the same sound James remembered: a soft sigh with just a hint of something that might have been a question, might have been a moan.
Afterwards, lying next to Greg in a bed that still smelled of his wife’s shampoo, James cast about in his mind, searching for some sliver of guilt, but all he could find was a kind of tired contentedness. The aftereffect of a good orgasm.
Beside him Greg shifted, eyes glittering in the half-light. “If I fall asleep here am I going to wake up with the kitchen shears at my balls?”
James barked out a laugh. “I hope not.” He said. Because if that happened it would only be after Julie had finished with him.
“Very reassuring Dr. Wilson.” Greg said, then he pushed himself up. “Where the hell are my pants?”
“Leaving so soon?”
Greg snorted. “I like my balls just where they are thank you.” He spotted his pants on the floor by the bed and started looking for his shirt and underwear.
James didn‘t want him to go. “Julie won’t be back tonight.”
“I know.” Greg refused to look at him, concentrating instead on pulling his pants up.
“Then stay.” James said. He reached out, the tips of his fingers trailing down Greg’s back. He should have known better. After all, tonight was a fucking night.
Greg shrugged into his t-shirt without looking at him. “See you tomorrow.”
James resisted the urge to groan, to yell, things never changed with Greg. That was the point, after all, of not being in a relationship with him. Wasn’t it?
THE END
