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House’s hands come down hard on Wilson’s hips, grabbing on as though he’s lost his balance.
“Woah, House, are you alright?” Wilson startles at the unexpected touch, the weight and warmth that crashes into him, and he almost drops the chopsticks held loose between his fingers. He swallows his surprise and looks over his shoulder, prepared to find that House’s leg has collapsed out from under him, or that he’s left his cane on the other side of the apartment again.
Instead, House’s fingers hook beneath Wilson’s belt, turn him around so they stand eye-to-eye. Wilson’s heart flutters at the darkness—no, hunger —he finds in their usually icy depths. The gaze is sharp and aware, not muted by the Gaussian blur of Vicodin or liquor. Tonight, it seems, House’s actions are as lucid as they are intentional.
Wilson almost balks as he realizes this is an unfamiliar animal in front of him, but there’s nowhere to run. The small of his back presses against the countertop now, head tilted back towards the cupboard, chopsticks rocking against the bowl where he’s dropped them. House doesn’t smile, doesn’t speak, but he doesn't need to. Wilson imagines the fangs of primal need tucked behind those soft, rose-petal lips. He has stared at those lips so many nights before, but now they come closer than he’s ever dared to dream, drawn tight in concentration.
Even without a word between them, Wilson knows what House wants. He knows even before House’s fingers are undoing the buttons at his neck, exposing the soft skin of his chest to the kitchen lights. He knows even before his own hand is on House’s wrist, guiding him to the next button instead of stopping him.
God knows Wilson wants it too.
But does he want it like this? In the middle of the kitchen, unceremoniously beside lukewarm takeout and chipped porcelain dishes, with hands that are ravenous instead of tender? Is this what he-
He doesn’t give himself the chance to think about it. He overthinks everything, always, mind churning with a thousand gears and fears that never stop. He can’t let that ruin this, whatever this might be.
Maybe it’s better like this says the angel taking flight from his shoulder, maybe this is the only chance you’ll have . Inhibition leaves him next, bolting like a startled deer. Neither his conscience nor his better judgment remain to stop him.
Desire runs through Wilson’s veins as acid. It burns him from the inside out, and the pain from each heartbeat drowns out the sensation of a yearning he refuses to fully feel, not like this, not yet. But he lets himself feel House’s hands, calloused where they grip his cane, but soft across his fingertips. He’s imagined the sensation of those hands ghosting over his skin a thousand times, no, ten thousand times, countless nights where he wanted nothing more in the world than to surrender beneath House’s touch.
Words find him as House finds his belt buckle. Wilson can see House leaning to one side, struggling to stay upright, his left hand tight on Wilson’s shoulder just as tightly as his right is battling the leather around Wilson’s waist. There’s little chance that they can remain standing like this for much longer. Wilson is relieved for the excuse to escape the fluorescent overhead lights, relieved that House’s tragedy gives him the chance to offer something softer than this.
“Bedroom,” Wilson gasps out, the word almost dying in his throat. Something like shame is choking him. He doesn’t know if it’s the shame of desire, the shame of the fact that he hasn’t refused, or the shame that he is melting into House’s hands like he’s always belonged there.
To Wilson’s surprise, the animal of lust that had taken over House’s body doesn’t protest. Instead, House stays docile long enough for Wilson to guide his hand around House’s waist, support him as they stumble towards the bedroom.
They collapse like a landslide into a half-made bed. Time slows down, then it speeds up, and Wilson disappears into sensation as fluidly as wax over a warm flame. They pull fabric from each other’s skin, baring themselves to the night air, Wilson’s soul as naked as his flesh. He wants to look House in his eyes, see something flicker there besides the hunger, but House won’t look at him. House is busy devouring Wilson whole.
Wilson lets himself be devoured. His hunger could have been satiated by House’s touch alone, but now he is suspended in the awe of transcendence. Small gasps and groans escape his lips in spite of himself, and he grapples to find purchase on anything, something. He reaches for a fistful of sheets, then a palm against House’s greying hair, cheek stubble sharp against his wrist.
They fall into each other without their lips ever meeting. As hands explore and hunt and grasp and stroke, grabbing at hips and at thighs and at the curvature of the maze of their legs, Wilson comes across a gnarled knot of scar tissue. For the first time House makes a sound that’s something other than labored breathing. A gasp, sharp as a knife but soft as the beat of a hummingbird’s wings, gone as soon as it came.
Wilson moves his hand away as though he’s been burned, but he’s already added that canyon of scarred flesh to the map of House’s body he’s been painting in his mind. Who knows when—if ever—he will be so fortunate to glance upon it again? Or if he will ever be so fortunate as to finally press his lips to House's own? There's certainly nothing so tender happening here, however deeply Wilson craves it.
Wilson’s body is parchment and House is a poet. Searching fingers deposit blots of pitch-passion ink while shudders shatter stanzas. A muse throbs white-hot between a tangle of legs and verses and limbs. The stutter of iambic pentameter is fractured only by Wilson’s joyous, mournful, blasphemous keening.
Then there’s a pause. The eye of the hurricane settles over the bed and House
stops
, he waits, he looks at Wilson for a moment. He pulls back and Wilson is left wanting, but their eyes have met again, they can't lie to each other about where they are and what they've done.
If they haven’t already tipped over the point of no return, it’s here now, a cavernous precipice. Wilson always thought he’d be afraid of heights, but he’s ready to jump now, headfirst into the open maw in front of him. He wants it, needs it, the skin on sin on skin, the abandon of better judgment and the consummation of this unlikely worship.
The only discomfort now is that House is asking. House is actually asking, waiting for Wilson’s affirmation, not simply taking and hoping everything works out later. House never asks for permission, and never begs for forgiveness. But now he’s waiting on Wilson, waiting for a confirmation that he can proceed, that this is something they are doing together . That it’s okay, in some small way, for this passing moment. That Wilson wants this too.
Wilson isn’t even sure if the word please has fully left his lips before House grabs him again.
What happens next is violent in the way a summer hailstorm is violent. It’s the most natural, terrifying, and beautiful cracking of the sky that Wilson has ever seen. It’s as though all of the seasons have conspired to shake the earth until it quakes in wonder. Wilson revels in it, he lets his skin be battered by ice as the acute sensation turns to euphoria, preferring this punishing cold as opposed to the nothingness there had been before. As impersonal as the storm might be, Wilson chooses it, is swallowed by it willingly. He’s battered, thrown beneath the stones spit out by the sky, and he loves it.
And as the hail pours down, there’s a roaring thunderclap, and—
House pulls away and the storm dies with it. He’s winded, Wilson can hear his heavy breathing, see him clutch at his leg with white-knuckled fingers. Wilson’s own chest is heaving, his legs trembling, his core pulsing with heat and with a lingering shock of what he’s just done. Sweat drips, drips, drips salt tracks across his body. House’s sweat mixes with his own and Wilson is drunk on his smell. He wants to revel in it, but he knows what comes next.
House is going to run, and Wilson won't stop him.
Still, Wilson can’t help but steal a final glimpse at House’s lips as he stumbles from the bed, dreaming of the way the stubble would have felt grazing against his own chin. He imagines how House’s mouth would have felt hot against his neck, biting at the skin of his chest, before his own lips returned the favor.
Wilson knows that there’s no certainty he’ll ever have the chance again. This was transient, it was primal, it was spurred by something in House’s mind that the man would never bother to articulate. It was a fantasy made reality and it was both sweeter and more painful than Wilson could have ever conceived. He already wants it again, his skin longing for House’s against it.
They won’t speak of it again, Wilson is sure.
By the time Wilson can peel himself from off the sweat-soaked sheets and stagger back into his pants, the roar of House’s motorcycle is already echoing down the street.
xXxXxXx
House stands in Wilson’s kitchen, watching the other man spoon fried rice into a chipped bowl, humming a song beneath his breath as he does so. He’s not sure if Wilson knows that he fills the air with melodies wherever he goes, whether idly humming or with the smiles between his breaths. He’s not sure if Wilson knows that House always craves that song.
Every so often House catches a glimpse of Wilson’s lips, and he feels the familiar tug in his chest pulling him closer. He needs those lips, he needs them more than he needs air itself, but House is familiar with denying himself. He always denies himself when it comes to Wilson. It is better to indulge himself in the pills that rattle in his coat pocket or in the spirits in the cupboard instead of letting his hunger rip Wilson apart.
He won’t kiss Wilson, not tonight. Not ever. That is something that can’t be undone. And God, House will tear the hospital from its foundation, bloodying his bare hands, before he ever ruins Wilson. No matter how strong that yearning, House refuses to destroy the last good thing he has left.
So he gives in to the next best thing. It’s been a long time coming, and tonight, in Wilson’s kitchen, he sheds the shackles that have been holding him back. He’s sure he’ll die if he doesn’t.
He steps forward, cane abandoned at the door, lunging forward until his hands are firmly planted on Wilson’s gently swaying hips. Adrenaline surges and he spins Wilson around. He had long hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but the fire spreading through his chest gives him no other option, lest it consume him whole and leave nothing but ashes in its wake. And as his eyes meet Wilson's, he sees warmth reflected there alongside surprise. Not fear - relief floods House's veins - but surprise. That would be enough.
House swallows a thousand passions and a yearning that is stronger than the tide itself, and lets Wilson take him to the bedroom for a facsimile of the intimacy he truly craves. And as he leans on Wilson, staying steady with a reassuring grip around his waist, he knows what will transpire in that bed. He’ll rain a furious storm of hail across the budding garden of Wilson’s body, he’ll abandon the flowers he hopes to plant there and crush their petals instead. It’s the only way he knows how to love, for now.
And although he craves the chance to learn, the opportunity to meet Wilson where he waits, he doesn't know how not to be a storm. Not yet.