Chapter Text
Wilson didn’t remember falling asleep on the couch. He barely remembered using his spare key to unlock House’s apartment, stumbling in and collapsing onto the couch, pressing his eyes closed against the stress of his day. He was thirty-five and thrice-divorced. He’d lost a patient today and had to tell another that their treatment wasn’t working. He’d got into an argument with a young girl’s mother over natural medicine as an apparent cure for cancer. He was fighting with House over fucking chores, of all things.
He must have passed out almost instantly upon coming home, and when he woke up, he wasn’t exactly sure what had disturbed his sleep. A light turning off, maybe? His palm was draped loosely over his eyes, which normally happened when he’d fallen asleep with the overhead light still on. He didn’t have the energy to move.
Then he heard the front door shut, gentler than normal, and the familiar sound of House walking; two steps, one heavy, punctuated with the light tap of his cane against the wooden floors. He must’ve turned off the light when he noticed Wilson on the couch. How uncharacteristically empathetic of him.
Wilson was genuinely exhausted, almost asleep again already. He was coming in and out of consciousness, not bothered to open his eyes and make conversation with his erratic friend, who he was also currently mad at. He didn’t really remember why.
His eyes flicked open under his palm when he felt the couch cushions dip under his torso. He closed them again, a little curious, but mostly too tired to care. The curiosity began to outweigh the sleep deprivation when surprisingly gentle hands found Wilson’s collar. For a moment, the oncologist couldn’t decipher the sensation, but then it clicked; House was slowly loosening his tie, which had been a tight, uncomfortable pressure around his throat that he’d barely registered. The tie was pulled away, surely dropped on the floor, and House’s fingers deftly undid Wilson’s top two buttons. The relief was surprising; Wilson hadn’t even noticed how much the tightness against his throat was bothering him. He didn’t know how House knew.
Wilson tried to ignore the shiver that ran down his spine at the feeling of House’s fingers flitting around his neck. He’d had dreams that started a bit like this; lying back on the couch as House unbuttoned his shirt. Although in those dreams, he never stopped at two buttons. And House was never gentle about it, either.
Then there was more movement on the couch, and more shuffling steps; House without his cane now, moving slowly between rooms. Wilson drifted back to sleep again, awoken to find his head being lifted with surprising care by a large, firm hand. When it was lowered, the slightly abrasive couch material had been traded for a pillow, soft and cool and clean. He sighed at the comfort of it. A blanket was draped over his body, and the couch cushions dipped again as House sat back down. Strange.
Wilson was torn. He’d been utterly exhausted, bone-tired and desperate for some sleep. He still was, and now he had a pillow and a blanket and no constricting necktie. However, he also had his best friend sitting less than a foot away, behaving even weirder than usual. Wilson’s eyes opened a slither, adjusting to the darkness. His hand had slid off his face when House had raised his head, but it didn’t matter. The diagnostician wasn’t looking at him; House was leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees, staring across the room at nothing in particular, deep in thought. Whatever he was thinking about was creasing the skin between his eyebrows and turning his lips down at the corners. Wilson hated it when he got like this; House wasn’t solving a problem now, he was running over useless things in his mind, like if he thought long enough, all the doubt or regret or self-hatred running through his mind would either go away or finally stop bothering him.
“Bad day?” Wilson asked, his voice abrupt and too loud in the darkness. House almost jumped, twitching as he turned his head to look down at Wilson.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “You could say that.” He ran a tired hand down his face, pausing to rub his eyes. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
It was the closest thing to an apology as House ever gave. Wilson smiled. “You didn’t,” he lied. “Thank you, by the way, for…” He trailed off, unsure how to handle this strange situation. He rarely thanked House for anything. Those trivial expressions of gratitude and remorse just weren’t staples of their friendship, and House rarely did anything that warranted thanks.
House waved away Wilson’s thank you dismissively. “You know how many idiots die each year because their ugly ties wrap around their necks while they’re sleeping? Too many. And God, wouldn’t it be an embarrassing way to go, taken out by that specific tie. It’s pink, Wilson.”
House pointedly didn’t mention the pillow. Or the blanket. Or the out-of-character tenderness he’d accidentally revealed. God forbid someone find out he had feelings, after all.
“It’s not pink, it’s maroon.” Wilson could bury the big things, too. He was accustomed to it, even. He could let House’s kindness be an unacknowledged secret, the way he always did when House slipped up and revealed he cared.
House snorted. “That is not maroon.”
Wilson smiled in the darkness at their familiar banter, pleasantly noting that House’s pinched expression had faded slightly. “You wanna talk about it?” he asked suddenly, emboldened by the darkness and by the unexpected care House had already shown him tonight, albeit accidentally. “Your bad day?”
House frowned. “Surgery went badly,” he admitted. “I made a judgement call, and… it wasn’t wrong, I had the right diagnosis, but I took a risk to prove it, and, well, let’s just say the patient didn’t take kindly to our scalpels. She had a clotting disorder. One of the doctors hit something, she lost a lot of blood. I don’t know if she’ll pull through.”
Wilson winced. House’s current patient was only young. “Did you know?”
House fixed him with a scathing look. “You know, I love sending teenage patients with clotting disorders into invasive surgeries with no precautions. It’s a hobby of mine. No, of course I didn’t know. There was nothing in the girl’s history, and none of our tests indicated a clotting problem. Of course, we didn’t run the right tests because there were no symptoms of a blood problem.” He ran one of his hands over his face. “Cuddy warned me not to do the surgery, too,” he lamented. “If that girl dies, then she’ll hold it over my head and never let me do anything exciting again.”
Wilson frowned. He knew House was worried about his patient, for reasons separate to Cuddy and his freedom to commit medical malpractice. “You couldn’t have known.”
“Oh, don’t give me that rubbish, Wilson. I’m a doctor with a team of doctors and this was an easily diagnosable, easily testable medical problem that had an easy solution. Something to help her blood coagulate before the surgery probably would’ve been enough, for God’s sake.”
Wilson sighed, resting a hand on House’s forearm in a rare show of physical comfort. House looked mildly surprised, but Wilson maintained the contact. House had removed his tie, for God’s sake, he could hardly baulk at a friendly touch.
“You couldn’t have known,” Wilson repeated. House didn’t respond for a minute, and they let the silence hang there, thick and heavy but not at all unpleasant. Wilson absently rubbed House’s arm with his thumb. Neither of them addressed it.
“Wanna watch Monster Trucks and have a beer?” House asked, changing the subject with a defeated kind of resignation.
“It’s past one,” sighed Wilson, already starting to sit up.
“Don’t worry, I have TiVo,” drawled House, as if that was the source of Wilson’s concerns.
So they sat, side by side, on the couch. Neither of them bothered to trek all the way to the kitchen, an excessive distance of five metres, to fetch beer. They turned the television volume down as low as it could go, which was still loud enough to hear in the silence.
Wilson maybe watched one truck complete one jump before he was out cold.