Chapter Text
"Wilson, would you bring me all the whores of Babylon if I asked you to?"
"Yes, master."
The underlings looked curiously around at each other. Thirteen said in a bemused whisper, "Wilson lost a bet."
"Yes! And he is now the slave of the diagnostics department for an entire week. I would offer you his sexual services as well, but that’s just for me."
Wilson rolled his eyes, and huffed "I need to go back to my office now, I have an appointment to keep with a woman who has stage 4 breast cancer."
"The slave will not speak! I also forbid you from putting your hands on your hips like that, it is impudent. "
Wilson left with his hands in the air, "you can whip me later, you promised this wouldn’t interfere with my job."
House shouted back "I’m going to hold you to that!"
Taub said suddenly, "actually there was only one whore of Babylon." House stared at him with menace. "Although she was more of a symbolic figure…" he trailed off.
"Not that I care, but why would Wilson even agree to such a stupid bet." Foreman said.
House replied simply, "he thought he was going to win."
House inevitably did not keep his promise about it not interfering with his work. After a day of House bursting in to demand tasks of his slave while Wilson was speaking to patients, and in the middle of physical exams, House insisted that Wilson come home with him, ‘because slaves can’t have their own apartments, especially ones that belonged to their dead girlfriends.’
The general word around the hospital was that House was making Wilson give him piggy back rides all around the hospital, which was absurd. It was only one time when House’s cane fell into a grate, and he carried him from the parking lot. Wilson had a feeling it was Thirteen who was spreading it as payback for not covering her clinic hours while House was on a tirade, making all the kids do the labs over and over again, 100 times. But it could also be Chase, he was just kind of bitchy sometimes.
Wilson went along with it all because at some point there was only so much you could do when it came to House. He was like a little kid, except with a credit card and a motorcycle license and doctor money to buy prostitutes with. It wouldn’t be so bad anyways, House would make him pay for a pizza, maybe a wrestling match, and he’d have to spend the night on a couch. Easy.
Or so he thought.
It did start out like that, except with Chinese food instead of pizza, and monster trucks instead of wrestling. Then House requested a massage. Fine, Wilson could handle a neck massa-“a leg message, my leg is killing me.”
He wasn’t going to make a big deal out of this. Ordinarily he would have said ‘no, massage your own damn leg.’ There were certain boundaries in a male friendship, you don’t sleep in the same bed as your male friend, you don’t get into the same shower as your male friend. And you don’t touch your male friend anywhere near their groin region.
He started low, toward the knee, as a safety precaution. It occurred to him that House would only let someone he was completely comfortable with see his bare thigh, let alone touch it. The thought strangely pleased him, even though it should have been a given after over 10 years of friendship, but nothing was a given with House.
"Do you eat snails?"
‘What, you mean like escargot? You know I hate French cooking,’ Wilson said, tentatively kneading the muscle.
House sighed, “you’re supposed to say ‘no, master.’”
"Do we really have to keep up this ridiculous charade, even when we’re at home."
“Do you eat oysters?”
Wilson caught on. “When I haven’t divorced them yet…master.” He had the Criterion edition of this on his shelf. “And no, I don’t think ‘eating snails’ is morally wrong, I’m not a bigot House.”
“First of all, don’t skip ahead, second of all it’s MASTER, not House."
“Wait a minute" Wilson said incredulously, “you want to be Laurence Olivier in this scenario?"
“Maybe. He’s better than bigot-y Tony Curtis. Except he was kind of stupid as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, I can’t believe anyone thought he was believable trying to ‘wuther’ Merle Oberon’s heights.”
“Tony Curtis was not ‘bigot-y’ in that scene”
“He may not have said he didn’t think eating snails was wrong but you could tell just by his ‘vibes.’ And now you’re going to run off with Spartacus, just like him.” House pouted.
“You mean Melody? House, just because I got a girlfriend doesn’t mean I’m going to ‘revolt against your Empire.’ I’m still your friend, and I don’t plan on getting married again any time soon.”
“I order you as my slave to break up with her.”
“You bet me that you could crawl through the vents to Cuddy’s office, to put a whoopee cushion on her chair, because you were worried I was going to stop hanging out with you? I suppose it’s a more direct approach than usual, you would usually just stalk us, and leave her threatening messages.”
“I did that too. And you should really be more impressed, I went from the third floor all the way into Cuddy’s bathroom. She did NOT ‘enjoy the go’ as the only great philosophers of our time, the Charmin bears, would say.’
“Okay you can stop massaging my leg now you’re starting to hurt it, like more than usual.’ Wilson had unconsciously been kneading harder and harder during their conversation, and his hand had moved into the scary, non friendship-y region of House’s thigh. He released his hand from the leg immediately. House winced and drew his leg up onto the couch. Wilson automatically handed him his vicodin bottle, which was on his side of the coffee table. House gave a small nod of appreciation and threw back a couple with his now room temperature beer.
Wilson said hesitantly, “sorry I couldn’t help.”
House shrugged and moved to get up. “I’m gonna go soak it. Feel free to do all the dishes, slave. Unless you want to join me, that is.”