Work Text:
1.
The first time Wilson proposed, House slapped him so hard it left a dull red spot on the flat of his cheek. House said nothing, then moved out to a hotel for a week and refused all of Wilson’s calls.
He came back after exactly seven days and picked up where they’d left off, just before Wilson’s one-knee act, pretending nothing had happened. Wilson was considered of above average intelligence by his colleagues, which was why he didn’t do anything so foolish as to directly ask what precisely was House’s damage but instead moseyed sidelong up to the issue at breakfast after a few peaceable days of reunion.
“So,” Wilson took a bite of toast with studied calm, “how do feel about marriage?”
“I feel very little about it,” House casually flipped a page of his magazine, “Seeing as I’m not involved in the institution.”
“And you don’t want to be.”
“Eh.”
“Then—”
House shot Wilson a look that said, ‘those seven days were nothing compared to what I’m prepared to do’ and Wilson lost his voice. Sudden attack of strep, probably.
“You know, I haven’t heard what Lindsay Lohan’s been up to lately,” House mused, showing Wilson the disappointingly Lohan-free magazine spread, “I miss that crazy cookie. When’s the last time a celebrity did something really, properly fucked up? I mean, head-shaving is fine, but I could do with a cannibalism scandal. You know?”
“Yeah.” Wilson sighed, picked his newspaper back up, and resumed his parallel pose next to House on the couch, “I’ll get right on that.”
“The cannibalism?”
“Sure, it’s not like we had dinner plans.”
House grinned and shifted the magazine to one hand so he could tickle the inside of Wilson’s thigh with the other.
Wilson decided maybe the conversation could wait.
2.
The second time Wilson proposed, he decided it was all about location-location-location.
Neither of them was big on vacations, either in terms of the leaving-work or going-to-new-places portions of the concept. Well, House wasn’t, anyway, and that was enough to trigger an empathetic homebody reaction in Wilson.
No, House wasn’t interested in white sand beaches or picturesque mountains, and he’d accuse Wilson of intimate partner abuse if he so much as suggested visiting a museum or art gallery. Wilson had therefore taken an unexpected tack and proposed renting a woodland cabin for a quiet week of seclusion.
House’s first response to that had been to take Wilson’s temperature and check for cranial parasites. But Wilson insisted he hadn’t taken leave of his senses. He promised to cook for House every day and assured him that the place he was looking at had excellent satellite TV and explained that being out in the middle of nowhere meant they could have lots of loud sex whenever they wanted and House was finally sold.
The cabin was an unmitigated success. It had been the food-TV-sex binge of House’s dreams, and as the last day approached, Wilson was ready to spring the trap. (Not, of course, that it was a trap trap. That made it sound evil.)
As long as it wasn’t a bad pain day, House was at his easiest in the mornings. Guards sleeping at their posts, alarms powered down, downright pliable with the right touch. Wilson had perfected his touch.
After a wake-up reach-around House was cuddly and permissive, letting Wilson big-spoon his heart out and nuzzle his neck, his own fingers lazily tracing up and down Wilson’s forearm and occasionally twitching the ghost keys of half-remembered serenades. Wilson could announce a desire to relocate to the moon in this kind of moment and House would just shrug and ask what the rent was like.
“I love you,” Wilson whispered, nosing at House’s ear.
“Sucker.”
Wilson pinched House’s nipple and he relented, “Alright, I love you too. Loser.”
“You know what people who love each other do?”
“S&M?”
“They get married.”
House’s whole body tensed like Wilson had prodded him with a high voltage wire. Wilson tightened his grip around House. He wasn’t about to let him make a run for it, though Wilson had of course cleverly planted them in the middle of an uninhabited forest to nip just that eventuality in the bud.
“House. I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“Sounds like a you problem.”
“House—”
“I’m not stopping you from spending the rest of your miserable life with me. You’re the one risking that, right now.”
“Why? Why, other than that you’re a contrary son of a bitch, which you can’t use as an excuse for everything?”
House huffed and turned over in Wilson’s arms to face him. His expression was a mask—a carefully crafted façade of his frequently deployed annoyed-at-you-for-being-stupid face, effectively camouflaging whatever more serious emotions stirred beneath.
“Alright. I clearly didn’t hit you hard enough last time.”
“You can hit me as hard as you like. And then we can both go through a domestic violence counseling program, and then we can have this conversation.”
“Uh huh.” House narrowed his eyes, slipping into scheming mode, which boded extremely ill for the success of Wilson’s sophomore attempt at putting a ring on it. “If the stick fails, try the carrot—by which I do still mean stick.” House rolled their hips together and Wilson really wished he wasn’t such a stereotypical man that it totally worked.
“You can’t avoid this forever, House.”
“Watch me.” When Wilson opened his mouth to respond, House pressed two fingers between Wilson’s lips, teasing his tongue. “You can either fuck me or continue this conversation. In the latter case, you’ll find out exactly how much I’m not kidding around when I take the car and leave you here to fend off bears all by your lonesome.”
Wilson had the ring in his bag. But he was also pretty fucking scared of bears.
He clambered on top of House and pinned him by the wrists against the tacky carved-wood headboard and even as he gave in and tasted House’s smug victory smile, he promised himself that this was just a battle, and the war could still be won.
3.
The third time, Wilson consulted Cuddy first.
There wasn’t exactly a line out the door of people Wilson could talk to about House and his House-iness. He was still friends with Stacy, though he’d worried even the years between her and House’s break-up and Wilson crawling from his third ex-wife’s bed into House’s wouldn’t be enough to soften the blow. He’d finally admitted to her that their relationship went beyond merely being roommates in a stifled phone call. With her usual lawyerly calm she’d just joked that he’d beaten her record, getting House to move in before they even started sleeping together, and they’d shared an uncomfortable laugh and agreed without further comment that explicit House-talk was out of bounds.
Cuddy liked House enough to offer advice other than ‘have you considered dropping an anvil on him from a significant height?’ and was as close to understanding the mucked-up meat maze that passed for House’s mind as anybody. Surely, their combined insight could get Wilson to a proposal that didn’t end in actual violence.
She smiled when he handed her a box salad over her desk at lunch time. Then her lips thinned with suspicion. “What do you want?”
He raised his hands in preemptive surrender, “I just need someone to talk to.”
“Oh,” she relaxed and flipped her hair over her shoulder, “I thought this was gonna be a House thing. I mean,” she wiggled her fingers vaguely in explanation, “a House lighting patients on fire or dangling Chase from the upper stories kind of thing, not just a talking about House thing. I assume this is a talking about House thing?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Right. Hold on a sec.” She steepled her fingers and assumed a mockingly stern posture. “Alright. Spill it.”
Wilson explained the first proposal fiasco and the second proposal-that-never was in as much detail as he could. Cuddy listened patiently as Wilson finally ramped up to the big frustrating questions: “Why do you think he’s so virulently marriage-resistant? And so cagey about the ‘why’? Usually, he loves to lecture me about why he’s right and I’m wrong.”
Cuddy deflected by cracking the top open on her salad and spearing a tomato. “Well. The first and most obvious suspects in the case are your past three,” she laid indelicate emphasis on the numeral, “spouses. Have you considered that House just doesn’t like the odds?”
Wilson reminded himself that he’d come to her for precisely this insight and directness. He was also reminded of how House and Cuddy had a lot more in common than either of them liked to think. “Yes, Lisa, I did think of that. Because I’m not actually comatose. House knows about my wives, he has mocked me rigorously about my wives, he has endlessly dissected the various neuroses I have that led to me making them my wives.”
“There you go, then.”
“No! It’s not just that. If House thought I was a bad bet he’d say so. He’d toss the ring in my face and tell me to prove I meant it by passing his trials three, or whatever. He hit me,” Wilson reiterated, “he never goes there. Never. I mean, I can tell he wants to smack me sometimes, the same way I do. But he doesn’t escalate beyond juvenile roughhousing and it…”
“It scared you?” The teasing was absent from Cuddy’s tone.
“Yeah. Not for that reason, though,” Wilson hurried to add, “I don’t think he’d do that again. It was an impulse because of something…something huge he felt, and it caught us both by surprise, but he knows what that is now—even if I don’t—and he wouldn’t let it push him over the line again.”
Cuddy’s head tilted at a fond angle as she listened to his circular explanation. “You trust him.”
“I’m fucking trying to.”
She laid her hands flat on the table, suddenly all business again. “Then stop asking. Popping the question led directly to him popping you one on the jaw. So, forget the reasoning behind it all, if there even is such a thing when it comes to him. Believe what he’s saying with his actions and stop trying to make him use words. The word might be ‘goodbye.’”
“But I—”
“Seriously,” Cuddy held up an authoritative index finger, “No ifs, no ands, no clever emotionally manipulative buts. Just hold on to what you have and stop asking before you lose him. Assuming that all this marriage messiness is because you want to keep him.”
“Of course, I want to keep him. That’s the point!”
“Then consider giving in and doing what he wants. It’s what you usually do and it usually works.”
“House has been encouraging me to make my own decisions,” Wilson argued, “Develop my own personality outside of pleasing other people.”
“He wants you to have an opinion on paint samples, not to keep hurling proposals at him.”
It was Wilson’s turn to level a suspicious stare at Cuddy. “Has House…talked to you about this?”
Cuddy sighed and shuffled some file folders in a display of busyness, “Who do you think got to hear all about this proposal nightmare when he ran off on you the first time?”
“He stayed at a hotel!”
“Yes, except for the first night, when he stayed drunk on my couch. Not for lack of trying to move him, I may add.”
“But then…” Wilson clutched at his hair in frustration. If he were far, far less of a gentleman, he’d pull Cuddy’s hair in retaliation instead. “Then you know why he’s like this!”
Laughter bubbled out of Cuddy and she clapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry, um, play that back in your head and you’ll hear it.” She twirled her finger in a rewind motion. “No one on this planet knows why he’s like what he’s like. Certainly not me. If I did, I could take Freud’s place in the psychological history books. No, I don’t know why he’s like this about marriage or anything else.”
“He must have told you something.”
“He told me lots of things. Most of them irrelevant or sexual. Often irrelevant and sexual.”
Cuddy came out from behind her desk to sit beside him. Wilson must have looked extra pathetic to earn the sympathetic decrease in bossiness. “Look. When he first showed up on my doorstep, I thought you two had fought and broken up. What else could make him such a mess? And when his ranting finally got around to what had actually happened…well. It made even less sense. All I can say for sure is that something about what you did—”
“—daring to suggest we commit to spending our lives together, how could I do such a thing—”
“—something about what you did scared the daylights out of him. Made him think it was all over.”
“Once again, we return to the sticking point. How could House possibly interpret a proposal as a declaration of war?”
Cuddy’s shrug was one part helpless, two parts annoyed. Her sympathy had apparently run its course because she stood and smoothed her skirt, returning to the power-position behind her desk. “Here’s a better question for you. Why are you talking about this to me?”
Wilson opened his mouth, thought for an additional moment, then admitted, “Because it’s easier than talking to him.”
“That’s a shit reason.” Cuddy’s salad replaced Wilson as her top priority. She glanced at him over a clump of romaine, dismissal clear in her eyes. Wilson thought wistfully that if House were here, he’d have been flinging croutons at Wilson by now.
He didn’t need to be pelted with greens to get the gist. He pushed to his feet and offered a contrite sort of nod. “Right. Well, thanks for the chat.”
“I’d say ‘anytime,’” she smiled at him, softening around the edges, “but we both know I have a lot of work to do.”
For the rest of the afternoon, Wilson assigned his spare brain space to pondering. By evening, it had turned to plotting.
House slumped into their kitchen somewhere north of midnight, his latest patient plucked from the jaws of death via the usual route of last-minute epiphany. Wilson was waiting for him at the island with a beer, garlic bread in the oven’s warming rack, and a plan.
A simple, unassuming, “Hey,” was his opening gambit. It had been chosen for its innocuous nature. Nonetheless, within a second of the “hey” being brought into the world, House had skipped up three alert levels and frozen in the dim light coming from the stove hood.
He hefted his cane like a broadsword in Wilson’s direction. “What do you mean by that?”
“By 'hey'? Well, it’s a common greeting. It’s also a dried grass used for cow feed if we’re dealing in homophones.”
“Don’t get cute.”
“I’m always cute.”
“Objection! Defendant’s comment is irrelevant.”
The mushy grin escaped containment. Not that Wilson was really trying too hard.
“C’mere, you ridiculous creature,” Wilson declared, arms outstretched.
House approached like a wildcat wondering if he could nip the tasty dead mouse from the human’s hand before said human tried to scratch him behind the ears. “If this was just a sex ambush, then your chosen lure wouldn’t be garlic bread.”
“But you love garlic bread.”
“I do. But it makes for very fragrant kisses. And other things.” House stepped into reach and let Wilson put his arms around his waist, though he leaned back enough to forgo a full hug. “Not to mention you know that I don’t require ambushing for sex. Ask and ye shall receive. Don’t ask and ye shall still probably receive.”
“I do like receiving,” Wilson shot back, slipping into the repartee like a favorite old sweatshirt. “But you’re right. I do have ulterior motives. I want to talk.”
“I knew it. You’re pregnant.”
“No.”
“I’m pregnant?”
“Nope.”
“Cuddy’s pregnant?”
“No. And why would I bother with a carbohydrate cushion to break that news to you?”
“Because the concept of not one but two Cuddys in the world shouldn’t be contemplated on an empty stomach. And discussing a Lisa Junior was my most likely scenario for why you snuck off to her office for a secret lunch, minus your own key ingredient.”
“What key ingredient?”
“The lunch of your lunch. Tasteless salad for Cuddy, nothing for you. It means you were too worked up to remember to eat. This is what happens when I’m not there stealing your food—you forget about it entirely. It’s tragic. If only Wilson’s Disease wasn’t already another thing, we could name the condition after you.”
Wilson nodded along with the analysis and adopted a villainous inflection, “Very clever, Mr. Holmes, but you’ve forgotten one important detail!”
“Oh? Was there tobacco ash on your left loafer indicating your penchant for rough sex with hunky chimney sweeps?”
“Okay, two important details.”
House’s reflexive smile was too smoochable to pass up. So, Wilson didn’t. He pressed the most important detail into House’s lips, a gently whispered, “I love you.”
“Ugh,” House didn’t jerk back, but he twisted his neck irritably. This just gave Wilson an excuse to kiss the sensitive skin at the hinge of his jaw. “I see why you’ve got the garlic bread in reserve. You know I struggle to roll my eyes and chew at the same time.”
“I love you,” Wilson repeated, “And I’m not going anywhere.”
“I already knew that too. You can’t leave, I’m holding your passport hostage. Not to mention you won’t give up a twenty-four hour a day pass to this ass.” House guided Wilson’s hand to the ass in question.
“This is all true. Love you, love your ass. Also, we might want to vacation outside the country someday, so you’ll have to give up the passport location eventually.”
“Never.” House had settled down from the unexpected verbal affection. His capable hands were playing with the loose collar of Wilson’s shirt. Time for the plunge.
“I talked to Cuddy about how I made a hash out of proposing to you.”
The now-expected tension rippled through House’s coiled frame. It wasn’t the near-death experience of the first time or the cornered-prey-with-its-claws-out of the second, but it wasn’t shaping up to be a trip to Disney World either.
“They do say the first step is admitting you have a problem,” House replied, voice misleading in its lightness. “Did she recommend any good marriage-addiction programs?”
This off-the-cuff joke derailed Wilson’s carefully ordered, edited, and timed speech. (He’d been working on it since dinner.) Was it possible that House had…a point? He often did. But it was absurd to think that Wilson was the one with an addiction. Maybe an over-eagerness to help people, maybe an unhealthy relationship to neediness, whatever. But that was separate that was—good. House liked that about him. Wilson knew it comforted House to know that Wilson would always be drawn in by how badly House needed him, and wanted him, and couldn’t live without the toothpick-and-marshmallow structure of life they’d gummed together around themselves over the years.
“If I’m addicted to anything, it’s you,” Wilson admitted. “But that doesn’t bother you. That’s not why you go postal at the mere mention of wedding bells.”
“You’re blaming me for having a life-threatening allergy to thrown rice and stupid mistakes?”
“I’m not blaming you for anything. And I’m not pressuring you, I shouldn’t have done that in the first place. Like I’ve never met you before and couldn’t have guessed that giving you a major life change jump-scare ultimatum would end badly. I’m supposed to know you better than that.”
Wilson spotted a foreign tinge of hope dart through House’s expression and his own pulse leapt in response. Maybe this time…
He pulled the black velvet box out of his pocket and that hope tarnished and died in House’s eyes. Wilson still pressed on but he could feel it all slipping away like water through his fingers.
“I’m not asking you to make a commitment you’re not ready to make. I just want you to know how I feel. To know what’s…on the table.” Wilson set the ring box on the table. House gave him a dead stare, communicating that no, he wasn’t impressed with this feeble attempt at humor. Wilson just smiled. “If you want it, it’s there.” He laid a hand on the box, then pushed it forward.
House scowled at the box like he could make it disappear in a puff of acrid smoke with the power of his mind. When that didn’t work, he snatched it up. He then went over to the sink, dropped it in, and turned on the garbage disposal.
Wilson’s strangled noise of consternation and rage came out as a rather un-suave, “grk!!” as he dove for the disposal switch.
“Oops. I think it shares my allergy to outdated symbols of interpersonal ownership,” House commented when Wilson looked tragically into the coughing, whirring depths of the dying machine. Wilson didn’t dignify that with a response, but his dignity wasn’t much preserved as he grabbed a fork and salvaged what remained from the sink trap.
He lifted the fork in sudden victory, a gold ring tinkling on its tines. “Congratulations,” Wilson grumbled, “The disposal gave its life but your nemesis survived. You happy?”
“Never am.” House shot one last venomous look at the speared, battered ring and sauntered away.
Maybe Cuddy was right. Maybe Wilson should just stop fucking asking.
4.
The fourth time Wilson proposed, House had just been shot. Technically, he’d been shot several hours ago, undergone surgery, and come out the other side alive and mostly whole. But Wilson was still trapped in the agonizing terror of first hearing the words from Cameron’s quivering lips, of seeing House pale and bleeding in the ER and then from the observation deck of the OR as they ripped him even further open just to sew him shut again, and it felt like he’d never get out of this eternal moment, never stop the ringing in his ears and the cold trembling in his hands.
He hadn’t let go of House’s wrist since they first let Wilson see him in Recovery. The pulse beating beneath his fingers was the thin thread that kept him suspended above the chasm rather than plunging into it. He was waiting, waiting for the sedative to wear off even as he feared the pain meds wouldn’t be able to hold their own against House’s tolerance, waiting for House’s eyelids to flutter and open and for him to toss off a totally tasteless remark about how Wilson was the only one allowed to penetrate him and dear god, please, let him wake up—
“You look like shit.”
Wilson’s breath caught in his chest and his gaze snapped up to find that House’s eyes were still closed, but the slack of drugged sleep around his mouth had been replaced by a familiar embattled grimace.
“How would you know,” Wilson whispered back, “It’s pretty dark in here.”
“Your looks-like-shit state goes far beyond the visual. It reaches the ethereal plane. Speaking of, the sheer force of your worrying distracted me from this really cool tunnel. It had light at the end if you’re curious.”
Wilson furiously clutched House’s weak hand, having to remind himself to be gentle. Just because House sounded exactly like his regular self didn’t mean his body had been magically healed either through the power of Wilson’s love or House’s spite.
“You scared the hell out of me.”
“Good.” House stooped to opening his eyes, bestowing a bleary glance on Wilson, “Glad it wasn’t a total waste.”
“Please. Please stop.” The relief of House speaking had almost immediately been replaced with a shivering horror at how close he’d come to never speaking again and if Wilson couldn’t punch it back down and bury it then it was going to swallow him whole. “Stop the jokes and stop almost getting yourself killed.”
“Hey, this time was not my fault.”
Wilson shook his head, rejecting everything equally, House’s words, the history he evoked, the next time implicit and threatening in them. “But it has been. And someday it won’t be just ‘almost,’ and then…”
“Then what? Have I topped out the premium on near-death experiences? My next brush with the afterlife won’t be covered by my carrier?”
“House, you can’t do this to me. You can’t do that to me. You can’t do it. You can’t. Not to me. Not to me. Not to me.”
The repetition took on a life of its own. It wasn’t Wilson’s voice anymore, he had no control over it. Nothing could stop it now that it had started, nothing but—
“Alright. Okay. You hear me? I said I won’t do it. I won’t let it happen.”
Wilson’s head dipped with the weight of tears he absolutely could not allow and House’s hand slipped free of his grasp to travel up Wilson’s jaw, trace a quick path around his ear, and slide into his hair. House held him like that, Wilson’s forehead pressed to the gritty cotton hospital blanket covering House’s hip, and House’s hand softly cradling the curve of his skull. For once, not demanding. Just giving.
Because House was House, he could tell when Wilson got ahold of himself again, and for that same reason, he immediately launched into an exaggerated promise: “I will never die. I’ll simply refuse. The next time an enraged gunman bursts into my office, I won’t hesitate to break out my karate skills and take him down before he can act. Though in exchange for these heroics, I expect you as my damsel to put out in a serious way.”
Wilson levered himself upright with a hand on the safety bar of the bed, scraping a palm across his eyes to hide the evidence. “I’ll put out anything you want if you put this on.”
“What?” House blinked as Wilson dug around in his jeans pocket—he’d changed into non-professional backup clothes, including the worn McGill sweatshirt that always gave House a serious case of the cuddles. At the time it had been to wrap the memories around himself like a comforter, but now he hoped it would cushion whatever blows House threw when Wilson showed him the ring. The ring he’d been carrying for weeks, still chipped from the garbage disposal. The ring that hadn’t been on House’s finger when he’d been wheeled away to surgery with the very real chance he’d never come back.
Wilson held it up and watched the multicolored lights of the machines glint dully off its surface.
“That’s—” House voice failed him, rage tamped down by medication, “You really… This is just—I mean. Am I actually dead? Is this hell?”
Wilson took House’s hand and pressed the ring against his palm, wanting him to feel it, to understand what its weight could mean for both of them. “House, I never want anyone to be able to take you away from me.”
“That gold band isn’t bulletproof. If someone wants to kill me, a marriage certificate won’t stop them.”
“But it can protect you—protect us—in other ways. I’d never have to face the threat of testifying against you again. All the legal protections—”
“All the legal protections are bullshit for people like us. This conversation would’ve been null about five minutes ago, in historical terms. Why would I want to be part of an institution that told me to go fuck myself for a solid 99.9% of its existence?”
“When did you get your gender studies minor?” Wilson shot back, “You really want me to believe you’re bitching me out to strike a blow for queer politics?”
“Yes. Fuck them straights.”
“House.”
“And fuck the ableds. You always forget that one. I’ve got double marriage inequality, you insensitive prick.”
“You’re not on disability. You make more money alone than the vast majority of American households. The rules about combined domestic income don’t apply.”
“It’s the principle.”
“Yes, because you’re known for standing on principle.”
“Standing? Jeez, this is exactly what I mean. Ableist shithead.”
“I’ll let that pass, considering how much morphine you’re on right now.”
“The amount of morphine I’m on right now is the primary reason I haven’t punched you, yet. Thank the nice opiate for that. Better yet, propose to the opiate. Much higher chance of getting a yes out of it.”
Wilson put the ring away. He’d known it was a mistake to bring it up, but it didn’t matter. He was compelled to take every chance he got to push the issue until he got to “yes” because yes was the only acceptable answer, it was the only answer that led to what he needed, because he needed forever. Unfortunately, forever seemed to be what it would take to get that yes in the first place.
Already resigned, Wilson went through the motions of continuing the argument. “Do you think it’ll really help the queer and disabled communities if one Doctor Gregory House rejects the protections of marriage on principle? Somehow it’ll lead to real equality if you get hurt again and I can’t even see you because we don’t share a legal connection?”
“You’re already my medical proxy,” House countered, “There’s no way those horror stories where my parents swan in and start making decisions instead of you would happen. Legally, our asses are covered.”
“They could be better covered.”
“And I could stop eating fried foods to reduce my risk of heart disease. But sometimes in life, you’ve just gotta live.”
“So, marriage would what, cramp your style?”
“Among other things.”
Wilson sighed and let his eyes track away from House and tried not to feel the impact of the ice pick House seemed intent on casually plunging into his chest with every rejection.
The familiar beeps and soft nurse-shoe shuffles and glaring fluorescents and lingering bleach scent that characterized their everyday work-home felt grating and wrong with House the one confined to a hospital bed.
House broke the silent stand-off with his usual compassion. “I just got shot and almost died. And you’re here trying to force me into matrimony when I’m barely out of anesthesia. You see how, for once, the fucked-up-ness of our relationship is solely in your court, right?”
Wilson’s heart ached. He hated House for saying he was the bad guy and he hated himself more because it was true.
He wrapped House’s hand with its IV line and finger-clip monitor in both of his and brought it to his mouth, kissing the knuckles over and over until he could be sure he wasn’t about to start crying.
“I love you,” he said, because though House might joke or sidestep or ignore it, he never rejected it.
“I love you too,” House answered, without the typical pause or wisecrack, “Can’t that be enough for you?”
Wilson’s spine curled. He felt like he was going to crack in two. The wind was knocked out of him but he had to say it as quickly and without doubt as he could, “That’s always been enough. More than enough, more than I ever thought I’d get.”
“Then, please,” House let the unfamiliar syllable linger in the antiseptic air between them, “stop pushing. I don’t want this to break.”
The reversal of their old conversation—their old fight—took Wilson’s breath away all over again, even worse than before. He’d fucked up. He’d fucked up, a bunch of times now, and House had been the one who’d come back and fixed things and accepted the sword Wilson kept running through his ribs as the price to pay for being this close. House had been telling him, this whole time—no. It was on Wilson to accept that.
He kissed House’s fingers again, gently pried them open and kissed his palm, felt heat behind his eyes when House’s hand relaxed against his cheek and stroked gently, thumb tracing a familiar path.
“Ok. Ok. I’ll stop,” he promised, “I don’t want this to break.” Wilson held his breath for a minute, then continued lightly, “On the note of legal ass-covering, do you think we could use this horrifying occasion to go to a lawyer and update our wills? You know, so if another patient tries to kill you, I can get all your money and stuff.”
“What makes you think I have a will?”
“What.”
“That was a joke, you imbecile. Of course, I have a will. I leave all my earthly possessions to you, except my extensive collection of VHS porn, which is for Cuddy, and my body, which is for science.” House’s fingers, still held greedily against Wilson’s face, skipped down to pet his lower lip in a sweet tease, “I wouldn’t leave you penniless. In death, anyway. In life, there’s always the chance I bankrupt you with my elaborate lunch expenses.”
Wilson heaved an exaggerated sigh, “I guess that’s what I signed up for as the Sundance to your Butch.”
“Ha. Gay-ass cowboys,” House muttered, succumbing again to the exhaustion and medication.
Wilson watched House’s eyes droop and close, tight angry muscles relaxing into opioid-assisted sleep. He reached out to stroke feather-light fingers across House’s brow, down his cheekbone, along his chin. Just reassuring himself that House was still there.
As long as he was still there, it would be alright. Marriage was just a piece of paper. He’d thrown away three of them. He didn’t need a fourth to prove anything.
This—House, here, alive and letting Wilson hold his hand—was surely enough.
5.
The fifth time Wilson proposed, he actually wasn’t. Proposing, that is. House got the wrong end of the stick and jumped immediately to Defcon One, before Wilson even realized he was in the room.
“What the fuck—”
“Ahh!” Wilson jumped, the vase he’d been dusting flying upwards. He caught it only by dint of it falling back down directly into his flailing arms. “What. What? Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“—I said what the fuck is this?”
House lined his cane up like a rifle on his arm, the rubber sole pointing at…the engagement ring. Sitting on the kitchen counter in a Tupperware because the nice ring box had been their garbage disposal’s last meal but Wilson didn’t want to have an expensive bit of jewelry lying about in the nude, as it were.
“It’s just garbage!” Wilson set down the vase and held up his hands (see, no concealed signs of affection, don’t shoot officer).
“Oh…kay.” House lowered his makeshift weapon. “That is what I’ve been saying.”
“Yeah.” Wilson wiped the sudden nervous sweat from his brow. “I’m doing a clean-out. Getting together all the stuff we don’t use. Gonna toss the junk and donate the usable stuff to Goodwill.”
“You’re so noble I could barf.” House started touring the assembled knick-knacks lining the counterspace. “Wait. This is mine.” He grabbed a novelty tourist shot glass that read ‘SHOT in the FACE in the BIG APPLE’ in a teeny tiny font with a very phallic handgun emblazoned below. He tucked it protectively into his armpit. “And this!” He lovingly gathered to his chest a mud flap with a naked woman’s silhouette on it, actually torn off a real semi-truck by the looks of its weathered plastic.
“It’s an odd coincidence,” Wilson gestured to the rip-off memorial Princess Diana tea towel (the cringe-worthy ‘RIP Princess Die’ in the text almost certainly the reason for its acquisition) that House had picked up with his teeth when his hands got full, “You’ll find that most of the useless crap in our home was brought here by you.”
“Mm-mhh,” House argued, this being the current limit of his speech. He spat the towel out a couple yards further away at what he apparently judged to be a safe distance from the black garbage bag lounging at Wilson’s feet. “These are all priceless items.”
“I’d pay to not have this awful stuff in my house.”
“You call that awful?” House pointed to the vase balanced precariously at Wilson’s elbow. “It’s fancy as shit!”
“It’s too boring to be awful or fancy. It’s just a vase. What do we need a vase for?”
“For putting flowers in. Like the flowers I would’ve romantically bought for you. Would’ve, because I can’t now. No place to keep them!”
“Yes, not having a place to keep them was what kept you from buying me flowers before.”
House gasped as he pulled a searingly red jersey out from beneath a stack of old magazines (mostly Hustler because, again, House). “You cannot throw this out, you heartless minion of minimalism!”
“I’ve never seen you wear that.”
“It’s sports memorabilia. You’re not supposed to wear it,” House said in a disparaging tone that indicated he thought Wilson had the IQ of a single-celled organism.
“What sport?”
“Huh?”
“What. Sport. Is it from?”
House’s back curved like the letter C while his mouth sounded out different possibilities, ultimately landing on a hilariously tentative, “Foot…ball?”
“Not even close.”
“What is it?”
“Table tennis.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I am.” Wilson flipped the jersey over and tapped his finger on the black and white printed pattern. “It’s chess. Much worse.”
“That is worse,” House agreed, and then held the jersey out graciously, “I bestow this upon you, the cleaner-upper of useless crap. Do with it as you will.”
“Why thank you,” Wilson took the jersey, bowed, then balled it up and tossed it in a growing pile of fabric-based donations, “I won’t forget your generosity.”
House made as if to leave but something stopped him. Wilson turned to make a quip about donating House to charity, but it died on his lips when he realized that House was staring at the ring again.
The part of Wilson that worked hard to stay sane had almost forgotten the ring was out. The other part, the part that still dreamt of seeing it glinting on House’s finger, had been acutely aware of its proximity ever since House arrived.
“So, it’s actually over.” House didn’t ask, he stated. It sounded…well, hell if Wilson knew how it sounded. Not regretful or penitent, not hopeful either.
“You said you didn’t want it,” Wilson forced a shrug. “It took me a while. But I heard you. I’m getting rid of it. That’s why it’s out, I’m just…trying to figure out what to do.”
“Are all the garbage cans on strike? Dumpsters no longer accepting fine metals?”
“Tossing expensive and emotionally resonant jewelry isn’t exactly the done thing.”
“Then pawn it. At least get some of your wasted cash back. It doesn’t look too banged up to sell…” House picked the ring up, held it to the light for inspection, and then—to Wilson’s gut-wrenching joy and horror—slipped it onto his ring finger.
He grimaced and pulled it right off again. “Yuck. Feels even worse than I thought.”
“Great. Thanks. Your sensitivity, as always, is appreciated.”
“It’s a sanitary disaster,” House pointed out, “do you know how vile those things get?”
“I do, actually.”
“Then I don’t know why you think fourth time’s the charm.”
“Is that what this is really about?” Wilson latched on to the snide remark. “You think I can’t get marriage right, that it’s cursed?”
“What’s with the third degree, Mr. I Hear You and I’m Getting Rid of It.”
Wilson answered with an angry mockery of surrender, “You’re right, of course, because god forbid I ask why. Trying to get a straight answer out of you is like—is like…”
“Convincing Cuddy to wear flats?”
Wilson didn’t laugh, but he didn’t not-laugh either. The tension started to drain away, lapping around them as it passed. “Yeah. Just. Fine, whatever. You never actually tell me your reasons, but I stop asking anyway. If you want such a sweet deal, then I get to be a little pissy about it, okay?”
“Is this just a little pissy? I’d hate to see a lot.”
“Yes. Yes, you would.”
House stepped forward, the ring still a grenade in his hands. “Listen, if you want nonsensical traditions and expensive rigamarole, you don’t need a wedding. Start sprinkling salt over your shoulder and take me out to dinner more.”
“You’re banned from everything that’s not an Arby’s in a ten mile radius. And that’s just because you’re single-handedly propping up the curly fry market.”
“Fine. Let’s get several thousand dollars’ worth of Chinese take-out tonight, to make up for the catering bill I’m forcing us to save on.”
Wilson’s answering sigh was closer to the fond than fed-up end of the spectrum. House took that as permission to edge closer. “I’ll give you all the rituals you want. Just not the kind that involves a justice of the peace.”
He watched Wilson cross his arms to telegraph how unmoved he was.
“Alright, here. From my religious background that I ignore.” House grabbed Wilson’s hand and slid the ring onto his finger before Wilson could protest. It didn’t quite fit, not meant for his hands. The sight made Wilson’s stomach turn for reasons he couldn’t quite name.
“And from your religious background that you ignore.” House grabbed Wilson’s half empty water glass and smashed it on the kitchen tile.
“That is not how—”
House barreled forward to kiss Wilson before he could become preoccupied with getting a dustpan and addressing their home’s exciting new flooring feature. Wilson let himself be kissed because at the end of the day, it was what he wanted more than anything. Even slightly more than a glass-free floor.
Voice rough and hands greedy, House whispered in his ear, “If it’s a wedding night you want, I’ll give you one.”
“Hmm,” Wilson made a show of considering it even as he was busying himself with House’s belt, “Will you wear a lacy garter?”
“Only if you promise to remove it with your teeth. In front of witnesses.”
“You haven’t properly scarred your fellows in a few weeks. Let’s pencil it in.”
House’s laugh was delicious and Wilson wrapped his hand around House’s neck to anchor the kiss. The ring burned cold against Wilson’s skin and he felt House flinch beneath his touch. He broke away and yanked the damn thing off.
“I’ll melt it down,” he announced, sliding it into his pocket.
“Sell it to a dentist for fillings,” House suggested, “or give it to an iguana as a bracelet.”
“I don’t know any iguanas. At least, not so personally.”
“I’ll introduce you.”
It was House’s turn to kiss the laughter from Wilson’s lips, and Wilson sank into the embrace and the banter and the way House felt like home, and ignored the stubborn denial curling in his gut that refused to ever let go of that fragile gold band.
+1
“Any good sushi places around here?” Nora asked, “We could get dinner sometime.”
Wilson kept a safe distance between them as they checked their mailboxes. Their new neighbor was sweet. House would eat her for breakfast. Or dinner, as the case may be.
He offered a politic reply. “That would be great. House’s father was stationed in Japan when he was growing up, and he’s got lots of opinions about proper sushi preparation. Always makes for an entertaining meal. That is, if you don’t mind having raw fish thrown at you.”
“By the chef or by your boyfriend?”
“Usually both. And House isn’t really my boyfriend,” Wilson corrected gently, because he couldn’t bear the adolescent tinge of the term when he was staring down the barrel of fifty.
“Oh, sorry. What do you prefer, partner? Lover? Husband?”
“He’s not my husband,” Wilson snapped, and she flinched. “Sorry, I’m so sorry, that’s just a, uh, tender point.”
“Oh. Yeah, no, I get it.” She nodded quickly, “That’s…it’s not fair, is it?”
Wilson bit the inside of his cheek and summoned up a strained smile. “No. It’s not. Anyway, don’t worry about it. He’s just my…House. Call him House. That’s what he is to everybody.” Silently, he added, that’s all he is to anybody. Including me.
Nora scuttled off with one last wave, sensing the dark rain clouds gathering.
Wilson tried not to storm back into the apartment. House had their daily storming allotment covered, Wilson certainly didn’t need to contribute any angry stomps or bitter pacing. Nonetheless, he slammed the door shut behind him in an unsatisfying fit of pique.
It had been a nice Saturday morning so far. No need to ruin it just because a cute brunette had assumed…
Wilson paused in the entryway, not ready to face House’s long legs stretched out on the coffee table as he watched cartoons and ate cereal like some elongated eight year old who needed a shave.
He tried to focus on the things they had. All the wonderful things. A gorgeous condo with his and House’s name on the lease. Work that let them stay close at all times, feeding the codependency they’d decided to embrace. Promises and lingering touches and rushed mornings with coffee kisses and someone to hold when he came home with a heart battered by too many dead cancer kids.
All the bad things too. He relived each of the memories that informed the current status quo: House slapping him like he’d gotten fresh on a first date rather than proposed after a decade of friendship, House physically trying to destroy the ring Wilson had bought him, House tired and wan in a hospital bed asking Wilson if what they had could be enough.
Of course, it could. It was. Wilson had had loveless marriages, why not a marriageless love? So, it wasn’t what he’d imagined for himself as he settled into middle age. The picture was a little different. Okay, it was a completely fucking foreign image. It didn’t matter.
It shouldn’t matter.
Maybe if he could just understand why…. No, that journey only led to one place. He’d been there five goddamn times and House never told him why. Or he did, and Wilson just didn’t get it. Didn’t believe it. Couldn’t.
He pulled the ring from the pocket of his ragged, lazy-weekend jeans, where it had languished since his promise to House that he’d get rid of it. It had been almost a week since the Goodwill trip. There was no shortage of pawn shops in town. It would’ve been symbolically appropriate to just chuck it down a storm drain.
“Still haven’t found the right lizard to offer it to?”
Wilson flinched, the ring clattering to the floor. For someone who prided himself on the scale and volume of his obnoxiousness, House could be a sneaky bastard when he wanted to be.
“You’re certainly cold-blooded enough.”
House checked his watch. “I didn’t have our first stupid fight of the day scheduled until after lunch. Mind if we wrap this up quick, my soap’s on.”
“Sure. Let’s say you won and move forward.” Wilson bent quickly to retrieve the awful reminder of what he’d never have, shoving it back where it belonged in the dark and the lint like the rest of the unwanted.
“I get why your wives got sick of winning arguments. You suck all the fun right out of it.”
Wilson walked with determination past House towards the kitchen. He couldn’t do this. Certainly not on just one cup of coffee. “Maybe I’m tired of having this fight.”
“Imagine how I feel.”
Wilson wished he was like House. Then he could slam this fresh clean mug onto the ground and make House clean up the shards and feel no shame about it. He just poured from the French press in silence instead.
“So, are we doing this?” House badgered.
“I thought we agreed we weren’t.”
“Your mouth said yes but that parasitic precious metal in your pocket says otherwise. Are you hooked on marriage, or just happy to see me?”
“I’m not hooked on anything. Except being repeatedly and cruelly scorned by you, apparently.”
“I wouldn’t have to break out the scorn if you’d wake up and smell the lack-of-roses.”
“I know, House! I know!” The shouting didn’t make him feel better. Wilson wished he could stop having his heart broken in this damned kitchen. “It’s not news to me. I should’ve known even before we got together. You never proposed to Stacy, either. It’s just who you are. You’ll never be anyone’s husband.”
“Who wants a husband?” House gave his bare left hand a flippant twirl, “A husband is a responsibility. A burden. It’s something you’re stuck with because you’re legally and socially and morally tied down to it.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“It would be for us.” House tried to hold Wilson’s gaze. “Don’t you get it? What we have—what we are—could never survive a marriage.”
The harsh words stuck and pulled and hurt and Wilson found it spilling out before wiser counsel prevailed: “I thought you loved me.”
House’s glower intensified. “That’s a separate issue. And a pretty transparent attempt at manipulation.”
Wilson’s shuffling feet and hands flying to the at-hips position confirmed it.
“If we’re playing that kind of game,” House carried on coldly, “then I’ve got one for you. If you love me then you won’t marry me. Why is that so hard to understand?”
Wilson scoffed, guilt scorched away, “Are you hearing yourself? What you’re saying is practically a logical inverse. It makes no fucking sense, how could I understand?”
“How can you not?”
“Because you refuse to explain it to me! I do my best to get inside that fucked up head of yours but yeah, sorry, sometimes I get lost in the forests of delusion and the valleys of unacknowledged trauma. I need a goddamn map but you stomp me down if I dare ask for directions.”
“You’re acting like it’s all a big secret. Like I haven’t given you a few thousand clues. You’re supposed to be an intelligent adult who can put together two and two.”
“Right, let’s go back over the conclusions I’ve drawn from your shitty little clues.” Wilson held one hand out, palm up, “Marriage itself is the problem, and it’s not the problem.” He lifted the other palm in parallel, “Marriage to me specifically is the problem, and it’s not the problem.” His hands moved up and down like a pulley scale, “Which is it? Both, neither? How am I supposed to fix the problem when you won’t tell me what it is! Those aren’t even reasons, they’re excuses.”
“Excuses? Anything I say you’ll take as an excuse because you’re fixated!” House slammed his cane on the ground to emphasize the point. “What would you consider a fair reason, huh? What could I ever say to you that would get through that thick romantically poisoned skull of yours?”
“Just tell me that you don’t want the commitment! That you don’t want a future with me! That you don’t…that you don’t love me.”
“I can’t tell you any of that because it’s not fucking true.” House’s left hand was clenched and raised in a fist, held close to his chest because even enraged he wasn’t going to strike Wilson, not again, though the wall might not be so lucky. “You are the one who thinks that. You think I can’t love you or commit to you or spend my life with you if I don’t want to marry you. I’ve never said that.”
“But I don’t believe what you’ve said.”
They both took a step back. The jackhammer of sparking tempers finally foundering on the granite bedrock of the real issue.
“You think I’m…lying?” House asked, uncertain, like he wasn’t the proud spokesman of New Jersey Liars United.
“I think…” Wilson groped for the right way to explain it when he hadn’t put the suspicions into words before, “you can’t really mean what you say. I think you’re acting like some born-to-be-alone rock star. I think you’re being contrary. I think you’re rehearsing social justice sound bites to avoid saying what you really feel.”
House’s slow nod was the condescending type he pulled on patients who were killing themselves over the dumbest shit imaginable. “You think the only possible reason I wouldn’t want to marry you is that I don’t really love you, so whatever else I say can’t possibly be true.”
He had his hooks in now. Wilson was the one trying to get away, wishing he’d repressed it all better, like he’d flattened all those intrusive feelings with his wives and avoided so many awful fights—
“I believe what I’m saying.” House planted himself in front of Wilson when the latter started inching away around the kitchen island. “I think marriage is a prison and a scam. And it’s especially those things when it involves you.”
That was enough to make Wilson really try and leave, but House didn’t let him. He grabbed him by the shirtfront and held him fast, still speaking, “Maybe some people could salvage it, but not us. It would change what we have for the worse. Because what we have right now is perfect.”
Wilson halted his escape.
“Because I choose you every day. Not just out of habit, not to avoid a messy divorce, I actively choose to keep you in my life because I want you in it. And so far you’ve chosen me, too. I want you to keep choosing me. Every day. Not just one, wedding day.”
Wilson’s hand settled on House’s where it was twisted in the fabric of his T-shirt, some faded band tee stolen from House long enough ago that it had become Wilson’s by common law. Not pushing the hand away, not holding it either. The instinct to reassure was strong but he didn’t know how to do it yet. He still didn’t understand.
“Wilson, do you think that deep down I’m really just the same as everybody else?”
It was a rhetorical question and a completely serious one all at once. Wilson had no idea how he was supposed to answer.
House kept going, momentum building, “Do you think you’re doing me a favor by pushing the ring agenda? That you’re just helping me help myself? Do you think that I must secretly want the same things everyone’s supposed to want and I’d be happier if I just acted a little more like everyone else, because how is it possible that I could really not want to be like everyone else?”
It was a staggering disgrace for Wilson to find he couldn’t force the ‘no’ past his lips. Remorse gnawed at his insides but he couldn’t tell House he was wrong.
And House knew. His grip on Wilson relaxed, then slid away. “If you think that, then you don’t know me at all.”
It takes a hell of a lot to break through compulsion. To be the fish that sees the water around them. House had always done it automatically, born in the sky and seeing it all from a different angle. Now, finally, Wilson had a glimpse.
“That’s what’s been scaring you this whole time,” he realized, clutching at House before he could retreat, “Since the beginning. The way you reacted the very first time I proposed. You’re terrified that I don’t really know you. It’s why you couldn’t explain why, because explaining would defeat the whole purpose. I’m supposed to already know. And I’ve been…I’ve been proving that I don’t know every time I asked. Making you think I want to change you.” The shame of taking so long to understand was almost too much to bear. Wilson couldn’t let go of House. The all-important understanding might disappear like a dream in the morning sun. Worse, House might disappear.
“Don’t you?” House asked, head pulling to a chilly observational angle. “Don’t you want to change me?”
“No.” That answer was easy. It was all coming easier now. It wasn’t a question of truth, it was a question of flipping the puzzle pieces over to see the picture and not just all the identical inexplicable brown cardboard squiggles. “I haven’t stuck around all this time because I’m hoping you’ll turn into someone else. I’m here because I know you’ll always be you. You’re the only real constant in my life. How could I ever want that to change?”
His right hand held House firm by the bicep, his left reached out to cup his cheek, the familiar grit of stubble against skin grounding and electric. “I don’t want you to change. And I’m so, so sorry it took me this long to understand what you were telling me.”
Time to solve the case.
Piece one: “For you, marriage means government surveillance and social baggage and giving up your autonomy.” And the missing piece, so much more important than the rest: “For me, marriage has meant acceptance and success and feeling…normal. You think I want to marry you to make you more normal. So. House?”
“What?” House asked, nervous and dogged, still prepared to fight and/or flee.
“I don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to marry you, at all.”
The waterfall collapse of emotions flooding across House’s face were as magnificent to behold as they were brief. After a mere moment, he said a collected voice, “That’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me in your whole fucking life.”
Wilson had his back against the fridge and House in his arms between blinks. They’d exchanged warm, lazy handjobs in bed that morning, but House kissed him like they’d been apart for weeks. His hands were everywhere, tangled in Wilson’s hair and dragging down his sides and making inroads into his pants. His groping fingers eventually stumbled on his old enemy, the dinged and buried golden band, and he unearthed it with a catlike hiss.
“It’s like the fucking Lord of the Rings ring! Where’s Mount Doom when you need it.”
“If I hadn’t fallen asleep during that movie marathon, I’d have a more clever and narratively appropriate response to that.” Wilson plucked the ring from House’s seething grasp. “As it is…”
He tugged House by the wrist over to the window. He pushed aside the curtains and wrestled with the sash and finally, as a chilly fall breeze rushed over his flushed face, chucked the ring outside with all his might.
It shot down two stories and pinged off a middle-aged woman’s forehead. She dropped her groceries and Wilson fell backwards to avoid being seen.
“Morning!” House leaned over Wilson’s defensive position and called cheerily to their victim below, “Didja hear, there’s a chance of gold showers today!”
Wilson hissed House’s name and grabbed him by the back of his waistband, pulling him out of sight of the street.
House was laughing heartily by now and it was such a rare sight that Wilson stopped worrying about being sued for assault with a deadly bauble. He backed House up until the couch took his legs out from under him, splaying those gorgeous long limbs across the cushions so Wilson could crawl on top of him and continue the hard, competitive kiss they’d started in the kitchen.
He dug one hand under House’s shirt to massage his fingers across bare skin, the other seeking the same under House’s loose pajama bottoms. House started sucking on Wilson’s throat, explaining, “Got my heart set on a hickey. Need to remind the peasants who the king’s consort is.”
Wilson twisted in pleasure and protest, but House followed his target unerringly. “Disturbing monarchal ambitions aside, I’ll only allow it if I get to do the same.”
“Oh, that’s a great deal,” House grabbed Wilson’s ass and squeezed with great satisfaction. “Make everybody squirm.”
Wilson nipped at House’s earlobe, whispering the things he could hardly speak outside his mind, “Because you’re the only one of your kind and you’re mine.”
“Same. I don’t need marriage to know I’ll turn serial before I let anyone else touch you.” House bit down on Wilson’s neck and he gasped and rocked his hips against House’s, thrilled and shamelessly turned on by the flagrant display of jealousy.
House had always known. He’d seen how Wilson got off on the way House treated the whole world like a cheap chemistry set for his personal, careless experimental use. The power and the focus and the capacity to control and humiliate or to rescue and protect, just at his whim.
Wilson had protested, told House that he hated it, god, how many times had he given House hell for going too far with his always excessive and unnecessary cruelty. But Wilson wouldn’t have stayed if he’d really meant a fraction of the reprimands he’d slapped House with.
House understood that.
And now, Wilson understood too. He didn’t need words and he didn’t need a ring and he didn’t need to see House stand up in front of their meager circle of friends and family and make a promise Wilson now knew that House would die keeping without ever saying out loud.
He just needed House. House, waking up next to him every morning, and choosing to be there because there was nowhere else he’d rather be. Knowing that every day he stayed was its own simple, wordless, perfect promise.
He only ever needed this.