Chapter Text
He’s still in that delicate age when most people are partying, having part-time jobs, making friends and having one-night stands; but instead he's working his ass off in two jobs, starting a residency in internal medicine while wearing shirts a size too small. And he’s married. Well, not for long now, he thinks as he’s staring at an envelop with the names and addresses of two attorneys on it, not that kind of attorneys he needs right now, not that kind of he ever wanted anything to do with.
"Shit."
Wilson throws himself down to a chair, leans his head against the bars and stares at the cop, massaging his stiff, bruised fingers. He’s done so many things he should have waited with, rushing towards adulthood; it turned out to be more exhausting and less worth it than he could’ve guessed. No surprise it bursted out of him. And now he’s betrayed, the divorce papers are burning his skin through his suit. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t.
But then a man with a pair of deep blue eyes is there, unexpected and unexplainable, appearing out of nowhere, coming into his life like deus ex machina. He’s new and unfamiliar, yet Wilson gets into his car without hesitation, feeling like they've known each other for a lifetime, and when they talk, it‘s as satisfying as a good meal or good sex. Their conversations give him so much, and after the initial small talk and mandatory information exchanging they have all the important things to discuss as the wind is tearing their hair; their fields of studies and the collapse of Gorbachev’s empire and Dr Seuss’s death and Jimi Hendrix’s latest album, stopping at a bar and drinking so much he can't even count the whiskeys in the end.
"You better pay me a few rounds, you cost me a fortune," House says as he's playing with an ice cube, and Wilson smiles and doesn't really understand what is happening to him and why, but it feels perfect in every way, so perfect that from time to time he can almost forget the fact that he’s going to be divorced soon.
House fills the voids in his mind, sharing his views, completing or questioning his perspectives of almost everything; he jokes a lot, tells Wilson random trivia about exotic animals and quantum mechanics, about his childhood spent in different countries, occasionally spicing his sentences with foreign phrases to flaunt; but Wilson doesn't fall behind him and bombs him with pop cultural references and stories of his tennis team in high school and quotes from the writings of Umberto Eco and Thoreau he read as an idealist teenager, anecdotes of med school and his own ordinary childhood that seems to interest House; and he asks House about his residency and his fellowship in nephrology and House speaks about them, and he later mentions a dark haired girl he shared a night with, and whom he seems to cherish; and Wilson tells him about his family and his teenage loves and Sam and his two jobs and the sleepless nights he had to work through to support themselves; and finally House tells him about his father, smiling a bitter little smile when Wilson gets angry for him.
It’s late night, and they sit in comfortable silence in a pub. House lights a cigar, puffing lazily, and he catches Wilson staring with a gloomy face at the envelop in his briefcase; and without warning House grabs it and throws it out the window, and Wilson is shocked, but after a moment he laughs like a maniac as the divorce papers are swept far away by the wind, and he notices that his heart is eased a little.
They continue their drinking tour across the pubs of New Orleans, and they drunk drive and laugh and argue about the AIDS epidemic and monster truck accidents, and they are yelling so loudly they’re kicked out of the next bar, and they keep shouting on the street before House suddenly laughs it off, and Wilson finds himself also grinning.
"We'll get us both arrested for all these decibels," he says, trying to see through the dimness of inebriation.
"You can always find interesting people in jail," House answers, "right, fuckers?", he adds with a deafening roar just for the sheer joy of it; and as they drive home, Wilson is thinking about how fascinated he is by House’s way of thinking, his talent, his bad guy mindset, wondering what a man of his age would find interesting in him. Their minds perfectly complement each other’s, and he feels like he just got back his arm that he didn't realize was missing. Like a blind man who sees light for the first time.
And later, they add colors to it.
"Ever been high on acid?" House asks, blatantly as always as they are sitting in the armchairs of House’s hotel room the next day, a lazy, hazy Sunday afternoon. They have all the time in the world; there’s still one day left of the convention they both know they will skip.
"What? N-no, never," Wilson says, staring stunned at House, eyebrows rising towards his hairline.
"Wanna try?" House fumbles in his backpack, long legs not moving from the table. "Believe me, it’s not bad. And you seem like someone who'd be into it. It will be fun, and I‘ll be your guide."
A questioning glare and a half-smile, and Wilson just stares at him, mouth gaping in disbelief and insecurity.
"Why am I not surprised that you have something like this. What kind of a doctor are you anyway?"
"Oh come on, don't be so tight-assed. You need to let go all the shit." Intense blue gaze burning into his own. "You trust me?"
Wilson releases a nervous laughter. "Is there a reason I shouldn't?"
"Well, you barely know me, but don't let that scare you," House says matter-of-factly while fumbling with a small pack of foil, and Wilson chuckles softly in answer.
"Yeah, but it doesn't feel that way."
But he does trust him. Oh yes, how he trusts him.
"Then open up," House says, and when he does, he places a tiny blue square on his tongue, and then on his own. "Don’t swallow, just let it melt."
Wilson chuckles with embarrassment, fear and excitement. "And what does this thing do, shows me the face of God?"
"Oh no. I don't think there's a God." Another half-smirk. "I used to look for him. Look for something beyond this, found nothing godlike. But maybe you'll catch a glimpse of something else just as interesting."
Wilson stares at him for a moment.
"So you are an addict and an atheist? The things I get to know…"
House just smirks.
"I'm not an addict type."
So they lie back in the armchairs, changing back and forth between comfortable silence and small talk about the effects, waiting for the LSD to kick in. Wilson is studying the walls and the rug, moving his feet full of pins and needles. Nothing happens first, just the feeling of incredible ease, but that might be just the warmth of this newly found friendship, and he shakes his head softly at the unexpected twists of the past few days.
Then the light slowly begins to fade and transform into radially pulsating lines and shards.
Wilson throws his head back to see the light oscillating in the room; hotness flows in his hand that he can’t eliminate, can’t resist nor surrender to it. An intangible, shapeless rage forms liquid crystal gravels under his fingers as he strokes his skin, and looks around. In front of a golden-black background crystal-drops of water glitter on a cobweb, and there's a white peacock, champagne bubbles are flying upwards from its tail feathers.
"Holy shit!"
"Good stuff, isn’t it?" House asks whimsically, but his question doesn't make sense to Wilson right now. He breathes in the air, travelling inside a black and white, flickering fractal, studying its mathematical structure in amaze, rocking between its fibers, and it’s beautiful as it transforms into a hypercube behind his closed eyelids. He says into the air that he doesn’t like the hypercube, because he cannot grasp its multi-dimensional shape.
House answers that he should love the hypercube.
He finds himself standing at the window, looking outside at the sunset that’s breaking on the mirror-walls of the skyscrapers. House is right beside him, their hands touch but they don't feel it; they watch the sun floating over the clouds in a glass globe of solar light. The cloud-silhouettes become the sea, dark ships drift among islands as they are looking at a magical picture hidden in another image.
"We are the only ones in the whole world who stopped to observe this," Wilson says, and House puts a hand on his shoulder as they keep staring at the orange orb.
Time has no concept anymore. Wilson vaguely knows that a few hours may have already passed, but it seems both eons and nanoseconds since they’ve been flying together. He looks at House who’s sitting by the window now, speaking about how he’s forming sculptures from the tiles of the floor of the balcony with his imagination, with his vision. Wilson is watching him, and the words he murmurs to himself have blue and pale pink colors, floating off his lips. I missed you.
He looks up at the ceiling, and stars are falling in his face, rapidly like raindrops, tiny fireflies light the dark room with star-colored shining.
House is there, he knows it, and he laughs an uncontrolled laughter at the sensation of unity. There are abandoned cities with the color of the night clouds, he’s holding House’s hand, maybe for real, maybe in his mind as they are building a shared dream; and a tree is growing out from the concrete, spring is oozing from its branches, it paints the sky blue, it glues the broken city together. He controls the vision, or rather the fantasy, deliberately imagining that everything will turn out to be good.
Wilson’s amazed, amused and comfortable as hell, he could follow a train of thought to infinity and still never grasp all of the dimensions in his head.
Then all visions slowly fade away to a pleasant, low-key pulsating, though the memory keeps lingering, rocking him in a soft little boat.
"Oh God, it is great, wonderful," Wilson babbles incoherently, warmth heating his feet and hands, and House is sitting on the rug, staring at the patches of light dancing on the blue wall behind the window blinds.
"Look at all those jellyfish," he says dreamily.
Wilson hums, but he's not interested in the jellyfish, instead he's regarding House’s profile, and when he turns towards him, his features change and unfamiliar faces are formed from them. His ancestors. An old man, a young man and a middle-aged woman, then, for a moment, an old woman, before his face becomes young and genderless in the colours of the twilight; Wilson has never seen anything so beautiful, and he feels like a sea dweller walking on the surface for the first time.
He closes his eyes again; another deep sigh, another swirl of images of the universe, the rays of a dying red dwarf star, a black hole absorbing the light, comets and moons circling around grey and blue planets; and when he comes back to Earth, he sees House lying right next to him on the bed, smiling at him, irises swallowed by huge bottomless pupils.
"I haven't even said your name. What do you prefer? James?" he asks, and it doesn’t feel right.
"Um, my… my wife calls me James, but… I―"
House's smile broadens, and he knows all.
"Then I won't call you that. Wilson," he says, tasting his name, syllables flying softly from his pink lips, and somehow the way he says it is more intimate than anything Wilson’s ever experienced. "You know that the acid works in your brain only for five minutes? Everything after is just the… aftershock. A ride in a swing. After…math…" House laughs as he's searching for the proper word. "The human communication is so… penurious, so insufficient."
It is true, Wilson thinks for a moment, and it feels so good not to be alone after what seemed like an eternity, travelling across the universe. There is another being, another human next to him, with similar mindset, similar experiences, understanding what cannot be told, and he wants to connect when words are useless and inadequate.
He catches himself glaring into House's face, memorizing his features like he could be gone by tomorrow, and suddenly he’s petrified that’s exactly what will happen; and House looks back with such gentle curiosity that it makes his heart race. He cannot lose him, he simply cannot… That’s when he realizes that he has House’s fingers in his hand.
And House smiles. "You ever seen brown eyes in the sunset? They melt into golden rays, like those circling an eclipse. In the later hours they turn into a sunset of their own."
"Is that your design, bailing out and wooing random guys?" Wilson asks, not wanting to move his hand, and he hopes House doesn’t notice it. He doesn't want to separate their hands.
"Not what I often do."
"Then why did you do it?"
"The wooing?" House asks. "No, I told you, needed someone to drink with."
"But… why me? There were other people too."
House doesn't answer, just stares at him, gaze becoming somewhat distant, and Wilson suddenly must hear the answer, he needs to hear it.
"Hou―"
But his voice is cut off. "I just… knew."
"Knew what?"
A smile. "That you're not boring."
Wilson blinks at him, then breaks out in laughter. "God, I’m… I’m in a fucking fairytale," he snorts as crystallized icicles form on the periphery of his vision, "a fucking, surreal fairytale… where I’m the youngest prince, and you are…" He leans over House, face inches from his, watching his huge pupils glistening in the twilight, cheeks gleaming with amusement similar his own, "you are Prince Charming who saves me."
House is looking back, laugh lines around his eyes. "Two princes? That’s one modern fairytale," he says, and that makes Wilson grin, too. "And what’s your soon-to-be-ex-wife’s role in the story?"
At the mention of Sam he grimaces, but can’t help bursting out in the next second. "Easy… she’s the evil witch who cursed me!"
They laugh, and for now Wilson really can't tell the difference between tales and reality and acid trip anymore. Then House’s face turns a little more serious, yet the mischief remains. "And how are the spells supposed to be broken?" he asks, and then Wilson’s body is faster than his mind and he’s not thinking, just leans forward to kiss House's still smiling mouth.
Lips are pressing softly like butterflies, with the insecurity of the first kiss that so much depends on; then a small pause, a tiny catch of breaths, Wilson’s voice but a trembling whisper. "I’m sorry, you were joking, I shou―," but then House takes his face in his hands and kisses him again, the tip of his tongue swiping against his upper lip with the breeze of a promise, and Wilson moans and yanks him close. House’s mouth is sliding on his, a hint of stubble, tiny suckling of lips, little nips, House’s hands are caressing the back of his neck, and Wilson groans again, devouring House’s lips, taking delight in the soft crying sounds he gets in return, tongues sliding wetly, tastebuds aroused with the flavour of spiced candy, and it's wonderful and feels like they were swallowing each other whole, so intense, so engrossed, everything feels multiplied thousandfold as their hands twine, and the delicacy of House’s lips is like kissing water, kissing air.
And there are pictures so vivid that he will remember them even many years later: the way House's collarbones are exposed as Wilson slides the shirt down from his shoulders, the goosebumps on his own stomach as House hikes his t-shirt up and breathes in his navel, the sight of a soft pink tongue gliding on his skin, the way his own fingers disappear in House's hair.
And House's voice is breaking as he leans his forehead against Wilson’s ribs. "No, it's… I didn't invite you here to… to take advantage of you…"
"Are you kidding, don't you dare to stop!" Wilson says, turning themselves over and kissing his friend, murmuring sweet nonsenses to encourage him until House embraces him back and presses his hot mouth against his neck, pushing aside his uncertainty.
"House," Wilson’s lips are teasing, worshipping the name, he keeps calling him like that and it feels natural and appropriate. "Oh, House, please," he whispers as he straddles him, letting himself be slowly exposed, unwrapped like a birthday present, his bare skin licked, tiny beads of sweat lapped up, and he feels a gasp of pleasure bursting through his lips, transmuted into a growl churning low in his throat. "House," he moans softly, like he’s holding onto the only fix point in his life.
"God," House whispers, "the way you say my name…"
"Don’t I know you?" Wilson’s on his back again, staring blankly at the undulating, pulsating patterns on the wall, face in a cathartic smile, "don’t I know you from somewhere?" He pulls House to him to claim his mouth in another molten kiss, and House growls onto his lips, completely undone, and seeing him like this is strange, thrilling, and not surprising at all.
"Wilson, oh I want to… I want…" House moans, slowly rocking against him, and the hard heat of his body sets Wilson on fire.
"Yes!" He cries as House nips his neck, his fevered sighs are like melody of another world, and House’s flesh feels like silk to his fingertips, and the pleasure is multiplied and he lets himself drown in it, he wants to feel it, he wants to live it through, it's not enough, even as House's naked skin becomes liquefied vanilla beneath his tongue and his dark red lips are sweet and warm, and his own body is melting under House’s touch as his mouth is doing incredible, wonderful things to him.
There's so much to do and so many things to experience, a hundred lifetimes wouldn't be enough.
"I want to feel you in me."
Wilson’s words form themselves on their own on his tongue, out of yellow and green colors as he’s floating on a melody of LSD and sweat and kisses and smell, and he only knows he said it out loud when House’s eyes flutter closed as he's gasping "oh fuck" against his cheek, so quietly it’s barely audible.
With his last shreds of sobriety Wilson slides to the edge of the bed to fumble in his briefcase for a condom before House could say anything, and House can't let him go and he follows him, hugging him from behind, trembling like he doesn't believe what is happening, his hardness pokes Wilson’s thigh as he keeps kissing along Wilson’s nape and spine, making him chuckle and purr and lean back into his embrace.
Turning over, he’s marveling at House’s body as he’s kneeling on the bed, rolling the condom on himself with shaking hands; his skin tightly hugs his muscles, the tall, sinewy form of an athlete, simple male perfection in body and mind; and Wilson’s so aroused he thinks he’s gonna pass out if House doesn't do something soon. But then the man is on top of him, broad shoulders hovering over his, a perfect, hot cock pressing against his own, and they’re kissing again, his mouth flooded with the taste of heaven, the warmth of House’s skin sends sparks along his nerves.
House is heavy and hard and sweating between his thighs, as aroused and needy and excited and scared as himself, hesitating for a second, but Wilson grips his waist with his legs, looking in his eyes.
"Come," he breathes, and when House pushes in, they both groan shamelessly; and he finally, finally slides all the way inside, the tightness, the heat become almost unbearable; it’s intense and foreign, Wilson can’t help but cry out, feeling like they were fusing together; and House stills.
"Good?" he grunts onto Wilson’s mouth, melting into him hotly, damply, until Wilson's whole being, his limbs, his head are all filled with him, to the tips of his fingers, tips of his toes.
"Yes," he groans, the depth of those darkened, blue eyes is almost sickening, he can’t stand it, he has to kiss, and House’s waist is the slender arch of a violin, lukewarm wood becoming hourglass under his palm, sand of life peeling behind moist glass. House moves inside him, his tongue feels like petals, its caress is the breeze of spring as he's bathing Wilson's skin all over with panting kisses, thus telling things he doesn't have the words for, gently closing his teeth around a nipple, his hands stroking him everywhere he can reach as his body is rhythmically pressing into his.
Wilson’s throat resonates and murmurs as he’s pushing himself against him, surging together with him, almost crying in delirious pleasure, "please, don't― don't ever stop…" as he's making love to a liquid deity, being transformed into plasma in the raging fractals of their minds. His friend, his lover, his saviour moves in him with slow, deep undulates, like the waves of an ocean, rocking him, taking him higher, each movement caressing that wonderful place within him, making him arch and moan, and their foreheads touch, lips part around gasping breaths, eyes lock in separate yet conjoined worlds, and in this moment he knows that he’s lost forever in him.
And then the blueness of that gaze becomes hypnotizing, and suddenly everything is too tight and too hot, House’s heat, his quiet sobs, his thrusts, his pleasure are washing over him, transforming into electric impulses across the netting of his nerves, and there’s not enough air in his lungs. "House―" he chokes out, "I’ll come―" and his breath sticks in his throat, his hands dig in House’s moist skin, and House’s guttural, answering groan is but a distant murmur in his ear; and at first he only feels the physical symptoms, the racing of his heart, the tightening of his muscles around his lover, the rippling of his abdomen, the arching of his back, the twitching of his cock in House’s warm, caressing hand, the first long spurt and the hot wetness on his own stomach and chest before the offset euphoria takes him, multiplied and stretched across time; and he clutches at the other man like his life depends on it, the last straw connecting him to this world, sobbing hoarsely, voice mingling with House’s encouraging whispers as his whole body is thrashing with release, his thighs clasp around his friend's waist, polygons with the color of House’s irises engendering behind his eyelids, dark fire pooling in his groin; it seems to last forever as he's wailing House’s name, his fingers sink in that muscular back and oh yes, House is there, inside his body and inside his skull and inside his soul, and they are twined together within the finite time; and for a moment he truly believes he’s found God.
His throat becomes dry with heavy wheezing, and in the first moment of clarity he finally looks up to see House staring at him, mesmerized and somewhat frightened, with a raw, vulnerable expression, eyes transfixed on his face.
"Wilson…" His whisper but a breeze between his lips, "God, you're so― oh God…" He’s trembling and his eyes are shiny, he’s stopped moving, waiting for his reassurance; but Wilson smiles at him and pushes and turns themselves over so he can ride him, slow and hard, pumping his hips, rising his body to damply kiss House's lips, holding him, swallowing his little cries of joy and fever. "My dragon…" House sighs shakily, "my silver dragon…" and Wilson watches his eyes glistening huge and unbelieving for a moment before screwing shut, his breath hitching, then calling out in Wilson's embrace, face twisting, body tensing and convulsing for what seems like minutes; it's such an intoxicating and beautiful sight that Wilson's heart skips a beat, and he just stares, burning the picture in his memory as they keep rocking slowly; and House’s hands are gentle on his waist, even as he’s flying high.
Caresses, long, long hours of aftermath, galaxies and quasars blink on the wall in the dim light, and they’re surging into the rhythm together.
"I saw your past in you," Wilson whispers in House's ear, wondering and smiling.
"I saw my future in you," House answers as he looks at him, dizzy amazement in his eyes in the place of his usual mask of indifference, and turns his face to kiss him. "I wish this lasted forever," he murmurs, puffing warm little clouds of breath on Wilson’s lips.
"Oh, yes, it will last forever," Wilson throws his head back, laughing as tears of happiness trickle from his eyes, "it will last forever."
They don’t talk about it the next day.
Wilson has to go back to Boston, to his previous life, to his divorce, and he’s scared, because everything they had is still too intense, too wonderful, too frightening. He’s scared and lost and doesn’t want to be in pain.
He dresses and steps to House to say something, to say thank you, but realizes he can’t find the words as they look at each other. Instead he fumbles in his jacket for a pen, and takes House’s hand to write his phone number onto his skin.
House looks at it for a while, like he wants to memorize it, then raises his head, his eyes unreadable, distant.
"Don’t go."
The quiet, simple beg tears into Wilson’s ears; but he cannot afford to lose House if it becomes something close, something intimate, and if it turns out to be unsustainable in the end.
So he chooses the lesser hurt, lying to himself that they wouldn't have a future together, because it was only a drug induced affair.
"I have to."
So he belittles and denies everything he saw in those eyes, everything he felt in his stomach.
"No, you don’t."
So he lets it go, pushes it away, and he’s cursing himself for it.
"We meet again?" A childish question escapes him though, he can’t help it.
And House looks at him like trying to figure him out when he thought he’s already solved the puzzle that’s Wilson; and after a long pause, he takes the pen to scrabble his number onto Wilson's hand, too.
"Call me if you want," he says shortly, and all the unspoken things are choking them both.
They say goodbye at last, and their skin is cold as they shake hands, but Wilson pretends he doesn't notice it.
He arrives back to Boston, and cries and sobs in the cab when he realizes he still has House’s scent on his shirt; and the driver doesn't ask anything.
A week passes, and just as he wants to call House, his phone rings, and they talk, both sounding happy to hear about the other; and they bury that night and rebuild their friendship from the basics.
Wilson can learn to live with the longing. It’s amazing what people can live with.
So he divorces, and he meets Bonnie and proposes to her after a while, and they get a dog. Because that's what nice, sober, straight people do.
Because there’s no such thing as love at first sight.