So here's the story: once upon a time a writer named MB ran across a Kink/Cliché challenge and went, "Well, why not?" She signed up, and upon receiving her prompts, came up with a quick germ of an idea for one of them, which she saved for a bit farther down the line, since she wanted to see some developments in canon, and also needed to finish some other fics first. Knowing her writing speed, she figured if she started the fic two weeks or a week and a half before the posting due date, she'd be just fine.

And then Beta Purgatory happened.

Really, if I'd started the story even a week before today things would have been great--but with three stories open, with a net of seven sets of characterizations, I just couldn't focus. I intended to sit down on Thursday or Friday and begin, since I'd finally gotten Balances* done and out, but Thursday and Friday turned into nightmare days involving dying pets and doctor's appointments and more. So I ended up actually starting the fic around 6 PM EST on Saturday, which actually would have been okay if it was in the six to nine thousand word range I was figuring on. Not fun, but manageable.

I ended up with over fourteen thousand words--written in less than twenty-six hours. In fact, if you remove time for eating, sleeping, and weeping piteously on people, I think it's something like fourteen or fifteen hours. Maybe less. Editing took up quite possibly more time, just because I had to keep going to people to get betas. Nevertheless, it was finished and posted... with a minute to spare.

Oddly I think it still turned out fairly well.


* Ironically enough, one of my prompts, unused, was, "Lots and lots of foreplay." I didn't go with this because, well, it's supposed to be a challenge. In retrospect, I could have just held up Balances a few extra days and submitted that, but it didn't really seem fair to the spirit of the thing.


Title: Defensive Strategies (1/2)
Fandom: House
Rating: R, Slash
Pairing: House/Wilson
Summary: In which Wilson has a problem, House has a cunning plan, girls hunt in packs, chocolate cake has unexpected dangers, furniture is unintentionally ordered, several conversations occur, and dinner is repeatedly served. Starring House, Wilson, House & Wilson's Issues, Cuddy, an Original Female Character, and the Original Female Character's Breasts. Trust me, they deserve the separate billing.
Notes: Written in about twenty-six hours for the Kink/Cliché challenge. Ow, my head. Anyway, the prompt I went with was, "Undercover lover/have to pretend to be dating". Also, the Detroit line came from bethfrish, and someone else came up with Housexual, though I'm really not sure who.
Warnings: Twenty-six hours, oh my god my brain. It's oozing out of my ears. Err, which is to say, results not guaranteed.
Disclaimer: These characters do not, in fact, belong to me. Except for the breasts and their attached girl. She's mine, all mine, bwahahahahaha.
Thanks: To canthlian, ladysorka, and writingrose for Alphaing, azarias and ginskye for incredibly fast Beta turn-arounds, hobviously for her usual brilliant Beta-ing consults, and especially to catalase, who Beta'd, did a bit of Alpha, helped me figure out what I was doing, and generally kept me sane while writing this.

If you would prefer a whole, off-LJ version of the story, it can now be found on the House Fan Fiction Archive by clicking here, or The Archive at the End of the Universe by clicking here (try the printer-friendly icon for a bare-minimum page).



Defensive Strategies


"I need a sign," Wilson told House, settling in across the booth from him.

"What, like a 'voice from above' kind of sign, or a 'tasteful font and maybe some graphics' kind of sign?" House asked, barely glancing up from the basket of fries that had arrived while Wilson had been in the bathroom.

"Either would be nice," Wilson replied, stealing a fry. House gave him a flat look. "But I was thinking more the second one, I admit," he finished, after pausing to chew and swallow. Their drinks had arrived too, sodas for both of them. Wilson had decided he wasn't yet at the stage of post-divorce where drinking was all that great a plan, though he figured it was probably a bad sign that he'd been through this often enough to know that from first-hand experience.

House, on the other hand, might drink at home but only did so in public when things were seriously screwed-up, though Wilson had never been completely certain if that was because of control and safety issues, or just because House avoided being in public as much as possible to begin with. Agreeing to go out with Wilson would have been a sign of something; the fact that he'd been the one to suggest they go out somewhere positively screamed that something. Wilson just wasn't entirely sure what that something was, or maybe he didn't want to be; if Wilson was in such obvious pain that the man who was so introverted he wouldn't even talk to patients if he could help it was trying to get him out among the happy shining crowd, he didn't think he wanted to know.

Still, he did have to admit that working their way through a different local restaurant every night did beat sitting at home in his new and still too-bare apartment, brooding over past mistakes. Even if sitting at home was safer, in some ways.

"So," House said, after a meditative fry-consumption pause of his own, "what would this sign say?"

"I don't know," Wilson said, leaning back in the booth. The vinyl creaked distractingly; it was too new to be totally broken in, but not new enough to be completely resilient. "Maybe, 'Not Interested,' or, 'Look Elsewhere,' or maybe just, 'Stop, Please, It's Flattering But I'm Not Ready To Date Again Now, If Ever.'"

"You're gonna need a big sign for that last one," House pointed out, licking ketchup off his fingers, and it took Wilson a second to remember to reply.

"I could write it on a sandwich board and just wear that. Then I could list other things, too, like the fact I'm oh for three in the marriage sweepstakes." He swooped in and stole another fry when this last statement caused House to pause for a second, a look halfway between surprised and thoughtful on his face.

"That'd probably actually encourage a few of the more terminally codependent types," House pointed out, after a second.

Wilson bit down on an urge to tell him that House would know, after all, and said instead, "Well, there's still the fact that not a lot of people will hit on a guy who's wearing a sandwich board."

"They would if that was really all you were wearing," House pointed out, with a dramatically overdone leer. Wilson rolled his eyes.

"You can always be relied upon to lower the tone of the conversation."

"Part of my charm," House insisted loftily. He paused for a second. "If it's really bothering you, we could stop doing this."

"No," Wilson replied, and if it didn't come out as vehement as it wanted to, he knew he'd still spoken too fast. House tilted his head, his eyes widening slightly as he studied Wilson in that particularly diagnostic way of his, french-fry held momentarily forgotten in his fingers. Wilson resisted an urge to shift uncomfortably--that look always made him itchy between his shoulder blades, somehow--and continued on, "You were right, I do need to get out. I just wish...." He paused and gestured slightly with one hand towards the bar, where a small cluster of girls was seated. They kept sneaking little looks at him and then giggling together. "You'd think I'd be used to it, but I'm not."

"Think of it like trauma recovery," House told him, taking a sip of his drink. "Stuff that never meant anything beforehand is going to be a lot harder to handle."

Neither of them glanced towards House's cane. But then, neither of them needed to. "It'll be flattering and fun again someday, but right now I just wish they'd stop," Wilson said, leaning forward on his elbows and sighing.

House looked thoughtful again for a minute. "Well, you could always," he began, then looked at Wilson for a long moment and shook his head. "No, that wouldn't work."

"What?" Wilson asked, sitting up straighter.

"I was going to suggest you could try to be less attractive, but short of shaving your head completely bald, which would cause the nursing staff to have hysterics...." House said, musingly.

"Gee, thanks," Wilson said, rolling his eyes and leaning back again.

"It's not my fault you were born looking like that," House pointed out. "Blame your mother."

Wilson rolled his eyes again. "I could slouch."

House thought about this a second. "Nope."

"Wear ratty clothing?" he suggested.

The reply was faster. "Nope."

Wilson's turn to think for a second. "Be mean?" he finally offered, tentatively.

"Again, you'd just attract a different sort of girl. You're better off with the ones who like you because you're nice, believe me."

One of these days, Wilson was going to get the full story about Cameron out of House. Until then, he was just going to go insane with all the hints House dropped.

"So you're saying I'm screwed."

"You could always wear a wedding ring," House said, gesturing towards Wilson's clasped hands with a fry.

"I didn't wear a ring when I was married," Wilson pointed out, and ignored the little quirk of eyebrows this provoked out of House, though House otherwise kept his eyes were fixed on the fry basket. "I was always afraid I'd take it off to wash my hands and lose the damned thing," he added. He was aware that seemed defensive, but he needed to say something.

"So, just wear it when you go out," House said, looking up from the fries with a casual shrug.

Wilson sighed, leaned forward, and stole another fry. "I'd rather not."

"Because it's dishonest?" House asked, his voice strangely clinical.

"Because...." He paused, and snagged another fry, using the time to eat it to think, then sighed again. "Because I'd rather not have the reminder," he finally admitted.

He was saved from any response House might have made to that revelation by the arrival of their meals. The waitress smiled at Wilson in a way that made him want to wiggle across the booth away from her, but otherwise didn't do anything too disturbing--though the way she stared directly at him when she said they should let her know if they needed anything else was enough to make him shift uncomfortably again. House didn't comment, just looked at him with something sardonic in his expression.

"See?" Wilson asked, when she was gone.

"I saw before," House said, reaching for the salt. He'd ordered a burger with the works; Wilson had ordered a salad. House had looked at him and Wilson had pointed out neither of them were getting any younger or healthier. Now, presented with the contrast between his leafy green selection and House's layered heart-attack delight, Wilson found himself wondering if those potential extra years of life were worth it.

"Uh, House...."

House cut the burger in half without even saying, 'I told you so,' though he did say, as they were transferring it over to Wilson's plate, "I get some of the salad, and you're paying half my bill."

"Done," Wilson said.

***
They didn't discuss anything serious for the rest of the meal; Wilson insisted on a share of fries, since House had gotten some with his burger on top of the ones he'd had earlier, and they talked about sports. Hank Wiggen was back in play and had just torn up the Yankees hitters, and House took a certain proprietary pleasure in that for which Wilson couldn't entirely blame him. And if there was something odd about the theory of going out to spend more time around people and only actually talking to House, well... Wilson really didn't think it was worth examining too closely. He felt better, and this was life, not medicine, so it didn't really matter why it worked so long as it did.

This might have held, and the whole thing gone down as a vaguely pleasant evening only somewhat marred by the whole apparently irresistibly-attractive-to-women thing, if it hadn't been for, well, the irresistibly-attractive-to-women thing. They were done eating and it was Wilson's turn to wait for House to come back from the restroom, only he'd decided to do so near the entrance, to avoid being gawked at by the girls at the bar some more. There was just one problem: the girls had followed him.

Well, girl. They didn't usually come after him in hunting packs, like Velociraptors, although that thought was probably going to keep him up nights. Wilson still had the distinct feeling that her friends were waiting just out of sight so as to be on hand to congratulate if she made a kill or console if her chosen prey managed to escape. He was betting, though, that she succeeded a lot more often than she struck out; there was a determined look in her dark eyes that, when combined with the easy confidence in her smile and movements, made him suspect she didn't often fail to get what she wanted.

And 'girl' wasn't the right term, either, once she got separated off from the rest of the bunch. Late twenties, early thirties maybe, with big dark eyes and a waterfall of curly dark hair, smooth dusky skin and a body, shown off to advantage in the tight pants and shirt she wore, that was reminding Wilson it had been a lot longer than just the start of his divorce proceedings since he'd had sex. Those breasts in and of themselves were pretty breathtaking, even to someone who spent as much time around Cuddy as he did, and had to be real--and Wilson was willing to bet even House would be impressed by the lines of her legs.

Damn, it had been way, way too long. This was the real problem he had with all the flirtation and offers; every time he said no, it used up another little bit of control out of his definitely-not-inexhaustible supply. He liked women and he liked sex, and that had always been a problem; he didn't trust himself with relationships anymore. He'd gotten through his marriages without cheating by the skin of his teeth, and that had been the reason for his first two divorces; he'd come to the point where he knew he was going to cheat, and that, not the actual cheating itself, had been the final thing that told him it was over. His leaving Julie had finally broken that pattern, but he was still hurting over her and knew he had no business getting involved with anyone new, yet when this girl smiled Wilson couldn't quite keep from smiling back, stupid as it was.

She had a great smile, too.

"Excuse me," she said, with that smile. Her voice went with the body and sent his brain to very bad, porn-filled places. "I wouldn't normally do this," she added, ducking her head a little and smiling up through her lashes, a coyness not matched by the look in her eyes, and a distant part of him admired her technique, "but some friends and I were at the bar and we couldn't help noticing... you have a really great smile."

Well, at least they were on the same page. "Uh, thanks," he said, a bit awkwardly but still smiling almost helplessly, and cursed that somewhere along the line he'd learned flawlessly how to attract women but never at all how to repel them. He sucked at putting people off. That was House's job, and one of the unspoken exchanges of their relationship; when House wanted or needed someone to whip out the winning smile and make nice, he called Wilson, and when Wilson needed someone to be a bastard and offend someone or get rid of them, he called House. Except right now his human shield was off in the bathroom, and the girl was only five six or so and had just leaned forward enough to give him an amazing view of her cleavage.

He wondered if shouting for help was premature.

"Do you--" she began, then broke off with a pause that Wilson was pretty sure had been planned, but only because he knew this game so well; she was really very good. "Are you from around here?" she finished instead, with just the right touch of awkward.

Fuck, but there was a voice in his head right now saying that if she was this good, he should take it, because she couldn't possibly be expecting anything too much. Some commitment-free sex would do him good, bolster up that reservoir of control and let him say no again for a good long while. Except Wilson was bad at commitment-free sex and he knew it; he always somehow ended up with commitment, and the girls never seemed entirely unhappy with that. "I... yeah," he heard himself say, and thought, you complete idiot, what are you doing? Except what came out next, instead of something that sensibly extracted him from the conversation, was, "Actually, I work just down the street, at the hospital."

He wasn't sure if this was his libido or how he'd been raised, but right now his common sense was pissed at both options.

Her eyes widened, and there were bits of him that couldn't help being gratified. "Oh, you're a doctor?" she began, with a slight laugh. "That's actually great, and kind of funny, because I-"

Wilson never got to find out what was great about it, because the cavalry had finally arrived. The noise of the rest of the restaurant concealed the familiar limping rhythm of House's steps until he was right on top of Wilson and casually sidling into his personal space. It wasn't really a surprise, or all that atypical, except for the fact that instead of pausing just slightly-too-close and helping Wilson hold the velocibreasts at bay with the force of his personality, House cheerfully crossed over the entirely-too-close line and slipped an arm around Wilson's waist. It was warm and very weirdly comfortable, all things considered.

"Sorry," House told the girl, who was staring at them with a startled expression, "he's taken."

When Wilson had been praying for rescue, somehow this wasn't exactly what he'd had in mind.

Still, the rapidly reassessing look on her face suggested it might work, so he marshaled his self-control and did not turn and stare at House, or jerk away and ask him what the hell he thought he was doing. The first actually took a lot more effort than the second; he knew what was House was doing, after all, and it really wasn't too horrible a fate to bear for a couple minutes.

He did think he owed the girl something though, for leading her on and the embarrassed flush rising to her cheeks, so he signed exasperatedly, turning his head slightly to get House in his peripheral vision, and began, "She wasn't--"

"No, I'm sorry," the girl interrupted him, and gave him another one of those smiles; he had to look slightly away to avoid the attractiveness of it, and House's arm momentarily tightened. Probably warning he was giving off mixed signals, but under the circumstances he was lucky he wasn't giving off coherent ones--just of the complete wrong type. "I.... It was nice meeting you," she said, and fled, taking her somewhat battered dignity and a really great view of her backside with her.

Well, it was more than some people got away from House with.

"Oh, you owe me for that," House said, watching her go, just loudly enough that Wilson could hear him. He didn't immediately let go of Wilson, either--but then, that might have alerted the rest of the pack to the charade, and it was probably a bad sign that he was thinking of women in those terms these days.

"For pretending you're getting to have sex with me?" he asked, turning to face House, and blinking for a moment at how close his face was. House's eyes were even more distracting than normal from this range. "I think the debt-burden there is on the other side."

"Well, I suppose really that depends on who's on top," House said, waggling his eyebrows.

Wilson rolled his eyes. "Okay, I did not need that image. You going to let go of me any time soon, or do we walk to the car like this?"

"Well that would certainly get the rest of the women here to leave you alone--not merely gay, but clingy."

"In this scenario, you'd be the clingy one."

"Might be worse. Gay with a clingy boyfriend who owns a stick, very bad idea to hit on."

Wilson rolled his eyes again, and House finally let go--but not without grabbing Wilson's ass as he did so.

"Hey!" It was more formulaic than anything else; Wilson didn't think House meant anything by it.

"Playing to the crowd," House said, loftily, before heading for the door.

Wilson trailed after him, sighing, "House...."

"Well, you wanted a sign," House pointed out, over his shoulder. "There you go. Neon, ten feet high," he added, indicating the metaphorical sign with a jerk of his chin.

The air was cooler when they'd gone in, but still not chilly. "I'm thinking the wedding ring idea might be better than having you grope me everywhere we go."

"You sure?" House asked, as they headed for the car.

It took Wilson a moment to think about. "No."

House gave him a strange look, but he didn't comment.

***
There was probably some parallel universe where it ended there, just another slightly odd event in a more than slightly odd friendship, and Wilson eventually got over his latest divorce and got back into dating and maybe eventually ended up with yet another wife, House went on with his life as well, and they just stayed friends. That was probably, actually, the easier universe, if not necessarily the better one, though sometimes Wilson wondered.

In this universe, which was the one that mattered to Wilson anyway, it didn't go that way, and didn't end there, because two weeks later, in a different bar and grill, they ran into the girl with the attack breasts again.

For about five days House had stuck with his particular plan, which Wilson endured with a dignified silence and a lot of staring. House insisted it was a really noble self-sacrifice on his part, but Wilson didn't find that particularly plausible; House was getting way too much enjoyment out of things like slipping out of his shoe and running a socked foot up Wilson's leg under the table. He always had gotten a kick out of doing shock-value things. They stopped on the fourth day not because it wasn't working--Wilson still got hit on, but never by anyone who had seen the two of them together, which made for a noticeable drop in volume--but because it was working a little too well; it had, after all, been way too long since the last time he got laid, and Wilson's body was starting to threaten to react on pure stimulus grounds, no matter how inappropriate it was. He told House that the reprieve had been enough and called a halt to things before they got out of hand.

So things went back to normal, or at least normal for them, which even Wilson had to admit was actually pretty strange by most standards. They worked their way through another string of restaurants on nights when they weren't stuck at the hospital, they saved a couple more lives, House made some suggestive comments about Cuddy's cleavage, and life went on.

Right up until the Friday evening when they ended up at Terry's Bar and Grill, sitting at the bar ordering appetizers, mostly because there weren't any other options--the place filled up fast--and it was better than standing around awkwardly while waiting for a table to open up. Six years ago, House would have spun on the stool; now he eyed the floor with the practiced look of a man who knows that at some point he is going to have to get down, and he probably won't enjoy it by then. It wasn't even the height, Wilson knew; it was the lack of support, so that by the time they were finished, his lower back was going to be hurting. You didn't spend that much time leaning on a cane without paying for it in other ways.

He'd have suggested they go somewhere else, but House had that determined, stubborn look in his eyes, and Wilson knew if he did House would just briskly turn him down, and secretly be a little hurt by it. So he didn't.

They were waiting on the onion rings--House had won that round--and debating what to order for dinner off of the menu when Wilson heard a faint, discreet sound behind him, and swiveled to find himself presented with a pair of smoldering breasts and bountiful eyes. Or maybe that was the other way around.

"Um," he said, when he finally rescued himself from the vision of cleavage past, "hello."

The look the girl gave him was bitterly amused. Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail tonight, and her eye makeup was maybe a little more dramatic, but if the clinging pants and shirt weren't the same as last time, they were close cousins. "Well, well, if it isn't the doctor. Or, excuse me, the taken doctor," she said, and he had no idea how on earth she was managing to be both seductive and scornful, but it was actually more of a turn-on than just seductive might have been. Which probably, now that he thought about it, said very bad things about him.

House, he saw out of the corner of his eye, had only turned his stool very slightly, so he was angled towards Wilson, and was giving her a look over his shoulder. Wilson knew that look. It was House's 'I'm not going to like you, am I?' look. Wise people feared it and ran away; this girl just gave him a quick, dismissive flick of her eyes before focusing back on Wilson.

"You lied to me," she told him, a wounded note creeping into her voice.

"I... what?" he asked, blinking slightly.

"I've been asking around," she said, stepping forward and resting one hand slightly on the lapel of his jacket. He was peripherally aware of House sitting up straighter. "You could have just said no. You didn't have to make me think I was an idiot."

Oh, that lie. Which technically had been House's lie. Except he had a feeling admitting that would be a very bad idea, and for once his sense was overruling other, older instincts. "I'm... not sure what you mean," he said, leaning back very marginally, away from her hand.

She dropped her arm, but her eyes looked disdainful, and flicked back and forth between them. "You two are not an item. I hear he attended your wedding."

Well, that explained why his good sense was momentarily overpowering those other, stupider instincts: this one was dangerous. Wilson might have been an idiot when it came to relationships, but there were some levels of idiocy he avoided, and getting involved with this sort of woman was one of them. "That doesn't actually mean anything," he pointed out, and wondered if it would be fair to slip off the stool and bolt for the restroom, leaving House to deal with her. It bothered him, though, that he couldn't quite decide the question of fair to who. It was possible that neither of them deserved each other, or maybe that they both did, and in either case it might have been really entertaining to watch them duke it out, except he didn't want to get caught in the crossfire.

She gave him a haughty look. "Please. I think in the very least you should owe me dinner."

Running seemed like a very good idea, suddenly. He was just opening his mouth to try and think of a good excuse--maybe he could figure out a way to fake a page, that always worked for House--when once again the cavalry arrived.

"You know, there's an easy way to settle this," House said, turning his stool a little farther towards Wilson and sitting up a tiny bit straighter. Both the girl and Wilson turned towards him, her with a skeptical expression and Wilson with one that might have looked slightly desperate. House smiled slightly at their mutual regard, and suddenly Wilson felt a brief moment of unease.

Then House leaned forward on his stool, grabbed Wilson's lapels so that he was dragged forward as well, and kissed him.

House's lips were surprisingly soft, and his tongue was surprisingly friendly--Wilson had barely even realized his own lips had parted when he found that tongue sliding against his own, before it continued on in what Wilson couldn't help but think of as a dementedly cheerful exploration of the rest of Wilson's mouth. Maybe it was the way he could almost feel House's smile, or... no, as close as they were there was no almost about it. House's stubble tickled for a second, and then started to rasp and burn slightly, and it was only when he felt House's biceps moving under his hands that Wilson realized his arms had come up and he was clinging for dear life. And it was only when that sunk in that he realized he was kissing House, he was kissing his best friend, he was making out with the guy he worked with and ate lunch with and mocked the nursing staff with. And he was doing it in public.

And it felt really good. Really good. The kind of kiss that, if you ended a first date with it, meant that it was certain you were getting a second one, and if you ended a second date on it, you were clearly getting some on the third.

Very dimly, just before they broke for air, Wilson wondered exactly what the protocol was for that sort of a kiss after years of friendship and what might be considered three solid weeks of dating. Seeing the quickly smothered heat in House's eyes, and thinking back over how much House had clearly enjoyed taking liberties during that period of pretending to be involved, Wilson mentally scratched out 'might be considered': they'd been dating. Wilson just hadn't noticed it.

Most people would have called this an epiphany, Wilson knew, and some of them went to ridiculous lengths to have one, including embracing strange religions, climbing strange mountains, and taking strange drugs. House, judging by the easy and casual way he seemed to get bolts of revelation, probably called it a Thursday afternoon, if even that. Wilson didn't know what to call it, except 'epiphany' felt like too exciting a word for something that left him feeling like an extraordinarily dense idiot.

He risked a glance over at the girl, and found her mouth hanging slightly open. She shut it with a snap when she realized he was looking. Unfortunately, this did nothing to take away from the realization that she wasn't the only one staring at them; the nearby diners were all gaping as well.

House gave them all a glare that, despite the general distribution, managed to have only marginally less intensity than the kind he bestowed upon only a single individual. "What, is this something you've never seen before? Do none of you get cable?"

Very suddenly everyone found other things to look at.

It occurred to Wilson he was still clinging to House's arms, and he let go abruptly, flushing and staring at the floor. Which meant he missed whatever expression was on the girl's face--not to mention a last view of her cleavage--as she said, "Fine," in a very strange, strained sort of voice, and turned to stalk away.

He did raise his eyes long enough to get another view of her in retreat, but that was kind of instinctive.

He couldn't quite meet House's eyes when he looked up--what did you say when your best friend had just kissed you in public? 'Sorry,' might have been appropriate, except Wilson wasn't, and he didn't think House was, either. 'Thanks,' might have been even more appropriate, but required a level of calm and casual he couldn't quite muster, especially when House's lips quirked into a smile for a second, and drawn by the movement, Wilson found himself fighting an incredible urge to grab him and try that all again.

"Don't worry," House said. "I know you'd do the same for me." There was a brief pause, during which Wilson tried to remember how to speak, and then tried to figure out which words to use. His lips were tingling faintly. "Well, okay, maybe not," House said, "but in any case, any response would of course be purely Pavlovian, and I'm not going to attach any real significance to it. And hey, look," he said, straightening and looking past Wilson, his tone brightening and warming, "the gods of timing are smiling for once, because I see our waitress and she's bearing onion rings. Think they're ours?"

They were, and further they came with the attached notice that a booth had been freed up for them. Wilson didn't know if he was grateful or not. He might not have known what to say, but he was fairly sure he needed to say something. When he automatically stood too close to House, so that House leaned into him while standing up without having to admit he needed to, Wilson was acutely aware of the brief contact of House's body in a way he never had been before... or maybe had just never admitted to before.

As he followed House across the restaurant, Wilson found himself thinking that House might not think it meant anything... but he did.

***
They talked more about sports, and ordered based on habit; at this point it was something of a given that Wilson would get half of House's steak and House would get half of Wilson's pasta, and they'd split the salad and fries. The only differences were that after what had just happened Wilson found it very hard to keep his mind on the conversation, and the waitress didn't bat an eye when they asked for extra plates. Apparently if you were okay with kissing at the bar, sharing meals was perfectly normal as well.

Kissing. At the bar. House. Him. Wilson felt like he needed a drink, except he knew better than that and just kept it to soda; the last thing he needed was to get drunk and do something he'd always wonder about later on. Whatever decision he made, he wanted to be clearheaded about it, at least.

Except it was very hard to be clearheaded when House kept licking dipping sauce off his fingers, and Wilson kept thinking back to that tongue in his mouth, which led to very bad thoughts about that tongue elsewhere, and he wasn't gay, so this was all completely wrong.

Well, he thought he wasn't gay. The fact he suddenly wanted to spend hours getting better acquainted with his best friend's tongue probably indicated that wasn't as certain as he had always assumed. And if Wilson was honest with himself, he'd been attracted for a while now--just glancing at the past couple weeks could tell him that, and if he went and looked back at all their prior relationship, it was.... Well, it was something. Something that wives and girlfriends had actually been jealous of, much to his perpetual bewilderment at the time, though he had to admit that it suddenly made a lot more sense. So... was he gay, and had just been in denial all this time, closeted so deeply even he hadn't known it?

A girl passed them by, and Wilson recognized her as part of the velocibreast pack; she slowed slightly to give them a disdainful stare, which meant Wilson had plenty of time to process the fact that while her cleavage wasn't quite on par with her friend's, it was still very nice, very much on display, and once again, very real. Also, he was very clearly not gay.

So, if he wasn't gay, did that mean House really was right, and this was all just a Pavlovian response, something that might go away if he found a nice, less-velociraptor-like girl and got his libido soothed?

House glanced up at him from underneath slightly lowered brows while making a point about batting statistics, and Wilson's pulse gave a little jump that was in no way related to anything as blatant as licking. Wilson smiled back, and definitively ruled the 'Pavlovian' option out as well; he had no conditioning at all to respond that way to a certain set of blue eyes. Except that meant he really was attracted to another guy. Not just any guy, either: he was attracted to House. Which, despite the fact Wilson really liked him as a friend, was only marginally more sane than getting involved with the girl with the smoldering breasts.

The food arrived, and Wilson had never been so happy to have a distraction before in his life. Not even when House had shown up the first time to save him from the velocibreasts. Though if that had led to this, he might want to worry more about where this might lead.

Especially since he couldn't seem to stop thinking about it, and now that they were eating the conversation had tapered off a bit so he didn't even have the distraction of mutual Yankees-loathing. The idea that he might not be purely heterosexual should have bothered him more, only as far as he could tell, trying it on for size, it didn't actually change much of anything, except possibly to explain why he'd always had a weakness for musicals. He wasn't gay, he just wasn't totally straight, so the net lifestyle change he had to seriously contemplate here was... nothing, unless he wanted it to be. Unless he decided to act on those less-than-straight thoughts.

Which was the problem, Wilson had to admit, because he'd just woken up to the fact he'd been flirting with his best friend for years. That was way more terrifying than realizing maybe he had some bisexual tendencies--after all, he knew about Kinsey's studies, so it wasn't like the idea of that wasn't possible. But to go instantly from, 'Okay, I could like a guy,' to, 'Okay, I like House,' was.... This was real, this was here, and this was now, and it was tangling up his emotions and his intestines in about equal parts, to the point he was just picking at dinner, and House was shooting him the occasional speculative or concerned glance.

"I said it didn't mean anything," House finally pointed out.

"And I heard you," Wilson replied, winding some pasta around his fork slowly. "I'm.... I'm not bothered by it, House," he said, and realized as he did so that he wasn't.

He was bothered by the fact he wasn't bothered by it. Wilson was completely okay with kissing House. In fact, he wanted to kiss House again. It was just that he knew he should be bothered by this, he should think this was a bad idea, he should be wanting to run screaming from even the idea of any relationship with House. It bugged him that it didn't bug him.

He was getting very confused.

House gave him a skeptical look, and Wilson said, "No, really. I'm not bothered by it. I just...." The problem with House was, once he saw that there was something wrong, he had a tendency to keep picking at it until he found the root cause; it made him a wonderful doctor but a terrible person to be friends with, in some ways. Unless you learned to cope. "She creeped me out," Wilson said, indicating the girl and the bar and maybe the whole scenario with a flick of his eyes, before taking a sip of soda.

House's eyebrows raised, and he leaned back slightly for a moment, giving Wilson a look that told him House didn't really believe that was everything at all, but that he was willing to accept it for the moment. And then he stole one of Wilson's carefully apportioned shrimp.

"Hey!" Wilson said, and got momentarily distracted from his thoughts by the resultant food-swiping competition.

It didn't last, though, and as soon as there wasn't something actively going on, his brain went back to pondering what he'd just realized. The thing was, if Wilson didn't have that urge to run screaming--if he just accepted that he was bisexual, and that he was attracted to a man, and that man was House, and he was okay with that--where did that leave him? Well, with the question of whether or not House liked him back, and Wilson wasn't even sure if that was worth asking. In fact, he was wondering how the hell he had attributed House's clear enjoyment of all that flirting he'd done to just his love of startling people--it wasn't that House didn't like shocking people, but that situation had been another thing entirely. So Wilson liked House, and House liked him, and now he knew that House was a great kisser. He also knew that House came with a set of emotional baggage so vast you could have used it as a life raft at sea, but then again, Wilson had been dealing with that baggage in capacity as a best friend for years now, so even that was a lot less intimidating than it should have been. And from the opposite viewpoint, House knew about and had been dealing with Wilson's emotional baggage for the same time period, so neither of them would be entering into this with any illusions about the flawless nature of the other person, only to get their hopes dashed later on down the road.

And from that point of view, getting involved with his best friend suddenly didn't seem like such a bad idea after all.

Theoretically, this should have been when the panic set in, or Wilson's good sense caught up to the rest of him.

In reality, this was when the dessert menu arrived.

***
House ordered a chocolate cake that sounded like it had the ability to bring strong men to their knees and possibly create world peace; he always seemed to gravitate to things like that on the menu. Given the state of his nerves, Wilson ordered another glass of sofa, which caused House to give him a level stare.

"You realize you just ordered a couch," House told him, and Wilson blushed and tried to ignore the amused, knowing look of the waitress.

"I know what he meant," she told them, with a grin, and headed off towards the kitchen.

"You're not getting any of my cake," House informed him, as soon as she was gone.

"I don't want any of your cake," Wilson replied, which was true, except possibly in a metaphorical sense. House just gave him a dubious look.

By the time the cake actually arrived, Wilson was pretty much completely reconciled to the bisexual thing, although he hadn't completely ruled out the possibility that he was just Housexual instead. In either case, his common sense still hadn't uttered a single protest, his subconscious was informing him that it had been in favor of this for years, his libido didn't even need to make its opinion known, and Wilson was feeling more and more that he should probably do something to act on this revelation at the first opportunity that didn't involve public lewdness.

Watching the faces House made over that cake made him rethink the lewdness part of his plan. After all, the staff here could see this too, and couldn't possibly blame Wilson for losing control. And if they hadn't thrown them out for French kissing while at the bar....

Then again, there was always the chance he might someday have to deal with one of these people in the clinic, so it was probably better to restrain himself at least until they got to the car.

The check had arrived with House's cake, and when Wilson looked at it he realized they'd not only been rung up together, but that this marked the first time they'd never even been asked. Probably, again, the kissing at the bar. Wilson got out his credit card wordlessly; the waitress swung by to take it just when House was making a particularly intense, eyes-closed, orgasmic face, and Wilson found himself unable to look away and acutely aware that he was never going to be able to eat here again without the faint patina of embarrassment and lingering associations of arousal.

The waitress gave him another amused look, and he flushed again and glanced away, which was lucky since House's eyes popped open right then. Wilson wasn't quite ready to meet that particular steady blue stare head-on just yet, all things considered.

He had a feeling that the chocolate cake was the only thing saving him from a particularly intensive grilling, though, because House's eyes narrowed as they studied him for a long moment before he returned to demolishing the five-layers-drizzled-in-hot-fudge confection in front of him. Consequently, Wilson wasn't sure if it was a relief or not when House finished and pushed the plate away from him. On one hand, it meant he couldn't avoid actually doing something for very much longer, but on the other hand, he'd already rolled both their straw wrappers into little balls, fiddled with his drink as much as he could possibly stand, shifted in his seat so much that even a much more dense person than House was bound to know something was up, and talked himself down from an erection twice.

The way House ate cake ought to have been illegal. The way he licked his spoon had to be in violation of some decency act or another, and Wilson wasn't even going to think about the little happy sounds. Really.

Make that talking himself down from an erection three times.

House leaned back in the booth and eyed all this with a bemused expression. Wilson avoided looking directly at him again, tapping a spare straw against his glass, and after a heartbeat House gave an easy shrug and grabbed his cane. "Meet you at the car?" House offered, jerking his chin towards the back of the restaurant and the restrooms. Wilson gave a jerky nod in response, not trusting his voice at the moment.

The waitress came back with the bill, and Wilson gave her a much more generous tip than he normally would have just to make up for the French kissing and the orgasmic faces, and then hesitated upon standing up. It was a nice night, clear and not too cold, and he really probably could use the time alone to gather his thoughts, so there was absolutely no reason not to go and wait for House at the car, like they'd agreed. None at all.

He pivoted on his heel and headed for the bathrooms instead.



***
Part Two
***