#wilson at dinner with cuddy

[mossysoupfrog]

Your honor that man is stimming

[sugar-salt-sea]

cuddy lets wilson and house get away with whatever at that damn hospital because they have big eyes and horrible personalities

[thankstothe]

[yomkippur]

when cuddy, house’s serious girlfriend and supposedly the person he’s deeply in love with, asks house point blank to choose between her and wilson and house chooses wilson

[hecksinki]

I’m watching House for the first time and ur telling me Dr. Wilson and House aren’t in love? I’m only on episode five and these men are IN LOVE

[certifiedgoofball]

i love the strange sub-plots in house md because wdym wilson went to dinner with cuddy and house found out and thought it was because she might have cancer but it turns out she was just trying to figure out if wilson would be a viable sperm donor

[janitorjuliann]

house tells cuddy he cant go to her family birthday dinner bc he has a date with wilson. he tells wilson he cant go out bc he has to have dinner with cuddy's family. they immediately tell each other about this and confront him and make him choose. he chooses wilson. cuddy then informs him that wilson is also coming to her family birthday dinner. psychosexual situationship of all time.

[13-hadley]

wilson just coming to dinner with house and cuddy is so funny. like yeah this is my boyfriend and his boyfriend! he has to come along, just ignore him and his yearning for his ex wife.

[notes-app-psychologist]

Wilson is so insane he just stole Cuddy's spoon from their dinner to test her for cancer

[kittenlittle24]

Fortnight

A/n: First angst!

Btw, gifs aren’t mine! Likes, comments and reblogs are greatly appreciated!

Masterlist

You knew your fiancé had a hard week, a patient with a difficult diagnosis, his mythical ex showed up, and emotions were strung high. Which is why you decided to surprise him at work with a fast food dinner.

Stepping off the elevator, you slowed your a stop upon seeing a brunette leaning to kiss your finance’s cheek. He put his arms around her and closed his eyes.

Your stomach felt like you swallowed a brick. No longer hungry nor caring whether he is or isn’t, you turned in the spot and went straight home. You tossed the untouched takeaway bag onto the counter, grabbed a pen and paper, followed by a suitcase.

It took you a good hour or two to pack your necessities, you figured you could ask Wilson for help with anything else that you were leaving behind. You took one last look around, tears streaming down your face before you locked the door and left.

When House arrived home, he quietly entered the apartment assuming you were fast asleep. All he wanted was to crawl into bed, curl up in your warm embrace, and forget about Stacy or the fact that Cuddy offered her a job. His brows furrowed when he saw the closed paper bag on the kitchen counter, he opened it to see food for two, did you go to sleep without eating?

Going back to the living room he took a drink from his whiskey and threw his cane aside before trying to take a step with his right leg. As soon as he put his weight on it a yelp escaped from his lips, crashing to the floor as his leg gave out underneath him, he caught the armchair to break his fall. Lifting himself to sit on the leather chair, he immediately took his Vicodin bottle and tossed a pill into his mouth.

“Y/n?” He called, hoping you’d wake up and help him move to your bed.

Crap, he thought when no reply came from the darkened hallway.

He waited till the pill started to work and the pain subsided a tad before he pushed himself up and extremely slowly even to his standards, made his way to your shared bedroom.

His body froze upon seeing the made-up, empty bed.

“Fuck.” He whispered and sat on your side of the bed.

Sighing and rubbing his hands down his face, he looked at your bedside table and saw the note and your ring on top.

He picked them up with gentle hands as if any unnecessary touch would harm the objects.

‘I’ve seen the way Stacy and you look at each other, and it’s killing me to know that you’d never love me as much as I do you.

You love her and I cannot be in second place.

I love you, but I’m scared it will ruin both of our lives.

Please, don’t be angry I took the coward’s way out. I just know had I stayed you would’ve talked your way to convince me it’s all in my head,”

Taking a deep breath, “It’s not in your head.” He admitted to no one.

He didn’t bother reading the rest, instead, he picked up his phone and called Wilson.

“House, it’s the middle of the nigh-“

Staring at the glistening ring in his hand, “Y/n left.”

[queerfables]

'Wilson' as an episode fucking slaps. I'm obsessed with Wilson's complete lack of boundaries and I'm obsessed with the way he acts out to express resentment while still being completely incapable of saying no. He gave a patient part of his liver!! The man is in no way hinged.

For all the emphasis that gets placed on Wilson's failed marriages and infidelity, we don't ever actually see it directly on screen. This is a narrative choice I love, for the record. We see Wilson's relationships through House's eyes and it allows us to understand Wilson as a deeply flawed person without ever making him unlikable, because Wilson's flaws and contradictions are what make him irresistible to House. It's so effective, the way these failed relationships say so much about Wilson's character while being constructed largely out of inference.

In this episode, though, we watch his inability to self advocate play out in real time, and I guarantee that this is what every one of his relationship meltdowns looked like from the inside. On some deep fundamental level, James Wilson doesn't believe "I don't want to" is a valid reason not to do something. You know the fantasy trope of an obedience curse, where the victim is inescapably compelled to obey other people's requests? Wilson casts that spell on his own damn self, and he'll hold true to it even to the point of violating his own bodily autonomy. When you lack boundaries like that, it becomes almost impossible to even know what you truly want, let alone to act on it. So Wilson says yes and yes and yes until it breaks him, and then he still can't say no.

When saying yes feels like surrendering to torture and saying no feels like committing murder, the only option left is escape. So Wilson goes out drinking to trash the liver he's going to donate. He gets dinner with the pretty nurse instead of going home to his wife. All of it is him scrabbling at the bars of his cage. And the irony is that the cage is unlocked, he just has to walk through the open door, and that's the last thing he could ever bring himself to do.

I'm pretty sure that when he went to Cuddy and told her his plan to donate, he wanted her to say no. She almost did! And I think she should have, because her first impulse was right, it is insane. Unfortunately this is the Insane Lack of Boundaries Hospital, and she can't actually be expected to guess when her employee's mouth is saying yes but his eyes are saying dear god no. By the rules of universe that House MD operates within, this doesn't even break a 7 on the "unhinged measures to save a patient" scale, and Wilson invoked the power of friendship. What was she supposed to do?

And through all of this, House is the person Wilson lashes out at. I love, love, love that House is the person Wilson lashes out at. Wilson can't even admit to himself that he's angry about the position he's in. How can he be angry when he's the reason the patient needs a new liver? But House sees right to the heart of everything going on with him, and he says all the things Wilson wants to be true and can't afford to believe. Because if he lets himself believe this wasn't his fault then he might not be able to say yes. And he's going to say yes. And he hates that he's going to say yes. And he hates that House knows he's going to say yes.

So he gets angry with House, because it's safe to get angry with House. He lashes out, because with House, he can. He tells House he's wrong about him, and demands House move out, and that's not at all what he really wants but he feels helpless and coerced and he desperately needs to exercise some kind of control over his own life. The fact that he can let go like this with House is in part about knowing House isn't ever going to leave him - the closeness of their relationship is always defined by what Wilson wants, House has never once pushed Wilson away and fights to reconcile when Wilson wants distance. But it's also about knowing that he can't hurt House by setting boundaries with him. Mostly this is because House will walk right over any boundaries he considers unacceptable, but in fairness, the fact that House is kind of a terrible person is part of his appeal. If Wilson had issues around other people violating his stated wishes, House would be the last person in the world that he should have anything to do with. But Wilson's issues lie in the fear that not being compulsively available and accommodating to everyone around him might permanently fuck up the life of someone he loves. House's fucked up life is never going to be Wilson's fault and even if it was House would still kind of deserve it, so Wilson's anxious people pleasing compulsion can chill the fuck out for five minutes at a time.

I don't want to idealise, there are times in their relationship when Wilson absolutely makes fucked up sacrifices for House. I don't think it's the case that he earnestly wanted to every time. But it's also true that House brings out authenticity in Wilson that few other people manage to. House knows him. House allows him to give in to his selfish impulses without guilt and consequences, and for all the people who love the best in him, House knows and loves his worst. While Wilson is caught up in trying to bend himself into whatever shape someone else needs him to be, what House wants more than anything is the truth. For Wilson, who is so out of touch with his own desires, being an object of fascination to someone obsessed with drives and motivations must be a rush. And if we accept the throughline of this episode, it might just be the case that House's boundary pushing and obsession is something Wilson needs.

[scintillatingshortgirl19]

so 5x21 ends with a montage of couples that happens to rather pointedly include house and wilson and i am. just curious what my takeaway here is supposed to be as a viewer

also

i know my hilson brainrot is real because when they made the Choice to cut directly from that cute hilson dinner scene to the scene of Cameron and Chase holding hands and telling Cuddy about their engagement. there was a split second in which i very nearly thought the couple holding hands was house and wilson

[weird-an]

"That's sexist!"

Wilson hears House yelling before she can see her. She walks out of Cuddy's office, her angry glare changing into something sweeter when she sees Wilson.

"They won't let me cut my patient's eye out," House pouts. She wears one of her band shirts that's a little too short, showing off the pale skin of her back. Wilson tries not to stare.

"Outrageous," Wilson shakes her head. "Cuddy protecting the patient from malpractice isn't sexist, you know? It's common sense."

"But for every HR complaint about me I have to file one back, that's how the games goes!" House rolls her eyes as if Wilson misses the obvious. "Also, it's important for the case."

"I don't think HR complaints are a game." Speaking of games. "Did you happen to know what happened to my bra? The teal, lacy one?"

It's been missing since House was over for dinner last week. It could be a coincidence, but neither House nor Wilson believe in those.

House gapes at Wilson in mock surprise. "You're missing your sex bra?"

She says it so loud, two nurses turn around to glare at them. Wilson lifts her hands to say sorry.

"That's not a thing," Wilson hisses at her. "So, you got it?"

"It totally is a thing. You only wear it when you go on a date and hope to get laid," House deflects. "You wear this bra and boom, you have sex, you get married to Mr. Wilson number 4 and I have yet to be the maid of honor again."

"Where is it?" Hopefully it's not dangling from the ceiling at some ward.

Wilson fights the blush on her face. House grins at her like a little kid at Christmas. "Buy me dinner and I'll release the hostage."

"I'm always paying," Wilson grumbles. She didn't want to go on that date anyway. The guy is sweet and kind and so boring. Husband material right there, House is right about it. She'd rather spend the evening with her.

House leans a little forward. "I like you better without a bra anyway."

It's a joke, Wilson tells herself. It doesn't explain why she's feeling hot all over.

"Just because you don't wear any," she retorts weakly.

"So, you have been looking. Interesting." House winks at her. "See you tonight!"

Wilson stares after her and wonders if she's missing something.

[0ccams-chainsaw]

Wilson being at dinner with cuddys mom for no fucking reason is sosos silly, a true I too am in this episode moment

[hilsonamore]

you guys starting s8 3 days before getting my period was not a good idea….im crying over these old men again. “I heard about this new vegetarian place”. Bro. He- house looked up fucking VEGETARIAN PLACES for dinner just because wilson quit eating red meat… for someone outside the fandom this might sound like just a plain ol’ kind move a friend would make but for house it’s HUGE LIKE WHAT. The man doesn’t TOUCH greens, his diet consists of vicodin, fries and take out. Let alone the fact that he DOESNT CARE ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE’S DIETS?!?!?! Or like opinions? But he- Omg why are they doing this to meeee. And the way he kept looking at wilson throughout the entire episode? The sadness in his eyes and voice when he asked him why he didn’t call during all this time? The rasp of voice when he said “i like you”? Like seriously, he’s said “i love you” to what? 3 people? Cameron, Wilson and Cuddy? Yeah but um… how many times has he said “i like you”? I like you as a person? I like who you are? How many times has he said that, not in his own twisted affectionate way, but actually said the words? I might be wrong but i do NOT remember him ever saying something similar to that before, at least not in a context like this. Like omggg im screaming. AND WILSON NEEDS VERBAL CONFIRMATION THAT HE’S BEING APPRECIATED BY SOMEONE OMG IM GOING FERAL OVER THIS

[the-hopeless-haze]

Let’s Spend the Night Together

Chapter 3 of If You Want It, You Can Bleed on Me

Greg House x Reader

Word count: 6.5k ??? what did I do

NSFW - smut

“Where does she live?” Greg asks James.

“If I tell you, am I assisting you in a crime?” James asks in response, barely looking up from his desk.

“I’m sure she told you about our date later.”

James huffs in frustration, finally looking up at him. “You’re insufferable.”

“Did you like her? Is that it?” Greg questions, trying to get to the bottom of his friend’s snarky behavior. Not that this wasn’t the usual from him. It was one of the things Greg loved about him, that he was always a little fed up with him, always preemptively aggravated, always in a state of annoyance. It was harder to piss someone off that was always a little pissed with him at baseline.

“Is that what you think? Because if that’s the reason you’re taking her out… you’re more fucked than I thought.”

“The correct answer would have been, ‘no, Greg, I do not want to sleep with her because I am married’ but we’ll go with that.”

James sighs, looking up at him. “Yes. She’s very attractive. But no, I had no intention of entertaining her.”

“Then what’s your issue?”

“Because I don’t know why you’re doing this. You sick of your prostitutes?”

Greg scoffs. “This isn’t about sex.”

“It’s not? I’m mistaken then, because you were flirting with her, made comments about her body, called her to your office…”

“Okay,” he corrects. “It’s not just about sex.”

“Are you trying to tell me you want to date her without saying the words? Because if so… congratulations.”

“No. I want to figure her out.”

“Just look in her chart. Save both of you the trouble.”

“It’s no fun if I learn all the answers at once.”

“Do you ever wonder why you’re single?” James asks.

“Do you ever wonder why you’re unhappily married?” Greg counters. “And. About that. Either her psychiatry training gave her some leg-up here or you tipped her off. She went through her files already. All that she left was a med list.”

“You already looked?” James asks, incredulous.

“Yeah. No birth control. Wonder what that’s about? Propranolol. Maybe some blood pressure issue… she’s young for that and that’s not first line. Idiopathic tachycardia? Maybe. Anxiety?”

“She can’t have an interesting med list. Stop looking for zebras. She’s barely thirty.”

“No birth control and barely thirty? Either she’s not getting any or she’s tied her tubes already.”

“Or… if she does have a blood pressure issue she can’t be on it. Or she has an IUD. Actually… don’t drag me into this.”

“Lamotrigine. Seizures. Bipolar disorder. What’s more likely?”

“lamotrigine isn’t the first-line med for either. Maybe you’ll have to talk to her.”

Greg rolls his eyes. “No fun. Hey… she’s on Vicodin.”

“A match made in hell,” Wilson grumbles, running his hands over his face.

“Well. She was. Eight years ago.”

“Most people don’t stay on it indefinitely.”

“Why would she leave that on there? It’s just these three meds.”

“Don’t you have an actual patient?”

He shrugs. “I need her address. I’m picking her up in three hours.”

“At least buy her dinner. Do not just bring her to your apartment.”

“I can’t learn anything if I just have sex with her. I mean, I’ll definitely learn some things, but…”

“Well, I don’t have her address.”

“You’ve got to have her address. You hired her.”

“Nope. I’m not her direct supervisor since she’s a consult. You’d have to talk to the head of psychiatry or Cuddy. And no. I’m not losing my job searching for it.”

“She took it out of her medical records,” he says, shaking his head, but he’s smiling. “I guess she likes to play.”

——————

“So let me get this straight. You want me to risk the safety of one of my employees so you can drive by her apartment?”

Greg looks at Cuddy for a moment, as if he’s  actually thinking about her summary of his request and he nods. “Yeah. That sounds about right.”

Sighing, she says, “I shouldn’t be shocked you live the rest of your life like you practice medicine, but I don’t care about the results here. The answer is no, House.”

“It’ll be worth your while.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“Because… if I get laid I’m in a better mood which means I’m less likely to cause you issues.”

“Right. Hm. Surprising, but that didn’t persuade me.”

“Have you met her?”

“Is that supposed to convince me?” she asks, looking up at him for a second.

He shrugs. “I don’t know. She does work in psychiatry. For someone who constantly loves to tell me I have a drug problem and there’s something wrong with me I’d think you’d want to make sure this relationship runs smoothly.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “I feel like you and I both know you’re not doing this for the emotional healing.”

“I won’t be doing anything if no one gives me her address,” he grumbles. He doesn’t tell her but for once he can’t believe how stupid he was that he fell for that, that he thought you might be interested.

“Hm. Well. I’m busy, House.”

He walks out without a word, heading back to his office. It’s 7:00.

Well. Alone again. Not much different than the last night or the night before that.

And he knows he could have Cameron. She’s been not so subtle in trying to get his attention, and yes, he certainly didn’t help matters by telling her she’s beautiful. Sure. But she isn’t… she’s not what he wants. He doesn’t need someone to take him on like a charity case.

You… you were fucking with him. And it’s fair, maybe he even deserves it. Maybe you got off on this, being a Walmart version of a femme-fatale, wounding men’s egos, seeing which ones would chase you and which ones would give up after a little pain.

Doesn’t really ease the sting of the ache of rejection, though. That you’d brush him off that easy, leave him without an avenue to reach you.

Sighing, he turns on the TV, trying and failing to focus on the screen, but you’d taken over his mind like a case he was on the brink of solving and just couldn’t get there.

8:15. He gets a page from your number. “YOURE LATE”. It reads.

Well. Screw that. He still had a way to reach you after all.

Possibly.

Smiling to himself, he calls down to the psych ward, asking for you. You’re not there, they say, but they’ll be happy to transfer him to your extension if you’re still in the building.

“I thought hookers took pride in their punctuality,” you say when you answer the phone.

“You’re kind of a bitch, huh?” He asks, trying not to let his chuckle be so audible in the receiver.

“You keep Wilson around. You love bitches.”

“Funny. Would’ve thought you’d been swooning, begging him to leave his wife by now.”

“I’m not so easily charmed.”

“Those big brown eyes don’t do it for you?”

“Sounds like they do it for you. Something you want to tell me, Gregory?”

“Don’t ever call me that,” he sighs.

“Not going to deny the gay allegations but you’ll draw the line at me calling you by your first name? What gives, House?”

“You can call me Greg.”

“Wow, could I? What an honor that we’re on first name basis.”

“Not many get the privilege.”

“Still haven’t denied the gay allegation.”

“Don’t really see the point. You’ll believe what you believe regardless.”

“Wow. Truly. A disaster of a man in all other regards but you’re comfortable in your sexuality? Greg is 1 for 0.”

“I have one male best friend and I’ve been single for five years. I embrace the gay jokes at this point.”

“Five years?”

“Yeah. It’s been a while for you too, huh?”

“What makes you so sure?”

“No reason,” he lies.

“Right.”

“You’re single now.”

“Moved here less than a year ago. Haven’t really had the chance to meet people.”

“Okay. What hellhole did you crawl out of to willingly move to Jersey?”

“Maybe I just like Frank Sinatra.”

“He’s dead. You didn’t come here for something. You left something and you came here to make sure whatever it was didn’t follow you.”

“Is this really the date you had in mind?” you ask.

“Nice deflection.”

“I just moved. No story there.”

“Also. Almost a year? And no one’s asked you out?”

“I can say no, you know.”

“You didn’t say no to me.”

“Maybe I should’ve.”

“Cold. Come down here. I’ll walk you out to my car.”

————-

“Ah. The bitch arrives,” he says, looking you up and down again, not hiding his checking you out. You’d changed, red blouse with a leather jacket and most likely the same black slacks you were wearing earlier. “Not quite slutty enough.”

“Could say the same for you. Where’s the assless chaps?”

“I could never pull that off,” he says. “You could, though.”

He’d changed, too, a button down with slacks for once instead of jeans... at Wilson’s nagging of course.

“Here,” he says, handing you a bouquet of flowers he thought for a second were going to wilt away at his desk.

“Flowers? don’t tell me you went all out. Maybe you’re not as much of a disaster as I thought.”

“I shouldn’t give them to you since you stood me, a cripple, up.”

“Stood you up? You didn’t come get me.”

“You never told me where to get you. Ergo… you stood me up.”

“You were supposed to figure it out.”

“Yeah. Right. Wilson didn’t know and Cuddy wouldn’t put out. And you knew I wouldn’t figure it out. That’s why you stayed here.”

“You actually asked Cuddy?”

“What? I’ve asked her for much worse.”

You shake your head, smiling. “Falling head over heels for me already, Greg?”

“Puzzles are no fun if you can’t figure out the answer.” He doesn’t say that the unsolved cases haunt him, nag him and he sees them where they’re not.

One day he knows you’ll haunt him, too. One day, when you leave, when he pushes this until it breaks.

“Mm. Try harder then,” you say.

“You gave me an unsolvable puzzle.”

“Mm. Not really. You gave it to yourself. You said you were picking me up at my place. I stayed here and gave you the easy way out.”

“You could’ve left it—“ he cuts himself off, lest he incriminate himself.

“Left it where, Greg?” you ask, bemused.

“Nowhere.”

“Right,” you laugh. “So what opiate do you pop constantly?”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

“Funny.”

“Why would that be funny, Greg?”

“Let me sleep with you first.”

“Absolutely not,” you say, grinning at him.

“Well, I shouldn’t have thought you’d be easy if you’ve put me through hell just to take you out,” he sighs.

“Don’t think I’ll leave you completely wanting, though,” you say, reaching out to touch his face, his stubble scratching your hand pleasantly, a shiver running down your spine. You run your thumb over his bottom lip gently.

Tentatively, he reaches out for you, too, copying your movements, hand on your cheek, thumb over your lips, but then your tongue darts out to run over the pad of his thumb and he thinks he might die right there. “Dirty girl,” he chuckles, smirking.

“Mm. You’re pretty, Greg,” you say, with enough sincerity he almost believes you’re not bullshitting him.

“Pretty? That’s a first.”

“Like no one’s ever told you.”

“Maybe ten years ago.”

“Mm. It’s those eyes,” you say, stepping a little closer to him, letting your breath mingle with his, snaking your hand around the back of his neck. Your lips almost touch, once, twice, wordlessly. “You gonna kiss me or not, Greg?”

You expect him to be rougher but he’s soft, testing the waters, lips still barely touching yours until he gives in, gives you what you want, kisses you like he means it. God, it’s been too long, and you missed it, the thrill of kissing somebody new, and you can feel his anticipation, electricity from your skin to his.

“Come on,” he says, breaking away from you after a few minutes. “I said I’d take you to dinner.”

———

“So what is it? Percs?” you ask once you’ve been seated and get waters. It’s a nice place he chose, somewhere a little out of the way, mostly serving Italian fare and seafood. It’s where men who haven’t been on a date in a while would choose to bring a woman, you figure.

“Percs? You do some time on the street?” he asks.

“So what if I did?” you counter.

He shakes his head. “Not your story. I’m not buying that.”

“Fine. Used to work at an addiction treatment facility when I was a nurse. Everyone calls them percs, though. Not exactly some down low street name.”

“It’s Vicodin.”

“Nasty drug,” you say.

“Really? I think they’re yummy.”

“You would.”

“What’s your personal aversion to them? They take you on a bad date?”

“Got them prescribed after a motorcycle accident. Didn’t agree with me.”

“Hm. You driving?”

“No.”

“What’d you break?”

“My leg.”

“Which one?”

“Right femur.”

Wilson was going to have a field day. Match made in hell, alright. Wilson’s personal hell, that is.

“Femurs are hard to break.”

“When your partner is drunk and doesn’t care about anything it’s not that hard,” you say, shrugging your shoulders. “Lucky I didn’t die. I mean, not that I cared so much then.”

“Partner? What were you, 19?”

“22,” you say, silently cursing yourself for not just saying boyfriend.

“Did they not make it?”

You look at him questioningly but don’t say anything about his use of the gender neutral. You don’t want to have that conversation tonight. “No. Life support for a couple weeks until they pulled it.”

“Hm. So that wasn’t the reason you left.”

“No. There was no reason. I just needed a change of scenery.”

“Right,” he says. “Jersey isn’t usually the place people pick for a change of scenery.”

“How’d you end up here, then?”

“There was a job opening,” he answers.

“You were running away from something, too.”

“No, I was running to something. I needed a place to hire me and Cuddy was the only one insane enough to take me on at that point.”

“You’ve always been discourteous and unprofessional?”

“Those are my middle names,” he snarks.

There’s a natural break in the conversation as the waiter comes back to take orders. Greg takes notice of what you order, a baked scrod, certainly not the least expensive thing you could have ordered but not the most, either. It’s an assessment of how you value yourself, he thinks. Average. Average is boring.

Or you could just like scrod, he supposes.

“Why are you single?” he asks.

“I don’t know. Life was busy. Didn’t have time for relationships,” you say, shrugging. “Why are you?”

“Myriad of reasons.”

“Give me one.”

“My leg,” he responds indignantly.

“What happened to it?” you ask.”

“That’s a second date conversation.”

"You're in pain."

"How'd you know?" He asks sarcastically.

"Was it the cane? The Vicodin?"

'I think it was your charming personality.

Anyway. If you're going to cite your leg as a reason you're single, I'd love to know why."

"I was with someone when it happened. It's a long story."

"We've got nothing but time,” you say.

"You really won't sleep with me if I don't tell you?" House asks.

"Nope. Keep pushing me and I never will.

Tell me."

House sighs dramatically. "I had an infarction in my thigh muscle. No one knew what it was, I diagnosed it, but... so much of the muscle was dead already. I didn't want an amputation, I wanted a bypass. I didn't care about the pain. I just wanted to be able to use my leg. I asked them to put me under sedation to cope with the pain at the time... and the woman I was with decided it would be a good idea to remove the dead muscle completely."

"You made her your medical proxy?”

"Mm. Stupid decision on my part,” he says.

"Any medical background?"

"Nope."

"Then yes. Stupid decision,” you agree.

"I'm sure you've made plenty of stupid decisions. Getting on that motorcycle, for one,” he says, adding a jab at the end so to help heal his wounded ego a little.

"We all make mistakes. It's human. So... what's the reason now? You resent people who can walk without pain so you don't get close to anybody? It interferes with sex? You feel like no woman would want to deal with it long term?"

House sighs and rolls his eyes. "Do you really think it interferes with sex? Is that what you're worried about?"

"No. I'm asking if that's what you-"

"No. You see me as a potential sexual partner, correct?"

"I never said that."

"We're going with it. You ask me as if you're posing the question to me... but you're projecting."

"And you're deflecting. I asked you three questions and you didn't answer one" you point out.

"No. It doesn't interfere with sex, at least not to the point where you have to worry if I

can get you off or not. Whenever you decide to spread your legs for me... you'll see."

You feel your cheeks redden a little and cough. "I asked you two other questions."

"They weren't what you were getting at."

"Entertain me."

"No. It's not that I resent people. Am I jealous? Sometimes. I'd love to know what it's like to wake up in the morning without pain. But I'm not going to wake up every morning wanting to kill my partner because she jogs every morning and I can't."

"Is it because you've been able to accept it?

Was it an issue with your girlfriend at the time, coming to terms with it?"

"What do you think?"

"Yes."

Greg shrugs. “Not hard to put that together. I bet I could get a psychiatric nursing degree too.”

"Third question? You feel like no woman would want to deal with it?"

"Mm. Or she'd want to deal with it for the wrong reasons, take me on like I'm a charity case. That's unattractive for an abundance of reasons. You could go that way, I think, or you used to."

"You think I'm taking you on as a charity case? You pursued me.”

"You agreed. You didn't think for a second,

'well, he's a cripple, I'd better at least give him a shot'?"

"Your leg is not the reason I am here," you say firmly.

"What is it then, my deep blue eyes? This big, thick cane? My ray of sunshine personality?"

You chuckle. "It's your drive. You barely knew me, decided I was interesting and pursued me without abandon. That is attractive."

"You're not curious as to why you?"

"Little tits and ass, as Keith Richards would say?" You ask. "I'm used to being objectified. Pretty privilege is a thing. I'm sure you have noticed that yourself. If there's something deeper, enlighten me."

"Well, you are attractive, there's no doubting that. But I intend to find out why you're in the medical field, and psychiatry at that. It's like Cameron, on my team. You're gorgeous enough to have become an actress, marry a millionaire. Something happened to you to make you choose this."

"Did you take Cameron out until you figured what her deal was?"

"No. Cameron pities me. I have no interest in her that way."

"Well. Why do you assume brilliant minds reside only in unattractive faces? Why do you assume I worked my ass off to get here because of some past trauma when this could have just been a goal of mine like it could've been if I wasn't as hot as you think l am?”

"Okay. Then why did you choose psychiatry?"

"That's a second date conversation." You quip.

He smiles wryly at you. "You coaxed my issue out of me. Come on."

“I hold fast to my principles. You're weak,” you say, grinning back. “Why are you a doctor, then, hm?”

“I’m not a beautiful woman.”

“Right…” you say. “Chase is pretty. Foreman is too, you know. Either of them could’ve done something easier.”

“Chase is trying desperately to fill his father’s shoes. His father was a doctor, and well, you know how that story goes. And Foreman is an overcoming adversity case. He could’ve been a hood rat. He was on that path.”

“You know… women just started to be able to open credit cards in 1971. Maybe I don’t want to have to rely on a man to make a living.”

“No. Believe me, I get that. My point was there’s easier ways to make money. You chose the hard way,” he says. “And unpopular way. People become doctors and they fantasize about cutting people open and diagnosing infections, not getting hit and restraining children.”

“Your hypothesis is stupid. Maybe I don’t want to be an actor or model… or an infectious disease specialist,” you say. “And I think we’re all damaged. All of us. No one gets out unscathed.”

“No one just chooses psychiatry because it’s such a good time.”

“They do when it can make them ridiculous money without as many hardships as medical school. I could be using my degree to write suboxone scripts and make more than I’m making right now. I know a lot of people who went back for that.”

“Proving my point. Why are you doing things the hard way?”

“You take on the most difficult cases across the country, cases no one else can solve. You’re doing things the hard way, too. Why? Because the easy way is boring.”

Greg smiles at that. “Fair enough.”

“Yeah. Fair enough.”

—————

You don’t quite know how you got here. Or well, you do. Greg asked you to come back to his place for drinks, and you agreed, and you should’ve known better but it’s been years and you can’t really care too much when his warm body is underneath you, his tongue down your throat, his hands everywhere he can reach.

“How bad are you hurting?” you ask him, breathlessly.

“I’m fine. Don’t worry,” he whispers back, reaching a hand back to touch your chin. “What do you want to come of tonight?”

“Let’s just see where this leads us,” you say, leaning back to kiss him again.

But he stops you, gentle pressure on your jaw to prevent you from closing the space between your lips. “I need to know what you want.”

You sigh, pressing your elbow in his chest as leverage to lift yourself off him, and you sit next to his feet on the other side of the couch. “Why are you asking?”

“Because I don’t want this to head somewhere we can’t get back from. Move over,” he says, and winces, moving his legs back over to sit beside you again.

“It wasn’t sexual trauma,” you huff, aggravated. “You can say I’m damaged all you want but that doesn’t mean you have to treat me like glass.”

“I tried to take your shirt off and you pushed me away but you kept kissing me. What do you want?”

“What do you want?” You ask, glaring at him.

Truth was, you were using him, maybe just like he was using you. You hadn’t had the opportunity to make quite as bad of a decision as sleeping with the man in front of you in a long time. And as bad decisions go, he wasn’t so terrible anyway. You like him so far, you think he’s attractive. But you know Wilson is right, that he might drag you down to places you haven’t been in a long time.

Still.

It’s been a while since you’ve felt something. You want the hating yourself in the morning for giving yourself away so soon, you want the walk of shame as he drives you back to the hospital where you left your car, you want to revel in the fact that Greg will be telling people how you were in bed, bragging that he got you in between his sheets. You want the dopamine hit and the subsequent crash.

You spent so long getting healthy but you had to keep everyone at arm’s length to do it. It was probably the worst idea to try to get close to someone else who also isolated people and couldn’t even be healthy then.

Why didn’t he just want it to be easy? Just fuck you and be done with it, continue if it’s convenient and worth the effort. Easy is boring, sure, but sex isn’t boring even if it’s easy (if so, he wouldn’t be seeing hookers, would he?). And you know he wants to fuck you, but why he wants to make it difficult… it’s beyond your reach at this moment.

“I want… I don’t know,” he admits, because he doesn’t.

Prostitutes were one thing. Vulnerability there didn’t really matter. They were doing a job and they didn’t even take a second glance at his leg. As long as they were getting paid. If he wanted attention drawn to it, they’d kiss it red with their lipstick but because he tells them to leave it alone… they do.

Sleeping with somebody new… it’s so much harder. It’s so much easier with someone you know. Or someone you don’t have an obligation to know.

With an aim to please rather than take, he doesn’t know how he’d perform.

Looking at his face, reading the ambivalence there, it suddenly clicks. If Wilson knew the truth, if you really are the first woman since his injury, there’s a lot of insecurity in being seen.

And you know all about being seen.

It’s easy to come off with bravado and arrogance but when you’re actually in the situation, when you’re called to be vulnerable… it’s something else entirely.

“Do you want to have sex with me?” you ask quietly.

“Yes. God yes,” he affirms, nodding his head. “Don’t take tonight as an indication.”

“It’s okay. I understand,” you say, nodding.

“That doesn’t mean… that doesn’t mean I can’t help you get off.”

You raise an eyebrow at him. “That’s still sex.”

Scoffing, he rolls his eyes. “If you’re in high school.”

“What do you think lesbians do?”

He raises his eyebrows, chucking a little. “Are you a lesbian?”

“You wish,” you laugh. “Say you could be the one that changed me.”

“I would. Except people don’t change.”

“Yeah. They do. They change all the time,” you counter, shrugging your shoulders. “Every day, every hour, every moment… it changes you. They’re minuscule changes, changes you don’t see immediately, but you look back a decade and then it clicks.”

“Right. Maybe. But fundamentally people don’t change. The parts change, but the whole never does.”

You want to say that he has been changed, that his leg injury changed him, that he holds so steadfast to that belief that people never change so he can convince himself he was always this miserable. Sure, you get the feeling he was fucked before, but this did change him. Made him worse. Made him push people away.

You don’t say that, though. You know deep down he knows it and doesn’t want to face it.

“Do you want to have sex with me?” he asks, insecurity creeping in, and he doesn’t know why this is so difficult or why he cares at all. He could pay for what he wanted, live his hedonistic lifestyle and not have to worry if the woman in front of him wanted to fuck him or not.

You aren’t boring.

But that’s not true, anyway, that’s not why he keeps people at arms length. Routine medical cases are boring, but people aren’t. It’s why he went through all the files he could of the applicants for his team, trying to pick the combination that would interest him the most, play off each other in ways he could live vicariously through. They weren’t the most deserving, or the most academically gifted, they were the most interesting. It’s why he loves gossip, loves knowing about things that don’t concern him, always living life like it’s a spectator sport and he’s got front row seats.

It’s always the people that love to watch that hate to be seen.

“I could be convinced,” you say, in that bitchy tone he knows hes going to love to hate. You soften; though, turn to him, your hair falling a little in your face, kiss him gently on the mouth.

Greg responds in kind, deepening the kiss, his hands tangling in your hair, pulling lightly before traveling to your breasts, kneading your flesh through your shirt.

“Could you be convinced to have lesbian sex with me right now?” he asks.

You’d burst out laughing if you also weren’t so admittedly and ashamedly turned on right now. “Yeah. Sure. Think you’d have an easier time in bed though.”

“You treat me like all your girls?” he asks, a glint in his eye, and oh, there’s the being seen. You’re not a fan, either. You’re surprised he’s not being forthright about what he no doubt is putting together, but ultimately you’re thankful.

“A slut’s a slut,” you quip as he leans back in, his mouth barely touching yours and he chuckles against your skin.

“You really are a bitch.”

“Mm,” you agree, closing the distance between you again, pulling him to stand up with you, letting him lean on you as he puts weight on it again.

“I’m sorry,” he says quickly, without thinking, never one to apologize for his actions but never one to let his disability affect others, either.

“It’s okay, Greg,” you whisper. “I got you.”

“No, I’ll go get—“

You stop him, holding his jaw gently in your hand. “It’s okay.”

Empathy. Not sympathy.

You had been here, in a way. Femur fractures take a good six months to heal. You walked half a year in his shoes on the same medication he was on.

Now it all clicks, what James had done, keeping you two apart to bring you together, doing something by not doing anything, letting it all happen by chance. He had been patient enough to let time do most of the work, something Greg could never do, but something that ultimately worked in his favor.

It’s okay. We all need someone we can lean on. If you want it, you can lean on me.

You still lived a life without pain.

Greg hates it, hates it all, and if you had had just the slightest twinge of force, the slightest indication that you were saying it was okay just to say something he would’ve told you to get out. He hates the way it kills intimacy, makes him older, more decrepit, makes him dependent, in a way. There’s certain things he can never do, or that he’d need help to do, and it’s something a woman would leave him for.

It’s something a woman did leave him for.

He wants to hug you, but that would feel too much, too intimate, too soon, so he kisses you again instead, and then the two of you hobble on to his bedroom. It hurts. God, it hurts, aches like it always does, maybe more so—the last pill he took was at dinner, but you make it, helping him ease onto the bed and wasting no time, knowing he was insecure, wasting no time to prove you still wanted him, mouth on his, your legs straddling his good thigh, moving on to his neck, laving your tongue over his skin, biting gently, unbuttoning the top buttons of his shirt.

“Hey,” Greg says, stopping your hand’s ministrations.

“I’m only taking your shirt off,” you assure him. “I won’t go further than that.”

“Fine. Not much to see there, either,” he mutters.

“I like tits,” you blurt without thinking. Jesus Christ. You have to stop doing that.

“Yeah,” he says, chuckling. “Sure you do. Good thing mine are bigger than Cuddy’s.”

“They absolutely are not.”

“You familiar with their size?”

You stop yourself just in time before you say “I wish.”

He lets you finish, helping you take his shirt off, take his undershirt off, shivering as you kiss down the length of his torso to the top of his pants. “I’ll show you mine,” you say, unbuttoning your pants and slipping them off, throwing them on the floor haphazardly. You move over so he can see the scar down the side of your leg, deep gash where they cut you open, you were a month away from a nursing license and you were in the OR, someone’s patient before you could ever be on the side you studied for.

You were lucky, they kept saying. You didn’t feel lucky at all.

Tentatively, his hand comes to touch your skin and you nod, silent agreement that he could touch. He’s gentle even though he doesn’t need to be, touching carefully, tracing the line of the scar up and down, hard keloid under his skin.

“This isn’t what you don’t want me to see,” Greg says.

“Hm?”

“Your upper body. That’s why you didn’t want me to take your shirt off.”

Oh. Yeah. That.

“I don’t care,” you lie.

“Yes, you do,” he counters immediately, looking at you knowingly. “Why are you lying?”

You sigh, pulling him back to you, kissing him hard, hoping he’ll shut up if you don’t give him the chance to speak. “Just touch me already.”

It would be so much easier if he just fucked you, fucked you over, fucked you up all within the course of a month. You get the feeling right now, as your tongue is down his throat and you’re letting out moans against his lips you try to suppress as his fingers enter you, stretch you out, reach angles you couldn’t reach by yourself, you get the feeling this is going to be for the long haul. Not that he’s necessarily going to be down on one knee, but that he’s going to drag out hurting you like he’s dragging his fingers against your walls, drawing you closer and closer to the edge but never quite bringing you there.

“You okay?” you ask him, breathless, head hazy, you just want him, want him closer than this, want him deep in you.

“Shh,” Greg whispers, almost a little irritated. “I’m busy right now.”

You can’t really focus on coming up with a retort because he starts rubbing your clit and as you tilt your head back into the pillows, he starts biting at the flesh he can now easily access, starting gentle but then applying more pressure with his teeth, smirking as you whimper.

Sweat trickles down your back and you wish this was different, but he’s naked from the waist up and you’re unclothed from the waist down, and it’s stupid, you know it’s dumb, that you’re letting this man fuck you with his fingers before you let him see you fully naked. It’s not like no one has before. It’s just a conversation you don’t want to have again.

Still. All this is making you a little too hot to be half-clothed.

Greg wonders why he let you in at all. Why he went through the trouble, bought you dinner, why he’s trying to get you off right now. Maybe it’s to fuck with James. Sure, it was originally, but now he feels like it was James who fucked with him, set him up, used predictable behaviors to create a predictable outcome. Still. If you’d been professional with him instead of giving him crassness right back, he would’ve decided to make your life a living hell instead of getting you in between his sheets. Either way, he was going to make someone miserable.

Himself, first and foremost.

Not that he can really be miserable right now. It’s not terrible being needed in this sense, he’s remembering.

You weren’t like Stacy, though, not here. You’re louder, not in a patronizing way where you exaggerate your moans to try and stroke a man’s ego, but it’s like you genuinely can’t hold yourself back. It’s hot. It’s unreserved. It’s… passionate in a way Stacy just wasn’t. She loved him, he knows that, but when things got hard and he got mean instead of fighting back she got cold and walked away.

Not that he can glean exactly how you’d be in an argument from how you act in bed, but he has a feeling you don’t let go of things easily.

And… well. Takes one to know one.

Who would give in, though?

His relationship with Stacy worked before his leg because Stacy would accommodate, she would compromise herself for him. It’s why his friendship with James works now. Sure. Both of them gave him some pushback — it’s not like they in good conscience could let him get away with all the things he wanted to do. And eventually he pushed Stacy until she broke.

You, though? You don’t seem like you shatter easily. If anything you seem like you’d harden like a scar, healing over stronger, uglier, thicker, nothing really hurting you because you’d just put more walls up. You’d fight him to the bitter end.

And you know, maybe he wants that. Someone he’s not afraid to push too far because he knows you’ll push right back the second he gets even an inch.

All he really knows is your vague med list, that you got into a motorcycle accident almost a decade ago, and that you chose to be a psychiatric provider among all other things you could have been. And yet… he feels like he can glean much more.

All he really knows in this moment is that you’re coming apart under his fingers, gripping his forearm with your hands as he drags out your orgasm, trying to get him away from your now overstimulated cunt.

“She comes in colors everywhere,” he mutters, smirking lazily at you, dragging his fingers out of you, finally, then brings them to his mouth, sucking slowly on each one.

You scoff at his comment, but just as quickly he sees the light turn green again and you straddle his left thigh, coming to kiss his mouth, hard, bare cunt against his slacks and he can’t help it, he’s thinking about you wrecking them, thinking about your wet pussy on what could’ve been his bare thigh… and he groans despite himself, in pain, yes, but also pleasure - and he’s pulling you closer by the collar of your shirt, and he begins to remember why men put themselves through what could very well be the potential torture of dating a woman.

It’s just so much better when it’s with someone you know. Or… someone you need to know everything about, need to memorize like they’re an extension of yourself.

You’re not soulmates. It’s not love. It’s not romance, like James would decree.

You won’t fix him. He sure as hell won’t fix you.

But you’ll do something to each other, alright.