Chapter Text
“There’s a flight at midnight that’ll get us there by late tomorrow morning,” Wilson scrolled through the online Jersey-to-Paris listings, “and…oh my god, the price,” he felt his eyes bug out, cartoon-style, with the shock of someone who hadn’t bought non-work-comped travel in the last decade.
House slammed the lid of the laptop down and stuck a beer in Wilson’s face. “No think. Just drink. I’ll buy us tickets at the airport, then you won’t have to rest your delicate eyes on any dollar signs.”
“I guess you’re driving?” Wilson couldn’t turn down the nerve-calming effects of alcohol right now.
“Obviously. You’re just there to look pretty.”
“I’m very good at that. You have anything stronger?” Wilson asked in lieu of opening the bottle.
House grinned and replaced the beer with whiskey. Wilson took a burning gulp straight from the neck of the bottle and did an internal audit. Yep, still nervous, but now he was also coughing a little. Great.
“Alright. I’ve got what I need to hit the road,” House announced, “Let’s get you sorted for our international escapades.” He threw his weight against the bedroom closet door to force it open despite considerable resistance from crumpled piles of clothes and shoes and tangled miscellanea. After a period of wrestling and rustling, he emerged with a laundry bag full of—not laundry, as a layman may foolishly have guessed—what appeared to be Wilson’s possessions. His missing possessions, specifically.
Wilson let the booze land with a muffled clunk on the rug as he joined House to investigate this Mary Poppins-bag-style menagerie of his former belongings.
“Here’s that pesky little passport,” House handed the highly essential document to Wilson, who stashed it protectively in his shirt pocket, “And…aha,” he pulled a small duffel out of the larger white mesh container, “I knew I’d snagged one of these at some point. Should have most of what you need.”
It was an entire hospital go-bag. Wilson’s go-bag. From a bygone era, probably—Wilson unzipped it and unearthed a loudly patterned shirt that hadn’t been fashionable since the new millennium (which he vaguely remembered House saying should remain in the nineties where it belonged)—yep, definitely from the Bonnie years.
“For fuck’s sake—” he finally exploded, grabbing a pumpkin-orange tie and flapping it in House’s face, “This tie almost ended my second marriage!”
“Then you should be grateful I removed it from the field of war.”
“No! I mean, Bonnie gave it to me as a birthday gift and when it went missing she was convinced I’d left it at some hook-up’s place.”
“Well, she was sort of right. From a kleptomaniac time travelers’ perspective.”
Wilson debated the merits of strangling House with the tie. He went so far as to wrap it around House’s neck, but once in place, found it a lot more enticing to use it to bring House’s mouth in for a kiss rather than choke the life out of his miserable, tie-stealing, marriage-wrecking body.
“Mm, I should rob you more often,” House murmured, chasing Wilson’s lips when he pulled away to inspect the rest of this recovered treasure.
“If you did, I wouldn’t have any clothes left.”
A pause, and then, “I should really rob you more often.”
Wilson sighed and examined the loose-fitting khakis—he’d probably gone up a size at the waist, but the forgiving bagginess and a belt would probably do the trick. “Well, I’ll look like an escapee from the last decade but at least I won’t be wandering the streets of France naked.”
“Wow. Seriously making me want to take these things back.”
Wilson clutched the clothes closer, and then decided to clutch House closer too. “Today’s about you giving, not taking, yeah?”
House’s eyes sparkled, warm and playful. “I do love to give it to you.”
“Where it…” Wilson leaned in close to whisper in House’s ear, “is your car keys.”
“Vroom vroom.”
They each stuffed a carry-on size bag with what they could scavenge from House’s place. Wilson decided to take a communal approach to House’s socks and underwear, and House packed an absurd number of condoms and less-than-three-ounce tubes of lubricant whose origins Wilson decided not to ponder.
House was turning the key in the condo’s lock when Wilson clutched his arm and said, “Cuddy.”
House blinked. “Unless you married her when I wasn’t looking, I don’t see how she’s relevant to our exotic intercourse excursion.”
“We need to call her.”
“We’ll send her a postcard.”
“No, she’s the one we have to call. We have to call someone.”
“No, we don’t,” House countered, “Our disappearance will be a fun little mystery for our colleagues. Like Roanoke.”
Wilson was already pulling out his phone. House snatched it from his grasp and flipped it open with a theatrical sigh. “Better let me handle this, babes.”
“Okay, one, never call me ‘babes.’ And two…never mind, you’re going to do what you want.”
“You know me so well, sweet cheeks,” House chucked Wilson’s chin as the phone dialed.
“Cuddy,” she answered tersely on the third ring.
“This is your office line,” House began without introduction and Wilson covered his face, the second-hand embarrassment pre-emptive at this point, “Even if you’re pathetic enough to be at work after five PM, the least you could do is pretend not to be.”
“House? What are you—” Cuddy managed to make the cell static itself sound irritated, “Surely, if you’re using Wilson’s phone at this time of night after today’s live action soap opera performance, then you have better things to be doing. Like him.”
Wilson winced. And wished House didn’t have the phone volume up loud enough that his neighbors were probably being treated to the finer details of this conversation.
“So true. But what about you? Girl, why aren’t you at home!”
“Why are you calling me ‘girl’?”
“I’m feeling affectionate.”
“Well, stop, it’s freaking me out. Is this because you’re being gay with Wilson now?”
“You say that like I wasn’t gay with Wilson before.”
“Touché. So, did you call just to update me on your relationship status?”
“My gay relationship status.”
“Yes, your gay relationship status,” Cuddy agreed, the ratio of fond to annoyed tipping oddly in House’s favor.
“And…pretty much. I’m spiriting away your boy wonder oncology genius to Paris for the weekend, so tell his patients not to die—and more importantly, not to call—while he’s busy getting frenched in France.”
A weighty pause. Then, “Paris? Seriously?”
“Oui.”
“Holy fuck. You are…way less of a cheapskate piece of shit boyfriend than I would have guessed.”
“You underestimate my generosity. And the power of Wilson’s ass.”
Wilson resumed covering his eyes in mortification.
“I guess so.” Cuddy sounded deeply amused. Wilson may never be able to show his face at PPTH again. “Well, you’ve both got the vacation days. I’ll make sure it gets pushed through in the morning and let your respective teams know they’ll have to struggle along without you.”
And in the silence where House should have been exclusively rude, he instead said, “Thanks. You’re the bestest with the breast-est. See ya Monday. Unless we’re arrested for being too internationally sexy.”
He snapped the phone shut and handed it back to a lightly stunned Wilson. “That was…well, it was still embarrassing, but not nearly as much as I expected.”
“Time is short,” House shrugged gallantly, “I want to get you naked again more than I want to bug Cuddy.”
“And that says an awful lot about how badly you want me naked.”
House grazed teeth over Wilson’s ear, and Wilson was tempted to unlock the door again and have House on the couch instead of carrying on with this whole Paris trip fuckery.
Sensing his horny indecisiveness, House jangled the Corvette keys in Wilson’s face. “You wanna drive?”
“…No. I like to watch you drive.”
“Good. I like to watch you ride.”
The double entendre worsened the horniness but not the indecisiveness. Wilson grabbed House’s hand and dragged him off to the underground garage where the vintage sports car slept under a canvas cover.
House got them on the road without incident, though that didn’t stop Wilson from providing color commentary on House’s driving skills, or lack thereof. Every time he loosed one of his usual lightly barbed notes on a brushed curb or a rough braking, however, it seemed to turn House on a little more.
Eventually Wilson chastised House for blowing an extremely red light, “It wasn’t yellow, it wasn’t even orange, it was crimson, have you been tested for colorblindness recently?” and House abandoned the steering wheel to wrap his right hand around Wilson’s knee and squeeze. He kneaded lightly as he depressed the gas pedal.
“This car’s a manual,” Wilson pointed out, voice trending upwards in concert with the journey of House’s palm, “Get your hand off my thigh and onto the gearshift.” House’s fingers eagerly tried to sneak between Wilson’s legs and Wilson had to loudly clarify, “Not a metaphor.” He removed House’s hand from his person and wrapped it pointedly around the manual column. Which…yeah. Only fractionally less dirty. Not helped by House immediately pretending to jerk it off.
“You worry too much,” House declared. “I think, from a medical standpoint, you need to replace at least 69% of your anxiety attacks with orgasms.”
“Doctor’s orders?”
House nodded, “I’d be happy to fill your prescription. I recommend beginning treatment with a course of road head.”
“Giving or receiving?” Wilson wondered.
“Patient’s choice.”
“Either way, it sounds like a surefire way to end up in a lethal head-on collision.”
“All I heard there was ‘lethal head.’”
Wilson sent his laugh up to the stars, neck cracking as he leant back in the seat. He stretched and took the opportunity—less by choice, more by geography—to catch a whiff of himself. “Fuck, I regret not showering. That was a rookie mistake. Now I’m going to turn up in Paris smelling like an overripe garbage can.”
“It’s just a bit of manly musk. I bet you’ll actually have Parisians falling all over you offering sexual favors. But don’t worry, I’ll fight them off for you.”
“Right, because top of my list of concerns was a sexy Frenchman sweeping me off my feet if I didn’t have an American maniac on hand to snarl rabidly at all comers.”
They rolled to a pointed stop at a red light, House glancing over at Wilson like he expected applause. Wilson was too busy not chewing his fingernails through sheer force of will and also not developing a major stress headache to oblige.
“Ugh.” House threw his head back in dramatic rolling dismay, then gripped Wilson by the neck and dragged him into a messy liplock. The light turned green, the empty intersection remained empty, and eventually they were bathed in sequential yellow and red glows again.
Once House had determined he’d kissed the correct amount of hell out of Wilson, he released him and sat back to inspect the results.
“Good,” he nodded curtly as Wilson blinked and patted his bottom lip with a baffled forefinger, “that’s better.”
A wolf whistle split the night air. Wilson turned to find two young women in a red VW bug waiting in the next lane over had rolled their window down to express their admiration. Wilson hid his face (maybe it would be easier to remain permanently shielded behind his hands, like some sort of tragic statue) but House just grinned and waved.
The light flipped to green again and the girls turned off (thank god) and House got them up to speed and merged onto the highway.
The wind whipped through Wilson’s hair and the lights of the city started to stretch and blur along the roadside.
After about five miles of silence, he burst out laughing.
“Joke or spontaneous mental breakdown?” House inquired conversationally.
“Oh, I was just thinking,” Wilson stifled another frenzy of giggles, “It was only twenty four hours ago that I was fleeing that miserable date with Angie.”
“Ah, yes, the attempted Mrs. Wilson and poodle princess.” House shuddered, “This trip won’t involve dog adoption, will it?”
“Nope.”
“Promise?”
Wilson pledged, “I swear it on my father’s grave.”
“Your father’s not dead, he lives in Hoboken.”
“And he’s already bought a graveyard plot there.”
“So really, you’re just promising on a patch of as-yet meaningless Jersey dirt that I won’t be walking out of this adventure with a leash.”
“I think you’d look good in a collar,” Wilson drawled, tracing a finger along the neck of House’s shirt.
House barked excitedly and Wilson laughed and scratched happy fingers into House’s hair until he stuck out his tongue and panted and it was overall the best trip on the I-95 that probably anyone had ever had.
They left the car in short-term parking at the airport, House stooping to gently kiss the front fender goodbye, and headed towards the international ticket stands.
Wilson had never wandered into an airport with anything less than a fully stocked suitcase, briefcase, travel itinerary, backup itinerary, copies of all essential documents, and a stock of security-passable snacks. Much less without tickets.
Fortunately, House was quite comfortable with unplanned chaos.
He opened with a brusque, “How much to get me and my cuddle bear here to Paris ASAP?” His palm landed squarely on Wilson’s ass and Wilson squeaked a little too teddy-ish of a squeak for his taste. He did not, however, encourage House’s hand to seek a different landing zone.
The tired, bulging eyes of the heavyset airline agent barely blinked. She merely consulted her desktop and began informing House of the redeye availability, and would sir prefer to fly business class?
Wilson, reasoning that fluttering one’s eyelashes couldn’t be a more difficult labor than what he did in the cancer ward every day, steeled his spine and got to work with the seductive stuff.
The worst case scenario (House laughing in his face when Wilson trailed meaningful fingertips up his back) did not come to pass. He blinked owlishly at Wilson’s sudden closeness, caught his breath when Wilson’s lips brushed his ear unnecessarily while whispering his request for first class.
In point of fact, House was powerfully and delightfully affected by the performance.
He said as much when they departed the ticket counter with their extravagantly overpriced travel secured. “You really are a natural when it comes to whoring.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. It was from the heart. Or at least some large, throbbing organ.”
“How long until we have to be at the gate?”
House checked one of the massive clocks adorning the airport walls, “More than an hour.”
“Great. Plenty of time to find a dark corner of the first class lounge and make out.”
“Wilson, I think you’ve lost your mind. I hope you never find it again.”
House leaned in and Wilson pressed two fingers against House’s eager mouth. “But first, we have to make a few practical purchases.”
“Common sense located near Concourse B,” House mourned as he let Wilson tow him towards the security checkpoint.
They made it through the security screening without incident—something House could not usually say, both as a bastard who liked to aggravate overly empowered bullies and as a mobility aid user who preferred not to be felt up by strangers while they examined his cane like he’d stowed an impressively compact nuke in the handle. Wilson was always glad (and proud) when a situation involving House didn’t involve trouble, and particularly today, because if someone had gotten professionally grabby with House’s jeans, Wilson felt like he might’ve seen red and committed a felony.
As they moved deeper into the airport, the reality of the situation battered at Wilson’s mental door like a determined debt collector. He was trying and failing to not be totally fucking petrified by what he was doing. Even setting aside the absurdity of unplanned international travel, his near total lack of luggage, how he was essentially abandoning his patients for a weekend of decadence—he was doing this with House. He was doing House. He was going to do House across multiple continents.
“You look like you’re trying not to hyperventilate,” House diagnosed.
“Brilliant deduction.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
Wilson swiveled his whole body to blink incredulous eyes at House. “Is there…anything…you can do?”
“That’s what you’re supposed to say!” House replied defensively.
“It is. That’s why it’s so weird to hear you say it.”
“Well, is there anything I can fucking do?”
Wilson considered the offer seriously before concluding, “You could hold my hand.”
House immediately added a caveat, “Is there anything I can do that isn’t in the behavioral oeuvre of a twelve-year-old girl?”
“I don’t think hopscotch is permitted on federal property, so yeah, you’d better just hold my hand.” Wilson held out the appendage pertinent to the current scuffle. House inspected it briefly, as if for quicksand traps or perhaps a moat, before grabbing it in a sullen, put-upon sort of way. But Wilson still had pretty good vision even this side of forty, and he wouldn’t need 20/20 to spot the sneaky little grin running an escape along the corner of House’s mouth.
“Let your doctor know if the anxiety gets worse,” House murmured lightly, “I’ll enact mouth-to-mouth protocols.”
“And if it gets really bad?”
“That calls for mouth-to-dick action. Break-glass-in-case-of-emergency stuff.”
“I’ll try to keep to a low dosage while we’re in public,” Wilson lifted their joined fingers and pressed a kiss to the back of House’s hand. House looked at him. Stared at him, really. A curious, vulnerable sparkle in his eyes. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” House immediately threw down the shutters on his expression, but it was too late, Wilson had memorized it.
“Like…that. You know. Looking at me,” Wilson repeated.
“I’m looking at you like I always look at you. Somewhere between disinterested and lustful.”
Ignoring this, Wilson pressed on, “Have you really always looked at me like that?”
“Like I want to strip you naked but might get bored by the time I reach your socks?”
“Like…like you want to hold my hand in an airport.” Wilson half-shook his head, not willing to turn away and even briefly lose sight of those perfect, hard-edged, unwelcoming, craggy features. “If you’d always looked at me like that, I think I would have picked up on it sooner.”
“Where ‘it’ is wanting us to be the victims of a homophobic hate crime at Newark International?” House wiggled their hands in a mock show of affection but Wilson used it to pull House in tighter.
“Yep. Exactly that.”
He led House off in the direction of the currency exchange kiosk and didn’t let go.
They were charged outlandish onsite service fees, of course, but House couldn’t care less because he got to press buttons and receive funny Monopoly money and heavy coins, the heft and throwability of which he deeply approved of.
“This brochure says we should be able to pay for most things with Visa or Mastercard,” Wilson pointed out, gesturing with the thin paper wellspring of European financial knowledge.
“The brochure can kiss my ass,” House replied, “I’m paying for everything in one Euro coins. Man, I bet these suckers would leave a bruise.” He aimed a coin at the back of a passing security guard’s head and Wilson grabbed his wrist.
“If you get dragged off to be waterboarded in some federal black-site for domestic terrorism because you really really wanted to throw a coin at a rent-a-cop, then I won’t be able to have sex with you.”
House holstered his weapon. “Fair point.” Then he checked his phone for the second time in as many minutes and Wilson delicately said nothing. House would share when he was good and ready. Possibly, after something humiliating had happened to Wilson. That’s alright—it’s what he was signing up for.
Wilson took up House’s hand again with a smile and renewed towing him around the shops.
They moved on to an all-purpose drugstore type of establishment so Wilson could stock up on what House considered “silly frivolities” and Wilson considered “essential toiletries.”
“The French do have teeth,” House pointed out, scanning the rows of floss with distaste, “At least, as far as I’m aware.”
Wilson hummed, “But sometimes a man wants his favorite brand of American toothpaste.”
House, He Who Demands His Same Bloodstained Carpet Back After It Was Ripped Up And Dumpstered, wasn’t gonna argue with that. He did, however, throw an additional package of condoms into their small shopping basket.
“Another, are you kidding me?” Wilson asked, nudging the hard plastic corner of the basket into House’s abdomen, “You do know we’re just going for a weekend.”
House spoke just beyond Wilson’s right ear, “Yeah, but I plan on being inside of you for most of that time.”
Wilson carefully collected his scattered wits and replied, “Then you’d better get a few more.”
Their bulging carry-ons were now equipped with the basic necessities and a few luxuries, such as a paperback thriller for Wilson to read on the plane and a disposable film camera unexpectedly chosen by House.
House’s cell trilled again and he caught Wilson’s curious gaze. “Sorry, just rearranging my hooker schedule.”
“Right. You can tell them I’m taking over their duties for the foreseeable future.” Wilson waited.
House twitched anxiously the way he only did when one of perhaps two people were involved—and since Wilson doubted House had gone to Stacy for advice on romantic international getaways, that meant…
“My mom’s been to Paris,” House admitted. “I asked if she had a recommendation for a hotel. She does.”
“Oh.” Wilson nodded and left another beat empty for House to fill.
“She’s just digging up the number.”
“Mm.”
House grimaced at the Dunkin’ Donuts sign just beyond Wilson’s head and finally added in a rush, “She’s very happy for us and always liked you and hopes to see us soon.”
“You already told your mother about us,” Wilson gushed and grabbed House by the waist.
“It was a necessary evil!” House insisted, trying to squirm away. Then, “Oh, thank fucking god,” he wagged the phone in Wilson’s face like he was warding off a vampire with garlic, “I’ve gotta call the hotel. Right now. Otherwise we might be sleeping on the streets of Paris tomorrow.”
Wilson kissed House’s nose but released him.
“They’re, what, six hours ahead? They should be awake by now, unless they’re lazy,” House determined as he dialed the number. “Hi…English? English, anyone? Great, oui. Yes, American. Yes, tourist. That sounds like a rude name, so yes again. Yeah, I’m flying in today, I want a room for two. Can I get your fanciest schmansiest suite through the weekend? Uh huh. Uh huh. I get it. Yeah, no, not a language barrier problem, I just don’t give a shit.”
Wilson felt the usual wave of embarrassed responsibility for House’s behavior, and also a maxed-out version of the typical drizzle of delight from watching House’s claws come out.
Don’t find bullying hot, he counseled himself desperately, seriously do not get turned on by blatant verbal harassment of innocent bystanders.
House, meanwhile, was still engaged in his unique brand of diplomacy. “Double your going rate if you tell the current customers to fuck off. Yeah, twice as much of your funny money. Or greenbacks if you’ve got a taste for ‘em. Ah. Yep, right, hold on a goddamn…yeah,” House wrestled his credit card out of his wallet after extracting that from his jeans pocket and read the details off. “Mmhmm. I told you it would clear. Alright, that’s—great. Suite for two, under name of House, afternoon check-in, yep. Pleasure doing business with you.” House hung up the phone and grinned brightly. “We’ve got a beautiful suite waiting for us in the Marais district and I didn’t even have to break out the death threats.”
“I’m proud of you. And grateful to you.” Wilson sidled closer and looked up at House through his lashes, which was a very effective move if House’s sudden dry gulp was an accurate gauge. “I’m tired. Let’s go find somewhere…quiet.”
They found themselves a candlelit first-class bar and lounge with lots of deep shadows to neck in. Not that Wilson originally condoned the necking, it was simply that the lights really were low, and they had some time to kill before the flight, and House’s mouth was so proximate that really, it would have been silly to do anything else...
“You’d better stop that,” Wilson murmured, when the tease of House’s tongue against the throbbing vein under his jaw threatened to turn this into an adults-only kind of show.
“Stop making you feel good? Sorry, that goes against my new prime directive.”
“This place is dark but it’s not that dark. We have an audience.”
“Hot.”
“No,” Wilson disagreed, even as a forbidden prickle chased down his spine, “not hot. Potentially risking whatever the airport equivalent of a night in lock-up is. Probably that’s a lifetime in max security.”
“As long as we share a cell.”
Normally, Wilson would—well, hell. Normally, Wilson wouldn’t be making out with House at all, regardless of location. The usual standards of behavior didn’t apply.
House had told him to take what he wanted. Right now, he wanted House. And slightly more than that, he wanted House to feel just a shade of the embarrassment Wilson felt at the potential of being caught getting aroused in a Newark airport bar booth.
Wilson craned his neck so House had more room to spread his lips and suck at that vulnerable, sensitive spot. Then he murmured, “At least a cell would be private.”
He felt House’s pleased grin against his skin. “If we were chained up together somewhere, alone and cozy…what would you do to me?”
“It’s more what I want you to do.”
“Oh?” House’s breath came hot and Wilson steeled his nerve.
“Yeah. I’d love to get you on your knees. See if your mouth feels as good as your hands.” Wilson forced himself to keep going, though the words didn’t come easily. But he wanted to say them. “See if you’re as good at stealing my clothes when I’m still wearing them.” Now, a gentle laugh, then more pressure on his skin, House’s lips encouraging his break with sanity. “I’d open your mouth wide…and I’d slide right into your hot, wet throat. Rub myself against your tongue.” A loud click as House swallowed hard. The sound made it way too easy to imagine the sonic backdrop of the fantasy he was tracing out. “See how deep you can take me. See if I can make you choke…and if you’d like it. I think you would. And you’d let me thrust hard, wouldn’t you?”
House whimpered. Wilson licked his lips. Oh, he should stop. He should seriously, seriously stop. “You’d let me drive into your mouth until you were a mess, wet and dripping from your lips and still begging for more. And I’d give it to you. Until your jaw aches and I’m so close I can’t stand it. You wouldn’t pull off, you never do things halfway. You’d suck and swallow me down—”
House gripped Wilson’s elbow like a drowning man. “You are going to make me come in my pants in this stupid bougie bar.”
“And I’m not sorry,” Wilson panted, hand shooting out to cup House’s crotch where, yes, Wilson was proud to report his sudden onset dirty talk skills had produced a flattering reaction.
“Gentlemen…” A bored voice yanked them out of the intimate moment. House barely flinched (shameless) but Wilson drew his hand back like he’d been massaging a lit stove instead of something else hot and dangerous.
The utterly disinterested waiter stared them down at close range. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Yes,” Wilson said too quickly.
“Don’t suppose you could give us a minute to finish our business?” House inquired.
“That would make my shift more interesting. But no.” This monument to employed ennui stepped aside and gestured towards the door, a flat glare encouraging them to make speedy use of it.
Wilson stood (carry-on held discreetly before him to cover the evidence) and levered his partner in crime upright by the arm, dragging House unwillingly after him.
“Well,” Wilson huffed once they were out of range, “Getting kicked out of a bar for grabbing your junk in public wasn’t on my weekend bingo card.”
“Me neither. I didn’t know you had it in you. Or rather, that you want to put it in me so badly.”
“That shouldn’t be surprising,” Wilson decreed airily. “Anyway, I guess I’m just glad no one called security.”
“You’re taking this pretty calmly. Why isn’t your Good Jewish Boy guilt going into overdrive?”
“I don’t know. This should be pretty much the most embarrassing thing to ever happen to me.” Wilson cocked his head, thinking intensely. “But…it’s not.”
“Probably because I have a magic dick that bewitches you into making ridiculous decisions,” House offered earnestly.
“That would explain a lot.”
“C’mon,” House grabbed Wilson’s hand and Wilson felt a dopey smile sprout, “Let’s go find another dark lounge where the bartender is really, really nearsighted.”
As if sensing House’s determination and seeking to protect the premises, the airport loudspeakers announced in stern tones that their redeye to Paris would begin boarding shortly. House grumbled about bad timing but he didn’t let go of Wilson’s hand. Wilson didn’t stop grinning, all the way to their gate.
He felt like he was floating long before takeoff. The terror had morphed in a surreal sort of childish joy. He was on a plane! He had the window seat! He was watching the lights of New Jersey get smaller and smaller on the ground below!
“You didn’t take one of daddy’s special pills, did you?” House asked, wrapping his pinkie around Wilson’s and jiggling playfully. “You seem awfully happy.”
“Just high on life. And jet fuel.” He leaned over the armrest and kissed House, then kissed him again, just because he could.
“Who knows,” House murmured back, “Maybe the effects of Vicodin can be sexually transmitted.”
“That would be a fun warning to add to the label.”
The weight of an absurd day started to sink in to both of their bodies. They were fading in and out of sleep while the seatbelt sign still glowed overhead. The lavish first-class seats, so ridiculously soft and oversized that Wilson felt like he was stealing bread from orphans just by sitting on them, folded out flat into only slightly cramped beds after they reached cruising height. A shoulder-high plastic wall along House’s aisle side offered them the illusion of privacy as they laid back, eye to eye, fingertips brushing across the thin strip of empty space separating their cushioned seats.
“Our first time sleeping together,” Wilson noted. “Of course it’s not in your bed, or mine, or even at a hotel, but at thirty thousand feet.”
“You wish we were normal and boring instead?”
“Nope. Your attractiveness only increases with altitude.”
“In a matter of meters, it’ll be physically impossible to keep your hands off of me,” House rejoined sleepily.
Wilson settled the curve of his knuckles against the rise and fall of House’s chest, where he stayed until the flight attendants came around with mimosas, croissants, and news that Wilson had managed to sleep through the entire Atlantic ocean.
“Wow,” Wilson dug the heel of his palm into his eye and tried to reorient himself in the ear-popping whirr of slow descent, “Who knew air travel would cure my insomnia?”
House pouted and gently kicked Wilson’s ankle, “I like to think my penis had something to do with your overall state of relaxed contentment.”
“Credit where credit’s due,” Wilson patted House’s arm and gratefully took the second glass of orange juice and champagne, which House had only half-drunk in a show of romantic consideration.
Chewing on one of the (also half-eaten) croissants, Wilson craned his neck to look at the mess of shiny paper scattered across House’s tray table.
House answered the questioning look, “That flight attendant has more than just an ass to write home about, she had brochures.”
Wilson coolly assessed the ass in question and had to admit that it was a piece of equipment worthy of note, though he wasn’t particularly pleased that House had been noting it.
“The hotel is in Le Marais,” House announced, regaining Wilson’s attention by batting a picture of ancient stone facades against his nose. “Which means we’re not just going to ‘gay Paris,’ as in très fun,” he affected a heavy and terrible French accent, “we’re going to gay Paris. Which is also Jewish Paris, so we’re really covering all your bases.”
Wilson took the brochure and perused it while House carried on, “The Marais is romantic, historic, and chic. It says so on the tourist pamphlet, so it must be true.”
Yet another brochure—Wilson suspected that attendant must store loads of them under her skirt to create that eye-catching silhouette—named “Your Weekend in Paris” very sternly informed him that a weekend was not nearly enough time to experience Paris properly, but if he was going to be foolish enough to attempt it anyway, here was a jam-packed blow-by-blow directive on how to maximize one’s attendance at museums, landmarks, and unmissable shopping and dining experiences.
“We’re not going to do everything listed here,” Wilson said, a question and a request all in one.
“No time,” House agreed, “after all, it doesn’t have ‘rail-slash-get-railed-by your sexy lover’ listed even once, and that’s our number one priority. Unless you want to combine and conquer? I’d be happy to fuck your brains out at a tasteful variety of galleries and war memorials.”
“Let’s put a pin in that,” Wilson suggested, “and first just see if we can make it to our hotel in one piece.”
“Setting a low bar, good idea.”
“Oh, my bar is high,” Wilson laid a hand on House’s thigh with intent. House growled low in his throat and nipped forward to kiss Wilson hard, with teeth. Wilson bet House wasn’t thinking about that flight attendant anymore. Unrelatedly, he might be developing a jealousy problem.
The plane landed, safe and routine, and House got to fulfill his destiny as a middle-aged white man and clap loudly as if the pilots had just sunk an impressive free throw. They idled on the tarmac for a while before trundling into place and hooking up to the walkway.
“And that’s why it’s called first class,” House noted smugly as they were allowed to disembark quickly without the usual economy-class humid waiting period.
Wilson tried not to be disappointed that Charles De Gaulle didn’t feel particularly French. The world over, airports are airports—long lines, crying children, escalators, an inexplicable abundance of perfume ads, and bored security guards. The signage contained some unfamiliar accented letters, but that was about it.
House’s enthusiasm made up for the lack of baguettes and berets. “Welcome to France!” he crowed, arm and cane in the air, “Homeland of Michelangelo, Picasso…some others.”
“I don’t think either of those are right.”
House considered, “The homeland of all your favorite shoes.”
Wilson glanced south and concurred, “Well, guys, how does it feel to visit the old stomping grounds?”
In a high, throaty tone he apparently thought appropriate for four-figure leather loafers, House replied, “Ooh, daddy, we looove to be back in Frannnhce.”
Wilson gave a full-body cringe. “Do that voice again and I’m stranding you here.”
“I’m the one footing the bill, remember?”
“In that case, does Mr. Moneybags wanna take the lead getting us out of the airport and into the city?” Wilson pointed to a sign advising “Tourisme Information,” which was probably just a lucky English cognate but still came off as French dumbed down for Americans, though he was in no position to complain. “I’m sure you enjoy being rude in foreign languages.”
“I do, though in this case, I can only be rude in my first language. Unless you think they’d appreciate some sharply worded Mandarin.”
“I thought—you don’t know French?” Wilson’s apprehension spiked and he gripped House’s arm automatically, “You know like seven hundred languages!”
“And French would have made seven hundred and one. I preferred a nice round number.”
“But you know Spanish.”
“So, if our plane had been blown significantly southwest we would’ve been golden. Otherwise, it’s just a few Romance language cognates and my general experience from being an international man of mystery. Now, it’s my turn—why don’t you speak French, Dr. McGill Graduate?”
Wilson’s mouth worked for a moment while he first absorbed the fact that neither of them could communicate with the current nationality unless the locals took pity on them, and then reckoned with the minor guilt trip re: his failure to learn the language in Montreal. “I…know a little. Just not as much as I would have liked, or should have, and it faded fast,” he admitted with a frustrated sigh. “Everyone pretty much spoke English and laughed at my pitiful attempts and terrible accent. They weren’t trying to be mean, but…it was better and easier not to try.”
“And you hate making trouble. It’s probably for the best, I don’t know how kindly Parisians would take to your Quebec-y twang.”
“It’s Quebecois. And I think my accent will be the least of our worries.”
“Then let’s stick to English. Par-lay voo Englayse?” House asked the concierge worker unlucky enough to be nearest as they approached the tourism desk. His pronunciation caused Wilson physical pain.
“Yes, monsieur,” the man answered in the easily polite terms of someone who—horror of horrors—dealt with a lot worse than House on a daily basis.
“How can we vamoose from this here airport to our hotel?”
Interpreting this bastardized Western dialogue correctly, the worker gestured deeper into the airport and said in English that surpassed House’s before his coffee, “There is a transportation hub on the other side of the facility, if you follow the signs and walk along the outer—”
“Walk?” House interrupted, “Hello!” He swung his cane in a dangerous arc, “I’m not up to a lot of walking. And I don’t read this strange local dialect.”
“Perhaps your aide…”
Wilson was confused until their still-polite guide’s endlessly gesturing hand pointed in his own direction.
House shot a quick thrilled smile at Wilson before replacing it with his favorite theatrical scowl. “This poor guy? He’s got a helluva lot on his plate already, what with the daily oral and anal requirements. You want to make him schlep me around on his back and translate too?”
Wilson felt his ears flame. Other parts too. God, he was developing bad habits at an astonishing rate.
House’s unshakeable opponent persevered, “To assist in your travel across the airport, you will find a moving walkway approximately fifteen meters to your right. Follow the signs—they are pictographic in nature, to avoid language barriers—to the central transport hub, where you will be able to board a train or hire a taxi. If you are not able to make the walk, I can locate a wheelchair for sir?”
Like a dog realizing it’s shaken the life out of a toy, House dropped the issue. “Sir will be fine without. I’m sure my handsome aide can resuscitate me if the moving walkway gets too vigorous.”
Wilson took House’s hand as they departed (less a romantic flight of fancy than a preventative measure) and leaned in close to hiss, “Are you being extra nasty on purpose?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because…” Wilson evaluated the thin crowd of people flowing around them, then decided that since he’d never see any of them again, there was no harm in a little PDA, “Because now you know I think it’s hot.” Wilson’s thumb traced House’s hipbone, over his shirt and down the outside seam of his jeans.
“Yeah. I’m doing it on purpose.” Wilson started nibbling at House’s earlobe and House asked eagerly, “If I get this for being testy with an airport grunt, what would I get for telling the entire French Foreign Legion to fuck off?”
“Probably they’d lock you up in the Bastille. But I’d let you do unspeakable things to me on conjugal visits.”
House kissed him up against a poster advertising lingerie in tasteful sepia. Wilson felt a wave of power overcome the lingering anxiety-and-embarrassment combo.
A tiny voice chittering off to their left encouraged Wilson to break off and glance around for witnesses. He found a little girl staring up at them with interest and asking them a question in the language they mutually did not speak. Wilson would’ve asked where her parents were, but House took a different approach.
“Looking for tips on tongue kissing? You’re French, you invented it!”
“She’s looks about seven, House, maybe stop shouting almost-obscenities at her.”
The little girl babbled something sweetly back in French. At least, it sounded sweet, but everything in French sounded either sweet or furious in Wilson’s experience.
“Amazing, we found the only monolingual European child on the continent,” House exclaimed as Wilson dragged him off a safe distance from their petite observer, finally locating that mythical moving walkway and hopping on it.
“I thought for a minute there that my sexual gifts could keep you in line,” Wilson murmured, “Guess that was some wishful thinking.”
“No, no, I think you’re on to something,” House countered, sliding middle and ring fingers between the buttons of Wilson’s shirt and rubbing delicately, “It probably just needs a few more treatments to really work.”
“Well, then I’d better get you somewhere quiet and horizontal, stat. For your health.”
They kissed unthinkingly on the Charles De Gaulle airport moving walkway and Wilson pondered with distant but approaching worry how he could ever go back to work like this. House would come into his office with that evil smirk and Wilson would be possessed with the need to lick it. He’d steal Wilson’s food in the cafeteria and Wilson would just start feeding him fries with his fingers. House would announce he’d poked holes in all the clinic sample condoms and Wilson would try and hump him in the hall. It would be a disaster.
“You’re thinking again, I can taste it,” House announced as they departed the walkway for an escalator down to the travel hub.
“Sorry, you must’ve missed a few grey cells the last time you fucked my brains out. Better be more thorough next time.”
House groaned in strangled delight and barely made it off the escalator with all his limbs.
Wilson headed without question for the taxi stand, but House pointed excitedly at the train symbol instead. “We should take the Métro. Like true Parisians.”
“Because nothing says ‘true Parisian’ like a rumpled Walmart button-down and…” Wilson squinted and brushed a hand down House’s tee to smooth the fabric, “is that a vodka advertisement?”
“Yep. Guess I’m more dressed for Russia.”
Wilson was still examining the shirt. “Why is the bottle wearing a cowboy hat…?”
“Listen, if you hate the shirt that much, you’re welcome to strip it off.”
“I’d love to. Let’s get to our hotel quickly in a nice comfy taxi so I can do that.”
House pressed his lips together in a rueful grin. “Your manipulative streak is out in force. It’s hot, by the way.” Wilson just smiled demurely.
“Hôtel Aurore,” House informed the driver as they squashed themselves and their carry-ons into the back of the cab.
Wilson watched the sprawling airport—practically a town in and of itself—start to disappear, replaced by roundabouts, grungy concrete, and street signs familiar in all but language.
“It’ll look more properly European once we’re in the city,” House commented.
“Stop reading my mind, please, it’s irritating.”
“But don’t worry,” House carried on heedlessly, “This is a French highway, which means these are romantic asphalt stretches and romantic construction zones.”
Wilson grinned and leant his cheek on House’s shoulder.
Small cars and motorcycles zipped by, not a pick-up or roaring semi in sight as the buildings began to get taller and closer together. “Your bike would be right at home here,” Wilson commented as House admired one scooting past carrying a couple.
“Would you ride with me?” House’s eyes were alight with imagined mischief.
“Arms around your waist, holding on tight?” Wilson teased back.
“I’m thinking eyes squeezed shut and giving me a terror Heimlich.”
“Romantic.”
“Realist.”
Wilson laid his head back down on House’s shoulder and thought he felt House press a kiss to his hair. Probably just his imagination, though.
Now, their surroundings were morphing to better suit what old movies and postcards and mid-tier furniture store décor had prepared him to think Paris should look like. Sidewalk cafés, shops at street level, then layers of windows above, thrown open with bright profusions of flowers blossoming in window boxes along each floor.
House mashed the tip of his index finger against the window, “Ha! Picasso! I told you so!”
A banner reading “Musée Picasso Paris” fluttered against one of the endless handsome stone façades.
“He was Spanish but lived most of his adult life in France,” Wilson read from one of the many, many pamphlets House had hoarded. “You were right. Good boy. Smart boy.”
“Patronizing. Yet, arousing.”
“Starting to think anything turns you on.”
House just smiled at him, strangely soft and with a proportion of lasciviousness notably below the expected rate. Wilson wondered if he was going completely fucking crazy or if this heavy, warm silence really was supposed to mean, ‘anything…with you.’
House had taken him to Paris, after all.
“The Hôtel Aurore,” their driver announced. Wilson stepped out of the car and assumed the hands-on-hips position to ensure House didn’t stiff the poor man, as he was want to do. But House was generous with his tip and Wilson was forced to wonder if House, after a decade of enthusiastic cheapskatery and mooching, was embarking on a belated campaign to impress Wilson with his financial resources. Or seduce him. Assure him?
“I think I need to lie down,” Wilson announced, feeling inconveniently dizzy.
“Soon, my precious rapscallion,” House patted Wilson’s backside, purposefully misunderstanding the comment. Which was fine, actually, because now Wilson felt dizzy for much better reasons.
“Wow.” House took in the attractions of the street as the taxi rolled away. “Coffee, gelato, macarons, and handmade chocolates, all within spitting distance.” He turned seriously to Wilson, “How do you feel about a permanent relocation? Surely there’s plenty of cancer over here, I mean, the smoking rate alone…”
“No shortage,” Wilson agreed, “But I don’t know how many medical mysteries even a high-end chocolatier can supply for you.”
“I can always swivel to a new career. Chocolate tasting, for instance. Or crime solving. Chocolate crime solving. Tasting on Tuesdays.”
Wilson laughed and started towing House—and wasn’t it great to be allowed to physically tow House places now, it saved an astonishing amount of time—towards the boutique hotel’s understated entry.
“Bonjour!” House boomed with all the cultural accuracy of Steve Martin’s Pink Panther.
The older man staffing the desk narrowed expectant eyes. “Party of House?”
“Amazing guess. Part time psychic?”
“No, monsieur, I am the proprietor. You simply have a…distinctive presence.”
“Hear that, Wilson? Multisyllabic and everything. I told you not all French people were twittering carb-addled sex fiends.” House threw his free arm around Wilson’s shoulders and Wilson realized he was fresh out of distressed cringes and apologetic winces for the day.
“Sorry, he’s…” Wilson couldn’t honestly say that House was ill-tempered from travel because this was just his usual level of badness, possibly a little better than usual, actually, which Wilson credited to the frequent dispensation of kisses and innuendo. Wilson tried again and ended up saying: “He’s...mine.” His hand landed on House’s chest and stayed there.
The owner’s eyes crinkled and his neatly trimmed white beard stretched in an understanding smile. “Ah, yes. Fortunate, because my partner would not forgive me for kicking out two of our own, even if one of them is an entitled American prick.”
“A+ on the vocab!” House cheered. He seemed inclined to get along with the hotel owner—especially when House learned his name was Guy, which opened up a whole world of puns—and so Wilson pasted on a bland smile and shut down to retreat internally for a brief stock-taking while House dealt with practicalities (for once).
Among other strange behaviors and allowances, House was letting Wilson reach new heights in touchy-feely PDA. Not even of the strictly sexual variety, as Wilson was currently doing a fairly innocent limpet impersonation along House’s left side. Wilson realized that he’d been the one initiating all this couple-y canoodling, but it had been instinctive (did that make it more or less real?), he didn’t know how he actually felt about it. About what it said about him…how it looked.
God, he wanted a minute to take the chaos in his head and put it down in neat, orderly lines on paper. Just a minute to untangle the confusing beats of his heart. Maybe make a list. Lists were good. Pros and cons of being so in love with House I can’t stop touching his chest and trying to straighten his collar and I want to bite him. Fuck!
He couldn’t write a list right now, he was checking into a French hotel to perform explicit acts with/on/for House over the course of approximately three days!
Writing an internal list, then.
First order of business, historical reference on committed relationship public comportment:
He and Sam had always held hands like high schoolers. They were young, they were stupid, they could swing joined fingers at the grocery store and not care about anything in the world.
Bonnie had always preferred to dangle off his arm. He’d actually liked it at first, it made him feel strong and confident. As time wore on, it became less charming, more suffocating.
Julie hadn’t liked to be touched unnecessarily, though she’d always been pleased when he put a low possessive hand on her back when they were out and about as a couple—standard power pose. He’d realized too late that she liked being Mrs. Wilson, she just didn’t really like him.
Some aspect of all three preferences had arisen in his and House’s 24-hour-courtship, but especially…fucking fuck of fucksville, was he the arm dangler now?
“You look like you’re gonna hurl. Or faint.” House glared at him, the closest he got to a concerned look.
‘Just contemplating the obliteration of my dignity and stable sense of self in the wake of my overwhelming attraction to you,’ he wanted to say. “Just jet lag,” he actually replied.
“Your suite is on the second floor. Come this way, please.” Guy slid out from behind the reception desk and gestured for them to follow. “Stairs are here,” he waved somewhat redundantly at the cramped carpeted staircase, “but I imagine you will prefer the elevator. We had it installed during the renovation, only a few years ago, lucky.”
House didn’t provide the usual accessibility commentary, still inspecting Wilson for signs of illness—or cold feet. Wilson almost slipped into his most effective calming-patients-with-kind-geniality manner but realized just in time that House would recognize it and pounce. He shifted instead into a gently interested attitude he’d pulled out to great success with all three sets of in-laws, and felt only a little bit guilty for giving House this particular taste of the Wife Experience. Needs must, etc.
“Here we are,” Guy turned the old-fashioned key in the handle and opened the narrow door to their room.
It was perfect. That was Wilson’s first instinct, and it remained intact as he stepped inside to look around.
The bedroom-sitting room suite was snug by American standards but spacious in a city packed with this much humanity. Ruffle-shaded lavender lamps accentuated the afternoon glow from the windows, which offered a golden sheen across the fluffy white bed stationed beneath a sturdy wooden headboard against the far wall.
“The bathroom is through there,” Guy pointed to an open door, displaying a peek at a thick ceramic tub and a glass-walled rain shower beyond, “and the kitchen is open from seven to ten, just dial one on the landline to call.” He and House shared a communicative glance, and Guy added blandly, “Please do not hesitate to reach out if you experience any difficulties,” before sidling towards the exit.
Wilson realized he was about to have House completely alone for the first time since—well, their first time.
A small panicked part of him wanted to hook Guy in meaningless conversation just to buy himself another minute to order his thoughts. Fortunately, the rest of him operated on automatic and knew that all things involving House were better without bystanders—plus, there was a not insignificant aspect of himself that really, really wanted to get House naked again, and soon.
The door clicked shut. The heavy rug and curtains politely absorbed the sound into the low ever-present rumble of traffic.
House hooked his cane on the edge of a glass-and-brass end table and wrapped both arms around Wilson’s waist from behind, his body lined all the way up and down against Wilson’s. Wilson leaned back and tried to soak it all in, the heat, the touch, the scent of him, the rumble of excited breath.
How many times had Wilson come up behind lovers like that? How rarely had he let someone else take charge, when his role was the gentlemanly pursuer? Was he giving House, known abuser of power, way too much authority right at the outset of this untried relationship?
“It’ll be alright,” Wilson muttered distantly, patting House’s forearm, “I’m still in charge of taxes.”
“Taxes?” House repeated, incredulous, “Why are you thinking about taxes? In France? With my lithe and virile form pressed against you?”
“Sorry, just a small internal masculinity crisis.”
House leered, “I’d like to get my masculinity inside you…”
“Very helpful. Supportive. Thank you.”
“Is that a yes? After all, it’s what we came here for.”
“Not culture? Cuisine?” Wilson asked innocently.
“Nope! To fuck on foreign soil. Well, a bed will do for starters.”
Wilson twisted until he could find House’s mouth.
It would be fine. It had to be. And it really didn’t matter that he’d never had a long-term romantic relationship with a man before because this was House, gender was the furthest criteria from essential in the equation.
“I believe I was promised the right to strip off your awful shirt.” Wilson stuck his hands under the worn cotton and shoved it up before House could renege out of spite. But House didn’t resist. He looked amused and desirous and a little wondering, just like he had yesterday, when Wilson had first gotten him naked. (Well, sexually naked. It’s not like it was difficult to find House without his clothes, you just had to show up early enough in the morning. Or late enough at night. Or occasionally smack in the middle of the afternoon.) His skin felt wonderful under Wilson’s palms. He wanted it all against his own.
House was already on it, ripping the buttons loose on Wilson’s travel-wrinkled shirt and yanking it over and off his shoulders. Wilson let himself be stripped from stem to stern, socks included, before giving House the same treatment.
There was always something just a little bit silly about being naked with someone else. And with House specifically, doubly so. The laugh snuck out of Wilson and House kissed it out of his mouth, licking the humor from behind his teeth until he was wrestling with a stupid smile of his own, and they were laughing together without their clothes on in Paris. Wilson wrapped an arm around House’s shoulders and poured every good feeling House was drawing out of him back into House’s skin. The kisses turned fierce and desperate, humor taking a back seat as need grabbed the wheel.
Wilson palmed House’s erection, hungry to feel close to him again, connected, like House needed him more than anything else in the world. House groaned against him like that was true.
“I hope to god—or any universal force of your choice—that you want me to fuck you again,” he rasped against Wilson’s ear, clutching a handful of his ass. It made Wilson imagine a flash of shoving House down and mounting him right there on the floor. His dick twitched like an excited dog hurling itself against a leash and only decades of life experience let Wilson hold it together long enough to fumble for House’s ridiculous carry-on full of sex supplies.
He caught up a travel-size bottle of lube and then paused.
“You’re clean?” Wilson asked, breathless.
House nodded, biting his lip like he didn’t trust his tongue.
“Then no condom. I want to feel all of you.”
House fucked him hard and bare over the edge of the bed. His good leg powered brutal, incredible thrusts, his bad leg leant against the thick duvet, his arms held Wilson down as he writhed in perfect ecstasy.
“Oh, House, fuck, just like that, just like—uhh—”
Each thrust drove more delirious babble from Wilson’s lips, and every word encouraged House to drive harder into him, the broad queen mattress squeaking in shock as their bodies rocked roughly into it.
It was exactly the no-holds-barred rough sex Wilson had wanted. Distantly, he knew House couldn’t possibly be as alright as he pretended to be—he’d pay for this later in pain. But House was giving it to him of his own free will and for once, Wilson wasn’t going to play the martyr. He was going to be fucked like he’d never been before and it was so good.
The sheer animal heat of it, the sweat beading and mixing between them from exertion, the filthy things Wilson couldn’t stop saying. He rode the cresting wave of desire, more a wall of untamed heat bearing down on him, and neared the peak with increasing desperation.
He had never come like this. Practically untouched, the silk-cotton friction of the comforter against his aching cock the only relief. Oh, he wanted to. He wanted it, wanted it, wanted it…
“Wilson,” House’s voice, almost a snarl, a distant sound through gritted teeth. “Come on. Somewhere…inside you…I know there’s a scream.”
There was. It ripped out of him, not just from the raw pleasure but the everything, House needing and wanting him so badly, this gorgeous suite in a foreign country, this perfect stupid time all alone in the whole world. Logically as a doctor, he knew desire was as much in the mind as in any other part of the body, but the overwhelming reality of how this felt purely because it was House, and House was giving him the dicking down of a century in Paris just because Wilson had asked—
Wilson screamed and ground down and came so very, deliciously hard onto the freshly made bed. House pumped tired hips into him until Wilson stopped shuddering and moaning and grasping at the sheets, at House, at anything he could reach.
House pulled out and flopped onto his back beside Wilson on the generous mattress. Wilson tried and failed to catch his breath for the better part of a minute. He almost calmed down but then he felt the cooling mess beneath him and it triggered fresh memories that sent him shuddering again. Unseeing, he reached for House, his heat now only imagined given the space separating them. Why weren’t they touching? That wasn’t right…
He found House’s forearm and immediately sensed the wrongness in the tension there. But not for long—House tore free to crawl up towards the head of the bed. Wilson raised bleary eyes to find that price he’d accepted being exacted sooner than he expected.
Without a job to do, House was focused fully on his injured thigh, no doubt sufficiently rattled by air travel even without the unwise exertion of rawing Wilson. Thoughts of how Wilson could return the favor and get House off were no longer relevant.
Wilson swallowed, dry and wrung out, before trekking up the bed to join House at the headboard.
“Hey.” A cautious touch to House’s shoulder was coldly rebuffed. Wilson didn’t take it personally, just added it to the calculus. Asking if he could get House anything would return one of a small set of answers: he decided to skip the anger and insults and just go retrieve House’s Vicodin from his abandoned jeans pocket.
Popping a pill into his palm, Wilson briefly detoured to the bathroom for a glass of water, then silently offered both to House. House took them. Then, voice tired and harsh but not nearly as cruel as it could have been, he asked, “What, no lecture to accompany the narcotics?”
“You’re in pain,” Wilson parroted House’s favorite line back to him, and used the abrupt snort of humor to sneak back in close, not quite touching as he got comfortable with a wince. House wasn’t the only one aching, but Wilson was sensible enough to recognize the chasm between their experiences.
On the same track, House loaded his own diagnostic inquiry: “Do you regret asking me to give it to you hard?”
It was obviously a test. “No.”
“Are you lying?” he prodded.
“No. I like the reminder of an ache. And you can’t escape your leg hurting. At least this way, we both know what it feels like for you to bend me over the bed and fuck me vicious.”
The lazy, lecherous grin was a relief to see. “It was really fucking good, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Wilson nuzzled into House’s arms and House let him, “It was really fucking good.”
He kissed House then until he felt those frazzled, aggravated nerves begin to calm beneath his touch. House’s breathing evened out and he spared a hand to poke vaguely at Wilson’s face, like a reminder that it was real. That they were both real.
“How about a bath?” Wilson suggested, the grime of airport travel crawling up his consciousness like mildew, “The tub in there looks gorgeous.”
“Let’s go take its virginity,” House agreed.
Once out of bed, House’s hostility to the mere telegraphing of Wilson’s helpful body language kept him at a distance. He retrieved House’s discarded cane instead and allowed the stubborn old bastard to hobble into the bathroom under his own power.
“Barebacking in Paris,” House muttered, “I think that’s a movie.”
“Yeah. Gene Kelly, right?” Wilson played along, going to crank the water on as hot as it went.
Upon reaching the thick clawfoot tub, House sized up the heavy iron and ceramic beast and decided it could take his weight. He sat carefully on the rim, twisting slowly and lifting his injured leg into the steaming, rising water. The other leg followed and then with lean muscles standing out in his arms, he lowered himself inside. Wilson watched and admired not just the body on display (though definitely that) but the vulnerability. He’d seen House at his lowest, but this wasn’t that—this was House at his…something-else-est. Something big and deep and frightening.
Wilson bent over him and kissed House’s forehead, muddling his hair under affectionate palms. “Scoot up,” he whispered, then started sliding in behind House before he could either comply or resist.
“Hey,” House protested without a target, on pure instinct.
“The better to jerk you off, once the hot water’s done its work,” Wilson explained happily, legs going on either side of House, front pressed so very comfortably to his back, arms wrapping around his middle. One hand rubbed vaguely against House’s stomach, the other teased lower and House grunted. Wilson retreated. For the moment.
House’s tension only increased when Wilson redirected his attention to joining House’s automatic massage of his wounded thigh muscle. Right. Not welcome. Instead, Wilson decided to share, “Huh. It’s gonna take a while to recover from that pounding you gave me.” It was definitely uncomfortable to sit like this, even with the water’s buoyancy taking some of his weight.
Now, House relaxed back against him, a pleasant arrogance in his tone as he replied, “Damn right. I plan on touching up the damage routinely. And of course, you can take a run at me.”
Wilson froze, or rather, most of him froze, and one specific part of him nobly attempted resurrection after a very recent petit mort, to use the language of the land. “Um. Do you mean…?”
“I mean you can fuck me,” House sighed, twining their fingers together and splashing along the surface of the water with their joined palms. “Assuming you’re interested.”
“Um. Safe assumption. Yeah.” Wilson shifted. House wriggled. Wilson pinched House’s nipple in retribution. House chuckled low and Wilson felt it vibrate through both of them.
He grabbed a washcloth off the nearby stand and dipped it in the water. If House expected Wilson to attend to himself, he was dead wrong. Wilson wanted an excuse to touch every inch of House and whataya know, that excuse looked like a bar of soap.
He ran the ivory bar down House’s chest and smoothed after the path with the cloth, fingers swirling careful circles into House’s skin.
“I want you nice and clean for me,” he murmured in explanation.
“Don’t forget my pits,” House murmured back.
Wilson laughed and squeezed his knees together, playfully compressing House and making House retaliate with a splash that injured the tile floor more than Wilson, who just tangled their legs even further.
House started to settle as Wilson gravitated from the center out. He dragged the rough cotton cloth down House’s arms, carefully stroking along and between each of his fingers, running across his palm. House let his long legs be drawn inward so Wilson could reach, scratching at hair and petting the delicate skin inside his thighs, beneath his knees, at the bone of his ankle.
He carefully maneuvered one finger beneath the cloth to run gently along the details of House’s face, over his forehead, his brows, along the line of his nose, circling his chin, scraping gently along the grain of his stubble. He smoothed kisses down House’s neck following the cloth’s path, sinking his hand low down House’s back before pulling up short, skating around his waist to start tracing his ribs. His fingertips got familiar with House’s collarbones before massaging along the gently ramping fullness of his pectorals and finally feeling out the subtly pebbled texture of his nipples.
All the while, he purposefully ignored House’s growing hard-on, even when his hips started to rock with interest and the reddened tip broke the surface of the water, making Wilson bite down sharply on his lower lip to keep up the impassive charade.
House eventually made his wishes known, as Wilson knew he would. “Am I just getting a free hospital sponge bath or is this gonna get lewd?”
“Well, you’re certainly not one of my patients. For one thing, you’re not paying me.”
“Aren’t I?”
“That’s true.” Wilson submerged the washcloth and wrapped it around House’s cock. Almost a warning. House held his breath. “You are acting like my sugar daddy. You want me to treat you like one?”
House chin jerked as he dismissed the idea. “No.”
Wilson rewarded the honesty with a gentle squeeze, feeling House’s heat through the fabric and against the surrounding warmth of the bathwater. “Then what do you want?”
Maybe House didn’t have any honesty left, or maybe he was trapped on the same train of confusion barreling towards destination: unknown as Wilson was, or maybe he was just sick of talking when he had perfectly good hands to say what words couldn’t.
He twisted his neck and caught Wilson’s bottom lip between his teeth, plunging both hands beneath the water to shove the washcloth away from his groin and wrap Wilson’s teasing left hand properly around his aching dick.
It was a great angle, especially well-suited to Wilson’s first time jerking House off—talk about familiar. His wrist knew just how to arc, his fingers knew just how to intensify pressure with a daring squeeze and leave off with a tormenting looseness that magnetized wanting thrusts forward into the circle of his hand. House responded to what Wilson liked, and he shared his enthusiasm freely when Wilson started to experiment with pace and tension and the very careful application of thumbnail to sensitive nerve clusters.
Wilson doubled down on sensation, dragging his toes up the line of muscle on House’s inner shin, tweaking peaked nipples, and striking gold when he brought the fingertips of his right hand to bear on the seam of House’s lips and House’s mouth opened to greedily suck index and middle finger inside. His tongue flicked against Wilson’s skin as if to follow the microscopic carving of his fingerprints before tightening and sucking hard.
If he hadn’t had such an intense orgasm so very recently, Wilson would be rutting like an animal against House’s back with the way that suction felt. As it was, he let the pleasure wash evenly over him, not arousal with a purpose, just pure enjoyment of body and senses.
Wilson picked up speed and the water roiled. There was a powerful eroticism to the miniature waves splashing against the cliffs of their bodies, the wriggling visual illusions of their sliding skin beneath the disturbed surface, the rushing melody of wet encounters and choked-off gasps. House’s head fell back against Wilson’s shoulder, his eyes shut tight while his mouth worked with silent pleasure, Wilson’s fingers slipping free and dragging damply down House’s chin.
And House still didn’t speak. No sarcasm, no dirty whispers, no secret pleas.
That was alright, Wilson generally knew what was going on in that beautiful, impossible head anyway. He slid his free hand, still slick with spit, down House’s front and between his legs to dip low and roll his balls in his palm.
“House…” he whispered, breaking their mysterious pact of speechlessness, “I thought you looked good from above, when I was riding you…” House whined and Wilson scraped teeth along his jaw, “But I could get obsessed with this view just as easily. Especially…with the added benefit…of not just feeling you come, but seeing it too…”
House spasmed, hands which he’d kept dutifully clamped to the sides of the tub while Wilson pleasured him flying to clutch at Wilson’s forearms, hips jerking wildly up as he started to come. His cock pulsed in Wilson’s hand and poured his release into the quivering water and Wilson watched the show with a want that smoldered so much deeper than bodily desire.
Now, House said Wilson’s name. Quiet and wrecked, a plea as Wilson’s hand worked the last drop of spent pleasure from him, then a petulant demand when Wilson wrung him past complete and into oversensitive.
Wilson rubbed his cheek against House’s ear and held him as he shivered through the aftershocks and at last found the rest of his voice with a haughty, “Well, I have clearly been missing out on the real joys of bathtime.”
“I’m sure you’ve had this particular joy plenty of times in your own tub.”
“Oh, but it’s not the same,” House’s hand skated down Wilson’s arm to join their fingers together, “It’s not you.” The sentiment made Wilson’s skin prickle, and House wasn’t done. He contorted his spine so he could leave the words right against Wilson’s ear, as if to minimize the distance they had to wander through the lonely air. “I love that I’m the only person on this entire continent who knows you.”
Wilson stole a kiss before deciding to be persnickety. “Well, that’s not strictly true, I’ve met colleagues internationally—”
“And do these so-called international colleagues get to fuck you in the bathtub?”
“No,” Wilson nibbled House’s ear, “They certainly do not.”
“Well, then, they don’t count.”
“You’re right. I’m all yours.” He illustrated that the opposite was also true with a tight hug around House’s chest, lifting him slightly out of the water with the force of his possession.
“Ah, the romance of a cracked rib,” House coughed, and Wilson released him with a pointed nuzzle.
“We’d better get out,” Wilson sighed, “We’re all pruny and the water is...contaminated.”
“Semen water,” House helpfully clarified.
“Yes.”
Wilson acquired a pair of fluffy towels and kept a wary eye on House as he dried off. But House was steady on the lip of the tub and stood with only the usual amount of wince-wobble when Wilson offered him the complimentary robe. Wilson made do with a fresh pair of boxers (purloined from House—surely their codependence couldn’t get worse?) and then decided he had to brush his teeth immediately or he’d keel over.
Meanwhile, House perused the room service menu with interest and snagged the phone.
Can I tell him now? Wilson wondered, cracking open the travel toothpaste and spreading it on the new brush bristles. Just spit it out and see how it goes? We’ve passed the twenty-four hour mark. Probably. Give or take airtime and the dateline or whatever.
Is it acceptable to tell him now that I didn’t just realize I wanted to have sex with him yesterday, I realized that I loved him? That I’m in love with him? That I’ve been in love with him this whole damn time and no one had the common courtesy to let me know that?
Probably, Wilson considered, he should wait. Maybe after the weekend? No, still too soon. Maybe two weeks? God, a month was a fucking long time. No way he’d make it to a new season without breaking down and begging House to open a shared retirement fund and adopt a three-legged cat with him. Maybe he could find a better way to phrase it, less frightening to House’s emotion-phobic side: hey, I don’t just wanna fuck you, I wanna fuck you for life—in the heart!
He finally decided to table the crisis, at least for the time it took to wash the taste of travel and House’s tongue out of his mouth.
Wilson was busy attending to his back molars but he caught the tail end of House’s room service order and picked up something about “fromage” before an exquisitely pronounced “merci.” He stuck his head out of the bathroom to accuse foamily, “You said you didn’t speak French!”
“I don’t speak French,” House dropped the phone innocently back in the cradle, “but I do speak food. I can get bread to my bed in every language in the world.”
Wilson risked going back to brushing above the sink but kept a wary squint on his own personal snake in the grass.
Champagne, a cheese plate, and bowl of pastries arrived at the door just as Wilson finished dressing enough to be appropriate for public viewing. House would consider himself decent in a G-string, so Wilson tied a knot in House’s robe as an extra safety measure before retrieving the food and bringing it to the small window-side table and chairs.
They sipped perfectly chilled champagne and snacked and people-watched through the sparkling glass. Wilson was always good at picking up on interpersonal signals—“He’s gonna propose.” “He can’t! Because she’s…” “Yep, she’s trying to break up with him. Fifty-fifty which of them beats the other to the punch.”—while House could diagnose profession, income, and health status at twenty yards—“Oh, he’s so got gonorrhea.” “There’s no way you can spot the symptoms from the second floor!” “But I can see the paint stains and artfully tousled hair, and struggling artist equals STD infestation.”
Wilson started flicking listlessly through the brochures as they neared the end of the pastries. The pamphlets were looking at him. Glaring. They were sneering that he was uncultured and lazy, and probably talking shit about his hairline while they were at it.
He gazed longingly at the disheveled bed, thinking of nothing naughtier than sleeping on a pillow without proper neck support. “House, would you mock me endlessly if I said that all I want to do right now is take a nap?”
“You’ve basically already said it—”
“—yes or no, smartass?”
“Yes. Mocking incoming. But…I might take advantage of your elderly mien to catch twenty winks myself.”
“Sounds unfair…” Wilson yawned, jaw cracking, “but I’m too tired to argue.”
He stripped off the clothes he’d only so recently buttoned himself back into and collapsed shoulder-first onto the bed. It was a move he’d perfected in med school, almost as satisfying as face-first but with less suffocation potential, and it provided a near immediate transition into the crumpled fetal position he favored for cat naps.
There was the lumpy flutter of the robe hitting the ground. House followed close on his heels—on his ass, really—and molded himself around the curl of Wilson’s frame. He yanked the comforter up to cover the chill of their nudity in the pleasantly cool room. Wilson felt a smile carving deep into his face. Helpless, hopeless. Comfortable. Contented.
He was in love, and in Paris, and maybe it was alright to just feel it and not say it.
“Wake me up when it’s time for more croissants,” House whispered in Wilson’s ear, “or coitus.”
“Or both?”
“Or both.”
********
During the course of their is-it-afternoon-who-the-hell-can-tell-in-this-foreign-time-zone nap, they had shifted positions. House found himself little-spooning it up while Wilson breathed deep and easy against his back. House decided he liked it—Wilson’s familiar heat surrounding him at unfamiliar proximity. Though he wouldn’t be putting that thought out into the verbal world.
He especially enjoyed how the position gave him prime access to information regarding how happy Wilson was feeling. Wilson’s hard-on nestled without agenda against House’s ass. House would be thrilled to provide an agenda.
Wilson was definitely still asleep, though nearing a peak of wakefulness if House remembered his REM stages from med school correctly. He turned over to get a better grasp on the situation—literally.
He stroked careful, inquisitive fingers along Wilson’s erection. It was hot and throbbing and even the gentle touch produced a flattering drowsy twitch-and-moan combo that made House’s mouth water.
Which was perfect, actually. Gripping his injured thigh and moving it along with the rest of him, House slid down Wilson’s body until his mouth was even with his prize. Flicking eyes quickly upward, he confirmed that Wilson was still mostly asleep, before taking a long lick with the flat of his tongue, starting at the base and then swirling around the tip.
Wilson’s hips jerked. House eagerly held him down before wrapping his lips back around the swollen head and sinking slowly down as far as he could. He hollowed his cheeks and dug the inquisitive tip of his tongue into the subtle shifts in shape and texture as he considered what kind of rhythm he should go for.
The question became moot. Whether Wilson woke up or came first, or more likely some delightful combination of the two activities, wasn’t clear. But he definitely did both, shooting into House’s mouth and beginning to mutter and grab vaguely for his hair. House drank him down and felt his already stratospheric ego swell a few more points.
“House…” the baffled, blown-away gasp of his name made House intensely aware of his own state of arousal.
“You rang?” he trilled, grinning beatifically up at his bedmate.
“How did you know…” Wilson swallowed hard and pawed fiercely at his sleepy eyes, “how did you know that…that…was what I was dreaming about?”
Unflinchingly taking credit for this telepathy, House brazened, “I am just that good.”
“Well. Obviously, that was incredible. But I hope I can actually be awake for the next time.”
“Just say the word. This mouth is always open for business.”
“Tacky, yet, undeniably alluring.” Wilson glanced down, hmmed, then shook himself all the way into alertness. “Hello.” He reached forward and baldly gave House’s dick a yank, “Anything I can do in return?”
“Think you’ve got the right idea,” House muttered, shutting his eyes. One of the advantages of Wilson touching him from behind in the bath was safety from that relentlessly affectionate gaze. Now, he was right in the crosshairs of those devastating soft brown eyes.
He shouldn’t have worried. Wilson’s mouth landed on his chest, then his stomach, then grazed along the crease of his thigh, and House could connect the dots.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Uh,” Wilson pointed a single, hilarious finger at House’s dick, “You got a problem with the destination?”
“…No. Just checking that you didn’t take a wrong turn.”
Wilson rolled his eyes, “Yeah, because I love taking it up the ass, but I’m queasy when it comes to oral.”
House blinked at the ceiling, “That sounds like something I’d say.”
“Huh. It does.” Wilson thoughtfully licked the head of House’s cock, making him whimper and swear. “Do you want to make the next comment or—”
“—sexually transmitted sarcasm,” House enthused, “that could be a real medical game changer! Let’s add it to the list, along with Vicodin and bad decisions.”
“You wanna make that list now…?”
“No,” House slid both hands into Wilson’s hair, and oh, yeah, that was really fucking nice, “No, I do not.”
Where Wilson had been slow and thorough and inexorable before, he went straight for the finish line now. He sucked House into his mouth and brought him deep, bobbing his head in a staccato allegro with a flooring demonstration of skill, until House was on the verge of thrashing beneath him. When House’s fingers flexed of their own volition from a hot wave of pleasure and pulled Wilson’s hair, Wilson purred. The vibrations along House’s length were way too much to stand.
House didn’t have the excuse of being partially unconscious for how fast he came. But Wilson just swallowed victoriously around him and then grinned up at House’s slack, panting features with an uncharacteristically wolfish grin.
“What is with you?” House asked, needing to know approximately as much as he’d needed to come a minute ago.
Wilson shrugged and rejoined him at higher altitude, reaching out and snagging a now close-to-room-temperature half-glass of champagne, tossing it down the hatch thoughtlessly before sprawling back on the pillows. House pushed up on an elbow to admire the decadence.
“I don’t know. A little while ago, I had nerves out to here. Now…” Another shrug. House flattened a hand against Wilson’s chest to feel the pull of muscles in the movement.
“Some booze, a bath, and a few orgasms are all it took to finally remove the stick from your ass,” House concluded. “Also, continental relocation.”
Wilson clicked his tongue and shot a finger gun at House. “Shoulda tried kidnapping me to Europe before. Or replacing the stick up my ass with something more fun.”
“I should have,” House agreed lightly, “Maybe last year. Maybe before Julie. Maybe before Bonnie.”
“Maybe the day you met me.” Wilson covered House’s hand with his, tangling their fingers together. He leaned in closer and his lips parted, maybe for a kiss, maybe for something a lot more dangerous—
House’s phone rang. He registered it backwards: first, that it was an alert of some kind, second, that it came from a phone, third, that for some cruel reason the phone in question belonged to him.
“Fuck you,” he said aloud to the phone, currently residing on the floor in the pocket of his long forgotten pants.
“Just don’t answer,” Wilson urged, and brought House down into an embrace. House would’ve been fine sticking firm to this course of action, but when the trill died down only to spring back to life a few moments later with another call, Wilson gently beat his fists against House’s chest and grumbled, “Go get it so you can hang up.”
House floundered out of the tangle of legs and sheets and plucked up the jeans, turning them upside down to shake the phone out and dump it on the bed.
Wilson fumed at the phone and then snatched it up in a fit of pique. “Hello?” he answered, the anger grating his voice making for a passable House impression.
“House, finally, we’ve got a—”
“You haven’t got anything,” Wilson interrupted, “You haven’t got a case, you haven’t got a cold, you haven’t got this number.”
“…Wilson?” Foreman asked.
“Yes, this is Doctor Wilson. And I officially have custody of your boss for the weekend. So stop calling.”
“Okay, but we really do—” Foreman was interrupted on his own end of the call before Wilson could bring down the guillotine.
“Wilson, does this mean that you and House really are…” Cameron—the cheeky minx—trailed off before finding a delicate conclusion to the sentence, “you’ve really figured things out?”
House decided it was time to make his entrance. “And how!” he cheered into the phone, “We’ve been figuring things out vigorously. Repeatedly. Horizontally.”
Foreman again: “That’s gross, but congratulations, I guess. Now can we please talk about the case?”
“No!” shouted House, Wilson, and if his hearing was right, Cameron.
“You’re big boys and girls,” House lilted, snuggling in next to Wilson—to get close to the phone mic, of course, “You’ll just have to figure this one out yourselves.”
“It is a weird one,” Cameron admitted, a guilty cajole.
“I don’t care. I don’t care if the President of the United States himself shows up because his dick is breaking out in blue polka dots and his mistress has started speaking in tongues. I’m out of contact this weekend.”
“But—”
“Where’s Chase?” House realized one of his monkeys was missing, “Let me guess, under the table, taking turns servicing the two of you?”
“He’s picking up bagels!” Cameron squeaked.
“I’ll bet,” House deepened his voice, “with extra cream cheese.”
“You’re right,” Foreman suddenly declared, “we can do this without you.” And he ended the call.
“Aw,” House pouted, “I wanted to hang up.”
“So did I,” Wilson added. He took the phone from House and turned it over in his hands. House then watched in awe as Wilson snapped the plastic back off, dug his nail in, and popped out the battery.
“Wow.” House ogled the sight. “Cutting me off from work. Defacing hospital property.”
“I know.” Wilson’s grip tightened on the battery.
“It’s killing you. You want to fix it so badly.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” House took the gutted phone and clicked the battery back into place, “that was hot, even if you couldn’t maintain it.”
“I maintain other things just fine.”
“Prove it.” House wedged his bad leg onto Wilson’s lap and took his face in his hands, kissing him slow and languid.
“Alright,” House smushed himself back into the pillows once neither of them were thinking about work anymore, “You wanna tour the city or my body?”
“Do I have to choose?”
“Only order and quantity.”
Wilson grinned and danced fingers along House’s waist. “Let’s just do what we want. Even if all we want is to lay in bed and eat pastry and have really improbable amounts of sex.”
“Obviously, I’m on board with that plan. You’re the one who has the voice of social norms nattering in your brain.”
“Well, I’ll smother that voice with a pillow for the weekend.”
“It’s not like we can’t come back,” House flung an illustrative arm towards the window, “This will be the fuck ‘n suck vacation, next time I’ll let you drag me through every museum and garden and guided tour you can find.”
“You promise?”
“Promise about the fucking and sucking or the forced culturing?”
“About having a next time.”
“Sure,” House answered too quickly. He was desperate to keep Wilson for himself, he always had been, how could Wilson think even for a moment that House was going to let him go now that he’d gotten his claws in so, so deep?
House considered the hopeful, excited glow in Wilson’s eyes and realized this wasn’t just about possession or even commitment. It was about…feelings. The ones House was stinging back with an electric cattle prod. The ones he’d so far managed to duck and weave around while Wilson jabbed—an “I’d marry you” kidney punch, an “I want all of you” cracking House’s glass jaw. He’d only avoided worse by throwing plane tickets at the problem. All of a day into their confusing new Sex Thing and House was taking the most desperate measures to avoid the Big Three Words.
He couldn’t sweep Wilson off to Paris every time he tried to tell House how he felt. It certainly wouldn’t work now.
House could taste the words forming on Wilson’s lips, could hear their echoes forming in the air.
“But if we don’t go see the Eiffel Tower while visiting Paris I’m pretty sure we’ll be shot,” House announced. “Not sure by who, but the sniper dot’s definitely already in place.”
Wilson’s teeth clicked as his mouth snapped shut. He nodded, dredged up a soft smile. “Same applies to the Louvre.”
“Mona Lisa herself would take us out for skipping her,” House agreed, relaxing. The danger had passed. For the moment.
“Let’s do the Louvre,” Wilson decided, relinquishing his hold on House and sliding out of bed. House didn’t appreciate either of those things. Regardless of the fact that he’d directly and personally caused them.
Still, he enjoyed the odd intimacy of watching Wilson dress. It started with a pleasant tingle at realizing Wilson had been driven to wear House’s underwear and moved into appreciation of the methodical way Wilson slung his slacks around his hips with the belt open while he buttoned his shirt. Then, tuck-zip-button-tighten and he was battle-ready in his typical uniform. No casual jeans and tees for him with only work clothes to choose from, and House wasn’t mad about that at all.
“Do you think you’ll be able to get dressed by osmosis?” Wilson gestured up and down the length of House’s naked, lounging form.
“Do I really need to wear clothes out? This is France. Surely they wouldn’t mind a quality mobile nude.”
Wilson smirked and stalked closer. “But I’d get very, very jealous.”
“Sounds like another reason to go au naturel.”
Wilson dumped House’s jeans directly onto his face.
The elevator opened onto a temperate late afternoon, the street bustling with pedestrians and the competing smells of coffee and motor fumes.
“This brochure from the hotel lobby—”
“Brochure addict,” House accused, like he hadn’t grabbed two (one to use and one to make into a paper plane).
“—It says,” Wilson carried on as if House hadn’t spoken, “that the Louvre is only a twenty minute walk. Is that alright for you?”
“Gee, I think you could speak to the state of my stamina better than I can.”
Wilson hooked their arms together, “By my experience, you could make it to the Spanish border.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere, including into my pants and apparently, to France.”
Wilson grinned and settled his hand on House’s bicep in a way that made House feel like a king taking his consort for a stroll around the royal grounds. “Still, just say the word and we’ll get a cab. I want you to save your energy for me, not waste it walking.”
They made their way slowly, taking in the vibrant architecture and people, thrumming with the diversity of a truly international city. (“Hey,” House pointed at a grubby alleyway, “This is Parisian piss.” Wilson sighed, “And here I thought we might miss out on a guided tour.”) They passed enough cafés to make House wonder at the coffee-and-pastry-shop per capita rate and how exactly the French economy operated. They also passed an elegant and utterly entrancing lingerie boutique that made House wonder how the French ever even got out of bed.
They were walking along the river route—a little longer, but damn, worth it for the view—when House’s phone once again produced a racket like someone wanted to talk to him, which was pretty damn cheeky on behalf of both the phone and the caller, as far as House was concerned.
“People need to stop calling you,” Wilson said seriously, “I’ve paid good tail for a monopoly on your horrible company.”
“You’re so right, angelcakes. I should throw my phone in the Seine.” House made to do it and Wilson only held out for a fraction of a second before using both hands to press the phone tighter into House’s palm and prevent it from becoming airborne.
“Oh, just answer the fucking thing.”
“Still my Wilson. An anxious do-gooder to the last.”
Wilson waved a tired ‘yeah, yeah’ gesture and House flipped open the phone after recognizing the number.
“Theresa!” House greeted the bank employee with the kind of joy usually reserved for a favorite grandchild, “It’s been too long.” Wilson tried to listen in, catching a dry rustling voice reply, “Not long enough.”
“Yeah, yeah,” House nodded, “Ha, yeah…the thing with the kayak and Iceland was—well, it was funny from my side. Yeah. Yep. That’s correct, I have not had my identity stolen, I just ran away to Paris for the weekend and started spending wildly outside my usual patterns for shits and giggles. Uh, what’s that about outside pressure or extortion…?” House trailed off with a glint in his eye, and Wilson preemptively planted his hands on his hips. “Nah, no one’s holding me at gunpoint. I was spirited away to Europe by my lover entirely of someone’s free will—maybe not mine, but who’s quibbling when there’s this much bread and sex. Yep. Great. Thanks so much, baby T…” Even Wilson heard the loud snap preceding the hangup—probably the very last of Theresa’s patience crumbling under pressure.
Wilson pinched the bridge of his nose, like that could possibly keep all his worry inside. “Right. Because neither of us called our banks before absconding to France. Nor did we do any of the other sensible things you’re supposed to do before you travel internationally—”
“Wilson, baby. Honey. Sweetie. Kitten. Lovebug. Cherry pie.”
“Is there a button I press to stop this, or…?”
“Captain of my dreamboat,” House took Wilson’s face in both hands, “stop panicking. That’s against the rules and the spirit of our sexy weekend getaway.”
“Weekend getaways are usually to neighboring cities, maybe states, not different nations. For all we know, there could have been a—a civil war going on here!”
House arched a brow, “Right, because we would have missed news coverage of the bloody baguette battles in the streets. Calm down. I survived a trip here before, surely having two of us doubles our chances of making it out alive.”
Wilson’s shoes scraped awkwardly against the concrete as he nearly missed a step.
“Hey,” House waggled their joined elbows, “You’re supposed to be the stable one.”
“Sorry.” Wilson found his bearings again but a firm set had come into his jaw. “I…don’t know why, I just assumed you hadn’t been to Paris before.”
Ah. House’s mouth screwed up in a thoughtful moue. “It’s been a long time.”
“Did you go with Stacy?” The question sounded casual, but House wouldn’t have needed to know Wilson as well as he did to tell that it wasn’t.
“Nope. It was her dream trip, but we never made it.” Instead of waiting for the inevitable ‘why,’ House barreled on, “I don’t like leaving a place once I get settled. Even if that place is Jersey.”
“Hate the traffic, love the pizza,” Wilson seemed to give House an out. Then he took House’s hand and stroked his thumb along House’s. “Thank you for taking me anyway.”
House coughed. This was a clever move to disguise how his internal organs were trying to reshuffle themselves. “Yep. Don’t mention it.”
“I won’t,” Wilson promised. “So, when were you last here, then?”
“Teenager. With my parents. Mom loved it, Dad hated it.”
Wilson mused for a moment. “Then…is you coming here a sort of extremely belated teenage rebellion against your father’s taste?”
“Huh,” House brightened, “I never thought of it like that.”
The Louvre’s famous glass pyramid entrance loomed over them for subjective miles. Wilson marveled at the intricate architecture, the counterpoint between classical stone and modern steel, the lush beauty of the gardens peeking out from beyond carved rock. House wondered if-slash-how-many people had been beheaded on the grounds.
Joining a populous queue, they traded observations of and imagined maladies suffered by their fellow tourists until they reached the front of the line. House was slow on the uptake, so used to living the easy life on the Wilson-dole that it was counter instinct to retrieve his wallet and swipe his credit card for a pair of frankly exorbitant tickets. Was it worth it for the way Wilson looked at him, pleased and proud and dimpling just a little beneath his very softest eyes?
House would rather not say.
“This place is comparable in size only to the biggest of global landmarks,” he proclaimed, “We’re talking Pyramid of Giza. And Cuddy’s ass.”
“I was wondering when our boss’s body would come up on this couple’s getaway.”
“Is there a map through this labyrinth or do we just wander until we find a mystical David Bowie to guide our way?”
“I hope it’s the second thing,” Wilson replied, shaking open a map and smoothing out the creases.
He went to the nearest unoccupied bench and sat down. This gave House a chance to sit down without having to look like he was initiating the break. He nonetheless remained standing stiffly until Wilson grabbed him by the wrist and tugged. “Elder abuse!” House complained, but eagerly stretched his leg and popped a pill.
He peered over Wilson’s shoulder to look at the plans of the various floors with features of particular interest marked with arrows and brightly colored photos.
“Everyone’s here to see the Mona Lisa.” House shifted his gaze to the lowing tourist horde spilling out to the floor below the renaissance masterwork. “A line a mile long to see a picture a foot tall.”
“Exactly,” Wilson folded the map neatly up and tucked it into his back pocket, “So, let’s wander. Go wherever the biggest crowds don’t.”
“Give some much needed attention to the poor, neglected, unpopular artists and artifacts?”
“Maybe find a quiet corner to give some attention to each other.”
House bobbled his eyebrows in admiration of Wilson’s newfound brassiness. “Sweet. Let’s go make out with a bunch of old-ass dusty statues.”
“With the statues? Kinky.”
“Nothing like some 500 BC marble to get me going.”
If everyone and their cousin wanted to see the Mona Lisa, then everyone minus their cousin still wanted to see the Venus de Milo; the Greek antiquities exhibit they first explored was swarming with families and tours. However, it was conveniently located on the ground floor of the museum, and House wasn’t feeling up to either stairs or following the signs to the limited disability-access elevators.
Wilson—clever bastard—managed to lead House around to those elevators anyway, and pressed the button to go down a level. “Egyptian exhibit, relatively new. And you have a thing for mummies.”
“And daddies, apparently,” House took the opportunity in the quiet lift to swipe at Wilson’s ass.
Wilson was giggling and had some suspiciously fresh red marks on his throat when the elevator doors opened on the first sub-level. A guard gave them a lazy hairy eyeball, a universal expression of ‘I’m not paid enough for this’ that bypassed spoken language.
“You care which way we go?” Wilson gestured at the split between two of the lower level’s quieter, cooler hallways.
“Nope. I’m deliciously uncultured so it won’t matter.” Testing the moment, House added, “Stacy was the art expert.”
Wilson nodded, unperturbed. “Sam, for me. Bonnie liked modern but Sam would’ve eaten up the classics around here. Told me all about how…” he fizzled fingers vaguely at the lines of an imagined painting, “this piece particularly calls to mind the melancholy excesses of the fourteenth century nobleman, or whatever.”
“Sounds like you don’t like being lectured at in museums.” House mimicked using his cane like a microphone.
“I actually do like being lectured at in museums,” Wilson countered dreamily, “since I also don’t know anything about art and I’d like to learn. I just didn’t like the way Sam talked, like she needed to prove she was smarter than everyone else. Specifically me. You already know you’re smarter than everyone else, you lecture because you need to impress people. Specifically me.”
“Stop psychoanalyzing or I’ll feed you to the Sphinx.” House pointed seriously at the huge stone creature, its paws extended from the shadowy depths of its alcove and its nose cracked off by the ravages of time.
“C’mon. You told me once that your dad was stationed in Egypt for a while and you went tomb-hunting. You must have learned something.”
“How offensive to think that if you’ve seen one ancient Egyptian artifact, you know about them all!”
Wilson patiently waited through House’s performance of outrage to ask, “So, you don’t know all about this exhibit?”
“Of course, I do. Shut up and let me tell you about the Seated Scribe and his spooky moving crystal eyes.”
The Louvre occupied their attention until the sun began its descent and the dinner crowds swarmed out.
“Do you feel learned?” House emphasized the adjective’s second vowel as they walked back along the river in the general direction of their hotel, “Sophisticated? A fresh member of the intelligentsia?”
“I feel like I’ve earned an evening of complex carbohydrates and indulgent sex,” Wilson responded, hands in his pockets as the weight of a long afternoon made House’s lurching pace inhospitable to romantic entwining.
“That you have. Also, bow wow,” he tacked on as a matter of course. His mind was occupied with trying to call up the name of the district’s most extravagant restaurant. “For dinner, L'Ambroisie has three Michelin stars.”
Wilson hmmed thoughtfully. “Sounds…daunting. Honestly, I’m more into the street food stall idea. Crêpes?”
House’s eyes glistened and he paused under the evening shade of a linden’s sprawling branches, “Marry me.”
“Don’t tease,” Wilson traced a finger down the front of House’s shirt, “Because I’ll say yes.”
The sound of a metaphorical bullet still whizzing past his ear, House ducked in and kissed Wilson.
They acquired the desired crêpes and settled into a dark red table and chairs streetside with café au lait in elegant matching demitasse for dessert.
House sipped the milk-lightened coffee. Talk about a world away from the burnt gasoline served in the doctor’s lounge.
A blur of green on two wheels knocked a fellow cyclist to the sidewalk on the street opposite them. House’s first thought was that the victim was lucky to have access to some of the best government-backed universal health care in the world. His second was gratitude that he wouldn’t be expected—indeed, he was actually not allowed—to practice emergency medicine on this continent. By the time this thought processed, Wilson was already over there, dispensing a little unlicensed doctoring with some halting French phrases.
Some things were the same the world over. Some people were the same.
Wilson rejoined him, “She’s fine. Just a few bruises. Not that you care, but I figured you might be slightly curious.”
“Not even slightly. But if you’re looking for more action and excitement, we are in gay Marais,” House rhymed, “Lots of gay clubs around if you want to dance the night away.”
“I think my clubbing days are past,” Wilson chuckled, and preempted House’s comment, “if they ever existed to begin with. But if you don’t mind a quick stop at a different kind of club…” Wilson pointed to a wrinkled poster taped in the corner of the café window, advertising JAZZ in English-friendly caps.
Gallantly, House accepted, “We can take a short detour on our way to Pound Town.”
La Cave du 38 RIV was an intimate venue, a cavernous (thus the name) bricked-in underground space with a medieval feel in the low arching doorways and stone floors. House gave the young eyebrow-pierced artiste-type running the ticket counter his most menacing glare and managed to score seats just as the show was about to start. They were squeezed into the very back of the small concert room, which meant they were all of fifteen feet away from the musicians rather than sitting on their toes. The gang onstage was a trio of bass, guitar, and saxophone.
“Hot club jazz,” Wilson reported excitedly after a slow, squinting, mouth-moving read through the program, “Paris is one of the only places you can hear that style anymore!”
“Also known as Romani swing or more recently Manouche jazz,” House discoursed automatically, “It stuck around since it was born here.” Wilson blinked at him in that big, open, wide-eyed way of his that House hatefully had to categorize as ‘adorable.’ “What are you giving me those eyes for? You know that I know jazz. You think I have that Chick Webb poster in my living room just for decoration?”
“…Yes?”
“Alright, bad comparison. Revision: do you think my acoustic guitar and baby grand piano are just for decoration? No!” House answered before Wilson could provide the obvious sarcastic comeback, “I don’t just play jazz, I can infodump about it with the best of them.”
Wilson leant his chin thoughtfully on House’s shoulder, an effective surveillance vantage point. “Why don’t we ever talk about music? It’s always monster trucks and nurses’ breasts over lunch.”
“They’re safer.”
“Giant death machines and our co-workers’ boobs are safer topics of casual conversation?”
“Yes.”
“I…think I see what you mean.”
“Also,” House tried to carry on breezily, “Talking about music would mean you’d have to assert your own interests and tastes. I like trucks, I like tits, so that’s the foundation of our chit-chat. You don’t even know what you like.”
“Selfish lessons,” Wilson murmured to himself.
House jerked his head in a nod, “Study up.”
The band leapt into a nimble, intricate string-heavy number, the melody weaving and wrapping around them in the heavy brick cave.
House was hugely in favor of sitting after an afternoon of walking, and might’ve been able to comfortably drop off if he’d had a hat to cover his eyes—also if Wilson hadn’t been rubbing his knee in a contented sort of way that made House keep forgetting about the music entirely.
Partially to keep alert, he whispered additional Jazz Facts™ in Wilson’s ear at respectful intervals—he didn’t talk over the music, he wasn’t a monster—comments about la pompe strum style, the plectrum pick technique, and chromatic composition. Wilson listened attentively, filed follow-up questions, and offered gently ribbing replies when called for (House would hardly be happy if Wilson left something called a “six-nine chord” un-mocked).
The show wrapped up and Wilson applauded while House offered an appreciative whistle, reluctantly joining the hunched standing-O.
“Wanna mingle with the musicians? Natter with the fans? Get a nightcap glass of wine?”
“Absolutely not,” Wilson slid his hand firmly into House’s back jeans pocket, “This was amazing, but it’s been way too long since I had you alone. I need you in our room, naked and sweaty and inside me, immediately.”
“I like a man who knows what he wants,” House said casually, instead of swooning at Wilson’s feet.
It was dark, the hotel lights down and desk closed when they stumbled through the lobby and over to the elevator. Wilson kissed House up against the lift wall, nearly jabbing an elbow into the buttons.
“It’s just one floor up,” House muttered against Wilson’s seeking lips.
“One whole floor.”
House didn’t know why he was arguing the point. He started undoing the buttons on Wilson’s shirt.
He nearly had Wilson’s chest exposed by the time they fell into their room, banging up against the bedframe and toppling onto the mattress while the door just barely swung shut on its own momentum. Just a little more wrangling and House could ford the moat (Wilson’s belt) and get down the drawbridge (Wilson’s zipper) and seize his prize (Wilson’s—well, you get the picture). He rubbed his face against the front of Wilson’s slacks in a slightly animalistic need for contact.
“Hold on,” Wilson said, patting House’s cheek a little frantically.
“Trying to hold on,” House gestured to the growing erection he was working so diligently to access.
“No, I mean, hit pause.” Wilson wriggled his hips away from House. House wriggled right back into Wilson’s personal space and jammed his nose into the triangle of stomach revealed from his half-untucked button-down.
“We’ve been out all day,” Wilson explained, petting House’s hair, “I have to wash up before you…do what I hope you were going to do.”
“I definitely was going to do what you hoped I was going to do.”
“Right.” Wilson slid off the bed with a thunk and held out hands like a lion tamer, “You stay. Right there. I’ll just be a minute.”
“You don’t want me to…?” House did an exaggerated washing-his-armpits pantomime.
“I’m used to your musk,” Wilson called over his shoulder, leaving the bathroom door open a crack while he did whatever it was his fretful nature insisted he do in there.
House took the opportunity to undress completely and get comfortable on the bed. He gave himself a few lazy strokes to make sure his dick didn’t try to take a catnap at an inopportune moment. But truthfully, he was in the territory of nodding off when Wilson finally emerged wearing nothing but that fluffy white robe House had been enjoying earlier in the day.
“Am I boring you?” Wilson drawled, leaning against the doorframe.
“Nope,” House pulled his shoulders back, blinking heavily, “Just centering my energy, you know.”
“Of course.”
“Concentrating for the ravishment to come.”
“Is ‘ravishment’ a word?”
“Get over here and find out.” House crawled to the edge of the bed while Wilson swaggered forward, a tempting confidence in the swing of his (presumably, extra squeaky clean) hips.
House took the folds of the robe in hand starting at Wilson’s neck and slowly, carefully pulled downward, running his mouth along each newly exposed inch of skin. He shoved the fabric off Wilson’s shoulders and earned a hot shiver as air hit skin. He soothed chilled flesh with palms laid flat. Wilson’s hands landed hesitantly on his shoulders.
He loitered around Wilson’s navel, teeth catching against the skin just above his groin before turning face up to announce, “Lie down. This is gonna take a while.”
Wilson hurried onto his back. House relished how quickly and easily Wilson capitulated to his authority. No argument, no stern look—though House loved both, in the right context. Maybe he should break out the promise of oral next time they had one of their tiffs about the ethicality of sticking patients with electrodes or whatever…
A train of thought for another time.
“I know what you want,” House rumbled, pitching his voice low and hearing how it made Wilson’s breath hitch. “You told me, in no uncertain terms, when we were dirtying up the good name of that airport bar. This afternoon’s somnophiliac attack was only a taste.” His tongue darted out and just missed contact with Wilson’s skin. Wilson flinched eagerly. “Spread those legs and make room for me. I’ve got work to do.”
Wilson did as he was told.
House’s oral fixation was an open secret—not really a secret at all. An advertisement, more accurately. And he was glad it had reached his target audience. Wilson had promised back in America, back in House’s bed, that House could take him one, two, three times a day for the rest of his life. Time to prove that wasn’t an entirely selfish bargain.
First, a reconnoiter of the area’s sensitivity and hot spots. There was the obvious erogenous zone (oh, he’d be getting there soon) but before he took the nuclear option, he was going to devastate the surrounding landscape. House settled in between Wilson’s knees and started alternating licks and bites up the path of his inner thighs, jumping from one to the other, with kisses sprinkled in wherever he could get away with it. He carefully monitored where Wilson reacted most favorably, what specific action or texture made his body tense up with pleasure.
He eventually lapped up the crease of Wilson’s thigh, teeth catching in the meat of his leg. Wilson’s hard-on jutted out so very, very close by, rigid and flushed and positively aching for attention. House licked his lips but didn’t let himself even brush that wanting flesh.
“House, please,” Wilson begged and House pressed approving kisses into the juncture of his hip.
“That’s good. Keep practicing. You’re gonna need those words again.”
He buried his face in the soft skin of Wilson’s lower stomach, lightly dusted with dark curling hair, and when he twisted his head Wilson’s breathy gasp stuck out like a blood spatter caught under a microscope.
Interesting. Purposefully, House pressed not just his mouth but the whole lower third of his face against Wilson, moving to run his stubble over the tender skin of Wilson’s inner thighs. Another desperate sound wound its way out of Wilson’s bitten lips and his fingertips ravaged the sheets.
“Unshaven kink?” House asked, a detached scientific curiosity balanced by raging lust.
“News to both of us,” Wilson coughed.
House dove back into action brandishing his new weapon. He flattened kisses in closer and closer to Wilson’s erection, spreading rough stubble against every patch of skin. The grit against velvet sensation brought Wilson near keening. House ignored how badly the sound made him want to just give up on dignity and hump the bed. He also decided the careful investigation stage had lingered long enough.
The experimental rub of bristles against the even more vulnerable skin of Wilson’s balls brought out a cousin to the shout House had extracted earlier that day.
“Fuck, please, House,” Wilson grabbed House by the hair and took his jaw in the other hand, “Let me. In. Your mouth.”
House grinned. His expression sharpened. “I knew you weren’t so submissive.”
“No,” Wilson’s eyes glittered back, “Not when what I want is…right there.” Slowly, he dug his thumb into the seam of House’s lips and gently, but insistently, pried his mouth open. House let his eyes flutter shut as Wilson guided himself inside.
Oh, fuck. Pleasure sizzled in House’s nerve endings—playing tormentor was fun but it was a whole different magnitude of thrill to have Wilson’s hot dick in his mouth. To be taken, even as it meant he had his own form of control over Wilson. And Wilson knew and he wanted it. He gave himself to House.
And House gave Wilson his all. He sucked almost delicately at the tip, tracing his tongue over fine detail and pressing in under the head. Right when the sensation bordered on too much, too focused, he opened wider and swallowed Wilson down nearly to the root. Wilson let out a breath like he’d been holding it since the first time House had touched him.
House’s ready right hand wrapped around the base and followed the movement of his mouth in practiced sync. Wilson’s fingers tightened and relaxed in House’s hair with the rhythm of his mouth. One hand remained on House’s jaw and his thumb traced obsessively over the hollow and filling of House’s cheek as he sucked Wilson in deep and then let him slide free just long enough to grow frantic for his heat again.
He could feel Wilson’s pulse pounding in his mouth as he swallowed around his thick length. Precum and spit gathered at the corners of his lips, adding to the filthy slide. Wilson’s hips were no longer under his control, bucking up in light rolling waves to force himself deeper into House’s throat.
House curled his tongue to cradle the head of Wilson’s cock and rub with the flat of it and Wilson lit up like that famous local landmark, so-so-so close to coming and past caring what he said or did or looked like. “Yes, yes, yes, just there, oh House, please just like that—”
He continued the attention for a few more moments, then pulled off and scraped his cheek along Wilson’s wet, throbbing erection, a quick drag on both sides, before sinking back down and tasting the release he’d smugly predicted that trick would produce. Wilson pumped into him with deep, catching groans, abdomen trembling with the intensity of it, muscles snapped taut before falling limp and elastic.
House licked his lips and made a show of wiping his mouth and massaging his jaw, Wilson watching every second from beneath hooded eyes.
Wilson tried to speak, found only a wrung-out croak, and had to clear his throat before trying again. “God, that…that was. It was. I know you’re going to be insufferable about it…but you’ll be insufferable anyway. Fuck. House. That was the most incredible head of my life.”
House had indeed already stocked up on his insufferability. “You’re only saying that because I vaporized your braincells with my life-changing, world-famous fellatio skills.”
“Maybe. Or maybe that’s just the Paris talking.”
“I bet they put pheromones in the butter,” House entertained the possibility, “Makes old man oral feel twice as good.”
“Ten times,” Wilson generously amended. He stroked languorous hands up and down House’s arms, finally scooping up along his neck to frame his face. “So. You wanna fuck me?”
“Assume a permanent yes to that question.”
“Good. Because I’m nice and relaxed and I really want you to fill me up.” Wilson brought their faces together and nipped lazily at House’s jaw and House rubbed himself against Wilson’s stomach, already imagining that tight heat surrounding him.
House took him on his side, crooking Wilson’s knee over his hip to slot their bodies together in a lazy roll against the mattress.
Wilson was so soft and inviting and House tried not to want to squeeze past Wilson’s ribs to nest in his heart. But it was nigh impossible to avoid wanting that when he was inside him and Wilson was holding him so close like maybe he was trying to make room for House between his vena cava and aorta.
Wilson’s eyes flickered with a slow burning passion, loosing a low whisper of indulgent praise to carry House all the way up that last stratospheric mile of pleasure, “House, you make me feel so full…I love it, I love feeling how badly you want me, I love giving you what you need…”
But it wasn’t all that House needed. It was close, but it was missing an essential piece. Wilson, of all people, king not just of need but of Knowing House Better Than He Knew Himself™, must know that. What House had been avoiding with expert precision since their lips first brushed and ignited a long-buried fuse.
Wilson’s thrilled glow suffused House and for a wild moment, House thought he was going to hear it. Finally. Surely, those three words had been bursting out of Wilson? Surely, he couldn’t have scooped out all of House’s insides and replaced the hollow with a writhing bundle of venomous affection, so dangerous that only he could ever risk touching House again...and not feel the same?
He thrust harder and faster, trying to fuck the truth out of Wilson, and he thought it was working because Wilson kept up the enveloping stream of devotion, spilling warm words across House’s skin, catching hold of his face to kiss it in breathy sips directly into his wanting mouth. “House, oh, yes, you feel so close, are you going to come for me? Are you going to show me how you feel about me? Show me, fuck me, pour it all into me, c’mon I know you want to, I know you, I know you and I love how only I know you—”
It was close enough. House choked on a moan as he buried himself in Wilson as deep as he could and clutched him tight, hips rippling in a slowing tide of release and relief, and Wilson licked into his mouth and occupied his tongue as the sparks settled down his spine.
House couldn’t keep up with Wilson’s lips. He fell back against the pillow and permitted—through the purest kind of exhaustion—Wilson to cuddle into, against, around him. Surrounded by the enemy.
Wilson looked dangerously good in the golden blush of Paris night.
“It’s getting late.”
House blinked slowly. A comment on the time? That’s what he got? He made Wilson’s earth move and now it was, what, back to business?
“Is it? My clock’s still on Jersey time. Barely evening in my bod,” House lied expertly through a yawn.
“You’re welcome to stay up and watch the French equivalent of infomercials. I’m gonna go de-gunk and then pass out for a solid ten hours.”
Wilson performed a truncated, make-do version of his nightly routine. House did not have what a registered fusspot like Wilson would even charitably term a routine. House brushed his teeth, more due to recent oral activities than habits of hygiene, and performed a perfunctory wipe-down to avoid the horrors of overnight crusting.
They slipped back into comfortable bickering. House crafted some shoddily rude comment, Wilson backhanded it into his face with easy wordplay, and House fell a little more in love with him with each serve and response. Just like usual.
Things were still the same—whatever feelings they felt, they didn’t say. That wasn’t them. And that was fine. House had just been experiencing some hormonal or neurochemical instability—the sex crazies, to get technical—and thought he wanted…something he never wanted.
They crawled back under the covers together and Wilson didn’t say any dreaded domestic twaddle like, “Our first real night together,” with hearts in his eyes. But silently, the hearts definitely lurked.
Instead, Wilson chose a mild and inoffensive, “What a day. Hard to believe we flew out of Jersey just last night.”
“Time flies when you’re having fun. Where FUN is an acronym that stands for Fucking Unendingly…Nuts?” House closed one eye and squinched his face as he tried to come up with a better word.
“Better sleep on that one,” Wilson suggested, weaseling his arms around House’s chest and nuzzling up against his back before House could porcupine him away.
“There’s no letter in FUN to indicate spooning.”
“There’s an asterisk,” Wilson trailed his fingertips in lazy curlicues along House’s skin, “it leads to a footnote that says the fucking is only unending if you put out on the snuggling front.”
“Should’ve read the small print,” House muttered, and he was so disorientingly comfortable with Wilson’s weight and heat and touch holding him in place, he didn’t even notice crossing the borderlands into sleep.