Fic: What Heights We'll Hit (Teen)
Jul. 29th, 2020 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deelaundryTitle: What Heights We’ll Hit
Author: Dee Laundry
Fandom: House MD
Rating: Teen
Relationships: Greg House/James Wilson, Bonnie Wilson/James Wilson, Greg House/Stacy Warner, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Characters: Greg House, James Wilson, Original Character
Tags: Marriage Proposal, Humor, Compatible with Spontaneous Remission, Did you know Wilson’s eyes are brown?
Summary: When Wilson proposed during the whole Nora thing, House really shouldn’t have been surprised.
Words: 4,800
Beginning Notes: Spoilers for all seasons of House. Set during, before, and after episode 6-11, “The Down Low.” Written forfirstlovelatespring for the Equality Auction. Also meets requirement for Banned Together Bingo 2020, prompt “Positive Take on Religious Minority,” as Wilson is Jewish and House has a very positive take on him. Thank you to pwcorgigirl and bironic for beta.
Sitting at the table in the restaurant, watching Wilson smugly drink Nora’s wine, as if putting your lips on a comestible where your intended has put their lips is at all equivalent to kissing (House’s conscious mind has a boot on the face of his subconscious, that pesky little bastard), House is surprised that he was surprised by Wilson’s proposal.
They’ve been fake proposing to each other since the day they met, after all, and it was Wilson’s turn.
When House heard the heavy doors open, he turned away from the bulletin board (he’d already come up with three different ways he could get the police station shut down just using their thumbtacks) and looked over at the only non-uniformed person to emerge.
Same boring brown hair (ruffled slightly from its former meticulously combed state), same Sears suit (tie gone; no, being handed back right now), same hangdog expression, but the not-so-boring brown eyes had gained a wary look (underneath that, the spark, the rumble, the tang, the held breath before the green flag drops).
The wary look was directed House’s way, and the eyes were absolutely not boring.
“Are you the one who bailed me out?”
“I took care of it, yes. Think of it more as a dowry I paid to take you off the hands of the city-parish of La Nouvelle-Orléans.”
“If it’s a dowry, then you’re the bride I’m taking off someone’s hands.”
They took a moment just to consider each other. The wariness faded from the man’s eyes, replaced by amusement and a warmth House hadn’t had trained on him for years.
“Alright, Mrs. Wilson,” said the man -- James -- no, Wilson for sure. “I could use a cup of coffee. Know any good beignet places around here?”
***
House was going to have to get a cordless phone. Either that or steal one of the speaker phones from work. Because ever since Wilson had moved into Boston Bonnie’s Boston… apartment (Annoying that there was no fitting B word to complete the alliteration and assonance. Bostel? Blophouse? Boring Boston Bonnie was entirely too boring for “bawdy house.” And for Bawdy House. Anyway.) he’d turned into a gabber. A would-not-stop yap-yap-yapper. And House couldn’t even put the handset down and walk off for a bit the way he could when his mother would get going like this (oh God, was Wilson really like House’s mother? Sweet motherfucking Oedipus no), because periodically Wilson would slip in something pertinently intriguing like, “So can I propose to you?”
“You’ll have to come down to Jersey for the weekend,” House replied, switching the handset from his tired right ear to his fresh left one. “Because I’m not saying yes until we’ve finished the M-O-P trifecta of sex, and we’re both dudes so we’ll have to do ‘em each twice, and with my trigger not being as hair as it was as a teen plus you know Stacy’s going to want to have sex with me as well over the same time period, it’ll definitely take a few days.”
“What the hell does M-O-P stand for?” said Wilson, because he was born a rambling man, but when it came to sex, he could always get right to the point.
House twirled the phone cord around his finger and didn’t think (much) about other things winding around other long lean body parts. “Manual, oral, penetrative. Didn’t they teach you anything in your high school health class?”
“Nutrition is good, drugs are bad, and kissing before marriage rots your private parts.”
“Jesus, sounds like the military bases I grew up on. I thought you were from a liberal bastion.”
“Letting in Jews was their liberal claim, and regardless, it was the ‘80s. Morning in America and all that shit. Anyway, I am trying to make it down there in the next few weeks, a couple of days with my parents and then a weekend with you --”
“We can use the bed for sex, but you’ll have to jump to the couch for sleeping; I mean, Stacy did buy the mattress, she has first claim.”
“To introduce you face-to-face to my new fiancée, assuming she says yes, which is why I need you to help me practice this proposal now.”
House rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and his body to the side. He was antsy, the way he always was when he went too long without moving. This physician was going to heal thyself with a good long run immediately after this call. “Really? You haven’t watched enough rom-coms?”
“Her last boyfriend was horrible, never treated her right, and the one before was even worse, so this has to be special.”
“Because Dick and Derek were bastards, you have to be Prince Charming?”
“Dick and Derek?”
“Boston Bon-Bon’s exes.” Duh. Wilson was prosaic, but he wasn’t usually brainless.
Wilson scoffed, loud and long. “Are you gay? You barely remember Bonnie's name, and you expect me to believe that for no reason at all you remember -- well, misremember -- her last two boyfriends’ names?”
“Who doesn’t remember a guy named Dick? And Derek is a picture in my brain of a stiff-leg derrick. You know, like a construction crane? I made a really cool one with my friend’s Erector set when I was a kid.”
“You had a friend as a kid?”
“Well, she owned an Erector set!” Who wouldn’t have made friends with a girl like that? “It was a huge one, too.”
“Moving away from the huge Erector,” Wilson said, and gave House a second to snort. “Bonnie’s exes were Dirk and Eric, not Dick and Derek, and they were bastards, so this proposal has to be romantic. C’mon, help me practice.”
“What's in it for me?”
House could imagine Wilson’s face at that. He’d seen it dozens of times by now, even though they hadn’t lived in the same city since they’d met: disapproving of House’s bluntness but intrigued by his audacity. Wilson wanted to be “good,” tried to be good, but had absolutely no idea how to be himself. House was working on it.
After a short pause, Wilson stumbled into, “Um, um, you'll have ideas for when you one day propose to a woman.”
“Um, um, no. Not happening.” House shook his head. “Besides, didn't you already do this once?”
“With Sam? That was a whirlwind, from first date to talking about it to boom, Mister and Missus. We were both just caught up in it, and -- Wait, you won’t even consider marrying Stacy?”
Exposing his fangs (canine teeth, same difference), House hissed loudly, and then changed the subject. “How are you doing this proposal thing? Jumbotron at a Red Sox game?”
“We’re going to her favorite bed and breakfast in Vermont this weekend.”
“Make sure you take two cars so she can go home by herself after saying no.”
A loud sigh burst from the receiver. “She’s not going to say no.”
“She will if you don’t perfectly word the proposal.”
“House!”
“Kidding. Of course. Go ahead; hit me with it.”
Wilson cleared his throat and began. “My darling Bonnie --”
House gurgled like a frog; Wilson ignored him.
“My darling Bonnie, I love you from the bottom of my heart. You are my everything.”
“Ernnh,” House interjected, with the Family Feud buzzer of not-right-ness. “She’s not your everything. Oncology’s your everything, weird as that is. She’s barely like ten percent of your thing.”
“House, just keep listening,” growled Wilson. After a deep breath, he continued in the sappy proposal voice he’d affected, “You are my everything. I knew we were meant for each other from our very first date --”
“Ernnh! You thought she was a boring dishrag after your first date.”
“And. You make me want to be a better man.” Apparently sensing another buzzer coming, Wilson hurried through the next sentences. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you, just you; and grow old together here in the New England you love. Would you make me the luckiest man in the world and grant me the honor of being your husband forever?”
“Ernnh! Ernnh! Ernnh! Ernnh! Ernnh! Ernnh! Ernnh! I sound like a fucking emergency door alarm because that was ridiculously packed with lies.”
“You’re --” Wilson’s voice was tightening precipitously. “It’s -- I --- It’s a proposal, House; it has to be romantic.”
“Not with a bunch of made-up crap. Why don’t you just tell her the truth?”
“The truth.”
“What she really means to you; why you’re really doing this. The honest truth.”
“The honest truth.” If Wilson’s voice were any tighter, his vocal cords would spontaneously fuse. “The honest truth! Sure, yeah, great, it’ll go something like this: HEY, BONNIE, THE SEX ISN’T TOO BAD AND I’M SCARED OF DYING ALONE SO WILL YOU MARRY ME?”
A muffled cascading bum-bum-bum sounded through House’s earpiece. “What was that?”
“Shit,” Wilson whispered. “Shit, shit, shit.” His volume rose with each repetition until it was back to his normal level. “Gotta go.”
“What happened?”
“Bonnie came home early.”
The crash of Wilson hanging up the phone was barely audible over House’s own laughter. He was still chuckling as he headed out for his run.
***
Sitting on the couch, House breathed slowly in and slowly out. The Vicodin would kick in, and then he could go do something active. Like stand up, and perhaps, to push himself, walk to the fucking kitchen.
This was going to be his whole fucking life now, this pain, or maybe it was better to say his whole non-fucking life because his libido seemed to have been excised along with the muscle in his right thigh. Not that Stacy would even agree to have sex with him; they hadn’t had a normal conversation since he’d woken from his medically induced coma and found out that she’d authorized surgery behind his back.
She should’ve fucking listened to him. He was the doctor, not her! And it was his life, and his leg, and… Fuck.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
He was about to reach again for the bottle of Jack Daniels he had stashed under the couch when the front door of the apartment opened. From the sound of the swing, he knew who it was.
“Hey, Wilson.”
“Hi. I just got off the phone with Dombrowski about your appointment.”
“Did you buy ice cream? Throw it in the freezer before we have this conversation. I can’t stand it when it melts and refreezes.”
Dutiful Wilson brushed past the couch with three or four plastic grocery bags in his hands. He’d been buying House and Stacy groceries practically every day, in some sort of odd penance for having been out of the country when House’s infarction hit. It was stupid. Stacy had two legs that were whole; she could get the damn food. It was the least she could do.
(House was aware that the least she could do was a whole hell of lot less than that; it was in fact nothing at all. But he could never remember that when she tried to talk to him or give him affection, and the arguments would start again.)
“I talked to Dombrowski about your appointment,” Wilson repeated as he emerged from the kitchen grocery bag-free. He took a seat in the recliner, the only chair that faced the couch. “You only spent ten minutes with her; how did you manage to piss her off that much?”
“She’s a hack.”
“She’s the best pain management specialist on the Eastern seaboard, if not the entire U.S.!”
Another quiver went through House’s thigh and he grunted. “She’s a hack. She wanted me to --”
Wilson was shaking his head. “She told me what her suggested treatment plan was, and it seemed completely reasonable to me.”
“Why did she tell you? Does patient privacy mean nothing anymore?”
“You told her I was your GP and signed the form for us to share records.” Wilson sat up a bit straighter. “So, since when am I your GP?”
“Since I wrote your name and number on the form. Duh.”
Wilson closed his eyes briefly and then opened them to look straight into House’s eyes. Still a soothing brown, reminding him of his mother’s sable stole, lustrous and warm. And if he was being completely honest, Wilson’s eyes felt more like home than any house he had ever lived in as a kid.
Good thing he was a master at obfuscating complete honesty, because that thought had been hella gay. Maybe it was the Vicodin, which now had made its way into his bloodstream. Time to grab his cane and get his ten limping paces of exercise.
“I don’t need a physical at the moment, but we can do the prostate exam any time. It’s my first, so be gentle with me, until I tell you to stop being gentle.”
“I can get you in with Shehebar,” Wilson said.
Huh? “The colorectal surgeon? I meant the fun kind of rectal exam, not a colonoscopy.”
“The pain management specialist at Mount Sinai,” sighed Wilson.
What a long-suffering GP thought House, and it’s been less than a day. Having finished his arduous journey (reached the kitchen island), he turned back around to face the couch. With one hand on the island, the other on his cane, and medicine in his blood, the pain was good. Not fun, not like that kind of pain at all, but fine. Good. Barely a five on the ten-point scale. He could go back to work any time.
“Is Shehebar going to say anything different from Dombrowski?”
“No,” Wilson was forced to admit.
“Then fuck no.” He shook his head at Wilson’s moue of disapproval. “I mean, I regret to inform you that I must decline your gracious offer. I’ll stick with the Vicodin.”
“Your surgeon’s not going to write you prescriptions any longer.”
“Of course,” replied House. “I’ll get my GP to do it.”
Wilson rocked back a bit in his seat. “Me? House, you really should have a specialist for this.”
“You’re a specialist. If I recall correctly, you even regularly evaluate and prescribe pain drugs. No problemo.”
“The typical treatment plan is multimodal for muscular --”
“Fuck that.” House lowered himself back on the couch. “They’re talking about when you’ve damaged a muscle, not when you’ve had it ripped out of your leg. The Vicodin is working: I can walk, I can think, I can get back to work.”
Looking at Wilson, House could picture the words forming in his throat, and interrupted before they could emerge. “Unless you want me to go back to oxycodone?”
“No!” Wilson was rubbing his neck: his “I’m conflicted because I really want to lecture you but don't want to upset you further” gesture. Funnily enough, he only seemed to make that gesture around House. Everyone else either got silence or the lecture.
Finally, Wilson sighed. “Fine, fine; I’ll be your prescriber.”
House grinned. “Marry me, you wonderful, marvelous man!”
“Then I couldn’t prescribe for you.” Wilson’s little smirk was… House couldn’t think of another word for “cute.”
“We’ll just have to live in sin then,” House proposed. He waited with bated breath for Wilson’s next move.
Whatever it would have been was obliterated by the door opening and Stacy’s noisy entry into the apartment. An armload of files, it sounded like, along with an extra-heavy briefcase. Her favored means for getting through an evening these days.
Wilson got up, no doubt to help Stacy with her burdens, and House got up too. It was time for more exercise for his leg. All the way to the bedroom, and maybe even kick the damn door closed behind him.
***
It was interesting, House thought. Wilson could hold his own with beer, drink you under the table with wine, and sip brandy or scotch with the best of them, but gin got him bombed every single time.
Bombed and chatty.
House smiled.
Wilson was slumped on House’s couch, shirt rumpled, hair rumpled, martini glass held despondently at his lips. Julie had broken up with him just that evening, and Wilson had come to House for comfort.
House was pretty shitty at giving comfort, but he did know how to make a mean martini.
Wilson had rambled through a variety of topics and now was mumbling, apropos of nothing, “Twice; twice.”
“What?” House asked him.
“Twice.” Wilson stretched forward and very carefully placed the martini glass on the coffee table. He eyed it for a moment, as if it might run away, and then slumped back into the couch. “You proposed to me twice. Now it's my turn, but.” He sighed, deep and long. “I'm a shitty husband. You don't want me.”
Self-loathing. So boring. He’d have to either get Wilson off this topic or get up from the couch and head to bed. “Maybe you're just shitty at being married to women.”
Wilson rolled his head to face House. “First two times I got married was to boys.”
Not boring. “Sam and Bonnie are both men?”
Wilson shook his head vigorously and then winced. He was so hilarious on gin. “Not them. When I's a kid. Danny made me be Emily.” He looked up at the ceiling, head lolling on the back of the couch, and snickered. “I married my brother; that's funny.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?” House wanted to make Wilson another martini, but he also didn’t want to move from the couch.
“Danny was George in Our Town at school and he made me be Emily to practice. We practiced the wedding kiss like eleventy times because he had a crush on Carol.”
Very not boring. “The girl who was playing Emily?”
“Yeah. And.” Wilson flailed an arm in House’s direction, thwapping him on the thigh. (The left thigh, fortunately.) “And even though the scene’s not in the play, I died in childbirth twice. Looking back, it was surprisingly clean. Having a baby is gross, really.”
“You don't have to convince me.” Grasping Wilson by the wrist, House returned Wilson’s arm to Wilson’s side. It immediately flopped back toward House, ending up on the couch cushion between them, fingers lightly grazing the side of House’s thigh. “What about the second time?”
“Still clean.” Wilson’s nose twitched. “It was a Raggedy Andy doll.”
“I mean, the second time you married a boy.”
Wilson rolled his head to look at House, confused expression on his face. “I told you. Danny.”
“The first time, then.”
“Oh. Todd.” Confusion resolved, Wilson looked to the ceiling again as if the story was written there. “We were six. Just six. Birthdays in the same month, houses on the same block, so our mothers had our birthday parties together. I didn’t really know him until then, but his mom said I was ‘such a responsible young gentleman’ that the two of us could play together in their house while she took Heather to ballet class.”
The pause was long enough that House felt the need to prompt, “Yeah?”
“And Todd always wanted to play in Heather’s room, with her baby dolls and the pretend kitchen their dad made just for her, on his knees because she was so little, you know?”
“Sure.”
“Pretend cooking looked like fun so I tried to do it too, the first time, but he pushed me over and said, ‘No! You’re going to be the husband after I make our wedding cake.’ We were married five minutes later. I was wearing one of Todd’s dad’s ties --”
“Of course you were.”
Wilson adjusted his position, sinking lower into the couch. “And he was wearing this long, long, longer than he was tall, white net on his head that I found out later was an actual bridal veil. He said, ‘I promise to love cherries and obey you until we’re deaf and apart, according to God’s holy law, amen. Now you say, I do,’ so I did and he said, ‘Now you gotta kiss me,’ and I did, and he said, ‘Let no man put it under and now you have to give me a baby.’
“I looked around at all of Heather’s dolls and asked him which one he wanted. He pointed at one, then ran over to his sister’s bed. ‘We have to get under the covers and hug because that’s how the husband gives the baby,’ and it all seemed like a bunch of rigmarole to me, but I did it, thinking that now Todd would let me play with the kitchen.”
“But he didn’t.” House was never going to run out of gin again, given the quality of stories it produced.
“No. The husband’s job was to sit at the tea-party table and read the newspaper. Every time I went over during Heather’s ballet class, all he’d let me do was sit at the table and hold the paper. Oh, and occasionally climb in the bed and give him a baby. He wouldn’t even let me play with the babies. Being a husband was boring.”
No shit. House slumped to mirror Wilson’s position, careful not to dislodge the fingers that were now stroking along his thigh. “He’d promised to obey you, so why didn’t you tell him how to play?”
“I didn’t actually know what ‘obey’ meant at the time.” Wilson smiled sheepishly at House. “And, well, I was me, even as a kid, so…”
House smiled back. “So you let him walk all over you even though you were bored to tears.”
“Yeah. I almost asked him, once, if we could play something else, but then his parents came home earlier than expected and Todd was in Big Trouble and we weren’t allowed to play together after that.” Wilson crossed his arms and directed his gaze toward the coffee table.
House missed the heat. “Was he gay or trans, you reckon?”
“I dunno. Either. Or maybe he just wanted to be a homemaker. Being a husband was really boring.”
“Was, or is?”
“Shut up. And get up. I’m sleeping on your couch.”
Two hours later, on House’s typical wee-hours jaunt around the apartment, he left a glass of water and a bottle of Tylenol on the coffee table. And a bucket on the floor.
***
Light. Warmth. Weird pain. Hand? Raised hospital bed.
House opened his eyes to see Wilson worrying at him. Then Wilson yelled because, concern, of course. Then they talked about his still-sick patient and his now-dead other patient, and House ignored Wilson wanting to hear about what House did or didn’t see before he woke up.
Instead, House closed and opened his hand, wincing at the pain.
“Just looking at you hurts.” Wilson scribbled in his chart. “I'm ordering extra pain meds.”
House was not going to let this blessed opportunity go by. “I love you.”
Wilson gave an angry nod and then stepped into the doorway. “Tonisha?” he called, and he gave the chart to the nurse who arrived. She was smiling at him, not in the hopeful way new nurses always did, but in the friendly way the more experienced nurses did, knowing he’d treat them with both warmth and respect. (House never got that smile from the nurses.) “Change to House’s meds. As soon as you can, please.”
Wilson returned to the end of House’s bed. “Now can we talk about--”
“No. Kaku to dani Eyawa ibuki no Sashi-mogusa Sashimo shiraji na Moyuru omoi o.”
Brows drawn together, Wilson queried, “Is that… Japanese?”
“Yep. ‘Love torments me like blisters,’ more or less.”
Wilson tilted his head in a half-shrug. “Apropos, I suppose.”
Amused, House pressed on. “Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove.”
“That one I recognize,” Wilson replied. “Marlowe. We read it in high school and it bugged me that those lines didn’t rhyme. The teacher said ‘prove’ was supposed to be read with a short-u sound, but all my friends liked to change the first line instead to ‘loove.’ Do you really ‘loove’ me, House, or are you just happy for more meds?”
“Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, and the rocks melt wi’ the sun,” House replied.
Tonisha arrived just then with the new meds, smiling at Wilson and glaring at House. Sheez, you’d think he’d hit on her girlfriend or something. Oh, wait, he had done that.
“I’m a little less busty than the gender you prefer,” Wilson noted, proving that heteronormativity was alive, well, and slotting boys and girls with its typical fervor.
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,” House replied, “and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”
“Um. A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”
The added pain meds were the dream, so blissful. House closed his eyes. “Lord, what fools these mortals be.”
“Now that I’m not surprised at all you memorized.” Wilson’s voice floated in from the darkness. “Good night, House.”
Good night, House thought.
Black.
The last time there’s a proposal between House and Wilson -- though House doesn’t know it at the moment -- it will go like this.
After a breakup and an announcement
After an appointment and a death dose of chemicals
After a Corvette and a steak and a scan
After Oreos and tears and House giving up being right
After a fire and “SHUT UP YOU IDIOT” and “I’m dead, Wilson”
They’ll be in Wilson’s condo for the last time, and it’ll be as bare as the first time they saw it together. The furniture (and House’s) and organ (and piano), as well as all the housewares, will have been sold off, the proceeds plus some of Wilson’s cash converted into jewelry and watches they can sell at pawn shops along the way if ever it won’t do to use Wilson’s credit cards. “How very 19th century married woman of Wilson,” House will think, conveniently ignoring that it was House who advised they do it that way.
“Well,” Wilson will say, scratching at the scruff along his chin. He’ll actually look worse unshaven, but House will never say a thing because even the ugly parts of Wilson are Wilson and therefore interesting and valuable. “Shall we be off?”
And something about the formal phrasing will spark something in House’s brain, the way Wilson has always conducted light onto the prism that is House’s cerebrum, and House will say, “It’s a dowry.”
“What?” The lines around Wilson’s eyes won’t really make them softer, but the brown of the irises will be exactly as not boring (exactly as beguiling) as they always have been.
“All the stuff you’ve gotten from me due to my ‘death,’ it’s not an inheritance. Think of it more as a dowry I paid to take you off the hands of the city-parish of La Nouvelle-Orléans.”
Wilson will smile, shift his hips. “If I’m the one getting the dowry, that makes you the bride and me the groom.”
House won’t smile. “I’m scared of dying alone, so will you marry me?”
Eyebrows furrowing, Wilson will take a step forward. “House?”
“Marry me, you wonderful, marvelous man!”
Wilson will take another step forward. House’s heart will be pounding in his chest.
“Now it's my turn but I'm a shitty husband. You don't want me.”
Wilson will murmur, “You’re wrong about that one, House.”
House’s leg will be aching, but just a little. Just a little.
“Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove.”
There will be smiles then, seemingly more smiles than people, shy but not small, and cheeks will be rounded.
House will take a big breath and say, “I love this man. And I’m not wasting another moment of my life denying that.”
Wilson will be so close to House now. Close enough to reach out and cup House’s jaw.
“I’ll probably fall if I try to get down on one knee,” House will say. “And I don’t have a ring.”
“Yes, you do,” Wilson will say, and House will be reminded of their jewelry stash. “Even one that would fit me. But I’m not much of a ring guy. What if we just say --” He’ll be looking at House’s lips now. “‘Til death do us part?”
“No,” House will insist, and Wilson will tilt his head a centimeter to the side and look up into House’s eyes, and House will continue, “Eternity, or forget it. That’s the offer.”
Wilson will come closer, and closer, and House will lean down, and “I do” will get whispered against lips, and they’ll be forty minutes late, according to the fussbudgety schedule Wilson will have put together, to the first stop on the Wilson and House Bucket List Tour.
But no one will mind a bit.
End Notes:
The quotations House makes are from these sources.
Fujiwara no Sanekata, Poem 51 of Hyakunin Isshu. A modern translation of the collection is here, although I prefer to think that House’s translation would be more like the one provided in this article.
Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
Robert Burns, “A Red, Red Rose”
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Author: Dee Laundry
Fandom: House MD
Rating: Teen
Relationships: Greg House/James Wilson, Bonnie Wilson/James Wilson, Greg House/Stacy Warner, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Characters: Greg House, James Wilson, Original Character
Tags: Marriage Proposal, Humor, Compatible with Spontaneous Remission, Did you know Wilson’s eyes are brown?
Summary: When Wilson proposed during the whole Nora thing, House really shouldn’t have been surprised.
Words: 4,800
Beginning Notes: Spoilers for all seasons of House. Set during, before, and after episode 6-11, “The Down Low.” Written for
firstlovelatespring for the Equality Auction. Also meets requirement for Banned Together Bingo 2020, prompt “Positive Take on Religious Minority,” as Wilson is Jewish and House has a very positive take on him. Thank you to pwcorgigirl and bironic for beta. Sitting at the table in the restaurant, watching Wilson smugly drink Nora’s wine, as if putting your lips on a comestible where your intended has put their lips is at all equivalent to kissing (House’s conscious mind has a boot on the face of his subconscious, that pesky little bastard), House is surprised that he was surprised by Wilson’s proposal.
They’ve been fake proposing to each other since the day they met, after all, and it was Wilson’s turn.
When House heard the heavy doors open, he turned away from the bulletin board (he’d already come up with three different ways he could get the police station shut down just using their thumbtacks) and looked over at the only non-uniformed person to emerge.
Same boring brown hair (ruffled slightly from its former meticulously combed state), same Sears suit (tie gone; no, being handed back right now), same hangdog expression, but the not-so-boring brown eyes had gained a wary look (underneath that, the spark, the rumble, the tang, the held breath before the green flag drops).
The wary look was directed House’s way, and the eyes were absolutely not boring.
“Are you the one who bailed me out?”
“I took care of it, yes. Think of it more as a dowry I paid to take you off the hands of the city-parish of La Nouvelle-Orléans.”
“If it’s a dowry, then you’re the bride I’m taking off someone’s hands.”
They took a moment just to consider each other. The wariness faded from the man’s eyes, replaced by amusement and a warmth House hadn’t had trained on him for years.
“Alright, Mrs. Wilson,” said the man -- James -- no, Wilson for sure. “I could use a cup of coffee. Know any good beignet places around here?”
***
House was going to have to get a cordless phone. Either that or steal one of the speaker phones from work. Because ever since Wilson had moved into Boston Bonnie’s Boston… apartment (Annoying that there was no fitting B word to complete the alliteration and assonance. Bostel? Blophouse? Boring Boston Bonnie was entirely too boring for “bawdy house.” And for Bawdy House. Anyway.) he’d turned into a gabber. A would-not-stop yap-yap-yapper. And House couldn’t even put the handset down and walk off for a bit the way he could when his mother would get going like this (oh God, was Wilson really like House’s mother? Sweet motherfucking Oedipus no), because periodically Wilson would slip in something pertinently intriguing like, “So can I propose to you?”
“You’ll have to come down to Jersey for the weekend,” House replied, switching the handset from his tired right ear to his fresh left one. “Because I’m not saying yes until we’ve finished the M-O-P trifecta of sex, and we’re both dudes so we’ll have to do ‘em each twice, and with my trigger not being as hair as it was as a teen plus you know Stacy’s going to want to have sex with me as well over the same time period, it’ll definitely take a few days.”
“What the hell does M-O-P stand for?” said Wilson, because he was born a rambling man, but when it came to sex, he could always get right to the point.
House twirled the phone cord around his finger and didn’t think (much) about other things winding around other long lean body parts. “Manual, oral, penetrative. Didn’t they teach you anything in your high school health class?”
“Nutrition is good, drugs are bad, and kissing before marriage rots your private parts.”
“Jesus, sounds like the military bases I grew up on. I thought you were from a liberal bastion.”
“Letting in Jews was their liberal claim, and regardless, it was the ‘80s. Morning in America and all that shit. Anyway, I am trying to make it down there in the next few weeks, a couple of days with my parents and then a weekend with you --”
“We can use the bed for sex, but you’ll have to jump to the couch for sleeping; I mean, Stacy did buy the mattress, she has first claim.”
“To introduce you face-to-face to my new fiancée, assuming she says yes, which is why I need you to help me practice this proposal now.”
House rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and his body to the side. He was antsy, the way he always was when he went too long without moving. This physician was going to heal thyself with a good long run immediately after this call. “Really? You haven’t watched enough rom-coms?”
“Her last boyfriend was horrible, never treated her right, and the one before was even worse, so this has to be special.”
“Because Dick and Derek were bastards, you have to be Prince Charming?”
“Dick and Derek?”
“Boston Bon-Bon’s exes.” Duh. Wilson was prosaic, but he wasn’t usually brainless.
Wilson scoffed, loud and long. “Are you gay? You barely remember Bonnie's name, and you expect me to believe that for no reason at all you remember -- well, misremember -- her last two boyfriends’ names?”
“Who doesn’t remember a guy named Dick? And Derek is a picture in my brain of a stiff-leg derrick. You know, like a construction crane? I made a really cool one with my friend’s Erector set when I was a kid.”
“You had a friend as a kid?”
“Well, she owned an Erector set!” Who wouldn’t have made friends with a girl like that? “It was a huge one, too.”
“Moving away from the huge Erector,” Wilson said, and gave House a second to snort. “Bonnie’s exes were Dirk and Eric, not Dick and Derek, and they were bastards, so this proposal has to be romantic. C’mon, help me practice.”
“What's in it for me?”
House could imagine Wilson’s face at that. He’d seen it dozens of times by now, even though they hadn’t lived in the same city since they’d met: disapproving of House’s bluntness but intrigued by his audacity. Wilson wanted to be “good,” tried to be good, but had absolutely no idea how to be himself. House was working on it.
After a short pause, Wilson stumbled into, “Um, um, you'll have ideas for when you one day propose to a woman.”
“Um, um, no. Not happening.” House shook his head. “Besides, didn't you already do this once?”
“With Sam? That was a whirlwind, from first date to talking about it to boom, Mister and Missus. We were both just caught up in it, and -- Wait, you won’t even consider marrying Stacy?”
Exposing his fangs (canine teeth, same difference), House hissed loudly, and then changed the subject. “How are you doing this proposal thing? Jumbotron at a Red Sox game?”
“We’re going to her favorite bed and breakfast in Vermont this weekend.”
“Make sure you take two cars so she can go home by herself after saying no.”
A loud sigh burst from the receiver. “She’s not going to say no.”
“She will if you don’t perfectly word the proposal.”
“House!”
“Kidding. Of course. Go ahead; hit me with it.”
Wilson cleared his throat and began. “My darling Bonnie --”
House gurgled like a frog; Wilson ignored him.
“My darling Bonnie, I love you from the bottom of my heart. You are my everything.”
“Ernnh,” House interjected, with the Family Feud buzzer of not-right-ness. “She’s not your everything. Oncology’s your everything, weird as that is. She’s barely like ten percent of your thing.”
“House, just keep listening,” growled Wilson. After a deep breath, he continued in the sappy proposal voice he’d affected, “You are my everything. I knew we were meant for each other from our very first date --”
“Ernnh! You thought she was a boring dishrag after your first date.”
“And. You make me want to be a better man.” Apparently sensing another buzzer coming, Wilson hurried through the next sentences. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you, just you; and grow old together here in the New England you love. Would you make me the luckiest man in the world and grant me the honor of being your husband forever?”
“Ernnh! Ernnh! Ernnh! Ernnh! Ernnh! Ernnh! Ernnh! I sound like a fucking emergency door alarm because that was ridiculously packed with lies.”
“You’re --” Wilson’s voice was tightening precipitously. “It’s -- I --- It’s a proposal, House; it has to be romantic.”
“Not with a bunch of made-up crap. Why don’t you just tell her the truth?”
“The truth.”
“What she really means to you; why you’re really doing this. The honest truth.”
“The honest truth.” If Wilson’s voice were any tighter, his vocal cords would spontaneously fuse. “The honest truth! Sure, yeah, great, it’ll go something like this: HEY, BONNIE, THE SEX ISN’T TOO BAD AND I’M SCARED OF DYING ALONE SO WILL YOU MARRY ME?”
A muffled cascading bum-bum-bum sounded through House’s earpiece. “What was that?”
“Shit,” Wilson whispered. “Shit, shit, shit.” His volume rose with each repetition until it was back to his normal level. “Gotta go.”
“What happened?”
“Bonnie came home early.”
The crash of Wilson hanging up the phone was barely audible over House’s own laughter. He was still chuckling as he headed out for his run.
***
Sitting on the couch, House breathed slowly in and slowly out. The Vicodin would kick in, and then he could go do something active. Like stand up, and perhaps, to push himself, walk to the fucking kitchen.
This was going to be his whole fucking life now, this pain, or maybe it was better to say his whole non-fucking life because his libido seemed to have been excised along with the muscle in his right thigh. Not that Stacy would even agree to have sex with him; they hadn’t had a normal conversation since he’d woken from his medically induced coma and found out that she’d authorized surgery behind his back.
She should’ve fucking listened to him. He was the doctor, not her! And it was his life, and his leg, and… Fuck.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
He was about to reach again for the bottle of Jack Daniels he had stashed under the couch when the front door of the apartment opened. From the sound of the swing, he knew who it was.
“Hey, Wilson.”
“Hi. I just got off the phone with Dombrowski about your appointment.”
“Did you buy ice cream? Throw it in the freezer before we have this conversation. I can’t stand it when it melts and refreezes.”
Dutiful Wilson brushed past the couch with three or four plastic grocery bags in his hands. He’d been buying House and Stacy groceries practically every day, in some sort of odd penance for having been out of the country when House’s infarction hit. It was stupid. Stacy had two legs that were whole; she could get the damn food. It was the least she could do.
(House was aware that the least she could do was a whole hell of lot less than that; it was in fact nothing at all. But he could never remember that when she tried to talk to him or give him affection, and the arguments would start again.)
“I talked to Dombrowski about your appointment,” Wilson repeated as he emerged from the kitchen grocery bag-free. He took a seat in the recliner, the only chair that faced the couch. “You only spent ten minutes with her; how did you manage to piss her off that much?”
“She’s a hack.”
“She’s the best pain management specialist on the Eastern seaboard, if not the entire U.S.!”
Another quiver went through House’s thigh and he grunted. “She’s a hack. She wanted me to --”
Wilson was shaking his head. “She told me what her suggested treatment plan was, and it seemed completely reasonable to me.”
“Why did she tell you? Does patient privacy mean nothing anymore?”
“You told her I was your GP and signed the form for us to share records.” Wilson sat up a bit straighter. “So, since when am I your GP?”
“Since I wrote your name and number on the form. Duh.”
Wilson closed his eyes briefly and then opened them to look straight into House’s eyes. Still a soothing brown, reminding him of his mother’s sable stole, lustrous and warm. And if he was being completely honest, Wilson’s eyes felt more like home than any house he had ever lived in as a kid.
Good thing he was a master at obfuscating complete honesty, because that thought had been hella gay. Maybe it was the Vicodin, which now had made its way into his bloodstream. Time to grab his cane and get his ten limping paces of exercise.
“I don’t need a physical at the moment, but we can do the prostate exam any time. It’s my first, so be gentle with me, until I tell you to stop being gentle.”
“I can get you in with Shehebar,” Wilson said.
Huh? “The colorectal surgeon? I meant the fun kind of rectal exam, not a colonoscopy.”
“The pain management specialist at Mount Sinai,” sighed Wilson.
What a long-suffering GP thought House, and it’s been less than a day. Having finished his arduous journey (reached the kitchen island), he turned back around to face the couch. With one hand on the island, the other on his cane, and medicine in his blood, the pain was good. Not fun, not like that kind of pain at all, but fine. Good. Barely a five on the ten-point scale. He could go back to work any time.
“Is Shehebar going to say anything different from Dombrowski?”
“No,” Wilson was forced to admit.
“Then fuck no.” He shook his head at Wilson’s moue of disapproval. “I mean, I regret to inform you that I must decline your gracious offer. I’ll stick with the Vicodin.”
“Your surgeon’s not going to write you prescriptions any longer.”
“Of course,” replied House. “I’ll get my GP to do it.”
Wilson rocked back a bit in his seat. “Me? House, you really should have a specialist for this.”
“You’re a specialist. If I recall correctly, you even regularly evaluate and prescribe pain drugs. No problemo.”
“The typical treatment plan is multimodal for muscular --”
“Fuck that.” House lowered himself back on the couch. “They’re talking about when you’ve damaged a muscle, not when you’ve had it ripped out of your leg. The Vicodin is working: I can walk, I can think, I can get back to work.”
Looking at Wilson, House could picture the words forming in his throat, and interrupted before they could emerge. “Unless you want me to go back to oxycodone?”
“No!” Wilson was rubbing his neck: his “I’m conflicted because I really want to lecture you but don't want to upset you further” gesture. Funnily enough, he only seemed to make that gesture around House. Everyone else either got silence or the lecture.
Finally, Wilson sighed. “Fine, fine; I’ll be your prescriber.”
House grinned. “Marry me, you wonderful, marvelous man!”
“Then I couldn’t prescribe for you.” Wilson’s little smirk was… House couldn’t think of another word for “cute.”
“We’ll just have to live in sin then,” House proposed. He waited with bated breath for Wilson’s next move.
Whatever it would have been was obliterated by the door opening and Stacy’s noisy entry into the apartment. An armload of files, it sounded like, along with an extra-heavy briefcase. Her favored means for getting through an evening these days.
Wilson got up, no doubt to help Stacy with her burdens, and House got up too. It was time for more exercise for his leg. All the way to the bedroom, and maybe even kick the damn door closed behind him.
***
It was interesting, House thought. Wilson could hold his own with beer, drink you under the table with wine, and sip brandy or scotch with the best of them, but gin got him bombed every single time.
Bombed and chatty.
House smiled.
Wilson was slumped on House’s couch, shirt rumpled, hair rumpled, martini glass held despondently at his lips. Julie had broken up with him just that evening, and Wilson had come to House for comfort.
House was pretty shitty at giving comfort, but he did know how to make a mean martini.
Wilson had rambled through a variety of topics and now was mumbling, apropos of nothing, “Twice; twice.”
“What?” House asked him.
“Twice.” Wilson stretched forward and very carefully placed the martini glass on the coffee table. He eyed it for a moment, as if it might run away, and then slumped back into the couch. “You proposed to me twice. Now it's my turn, but.” He sighed, deep and long. “I'm a shitty husband. You don't want me.”
Self-loathing. So boring. He’d have to either get Wilson off this topic or get up from the couch and head to bed. “Maybe you're just shitty at being married to women.”
Wilson rolled his head to face House. “First two times I got married was to boys.”
Not boring. “Sam and Bonnie are both men?”
Wilson shook his head vigorously and then winced. He was so hilarious on gin. “Not them. When I's a kid. Danny made me be Emily.” He looked up at the ceiling, head lolling on the back of the couch, and snickered. “I married my brother; that's funny.”
“What in the hell are you talking about?” House wanted to make Wilson another martini, but he also didn’t want to move from the couch.
“Danny was George in Our Town at school and he made me be Emily to practice. We practiced the wedding kiss like eleventy times because he had a crush on Carol.”
Very not boring. “The girl who was playing Emily?”
“Yeah. And.” Wilson flailed an arm in House’s direction, thwapping him on the thigh. (The left thigh, fortunately.) “And even though the scene’s not in the play, I died in childbirth twice. Looking back, it was surprisingly clean. Having a baby is gross, really.”
“You don't have to convince me.” Grasping Wilson by the wrist, House returned Wilson’s arm to Wilson’s side. It immediately flopped back toward House, ending up on the couch cushion between them, fingers lightly grazing the side of House’s thigh. “What about the second time?”
“Still clean.” Wilson’s nose twitched. “It was a Raggedy Andy doll.”
“I mean, the second time you married a boy.”
Wilson rolled his head to look at House, confused expression on his face. “I told you. Danny.”
“The first time, then.”
“Oh. Todd.” Confusion resolved, Wilson looked to the ceiling again as if the story was written there. “We were six. Just six. Birthdays in the same month, houses on the same block, so our mothers had our birthday parties together. I didn’t really know him until then, but his mom said I was ‘such a responsible young gentleman’ that the two of us could play together in their house while she took Heather to ballet class.”
The pause was long enough that House felt the need to prompt, “Yeah?”
“And Todd always wanted to play in Heather’s room, with her baby dolls and the pretend kitchen their dad made just for her, on his knees because she was so little, you know?”
“Sure.”
“Pretend cooking looked like fun so I tried to do it too, the first time, but he pushed me over and said, ‘No! You’re going to be the husband after I make our wedding cake.’ We were married five minutes later. I was wearing one of Todd’s dad’s ties --”
“Of course you were.”
Wilson adjusted his position, sinking lower into the couch. “And he was wearing this long, long, longer than he was tall, white net on his head that I found out later was an actual bridal veil. He said, ‘I promise to love cherries and obey you until we’re deaf and apart, according to God’s holy law, amen. Now you say, I do,’ so I did and he said, ‘Now you gotta kiss me,’ and I did, and he said, ‘Let no man put it under and now you have to give me a baby.’
“I looked around at all of Heather’s dolls and asked him which one he wanted. He pointed at one, then ran over to his sister’s bed. ‘We have to get under the covers and hug because that’s how the husband gives the baby,’ and it all seemed like a bunch of rigmarole to me, but I did it, thinking that now Todd would let me play with the kitchen.”
“But he didn’t.” House was never going to run out of gin again, given the quality of stories it produced.
“No. The husband’s job was to sit at the tea-party table and read the newspaper. Every time I went over during Heather’s ballet class, all he’d let me do was sit at the table and hold the paper. Oh, and occasionally climb in the bed and give him a baby. He wouldn’t even let me play with the babies. Being a husband was boring.”
No shit. House slumped to mirror Wilson’s position, careful not to dislodge the fingers that were now stroking along his thigh. “He’d promised to obey you, so why didn’t you tell him how to play?”
“I didn’t actually know what ‘obey’ meant at the time.” Wilson smiled sheepishly at House. “And, well, I was me, even as a kid, so…”
House smiled back. “So you let him walk all over you even though you were bored to tears.”
“Yeah. I almost asked him, once, if we could play something else, but then his parents came home earlier than expected and Todd was in Big Trouble and we weren’t allowed to play together after that.” Wilson crossed his arms and directed his gaze toward the coffee table.
House missed the heat. “Was he gay or trans, you reckon?”
“I dunno. Either. Or maybe he just wanted to be a homemaker. Being a husband was really boring.”
“Was, or is?”
“Shut up. And get up. I’m sleeping on your couch.”
Two hours later, on House’s typical wee-hours jaunt around the apartment, he left a glass of water and a bottle of Tylenol on the coffee table. And a bucket on the floor.
***
Light. Warmth. Weird pain. Hand? Raised hospital bed.
House opened his eyes to see Wilson worrying at him. Then Wilson yelled because, concern, of course. Then they talked about his still-sick patient and his now-dead other patient, and House ignored Wilson wanting to hear about what House did or didn’t see before he woke up.
Instead, House closed and opened his hand, wincing at the pain.
“Just looking at you hurts.” Wilson scribbled in his chart. “I'm ordering extra pain meds.”
House was not going to let this blessed opportunity go by. “I love you.”
Wilson gave an angry nod and then stepped into the doorway. “Tonisha?” he called, and he gave the chart to the nurse who arrived. She was smiling at him, not in the hopeful way new nurses always did, but in the friendly way the more experienced nurses did, knowing he’d treat them with both warmth and respect. (House never got that smile from the nurses.) “Change to House’s meds. As soon as you can, please.”
Wilson returned to the end of House’s bed. “Now can we talk about--”
“No. Kaku to dani Eyawa ibuki no Sashi-mogusa Sashimo shiraji na Moyuru omoi o.”
Brows drawn together, Wilson queried, “Is that… Japanese?”
“Yep. ‘Love torments me like blisters,’ more or less.”
Wilson tilted his head in a half-shrug. “Apropos, I suppose.”
Amused, House pressed on. “Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove.”
“That one I recognize,” Wilson replied. “Marlowe. We read it in high school and it bugged me that those lines didn’t rhyme. The teacher said ‘prove’ was supposed to be read with a short-u sound, but all my friends liked to change the first line instead to ‘loove.’ Do you really ‘loove’ me, House, or are you just happy for more meds?”
“Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, and the rocks melt wi’ the sun,” House replied.
Tonisha arrived just then with the new meds, smiling at Wilson and glaring at House. Sheez, you’d think he’d hit on her girlfriend or something. Oh, wait, he had done that.
“I’m a little less busty than the gender you prefer,” Wilson noted, proving that heteronormativity was alive, well, and slotting boys and girls with its typical fervor.
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,” House replied, “and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”
“Um. A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”
The added pain meds were the dream, so blissful. House closed his eyes. “Lord, what fools these mortals be.”
“Now that I’m not surprised at all you memorized.” Wilson’s voice floated in from the darkness. “Good night, House.”
Good night, House thought.
Black.
The last time there’s a proposal between House and Wilson -- though House doesn’t know it at the moment -- it will go like this.
After a breakup and an announcement
After an appointment and a death dose of chemicals
After a Corvette and a steak and a scan
After Oreos and tears and House giving up being right
After a fire and “SHUT UP YOU IDIOT” and “I’m dead, Wilson”
They’ll be in Wilson’s condo for the last time, and it’ll be as bare as the first time they saw it together. The furniture (and House’s) and organ (and piano), as well as all the housewares, will have been sold off, the proceeds plus some of Wilson’s cash converted into jewelry and watches they can sell at pawn shops along the way if ever it won’t do to use Wilson’s credit cards. “How very 19th century married woman of Wilson,” House will think, conveniently ignoring that it was House who advised they do it that way.
“Well,” Wilson will say, scratching at the scruff along his chin. He’ll actually look worse unshaven, but House will never say a thing because even the ugly parts of Wilson are Wilson and therefore interesting and valuable. “Shall we be off?”
And something about the formal phrasing will spark something in House’s brain, the way Wilson has always conducted light onto the prism that is House’s cerebrum, and House will say, “It’s a dowry.”
“What?” The lines around Wilson’s eyes won’t really make them softer, but the brown of the irises will be exactly as not boring (exactly as beguiling) as they always have been.
“All the stuff you’ve gotten from me due to my ‘death,’ it’s not an inheritance. Think of it more as a dowry I paid to take you off the hands of the city-parish of La Nouvelle-Orléans.”
Wilson will smile, shift his hips. “If I’m the one getting the dowry, that makes you the bride and me the groom.”
House won’t smile. “I’m scared of dying alone, so will you marry me?”
Eyebrows furrowing, Wilson will take a step forward. “House?”
“Marry me, you wonderful, marvelous man!”
Wilson will take another step forward. House’s heart will be pounding in his chest.
“Now it's my turn but I'm a shitty husband. You don't want me.”
Wilson will murmur, “You’re wrong about that one, House.”
House’s leg will be aching, but just a little. Just a little.
“Come live with me and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove.”
There will be smiles then, seemingly more smiles than people, shy but not small, and cheeks will be rounded.
House will take a big breath and say, “I love this man. And I’m not wasting another moment of my life denying that.”
Wilson will be so close to House now. Close enough to reach out and cup House’s jaw.
“I’ll probably fall if I try to get down on one knee,” House will say. “And I don’t have a ring.”
“Yes, you do,” Wilson will say, and House will be reminded of their jewelry stash. “Even one that would fit me. But I’m not much of a ring guy. What if we just say --” He’ll be looking at House’s lips now. “‘Til death do us part?”
“No,” House will insist, and Wilson will tilt his head a centimeter to the side and look up into House’s eyes, and House will continue, “Eternity, or forget it. That’s the offer.”
Wilson will come closer, and closer, and House will lean down, and “I do” will get whispered against lips, and they’ll be forty minutes late, according to the fussbudgety schedule Wilson will have put together, to the first stop on the Wilson and House Bucket List Tour.
But no one will mind a bit.
End Notes:
The quotations House makes are from these sources.
Fujiwara no Sanekata, Poem 51 of Hyakunin Isshu. A modern translation of the collection is here, although I prefer to think that House’s translation would be more like the one provided in this article.
Christopher Marlowe, “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”
Robert Burns, “A Red, Red Rose”
William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
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