He never gave much away.
Not in college. When he challenged your every word and taunted you with each of his; and you constantly went back for more and loved it, cutting your teeth and sharpening your claws on him.
(He loved it, too—especially when it left marks on his back.)
Not in the limbo years of your twenties and his thirties. When he showed up randomly at your apartment because he was writing a journal article and needed someone to bounce ideas off of, or called you to tell you all the things his boss was doing wrong that you should never do if you really plan to usurp the Dean at Princeton Plainsboro, or just wanted to drink with someone who could stomach straight Irish whiskey and not get dizzy from Coltrane; and you were more alive in those times with him more than anyone else, but couldn't admit that because you only saw him sporadically and it would just be sad.
(You didn't need Eastern Lube guy to tell you that "nothing else in the world matters" to you when House was there—you'd known since you were twenty-seven.)
Not even in that horrific period when he was dying. When his whole body quaked and seized with the pain as he screamed at you and Stacy and anyone he saw but couldn't get a word out without gasping, or refused all of your options even though your throat had gone raw begging him and his urine was more blood than anything, or cried for the first and last time of your knowing; and you didn't go home for six days but went to the synagogue to pray every morning after you showered in the locker room because there was no way either of you were going to get through this alone.
(Through gritted teeth he'd complain about the "stink" of the incense when you got back to the hospital, and you would have to apologize the next morning on his behalf.)
You hired him, thinking he would change.
Not at first, of course. In fact, he'd never been colder to you, and a part of you was crushed but a bigger part understood.
Vogler was the first straw. You voted against him and he knew and why. Not that it inspired a complete 180-degree reversal; but there was a change. You weren't solely his boss, you were The Enemy, and somehow that was reassuring.
Then there was Stacy. You hated to admit it but she strengthened your relationship more than anything else. He seemed to view you as an ally. Maybe it was the woman thing, or the doctor thing, but you were better friends and better coworkers when Stacy was around with her soulful Southern accent, doe-brown eyes, and long legs driving him crazy and making you feel short and frizzy.
That was why, in retrospect, you told him about the IVF.
Well, that and he figured it out on his own.
But you wouldn't have asked the pre-Vogler, pre-Stacy-round-two Greg House to give you the injections or approve your sperm donors. Something had changed.
The Tritter Fiasco was when you figured it out, or started to.
You hated to think it was because you were, in his words, The Vicodin Nazi, especially after Wilson's privileges were suspended and he ran out of all his secret, secret-secret, and secret-secret-secret stashes.
You hated more that look in his eyes, the unabashed need, whenever you produced the tiny capsules, which had the privilege of ruling Gregory House more than any man, woman, child, officer of the law, or Deity could.
You hated that entire period of time more than when he first got sick, not only because you failed him again with the Ketamine and because you saw the monster you'd help create, but because when you lied on the stand you weren't helping him, you were really just setting in stone his current state of wretchedness.
But you had been too afraid of losing him to let him hit rock bottom. Wilson was a better man than you, in that way.
But it was after that, though, when you figured it out.
It was gradual, because his attitude and behavior towards you didn't change outright—references to your "fun bags" would never end, or your alliance with Hades, or your desperate desire for him—but something was different.
The realization came to head in of all places, a scrub room.
Something had changed, undeniably.
He didn't threaten, didn't joke, didn't browbeat, didn't beg, and didn't hyperbolize—he asked for your trust. But even the asking wasn't an asking—because he trusted you to trust him, to let him do whatever it was he was about to do because it was best for the patient
It was in that moment, in that silent moment as you stared at each other over the expanse of sanitized tile under the hue of surgical lighting, you realized what he'd given to you.
Not just his brand of trust, as it was. His bitterness, his anger, his cynicism, his intolerance, his derision, his genius—everything he is and everything he uses to protect himself he gave to you, at some point. In that way, he is completely yours.
And you don't know if you cried because it was so strangely romantic or so unbearably tragic.