Mind (and Other) Games
House is having fun.
Okay, the patient is being totally uncooperative, but he bugged the guy's room. Something (an incriminating conversation, an obvious lie, the location of the secret drug stash) will come out of that eventually, and in the meantime, he gets to pull out every gay stereotype in the book to frustrate Wilson's desire to romance Nora—which is for Wilson's own good, anyway.
It's not like it's hard: Wilson isn't the most overtly masculine man around, and he always looks impeccably groomed and enjoys musical theater. And he cooks and blow-dries his hair and knows the names of French pants.
What makes this so enjoyable is that everything from the super-enormous A Chorus Line poster to calling him 'sweetie' in the office winds Wilson up, and House knows that sooner or later, Wilson will get tired of being pushed and push back.
One of the reasons they've been friends for so long: Wilson may like to play the Good Boy, but while he puts a personable face on it, he can be as much of a manipulative bastard as House is himself. And he's never entirely predictable.
House has to give him points for the declaration of love in a crowded restaurant: that'd taken balls, considering how much Wilson values his precious public persona. And then the marriage (well, civil union) proposal, complete with ring and the down-on-one-knee routine: very nice. He hadn't expected that.
He considers saying yes and upping the ante with a PDA—grabbing Wilson and kissing him over the table would be worth wide eyes and sputtering and maybe even that flapping thing he sometimes does with his hands—but there's only so far he can afford to let this escalate while he's still got a dying patient he has to focus on.
Besides, after a certain point, this will stop being a game: Wilson's impassioned speech marks a boundary line, and if House crosses it, they won't be able to pretend Nora is the reason why.
He gives Wilson an appreciative look, subtly raises his wineglass. Concedes defeat, because continuing in this vein would allow Wilson too many convenient excuses, and he's not pushing limits any farther with Nora as the object of the game.
That kind of risk merits a much better prize.
END.