There's something in the air.

It might be the weather. It's been unusually dark all day, the sky a deep grey, the air hot and stagnant. It's the middle of July. The clouds seem low and oppressive.

'I've got a weird feeling of foreboding,' says Wilson, winding down the driver's side window of his BMW. He hands over $15.50 for four cheeseburgers, two large fries, a black coffee and a medium soda. Three of the cheeseburgers are for House.

'It's a full moon, Jimmy,' says House, from the front passenger seat. Then he howls, long and plaintive, tipping his head back, closing his eyes and pursing his lips. The sound is genuinely chilling – it sends a shiver down Wilson's spine. The girl in the fast food booth jumps. Wilson looks at House's clean-shaved face, and for a moment, the shadow of the sun visor falls across his chin – he thinks that House has grown facial hair, rough dark stubble, as though he hasn't shaved for two days.

He still hasn't figured out what draws him to House.

It's true that House, initially, was the one that latched onto Wilson. For a good couple of hours after House had bailed him out, that afternoon in New Orleans, Wilson had been certain House would become a dinner party anecdote to share with Bonnie's easily-amused friends. 'Hey, you'll never believe the loony I couldn't shake off at this nephrology conference this one time...' Soon after – at some point between House's casual demand that they find the nearest bar, and their equally casual, hung-over backslap of farewell the following day – Wilson had fallen under his spell. And when House turned up in Princeton, not six months after that first meeting, Wilson was unaccountably delighted to feel that odd influence again. It's a strange sort of connection, that they've developed. Wilson's been infatuated, preoccupied, even in love with people before. House, however, mesmerises him. House walks, and Wilson falls into step with him. House quips, and Wilson finds the answering quip tripping from his tongue, as though they've rehearsed this act, and House is the ventriloquist, Wilson the dummy.

Because Wilson isn't like this, really. He isn't dark or dangerous or wild or weird or damaged or even the slightest bit unhinged. He's just... mesmerised.

'Give me that,' says House, leaning over the stick shift to snatch the package of food. He digs inside and retrieves a cheeseburger, unwrapping the paper and gnawing at the bun with feral relish.

Wilson's stomach growls at the thick warm meat smell leeching into the car.

House pulses, all the time, with a restless energy that puts Wilson on edge. He can feel it singing in his back teeth, like his fillings are picking up radio signals. Wilson tries to counteract it with casual indifference, though he's too neurotic for this to be entirely successful.

'Where do you want to go tonight?' he asks, looking at House's right knee jogging, his leg bouncing on the ball of his foot.

'The Slaughtered Lamb,' says House, deadpan, his mouth full of beef. He's so like a child. He needs to be pandered to and entertained. His hungers need to be satiated as soon as he notices them.

'I've head it's a bit cliquey in there,' says Wilson, mirthlessly, manoeuvring the car out of the parking lot and onto the main road. 'What about that bluesy place you like?'

'You hate the Blues,' says House.

'You don't want to go?'

'No, we'll go. Just don't complain when we get in there. Jesus!' he shouts this last very loudly, with a sudden, sick panic.

Wilson draws in a sharp breath and slams on the brake. In the centre of the road, standing cool as a cucumber, is a dog. A large grey thing with a long muzzle and no collar. It looks at him with its large, yellow eyes for several moments, until it ambles casually to the other side of the freeway.

Wilson tries to calm his breath, too shocked to say anything.

A car honks from behind them, and he re-starts the engine, his hands a little shaky.

House has moved on to his second cheeseburger.

'Stupid mutt,' he says.

6PM That Same Evening

'Two beers,' says House. The waiter's face is largely hidden by the shadows. He could be young or old, beautiful or ugly. Male or female, come to think of it. 'And four shots of Bourbon.' The waiter melts into the darkness.

'I can't get drunk,' says Wilson, with exasperation.

'Why not?' asks House.

Wilson realises that he has no good answer to this. It's Friday night – neither of them have work tomorrow. It just seems important that he stay sober. On his guard. Though he can't vocalise this – can't think of anything to say when House slides two of the shots across the table to flank Wilson's beer bottle.

'To the Blues,' says House, and downs both his shots in quick succession.

The bar is small and dark. The light seems to have a navy blue caste to it, and the air is thick and tobacco-flavoured. House has chosen a table in the corner, with a lousy view of the stage, but slightly more set-apart, slightly more isolated, than the other tables, which are close-packed, crowded with occupied chairs.

The music is just a little more than background-noise. There's an electric guitar, and a saxophone, and a low, female voice, weaving a spooky tune out of three clear, sparkling threads.

'I hate the Blues,' says Wilson, and downs one of his shots.

'You promised you wouldn't complain.' House's tone feigns terrible hurt.

'I'm not complaining. I'm expressing an opinion.' Wilson pauses for a second, thinking. 'It makes sense,' he says, contemplatively, 'that your favourite music would be the Blues. You're a very blue person.'

House laughs.

'Why wouldn't I? They're honest about the shit things in life.'

'How so?' Wilson asks, sucking the sparse layer of foam from the top of his beer. They serve it in pint glasses here, not bottles. It's quaint.

'Sex, death, betrayal and addiction. They're all in there. And they don't dress it up. It's hard, cold reality, and still, it's... Well. It's beautiful.' House cringes a little at himself for flirting with sentimentality.

Wilson simply raises his eyebrows and drinks.

'Do you know,' House goes on, 'that the first Delta bluesman to record a song was such a hardened alcoholic that he used to suck methanol out of camping stove cans?'

House sucks down another shot to illustrate his tale.

'As it happens,' says Wilson, 'I failed Blues History 1-0-1.'

House is ignoring him.

'How's that for an addiction, huh? Can you imagine that?'

'I'm not sure I want to. But you go ahead.'

Wilson, though, is imagining it. He's watching House poke his tongue into the shot glass and lick every drop of Bourbon from the glass, and thinking, imagining. Worrying, slightly.

'His name was Tommy Johnson,' continues House, pulling his tongue from the glass with a pop. 'He perpetrated the rumour that he'd sold his sold to the devil in exchange for his amazing musicianship. The way he told it, he brought his guitar to the crossroads at midnight, and a man all dressed in black appeared out of nowhere, took his guitar from him and began to play. Then he gave the guitar back to Johnson, and the rest is history.' House waves the waiter over again. 'Not a bad deal, all told.'

'Are you considering selling your soul to the devil in exchange for unlimited diagnostic powers?'

House looks at him quite seriously.

'Who says I haven't already?'

He bares his teeth in a frightening smile.

Wilson laughs, though he feels a little disconcerted.

'You don't believe in the devil,' he says.

'No,' says House. 'But I believe in bargaining to get what you want. If that necessitates giving away a piece of yourself, then... Well. If you weren't using it anyway...'

'You'd miss it,' says Wilson, definitively. 'I mean, if you suddenly lost some piece of yourself. Believe me.'

The band onstage plays a slow, haunting song. Something about the moon.

'When's Stacey back?' asks Wilson.

'Day after tomorrow.'

'Right. Good.'

'We've got plenty of time,' says House, pushing another shot towards Wilson. House looks around, his eyes sparkling silver in the low light. He blinks, and licks his lips, and then says, 'I'm going to smoke.'

Wilson shakes his head in overt disapproval, though he doesn't say anything as House pulls out a pack of Marlborough's and a silver Zippo lighter from his pocket. He tucks the tip of the cigarette between his lips. It sticks, dangling on the bottom lip of his open mouth as he coaxes a flame from the ancient lighter. As he sucks, the tip flares orange, and Wilson feels hot with something similar to envy. He tracks the bright spot of light as House wields the cigarette, drawing lazy, uncoordinated arcs from the ashtray to his mouth, back to the ashtray. Following the tiny glow like a snake might follow the motion of a charmer's pipe.

11:40PM

The stages of drunkenness, for House, are a little like the stages of grief. The first three shots don't touch him.

Shots four and five, and he enters denial – he refuses to acknowledge, physically or mentally, that the alcohol has begun to affect him. He hides it well – compensating for his over-compensation in preciseness of movement and speech. No one but Wilson would be able to tell he's drunk.

Shots six and seven and he's into anger – it's a brief stage, but dangerous. Wilson has to rein him in from calling ex-girlfriends to rant at them, or picking a fight with the nearest stranger at the bar.

Eight and he slides into depression – nothing seems to matter anymore – not his slurred speech, which he ceases to disguise now, nor the people that are staring, irritated or amused by him, nor the mere fact of life, the necessity of living, of continuing to eat, breathe, sleep, laugh, love.

Nine and he's on the upward turn. He reconstructs. He works through. He tells jokes – longer and more structured jokes than he's ever inclined to, sober. He makes plans – ordinary and outrageous – for tomorrow, next week, for two years from now.

And finally, after some indeterminate but obscene amount of booze, he slips into acceptance. He's serene, sloppy and touchy-feely. Unburdened, crude and occasionally gleefully cruel. It's palpable in him – the relief that he's finally anaesthetised his thoughts enough to slow them.

Wilson, however, is sober until he is drunk. The moment he becomes drunk is obvious, as is the moment when it ends. In between, he is an odd mixture of dopily happy and maudlin, garrulous and tongue-tied, stupid and philosophical.

'I think,' says Wilson, gazing wistfully at the cleavage of the young brunette at the next table, 'that it might be time to call it a night.'

House is piling his shot glasses into a totem pole in the centre of the table, with remarkable precision, for someone so inebriated.

'Bullshit,' he says, too loudly. 'The night is young.' He pauses, recognising his cliché. He attempts to redeem himself. 'The night, in fact, is probably not even legal in most states.'

Wilson laughs hollowly.

The band finished their set an hour ago. They've packed up their instruments and tucked them away at the side of the stage. Now they're drinking at a table in the opposite corner, unobtrusively, with a kind of subdued relief. They're playing an album over the sound system, now. Howlin' Wolf, House tells him.

'I would probably,' House goes on, 'be put on the sex offender's register for fucking the night.'

Wilson chuckles, a little more genuinely now.

'The night is in pre-school. Dammit!' he slams his hand down on the table, as though to command the attention of the entire room. He barely commands Wilson's. 'The night is in diapers.'

'House,' says Wilson, leaning in as if he's sharing a secret, 'we're going home.'

'You have no stamina,' says House. 'No energy. You are lack-lustre.' Wilson drags him to his feet, and for a few seconds they cling to each other, finding their mutual centre of balance. 'You are completely lacking,' House continues, 'in the lustre department.' Then he grows captivated by the shine of Wilson's hair, and lifts a hand to clumsily touch it. Wilson bats it away.

'Fine,' says House. 'Fine,' he mutters to himself. 'Don't touch the hair.'

Wilson starts towards the door, pulling House along with him. House leans into Wilson, his mouth close to Wilson's ear, breathing hot damp breath all over it. As they weave through the tables, House sings, low and gravelly, only for Wilson,

'Well, the moon is rising,

And I got bad things on my mind.'

'What's new?' says Wilson.

House ignores him.

'Well, the moon is rising,

And I got bad things on my mind.'

Wilson pushes the door open and they tumble out into the street. It's warmer outside than it was in the bar. A Summer's evening – the sun has long-since set, but the air is still, silent, fragrant with car exhaust. The fluorescent bar sign (a blues note, in blue neon) above the door is stuttering, giving up the ghost. It dances, blurred and wavering, in Wilson's peripheral vision like a dying fairy.

'Well, I wants to... kill my baby,

But I just can't... kill that woman for cryin.''

Wilson turns his head to look into House's eyes. He expects to meet a twinkling, mischievous gaze and a sloppy grin. Instead, House's face is a mask of seriousness.

Despite the warmth of the beer and the bourbon inside him, Wilson is slightly chilled.

'What bad things do you have on your mind, House?' he asks.

House's eyes are blue. Not startling blue, like they can be in the right kind of daylight. Now they're a darker, glassier, bottomless blue. Like clouded marbles. They are focused on him like two zoom-enabled camera lenses, the pupils dilating and contracting indecisively as the neon bar sign flickers above their heads.

'Wouldn't you like to know?' says House. It doesn't sound rhetorical. Then, he shouts, 'Taxi!' pulling away so suddenly that Wilson stumbles, has to steady himself with an arm against the outside wall of the bar. 'Taxi!' shouts House, again. He affects a British accent. 'Oh, taxi cab! Cabriolet! Handsome!'

A cab pulls up a few feet from them – the face of the driver, like the waiter's before, is ageless, indistinct, anonymous.

'Wilson,' says House, 'I called you a handsome.' He dissolves into giggles, crumpling forward at the waist. To Wilson, he looks for a moment like a little child horsing around. 'You're a handsome, Wilson.' He lets out an odd, high laugh – a little too girly to be believable. He's going to fall over, Wilson thinks. Can I be bothered to move, take his arm and steady him?

Before Wilson can decide, House snatches at the handle of the cab, opens the door and climbs in. He scrambles along to make room for Wilson. Wilson continues to lean on the wall for a second or two, processing this new development. Then he propels himself from the wall with his hand and gets into the back with House. He grabs at the door and yanks it shut.

'Onward to... where do I live, Wilson?' says House, slinging a heavy arm around Wilson's shoulders. The sweat under his armpit reeks.

'I haven't got a clue,' says Wilson.

'Neither do I,' says House. 'I think it might be Baker Street. Let's try Baker Street. Onward, Driver!' he's British, again. 'Onward to Baker Street.'

The driver doesn't reply. He starts the engine.

For ten minutes, they travel in silence. The low hum of the engine begins to lull Wilson into a shallow sleep, cold and uncomfortable, like lying face-down on a damp bathroom floor. Until, all of a sudden, House yanks him out with,

'When Stacey gets back, I might take her to that bar.'

Wilson jerks into consciousness with a gasping breath – he's sure he was a moment from drowning in that inch of stagnant spilled bathwater. His face is buried in the front of House's t-shirt. The rich smell of cotton-damp sweat, Jean Paul Gautier aftershave and Polo Mints seeps into his sinuses, makes him feel even drunker. He pulls away a little, clinging on to the sides of House's open shirt, and sees the face of Sonny Boy Williamson I, printed in neon green, blowing on his harmonica.

'Are we nearly back?' he asks.

'Five minutes,' says House. And then, 'You were sleeping on me.'

'Sorry.'

'With your face all nuzzled up against me.'

'Christ. Was I?'

'You licked my nipple.'

'What?'

'Just kidding.'

House erupts with a bubble of drunken laughter.

'Fucker,' says Wilson.

Five Minutes Later

Wilson tries one of House's keys in the front door lock. It doesn't work.

'I thought you said it was the small silver one,' he says.

House hovers over his shoulder, emanating a vague warmth. Wilson stabs at the lock with another key, and misses by an inch.

'Thank God you're not a surgeon,' says House.

'Thank God you're not a... fucking...' though Wilson can't think how to finish that comeback.

As Wilson tries a third key, House falls forward onto him, very deliberately, planting his hands against the door, on either side of Wilson's head. He presses his whole front against Wilson's back and begins to thrust his hips deliberately.

'Gonna bum you,' says House.

'Get off, House.'

'Don't pretend you don't want it,' House says, still knocking his hips in rhythm against Wilson's ass.

'House,' says Wilson, 'if you don't get off, I'll fucking lay you flat.' He only uses language like this when he's drunk.

'Bitch,' says House, and pushes himself backwards off the door. He staggers, and for a moment it seems like he might fall backwards into the road. But he regains his balance, just as Wilson finds the right key.

While Wilson stumbles into the flat, House notices something tacked to a lamppost, three yards to his right. He moves closer to look at it.

It's a poster.

LOST DOG

Husky/Doberman cross, grey coat, yellow eyes

Answers to BARNEY

Please approach carefully – Barney is easily spooked

28A 112 St, 09725 0593576

Cash reward for safe return

'Well,' says House. 'Fuck me.'

He follows Wilson into the flat.

Wilson is already on the couch, on the right-hand cushion, slumped against the arm rest in the posture of sleep, though his eyes are open.

House falls down onto the cushion beside him.

'You left the small lamp on,' says Wilson, lifting his head and looking at the mellow glow of the silver lamp on the dresser. 'And the blinds open.'

House looks out of the window. It is a full moon.

Wilson turns his head lazily to look at House.

'Bum me?' he says. 'Bum?'

House nods sagely.

'Heard it on some British TV programme. BBC America.'

Wilson's scratches at a fierce itch above his right eyebrow.

'Thought at first you meant you were gonna "homeless person" me,' he says. His voice is mirthless.

'Hah.' House kicks his shoes off. 'No. It's British for "ass." They've not got asses in Britain. They've got bums.' He scratches his crotch. 'Front bums and back bums. Lots of bums, in Britain. A vast array of differently situated bums. When Stacey gets back...'

'Oh, will you shut the fuck up about Stacey?' says Wilson. Then he claps a hand over his mouth. Dragging his fingers down his chin and letting his hand drop, he says, 'Christ. Sorry. Dunno what I'm saying.'

'Hey,' says House, wiggling his toes, 'don't worry about it.'

Wilson undoes the top two buttons of his shirt. He can't think why he hasn't done it before now.

'I do, though,' he says, idly. 'We... we're alright, aren't we, House? You and me?'

'Peachy,' says House. 'Apart from the fact you need to ask that.'

Half an Hour Later

They've begun to sober up, so they've begun to drink again.

House has fetched a bottle of Bourbon from beneath the sink. Wilson is settling into his intoxication now, no longer discomfited by it. House is drinking in measured doses, carefully maintaining his seventh-stage drunkenness. The moment he feels his thoughts stir again, niggle again, chatter again, he calms them with another swallow.

House is still on the couch. He's stretched out along the whole length of it, on his back, his head propped up against the armrest, his legs crossed at the ankles. His glass of Bourbon is balanced on his chest, hands-free. Wilson is on the floor, his back to the couch, his legs spread straight out in front of him.

'Hey,' says House, 'you know that dog we nearly hit? It's lost.'

'What?'

'I saw the poster.'

'I haven't a clue what you're on about.' Wilson lets his head fall back. He's sure, for a moment, that he feels a hand in his hair. When he turns his head, though, House is in the same position he was before – supine on the couch, eyes trained on his glass of bourbon rising and falling with the movement of his breath. 'I need a piss,' says Wilson. He manoeuvres himself up onto his knees, his hands on the floor, like a dog. Then he takes hold of the front of the couch and begins to hoist himself into an upright kneeling position. He half-notices House moving too, in his peripheral vision, swinging his legs over the side of the couch, bending to place his bourbon on the carpet.

And all of a sudden, House is on top of him, behind him, his arms wrapped around Wilson's waist.

'Really, House,' says Wilson with exasperation. 'I need a piss.'

House uses his weight to tip them both onto their sides on the floor – Wilson nearly hits his head off the coffee table. Then House turns Wilson over, rolling on top of him, his knees planted on either side of Wilson's legs. He pins Wilson's hands to the floor above his head.

Wilson's not sure he's in the mood to wrestle. His bladder is heavy and his head is swimming.

'I'll piss on your carpet if you don't let me up,' he says, into the floor.

House isn't listening. He sits down with his full weight on Wilson's thighs.

Then, he angles his hips downwards, and presses his groin against Wilson's backside. More slowly and deliberately than before.

Wilson's body stiffens a little. He moves his hands in the grip of House's, though not quite in a panicked way.

'House,' he says, and his voice is gentle. Non-threatening. Like one would speak to a wild animal ready to pounce. 'I really. Will. Piss. On your carpet.'

House pulls away, stands up and falls back onto the sofa. Wilson levers himself to his feet and stumbles to the bathroom.

Forty-Five Minutes Later

'You're going to stay tonight, aren't you?' asks House, his tone a little desperate. House has lifted his legs to allow Wilson onto the sofa. Wilson is sitting properly, his feet on the floor – House is facing towards Wilson, with his legs bent at the knee. Their empty scotch glasses are side-by-side on the coffee table, next to the near-empty bottle of Jack Daniels.

Wilson is staring at the television – it's muted, and set to some obscure dating channel called 'Rabbit.' The broadcast is nothing but still pictures of romantic hopefuls accompanied by lonely hearts messages.

'I was going to,' he says. 'Save the cab fare.'

House surreptitiously straightens his bad leg along the back of the couch. Wilson is slumped in his seat, so House's leg slides quite neatly into the gap behind Wilson's ass.

'What the hell are we watching?' asks House.

'Rabbit,' says Wilson.

House angles his head and squints at the screen. In the upper right-hand corner, there's a bad photograph of a middle-aged brunette. She's not unattractive, though she's a little odd looking, and her face is shiny and far too red. The text reads:

SWF, 47 seeks BSM, 18-50 for fun and games,

NSA. No time wasters, please xxxx

'Christ,' says House. He laughs, at nothing specific. And then he says, 'Let's ring her.'

'Let's not,' says Wilson.

'Oh, let's,' says House, groping in his pocket for his mobile. 'What's the number?'

'House,' says Wilson, 'don't be cruel.'

'Who says I'm being cruel? Why would you assume I want to prank call the woman? I might want fun and games.' He begins to dial the number on the screen. 'I'm not a time waster.'

Wilson sits up a little and snatches at House's phone.

'You are,' says Wilson, grabbing for the phone as House dangles it like a cat toy, offering it and then yanking it away just as Wilson gets near. 'You're a time waster, and you're wasted. I'm wasted. We're both...' he gives up, exhausted, and falls back to sit on the couch again. 'Fine,' he says. 'Ring her. Have fun and games. Knock yourself out.'

House, however, seems to have lost interest. He's tossed his phone onto the floor beside the couch, and retrieved the remote from the coffee table.

'Let's watch pay per view,' he says.

Twenty Minutes Later

'Wilson,' says House, quietly, as a lean brunette fellates a tall, tanned bald man on the screen. 'There's something I've been meaning to tell you.'

Wilson is sitting with his legs spread, slumped on the sofa. He's savouring his hard-on. He loves the fact that he's too drunk to care that he's hard in front of House. In any case, Wilson can see. House is hard too.

That's the point of it. That's the whole point of watching porn.

That's the whole point of watching porn together, drunk. You're hard in front of the other person, and you don't care enough to stop watching, to leave, to mutter your excuses and get the hell out of there. But you care just enough to make it all the more exciting.

Once, Wilson remembers, deep into particularly debouched night in House's flat with two bottles of Famous Grouse and the new King Dong DVD, House had said, all of a sudden, with infectious enthusiasm,

'Let's play the cock game!'

Wilson has only vague memories of the following half-hour, though he's fairly sure it involved taking out their cocks and comparing them, flaccid and erect. Possibly also some sort of competition to see who could get the hardest the quickest, though he may have dreamt that up.

It was all very juvenile. Large aspects of their entire relationship are very juvenile. But then, House is very juvenile, in that vulnerable, alluring, forgivable way that most geniuses tend to be. And Wilson – Wilson never really did all of this, properly, when he should have – when he was an adolescent, a student, a young, unburdened youth. He was far too serious and restrained. He feels he's owed it, now. Perhaps that's what draws him to House.

He recalls that House has asked a question.

'What?' he says. 'What've you been meaning to tell me?'

House gives out a low hum of a laugh.

'I really did sell my soul to the devil.' The 's' of 'sell' is quite crisp and distinct, though his 'soul's 's' is horrendously slurred.

Wilson echoes House's laugh. He's too drunk to try to produce an original one.

'Thought so,' he says. He turns his head lazily to look at House, sitting in an identical posture to his own, legs spread, head against the back of the couch, half-closed eyes peering at the filth on the TV.

'I went to a crossroads at midnight...'

'Which crossroads?'

'The one – erh... the one down the road. Next to the Laundromat. I went there at midnight, and I took my favourite... medical text, and a tall man dressed in... black appeared, and he took the medical text off of me, and... handed it back, and when he did, I could diagnose any disease in the world.'

'Yeah?'

'Yeah.'

And then, startlingly quickly, House is on top of him.

House claws at his thighs until Wilson pulls his legs up onto the couch – they feel like a dead weight, but he pulls them up, and stretches them out, and he can't really feel them, them or his hands or his face. And House is in between them, lying stretched out along his length, on top, and he's holding onto Wilson's shoulders and rubbing himself, urgently, diligently, guiltily, like a dog in heat, over Wilson, pressing the weight of his groin down into Wilson's to increase the friction, panting through his nose against Wilson's neck.

It compresses Wilson's hard on so painfully, so gloriously, that Wilson's breath comes out as a sound – a long, embarrassing 'oo,' too satisfied, too throaty, not to be mortifying.

Wilson brings his hand up to tangle in House's hair, the other to rub at his back – it's the only etiquette he knows, in this situation. Then it doesn't seem quite right. House isn't any of his previous girlfriends. Isn't Bonnie. Wilson takes his hands away and lets them fall to his sides. Lets House rub and writhe and tremble on top of him, listens with half an ear to the unlikely, outrageous things he's saying, in a low, drunken voice,

'Gonna... gonna bum you. Bad things on my mind, Wilson... this is one of them. I can... feel your... front bum – hah. Through your fucking trousers. Are you British? Cos I'm gonna bum you.'

The rutting and the rubbing continues for a long time. Long enough to grow uncomfortable. For a while, Wilson thinks he might come – thinks House might come, on top of him, in his trousers. Then he realises that it's hopeless, really.

Eventually, House slows, and stops. And falls asleep.

Eventually, Wilson falls asleep too.

The Following Morning

Wilson wakes around 8:00, still crushed flat by House's weight. His right shoulder is wet with a wide circle of House's drool, soaked into his blue shirt fabric. He squints. The damp patch looks like a dark moon rising in an early evening sky.

He closes his eyes and lays there, his limbs heavy, his body trapped, breath shallow in his chest.

He doesn't know what to do. So he goes back to sleep.