"Everything is as it's always been.
This never happened.
Don't take it too bad; it's nothing you did.
It's just once something dies you can't make it live."
-'Take it Easy (Love Nothing)' – Bright Eyes.
"You seeing anyone?" He's playing "My Heart Will Go On" on Wilson's laptop. Wilson turns it off without glancing at the screen.
"House."
House turns the music back on, automatically. "Really? You're a lucky guy; I hear he's quite the catch."
"I know it's completely unlike you to actually diagnose anything before a patient is more than five minutes from death, but I kind of wanted to get home in time for Dexter. Focus on the case, please." He softens his tone, modifies the anger to impersonality.
"You watch Dexter? So you still have cable. The hospital is financially sinking, which Foreman will tell me in fifteen minutes when I go ask for my team back, and your wages have been cut, and you're rarely home, anyway. It should have been the first thing to go."
"She's running out of time, House." Wilson's voice lacks vitriol, though. Just weariness, and perhaps a bit of foregone resignation.
"Case is solved; my team is confirming the diagnosis as we speak. So, if you kept the cable, it means you're spending a lot more time at home, alone... Not seeing anyone, then? Because, if you're free tonight, I thought that maybe..."
Wilson is trying to be understanding, but fuck it, he is tired, worried for his patient, and filled with a loathing that surprises him in its intensity. It feels like, of all things, betrayal. Who knew House was even capable of such a thing, when Wilson wasn't aware of having trusted him in the first place?
"I'm leaving." Wilson snaps abruptly. As he reaches for the door, House blurts:
"You could just say no."
"No."
"No, you can't say no? Great, well, then it's a da-"
"No. I won't go out with you. No, I won't let you use whatever used to be between us to distract me from how your self-destructive chaos has ceased to carry the prefix 'self-'. No, I won't discuss personal matters with you, because our relationship is not personal; strictly professional."
"So we're in an agreement that we have a relationship, though, right?"
Wilson turns from the door, puts his hands on his hips, and stalks back towards the desk like a criminal to the noose. "I'm not joking, House, and honestly, I'm a little insulted that you'd drag this up and expect it to change anything. Because it really, really doesn't. If anything, it just reinforces how completely selfish you still are." He turns away.
"...I didn't."
But Wilson knows House's tactics, and won't give him control of this conversation by asking for clarification. Either House will explain, or Wilson will keep walking, and never know what House would have said. And honestly, Wilson doesn't know which idea hurts more: never knowing, or being offered everything he had only let himself think about in between moments, when his control slipped fractionally and his mind found itself inexorably drawn to that central thought: we'd be fucking fantastic.
They wouldn't, though. They'd be ruined, because House ruins everything. Which is why Wilson keeps walking.
"I didn't think it changed anything." House sounds like he had tried not to show his hand here, how desperate he was, but it had come bubbling up anyway, shouted hastily at Wilson's quickly retreating back before he is quite out the door. Wilson lets himself pause without thinking about it. Alright, a concession for a concession; they're still on even ground. He isn't even facing House. Body language stiff, unyielding. He's definitely still in dominance. House has stood and moved into the room, willing to follow if he has to, but clinging to familiar territory. He speaks to Wilson's back, and Wilson can see him without even looking; eyes pointed resolutely at the ground, averted, long fingers gripping the wooden cane harshly, weight shifted heavily onto his bad leg, as though to punish himself. God, it makes him sick. House makes him fucking sick.
He's also so in love with him, that the hallway is slightly spinning.
"If we're already not friends, I'm not risking anything."
"There's nothing there, House."
"Liar." House returns to the desk, bitter.
Wilson, despite everything, is guilty. He turns back into the room, and amends: "It's over. We missed our chance. Let it go."
"What the hell are you talking about missed, we never even had a chance, and won't until you get over yourself."
"There were plenty of opportunities, House. Plenty of times we were both single. You chose Cuddy. It's nothing to be ashamed of, but you can't just come back now and decide you want me, instead. You take me for granted."
"I've always taken you for granted. That's not your issue, or it would've come up sometime within the past fifteen years as more than a patented James Wilson bitchfit. What the fuck are you so afraid of?"
"I'm not afraid of anything, House. Absolutely nothing. I've lost it all already. I simply am out of anything to give."
House starts to reply, but is cut off by a knock on the door.
"Come in," they reply in unison.
Later, when it was all over, and they found themselves luxuriously occupying as much of either half of House's couch that they could manage, as though attempting to expel their limbs as far ass possible, a thought struck Wilson.
"Hey, House..." House tipped his head in acknowledgment, but Wilson was at a loss of how to proceed. Slowly, he drifted a hand to House's wrist, slung casually over the back of the couch, the empty space between them caught in a half-embrace, and ran his thumb over the pulse.
House's eyes followed the movement, and then came back to his own, looking panicked, trapped, and still longing at the same time.
Wilson sighed. "Right," he said, and put his hand back in his lap.
They finished the movie in companionable silence, and then Wilson went home, and both tried very hard not to think about what would have happened if he had just kept his damn hand where it had been.
A/N: Here, have some angst. Done for now, but may expand into a series if season eight provides more plotbunnies.