A/N – this chapter is still all House and Wilson at home. Next chapter gets even more interesting with House returning to work. Enjoy!
House sniggered softly. Wilson hadn't said anything particularly funny, but the whole idea of having someone in his life who really enjoyed his company and with whom he could completely relax was such a joy that he couldn't hide his pleasure. Actually, what he really wanted to do was bust out laughing, but there had been so little in his personal life to laugh at in the last fifteen years or so that he'd become ill at ease with outright laughter. To fill the void, he'd become a master at playing tricks on his employees and cracking jokes at work. But there was nothing as satisfying as having someone he loved at home with whom he could just cut loose and laugh.
"What's so funny?" Wilson asked with a smile.
"Nothing. I need you around more often!"
"I intend to be around permanently," Wilson replied.
It was already almost four am and they'd been up all night talking. House bid him goodnight, set his alarm for nine am, flipped the lamp off and rolled over, trying to get some sleep. He was never one to go in to work early unless absolutely necessary, and had no intention of getting up before nine am.
The bottle on his nightstand containing his extra doses of Methadone for breakthrough pain was still unopened.
Wilson closed his eyes and tried unsuccessfully to go to sleep. It wasn't that he wasn't tired. He was physically exhausted and mentally wound up tighter than a spring in a brand new bed. The mind often works overtime when one is over tired. He had a lot to think about.
He wanted House back in his loft. Technically, it was "his" loft; but Wilson never intended to live there without House. When he bought it, he tried to be altruistic about it and told himself that he only bought it for House. Looking back now, though, on everything that transpired since then, Wilson had to admit to himself that that wasn't the only reason he bought it. Wilson bought that condo because as long as he had a spare bedroom and bathroom, he would always hold out hope that someone else would be there to occupy it. In the beginning, that someone was House. He convinced himself that he was being altruistic about the purchase because House was still recovering from his hospitalization at Mayfield and needed to live with someone else. They were living together in Amber's old apartment and needed more space. But then Sam came back into his life. Wilson had always wanted, but rarely got, comfort AND safety in a relationship. With House, he had the comfort born of familiarity but at the time there was no safety. With Sam, he didn't have as much familiarity simply because they'd been apart for so long, but he had the safety of knowing what screwed up their relationship before so that they wouldn't repeat the same mistakes. Wilson knew now that kicking House out of their home was a mistake. It was a mistake to replace House with Sam. Wilson tried to deny at the time that he was replacing House with Sam, but he knew now that's exactly what he did and he knew now how much it hurt House. For as much as House claimed to like living alone, nobody really likes living alone. Wilson knew that all too well.
Wilson wanted so badly to apologize to House for the biggest mistake he'd made in a long time. House wasn't just a replacement, a fill-in until the next Mrs. Wilson came along. He tried to say that in that hotel bar the last time House began to self-destruct again, but it came out wrong. It came out sounding like he wanted House to move back in with him because he was House's savior.
Wilson had jumped into a lot of relationships that ended up being sad mistakes. This one was the only relationship he hadn't jumped into, but had been allowed to mature naturally over many years. Clearly they had stood the test of time as friends, and clearly they both wanted it to become more than just friendship.
One thing both men had learned the hard way was that sex can often be a nail in the coffin of a relationship. That's all House and Cuddy really ever had, and House had said often enough that he knew that relationship was doomed from the start even though he did love her. Looking back on everything that happened last year, Wilson began to see that House was probably using Cuddy simply to avoid being alone. There appeared to be little more to that relationship than just the sex and the comfort for House of knowing that he didn't have to sleep alone. Sometimes Wilson felt like that was all he had done with his wives, too.
Wilson really relished that conversation they had just had. It was refreshing; it was cathartic. He began to wonder if maybe that's what had been missing from his marriages, but then he realized that things happen for a reason and he would probably be a lot better off not worrying about the past. When he was a child, his mother had often said "Don't worry about that water that's already under the bridge. It's gone. You can't get it back again. Clean the trash out of the water in front of you and you'll be fine." Wasn't House the one who just said Wilson needed to 'move on'?
Yeah, 'move on.' Wilson had just spouted off to House that House was emotionally stuck and unable to move on. Maybe that wasn't really as true as Wilson originally thought. Wilson found himself thinking about all the difficulties in life House had had to deal with. As emotionally unstable and, frankly, crazy as House's behaviors often were, he'd dealt with some very challenging obstacles in his life. For one, a domineering stepfather who expected perfection and tolerated nothing less. Having to live his entire life without hearing the truth about his biological father from his mother. He'd been lied to his entire life about that, since it was a lie of omission. House had to confirm his suspicion with a post-mortem paternity test obtained from an illicit sample of the man's earlobe because his own mother wasn't honest with him as a child. Oh, and then there was having his thigh muscle cut out not only against his wishes but while he was under a medically induced coma and unable to do anything to prevent it.
Everybody has problems and everybody has their own ways of dealing with their problems. Wilson was beginning to realize that he could love someone deeply without expecting something in return that the other person might not be able to give. He could love House for who he was, not for who he wanted House to be. Sex would be wonderful, a dream even, but not if House wasn't ready and not if it would mean the death of this little seedling. After all, good things come to those who wait.
Wilson looked with happiness and pride over at House. It was a profound happiness that Wilson hadn't felt in a long, long time. Wilson knew now that with work, he would find the safety in this relationship that seemed to be missing before. It was there; it just needed work and nurturing.
"You gonna keep admiring me or are you gonna go to sleep? SOME of us have to work in the morning!" House groused.
"'Night, knucklehead," Wilson said as he rolled over in the darkness, facing away from House. Yes, indeed. Good things come to those who wait.
Next morning House awoke to an otherwise empty bedroom. Wilson was pottering about in the kitchen and the heavenly scent of lightly browned waffles, hot syrup and melted butter drifted in to the bedroom.
House began the ritual necessary to rise from his bed. Years ago he learned that even if he wasn't hurting in bed, he needed to follow the same ritual if he didn't want to cramp immediately after standing up. Regardless of how full his bladder was, he needed to follow the same ritual. On the rare occasions that he didn't follow the routine, he would cramp so badly upon standing up that he wouldn't always have time to make it to the bathroom. Rule number twenty in his life was to always, always, ALWAYS do the warm up routine before rising from bed in the morning.
The routine was as follows:
Range of motion exercises on his right foot and ankle, to get the blood flowing.
Using his hand to support his thigh, he bent his knee four or five times or as much as it took to work the stiffness out.
Again using his hand to support his thigh and help with the motion, he rotated his hip this way and that, and repeated that motion until the stiffness had been worked out of his hip.
Working up gently and methodically from the foot to the knee to the hip, he was usually able to work the kinks out and get blood flowing to his leg well enough to prevent major cramps when he rose from bed in the morning. It took time, but in the long run it was well worth it.
When he woke up, before he started doing anything to his leg, House felt the very pleasant sensation of a morning woody. When he was on Vicodin, he hadn't had a woody spontaneously in a long, long time. Narcotics tend to have that nasty little side effect. Methadone is a narcotic too but it's longer acting and more suitable for long term use than Vicodin is. He was taking less Methadone than he expected and it was wonderful, invigorating even, to feel his libido return naturally because of not being so saturated in opiates. He'd always teased, flirted, made horribly sexist remarks and jokes, and talked all kinds of nasty stuff to the hookers he hired, but very rarely did any of it consummate in actual sexual intercourse because the Vicodin usually made him impotent. Sometimes, not even the Viagra could counteract that particular nasty side effect. He would never admit it to anyone and never in a million years wanted anyone to suspect it, which was why his behavior was so outrageously flirtatious and sexist. It was a mask, attempting to preserve what little self esteem he had left and hide the real problem. Getting a woody spontaneously, without the aid of Viagra, was an absolutely heavenly reminder that maybe he hadn't completely lost his macho mojo.
House took a few moments, actually more than a few moments, to enjoy his woody and then finish it off.
While he was enjoying the post-orgasm endorphin high, he took his morning Methadone maintenance dose and went through his range of motion routine. Soon enough, he was quite ready to get up and dig into those damn waffles that were driving him crazy.
Appearing in the kitchen resplendent in his pajama pants, holey tee shirt and a classic bed head, House pretended to complain. "So, what, no pancakes? I told you I wanted pancakes!"
Looking up from his work by the stove, Wilson took a few minutes to absorb the sight. Wilson rarely set foot outside the bedroom in the morning without his daytime clothes on whether or not there was anyone else in the house with him. Living alone seemed to have affected each man differently. Wilson didn't change his habits when a roommate moved out. Even when he was alone, he still didn't want to emerge from the bedroom in the morning not properly dressed to start the day. Up until now, he'd thought of the people he lived with as just that; roommates. The wives may have started out as beloved spouses but by the time the marriages had run their course, the wives were little more than roommates. Things were different now with House. He no longer thought of House as a roommate. Roommates come and go. Partners stay for life.
House's behavior as a result of living alone also didn't seem to change with Wilson in his life. Part of it was the fact that he didn't feel the need to change the way he dressed around the house just to please someone else. Part of it was also the fact that it was more comfortable to wear soft, thin, well-worn clothing at home. When pain is a 24 hour a day presence, things that provide comfort are of prime importance. The way House saw it, soft, old thin clothing was much more comfortable around the house than staying in street clothes, and comfort was worth giving up some vanity even when there were other people in his home.
"Yeah, keep complaining about not getting pancakes. I'll eat all the waffles and you'll get nothing," Wilson retorted playfully.
"Gimme," House cried and limped as fast as he could to the table.
Sitting at his table, House was again pleasantly surprised by the feeling that was washing over him right about now. It had been so long since House experienced any kind of prolonged, sincere happiness that he really wasn't too sure what this feeling was. He knew it made him feel warm and good. House's appearance this morning was deliberately more tousled than usual. It was a test to see how Wilson would react. In House's mind, they couldn't live together if they couldn't tolerate seeing each other in ratty old clothes and all messed up. Wilson didn't say anything about House's attire, his bed head or the fact that his untrimmed beard was beginning to resemble Grizzly Adams. Wilson accepted House for who he was. The tousled, unkempt appearance didn't apparently matter one iota.
It was nice; no, a more appropriate word would be comforting, seeing Wilson in the kitchen with him. So many times House ate alone. He rarely even bothered eating at his kitchen table since there was never anyone there to enjoy it with him. He had long since fallen into the habit of eating take out in front of his TV in the living room or else going out to eat with Wilson. It's difficult enough to live alone and eating alone at home is even more depressing. House had a very well stocked kitchen. He enjoyed cooking, and he was good at it; but he didn't enjoy cooking for one and he especially didn't enjoy cleaning up the mess afterward. He felt like the joy of cooking was outweighed by the sadness over the fact that there was rarely anyone else there to enjoy it with him. So the expensive cookware and cutlery usually saw very little service.
With Wilson there, it felt like a permanent ray of sunshine lit up his previously gloomy and lonely domicile. He could break out the expensive pots and pans and create culinary delights for both of them to enjoy.
Meanwhile, though, House was busy with the task at hand of digging into Wilson's delicious vanilla and cinnamon waffles. That little bit of fresh vanilla bean and freshly ground cinnamon added to the batter before pouring into the waffle iron made all the difference. Freshly ground cinnamon is always tastier than stuff that may have been ground a year ago. And people who have never tasted a fresh vanilla bean are missing the culinary equivalent of the Holy Grail. Man, those waffles were addicting. They were even more addicting than Wilson's famous almond pancakes.
As he was inhaling his waffles, House looked up at Wilson and realized that there actually was one thing he would need to change quickly if he and Wilson were going to cement this relationship. House remembered his manners. Living alone tends to make one forget one's manners since there's nobody else there to care about farting, belching, or an equally impolite thing to do in the company of other people; eating before the other person sits down at the table.
House wiped his face with his napkin and made a point to stop eating until Wilson sat down and started on his food.
"Sorry about that. Not used to company at the kitchen table," House said. "I would say these are heavenly, but a more accurate adjective would be 'ungodly good'. Ha! Get it? Ungodly. And good, too. That's the highest superlative this atheist can come up with."
"Why did you stop eating? Are they cold?" Wilson asked, perplexed about why the inhaling of waffle suddenly stopped.
"They're fine. I forgot my manners. Sorry about that," House said with a hint of a smile.
"Manners? What? Oh, you mean that…" Wilson motioned to House's empty plate and then to his own as yet untouched plate. "The fact that you inhaled yours before I had a chance to sit down and enjoy mine is a compliment." Wilson said that with a stone cold, completely expressionless poker face.
House returned his stare. The two men engaged in a stare-down until both broke up, snorting with laughter. "Seriously, House. Don't change for me. It's a compliment that you like my food that much."
"It helps to have someone to enjoy it with," House added.