A/N: Okay, thanks for all the support everyone :D AND I'M SORRY THAT I HAVEN'T UPDATED IN A CENTURY OR SO…. don't shoot!

Firstly, in response to my anonymous reviewers:

honestly?: Although Mrs. White had MBP for some time, the stabbing isn't part of the MBP. She just went over the edge.

GHXJW

In the dark, as Wilson watched House sleep, he got a horrible idea. A horrible, horrible idea. It was brilliant, but it was very manipulative, and selfish, not to mention right down nasty. And right after House had been so…well, Wilson didn't want to use the word 'nice.' It was juvenile, and so overused, and so wrong for House anyway. And right after House had…held him, underneath the sink, his bum leg probably cramping like a motherfucker, and let him cry all over him like a lost, snotty child, Wilson didn't want to do this to him. He wanted to trust House, to take his word for it.

He sighed, turned over, and decided tomorrow was a good time to execute his plan.

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"Cuddy, I have to leave early," Wilson said, fidgeting with his tie.

She didn't bother looking up from her paperwork, but merely raised an eyebrow as she scribbled away. "And why is that, if I may ask?"

"Uh…" He stood there, frowning and thinking rapidly. He didn't sound sick. He didn't look sick. He didn't have a kid to come home to. Hell, he didn't even have a wife to go home to. He fidgeted a little more with his tie. Maybe he should've thought this out first. "House," he said, deciding on the truth. "I have to go because of House."

Cuddy did look up this time. "What's he done this time?" she sighed exasperatedly, sitting back and brushing her curly hair out of her face, ready to listen and sympathize with yet another long rant about House and his general idiocy.

"Nothing, really," Wilson answered. Except for push Wilson into a deep hole of something (maybe love), and at the bottom of that hole there were the spikes of jealousy, lust, and New Realizations, all of them ambiguously ugly yet beautiful. "I just need to. Um. Do something."

She peered at him in a way that was far too discerning for his taste, and then nodded slowly. "All right, you go then. But you'll have to make up for it in clinic hours."

He smiled – he had expected nothing less. "Thanks."

"It better be good," Cuddy said as he pushed open the door.

Wilson, totally thrown, looked back at her. "What?"

"Your prank. It better be good." She grinned and returned to her paperwork.

"Yeah." Well, he wouldn't exactly call it a prank, as per say…

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Even as he got into the car, his nerves were already humming with adrenaline. Just thethought of what he was going to do already set his heart racing and his breath coming more shallowly. Relax. Just relax. Yes. It was okay.

Oh, God, no, it wasn't. Wilson sped up and almost ran a red light; because he knew that if he let himself, he would make a U-turn and drive all the way back to the hospital at full throttle. He had to do this. He had to know the truth.

The truth. Oh, the beautiful, beautiful truth. People tended to put it on a pedestal, but from Wilson's experience, it was a sadistic bitch that liked to hit you in your weakest spot. He supposed he should be afraid of what he would find out when he asked House about the truth, and got it in all it's sadistic glory. The thing that separated Wilson from House, however, was exactly this: hope for something better. Wilson called it optimism; House called it naïveté – just another perfect example of their differing views. He parked roughly in front of the house, and locked the car as he ran, almost breaking his neck when he tripped over the stairs, and throwing himself through the door when it finally unlocked. He carefully shut it behind him, and then walked into House's apartment. His pulse still drummed loudly in his ears, and his breath came heavily in the newfound quietness.

Wilson started in the bedroom. There was one on the bedside table, that much was obvious, and one in the drawer of the bedside table, in case House ran out. He moved to the closet and rifled through House's clothes, listening for the clattering sound, and found none, then moved to the bathroom. He opened a drawer, and had to scoop up its entire contents and dump it in the plastic bag he was carrying with him. House could win a world record. He moved onto the next drawer. Razor blades, unopened boxes of toothpaste – bingo. Wilson tossed that one into the bag as well. In the living room, there was one on the piano, two under the coffee table, one under the cushions of the couch. Chances were that House didn't even know about those, but Wilson didn't want to take chances. He wanted to be sure.

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His nervousness died down a little, but they jumped back up and bit his hands with the jitters as soon as he heard the key turn in the lock, and those irregular footsteps approaching. "Hi, House," he said quickly, as House entered.

"Hi, Wilson," House mocked, throwing his helmet and jacket onto the couch, along with his keys. He rested heavily on it for a moment, then went into the bedroom. Wilson followed him.

"Your leg okay?" he asked cautiously.

"Yeah, it's fine," House answered, almost sincerely. "Except for this great, gaping hole there is where there used to be muscle. I think it's called an infarction. Or something."

Wilson started to reconsider his plan. House only talked in such fragmented sentences when h was in pain. House's sarcasm only leveled down from venomous, bruising and fantastically harsh to nipping and slightly cold when he was in too much pain to do anything but go through the motions. Maybe a Vicodin or two would help. "Um. Don't you have a Vicodin?"

"Um, no." House had used the mocking device twice in the same conversation; the situation was deteriorating. He had gotten to the stage where his breathing got ragged and he started to knead his leg in a desperate defense against the pain, which Wilson knew was only getting stronger. His chest was heaving, and his knuckles were white around his leg. Suddenly, Wilson was reminded of House during sex, but he urgently brushed that thought away.

"Should I get you something?" Wilson suggested slyly, wrestling with the want to just give it up and give House his pills. You need to know the truth. You need to know the truth. At what cost? Wilson cried to himself, but the golden words were already falling out of House's mouth:

"Get me…the shots."

Without letting himself pause and reconsider what he was doing, Wilson ran to the bookshelf and nearly dropped the box in his haste. He ripped the syringe free from its plastic cover and quickly tied the knot around House's upper arm. A quick look into House's eyes told Wilson that House knew exactly what he was doing…and that House was letting him do this. As he plunged the syringe into House's arm, he rested his forehead against House's and closed his eyes. "I'm sorry," he whispered against House's rough cheek, as his head collapsed onto Wilson's shoulder, followed by the rest of his long body.

See, because sodium thiopental is a truth drug. Used by the bad guys, and all that jazz. But that didn't really matter, because at that moment, Wilson was very much a bad guy. And he never cared too much for jazz, anyway. But the look of pain, plainly written across House's face in the harsh lines in gray and sweat, had almost broken his newly found, bad guy resolve. And watching House merely acquiesce to him was even worse, the salt and vinegar and acid poured on his raw wounds. He took a deep breath. "House, you know what I'm going to ask, right?"

House mumbled something incomprehensible, facedown on the duvet as he was. Wilson reached out a hand instinctively and turned him over gently. House exhaled deeply, eyes glazed over with the drug. Wilson took a deep breath himself, and let the question out in the long breath: "Were you telling me the truth, before? About Rurigawa?"

"Yes," House droned, struggling to sit up. "Yes, of course I was."

"Of course? What do you mean by that?" Wilson pressed, remembering that the questions had to be clear and precise. Under the influence of the drug, people couldn't read inflections or facial expressions as well as they usually could.

House finally managed to sit halfway up, supporting himself weakly on his hands. At Wilson's question, he stopped wriggling and swung his gaze toward Wilson. Again, the blue eyes were like magnets, drawing Wilson away from reality. Taking slow, measured steps, Wilson approached House cautiously, until House struggled to stand and Wilson caught him before he banged his head on the floor. He carefully removed him, lanky limb by lanky limb, and sat him back on the bed, leaning over him. House's head dropped again to Wilson's shoulder. "Because," House whispered woozily. "Couldn't lose you."

Wilson's internal organs, having been tied down with lead weights, suddenly bounced up so high he couldn't feel them anymore. "Why couldn't you lose me?" he asked, trying to keep his voice level.

"Don't know." Again, these words uttered in such sincerity shot a tremble across the back of Wilson's neck. "But I just know I can't lose you. I mean, honestly." Wilson ignored the irony in that last phrase. "For some strange reason, you've become…something. More. I mean. I guess." House was coming back to himself, eyes refocusing, fine motor skills returning. "Can't lose you," he murmured again. "Need you." He put his hand tentatively on Wilson's lower back, simultaneously numbing the area and making it tingle with hot electricity.

Wilson closed his eyes, shutting out the image of the fine, dark wood headboard against the pale blue wall, and the cobalt-tinged evening light flowing in through the window, and inhaled against the side of House's face. The stubble scraped his cheek in a welcome discomfort, and House's hands were pulling his hips closer, and all the while he was drinking in and drowning in the elegantly clean, piquant and zesty, rather sharp scent of House that encompassed him completely in a cloud of the familiar spiral out of control. If it was intoxicating to merely smell House, to taste House was another universe completely: the rich warmth of coffee coupled with the slight tang burning of alcohol, a little sandwich residue, the sticky sweetness of a few raspberry lollipops, and underneath it all, the lingering bitterness of Vicodin…

House pulled his hips closer and more urgently and firmly now, causing them both to fall heavily and awkwardly onto the bed. For a brief, clear moment, Wilson worried about House's leg, but then he was tugged back into the heat, and the world was spinning and twirling and doing mad pirouettes upside-down and backwards, but it felt right, and God, screw everything, forget last time, because now Wilson knew, and there was nothing else anywhere about anything that mattered more.

GHXJW

A/N: Feel free to shoot me. Although, do bear in mind, that if you shoot me, there won't be any more updates, no matter how late.