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Nothing Ever Changes
People never change, and they know that. It's the biggest reason they're even here, together in the only way they can be, instead of just House playing piano alone and dreaming of nothing; Wilson fucking another pretty nurse against a wall and telling himself that there's oblivion in every orgasm and it doesn't matter.
Nothing changes, but at times Wilson can't help but want it, for things to stop being quiet and stop being understanding and just kiss him violently and see what he could consume; if he could draw out more than quiet, nighttime confessions which mean nothing which mean everything. To not need to be drunk to see things clearly, spread out before him -- there'll be wife after wife after wife until no one wants him anymore and then there will just be House, still House, and why do they have to keep waiting?
"Sometimes I wonder when we're going to get exhausted enough to admit that it's always been us," Wilson tells him one night, his eyes fixed on the television and his hand curled tightly around a cool bottle of his own brand of painkiller. Because he's tired, and it's true that he's never as happy as he is with House, in the small, bachelorish apartment, with the L Word muted, illuminating empty chinesefood containers.
House stands and goes to bed and doesn't answer.
There's always been something about Wilson that makes House think that maybe he could suck out his soul. He doesn't mean that the way it sounds, in the manner of badly animated monsters in any of the trashy monster movies they watch, shoulder to shoulder, drunk enough that it doesn't matter and knowing that neither of them have to work in the morning. No, it's more like this -- he's afraid, in Wilson's mouth, that he'd lose himself.
If he'd felt that about anyone else and told his friend -- not that they talk about that sort of thing -- Wilson would spew some psycobabble about how House defines himself by his injury, how he's afraid of being happy; afraid that if he found someone who didn't care and understood and could really love him he wouldn't have anything to be miserable about anymore, and he'd have a point -- not that House would admit it. But it's more than that.
It'd be this impossible thing, kissing Wilson. He always feels rubbed raw as it is, by every careful touch they allow themselves; every time Wilson grabs his wrist to stop him from stealing food, or bats his hand away. Every time they fall into bed together, and somehow they end up turned away -- always turned away -- their backs resting against each other, and House still sober enough to close his eyes and name each muscle he feels tensed against him, to time the quickened beating of Wilson's heart.
He wouldn't be able to get away from it, is the thing. To give it up. If he let Wilson kiss him, that would be all, and he might just become one of the legion of nurses, each used up and lost, each with the same mantra stamped between her eyes -- I'll be the one to fix him. I'll be the one to keep him. I'll be the one who can make him stop spinning.
There's a time he makes the mistake of letting Wilson into his bed sober, after he warns House not to sit in that particular spot on the couch, and House realizes that he'd rather just sit on a pillow than move away. Wilson offers to lay down a towel or something, but House rolls his eyes and promises not to take advantage of him, and is almost shocked by the faint blush which comes over his friend's features, hardly visible in the darkness but so tantalizingly there. They undress awkwardly and face each other for once; Wilson's chin is tucked against his chest and his fingers ball around the sheets in unidentifiable frustration and neither of them move or speak until morning, and even then it's only House grumbling abut people getting sick too early and Wilson asking if House wants coffee, and though their hands brush as Wilson climbs out of bed, the only thing that serves to prove is that nothing ever fucking changes and nothing ever will.