Chapter Two

House was having a good day. Rachel had been less of a terror than usual when he'd had to babysit her while Lisa showered and dressed and made breakfast and left early for work. He discovered that she'd bought his favourite cereal at the store, so he'd had a good breakfast, and when he got to work she even gave him a really interesting case. After doing a differential with his team, he got to sit in his office and play his PSP while they did the grunt work. Being a department head totally rocked.

Around noon Wilson popped into his office and offered to get lunch with him.

This surprised House. Over the last couple of months they'd only had lunch together a handful of times. Wilson often claimed to be busy, and once House started seeing Cuddy he sometimes ate with her.

However, he knew that today she would be in meetings all day because she had complained about it to him earlier. He'd smirked satisfactorily because he never went to meetings. So, with a shrug, House used his cane to push himself out of his chair and followed his friend down to the cafeteria.

Something was still different. It wasn't...awkward per se, but the atmosphere lacked the usual comfort House felt whenever he was in the room with Wilson. He wondered if maybe this was a good thing. Maybe if he and Wilson...grew apart, then his feelings for the man might dissipate and it would be easier for him to focus on his relationship with Lisa.

But of course, he didn't want himself and Wilson to grow apart. Even if they couldn't be lovers, he still wanted to be best friends with the younger man, see him every day...well...until the day he died.

What he didn't want, though, was to continue to have romantic feelings for his friend. He was with Lisa now. He had romantic feelings for her, and he wanted her to be the only one for whom he had those feelings. The night of the Trenton disaster, when she'd come to his apartment and they'd begun a relationship, she'd said she was in love with him and wished she wasn't. House knew exactly how she felt because, now more than ever, he wished he wasn't in love with Wilson.

And that's what he was thinking about as the two men quietly rode the elevator down to get lunch. House was staring at the doors, Wilson at the buttons. Neither spoke. House guessed neither could think of anything to say.

Wilson paid for House's lunch, as usual, and they sat down at their usual table. They still hadn't said anything except for when Wilson had hesitated over whether or not to buy a brownie and House talked him into it because the older man would just eat most of it anyway.

House kept looking over at Wilson, but every time they made eye contact both looked away rather quickly. Instead he settled for watching people in the lunch line. His eye was immediately drawn to two laughing, chatting women wearing scrubs. One of them, the blonde, he knew was a paeds doctor and he was pretty sure the other one was a nurse, though he wasn't sure which department. Both looked to be in their early thirties and were quite attractive.

"Wilson," House muttered, and the oncologist looked up from his sandwich. He nodded his head toward the women. "Which one, if you had to pick?"

Wilson looked over at them and his face broke into a smile. "If I could have either?" he clarified.

House rolled his eyes. "Duh. And not based on neediness, which one you think would made a more lasting relationship. Just sex, just looks."

Still grinning for some reason, Wilson watched them from a distance. "The blonde," he decided eventually.

"Got a thing for blondes?" House asked, unscrewing the cap on his soda.

"No, not really," the other responded with a shrug. "She just...I don't know, they're both pretty..."

"Blonde's tits are bigger," House observed. "But I don't know if I'd want to do a pregnant chick."

Wilson coughed. "She's not pregnant!" he said, looking over at them again.

"She's pregnant," House contradicted. "Swollen breasts, circles under her eyes, she's fatigued–"

"–or she's just exhausted from working a sixty hour week and she's got large breasts."

"She went for the salad," House explained. "No meat because the idea nauseates her right now–"

"–or she's a vegetarian–"

"–but she's also getting the chocolate cake," he continued. "Cause she's got a craving. So overall, I'd take the brunette," he decided.

"Well good luck with either of them," Wilson muttered. "The brunette is a lesbian and I'm pretty sure the blonde is her partner."

"No way," House said, swivelling his head again and then shaking it, watching as they paid for their food. "You're just saying that 'cause I said she was pregnant. You're trying to one-up me."

"I'm not entirely sure about the blonde," Wilson said, looking at his food instead of the women again, "But trust me, the brunette is a lesbian. I asked her out a few months ago."

House stopped staring at the women to stare at Wilson. "You asked her out?" he clarified, nodding at the nurse.

Wilson nodded. "Unless she was just brushing me off."

The diagnostician rolled his eyes. "When in your life has anyone ever brushed you off? They get in line to do you. All you have to do is give them that ridiculous crooked smile of yours and they find you irresistible."

The ridiculous crooked smile made its way onto Wilson's face at the compliment, causing House to roll his eyes again. "Well it's not gonna work on me," he said. "I'm already taken." That, and the fact that he was already in love with Wilson and seeing the smile again made about as much difference as pouring a glass of water into the ocean.

"I wasn't trying to–" Wilson started to say, but then he laughed, and House smiled in return. All right, maybe seeing Wilson in such good spirits had an effect on him after all. And then he realised that suddenly things were back to normal between them. He decided it was the laughing that did it, and reached over to steal one of Wilson's fries.

"So you think they're having a baby together?" he asked, leaning forward in the excitement of the gossip. "Or is Blondie a closet bisexual and cheating?"

Wilson chuckled again. "Let's hope for both of their sakes it was planned. Jessica's a nurse in OB-GYN; if you can tell the woman's pregnant from fifty feet away, she probably can."

.

Despite the rocky start to the lunch, overall it put House in a cheerful mood. He spent the rest of the afternoon pestering Wilson with emails and instant messages when he wasn't diagnosing his patient, and when Cuddy bribed him with sexual favours to go do his clinic hours (well, she actually threatened to cut House off from sex until he did his clinic hours, but his view was more lewd so that was the one he chose) he called the oncologist for a unnecessary consult just to annoy him.

Since he got home before Lisa, House decided to make her dinner, priding himself on multi-tasking even though he wasn't really sure leaving Rachel in her playpen constituted babysitting. The cooking would have been more fun with Wilson, yes, or at least if Wilson would be around to eat it, but he tried not to think about that. Lisa would be around to eat it, and she would be even more appreciative because he was also making a toddler-friendly meal for Rachel.

He could be just as good a boyfriend to her as Lucas had been. He could be responsible. He often chose not to, but that didn't mean he was incapable. House wanted the relationship with Lisa to work. He was willing to put forth the effort to make it work. When he'd had a good day, he was even more willing to put forth the extra effort to make it work. Lisa would not regret breaking her engagement with Lucas for him.

A fancy dinner for himself and Lisa, a nutritional but still edible dinner for Rachel: House's girlfriend would be thrilled when she got home. And he even decided to be a tiny bit romantic and light candles on the dining room table. She would like that. And as he lit them, keeping them out of reach of Rachel, who was eating in her high chair, it occurred to him that this was the sort of thing he could never do in a relationship with Wilson. If Wilson were bisexual and in love with him, (a scenario he tried to envision as infrequently as possible, with limited success) yes, he could make him a fancy dinner, but he couldn't light candles. Sure, Wilson was secretly a girl and would think candles with dinner were totally romantic and would love them. He would appreciate them, but he would also get smug and smirky. Even if he wouldn't outright mock House for his romantic gesture, he would somehow, probably more through glances than words, call attention to the fact that House, who prided himself on being anti-sappy, was doing something sweet. This would...well, it wouldn't embarrass him because House didn't get embarrassed easily, but it would make him uncomfortable enough to regret the decision. And he wouldn't do it again.

Lisa, however, could just take the candles at face value, appreciate it, and love him for it. So he lit candles.

House was setting Rachel down from her high chair when Lisa came home. "Hey," she greeted, setting her keys and purse down and joining them in the dining room.

"Mamma!" Rachel squealed, toddling over to her has fast as her small legs could carry her. Lisa scooped her daughter up in a hug and placed a kiss on her cheek.

"How come she gets one and I don't?" House smirked in a mock-whiney voice, causing Lisa to laugh before making her way over to him.

She kissed his cheek like she had with Rachel before moving her lips to his ear and whispering, "You'll be getting much more than that after she goes to bed, I promise."

House grinned. "I made dinner," he said proudly while Lisa set her now-squirming daughter back on the ground.

"Thank you," Lisa said with a genuine smile. "Why don't you go set the table while I change, and then we can eat?"

He nodded and she gave him another quick peck on the side of the mouth before heading down to their bedroom.

When she returned, barefoot with jeans and a V-neck tee but still foxy, she noticed the candles and fancy setup and smiled at House.

"You did all this for me?" she asked, moving to wrap her arms around him.

He shrugged and hugged her back. "I was in a good mood today," he explained.

She kissed his cheek again. "Thank you, Greg. This is so nice."

They ate dinner in relative peacefulness, Lisa complaining good-naturedly about the meetings she'd been in all day, House telling her about the clinic patient who'd been too stupid to notice that her husband had replaced her birth control pills with candy so she'd get pregnant.

Rachel interrupted dinner, of course, but Lisa was finished eating by then and she took the toddler to get ready for bed while House stacked the dishes in the sink for Lisa to clean later (he was in a good mood, not a fantastic mood) and watched TV.

She joined him on the sofa after about a half-hour. She took his hand in hers and kissed it. "Thank you for dinner, Greg. It was wonderful."

"Sure," he muttered. She cuddled up against him and he slipped an arm around her shoulders. They watched the programme in companionable silence for awhile, but when it ended House decided he was more interested in the woman sitting next to him than whatever was on next.

He began to kiss her, softly at first, but it soon gave way to harsher, needier movements. She was just as into it as he was—one thing he loved about her, she was never just 'not in the mood' for sex. Stacy had been the same way. House had good taste in women. Or maybe he was just that sexy. He started wondering whether Wilson would ever not be in the mood for sex if they were in a relationship and decided that no, he was just as horny as House and they would probably do it at least twice a day. Then he remembered that he wasn't in a relationship with Wilson, he would never be in a relationship with Wilson, he was with Lisa, and right now her tongue was in his mouth and she was the one wrapping her arms around him and pulling him on top of her onto the sofa. He reached a hand around to cup her breast through her shirt and moved his mouth away from hers to kiss her neck and upper chest. She made him stop for a second so she could take her shirt off, and he grinned down at her breasts and forgot about Wilson.