Fic: Hugs and Kisses
Title: Hugs and Kisses
Author: rainbow_romeo
Pairing: House/Wilson pre-slash or a very, very strange kind of friendship
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I just borrowed a few names and facts. Nothing and nobody belongs to me.
Summary: This is a better summary than any description I could come up with.
A/N: Since hockypocky is awesome and drew a very, very cool picture for me when I asked, I got inspired and I wrote the fic I promised I’d write. So the general idea is really not quite mine, well, it’s a mixture now. =)
Also, I haven’t really written anything in months so the beginning is awful, but it already took me two tries to get this and I really wanted to get to the actual story. Just ignore the post-writer’s block-awkwardness. Comments would be very nice!
There were a lot of things he had given up since he had admitted himself to Mayfield all those months ago. The most obvious was - of course - the Vicodin. Though as much as that surprised even the people closest to him, giving up on the pills had been the fairly easy part.
But there were so many things his doctors thought he’d needed parting from! The booze, the addiction to conflict, the search for a puzzle to solve in every thing and person… It looked like they’d declared his whole life unhealthy.
House snorted with a tiny smirk on his face. Just thinking about all the little things he’d been advised to change, just because those doctors had had no clue whether an opiate addiction was worse than a little curiosity, was hilarious. It wasn’t like he thought about it all that often, but it was late and he was allowed some brooding introspection.
He had, however, won over those “flaws”. Some took longer than others, but Gregory House was always stronger than anyone else and, as Nolan had philosophically joked, House was even stronger than he himself.
Only one thing was still out of reach and that was any kind of normalcy in achieving his goals. Whether it was about getting his new and now old neighbor to accept him or testing the relationship between his boss and his old friend. He needed to plot. He needed complex scenarios that kept his mind busy. With the amount of calculation and a pre-planned meaning for any kind obedience or defiance to his reason, his plans had every right to be called elaborate, but unhealthy?
Unhealthy! How he despised it, when people called his habits that! It wasn’t like he was snorting cocaine or jumping out of airplanes. But he’d decided to give the therapy thing a try, he couldn’t just back out now.
And all of this brought him to this here moment. The oncology lounge, 2 am, a Thursday. The endless string of cancer ridden patients had provided Wilson with yet another cute little kid, fighting against his own body. House had helped him diagnose paraneoplastic syndrome and after the usual search one of the boy’s testicles was being sliced up by Chase.
According to Wilson, the 13 year old needed a positive male figure as soon as he was conscious again and since he claimed Chase to be emotionally unavailable, the task had to be his own. House thought that was hilarious, too, but he wasn’t in the mood to go home alone.
Fortunately Wilson had stopped thinking it was a good idea to call him on little weaknesses like this, so now they were spending the night on a sofa. Drinking coffee, sometimes paying attention to the TV on the wall, holding an on-again-off-again conversation between them. Right now, though, House was preoccupied. He made himself analyze every situation he could think of, any change since Mayfield, because he was strong - damn it - and he was able not to plot if he was determined not to.
The thing was that the situation at hand needed a way of resolving itself, but every time he had an idea, it turned into a scenario worthy of a soap opera instead of an act of spontaneity.
First there had been the old thing about the spilled coffee. He could correct the way he was sitting, bouncing on the cushions to let the warm beverage in Wilson’s cup spill all over the man’s shirt. But then that thought turned into another one and soon he was trying to find the right interpretation for the outcome that Wilson would rather wear scrubs than take the button down shirt House was wearing and would offer to his friend.
That idea was spoiled, so he’d needed another one. He’d thought about getting up to refill Wilson’s cup as soon as it was empty. However, he’d immediately seen the scene in his head, Wilson asking if he was feeling okay, teasing him gently, but standing up all the same when House’s cup would be empty a few minutes later, filling it up for him as a thank you. What would it mean if the other man brought along a poptart for him? What would it mean if he didn’t? Was he preoccupied enough with the cancer-kid-case that not getting him a poptart wouldn’t really mean anything or would Wilson stray from his usual mothering self to remind House that one little gesture from him didn’t mean Wilson would try and thank him with something bigger?
No, that one wasn’t any good either.
House’s problem was that he really, really needed something to change. See, Wilson was drinking very hot coffee. So until the coffee was cooled down a bit, he would take a very small sip, wait until the heat in his mouth and throat was starting to fade and then take another sip. In itself that wasn’t too bad, but for the last minutes the coffee had obviously reached the temperature where the warmth wouldn’t take too long to evaporate and Wilson didn’t feel like putting the cup down just to bring it up to his mouth every few seconds.
That was where his problem originated. Wilson was holding the edge of the cup against his lips and every time he tipped it back to drink his lips would open around the ceramic and pucker slightly.
Wilson was kissing his damn coffee cup!
In only a few minutes House had contemplated every change he’d made since Mayfield, had thought about everything he’d accomplished, everything that had happened to make his recovery harder or easier, just so he didn’t have to acknowledge the fact that Wilson was kissing his coffee cup. Generally those thoughts were enough, but he’d used that tactic to damn often and it didn’t really need much focus or time and he couldn’t keep himself from glancing over to his friend. His last resort before starting to think of ways to break up the situation had been loudly singing in his mind to drown out that part of his brain screaming “Why can’t I be his coffee cup?” and “I’m warm and I taste good - why isn’t he kissing me?”.
It hadn’t helped. But he wasn’t allowed to plot, he had to do something without thinking it through beforehand.
He could just ask Wilson to stop doing it. No, he would have to explain why and if he told him a lie, Wilson would start interpreting that himself and then…
He could stand up and turn his back at him. No, he would still know Wilson was doing it and he would begin picturing it in his head and that would lead to very bad and more explicit mind-movies…
He could start up the conversation again and distract Wilson. No, the other man would just answer him, but take even more little sips while House was talking and then he would lose his thought and embarrass himself and…
“You could ask him to kiss you instead” was what that stupid screaming part of his brain came up with and he thought about if for all of two seconds before dismissing the idea. Yeah, talking about it, not keeping it in his head, including Wilson in his problems was what he had been advised to do, but…
It was just stupid and he didn’t want to.
A sigh escaped House’s lips as he started yelling a hard rock version of the Stones’ “I think I’m going mad” to counteract the effect of the stupid screaming of “I wanna be your man” in his head. Feeling Wilson’s gaze, he slouched down until he could lean forward and rest his elbows on the conveniently high table. Then he tried mocking the whole department of Oncology for thinking about being able to work of all things when purchasing their lounge furniture, but not even that was helping a whole lot.
Maybe the talking thing would be the right way to go. Talking always meant a certain degree of spontaneity and it was okay to think about what reaction his words would provoke, because he was supposed to think about whether his words would hurt before saying them, so he could maybe rephrase.
“Why aren’t you down in surgery, watching your little testi-kid?”
That was good. It was fairly teasing, so it didn’t sound like he was trying too hard, but it wasn’t as mean as openly prodding and ridiculing Wilson’s overly caring nature. Now, if Wilson got up and did go to watch the kid, it probably meant that he was feeling guilty or that he…
“It’s not just a twenty minute procedure and there are no comfortable chairs up in the theater. Chase is capable and he’s not too keen on being watched.”
It was a good answer, too. It didn’t really reveal anything other than yet another demonstration of his trying to please people. House snorted softly in reply, hoping Wilson didn’t quite notice that he took some time to react, because he hadn’t just listened to his words, he’d heard “…theater - sip - Chase is capable - sip - and he’s…” with a longer sip at the very end of his statement.
Not that he was actually hearing anything, because Wilson wasn’t slurping, but he noticed the small pauses and was overwhelmed with short visions of lips closing around white ceramic in slow motion under a giant magnifying glass, complete with sound effects of waves of coffee meeting skin.
House thought he was pretty pathetic when he was like this, almost as pathetic as that other part of his brain, the screaming, screeching part.
“You could go home, you know. You could take a cab, I’d be okay here.”
Sip. Words. Words. Sip. Words. Sip.
He was starting to sound muffled, not taking the cup away from his lips to talk, not moving his lips too much. It sounded quite like people did when they tried to say something into a kiss, still maintaining contact, kissing and talking at the same time.
Wilson was still kissing his coffee cup, now going from little pecks to full contact, lips pressing, minute long kisses!
And he was trying to send House home, like he wanted to have privacy with his cup and make love to it!
“No. I’ve stayed this long and I’d probably pee pure coffee right now, it’s not like I could go to sleep anyway.”
That was okay, too, he decided. It was a little more open than necessary or normal, but they’d talked about his problems with going to sleep before and it wasn’t much of a secret. Wilson liked it when he was fairly honest and admitting something he knew was true often distracted him from considering the idea House was still lying.
And he was. He just really didn’t feel like being home alone, it was still weird to be at the loft without Wilson. The younger man had spend all his time recovering after the partial liver transplant in their new home, so whenever House had come from work, Wilson had been there, whenever he’d left, he’d heard Wilson in the loft, like a promise to still be there when he came back. He didn’t like the new apartment without Wilson in it.
No, those thoughts didn’t help either, even though they normally distracted him from just about anything because of their pure craziness.
Wrapping both hands around his own cup, he slouched even more, resting part of his upper body comfortably on the table. Of course the warmth emitting from the ceramic reminded him of Wilson making out with his cup and he carefully lifted his head, throwing a cautious glance at his friend.
Still kissing. Oh, and looking at House. He averted his gaze.
Damn it, he really wanted that to be him. The stupid screaming thing in his head - he wanted to call it crazy, but that would mean the whole of his brain and that didn’t quite fit, did it? - was doing quite a job convincing him that there was nothing he wanted more than to be a dumb coffee cup.
It was stupid.
And he was a lot better than a boring ceramic cup and he’d chewed on one of those chocolate mint thingies Wilson had bought from a group of girl scouts so he tasted much, much better than boring coffee.
Wilson was stupid, just like the cup and the coffee and the damn screaming part of his brain.
______________________________________________
It was already after 3 am and he was starting to grow tired despite all the caffeine circling through his body. It was tempting to slouch down like House had done, but the table was hard and there wasn’t enough space on the sofa to curl up.
Little Evan had survived the first hour of surgery and as promised one of the nurses who was not actually assisting, only watching in case they needed another pair of hands, had sent him a page, telling him Chase had gotten the whole tumor, as soon as the surgeon was beginning to close him up again. The worst part of waiting was over, because there hadn’t been any complications, and now he could relax until Evan was post-op and woke up.
After an extensive yawn and stretch he looked at his best friend, who was still intend on keeping him company. Again House was watching him - he had been for the last two cups of coffee and if it had been anyone else, he was sure he’d have gone crazy already. But it was House and sometimes you just had to let him do what he wanted without making him explain. It was obvious that the older man wasn’t in a mischievous mood, so it wasn’t like there was any danger in being stared at.
He actually quite liked it.
House was cradling his own cup - now containing hot chocolate instead of coffee, no, Wilson had no clue why - and resting his head on one arm. Wilson allowed himself to study the picture for a moment. His friend’s hands were just so huge! They were wrapped around the whole cup, making it look so much smaller than it was and they also kind of looked like they were embracing the bright red ceramic mug.
House was hand-hugging his hot chocolate! He smiled and drank the rest of his coffee, placing the cup onto the desk in front of them. That thought was incredibly sweet, as was the image of House giving a ginormous cup a full body hug.
Actually, Wilson was feeling a bit like a hug.
“I didn’t think that would be possible, but I think I’m going to fall asleep in spite of the coffee.”
In reply House sat up and threw him a questioning look, probably thinking Wilson wanted to go home. He didn’t really have the time to contemplate what he was doing, because seconds later he was gently shaking his head no and grabbed House’s arm. Pulling the other man with him, Wilson pressed himself into the corner of the small sofa and turned his suddenly stunned friend around. Another few seconds later, he was resting his arms on House’s front, having forced him into a back-to-front-hug.
There really was no other way of getting a House-hug. Sometimes you just had to take what you wanted. And Wilson knew that sometimes, House kind of, maybe liked to be forced.
End.