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Just like everyone else, Wilson has had his fair share of random scars pop up when he’s not looking. They’re usually hailed by a faint, warm sensation followed by a brief itch, and then bam. He looks down and there’s a neat little line right by his left thumb, like somebody slipped with a kitchen knife.
His other scars are just as small and innocuous; a faint nick on his left knee, like his soulmate fell and got a little scraped up; a ragged but short mark on his calf, complete with the little circular marks of stitches; a long scrape down his elbow that heals with time.
Wilson himself only has his appendectomy scar and the spot where he’d cut his arm on a broken plate to contribute.
Small. Innocuous. Normal. The same kinds of scars other people boast.
And then he wakes up screaming one night.
It’s the first night in a while he’s actually spent in his bed instead of sleeping fitfully in his office, trying to pretend he wasn’t sticking around to check up on House. He’d have been in the chair by House’s bed but…well, that’s where Stacy had been. Wilson had fluttered around the edges of the scene. Usless. Worried.
They’d put House into the coma earlier that day. It was as good a time as any for Wilson to go home and get some real sleep, even if he’d tossed and turned for hours.
The pain is already receding but a bone deep ache is settling into it’s place. Wilson pulls the blankets aside and scrabbles with his boxers, fingers shaking.
Distantly he hears Bonnie’s voice, concerned, caring, but he can only stare in astonishment at the scar on his upper thigh. It’s ugly. Hideous, really, the edges of the incision pink and raised agianst a backdrop of mottled, purple skin. The shadows give an impression of depression, but Wilson knows all of his muscle is still there underneath it.
The same can’t be said for House. Miles away, his scar is still an open wound, held together with sutures and morphine, the skin slack and loose now over where all that muscle was taken out.
Wilson barely makes it to the bathroom before he’s sick. The anxiety of the past few days, the pain, this new realization, they all swim through his head until his eyes cross and he blessedly can’t see the toilet bowl in front of him.
Soft foot steps sound behind him, barely audible over his own heaving breath.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Bonnie says, quiet and upset. She obviously saw the scar, and James has been talking about House’s affliction enough that she can put two and two together. “I always thought…” Her voice trails off and Wilson closes his eyes against the accusation he hears there.
Things fall apart after that, despite the fact that he stays.
“He has Stacy!” he tells Bonnie a week later, tone high with desperation. “Even if he didn’t, he’s in a tough place right now, he doesn’t need this on his plate!”
“He needs his soulmate,” Bonnie replies. She stares him down, silent and judging but still full of love, and Wilson wishes he could cave.
But he can’t, and he doesn’t. He stays with her and runs their marriage into the ground even further. It’s easier that way.
With Julie, Wilson never mentions the scar and she never asks. She pauses, the first time they have sex, when his pants come all the way off. But her soulmate is dead and after a brief appraisal she seems to decide not to care. He never actually knows if she recognizes the scar as House’s or not.
And then that falls apart too, for similar reasons. Infidelity. His inability to put a wife first, no matter how much he tries.
His devotion to House.
Despite it all, he still can’t say anything. He doesn’t say anything when House drives Stacy away, and he doesn’t say anything when he realizes his best friend, his soulmate, tries to heal his disability through acquiring a Vicodin addiction.
He feels like a coward, but by the time he realizes he should have come clean from the beginning it’s far too late. You can’t hide a secret like being someone’s soulmate for years. That’s just not how it works. So he resolves himself to being the best damn best friend he can be and damnit he does a great job. And it’s not an easy job.
“Do you believe in all this soulmate crap?” House asks him one day. He’s seated as his desk, bad leg propped up, and he’s eyeing the cut on his palm that belongs to Wilson.
Wilson can feel himself freeze up. Soulmates are known, of course. There’s even plenty of science out there on them, but they’re still considered somewhat of a psuedo science. Accepted culturally but not held up on a complete pedestal because finding your soulmate in the first place is next to fucking impossible. It’s easier to believe that it’s the equivalent to astrology or acupuncture because then it hurts less when you can’t have it. It’s a pipe dream. Something that only happens to a lucky few.
Something that House has never truly believed in.
Something Wilson can’t believe he’s lucky enough to have, and has yet managed to throw away.
“Why do you ask?” Wilson says, instead of giving a straight answer. He’s carefully not looking at his own hand, but he can feel himself rubbing absently at the line on his thumb. It’s amazing, really, that House hasn’t seen their matching scars and picked up on it already, even if the two visible ones are super tiny. House is normally so quick to pick up things like that, especially things nobody actually wants him to see. It’s kind of his speciality.
House drops his hand and cocks his head at Wilson. Fuck, he’s peaked House’s interest. “Your dating and marriage record say you don’t believe in soulmates, but your soft, squishy nature suggests otherwise.”
“Why is this just coming up now?”
“Call me curious,” House says dully. Despite his tone the blue of his eyes is bright, interested.
Wilson rolls his neck but knows if he keeps sidestepping, it’ll make House hound the question harder. “I…believe in them,” he admits. Reluctant.
“And yet you’ve married three separate times.”
“I said I believe in them general, not that I believe in one for me.”
“You’re lying,” House hums. “Interesting.”
This is the last conversation Wilson wants to be having. It’s been a long day, he’s tired, the sun is dying on the horizon and House’s office is filled with warm, sleepy light, shadows dancing just at the corners of the room. They’re supposed to go out for drinks after this, finish winding the day down. Instead Wilson has a hand on the back of his neck, gaze fixed on the ceiling.
House levers himself laboriously to his feet and miraculously drops the issue. “Let’s go get drunk.”
Wilson can’t agree quickly enough.
oOo
Of course, House never drops a matter entirely. Not until he’s completely solved it anyways. The next day he grabs Wilson’s hand while they’re in the elevator together and starts inspecting it.
Surprise keeps Wilson from puling away a second too late.
“Huh,” House says conversationally. “The scar on your palm. Yours or you soulmates?”
Wilson shoots him a glare, superstitiously rubbing his hands on his pants, like he can erase House’s touch that way. Unfortunately it reminds him of the scar on his thigh, and he winces a little. “Some people would consider that a rude, invasive question,” he says, then sighs. “It’s mine.”
He’d considered lying, but House would probably just call him on it again, and then dig deeper to figure out why he’d lied. Better to tell the truth and let House come to his own conclusions.
But the bastard just drawls, “Fascinating,” right as the elevator dings, and his limps away without another word.
Wilson stands there staring for so long he ends up on the wrong floor. He’s got a bad fucking feeling about this.
oOo
Somehow, Wilson’s plan to distract House with an interesting case actually works. All talk of soulmates disappears.
oOo
And then everything goes wrong. Because of course it does, and of course House isn’t ever completely put off a scent once he’s found it. He’s like a fucking hunting dog that way. Or a heat seeking missile.
Wilson gets cornered in his office before the day has even truly begun. House barges in like a hurricane, systematically locking both doors and closing all the blinds. That done, he whirls on Wilson, pointing his cane threateningly at him. “Drop em.”
Wilson cocks an eyebrow, but there’s something heavy growing in the pit of his stomach. He knows where this is going but damn if he isn’t going to fight it. “Excuse me?”
Early morning light filters between and underneath the closed blinds, the only light in the room. It highlights the sharpness of House’s cheekbones, the narowness of his jaw. The knobby points of his wrists stick out from uneven, wrinkled cuffs and his eyes look nearly luminous in his grey face.
“You heard me.” The thin lips twist up in a smile. “Drop your pants.”
The gig is up, he knows. But Wilson isn’t going to make this easy for him. He leans back in his chair and sighs. “I didn’t think I’m due for my prostate exam for, oh, another decade or so?”
“If I wanted office sex I would have just come right out and said it, Jimmy.”
“You got office sex out of a prostate exam?”
House finally lowers the cane and leans heavily against it, fingers tapping at his good thigh. “Oh, is that not what the kids are calling anal these days?”
Wilson rubs at his face with one hand. Trapped in his own damn office. He’s faster than House, sure, but that cane has a lot of reach and his friend has no morals.
“What is this all about, House?”
The thin chin tilts up. “Oh, you know what this is about. You’ve known for years.”
Wilson can feel the way his lips press tighter together, but he says nothing. That doesn’t deter House, who starts pacing closer to the desk, eyes narrowing as he speaks.
“The question now is whether you knew before or after the infarction. I’m going to guess after. A few similar marks on the hands does not a soul mate make, but a huge, ugly surgery scar? Yeah, that’s hard to miss.”
House pauses his approach and hitches his shirt up on one side. “Remind me when we got this one again?” he says, lips pursing into an almost pout. It’s the same appendectomy scar Wilson has, of course, a one inch incision down and to the right of his belly button. It looks better on House’s flatter stomach.
Rather than answer Wilson stares at the scar and tries not to feel like his entire world is coming down around his ears. He never wanted this to happen. He was perfectly content with their completely platonic, occasionaly flirtatious relationship. Miserable, but content.
The shirt falls back into place. Shirts, actually. A button down actually done up for once, and the white undershirt hidden beneath. Wilson catalogues both of these things a little numbly and doesn’t look up until House’s fingers are snapping directly in his face.
“Excuse me,” House says acerbically, “I believe we were having a conversation.”
Wilson pulls himself together again, slipping seamlessly from world shattering to annoyance. House tends to have that effect on people. “No, you were accusing me of being your soulmate.”
“Accusing,” House muses. He’s sitting partially on the desk now, leaning forward into Wilson’s space. “Interesting word choice. Feeling guilty are we? Because you don’t want to be my soulmate, or because you never told me when you should have?”
Of course Wilson manages to give the answer away without meaning to. He’s not even sure what he did; twitch, maybe? Blink? Breathe the wrong way. Whatever it is, House’s expression lights up.
“Definitely the second. Which means you don’t actually mind being my soulmate yet you kept that juicy little detail to yourself for years. Curioser and curioser, Jimmy.”
“I don’t suppose I could convince you to stop analyzing me like I’m some interesting case of yours?” Wilson tries weakly.
Predictably, House doesn’t rise to the question. His gaze drops to Wilson’s lap instead, and his tone is a little more ragged this time when he says, “Drop em.”
It’s not a sexual thing despite the way his friend’s voice has dropped an octave. Wilson presses his lips together and considers boarding a plane to Mexico and never returning.
Instead he stands, hands moving to his waist line. He pauses there for a moment, worried, but pushes the concern away. House isn’t going to be deterred by a little anxiety on his part. With deft movements he undoes his slacks, pulls the fly down, lets the warm material slide down to mid-thigh. He leaves them there, hooking a thumb under the leg of his boxers and pulling it up. Less embarrassing than taking the boxers off entirely, and it gets the job done. They don’t move up far enough to reveal the scar entirely, too tight for that, but the bottom half of it, skin mottled dark purple, the bottom line of the incision, is perfectly visible.
House’s stare is intense. Scrutinizing. A long, silent moment passes before he says, quietly, “I want to see the whole thing.”
It’s a bad idea. The blinds may be drawn, the doors locked, but they’re still at work. He can’t get partially naked in his own office, not even for House.
But he’s going to apparently. With a protest grumble he pushes the boxers down too, now thoroughly embarrassed. There’s a flush on his cheeks, he can tell, but he’s more worried about House’s reaction to this. Anger? Shame? Hatred? He has every right to be upset with Wilson. Wilson hasn’t exactly been discreet since the mark appeared; he’s slept with plenty of women and only cared that they didn’t know who the scar belonged to, not that they saw it. But it was never his scar to reveal in the first place.
Or maybe House won’t be able to look at him now. He hates the scar after all, is self conscious about it,and now he knows Wilson is walking around with the same damn thing albeit an undamaged version. He gets all the perks of having full use of his leg, and not particularly caring what his thigh looks like, without any of the downfall. House, meanwhile, has chronic pain and a limp Wilson will never have to deal with.
But House doesn’t look upset or disgusted. His expression is blank, but not in a bad way. It looks more like his thoughts are simply running too quickly for him to remember to emote properly. After a moment he levers himself up off the desk and comes around. It makes Wilson tense up. He feels ridiculous standing there with his pants and underwear pulled down around his thighs. The air in the room is cool on sensitive skin and he can feel goosebumps crawling along his thighs.
“Uh, House,” he says nervously when the other man slowly, laboriously droops to his knees in front of him.
“Relax,” House rasps. “I’m not down here to suck your cock.”
“Why would you even say that!?” Wilson exclaims, then tilts his head back so he can’t see what’s happening. Damn House for putting the idea of blow jobs into his head. Not that the position reminded him of anything else, but at least if House hadn’t said anything Wilson would have been able to pretend that wasn’t where his thoughts were.
A touch on his thigh makes him jerk a little in surprise. It’s right below the scar, and House’s fingers are warm. Wilson resolutely keeps his gaze on the ceiling, refusing to glance down and see that salt and pepper head kneeling in front of him.
At least the cold air is helping. That and fear.
The touch moves upwards, not hesitant exactly, but slow. It traces the rectangular outline of the scar, then follows the line of the puckered incision.
Wilson focuses on keeping his breathing even.
House’s palm covers the scar next, like he’s trying to see Wilson’s thigh without it there. He knows from experience that the scar is too big to be covered by one hand though, knows that the mottled purple peeks between spread fingers and around the edges of the palm.
What he isn’t expecting is the warm breath he suddenly feels on his hipbone, several inches above House’s hand and the scar. Wilson’s heart picks up it’s pace and he waits, tense, unsure, until he feels warm lips press against the sensitive skin.
That’s when he finally looks down again, unable not to.
House is looking up at him, lips pressed to Wilson’s hip, blue eyes narrow but sparkling. He’s not sure with what. It’s an alluring sight, too alluring really. House’s mouth is right there and he’s leaning his weight against Wilson’s leg, a heavy, warm presence. Intimate.
Then House opens his mouth and bites him. Hard.
“Ow!” Wilson protests, loudly, but he doesn’t pull away even as House starts worrying to abused flesh lightly between his teeth. “What the hell, House?”
The other man backs off, but not before delivering a wet, noisy kiss to the quickly bruising mark. He grins up at Wilson, all devious smile and wrinkles around his eyes.
“Can I pull my pants up now?” Wilson, trying and failing not to be moved by that expression.
“No,” House replies easily, then sticks up a hand. “Help me up. Consider the partial nudity a punishment for keeping this from me.”
Wilson rolls his eyes and pulls his pants up anyways, taking the time to button everything again before he helps House up off the floor. Then he stands there awkwardly, hands on his hips, not quite sure what to do. This changes things between them, obviously, but how? What the fuck has any of this interaction meant?
House sighs dramatically. “Stop overhinking, you’re terrible at it.”
“Well excuse me for being confused,” he snaps, though it lacks any heat.
“Want me to break it down for you?’
Wilson spreads his arms and rolls his head back to regard the ceiling again. “Oh, great House, please bestow your wisdom upon us mere mortals!” he declares, then drops his arms and stares the other man down. “Seriously. What is all this? Why do you care if I’m your soulmate or not? You don’t care about them.”
House grabs his cane from where it was resting against the desk, then leans both arms on it. His leg is probably hurting from that little stunt, but he’s not reaching for his pills so obviously Wilson has his full attention. “Who said I don’t care about soulmates?”
“Uh…everything about you?” Wilson tries incredulously. He’s going for levity, but House just turns his head to the side a little, eyes flickering slowly around the room. It’s a sign of vulnerability for him. Openness.
“Oh my god, you do believe in soulmates,” Wilson says in a soft rush.
It makes House’s shoulders hunch a little, but he’s not retreating completely. Good, he started this damn conversation, he better finish it.
“Maybe I’m like you,” House says after a moment, slowly. “Maybe I believed, but I didn’t believe in one for me.”
Wilson sucks in a sharp breath and lets that sit in the air between them for a moment, unsure what to do with it. Finally he asks, tentatively, “And now? Now that you know it’s me?”
House finally looks up again, locks gazes with him. There’s uncertainly in those blue depths, and it’s shaking Wilson to his core to have House this bared in front of him. Because of him.
“I need to know why you didn’t tell me.” A deflection, but a relevant one. If Wilson says he never wanted House as a soulmate then this ends right here. If he tells the truth…well, there’s no telling, but there are clues lurking in the emotions in the shape of House’s shoulders, the tapping of his fingers, the curve of his lithe frame.
“You had Stacy,” Wilson says, gesturing stupidly with one hand. “I knew after…after the surgery and you still had her and you didn’t, didn’t need all of that on your plate right then.”
“Didn’t need my soulmate?”
“Didn’t need to be worrying about your sexuality in the middle of a crisis.”
“Soulmates don’t necessarily have to be romantic. Sometimes they present as platonic relationships, you know that.”
Wilson’s lips thin. “You just kissed me, I think you know this isn’t presenting platonically.”
“I kissed your hip,” House corrects.
“While I was partially naked!” Wilson shakes his head to clear it. “We’re getting off topic. Look, I knew I had romantic feelings for you, but I didn’t think too much of them until the scar appeared. And then I figured it wasn’t something you needed to deal with, and also that you had a serious girlfriend, and by the time you were out of crises and Stacy was gone it was already too late.”
Jutting his chin out stubbornly, House steps up into his personal space. He’s taller than Wilson, only by a little, but it still means Wilson has to tilt his head back a bit.
“It’s never too late,” House murmurs, completely serious now.
“Well now you tell me,” Wilson jokes quietly. It doesn’t work. The set of House’s jaw is still there, and his gaze is searching.
“Tell me now,” he demands.
Something in Wilson wants to protest. House already knows, the cat’s out of the bag, the game is up. What’s the point in telling him now? But he can also tell when something is simply about a principal and not the actual matter. Wilson squares his own jaw, setting his shoulders. Firmly, making eye contact, he says, “Gregory House, you’re my soulmate.”
Those blue eyes flicker over his face for a long, tense second. And then House is breaking into a smile. “About damn time,” he mutters, then he’s leaning in to kiss Wilson and there’s no time for him to over think this anymore.