Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Wilson who wandered in to work the next day was visibly weighed down by a depressed torpor.

“Donut?” House offered upon arrival.

“Don’t you mean…half a donut?” Wilson corrected, giving the gift a passing glance.

“It’s at least two thirds. I was just checking for poison.” House pushed the unbitten end closer to Wilson’s grim, plainly lipsticked mouth (her most boring shade of dark beige, not a great sign).

“You’re the only one likely to poison my food, House.”

“And I pinky promise there’s only a teensy bit of arsenic in the glaze. C’mon,” House hip-checked Wilson and Wilson froze up, frown cementing. “Accept my peace offering.”

“No.”

“You really that bummed you didn’t get a chance to slobber on your ex’s dick last night?” House inquired, all thoughtful sensitivity.

“Since you can’t separate sex from emotional intimacy…yes, House. That’s pretty close to why I’m upset.” Wilson closed the explanation and the office door in House’s face.

After checking in with her team to confirm that no one had reached a scale of intensity and interest on the sickness scale to merit her attention that day, House devoted herself fully to re-barnacle-ing herself to Wilson’s side.

“Okay, so Sam didn’t age badly. That doesn’t matter. Deep down, you know that he’s still looking for a housewife. It never would have worked,” House insisted, pursuing Wilson down the hall at a steady lope as soon as she braved the exterior of her office.

“I’m glad your powers of prophecy are so strong. I actually have to talk to someone to know what they want.”

Wilson gestured to good old oncology Carl, and House was physically restrained out of Wilson’s wing by the time she flicked back her first privacy curtain. No problem. House was prepared to make a full-day-campaign of it.

The break room, neutral territory, was the next natural staging ground for Friendship Repair 101, House Edition.

“Be reasonable,” House demanded as soon as Wilson crossed the threshold. Wilson immediately looked like she regretted packing her own lunch, but she wasn’t ready to give up her corned beef on rye in order to avoid passing House en route to the fridge, which was a point in House’s favor. “There are a zillion Sams out there. You don’t need a double dose of the same schlong. Why go scraping the bottom of the ‘men’ barrel when you haven’t even skimmed the cream of the women crop?”

“It’s…too late for that.”

Wow. Now that was an answer House needed to get under a scalpel in the nearest surgery bay, stat. “It’s never too late!” House enthused with all the energy of a used car salesman with heavy back mortgage payments. “Dykes can be reborn at any stage of life.”

“I’d be pretty behind the rest of the class, though.”

Wilson tried to maneuver around House. House easily blocked her Sandwich Access.

“That assumes you’ve been one hundred percent straight all this time. Do you know how few lesbians have genuinely straight best friends?”

“I thought you weren’t a lesbian.”

“I’m not, unless it’s convenient. Now, answer my question, do you know how many? That’s right, none. The answer is none. There’s always something more interesting hiding in the closet.”

“I’m not a lesbian.”

Another dodge, another block.

“Neither am I. You don’t have to go in for labels to kiss—” House felt her body language betray her, turning inwards with the physiological equivalent of a neon ‘ME!’ sign, and finished brokenly, “…girls.”

Wilson’s features lit up. She stared, freezing House in her tracks in the center of the room. House felt a sweat break out under the weight of her jacket, worn to up the swagger dial. Her eyes flickered about for escape or shelter. She’d propositioned Wilson a million times, but this threatened to evolve into something entirely different.

“The way you said…girls…”

Fuck. Fuck, House had walked directly into that. She’d survived yesterday’s close shave just to screw it all up now on a clumsy play.

“Would you prefer dames?” House hurried to throw dirt on the flames roasting her insides, “Or chicks? Babes? Birds, for some British flair?”

“It sounded like you had a particular girl in mind.”

“Well, I haven’t been a girl since the Nixon presidency, so it’s not me. If that’s what your twisted little mind is thinking.”

“That’s exactly what my twisted little mind is thinking.” Wilson drew closer. House inverted her previous soccer-goalie strategy and tried to flee backwards. Let Wilson have her sandwich!

“I don’t kiss the girls I fuck,” House lied brazenly, “I follow the no-lips no-attachments rule.”

“No lips, huh?”

“Not the ones on your face. Her face. Their—anyone’s face, no one in particular.”

“But you have sex with girls. Women.”

“Yes.”

“I’m a woman.”

“…Yes.” House couldn’t even make the ‘allegedly’ joke required by that set-up. Wilson’s woman-ness was currently hitting House over the head like a failing rockstar smashing his guitar onstage.

“And you haven’t had sex with me.”

“No.” House stumbled into an obstacle—a footstool. She kept herself aloft with a pinwheeling motion.

Wilson nodded and stepped smoothly into House’s troubled space. “That makes sense.”

“Huh?”

Wilson shrugged, “You’ve made a million jokes about having sex with me. But this is the first time you ever said you’d kiss me. It all makes sense now.”

“What does?”

“You don’t kiss the girls you fuck,” Wilson repeated meaningfully. “But you’d kiss me.”

House wanted to shout. Or run away. Or shout, while running away. But she didn’t, because doing so would mean admitting that she’d lost. That she was lost.

“I never said I would do anything. I said you could—do something.”

Wilson squared her shoulders. Like she was going to do something.

“Did you have Cuddy break up my dinner just because you hate Sam, or because you didn’t want to lose your friend, or because…”

“If you can’t finish the question, I don’t have to answer it.”

Wilson committed to skirting around their long-treasured elephant with a masterful dodge, “What were you thinking when you sabotaged my date?”

“I was thinking…” House’s tongue had chosen a terrible time to test out a Sahara impression. “I was thinking: I don’t want you to get back together with Sam.”

“Well, I don’t either, so that works out.”

A piteous match-flicker of hope. “I don’t want you to keep going down the list and try Benny again either.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

“Or Julian.”

“Double no.”

“I don’t want you to take a chance and ask out that gooey new doctor from Peds.”

“He’s married. Not that I was looking.”

Desperation climbing a peg with each shot pinging past its target, House continued, “I don’t want you to get a profile on one of those dating websites.”

“Worried about serial killers?”

Not an answer. Parry. “I don’t want you to let your sister start setting you up on blind dates.”

“Nobody wants that.”

“I don’t want you to catch a flash of Cuddy’s expensive cleavage and suddenly realize there’s only one woman for you.”

“House!” Wilson took her best friend by the arms, hands closing over wiry muscle and wrinkled cotton. “Stop it. Just tell me. What do you want?”

“I want…” Dry mouth, the flicker of a blackout. If this all went to hell, House was going to calmly inject a fatal quantity of morphine into her median cubital vein and she was not kidding. “I want you…to not want anyone else.” Wilson’s face creased, readying for a fall, and House forced the rest out through blood and gristle: “I want you to want me.”

“House.” Wilson collapsed into a great bloom of a smile. She swayed against House, almost a swoon, and her obsessively moisturized hands found House’s skincare-averse face. So warm, so soft, so unimaginable. “That’s easy. I do.”

Her gently parted lips were in lethal proximity. All it would take is one, simple, familiar move.

So, naturally, House stayed stock still and growled out, “Then why the fuck were you out teasing me with this Sam bullshit?”

“He was in town!” Wilson’s voice split in a laugh, a sprinkle of nonchalance and censure and terrified relief. “I wanted to see him. I wanted to show him how well I was doing. And yes, maybe I wanted to see if the spark was still there…or if my interests had moved on. Turns out, it’s definitely the latter.”

Her eyes egged House on. House knew that once she laid her hands on the softly padded divots of Wilson’s waist, she could never bear to take them off again. Would Wilson allow it…or would she amputate?

“House.” Wilson’s voice was sharp with breath and need. “You have to do something now.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you, Doctor I Fuck Girls All The Time.”

“You took a peek at my new business cards.”

“I need you. And I need you to…to be the one who reaches out, for once. I can’t do this on my own.”

Oh, god, House begged her own body to listen. Please touch her, it’s all I want. But the icy suspicion that House was in the act of ruining the one good thing in her life couldn’t be melted by a few stilted pleas.

“I’ve reached out,” House argued, instead of putting her tongue in Wilson’s mouth. Or ear. Or between her legs… “I’ve reached out a fucking lot.”

Wilson scoffed, but her fingertips had become distractingly mobile along House’s jaw. “Crude jokes don’t count.”

“That disqualifies my whole personality! Anyway, how exactly do you recommend fording the river between gal pals and lovers? If you recall, it was literally the first thing I tried to do when we met.”

“I wasn’t ready back then,” Wilson waved this away. “You’ve had years to try again.”

“I have! I flirt with you constantly. Yet, not once have you shown up under my desk in lingerie.”

“Because I know how underworked our janitorial staff are. Ew.”

“I grab your ass on a bi-monthly basis!”

“That’s only actionable legally, not romantically.”

“Romance, huh? You buy me dinner all the time, but never take up my offer of a ride.”

“That’s because your bike is a death trap.”

“So’s the rest of me.”

Wilson blinked as House accidentally tossed the wretched truth of the matter at her feet.

“Well.” Wilson swallowed hard. House needed to know the taste of her, as badly as she needed these damned shards of glass to stop needling her heart. “Good thing I’m a doctor, then. I can keep us both alive…if you make sure we keep living.”

House’s turn to consider the proposal. It sounded good. It sounded like everything she wanted in the world, wrapped in just enough responsibility as her fractured personhood could stand. It sounded too good to be—something she deserved.

“Okay.”

Maybe she hadn't earned Wilson. But she had her claws in now, and hell if she'd let anybody thieve away what she'd managed to steal for herself.

Time to make Wilson feel alive.

She swept the hook of her cane against Wilson's back and used her free hand to take her at the neck, reeling her in sharply. House gave Wilson just a moment to absorb their closeness, chest to chest, before completing the sweep and bringing their lips together. She applied a tender, close-mouthed attention from above to Wilson’s startled lips, turned up to meet her. When she felt the first sigh of settling in, House pressed her tongue to the seam of Wilson’s mouth.

Wilson opened to her. She clung to House’s shoulder, touched her face with reverential fingers, brushed the hair back from their busy mouths. She didn’t kiss like someone who’d never kissed a girl. She didn’t kiss with even a touch of panic. She kissed House like she’d been cramming for this exam since they met and was finally, greedily answering each and every question, desperate to showcase her knowledge on every inch of House's body.

This was all well and good, but this wasn’t House’s first first-girl rodeo. At any moment, Wilson might actually realize what she was doing—not just sticking her tongue down a woman’s throat, but House’s throat—and take off for the hills. Sure, Wilson was melting into House’s embrace like ice on salted asphalt right now, but House had no insurance against a recurring snap freeze. She had to test Wilson’s limits. Remind her what she’d asked for.

House sank her weight left, abandoned her cane, and grabbed a handful of breast through lavender sweater-vest. She squeezed.

She half expected a tearing away, cheek tingling in premature expectation of a slap. But Wilson just made an intrigued little noise and ground in closer. House, delighted, wondered if Wilson was as wet as she was.

There wasn’t even a trace of nervousness between them now. Untouched hunger ruled Wilson’s body, overriding completely whatever roadblocks had stopped her from climbing on top of House for all these years. Because god, all she had had to do was ask. Not even that, just decide one evening and spread her legs and take House by the hair and guide her down in silence and House would have given her everything she needed right there in front of the eleven o’clock news.

Wilson covered House’s massaging hand with her own and urged it on to canvas more of her chest. Her palm rubbed a smooth path from the back of House’s wrist to flexing fingertips. House felt a prickle of insanity at the base of her cortex. She wanted Wilson naked, now. Needed it. The fantasy of sex with Wilson was manageable, the real possibility of it shifting just out of reach was unbearable. She had to get them there. She didn’t care if she had to fuck Wilson against the vending machine with the janitorial staff circling through every quarter hour to check if the mess has reached its zenith.

On the other, non-boob-holding hand, she really didn’t like the idea of Blu the custodian getting even a glimpse of Wilson’s fantastic knockers. Because oh, House would have them out…

“Mmm, I can hardly feel you,” Wilson murmured, voice low and rich as she intervened in House’s panic-swirled imaginings. Her fingers tightened to draw House’s rubbing hand up, up, up off her tit, over neck and chin until she could slide House’s first and middle fingers between her lips. Wilson sucked gently, laving the tender sandpaper of her tongue along the length of House’s digits. House wobbled a little, blamed her leg, and decided it was alright if she wobbled some more.

Wilson moaned around her mouthful and House was blasted with desperate heat. The feeling increased exponentially when Wilson released House’s fingers, just so she could push them down and guide them up her own skirt. She wrinkled the hem, slipping House’s wet fingertips under and then up and then past the paltry barrier of panties to—Jesus. Jesus Christ. Wilson slid House’s two, wet, astonished fingers into her pussy. She fucked herself on House’s frozen touch, in and out, slow and deep.

“Can you feel that?” House whispered, the line’s charge turned back on her with its telltale texture of ruin. Wilson had both hands on House’s wrist. Total control.

“Mmhmm,” Wilson hummed back, eyelids fluttering closed as she penetrated herself with House’s terribly willing digits.

House, never one to be upstaged, tilted her hand until she could slide her thumb into the furrow of Wilson’s mound and rub—

Wilson choked on a loud, undignified noise and House throbbed in her jeans. She tried to take advantage but Wilson wasn’t letting go of the reins. Her mouth hung open, lips brushing House’s chin as she rode out the pleasure and kept her hold on House, her control over their speed. Her skirt draped in a filthy curve over their locked, rocking hands. House buried her tongue in Wilson’s mouth because that was a lot less embarrassing than a scream. Wilson moaned and squeezed around her and fuck, House needed this to go horizontal, she couldn’t take it—

“Jesus...wept.”

The interruption boomed from the lounge’s entry, which was, for anyone paying attention, an unlocked and moderately trafficked semi-public doorway. Not the bolted entrance to a private chamber that would certainly be preferable in this moment.

Whoops.

Foreman—for fate had named her the unfortunate, or maybe just unappreciative, witness—whipped around, elegant hand coming up to cover her tormented vision. She made as if to leave (sensible, and desirable) but paused. Wilson shoved House’s hand out of her and away, like the glistening evidence of those fingers’ journey was any better than the implications of their hidden absence.

Foreman turned around with her arm up like a sun visor and stomped over to the fridge, grumbling, “Came in here for my damn lunch. Not leaving without it.” More muttering, the phrase, “Not one moment of damn peace in this hospital,” audible, before she stormed back out the door without directly addressing the in flagrante couple.

House and Wilson overheard more grumbling in this vein from outside, a questioning noise that sounded like it came from Cameron just beyond the door, and then Foreman again: “Trust me. Don’t.” A pause. “I’ll explain it to you when you’re older.”

“That’s gonna make the yearly review,” House predicted, feeling about four vodka shots in with dizzy joy.

“Oh my god,” Wilson whispered, tiny and devastated. “I can’t believe your employee caught you fingering me in the break room.”

“Don’t worry, my fellows’ opinions of us can’t get any lower,” House assured her, chipper, and sucked her own fingers into her mouth. She licked them clean and then dirty again, enjoying watching Wilson’s pupils explode in real time. “Want me to put these back where I found them?” she offered eagerly.

“God…” Wilson grabbed House’s wrist again, this time bringing her fingers in for a rueful kiss. “Not here. Humiliation is finally beating out lust.”

“Just as long as shame stays the hell out of our way. You seem pretty chill on that front, though.”

Oh, that crooked smile. The one Wilson wore when she was sharing something with House that only House would understand. “I thought…with a woman, you know…I thought it would be so different. And I know I’ve only just been admitted to the order, so don’t kick me out for saying it, but…”

“It’s not that different at all,” House completed the nervously assembled thought. “I’ve been saying this forever! Human is human, meat is meat.”

“You old romantic.”

“Girls are really good though.”

Wilson’s answering hmm had more than a note of desperation. “I imagine the real difference is the social part of dating. And in that category, you being a woman is the last thing I need to worry about.”

House backed Wilson into the small kitchenette island. The movement jolted her leg, sending up increasingly urgent flares about all this unsupported standing. House continued to ignore it. “Yep. The first thing you always need to worry about with me is: what am I going to do next?”

“Fuck,” Wilson hissed, and tucked her head aside so House’s hungry kisses landed on her neck. “House…not here…you have to let me go…” But her leg popped up and wrapped around House’s hip, locking her in tight to Wilson’s heat. Conflicting evidence.

House grabbed the thigh belted over her side and ran her hand back to palm Wilson’s ass. She murmured against her ear, “Your office or mine?”

“Neither!” Wilson reared back, scandalized. “Our first time can’t be at work.”

“Why not? Seems appropriate.”

“Fucking on a desk is literally the dictionary definition of inappropriate workplace behavior.”

“Then I’ll fuck you on your couch.”

Wilson’s limbs contracted, wanting, winding House in tight. Her heavy breathing brushed House’s mouth but she didn’t let her lips turn it into a kiss. “House. Please. If we come on any of my office furniture, I’ll never be able to work there again.”

“Hire a decorator and remodel.”

Wilson made an anguished noise and buried her face in House’s neck. House squeezed her tight, feeling success heating beneath her touch.

“I have to go back to work,” Wilson pleaded, which wasn’t what success sounded like.

“No, you don’t. You have to let me find out how many sequential orgasms I can tease out of your body.”

House’s leathers crinkled hard under Wilson’s fierce grip. “Stop. It.”

“Or what?”

“Or…I’ll take another shift and not go home with you until tomorrow.”

“Counter demand: you go and make your excuses and then leave with me right now.”

“Or what?” Wilson returned the dare.

“Or…” House floundered, grabbed the nearest memory and ran with it. “I’ll go chase Foreman down and ask if she wants what you were having. And I’ll give her the whole meal on your desk.”

Wilson’s jaw worked with jealousy and daring. “She doesn’t want your…menu.”

“Willing to bet on that? Even if she turns me down, I’ve got two other fellows I can put in my mouth, if you’re gonna miss your reservation.”

“You are…you…” Wilson’s search for a word to describe just what House was came up short. “You have to put me in your mouth,” she finally concluded on a plaintive note. Then, “Give me fifteen minutes. I’ll wrap up a few things and we can…have a private lunch hour. A long hour. At your place.”

House battened down a snort at that. Like an hour would even scratch the surface. She’d need to fuck Wilson for a minimum, unbroken 48 hours before she let her stop coming in her mouth and instead come back to work. But Wilson would figure that out for herself once she’d gotten a real taste.

“Lunch. Is that what the kids are calling it? The cafeteria just got a lot more interesting.”

Wilson broke and gave her one, last ferocious kiss. “You animal. You pest. I need you so fucking badly.” House grappled her with enthusiasm but Wilson wiggled free. She bent over to retrieve House’s cane and House went for her ass with both hands. Wilson used the wood to enforce distance between them, shoving it hard into House’s hungry palms. “Go now. Get your keys and take your bike home. I’ll drive separately so I don’t have to fight the urge to rip your clothes off at every red light.”

She disengaged from House and fled in the clumsy, lopsided way of the aroused and overwhelmed.

House took off for her own office. Bag, keys, note so the kiddies didn’t worry and call (though big sis Foreman could probably figure out why mommy had flown the coop). Then: home, and Wilson.

“House?” Chase slipped through the office door, her face loose and making easy eye contact. She must not have been part of the squad outside the break room or since met her compatriots. “I was—” she squinted as she got closer and her body language took on the flavor of mightily embarrassed electric shock. “Um, uh…” Chase made even less intelligent noises than usual and rummaged in her lab coat to produce some sort of damp tissue, “you, uh, need this.”

“Thanks, but I change my own diapers now,” House viewed the offering with distaste.

“It’s a makeup wipe,” Chase proffered it more fiercely, “and Wilson’s coloring is very different from yours.”

House grabbed her computer monitor and twisted it to examine her fuzzy reflection in its black screen. “Ah.” Without looking, she held her hand out and received the wipe. Before she attacked the smear of off-tone foundation and matte ocher lipstick, she admired it with a grin.

“Wait,” she stopped Chase from hot-footing it out of the office, “why do you carry these around?”

“I wear…makeup.” The pause was awkwardly placed, even in her always awkward Aussie enunciation.

“But you’re not taking it on and off during work. In the locker room maybe, but not when you’re still wearing your coat…” House prowled forward, deducing, crumpling the used wipe. “The only reason you’d need to cart these around is if you’re getting your colors all over someone else…”

Chase flushed, confirming that suspicion.

“Or someone else is getting theirs all over you.”

Chase flushed even harder: double confirmation.

“I knew it! You’re getting double screwed!” House crowed, flinging her victory garbage at Chase’s reddened face, “And I mean that both ways. Do they do you separately or at the same time? I feel like Cameron would be frazzled with two women on his hands, but I bet Foreman’s too impatient to take turns…”

“Shut up,” Chase cringed behind her stringy defense, “I’ve already filed so many Title IX claims against you.”

“And they bounce right off these titties!” House slapped her chest. “Immunity boobs, baby.”

“Not a lot of immunity there,” Chase snipped, tossing off the meager parting remark as she fled—no doubt to pour her heart out to Foreman, who wouldn’t care, or Cameron, who would care a little but still side with House.

House wondered, in an unrelated and independent subroutine titled ‘Employee Humiliations: Entertaining,’ how long it would be before it was Chase in the breakroom, startled by unexpected company with one of her colleagues three fingers deep.

House roared home, left her bike perched precariously over the curb and half on the sidewalk, and blew into her apartment. It looked like it always did, which wasn’t a problem, Wilson knew what she was getting into there. The bed was full of Pop-Tart crumbs, which was a problem, because Wilson hadn’t gotten into that yet. House had whipped off the sheets and forced clean(ish) ones on in their place when she heard a mousy knocking.

“Come and get it!” she bellowed, and imagined—if not actually saw—Wilson rolling her eyes as she let herself in.

“Uh. Hi.” Wilson closed the door carefully behind herself. On second thought, she locked it with a nervous twitch. It was something of a relief to see she’d finally succumbed to the anxiety naturally sold alongside finally admitting you cherished raging homosexual lust in your heart for your best friend.

To Wilson, wanting House was a hurricane landing in Wisconsin. Unmanageable magnitudes of unexpected and potentially terminal chaos.

To House, wanting Wilson was just another Tuesday.

The joy of at long last having Wilson at her fingertips (on her fingertips) was helpfully muddied and pitted with fear of loss, of reprisal, of “Gotcha! Now wasn’t that a hilarious joke. As if.” Impure, House could process its intensities. When this got more real…if it lasted long enough to become any more real. Well. House would detonate that bridge when she jumped off of it, or however the saying went.

“Hey. You wanna get straight to the sex, or do you need a drink first?”

“It’s…” Wilson checked her watch, “not even one in the afternoon.”

“Too early for sex?”

She worked up a grin, still flavored with nerves but settling, and answered the first question, “I am thirsty. But not for cheap beer or your macho Jack Daniels.”

“She’s thirsty, bow wow!” House barked, loud and silly enough to make Wilson laugh immediately, helplessly. House swept into the fracture of Wilson’s anxiety and took her place in the arms that opened just for her.

“I wasn’t sure if I should do anything before I came over. You know. Clean up or dress up or put my hair up, I don’t know.” The speed of Wilson’s words was jerkier the more nervous she became.

“Come as you are,” House leered. “You’ll have to accept my goods as is.”

“I like your hair long,” Wilson reached out to sweep it back from House’s face. The ease and deep-set relief of the motion tattled that she’d wanted to do that for a long, long time. “Not that you’ve ever seemed inclined to do anything different with it.”

“You’re just addicted to change. Editing yourself to please other people.”

“I couldn’t tell how you felt when I last cut my hair. You’re rude whether I leave it alone or not, so I figured, why not give my hairdresser something to retire on?” She fluffed the softly curling bounce of the undefined bob with a flirtatious gleam. “So. You like it?”

House gave this its due consideration. “When it was longer, I thought about pulling it all the time. Which was distracting. But any shorter…” House drew her fingers through Wilson’s locks from carefully conditioned roots to regularly trimmed ends, “…and I couldn’t grab it.” She tightened her hold, total caveman, and held Wilson utterly still in her thrall. Wilson shivered, her lips parting and eyes fluttering with unconcealed want. “So,” House relaxed, scratching gently at Wilson’s scalp, “I’d say this is a happy medium.”

Their following kiss was deep and heavy but apprehension still bound Wilson back from diving in headfirst (literally or metaphorically).

“Worried about having premarital sex?” House asked of Wilson’s taut posture, leaving the words against her cheek. “Because that’s the only option we got in the benighted state of New Jersey.”

“I’ve done it without a ring before.”

“You’ve done it with a ring and the wrong person.”

“No ring, right person,” Wilson formulated, “maybe that’s the winning combination. But…” Stumbling in the attempt to hide her hesitation, she added, “I don’t really know how lesbian sex works.”

“You seemed to have a pretty good idea in the break room.”

“I, um…” Wilson flushed fiercely, “I saw that in a movie, once. I don’t know what’s supposed to happen next.”

“Faded to black on ya? Damn those PG-13 ratings.”

“Is it—I mean, obviously I’ve had sex with men—is it harder, or, or softer, or about technique or—”

“Don’t overthink it. Like the kissing, it’s not that different, or difficult. Just takes a little practice. Like parallel parking! Don’t worry. I’ll be your driving instructor.” She happily cupped Wilson’s ass in both hands and squeezed. “Care to guess what the first step is?”

“I hope it involves being underneath you, and naked.”

“See, you’re a natural!” House enthused, pushing Wilson over the threshold to her bedroom, nearly hopping on one foot to maintain forward motion without agony.

Wilson kissed her hard while managing to keep up the backward motion, falling onto her back on House’s half-made bed, House in quick pursuit atop her willing form.

It was a violent dislocation for a moment, twin familiarities crashing into one another: a lover’s body, taken in the easy and intimacy-free precursor to sex, and Wilson, a woman whose intimacy House knew beyond doubt despite resisting even the most platonic of hugs in their long and difficult friendship.

She kissed Wilson until her brain stopped spitting and hissing out thoughts like frying oil seeking vulnerable skin to burn.

“Uh, naked?” Wilson suggested against House’s lips, and House internally berated herself for needing a reminder.

House peeled the fuzzy purple cashmere blend off of Wilson’s tits in a quick, satisfying whip of fabric. But said tits were still imprisoned in a prim white button-down, testing House’s patience.

Outside of matrimony and third-dates, Wilson reverted to 100% cotton granny panties bought in bulk and supportive, well-structured bras from department store clearance sales. House had worn boxer briefs since she first stole a pair off a boyfriend in the eighties, and a sports bra if she bothered with anything up top at all. She hadn’t, today. Wilson wouldn’t get a chance to find that out for herself just yet—House had dibs on stripping her first.

“Sorry,” Wilson grinned as House peeled back her tailored white button down to reveal a sweat-stained full coverage nude bore, “I’d have worn my fuck-me red lace if I’d known where today was heading.”

“Yeah, because this isn’t hot at all,” House replied, trying not to actively salivate over how Wilson’s breasts fought for freedom, spilling over even the high, modest scoop of the practical bra. She couldn’t stop the next impulse: House bent and bit down on the swell of Wilson’s right breast, capturing satin skin between her teeth and tugging gently. Then less gently.

Each tug of incisors wrung a fresh gasp from Wilson’s open mouth, escalating into mews that left House feverishly tearing the thing off of Wilson with numbed fingertips dug into uncooperative, worn clasps.

Her breasts were beautiful. They flooded enthusiastically free of confinement once underwire and dull fabric cups were flung aside, not youthful and perky but heavy, shapely, straining it seemed in all directions—or maybe that was just House’s brain overloading.

“Oh, it’s a crime to lock these up,” House critiqued the harsh practice of full-coverage bras and shirts buttoned to the neck in a labored whisper. She got her paws on as much as she could and was thrilled to find that even the greediest handfuls still left plush flesh for the taking. Squeezing, massaging, she reveled in the luxury of Wilson’s chest, so soft, so bountiful, so readily manipulable. The smooth transition from collarbone valley to hill of breast, the way her nipples caught and peaked in the work-roughed lines of House’s palms, the almost cool span of pendulous flesh held by straining skin on the underside, running to hot sweat in the deep crevice between tit and rib.

Wilson’s areolas were magnificent and huge and House immediately committed to answering empirically the age-old question: can I fit this in my mouth?

Barely. Dear god, only barely. She sucked hard, toying with the firm nipple, pressing the tip of her tongue deep enough to invert the peak, then lapping wide in glorious circles over the subtle wrinkles and bumps of texture smoothing out as pink flesh mottled into white. Kneading with the muscle of her tongue, she worked over every inch of breast Wilson had so selfishly hidden from her, tracing blue veins and reminding herself not to bite. At least, not too hard.

Then she moved to the other side. Almost lost her mind in the joy of repeat performance.

“Having a good time?” Wilson asked, amused.

“Mmph,” House slurped in the affirmative.

“Alright,” Wilson murmured, petting House’s hair idly, and that made House pop up and frown analytically.

“You...don’t like having your tits played with?”

“I like it just fine,” Wilson assured her.

“Not very sensitive, though,” House deduced, and Wilson nodded.

“Like it’s happening to someone in the next room. But I do like the intimacy of it.”

“Yuck, way to ruin it.” House suckled mournfully at taut skin and gave that giving flesh one last nibble, before pushing up on elbows. “Okay, princess, what do you want? All expenses trip south?”

“If you’re offering,” Wilson agreed, breathless.

House felt her grin go extra sharkish, and Wilson’s pulse jumped beneath her in response. “Always. My mouth is legendary.”

“You do run it constantly, keeps it in good shape—oh!” Wilson barely managed to rush out her responding snark before House buried her face in her still-clothed crotch.

The skirt smelled like detergent and Wilson’s moral compromise of price and environmentally questionable plastic fibers. No hint of the woman beneath. House chewed irritably at the hem while she felt around under Wilson’s ass for the back zipper. Aha! Located, she forced the metal tab down over and under the generous scoop of her backside, then grabbed the waist of the skirt and the boring underwear and dragged the whole kit down and off Wilson’s legs in a magician’s swoop.

Utterly naked, Wilson’s breath pooled high and nervous at the tops of her lungs, creating a very pleasant heave to her chest that almost (almost) diverted House’s attention from her first unadulterated peek between Wilson’s legs.

So much pink. No waxing, but pretty intense shaving, trimming away what House suspected would be a glorious bush (she’d have to work on Wilson and the delights of going natural). Probably, Wilson had tamed her jungle on the chance she got under Sam again. Good thing House was here instead.

House opened with a brief tactile scan: both hands framed Wilson’s pussy, thumbs meeting inwards for a gentle sweep along the length of her lips. She left her clit alone for the moment, testing how sensitive she was elsewhere. Judging by the way Wilson began to tremble as House gently spread her wide, the answer was: delightfully so.

Enough teasing. House dipped her head into the frame of her hands and lapped with the curiosity of a scholar into Wilson’s cunt. Wilson gave a helpless little shout and grabbed at House, getting a hand in her hair. Good girl.

House sank her tongue in for a depth charge and then bobbed back to the surface for exploratory exercises. She parted soft swells and traced her tongue firmly along Wilson’s clit for the first time. The response was immediate and gratifying. Wilson shuddered and moaned a long, “oohhh,” while her legs twitched around House. House grabbed those thick thighs and tucked them under her arms, keeping Wilson pinned. Elbows planted, her fingers returned to probe and fuck Wilson’s hole while House got comfortable sucking on her clit like one of the lollipops Wilson always scolded her for stealing from the clinic. Bet she appreciated all that oral training now.

Wilson writhed under too much stimulation, and House was happy to show mercy if it meant the game went on for extra innings. She dragged her face wetly down and in, swapping focus to fuck Wilson with her tongue curled and jabbing as deep as it could go, her middle finger lightly circling around the swell of Wilson’s mons to keep her taut on the edge.

Wilson had managed to keep her mouth mostly shut after the initial outburst, but when House locked her hands into Wilson’s inner thighs, pushed them even further apart, and flattened the whole of her tongue in a long stripe between her legs, Wilson found the most important words: “House! Please!”

“Please, what?” House asked, letting hot breath torment Wilson’s wet, shivering flesh, “Do you like what you’re getting?”

“Yes, oh, don’t stop…”

“Mmm…” House vibrated the sound deep into Wilson’s core, flicked her tongue against the hard tip of Wilson’s clit until she forced out another shout, then softened, running a thumb up and down Wilson’s part while she spoke. “When’s the last time someone went down on you?”

“Unh…” Wilson didn’t have a helpful answer. House retracted her touch until she did. “Don’t…remember. Long time.”

“Long like months, or long like the Jurassic era?”

Wilson wriggled, untouched and miserable. “The…second one. Julian didn’t…believe in it.”

“Julian didn’t believe…” House repeated in astonished disgust, “in eating his wife’s pussy?”

Wilson managed to fit a shrug into her despairing shuffle.

“But you still went down on him?”

Another unhappy worm dance on the mattress.

“Oh, I am going to kill him. As soon as I’m done making you come.”

House didn’t give Wilson a chance to reply, just went back to her clit to start working on the heinous backlog of oral pleasure her wonderful body had been denied. Wilson pulled House’s hair and made pitiful noises and House just worked her tongue harder, faster, until something snapped and Wilson was trying to shove House’s face in deeper, hips bucking to meet her tongue. If it were physically possible, House would have grinned.

Wilson pulsed and writhed at an even higher, staccato pace. House ate her ever more eagerly, chasing the taste of release with exactly the same intensity and joy as she applied to her cases. And how convenient, she could solve this one without even leaving bed!

“House,” Wilson moaned, and House was building a detailed mental catalog of how her name sounded in each phase of Wilson’s building pleasure. “House!” Lower than before, coherent enough to contain an implicit demand: more.

It was finale time. House was growing too hot and wet to stand herself and someone had to come right the fuck now or the consequences would be—though only vague in her sexed-up brain—undeniably dire. Flicking the tip of her tongue in rapid-fire, relentless stimulation of Wilson’s clit, she held the humid warmth of her mouth steady with hands on Wilson’s cushy hips—oh, what good handholds. House squeezed. Wilson tried to fuck herself into House’s mouth but House held her down and made her take her pleasure where she lay. Peaking, peaking—

Right when Wilson was sweating up the hill to tip into climax, House released one hand from its sacred position on Wilson’s waist to flicker between her legs. She slid two long fingers into the hungry throb of Wilson’s pussy and curled them into a hard, matching stimulation of her g-spot from the inside as her mouth tormented her in perfect harmony from without.

Wilson screamed and bucked so hard House had to hold her down with her free arm planted like a rollercoaster rail guard over her hips as she gushed onto House’s tongue and squeezed around her flexing fingers.

“Oh, fuck…oh, fuck…” Wilson whispered as she came down, eyes half closed and limbs sinking into limpness. House worked her through every last second until her body relaxed totally. Only then did she sip her final taste and retreat for the gloating.

“So. Better than any man?” she asked.

“Well.” Wilson panted. “I never have gotten to Denzel.”

“Okay, Denzel aside,” House accepted this reasonable caveat.

Wilson grinned, and House found herself tackled onto her back. It happened like that—so fast, it could only be processed as a past event. Wilson was straddling House’s narrow hips, rubbing a naked filth against her jeans, her hands yanking House’s T-shirt up her torso and finally wrestling it over her head to bare her chest. Her hands landed on House’s breasts, and to paraphrase Chase’s earlier comment, there wasn’t much of a landing zone.

House wriggled, shifty and wrong-footed. She’d miscalculated. Made Wilson come so hard, now she was all focused on reciprocation. Exploration.

“My tits are of the mosquito bite variety.” House tried out logic. “Nothing very interesting.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Wilson decreed, and began to roll House’s nipples sharply between her knuckles. House shivered violently and couldn’t force her mouth back shut.

“Hmm,” Wilson intoned, insufferable, “I think I’m getting something, here.” She bent and mouthed at House’s right breast, lazily stimulating the sensitive flesh with the flat of her tongue. Her eyes were dark and predatory, her chin dug in to House’s ribs. “You really just…hate wearing bras, don’t you,” she murmured, complaint and compliment in one. “Or do you just love driving me crazy?”

“I don’t need a bra.”

“I needed you to need one. Jesus. The way your nipples always poke out through your shirt…”

“I saw you looking. But assumed it was with disapproval at my runaway nips.”

“I told myself that, too. But I’m starting to think it was mostly lust.” She punctuated this bit of self-awareness by switching to House’s other side and rubbing her cheek with a satisfied sigh against the hard nub awaiting her, body language making clear that this was the fulfillment of a not-new fantasy. Feeling the soft plush of skin over cheekbone was somehow even dirtier than her tongue. House spiked a fever marked by chills—this felt too good to be safe.

Wilson latched her mouth on and set about making a very nice mess of House’s breast. Her dominant hand crept to rub curiously between House’s legs, catching against the thick central ridge of denim, jeans barring access.

She suddenly announced, “I want to eat you out.”

Beautiful words. Some of House’s favorites, in fact. But Wilson wasn’t a new girlfriend, easier to deal with the unexpected given the novelty of it all, or some store-bought hook-up House paid to ignore everything and just make her come. Wilson had been cagey about getting in bed with a woman, how would she react when she found out she’d gotten an off-brand model?

Because House didn’t think she could stand it if Wilson asked what House’s condition was from between her legs.

“Go on,” House urged with grim desire. “I’m not stopping you.”

Wilson wrenched open the belt House wore every day. Got the button in a flash, lingered for just a second with her lower lip between her teeth over the sheer joy of pulling the zipper down on House’s pants. Then she mirrored House’s earlier move and dug her fingers into jean and underwear waistbands to wrestle them down as one over knees and ankles and finally toes. Naked at last.

House had given up shaving any part of her body after the infarction, figuring her uniform of T-shirt and jeans covered all the offending areas anyway. Men desperate for sex didn’t actually care once their dicks were out, and women who had sex with women knew (at least in theory) that they weren’t supposed to criticize such classically feminist practice, even if House herself was plenty loud about appreciating the satin of waxed skin. Wilson was all velvet. But she was used to finding her lovers coarse below the belt, she wouldn’t mind it in House…right?

“Oh…” Wilson murmured without any particular meaning, looking with her hands and touching with her eyes as she gently parted House’s legs.

House stared straight up at the ceiling and started mentally snipping the lines connecting her mind to her body. She didn’t want to be here for this part.

“House?” Wilson’s familiar just-found-House-standing-on-the-roof-ledge tone was turning up pretty early in the proceedings.

“Yeah.” Leave a message after the beep.

“Are you freaking out?”

“That’s my question.”

“I’m not.” Silence. “It feels like you’re pulling away from me.”

“I just don’t want you to say anything.”

“Okay.”

“Saying nothing is worse,” House added swiftly.

“Okay,” Wilson assured, safe and settled in House’s contradictions as always. “I can say that I feel like an idiot, then?”

“Sure.” House clearly wasn’t as amused as Wilson had hoped, so she tried again.

“More than a decade of friendship. Of working side-by-side in a hospital. And only now do I finally understand why you were never good for a tampon.”

“What, you thought it was super premature menopause?”

“I’d assumed a hysterectomy,” Wilson admitted candidly. “You always hated the idea of kids, but never seemed worried about getting pregnant. It would be very in-character for you to have an extreme surgery instead of taking one of a dozen safer routes.”

“There was an extreme surgery. Just not my call, being about a day old. And not entirely successful, as you can see.” House stole a downward glance at Wilson.

She found a calm, neutral, windless-lake expression. Now nodding, putting the historical, medical, personal pieces together. “Hormone therapy would’ve been pretty new when you were growing up. In the dark ages, I mean,” Wilson added, warming House by a few degrees with her wry grin.

“Yep. Lots of over-compensating with frills and braids, especially when puberty saw me shooting up and not out.” House lashed out and pinched Wilson’s breast. Wilson barely even flinched, just leaned into the rude touch.

“I bet you had more dirty jeans and skinned knees than any boy around.”

“Got that right. Point of pride.”

“Your parents didn’t think a girl could wear pants and play sports and still be a girl?”

House shrugged. “Not when there was such a big fear that I wasn’t really a girl, after all. My dad won’t say it—because he’ll never admit to being wrong—but I know he thinks they made a mistake. Should’ve gone the boy route when the doctor asked. Then this flat chest and penchant for pussy would’ve been just fine. Hilarious, really, that he thinks I’d hate him less if I were a man. That he’d hate me less if I were some guy who had a dick and liked dick too.”

“…That’s why you don’t talk to your father.”

“I have plenty of reasons to avoid my dad. Don’t pigeonhole me. He’s a wide-ranging piece of shit.”

“Yeah. Let me know if you need me to run him over with my car the next time he’s stateside. I’ll gas it up.”

“I’ll buy popcorn.”

“I’m not saying this explains everything—nothing explains all of you. But there are some things I get now…” Wilson drew her hand up from House’s knee, over her scar, up the sharp jut of her hip. “You always make nasty jokes about the stuff that really bothers you. Hurting yourself before anyone else can do it, like that’s better.” Wilson’s tone was diagnostic but her touch was anything but. A worshipful exploration of palm to skin. She thumbed House’s nipple and then cupped her tit—a swell of pectoral muscle, really, but what’s in a name—squeezing experimentally. “Is this why you’re always so crass about your breasts? You think because they’re the perfect size to fit in my hand and drive me to distraction, you’re less of a woman?”

House sneered, “I’m more woman than most women can handle.”

“Don’t I know it,” Wilson muttered under her breath. “Then you’re a woman. Great. End of conversation. Unless…” confidence fluttering mid-phrase, losing its footing, “I mean. You don’t have to be, it’s not the only option. If you don’t want…is woman the word you want? About you, I mean?”

“Because I have such a history of being careful about language.”

“House. I’m just trying not to be a bitch here.”

“Well, do you want to run a hormone panel? Get my chromosomes tested? Have a map of my internal genital configuration?”

“I’m not here as a doctor. As your lover…and as someone who’s mostly given people pleasure by lying there and moaning at regular intervals…I just want advice on how to make you feel good.”

“That’s a lot easier.” House smirked and drove an elbow into the mattress to lean up and into Wilson, relief chasing the heels of twisting unease now that all of that could be over and forgotten. “Words don’t make me come.”

Wilson reciprocated the lean. Flicked her tongue out to just graze House’s lower lip. “We’ll see about that.” Another hot, almost-kiss. “I like a challenge. C’mon. Give me the lay of your land so I can give you the lay of your life.”

Confident, charming, clumsy, cheesy—House couldn’t decide which category it fell under. Then, as with so many things, she decided categorization was for shit. She took Wilson’s hand and brought it to her warmth.

“Don’t go digging deep,” she instructed, only a little gruff. “No point, I can’t have your babies. Otherwise, the same rules apply for any kind of good sex. Get things wet. Use your mouth. Use your hands. A little friction is hot, too much is bad.” House brought Wilson’s fingertips around to explore her mound. “I figure a steady diet of dick means you won’t flip at a clit that doesn’t match the medical textbooks.”

“It’s great,” Wilson said without self-consciousness as she slid down to take another gander at her prize. “There’s so much to work with. You’re so—” she ducked abruptly in for her first taste and House made an embarrassing kind of nasal inhale at the ferocious rake of tongue. “You’re so beautiful.”

“Shut up,” House wheezed, and grabbed Wilson by the hair.

“Planning on it,” Wilson grinned, and dived in.

She didn’t favor a soft start (thank fuck). Wilson filled her mouth with House’s clit and feasted. House’s body relaxed immediately, the tension of fear evaporating into a sparkling layer of vulnerable arousal, worked into a steady beat of hunger by Wilson’s eager attentions.

Wilson took all the right cues, like she’d gotten those talented hands on the secret manual to House’s body. Her mouth didn’t leave House’s clit, correctly unconcerned about overstimulation. Shallow and not very sensitive, Wilson quickly figured out the fingers exploring House’s pussy were better utilized elsewhere. She brought her barely damp digits to House’s injured thigh and started up a gentle rubbing in time with the suck of her lips. House tried to buck away, a spooked horse shying out of reach with hooves ready to cave in someone’s skull, but Wilson just buried her face deeper and dragged both of House’s legs over her shoulders. Now, every time House rocked in pleasure, muscles clenching, the supportive angle of her knees reduced the pressure running through her thigh muscles.

Pleasure gushed through House’s core at the relief, almost early release, and Wilson’s whole face was getting wet with her eager amateur dive into the buffet. God, House couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed oral this much. Sex this much. Another person, this much.

Her ankles bounced gently on Wilson’s back, knocking into her kneading shoulders as Wilson put her whole body into it. Sweat prickled across House’s skin but perception was narrowing to just the point where Wilson had gotten the idea to clamp her arms like manacles around House’s thighs and use the leverage to pile drive down. House was held unyielding against the mattress as Wilson followed the lead of her teacher and flicked her tongue in just the spot that made House’s core clench, devastating the tip of her clit, finally breaching the dead zone to cross into too much, no break no mercy no end allowed except House’s volume crescendoing as the white heat of orgasm rushed from Wilson’s efforts into House’s body, between her legs to the tips of her curling toes, clutching fingers, arching neck.

She rocked herself against Wilson until the hot tides of pleasure drained away and threatened to blend into discomfort. She collapsed.

“How did they ever divorce you,” was House’s first semi-coherent comment.

“Hmm?” Wilson wondered. Her eyes shone with the thrill of accomplishment; her lips, cheeks, chin and nose glistened with their bodies’ combined moisture.

“Your husbands. Your mouth…” House traced the bow of Wilson’s wet upper lip with a limp thumb, “No matter what, how could they stand to give up steady access to such enthusiasm.”

The mouth under House’s touch quirked into a suddenly knowing smile at the praise. “Well. There’s a reason they married me in the first place.”

House laughed and took her turn tackling Wilson down with a fresh rush of energy, kissing trails along her throat, visiting the pink peaks of her two new favorite landmarks. Wilson sighed, settled, petted House right back. It took a moment, then House realized.

“Oh, you thought we were done?” House drew herself up to a predatory hunch over Wilson’s hesitantly eager frame. “Wilson, there’s no cock involved here. You don’t have to wait another twenty-four hours for me to get it up. I’m gonna make you come until you cry.”

“Oh, yes, please,” Wilson acquiesced with an easy slide into begging. Then, a spark in her eye and a new bend to her body language. “Could…do you have—I mean, could we do…penetration?” Wilson made an incomprehensible gesture that even history’s greatest codebreaker couldn’t have figured meant ‘sex toy.’

House brilliantly picked up on the logical trajectory anyway. “I’ve got a strap around here, somewhere. I can put it on and you can ride it, as long as you don’t mind me falling asleep during.”

“You’re the most selfish bastard I’ve ever met,” Wilson told her warmly. “And that works out well, because I was hoping to fuck you with it.”

“I know exactly where it is,” House leapt out of bed, clinging to her side table for balance and hopping hard on her left leg.

She returned with the comfortably medium-sized dildo and strap-on harness. The thing hadn’t seen use since the twilight of the Stacy Period, when House realized she couldn’t top like she used to, and why had she been bothering to do it anyway, it was so much easier to just lie there…

Wilson took the strap with a cross between a knight’s reverence for their sword, and the terror of a novice marksman getting handed live ammunition. House bridled at how much that mirrored her own internal state.

“I prefer it in the backdoor.” Casual crassness masked the unhappy history of incorrect assumptions House had been trying to herd them away from.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” Wilson asked anyway, touching gently between House’s legs. “Or does it hurt…less?”

“I’m not a wuss. I can take a little pain.” She winced as Wilson rubbed abruptly up over the scar in her thigh again, unfairly hopping between points of vulnerability. An expert in loving cruelty.

“I know. And I’d really like to not contribute any more pain to your supply.” Palm released thigh. Slipped down to playfully circle a knuckle over House’s clit. “Going for the record on solo pleasure.”

“Solo pleasure? I call that a Friday night. This is a duo act.”

Wilson grinned and took up the harness with gusto. She pulled at the various straps and clasps. She tried gamely to attach it around her waist, muttering, “This is worse than that damn truss I had to wear for my sister’s wedding.”

It occurred to House with a damp, belated clunk: “You have used one of these before?”

“Of course, not,” Wilson demurred, sweetly prim as she ran a curious hand up the silicone length now resting between her thighs. “I’m a good girl, remember?”

“Christ,” House tried to neither pant nor drool as Wilson took her legs in hand and spread them gently to her liking. “Yeah. Do me like a good girl.”

It only took Dr. Wilson, MD, another minute to figure out the strap mechanics and roll on a condom for hygiene’s sake. Then she was looming over House with a hard cock and a dream (and lube from the bedside table).

House tried to protest that lube was for sissies and prostate exams, but Wilson countered with an unimpressed eyebrow and a slick finger sliding home. House tried to drive her body to relax—a contradiction in terms that worked as well as logic would suggest. Wilson was much more successful, kissing House into submission, the work of her tongue and the tantalizing swing-brush of her breasts over House distracting from the less desirable sensations of necessary legwork.

“Oh, god,” Wilson murmured, voice wrecked, and House realized—pulled away from her own unruly feelings—that Wilson appeared to be having a transformative time of it.

“First time sodomizing…anyone?” she hazarded.

Wilson nodded, eyes aglow.

“I think you like your taste of power.”

Another nod. “I’d really like to fuck you now.”

“Go for it.” House’s body tensed up. Bitch.

Wilson frowned. “Not until it’ll feel good for you.”

“All virgins know it hurts at first. And I’m no virgin.”

Face still squished into an adorable expression of serious concentration, Wilson didn’t speak before acting on a hypothesis.

She took House by the shoulders and rolled her over, jamming House’s face in the pillows and her fingers deep inside her. The bespoke tension House lovingly cultivated threatened to snap. Then Wilson draped her weight over every inch of House that she could reach.

House’s body—cleaved momentarily but entirely from her mind—shuddered in minor ecstasy, broke down to shivers, and finally relaxed.

As soon as House’s body calmed, Wilson slipped the blunt head of the strap inside her. The penetration threatened to undo all that good work and Wilson hushed and soothed and fucked just a little deeper, a little deeper, until oh, god, she bottomed out.

“House…” Wilson whispered, brushed House’s hair aside, kissed the back of her neck reverently. “How do I feel inside you?”

“Grahh.”

“What’s that?”

“Good.”

“Hmm.” Wilson’s skin thrummed with a tangible thrill all over House as she pulled out enough to deliver her first real thrust. “How about now?”

“Fuck.”

“I think I really like this,” Wilson said, way too casual, before taking House’s hips and started to pound into her.

House’s breathing was strangled. The fuck felt better the faster and harder Wilson went, and “faster and harder” seemed to be Wilson’s new favorite style. Was this how Wilson liked to be fucked? Or could she just tell it was what House needed? Was fucking House like this what Wilson needed?

Beginning to writhe, House allowed one small moan to trickle out, a reward for Wilson’s good behavior. Wilson took her praise and ran with it, doing House with a passion alien to recent memory. Jesus, but Wilson wasn’t treating her like a soft, broken thing. She couldn’t do this if she saw House that way. And she was doing it so achingly well.

“You take it so good, House, I never would have guessed. I didn’t know you could be so good for me.”

House was eminently grateful that her face was safely vaulted away in the pillow because it was, without a doubt, doing something indecently vulnerable right now.

The cool air whipped against the sweat lining her spine and she shivered. For all the friction and heat below the belt, there wasn’t nearly enough Wilson against the rest of her, now that she was up on her knees to spear House open like this.

Wilson was smart. She figured it out.

“God, yes,” House groaned involuntarily as Wilson’s breasts flattened against her back. She could feel their weight pooling, pressing and rubbing against the sharp peaks of her shoulder blades, nipples getting squashed and then peaking and brushing in the tantalizing half beat of Wilson’s thrusts, before crushing back down and staying there, teasing hard as Wilson explored her rhythms. The feeling produced as much raw pleasure as the penetration, and was at least as erotic.

“Do you like my tits?” Wilson asked in a husky, knowing whisper. The obscene slap of flesh as she reared back and then smacked House down with the full application of soft body, strap buried deep and chest smashing the air so, so willingly from House’s lungs.

“Fuck, Wilson…” (It was an all-purpose phrase: request, demand, insult, plea.)

“It makes me so hot to know it, House. You really have been looking. All these years. The low cut tops, the underwire, the peeks in the changing room…you really did want to take a bite out of my rack. Like Benny always complained.”

House writhed in the sharp spike of anger amidst the desire. “Never…would…”

“Oh, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Wilson assured her. “I wanted you to look. I know that now. I wanted you to touch…” She rubbed down hard and the stimulation of memory and of pure biological reality forced a hard moan from House.

“Wilson…” House pleaded, she didn’t know what for.

“House,” Wilson rejoined in the same register of desperation. “I love being inside you. I love being on top of you. I love feeling you wriggle under me, on me.”

Panting now, House started to itch all over with the need to climax but Wilson’s words pinned her to the cliff-side of ecstasy. “I love fucking you,” Wilson carried on, and slowed down, which didn’t match anything, what the hell, “I’ve never gotten to take someone like this…in my life…” House started to process how Wilson’s breath had been coming in sharp puffs for a while now, “and I…think I…needed to train first.”

She stopped. “Fuck. How do people keep their hips pumping like that.”

“It’s an art,” House snarled, pretty coherently, considering.

“I’m really sorry, it’s just—”

“—your back,” House finished the thought in huffy sync (but hadn’t finished, thus the huff). “I’m familiar with your L5 woes. No,” she interrupted, “don’t say anything.” Apologizing for bodily limitations wasn’t a race she was keen to start. “It’s not like I’d usually come from just that anyway.”

“Good.” Wilson’s lips teased the shell of her ear from behind, “Because I already miss your taste. You stay right where you are.”

One hand kept vigil at the base of House’s spine, keeping her flat to the bed, while Wilson found a new and exciting place to put her mouth.

“JesusfuckingChrist,” House exhaled, feeling Wilson’s tongue flick inside her where the now-clumsy-seeming strap had been. Her limbs went liquid. Wilson had her face buried happily in House’s ass and the simple fact of it was enough to throw House over the edge into orgasm, but the fingers sneaking down to massage her clit in perfect unison were delicious overkill.

House bit down viciously on her pillow and it did a decent job of muffling how loud Wilson’s enthusiastic expansion of her woman-eating capacities made her.

Wilson kissed up over the modest round of House’s backside, licked the twin divots marking the end of her spine, ran her nose along the inverted curve of her back. Her unfulfilled energy prickled at the edge of House’s blissed out consciousness, and it came as little surprise when she asked a few moments later, “What you said, about riding you…”

House sighed, not unhappily, and rolled over to get a better look at Wilson radiating excitement for another adventure.

“I say, slap a condom on that wood and all aboard.”

Wilson eagerly complied, cheating her way around a sanitizing trip with another plastic barrier from the bedside store, and helped hook the strap up around House’s immobile waist.

House was so, so satisfied, but the imagery of Wilson climbing onto her hips and giving the strap a playful stroke as she lined it up with her cunt still made bubbles of hot desire pop in House’s veins.

“Ready?” House asked, grabbing Wilson’s blissful hips.

Wilson’s eyes sparkled. “I was gonna ask you the same thing.”

She sank down without any more prologue. Her knees dug into the mattress on either side of House as she arranged herself on what House was starting to remember enjoying thinking of as her cock. It really had been too long since she’d done this.

House used her grip to hold Wilson still while she slowly but inexorably shifted her hips up, deeper, giving Wilson the first beat in their new rhythm. Wilson made a decadent little noise of pleasure and followed, easily sliding into sync.

“You feel so good,” Wilson purred, hands stroking and squeezing House’s shoulders and chest as she wriggled towards her perfect position. “So big and hard, just for me.”

“Just for you,” House agreed, and it was true, it didn’t matter that the strap couldn’t discriminate between being inside Wilson or a drawer, House was hard only for her. “And you’re so fucking tight, so hot. Like you’ve never been fucked before. Not like this.”

Wilson shook her head, biting her lip, and House’s rich imagination filled in the feeling of her pussy throbbing around House’s trusty length. House slipped exploratory fingers into the wet, thrusting mess of their bodies, stealing a swipe of the slick Wilson left behind in her thrill. She thumbed Wilson’s clit with venom and Wilson’s volume skated up close to a scream and she slapped House away.

“Not yet…let me…enjoy.”

So, House sat back and let her enjoy.

House wanted to see this every time she opened her eyes from now on. Wilson on top of her, riding her hard and harder, whole fantastic body in motion as she chased her pleasure with gaze fluttering shut and head falling back on her shoulders. Utterly debauched. House had believed she was developing a potentially debilitating obsession with Wilson’s breasts before? That was nothing to this, seeing them bounce wildly from below.

She grabbed Wilson’s tits, one per voracious hand, and squeezed to the limit of tolerance. Loosening her grip, she admired the flash of color left behind by her violence. Wilson’s flesh jiggled and slapped into her palms on every downbeat. Each impact made House lose another fragment of sense and self-control.

House wondered if Wilson would let House fuck herself on those tits, someday. Press that thick flesh between her legs, sensitive hill pressed into sensitive valley, the hard nub of Wilson’s nipple teasing that of House’s clit—

A not-entirely-satisfactory “oh, god,” left Wilson’s lips. House dragged her attention back from titty fuck land to realize that Wilson was tiring again. More than that, the frustration lining her body said she was remembering the pleasure limitations of this kind of penetration.

Fortunately, House had an easy solution.

“Now that you’re good and wet and fucked, come finish on my mouth.”

Wilson’s eyes widened and darted to House’s lips.

“You’ve had enough of my strap. You need my tongue to finish. And I’m lazy, I’m staying right here.”

“I…don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t,” House scoffed. “C’mon. Sit on my face. I can see you want it. And you can take anything you want from me.”

Control frayed and whipped away in a gust of desire. Wilson scrambled up to straddle House’s face. House breathed in deep and took gentle hold of Wilson, admiring the view, all there for her taking.

Wilson gripped the headboard and ever so carefully lowered herself until—

“Oh!” It wasn’t quite a scream, but House could sense one lingering inside Wilson, nearby. She swiped her tongue in another playful tease before getting a better hold on all the unthinkable bounty of Wilson above her and diving in deep.

She licked and sucked and ate at Wilson until she was near sobbing, clinging to the wooden bedframe for support. It only took a minute. Wilson had been on the physiological edge, and now the psychology of House luring her up to sit on her face and ride her tongue was tormenting her beyond the pale.

“House, House…” Wilson moaned desperately, and she gave up one safety handhold to reach down and grip House’s hair and hold her there, just there, and House staccato-ed her tongue through Wilson’s flooding, moaning orgasm.

The headboard creaked a final, piteous brrrr of strained timber as it became the primary force holding Wilson upright. With great effort, she heaved her thigh off of House’s face so when she went down like a building full of TNT, there weren’t any casualties. House pulled jealously, greedily at Wilson, tugging her in to lie face-to-face, half-moon curves in silent conversation.

Wilson gifted her a sleepy smile, coming back to life just enough to initiate a proper embrace. Her lips sealed without concern over the mess of House’s. She brushed hair damp and matted with sweat and slick off forehead and cheek and chin. She didn’t say anything because she didn’t have to—the thrum of her satisfaction didn’t need translation.

House was feeling hot and prickly under her skin again. Wilson’s kisses were reminding her how talented that mouth was, how it had felt between her legs. Her hands were in on it too, touching House so tenderly, it had to qualify as some kind of misdemeanor. Wilson ran her thumb in sweet rhythm over the ridge of damaged flesh standing in rude contrast forming the base of House’s scar. House spread her palm over Wilson’s ass, feeling out the delicious dimples of fat and ripples of stretch marks striating skin.

“I don’t know how I kept my hands off you all this time,” she muttered aloud.

“I don’t know why you did.”

Jerking minutely out of her hazy slump, House retorted, “I tried! I made moves! You always de-clawed my sexual overtures.”

“You could have…forced me.”

“You wanted me to...?” House sputtered, and she was not one to sputter lightly. “Jesus, Wilson. I can’t believe I’m the one saying this. But you’re being very politically incorrect. Lesbians don’t—as a class—force straight women into bed like animals.”

“But it would’ve been so hot, and convenient, if you forced me,” Wilson sighed, unbothered. “Maybe just before Julian. Saved me at least one divorce.”

“You could’ve jumped me, too.”

“I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. I never…” She laced her fingers with House’s and pushed gently down into the give of the bed. “I never initiate. I’ve never had to…seduce someone before.”

“What do you mean, never?”

“I mean, never.”

House wanted to, but couldn’t call bullshit. It tracked. Wilson sat there, beautiful and kind and tactile like one of those children’s museum exhibits you were allowed to get your grubby hands all over. Who wouldn’t throw themselves at her, regardless of invitation?

“So.” House licked her lips. “What should I have done?”

Wilson fell into her gravity well, feathered kisses on House. “You should’ve fucked me on your couch, all vegged out watching crap TV. You could’ve slipped your fingers between the buttons of my shirt. Get under my bra, pinch my nipple to a peak…” She brought House’s hand to her breast and House eagerly play-acted the fantasy. “Do it when I’m drunk. So I can’t get away.” Her eyelids fluttered, neck tilting back and away from responsibility, as House leaned in to commit her requested theft of innocence. “You don’t take off my clothes, just get beneath them, dirty me up. After you’ve teased my breasts and I haven’t stopped you…you go up my skirt. My underwear don’t slow you down. You press fingers into me and you go deep and I’m soaked already…”

All true, House thought gleefully, fucking Wilson gently on two fingers, feeling her rock and clench as her eyes shut tighter and wove the imagining more fiercely around them.

“I’ve never had a woman inside me before. I’m so turned on. You broke the gates and now I can touch you, too.” Wilson was on House, dragging and rolling until the vectors aligned and physics pulled House up to cover Wilson’s body with her own. House went with enthusiasm. “It’s so good, and you need me so badly.” Her eyes opened and met House’s and there was no room to feel humiliated at being so completely seen. Just a dazzling plunge of ecstasy. “You expose yourself to rub against me and oh god—!” Wilson squeaked and thrust her hips as the hard point of House’s clit lined up against her own mound and they fell into a frantic frotting rhythm. “Yes, yes, you do that, you rub yourself all over me and I’m desperate against you, like an animal, we’re rutting and it’s primal and neither of us could stop for anything in the world…”

Their mouths collided, clinging smears of touch without the finesse of a kiss, panting air like they were sharing the last molecules of oxygen. Wilson was determined, holding off on the orgasm House had brought to the surface in her until House’s face was screwed up in a near-pained grimace and then she begged, “House, please, come with me,” and House had turned down a lot of pleading in her life but that was a request she was incapable of refusing.

They came in staggered unison on friction and the thrill of synchrony.

House collapsed on Wilson, exhausted. Wilson clung to House like she could, or would, be going anywhere.

“Oh, House…” Wilson whispered.

Yeah. House forced her lazy lips into a kiss, pressing it to the shoulder squashed against her mouth.

“House,” Wilson repeated. Her hands were in House’s hair, playing across the skin of her back. “I…love you.”

“Uh.” Thick panting. Shit. “Is that supposed to be news? Ow!”

Wilson responded quickly and viciously to the lofty sarcasm. She prodded House hard in the ribs and House rolled off her, rubbing balefully at the wound.

“Christ.” More heavy breathing. “Give a girl a minute!”

“Fine.” Significantly less than a minute later, “If you love me in a minute, you love me now.” Wilson grumbled the syllogism, somewhere between stodgy chill and resignation. “I don’t think anything else momentous is gonna happen in the next sixty seconds.”

House moved with ant-approaching-boot levels of caution to kiss Wilson’s shoulder again. “You underestimate me.”

“No, I’m just closing up shop downstairs.” Wilson snatched the comforter—never having made the return journey back onto the bed in the first place—and dragged it up from the ground of shame to cover herself from waist to knee. “There. Now no more…unfair advantages.”

Sighing, House ran the knuckle of her first finger up and down Wilson’s arm. Wilson didn’t take a machete to the nearest joint, so House figured things were probably okay, despite the fussy act. “Why are you trying to rush out of our first fuck into our first fight? Let the endorphins clear first, at least.”

“I don’t wanna fight. And I don’t…” Wilson’s fingers twisted and untwisted in the fabric over her belly, “I don’t know why I said any of that.”

“Any of it?” House wanted Wilson to specify. She really, really wanted her to specify to which segments of speech she was shedding responsibility.

“I just feel very weird.” Wilson wiggled, turned onto her shoulder to face House. Captured House’s wandering hand so their fingers could frolic against each other. “We can blame those endorphins of yours.”

“I don’t own all the endorphins.”

“I am blaming you for these endorphins.”

“…Fair enough.”

“So.” The pad of her pointer finger played havoc with House’s love line, which was a bit on the nose as motifs went. “Where do we go from here?”

“The kitchen?” House suggested. “I never did get my lunch.”

“Okay, a sandwich first,” Wilson snorted. “And I vote for a shower, too. Eventually we have to go back to work. But what about slightly further along? Like, tonight? Tomorrow? The rest of our lives?”

“Tonight, Dark Angel is on. Tomorrow, it’s The X-Files.”

“And when Jessica Alba and Gillian Anderson are unavailable for you to drool over?”

“That seems to be where you come in,” House hypothesized, voice mild but hands itching for more than this innocent tangle on the sheets. Thumb wrestling was for shit, they’d been inside each other a few moments ago.

“I don’t really know where I come in.”

“But I know who you come in!”

Wilson gave the weak pun its due and ignored it. To the gratitude of all currently residing in that bed, she gave up on distance and tried to snuggle closer into House. House put up the requisite struggle for a few seconds before letting Wilson do what they both wanted and make her home in House’s arms. Her cheek nestled against House’s inner shoulder, one leg between House’s, elevating House’s injured thigh damned comfortably, her hand saddled in a smooth arc where House’s ribs melted into her back. Eye to eye, sleepover-gossip style, with even more sapphic sexuality than such events usually entailed.

“Seriously,” Wilson murmured, “they should give out manuals.”

“Where to go after going down on your first girl? Fashion do’s and don’ts for dyke night?”

“Tax advice for the savvy sapphic,” Wilson tried out a headline. “Recipes to drive your woman wild.”

“They could append it to the back of U-Haul rental contracts. Save time and paper.”

“Absent that, I’m stuck asking you. Until I get more lesbian friends. Will I get more lesbian friends?”

“Not if you know what’s good for you.”

An unmistakably happy noise purred out of Wilson’s throat, her nails scratching gently at House’s shoulder blade. “You’re good for me.”

“That cannot possibly be true.”

“C’mon, dispense some wisdom!” Wilson shook House gently. “Do I have to…I don’t know…put up a rainbow flag in my office?”

“You already have one.”

“That’s an ally one. This would be a…”

“Practicing dyke one?”

“But I haven’t practiced! What if someone asks me about something and I don’t know the answer because I’m a total amateur?”

“Do you think it’s likely you’ll be quizzed on k.d. lang lyrics? Expected to maintain a constant awareness of Ellen DeGeneres’ current whereabouts? Or do you just predict a high volume of callers asking for explicit cunnilingus tips.”

“I mean, I don’t think there will be an actual exam.” Wilson waited a beat, like House might leap in to correct her that, actually, she’d be sitting for the lesbian SATs next fall. “But I don’t know anything about yo—about our culture. Or history. What it’s like for gay people in Princeton, or on the east coast generally.”

“There is no general. It’s every bitch for herself in this dog-eat-dog world. You tried to take care of everyone before, you’ll try to take care of everyone now. You’ll just feel a little worse about the AIDS cases. Maybe donate even more time to Planned Parenthood. But hey, now you can make gay jokes without guilt.”

“Right, that sounds like me.” Wilson had evidently booked an overnight ticket on the pity express. House derailed it before the lingering buzz could be entirely killed off.

“Listen, just give Stacy a call. I know you still talk to her sometimes. She’s been dying to give you the WLW 101 since you met. I’m sure she’ll be fucking thrilled that you’ve taken the beaver plunge.”

“I doubt she’ll be thrilled that it’s your…um, beaver, that I’ve plunged into.”

House cracked a grin at the painful pronunciation of that imagery. “Maybe not. That’s your problem.”

“True. I have made you my problem. Right?”

“I’ve been your problem for a long time.”

“There were limited hours on my services. Now, I’m hoping all of…this has made it a full-twenty-four operation.”

“I’ve been vying for uninterrupted Wilson Access for years, you don’t have to convince me. What do you get out of the deal?”

“You,” Wilson said simply. She touched House’s cheek and House only flinched a little.

“Historically speaking, I’m not very…keepable.”

“I’ve kept you.”

“Mostly.”

“Entirely.” Wilson’s hold was taking on notes of the python.

House twitched an arm free. Grabbed for the Vicodin she kept shoved beneath the mattress for emergencies, which this was threatening to become. “I’m a love ‘em and leave ‘em kind of girl.”

“You can’t leave me,” Wilson said, as soft and indominable as moonlight through atmosphere. “You don’t have anywhere to go.”

House forgot about her pills. “You like that.”

Wilson shrugging was quickly rising up the charts on House’s favorite Wilson activities. Casual, a little mean, and it made her unbound tits jiggle so naughtily. “I’d rather have you the wrong way than lose you the right way.”

This was a great deal better and a great deal more damaging than the “I love you,” which House now felt had been like a cat play-biting without force. The fangs were out now. Yet, House felt that she was being stitched together into something strange and strong and vibrant, even as she was torn apart.

“You never talked like this before.”

“I’ve never been in your bed before.”

“Then I hope you never leave my bed.”

House felt Wilson’s breath catch in the closeness of their lungs. “That sounded a little like ‘I love you, too.’”

“Get your hearing checked.”

“Rephrase, then.”

“I want you in my bed. Forever. Your body, I mean…” She whistled, but no amount of vulgar volume could puncture the hope rising in Wilson’s limbs.

“Tell me more.”

“About how I want your body?”

“Yes, tell me how much you love my body,” Wilson challenged.

“Easy. Starting with the main exhibit: I think your breasts belong in a museum, or a really classy art gallery…” House touched her well-formed topics appreciatively as she expanded on her thesis. “I think your thighs should be preserved for posterity.” She smacked her palms down on said thighs. Somehow, though, her fingers traveled back up from this luscious locale to unsafe altitude. She cupped Wilson’s cheek and jaw far more tenderly than common sense would advise. “I think your face should be captured in oils by someone with a lot steadier hand than me.”

Oh, Christ, she could feel it. Wrenching free. All of it. Some idiot had left the lid loose on House’s hermetically sealed jar of feelings and now they were spidering out at top speed on razor legs, uncontained and heavily armed.

“I think your mind is more beautiful and twisted than I’m able or you’re willing to comprehend. I think you…” (stop, stop, please, shut up) “I think you are altogether too good for my shitty love to fit anywhere but on the lowest, dustiest shelf of you.”

In the immediate aftermath, House was vindicated to know that yes, it hurt exactly as much to say it out loud as she’d predicted. Small comfort in the bowels of hell, but she never turned down an opportunity to cherish being right.

And now, Wilson was on top of her again. Excellent, for obvious reasons. Terrible too, because now House was chained down for full, unendurable scrutiny by the lodestone of her world, and she knew the audit would come up in debt.

At least, Wilson mercified the blow with a kiss. A moment of peace, shattered as she whispered to House’s locked-closed eyes, “I would make a monument to any shred of love you gave me.”

If her teeth could reach, House would’ve gnawed off the leg she almost died to keep, just to escape this moment.

“House, please listen.” Another kiss. “Is this how?” House, pinned by Wilson’s lips. “Do I need to kiss you until you understand? Until you understand how much I want you to fill me up, to make me whole. I want you to hold me, forever, not just on the bad nights but on the good ones and the boring ones and the utterly routine ones we can’t even remember because they all blend together.” Wilson’s breath rattled, pained, but the words were carried onward by their own force now. “House, I have never wanted to be anyone as badly as the person you shape me into. She is braver and more interesting and more alive than I could ever imagine being before I met you. Please, please let me keep her. Let me keep you.” A fevered note crept in, diluting the wild assurance of her unbroken need. “Let me keep you. I won’t—I won’t let you go until you promise I can keep you.”

House smiled. No conscious thought needed, no regulation of emotion allowed—the expression simply rolled into place, in expectation. “You could never keep me. But you don’t have to. I’ll stay.”

A shiver wracked Wilson, hissed from her mouth as she dug her nails into House’s meager flesh, melding them into one broken shipwreck of a lover. “You really mean that?”

“Of course, I do. I never wanted to leave. I just needed to know what you’d do to stop me from going.”

Wilson dropped her face to bury it in House’s neck, and screamed a little. Then she sighed, stilled. Pushed back up on her arms to provide House with a perfect view of her squashed, cranky little face, framed by crooked curtains of soft brown hair. “You are an abominable ass. And I still love you.”

“Drop the ‘still.’”

Wilson melted. “I love you.”

“That’s better.”

“I love you.” The hysterical edge of joy sent her wriggling and giggling on top of House. “It feels so good to finally say it.”

“I…will take your word for it.”

Trickling off House so they could both take another go at breathing, Wilson laughed and gave House’s side a dutiful tickle. “Someday, you’ll say it back.”

House pinched her lips together but nodded. “The evidence is pointing in that direction.”

“I think I can be happy with a hypothesis for now. Proof can come later.”

“Universal truths exist outside of scientific observation,” House argued, abruptly and strongly concerned that Wilson had misunderstood the metaphor. “Facts predate publication.”

Wilson tucked her fist under her chin, thoughtful. “Are you saying…you love me, but you just can’t say it?”

“I couldn’t say that.”

“What can you say?”

“That you must know this—between us—is as much a theory as gravity.”

Wilson traced House’s face and her logic. “We rely on it every day, even though we can never get final proof.”

“Forever theory.”

A single tear, its appearance long awaited in this afternoon thunderstorm of passion, glittered in the corner of Wilson’s eye and danced down her cheek. “I like this theory.”

“Care to test it with me?”

“For how long?”

“I suspect it’ll require extensive experimentation.”

“Years?”

“Even a lifetime.”

Wilson pulled House in with both hands, an ungainly grab at ears and neck and cheek, kissing her hard. “A lifetime,” she nodded, both their faces damp and messy now, causality impossible to determine, “I can work with that.”