It starts with one too many Vicodin.

Sometimes this happens, and it’s okay. He hallucinates and lets himself get exhausted, lets himself fall asleep as the colors make sounds and as he can taste blood in his mouth without doing anything to cause himself to bleed.

Tonight, it’s different— and not a good kind of different. Not like he’s ever liked different.

“House.”

There’s no way Wilson is here— he didn’t hear the door open. His head snaps up and he looks up at him, and he manages a weak smile at the sight of his best friend. Wilson’s brows are knitted together, his gaze unreadable and his hand twitching.

“What?” he says, raising a brow, looking bored as he goes to reach for some water. He knows better than to mix booze with hallucinations, although he has done it sometimes, even if just to make himself a bigger mess than he already is.

“I wanted to show you something.”

Wilson’s voice wavers, like he’s unsure, like he’s not positive he’ll like what he wants to show him.

“C’mon then,” he says, unamused.

He blinks and he sees Wilson’s bare torso, and Wilson’s bare legs and Wilson’s bare everything and suddenly House has bile rising up his throat, clawing at it, not letting him move, not letting him think.

He looks almost like one of those men in the pages of Barazoku back when he and his father were in Japan, those issues he kept well-hidden at age seventeen so he’d never find out about them.

A toned chest he questions for a second, warm hands trailing down Wilson’s torso, legs slightly apart, and House knows where this is going, and tries to ignore how his stomach turns, how his hands shake.

“I’m not a fag,” he breathes.

Wilson— fake Wilson, Wilson would never do this, he’s just a hallucination, Wilson would never do this— moans softly, moans his name as he tips his head against the wall, wraps his hand around his length.

“House—”

And he sounds just like him, just like his best friend, and it fucks him up so bad it hurts.

“I’m not a fag!” he yells, taking the unopened bottle of wine and throwing it to the wall, the hallucination distorting and eventually fading away.

He stares at the wall Wilson was leaning against, and he doesn’t get a blink of sleep that night. All he can think about is Wilson’s torso and Wilson’s thighs and the way he breathed his name, the way he’ll never breathe his name like that, the real Wilson would never—

He doesn’t want him to breathe his name like that, anyway. He is straight, he is a straight man who doesn’t harbor feelings for men, thank you very much. He loves women, adores their bodies and the way a hooker sinks into him with too much ease and too little care.

And he loves women, loves their curves and the soft caress of a body against his own, so he cannot be gay. Being gay means being exclusively attracted to your own gender, and he loves women. It isn’t him, it’s not him, it’s never been him.

When he manages to get up, he gets to the bathroom and pulls his clothes off.

He decides to torture himself a little, ice-cold water hitting his back as he tries to get over the effects of too much Vicodin in his system. All he can think about is Wilson, which is not good when all he trying to do is forget about him. Or the fake version of him his brain conjured up for the sole purpose of making him miserable.

He spends valuable time he should spend getting ready on the thought of Wilson’s thighs, and WIlson’s alluring call of his name, and he snaps out of it. He finishes showering, puts a towel around his waist and limps towards his bedroom.

When he gets to the PPTH, he’s met by Wilson pushing a file into his hands. Teenager with something uncommon, the usual; he can’t meet his friend’s eye.

All he can think of is what’s underneath his white coat, and how much Wilson adores Julie, and the way he gets drunk sometimes and speaks about how she can hold him and how he holds her after bad dreams or the way her lips taste like cherry cola after a night out.

House contemplates for one second, just one second, kissing Wilson. Pushing him closer towards him, mashing his lips with him, letting him consume him.

The dirty feeling returns, and he wants to scratch his own skin off.

“House?” Wilson says, nudging him with his hand against his wrist.

He snaps out of it, and Wilson’s brows are knitted together in worry and oh, the feeling in his gut returns full-force.

“What?”

He cocks a brow at him. “Are you listening to me?”

“No.” He snatches the file right out of Wilson’s hands. “I’ll look into it.”

Wilson looks at him, put off by how he took it without even one argument against it, but maybe his body language is obvious enough about how he doesn’t want to talk, because he doesn’t follow him.

The rest of the day proceeds in its usual fashion. He saves the life, he says something sardonic and rude, goes through clinic duty.

“You’re weird,” Wilson tells him as they step outside the hospital.

“And you’re cheating on your wife,” he says, deflecting, “any more obvious inflections?”

“I’m not—”

House raises a brow at him, looking at the space between his brows rather than his caramel-brown eyes.

Wilson rolls his eyes and heads to his car. “Do you want me to drive you?”

“No,” he says all too quickly.

Wilson raises a brow.

“My car's here.”

A lie. If Wilson doesn't buy it, he doesn't say anything, simply shrugs and heads to his car.

“See you tomorrow,” he says, a smile making its way into his factions.

House swallows thickly. “See you tomorrow.”

---

The bottle on the coffee table is nearing emptiness, and House can't sleep. So he resorts for what he knows, for what always works.

He shuffles through numbers and through what his computer tells him until he manages to call. The voice on the other side is a young thing, voice high and sweet, wrapping around every syllable.

There's a knock at his door, and a man's lips against his own, and him clawing at this pretty young thing's shirt. His torso wouldn't be unfamiliar in the Japanese magazines he bought decades ago.

He is twenty-something, small and skinny; his nimble, expert fingers raising goosebumps over House's thighs and House's back. He makes sure to bring the lube, at House's own request.

He watches, almost dumbfounded, as this young thing sinks down into him, pushing him into another kiss.

“Queer,” House breathes, holding onto this pretty man, a hooker, as he fucks into him.

He doesn't know if he's calling himself the word that means dirty, odd, wrong; or if he's calling the man riding him it. Either one is equally terrible.

“Fucking fairy,” House growls as he pushes deeper into him, clawing into this hooker's sides, pulling him open. Trying to understand how, oh how does he manage to be so comfortable in his own skin.

For just a moment, the man tips his head back, mouth open in a silent plea, and House wonders if he squints he'll look like Wilson.

He snaps out of it, holds onto the man's waist, pulls him impossibly closer.

“Wilson,” he gasps with a shuddering breath, coming into the condom, and the wave of shame that overcomes him, the disgust towards himself, makes him want to throw up.

The man pulls himself off him, and he almost wants to beg him to stay. To hear him lament about how much he hates it, hates himself for being a faggot and for just coming at the thought of his best friend riding him like the pretty young thing he's got at his fingertips.

But the man simply looks for his clothes, pulls them on, cleans himself up. He leans in to kiss him again.

“Interested in another round any time soon?” he asks, voice the same seductive tone over the same. His red-pink lips wrap around every vowel, lashes long and eyes the same caramel-brown as Wilson.

House takes a shuddering breath in, considers his choices. “No,” he manages to croak out.

The man puts his jacket on. “I think a therapist is better for internalized homophobia than a hooker, darling,” he says before slipping out the door.

Like with most advice, House doesn't listen, and finds himself with another pretty young thing in his bed the week after.

---

Chase mentions sleeping with a guy, and it’s like all hell breaks loose.

House doesn’t comment on it, of course he doesn’t, just listens. Listens as Chase dramatically explains the bisexual guy who hit on him at a bar, the bisexual guy with a British accent, the bisexual guy, the bisexual, bisexual.

He’d heard the word before, of course. In passing, in mentions that he’d never ever thought of applying to himself. Maybe because all of those mentions were about women— women with boyfriends who slept with women too, women into threesomes and women whose sexuality did not belong to them.

House watches the reflection in the mirror the day after.

House watches the pretty young thing’s collar bone as he peppers it with kisses, as he kisses him madly, as he stops whispering slurs against the man’s mouth. He takes him all in, ignores the burning feeling in his stomach that it shouldn’t be a man he doesn’t know, it shouldn’t be not Wilson, it shouldn’t be a man.

After a few weeks, he admits it to himself, and it makes him be terrified for his future, his present, his past.

It’s a truth he’s ignored for years now— no, for decades, because no straight man gets gay magazines while in Japan and hides them from his father, no, does he? This is obvious, but the way he buried it inside him until Wilson happened made him almost forget about it.

He stays in the shower for longer than normal, sitting down, as he considers what he can do now. Not much, he guesses; he isn’t going to come out. Why would he, why should he? It has a lot more cons than pros.

He ends up calling the first young man he fucked, asking him to come over.

“Got therapy?” he jokes, a bit of stubble around his chin. He undresses himself, sways his hips as he kisses House again and again.

“No,” he replies, pulling him closer. He digs his nails into the young man’s hip, lets them sink in. Lets himself sink into all he thinks, all he feels. “Just my own thoughts.”

“Good.”

He sinks into him, and although he thinks wrong, wrong, wrong, the logical part of him knows there’s nothing dirty about this all.

---

He takes a few too many Vicodin a few days after.

There’s Wilson again, of course, and he isn’t undressed anymore.

He leans in towards him, taller than the real one, and cups House’s cheek. He swallows all he wants to say, all he wants to think, all he wants to feel. He can’t let himself even muster it.

“I think I’m in love with you,” Wilson says, same inflection, same voice, same curl of his mouth as the real one.

House stares at him— his caramel brown eyes shine with focus, with love, and it’s the same love he sees when he talks about Julie. He’s a little sick with it all.

His head pounds and he’s nauseous, but he manages to stare at Wilson’s lips for longer.

“Me, too,” he stutters out.

---

House hears knocking at the door, and goes to open it. He sees Wilson, overdressed, looking devastated.

“Could I stay with you for a few days?” he asks.

House opens his mouth, to say something about how he told his wife he’s cheating, but Wilson intercepts—

“She told me…” House’s brain turns into static, and all he can think about is how he’ll be in the same apartment as Wilson for a few days, maybe a few weeks if it stretches out for far too long. Wilson always talks about Julie’s lips tasting like cherry cola, and the way she laughs, and how good she is. And now... “It’s always about sex. She’s been having an affair.”

House draws in a breath and steps back, letting Wilson in.

There’s a quiet sureness he has, that he’ll keep wanting him more and more as the days pass, until it overcomes him and he does something incredibly stupid. Something that could cost him his friendship— hell, could cost him his life.

“Want a beer?” he asks.

Wilson smiles, and the way his lips curl into an easy grin makes House’s heart beat faster than anything else ever has— and he’s had gone into cardiac arrest before.