III

"Do you want to buy a hooker?" House looks up from his magazine as he speaks, a half-serious expression on his face. He's laying in bed, his bad leg propped up on a pillow. "I mean, it's not gay if it's a three-way."

Wilson scoffs and puts down the book he's been holding. (Not reading. Not really.) "No," he snorts, indignant. The very action of him exhaling so forcefully sends a sharp, shooting pain into his chest. When House replies, "Why not?" with a careless shrug, Wilson can't answer from the shock of feeling like his heart is being torched.

He's exhausted, honestly. House had planned today within an inch of its life. They rode their bikes to a nearby carnival, and they did all the things that carnival goers did, and it was taxing and horrible and they both agreed that they would never do anything like that again. (House said, "in the years to come," which really wasn't very fair of him.)

"Because, House," Wilson protests, propping himself up on his elbows. "One, it is gay if it's a three way, and two, I would rather get sex from real people."

"That's an insult to hookers."

"Yeah, well," Wilson grumbled distastefully. "I don't want to."

"Cross it off your bucket list. Hell, I'll even put it on me. It's on the house. Pun intended only slightly."

"House, we're using my money."

House rolls his eyes. "Buzzkill. I do have cash."

Wilson dismissively waves his hand and picks up his book, pretending to run his eyes down the pages but not reading anything at all. He's just waiting for House to speak up again, and when he does, it's no surprise. But what he says... it makes Wilson shake his head, like a dog trying to get water out of its ears.

"Why not buy a hooker? I'm serious," House says, his lips curled into an encouraging smile. "As serious as I'm ever going to get, that is."

Why not? Why not?

Was House really going to ask him that, as if he didn't already know? Was he really going to make Wilson say it...? Because Wilson thought that's what they'd been trying to avoid. Because he thought that House knew - of course he knows, he does, they both know. Of course they know. House is fucking with him. He's trying to screw things up, just like he always does when it actually matters. House is just fucking it up because he can't stand being miserable alone, because he is like a parasite but Wilson is still letting him drain the life out of him, bit by bit - no wonder he has cancer, it's House, it's him, and Wilson can't take it, he just can't-

"You fucking... dick!" he yells at House, abruptly enough that House's smile is wiped off his face in an instant. Wilson feels like a tightly wound coil, ready to snap back or break, but determined to do neither. House shocked into silence, eyes wide and mouth closed, finally, for one goddamn time in his life. "You know why," Wilson hisses lowly. "You know," and he can't keep the pathetic agony out of his voice. "House," he says, his voice cracking on the word, a finger being brought up to point accusatorially. He can feel his throat closing, and tears threatening to dampen his eyes. He doesn't know what to say, so he falls back to default, his voice trembling.

"House. You... know why."

Wilson looks down, because he can't take it. He can't fucking take it.

They don't share a word for the rest of the night.

***

He dreams of dying.

At two, he wakes with a start, panting uncontrollably. He feels like his lungs aren't getting enough air, yet he's making so much carbon dioxide. He needs to exhale into a bag, and concentrate hard on breathing - Where's House? - Don't pay attention to him, James - in out, in out, in out, but he's starting to forget what the words mean and he's confusing them - in out, in in out out out, out, out, in in in in in in out in out-

You need House to live, he hears, as he passes out. You need House to die. Pathetic.

***

Everyone used to call him James, and then House came, and he erased James's existence and replaced it so seamlessly with a stranger - the stranger that James had wanted to be. No one noticed except them. It was their secret.

But that stranger has cancer, and just hyperventilated his way into sleep.

When he wakes up, it's three AM, and he regrets everything. Even if only for a second, a notion hangs there, a sentiment that he previously thought he'd only have if his family was threatened at gunpoint.

Fuck it, Wilson thinks. There is no utopia. Fuck it to hell.

He downs twenty of House's Vicodin. It saves him the pain of dying slowly.

He calls it an experiment. Sees if he wakes up in the morning. Wilson drifts away, feeling small and insignificant, his hand loosening on the pill bottle until it falls from his grip and onto the floor. Pills disperse in a warped clatter, like glass beads.

For an instant, he feels no pain.

And what will House do then, when he finds his friend lying on the bathroom floor?

What will he do then?

***

But Wilson'll never leave House like that.

***

"If you need to talk, if you need any more help..."

"I'm just tired."

"...I'm right here."

He was so used to being the crutch, the shoulder. Now look where they are.

***

There are lines they do not cross.

When Wilson calms down, House faces him, gauging his response. He slips out of his bed and limps around, over to Wilson, unsure of what to do next, what moves to make. This is a dance to him. A chess game. They're a pair of broken marionettes. "Hey," he says, his voice thick with that uncertainty he gets when he's being half-decent. He doesn't look Wilson in the eyes. "You okay?"

Wilson nods shakily, wiping his palms on his pajamas. He shuns the faint tint of fear from his mind as he nods again, and House sits down on the bed next to him, lifting his bad leg up with both thick hands. They sit for a few seconds in the darkness, and he doesn't know what to say, so he just starts talking.

"I'm sorry," he starts, uncharacteristically. "I didn't know - I mean, I knew. We both knew. We both did and I thought that if I pretended that it wasn't true then when you died I wouldn't feel so..."

In a different, kinder world, House doesn't finish his sentence. Wilson sits up and pulls House down on top of him, one hand on his hip, the other palming the skin on his face; he hears the soft intake of breath that House makes when he does so. They lean into the mattress, and it groans under the weight of them, them. House and Wilson. Is this a line they can cross?

His skin feels like rain, and his lips are like a pulse; he can feel soft, wiry hairs brush against his hand, and as he leans back into the mattress, House says in a low, breathy whisper: "Is the part where I kiss you?" And he takes in Wilson's face with his eyes and he chuckles and he presses his lips to Wilson's like he is a planet caught in Wilson's gravity.

House trails open mouthed kisses down from the corner of Wilson's mouth to his neck, quiet hums of appreciation being attached onto every touch of skin. Wilson squirms slightly as he feels House's hands tighten on the hem of his shirt, lifting it up over his head and discarding it carelessly on the floor besides them. Kisses are trailed down the skin of his chest, House mouthing the flesh quivering underneath him, and House disregards the protest of his leg as he slowly makes his way down to Wilson's hips, smoothing his fingertips across the skin of his ribcage and the soft warmth of his stomach. House looks enraptured as he watches the slow undulations underneath him, rubbing a warm hand against Wilson's hardness as Wilson exhales, shaken.

When House comes back up to kiss him, still palming Wilson leisurely, Wilson draws his fingers through the wisps at the base of House's neck and breathes him in. In a different, kinder world, he falls in love like that. Again and again and again, he falls in love, the way you fall in love with a song, or a sunset.

In a different, kinder world, House doesn't finish his sentence. Wilson kisses him.

In a different, kinder world, Wilson doesn't have cancer. Wilson kisses him.

In a different, kinder world, James doesn't feel like he's about to spontaneously combust because House knows, they both know, and there's no point in apologizing for knowing because you can't just snap your fingers and undo processes and diagnoses; there are steps to go in reverse. Wilson sometimes feels like he is Sisyphus, pushing a boulder to the top of a hill and then watching it roll back down again, successfully banning emotion from his conscienceness and then watching it break back through with the persistence of a wrecking ball. He can't control the laws of inertia.

Thusly, House's sentence carries through with the same speed and in the same direction, unacted upon by an outside force. Silence hangs over them, a cloud that refuses to play its hand, shuffling coyly and waiting for a tell. Wilson can sense sleet in the way that House breathes - precisely, measured. He sits up, and says, "We don't need to talk about it, House." His voice is a whisper, although the neighbors won't really be able to hear if he speaks louder. Then again, it is four thirty.

House nods, once, his eyes meeting Wilson's. "Right," he says, his voice feigning certainty. "See you in the morning." House stands up slowly, looking down at Wilson. His eyes are taking in Wilson's face, gray shadows under the deep lines of his brow. They seem to express exactly what House is feeling at any one time - but not now. This time his face is drawn and quiet with knowledge, secret thoughts that aren't grievous nor happy. House looks blank, but Wilson knows better.

If only he could curl up inside of House's skull and know exactly what he's thinking, feel the way he feels, experience every smell and texture and ache that rattles through his bones. He could fix things; small things; tweak and work at broken cogs and IV drips linking his heart to his brain. Wilson could finally lay things out, like a map before him, tracing which paths lead to this moment, and understand all their mistakes, the wrong turns they took.

Wilson fights the urge to ask if he feels the same way, because their walls are up for a reason, and he's not going to touch him, because the spaces in between skin are there to separate people. Wilson won't climb into his arms and bury himself in House's chest and curl up inside his head, and understand everything wrong that has ever happened to them.

There are lines.