Chapter Text
Bisexual.
House first heard the term in a military magazine article when he was eleven; ‘Bisexuals in the Military: If They Can’t Pick a Partner, How Will They Pick a Side?’
Even then, he had thought it was ludicrous. He was familiar with the stories of men out on deployment getting together with the enemy's wives. Denying their illegitimate children as they went straight back to killing their husbands, their sons, their brothers, the innocent civilians caught by stray bullets. If anything, an army of bisexuals would be the saving grace the military needed. They would either wipe each gender out equally and conquer foreign lands like a true patriot or bring peace to the world through orgies.
Not that his father would have appreciated that unique stance.
House had looked up the word in the dictionary at the time, hidden under his bed with pink cheeks and a churning stomach because it had the word sex in it and that made it bad.
He closed the book with a racing heart and somehow, the definition slipped into the beat like a perfectly timed snare; ‘sexually or romantically attracted to both men and women’. It stuck with him every time he looked at a guy in his class or a girl smiled at him down the hall and his heart came to life.
House heard other words across the years. Pansexual. Omnisexual. Polysexual. They all applied to him in an abstract sort of way. He preferred bisexual, simply because that’s what he heard on the news and what they put in the acronym for other people like him. He figured if he ever needed to explain himself, bisexual was easier for the general population to wrap their heads around.
Attraction for House was less about what was going on downstairs and everything to do with suffering a bone-deep cold every day of his life and everyone else being a warm body to latch on to.
He liked the way his college girlfriend’s hair ran through his fingers and how her lips parted when he tugged. She fit snugly into his arms, squashed up against the wall on the single mattress in his dorm room. Her long, bedazzled nails left lines on his back, and her chest made a damn good pillow after endless hours of study.
Stacy matched his intellect. She snapped back like a rubber band and gave him whiplash with her sharp tongue in more places than one. They spent hours arguing, debating, catching each other out on the tiniest little fact. It drove him crazy. Her long legs looked good in flared pants and flowy dresses and fucking incredible wrapped around his back.
House lived on the high of his brief affair with Willama in his twenties. She had biceps the size of his thighs and a short, spiked pixie cut dyed bright purple. He still had the bruises on his back and the ache in his hips where she had picked him up and slammed him down on every surface in her apartment.
Willama pole danced on the weekends, and if that wasn’t enough to bring up all those puberty hormones House thought he had gotten over since his teenage years, on Friday nights, she performed on the silks in a cabaret show at a local bar. House went to every single show. And if those silks ended up around his wrists and over his eyes, who was he to complain?
House never denied his bisexuality to himself. What he thought in his head couldn’t get to him out in the real world. But yes, he had only been with two men in his life, and yes, he had only told one person he was bisexual in all four decades of walking (and one lousy decade of limping) the Earth.
House had his first kiss with Irene Batsy, hidden under the cover of a playground slide. Irene used to sneak out of the house at night and had spotted him shivering in his pajamas, sheltered from the wind and torrential rain by the metal underside of the slide, and had run back to her house for a blanket.
It became a regular occurrence. His dad left him outside for the night. Irene found him sometime after dark. They huddled together at the playground under her scratchy checkered blanket. On the colder nights, she offered him a cigarette and they thawed out in the glow of the flame. House still remembered the feel of the pink, satin edges as he tucked the blanket up to his chin.
A few weeks into their arrangement, he kissed her. She had tasted of smoke. He supposed he had too.
House didn’t have to work as hard for his second kiss. Graham Jackson, the spitting image of Roger Daltrey and a kid in House’s lacrosse team invited him to watch ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ at the movies. Graham had his hand on House’s thigh before the trailers ended and his teeth on his neck pretty soon after the movie began.
Two things became clear that night. House gave off a vibe that clearly and explicitly invited gay romance into his life (it wasn't as if people at that time took a risk. They had to have known something about him he didn’t recognise in himself) and secondly, he was undeniably not straight.
House remembered flipping back through the dictionary and running his finger under the word ‘bisexual’, reading it over and over again just to be sure it was a thing that a person could be. He liked Irene and he liked Graham and he definitely liked whatever Frank-N-Furter had going on in those brief moments House caught a glimpse at the screen between sucking face at the back of the theatre.
Graham didn’t last. Nothing ever did as a military kid forced to move from place to place every couple of years.
But when House was seventeen he met the first person he ever confessed his bisexuality to and the first and last man he ever had sex with.
His name was Todd Perry but everyone called him Sticks. He played the drums on a pile of upturned paint buckets, two metal trash can lids, and a 10 gallon water carrier. House called him Stevie Sticks because even though Stevie denied it to the ends of the earth, House knew had gotten his hippie-waved hairstyle from the Fleetwood Mac poster on his wall.
They had been in Stevie’s room sitting on his bed under that very same poster when he turned to House and said ‘I have something to tell you. You have to promise not to tell anyone’.
House already knew. It had been obvious. Stevie just had that way about him…a certain flair and way of speaking that straight guys didn’t really have. House noticed the way Stevie looked at him because it was the same way House looked at him too; lingering glances between strictly averted eyes; warm faces and ducked heads and little smiles for no reason other than to say ‘oh, hello, there you are, where you’ve been sitting for the past twenty minutes. Fancy seeing you here’.
House confessed his own secret. He told him about the dictionary and Stevie listened with wide eyes because he hadn’t heard that word before. Stevie asked him questions about girls, what he liked about them and what he didn’t, and House shrugged because the bits didn’t really matter the way dicks and abs and muscles appealed to Stevie.
Stevie didn’t quite get it but he tried to understand and that was more than House could have asked for. He didn’t really get Stevie either. How he could fawn all over Roger Taylor’s long blonde hair but not care for Farrah Fawcet. How he gushed over David Bowie’s blue eyelids and striking make-up but not Donna Summer’s.
But they bonded over Led Zeppelin and Harrison Ford from Star Wars and grew closer in the bond of their secret.
Stevie played his makeshift drums and House played his guitar. They called themselves ‘The Basketcases’ because it sounded cool, and took inspiration from The Rolling Stones and The Who. Stevie sang like a cat giving birth but damn could he work those paint buckets. He gave John Bonham a run for his money. House had told him that once and had to wear a turtleneck for a whole week afterwards.
They wrote a few original songs together but all that remained was a simple melody- na na nana naaa na na nanana naaa…- that House now struggled to find the words too. Something about a road trip, or maybe a warzone? House didn’t have many regrets but forgetting to record those songs was one of them. He should have at least written down some of the sheet music or the lyrics.
They used to make out in Stevie’s room while his parents were at work. One day, Stevie’s dad needed surgery at a hospital out of town and left Stevie at home to look after the house. And boy, did he look after the House.
They fumbled around each other, more laughter and hesitance than any real dirty talking or initiative. Their kisses were sloppy and their hands were all over the place. Stevie nearly fell off the bed. House twisted his leg in a weird way that hurt for over a week. It was all new to them. Health class skipped past the whole gay sex unit but they made it work with some trial and error. Their bodies found the right ways to fit together on their own. It felt good. No, it felt fucking amazing.
He would have done it a million times over.
Then his father found out.
House blamed himself. He fucked up, like always. His stupid hormone filled brain and undeveloped frontal lobe took a risk and decided to kiss Stevie in his bedroom, with his parents in the living room right down the hall. What started as a kiss shifted into full on making out. House lay on his bed with Stevie’s hands sliding all over his chest and his teeth along his collarbone, forgetting about the world around them.
He didn’t hear the footsteps coming down the hall over Stevie breathing in his ear. He missed the knock- not that a door ever stopped John House from barging in, but they had a guest and appearances of politeness had to be kept- for the giggle against his lips when Stevie tickled his ribs. He failed to notice the door swinging open and his father sweeping in because he was busy looking in Stevie’s eyes.
But House was there when his father cut through the laughter like a guillotine. “Boys.”
Stevie had jumped from the bed and was in the furthest corner of the room before House had even processed his father’s voice.
Then, House saw his father, and his heart sank into his stomach. He stared down the grey of his father’s eyes, the only barrier between John House and the steadily growing anger building within him, and simply stopped breathing.
His father had a hand on the doorknob and a completely blank, impenetrable expression on his face. He stood with his shoulders back and his head raised. The vein in his forehead throbbed. His fingers twitched.
Fury flowed through John House like magma. It poured hot and steaming into every crevice of his body and solidified into the familiarised, military rigidness House came to expect when he pissed him off. John contained it for now. They had a guest after all. The guests always came first. But cracks formed along his fault line. His lips pressed tight together and his chest rose faster and faster.
HIs father would explode any moment.
House had a line crossed over his name. He knew as soon as his father got rid of Stevie, he would be a dead man.
House turned to Stevie, pleading with his eyes for help, for him to stay, for him to run and find someone to save them both, for anything at all except for their reality, but Stevie had his eyes glued to the floor as he tucked his t-shirt back into his jeans.
His father’s low, monotone voice rattled his bones. “Todd, pack up your things and go home.”
The fear crept up like the thumping, infrasound bass from a horror movie; the secret build up of the camera crawling down the hallway in deathly silence; the moment before the character closed the medicine cabinet and found a killer in the mirror; the crescendoing scream before the knife plunged forward and blood spilled from open jaws.
Stevie bolted without pulling his eyes away from the carpet. But when he got out into the hall, behind the wall of House’s father, Stevie lifted his head. He offered House a single parting glance filled to the brim with the terror and panic reflected in House’s own eyes.
Stevie had reached out for just a moment. Between fleeing to his freedom and running away, Stevie took his own risk and stopped for a split second to turn back around. It had been more of a jerk of his hand than anything, his palm opening and fingers inching towards House, before he closed his hand into a fist and hugged it to his chest.
But it had meant something to House. Stevie had thought about him. Enough to fight his own fear and let House know that he had wanted to help. House knew if either of them had been a little braver, a little older, even a little more sure of themselves, they could have stood side by side and faced the wrath of John House together.
House wouldn’t have asked that of anyone in a million years. But he saw it on Stevie's face in the brief flash of time where everything stood still and it was just him and Stevie in their bubble of happiness together.
Then the bubble burst and time carried on.
That one gesture of solidarity would be the final memory House had of Stevie.
Stevie disappeared and John House stepped into the room. He closed the door behind him.
House’s mum was in the lounge, only two walls away. She never seemed to hear a thing.
His father advanced like a hyena. House was frozen to the bed. His body disconnected from his brain and no matter how hard he tried to run or fight, the signals were blocked up by the panic. There was no way to get out of this. No explanation that made sense. No one he could pin the blame on. It didn’t matter how thought-out or calculated or convincing he made his argument, there was no way to deny that his father had found him kissing another boy and enjoying it.
House was smart, but he couldn’t sweet talk his way out of irrefutable proof. Not that it would have mattered anyway. Lying was another punishment.
John House stopped at the foot of House’s bed. He sighed, breathing deeply through his nose and closing his eyes. The pulse on his neck broke the surface.
“Go to the bathroom and fill up the tub.”
House gulped.
“Answer me,” his father said. The suppression of his anger turned his voice to sandpaper.
“Yes, Sir,” House said quickly.
House swung his legs over the side of the bed. A shockwave rocketed up his body as his feet met the ground. He pulled himself to a stand and forced himself to face his father, if only for the nonexistent leniency of offering his fake respect. Disappointment, disgust, and thinly-veiled vindictiveness raged a war behind his father’s eyes. It already felt like he was caught in the crossfire. House couldn’t bear to imagine the brunt of the battle.
His father didn’t follow him from his room but the shadow of his watchful eyes bore down on House like an omnipotent power counting his missteps with the glee to withhold his salvation.
As House walked down the faded, sun patterned carpet of his home, he couldn’t help but see the green concrete of his final mile and an electric chair at the end of the hall.
With his father’s threat on his back like a barrel, he could do nothing but keep shuffling forward.
Then he met the bathroom. The door was closed, and House couldn’t remember if they always closed it or if his father had somehow known that he was about to screw up and had shut it beforehand so House had to suffer through the painful task of setting his own hand on the handle, making him be the one to work open the threshold into his own hell. If his father, not his real father- House had to remind himself that he didn’t share his DNA with this asshole in times like these- truly set this cruel, psychological torture up, then he was more sadistic than House ever gave him credit for.
He pushed through the door.
House went through the motions. Punishment had become routine. With a military man as his punisher, House had learnt to perfect his own pain. When the punishment was not executed perfectly, he had to start again.
He often zoned out during these set-ups, turning into a robotic frame of a creature as he let his father’s malware take over his circuit boards.
House plugged the tub. He tightened the hot faucet to be sure that not a single drop came spilling out before throwing the cold one into gear. Water crept up the sides of the bath inch by inch. House imagined himself on a beach front with the ocean rolling in, the water rising, rising, rising like a perfect wave as he stripped out of his clothes.
He didn’t have to hide his shivers with his father out of the room, but knowing that didn’t change his conditioning. House tensed his muscles to stop the shaking and pretended he didn’t hate himself for it.
He folded his t-shirt into a square and set it on the toilet lid. Next came his crisply patted down jeans and his flattened socks.
The tub was only halfway full. He bunched his boxers in his fists with hands at his sides and waited.
His father entered a few minutes later. House kept his head up and his shoulders back as he walked right past with two bags of ice in either arm. His father paid House no mind as he ripped the bag open with the scissors in the vanity cupboard. The ones his mother used to cut her hair. House hid his flinch behind a single blink of his eye as the ice rattled into the tub.
House knew not to incite attention. He was no better than a picture on the wall. Unless John House found some worth in looking at him, he didn’t, and unless pictures started talking, House was expected to keep his damn mouth shut.
House let go of his boxers as his father turned back around. He made sure his palms were flat against his thighs and his eyes steadfast on his father’s. Avoiding eye contact was a sign of disrespect.
Forcing your son into a vat of ice was too, but you didn’t see House bringing that up.
“Get in.”
His hesitation lasted a split second before the invisible pull of his father’s stare sent him in the direction of the tub. House stood with his feet up against the sides, trying to adjust to the temperature though the nerve endings on the small patches of skin at the ends of his toes.
The chill crept up to his chest. House was cold already, but he was almost always cold. Cold lived in his bones. It hung over him like a storm cloud wherever he went and blocked out any sun that tried to shine down on him.
He lifted his leg and stepped inside.
His heart slowed to a glacial pace. The bitter air was numb to the touch. It bit and clawed through his skin like razor blades and embedded itself so deep it was as if the glacier had swallowed him whole. Glassy eyed, he blinked out at the world in a blurred visage of blue ice and layers of frozen water. House zipped his mouth shut at the choked up noise in the back of his throat. It coughed up through his nose in a harsh explosion of breath and sent shockwaves across the water. The ice rattling against the bath was gunfire to his ears.
House went through his process. He shoved his shoulders under the water to acclimatise to the cold before his body crossed over the edge of pain into shock. He breathed deeply and slowly and focused on the somewhat hazy metal faucet, his face shining like a funhouse mirror in the polish, as it dripped a steady rhythm into the water below. Each time a droplet fell, it plucked the surface on a twangy thread before disappearing into the ripples.
In a few minutes, his mind would separate from his body, leaving behind a shell of flesh and bone shivering in the water while his thoughts travelled up and away and suspended themselves on the iceburn melding them to the walls.
House counted the drops. They coalesced at the end of the faucet in a perfect circular dome. Gravity pulled them down, tugging with all might against the water’s strength until the tip blackened under the weight of its own shadow. Gravity never won. It was always the final drop that forced the water to break apart and collapse. No matter how much gravity pulled and tugged and fought, the water’s own worst enemy was itself. It always had to get a little bigger. It always had to prove itself.
There was a metaphor in there somewhere. House ignored it and just kept on counting.
He got to eighteen drops when his mind started to lift away. His toes floated to the surface, air bubbles popping up through the ice. House’s head fell back against the tub as his vision grew blurry and distant. Just as he felt it, the flip of a switch like a fusebox had been turned off and everything went dark, House couldn’t breath.
House sank. Ice peeled the skin from his cheeks. The sharp, jagged edges of cold sliced through the steel of his cheekbones and the iron of his jaw. It crawled up his nostrils in a fury of raging waves and sloshing, thunderous claps smashing atop of water. He could feel the red of his mouth drifting out to sea like the blood of a gutted fish and the blue of cold cracking along the lines of his lips.
House tried sucking in air but water flowed into his lungs instead. Thrashing, flailing, floundering, he battled against the blackness creeping into the corners of his vision. It registered after a moment, that a hand was clamped around his neck in a vice. Fingers bruised his tender flesh. A burning tightness spread up from his sternum and pushed his eyes out of his head.
He brought his hands up and tried to pry the hand away but it latched on even tighter. His breath drew further and further away. The fight in his limbs faded with each attempt at throwing his attacker off.
Then, just as stars floated into sight and dark spots overtook his vision, he was pulled back out of the water.
Sputtering and gagging, House crawled over the side of the tub and threw up the water he had swallowed. He had all of five seconds to catch his breath before his father was gripping his hair and tugging him back into the centre of the tub.
Blobs of fireworks and a layer of thick smoke spattered the world around him in fading and ebbing colours. House was, somehow, able to hold onto his fathers eyes through the fog like the flicker of a blue flame in the white of ash and the black of char.
House’s chin stuck up and his skull pulsed with the way his father hauled him up by the hair. Unrestrained and unbarred, anger burned furiously across his face. It melted what little love John had for House into a puddle of nothing, and wiped their few good memories together away like photo albums turned to charcoal.
His father held his gaze, bright blue and as hot as dry ice. House couldn’t look away.
“No son of mine will be a fag.”
Tears pricked the corners of House’s eyes.
His father launched him back underwater. He came back up frozen and stammering.
“You answer your elders when you’re spoken to.”
“Yes, Sir.” House said, his head fuzzy as he tried to pull out what he was meant to say.
“You’re not a fag,” his father said again and pushed him back under.
“Say it.”
“I’m not a fag,” House stuttered.
His dad let go of his hair. House’s sigh of relief was cut short by the grip around his neck. “I-I said it. I said I’m not a…not a fag-”
John House smiled as he slapped him across the face. “Shut up. I decide when you’ve learnt your lesson. Say it.”
The handprint across his cheek tingled like pins and needles beneath the bitter chill. It lingered and it spread and House knew he would feel it tomorrow. “I’m not a fag,” he said again. It came out shaky and weak and House closed his eyes and bit his lip because crying was something a fag would do and he couldn’t be a fag right now or else-
John House pushed him back under the water.
And he kept pushing him, again, and again, and again, and again, and again…
“I’m not a fag,” House would say.
But his father would always force him back under.
***
The decades fell away.
House hadn’t seen Stevie since. From what he could guess, Stevie was either too afraid to come back around or his parents had banned him from seeing House the same way John had banned House from seeing him. Either way, a few weeks later, House walked by Stevie’s house and there was a new car parked in the driveway and different furniture in the living room.
He only hoped that if Stevie’s parents had found out, they were kinder than House’s father.
House came across Stevie’s Facebook page many years later. Stevie had shorter hair now, grey at the edges and too short to show off his curls. He had traded band shirts for sweaters and his buckets for a proper drum kit. There were a few posts of him playing the drums in his living room and one at what looked like a small community concert.
What took House most by surprise was his relationship status.
‘Engaged’.
Stevie lived in Massachusetts with a fiance, Teddy Dalton. It seemed like Stevie was a social worker and Teddy worked as an acoustic engineer. They had a house out in the suburbs with two cats, Billie and Betty, and a couple of canaries.
There were pictures on Stevie’s timeline with his fiance and their families at birthday dinners and promotion parties. Stevie’s mother was smiling, so was his dad. They looked older, but happy. Everyone looked happy.
House made a fake profile and managed to be friended by him. They hadn’t talked. House hadn’t even liked a photo. But he kept tabs to see how he was doing. He thought about getting back in touch but what would he even say? ‘We had sex thirty years ago and my dad scared the shit out of you, how are you doing?’
A little part of House wanted to know how things went from Stevie hanging his head in shame when House’s father walked in to kissing his fiance's cheek with his parents in the same room. House wasn’t jealous. Of course not. It used to take him a whole bottle of whiskey to stop thinking about whether the reason he never ran into Stevie or saw his name when he searched him up in those earlier days of the internet was because he had killed himself from the fear.
He wanted Stevie to be out there living his life instead of another statistic.
When House finally found Stevie’s Facebook page, he had assumed Stevie would have taken the Wilson route of marriage and divorce. Maybe with two kids in the mix. At the very best, he had anticipated finding a careful fabrication of a profile page, with cherry-picked pictures and strategically worded posts that told the bare minimum of his job and a vague relationship status to throw people off.
He definitely hadn’t expected Stevie to be so open about his gayness. Which was good. It was fine.
House didn’t hide his sexuality in the sense that if someone asked him directly, ‘Hey, are you bisexual?’, he would tell them the truth and say yes. Just…no one had asked him yet.
House’s sexuality hadn’t changed since those teenage years. He appreciated Cuddy’s curves and Chase’s stupid hair. He watched Melrose Place for Laura Leighton and Doug Savant.
But having the hots for men and acting on those desires were two entirely different things.
House had tried three times since his father discovered him with Stevie.
House had met a guy in his bio lab at college. Something with a T; Theo or Taylor or maybe Tommy. They paid a senior to buy them the cheapest pack of beer for their money and got drunk on them in some bushes next to an empty parking lot. House liked the guy. He had a quietness about him that House wanted to make squeal. With the confidence of too many drinks to count behind him, House spurred forward and kissed him.
It was good. WhatsHisName made a lost noise, a whine mixed with a groan and House smiled against his lips for discovering it. Their teeth clashed together and alcohol stained their breath, but fuck did it feel good, and goddamn had it been a while since his stomach flip-flopped and his bones turned to jelly.
Then WhatsHisName put a hand on his neck to pull House closer and House freaked out. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. In a blur of bottles falling to the concrete and glass cracking under his feet, House let out a half-assed apology and ran away.
WhatsHisName found him the next day and asked what happened. House mumbled out some lame excuse he couldn’t remember and things were awkward for the rest of the year.
A normal person might have analysed that moment, maybe even sought a professional opinion. House carried on. He figured he just needed some more time. It had only been a year since The Incident. His parents had visited him over the holidays and his father’s disapproval was still fresh in his mind.
Once he gave his father and The Incident some space, he would be fine.
In med school a few years later, House found himself at a gay bar across town. He was determined to sway into the full swing of gayhood for at least a night and shake off the memory of hands grasping at his neck.
House pulled out all the stops. He wore the tightest, whitest T-shirt he could find with a snug leather jacket over top. His pants were so tight they bruised his balls but at least they made his ass pop.
He sauntered into the bar on an edible and three beers and walked right up to the counter to order another. Most of the people there were carrying around fancy cocktails with olives and bright colours. House pointed to a blue, sparkling drink with an umbrella held in the hands of a very open-chested and toned gorilla of a man and asked the bartender to make that for him. It tasted of blueberries, bubblegum, and gasoline.
House downed three.
Properly lubed up and loose, House scoured the bar for a target. Frankly, he was spoiled for choice. A short guy stood to his left with a fierce, fiery expression on his face, a Freddie Mercury moustache, fishnet arms, and the strongest thighs he had ever seen. House’s mouth watered.
Another man sat a few chairs down on his right. He had thick green eyeliner, golden bedazzled cheeks, and a stunning afro House desperately wanted beneath his fingers. Tiny, little short-shorts, which really should have been considered underwear, pulled taut against his arse, showing off the glow of his legs in the black lights. House could have fainted then and there.
Then he spotted a bright star of a man with sharp cheekbones, a sweet smile, and a graceless freedom to his dancing that was so bad it was attractive. Tassels hung from his tanned jacket that peeked up to show the pale skin of his slender waist. He had ruffled bed-head and the softest, brownest, teddy bear eyes House had ever seen. House was drawn to him like a moth to a bulb.
He chugged down the last of his witch's concoction and stumbled over.
It didn’t take much after that to slip into the bathroom. House brought him a drink, sweet talked him a little, and soon enough the man, nameless, but henceforth called ‘Tassels’, slipped an arm around his waist and wrapped a finger around one of House’’s curls before whispering something in his ear that loosely translated to ‘lets fuck in the bathroom’. With an offer like that, how was House to refuse?
Tassels giggled into his neck and pushed him up against the stall door. They kissed, sloppy and wet, and when Tassels pulled him closer by the small of his back, House didn’t think about ice or baths or his father. He fingered the tassels on the man’s jacket before slipping a hand underneath and mapping out the incredible smoothness of his waist.
There wasn’t much room in the toilets for anything intricate and none of them had brought lube, so House gave Tassels a dopey smile and dropped to his knees. The sound of the zipper drowned out the club music thrumming around them. The metal glinted in the dim bathroom light. Mixed with House’s high and the alcohol in his system, it shimmered like gold.
Tassels’s jeans fit so snuggly around his hips, it took a joint effort to wiggle them down to the floor. House salivated at the tented underwear in front of him. All he could think of was ‘Jesus, what kind of man wore leopard print underwear?’. They were practically pasted to his skin as his dick spread the elastic out. House leant forward and nosed the wet spot staining the front.
Tassels gasped. House took that as his cue to start moving. He used his teeth to pull the underwear down to his thighs and licked at the tip. It was bitter and salty and addictively indulgent. That encouraged him to wrap his lips around the head and start bobbing his head slowly, just to get a feel of the weight and size in his mouth.
Tassels panted like a steam engine. Muttered praise broke through his stunted breathing, soft nonsense that didn’t mean a damn thing but had House rutting into his own hand and his dick chaffing in his jeans. Gaining confidence, House hallowed his cheeks and surged forward.
He was immediately hit by his gag reflex being set off and the walls of his oesophagus closing around the girth of Tassels’ dick. House froze. Tassels dragged a hand through his hair. His fingers crept towards the base of House’s neck, each little movement rocking House’s mouth further down his length, before a heavy palm was planted firm and unwavering across the back of his skull.
Tassels moaned out something about being a tease and tugged.
House choked. Spit sputtered around the dick in his mouth. Drool rolled down his chin. His lungs were on fire and his heart burst out of his chest. House tried breathing through his nose but the air couldn’t get through. His blood ran cold and his chest grew hot, too hot, like a flush of desperate heat in the late stages of hypothermia, and all of a sudden it was his fathers fingers in his hair dragging him below the water again and ice in his throat blocking off his oxygen.
House panicked.
Everything went black. Far away in the distance, like a wireless puppet, his body kept moving without his permission. His limbs flew and swung. A disconnected pain, a barely there pressure and traces of sensation, poured down his arms like warm wax and settled over his knuckles.
The next thing he knew, a glass of water was on his lips. House blinked away the fog and came face to face with a security guard encouraging him to drink up. He was still in the toilet cubicle, propped up against the side wall with his chin on his knees. His elbows hurt and his hands throbbed but he seemed to be okay.
House sipped away at the water as he tried to focus on the security guard’s voice.
“How ya doing, kid? Wanna tell me what happened back there?”
Nope.
“Mixed the wrong drinks with the wrong drugs.” It wasn’t technically a lie. In fact, if House believed in it strongly enough (and he was determined to do so starting now), by this time next week it would probably become dogma. A moment of young stupidity; too much fun too fast. Nothing to do with a bath half a decade ago. Just a bad reaction to some (supposedly) tainted weed and whatever chemical they laced those drinks with.
“If you’re not sure what drugs you took, I’d recommend getting you to a hospital.”
“I’m a doctor,” House explained, “I know what I took and it’s worn off now.”
“Alright. Let me just give you a once over in case you’re more out of it than you think.” The security guard moved to take his pulse. House took a deep breath and worked the terror out of his chest.
Tassels stood in the bathroom doorway, swaying side to side with his fly down and scratch marks in the leather of his sleeves. He sighed and wrapped an arm around his stomach when he saw House looking at him. House beckoned him over to his stall.
“Are you alright?”
House couldn’t seem to find the words so he just nodded.
“Do you know what happened? You sort of blacked out.”
House shook his head. It wasn’t worth explaining. Not when he hadn’t processed it for himself.
“If someone messed with your drink, that’s serious stuff. I can take you to the hospital.”
House waved his hand. “No, no,” he said slowly. He took a drink of water to get rid of the roughness in his throat. “I’m fine. Sorry if I tried to bite your dick off.”
The security guard grunted and took his hands away from House’s face. Tassels laughed. “It’s a first. But I managed to fight you off.”
“One for one, that’s a clean record.”
Tassels smiled. If House had any lust left in him he would have swooned. “Hey, I’m glad you’re okay. I promised my friend I would be back by one, but if you need anything-”
“Don’t worry about it. Go.”
He frowned, fiddling with his tassels. “Are you sure?”
House smiled weakly. “Yeah. I’m a genital risk. You got lucky the first time. Can’t make any promises of safety if you let me hang around.”
Tassels raised his arms at his sides. “I believe you, baby. Have a good night.” With that, Tassels left, and thus concluded House’s second attempt at having sex with a man.
Welp. Third time’s the charm, so they say.
His third attempt occurred at a medical conference in New Orleans.
It was the perfect opportunity. Louisiana was about as far away from his father as he could get without crossing the border into Mexico and the sweltering heat almost guaranteed that there would be no unwelcome memories of ice and water and other cold things accidentally popping up.
A decade existed between New Orleans and the drug-induced panic fest with Tassels, and fifteen years had gone by since the ice bath incident. If that wasn’t long enough, then House was screwed. And not by a man.
House had left the conference early and scoured the streets until he came across a rainbow flag flapping in the wind under a sign that said ‘Come Inn’. House had entered gladly.
It was classier than some of the other bars he had been to. The lights were dim and cozy as opposed to inducing epileptic seizures. Velvet stools and booths took up the space where a dance floor would have been. The people were dressed more blandly; jeans and T-shirts, button-downs and slacks. Even the music was more subdued.
A rustic sort of man about House’s age or a few years younger, but with silvering hair and rough, leathery skin, sat at the piano playing Billy Joel’s ‘Leave a Tender Moment Alone’. He had a classic sort of look, as if he had come out of Pride and Prejudice and ran straight (ha) to the nearest old-timey thing he could think of; the grand piano in a semi-refined bar. He must have missed the memo about the dress code because he wore a burgundy suit with a stark white undershirt and brown dress shoes. His fingers were thick but long, moving delicately across the keys.
House thought he would look fantastic ruffled up and ripped apart.
The plan formed itself. House would go over there and compliment his musical skills while insinuating that he could do better, hopefully riling the man up into some friendly, and then sexy, competition until Mr Refined decided to show him who was boss.
House licked his lips.
He plopped down next to the man until they were thigh to thigh. The man offered House an impish smile before looking back down at the keys. House could see him watching him out of the corner of his eye.
House analysed the gold of the man’s face as much as he did his technique on the piano. He played well. Really well actually. Definitely a worthy competitor. House set his hands on the treble keys and let a harmony flow out as smooth as molasses.
The man raised his brows and chuckled, amused.
House grinned. He liked him already. All ironed clothes and perfect lines on the surface. Mischief underneath.
“Those are some nice fingers you got there.” Eh, not his best but he wasn’t there to write sonnets. He was there to fuck.
“Let me guess, you wanna see what else they can play?”
“And can they? Play?”
The man nudged House’s shoulder without missing a note. House’s fingers narrowly avoided slipping from the keys. “Oh, I’ve made some beautiful sounds with these fingers. I’ve gotten a few encores for my trouble.”
“A man of many talents,” House purred.
“You’re not so bad yourself. Your hand formation is a little off though. Are you self-taught?” He asked his question with so much mock-condescension and casual disregard for House that House nearly growled.
House glanced down at his hands. His wrists were level with his forearms and his fingers were curved. Perfect formation! He may have been self taught but he wasn’t an amateur.
As House lifted his head to grumble and make some false critique about this asshole’s skills in retaliation, House found the man laughing. “Oh, you’re too easy.”
Then, the man turned his entire room-grabbing face towards House, his fingers still flying away like it was nothing, and oh- his eyes sparkled with something naughty and something dark.
The man smirked like sin incarnate, “But I knew that from the way you’re practically sitting in my lap, begging for my fingers.”
For the first time in his life, House’s jaw fell open and his brain short-circuited. He tried to file through his catalogue of insults and comebacks but someone had locked the drawers and thrown the keys into a black hole and then the filing cabinet spontaneously combusted, and hang on a hot minute, because his locked-up thoughts had somehow reached the window ledge and were jumping out of the office into a trash compactor down below, and that too was somehow on fire and-
“You’re cute.”
House blinked uselessly.
“That dopey, dumbfounded look is so fucking hot.” The man seamlessly brought the song into the bridge while nipping at House’s jaw and flicking his tongue around House’s earlobe. House’s face flushed and his thoughts fell out of his open mouth, dispersing into the air, never to be seen again.
Bye-bye thoughts, I’ll miss you.
“And that was from a couple of words. Imagine how dumb you’re gonna look with my dick in your ass. I’m gonna fuck you stupid.”
House worked very hard to force his muscles into gear and get rid of the so-called ‘dopey’ look on his face, because if he was going to be any of the Seven Dwarves, he was Doc, not the clumsy idiot.
House was a board certified nephrologist and infectious disease specialist. He had solved every case he had ever worked on and never backed down from a fight. Not even against the head nurse, Kitty, who all of the staff, including the hospital director, avoided. He called bullshit on patient’s families and took their punches with his head held high.
House was not dopey or dumbfounded and especially not cute.
Which is why it made absolutely no sense for the little man running around the raging inferno in his head to dive into the flames and pull out the following four words from the same case file holding such gems as ‘that’s gay’ and ‘not if I fuck you first’. Okay, so he wasn’t being invited onto Letterman any time soon but those weak lines of defence sucker punched the actual words that came out of his mouth into the sun.
“Yes. Yes…do that.” The word ‘please’ even sat at the edge of his tongue. House bit his lip before he said anything that threatened his dignity. Someone needed to fire the man upstairs.
The man chuckled. His lips ghosted over House’s mouth, his breath hot on his face, and House stared at him like a deer in the headlights. The song finished. House hadn’t even heard the final notes, just silence and a string of scattered applause hanging around them.
The man (he really needed to name this guy. Maybe Mr Your-Dick-Better-Be-As-Big-As-Your-Ego? Mr Dick for short) traced House’s bottom lip with his thumb. House went cross-eyed trying to follow it. His thumb was thick, sturdy, and on every sensitive drag along cracked tissue and raised ridges, House’s stomach fluttered. He let his tongue circle the tip. The salt sizzled along his tongue. The roughness made his dick twitch. House closed his eyes and let those thoughts wander.
Mr Dick pulled his lip down and slipped his thumb along the seam where the wetness of House’s saliva collected. Then he stuck two fingers inside and spread them out to the corners. House’s mouth stretched to clownish degrees as it pulled unnaturally towards his cheeks to accommodate them. Mr Dick’s fingers came out with a ‘pop’ and he ran a hand down House’s face until a trail of his own spit clung stickily to his skin.
House shivered as Mr Dick grabbed his jaw and tilted his head up. “You’re pretty,” he said, before sticking his tongue down his throat.
House groaned and grappled for Mr Dick’s shoulders. He kissed like a rival, like an enemy, like someone worth fighting, and House dug his fingers into his shoulder blades and pushed that resentment from Mr Dick’s patronising and his own brain’s failure to stand up to it into the force behind his kiss. It was dirty. It was sloppy. House yearned for more.
Just as House had the upper hand with Mr Dick moaning into his mouth, he pushed House away to the other side of the bench.
“What, all talk, no walk?” House goaded.
Mr Dick winked before setting his fingers back on the keys. He flashed a knowing smile towards House before adjusting his feet by the pedals and diving right back into ‘Leave a Tender Moment Alone’.
“Only know the one song?” House asked. “Or playing hard to get?”
“Trust me, you’re gonna want to see this.”
“If we’re talking about ogling your fingers, I think we’ve already done that. This is the part where we have sex. Preferably soon and not with an audience. Unless you’re into that.”
“Eager, aren’t you?” Mr Dick laughed. “Don’t worry cutie, we’ll get to that. Let me just finish this song.”
Before House could argue, Mr Dick launched into singing. “Even though I’m in love sometimes, I get so afraid-”
His voice dragged as smooth as whiskey. As the vibrations curled around House’s gut and sent tingles down his spine, it became very clear very suddenly that he was beyond inexperienced in the face of Mr Dick’s confidence. Even though House wasn’t above a challenge, and he had sure showed Stevie a good time, that was fifteen years ago. Up against Mr Dick, House had some big shoes to fill. Some big holes too, presumably.
He muttered something about getting himself a drink before he found himself at the bar slapping down a twenty and chugging down however many shots of tequila that bought him.
The final shot shook in his grip. Tequila spilled over the sides and onto the bar. House slurped it up more than shot it down. Bugs crawled in his stomach and a lump grew in his throat. House white-knuckled the bar as his breathing grew laboured and an anvil crushed his chest.
He was going to have sex. Gay sex. Sex with another man. He wanted to. God, how he wanted to. As soon as Mr Dick opened his mouth House’s dick came to attention. His blood boiled and his groin burned. The way Mr Dick spoke did something to his brain that blocked off his thoughts and made him lose his damned mind.
But his memories still haunted him. When House drew a droplet onto the end of his pinky finger and swirled it around, it collected all the other droplets up into a single, rounded coagulation like the head of his bathtub faucet dripping ever so slowly into the water by his feet. The salt of Mr Dick’s fingers on his tongue turned to bitter precum at the back of his throat and the stinging in his cheeks from the thick of them made his jaw feel so spread apart that he started choking on nothing but air.
He thought of Mr Dick’s fingers and his roughness and how he could probably throw House up against the wall and toss him around in bed. The image stirred something wild in him. It sparked nerves that had never been touched before and scratched an itch he had been clawing at for years. But then he pictured Mr Dick on top of him with his strong fingers wrapped around his neck or his hands ripping the hair from his follicles and in a second, House was back underwater, kicking for his life to get back up to the surface.
House let the alcohol fog over those thoughts. They lingered like blast shadows, a dark mark on his psyche he couldn’t quite escape no matter how far he ran and how meticulously he tried to cover them up. But House held onto his determination and didn’t let go, because fifteen years was a pathetic amount of time to be caught up in a single moment from his past.
Smacking his shot glass down on the counter, House swivelled around and marched after the honeyed baritone- “But if that's how I feel then, it's the best feeling I've ever known” (had Mr Dick started the song again? What was he playing at?)- when an ear-piercing screech cut through the music.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!”
Every head turned to the source of the yelling.
House stopped in his tracks.
They looked too young to be a man. House had to blink at first to make sure he wasn’t just seeing a very butch lesbian.
He stood with a hand on his hip in the hallway leading to the toilets. House clocked him as the lovechild between a hot Jim Carrey and an even sexier Tim Robbins and immediately dubbed him as Jim Crobbins. Brown curtains flopped over his forehead. He had a boyish face slightly too small for his nose and a suit two sizes too big that made his fingers poke out from his sleeves and his jacket and pants dangle like he had gotten lost in an MC Hammer music video on the way over.
He clenched a file in his fist, waving it aggressively at Mr Dick who had the biggest smile on his face as he started singing even louder.
Despite his confused, almost naively gullible expression, Jim Crobbins turned purple and glared daggers at Mr Dick. His cheap, yellow tie that came straight out of a costume store contrasted beautifully with the eggplant shade of his cheeks.
House leant on the nearest table as his knees wobbled.
This man, all long lines and teddy-bear cluelessness with his fresh-blooming rage and puffed up chest spun House in circles. House couldn’t look away.
He had saucers for eyes; these huge, brown, chocolatey, Texas-sized things that took up half his face and pulled House in like a river to a waterfall. It was gooey and disgustingly romantic, but he was the most beautiful person- not man, person- House had ever laid eyes on.
Then he spoke, and House had to sit down.
“What part of ‘leave a tender moment alone’ do you not understand? I told you to stop playing that damned song half an hour ago! Shut up. Just shut up!”
Spit crossed the room. The tip of Jim Crobbin’s nose glowed red. He threw his hands into the air furiously.
Mr Dick just kept singing.
House tucked his chin into the curve of his palm and leant forward. He had met a few people who disliked Billy Joel but he had never before seen someone so impassioned by a hatred towards this one specific song. A niggling thought in the back of House’s mind told him the file had something to do with Jim Crobbins’s unfavourable attitude. If House didn’t get laid tonight he at least wanted a sneak peak at its contents.
The file scrunched up in time with Jim Crobbins’s face as he stormed towards Mr Dick. “I’ve asked you nicely a million times over. Now shut up before you regret it.”
Ohh, things were starting to go from good to better.
Mr Dick gave Jim Crobbins a trying, ‘yeah, whatcha gonna do about it?’ kind of smirk. House shuffled to the edge of his seat.
House put all his money on Mr Dick. After making a fool of himself with him (and House made a sweeping generalisation that he was the only person here even remotely capable of one-upping Mr Dick) and Jim Crobbins mentioning that he had already nicely, and unsuccessfully, asked him to stop, House doubted that Jim Crobbins truly contained the willpower within his wide-eyed, damsel in distress demeanor, reminiscent of the ditzy woman in a black and white film who needed a man to catch her, to follow through with any threats.
It took all of two seconds for Jim Crobbins to steal someone’s beer and throw it at Mr Dick’s head.
Mr Dick ducked. The bottle took off, climbing, rising, soaring, before crashing right into a ten-foot mirror scaling the side of the wall.
Glass shattered to the floor like fallen stars. Lights glistened and beamed through the dusted air before fading to nothing, leaving behind a blank, wooden wall facing the room.
Mr Dick froze.
Silence fell. One second. Two seconds.
“Ahhhhhh!” Someone screamed, then shot glasses, beer bottles, and chairs went flying.
House picked up the nearest thing to him- a napkin holder- and tossed it into the flurry. It was all a blur after that. House chose to stick close to the wall and watch the chaos unfold in front of him. Security did their best, but without the numbers, the crowd just kept fighting.
Broken tables, swollen eyes, and smashed-in noses later, and the next thing House knew Mr Dick and Jim Crobbins were cuffed and stuffed into the back of separate cop cars. House called a taxi and made his way to the station.
Mr Dick’s sly grin never left his face as the officer took him out of the holding cell and handed him over to House.
“You must be desperate,” Mr Dick said.
The opportunity presented itself again. House’s nerves had settled and he had more than paid his fair share for a good night with Mr Dick by bailing him out of jail.
Except… that ruffled-up mop of hair and pissy, crossed-armed pacing from Jim Crobbins as he kicked at the ground kept a tight leash on House. He tried prying his eyes away, but like any good case, House gave in to the mystery. He had to figure out that guy’s deal. He had to know why he hated Billy Joel so much. He had to find out what he was carrying around in that file that made him so mad.
“If I was desperate for a fuck from some pissed-stained dude with a methhead’s blood on his pants, I would have picked up a hooker instead of carrying myself all the way down here to your holding cell. Don’t assume I’m here for you. You just got lucky.”
Mr Dick’s smug smile finally dropped from his face. House waved him goodbye as he picked up his watch and wallet and stormed off without a final word.
House found an officer and pointed at Jim Crobbins. “How much for the missing Wham! member with the sad eyes?”
He had to visit the ATM down the block, but ten minutes later, House was handing the cash over and Jim Crobbins was collecting his valuables along with the enigmatic file.
“Thank you,” Jim Crobbins said a little sheepishly. “I’ll pay you back for the bail. I don’t have the money on me right now but if you give me your address I can mail-”
House shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure you’ll find a way to pay me back.”
Jim Crobbins eyed him wearily. “Why, what do you want?”
House nodded his head at the file. “What’s in there?”
He held up the file curiously. “You want to know what’s in this? Wait a minute. I remember seeing you at the bar. Did you follow me all the way down here just to ask me about a file?”
“Are you really going to deny me an answer now that I’ve bailed you out of jail? How fun was your night gonna be with Bloody Knuckles and Heroin Hunch over there? ‘Cause I don’t mind asking for my money back.”
A slither of anger flickered across Jim Crobbin’s face. He huffed, his lips going all pouty, and stuck his hand back on his hip. “You’re an asshole. If you must know, they’re divorce papers. Happy?”
Jim Crobbins turned on his heel. “Thanks for bailing me out but I’m gonna head off-”
“Since when did they legalise gay marriage?”
Jim Crobbins flung back around with squinted eyes and a flustered pull of his hair. He waved the divorce papers in front of House’s face. “This is from my ex-wife. As in, a woman.”
House raised a brow. A recently divorced man in a gay bar? This guy had probably spent more time in the gay bar’s bathroom than in his marriage considering that he looked young enough to be the flower girl at his own wedding.
Somebody’s pet goldfish could put those two puzzle pieces together.
“Wow, you didn’t sustain the illusion of a heterosexual marriage for very long. How long did it take for her to discover the boyfriend?”
Jim Crobbins sputtered like a broken hose. “What are you talking about? Why do you think I’m gay?”
“When one spots a man in a gay bar, they tend to come to conclusions.”
“That was a gay bar?” He asked incredulously.
“Yep,” House replied. “Are you really going to look me in the eye and deny it?”
“I didn’t know it was a gay bar,” Jim Crobbins whisper-yelled, “I just walked into the first bar I saw.”
“There was a gay pride flag at the entrance.”
Jim Crobbins’s eyes grew out of his head. “I wasn’t thinking okay! My wife- my ex-wife- served me divorce papers in the middle of a conference and I just ran away to the nearest place with alcohol. I didn’t think about where I was going.”
“And hang on a minute,” he pointed his finger at House’s chest, “You were in a gay bar too! How do you explain that?”
“I saw you inside and thought it was a lesbian bar.”
A rainbow of emotions from frustration to curiosity to downright offence contorted Jim Cribbon’s face into a shrivelled prune.
He whacked House over the arm with the file. “I should have thrown that bottle at you when I had the chance. You’re very punchable. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Once or twice. Why? Are you gonna punch me?”
“No,” Jim Crobbins shook his head and eyed House up and down, “I’m worried you might be into that.”
House gave him a wink that could mean just about anything. Before Jim Crobbins could insert his appropriately disgusted retort, House latched onto the thing about the conference and decided even more ribbing was to be made. Jim Crobbins, with his squishy, pinched-by-his-grandma cheeks and innocent eyes looked far too young to be a doctor. He probably got told that so often it drove him crazy.
“You were at the doctor’s conference too? Were you a waiter or the eye candy on the arm of an actual doctor?”
Jim Crobbins gawked and made some useless motion with his hands that mimicked a windmill. “You’re not gonna believe this, but I actually went to the medical conference as a doctor of medicine.”
House did a little jump and pointed at himself. “So funny. Me too!”
“Yeah right,” he scoffed, “Who in their right mind let you become a doctor?
“Trust me, they didn’t the first time around.”
Jim Crobbins huffed, not at all looking surprised as he turned toward the door.
He stilled with his foot halfway outside.
“What does that mean?” Jim Crobbins swivelled around to face House again. “Actually, a few guesses come to mind.”
Hook, line, and sinker. Just gotta reel the guy in. “I got expelled.”
Jim Crobbins raised a brow. “A few more ideas come to mind.”
House smirked but didn’t say anything further.
Jim Crobbins shuffled antsily. “Why were you expelled?”
House gave himself a mental high-five. For whatever reason, this guy didn’t immediately irritate him. House could respect a man that could say right to his face that he wanted to punch him after literally bailing him out of jail. That took balls. And if there was one thing House liked, it was balls.
Not to mention the mystery of why such a smoking hot piece of ass had been served divorce papers, during an out of town work conference, no less. His wife hadn’t even given him the respect of a face-to-face conversation. He must have done something bad to pull that off. Unless the wife had followed him down here, unable to wait out the conference to get rid of him.
House needed to know more about his divorce right now and not a moment later. If House had married that sassy mouth and that floppy hair, it would take a squad of green berets to pry him away.
“I’ll tell you all about it over a drink, Jim Boy.” The nickname slipped out without any thought.
Jim Crobbins blanked for a second before he stared up at House like a chimpanzee that had just seen its reflection in the mirror. “How do you know my name?
It was House’s turn to act confused. The most obvious answer would be that the police officer had told him, but as he thought back, House realised that he had never actually asked for the man’s name and that the officer hadn’t shared it with him either. Yet, somehow, House had apparently gotten his name right.
Maybe this man was the child, and namesake, of a hot Jim Carrey.
“The officer told me,” House said for fun.
Jim (last name pending) crossed his arms. “No he didn’t. I heard you telling the officer that I was the sad, missing member of ‘Wham!’- and I’m offended that he managed to pick me out of the holding cell on that description, by the way.” He said this with a stony glare towards the front desk. “I’m also ninety-percent sure you said that as an insult. Let me tell you right now that you’re missing out. ‘Make It Big’ is a masterpiece.”
“Are you sure you’re not gay?”
When Jim crossed his arms, he closely resembled a border terrier that had been locked outside for the night. “It’s starting to feel like you want me to be gay.”
“It would save some of the chicks for me,” House said. Which was true. This Jim character had the cheekbones of a supermodel, the hair of a Duran Duran member, and the power of cartoonishly big, wallowing eyes that could make a sucker out of just about anyone. House took a step back. Better steer clear before he got sucked in.
“Mmm,” Wilson hummed warily, “I’m taking that as a compliment.”
“Good, it’ll be the last one you’ll ever get.” With an ass like that, Jim did not need House feeding his ego. He had probably gotten enough glances just walking down the street to the bar to keep him flattered until the turn of the century.
Jim gave him a strange look as he turned back towards the door. “You say that like we’re going to see each other again. Are you sure you’re not hitting on me?”
House started following him out the door and onto the street, their footsteps falling into sync. “If I was hitting on you, you’d have the grimey film of disgust clinging to you to show for it.”
Jim’s nose crinkled. “That’s…an image.”
House grinned. “It’s the House guarantee.”
“The House guarantee? Is that your name? House?” Jim used the half-folded file to point at him, “I knew there was something weird about you. A guy named House could not have been raised right.”
Amen to that.
“Hey, my name has nothing to do with how badly I was raised.”
“Yeah, but if your parents had named you, say… Robert, you might have had a fighting chance.”
“I’m sure Robert Mugabe’s parents thought the exact same thing.”
House stepped out onto the road towards a bar across the street. Jim, without question, followed after him.
House bit back his smile.
“You’re forgetting some good Roberts here. Robert De Niro. Bob Marley. Bob Dylan.” Jim counted them out on his fingers.
“Pfft, there’ll be a sex scandal about one of them in twenty years’ time.”
“Bob Marley’s dead,” Jim argued.
“That just narrows it down to two.”
“You’re a well of optimism, you know that?”
House put on a fake smile.
Jim rolled his eyes and stepped up to the door of the bar. With his hand on the handle, he turned around and tilted his head. “What’s the good to bad ratio of people named House?”
House chuckled. He knew where he and his dad placed on that infographic. His mother brought the score up a bit. But not much. House didn’t know his grandparents on his father’s side and whether they were dicks too. He imagined they would have been to have raised such an asshole.
“Two to one for the dark side, so far. I’ll get back to you when I finish my family tree assignment in class tomorrow.”
Jim’s expression turned curious and amused. “Ahh, so it’s a family name. What, you don’t give out your first name to us common folk?”
“Depends,” House grinned slyly, “How common are you really?”
Jim sent him a conniving smile back and shifted into his space. House held back a shiver. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
House very much did want to know. In a gesture of hardly any good will, but rather a natural pull towards the heat radiating from Jim’s chest half a foot away from his own, House stuck out his hand. “Greg House,” he said.
Jim shook his hand, more floppy than firm, but the effort was there. “James Wilson.”
And thus, with a wimpy shake of hands, House met Wilson.
House didn’t have sex that night with Mr Dick or James Wilson or any man on any night in the years afterwards, but he did, in a way, get lucky. Meeting Wilson made the lack of gay sex almost worth it. As House would quickly come to find, spending time with Wilson made life, and a lot of things within it, a hundred times easier.
House eventually learnt to live with himself. It sucked not having sex with every beautiful man he stumbled across but he pretty much hit and missed with most women anyway, so it didn’t matter as much as it could have.
Besides, House had a foolproof plan, as most well adjusted and totally not sexually repressed adults did. The plan was simple. It only had one step actually.
Wait for John House to die.
And on a beautiful day in 2008, thirty-eight years since House first discovered the word bisexual, John House finally carked it. Too bad he didn’t know any good doctors to help him out with his heart problem.
House bid goodbye to his father, bid goodbye to gay panic, and said a warm and welcome hello to the gay future that awaited him.