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Wilson blinks awake in a drab motel room. It's been seven months.
He feels - fine.
He turns to the man in the bed next to him, snoring inelegantly. It shouldn't be endearing, and yet it is. Wilson presses a kiss against his forehead, and then his lips.
House frowns a little in his sleep, as though, even unconscious, he's getting judgey about sentimentality.
Wilson can't help it. He wants to kiss this man for as long as he's around. He's so glad for today, for however many todays they have left.
*
"This screen is tiny," House grumbles as the text message arrives on his cell phone. He passes it over to Wilson. "What’s it say?"
"We should pick up some reading glasses somewhere," Wilson says. "What’s your prescription?"
House scowls. "Just read it."
"Confirmation of a reservation at - House." Wilson looks fond. "That place we passed by last night. I can't believe you booked a table."
House is pleased at the response. "Hey, they do good food. Figure it'll help me get you into bed."
"Not sure you need much help with that," Wilson points out.
House shrugs. "ABC, Jimmy."
"What?"
"Always be closing."
Wilson laughs. "I forgot I had David Mamet as my road-trip buddy. My mistake." He presses a kiss into House's shoulder.
*
"There's steak, right? I'll get that."
Wilson is scanning the menu. "Not sure they have -"
The beautiful waitress appears at just the right moment. "Gentlemen, would you like to hear about our specials?"
"Absolutely," House replies in a tone that is perhaps deliberately dirty, and that leads to Wilson kicking him under the table. Once the waitress is gone, there's possessive grabbiness - that too is welcome.
He loves this man.
*
It's nine months, now. Wilson wonders if he should go to a hospital, get a new estimate. "There’s one two miles away," he says.
House shrugs. "If you want."
"You saw the sign, right? On our way in?"
"Can't remember." House leans over and kisses him. "Might've been distracted."
*
House isn’t sure how long he can keep up the pretense. He's pretty sure Wilson will flip, if he ever finds out, if he ever lets himself believe that such deals can be made.
He still thinks it was worth it.
*
It's been a year. This is a date on the calendar Wilson was told - kindly, the same lowered-tone he'd have used for a patient - that it was highly unlikely he'd see, without treatment.
But he's here. Without treatment. And even if he's lucky enough to have this extra time, there should be - more. More happening to him. He should be feeling it, by now. The cancer eating away at him.
"One year," he says to House, ready to launch into an interrogation: what has House done, surreptitiously, to make this happen?
"Is it?" House looks genuinely surprised.
"We get the paper nearly every day, you didn’t notice the date?"
House scowls. "Better things to do with my time," he snaps.
It's defensive. It's angry. It's -
Wilson doesn't know quite what to do just yet but an impossible theory is knitting itself together at the back of his brain.
*
House has a terrible feeling Wilson knows - not everything, because he'd never believe that, but something.
He wouldn't believe it himself if it hadn't happened. A lifetime of devotion to science, and it turns out there is some logic to magic after all. He thinks, sometimes, about how it's just physics, but mostly he tries not to think about it at all, because if he thinks he will want to investigate further. He will want to research, with books and papers and studies, and this is no longer an option available to him.
*
"What does this say?" Wilson holds the newspaper up, one morning. Front page.
"Don't have my reading glasses," House responds automatically.
As though he's been expecting that answer, Wilson whips a pair out from his pocket. "Picked these up at the pharmacy."
House doesn't take the offering. "What the fuck is this, anyway?" he grumbles.
"Read it," Wilson insists. "Read it to me."
House stares at him. Something inside him cracks. He still can't admit it.
"You can't," Wilson breathes. "You can't read."
House jerks his head once in angry assent. Wilson wasn't ever supposed to find out.
"You did - something. You traded it - for me." Wilson’s eyes are wet now. "House."
He grunts. "It's not a big deal." This is, of course, a lie, but he needs to tell it.
"It's a huge fucking deal!" Wilson snaps. "Why didn’t you tell me?"
House shrugs, uncomfortably. They've been sleeping together for months, but that's easier than admitting feelings out loud.
"It's too much," Wilson says quietly. "That’s too much for you to give up."
House growls. Doesn't he understand? Yes, it's a high price to pay. He feels stupid and helpless and deprived of so much of what his brain - the only good thing about him - can do. But Wilson is alive.
Quality products are worth the cost. He wonders if there's a Mamet quote about that, not that he'll be able to check.
"Can you undo it?" Wilson asks.
House stares at him, horrified. "I never asked." He wants to add: I never wanted to ask. "I don't want to." This too is partly a lie - he has not enjoyed having another part of him lost to the cruelties of the universe, this past year.
But Wilson is still here on this Earth. So fuck everything else.
Wilson puts his head in his hands. "House," he says. "You shouldn't have -"
"What the fuck else was I supposed to do?" It comes out as a howl. Like something animal. But that's how House feels now, and how he felt then - desperate and hurting and all primeval responses. What would keep Wilson alive? Of course he would do it.
"I'm not worth -"
Something breaks in House, then. "Of course you are," he says softly.
They stare at each other, desperately.
"Don't make me say it," he finally adds, irritably.
"Heaven forbid," Wilson immediately responds, and House breathes easier: it's okay. They're going to be okay.
"Come back to bed," he says, and Wilson puts down the newspaper House will never be able to read, never again, and settles himself in his best friend's arms.