Ignaz Wisdom
ignazwisdom@gmail.com
March 2007

Pairing: House/Wilson

Rating: NC-17

Word Count: 56,000

Summary: Tritter's case against House still depends on subpoenaed testimony from Wilson. To save House from losing everything, the doctors of PPTH decide on an unusual solution, which in turn leads to unexpected consequences. This is a story about the sacrifices we make that turn out not to be such great sacrifices after all.

Spoilers: For everything up to and including "Merry Little Christmas."

Notes: I didn't like the way the Tritter arc was going. This is an alternative ending, or one other way to resolve some of the issues Shore et al brought up and then promptly ignored. The story is set the morning after "Merry Little Christmas"; in this universe, nothing from "Words and Deeds" or any other 2007 episodes has happened. Also, please don't take any of the following as legal fact; there's a reason it's fanfiction :) Finally, if you prefer to read this on LiveJournal (in eight linked posts -- ah, word limits), the story starts here. (New as of December 2007: AMP podfic!)

Thanks: to the fine state of New Jersey, without which this story would never have even begun to exist. Muchas, muchas gracias to the five fabulous beta readers who bravely volunteered to tackle this monster: karaokegal, thesamefire, elva_barr, the_antichris, and nos4a2no9. These guys were amazing. They each gave this story multiple read-throughs, offered fantastic suggestions, and kept me from throwing in the towel too soon. Any remaining mistakes are a result of my own stubborn refusal to accept sound advice.

Feedback: I would be thrilled to hear from you in comments to my journal. You can also send me an e-mail if you prefer. Hell, you can send me smoke signals or a homing pigeon if that's what butters your muffin -- I'm game.

One: I Knew That Cleavage Was a Smokescreen

"I talked to Stacy," Cuddy said from behind her desk, in the pissiest of her arsenal of pissed-off voices. The evil glint in her eye was aimed directly at House. "She thinks the two of you should get married."

House cocked his head and pretended to consider the idea. "Well, I'd be okay with that. Her husband might not be, though --"

"Stacy thinks what?" Wilson spluttered.

"-- but really, it's fine, as long as Mark sleeps in another room. Nothing personal, I'm just not that good at sharing the covers."

By late morning, Cuddy's initial reaction to the news of the stolen pills and the disappearing deal had died to a low, sinister rumble. Having collected his severed testicles, and with a fresh dose of Vicodin in his system, House was nearly back to his normal -- if somewhat subdued -- self.

The new supply of Vicodin was courtesy of Wilson, who couldn't have looked more tragically unwilling to hand over the prescription bottle that morning in his hotel room. After crashing back into consciousness on his floor with his best friend's disappointed face above him -- and after losing the deal -- House could think of nothing else but finding Wilson, a need so desperate and instinctual that it scared him. When Wilson opened his door in the pre-dawn hours of Christmas morning and let House inside, the relief had been almost overwhelming.

Of course, House would never tell Wilson that. He had trouble even admitting it to himself.

There were few things in life that House found difficult. Topping the short list were climbing stairs, giving a rat's ass about people, and apologizing. Last night, Wilson had sat House down in a chair in the hotel room and let him apologize until his throat hurt -- for stealing Wilson's pad in the first place, for not supporting Wilson when Tritter took his car and his money and his whole damn practice, for never listening and for refusing to accept Wilson's first attempt to get them all out of this mess.

House had actually meant it. He was sorry as hell that this was happening to them, in every way that it was possible to be sorry. Yet meaning the apology didn't make it any easier to say. Accepting that he had been wrong -- that he'd screwed up, probably more than he'd ever screwed up before -- was more of a sacrifice than he could have imagined. His pride had always surpassed his capacity for self-preservation.

Wilson had brought him a glass of water and made him take off his coat so he could unwrap the white bandages and examine the dark red gashes on House's arm. He had stared at the cuts and then stared at House's hand -- the same hand House had deliberately broken the last time he had been off Vicodin -- and then Wilson had cursed under his breath, reached into his pocket, and put a pill bottle in House's open palm.

"I'd rather have you go back to these than mutilating yourself," Wilson had explained, his voice rough, his face sick with despair. "Or killing yourself with oxycodone. And I'd rather have you saving people's lives than sitting around the hospital, coming up with even more ways to screw yourself over."

That was the last time Wilson had mentioned the stolen oxy or the overdose, but he still occasionally looked at House with wounded eyes. Not that Wilson didn't have every excuse to be hurt and resentful. He had betrayed House, yes, but not without good reason. House hadn't just stolen Wilson's pad and forged his name to a few scripts -- and really, Wilson could have justifiably been a lot angrier about that stunt -- but he'd also forced Wilson to be the one whose testimony would be the final nail in House's coffin.

"She was kidding," Cuddy assured Wilson, jarring House from his reverie. "Keep your pants on."

"But I'm pretty sure ‘pants off' is part of the marriage deal," House said, unable to resist. "Of course, in Wilson's case --"

"She thinks this is funny?" Wilson's face was frozen in shock. "We could lose our licenses over this! We could both end up in jail!"

"But you're not going to, are you?" Cuddy asked, leveling a lethal stare at both of them. She hadn't made it to her position by wearing kid gloves, and when she wanted to pour on the authority, it could be thick as syrup. House had to admit that Cuddy's ball-busting skills were pretty cool to watch when he wasn't on the receiving end. Her eyes bored into both House and Wilson, making it clear that there was absolutely no possibility of any of this going the wrong way for her or for them.

"Although it would be a lot easier if they couldn't force you to testify against him," she said, addressing Wilson. "Unfortunately, the only way around that is a marriage license, and frankly, House, I just don't think you have the figure for a white gown."

"I'd only divorce him and drain him for alimony, anyway. Seriously, everyone's doing it. Ask any of his ex-wives --"

Wilson's glare could have shrunk his patients' tumors at twenty paces. Come to think of it, Wilson was pretty good at ball-busting himself.

"I'm delighted that my marital failures are still able to provide you with plenty of fodder for jokes," he snarled. He stepped between House and Cuddy's desk, taking up her entire line of view. "What do you mean, a marriage license?" He sounded disturbed at the very word, as if Cuddy had suggested that the best way out of their dilemma was covering themselves in leeches. House wondered whether he should be offended.

Cuddy shrugged. "She just said that it was a shame you guys only fight like an old married couple. Legally, married couples can't be forced to testify against one another. In the future, House, when you insist on stealing another doctor's prescription pad, do me a favor: marry her first."

"Next time, I'll make sure to steal from one of the lovely lady doctors in my life," House promised, giving Cuddy a predatory look.

"You do that," Cuddy said in a dismissive tone. "In the meantime, I'm sure there are lawyers right here in town whose marriages you haven't tried to break up who can give you a second opinion. In fact, I'm almost certain that I sent you to just such a lawyer last week. You do remember your lawyer, don't you, House?"

House remembered his lawyer. Not that the lawyer was a bad guy -- by lawyer standards, he was actually okay. Unfortunately, he just hadn't been all that great at giving House good news.

Wilson leaned slightly in House's direction. "That would be the four hundred dollar butt plug, in case you forgot," he supplied.

"Four-fifty, with a five grand retainer," House muttered darkly.

"I don't care what kind of toys you want to spend five grand on, House, but try to set some cash aside for the lawyer, too," Cuddy said. "Go talk to Howard."

"But I --"

"Go talk to Howard!"

They went to talk to Howard.

Two: A Four Hundred Dollar Butt Plug

"Speeding," Howard recited, "DUI, reckless driving, resisting arrest, possession of a Schedule II drug, possession with intent to traffic, forgery of the third degree, and ... disorderly conduct?"

"Surely not," Wilson protested, as insincerely as he could get away with. House, for his part, stared sheepishly at the expensive carpet in Howard's office, having apparently heard some version of this litany before.

"You know, most of my clients get charges dropped after the incident, not added," Howard said patiently as he finished his pacing and took a seat on the other side of the desk.

"Dr. House is renowned for his skill at defying the odds in the worst possible ways," Wilson explained.

He knew he should have been angry, but he was too tired for anger and too well-trained in suppressing it. Last night's nightmare had drained him of every recognizable emotion. For three seconds after finding House on the floor of his apartment -- the longest three seconds of James Wilson's life -- he'd known with a bone-deep certainty that House was dead. From irritation at House's refusal to pick up the phone to throat-clutching, stomach-dropping terror in half a second -- if Wilson had been a few years older, it would have been a great beginning for a heart attack. It was impossible for him to understand the kind of pain House's leg caused him on an daily basis, but he imagined that finding House's body twisted up on the living room floor felt roughly the same.

But not even the agony of those three seconds could hold a candle to the seconds, minutes, and hours after. First came the relief at finding House breathing and conscious, the kind of relief that had him saying a silent prayer of gratitude to any gods that might be listening. Finding the whiskey and the empty pill bottle ... Wilson wasn't sure he knew a word for that feeling. And he doubted there was any word at all for what it felt like to stand up, let the empty bottle fall from his hand, and walk out the door. He'd known that House would be fine -- physically fine, at least. What Wilson hadn't known was what he would do if he stayed there any longer. He'd walked out of the apartment as if in a dream -- dazed, blinking against the sparks of light reflected by the snow.

He had returned to his empty hotel room and lain fully dressed on top of the bed, which was still made from the previous morning, trying his damnedest not to think about anything. Maybe he should have swiped some pills from Zebalusky for himself. He had his car and his bank accounts and his practice back, but now he seemed to be short one best friend. Every time he closed his eyes, his mind instantly rewound to the moment when he'd opened the door to House's apartment.

That is, until House himself knocked on the hotel room door.

He barely heard the first knock, and didn't move until the second. He checked the peephole before opening it. Unannounced visits from Tritter had made it a habit.

Even small and distorted through the hole in the door, House had looked like shit. Wilson pressed his forehead against the cool surface of the door. He'd seen House in more states of disarray than anyone, but he'd never seen him like that: the walking dead. And House had actually been dead, or close to it, more times than most people Wilson knew, so that was really something. Worse yet was the fact that House hadn't just looked dead -- he had looked as though dead was exactly what he wanted to be.

That was when Wilson heard about Tritter taking the deal away. House had been slumped in front of him, still avoiding Wilson's eyes, rubbing his thigh, face ragged with pain -- and Wilson had felt nothing but grief. Just as his lawyer had said, House was going to jail. Wilson was going to be forced to put him there.

House had lowered his eyes and apologized for everything in a voice so soft Wilson had to lean forward to catch the words. Then Wilson had reached out, cautiously, and put his hand on House's knee, a gesture that startled them both.

House had finally looked up at him with dull gray eyes. Wilson didn't touch House, except in medical contexts, and House never touched anyone if he could help it. The simple placement of hand on knee was very nearly the most intimate contact the two of them had ever had.

Wilson didn't want to think about how pathetic that was, that the most physical contact he'd ever had with his best friend was a brush of shoulders while walking, checking his vitals last night on House's floor, and that sad, strained moment. In a better mood, House would probably have made a crack about how their never touching drove Wilson to seek physical relationships with every female around him.

Wilson definitely didn't want to think about that.

Howard sighed and looked at House with a pained expression. "I'm going to have my work cut out for me, aren't I?

"At four-fifty an hour, you should have your work cut out for you."

"At four-fifty an hour, it might be best if we got right down to business and didn't waste time bickering over my fees," Howard pointed out. "I need you to be honest with me. Did Dr. Wilson write these prescriptions?"

House closed his eyes briefly, and then shot Wilson a look of barely disguised guilt. "Most of them."

"But not all of them. Did you forge his name for the remainder?"

"Does it still count as forgery if you make absolutely no attempt to imitate the person's handwriting?"

Howard's patient stare didn't waver. It occurred to Wilson that he liked House's lawyer.

"Yeah, I forged his name," House admitted.

Howard smiled thinly. "I told you last time that a plea bargain would be the easiest way to make this disappear. Unfortunately, it appears that a plea bargain is out of the question at this point. The DA wants to go to trial. This prescription forgery charge, combined with the intent to traffic -- those are some very serious criminal charges."

"I never had any intent to traffic," House said. "That's ridiculous."

"I know that, and you know that," Howard answered, "but the things you and I know are only going to be worth so much in the court room. Even if the DA can't prove that you intended to sell those drugs, he could still get you on the forged prescriptions."

Wilson watched House very closely. He didn't possess House's uncanny ability to look at a person and instantly pick up on the innermost workings of their minds, but he'd known House for a long time and had learned to read him with a fair degree of accuracy. Although House had taken another Vicodin before arriving at the lawyer's office, Wilson could tell from the way he carried himself and from the way he now sat that he was still in pain. But it wasn't just House's leg that was hurting. It would have been barely perceptible to anyone else -- even to another doctor -- but Wilson could tell that House's shoulder was bothering him again, too.

He'd given House a new prescription. The deal was gone for good and House was still in pain -- what else could he have done? He had handed the bottle over, watched House swallow one dry, and then closed his eyes. "They're going to kill you one of these days," he had said.

"Better pills than pain."

The deal with Tritter, the detoxing, even House's eventual willingness to go into rehab -- it had all been for nothing. And here they were, back at the beginning: House on the drugs; Wilson enabling. House destroying himself; Wilson assisting.

Wilson turned to Howard. "So what happens next?"

"Dr. House will be issued a summons to appear in court. There will be a formal arraignment, at which he'll enter his plea. The judge can probably be convinced to dismiss or downgrade the intent to traffic charge. But the forgeries ..." Howard looked sharply at House, but his voice was even. "You need to understand. You obtained an opiate illegally. There is very little leeway around that. Dr. Wilson's testimony will be included in the trial, and it is not going to look good for you."

Wilson glanced over at House, whose face had gone unnaturally blank and unreadable. He looked back at Howard and nervously asked, "What if I don't testify?"

Howard's smile was tight. "You've already testified, Dr. Wilson. Your statement to Detective Tritter will be admitted whether you go on the stand or not. They'll want you up there, of course, because it looks better for them -- and you'll want to be there, too, because if you don't, they're going to subpoena you."

House spoke up. "Tritter said they didn't need Wilson anymore," he said, sounding uncertain.

"Oh, they still need Wilson," Howard said. "They can't convict you for signing out pills for a recently deceased patient. It's circumstantial -- too much room for reasonable doubt. You could have been doing Dr. Wilson a favor by picking them up, not realizing the patient had already died. They'll need more than that for a guilty verdict."

It was hardly a revelation, but hearing it from a lawyer -- from a lawyer who was on their side, even -- made the lump of fear inside him grow heavier. "There's nothing we can do?" Wilson asked.

Howard sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'll do what I can to get the charges downgraded. Your leg," he said, gesturing at House, "that's a mitigating factor. The sympathy vote might count for something. The fact that you're a doctor -- well, that could go either way."

With a show of finality, Howard closed the file on the desk in front of him and pushed his chair back. "You have a long road ahead of you, gentlemen," he said, standing. "But I'll do everything I can."

The air felt like quicksand around him. Wilson had been certain that the lawyer would be able to give them some way out -- some way to make the nightmare of the last few weeks disappear. He'd never expected that Howard's assessment of the situation would be this grim. The possibility that House could lose his license and end up in prison had always been there, but it had never seemed more real.

Wilson stood up anyway, reaching across the desk to shake Howard's hand. "Thank you," he said, and behind him, he heard House snort.

"Say hello to Dr. Cuddy for me," Howard said as the two of them headed for the door. "Oh," he suddenly chuckled, "and tell her that I got her message: the marriage idea was very funny. My hat's off to whoever thought of that."

Appreciative laughter followed Wilson as he quickly ushered House out the door.

Three: Fight with the Wife

"Twenty-two-year-old female," House began later that afternoon, limping into the conference area with a case file under his arm, "presenting with --"

"So, we hear you're getting married," Chase said.

If news traveled fast in the glorified high school that was Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, gossip and mockery traveled faster. House had spent half his time at the hospital that day deflecting questions about the cuts on his arm -- for which he'd have to thank Cameron's big mouth, of course -- and word had clearly gotten around that Tritter's deal had been withdrawn. The only bit of House news that wasn't in circulation was the Christmas Eve overdose. Wilson, to his credit, had kept that particular gem of humiliation to himself. House wasn't even sure if Cuddy knew.

Aside from the fact that he'd been found on the floor in his own puke, his personal business was common knowledge throughout the hospital. That Cuddy was now sharing the wit of Stacy Warner with his employees should have come as no surprise.

House met Chase's baleful stare. The tightness of his mouth and the vivid bruise on his jaw made the effect positively sinister. In the corner, Foreman rolled his eyes with enough gusto that his entire head rolled as well.

"Presenting with --" House continued, undaunted.

"What did your lawyer say this time?" Cameron asked.

"That I need to hire underlings with longer attention spans," House shot back. "Patient is female, twenty-two, presenting --"

"You can't just keep avoiding this!" It was Cameron again, with her typical overconcern.

"No," House admitted, tossing the file onto the table so it slid neatly across the surface until it came to a stop directly in front of Cameron, "but if I play my cards right, I can successfully avoid you. Cameron, do a lumbar puncture. Foreman, patient history. Chase, you're on breaking and entering duty."

He turned to go into his office, but it was only for show -- a few seconds to allow the players to take their positions. They were getting predictable. When he turned around at the connecting doorway, his team was exactly where he'd expected them to be: Chase had stood and grabbed his coat, Foreman had a clipboard in hand and was making his way towards the door, and Cameron was still sitting right where he'd left her, arms crossed at her chest and an look on her face that was half anger and half pity.

"Yes?" he asked, attempting to infuse the word with impatience.

Cameron finally stood, then walked across the room to hand him a slim white envelope. "This came for you today," she said quietly.

The envelope was unremarkable except for the return address: the New Jersey Superior Court. House kept his face deliberately impassive as he looked back at his team: Chase, so cold and indifferent that it had to be an act; Foreman, also trying for cold and indifferent and mostly failing; and Cameron, whose anger had morphed into full-blown sorrow.

House tossed the envelope in the air with forced levity and caught it again between his fingers. "Overdue parking ticket," he said lamely.

When nobody started moving again, he picked the nearest victim. "Lumbar puncture," he stressed, leaning towards Cameron as if she were slightly deaf. Before any of them could protest -- or worse, offer some sort of condolences -- he stepped into his office and shut the door behind him.

Someone had been there earlier. His desk had been graced with the January issue of Modern Bride. It occurred to him that the PPTH laugh mill had to have run pretty damn dry if Stacy's stupid joke could garner this much attention.

He dumped the magazine in his trash bin along with a pile of hospital paperwork and then tapped the ominous white envelope against the now clean surface of his desk. He considered not reading it, dropping it into the trash right behind the magazine, and wondered if he could get away with pretending he'd never received it. But that would mean enlisting his team in the conspiracy, and he was pretty sure Chase was permanently finished with lying for him. He ripped the envelope open quickly and removed its contents.

The summons was short and to the point: Dr. Gregory House was to appear before a judge in the New Jersey Superior Court in one week to address the formal charges presented against him. His lawyer could be present; if he could not afford a lawyer ... gradually, his attention waned. He'd seen enough episodes of Law and Order to know how the rest went. He could practically hear the doink-doink.

Howard had said he'd do everything possible, and some impossible things, too, but he'd also made it clear that the situation was serious. House thought about his medical license. He was a little old to be making a career change. As he contemplated the possibilities of teaching full-time, and whether anyone other than Cuddy would hire him at this point, he realized that he was avoiding the much harsher reality of what might happen if he lost. He immediately derailed that train of thought, just as he had with so many others. Going to prison was a non-option.

House popped another pill while his mind drifted, as it frequently did, to Wilson. He'd been able to think of little else since coming awake that morning on his floor, certain he was dead, and finding his panic-stricken, sweaty-haired friend above him instead of an angel.

Wilson had told him, in Atlantic City, that House was a pathological relationship-killer, constantly pushing Wilson's friendship and loyalty to its limits. House had disregarded the remark at the time. Of course he didn't want to push Wilson away permanently. House could no more part with Wilson than he could have let Stacy cut off his leg.

But after the things House had done to Wilson recently, he had to wonder. Had he wanted to break their friendship without realizing it?

When his internal monologue started to sound like a classic Wilson lecture he stuffed the bottle of Vicodin in his jacket pocket and went to go find the man himself.

Wilson didn't look happy to see him, but Wilson didn't look happy about much these days. He waved a depressingly familiar white envelope at House as he limped into the office and shut the door.

"Another ‘love note' from Tritter," Wilson explained, "only this one's by way of the DA's office." His brown eyes exuded misery; House was irritated by the reminder that Wilson wore misery quite well.

House dropped his chin. It was suddenly hard to meet Wilson's gaze, even with his somber mood making him look like something out of GQ. "What are you going to do?"

Wilson sighed. "I don't know. I was thinking about becoming a fugitive," he said wryly. "Maybe grow a beard, disappear somewhere in Montana."

House tried and failed to fight off a smile. They were mostly inevitable where Wilson was concerned. "You'd look revolting with a beard. You probably couldn't even grow one. I've seen you after a few days of not shaving. You look like a mangy animal."

"Well, there's always Mexico. Or Spain. Did we ever decide where Salma Hayek lives?"

House averted his eyes. "You know that refusing to testify won't get either of us anywhere. Like Perry Mason said -- they'll admit your testimony whether you're there or not." He looked up at Wilson, who was standing with his hands on his hips, expression fading speedily back to miserable. "You've already sacrificed enough for me. Testify."

Wilson just stood and looked at him for a long moment, long enough that House started to shift uncomfortably under the weight of Wilson's gaze. When Wilson spoke, the change of subject was jarring enough that House wasn't entirely sure he'd heard correctly.

"What did you think you were doing last night?"

House automatically began considering and rejecting a handful of smart-ass retorts. He settled on, "Getting into the Christmas spirit," which was still pretty obnoxious, but probably wouldn't result in Wilson giving up on him just yet.

"You took more than seven times the recommended amount of pills. Did you even read the label? Or did you just start eating them like M&Ms? And I assume you washed them down with the bourbon. Damn it, House," Wilson said, his voice rising, "what was that?"

"It wasn't what you think," he muttered.

"Then explain it to me."

But House couldn't explain it. He couldn't even start. Maybe he'd be able to someday, when Wilson's fury and pain wasn't staring him right in the eye. There was something about Wilson in this mood that made him feel like he was suffocating.

"I'm sorry." It felt like he'd been saying that a lot lately, usually to Wilson. He wondered if it meant he was whipped.

"And what's that?" Wilson continued, gesturing vaguely.

"What's what?"

"Telling me not to testify because you're not worth it, or whatever you're trying to pull. This noble self-sacrificing crap. You don't want me to go up there and testify. You want me to fuck off to Montana or Mexico. You're still pissed about the deal I made. Did you want to punish me? Maybe kill yourself on Christmas Eve and let me find the body? Is that what you wanted?"

"I didn't want to kill myself," House snapped.

"No," Wilson agreed, his voice suffused with bitterness. "You just don't particularly care if you live, either."

If House had known of the scathing power of an angry Wilson, he might have saved himself the trouble of hacking at his arm. He pushed away from the wall he'd been leaning against and limped toward the door. "You have no idea what I want," he told Wilson as a parting shot, and as he left the office he thought and neither do I.

Four: Gold Star for Cameron

The hotel room seemed dramatically emptier without House in it, but Wilson reminded himself that he'd had just about all the House he could stand for forty-eight hours. He needed to detox.

Wilson had never been very good at solitude. He supposed it was one of the reasons he tended to leap into marriages before their stability and longevity could be assured. House had once accused him of "eating neediness," but that wasn't true: he was just eternally afraid of being alone.

Wilson worried about House being alone, as well. If he closed his eyes, he could still see House's body on the apartment floor -- but the memory was too fresh and too raw to speak of. He'd file it alongside the hundreds of other Things They Didn't Talk About. But even if very little else had been revealed in their earlier conversation in Wilson's office, he was at least certain that House wasn't in any more danger by his own hand for the time being.

The bigger picture, though, was still blurry. The escalating doses of Vicodin, the motorcycle, his increasingly insolent behavior towards patients, and now this debacle -- Wilson had no idea how long they had before House found himself back at that same edge again. And next time, House might not be able to hang on.

Finding House half-dead in his apartment had shaken Wilson to his very core. For the first time in the history of their friendship, he had to finally admit that he didn't understand House -- that maybe he never had. Wilson had been certain that taking the Vicodin away would bring House to his senses -- or, barring that, to his metaphorical knees, so he would give up the stubborn denials and do what was necessary to release all of them from Tritter's predatory grasp.

He could never have anticipated that House would take it so far, that his refusal to capitulate in any way would lead him to choose flirtation with death over surrender. How could Wilson have ever believed himself capable of predicting what House would do? It was clear to him now that House -- infarction, addiction, and all -- was a power he couldn't begin to comprehend.

He took advantage of the temporary lull to catch up on e-mails that had been neglected over the last several days. After sorting through the spam and other junk mail, one message in particular caught his attention. There was no subject line and it was dated from only a few hours earlier. Curious, he clicked on it.

To: "James Wilson" (jwilson@ppth.org)
From: "Allison Cameron" (acameron@ppth.org)
Subject: [none]

Message: http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/10/21/nyregion/21gaymarriage.html

Wilson frowned deeply and, to his further irritation, felt his cheeks start to grow hot. It was a stupid, juvenile reaction. He knew that this wasn't the adult equivalent of being called a queer on the playground, and there was no way Cameron could suspect -- no. All Cameron knew was that House was in trouble, and being Cameron, she'd do or say anything to protect him. They weren't entirely dissimilar in that regard. Wilson sighed and reluctantly clicked the link.

Legislators Vote for Gay Unions in N.J.

TRENTON, N.J. - New Jersey's governor signed legislation Thursday giving same-sex couples all the rights and responsibilities of marriage allowed under state law -- but not the title.

The legislation will make New Jersey the fourth state to offer some sort of legal protection to same-sex couples.

He was skimming over the less interesting parts when a line caught his eye: The civil unions law grants gay couples adoption, inheritance, hospital visitation and medical decision-making rights and spousal immunity: the right not to testify against a partner in state court.

His stomach lurched. He blinked and read the sentence again, but it still said the same thing. It was what Stacy had been joking about, but if there had been any humor in the situation before, it was completely gone now.

Spousal immunity. It was a strange-looking term. Wilson smiled ironically to think that he could certainly use some immunity from his former spouses. It would do his bank account a lot of good.

House had his own brand of spousal immunity. Wilson couldn't picture him married to anyone. In the Stacy years, he'd tried to imagine House married, but Wilson had failed, as totally as House and Stacy's relationship eventually would, to conjure up any sort of mental image of House as someone's husband. House just didn't have it in him -- and he would probably have pointed out that Wilson had too much of it.

The article was short. Wilson finished it and deleted the e-mail without a response. He thought about shutting the computer down and going to bed, or getting dressed and going downstairs to the hotel lounge for a nightcap.

Instead, he went online and started searching for more details. It didn't have to mean anything. It was good to keep up on changes in state law. He steadfastly refused to examine his motives any further than that.

There were already several places online with usable information. Wilson found a brief list of the requirements a couple would have to meet to get a civil union license, alongside a list of the old requirements for a ‘domestic partnership,' and discovered, with some distaste, that at least one of his marriages would never have been up to snuff. It struck him as deeply unfair that he'd been able to get married and divorced three separate times by the time he turned forty, while committed same-sex couples had had to deal with half-assed domestic partnership rights.

Not that his marriages had seemed anything less than committed from their respective starts -- at least to him. House had provided ceaseless diatribes about what terrible ideas they were, but he was obsessively cynical about all of Wilson's romantic prospects. He'd never liked anyone Wilson had dated. That was just House being House.

But Wilson had loved each of his wives -- he refused to dwell on how pathetic that was, to be able to say "each of his wives" -- or at least he'd been pretty sure he loved them. He'd done a lot to revise his definition of the term in the months since his latest separation. Love was -- commitment. Unflinching loyalty. Willingness to sacrifice. Three things he had to admit he'd never given his wives. Friendship -- well, there weren't many people with whom he shared that, and his wives had never come close.

He turned the computer off and left it on his desk, and then stripped down to his shorts and undershirt and lay back on the bed. It was good news, really -- he was proud of his state.

It wasn't that he was gay -- he was irrefutably not gay. He loved women, loved their long hair, their smooth skin, their supple breasts in his hands, their hips and curves and soft, wet places. He'd had three marriages and more affairs than he cared to remember to prove it. He hadn't really thought about men in ages, and he hadn't done anything about it since before his first marriage -- since med school. So he wasn't even close to being gay, not really. Or at least not mostly.

He suddenly became aware of the fact that he was aroused. He shouldn't have been surprised; it wasn't an unusual reaction to the stress of the last several days. He considered ignoring it, rolling over, and going to right to sleep, but he could hardly remember the last time he'd jerked off, and who was he trying to impress?

He pulled his shirt over his head and then slid his hand down to the front of his shorts, touching himself through the soft cotton. He took hold of the waistband, slid the boxers over his hips, and wrapped his hand around his growing erection. He didn't linger, didn't take his time, just stroked himself with sure, strong motions.

He forced his mind to empty and let himself think only of anonymous hands, anonymous mouths, refusing to permit thoughts of anyone or anything but the feel of his own warm hand on his hard cock, and the tensing muscles in his abdomen and thighs. He squeezed his eyes shut and exhaled a moan when he came, jerking and shooting hard into his palm.

A few minutes later, when his pulse stopped racing, he went to the bathroom to clean up. A few minutes after that, he rolled over in bed and wondered if maybe he should have hung out with House tonight after all. Being alone sucked.

Five: Bad Mojo is Not a Diagnosis (It's a Way of Life)

House needed a patient and he needed a patient soon, because if his team had any more downtime, he feared they were going to start looking up caterers and china patterns. In desperation, he combed his desk for any useless paperwork he could assign them.

Twenty-four hours had given the gag enough time to make the rounds and then some. By ten o'clock House had already been the ungrateful recipient of two more wedding magazines (one from Radiology, who were still mad about the incidents with the MRI -- both of them -- and one from the entire nursing pool), four e-mails with links to wedding websites (including one from the kid who worked at the hospital gift shop, and another from Stacy's husband -- had she and Cuddy taken out a billboard or something?), and countless stares and barbs. The next person to "accidentally" address him as "Mrs. Wilson" was getting a bag of flaming dog shit in their locker. Cuddy was getting two on her doorstep.

In the adjacent conference room, Cameron was regaling an audience of Foreman and Chase with stories about her jailbait cancer wedding, which might have been heartwarming, House thought meanly, if her husband hadn't gone to that great frat house in the sky only months later.

Under October's FHM, House found several long-overdue billing forms. He grabbed them and triumphantly brought them into the conference room.

"Do you really think this would work?" Foreman was asking.

"Stacy and Cuddy were right," Cameron said. "I looked it up -- spousal privilege prevents any married couple from being compelled to testify against one another in court."

"Wilson and I are not getting married."

"But --"

House slammed the papers down on the table and was disappointed when they barely made a sound. Next time, he resolved to bring something heavier. "Do we have to go over the differences between boys and girls again? Assorted teddy bears in his office notwithstanding, Wilson is not a woman. And since we're a few hundred miles south of Canada, this presents certain problems for your sadistic little scheme." He couldn't bring himself to mention the other obstacles to such a plan, namely that Wilson was ostensibly straight, and probably hated him. "Fill these out. I'm going to lunch."

He found Cuddy behind her desk. To his annoyance, she didn't even lift her head to look at him. "Don't you have some sort of work to do?"

"Yeah, I do," he said loudly. "It's just a shame that my team is too busy gossiping about your weird wedding fetish to listen and do their jobs."

"Right, this is entirely my fault. If only I hadn't stuck that thermometer up a cop's ass -- things would just be sunshine and roses all around."

One of House's great regrets in life was his inability to strike fear into the heart of his boss whenever he had cause to barge into her office and yell at her. Cuddy was utterly unflappable in that regard. Threats of violence couldn't move her. She was immune to blackmail attempts, and since House didn't have any really good dirt on her that he hadn't conjured up out of his own mind, that was a dead end.

He'd found out a few days earlier that he what he could do was make her cry -- but the whole thing had made him feel disgusted enough with himself that he'd privately vowed to never do it again.

Having given up on terrorizing Cuddy into letting him get away with things, House typically had to resort to Plans B and C, which were annoying her into submission, and shameless acts of bribery. But none of those options was going to make any of this go away: not Tritter, not the trial, not the asinine gossip, and not the wall he'd somehow managed to build between himself and Wilson. Defeated, he headed for the door.

Cuddy's voice followed him. "That's it? That's all you wanted, to yell at me?"

House paused in her doorway. "Yeah, that's it. Makes me happy." He gave her a menacing grin on his way out.

* * *

"I need you to tell me exactly what happened with this cop," Howard said. "Everything you can remember, from the day he came into the clinic to the last time you saw him."

House did his best impression of exasperation. It had become a reflexive reaction to the mention of Tritter. Although he'd never admit it to anyone, he recognized it as a defense mechanism. The cop gave him the creeps.

"He showed up at the clinic with a rash on his --" House glanced up in time to catch Wilson's disapproving stare. "-- his penis. Can I say ‘penis', Dr. Wilson?" he asked, just to annoy him. It was bad enough having Wilson tag along to his meetings with the lawyer, but monitoring House's language was overstepping it just a bit.

"It's probably best if we leave the specific anatomical details out," Howard suggested. "Please, continue."

"I looked at the rash, saw he was chewing nicotine gum, told him he had a lubrication problem. It was a mindless diagnosis. A first-year med student could have told him that. He insisted I run a pointless, unnecessary test; I told him no. He --" House stopped himself, but Howard and Wilson both leaned forward in their respective chairs, having caught a whiff of something interesting.

House muttered, low enough that he hoped neither of them heard it, "He also kicked my cane."

"He what?"

Shocking Wilson was usually more fun than this. "Never mind."

"He kicked your cane? Like, out from under you? While walking?" Actually, Wilson's righteous outrage on House's behalf was a lot easier to take than his righteous outrage directed at House. House made a mental note to invent a few more indignities Tritter had inflicted upon him, to see if he could get a similar reaction out of Wilson again.

"You sawed halfway through my cane. What's the difference?"

"You practically dared me to! I had to deal with you for years -- he only had to put up with you for five minutes."

"By your own admission, you were rude to him," Howard calmly directed them back to business. "How rude are we talking? What else happened?"

House averted his eyes. "After the cane thing, I took a swab of his -- problem. He thought it might be an infection, so I had to get his temperature. The nicotine gum made it impossible to get an accurate oral reading, so I used a rectal thermometer."

"And?"

"And ... then I left."

Howard gazed quietly at him. "That's pretty rude," he observed.

"He had it coming," House muttered.

Howard sighed in resignation. "Then what happened?"

"He went crying to Cuddy; she told me to apologize. I ..." He paused again, contemplative. "He said he wanted to humiliate me."

"Considering you left a thermometer in his rectum," Wilson said quietly, "can you really blame him?"

Howard regarded each of them quietly. "Those were his exact words?"

"He said, ‘I'm not interested in sincerity, I'm interested in humiliation.'"

Howard nodded, his expression pensive. "What else?"

"Then he pulled me over for speeding. Which I wasn't doing."

"Of course not. He just happened to be in the area?"

"Of course not," House snapped, "he followed me from the hospital."

Howard made a thoughtful sound at the back of his throat.

"He asked for my license and registration. I didn't have them. Then he searched me --"

"On what grounds?" Howard interrupted. "Why did he search you?"

"He saw me take a pill at the clinic."

"Vicodin?"

"Yeah."

"Hmm." Howard jotted something down on a legal pad. "Are those the white tablets I've seen you take?"

House reached into his pocket, pulled out the latest bottle, and rattled it in the affirmative.

"What happened next?"

"He read me my rights and handcuffed me."

"You didn't resist?"

House glared. "I'm a cripple. He's a walrus with a weapon. What do you think?"

Howard smiled wanly. "I think you probably did the responsible thing for the first and last time in this mess."

They went over the rest of the timeline, from the search of House's apartment to the seizure of Wilson's assets to the stolen oxy and the lost deal. Howard also took notes on House's medical history since the infarction. By the end of the session, Wilson was looking as tragic as House had ever seen him, and his own leg was hurting like a bitch. Howard was nearly apoplectic.

He released them with a shake of his head. "I'm going to need to talk to your team," he told House, "and probably Dr. Cuddy, too."

Of the two of them, only Wilson was brave enough to acknowledge the look on Howard's face. "Still bad news?"

Howard sighed again. He did it more than anyone House had ever met, except maybe Wilson, or maybe that was just a characteristic of spending time with House. "I've won harder cases," the lawyer said, "but not many. Whatever grounds I'm able to make up are probably going to be lost when Wilson testifies."

House stole glances at Wilson out of the corner of his eye as they drove back to the hospital. Wilson wasn't just lost in thought: he was trapped in an uncharted, untraveled wilderness of contemplation. More than ever before, House wished he had some sort of line into Wilson's brain, but his friend's powers of duplicity had been magnified by years of knowing House. Wilson was inscrutable.

House arrived at his office at a quarter past five. At five-thirty, he noticed the New York Times clipping perched on top of the mess of files cluttering his desk. He plucked it up by the frayed edge, avoiding the newsprint, and took in the headline:

New Jersey governor signs civil unions into law

He blinked at it and turned to look into the conference room, where Foreman and Chase were conspicuously trying to look busy, and where Cameron was standing, arms crossed, staring at him with challenge in her eyes.

Half a dozen biting retorts flew to House's mouth, but he resisted. He glanced back down at the scrap of newsprint. It had taken the wind out of him; he felt strangely uninvolved and tense at the same time. The trash can was within arm's reach, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to pitch the article. Instead, he opened his rarely used top desk drawer, slipped the clipping inside, and shut it with a bang.

Six: You Just Can't Always Anticipate the Conditions

The arraignment was quick but far from painless. Wilson sat in the middle of the room, near enough to be supportive, but not so close as to be overbearing. Cameron had wanted to go, too, but House had growled at her to get back to work and she'd obediently scampered off. He'd tried growling at Wilson, too, but Wilson was bigger than Cameron and harder to scare away.

At Howard's insistence House had worn a tie, although he'd balked at ironing anything. He also seemed to be taking Howard's advice to keep his mouth shut, except for the times when he was specifically addressed by the judge. Wilson felt weirdly proud of him, and unshakably nervous. Howard's reminder of the gravity of his own testimony still weighed in his mind.

As the judge began reading the absurdly long list of charges, Wilson felt someone take a seat next to him on the bench, much too close for a stranger. His jaw clenched tightly as he turned to see Tritter, who was gazing at Wilson with disinterested pity.

"What are you doing here?" Wilson whispered angrily. "Don't you have some kind of job?"

"I could ask you the same question," Tritter answered, bothering only to lower his voice a notch.

"I'm here to support a friend," Wilson snapped.

"Some friend, huh?" Tritter reached into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew a piece of nicotine gum. He smelled like menthol and cheap aftershave.

"You're one to talk. You said you wanted to help him."

Tritter only shrugged. "A guy has to want to help himself."

"He came to you to take the deal! He would have gone to rehab! You --" Wilson had to stop himself; his voice was rising and people around them were starting to look. "You yanked that deal out from under him when he needed it most," he hissed. "You lied to both of us." He wasn't sure if he was angrier on House's behalf or his own.

Tritter's smile sent a chill down Wilson's back; his fingers instinctively curled into fists. "Everybody lies." Tritter stood up. "I'll see you at the trial," he promised, then left.

With Howard at his side, House plead not guilty to each charge as it was listed: speeding, driving under the influence, reckless driving, driving without a license, resisting arrest, possession of a Schedule II drug, possession with intent to traffic, and the killer -- forgery.

Wilson watched quietly, taking in the courtroom, Howard's posture, and the bare patch of neck between the back of House's collar and his messy, uncombed hair. Wilson thought about Tritter's betrayal, just when House had finally been willing to get help. He thought about House -- unconscious on his living room floor, apologizing in Wilson's hotel room, in pain behind bars -- and he thought about Cameron's e-mail.

Leaving the courtroom, House yanked his tie off, stuffed it in his pocket, and quietly asked Wilson, "What did the cop want?"

"To rub my face in it," Wilson said. Of course House had noticed; he'd probably smelled Tritter as soon as he'd walked through the doors. "Probably looking for something else to charge you with." He gave House a look, assessing the tension running through House's body. "How are you doing?"

"Oh, just dandy," House sniped as he one-handedly freed the top two buttons on his dress shirt and rolled his neck. "Never better."

Wilson didn't bother digging for a better answer; it was a rhetorical question, anyway, and they both knew it.

"Lunch time," House mused as they got back to Wilson's car. "Burgers?"

"Maybe later," Wilson said, quelling the pang of hunger drawn out by the idea of food. "I have an appointment." It was a lie, but he'd gotten a lot better at lying to House, and his friend hadn't seemed to notice.

* * *

The first time Wilson got up to find Cuddy, he was back behind his desk before he could make it out the door. The second time he made it as far as the clinic before turning back. He steeled his resolve, and on the third attempt he succeeded.

Cuddy glanced up at him as he entered her office and seemed to find him interesting enough to stop what she was doing. "How did the arraignment go?"

Wilson glanced surreptitiously around the room. "Can we ... go somewhere where he's less likely to burst in at any moment?"

Cuddy smiled wearily. "I know just the place."

There was an available exam room in the clinic, so Cuddy instructed the intake staff not to send any patients their way. They locked the door and shut the blinds.

"So," she said. "Why the secret rendezvous?"

Wilson shifted uncomfortably. There was no way this conversation could be easy for him. "I need to talk to someone. About ... this marriage thing."

"This required going someplace where House couldn't find us? He barged into my office the other day just to yell at me about it. It was just a joke! Look, if the teasing is getting out of hand, I can send memos to the other department heads, tell them to cool it."

Wilson shook his head. "Not ... that. Something else. Last night, I got an e-mail from Cameron. Stacy was right about the spousal testimony thing. She was just wrong about the joke."

Cuddy mimed irritated confusion. "I don't follow."

He took a deep breath, ignored the twist of fear in his chest, and bit the bullet. "They just made civil unions legal in New Jersey. They have all the same rights as real marriages, but for --" Gay. Queer. Gay. "-- same-sex couples."

Cuddy's eyes widened.

"And that includes the right to not be forced to testify against each other."

She stared at him like he was some sort of idiot, and then barked a dry laugh. "You must be kidding me."

Wilson shakily stood his ground. "I'm not kidding. This may be the only way to prevent the DA from forcing me to testify against him, and Howard said my testimony will send House to jail no matter what else happens during the trial."

"I -- you --" Cuddy's hands fluttered. "You can't just get a civil union license with House because you feel like it! You're not a couple -- you're not even gay!"

"It doesn't matter," he said, trying not to think too much about the issue. "I looked up the details. There are some criteria we'd have to meet, but nothing we can't arrange. Or fake."

"No," Cuddy said, shaking her head. "You're not going to do this."

"Well, I'm not going to send him to prison!"

Cuddy started pacing -- never a good sign. "Have you talked to him about this?"

"Not ... yet," Wilson grimaced. "I didn't want to promise anything until ... until I was sure." Sure that it would work, sure that it wouldn't kill him, or both. After three divorces, even the idea of a fake marriage made him feel like he was having a heart attack.

"Oh, god," Cuddy moaned. "I can't believe this. It was just a joke."

"Yeah, well, desperate times call for desperate measures," Wilson finished weakly.

Cuddy stopped pacing and stood staring at him, looking as hopeless as she had when he'd told her about making the deal with Tritter. Not for the first time, Wilson felt a pang of remorse that every other meeting he had with Cuddy seemed to put that expression on her face.

"What do you want me to say?" she asked. "That you should go into your fourth marriage -- a fake marriage -- to keep him out of jail? I can't tell you that. This is insane."

Wilson looked at the floor. "You said it yourself: he's worth too much to the hospital. Actually, he's worth too much to humanity."

"You would do this for him?" Cuddy sounded awed and a little skeptical.

Once again, he was forced to resort to the three-word explanation that wasn't an explanation at all. "He's my friend."

"He's your friend." Cuddy shook her head. "Unbelievable."

Wilson shrugged awkwardly. "I'm going to talk to him." When it appeared that Cuddy wasn't going to offer any more protests, he shrugged again and started to leave.

"He has no idea how lucky he is," Cuddy's voice stopped him. Wilson turned around; she was watching him with grudging admiration. "Everybody should be so lucky. Of course, normal people don't need to be this lucky."

"Because normal people can actually get along with other human beings," Wilson finished with a rueful smile.

"Every time he does something stupid and reckless and you get screwed over, I think -- this has to be it. This has to be where Wilson draws the line. But you never do." She threw her hands in the air in surrender. "Mazel tov, I guess."

"Thanks." Wilson braced himself, ignored his elevated heart rate, and went to look for House.

Seven: Ask Him About the Time He Sabotaged My Cane

House was playing Warcraft and still jonesing for a burger when Wilson showed up in his office later, but the determined, petrified look on Wilson's face indicated that dinner would have to wait. He was in for another one of their Serious Talks. House missed the days when they could just drop things off the roof together, or chat about Cuddy's breasts, or simply make fun of each other in peace.

"We have to talk," Wilson began, for probably the thousandth or so time since House met him, and House braced himself for yet another armchair psychoanalysis of his various problems and pathologies. He liked picking people's brains as much as the next obsessive narcissist, but Wilson should have just bitten the bullet and gone into psychiatry instead of cancer.

"I don't think I've done anything awful since I saw you five hours ago. Or at least nothing you'd be able to find out about this quickly."

"This is important," Wilson said gently. It was unnerving enough that House actually closed the computer window and paid attention. It sounded almost like the tone Wilson used to tell his patients they were dying. House tensed, waiting for his own death sentence to be delivered.

Wilson stood on the other side of House's desk, clearly too wound up to sit down. "It's about the trial, and my testimony," he started, and then hesitated. "And it's also about what Stacy said to Cuddy."

As if answering a cue, House's leg started to hurt. He began fumbling in his pocket for the pill bottle while his stomach did metaphorical back flips. The newspaper clipping, still resting in his desk drawer, was a radioactive bomb about to go off.

"Tritter and the DA are going to force me to testify. We both knew that, and Howard confirmed it. There's nothing either of us can do to get around it. Unless ..."

House closed his eyes and bit his tongue to keep himself from shouting, don't say it.

"... unless we had a civil union. They're legal now in New Jersey, and they work the same as any real marriage. If ... if I were your ‘spouse', they couldn't make me testify against you. All we'd have to do is get the license and sit through a ten-minute ceremony -- and then they couldn't touch me. You'll be free."

"Wilson," House started, with no idea what he intended to say. There was no way Wilson could do this for him. But Wilson didn't give him an opportunity to flounder.

"What I'm trying to say is," Wilson continued, fidgeting and then reaching into his pants pocket to retrieve something. Two spots of color stood out on his cheeks. "What I'm trying to say is -- will you join me in a phony civil union to keep you out of jail and keep me from having to betray my best friend?" He stuck his hand out, offering House what turned out to be, on closer examination, a Ring Pop.

House was silent. He wasn't sure that there was enough sarcasm in the world to top this stunt. He also wasn't sure if sarcasm was the first thing on his mind, but it made for a safe refuge from what he was actually feeling.

Wilson must have interpreted his non-response as some sort of shocked confusion. "I know how much you like -- candy," he hastily explained, and sucking on things, House silently supplied.

He fought with near-preternatural effort against the smile that threatened, and then reclined in his chair, feigning thoughtfulness. "I don't know," he hedged. "Can you support me in the style to which I've become accustomed?"

"Let's see," Wilson said dryly. "Food, bail, spontaneous rides to Atlantic City, expensive semi-illegal drug habit -- I'd say I already do."

House conceded the point with a shrug and moved onto his next objection. "But we've hardly dated. I'll want a long engagement, of course --"

"House. Seriously," Wilson interrupted, and it suddenly hit House that, despite the presentation, Wilson was dead serious, and that making this offer was a sacrifice of monumental proportions. The realization was like a blow to the solar plexus. He felt sick, dizzy, exhausted.

"This ... is a pretty big leap," he said.

"I know. But if it's the only way for you to keep your medical license, your job, your freedom -- then so be it."

"You're not concerned about what your co-workers will say? Your exes? Your parents?"

Wilson rolled his eyes. "We won't be trying to fool them -- we only need to fool the court system. Who cares what they say? They'll probably say we're nuts, but what else is new?"

House shifted in his chair, focusing on Wilson's hands, which were resting on his hips, and Wilson's bare forearms. His eyes returned to Wilson's face. "And you don't care if people cast ... aspersions ... on your sexuality?"

The blush returned in full force. House noted it with interest, along with Wilson's firm "Of course not."

"You'd really do this for me." It wasn't a question.

Wilson visibly bristled. "Someone has to care about your career. Since you won't do it ..."

"... you have to," House finished.

"City Hall. Saturday." If Wilson looked a little awkward and miserable walking out of his office -- well, House thought, he'd only brought it on himself.

He didn't bother restarting his stupid computer game. He sat in the darkened office and rested his chin on the cane. He felt -- flayed. Exposed. Which was stupid, because Wilson was the one putting himself out there for public mockery, the one making the sacrifices for House and his job -- as usual.

Insane. That's what this was. House didn't respect many social constructs, but he still held onto a disaffected respect for marriage, civil unions, whatever -- it was why he never stopped being annoyed at the fact that Wilson seemed to have no respect for marriage whatsoever. He'd lived with Stacy for five years and never once thought of proposing to her, because he'd known even then that there was nothing certain or permanent about them.

The idea of doing it as a con, just to keep his ass out of jail, was an affront to his worldview. It made him feel sick. There had to be a better way to win this case, but if there was, he couldn't think of it. Spending the next ten years in prison made him feel sicker.

In the conference room, his team was discussing their patient, who was making a slow but apparently steady recovery, and who had therefore lost House's interest. The bruise on Chase's jaw was fading to blues and greens. They all looked up as he entered the room.

"How was the arraignment?" Cameron asked, as unwilling to mind her own business as ever.

She and Wilson had a lot in common in that respect.

"Great," House said, infusing his voice with saccharine cheer. "Can't wait for the next one. Cameron, you're covering my clinic hours tomorrow."

"Uh, why?" It was Foreman's turn to stick his nose where it didn't belong.

"Important date. Tranny hooker."

Foreman smirked. "I thought you were confining your skanky, illegal sex-capades to after work hours, House."

"Actually, that reminds me," House said, immediately wondering if the segue was a bad idea but figuring it was too late to worry. "I'll need one of you on Saturday."

Chase cocked his head. The light hit his jaw, illuminating the bruise. "What for?"

House sucked in a breath and averted his eyes. "To witness the civil union ceremony."

There was an agonizingly long silence before Foreman finally broke it with, "You're shitting us, right?"

"Sure," House agreed. "I'm totally shitting you. But just in case, I need one of you at the Princeton City Hall on Saturday. Noon." He got up and grabbed his cane. "I'm going home."

He wasn't sure whether to take it as a good sign or a bad one that not a single one of them said anything else or tried to stop him.

Eight: And You Would Know Normal?

Wilson managed to avoid seeing House the next day, but the hospital-wide windfall from what had transpired was impossible to escape. The intake nurses behind the desk at the front of the building shook their heads pityingly at him. His assistant gave him a look that was a toss-up between stunned admiration and the look someone might have worn while watching a zoo animal eat its own feces.

He checked his e-mail: three "what were you thinking?" messages from colleagues, and one encouraging recommendation for a progressive-minded rabbi in Plainsboro from someone who might or might not have been in on the joke that there was nothing sacred or holy about Wilson's pending nuptials. The rabbi might have been liberal enough to bless a gay marriage between a lapsed Jew and a grouchy goy, but Wilson doubted she was open-minded enough to bless a scam.

He had two terminal patients, including a child, and one death before noon. He ate lunch alone in his locked office, lacking the nerve to brave the stares and rude questions in the cafeteria.

Everything should have been fine. He was just doing a favor for a friend -- his best friend -- and okay, it was an unusual favor, but House was an unusual guy and they had an unusual friendship. Wilson should have been handling this better. And he would have been, if he hadn't started having second thoughts about the civil union, one of which was the somewhat delayed revelation that friends didn't marry friends as favors. People married for sex, for money, for power, to stave off loneliness, to create makeshift families for unplanned children, to get green cards, to get financial aid for college, for love -- that mysterious, elusive, indefinable ‘x' factor -- but they didn't marry friends as a favor. Nobody was that good a person. Wilson certainly wasn't. He'd never get married to a friend like this -- which made him wonder what the hell House was to him, if not a friend.

Worse than that, though, was the realization that he noticed things about House -- things he had no business noticing. Things he'd been noticing for a while. Things like the way House smelled: clean, like the soap Wilson remembered House buying when he lived in House's apartment, and a little like coffee in the morning. How many days it had been since he last shaved. The fading bullet scar on the side of his neck. His energy -- dulled, of course, by these last few weeks, but still there if you knew where and when to look for it -- and the smooth strength of his imperfect body.

That line of thought was too disturbing to focus on for long. His own dying patients were easier on the mind.

But the worst event of the day by far was the visit from House's team.

"I'm not talking about this," Wilson warned them by way of a greeting.

"I cannot believe you're getting a phony civil union with House to keep him out of jail," Foreman challenged.

"And yet here you are, talking about it anyway," Wilson sighed in defeat.

"There's no way this is going to work," a still sullen Chase said. He'd been in a dour mood since the day House socked him. Wilson couldn't blame him. He'd been pretty depressed lately himself.

"It will work," Cameron insisted as if she could singlehandedly make it work by sheer force of will.

"Wanna bet on it?" Foreman offered.

"This seems like the sort of conversation that could be held without my participation," Wilson politely suggested. "Say, in a place that's not my office."

"Don't you think Tritter will figure out it's a scam?" Chase continued.

"It doesn't matter if he thinks it's a scam," Cameron said. "It's legally binding. And anyway, it's not his case anymore -- it's the district attorney's."

Foreman pretended to look thoughtful. "So, are we talking about a Jewish wedding? Will there be one of those canopies? Will someone step on a wine glass?"

"This is not a wedding," Wilson snapped, "and it's not a marriage. This is a stupid favor for a friend who doesn't deserve it. It's a sham, it's a farce, and as soon as this trial is finished, it's over. Then we can all go back to our real lives and stop having our practices interrupted and our bank accounts frozen and --" He realized he was almost shouting, and continued in a quieter voice, "and things will go back to normal." Normal, as always, being a relative term. Normal, hopefully, being a state that didn't include hiding out in his office, away from his co-workers, silently wondering what the hell he was really feeling about his best friend.

Chase and Cameron at least had the decency to look contrite. Foreman, damn him, looked suspicious and analytical, and Wilson felt his face heat as though someone had written I'm questioning my allegedly platonic feelings for the friend I'm about to fake marry on his forehead.

Foreman didn't say anything. Wilson realized he was being ridiculous.

"I have work to do," he concluded, which was true and had the added benefit of actually getting them to leave. House's team shuffled toward the door.

Cameron leaned back through the doorway and caught Wilson's eye. "Thank you for doing this for him," she said quietly. She waited, as if expecting a response, but Wilson could only stare dumbly. She eventually gave up and left him to his own thoughts.

Nine: I Hurt My Shoulder Playing Fantasy Football

Friday night found House digging out the ironing board that hadn't seen the light of day since Wilson moved out, and ironing the wrinkles from his best shirt -- the blue one -- cursing himself the entire time for feeling, even at the deepest and most neglected level, that he had to look presentable on his fake wedding day.

Not like he had anything better to do on Friday night. He couldn't sleep. Wilson was getting to him, getting under his skin, making him worry about things like ironing -- there was something deeply wrong with that. He had to talk himself out of buying a boutonnière, like he was going to the world's oldest and most awkward prom and not to a sham civil union ceremony with his best friend.

The shirt was nice, though. Even Wilson had agreed the last time House had worn it, for his "date" with Cameron -- another in a long list of spectacularly awful ideas he'd got himself roped into going along with. He remembered more about getting ready for the event, with Wilson lying on his sofa and coaching him in the arts of ties and seduction, than he did about the date itself.

Maybe the shirt was too nice. In a moment of near-panic, House almost rolled the thing into a ball and pitched it into the back of his closet. He started to reach for his newest bottle of Vicodin, but the memory of the hurt and dismay on Wilson's face when Wilson had given it to him was enough to stop him. That look had not been unlike the look Wilson gave him while explaining the civil union idea. There didn't seem to be anything Wilson wouldn't sacrifice for House -- his marriages, his morals, his privacy, his dignity ...

The thought was terrifying. This was a mistake. He resolved to call Wilson immediately and tell him that the whole gig was off.

House's leg spasmed as he went for the phone and he clutched his thigh, wincing in pain. It was dull pain compared to what he'd gone through during Tritter's three-day window, when Cuddy had taken his meds away. House reached for the newest pill bottle and swallowed one dry. He thought about the quality of prison healthcare, and the phone call was forgotten.

Wilson picked him up on Saturday morning with a faint waft of expensive cologne and a cloud of tense silence that didn't clear until they reached their destination. House could tell that Wilson noticed the wrinkle-free shirt and knew exactly what he had done, but mercifully, Wilson didn't comment.

As Wilson parked the car near the imposing building, House felt something twist in his gut. Wilson appeared to be on the verge of either bolting or weeping at any moment. Naturally, he looked great doing it. House's fingers itched to reach across the small distance separating them, but then perversely, against his better judgment, he succumbed to the uglier urge to mock.

"What's your problem?" he asked in a low voice. "You should be a pro at this by now."

Wilson didn't answer. He didn't even turn to acknowledge that House had spoken, and the half-petrified, half-sorrowful look remained on his face. He opened the car door and got out.

House followed, both his leg and his shoulder starting to ache. Wilson might have been onto something when he'd accused House of unconsciously manufacturing the shoulder pain to deal with his guilty conscience. "We don't have to do this," he said quietly, for what felt like the tenth time. The sidewalk kept disappearing beneath their feet, propelling them towards their fate.

"Don't tempt me," Wilson muttered back, but there was no heat in his voice, only fatigue, like a surrendering general at the end of a long war.

Inside the building, they found House's entire team assembled: Cameron, wearing a modest blue dress and a beatific smile; Chase, in a suit and a disapproving frown; and Foreman, tie-less and with a shit-eating grin. Wilson gave them a grim smile of acknowledgment. House scowled at them en masse. "I thought I told you I only needed one of you."

"We talked about it," Cameron said, "and we decided it wouldn't be fair for just one of us to get to see this."

"You know," Foreman opined, "I've heard it's bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding."

"You're all fired," House said, nodding at Foreman, "you especially." He gave Wilson a sidelong glance that he hoped hid his nervousness. "Let's get this over with."

Wilson sighed in a way that did absolutely nothing to conceal his own anxiety. "Let's."

They had to wait in the hallway among some pathetic-looking chairs, in line behind a conspicuously pregnant teenage couple. House felt ancient next to them. He also felt, at some level he didn't want to acknowledge, terribly alone.

While the teenagers held hands and stared at each other with big cow eyes, House leaned back and stared narrowly at Wilson, who'd taken a seat across the hall, a safe distance away, looking like a man waiting for his own execution. It was enough to draw even Cameron's sympathy, and House knew what Cameron had thought about Wilson making the deal with Tritter. Now, her anger seemingly forgotten, she took the seat next to Wilson and ventured a supportive hand to pat Wilson's knee.

House looked at her slender hand on Wilson's knee and felt a small, surprising pang of jealousy. He remembered again that she was the only one of them, aside from Wilson, who had been down this road before. Actually, Cameron's doomed marriage to a dying husband bore a stronger resemblance to Wilson's current position than House was comfortable contemplating.

Happiest day of my life, he thought, looking bitterly at his shoes. He rubbed at his damaged thigh, trying and failing to soothe away the pain. He wished he could just drug himself into an opiate stupor. Everything would be so much easier if he could just turn his brain off for a few hours and pretend that this wasn't his stupid, screwed-up life.

The ‘ceremony' was over quickly. The county clerk read the standard spiel in a monotone, they assented at the appropriate places, and Wilson tried hard not to look like he wouldn't mind if a hole opened up under him and sucked him into the bowels of the earth, never to be seen again.

Remarkably, the kids managed to behave themselves throughout the ceremony, although Foreman's smirk hardly wavered, Chase still looked at House like a kicked puppy, and Cameron actually had the nerve to get teary-eyed toward the end.

House's shoulder ached and guilt-driven nausea crept up on him. By the time the clerk reached "by the authority vested in me by the State of New Jersey, I hereby join you in civil union," House felt like retching. This ugly, fake thing -- this wasn't how it was supposed to be. If things were different, if they were under other circumstances ... he felt foolish, pathetic and dizzy. Only the curious sight of Wilson standing next to him, his expression strange and sad, kept him upright.

That and knowing what Wilson would do to House if he puked on Wilson's shoes.

* * *

There was nothing festive about their late celebratory lunch. Cameron had insisted that it was their treat in spite of Wilson's protests. House had made fun of her but went along with it anyway. Eventually they'd found a restaurant a few blocks from city hall. At least it was free food, although it tasted like paper and sat like lead in his stomach.

"To Wilson," Foreman declared, raising his glass. "For braving the wedded waters yet again, and saving all our jobs by joining our boss in unholy matrimony. Cheers."

Cameron raised her glass with a grin. Even Chase managed to produce a hint of his old smile. Wilson, reluctance written all over his face, eventually joined the toast. House held out the longest, but then remembered that it was his ass getting saved, and the least he could do was drink to the guy saving it.

The forced revelry dragged on for nearly two hours before he and Wilson could make their escape. They walked back to Wilson's car and sat there, with the engine off, in an exhausted silence.

"So," Wilson said, a precursor to nothing.

"So," House answered, risking a glance at Wilson and then quickly looking away again.

"You're welcome." It was said with the tired annoyance of someone who has come to expect to be annoyed.

House dropped his chin. "You didn't have to do this," he reminded Wilson, in lieu of gratitude or more apologies.

He glanced up again in time to catch Wilson gazing at him -- in time to see Wilson's expression change from trepidation to blankness. "No, I didn't," he admitted, looking weirdly surprised by the fact. Wilson's mouth was parted slightly; the tip of his tongue came out to wet his lower lip ...

"Could get a hooker," House blurted before he knew what he was doing. "Or there's this strip club around here somewhere. You could reaffirm your heterosexuality the American way: by paying for it. Hell, I'll pay for it. Or we could hit the bars; I'm sure you'd have no problem picking someone up for free. I'll take a cab --"

"House."

Sometimes he hated himself. His mouth, especially. Wilson frowned at him with a mixture of disapproval and sadness.

"You used to be funny, you know," House muttered, turning away and flatly refusing to look back.

"So did you," Wilson said quietly.

What does that mean? House almost asked, but he knew Wilson would just ignore or deflect the question, so he didn't bother.

Wilson drove. The quiet between them was tense and irrevocably awkward. When they reached his apartment, House thought he should say something better than see you Monday and less rude than the hundredth crack about Wilson's last three marriages he'd been thinking of making. He settled on "Wanna come in?"

He wondered if he should have stuck with the marriage joke when Wilson's face turned from shocked to scared to sealed-off in a matter of seconds. "I think," Wilson said carefully, "I'd better not."

House felt a familiar twinge of childish self-pity. It wasn't the first time Wilson had declined an offer of his company, and House had shot him down a hundred times before, but that didn't make the rejection sting any less.

Then again, maybe it was for the best. He was in a weird mood, being this close to Wilson, being suddenly married to Wilson, and he wasn't entirely sure he could trust himself.

"Right," House said. "Well."

Wilson looked at him sedately. "It's been ... interesting," he said, and for a panicked moment House thought Wilson was bidding farewell to their friendship, before he realized Wilson had been talking about the day. He was thrown again when Wilson extended his right hand to House.

If Wilson was a woman, House thought, he would try to hug me now. If we were actually married, he would -- He shirked the idea and accepted Wilson's hand, shaking it awkwardly. If they held on a little longer than absolutely necessary, it was probably Wilson's fault.

"Okay," House said.

"Okay," Wilson agreed.

House nodded one more time for good measure before getting out of the car and returning to his cold, empty apartment.

Ten: I Honestly Figured I'd Get a Different Judge Today

"You did what?!" Howard hissed.

The DA's office had agreed to Howard's suggestion of a bench trial, sparing them the jury selection process. Howard had seemed sure that it was their best chance, and they had to trust that he knew what he was doing.

Howard, unfortunately, had no idea what House and Wilson were doing, which made for an uncomfortable confrontation outside the courtroom on Wednesday morning, the first day of House's trial.

"I thought it would improve my chances of not having to testify against him," Wilson said defensively, lowering his voice to match Howard's. He glanced around. They were already starting to draw attention to themselves. House, whose tireless enjoyment of shocking people apparently did not apply to civil union scams -- or maybe just not to civil union scams involving Wilson -- remained silent.

Howard, who had been glaring at House, turned to Wilson. "This was your idea?"

Wilson nervously rubbed the back of his neck and tried to explain. "Technically, it was his ex-girlfriend's idea. Then it was Cuddy's idea. Then --"

"It was just a joke!" Howard said.

"But it might work, right?"

Howard waved his hands in the air. "It -- you -- there is virtually no chance --"

From behind him, a brick-hard voice rasped, "You son of a bitch."

Wilson spun to find himself face to face with Tritter, who still had nothing better to do than stalk them. Tritter's eyes were the searing blue at the center of a flame, but the rest of his face was tightly controlled.

"Don't you have parking meters to check or something?" House snarled. Wilson watched as House jauntily popped another pill in his mouth and tried to ignore the way the sight of the Vicodin made him feel. After the nightmare of Christmas Eve, Wilson had almost given up altogether on confronting House's drug use. He'd seen the depths to which House would sink and was afraid to follow him there. He wasn't even sure that it mattered anymore. Vicodin abuse would be the least of House's problems if he lost this trial.

Still, watching House take the pills and knowing that the pain House was medicating was at least as much psychological as physical -- not to mention knowing the long-term damage wrought by the accumulating acetaminophen in House's body -- made Wilson feel like there was an anvil on his chest. Watching House passively-aggressively self-destruct in the years since the infarction and Stacy had been standard. Watching House actively killing himself was an entirely new nightmare.

Tritter slowly turned from Wilson to House. He smiled smugly, but the confidence didn't reach his eyes. "You think you're going to get away with this? You think getting a phony civil union with Wilson is going to keep us from touching him?"

"Well, there is a certain expectation of fidelity," House retorted. "Although, in Wilson's case --"

"This is none of your business," Wilson said, cutting off yet another crack at his past affairs. He'd tolerated the jokes before, but there was something about their changed circumstances that made Wilson suddenly very tired of them.

"It's all my business," Tritter darkly intoned, leaning in almost intimately close to Wilson, who instinctively recoiled. "And your little wedding scam isn't going to work. You're either going on the stand or you're going to jail."

When Tritter had turned and walked just far enough away for it to be truly embarrassing, House shouted after him, "He's mine! You can't have him!"

Tritter paused for a half-second before walking on. Every other lawyer, clerk, judge, and spectator in the hallway turned and stared. Wilson grimaced, but even in the flush of humiliation, he noticed a very different kind of heat -- the dangerous kind, the kind that always seemed to flare whenever House was around, the kind he was trying his level best to ignore. House's possessiveness had always made him feel oddly pleased -- grateful that someone cared enough to want to claim him, content to be half of their pair. But since the civil union -- and, if he was being honest with himself, since long before that -- House's obstinate guardianship felt very different.

"The least you could have done is given me some sort of warning," Howard said to both of them. "If you're going to try to pull this off, you're going to have to do a lot more than this to make it seem legitimate. If they're able to prove this thing is a con, not only will Wilson still have to testify, they could also hit you with additional charges."

Panic, sudden and cold, wrapped its fingers around Wilson's throat. "What do you mean?"

"I mean fraud," Howard said in a low voice. "If they try to look into this, you're going to have to prove that you're actually together -- joint leases, joint bank accounts, insurance policies, vacation photos --"

"Vacation photos?" House asked, sounding almost horrified. Wilson shared the sentiment, although the photos were the least of his concerns. If what Howard was saying was true -- and they couldn't really afford to doubt him -- then Wilson would have to move back into House's apartment. There would be the inevitable backaches from sleeping on House's sofa, not to mention cleaning up after House and trying to avoid more college dorm-style pranks, but this time, Wilson wasn't sure he could handle the sheer proximity to House without doing something he would regret forever.

"-- and letters from people who know you as a couple. You can't just get a civil union license and get out of testifying. So from now on, there's no more of this Odd Couple bickering all the time. No more jokes about Wilson's ex-wives, no more insulting each other. You're newlyweds," Howard snapped, "so start acting like it."

An unbidden image of what newlyweds did came to Wilson and he felt his entire face flush. How had he not known that being fake-married to House would come with so much public embarrassment? Maybe the better question was how he'd failed to realize that being fake-married to House would mean having to finally face what he'd been avoiding for so long.

"Oh, and while you're in court? It's not 'House' and 'Wilson.' It's Greg," Howard smiled with phony cheer, "and James."

House balked. "I can't call him James. I've never called him that." He glanced at Wilson, considered him for a moment, and then turned back to Howard. "How about Jimmy?"

Howard leveled a lethal glare at House. "He's a forty-year-old oncologist, not a two-year-old child. It's James, and I don't care if you don't like it."

Wilson watched Howard stalk into the trial room, leaving the two of them to deal with nomenclature. He weighed the word Greg on his tongue. It felt comically foreign. It felt like being Stacy. Or House's mom.

House still looked inexplicably despondent about the name issue. "My wives all called me James," Wilson offered by way of consolation, hoping to ease House into accepting the idea, but House greeted his words with a poisonous stare.

"I know," he snapped, then followed Howard through the door. Wilson stood outside, alone, wondering whether House didn't want to use his first name because that's what his exes had called him, or because that's what his exes had called him before leaving him.

* * *

"All rise!"

Wilson watched House's back as the courtroom collectively rose to their feet. Next to him, Cuddy was watching the judge.

"Oh, shit," Cuddy said under her breath.

Wilson craned his neck to see a tall, middle-aged Asian woman in judge's robes making her way to her seat at the front of the room. Wilson frowned at Cuddy's shell-shocked expression, but she didn't explain.

"Be seated," the judge said, then turned to assess the defendant's table. "Dr. House," she said, a dryly amused smile curling her lips, "we meet again."

"What are the odds?" House flippantly replied.

"Of finding you in front of a judge? Fairly high, apparently." The judge caught sight of Cuddy and gave her a nod. "Let's get started. Mr. McKenna," she said, turning to the prosecuting attorney, "what do you have for me?"

What McKenna lacked in Howard's charm, he made up right away in pomposity. "Your Honor," he began, "it has only just come to our attention that last weekend the defendant obtained a civil union with our primary witness in a disturbingly fraudulent attempt to prevent him from testifying. We demand that your Honor suspend Dr. Wilson's spousal testimonial privilege so that this court can come to a fair judgment with all the facts available."

Wilson felt eyes on him; he turned to see Tritter, on the opposite side of the aisle, staring at him with an expression that managed to be both sneering and impassive.

The judge arched an eyebrow. "A civil union to invoke spousal immunity," she remarked. "That's one I haven't heard before."

Howard stood smoothly. "Your Honor, it is deeply insulting to my client and his partner to claim that their civil union ceremony was anything less than genuine and sincere. Doctors House and Wilson have had a very close relationship for nearly twelve years now, as anyone who knows them can attest."

Wilson felt his jaw drop. For a man who'd been close to foaming at the mouth about the civil union ten minutes earlier, Howard's transformation was incredible. Wilson wondered if they taught that sort of thing in law school or if it came naturally.

"Just as I'm sure anyone who knows them can also attest to the fact that there has never been any hint of an intimate relationship between them," McKenna snidely replied. "Your Honor --"

"That's enough," the judge said, raising her hand. "I'll take it into consideration, Mr. McKenna. If there's nothing else, you can begin with your opening statements."

Wilson had given House's preliminary hearing a pass. He could have gone: transferring most of his patients to other oncologists had left him with a very light practice and a lot of free time. But after sitting through the initial arraignment, he'd decided he couldn't stomach listening to the district attorney excoriating House -- which, it seemed, was the sole purpose of the exercise.

Now there was no way to avoid hearing the public flaying of his friend. McKenna spoke carefully of House's various sins, like he was savoring the details as they came to light, from the DUI to the illegal prescriptions to the stolen bottle of oxy from the pharmacy counter. It wasn't that Wilson had never heard it before -- he had already given House an earful and then some -- but there was an irrational part of him that felt like he had the exclusive rights to bitch House out. Where did these people who barely knew the guy get off complaining when he'd had to deal with House for more than a decade?

Some part of him recognized the instinct as protective, maybe even possessive, but he tried not to acknowledge that.

After McKenna finished shredding House, Howard stood and attempted to undo the damage. He explained about House's leg and the pain that continually plagued him. He tried to paint a portrait of House as a misunderstood public servant, treating patients no other doctor could cure, in spite of his own problems.

Howard also spent a significant amount of time doing Tritter the same favor McKenna had done for House, accusing him of being a dirty cop with an overblown ego and an ax to grind. Wilson risked a glance toward the cop; he was eying Howard with a cool expression that made Wilson hope House's lawyer didn't have any skeletons in his closet.

Wilson spent most of the time looking at House. Despite his initial misgivings, he was ready to admit that his feelings for House transcended the normal boundaries of friendship, respect, loyalty, and platonic affection, and even the abnormal boundaries the two of them had established over the years.

He was also ready to admit that there was no way he could ever say anything about it to House. What they had together was worth more to Wilson than anything else in his life, and it had been for years. If that made him pathetic, then fine, he was pathetic -- but he couldn't afford to lose House. House was all he had. So if that meant a lifetime of stifling what he really felt, of making do with House's twisted version of friendship, of wondering forever what House would be like as more than just a friend -- so be it.

Wilson bit his tongue and watched the trial unfold before him.

Eleven: Like a Detective or Something

"Will you please state your name and occupation for the record?"

"Michael Tritter, detective with the Princeton Police Department."

The plan, as far as House could figure it out, had been to have Tritter lambaste him at the beginning of the prosecution's case, and wrap it up with Wilson's testimony. House couldn't quell a smug smile at the memory of Tritter's face, earlier that day, when he'd confronted them about the civil union. Without Wilson, House had a good chance of winning, and Tritter knew it.

"Detective Tritter, you pulled Dr. House over for speeding on the evening of December 9, is that correct?"

"That's correct."

"Can you describe the incident?"

House tuned out the testimony, turning in his chair so he could look at Wilson and Cuddy in the row behind him. He made a face at Cuddy's disapproving glare but was surprised by the vaguely sad look in Wilson's dark eyes.

He knew that the civil union scam had been hard on Wilson. He'd have to have been blind not to see the pain etched on Wilson's face during the ceremony and after. And it looked as though it was only going to get worse if Howard had his way.

Before, he had been able to blame Wilson's suffering on Tritter, but his own culpability was getting harder to ignore. Wilson had made the original proposal, but he never would have had to debase himself like that if House hadn't tried to out-stubborn him, Cuddy, Tritter, and the entire legal system.

He didn't want to feel guilty. He didn't want to suffer for Wilson or for anyone but himself, but there was no denying that he'd felt guilty for a long time now.

Tritter talked them through the arrest, the Vicodin confiscated at House's apartment, the 'investigation' of Wilson (police harassment, House thought darkly), the suspicious scripts, and the pharmacy log before McKenna declared that he had no further questions. Then it was Howard's turn to take a crack at the cop.

"Detective Tritter," he began, "before you searched and arrested Dr. House, didn't you tell him that you'd seen him take a pill while with a patient?"

On the witness stand, Tritter leaned back in his seat and regarded Howard coolly. "I did."

"When did you see Dr. House take this pill?"

"Two days earlier, in the clinic at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. I had gone in for a routine exam."

"Is seeing a person take a pill enough grounds to arrest them?"

Tritter looked like he'd eaten something sour. "Not by itself. When I pulled Dr. House over for speeding, I found him to be agitated. His pupils were dilated and he appeared to be under the influence."

"Your Honor," Howard said smoothly, "I'd like to state for the record that my client was not under the influence of any illegal drug at the time of his arrest, and his driving was not erratic. Detective, were you able to identify the pill that Dr. House took?"

"It was Vicodin. A highly addictive narcotic."

Howard nodded thoughtfully, then stepped a few feet from the witness stand and withdrew two small, clear plastic bags from his pocket. He studied them quietly for a moment before holding them up, one in each hand. House squinted. Each bag contained a single oblong white tablet.

"Detective Tritter, can you identify these pills?"

House watched with interest as Tritter's facade of confidence wavered. "They're Vicodin," he answered, sounding uncertain.

Howard gave a genteel smile. "Actually, this one is two hundred milligrams of ibuprofen," he said, handing the bags to the judge, "and this one is a generic version of Midol."

"I'm a narcotics detective," Tritter said, anger bubbling over the surface. "I know what Vicodin looks like and I know what I saw Dr. House take."

"Are you a doctor?" Howard waved a hand dismissively. "I'll withdraw the question. I'm sure you'd never presume to know what an appropriate regimen of pain medication would be for a total stranger with a disability. Just as I'm sure you think you know what you saw Dr. House take -- but as we've just seen, there are a wide variety of medications that look very similar to Vicodin, especially from a distance, especially when someone else is taking them. But let's not worry about that for now," Howard said, silencing McKenna's objection before he could make it. House bit the inside of his cheek and tried not to smile. "You said you went to Princeton-Plainsboro for a routine exam on December 7, two days before Dr. House's arrest. Dr. House was your physician during this exam?"

Tritter's mouth was tight, his expression dangerous. "Yes."

"Would you tell us a little bit about what happened during this exam?"

"Objection, Your Honor," McKenna said in a deeply put-upon tone. "Detective Tritter's medical history is not an issue."

"Your Honor, I'm trying to establish what sort of relationship Dr. House had to Detective Tritter before his arrest."

"I'll allow it," the judge said, "but make it snappy, counselor. And the detective doesn't need to reveal any personal medical details."

Howard granted the judge a genteel smile that clearly said he appreciated her support. "Of course. Detective Tritter?"

"Dr. House displayed unprofessional behavior. He was rude and he refused to perform any tests beyond a cursory examination."

"Did Dr. House give you a diagnosis?"

Tritter looked at Howard like he could stare him into submission. "Yes."

"So Dr. House gave you a diagnosis, but you still insisted that he perform unnecessary tests, wasting both his time and yours, not to mention the resources of a free community clinic --"

"Objection --"

"Withdrawn. One last question, Detective. During the course of this first meeting with Dr. House, did you ..." Howard hesitated and frowned in a surprisingly believable display of disbelief. "... kick his cane from under him?"

The silence in the courtroom was painful, even for House. He glanced at the prosecution's table, where McKenna was sitting quietly, mouth gaping. "Objection," McKenna finally said.

The judge regarded Tritter and Howard with interest. "Overruled. Please answer the question, Detective."

Clearly seething, Tritter somehow managed to keep his voice calm. "It was unintentional."

Howard met Tritter's lethal glare with a small, patient smile that would have unnerved stronger men than Tritter. House glanced over his shoulder to see Cuddy and Wilson staring at the lawyer with wide-eyed admiration.

Howard's smile didn't waver. "Let me get this straight, Detective. You went to a free clinic where a doctor was rude to you. You came back to the clinic a day later, demanding that this doctor apologize to you. One day after that, you just happened to be in the same area as the doctor, and you just happened to arrest him. Would you agree these are the facts of the matter?"

"Dr. House was speeding through the area I patrol. I can't help where he decides to behave inconsiderately, with no regard for other human beings."

Howard kept the unnerving smile going for several more seconds before turning to the judge. "No further questions, your Honor."

"Redirect, Your Honor," McKenna said, almost jumping to his feet.

"Proceed, counselor."

"Detective Tritter, how long have you been a police officer?"

Tritter's gaze drifted to House, and to the row of seats behind him where Cuddy and Wilson were, before answering the question. "Twenty years."

"And in that time, you've received numerous commendations and citations, is that correct?"

"Yes."

"In all that time, Detective, has anyone ever accused you of neglecting your duties as a professional in order to nurse a grudge?"

Tritter smiled tolerantly. "No."

"No further questions," McKenna concluded, returning to his seat with the air of a man who was tired of cleaning up others' messes.

* * *

That night, under Howard's orders, Wilson checked out of the hotel and moved back into House's apartment.

House called the landlady and had her add Wilson's name to the lease. Then he sat brooding on the couch while Wilson hung his suits up in House's closet and placed carefully contrived photographs of his family in strategic locations around the apartment.

House had wanted Wilson to move back in pretty much since Wilson had first moved out. As much as he'd bitched and moaned about his roomie, it hadn't taken House long to realize that his home life was far more interesting with Wilson around. He'd even made the invitation once, but Wilson had soundly shot him down. The issue hadn't come up again until that morning.

This, though -- this was going to be a nightmare. They had been walking on eggshells around each other since the civil union ceremony on Saturday. There wouldn't be any pranks this time around; House's days of juvenile revelry were long gone. The tension running through Wilson was palpable. He moved through the apartment as if in a fugue, occasionally giving House long, speculative looks, the origins of which remained a mystery.

Wilson seemed to be fixated on a spot on House's living room floor. The origin of those looks was unmistakable. House still had no idea how long he'd lain there, unconscious, over Christmas Eve. He didn't like to dwell on the subject, but it was clearly still weighing heavily on Wilson's mind.

House answered the knock at his -- at their -- door, half-expecting to find Tritter and a cadre of uniformed cops on the other side. The sight of an exasperated Cuddy was only marginally less disturbing.

"I didn't book a stripper for tonight," House said.

"Howard called," she informed him, unceremoniously dumping a shoebox into his arms. "He said you might need some help."

"Good old Howard," House muttered, clearing the way so she could stroll through the door.

Wilson, busy crouching near the TV and alphabetizing his -- their -- DVD collection, glanced up. "Oh, hi," he said, looking surprised. He stood up and stretched his arms over his head, wincing. House watched surreptitiously as Wilson's t-shirt rose a few inches, baring a slim band of his abdomen.

"This has to be the most ridiculous thing you two have ever done." She didn't sound reproachful -- just tired.

House limped back to the couch with the shoebox tucked under his arm. Once seated, he opened it, aware that Wilson and Cuddy both were watching, the former with curiosity, the latter with resignation.

"I did some digging," Cuddy explained as House pulled out the first photograph.

It was old -- really old. His mind, momentarily blank, conjured up the source: the hospital's annual holiday party, sometime in the late '90s. There was Stacy seated at a table, her smile pinched and unhappy -- and there he was, evidently a fraction of a second away from throwing his hand in front of the lens. That had been near the end of their relationship. He'd been tossing back Vicodin that night at almost the same rate as she'd been tossing back martinis.

Beside them at the table were a boyish Wilson and pretty wife #2. They had still been basically newlyweds at that point, although House had known from the engagement that it was never going to last. Even the photographed Wilson seemed to realize his second marriage was doomed, because it wasn't his bride he was leaning toward in the picture -- it was House. The photo looked more like a picture of House and Wilson than of two couples enjoying the holiday festivities.

House felt warmth at his back. He noticed that Wilson had snuck up very close to him and was now leaning over House's shoulder, staring at the photo with amazement. "Where did you find this?" Wilson asked, carefully plucking the picture from House's fingers.

"You'd be amazed at the stuff the hospital has managed to accumulate over the years," Cuddy answered, looking slightly ashamed of herself for possessing such damning evidence that she gave a crap about them. "Howard said you needed pictures. I figured you could maybe crop it."

House glanced up and over his shoulder at Wilson, who was still fixated on the picture, looking deeply preoccupied.

House sifted through the other contents of the shoebox, turning over photo after photo: several from a hospital picnic and a few from various fundraisers. Wilson had dragged him to the former; Cuddy had dragged him to the latter. Most of the pictures were not only of House and Wilson. There was usually a wife, a girlfriend, or some coworkers stuffed in there. A lot of them had obviously been either candid or sneak attacks. Some of them were excruciatingly bad. A few, though, were sort of nice, and Wilson quickly snatched those ones from House's hands as if he expected House to shred them if he didn't get there first.

"I also brought the paperwork from Human Resources," Cuddy said, pulling a manila folder from her oversized bag. "You'll need to list each other as your medical proxies and change the next-of-kin on your --"

"Yeah, yeah," House said, dropping the photos and the shoebox onto the couch and shoving himself to his feet. He had no idea where he was going; he just knew that he couldn't sit there and listen to Cuddy and Wilson manufacture the trappings of a relationship that didn't -- and never would -- exist.

House slouched into the kitchen and nodded in greeting at Steve McQueen, whose tiny gray head perked up, whiskers twitching, when he entered the room. He gave Steve a head of broccoli and himself a pill. Then he sat down at the kitchen table, idly sifting through the medical journals and takeout menus piled on top of it, and listened to his friends puttering around his living room, designing the biggest and most pathetic lie of his entire life.

* * *

With everything in its place, and the charade as well-constructed as it was ever going to get, Cuddy left. House returned to the living room to survey their work.

The place still looked like his, of course, but -- different. Wilson's things were interspersed with his own: books with House's books, CDs with House's CDs. The pictures, House had to admit, were a convincing touch. Cuddy really was some kind of genius. He wandered over to the piano and sat down on the bench, leaning his cane against a piano leg. There was a framed photo sitting on top, one of Wilson and himself -- the former grinning, the latter sort of smirking -- at some hospital event or other. He had just picked it up to take a closer look when Wilson quietly said, "I can probably get some good wedding photos."

House stopped breathing for a second before he realized that Wilson hadn't meant their 'wedding' -- he'd meant his weddings, the last two, both of which had featured House as the recalcitrant best man. There had been photos, naturally. He'd had to wear a tux and endure Wilson's brides, who had unanimously hated him.

There were no pictures to preserve their ceremony for posterity. House wasn't sure if that was cause for celebration or regret. Cameron had probably thought about taking pictures. Chase might have wanted to do it for blackmail purposes.

"Yeah, I'm sure your ex-wives have been keeping those albums under their beds for years," House muttered, putting the framed photo down and refusing to look at Wilson. "Bet they cry over them every night. That, or use them for target practice."

His fingers dropped to the piano keys. He tapped out a few maudlin notes, and then he closed his eyes and played blind for a while. He heard the muffled sound of water running in the bathroom. When he opened his eyes a few minutes later and glanced up, he saw Wilson in shorts and a thin white undershirt standing near the piano, watching House intently.

Wilson jumped a little when House looked at him. He put one hand on his hip and used the other to anxiously rub the back of his neck. "I think I'm going to turn in," he said, his voice a little rough around the edges.

House nodded and continued playing, but Wilson didn't move. A moment later, it dawned on him and his fingers stilled.

"Oh," House said, feeling stupid and vulnerable. Of course Wilson wasn't moving towards the bedroom. The sham must have been working, though, if even House couldn't remember that they weren't really together. "Right." He stood up with some difficulty and grabbed the cane.

"Good night," he heard Wilson say. He turned around, but Wilson had already turned his back and sat on the couch, so all House could see was unruly brown hair and Wilson's shoulder blades, outlined faintly through the white cotton shirt.

"Yeah," he said, and then went to his bed alone.

Twelve: There's No Way this is Going to Work

Wilson woke up early. Truthfully, he'd hardly slept. House's sofa hadn't become any more comfortable since the last time Wilson stayed there. It was worse knowing that House was probably sound asleep behind his door, alone in bed. Eyes closed, mouth slack. Maybe House's shirt would be twisted up slightly, exposing his abdomen or the small of his back. House warm and quiet was not something that Wilson got to see every day.

It wasn't that Wilson had never realized how much he cared about the miserable jackass, or that he'd never recognized the familiar flicker of lust. He had. God, he had. But as with most things in his life -- principally his marriages -- he just happened to be damn good at denial.

The trouble was that the last few weeks -- Tritter, jail, the forgeries, the forgiveness, and finally the civil union -- had amplified everything he'd been trying to suppress, throwing a spotlight on it and blowing it up in Technicolor. The body reacts to stress, Wilson reminded himself. A sudden or not-so-sudden desire to jump his best friend was not an unusual response. Besides, it wasn't like he was the first of House's colleagues to want to nail him. There was practically a waiting list.

Their new living arrangements had also made it absolutely imperative that he never let House have the slightest hint of what was going on in his head. Their friendship was messed up enough already without House suspecting that Wilson had conned him into some sort of compromising position, or whatever twisted explanation House's cynical mind would come up with.

Wilson finally got up and started getting ready for the day. He tried to be quiet about it, remembering how House had bitched him out the last time, but apparently he wasn't quiet enough. When Wilson opened the bathroom door after his shower, he practically stumbled over House, who was waiting outside. He was so rattled he nearly dropped the towel around his waist.

House stared hard at Wilson's face, his eyes wide and his expression stony, looking like he hadn't slept much either. Wilson braced himself for some cutting remark, but House just kept staring. He looked like he was fighting the inclination to look down.

"Gotta pee," House said bluntly. Wilson exhaled sharply and moved out of the way so House could get into the bathroom.

House shut the door behind him. Wilson paused for a moment to consider the fact that House had never given a damn about privacy before, with Wilson or with anyone else for that matter -- which meant that House was shutting him out, putting physical barriers between them. Wilson sighed. It figured. It had taken all his other spouses more than three days to start that process, but House had always been ahead of the curve.

Cuddy's testimony kicked off the second day of the trial. The purpose of putting her on the stand seemed to be pure character assassination. Wilson didn't envy her. Cuddy got the dubious honor of fielding question after question about House's cases -- and lawsuits -- over the last several years.

"John Henry Giles," McKenna began, prowling the floor in front of the witness stand. "Had a DNR, which Dr. House violated, resulting in a restraining order and criminal charges for battery."

"Those charges were dropped." Cuddy radiated regal disbelief that she should be subjected to this interrogation. Attagirl, Wilson thought. "Not only did John Henry Giles live, he regained the use of his legs and was able to walk out of the hospital thanks to Dr. House's care."

"Carly Forlano -- Dr. House withheld critical information about this patient's psychiatric condition from the transplant committee, compromising their ability to make an informed decision."

"Nobody ever proved that Dr. House was aware of that patient's psychiatric condition."

McKenna continued, rolling over Howard's objection. "But the patient did have a psychiatric condition that would have made her a poor candidate for surgery, and Dr. House failed to report it. Is that true?"

"He saved her life," Cuddy flatly stated. "And yes."

"Then of course there's Kayla McGinley, who died as a direct result of Dr. House's failure to supervise his employees and his blatant misconduct in other areas --"

"That is not true --"

"But isn't it true that Dr. House was accused of attempting to bribe and blackmail a fellow doctor into performing a dangerous surgery? And isn't it true that Dr. House's behavior was so audacious that you had to appoint an employee fifteen years his junior to supervise his department?"

"Those were only accusations," she fumbled, "and the supervisory period was only one month."

"In other words, yes."

The rest of the examination continued in the same vein. Had House injected a patient with colchicine, a highly poisonous gout medication, solely to mimic the symptoms of a disease she didn't have, thereby circumventing his bosses' authority and risking that patient's life? Had House woken a burn patient against the orders of the patient's parents and anesthetist, causing that patient excruciating pain? Had House misrepresented himself to the husband of a dying woman, and then bullied the man into prolonging his wife's life against her stated wishes, solely so House could harvest her organs? Had House really spat on a surgeon in a sterile operating room to stop a liver transplant for a dying patient?

It was painful to hear House's record twisted that way -- not only because Wilson knew how the litany of disasters would sound to someone who didn't understand just how good House really was, but because it served as yet another reminder of his own failings. The lengths to which House went and the way he was able to figure out the most complex and obscure diagnoses -- Wilson couldn't come close to that.

He scraped his fingers against the unyielding wooden bench, imagining life with his best friend behind bars. If the judge bought McKenna's story, it wouldn't take much to convince her that House needed to be locked up before he hurt anyone else. And if the judge ruled against House, took away his license, and sent him to prison ...

It occurred to Wilson quite suddenly that neither of them had much to lose.

Howard's face was carefully blank as he approached Cuddy for cross-examination. "Mr. McKenna just presented a very ... interesting portrait of Dr. House, didn't he?"

Cuddy looked dazed. "You can say that again."

Howard smiled warmly. "Certainly Dr. House has an unusual style. But it works for him, doesn't it?"

"He's the best doctor we have," Cuddy admitted.

Howard nodded. "I have a question, though, Dr. Cuddy. As I was sitting there, listening to Mr. McKenna's remarkable line of questioning, I had to wonder: how did Mr. McKenna find out all these things about Dr. House's former patients? I was pretty certain that there was an expectation of doctor-patient confidentiality at hospitals. So how did the DA's office get so many case files from Princeton-Plainsboro?"

For a moment, Cuddy didn't answer. "He ... Detective Tritter, he just sort of ... helped himself to them, I guess. He's been working out of our basement for days --"

"Objection," a bored-sounding McKenna said. "If the defense wanted to obscure the evidence of Dr. House's previous entanglements with the law, they should have filed a motion at the beginning of the trial."

"I don't want to 'obscure' Dr. House's long history of saving lives, your Honor," Howard retorted. "I only want to bring Detective Tritter's unusual investigative style to light. I have no more questions for this witness."

* * *

They added each other to their checking accounts.

Wilson suppressed a shudder. House was already the most expensive investment he had, sucking money out of him for food, bail, more food, gambling cash, and even more food -- but now House had unfettered access to Wilson's money. He almost asked the polite young teller if he could pick up some preemptive bankruptcy paperwork while they were there, but she looked so pleased when she heard about the civil union that he didn't have the heart.

"I want a pre-nup," Wilson remarked when they got back into his car. "Something to keep you from taking half my income when this is over." He turned the key in the ignition. It was crisply cold outside.

"Too late. We're already post-nup. Or haven't you been paying attention?"

Wilson gave him a baleful look from the driver's seat. "You still owe me fifteen grand, remember?"

House appeared almost chastened for a split second. "You'll get it," he said. "And I'm not going to rob you blind after the divorce." He paused. "How do we get a divorce, anyway?"

Wilson pressed his lips together. Ironically, he hadn't looked into it yet. "The same way as anyone else, I guess." He could probably even use the same lawyer he had for the last divorce. Or maybe he'd ask Howard to do the honors.

"Great," House said quietly, looking and sounding about as far from great as a human being could get.

Wilson drove them back to the hospital so House could do his mandatory clinic hours. House was no happier about them, but at least he was unlikely to skip out on them now that Cuddy had his balls in a metaphorical vise. She could expose the farcical civil union and end all hopes of a not-guilty verdict with a single phone call. She wouldn't, of course, but House wasn't stupid enough to tempt her.

Cameron frantically waved Wilson into the diagnostics office when he passed by.

"Tritter was here earlier," she announced as if delivering a particularly shocking piece of gossip. "He was asking us all these questions about your relationship with House."

"The non-existent relationship," Foreman clarified.

"We told him you'd been together for a while now but that you hadn't told anyone around the hospital," Chase said, briefly glancing up from the newspaper. The bruise on his jaw was still plainly visible.

"He's probably going to search House's apartment and God knows what else," Cameron said.

"It's under control," Wilson assured them, and then swallowed thickly. "Thanks ... for lying for us."

It was almost inspiring, actually, the kind of loyalty House elicited from those around him. Inspiring and frightening. House could probably lead them all off a cliff or invade Poland without losing the support of Wilson and his team. They were a sociological study just waiting to happen.

Wilson met House at the front desk of the hospital and listened to him complain all the way back to the apartment about the 'morons' he'd had to endure in the clinic. Still, House complaining was better than House moping, and as long as Wilson wasn't the target of his vitriol, he was fine with hearing it.

House's cell phone rang while Wilson parked. It was Howard, calling to tell them that an interview had been scheduled with the judge for the following morning. Wilson could hear Howard's tinny voice through the earpiece, warning House that they had better be able to answer any questions she might put to them, no matter how trivial, from where they met to what they liked in their cereal to where their new in-laws lived to what brand of toothpaste they used. If they were interviewed separately and their answers contradicted, they could be busted before they knew what happened.

Practice, Howard had said, so they ordered dinner and that's what they did over the next couple of hours. It was like being back in college and cramming for an exam, complete with pizza. They quizzed each other on the basics: parents, brothers, exes, colleges. Bathroom rituals. Family holidays. Rat maintenance, which turned out to be a surprisingly complex subject. Irritating personal habits, of which House had none whatsoever, according to his own self-assessment, and of which Wilson had a crapload.

It was only slightly disconcerting that House knew more about Wilson than any of his ex-wives had. As a nosy bastard with a selectively eidetic memory, House knew almost everything. 'Almost' being the operative word there. There were plenty of things a real couple should know about one another that they didn't discuss. First time Wilson had kissed a girl. First time he'd kissed a guy. First time he'd slept with a guy. He had to assume that the judge wouldn't ask questions that intimate, so it wasn't like House needed to know. House probably would have wanted to know, if he'd had any inkling about the stuff with the guys, but there were some things that even House couldn't learn from swiping the hospital's confidential personnel files. What House didn't know wouldn't hurt him -- wouldn't hurt either of them, as it happened.

They studied up on each other until Wilson's eyes burned and House started wearing a plaintive look while rubbing his leg. When House pulled out his replacement pill bottle, Wilson decided it was time to call it a day. He wasn't looking forward to another sleepless night on House's couch, but he was more resistant to watching House screw around with his Vicodin.

Wilson went into the bathroom, still startled to find his toothbrush next to House's in the shared holder -- startled to find himself in this situation at all. There were House's towels, ones that probably hadn't been replaced since Stacy moved in with him a decade ago, which were now his towels, at least officially, at least on paper.

He was distracted by the shower. If they were really newlyweds, if they were really lovers, they probably would have done things in this shower. They would have been running late to work one morning, and decided to share to save time -- but then House would have pushed him up against the shower wall, tiles cold against his back and ass, and kissed him hard on the mouth. House would have tasted of clean water and he would have inadvertently scratched Wilson's face with his morning stubble and not apologized afterwards, because House would have liked the way it looked. He would have liked marking Wilson as his.

Wilson would have kissed back, because he was always up for a challenge, especially where House was concerned, and then they would have been even later. They would have stumbled into work around ten, Wilson apologetic, House cocky and smug. Everyone would have known why they were late, but they wouldn't have cared. They were married.

At least the shower would be a good place to jerk off if he couldn't stop thinking like this. Wilson watched himself in the mirror and then closed his eyes.

Thirteen: Looks Like We Got Ourselves a Mystery

On Wednesday morning, with both lawyers and his fake spouse in tow, House went to the judge's chambers to have his brain picked. The judge, who was apparently a bigger fan of Dr. Phil than of Dr. House, wanted to talk about their marriage.

House winced at the preemptive mental daggers he could feel Howard shooting in his direction before the interview started. Wilson looked nervous, but what else was new?

House wondered if they should have practiced more or prepared some sort of bullshit romantic back-story to feed the judge. It was love at first sight. Except for those twelve years where we didn't say anything about it. Or maybe, The first time we met we hated each other. He might have suggested that one last night, but then Wilson would have said that their relationship was not an gay remake of When Harry Met Sally. House would have said that he hated When Harry Met Sally; Wilson would have protested that he liked When Harry Met Sally; House would have called him an offensive name and that would have been it: from best friends to barely on speaking terms in two minutes.

"So," the judge said, crossing her arms over her chest and peering at them as they sat, each in his own chair, on the other side of her desk. She spared a glance for Howard and McKenna, who were sitting quietly to her right on the leather sofa once occupied by Alice Hartman's disagreeable parents. "Mr. McKenna here has alleged that your civil union was an illegitimate attempt to prevent Dr. Wilson from testifying."

House waited for a question to present itself -- and was stunned by the sudden feel of a hand clasping his own. He looked up at Wilson, who was giving him a supportive look, only barely disguising a desperate plea for cooperation. Wilson's fingers were warm and strong. He squeezed House's hand once, then let go.

House looked back at the judge in time to see that she'd noticed the gesture. He couldn't gauge her reaction.

"How long have the two of you known each other?" she asked.

"Twelve years," Wilson supplied without a moment's hesitation. "We met at a work function."

The judge nodded encouragingly. "And have you always been ... close?"

House watched as Wilson's cheeks