The morning got off to a bright start with semi-burnt toast, bourbon-flavoured coffee (he really should have at least made the effort to rince the mug before reuse) and clumsy, slippery shower sex with one Doctor Wilson.

Or, at least it should have - if Wilson had stayed over for a night of inebriated shenanigans after The L Word marathon. Which he definitely would have if he hadn't been completely and utterly repulsed by House's joking suggestion that masturbating in front of your best friend was perfectly acceptable in the presence of lesbian porn.

It was probably for the best, House reflected as he adjusted the hot tap, since the whole trying to balance in the shower thing was difficult enough when not being blown by your bestest bud.

Exaggerated sounds of pacing, huffing and watch-checking were taking place in the corridor, as House carefully examined the ingredients of his shampoo. It was important to know this stuff, after all.

"House," Starkly humourless, "I have a meeting with a benefactor at nine-thirty."

Aqua, sodium benzonate, benzyl alcohol, pyrithione zinc...

"I told you to be ready by eight!"

Whoa. Methyl-chloro-iso-thia-zol-i-one... With a name like that, this chemical couldn't help but be interesting.

"Wilson, there's a green reference book with `Chapman and Hall' on the spine. I'm going to look for it when I'm done in here. You could save time by getting it for me now."

There was a pronounced silence whilst Wilson probably contemplated whether or not it was worth trying to trap waves on the sand. Fortunately, it progressed into hurricane-force exhaling as Wilson made the decision of least resistance. "Difficult case?" He inquired stiffly, accompanied by the sounds of a chair scraping across floorboards.

"Technically, yes," Well, it wasn't really a lie. "Can you bring it in here?"

"House. It's a book. You're wet."

"Oh, come on. It's not that good a book," Although, it would be oddly entertaining if he could lure Wilson in to the bathroom with it, somehow. Perhaps he could get his slippery, perilous shower sex after all. "Waiting."

More struggling against the tides delayed Wilson by another minute and a half, before the happy sound of expensive patent soles slapping against House's tiles heralded his ultimate victory. Unhappily, defeat soon followed suit; the hiss of the shower curtain alerted Wilson to House's imminent visibility and by the time House had revealed himself (complete with the Tada arm sweep), Wilson was facing in the other direction.

House scoffed in the exact verbalization of an eye-roll. At least Wilson had the decency to get his suits properly tailored - if he couldn't gaze whimsically into a cleavage chasm, Wilson's rear in a suit was a reasonable alternative.

"Your book?" The item in question was tapped insistently against one perfectly cut suit shoulder.

"Can't reach," He allowed some mischief to creep into his voice.

"Then get out of the shower."

"You know, there's this spot on my back that--"

"No."

"--but I dropped the soap, and I can't bend--"

"House! You can mess with me some other time, alright? Just get out of the shower so I don't have to explain to Cuddy why I lost our grant!" Since the toilet was within his reach, Wilson emphasized his point by pushing on the flusher several times in succession.

"As if you'd need to," House rationalized, hurriedly twisting at the taps. "Towel?" One was flung in a neat arc to him, "Cuddy always blames me anyway."

"Yes, I've never been able to figure that one out," Well, at least the dry sarcasm had returned. "What is this, anyway?" The book disappeared over Wilson's shoulder.

"Hydrogen, Helium..." Wilson recited to the sound of pages being turned, as House fluffed his leg hair into poodle-like fuzz. " `America's leading chemical compound dictionary'. You think poisoning?"

"Now, there's a conspiracy theory that's yet to hit the box office."

"What?" Right, so now Wilson turned toward him, when he had the towel wrapped securely around his waist. Whilst House was busy contemplating the possibility of `accidentally' shaking it loose - not that full frontals executed by anyone other than Francesca Ricci were ever a useful seduction technique - he noticed Wilson's eyes darting between his own and his torso. For a moment, he wondered if his abs still retained a hint of their former magnetism... until the Crinkle of Concern wedged between Wilson's eyebrows reminded him that he now sported an extremely attractive-to-rescuers, healed gunshot wound.

In split-second spark of brilliance that he would later drink to, he gasped breathlessly, bent double, and clutched at it.

The effect was as prescribed; Chapman and Hall slapped against the tiles, and Wilson's hands were all over him in all the professional places. He found himself supported under an armpit, and there was a hand at the small of his waist. He groaned appropriately, adding a grimace for effect.

"House!" Wilson's voice did that delicious register-straddling he had come to expect when House was faced with injury or death; he wondered when he'd find out if it were an accessory he could expect to have access to during sex. He hypothesized Wilson would be a mixture of silent gasps and desperate pleas - based on observing Wilson's reaction to the Flyers actually scoring, which was the closest he'd seen his buddy to an orgasm.

"My... God, it hurts..." House reflected on missing his calling as a Hollywood great, crumpling in apparent agony in Wilson's arms. A frilly dress on Jimmy boy, and they could have had themselves a classic!

"You..." Wilson seemed a little... "You're faking." Guarded . So, perhaps not Oscar material after all.

"Nope," House straightened as Wilson's hands fell from him, "Just really hungry."

By the expression on Wilson's face, House could tell there'd be no shower sex today. In fact, he could probably rule out the entire week. "You can walk to work," Wilson forced through tight lips and a clenched jaw, and then spun on his heels.

"Would it help if I told you I just wanted you to touch me?" House called after him, loading up his toothbrush with Hydrated Silica, Sodium Tripolyphosphate and Titanium Dioxide (just a handful of the exciting ingredients contained in toothpaste).

"Hookers, House," Various discordant tones were emanating from his kitchen. "Now number six on your speed dial."

"You're number one," House advised him, through a mouthful of medium-hard bristle aquanaut. "And I'm not leaving this house until I get a blowjob."

"Six, House, dial Six," Wilson's point was accentuated by a very violent door-slam.

Well, at least it gave him a reason to take a sick-day.

---


It was roughly eleven-thirty when his phone rang, startling him out of a post-Ice Cream insulin coma. He turned the volume up to ten and listened to the casing of the TV hum with exertion. His leg throbbed pleasingly in time with the pulsations of Christina Aguilera's arse.

----

At eleven-fifty, it rang again. This time, he tried to beat the handset in a contest of wills, staring it down like a raging bull. When that didn't work, he answered it.

"House," Cuddy's voice was always so gravely when she was pissy. "Quit terrorizing Wilson and get to work."

"Can't," House informed her, rooting around in his cushions for a rogue Vicodin he may have dropped the night before.

"'Can'," Cuddy snapped, this time with more of a hiss. "Foreman has assumed control of the department and Cameron's been in here three times already."

"Nice," Cameron was getting a Christmas present after all, it seemed. "But still can't."

"I'm suspending you without pay until you get your ass in here."

"You should mention that to Wilson. It's his fault I can't come in," A smack in the background could have either been Cuddy's hand to her forehead; Cuddy's forehead to her laptop or possibly a pencil being crushed in her talons.

"No blame-games. Get in here!" The handset screeched as he held it a good ten inches from his ear, and then pushed the hang-up button. America's Top Model reruns were definitely preferable to listening to Cuddy yank out fistfuls of her feathers.

---

It was nearly one-thirty before the phone rang again. Since it was a good five minutes before Family Guy began, he answered it.

"House. I told Foreman he's welcome to move his stuff into your office unless you're in here by two."

Ooh, hardball. House had to concede this was starting to be interesting, "Did you speak to Wilson?"

"He seems to think he's innocent, and recommends you take a round of ECT."

"I'm not coming to work until he blows me," House imparted casually as he located his elusive Vicodin and dry-swallowed it. "He refused."

Cuddy's face was probably developing a series of unattractive new wrinkles, "Can't say I blame him."

"Hey, it's not my fault you never mastered your gag reflex."

"Oh, please. Your eyes were rolled back too far into your skull for you to have any idea what was going on at groin level."

"What do you expect? You were stealing my soul to be a pawn in your hellish empire," House discovered he was bored with this conversation - and, besides, the commercials were finishing. "Buh-Bye," He told the handset, the then hung up.

---

It was two-fourteen when the phone rang for the fourth time.

"House," Wilson's voice, "Foreman insisted on sitting with me at lunch, and Cuddy wants me to sue you for sexual harassment."

"You should call Stacy for that one. She'd have a field day," Spreading peanut butter on a sandwich without a hands-free was a fine art yet to be mastered by Gregory House. He decided butter on one slice was enough, "Come to your senses yet?"

"Cuddy certainly seems to think I should. She said surrender is the truest freedom, and then she locked herself in her office put on that whale-singing new-age crap so loudly I could hear it."

"Well, she's a very smart woman."

Wilson's sigh was definitely one of ultimate resign, "I'm going to bring a bio-suit. You do realize that."

"Believe me, beer works much better."

"And latex. And a surgical mask."

"Now you're just teasing me. You'd better stop before you get to the naughty nurse outfit and the forceps or the party will be over before you get here," House's giant grin may accidentally have leaked some merriment into his voice.

"Oh, God..." Wilson had definitely scrunched his eyes closed, and was probably pressing them with the pads of his forefinger and thumb. "Fine. I'll be there by eight, and if I'm conscious at all, please, please have mercy and pour more alcohol into my mouth."

On the way to his bedroom to make sure his sheets didn't smell too scary, House reflected that his whole master plan had been a little too easy to execute.

His suspicions were verified when Wilson showed up completely sober, and in a tux.

Cuddy was going to kill him when neither of them showed up for work the following day.