The meat metaphor

As one raw red slab of meat adorns the jaw of the ex convict another lies limply over the knuckles of his nearly ex friend. After the hectic day there is suddenly a calming silence throughout the neglected room that House had all too easily forgotten how to call home. No flickering lights from the muted T.V adorn the walls as everything lies deadly still and in sombre darkness. One solitary candle stands in the middle of the table, its luminous glow fading with every passing minute.

Both Oncologist and re-instated Diagnostician appear in deep thought as they tend to each of their self inflicted wounds. So in tune are these strange beings that they seem to be thinking each thought in tangent as they stare anywhere but at one another.

"I like you. I have fun with you. Now if you can honestly say that you don't like me, that you don't have fun with me, I can accept that. But, just do whatever you have to do to get over this. Punch me in the face, kick me in the nuts. Either or - both seems excessive.

"The thing is, House, I don't like you,"

'You really haven't changed. But I've given up red meat,"

Screw that. I want a steak

House winces and they are both suddenly snapped from their thoughts as he slowly removes the half a dead cow from his face. He lays it on the table in front of him and in a mocking tone turns to address the Oncologist.

'Well at least the meat was useful for something. Guess we are going vegetarian after all. Tomato?'

House brandishes the red lump in Wilsons face and subsequently watches it fly from his hand and roll towards the corner of the room, as the Oncologist resolutely bats it away.

'So I forgot the electricity would be cut off. Of course that's my fault and not yours.'

'You're right I really should have opened those final demands they pushed through my cell box...IN PRISON...'

Wilson still cradling the meat looks incredulously at House as he leans back on the chair in an exasperated manner. His voice is soothing to the Diagnostician after what feels like years of not hearing it. However it is still annoying nonetheless.

'We could have steak at my House?'

'I haven't been here in over a year. I'm staying right where I am tonight. Anyway, yet again you're forgetting something.'

A leg is strenuously lifted and trousers pulled upward to reveal the beeping tag, his lifeline and his shackle. He places his leg back onto the floor and resumes his close proximity to the Oncologist and his previous thought process.

"You really haven't changed. But I've given up red meat,"

"The thing is, House, I don't like you,"

Screw that. I want a steak

Wilson's sharp inhales force House back into the present. Before he can object, the Diagnostician gently takes Wilson's hand and removes the dead meat. He makes no eye contact as he slowly slides his own hand over his friends, gently massaging it but only after checking for serious damage and being satisfied there was nothing other than bruising to concern him. No words are spoken by the men, the only movement the rhythmic massaging being undertaken by House, a process which if necessary at all to begin with, was now with every dripping of the candle wax becoming less of a necessity.

"Do you ever sometimes wonder what's going on with the two of us?"

Wilson's eyes dart quickly upward from warm aged fingers to ice cold blue orbs. He clears his throat of its hoarseness and proceeds to speak calmly to the man whose motions had stopped but whose hands hadn't moved from his own.

'Continously. What particular thing are you referring to this time?'

To Wilson, the Diagnostician seems to be slowly moving closer to him with every piercing emotion filled look he casts in his friends direction. In reality, neither have moved an inch. Both are breathless, sweaty, nervous, scared out of their wits but also tired of waiting any longer for the answers to questions they have both chosen to repress deep within their consciousnesses.

'I tell you I like you, that I have fun when I'm with you. I put myself out there by divulging my feelings for you and in turn you tell me that you don't like me and then you punch me. I mean isn't that meant to be the other way around? You divulge and I use violence as a way of displaying and dealing with fearful emotions? Or are we taking the crazy shifts in turns now?'

'Well couples should share the load, isn't that what they say?'

'We're not a couple though.'

Both sets of eyes are penetrating the other as the last words that fall from House's lips are half said. Such has his breathing rapidly increased; he struggles to think clearly enough to remove his hand from his friends grip. He gives up the struggle. Wilson is consciously or not, not letting go just yet.

'House we've spent so many years trying to convince ourselves and everyone around us that we aren't a couple, that by a cruel twist of fate we've turned into a couple. Sexless couple granted but couple all the same.'

House can't help but notice how the Oncologists voice heightens as he reaches 'sexless' in his sentence or how his pupils are unnaturally dilating against the intense glow of the burning flame resting underneath their reflective gazes. He can't help realising his friend said that word like it was both dirty and exhilarating;forbidden and desired. The Diagnostician is pushed once again to the thoughts that have been niggling at the back of his mind.

"The thing is, House, I don't like you,"

Wilson can you stay with me tonight?

"You really haven't changed. But I've given up red meat,"

'I was always staying with you tonight.'

Screw that. I want a steak'

House, still holding his best friends hand, continues to rub it once, twice, three times. The Oncologist makes no effort to stop the motion but no plea for it to continue either. House stops abruptly once more and Brown eyes are held in his gaze like they've just saw the everlasting light.

'Why did you say you didn't like me, then two hours later you're sitting here on my couch in the freezing cold, with bruised knuckles, that I pushed you into doing, no beer with a raw dinner and the only edible thing a dust ridden tomato in the corner of my candle lit electrically void room. If you don't like me then why have you agreed to stay here? Why the hell are you still holding my damn hand? It's been a year Wilson.

The everlasting light flickers from the eternal blue and contact is lost. The room fills with darkness and it is several seconds before either realise that the candle has extinguished. The only light is the sparse flickers from the occasional cars. Suddenly they are forced to come to a realisation blindfolded. Wilson, as if having been divinely provided with an excuse, inches forward until his body touches the man who now sits eagerly waiting for a caring voice to speak from the void around him.

'I meant every word. Right now I don't like you much. House if this was a simple matter of not liking and liking we wouldn't be having this conversation. The reason I'm still here after everything is because I love you. I don't have to like you to love you. I don't have to like you to need you. It's the one thing that just refuses to go away. I'm incapable of giving you up.'

With his last words nothing is said for some time, gentle breathing, bodies and hands still touching but no words until that moment when hands are removed and re-positioned on a shaking Oncologist's tie.

'You never even gave up actual steak did you Wilson? Tell me, what exactly was meat meant to be a clever metaphor for?

As House speaks he slowly slides his hand up the Oncologists neck to the back of his head where he grips his hair and begins to pull him closer. It's Wilson's turn to think of the weight and worth in past dialogue between the two.

'There's always another angle, hold her hand, get the sister to beg, stick your fingers in your ears and pretend you can't hear. You do whatever it takes'

' No. You would do anything to keep this friendship House. This can't happen. This is sinking to new depths of enabling even for me. I know this is not really what we want. It can't be. It just can't. It's not who we really are deep down.'

'Not what I want? Not who I am?.Wilson I played you, 'my heart will go on' ,today. I've flirted with you unconsciously and consciously over a 20 year period, how blind are you? You just practically told me you were in love with me, how stupid are you? And I know exactly what your steak euphemism is so cut the crap and just let me hear you say it. I want to hear it. It's been a year. Wilson I really need to hear it.'

House begins unbuttoning his friends shirt and running his hands up the Oncologists trembling torso. Wilson's voice comes out resolute but hoarse. In the darkness it takes longer to find the Diagnosticians hands and temporarily restrain them.

'House stop this before it's too late to stop it.'

House, having no hands, begins fiercely kissing Wilson's chest whilst simultaneously and continuously repeating the same two words

'Say it! Say It! Say It!'

He reaches Wilson's neck and bites down leaving yet another bruise forming on his body. Wilson quietly moans and begins to slowly loosen his grip of his friend's arms, now fully allowing House to dominate him and guide him downward horizontally onto the couch. His shirt is fiercely discarded, though his tie is still wrapped neatly around his neck. This is quickly gripped onto by the diagnostician using it as a means to pull himself upwards. He suddenly stops. He meets the eyes of his friend for only the fourth time that night. This time, without words of his own and simply communicated through the looks of hunger and desire in both their reflecting eyes, Wilson finally grunts out the meaning of his meat metaphor to a frenzied but satisfied House.

'It's about wanting you...sexually.I thought I could give it up.I thought I could give you up. I thought that I had. I can't, It's consuming me. You're killing me. I need you to...I need you...congratulations Greg I guess you've finally solved me, so how does it feel?'

This is enough to send the Diagnostician over the edge of reason. A whole year locked away and sexually repressed. Growing in feeling for this man day by day and yet thinking he would never see him again. This coupled with complete animalistic lust taking over like an all consuming fever for the one person who for 20 years he thought it not possible to ever fully have. A person who was off limits and was like a forbidden fruit leading to damnation and the fires of hell or worse; leading him towards being outcast into the bitter wilderness of loneliness, if he even dared try and devour him.

One bite and suddenly he was now lost forever. The puzzle was finally complete. They both were.