I am spending way too much time surfing.  I did, however, manage to get a short story finished, printed and tucked into a nice clean manila envelope ready to send off, so I feel guilt free to indulge in a little extra-curricular fic.  (I am such a House ho!)

Title: The Girl Who Finally Said No.

Rating: PG

Warnings: None

Summery: Wilson is kindly nudged toward his happy place.  Takes place after a divorce that is not yet cannon, though we all know it will be eventually.

Disclaimer: I only own the girl without a name and Wilson's tastefully decorated abode.  The rest is borrowed from Fox et. al. 

Enjoy this little dalliance if you like, and comment on it too.

"No, James."

James snapped his mouth shut.  The little smile died on his lips, the light faded out of his eyes.  He blinked.  "What?"  He was not sure he  heard that right.  In his experience, women did not say no to marriage proposals.  The fact that he knew he had that experience to draw on should have told him something, but he had always been quite good at ignoring the little voices in his head.  "What do you mean, no?"

"No is pretty strait forward, don't you think?"

"But," he held the ring a little higher and tried not to wince as his knee snapped against the rough floor boards on which it rested.

"Don't make this harder than it is, please."  She put a hand under his elbow and tugged.  He had no choice but to get up off the floor and settle back into his own chair across the table from her.  He snapped the box closed and set it gently on the cloth.  It's blue colour stood out against the white, mocking him.

"You have to at least tell me why."  He made a face at his own petulant tone, then decided he had the right to be  petulant at the very least.  "Why?"  He looked at her, asked a little more firmly this time.

"Because you don't want me."

"I would not have asked if-."

"You don't want me, James," she spoke over him as she pulled her napkin off her lap and set it down beside her plate,  "any more than you wanted any of your first three wives."

"But I married them because I loved them.  I love you."

"You can see why that logic is hardly inspiring me to change my mind."  Her left eyebrow went up, and he could not stop the rueful grin that twisted his lips even as his heart sank.  "You married them because you wanted someone to come home to.  You wanted a warm body in the bed next to you.  You are not in love with me, James, you are in love with an idea."

"I don't see how you can say that."

"You don't see much, Sweetie."  James looked at her a long time, trying to decipher what that meant.  Finally, she shook her head.  "You want there to be someone in your life that does not sap you."  Still, he stared at her, waiting, needing her to explain.  "Your job drains you."  He could not argue with that.  "Even being back on the board stresses you out."  He nodded.  "And House,"  her lips drew into a tight line across her face, her eyes grew hard and glittery.  It was a look he had seen, in one form or another on the faces of all the women in his life, only with her, it was tinged with something other than just anger and resentment.  There was still the underlying compassion, the sense that she understood that had given him hope that she really was the one this time.  "Honey, you can't be with two people at the same time and expect it to work."

"Be?  With two people?"  He felt his brow furrow, and his jaw worked up and down in a little silent stammer as he searched for words to negate what she seemed to be implying. 

"The only reason you want to get married, James, is because you want someone who will touch you, hold you, because he won't.  You want someone who will tell you they love you because he can't.  But you don't want to give up what he does give you."

"Which is what, exactly?" he asked.  He knew he sounded a little angry, and maybe he was.  She did not know anything about his relationship with Greg House if she thought what she seemed to be thinking.

"That gut-wrenching feeling you get whenever you think about him."

"How do you know-"

Again, she cut him off.  "I see it, James, in your eyes when you get off the phone with him.  When you come to bed and you lie there, and I know you are not thinking about me.  Even when you touch me, when we make love, it always ends with him."  James tilted his head away from her.  He could not quite look at her, feeling suddenly furious, terrified, nauseous.  She reached over and touched his fingers lying on the table, and he managed not to pull away, but only barely.  "What I mean is, I know he is the last thing you think of before you fall asleep.  You wonder if he's asleep himself, or still awake and drinking.  When you wake up in the morning, I know you rush out of here because you have to know that he is not late for work, or worse, not coming in at all.  I know you don't feel at ease until you know he made it through another night."

"It's not like that," he whispered, but he let out a shaky breath at the same time because she was not as far from the mark as he might have wished.  "It's not all doom and gloom."

She smiled and a little sardonic laugh escaped her throat.  "I don't really want to know what else it is, James."  He lifted his head, finally, about to protest that she was misinterpreting him, but she stopped his words with her fingers over his lips.  "You can't love two people and not expect one of them to get hurt.  You would never hurt Greg.  He can take it, though you don't think he can, but you would never do that to him, and that's ok.  You shouldn't settle for marrying someone you can live with for a little while, James.  You shouldn't settle for anything less than what you deserve, and you deserve the one you can't live without.  Especially after all he's put you through over the years."

"It's not that kind of relationship, I swear."

"Whatever it is, Honey, you can't let it go.  And I don't mean I think you shouldn't let it go, I mean you are incapable of letting it go."

"You make it sound like I'm in love with him."  Again, that left eyebrow went up, only this time, it did not elicit a laugh, because James was suddenly incapable of breathing, let alone laughing.  For a long, silent interval, he stared at the table cloth, she held his hand, he struggled to tilt his world back onto its proper axis, and she waited.  "I don't know what to say."  It was a difficult admission.  All it got him was a pat on his fingers.

"I don't think I'm the one you need to say this undefined thing to anyway," she pointed out.

"No.  Probably not."  Another deep silence pushed its way between them.

"I should go."

Finally he looked up at her.  "Where?"

"I packed some things this afternoon.  I'll go to my Mom's."  She was getting up, clearing her half eaten meal from the table.  James took the plate from her.

"I'm sorry."  He didn't quite know what else to say.

"I'm not, James.  I want you to be happy."  She ran a soft hand down the side of his face and he turned toward the warmth of her fingers.  "I can't make you happy.  Maybe he can't either, but I won't be the one to make you miserable."  She leaned her forehead against his.  "You are a very brave man for going anywhere near him.  Insane to love him, but that is what makes you you."

James stood where he was in the kitchen long after she left, letting her words push their way under his skin, into his heart.  The streetlights outside came on.  The rain that had threatened all day began to fall, slithering down the window in rivulets that left shadows across his face.  He could see them in his dark reflection above the sink.  He might have stood there all night, but his cell phone rang, jolting him back to his dirty dishes and mangled emotions.

"Yeah?"  It was uncharacteristic of him not to look at the call display before he answered, so when Greg's voice filled his ear, he was caught off guard.

"So?"

"Greg, what-?"

"What did she say?"

"She said yes, and we're kind of in the middle of something," James spat.  Greg snorted into the phone.  "Fine.  She said no.  Are you happy?"  He asked the question without thinking, annoyed that Greg had even called, not surprised that he had, and angry that he was not surprised.  There was no immediate answer.  In fact, there was no answer for so long that James began to regret asking so harshly.  "Greg?"  More silence.  "Are you there?"

"Yeah."  Greg's voice was strangely quiet.

"Were you hoping she'd say no?" James asked, more to point out how this type of interference rankled, than to get a straight answer.  He never expected a straight answer out of Greg.  There was another not empty silence so long, James began to pace, out of the kitchen into the living room, then into the entry hall.  When his front door opened, he jumped and almost dropped the phone.

"I was hoping, actually," Greg said, folding up his own phone and slipping it into the pocket of his leather jacket, "that you wouldn't even ask her."  For the next minute, it felt, James' feet were rooted to his expensive oriental welcome mat, his phone held stupidly to his ear, his throat closed, his mouth too dry to speak.  A small, mocking, but not unkind smile played around Greg's mouth as he finally closed the space between them and pulled the phone out of James' hand to flip it closed.  He must have run a hand through his wet hair, because it stood up in weirdly rumpled spikes on top of his head.  The black t-shirt he had on was wet enough to stick to his chest.  James swallowed and looked down at the puddle he was making on the rug.

"You should have said," James stammered out, at last finding his voice and enough courage to look up.  Greg cocked his head, his  silent eloquence, pointing out the folly of that statement.  "Right."

James turned and went back to the kitchen where the light was brighter, the mood was more sterile, and Greg's rain-washed scent was more diffused.  He started tossing food down the garbage disposal, but he stopped when he felt Greg behind him.  He had to lean on the edge of the counter, needing physical stability, suddenly, because he had nothing else.  A long breath hissed out between his teeth.  "I am so tired." And he was.  More tired than he could ever remember being, and there was no one to hold him up. 

 The last thing he expected to feel was Greg's hand, warm through his shirt, fingers squeezing his right shoulder gently.  The sensation echoed up through him from long forgotten memories of a friendship that had been stronger once, less hesitant, less afraid.  He had been braver back then, he realized suddenly.  Greg had been less fragile.

"I won't break, Jimmy."  The words were so quiet, for an instant, he thought they were a memory too.  "I can't make any guarantees about your bone china."  The fingers tightened.  "I'll clean this up.  You look like shit.  Go to bed."  And the hand was gone.

Greg,"

"Hey, I already offered to clean your kitchen.  Don't push your luck."

There were a thousand things James wanted to say, wanted to ask, wanted to know, but no words he could think of.  He went to the door, turned back to at least say thank you, but Greg turned on the disposal and the water and the room was filled with the sounds of scraping and clanking and domesticity that James barely recognized from any of his previous experience.  The little voice inside his head whispered how ordinary it seemed to see Greg standing at his kitchen counter washing dirty dishes.  He smiled at the whisper, and as he dropped into bed, and into sleep a short time later, he thought how easy it was to believe that this time, it might actually work.