Easier Than Being Alone
by Jennamajig

SUMMARY: Wilson piece. Character study, really.

SEASON/SPOILERS: Season One. Nothing glaring, but set around Damned if You Do.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: My first try at a fic in this fandom, so a little nervous. Short little ficlet, but any comments are welcomed :).

DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Just borrowing.

He wasn't sure if happened was before or after the leg, but in the end he supposed it didn't really matter. Either way, he still found himself sitting in his friend's living room amid Chinese takeout boxes on a holiday he didn't celebrate but still respected.

James Wilson figured he could spend hours analyzing his friendship with House, how he'd ditch a homemade Christmas dinner with his Gentile wife to spend the evening with a man one could argue had no Christmas spirit.

Then again, neither did he, being Jewish and all, but that wasn't really the point. Or was it? Over analyzing used too much brainpower and he'd spent all he had the night before in a shouting match with Julie. He figured it probably wouldn't be long before another marriage went down the tubes, despite the effort he tried putting in to save this one. And he did want to save it.

Or at least, he kept telling himself he did. He loved his wife.

But love sometimes wasn't enough to survive. Enough to try, maybe even enough to try hard, but still in end, things were crappy and there was little everyone could do to fix it. So instead, he could ignore it, she could ignore it. He could romance a nurse or two, she could set her sights on their accountant and neither would, could, admit anything.

It made Christmas dinner a painful charade that took entirely took much effort to avoid each other's gaze because as soon as their eyes locked, the guilt would spill out onto the table and it was over.

It made friendship seem better and better. Friendship had no romantic strings, just an understanding that even when everything had gone to hell you could still hang on and maybe, just maybe, start over.

His friendship with House, to most, to Julie especially, seemed odd. That it didn't take much for him to drop everything to humor his friend's wishes when he appeared to get nothing in return. But that's were most were wrong. He did get something in return. Purely platonic, although he doubted he'd have a problem protecting his sexuality.

Their friendship wasn't a one-way street. Every night that he'd stumble out and find a pretty face to satisfy his physical needs, he'd find himself at House's doorstep, not wanting to go home. To go home to an empty bed, or worse yet, a sleeping Julie, and lie there thinking about his betrayal, his guilt. About the fact that the world saw him as the good guy, when in fact he felt nothing like that. Sex was great, the act was perfect and it felt so good that sometimes he wished it would last forever, but it didn't. It was soon over and left him with a bad taste in his mouth, because in the end he wasn't really satisfied. Yes, it kept him going for a while, helped him cope, but it wasn't enough.

So he'd ring House's buzzer at two in the morning, knowing the man would be up because he never sleep for long stretches of time, even before the leg. He'd hear the sound of a cane on the floor and the door would swing open and he'd brandish a bag of food from the all night Chinese place down the block. It was always the same old script.

"Julie throw you out?" he'd ask, even though Wilson was well aware that House knew the truth. Greg wasn't afraid to meet his eyes and the eyes could never truly lie.

"Yeah," he'd say and House would let him in. They'd eat and watch late-night TV and bitch about the world and discuss any and every thing as long it didn't involve relationships or the leg.

It worked.

Perhaps that's why he'd rather spend Christmas night with House, where they could both smile and forget about, if only for a moment, the crap weighing down both their lives. House would pluck out a few Christmas carols on the piano and they'd pool their resources and see how many Chanukah songs they could come up with.

Because, really, in the end, it was much easier than being alone.