i spent three years driving around

“Doesn’t it bother you that we’re leaving nothing behind?”

“Doesn’t it bother you that we just had sex?”

Wilson pulled his lips oblong across his face.  He shrugged a shoulder, making the bed jiggle.  “I…didn’t really like kissing you.”

“But you’re completely fine with everything else?”

“Maybe if you shaved.” Wilson rubbed a hand across his own neck as if to check for brushburns.  “I don’t know.”  He turned his head so his cheek rested on the pillow and House was looking back at him.  “I know you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Actually,” House said, plopping his chin with girlish flirtation in his cupped hands, “I wanted to discuss our deep, turbulent feelings while we cuddle.”

Wilson snorted and stared back up the ceiling.  House wondered where their jeans had ended up, and if all of Wilson’s coins had spilled from his pockets.

“What would you want to leave behind anyway?” he asked.  “You provided a service.  You’ve saved lives.”

“But then those lives go on to fulfill themselves.  They don’t reflect my own existence.”

House’s eyes skimmed across his face curiously.  “How un-selfless of you.”

“I’m channeling you.”

“That’s one way to turn people on.” House silently wished Wilson was lying on the left side of the bed, so when House turned to his side to look at him, his leg wasn’t crushed beneath him.  He ignored the twisting yelp of pain and watched Wilson’s bare chest rise and fall, and the shadows made by the lightening tuft of hair over his solarplex.

“I want to paint the walls,” Wilson said.

House gave up on lying on the side and rolled to his back.  He kicked Wilson’s calves lightly to signal for more room, although he already had enough.  Hair tickled the tops of his feet.

The new apartment was just slightly smaller than House’s.  Unpacked boxes lay like empty shells across the floor, and House pictured leaning an ear to one and hearing the echo of everything that had rested inside: empty picture frames, computers, movies, desk lights, posters.

Earlier that evening, House had picked up the Doisneau and inspected it.

“Don’t,” Wilson said, “even start.  It was a gift, I kept it because—”

“Don’t you think it’s strange,” House cut him off.  “We take pictures of what other people see and stick them on our walls.”  He dropped the poster back into the box, and it rolled itself up.

“The walls don’t need paint,” House said.  He already imagined Wilson calling him during obscure hours meant for sleeping, asking if he could drop by and help scrub the walls, or if he had an extra roller, and he wouldn’t even have to lure him with alcohol—House had never seen Wilson paint anything before.  It would be interesting.

Wilson in an old t-shirt with a gas station or baseball logo on it.  Jeans, freshly speckled, from when House had dipped the tips of a brush in a can of glossy paint and let fly.  Wilson telling him ahead of time not to sniff the paint.

Wilson shrugged again.  House shrugged back to see if he could match the way the bed moved.  He did.  The bed had a brass headboard that made a shimmering noise, like the growing vibration of a cymbal.  On his stomach, House had stared into his own golden reflection when Wilson climbed behind him.  He’d closed his eyes and heard towers of cymbals toppling and crashing onto one another, bright and half-breaking.

“I was thinking a green maybe.”

House frowned.  “Like the regurgitated shade of your office?”

“That’s not regurgitated.  It’s…mossy.”

“If you’re regurgitating moss.”

Wilson rolled his eyes, which signaled he had nowhere else to look for the next line of argument.  House smiled and rearranged the sheet over himself, tugging just a bit to expose one of Wilson’s legs.  Wilson tugged back and House threw the covers off himself.  Wilson glanced over warily.

“What are you doing?”

“Sorry, am I embarrassing you?”

“No.  It’s just…”

House watched his face carefully.  He wanted to ask if Wilson first saw him anatomically but didn’t, because that would require his own answer in response, and “yes” made it sound like he’d been taking notes about length and hair trimming and muscle contours.  Which he had been, but not entirely.

“It’s just what?”

Wilson’s eyes didn’t drift below House’s chin.

“Pretend I have breasts,” House said.

“What?”

“You’d look then.”

“No I wouldn’t.”

“We’re naked so yes you would.  You’d look even if we weren’t naked.”

“This is a stupid conversation.”

“You just don’t like it.”

“Because it’s stupid.  And I’m painting the walls in here green.  The kitchen is going to be white, the bathroom blue.”

“Entirely logical.”

Wilson started.  He turned his head to the side again, so his cheek squished up into one of his eyes, squinting it.  “Why?”

House rolled his eyes, which signaled he had too many things to say to make them fit all at once.

“Obviously those colors peg you as a selflessly idiotic doctor who uses Colgate toothpaste after every meal and brushes twice as long if it’s spicy and is trying to convince himself he’s gay so he has a better reason for destroying all three of his marriages.” House paused.  “Sarcasm.”

“Really.  Didn’t catch that.”

“Do you overthink everything I say?”

“You make it necessary.”

“I do not.”

“You can’t take anything for face value.  Nothing you say is face value.”

“Green is an ugly color.  That’s face value.”

“Fine.”

“So what is your logic?”

“I’m painting things green, white and blue because everything I have is coordinated to match it, because that’s what color my old house was.  All right?”

“That’s.” House stopped and frowned again.  “Boring.”

“Logic usually is,” Wilson agreed.  He rearranged his legs under the covers, and House noted the three extra inches now put between their limbs.

“But that’s not the reason.”

Wilson sighed and placed his fists over his forehead.  “Of course it isn’t.”

“It’s familiar, you can’t let go, so you’re returning to whatever colors make you feel safe and happy.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call my marriage ‘safe’ or ‘happy.’” Wilson laughed, a sharp, tight sound through his mouth.  “Try again.”

House rolled over to his shoulder again despite the throbbing from the waist down.  Hair rose on his pimpled skin—Wilson hadn’t turned on the heater yet because of a suspicious black stain spreading on the side of the radiator—but House ignored the blanket.  House couldn’t tell if it was still snowing behind the blinds, and he wondered if the fact that they were closed was foresight or coincidence.

“Did you and Julie talk afterwards in bed?”

“Sometimes.”

“Did she talk to you during sex?”

Wilson glanced sidelong at him.  “Why?”

“Can’t a guy just wonder?”

“You’re not any guy.”

House had the feeling Wilson was quoting something back at him, but he couldn’t remember the conversation.  Odd.  He didn’t react, keeping his face straight.

“Did Stacy talk in bed?”

House grinned.  He almost said something but then kept his mouth shut.  Wilson didn’t press, although House saw him pausing and imagining, which was just as rewarding as any comment he could have made.

Wilson tossed more covers in House’s direction, and House stared at the folded lump they made between them.  After a moment, he started tracing the contours with his index finger, slowly curving around the shape as if it were a path going around and around to the top of a mountain.

“Were you ever photographed naked?” House asked.

“No,” Wilson said defensively.  House glanced up.  “You’re not going to, either.”

“I was,” House volunteered without waiting for the prompt.  “A throw-away art class in college.  Last minute I’d switched out of basket weaving because there were a bunch of Indian kids and the teacher graded on a curve.” He peered over the mountain of covers to see Wilson, not looking at him but smirking.  “So I took photography.  I tried to get the band to pose nude.  I told them it would be a great cover for our debut album, which never happened by the way.”

“They didn’t buy it?”

House thought fleetingly of Crandall, slipping his leather jacket halfway off before looking around at the others, who stared at him as if he were a lunatic.  He remembered biting the inside of his mouth as the jacket went back up.

“So I did myself,” House continued.  “I’m sure you can imagine, that made a big impression.”

The bed shimmered again as Wilson’s laugh reverberated in his chest.  House focused on the mountain, unease swirling in his stomach like his finger did up to the heap’s peak.

“What?” he snapped.

“Oh.” Wilson grinned, and House counted the creases at the corner of his eyes, noting which ones were new and which ones had deepened.  “It’s not about your, you know, manliness.”

“You can say the word ‘cock’ and not go to hell, I think.”

“Penis.”

“Dick.”

“What are you, eight years old?”

“They’re body parts.  We live in them.  We test them and stick samples of their excretions under microscopes.  Society makes them loaded words because society is uncomfortable with everything that’s face value.  So off they go, hiding faces and making annoying people like me dig them back up.”

“You’ve buried a few.”

“I have reasons.”

“Society doesn’t?”

“You don’t.”

“Only because you don’t want to try so hard to know.”

House sighed quietly to himself, picturing his lungs deflating into tiny bags.  When Wilson had called him over to help unpack and populate the apartment with useless junk, House had moped around and stripped metal silverware from newspaper padding and similar plastic bags.  He’d stopped midway through to read a crinkled article about how a convicted bank robber won the $800 million lottery, and stared at the face of a white-bearded man who’d have to give it all back in the end.

House flattened the mountain of covers and shoved them out of the way.  Wilson flinched, which he expected but it still annoyed him.  House kissed his shoulder and rubbed his chin against the skin.

“House, can we not…?”

He heard a sigh but Wilson’s noises were still too new and unfamiliar, and House hadn’t properly catalogued the good sighs from the stop ones.  He touched his tongue to the stray freckles on Wilson’s shoulders, which were pale and without tan lines, and House wondered how easily he burned and how his skin would taste mixed with suntan lotion.  Wilson scooted away but House reached his hand beneath the covers, dragging his fingers firmly up the inside of his thigh until he touched him, still limp.

Wilson jumped back.  “Don’t.”

House drew back onto his side of the bed, which wasn’t really his side but for the sake of the argument, he’d termed it at least a temporary possession.  Once he left, did the pronoun shrivel and waste away too?  How soon would Wilson wash the sheets?  Would he flip the mattress so he wouldn’t feel House’s indentation on the other side?

“Was this a bad idea?” House asked.

“Usually something you consider before you do anything,” Wilson replied.

“Some things you do when you can’t account for everything.  You jump out of a plane because it’s exciting, not because your parachute might not open.”

“Isn’t that why it’s exciting?”

House closed his eyes and smiled thinly.  “Maybe.”

He liked that the radiator wasn’t on, so the noiselessness between them was unaffected by even the hum of heat.

“So.” Wilson stayed quiet for a few more minutes.  “Did we land?”

House wanted to answer but focused hard on looking asleep.  If he stayed still and in one spot long enough, he thought he’d have a better chance of leaving enough of something behind, even if Wilson didn’t know what to do with it.  House saw against the backs of his eyelids the emptied boxes, now spacious for new things to be stored away until the next move.  He stilled and lowered himself into another box without sound or commentary.

The bed moved and he heard Wilson get up to leave, but there was nowhere to go.  He counted the steps of Wilson’s bare feet on the floor.  He heard where they muffled when they hit the rug.  Jeans and cotton made the sandpapery sound as they slipped against skin, and there was still change in Wilson’s pocket from lunch, House noted, as he heard the clinking sound, nearly an octave lower than the bed’s shaking.

The mattress dipped and House felt denim and t-shirt pressed along his side.  Each was stiff, as if they had never been worn before.  House imagined Wilson’s body beneath spinning in the wash, surrounded by soapsuds, then soaked wet and drying in the sun, glistening to an evenness like paint on walls.

He measured out inhales and exhales before he took them and sent them systematically through his nose.  Wilson’s hand touched his arm for a few seconds, then pulled away.  The denim and cotton followed.  He felt a sheet be half-thrown over him, and for a second he was convinced he’d turned into the latest body covered in the morgue, until the pressure of Wilson’s body returned to his side, separated by clothing and blankets.

House thought of how many layers of paint Wilson wanted.  Enough to hide the old colors, Wilson said, and House hadn’t realized he’d just asked aloud.

end