Author's Note: Due to the content policy of this chapter has been altered. If you would like the complete, original version, go to my homepage (listed in my profile).
This is a completed fic, with five parts total. I'll post one part each day.
Prologue
Browsing in a gas station, one postcard caught Wilson's eye: several tanned women in bikinis frolicked on a generic beach. The caption read, "I'm glad you're not here."
That ought to get a smirk out of House, at the very least.
After the Tritter case was closed and over with, Wilson had taken a few days off work for a road trip. He told everyone he'd been planning this vacation for the past year, but the real reason was to get a breather from it all.
The cashier, a middle-aged pasty-white man, rang up his order. "You're not from around here, are you?"
Wilson shook his head. "Just traveling through."
"What, by yourself?"
Wilson smiled, though he was irked at the reminder. "Some journeys have to be taken alone. I'm a big boy now, I can handle it."
The cashier titled his head to the side. "It's harder that way, though. Couldn't imagine getting through without my girlfriend Jennifer." Wilson kept on a cheerful expression, though he was more irritated than ever. "She's my best friend, y'know."
Wilson tried to imagine saying that about House. It sounded like a joke. Maybe once he could have said that he could depend on House, but that was a long time ago-- before Grace and lies about cortisol and forged prescriptions. "Good for you," he quipped, refusing to let himself get riled by this random cashier.
"How 'bout you? You married? Got kids?"
"No, no one would have me, so." That sounded pretty pathetic, so he added, "It's probably for the best."
The cashier shrugged, as if to say, to each their own.
Wilson, wanting to mail the postcard through the mailbox outside the gas station, used the countertop to write a message. He scribbled "Warning: Oncologist May Not Resemble Image" onto the back, but, at a second glance, it didn't seem as funny as he'd first thought. Besides, the two of them had been so out of synch, House might think that the whole thing was stupid.
He pocketed the postcard.
Starting tomorrow, he'd step back into routine, one that Wilson couldn't imagine ever changing. He'd work the same job until retirement, he'd remain a bachelor, and he'd continue to feel alienated from his one friend.
"You know any good restaurants around here?" Wilson asked the cashier. He might as well enjoy the last few hours he had before heading back to Princeton-Plainsboro.
"Um, there's a Denny's--"
"I was thinking of something a little different," Wilson said.
The cashier laughed. "If it's different you want, I know just the place. Everything on the menu is raw, it's like nothing you've seen before."
If this was going to be the biggest change in his life, he might as well go all the way. "How do I get there?"
PART I
day 01
All of Wilson ached. His muscles were sore, his limbs felt abused, and even his organs seemed out of place.
His sleep-addled mind didn't know what to make of it. It could be from the traveling, Wilson thought, though a short road trip shouldn't cause this much upheaval to his system. Maybe it was food poisoning; Wilson never did take well to radical changes in cuisine.
On top of it all, he was getting a headache.
With some trepidation he rolled to the edge of the bed. All of him protested and he couldn't quite find his footing. He stumbled and ended up walking along the wall, one hand against it to keep his balance.
Flicking on the switch in the bathroom, he squinted at the onslaught of light. He didn't need to see for the following operation-- it was more habit than anything-- and he groped along the counter. There. It was a twist, pop, and swallow to get the Advil down and, as he did with every pain killer he took, he thought about House. Sad as it was, this felt like the closest Wilson would get to him.
Wilson's vision started to return. In the glare of the fluorescent light, he seemed pale yellow and wrong, somehow. He blinked at his reflection in the large mirror. Was it his imagination, or was his waist wider?
Wilson rubbed his eyes, but when he looked again, it wasn't just his hips that were off. His breasts were more prominent than they ought to be. Before he'd been confused, but it was now with some horror that he touched them. He'd felt thousands of breasts like his, as a lover and as a doctor, but never on his own body.
He was seeing clearly now.
Shocked, he fell onto the edge of the bathtub behind him.
"I always knew that it could be worse," he commented wryly to the woman staring back at him.
Still sitting on the edge of the bathtub, Wilson performed a standard physical exam on himself. He checked his eyesight, hearing, and swallowing mechanism. Fingers on his pulse, he counted his heart rate-- it was elevated, but that could be due to his anxiety.
Aside from his sudden onset of womanhood, everything seemed to be in order.
Of course, if he was delusional, his own senses were not to be trusted. Wilson half-hoped this was all in his head, though he couldn't decide which was worse-- being female or being crazy. But his senses were all that he had to go on.
The more he looked, the more changes he found: a different shape to his wrists, paler lips, a smaller nose, and what his first ex-wife would have called 'thunder thighs.' Even his eyebrows had thinned out; that alone made him feel vulnerable.
There was one last thing to check.
With a shiver, Wilson removed his boxers. He didn't even want to look, so he closed his eyes and let his fingers feel out the parts he expected to find. And, indeed, it was all there, cold and clammy: mon pubis, labia majora, labia minora. Probing revealed the entrance to a vagina and, above that, a urethra. He had a complete package.
The muscles between his legs began to clench. What was that? It didn't quite hurt, it kind of felt like he had to pee--
Oh.
That might be it.
Eyes still closed, he fumbled to lower the toilet seat and sit on it, back rigid. How did this work? He was in the right position, but nothing was coming out and his muscles were still constricted. Being uptight like this couldn't be helping. He leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, and tried flexing.
A trickle came out and nothing more. Wilson tried again, pushing harder. A steady stream came out and the tightening was gone. He stood up, ready to pull his boxers back on, but stopped when a wetness trailed down the inside of his thigh.
He'd forgotten that women had to clean up afterwards.
"Didn't have to just be a woman, nooo," he muttered to himself. "Had to be a hygiene clueless woman."
Wilson wiped himself up with a dozen or so pieces of toilet paper. Feeling dirty, he scrubbed his hands under the faucet, but then he had to flush afterwards and thus wash his hands a second time.
Come to think of it, maybe what he needed was a good washing. He stepped into the shower and turned the water on as hot as he could bear and stood there. Nothing. Grabbing a bar of soap, he tried scrubbing himself, fast, over his ribcage and stomach, not wanting to touch his genitals again.
He was dismayed, but not surprised, to discover that water and soap could not correct erroneous chromosomes.
Now what?
What he'd have liked, if he weren't petrified by the thought of going out and being recognized, was access to technology that could reveal what was going on inside. Did he now have fallopian tubes? Was he now more susceptible to ovarian cancer? A quick self-examination revealed no nodules.
Wilson decided to call it a night. Maybe sleeping would make this all better. He dried himself off and put back on his boxers. But going around topless like this was obscene, wasn't it? Just because he'd had a spontaneous changed sex didn't mean he had to be inappropriate.
He found a McGill sweatshirt bulky enough to hide his new shapeliness and keep his nipples from peeking through. Only then did he swallow a couple of sleeping pills and crawled into his bed, hair wet and strangely exhausted.
day 02
Wilson woke up the next morning still full of aches and still a female.
Now that he was going to be walking around, Wilson adopted a pair of pants. He didn't want to be faced with his legs' change in shape and size. Not to mention how embarrassing it was to be female and have hairy legs-- he didn't want to shave, per se, but he didn't want to think he was slacking on his looks.
Wilson fired off vague emails to his secretary and Cuddy about how he wouldn't be in due to a bout of the common cold. Wilson hated canceling appointments with his patients, but what could he do? He was in no state to treat them.
That done, Wilson turned to research. Because he couldn't go outside and, god forbid, be recognized, he was limited to his laptop and wireless connection.
What Wilson wanted was to find House. If there was one person who could get to the bottom of this strange malady, it was his sorta kinda best friend; pity about the "sorta kinda" part.
Even after the apology, which Wilson hoped was sincere, it was hard to trust House. It was one thing to say sorry-- a big step for House-- but it was another altogether to change your actions. It wasn't about the addiction anymore, though that still worried Wilson. It was how he couldn't be sure that House wouldn't throw him to the four winds again the next time things got shaky.
Which was why Wilson hesitated to turn to House.
But the internet would have answers, right?
Google turned up porn and articles about hermaphroditic polar bears.
The New England Journal of Medicine came up with articles on how sex affected various diseases, as well as the psychosomatic effects of sex changes.
What would House do? Probably try playing with himself; his curiosity would override any horror. Wilson smiled to himself at the image, but kept that line of thought from developing any further-- he'd always thought it dangerous to think of House sexually.
When diagnosing, House started with patient history. Wilson had no genetic predisposition, as far as he knew, for sudden sex conversions. Nor had he engaged in any recent behavior, such as a surgery, that would induce such a transformation. Something he'd caught, then?
Wilson got up, deciding that this was ridiculous. House was the best at medical mysteries and might be the only one that could figure this out. So House was somewhat unreliable and Wilson was more than a bit embarrassed at what had happened to him. But he ought to be able to depend on House to help him with at least this much.
When he realized that his feet were an inch too small for his sneakers, Wilson knew that he had made the right decision. The sooner he put an end to this madness, the better.
If nothing else, House's expression almost made this nightmare worth it. Almost.
"It's as if you've never seen the fairer sex before." Humor was essential in gaining the upper hand. Moreover, it would serve to snap House out of his shock.
"A week-long sex change, I think that's a record. Tell me, did the basement get as convincing a renovation as the upper floors?" House's tone was dubious, as though he were waiting for the punch line. "If this is what you were up to, why make up crap about road trips and colds? Did you think no one would notice?"
Hearing House mock him, Wilson realized how much he'd missed him during the past few days. Despite all his misgivings and doubts, Wilson did care for House. Probably too much, but that's how things were.
Wilson walked into the apartment and threw his winter coat onto the nearest chair. It was odd; he'd done this a dozen times, but even such a simple movement felt different in this body. "It's a bit more complicated than that. You up for a new case?"
Wilson turned around and noticed that House's glance had been directed at his own behind.
House was staring at his ass and Wilson couldn't think about that now.
"However complicated it was, gotta say, they did a bang-up job." And now House was eyeing him all over. That was unnerving. Or maybe what was unnerving was how flattered Wilson felt. Being looked at by House like this wasn't supposed to feel good.
More self-conscious than ever, Wilson exclaimed, "I didn't do this! It happened!"
They ended up in the kitchen, with House on a stool and Wilson, too nervous to sit down, leaning against the sink counter. The more he told, the more relieved he felt. He wasn't alone in this any more.
The way House kept trying to get an eyeful was still disquieting, but, if nothing else, it confirmed that he indeed was endowed with a female body. Perhaps he could cross off 'crazy' from the list of causes.
"Am I supposed to believe this?" House asked.
Or maybe the both of them were going insane. At least he'd have company.
"You want more evidence than this?" Wilson waved at himself.
House leaned back, cupping his chin with his hands. "If I could get a closer look--"
Wilson sighed. "Just figure out what happened to me, okay? With a minimum of innuendo."
"Sounds like an infectious disease to me," House mused. "An STD, maybe? Kidding, kidding. Or maybe not. You're going to have to tell me everything you did on this road trip." He did not, of course, ask for information previous to that. House always kept tabs on the people in his life, especially Wilson.
House wanted to run tests on him, but Wilson still refused to go anywhere. They did what they could in the apartment itself, like collecting urine and blood samples. House dropped those off at the hospital to be examined by the labs.
Like Wilson, House didn't have any articles lying around on the spontaneous sex-changing phenomenon, but he'd had a lifetime hobby of hunting zebras and his library reflected that. Wilson had browsed through House's collection before, but never for something regarding his own health. It wasn't quite as fun when he himself was the zebra.
Wilson worked with the English and French sources while House took on everything else. "You think we'll find something here?" Wilson asked.
"Doubt it." House said, not even looking away from his reading.
House's concentration reassured Wilson. In fact, despite House's frequent jokes at Wilson's expense, his reaction was overall relieving. He seemed to be serious about figuring this out.
Now that they were working on this together, Wilson didn't know why he'd hesitated so much to ask for House's help. Just because their relationship had been rocky ever since Wilson had moved out didn't mean that he couldn't depend on House.
Around four in the morning, Wilson fell asleep. He must have, because one moment he was reading a1974 French Algerian paper on desert snakes and the next he was drooling on a photo of sand dunes.
Half-awake, he could feel something warm brush against his hair, fingers rubbing light circles around the back of his head. Wilson turned so as to expose more of his neck to that touch. The pressure moved to the base of his cranium, massaging away Wilson's stress and anxiety. Who was doing this? Wasn't he supposed to be doing research over at House's?
His eyes flew open.
He was indeed at House's.
The massage continued. Wilson, unsure of what to do or even how to react, stayed frozen. He couldn't let House know that he'd woken up. It'd be embarrassing for both of them and, Wilson was nonplussed to realize, he didn't want House to stop. He hadn't felt this safe since before he could remember and yet, at the same time, it was making him warm--
That thought made him stand up at once.
Letting House caress him was one thing. Getting excited over it was another.
One second House's hand hovered over where Wilson's head had been and in the next, he was rubbing it against the side of his pants. "Your hair is thicker," House said, looking away.
Wilson ran his hand through his own hair. "I know." He didn't know what had just happened or how he felt about it. And he had no idea what House was up to, being so affectionate in secret. "We should uh, get back to the books."
The tests, when they arrived, revealed that Wilson's hormones were in average condition for a female his age. In fact, his FSH levels indicated that he close to menstruating. "Ought to get myself some tampons," he forced himself to joke.
House tried on an expression that was too innocent to be real and then, unable to stop himself, he snickered. "Too late," he said, pulling out a pack of extra-large pads with wings from his backpack. He threw it at Wilson.
"Hardy har har." Wilson caught the package and hoped that he wouldn't come to need it.
day 03
Beaming with pride, House dumped a pile of printed pages over the journal Wilson was reading. Wilson jumped, jittery from the caffeine that had gotten him through thirty-six hours of fruitless reading. "There."
On one side was either abstract art or a creative depiction of DNA strands. The rest of it was a mess of gibberish. Wilson was too cranky to deal with silliness. "Since when are you fluent in… whatever this is?"
"I'm fluent in all languages known to man. And woman." House sat on the couch armrest opposite from Wilson. "It's the advantage to being an ex-military brat. Don't you want to know what it says?"
"I figure you'll get to it when you feel like it and not a moment before."
"Were you always this flippant, or is it a side-effect of acquiring a second X chromosome?"
Wilson smiled. "Always this flippant. Ready yet?"
"Yeah, all right." House nodded at the papers in Wilson's hands. "According to that, you picked up a virus common in fish and amphibians, but rare in humans, that induces sex changes."
"It does not say that." Wilson flipped through the pages, skimming the occasional note and translation House had jotted in the margins. They included words like "chromosome" and "interspecies." "That is the single dumbest thing I've ever heard."
"It does too say that. What did you do to get frog germs?"
Wilson threw the stack of papers onto the table. "I slept with all the frogs I could find."
"You only have to kiss the frogs to get the princess, Wilson!" House made smooching sounds with his lips. "C'mon, no scuba-diving? No petting zoos?"
"Seriously, House, this is idiotic. If you think I'm in a mood to play--"
"No food you shouldn't have eaten?"
At first Wilson glared at him for being this persistent in his prank, but then he remembered something. "I--" Wilson buried his face in his hands. "I ate at this hip-and-upcoming restaurant. Raw clownfish. If this is a joke, House, I'm killing you."
"It gets worse."
Wilson groaned. "Of course."
"The virus is unable to maintain itself in a human host, so the effects are temporary. It'll last three days, maybe a week, tops."
Wary, Wilson asked, "You swear?"
House held up a single pinky. "Pinky swear," he said in mock-solemnity.
Wilson's sigh could be described as one of relief, but that wouldn't begin to cover how he was feeling. A tumult of emotions exploded in him in, from freedom to happiness to a hint of worry that House might wrong. It ended up being translated as a high-pitched, chopped-up laugh. "Thank god."
"Yeah, woohoo," House slumped off the armrest and onto the couch itself. "I say it's a pity, though. You don't make for a bad woman." House's gaze traveled all over Wilson with something more than pure medical interest.
Wilson flushed again, as he had been these past few days every time House paid him a little too much interest. Wilson turned to humor, as that was safe territory for the two of them. "Maybe we should make the most out of it."
And once Wilson said it, the realization hit him: he did want to make the most of it. Wilson blushed, but the blood to his face drained away at once because he also knew the reason why. This might be the closest he'd ever get to House and Wilson wanted that, even if it was only a physical, and not an emotional, proximity.
God, how desperate and fucked up of him.
House's eyes widened and he pressed up against the armrest, as if to increase the distance between them. Wilson saw the alarm there. "Let's not get carried away; you're no Carmen Electra."
"Yeah," Wilson blurted, and got up. "No carrying away. So, um, I'll get us beer, to celebrate, you know--"
He was sprinting towards the kitchen, as if he could run away from the mortification, when House said, almost timidly, "We could think of it as an experiment."
Wilson almost tripped, he was so surprised. He didn't hear that tone often from House, but he recognized it: vulnerability. Well. That was unexpected. "An experiment?" Wilson repeated.
For a split second, House seemed embarrassed, looking down at the carpet. In the next, he was looking up at Wilson again, eyebrows waggling. But he betrayed his nervousness in how tightly he gripped his cane. Wilson was surprised the wood didn't snap in half. "In the name of science! How convincing a woman are you really?"
Tentative, Wilson moved towards him. He maintained the jocular tone because he knew that if either one of them admitted to having any reasons for doing this beyond curiosity or amusement's sake, this would go no further. "Well, it would be a shame to not go on a test drive."
"Um," House said, eyes widening again, but this time Wilson saw the desire there as well. "Um, yeah, it would. Damn shame."
Still not sure whether he was misreading the signs, Wilson lowered himself so that he almost came in contact with House.
The part of Wilson's common sense not knocked out by the caffeine and giddiness warned him that this was not a good idea, but even so, Wilson licked his lips. This was a once-in-a-chance opportunity that could vanish by tomorrow. "An experiment, right?"
House moved his head a fraction of an inch, as if that was the closest he could get to nodding. "Right."
Where to even begin? Heart hammering, Wilson patted House's thigh. "Okay."
Deciding to sleep with your best friend of ten years is one thing; going about it is altogether different, especially if you're dealing with a new body.
House wanted to explore all of Wilson, who half-suspected that his meticulous surveying was more a substitute for not getting a MRI than it was a desire to sniff out Wilson's hairy armpit. "Is that absolutely necessary?" Wilson asked, half-exasperated, half-fond.
House took another deep whiff indicating that, indeed, this was necessary. "You smell different," he said, as if it were an explanation. "I'd thought so before and-- yeah, you do. If you stick it out as a woman for any longer, we'll have to get you Secret deodorant."
"I'll be sure to pick up a stick."
Anyway, if they were going to do this, Wilson wanted to go the whole nine-yards. Figuratively, anyway. "Condom?"
House produced one, along a tube of KJ Jelly. Good, he was as paranoid as Wilson. He wasn't going to have to justify his want for protection.
Afterwards, Wilson understood how his high school sweetheart had felt about her first time-- "I preferred 'Cats.'" Changing positions didn't help. Neither one suggested giving the sex up, though Wilson suspected that House came as fast as possible. Or at least he hoped he had, because if that were all the endurance he had, Wilson had one more reason to pity House's girlfriends of past and future.
So Wilson was surprised that, after he rolled off, House went back to touching him. "I have a reputation to maintain," House said "Half the hospital thinks we're sleeping together, and if you tell them that I'm crap in bed, they'll believe you."
House could come up with all the excuses he wanted, but Wilson saw through him: he hadn't wanted to leave him unsatisfied. Wilson felt such a surge of affection that he kissed him for the first time, open-mouthed, along his collar bone
day 04
The phone rang.
"Get it," Wilson mumbled. "I can't, still a girl." He groped about to pull the covers back over himself. It was foolish of him, he knew, feeling like he still had anything to hide or, for that matter, that he had anything to hide in the first place.
"Thank god," House said, reaching for the phone. "Wasn't keen on waking up to a naked dude. What. Why, yes, I was clueless of the fact that it's paste ten. And, no, I don't know what Wilson is up to, probably in bed with a fever of a hundred and ten, what else would keep him from work?" He hung up.
"Cuddy?" Wilson asked.
"She thinks we're up to something," House said, turning towards Wilson.
"We're not." Wilson paused. "Not intentionally, anyway."
House was pulling the cover away and Wilson let him. "I still think it's a pity you've got to turn back."
"A tremendous pity, yes."
"Seriously. You've been upgraded to boobs. What more do you want?"
"My balls."
"Both come in pairs and start with 'b.'"
"Somehow, I'm not convinced."
"Well, you should at least try keeping this ass."
"Not that I don't appreciate the first compliment you've given me in years, but don't you that's a mismatch? Like an elephant's tail on a penguin?"
"Who cares, you oughtta keep your assets." Wilson groaned, in part because of the pun, but mostly because House had chosen to punctuate his remark by biting his behind.
Talking about what was coming made Wilson uncomfortable. On the one hand, he was dying to go back to being a man and resume his life. And he'd be glad to be rid of the fear, lodged in the back of his mind, that he'd never be normal again.
At the same time, Wilson thought, fidgeting as House tasted him along his spine, he liked this… thing, whatever it was, that they had going. It was pleasant. The sex was nice, if a bit clumsy, and the faux-intimacy it brought was better.
Wilson knew that the minute he reverted to his real self, they'd never lie together like this again. They might not even speak of it, unless you counted House giving explicit descriptions to coworkers of what Wilson was like in bed that everyone would take as a joke. Even if Wilson went back to not being attracted to House, he'd still miss this.
"You're thinking too hard," House whined.
Wilson translated that as: get out of your headspace and play with me. He rolled his eyes and left the thinking for later.