all of these things i think about constantly & fondly and exist in my mind as true canon:
house has been interested/obsessed with wilson since the second he saw him; the divorce papers ordeal combined with wilson looking like he did in 1991 sent the bisexual alarm ablaze.
only someone as repressed and clueless as wilson could take "you were the only person who didn't bore me" as a purely platonic statement.
relatedly, i think he was very convinced throughout their time together at the new orleans medical conference that wilson liked men, and only during some horribly awkward flirting attempts house witnessed from afar did house realize that either A) wilson is unfortunately straight or B) he's repressed beyond belief. being so good at reading people, i bet house accurately picks up on the latter.
house playing instruments for wilson is one of their most significant forms of intimacy.
paradoxically, since wilson is very gentle and hands on with just about everyone else in his life (patients included), he never crosses any physical barriers with house as a sign of respect for his boundaries. this goes pretty unnoticed by house until someone points it out - "aren't you guys really close? he's never even given you a pat on the back?"
they don't smoke together very often but they used to and wilson gets incredibly giggly every time, which house loves to see. wilson gets paranoid about drug testing, which sparks an argument about vicodin and double standards. wilson loses the argument every time.
wilson kissed house when they were high exactly one (1) time several years before canon. wilson was so blasted he's convinced himself it was a dream, and house always kept it in his back pocket as a desperate "gotcha" moment for the future. but the memory is too sacred and tender to ruin it by being petulant, so he never brings it up.
HOUSE IS A YEARNER. AT HIS VERY CORE, HE IS A YEARNER. WHEN ALL OF HIS BULLSHIT IS STRIPPED AWAY, HE YEARNS! wilson is better at shoving everything deeper and deeper than house.
through some grand scheming alongside cuddy, it was actually wilson's idea that they have adjoining offices, but he and cuddy worked together to make house think it was his idea and that, by getting the adjoining office, he'd won over the 2 of them.
cuddy is the only person who ever broaches the topic of house's feelings for wilson while she and house are dating. knowing them both as well as she does, she can see some sincerity there. she asks house about it and eventually gets a clipped but genuine answer: "i mean...yeah. sure. but that minefield is so sensitive that even looking at it too closely will start a chain reaction. so no thanks."
thirteen instantly picks up on house and wilson's "deal." like she can't believe it's not outright and obvious to everyone else.
SEASON 8/POST-CANON SPOILERS
i don't think house and wilson die simultaneously. whether out of reverence, grief, or masochism, i think house would try to live without wilson even for just a few hours. then he would be fully in touch with the human experiences he's always avoided/felt alienated from. it would be the final challenge for his atheism to conquer.
while holding fast to the fact that they've never slept together and never will, they get increasingly intimate with one another in those last 5 months. they share a bed, keeping mostly to their respective sides of the mattress, but really ramp up the whole "no social contract" thing. sometimes hands wander and they wake up with gentle touches on their sides, shoulders, etc. house is preparing to lose the only person who even understands his kind of intimacy, while wilson, being someone who seeks it out, struggles with this new arrangement, and all they have is each other atp!
they change how they describe their relationship to strangers while they're on the road. one day they're business partners, another day they're married, then on a first date, then professorial colleagues, then third cousins (wilson hates that one), etc., etc.
even more so than house, wilson likes that he can finally shed off layers of his old identity and feels more authentic than he ever has while road-tripping with house in the end.
i'll probably come back to this list and keep adding but there ya go, those are some of my thoughts :)
if there's one thing that can be said about peter maximoff, it's that he's always got his ear to the ground when it comes to gossiping. it's like, his thing by now. if anyone wanted to hide their secrets from him they'd be fresh out of luck because despite how much he darts around and lets himself trail off sentences in the middle of them to zip off and do something else because he got tired of slowing himself down in the middle of it, he is surprisingly good at being quiet when he needs to and being at the right place at the right time. he has a very good record when it comes to this stuff, so he knows it's not bullshit when he's figured out that his dad—which, like, wow, his dad?—is in the dating scene. he knows it. what's more of a surprise is that he's gotten all strung up with charles xavier, of all people.
which, like, peter doesn't hate the guy. he doesn't! he was just under the impression that ten years ago—wow, ten years really fly when you really think about it, that day feels like forever ago and yesterday at the same time—that charles and erik hated each other. so he guesses he missed the memo where they kissed and made up after punches were thrown in the pentagon's elevator by a drenched, half-sober man who looked like he would laser erik to death with his eyes the way scott tries to do to peter about four times a week without even taking off his glasses in case he'd accidentally make it stick. though he couldn't, because, like. peter is very fast. duh.
so. the evidence behind his claims goes as follows (of course he collected evidence, peter says to ororo, affronted, when she asks if he even had proof. what was he, an ameteur?):
1. erik keeps taking lunch breaks.
it's not like he didn't before but he was definitely less likely to. when they were rebuilding the x-mansion after it blew up and he was their heaviest lifter, it would be rare to peel him away from all the construction. erik was actually weirdly good at building, which peter didn't really expect for some reason because he was always under the impression all the guy did was like. terrorize people. or kill them. or twist spoons into pretzels just because he could. but no, nowadays he's been taking more lunch breaks than ever and it's a very pointed difference, even though they've already finished construction a few months ago and erik didn't really have a reason to stay. unless the reason to stay was so he could be with charles! (scott stares at him with that unimpressed, laser-eyes look again so peter flips him off and continues past the sputtering).
2. he's also like, weirdly nice now?
which isn't to say that peter didn't think terrorists couldn't be nice. which sounds bad but erik might be the one exception. anyway, when peter saved him about a decade ago he remembered the guy being kind of an asshole when he met up with charles for the first time and yes he knows that it puts a damper on his dating theory, jean, but he's not done yet so wait a second. anyway, he was less of an asshole when he came back to help fix the mansion after trying to kill the whole world so peter guessed he kind of swings on a pendulum between good and evil and whatever they get on that day is like the worlds most important and demented coin flip. that's besides the point. so when he was back here to help fix things up he stayed out of everyone's way and he wouldn't do much to bother anyone because in peter's opinion erik didn't want to scare the little kids who knew of his reputation even if they didn't know his face. but, like, now he's been here a while it's like a complete 180. peter caught him teaching a seven year old how to tie his shoes the other day. a thirteen year old shortstack was rocking back and forth on her heels while erik got her a book from one of the higher shelves of the mansions newly refurbished library (who knew that once you saved the world there would be at least one or two places willing to donate books on top of charles' infinite wealth?). it was like stepping into the twilight zone. but it was real. like, peter saw the hint of a real smile on erik's face one time when he saw the man looking over the grassy field of the school. it freaked him out a bit.
3. charles knows how erik takes his coffee
this is admittedly one of his weaker arguments from the lead-in, peter concedes when he gets blank stares from storm, jean, scott, and kurt. like, even kurt! he didn't think that was a look he could pull from that kid. anyway, peter says that it's pretty damn obvious that erik has a whole thing when it comes to charles being in his head. he's heard from someone who heard from a friend who eavesdropped on a teacher who overheard charles and raven after a faculty meeting that the helmet erik wore all the damn time when he was evil was to keep charles from getting into his head. which explains a lot. anyway erik has a complex about charles getting in his head. but he doesn't wear the helmet now and peter heard charles one morning when he was getting ready to start the day off by eating at least two and a half boxes of poptarts. he heard the man say something like coffee? and he heard erik reply with a hum and charles went how dyou want it and erik said don't you know already? and peter had peered in then and seen erik gesture to his head. and he wasn't defensive about it at all and charles had this really weird look on his face that peter spend a few seconds examining in hyperspeed before getting away from the whole thing because the vibes were so weird. but yeah. erik let charles into his head just for some coffee after spending like two decades trying to keep charles out of his head. which has to mean something (and peter knows he's hooked them now because even scott is leaning in like he's interested and that kid would pretend he had a ticklish throat and needed a water bottle more than anyone else in the immediate vicinity if peter was on fire in front of him).
4. all the chess boards
like, they're all over the place. it's excessive. there's a different game set up in the library, on a table in the garden, on charles' desk in his office, on erik's desk in his office and his bedroom. and no one touches them because no one likes fucking chess except for cute little ten year old jenny because her grandfather taught her before she accidentally turned his house into clouds and seventeen year old thomas who's a prick because he thinks he's more distinguished than anyone ever because he came all the way over from europe or whatever the fuck and peter can't see either of them sitting down to play one game, let alone multiple. and he knows chess is charles and erik's thing because he saw the board in erik's room one time—(you were in his room? ororo asks with a very deep look and peter nods and goes yeah we've been bonding lately but it's kind of one sided because it's more like me showing up and him tolerating me until i leave but like it's progress!)—and peter asked before erik could get a chance to politely kick him out and erik actually paused and told him that chess was a shared hobby of theirs from a few years back and get this, peter says conspiratorially, leaning forward as the rest follow suit. he smiled. like a full on real smile with teeth. and peter was so taken aback he was like that's sweet man and then left before he could be kicked out. and now he knows that the only people who play chess in this mansion are dickhead european thomas and sweet little jenny and charles and erik, all the games all over the place have to be charles and erik's which means they spend a lot more time together than he thought before. and they plan to spend it together because a lot of these games are half finished, like they leave and come back every few days depending on how much free time either of them have. (and now everyone looks thoroughly hooked because the evidence peter brings is good because peter is a hell of a gossip, dammit. he won't have people questioning his skills when it comes to this. he was made to be at old little women's tea parties where they talk about their evil husbands doing war crimes. that's what he guesses goes on there, anyway, considering his first gossip session with his mom went that way)
5. charles is happier now
and jean frowns at this one right off the bat but no one really says anything because the way peter said it was soft and kind of less jokey than the rest of his tirade. because it was something he wasn't really expecting? because charles wasn't sad per se, he was always happy in front of the kids and he didn't try to drag them down with his own moods and ever since the guy got sober he's looked a hell of a lot more put together than when he showed up on peter's doorstep, tired and hungover and just plain heartbroken. but even in that small time frame between defeating apocalypse and the mansion being rebuilt, he was just... sort of happy. happy he lived, maybe. happy the world made it and his mansion was being rebuilt so he could home all these poor kids without anywhere to turn to that understood them. but wow, the stark difference between a charles that was kind of okay and a charles that was happy was like night and day. he was just so much brighter now that it took peter aback sometimes. he hummed under his breath whenever peter walked by him in the halls at a human speed and those old withered plants in his office started to stand taller, as if someone finally started watering them. and hank stopped staring at charles the way he did when peter met them a decade ago—waiting for something to give. so, yeah, charles is definitely happier now when no one even knew he was unhappy at all. and it all started when erik started taking lunch breaks.
and jean and scott and ororo and kurt are looking at him less like he's pulling their legs and more like he's made a point that makes them a little sad which wasn't the goal but he gets it. charles is like, jean's dad in a way, and the rest really look up to him despite only being here just shy of a year, so to hear this guy that they always saw as this strong bastion of optimism and goodwill was just sort of sad all the time right under their noses was probably depressing the hell out of the four of them. but it was the truth. and peter knows it was because he can practically see them recalling how the professor was before he got there and before he made up with erik.
so yeah. peter is right. erik and charles are probably dating and now four more people know that charles is happier than he was before and erik is too. and privately, peter thinks maybe if erik is happy to find family in charles, he'd be happy to find family in peter, too. but that's something for another day. he's just suddenly aware of the fact that he's so glad these guys who were so bent out of shape and angry and irritated and heartbroken and assholeish ten years ago are looking at each other like the sun took up custody of both their smiles or whatever.
anyway i'll see you guys later, peter tells them, and races off before they can say anything. he's already halfway across the school and in his room playing pac-man before any of them can blink.
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