someone to stay ; hilson oneshots

5: when he walks in (i am loved)

smut fic, set immediately after the s8 episode "transplant".

PS copy and pasting deleted all my italics but im not fixing them oops pls enjoy tho <3

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After solving the case involving a pair of lungs in a box for a woman dying of cancer, House heads home with an aching face and a bruise on his cheek in the shape of Wilson's knuckles. It hurts, yet he can't stop his lips from quirking up into a smile when he thinks about it. He doesn't particularly enjoy being hit, of course, but he's just glad that this means that he and Wilson are back to being best friends again. And he's also glad that Wilson didn't opt for the other choice of kicking him in the nuts.

He takes a cab home, secretly grateful that Foreman had made sure to get his utilities switched back on for him ahead of time, but House would never admit his gratitude aloud nor say 'thank you'. When he opens the door to his apartment, it looks the same as it ever did, if a little dustier, maybe. He hasn't been back here since getting out of prison, instead deciding to spend all of his time at the hospital, avoiding home like the plague, though he isn't all that sure why. He wonders if Dominika has been around at all or not in his absence.

He realizes a moment later that he doesn't really care if she has, and he doesn't care if she knows that he's out of prison or not. She may technically be his wife, but it's just a paper marriage and nothing more. They never got married out of love, and they're certainly not a couple. They're barely even friends. House doesn't love her.

At this point in his life, though, House doesn't even think he really believes in love anymore.

He loved Stacy, but he lost her and then made the choice to let her go. He loved Cuddy, too, and he lost her as well. He could've loved Lydia, if only she'd chosen to leave her husband and stay in New Jersey. So the only person that he… has deeply cared for, and has never managed to completely drive away, is… Wilson.

House is fairly certain that nothing more than friendship could ever come from his relationship with the man, though – not that he has ever expected or actually thought that there really could be more between them. He'd toyed with the idea in his head, but never took it seriously. He can't imagine what a relationship with Wilson would be like, because as it is, their friendship has fallen apart multiple times – the only reason they're friends again now is because Wilson might just be more insane than House realized.

(Probably not insane enough to hook up with House, though.)

And House has learned from his mistakes – he isn't going to lose Wilson like he lost everyone and everything else in his miserable life. What he had said earlier to Wilson – about how he liked him and had fun with him – was as close as House will probably ever get to a real confession of how he truly feels. He's so screwed up and repressed that it was all he could allow himself to admit to the man. But the truth is that he cares about Wilson, maybe even... loves him, in a way, and he needs him in his life. He wants Wilson in his life. He just doesn't know how to express it any other way than he has been, which, frankly, hadn't exactly gone so well for him. If Wilson's patient had died or they'd lost those lungs, House and Wilson still probably wouldn't be on good terms, so… House will take what he can get. He won't ask for more.

He sighs and tosses his backpack somewhere before he takes off his blazer and tosses it somewhere, moving to the couch to lower himself onto it with a tired sigh. Wilson is supposed to come by with dinner, but House doesn't know when. He guesses probably soon, though.

It feels strange to be back here, if he's honest. He still remembers the last time he'd been here, when at the last minute he had recalled that Cuddy had left her hairbrush here and wanted it back. He figured he could take it to her, get them one step closer back to normalcy – or as close to it as they could ever be after the breakup – but when he arrived, he had seen her inside with somebody else. It had been only hours after she'd just told him she wasn't seeing anyone, too. He stood there in her front yard, feeling betrayed as he stared through the window at her, and she looked… happy.