House MD Fanfiction

The Old Apartment

Hilson, sad!kisses, 4,614 words
By: We_Band_Of_Buggered

If you asked Gregory House if he’d been spying on his ex-boyfriend, he would have denied it with the modicum of sarcasm that would have left you uneasy, wondering if he was lying after all. Except, nobody asked him this, because nobody expected that even from House. And yet here he was at midnight, the road outside the apartment empty  but for the motorcycle slowing to a halt, the driver pulling off his helmet and staring over at the top floor apartment of the unassuming grey building. The curtains were open but the windows were dark.

James Wilson wasn’t home. But, of course, House already knew that.

He parked his bike across the street and walked towards the apartment as though it was natural, as though this was still his life—long hours, the ride home, the road crossed with cane in hand and helmet under arm. He smirked at the sight of the open security door and slipped through it. If you’d have seen him do it, you would have assumed he did so every night. He told himself he was nothing more than a well versed liar, but in actuality there was a part of him that marvelled at how easy it was to slip back into the routine—into this previous version of himself.

He stepped into the elevator and remembered it. He knew the heavy air, the garish walls (“I don’t mind the salmon walls.” “They’re pink.”), the mirror spattered with its inexplicable dirt. Most of all he recalled what all of those things used to tell him.

Almost Home.

The lift shuddered to life. Not only that, but it groaned with the weight of him as it pulled him to the top floor. When the doors opened, the fifth floor stretched out before him and House took a deep breath, exhaling an entirely different emotion than the one he had breathed in before it. He felt physically lighter, anxiety stripping itself from his bones and melting onto the uneven concrete floor, which looked like very little but almost felt like Everything. The clip of his cane on the concrete echoed, until he hooked it over his arm and fished for the keys in his pockets. They echoed too, loud and jangling, an innocent and comforting noise. He took a deep breath, let his eyes slip shut and slid the key into the lock.

Home.

Wilson hadn’t changed the locks. If the situation had been reversed, House knew he himself would have changed them months ago, and the fact that Wilson hadn’t made something ache in his chest. Love. His love for Wilson ached like the wound it had become, and House stepped into the apartment and pushed the door shut behind him before he even opened his eyes.

The first thing that hit him was the scent, the warmth of it—all coffee and cologne—soft and sweet, all Wilson. That alone was the first snapshot, a moment caught in time and still lingering in the apartment—the ghost of the morning routine. The memory soaked into House’s mind, the early alarm to wake them, the alarm fifteen minutes later to actually get them out of bed, newspapers spread on the kitchen table or Wilson leaving in a whirl of that cologne, jacket pulled on hastily, coffee still too hot to drink despite his determination to do so. (“Why’d you turn off the second alarm? You knew I couldn’t be late today.” “I knew we’d be having fun this morning. That noise really kills my morning wood.” “House…”)

The kitchen itself, which faced House directly as he stood at the door, was an echo of its previous self. Same sleek black floor, same old appliances but for the purple stainless steel kettle and the matching toaster. Same old dish rack, empty and spotless, so obviously Wilson’s apartment, so obviously not House and Wilson’s apartment. To the left of the kettle, tall and proud, was the mug tree. The very sight of it tugged at something in House. Pangs rippled through his abdomen like stones thrown into a lake. His emotions were wild animals inside him, half of them hurting and loving and longing, the other half snarling at how pathetic the first half were. Gregory House would never have admitted it, but his fingers were shaking and his stomach was in knots.