An empty room stared back at them as they lingered in the doorway; almost suddenly, but almost not, they could feel the sun reel back into the ground and leave them in a twilit dusk, full of ancient conversations with the dead. A feminine voice wisped about the room, gusted past their ears, and it was all they could do to not shiver—ghosts do not easily take to being forgotten, and wasn't what this was? Forgetting? The ceremonial emptying of memory into compartmentalized boxes, stashed away forever to be brought up exactlywhen it's wanted, and not at some inconvenient time when the façade was still needed: and the apartment echoed her thoughts from beyond this life…
Don't forget me
I love you
I'm still here
Can't you tell
Don't forget me…
They had been standing there for just under an hour, prepping to take the final step toward something new and fresh, instead being cemented in place with that one-sided conversation, stripping the walls down past the paint to its core, its soul that rattled with the multitude of firsts it witnessed in his life, so many that refuse to be left behind. To leave would be to abandon. To move in to someplace virgin would be to replace.
Wilson couldn't do it. And House, as pained as he was on his leg, just stood there too, shifting every so often, casting a worried glance and gradually wishing to say something but keeping silent.
Stay
Stay here
Don't forget me
I'll love you forever
And ever
Wait for me
"Wilson…"
When he finally meets House's gaze, even in the shadows his face is streaked and shiny with sorrow, pumping from his eyes with every heartbeat.
And, with words failing to do anything but shred in the face of grief, House reached out and grabbed his hand, and after a beat, he could feel the other's fingers curl gently around his palm.
Warmth spread through their skin and into their souls.
Finally they took the first step, away from it all and toward it all, House lightly pulling him along down the hallway, onto the street, into the sun—
For one week this carried on: one week of holding hands and silent treatment.
For one week, no words passed between them; for one week, as soon as they were in each other's company, their hands sought out the other's. It was natural, it was nothing, it was everything, and most of all, it was real.
Eating a sandwich one-handed while hiding its twin under the table.
Watching television with the clasped palms between them, covered barely by the loners on the edges.
Ambling down the hallway, examining charts, conversing with patients—connected at the wrist.
Yet no one said a word.
And one day, it just snapped—on the sofa, Mythbusters roaring softly in the background, then they turn to each other and stare into their eyes, down at their hands, whose fingers for the first time have slithered to intertwine.
Wilson closed the distance first, a light peck on the forehead, slowly backing away. "Thank you." A pause. "This feels right," he added.
"I know."