Hurt is an old familiar companion.
Angry insults and threats yelled, harsh punishments and punches fulfilled. A mother, who couldn't still the hurts his father hurled, a lover, who didn't trust in his own will, birthed a cripple in things emotional and physical.
And so, to logic he clings. Self-preservation is the stuff evolution is made of he tells himself, justifying his defenses.
His battalion stays strong keeping out all who approach. They cannot hurt him if they don't know who he is. He provides an illusion, offering mere glimpses of the man behind the armor. There is security in remaining elusive.
There is one who sees through to him as he is. But from Wilson too, he hides feelings and hurt both. Emotion unexpressed cannot be rejected and pain unshown cannot be discounted. But there is regret in remaining so alone.
He loves, but doesn't know how to show it. After moments of dying, he forms the words for Wilson's ears, but it's not enough to draw them together. Failure feels unfamiliar after years of never trying.
Then he sees more smiles on the face of the one who sees through to him as he is. A happy Wilson warms parts of House long cold, even if he's not the source of such happiness.
When that happiness's only chance of survival, is a threat to House's, he thinks Darwin may have missed something. Then again, the man did marry his cousin. House abandons his self-preservation, preparing to risk his life to express his love.
"I love you, I want you to be a good soldier," his father says the day he is born.
"I love you, I want you to grow up with mother and father both," his mother says 40 years before.
"I love you, I want you to live," his lover, Stacy says 7 years before.
"I love you," Wilson says today, the day he might die. And it is perhaps because there is no want, or justification of hurt attached to this love that House is willing to give him everything.
If he should die, he would leave no doubt that he had loved Wilson while he lived.
He feels no fear, only hope that if this is it, the end of his life would spell the end of his hurt too.