The conclusion.

Regaining Balance

Prompt: I hate myself

"House."

No response.

Wilson knocked again, a little harder. "I know you're home."

The door finally opened.

"Why have you been avoiding me?" Wilson asked.

"I haven't been avoiding you. Why have you been avoiding me?" House contradicted, scratching his chin.

"I just stood here and knocked for ten minutes."

"I called twelve times two nights ago."

"You were belligerently drunk, I heard your messages when I got home."

House stepped aside to let him in. "You haven't talked to me in a while."

"You haven't tried very hard to talk to me…" Wilson said. He hadn't really been speaking to anyone, truth be told. Patients, of course, but none of his friends or the recurring characters in the tragedy he called his life.

But they had at least tried to talk to him. They had patted him on the back and apologized and hugged him. He had accepted it without really feeling it.

He and House hadn't spoken since before House fell into the coma.

Since he had asked House to do the procedure that put him in that coma, truthfully.

There had been moments when he thought House was going to swoop in and steal his sandwich (mostly on days when he thought to himself that his sandwich was particularly delicious) and moments in the halls of Princeton-Plainsboro that they had made eye contact.

But neither of them had very actively sought the contact of the other.

It was no wonder they both thought they were being avoided.

"I just figured you blamed me for Amber," House said, trying to seem nonchalant.

Wilson froze in the act of removing his coat and stared. "I…"

There was a nasty voice in the back of his that, for the past few weeks, had blamed House. But he attributed it to grief. It hadn't entirely been House's fault. House had wanted all of this to happen about as much as Wilson did.

"I thought you hated me."

For an absurd moment as he had turned off Amber's lifesupport, he had.

But he couldn't really.

"I don't blame you if you do. I hate me."

"Don't."

House looked up.

Wilson dropped his coat and walked to the couch. "Old movies. Crying. So sit down."

"Don't get offended if I don't cry as easily as you do," House said with the smallest of smiles, following Wilson over to the couch. "And don't sit so close to me," he added as Wilson plopped down, putting them practically arm-to-arm. But neither of them moved.

"It may be absurd, but I've missed you, House."