Fic - Contemplation (PG)
TITLE Contemplation
AUTHOR the-vintage
CHARACTERS / PAIRING hint of House/Cuddy near the end
RATING PG, just in case
SPOILERS some for season 3 and one for season 4 (although very vague)
SUMMARY “She packed away the colors of her childhood and traded them in for a neatly tied package of blacks and whites.” Cuddy ponders her life when she walks in the grass.
DISCLAIMER The show House M.D. and all related characters are not mine. Neither is the play Barefoot in the Park. The aforementioned titles belong to their respective owners. However, the fiction is mine.
A/N Written in response to cuddy-fest prompt 52 - Cuddy, gen: Barefoot in the Park. I did read the play of the same title when I was trying to feed my muse. It kinda helped. Also, I guessed a bit at the dandelion part - Wikipedia being my only source D: - so I may have gotten that wrong. This is my first fic over 100 words. Here goes nothing!
Cuddy loved the summertime. She loved the smell of the air, the vibrancy of the colors around her. She loved how the sun shone brightly in the sky, giving her warmth inside and out.
In the summer, in her small moments of freedom, she would go to the park. The peaceful sounds of the gentle breeze through the trees, children’s laughter in new discovery and their innocent camaraderie… these she treasured. Life stood still for just a second, creating a portrait in her mind that she would bring up in the worst times.
When she felt like this, and when nobody was looking, she would walk barefoot on the grass, loving the gentle prickle on her skin. She loved hearing the squish of the morning mud in between her toes, fresh and wet from the early morning sprinklers, and the feeling of the light dampness of dew on the ground. Other times, at dusk, as the sun was setting and the sky was a brilliant array of reds and violets, she would smell the chill of the air around her, the wind blowing gently through her hair.
Regardless of the time of day, she could always relax like this. Sometimes she believed it was because walking on the slightly rough land stimulated the pleasure centers in her feet. Sometimes she believed it was because she felt like a child again, carefree, optimistic. And sometimes she believed it was because she could get away from the rigidity of an urban life and enjoy the more beautiful things in life.
Walking barefoot was a simple act of humility. She didn’t care what anyone thought of her at the moment. She just was.
---
She seldom had a chance to reflect on her life. She hardly wanted to - in the quiet times where she would pace the length of the green without her shoes, and as the sweet aroma of summer flowers enveloped her senses, her freedom would be halted by thoughts of how plain and scheduled her life was, always following a meter, as if in a poem, or a song. The thought depressed her. As a child, she vowed to herself to always follow her dreams, to be as free as the monarch butterfly she chased for hours that one day as a five year old, to not let anyone stop her from being free-spoken and independent. It was this philosophy that got her so far in life and got her to where she was today.
But she had been so driven to succeed, to be at the top. And when she felt that she was falling, she turned to the tried-and-true methods that had helped others like her succeed, be accepted. She packed away the colors of her childhood and traded them in for a neatly tied package of blacks and whites.
Was it all worth it? Was being an administrative head of a hospital worth it?
She never liked to ponder these things when she walked barefoot in the park. She walked to have an escape from the crazy blandness of life. She walked to feel the colors, to feel the irregularities, to remind herself that she was Lisa Cuddy for Lisa Cuddy, not Lisa Cuddy for the hospital.
Sometimes, it worked.
---
Once, she nearly stepped on a ladybug.
She didn’t notice it, at first. In fact, she wouldn’t have noticed it at all, had she not decided to bend over and straighten out her skirt.
The poor thing would have been dead.
She sidestepped to avoid it, shaken out of her reverie. She realized that this escape was not an escape. She was no longer the Lisa Cuddy of years past. She had changed.
When had she become so ignorant?
Before she had entered high school, she noticed everything. The way her father twiddled his thumbs when he was nervous, the way her mother went for the soup part of the canned chicken noodle soup and left the chicken & noodles to grow cold, the number of birds that would flock to her window when she laid out pinecones covered in peanut butter and birdseed. But when she hit fourteen, it suddenly was very “uncool” to pay so much attention - or at least, that’s what the popular kids said.
“Hey, what’re you looking at? Do I have something in my teeth?” Susan Whittaker, head cheerleader, spun around to meet the eyes of a very scared looking, yet annoying, freshman.
Lisa winced. This was the fourth time today one of THEM had demanded to know why her eyes followed their every move. They were the in-crowd, after all - why wouldn’t she stare? But as soon as Susan had asked, she had noticed that there was, in fact, a very obvious something lodged in her teeth. Thinking that this would be her way up the metaphorical food chain - saving the cheerleader from further embarrassment - Lisa nodded. “A piece of spinach, yeah.”
Everyone turned to stare.
The teen looked away, as if embarrassed. “Y’know what? Nobody asked you. Shut up.”
“But I-“
“Shut. Up.”
Suddenly, she received death glares from the cheerleader’s friends. They promptly ushered Susan to the bathroom, and all witnesses snickered at the little freshman.
She turned away, tears starting to form in her eyes.
She could pinpoint exactly what was wrong in the hospital, find errors in paperwork and calmly fix them. She had the ability to spot something that was going wrong a mile away and stop it. But was that really the only things she could do? Had she really tuned herself to the standards of others, to do just what her job expected her to do and nothing more?
When had she become so swept up in trying to please everyone else?
Sometimes she couldn’t believe that this was her destiny. She had promised herself she would be happy, and yet… happy was not at all what she was.
Happy was not a state of being that she could accept herself in, because true happiness lasted a lifetime. When, in others’ eyes, she walked “happily” in the park, she was just grounding herself to reality, as much as she didn’t want to.
As if barefoot walks in the park could ever lead to happiness.
---
“I found love, spiritual, emotional, and physical love. And I don’t think anyone on earth should be without it.”
-Corie Bratter, Barefoot in the Park
---
She was walking in the park one day when she spotted a couple in their late sixties. Their love was so pronounced, and in their eyes she could see happiness. The man picked up a dandelion, blowing its delicate seeds away as a few giggles escaped from the woman’s mouth.
She learned about dandelions as a child, how the seeds only are mature enough to be spread as the flower itself withers away and dies. She often wondered how the seeds felt to be without their mother, without the love that nursed them to health. As time went on and as she grew older, her rational self told her that it was just a way of life (and that flowers didn’t have feelings anyway).
Was she that seed? Did she really have no feelings? Is that why she felt a constant emptiness inside her, because all her significant connections in life were gone? Her parents were no longer a part of her life. She barely kept in touch with her friends - she was so busy. Any attempt at a relationship was thwarted by the misanthrope of a doctor who thought that because he didn’t have many friends, she couldn’t, either.
House irritated her 9.9 times out of 10. He disregarded hospital protocol, but she couldn’t fire him - he was irritatingly intelligent (and had tenure). She had become used to his behavior, having known him since college, which is why she allowed him to push her buttons.
He was (most) everything she wanted to be. She could do without the bum leg and the annoying attitude, and she could definitely do with more friends than the one he already had. Two, if she was included in that count. Secretly, she admired him for being himself, even if that meant losing acceptance among his peers.
And he probably knew that - House seemed to know everything that was going on with her - which was why, 1% of the time, he let her be. He challenged her without making her cry, and he thanked her once in a while. He let her hold his hand and finish tirades that he could stump with a few words. In that small fraction, she could feel comfortable. She could forget that she had lost sight of her goals somewhere along the way - talking to House, it was like they had never left. She liked it that way, and it made a world of difference to her.
Lisa Cuddy sat quietly in the café, waiting for her espresso to cool. She hated hot espresso, but she also hated pouring tons of milk into the coffee - the coffee taste went away completely, she thought.
She had lost a patient today. Cardiac arrest on the operating table. Technically, it wasn’t her fault - she was just a simple endocrinologist, after all - but she always felt bad after a patient’s death. She put a brave face on for the woman’s family, but she still couldn’t shake her guilt off.
Someone abruptly sat down in front of her.
It was House.
“You’ve got that one-of-my-patients-died look on your face.”
Cuddy glared at him. “Whether or not that did happen, House, it’s my business.”
House scoffed. “’Your business’ never stays ‘your business’. Your face gives it all away.”
“Spare me.” Cuddy took a sip of her espresso, immediately regretting it as she burned her tongue. “Ow,” she muttered quietly.
He smiled faintly. “I could have told you that it was still too hot.”
“Are you here to piss me off?”
Handing her a folder, he stood up. “Just wanted to make sure you hadn’t forgotten your application for Dean of Medicine.”
She looked up at him. “I wasn’t going to apply.”
“Why not? If there’s anyone who’d be good at sucking up to people, it’d be you.”
She handed the folder back to him. “Gee, thanks. And uh. No.”
House placed the folder in front of he and spoke gently. “You’d be better off running the hospital than being a doctor. The guilt kills you too much.”
Cuddy stared at him, straight-faced. “You’re just saying that so if, on the off-chance I do become Dean of Medicine, you’d be able to get what you wanted.”
House grinned. “Just an added bonus.”
Cuddy frowned, slipping the folder into her bag. “I’ll think about it.”
“Good.” He turned and walked away. “Your coffee’s fine now, by the way.”
She took a cautious sip. It was perfect.
As a high-pitched chirp brought her back to Earth, she looked around to see House smirking at her.
“Looking for your shoes, Dr. Cuddy? Because you’re never going to find them if you keep looking up at the sky.”
“Fine, House, whatever,” she said.
“No retort? There must be something in this air that makes you so nice for once. I should probably leave before I get infected.” He turned to leave.
“Why are you here, anyway? As far as I know, you’re always trying to get away from me.”
“Just wanted to make sure you hadn’t gone crazy. You’ve been acting different. I don’t like it.” He turned back to look at her and grinned. “You’re not much fun when you don’t yell at me and tell me to do my job.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Cuddy walked over to where she’d placed her sandals. They weren’t there.
“House, give me my shoes back.”
“Who says I have them?” he said, obviously hiding a pair of sandals behind his infamous Nike Shox.
“You just did.”
“I simply asked a question - you twisted my words around. Nobody likes a plagiarist.”
“Nobody likes a liar.”
“Who says I want to be liked?” He walked around and grimaced as he bent to pick up the shoes in question. “Here, have your shoes. General Hospital’s on in fifteen. Can’t miss that, now.”
She watched him walk away, sitting herself on a nearby bench and wiping her feet off in the process. She then slipped her sandals on, forgetting her misery. Without saying a word, she thought, This may be happiness.
Sometimes .1 is bigger than 9.9.
AUTHOR the-vintage
CHARACTERS / PAIRING hint of House/Cuddy near the end
RATING PG, just in case
SPOILERS some for season 3 and one for season 4 (although very vague)
SUMMARY “She packed away the colors of her childhood and traded them in for a neatly tied package of blacks and whites.” Cuddy ponders her life when she walks in the grass.
DISCLAIMER The show House M.D. and all related characters are not mine. Neither is the play Barefoot in the Park. The aforementioned titles belong to their respective owners. However, the fiction is mine.
A/N Written in response to cuddy-fest prompt 52 - Cuddy, gen: Barefoot in the Park. I did read the play of the same title when I was trying to feed my muse. It kinda helped. Also, I guessed a bit at the dandelion part - Wikipedia being my only source D: - so I may have gotten that wrong. This is my first fic over 100 words. Here goes nothing!
Cuddy loved the summertime. She loved the smell of the air, the vibrancy of the colors around her. She loved how the sun shone brightly in the sky, giving her warmth inside and out.
In the summer, in her small moments of freedom, she would go to the park. The peaceful sounds of the gentle breeze through the trees, children’s laughter in new discovery and their innocent camaraderie… these she treasured. Life stood still for just a second, creating a portrait in her mind that she would bring up in the worst times.
When she felt like this, and when nobody was looking, she would walk barefoot on the grass, loving the gentle prickle on her skin. She loved hearing the squish of the morning mud in between her toes, fresh and wet from the early morning sprinklers, and the feeling of the light dampness of dew on the ground. Other times, at dusk, as the sun was setting and the sky was a brilliant array of reds and violets, she would smell the chill of the air around her, the wind blowing gently through her hair.
Regardless of the time of day, she could always relax like this. Sometimes she believed it was because walking on the slightly rough land stimulated the pleasure centers in her feet. Sometimes she believed it was because she felt like a child again, carefree, optimistic. And sometimes she believed it was because she could get away from the rigidity of an urban life and enjoy the more beautiful things in life.
Walking barefoot was a simple act of humility. She didn’t care what anyone thought of her at the moment. She just was.
---
She seldom had a chance to reflect on her life. She hardly wanted to - in the quiet times where she would pace the length of the green without her shoes, and as the sweet aroma of summer flowers enveloped her senses, her freedom would be halted by thoughts of how plain and scheduled her life was, always following a meter, as if in a poem, or a song. The thought depressed her. As a child, she vowed to herself to always follow her dreams, to be as free as the monarch butterfly she chased for hours that one day as a five year old, to not let anyone stop her from being free-spoken and independent. It was this philosophy that got her so far in life and got her to where she was today.
But she had been so driven to succeed, to be at the top. And when she felt that she was falling, she turned to the tried-and-true methods that had helped others like her succeed, be accepted. She packed away the colors of her childhood and traded them in for a neatly tied package of blacks and whites.
Was it all worth it? Was being an administrative head of a hospital worth it?
She never liked to ponder these things when she walked barefoot in the park. She walked to have an escape from the crazy blandness of life. She walked to feel the colors, to feel the irregularities, to remind herself that she was Lisa Cuddy for Lisa Cuddy, not Lisa Cuddy for the hospital.
Sometimes, it worked.
---
Once, she nearly stepped on a ladybug.
She didn’t notice it, at first. In fact, she wouldn’t have noticed it at all, had she not decided to bend over and straighten out her skirt.
The poor thing would have been dead.
She sidestepped to avoid it, shaken out of her reverie. She realized that this escape was not an escape. She was no longer the Lisa Cuddy of years past. She had changed.
When had she become so ignorant?
Before she had entered high school, she noticed everything. The way her father twiddled his thumbs when he was nervous, the way her mother went for the soup part of the canned chicken noodle soup and left the chicken & noodles to grow cold, the number of birds that would flock to her window when she laid out pinecones covered in peanut butter and birdseed. But when she hit fourteen, it suddenly was very “uncool” to pay so much attention - or at least, that’s what the popular kids said.
“Hey, what’re you looking at? Do I have something in my teeth?” Susan Whittaker, head cheerleader, spun around to meet the eyes of a very scared looking, yet annoying, freshman.
Lisa winced. This was the fourth time today one of THEM had demanded to know why her eyes followed their every move. They were the in-crowd, after all - why wouldn’t she stare? But as soon as Susan had asked, she had noticed that there was, in fact, a very obvious something lodged in her teeth. Thinking that this would be her way up the metaphorical food chain - saving the cheerleader from further embarrassment - Lisa nodded. “A piece of spinach, yeah.”
Everyone turned to stare.
The teen looked away, as if embarrassed. “Y’know what? Nobody asked you. Shut up.”
“But I-“
“Shut. Up.”
Suddenly, she received death glares from the cheerleader’s friends. They promptly ushered Susan to the bathroom, and all witnesses snickered at the little freshman.
She turned away, tears starting to form in her eyes.
She could pinpoint exactly what was wrong in the hospital, find errors in paperwork and calmly fix them. She had the ability to spot something that was going wrong a mile away and stop it. But was that really the only things she could do? Had she really tuned herself to the standards of others, to do just what her job expected her to do and nothing more?
When had she become so swept up in trying to please everyone else?
Sometimes she couldn’t believe that this was her destiny. She had promised herself she would be happy, and yet… happy was not at all what she was.
Happy was not a state of being that she could accept herself in, because true happiness lasted a lifetime. When, in others’ eyes, she walked “happily” in the park, she was just grounding herself to reality, as much as she didn’t want to.
As if barefoot walks in the park could ever lead to happiness.
---
“I found love, spiritual, emotional, and physical love. And I don’t think anyone on earth should be without it.”
-Corie Bratter, Barefoot in the Park
---
She was walking in the park one day when she spotted a couple in their late sixties. Their love was so pronounced, and in their eyes she could see happiness. The man picked up a dandelion, blowing its delicate seeds away as a few giggles escaped from the woman’s mouth.
She learned about dandelions as a child, how the seeds only are mature enough to be spread as the flower itself withers away and dies. She often wondered how the seeds felt to be without their mother, without the love that nursed them to health. As time went on and as she grew older, her rational self told her that it was just a way of life (and that flowers didn’t have feelings anyway).
Was she that seed? Did she really have no feelings? Is that why she felt a constant emptiness inside her, because all her significant connections in life were gone? Her parents were no longer a part of her life. She barely kept in touch with her friends - she was so busy. Any attempt at a relationship was thwarted by the misanthrope of a doctor who thought that because he didn’t have many friends, she couldn’t, either.
House irritated her 9.9 times out of 10. He disregarded hospital protocol, but she couldn’t fire him - he was irritatingly intelligent (and had tenure). She had become used to his behavior, having known him since college, which is why she allowed him to push her buttons.
He was (most) everything she wanted to be. She could do without the bum leg and the annoying attitude, and she could definitely do with more friends than the one he already had. Two, if she was included in that count. Secretly, she admired him for being himself, even if that meant losing acceptance among his peers.
And he probably knew that - House seemed to know everything that was going on with her - which was why, 1% of the time, he let her be. He challenged her without making her cry, and he thanked her once in a while. He let her hold his hand and finish tirades that he could stump with a few words. In that small fraction, she could feel comfortable. She could forget that she had lost sight of her goals somewhere along the way - talking to House, it was like they had never left. She liked it that way, and it made a world of difference to her.
Lisa Cuddy sat quietly in the café, waiting for her espresso to cool. She hated hot espresso, but she also hated pouring tons of milk into the coffee - the coffee taste went away completely, she thought.
She had lost a patient today. Cardiac arrest on the operating table. Technically, it wasn’t her fault - she was just a simple endocrinologist, after all - but she always felt bad after a patient’s death. She put a brave face on for the woman’s family, but she still couldn’t shake her guilt off.
Someone abruptly sat down in front of her.
It was House.
“You’ve got that one-of-my-patients-died look on your face.”
Cuddy glared at him. “Whether or not that did happen, House, it’s my business.”
House scoffed. “’Your business’ never stays ‘your business’. Your face gives it all away.”
“Spare me.” Cuddy took a sip of her espresso, immediately regretting it as she burned her tongue. “Ow,” she muttered quietly.
He smiled faintly. “I could have told you that it was still too hot.”
“Are you here to piss me off?”
Handing her a folder, he stood up. “Just wanted to make sure you hadn’t forgotten your application for Dean of Medicine.”
She looked up at him. “I wasn’t going to apply.”
“Why not? If there’s anyone who’d be good at sucking up to people, it’d be you.”
She handed the folder back to him. “Gee, thanks. And uh. No.”
House placed the folder in front of he and spoke gently. “You’d be better off running the hospital than being a doctor. The guilt kills you too much.”
Cuddy stared at him, straight-faced. “You’re just saying that so if, on the off-chance I do become Dean of Medicine, you’d be able to get what you wanted.”
House grinned. “Just an added bonus.”
Cuddy frowned, slipping the folder into her bag. “I’ll think about it.”
“Good.” He turned and walked away. “Your coffee’s fine now, by the way.”
She took a cautious sip. It was perfect.
As a high-pitched chirp brought her back to Earth, she looked around to see House smirking at her.
“Looking for your shoes, Dr. Cuddy? Because you’re never going to find them if you keep looking up at the sky.”
“Fine, House, whatever,” she said.
“No retort? There must be something in this air that makes you so nice for once. I should probably leave before I get infected.” He turned to leave.
“Why are you here, anyway? As far as I know, you’re always trying to get away from me.”
“Just wanted to make sure you hadn’t gone crazy. You’ve been acting different. I don’t like it.” He turned back to look at her and grinned. “You’re not much fun when you don’t yell at me and tell me to do my job.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Cuddy walked over to where she’d placed her sandals. They weren’t there.
“House, give me my shoes back.”
“Who says I have them?” he said, obviously hiding a pair of sandals behind his infamous Nike Shox.
“You just did.”
“I simply asked a question - you twisted my words around. Nobody likes a plagiarist.”
“Nobody likes a liar.”
“Who says I want to be liked?” He walked around and grimaced as he bent to pick up the shoes in question. “Here, have your shoes. General Hospital’s on in fifteen. Can’t miss that, now.”
She watched him walk away, sitting herself on a nearby bench and wiping her feet off in the process. She then slipped her sandals on, forgetting her misery. Without saying a word, she thought, This may be happiness.
Sometimes .1 is bigger than 9.9.