Fic and Other Things
First the other things: I have returned from clubbing. My feet hurt. I was foolish enough to dance in heels. Still, it was rather enjoyable, but many creepy people kept staring at my ass. Not fun.
Onto the fic.
Title: Twenty
Author: LadyMurha
Fandom/Pairings: House M.D.; various pairings (both het and slash).
Rating: Only one drabble (#2) is actually graphic. The rest may contain references rated no more than M.
Warnings: May contain spoilers for seasons 1-3 of House.
Disclaimer: Do not own. Sad but true fact: I will never own.
A/N: I would like to thank the marvelous bananacosmic for inspiring this fic: you choose a book and pick the first full sentence in pages 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100. You then write a drabble based on those sentences.
I used the book 'The Shadow of the Wind' by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I had also decided to use pages 110, 120, 130, 140, 150, 160, 170, 180, 190 and 200 in addition to the original page-numbers; some drabbles are actually double-drabbles.
10. A secret’s worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.
House sits in his office. He pretends to read his newspaper, because on the other side of the glass wall there are people who can immediately tell when he’s busy not working.
Chase can tell best of all. It’s scary how well the aquamarine eyes read him when he isn’t noticing.
The consequence of each glance - tranquil, poignant, bewildered - is that House feels something, burning him inside. Perhaps not so metaphorically.
And he wonders how long his mouth can remain shut.
How long until Chase finds out?
A secret this big has to be kept - best of all - from him.
20. Never before had I had the chance to examine a woman so closely and with such precision, yet without the danger of meeting her eyes.
Lisa’s back arches to and fro upon the sweat-soaked sheets. Her hands unable to do a thing, locked up tight in rings of metal. Her eyes blinded by a scarf tied around her head. Mouth open and glistening, a clear bead of saliva balancing on the bottom lip, threatening to slide forward. I study her with a certain delight I didn’t know I could find within me. I say to myself, Allison, you’re one lucky girl. Never before had I had the chance to examine this woman so closely and with such precision, without the danger of meeting her eyes.
30. It was getting dark when we stepped out into Calle Canuda.
The end of the day. Finally.
Wilson packs up his suitcase full of forms and files, to go over at dinner.
Foreman stops at the vending machine for a chocolate bar before leaving.
Cameron hangs her lab-coat meticulously and sweeps her hair back.
Chase pulls on his jacket in the conference room. He sees the snow fluttering by the window, and sighs as he pulls out his gloves.
Cuddy’s long scarf encircles her throat, the ends hiding inside her coat.
House? He doesn’t leave until it’s very late and most visitors have gone; he leaves when the hospital is asleep.
40. I followed Bernarda through a gallery that was full to overflowing with foliage and tropical species.
Wilson had been to many countries. He’d been to Europe (conferences in England, Germany and France; honeymoons in Italy, Greece and Spain); he’d been to many of the American states; he’d even been to Japan once.
But what he really wanted to see were the tropics.
He wanted to see species of plants and trees which grew nowhere else and had the potential to cure disastrous illnesses - wanted to see animals that lived nowhere else in the world. He was aware of the imminent extinction of many of those species, and sometimes he was afraid that he’d be too late.
50. On my 16th birthday I spawned the most ill-fated idea that had ever occurred to me.
Sixteen is a time when foolishness can cost one the rest of his life. Eric decided that he was old enough to do as he wished, and his habit of staying out late, roaming the streets, worsened. He and his brother joined a score of local teens, breaking and entering when the mood suited them. Then there was that one time too many and he’d gotten booked. That’s the kind of thing that goes on your permanent record, the officer said to him at the time. Goes with you like a black tattoo on your back, and everybody can see.
60. A deep voice that whispered and laughed.
House woke up disoriented. He had drifted off to sleep rather late in the previous night, not quite as doped up on Vicodin as he would have liked, but feeling little pain nonetheless. He was sure he slept well, although he remembered dreaming about something. What it was, he couldn’t figure out.
He returned to slumber; within this broken dream he thought he heard a voice laughing. He couldn’t tell whether it was happy or sad; the voice was accompanied by warbled whispers, words going backwards and half-understood truths.
He awoke remembering flashes only, and decided another Vicodin couldn’t hurt.
70. “He would have, but he ran out of time.”
The truth was that Cameron couldn’t give up the chance to marry the one man she loved.
She missed him; there were so many things she wished he would say and do again.
She wished he would say “I love you” again.
She wished he would hold her tightly every morning again, like they used to wake up - entwined like cords in a rope.
She wished he would smile tiredly again when he lifted his head up from a book and would catch her gazing at him.
He would have done these things again, but he ran out of time.
80. That year the autumn blanketed Barcelona with fallen leaves that rippled through the streets like silvery scales.
“I’m so cold!” Cuddy exclaimed, wrapping her coat tighter against herself, her palms furiously rubbing up and down her arms.
“I’ve got gloves,” Wilson offered. He didn’t wait for a response and pulled Cuddy’s woolly hat farther down on her head. Her dark hair flew like smoke tendrils in the chilly wind.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling. She stopped rubbing her arms and checked her watch. “We need to hurry up,” she said. “The one o’clock presentation isn’t gonna wait.” She turned to see the wind blowing a dead leaf right into Wilson’s hands.
He handed her the dried golden-brown magnificence.
90. “You’d better lower your voice, Fermín,” I advised him.
“House! Please, keep your voice down!”
“-Not to mention that extremely sexy lap-dance. Where did that come from?”
“House, I beg you - you can do this at home, but please, not in the middle of the cafeteria, okay?”
“Oh, so dear Wilson has decided to call my humble abode home, has he?”
Wilson looked at House with defiant, bright eyes.
“So what if I have?”
“No, nothing. I just find it sweet.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“I’m not even being sarcastic. I swear. I like that you call it home.”
“Oh. Ok. Just next time, please, keep your voice down.”
100. “Oh dear, I don’t know, I’m not sure about lives of saints.”
When he was young, Robert liked reading about historical figures. His father, strict as he was, took solace in the fact the boy was reading.
In high-school, Robbie pretended to be uninterested when the history teacher droned on about the first Australian explorers.
In seminary, the myths surrounding each saint permeated Robert’s mind, inspired him to pray, although sometimes he wasn’t certain about the prayers.
Dr. R. Chase has read about the lives of those saints, the lives of the explorers, the lives of the historical figures he had so admired, and wasn’t so sure they deserved to be immortalised.
110. I tried to look impressed.
The presentation of the new drug supposedly able to help millions against pain was flashy. Cuddy could tell this was a no-expenses-spared kind of presentation.
Shame that it was boring her out of her mind.
Still, this was showing up at a fund-raiser.
“Enjoying the party?” House’s jovial voice had somehow found her.
“Having a blast. Have you made anyone cry yet?” maybe she shouldn’t have asked.
“I think that gal in the corner looks like a pretty good candidate,” he chuckled and left. Cuddy tried to look impressed once again by the show, and found that she miserably failed.
120. “It’s locked,” I said.
Cameron took the topmost file and sighed. Clinic duty. Necessary to keep Cuddy happy.
Nurse Brenda smiled at her shortly.
“That’s... Nolan? Exam room two.”
Cameron headed over to the correct door and pressed down on the handle.
The door didn’t open.
She tried again, this time pushing the handle down hard and shoving against the door with her shoulder. The door didn’t budge.
That’s strange.
She returned to Nurse Brenda for the key. She didn’t have it. Miss Nolan will have to wait.
(Unbeknownst to her, House and Chase were busy having their own little ‘consultation’ behind the door.)
130. “I got delayed on the way. Where’s my father?”
He tried to reconstruct it in his memory, hours later: the phone-call stating the fatal news, the - he didn’t know what followed. Shock, possibly devastation. He remembered that tears hadn’t formed in his eyes. Thankfully. He didn’t even know where the call came from.
And there he sat, on the couch, the air silent around him, trying to digest news that probably won’t matter pretty soon. He hadn’t known saying goodbye by the tail-lights of a cab would be the last goodbye.
I’ll visit Melbourne in the autumn, he said. Well, he had delayed, and his father wasn’t here anymore.
140. I spread the letter out on the desk and read it, breathless.
It really shouldn’t be that exciting, getting a letter. But when the letter comes from one of the more prestigious medical journals, you have every reason to be excited. And when Foreman’s eyes flashed over the typed words - is this what he thinks it is? - telling him that yes, they would be delighted to publish his article, he knew he had every right to be excited. Cameron would probably be on his case for a while; so they happened to write a similar article and his just got recognition first - she needed to deal with that. But the feeling’s good.
150. “But, woman, coming from your nubile hands, this offering, this fleshy fruit of the original sin, ignites my-”
“House.” Cuddy stops his aggravated pacing around the room with one well-aimed hand to the chest.
“Is this a new way of attempting to kill pain? Because I have to say, it’s not working.”
“Any more Vicodin and your liver will shut down. You have to take it easy for a while; rest at home-”
“Resting isn’t going to alleviate my pain.”
“So do some exercise. Physical exertion can help you focus on the other muscles.”
“I won’t be able to focus if I’m in pain.”
“You have to distract yourself from it, then!”
“Easier said than done. What do you want me to do? Grab your ass? God knows that’s enough of a distraction.”
“You have your porn, you don’t need my ass.”
“But you know what that ass does to me. I get all hot and-”
“-Don’t you have some patient to go treat?” Cuddy interjects when it seems House is intent on embarrassing her with further innuendo.
“How can I concentrate when your voluminous tuches holds my attention so steadfastly? Not to mention, oh yeah, I’m in pain?”
“You’ll live. Now, out!” She can’t quite stop herself from grinning when she pushes him out through the door.
160. “True to character.”
Chase finished changing out of his scrubs. The bloody surgery (damn pun intended) took far longer than the surgery team thought it would, and all he wanted right now was to go home and sleep. Possibly with a side-dish of something delicious to snack on.
All the way home he hoped that House didn’t wait up, because he would get such a scolding if he was awake, and Chase didn’t have the patience for arguments right now.
The TV played a movie on mute. There was light in the kitchen; he could see several closed take-away boxes on the counter. The piano rang out in the darkness of the living-room.
“I’m not going to rant and rave at you,” House said as he glanced over his shoulder at an exhausted Chase. “You’re going to eat and then you’re going to sleep, and you’re not allowed to comment on the piano while I stay up.”
“Yes, master,” Chase answered with a mock salute. “I will say hello and give a kiss to my tired slave.”
“I wasn’t joking,” House said, but the small grin was there all the same.
Chase awarded him with a small kiss before heading to the kitchen.
170. “Nobody talks about it anymore, but there are lots of nameless graves, like Julian’s.”
Everyone tries to bury someone from their past. It’s a known fact.
House tries to bury Stacy every time his leg twinges on a bad day and it feels like plain old Vicodin just won’t do it.
Wilson tries to bury his wives, wondering exactly at what moment he knew that the relationship was doomed and was on its way to complete and spectacular failure.
Cuddy wants to bury the tiny people that lived, for a short while, inside her, and their ultimate culmination in a soggy mass of blood.
Chase wants to bury his mother. The alcohol reduced her from a beautiful woman to a wreck, and more than anything Chase wants to bury that memory and never let it hinder him again.
Cameron wants to bury her best friend from college, because if she hadn’t introduced them, she wouldn’t have had to justify marrying a cancer patient to House again and again.
Foreman wants to bury his brother, still in jail and rotting to the core of his soul; wants to bury the shame that he feels about him, just because he made nothing of himself.
No-one wants a name on the gravestone. It’s also a known fact.
180. “Stupid of me.”
Chase’s lilting accent rises in volume. “You nearly killed someone today, you realise that?”
House’s voice is thick and low. “I need-”
“Yes, I know what you need.” Chase isn’t angry; he’s bitter. “You care about that more than a little girl who could have died-”
“So you saved her, well done! Is that what you want to hear?” House finally breaks.
“No. Never mind.” Chase sits on the couch heavily and huffs. “Stupid of me to draw your attention to a patient who nearly died because of your addiction.”
House supposes that’s the real reason Chase left that night.
190. I spent the Saturday in a trance, anchored behind the bookshop counter in hopes of seeing Bea come through the door as if by magic.
Chase doesn’t want to admit it, but he kind of enjoys waiting around for a chance to be alone with Cameron on Tuesdays. He likes to sit and wait until she arrives at the lab for whatever test they have to do (there’s always something) and savours telling her he likes her; it’s killing the quiet time until the storm will arrive with its noise and lightning flashes. It’s almost like a very subtle game: a childish, playful seduction. It’s strange that the seduction occurs after the sex, but then again, since when has his relationship with Cameron been normal?
200. “Hence our interest in reconstructing the past and recovering the memory of an illustrious person, whom the Fates tore away from the side of a poor child.”
John House has done a lot of things in his time. Gregory House supposed it would be fitting to call him illustrious, but he had no interest in recalling anything to do with his father.
Foreman knew he put his mother through a lot, but knew she couldn’t remember any of it now. He knew apologising won’t matter to her - she won’t know what he’s apologising for.
Rowan Chase did good by Robert - that is, until he left and wasn’t heard from again. From then on he didn’t want to remember - couldn’t focus on remembering. His mother made sure of that.
Wilson’s memories of his estranged brother got lost, somehow - maybe they just refused to come out. Dinners with his parents became a lot more awkward after that, because it was hard to remember anything else.
Cameron sometimes thinks about what it would’ve been like to have given birth. She’s glad that she hadn’t, because her child would be missing a parent. That would’ve been hard to explain.
Cuddy wonders what her children’s life could be like: she couldn’t picture the father, but she knew that she wouldn’t be able to be there as much as she wanted to.
Onto the fic.
Title: Twenty
Author: LadyMurha
Fandom/Pairings: House M.D.; various pairings (both het and slash).
Rating: Only one drabble (#2) is actually graphic. The rest may contain references rated no more than M.
Warnings: May contain spoilers for seasons 1-3 of House.
Disclaimer: Do not own. Sad but true fact: I will never own.
A/N: I would like to thank the marvelous bananacosmic for inspiring this fic: you choose a book and pick the first full sentence in pages 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100. You then write a drabble based on those sentences.
I used the book 'The Shadow of the Wind' by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I had also decided to use pages 110, 120, 130, 140, 150, 160, 170, 180, 190 and 200 in addition to the original page-numbers; some drabbles are actually double-drabbles.
10. A secret’s worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.
House sits in his office. He pretends to read his newspaper, because on the other side of the glass wall there are people who can immediately tell when he’s busy not working.
Chase can tell best of all. It’s scary how well the aquamarine eyes read him when he isn’t noticing.
The consequence of each glance - tranquil, poignant, bewildered - is that House feels something, burning him inside. Perhaps not so metaphorically.
And he wonders how long his mouth can remain shut.
How long until Chase finds out?
A secret this big has to be kept - best of all - from him.
20. Never before had I had the chance to examine a woman so closely and with such precision, yet without the danger of meeting her eyes.
Lisa’s back arches to and fro upon the sweat-soaked sheets. Her hands unable to do a thing, locked up tight in rings of metal. Her eyes blinded by a scarf tied around her head. Mouth open and glistening, a clear bead of saliva balancing on the bottom lip, threatening to slide forward. I study her with a certain delight I didn’t know I could find within me. I say to myself, Allison, you’re one lucky girl. Never before had I had the chance to examine this woman so closely and with such precision, without the danger of meeting her eyes.
30. It was getting dark when we stepped out into Calle Canuda.
The end of the day. Finally.
Wilson packs up his suitcase full of forms and files, to go over at dinner.
Foreman stops at the vending machine for a chocolate bar before leaving.
Cameron hangs her lab-coat meticulously and sweeps her hair back.
Chase pulls on his jacket in the conference room. He sees the snow fluttering by the window, and sighs as he pulls out his gloves.
Cuddy’s long scarf encircles her throat, the ends hiding inside her coat.
House? He doesn’t leave until it’s very late and most visitors have gone; he leaves when the hospital is asleep.
40. I followed Bernarda through a gallery that was full to overflowing with foliage and tropical species.
Wilson had been to many countries. He’d been to Europe (conferences in England, Germany and France; honeymoons in Italy, Greece and Spain); he’d been to many of the American states; he’d even been to Japan once.
But what he really wanted to see were the tropics.
He wanted to see species of plants and trees which grew nowhere else and had the potential to cure disastrous illnesses - wanted to see animals that lived nowhere else in the world. He was aware of the imminent extinction of many of those species, and sometimes he was afraid that he’d be too late.
50. On my 16th birthday I spawned the most ill-fated idea that had ever occurred to me.
Sixteen is a time when foolishness can cost one the rest of his life. Eric decided that he was old enough to do as he wished, and his habit of staying out late, roaming the streets, worsened. He and his brother joined a score of local teens, breaking and entering when the mood suited them. Then there was that one time too many and he’d gotten booked. That’s the kind of thing that goes on your permanent record, the officer said to him at the time. Goes with you like a black tattoo on your back, and everybody can see.
60. A deep voice that whispered and laughed.
House woke up disoriented. He had drifted off to sleep rather late in the previous night, not quite as doped up on Vicodin as he would have liked, but feeling little pain nonetheless. He was sure he slept well, although he remembered dreaming about something. What it was, he couldn’t figure out.
He returned to slumber; within this broken dream he thought he heard a voice laughing. He couldn’t tell whether it was happy or sad; the voice was accompanied by warbled whispers, words going backwards and half-understood truths.
He awoke remembering flashes only, and decided another Vicodin couldn’t hurt.
70. “He would have, but he ran out of time.”
The truth was that Cameron couldn’t give up the chance to marry the one man she loved.
She missed him; there were so many things she wished he would say and do again.
She wished he would say “I love you” again.
She wished he would hold her tightly every morning again, like they used to wake up - entwined like cords in a rope.
She wished he would smile tiredly again when he lifted his head up from a book and would catch her gazing at him.
He would have done these things again, but he ran out of time.
80. That year the autumn blanketed Barcelona with fallen leaves that rippled through the streets like silvery scales.
“I’m so cold!” Cuddy exclaimed, wrapping her coat tighter against herself, her palms furiously rubbing up and down her arms.
“I’ve got gloves,” Wilson offered. He didn’t wait for a response and pulled Cuddy’s woolly hat farther down on her head. Her dark hair flew like smoke tendrils in the chilly wind.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling. She stopped rubbing her arms and checked her watch. “We need to hurry up,” she said. “The one o’clock presentation isn’t gonna wait.” She turned to see the wind blowing a dead leaf right into Wilson’s hands.
He handed her the dried golden-brown magnificence.
90. “You’d better lower your voice, Fermín,” I advised him.
“House! Please, keep your voice down!”
“-Not to mention that extremely sexy lap-dance. Where did that come from?”
“House, I beg you - you can do this at home, but please, not in the middle of the cafeteria, okay?”
“Oh, so dear Wilson has decided to call my humble abode home, has he?”
Wilson looked at House with defiant, bright eyes.
“So what if I have?”
“No, nothing. I just find it sweet.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“I’m not even being sarcastic. I swear. I like that you call it home.”
“Oh. Ok. Just next time, please, keep your voice down.”
100. “Oh dear, I don’t know, I’m not sure about lives of saints.”
When he was young, Robert liked reading about historical figures. His father, strict as he was, took solace in the fact the boy was reading.
In high-school, Robbie pretended to be uninterested when the history teacher droned on about the first Australian explorers.
In seminary, the myths surrounding each saint permeated Robert’s mind, inspired him to pray, although sometimes he wasn’t certain about the prayers.
Dr. R. Chase has read about the lives of those saints, the lives of the explorers, the lives of the historical figures he had so admired, and wasn’t so sure they deserved to be immortalised.
110. I tried to look impressed.
The presentation of the new drug supposedly able to help millions against pain was flashy. Cuddy could tell this was a no-expenses-spared kind of presentation.
Shame that it was boring her out of her mind.
Still, this was showing up at a fund-raiser.
“Enjoying the party?” House’s jovial voice had somehow found her.
“Having a blast. Have you made anyone cry yet?” maybe she shouldn’t have asked.
“I think that gal in the corner looks like a pretty good candidate,” he chuckled and left. Cuddy tried to look impressed once again by the show, and found that she miserably failed.
120. “It’s locked,” I said.
Cameron took the topmost file and sighed. Clinic duty. Necessary to keep Cuddy happy.
Nurse Brenda smiled at her shortly.
“That’s... Nolan? Exam room two.”
Cameron headed over to the correct door and pressed down on the handle.
The door didn’t open.
She tried again, this time pushing the handle down hard and shoving against the door with her shoulder. The door didn’t budge.
That’s strange.
She returned to Nurse Brenda for the key. She didn’t have it. Miss Nolan will have to wait.
(Unbeknownst to her, House and Chase were busy having their own little ‘consultation’ behind the door.)
130. “I got delayed on the way. Where’s my father?”
He tried to reconstruct it in his memory, hours later: the phone-call stating the fatal news, the - he didn’t know what followed. Shock, possibly devastation. He remembered that tears hadn’t formed in his eyes. Thankfully. He didn’t even know where the call came from.
And there he sat, on the couch, the air silent around him, trying to digest news that probably won’t matter pretty soon. He hadn’t known saying goodbye by the tail-lights of a cab would be the last goodbye.
I’ll visit Melbourne in the autumn, he said. Well, he had delayed, and his father wasn’t here anymore.
140. I spread the letter out on the desk and read it, breathless.
It really shouldn’t be that exciting, getting a letter. But when the letter comes from one of the more prestigious medical journals, you have every reason to be excited. And when Foreman’s eyes flashed over the typed words - is this what he thinks it is? - telling him that yes, they would be delighted to publish his article, he knew he had every right to be excited. Cameron would probably be on his case for a while; so they happened to write a similar article and his just got recognition first - she needed to deal with that. But the feeling’s good.
150. “But, woman, coming from your nubile hands, this offering, this fleshy fruit of the original sin, ignites my-”
“House.” Cuddy stops his aggravated pacing around the room with one well-aimed hand to the chest.
“Is this a new way of attempting to kill pain? Because I have to say, it’s not working.”
“Any more Vicodin and your liver will shut down. You have to take it easy for a while; rest at home-”
“Resting isn’t going to alleviate my pain.”
“So do some exercise. Physical exertion can help you focus on the other muscles.”
“I won’t be able to focus if I’m in pain.”
“You have to distract yourself from it, then!”
“Easier said than done. What do you want me to do? Grab your ass? God knows that’s enough of a distraction.”
“You have your porn, you don’t need my ass.”
“But you know what that ass does to me. I get all hot and-”
“-Don’t you have some patient to go treat?” Cuddy interjects when it seems House is intent on embarrassing her with further innuendo.
“How can I concentrate when your voluminous tuches holds my attention so steadfastly? Not to mention, oh yeah, I’m in pain?”
“You’ll live. Now, out!” She can’t quite stop herself from grinning when she pushes him out through the door.
160. “True to character.”
Chase finished changing out of his scrubs. The bloody surgery (damn pun intended) took far longer than the surgery team thought it would, and all he wanted right now was to go home and sleep. Possibly with a side-dish of something delicious to snack on.
All the way home he hoped that House didn’t wait up, because he would get such a scolding if he was awake, and Chase didn’t have the patience for arguments right now.
The TV played a movie on mute. There was light in the kitchen; he could see several closed take-away boxes on the counter. The piano rang out in the darkness of the living-room.
“I’m not going to rant and rave at you,” House said as he glanced over his shoulder at an exhausted Chase. “You’re going to eat and then you’re going to sleep, and you’re not allowed to comment on the piano while I stay up.”
“Yes, master,” Chase answered with a mock salute. “I will say hello and give a kiss to my tired slave.”
“I wasn’t joking,” House said, but the small grin was there all the same.
Chase awarded him with a small kiss before heading to the kitchen.
170. “Nobody talks about it anymore, but there are lots of nameless graves, like Julian’s.”
Everyone tries to bury someone from their past. It’s a known fact.
House tries to bury Stacy every time his leg twinges on a bad day and it feels like plain old Vicodin just won’t do it.
Wilson tries to bury his wives, wondering exactly at what moment he knew that the relationship was doomed and was on its way to complete and spectacular failure.
Cuddy wants to bury the tiny people that lived, for a short while, inside her, and their ultimate culmination in a soggy mass of blood.
Chase wants to bury his mother. The alcohol reduced her from a beautiful woman to a wreck, and more than anything Chase wants to bury that memory and never let it hinder him again.
Cameron wants to bury her best friend from college, because if she hadn’t introduced them, she wouldn’t have had to justify marrying a cancer patient to House again and again.
Foreman wants to bury his brother, still in jail and rotting to the core of his soul; wants to bury the shame that he feels about him, just because he made nothing of himself.
No-one wants a name on the gravestone. It’s also a known fact.
180. “Stupid of me.”
Chase’s lilting accent rises in volume. “You nearly killed someone today, you realise that?”
House’s voice is thick and low. “I need-”
“Yes, I know what you need.” Chase isn’t angry; he’s bitter. “You care about that more than a little girl who could have died-”
“So you saved her, well done! Is that what you want to hear?” House finally breaks.
“No. Never mind.” Chase sits on the couch heavily and huffs. “Stupid of me to draw your attention to a patient who nearly died because of your addiction.”
House supposes that’s the real reason Chase left that night.
190. I spent the Saturday in a trance, anchored behind the bookshop counter in hopes of seeing Bea come through the door as if by magic.
Chase doesn’t want to admit it, but he kind of enjoys waiting around for a chance to be alone with Cameron on Tuesdays. He likes to sit and wait until she arrives at the lab for whatever test they have to do (there’s always something) and savours telling her he likes her; it’s killing the quiet time until the storm will arrive with its noise and lightning flashes. It’s almost like a very subtle game: a childish, playful seduction. It’s strange that the seduction occurs after the sex, but then again, since when has his relationship with Cameron been normal?
200. “Hence our interest in reconstructing the past and recovering the memory of an illustrious person, whom the Fates tore away from the side of a poor child.”
John House has done a lot of things in his time. Gregory House supposed it would be fitting to call him illustrious, but he had no interest in recalling anything to do with his father.
Foreman knew he put his mother through a lot, but knew she couldn’t remember any of it now. He knew apologising won’t matter to her - she won’t know what he’s apologising for.
Rowan Chase did good by Robert - that is, until he left and wasn’t heard from again. From then on he didn’t want to remember - couldn’t focus on remembering. His mother made sure of that.
Wilson’s memories of his estranged brother got lost, somehow - maybe they just refused to come out. Dinners with his parents became a lot more awkward after that, because it was hard to remember anything else.
Cameron sometimes thinks about what it would’ve been like to have given birth. She’s glad that she hadn’t, because her child would be missing a parent. That would’ve been hard to explain.
Cuddy wonders what her children’s life could be like: she couldn’t picture the father, but she knew that she wouldn’t be able to be there as much as she wanted to.