Fic: Hooked
Title: Hooked
Summary: House remembers, and compares the worlds of music and medicine with an introspective look at his role in each and his life choices.
Words: 900
Disclaimer: They’re all mine. Okay fine, they’re not, but I still claim Dr. Khan.
A/N: So, upon re-reading this, I realize, I'm dissatisfied with it, but it's already been posted, and is what it is. I may rework some of the ideas from it into something else at some point. If you have any thoughts on it, feel free to let me know and be brutally honest. :)
Small ceiling fans rotated quickly, chopping through the air. Thick summer heat remained unbroken though the scents of cheap beer, cheap cigarettes and cheap women intermingled and circulated through the blades. The cramped one-room bar was made warmer still by all the people within pretending to be something they weren’t. Intoxication and much practice allowed some to fool even themselves.
They had been his brethren when he tried to live a lie there, but he had moved on. The push to do so may have been unnecessary, but it had come. In the incarnation of Dr. Khan, one of the few professors he didn’t consider a complete fool.
House had been lost in the slightly chipped black and white keys of the old piano that sounded far better than it looked. Dr. Khan, and everyone else, went unnoticed until the band took a break.
Tie absent, shirt rumpled, and five o’clock shadow darkening his face - the usually immaculate college professor fit in better than he should have in that dump.
A slap on the back and beer were offered in falsely cheery welcome. House, never one to turn down a free drink, didn’t bother paying much attention to what the older man said. How interesting could the drunken ramblings of a middle-aged man drowning his sorrows over some failure or the other really be?
But then, the man had bore into House’s eyes with his own as if searching for something. He seemed to have found it because when he spoke again, he had shaken the slur from his speech and replaced it with fervent intensity.
“Young man, I have nothing to say about the work, or years, or money or any of that. You can figure that out on your own. You can probably figure this out on your own too, but I’ll save you some time. If there’s anything else in the world that you could be happy doing, anything at all, go do it. You won’t last if there’s an alternative, and really, it wouldn’t be worth it. But if medicine’s got its hooks in you, nothing else will satisfy,” he said before tossing down some cash. And like some mysterious drunken oracle, he stumbled off without another word. Probably to chase after some woman who was even younger than House had been then.