"I wanna see what they see, I wanna love you like crazy..."
Title: Gold Star
Fandom: House MD
Pairing: House/Cuddy
Challenge/Prompt: 100_prompts, 019. Found
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Het
Summary: {This isn’t Neverland and we don’t fall in love just because we’re told to.}
Author’s Notes: Written in 43 minutes, after midnight at a time when I’m vague and loquacious. I really like it because it’s simple and it isn’t. Be warned that because of the style and time there are quite a lot of run on sentences, but it’s an artistic statement and I did try to insert some punctuation and everything.
One point one.
There are some decisions no one should have to make and maybe this is one of them. It’s not the decision about whether I like you or not because everyone has tried to make that one, and, regardless of love or personal attachment, I think it’s fairly obvious that everyone’s decided that pretty much everything about you is repellent. It’s not even the decision about whether to fire you or not, something I think I’ll eventually sort out with a heads or tails coin toss because it seems more logical than fighting through the pros and cons of having someone as insane as you working as head of diagnostics.
This is the decision where I can feel your lips on mine, although we were arguing a minute or five ago, and now I simply have to work out whether to slap you or kiss you back.
I wish you’d make things easier on me.
One point two.
We don’t start at the beginning because we don’t know where we began. Or maybe we do and my memory’s not what it was. I can remember enough but not quite where we first met, whether it was Medical School or the job interview or you lying on your back begging for drugs in all shades of exhaustion. I can’t remember because I find myself inventing things that never happened; things I wanted to happen and they blur together until I’m no longer sure what the hell happened. Maybe nothing did, maybe this is all happening for the first time.
I’m not good at beginnings and there’s something about ends that physically hurts, but I like it here in the middle, lost with you and the tension and the spark it creates.
Maybe this could work after all.
One point three.
The differences aren’t as pronounced as they could be and in some ways this unsettles and disturbs me. You convert the people around you easily and callously, pushing them until they fold like damp paper and become the shapes and sizes you need them to be. I like to think that you haven’t done that to me, but it’s probably only because of one rather awkward truth. You spend a lot of time telling me all about how we’re opposites, nemeses {the drugs might make you neutral, but alcohol makes you loquacious and philosophically so; at least, you talk in extended metaphors and I try to keep up}, designed to forever be each other’s flip sides. It’s nice, but it isn’t true. For once, you’re actually wrong.
We’re not two sides of the same coin, we’re the same side of the same coin, far too similar, overcrowded and chafing. And it’s almost hilarious how you haven’t noticed.
One point four.
When I was younger I had this dream about falling in love and getting married. I imagine that Cameron’s dreams were more complicated and there were waterfalls of lace and that kind of thing, but mine weren’t like that. I’m a middle sister; I’ll never be the oldest or the baby and I run a hospital now, which means I won, but in some ways all I really wanted was love. I had all these aspirations and hopes for babies and veils and it was all a bit vague but it still made perfect sense to me and I’m not going to get any of these things from you. Stacy tried and tried and tried and if she couldn’t extract a ring from you then I’m almost certain that I can’t. But I’m not entirely stupid and I’m not eight so I’m not naïve any more and I have learned a thing or two. You know. Little things.
{This isn’t Neverland and we don’t fall in love just because we’re told to.}
And I’m glad.
One point five.
When you’re furious with me your eyes flash and I like it; something about that rage gives me power or perhaps just relief that I can invoke a reaction in you. You take too many drugs and you break too many hearts and you hurt too many feelings and you’re this big mulch of emotions and complications, which, as far as I can tell, all boils down to the fact that you’re angry. Not angry about the leg, or about Stacy, or about the human race in general, but you’re angry about something so deep down that it doesn’t matter any more, because you can’t function without that simmering resentment of everything around you.
I love that I can still make you grit your teeth and swallow your words whole; even Wilson is losing his grip on how to hold you together but I’m still hanging on and maybe one day I’ll be rewarded for it.
One point six.
We twist because we want to fit somewhere, and there has to be something, somewhere along the line, that can fix it all and put it back where it ought to be. I’m not enough to make you right and you’re not what I thought I wanted, but perhaps we’ve got just about enough desperation and fury and flirtation and blue eyes to keep this moving and changing into something new and different and I dig my fingers in to grab fistfuls of your t-shirt before I lose you entirely and your mouth is on mine and my hair is messy and I’ve got ladders in my pantyhose and a meeting in ten minutes but none of that matters because somewhere along the line I’ll work out where you fit.
That’s all that really matters; not who can fix you, but who is actually there to admit that they can’t.
One point seven.
You say that you do this - whatever it is that this is - to preserve your humanity, and I comply, but I can’t help thinking that we’re preserving something that’s already gone.
One point eight.
I think someone mentioned to me a long time ago that this was unethical and I said that I didn’t mind; come to think of it, it was probably you. You know all the rules so that you know when you’re breaking them and can be proud of it. No point crossing lines unless that you know they’re there. After all, you’re all about the look of the thing. You pretend not to care about what other people think but all you really want is the attention. You solve the puzzles for you, that much is clear, but you need people because you need to show them just how much you don’t care and just how far you’ll go.
I sit back and enjoy the show because there’s nothing else I can do {I’m not sure I want to intervene anyway}.
One point nine.
Sunlight streams through the blinds, indicating that another day’s arrived when neither of us are dead and somehow you’re still breathing, no matter how much you say that you’d rather not be. I don’t think you want to die and I don’t think you do either. You like hurting but that’s another edge to you that I pretend isn’t there because if I acknowledge it then I have to stop this and then I’d have to fire you. You like self-destructing but in certain lighting I think that you like me more. Perhaps I’m crediting myself too much, but you don’t have a lot of people in this world and I’m there for you at times when no one else will be.
I think I’ve given everything I can for you, and it isn’t enough, but we both know that although you’re not beyond saving, you’ve carefully erased all evidence of what it is that you need so that no one will ever be able to make you whole again.
Two.
I think, last week, for twenty minutes {or maybe half an hour} I loved you. Not the never-ending love of fairytales and Cameron, or the half-assed but excruciatingly genuine love of romantics and Wilson, but the compromising gut-wrench of love that most people learn to deal with and even like. It was a strange feeling and I kind of liked it, in that slightly scared and fascinated way that I react to things I’m not expecting and am rather horrified by. We make this work and that’s all anyone can really ask for, and maybe one day it will become something beautiful and maybe it really won’t.
Whatever happens, it’ll be more than we were ever expecting. You can’t always have the one you love, can’t take a deep breath and say the words you always meant to, can’t fit the pieces together and reveal the big picture you knew was there all along. It’s really about middle ground and need and unanticipated longing that becomes reciprocated without you realising it.
And maybe that’s who we are now. Maybe that’s just about enough.
Fandom: House MD
Pairing: House/Cuddy
Challenge/Prompt: 100_prompts, 019. Found
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Het
Summary: {This isn’t Neverland and we don’t fall in love just because we’re told to.}
Author’s Notes: Written in 43 minutes, after midnight at a time when I’m vague and loquacious. I really like it because it’s simple and it isn’t. Be warned that because of the style and time there are quite a lot of run on sentences, but it’s an artistic statement and I did try to insert some punctuation and everything.
One point one.
There are some decisions no one should have to make and maybe this is one of them. It’s not the decision about whether I like you or not because everyone has tried to make that one, and, regardless of love or personal attachment, I think it’s fairly obvious that everyone’s decided that pretty much everything about you is repellent. It’s not even the decision about whether to fire you or not, something I think I’ll eventually sort out with a heads or tails coin toss because it seems more logical than fighting through the pros and cons of having someone as insane as you working as head of diagnostics.
This is the decision where I can feel your lips on mine, although we were arguing a minute or five ago, and now I simply have to work out whether to slap you or kiss you back.
I wish you’d make things easier on me.
One point two.
We don’t start at the beginning because we don’t know where we began. Or maybe we do and my memory’s not what it was. I can remember enough but not quite where we first met, whether it was Medical School or the job interview or you lying on your back begging for drugs in all shades of exhaustion. I can’t remember because I find myself inventing things that never happened; things I wanted to happen and they blur together until I’m no longer sure what the hell happened. Maybe nothing did, maybe this is all happening for the first time.
I’m not good at beginnings and there’s something about ends that physically hurts, but I like it here in the middle, lost with you and the tension and the spark it creates.
Maybe this could work after all.
One point three.
The differences aren’t as pronounced as they could be and in some ways this unsettles and disturbs me. You convert the people around you easily and callously, pushing them until they fold like damp paper and become the shapes and sizes you need them to be. I like to think that you haven’t done that to me, but it’s probably only because of one rather awkward truth. You spend a lot of time telling me all about how we’re opposites, nemeses {the drugs might make you neutral, but alcohol makes you loquacious and philosophically so; at least, you talk in extended metaphors and I try to keep up}, designed to forever be each other’s flip sides. It’s nice, but it isn’t true. For once, you’re actually wrong.
We’re not two sides of the same coin, we’re the same side of the same coin, far too similar, overcrowded and chafing. And it’s almost hilarious how you haven’t noticed.
One point four.
When I was younger I had this dream about falling in love and getting married. I imagine that Cameron’s dreams were more complicated and there were waterfalls of lace and that kind of thing, but mine weren’t like that. I’m a middle sister; I’ll never be the oldest or the baby and I run a hospital now, which means I won, but in some ways all I really wanted was love. I had all these aspirations and hopes for babies and veils and it was all a bit vague but it still made perfect sense to me and I’m not going to get any of these things from you. Stacy tried and tried and tried and if she couldn’t extract a ring from you then I’m almost certain that I can’t. But I’m not entirely stupid and I’m not eight so I’m not naïve any more and I have learned a thing or two. You know. Little things.
{This isn’t Neverland and we don’t fall in love just because we’re told to.}
And I’m glad.
One point five.
When you’re furious with me your eyes flash and I like it; something about that rage gives me power or perhaps just relief that I can invoke a reaction in you. You take too many drugs and you break too many hearts and you hurt too many feelings and you’re this big mulch of emotions and complications, which, as far as I can tell, all boils down to the fact that you’re angry. Not angry about the leg, or about Stacy, or about the human race in general, but you’re angry about something so deep down that it doesn’t matter any more, because you can’t function without that simmering resentment of everything around you.
I love that I can still make you grit your teeth and swallow your words whole; even Wilson is losing his grip on how to hold you together but I’m still hanging on and maybe one day I’ll be rewarded for it.
One point six.
We twist because we want to fit somewhere, and there has to be something, somewhere along the line, that can fix it all and put it back where it ought to be. I’m not enough to make you right and you’re not what I thought I wanted, but perhaps we’ve got just about enough desperation and fury and flirtation and blue eyes to keep this moving and changing into something new and different and I dig my fingers in to grab fistfuls of your t-shirt before I lose you entirely and your mouth is on mine and my hair is messy and I’ve got ladders in my pantyhose and a meeting in ten minutes but none of that matters because somewhere along the line I’ll work out where you fit.
That’s all that really matters; not who can fix you, but who is actually there to admit that they can’t.
One point seven.
You say that you do this - whatever it is that this is - to preserve your humanity, and I comply, but I can’t help thinking that we’re preserving something that’s already gone.
One point eight.
I think someone mentioned to me a long time ago that this was unethical and I said that I didn’t mind; come to think of it, it was probably you. You know all the rules so that you know when you’re breaking them and can be proud of it. No point crossing lines unless that you know they’re there. After all, you’re all about the look of the thing. You pretend not to care about what other people think but all you really want is the attention. You solve the puzzles for you, that much is clear, but you need people because you need to show them just how much you don’t care and just how far you’ll go.
I sit back and enjoy the show because there’s nothing else I can do {I’m not sure I want to intervene anyway}.
One point nine.
Sunlight streams through the blinds, indicating that another day’s arrived when neither of us are dead and somehow you’re still breathing, no matter how much you say that you’d rather not be. I don’t think you want to die and I don’t think you do either. You like hurting but that’s another edge to you that I pretend isn’t there because if I acknowledge it then I have to stop this and then I’d have to fire you. You like self-destructing but in certain lighting I think that you like me more. Perhaps I’m crediting myself too much, but you don’t have a lot of people in this world and I’m there for you at times when no one else will be.
I think I’ve given everything I can for you, and it isn’t enough, but we both know that although you’re not beyond saving, you’ve carefully erased all evidence of what it is that you need so that no one will ever be able to make you whole again.
Two.
I think, last week, for twenty minutes {or maybe half an hour} I loved you. Not the never-ending love of fairytales and Cameron, or the half-assed but excruciatingly genuine love of romantics and Wilson, but the compromising gut-wrench of love that most people learn to deal with and even like. It was a strange feeling and I kind of liked it, in that slightly scared and fascinated way that I react to things I’m not expecting and am rather horrified by. We make this work and that’s all anyone can really ask for, and maybe one day it will become something beautiful and maybe it really won’t.
Whatever happens, it’ll be more than we were ever expecting. You can’t always have the one you love, can’t take a deep breath and say the words you always meant to, can’t fit the pieces together and reveal the big picture you knew was there all along. It’s really about middle ground and need and unanticipated longing that becomes reciprocated without you realising it.
And maybe that’s who we are now. Maybe that’s just about enough.