Fic: Chapter and Verse (1/1) House NC-17

[romanticalgirl]

TITLE: Chapter and Verse
AUTHOR: Laura Smith
PAIRING: Cuddy/Wilson
RATING: NC17
SUMMARY: The past is prologue
DISCLAIMER: House and all the characters therein belong to people who are not me. I make no profit from this, I just like playing with them.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to nolivingman for the beta and pokey stick.

Comments

[nolivingman]

Oh I love it so much. Love love love. It's messy and angsty and grown-up and yes.

[romanticalgirl]

There's so much glorious angst and pain. It's pretty. Mmmmmm. And Cuddy is wearing red! Hee.

[katakombs]

I love how you write Cuddy. The show is all over the board, one week she's so next to incompetent that she can't even announce a speaker (Distractions) and the next she's awesome so I'm glad you picked awesome. She's grown up and knows what she wants and what she can't have.

And I like the insight into Wilson too. I wonder how any relationships he's ruined because his loyalty to House supercedes it. And why he keeps doing it.

The back-and-forth in the story is so good, it keeps me engaged trying to figure out who they are to each other, where they are now. It emphasizes the ups and downs in their relationship

(But I will never believe the debridement was the right thing to do, for emotional as well as medical reasons. House may have done it himself if he'd been the doctor but House makes enough wrong calls to cast even that into doubt. Right now, I'm thinking of House as a bit of an idiot savant, brilliant medically but not much of a clue when it comes to dealing with real people.)

[romanticalgirl]

One of my true annoyances with House is how they are so mercurial about their characters - particularly Cuddy. They vacillate between treating her like a clever, competent woman and doctor and them make her a flailing buffoon. It's really pretty shitty characteristically and structurally for the show. I'd much rather see a good, competent Cuddy that one that doesn't know her own ass from a hole in the ground.

The relationship between Wilson, Cuddy and House (and all the permutations there of) is so interesting and convoluted and complex that it's too much fun to play with and, while I agree with your final assessment, I can see where they'd make the choice - a lot of medicine seems to be doing what seems to need to be done, even if it's not always the right choice. Doctors are, at the end of it all, human and make choices as such. And while House may disagree with what they did, I can also see him giving them credit for doing it, if for no other reason than to totally throw Wilson off his stride. Hee.

[katakombs]

I think the women on the show and especially Cuddy depend very much on who writes them. Shore is good, Sara Cooper, Michael Perry (Deception) and Doris Egan (Failure to Communicate) are too. Lawrence Kaplow (Distractions, Kids) so much wants House to be the coolest kid that he writes Cuddy as someone from The Pink Panther. Gray's Anatomy, for all it's soapiness, writes kickass women. Bailey and Christina are what Cuddy should be. Especially since Cuddy is smart and ambitious.

The jury will always be out on whether Stacy did the right thing (unless Shores decides to reveal all) because it's more interesting this way but House would totally say they did the right thing just to mess with Wilson's mind.

[romanticalgirl]

I can make allowances for the variance of writers - some characters you just have a better feel for than others. But the wide, inexplicable character swings are what bother me. They seem to disavow any knowledge of the character previous to an episode if the characters episode up till then doesn't support their current needs. Drives me insane.

[anonymous]

I've read all of your House fics and never commented before, but I realize I should say something about how wonderful they are. They are, to me, set apart by their realness. They are a welcome change from a lot of the fics out there that are OOC or just bad.

You seem to have a good grasp of the characters and put them into real, angsty, heartbreaking, wonderful situations and then proceed to write the hell out of them. I love your Cuddy and your portrayal of Wilson is one of my favourite. I especially like how even the fics not about House are inevitably about him anyway, since the show does that as well.

Anyway, this comment ran away from me and I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your fic. Thanks.

[romanticalgirl]

Thank you so very much. I think that the coolest thing about the House fandom is how messed up the relationships can be and are. There's a fine sense of give and take with all the characters, even though their lives are all intricately woven around House.

I think the characters of Cuddy and Wilson have such potential, and I'm often frustrated at the disparity of their characterizations from week to week, so it's fun to give them a constant to be and build on that. I'm glad to know that it worked for you. Thanks for all the nice words!

[hihoplastic]

I know it's cliche, and cliche to say it's cliche, but I honestly cannot express how much I love this story. I'm pretty much a hard-ass when it comes to literature and writing, especially fanfic [because quiet honestly, there's so much crap sometimes it all blends together] and I'm always hard-pressed to find anything that I find really spectacular; but I just never ceased to be awed and amazed and in love with your work. And this one just completely blew me away.

“I love you,” she whispered, the sound nearly drowned out by his own request. “Don’t do the surgery, Lisa.” and the very last lines are, I think, the most powerful thing I've ever read. Yeah, again with the cliche and what sounds like an exaggeration, but after that first line I spent the rest of the story with one hand over my mouth, not quite sure whether to cry or scream. And then I had the same reaction the second, third and forth time I read it. It's still gut-wrenching

[romanticalgirl]

Hee. Never stop fangirling.

Thank you so very much for the amazingly kind words. There's something so messed up and complex and complicated and gorgeous about the relationships here - House and Wilson and Cuddy and Greg and James and Lisa and everyone else just layed in and around and on top of them. It's like cutting away pieces of flesh to get to the meat, but every cut gets felt and hurts.

I shall indeed post to pathologies. I wasn't sure with this one, since House is such a small part of it, even if he is a driving force.

Thanks again!

[hihoplastic]

*fangirls*

I know. I love the relationship between those three so much. It's so demented and complex and we barely know anything about how deep it goes, and yet you can tell that it does definitely go deep.

It's like cutting away pieces of flesh to get to the meat, but every cut gets felt and hurts.

Perfectly phrased. That's exactly what it is, and I so hope they go into more detail on the show, especially their dynamic directly post-infarction.

Awesome. The comm is slightly dead (my fault probably) and needs fanfic like this to show people why HouseWilsonCuddy is warped!intellectual!deadsexy!love.

[romanticalgirl]

Hopefully the new episodes opening up a little more of Wilson and Cuddy's lives will give the boost needed to get more fic out there. There's so much potential. And I really must finish the sloppy drunk threesome.

Also? That icon is gorgeous.