Drabbles
Title: Drabbles
Author:
shara_i
Rating: G to PG
Paring: H/W, gen
Disclaimer: Don’t own
Word Count: most of the drabbles are a little over 100 words
Summary: A series of 10 unconnected drabbles with the prompts taken from the first sentence at the top of every 100 pages of a book. I used The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, 1990 for my prompts. :)
100. Beige n. a pale sandy fawn color; adj. of this color
Sometimes House really hates winter days. He leans against the balcony wall and looks out at the hospital parking lot. There’s the dull monotony of the blacktop, now turned gray with the wash of mud and snow, the dark bones of trees and an even grayer sky beyond that. It’s too quiet, too still; the snow muffles color like it does sound.
He plays with an errant pill in his hand, turns it around and around with his fingers. He doesn’t remember taking it out of the bottle, but isn’t surprised to see that he has. He has no cases to distract him. His fellows are busy doing clinic duty or crosswords; Foreman’s impatient huffs are echoes to his own restlessness.
He pushes the pill through his lips. Even Vicodin has no sheen: its dull beige shape trails bitterness down his throat.
Word Count: 142
200. Christadelphian n. a member of a Christian sect rejecting the doctrine of the Trinity and expecting a second coming of Christ on earth; adj. of or adhering to his sect
“We’ll be late for Christmas Mass.” His voice sounds too loud, echoing on the ceramic tiles of the bathroom.
His mother has her head bent low; she grips the sides of the toilet tightly as her chest heaves.
“I don’t thi-I can’t go this year, Robbie.” She turns to reassure him with a wavering smile. Robert stares at the thin sheen of watery vomit coating her lower lip.
“Ok,” he says. Now his voice sounds too quiet.
He backs out of the bathroom and stumbles out of the house, drinking in warm air to wash away the smell of vomit. He walks to church by himself, kneels in a hard, wooden pew, and prays for his mother’s eternal soul.
Word Count: 120
300. Decimalize v. to express as a decimal
House knows that there is a math behind everything. Thirty-six pills in a bottle, one for every hour, and for bad days and annoying clinic patients, one for every half hour. A specific dose of medication for every affliction; an exact number of days between Cuddy’s yogurt sightings; an absolute measure of time for every piece of music he has ever played.
But, as he lets Wilson enter his apartment laden with Chinese food and beer and sees his casual smile, he realizes that he does not know the math behind this. He has tried to measure Wilson’s worth with favors and dollars, but the numbers keep falling off the page. He knows there is no reason for Wilson to stay: House is a constant negative, and his variables will never balance out to zero. But Wilson stays anyway, defying equations, and with every kiss, sends numbers and figures spiraling off the charts.
Word Count: 153
400. -esque suffix. Forming adjectives meaning ‘in the style of’ or ‘resembling’
Wilson knows he was just asking for trouble when he agreed to go to the art film festival with House, but this is ridiculous. He slinks down in his seat as House interrupts the speaker with obnoxious questions, and glares at House when he coughs loudly during important parts of the movie. He sighs and rubs a hand over his face as House swindles money out of him to buy ice-cream. He rolls his eyes and puts his hands on his hips about a million times all afternoon and just when he thinks he’s run out of ways to show House how exasperated he is, House leans over to kiss him with his ice-cream flavored tongue, and he has to roll his eyes again.
But this time, he also smiles.
Word Count: 130
500. Glasshouse n.
- a greenhouse
- Brit. Sl. A military prison
- a building where glass is made
His hands scrabble at the doorknob, the edge where the door meets the jamb, feeling for an opening, a gap.
“Let me in!” he screams at the door, anger overpowering his eight-year-old body. He bangs on the door with ineffective fists. He steps off the porch and runs to the nearest window, bangs on it hard enough that he’s sure it will break, but it holds fast. He peers through it and sees only darkness inside. He runs back to the door and pounds on it.
It takes over half an hour for him to realize that no one is going to let him in. He stands on the porch and stares at the door, bewildered. He turns in a slow circle, taking in the wide yard, empty dirt road, the rose bushes his mother tends, and back to the closed door.
His heart starts thundering in his chest.
Word Count: 150
600. incurious adj. lacking curiosity
“What’s up with those two?” Kutner asks, leaning against the nurse’s station where Foreman is standing, checking over a chart.
Foreman looks to where Kutner is gesturing and sees House and Wilson sitting across from each other at one of the cafeteria tables. House is waving his hands around, probably regaling Wilson with some hilarious story, because Wilson is smirking as he smacks House’s hand away from his fries.
“They’re…having lunch?” Foreman suggests, raising an eyebrow.
“No, I mean-what’s up with them? Are they-like-you know-?” Kutner waggles his eyebrows, hoping Foreman will get the hint.
Foreman rolls his eyes and puts the chart back. “Don’t care,” he says, walking away.
“You’re not even a little curious?” Kutner sputters after him.
“Nope,” says Foreman over his shoulder.
Word Count: 134
700. loof n. var. of luff
luff n. the edge of the fore-and-aft sail next to the mast or stay
He comes home to frigid silences and stony glares, picks at food gone cold and knows what it all means.
He figures he should try anyway, so he rents a small sailboat one Saturday and convinces her to come out with him. He steers them out of the dock and into open water. They keep the shore in sight and face the wind, Julie’s hair flying behind her, unhappy lines carved into her face.
“I love you,” he says to her, curving an arm around her tightly clenched shoulders.
House’s voice in his head says knowingly, Everybody lies.
Word Count: 98
800. nick v. intr. Austral. Sl. Move quickly or furtively
The points are awarded based on how far the target is, with bonus points if the victim doesn’t notice. And extra bonus points and a blowjob for whoever can get a grape down Cuddy’s shirt, House tells him with his most mischievous smirk. Wilson tries to look mature and disapproving but mostly fails, so he grabs some grapes out of the bag in House’s hand. House is in the lead: he already got a nurse on the head doing paperwork in the lobby.
Wilson aims for a janitor near the doors but gets a patient instead, which leads to a brief but earnest argument about whether it counts if you got someone by accident.
It isn’t until one of House’s grapes hits a doctor (Carter, one of the surgeons on the board), and they have to duck away from the balcony to smother their giggles by the wall that Wilson remembers that he himself is a doctor, a department head. He straightens his tie with two fingers and begs off to go back to his paperwork.
Word Count: 176
900. Picnic n. an outing or excursion including a packet meal eaten out of doors
Wilson finds him only fifteen minutes after he sits down, and frankly, House is a little impressed. He’s going to have to start looking for new hiding places or he’ll never be able to eat Wilson’s lunch in peace.
“Did you think that I wouldn’t notice you stole my lunch if you got as far away with it as possible?” Wilson asks, sitting down on the bench across from him, and giving him a look of annoyance and fondness that House hates and loves.
“Saved you some of the salad,” House says, shoving the half-eaten salad across the picnic table. The sandwich accompanying it was long gone.
Word Count: 107
1000. reattain v. attain again
The first time he ran in the early morning dark, summer was just getting started. The grass was wet with dew, and the damp, heavy smell of earth mixed with the stink of his own sweat. The dawn light had turned everything metallic, shiny, new, and he could hear birds calling, and every once in a while, a car horn in the distance, like the whole world was waking, and he was the only one there to see it all.
He slipped in some mud while he was running, fell spectacularly, but pushed himself up without preamble, sneakers and shorts slick with mud now, so fucking happy he laughed, the sound ripping from him involuntarily. His heart was matching the litany of his feet on the pavement, beating so hard that he thought he might die from it, but if there was any way to go, nothing better than this.
Word Count: 151
Thanks for reading!