A new fic!
This one's gen. Very House-centric, but with mention of Cuddy, Stacy and Wilson.
A fill-in for Merry Little Christmas, and some of the rest of the Tritter arc. A none-too-linear plotline, and a little bit of an experiment.
Thank you for reading, and big thank you to my LJ friend-list. You know who you are.
A light language warning.
Cheers.
REWIND/REPLAY/RINSE/REPEAT
He sits on the couch. Still. Ridiculously inactive. He feels a little buzzed, but that’s all. Inactivity isn’t good, he knows that. Apathy and inertia kill more readily than drugs or smoking or drink driving. Be active, he thinks. Be active.
He fumbles to draw the pill bottle out of his pocket. They’re almost gone. There’s a bitter taste in his mouth. He straightens up on the couch and looks at the whiskey bottle on the kitchen counter. Another pill in the palm of his hand.
He uncaps the whiskey, his fingers numb and cold and stiff. It can’t hurt.
Hey mom, guess you guys are already up at Aunt Sarah’s…. Just wanted to say Merry Christmas.
Dial tone.
What-If is a bad game to play.
It’s like riding a train into the underground, into a subway, facing backwards so you can see the surface recede.
Time passes. He doesn’t know how long it is and he can’t see his watch. His elbows are on his legs, but he can hardly feel them. The floor and his feet waver back and forth. He’s moving. There’s a rushing in his ears.
Then he’s on the floor, but he can’t remember getting up, he can’t even walk or speak or move.
Minutes or hours or seconds stretch back and forth. His heart thumps.
Nothing. Something, something obscured and muffled, the world through his milky-white consciousness.
He doesn’t think. He just is. Then everything is rushing up, and he has the presence of mind to roll onto his side before he hunches up with retching.
Suddenly the silence isn’t there any more, as if a room in his mind has been bathed with light.
Detective Micheal Tritter. About 6-4, but sort of stocky, not skinny. White hair, and a don’t-fuck-with-me look on his gum-chewing face that just screams COP.
Micheal Tritter stands there and chews gum and tells House he’s got some attitude and a real smart mouth, telling him that just like a school vice-principal or a two-bit truant officer, and House figures he can leave him to stew in his room with his nicotine withdrawal and his irritation (House can see that, too – the abstract, flighty look to his eyes, the sweat on his top lip; coming off nicotine is worse than heroin, and Detective Micheal Tritter is feeling it).
As he passes by the cop he feels an instantaneous flicker of alarm, but he figures that he couldn’t be that much of a bastard, right before he’s rushing towards the clinic door with a sick, unbalanced feeling in his stomach. He hits the door, and it hurts, that's probably going to bruise his shoulder, and he almost falls over, and that alarmed feeling is replaced by dark anger, the hot type that seeps up from the bottom of your stomach.
He curls his fist, the palm still smarting. Micheal Tritter’s jaw draws towards him, and ten seconds later he’s reeling out of the room with one cold hand against his chin.
The look on Cuddy’s face, soaking his hand in a bowl of icy water. Detective Tritter cupping his jaw, leaning against an upturned stool in the clinic room.
That’s where it ends.
///
He’s sitting in the ER reading a newspaper. Doctors are being paged back and forth on the intercom. A couple of worried parents are talking about asthma. Stacy walks down the corridor with her briefcase in hand, and then he’s looking her in the face. I love you, he says. Come with me.
Cuddy. Cuddy walking back behind her desk. He can see her shaking her head through the glass.
Wilson. Running with Wilson through a jogging track with wet concrete paths and wet leaves.
Never actually did that.
September 1999. He leaves hospital on crutches, but three weeks later he’s bounding back up the stairs onto the roof of the hospital, avoiding work.
He doesn’t know what happens next.
///
Stacy. She screams and throws stuff around, and he comes home one day to find all her stuff gone, but he’s so tired he just sits on his couch in the bare apartment, darker patches on the wall where her framed prints were. Spaces on the cabinet for her books and music.
Greg, this isn’t working.
Mom. God, he knows they had hopes, but she never mentions kids again after he rings her to tell her that Stacy left.
There are voices. Echoing, like in a bad telephone connection.
Greg, Greg, Jesus, what did you do? James, it’s Greg. I don't know! Yes. Yes. Greg, can you open your eyes? I don't know I can't tell. I don't know. Are you coming over Greg oh God what did you do? Please, please. Can you sit up c’mon I can’t do this unless you help me, Greg, Greg.
That’s regret, right there.
Do you want a job, House? Come back to work. Teach again. You can teach again. You can treat patients again. Sitting in big Dean of Medicine Cuddy's office with his hands at his knees, feeling awkward and old and a little sleepy, even with everything that's going on. Cuddy has an ornate silver letter-opener, must have been a present from someone. Congratulations, Dean of Medicine. He's missed so much. He lightly drills her letter-opener against the tip of one finger and looks up.
House? House. C’mon, I know you’re in there. Locked in his office. Open up! Go away, Wilson, I'm busy. Can't run away anymore.
Someone you trust. Pick someone you trust. Do you trust me, Cuddy? Someone you like.
You’ll never understand, House.
It’s junior high, and this kid called Scott is selling him two joints in a dime bag. Dad sees his red eyes, and that’s the beginning of the end. No son of mine. Pull down your trousers. Mom crying. Jesus, Mom, it's okay. I'm okay.
He could have chosen anyone to cheat off. Still, he’s been expelled before. The dean has an avuncular look, regretful and disappointed, and he feels so damn stupid he could puke right now in the wastepaper basket. The worst thing was telling them. Telling them he threw it all away.
Michigan. Running with the lacrosse team on a sunny Saturday morning. Always seems sunnier on Saturday, somehow.
And there was Crandall and his shitbox car. Maybe they should have driven straight to New Orleans instead of doing college town gigs. Do you know this one? Play it please, man. Broken beer bottles on the stage and rich frat boys and depressed kids failing mid-terms. It was good to play in the band, though. Hey, Crandall, give me a drive. Let's just drive. Turn the radio on.
Oh, that's right. Crandall with his head under the hood, spending his last twenty bucks on some plug or pump or filter, just so they could get home. Home to Crandall and his sweetheart, spending the last fifty miles trying to convince him to be a little bit less impulsive. Hell, twenty years and he was still the same old Crandall.
What about him? What did Crandall think of the new Greg House?
The telephone is ringing. The telephone.
Hi Stacy, uh, no, it’s me. Yeah, I’m fine. Of course, yeah. I need to talk to you. We should talk. I want to talk to you.
Ring, ring.
Dr Smith? Yes? Do you remember me, Dr Smith? Professor. You taught Anatomy at Johns Hopkins. Left your office twice a day to lecture. Always worried I’d just fade away like that. House, Gregory House. Yeah, you do?
Crandall? Still smoking? Still an emotional adolescent?
Ring, ring, ring.
Beep.
Mom, it’s just me. Hi mom, it’s me. Hey there, it’s Greg, is mom there? Hey Mom, just calling to say hello. No. Hey Mom, there's nothing wrong. Hey Mom, it's me. Is Mom there? It's Greg. No, there's nothing wrong. Nothing at all.
Hi mom, happy Thanksgiving, oh momma, I’m really fucked up.
Click.
Footsteps. Coming up the stairs, maybe? The entryway.
Tap tap tap tap tap. Feet. Lights flashing overhead. Ceiling. Light. Ceiling. Light. Smoke alarm. Ceiling. White male, complains of extreme stabbing pain in the right quad. Look, he’s curling, hold him down, will you? Mr House? I need you to breathe in here. Breathe.
Boom.
Rolling rolling. You’re gonna be ok. Ha ha, you don’t know that. Warm blood. So warm.
Oh, fuck, a key in the lock. This is too pathetic, too stupid. Lying on the floor next to a puddle of vomit.
The door opens. He’s back in the room. He can place that voice. It’s him. Wilson. It’s really cold. Oh, he’s turning over, he can see the ceiling now, Wilson floating up there, a pinkish blob. The light is in his eyes, moving all over like flashing carnival lights. Hold on, here we go!
Wilson’s footsteps recede.
Flash, flash, flash. Sodium lamps.
No one ever said it was time to stop. He’s in the driver’s seat, zooming on down the interstate, a red streak. One wrong move and everyone here’s gonna be mincemeat. Oh, now everyone’s sitting with him. He’s seventeen years old, and as high as a fucking kite. Step on it, man!
Hey man, hey. Help me out with this. I can’t shift gears. Throw it all away.
On and on and on. The telephone. He lies there and listens to the ring, over and over and over, until all he can hear is his heartbeat and his own ragged breath and the echo of the traffic on the street outside.
So long. But he realises that the telephone has stopped ringing. That he can't hear his heartbeat any more, but that he can feel himself lying there, the floor against his back, his shoulderblades and muscles and tendons, and his leg.
He puts his hands against his face and lies there long after he can think again, long after he realises that he hasn't felt this bad for so, so long.
Something. Something needs to happen.
Thanks, guys! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
And thanks again for your comments, nomad! Nothing like concrit.