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verbal_kint) wrote2008-11-11 05:12 pm
Glue: Chapter 4
Chapter Four: The Story Time Drowning
“It was our first date.”
House perks his head up from the trashcan while his eyes melt the wall behind Wilson’s head with the look he often gets while solving a case. “Well, technically it was our second date.”
“You and…Stacy?” Wilson hesitates, as if her name is some horrible curse word only to be used by its inventor.
House nods, closing his eyes as his leg reminds how far gone his first date really is. He tries to let go, to allow himself to drown in the past, but it’s nowhere near that easy. Drowning in cases is easy. Drowning in Vicodin is very easy.
And yet neither is readily available in the average janitor’s closet. And painful as it is to admit, this is the average janitor’s closet. Except for the trash, the note, and the people, that is.
But drowning isn’t average, and his past isn’t average. Combined, they especially aren’t average. But somewhere between thinking about this and talking about this, an invisible wall gets breached. House doesn’t know why he has this wall and others don’t—just that it’s there, just that it makes it harder to care about things other than Moebius Syndrome or Elephantiasis, and just that right now, he’s getting dangerously close to breaking through the wall.
He opens his mouth. He stops thinking. He starts talking. And suddenly, the fire poker in his thigh seems almost as far away as, well, his first date.
“It was our first/second date.”
“Wait.” Foreman puts a hand up to stop him. “I thought you said this was your worst date.”
“It is. But it was also my first/second date.”
“So this was after she shot you in paintball?” says Wilson.
“Yes. First time that we met after that actually.”
“So you call that paintball game your ‘first date’?”
“…More like what happened after the paintball game.”
Chase eyes pop with excitement or shock or scorn (or all of the above). “You had—“
“Dinner at Macaroni Grill. Then fantastic sex.”
Everyone leans in a little to listen.
“So by our ‘second date,’ she was moving here from New York, asked me if I’d come up and help her move the rest of her stuff, and I said sure, so—“
Wilson sticks his hand up. “Wait, you just went? No questions asked?”
“Well I made sure her bed hadn’t been moved yet.”
Wilson nods as if to say, “good for you.”
House nods back and continues. “When I got there, everything was mysteriously packed. Except the bed, obviously. So there we were, with nothing to do except…”
“Each other,” sighs Foreman. “We get it. Now can we move on to the humorously bad part of this date?”
House tilts his head. “I was going to say ‘ice skate.’ Get your head out of the gutter.”
“You went ice-skating?” says Wilson.
“Yeah,” House admits, “at Rockefeller Center.” His head is down, and yet he can’t keep from smiling.
“Anyways, it was late, so pretty much everyone else had gone home. We skated for a few hours, making sure to get nice and cold so her bed would feel extra toasty by comparison. All was going well—“
“Until?” Foreman concludes with a shrug.
House’s hand finds his thigh once more. He thinks nobody notices. “Will you stop interrupting me?”
This time, it’s Chase that answers. “He will if you start getting to the good part.”
“So embarrassing moment foreplay’s not your thing?”
Wilson, Foreman, and Chase shake their heads. House still wishes it were dark.
“Until she slipped on the ice and I ran over her fingers with my skate.”
A series of “Ooooh’s” follow as the guys give House their versions of the sympathetic frown.
“And she kept seeing you?” says Chase. “You must be damn good in bed.”
“You would know,” whispers Foreman.
Wilson folds his arms and scoots back a little at the conclusion of this tale. “Still,” he says, “that’s not as bad as…you know, what happened to me.”
House grins fiendishly. “Oh the story’s not over. It gets worse.”
Wilson scoots towards House once more as Chase says, “Worse?”
House nods and continues. “I helped her off the ice, sat her down on a bench so I could take her skates off. Blood everywhere,” he adds. “But the damn skate was just a little too tight around the ankle, so I gave it a few good tugs, and the bottom of it wound up in my shoulder.”
Another round of “Oooooh’s” came from all directions as House pulled down his collar to reveal the four-inch, linear scar beneath his shoulder blade.
“You told me that was from getting mugged!” says Wilson, wide-eyed and flustered.
“You’re the one who believed me.”
House straightens out his shirt with an innocent look while Wilson stares at House’s shoulder with a politician’s scrutiny.
House ignores his gaze and continues. “We ended up spending four hours in the ER waiting to get stitched up.”
Wilson scratches his head while he laughs empathetically (if such a thing is possible). “Wow House, that…sucks.” And he laughs again, this time devoid of empathy, pity, or anything heartfelt at all, because ice-skating injuries are funny that way.
House chuckles briefly. He looks down and squints, appearing more badass than perceptive. “Actually, all we did was talk. About, I dunno…ourselves. Where we grew up, and…” He trails off and looks down again when there’s really no reason to continue. They’ve heard all they want to hear. He’s said more than he wants to say. But for some reason, it’ll never quite be enough to make things right again. Screw 19th century poets—words never change a damn thing.
Wilson waits for House eyes to meet his before he says, “So you’re telling us you had your first/second/worst/best date all in one night.”
“Jealous?” says House.
Everyone replies with their variant forms of “Yes.” Except for Foreman, that is, who sits against the door shaking his head and laughing silently to himself. Now, such a thing often looks odd to people without proper context. It’s on these grounds that Chase leans over and whispers, “Care to enlighten us on your special brand of humor?”
Foreman looks up to meet three pairs of suspicious eyes, eliminating any thoughts that this will be a quick explanation with, “I was trying to surprise my girlfriend one night.”
“Let me guess,” says House, “it was dark?”
Foreman nods, trying not to laugh as he elaborates. “So I snuck into her apartment a little after midnight. She’s was asleep on the couch, probably after watching TV or something.” He keeps shaking his head as some unseen earthquake of laughter rumbles beneath his sealed lips.
“Well this is the equivalent of seeing Mr. T cry, isn’t it?” says House, his hand sinking to his leg.
Foreman composes himself and continues. “I got on the couch with her and we started making out. A minute later she was semi-conscious with her shirt off, and I had my pants off. All of the sudden, the light popped on in the living room and I heard, ‘Eric!’ I looked down, and that’s when I realized that the girl I’d been making out with wasn’t my girlfriend, but one of her friends who was spending the night.”
This earns a round of applause from Chase, even a full-fledged grin from Wilson, who dares to ask, “So what happened then?”
Foreman retreats a little into his default expression, eyeing the floor like a tiger who’s tasted blood. “I tried to explain, but obviously she didn’t believe me. Actually,” he says, a smile reappearing at the edges of his mouth, “I dated that friend after she dumped me, and we went out for a good six months. I never really tried to ‘surprise’ her, though.”
Everyone sinks back after some final laughter, leaning on their respective backrests once again. They listen briefly for sounds of life outside, watching for changes of light through the cracks on the side of the door. Their silence finds a way to be comfortable, sparing them the awkwardness of thinking about what to say. If someone needs to talk, they’ll talk, and if someone needs to listen, they’ll listen. In the mean time, House, Wilson, Foreman, and Chase read the ingredients of cleaning solvents, and wait.
Wilson’s pretty sure he can see House grow paler before his eyes, but he doesn’t do anything—not directly at least. Wilson comes to the conclusion that watching House in pain is like watching otters at the zoo: as much as you want to get in the water and swim with them, their pool is always going to be a little too cold. Wilson then comes to the conclusion that convoluted zoologic metaphors are a Hell of a lot less useful than…anything else. It’s back to story time.
Wilson turns to Chase, watching House out of the corner of his eye. “Hey Chase, you never told us about your worst date.”
Chase starts and stops a few times. “Well, it’s not really a date. I mean, it was, but it was more like my worst Christmas.” He scratches his head in a rare display of nervousness. “It’s not really funny either.”
Wilson shrugs, giving him one of those supportive half-smiles that only an oncologist could perfect. “Like you said, there’s nothing better to do.”
Chase shrugs back and clears his throat. “It was at Formal, or I guess you’d call it Winter Prom or Winter Formal. Anyways it was the week before Christmas, and I’d been waiting all Summer for it, even rented my tuxedo early. Uh, Christmas is in the summer in the southern hemisphere,” he adds for the benefit of Foreman’s puzzled look
Foreman proceeds to act as though he’d never forgotten that small detail.
“So my dad dropped me off at the dance with my date, Susan Frollis, the most beautiful girl in New South Wales. He was on his way to work, said my mother would pick us up after the dance.”
House takes his head off the trashcan while he makes eye contact with something other than his own eyelids for a change. He listens to Chase—still pale, but now distracted—indeed a devious plan. “You had your dad drop you off for a date? Well duh, that’d ruin anyone’s Christmas.”
“I was 17 and I couldn’t afford a car.”
“Daddy could.”
“’Daddy’ didn’t feel like spending heaps of cash on something I was liable to wreck within six months.”
House scoots forward with a wince. “This introspective self-doubt isn’t like you, Chase. Do we need to talk?”
“What happened at the dance?” asks Foreman, avoiding the eyes of House or Wilson.
“We…danced. I mean, it went great. They played good music, my friends kept their distance, she even gave me a kiss during one of the slow songs. After the dance was over, we went outside to wait for my mum, and uh, all the others kids were leaving or getting rides or something, but not us. Neither of us had a mobile to call anyone, so we waited, still expecting that Mum was just stuck in traffic or something.” He sighs, allowing all the alternate scenarios to rush about his head. “We sat on the steps of my school for an hour, and we didn’t even talk. I was nervous, embarrassed as Hell. She was…I dunno, probably frustrated and bored. This squad car pulled up, and a police officer stepped out, introduced himself as Officer Bremmer or Bremman, something like that. He said my mother was arrested for drunk driving and that she was being held at the Garden Island jail. He, uh, offered to drive us home, so we got in the back of his car. We didn’t talk there either. We dropped Susan off at her house, and I said, ‘Sorry.’ She said, ‘Don’t be.’”
Chase laughs briefly and genuinely. “That was the last time I ever saw her, but she did give me another kiss.
“Dad didn’t bail Mum out. He let her stay in there for three days. By the time Christmas came around, nobody felt like celebrating. We ate in separate rooms, picked up our present and opened it alone. We were strangers, but it still felt like hating your own arm or something, and none of us could chop it off. Except my father, but then he was a surgeon. He paid my mother’s fines and left.”
It doesn’t take long for this most recent silence to become uncomfortable. Foreman wants to say he’s sorry. Wilson wants to say he understands. But the words get stuck somewhere on the tongues of their owners, like adhesive rat traps. House’s mouth is the only one that seems capable of delivering verbiage with coherency, which would be downright frightening, most of the time.
“What did he give you for Christmas?”
Chase looks up as if admiring the sound of another voice. “My dad?”
House nods, leaning his head against the trashcan once more.
“He gave me his old stethoscope with a note that said ‘Listen to your heart.’”
“And here I thought he’d give you something manipulative,” says House.
Chase shrugs and smiles half-heartedly, hoping someone else will talk.
Wilson sticks his hands in his pocket and comes up with a pill. He leans over to House and brandishes the small orange capsule. “Motrin? I mean, I realize it’s like giving a band-aid to a shark attack victim, but—“
House swipes it and swallows, waiting for a pitiful version of the placebo effect to kick in. It doesn’t.
Wilson watches Chase frenziedly straighten out his shirt and pants. “So the next Christmas,” he says, “it was just you and your mom?”
Chase nods. “And after that, I left, too.”
Wilson narrows his eyes. “The first Christmas is always the worst.”
Chase and Wilson make that supposedly meaningful eye contact experienced by two soldiers in battle, or two Titanic survivors, or two Jeep owners. It’s the “I’ve been there” concept that wants to lump everyone into the same boat.
Chase relaxes his shoulders once he realizes the spotlight has finally been moved elsewhere. “So let’s hear about your worst Christmas then, Dr. Wilson.”
Wilson shakes his head. “Mine’s not funny either. We’ll die of boredom before we die of starvation.”
House sits up. “However, as you can tell from that particular joke, Dr. Wilson’s understanding of humor is a bit…off. His story’s probably hilarious.”
“It’s not, House.” He looks over to Foreman and Chase, looking for an out. “I-It’s not even a story, it’s just how I felt that first Christmas after he…” Wilson looks down and swallows. His head continues to shake, answering the question of what a bobble head doll would sound like if it possessed the ability to speak.
“Your brother?”
Wilson looks up to see the tale end of a concerned look from House, who is now looking at nothing in particular over Wilson’s head.
“Yeah,” says Wilson, “his name, uh, was Eddie. I mean, Edward. He was—is a few years older than me, but he was still Mom’s baby I guess. He—“
From under the crack of the door come the pained squeals of wheels on tile. Their whines are quickly followed by the unavoidable squish of new sneakers and the buzz of pant leg against pant leg in between steps.
Inside the closet, everyone freezes.
Seconds pass, and the noises grow louder. The smiles on our castaways’ faces grow goofier. Chase is the first to raise his arm to knock.
“Wait,” whispers House.
“What for, someone’s right outside!”
House swallows a wave of pain, regretting this decision before he makes it. He shakes his head and looks at Wilson.
“Let Wilson finish his story first.”
Last Chapter
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Thanks so much. When I first got the idea, I really doubted I could pull off the humor and the angst at the same time, but I'm really relieved it works for someone out there, haha.
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They're gonna stay in the closet (lolz at double meaning)
XD
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*hugs*
DoS
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I'm looking forward to Wilson's LLB story.
As always, you have a natural writing style, and create lovely dialog that's very IC.
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*grins manically at the thought of House ice-skating*
x
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Thanks so much for reading and commenting!
P.S. ICON!LOVE
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Yeah, it sucks we can't be RL friends. Then again, I live in Arizona (aka Hell).
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I live in Georgia, but I'm in college in Nashville, Tennessee. =) So I kinda live in both places. I miss my bunny (no pets in the dorms except for my water turtle since she LIVES in the water and I clean her daily). GAH oh well. You're an awesome person regardless~~
Awesome
hppyflwr
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They all had great stories. This was a perfect House line “Let me guess,” says House, “it was dark?”
A perfect Wilson description "His head continues to shake, answering the question of what a bobble head doll"
Another wonderful update.