The Stonemason's Apostle
By Loremaster of Anorien
Disclaimer: I do not own House.
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"And I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it." – Matthew 16:18
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(When he was born, his mother thought about naming him Peter.)
He's the token black in a group of pretty vanilla white people. He can't say he likes it very much – who would –, but he bears it because he's himself: the magnet that the frayed metal wires that are his colleagues cling to, the straight man to their Lucies and Seinfelds.
(Someone has to; every good show needs a foil for the unstable characters, and the hospital often feels like a stage of smoke and mirrors.)
He know that's he merely a blip in most people's minds, if they aren't cursing him as "that arrogant, judgmental bastard." Otherwise, he's uninteresting.
(After all, people tend to watch the angst-filled, weepy, conflicted folks more than people like him.)
He's the only one who seems to actively and normally date anyone. His boss slept with his ex and before and after her, his cane and bottle of pills. The spoiled white boy goes through women like paper bags just like every other trust fund baby he's ever known, and Little Miss Priss seems too much like a princess from a fairy-tale for him to even comprehend her as someone who dates without trying to save and be saved.
(He's tired of abnormal relationships. His dad barely speaks to him, his brother's in jail, and Mom doesn't even recognize his face.)
He's had too much insanity around him. He left his childhood and adolescence behind hoping to find that glittering skyscraper dream of his – ivory, of course, and high enough to leave behind the world's irregularities. Instead, he finds himself the rock again, as waves beat frantically around him.
(The ivory tower doesn't exist; he should have known that nothing can ever be that high.)
He's granite, rather than the ocean. He is eternal but never changes. He's the solid one, Mr. Unflappable. He's his mother pride – if she could remember that he's thirty-two and not seventeen. Even when he's angry, he's familiar – the angry black man.
(It's nice to be people's security blanket – sometimes.)
Ordinary people don't try to pick at stones, lest they tear their nails and flesh. It's fine enough with him, although his boss fancies himself a geologist and tries. He won't get too far, though, because he knows how to keep people away.
(He learned some from his boss and the rest from standing in chaos.)
He sometimes wonders what it's like to not be stone. Like water. Or the air. They last forever, too, but people seem to think they're fragile and break easily.
They're wrong. Water bends away from hurt, and pain goes right through the sky. He's stone, though, and can't stretch away or let it pass through. He's an impenetrable citadel, and citadels are supposed to absorb and repel.
(But as everyone knows, rock eventually breaks down.)
He's the rock, and he's accepted it. There's no point in fighting; he wasn't forced to his knees by destiny or his father's God.
He chose his fate.
(He should have been Peter, not Eric.)
Fin.