Written for Marie of the Bloody Koalas for her birthday. I haven't churned anything out for awhile, but decided that maybe I could at least make the effort for her birthday.
Of course, if she thinks it sucks, as I sort of do, the effort might as well have been a waste of time. But I didn't get a chance to ask her what she wanted, so I guess she might just have to find it within herself to appreciate that she made me write my first piece in almost 6 months!
It's the effort that counts, Marie!
(Edit, 3 Months Later: Whoops. I know I completely missed your birthday, girl, but it wasn't as easy coming as I thought it would be.
Can we just say, Better Late Than Never?)
(To all the rest of you that are reading this, all you have to appreciate is the guitar and how terribly hard it can be to handle sometimes.
…actually, you really don't even need to appreciate that. Just appreciate the story, alright?)
Disclaimer: Hey, would anyone sue me if I wrote something and then didn't 'Disclaim' it? That would be sort of funny: "Spncsifreak, you are hereby sentenced to six months of hard time for not saying you didn't own House, MD at the beginning of your 3-page drabble. This was a very serious offence, and I sincerely hope you rethink your acts of plagiarism the next time."
Would any of you guys turn me in?
Strum, strum, strum, ziiiing, "DAMN it!"
These are the sounds of Gregory House, MD's office on Wednesday. A bright, spring Wednesday, full of opportunity and happiness. A bit of love might have been floating on the breeze, as well.
It was hardly a wonder House was in a hostile mood.
It had taken his team all of three and a half seconds with the man that morning to convince them that catching up on their clinic hours was definitely the way to go that day. Maybe not the most pleasant way to go, certainly, but most assuredly the way to go if they wanted to head home that night still with a job and all of their limbs still attached.
Since House was still waiting on an at least mildly interesting case (which he intended to resist thoroughly if it actually did come his way), he had brought his guitar to work. His Flying-V, even. If he woke up in the morning and his leg was telling him that it was going to make that day only horrible, he brought his acoustic. If his leg actually woke him up and started screaming at him that he betternot even think about putting any weight on it today or he would regret it, he brought the Flying-V. It was a sort of comfort mechanism—although if anyone dared ask, they were told (in a typically biting and sarcastic manner) that it was a Flying-V, and if they had one would they not bring it and show it off every chance they got?
It was supposed to be relaxing. Somehow, the power chords running through his body loosened up his aching and tensed thigh muscles.
Discords, however, did nothing but make his leg scream bloody murder at him, which was why he usually tried to avoid making them.
Any normal person would have given up on mastering the extremely complex guitar riff hours before. Would have accepted that the bet they had made with their best friend the night before could be considered null and void in all respects, since the riff he had been challenged to learn was, quite obviously, physically impossible. Would have realized by now that one's fingers cannot be, pragmatically, strumming all four chords at once while creating a rippling effect at the same time. House could never have passed for normal, however, even if he had wanted to.
The worst part was that Wilson had posed the bet trying to sound like he actually knew a damned thing about playing the guitar. There was an amount of alcohol involved, true, and while under the influence of an amount of good scotch, Wilson also thought he was capable of walking down a flight of stairs backward in the pitch black. House knew firsthand how that one worked out, and so had no intention of actually challenging Wilson on his guitar skills, lest his ears suddenly decide to take a permanent sabbatical.
And so the thing that infuriated House most about the entire situation was not the fact that he seemed incapable of hitting the last note of the riff without producing a horrid squelching noise (he had no idea how a guitar could even squelch, but he knew he had bought the Flying-V for its sustainability as well as its looks; he had been planning to possibly teach Wilson the basics of the guitar before this situation arose and had needed to make sure it was a guitar that could withstand the amateur strummings of inexperience, which, much to his chagrin, was proving true for himself more than Wilson), nor even the fact that everyone in the building was probably wondering why on earth he was butchering some poor animal in his office. It was the fact that his best friend was going to make him watch every single movie Hitchcock had ever made (over again, for maybe the 23rd time) if he failed to do something that he couldn't even do himself. House might have had a slightly warped sense of justice, but he was pretty sure that there was something very wrong with that set-up.
The two solaces he had were the knowledge that the walls between his and Wilson's office were unnaturally thin, and the hope that his friend was enjoying spending his day listening to the fruits of his wager.
--
As House hit his 34th discord of the morning (but who was counting?), James Wilson, very vocally, started to curse thin walls. It had gone beyond the point of just cursing the thin wall between his and House's office. He had moved on to cursing thin walls in general. He would have liked to get his hands on the genius that had reduced the plaster/insulation ratio in PPTH to get the most of the budget.
When he had made the bet he hadn't thought it all the way through. He hadn't even been thinking of the walls between their offices, actually. He was the type that typically thought things through beforehand, but there had been scotch involved. A certain amount of scotch.
He hadn't been planning to lend his advice, much less his expertise, to House. He hadn't even intended House ever know about it, but still, after the 36th squelch of House's Flying-V (Wilson found it mildly interesting that a guitar could even be manipulated in such a way as to make it squelch), the oncologist still found himself jumping out of his office chair and fairly sprinting to his friend's office. Matter over mind, every time.
--
Being as absorbed in the riff as he was, it took House a few seconds to realize the guitar was no longer in his hand after it was suddenly and forcibly snatched out of his hands. He was left plucking and strumming the air for a good 5 seconds before the lack of guitar registered in his head.
Convinced that he had almost had it (although, in reality, he hadn't been any closer than he had been at 9 that morning), he got up, full ready to let his considerable frustration out on the perpetrator.
The words on the tip of his tongue were sent to an early grave as notes, beautiful in their complexity, filled the office. He sat back down, hard, as his eyes saw the face behind the guitar-snatcher, rather than just the hands that had stolen it.
Wilson, oblivious to the sheerly incredulous look his friend wore, kept playing. Playing perfectly.
House, not believing what he saw but wholly unable to look away, wondered if what he was doing what even within the laws of physics. He couldn't even freakin' see Wilson's hands anymore, and surely that wasn't normal.
When Wilson had finished, he looked up, and with no little amount of self-satisfaction, said, "And that, my friend, is how you do it. I'll be over at 8, with the movies. Every last one of them."
For the first and last time in his adult life, House was speechless.