She had learned to play the guitar because of him.
Not that he'd gone so far as to teach her. No, that wasn't the sort of thing House would do.
Originally, it had been an accident.
It had started late one night when she jerked awake at night and couldn't sleep. She'd not wanted to wake him, but she needed to relax...
And then she remembered that there was always a guitar at his house, somewhere.
She'd found it hanging on a wall in the living room: which was good, because she had not been prepared to handle the mess of the bedroom.
And she had taken it down, and strummed a few notes. Just a quiet chord, nothing at all.
When she returned to the room, he was awake. He stroked her cheek and held her until she slept.
The day after, he had bought her her own guitar. He had told her the names of the notes, and left her on her own with the rest.
She had to give him credit, however, in that he listened to her mistakes. She had been horrendous at the beginning. In silence, he would correct her fingering, her posture. And he would smile at her, tell her to try it again.
In the month since then, she'd progressed a bit. Learned songs rather than chaotic jumbles of notes.
She'd figured, once she started, that it could be useful to learn. That when they could talk about nothing else, they could talk about guitars and music.
It hadn't really happened, however.
Oh, it wasn't that they didn't run out of things to say. It wasn't that she never played for him, or that he never played for her.
It was just that while he was teaching her to play the guitar—in the vaguest sense of the words, admittedly—he had taught her something else as well.
Because no matter how cliché the phrase sounded, no matter how many people used it daily, it was still true.
Silence was occasionally louder than words.
Review: No Flames.