Work Text:
Variations
Variation 4
"I've been reassigned," Dad said.
Greg timed his nod by Dad's anger. Long enough to piss him off, not long enough to earn a lecture. When his father barked, "Start packing," and slammed the door, Greg counted coup.
Every base was different. Every house was the same. Their furniture reappeared in identical incarnations. The only difference between bedrooms was the angle of moonlight, the voice of the wind.
In the mornings, Greg forced himself to ignore the wash of déjà vu until his heart slowed into the rhythm of a new place. By then, it was time to move again.
Variation 15
House lived in a clockwork hospital. The bed's railings and the slow count of seconds between doses kept him prisoner. The rattle of the orderlies' carts, the goddamn physio's mouse-timid approach: the patterns became more routine than his pulse.
Each morning House guessed before he looked who he'd find sleeping in the visitor chair. He listened until he knew Stacy's breathing from Wilson's, and what both their nightmares sounded like.
When Stacy brought him home, House slept next to her again. He woke pain-crazed and panicky, and forgot five years of loving her while he searched endlessly for his pills.
Variation 12
"Adam Quong is seizing," Cameron said.
House jerked out of a dream and blinked at the shoes beside his head. "What've we got him on?" he asked.
"Prednisone," Cameron said, "and he's crashing."
"It's not Crohn's," House said. His brain raced ahead, proposing and rejecting tests, procedures, treatments.
"We should take him off the prednisone--"
"Too soon." House rolled to his feet. A second later he landed hard against his desk, his leg collapsing under him.
Cameron rushed forward. "Are you--?"
"Shut up," House said. "Get moving." He followed her, snarling, ripping his dream of running into shreds.
Variation 25
The syringe
slips from his fingers, lands
next to the box he climbs the step-ladder for, his thigh crying while he reaches
behind books he never reads, new age self-help, where he keeps
this last bit of advice
guidance, away from the sizzling spike driving into his hip, the throb that grows into a tornado howl from his belly to his ankle so he
takes a vacation, a solution, a drop glistens at the hollow tip
and he regrets the loss until he
slides over the edge, fallingflying,
a sloppy dizzy fade.
House wakes up in his apartment
surprised
as always.
Aria da Capo
House slipped into wakefulness listening to the blinds clicking in the breeze from the open window. The extra Vicodin he'd taken last night left the pain a dim flicker. The night air smelled cool, like distant rain. House moved, enough to test his range of motion, pushing against the other body in his bed.
"Okay?" Wilson mumbled.
House shifted again. "Can't sleep, there's a lump on my mattress."
"Hmm," Wilson said agreeably, and burrowed closer.
House closed his eyes. He didn't trust waking up next to Wilson, even after months.
Going back to sleep, though, was getting easier every time.
end