Author’s notes: Drabbles no 70, 80, 90, 100 and 110 go together, the rest are stand-alones. Most of these are House/Wilson.

Prompt: Pick a novel (or book), preferably one of more than 100 pages in length, and take the first (full) sentence off of the top of page; 10, 20, 30, 40 & ect, until you have ten (or thereabouts) quotes. Take said ten (or so) quotes and write drabbles based on them. You can use the whole quote, or just a section, even a word – all that matters is that you stay faithful to the first sentence part of the challenge.

Book: Wicked, by Gregory Maguire

 

 

10.  But she couldn’t sustain the fury at him.

Cuddy tried her best to stay angry with House after everything with Tritter, but she couldn’t sustain the fury at him. Something in House had been affected after all – and she was certain that something had happened between Wilson and House on Christmas Eve. She didn’t know what, and would probably never know – but one couldn’t stay in House’s surroundings for so long, without picking up a certain gut feeling about things.

She knew she’d never be as brilliant as House, but simply having seen the something made her feel rather smart, despite not knowing exactly what that something was.

20. “Another willful boy,” said the fishwife, sighing.

When House was six, he decided to run away from home after his mother tried to force him to finish his dinner. He managed to stay away for a whole four hours – and then his father found him, hiding in the shed behind the house.

“He’s just—willful,” his mother tried to soothe his father’s anger, without success.

“I’ll teach him about will – my will,” his father said, his voice low and dangerous.

Gregory shrank back, frightened, waiting.

But no matter the how cold the ice baths or how harsh the beatings – House’s will was the one thing never broken.

30. Though she had native skill in healing, Nanny was unable to come up with a skin-changing potion.

“Perhaps you ought to try some less medical way to do it,” Wilson suggested.

“Oh yeah, I should go to Africa and see one of those shamans – why didn’t I think of that? Is that the advice you give your cancer patients, because then it’s no wonder they’re always dying.”

Wilson rolled his eyes. “I’m just saying – you’ve tried the Ketamine, and it hasn’t worked. Perhaps you should try something more spiritual.”

“Spiritual,” House said, spitting the word out. “Spiritual healing – I’m guessing you want chanting too? That sounds so like me.”

Wilson shook his head – at least he’d tried.

40. Frex had had to quote a little of the Oziad to indicate some sort of humanity – “Land of green abandon, land of endless leaf” – it was all that would come to him

Wilson wondered sometimes if House saw himself as sort of a god.

“God doesn’t limp,” he’d told Wilson once, furious after the Ketamine started wearing off.

Before the infarction, what had House been then? Wilson had trouble remembering. Even so, he was fairly certain that House had hated his own humanity as much then as he did now – he simply hadn’t been reminded of it every second of every day back then, as the leg reminded him now. Perhaps that was why he’d been less miserable back then.

Perhaps House needed to think of himself as sort of a god.

50. But because she is green, she is shy.

The first time Wilson undresses in front of House, he knows it’s what he wants – his body is aching with need, his mind pulsing with love – and still, he feels shy. They’ve known each other for a decade; this is the step they’ve never taken before. He wonders what it will be like, if House will be gentle or aggressive, if he’ll be as dominant in bed as he is in life.

“You’re thinking too much, James,” House tells him, deliberately using Wilson’s first name, whispering into his ear.

Wilson calms, in a way he only does in House’s presence.

60. “And you got home safely? Did anyone suspect?”

Cameron watched House and Wilson, standing side by side on the balcony they shared. They stood a little bit too close, a little bit too comfortable in each other’s personal space. She bit her lip, wondering if her suspicions were correct. Had she never had a chance with House to start with? Had this always been there, with her blind to the obvious?

She almost expected them to turn their heads towards each other and actually kiss, perhaps a quick peck or something more. They didn’t; they simply laughed together and then, with a last barb from House, they parted.

70. “I would have a private word with you, Madame,” said Galinda in desperation.

“A word with you, now.”

An angry Wilson dragged House into an exam room, holding his arm in a vice-like grip.

“Why did you tell the nurse in pediatrics that I’m gay?” he asked once they were behind closed doors.

House’s eyebrows rose, in a parody of shock. “Aren’t you?”

“House—”

“With the hair and the ties and the three failed marriages before the age of forty, I could only assume—” House smirked at him.

“Why would you tell her that?” Wilson asked.

“Because it’s fun,” House said. “And because of this.”

He leaned forward and kissed Wilson.

80. “Oh, well, tell that to our boring minister at home.”

“Oh.”

When House pulled back, Wilson couldn’t form any coherent words, so the ‘oh’ was all that passed his tingling lips. House was looking at him expectantly, and Wilson wondered what he should say. Thank you? I liked it? God, do that again?

House smirked. “You can say any of those things.”

Wilson wondered if he’d spoken out loud, or if House simply knew. Perhaps Wilson’s expression gave him away – it usually did, as far as House was concerned. Still, it’d be nice for Wilson to realize his own thoughts before House for once.

Finally, he breathed, “Do that again.”

90. “Madame Morrible, if you please,” said Elphaba, “we never had an opportunity to discuss the Quells that you recited in the parlor last week.”

“We need to talk about this.”

House gave a put-upon sigh. “What’s there to talk about?”

“We kissed,” Wilson said. “We should discuss it.”

“We kissed,” House said. “There’s not much to discuss. Unless you want to do it again.”

“But—what does that make us?” Wilson asked. “Is there an us? Are we—boyfriends?”

“God, you’re such a teenage girl,” House said. He rolled his eyes. “I’m not having this discussion in the corridor.”

They headed towards Wilson’s office, because House thought that Wilson might feel more at ease there. Of course, once inside, House simply kissed him again.

100. “Your head looks like a hedgehog in shock, what did you do to yourself?”

“Don’t look so shocked,” House said, giving another roll of his eyes. “It’s just kissing. I’m sure you’ve done more with your ex-wives – otherwise I’m sure they were disappointed with their wedding nights.”

“It’s just—you,” Wilson said. He looked slightly out of breath after the last kissing session.

“It’s not like anything has really changed,” House said. “We’re friends who happen to kiss.”

“That’s usually called a relationship,” Wilson said.

“I’m not going to be your boyfriend,” House said. “That’s so gay.”

“We are gay,” Wilson said.

“Nu-uh,” House said. “’Gay’ is for men in general. I’m just—Wilson-interested.”

110. “Please, perhaps I am wrong,” said Boq.

“So how ‘bout you? House-interested, or men in general?”

“House, please—”

“Oh, come on.”

Wilson sighed. “Haven’t had much time to think about it. But I suppose it’s, uh, you.”

“Don’t sound so thrilled about it,” House said, rolling his eyes.

“I’m just—getting used to it.”

“Like I said, nothing has to change,” House said. “We just kiss every now and then.”

“So just kissing?” Wilson asked, and he waggled his eyebrows to see if he could get a reaction from House.

House smirked, and Wilson was surprised to see desire in those blue eyes. “Not just kissing.”

120. “We shall conclude that the relative force you need to break my arm – as opposed to other arms you have broken – is proportionate to the relative amount of human versus elfin blood in my veins.”

Chase operates on House’s broken body, forcing himself to keep his hands from shaking. He probably shouldn’t be operating, but House asked for him, and he couldn’t say no.

The steady beep of House’s heartbeat is reassuring, but not very certain – his heart has already stopped twice. Chase wonders what made House drive his motorcycle in the middle of winter on icy roads, when it is just an accident waiting to happen. There was no chance to ask, and when House’s heart stops again, Chase thinks, heart breaking, that he may never get to ask that question, or any other.

130. There was no doubt in the minds of anyone who had seen the corpse, the correct word, was murder.

She was a beautiful corpse, just as she had been beautiful in life. Even the blood pooling around her seemed poetical.

House watched as the police photographed the crime scene – the office, his office – and took samples of odd hairs on the floor, fingerprints that would tie the murderer to the scene.

Her niceness, her pleasantries, her constant hunt for people to be good – it had been her downfall, what had made him snap in the end, no matter how much Cameron just wanted to be kind.

She’d annoyed them both.

He watched as they took Wilson away in handcuffs.

140. “Maybe we can figure it out together, work to make a change.”

Her head rests on her sleeping lover’s chest, but Thirteen is wide awake. From her point of view, she can see the outline of breasts through the thin nightgown, see the creases over the taut stomach, the hipbones jutting out slightly. She can imagine what the dip of fabric between the legs hide, because she’s been there, tasted it, made her lover scream and beg.

Now her lover is sleeping calmly in post-coital bliss. Thirteen wants to sleep, but can’t – ever since the results of the test – The Test – she’s been sleeping less and less, because it feels like she’s wasting time.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing,” Thirteen replies. “You should sleep.”

“So should you,” Allison says.

“Yeah.”

She feels fingers thread through her hair, long fingers that are soft and gentle like the rest of Allison. A kiss is dropped onto Thirteen’s head, and it makes her feel safe and loved, the loneliness chased away for just a little bit.

“We can figure it out together,” Allison says softly. “Tomorrow, after we’ve slept. We can’t solve anything right now.”

This can’t be solved, and Thirteen knows it. Still, she nods, and she allows her eyelids to fall shut.

150. “They’re just gorgeous,” said Elphaba thickly.

Wilson in front of him, naked as the day he was born, his hands and feet tied to the bed posts, a blindfold over his eyes. House could see Wilson’s chest heaving, up, down, up, down, and Wilson’s tongue darted out to lick his lips, waiting in anticipation. House’s own cock was throbbing, but he wanted to savor this moment, wanted to burn it into his memory, so that he would always remember how gorgeous his lover was.

“House?” Wilson asked, raising his head. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” House said thickly, and made his way onto the bed, to Wilson.

160. “Miss Glinda, with your middle-range social position and your transparent ambition, you can slime your way into ball-rooms of margraves and still be at home in the pigsties.”

“Ass-kissing again? Didn’t you get enough this morning with me? But then, I guess this is a different kind of ass-kissing,” House said, studying the ceiling as though contemplating it.

Wilson gave him an impatient look. The couple behind him – over-the-top rich, if the wife’s diamonds were anything to go by – looked rather shocked at House’s outburst.

“Ignore him,” Wilson said, “he’s just the janitor.”

“Is that any way to talk about a lover?” House asked. “But if I’m the janitor, I’ll have to wipe that slime off your lips, from all the aforementioned lower-cheek-kissing.”

“House—”

“Oh, I’m humbled,” House said. “The great oncologist, Doctor James Wilson, knows my name. I shall forever remember this day—”

Wilson looked as though he’d do anything to make House disappear, which was what House was after.

“One kiss, and I’ll go away,” he said, grinning.

Wilson’s eyes narrowed. “Seriously?”

“Yep.”

“Well then,” Wilson said, and leaned over and pecked House’s cheek very quickly. “Done. Now go away.”

Wilson strode past House, with the two shocked rich people trailing behind him. House stared after Wilson, more than a little surprised that he’d actually kissed House, if only on the cheek, in public.

170. She was glad of it.

Getting the results made her world come crashing down around her ears – and yet at the same time, she was glad; it was liberating. What she had dared to do before because she didn’t know whether she was sick or not, was now something she felt she had to do, because she might not be able to later. She booked lessons for skydiving, and it was exhilarating, feeling the air, the rush of wind in her ears, heart pounding and mouth spread in a smile until she pulled the parachute. She felt free, for the first time in her life.

180. On a clammy late summer evening about three years after graduating from Shiz University, Fiyero stopped at the unionist chapel in Saint Glinda’s Square, to pass some time before meeting a fellow countryman at the opera.

It had been a little over three years since he stopped working for Doctor Gregory House, which meant he’d now been ‘free’ of House for as long as he’d been under House’s thumb. Chase wondered if he missed it, or if it was a relief.

He had a child now, and a wife, a lovely, charmed life. He wondered what he would have said, had anyone told him six years ago, when Allison Cameron first came into the office, that she’d be his wife. She seemed far too perfect, far too good, to ever even look at him. He would probably have laughed at that someone. It had seemed impossible even three years ago. And now they had their daughter, three months old with bright brown eyes and a thin sheen of blonde hair, and she was just as perfect as her mother.

Still, even in this life of perfection, he sometimes missed the growling, sarcastic man who was more like a father to him – although neither Chase nor House would ever say so – than Chase’s actual father.

Perhaps it was a mixture of missing it and being relieved to no longer be called an idiot five times a day.

190. “Is he still a smug boor?”

“You’re looking your usual smug self.”

“Thank you.”

“What did you do this time?” Wilson asked.

“I did what I always do – the un-doable, what others can’t,” House said.

“You—flew? Cured cancer? Stopped all the wars in the world?”

House rolled his eyes. “Flying is for sissies. Curing cancer is boring. And if all the wars in the world would stop, then our economy would collapse from the lack of weapons sold. Better not do that.”

“Right. So then, what did you do?”

House looked ridiculously proud. “I watched an entire season of General Hospital in a single day.”

200. “Keep some proportion in all this!”

They told him that he shouldn’t push himself too hard, that in proportion to the injury, the permanent damage was very low. That injuries to the brain such as the ones he had sustained could have left him a vegetable, perhaps even should have.

But then, they didn’t know what he’d lost; they didn’t know their proportions were all wrong. That while his physical injuries weren’t bad, the permanent damage was mile-high. It was worse than the leg pain had ever been.

Wilson wouldn’t even look at him these days, and that hurt worse than any injury to his body.

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