![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mhalachaiETA: Changed the rules, as I can't write one-sentence on these. *Has no restraint*
So.
Hi. You might remember me from such fics as were posted in 2006. You know, last year. Uh huh. I'm coming down off the most hellish quarter at work ever (you know we actually started using the phrase math 4eva! ?) and need to get my creativity back up and running. So, it's time for run-on sentences!
Stealing 75% from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
houses_on_fire:
In the vein of Summaries for Dummaries (One and Two), it's the TheSingle Sentence Quasi-drabble Fic Meme:
Any universe I have written on before, and/or is listed on my tags page, is fair game. Request as many as you'd like, as often as you'd like. They can be outtakes from existing fics, or just out of the air.
Be creative! Have fun!
6 posted!
Forholy_schist, Dawning Light, Dawn and JC...prompt "baseball"
"Hi Jean-Claude," Dawn said, slumping down on the carpet. She chomped into her apple before looking up and the vampire, seated elegantly on the couch. "Whattcha up to?"
"Waiting to speak with Anita." Jean-Claude looked at Dawn, askance. "You are certainly in an... interesting outfit."
Dawn snorted, and then had to spend a few minutes coughing up a chunk of apple. "It's my baseball uniform," she choked out after a while. Jean-Claude, who had not moved a muscle during her little fit, raised an eyebrow. "Come on, even someone as trapped in the French Revolution as you has to know what baseball is."
"I... do." Only the Master of the City could put such distain into two words. "But why are you playing such a sport?"
"'Cause it's violent."
"Violent," he repeated.
"Yeah, total." Dawn set her apple core down on the coffee table and wiped a grimy, sticky hand on her uniform leg. "You hit things really hard with sticks? You get to throw things at people’s heads, and no one yells at you?"
Jean-Claude stared.
"What?"
"I am considering changing what I am going to get you for your birthday."
"Like what? Sharp things?" Dawn asked, perking up.
"Non."
"Pointy things?"
"Non."
"Pointy sharp things that are on fire?"
"Dawn..."
shadow_in_eden Dawn/Asher is the pairing, and masks is the prompt. -- Dawn's 16/26, and it's Halloween.
"Very interesting."
Dawn whirled around, her heart pounding in her chest. "What-- why here? You, here?"
Asher leaned against the stone wall, hands in his khakis pockets. "Such a beautiful dress," he said, ignoring her stuttered question. His eyes, half hidden behind a curtain of golden hair, traveled up from her shoes to her waist. "A very... tight dress."
Dawn blushed hard, burning from the inside. "It's like a period costume. For Halloween," she said, gripping her mask for the Vampire Masquerade even harder.
"Oui, I know the period." Asher took one sauntering step forward. His eyes moved up, pausing for a moment on Dawn's chest. Finally, finally, he met her eyes. "You fit it very well."
And just like that, Asher vanished.
Dawn breathed out shakily. Her heart was pounding its way out of her chest and she didn't know what she was doing wrong.
Somehow, this all felt very wrong.
cissasghost Dawning Light 'verse . . Anita/Jean-Claude . . prompt "socks" -- Dawn is 6/16.
"What are you doing, ma petite?"
"Looking for my socks."
Jean-Claude caught Anita's wrist, fingers gently encircling her skin. "Why is that?"
Anita looked at him, exasperated. "Because I have to get home!"
Jean-Claude gently pulled Anita back to the bed. "And why must you return home?"
"Because!"
Yet, Anita didn't object as Jean-Claude slid his hand over the bare skin of her waist. She grudgingly laid down, shoulders stiff against the pillows.
Jean-Claude restrained a smile. Carefully, so as not to spook her, he kissed a gentle line up her arm. "Little Dawn is fine," he said.
"I know that."
"She has not had a single problem in her sleep in over nine months," Jean-Claude pointed out. "She sleeps well and soundly, as any child of six would do."
Anita sighed. "Dawn still takes an hour to get to bed."
Jean-Claude waited.
"She..." Anita stared up at the ceiling, unconsciously wiggling closer to Jean-Claude. "She needs a story, then she needs a glass of water. Then she needs to tell us all about her day."
"How long does that take?" Jean-Claude asked, curious. "What can a small child do in one day?"
Anita rolled her eyes. "Too much. She does more than I do in a day, I swear. And everything's the biggest deal ever."
Jean-Claude tightened his grip on Anita's waist. "Really?" he asked, unable to stop himself. "That sounds familiar."
Anita sat up, glaring down at him. "What the hell does that mean?"
With a sigh, Jean-Claude said, "Ma petite, I only mean that little Dawn is very much like yourself." When that didn't elicit any reaction beyond a glare, he continued. "It means she has people in her life that she cares about, deeply, and that those people in her life care about her."
Anita stared at the ceiling. "I just worry about leaving her alone."
"She has both Nathaniel and Micah home tonight," Jean-Claude noted. "She knows that you will be home in the morning. Did you not wish her goodnight when we went out for dinner?"
"That's not--" Anita swallowed hard. "I don't want her to be alone."
"She is not alone," Jean-Claude pointed out.
"No, she's not."
The hint of hesitation gave Jean-Claude the clue he needed. "Dawn will still need you in the morning."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know." Jean-Claude kissed Anita's shoulder. "But that is what I meant."
Anita said nothing.
sorceress_death Dawning Light- Dawn/Vampires -- Barbie Dolls
Micah raised his newspaper, resisting the urge to sink down in his seat as Anita stalked through the living room. She had been in a very bad mood since she arrived home, and Micah was just waiting for something to set her off--
He winced as Anita tripped on a pile of Dawn's belongings. The woman kicked the pile, then put her hands on her hips and looked up in the general direction of Dawn's bedroom.
"Dawn!" Anita shouted at a level that hurt Micah's ears.
"What?" came the muffled reply from the upstairs.
"Get down here!"
"I'm in the middle of a level!"
"Get down here or so help me God, I'm throwing your video games out the window!"
Carefully, Micah folded the newspaper. Anita could be mad all she wanted, but he would not let her take it out on Dawn.
Stomping footsteps came down the steps, down the hall, and then Dawn appeared in the living room door, eyes flashing. Of course, she'd be reflecting Anita's anger. Some days Micah didn't know how he handled the two of them. "What is the matter with you?" Dawn demanded. "Why are you shouting?"
"Because you keep leaving your stuff all over the floor!" Anita grabbed a handful of the items from the floor. "All I ask you to do in this house is pick up after yourself, how hard is--" Anita stopped abruptly and stared at the item in her hand. "What is this?"
"A doll," Dawn ground out. For all that she was six, she looked eerily similar to Anita, right down to the glare. "The Barbie doll your parents got me for my birthday." She even managed to put Anita's sarcastic tones in her words.
"This is not the doll my dad and Judith got you," Anita said, brandishing the doll. "They got you a normal doll. This--"
"Normal dolls suck!" Dawn exclaimed. "I made it better!"
"You made it into a vampire!"
"Like I said, it's better!"
Micah pushed himself off the couch and took the doll from Anita's hand before she could protest. "Did anyone help you with this? he asked, looking closely at the toy. If he remembered correctly, Anita's parents had given Dawn a Barbie dressed in a pink princess outfit -- this doll had on a black satin evening gown, artfully ragged, and her face had been painted to a vampire's pallor with sharp white fangs and a tiny vampire bite mark on her neck. It was very well done.
"Vi-- I mean, someone helped me sew the dress, because Anita won't let me use sharp things," Dawn said with a glower at Anita. "But I did the painting and stuff."
"It's really very good," Micah said, smiling down at Dawn. The determined set of her jaw slowly faded, and she smiled back at him. Giving the doll back to Anita, he picked Dawn up. "But Anita is right about one thing, you are supposed to pick up after yourself."
Dawn squirmed. "I know," she said in a tiny voice.
"It's something to work on," Micah said. He looked at Anita. "It's something we all need to work on."
"Right," Anita said awkwardly, her anger tapering off.
Dawn rolled her eyes. "Want to come blow things up on my video game?" she said, holding her hand out to Anita as a peace offering.
"Of course she does," Micah answered, handing Dawn to Anita. "I'll do some cleaning down here, okay?"
He waited until Anita and Dawn had gone upstairs before collapsing back on the couch. Nathaniel had been out of town for three days and already Micah thought he was going to go insane, trying to deal with Anita and Dawn by himself.
Only two more days, and Nathaniel would be back.
Micah wasn't sure he'd make it.
empressvesica Faith/House, Prompt: I dare you.
He didn't want to do this. To go out there, dressed like-- But no, he'd taken Faith's dare, and she'd know if he backed out.
One day, he'd figure out how she always seemed to know so damned much about him. It was like she had spies, or eyes in the walls.
Hand tightening on his cane, House let out one last breath and reached for the door.
"...could be lupus?" Cameron was in the process of suggesting, and in spite of his apprehension, House rolled his eyes. It was never lupus.
"When was the last time it was lupus?" Chase reminded her, helping himself to a cup of coffee. "You tell House you think it's lupus and he's going to tell you to stop spending time around all the helium balloons in the children's cancer ward."
"No, he'll think it was your idea," Foreman muttered half-heartedly, not looking up from the patient's chart.
"Why would he think that?"
"Because I'll tell him."
Chase put his cup down and turned around. "Hey, what did--" Chase's eyes went wide as he spotted House. "What-- You?"
Cameron glanced up, her mouth opening in a cute little O. Foreman looked up from the file, then back down, then back up. He frowned.
"It's not lupus," House said loudly. He turned toward the door. "I'll be in the clinic."
"Voluntarily?" Chase burst out.
House clenched his jaw on the way out the door.
People actually stopped and stared at him as he hobbled down the hall. If he had known everyone would make this big a deal, he never would have taken Faith up on her dare.
An orderly almost walked into a wall as House stopped at the elevator. Any other day, House would have reamed the guy out, questioned his intelligence, his parentage and his optometrist, but today he had to bite the words down.
He was going to win this dare, and he was going to collect on Faith.
~~~
He saw ten patients in under an hour, ordered blood tests for three of them, wrote prescriptions for five runny noses, told one hypochondriac to go away, with a recommendation for mega dose vitamin C pills, and sent the wacko muttering about penguins up to the third floor.
Dropping the wacko's file on the nurse's desk, he gritted his teeth, grabbed the eleventh file, and walked into exam room three. And almost walked out again.
"Hoo hoo!" Wilson exclaimed, crossing his arms over his chest. "Who died?"
House pulled the door shut behind him and collapsed onto the seat by the window. "Don't you have doctorly things to do?" he said peevishly, opening the file. "This is for Spot Guy."
"Were you hit in the head on the way to work?" Wilson wondered. He shook his head. "No, then you wouldn’t be like this." He looked closer. "Do you even own a tie?"
"Apparently." House ignored Wilson's burgeoning apoplexy and leafed through the file. "His white count is up, maybe Cameron was right about the autoimmune thing."
" 'Maybe Cameron was right'? Who are you and what have you done with Gregory House?"
"Shut up," House snapped. "Get out of here. Hell, go shove this up your ass to keep that damned stick company."
"House, you're doing extra clinic hours and not one patient has complained about you yet!"
"Out!"
"You're wearing a suit! And a tie! Your lab coat is ironed and you shaved!"
House pointed his cane at Wilson. "You know the nice thing about Vicodin? It renders me incapable of feeling your pain. Out!"
"The staff are walking around waiting for the world to end!" Wilson pressed, batting the cane out of the way. "The last time I saw a woman as happy as Cuddy was when my brother told my mother he was marrying a nice Jewish girl and moving in next to them!"
"Cuddy needs to get laid, why don't you go help her with that?" House stood up and headed towards the door. Wilson got in his way. "Move."
"What are you doing?"
Wilson looked so curious, and House was just fed up enough, that he cracked. "Faith dared me to act like a real doctor for a day."
Wilson's mouth dropped opened. "She's still in town?"
"Yes, she's still in town," House mimicked in a whiny tone. "I told her I was a real doctor and then she dared me to be you for a day."
"You're being... me."
"Bite me."
"You're being me," Wilson said, a strange light coming into his eyes. Oh, House knew he would never hear the end of this. "You're in a suit and tie and you're being nice to people because you're being me."
"No, I'm not being you, because I could never be this much of a jack-ass." House tried once again to get through the door, but Wilson was like a yappy rat-like dog with a bone.
"You're being me because the hottest woman ever to walk through these clinic doors, a woman with a perverse attraction to an ass of a doctor twice her age, who can outrun, out-eat, outdrink and outlast you in ever other way, dared you?"
House considered feinting for the epinephrine then running out of the room when Wilson made to cover the family jewels, but his shoes hurt and the tie was cutting off his oxygen. "Yes. Well, not so much a dare as a bet."
Wilson straightened up. "House..."
"I do what she wants for eight hours, then she does what I want for eight hours."
"What are you going to do?" Wilson asked. House smiled. "You can't do--"
"Do what?"
"Do whatever you're thinking about!"
"That's the thing about today's youth," House said, taking advantage of Wilson's somewhat jealous outrage to open the door. "They're open to... almost anything."
"House--"
"I'll see you in a couple of days. I'm calling in sick tomorrow, as I plan to be suffering from exhaustion." House paused to look back at Wilson. "And dehydration."
Some things were worth a little humiliation, after all.
houses_on_fire House, Wilson and Cuddy, buttercups
"Cuddy got laid."
Wilson kept his eyes on the paper in front of him, not risking a glance upwards. "How do you know?"
House propped his feet up on the desk. "She's glowing."
"Maybe she went for a run."
"It's not that kind of glow." House tapped his cane loudly against Wilson's garbage can. "It's the third time this week. And there are flowers in her office."
"She often has flowers in her office," Wilson pointed out.
"Not buttercups," House mused. Wilson could feel the weight of House's stare on the top of his head. It itched. "She duped someone into knocking boots with her and then the fool bought her buttercups."
"House--"
"He'd have to be desperate or stupid." House snapped his fingers. "One of the med students."
"House, would you shut up?" Wilson demanded, finally looking up.
That was a mistake. House's eyes grew wide. As Wilson tried to think of something to say, to deny what he knew would be coming out of House's mouth, the other doctor frowned. Deeply. "You're banging Cuddy."
"Don't be ridiculous," Wilson blustered, standing up to put a book away. He refused to acknowledge how much his hand was shaking. "I'm not sleeping with Cuddy."
"You're banging your boss," House pressed. "Are you insane?"
"I'm not sleeping with Cuddy!" Wilson shouted, forgetting that the door to his office was half-open.
"Do you want to?" House asked, changing topics. "I know a guy--" His pager went off, and he quickly hobbled out of the room. "Tapping it at work never ends well, Wilson!"
Wilson wondered if it was possible to retroactively vote House out of a job.
~~
The note appeared on his desk the next day.
The guys at the flower shop
over-charged your credit card
by two dollars. You should sue.
The paper was unsigned, but a print-out of his credit card statement was taped to his desk.
Wilson waited for the rumors to start, but it was quiet around the hospital. Too quiet. It was as if House was lying in wait, holding back until just the right time. Wilson was going to get an ulcer waiting for the other shoe to fall.
"Do you think anyone will notice if I kill House?" Lisa asked that night over drinks on the far side of town.
"What's wrong now?"
"He's calling me Buttercup." She took a sip of her martini, and even with all the stress, Wilson had to admire the way her fingers played over the glass's stem. "And I don't think he's referring to me as a cow."
Wilson became suddenly interested in his menu. "Really?"
He was saved from her reply by the ringing of his cell phone. The call display told him it was his mother. Why was she calling him at ten at night?
"Hello?"
"James!" his mother exclaimed. "You are keeping things from me!"
"I, uh... what?"
"You're dating a nice Jewish doctor and you hide this from me?"
That sinking sensation in his chest must be the other shoe, Wilson thought in a daze. "Mom--"
"You're buying her a ring and I have to hear this from your friends? Not from you?"
It took Wilson five minutes to get his mother off the phone. After he hung up, he looked at Lisa. "You kill him, I'll dispose of the body."
Lisa's phone rang. Even upside down, Wilson could see the word MOM on the call display.
That was it. House was going down.
So.
Hi. You might remember me from such fics as were posted in 2006. You know, last year. Uh huh. I'm coming down off the most hellish quarter at work ever (you know we actually started using the phrase math 4eva! ?) and need to get my creativity back up and running. So, it's time for run-on sentences!
Stealing 75% from
houses_on_fire:In the vein of Summaries for Dummaries (One and Two), it's the The
Name a character or pairing and a prompt, and I'll write you a one sentence Quasi-drabble (ie somewhere in the ballpark of 100 words) fic.
Any universe I have written on before, and/or is listed on my tags page, is fair game. Request as many as you'd like, as often as you'd like. They can be outtakes from existing fics, or just out of the air.
Be creative! Have fun!
6 posted!
For
holy_schist, Dawning Light, Dawn and JC...prompt "baseball""Hi Jean-Claude," Dawn said, slumping down on the carpet. She chomped into her apple before looking up and the vampire, seated elegantly on the couch. "Whattcha up to?"
"Waiting to speak with Anita." Jean-Claude looked at Dawn, askance. "You are certainly in an... interesting outfit."
Dawn snorted, and then had to spend a few minutes coughing up a chunk of apple. "It's my baseball uniform," she choked out after a while. Jean-Claude, who had not moved a muscle during her little fit, raised an eyebrow. "Come on, even someone as trapped in the French Revolution as you has to know what baseball is."
"I... do." Only the Master of the City could put such distain into two words. "But why are you playing such a sport?"
"'Cause it's violent."
"Violent," he repeated.
"Yeah, total." Dawn set her apple core down on the coffee table and wiped a grimy, sticky hand on her uniform leg. "You hit things really hard with sticks? You get to throw things at people’s heads, and no one yells at you?"
Jean-Claude stared.
"What?"
"I am considering changing what I am going to get you for your birthday."
"Like what? Sharp things?" Dawn asked, perking up.
"Non."
"Pointy things?"
"Non."
"Pointy sharp things that are on fire?"
"Dawn..."
shadow_in_eden Dawn/Asher is the pairing, and masks is the prompt. -- Dawn's 16/26, and it's Halloween."Very interesting."
Dawn whirled around, her heart pounding in her chest. "What-- why here? You, here?"
Asher leaned against the stone wall, hands in his khakis pockets. "Such a beautiful dress," he said, ignoring her stuttered question. His eyes, half hidden behind a curtain of golden hair, traveled up from her shoes to her waist. "A very... tight dress."
Dawn blushed hard, burning from the inside. "It's like a period costume. For Halloween," she said, gripping her mask for the Vampire Masquerade even harder.
"Oui, I know the period." Asher took one sauntering step forward. His eyes moved up, pausing for a moment on Dawn's chest. Finally, finally, he met her eyes. "You fit it very well."
And just like that, Asher vanished.
Dawn breathed out shakily. Her heart was pounding its way out of her chest and she didn't know what she was doing wrong.
Somehow, this all felt very wrong.
cissasghost Dawning Light 'verse . . Anita/Jean-Claude . . prompt "socks" -- Dawn is 6/16."What are you doing, ma petite?"
"Looking for my socks."
Jean-Claude caught Anita's wrist, fingers gently encircling her skin. "Why is that?"
Anita looked at him, exasperated. "Because I have to get home!"
Jean-Claude gently pulled Anita back to the bed. "And why must you return home?"
"Because!"
Yet, Anita didn't object as Jean-Claude slid his hand over the bare skin of her waist. She grudgingly laid down, shoulders stiff against the pillows.
Jean-Claude restrained a smile. Carefully, so as not to spook her, he kissed a gentle line up her arm. "Little Dawn is fine," he said.
"I know that."
"She has not had a single problem in her sleep in over nine months," Jean-Claude pointed out. "She sleeps well and soundly, as any child of six would do."
Anita sighed. "Dawn still takes an hour to get to bed."
Jean-Claude waited.
"She..." Anita stared up at the ceiling, unconsciously wiggling closer to Jean-Claude. "She needs a story, then she needs a glass of water. Then she needs to tell us all about her day."
"How long does that take?" Jean-Claude asked, curious. "What can a small child do in one day?"
Anita rolled her eyes. "Too much. She does more than I do in a day, I swear. And everything's the biggest deal ever."
Jean-Claude tightened his grip on Anita's waist. "Really?" he asked, unable to stop himself. "That sounds familiar."
Anita sat up, glaring down at him. "What the hell does that mean?"
With a sigh, Jean-Claude said, "Ma petite, I only mean that little Dawn is very much like yourself." When that didn't elicit any reaction beyond a glare, he continued. "It means she has people in her life that she cares about, deeply, and that those people in her life care about her."
Anita stared at the ceiling. "I just worry about leaving her alone."
"She has both Nathaniel and Micah home tonight," Jean-Claude noted. "She knows that you will be home in the morning. Did you not wish her goodnight when we went out for dinner?"
"That's not--" Anita swallowed hard. "I don't want her to be alone."
"She is not alone," Jean-Claude pointed out.
"No, she's not."
The hint of hesitation gave Jean-Claude the clue he needed. "Dawn will still need you in the morning."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know." Jean-Claude kissed Anita's shoulder. "But that is what I meant."
Anita said nothing.
sorceress_death Dawning Light- Dawn/Vampires -- Barbie DollsMicah raised his newspaper, resisting the urge to sink down in his seat as Anita stalked through the living room. She had been in a very bad mood since she arrived home, and Micah was just waiting for something to set her off--
He winced as Anita tripped on a pile of Dawn's belongings. The woman kicked the pile, then put her hands on her hips and looked up in the general direction of Dawn's bedroom.
"Dawn!" Anita shouted at a level that hurt Micah's ears.
"What?" came the muffled reply from the upstairs.
"Get down here!"
"I'm in the middle of a level!"
"Get down here or so help me God, I'm throwing your video games out the window!"
Carefully, Micah folded the newspaper. Anita could be mad all she wanted, but he would not let her take it out on Dawn.
Stomping footsteps came down the steps, down the hall, and then Dawn appeared in the living room door, eyes flashing. Of course, she'd be reflecting Anita's anger. Some days Micah didn't know how he handled the two of them. "What is the matter with you?" Dawn demanded. "Why are you shouting?"
"Because you keep leaving your stuff all over the floor!" Anita grabbed a handful of the items from the floor. "All I ask you to do in this house is pick up after yourself, how hard is--" Anita stopped abruptly and stared at the item in her hand. "What is this?"
"A doll," Dawn ground out. For all that she was six, she looked eerily similar to Anita, right down to the glare. "The Barbie doll your parents got me for my birthday." She even managed to put Anita's sarcastic tones in her words.
"This is not the doll my dad and Judith got you," Anita said, brandishing the doll. "They got you a normal doll. This--"
"Normal dolls suck!" Dawn exclaimed. "I made it better!"
"You made it into a vampire!"
"Like I said, it's better!"
Micah pushed himself off the couch and took the doll from Anita's hand before she could protest. "Did anyone help you with this? he asked, looking closely at the toy. If he remembered correctly, Anita's parents had given Dawn a Barbie dressed in a pink princess outfit -- this doll had on a black satin evening gown, artfully ragged, and her face had been painted to a vampire's pallor with sharp white fangs and a tiny vampire bite mark on her neck. It was very well done.
"Vi-- I mean, someone helped me sew the dress, because Anita won't let me use sharp things," Dawn said with a glower at Anita. "But I did the painting and stuff."
"It's really very good," Micah said, smiling down at Dawn. The determined set of her jaw slowly faded, and she smiled back at him. Giving the doll back to Anita, he picked Dawn up. "But Anita is right about one thing, you are supposed to pick up after yourself."
Dawn squirmed. "I know," she said in a tiny voice.
"It's something to work on," Micah said. He looked at Anita. "It's something we all need to work on."
"Right," Anita said awkwardly, her anger tapering off.
Dawn rolled her eyes. "Want to come blow things up on my video game?" she said, holding her hand out to Anita as a peace offering.
"Of course she does," Micah answered, handing Dawn to Anita. "I'll do some cleaning down here, okay?"
He waited until Anita and Dawn had gone upstairs before collapsing back on the couch. Nathaniel had been out of town for three days and already Micah thought he was going to go insane, trying to deal with Anita and Dawn by himself.
Only two more days, and Nathaniel would be back.
Micah wasn't sure he'd make it.
empressvesica Faith/House, Prompt: I dare you.He didn't want to do this. To go out there, dressed like-- But no, he'd taken Faith's dare, and she'd know if he backed out.
One day, he'd figure out how she always seemed to know so damned much about him. It was like she had spies, or eyes in the walls.
Hand tightening on his cane, House let out one last breath and reached for the door.
"...could be lupus?" Cameron was in the process of suggesting, and in spite of his apprehension, House rolled his eyes. It was never lupus.
"When was the last time it was lupus?" Chase reminded her, helping himself to a cup of coffee. "You tell House you think it's lupus and he's going to tell you to stop spending time around all the helium balloons in the children's cancer ward."
"No, he'll think it was your idea," Foreman muttered half-heartedly, not looking up from the patient's chart.
"Why would he think that?"
"Because I'll tell him."
Chase put his cup down and turned around. "Hey, what did--" Chase's eyes went wide as he spotted House. "What-- You?"
Cameron glanced up, her mouth opening in a cute little O. Foreman looked up from the file, then back down, then back up. He frowned.
"It's not lupus," House said loudly. He turned toward the door. "I'll be in the clinic."
"Voluntarily?" Chase burst out.
House clenched his jaw on the way out the door.
People actually stopped and stared at him as he hobbled down the hall. If he had known everyone would make this big a deal, he never would have taken Faith up on her dare.
An orderly almost walked into a wall as House stopped at the elevator. Any other day, House would have reamed the guy out, questioned his intelligence, his parentage and his optometrist, but today he had to bite the words down.
He was going to win this dare, and he was going to collect on Faith.
He saw ten patients in under an hour, ordered blood tests for three of them, wrote prescriptions for five runny noses, told one hypochondriac to go away, with a recommendation for mega dose vitamin C pills, and sent the wacko muttering about penguins up to the third floor.
Dropping the wacko's file on the nurse's desk, he gritted his teeth, grabbed the eleventh file, and walked into exam room three. And almost walked out again.
"Hoo hoo!" Wilson exclaimed, crossing his arms over his chest. "Who died?"
House pulled the door shut behind him and collapsed onto the seat by the window. "Don't you have doctorly things to do?" he said peevishly, opening the file. "This is for Spot Guy."
"Were you hit in the head on the way to work?" Wilson wondered. He shook his head. "No, then you wouldn’t be like this." He looked closer. "Do you even own a tie?"
"Apparently." House ignored Wilson's burgeoning apoplexy and leafed through the file. "His white count is up, maybe Cameron was right about the autoimmune thing."
" 'Maybe Cameron was right'? Who are you and what have you done with Gregory House?"
"Shut up," House snapped. "Get out of here. Hell, go shove this up your ass to keep that damned stick company."
"House, you're doing extra clinic hours and not one patient has complained about you yet!"
"Out!"
"You're wearing a suit! And a tie! Your lab coat is ironed and you shaved!"
House pointed his cane at Wilson. "You know the nice thing about Vicodin? It renders me incapable of feeling your pain. Out!"
"The staff are walking around waiting for the world to end!" Wilson pressed, batting the cane out of the way. "The last time I saw a woman as happy as Cuddy was when my brother told my mother he was marrying a nice Jewish girl and moving in next to them!"
"Cuddy needs to get laid, why don't you go help her with that?" House stood up and headed towards the door. Wilson got in his way. "Move."
"What are you doing?"
Wilson looked so curious, and House was just fed up enough, that he cracked. "Faith dared me to act like a real doctor for a day."
Wilson's mouth dropped opened. "She's still in town?"
"Yes, she's still in town," House mimicked in a whiny tone. "I told her I was a real doctor and then she dared me to be you for a day."
"You're being... me."
"Bite me."
"You're being me," Wilson said, a strange light coming into his eyes. Oh, House knew he would never hear the end of this. "You're in a suit and tie and you're being nice to people because you're being me."
"No, I'm not being you, because I could never be this much of a jack-ass." House tried once again to get through the door, but Wilson was like a yappy rat-like dog with a bone.
"You're being me because the hottest woman ever to walk through these clinic doors, a woman with a perverse attraction to an ass of a doctor twice her age, who can outrun, out-eat, outdrink and outlast you in ever other way, dared you?"
House considered feinting for the epinephrine then running out of the room when Wilson made to cover the family jewels, but his shoes hurt and the tie was cutting off his oxygen. "Yes. Well, not so much a dare as a bet."
Wilson straightened up. "House..."
"I do what she wants for eight hours, then she does what I want for eight hours."
"What are you going to do?" Wilson asked. House smiled. "You can't do--"
"Do what?"
"Do whatever you're thinking about!"
"That's the thing about today's youth," House said, taking advantage of Wilson's somewhat jealous outrage to open the door. "They're open to... almost anything."
"House--"
"I'll see you in a couple of days. I'm calling in sick tomorrow, as I plan to be suffering from exhaustion." House paused to look back at Wilson. "And dehydration."
Some things were worth a little humiliation, after all.
houses_on_fire House, Wilson and Cuddy, buttercups"Cuddy got laid."
Wilson kept his eyes on the paper in front of him, not risking a glance upwards. "How do you know?"
House propped his feet up on the desk. "She's glowing."
"Maybe she went for a run."
"It's not that kind of glow." House tapped his cane loudly against Wilson's garbage can. "It's the third time this week. And there are flowers in her office."
"She often has flowers in her office," Wilson pointed out.
"Not buttercups," House mused. Wilson could feel the weight of House's stare on the top of his head. It itched. "She duped someone into knocking boots with her and then the fool bought her buttercups."
"House--"
"He'd have to be desperate or stupid." House snapped his fingers. "One of the med students."
"House, would you shut up?" Wilson demanded, finally looking up.
That was a mistake. House's eyes grew wide. As Wilson tried to think of something to say, to deny what he knew would be coming out of House's mouth, the other doctor frowned. Deeply. "You're banging Cuddy."
"Don't be ridiculous," Wilson blustered, standing up to put a book away. He refused to acknowledge how much his hand was shaking. "I'm not sleeping with Cuddy."
"You're banging your boss," House pressed. "Are you insane?"
"I'm not sleeping with Cuddy!" Wilson shouted, forgetting that the door to his office was half-open.
"Do you want to?" House asked, changing topics. "I know a guy--" His pager went off, and he quickly hobbled out of the room. "Tapping it at work never ends well, Wilson!"
Wilson wondered if it was possible to retroactively vote House out of a job.
The note appeared on his desk the next day.
The guys at the flower shop
over-charged your credit card
by two dollars. You should sue.
The paper was unsigned, but a print-out of his credit card statement was taped to his desk.
Wilson waited for the rumors to start, but it was quiet around the hospital. Too quiet. It was as if House was lying in wait, holding back until just the right time. Wilson was going to get an ulcer waiting for the other shoe to fall.
"Do you think anyone will notice if I kill House?" Lisa asked that night over drinks on the far side of town.
"What's wrong now?"
"He's calling me Buttercup." She took a sip of her martini, and even with all the stress, Wilson had to admire the way her fingers played over the glass's stem. "And I don't think he's referring to me as a cow."
Wilson became suddenly interested in his menu. "Really?"
He was saved from her reply by the ringing of his cell phone. The call display told him it was his mother. Why was she calling him at ten at night?
"Hello?"
"James!" his mother exclaimed. "You are keeping things from me!"
"I, uh... what?"
"You're dating a nice Jewish doctor and you hide this from me?"
That sinking sensation in his chest must be the other shoe, Wilson thought in a daze. "Mom--"
"You're buying her a ring and I have to hear this from your friends? Not from you?"
It took Wilson five minutes to get his mother off the phone. After he hung up, he looked at Lisa. "You kill him, I'll dispose of the body."
Lisa's phone rang. Even upside down, Wilson could see the word MOM on the call display.
That was it. House was going down.