Drive by beta time

[namaste]

I can't decide if this is a vignette in search of a larger story (possibly something dealing with how House shuts out Stacy in particular, or attempts to shut out others, but some refuse to be shut out) or if I should just clean it up as is and let is sit as an independent fic.

Since whenever I get stuck in conceptual phases I get unstuck by throwing things out for feedback and discussion, I figured I'd put this up on my journal for feedback, discussion, ideas ... you name it.

Please comment.

He dreamed he was in Egypt ...

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He dreamed he was in Egypt. He was nine years old, and had fallen asleep in the shade of the pyramids in the middle of the day. He could feel a drop of sweat making its way down the side of his face. It tickled, and he wanted to wipe it away, but moving took too much energy, his arms felt too heavy.

“Greg?”

He heard her voice, but she was far away.

“Greg?”

A little closer this time. He wondered why she was moving. It was too hot to move.

He felt a hand touch his cheek, then a cool cloth wiping away the sweat. It felt good, and he sighed, turned toward her. A sharp stab of pain shot out from his leg as he tried to move and he heard himself whimper. He woke, feeling the soft sand that had been under his back in the dream harden into the hospital mattress.

He opened his eyes, and saw Stacy looking down at him.

“Greg?” She pulled her hand away from his face, but hesitated with it still in the air, as if she wasn’t sure if he’d allow her touch. Since he’d woken from the surgery, she’d kept her distance, rarely holding his hand, and then only maintaining a soft contact, a light grip around his fingers as if she was unsure how he’d react.

House looked away, unable to look at her, not knowing what he should say, not knowing what she expected him to say. He’d walk away, if he could.

“I was sleeping,” he said. “You woke me up.”

Stacy put her hand on the rail. House could see her knuckles turn white as she gripped the plastic. “You were hot,” she said. “I was worried that the fever was back.”

“Let the doctors worry about that. You shouldn’t be thinking about any medical issues anymore.”

Stacy released the rail, put her hands in her lap. She sat back.

House closed his eyes, tried to will himself back into the dream, away from the pain. But the pain was here now, and it wouldn’t be ignored.

“I was going to go get some lunch,” Stacy said. “I thought I’d pick up some soup from the deli. Lisa said it would be all right for you to have some too.”

House shook his head. “I’m not hungry.”

“You weren’t hungry at breakfast either.” She leaned forward again, but kept her hands on her lap. “You need to eat.”

“You’re not my mother.”

“Would you eat something if she asked you to? She’ll do it.”

House didn’t answer, just closed his eyes again. Soft sand, he thought. Hot wind. The scent of Egypt in his nose -- of camels and fat tourists and diggers at the excavation sites. He took a deep breath but only picked up the air conditioned air of the hospital, the scent of cleansers and his own flesh. He wanted to take a shower, to stand there under his own power and feel the water washing over his skin, over his legs. The sponges and lukewarm water the nurses carried into his room each day were no good.

“Greg?” He heard the chair creak as Stacy pushed herself up, heard her steps as she moved toward the door, heard the door slide open. “Are you sure you don’t need anything?”

He didn’t say anything, didn’t even bother to shake his head, just listened to her walk out the door.

Comments

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

It packs quite a punch as a stand-alone. It's very vivid, especially so in the Egypt memories, and the contrast between the observant boy in the desert and the man who wants to walk away in the present made my heart ache for him.

There's also plenty of room for loosely connected short pieces around the theme of pushing others away. In canon, House does that to almost everyone, and only a few are persistent about staying the course with him.

An interesting aspect to explore could be whether he became worse about it after his illness. It's something I've always wondered about, because Crandall obviously had fond memories of House. Although Crandall is such a gullible happy-puppy of a guy, he might not be a good choice for a benchmark. But Wilson, who is pretty reliable in his readings of House, thinks he did shut people out more.

[namasteyoga.livejournal.com]

You know, I hadn't thought of Crandall, though that would be a good chance to play with him again -- so to speak. I can actually see House as trying various times to push him away, but he just doesn't get the hint, so House keeps getting harsher and harsher with his pushing. (Kind of like the puppy, as you say, who doesn't realize that the owner doesn't want him to bring the stick back.)

Of course that also raises the question of why House was pushing him away. With Stacy, obviously, it was his response to the infarction -- he responds to the changes in his life by trying to keep people at arm's length.

Maybe with Crandall, House pushes him away because he wants to separate himself from music? As if he's struggling between these two things that he loves -- medicine and music -- and believes he has to fully commit himself to medicine if he's to become its master, but there's Crandall, tempting him back, reminding him of the other love.

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

That's a great idea, that he felt he had to separate himself from music to follow medicine. At 20, House would still have been young enough to see the world in the "either/or" terms that teenagers do, and he may have felt it was either medicine or music.

As an adult, he's found a balance that seems to make him happy, but an exploration of the days when it was a hugely important struggle would make a wonderful installment of this story.

[namasteyoga.livejournal.com]

So now that you've got me thinking of it ...

House dreamed he was in Louisiana, lying in the back of Crandall’s car, trying to sleep as Crandall hit every bump in the road. It was dark and the windows were open, the hot, moist Delta air streaming through the windows, spinning in humid whirlwinds over his body.

He rolled onto his side and wiped the sweat off his face with a t-shirt someone had thrown into the back of the car a day or two before. He wasn’t sure if it was his or Crandall’s. He was pretty sure there wasn’t much of a difference any more.

He felt the car shudder and gravel pinged up against the sheet metal. It jerked suddenly to the left.

“Jesus, Crandall, you trying to kill us?”

“Sorry,” Crandall shouted back, his voice blending with the roar of the wind and the creaking of the rusted floorboards.

“If you’re going to fall asleep, just pull over,” House said, “or let me drive.”

“I’m not falling asleep,” Crandall said. “There was something on the road. A dog, or a skunk or something.”

“You can’t tell the difference?”

“I was concentrating on not hitting it, rather than identifying it, G-Man.”

House pushed himself up until he was sitting with his back against the hard vinyl behind the passenger’s seat. Crandall hit another bump and his head banged against the window. “Jesus, Crandall.”

“Sorry.”

I'm thinking I may try to drop the Crandall parts as dreams into the Stacy-related parts of the story, but I'm not sure how that'll work yet.

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

I like this very much. There's a very subtle link to the first one (his observation of the climate and the sweat House wipes away) that's just enough to pull them together.

[mystcphoenxcafe.livejournal.com]

Greetings!

Ok... will try to distill the page of semi-rambling notes I took outside (wonderful day, yes? even if a bit warm) down into something vaguely coherent and hopefully useful to you.

Imo, this is def. part of a longer piece, and not just b/c I love your work. This feels extremely unfinished to me... TOO much left unsaid, too many story threads and possibilities left dangling like a ruined spiderweb. Even assuming a shared knowledge base for many of the basic details, this just seems too much a snippet to work as a standalone for me.

As to whether it is about House and Stacy alone, or how he shuts people out in general, that could be handled either way. I think that the House and Stacy angle should certainly be a part of whatever you choose, but whether it is the whole or not and whether it is one story or a series of vignettes....

Some things that struck me during the reading...

They fear House. They being defined as almost everyone. He has done an excellent job of making it so people will not want to dare his wrath by getting too close or challenging his will in things. This does not always have the best results. Even those who are close enough to him to presumably know better fear him, or are insufficiently willing to go through what is necessary to accomplish what is necessary. (Causing a certain amount of wanting to climb into Story w/a club, but I digress.... :lol)

Guilt and fear are a powerful combination. I have always wondered why Stacy was never willing to go through the screaming, why, for all her skill in a courtroom, she never saw through the anger in House's voice to what lay beneath, because there most assuredly were things beneath. (And why she ended up choosing the man she did. As punishment for her sins mayhap? Or is that just me?)

This strikes me in general as a story about seeing beneath what is said, what is shown, to the hidden truths that lie buried beneath... and why they were hidden in the first place.

It seems also a story of escape... and the desire for escape. No-one wants to be in the situation in which they have found themselves... not Stacy, not Cuddy, certainly not House himself. So... House dreams of long-ago days, Stacy leaves to return to the Real World for a few moments, and presumably Cuddy is off somewhere taking care of her job, drowning her feelings in work.

As a side note about Stacy's leaving, which rings very IC, although I must admit to wanting to smack her... we are always most clueless about the ones we love.

Hopefully this is helpful to you....
-Katrina

[mystcphoenxcafe.livejournal.com]

PS - "He’d walk away, if he could." A truly amazing line.... -K

[namasteyoga.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I'm going to be playing around with some stuff here in the next few days, seeing how they link. (The hot weather here definitely prompted the heat in House's dreams.)

Now that I'm playing with the idea of House's dreams within a dream idea, perhaps the dreams of Crandall, and how he hot got rid of him would be a link along with the heat and emotion, sort of prompting his harshness with Stacy by how he pushed away someone before.

I don't know how well the dreams within the story of pushing away Stacy will work, but I'd like to try it regardless because I've done plenty of related vignette pieces before, and would like to try to make those connections in a different way.

[sangria-lila.livejournal.com]

Please don't leave this as it is. Because as mystcpheonxcafe said, there are too many threads dangling.

On a shallow note, and because I like the dream part too much, you could turn this into a 'five times he dreamed about egypt' piece. Or, what you could do is write the dream as a continuous story, and have House keep dreaming the same dream - when the story in the dream ends, that's when the story in real life ends. Ergo, you could write a piece about a day in House's life after the infarction - perhaps all he wants is to sleep and he keeps getting woken up by various people, nurses, Wilson, Cuddy, Stacy, whatever. You could write how much it irritates him.

Hmm, would be more coherent but am not in a coherent mood, hope this helps nonetheless!

[namasteyoga.livejournal.com]

I happened to see that someone (don't recall who offhand, and I haven't had a chance to fully read the story yet) posted a story on House_Wilson overnight dealing with House and a recurring dream. I know the theme is hardly unique, but that's just weird.

What I'm leaning toward at this time would kind of combine elements from everyone's suggestions -- comparing House shutting out/pushing away Stacy post infarction with how he shut out Crandall, with his guilt for that manifesting itself in how Crandall starts dominating his dreams (which I can see House as dismissing as a side effect of the pain meds). So there would be recurring thematic dreams, issues of House pushing someone away, his remorse even while doing it reflected through Crandall, perhaps a touch of surprise that Wilson won't leave when everyone else does?

Does that make sense? I'll probably post an updated concept once it starts to coalesce, if that's possible.

[sangria-lila.livejournal.com]

Yep, and honestly I was hoping you'd do a combination of all three, because I'd love to see your take on Crandall. And you already know how much I loved Cross Road Blues.