House het ficathon entry: Dissonance, W/J
Apr. 19th, 2006 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicFic!
My entry for the House Het Ficathon: Wilson/Julie, Julie/OMC (Oh God, who'd've thought?), and House/Wilson if you want it to be there. PG-13, 3,700 words.
Comments of all sorts welcome, including criticism.
Title: Dissonance
Pairing: Wilson/Julie, Julie/OMC. And House/Wilson if you want it to be there.
Rating: PG-13 for language and mild sexual situations
Word Count: 3,700
Spoilers: Through 2.17, "Sex Kills."
Written for:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stormmedicine, who requested Wilson/Julie, a Steinway concert piano, T. S. Eliot and two bagels. I hope this exceeds your expectations!
Disclaimer: If I owned them, I'd be writing scripts instead of fics.
Comments: All poetry excerpts are from T. S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton" (Four Quartets) except the last, which is from "The Waste Land." Also, I tried to make the medical discussion accurate but had to work within the hole-riddled framework set up in "Skin Deep" (see http://politedissent.com/archives/1124). And finally, thank you tosynn, catilinarian and musicisbelievng for their invaluable input on the disjointed first drafts.
Dissonance
Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness...
* * *
It's the silence that gets them in the end.
The griping was awful, but this almost makes him yearn for it again. Now they speak to each other in terse notes slapped on the fridge—"Pick up dry cleaning," "Home late tonight"—and know each other by small disruptions around the house, objects shifted in daily life: the keys tossed in a different position in the bowl by the door, the mail left open on the table, the toothpaste rolled a little further.
On the days when their schedules coincide, they have breakfast together. She in her nightgown makes the coffee and watches him (suited, as though he is only pausing here in their home in the regrettable moments between sleep and work) prepare the bagels—two bagels, one for each, for he has never stopped being kind, only stopped seeing her there in front of him—toasting, slicing, smoothing on the cream cheese, laying out the lox, just so; she knows his movements from years of observance, following them at first with love, now with the hatred of familiarity without affection.
He puts the plates in front of them and she sips her coffee and he reads the Times, each painfully conscious of the other and pretending preoccupation. If she speaks, she knows, she will not be able to keep the venom from her voice, and he will take it without a word, and for the rest of the week he will have breakfast at work and come home after she has gone to bed; so she says nothing. When they have eaten and put the dishes in the sink, he leaves for the hospital to care for people who are not his wife, and she drives into town to sleep with the man who is not her husband.
* * *
Home seems like a bad dream and work the reality. Each morning the suffocating stillness of their apartment, the palpable tensions of his wife's resentment and his own guilt, gives way to the organized chaos of the hospital, where he welcomes with relief the hurried stream of physicians and patients in the hallways and private rooms and in his office, settles into the rhythm of evaluation and diagnosis and treatment-planning, the occasional surgery, clinic hours, the department and Board meetings, even the interminable stacks of paperwork. His patients and administrative duties demand his full attention for most of the day, and when there is a lull in the action he wanders over to House or the nurses' station or the cafeteria or anywhere, really, to keep occupied. For hours at a time he forgets about his other home entirely. It's only as evening approaches that the dread clutches at him again.
* * *
At her lover's apartment they laugh and wrestle and kiss and sprawl in the sunlight that hits the bedspread mid-morning. She admires his pianist's hands and he strokes her face and hair and calls her beautiful.
After they make love and press their foreheads together and talk about nothing, he pulls his jeans on and walks barefoot on the hardwood into the other room, where the piano is. He has a Steinway living room grand, black and beautiful and surrounded by scattered papers, and though he complains each time he sits on the bench that he wishes he had the space for a proper concert grand, it's clear that he loves it. She remembers when James treated her with the same reverent delicacy, not so long ago though it seems like another marriage entirely, and lets herself indulge in a moment of self-pity before she wraps herself in the blanket, walks over to the couch and stretches out, watching him play.
She doesn't know much about classical music and rarely recognizes the pieces he shares with her, but she doesn't mind. When he is not playing he speaks to her of tempo and theory, composers and composition, and unlike in the early days when James tried to tell her about his work and filled her head with sickness and sterile Latin, she is beginning to sense the passion in this instrument and likes the feel of the Italian words in her mouth: capriccio, sostenuto, gioioso, vivace.
In her head she has already begun numbering herself among James' ex-wives.
* * *
He has always gotten along well with women. They find him easy to talk to, which they tell him is attractive in a man; they like that he keeps himself neat and can dress well; and his good looks and prestigious position at the hospital don't hurt either. He offers them a sympathetic ear and keen advice, talents that have been invaluable in his line of work and which he cannot seem to switch off. (How ironic now that he needs to talk and there is no one he feels comfortable confiding in who is also willing to listen. He is not desperate enough yet to go to House for commiseration, and Stacy is back home enmeshed in her own marital frustrations.) He enjoys connecting with people, and although on occasion he finds himself cornered and praying for rescue as Jennifer sobs over her love life or Ann-Marie gushes about her son, for the most part it is harmless, playful chatter that on very good days reminds him he can be desirable.
Admittedly, once in a while he gets a little too close. Caring about others can be a fault as well as a strength, and even after ten years and two divorces, he cannot bring himself to say no.
Some days he hates himself for indulging in these flirtations. It is old, this self-disgust, too old to influence his behavior. He knows it's wrong, knows if he were to channel this energy into his own failing relationship there might be hope for its recovery, but he can't help it. There is comfort in knowing women still like him even if his wife doesn't.
* * *
She hates herself around him now, hates her short temper, the bitterness in her voice. Hates how she is angry all the time. It is like a learned response, the fury tightening in her chest when she comes home even if she knows he is not there. She remembers James telling her that some chemo patients throw up when they see a hospital, thinking of their treatment.
She hates James, too, his increasingly transparent lies, the days when he doesn't bother with excuses at all, his predictability (she can tell the time by his morning and bedtime routines, knows the day by his wardrobe and meals), his impossible sensitivity, and that wounded look he wears constantly now, irritating the hell out of her yet leaving her reluctant to lash out. Once upon a time, she thought that if she yelled, he would yell back and they would work through it. She can count on one hand the number of times that tactic has been successful. Still, the rancor in itself has become perversely satisfying.
She thought at first that he was having an affair, with Stacy maybe, whom he has known since before his last marriage, whom he used to leap to see whenever she was in town. That was back before Julie comprehended the extent of the time he spends with his friend—the one she had felt sorry for, before she knew better, the one who knows things about her she never intended James to share—and learned about her husband's infuriating inability to refuse him. In her more cynical musings she wonders whether that same weakness made him agree to marry her in the first place.
* * *
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now.
* * *
Looking back, he can't identify the turning point of this marriage. All he sees is the insidious perfusion of disillusionment since shortly after their honeymoon.
She started to take it personally that he worked long hours, preferred things tidier than the "comfortable mess" she was accustomed to, liked to cook when he was home for it, spent time with House. She stopped calling him Jim. He didn't want to wear a wedding band. She didn't want kids. He drifted. They found it harder to be silly together. After a grace period she started needling him about never being home anymore, complaining that he never looked at her when he was there, that he paid more attention to his medical journals and the television and his friend and his mother and even the maid he'd hired than to her. Now she is the very embodiment of accusation, and, unable to confess to what he has not yet done, he has instead resigned himself to her simmering hostility, the slow-progressing malignancy that has metastasized throughout their relationship. They haven't slept together since—hell, they haven't slept in the same bed for weeks now.
He supposes the signs were there before he proposed. She was always outgoing, strong-willed, a free spirit, vibrant with joy at the best of times but prone to sulking when she didn't get her way. She grew anxious when she felt ignored. He had known going in that he would not be able to provide the kind of sustained attention she needed from him.
Yes. In the beginning was the end.
* * *
Julie knows exactly when it started.
Nearly two years ago, back when James was starting to get tired of coming with her to social events, she got two tickets to one of the faculty recitals at the university. She thought he liked piano music, knew that his best friend was a fairly talented amateur pianist himself, and assumed he would appreciate some time away from the stress of his job.
They were supposed to meet on campus in front of Richmond Auditorium. She waited until the concert was about to start, then went in alone and sat there with the chair beside her embarrassingly empty. It was during the intermission as she gathered her things to go home that she met Matthew, and ended up staying. She didn't sleep with him then, though she accepted his number, didn't consider it until after James abandoned her at Christmas.
The next evening when she told James over dinner that she'd gone alone, he apologized and said he'd had to stay late at work to help House (House again) with a difficult case. It was a common enough occurrence that the selfish bastard kept her husband at the hospital into the night to consult on cases that weren't even related to his specialty. But she knew James too well not to identify the moment of panic in his eyes when she mentioned the concert, the way he averted his gaze and rubbed the back of his neck as he fumbled through his excuse.
Yes. That was the beginning of the end.
* * *
She calls him at the office to debate who will be home Thursday to let in the repairman. He has patients to see. She needs to show some houses. Soon enough he remembers why he was grateful in the early days of Spousal Silence.
He is trying to civilly interrupt her when someone opens the door without knocking. He doesn't need to look up to know it's House, but he does anyway and makes a series of vague, helpless half-gestures indicating the phone and the door. House all but rolls his eyes at him and raps the now wide-open door with his knuckles as he limps in.
"Can it wait?" Wilson asks him, knowing it is futile.
"Excuse me?" his wife asks.
"Sorry, can you hold on for one second, please?" He covers the mouthpiece and braces himself. "House—"
"You break the news to terminal cases over the phone now?" House asks, lowering himself into the chair with a grimace. "That's almost as bad as getting dumped on Instant Messenger."
"It's my wife."
"Your wife has cancer? How ironic."
"She doesn't have cancer. Nobody has cancer."
"Supermodel's got cancer. You should be more sensitive about these wild generalizations."
"Is that House?" Julie demands, sounding disgusted.
He adjusts his hand to cover the phone better. "She does?"
"Yup. Just need you to find it."
"Wait—so you think she has cancer, but you haven't seen it."
"She's responding to IVIG. It's paraneoplastic syndrome."
"Okay, that's…a leap of logic.…"
"The cancer's there. Requisition the ultrasound, take X-rays, schedule a CT scan, whatever you people use."
"And I assume you need everything done ten minutes ago, other patients who actually have appointments be damned."
"I'm sure you'll manage. Use your wily charms on Rochelle over in Radiology."
"Rhonda."
House gives him a pointed look.
Wilson becomes aware that something is…off. He squints, then pinpoints it: there's a dial tone humming in his ear.
"Great," he says, and puts the receiver down. "She hung up on me."
"Leaving you conveniently free to play a few rounds of Find the Tumor." House levers himself up with another wince.
Wilson looks at the phone. "I should call her back."
"I should wear my lab coat. Come on. Your marriage is beyond help. Cancer Girl can still be saved."
* * *
Matthew invites her to one of his students' recitals and murmurs commentary for her throughout the performance. It is an all-Rachmaninoff program, and his student, who is visibly sweating now, seems to her quite talented. She likes Rachmaninoff's intensity even if his music is often very dark. She closes her eyes and revels in Matthew's voice soft in her ear, the chords resonating in the hall.
At the end of the Prelude in G Minor, she makes up her mind.
When it is over and he has seen the young man off, he walks her to her car. The nights are growing warmer, the air refreshing without bite; she wears her coat without gloves, and Matthew looks comfortable in his white shirt and open leather jacket. After they emerge from campus onto Nassau Street and step around the first knot of students laughing and arguing on the sidewalk, he gives her a stack of CDs to try and describes his favorite parts of each recording.
When they reach her car, she tells him she is going to leave James.
* * *
Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.
* * *
They are approaching the crisis point. He doesn't know how he knows this after months of frigidity, but this silence cannot continue for much longer. He does know that the chocolates were too little, too late; when he left for the office this morning he saw them untouched on the kitchen table. He knows he needs to spend more time at home, yet that is the last thing he wants to do. Between that, Stacy's departure and House's worsening leg pain, he is getting dangerously distracted at work—screwed up a diagnosis he shouldn't have, missed two entire testes in that kid, the cancerous one of which would have killed her if House and his coterie hadn't found it themselves. Something has got to give.
He brings roses home that evening. Standing on the front stoop fishing for his keys, he catches noise from inside as if the television or stereo is on full volume. Nonplussed, he unlocks the door and opens it to a symphony so loud it seems a physical presence in the house. He steps inside and hardly hears the latch click behind him.
No lights are on beyond the foyer, so when he has put down his bag and hung up his jacket he follows the sound of the furious piano and swelling orchestra up the half-flight of stairs into the living room, where Julie is sitting on the couch in the dark with her legs tucked under her. She is lit in green and orange from the CD player and the street lamps. He wonders when she started listening to classical music, then wonders whether she always has and he has somehow never noticed.
"Beethoven?" he finds himself asking.
She looks up, startled, and—for the first time he can recall in months, if not years—blushes, deep enough that he can see it darken her cheeks even in this strange light. He feels a sudden rush of affection for her.
"Saint-Saëns," she replies in perfect French. He blinks. She cuts the music off mid-crescendo with the remote beside her.
The music echoing in his head, he watches her as she stands and brushes past him into the kitchen, flipping on the light on her way. She sits at the table in front of a mostly-empty wine glass.
"These are for you," he says, remembering the flowers, and puts them beside the unopened chocolates.
She reaches out, fingers a blossom, pulls her hand back and turns her glass by the stem. "James," she says. "We need to talk."
He sighs and sits down. So the moment has come. What to say? 'Sorry, honey, I've been thinking about cheating on you for more than a year now'?
"Look," he begins.
He is not surprised when she interrupts him. He is surprised, however, by what she says.
* * *
The poor bastard, she thinks when she sees the look on his face. It didn't occur to him that I might do it.
"You—what?" he says, finally.
"I've been having an affair," she repeats, already out of patience, wanting this to be over. "I've been sleeping with another man."
"Who?" Immediately, he holds up his hand. "No, I don't want to know." He rubs his forehead.
"He makes me laugh," she says, as though that explains everything. In a way, she supposes, it does. Then she keeps going, because she doesn't know what else to do: "He has time for me. He makes me feel wanted."
"I really don't want to hear it." That waver in his voice again. She almost feels sorry for him. She looks at him looking at the wall until he goes on: "So that's it, then."
She shrugs. "I don't think we're fixable. I don't even want to fix us anymore."
She waits. He doesn't argue with her. Big surprise.
"For God's sake, James," she tries. "I thought it would be different with us."
He just looks at her.
She sighs noisily and pushes her chair back. "I've got some things packed. I can be out tonight."
He stands up as well. "No, I'll go. I can stay with—" He stops.
"Right," she says, and is glad she no longer has to bother masking the spite that tightens her jaw whenever that man is mentioned.
He breaks the stalemate by nodding and leaving the room. She sits back down and sips the rest of her wine as she listens to him take a suitcase out of the closet, gather his things from the spare room, open and shut drawers in their room—she still thinks of it as their room—and finally rustle around in the bathroom.
He reappears in the doorway, hair ruffled, carrying the small suitcase he uses for conference weekends. She rises and walks with him down the stairs to the front door. She watches him put on his jacket. He ducks down and hefts his work bag onto his shoulder. Half-turned, his hand on the doorknob, he pauses and asks, "Will you stay with him?"
She starts to answer, then gives a short, humorless laugh. "What do you care? You haven't been interested in my life for a long time." She should regret saying that, but it's true, and it feels good to hurt him a little.
"Touché," he murmurs, then opens the door and walks out.
* * *
"This is the way a marriage ends," he sighs when House returns with a sandwich and two beers and oofs onto the couch beside him. "Not with a bang but a whimper."
"You've never had any trouble getting your bangs from the nurses. I'm sure they'll help you recover." House offers him half the sandwich and a napkin.
Wilson takes them and glares at him, or tries to; it is rare that he can pull one off with House. "Thanks," he says, sounding not at all sincere, puts the sandwich and napkin on the coffee table and cracks open his beer.
House reaches forward to grab the remote. "Who'd she do it with?" he asks as he turns on the TV and scrolls through the listings.
"I didn't ask."
"Wuss."
He sees House look at him out of the corner of his eye as though to gauge his reaction to the jibe. He quirks a small, tired smile.
There are any number of things House could say next—"Karma's a bitch," for instance, or "So how come you're the one who moved out?"—and while he knows he deserves all of this and more, he is too weary to handle any more humiliation tonight. But House only puts on Monster Trucks and limits his remarks to the show. Wilson relaxes into the couch on which he will soon be sleeping, and eats his sandwich.
* * *
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.'
* * *
When her soon-to-be-ex-husband has gone, Julie holds her own gaze in the mirror in the foyer. Then she walks upstairs into the kitchen again, where she pours more wine and drinks half of it without stopping. She takes a deep breath, once, raises her head, rakes back her hair, and strides into the living room. She presses Play. The concerto starts again from the beginning.
My entry for the House Het Ficathon: Wilson/Julie, Julie/OMC (Oh God, who'd've thought?), and House/Wilson if you want it to be there. PG-13, 3,700 words.
Comments of all sorts welcome, including criticism.
Title: Dissonance
Pairing: Wilson/Julie, Julie/OMC. And House/Wilson if you want it to be there.
Rating: PG-13 for language and mild sexual situations
Word Count: 3,700
Spoilers: Through 2.17, "Sex Kills."
Written for:
stormmedicine, who requested Wilson/Julie, a Steinway concert piano, T. S. Eliot and two bagels. I hope this exceeds your expectations!Disclaimer: If I owned them, I'd be writing scripts instead of fics.
Comments: All poetry excerpts are from T. S. Eliot's "Burnt Norton" (Four Quartets) except the last, which is from "The Waste Land." Also, I tried to make the medical discussion accurate but had to work within the hole-riddled framework set up in "Skin Deep" (see http://politedissent.com/archives/1124). And finally, thank you to
synn, catilinarian and musicisbelievng for their invaluable input on the disjointed first drafts.Dissonance
Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness...
* * *
It's the silence that gets them in the end.
The griping was awful, but this almost makes him yearn for it again. Now they speak to each other in terse notes slapped on the fridge—"Pick up dry cleaning," "Home late tonight"—and know each other by small disruptions around the house, objects shifted in daily life: the keys tossed in a different position in the bowl by the door, the mail left open on the table, the toothpaste rolled a little further.
On the days when their schedules coincide, they have breakfast together. She in her nightgown makes the coffee and watches him (suited, as though he is only pausing here in their home in the regrettable moments between sleep and work) prepare the bagels—two bagels, one for each, for he has never stopped being kind, only stopped seeing her there in front of him—toasting, slicing, smoothing on the cream cheese, laying out the lox, just so; she knows his movements from years of observance, following them at first with love, now with the hatred of familiarity without affection.
He puts the plates in front of them and she sips her coffee and he reads the Times, each painfully conscious of the other and pretending preoccupation. If she speaks, she knows, she will not be able to keep the venom from her voice, and he will take it without a word, and for the rest of the week he will have breakfast at work and come home after she has gone to bed; so she says nothing. When they have eaten and put the dishes in the sink, he leaves for the hospital to care for people who are not his wife, and she drives into town to sleep with the man who is not her husband.
* * *
Home seems like a bad dream and work the reality. Each morning the suffocating stillness of their apartment, the palpable tensions of his wife's resentment and his own guilt, gives way to the organized chaos of the hospital, where he welcomes with relief the hurried stream of physicians and patients in the hallways and private rooms and in his office, settles into the rhythm of evaluation and diagnosis and treatment-planning, the occasional surgery, clinic hours, the department and Board meetings, even the interminable stacks of paperwork. His patients and administrative duties demand his full attention for most of the day, and when there is a lull in the action he wanders over to House or the nurses' station or the cafeteria or anywhere, really, to keep occupied. For hours at a time he forgets about his other home entirely. It's only as evening approaches that the dread clutches at him again.
* * *
At her lover's apartment they laugh and wrestle and kiss and sprawl in the sunlight that hits the bedspread mid-morning. She admires his pianist's hands and he strokes her face and hair and calls her beautiful.
After they make love and press their foreheads together and talk about nothing, he pulls his jeans on and walks barefoot on the hardwood into the other room, where the piano is. He has a Steinway living room grand, black and beautiful and surrounded by scattered papers, and though he complains each time he sits on the bench that he wishes he had the space for a proper concert grand, it's clear that he loves it. She remembers when James treated her with the same reverent delicacy, not so long ago though it seems like another marriage entirely, and lets herself indulge in a moment of self-pity before she wraps herself in the blanket, walks over to the couch and stretches out, watching him play.
She doesn't know much about classical music and rarely recognizes the pieces he shares with her, but she doesn't mind. When he is not playing he speaks to her of tempo and theory, composers and composition, and unlike in the early days when James tried to tell her about his work and filled her head with sickness and sterile Latin, she is beginning to sense the passion in this instrument and likes the feel of the Italian words in her mouth: capriccio, sostenuto, gioioso, vivace.
In her head she has already begun numbering herself among James' ex-wives.
* * *
He has always gotten along well with women. They find him easy to talk to, which they tell him is attractive in a man; they like that he keeps himself neat and can dress well; and his good looks and prestigious position at the hospital don't hurt either. He offers them a sympathetic ear and keen advice, talents that have been invaluable in his line of work and which he cannot seem to switch off. (How ironic now that he needs to talk and there is no one he feels comfortable confiding in who is also willing to listen. He is not desperate enough yet to go to House for commiseration, and Stacy is back home enmeshed in her own marital frustrations.) He enjoys connecting with people, and although on occasion he finds himself cornered and praying for rescue as Jennifer sobs over her love life or Ann-Marie gushes about her son, for the most part it is harmless, playful chatter that on very good days reminds him he can be desirable.
Admittedly, once in a while he gets a little too close. Caring about others can be a fault as well as a strength, and even after ten years and two divorces, he cannot bring himself to say no.
Some days he hates himself for indulging in these flirtations. It is old, this self-disgust, too old to influence his behavior. He knows it's wrong, knows if he were to channel this energy into his own failing relationship there might be hope for its recovery, but he can't help it. There is comfort in knowing women still like him even if his wife doesn't.
* * *
She hates herself around him now, hates her short temper, the bitterness in her voice. Hates how she is angry all the time. It is like a learned response, the fury tightening in her chest when she comes home even if she knows he is not there. She remembers James telling her that some chemo patients throw up when they see a hospital, thinking of their treatment.
She hates James, too, his increasingly transparent lies, the days when he doesn't bother with excuses at all, his predictability (she can tell the time by his morning and bedtime routines, knows the day by his wardrobe and meals), his impossible sensitivity, and that wounded look he wears constantly now, irritating the hell out of her yet leaving her reluctant to lash out. Once upon a time, she thought that if she yelled, he would yell back and they would work through it. She can count on one hand the number of times that tactic has been successful. Still, the rancor in itself has become perversely satisfying.
She thought at first that he was having an affair, with Stacy maybe, whom he has known since before his last marriage, whom he used to leap to see whenever she was in town. That was back before Julie comprehended the extent of the time he spends with his friend—the one she had felt sorry for, before she knew better, the one who knows things about her she never intended James to share—and learned about her husband's infuriating inability to refuse him. In her more cynical musings she wonders whether that same weakness made him agree to marry her in the first place.
* * *
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now.
* * *
Looking back, he can't identify the turning point of this marriage. All he sees is the insidious perfusion of disillusionment since shortly after their honeymoon.
She started to take it personally that he worked long hours, preferred things tidier than the "comfortable mess" she was accustomed to, liked to cook when he was home for it, spent time with House. She stopped calling him Jim. He didn't want to wear a wedding band. She didn't want kids. He drifted. They found it harder to be silly together. After a grace period she started needling him about never being home anymore, complaining that he never looked at her when he was there, that he paid more attention to his medical journals and the television and his friend and his mother and even the maid he'd hired than to her. Now she is the very embodiment of accusation, and, unable to confess to what he has not yet done, he has instead resigned himself to her simmering hostility, the slow-progressing malignancy that has metastasized throughout their relationship. They haven't slept together since—hell, they haven't slept in the same bed for weeks now.
He supposes the signs were there before he proposed. She was always outgoing, strong-willed, a free spirit, vibrant with joy at the best of times but prone to sulking when she didn't get her way. She grew anxious when she felt ignored. He had known going in that he would not be able to provide the kind of sustained attention she needed from him.
Yes. In the beginning was the end.
* * *
Julie knows exactly when it started.
Nearly two years ago, back when James was starting to get tired of coming with her to social events, she got two tickets to one of the faculty recitals at the university. She thought he liked piano music, knew that his best friend was a fairly talented amateur pianist himself, and assumed he would appreciate some time away from the stress of his job.
They were supposed to meet on campus in front of Richmond Auditorium. She waited until the concert was about to start, then went in alone and sat there with the chair beside her embarrassingly empty. It was during the intermission as she gathered her things to go home that she met Matthew, and ended up staying. She didn't sleep with him then, though she accepted his number, didn't consider it until after James abandoned her at Christmas.
The next evening when she told James over dinner that she'd gone alone, he apologized and said he'd had to stay late at work to help House (House again) with a difficult case. It was a common enough occurrence that the selfish bastard kept her husband at the hospital into the night to consult on cases that weren't even related to his specialty. But she knew James too well not to identify the moment of panic in his eyes when she mentioned the concert, the way he averted his gaze and rubbed the back of his neck as he fumbled through his excuse.
Yes. That was the beginning of the end.
* * *
She calls him at the office to debate who will be home Thursday to let in the repairman. He has patients to see. She needs to show some houses. Soon enough he remembers why he was grateful in the early days of Spousal Silence.
He is trying to civilly interrupt her when someone opens the door without knocking. He doesn't need to look up to know it's House, but he does anyway and makes a series of vague, helpless half-gestures indicating the phone and the door. House all but rolls his eyes at him and raps the now wide-open door with his knuckles as he limps in.
"Can it wait?" Wilson asks him, knowing it is futile.
"Excuse me?" his wife asks.
"Sorry, can you hold on for one second, please?" He covers the mouthpiece and braces himself. "House—"
"You break the news to terminal cases over the phone now?" House asks, lowering himself into the chair with a grimace. "That's almost as bad as getting dumped on Instant Messenger."
"It's my wife."
"Your wife has cancer? How ironic."
"She doesn't have cancer. Nobody has cancer."
"Supermodel's got cancer. You should be more sensitive about these wild generalizations."
"Is that House?" Julie demands, sounding disgusted.
He adjusts his hand to cover the phone better. "She does?"
"Yup. Just need you to find it."
"Wait—so you think she has cancer, but you haven't seen it."
"She's responding to IVIG. It's paraneoplastic syndrome."
"Okay, that's…a leap of logic.…"
"The cancer's there. Requisition the ultrasound, take X-rays, schedule a CT scan, whatever you people use."
"And I assume you need everything done ten minutes ago, other patients who actually have appointments be damned."
"I'm sure you'll manage. Use your wily charms on Rochelle over in Radiology."
"Rhonda."
House gives him a pointed look.
Wilson becomes aware that something is…off. He squints, then pinpoints it: there's a dial tone humming in his ear.
"Great," he says, and puts the receiver down. "She hung up on me."
"Leaving you conveniently free to play a few rounds of Find the Tumor." House levers himself up with another wince.
Wilson looks at the phone. "I should call her back."
"I should wear my lab coat. Come on. Your marriage is beyond help. Cancer Girl can still be saved."
* * *
Matthew invites her to one of his students' recitals and murmurs commentary for her throughout the performance. It is an all-Rachmaninoff program, and his student, who is visibly sweating now, seems to her quite talented. She likes Rachmaninoff's intensity even if his music is often very dark. She closes her eyes and revels in Matthew's voice soft in her ear, the chords resonating in the hall.
At the end of the Prelude in G Minor, she makes up her mind.
When it is over and he has seen the young man off, he walks her to her car. The nights are growing warmer, the air refreshing without bite; she wears her coat without gloves, and Matthew looks comfortable in his white shirt and open leather jacket. After they emerge from campus onto Nassau Street and step around the first knot of students laughing and arguing on the sidewalk, he gives her a stack of CDs to try and describes his favorite parts of each recording.
When they reach her car, she tells him she is going to leave James.
* * *
Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.
* * *
They are approaching the crisis point. He doesn't know how he knows this after months of frigidity, but this silence cannot continue for much longer. He does know that the chocolates were too little, too late; when he left for the office this morning he saw them untouched on the kitchen table. He knows he needs to spend more time at home, yet that is the last thing he wants to do. Between that, Stacy's departure and House's worsening leg pain, he is getting dangerously distracted at work—screwed up a diagnosis he shouldn't have, missed two entire testes in that kid, the cancerous one of which would have killed her if House and his coterie hadn't found it themselves. Something has got to give.
He brings roses home that evening. Standing on the front stoop fishing for his keys, he catches noise from inside as if the television or stereo is on full volume. Nonplussed, he unlocks the door and opens it to a symphony so loud it seems a physical presence in the house. He steps inside and hardly hears the latch click behind him.
No lights are on beyond the foyer, so when he has put down his bag and hung up his jacket he follows the sound of the furious piano and swelling orchestra up the half-flight of stairs into the living room, where Julie is sitting on the couch in the dark with her legs tucked under her. She is lit in green and orange from the CD player and the street lamps. He wonders when she started listening to classical music, then wonders whether she always has and he has somehow never noticed.
"Beethoven?" he finds himself asking.
She looks up, startled, and—for the first time he can recall in months, if not years—blushes, deep enough that he can see it darken her cheeks even in this strange light. He feels a sudden rush of affection for her.
"Saint-Saëns," she replies in perfect French. He blinks. She cuts the music off mid-crescendo with the remote beside her.
The music echoing in his head, he watches her as she stands and brushes past him into the kitchen, flipping on the light on her way. She sits at the table in front of a mostly-empty wine glass.
"These are for you," he says, remembering the flowers, and puts them beside the unopened chocolates.
She reaches out, fingers a blossom, pulls her hand back and turns her glass by the stem. "James," she says. "We need to talk."
He sighs and sits down. So the moment has come. What to say? 'Sorry, honey, I've been thinking about cheating on you for more than a year now'?
"Look," he begins.
He is not surprised when she interrupts him. He is surprised, however, by what she says.
* * *
The poor bastard, she thinks when she sees the look on his face. It didn't occur to him that I might do it.
"You—what?" he says, finally.
"I've been having an affair," she repeats, already out of patience, wanting this to be over. "I've been sleeping with another man."
"Who?" Immediately, he holds up his hand. "No, I don't want to know." He rubs his forehead.
"He makes me laugh," she says, as though that explains everything. In a way, she supposes, it does. Then she keeps going, because she doesn't know what else to do: "He has time for me. He makes me feel wanted."
"I really don't want to hear it." That waver in his voice again. She almost feels sorry for him. She looks at him looking at the wall until he goes on: "So that's it, then."
She shrugs. "I don't think we're fixable. I don't even want to fix us anymore."
She waits. He doesn't argue with her. Big surprise.
"For God's sake, James," she tries. "I thought it would be different with us."
He just looks at her.
She sighs noisily and pushes her chair back. "I've got some things packed. I can be out tonight."
He stands up as well. "No, I'll go. I can stay with—" He stops.
"Right," she says, and is glad she no longer has to bother masking the spite that tightens her jaw whenever that man is mentioned.
He breaks the stalemate by nodding and leaving the room. She sits back down and sips the rest of her wine as she listens to him take a suitcase out of the closet, gather his things from the spare room, open and shut drawers in their room—she still thinks of it as their room—and finally rustle around in the bathroom.
He reappears in the doorway, hair ruffled, carrying the small suitcase he uses for conference weekends. She rises and walks with him down the stairs to the front door. She watches him put on his jacket. He ducks down and hefts his work bag onto his shoulder. Half-turned, his hand on the doorknob, he pauses and asks, "Will you stay with him?"
She starts to answer, then gives a short, humorless laugh. "What do you care? You haven't been interested in my life for a long time." She should regret saying that, but it's true, and it feels good to hurt him a little.
"Touché," he murmurs, then opens the door and walks out.
* * *
"This is the way a marriage ends," he sighs when House returns with a sandwich and two beers and oofs onto the couch beside him. "Not with a bang but a whimper."
"You've never had any trouble getting your bangs from the nurses. I'm sure they'll help you recover." House offers him half the sandwich and a napkin.
Wilson takes them and glares at him, or tries to; it is rare that he can pull one off with House. "Thanks," he says, sounding not at all sincere, puts the sandwich and napkin on the coffee table and cracks open his beer.
House reaches forward to grab the remote. "Who'd she do it with?" he asks as he turns on the TV and scrolls through the listings.
"I didn't ask."
"Wuss."
He sees House look at him out of the corner of his eye as though to gauge his reaction to the jibe. He quirks a small, tired smile.
There are any number of things House could say next—"Karma's a bitch," for instance, or "So how come you're the one who moved out?"—and while he knows he deserves all of this and more, he is too weary to handle any more humiliation tonight. But House only puts on Monster Trucks and limits his remarks to the show. Wilson relaxes into the couch on which he will soon be sleeping, and eats his sandwich.
* * *
She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.'
* * *
When her soon-to-be-ex-husband has gone, Julie holds her own gaze in the mirror in the foyer. Then she walks upstairs into the kitchen again, where she pours more wine and drinks half of it without stopping. She takes a deep breath, once, raises her head, rakes back her hair, and strides into the living room. She presses Play. The concerto starts again from the beginning.
no subject
Date: Apr. 21st, 2006 03:59 am (UTC)I always marvel at people who can present Julie in a human way. More often than not I think people are content to let her simply be a horrible excuse for a decent person rather than give her character depth and motives that aren't completely malevolent.
You've managed to make it clear that both parties were at fault here, without making either seem cruel or 'evil'.
Again, much love.
Thanks for writing! Very enjoyable!
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Date: Apr. 21st, 2006 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 22nd, 2006 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 22nd, 2006 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 22nd, 2006 02:56 am (UTC)I'll be linking this when I do tonight's
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Date: Apr. 22nd, 2006 03:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: Apr. 22nd, 2006 03:02 am (UTC)I like the comparison and differences between Wilson and Julie, the presense of House that is felt if barely seen, the realization they both have about the wrongness and then the difference they find to fix it or try to fix it.
(Also, a side note: Wilson's little quasi-quotation of Eliot's "The Hollow Men" made me cackle. Because I am on a break from writing a paper on that very poem.)
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Date: Apr. 22nd, 2006 04:31 am (UTC)Thank you. I do think House hangs (well, hung) heavy over Wilson's marriage even after you account for the show being so House-centric, but at the same time I didn't want this to turn into a story about House and Wilson because it was, you know, a Wilson/Julie request for a het ficathon. But darn it if that pair doesn't sneak into everything.
Yay papers on Eliot! Wilson's allusion and House's response were actually the first lines I wrote for this fic, before I knew I'd be doing the "Burnt Norton"/"Waste Land" excerpts.
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Date: Apr. 22nd, 2006 05:04 am (UTC)I adore the contrast of Wilson's inability to name a turning point, and Julie's precise dating of the demise of the marriage. On the one hand, it demonstrates beautifully what is reinforced throughout the fic, that Wilson just isn't paying attention, that Julie really is not his primary concern. Yet on the other hand, you know that relationships aren't like that. That with hindsight one can name a turning point, but really something else could have happened to change the course of events.
I know the story is primarily about Wilson and Julie, but I have to say that House's lines in this are fantastic. The whole cancer exchange, and then his commentary at the end. Well, like I said before, I'll probably remember "Sex Kills" as actually including those scenes from now on. Love, love, LOVE this story, cannot say enough good things about it. Seriously.
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Date: Apr. 22nd, 2006 05:30 pm (UTC)Finding those lines in "Burnt Norton" was the bolt of inspiration behind the part about both of them looking back and seeing 'where things went wrong.' You're exactly right about the psychology there. I do think Julie is the sort of person who would latch onto an event or two and find a way to blame Wilson for ruining their relationship, while Wilson would look back at the whole marriage as vaguely doomed from the start.
I tried to depict the scenes in Wilson's office and House's apartment as they could have happened had they been included in "Skin Deep" and "Sex Kills." I'm very, very happy that you think they fit so well.
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Date: Apr. 22nd, 2006 06:56 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: Apr. 22nd, 2006 06:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 22nd, 2006 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 22nd, 2006 08:36 am (UTC)So easy to dislike Julie, and I am amazed at the writers who can make us like her. Hard to like a character we have never 'met' via the show.
Love House's little contributions to the failing marriage.
Great job!
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Date: Apr. 22nd, 2006 05:39 pm (UTC)I've never imagined that Julie could be all bad, even if she has given Wilson a hard time over the past couple of years. I don't know if she -- if the writers ever deign to bring her onto the show -- will turn out much like I imagined her here, and I doubt we'll ever know who she cheated on Wilson with, but I did my darnedest to extrapolate a fair and balanced personality for her and depiction of their relationship without departing from what Wilson and House have said (though there's leeway in the fact that you have to take anything coming from them with a grain of salt!).
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Date: Apr. 22nd, 2006 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 22nd, 2006 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 22nd, 2006 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: Apr. 24th, 2006 04:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 24th, 2006 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 24th, 2006 08:39 pm (UTC)Also loved the Eliot quotes; I didn't read the blurb at the top so as I read I thought to myself, "why if I didn't know better I'd say that that is Mr. Eliot." They add another dimension to the fic, highlighting the themes.
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Date: Apr. 24th, 2006 08:58 pm (UTC)Yep, as you probably know now, Mr. Eliot was one of
Thanks for your comments!
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Date: Apr. 25th, 2006 08:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Apr. 27th, 2006 02:22 am (UTC)Thanks, though!
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Date: Apr. 25th, 2006 10:25 pm (UTC)"He makes me laugh," she says, as though that explains everything.
It just parallels what Wilson told Cameron in Spin, which I'm sure was your intention.
This was a beautiful piece of work and I need to read it again. So good.
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Date: Apr. 26th, 2006 12:29 am (UTC)Thanks so much! Read away as often as you please. :)
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Date: Apr. 29th, 2006 04:43 am (UTC)You drew the poetry into it brilliantly - it didn't detract from the flow of the piece, nor did it steal the spotlight. Your music was lovely, your medicine was (to the best of my knowledge) flawless in the scope of the show, and your characterization was far beyond 'spot-on'. I love the little tie-ins with canon, and the way you're branching out in such a meaningful way. This is not AU - as another commentor observed, this could easily be canon.
Also, anything that gets me to dust off my Rachmaninoff deserves my undying loyalty.
Thanks so much for writing this - it was an absolute pleasure to read.
no subject
Date: Apr. 29th, 2006 01:12 pm (UTC)I'm SO glad you liked it.
Thank you for your comments; I'm really flattered. Keep in mind, though, that a large part of the credit goes to you for those prompts! Immersing myself in Eliot for hours one morning in preparation, and listening to Rach III and Liszt while writing, really gave the piece its shape and tone. It couldn't exist without you.
BTW You were *my* hero when the assignments went out for having requested Wilson and T.S. Eliot and a piano. :)
Fic: Dissonance
Date: May. 16th, 2006 03:00 pm (UTC)Perfect. Cool and smooth and lost.
In the end my relationship with my ex-boyfriend was like Julie's with Wilson, just so sad that it comes to that.
The music and the poetry are gorgeous.
Re: Fic: Dissonance
Date: May. 17th, 2006 03:48 pm (UTC)On a lighter note, hooray for the Rose Williams stamp of approval! :D
Re: Fic: Dissonance
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Date: Sep. 1st, 2006 07:43 am (UTC)I really loved the tone of this story, the darkness and the inevitability. Well done, this was wonderful.
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Date: Sep. 1st, 2006 07:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 1st, 2006 01:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 1st, 2006 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 1st, 2006 02:35 pm (UTC)I'm terrible at leaving feedback - I never know what to say - but this was so beautiful, so taut with pain, that I just had to let you know that it blew me away. Great job.
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Date: Sep. 1st, 2006 07:47 pm (UTC)What a beautiful way to describe the tone I was trying for. Thank you so much. The Wilson/Julie divorce got so short-shrifted on the show -- what with Julie being made fun of and Wilson getting so poorly treated by House (nothing unusual there) throughout what was clearly a rough time and the whole plotline being dropped as soon as Wilson moved in, except for a couple of jokes -- that I thought a story like this, where we get to see what might have been going on between them, really needed to be told. The pain and sadness were right there to be explored. I'm so glad it moved you.
P.S. I wouldn't worry about your feedback-leaving abilities if I were you!
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Date: Sep. 23rd, 2006 03:32 pm (UTC)Also liked how you worked in canon (especially that point about the POTW in Sex Kills, because, way to make Wilson look bad, writers) and the chocolates, and his decision to move in with House. That was lovely.
And "This is the way a marriage ends," he sighs when House returns with a sandwich and two beers and oofs onto the couch beside him. "Not with a bang but a whimper." got both a 'hee' and an 'aww', and I had to go look up the quote as well.
Beautifully done. Also, Julie's lover reminded me of Julian(?) from Short History, which I don't think you'd even read when you wrote this, but nevertheless :)
no subject
Date: Sep. 24th, 2006 09:22 pm (UTC)The "not with a bang but a whimper" quip and House's retort were actually some of the first lines I wrote for this. At first I couldn't decide when in Wilson and Julie's relationship to set the story, so, since
I liked it that Julie and Wilson were both sympathetic and non-sympathetic in their own ways, and that they were both fairly capable of relationships - just not with each other
Most of the Wilson/Julie fics I'd read took one side over the other. It's so tempting to say that the marriage failing was Wilson's fault because X or Julie's fault because Y, but in my experience that's not the way it works -- both parties bring their own faults to the relationship and in the end, something gives, and it's not worth trying anymore. I wanted very much to show how both contributed to the problem without demonizing either of them.
I liked the quiet tragedy of Wilson having a suspicion the marriage would fail even as he was getting into it. I suspect he had a naive hope when he proposed that this time it would work, despite the voice in the back of his head telling him why it wouldn't. Ah well. He'll always have House.
Also liked how you worked in canon
So much was missing from the show about what Wilson was going through with the separation -- the pain he was experiencing and the way he kept trying to reach out to House, not to mention all the details we never learned about Julie -- that I really felt a need to ground this story in those two episodes. In a more general sense, isn't there something thrilling about writing or reading a story and thinking that it could have happened between or behind the scenes?
especially that point about the POTW in Sex Kills, because, way to make Wilson look bad, writers
Agh, yes! I know House has to be right all the time, but could they please find a way to do that without making Wilson look totally incompetent? A bit of research helped me understand how a competent oncologist could miss organs like that, but the distraction of marital problems and House's leg provided a more satisfying explanation.
Also, Julie's lover reminded me of Julian(?) from Short History
Hee, me too. I smiled to myself when RSL read that passage, especially once I started imagining Wilson in Walter/Julie's place and House in Julian/Matthew's. If only House had a cat to sit on Wilson's legs while he lounged on the couch in a sheet, it would have fit perfectly. That scene was awfully sad, though.
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Date: Dec. 11th, 2006 09:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Dec. 11th, 2006 02:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: Feb. 4th, 2007 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jul. 6th, 2007 05:56 pm (UTC)Thanks for the feedback! Wilson being unable to argue was one of the big differences I imagined between the relationships he has with Julie and with House. If he could have communicated with (and paid attention to) his wife the way he so often tries to talk to House, I have a feeling they would have had a better chance of working things out. But it didn't seem from what little we saw and heard on the show that they wanted to work things out in the end, hence the way their disintegrating marriage is portrayed in this story -- both and neither of them to blame. And, hee! You cast Hope Davis. I'm still not sure what I think Julie looks like. Brunette and pretty and fashionable's about as far as I got. :)
This story was brilliantly remixed by
no subject
Date: Oct. 7th, 2007 08:55 pm (UTC)I wonderfully painful look at the Wilson marriage. I just love the Postit note hatred and how you spread the blame equally for the marriage failing. Julie isn’t evil in this, just lonely and feeling abandoned.
Wilson looks at the phone. "I should call her back."
"I should wear my lab coat. Come on. Your marriage is beyond help. Cancer Girl can still be saved."
Ouch, true, but still ouch. House’s causal dismissal of Wilson’s marriage is so in character, but he knows the end is here. This fic fits in really well with what we learn later from Bonnie. I really enjoyed this fic. Your comment pledge has been a great excuse to reread a lot of great fics in my memories. Thank you for suggesting it. :)
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Date: Oct. 8th, 2007 12:23 am (UTC)Julie isn’t evil in this, just lonely and feeling abandoned.
Yes -- that's something I knew I wanted to depict from the beginning. I tried to show how she and Wilson were both responsible for the separation in their own ways; too often in fic, Julie gets short shrift so Wilson can be the hero. So it's great to hear that that rang true for you. And I completely see the end of their marriage being a passive-aggressive battleground, hence the post-it notes. :)