three marriages, one guitar
by greensilver

---

James' first wife was on the "herbal remedy" end of the medical spectrum, which made her an odd fit for a cynical oncologist who thought that alternative medicine was what happened when real hope gave out. She was the sister of a patient James couldn't heal, and she came back to his office to gloat about the wonders herbal medicine had done for her sibling. He took her out for a cup of coffee, because she was pretty and smart and challenging - he'd always had a thing for women who challenged him. He liked to think that was because challenging women expanded his worldview, but in truth, it was probably because he had a masochistic streak that tended to manifest itself in the clueless repetition of awkward dinners and uncomfortable post-coital silences.

Dinner conversation never got any easier, but he didn't get home in time for dinner very often, so he married her anyway.

Their marriage was absurdly easy to maintain, even with his long hours and her aggressive attempts to bring him around to her various points of view. He liked to argue with her about her views, as much to see her get animated about her side of the argument as for that special zing of confrontational debate. Perhaps as a result of that zing, the sex improved, and marriage started to look like it had been a pretty good idea, after all.

House always gave him obnoxiously pitying looks when James related these arguments in full detail. "It's nice that you're enjoying your starter marriage, Jimmy," he'd say, and James would laugh him off, figuring that House was just being House.

If he'd been a little better-acquainted back then with the common uses of St. John's Wort, he might've seen it coming; anti-depressants would've been a sure warning. As it was, he was surprised when she handed him the paperwork, and even more surprised when his steady hand signed on every dotted line.

She left a lot of her stuff behind in her haste to be rid of him, including an old acoustic guitar with a slightly warped neck. For weeks, he sat around with that guitar, just strumming it and listening to the dissonant sounds that buzzed at his fingertips.

House let himself in one day and found James reclining on the couch in his underwear, strumming away at the guitar. His first thought was that House must've come by to sympathize and keep him company - prolonged self-pity had evidently produced a chemical imbalance in James' brain. Good thing his ex had left him that entire bottle of St. John's Wort, then.

"You don't know how to play that thing, do you?", House said, making one of the most terrifically displeased faces that James had ever seen.

James shrugged, shifted his grip on the neck, and swiped a thumb over the strings. "I'm learning."

"Yeah, right." House pulled the guitar away from James, sat down next to him on the couch, and plucked a single string. The resulting sound was grating enough to make them both wince. "You haven't even learned how to tune it yet."

The guitar case was open on the floor, close enough for James to pick up and discard the guitar as the mood struck him. House leaned over to the case, reached in, and pulled out a small white pitch pipe that James hadn't bothered with.

"See, it's-" House blew into one of the mouthpieces, producing a loud, clear A. When he struck the corresponding string, the sound was jarringly different, and House looked up at James like a puppy waiting to be rewarded for learning a new trick. Actually, the look was more like this is how it's done, you idiot, but with House, the rebuke and the wagging tail were practically the same thing.

James was more amused than aggravated, but he wasn't going to let House sit there and lord it over him as House tuned every single string, so he finally sat up and grabbed the guitar back. The wood was uncomfortably cool against his skin, and he had to work not to wince as he resettled the instrument and rested a hand against the neck. "I know how to tune a guitar."

"And yet, you're sitting here playing sour notes," House said, clearly unconvinced.

James took the pitch pipe, picked G, and twisted the knob until the sounds matched. If House asked him to do anything more than tune it, he'd be screwed, but he'd spent enough time around his wife to learn how to fiddle with the little knobs. Perhaps his marriage hadn't been a complete waste of time, after all.

House looked almost impressed, and his tone was half-hearted when he said, "The neck is warped, anyway."

"I didn't know you played guitar," James said, and it wasn't really a question, because he knew House didn't play guitar.

"Misspent youth." House wasn't looking at James or the guitar anymore; he was examining the pitch pipe, like it was a patient with a particularly rare disease. "You should get some clothes on."

James wasn't feeling particularly gracious just then, so he said, "Should I be wearing pants from now on, in case you decide to start dropping by?"

He immediately regretted snapping at House, mostly because he was sure that House was going to come back with something sharp and devastating, something James would entirely deserve. That was the way it usually worked with House.

Instead, House looked amused. "Is sitting around in your underwear some adolescent form of divorcé rebellion?"

James scowled. "I'm not rebelling."

House nodded thoughtfully. "Right. And are you rebelling against me, or your ex-wife?"

"I'm not rebelling," James said again, his voice louder, more annoyed.

"Then why do I care whether or not you're wearing pants while you sulk?" House said, and shrugged. "We're going out to a bar, and I'm pretty sure you have to wear pants to get into one of those."  
 
James couldn't find a flaw in that logic, so he put down the guitar, found a relatively clean pair of pants, and let House get him blindingly drunk.

---

He never actually learned to play the guitar; before he could pick up so much as a single chord, he was married again. His second wife must've intuited that the guitar was the first wife's property, because despite being otherwise mentally stable, she strenuously objected to acoustic guitar music on principle.

James gave the guitar to House, along with the later works of John Lennon (also property of the ex) and Eric Clapton Unplugged (a holdover from his pantsless period, when he'd done his best to do Eric justice on "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" on a daily basis).

"Just for now," he emphasized, as House took the guitar case out of his hands.

"Oh?" The guitar was still warped beyond probable repair, but House treated it more delicately than most of his patients; he wrapped one arm around the narrower part of the body, and gave the case a fond pat. "Already planning out the next divorce?"

"What? No, of course not." The phrasing did seem a little odd, on second thought, but he clearly hadn't meant it like that - leave it to House to twist his words around on him. "I just don't want you to get attached to my stuff, House."

"I wouldn't dream of it." House set the guitar case aside, and started flipping through James' CDs. "Not when you're going to need it all again so very soon."

James rubbed the bridge of his nose, glaring at House over his fingers. "Can we please just not - not even contemplate the possibility of divorce? I know it pisses you off, but I'm a happily married man, and I don't have any plans to change that status any time soon."

"Fifty bucks says it lasts two months," House said, and started digging into his pocket.

It would've been been classic House to get James to bet on the duration of his own marriage, and James wasn't going to fall for it. He wasn't going to deck House, either, though that was an incredibly tempting idea. One close-fisted punch, and all talk of divorce would've been over. Marital relations would probably have improved, too, without House popping by to antagonize the wife and drink James' scotch. He couldn't actually hit House, but he could at least give as good as he was getting, and he had plenty of one-liners on hand for just such an occasion, really barbed comebacks he could never bring himself to use on a day-to-day basis. Their day had finally arrived, and he was ready to let House have it.

Instead, what he said was, "A hundred on one year, and whoever is closer wins."

House looked faintly surprised that James had taken him up on it. "What is this, The Price is Right? Do I get a fifty dollar bonus if I call it within three days of moving-out day?"

"Thirty." James was feeling more than little bit smug about the way House's eyebrows kept jumping up and down; it wasn't every day he managed to catch House off-guard. This was probably the stupidest bet House had ever taken, because all James had to do was stay married for seven months and the money was his by default. It would, without a doubt, be the easiest hundred dollars James had ever made.

House's eyebrows were still doing acrobatics when James grabbed Plastic Ono Band back out of the CD pile and slammed the door shut behind him. It was the kind of exit James lay awake at night fantasizing about, the perfectly timed dramatic exit that House had down to a science, the kind that inevitably gave the departing victor the last word. Absolutely perfect, from the scowl on his face to the entirely satisfying slam of the door.

He was pretty pissed, then, when he had to eat that dramatic exit, along with all of his puffed-up words about being happily married, not more than a month and a half later. He was pissed about the hundred and thirty dollars, too, and it probably should've given him a stunning insight into his own psyche when he realized that he was more pissed off about the bet than he was about a second round of alimony.

James opted to skip over the introspection in favor of once again shunning pants for the duration of his post-marriage seclusion.

When House came by with the guitar and CDs, James was sprawled out on the living room floor with a bottle of Old Milwaukee balanced on his chest, watching Ghost for the third time in a row. He wasn't usually inclined to get maudlin about movies involving Patrick Swayze, but House had been slow to bring back Eric Clapton Unplugged, so James had been forced to make do with what his latest ex-wife had left behind.

"Nice," House said, after taking in the scene. "But why stop there, when you can go for Dirty Dancing and PBR?"

"Shut up and give me my CDs," James said, not even bothering to get up off the floor.

---

The following stretch of single-and-carefree was the longest of James' dating career. Thus, it probably followed in some sort of logical progression that his marriage to Julie would be the longest-lasting "I do" of the three. She didn't make him get rid of the guitar, so there were no opportunities to place bets with House, and thus his marital hubris was at an all-time low; that probably helped, as did the fact that House stayed largely in the background of this particular marriage, hardly ever busting in uninvited.

James tried to chalk it up to House being supportive, but he suspected that House was actually pissed at him for ending their extended period of mutual bachelorhood, and this was the punishment James got: dealing with his wife all by himself.

Unlike his previous marriages, this one ended slowly, all of their battles getting dragged out over time. His previous marriages had ended suddenly, with no warnings he'd been smart enough to pick up on; his third marriage turned into the legally binding version of beating a dead horse. He went through cycles of anticipation and complacency, weeks where he'd just be waiting to meet her lawyer and weeks where the word divorce would never even occur to him, and it was during a complacency cycle that she finally told him it was over.

Maybe it was just that he'd had so much time within their marriage to contemplate a return to the single life, or maybe it was that after three divorces, he was fresh out of new and creatively embarrassing ways to feel sorry for himself over an extended period of time. Maybe it was that House was feeling sorry enough for the both of them, these days, or maybe it was that James was too busy feeling sorry for House to feel sorry for himself. The one he liked best - despite it being least likely - was the one where the unprecedented availability of hot nurses and flirty interns simply gave him other things to think about. There were lots of possible explanations for the fact that he didn't immediately shuck his pants and get smashed on Busch, and if he were at all motivated to go through a phase of reflection and self-examination, he probably would've pored over every single possibility.

As it was, he settled for TiVoing home repair shows and vegging out on House's couch with cheap wine and Bob Vila.

A few days after James moved in, House settled on the couch next to him, stole half a cucumber sandwich, and flicked a few rye seeds in Bob's direction. "Groucho Marx once said, 'I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.'"

James just kept chewing; ignoring House was, as ever, the best possible option.

"He also said, 'marriage is the chief cause of divorce,'" House went on, grabbing a handful of chips.

"Shouldn't you be at the hospital?" James moved the remote out of House's reach, just in case this was a diversionary tactic.

House patted James' knee - in lieu of using a napkin, probably, which meant that James was going to have to change before he went back to work. Maybe this was what he got for not being half-naked and self-pitying.

"Fifty says you're married again inside of six months." House leaned across him to take the remote.

"Oh, no." James jammed the remote down between the couch cushion and frame, making it next to impossible to steal. "I'm not making bets about my marital status, again."

"A hundred," House said, because according to innately twisted House logic, raising the stakes was probably a good way to get someone to take a bet they didn't want in the first place. "Six months."

"Come on, House. There's no way I'm getting married again in six months - I'm not in any hurry to sign more paperwork." And because House was still eyeing the spot where the remote was hidden, James slouched back and slung a leg over the arm of the couch, as good as declaring victory on behalf of Home Again and This Old House.

House gave up on the remote, for the moment. They watched Bob install glass block windows for a few minutes in companionable silence, House eating every bit of food James left unguarded. When the food was all but gone and the window project was a success, House snagged James' wine glass, took a sip, and made a ridiculously melodramatic face over the rim. Too many soap operas; sometimes House's more sarcastic expressions had a positively daytime flair.

"Comes in a bottle, but tastes like a box - that's some high-quality stuff you've got there," House said, putting the glass as far from him as possible and taking the last of the chips as compensation. "You'd be better off back on Old Milwaukee. Where are Clapton and Swayze, anyway? Where's the divorcé guitar?"

"Julie took it," James said, and had to fight back a smile.

That got House to pause in mid-chip. "Did she know where it came from?"

"Nope." James plucked a stray chip up off the cushion and flicked it at House. "She probably thinks it's worth something."

"That guitar gets around more than Cuddy in tennis season," House said, and, unexpectedly, laughed. It wasn't really like House to laugh at his own jokes, so James just waited him out until House finally calmed down enough to say, "Okay, fine. Eight months."

James had never been more confident in his life than he was of the fact that he would not be getting married again inside of eight months. Even the ETA-to-divorce bet hadn't carried the unshakable faith that this one would, if he decided to take it.

He sighed, and gave in. "One year, and we split the-"

"Done," House said, and started laughing again.

James was pretty sure he'd have been better off with Swayze and Clapton, but House would have to do; so James just rolled his eyes, chugged the cheap wine, and swore to himself that he wouldn't be getting married again any time soon.

Not until he'd won that bet, at least.

Author's Note: Written for Stacey, based on an image prompt of Robert Sean Leonard with a guitar.

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