Title: Any Port

Author: Mercaque

Summary: Chase gets arrested during a break-in; Foreman comes to bail him out. Slash, m/m sex.

Disclaimer: House MD and all characters are property of David Shore and FOX.

Author's Notes: Constructive criticism highly welcome.

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Bile and old vodka, Chase thought. He could identify the smell as soon as the door slammed shut behind him, and before long he was soaking in it, swimming in it, drowning in it.

It was inevitable, he supposed, that one day they would get caught "investigating" a patient's home. Chase had always been the most eager of his colleagues to follow House's hunches, right into other people's living rooms if necessary. And he had blithely brushed off both Foreman's groaning reluctance and Cameron's skittishness as entirely unappreciative of House's genius.

But getting handcuffed, booked, and thrown into a general holding cell – complete with orange jumpsuit – had seriously shaken his opinion. Like so many things Chase had once been absolutely certain of in life, his callous dismissal of Cameron and Foreman's hesitance now felt childishly naive. Foreman had experienced this once, after all. Should've listened to him, Chase thought. Should've realized why he was so determined to forget this rancid place...

It was like being sealed inside a mausoleum along with the dead. The air between the four slablike grey walls was damp, fetid and bone-penetratingly chilly. And if the other ten or so men in the cell weren't corpses, they might as well have been: some slumped in dirty heaps on the benches, others lolled against the concrete wall, and nearly all appeared to abuse one substance or another. Chase recognized the lifelong alcoholics immediately, with their red noses, their soggy eyes, their defeated sag, their wheedling airs.

Theoretically, he ought to have been well-equipped for this, having seen every shade of shitfaced once Mum started going downhill. But instead, his skin was crawling. The disconnected mumblings were all too familiar to his ears, the smell a pungent reminder of the empty hallways of Mum's house after she'd died. Chase desperately willed himself to block it out, but could only curse his inability to think of anything else.

And he further cursed his foolish decision to place his one and only phone call to House's office. There had been no answer. For all Chase knew, no one had even listened to the message, half-informative and half-shaky, that he'd left on the machine. They couldn't just leave him here, he thought; surely House would come eventually. But as the cold grey hours ticked by, and no sign appeared that anyone knew he was here, the decreasing likelihood of that scenario began to pick at his already-frayed nerves.