"Wow. Yeah, I get it. House is adorable. I just want to hold him and never let go. " –love hurts
Chase groaned, as he heard the click.
"Good luck." said Tritter, walking away, "maybe you'll learn how to respect each other."
"What the hell?!" yelled House after him, jangling the handcuffs.
"And that's what happened..." finished Chase, watching despondently as Foreman tried to pick the lock on the cuffs.
"Well, it could be worse. He could have arrested you." said Cameron, badly hiding a smirk.
"We hadn't even touched the door yet!" said Chase desperately.
Foreman put down the pick with a sigh.
"It's no good. They're not real locks, I think they were only designed to close."
"You mean we're stuck like this forever?" asked Chase, horrified.
"No you idiot, just till we can get someone to saw them off. And anyway, why are you complaining, Mr. Dominatrix?"
Chase sighed.
Foreman shrugged.
"You can try, but I don't think they're steel."
"This is a hospital. With an orthopedics department. We have saws that can cut titanium." said House, rolling his eyes.
"I dunno, with Chase here, it might turn out to be something out of this world..." joked Foreman.
Chase sighed.
"When are you guys going to let that go?"
"When you realize that even if there's intelligent life out there, there's no reason they would want to come to a planet as screwed up as ours." said House, rolling his eyes again.
Chase sighed.
"It won't cut." repeated House, blankly.
"Nope, it won't." said the surgeon, looking perplexed.
Chase groaned.
Foreman snorted.
Cameron looked concerned.
Wilson, who had been told what was going on when they called the guy with the saw, shrugged.
House glared at him.
"You might get off clinic duty this way."
House sighed.
"Not sure which is worse."
Chase looked a little upset, but said nothing.
Wilson frowned.
"What?" snapped House.
"That was rather mean of him."
House sighed, realizing what Wilson had noticed. It was his left hand in the cuff, which meant it would be hard to do anything while walking.
Chase glanced down, figuring this out as well.
"He actually probably did it that way so you could still use your cane."
House paused. It was true, as annoying as the alternative was going to be.
House sighed. They had gotten through the bathroom issue alright, neither of them being particularly into teasing at the moment. The problem now was sleeping. Sleeping on his back. With his leg straight. All night.
Actually, that was the cause. The problem would be standing up in the morning.
He had finally drifted off, floating somewhere between wakefulness and a purple lake with bright green seagulls, when he was startled awake by something that sounded like sobbing. He looked to his left. Chase was asleep, but tears were running down his face. House blanched.
"What the hell? He's crying. Why the hell is he crying?"
House unceremoniously grabbed his cane from where it was leaning against the nightstand and whacked Chase across the stomach with it, not quite hard enough to actually injure him. It didn't seem to have any effect, other than to make him start mumbling as well as crying and sobbing.
House glared at him, too tired to be anything but annoyed.
"Chase. Wake up."
To House's surprise, Chase did, at the sound of his voice.
"Sorry!" he shouted, bolting upright then grabbing his right wrist, as the cuff dug into it.
House raised an eyebrow. Chase blushed and looked in the other direction, wiping his face with his left hand.
"Sorry." he said, hanging on to a vain hope that House wouldn't push the subject. To his surprise he felt and odd tug, as House rolled over onto his right side, pulling Chase's arm with his own.
Chase sighed, as he felt the rise and fall of the ribs his arm was resting on even out, as House fell asleep. It was uncomfortable, but not nearly as much as a conversation with House about his dream would have been. Now if he could stay awake for the rest of the night, he might be able to avoid such a conversation.
Chase blinked sleepily, snuggling against the warmth in front of him. He stopped, fighting the urge to jerk back and roll away from House as fast as possible. It would almost certainly wake him, and Chase did not want that. He frowned, realizing something odd. For the first time in twenty years he had gotten a real sleep without any dreams of his mother, only some odd and slightly unhappy dreams of a large, muscular man shoving him into a tub filled with icy water. Though unhappy, it was certainly a welcome change from the routine, especially since in the dream he hadn't known in perfect detail what was happening, as he did in his usual ones. Although... it was odd, he had woken up at least eleven times, as though he were uncomfortable and having trouble sleeping.
House frowned, waking up. No dreams of his dad. For the first time in over forty years, no dreams of icy water. Just some lady drinking constantly. But it was so much better, he had known what was going on in that dream. And... oddly enough, he hadn't woken up at all. For the first time since his infarction, the pain had let him sleep.
"House?"
"Mmm?"
"Are you gonna get up? Today?"
"Yes. Shut up."
"It's eight."
"You've worked for me for how long? You know when I get in."
"Yeah, but when do you get up?"
"As late as I can without having blond wombats bugging me insecently."
"Get up. It's ten, I'm hungry."
Chase groaned.
"Tired..."
"Get up."
Chase sighed, dragging himself out of bed.
"Wake up already." said House, annoyed, as Chase nearly walked into the kitchen doorway.
"Sorry... can't sleep..." mumbled Chase, rubbing his eyes with his left hand.
House paused.
"You can't sleep or you can't stay asleep."
"Can't stay... asle-e-e-e-eep." replied Chase, yawning and sitting down on the lefthand stool.
House tilted his head, sitting down on the other one.
"And you wake up ten to fifteen times a night."
Chase nodded.
"Sorry... I been waking you?"
"No. Actually, I'm sleeping just fine."
Chase frowned for a moment, then laid his head back down, too tired to be curious.
"Chase! Wake the hell up already!"
"Nnnnnnnnggggghhhhhhh!" said Chase, lashing out in his sleep, hitting House in the stomach.
"Ow. Chase, wake up."
"Noooooo..." he moaned.
House blinked, peering at Chase's face.
"Chase?"
"Mmmm..."
House poked him in the shoulder.
Chase did nothing.
House grabbed a glass of water off the bedside table, dribbling some of it onto Chase's face.
Chase curled up, trembling, eyes open but blank.
"Oh..."
House had finally realized that Chase was having a night terror. But not one about his mom or his dad. One about House's dad, if the insane reaction to a splash with cool water was anything to go by.
House pulled the blanket up over his trembling employee, rubbing softly over Chase's back. Not that he wasn't about to throw up from doing that, but he knew how that felt, and wanted breakfast.
Chase moaned softly, coming out of it.
"Chase?"
"Nnngg...what? What was that? What...?"
House sat up, dragging Chase's arm with him.
"That was called a dream, wombat boy. Some people a capable of having them without waking other people up."
"No... that... it was too real. It was like I was hallucinating..."
"You weren't."
Chase blinked at the flat tone.
"You were having a night terror. Of a marine dunking you in an ice bath."
Chase stared at him.
"Similar to the dream I've been having over and over again about some lady drinking constantly."
Chase gaped.
"We're...switching dreams?"
"Seems that way."
"What kind of handcuffs are these?!"
"Apparently the magical asshole cop fairy kind."
Chase sighed.
"Well...thanks for waking me up, I guess..."
"Whatever. Get up. Food. Coffee. Need."
Chase snorted, following House awkwardly out of the bed.
The whole process of eating breakfast had been complicated more than anything else by the new arrangement. Mainly because neither of them were actually awake by this point, and Chase wasn't left handed.
After three spilled bowls of cereal that didn't even make it off the counter they were poured on, House got annoyed, and splashed Chase with the milk.
Chase retaliated by throwing a handful of wet frosted flakes at House's face. They both sighed, stopping.
"This is pathetic."
"No kidding."
Chase pulled them over to the sink, trying to wash the sticky milk out of his hair.
"Gah, you got it all down my shirt..." he complained, slightly grossed out by the sticky fabric against his skin.
House sighed again.
"I think we need a shower.
Chase nodded, then frowned.
"How do we get our shirts off?"
House groaned.
"I guess by cutting them. Unless you can fit through an armhole."
Chase snorted.
Chase was looking pointedly to his left the entire time House was taking his pants off, not so much out of embarrassment–they were both guys, who cared?–but out of respect for House's privacy about his scar.
House seemed not to have noticed this, but wasn't snarking about two men getting into a shower together, so Chase decided he was being thankful in a very obscure way, and continued carefully controlling his gaze.
They had finally gotten the shirts off, and were arguing about the current water temperature, when the phone rang.
House heard it, but Chase didn't.
As he moved to get out, it caused him to tug on the cuffs, which threw him off balance, and he slipped, going down hard and pulling Chase with him.
When Chase finally worked through what had happened, he began to untangle himself from his boss, wondering why House wasn't moving and hoping he hadn't hit his head.
"House?" he asked, tugging on the arm that was under the older doctor. He couldn't see House's face, but his chest was pressed against House's and he could tell he was at least breathing...
House groaned softly, but didn't move.
"House, are you conscious?"
He groaned again.
"Did you hit your head?"
"Nnnhn...no."
"Oh. Ok..."
A long silence.
"Are you planing on getting up?"
Another groan, followed by a choked inhale.
Chase blinked.
"Are you ok?"
This was getting slightly ridiculous, why wasn't House getting up?
Then he realized. House's leg was probably killing him, after that jolt.
Chase wiggled enough to see the general position of House's right leg, and found that it was twisted under the older doctor, in a position that would be uncomfortable enough just on its own.
He sighed.
One slip and House was stuck on the floor of his shower, in a large amount of pain.
One small tug on his wrist.
One tiny second of imbalance.
The water was getting cold.
House had passed out.
Chase realized they had been there for a long time, probably over a half hour. He tugged some more on the arm trapped beneath his boss. It stayed trapped.
He sighed.
Thirty minutes after that, they were shivering, the water was freezing, House still wasn't moving, and Chase was still stuck.
Ten minutes after that, House woke up, and started struggling violently.
"House! House, calm down, it's the floor of your shower, calm down!"
House really didn't seem to hear him, and eventually subsided into a sort of rigid trembling.
Chase wondered exactly what part of the situation House was scared of.
An hour after that Wilson had shown up, dragged them out of there, and together they had awkwardly carried House to the bed.
He wasn't talking, wasn't moving. Chase guessed he couldn't.
An hour after that Chase was still sitting on the bed, waiting for some movement or sound from the large warm lump to his right.
Yet another hour later this situation hadn't changed.
Another hour passed, and Chase's stomach was starting to growl, but nothing else happened.
After the next hour Chase had discovered a book under the bed, and was trying vainly to reach it without moving House.
When the clock beeped again he had given up on the book, and had mastered using the yo-yo that had been next to the clock left handed and without hitting it on the floor and messing up the spin.
Around three pm Wilson came by again, made lunch, set it on the table next to Chase, handed Chase the book, and left to answer his page.
About five pm House sat up, changed position slightly, then closed his eyes. Chase felt that this had been one of the most pointless days in his life. He had gotten a blister from the yo-yo string.
About seven pm, Chase had finished the book–the neurology of eye movements–and House bolted upright, staggering weakly to the bathroom, Chase keeping him from collapsing by the time they got to the bland tiled room.
Chase sighed as House retched, sounding and looking unbelievably miserable.
When House finished, all he did was kneel there, slumped over the toilet, head half inside the bowl as though too heavy for him to lift out and rest on the rim.
Chase eventually realized he couldn't stand up, and lifted him again, holding what he was sure was almost all of the older doctor's weight.
House hadn't said a word or looked at him since seven am.
The next morning House didn't get up, he just knocked the alarm clock off the table, ignoring the fact it kept buzzing.
Chase sighed, listening to the irritating beeping, staring up at the ceiling, and wishing he had pants on.
Wilson came around ten, silenced the alarm clock, and stood, hands on hips, looking down at House.
Twenty minutes and a pseudo-forcefeeding later, House was back over the toilet, retching harder than before.
Wilson was able to stick around for about an hour that time, and Chase learned that House kept morphine in his apartment, and despite knowing where it was, Wilson hadn't confiscated it yet. He said House didn't like not being able to think straight, so he didn't have to worry too much about the abuse potential of that particular drug. Chase wondered if he knew about the LSD a year ago, but said nothing.
An hour after Wilson had left, House dragged himself to the bathroom for a third time, but thankfully not to puke. Chase managed to prop House up on the sink long enough to go himself–the lack of pants to unzip helped with the speed issue–but after about fifteen seconds House was getting quite pale, and had started to slide down the side of the cabinet, his ribs level with the top as he supported himself on his forearm.
Chase literally dragged him back to the bed, wondering why exactly House hadn't said something along the lines of "bath not shower. No whining." and prevented this entire mess. He was also beginning to wonder if House wasn't habitually late so that bad days were indistinguishable from lazy days.
About noon they got a call–House threw the phone at Chase–from Cameron, saying they had a case.
Chase explained that House was pouting about having to cut a shirt to get it on, and that they would be there eventually, then threw the phone back at House, hitting his shoulder.
House didn't say anything, but the general atmosphere of ashamed anger dissipated noticeably.
An hour later, House was explaining in grumbling terms how to work the hand controls on his car, and they were off to work, Chase trying to understand how House had gone from sliding down the side of the sink and retching into the toilet, to looking slightly pale and tired, in about forty-five minutes. He guessed it was from years of practice coupled with adrenaline from the puzzle, and that if House didn't have a case he would still be retching over the toilet.
Nobody seemed to notice that anything was wrong, which surprised Chase. Maybe they thought the dark circles under House's eyes were from them getting annoyed and arguing during the night or something.
An hour into the case, he realized that they just hadn't noticed.
An hour later, he realized that by how Wilson had acted, this wasn't exactly an extremely rare occurrence.
Ten minutes after that the patient had coded, but he was thinking more about the fact that he had completely missed bouts of agony in his boss for the past four years, and wondering about how much pain House had to be in the times they did notice.
"Wake up already, wombat!" snapped House, and he blinked, realizing he really should be focusing on the patient–who was dying–instead of House–who wasn't.
Three hours later, the patient was well on his way to being cured, and House had passed out on Wilson's office couch.
An hour after that the patient was back on his way to dying, and House was standing in front of the whiteboard.
Two hours after that, the patient was well on his way to being cured, and House was puking into Wilson's office trash can.
An hour after that, the patient was dying again, and House was dragging Chase around the room as he paced.
An hour after that, the patient was actually cured, and House was passed out on the floor of Wilson's office, with Chase trying to drag him to the couch.
Wilson came in, rolled his eyes, and helped Chase lift his boss.
The next day House was pretty much back to normal–though Chase was privy to several incidents of him being forced to sit down as soon as Cameron and foreman were around the corner–and had resumed snarking and calling them idiots. Chase reflected that he had been doing that anyway, but now he was doing it to Chase when the other two weren't in the room.
"Hey..." he started, as House yanked his arm up in an attempt to reach a book on the top shelf of his bookcase.
"Dammit, you're too short." said House, still tugging distractedly.
Chase sighed.
"No, the book's too high. Have you ever heard of a stepstool?"
"Have you ever heard of not being a midget?"
Chase rolled his eyes, tugged House's arm down, then got a chair and stood on it.
"Happy now?"
"Never."
Chase rolled his eyes, reaching for the book House had been aiming at.
"Hey! Robert, you didn't return my calls!" shouted a female voice from behind them.
Chase spun, felt the tug on his arm, tried to correct his balance, found he couldn't lift his arm far enough with House's pulling down on it, and ended up slipping off the chair, knocking House over and landing awkwardly.
House sighed, sat up, and glared at the nurse.
"Ok, if you haven't noticed, he's handcuffed to his boss. I think that probably explains why he hasn't called you."
Chase, curled around his sharply throbbing wrist, reflected that House was actually being vaguely helpful.
"It's been two days! How hard is it to get a pair of handcuffs off!?"
"Apparently pretty hard, because, as you pointed out, it's been two days. Go away."
Chase heard a angry sniff, then heels clacking as Alice left.
Then he felt surprisingly gentle fingers slip under the cuff, lifting the wrist without bending it.
He heard House sigh, as the fingers pressed against the painful area, and couldn't suppress a small whimper.
"Get up. Dude, it's just a broken wrist. The rest of you works."
Chase sighed, wondering why he had thought the gentleness would last, and sat up, surprised to find that House was still keeping his wrist straight.
The process of getting up proved to be much more difficult than either of them had suspected, and took three false starts and two falls to get House's leg and Chase's wrist to co-operate.
When they finally got there, Chase was wishing his eyes weren't watering so badly, because he did not want House of all people to think he was crying, and House was somewhat pale, and was wishing he didn't have his left hand stuck under Chase's wrist, so he could use the cane and take a vicodin at the same time.
Most of the people they passed in the hall stared at them, which creeped Chase out an awful lot more than House, who barely even seemed to notice.
Chase made a sort of unhappy whining sound, when House insisted on stopping by Wilson's office and chatting with its inhabitant before heading down to get x-rays, and didn't listen to a word the two were saying.
When they finally got to radiology, there was some amount of difficulty with getting Chase's wrist to lay flat, with the cuff far enough back that it wouldn't obscure the image. Thankfully, the word about them being stuck cuffed together seemed to have gotten around, and the radiologist didn't mention it.
"It's broken."
Chase groaned.
"I'll call in someone from ortho." said the radiologist, to which Chase nodded.
"I can't splint or cast it."
Chase blinked.
"You can't what?"
"The splint won't fit under the cuff and I can't wrap the cast with it there."
Chase stared.
The ortho guy got up and left.
House sighed, levering himself to his feet.
"What am I supposed to do?" asked Chase to nobody in particular.
"Shut up and stop whining?" suggested House.
Chase sighed, looking unhappily across the room.
"Here." Wilson's voice. When had Wilson gotten there?
Chase tensed, as a very gentle–though not more so than House's–hand slipped under the injured wrist, lifting it up and sliding something cool, hard and perfectly contoured underneath.
He looked down.
Wilson was strapping what appeared to be a cannibalized sports wrist guard in place.
"Not as good as an actual splint, but I figure it's better than nothing."
Chase nodded gratefully.
"Thank you, Dr. Wilson."
Wilson smiled and shrugged.
"House asked me to get something, this was the best I could think of."
Chase blinked, looking at House in surprise. So the visit to Wilson's office hadn't been to annoy him, after all.
House looked very firmly in the other direction, apparently finding the poster on bike safety to be of the utmost interest.
Chase rolled his eyes, looking back at Wilson, thanking him again.
Wilson just grinned, happy to facilitate House being nice to someone, and left.
House lay on the bed, mulling over the general behavior his young fellow had been exhibiting over the
"He's just one level of anti-social bellow me. He took a job so he could sit on his ass. He sucks up but doesn't actually want to go anywhere, he just does it to get what he wants without actually talking or asking. He doesn't entertain the same goals as everyone else. Yeah, he dresses well and talks to people, but he doesn't like it. He knows perfectly well what caring can cost, he doesn't want to get hurt, but he still has a little hope. Only the third one is different from me. Maybe I should tell him the phone call his dad made was asking for directions because was sure his son's were going to be wrong. I wonder what he'd do if he knew that?"
Chase screamed, as he thrashed in his sleep, obviously mixing the pain in his wrist with the pain in his dream.
House sighed, waking up from Chase's nightmare, and turning over to deal with his own.
This whole arrangement really sucked. Really, really, really sucked.
House grasped about three inches below Chase's injured wrist, pushing that hand flat against the bed, then reaching for the other one to keep Chase from throwing him off.
Eventually he managed to pin Chase down so he stopped thrashing and hitting things on the bedstand and headboard.
"Chase! Wake up! Chase! Dr. Robert Chase! Robert! Chase! Chase, wake up!"
Chase groaned a little, and stopped fighting House's grip.
"Chase, wake up." said House, softer this time.
"Ung?"
"Chase."
Chase opened his eyes, finding two very, very blue eyes staring into his own. He blushed.
House raised an eyebrow, watching red spread across the younger doctor's face.
"Are you ok?"
"O-ok?"
"Yeah... you know, not dead? Or in a significant amount of pain?"
"What...oh... um... the... umm..."
House snorted, rolling his eyes.
"Does your wrist hurt?"
Chase swallowed.
"My... uh... no... I mean yes..."
House sighed, letting go of Chase's arms and shifting himself off the younger doctor.
"Calm down and pay attention. Did your wrist get messed up?"
Chase closed his eyes, paused, then nodded.
"Yeah."
House sighed again.
"Get up. Don't want to hear you whining."
Chase nodded again, slowly maneuvering himself to a sitting position.
"Sorry."
House shrugged.
"Whatever, I don't care what goes on in your head, just so long as it doesn't affect me."
Chase nodded for a third time, trying to pull his sweatpants down with his left hand only.
House watched, mildly amused.
He had always thought Chase was just an ass-kisser. Apparently it went a bit deeper than that.
They paused, in front of House's car. Chase's car was in the parking lot at PPTH. House's car had hand controls. For the right hand.
Teamwork would be required.
Crap.
By the time the car pulled into the parking lot, Chase's heart felt like it was a) going to burst out of his chest the next time they had to take a turn, and b) explode, because House was leaning across him to reach the hand controls.
His face felt like it was going to spontaneously combust. And his wrist felt like it was on fire.
They got to the ortho wing ok, but by that time Chase had to sit down before he passed out from the vibrations of walking. House didn't mind sitting that much either–the awkward position he had been in during the ride there hadn't done much for his leg.
They both looked up, as unpleasantly familiar footsteps approached.
"So... have you two learned anything?" asked Tritter, nastily.
"Showers can be more painful than you would expect. And that we have even more reason to hate you." said Chase.
Tritter laughed.
"Well, not very polite, but it'll do... how about you, Dr. House...?"
House glared at Tritter.
"Other than 'not obedience', what have you learned? Or do you want to be in those things forever?" insisted Tritter.
"He isn't as much of an idiot as I thought..." said House in a strangled voice.
Tritter grinned widely, unlocked the cuffs, and disappeared.
Several days later...
"Chase."
Chase turned around, blinking.
House was there, leaning on his cane, staring directly at him, making him blush.
"Are you going to hold this," he pointed to his cheeks, "against me forever?"
"No." said House, taking a step forward.
"Then... what?"
House limped the rest of the way over, then leaned against the wall. Chase frowned, and walked away, toward a bench.
House snorted and followed, and sat down.
Yeah, that secret was out too.
"I have a drug issue, a pain issue, a sleep issue, and I'm a bastard. I have night terrors about my abusive father; on the rare occasion that I actually do give a damn, I end up getting cold feet and deciding it's not worth the risk because my dad screwed with my head; and I am terrified of cold water, again because of said head screwing. Oh, and I have spent the past forty years attempting to keep the last three a secret, which is part of the reason I only have one friend, because there are very few people who would rather slowly figure things out than pry. You, however, are an anomaly; even more than Wilson is. You know I'm a bastard, you know I have a drug issue, a pain issue, and a sleep issue, and I have been making your life miserable for the past four years, but you still blush when I look directly at you. You found out the three things I have been trying to hide for my entire life, and had the reaction of 'oh, I guess both our childhoods sucked; where'd you put the dishsoap?' which is rather different than I expected from you, and certainly very different than what I expected from the general population."
"Ok..." said Chase, not sure where House was going with this.
House looked at him, arms folded, cane leaning against the wall to his left, bad leg straight out in front of him, the other half under the bench, for over ten minutes.
Chase just stood there, feeling awkward and confused.
"And you don't optimistically try and convince yourself of something when you aren't really sure it's true." said House finally, glancing at his watch and standing up.
Chase grimaced, as House stepped towards him. House really was going to torture him, wasn't he?
He felt a tug on his tie, but couldn't look down without bumping House's face.
"What are you doing?" he asked, voice husky with the nervous tension of having House only a few inches away from him.
"What does it look like I'm doing?"
"Trying to make me faint?"
House chuckled.
"That comes later."
Chase turned beet red.
"Wh... wh..." he stammered, heart beating so fast it hurt–or maybe that was just the close proximity again.
No, it was definitely his heart.
Or so he thought, as it basically exploded at the sensation on his lips.
He didn't think much beyond that, because his prediction came true, and he slumped against House, unconscious.
House blinked for a moment, his leg protesting the strain loudly, then lowered Chase onto the bench with some difficulty.
Chase groaned, as House gently slapped his cheek, but didn't wake up.
House sighed, glaring down at the peaceful-looking blond.
Then he grinned, as an idea hit him.
Chase groaned, and groaned again.
He opened his eyes.
"HOUUUUOOOOOHHHHHHH...ohhhhhh..."
House snickered.
Chase groaned again. And again. And...