Title: Still Verdictless Life
Rating: R
Pairing:
House/Chase
Summary: Three stories, what could've happened,
what is and what might've been.
They could've met when he first made it to the states, when he hadn't even begun thinking about his mother's death and was still wondering whether his osmosis of medical information would be enough to make up for his complete lack of interest in it.
But House would've ignored him then, waiting on one side of the coffee house while Chase sat on the other with a fortress of second hand books and coffee mugs. He didn't normally drink coffee, but he needed the caffeine and doubted he'd be able to inject it directly. His notebooks open, coated with messy and terribly important looking scribbles that really, could've been summed up in I have no idea what I'm doing here.
House would've had his cup with a brunette in a smart suit. But it wouldn't take long for his lady friend to grow so unimpressed with his humor that every person in the shop would've known it; watching out the corner of their eyes as she made up an errand, dropping money for her half of the ticket.
On his own way to the door, House would jostle Chase's table in a childish effort to make himself feel better, just to watch a stranger's face contort as coffee spilled, dampening his furiously scribbled notes and damaging, if not ruining, the notebook.
Only Chase's face wouldn't contort, in anger or sadness. He would sigh, take in the most important objects of his life at the moment, sprawled out haphazardly on the table in front of him, ruined by slowly spreading liquid, stand and brush past House blankly.
-.-.-.-.-
They meet just after he stumbles through his last year of internship in Maine. He picks a residency in New Jersey because his roommate once told him of a Cristelli's Pizzeria there and he knew a girl name Crystal once and that sort of sounds the same and he's kind of drunk when he makes the decision. He'll pick Princeton-Plainsboro because he likes the contrast. Prince Plain.
He doesn't bother to see if they were accepting applications. He applies because he probably should and that's what everyone else is doing, but he doesn't expect to hear anything back, resigning himself to a summer of eating cornflakes, watching television and pointedly not contacting anyone at home.
These plans are disrupted, though, by a call from a woman with a handsome voice. He's been invited up to Jersey for an interview for a fellowship under a Dr. House. At his convenience, even. Bizarrely enough, it's only then that it really hits him, how very much he doesn't want to be a doctor, not at all, not even a little; he doesn't want the responsibility or the glory or the dedication or the obsession. Because his mother was addicted to alcohol and his father is addicted to his work and Chase has been spared one of those but he doesn't think he'll get that lucky twice.
"Next Monday?" he says anyway, and only remembers it's Saturday after they've hung up. The tickets are expensive on such short notice, but Chase can't bring himself to care.
On his way in to the hospital he holds the door open for Dr. House, except Chase doesn't know that yet; all he sees is a man with a cane. He doesn't say thank you and Chase doesn't expect it.
He wonders idly if the man with the cane thinks he's following him as they get off on the same floor and walk the same path.
That worry looses priority, however, when he nearly face plants because of the cane slamming against his shins. He looks back and, thankfully, notices the caned man is holding open a glass door with Gregory House, M.D. written across it before demanding any explanations.
"Dr. Chase?"
He's spent a near year being called Dr. Chase, but he's fairly sure he'll never stop that knee-jerk reaction of confusion, the response that's camped out on his tongue for life, 'No, my father isn't here.'
Chase nods anyway.
-.-.-.-.-
They might meet a good year after his father has died, after Chase quit his work with the church and decided to live off his father's fortune like a proper rich boy should.
They'll gravitate toward each other in a bar that neither of them are really at home in. House will be too unhappy for the music or the lights and Chase too awkward for the people.
House will say he's in Australia for a convention or patient or something else medical but Chase will tune him out fairly quickly. He will hate himself for falling for a man who looked to be nothing like his father and turned out to be a doctor, and wonder if there's something wrong with him, if this is a new trend. He will have learned to hate all things medical at that point, from its sterilizing smell to its false promises.
He will feel terribly old, thinking about this when the only thing on his mind should be getting into this man's pants. He will have felt like he's lived three lifetimes already; his childhood, his adulthood and that awful time in-between and he'll always remember that being the longest, even though it couldn't have been more than two years.
Chase will wonder if it shows on his face, how very, very old and worn he is, but if the man noticed, he will say nothing.
Chase's twenty-eighth birthday will be the next day.
House will notice Chase's attention waning and say the cheesiest line ever uttered by a sober person, something about a sock collection in his room at the hotel that is impossible to believe without seeing, and Chase will laugh in surprise. The sound of it will put them both at ease and they will exit the bar without notifying House's traveling companions, a black man and petite woman who will be too wrapped up in each other to notice anyway.
-.-.-.-.-
The streets of Jersey were always cold, and Chase was always bundling up but never managing to cover all the holes. Bits of cool wind wriggled through his coats and shirts, brushing against his neck and small of his back and he couldn't stand it.
He hated how the city looked, cramped by filthy buildings so high they looked like walls of a maze the residents scurried about in, all under a mucky, polluted sky. He hated how it smelled like gasoline in some parts and rotting foods in others. He hated how he still confused his apartment building with its attached twin. He hated that his father hadn't tried to contact him since the brief hug over his mother's grave and he hated how lost he always felt. What he hated most, though, was the open, gaping wound his mother's absence had left. Not just her death, but the very fact she was gone. For four years all he thought of was her, constantly monitoring and checking and caring for, and now he had nothing but himself and his classes and a city that wouldn't notice if he simply vanished in one of the back alleys.
He wanted to go home, but home was with his mother, home was a building he sold so he could get to school without his father's support. He had no home.
He didn't realize he'd stopped until the moist journal slapped against his shoulder.
"What, were you raised in a barn?"
Chase blinked at the man who had spilled his coffee, and was now standing cockily before him, waving his still dripping journal as if it were a weapon, the rest of his books tucked awkwardly under his other arm. "It's rude to leave your garbage for other people to take care of."
"Oh."
"You're wrong, by the way," the man continued, using a tone that would've only been appropriate if Chase had insulted him. "The hepatomegaly of Gaucher's is painless. A patient wouldn't be able to complain about it."
Chase licked at his upper lip, staring at the crazy man, presumably a doctor although he certainly didn't look it. "Cirrhosis, though, is usually fairly painful."
The man thought he was an idiot, given his expression. "That wouldn't present until after the neurological damage. Much more noticeable. And notable."
"And he'll have been treated for neurological diseases," Chase said, an odd sense of ease settling around him, blurring out the rest of the street, and he wondered if this was the first time his shoulders had relaxed since he forced opened his mother's bathroom door and found her cold and stiff. "They'll assume these symptoms are unrelated and list them that way."
"In a hypothetical situation where the doctors don't know what's causing it. But you obviously do, you have Gaucher's underlined here at the top."
"The assignment was to approach it as though we didn't know," Chase explained.
"I'll save you some time then, if this is how you plan on treating people. Patient dies. Autopsy reveals Gaucher's." He used ridiculously sharp words, and nothing about him made sense, the fact that he followed Chase or the misplaced anger or the way he was still holding Chase's books instead of dumping them on the ground. There was something in the man's eyes, something frantic that had nothing to do with any fictional patient or a very real waste of an assignment.
The man wanted this, Chase realized. Wanted to dig into someone ruthlessly and have it mean nothing. It was childish and if he'd attacked probably anyone else, probably hurtful.
But he didn't attack anyone else, he attacked Chase.
Chase leaned forward, snagging his notebook out of the man's hand. "You owe me a coffee."
-.-.-.-.-
"--not necessarily prepared for the prestigious position you've offered. Robert's eyes are a bit bigger than his stomach when it comes to matters like this,"
Chase closes House's cell phone on his father's affectionate chuckle and carefully schools his expression. It's not the criticisms his father gave on the message that has him tense, it's the very sound of his voice, that grating, condescending chuckle. Things he hasn't heard in years and it puts him on edge, sends him right back to the time he hid in the bath cabinet all day for breaking his grandfather's vase. It's not a place he should be on an interview, he's pretty sure.
Dr. House stares at Chase as he places the phone back on the desk, head cocked to the side, terribly interested. "Why would a father leave a message like that about his son?"
He's already mentally picking through states for another residency, (New York? It's so close) but still, he has to deal with this moment, and this man with eyes so blue he wouldn't be surprised to find two, little blue orbs burned onto his forehead after this. "Your guess is as good as mine."
"My guess would be because he thinks you're a horrible doctor." House watches him as if his gaze is the only thing keeping Chase in the chair, and it might very well be.
He's not getting this job, he knows it, so he sees no reason not to say, "anything's possible."
House's eyebrows twitch upward in surprise, possibly impressed. "But I don't think you're a complete idiot."
"Thank you," Chase says, because it honestly feels as though the strange man means it as a complement.
"There's the problem, am I arrogant enough to assume I've gotten to know you better in two minutes than a man who raised you?"
Chase has a feeling he is.
"Then again, he could just miss his baby boy so much he's willing to ruin your career here to get you back home," House says, but when his interviewee says nothing in return he reaches for the transcript, flipping through it dramatically. "The genius son of a potential donator. My boss had an orgasm over this, you know."
"I'll take it your boss didn't hear that message, then."
House narrows his eyes and it takes Chase a moment to realize it's in amusement. It reminds him of a cat. "You don't want this job, do you?"
-.-.-.-.-
Chase will tell House his old occupation in the cab on the way to Chase's place, and House will think it is a joke. A bad joke, though, and only when he realizes it's the truth will he laugh, long and hard. Chase will wait for him to finish.
Chase's front door will be unlocked like he'll almost always leave it, and they'll just barely make it to his bed, a rough spot on the stairwell where House used a combination of the handrail, Chase and his cane to make it all the way up.
House's hands will be coarse, and Chase will be impossibly soft. God's work does not call for many activities that are particularly rough on any bits skin, especially not the back, leaving him defenseless in its paleness and fragility. The contrast will be exactly what Chase was looking for, though, the scratches the curve of the doctor's palm leave will make him tense in anticipation and the muscles of his stomach to quiver.
House will look tremendously satisfied with himself at how easily he got Chase pink cheeked and panting, and Chase will not be able to resist reminding him he's sort of out of practice with this sort of thing, what with him being a priest and all.
House will start to make a crack about alter boys, but its punch line will, sadly, be forever lost in Chase's demanding mouth.
It will feel as if they've done this before, they'll meld together and the imperfections of their fit will thrill Chase. The sound of House breathing heavily, the feel of his damaged thigh flexing uselessly, out of habit, and his hands gripping at Chase's hips will, strangely, be the most addicting things he will be able to remember feeling, maybe ever.
-.-.-.-.-
House, his name was, was indeed a doctor. A very good one, although not as good as he acted, simply because Chase was pretty sure he wasn't God.
They continued to meet at the coffee shop every day at the same time at the same table, but it was all very coincidental.
Chase did not look forward to these meetings all day, because it would be an odd thing to look forward to, especially because the only time he drank coffee was when he was planning on an all-nighter or had just finished one and had to get through the rest of the day.
Not that they didn't serve tea and hot chocolate, but he thought it was even odder to think, 'Oh boy it's nearly two, then I can go down to the coffee shop on ninth and have some tea while I work!' especially when the college had better tea anyway and he could usually get it for free.
House would look over the work Chase brought, making sarcastic comments and occasionally correcting errors Chase had made, but mostly making sarcastic comments.
Sometimes House brought a man named Wilson. Wilson was House's friend, but he wasn't really Chase's. They would try, at first, but everything about their interactions was awkward and forced. Chase would suspect that it should've been much worse, though, and the fact that they'd managed to agree to that other has a right to exist is something of a marvel, like a cat and dog that live in the same home without any fuss.
Chase had never trusted a man with a smile as his default expression and Wilson probably disliked Chase for an equally insane reason.
-.-.-.-.-
It's when Chase realizes that House is as good as he acts, he stares at the man in awe, in horror. Not because he's that smart, or wonderful, but because it means he's right. He's been right. He wanted to replay every conversation they ever had, take a second look, digest what House had been saying instead of just batting it away.
But maybe that's the genius of House, he reflected, later; it's only visible in retrospect.
House limps around the hospital as if it's his, as if he's the disgruntled landowner and the rest of the people are his tenants, behind on rent and only still there out of the warmness of his heart.
He talks to everyone he meets with varying levels of disgust, his only admitted friend, Wilson, being the odd exception.
Chase isn't sure how he should react to the fact that he has no problem working with a man like this, if he should be ashamed or proud that he looks forward to the next day for the first time that he can honestly remember.
-.-.-.-.-
Breakfast will not be awkward, a first for Chase. The breakfast part, not the awkward -- most of his partners were gone by the time he woke, whether they had been in his place or theirs. House will make snide remarks between spoonfuls of cereal about anything that comes to his attention, that could've easily offended Chase on a day where he didn't feel so warm and content.
He will mock the fact that Chase's table doesn't match his chairs, and Chase will snigger into his Frosties. House note that Chase's hair has not changed shape or consistency all night, and ask if this an ability of all Australians, or just the blond, pretty ones?
The highlight of the meal will be when Chase blows House under the table, obscenely and sloppily, fingers curling in his hair and fisting.
-.-.-.-.-
He liked to have sex in weird places, forcing Chase against a back alley wall, not quite hid behind a dumpster, and he was forced to bite his own hand so as not to disturb passing strangers while House thrust so hard Chase wondered dizzily at the strength of the dirty bricks he was getting plowed into.
House had taken him to his office twice, the first time to settle a bet they had by looking something up in one of his ridiculously rare books. The second seemed to have no other purpose than to get Chase against his file cabinets.
Which was, you know, a good enough reason for Chase.
-.-.-.-.-
To listen to House, it would be easy to assume that Chase is a mentally incapacitated child. He speaks with such conviction, too, if there weren't so many living patients to contradict it, Chase thinks he would begin to wonder.
Thankfully, working with House means a lot less torn organs, and a lot more lab work. So even if he is as incapable as House makes him out to be, there simply aren't as many chances to kill someone because of it. He never seriously considered becoming a diagnostician before this, but it's satisfying work. One that challenges him, but not too much, because he can make no mistake. House is always there and always right, and say what you will about the man, but he has mastered the art of allowing a person to make their own mistake with the least damage possible.
It was only a matter time, Chase will reflect later, that he screwed it all up.
They lose a girl six months after he arrives, something that rolls of House's back without so much as a bat of the eye because he'd already solved the problem; it wasn't his fault it was terminal. Chase tries to mimic the blasé attitude, and can't figure out why it's any problem. He's dealt with patients dying, patients suffering and patients slipping into a vegetative states, but finds himself haunted by the girl's last words, stupidly hopeful. Trusting, because Chase had been so sure, because she'd be the first one that he'd lose at PPTH, and the odds were in her favor.
House notices his problem with a derisive snort. "And I thought you wanted to be a doctor."
Chase shrugs. It's an understandable mistake.
The next day Chase finds the spare time that would usually be spent setting up dominos in House's office replaced by a rotation in ICU, like any proper intensivist would have. House's name is scribbled in approval at the bottom of an application he never filled.
House is too busy interviewing for a second fellow for any explanations, but Chase doesn't need one. He comes up with so many before lunch he has his pick: he's become boring, House has figured him out and now he needs something new, he was too sloppy last time he gathered bodily fluids from a patient, or maybe this is just the punishment for letting the girl die. Maybe (this one comes as a bit of an epiphany) House thinks he's grown too soft.
He is under a contract, a three year fellowship, one that will end and of course he'll have to have some experience under his own specialty.
-.-.-.-.-
It will be House that suggests it, but it's after watching Chase lick bits of white from his bottom lip, so that probably doesn't count. Chase will realize that he actually wants it, though, and he'll have talked about visiting the states idly for years, and he has the money, and there's no reason not to.
-.-.-.-.-
It was Thursday when House didn't show up, Chase would remember that because he had a particularly difficult exam the next day and House had agreed to insult him mercilessly for every question he answered wrong. One of the rare times they verbally agreed to meet each other.
Instead of House, though, he'd find Wilson, looking tired and worn and Chase asked, and Wilson spun a lovely little story about House's addiction, House's attempt to steal from the hospital, House's leg, House's coma -- it didn't make sense, though, and he'd stopped following toward the middle of it, finally coming to his senses toward the end, to hear the most important part -- House's hospital room, House's alive, yes, but he's not happy about it.
Chase would listen, his fingers would go numb and he wouldn't want to sit but would, abruptly, against the hard plastic a chair, wondering why God felt the need to inflict the same lesson on him twice. Was it possible He'd forgotten; He'd done the exact same thing to his mother?
Instead of attending any of his afternoon classes, Chase made his way to hospital. Wilson said he was alive, but it was something he needed to see for himself.
"You're alive."
He didn't know if House expected him there, his expression as disgruntled as a man could get under that many sedatives. "I'll never walk again."
"House, you're alive," Chase said, his voice wavering. He pressed palms to his eyes and refused to contemplate what would've happened if he'd lost yet another person he was stupid enough to care about. That didn't stop his body from feeling the affects of the relief, though, and he thought he might just fall off the chair into a puddle.
House's heavy sigh spoke of wanting to complain more, but he looked at Chase's no doubt crumpled, messy excuse for a form and shrugged ruefully. "I guess I am."
Chase would've found nothing as pleasing as crawling into bed with him, because that was obviously the only way to make sure nothing else would came to take this strange, brilliant man away from him in the middle of the night,
-.-.-.-.-
it's not going to happen, though, they both know it,
-.-.-.-.-
so instead he slipped his hand in House's gripped it tightly and thought out it was odd how large House's hands were next to his, and how he'd never noticed.