Untouchable
Chapter 2
(Enter the Circus)
Vogler was not sitting in House's desk the following morning with termination papers in hand.
This alone was enough to set House into paranoia. He made Cameron open the door for him, just in case there was some sort of rigged bucket of water (or, as was more likely when it came to Vogler, a bucket of liquid nitrogen) just inside the door. He triple-checked his cane to make sure that it hadn't been tampered with, and Foreman had to rock vigorously in his desk chair until House was satisfied that it, too, had not been booby trapped overnight. He was almost disappointed when Cameron failed to keel over and die after taking a sip of his coffee.
"House, do you seriously think that he would have poisoned your coffee?" Cameron asked as she handed him the cup of coffee from which she'd just taken a sip. "It would be too obvious if all of us keeled over and died over our coffee cups."
"You get your coffee from Starbucks," House pointed out. "He doesn't care about the rest of us." But all the same, he took his coffee and sat down behind his desk. "Where's Chase?"
Foreman shrugged. "Maybe Vogler fired him."
"How about it, Cameron? Wanna fill us in?" House asked, earning him a scowl from Cameron. He rolled his eyes.
Suddenly, the door flew open and Chase came in looking harried. His hair was disheveled and he kept his head down as he crossed the room briskly, shoving a file at House and then yanking back a chair and sitting down. He dropped his bag down to the floor and stared at the table furiously while his breathing echoed off the walls of the silent room.
House stared at the file in his hands, noted that it was a patient file, but found himself more interested in Chase's arrival and the subsequent awkward silence as Cameron and Foreman tried not to look at him too closely.
"Well," he said loudly, drawing the attention away from Chase for a minute. "We have a case, apparently. Who caught you?"
"Vogler," Chase mumbled, almost unintelligible.
House made a face as he opened the folder. "Goody. Pregnant woman, 39 years old, three miscarriages. Symptoms are: altered mental status and loss of coordination. Tox screen's clean, except for oxybutynin."
"Was she taking it for incontinence?" Foreman asked.
House pushed himself to his feet and limped over to the whiteboard. "Yeah," he said as he uncapped a purple marker and began scribbling down the symptoms. "Probably something underlying—something easy, like an autoimmune disease."
"I'll check her blood," Cameron offered, pushing back her chair and standing up.
"Do an MRA for vasculitis too," House said. "All of you."
"It doesn't take three people to run blood work and do an MRA," Foreman protested, not getting out of his seat.
"An ultrasound? Excellent thought!" House said, pretending not to have heard Foreman. "And put her on magnesium just in case it's something boring like preeclampsia."
A round of sighs came from his team, Foreman grumbled something unintelligible as he stood up, and House watch as they trooped out of the room like a group of soldiers just sent to the fight on the front lines. He rolled his eyes and began searching for his GameBoy.
It wasn't in his desk, where he usually stored it, so that meant that he had probably set it down in his office and left it to collect dust. Where had he been in his office last night? He'd been pacing, staring at the speech he was supposed to give. In fact, he hadn't touched his GameBoy all day yesterday. Which meant that he had to think back two days... And he couldn't remember. House considered tearing his office apart in pursuit of the little toy, but instead fished out his iPod and worked the buds into his ears. Flipping it on, he began to scroll through the list of artists when he became aware of another presence in the room.
Looking up, there was none other than Edward Vogler standing in the doorway.
"Dr. House," Vogler greeted cordially, offering a thin smile. "How are you this morning?"
"Just dandy," House said, eyeing Vogler with slight apprehension. "What can I do for you?"
"I trust that you remember our conversation about your faculty," Vogler said, picking up House's tennis ball and rolling it around in the palm of his hand.
"Yeah," House said, yanking the earbuds out of his ears. He balled them up in the palm of his hand and then jammed them back into his pocket. "Are you here to add more fine print? Chase was next on my list, in case you were wondering."
"Actually," Vogler said calmly, unruffled as a tabby cat, "I wanted to let you know that it's no longer necessary for you to fire any of your staff. A recent donor contribution has allowed us to keep your current department the way it was."
House blinked.
"You said it wasn't about the money," he said slowly, staring at Vogler while he processed this new information. It didn't make any sense.
"I would tread carefully." Vogler went on as if he hadn't spoken. "This money might not last forever. Enjoy the time that you have with your team, Dr. House." A cold smile curled his lips.
Obviously, Vogler was not relenting out of free will, House decided. Maybe Cuddy had finally stepped up and said something on his behalf, made a few threats and got Vogler to back off for a while. But that wouldn't have been like Cuddy to chance losing money for the hospital, and it wouldn't have been like Vogler to back off and listen to her unless Cuddy had dug up some serious shit on him. Unless Vogler was planning some new game to play with him, something worse than making his choose which of his staff to fire—House could certainly think of a dozen things worse than that.
As Vogler left the room, House stuffed the iPod back into his pocket to join the headphones, his mind already bubbling with unanswered questions and half-formed plots.
oOo
Cuddy had an early lunch that day, and House was sorely disappointed to discover that she wasn't in her office when he entered. After proving to himself that he could easily hack into her computer and browse through her files (not that there was anything interesting, really) and failing to open the top right drawer with a paperclip, House found himself bored enough to start fiddling with the objects on Cuddy's desk. He changed the date to a week from now, arranged two little stuffed cows so that they appeared in a very inappropriate position, and was in the process of writing 'Botox Much?" with magic marker on the front of her desk when Cuddy walked in.
"What are you doing now?" Cuddy asked warily, collapsing into one of the chairs in front of her desk.
"Nothing," House replied, finishing his C and moving over to start on the H. "Good lunch?"
"Are you—does that say Botox?" Cuddy demanded, leaning forward as House began to color in the H that he'd drawn. "Stop coloring on my desk!"
"Stop messing with my head," House said evenly, continuing to color without bothering to look up.
"Messing with your head?" Cuddy repeated blankly.
"As nice as it is to have someone stepping in on my behalf, it's irritating as all hell when you don't tell me ahead of time," House said, still coloring diligently. The marker was beginning to run out of ink—he should have made the letters smaller—but he just pressed down harder.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Cuddy said. "But an explanation would be nice."
House paused as the marker finally ran too low to color with and turned around to look at Cuddy, studying her with intent eyes. She was relaxed back into the chair, her right hand was tugging on her earlobe and her face was expectant.
"You're not lying," he decided.
"About what?" she asked, frowning. "House, what's going on?"
"Nothing," House muttered, hopping up from his spot and grabbed his cane. He dropped the dead marker into the garbage can as he walked away.
oOo
"House!"
House's head snapped up and he found himself face to face with Foreman and Cameron. His hand twitched on the mouse, almost clicking out of the window he was in reflexively before remembering that his ducklings, if they were even smart enough to realize it, wouldn't care that he had hacked into the hospital's database and was sweeping their financial records. So he returned to his computer, scrolling down the list.
"What is it now?" he asked, snorting quietly as he saw Cameron's name on the list of people who had donated money towards the new geriatrics ward. It would figure. Vogler had probably given her a secret raise as part of their little bargain, because there was no way she could have donated that much on the salary he was giving her.
"It's Naomi," Cameron said. "She went into labor during the MRA."
"Preeclampsia," House said in a bored tone, bringing up another window and cross-referencing it. "Stick her up in maternity."
"It can't be preeclampsia," Foreman said immediately. "She's showing signs of myasthenia. It doesn't fit."
"What, did she fall out of her wheelchair?" House asked, taking a second to look away from the computer screen to glance at Foreman. "And where's Chase?"
"He's showering," Cameron said. "Said he had an incident with a patient this morning and couldn't get the smell out of his hair."
House would have made a comment about Chase, but his mind was distracted as he realized that he'd reached the end of the donors list, to no avail. Which meant that Vogler had indeed been lying his ass off this morning when he'd said that the hospital had received a new donation. He'd have to start getting down and dirty if he wanted to find out the real reason behind this sudden reprieve.
With a scowl he closed the screen and remembered his patient with new clarity. "What's with the supposed myasthenia?"
"She choked," Cameron said. "But people choke all the time—it doesn't mean anything."
"What did she choke on?" House asked, reaching for his cane. Finding it, he planted it firmly and pulled himself out of his chair, then began making his way to the conference room just in case this debate played out in Foreman's favor. Cameron and Foreman's footsteps echoed behind him, following their boss dutifully.
"Some cooked pear," Foreman said impatiently with a frustrated exhale. "It doesn't matter! The muscle weakness isn't a sign of preeclampsia."
"She choked on a soft, wet pear. Did she forget to take the bones out? That's way past muscle weakness—did you do an upper endoscopy?" he asked, watching as Cameron's mouth opened, no doubt to protest her case for preeclampsia, but Foreman spoke up before she could get in a word.
"No, we didn't," Foreman said, shaking his head.
"Well the go drag Chase out of the showers and get going!" House snapped, watching Cameron and Foreman hustle out of his office with satisfaction.
oOo
Wilson stared at him with raised eyebrows. "You've got to be kidding."
"No, it's true," House said. "People really are that stupid."
"Not that," Wilson said in irritation, waving an impatient hand. "I can't believe that you wouldn't have called social services! I would have done the same thing! Abuse doesn't have to be conscious, you know."
House scowled as he realized that Wilson was going to take Cuddy's side. "My patient, my call," he said stubbornly. "All they needed was a proper education on infant care and the runt would have been just fine." His fingers picked up a little finger puppet that one of Wilson's patients must have made for him and began playing with it.
"You need to be careful," Wilson said, lowering his voice and leaning forward across the desk. He reached over and snatched the puppet off of House's finger, making House look over at him and glare. Setting the puppet down now that he had House's attention, he continued sotto voce. "Vogler's just waiting for an excuse to knock you off. All you need is one strike—one little thing not according to regulations—and you're gone! He's just waiting for you, House."
House opened his mouth to give a flippant remark in response, when a thought occurred to him and he quickly changed direction. "He's getting what he wants—I've still got to fire Foreman or Chase."
"You should be grateful it isn't worse, considering your stunt last night," Wilson reminded him. "I was half expecting to see you packing up your office this morning."
House shook his head. "Nope. Still here. Dunno who I'm going to pick, though." He reached for the finger puppet and put it back on his index finger. "I like this. Tell Dorothy to make me some for my birthday."
"Her name's Danielle, and she won't be around for your birthday," Wilson informed him, leaning back in his chair with a resigned sigh.
Secretly, House was both relieved and disappointed. Wilson hadn't been the one who'd pulled Vogler's strings to get him off of House's back for the time being, which was good news, but it also meant that he was no closer to finding out who was playing puppeteer with Vogler. Trying to hide his frustration, he took off the finger puppet and said, "My patient has cancer."
"Do you want me to take a look at it?" Wilson asked, cocking his head to the side slightly.
"The tests haven't come back yet," House said. "But they should be here soon." He stood up, reaching for his cane so that he could trek back to his office where his ducklings would come and seek him out and tell him that their patient had paraneoplastic syndrome, as well as a tumor in some area of her lungs. "I'll be returning soon. Don't let anyone take my chair."
He limped over to the door and twisted the knob roughly and yanked the door open. He breezed into the hallway, letting the door shut itself behind him, and took the five steps that it took to get into his office. But he stopped before it, staring through the glass windows because his office was not the way that he'd left it. The blinds were now shut.
Who knew? Maybe Chase and Cameron were in there having kinky sex on his desk.
House put a hand on the door and shoved it open with one hand, and he was immediately plunged into darkness. His office was pitch black with the blinds drawn, and somehow not even the scant rays of light from the setting sun were making the cracks between the blinds glow with light. His ears buzzed with the sudden silence and the blackness pressed against his eyes like he was drowning in a puddle of ink. For a second, he couldn't even breathe. It was like time had suspended itself and rendered him senseless, unable to think. His body felt frozen, and the only thought that ran through his head was Vogler. This had to be something that he'd set up, some sort of plot to get him to trip in the dark, make his death look like an accident.
His hand went for the light switch, but it wasn't there. He reached out, running his fingers along the wall and searching, feeling his way around for the little plastic casing.
A hand touched his back.
"Fuck!" House shouted, nearly jumping out of his skin. He whirled around immediately, but his eyes only saw the black expanses of nothingness. But his ears, becoming attuned to the silence, picked up the light breathing of another person. Somewhere in this room, someone was playing a joke on him.
Rolling his eyes at himself for being so jumpy, he began limping back to the door to turn on the switch so that he could chew out whoever had devised this little prank. But he hadn't taken two steps when a hand caught him around the wrist.
"Let go," House said exasperatedly, tugging. When the hand wouldn't release, he pulled harder. "I'll whack you with my cane if you don't let go of me."
Slowly, a body pressed up against his and he felt hot breath in his ear. "No, you won't."
His heart began to race slightly as fear swept through his mind. Who was this person and what the hell did they think they were doing? This didn't feel like an innocent prank anymore. It was Vogler, he knew it. The bastard was here, in the room, about to get revenge. And he was trapped like an animal, the hand still firmly grasping his wrist. Something was pounding against his chest but it took him a minute to realize that it was not his own heart so wildly beating, but the heart of the other person. They were pressed up against each other.
Was Vogler this skinny?
"What do you want?" he whispered, afraid of taking a louder tone for fear of what it might betray.
"Nothing," the person said, but a hint of Australian leaked into the whispered tones and House instantly recognized who it was.
His hands came up to the other person's shoulders, trying to shove him away. "What the hell, Chase?"
A finger that was not his own came to his lips. "Shh," Chase whispered.
House opened his mouth to reply but choked when fingers brushed against his ear, as if they were combing back nonexistent hair. He had a split second to breathe, and then his mind exploded as he felt Chase's lips lock on to his. Fuck, fuck, fuck, this is not happening, I am not kissing my employee, get off, get—
Emotions flooded his body too fast for him to analyze, shooting like burning fire and exploding like fireworks. His hands were feeling fabric, feeling taut skin and the rough patterns of stubble and the hollow crevices in between bones, but was he pushing or pulling? The world was spinning and flipping until it couldn't exist anymore because he couldn't feel the floor, he didn't even know if there was a floor and he didn't care anymore. This passion, this pure adrenaline was directed at him, and it was his. He owned it.
The power rushing through him was intoxicating, and he wanted more. More, more for him to take and own and control, and when it began to slip he gripped even harder and lashed out angrily. It was his, and no one would take it away from him. He would never let go, never let this get out of his control because then the power would leave. He couldn't feel anything but control and power and white-hot energy keeping him standing and he wasn't ever going to let go of this thing that belonged to him. More, he needed to have more of this...
Suddenly, the wall was behind him and he was pressed up against it, kissing Chase furiously.
Chase.
He was kissing Chase.
And for an instant, he'd been enjoying it.
"Chase," he gasped, out of breath as he tore his mouth away for a split second.
Chase's voice came out in a low growl. "Shut up."
"I don't—" His mouth stopped working and he pressed himself against the wall, hissing as he stifled a cry of pleasure. Fuck, Chase was good.
"You want this," Chase said in a low voice, his hands moving across House's chest and working off the buttons deftly.
"I don't," he said as loud as he could, but he was panting and it was too airy and soft.
"Yes, you do," Chase said quietly, his hands stilling as they came into contact with House's bare chest.
Time was suspended as they stood there in the dark. He couldn't see anything. Loud, heavy breathing resonated off the walls but he didn't know if it was his or Chase's. He didn't care. His heart was pumping so fast that it felt like it might burst through his chest and his lips were swollen and wet.
"I challenge you to a game of Dare Chess," Chase breathed, his hands leaving House's chest.
"What?" House asked dazedly, his mind spinning and empty at the same time. Chase was gone, he wasn't touching anymore, the heat and the passion had disappeared and he was left in the dark room.
"Pawn to G3," Chase said, and then the lights came on.
"Shit!"
House's eyes seared with pain and he flinched away, hunching over to get away from the light. Distantly, the sound of the door opening and brisk footsteps echoing down the hallway came to his ears, but it didn't register. His eyes burned, pulsated with pain like they'd been physically burned with a torch. Fuck Chase, bastard, this hurt.
When his eyes had recovered from the shocking light change, House looked up and realized that Chase had left the room. The kid had used the lights as a tool, his getaway car, and House had fallen right into it.
Swearing, House collapsed into the nearest seat and closed his eyes, trying desperately to think of anything but Chase.
oOo
Vomit.
His skin was sweaty and his hands trembled while his vision blurred with tears he was refusing to let fall. Before him, the toilet stank. He felt disgusting. What he wouldn't give to be anyone else right now, someone who hadn't just, just practically fucked their boss in his office. Their boss. Their male boss.
It wasn't worth it.
Hell, it wasn't right. He wasn't supposed to kiss other men. He wasn't supposed to seduce other men and touch them and make then gasp for air. But he had. He had to, and he would have to do it again. His lips would touch the bare skin of that bastard, his voice would slip out his name in loving whispers, his hands would... They would touch him. He would touch House's penis. In all likelihood, House's penis would be shoved up his ass and he would have to lay there and not only endure it, but pretend to love it.
Rape. He was going to allow himself to be raped to save his job.
His stomach twisted at the thought of laying in bed with House, the sheets reeking of semen and sweat, his naked body touching House's nasty, old, hairy, disgusting—
He threw up again.