There are two or three more chapters left. I hope you like this chapter. I've been told it's a bit blah but hopefully it isn't that bad. Next chapter will be a lot better I promise. Please review it makes me happy.
Chase sat at the kitchen table staring into nothing as he held his cigarette idly in between his pointer and middle finger. He didn't usually smoke inside his apartment, it wasn't forbidden but he felt uncomfortable smoking indoors for the most part. But this was a dire situation and he had been chain smoking since he had first solved the puzzle box.
"So when's he due in court?" Nina asked him snapping him back into the present. He looked around the table at his friend's somber faces. He had vaguely remembered calling Merryn and he had managed somehow to explain what had happened to her and she had rounded up the troops and had come over to comfort him and to find out what the hell was going on.
"January 21st," Chase mumbled before seeing that the ashes on his cigarette were dangerously close to falling and he sighed and flicked his ashes into the ashtray.
"What time?" Matt asked and Chase looked up.
"You guys don't have to come, it's ok," Chase said knowing that there was no way to talk them out of coming. He remembered back to when his friends met House. He had been a bit nervous about everyone meeting the older diagnostician. Looking back he didn't know why he had been nervous seeing as how all his friends were basically young House clones. They were all sarcastic, loud, and all around crazy House had fit right in as if he had been around them for years.
They laughed at all House's rude and sex laced jokes and fired back quickly when House wanted to verbal spar. They had only met House once and had heard about the older man from Chase hundreds of times over the years but already House had been adopted into their little family.
"What time is it Robbie?" Jake asked as he pulled the ashtray closer to him and smushed the end of his cigarette down into the tray before sliding it back over to Chase.
"11:30," Chase said softly.
"We'll be there," Merryn said and Chase nodded his head, silently happy for their support.
"Robbie it's gonna be ok," Emily said as she reached over and petted Chase's soft blond hair.
Chase smiled sadly "I doubt it."
"Well no it isn't if you don't think positive," Emily said.
Chase sighed and stood from the table and made his way back into his bedroom. Merryn thought about following him but by the time she decided to stand up he was back. In his hands was the puzzle box, he had taken the pieces apart and put them back in their original position. He set the black and gold box down in the center of the table and they all stared in shock at it.
"Is that what I think it is?" Jake asked as he reached out and tentatively touched the smooth lacquered wood.
"Greg got it for me…he said it was for a late Christmas present but…" Chase trailed off.
"You think it's a 'I'm going away to prison so I got you this to remember me by' present?" Emily asked.
Chase nodded his head and Emily jumped out her seat and engulfed him in a hug. "If he goes to jail we'll bust him out and you two can go chill out in Canada ok," Emily said and he chuckled and hugged her back.
The fire fighter was in love with his friend but according the man the girl was in love with his older brother. She was the cause of the heart attacks. Broken heart syndrome. Chase wondered silently to himself if House was taken away from him. Would his heart be able to handle seeing House caged like a wild animal? He shook the thoughts from his head, Emily was right, he had to stay positive or else he was going to get so depressed he'd do something he'd regret. House had more important things to worry about than Chase's internal breakdown.
They had gone to see House once more to get his opinion on what they should do. Chase said nothing, like he had the day before. This time they had to call in Cuddy and Chase could feel her eyes on him, he knew why she stared. His eyes hadn't left House's form since they had entered the rehab center.
House could feel Chase's gaze on him. He knew the young man had to have found the puzzle box he had ordered two days after he and Chase had watched Hellraiser together. He had never seen someone so excited to see people torn apart by hooks and demons popping out to try and take people to hell. It had amused him and he watched Chase mostly as the young man's eyes lit up and some new horror on the screen.
Chase's eyes weren't sparkling however at the prospect of frying a guy's brain to save his life. That was the difference between movie horror and real life horror. With a movie, if you get too scared all you have to do is hit a button and it's over. With real life you couldn't stop no matter how much you screamed and cried and bled.
"Go ahead," Cuddy said, and House looked at her in slight confusion before masking it and looking at his team, before looking at Chase.
"Well you heard the lady," House said as he motioned with his head that they should get going.
Cuddy watched as the three began to depart and she frowned when she saw Chase look over his shoulder at House, sadness and worry were in his eyes.
There was something going on between the two of them but she couldn't figure out exactly what it was. House sat down at the table and she made to follow the three but he stopped her.
"Am I really that pathetic?" he asked, his voice tired and her eyes drifted down to see his hand massaging his thigh. She could only imagine the amount of pain he was in and a small part of her wanted to go and give him a pill.
"What are you talking about?" she asked.
House didn't look at her, she didn't know if it was because he couldn't or wouldn't meet hr gaze. Was he afraid that she really did think he was pathetic?
"If I had pitched electroshock therapy as a cure for broken heart syndrome any other time, you'd have dug in, made me try a hundred other useless things first," he said this time finally looking up at her. "So either you're actually beginning to trust me or you just feel sorry for me," his voice was softer as he said the last part and Cuddy looked down at him, she knew she couldn't show him pity because that isn't what he wanted, so she cleared her face of emotions.
"You presented a reasonable argument. You were clear headed and non impulsive about it," he looked away from her as she spoke but she continued to speak. "Never once used the word 'moron'. The rehab's working, House," she said and before he could protest she took her exit, she had a phone call to make.
House sat a few hours later at a different table over near the corner, as far away from the rest of the recovering addicts as possible. He didn't want them to talk to him, he didn't want to hear their tales of woe. He just wanted to poke and push his play-do around until art therapy or whatever they decided they were calling it nowadays was over with.
He heard someone stop in front of his table and he looked up expecting to see one of the supervisors. His eyes hardened when he say Tritter in front of him.
"Caterpillar?" he asked. House silently wondered how long it would take a person to die if they had play-do shoved down their throat. How dare that man walk up to him after everything he had put him through. No to hell with what he had done to him, it was what he had done to Chase that made House so infuriated to see the white-haired man again.
He held back his rage and disdain and decided that if he really wanted this to stop he had to play nice. He picked up his sculpture "Lower intestine with ulcerative colitis."
Tritter just looked amused and House asked irately "You crash art therapy classes just for the adrenaline rush?"
"Cuddy wouldn't get off the phone until I promised to come see for myself," Tritter said and House didn't know how he kept himself from punching the smug look off the man's face. "I got to admit," Tritter said and House looked back up at him. "This move I did not expect."
Something was wrong, this wasn't the way this was supposed to be. Tritter was having too much fun with watching him suffer. How could he have been so stupid to give the man what he wanted to see?
"Well don't tell anyone but the photos of smiling people in the brochures, it's just marketing," House said. He had to salvage this somehow; he had to show Tritter that he wasn't breaking at all.
"Well you're obviously making an effort," Tritter said. "So I suppose the next step would for me to talk to the D.A."
Mission objective failed.
"Which you have no intention of doing," House said, he shouldn't have been the least surprised.
"No," Tritter said, and the bastard even smiled.
"So words mean nothing, actions mean nothing, what the hell is left?" House asked, his anger starting to boil over.
Tritter just shrugged before turning and making his way toward the door. House closed his eyes for a moment and he saw Chase's trashed apartment and the blond lying on the bed utterly defeated and heart broken. Tritter had done that, just to get back at him.
"You son of a bitch!" House said loudly, his voice full of venom and fury. Tritter stopped and slowly turned back around to face him.
"What about your words?" House asked "What about your actions?" this he said with so much hate that the people around him scooted away from him.
"Got to get House cleaned up. Got to get him to show some humility," House said as he stood from the table and began to walk over to the man. He saw Voldemort out of the corner of his eye but the man made no move to stop him.
"But when it comes to actually doing something, you prove that all you care about is bitch slapping a guy who refused to kiss your ass and taking away everything that matters to him," House growled.
"Have you ever trust an addict, you ever given one the benefit of the doubt?" Tritter asked but House didn't give a damn about his story anymore than the recovering addicts around him.
"How many times has that worked out for you?" Tritter asked but House didn't want to hear it.
"Yeah, I get it," House said annoyed. "So you were screwed over by your wife, your mother, your partner. But you keep sending them Christmas cards while you take it out on everyone else, including people that haven't done a damn thing wrong," House said, thinking about holding Chase as he cried over the broken strings of his guitar and Roe's fractured leg.
"No more Christmas cards," Tritter said. "And I wonder how long it'll take Dr. Chase to stop sending you cards if you do indeed go to jail." House clenched his fists, how dare the man talk about Chase.
"Because people like you, even your actions lie."
"And your actions, what about them, can you justify a cat's fractured leg, or three broken guitar strings, an apartment completely trashed?" House asked and Tritter was silent.
"CAN YOU?" House yelled.
Tritter said nothing, just turned and walked away.
Hours passed and it was almost nightfall when his team came to give him the update on their patient. His anger had subsided for the most part but it was still there, along with something else, regret.
"We've given him four rounds of electroshock. The charge made his voice a little higher, but the EKG and BP are good," Cameron said.
"Good," House said softly and he glanced over to see Chase looking at him as if the younger man were trying to memorize every detail about him.
"We're going to give him his last round in the morning, then be in court for your hearing," Foreman said.
House nodded his head "Thanks."
"I'm gonna stay here, monitor Derek," Cameron said and House looked at her in surprise before being resigned to the fact that she wanted to pretend that he wasn't leaving them all.
"Thanks for the update," House said and he looked back over at Chase. They stared at each other for a moment and House began to wonder if he did go to jail, would the blond stop visiting. No more music, no more adorable oddities, no more hyper craziness…no more Robbie.
House was snapped out of his thoughts when he saw Wilson enter the center. "My next condolence call is arriving. I'll see you guys tomorrow," he said and the three stood up. Chase more slowly than the other two. He was reluctant to leave House alone with Wilson even though he knew House and the other man had called a truce.
Cameron and Foreman walked past Wilson and the other man stopped and looked at Chase. He opened his mouth to say something but Chase turned to House and said "I'll see you tomorrow, along with Merryn and the others, good night."
With that the blond swept past Wilson as was out the door before the other man realized it.
He was smoking inside again. At this point he didn't very much give a shit if it was against the rules or not.
"You're smoking too much," Merryn said as she tried to take the newly lit cigarette from him but he snatched his hand a way before she could grab it.
"I don't care," he said softly as he reached over and scratched behind Roe's ears as Steve nibbled at a bit of Cheez-it Merryn had given him. It was just the four of them sitting at the kitchen table. The Lament Configuration still sitting in the middle of the table where he had left it the night before.
He could hear the Pillows being played softly in the background and he thought back to when he was in Korea and Jae had introduced him to the Japanese band. Everything seemed so simple but so complicated when he lived away from Australia. It was true as well for his life in America. His job, his friends, loving House; that was all so easy for him. It was the little nit picky things, the fine print that made life so complicated.
"Can you feel, Can you feel that hybrid rainbow? Surely we can still go farther than this," Chase sang softly and he felt tears prick up in the corners of his eyes. This couldn't be happening, it had to be some sort of nightmare. Everything was falling apart and he was frantically running around trying to pick up the pieces and glue them back into place. But it wasn't enough, his pillar had been ripped away from him and his heart was close to collapse.
Chase jumped slightly when he heard a hesitant banging on the door. He knew all of his friend's ways of knocking and he knew for a fact that it wasn't House.
"Who's that?" Merryn asked.
"I don't know but if it's that fucking cop get ready to bury a body," Chase growled as he got up from the table and made his way to the door.
He unlocked it and swung the door open. He was surprised to see Wilson standing on his doorstep.
"We need to talk," Wilson said.