Author's Note: It is not flesh and blood, but heart which makes us fathers and sons. –Johann Friedrich Von Schiller
Disclaimer: I don't own House, M.D., nor its concepts, characters, and setting, but I do love them, especially Chase. This story is for entertainment purposes only and is not meant to take the place of the advice of either physicians or lawyers licensed to practice in your country or state.
Chase's voice was tense pronouncing their safe words: "True Blue."
The splendid hot ache across Lisa's shoulders was like the muscle burn after a good workout. The coolness of the washcloth her lover wielded both extinguished and soothed, the mingling of hot and cold a sensual pleasure of its own. She kissed the place where his jaw met his neck. "I think I'm supposed to say that," she cooed.
"Yes," he agreed. "You are." Concern sharpened the normally mild voice. "This is gonna be a second degree burn here." He could see blisters forming. He hated that, hated it. "I'm sorry."
He might not be the most stoic dom she'd ever had, but he was certainly the most caring. And the most beautiful. She pressed a hand into the mat of blond hair on his chest to feel the hammering of his heart. "Keep breathing, wallaby, I'm fine."
"You're not!"
"I've had worse many times."
He could handle it when it was all just alcohol and blue flame pyrotechnics, but one whiff of reddened skin, and he started to freak. Lisa led him into the bathroom and set the mister showerhead going, the cool water working to counteract the heat she could still feel in her shoulders. She hugged Chase to her. "You haven't done anything wrong."
"I've worked shifts in the Burn Unit," he said simply, leaning lightly against her under the cold gentle drizzle.
She held him. "It's all right."
She took the top position, a concession to his worry that her blisters would break. "They'll break anyway under my clothes, but just as you wish."
Afterwards, he applied an antiseptic ointment and bandages, making sure to wrap them in such a way as to allow free movement of her arms.
"I know," she assured him. "Be sure to move my arms, so the skin doesn't get tight." She started to hum the Chicken Dance, flapping her arms like wings, which finally did get a laugh out of him.
Lovemaking had relaxed him, but not enough. Seeing it, she offered. "You wanna get a drink or three?"
"Yeah. Love to."
The loud terrible buzzing noise was not the smoke alarm.
It was his pager.
Chase fumbled for it and gazed groggily at the tiny screen.
Black upside-down letters on a gray screen announced WE HAVE A CASE.
House sat at the glass table in the conference room, writing in black marker on a white legal pad.
The letters M S took pride of place at the top, then underneath he'd written on one side a list of symptoms, leaving the other side blank. Where was Chase? He'd had plenty of time to get here by now.
Chase walked in. He offered no greeting, instead making a beeline for the little refrigerator. Pulling out a bottle of water, he drank like a man newly returned from the desert, then proceeded to the corner of the room behind the desk, his free hand reaching for the hanging stick that controlled the angle of the vertical blinds.
"Leave them open," House snapped, frowning. "You think Cuddy wants to pay for electric lights in the middle of a sunny Sunday afternoon."
The young man withdrew his hand and came to throw himself into a chair on the opposite side of the table from his boss. He rested an elbow on the glass tabletop, chin in his hand.
House caught a whiff, not of the expensive Eau de Parfum he'd been expecting, but more the scent he would associate with a beer delivery truck that had smashed into a distillery's storage room for whiskey soaked barrels, and then been left sitting under a week of heavy rain. "Are you drunk?" he asked.
Chase looked at his watch and did some mental arithmetic. "No," he replied.
"There's no coffee," House complained.
Chase rose to make it, flinching whenever his boss made any unnecessary noise, which the older man seemed to be doing a lot, before finally getting up and going into his office.
Coffee brewing, Chase tossed his empty water bottle in the bin, and got a second one from the fridge before dropping back into his chair. He looked across the table at the upside down MS. "If you know it's multiple sclerosis, why is it a case?"
"Look up."
Chase did so to find the giant tennis ball from the inner office coming towards his head. He grabbed it out of the air. What the—
"It was diagnosed as MS, but I think that diagnosis is wrong. What else could it be?" He seated himself, took his ball back from his bemused fellow, and started to turn the pad around so the younger man could see it.
"You don't have to turn it," Chase told him. "Symptoms are numbness, tingling, pain, fatigue, and heat sensitivity. That all sounds like MS." He rested his head in his hands.
"Don't forget the eye pain, vomiting, and hiccups."
When there was no response from the bowed head, House inquired, "Would you like some aspirin?"
"Already took some, thanks."
There was a short silence.
"If it isn't MS," House repeated, "what else could it be?"
"Lyme Disease."
"No tick bite."
"Ankylosing spondylitis."
"Maybe." House wrote it on the pad.
"Anything else?"
"Neuropathy. Lupus."
"It's never lupus," House said. "How about Sjögren's Syndrome?" He wrote that. "Anything else?"
"Vasculitis," the bowed head said.
"Are these diseases written on a list under the table?"
Chase looked up at him with bloodshot eyes. "B12 deficiency?"
"Okay, how about sarcoidosis?"
Chase nodded. "Myasthenia Gravis?"
"Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis?"
"Or Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder."
House looked over the list. "Looks like we have a pile of work to do to rule out all of those."
A few hours and many tests later, contemplating his weary looking fellow, House said, "Go home, Chase."
"We'll have a lot more results in a couple hours," Chase pointed out. He was exhausted, and his head still pounded, but he didn't want House to think he didn't want to participate. He'd waited too long for this. "It's no trouble to stay. I didn't have any plans for today."
"Obviously." House thought about it. "Okay, let's go back upstairs, see what we can figure out while we're waiting."
Once on the fourth floor though, he walked past the conference room door to the door of his 'private' office. "In here," he directed his fellow.
Chase entered the inner sanctum, followed by his employer. "Take a load off," House invited, pointing to the lounge chair. "Play time's over. Time for your nap." He twisted the control stick so the vertical blinds shut out the view of the hall.
Blond hair fell in the young man's eyes as he objected, "I'm fine, I don't need—"
"Nap time," House repeated, "or go home."
Chase sighed, and slender fingers rubbed his forehead and jaw. "Okay, you win." He lay back in the lounge chair as directed and put his feet up on the ottoman.
"Close your eyes," House instructed.
"This is silly."
"Do it."
Blond lashes fluttered down over eyes the pale green of a shallow sea, then back up. "You'll wake me when the results are ready?"
House nodded.
After a moment, the older man whispered, "Would you like to hear a lullaby?"
But Chase…
… was already asleep.
The following afternoon, heading out of her office in search of Dr. House and his fellow, Cuddy ran across Wilson just outside the Pathology lab, standing in the exact spot from which it was possible to look into the glass walled room without those inside being able to see him, and indeed, he was peering in with rapt attention.
"Wilson," she greeted him. "Have you seen—"
"Shhh." He motioned her over anxiously, and she joined him in looking through the glass at the activity inside the lab.
Dr. Gregory House sat at the microscope, but he was not looking at a slide. Instead, he had turned towards the counter where gels and titers were habitually run, his bemused gaze focused on the tall blond elegance of his fellow Dr. Chase, standing at the counter, presumably awaiting results.
Though the two observers outside the lab could not hear what was being said, it was clear the younger man was holding forth on some subject, lips moving rapidly, as though he were talking nineteen to the dozen, the slender hands gesticulating to emphasize his silent points.
House responded occasionally, and when the older man's mouth moved, the younger one's stopped, an expression of intent listening on his face, hanging on his mentor's every word.
"I wish I had a camera," Cuddy whispered.
"A Kodak moment?" Wilson suggested.
"Father's Day in the Lab," she said.
House beckoned, and Chase moved with fluid grace to stand next to his employer and bend over the microscope to look at the slide, to see whatever it was House had seen. The young man stood so close his lab coat caught on one of the pens in the breast pocket of House's sport coat, yanking him back abruptly, and causing the two men to break apart to disentangle themselves, laughter on their faces, before Chase bent again to the binocular eyepiece of the microscope.
"Nice to see'm so happy," Cuddy opined.
"Which?" Wilson asked.
The administrator smiled. "Both."
The oncologist shook his head a little. "I'm amazed it's turning out so well. How did House find him?"
"Chase's dad called House up and asked House to take him as a fellow."
Wilson blinked. "His dad? I wouldn't pick House as one to go for someone still relying on Mommy and Daddy."
Cuddy favored him with an appraising look. "His daddy is Rowan Chase."
Wilson thought, then, "Rowan Chase, the rheumatologist? Author of Modern Textbook of Rheumatology?
"The same."
"Wow. Yay for nepotism."
"Or maybe 'yay for spite'." In answer to his questioning look she continued, "I think House only said yes because he thought I wouldn't be able to get the kid here for him. Do you have any idea how much red tape is involved in bringing a doctor up from Down Under? Enough for twenty years of Christmas presents."
"Yeah, that's—Wait, you're Jewish."
"Whatever. A hundred years' worth then." She flourished the envelope she held. "But we did it."
"What's that?"
"Chase's license."
"Oh, great." Wilson's eyes were drawn back to the dumbshow in the lab. Chase and House were still conversing amiably over their respective tests. "You know, once you give them that, you'll never get House to set foot in the Clinic again."
"Not a problem. Chase loves the Clinic. He'll do enough hours for the both of them. And when he catches a case he can't figure out, he'll take it directly to House."
NMO IgG test was positive. The patient had Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder, originally misdiagnosed because the patient had been on immunosuppressants after a corneal transplant.