Author's Note: "Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses." — Ann Landers

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.

The sign on the DDM coffeemaker hailed good coffee as being cheaper than Prozac. Chase hit the brew switch. At this point he could use some fluoxetine. He didn't know how much more of this he could take.

He sat at the glass conference table, took out his diary, and began paging through it from the beginning again, looking for House's handwriting. He knew he wouldn't find anything but the list of diagnoses House had written yesterday morning, but he couldn't help himself: he had to look.

There was nothing else, just the list he'd worked from yesterday, but the knowledge didn't ease him. The coffee didn't help. Walking over and looking through the glass door at the legal pad he'd laid on House's desk last night didn't help.

Nothing helped.

He sat down at the table and rested his forehead momentarily in his hands. Either House would accept the work he'd done yesterday, or he'd tell him to do it over, or he'd—

What?

Do something else insane.

When Rob had been young, and Mum had shoved him in Dad's study and locked the door, she had always just done it, never threatened to do it. He'd never had to worry about it in advance. It had only been a problem when it was actually happening.

Dad must have known. He'd certainly found Rob curled up asleep in his study enough times. He'd always thought Dad didn't know, that Mum had unlocked the door before Dad came home, but if that was true, how did House kn—

He'd winked when he said it. Winked. Because it… was a joke?

The locks on the DDM doors were designed to keep intruders out, not employees in. House would not be able to keep him in there against his will. It was absurd. He picked up his head and drank his coffee and fought the urge to page through the diary again. There's nothing else there.

Chase had tried to get House to look at what he'd written about Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva yesterday, to make sure what he was doing was actually what was wanted, but House had told him he had to do his work himself, that House wouldn't do it for him, and that today was soon enough for the older man to see it.

He hated this. Hated it, hated it, hated—

"Good morning," House greeted his fellow sunnily.

"G'morning."

"Coffee?"

Chase got up to get it. Instead of waiting, House walked through the glass door to the inner office. Chase followed hesitantly, the red mug of coffee in his hand.

"Put it down," House ordered.

Chase obeyed, mesmerized by the sight of House paging through the legal pad. He could not have been reading it, unless he was a speed reader: he was turning the pages too fast. When he reached the time notation on the final page, he smoothed the turned pages back into place, then pitched the legal pad into the trash.

House picked up his coffee mug and took a sip, noting his fellow's worried expression. "What?" he asked.

"Is—was it okay?"

"Fine. Why wouldn't it be?"

Chase shook his head, confused. "No reason."

"Are there any cookies left?"

"Uh, yeah."

House got up to go get some, and Chase trailed him back into the conference room.

House sat at the table with his coffee and cookies. "You never told me what they gave you for dessert."

Sure, 'cause that whole thing yesterday never happened. Chase told himself not to worry, with limited success. "Uh, I didn't eat dessert there."

House bit into a cookie, spraying colored sugar onto the glass tabletop. "Why not?"

Chase took a breath, held it, then let it out slowly. "They set out the desserts in a sort of buffet on the kitchen table after we opened presents, and we filed in there a few at a time to pick what we wanted. When it was our turn, my girlfriend and I went in, and I saw a row of chocolate covered strawberries laid out on a dish, and jumped half a meter in the air, and half a meter back away from them."

House's brow furrowed in silent inquiry.

"I'm allergic," Chase confirmed.

"Allergic as in break out in hives?"

"Allergic as in stop breathing and fall down on the floor."

"Did you?"

"Thankfully no, I've never had it happen unless I've actually ingested some of the stuff, but when my girlfriend heard what the problem was, she bundled me back into the living room and wouldn't let me eat anything else. So I spent the dessert interval showing these old ladies how my epipen works, in case they should need to use it on me… one of them did bring me a little commercially produced square of iced fruitcake sealed in cellophone, but I wasn't allowed to eat it until we were in the car going home. And they gave me the tin of bikkies, because a different lady brought them than the one who did the strawberries, and the tin hadn't been opened, so it wasn't… 'contaminated'."

"It was stupid not to warn them," House pointed out.

"You keep saying I am," Chase muttered, annoyed. He saw House was still looking at him, so continued, "I wasn't expecting to see strawberries on a Chrissie buffet… and I can't… spend all my time making people afraid for me—or being afraid myself. Nothing happened."

House nodded.

Chase looked away and House watched white teeth sink into the corner of his lip. "In a related story, I have to ask you a favor."

"What'll you do for me?"

"Whatever you want. Whatever you say."

House grinned. "A very generous offer, and one I can't refuse. What's the favor?"

"Don't write in my diary anymore."

A dark brow rose. "I only wrote in it twice."

"Yeah, but I've checked it twenty-five times since yesterday morning, in case some other order I don't know about should appear in it and cause me trouble."

"A little OCD?" House suggested. "You should get yourself checked out."

"Seriously, if you're going to keep tricking me and blaming me for not having done stuff you didn't tell me to do, instead of having a willing fellow, you'll just have a pathetic derro lying broken outside the hospital until INS comes and deports me."

House laughed. "Okay, I won't do it again."

Chase gave a heartfelt sigh of relief.

"Small price to pay for your doing whatever I say."