A/N: Well here we are again children if anyone's even still with me. Here's my next two contrabutions. After thiss I'm planning one more smaller ficlet and then a longer one which will be threaded through the first season finale. For anyone waiting on the next for In Tatters I'm sorry I promised it weeks ago. But its tougher than I thought so maybe in another two weeks. Thanks for the patients. Okay read on and as usual their not mine.

Stand Alone

From the body one guilty deed a thousand ghostly fears and haunting thoughts proceed.

William Wordsworth

Chase is naked this time… completely stark and he knows it, knows why. Sits up slowly on the bed and pulls his knees up to his chest, the sheet folding around his skin. The airs cool against his skin, steadying in a world where nothing else ever has been. In a world that lies shattered around his feet, tiny incomparable shards and Chase can't even begin to know how to put it back together. Chase presses a warm cheek to cool fabric and listens to the lost notes that trickle into the dark room. Finds it lulling, comforting the way nothing else ever has been.

It's not classical, though Chase doubts he could place it even if it were. Music was never his area, not even after practising until his fingers almost bled. Could almost be envious of how easily notes seem to slip of the others fingers if he didn't feel so peaceful, so adrift from the world.

"Still not tired?" It's murmured sleepily from the doorway and House turns in the half-darkness, because the low fire is casting some light and his eyes slip slowly over Chase. He's a shadowy little spectre cast into a ethereal orange glow. The light catches his hair in a honey halo and House has to wonder if he'd taken the time to straighten it before coming out.

He's moulded to the doorframe, hip curving with the wood, House's sheet wound around and clutched at his chest the way a woman might, the scars bob up past the white smoothness and decorate an angled shoulder. House likes those scars more now than he ever has before, the sheet pooling in light and dark folds.

Through all this House doesn't miss a key and he makes no move to answer the other. Still can't even believe that the others even here because Chase had shoved him away after their… okay his somewhat impromptu kiss. Then had shown up a few hours later just as inexplicably as the last time. Had practically jumped House at the door and House for the most part hadn't complained.

It must have happened though because House's skin still tingles and pricks. The faint taste of Chase still clinging at the back of his throat. Reminding House of the little pieces of crackling candied gum that he'd chew as a child. Remembers it itching his tongue. Chase does the same and it makes sense that the crumbly little fairy-boy would taste like some sugary treat.

So it must have happened because Chase is standing before him now, so it happened or House is having a complete breakdown.

House turns back to the piano keys and taps away lightly.

"When my father walked out…" Chase's voice catches and dies and House keeps on playing not looking at the other.

"I went a little crazy…" Chase breathed, wanting nothing more than to be rid of the weight. But he can't he'll never rid himself of it because he can't even say it.

"My mother and I we lived in this house on Tyres River." Chase shifts closer to the wall and House thinks he may be trying to work himself into the wood.

"Thing about Australia is that the summers are hot and the winters… freezing…" Chase swallowed down razor blades and continued.

"I thought if I made myself sick enough that he'd come back, that whatever was happening with them wouldn't matter." House can here the cool detachment, tears lying just underneath.

"I went swimming in water that was… I don't even know how cold… Just that my arms were numb afterwards." House almost misses the next key, fingers falling heavily.

"One morning… I ummm… I knew it didn't look right… But I ummm, I jumped in anyway and I could hear my mother calling out over my shoulder…" Chase sways a bit in the darkness and House has the sudden desperate urge for Vicodin.

"I guess she was watching the news or something, but there'd been a cold snap overnight and even though it wasn't really cold in the air… the water. It had ice on top; it wasn't very thick just like a plastic coating… But it was freezing… It felt hotter than the boiling water down my shoulder. Then just this terrible gut wrenching numbness." House can feel what's coming next and hates the fact that he's left his drugs in his pants pocket on the bedroom floor.

"Then her arms were around me and that's the last thing I remember…" House forces his fingers to each new key.

"She dived in after me… somehow got me up onto the bank and then… I was hospital for weeks, missed her funeral and the really amusing thing…" Chase bites his lip and frowns, laughs forcedly, bitterly.

"I didn't see even the back of my father… He couldn't even make room in his busy schedule for…" Chase sighs and breathes and holds back tears for a moment and then brushing hair behind his ear lets it go. House's fingers pause over the keys, drop down to rest lightly there.

"I've spent a third of my life blaming everyone!" Chase bites jaggedly.

"I killed my both my parents and my seven year old sister when I was eighteen." House doesn't even have to look to catch the surprised expression.

"My father let me drive the car… slippery bit of road, bad brakes and a semi-truck later and I wake up in hospital with souvenirs of my own…" House tugs his shirt up a bit and shows the long thin streak of raised white which curls along is last rib. Chase had wondered…

"I'm sorry." Chase breathes and means it, wonders if that's why House keeps himself inside such a perfect little bubble.

"No you're not!" House spits.

"Nothing you ever think actually comes out your mouth… You're a boring, shallow, frustrating, little husk of a person." House grinds and Chase looks as though he's been slapped.

"Not that your tale wasn't a tragic little saga… gut-wrenching really…" House tosses a reprinted newspaper article at his feet. Chase can barely see it in the half-light… But can recite it off by heart anyway.

"I suppose your mother slicing her own wrists in the bath is slightly less dramatic… down-plays the whole self-sacrificing mother thing really." House scoffs.

"Fuck you House…" Chase winces.

"Well you should probably stick to what your good at!" The wince deepens and Chase has that violation tinged look. Says nothing because House knows he can't… Chase has been suffocating his whole life.

House pulls himself up, leg aching at his callous actions.

"Give me your hands Robert." He orders… demands.

"W-"

"Now." Chase lifts his arms, palms up just as House new he would. He grabs the others wrists tightly, smirking as he flinches and then turns him to face the fall length mirror that sits so out of place next to his piano. The only remnant of Stacey in an apartment she'd never entered.

"Do you like what you see?" House grates after stretching out the others hands so that the sheet falls.

"I think my scars are…"

"Not your scars dumb-ass, you…"

"What did you want me to tell you House that my mother killed herself… That she had the weigh of an alcoholic mother on her shoulders. A mother dying of liver failure. How I hated her for being so weak and giving my grandmother alcohol when she was sobbing in pain." Chase spits as though it matters, as though it has any bearing on anything… Maybe it does.

"How her husband walked out on her because he decided just that he could. How she needed her son more than anything and the only thing he did was drown her out with music… That's what I was doing House… She was bleeding to death and I was listening to angry teen rock, worried about where my father…"

"Oh cry me a river Bobby…" Chase stiffens.

"Stop making you about them and look at yourself!" House growls because Chase is still not seeing anything.

"You have to live inside your skin Chase, if you can't even look at your reflection then its no wonder that you can't breath." House just about swears. Chase raises his eyes, knows what he'll see. Blonde hair and a pale broken body, with glassy chipped eyes. Nothing like his mothers which had been, so alive, so warm. Or his fathers, who took in everything, missed nothing.

"I can't… I can't bath… I can't even been near a tub full of water since… Its like I'm drowning. Being pulled down into the dark and nothing can stop me. Just falling into nothingness." Chase breathes shakily.

"You just can't stop can you." House derides and Chase honesty doesn't get it this time.

"You put on airs of this damaged little cracking prince. Some pour toppled angel. Some weak piece of fragile crystal. All big teary eyes and pouting, trembling mouth… Because as long as everyone sees this feathery facade nobody notices the real you… Imperfect and selfish…" Its breathed into his ear.

"And you're one to talk!" Chase bites back and there's nothing soft about it.

"You put on enough layers of frost and enough stinging barbs… Layer in enough sarcasm so that nobody will want to be in the same state with you let alone the same room. You're not smart or rude you're just scared. Put them out enough to start with and there's no disappointment when you don't want to offer anything else. Afraid of coming up a little short Gregory." Chase spills and realises only after that he can never take any of it back. Wonders if he'd even want to. If House wants to.

House spun him painfully around, gripping slim shoulders.

"Get dressed and get out!"