Chapter 12

But House wasn't about to show Chase that he had any affect on him. "I told the agency I didn't want any more cute blondes." He shook his head. "Hookers," he added with an 'ain't that the truth expression' on his face.

"Stop messing with Cameron's head," Chase said, glowering at House.

"Do you know why I employ you as a doctor on my team and not as my maid?" House asked with a straight face. "So that you're never at my house."

Chase's fists clenched at his sides as his lip jutted out in its normal fashion when agitated. House walked over to his piano bench and started playing. Without an invitation, Chase stepped in the room. "Stop messing with Cameron's head," he demanded.

House did not even turn around. His fingers gracefully kept stroking the keys as if he was massaging the music from the instrument. "I can't get inside her head if she doesn't want me there," he stated calmly, but inside his mind raced. House knew Cameron's reaction to him must be evident to Chase.

The younger doctor shifted his weight as he licked his lips. "She's a novelty to you. You know she'll be happier with me."

House finally stopped playing. He got up from his seat and narrowed the distance between him and the other man. Those blue eyes focused on Chase. "I used to think that," he said, "but I'm tired of making everyone miserable. I don't want to do that to her."

"You're doing a bang-up job so far, mate," Chase sneered. His eyebrows raised in mock agreement. "She's writing odes and sonnets to her giddiness right now."

House had had enough. He practically snarled, "She should be with you? You are quite a catch. You only have to take advantage of chemically induced chicks or women grieving over someone else's sick bed to get someone to sleep with you. What a guy!"

Chase was determined to wipe the angry smirk from House's face. He spoke quietly, but cut to the quick. "Do you know what it's like to kiss her? Touch her? To be with her so completely, nothing else matters? It's a shame you never will, House," he said. Then, he leaned in and flashed him his best bedside manner smile, saying, "It's truly fantastic."

Chase didn't have time to react. House swung back and hit him so hard, so fast in the face that he stumbled into a chair and fell down. House was glad he had taken the extra Vicodin, or else it would have hurt like hell. His knuckles were already swelling and tingled. His words spat out in a hoarse cry. "You don't deserve her. Don't you ever disrespect her like that again."

Chase picked himself up and grabbed his head. He blinked a few times at House, not fully believing what just happened.

House gripped his cane so hard that his fingernails stabbed the palm of his hand. He waited for a reaction, but Chase just nodded and went out the still open apartment door.

The older doctor slammed the door shut, then collapsed in the closest chair. House knew he should go into the kitchen and put ice on his hand, but he felt like his life force had been ripped out rolled down a bowling alley. Then something strange happened. He chuckled. Cameron hates sports metaphors, he thought. It had been a long time since he had thought about the little pieces to somebody's puzzle, the tiny things that made them who they were. Sure, he had done it to save his patients' lives, but he had stopped caring about those details, at least where romantic entanglements were involved. House avoided knots as much as possible. But now, he was ready to get tangled, to place those more difficult pieces.

He drifted back to sleep in his chair, comforted with the thought that Cameron and Wilson would both be proud of him.

…………………………

Chase's eye stung as if little pellets were lodged into his cheekbone. He had to hand it to House. The man could take a swing. That hard a swing only meant one thing: he really did love Cameron.

He wheeled into a parking lot and shut off the car. Inside the convenient store he had stopped at, he bought a case of beer. Chase had a feeling he might need it.

The young doctor knew he had screwed up. He shouldn't have played with Allison's emotions as he had, but deep down he had vainly thought that if he could just be with her, she would want to be with him, too. Getting back into his car, he headed home. Chase could not pull House from her, and in a cruel twist of fate, House had actually had an epiphany when the death toll nearly sounded. No one, especially Chase, had seen that coming.

As he stepped from his car in front of his building, he squinted his eye to try to relieve the pain. Chase shifted his beer to rest on his hip more as he walked towards his home. He was trying to use his cell phone with one hand, but since one eye was out of commission, he was having difficulties seeing what he was doing. Eventually he successfully called the person he wanted to reach.

"Hello?" the voice on the other line answered.

"We need to talk," he responded before he hung up the phone.

TBC