DISCLAIMER: I don't own House. But I do watch it religiously.

A.N. The previous chapter displayed the contents of Cameron's dream (ie. not reality). When Chase 'morphed' into House, it showed that shewas attracted to Chase on a lot of levels, butwas still, subconsciously, attached to elements of House at the same time. Sorry if it was confusing; I hope this clears it up slightly!

Q is for Quarantine

Chapter Thirteen: When You Least Expect It...

"Hh… House…."

It's funny how a single word can rock your world. Chase thought that as he pulled away from Cameron's face, as he traipsed silently out of the room. He turned to shut the door, but found that it was already sliding shut behind him. Cutting him off from something he thought was real.

Chase's face was inscrutable as he swept into the diagnostics office and swung himself into a chair. He didn't express any thought or word, instead choosing to begin work at once on the case at hand. He pulled a loaded file closer to him, from the pile stacked high on the table, and began to read.

House's face was inscrutable as he sat in the diagnostics office and swung his cane from side to side by his chair. He didn't express any thought or word, instead choosing to continue pondering the case at hand. He pulled a ball closer to him, from the pile stacked high on his desk, and started to throw and catch it.

Neither doctor felt it necessary to say or do anything that might involve interacting with the other. For once, they both respected that the other needed the personal space to think or dwell on the previous events of the unfolding days. House noticed Chase was different; Chase noticed something about House wasn't the same. In the hindsight of their minds, both doctors knew and sensed a change in the other person's character, but they had their own worries and bothers to think on, and everything that might have been important before, now seemed to fade from thought.

"What have you got?" House finally broke the brittle silence, his edged voice cutting through the air like cool steel.

Chase didn't look up from the untidy scrawled notes on the paper. "The original patient: Joe Cosgrove… medical history seems fine, but there are cases of recurrent nosebleeds from a young age, up 'til now… telangiectasias on upper thigh and around the nose… anaemia…"

House frowned slightly. "'Medical history seems fine'?" he quoted. "That's quite a lot of blood problems, but they don't endanger your health at all, right?"

Chase shrugged his shoulders, continuing to analyse the sheets in front of him. "Recurrent epistaxis does not pose as a big health problem… and I really doubt even the most frequent and heavy nosebleeds cause anaemia. Abnormal blood vessels could mean a lot of different things, but –"

"Any finger clubbing?" House cut in, and Chase ran his eyes over the report quickly.

"No."

"Hmm. When you saw Cosgrove before he checked himself into a body-bag, did you –"

Chase's ears pricked at the unfinished question. "Wait, Cosgrove is dead?"

"No, he just thought that body-bags were more comfortable than hospital beds."

"When did you hear?"

"When I was told."

"When were you told?"

"When you were playing the faithful steed to Princess Cameron."

Chase ran a hand through his hair, a little frustration seeping through the careless holes in his hardened façade. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I just did," said House coolly, not seeming the least bit unruffled, but perhaps a slight bit colder. Lucky for him, Chase was not the sort of person to push the point.

"What about Foreman?" This was the first time the neurologist had really crossed his mind, and Chase was faintly disgusted with himself; how could he be so self-absorbed at a time like this? "Have we got any more news on his situation?"

House shook his head. "Nope… He's doing ok… developing a nasty rash of some sort, but nothing else… oh, and he's had three nosebleeds in the past hour, and his phlegm has turned a nice shade of red…otherwise –"

Chase blanched, the first sign of any emotion showing on his face. "He's what?"

"I said, he's developing a rash and –"

"You mean he's been infected!" Chase was now sitting on the edge of his seat, fingertips gripping the edge of the table in anxiety. Why hadn't he thought to ask about his colleague before?

"You didn't know?" House cast him a mildly surprised glance and Chase's frown deepened.

"Does this look like the face of someone in the know?" he snapped, giving way to the bubbling irritation inside him. Why didn't House say anything before?

House bounced the ball up and down a couple of times. "Yeah, well, I've had my suspicions."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that if we don't figure out what's going on here, there's a good chance that our good friend Foreman's not gonna be joining us for any more consults."

Chase was incredulous. "How could you sit on this since talking to James yesterday? Foreman could die, and we'd still not know about it!"

House caught the ball in his hand and squeezed it, fingers turning white with the effort. "Aw, poor Chase, not knowing anything; my heart bleeds for you. No, sorry, Foreman's lungs bleed for you… literally."

Chase's lips drew into a firm line across his face, the reminder of his own father's secretive death stinging his memory painfully. He didn't know anything about that either. "How could you joke about this?"

"Easily." House's knuckles cracked softly, and the ball seemed to be getting squashed into a smaller and smaller shape. Chase made a choking sound of barely disguised contempt, pushed himself away from the table and made his way over to the sink. He leaned over the basin and focussed on nothing but the little droplets of water leaking from the tap, afraid that his meticulously-made mask would crumble at the mere sight of his boss. But then, it already had – and House knew it.

"Don't bother pretending to care again," House said quietly behind him. "We went through that with Cameron and her HIV."

Chase's nostrils flared, but he did not turn around. "Caring whether someone dies or not should be within any human's capability of feeling."

House gritted his teeth and crushed the ball with even more force. "Then I guess I don't qualify as a human, then."

Chase whirled round. "What the hell is wrong with you, House?" he hissed threateningly, dangerous fury sparking in his flashing eyes.

House's eyes glinted darkly, contrasting sharply with Chase's crackling irises. "If you care so much, then why are you hiding by the sink? Why aren't you sitting at your table, solving the case?" He paused, waiting for Chase's reaction, carrying on when he saw the Australian clamping his lips even tighter together. "If you cared so much, why didn't you ask about Foreman earlier on?" Chase's breathing intensified, his chest heaving, and House found that he could no longer feel the fingers that gripped the ball in his right hand. "I suppose people only matter to you when they're about to die, right?"

Chase found himself snatching another file off the table and opening it; how he got back to the table, he had no idea, but he didn't take his eyes off House for one second as he did so. The diagnostician regarded the intensivist icily, refusing to sit down even though his leg was killing him, and his fingers were tightened and motionless. Annoying the younger man in front of him was worth every moment of his discomfort.

"Touched a nerve there, didn't I?" House limped towards Chase, teetering on his toes as he inched forwards. "You didn't give a toss about Foreman until you heard he was next up on the list for the Grim Reaper's birthday bash... VIP pass, even. He's gone in under twenty hours, judging by how long Cosgrove lasted."

"Then we still have time," said Chase cagily. "Let's just solve the case."

"Chase, I don't have a team!" House snapped, the ball straining further against the force of House's hand. "Cameron's out for the count, Foreman's officially our patient, we have no idea what we're treating and you're standing around pretending to read stupid, irrelevant files! What are we supposed to do, wait around for Foreman to go blood volcano on us before we finally figure something out? 'Let's just solve the case' – yeah, come on then, let's hear it. What's the great Chase got to say about this, huh?"

Chase clenched the thick file between his hands and continued to stare, dumbfounded, at House. He was so clueless, his composure scattered in various bits all around the room that had once been his place to think, collecting in clusters and throwing themselves at Chase, who could do nothing to defend himself against the onslaught of un-House matter that kept assailing him. His boss was distressed. Something was making him really agitated. Typical for House to bottle it up and let it explode inside him, blowing all parts of his self-control in fifty different directions; Chase was in the immediate vicinity and received the brunt of the blast, and had no time to cower from the falling debris. Too late, the equally distraught Australian realized that he was also storing up the raging fury felt over all the things that were going wrong; so when the last bits of lava from Mt. House had gurgled forth from House's little bottle of emotion, Chase found that they had ignited something just as fiery inside of him. Chase felt the flames lick his chest before the explosion of emotion that followed soon afterwards.

"I know I'm not Cameron or Foreman, but I'm all you've got right now," he said, words spilling from his mouth like machinegun-fire, voice clipped and chipping repeatedly at the ice between his and House's gaze. He was so sick of people insinuating that he was the stupid one, the one that didn't influence the diagnosis in any way because he had nothing valuable to add. And right now, he was sick of House more than anything else. "That may not be good enough, but –"

"You're damn right it's not good enough," House spat. He turned round, plucked his cane off the chair and made his way out of the office. "Get Cameron," he ordered, opening the door, "I don't care if she's dying of exhaustion – she can die after we find out what the hell's wrong with Foreman."

"House!" Chase yelled at his boss. "You can't just walk away!"

"Watch me."

Something in Chase snapped. He bounded up to the door and grabbed House's arm, pulling him back with such force that they almost ended up falling backwards into the room. "Not until you tell me what's wrong with you."

House turned his eyes on the young doctor, nothing on his face betraying his expression, but his eyes smouldering in their sockets. "Why ask when you've already figured it out?" he said, voice deceptively quiet. "'Insufferable asshole' you said, 'not human' – well, isn't that good enough? Isn't that what's wrong with me?"

Chase frowned, but didn't loosen his grip on House's arm. "What are you talking about?"

"You think I don't care," House began, words fighting out of his mouth through gritted teeth. "And I don't… I really don't."

"House, I really –"

"Stacy's dead," House said in a monotone. "She's dead."

The cold, empty words echoed around the room and settled like decaying leaves on Chase's shoulders. House turned away and wrenched his arm out of Chase's hand, proceeding to stagger out of the room. The door clicked shut as House's footsteps faded from earshot, the walk of a hollow man who knew how to feel, but was afraid of showing it. The walk of a broken man.

Chase looked down to the floor, unsure of how to react. By his feet were the torn shreds of the ball House kept crushing. White power spilled from the broken toy and littered the space around where it had been dropped. It was destroyed, beyond repair; in a single, tense moment, it had been completely obliterated, its outsides exploding from a carefully manufactured, tight-knit shell that now lay in pieces around it.

Just like House, thought Chase, opening the door and following the footsteps of the broken man…

Into an even more broken world.

A.N. Sorry about taking so long to update!

I know House and Chase were OOC in this chapter, and I'm sorry for that. I've been having trouble putting the characters through all this stuff in such a condensed time period, and I apologise if their reactions were a bit… off.

As always, REVIEW and tell me what you thought! Thanks for reading,

Daygoner