A/N: Now, I know I said that was going to update a lot quicker than last time and that was what I had hoped to do but there is a good excuse behind why I didn't. My laptop came down with a virus and I had to get it reimaged (erased), which took long enough in itself, but I also had to back up everything first – a task absolutely impossible because I would need like a million USB sticks and although I had an external hard drive it has already broken down twice and is therefore unreliable – which took ages. A little bit of advice, if a security check shows up on your computer, telling you that you have a whole lot of viruses, that doesn't look like your usual security thing do not click on it to try and get rid of the viruses – it is actually a virus itself, and a really fancy looking one too at that. I hope if this happens to anyone else that they won't be as unlucky as me and click on it; stupid virus.

Anyway that's my long explanation/excuse and I hope you're not too mad at me.

And thanks again for the reviews; I love getting them.

. . .

Narrator: The Encyclopedia Galactica, in its chapter on love, states that it is far too complicated to define.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of love: "Avoid, if at all possible."The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (film version)

Thirteen winced as the needle poked through her skin and Chase smiled apologetically at her. The MRI had gone fine, with no signs of brain damage, and they were now about to test her for Leukaemia; something that the blonde was doing his best to avoid telling her about. It wasn't an easy task either; trying to jab someone with a pointy object was hard enough but trying to do it without first telling them why? It was very nearly impossible.

Eventually, the blonde had just gone with the excuse that it was only a routine blood test, a lie which would have been slightly more believable if he had been able to look her in the eyes when saying it, or look at her at all, really.

"You're hiding something," she stated knowingly, watching him with half-closed eyes. Despite being unconscious for the better part of the day she was still exhausted and Chase was tempted to wish her a good afternoon and come back later just so she could get the amount of sleep her body seemed to crave so much. The only thing holding him back from doing so was that House was not above airing his dirty laundry – aka his 'sordid' affair with Thirteen – out to the other fellows if the blonde returned to the differential room empty handed, and Chase really wasn't in the mood to get in a fist fight with Foreman.

He didn't respond to her statement as he focused all his attention on draining the blood out of her arm, a task that was much easier when being performed on someone you didn't know. The brunette took his silence just like any reasonable person with half an IQ would – she assumed she'd been right.

"What does the team think is wrong with me?" Remy asked.

"We're not sure yet," he responded noncommittally and managed to force his eyes up to hers for a good 0.3 of a second before shying away from the confrontation. No, the needle was a much safer thing to look at.

"Then what are you testing for?"

He didn't reply, pulling the needle out of her arm. Thirteen resisted the urge to wince and instead chose to persist. Chase would much rather have preferred the wincing, though he chose not to voice this when he realized it would make him sound far too much like a sadist.

"I'm not some fragile doll, Chase; I can take it, whatever it is. Just don't lie to me."

The Aussie sighed and glanced up at her. He knew she could take it, he really did. If there was one thing he had learned about Thirteen during their time together it was that she was a strong young woman. Even though she had reacted to the news of her Huntington's rather badly at the beginning of last year, she had come back from that with flying colours, not to mention the whole baby thing this year, and Chase respected her a great deal for it. She could be strong. He just didn't want her to have to be. "We're checking your white blood cell count."

She frowned, not liking the sound of that. "You think I have Leukaemia?" Remy asked in disbelief, the thought never having occurred to her.

Chase shook his head. "No, it's just a routine test. Trust me, we're 99% sure that it's something else. We've just got to cover all grounds." He for one was impressed with how believable he sounded, though Thirteen's next statement managed to knock him off his high-horse rather quickly.

Remy smirked slightly at him, unable to stop herself from being slightly amused. "You're a terrible liar."

He grinned back at her. "And you're a terrible patient. You've been making it extremely hard for us to do our jobs." The two shared a smile and Chase paused. "How are you feeling?"

"At the risk of sounding like a whiny little girl, I'll refrain from answering that," she offered with a small smile. Chase nodded his head and Thirteen bit her lip, debating. "Chase . . . Robert," he glanced up at the sound of his first name and she paused, "about what's been going on – this . . . thing . . . between us. . ."

Comprehension dawned in his eyes and he nodded his head. "We don't have to talk about it right now." Or ever. At least until Chase was sure how exactly he felt about this 'thing' between them.

Thirteen took in a deep breath. "I can't . . ." she trailed off, trying to form the appropriate words and Chase was certain that now was definitely not the time to talk about this. Too much had happened recently for either one of them to think clearly enough to come to an appropriate and non-rash decision; at least, that was how he felt. "It was a mistake."

She was looking at him straight on, her voice didn't tremble and she didn't look at all guilty like someone who was lying would. For all intents and purposes Remy appeared completely honest. So why didn't he believe her?

Chase looked away, deciding that whatever it was that was making him doubt her words now was not the time to bring it into the light. Later, when she was better and out of the hospital, maybe then he would bring it up again. Or not. "OK."

"I'm sorry," she apologised.

"Hey," he reassured, reaching out a hand and grabbing her own. "Don't worry about it. I was drunk, you were . . . going through some stuff and one thing led to another. Don't stress."

She gazed at him, touched by his understanding. "I didn't want to hurt you. I just . . . needed someone."

"Hey, we both took advantage of each other," he responded outwardly brushing off her remark even though inwardly his insides prickled with . . . something. "Though, if you're feeling really guilty I suppose you could always clean my house for me once you get out of here. Yours is pretty spotless." As much as he liked the cluttered rat hole that was his condo, even he had to admit that, when you couldn't take one step in front of you without hitting something that he'd much prefer not to think about, things needed to change.

She chuckled slightly and looked down at their clasped hands. Absentmindedly, she ran her finger over his knuckles, knowing that she shouldn't but liking the feeling of doing so anyway. It was comforting, in a way.

Comfort was nice, even if it did come from the most unexpected of places.

. . .

Five Weeks Ago

Thirteen moaned into Chase's mouth as he pushed her back roughly against the wall of her living room. After spending most of the night suffering from inner turmoil – to terminate or not to terminate – she had finally given up and decided that it was time for a distraction. Her usual methods were out of the picture since alcohol and/or drugs would harm the ba–fetus, even if there was only a small chance she would keep it.

That had left only one option: sex.

Remy had considered going out to a club to pick up some woman or, if all else failed, a man but had quickly scratched out the idea. Just because she had decided not to do those other two distractions did not mean she was a saint. When it came to resisting temptation, Thirteen failed miserably, and a club filled up with alcohol and other more dangerous forms of drugs was not a good place to test her restraint.

She'd even thought about calling up Eric but that idea had been thrown out almost instantly. Things were way too complicated at the moment to even consider going down that path.

That left her with two other options: her crack-whore next door neighbour that had been hitting on her for the past two years (once again, though, that ran the risk of drugs and booze) or somebody else from work.

Taub had been crossed off the list immediately – even if he wasn't married, there was no way she'd ever sleep with him. Stacy – a lesbian nurse in E.R. – had crossed her mind and she'd even gone as far as to ring her up – no answer. Thirteen even allowed herself to contemplate the idea of calling House but she tossed the idea upon imagining the many snarky comments she would be subjected to at work the next day.

That just left one Robert Chase.

His wife had just left him (so anger sex wouldn't be out of the question), he was hot and, as far as she could tell, had recently been drowning his sorrows in the bottle (so he should be easy). The cons, of course, were that she worked with him so no doubt there would be tension between them for weeks, if not months, to come. There was also his friendship with Foreman and the last thing Remy wanted to do was mess up their relationship.

The end result was the same, though. All that was left was Chase.

Of course, she hadn't rung him up and asked point blank whether he wanted to fuck – that would just be impolite. Instead, she'd invited him over for drinks (the fact that it was 1:30 in the morning didn't seem to register on either of their minds). He'd agreed almost instantly, seeming, just like her, happy for the distraction and had shown up at her apartment shortly after.

It turned out that Remy hadn't even needed to worry about wasting her time with small talk as, the moment he was through the door, their lips were locked in a passionate kiss. It seemed that he had had the same thing on his mind when she had called him up.

So that brought them to where they were now – crowded up against the wall of her living room, the bedroom apparently being deemed too far out of their way.

Chase's lips pressed into the hollow of her neck and she shifted, panting slightly. It had been too long since the last time she had had slept with anyone and just the feel of someone else's mouth on her skin was enough to send her sky-high.

"You sure about this?" he breathed, his warm breath raising Goosebumps on the area that he had just kissed. Remy shivered; whether from the excitement or the cold, she couldn't tell.

The brunette nodded against him, face flushed. "Don't stop."

He didn't.

. . .

Thirteen watched as Chase exited the room, off to run the necessary tests on her blood. The idea that she could have leukaemia had left her numb to most things and she could hardly even process the information. It wasn't like when she'd gotten her Huntington's diagnosis – she had been pretty numb then, too, to begin with but her mind had also been completely clouded with what it had meant, even if she couldn't feel a thing – but almost as though the words had been said to someone else; Remy couldn't connect them with herself. She couldn't think about what this could mean because she couldn't allow herself to believe that it could mean anything.

There was already too much going on in life at this point to add Leukaemia to the mix.

The brunette frowned and gazed down at her hand, the one that Chase had been holding only moments before. She hadn't been lying when she'd said that what had been happening between them was a mistake, that she couldn't do it anymore, but Remy had managed to evade from the actual truth. The truth was . . . she liked him, a lot more than she should and certainly more than a friend, and that, on top of everything else, was just something she couldn't deal with at the moment.

It had taken a great deal of optimism, which had appeared as a completely foreign part of her, to start dating Foreman last year and look how that had ended up. And if one followed her past track record with relationships, they weren't much better either. But it was more than that now.

The only reason she had allowed herself to date Foreman in the first place was because Thirteen had foolishly believed that there was a chance her Huntington's could be cured with the drug trial. The only reason she had continued to date him after she had found out that there was no hope for her disease was because, at the time, they had both already put too much into the relationship to suddenly back out.

But Remy couldn't put Chase through the same thing her mother had put her father through, especially after his failed marriage with Cameron. He deserved to settle down with someone who was going to be with him for many more years and give him children, not someone who was eventually going to forget that she had ever cared about him in the first place. She cared about him too much for that and, slightly more selfishly, a part of her didn't want anything more that was going to tie her down to this world, inevitably making leaving it even harder.

. . .

"Her blood showed a low count of white cells," Chase announced watching as everyone in the room seemed to deflate at the news. He'd been the exact same way when looking over the results in the lab for the very first time.

"Leukaemia," Foreman sighed, his dejected tone mirroring how everyone else seemed to feel.

The blonde however shook his head. "I thought the same thing so I did a bone marrow aspiration –Negative," he finished, trying not to let on how relieved by the fact he was . . . or that he had done a little happy dance after he had gotten the results from the procedure, a very embarrassing one too (made even more so when one of the nurses had walked in on him). There were just some things that should never be known.

He needn't have bothered – all those gathered around the table visibly sagged in relief at the news, even House looked slightly better for wear. Unfortunately, the fact that she wasn't dying from a horrible disease like leukaemia still didn't rule out the one that she was still dying or point them in the direction of figuring out whether they would be attending her funeral in about ten years or just next week; the last thought nearly caused Chase to shudder. This seemed to register with everyone rather quickly for the relief only lasted a short amount of time.

"What next?" Foreman asked the question that they were all thinking; well, all of them but House apparently.

"Me going and interrogating her," Their boss decided, ignoring the apprehensive looks on all of their faces. It was at this instance that Chase realized he really should have invested in getting a security guard placed outside Thirteen's room to keep the old cripple out – any interrogation with House involved could only end badly, as they all knew very well.

. . .

Five Weeks Ago, That Morning.

Chase watched Thirteen lazily from the bed as she rose to her feet, not seeming to care that she was completely naked without the sheets to shield her. Last night had been . . . unexpected. Though, Chase didn't know what he had expected when he got that call at 1:30 in the morning. It certainly hadn't been this, though.

He didn't even know what he had been thinking. This was Thirteen, his co-worker, not just someone he could have a one-night-stand with and hope never to see again. They'd be lucky if they were still able to go about the day and keep things callously professional between them, even luckier if House never found out and, in conjunction, Foreman.

The blonde resisted the urge to groan at the reminder of his friend. This was a definite cross over the friendship line and if it was Foreman who had slept with Cameron, Chase would have been beyond the point of angry.

And that brought him to Cameron. The woman he was still very much married to despite her disappearance. The woman that a part of him was still in love with . . .

This was not good.

Yet, the sight of Thirteen standing naked right in front of him as she searched for something to put on was certainly making it hard to believe that it was anything but good. He was a man after all and Thirteen was certainly not ugly, far from it actually . . .

'Alright, bad thoughts, bad thoughts, remember the part where she's your friend's ex?'

Chase did groan this time and the brunette glanced back at him, startled. "You're awake." By now she had managed to procure a bathrobe that had been tossed aside nearby and the blonde was eternally grateful for that.

"Where are you going?" he enquired.

Thirteen bit her lip and approached the bed, taking a seat on the edge (far away from him). "Look, this was a bad idea. Can we just, I don't know, pretend last night never happened?"

After a pause the Australian nodded; he'd been thinking the exact same thing. "Sure."

Little did he know that 'last night' was just the beginning of a whole lot more of 'last nights' and he was practically powerless to stop it. Far more terrifying was the fact that, if he had known, Chase might not have done anything to stop it anyway. There was comfort in Thirteen's arms, a comfort that he had spent far too long without, a similarity, he suspected, that could be found in Thirteen. At the present point in the young doctor's life, with everything pretty much going to hell, that was a comfort that, even though he didn't know it yet, that he just couldn't live without.

…

"comfort was allowed to come to them rare, welcome, unsought: a gift like joy."

- Michellee Ursula K. LeGuin quotes (American Writer best known for tales of science fiction, b.1929)