Title: Flaws
Pairing: House/Chase
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Oh, if only they were mine.
Summary: House watches Chase and pushes until he breaks. That's when House can put him back together.
Notes: Idea meshed out of nowhere. Just wanted to contribute to the woefully neglected House/Chase. Crossposted to housefic and house_chase.



i.

Chase’s gaze flickers up towards the sky, like he’s still praying to God, a God who won’t listen and never returns his calls let alone leave the answering machine on. Chase’s eyes then turn towards House – a different kind of deity, a different sort of worship. House notices that there are flecks and imperfections in Chase’s eyes, like God’s damned him to that. It’s like a punishment of a sort. He’s pretty, but he’s got imperfections.

“House?” Chase interrupts his thoughts. “Why’re you staring at my face?” he bluntly asks.

House smirks.

“Just trying to see if there’s sentient thought there.” He picks up his cane and leans on it, as though confiding. Foreman and Cameron appear amused, amused by their littlest duckling, it’s always funny to pick on the little ones. “Don’t worry,” he winks. “Next time, I’ll just take it on face value that nothing goes on in there.”

ii.

Chase wears his issues like people wear stylish clothes. The label is there to be noticed, but oh, not really, because that’s trying too hard. With Chase, it’s the way he hangs his head, turns and walks away from his issues, the little physical things and the verbal clues that litter a path to the forest of Chase’s misery. And oh, but Chase doesn’t just have issues, he has issues like bars have screaming, neon lights, but in Chase’s case, he’s driving people away from them.

He ought to be driving them all away. The little things, his passive-aggressive nature, his tendency to be closed off, his tendency to be inappropriate, his inability to commit, love, be normal should drive anyone away. Everyone away.

…except House. He never listens to or heeds warning signs, especially not neon ones, oh no. House pushes and pushes and pushes until Chase shatters and lets him in, lets House break him apart and piece him back together. Jagged with sharp edges and dangerous to get close to, just the kind of person House likes.

iii.

Apparently, Chase thinks that kissing him tastes of Vicodin and despair, but Chase had tasted of tequila and misery, so House thinks they should call it even. They’re in a bar –, a seedy little place in House’s neighborhood where House finds Chase one night. They have work the next day, but Chase is drinking like work is a lifetime away. There’s a cell phone on the bar beside Chase and it’s clear that no one’s calling, it’s clear that no one’s been calling.

“Can I buy you a drink?” House suggests.

Chase barely glances up. “I’d rather you take a seat.”

The kiss comes later when House is dropping Chase off. Chase’s hands graze the stubble on House’s face and they’re both far too drunk to protest or to call the kiss anything more than a drunken mistake.

Vicodin, misery, tequila, and despair.

Not bad for a first kiss.

iv.

House tries to stop his fingers from twitching as he paces back and forth, relying on his crutch – the cane, the meds, his thoughts – and tries desperately not to look at his doctors. Foreman wants an answer. Cameron wants validation. Chase wants nothing more than to be ignored.

It’s that damn shirt that’s driving House crazy.

Ugly shirts aren’t new for Chase. The man knows fashion like Wilson knows shoes and monogamy, but today, House’s fingers twitch like he needs a fix, wanting to pry the shirt off because something so blindingly ugly doesn’t belong on Chase, it doesn’t go, it doesn’t make sense.

“House, this is not a puzzle!” Foreman shouts stubbornly. “Run the biopsy on the lungs!”

House pauses long enough to let Foreman share a little bit of his frustration. “Chase,” House finally snaps. “Go run that. And for god’s sake, change your shirt while you’re at it. You’re here to work, not cause my corneas to scar.” Those ugly shirts have to be deliberate because Chase just grins as he wanders out, chewing on his pencil. No man wears a shirt like that without somehow wanting someone to call him on it. Like he’s trying to be noticed or something.

v.

Once, once upon a time, Wilson had surmised that House was far too involved in appearing as he was not and being not what he was. Of course, he had followed that intriguing and confusing snippet with a messy ramble about how House was doomed to be alone. Now, now upon this time, Wilson sits inside House’s office.

“So, he kissed you.”

“To be fair, I provided my fair share of sexual harassment.”

“Right. Okay. Right.”

“We were drunk.”

“You been thinking of him since?”

“No.”

House’s lies taste, oddly enough, like the faint burn of two-day old tequila on his tongue, resurfacing like a vicious memory there to infuse guilt into his very being. He pops a Vicodin and brings good ‘ol despair right back to the surface.

vi.

What gets him, what really gets him is the hair. Nobody’s hair should fall into place so perfectly, no one should have things so easy. That’s just Chase though. It was Foreman who had said it, wasn’t it? That Chase didn’t care, he didn’t care about his job. Appearances are deceiving. House knows that Chase cares about things a whole lot more than he would ever want to show. You hide your hand and you bluff and you hope no one calls you on it.

Chase has spent his life learning not to care, Daddy’s little lesson that got burned into Chase’s memory like a bad song on the radio.

But Chase tips his hand to House every once in a while and House sees just how much the kid cares – about his father, about his job, about House, about family, friends, values, moral, the list is never-ending – and when House glimpses at Chase’s deck, which is clearly not full, he really wishes he’d never called Chase’s bluff.

vii.

Chase may hate nuns, but he hates the morgue more.

He will not, absolutely will not, step foot there. House has tried everything. Threats, promises, teases, flirtations, more threats, harassment, berating. Everything and still, he can’t get Chase in there. It’s not so bad in the morgue, House thinks. It’s hygienic. It’s clean and medical and it should be every doctor’s playground, but not Chase’s.

One rainy day, House pushes too far.

“Chase, autopsy our patient or you’re fired.”

Chase freezes and clears his throat. He’d have to have been in a morgue, pre-med with cadavers, but since he’s been in Jersey, he seems to send Foreman for him with the promise to make it up to him later. Chase crosses his arms and shakes his head. “I mean it,” House pushes. “I didn’t let Cameron get away with her dancing around the bad news with the patient and you’re not getting away with this. Get to the morgue, figure out what killed her.” House smirks. “What’s the matter, you afraid the big, bad bodies are going to get you?” It’s grey outside, the weather in which people decide their lives are not worth living.

“I don’t care for morgues,” is all Chase retorts before he turns and heads downstairs.

House follows soon afterwards and watches Chase perform an autopsy with shaky hands, pale-faced, and so focused on his job that he doesn’t even notice when House enters the room to take over for him.

viii.

Cancer. It’s a c-word. Chase, that’s a c-word too. One Chase isn’t going anywhere and the other one can’t stay long enough because of that first c-word. House has been waiting for the day that Rowan’s little game is finally called to a close.

It’s Wednesday when it happens, Thursday in Australia.

House watches Chase’s face fall to pieces when the obituary is printed in the paper. Not in the back, not on page G18. Rowan Chase’s obituary is printed in the Life section of the paper with three pictures of himself, his wife, his son; his life spread out on ink and paper that will do nothing more than smudge Chase’s fingers, fingers that will brush across pale skin unstained because his tears won’t fall, they aren’t meant to fall. His cheeks will be grey with the ink of his father’s life, but no one will say a word because it’s the least they can do.

It’s a sunny day when Rowan dies and there are no morgues and no cemeteries, no grey clouds to darken the world. Simply a newspaper, Chase, and his despair.

Funny, then, that Chase kisses House on the way back from the funeral and the only thing it tastes of is hopelessness.

end