alanwolfmoon | A god awful tie (ch 17/?)

Title: A god awful tie... (ch 17/?)
Pairing: House/Cuddy, Foreman/Cameron
Author: Alanwolfmoon[Unknown site tag]
Rating: PG-13-ish
Summary: House treats some odd diseases, but even he doesn't know the cure to the one affecting PPTH
Disclaimer: MINE! ALL MINE!....uh, no. Not mine.
Notes: Reviews and flames alike are welcome. (They make it look like I'm writing fast)

Chase groaned, shifting uncomfortably on the stiff hospital bed.

“R-Chase?”

He opened his eyes, looking sideways and wondering why he had such a bad headache.

“Hey.” he said, seeing Cameron and Foreman standing there, looking worried. Well, Cameron looked worried. Foreman looked like Foreman always looked, “what happened?”

“Um... to what extent do you not know?”

“To the extent that I went to sleep with a diaper on, and now I’m in a hospital bed, grown up, with gauze wrapped around my head.”

“What you had when you were a kid didn’t get fixed when you grew up. You got rushed to surgery, and you should be fine.”

Chase sighed.

Then he blinked, spotting someone lurking just outside the room.

“Um, is that Cuddy waiting to see if I can go back to work immediately?”

Cameron and Foreman both glanced over their shoulders, then looked back at him.

“No, that’s House trying to pretend he hasn’t been watching you since you got out of surgery.” stated Foreman flatly.

“That’s... vaguely disturbing....”

Cameron shook her head, smiling.

“Not in a creepy way. More like an ‘anxious, been your parent for the past four months and hasn’t stopped quite yet’ way.”

Chase blinked.

Cameron and Foreman looked at each other.

“I have to get some coffee.” stated Cameron.

Foreman blinked, opening his mouth to protest that she had just had some.

Cameron stepped on his foot.

“Uh, yeah. Me too.”

They left, apparently pretending to not see House standing there.

Chase watched, half amused, half interested, as House fidgeted, looked the other direction, shifted his weight, played with his cane, then finally looked furtively around, and came into the room.

Chase blinked, as he promptly limped back out again.

Then started to come in, then turned around.

And repeated this at least five times.

“Can you please stop that? You’re making me dizzy.”

House stopped, halfway out the door, facing away from Chase.

Then he slowly turned around, and leaned against the glass wall of the room.

“Ok.”

Chase realized it had been a bad thing to say. He was nearly as awkward as House about these things.

“You lied.” said House, after a while.

Chase tilted his head.

“How so?”

“By omission.”

“Sorry, what, exactly are you talking about?”

“You said he just didn’t come to ball games, and left you with your mom. You didn’t mention that he hurt you.”

Chase stared.

“How the hell do you know that? I never talk in my sleep, and I know I didn’t tell you.”

House shrugged.

“You got scared of Foreman. Who had done nothing to you, and just glared at you. You hid in a cabinet in the lab, which was really a big long shelf with multiple doors–easy to get out of without getting caught. The lab itself has two doors, endless hiding places, and lots of tight spaces an adult couldn’t pull you out of. You went there instinctively, easily. You were sure what kind of place you were looking for. You’re an ass kisser because you’re programed that way. But not because it got you into medical school, got you this job. Not because of positive reinforcement. Because of negative reinforcement when you didn’t do it.” House had been slowly moving further into the room, pretending he wasn’t working his way in, picking up Chase’s chart, checking drawers... and by this point he had made it to the chair next to Chase’s bed, under the premise of pressing buttons on the status box.

He seemed stuck, then, but Chase closed his eyes, pretending to be asleep. He laid there for a long time, maybe ten minutes, before House started talking again. Chase kept his eyes closed.

“And not even just to him. If you didn’t get the right grades, if you got... probably a B+ or A-, depending on what his opinion was, he’d get mad. Maybe he wouldn’t mean to hurt you, but he would be angry. He would tell you that you were pathetic. His words would hurt, and maybe it was just because you missed that one test because you were sick, or the teacher didn’t have time to talk to you if you didn’t understand one thing, but it would bring your grade down, and that was all that mattered to him. Because he judged you by your results, not who you were. That’s why you wanted to be a priest, because the church, the people you would deal with if you took that road, they wouldn’t give a damn if you got a B- on your fifth grade history paper, as long as you worked hard, and were a good person. They would have cared who you were, not what results you got.”

Chase had his eyes squeezed shut now, trying his hardest to not let what he was feeling show.

One incident. One incident of a shy three-year-old running and hiding in a cabinet, and House was telling him more about him than Chase could bring himself to admit to even just himself.

“But you didn’t do that. You went there, and you spent time with the people you wanted to spend the rest of your life being around the like of, and you found something out: they’re boring. You never loved helping people for the sake of helping people, you weren’t sappy–you didn’t know how to be sappy. You didn’t know how to talk people through their emotions, because you didn’t know how to deal with those emotions yourself. And the few things you had valued, the fact that you *are* a smart person, the fact that you could play... mmm, probably soccer, really well, all of that meant nothing. And the things you thought you wanted from them, to have your emotions and personality valued... you turned out to not know how to deal with. And they wanted to know things. No secrets, no personal emotions, no having things to deep and close to tell anyone... you couldn’t deal with that. Your whole childhood, if something was close to you, you never let anyone know. Because if they knew, they might use it to hurt you. You couldn’t let go of that, you couldn’t let so many people in, you couldn’t let anyone in.”

Chase didn’t understand it. How could House, stubborn, misanthropic, completely logical and unemotional House, be able to tell him to this level of detail what had gone through his head? And what was the point? Just to torture him?

“It was difficult. It was *so* difficult, to come crawling back to your dad, to spit through your teeth that he was right. But you did it, because you couldn’t stand to stay where you were. You came back, and he laughed at you. And it made you angry. And you wanted to prove him wrong so badly. It made you angry as nothing ever had before. And he kept laughing at you, because you couldn’t do it. You still weren’t good enough. There was always someone better, you never got the top grade, and you never satisfied him, no matter how hard you tried. And when he laughed at you one more time, you exploded inside, you said you were going to be a doctor, and if that didn’t prove it, you didn’t care what he thought. You hurt all over inside, but your decision was logical. You had through about it. It made sense. And he laughed at that decision. And then he left. He left laughing, he left hurting and laughing, and believing he was doing the best for you, all at the same time. He didn’t think you could do it, he thought you would fail, maybe in pre-med, maybe in medical school. And he thought it would crush you if you got that far and then failed. So he left you with your mother, knowing you wouldn’t abandon her, knowing, that you would fail to do both, take care of her and fight as hard as you were.”

House was looking away, but even though his eyes weren’t focused on Chase, the blond could see that they were serious, calm, and somehow... somehow Chase thought they looked almost a little kind. But why... why was house doing this?

“All that you saw was that he abandoned you, and that he wanted you to fail. You were perceptive enough to see that, which he didn’t expect. He thought you would think it was just him being cruel. But you saw that, and it burned. It burned so bad, it made you so angry, that it broke through that wall, the one that had kept the explosion inside, that had made you go with the logical thought that you were going to be a doctor to prove him wrong, instead of yelling. But this shattered that wall. You weren’t just going to be a doctor, you *wanted* to be a doctor, it was the only thing that mattered, you were going to be the best, and you were going to crush him. That was what you felt. And you did. You were so angry, you were so emotional, and you didn’t know how to deal with those emotions, you didn’t know how to take a step back because you had never had anything to step back from, that you just exploded again. You pushed so hard that you succeeded, and you took care of your mom, and you became a doctor, and you knew, when she died, that you couldn’t have taken better care of her if you had dropped out of school to spend all day with her. You were the top of both halves of your life, and you were happy, for the first time, on graduation day, when you thought you would get to see your dad’s face when he saw you graduate top of your class. But he didn’t care. He didn’t care, because he thought you would still fail, and he was angry that his plan didn’t work, and all you got was disappointment.” House had to take a break to clear his throat, and Chase took the opportunity to wipe his eyes and cheeks without House seeing that he was awake.

“Everything you had worked for seemed meaningless, because it had failed. And he saw that, and he regretted it, and he made a phone call to a guy he had met when the guy was just a teenager, when the guy and his dad were stationed in Australia, and he said that he remembered meeting the guy, and said that he thought the guy would think his kid was an interesting person, cus he was a lot like the guy when your dad had met him. He called, and asked if the guy would interview his kid, and let him find out that he wasn’t cut out for this, that it was like when he had met the guy, who had been trying extremely hard to do two things at once to prove himself to his own dad. And that’s the phone call your dad made that got you hired. Cus he was right, you were, and are like the guy. And I still didn’t like going along with people like your dad.” finished House, watching Chase steadily, perfectly calm.

Chase swallowed.

“He didn’t want you to hire me?” he whispered, abandoning the pretense of being asleep.

“He didn’t want me to hire you.”

Chase looked up at the ceiling, trying to keep himself from showing anything. House hadn’t been torturing him. He had had a point. Even if the point still hurt.

“Chase.”

He pressed his lips together, hoping it would stop them from shaking.

“Chase, look at me.”

Chase looked at him.

House was still completely calm. Still not laughing. Despite the wet on Chase’s face.

“He shouldn’t have done that. It was wrong for him to do that. And you don’t have to force yourself to love him, even if did it because he cared about you. His motives don’t mean it was right, or anything approaching ok. It was just wrong. So whether you do love him, or really do hate him, it’s ok. You don’t have a duty to love him, and you don’t have a duty to hate him. It doesn’t matter what you think you should feel about him. Just what you do feel. Cus nobody’s gonna know the difference but you, and lying to yourself is just gonna make you miserable.”

Chase went to wipe the tears off his face, but was shocked to a stop, by a hand on his wrist.

“I’m not gonna hug you, not even considering it. But you don’t have to hide those. I’m not gonna laugh at you.”

Chase closed his eyes. He was crying, but... he felt happy. So happy. Happy in a way he had never been before.

In the hall, Cuddy, who had been intending to check in on Chase but stopped when she heard what was going on, had her hands pressed together, over her nose and mouth. She had only heard the last bit, but... god, House really had matured....

It was odd, feeling this way after the last few months... but still... what was she supposed to do? Find out that House really could be a decent person when he put his mind to it and not feel anything about that? But then again... he was still House....

House wrinkled his nose, as he sat next to Chase’s bed, letting the blond cry without commenting on it.

“Chase, did you just poop?”

Chase blinked, confused.

“What?”

“Did you just poop?”

Chase lifted the sheet, peeking under it. He had a urine catheter in, but... gross....

“Ok....” muttered House, looking partially amused and partially grossed out, but mostly worried, “I’m gonna call the neurologist....”

Chase looked at him, almost laughing.

“I’m not potty trained.”

House looked at him oddly.

“Like Cameron’s arm. It didn’t....”

House snorted.

“Ok, but I am *not* changing you.”

Chase laughed.

A god awful tie (ch 17/?)

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