Postcards From Ruritania - Chapter Seven
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Disclaimer: All rights to House MD belong to David Shore, Heel and Toe Films and Bad Hat Harry Productions in association with NBC Universal Television Studio. I do not make any monetary profit from this fanfiction.
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Chapter Seven. Just Left of Reality
Tap. Tap, tap, tap.
House frowned at his Nintendo DS, stylus poised above the lower screen, feet propped comfortably on his desk. He’d have to be quick if he wanted to hold onto Mario’s last life.
Tap. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, TAP.
“Go on,” he hissed in encouragement as his stylus pushed the little bundle of pixels in a daring leap over a stack of boxes. The tapping in the background was getting annoying.
Tap, tappity, tap-tap-tap-tappity-tappity-TAP!
One over-quick, stupid move, one Bowser shooting fire, and the game emitted the sad little tune that signified Mario’s current demise. House snapped the DS shut in irritation and marched over to his balcony door, which sounded like mad woodpeckers were trying to construct a condominium on its glass surface. “What?” he barked, pulling it open.
Wilson stood there, his usually-perfect coif mussed and his tie askew. “You!” he whisper-shouted, pointing at House accusingly. “You, you, YOU!”
“Why, Wilson, looks like you’re in dire need of that emergency blow-dryer you keep in your locker. Been having some stressful consults this morning?”
“Shhhh!” Wilson gestured frantically. “Keep your voice down! He thinks I’m just-look, what’s going on with Chase?”
“From the look of things, I’d say you were.” House leaned against the doorjamb, thoroughly enjoying himself while at the same time blocking any possible escape route for Wilson.
Wilson paced around the balcony, ignoring the last remark. “I thought it was some kind of joke at first. He was crying, House! Chase, who doesn’t say shit about his feelings even when you punch him in the face, was sobbing and trying to crawl into my lap!” He put his hands on his hips and glared at House. “So what did you do to him?”
“Me?” House was suddenly off-balance. “I didn’t do anything!”
“Right. That’s why he kept saying you were mean to him and begged me to intercede with you. Well,” Wilson ran a hand through his hair and straightened his tie, “at least I can tell him that I tried to talk to you. If I’m going to take him home with me, he has to feel that he can trust me.”
House’s mouth dropped open. “You’re taking him home with you? You’re joking, right?”
“Of course I’m joking, you ass!” Wilson was back in frantic mode. “What the hell did you think you were doing, locking him in my office with me? Obviously something happened to his brain while he was in the coma! He called me his Wilson! He tried to-he got down on his knees and-!” He gestured furiously at his belt.
“Yeah, Chase has been unusually affectionate since waking up.”
“This is funny to you, isn’t it? Meanwhile, the only way I could get him to let go of me was to give him direct orders.”
“Really?” House lifted an eyebrow. “Direct orders like-?”
“Right now, he’s reorganizing my files,” Wilson admitted a bit shamefacedly.
“Hmph. Seems that I’m not the only person around here taking advantage of an invalid.” House swung his legs and cane over the short wall that divided his balcony from Wilson’s, limped over to the glass door, and peered through. “Uh, Wilson, I’m guessing you forgot to order him to keep his clothes on while filing.”
“What?” Wilson quickly vaulted the wall.
“Ugh!” House winced, turning away from the door with one hand at the side of his face, blocking his peripheral vision. “Guess Chase likes filing a lot more than the rest of us do. Enjoys it way too much if you ask me.”
Wilson pushed past him to look through the door. “He’s not-!” He turned back to House. “You’re such a liar. He’s still fully clothed.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t know that. You wanted to see him naked.” House started chanting in a sing-song voice. “Jimmy wanted to see Chase naked! Jimmy wanted to see Chase naked and hard!”
“I did not!” hissed Wilson frantically. “I was just worried! I have patients arriving in about five minutes.”
“Excuses, excuses. You jumped that wall so fast, you could’ve qualified for the Olympic time trials. Admit it, Wilson, you think Chase is cute.”
“No, I don-“ Wilson stopped and bit his lip pensively. “Okay, maybe I do.”
“What?” House’s eyes widened.
“Just a little,” mumbled Wilson. “After those dreams I started having about him last winter…it’s only natural.” He looked appealingly over at House. “He’s an attractive man, but it doesn’t mean anything, right?”
House looked floored. “Are you serious?”
“No. You’re an ass, House.”
“You’re both asses.” Cameron moved out onto the balcony from House’s office, glaring at the two men. “Acting like a couple of twelve-year-olds, having fun at Chase’s expense when he’s obviously not well.” She crossed over the wall and rapped sharply on Wilson’s door. “Robert! Come out here.”
Chase appeared at the doorway with a bemused expression, his hands full of files. “Wow. This place is suddenly really crowded.”
“Don’t worry about it; just put the files down and come with me. I’m taking you to Princeton General for a few tests.”
“Okay.” Chase obediently disappeared for a moment, then returned to follow Cameron across the balcony. Just as he reached the dividing wall, he stopped and looked back at the two men. “Uh, Doctor Wilson, just to let you know-your glass door isn’t soundproof.” He looked them both up and down for a moment, a slow, seductive smile curving his lips, then turned and vaulted the wall.
House and Wilson silently watched him as he followed Cameron into House’s office.
Wilson finally turned away, leaning over the rail and tugging at his collar. “A little hot out here, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, a little,” House agreed, resting his forearms on the rail.
“Doesn’t mean anything, though.”
“Nope. No, not at all.”
The two looked out over the city for another minute before returning to their respective offices without exchanging another word.
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“Thanks for the gourmet lunch, House.” The words were a bit muffled, consonants unarticulated in favor of sticky vowels.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” House reprimanded absently, before innocently widening his eyes. “Wait, was that supposed to be sarcastic?”
Chase would’ve sighed, but the glob of peanut butter and bread stuck to the roof of his mouth made dramatic exhalations impossible. He settled for scraping at the glob with his tongue, hoping to dislodge it without having to resort to using a finger. For some reason, ever since first grade, using the finger was equivalent to Fail to the nth degree.
Diligence won out, and he was finally able to swallow the last of his lunch. He looked across the breakroom counter to see House observing him with a sort of fascinated appreciation.
“Nice tongue action,” House said, catching his eye.
Damn. He should’ve used his finger.
His world gave a little lurch again, his brain shrieking “Weird!” for one brief moment before he got himself back under control. If there was any lesson that life kept teaching him, it was to roll with the punches.
So he did what he would normally do. Complain. “Glad that someone’s happy. Though in my opinion, if you’re offering to buy a person’s lunch to celebrate important life events such as coming out of a coma, the least you could do is, let me think here…pay for that lunch?”
“Don’t blame me,” replied House, unconcerned. “Wilson would choose to go to a meeting about FDA Phase III studies for a new cancer drug, instead of meeting us for lunch.”
“Where are his priorities?” Chase agreed with an edge to his voice. “Putting cancer patients’ welfare over the needs of your stomach.”
“Our stomachs,” House reminded, screwing the peanut butter lid back on the jar. “Like I said, blame him.”
“I suppose I should also blame him for the lack of any jam or jelly in this place as well?”
"I don't see why not. Blaming Wilson takes care of most problems in my life. C'mon, now that you've been well-fed, it's time to get back to the office."
"Well-fed," muttered Chase, but he followed closely on House's heels, almost having to break into a jog to keep up with the older doctor's rapid pace. He found himself growing breathless and wondered how fast House had moved in the years before the limp and cane. No matter-the important thing was to not lose sight of him now.
Chase mentally chided himself as he followed House onto the elevator. It was irrational, this fear of getting lost in the familiar environs of PPTH. But everything seemed a little off, the stairwells, offices, and elevators not quite where he remembered them. He was suddenly seized with empathy for people who struggled with the onset of Alzheimer's, wondering if this was what it felt like: this thrill of terror when the familiar suddenly looked completely strange.
"Penny for your thoughts, no increase for inflation," House said out of nowhere.
Chase blinked before shaking his head. "Nothing interesting," he lied, then firmly pushed back his fears (There's something -wrong- with my brain!), resolving to deal with them later. Alone. If at all.
The elevator doors opened, and to his relief, the corridor assumed the familiar fishbowl façade of the Diagnostics Department. Chase followed House into his office-and stopped in shock at the sight of three teenaged girls draped moodily over the furniture. Even more shocking was the fact that instead of driving them out with acid remarks and a few well-placed thwacks of his cane, House was smiling at them with indulgent fondness.
Reaching his hand surreptitiously under his sleeve, Chase pinched his forearm hard. Nope, he was definitely not dreaming.
“Dr. Chase, these girls are Taryn, Erin, and Fauntleroy.”
“Fauntleroy?” Chase blurted out before he could stop himself.
“Yes, her mother wanted to give her baby girl a trendy, masculine name to demonstrate her profound originality as a parent. Unfortunately, her Lamaze yoga class and Pre-natal Pilates group had already claimed any number of Dakotas, Madisons, Baileys, Dylans, Taylors, Tylers, and Codys, so she had to settle for naming her daughter Fauntleroy.”
Fauntleroy scowled darkly, eyebrow rings clinking together above bright blue eyes that contrasted starkly with her terribly original rebellious black eyeshadow (Maybelline IB Goth #5).
“And they’re in your office because…?” Chase prompted.
“Well, Fauntleroy is my niece by a sibling I’d never heard of previously, since I’d spent the first thirty-four years of my life telling people that I was an only child.”
“Wait-you didn’t know that you had a sibling? But I thought your parents never divorced, so-“
“No need to sound so skeptical,” House retorted. “I’m sure that you have any number of big brothers or little sisters ready to turn up on a moment’s notice.”
“My home wasn’t that big, House. I’m pretty sure that if I’d had any siblings, I would’ve tripped over them once or twice over the years.”
“Don’t be so cocky,” House said darkly. “Random relatives just appear out of nowhere; that’s the way life works. Get used to it.”
Chase waited for the punchline. Nothing.
Just as he was drawing a breath to ask another obvious question, House continued with the introductions, waving a hand at one of the remaining two girls. “Speaking of random relatives, Taryn is my long-lost daughter by Cuddy, conceived while we were in medical school, neither one of us finding out about her existence until last month.”
“Daughter? Cuddy?” Chase sputtered before getting his brain to formulate a coherent thought. “How could Dr. Cuddy not know she had a child? Usually, the mother tends to be somewhat aware of giving birth.” House lifted an eyebrow at him, and Chase wondered when he would learn to keep his stupid mouth shut.
“She forgot,” said House, and the blond sixteen-year old girl with her hair razor-cut to shoulder length with pink highlighted streaks, wearing a cute denim miniskirt and see-through lace croptop with a black beaded camisole and scuffed Converses, gave a self-conscious pout of her pale pink-glossed lips lined with Kiss-Me-Silly lipliner.
“Oh,” said Chase, unsure of the proper condolences to offer a teenager whose existence seemed to have slipped the minds of both her parents for the past sixteen years.
“And this adorable moppet,” the red-haired thirteen-year-old scowled so fiercely that Chase pulled back the hand he was offering her, “is my little sister Erin, only thirty-four years younger than me, her birth having qualified my mother for the Guinness Book of World Records for Post-Menopausal Pregnancy Successfully Brought to Term.”
“Um, congratulations?” Chase was at a complete loss.
Erin sneered, then tossed her head back and dry-swallowed ten Vicodin tablets.
“Tolerates those narcotic hydrocodones just like her big brother,” House said fondly. “Inherited my limp as well.”
“But a physical injury can’t be passed on since it’s not genetically based, not to mention that siblings don’t inherit from each other-oh, never mind.” Chase sighed, giving up on the pesky laws of Mendelian genetics for the time being. He reminded himself of his earlier resolution to roll with the punches, no matter how wild those punches might be. “So they’re all here at the hospital because…?”
“Why wouldn’t they be?” House seemed genuinely confused by Chase’s question. “It’s a teaching hospital, isn’t it?”
Chase swallowed his retorts about OSHA and Joint Commission regulations prohibiting underaged civilians from walking freely around staff areas of medical facilities; obviously, the rules as he knew them didn’t apply anymore. "Okay," he said carefully, "seeing as we don't have a case, and I've just been released from the ICU, I think maybe I'll call it a day and go home."
Four identical pairs of cerulean azure cobalt sapphire orbs of dazzling blue fixed on Chase with laser intensity, stopping the words in his throat.
"You can't leave," said House.
"Why not?" squeaked Chase (then pinched himself double hard for emitting a ridiculously girly sound.)
"Because you have to choose which girl you're going to fall in love with."
Three pairs of cerulean azure cobalt sapphire orbs wavered under wildly fluttering eyelashes.
"House, you can't be serious! They range in age from thirteen to nineteen at most!"
"Oh, that's right; they're a bit older than your favorite single digit make-out demographic."
Chase scowled but felt an undeniable wave of relief at House's familiar mocking tone. Right now, he’d settle for anything halfway close to normal.
"Fine," sighed House. "Dr. Chase doesn't want to play. Makes no difference; I wasn't going to let any of you estrogen-drenched anklebiters have him anyway. He's mine." He grabbed Chase, dipped him deeply, and planted a big kiss on him.
Chase wrenched out of his embrace. "Are you insane? STOP KISSING ME!"
"So does that mean you like us girls better?" asked Taryn hopefully.
"No!"
"See, he likes me best, he said so!" taunted House, and the three girls wailed, pulling out razors and carving RC onto their wrists in loopy calligraphy.
"House!" shrieked Chase (the thought crossing his mind that he would've preferred to emit a somewhat more masculine sound, a shout for example, but given the fact that three girls were spurting venous blood on his behalf, perhaps panic could excuse the slightly higher pitch.)
"Oh, enough of the emo, bitches, outta my office!" House smacked the razors out of their hands, then used his cane to herd them into the hallway, locking the door in their faces. "You're ruining the mood. Go cry to Cuddy. And have her stitch you up in the clinic while you're at it."
Chase collapsed on the office couch, gripping his head in his hands as he listened to House drawing the window blinds. The clattering sound seemed as sharp and real as, well, reality, as real as the sharp pain in his arm when he pinched himself (as real as House’s kiss)-but that proved nothing.
Enough of this. He wasn’t going to figure anything out as long as he remained in the vicinity of House’s…madhouse. Chase stood up. “I’m going home. And you can’t stop me this time.”
“Stop you?” House sent him a quizzical blue gaze. “Not only am I not trying to stop you-I’m going to drive you there.”
“Like hell! I have my own car, so you can just forget about it.”
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“Go away, House.” Chase looked around the dimly lit environs of the PPTH parking garage, hoping to catch a glimpse of his car somewhere in this murk. Honestly, the only thing this place needed to complete its creepy atmosphere was a zombie or two lurching out from behind the support pillars.
“Is that any way to talk to the guy that kept you from getting lost at least three times during this excursion? If it wasn’t for me, you’d currently be looking for your car in the NICU, probably frisking the preemie’ bassinets for your keys.”
Chase hoped the gloom hid his flush of embarrassment. One more screw-up, and House would probably send him off for a brain scan (To see if you have one, he could almost hear House snerk), when all he wanted to do was go home and rest. He had to find his car, or-
“There it is!” He could barely make out his license plate against the shadowed bulk of the vehicle, but he didn't care. Car, he thought as he hurried up to it. Home. Safe. “What the fuck?” He stared at the decrepit old wreck that was inexplicably bearing his license number. “What the hell happened to my car?”
There was a leisurely step-tap, step-tap as House caught up to him. “Hm, my guess is that your warranty ran out. Sometime during the Jurassic period is my estimate.”
“This is impossible!” Chase burst out, walking around the car in dazed disbelief. “I just bought this car two years ago! It wasn’t anything flash, but it sure as hell wasn’t-!” He poked at the passenger side door, which responded with a gentle shower of rust flakes. “This couldn’t possibly happen in just two days!”
House leaned on his cane meditatively. “I told you that thing was a piece of junk from the moment you putt-putted into work, but you insisted that it was a good car. As if you Brits know anything about auto-mobiles. Myself, I suspect that there’s a painting in a locked attic somewhere, the portrait of a really fine driving machine. The Picture of Dorian Car.”
“Just shut it,” snapped Chase as he tried to pull duct tape off the door handle. “I don’t care what insane-impossible-freakish-bollocked-up madness keeps happening, I’m driving this car home!” He could hear the edge of hysteria in his own voice, but at this point, he didn’t care. Tugging fruitlessly at the door handle, he finally remembered his remote keyed entry, and pulled his keys from his pocket. Pointing the little black remote at the driver’s door, he depressed the Unlock button.
The car shuddered and emitted an electronic whoop. With a tremendous clang, the front fender crashed to the ground, cracking in half.
To House’s credit, he didn’t make a single sound except for a brief, breathless wheeze. Which was why Chase was able to refrain from killing him.
“You know,” said Chase after an extended silence, “on second thought, I believe I will accept your offer of a ride home.”
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To be continued
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Thanks for reading.
Aenisses 24-July-2007
Next time on Postcards:
Chapter Eight: http://aenissesthai.livejournal.com/3684.html
Previously on Postcards:
Chapter Six: http://aenissesthai.livejournal.com/3083.html#cutid1
In the beginning:
Chapter One: http://aenissesthai.livejournal.com/1923.html#cutid1