just_muse_me: 2.1.2
2.1.2. “All I really need is love, but a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt!” - Lucy Van Pelt
[Co-written with drcampbell]
Lachlan leaned against the frame of Chase’s bathroom door, his arms folded casually in front of him as he regarding his mate praying spectacularly to the porcelain god. “Did you fucking eat half the Hershey factory or something? How does that amount of puke even fit in you?” he asked with a sceptically raised eyebrow.
Chase remained gripping the edge of the toilet with one hand and used the other to flick a poorly aimed bird over his shoulder at Lachlan. “Shut up,” he said hoarsely. “I’m having issues here.”
“I’m nay holding your hair back,” Lachlan snorted. “I’m nay entirely convinced you dinnae deserve this. Either for murdering Bohemian Rhapsody or for clearly having ingested enough chocolate to have done five pregnant lassies with cravings for ten pregnancies each.”
“You know, I would never have called you if I knew you were in a tosser of a mood,” Chase complained as he dragged some toilet paper off the roll to wipe his mouth. He leaned down on the flush and then slumped to the floor with a moan. “You’re supposed to be the sane one. The unphaseable one. The one who doesn’t yell and glare at me.”
Lachlan tilted his head. “Oh, aye? You try giving up smoking - again - and nay have a satisfying fuck in weeks. Not to mention a fucking broken arm. You dinnae go getting your willy out again and I willnae yell, will I?”
Chase noticed then how stressed Lachlan looked. And tired, like he hadn’t had a proper sleep in days. “You’re giving up smoking again?”
“Aye, trying. Cannae be doing shit like that with a bairn on the way. Tara’s an Oncologist; she doesnae want to be kissing a smoker. I dinnae blame her, it’s just nay fucking easy. Then I cannae feel my music and I cannae get it up. And if I do, I’m too worried about hurting the bairn, which I know is stupid, but I cannae help it…” Lachlan trailed off with a frown. “But it’s all beside the point to why you called me. Why did you call me? You didnae get the chance to tell me before you decided to heave up your liver and all the half-digested chocolate this side of Princeton.”
“They were éclairs,” Chase protested half-heartedly. “You can’t hurt the baby by having sex with your wife.”
Lachlan avoided Chase’s gaze by shifting his stance and shoving his cast-less hand in his pocket. “Why did you call?” he asked, dodging the comment. “Hit me with it. I’m your Best Man, we’ll tackle it together.”
Chase was torn with whether to just keep his mouth shut and not lay anymore crap on Lachlan than he already seemed to be battling or actually admitting the real reason he was puking enough to almost make it worthy of an Olympic sport. Lachlan was watching him expectantly, though, and he knew his best mate had this knack of pinpointing exactly what was wrong with someone if they were unhappy. Lachlan would always separate his own crap to help someone else with theirs and he always seemed to offer some words of wisdom to try and help. It was just the sort of bloke he was and Chase wasn’t surprised his other friends nicknamed him Yodalan. “I… think I’m having second thoughts about getting married,” he admitted feebly.
Lachlan’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, the infamous cold feet, aye? What brought this on, buddy?” He moved into the bathroom now he felt it was safe he wasn’t going to get vomited on and sat down on the edge of the bathtub.
“Well, you know the thing? The thing. It was all going perfectly, yeah? Everything was just falling in to place, even if I’ve been working my arse off to try and make it happen. But anyway, I knew I better tell her there was no Hamptons because I knew it was getting close and all. So I tell her the venue called and cancelled out on us, which is a lie, for obvious reasons. And she just… didn’t seem bothered at all. You know what she said? ‘I don’t want our baby born a bastard’. That’s it. Nothing much else. She didn’t even seem upset we’d been cancelled. I just… well… she doesn’t seem to care when we get married and now I’m just wondering if we rushed it and maybe we’re just not doing the right thing? If it’s not important to her, then maybe we should just not bother at all and wait until it is important… if it ever becomes that way?” Chase stopped his rambling with a rub of his forehead with the heel of his hand. Even explaining it made him feel close to a complete freak out. “What if I’m not made for marriage and I’ve been fooling myself into thinking I was? Did you ever feel like this? Did you get cold feet?”
Lachlan rested his elbow on his knee to he could put his head in his hand. “For about two minutes right before the ceremony, but things were a completely different set of factors for Tara and me, buddy. I’d nearly lost my life and we’d dragged each other through hell and back for months. She was the reason I was living and breathing, literally. Now I’m nay saying this lessens your relationship with Rogue in anyway. It doesnae, it’s just that anticipation of our wedding is what gave me reason to live and gave me the strength to fight when I didnae think I had it in me anymore. Getting married was just like dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s for us. I had cold feet because I thought I was broken and I wanted Tara to have everything… the world. I didnae even think I could give her a bairn. I had months and months of rehab stretching before me. Our wedding was just the light at the end of a tunnel full of life-changing shit.”
He paused for a moment and looked at Chase intently. “None of that is really a factor with you and Rogue. It doesnae need to be. Sometimes things are just right, buddy. Sometimes you just know when something is meant to be. You love her, you’re expecting a bairn together. You’re a fucking brilliant doctor, too. What could possibly be making you think you arenae made for marriage? Nayone is made for marriage… you make yourself right for it with someone you just know you want to be with for the rest of your life. Plain and simple. Do you feel that with Rogue? That feeling that you nay ever want to be apart from her?”
“Of course I do,” Chase murmured without hesitation. “So much that it hurts.”
Lachlan smiled faintly. “Well, you’re halfway there. Let’s see to that second part. Has Rogue ever given you a reason to think she doesnae want to marry you before this one conversation? Has she indicated she only wants you to marry her because of the baby?”
Chase shook his head. “No. But maybe she’s just getting cold feet too? It has all been quite quick. What if she was just going along because I wanted it?”
“She doesnae seem like the type of lassie that would do that, buddy. You’re resting an awful lot on the speculation of one reaction. Bearing in mind she’s expecting and if she’s anything like our Tara, reactions cannae ever be taken at face value right now. She cried because the new pillow cases didnae match our bedding. But aye, okay. I would’ve expected a bride to react a wee bit more… verbally or indignantly if someone turned around and cancelled her wedding less than a week before it was supposed to happen. Most are so scared that something will go wrong that when it does, it can feel like a tragedy. And I admit there is a wee chance she could have cold feet too, so my question is… why havenae you talked to her about it instead of working yourself into an absolutely panicked frenzy and taking it out on the éclairs of the world?” Lachlan asked calmly.
Chase buried his face in his hands. “Because I don’t know if I can take it if she doesn’t want this anymore. Neither of us were exactly relationship experts before we fell for each other. Neither of us had much of a track record for commitment. Maybe now that it’s happening, it’s just too much?”
“Well, coming from someone who has had enough relationship experience to get by, I say bollocks, mate,” Lachlan returned simply. “Dinnae make it all into a chore or base it on anyone else’s expectations but your own. You love her, you want to spend your life with her, you’re having a bairn together. What more do you need to convince you?”
“Knowing that she wants the same,” Chase said helplessly.
Lachlan gave Chase a nudge in the knee with his toe. “Then talk to her. Nayone is going to have better answers to those questions for you than her. Biggest lesson to learn as a married man is to one, listen of course, but two, talk and dinnae assume. Because nay matter how hard you try, buddy, you’ll love them with every breath you take, but you’ll nay ever truly understand your lassie. She needs to guide you with that. That’s what marriage is.”
“The wife always trying to make her thick husband get her?” Chase asked tiredly.
“Nay,” Lachlan replied in amusement. “It’s doing it together… whatever the hell ‘it’ might be in your life.”
- justalilcontact & doctortara referenced with permission
Muse | Dr Robert Chase & Dr Lachlan Campbell (OC)
Fandom | House, M.D.
Word Count | 1,604
[Co-written with drcampbell]
Lachlan leaned against the frame of Chase’s bathroom door, his arms folded casually in front of him as he regarding his mate praying spectacularly to the porcelain god. “Did you fucking eat half the Hershey factory or something? How does that amount of puke even fit in you?” he asked with a sceptically raised eyebrow.
Chase remained gripping the edge of the toilet with one hand and used the other to flick a poorly aimed bird over his shoulder at Lachlan. “Shut up,” he said hoarsely. “I’m having issues here.”
“I’m nay holding your hair back,” Lachlan snorted. “I’m nay entirely convinced you dinnae deserve this. Either for murdering Bohemian Rhapsody or for clearly having ingested enough chocolate to have done five pregnant lassies with cravings for ten pregnancies each.”
“You know, I would never have called you if I knew you were in a tosser of a mood,” Chase complained as he dragged some toilet paper off the roll to wipe his mouth. He leaned down on the flush and then slumped to the floor with a moan. “You’re supposed to be the sane one. The unphaseable one. The one who doesn’t yell and glare at me.”
Lachlan tilted his head. “Oh, aye? You try giving up smoking - again - and nay have a satisfying fuck in weeks. Not to mention a fucking broken arm. You dinnae go getting your willy out again and I willnae yell, will I?”
Chase noticed then how stressed Lachlan looked. And tired, like he hadn’t had a proper sleep in days. “You’re giving up smoking again?”
“Aye, trying. Cannae be doing shit like that with a bairn on the way. Tara’s an Oncologist; she doesnae want to be kissing a smoker. I dinnae blame her, it’s just nay fucking easy. Then I cannae feel my music and I cannae get it up. And if I do, I’m too worried about hurting the bairn, which I know is stupid, but I cannae help it…” Lachlan trailed off with a frown. “But it’s all beside the point to why you called me. Why did you call me? You didnae get the chance to tell me before you decided to heave up your liver and all the half-digested chocolate this side of Princeton.”
“They were éclairs,” Chase protested half-heartedly. “You can’t hurt the baby by having sex with your wife.”
Lachlan avoided Chase’s gaze by shifting his stance and shoving his cast-less hand in his pocket. “Why did you call?” he asked, dodging the comment. “Hit me with it. I’m your Best Man, we’ll tackle it together.”
Chase was torn with whether to just keep his mouth shut and not lay anymore crap on Lachlan than he already seemed to be battling or actually admitting the real reason he was puking enough to almost make it worthy of an Olympic sport. Lachlan was watching him expectantly, though, and he knew his best mate had this knack of pinpointing exactly what was wrong with someone if they were unhappy. Lachlan would always separate his own crap to help someone else with theirs and he always seemed to offer some words of wisdom to try and help. It was just the sort of bloke he was and Chase wasn’t surprised his other friends nicknamed him Yodalan. “I… think I’m having second thoughts about getting married,” he admitted feebly.
Lachlan’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, the infamous cold feet, aye? What brought this on, buddy?” He moved into the bathroom now he felt it was safe he wasn’t going to get vomited on and sat down on the edge of the bathtub.
“Well, you know the thing? The thing. It was all going perfectly, yeah? Everything was just falling in to place, even if I’ve been working my arse off to try and make it happen. But anyway, I knew I better tell her there was no Hamptons because I knew it was getting close and all. So I tell her the venue called and cancelled out on us, which is a lie, for obvious reasons. And she just… didn’t seem bothered at all. You know what she said? ‘I don’t want our baby born a bastard’. That’s it. Nothing much else. She didn’t even seem upset we’d been cancelled. I just… well… she doesn’t seem to care when we get married and now I’m just wondering if we rushed it and maybe we’re just not doing the right thing? If it’s not important to her, then maybe we should just not bother at all and wait until it is important… if it ever becomes that way?” Chase stopped his rambling with a rub of his forehead with the heel of his hand. Even explaining it made him feel close to a complete freak out. “What if I’m not made for marriage and I’ve been fooling myself into thinking I was? Did you ever feel like this? Did you get cold feet?”
Lachlan rested his elbow on his knee to he could put his head in his hand. “For about two minutes right before the ceremony, but things were a completely different set of factors for Tara and me, buddy. I’d nearly lost my life and we’d dragged each other through hell and back for months. She was the reason I was living and breathing, literally. Now I’m nay saying this lessens your relationship with Rogue in anyway. It doesnae, it’s just that anticipation of our wedding is what gave me reason to live and gave me the strength to fight when I didnae think I had it in me anymore. Getting married was just like dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s for us. I had cold feet because I thought I was broken and I wanted Tara to have everything… the world. I didnae even think I could give her a bairn. I had months and months of rehab stretching before me. Our wedding was just the light at the end of a tunnel full of life-changing shit.”
He paused for a moment and looked at Chase intently. “None of that is really a factor with you and Rogue. It doesnae need to be. Sometimes things are just right, buddy. Sometimes you just know when something is meant to be. You love her, you’re expecting a bairn together. You’re a fucking brilliant doctor, too. What could possibly be making you think you arenae made for marriage? Nayone is made for marriage… you make yourself right for it with someone you just know you want to be with for the rest of your life. Plain and simple. Do you feel that with Rogue? That feeling that you nay ever want to be apart from her?”
“Of course I do,” Chase murmured without hesitation. “So much that it hurts.”
Lachlan smiled faintly. “Well, you’re halfway there. Let’s see to that second part. Has Rogue ever given you a reason to think she doesnae want to marry you before this one conversation? Has she indicated she only wants you to marry her because of the baby?”
Chase shook his head. “No. But maybe she’s just getting cold feet too? It has all been quite quick. What if she was just going along because I wanted it?”
“She doesnae seem like the type of lassie that would do that, buddy. You’re resting an awful lot on the speculation of one reaction. Bearing in mind she’s expecting and if she’s anything like our Tara, reactions cannae ever be taken at face value right now. She cried because the new pillow cases didnae match our bedding. But aye, okay. I would’ve expected a bride to react a wee bit more… verbally or indignantly if someone turned around and cancelled her wedding less than a week before it was supposed to happen. Most are so scared that something will go wrong that when it does, it can feel like a tragedy. And I admit there is a wee chance she could have cold feet too, so my question is… why havenae you talked to her about it instead of working yourself into an absolutely panicked frenzy and taking it out on the éclairs of the world?” Lachlan asked calmly.
Chase buried his face in his hands. “Because I don’t know if I can take it if she doesn’t want this anymore. Neither of us were exactly relationship experts before we fell for each other. Neither of us had much of a track record for commitment. Maybe now that it’s happening, it’s just too much?”
“Well, coming from someone who has had enough relationship experience to get by, I say bollocks, mate,” Lachlan returned simply. “Dinnae make it all into a chore or base it on anyone else’s expectations but your own. You love her, you want to spend your life with her, you’re having a bairn together. What more do you need to convince you?”
“Knowing that she wants the same,” Chase said helplessly.
Lachlan gave Chase a nudge in the knee with his toe. “Then talk to her. Nayone is going to have better answers to those questions for you than her. Biggest lesson to learn as a married man is to one, listen of course, but two, talk and dinnae assume. Because nay matter how hard you try, buddy, you’ll love them with every breath you take, but you’ll nay ever truly understand your lassie. She needs to guide you with that. That’s what marriage is.”
“The wife always trying to make her thick husband get her?” Chase asked tiredly.
“Nay,” Lachlan replied in amusement. “It’s doing it together… whatever the hell ‘it’ might be in your life.”
- justalilcontact & doctortara referenced with permission
Muse | Dr Robert Chase & Dr Lachlan Campbell (OC)
Fandom | House, M.D.
Word Count | 1,604