30 Days and Nights of House/Chase - Day 26
Ahhhhhhhh!!! This one was short. Really short. And then these guys started playing around and getting totally out of hand. Next thing you know, not short. No wonder my updates take forever. This story takes place maybe three months after the end of Not Entirely Human Error (and yes, you ask, where IS the end of that one? Coming!)
I split this up, not to build suspense but because I wasn’t entirely happy with some of the dialogue in the last part. Part 2 will appear very shortly. And there WILL be only two parts.
Title: A Power Greater Than Ourselves (Part 1 of 2)
Author: parkermonster
For: 30 Days and Nights of House/Chase
Rating: PG-13, I suppose
Pairing: House/Chase
Warnings: Angst, but nothing worse
Summary: From bookgodess15’s prompt #35: Chase gets a letter from the seminary. What does it say?
Disclaimer: So sue me.
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House grabbed the mail on his way into the apartment, dumping it on the table by the door. One letter caught his eye; it was hand-addressed to Chase from St. Michael’s Parish in Adelaide. Hmm, didn’t know he had connections in Adelaide, House thought.
When Chase finally got home three hours later, the takeout had already arrived and House was already on the sofa waving chopsticks around.
“About damn time! I was ready to start without you,” House grumbled.
“Maybe you should have. I’m not very hungry right now,” Chase replied, flopping into the chair across the coffee table.
“At ten o’clock at night? Did you take a long lunch or something?”
“Hardly. Just not much appetite right now.” He leaned his head back against the cushion and closed his eyes.
Now House could see the tension around Chase’s eyes and mouth. “Rough one, huh?”
“Yeah,” Chase sighed.
“Care to share?”
“Boring, really. Totally by the books. Teenager plus motorcycle plus no helmet equals organ donor. It wasn’t pretty.”
“No, I guess not. You should eat something anyway.”
“Probably.” Chase sat forward in the chair and looked directly at House. “Promise me you won’t do something like that, House.”
House tried to look offended, but he could see how serious Chase was. “I wasn’t planning on it. Leaving aside the matter of my excellent driving skills… Don’t roll your eyes at me, Junior. I was riding a cycle before you could walk.”
“Barely,” Chase replied with a hint of a smile. “Don’t play the age card with me, you geezer-wannabe.”
Good, that lightened things up, House thought. “As I was saying, aside from my superior ability to remain on top of my bike, I always thought that riding without a helmet was a Darwinian selection process in action. Unless I’m in the throes of a death wish, I travel with brain protection.”
“Well then, promise me you won’t entertain any death wishes.”
House gave Chase a knowing little smile. “Oddly enough, I haven’t felt terribly self-destructive for, I don’t know…how long have you been living here?”
Chase gave him one of those small but brilliant smiles that made all the adjustments of sharing his life worthwhile. “Yeah, I know the feeling, House. Maybe I will have a bit of the Kung Pao chicken.”
As they ate wordlessly, House remembered the letter. “Hey, you got a real letter from Australia today. Came from a live person and everything.”
“Oh?” Chase looked puzzled. “Didn’t think I knew anyone who wasn’t online. Is it an invitation of some sort?”
“Nah. It’s from some church in Adelaide. They probably want money or something.”
“Well, if that’s the case, they should have written to my stepmother. Anyway, I don’t have any church connections in Adelaide that I know of. Most likely it’s someone I went to seminary with, although I don’t know how they’d track me down here.”
House shrugged. “You could just open it and solve the mystery, you know.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Chase replied, getting up to retrieve the letter. He tore the envelope open and looked for the signature on the handwritten note.
House could tell immediately that this was not a welcomed discovery. Chase’s face instantly hardened when he saw who it was from. House watched him refold the letter without reading it and stuff it back in the envelope. Then Chase turned without a word, clutching the letter, and headed to the bedroom, closing the door behind him. Both of them needed or simply wanted alone time on occasion, and the closed door was their privacy signal. Damn, House thought. This is not a good night for Chase to go off alone to brood over some shit he traveled 10,000 miles to get away from.
I’ll give him twenty minutes before we deal with this.
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Exactly twenty minutes later, House knocked on the bedroom door. When he didn’t hear a response, he opened the door and went in. At first, he didn’t see Chase, although the envelope was lying on the bed with the letter still inside. Then he realized that Chase was sitting on the floor in the opposite corner of the room, his arms wrapped around his legs and his head on his knees.
House walked to that side of the bed and stood for a moment to see if Chase would acknowledge his presence. When he didn’t, House growled, “You know, if you make me get down on the floor, it won’t be pretty when I try to get up again.”
“So don’t get down on the floor,” Chase replied, sounding incredibly weary for a person his age.
“So… what? I’m supposed to tap you on the back with my foot and offer you a knee to cry on?”
“No,” Chase said, straightening up and leaning his head back against the wall. “You’re not supposed to do anything at all. I’m fine.”
At least he’s not crying, House thought. I hate crying. You can’t pretend crying’s not happening. “You don’t look so fine. What’s in the letter?”
“Nothing.”
House settled on the edge of the bed. “I hate to tell you this, but when there’s writing, there’s something. Who’s it from?”
“Someone I knew back in seminary school.”
“Obviously not someone you were hoping to hear from. Fellow student?”
“No.”
“Do we really need to turn this into Twenty Questions? Because if we do, I think I deserve a chance to go back and start out with “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”.
House thought he detected a tiny ghost of a smile in response. “House, this is just something I need to think through. Alone.”
“Tell me what it is you’re thinking through and I’ll leave you to it.”
“House…” Chase started, then fell silent for a minute. “It’s… I’m just trying to decide whether to read the letter, OK?”
House raised his eyebrows. “You haven’t read it yet? And you’re already upset? I take it this is from someone you really didn’t want to hear from.”
“Great deduction, Doctor House. Your powers of observation are astonishing.”
“Sarcasm will get you nowhere. So who’s the letter from?”
“I thought you were going to let me work this out on my own.”
“I lied. Who’s the letter from?”
“No one you know.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. Who’s it from?”
Chase gave a sharp mirthless laugh. “I seriously doubt you know any Catholic priests in Australia, House.”
“Ah, vegetable, then.” House gave his best ‘oops’ face when Chase glared at him. “Look, Chase, what are you going to do if you don’t read the letter?”
“Throw it away, I guess.”
“Not save it for a rainy day?”
“I think not. Whatever…Father Joe has to say, it’s not going to improve with more time.”
“Maybe not,” House said thoughtfully. “Could I make a suggestion?”
“Could I stop you?”
“Nope, so here it is. Why don’t I read the letter and…?”
Chase burst out laughing. “Oh, that’s a great solution. Why don’t I just post it on a bulletin board at work and see what everyone else thinks, too?”
“I hardly consider myself to be equivalent to ‘everyone else’ in your life. Unless, of course, you’re sleeping with everyone else too. ‘Cause if you are, ewww.” House tried to keep his tone light, but he couldn’t help scowling at Chase.
Chase looked up at him with eyes that were just a bit too glittery in the dim light. He finally got up and sat beside House on the bed. “No, for better or for worse, you are definitely a unique part of my life.”
“Good. Although, if that was supposed to be a backhanded marriage proposal, once again, ewww.”
Chase gave a little chuckle at that. Good, House thought, Finally I’m getting through to him. “Sooo, Chase, what’s next? If this really is some horrible, dark secret that you don’t want to share with me, I’ll bow out, for the moment. This won’t be the end of it, but I’ll let you work it out for yourself tonight.”
Chase closed his eyes and sighed. “What are you going to do if you read the letter?”
“Depends on what’s in the letter. If it comes from a happy, happy place, I’ll hand it over and we can go frolicking through a meadow of wildflowers when the sun comes up. After we have sex, of course. If it comes from a bad place, with naughty words and death threats, I’ll make up something to tell you and tear the damn thing up. And then we’ll have sex. If it’s somewhere in-between, I’ll improvise. Preferably after sex. How would that work for you?”
Chase very briefly leaned over and rested his head against House’s arm before sitting up again. “The sex part sounds very nice. Can we skip the rest?”
“Aha!” House gave a little bounce. “You picked the terms. No sex until one of us reads the letter.”
Chase threw himself back on the bed with a smile. “Are you kidding me? You can barely make it through the workday without sex. Do you expect me to believe you’d hold out if I refused to let you read the letter?”
“You can read it yourself if you want. It’s fine with me. I’ll weasel the details out of you later anyway.” House lay down beside Chase and pretended to look thoughtful. “Probably during sex. You have absolutely no self-control when you’re naked.”
Chase turned toward House and propped his head up on his arm, smirking. “Oh, and I suppose you want me to have more self-control when we’re in bed.”
“Hell, no. That was merely an observation.”
“Because I could be more reserved, if you like. More…I don’t know, dignified?”
House laughed. “I would love to see someone have a dignified orgasm. That would be world’s first and a journal article for sure.”
“Probably would, at that.” Chase gave him that soft smile that he loved to see, the one that spoke of real affection and maybe even happiness. It was even better when Chase leaned over and kissed him gently. House found himself immediately wanting more, and realizing this wasn’t the time for it.
Chase withdrew and lay back down, looking at the ceiling. House could see he was thinking, so he too lay back and waited. After several minutes, Chase spoke.
“Go ahead. Read the letter.”
“Are you sure?” House had already picked up the envelope from the bed beside them and taken the letter out.
“Yeah,” Chase sighed. “It’s not worth throwing away any more time worrying about the distant past.”
“Yeah, like someone your age could actually have a distant past.”
“Aren’t you the one who once accused me of living my life in dog years? That would make me well over a hundred. And quite frankly, most of my past can stay distant, thank you.”
“Yeah, I’ll let you have that one,” House replied, sitting up to unfold the letter and look it over. The writing was large, and though it spilled over to a second page, the letter wasn’t long. It was signed “Father Joseph Chandler,” and began:
Dear Robert (I hope you’ll still permit me to call you that),
I realize that it has been a long time, and you’re probably not very happy to hear from me, but I hope you will read this and know what’s in my heart.
House had a bad feeling that this wasn’t going to be from a happy, happy place.
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TBC
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Really, I wasn’t trying to create a cliffhanger. Of course, that’s what it turned into, so my bad. However, I will at least offer a bit of reassurance: there is angst to come, but it’s not from the really, really bad place you might be dreading. There are no additional warnings associated with Part 2.