Current location:	Dr. Robert Chase's hospital room
Current mood:	tired
Current music:	'The Scale' by Interpol

My neck hurts but I don't care at the moment...
My Son, You Sleep in Clouds of Fire
By Angelfirenze

Disclaimer: Not mine. Never were. The writers of each respective show own the characters. Even the main plot was a prompt I originally came across in chase_fest, Round One, and became curious as to what would happen if I decided to try working on it though, apparently, this idea's been done before. Not this way, I don't think. The title comes from my favorite Interpol song, 'The Scale', from their newest album, Our Love to Admire and the chapter title comes from 'Choice Hops and Bottled Self-Esteem' from Bayside's newest album, The Walking Wounded. Appropos, no?

chase_fest Prompt: #97 House is Chase's biological daddy, Chase has always known, House doesn't.

Summary: "If I agreed that I was crazy, would you let me stay?" he almost asked, but just as soon as it started, the wild laughter was gone and suddenly his eyes were stinging and he couldn't see.

Notes: This may turn into a sort of ominous crack. Yes, I realize that's an oxymoron, but the point is that I'm warning you now in case crossovers of a sporadic nature irritate you for some reason. I write crossovers because of the sheer potential involved and I consider it a personal challenge to see how plausible I can make the plot and how the characters come together and interact. Hopefully, the plotting pwcorgigirl and I did beforehand when I first pitched that I wanted to try it (as well as the awesome beta'ing job she did for me after I started it--many, many thanks for that) will work to my advantage.

Part I: A Good Cleansing of Body, Mind, and Soul

...The healing power of alcohol only works on scrapes and nicks and not on girls in seedy bars who drown themselves in it...

The first time Robert Chase lay eyes on Gregory House, it wasn't the differences that came to mind, or even the similarities. Those came later, after a few days of Shite, I've found him--what do I do now? doubts floating in and out of his subconscious as half-formed speculations and conjectures played Tag under his eyelids while sleep eluded him.

He would later wonder if insomnia may actually be genetic or if it was as obvious to House as it was to him that his hair still darkens every summer (even though he's been in the States for years now, but it appears that changing hemispheres doesn't matter any more than anything else in his life has), becoming nearly a match of the man who had hounded and led him through life without even a single inkling of any imprint he was leaving. Then again, Chase told himself bitterly as he packed up his things (he doesn't quite remember how a ping pong paddle came to reside in his locker, but now was not the time to puzzle that one out), why should House know? Years, years he watched on the edges, slinking along in the shadow of this man and never once did he get up the courage to do what he'd intended from the moment he first arrived here and reveal...what?

What makes a father? he'd asked himself, once and again. For nearly his entire childhood, he'd known he wasn't wanted, wasn't planned. Watching his mother, pale, wan, her sidelong gaze glazed in the half-light of the kitchen table as he tried (yet again) to find a place to hide her poison where industrious fingers (and careless need) wouldn't wrap themselves around bottlenecks that he shouldn't have known the names of (he's fairly confident he can name them all alphabetically) and she wouldn't sink again. Just this once, he used to think with a sort of hope that couldn't seem to die no matter how many times reality spit in the face of it.

It wasn't until he knelt before her gravestone, searing tears sliding down the granite marker, that he finally accepted that he'd failed and, furthermore, she'd never wanted him to succeed. That would have meant he mattered more to her than this sickness did. He knew better. Knew the truth, shoved in his face as it was. Hell, there wasn't any reason why he shouldn't have figured it out earlier, being whose son he was. He knows that now and it's like a knife flaying his soul away layer by layer.

"You were born from a bottle," she'd told him once, her voice deep and slurred as it so often was, her blonde hair so pale that when light hit it he could pretend she was made of stars instead of flesh and blood. He'd been four then. He's surprised he remembers. Other details, clues, trickled out over the years--a snatch of jazz or piano on the radio, international news on the telly, even the sound of the ocean outside her bedroom window at night -- would trigger some half-remembered snippet.

"He had beautiful hands, your dad," she'd told him when he was seven. By then the man he'd been calling 'Dad' no longer felt the need to actively live up to the title, and had decided his talents were better utilized elsewhere. Robert had been only slightly surprised by how small the void he thought Rowan Chase was supposed to fill actually was. He wondered where all his emotion had gone. Then Mum would find a bottle somewhere (he swore that he'd thrown them all out) and he'd remember. He was too tired for all that, exhausted from simply trying to save someone who (he couldn't admit this to himself, then, but one day he would) didn't want to be and didn't care if she wasn't.

"He was a real thin...rail-thin bastard," she murmured one day, a wistful look in her eye as she gazed off into space. She did that anyway, but that day it seemed to serve some unknown purpose. "And I do mean 'bastard', I'm not just sayin'...but he could play like...play that piano like he was born for it, love. You don't have his hands, Robbie...I...I don't know if you could..." she took a breath, actually looking at him for a change, and gave him a watery smile. "But you've got his sense of humor, I bet. It's in there, hidin' somewhere. Bring it out! I want to play, Robbie."

He hates being called 'Robbie'. It reminds him of stale sweat, the sharp tang of vomit staining half-missed toilet bowls and acrid breath, bloodshot eyes and the dead sleep of the drunk.

He scowled then and turned away, knowing she'd forget as soon as he'd left the room. She'd find something else to occupy her time rather than reminiscing about whomever she was talking about. He didn't know whom he hated more in those moments; her for starting them or himself for that grudging need for more he would feel afterward.

***

Robert stood in the darkened doorway of House's office, listening to the low volume of the television he kept in there playing something too vague to make out. House's back was to Chase, the light blue of his shirt contrasting with the one underneath. His fingers drummed lightly on the desktop beside him, and Chase found himself glancing down at his own hands holding the box of crap from his locker.

You don't have his hands, Robbie...

He exhaled sharply and House's back straightened, his body turning in slow-motion like a roll of bread dough being shaped. Shoulders followed head followed hands followed (presumably) legs. They were obscured by the desk, after all, and sometimes Chase would look at them, see the faint dip in those jeans where he knew the remaining muscle had wasted and the skin had puckered, and a sharp, electric sort of pain would shoot through him and he'd have to look away before the fear and empathy would overwhelm him.

He remembers watching House lying in a puddle of blood to the left of this room, remembers the dull pains that stabbed his own neck and stomach all night as he'd sucked down cups of tepid coffee and wished this nightmare would end. He had been awake, after all, and dreams weren't supposed to follow you into waking life. But, then, he recalled thinking, when in hell had his waking life been anything resembling a dream? And why, much more importantly, should that have changed for any reason, say nothing of the complete lack of reasoning behind what amounted to a bad acid trip tacked on the wall and renamed a day.

It all came down to stones. And he didn't...

"I thought I fired you," House's quiet, slightly hoarse voice filtered out over the white noise of the television and Chase felt his breath hitch in his chest.

"You did." He frowned, a warm surge of anger pooling in his gut and he didn't know where it came from or why, but if it helped him get out what he'd spent years trying to say, then fuck it. "I just thought I should say goodbye...or is it 'hello'? We've never really had a chance to actually meet. An interview doesn't count as meeting. You'd decided before I ever came in that I wasn't leaving. The question..."

A slightly hysterical laugh bubbled up out of him then and House was staring at him like he'd gone stark raving and, bloody hell, he probably has. He's entitled to it, he thought, a little madness now and then. He'd wondered before if the sort of madness House seemed to hold within got boring, since he complained of it so much. The thought brought the smile out from his mouth and up to his eyes and House was frowning at him now like he'd grown a second head with at least three extra pairs of eyes to match.

"If I agreed that I was crazy, would you let me stay?" he almost asked, but just as soon as it started, the wild laughter was gone and suddenly his eyes were stinging and he couldn't see.

"Holy shit," he heard House bite out, but he couldn't say anything in reply, and his body folded like a cheap lawn chair, the box of locker crap falling solidly to the carpeted floor. He followed a second later, his legs curling against his chest as he pressed his face into his knees and gripped them closer, the brightness behind his eyelids blotting everything out but the tears kept coming.

"I don't even know you," he heard himself say. "She said...I had...h-had your humor and it was hiding. She wanted it to play. I'm so sick of playing."

“What the fucking hell are you talking about?" House asked from somewhere above his head, and Chase looked up at him through the curtain of fringe that had fallen over his eyes.

“Her name was Eileen,” he whispered. “My mum. She was married, but that never stopped her. She liked men, liked a drink. She liked your piano playing. Said you sounded like you were born for it.”

His voice was going hoarse, but he couldn't seem to stop now that it was coming out. House was pale, himself, now...his eyes (that blue that Mum said was her favorite color--of course, because if she couldn't let go of one addiction, why not add another?) widening and he was leaning back against the closer of the two desks, the corner digging into his back as he ran his hands down his face, but Chase couldn't seem to care. He was staring at House's hands that were so unlike his own, he was always told.

Chase raised his hands now and House was watching him, that wary look on his face like Chase was a scared animal that might bite. He was, he knew. And he knew House knew how that felt. What it was like when someone did that to you.

"You fired me, yeah, but I don't want to go,” Chase said. “That'd make me as bad as them. You couldn't go...you didn't know...is this you taking your chance?"

House was taking a deep breath now, inching backward toward the cabinet where Chase knew he kept his personal crash cart. House flinched when his shoe caught on the carpet and the heel came off, jarring his leg. He snarled quietly in what Chase recognized was something Asiatic, but he couldn't place it. He didn't care.

"No drugs," he gasped and House froze, his face becoming incredulous.

"Are you--"

"Mental?" And Chase laughed again, the hiding humor back as a twisted smirk came to his face. "Probably, but I come by it honestly, don't I?"

"Chase." House's voice was sharp, tangible, and Robert held onto it like a raft. "You have to--"

"I don't have to do anything. You've fired me." The bitterness was a taste in his throat now and Robert swallowed convulsively. There was suddenly too much saliva in his mouth.

"You're going to be sick," House said quietly, matter-of-factly, the way he always spoke to patients. But Robert was not a patient and that was that.

"No drugs," Chase snarled, and House let out a sharp breath, his hands coming to rake through his hair.

"You're trying to tell me that I'm your father. You've known this for as long as you've worked for me, presumably the imbeciles who raised you knew it, too, considering the asshole who wrote you out of his will and didn't even..." House cut himself off, but Chase didn't know why.

Chase was nodding, but he wasn't quite sure. The room was becoming more than a little tilted.

"Chase, do you trust me?" House asked quietly, his entire body more still than Chase has ever seen it outside of that kaleidoscopic week in the ICU when he'd found himself in charge of House's ketamine treatment.

"No," he answered automatically, before wondering why he was lying like this.

"If you meant that, you'd be trying to get up right now," House reasoned and Chase heard himself groan, his stomach pitching wildly. "You need an anti-emetic if you don't want to add to the lovely palette of bodily fluids already adorning this office. I can tell you right now, yours are going to smell a lot worse and I doubt that weird night janitor who wears his pants backwards is going to appreciate having to come back in here for another stain he can't Resolve away."

"What?" Chase asked, completely unable to follow House's train of thought--which isn't altogether unusual but it happened a lot less than it ever did with Foreman or Cameron and what the hell does he care because they're leaving, too, and anyway, Cameron doesn't want a damned thing to do with him and fuck it being Tuesday because just like every other Tuesday and, for a long time now, not even Sundays matter anymore.

He's lost and he can't find the way out of what feels like a wind tunnel and his stomach has pitched again. He heard House tell him to trust him and he wanted to tell House to kiss his arse, but then there was a sharp prick on his arm, and then he didn't know anything for a long, long while.

...Well, I made you and now I take you back, it's too late...

...TBC...

x-posted to my journal, patris_filli, and housefic