Puzzle Me This
Sallow yellow light framed the bedroom when House turned the light off, hearing the front door close. The tequila still burned in his veins like it was infecting every part of him. Seeing, hearing, talking, moving, all of that was harder and he just rubbed his eyes, heading for the liquor cabinet. A Bloody Mary ought to clear that right up.
Outside, a taxi was coming by to pick up a man on the corner of the street and the conversation went a little something like this.
“Need a lift?”
“Yeah. You driving?”
“Hop in. Rough night?”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
*
Chase stirred his morning coffee with three times the sugar than he used milk; and yet, he never seemed to mind the sweetness. House watched him, the case still heavy in his mind. It was an alcoholic woman, in her upper thirties, and he was watching Chase to see if he’d ever hear that crack of snapping, the one that predicted the fall that’s going to kill him in the end.
But there was something else, something other than that and House needed to put his finger on it. It was the alcoholic woman, it had to be. Every time he thought the very words ‘alcoholic’ in combination with ‘woman’, something clicked in the back of his mind.
But Chase just handed him the tox-screen, sipped at the coffee which reeked so much of sugar that House had to pull away and make a face.
“Can’t you drink something normal?” House muttered scathingly.
Chase rolled his eyes. “What, like tea?”
And the alcoholic woman faded away into a pattern of test results and House let go of the nagging suspicion that he was forgetting something.
*
The only sound was the sound of their gasped breaths, trying to collect some dignity back from the evening, stealing it back from the twilight. House sat up and watched the scene from a bleary gaze, what looked like a motion blur getting dressed in front of him and muttering something about calling.
House was up, leaning on the walls to serve as his cane as he locked up his front door, heading back to the bedroom and turning the light off.
*
“If you’re not using the salt, pass it over,” Chase encouraged at lunch, when they’d discharged the patient. Foreman had just left to go over an article and Cameron had never joined them in the first place. Of course, House didn’t pass it over, so Chase just sighed and leaned over House, his thigh brushing against House’s as he grasped the salt and the pepper in one fell swoop.
There was a moment there, when they both froze, and something clicked.
“Chase,” House snapped lowly. “Is there a reason you’re copping a feel with your leg?”
Chase eased off him immediately and House realized that when he said Chase’s name a little like that, it didn’t sound so unfamiliar.
*
The sound of the climax bounced off the newly-painted walls and House just worked through the haze. Time had skipped, jumped, hopped all around and did the hokey-pokey while it twisted all about. He’d sworn they were just undressing, and now, now they were collapsed all over the covers, doing this little dance of ‘who could keep quiet the longest?’
*
Chase found him in his office that night when everyone had gone home and the janitorial staff had already turned off the majority of the lights. House peered up from the cat’s cradle he’d been making out of string.
“Diagnosis for sore throat, fever, no cough,” House directed.
Chase just stared at him. “This is a trick, right?”
“A little,” House agreed. “My clinic patient had those symptoms and self-diagnosed himself with Ebola.” Chase just stared, not wanting to believe anyone was so actively stupid. “Yeah, he really thought it,” House confirmed before Chase could ask what he was thinking.
Chase didn’t move from the door, shifting his jacket to the other arm. “This morning, a patient asked me if I wanted to move when I was in his way and I remembered something.”
House just looked up, his cat’s cradle falling apart.
*
“You want to move, or are you just going to stand there,” House had muttered, showing Chase into the bedroom and flicking on the switch. They were both drunk past the point of no return, with tequila fueling their minds and their actions. Everything jumped and skipped, time blurring and everything seeming out of place.
But then they were naked and the covers moving, Chase on top and House being ridden to his climax, and the tequila blurred all the pain and erased it from the situation and it was all going to be okay.
*
“We slept together,” Chase said, like he couldn’t believe he was saying it. “We’d polished off three bottles of tequila and you and I slept together, didn’t we?” He was looking anywhere but at House. “We went out to a bar over a year ago, and we slept together.” He finally caught House’s gaze. “Right?”
House could lie, could say that Chase had it all backwards, but that seemed way too complicated. “Yeah,” he agreed. “You tell anyone and you’re fired. You know that, right?” It wasn’t a threat; just a statement of fact. Chase nodded silently, not saying anything past, ‘see you tomorrow’.
House had figured it out when he’d seen Chase toying with the cap of a bottle of water, the déjà vu too vivid to ignore. He’d remembered the bar and the first bottle of tequila, before the events of the night tumbled like a game of dominoes.
*
Chase had wandered into the pair like a lost child, looking for a parent. He’d stopped by House and leaned against the bar, his hip there. “You want company?” His voice was already slurred, like he’d been drinking a while. House glanced up from his beer to Chase, noting the date. Eleven years ago that day, Chase would’ve been filing a death report. Now, he was just standing at a bar, ordering a bottle of tequila.
House shrugged. “Why not?”
THE END