"Every Year..." A House MD fanfic :-) - (6 Parts)

[matilda3948]

Ahhhh!!! This is SO GOOD! All of life's distractions need to leave you alone so you can continue to torture poor Chase

[queenie]

Mmm, poor little sick Chase. Poor headachy baby... I guess it's wrong that I get this thrill from his suffering? *impish grin*

[silentdreamer789]

Very nice. Has House really left or did he just open and close the front door?

[lalaland~]

Very nice. Has House really left or did he just open and close the front door?

I was wondering the same thing! I bet he didn't leave!~

Ohh this story is so yummy!

[Morgancer]

*gasps* Oh my gosh, that is totally incredible! You, honestly, are one of the best sneezefic writers I've come across in a long time! Please have more soon!

[Guest cally]

Looking forward to more. I've figured out what the whole deal is re: Chase and the "Every year" which I am sure House fans have too. I have a feeling House will be back, maybe with something to make Chase feel better?

[crazy_cat_girl]

Sorry that it took me so long to complete this! I was completely lost on how to end it, actually. And House would not cooperate with a happy feel-good ending. Nothing I wrote was in character. So here it is, and I hope it remains true to the House MD vision. Thanks and enjoy!

He awoke disoriented, his breath crisp with the need to cough. He turned against the pillow and coughed into his curled fist. He wasn’t sure how long he’d slept, but not long enough to dampen his worsening condition.

A glass of water, he thought, that would help alleviate the pang in his throat.

He reached for his abandoned button down shirt, lying in a bundle on the floor and threw it on over his bare chest.

Thank God Allison wasn’t home to see him like this, he thought, and then remembered how much he disliked thanking God for anything.

“Sicker than I thought,” he murmured out loud and frowned at how bad his voice sounded.

He opened his bedroom door and winced, unprepared for the blazing lights in the living room. His now sensitive sinuses reacted and he pinched the bridge of his nose,

“AUGHESSH!”

The sneeze left him doubled over, and he groaned at the accompanying pain in his head.

“Sleeping Beauty is awake!”

The sarcasm was unmistakable.

“A few more minutes, Princess and I was going to barge in there and kiss you.”

Chase felt his stomach drop and looked up.

Sure enough, House was reclining on his sofa, feet on his coffee table, cane resting on the floor. But in House’s arms, an even more horrifying sight. A brown album, opened on his knobby knees, papers strewn across the couch cushions.

Chase’s mouth became a thin line on his face.

House could read a flash in Chase’s eyes—in that moment, Chase wanted nothing more to race over and snatch the album back, but he was containing that urge. Instead, the younger doctor said,

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Comparing you to a Disney princess--,” House began, then gave a mock look of surprise,

“Oh, you mean this!” He lifted the edge of the album. “Just limpin’ down memory lane, I suppose.”

Chase wiped his nose with the back of one hand and glared across the room.

“Not your memories,” he said. He couldn’t think of anything else, the whole situation was so surreal.

It was like one of the anxiety dreams he’d had when he was working in Diagnostics, House breaking into his personal life and looking at all the flaws and…lies.

“Oh, I don’t know,” House held up a photograph in the light, “This lady looks familiar. By the looks of the veins in her face though, she was tossing back a few too many gin and tonics—“

“None of your business,” Chase snapped and he was crossing the room now.

“None of your damn bu—“ Chase's head bobbed back and he roared out a sneeze, unexpected, "AUGHESSH!" Although he bent at the waist and brought a shielding hand to quickly cover his nose and mouth, the spray jetted around his protective fingers and House winced when he felt minute droplets land on his face.

"Ugh," House muttered, rubbing his cheek, "lovely."

Despite the circumstances, Chase found himself turning away from his former boss.

"AUGH-ESSH!" He sneezed harshly into his clenched fist. They came upon him, fierce and nearly uncontrollable, "K'EESH! AUGHESSH! K'ESH!"

After it was over, a sudden wash of dizziness swept up and down his body and he raised a hand to his bandaged forehead.

House didn’t miss the younger man swaying on his feet and he sighed,

“Sit down before you fall down.”

Chase closed his eyes, “…give…give me back my…” he started, weakly.

“Here,” House interrupted, and threw the album back on to the coffee table with a thump. He lurched off the couch, “Just sit down.”

Chase slowly sank onto the sofa, and put his face in his hands.

House swaggered in the direction of the kitchen, and called behind him,

“Sneezing keep you up?”

Chase didn’t move his hands, only responded quietly,

“Bit of a cough.”

“I heard,” House said, dry.

Chase heard the rapid limp-step of House’s return and forced himself to peer over his fingertips as the older man carefully set a glass of water on the coffee table and extended two white pills in his palm of his hand.

“The rapid onset of symptoms and,” House looked at Chase’s face, “the obvious fever indicates that you have the flu.”

“I’m fine,” Chase muttered.

“Obviously,” House rolled his eyes. He thrust out his hand until it was right under Chase’s nose. “Take it. It’s only damn aspirin.”

Begrudgingly, Chase took the offering and reached for the water glass on the table.

“I thought you’d left.”

The statement was not without meaning. Please leave, Chase thought to himself, just use your sorry cane and scram. Get out of my apartment, get out of my LIFE-

“I was letting the cat in.”

“I don’t have a cat.”

House made a dramatic “O” with his mouth. “Whoops,” he said.

“Anyway,” House slung his body back onto the couch and slapped his cane on top of the album, “I’ve figured out it. It was pretty easy. I should have realized before.”

“Figured what out?” Chase rubbed his fingers underneath his eyes, where his sinuses where throbbing.

House pulled a yellowed newspaper clipping from his pocket, and Chase’s back went rigid.

House must have found it pressed between the pages of the album.

“Please, don’t…” Chase whispered, but House was already reading aloud to the room the name of Chase’s mother, the date of her death, and who she had left behind.

“April fifth,” House repeated and raised his blue grey eyes to zero in on his prey.

Chase felt his throat close off with emotion and he swallowed hard against it. He forced himself to meet House’s gaze head on, fiercely level and indifferent.

“So?”

But House melted lies like lead. He always had and always will.

“So, that’s today, Chase. And every year, for some foolish reason, you celebrate her death by going out to a bar as far from the hospital as you can get and you get smashed.”

House put the clipping on the coffee table.

“Maybe it’s so you can feel closer to her, through the taste of what killed her…Or maybe it’s to prove to yourself that you can tackle the demon that she couldn’t, that for another year, you are still safe from it. So you drink till you’re sick and find that, thankfully, you are still the same Chase the next day. It didn’t affect you the way it did her…at least, not yet. So you wait until next year…”

“Enough.”

Chase fought the moisture rising in his eyes. He hadn’t cried in years and he certainly would not do it here in front of this man.

“Get out of here, House.”

But House was regarding him with those cool eyes, unmoving.

Chase took a breath, knew it had to be said,

“I’ll call the police.”

House shrugged his shoulders and gave a small smile. He pushed himself up from the couch, and stabbed Chase’s mother’s obituary with the rubber stopped end of his cane.

“Listen up, kid,” and he carefully waited until Chase raised his nearly tearful gaze and then said, quiet as stone,

“We don’t all turn out like our parents.”

With that, he swaggered to the door, stopping to turn back and issue some medical advice.

“Get some rest,” he said solemn.

He shut the door.

Once he was sure that he was completely alone, Robert Chase gathered all of his mementos and stashed them back behind the pages of the album. He walked it over to the book shelf to the dust-free square it had previously occupied. He felt some wetness on his face and disregarded the sensation.

He put the book back in its proper place and sighed.

“Till next year, I guess,” he whispered to it. And turned away.

END

[evelyn]

WOW! Brilliant ending! I'm so glad you finished it. *happydance* I'm hooked on your Chase stories. I hope this isn't the last one.

You also reminded me that I have duties as well...like updating my Chase story... *goesoffwriting*

[crazy_cat_girl]

WOW! Brilliant ending! I'm so glad you finished it. *happydance* I'm hooked on your Chase stories. I hope this isn't the last one.

You also reminded me that I have duties as well...like updating my Chase story... *goesoffwriting*

Thanks, Evelyn! I am excited because I think your Chase fics are fantastic and I can't wait!

:-)

[Vetinari]

Wow that's a great ending. Thanks very much.