An Exercise in Etiology * Etiology: 1. The study of causes or origins. 2. The branch of medicine that deals with the causes or origins of disease. 3. Assignment of a cause, an origin, or a reason for something. 4. The cause or origin of a disease or disorder as determined by medical diagnosis. * The afternoon that Mary is sent home, Chase asks why he isn't fired yet. Chase predicts: it's because it takes effort to get a new intensivist -- because House wants to deny that Voegler pushed him into doing anything -- because torture is too much fun. House claims that he won't fire Chase, precisely because Chase wanted to stay so badly that he risked House, and damn, that's -- that's just weird. Chase wants to say, we hurt worst the things we like best, which is nothing more than an excuse, but House collects excuses the way Cameron likes lame. Instead he says, incredulous and wary and expecting nothing -- this is a trick that his father taught him, long before House limped into his life --"You'll keep me until you figure out why I want to stay?" It feels like a Moebius strip, somehow. "Something like that," House says, voice a little heavy, like his cane digging into the carpet, like Chase's head feels, like the way Chase's heart wants to sink down. Chase thinks, this is another game and he should get on his feet, so he does, teeth poised to bite the inside of his mouth, his lips, when the urge to speak, to retort, to defend himself, comes. He swallows his blood drop by drop this time of today, because House is watching and waiting, and Chase is just childish enough to spite him, to deny him satisfaction. House grows apparently impatient, because he twirls the cane and trades the sarcastic smile for a brutally honest sneer. "Your daddy made a phone call to me, he said 'Dr. House, I heard that my son Robert Chase is applying for a fellowship with you, I'd appreciate it if you' -" "Stop," Chase blurts, interrupts, afraid. He looks at House and thinks, how much do I owe you? And he thinks of his father and then, am I always going to owe him something? He thinks House can see through him, infinitesimal slices photographed and dissected on a CT scan, everything inside revealed: tumors and tangles and embolisms, metaphors that he doesn't want to make. Looking inside himself is ugly, nauseating, and he can't handle it. It's easier to look at everyone else's problems, point them out, fix them. "Your dad called me the day before you interviewed --" House is out the door, five PM and goddamn his fucking timing, "-- to tell me not to give you the job." * It take an evening and two glasses of scotch to get up the courage and the anger, but he does. Chase drives recklessly to House's apartment and his heart is pounding like his fists, relentlessly against a closed and locked door, and he can feel the skin peeling back from his hands, blood soaking and staining into the wood. There's no pain, not yet, and it can't just be the numbing alcohol in his veins, bleeding out of him. House opens the door and doesn't offer any bandages for the knuckles. Chase blurts, and he tries not to scream, not to let his voice shake, "Why?" "Ask your dad yourself." Chase says, "He lies to me. You've given me absolute shit every day of my employment, but you have never outright lied to me." "I have no idea what your father was thinking." Chase clarifies, "Why you?" House shrugs. "I'm contrary. I thought it was very interesting that your dad would ask that. I thought it would be fun to play with your Daddy Complex. You're like the screwed-up gift that keeps on giving." "What do you want from me?" Chase asks slowly, the pain in his hands finally registering as the beat of his heart slows. In the morning his chest will be bruised in the patterns of his aching ribcage. His fingers will be ruined, useless, tomorrow, and he will not be able to tell himself that nothing has happened. House scolds, looking half-hearted and sounding exasperated, "Can't something not be about you?" You don't understand; I want something in my life not to be about my dad, Chase wants to say. I want it just to be you and me, me and you. * It's two midnights after Harvey's discharge and Chase is very, very drunk on screwdrivers that he mixed from House's secret stash. He's not sorry, because it's House who made insinuations for days, because it's Cameron who went on a date with House, maybe fucked him if she had her way. Because it's his own fault for projecting onto Cameron what he can't do and can't have. House says out of nowhere, "Make me one." Chase hears the rattle of danger as shake-shake go the white pills that House begins to take out of his pockets. It's a snake with one fang broken and the other overgrown in compensation. There's no talk of petty thievery, so Chase doesn't harp on medication. He dilutes vodka, hands it over without a word. House drinks as he muses, "You don't need the money. You don't need the job. You never wanted to be a doctor. You dad didn't want you to work for me --" "I want to stay," Chase says stupidly, insistently, just short of a child's whining. He wants to say, what do you see in me and what do I see in you? Figure it out and let me know. Tell me and we can both walk away. "Well then," House says. He hands Chase a Vicodin and Chase is drunk enough to gulp it down, drunk enough not to wonder afterwards when House watches him vomit into the sink and hands him a glass of water. Chase waits, irrationally, for the brush of fingers through his hair, glances on his forehead. And when it comes, sweat streaks across his face because House's hands are clumsy and drunk, because Chase shivers at the touch. House wipes Chase's face and Chase writhes, mumbles incoherently through sticky lips. And House is teasing, whispering, you know, you really do get off on humiliation. And Chase thinks, it's you doing it to me. * Chase remembers his mother passed out on the couch, gin and tonic soaked into her hair and bathrobe. He remembers his father slamming the door too fast and too hard, breaking three of Chase's fingers that had clung to the frame. He thinks and dreads that he will become them one day, carelessly and eroding: it's in the stiff-lipped way he betrays trust, the easy way he tosses back wine. House supplies both opportunities and alcohol. He knows how House likes watching accidents happen, wants to understand how and when things go wrong -- and there isn't always a why, but if there is, then he wants that too. When House understands Chase's pathology and etiology, the causes and the presentations of the fatality that may or may not be prevented, then he will lose all interest. Chase knows and he expects this, and maybe it's flattering that somewhere knotted into the muscles of his chest is a clot surrounded by dead and dying tissue, a lump that House is digging after, never mind the collateral damage. * "New symptom, kids. Kidney failure." House barks on Tuesday morning, a dry-erase marker tapping on his whiteboard, his eyes glittering like a child's before a new plaything, but a child who knows that all toys will break, and all patients eventually heal, or die. Chase thinks about the list of symptoms on the board, one after another, the glee in House's voice as he rolls the syllables like candies or pills around in his mouth. "You have no idea what's wrong with her," Foreman complains, disgruntled as usual, while Cameron purses her lips and rolls her eyes in agreement. "That's what makes it so interesting," House retorts. Chase wonders whether he is any better, any worse than them, than all the other things that compete for House's incurably fickle fancy. "Dr. Chase. Pay some attention before my interest in this one dies off." House speaks with an affected care that means he is trying to make a point here. Chase diverts his stare from the table to House. Maybe it won't go away, not ever, he aches to say, but that would mean his father did not cure him of false hopes. He will never admit to this. Instead Chase says, "I am," and he offers House a smile as mysterious as he can make it: wrapped in hope and weighed down with resignation and tied up with fascination. And House stares with a gaze cold and blue and sharp as stainless-steel scalpels, threatening to cut open everything they lay upon, but that's what Chase wants, and in the same eyes Chase also sees something resembling approval and maybe even bewilderment. "Good," House says as he turns around, and Chase breathes again. * end *