fairy tales House doesn't see sleeping people a lot: he doesn't visit patients, and it's not like he can watch himself slumber. And on the soaps, if they're in a bed they're either making out, talking, or seizing. Mostly seizing. So it's kind of a revelation that he likes watching somebody sleep. The last time he caught Chase asleep in the office, he threw a book onto Chase's lap. This time he watches. Perhaps it's only Chase. He has his arms folded across his abdomen, and he's wearing another horrid patterned shirt with the top button is undone, the wrinkled fabric is starting to sneak up and out of his jeans, the striped tie is loose and trailing off to one side. The discarded lab coat is stained with things House wouldn't touch. He's got his eyes closed and head lolling to one side in the chair, the makings of morning stubble circling his chin, and in the soft, diffuse morning light his longish hair is backlit, feathery and brushing House's fingers that are reaching out slowly. The hair is tousled from sleep, kind of greasy, and in desperate need of a washing. And House gives it a sharp tug. "Ah-OW!" The neck muscles twitch and the shoulders wince, but Chase still resists opening his eyes. "This isn't a castle and you're not Sleeping Beauty," House rebukes, leaning over Chase, who grunts and opens his eyes like he is doing House a favor by waking up. "You're not a prince." "Actually," House says, "in the fourth-grade play I was Prince Charming. But Cinderella wouldn't let me kiss her, so she never woke up from the poisoned apple." "That's Snow White." "Oh yeah, the necrophiliac fairy tale. Oops." "Uh-huh." Chase smirks knowingly, and House pretends not to notice. Chase looks like a golden prince with a lot of tarnish, and the gold is probably gilt or a thin layer of hammered-on gold-leaf, but he's more princely than House anyhow. "Get up. Just for that, you're working my clinic hours." House would prefer to think that Chase goes uncomplainingly and without batting an eyelash because he's Chase, but there's the uncomfortable feeling that there is something else in the smile that he receives through the glass door. * They were on long call last night, and while House has a dearth of patients, the downside of being an intensivist is that the ICU always needs another pair of eyes and hands. It goes like this: while House, Foreman and Cameron rotate naps and rotations through the wings, Chase swills Turkish coffee and tries not to let his hands shake too much as he performs two emergency tracheotomies, adjusts twenty IV lines, and writes on a hundred charts. House supposes that would explain why after lunch Chase is once again out cold on his desk, face buried in the corner of the sleeves of his tweed jacket, awful tie dipping into an empty red coffee mug. There are bits of crusty things in the corners of his eyes and the beginnings of a puddle of drool all of six inches away from House's gameboy advance. House slaps Chase's back. Chase splutters and his eyes snap open, dazed. He rolls halfway around in the chair, his face patched with red splotches from pressing against rough fabric and hard desk surface. "Did that get the apple out?" "Huh?" Chase's voice is tired and sounds dry from the constantly conditioned air in the ICU. His eyes are bloodshot and they keep fluttering closed. He looks better asleep -- then he's not constantly scared, he's not petulant, he's not sympathetic, he's not troubled. "Go back to bed," House says. "Chair. Desk. Whatever." Chase offers him a close-eyed smile, soft like the morning and sweet like Cameron's usual fare, but it doesn't come from a demonstrated need to make others feel good, it's honest and there is no extraneous thank-you and it's not premeditated. And Chase, oblivious to the world, isn't expecting anything in exchange or in return. Or refund. He kind of likes that, though he recognizes the origins of such behavior. House doesn't move. He tells himself that he's waiting for Chase to wake up so he can order him around as usual. But when his leg begins to really ache, House limps into the conference room instead and watches through the glass. * By the time they're done for the day, it's almost midnight and Chase is out like the lights in the diagnostics lounge. The nurses passing by snicker. "Narcoleptic sleepwalking," House offers as explanation when he shoos them away. "Patient got out of his room somehow." When the area is clear, House reaches out with his cane, ready for a nudge in the head or the stomach or anywhere else. But instead he leans a bit on the cane for support, bends over and waits for nothing, like a dizzy hummingbird hovering in midair, poised for nothing. Chase's eyes open and House pulls back, fumbling with his cane from the sudden change in stance. "House," Chase says, more confused than wary-sounding. "What're you doing?" "You idiot," House says, "you're not supposed to wake up until I kiss you." Chase rolls his eyes, as if saying, this is not a fairy tale. "I'm sorry," he says, sitting up with his eyes downcast, looking penitent as only a severely lapsed Catholic can. "I'm -- I'm just really tired today." "You'd better not fall asleep on the job again. If I catch you, I might be tempted." "To do what?" Raised eyebrows, asking for it. "Never mind," House says, and waits for Chase to forget, brush it off as teasing gone a little bit too far, to not report harassment to Cuddy. God knows he's said enough risque things to Wilson and Cameron and the hot patients who didn't look like they were in danger of dying. "Um," Chase says, awakening for the first time this entire day, but it is night, and it is too late. And Chase smiles, and House gets a feeling like he's said too much, but he tells himself that this the same principle as giving a patient medicine for the sake of taking a reaction, effecting a cure. He just wants to know, even though whether or not he can do anything about the situation at hand is a totally separate matter. "See you in the morning," Chase says, but he leans back and his eyes close slowly, eyelids relaxing like pain fading, while his fingers curl into a grip around the shoulder strap of his bag: a study in contrasts. So House leans forward again, reaches out with the back of his hand, and he puts the index and third fingers together, all of him clumsy and tired and old, and he gently touches Chase's warm, dry, pretty lips with them. Under the two slivers of contact House can feel Chase's body twinge and shiver like a piano string, struck and resonating. And Chase is staring at him with those choirboy eyes, there's a miniscule pressure of lips parting, then a tiny wet sensation on House's fingers, rough and warm and slow before it's withdrawn with the lips. And Chase is still, still gazing at House, and the lips slowly curve into a smile. "In the version my school put on, it was Prince Valiant," says Chase with the smallest of smirks. "See you in the morning," says House. End