Yay, stories.

I will apologise in advance to long-time Harry/Draco fans because I read a story once that dealt with this, and kind of gave me the idea for this story, as well as a prompt from the chase_fest list.

Title: Patience
Author: LadyMurha
Fandom/Characters: House M.D., House-Chase
Rating: R
Warning and A/N: dealing with STDs. If it squicks you out, see ya. Self-beta'd. One-shot (sequel possible if demand arises).
Disclaimer: I'm just messing very deviously with the characters. I promise I'll return them once I'm done. (They're Fox's and David Shore's, not mine.) Please do not steal in any way, shape or form.



Leaves turn a dead shade of brown. When the rain comes, they decay and turn into pulp. When the autumn ends there is nothing left but leaf litter and cutting winds, chilling to the bone-marrow and freezing to the soul. Winter digs in its teeth and it’s never a good feeling.
Chase knows this. Winter wasn’t horrible, wasn’t this bad back in his homeland. He knows that sometimes he’d rather be back there; and then the ghosts haunt him and remind him why he left, and he’s glad and bittersweet that he left.
Tonight he’s not, though. He came here and he’s still waiting. He’d rather not do the test himself, although it would have taken him half the time, especially in the Princeton Plainsboro labs. He shrugs when House asks him why in front of the other two components of the Diagnostics department, but when they are at the apartment, plates clinking gently in the sink and the kettle set to boil Chase confesses that he doesn’t want rumours sprinkled around the hospital. Someone could always find him and ask about the test he ran, ask what he’s doing. He’s not prepared for that kind of risk and House quietly agrees it would be better to get it done in another clinic.

When Chase’s number appeared on caller ID on his mobile-phone screen a month ago, House picked up. He decided, unusually, to stay at the office a little longer than he would have on a regular day and the dark outside felt a touch strange. Chase’s voice sounded strangled, weary, the voice that House knew was fat and full with the inevitable arrival of tears.
“Robert?”
“House. I need- I need help. Emergency.” Something crackles in the background.
“Where are you?” Chase tells him and he doesn’t bother saying goodbye, leaves the mobile-phone on his desk and races out as fast as his leg allows. He gets to the spot at record time (though it’s really not that far from the hospital) searches for Chase swiftly in the lengthy shadows of the alley and feels a little relieved when he stumbles out suddenly, into the dim light of the lamp above them. He’s walking a little awkwardly, off-kilter and unbalanced, arms tightly wound around himself. His face displays thin lines of dry red and chafed skin from his temple to the jaw. His arms shake as he walks and sees House. He waves, gets off the motorbike to get a closer look at Chase. He doesn’t like what he sees.
“They took anything?” House asks. Worry pierces his tone like a brutal dagger and he wants to hold Chase to his body and calm him down.
“No…” bowed head, dirty blond flutters in the tiny breeze. His eyes are too shiny when he lifts his face to House and burrows into his chest. “He-” whispers translucently “-raped-” he can’t continue and his body shudders as House feels his shirt, underneath the leather jacket, soak up the tears that don’t stop coming as he wraps his arms around Chase.
He took him to the ER, didn’t let anyone else look at him, checked him closely and delicately. He was raw all-over, bloodied, bruised around the hip-bones. His back didn’t escape unscathed, either, deep blue that looks nearly navy under dim lights. He held his breath while his eyes betrayed aches, although House worked his fingers around the painful locations as softly as he could. He discarded the torn shirt for one from a scrubs set, wore the trousers too. He stuffed his own pair into a plastic bag from his locker and took that with him.
Chase didn’t want to stay overnight and House wasn’t about to let him, either. In the darkness of the apartment Chase said he walked back from meeting some acquaintances to the hospital and was dragged somewhere before he knew it. He tried resistance and the colours on his body proved that he wasn’t successful. He wouldn’t say anything beyond that, and nodded once when House said he should go and get tested.

Cameron and Foreman were shocked when he appeared next morning. He supposed the bruises and raw skin showed stronger in daylight. He told them he’d been attacked and didn’t want to elaborate. They left him alone while he didn’t talk for conversation for the rest of the day.

Now this waiting, this endless stretch of time. The nurse who tested him said the results would be ready soon. Living with House all this while, closer than the two of them had ever been – even with their relationship, Chase hadn’t taken advantage of House’s bedroom too many nights a week – was just another facet of the waiting. The last few days were full of testing and he took them off work – House let him – but they were still just another disease to erase. This was the last one to go and if he had it – well… if he has it…
He reasons with himself. There’s a chance that he may have contracted HIV, but then again there’s just as equal a chance that he didn’t.
He sighs, leans forward onto his knees. He didn’t want to kiss or touch or anything remotely intimate when House held him firmly every night for the last month for fear of infecting him, if he did carry anything. Free of all the diseases he knew were off the list now, he allowed a kiss that morning, just something tender and soothing, something shared between lovers. He needs it more than any other reassurance.

Tick, tick, tick. Tick, tick, tick. The second hand on the round nondescript clock in the waiting room talks quietly to itself, eating away at time. Chase just waits. He has to be patient.
What would he do in the event that-? There’s medicine to solve it now, huge advances. He could live for another twenty years easily, albeit a little sicklier if the AIDS kicks in. He could do it. But he would not want it. It’s probably a testament to the stubborn attitude he learnt from House (though he refuses to admit so) that he obstinately won’t think of enduring a life such as that. The alternative is too terrifying, but nothing is solid and everything is liquid right now and there is no use resolving yet.

There are moments in which he is totally lucid and remembers down to the hurting details. In other moments woven into this twisted fabric he’s sure he’s half-dreaming and the fear of then attacks as strong and fresh, as horrifying. In other moments he just doesn’t think about it and focuses on other things, the semblance of a life he may no longer be able to lead. He remembers how Cameron nearly got away without her test, and everything was alright again when she did get her results. She asked him a few days ago how he was holding up and he gave the non-committal pull of the shoulders and half-smile, said he was alright.
Truth be told, the nightmares are the worst. And he’s thankful that when House wakes him up, damp with cold perspiration, he’s still there and he’s not gone, he’s not some shadow of Chase’s mind. At work he snaps just like every day, and he does that at home, too, but not insensitively. Chase appreciates the way House is maintaining as much a degree of normality as possible.
He is alone here, no one but him in the room. The last patient – a woman of about thirty – left half an hour ago. He saw her absorbed in a magazine, idly flicking pages, eyes following words of articles. Underneath the pronounced laziness, there was the twitch that he knows to recognise in nervous patients. They’re afraid and they don’t know what to do if the results are positive. He’s seen that many times, being a doctor. But now he’s here in the capacity of a patient – one of them – and he knows what the nerves are about, now, knows he can control them but has forgotten how.

Breath in, breath out. This is going to either change everything or nothing. Breath in, breath out. This is wearing him out thin and tattered. Breath in, breath out. You’re not allowed to be afraid, Robert. Breath in, breath out.

It feels like the last crumbs of time are feasted upon by the off-white clock on the wall and Chase loses the last vestiges of patience when the nurse comes in. He can’t tell anything from her expression, though he isn’t sure if it is because he’s not looking close enough or because she really isn’t saying anything, and he gets up.
“I put the results in the envelope for you.” She hands him a plain white envelope embossed with the clinic’s small logo on the front. “Have a nice evening.” Just like that she briskly turns and walks out again, light-pink scrubs suddenly making him nauseous.
He wants to slit the narrow envelope quickly and be done with it, he wants to throw it away and never think of it again and live in deluded hope and half a misery of not knowing.
Breath in, breath out.

In the car he thinks he’ll let House read it for himself. On the highway the music plays, some indistinct tune, and the envelope lies small and deadly, neutral and sweet, on the seat beside him, unopened yet.

“Hey, I’m home.” He calls out when he finishes jingling the keys after taking them out of the lock. The slow pattern of thump, step, thump, step, comes at him, and House gazes into his eyes, trying to read them. Blue and aquamarine meet for a long, silent moment; House hugs Chase as hard as he could without causing him more bruises, kisses him melodiously. The envelope is loosely clasped in his hand, but House doesn’t ask to see it.

They don’t head to the kitchen – Chase says he grabbed a sandwich on the way (which is true) and House says that he cooked himself something (which Chase doubts is true because despite House being very able to cook, he doesn’t smell any tell-tale food aromas in the air). They undress silently as they are in the bedroom, shoes kicked off and shirts pulled away. House flips the side of the duvet over, lets Chase in, looks at him closely. The silence stretches and the note of patience hangs between them. Chase finally falls to his side – head on the pillow, hair astray like golden rays from a planet and arm tucked beneath him. House is holding the envelope and skims the torn edge.
“You read it already.”
“Yeah. I didn’t want- patience was starting to get to me.” He closes his eyes. House knows Chase isn’t going to say anything more, for whatever reason, so he plucks the single printed sheet from the envelope, reads every word.
“I see,” he says finally after a while. He lies down to his side, too, facing Chase, kissing him again, a little more intense this time, hoping he isn’t really asleep, that he feels this gesture. Shuts off the light, his arms around Chase in a manner that they are so used to now.
Winter is still biting outside, with teeth of frost and breath of cold. Chase knows this. Before he drifts off, a slight smile from House’s kiss, he thinks that the winter isn’t that bad anymore.