Title: Existential Angst
Fandom: House MD
Pairing: Chase/Wilson
Challenge/Prompt: fanfic100, 081. How? // Also for rivers_bend, who beat me at “Stump The Writer”, but also, I want to thank her for sending me a lovely CD :D
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Slash
Summary: Wilson isn’t a mistake and Chase loves him for that.
Author’s Notes: This is what happens when you take het mentality and use it to write a slash fic. This is also what happens when you accidentally write Robert Chase the way you write Ianto Jones. And what happens when you don’t really pay attention to what you write. And also, I think the CD rivers_bend mailed me might be slightly to blame (in a good way). Anyway: This Is Very Bloody Strange and a bit morbidly poetic, but I really like it.



Blinking so hard that it’s kind of like going blind, Chase can feel himself aging seconds and centuries under Wilson’s gaze. Wilson’s eyes aren’t like House’s because House’s are all sharp and blue and see too much; Wilson’s seem too focused and then they don’t and they aren’t like a normal person’s in some kind of indefinable way that Chase doesn’t have a hope in hell’s chance of unravelling.

“Dr Wilson-” he begins and sounds breathless like Cameron would. But Cameron isn’t here and this is his moment, two in the afternoon and it’s the wrong time and the wrong place.

But Wilson just stays looking at him and Chase backs out because he can feel the glass burning through him.

+

No.

That wasn’t a beginning and it wasn’t an end and sometimes mistakes are there for the making and it’s impossible not to take them with both hands. Wilson isn’t a mistake and Chase loves him for that because although they’re both made of misdemeanours and indiscretions and downright futility all wound up with surgical tape, this isn’t an entirely stupid thing to do.

Closing his eyes, screaming with his mouth closed. This makes no sense and maybe he should start stumbling his way back to normality.

Maybe not.

+

It’s with burning gazes and awkward smiles and coffee that tastes like fermented paperclips that somehow they make something new. It’s almost poetic except that Chase lost his poetry years ago and Wilson’s poetry cuts and bleeds. Divorces hurt and so does betrayal and endless lines of mistakes. It’s not comfort. It’s not anything but a way of connecting that neither of them saw until they tripped over it. Maybe there aren’t enough words to make more than a verse or two, a dirty limerick, but poetry is overrated when all you really want is not to be alone.

+

Chase stumbles back, actually stumbles, it’s half-dark and he can’t breathe. Wilson follows him, closing in on his personal space, like dancing except really not. I take one step forward you take one back. Give and take. They stumble backwards; Chase feels glass against his shoulder blades.

“This isn’t-” he begins as though he’s afraid or still thinks there’s an option. Wilson takes his left wrist and pins it to the glass and his right hand tilts Chase’s face up so their eyes can meet. Wilson’s eyes are half deadly and looking into them Chase knows exactly why it is that so many people fall. He’s falling now, too far down, drowning in that gaze.

He closes his eyes before Wilson even kisses him, mouths meeting blindly, lit from the yellow hallway electricity, a silhouette in black or pastel shades. Bad idea. Good idea. It’s beautiful either way.

+

Shards don’t fit together because something is always lost and this is the part that we don’t have any more. You and I. Us. Them. Chase closes his eyes against the sunlight and listens to his own heartbeat because that part doesn’t worry him. It’s impossible to say if there’s a beginning or an end and this is strange because he’s used to sort of knowing where things fit in, if only with hindsight and the picture painted on the jigsaw puzzle box lid.

I love you.

No, I don’t. Won’t. Want. Have. Lose.

Word association is ten shades of fun.

+

It’s an elaborate waltz and they could dance it forever, step by step, back and forth, fear and pain and rain and other poetically morbid things on a Thursday afternoon. Stumble back, too close to tell who is who, sharing kisses like they’re in love except for the obvious part. It’s not hate though and they’re sort of confused. Step. Maybe he should just stop teasing, give in. Hands in his shirt and under his shirt and oh I really liked this one please don’t rip it and

Unremarkable guitar chords played too slow on a stereo of some kind because apparently Wilson believes in making love, which is so much more than crude old fucking even though plenty of people get by on that without too many problems. Chase isn’t fond of making love because it’s disconcerting but there’s a kind of a touch and it’s intoxicating and he could make an exception he supposes.

Maybe tonight.

+

People die and they both hate it and Wilson kisses it better or tries to with every movement of his mouth, lips against Chase’s until the words like sorry and I can’t make this go away but we can both try to forget fade clean away into a complicated meld of something else.

Wives in boxes. Photographs and papers and lovenotes and pretty little things that everyone needs to forget. Wilson has Laura and Rose and Julie all shut up and Chase wonders if he’ll ever become Robert because that’s something scary new and different. He doesn’t want to be the next wife even if it would be possible but oh I want you to love only me forever because no one has ever done that before and I don’t know if I’d like it.

Pressed roses and dangerous smiles and it must hurt, he supposes, to lose that fast and that far and he wants to ask and doesn’t dare.

+

Counting the hours in bedsheets and rain against the window and Chase remembers something from English class years ago when he never really listened but the girl who sat next to him was very pretty and that was almost enough to make him pay attention. Existential angst. Too many choices or something and you can get existential nausea too.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you think too much?” Wilson asks softly.

(House tells me I don’t think enough, Chase thinks)

+

Is this where it ended or where it began? I can’t remember.

Chase thinks about falling in love and the part where that’s a bad idea and he collects fatal flaws like other people collect whatever things other people collect. House keeps his fatal flaws in a jar on the front of his desk for people to count and remark on, but Chase likes to keep his hidden under his shirt, written on his skin in some kind of invisible ink or perhaps it’s becoming increasingly less invisible.

“Kiss me,” he murmurs, and erases the line between metaphor and tentative reality.

+

This isn’t a movie.

Just so we’re clear.

+

“I love you.” It’s a tentative admission and Chase’s stomach lurches in a mixture of fear and amazement.

“You don’t have to,” he says, it comes out before he can stop it.

“What if I want to?” he asks, all gentle smiles, something almost anxious, existential angst and then some because how many things could Chase say in reply to this? Too many and the possibilities are endless.

“Oh,” he says, “I guess that’s all right then.”

+

Things don’t last but sometimes they last longer than they’re meant to but maybe that was just something I thought of on a Thursday afternoon. Chase can make origami birds and stars and they’re halfway passable; he folds sheets of forms House won’t sign into sharp-edged shapes that don’t make any sense. Supernova, both of them falling into pieces and blending together until Chase isn’t sure who is who any more.

This is ridiculous. It was so much easier to stay detached. Chase can’t remember why he even got involved in the first place.

+

“When you slip up-”

“I’m not going to slip up.”

“Yes, but when you do…”

The conversation they’ll never have.

+

I think it’s like being shut in an MRI machine. Chase smiles. All bright lights and pieces and inability to escape. Wilson’s lips brush his and this is all surreal and he doesn’t like it except for the part where it’s addictive and he can’t let go.

+

It’s not a case of forever although forever’s the fun part they’ll aspire rather desperately to. Chase thinks about falling darkly in love but that’s insanity and he’s seen what love and hate do to people. He could love Wilson to shreds, but he doesn’t know how to. He doesn’t want to.

He does.

But if he couldn’t fall in love with House and he won’t fall in love with Cameron, then Wilson can’t expect to wind up being everything.

+

I was waiting for this to happen, I saw this coming. It still stings, though.

Words that don’t make sense and make too much sense and everything in between fall into Chase’s head and he steps back. An analysis of ouch and his eyes feel like they want to start crying and he can’t and he won’t and oh God. Oh God.

Fading out and he tastes the world in shades of heartbreak except that he won’t let his heart break because oh. Oh, he swore he’d never get this attached.

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Oh G-

+

Words. So many words that he doesn’t want to hear so he lists them in his head in the shower while remembering the feel of the cold tiles against his back and lips on his that bruised so beautifully and he tastes sobs on his back teeth and spits in the direction of the plug hole until he feels physically sick because that’s easier.

There are excuses. There is House’s personality, how darkly intoxicating he is, how all of them have fallen for him and wanted him in more ways than is actually possible because of his leg and the fact he’s a bastard and he’d say something he shouldn’t in the middle and turn the mood off like a light switch.

Wilson, though, Wilson has his compulsions and his masochism and the barbed-wire jacket that just about keeps him safe from House and his demons.

Or maybe they just keep him trapped.

+

It’s either the loss of trust or the loss of innocence or the fact he gave everything up even though his reservations told him not to and now he’s paying the price.

+

“I think I loved you,” he says quietly, “I think I loved you more than I was prepared for, there were days when I pictured this lasting into something real, there were times when you were kissing me and I never wanted you to stop because you felt so real and alive and beautiful.”

Just silence.

“I hate that you betrayed me and I miss you like I didn’t think I would and it’s madness because I told you all along that this would happen and you didn’t care.”

Just silence.

Chase wipes the steam off the bathroom mirror but turns away so he can’t see what might almost be tears.

+

We run and twist and turn and try but we can’t hide from the truth and you’re my true nature sometimes and other days it’s just like I’m happy being perpetually wrong about other people.

Or something.

+

Wilson’s eyes burn through the glass but he has House now or he doesn’t but he did have House and that’s what actually matters and Chase won’t talk to him or tell him the truth. They just stare at each other, both heartbroken and angry, flames and it tastes like endless misery.

“I want-”

Wilson doesn’t finish the sentence and Chase walks out on him because none of this is fair.

+

Chase knows that he would never have known if he hadn’t seen the kiss through the slats in the blinds, the way they kiss showing how the two of them have done this before innumerable times. Chase wonders if he was a game, how to make a guy love you in the shortest possible amount of time and then break his heart, it’s plausible because that’s what Wilson does to everyone.

He thinks knowing is better than not knowing but once again it’s existential nausea and angst and every other damn thing on offer.

And he can’t breathe from the dizziness and stupidity of it all.

+

You did this. You fix it.

+

They stand. Stand-off. You and me and no one else. Just them in a world – no, a universe – of hurt.

“Please, forgive me,” Wilson says quietly.

Chase looks at him with tired, old eyes, and thinks about what Wilson did, how he betrayed him, thinks about Laura and Rose and Julie and the patchwork of pain, and scrapes up a smile from all the pieces of him that are almost still whole.

“I don’t want to.”

+