Work Text:
"I ... hate ... him," Foreman said in between labored breaths, punctuating each word with a stab of his stick. Sweat formed beads on his forehead, glinting in the sun.
"Do I need to ask who we're talking about?" Chase's voice felt thin and reedy, his breath meted out in small portions.
Foreman gave an empty Doritos bag a particularly vicious jab and then turned his glare on the other man. "I don't think so."
Chase winced, dread pooling in his midsection, sweat pooling on the rest of him, but proceeded anyway. "We each knew he was insane when we took this job."
"Eccentric." Foreman stabbed a browning banana peel. "Not criminal. Not certifiable."
"You were a criminal," Chase said, making sure he was a safe distance away first.
"I was a kid. He's forty ... something. I had a clean record until now!"
"There are worse things. At least we're outdoors, and it's a nice day."
Foreman stared at Chase for a long moment, looking like he was fighting the urge to punch him. He shook his head in disgust and went after an empty soda bottle. "I am a successful, respected neurologist. I graduated at the top of my undergrad and med school. I've worked with some of the most important people in medicine. And now?" He laughed bitterly and gestured at the ill-fitting orange jumpsuit he wore. "Now I'm picking up trash on the side of the goddamn freeway!"
Chase decided it might be wise to refrain from saying anything else. He glanced upward, squinting into the sun, and then picked up the remains of a flattened Gatorade bottle. He'd lied, of course -- there really weren't worse ways to spend one's court-ordered community service, except maybe cleaning toilets, which was one possibility he'd heard of.
Foreman's fury wasn't completely unjustified. After all, it had been House who'd misread the patient's address, inadvertently sending them to break into the home of an unsympathetic non-patient who had promptly put them in front of an equally unsympathetic judge.
Although House wasn't responsible for what happened at the stranger's place. For that, they had no one to blame but themselves.
Chase wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and stole a glance at Foreman. They hadn't talked about it. Apparently they weren't going to. Every time Chase tried to bring it up -- usually before he could get even a single word out -- Foreman cut him off with a sharp look or an abrupt change of subject. Foreman hadn't yet taken to avoiding Chase at work, but Chase wasn't naïve enough to believe that that was anything other than stubborn professionalism.
But they had a long (long, long) future of roadside beautification ahead of them, which meant plenty of hours in the sun with nothing to do but sweat and pick up garbage. Surely Foreman couldn't dodge that line of conversation the entire time they were out here.
Or could he?
Chase got his answer at the end of day two. When their shift was over he asked Foreman, casually and without looking him, if he'd like to get a drink before parting ways. Chase made sure to include the bit about parting ways, just in case Foreman got any ideas.
Foreman gave him Look Number Two, which Chase had recently dubbed the 'Resignedly Suspicious Glare.' Foreman only had about five different facial expressions for talking to Chase, which was a few less than he had for talking to House. Then Foreman sighed and said, "I guess I could stop for one drink," putting subtle emphasis on the one part, just in case Chase got any ideas.
Chase nodded noncommittally, as though there were a hundred equally important things he could be doing with his evening. Actually, the only alternative he could think of at the moment was eating microwave pizza and watching reruns of Scrubs.
They went to a bar near Chase's apartment, a laid-back pub he used to frequent back when he was still deluding himself into thinking that he could meet people outside of work. Foreman ordered a pricey Norwegian beer with an unpronounceable name but mostly he just held it in one hand, letting the condensation soak his fingers.
Chase drew abstract art on the wooden bar top with his own little puddle of condensation. He considered and then discarded the idea of small talk. Instead, he cleared his throat and stiltedly said, "I know we've had our differences and our conflicts, but we've worked together for a while now, and I would hope that you'd consider us friends."
Foreman laughed, or possibly scoffed: with him, it was sometimes hard to tell. "What is it with you and Cameron? We're not friends."
Chase looked down and drew a round smiley face on the bar top. He and Cameron might be strange, but Foreman was insane. "Why not? I don't know about you, but I don't exactly have a booming social life outside of the hospital. Who else are you going to make connections with if not your coworkers?"
He glanced up to catch Foreman blessing him with the coldest version of Look Number Four, the 'I know everything about you and utterly despise you' look, that Chase had ever seen. The corner of Foreman's mouth actually curled up.
"You don't want to be my friend."
Chase fell silent. He took a long drink from his pint, swallowing his surprise along with the bitter hops. He hadn't expected Foreman to be the one to face it head-on. He'd actually expected Foreman to dodge it forever, but had been three full weeks since he'd blown Foreman in a stranger's bedroom, and all that time already felt like forever.
It wasn't like it was the first time they'd screwed around, just the first time they'd done it in public, in someone else's home. It was also the first time they'd got caught, which probably had some connection to the 'doing it in someone else's home' thing.
It had been stupid, painfully stupid, and it would have still been stupid even if they'd been in the right house. But they'd been good together that day, all day long, from Foreman's jaunty 'good morning' to the bad jokes Chase cracked that Foreman still chuckled at, while Cameron raised her eyebrows and shook her head. It was hardly ever like that. Usually Foreman reacted to Chase the way he might react to a piece of toilet paper stuck to his shoe. That day, though, everything seemed to fit together. They were in sync. So when House sent the two of them off to investigate the (wrong) place, Chase couldn't have been happier to take the assignment.
He hadn't planned on letting anything happen. He hadn't even brought it up. He was actually a little shocked when Foreman cornered him in a bedroom, ran the pad of his thumb over Chase's lower lip, then held Chase still while his tongue made overtures to Chase's tonsils.
He didn't protest. It was too easy to get caught up in the pressure of Foreman's mouth, warm and tasting of spearmint, and the confident motion of his hands as they slid down to Chase's hips and then to his ass. In public, at work, Foreman didn't touch him or allow himself to be touched. They were like ghosts with each other, unable to meet flesh to flesh. Alone, it was different. Foreman liked touching and being touched. He liked pushing Chase up against the nearest convenient wall and he certainly seemed to love putting his hands everywhere on Chase's body.
Even in someone else's house, apparently.
Foreman put a hand around the back of Chase's neck, fingers tracing his vertebrae. He kissed like he was starving for it, and Chase -- well, Chase was admittedly a lightweight. He was a sucker for being wanted by anyone, really. So it wasn't long before he was slumping down the wall, shoving Foreman out of the way while tugging at his belt until Foreman's cock was free and sliding into Chase's mouth.
And even as they were caught with their pants (literally) down and hauled off to a holding cell, all Chase could think about was when Foreman would get over it and let them do it again.
No, Chase didn't exactly want to be Foreman's friend.
Chase put the glass down on the bar and stared at the sunlight refracted through the amber. "I want to be … whatever," he said lamely. "Look, we don't have to -"
"Don't," Foreman said, apparently changing his mind. He shook his head. There was something faintly defeated about the gesture. "I shouldn't have gone there. I'm sorry."
That was Foreman all over: cold, civil, doing only as much as necessary to smooth things over. Just the wrong side of polite. Chase wondered if he should apologize, too.
He didn't.
***
"I just -" Foreman started to say the next day around noon. He stopped abruptly and looked around, glancing at the other trash-pickers, none of whom was paying him the least bit attention.
Chase hadn't said a word. Last night's conversation had hung between them all morning, like the prison chains they (thankfully) didn't have to wear. The sun was beating down just as mercilessly as it had the days before. Chase was getting a sunburn.
"I just don't want that kind of ... relationship," Foreman finished, his voice a bit strangled. He stabbed a dirty plastic bag. He had said the word relationship like he was assuring Chase that he didn't want genital herpes or flesh-eating bacteria.
Chase nodded because he didn't know what else to do. He looked at Foreman out of the corner of his eye. "But," he started to say.
Foreman gave him a sharp look.
"But what we've been doing," Chase continued under his breath. "That's okay, right? I mean, you seemed okay with it until ..."
Foreman blew a long gust of air from his mouth and didn't answer.
***
"We work together," he said two hours later.
"Uh ..." Chase said uncertainly.
"It's a bad idea," Foreman continued. Chase got the faint impression that Foreman wasn't actually talking to him.
"We've ... worked together for a while," Chase said. He felt stupid. Being around Foreman often had that effect, but at least when they were talking about medicine, he could turn it into a challenge. "A lot longer than we've been -"
Foreman stuck his stick into a plastic milk jug with enough force that the echoing sound drew the attention of another trash-picker some ten yards away. It was easy to see who was going to control this conversation.
"When did it go from a good idea to a bad idea?" he tried.
"When it started interfering with our work," Foreman replied, and considering that it was Foreman who had made it interfere with their work, Chase thought that was pretty much bullshit.
***
Day four was even hotter. The sun sizzled above them, making Chase's eyes feel like two egg yolks on a skillet. In between stabs at scattered trash, he swiped the back of his hand over his face, wiping away sweat. Whenever he passed his tongue over his lips he tasted salt.
The escalating temperatures did nothing to improve Foreman's mood. As the heat rose, so did his rage.
Chase should have known better than to ask if he was all right.
"People look at you out here," Foreman said, his voice low and tired. "What do you suppose they're thinking? They're thinking -- 'oh, look at that nice, clean-cut young man. He must be here by mistake.' What do you think people are thinking when they look at me?"
Chase blanched. "That isn't fair," he said.
"No," Foreman answered grimly, his anger still tightly reined. "It really fucking isn't."
He stabbed an unidentifiable piece of rubbish, muttering something about water off ducks' backs. Chase frowned.
"Is that why you don't want to ...?"
Even in the scalding heat, the look on Foreman's face made Chase shiver.
"You're an idiot," Foreman declared, shaking his head and going back to work.
***
Maybe Foreman regretted it later, because he was actually the one who invited Chase to get a drink at the end of the day. Chase would rather have gone home and stood under a cool shower until his teeth chattered, but he recognized a peace offering and agreed to meet Foreman at the same bar after they both went home to clean up and make themselves presentable to other human beings.
Chase ordered ginger ale. Foreman had a shot of Jack Daniel's.
"I'm okay with what we were doing," he muttered. They sat side by side at the bar, giving Foreman an excuse not to look at Chase. "It's fine, it's ... good." He seemed embarrassed and sort of pissed off. "But that's it. That's all it can be. Because I'm not like that." Finally he cast Chase a quiet, pleading sort of look.
Chase nodded absently. He'd kind of figured as much. Foreman was okay with the sex because the sex was good -- really good, actually -- but he was bitchy and prickly about their 'relationship' because he wasn't like that.
Chase was kind of like that. Not a lot like that. He wasn't going to be marching in any parades or anything. But -- damn it -- he was willing to do this thing, whatever that thing might be, whatever Foreman would let it be, because it was worth it.
"Is it me?" he asked, immediately grimacing at how pathetic he sounded.
"It's not you," Foreman said, and Chase silently supplied the It's me that should have followed. "You're -" Foreman made a vague gesture that could have meant anything from 'great' to 'insane' to 'about to die from bovine encephalitis.'
"I'm what?"
"It's not you," Foreman repeated firmly, closing the subject without really answering the question.
Just the wrong side of polite.
"You're going to be lonely for the rest of your life," Chase said. "You're going to let this -- this thing, this fear of being 'out' -- you're going to let that ruin your life? Because you think you're 'not like that'?" He took a drink. "Pardon me for saying so, but that sounds like a moronic way to live."
"No," Foreman said, sighing like Chase was the moron. "That's what I'm trying to tell you. I'm okay with it. At least with that part. But I'm just … not like that."
Chase frowned, feeling a bit like he was trapped in an elaborate game of charades. Foreman was okay with sleeping with Chase, he was okay with sleeping with guys -- he wasn't like what? Chase tried the phrase again, taking their dicks out of the equation and exchanging "queer" for "human." Throwing out the two-guys-fucking issue and putting in other ninety-nine percent of what it meant to be with someone -- the distraction, the vulnerability, the risk -- the stuff he'd barely even thought about, which was apparently running Foreman ragged. Human companionship. Foreman's hatred of House made a lot of sense.
Chase tapped his fingers on the bar top and considered. "I'll take what I can get," he said.
"Yeah," Foreman said. For the first time in weeks, he actually smiled, although the curve of his mouth looked sickly and somewhat terrified. "I've noticed."