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The glass door swings open, and the shadows from the embossed letters change their position as the Head of Diagnostics props the door open.
Chase, Robert. MD.
Chase settles into his desk chair, picking up a loose pen to hold in between his lips while he flicks the Newton's Cradle and skims through unanswered emails. He settles for hitting select all then delete . He’ll have one of his fellows sift through it later. He shifts his attention to the phone on his desk. Like the emails, there’s an entirely unreasonable amount of messages left for him on it. He clicks the play button, intending to let the voicemails all run their course, entirely ignored, until-
“Hey,”
That’s House’s voice. That’s House’s fucking voice.
“Yeah, yeah, save your shock. I’ll tell you later. I mean, I won’t, but you should be smart enough to figure it out by yourself at this point.” House’s voice is shaky, incredibly unsteady, and his breaths are short and aching. Despite all that, it’s still intrinsically, entirely, House.
Chase leans back in his chair, and presses his hands to his face, leaving everything but his eyes covered. He keeps listening.
“If you haven’t figured it out by now-” House draws in a slow, methodical breath. “It’s me, the one and only.” His voice is completely lacking its usually thick trace of sarcastic superiority. “House, that is.”
The mindless chit-chat of three fellows barely makes its way through to Chase’s office. They’re clearly waiting for him. He doesn’t care, not now.
House sighs, then Chase hears a soft thumping come from the phone, like House’s is falling back onto something. The line goes quiet for a moment, and Chase is terrified that’s all he’ll get. Then he hears something he never wanted to hear. Something that he thinks will haunt him more than the combined pressure of living up to both his Father and House ever will.
House starts to cry. Not full on, sniffling sobbing, but still very clear, audible crying. More shuffling sounds come across, House wiping his face maybe, and quick breaths punctuate quiet whining.
“I loved him.” Chase leans forward in his chair, he wants to slam his fist into the desk. “I loved him so much.” Another exhale, more shuffling. House’s voice is closer now, he’s probably put the phone closer to his head.
“Wilson, I mean. if that wasn’t obvious.” Inhale, exhale. “I loved him. Not like a brother, or a friend, or any of that dumb shit everyone was stupid enough to believe. I was in love with him.” House’s crying picks up again with that last sentence. Chase feels his stomach turn, he’s going to be sick.
“I needed somebody to know that. I needed somebody to know that-” Exhale, it’s a heavy one this time, like he’s trying not to break down. That’s probably exactly what it is. “That everything I did, I did for him. That’s why I’m in the middle of bumfuck New Orleans, in the worst motel I’ve ever had the misfortune to overdose in, with no legal ID, and a corpse next to me.” Chase all but smashes his head into the desk; he’s got a white knuckle grip on its ledge. The chit-chat from the outside office stops.
Inhale, Exhale, sob, laugh . House is laughing , it’s not funny at all, it sounds like a dying animal. Chase figures that in the most literal of ways, it is. “You wanna know the worst part? Too bad-” He laughs again, then shuffles and cries some more. “I’m telling you anyway. He loved me too.”
Chase already knew that part. He eases back into his chair a bit, and wipes tears from his face. He has no idea when he started crying, but he’ll choose to ignore it.
“I’ll never know why, he explained it about a hundred times, and it never made sense.” More shuffling, then some mumbling, Chase thinks he even hears House mutter Wilson’s name. Maybe even an ‘I’m sorry’. House’s voice is further away now when he speaks again, “Just, not enough to stay alive, I guess.”
The line goes silent again, Chase’s eyes flicker from the ground to the phone for a moment. That little red light is still flashing, so the message’s not done yet.
“Do me a favor, one last order from your son-of-a-bitch boss, sorry, you won’t get paid overtime for this.” House’s voice is getting quieter, slower, his breaths more shallow. Chase thinks about what it would feel like to sit next to the corpse of your best friend.
“Call the police, tell them that there's two corpses on the bed of room 822 in the Royal Palms motel.” Chase shudders. How long have they been sitting there, rotting? “Don’t be slow about it either, Wilson’s anal about his appearance, and rotting-cancer-patient-chic isn’t exactly on trend right now.” Chase is the one letting out unsteady breaths now, how the hell is he supposed to do this?
There’s no more crying on the other end now, just slow breathing. He’s listening to House die. Probably overdosing on Vicodin, or morphine, or whatever he and Wilson could get their hands on.
“And Chase?” He wipes his face again, his fellows are staring at him, he’s sure. He can’t bring himself to care.
“I’m sorry.” The call ends. House and Wilson are dead in a motel somewhere, probably still wrapped in each other's arms. Cold, and unbreathing. Chase looks at the phone again, the voicemail is from 7 hours ago. Rigor mortis has set in by now. If they’re holding hands, they’re stuck that way now.
Chase gets up, stumbles past his fellows, not answering a single one of their idiotic questions. They follow him all the way to the elevator. He’s hitting the close door button before he’s even all the way in, but one of them still slips in. It’s the one he calls Cameron Jr. in his head, but he’s not really in the mood for that.
“Chase? What’s going on?” He’s standing with his arms crossed, kind enough to not acknowledge the obvious crying, but not kind enough to just leave it be.
“Nothing. The grown ups have to talk. Go.” Usually his Housesian quips make him feel smart; right now they’re just leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.
He barrels out of the elevator, ignoring his fellow and every confused stare at the crying doctor stomping through the hallway. He throws the door open to the Dean’s office and slams it behind him.
Then he’s on Foreman's couch, holding a phone in his shaky hand, with Foreman's arm wrapped around his shoulder. He’s not sure how he got here, but he’s crying much more now, and he thinks Foreman might be crying too. There’s one number still to type in, and then he’ll have to explain that the bodies of the two of the most important men in the world to him need to be collected, and disposed of. Foreman dials the last number for him.