House knows he’s looking to take all this guilt out on himself, to make himself suffer for what he’d done. He wants to punish himself, but not enough to turn himself in to the cops, because at the end of the day he thinks he’s done the right thing. And he’s right. House agrees, he did. At least he did what he believed was right, and he saved thousands of lives, and for House, that’s all that matters. He made a decision and stuck by it. He doesn’t regret it, but it’s still tearing him apart, but the problem is that it’s not tearing him apart enough. He needs to feel more than he does. He doesn’t feel nothing, but it’s not the right kind of something, maybe. Right now it’s just a suspicion, a theory he hasn’t tested. Yet.

House nods once, lip shrug saying he doesn’t buy Chase’s lie, but he’s going with it. Acting like he does while making it clear that he doesn’t.

“Alright, then. Better get going with that before your buzz wears off,” he says, and he reaches over and picks up Chase’s glass and presses the rim against his lower lip and tips it, all but forcing him to drink it. “Sipping never got anybody faced. Drink up.”

It’s not passive aggressive, it’s just plain aggressive. He tips the glass enough that it spills in rivulets down Chase’s chin, spatters over his jacket and soaks a part of the collar of his shirt. The look on House’s face is dark and hard, and he’s pushing like he never has before, pushing into Chase’s space, past his boundaries. Except he has before, just once he’s gotten this close, this far beyond the trench of no-man’s-land that lay between them that he’s crossing enemy lines and making a bid for war. The look in his eyes is hard and dark, challenging, like he’s entitled to this and whatever else he dares lay claim to, like Chase is just undiscovered country and his hand a flag.