Take Me To Church

[scaredywombat]

Chase felt empty, fingers playing with the rim of an empty shotglass as he tried to find an answer to a question that wasn't there to ask. There was no question. He didn't feel that what he'd done was wrong. It didn't mean that he didn't feel like shit about it, that he didn't want someone to forgive him. That was a lie. What he wanted was someone to punish him, someone to make him hurt, to take all the acidic feelings inside of him and take it out on his body, until he could take solace in that, bleed these feelings out of him. Foreman kept telling him to talk to Cameron, and Allison kept trying to tell him that they could get through this together, but Chase knew that she couldn't be what he needed. Not for this.

There had been a time when he'd thought that maybe she was, maybe she could be, and they'd tried it once. His wrists, handcuffed to the bed. It was nothing, as far as Chase was concerned, but he never told her that. Not when even that dissolved into alternating giggles and awkwardness. He never brought it up again, and she never asked why he had a pair of handcuffs. He never brought up how much it meant to him, that when things pulled him too taut, it was the feel of restraints, the pain, the biting words, the feeling of having someone guide him through a scene with a hard touch, and catching him after when he crumbled that made it all make some kind of sense. It was what put him back together.

He knew he was hurting Allison, but he couldn't stop. He couldn't call her, because he had no explanations, nothing to offer that she'd accept. He needed to get drunk because he just... couldn't right now. He was pushing her away because he didn't know what else to do, and he couldn't tell her. She wouldn't understand. He knew her well enough to know that once she'd decided not to kill Dibala that she wouldn't forgive him when he did. He was okay with that. It just meant he couldn't tell her, that this was something that would always be between them.

And so he was here, at a bar, trying to find any other answer. Whiskey wasn't an answer, but it was something. A balm, maybe. It made the hurt feel less sharp. He wasn't drunk, even if he was working on it. He was just tipsy enough to dull the pain, and some of his inhibitions, but sober enough to be coherent.

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[the_house_rules]

He’d followed him here. Maybe he’d given him a head start, if we’re calling it that. Truth be told, he’d been following him a while, to the church and now here, and here he’d waited in the car, watching the door, expecting that after a half hour, forty five minutes, he’d come out. It had been over and hour and he’s still inside, and that’s when House decides it’s time to follow him in.

He walks in, stiff from sitting so long in the car, and it has his limp more pronounced than it sometimes is, at least by the door. Once he’s managed a half dozen steps or so inside the bar, he’s falling into that old familiar gait that looks less pained than it is. He doesn’t say anything, just hooks his cane loudly on the edge of the bar next to Chase, making sure it’s noisy enough to be jarring, and then settles himself down on the barstool directly to his left. He doesn’t say hello because Chase knows who he is, and if he doesn’t know that he’d stalked him here, then he hasn’t been paying attention for the last few years.

And he’s not subtle about eyeing Chase, the level of his drink (nearly gone), the color of his face, the dilation of his eyes. Then he leans in closer a little bit and smells him.

“…so I take it you’re planning to take a cab home to your apartment? Or maybe you were going to walk the fifteen blocks. You know, to keep with the theme of the evening, punish yourself a little bit more… maybe toss a couple broken beer bottles in your shoes for dramatic effect…?”