Round 1 Story Title: A Little Too Late
Author: Daylight Starr & Symphonyflute
Fandom: House MD
Rating: No rating provided
Summary: Takes place after the Voglar incident. Saying more will give too much away.
Bunny: 55

"Hit me again," Chase said quietly, looking down at the table.

"You driving home?" the bartender asked.

"No," Chase replied, a little too emphatically.

"The bartender eyed him suspiciously. "Give me your keys," he demanded.

"What?"

"You heard me, give me your keys. You aren't driving home tonight."

"I know. I said I wasn't. I'm a doctor. I can tell you everything that whiskey can do to every part of your body." He laughed. "And your family."

"Then what are you doing in a dive like this?"

Chase raised his head and the bartender could see the dark shadows under his eyes. "It's been a long couple of weeks," he said dryly, draining the last of the melted ice from his glass.

The bartender shook his head. "Look Kid, you should be home, sleeping all this off, not getting more wasted. I'll call you a cab."

"I don't want you to call a cab right now. Either give me another, or leave me alone."

"You do know I can have you thrown out of here, though." His voice was stern, but not harsh. "I think you should sleep it off now."

"Fine, call the damned cab, give me another, and I'll have it gone by the time the guy gets here." He cleared his throat and sniffled deeply.

The bartender turned to the phone and dialed the cab company. "Why don't you have some water, on the house." The bartender set a bottle of water and some more pretzels on the bar. "You'll have a killer hang over if you keep this up without something to absorb it all."

"Why are you bein' so nice to me?" Chase slurred, staring intently at the older man. "People aren't just nice to people for no good reason."

"You're too young to be this bitter," the man said, shaking his head sadly.

"I'm too smart not to be," Chase corrected. "Life's a bitch and then you die, and along the way you lose all your friends, betray a few people, ruin lives, end lives." He put his head in his hands. "I should just quit. I never wanted to be a doctor anyway."

"What did you want to be?"

"A priest." Chase laughed hollowly. "Ironic, isn't it?"

The bartender raised an eyebrow, trying to imagine this handsome young man as a priest. "I see."

Chase opened his bottle of water on the third try and took a swig before nibbling on a stale pretzel. He jumped when his phone sounded the cheerful ring tone that was Cameron's. "Yeah?" He slurred slightly. "What is it?"

"Chase? I just got off duty and was wondering if you were alright. You looked tired today."

Chase frowned, wondering why she even seemed to care. "I'm good. Nothing a little sleep won't fix." He took another drink of water and coughed. Must have gone down the wrong way, he guessed.

"Um, alright. So I'll see you tomorrow?" She actually sounded hopeful.

"Yeah, tomorrow it is. See you then."

The bartender looked out the glass door. "Well Kid, your ride's here. Get some sleep when you get home, oaky."

Chase gave him another curious look, wondering why he was so nice. "Yeah, sure. thanks for the water and stuff." he tossed down two fifties and walked out toward the cab.

Outside the bar, which was not in a good part of town, prostitutes and thugs gave him the same bored expression he gave them. He was just another drunk idiot to them.

The light from a rusty streetlight burned his eyes, and he stumbled, almost walking into the cab waiting for him.

When he got back to his apartment, it took him four tries to open his door. When he finally got it, the bedroom seemed too far away to even fathom and he promptly collapsed on the couch in his clothes to sleep.

After a few minutes of twisting around on his couch, he gave up on getting comfortable and pulled his shoes and socks off with his toes and snagged the blanket from the top of said couch to cover up with. Yeah, it was a short thing that Cameron had given him for the gift exchange last Christmas, (it was "to brighten up that dark apartment of yours" she'd told him) and it didn't cover his feet at all, but he didn't care. He pulled his feet up as close to his body as he could and turned on the TV, hoping that some late night movie might lull him off. He coughed again, and took a drink of water then closed his eyes.

Way too soon the alarm on his cell went off, signaling that another day had begun. Chase sat up and groaned in a pained way. The sore throat he'd been ignoring since the morning before was flared up angrily thanks to a night of over doing it, and his head was feeling stuffy. "Damn..." he swore under his breath, noticing how congested his voice was. "Hep-ishh-ephm! Oww!" his head throbbed in protest when he tried to half stifle his sneeze. "Note to self, don't do that again." Chase rubbed his aching neck and headed for the shower, hoping some hot water would do him good.

In the end, he was half right. The scalding water burned his skin, but it was a better pain than any that he had felt as of late. The steam wasn't bad either, clearing his head and sinuses. But with the increased ability to breathe freely came the increased ability to sneeze, and he found himself gasping for reasons far unrelated to the tears he had been holding back for weeks.

"Heh-Hetchoo! Hetschoo! Hatchoo! Ugh..."

Having nothing with which to blow his nose and feeling slightly gross, Chase was forced to turn the water off and search for his tissue box. The search lasted only about twenty seconds before he remembered that he didn't have one, and smirked inwardly.

He reached for toilet paper instead and blew his nose. Then he got out of the shower, wrapping a towel around his waist. He didn't plan his outfit as carefully as he had in the past, figuring that it didn't really matter what he wore. House would have him in the office, doubtlessly looking up everything that could cause a fever, starting with the letter "A". not that House wasn't justified, at least, in House's mind. He did, after all, try to get the man fired to save his own skin. "God..." Chase touched his forehead and sighed quietly. "I guess it's that time again."

"You're late." House barked at him when Chase settled into his seat, half an hour after he'd left his apartment.

To Chase's surprise, Foreman spoke up for him. "As if you're never late."

"I'm the boss. Bosses are never late." Not that that explanation would have flown with Cuddy, but it made sense to him.

Cameron frowned a bit and eyed Chase, not saying anything.

"I woke up late and traffic was heavy. It won't happen again, I swear." He didn't really feel like defending himself, however. Whatever House deemed a fair punishment, he'd just take, no questions asked.

"It'll happen again tomorrow," Cameron guessed. "I have a feeling you'll be just as sick, if not sicker, then."

"I'm not-"

"You look like crap," she said simply. "That's why you woke up late. And like I said, you'll still be sick tomorrow. So logic says, you'll probably be late again then."

"Unless," Foreman continued, "you know the magical overnight cure for a cold. In which case, please do share."

House smirked. "If he's found a cure for that, we, as doctors, would want to keep it quiet. I mean, I guess not us, personally, because our clinic is free, but I bet half the cases that we come across are over-worried mothers with kids who have the sniffles. Let's get to work. Chase, since you can't actually see our patient without infecting him, I want you to research every myth surrounding the common cold you can find."

"But that doesn't even have anything to do with the case." He protested.

"It does when my staff thinks he should just come in and spread it around. I figured, since you didn't think you could give it to us, you had some other theory about how one gets it in the first place. When you figure out which myth you subscribe to, print it out, leave it on my desk and go home." He looked at Chase evenly before leaving the room.

"I think he wants to know why you're sick," Cameron remarked, smiling warmly. Chase didn't see it as friendly, but rather as mocking.

"I'm not sick," he repeated, wrinkling his nose in irritation and sniffling.

Cameron rolled her eyes. "Okay, whatever you say. But I suggest you write down the first thing you think of, put it on his desk, and go sleep it off. If you're still not sick later, you can call me."

"Or me," Foreman added. The both left the room to join House in trying to cure their latest patient, a nine year old boy named Adam.

Alone, Chase sat silently and still. He didn't understand what was happening; were they being nice to him? Or were they torturing him?

Or both?

"Hetchoo! Ow..." Rubbing his temples and sniffling liquidly, Chase decided that he could think and be confused just as well at home and, grabbing a piece of paper and a pen off the table quickly scribbled "germs. How stupid do you think I am?"

Chase zipped up his jacket and stuffed his hands into his pockets. he let the door to House's office swing shut and ran headlong into Wilson. He was a bit more awkward with the oncologist now, seeing as he had, no matter how briefly, cost the man his job.

"Leaving so soon?" There was only a hint of tightness in the older man's normally warm voice.

"Yeah, um, I caught a cold." He sniffled quietly, fighting back a sneeze. "House sent me home."

"That sounds strangely logical of him. What did you have to do first?"

Chase blinked, caught off guard by how well Wilson knew House's habits. "I had to tell him how I got sick to start with. I think he was pissed that I came in today."

"Again, logical. I'd be a little annoyed if any of my staff came in sick."

"But your staff could kill someone if they came in."

"Right, it's not as if you don't work around high risk cases, what was he thinking." Wilson's voice softened a bit. "Go home, get some sleep. We're here if you need anything."

Chase nodded and walked away, puzzled. The was what Cameron and Foreman had said, but he wasn't expecting Wilson to ever say anything like that to him again. "Um, yeah, thanks." He took the elevator, too worn down to even think about taking the stairs.

Chase started up his car and cranked the heat up, in spite of the fact that it was a warm day. He wondered if he dared impose on Cameron for some soup when she got off. She didn't have to stay, but he didn't feel like stopping anywhere, now that he was on his way home.

When he got home, he considered sleeping on the couch again, seeing as his bedroom was a lot farther away than he remembered. The doctor in him argued that it was a lot better for him to sleep in his comfortable bed under his warm blankets, but he found himself passing out on the couch again even as he planned on going to his room, his leather coat and the thin blanket on the couch providing enough comfortable warmth for him to fall asleep.

He must have snored through his stuffy nose as he slept, because as he was abruptly woken up before he even remembered going to sleep, his throat was dry and rough as if he had slept with his mouth open.

As he tried to get his groggy mind to mull over what had forced him awake, he heard a knock on the door that must have done it. Groaning, he pulled himself to his feet and over to the door.

It was Cameron. "I brought you soup," she said brightly, holding up a brown paper bag.
Chase frowned at her as if she weren't real. "Did... did I call you for soup, I can't remember."

"No, you just looked like you could use it today. How do you feel?" She placed the back of her hand against his forehead. "You're warm."

"I guess so. I haven't had the energy to find a thermometer or anything."

"I brought one, let me take your temp before you eat that." She pulled a digital thermometer from her pocket and tucked it under his tongue. "Wait there while I heat you some water for tea." She took the instrument from Chase's lips and looked at it. "You have a fever, but it's a little one. 100.5"

"Why are you worried about it?"

She frowned a bit. "Because you're my friend, why do you ask?"

"Because I'm sort of the office leper now."

"No one thinks of you as that. Yeah, we were all mad at you when it happened, but I think we're over it. Even Wilson."

"But... why? That doesn't make a lot of sense."

She rolled her eyes. "I think it's human nature to forgive, no matter what House wants to think. He forgave you before the rest of us, even if he does still want to punish you."

"Again, that doesn't make sense."

"House never makes sense, so that doesn't count. Here, eat this." She handed him the soup container.

"Thanks. It's really good. From what I can tell, anyway."

"Well, it should help with the stuffy nose, too."

Chase blushed. "thanks," he mumbled.

Cameron sighed. "Honestly Chase. We're both doctors. You can stop being embarrassed any time now."

"Hecthoo! Sorry..."

"Don't apologize," Cameron ordered. "Just eat your soup and go to sleep. I'll channel surf." She helped herself to his remote and put on Seinfeld.

"I didn't know you liked Seinfeld," Chase noted, surprised.

"You don't judge people well," Cameron replied, smiling at him. "It's okay, I'm sure you've learned."

"Yeah, I guess."

They didn't say anything else, just sat on his couch eating soup and watching Seinfeld until Chase fell asleep. When he woke up, Cameron was gone and the comforter from his room was tucked around his shoulders.

He wasn't late to work.