Tales Told Out of Turn Part 4
Title: Tales Told Out of Turn Part 4/?
Rating: NC-17 (overall)
Pairing/Grouping: House/Wilson/Chase
Disclaimer: Don't own them, as we all know.
Crossover w/Stargate: Atlantis (you don't need to know much about Stargate to get this fic.)
Summary: House spent way too much time moving around the world as a child and some places had more interesting people than others. How much trouble can a childhood friend cause?
Warnings: Hurt!Chase makes an appearance, although the harm is done prior to this fic. Mentions are made, but no graphic discriptitions. (And I fix him, so it's really about the healing not the hurt.)
Beta:
recrudescence
(Part 3)
*****
Chase watched from his corner chair as John and Rodney argued. It was like watching House and Wilson, only more yelling and less throwing of things. The last time Chase had watched his partners fight they’d thrown enough popcorn around to cover the floor of the living room. House won the argument simply by refusing to move until Wilson had cleared enough floor to walk again. Chase winced as Rodney’s latest barb cut a little deep.
"I don’t care, McKay! You can’t just imply someone is gay."
Rodney pouted. "I didn’t."
"Not ten minutes ago you did."
"Oh, good God, John. I’ve implied a lot of things to a huge amount of people. You’ve never thrown this big of a fit before."
John shook his head. "Usually I’m surrounded by people I know. People who for the most part don’t care who’s gay beyond whether or not they want that person."
Rodney and Chase both blinked. Chase shifted in his seat.
"I thought the military frowned on alternate lifestyles."
John turned his attention to Chase. "Officially they do, but if you speak to individuals in units you get a whole different picture sometimes." John cocked his head. "I’ve got at least five people under my command who are discreet and three who aren’t."
"Aren’t they supposed to be forced out?" Chase sounded genuinely curious.
John sighed. "It’s not really that simple. Generally they are ignored as long as there isn’t a problem. I try to watch and make sure no one harasses anyone else. Unless some hardass upsets the balance, I keep good soldiers that I desperately need."
Chase nodded. "So you need them enough to keep the blatant ones as well?"
"Yes." John chuckled. "Oh, there’s one who’s so blatantly gay it’s downright funny. Fights right beside on of my most straight and narrow soldiers. They make a hell of a team."
"The whole thing seems foreign to me."
John nodded. "You sound like you are from Australia."
"Yes, that’s right."
"What’s with the whole wombat thing, then?"
Chase sighed. "Once in a while House will compare me to a wombat. I have no idea way."
Rodney fidgeted with his blanket. "Actually, that’d be my fault."
John cocked his head. "Oh, is this an embarrassing childhood story I hear beginning?"
"No." Rodney glanced at Chase before turning to John. "It wasn’t that fun a childhood, you know."
Chase straightened a little in his chair. John’s eyebrows climbed. "Nah, really?" John stared at Rodney. "I know what you’ve told me, Rodney, which amounts to squat."
"You just don’t listen properly." Rodney turned to Chase. "All medicine is voodoo, you know."
Chase blinked. "Your parents didn’t like taking you to doctors?"
Rodney grinned. "Oh, good, you know this game. Okay. How about…I was a clumsy child who never wanted to play with anyone."
"You usually had bruises you didn’t want to try to explain." Chase watched John’s eyes narrow as Rodney nodded.
"Right. Okay. My sister doesn’t really get along with me because I was always watching her."
"Your parents were never around to watch her themselves."
"Actually, Mother died."
Chase rubbed his hands on his thighs. "How’d she die?"
"Too much alcohol and too many pills."
Chase nodded and folded his hands together in his lap.
Rodney nodded. "And that’s why the wombat." Rodney waved his hands around as he spoke. "About a week after Mom died, some little asshole decided that calling her names was the best way to upset me. I stayed calm until he pushed me and then I got a little upset."
John started to say something, but Rodney went right on.
"I got pushed down and I took him out at the knees. Then I sat on him and bounced. I kept bouncing until a teacher pulled me off him. When House heard about it he told me my ass as a weapon was too funny. I said it just meant I was like a wombat with their bristly butt that can’t be bitten easily." Rodney shook his head. "Never compare yourself to anything around House if you know what’s good for you."
"How long did he call you wombat and nothing else?"
"Three days. I caused a chemical reaction in his shoes and he decided my name was a good thing."
John decided to corner Rodney about his childhood later and asked, "What kind of reaction?"
Rodney grinned. "Oh, just a small fungal thing. Only soft science experiment that I ever liked."
Chase snorted. "What he do to you for that?"
"I think his reaction was far too much. The little bastard trapped every kind of spider he could and put them in my dresser."
"You two were total terrors, I take it."
Rodney shrugged. "I suppose so. House’s parents had a lot of trouble understanding him. His father never knew what to do with him. House was too smart, too stubborn, and in a lot of ways too much like his father."
"You and House got on well even with the pranks?"
"Oh, yeah. He only got to stay half a year because his father was only on temporary duty. They wouldn’t have even followed him there except they thought it was going to be permanent."
"Why wasn’t it?"
"His father got called up for a training program for Vietnam. They moved just before the end of the school year. Never saw him again until the ER."
"Yeah, about that. I hear you lied through your teeth and said you were radioactive."
"Well, it’s probably true. I’ve been around enough stuff and could very well have absorbed any amount of…"
"Rodney! Enough. You aren’t going to glow in the dark."
Chase bit his lip as Rodney huffed.
"I do not glow for any reason."
"Of course not, Rodney."
Rodney glared at John. "You’re patronizing me, aren’t you?"
"Oh, no, Rodney. I’d never do that."
A short laugh burst from Chase. "Oh, sorry, sorry."
Rodney turned from glaring at John to grinning at Chase. "It’s fine. He’s always an ass."
John snorted. "But, Rodney, I’m such a good ass."
Chase snorted and started to giggle as Rodney turned in exaggerated surprise towards John.
"Really? You admit that you are an ass?" Rodney pressed a hand to his heart. "Will wonders never cease? Oh, look it’s Major Ass Sheppard."
"Colonel!" Once the reflexive correction of his rank was already out of his mouth, John sighed, closed his eyes, and shook his head. "I hate my life."
Chase’s giggles escalated into outright laughter as Rodney made faces at John, who rolled his eyes.
"You don’t hate your life. You aren’t being shot at or forced to do milk runs over Antarctica; your life is good."
"I liked Antarctica, you know."
"You were bored, admit it."
"No, you were bored until you met me. I was a lot less stressed." Sheppard rubbed at his chest. "I’m tired."
Rodney turned to Chase. "That’s code for he’s in pain."
"It is not!"
Chase moved to check John. "We don’t want you to be in pain, Colonel."
John turned his head to watch Chase work on his IV lines. "I’m fine."
Chase could hear Rodney snort. "Consider that to be just like House saying he doesn’t need help."
"He didn’t like help when he was a child either, then?" Chase adjusted John’s medication and sat back down.
"Oh, he hated it. His mother tended to ignore his protests if she felt like mothering him, but he would have rather died then been fussed over."
Chase nodded. "He only lets Wilson hover when he doesn’t feel good. Concern usually means getting yelled at."
"Sounds like he’s only gotten taller. Can you still count his ribs?"
Chase’s eyebrows went up. "You’ve counted his ribs?"
Rodney snickered. "Oh, yeah. He got stuck in this program to bond with a younger student because they thought it would make him more outgoing. They let him out of the program when he managed to cause a priest to get mad enough to punch an altar in the younger student’s church."
"How’d he manage that? I’d think even you’d have trouble causing something like that."
Rodney snorted when Chase said, "You’d be surprised at how mad House makes people."
"Oh, yeah. The priest told the younger student that all men had a one less rib than women because of the whole Adam and Eve thing and how that meant that women where subservient to men. House didn’t take that well. He pulled up the younger student’s shirt, counted her ribs, and then counted his own ribs and then counted the ribs on the Jesus behind the altar. About the time he got to counting the priest’s ribs, the man lost it."
John smiled. "The younger student was your sister, wasn’t it?"
"Oh, yeah."
"House once told Wilson about explaining rainbows to a priest with a quartz crystal." Chase leaned back in his chair.
Rodney snorted. "That was the week before the rib counting. House had been trying for about five weeks to get the poor man to change expressions. He never did, even when he broke his hand. House used to wonder what had caused the nerve damage in the man’s face."
"Did he ever stay over with you?"
"Once. It didn’t go well."
John’s eyebrows drew down. "What happened?"
"We kind of caught the swimming pool on fire."
"Water? You managed to set water on fire?"
"No, no, not the water itself, just the gasoline on top of the water."
Chase rubbed his forehead. "Why was there gasoline on the water?"
"We were testing to see if gasoline is lighter than chlorine water. Then when we were done we thought we’d get rid of it by burning off the gasoline." Rodney smiled. "It was pretty."
Chase blinked. "How did you get it put out?"
"Ah, well, we didn’t. Mother noticed it when the heat made some of the tiles crack and the noise bothered her. She came, saw, screamed, and ran away. I don’t know why; the flames were less than a foot high."
John cocked his head. "How much gasoline are we talking?"
"Oh, about an entire barrel because it was too heavy to stand back up once we laid it over to pour out some."
Chase leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees. "Did she call the fire department, then?"
"Oh, no. Actually she called House’s parents and woke them up. Told them that House was a horrible influence on me and to come pick him up." Rodney snorted. "When his mother got there, my mother was drunk enough for it to be noticeable. She sat my mother down, came out to us, made us throw shovelfuls of dirt onto it until it died, and then she quietly told us just how lucky we were that House’s father had been called into an alert and we had to deal with her."
"You would have rather House’s father?"
Rodney nodded. "Marines are much less scary than Mrs. House when she’s upset."
Chase smiled. "How much trouble were you in?"
"We weren’t. She never grounded us or told House’s father. Oh, no, it was much worse. She made us feel guilty for weeks by reminding us how disappointed she was and how awful it would have been for her and my mother if we had died." Rodney smoothed the blanket on his stomach. "It was masterful the way she worked."
"Did he listen to her?"
Rodney shrugged. "Sometimes. When he felt like it, he’d try hard to please her, but most of the time he just wanted to do his own thing and he’d include me because I’d help him create mayhem."
*****
(Part 5)