This Is How It Works

This is how House and Chase flirt:

It all begins when House fires Chase. He makes the first move.

Chase returns House's affections by getting Cameron to quit as well.

When Chase is hired by surgery House is so delighted to have him back at the hospital that he spreads a nasty rumor about Chase having syphilis.

Chase is flattered and he uses the diagnostics keycode for the lab instead of the surgical one, racking up thousands of dollars for House to paperwork his way through.

Feeling as though he's being too forward, House is quiet for a day.

Chase is confused, and tells a passing intern on a food run for House not to hold the pickle on House's sandwich, hoping that House will get his message.

House quickly reassures him of his intentions by giving Chase's pager number to a manic OCD patient in the psych ward, who must do things seven times every seven hours during the week when Chase is on night rotation in trauma.

Chase calls every Jehovah's Witness "Kingdom Hall" within a fifty mile radius and gives them House's address.

House burns the stack of pamphlets under the fire alarm in Chase's apartment building.

Chase sees House standing among the crowd of people who live in his building, grabs his face with two hands and smashes their mouths together, thus breaking the sexual tension that has been building to unbearable levels over the past few months.

House is totally okay with this.

oOo

This is how House and Chase date:

Chase eats his lunch and refuses to let House have any, stuffing half the sandwich into his mouth and claiming something ridiculous, like he hasn't eaten in fourteen hours. House wanders away to find Wilson.

They go to a bar. This is good until House learns that Chase doesn't drink, and gets pissed when Chase resists all of his taunting and provoking. He sits at the bar sourly, glaring at Chase, until Chase gives up on having a conversation and leaves. House incites a bar fight within the hour and watches with grim satisfaction as the pretty boy who had been sitting all prim and girly in the corner now loses spectacularly to a middle-aged Mexican man. Stupid pretty boys.

Chase goes out to lunch with a guy that he's going to be doing a surgery with tomorrow. House shows up in the middle of it, and the surgery guy is such a tosser that Chase is actually happy to see House there. Not that he'll say so. House has chased the asshole off in ten minutes, and they bicker for the rest of the meal.

House gives Chase a lift on his motorcycle that night, which doesn't disintegrate into bickering, but this is possibly because it's rather difficult to talk on a motorcycle. As he gets off, Chase thanks House for the ride. House pulls Chase back on and they make out on the bike until House nearly loses his balance and tips the motorcycle over.

House has an intense case. Chase stays away.

When his patient dies two days later and House still hasn't figured out the answer, Chase beats House down to the morgue. House is half-crazed in his need to know the answer and nearly pummels Chase in a fit of rage when Chase refuses to let him near the body. They fight. Chase pins House to the ground (a surprisingly difficult feat) and holds him there until he's sure that House is thinking clearly enough to do this autopsy. The diagnosis comes to House not three minutes later, before they get halfway through the first cut.

One night, when Chase is feeling particularly ballsy, he invites House over to his place, but it turns out that House is even more nervous about this than he is because he shows up an hour late and half-wasted. Chase is pissed. He puts House to bed and spends the night on his couch, unable to sleep. In the distance, he can hear the ocean calling to him.

They go out to dinner. Chase makes ridiculous animals out of folded napkins. House drops an onion ring into his Sierra Mist and then wails that it's "Lost, lost, the precious is lost!". Their waiter does not like them very much.

Chase is slumped against House, sound asleep asleep, as the sun rises. Because they're sitting on the roof and no one can see, House runs a hand through Chase's hair.

oOo

This is how House and Chase have sex:

Frequently. Inventively. Deliciously.

oOo

This is how House and Chase say they love each other:

House keeps a bowl of M&M's on his desk. No one is allowed to eat them, not even Wilson. House himself doesn't ever seem to venture a hand into the bowl. Yet somehow, they always disappear.

When House finds out that Chase had a brief stint in college as a model for the art department, he does not make fun of him. Much.

It's now almost tradition for Chase to give House half of his sandwich as he walks from one surgery to the next, because House always thanks him later for it.

It's also tradition for House to spread his monthly rumor that Chase has acquired syphilis, or gonorrhea, or AIDS. "To ward off the competition," he tells Chase.

Chase sleeps with headphones hooked up to his phone whenever his shift starts before House goes in (which is rather frequently). He knows that House is somewhat of an insomniac and that if he does finally fall asleep, the slightest noise will wake him again.

And House, in turn, never mentions that the loss of Chase from his bed never fails to wake him anyway.