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Foreman’s had a few rum and cokes, and now he’s flirting with the bartender. He’s had a few rum and cokes because Chase bought them for him. Foreman had taken that homeless woman’s death from rabies pretty hard.
The bartender’s a tall, tough chick: tattoos down both arms, eyeliner thick, hair dyed black and chopped off at chin length. She’s got a spike necklace, and Chase is surprised because she doesn’t seem like Foreman’s type. And then he realizes he has no idea what is Foreman’s type. But if he had to guess, it’d be women in pantsuits and tight buns.
The bartender seems to be humoring Foreman, so he leans in closer, lowers his voice, taps his fingers on the wooden bar surface absentmindedly. Chase watches this scene with delight, and then, suddenly, recognition.
Six months ago, Eric Foreman arrived at House’s office for his first day of work. He’d entered the outer office, where Chase was lounging with a newspaper on his lap and his feet up on the glass table. Foreman had bent his head down to Chase’s ear, tapped his hand on the glass, and said, “Crossword, huh?”
Chase had also bought himself a few rum and cokes, so when Foreman finally returns to the table with a smile and two more drinks, Chase says, “So.” He waves his arms around in the air, unsure what to do with his hands. “So your first day at PPTH, when we first met. Were you flirting with me?”
Foreman’s smile disappears, and he stares at Chase, serious and unamused, as if he doesn’t have five drinks sloshing around in his system right now.
“No.”
Chase points a wild finger at Foreman. “Own up, Foreman. Actions have consequences.”
Foreman raises an eyebrow. “And what would those consequences be?”
“The fact that I get to tease you about this for the rest of your life.” Oh, he’s drunk. He can feel it.
“Fine,” Foreman says, crossing his arms. “I was flirting.”
Six months ago, Eric Foreman had stood close enough to Chase that he could feel the warmth through his lab coat and said in a breathy whisper, “Seventeen down is Toxocariasis.”
Chase is so surprised that he actually got Foreman to admit it that he doesn’t even think about his next words. “Why?” he blurts out.
“Maybe I got a thing for blonds.” Foreman says, taking a sip from his drink and smirking at Chase, and Chase just stares. For a moment, the man across from him looks and sounds so different from the Foreman he knows and loves—well, not loves, that’s just the saying, you know—and he’s half convinced he’s dreaming.
“Well… why’d you stop?” He’s so, so drunk.
Foreman’s mouth reverts to its default scowl. “Then I got to know you.” Ah, there he is.
They watch idly through the glass as Wilson berates House about something or another in his office.
“You think House ever fucked Wilson?” Chase asks conversationally.
Foreman gives him a long look. “Are you just asking me this because you found out I was bisexual?”
“Yes,” Chase says. “Also you’re the only other one in the room.”
Shrugging, Foreman says, “I have horrible gaydar.”
“I didn’t ask you if they were gay, I asked you if they fucked.”
Foreman gives Chase another long, possibly amused, look, then turns to stare at House and Wilson in the next room.
“No, I don’t think so,” he says eventually and leans back in his chair. “But I bet Wilson has fucked House.”
“Oh, right. Gay sex. Works two ways. I forgot.” Chase isn’t drunk, obviously not at work, but his mouth starts moving of its own accord. “Um, I’m not. Gay. By the way.”
“You don’t say,” Foreman replies, voice dry as Texas in August. He has the tired facial expression of a man trying very, very hard not to roll his eyes.
“I just thought I should let you know. Since you have horrible gaydar and all.”
“How considerate of you.”
Chase bites his lip, thinks very carefully of what to say next.
“You think House ever fucked Cameron?”
“Pfft. We’d know by now if they fucked.”
“True. Cameron would bring in home baked cookies for House every day, and House would make really crude comments about her naked body in front of all of us.”
Foreman laughs out loud.
Chase has never really looked twice at guys. There’d never been any need; women were always falling over themselves to date him.
The next time they’re out for drinks without Cameron, Foreman keeps staring at Chase over the top of his beer.
“Why’re you staring at me?” Chase asks eventually.
Foreman grimaces, as though his next words will physically pain him. “I wanted to say…” He opens and closes his mouth a few times. “I wanted to say you made a good catch today. On the weight gain as a symptom thing.”
“Thanks,” Chase says. Then, “Why do you hate me?” He has somehow decided that when just the two of them go drinking together, it’s Honesty Hour. Or perhaps his state of inebriation decided that.
“I don’t. Hate you,” Foreman replies, professional as always (except for that one time he’d flirted with Chase of all people).
“Come on, Foreman, just let it all out. It’s not good to keep things bottled up. Honesty is the best policy. Everything you hate about me. Go.”
“Well, for one, all the cliches you just used in that sentence.” Foreman picks at the paper label on his bottle. “You know, by now, how harsh I can be.”
“We work with House. I think I can take it.”
Foreman shrugs. “Alright, you asked. You’re a privileged rich boy who has no idea how the real world works. Yeah, I know your dad left and your mom drank and that sucks, but look, he still sent you checks in the mail every month, he still paid for your medical school, he still got you this job. Speaking of this job, you have one of the most desired jobs in all of healthcare, and you don’t give a shit. And you didn’t even earn it. You work half as hard as me and Cameron.
“You’re only good to people when it serves you. If it doesn’t, you don’t care. Like that girl today, man. She was seriously ill, and all you could talk about was how fat she was. Didn’t matter what she said, what the mom said, all you saw was a fat girl who didn’t deserve your attention. Why? What do you have against fat people? What, were you bullied by a fat kid when you were little?”
Well, when Foreman says it like that, in his sardonic tone, it sounds stupid. Foreman has that beautiful and unmistakable talent for making things that previously seemed okay sound stupid.
“Maybe.”
Foreman barks out a sour laugh. “Wow. Wow.” He shakes his head. “Wow, Chase.”
They sit in silence for five minutes.
“You’re right,” Chase says, eventually. “That was pretty harsh.”
Foreman exhales deeply, leans further back into his chair. “I did warn you,” he says, and then, in a fit of sympathy or perhaps awkwardness, “Okay, your turn. Why do you hate me?”
Wrinkling his eyebrows, Chase replies, “I don’t hate you.”
Foreman purses his lips, and focuses his eyes on the table. He looks surprised.
They’re at the hospital late, testing the patient’s blood for all sorts of exotic parasites, when House finally drags them to the patient’s room around eleven to solve the whole case in an overly dramatic manner.
It’s a Friday night, but Chase is exhausted and ready to go home. Then on the way to the parking lot, Foreman raises an eyebrow and says, “Buy you a martini?”
Chase wants to say yes, but first he has to satisfy his curiosity. “Why do you keep hanging out with me if you hate me so much?”
Foreman tilts his head at Chase. “Do I seem like the kind of guy who has a lot of drinking buddies?”
Chase sighs and looks up from his PCR plate, tired and bored. In the silence of the lab, he leans back and stretches his sore spine. “So,” he says, “black and bisexual. That’s gotta be tough.”
Foreman peers at Chase over the computer. “What are you doing.”
“I’m just trying to make conversation,” Chase says innocently.
“Well, you suck at it,” Foreman replies. He, too, leans back and stretches, clearly tired, as well. “The black part’s harder.”
“I’ll have to take your word for it.”
Foreman makes some sort of sound that’s half laugh, half scoff. “Yeah, I guess you will.”
“You ever think about just being the straight part of bisexual?” Chase asks, even though he’s like 70% sure Foreman’s gonna get offended. “Make your life easier?”
Foreman looks thoughtful, instead. “Sometimes. But that’s not the way I do things.”
“What’s up with you and Foreman?” Cameron asks him once she’s been hired back and they’re both sitting behind the MRI desk. Odd, she rarely gossips and when she does, it's usually about House.
“Nothing,” Chase says, watching the scan. He pauses for a moment and then turns to her. “Why?”
“You two haven’t been making eye contact for the past three days.”
Hm. Chase chews on his pen cap. He hadn’t even noticed.
“I think,” Chase says, “I think maybe he stopped hating me.”
After spending numerous late nights with Foreman at the bar and at the hospital, Chase has figured Foreman out. Here’s the thing about Foreman—well, actually, here are the two things about Foreman:
1. He’s an asshole.
2. He tries.
At heart, Foreman is a giant asshole. Even more than Chase. Maybe even more than House.
He also tries. He tries really hard to be a good doctor. To be as good as House. To be better. He tries really hard to be professional. To be mature in the workplace (except for that time he’d flirted with Chase, and Chase can’t get it out of his mind). But most of all, he tries really, really hard not to be an asshole. And he succeeds most of the time, some of the time. He’s better at it with patients, worse at it with his fellow doctors. (Understandable. It’s hard to avoid being an asshole in House’s presence.)
And he’s worst at it with Chase. He’d barely needed any prodding before he started listing all of Chase’s worst faults. And yet, Chase still likes Foreman. Weird, huh?
“What the fuck are you doing?” Foreman asks, when Chase crowds Foreman into an unoccupied janitor’s closet at work.
“This,” Chase says and kisses him.
As it turns out, kissing guys isn’t all that different from kissing girls. Foreman has really soft lips, and he tastes like spearmint. Chase is enjoying himself. Robert Chase is kissing Eric Foreman in a janitor’s closet, and he is really enjoying himself. Wow.
Foreman cuts the enjoyment short. He pulls away, steps back, runs a hand over his head. He looks so delightfully flustered in a way that Chase has never seen before.
“Look, I thought you weren’t into guys?”
Chase bites his lip. “I wasn’t,” he admits. “But, you know, I’ve been thinking, how hard can it be?” He pauses. “Pun intended,” he adds.
“You’re so…” Foreman shakes his head with what could almost be described as fondness. “I hate you so much.”
“I know.” He smirks. “But remember, you started this.”
“… I did. God help me.” He grabs Chase by the shoulders, serious now. “You like me enough to change your whole sexuality? Really?” he says with skepticism.
“Yeah,” Chase shrugs. He steps closer to Foreman, puts a hand on the other man’s thigh, near the crotch. There’s a dick in there, he thinks in the back of his mind. No matter, he can handle that. He’s got one of his own, after all.
“Why?”
“I think I’ve got a thing for assholes.”
“Okay, I know you haven’t been queer for very long, but that’s not how we talk.”
“Oh, for f—I didn’t mean that. I meant, like, jerks. Mean people.”
Foreman fixes him with a dry look. “You like me because I’m mean,” he says in disbelief.
“And nice.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Will you just shut up and let me blow you?”
Foreman puts his hands up. “I’m not gonna argue with that.”
“Chase and Foreman are now gay lovers,” House immediately announces to the office (basically, just Cameron) the next Monday, when the two of them walk into work together.
“What?” Cameron says.
“House!” Foreman says.
“It caught me off guard, to be honest,” House continues regardless. He points his cane at Foreman, “Now, I knew you were bisexual, but you…” He points to Chase. “Aren’t you a bit old to be having a sexual awakening?”
Chase watches all eyes in the room turn to him. House looks gleeful, Cameron looks baffled, and Foreman looks extremely unimpressed. And Chase feels... okay.
“It’s never too late,” Chase hears himself saying.
At this, House does the last thing he expects, which is: he turns around, walks through both offices onto the shared balcony, and shouts, “You hear that, Wilson? Chase says it’s never too late to have a sexual awakening!”
“… Sounds like House just gave you his blessing,” Cameron says, as Foreman slowly uncrosses his arms.
“House, I’m with a patient!” they can hear Wilson shout.