dr_robchase | (no subject)

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By now, six years and counting, Chase should have been ready for whatever he had to come up against. He should have been expecting the worst and thought -- stupidly, stupidly thought -- that whatever this place had for him, it couldn't be worse than what he'd already lived through. It was bad enough to see both your parents leave you again (whether by death or disappearance), bad enough to have a near-death experience, to constantly lose everyone you ever loved, but the one thing this place had never done was take him back to the harrowing moments he had growing up.

At least, not until today.

He'd been downstairs, in Gwen's old room, trying to figure out whether they could shift the space around. One moment, it was the spare room with its dusty floors and the empty bed. He blinked, only closed his eyes for a second, but when he opened them, he knew that smell. He knew the feeling of being closed in, and he swore he could even smell the faint aroma of gin in the air. Chase felt a sick lurching in his stomach.

"No," he begged, terrified that he was right back to where it all started.

What if, behind this door, his mother was drinking herself into a stupor. What if his father has left for months? What if he finds his baby sister, what if -- what if what if. Chase slams both palms against the door, feeling a stricken with panic as memories filter back and he remembers, all too well, the begging and the shouting and the pleading he did to get out of this room. The books were the same, the leather armchair still had the cigar burn in the arm, and the carpet had that same old musty smell from too many glasses of scotch and gin spilled on it.

"Let me out!" he shouted, his voice catching. "Let me out of here! Let me..." he trails off, a weak and frustrated exhalation of 'Mum, please' on his breath before he slams his palms harder against the locked door, struggling with the antiquated copper knob.

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"It just...it changed while I wasn't looking," he said, trying not to let it bother him so much. He was still on the island, he hadn't managed to find his way into the hellish days of his past. He was okay. He was okay. He couldn't say the same for his family, but he wasn't being made to relive it. "Where's Nate? Is he okay?"

The Doctor suspected there was more to it than that--Chase wasn't that easy to startle into a full-fledged panic. "Nate's fine," he said, looking Chase in the eye, trying to calm him down. "He's over at Jane's, showing Lydia how to make mud pies...Rob, what is this room?"

It smelled of booze, for starters.

Chase crossed his arms around his torso as tightly as they'd go, not sure if that would make him feel better, but it was something. It was better than nothing. "It's my father's study," he said, his tone completely even. "It's where I used to go--"

No, that wasn't it.

"It's where my mother used to put me."

For someone who'd been panicking a moment or two earlier, Chase was almost preternaturally calm, and the Doctor looked at him warily, before realising what exactly he was trying to say.

"Oh dear god," he said. "Here? In our house?"

Chase was fairly sure that he was pale -- even considering the island tan he was sporting. There were some things that could spook the colour right out of him, and bringing his past out in front of him was a surefire way of that. "Right here in the house," he agreed, glumly. "I thought -- for a minute, I thought that I was back there. With her, locking me in here."

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said, quietly. He put his arm around Chase's shoulders, pulling him close. "And now it's here. In the house. It's not like we can get rid of it."

He looked around them--the stunt would have been impressive if it hadn't traumatised Chase.

"It's a room," Chase agreed with a sick feeling in his stomach, considering that they would have to fully remodel the house. The support was gone, the room was there. "I don't want it here, though."

The Doctor squeezed Chase's shoulder, then walked over to appraise the walls. "We'd have to gut it...and you know we do have to keep the books. There's no other way."

Like hell he was getting rid of books.

Chase closed his eyes tightly. The books were actually one of the few decent things in the room, considering they would be helpful for the clinic -- seeing as Rowan Chase had impeccable taste in books, just not in parenting techniques. "This place makes me sick," he spat out.

Walking back over, the Doctor nodded and put his hand back on Chase's arm. "Okay," he said. "We can see if anyone wants most of this stuff, and take the books to the clinic...though we'll probably have to take most of the shelves, too...this is going to be a lot of work, but we can do it."

He had no idea where they were going to get paint. Maybe the TARDIS had some ideas, though they were likely slightly dubious interior design-wise.

Chase hated the idea that this was always going to be under his feet. It was a part of his past that he was so eager to forget, but the island was a nightmare like that. "I want the door replaced and I want the walls painted. I'll do it," he insisted. "But I don't want the remnants of this chapter of my life to be easily visible."

"I'm going to help," the Doctor said, equally as insistent. "I understand. I do. And you're going to need help." What else was a partner for, really, if not something like this? Even if 'this' involved island wankery.

Chase took in a deep breath before he turned his attention to the ceiling, coaxing his emotions to settle before he tried to process the scene in front of him. "You know, I've been here for over six years and it's like this place refuses to let me slide through life until I've faced the bad parts of it. It's like therapy, almost."

The Doctor lifted an eyebrow and moved his hand up Chase's arm to his shoulder. "If by therapy, you mean particularly cruel exposure therapy, then I suppose so. You don't have to stay in here if you don't want to, Rob. We can go sit in the living room. Have some juice."

"The door is open, I'm fine," he insisted, because so long as he could see through the door -- so long as he was able to see that his mother wasn't out there drinking herself to death, then he was fine. "I don't talk much about my sister, I know," he said quietly. "For a minute, though, I thought...well, I thought she'd be here too."

Much meaning essentially never, but the Doctor wasn't going to say that. He nodded, instead. "That...would have been really a bit over the top," he said, just as softly. "Even for the island. Rob...we don't have to stay in here."

It was like Chase was doing it just to convince himself he could.

Chase gave the Doctor a slightly pained look, considering that he didn't want to abandon the home he had made, solely because of one room. "This is where we live," he said stubbornly. "This is where I want Nate to grow up. It's our Treehouse," he insisted. "I just want this to stop. I want to stop being afraid of my shadow."

The Doctor had meant in the room, but he opened his mouth, then shut it. "Maybe you need to go back into therapy?" he suggested, very very gently. "Or talk to someone at least a little."

He'd been putting it off for so long because he thought he could handle it, but in the face of this room and all the rest of the things lurking in his past that could undo him, Chase knew that he couldn't really put it off. "I'll see if Will can fit me in for a couple of sessions," he agreed.

"That sounds like a plan," said the Doctor, who really needed to sit down and have a think. He didn't know if he wanted to sit down in any of the chairs in the room.

Chase took a deep breath as he wound up on the edge of the oak table, staring at the Doctor without blinking. "It shouldn't be you, should it?" He'd like it to be, but that was too many conflicts. "We could talk about it here, unofficially, but I don't want it to provoke fights between us."

"Fights or no fights, I don't think it'd be in your best interests," said the Doctor simply. "I don't have an objective take on it, Rob, I couldn't even muster one up if I had to." He cocked his brows as if certain Chase would see his point.

Chase couldn't help it; he smiled tiredly as he pressed his chin to his shoulder and peered sleepily at the Doctor, careful not to fixate on any one point in the room -- lest he be pulled back into dark memories. "Is that your long-winded way of saying you love me?" he asked.

"I thought I said I love you by saying I love you," pointed out the Doctor idly, before he snorted a brief laugh through his nose. "But yeah, maybe. You look like you're about to pass out, Rob, did you need to have a sit?"

"I don't know, I like it both ways," he replied, pushing himself up from the table so he could wander closer to the Doctor, cupping the back of his neck lightly, pressing his forehead down against the Doctor's. "I feel sick," he admitted. "It's like I can't escape from the memory of myself locked in here with my mother just outside, ruining her life."

And his own along with his sister's.