The case was hell. It clawed at all of them. But they saved the patient, somehow. No one felt like going home, so they ended up at House’s place—again. Half the team already knew where the glasses were. The other half didn’t care anymore.

Chase was lying with his legs over the arm of the couch. Foreman stood with his back to the wall, sipping from a tumbler. Wilson had rolled up his sleeves and was perched on the arm of House’s recliner, and you sat cross-legged on the floor near the window, eyes half-lidded from exhaustion.

House walked in from the kitchen holding a bottle of scotch and four clean(ish) glasses. The amber liquid sloshed gently as he set it down, the sound of glass on wood cutting through the tired silence.

“No fifth glass?” you asked, your voice carrying the weariness of someone who's been making life-or-death decisions for the past 36 hours.

House dropped the bottle on the table with a clink. “You don’t look like you need any more help making bad decisions.” His tone was typical House-sarcastic, but there was an undercurrent of concern you'd learned to detect over time.

That earned him a lazy smile from you and a snort from Wilson, who was already on his second drink.

“You know,” Chase said after a moment, breaking the comfortable silence that had settled over the room, “we’re not good at this.”

“This?” Foreman asked, his eyebrow quirked in that skeptical way that had become his trademark.

“Relaxing. Existing without chaos. Being... human.” Chase's voice held a vulnerability rarely heard from him during hospital hours.