tampered | Log: Ongoing

Log: Ongoing

When: Wednesday evening, 9/12
Rating: anticipating R for sex work discussion
Characters: Asher

ivory_gold and House

vicodincrutch
Summary: "Pre-employment physical" for a moody vampire done by a misanthropic genius. This can only end well.
Log:

Asher stopped at the door to Dr. House's office in the Palace and ran his fingers through long hair the color of true metallic gold and sighed unconsciously. As the hair fell back, without thinking, he tipped his head to let that golden fall slide to cover the scarred right side of his face, letting only the unmarred perfection of the left side of his face show.

A physical.

A physical?

He was centuries old and was having a physical because he was admitting that there were things he could not get other ways. At least not without lies between himself and whoever he was with. Money made this whole transaction so much more honest.

Jean-Claude...

Was not there. Was gone. Might never be back.

Enough. Maudlin musings were for home. Not business.

He steeled himself, dropping an emotionless mask over the half-perfection of his face, and entered the physician's office.

He had fed. He was warm. He had a pulse. His heart beat in his chest. Let this doctor show him how skillful he was.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Dr. House's first appointment was much earlier that day. He had to get out of bed and across the city for it, a pretty face made it a tad more bearable. However, night had fallen and he grew increasingly restless. A medical ward was quite usually a bustling, obnoxiously busy place. However this was no hospital. Quite and still.

Like a pendulum, he idly swung the simple wooden cane between his thumb and fore finger. At last the door opened.

"Fabio?" No, Nicholas Brocklehurst had said the patient's name was Asher but still the very first thing that popped into the doctors mind with unearthly well cared for hair at his length for a man was the male model.

"Asher," the vampire corrected, having no idea that the Fabio was a male model reference. He didn't keep up with modern culture.

He looked the man over, ignoring the faint predatory judgment that this man would be so easy to take.

"I believe you are expecting me."

"Right. I'm Doctor Greg House. Take off your jacket, have a seat and stay a while." Dr. House himself sat down, hooking the curved handle of his cane on a counter. "Get ready to answer personal questions, but I don't think that personal is an issue with you, hm?"

Greg could feel the particular weight of the other man's gaze. It settled on him and gave density to the air.

Asher removed his dark maroon suit coat, leaving himself in a silk shirt in a shade of pink that said he was absolutely secure in his masculinity. The entire time he moved, he kept his face tilted to catch the shadows or turned or covered by hair to keep the burn scars that marred his face from being exposed.

He did it without conscious art, although he had had centuries to practice that careful use of light and shadow and camouflage.

"That will depend, Dr. House, on your questions, and upon you," he responded and remained standing over the seated doctor.

He was behaving himself so far. No vampire tricks. No power used. Just himself - as ordinary as a centuries old vampire with eyes the startling pale blue of a husky's and hair of a color even hair dye could not achieve could ever be.

House had seen enough facial deformity, kudos to med school training, to recognize that something was hidden in plain sight. He'd been staring at the man for a few moments and realized that he had not seen his full face. A head tilt and quirk of an eyebrow didn't change anything. "Whatever you're doing, stop it. If there's something wrong with you, what's the point of hiding it?" Vanity? Courtesy? Shyness? Dr. House didn't really care either way.

He pulled a clipboard off from the counter top and grabbed a pen from his shirt breast pocket. "Questions are questions. Speak truthfully."

Of course. This doctor would probably want to see him without the shirt as well. After all, this was a "professional" exam.

Asher turned to fully face the doctor, swinging his head to toss his hair back over his shoulder and expose the right side of his face.

"Ask your questions."

Direct. "Name and age. Medications you are on and any allergies you have." That did look particularly unpleasant against the rest of his face. House still felt that Fabio was appropriate, at least to himself.

His pen clicked, poised to jot down notes. First being. Burn victim?

"Asher." He waved a hand dismissively, covering his discomfort at exposing himself for the man's frank scrutiny with casual flippancy. "Once you pass three hundred, who keeps count?"

Asher earned a snort. "You don't look a day over two hundred and eighteen. Do I have the pleasure of speaking to a tooth fairy, demigod or the immortal spirit of every woman's dreamboat?"

I guess that means no allergies of any sort.

Other than to sunlight and holy objects?

Asher shook his head and allowed his hair to fall to shield his face once more. "I am a vampire. Mr. Brocklehurst did not bother to inform you?"

"Blood deficiency disorder, we should check for anemia, and it drives you to consume blood? Is that right?" Asher had the misfortune becoming the first vampire that Dr. House would meet of many within the City. "Have you been tested for HIV or AIDS?"

"It is not such a human thing," Asher said emotionlessly. "I am not human. And I cannot contract human diseases, nor can I transmit them."

"For the flawed, human being doctor you are another patient who will be treated like all the other patients," House answered over his shoulder as he wheeled the chair to a drawer retrieving a few syringes for later. "Take off your shirt."

Anyone who didn't know Asher wouldn't be able to see the tension in his movements as he unbuttoned his shirt and neatly draped it with his coat. He kept his left profile to the doctor, concealing the scars that poured down the left side of his chest and disappeared under the waistband of his trousers.

"I suppose you will take my pulse? Listen to my heart?" The faint mocking tone in his voice carried a taste of his magic, a physical touch to go with the sound.

House slipped on rubber gloves, one and then the other. "Friendly time." If this man wasn't a vampire he was an illusionist of sorts. Greg wheeled closer.

"No, I just wanted to see you shirtless so I can die happy." Armed with a stethoscope, he didn't even bother to warm it with his breath or shoulder before pressing it to the center of Asher's sternum.

Asher didn't react to the cold metal pressed to his chest, but this man continued to treat him as though he were human.

And his words about dying happy had dug into old wounds. Once, people had said such things and meant it.

He went still under the metal. Still as the grave. As though there were no one there at all. His heart slowed and stopped. His breathing stopped. There was the body, but it did not give out that sense of "Living thing here," that any human would in the same moment.

Through the stethoscope, Doctor House could hear the alteration. Asher's slowing rhythm of heartbeats and unnaturally easy stop of breathing brought a rare look of surprise and a hint of wonder. "Nice trick. But can you talk while doing it? I don't think so, the vocal chords need air to pass through." The longer Asher sat, the more his body temperature would fluctuate.

Asher was suddenly there in his body, though his heart did not start beating again. His lips twisted in a wry movement that was likely a smile.

"I can speak. I did not exhale all the air from my lungs." He drew in more air. "But I must inhale once it is gone."

"Are you light sensitive?" Stethoscope moves to the opposite side of his chest. Uneven ripples of flesh betray Asher's attempts to hide scars.

"You know eventually what I'm going to ask. Stop hiding."

"I would burn and die in the sun. I die every day at dawn and wake at sundown."

His voice was tightly controlled, but a trickle of power rode the words, a sandpaper rasp over skin.

"And the scars," he looked down at his chest and the runnels of scar tissue that ran down the right side of his body, "are from holy water. Yes, crosses burn me in the hand of a true believer, and yes I live on the blood of humans."

"No beach for you. No skin cancer for that matter, which could go along with your immunities talk." Dr. House suspended his belief surprisingly well. The blood would tell. The patients lie, but not the blood. He'd have something to play with until there were more patients.

"I was thinking chemical burn. Skin graphing is not an option at this point. I'm sorry."

"I expected no remedy for scars that are centuries old," Asher replied, and this time there was no power in his voice, just emptiness.

"And since it no doubt matters to you, they do not affect my 'performance.'"

Still, the lack of revulsion or pity was soothing.

"An alternative would save you from being your own cinematographer, thinking realistically is always a good thing though."

Dr. House wheeled again away from Asher to a counter on the opposite side of the small room. "I want a skin sample. Nothing too much. I don't get how you can stay animated while 'dead' and how tissue can remain intact without decomposition."

"Magic," Asher said simply. He was no scientist and not from an age where people questioned such things as a matter of science.

How else would those zealots have thought that holy water was a good idea for trying to chase the "demon" from him?

"What will you do with your samples when you are finished with them?"

"I might need to sample that too." House couldn't help the dripping sarcasm. Magic was never an answer, at least not where he was from.

"When I'm done I'm going to use them to flavor my coffee. What's it to you? You've got more."

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