draping the joint

i can't believe i wrote half of this at work and then closed the app on my tablet as i was attempting to transfer it to my computer. even tried accessing tmp dir to fix it. so now rosie will learn to kill some darlings. this never happens to meeeeee

Lucas Douglas keeps a faraway look in his eye the way some people keep a rabbit's foot in their pocket. Or chapstick.

He's not dumb, nor particularly inept, socially. He's a normal guy with some above-average intelligence developed in the area where he chose to concentrate his efforts. Like an athlete with an unexpected set of buffed-up muscle groups - you use it when you use it, and when you don't, you don't have to look like an Olympic archer, curler, table tennis player just walking down the street.

So where House might have been said to be constantly dialed-in, to something specific somewhere if not the person directly in front of him, Lucas is dialed-out. Part of his charm. He's never too intense - except when he wants to be.

It's why he became a PI. Why he didn't claw his way out when he fell into it. The detachment keeps him from being a total psycho-killer creep that such a profession, sans the procedural noir costume, necessitates that you be.

Detachment: information in, information out. He used to memorize license plates, offhand, and when one or another of his coworkers would raise a chary brow at the idea that one puce Toyota Avalon is not identical to the next, and the next, he'd defend that the numbers just stick in his head. "Do you know your own tag?" he'd wonder, shrugging, then rattle off his own. They'd frown appraisingly, bottom lip pulling its weight, since they invariably confessed to not knowing any such thing, and agree that he, just like them, harbored no illicit intentions toward tailing any of their colleagues to this bar or that.

Not a puzzle. Not a game, either. A sport, and one that he was good at. The occasional disguise or prop was equipment he used, not tools he honed. The same with careful skewing of skeevy observations into genuine, insightful compliments: not tricks, not gimmicks, but practiced skill at handling the human publipsyche.

Losing Cuddy followed form, too. One night he had her. The next, she disappeared like the dust on her bloody scrubs, even though the ashen pallor remained.

There would be other titillating single moms. Other babies who'd play nice with the goofy plaid-clad guy, all careless five o'clock shadow and beady green eyes. There would be other complex, successful women with stunning smiles and stunninger hearts, chests, legs. He tailed their husbands every day.

In other words, he wasn't half jealous or heartbroken enough to try to stalk House where he stood. They could switch places, instead. One last swing for the fences, to know everything miserable and all the sins a ginger ale failed to cover.

When it comes to matters of public record, Lucas dabbles with an expert hand. He's in and out of government PHP like House swims through sick people's kidneys.

One such matter: Lucas Douglas's application for a marriage license alongside one Lisa Cuddy.

Another: Gregory House's contemptuous attendance and expert testimony in immigration court for the hearing of the matrilineal citizenship of one Juan Alvarez.

Mr. Alvarez's residency history - the real one, the one with street names - lists his most recent address as 221B Baker Street. And Lucas, proud founding member of the Discount Wilson Club, had never overstayed his welcome long enough to spin out actual cohabitation. He hadn't needed to, of course. Hadn't even wanted to. More fun, better stretch, if he didn't.

(Also, it's weird if you take the place of your mark like that. Sort of like mutually comforting the visitors to your patients.)

So either Alvarez needed to stay, or House wanted him to. In his house. In his world. In his life. Or Alvarez made it up, and House corroborated. Somehow. Court transcript notes Alvarez mouthing to House, "I hate you. I'm not talking to you."

(No it doesn't. But statements like that could go either way, without physical evidence, without context clues. House has hated and stoned out his assorted intimates many a time. And everybody breathing hates him, on one day or another.)

What can you do once you get your homegrown green card? Well, for one thing, fly back to PR. Or anywhere else you might like to go. Anywhere other than Princeton, New Jersey.

Date of birth's right there. Lucas has House's landline already. Put some numbers together, you get what there is to be got.

(On that note - he's younger than House, even younger than Lucas. He's probably got no job. If he was still there, Cuddy would know about it, and so would Lucas. She doesn't step around stuff like that, not like he does.)

He calls around to all the major airlines, dutifully providing the requested checkpoint details that let him listen to reservation confirmations in the automated system (he's not playing the impersonation game, not yet). United, American, Southwest, Delta, Frontier, even Spirit and JetBlue.

(In House's name...?)

And there it is. Two weeks out, on a Tuesday. Departure from Newark Liberty at 5:55 AM, one stop in Atlanta. Destination, Phoenix Sky Harbor.

Someone else had left House for Arizona, once. Sort of recently. But she hadn't lived with him. That had been the problem. She couldn't.

So he knows this, now, about House. That House had had a crazy down-on-his-luck roommate, helped him out, and sent him packing. Not too surprising. Maybe going to rehab makes you into a bit of a fixer, if all that googly-moogly works on you.

Maybe that's where he got him from. Maybe that's why there's no permanent address listed for several years prior, since the Bronx. Just a couple of sublets, random crashes for months at a time. House's mailing address had changed to Wilson's condo once they got done with the PO box con, but his I-9 and W-4 stayed with the piano and the guitars.

It's so easy, so satisfying. All the pins falling, perfect darts in all the right places. And the best part is, he's not surprised. The reason people hire private investigators is that they suspect something, and they want it proven, or they lost something and they need it found.

They don't hire private investigators to find the impossible, the wildly improbable, the stuff of lunatics' dreams. They hire them to piece together the world's zig-zag puzzle. House has a few dovetails, just like everybody else. More than his fair share, actually.

Just a rep to keep the muscles loose, Lucas tells himself. Just information in for information out.

But now that he knows that Juan Alvarez exists, and that he's not leaving for another couple weeks, it's hard to stay detached.

That's a real person. A real guy with some real problems. And House helped him - not in the hospital, or in the other hospital. In real life.

Lucas can't help but want to find this guy.

so the ship is a lie but i don't feel like writing the consequent part. on account of grumpy