With no alcohol in his system, House enters at the bar and thinks to himself that going out for drinks with the ducklings after work was both a very good and very bad idea. He thinks it’s a very bad idea, of course, because he doesn’t want to instill some false sense of bonding and camaraderie amongst them; he tries to make it clear that he’s only in it for the booze and the escape from Cuddy, but he can see the way Cameron’s looking at him, thinking it’s one small step for House, one giant leap for his mental recovery from the sins of the past. He’s tempted – oh, so very tempted – to tell her off, but then he remembers being at the bar is a good thing because it keeps his mind off other events, so he slides into the booth next to Chase and across from Cameron and orders himself a glass of Wild Turkey, straight-up.
===
With one drink in his system, House wants nothing more that to head home, take a Vicodin, and sprawl out on the couch, the warm fuzziness overtaking his veins and lulling him into a narcotic, dreamless sleep. Foreman is telling some stupid story about his days in California and the other two are laughing, but he finds his lips unable to smile. He taps his cane against the floor as he listens and thinks of leather upholstery and strong pain killers, but then Chase jostles him and he sends the younger man a dirty look. They’re requesting a story from him now, a story about his previous fellows, and he considers the question. He’s tempted to say no, to get up and leave the booth, but that would be admitting defeat. That would be admitting that something was wrong… Well, something more than wanting to spend time with the three of them, at any rate. So he orders a second drink and starts to spin a tale about the name Lacey Jones – an unfortunate fellow with an unfortunate name – managed to get lost and end up locked in the basement sleep lab for three hours.
===
With two drinks in his system, House feels fine, loose and relaxed and free to say a number of things he wouldn’t say anyway. His words drift first to his previous ducklings – since isn’t that what they wanted to hear about, their predecessors? – but before he knows it he’s telling them about Wilson’s wives, one after the other. About how Amy’s nose looked exactly like a duck bill and it’d been that that had eventually inspired him to call his fellows ducklings, anyway; he’d threatened to call any little Wilsons that came out of the pairing “ducklings,” and Wilson had retorted years later that if anyone had ducklings, it was him. And then, about how Sarah’s socks never matched and Wilson always pretended not to notice, but that it bothered him – of course it bothered him – and that House had fed the fire by giving Sarah socks for Hanukkah during both of the holiday seasons that marriage had lasted. And, finally, about how Wilson was home with Julie right now, trying to make amends and fix broken bonds, about how he didn’t actually want to be divorced for a third time if he could avoid it.
Cameron looks at him sympathetically and Foreman stares at his napkin, and by the time he’s ordered his third it’s only him and Chase left in the booth, sharing the side of the booth, sharing silence and very little else.
===
With three drinks in his system, all of the House rules have changed and he’s pressing Chase hard against the wall of the handicapped stall, one hand in that pretty blond hair while the other is making short work of an ugly, mismatched brown belt. Chase’s mouth tastes like soapy, sour beer – Fosters’, Australian for urine? – and he’s clumsy with his tongue, but House doesn’t much care. He doesn’t much care what’s going on around them, or that the bar had been slowly closing when they stumbled in here.
For what Chase lacks in tongue-finesse he makes up for in urgency, and he grabs House’s lower lip between his teeth, a rough tug and then a suckle, and House takes no time in shoving his hand into Chase’s pants and boxers. Chase hisses and releases him, leaning his head against the back of the stall and bucking slightly forward, and dammit, House knows his leg and wrist are going to hurt in the morning from this.
“Pretending I’m someone else?” Chase breathes after a moment, and House would frown or curse were he not this drunk and allows Chase to move them around, to press House back against the wall hard enough to shake the green-painted metal. The lights are dim and it’s a pretty dingy dive of a bathroom, but House finds it hard to criticize when he’s got that clumsy tongue flicking his earlobe and then traveling down his jawline, catching the stubbled skin in nips and bites before finding a small patch to suck on. He twists his hand, keeps it in those silky boxers and tight jeans, and Chase groans against his skin. It’s probably one of the hottest things House has heard in a while – sad, celibate lifestyle when he’s not fucking his best friend, and all that – and pulls harder on the half-hard, hot cock in his hand. Chase grunts and pushes against him, and House’s hand is forced against the strained erection in his pants, an uncomfortable and yet somehow very erotic pressure.
“Who gives a fuck?” he answers the question he can barely remember Chase asking, and Chase’s hands skim down his sides before working on his pants. House has never been so happy that he’s skipped a belt. “You could be Cameron, for all I care.”
“You’re not that horny.” It’s bait, and a tease, and House proves his point by untangling his fingers from Chase’s hair and reaching down to squeeze his ass. It’s a surprisingly firm, surprisingly perfect ass, a marvel of the ass world, and he finds himself squeezing it to the rhythm of the lips on his throat. And then, the lips are gone and Chase has his pants undone and is forcing him backwards until he stumbles into and then sits clumsily on the toilet.
He smirks. “Kinky, choir boy.” Chase shoots him a dirty look and sinks to his knees on the soiled tile, his face flushed in the flickering fluorescents and his fly open. Wide open, House realizes, but then his is, too, and before he can do anything about it Chase reaches into his boxers and pulls out his penis, the head of which is already threatening to glisten. Chase looks surprised, and he reaches up to pinch a round cheek. “What you see is what you get.”
“Asshole,” Chase mutters, and House would have twisted it into a come-on were Chase not leaning forward, now, and running that coordination-less tongue along his length, from tip to head and then back again, flicking the dark vein on the underside and barely – just barely – teasing his balls. He grunts and moves a hand to grip Chase’s head, trying to pull him closer, but Chase clucks his tongue. “For once, you’re not giving orders.”
“Must be the dom in you,” House returns, and forms a fist in that pretty blond hair. It’s softer than Wilson’s, and longer, and he idly wonders what Wilson would look like with hair like that, shaggy like some sort of long-haired puppy. And lapping at him with a puppy’s tongue, he thinks, but then he’s not thinking because there’s lips enveloping his head – just his head – and thoughts aren’t important.
He watches Chase through half-hooded eyes – watches Chase with his eyes closed and mouth full of warm, red penis, watches as one of Chase’s hands splay against the dirty tile while the other, oh-so-devilish hand moves down and into his own pants, pulling out and then stroking his own hard cock. House can barely see it, the shadows playing against the hardened flesh, but he admires it anyway. He wonders what it’d feel like in his ass, or in his mouth, but he can only wonder for so long because Chase begins to suck in earnest, and could very well be a Dyson vacuum cleaner, the way he doesn’t lose suction.
House can’t watch anymore, so he leans back against the cold ceramic of the cheap toilet and just feels, feels his hand in that soft hair and that devilish mouth around his cock. He hears Chase’s breathing, heavy and labored through his nose, and every time it hitches from his own ministrations House thinks he just might lose himself. Especially as the hitching is replaced by a low moan that rumbles in the back of Chase’s throat and sends vibrations up House’s cock and straight to the pleasure center of his brain, and dammit if he’s not going to overload every synapse in his body.
He holds off, holds back, and then he can’t any longer, and his mind is filled with a million short thoughts – thoughts of Cameron on their date, Foreman’s shoes, Amy, Sarah, Julie, and, of course, James Wilson, Cuddy’s tennis racket and Stacy’s necklace – and he groans out nothing and everything as he comes into Chase’s waiting mouth, the muscular contractions of Chase’s swallowing causing him to shudder, and his brain to dull into blissful, sated uselessness.
He’s only vaguely aware of Chase growling out his name – a guttural “House” that sounded more like a curse than anything else – and then a long sigh, an almost religious-sounding moment of enlightenment from the floor.
He’s unsteady on his feet when he does stand and hardly can remember how to redo his pants, and Chase helps him up and hands him his cane. “You’re way too drunk to drive home,” he scolds, and straightens his now-mussed hair in the mirror. “I’ll drive you.”
“Always the good samaritan,” he quips in response, and when Chase frowns at him, he wonders just how many bad church jokes he’s made since he lost count at six during his second Wild Turkey.
===
With three drinks metabolizing in his system, House sprawls on his couch and holds his Vicodin bottle, listening to the rattle of the pills against plastic as he turns it upside down and then upright again, watching the white shapes move behind their copper shield. He considers making a phone call to someone who will listen, but Wilson begged him not to call, not to bother him while he’s trying to fix this. Cameron would be too sympathetic and too willing to listen, Foreman wouldn’t care, and Chase… He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do with Chase.
His stomach feels soupy and his eyelids are heavy, so he sets the pill bottle down on the coffee table and lulls his head back against the arm of the couch. Going out with the ducklings had been a very good thing, because at least he wasn’t resorting to mixing meds and alcohol, or driving recklessly through the countryside in his Corvette. But at the same time, going out with the ducklings had been very bad and, as he drifts off to sleep, he thinks of Chase’s pretty hair, Wilson’s pretty wives, and take-out Chinese containers filled with duck soup.
