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In for a penny, Chase thinks, and goes in for the hug.
House is rigid to an almost painful degree. Chase wonders for a moment if he had been like this when Cameron kissed him—stiff, shoulders drawn up, chin tilted—or if the caustic edges had softened into something more agreeable.
House, agreeable. There's a joke.
It doesn't matter. He has to stretch his arm up to reach his shoulder as he presses their bodies together. House is warm and alive and solid against him. In a few months, he won’t be. Chase’s breath catches in his throat.
“How’s the kid’s treatment going,” House asks, pretend-light and clearly uncomfortable. Chase can feel his voice rumbling against his chest.
He can’t speak. His eyes are stinging, he realizes. A tear drips down into his mouth, salty and wet, and then another and another. His fingers twitch against the fabric of House’s jacket. House’s face twists just a little bit, enough that Chase can feel the prickle of his beard against his cheek.
“Are you crying?” he asks.
No gets stuck in his throat. Chase finds himself unraveling, as if the rug has suddenly been pulled from beneath his feet. He opens his mouth and catches the tail end of a whine between his teeth.
House startles at the noise. Chase feels himself flush, humiliated, but he can barely tell it apart from the heat of the tears on his face.
Panic rears its ugly head. It surprises him—it’s as if the news of House’s cancer have kicked over the small piece propping up a precarious dam holding back all his daddy-slash-older-employer issues.
“Should we be worried about you killing another kid?” House makes a humming noise. “Probably cheaper to take you off rotation for a month than deal with another lawsuit. Cuddy will agree.”
“Screw you,” Chase says. He tries to put some steel into it, but his voice sounds pathetic.
“Sucking up only gets you far if the suckee is alive, you know.” House sounds curious. Chase tries and fails not to be furious.
“God, you’re an asshole.” His breathing hitches again, mortifyingly. He’s started to drip tears on House’s shoulder.
“Another quarter for the blasphemy jar.” House isn’t pushing Chase away, some hidden background process in the back of his brain pipes up. His hands are still hanging limp by his sides, and it’s like hugging a piece of dry driftwood, but Chase can’t let go. He tries to get his breathing back in check. “You’re doing a lot of crying over an asshole. You’ll put Cameron out of a job.” He turns his head at the end of the sentence and his warm breath tickles the shell of Chase’s ear. He shivers, then scoffs.
And then, impossibly, House puts a hand on his back.
Chase feels it like a brand on his skin. House’s hand is wide and long-fingered, splayed right over his spine from T5 to T8.
It knocks something loose in him. He shoves his face into House’s shoulder almost violently. House, to his credit, allows this for exactly five seconds before sighing and saying, “Alright, enough of that. Places to see, dying people to treat. Chop-chop.”
“You weren’t ever going to tell us, were you,” he mumbles into House’s jacket. The lateness of the hour gives an eerie, intimate feeling to the entire thing.
“So you could throw me a preemptive funeral, or worse, do this? No, thanks.”
He smells good, Chase’s hindbrain offers. Stale deodorant and old fabric softener and a bit of sweat. A spark of warmth mixes with the roiling nausea in his gut.
House’s other hand drifts to his waist. Chase’s surprised puff of air blows against House’s collarbone.
“What?” House sounds amused, in that tongue-in-cheek way of his, purposefully leery. “If you’re going to insist on weeping all over me I might as well get some groping in. Fill up the weekly quota.”
“This is hardly groping,” Chase croaks out. There’s a baffled silence. Chase’s heart beats a steady tachycardic rhythm—one-two, one-two.
“Why, Doctor Chase,” House drawls. The warm hand on Chase’s waist grips harder. “Is that what you tell all the nurses?”
“They’re actually grabbier than you, if you’ll believe it.” Chase tilts forward, lets their stomachs press together, hardly believing what he’s doing. House doesn’t spook. “They don’t need encouragement.”
“Is that what this is?” The other hand slides down, down, down, to the small of his back. Chase grips at House’s rumpled jacket. “Encouragement?”
“Why not?” Chase lets the running worry in the back of his brain fall quiet. To hell with it. House is going to die anyway. “If the rumor mill is true you don’t need to be encouraged at all.”
He leans back then, for the first time since he wrapped his arms around House, and meets his gaze. House is squinting, mouth half-open in thought—Chase can make out the pink gleam of his tongue. He doesn’t look offended. If anything, Chase thinks, there’s a glimmer of interest in his eyes.
“How wonderful,” House says. His right hand tilts Chase’s chin up, then to the side, as if he’s sizing him up. Chase’s limbs prickle with warmth. “I’ve always wanted to be propositioned by a blubbering twink.”
Chase laughs, despite himself, and scoffs again, and then he grabs House by the lapels and pulls him down.
House can kiss.
This is not a surprise, in and of itself. Chase has spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time thinking about it—about the surprising softness of House’s mouth against his, the firm grip of his fingers on his face, the sharp burn of his beard on Chase’s cheeks.
“The crying is kind of a turn-off,” House says while simultaneously trying to lick into Chase’s mouth.
“Liar.” Chase shoves him until House relents and limps back until the back of his knees hit the edge of his chair. “You’re into it.”
“Yeah, I am.” House looks up at him from where he’s sprawled on his seat. His hand thumbs at Chase’s still-wet eyes, way too tender. Chase climbs into his lap and bites at his lower lip until House makes a noise. “Why can’t you always be this proactive?”
“I think some concerns would be raised if I tried to jump you every time you went through the door.”
“Hmm,” House says, and tugs both Chase’s shirt and undershirt out of his pants to stick a hand up his back. “You'd get no complaints from me.”
Chase licks House’s teeth. His mouth is hot and faintly dry and tastes of bitter coffee. His tongue makes Chase go weak at the knees.
He can feel House when he shifts in his lap, hard against his thigh. A hint of greedy pride flashes through him, and House looks at him with raised eyebrows like he can tell exactly what it is he’s thinking.
“Don’t toot your own horn too much,” he says. “You said it yourself—I’ll fuck anything.”
Stings, just a tiny bit, but Chase had been prepared for this—insults and humiliation, that’s his bread and butter every day. And most of his brain is preoccupied with the noise House makes when he grinds down against him. Chase kisses him again, panting, and slides off his lap into the floor.
“Exhibitionist as well as a slut,” House murmurs, but he cradles the back of Chase’s head at the same time as he brushes a thumb against his lips. Chase makes a questioning sound and then realizes the door is still unlocked.
“Doesn’t matter,” he says, even though the part of him that has gone quiet with grief knows it does. “Cameron and Foreman are getting early breakfast. There’s no one here.”
Chase arranges himself on his knees—shoulders down, hands half-curled over his thighs, chin tilted up and eyes lidded in that way he knows drives men insane. He pushes the tip of his tongue against his bottom lip. House looks down at him with dark eyes and a widening grin that makes the bottom of Chase’s stomach flip unpleasantly.
“You’re so easy.” He grabs the back of Chase’s hair and pulls a bit. Chase goes and lets House press his mouth against the tent in his jeans. He’s salivating a little. “What, daddy never took proper care of you?”
Oh, fuck off.
House doesn't let him up, but he has the decency to look slightly startled by what has just come out of his mouth. Chase grits his teeth and tries not to pant, and most of all he tries not to let anything show in his face.
"Oh," House says, recovering, and laughs. "Well." He slides a finger into Chase's mouth, then another. Chase considers biting down and then House presses down on his tongue and everything in his brain goes melt-quiet and fuzzy. "I should have known, with the dominatrix. I bet she bent you over her knee while you called her mommy."
The thing about House that you learn ten minutes into knowing him is that once he gets his teeth onto something he does not let go. Chase glares at him anyway and bites. House pulls his hair, hard, and he gasps.
"Brat," House says, grinning and mean and delighted.
“Fuck you,” Chase spits out around his fingers. He’s so hard he can barely think. House tuts at him like he’s a disobedient child and Chase has to still his hands so he doesn’t hump himself like a dog.
“Don’t act like this isn’t what you wanted.” And he shoves Chase off him to undo his jeans and pull out his dick.
Chase does want, is the mortifying issue. House is hard and flushed, already leaking at the tip, but he keeps Chase in place by his hair when he tries to lean in.
“Say it,” he says. His eyes are glinting the same way they do when he figures out a case. “Didn’t daddy teach you manners?”
Chase’s belly does a triple somersault. He tries not to swallow his own tongue. “Seriously?”
House raises his eyebrows. “You know me. Big on politeness.” He tugs on Chase’s hair again, a bit softer.
“You are unbelievable,” Chase tells him, cheeks burning, and nothing else comes out of his mouth. House shrugs and leans back, hands sliding away from him as he sprawls over the chair.
“Your loss, then.”
And he starts touching himself.
Chase must be going insane, he thinks. Maybe it’s a mass-hysteria thing kickstarted by House. Maybe it was just a matter of time—he made it three years working for him, something was bound to give eventually. He watches House’s hand twist around his cock, and the line of his neck as he tilts his head back and sighs. House's thumbnail catches under the head of his cock and he moans a little. Chase is vaguely aware that his mouth is hanging open.
“Come on,” he says, voice rough. “Are you really—”
“Ah-ah.” House shushes him, loudly. “As usual, you have nothing useful to add.” Chase’s breath hitches and House smirks. “At least you’re pretty enough to look at.”
And God. God.
“Please,” Chase says.
“That must be a first.” House bites his lip and rubs himself off harder. “Nice try—not good enough.”
“Please,” he repeats. House looks down at him through half-lidded eyes, that X-ray vision piercing through him. “I’m—I—”
House puts an palm behind his own ear and leans in. “Yes? I didn’t catch that.”
“Please let me suck your dick,” Chase says in a rush, and the humiliation that flashes through him leaves him dizzy. House grins like he knows it.
“Pathetic,” he says, and puts his hand back in his hair. Chase could weep.
House pulls him to his dick by his hair like a dog on a leash. Chase sticks his tongue out as best he can, until he can lick a stripe at the side of it, and he's rewarded with a low sigh. For a moment, from the glint in his eye, he thinks House might drag this out longer—but then he pulls again and Chase wraps his mouth around him and they’re off to the races.
Chase is, if he says so himself, pretty good at this. He knows he looks and feels good, that guys like watching his mouth get red and full and his eyes get watery and the way his hair falls on his face. House is a bit harder to please than they usually are—he plays the bored part well as Chase sucks him, sprawled back on his seat, even when Chase can feel how hard he is in his mouth. Then Chase takes him in a bit deeper and he moans.
“At least you’re good for something,” he pants. His cock is heavy and so full in his mouth, musky from ten-odd hours running around at the hospital. Chase clutches at House's left leg and waist to keep his hands from wandering. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the way you paid through college after daddy cut you off.”
That fucking word again. Chase moans around his dick and gets a sharp pull for his troubles.
House is flushed in the face now, and panting a little, which soothes something in him. Chase closes his eyes and relaxes his jaw, takes him in further, until his cock is nudging the back of his throat. House swears.
“Christ, Chase.” His hand slides down to cradle the side of his face and then run his fingers over his throat. Chase swallows around him. House moans. “I’ll have to take back all the comments about you being just a pretty mouth.”
Chase’s awareness has floated away—he’s anchored only by the weight and tightness in his mouth and the hand on his face. House makes a soft wordless noise and then laughs.
“Look at you, humping the air like a bitch in heat. Pitiful little boy.”
Chase is vaguely aware that his face is wet. He moans and swallows again, and then House is swearing loudly and pulling his hair and spilling down his throat.
Chase doesn’t gag, because he’s very good at this. He makes a muffled whine and keeps his jaw loose as House fucks his face while he comes. He looks beautiful like this—eyes closed and face melted tenderly in pleasure, all sorts of muscles twitching and relaxing until he finally slips his softening cock out of Chase’s mouth.
It’s a bad sort of emptiness that falls into him. Chase sort of curls in on himself, breathing harshly through his mouth. That’s the only sound in the room for a bit. Then there’s a touch to his face.
House’s hand slides over his wet cheekbone all the way to the back of his neck. Chase lets his eyes fall shut. House makes a small noise of displeasure and grips him harder, reassuring and possessive.
“Up,” he says, voice too-loud. Chase cringes and shakes his head—he feels wrung out, off-kilter. House sighs. “Come up here, will you? Because I can’t exactly pull you up like this.”
His other hand cards through Chase’s hair, and it feels obscenely good. Chase risks a peek.
House is looking down at him with an unreadable expression. There’s a sort of looseness about him, eyes rounded and mouth soft. “Up,” he says again, not in that mock-ordering tone from earlier but gentler, now, and Chase goes.
He stumbles as he gets off his knees, and House catches him with a hand on his waist that he uses to drag him back onto his lap. It’s a lot of contact, this time—they’re pressed flush, chest-to-chest, arms and legs and stomach. Chase carefully shifts his weight mostly to House’s left thigh and is rewarded with another brush of his hair.
“I’m surprised you didn’t come in your pants,” House says in his ear. He’s one-handedly undoing Chase’s pants while he tugs off his lab coat, and then his shirts, with the other. “Good job.”
It makes him gasp. Chase bites his tongue, but it’s too late, the noise is out there. House pinches his nipple and sucks lazily at the skin of his throat, like they have all the private time in the world and aren’t sitting in his unlocked office in the middle of the night.
House doesn’t even bother shoving Chase’s pants down—he just reaches in and pulls him out, making him moan. “Pretty,” he murmurs, looking down as he rubs his thumb against the head, and then he winces.
They stare at each other. House has lost that manic, mean edge—Chase isn’t sure what to do without it. There’s something cracked here, more tender, unfamiliar. House kisses him, open-mouthed, as Chase fucks up into his hand.
Chase is still crying as they kiss—it's wet and salty. House touches the skin below his eyes with a complex look in his face, like he's trying to put together a puzzle.
“Good boy,” he says, slow and tentative, like he’s trying to prove a hypothesis. Chase feels it like a gut-punch; his cock twitches in House’s hand.
“Daddy,” slips out of his mouth before he can stop himself. He feels himself get wetter, even with the hand on his dick stationary, and he twists his face into House’s neck to bite down before he can say anything. House exhales and then nips at his ear.
“Just like that,” he says. The words are clumsy in his mouth—Chase has heard these exact words from the mouths of a lot of different men, but with House it’s as if he’s trying them out, seeing how they fit together. “You were very good, Chase. Come on.”
You were very good. Chase doesn’t even try to hold on, already at the edge by the time House put his hands on him, but it’s still humiliating, how it takes him less than three minutes to go over the edge. He comes almost violently, spilling all over House’s fist and shirt and a bit on his own chest. House murmurs a steady stream of nothingness against his throat and cheek. Chase is going to have beard burn for days.
He melts onto House’s lap, after. House allows this for longer that he would have imagined, quietly petting Chase’s hair, and then he wipes his hand on Chase’s chest.
“Hey,” he protests weakly. His hair is falling all over his eyes when he looks back at House. House flicks a nipple, unrepentant. “I have to go back to work after this.” His voice is fucked-out to shreds. Jesus.
“You’ll want to wipe the jizz off your chin before you do,” House says. He’s all rough too, rumbly and warm against Chase’s chest. “Or don’t. It really brings out your eyes.”
Chase gives him a glare and grimaces as he swipes at his face. He gives up and uses his undershirt to wipe himself off, and by the time he buttons up his lab coat he’s more-or-less presentable, if very wrinkly and a bit smelly. House is still slouching in his chair, zipped up, watching Chase get dressed.
“Well.” He clears his throat. “I’ll, er, see you around, then.”
Not his best goodbye line, but Chase is finding it a little difficult right now, to look his boss in the eye and not think about calling him daddy. That won’t be a problem for much longer, he supposes, and then grits his teeth.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” House looks at him with raised eyebrows. Chase looks around, uncertain, and then steps back up to him and leans down.
It’s the chastest kiss they’ve shared. House exhales against him, and opens his mouth a little, but it’s mostly brushing lips and shared breath. Chase straightens himself after a last lick at his bottom lip. House is staring up at him with a wide-eyed look.
“Presumably,” he says after a moment, “you didn’t initially come in here to suck my dick.”
Right. Chase wishes for a hole to open below him and drag him to Hell. The carpet, sadly, remains stained and sturdy beneath his feet.
“Right.” He clears his throat. “He’s all good. No more seizures, and his respiration’s okay. He’ll be fine.”
“Not for what I’m gonna do next,” House says, and stands up with a groan and a wince. His leg looks stiff. Chase thoughtlessly hands him his cane, forgotten next to the table. House gives him an unreadable look.
“What next? There’s nothing next, House.”
“There’s better,” he says simply, and as he limps off past him he presses their mouths together for a second before waving goodbye. “Thanks for the hug.”
Chase stands there, sticky and dizzy, and stares off at the door.
“I can’t believe he got the last word and the last kiss,” he murmurs to himself, and runs off to the bathroom before anyone can catch sight of his hair.