A Very Threesome Christmas: 2/2
Chase was glad that he didn’t have to work the next weekend. Last weekend’s surprise had been pretty overwhelming to come home to, but House had intimated that there were more Christmas preparations to come, and he wanted to help with some of them. They started the morning in the usual lazy-Saturday way--with sex and breakfast in bed--but he was still in a post-orgasmic doze when House announced, “Okay, everybody up!” and started throwing clothes at them.
“What are we doing now?” he wondered out loud.
Wilson, tugging a shirt over his head, said, “Are we starting the--”
“Wilson!” House admonished him.
“--thing, already?” he finished weakly.
“Yes,” House answered. “It’s a big project.”
Somewhat to Chase’s surprise, House lead the way to the kitchen. There had been an unusual amount of flour and other baking supplies in the week’s groceries, but he had assumed Wilson was planning something with them. Instead, House hauled out two large bags of nuts. “Wilson, you can shell the pecans, and Chase can do the walnuts,” he directed.
House’s participation in the baking project turned out to be largely supervisory. Under his direction, he and Wilson creamed together butter, sugar, and molasses, added eggs and vanilla, mixed in flour, and then stirred in the nuts they had shelled, plus a foul-smelling concoction that House insisted was dried fruit.
“Good God, House,” Wilson said when they started pouring the stuff into floured baking pans, “how much fruitcake do you think we can use?”
House looked at the pans--three loaf pans, two round cake pans, and a pie plate--and the amount of batter that was left, then shrugged. “We’ll have to give some away.”
“You think people will want it?” Wilson asked skeptically. “People who know you?”
“I’ll have you know this is Grandma House’s personal secret recipe. I had to beat it out of her.”
“Seriously?” Chase asked. He was pretty sure House hadn’t actually beat up his grandma, but it was hard to imagine him having a grandma.
“No. I helped her make it a couple of times. Well, four or five times. If we weren’t there at Christmas, she’d send us some.” House stared at the oven for a while. “It keeps really well. I had one in my dresser until August, once.” He shook himself and continued briskly, “We’ll have to use the pans again once the first batch is done, that’s all. Pop those in the oven, now.”
#
By the time they all went back to work on Monday, there were twelve fruitcakes marinating in rum on top of the refrigerator, well-wrapped in cheesecloth and wax paper. House--in a rare display of gratification deferment, insisted that the first cake couldn’t be unwrapped and sampled until Christmas eve. “It’s tradition,” he’d said firmly. “Besides, if we eat it early, the fruitcake gnomes will make all the rest go bad.”
When Wilson repeated, “Fruitcake gnomes?” House had shrugged sheepishly and answered that that was what Granny House had always said.
Mid-day, Chase was standing in line in the cafeteria when it suddenly struck him that if they were celebrating Christmas, he needed to buy presents. The difficulty was that they kept him on a very short leash financially--he only got enough money every week to buy his lunches. They’d give him some extra if he asked and explained what it was for, but if he did that, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise.
And, while he was on the subject of surprises, his only option for unsupervised shopping was the hospital gift shop. Moving forward in line, he briefly considered the possibility of making something. Problem with that was, he was crap at handcrafts--plus, there was only so much anyone could make without buying special materials, and that was back to the shopping problem again. Wilson might be satisfied with a pencil cup fashioned out of an unused specimen bottle decorated with mailing labels, but not House.
There was the lost-and-found box in the Clinic, but House regularly checked that for items worth stealing, so anything he was able to purloin would probably have already been considered and rejected.
“What’ll you have, hon?” the cafeteria lady asked him.
Realizing it was only a week and ahalf to Christmas, so anything he bought would use up a sizable chunk of his gift-giving budget, he gulped, “Nothing, thanks,” and darted off to see what the gift shop had on offer, and perhaps to inquire if they offered a layaway plan.
#
Thursday afternoon, House had just sent his team off to MRI their latest patient and was settling down for a game of Tetris when Wilson popped into his office. “Hey,” he said, leaning against the edge of House’s desk.
Hopefully, House glanced up at him. Tie was firmly in place--that meant he hadn’t popped over for a quickie. Damn. “Working,” he said.
“Just out of curiosity, what kind of work can you do with only the arrow keys of your keyboard?”
House could have spun out some complicated explanation about occupying his visual cortex so that the rest of his brain was freed up for higher reasoning, but instead he just grunted. “Did you come over here for a reason?”
“Yes, I thought you should know that Chase is saving up his lunch money to get you a Christmas present, and you had better be prepared to absolutely love it. Whatever it is.”
House stared at the screen, fingers flying over the arrow keys. If he didn’t get a long blue piece soon, he was seriously screwed--oh, there it was. Now he had a little breathing room. “Why don’t you just give him some money?”
“Because he isn’t asking for money. He just keeps showing up around lunchtime and looking hungry. I think it’s supposed to be a surprise.”
House briefly considered the possibility that Chase was saving up his allowance for some more nefarious purpose, but decided Wilson had to be right. Five dollars a day wouldn’t buy much in the way of illegal drugs. Or anything else, for that matter. This was going to be one lame present. “Where’s he going to buy it, anyway? The gift shop?” It was going to be hard to work up much enthusiasm for mylar balloons or a hemorrhoid pillow. “Maybe you should take him shopping. And give him some money.”
Wilson stood up and put his hands on his hips. “I think we should let him do it his own way, and if that means you have to be nice about a…not very impressive present, you can live with it.”
“I guess,” he said dubiously. He was bad at feigning gratitude--that had been one of the many things that had contributed to the traditional Christmas argument when he was growing up. One time they’d even managed to all not be speaking to each other by the time the sun came up.
“He’s putting a lot of effort into it, whatever it is,” Wilson said. “Surely you can appreciate that part of it, anyway.”
Wilson had a point. His mother had always said, “It’s the thought that counts,” when confronting him with some pathetic present someone had gotten him--but the thing was that those presents never reflected any thought about what he might actually want to have. The only thought the givers had had was “Guess we ought to get John and Blythe’s boy something.” And the result was an ugly sweater or some childish pyjamas or a model airplane kit or something equally odious. “Yeah, okay.”
“You’re going to be enthusiastic and appreciative,” Wilson said. “Right?”
“I said, yeah, okay. Are you deaf?”
#
Lunchtime on Friday, Chase made what was becoming a routine trip to the gift shop to see if the present he’d picked out for House was still there. He’d actually managed to find a terrific present for House--the gift shop had laid in a small but high-quality selection of toys, probably meant for parents too busy with sick kids or other relatives to shop anywhere else. He had his eye on a magnetic building set; he should have enough money to buy it on Monday, if it was still there.
The stock had dwindled from eight sets to five since yesterday. That didn’t look good, but who knows? Maybe somebody with three kids had bought all three. “Do you know if you’re going to be getting any more of these in?” he asked the shop attendant.
She shrugged. “Doubt it, but you never know.”
“I don’t suppose you could hold one for me.” He’d already asked a different clerk the first day he’d found it, but there was always a chance this one wouldn’t know that she couldn’t.
“No, sorry. If you want one, you should probably get it now.”
“I can’t,” he said. “Thanks anyway.”
Leaving the shop, he backtracked to Wilson’s office. Fortunately, Wilson was just sitting at his desk, not seeing patients or anything. “Hi, sweetheart,” he said when he saw Chase, closing a file folder and putting it on top of a pile. “Ready for lunch?”
“Yeah,” Chase agreed. “If you’re free.” It was funny how Wilson hadn’t asked why he kept turning up here instead of buying his own lunch like usual. House would definitely have asked.
“Sure,” Wilson agreed. “Let’s go to the oncology lounge. I brought sandwiches.”
Wilson must’ve been expecting him, or else he’d brought extra in case House came mooching. He’d brought two large turkey sandwiches and a container of his homemade potato salad. Chase wasn’t sure what he did to it, but it was a lot better than the cafeteria’s potato salad, which mostly tasted of mayonnaise and pickle relish.
When they sat on the couch to eat, Wilson tucked a napkin in his collar to protect his shirt, and insisted on putting one in Chase’s, too. Chase thought they both looked like dorks, but didn’t argue. “This is really good,” he said with his mouth full of potato salad.
“Thank you. And try to swallow before you talk.”
Chase was struck by how unexpectedly dirty that sounded, but since he’d taken another big bite of potato salad, just raised one eyebrow.
Wilson shook his head, but he was smiling as he did it.
#
Saturday afternoon, while Chase was at work, Wilson settled down on the couch to do some gift wrapping. He’d wrapped House’s presents at work, and hidden them in the trunk of the car, but he still had all of Chase’s to do. The hand-embroidered stockings had arrived, and House occupied himself by pounding nails into the mantle piece to hold them up. The whole time he was swinging the hammer, Wilson was waiting for the yelp of pain, the swearing, and the trip to the emergency room, but House managed the chore without incident.
After that, he dug into the hall closet and came out with the iPod. Sitting next to Wilson on the couch, he attacked the plastic clamshell package with a pair of scissors.
“You’re opening that?” Wilson asked.
“Yep. I need you to go down to the basement and get the box with Chase’s CDs.”
“You’re going to put his music on it? That’s a good idea.”
House demurred, “No, I’m going to ritually burn them,” but when Wilson went downstairs and came back with the CDs, he took them and the iPod over to the computer desk.
Wilson finished wrapping the presents and started putting on ribbons. “What do you think, presents under the tree now, or do we keep hiding them until Christmas morning?”
“Keep them hidden,” House answered. “More exciting that way.”
“Okay.” Wilson took a break from wrapping to make himself some cocoa. House accepted a cup, and dug an ancient-looking bottle of peppermint schnapps out of the cabinet under the sink and poured a liberal measure into each cup. The combination was surprisingly good. “Where’d that come from?” Wilson wondered.
“Nephrology Secret Santa, first year I worked here. I kept it in case of emergency.”
Meaning the bottle was about twenty years old. “I thought you were banned from participating in those.”
“I was, after that year.”
“What did you do?” The ban had been long established by the time Wilson had started working at PPTH, and since his friendship with House was well established by the time the subject came up, no one had told him the story.
“Nothing,” House lied.
“You gave your Secret Santa something wildly inappropriate, didn’t you?”
“Hustler calendar. It came free with my subscription.”
“I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time,” Wilson said ironically.
“Hey, I didn’t know the guy was born-again.” House slurped noisily at his cocoa.
#
“House?” Chase said tentatively. They were all curled up reading after dinner, House and Wilson on the couch, and him on the floor by their feet.
House looked up from the journal he was reading. “What, puppy?”
“I was thinking….” He stopped, feeling stupid. This was a bad idea. It wasn’t that important, anyway.
“What?” House repeated.
“Um, never mind.”
House took his chin in his hand and made Chase look up at him. “Tell me,” he said in that firm voice that somehow went straight to Chase’s cock without passing through his brain on the way.
“Um,” he said again. For a second, what he’d been meaning to say had gone straight out of his head. He had to take a few deep breaths before it came back to him. “I was thinking it might be kind of nice…on Christmas Eve, if I could kind of….”
“Yes?” House prompted him.
“Go to midnight mass,” he said quickly. Of course House wouldn’t want to go. Stupid.
House looked back down at the journal. “Sure. Wilson’ll take you.”
“Hey!” Wilson said.
“I’m pretty sure the church roof only falls in if a Jew goes on Easter,” House told him. “Christmas should be fine.”
“I don’t know what they do in a Catholic church,” Wilson said.
“Chase does,” House answered. He glanced down at Chase. “I thought you didn’t believe in God anymore, anyway.”
“I don’t,” Chase said quickly. He hadn’t been to church in almost ten years. But he hadn’t really celebrated Christmas for almost ten years, either. He didn’t plan on taking communion, of course. But today he’d heard Adeste Fideles in the elevator, and had been struck by a sudden and vivid memory of the Christmases of his childhood, when midnight was later than he was normally allowed to stay up, and the church dressed up in greenery and candles seemed somehow magical. “It just wouldn’t feel like Christmas if I didn’t go.”
“Okay,” House agreed. “Wilson’ll take you,” he said again.
“Thanks,” Chase said, glad House hadn’t made fun of him. Much. Yet.
#
Monday, Chase ran to the gift shop on his morning coffee break. He’d wondered if he’d get the usual amount of allowance that week, since he was off work Tuesday and Wednesday for Christmas, but House had handed over the usual amount without comment.
Hurrying to the shop, he wondered what he’d do if the magnetic building sets had sold out. He’d considered the problem before, but never came up with a solution. The gift shop didn’t have anything else he thought House might like.
When he got to the shop, there was exactly one set left, and a woman was holding it. Chase gnawed his lip anxiously, wondering if he should ask her to let him have it. Finally, she put the set down and moved on to look at something else. He grabbed it and hurried away before she could stop him.
Since he had some extra money left, he looked around for something to get Wilson. There wasn’t anything quite as perfect as what he’d picked out for House. He looked at a few bottles of cologne (too expensive, and Wilson had plenty of that anyway) and some ties (too expensive, and ugly besides). Finally he settled on an umbrella. Boring, but Wilson was always losing his, and the price was right.
He carried his purchases to the counter. The clerk smiled at him. “Last minute Christmas shopping, huh?”
“Yes,” he answered, pleased with himself.
“It’s amazing how many of the doctors do their Christmas shopping here,” she said, ringing up his items. “When I got this job, my mother said maybe I’d meet a nice doctor working here, but from what I’ve seen, I think you’d have to be crazy to marry a doctor.”
Without thinking, Chase answered, “I married two of them.” He didn’t know what prompted him to say it--he’d never referred to House and Wilson as his spouses…husbands…whatever, before, and as far as he knew, they didn’t either.
“Divorced once, or twice?” She glanced down at his hands, probably looking for a ring.
“Never.” He paid for the gifts and accepted his receipt. “Merry Christmas.”
#
Christmas Eve, none of them had to work, but they went to the hospital anyway, to deliver fruitcake. They hadn’t tasted it yet--House was insistent that fruitcake couldn’t be eaten until after dinner--so Wilson wondered if it would actually be any good. He even briefly considered the possibility that fruitcake-baking was a big practical joke, and they’d unwrap them to find a disgusting, inedible mess. But House had carefully boxed up the two largest cakes and mailed them to his Aunt Sara’s, where his parents would be having Christmas, so Wilson decided it probably wasn’t. House claimed it wasn’t the kind of fruitcake that people make jokes about, but it was always possible he was wrong, and Wilson would be embarrassed to have given terrible cake to all of their friends. But it was clearly important to House, so he went along as they took cakes to Oncology, the NICU, and the third floor janitor’s closet. The final cake they took back to the first floor and Cuddy’s office.
“She might not even be here,” Wilson pointed out. “It is Christmas Eve.”
“And she’s a single, childless Jew,” House reminded him. “She’ll be there.”
Unsurprisingly, House was right. When they all trooped in--Chase bringing up the rear with cake in hand--she looked up from a mountain of paperwork and smiled tightly. “What have you done this time?”
“We made cake!” House said proudly. “Give it to her, Chase.”
Chase stepped forward and put the cake--still in cheesecloth and wax paper, but with a festive red ribbon added--on top of the papers. “Um, here.”
Cuddy poked at the cake with the end of her pen. “What kind of cake?”
“Fruitcake,” Wilson answered. “It’s supposed to be good.”
“You don’t know for sure?”
“House won’t let us have any,” Chase explained.
“Not until tonight,” House added.
Carefully, Cuddy opened a desk drawer and placed the cake inside. “I’ll wait until Thursday, then, and see if you three are still alive.”
Privately, Wilson thought that was a good plan. “If you like it, we have six more at home.”
“Those are mine!” House protested.
“We’re going to eat all six?”
“I told you they keep,” House told them, then turned back to Cuddy and said earnestly, “I made it with my own two hands.”
“No you didn’t,” Wilson said. “You made me and Chase do everything while you sat and barked orders at us.”
House smiled blissfully, “Yeah, and it was totally hot, wasn’t it?”
#
Wilson had wanted to make something a little bit special for Christmas Eve, but not something that was a lot of work, since he was doing the turkey--now brining in the refrigerator--the next day. He settled on thick steaks, crusted with black pepper and served with crisp fries. House clearly approved, but Chase had some difficulty concentrating on his food--he kept looking back over his shoulder at the Christmas tree. “You know,” he said slowly, as House stole a chunk of steak off his plate, “when I was growing up, sometimes we used to open presents after midnight mass.”
House glanced down at him. “Nice try.”
“We did,” Chase insisted.
“I believe you.”
“We always did our Hanukkah presents at sundown, right after the candles and the prayers,” Wilson put in.
“We always did ours on Christmas morning, as God intended,” House answered.
“You don’t believe in God,” Chase pointed out.
House pointed his fork at him. “Don’t sass me, unless you want a Christmas ass-beating.”
Chase apparently decided that he didn’t, and ate several fries in rapid succession.
After dinner, House finally decreed that it was fruitcake time. “Make a pot of coffee,” he directed. “Coffee goes with fruitcake. Put lots of sugar in it.”
Wilson took Chase with him to the kitchen to help with the coffee. “He’s going to be really disappointed if this didn’t turn out,” he said, getting a cake down from the top of the fridge.
Chase nodded. “Yeah, he seems really excited about it.” He stacked the dirty dishes in the sink and got out the dessert plates and coffee cups.
Scanning the cake to find the best way to unwrap it, Wilson added, “I’m almost afraid to look.” But he did unwrap the cake, and it looked fine--darker brown then when they’d wrapped them up, but not a pile of moldy goo, as he’d half-feared. “I think we’ll let House carve it,” he added.
“Sounds like a good idea.”
When the coffee was done, they carried everything in to the living room. Seeing them, House sat up and actually rubbed his hands together. “You guys are in for a treat,” he predicted.
Wilson and Chase exchanged a look. House so rarely seemed to look forward to anything, that if the cake turned out to be an utter failure, his disappointment was going to be hard to watch. Chase put the cake on the coffee table in front of him, and Wilson handed him a knife. He had to remind himself to breathe as House cut into the cake.
The knife went in smoothly, so at least it hadn’t gone hard as a brick. House cut a neat slice from one end of the cake, then broke off a bite-sized piece with his fingers and popped it in his mouth. Closing his eyes, he chewed carefully, his face unreadable. Finally he swallowed, opened his eyes again, and pronounced, “Perfect.”
#
After they got back from services, Chase was practically bouncing off of the walls with excitement. Hot cocoa spiked with peppermint schnapps and another hunk of fruitcake failed to settle him down to any noticeable extent. “You know, Santa Claus won’t come unless you go to sleep,” Wilson pointed out.
House tried not to roll his eyes. Chase wasn’t five. “Maybe we can come up with some way to help him relax,” he suggested, drawing one hand up Wilson’s thigh and the other up Chase’s.
Wilson jumped to attention under his hand, but managed to say evenly, “That might just get him more wound up.”
Chase kept his mouth shut, but squirmed eagerly.
“He always falls asleep after he comes,” House reminded him.
“Slipped my mind,” Wilson admitted.
He rubbed the back of Wilson’s neck and watched his friend’s eyelids droop. It was funny, the things you only learned about someone when you started having sex with them. Rubbing the back of Wilson’s neck was like hypnotizing a chicken; he couldn’t help it.
Chase, frustrated at being neglected, bucked his hips against House’s other hand. Stroking him a little, House leaned in and kissed him. “Robbie, do you want to go in the bedroom for a Christmas Eve treat?”
Chase nodded eagerly.
He shook Wilson a little to rouse him. “Come on, let’s go.”
By the time they reached the bedroom, Wilson had come out of his daze enough to undress Chase. House kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the bed to watch. “What do you want to do with him, Jimmy?” he asked as Wilson unbuttoned Chase’s shirt.
“Hm. Anything,” Wilson said unhelpfully.
House admired Wilson’s backside as he bent to take off Chase’s shoes. “We could spit-roast him.”
Wilson glanced over his shoulder at him with a smirk of distaste. “Do we have to call it that? It sounds disgusting.”
“Fuck him at both ends, then.”
“Much better.”
Once the others were undressed, House got Chase on all fours between his legs, with Wilson kneeling behind him. “You ready, Jimmy?” he asked, even though it was painfully obvious that Wilson was.
Wilson nodded. “Yup.”
“Ready, puppy?”
Chase, practically wriggling with excitement, nodded and whimpered. “Uh-huh.”
“Good. Okay, slide on into him, Jimmy.”
When Wilson did, House made him hold still, sunk up to the hilt in Chase, but not thrusting. Wilson was good at self-restraint, liked it, even. Something House could know about him but never really understand. Unbuttoning his fly, he freed his cock. “Okay, Robbie, have a little taste.”
Robbie tasted of him delicately. The tip of his pink tongue reminded House of a cat’s. So did the mewling sounds that he made as he licked.
“Okay, take it in, take it all in. Go ahead, Jimmy, fuck him good and hard.”
Jimmy did, and Robbie did. All the work of setting up done, all he had to do was lay back and let them go at it. It was a gift, this, being able to relax. It had never been like that with Stacy--the sex had been hot, sure, but it had always been like an argument, each of them wanting to overwhelm the other. Since these two, his boys, had already surrendered to him absolutely, he could surrender too.
#
Some five or six hours later, House woke. The sky was just starting to lighten, and he felt queasy and anxious, a feeling it took him a few minutes to recognize as excitement. This was how Christmas mornings past had felt, when no one else was awake, and there was still a chance that this year, everything might work out all right.
Disentangling himself from Wilson, who was curled up against his chest, and Chase, against the backs of his knees, he got out of bed and found his cane.
After padding into the bathroom to take a leak, he went into the living room. For a moment, he almost expected to find that a pile of presents had appeared under the tree while they slept. Instead, he plugged in the tree lights and unlocked the closet.
The presents made a pretty satisfying pile under the tree. Wilson hadn’t labeled all of the smaller things, so had to guess what went in which stocking. He was glad it had occurred to him to get a few things for Wilson’s--even though he’d done the stocking shopping at the gas station yesterday, at least Wilson’s stocking wouldn’t be hanging there all flaccid and empty.
He’d probably been five or six when he first realized that the moment before opening his Christmas presents was as good as it was going to get. When everything was still a mystery in red-and-green paper, he could almost imagine that this year, he was going to get everything he wanted. It took a few more years to realize that the things he really wanted, he couldn’t even name, much less put on a Christmas list. His parents hadn’t been much good at getting him the things he wanted that could be bought at a store and put in a box under the tree. The more important things were clearly beyond them.
It wasn’t until he was in college, watching the Charlie Brown Christmas special stoned, that he was able to begin to put a name to what it was he really wanted. Lucy had that scene where she said that all she ever got was a bunch of clothes or toys or a bicycle or something, and she never got what she really wanted: real estate. He didn’t want real estate, not in the sense that Lucy meant it, anyway. The best word for it, maybe, was home.
Involuntarily, he glanced down the hall toward the bedroom. Wilson was right, damn him. He wouldn’t have to pretend to like whatever Chase had gotten him, or whatever Wilson had gotten him, either. Whatever it was Wilson had hidden in the trunk of the car wasn’t the real present. The real present, he already had. Exactly what he’d always wanted.