Title: The Kittens
Author: hwshipper
Pairings: OMC/OMC (Chris/Brian), House/Wilson established
Warning: Despite the title, there are no baby cats in this fic. Sorry!
Beta: am further in debt than ever to srsly_yes
Summary: Brian consults House. About Chris.
A/N: Follows Prostates and Plum Pudding.
The Kittens
Brian was sitting on the treatment table in Exam Room One, hugging his knees, and wondering if it was too late to just leave, when House came swinging in the door. He was scowling, with a preoccupied look in his clear blue eyes, but they focused swiftly when they saw who was waiting for him.
"Brian!" House shut the door behind him. "And here was I trying to get out of clinic a minute ago. If only I'd known, I'd have tried harder."
"Nice to see you too, House," Brian said mildly.
House's eye dropped downwards to the bake pan sitting next to Brian on the table. "That looks like bribery."
"Mississippi Mud Pie, actually."
"Definitely bribery." House sat down in a swivel chair and scooted himself across the room towards Brian. "So, what hideous illness do you want me to treat? Tell me it's not an STD. It'll take more than pie to do that."
"I'm fine," Brian hastened to say. "I was visiting Princeton to see my sister, she made the pie." Brian had helped, mainly by assisting his toddler nephew in scraping the bowl. "I just thought I'd drop in."
"A social call?" House arched an eyebrow. "Don't tell Wilson."
Brian was regretting his visit in a big way now, but it seemed too late to back out. He came to the point. "I wanted to ask your medical opinion about something. About Chris."
House snorted in a disgusted kind of way. "And what's lover boy been up to? Afraid he's on the white powder again?"
"No." It had been four months since Chris had collapsed at Princeton Plainsboro following an accidental overdose, while Linus had been recovering from his prostate surgery. It had frightened the crap out of all of them, and Brian was sure Chris was clean and would be for the foreseeable future.
"Then what?" House looked at his watch. "I have a patient, you know. A real one, not a clinic time-waster, bleeding out of every orifice. Give me something more interesting than that, or I might just leave now."
"Chris seems to have lost his sex drive," Brian blurted out, and knew as he spoke that he shouldn't have come.
House's jaw dropped and he regarded Brian with something rather like awe. "Okay, you've got me."
It really should have been Linus, not Chris.
Linus had his prostate removed in major surgery, yet had barely gotten rid of his catheter before his first attempt at sex. Brian knew this because he and Chris had been driving home from a theatergoing weekend in New York City, and dropped by Linus's and Raul's house en route following an excitable phone call. Linus insisted that they visit, even though it was well after midnight by the time they got there.
They found him sitting in his enormous living room with a large glass of brandy and a beam on his face. He told them with evident relief that although he'd found an erection wasn't possible yet, the nerve-sparing surgery had worked well ("I must thank Dr. Chase for that,"), reciprocal handjobs had been achieved, and the sensation was as it ever was.
"Orgasm without an erection?" Chris was foolish enough to query. "How does that even work?"
"It really is most different, Chris, I can tell you!" Linus said earnestly. "And coming without any come, I never would have warranted it--"
Brian decided he could live without knowing any more detail. He muttered an excuse and wandered off to find Raul, leaving Chris and Linus in conversation. Raul was upstairs in his room, curled up like a cat on the bed. Brian thought he was asleep and started to back out of the door, when Raul's long eyelashes lifted and he smiled through deep dark liquid eyes.
"Hey." Brian came to sit next to Raul. "Linus is telling Chris all about your all new sex life."
Raul yawned and stretched, flexing slender yet muscular arms. "He is not one to hide anything, as you know. But, he seems to be recovering as well as he could be, the doctors say."
"And very quickly," Brian remarked.
Raul tugged on Brian's sleeve, pulling him down onto the bed. "Too quickly. The doctors did tell him it was very early, but he wasn't going to listen. I told him too, but he wasn't going to listen to me, either. I'm worried he's going to take things too fast and hurt himself."
"Ah." Brian snuggled down next to Raul.
"He seems to think he has to do it for me," Raul went on, a note of frustration in his voice. "As if I might leave him if we couldn't have sex anymore! I can't make him understand, all I want is for him to heal from the surgery and be healthy without the cancer. Nothing else matters..."
Brian looped a soothing arm around Raul's neck, and after a while Raul relaxed enough to fall asleep, his chest rising and falling steadily. Brian started to drift off himself, but woke when Chris came into the room and touched him lightly on the shoulder.
"Shall we go, or do you want to crash here?" Chris asked quietly.
"Let's go," Brian mumbled, and managed to extricate himself from the bed without waking Raul up.
As they drove away, Chris remarked, "Linus will be disappointed you weren't fucking Raul upstairs. He said he hoped you were, 'cause he can't do that himself right now."
Brian snorted a little with amusement. "Good chat?"
Chris pulled a face. "Too much information, really."
"I am just dying to hear the gory details." House could not conceal his glee. "But--before you go on, this is clearly going to be a difficult case, so I need a consult from my professional colleague. He has better personal knowledge of this patient, as you know." House reached into a pocket for his pager.
Brian sighed, and sat back to wait for Wilson.
House remarked as they waited, "If Wilson heard that you turned up on your own with no Chris in tow and not getting any at home, sneaked into my clinic session..." Sharp blue eyes raked Brian up and down. "He's gonna assume you came here to get into my pants."
"Maybe he wouldn't be too far wrong," Brian deadpanned, daring a wink.
"Look, but don't touch," House's voice was stern but his eyes were smiling.
Wilson arrived in Exam Room One a minute later, looking even more busy and preoccupied than House had. He stopped short at the sight of Brian. "Whoa. Brian? What's up?"
"Chris doesn't want to have sex with him anymore," House said with far too much relish.
"Hey, Dr. Wilson," Brian said weakly, now really, really, wishing he hadn't come.
"Thank you very much for the plum pudding, by the way," Wilson said politely, sitting down. "It was excellent. So, what's the problem? Penile erectile dysfunction?"
"No." Brian had been thinking about this quite a bit, googled it a lot, and was sure. "He doesn't have any problem getting it up when he wants to. It's just... he doesn't seem to want to, much."
"Reduced libido?" Wilson queried. "That's...really quite unusual, in men."
"And we're talking about Chris, the lean mean sex machine," House put in. "Really quite unbelievable is how I'd put it. So, what happened?"
Brian got home from his screenwriting evening class, buzzing with energy after receiving a morsel of praise from the instructor. He found Chris slumped on the couch, idly channel hopping.
"How was it?" Chris asked, as Brian came in, kicking off sneakers and shrugging off his jacket.
"Awesome. The prof liked the killer trolls, Chris, honest! At least, she said there was potential." Brian perched on the couch next to Chris, bent to kiss his brow.
"Great." Chris grinned, and stretched a little. "We'll just wait for Hollywood to come calling, then."
Brian snuggled up next to Chris, and started watching the TV with half an eye, still inwardly wallowing in delight at his achievement. Happy soon turned into horny, as he arched his groin against Chris's hip, nuzzling Chris's neck, until Chris nuzzled back a little and reached for Brian's fly.
One swift satisfying handjob later, Brian closed his eyes and rested for a minute, then moved to reciprocate. But Chris had shifted away, and murmured, "S'okay, I'm tired. Tomorrow, maybe."
Brian might have not thought anything of it, except he then found that Chris wasn't jumping to jump him tomorrow either.
And when they did next have sex the day after that, it quite distinctly felt like Chris was humoring him, going through the motions, with his mind elsewhere. The predatory gleam that had never been far from Chris's eye seemed to have gone AWOL.
Brian didn't really know what to do. Chris wasn't the kind of man to be seduced by chocolates and flowers. Generally speaking, the way to seduce him was to walk in the room in a tight pair of pants, or no pants at all. But that kind of thing didn't seem to be working right now.
"There could be physical causes for reduced libido; low testosterone levels, alcohol, drugs." Wilson saw Brian's fuck-it-not-cocaine-again face at the latter, and hastened to add, "Some prescription medication can reduce libido, for example."
"I deny it," House said.
"I mean, it's only been four months since he collapsed here in the hospital, just before Christmas," Wilson persisted. "Is he seeing a doctor at home? What do they say?"
"He has regular appointments, doctor says he's fine." Brian had accompanied Chris to the doctor's office a number of times. "His heart and liver's fine, he recovered really well. Still got high blood pressure, but that's all."
"High blood pressure is a cause of erectile dysfunction," Wilson pointed out.
"No, I'm sure it's reduced libido." Brian was definite. "But why? He's not taking any medication, he's cut way down on the booze and is eating really healthily, exercising, everything."
"Psychological causes are more likely for reduced libido anyway," House declared. "Depression, stress--"
"I don't think he's depressed." Brian knew what depression was like; he'd been there. Rock bottom face down on his living room floor, alone and unable to see the point of going on...
"Depression doesn't have to mean suicidal," House said, as if he'd read Brian's mind. "He could be mildly depressed for any number of reasons. Cutting down on those malt whiskies could make anyone depressed."
"What about stress, Brian?" Wilson asked. "Chris was very stressed from work when he had his, um, episode here."
"And you weren't getting much then, either," House put in.
"He's not stressed about work anymore. He's reduced his workload all over the place." Brian was certain of his ground here. "I made him. He's delegating much more to his managers, everywhere. Like, the club got a refurb a couple of months ago, and he left it all to his manager to choose the color scheme, employ the decorators, everything. Chris hardly did a thing."
Chris had long been in the habit of closing the club for a week each February, the quietest month, for a refurb. Occasionally this was a wholesale redesign, more usually it was just a paint job. Returning to work after his crisis and enforced stay at Princeton Plainsboro, Chris had entrusted the redecoration to Ferdinand, the club manager, with just three directions: 1) don't touch my office, 2) keep to budget, and 3) don't do anything to the private bar that Linus wouldn't like.
"Linus, but not you?" Brian asked, amused.
"When I first bought this place, Linus invested in it on the condition I created a place he'd want to come and bring his friends." Chris shrugged a little. "I bought him out a long time ago, but I've always stuck to that promise."
So Ferdinand had almost a free hand. The upstairs private bar had been painted in soothing stylish shades of duck egg blue and chocolate brown, and Linus and the regulars collectively approved. Brian saw Chris's face constrict in agony at the first sight of the canary yellow color selected for the downstairs bar, but he hadn't voiced any objection, and lo and behold, once it was finished the overall effect was very striking. And it worked. New people visited, and stayed, and came back.
What really made Brian think there was something wrong was the lack of interest Chris showed in bedding the Kittens.
The Kittens were a bunch of young men who had flocked to the club following the refurbishment and an advertising blitz by Ferdinand. Their collective name was invented by Linus one evening, when he, Chris, and Brian were standing at the top of the stairs to the private bar, looking down at the scene downstairs.
"You know, since the refurb, there's been a whole bunch of young people here almost all the time," Linus said happily. "Does my heart good to see. And my poor sorry prostate-less dick, too."
"They've kind of taken up residence." Chris craned his neck to look around. "They remind me of the the stray cats that wander into your place sometime."
By stray cats Brian knew that Chris didn't mean actual cats; he was referring to winsome young men, often in need of sanctuary, that Linus was partial to homing. Raul bore them with a patient good humor, obviously knowing their stay was temporary, and they would soon move on.
"Not very stray, these cats," Linus objected. "And hardly cats. So young, some of them, more like kittens."
Chris snorted in amusement. "They've all been carded."
"Cute as a kitten, that one there, can't be older than twenty-one." Linus nodded downwards.
And the name stuck.
Wilson drummed his fingers on the table. "This workload reduction isn't necessarily a good thing."
"Some people get depressed when they give up work," House stated, and Brian wondered if he spoke from personal experience. House carried on, "You hear about them all the time; retire, lose their reason to live, and end up in a coffin within a year. Chris isn't retired, but he hasn't really got the stake in his work he used to have. He can't take the credit for the success of the refurb; it's all slipping away from him."
"And one thing about Chris's sex life is that it's very closely bound up with his work life." Wilson bunched his bushy eyebrows together as he thought.
House looked pained, and Brian frowned, not understanding.
"I mean, he always used his position and status at the club as a point of pride. At least, he used to, when I knew him, years ago." Wilson looked to Brian. "Buy a drink for anyone he was interested in, invite them to the upstairs private bar, draw them into his office--"
"--bang 'em on the couch." House grimaced.
"He still does that," Brian confirmed, remembering how Chris had drawn him in in exactly that way. "But not recently."
A few weekends after the re-opening, Brian was sitting chatting to Linus and Raul up in the private bar when Chris emerged from his office behind the bar, looked all around, and headed over to them.
"Linus," Chris said, his voice pained. "Why has my bar been overrun by Kittens?"
A few of the Kittens had indeed found their way upstairs to the private bar, which was invitation only; Brian hadn't thought anything of it.
"I invited them up. Well, I invited one, last night. Carlos, very beautiful eyes, such smooth skin." Linus gestured hazily around. "And he asked if some of his friends could come upstairs too, and frankly, Chris, it seemed like a small thing to ask since I hoped he might blow me at the time..."
Chris groaned.
"You can un-invite them anytime," Linus pointed out. Chris, as owner, always had the power of veto. "But I rather like having some young people running around the place. There's only four of them. I think the poker players could do with a bit of shaking up."
Brian looked across the room at the small group of Kittens, sitting on a couple of low black leather couches. Each had a beer bottle in hand, and the four of them were conversing merrily. There was no doubt about which one was Carlos. Brian would have picked him out of a lineup anywhere as Linus's type; easily the youngest of the four, perfect tawny skin, eyes so dark as to be black orbs shining in the bar half-light.
The one sitting next to Carlos was very blond, bleached almost white and dazzling in the dim lighting. Brian's gaze moved to the next one along; brown haired and dark eyed, but pale, bespectacled and demure. Chris's kind of thing, without a doubt.
Perhaps, Brian decided, the prospect of having a Kitten would boost Chris's sex drive.
"They're kinda cute," he ventured, and waited for Chris to notice the brown-haired one, expecting to see Chris's gray eyes darkening and glowing at the prospect of a spot of Edward-alike sex.
Instead Chris simply glanced across the room and shook his head.
"They can stay, so long as they don't cause any trouble," Chris warned Linus, and turned and went back to his office.
"If you want some more amateur psychiatry, there's his best friend recovering from prostate cancer surgery." House was crisp.
Brian hadn't mentioned Linus, but of course House and Wilson knew all about him; Wilson had been Linus's doctor for years.
"You mean, Linus's actual erectile dysfunction is making Chris behave in unconscious sympathy," Brian queried.
"In a nutshell." House sounded certain. "The power of suggestion."
Wilson grimaced and shifted a little in his chair.
"Wilson's looking alarmed now because he worries too much about doctor-patient confidentiality," House declared. "Whereas I know that I'm not telling you anything you don't know, when I say that Chris's prostate pal will have been struggling with his own sexual problems the last few months. In a major way. And he, if I recall correctly, is even more over-sexed than Chrissy boy."
"Linus doesn't hide anything," Brian said with a wry grin. "We've had every gory detail."
Three months after the surgery, Linus was proud to tell them that he'd had his first erection, assisted by an injection from a doctor. "You should have seen the size of the needle, it went right in and it hurt like nothing I have ever fucking experienced. No way could I have fucked anything, way too painful, but I can still get it up, thank heaven for that!"
Brian really, really, didn't want to think about such a needle, and from the look on Chris's face, he didn't either.
Linus rambled on happily for a while anyway, talking about pumps and pills, Viagra doses and the importance of having a supportive partner. "I could not have got through all this without my beloved Raul, I really could not."
Brian went off to find the beloved, and found him downstairs playing on a pinball machine.
"So Linus had a breakthrough?" Brian asked.
"Yes. It is a relief for him." Raul spun a ball deftly around the game. "He has motivation, with all these Kittens around. They like him. A lot of them want an older man, someone they can call daddy."
Brian grinned at that. Linus had always had a weakness for young men. Brian wasn't surprised to know that Kittens liked Linus. The age gap might be large, but Linus was personable and friendly, charming and generous, wealthy and powerful. He'd lost weight following his operation and looked better than he had in a long time.
"It is very good. It has made him realize that although some things will never be the same, other things don't have to change at all," Raul continued, with a big smile, and Brian was glad.
Later that evening, Brian overheard Linus declare to a bar full of Kittens, "You know, it's very important after prostate surgery to keep stimulating the penis. It stretches the tissues and discourages scar tissue formation. So, who's up for helping me stimulate it?"
There were takers.
So the removal of Linus's prostate had certainly not removed his libido, Brian reflected wryly. The irony that it had affected Chris's instead was kind of difficult to appreciate right now. "So, what do I do?"
"I can recommend a therapist," House offered.
Brian and Wilson both shook their heads simultaneously. Brian knew Chris had never seen a shrink in his whole life, not even when he'd lost Edward.
"You should talk to him, Brian," Wilson suggested instead. "Tell him how you feel."
Brian grimaced at this. They were guys, after all. Neither of them were any good at talking about how they felt. Brian's instinct before any kind of confrontational discussion was to duck out, walk away, and hope the problem went away by itself.
"You should think of ways to jazz up your sex life," House contributed. "You've been together a while. Let's face it, the romance has probably waned."
"House!" Wilson said reprovingly. "Look, Brian--"
"What you need to do, Brian, is find a young, hot, man with brown hair and brown eyes, and dangle him in front of Chris," House interrupted, and tapped his cane on the floor for emphasis. "I guarantee a reaction in the pants department before you can say Viagra."
House shot a glare sideways at Wilson, who had raised his eyebrows, and added. "And I'm not volunteering Wilson for this."
Brian smothered a grin behind a hand.
"What I was going to suggest, Brian, is that Chris has always been one to...separate...sex from his personal relationships," Wilson returned, a little diffidently. "If you wanted to fulfill your, ah, needs elsewhere, and talked to him about it, I imagine he would have no objection."
It was Wilson's turn to shoot a glance at House, and he added with a touch of humor, "And I'm not volunteering House for that, either."
Brian returned from Princeton berating himself for his trip to the hospital, wondering just why he had done it. He had a sneaking suspicion it had been so he could see House again. Stupid fucking waste of time that was. And he'd given up the Mississippi Mud Pie for it...
Remembering that he and Chris had agreed to watch the game on the big screen TV in the downstairs bar that evening, he drove straight to the club rather than home, only to find he was too early and Chris wasn't there yet.
He settled down at the bar to wait with a Scotch on the rocks and a newspaper, when a pair of Kittens appeared next to him. Brian recognized them as two of the ones with access to the private bar; the bleached white-blond one and the demure dark-haired one.
"Two Buds, please," the blond said to the bartender, then looked sideways at Brian. "And could I get this gorgeous piece of ass another of whatever he's having."
Brian felt himself start to blush behind his beard. He hunched a little in his seat, hiding behind his spectacles.
"Not necessary, this gentleman drinks on the house," the bartender said, replenishing Brian's drink anyway. It had been a long time since Brian had paid for a drink at the club, not since Chris had pulled him into his life.
"Ah, we've seen you upstairs." The blond Kitten batted an eyelid and nodded in understanding, as he paid for the two bottles of Bud.
Brian supposed he shouldn't be surprised to hear that the Kittens discussed the men they'd seen around the private bar. He felt flattered that they'd noticed him, though; he tended to assume his own invisibility, compared to alpha male Chris, the flamboyant Linus, and the beautiful Raul.
"Yeah," he said, his voice gruff with shyness.
"You're with the owner, right?" Dark-Haired Kitten chimed in. "The fair guy, with the gray eyes? We don't know his name--"
"Chris," Brian confirmed, and noticed both Kittens went a little doe-eyed at learning Chris's name. He wasn't surprised. Chris was a few years younger than Linus, strong and handsome, self-confident with the cool assurance that came with authority.
And at the end of the day, Brian realized wryly, both House's advice and Wilson's suggestion were good. Dangle a hot young man in front of Chris and/or go get fucked elsewhere. The club was full of the former, and hence the capacity for the latter.
"There he is, look, in the leathers!" Blond Kitten said suddenly, and nudged his friend with a sharp elbow. Dark-Haired Kitten turned to look, blushing a little too.
Brian's flight instinct kicked in, and he slid off the bar stool. "I have to go. I''ll see you around--" He practically fled across the room towards Chris, who was standing near the front entrance, chatting to the doorman. Chris, in his full biking leathers, jacket, pants and boots, looked effortlessly hot.
"Hey," Chris greeted him with a smile, peering over Brian's shoulder to see where he'd come from. "You seem a bit...flustered. Been talking to Kittens?"
"Hey," Brian muttered. "Yeah, kind of."
Chris furrowed his brows slightly, and moved away from the doorman, drawing Brian with him.
"Brian," Chris said gently. "I'm getting the feeling you've got a thing for one of the Kittens. The blond one, right?--your kind of thing..."
Brian was speechless. He did go for blonds, it was true--Chris was fair, Ethan even more so--but he hadn't thought of it as a preference, particularly.
"You know if you want to go have a good time with a Kitten, then you should go right ahead," Chris carried on, looking a little perplexed.
Brian threw up his hands. "I don't want to have a good time with a Kitten! I mean, I might, but I want you to have a good time with a Kitten! Chris, you've been so... out of sorts recently. I thought--I thought it might pep you up a bit..."
"You were looking for a Kitten for me?" Amusement entered Chris's voice.
"Well, you'd usually notice," Brian said desperately. "The dark haired one, right? Isn't he your type?"
"You're my type," Chris protested automatically, and then his eye skated back across the room in the direction of the Kittens. "Although he is very cute."
And suddenly it was back. That predatory gleam in Chris's eye that Brian had missed was back!
Chris hooked an arm around Brian's waist and pulled him close.
"Tonight," Chris said firmly into Brian's ear. "We are going straight home, alone, and I am going to fuck you into the mattress. Tomorrow, we come back, and we hook ourselves a Kitten or two. Maybe one blond, one dark. Sound good?"
"It sounds perfect," Brian said sincerely.
END
A/N: A Chris/Brian story will be following this shortly; Chris decides to retire, doesn't find it easy, and Brian bears the brunt. No House/Wilson though.