Bashful. On cue, he slides the glittering, golden ring across the table, setting his insides churning in a medically inexplicable fashion.

"Oh, sweetie." A hand is extended. "I've waited for so long."

And with this, Dr. House takes the large, golden doughnut between thumb and forefinger, and takes a bite.

"I do," he chews.

Chase vasodilates. Blushes.

House holds the back of his free hand up to his mouth, his smile, and shakes the pastry in the direction of his colleague's collar.

"I always knew I'd find a nice girl eventually."

"Yeah, I get. I'm fully aware of the hilarity," comes the sulking response. Out of touch with the launderette, and out of luck in this morning's worn-out, hung-over, teeth-tie-toast scramble, Chase has found himself trying to conceal a pink shirt under his white coat today. An acutely irritative, hot pink. House is exultant.

"Are you sure? Are you really aware of the full extent to which this thrills me?" With an almost earnest, wide-eyed cocking of the head, House adds: "I had you down as more of a violet. Mauve. Lavender gray."

And, as Chase shakes his head incredulously,

"I only though, with your coloring…"

But, tiring, he claps, dispelling objections, dispelling grains of sugar. They're seated in the cafeteria. "Now. 'We are gathered here today'…"- his team's amenity levels drop palpably; there's a despairing hiss from Cameron, who had worked late; House persists, "We are gathered here today to bear witness to some kind of…"- enjoying himself- "proposal. It's been fourteen hours, tests universally inconclusive; Foreman, outdo yourself. With my undivided, " snapping the last of the syrup from his thumb, "attention, I thee honor." He shuts up, drinks up, quiet. Briefly.

Soon enough, though, a suddenly conspicuous absence from the table, and a whine from Chase's gut, merit House's interruption.

"You're not having one?"

And, as Foreman, perplexed, begins again his TIA suppositions, House concludes:

"It was the last one."

And, as he, now equally perplexed, scowls at his Australian,

"What?;"

the young man begins to get hot under the (bright, pink) collar.

Chase's doughnuts are a daily fixture, his sweet tooth ridiculed, albeit companionably, by all; today, though, he has gone without. His borborygmus shows that it clearly wasn't for lack of appetite, and he's even displaying some degree of pupil dilation: his sugar could be low. He has plenty of change, stacked by his folded hands, and he could never, never be on a diet.

"Listen, Blondie, if you want to be nice, you and…"- Allison, who glowers- "can go share a table elsewhere. Compliment one another's blouses. Share. But on this table, we put ourselves first."

"We put our patients first!" Foreman chimes in indignantly, alarmedly, triumphantly.

The bickering continues.

Chase smiles at House. Grins. But only while he isn't looking.

A delicious, sarky, verbose growl of entirely meaningless abuse; to be lectured while there was still a pinch of hard, saccharine gravel icing the corner of his colleague's scowl, proving that he wasn't averse to sweetness.

Chase had asked for it.

His eyes darken further.