A/N GAH! I'm terrible… I practically promise a same day update and I don't deliver… I'm sorry, forgive me?… But the chapter got away from me as I got another idea and it grew… so instead of holding onto this any longer I split it again so you could at least read this while I kept working on it…. So I'll stop rambling and let you read Round Two ::ding ding ding::

"Chase, Forman, House," Cameron greeted the three men tersely in turn as she entered the conference room.

"Uh oh, she used my last name, I think I'm in trouble," House said looking at his two male fellows, bringing his fingertips up to his mouth in a show of mock fear, before turning back to the woman standing near the door. "Well thank you for deciding to finally join us dear," House greeted with an extra sarcastic emphasis on the endearment.

"Don't we have a patient we should be diagnosing, darling?" Cameron replied in the same tone, as she pointedly began making a single cup of tea, instead of the usual pot of coffee.

Chase and Forman quickly exchanged worried glances. While they were both curious enough to want to watch their boss and coworker battle it out, neither of them really wanted to be caught in the cross fire so they both made the wise choice to stay quiet and look unassuming.

"Seventeen year old female, originally admitted for pneumonia, but didn't respond to antibiotics, now in addition to her respiratory symptoms, she is presenting with fever, diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal pain, chest pain, and bleeding from the nose and gums," he listed as he wrote the symptoms on the board, even able to make the marker squeak angrily against the white board.

"Could be Crohn's disease," Chase suggested tentatively. "And the respiratory problems are a secondary infection."

"And you could try harder to not be a complete waste of oxygen," House snapped back, his bite even sharper than usual. "Dr. Cameron," he interjected, her name rolling off his tongue with a purposeful spite, "could you enlighten our friend from the other side of the equator on why the very idea of entertaining the notion that out patient could have Crohn's disease is utterly ridiculous."

Cameron didn't speak for a moment as she was to busy sending a glare at her boss that would have most men running in fear of being castrated. Seeing this, Foreman was going to interfere and answer the question for her until a cane was slammed down on the table in front of him. Forman jumped and hit his knee on the table leg, Chase flung his pen across the room in surprise and Cameron… well Cameron just glared harder.

"No Forman," House ordered, anticipating the Neurologists actions, "after all Dr. Cameron is a strong, independent, modern woman. She doesn't need anything from the men in her life, she can answer this question all by her big girl self."

His rantings and ravings gave her enough time to formulate an answer which she gave with actual annoyance. After all, just because they were pretending to fight didn't mean he had to make Chase want to pee his pants and cry. Not to mention the fact that he was just as good as pretending to be infuriating as he was at actually doing it.

"It cant be Crohn's because she doesn't have photophobia, a rash, or clubbing, also her fever wouldn't be this high and it doesn't explain the bleeding nose and gums," she said in clipped tones, never taking her eyes off her boss. "Taking in these symptoms and assuming the gastrointestinal and respiratory problems are related it looks more like avian influenza," she suggested, her ire lessening slightly as she actually did her job. "Although how a teenager from New Jersey gets the bird flu is beyond me."

House blinked twice, but other than that did not betray any emotions at her diagnosis, it hadn't even occurred to him, but it fit every symptom perfectly. And he was always up for a disease where there only a few hundred proven cases which all took place on the other side of the world.

"Well Dr. Cameron," he said once more emphasizing her name, "perhaps instead of sitting around here wondering where she might of picked it up you could go take a history and see if she has been to Asia lately."

"Fine," she practically growled as House poured a Vicodin into his hand prepared to swallow it dry. "And for gods sake, would you please wash that down with something! One of these days its going to get stuck in your throat and I'm not about to give you the Heimlich when it happens," she shouted slamming her palms against the table, before standing and storming out of the conference room to go get a history.

Cameron was glad that she had an excuse to flee the conference room so that the boys couldn't see the perplexed look that took residence across her own face as she made her way to their patients room. She honestly didn't know where that last comment had come from. True she did always cringe a little inside whenever he dry swallowed one of those large pills, but it had never been something she had felt the need to harp about. Perhaps, she realized, it was because she had never been in the position to harp about it. As his subordinate that level of worrying would have been inappropriate, but as his 'wife' she was supposed to have that kind of intimate concern for her 'husband.' She was just playing the part, she told herself, that's all it was.

Back in the conference room three stunned men watched the lone female of their department storm away, her heels clicking angrily down the hall.

"Don't you two have some kind of doctory type tests to be running?" House demanded of his other two fellows as he was the first one to recover.

"Which ones?" Chase made the mistake of asking.

"Are you new?!" House asked disgustedly. "Ask Forman I'm sure he can help you figure it out."

Having yet to fall victim of House's wrath, and knowing it would only be a matter of time if he stayed in the older mans general vicinity, Forman quickly pushed his chair back from the table so he could go perform all the standard tests they did when they got a new patient, as well as those more specific to finding out if the patient indeed had the bird flu. Chase, always one for self preservation, quickly followed.

House watched as they too escaped the conference room, all the while absently rolling the white pill between his finger tips. Becoming aware if what he was doing, he looked at the pill in disdain, then popped it in his mouth. He let it roll around his tongue for a moment, before losing an internal battle he wasn't even aware he was fighting, and grabbed Cameron's half drunk, abandoned cup of tea to wash it down. Deciding the apple cinnamon concoction wasn't completely disgusting, and realizing while it wasn't coffee, it was still caffeinated, he drained the dredges and placed the mug in the sink.

Knowing it would be a couple hours before the ducklings came back with anything conclusive, he decided to go waste some time in the clinic. Much to Cuddy's surprise, he saw patients at an almost rapid fire pace and somehow managed not to piss any of them off enough where they might threaten legal action. She was beginning to think that she should bribe Cameron into getting in fights with House more often.

What Cuddy had fairly accurately guessed, was that House was seeing so many patients because he hoped that if he could keep busy enough, it would keep his mind off of the one and only Allison Cameron, and that the reason he wasn't pissing more people off was because he was too distracted to snark properly as he was failing miserably at his first purpose and couldn't stop thinking about his immunologist.

House was irritated, which just made him more irritated for being irritated in the first place. He knew it was a staged fight of which he picked the topic, but telling himself that didn't seem to help obscure the detail that it had gotten under his skin. For some reason the fact that Cameron had refused to become Mrs. House in their fake marriage bothered him. He told himself it was because it would make their ruse even more believable, just like he told himself that he only called her Mrs. House to annoy her, not because he actually liked the sound of it.

"You have a pulled muscle, go to the grocery store, get some icyhot and stop bothering me," House exclaimed, finally loosing the small resemblance of patience that he had actually had that morning as he stormed out of the examining room, more frustrated with himself than the actual patient… and that was saying something.

Glancing at the clock and seeing that he had actually completed his hours for once, he quickly signed out and made his way upstairs to his office with all his nice and friendly distractions. Peering into the conference room on his way into his office, he noticed an absence of goons and angry wives, so he figured they were all still off doing what he paid them for. Either that or Cameron was avoiding him and Chase and Forman were avoiding both him and Cameron. He didn't really care which.

Sinking down into his chair, he propped his feet up on his desk, not bothering to move the pile of mail that Cameron did not sort through that morning. He then pulled out his PSP out of his desk drawer and spent the next forty minutes playing "Call of Duty: Roads to Victory" until it was time for General Hospital.

When lunch time finally rolled around, a part of him wondered if Cameron was going to come join him like she always did, despite the fact that they were supposed to be fighting and the fact that she actually did seem pissed off the last time he saw her. He waited until five after before conceding that she wasn't going to show and moving from behind his desk to his couch where he flipped on the TV, it already on the correct channel.

It only took ten minutes to figure out that he just couldn't concentrate on the mystery of who really killed Rick Webber. Usually, he wasn't overtly interested in the college set on GH, but Lulu was Luke and Laura's daughter so it made her an exception among the bevy of insipid blondes that seemed to populate PCU. Of course the reason he couldn't focus on his soap wasn't because he didn't have Cameron to comment on it with, no it was simply because he was hungry since Cameron hadn't brought him lunch like he had become accustomed too.

Making a quick decision, he flipped off the TV and escaped from his office which suddenly felt stifling and out onto his balcony, hopping quickly over the divider and into the adjoining office without knocking.

"Buy me lunch." It was a statement not a question.

"Dr. Cameron still mad at you?" Wilson asked knowingly, looking up from the chart he was reviewing.

"Why would Allison be mad at me?" House asked feigning ignorance.

"Because you aren't eating lunch with her, and you haven't hit me up for lunch once in the three weeks since you have been back from the conference," he replied. "In fact, I haven't seen much of you at all since you've been back from Vegas."

It was true, Wilson hadn't seen much of his best friend since his alleged marriage a little over three weeks ago. House had sequestered his immunologist and himself away in his office everyday at lunch and they hadn't hung out at all after work at his condo like they usually did a couple times a week. And it wasn't for lack of trying on his part.

Wilson had shown up on House's doorstep twice that first week. The first time, House had only opened the door enough so that he could poke his head out too tell Wilson that he was interrupting 'naked Wednesday' and that he would have to come back at a later date. The next time he tried to go over, House didn't even open the door to him as he called through the locked door that he was interrupting 'naked Saturday.' When Wilson asked when 'naked Saturday' would be over, House simply quipped, at midnight, but then 'sex Sunday' starts, so don't come back then either.

The oncologist would have kept trying, as he had yet to actually see Cameron on these trips except for that first morning, but some trouble in his own home life, with his own wife, in conjunction with two terminal patients entering their final stages had kept him from prying any further into his friend's personal life.

"I know," House responded, bringing Wilson back to the present conversation. "So maybe I just miss spending time with my bestest of best buddies Jimmy."

"Or it could have something to do with the fact that two of your fellows, the two with the Y chromosome, paying me a visit this morning wondering if I had any idea why their department had suddenly become a battle field of World War Three," Wilson revealed, leaning back in his chair and clasping his hands behind his head.

"It could," House shrugged indifferently.

"So what's going on?"

"Ah, now for that, you're going to have to buy me lunch."

Wilson gave an obligatory sigh and eye roll, but inwardly he was glad. While he had indeed missed his acerbic friend, this would also give him a legitimate excuse to pry and see if he could get to the bottom of this whole 'marriage' thing. He grabbed his wallet out of his desk drawer and left his office for the cafeteria, knowing House would follow.

A/N Once again thanks and gratitude is extended to Corrin for the General Hospital info… I hope you all enjoyed this chapter and like I said, I had to split this chapter again so Round Three is on its way and since I have my last midterm today I should hopefully have time to write tonight if I don't pass out from exhaustion, so let me know what you all thought!