Disclaimer- I don't believe anyone should own them, they're free spirits at heart

Hendersons Bar 8.45pm

'Just drink it.'

'Nope, it's a girl's drink.'

'Because..?'

'Because it has a fluffy pink umbrella poking out of it.'

'Drink it, fool.'

'Nope.'

'It cost me ten bucks, just drink it. You're effeminate enough already without worrying a drink's going to make you seem any worse.'

'No way.'

'Fine,' Foreman growled, downing it himself instead. 'Pick something else. You asked for "Sex on the Beach", what did you really expect it to be? You think you were gonna get a half hour with the waitress?'

Chase smiled and scanned the cocktail menu again, his eyes already glazed from the four beers he had lined his previously empty stomach with. 'What's Clarkson having?'

'A non-alcoholic Cosmopolitan. And Cameron's ordered a "Between the Sheets" before you ask. Why don't you just have another beer, for Christ sakes? I'm growing a beard here waiting.'

'No, I got it, this is definitely the one for me', Chase sniggered loudly. 'I want a "G-Spot."'

Foreman arched his brow. 'Ok, a little louder, I don't think the people in the bar across the street quite caught that. You'd better not reject this one as well.' He passed Chase two ornately decorated cocktail glasses. 'Here, take these over to the lovebirds.'

Chase obligingly picked up the cocktails Cameron and Clarkson had requested, zig-zagging his way through the swelling crowd at the bar. Foreman joined him shortly afterwards, with Chase's elaborate concoction and a beer for himself. 'Indy still dancing?' he asked Cameron as he sat down.

Cameron took a sip of her drink and glanced in the direction of the dance floor. 'Yes, she's a real sweetie. You must be so proud of her, Eric. An honours degree from Princeton is no mean feat.'

Foreman spotted his sister, dancing as though her life depended on it on the perimeter of the dance floor, festooned in streamers and balloons, surrounded by her friends, all equally energetic and gaily decorated. 'Real proud, she's the one with brains, no doubt about it.'

Chase, almost taking his eye out with his sparkly cocktail stirrer, slurred, 'Definitely got your share of grey matter, I'd say. And from where I'm sitting, she wasn't exactly last in the queue when they dished out looks either. She available?'

Foreman placed his beer down firmly on the table. 'Don't even think about it, pretty boy,' he hissed. 'You know, you're truly something. Both mouth and pants, unable to stay zipped for long.'

Outside Hendersons Bar 9.24pm

House sat alone in his car. He'd been there for almost 40 minutes now, re-running his predicament over in his mind whilst listening to some Eric Clapton. Unsure of his next move, he looked at himself in the rear-view mirror. On arriving home earlier, he had paced uneasily like a captive tiger for about an hour. Figuring that once he'd showered, changed and made the effort to get into his car, that the indecisiveness would pass. That he'd know what he should do. But it hadn't. And he didn't.

He knew if he didn't do something, he would still be feeling like this in an hours time. And that if he turned the car around and headed back, alone, that he'd be feeling even worse still as the evning went on. Losing sleep imagining how Cameron may have looked with a few drinks inside her. How she may have behaved towards Clarkson when he gallantly took her home, reassured her when waves of alcohol-induced nausea had overwhelmed her. How she would have melted him with that doe-eyed vulnerability, Clarkson noticing the light in her eyes that had bewitched House countless times in the past, but most memorably that one time in his living room as she'd extended her hand to him. Tried to elicit a response, to provoke him into revealing how he really felt. And how Clarkson, for all his talk of treating a woman with respect, wooing them gradually, would have found himself sucked in, like waders in quicksand, testosterone flowing rampantly, unable to stop himself from taking a decidedly unprofessional interest in her. How Cameron, ever the hopeless romantic, and slightly the worse for wear, would have responded needily, transferring her unrequited passions onto Mr. Right Now.

House snapped sharply back to reality, searing pain shattering his nightmarish vision. Only the pain was not in his thigh, it was stabbing him in his chest. Automatically reaching for his Vicodin, he stopped himself just in time, realising his trusty panacea would not be able to help him on this one. That the only way to ease the discomfort was to take action. Whether he would make the right call or not, he was still unclear, but his self-imposed differential diagnosis on his ever-worsening condition had a very grim prognosis if treatment wasn't started soon.

As he walked into the bar, he spotted his team straight away. Kind of hard to miss them. Clarkson was attempting to restrain Foreman, who in turn was blindly waving his fists at what appeared to be Chase- a Dr. Chase who was partially buried beneath a sea of streamers and the assorted limbs of a voracious pack of scantily-clad women. A young woman standing directly behind the jumbled heap of flailing arms and legs, House correctly identified as Foreman's sister. Predominantly due to the fact she was wearing a mock-up graduation outfit and was yelling 'Eric' at the top of her lungs, as her eyeballs went into free-fall.

And just beyond the chaos, he saw Cameron, alone at a table that was littered with a multitude of empty bottles and glasses, one of which she was holding aloft as if raising a lonely solitary toast to an imaginary friend, whilst smiling pathetically at it. 'Oh boy,' he thought to himself, 'I've missed one hell of a party here.'

He limped towards the heaving mass of bodies that three-quarters of his team were enveloped in and deftly jabbed his cane in amongst them. As the crowd dispersed, Foreman found himself being restrained by both his sister and Clarkson. Chase emerged from the dwindling throng, shirt torn, face plastered with a particularly lurid shade of lipstick, and looking genuinely bewildered. House eventually persuaded Foreman to calm down slightly and take his sister home in a cab, whilst Clarkson appeared deeply unimpressed having been assigned the role of Chases's chaperone, strict instructions issued not to just dump him at the door, but to get him inside and ply him with strong coffee.

Which just left Cameron, a Cameron who was seemingly oblivious to the excitement that had taken place twenty feet in front of her. Glassy-eyed and most definitely having let her hair down, she didn't even notice House's presence until he sat down beside her, as he did so placing two drinks on the table before them. Double JD on the rocks for him, black coffee for her.