Happy St. Patrick's Day, fandom! Here's the next installment... laying some groundwork for the dynamics of our future band. I didn't get a ton of song suggestions for the upcoming karaoke segment, but I asked my husband (also a fan, but not to the GEEKING degree that I am) for some input. He gave me some good ideas and led me to some of my own. I'm working on that part right now, so we'll see how it goes!

And as always, shout-outs to my fabulous reviewers for the previous chapter: IHeartHouseCuddy, Abby, lenasti16, HuddyGirl, lin12344, Alex, Guest, and JM!

Of course, I wouldn't cry if I got some more lovely reviews for chapter 5 ;-) Please and thank you!

Chapter 5- Epic Sex Battles of History

By 8:10, the potential future band mates had all followed Cuddy out the door and divided into two carpooling groups. House thought that Wilson should drive, because he knew that his friend would definitely have the presence of mind to call for a cab if he were too drunk to drive by the end of the night. So along with Amber, Cuddy rode with them, if only because it would be less awkward than riding with her other employees. The former and present fellows decided that Forman would be the other driver along similar lines of supposed responsibility.

Beasley's was typically busy for a bar hosting karaoke on a Saturday night. Upon arriving, House led everyone to a section of empty tall tables near the back of the room, since most of the others were already occupied by high-spirited patrons. Some attractive, if slightly inebriated college girls were currently on the stage singing a popular Katy Perry song.

"This song is such a cliché," Wilson complained, trying a little too hard to appear pretentious about the singers' taste in music.

"Yeah, that's why you and all of the other guys are drooling at those hot twenty-year-olds singing about kissing other girls," Amber chastised, indicating the rest of the men at their tables. Cuddy and Cameron laughed.

"Hey, I'm not drooling! I agree with Wilson," said Kutner defensively.

"Wilson's being a little ass-kisser… so if you agree with him, what does that make you?" countered Amber.

Kutner started to answer, but House interjected, "Better to just plead the 5th and quit while you're ahead. You need your big boy pants to play with Cutthroat."

"Oh… look at that…" the normally stoic Forman remarked in an interested tone, his eyes too glued to the scantily clad women on the stage like most of the boys' to register the redhead's comment

"Wow… you think those two are going to start making out?" Chase asked House, who was standing right next to him. Cameron stopped laughing and pulled a face, but it was lost on her boyfriend.

"It's a lovely thought, but I think they would need at least another .03 on their blood alcohol to reach bisexual drunkenness. Maybe we should send them a few six-packs of Smirnoff Ice and persuade them to sing it again in a couple of hours," House suggested helpfully.

Cuddy rolled her eyes and said in the general direction of the girls, "Men are pigs." Amber and Cameron nodded their agreement. "Would you two members of civilized society like to go with me to get a drink?"

"Absolutely!" Cameron answered, and she and Amber gladly followed Cuddy to the bar.

Wilson immediately began scolding House. "Can you please try and refrain from being a sexist jerk the entire night? Some of us plan on getting laid when we get home."

"What about him? He was being just as sexist as me," House whined, pointing at Chase.

"You're digging your own grave, man," Wilson warned the Aussie doctor.

"Yeah, I can imagine that one night of night of not having sex with Cameron because she overreacted to the attention he paid some insignificant eye candy would cause him to shrivel up and die," House snarked.

"Hardly," sneered Chase, drawing some curious glances from the other men.

"Wait a minute… you're lucky enough to be going home with a sure thing, that looks like her, and you don't care?" wondered a baffled Kutner. Chase shrugged apathetically and pulled his phone out of his pocket when he felt the buzz of a text message. Kutner gave the surgeon a quizzical look and glanced toward where the women were standing at the bar.

"Trouble in paradise?" questioned his former teammate.

"No, not trouble… exactly. Just…"

"Losing some spark, schnookums?" suggested their derisive boss.

"Something like that."

H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C- H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C H-C-H-C-H-C-H-C-

"Why do they have to be such jackasses?" Cameron griped to her female coworkers sitting at the bar while she took ambitious sips of an Appletini.

"Well, this entire field trip was organized by the King of the Jackasses, so how surprised should we really be?" retorted Amber, stirring her Vodka Collins with an agitated pinky.

"I'll drink to that," Cuddy added tiredly, reaching her Cosmo to clink with Amber and Cameron in solidarity.

"How do you do it every day, Dr. Cuddy?" Amber solicited earnestly. "How do you supervise House every day without killing him?"

"I've calculated the jail time, and it just isn't worth it."

"God knows you could plead temporary insanity," Cameron commented.

Amber supplied, "Or self-defense!"

"Probably. He insults me and most of the staff and more patients than not on a regular basis. But at the end of the day, the truth is… he saves people who would die otherwise. He sees the tiniest medical anomalies and possibilities that would go unnoticed by pretty much any other doctor."

"He really does," Cameron remarked. "And for all of his self-destructive, alienating behavior, a small amount of humanity does peak through his shell occasionally… just often enough for most of us that know him… not to hate him completely."

"Exactly. But don't get me wrong… some of his less than horrible qualities don't change the fact that he is a giant pain in my ass a majority of the time." Cuddy paused, looking around for the genius in question. "Well, I don't see him limping over here with a sharp retort about my ass, so the good news is he hasn't actually started reading minds or planted a microphone in my purse."

"Yet!" quipped Amber.

All three women shared some laughing camaraderie on the common denominator of the surely diagnostician in their lives and were at the bottom of their drinks inside of five minutes. Conversation flowed more easily between them the more relaxed they became by the alcohol.

Suddenly, Amber observed, "House may not be coming over to check on us, but it looks like House-Lite is."

"So you're House-Lite, huh?" Cameron teased Kutner as he approached the female members of House's potential band.

"Um… I am?" he asked, confused.

"Yeah emphasis on light... as in fire…" Amber commented, snickering. Her Collins was as heavy on the vodka as Cameron's Appletini.

Cuddy raised an eyebrow at the flustered male doctor, and he started, "Dr. Cuddy… that was a total accident… I didn't…."

"It was an accident to bring charged defibrillation paddles into the hyperbaric chamber?!" the redhead persisted.

"Oooooo… burn!" snarked Cuddy unexpectedly. As the female triumvirate erupted into another fit of hardy giggles, and Kutner turned around and briskly walked back to their tables.

"I think we need to get them back over here, or they'll end up fall-down drunk before we even start singing," he informed the guys upon his return.

"Cuddy… fall-down drunk? Somehow I don't see that happening," Foreman remarked, but the ostracized males looked toward the bar to assess the younger doctor's claim. All three women appeared to be living it up, and gaging from their ostentatious laughter, clearly under the pleasant influence of their drinks.

"I don't think I've ever seen Amber… giddy," observed Wilson, a bit disconcerted. "And I know I've never seen Cuddy that relaxed." House smiled almost imperceptibly. He had.

"What about Cameron? Is that normal for her?" Kutner wondered.

"You're paying awfully close attention to what Cameron's up to this evening," his boss chided. Chase didn't comment, but he did lift his eyebrows at Kutner appraisingly.

"I was just curious… since you said it was different for the rest of the ladies," he defended.

"Ladies?" House parroted. "Talk about trying to get laid… you use that whole 'I'm a gentleman' act to try and get into girls' pants, don't you?"

"Leave him alone, House… I know this may come as a shock to you, but some women prefer to be treated like more than a piece of meat. And particularly those three over there," Wilson lectured.

"Oh, like all that tossing their hair and crossing their legs and big smiles is just for the benefit of each another. They like the attention." Truthfully, House could really care less for any tossing, crossing or smiling that wasn't being done by Cuddy at that particular moment. And as far as she was concerned, he knew for a fact that her wardrobe choices were at least partially influenced by his presence and potential reaction in most situations when they would be around one another.

"Are we going to stand around here doing a live-action version of 'Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus,' or are we actually here to sing?" an annoyed Wilson questioned his best friend."

"To sing. Let's go collect our little barflies before they float away on their own girl-Tini soaked breaths." House started toward the bar and was followed by Wilson and also Kutner, whose new-found sense of chivalry was incredibly suspicious to his boss and not lost on Chase, either.

"… and it's actually pretty big," they overheard Amber finish a sentence as they approached. A small collection of empty glasses surrounded the women. From the looks of it, they had each done a shot in addition to their earlier round and were now onto their third actual drinks.

"Huh. I'd always wondered," Cuddy mused.

"Yeah, me too," added Cameron.

"Makes sense, I guess… but everyone knows the really important thing is how they use it!" the dean observed glibly, sending her companions into renewed peals of laughter.

The tail end of the conversation they heard was enough to make most men nervous, but Wilson gamely broke in before he had much chance to process what he had heard.

"Hey, there… are you guys ready to come take a look at the song list with us?" he asked a little too brightly. Cameron was openly assessing Wilson's crotch with her head cocked to the side, and Cuddy looked very purposefully at his face and tried her best to remain composed. He asked House as an aside, "Why are they looking at me like that?"

"I'm guessing it's because they were discussing the size of your junk when we walked up to the bar," he answered far too casually. "Unless they are suddenly very interested in visually estimating the inseam measurements of men's jeans." Although after existing around House for such a long time it happened infrequently, in this situation Wilson was easily embarrassed by such a blatantly sexual observation about his anatomy.

"Amber!" he chastised.

"See? I told you that you were dating me. Well… or the chick version of me. At least I'm guessing you would have told me by now if she really had a penis."

Wilson sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. "I am going to walk over to those tables with the gigantic binders and pick something to sing. If anyone wants to come with me, they can," he said, yelling the last part over his shoulder as he walked away.

"God, why does he always have to be so sensitive about everything? It was just some harmless girl talk," the read head complained.

"You should be thankful that I popped his verbal abuse cherry before you came along. Think of how much more poorly he would have reacted if he hadn't been subjected to my brand of supportive friendship for years and years." Amber scowled at House, unamused.

"I want to go look at songs!" Cameron suddenly declared.

"Me too," Kutner replied, smiling. "Don't know if I have the guts to get up there by myself, but I want to see what there is."

"Well, c'mon then!" his obvious crush responded happily, grabbing his hand with one of hers and pausing to pick up her drink with the other before dragging him over to the binders to join Wilson.

"Got any more bright remarks for me, House, or can I go look, too?"

"Who's stopping you? But you might want to think about not publicly emasculating the guy whose equipment you plan on using later tonight."

"Dr. Cuddy, do you think I'm being unreasonable?" Amber engaged the other woman, hoping for some support in her recent drinking buddy.

"Oh, no. I'm done refereeing for you two… especially where Wilson's concerned. I'm not going to try and cut that baby in half again," she quipped dryly. Amber initially looked a little disappointed, but then Cuddy smiled at her and said, "But do me a favor and stop with the 'doctor' crap, at least for tonight. Cuddy or Lisa is fine, but no one's saying 'Dr. Volakis' or 'Dr. House.' I want a night off. Now let's go check out the music." Feeling freshly shed of her administrative skin, Cuddy took her cue from Cameron and led Amber by the hand over to peruse the large books with their coworkers.

"What about 'Party Pants'?" House yelled after Cuddy, never missing a chance to throw that particular nickname in her face.

"Shut up, House!" she volleyed back over her shoulder with cheery exasperation.

Oh, this is going to be fun, he thought to himself, trailing with restrained excitement behind his friend's girlfriend and his secret former girlfriend.