Alice woke up the next morning, tired and irritable. At first she wasn't sure why she felt that way, but then the events of the previous evening came back to her. The date had been fun, but she doubted it could be called a success. She had a definite sense from the silence of the house around her that he'd already disappeared and now all she was left with were regrets.

Why had she suggested the hot tub in the first place?

She sighed and looked at the clock. It was after eight, but it wasn't as if she had a clock-in, clock-out job. She stretched, wondering whether to try to catch another hour's sleep, to see if that would improve her state of mind, and then caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye. A note, on the undisturbed pillow next to her.

She recognised the notepaper from her desk, but the handwriting was new. She'd have guessed he was a doctor just by the barely intelligible scrawl.

Alice in Wonderland: Happy un-birthday. Let's celebrate? Tell me where and when. G.

His cell phone number was written underneath. Alice smiled. The "un-birthday" wasn't exactly original, but the fact that he wanted to see her again was enough to make her previous gloomy mood lift. She jumped out of bed and headed for the shower.

It wasn't until she got to work that she realised that he had to have walked into her bedroom while she was sleeping to leave that note on her pillow. God, she hoped that she hadn't been drooling. How embarrassing would it be if she was drooling? Or if her face was smooshed up against the pillow making her nose look all piggy-like? What if she'd accidentally farted in her sleep while he'd been in the room?

Alice's mind tormented her with the million-and-one embarrassing things her body could have done while she was unconscious until she decided to bury herself in work in an effort to banish all the hideous scenarios from her mind.

She was working on a lead, investigating potential corporate bullying in the local dairy industry. She spent a couple of hours online, learning about dairy farming and researching more about the history of a new, particularly aggressive player in the market that seemed to be acquiring its competitors at an impressive pace. It was boring, but research like this had won her accolades and brought down wrong-doers.

Every now and then Alice liked to picture herself as the journalistic equivalent of a superhero, faster than a loco-politician, able to leap tall stories in a single bound, searching for truth, justice and . . . well, a bad guy to expose.

After picturing herself in a red and blue lycra catsuit, with a little cape and CFM boots for good measure, Alice suddenly had enough confidence to respond to Greg's note. She grabbed her phone and typed in a text message.

Un-birthday party tonight. Same bat-place, same bat-time. I'm cooking. Absolutely no hot water involved. A x

Hmm, yep, that would do. Alice hit send and then, just as the phone flashed to let her know her message had travelled into the ether, she realised she'd signed it with a kiss. A stupid "x" after her "A". It was the way she signed all her text messages to friends, so typing it had been automatic. But it was so corny! And she'd sent it to a guy after one date!

Alice groaned and put her head into her hands, wishing, not for the first time, that text messages had a recall function.

Her boss, Michael "Mad-Eye" Moody chose that exact moment to wander over to her desk. "Bad day?" he asked. There was not a trace of sympathy in his voice, lest Alice actually think he was interested in her happiness or lack thereof.

Alice took a deep breath and pushed her silly, teenaged self back into the box she belonged in, and looked up at her boss, trying to appear professional.

"Uh, kind of. I think this dairy industry lead might be a bust. I've been researching all morning, but I've yet to find anything that's illegal. Morally reprehensible, yes, but illegal, no." The last story Alice had read had been about a family who had been evicted from their property, generations of farming ending with a single swipe of a red pen over a ledger. Unfortunately, it wasn't an unusual story. And it wasn't news.

Mad-Eye shrugged away her update and gestured over to an office on the far side of the floor. "See that guy in with Murdoch?"

Alice looked over and saw her colleague Sue Murdoch, another features writer, deep in conversation with a middle-aged guy. He looked kind of wrong, like his clothes didn't fit properly or something.

"Yeah, so what?"

"Think he's on the up and up?"

Alice moved her chair over a couple of feet to get a better look. This was a question Mad-Eye often asked her – Alice's powers of observation meant that sometimes her first impression of someone was more accurate than that of another reporter who'd spent hours interviewing them.

"Not sure . . . " Alice answered tentatively. There was something about the way the guy sat on the edge of the chair – could be nerves, or could be a sore back. It looked like his hands might be trembling – again could be nerves, or he could be sick. That'd explain the over-sized clothes. Then he touched his ear, and looked down as Sue leaned forward, apparently asking a very direct question.

"Hmm. I think there's something dodgy going on there. Not sure what."

"Okay, thanks." Moody got up to leave.

"That's it? You're not going to tell me what it's about?"

He gave her one of his patented evil grins as he walked away. "No."

Alice turned back to her desk, muttering under her breath about the inherent evilness of management and a fervent wish that someone would replace the fluid in his hip flask with polyjuice potion mixed with cockroach, just so she could watch the transmogrification.

"Doing underage magic spells again, Al?" It was newsroom shorthand for bitching about someone.

Alice looked up at junior reporter Cathy Miller, otherwise known as Jimmy because of her uncanny resemblance to Clark Kent's sidekick Jimmy Olsen: always smiling and eager to please. Alice noticed that she was carrying a stack of papers.

"Yeah, but just about Mad-Eye," Alice admitted. "Are those the annual reports from White and Co, Jimmy?"

"Yep. Going back five years. That's all I could get."

"Great, thanks."

Jimmy was great, really helpful, but she always wanted to hang around for a chat and today Alice wasn't interested.

"You know it's funny that a milk company is called—"

The buzz of Alice's mobile interrupted and Alice grabbed for it.

"Sorry Jimmy, gotta grab this. Thanks." She deliberately turned away, feeling a little mean ignoring a person for a text message, but if she didn't, Jimmy's breezy chatter could easily suck up most of the rest of her morning.

Alice couldn't help the flutter she felt when she read the message on her phone.

Great, see you then. Look forward to taking up where we left off. Sort of.

Did he mean he sort of looked forward to seeing her, or did he mean sort of in terms of where they'd left off? She figured it was the later. If it was the former, surely he wouldn't be interested in seeing her again so soon. She cut herself off before it could turn into yet another mental drama that made her feel fourteen again. He definitely meant that he was looking forward to taking up where they'd left off – only just before he'd almost drowned. And oh, so did she. Alice just knew the rest of the afternoon was going to last forever.

--

House entered Wilson's office, making sure no one saw him go in. Which was ridiculous, it was a perfectly normal sight to see Dr House going into Dr Wilson's office at any time. But the purpose of this visit made him feel a need to be surreptitious.

"House? Are you okay?" Wilson seemed concerned enough to get up from behind his desk.

House knew he was walking funny. His leg hurt, and he was being cautious of the bruises on his spine. He just wanted to make sure, before he replied to Alice's invitation for that night, that he'd be . . . well, up to performance standards.

"Um." House wondered why he was hesitant. It wasn't like he was going to ask Wilson to check his prostate. "I need to you look at something."

"What?" Wilson suddenly looked nervous and House couldn't resist tormenting him.

He put on a serious, poker face. "I found a lump on my balls."

"Oh!" Wilson's expression was priceless, trying to cover his embarrassment with concern, and not really succeeding at either. "Well, I guess I could—"

"No, I didn't, you idiot." House laughed. Wilson didn't. "I hurt my back. I need you to check and make sure I didn't do any serious damage."

House had left Alice's place around four that morning, having been unable to sleep in the unfamiliar bed. He'd left a note on the pillow next to her, tip-toeing as best he could to avoid waking her. In her bedroom he watched her sleep for a while. Her hair had been spread over the pillow and she seemed to be wearing some kind of sexy little negligee. He had half an idea to get undressed again and crawl into bed next to her, just to cuddle up to her warm body, but he dismissed it as the crazed wanderings of his sleep-deprived and pain-filled brain. Back at his place, he'd tried to look at his injury in the mirror, but he couldn't turn enough to see it properly, so he'd decided to ask Wilson to check him out.

Wilson narrowed his eyes. "How did you hurt your back?"

House ignored the question and turned around, undoing his belt to loosen his jeans and then lifting up his shirt and t-shirt.

"Jeez!" Wilson's exclamation made House half-annoyed and half-proud. "What have you done to yourself?" He leaned in closer and House felt him gently pressing along the worst of the bruising.

"She likes it rough," House said through clenched teeth.

"What? Oh, your date." Wilson had obviously forgotten. Then it sunk in. "Your date did this to you?" He sounded outraged.

"Don't have a stroke, Wilson. No, she didn't to this to me. I did this to me. It was a small hot tub misadventure."

"Right," Wilson said, but from his tone it was clear he had no idea what House meant and wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know.

"Just tell me if there's anything I need to be concerned about. I can't see it in the mirror myself."

Wilson dragged over a chair and sat down, bringing himself more in line with House's lower back. He pressed over the bruised bones and asked House to do a few movements to check his dexterity. At one point House was bent forward, his ass in Wilson's face as he sat in the chair, and House hoped like hell no one would burst in.

Then Wilson stood up and gestured to let House know he could rearrange his clothing.

"You seem fine to me. Just bruises. You did break the skin with a couple of those scrapes, so if you were in a hot tub," Wilson made it clear that he highly doubted that was true, "you might want to swab it with some Betadine to make sure there's no infection."

"Right." He re-buckled his belt and turned around to face Wilson, who was sitting back at his desk, staring at House with a puzzled look. And now, House did feel embarrassed. So he did what he would usually do. "Just glad to know I'm fighting fit for the repeat performance. Tonight we're doing it in harnesses suspended from the ceiling."

Wilson grimaced and House grinned. He headed for the door.

"Thanks, Wilson."