Edward was the first to fall off his perch. It wasn't a violent thing though; he just slumped to one side and slid off it like a slug.

Emmett would've fallen too if he hadn't already been on sitting on the ground. Instead he toppled sideways and clutched his sides as his new friend clawed uselessly at the concrete to steady himself.

"He's so drunk," Ben laughed, the only sober one at the party.

Angela was laughing hysterically and clutching at his arm so she wouldn't fall off her chair too. She wasn't drunk but she had a nice, warm little buzz going on all the same. It was the laughing that was making her unsteady. The situation was just that funny.

Bella was horrified, worried and giggly all at the same time so the sound that came out of her mouth as she watched him fall sounded like a wounded hippo undergoing a mammogram whilst being tickled with a feather duster.

Emmett didn't know who to laugh at first as he watched a drunken Bella attempt to right an even drunker Edward. First she tried lifting him by his collar but that only made her slide to the ground with him when his weight didn't shift and hers did. Next she tried to slip her arms under his but she just wasn't strong enough to right him. Giving up she sat back in her chair unsteadily and asked for another drink. "Alcohol makes you brave and strong, right?" she asked a cackling Emmett who nodded as solemnly as he could in agreement.

"Round here they say it makes you ten foot tall and bulletproof," he chuckled.

He happily refilled her glass with what was left of the bottle of red and then moved to help Ed who was still laughing his ass off and flailing like a giraffe on rollerblades. Bella was never going to be strong enough to lift him and Em had quite a few drinks under his belt too, so the process wasn't quite so easy for him either. But eventually he got the guy onto his wobbly legs and sat him back in his seat.

Ben was the first to leave and he took Angela with him. They'd made a plan to meet in the gym early the next morning and they both knew they'd never get there if they didn't sleep soon.

The three that were left didn't last much longer. By the time Em called last drinks Edward was so drunk he couldn't form words let alone sentences and Emmett had to tip him, still clothed and reeking of stale beer and cigarettes, into his bed before walking Bella back to her cabin ten minutes later.

Bella thanked him profusely for the alcohol and for the fun and Emmett accepted it with good grace. He told her he'd enjoyed her company too and that they should all do it again real soon.

For the first time in her life Bella fell into her bed with her makeup still on and without brushing her teeth. It wasn't a conscious decision; she was just too drunk to care. She fell into sleep with thoughts of rebellion at the forefront of her mind. Rebellion and jade green eyes and a laughing mouth on a beautiful copper haired man.

Wandering back along the path Emmett spied a light on outside the cabin at the very end of the path. Only three quarters as drunk as he usually was after a party he took another beer from the fridge and gulped half of it down before going back outside and looking to see who it was that was still awake at the ungodly hour.

He tripped twice as he approached cabin six and knocked his big toe quite hard as he came to the edge of the cement where the path met the porch. "Bassstard," he slurred as he hopped on one foot, his toe throbbing like a bitch in his thongs.

"Charming," Rose mumbled as she watch the hulking body stumble up under her awning and then flop down into the seat opposite her.

"Hey, it's you Blondie," he chuckled as he tried to focus on her features. "What are you doing up here with the plebs?" he asked as he looked around.

She ignored his question and corrected his manners instead. "It's Rose, and this is my cabin," she said sternly. "Good night?" she asked as Emmett grinned over at her.

"Why yes, Rose," he said pointedly having been sufficiently berated for the use of an improper name for her. "It was a very good night. You should've joined us."

Tapping the side of her wine glass with the tip of her pen she smiled over at him. "I'm all set right here," she told him though she was a little startled and more than a little surprised that her first ever invitation to join her guests would come from Emmett McCarty of all people.

"Then you should've invited us to join you," he replied with a pout.

"You lot were doing just fine on your own. You don't need me hanging around cramping your style," she replied and took a sip of her drink when he did from his beer.

Thinking he was being dismissed by a superior Emmett stood and drank the last of his beer down in one go. Crushing the can between his palms he tossed it into the rubbish bin by her door and made to leave.

Unsure what she'd said to bother him, and she was sure she had bothered him, Rose was about to ask him to sit back down when he leaned over the small table and stared down at her with glazed, drink addled eyes. "You're so fucking beautiful, Blondie," he drawled. "Why you're sitting up here on your own I don't know, but it's a crying fucking shame," he slurred.

He didn't wait for a reply he just turned and left. She watched him weave his way back down the path and when the light outside cabin two went out she let out the breath she'd been holding.

Cabins one and two had a very slow start to the day the next morning.

Emmett, the most used to waking hungover, felt the better of the four but even that was a small win. Used to the groggy, detached feeling in his brain and the aches and pains in his body he got moving far easier than his roommate did.

He took a long shower and shaved as best he could with his shaking hand. He dressed in his usual uniform of t-shirt, jeans and thongs and was sitting in front of the TV when Edward made his sleepy appearance an hour later.

Still dressed in the previous nights clothes with his hair sticking out in all directions the guy looked wrecked. Telling him to shower but warning him not to attempt to shave yet Emmett got busy making some coffee. He might be a dab hand at shaving while still way over the legal drink driving limit, but Ed was likely to slit his own throat.

Twenty minutes later Edward came out into the living room looking better but feeling like death itself. "Why did you let me drink so much?" he whined from a croaky throat.

"I'm not your mother," Emmett chuckled and handed him a coffee and a beer. "Don't turn your nose up," he laughed when Edward tried to decline the alcohol. "It's called hair of the dog that bit ya and you'll thank me for that," he said, nodding towards the bottle.

Edward figured Em knew what he was talking about because he looked perfectly fine and he'd drunk just as much if not more than he had the night before. He downed the beer first and as it fought for the right to expel itself from his body he drank the coffee to rid his mouth of the taste. Sliding down onto the sofa he put his pounding head into his hands. "Oh Christ," he moaned as Emmett took the TV off mute and settled in to watch the morning news.

"All the best nights are followed by an 'oh Christ' the next morning," Emmett laughed.

Angela was late meeting Ben and Bella still hadn't made an appearance as she ran down the path towards the gym.

Woken by the sound of the door closing Bella opened one eye at a time and squinted against the morning sunlight that streamed into her bedroom through the gaps in the blinds. "Oh Christ," she mumbled as she clutched at her head and tried to sit up without vomiting. It was only now that she thought about Roses advice and regretted not drinking about ten gallons of water before she'd fallen asleep.

Moaning long and hard as she got to her feet she waddled into the bathroom and tried to work out who the person was staring back at her from the mirror. Her mascara was muddled under both eyes and made her look like she'd been in a fight. Her hair looked as though a family of crows had tried to build a nest in it and her teeth felt furry and filthy.

Ignoring her long ingrained habit of conserving water she stood under the shower for forty minutes and tried to make her brain and shaking hands work. Washing her hair and body hastily after giving up hope that the hot water would wash her hangover away she exited the shower and towelled dry. She slid into the most comfortable clothes she owned and ran a brush through her tangled hair. She swallowed two aspirin tablets and as much water as she could stomach and then went in search of her partners in crime.

She found them on the sofa in cabin two and was pleased to see that at least Edward looked about as bad as she felt. She did her best to decline the offer of a drink but was talked into it by Emmett after listening to him explain why it was a good idea. The wine tasted bitter and it was warm from having been left out on the counter overnight but the coffee he shoved into her hand when she'd finished the glass washed away the taste well enough.

"Can you two stomach breakfast?" he asked and chuckled when they both said no. He left them in the cabin with instructions to keep drinking water and made his way down to the hall to pick over what was left of breakfast for himself.

Sitting side by side on the sofa Edward and Bella watched the mid morning news in silence and Emmett found them still there, sound asleep in each other's arms three hours later when he returned with a tray of pastries.

"Rise and shine my little party animals," he bellowed, scaring the hell out of both of them. "Daddy's brought you some lunch," he told the frantically scrambling pair as he laid the tray on the table in front of the sofa.

Bella was mortified. Edward had fallen asleep not long after she'd sat down but he'd been sitting bolt upright at the time. She didn't know how long she'd lasted but it couldn't have been very long. Why she'd woken with her head in his lap and his hands in her hair she had no idea either but she was horrified to be found that way by Emmett.

Edward was ecstatic. He'd laughed and joked his way through the night with his new friends. He'd been so drunk he'd had no idea how he'd gotten into his bed. The hair of the dog had cured his hangover and he'd woken with a gorgeous girl in his lap. Once again he'd come up trumps. He understood Bella's embarrassment but didn't feel it himself at all. It was a perfectly innocent thing and he was quite happy with his lot in life right then.

"I'm starving," Edward admitted as he tore open a piece of strudel and began to munch on its sugary contents. "What's the time?" he asked Emmett who was hovering by the kitchen counter with a slice of pie in his hand.

"Nearly midday," Emmett told him and asked if he wanted a soda.

Bella shot off the sofa so fast she stood on Edward's toes. "I've got to go!" she yelled as she went out the door. "My taxi will be here any minute," she called as she ran back towards her cabin.

"Wonder where she's off to," Edward mumbled around his second piece of strudel.

Bella was off to town and Rose watched her leave through her window in the administration block with interest. She wasn't quite as immaculately dressed or nearly as poised as she had been the two days previous and Rose put that down to last night's partying.

Good for her Rose thought as she put her head down and got on with the accounts.

She liked to watch her private guests blossom. She liked to watch the slow, steady emergence of their true personalities. She liked that the camp had a way of turning the shy, scared and sometimes broken children into self assured and confident adults.

It wasn't fool proof and there had been times when even Crossroads couldn't turn someone's life around. When it looked as though a little nudge was needed or her guest just wasn't settling in she could rely on her team to get them through, or pull them through if needed, but sometimes even a team of professionals couldn't help someone who was beyond helping themselves.

Sometimes the guests who came to stay were just too far gone by the time they arrived. Whatever they'd suffered left scars too deep to mend or what they were returning to was impossible to avoid. And sometimes she had guests who simply didn't want to be helped. She took those failures personally. But mostly her hit rate was pretty good. Better than ninety percent she guessed as she shoved aside the accounts and opened her web browser to type Emmett's family name into Google.

Emmett hadn't wasted the three hours that his new friends slept away that morning. Oh no, Emmett wasn't a time waster. He might fritter some of it away on social excursions or even devote some of it to frivolous pursuits, but everything he did had a purpose attached to it. He never did anything that felt like a waste.

That morning's reasoning was money and alcohol.

After a hearty breakfast he'd taken a promenade through the camp grounds. It might have looked like either mindless exercise or a man with nothing to do, but Emmett was on a mission.

His stroll took him beyond the gym and the health spa and across the other side of the camp to where the corporate cabins were located. He stood by the edge of the lake and seemed to be taking in its beauty. He looked in the windows of the Conference Centre and stopped off at the convenience store to buy some gum and to ask where the public toilets were located. He wandered across the playing fields and stopped by the grove of trees that edged the back of the private cabins. His amble took him almost to the main road and he made a deliberate show of walking around each of the garden beds there, even stopping to read the names of some of the flowers.

Rose watched with interest as he did. She hadn't pegged him as a garden enthusiast, nor a flower lover. But there he was, bent over a rose bush sniffing at the petals of a late bloomer.

She watched him make another circuit around the circular beds and then as he disappeared around the corner of the administration block before returning her attention to his name on her computer screen.

Emmett made his way back along the path outside the dining hall and stopped to 'chat' with two of the kitchen hands who were waiting by a roller door to accept a delivery. And then he went around to the very end of the dining hall building and stood under the awning where the public-use restrooms were located. He took note of the padlock on the janitor's storeroom beside the toilets and then he went back to the roller door and waited until he spotted a kitchen hand with his arms full, and who wouldn't care too much if he asked to borrow some tools to fix his bike.

Emmett didn't have a bike but the kitchen hand didn't know that. And just as Emmett had hoped his arms were too full for him to care too much about the request. Learning there was a tool box under the counter in the back of the storeroom that he was welcome to use; the kitchen hand went back to carting his very heavy produce into the kitchen.

Finding the small bone saw in the toolbox Emmett slid it up the sleeve of his shirt and clutched the pliers openly in his hand as he went back to the janitor's storeroom. He made quick work of the padlock and slipped the broken pieces of it into his pocket and then calmly put the saw back into the toolbox. He made sure to thank the kitchen hand on his way back out.

He did his best to hold in his chuckle at Edward and Bella asleep on the sofa in the living room when he made his way back to the cabin. He stuffed all his odds and ends into his duffel bag and slung it over his back. Whispering 'sleep tight my hungover pretties' on his way out he shut the door quietly behind himself and went back down the hill to assemble his still.

Bella sat in the salon's black leather chair and smiled to herself. She'd had nothing done to her hair that would look different to anyone else, but she felt different for the experience. She'd been shampooed and conditioned and she'd had a treatment put in her hair to ward off split ends. She'd had just half an inch cut off its length and then it had been blow dried and styled in exactly the same style she'd always worn it in. But it felt different.

It had never been about making a dramatic statement by changing the long, straight length. It was more about being able to make the appointment for herself, by herself. She could choose what she wanted done and even though she'd kept the original style it had been her choice.

Just being in the salon was exhilarating. At home a stylist came to the house and Renee dictated what needed doing to Bella's hair. Here she had free reign even if she wanted nothing done other than what would normally be done by Renee's lackey. At home there was no conversation, no gossip magazine to flick through, no coffee and cookie and definitely no relaxing head massage after having her hair washed.

Bella had watched in the reflection of her stations mirror as two young girls had their nails polished in a little cordoned off section. Staring down at her own nails while her stylist finished drying her hair Bella began to wonder what it would be like to have something other than plain clear polish on them.

"You have nice nails," the stylist commented.

"I should have," Bella giggled, "My hands do nothing."

"Look at mine," the stylist giggled as she reached around and showed Bella her right hand. Her nails were short and well cared for but they were stained too. "Hair colorant is murder on your nails even if you wear gloves," she tells Bella who nods in understanding. "Jaimee will be free after those girls leave. Would you like to move over to her station next?" she asked.

Looking back down at her own hands Bella began to nod. "Yes please," she grinned.

An hour and a half later Bella walked out of the salon with pale pink nails that had hand painted daisies on them. Her hands were soft and moisturised and she'd suffered a kind of brain fade as Jaimee the nail technician had massaged from her fingertips to her elbows with rose scented lotion.

Her hair was lustrous and freshly cut and she no longer felt hungover and tired. She felt new. New and confident and when she'd handed over the cash to pay for her visit she felt grown up and proud of herself.

She located the supermarket a little further down the street and made her way there with a spring in her step.

Like it was for Edward the supermarket was a wonderful place as far as Bella was concerned. She'd been in one before but had never had the freedom to purchase whatever she pleased. The girls at school had dragged her along on a few trips but her allowance had been on such a tight leash back then she'd never really indulged in anything other than necessities. Now she could buy what she pleased.

She had just over half her weekly allotted cash left so she filled a basket with sweets and crisps to replace what Emmett and Edward had shared with her the night before. She added a few pieces of fruit and some cans of soda to stash in her little fridge.

When she got to the checking counter she asked for a packet of cigarettes that looked similar to the ones Edward had been sharing with her and then asked the girl totalling her purchases to wait a moment while she ducked back down the confectionary aisle to collect two more bags of the jubes Edward had been shovelling into his mouth the night before.

She reminded herself not to offer a tip as she paid. Eyeing the extent of her purchasing fun she decided to buy a strong cloth carrier bag and then put that over her shoulder for the walk to the liquor store. She had no idea what she was looking at when she got there. There was no way she'd be able to carry a box of beer bottles but if she bought another carrier bag she could manage two of them for the short walk to where she arranged to meet the taxi.

Deciding on two bottles of white wine and one of bourbon for the boys she paid and stood the bottles up in the new carrier bag.

She had twenty minutes before the taxi would arrive so she ambled down the quiet street and looked in every window she came across. The trinkets in the window of the pharmacy were delightful but she wasn't a trinket kind of person. The properties listed in the window of the real estate agency looked sprawling and charming but she wasn't shopping for a home. Modern music was a foreign concept so the music shop held very little fascination but the bookstore ate up the last ten minutes of her time.

Giving away the last few dollars of her allowance for the week Bella met the waiting taxi with two cheap novels in amongst the alcohol and sweets in her bags.

Edward saw her approach the path to the cabins from his seat under the awning of his own cabin. He'd showered again and had shaved successfully. He'd managed to eat some fruit and drink two cups of very strong coffee and was feeling a little more human himself as he bounded down the path to take her carrier bags from her.

"You don't need to do that," she protested, but Edward was a gentleman and she'd had to give in to him at his insistence.

"What did you think of town?" he asked as they travelled the path.

"It's tiny but it's nice," she replied, happily turning over the details of her trip in her mind. "What did you get up to this afternoon?" she asked when they got to her cabin.

"Not a lot," he chuckled as he set the bags onto the counter inside. "Slept a little more, shower, watched TV. Nothing much," he admitted as he took her purchases out of their bags. "You planning another party?" he grinned when he came across the wine the bourbon and the cigarettes.

Blushing Bella giggled, "No, not exactly," she said as she stood the two bottles of wine in the door of the fridge and set the bourbon against the splashback of the countertop. "I have to repay you guys for last night though," she told him as she flicked the pack of cigarettes towards the end of the counter where he stood. "Those are to replace the ones I keep taking of yours."

"Emmett bought the wine and the snacks," Edward told her as he spun the pack round and round with his finger. "I only had enough money to buy that one pack at the airport," he admitted. "So I'll take these, thanks."

Tilting her head to the side she studied him carefully. "There's a bank in town you know. I saw it just now. I'm sure you can arrange an international money transfer from there. I can loan you some cash until that's sorted," she said kindly, making Edward blush just a little.

"I can't take your money, but thank you," he told her as he moved towards the door to leave. He was uncomfortable with the conversation and didn't want to admit that he'd used his 'winnings' from his bets with his drivers over the years to fund his cigarette mutiny. "I gotta go," he said hastily. "Em wants to show me something."

Bella stared at the space in the doorway where he'd been and shook her head. He was the strangest man. Carefree and open one second, closed off and almost frightened the next. Leaning over the countertop she watched him through the window as he walked down the path and along it in front of the dining hall. When he disappeared around the end of it she went back to unpacking her things.

Keeping the packets of jubes aside she put everything else into the little pantry and stowed the bags in a drawer. With an hour and a half to kill before dinner she took her new novel outside and made a start on it in the little bit of sun that was still doing its best to fight the cloud cover.

Reading the family biography on Google didn't do much to put Rosalie's thoughts in a better order concerning her guest. In fact it threw up more questions than it answered.

The McCarty's are quite a prominent Melbourne family with ties to charities and society clubs and groups all over the state.

Emmett's father is a well respected Cardiologist with private rooms in the city and a resume that included testimonials from royalty. Emmett's mother is a socialite whose picture had appeared in so many newspaper editions and magazines that the image list went on for three full pages on Google.

He has a younger sister who had recently graduated from Latrobe University and there is a picture on her profile page as well as a brief article about the two degrees she'd earned, Biochemistry and Molecular Biochemistry.

As far as the family biography was concerned the short listing stated that mum and dad were high flying sophisticates, the sister was near genius level and Emmett had been tacked on the end as 'the long-studying older brother of Gemima'.

How condescending Rose thought. He was a man in his own right and he'd been tacked on the end as though he was the poor cousin, not the much loved and respected older son. It was just downright rude as far as Rose was concerned.

She scrolled down the page to see if there is any mention what he is studying and what 'long-studying' meant. There weren't too many specifics to be had, just a brief mention that he had been but was no longer enrolled at the same university as his sister as a medical student.

A quick, vague check on how long a medical degree was likely to take, and then a mental calculation between the ages of the two siblings, and Rose was able to guesstimate that had Emmett entered university with his peers he'd been there for nine years already. And he hadn't graduated. His younger sister had studied, graduated and moved on to the private sector before he'd finished his qualification.

Nine years. Nine years at university. Another quick check and the magic that was the internet told her that there was no Emmett McCarty registered with the medical board in Australia. That meant she could rule out that he was still studying for post graduate degrees or courses. He wasn't a doctor who was still studying to specialise. He'd never graduated.

Emmett had been at tertiary school for nine years and had never graduated.

Closing all the other browser pages down Rose stared at the original Google enquiry she'd used to find the website for Latrobe. The third result from Google jumped out at her for no other reason than it mentioned Emmett personally. Clicking on it she read the first few lines and then put her hand to her forehead.

"The stupid, childish idiot," she laughed as she looked at the accompanying picture to the article.

Emmett was at Crossroads because he'd used up his third strike at the university. He hadn't been sent for a rest so he could finally graduate next year. He'd been expelled for his part in the destruction of an entire science block on the campus grounds. If he was ever going to become a doctor it wasn't going to be by graduating from Latrobe.

Recognising it for what it was Rose sighed as she closed the internet down completely. His mother had made the booking for him and she'd used a credit card in her own name to pay for it. Emmett hadn't sent himself to camp to get his shit together; his parents had shipped him off in frustration.

Rose had a sinking feeling that he'd been excommunicated from the perfection that was the family McCarty. Like so many of her previous private guests Emmett wasn't welcome in his family because he didn't fit inside it. He was different and different sometimes meant unacceptable to those who could afford a stint at Crossroads.

The man in question was on his knees sniffing at the clear liquid that was slowly dripping from the end of a length of copper tubing that was poking out rather suggestively from the spout of a drink thermos.

"Smells pretty strong," Em told a sceptical Edward.

"Is it supposed to?" Edward asked as he backed away to give Em more room to move inside the tiny storeroom.

"Yeah, course it is," Emmett chuckled as he turned the heat up a little bit on the camping stove, "The stronger it is the higher the proof the bigger the buzz we'll get out of it."

The vapours the still was giving off were giving Edward a headache already, so he couldn't imagine what ingesting the concoction was going to do to his liver, but he was eager to find out if last night's buzz was anything to go on.

"Is this safe?" he asked as he got more and more lightheaded as the vapour filled the tiny room.

"You've got glasses on and I'm wearing gloves, we're covered," Em said so confidently Edward was almost forced to believe him. Almost. "Right. Now we leave it to do its thing for a couple of days and then we'll make some cash," he announced as he checked the connections between the lip of the kettle and the plastic tubing he'd pushed into the cork in the top of the thermos.

Edward was tempted to say 'if you say so' but kept his mouth shut. Emmett really did look like he knew what he was doing. Plus he was a medical student; they knew chemicals he thought to himself as they shoved the fuel barrel back in front of the still. Rolling the mowing machine in front of the barrel Em made sure that their set up was invisible from the door of the storeroom and then he sent Edward on ahead to check they wouldn't be seen exiting the room.

Making a clean get away was important Em told him as they walked as casually as they could up the path to the cabin. He explained that it was his 'dismount' after the science lab incident that got him in the shit, so stealth was going to be a priority for this venture.

What he didn't know, and what Edward couldn't know because he really had no idea how to operate a still and thought that Emmett did, was that the vapour that was leeching from the still at that very moment wasn't ethanol like he'd hoped. Had he done any actual research he'd know that he should've boiled his 'mash'- the syrup and water mixture – at a considerably higher temperature than what the butane burner could achieve. Instead he was making methanol. Methanol would make you blind, ethanol would get you drunk. Both would produce a spectacular explosion if conditions weren't right.

Twelve hours later, after dinner had been served and cleaned up and everyone on the grounds were tucked up in their warm beds, the butane stove sputtered as it ran out of fuel. The automatic ignition tried to relight itself, throwing a single spark. That spark ignited the methanol which in turn ignited the fuel drum for the mower. The fuel drum splintered into a thousand tiny pieces of shrapnel and turned the mowing machine itself into a further thousand tiny pieces as its oil and petrol expanded in its motor.

The resulting explosion destroyed the storeroom, blew out the porcelain fittings and fixture in the toilets next door and blew a hole in the side of the building big enough for the groundskeeper to drive his mower right through it. If it had survived the explosion that is. Which it hadn't.

A/N: I've seen every episode of M*A*S*H too and I couldn't build a working still either. LOL

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