snowblindrpg | [log] I Think We're Alone Now [semi-open]

I'm a nephrologist and infectious disease specialist and you think I'm certified for surgery?

[There's actually a full towel in House's backpack. He probably should have brought that in here with him.]

I mean, I can run a large intestine like any guy, but no. They usually don't want me doing much more than observing on the live ones. [He's exaggerating a little bit. House has performed surgical procedures, but they're typically the kind that involve minimally invasive actions... or majorly invasive ones after the surgeons have things set up so he can't kill anyone too easily.] I do more autopsies than surgeries. I've got a neurologist and an intensivist on my team and a whole surgical unit at the hospital when I need that kinda thing done.

Chase, he's the crying dingo. [With something of a start, House realizes it's the first time he's said the young man's name in... months probably. He'd offered all of his fellows as fake names in his first months of being in Norfinbury, before Dio announced his name and his first obituary confirmed it. The thoughts are enough to douse the heat inside of him that's been embarrassingly close to the surface for the last several minutes.] My intensivist. Probably the most irritating overall, really. He's a brown-noser with a side of back-stabber. Daddy made a call and Cuddy told me to put him on my team. He's not a complete idiot, but some days I wonder.

Not a complete idiot. [ Will returned the words to House. ] That's high praise from you.

[ Which suggested that House actually saw something in this Chase, or else he'd have made his life such a living hell that the guy would have quit the team. One pair of pants done, Will checked the dishsoap and then went ahead with freshing the water with a new supply of soap.

The extra bit of effort also helped distract him from the sounds of the other man moving under the water; the slick slide of soap over skin.

...

Really should have gone for that cold rinse cycle. ]

[It's really not going to get any better as House sighs in quiet contentment to himself, washing out the shampoo and scrubbing himself with the soap. Everywhere.]

He's... caught a few mistakes. Made a hell of a lot more, but he has decent ideas when we're doing our DDX's. Foreman's the one I... [He trails off. He's thought this, but it's nothing he's actually said out-loud.] He's my neurologist. He used to break into cars when he was a kid. Ended up top of his class. Bright guy. Kind of an ambitious dick. Incredibly argumentative. [There's a smile on his lips and in his voice.] If he thought he was right and I was wrong on a diagnosis, he'd spend all night in the lab running tests trying to prove it or undercut me. Handy when we get off track. He's good for breaking into patient houses, too. So, you get the whole package.

[House runs the soap lower, across his belly and slows his movements as he looks down, remembering Will's fingers brushing there, just beneath the hem of his shirt. Okay, stay focused on the fellows. Out, out other thoughts!]

[ No. No those content sighs really do not help. Or the do help, just not in the direction necessary for the circumstances. But Will does not need his extra fertile imagination playing out various scenarios where he might draw out similar noises.

....

Crap!

Quickly rinsing out the last pair of pants, Will reached for his small towel and ran it under the cold water. Peeking back to make sure House was still safely behind the curtain, he reached down and tucked the towel up between his legs.

Socks. Got to clean socks. Dirty, filthy, stinking socks. Not sexy work at all. ]

You respect him. [ Will called over his shoulder, it was a conversation they'd had once before, a ... well a long time ago. ] What do you think your team would have thought of this place?

[ A conversation about other people was safe, right? ]

[House is being a terrible waster of water. He's tracing his pruned fingers across where Will had touched, sliding lower and... really finding a burning need to finish washing. Shouldn't waste soap. The doctor slicks his hand and washes his particulars more roughly than is his usual wont. Just a little unpleasant treatment to re-rail his thoughts... and calm those down to a company-appropriate position.]

Cameron would've been like Hale with a side of that chick who's with Quark now. She's niceness incarnate and has to fix every broken bird she finds. It's pathological. She'd probably have burned out and gone into the same force optimism shtick Hale's running to keep herself together. Chase'd try to make himself handy to everyone. Probably would've died without regular showers to keep his hair looking pretty. Foreman... probably would've thought this was hell, but he's used to dealing with that from me. Would've tried to do the information and organization thing. He's good with paperwork.

[ Will tried to keep his focus on the socks and the description of House's team. He absolutely did not let his imagination wander to such practical thoughts of how much water they could have saved if they'd just showered together.

He tries to remember the feel of warm skin against his hand, with the gentle rejection that came with it. Tries to keep himself in line with what was reality. Tries not to think how his fingertips had been within reach of trouser buttons. He tried to rationalize the need he'd felt. Layer it under the guise of distraction and the instinctive response to a stressful environment.

Memories of another bathroom, of arms around him, cropped up and Will nearly groaned in frustration.

Socks, socks, focus on the socks. They needed a rinse, at least one and maybe another scrub. Will attacked them with focused ferocity. Poor socks, never did anything to deserve the scrubbing they were receiving. ]

Sounds like a diverse group. I know how you ended up with Chase, what about the other two, were they hand picked or foisted upon you?

Edited (need to stay in a format lane) 2018-10-14 16:24 (UTC)

[He can hear Will moving around out there. Naked. They really should have thought the clothes situation through a little more. House is grateful just to be out of his grimy attire and getting it washed, though. It if means pretending hard that some part of this doesn't appeal to him at an incredibly base level, then so be it. So be it.

He can just talk about his team. His team is not sexy. Well, scratch that, his team is actually pretty damn sexy as a group, but they're not the type of sexy House is interested in pursuing. He's not interested in pursuing any sex right now. Not with anyone. Or anything. He's putting the damn soap down and grabbing the conditioner so that he can get out of here.]

Cameron was my first hire. She came on around the same time as Chase. Foreman I hired a couple of months after those two. Cameron and Foreman were mine. Wilson helped with the interviews.

[Oh, there we go. That's a good dose of icy water to the libido.]

Cameron got the job 'cause she was pretty. Chase got the job 'cause of daddy. Foreman got it because his old gym teacher has loose lips about my home-boy's extracurriculars.

[ House. Your team is incredibly sexy because they're smart. One of your biggest turn ons.

Will has moved past being concerned about being naked at the moment, and tackling the sticky wicket that was practicality. It was dangerously cold these days, even when inside a building it felt bone deep; a lethal sort of chill. They needed all the warmth they could get and that included body warmth.

Body warmth, shared while hunkered down between two sleeping bags that were zipped together.

Not usually a problem, they had manfully huddled (muddled?) together in the past, but always with a few layers of clothes on and minds full of puzzles. Now, as they crept towards what felt like an unfortunate end, the puzzles didn't have the same sense of urgency, and the clothes were currently drip drying all around the bathroom.

Also, practically speaking, it was better to be flesh against flesh for the sharing of body warmth.

Rubbing his hand over the back of his neck, Will reached down and scooped up the bags. ]

You're ridiculous, you realize this right?

If we sleep in here, we can make the most of the warm steam and we'll be right here when our clothes have dried. But there is a mattress in the bedroom.

Do you have an opinion, one way or the other?

[House doesn't expect Will needs an answer to that first question, not really. Ridiculous is his life. He's had the Joker tell him off for being a ridiculous person and that's like the Kool-Aid dude telling someone they're having too much Kool-Aid.

The matters of practicality have not escaped House, either, though. It's not like this should be any different from the other times. They've dealt with this before. It's just... with fewer layers. And certain things they're ignoring. And now he's firming up again. House twists the handle for the cold water and it's almost an immediate stream of ice over his body. He gasps, a little too loudly in the close quarters, then turns it down.]

Goddamn knob doesn't know the difference between hot and cold. [Yep. Nailed it on the excuse.] Go drag the mattress in here along with my pack I've got a towel in there.

[Sorry he didn't mention, Will.]

I'll keep the steam going. I'm magnanimous like that.

[ The knob is perfectly functional. Will knows this for a fact, but as he'd nearly had to do the same thing on a couple of occasions, he sympathized and didn't remark on it.

Instead, he snorted lightly at having missed the obvious solution. ]

You spoil me. [ Will remarked in a desert, dry tone. There was a half a minute of building himself up to face the cold, then House probably felt the shift in the air and the wash of cold as Will opened the door.

There may have been a small (but completely manly) yelp.

Yelp or no yelp, over the next few minutes the ex-profiler set himself to the task of retrieving the mattress and their packs. It was going to result in very close quarters, but hopefully neither of them would have to leave the bathroom until their clothes dried.

A hand holding a towel pushed its way around the curtain. ]

You're welcome.

[ At least his foray out into the cold air had helped settle his own equipment. It was a little difficult to sport an inappropriate semi when your cock and balls were trying to burrow their way back up into your body cavity. ]

[House turns off the water when it seems like Will has everything in the bathroom and mostly settled, then just sort of waits. The towel being offered is a nice surprise. He figured he'd have to grab it himself. Taking it, the doctor dries himself off as much as he can before wrapping it around himself and pulling back the curtain. He'll do his best not to step onto the mattress, but it's not a big bathroom. It's probably going to get dripped on a little as he steps over it and onto the cold tile.]

Kinda hoping the our clothes don't freeze overnight. It's getting colder.

[Which... when it's already hellishly cold is impressive.]

If Holmes was right about this whole place being some kind of super quantum computer, might be it's gearing up for something.

[Thinking. Theorizing. It'll keep his mind off watching Will moving around, maybe setting up the sleeping bags together. The puzzles are a little more distant right now, though. His eyes follow the other man as he shifts the towel up to dry his hair.]

When the temperature drops like this, something bad's about to happen. [Then again, when the temperature rises to room temperature or higher, bad things tend to happen, too. There's a happy medium of mostly-freezing that they live in now.]

[ House was in luck.

While the doctor distracted himself with quantum computer something or other, Will was keeping his eyes firmly on the job of zipping together the sleeping bags. He was not desperately hoping his body behaved long enough to get into the bags, nor was he allowing himself to sneak peaks at the way water was sliding down House's chest.

Down his chest, across the soft skin of his abdomen and then beneath the towel. Will absolutely was not thinking about how his fingers had traced a similar path, up to the point where they were stopped.

Sleeping bags secured and laid out on the mattress, the ex-profiler wasted no time crawling inside. He hoped that it would just look like a man who was cold, trying to get to the warmth. ]

Before you fuss, I've already taken care of my teeth. [ Because he knew it was not above House to insist on good oral hygiene. Just to make Will move, if for no other reason.

The material of the sleeping bag felt strange against his naked skin. Will tried to recall if he'd ever slept naked in a sleeping bag before and he couldn't recall a single instance. He'd always been clothed, in one way or another, not stripped bare.

In more ways than one. ]

I think we've all accepted the fact that something bad is on the horizon. [ The ex-profiler finally circled back to the puzzle. Though he sounded more resigned than anxious. ] I suspect the deck has always been stacked against us, just perhaps in varying degrees of negative consequences.

Perhaps it's better to have it done with, than to continue on; trapped in this horror. We had tastes of what that would be like.

[ Hunkered down in the sleeping bag nest, arms wrapped around himself as he tried to warm up, Will peeked up at House with a pointed glare. ]

If you try to drag that wet towel in here with us, I will feed it to you.

[ He knows what you're like with loopholes, House. A wet towel, despite affording the illusion of some sort of physically barrier between naked skin, is NOT invited. ]

Edited 2018-10-23 17:23 (UTC)

Kinky.

[Enjoy the sass while House takes care of his own oral hygiene. He has the towel cinched around his waist for the moment as he steps around the mattress and uses the sink and the diminishing remains of his toothpaste along with the toothbrush he's thoroughly worn through. Still, it's better than nothing.

It also offers a few more precious moments to prepare himself for this and tell his body to behave. He drops the damp towel on top of Will's head once he pulls it off, purely to be a brat, then sort of... slides into the sleeping bag. It's immediately apparent there there are two grown men trying to share a very small space. It's physically impossible to get in and move to zip up without being aware of how naked Will is beside him. At his back, as he shifts to his side to work the zipper all the way up. Normally, House would demand to be the 'big spoon' in this situation. It's sort of expected. He's larger. The whole skin-to-skin warmth will work better if he's 'cuddling' Will.

But cuddling Will means having an extremely telegraphic body part pressed up against the other man.

Decisions.]

So, I'm guessing the whole weird feeding fetish came from Donner Party?

[Cold water. Cold water. Think of cold water-inducing things to say while they just settle and sleep.]

[ The problem was going to be House would have to try to sleep with an equally telegraphic body part pressed up against him. It was a lose/lose (or win/win) situation, either way you cut it.

Sputtering at the towel being dropped on his face, Will pulled it off and tossed it off to the side, trying to hook it on something so it had a chance to dry. Lining it up and tossing it, allowed him to keep his head turned while House crawled into the bags with him, but it did nothing when his throat went dry as a result of the skin to skin contact.

House was warm. Warm, familiar, and the scent of comfort. Months and months of comfort, in amongst the points of awkwardness and pain. With the towel in place, he lay down, studying the back of shaggy, brown/grey hair and surprisingly broad shoulders. ]

Nice try. [ He said softly, when House rather artlessly attempted to bring up the subject of Hannibal. No doubt an attempt to douse the mental and emotional heat, as well as the physical. ]

House ... [ Will started, paused and took a breath. ] We're grown men. If there is a reason why we're being ridiculous about this, then I need you to tell me. I'll respect it, I promise.

[ But the two of them, laying as they did now, both trying to ignore their bodies' reactions to one another, reactions fueled by an intimate connection that neither had ever expected, tried to rein in, and inevitably lost the battles? It was a little too high school for Will.

And they were running out of time for high school shenanigans. ]

But will you respect me in the morning?

[Okay. Glib comments are really only going to carry them so far. He doesn't do this. He doesn't do heartfelt conversations about feelings. Luckily, not having an excessive amount of them means that he doesn't have to. But they've already been through this when House had been helpless to stop expressing himself. Now they're here, the silence around them as deep as the cold in the air. It's just two of them. Alone. Alone and nothing but the night ahead, quiet breaths, skin pressed to skin, the scent of soap.

He's quiet for long enough that Will might wonder if he's actually going to say anything else. When he does, his voice is quieter. He's still turned away.]

I've screwed up every relationship I've ever been in. I can't... afford to screw this one up.

[Not when he can see 'final boss' written all over the exit to the Bunker in his mind's eye. Not when losing Will now for whatever reason, might well be the straw that breaks the camel's back. The man is important enough. They don't need to add another crippling layer to that.]

[ Will isn't even going to dignify that initial comment with a response, and also because he understands it's a throw away line for House. Probably words out of his mouth before he was aware of speaking.

As the older man spoke, the ex-profiler inched over onto his side, facing his friend. He watched the haggard profile, as House gave one of those rare glimpses, into his vulnerable heart. The reasoning was sound, and Will knew the man struggled with these types of fears. Not without reason, House was the master of self sabotage.

Reaching under the warming cocoon of the sleeping bags, Will lightly curled his fingers around House's forearm, tracking it down, until he could grip the other man's hand. ]

House. [ He began, in those soft and solemn tones. ] I highly doubt any of us are going to survive long enough for even you to screw up this relationship.

I sat there, while you were in that induced coma ... and all I could think about was the very real possibility that this time you weren't coming back. [ He'd gone and he'd done his investigating, like a good boy, but there had been a few hours. ] There seems to be a line drawn in the sand, between the few of us who weren't infected through our tablets and the rest of the group. If this place is true to form I suspect we'll find ourselves separated, and not by choice.

[ Pushing up on his elbow, he looked down into brilliant blue eyes, his own calmly serene. It had been the same serenity he'd felt, when he realized he'd lost the ability to save himself.

Zero sum game. ]

[When was the last time he even held someone's hand when he wasn't freaking out? Ecks, maybe? Quark? Ginger in Miller's cells? House can't remember. It's been long enough that the simple connection is almost foreign to him. It's associated with trauma, with fear. There's fear here, of course. He can't really dispute the words Will's saying. He's seen the divide, as well. It's like the lights or the lines. Except this time, most people made the wrong choice, were marked for the crappier side of things.

Will picks himself up and leans over House and the doctors stares up at him, momentarily frozen. This conversation is going to end one of two ways. His lizard brain, the part that works only on fear, on a sense of danger, on a need to protect against all hurt says to rebuff Will. Laugh it off. Change the topic. Just straight out tell the other man to lie down and go to sleep.

But there's another option here.

House stays where he is, but he turns his hand, laces his fingers with Will's. Yeah, this is stupid, but he's never made particularly good life choices.]

You realize you're just giving me a challenge right?

[ He was equal parts expecting House to push him -gently- away, equal parts figuring it would be for the best if he did, and equal parts relieved when skilled medical fingers tangled with his own. Will flexed his hand, settling his fingers even more comfortable and then returning a firm grip:

I'm here.

Still leaning slightly over the older man, the ex-profiler quirked one corner of his mouth upwards, just a touch higher than the other, as his eyebrows rose innocently into his hairline. ]

Did I? Don't know what I was thinking.

[ Only that challenges were good. That if this place did take them away from each other in the next day, or the day after that, House would at least have the challenge to keep him driving onwards. It was about the only thing any of them could promise the other at this point.

But that was in the future hour, and Will was tired of trying to sort out the next step. It seemed a good time to simply exist in this moment. ]

This is where I awkwardly kiss you, [ he shared, a twinkle of wry humor entering into his blue eyes. ] If afterwards you tell me you can't because I'm unstable, I am kicking you out of the sleeping bags tonight.

[ No. No he wouldn't. House could stop things at any time he wanted, and they would just go to sleep. ]

[He squeezes back.

I know.]

I mean, the Joker kissed me once. You're a hell of a lot more stable than he is. Anyway, I think the crazy's supposed to make it hotter.

[House finally shifts, rolling so that he's more on his back, looking up at Will properly now. His blue eyes are half-hooded]

This is also where I point out I'm not cleaning the sleeping bags if anything more than a kiss happens.

[While he's interested in dipping his toes a little deeper into whatever waters they're stepping into here, the thirst needs to wait for the morning when they can see about a shower before heading out.]

Edited 2018-10-28 22:00 (UTC)

[log] I Think We're Alone Now [semi-open]

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