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[tresjoly]

When Joly had insisted that they needed to warm up after getting sodden in the rain (an ill-fated trip from the medical building of his University's campus back to his apartment, in which Bossuet, who had been in possession of Joly's umbrella while the surgeon-in-training was laid heavy with his own textbooks and carefully colour-coded notes, had needed to veer off to meet Courfeyrac for coffee, and had taken Theo's shield with him, in the scabbard of his satchel), he had not quite meant that they both take to the tub at once. Indeed, though, his logic had worked against him in this regard.

The shower had come upon them suddenly, when they were but a block from his abode. Joly, squawking, had been almost as worried over the health of his notes as in his own bodily well-being, and had not known what to shield. Being a sun-shower, as it was, upped the chances of a sore lymph or a sandpapered throat come the morning; a sudden shift in temperatures never did anyone any good. Mood rings alone benefitted from that. A relic that really belonged squarely in the 60s, and had no part of function in his millennial life, thank you much!

Once inside his apartment, he'd shed his shoes, hung up his coat to dry, and fussed over Grantaire to follow suit. On at a ramble about the ill-effects of the damp, and how imperative it was to get into warm water quickly... he had missed the little circle he'd drawn about them both, in his haste to see them both well.

If they both must be in a warm bath at once, and he only owned one tub; who was to take the first of these baths, and who was to suffer?

After very little hemming and hawing, the deal was struck, and they both fit neatly into the tub, filled up solidly, with a bubble bath of his own brewing. Eucalyptus, peppermint and pine; he wasn't hugely convinced of aromatherapy, but he trusted his own homeopathy, and these were the scents best for keeping the sinuses clear. They would smell like a Candyland Forest after, but, well! Worse things to smell of.

Snorting lightly, and leaning back, he blew a mount of bubbles away from him, and towards his guest, at a lazy drift.

"We may yet survive to see tomorrow; no promises, though! Also, might you make your legs a bit shorter? Your toe is prodding at me."

[flaskerade]

Sometimes, Grantaire wonders why he so often keeps company with Joly. He wonders why he even bothered harassing his honorary best friend instead of going to one of many bars that know his name for a rowdy bout of happy hour sickness. They didn't even go to the same university, and yet he had schmoozed his way right past the security guard with the smell of whiskey and spearmint on his breath. Why? He tells himself it's because he's bored, and because his pokes and prods illicit just the right responses that make his favorite hypochondriac's voice reach pitches only dogs and grand R's could hear. He won't ever admit that it's because they fit, like pieces in a soggy puzzle. He won't ever admit that he's capable of actually having friends.

To admit it would be to accept it, and accepting something as fact always leads to disappointment.

Whatever the reason, Grantaire kept pace with his friend through the nattering and the squawking, only put off by the rain because it risked putting out his cigarette. That would be the one reprieve of the rain for Joly, he thinks. He'll die from pneumonia and the whooping cough but at least that fucking cancer stick was destroyed by its greatest enemy: moisture. He put the thing out against the wall of the building as Joly rang them in, letting the tar and tobacco litter the paved ground instead of the inside of Joly's hypoallergenic apartment. A small favor, one likely to be ignored in light of all his other terrible misgivings.

Sometimes, he wonders why Joly keeps him around too.

His clothes were shed without pretense but not without mockery and jibes at Joly's expense. He threw a balled up wet sock at Joly, then another, before shimmying out of his paint-covered skinny jeans and letting his body be a free agent of germs in a sanitized space.

It was during the space of time where Joly was hemming, hawing, and fussing over clinically unproven herbs and supplements that functioned primarily as placebos for the paranoid mind, that a bottle of wine was obtained. He had sauntered through Joly's kitchen buck naked and trailing water until he found it, popped it open, and grabbed two glasses. Another small favor; he could drink from the bottle instead. When he joins Joly back at the tub he sinks in without a second thought and pours himself a glass.

"Unfortunately, I can't make my legs shorter, unless you suddenly think that I've mutated into Mr. Fantastic the incredible stretching man. Can you imagine, me with super powers? What a waste. You're just going to have to deal with my regular sized human legs just like I'm going to have to deal with yours. Which, by the way, are shockingly close to my junk. I never knew your feet felt that way, Joly."

He emphasizes the point of his long legs with a nudge, a purposeful prod of toe to glut.

[tresjoly]

A thing to remember: Moisture was always the enemy. This was not just a prophecy meant for cigarettes, but for man as well. 'It's raining daggers' was capital idiom to live (and possibly die) by, properly painting a portrait of the sun-shower for what it really was: lethal to the mortal (see: man), and mortal to the lethal (see: cigarettes.)

Moisture was the fiend indicted in the following crimes: Structural damp, leading to asthma, mold infestations, allergenic or immunological illnesses, bacterial disease, and a buffet of microbes and fungi quite aside from the sort of shrooms Joly might swear by in short, hypnotic doses. Moisture was also credited with the ills of aching bones and sulfated lungs, common colds and uncommon immunity troubles. Slipping, too, was a rude side-effect of moisture when it had the audacity to become rain, and to puddle. (As such, Joly suggested a cane to prevent the breaking of an ankle, and not as a symptom of one already fractured.)

Grantaire's cigarette had learned the lesson the hard way, and Joly had no desire to see his light snuffed in a similar manner. He had been very free (and somewhat verbose!) in telling Grantaire so, in increasingly colourful, fatalistic, scientific, and high-pitched language on their way to his apartment, the damper his hair had become.

Now, perched and stationed in the tub, surrounded by the compulsive perfection of his Medicine Cabinet (his affectionate name for his well-kept bathroom, bleached free of mold and wiped clear of dust, throughly humidified and potpourri'd by a hypoallergenic bouquet), and in the warm and more inviting water of his temperate bath, silky with oil: finally, he could relax.

Or ought to be able to, really! Such nerve, on the other side of the tub! Such audacity! Terrible to think how fond he was of it, the entire package that was the incorrigible, inexplicable Grantaire. (Grantaire's actual package being far less laudatory, and equally inexplicable, Joly had been reminded but a moment ago.) How he had not fallen ill of simply looking so ill half the time was a mystery unto itself, and Joly saluted and congratulated the man his firm insides, even if the outsides were a bit mottled and mushy in feature.

(Less salutary were his mushy socks, which sat marring Joly's otherwise spotless floor after their offensive trajectory towards his naked shoulder. He would wash that shoulder and the floor with the same care, three times even, but for the moment did his friend a credit in doing his best not to think of it.)

"I can't say I have enough imagination to fathom it, no." He agreed, with a cheeky grin that blossomed thin and happy across his face, despite his best wishes to cluck and scold that a man might make his legs shorter by use of the knee. Joly, when he was coaxed back into good spirits in the relative safety of his tailored apartment, was difficult to make grimace for too long. "I perhaps have enough imagination to visualize you not drinking in my tub, but, I suppose I can also envision you sharing the bottle-- ut, ut! So long as you don't drink directly from the mouth, and swear to keep using the glass."

That he puts his hand out for the second glass, which he has already spotted, is a matter of course.

Nose wrinkling at the prod to his stomach though, he went on, "My feet do not feel much, my friend. And I daresay it isn't because of Lewy Body Disease, but more to the point, because there is not much to feel." And to make his point, he'd wiggle his own foot around and make a scrunched-up face, as if in search of something that was not there.

Sorry, Friend!

"Besides, if you had super-powers, you'd be the Human Torch, not Mr. Fantastic. Lighting everyone's cigarettes, and being otherwise flaming."

[cynisme]

There are, among their great and ennoble ranks of hapless idealists and talented good for nothings, some rules which should go without saying. A drink in the hand is two in Grantaire, for instance, or perhaps that you can't judge a Courfeyrac by the state of his undress. One that should join those ranks is to never challenge Grantaire to something you don't want him to do. He had brought the glasses around for a reason, out of an amicable courtesy to his obsessive compulsive host. Small courtesies were easy, in the face of his inability to waver himself from his own path sauntering head first into failure. To insist though, that he not drink directly from the bottle? Well, that was better than asking for it.

The look he gives his bathmate with a tilt of his head says it all, says that the words he chose were not the best for his purposes, and Grantaire pours Joly a glass. Slowly, careful not to spill a drop into the noxious water below. He takes his time and snorts at the comment, not moving much in spite of Joly's squirming.

"Feet don't feel much to begin with, we have callouses for a reason. Namely to keep us from hollering like banshees at the constant chaffing. Imagine if we walked on our hands how much that would hurt. You'd never stop whining, or more than you do already. Or maybe you are losing circulation, who knows? You might want to get that checked out before one of them falls off." He hands over the glass then, wine to the very rim.

"Speaking of flaming, your prodding my asshole. Do you want to know when's the last time I had an enema or are you happy to see me, monsieur hypocondraine?"

And with lips to bottle he finishes himself off, smug at the challenge fulfilled.