bakerstreet | The Body Heat Meme

The Body Heat Meme

Post with your character! They're now stuck in a very cold place of your choice. It can be anything, such as a freezing chamber, a cavern or a small cabin in the midst of a blizzard. The choice is up to you.

Comment around! Now your character has some company in this bone-chilling environment. The two of them share two things in common: clothes completely unfitting for this weather (be they summer clothes or even lingerie) and a blanket.

A blanket? Yes, just one warm blanket and no other ways to escape the cold. The two of them will have to share it in order to stay alive in this weather. Don't worry, you're sure to find a common language in this terrible situation!

So, uh, have fun, I suppose. Try to not freeze to death!

Protip: friction and body heat are both excellent ways to fend off cold.

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[It had been a terrifying night but finally, Rei and Makoto were safe. When Haru had woken up to find them gone, when he figured out where they were, his heart had stopped. As blank as he normally seemed, he wasn't really.

Now, with Nagisa with Rei somewhere, Haru and Makoto had found a cave to try to wait out the storm. Dressed only in their jammers, the temperature had dropped to the point of painful. Still, there were more important things.

Dark blue eyes take in his friend. He'd been in the water longer, was probably colder. Though he was usually on the other end of that question, he voices his concern.]

..You okay?

[ His hands are still shaking.

It's an inconsequential fact when juxtaposed against the rest of the night — his slipshod fear and Rei plummeting fast beneath the waves, the flicker of spasming panic when he couldn't go any further, when he'd lost all sense of motor control and slipped into an inexorable downward spiral — and while the rest of him recovered in time, he couldn't control the shivering any more than he could coax a sense of calm into his palms. Wrapping his arms around his scrunched legs, he's in the middle of timing his breaths, in-out, in-out, all fractured respirations and defunct finesse when Haru eventually speaks up into the silence, and then he tips his head at a tilt to stare up and assess him. ]

... Ah, I'm fine.

[ A partial lie. By means of escape, he abruptly averts his stare, keeping it safely pinned on the ground in tacit ignorance of the chill seeping fast into his bones. ]

What about you, Haru? Are you alright?

[What makes them shake? Is it the dropping temperature, a frigid air that's brought on by a combination of being in cold water and chilling temperatures dropping even further due to the falling rain? Or is it fear? Haru had been with him, back when they were children, and he still knew how much something like that had frightened him. For the ever calm and ever protecting Makoto to freeze up, it meant something.

He's both of those things himself. He's cold, he's wet, he's afraid. Looking out and seeing - or not seeing - those two bodies had been terrifying, even without a childhood trauma. What if they didn't get to him in time? What if they got to them but couldn't get them to shore before their air was pushed out of their lungs and was replaced with water?

The small shivers, the way he can see his breath, all of this serves as answers, one to a question he ignored.]

It was stupid, being out in the ocean like that. [And he's angry. Rei could have died, Makoto could have died, and it makes him want to shout the stupid until it gets out of his mind, until his heart returns to a reasonable, normal pace.]

[ His breaths peter out soft despite the tremulous shivers. In a sense, it's terror going slantslide, raveling out fast and remorseful, gutting out his lungs; the profound inanity of a disclosed phobia because there's nothing to fear now but his own brazenness. He didn't let himself think beyond surface-level impulse, the implicit reinvention of panic sustaining him while his usual sensibility rapidly declined.

For nothing less than selfishness, singleminded and insatiable, Makoto let every misgiving go, allowed it to drown him until Nagisa and Haru forcibly dragged him and Rei back from the depthless tides. ]

When I first saw him, he wasn't too far out. I didn't want to wake up the rest of you just because I couldn't handle it on my own. That'd be too pitiful, wouldn't it?

[ Plaintiveness holds its weight in his mouth. His throat closes up around the words. ]

I really thought it'd be okay. I'm sorry for making you worry, Haru.

[Haru should understand that sense of shame and pride which makes all ability to ask for help freeze up or go away completely. He's the quiet one, the reserved one, the one with so much pride that he keeps it to himself. But he's only able to understand to an finite degree, because they could have both died. The waves had grown tall and visibility had steadily decreased until they were all lucky Nagisa and himself had managed to reach them.

He stands, body shaking as small sparks tried to move through frozen veins, causing shivers. The heat in his voice doesn't travel to his bones, doesn't give any kind of actual warming bonus.]

It was stupid. It was stupid for him to go out there alone at night, and it was stupid for you to follow! [Fear laces the words, and he knows he's going to go too far until he's told to stop.] You should have woken us up! If we hadn't...!

[Or not, because his own words die in his throat, not quite frozen like everything else, but stuck nonetheless.]

[ His eyes are alight with terror, the steeling numbness of shock peeling away in lieu of remorse, anesthesia in diffusion, the gradual slantslide to clarity. It's in these moments that he recalls Haru's predisposed silence, how he'd sooner dunk his hands in the shredded darkness of evening, waxing on and on like a sickness seeping into their bones.

And Makoto is shivering, fingers slung in quivering semantics, every ligament snapped taut and thin as he rises to meet Haru, stands above his diminutive height but somehow always below him in concomitant degrees because Haru was right, was right, was right — ]

We swim three times as much every single day since we've arrived. Rei's a beginner. Of course he'd feel frustrated when he couldn't keep up with us. It was my responsibility to bring him back, when he could have just as easily —

[ He falters with consternation as a bone saw cutting viciously deep into the planes of his face, already pale and wan from exertion, from nearly drowning on nothing more than pretenses. ]

... died. He was only a few kilometers out from shore, but if I turned my back on him just because I couldn't handle it? I would never be able to face Rei again. Who knows how much longer he would've lasted out there?

I panicked, Haru. I didn't want him to get taken away.

[ It's cold.

It's so cold. ]

[There's something raw about the cold, primal almost, as if it were a direct enemy to them both. It would attack their bones, freezing their blood, make them both algid because they were too busy arguing about what had just happened to take much notice at how low their internal temperatures were dropping.]

If you'd woken me from the start, you wouldn't have had to turn back.

[His anger seems to temper off, though it's done anything but. Yelling takes too much energy now, too much attention he can't force away from his pained skin.

Of course he didn't want Rei to have been left out there, he wouldn't have let that happen himself. He wanted both of them safe, both of them on shore, both of them in their tents. Maybe later he'll find his empathy and understand why he would do something so stupid, but he'd almost lost them both over it.]

Killing both of you wasn't going to save him.

[I don't want you to be taken away

But then it has to be mentioned, because he can't ignore the physical signs anymore. He wraps his arms around himself, bending his knee as if trying to recreate some kind of warped fetal position.]

It's cold.

[ And it's more so the consternation than the chill that trickles into him eventually, but he can't ignore Haru's frigidity, arms wrapped so tight around him in a futile effort to induce heat into his skin, visible displacement in his shuddering arms. Makoto stutters off, eyes bright and caught, and he cuts straight to the heart, forgoing the words dying on his tongue to wrap two borderline-lukewarm palms over Haru's tremulous shoulders. ]

... We shouldn't stay out here any longer. Maybe we could go looking for somewhere warmer to stay in the meantime? But Rei and Nagisa — where could those two have gone? We can't leave without them.

[ And it's no assuagement of guilt, but he stares up at the milky dishwater light of the fermenting sky and the ensuing fog, the potential for rain vibrating in the air, and figures it might be a lost endeavor if they go trekking out to search now.

Nowadays, it seems like all he does is make mistakes. ]

They made it to shore.

[He knows that, he watched for that as he managed to pull his cold friend for the water. He could see two figures in the opposite direction, dark and shadowed as they had been. While the smaller was obviously supporting the larger, Rei had seemed to be able to walk, so he was conscious. What happened after that wasn't unimportant, but it didn't have the same urgency as getting them out of the water.

Beneath those hands, he can feel the small tremors that are hurting his bones, that are setting his teeth on edge. He wants a large blanket, some hot soup, and he remembered the day he had gotten back from swimming and Makoto had met him with just that. Instead of being comforted, the pain just returns. His real anger is - was? - at Rei, even if he's finally beginning to understand, but he wasn't there.

Forcing himself away from that circular thought process again, he looks around, dark blue eyes trying to make out the silhouettes in the dark. There seemed to be some cliffs, some parts darker than others, hinting at overhangs at the least.]

[ Slowing to fixate on Haru's utter equanimity in the matter, he blinks, startled out of scanning the shore for their forms. Mouth rounded in contrition, he bows his head, circumspectly rubbing the nape of his neck in concentric motions, eventually retreating to take a few idling steps forward, then swivel on his heel to appraise his best friend in the dying light. ]

Ah ... okay. Okay, then I'm sure they'll be able to find help, Haru. Once there's enough light out, we should follow them. Let's try to find somewhere warmer in the meantime.

[ Feet sinking further into the sandbar, he retracts to head in the direction Haru's line of sight was pinned upon, only to pause. Amidst the murky, percolating gloom, he arbitrarily takes Haru's hand in his and resumes walking, striding out toward the overhanging cliffs with a renewed pace. ]

... So we don't get separated. Don't let go of my hand, alright?

[He can feel the rough, coarse material as it went around the very bottoms of his feet, slightly between his toes but it's not an unpleasant feeling. It's ground, soft and squishy as it feels, it's safer than the turbulent waters he loved. It meant they had made it back and no random storm would take them back out again.

Trying to shake himself out of such a dark mood, he blinks at the hand currently around him. It's cold, much as the air and water was, but somehow his hand feels warmer inside. In that small span of time, Haru had gone from accusatory to follower, ready to find some shelter from the lowering temperatures.]

....It's warm. [The off-hand remark is just that, something to notice, barely worth pointing out, but any kind of warmth felt good to his body right then.]

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The Body Heat Meme

A little rewriting of their island adventure, then

sorry for the lateness!!

No worries!

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