bakerstreet | Body Heat

Body Heat

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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Her side was snug against his. Of course, it was not the closest she'd ever been to someone. But it was the closest she'd ever been to him. And from either side of light summer fabrics she could feel the telltale signs of life: body heat and the occasional twitch of muscle. It was visceral and she flushed again to imagine he felt much the same from her. Her fingers crushed and creased in the furs. Her knees drew up against her chest.

"The bed," she whispered. "If you cannot poof, can you chop?" A fire would not be a perfect solution -- but there was something enticing about sitting out before the flames with her head tucked easily on his shoulder. Something about the intersection of necessity and choice that appealed to her.

"That wood looks way too old, Sansa. And in case you haven't noticed, I don't exactly have anything to chop with." He could feel her against him, warm and getting warmer, each breath she took pressing her side into his for a moment.

"The furniture here isn't exactly, ah, burning conducive. Might sort of be that way for a reason." Like so that the house didn't burn down.

Her expression soured. Here was the bounty she reaped for having ideas: refusals and explanations. "Your magic!" She said with a softer insistence. "Does your magic not chop...?"

What good was magic if it could not stand in for a sharp edge? In truth, she had a childish habit of reducing his magic down to whatever she needed at the time.

Not that it mattered. He'd already named the wood unusable.

Edited 2014-09-02 11:16 (UTC)

"No, my magic does not chop. It burns. It ices. It rumbles. I've been working mostly on elemental stuff. And bubbles." And fireworks and snow for her, but she didn't need to know that right now.

But he felt bad, inadequate, like he'd failed her. His chin drooped a little.

It was difficult! Balancing her lingering-sticking-aggressive sense of social dread for sharing so much space with his limbs. Balancing it with a desire not to wound him or hurt him or offend him. And when she glanced rightwards she could see that she had failed. Sansa drew breath and shrugged her shoulders tighter. She curled her toes.

"Our...body heat," she whispered the word with such nervousness and guilt, "will have to be enough. In the morning -- when the sun breaks -- we might go looking for a tree? One with little branches. Easy to snap."

Said as a question, now. And not as an imperative slight against what he could provide her. But deep down she understood that there were other young men who would have had a sword at their hip.

"In the morning we're going to get the hell out of here. Someone will come looking. Your brother or sister. Or someone. And I'm not going to sit here with you and watch us both lose body parts." He was still a bit grumbly about the quip, but he knew that she came from a different time, hell, a different place where guys just ran around being manly with swords.

"Stiles."

She began smallishly. Nervous. As though she feared to contradict him -- but he'd never given her any cause to fear. He'd never hurt her for her argument nor made her feel dismissed for her thoughts. So, twisting under their blanket so she might half-manage to face him, she picked at one loose thread in his proposal. "If someone comes to look for us...and we've already gotten the bleep out of here--" Yep. "How will they ever find us? You and I would be gone."

Her knees knocked his.

He shrugged, giving her a small smile. "We're not exactly stealthy, Sansa. We'll make a visible trail. A blind deaf guy could find it. The castle shouldn't be too far away and it's not like we're lost. We just couldn't go on in this. When it's over, we'll go home."

That he'd call the castle he'd been kidnapped to 'home' made him want to laugh. But she knew what he meant.

"Home--"

Her shoulders sank. And the settled upon that choice of word. That concession, of sorts, and watched him tenderly. But she did not smile. Not even when she said his name. Although I like it when he says my name. My proper name.

"So we need only survive tonight." Strength grew in her voice. "I can do it. I swear, I can."

She refused to disappoint him.

"Of course we can. We're not outside. We've got shelter. And we've got something to keep us warm. Our chances of survival have gone up like, fifty percent because of that. We'll make it till morning, then we'll head home and get them to build a huge fire and make some hot chocolate." He gave her a bolstering smile, hoping that she'd believe him, hoping that he believed himself.

Ah-ha. Here was a rhythm she knew and liked: the predictable give and take. You know, the one where Stiles gave up all these strange foreign concepts and she -- like a pecking bird -- sought to pick out the meaning out of a whole nest of strangeness. Sansa settled nearer, let her cheek fall against his shoulder, and asked the question we all knew she was destined to ask: "What, pray tell, is hot chocolate?"

"You haven't had hot chocolate yet? Okay, yeah, we're fixing that when we get back. It's not even just a Christmas thing. It's pretty much something that comes out all year round, but it's better in autumn and winter because it's a nice hot drink. Have you had chocolate yet?" He wasn't really sure what sort of candy or sweets they had other than lemon cakes where she came from.

She smiled, though it was a small and watery sort of smile.

"I have. Not back in Westeros, you understand. But here. Chocolate is very nice; I like it. It's rich and sweet and just a little bitter and one day Sigrid brought up these tarts with chocolate and raspberry and..."

And if she continued like this she was apt to make her stomach growl. Sansa exhaled. "It's not fair to tempt ourselves so with things we can't yet have."

"Sure it is. Then we have something to look forward to. Hot chocolate is like... it's chocolate mixed with hot milk and if you're lucky, you can find some marshmallows to toss in. It's sweet and hot and perfect for cold nights. We'll have some when we get back. Lots of it. And maybe you can ask Sigrid for some of those tarts. They sound good." No one tormented Stiles like Stiles tormented himself. God, he wanted some hot cocoa. And pizza. And hot dogs.

She sighed into his shoulder and shut her eyes against the temptation -- only to see visions of the same slink along behind her lids. Chocolate and tarts and she even tried to imagine marshmallows with nothing but their names to conjure a picture. "How cruel!" Sansa objected, but not without much force and certainly not without a mild smirk. "You will make us both hungry with talk like that."

And yet: "Do you drink it as you drink tea? Or is it spooned from a bowl, like soup?"

Hot chocolate.

"Better to be hungry than the alternative." Which was dead. But he just shifted a little to try to make her a bit more comfortable on his shoulder. "It's like tea, only better. Big mug and the marshmallows float in it until they melt or you sip them up. It's delicious. You'd love it."

"The alternative," she chided him, "is to have our tummies full and our persons tucked under more furs than this. Before a roaring fire." But then Sansa paused, shook her head, and corrected herself: "Roaring fires." Plural. Separate. In her indulgent fantasy she must not allow them to be sharing that same fire's heat -- after all, what they shared now was only due to a lack of other options.

Even so, she snuggled nearer and suppressed a shudder as she leached his warmth.

He caught the slip and he smiled, wishing he could lift his arm over her shoulder and let her tuck in more. That might have the wrong effect and he wasn't up to having to try to talk her back into doing this, especially not when he could feel it starting to get warm under the blanket. "Mm, that'd be nice. After a nice hot bath. Bubbles for you, of course." Yep. She seemed like a bubble bath kind of girl.

"What do bubbles have to do with a bath?"

Bubbles were a waste of precious soap, Stiles! Or at least some magical byproduct of modern soapy science. The hard old-fashions soaps with which she was familiar did not lather into frothy walls of bubbles and foam. She was fortunate to receive a few suds as she scrubbed.

"... Oh wow. Okay, when we get back? I'm finding bubbles for you. It's a sort of... liquidy soap thing you put in the bath while it's running and it bubbles up and, you know... bubbles."

Sansa shook her head.

"It isn't your duty to prepare my baths, Stiles." Gods forbid. "Sigrid does; it may be she knows something of this...liquidy soap."

Okay, that got him a little flustered. "I wouldn't prepare it myself. Just find the, uh, the stuff. So you could. Or Sigrid. Or... stuff. For the bath. Not me. Near the bath."

The fluster was mutual. She hunched her shoulders together and stared across the room -- this avoidance of his gaze was made easier by the fact that she was sat next to him already. And although she stiffened at his side, it would be more fuss to extricate herself than to stay here. Quiet. Pleasant. Patient.

"O-of course. It wouldn't be seemly." Because you're a man and I-- "You're no servant. Certainly no handmaiden."

That would have to do.

He snorted at that, cheeks still a little pink but his head ducking as he shook it. "It's really... weird to hear you talk like that. I mean, not you, but... about servants and stuff. Most people do things for themselves where I come from unless they're unable to. Like... disabled or too old or too young. Especially stuff like that. Personal stuff."

"For themselves!"

She blew a long breath out her puffed cheeks. And she gave her head a shake. "I would be lost without Sigrid to prepare the water and work the comb through my hair." Sansa could do a lot of things: dance and sing and play the high harp. But the sheer trouble of having had to wash her own hair was borderline traumatic.

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