doctornota

[doctornota]

Great. I'm real glad for you. Look, while you're in there tell the annoying blonde that I don't feel any particular way about anything that went on just now. Tell him I'm not even thinking about any of it. And that I don't care. About anything.

WE'RE SO FUCKING BACK

[doctornota]

Eh. Yeah, why the hell not. Here's a key.

MAYBE NOT SOMEONE FROM THE HOSPITAL BUT HEY.

[doctornota]

...If I beg somebody else at the hospital might switch apartments with me.

[doctornota]

Setting up a medical mannequin and all his equipment on the coffee table.

[doctornota]

apartment 301 is truly a frat house

[doctornota]

"YEAH, AND I CAN TELL YOU WHY, TOO." He can't argue with that, after all, Leonard is well aware that he has been operating at an unreasonably high level of stress since... since hell if he knows. "I happened to be perfectly relaxed most of my life up until I met you." Not even Jim's fault, not really, but the Academy was stressful and dear god, deep space is stressful. Every single thing about the Enterprise is - was - stressful beyond belief.

What's his excuse here? Well, he'll let you know once he figures it out.

"I could be on a beach somewhere," he mumbles. He watches the other skaters on the rink, the way they effortlessly glide and even spin. "We're going to the beach next time." He toes the ice with the front of a skate, briefly entertaining the idea of pushing off and seeing what happens before ultimately chickening out. "Okay, since you're the expert. What am I doing here?"

THERE'S A LAUGH THAT COMES OUT OF HIM at the comment. If it was anyone else , Jim maybe would've taken the threat seriously. But Bones ? Even if he wanted to ( and there was no doubt in his mind that he wanted to ) there was no way in hell he would purposefully cause them both to fall. Not when he was just complaining about the hypothetical surgery they would both need.

❛ JESUS. YOU'RE GOING TO HIT SOMEONE before you end up actually falling. ❜ Flailing your arm around is definitely the best way to keep stable. It's better than , you know , actually taking the advice of the guy trying to help you. But what does Jim know ?

HE ROLLS HIS EYES SKYWARD. He would facepalm , but if he lets go of Bones he fears they will both end up face down on the ice. ❛ Yeah , well , you need to work on that , too. ❜ Jim watches as he straightens himself up , before raising an eyebrow at him. ❛ Y'know , I don't think I ever have seen you relaxed. Even three drinks in you can still find something to be stressed about. ❜

[doctornota]

Believe it or not I'm actually trying not to end up on the shitlist of every single person I share an apartment with.

WHY THE HELL WOULDN'T YOU IS THE QUESTION YOU SHOULD BE ASKING.

[doctornota]

Don’t pander to me, kid. One tiny crack in the hull and our blood boils in thirteen seconds. Solar flare might crop up, cook us in our seats. And wait’ll you’re sitting pretty with a case of Andorian shingles, see if you’re still so relaxed when your eyeballs are bleeding. Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.

[doctornota]

And why the hell would I do that.

[doctornota]

WELL, THAT'S JUST UNIQUELY FUCKING HORRIFIC, and yet even then his mind fills with nothing but questions, research he could be doing - this guy is a xenobiologist's dream; think of the papers they could partner on - after the knee-jerk reaction of what the actual fuck holy shit passes ( and thank god he is a decade or so past the point of being made nauseous by just about any visual stimuli the galaxy can conjure upl ). What the hell kind of evolutionary advantage does that little trick come with, what kind of stomach - Jesus Christ where the hell would it even keep a stomach - can process glass with that much ease, and hey, are you free after this? I've got this sate-of-the-art hospital, by 21st century-or-so standards, and - never mind. Leonard reaches over and slides a martini over towards himself, once they arrive. Equivalent exchange, he thinks.

"Not half as deep as I'd like, but we're getting there. Not exactly sure I can go toe-to-toe with a guy that orders fifteen margaritas as a starter, either, but I've got nothing better to do tomorrow, so let's push our luck, shall we?" A small amount of disappointment - no, that's not quite accurate. Guilt, maybe? Yeah, it might be guilt - anyway, it gnaws at the very back of his mind, because this sort of stupid-ass behavior is the kind of thing he and Jim have tried to keep each other away from since landing on the Enterprise, but...

God, who is he kidding. All the more reason to get shitfaced.

"That one was on the house. As for the rest, we'll see. My standards are high." For what, he's got no idea. Conversation partners. Aliens he's willing to hit on. Drinking buddies. Actually now that he thinks about that he's not sure any of those things are true, but he's not going to empty his wallet out in front of this guy, and that means being obstinate.

It’s a real joy, how truly and utterly perplexed they are by his mere presence. That’s his favorite feeling to invoke, in both humans and anything else, and so he does nothing to dissuade it. If anything he basks in the feeling, glad to keep it after he's lost most of what truly highlights his unhinged nature. Whiskey usually isn’t his preferred poison of choice, but hey, it’s free and he’ll take anything. His eye retreats into its socket as teeth and a tongue appear in its place, knocking the whole thing back before grinning at him. Wide. He proceeds to eat the glass itself shortly after, an audible crunch being apparent.

“GEE, THANKS - FOR THE COMPLIMENT AND THE FREE DRINK. YOU SURE KNOW HOW TO TREAT A GIRL, HUH? HOW MANY DRINKS DEEP IS THIS? TRYING TO FIGURE OUT IF YOU'RE JUST THIS CHARMING WHEN YOU'RE SHITFACED OR MORE ON THE SOBER SIDE - AND IF I CAN GET A FEW MORE FREE DRINKS OUT OF YOU. AND IF YOU'RE A MASSIVE LIGHTWEIGHT OR NOT!"

There's a cackle or not, but he does entirely mean all of that. For the better or worse.

[doctornota]

"I'D LIKE TO." Rule it out, he means. It's muttered under his breath and into his cup of coffee as he takes a sip and makes a face, though whether that one is directed towards the coffee itself or just a reflection of his general emotional state is anyone's guess. Some days - many days - Leonard simply makes a point to go out of his way to be cross, which solves very little of his problems but feels like an appropriate stance to take when you've found yourself in a galaxy seemingly intent on screwing you over.

"Not really shoveling I'm worried about. The cold and I just have very different views on what constitutes fun." And all the frostbite cases he'll have to treat... "Thanks, anyway. Just never sure what to expect of this place. But you'd think we'd know better than to try and predict anything around here by now, right?"

"Well I've never seen it snow before but I don't think you can really rule it out now can you?"

When something seems to go wrong every other month mother nature having a little bit of a hissy fit was probably within the realm of possibility and high on the totem pole. Not as insane as everything else they could do but still pretty annoying. Worse for the boat girl who didn't have any warm clothes in any wardrobe at all...

"At the very least someone can probably clean up the mess for you if ya' don't like shoveling too much. But everything else? Yeah it'll be a real fun time in the coming months."

[doctornota]

LIKE THAT'S NOT BAD ENOUGH ALREADY. At least there's a Jim-shaped buffer here, though he's not sure if he'd wind up feeling better or worse if they both crash into somebody.

"I might." It is a slightly-murderous threat. "Only be fair of me to keep you on your toes for once," instead of the other way around. His free arm pinwheels as he finds his center of balance - a tricky thing, when he's so certain his feet will go flying out from under him any second now - and the other still clings to Jim.

"I do walk leaning forward. I've got places to be," and half the time he's running because Starfleet is nothing if not a test of his endurance, all day every day. But he straightens his back enough to look like a slightly more put-together human being rather than a horse who's forgotten how to use its legs. "And I'm relaxed. I am. This is relaxing. You know, where I grew up we used to stay away from the water in the winter, and that always seemed plenty fun to me."

IT'S A LOOK THAT HE KNOWS FAR TOO WELL. It's that look that Bones gives him when he wants to say damn it , Jim without actually saying a word. It's like he's only got a limited number of them that he's saving for more important occasions , so he has to ration them out and settle for glaring daggers at him instead. ❛ For one , it's a public rink. Worst you can do is run into someone. ❜ Or have someone run into you. And Jim knows full well they're not going to be going fast enough for the former to matter. The latter ? Well . . that one he's not so sure of. ❛ I wouldn't promise anything if I didn't expect you to. ❜

❛ WE WON'T NEED SURGERY , BONES , unless you really intend on screwing up that bad. ❜ There was a part of him that genuinely thought the guy was just exaggerating , but as he immediately almost topples Jim over by virtue of using him as support - he's starting to slightly regret this. But admitting that to Bones would be like a death sentence. ❛ Well , first thing you gotta do is stand up straight. ❜ A hand still rests firmly on the other man's arm to keep him from immediately eating shit. ❛ You don't walk leaning forward , so you can't skate like that either. Just relax , alright ? I've got you. ❜

[doctornota]

THIS PLACE PUTS LEONARD ON EDGE ON THE BEST OF DAYS. Not the hotel, the city itself. Just wrong, the thought that half the population could just up and vanish, or whatever the hell's going on with them - he's not exactly solution-minded, not currently, unless you count hunkering down with a group of mostly-strangers and a bar as a solution. It's keeping his sanity in check, at least.

And Jim's here. So. Solutions are imminent, he imagines. Jim's like that.

For now, though, he's nursing a half-empty glass of actually-not-too-bad whiskey, one hand pressed to his forehead and the other tilting the glass back and forth idly. The other man barely gets so much as a sideways glance up and down before evidently deciding this warrants an effort at polite conversation and turning to better face him.

"Wouldn't believe anything he tells you, if I were you, but yeah." It was different when his introductions were always obligated to mention the whole highly-decorated medical officer thing; here he's perpetually scared that Jim is going around introducing him to others as 'hey, did you know he threw up on my shoes the first time we met?'. Fucking embarrassing. Leonard offers him a hand. "That's me. Another medical professional, you said? Well, hey, look at us." Damn good thing to have if things go to shit, isn't it? Guess their little group lucked out.

"Probably a smart move. Haven't got much of anywhere else to go and there's not much sense in sitting around ignoring each other." Really though there's only two of them he doesn't know - Hannibal and the young woman that had showed up back when they'd first sent out a message. Elijah and Jim are... Elijah and Jim. "You can take a seat, if you want. Lord knows nobody else is gonna fill the place up."

the cast of characters now united at the hotel is positively interesting. where some appeal to positivity and others find preference in violence ( not to name elijah and v respectfully, of course ), the man he now knows as leonard has settled into a melancholic state, found more often than not looming over a glass of whisky.

this is how hannibal encounters him, late into the afternoon. the bartender is gone and so is the rest of the staff - those who'd enforce the bar's closing hours are nowhere to be seen, and so these are left to the group's own choice. leonard has decided that the drinks menu is available at six pm and so it is - hannibal takes the seat next to his.

" i hate to interrupt a fellow medical professional, but i don't believe we've met. " leaning forward, his elbows rest on the counter before them, supporting the weight of his torso. " you must be leonard. james speaks highly of you. "

the psychiatrist smiles politely, the grin itself an apology for cutting off mccoy's very apparent train of thought. " since we'll spend the following weeks sharing the same living space, i found it appropriate to introduce myself to all members of our impromptu group. i'm hannibal. "

@doctornota, for the event!

[doctornota]

"I DON'T KNOW, I'm not in the business of underestimating folks." Some of the scariest people he knows are under five feet tall and half of them could probably lift a car, even outside of this place, which has an additional layer of weirdness to it so anyway Leonard just goes around making a habit of assuming that anybody and everybody could knock him on his ass if he wanted to. Helps keep him from saying stupid shit. "But it's all the same to me."

Does bring him back to the issue of looking like a fool, but at least he's not alone in it this time; he crouches so she can hop up onto his shoulders, if she wants, it's not so terribly high that she shouldn't be able to reach it from there.

"Ha! No, can't imagine they would be. You, uh... you've really got a way with the little guys, haven't you?" This is not the first time he's run into the young woman and it's... also not the first time she's been hanging around with birds, or something to that effect. "I mean, wouldn't exactly have been my first solution, I can tell you that much."

" Oh I don't think I could hold you up very well... But I think I could reach it if you didn't mind ! " Snow placed one hand up over her eyes as she stood up on her toes to really zero in on the runaway snow flake. She originally came here to the mall to get a pair of boots... And now here she was, quietly wishing she was a squirrel so she could just run up the wall and get the thing down herself...

" I thought about seeing if I could call a winged friend to help, but I don't think the mall would be too happy with flyaway snowflakes AND flyaway birds ! "

[doctornota]

JIM RECEIVES AN ABSOLUTELY FED-UP LOOK. He's not being any kind of way - except for rational, maybe. Or at least he's trying to be. Kirk drags him into a lot of irrationally bad ideas, some worse than others. This is pretty low on the list, all things considered. "I've fully got no idea what in the hell could possibly make you think that," that Leonard's balance could have even remotely improved since the last time around ( they'd spent a lot of winters in California and even more up in space where they only ran into naturally-occurring ice every once in a while; obviously Jim has dragged him into holodeck-provided snow once or twice and it's never ended well ), that is. "But if you're gonna be fool enough to make a promise about it, well, then I'll just have to hold you to it."

But then he says that very often and only drags Jim through a guilt trip over the things that don't really matter - Jim has never once broken a promise that did matter, not by Leonard's measurements. Whether not getting his legs busted by this damn foolish venture matters enough to qualify is up for debate.

"Oh, yeah, because the only thing I love more than performing surgery on myself is performing surgery on both of us. You know me so well." But he can't really effectively dig his heels in even if he wanted to and he's already come this far, even if the first uncertain step onto the ice nearly does end with both of them flat on their asses ( clawing like a drowning cat at Jim does assist greatly with maintaining his balance ). "Jesus. There's a trick to this, right?" Pizza, french fry... that might be skiing. "You seriously used do this for fun?"

THE WIDE , SHIT - EATING GRIN ON JIM'S FACE says everything Bones needs to know. He knows full well that it's ( almost ) impossible for the Doctor to say no to him. Granted , things are a little different now that he's technically not required by Starfleet regulations to follow his orders : he could've said no if he really wanted to. And yet here he is. Even though he's taken twenty minutes just to get his skates on to buy himself some time , he wasn't forced to come. But he is going to be forced to skate since he did show up.

❛ DON'T BE THAT WAY. ❜ It's just ice skating. An activity made specially for an Iowa boy such as himself. Yet again , Bones doesn't even like winter in the holodeck. So his reluctance shouldn't really come as a surprise. ❛ It'll be different this time. I promise. ❜ It takes all of his effort to bite back his laughter as McCoy takes a step forward.

HIS PLEAS ARE MET WITH A SHAKE OF HIS HEAD as he continues to coax him towards the ice. ❛ You're not gonna bust your ass , Bones. I'll be right there the entire time. And if for some reason you do fall , you'll probably end up taking both of us with you. That'll cheer you up. ❜

[doctornota]

HE OFFERS JIM A NOT-VERY-FRIENDLY GESTURE ( fine, there's a hello for him ) and debates the merits of packing a suitcase. But how long can it last, really, whatever the hell it is? Weird shit is always happening around here. "And who says you were the intended recipient of this conversation? Thought you had your own apartment."

Anyway, he's right, McCoy doesn't need much of an excuse to drink, especially these days, but this time it feels more dire. Or maybe he really is just at the end of his rope. Kinda feels like it. To Elijah, he can only shrug broadly.

"No idea, but it's gonna be a damn empty hotel, I can tell you that much. Maybe you'd better come with after all, I'll strangle him if it's just the two of us." An exaggeration and a half but he's feeling theatrical ( could just be hysteria, he's not up for diagnosing himself accurately at the moment ) and he'd feel bad leaving him behind if he ends up getting whisked off to wherever-the-fuck things are happening this time around. Leonard is not the world's greatest roommate, but he is putting forth some kind of effort to be friendly with the man.

"...Meet-up's not a bad idea, either. Somebody's bound to know what in the hell's going on out there." And what's the saying? Misery loves company? "Not sure if I should be thanking you for enabling this or not, though." It's not one of his more comprehensively planned-out ideas, certainly.

❛ And hello to you too. ❜

Jim barely looks up from his place lounging on Bones' couch - nothing like crashing at your friend's apartment when his roommate also happens to be there. The guy's chill enough , and unlike Bones , has a diet that consists of more than just shitty beer and a prayer. Halfway through his rant , Jim finally throws his legs over the side of the couch and sits up.

❛ I'm pretty sure you don't need anything to drive you to drink. ❜ Although the prospect of renting out a bar does sound appealing. He thinks on it for a second. ❛ If shit really is going sideways , why don't we go to a hotel or something ? Plenty of space , usually have a restaurant and a bar. And we can meet up with anyone else there. ❜ He's not sure to what extent this is , but Bones is known to exaggerate. So unless he walks out there and buildings are on fire or something , then he's not too worried about it.

[doctornota]

"I DON'T WANT TO BE HERE."

It's always fucking something. People vanishing right off the goddamn street, sure, why not. Leonard spends the entire walk home doing a piss-poor job of tamping down an anxiety attack - god forbid he's next, if he's getting out of this place it'll be on his own goddamn accord thank you very much - kicks open the apartment door like a man being pursued by death itself, and chucks his bag against the wall, pacing. His roommate has been around long enough now to have seen Leonard's more unsavory meltdowns, so that's... fine, he no longer feels shame in that regard, and Jim is... Jim ( and of fucking course he's hanging around Leonard's apartment while he's at work, why wouldn't he be ).

"I'm serious, we don't have enough alcohol to get me through whatever the hell is going on out there," he jabs a finger towards the window and the city that has wronged him, "this time. Can't we rent out a bar or something? A hotel with a bar, maybe? I feel like I'm going crazy. This city's driving me to drink."