The Arms Hotel Lobby, Wednesday

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

Jeff's sunburn was just starting to fade. Just. That meant that large parts of his arms were peeling. Nana thought this was the most fascinating thing ever.

In practice, this meant Jeff spent most of the day sitting on the floor being sniffed by a gleefully fascinated Saint Bernard. Being Jeff, he had quickly given up on doing anything about it at all.

"Sometimes," he said, "you've just got to lie back and take it."

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[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

Of course, Turtle came bounding into the hotel with her usual greeting ("Jeff!") and a bag with sandwiches for lunch, but there was also another bag from Turtle & Canary containing some lotion. After waking up that morning and practically having to wade through a sea of peeled-off skin (okay, maybe that was a slight exaggeration, but still!), something needed to be done.

"How's it going?" she asked, not sure she wanted to know why Jeff was sitting on the floor and letting Nana sniff him.

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

"I think she's retreating!" he yelled, giving her a thumbs up from underneath the large mount of dog.

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

"Retreating is good," Turtle said, head tilted now that she was standing in front of the heap of dog. She would have sat down across from Jeff, but didn't want to risk suffering a similar fate. So she might have to be patient.

"Especially since I didn't bring a sandwich for her."

She never did. Stupid dog.

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

"Maybe next time," Jeff said.

Considering that she was slobbering at his face, it came out more like mlbnxtaimeNANA, but he felt the point stood.

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

Doubtful.

Still, hoping to help Jeff at least somehow, Turtle gave a tentative nudge at Nana; there wasn't much too it. She didn't want to make things worse for Jeff rather than making them better, but she had to do something. "Go on," she said. "Go bug Gunther or something."

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

Nana lifted her excessively drooly head and panted happily in Turtle's direction. She had a compromise: she dropped a long strand of drool right about where Turtle's hand was, and then skittered aside, her paws scrambling at the floor.

"Well," said Jeff. "I think my hair's stuck together."

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

"Eeeeeew," Turtle said, scrunching up her nose and trying to wipe the saliva off of her hand, onto her jeans, which were promptly going to be changed as soon as she got back to the dorms. "Gross."

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

"She's been in a bit of a spot," Jeff said, sitting up in a sort of veering way. "I think it's the suntan. It's gotten her convinced that I'm a lobster."

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

"I didn't know dogs liked lobster," said Turtle, since she could at least understand where Nana might be coming from in thinking that Jeff was one.

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

"I think she mostly just likes the cracking sound they make when she chews on them," Jeff said, wisely, "It's a bit like a huge rattle."

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

"Gross!" Turtle said, her face a conglomeration of various stages of cringing. "Your dog is gross, Jeff. Now I'm going to have nightmares of her trying to eat my legs because she likes how they crunch."

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

"No, see, human legs don't crunch." Jeff was still maintaining his sage streak as he crawled up to his feet, prodding at his hair. "They haven't got the carapace for it. Unless you're wearing shin guards."

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

"What about bones?" Turtle said, frowning at Jeff a little and finally settling down, sitting cross-legged in front of him, facing him, sandwich bag between them. "Those have got to crunch."

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

"She doesn't chew that far!" he argued, then added, "Generally."

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

"Yet," Turtle added, helpfully, persuasively, as she took out a sandwich and handed it over to Jeff.

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

Jeff gladly took the sandwich. His hand was a little sticky. With drool. "I think she tried to chew the bed once," he offered.

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

"That dog," Turtle stated, a little needlessly, as she got her own sandwich, holding it very specifically with the hand that hadn't been drooled on, "is a menace."

She didn't seem to care that saying that was about the equivalent of saying Water is wet, snow is cold, and squirrels are evil.

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

"I need to figure out where to put her after graduation," Jeff mumbled. He still didn't want to think about it, but it had been On His Brain for a while now.

It was better this than throwing a spazzfit.

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

"You should make your mother take her," Turtle offered in a mouthful of food, contemptuously, enjoying the thoughts of just desserts.

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

"Oh, no," Jeff said, shaking his head violently, and shoved his own now-mildly-drool-stained sandwich into his mouth. "...I can't do that. If I get within a five mile range of my house, my mother will find me. She's got me electronically tagged."

Pause.

"Or at least she said so."

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

"Do I even want to know," asked Turtle, "where it is that she's said she's tagged you?"

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

"Probably not."

He chomped on the remaining bits of his sandwich.

"Nipples."

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

"Ugh," Turtle groaned. "Jeff!"

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

"Sorry!" Jeff flailed, "She just said it was better to spread out a bit!"

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

"Jeff, I doubt she's had your nipples electronically tagged."

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

"I think there's a bump. On the left-hand side, just off the actual nipple."

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

"I think you're paranoid," Turtle said. "It probably statistically more likely to be breast cancer than an electronic tagging device, Jeff, and, if you don't believe me, I'll pay to have some doctor check it out."

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

"But have you felt it?" Jeff demanded to know, "You get closer to it than I do." Because nipples sort of confused Jeff greatly.

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

Turtle blushed to be reminded of that fact.

"I've never noticed anything," she said.

Of course, she knew that, if she were that close, she had other things on her mind than checking for electronic implants, but saying so didn't help her case, so she stayed mum on that fact.

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

"You have to wonder, though," he said, wistfully, "about nipples. I mean, they're the world's most useless bodily extremity. It's like someone put buttons on there and forgot to wire them properly and now they just mostly make your vision go a bit funny."

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

"They're not useless for women, Jeff," Turtle pointed out, her blush only deepening and her eyes very distinctly focusing on other places of the room, other places that didn't have even so much as a thing that might be mistaken for a nipple. "And guys have them because they develop on the body before the gender does when you're gestating in the womb."

What?

Turtle had done her research. She didn't believe in engaging in heavily involved situations without the proper amounts of research.

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

Jeff thought about that for a moment.

"It really makes you think, doesn't it?" he asked, "Nipples are like mankind's common denominator."

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

"Wouldn't that...technically...be humankind?"

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

"Technically," Jeff agreed. "But just think about it. People everywhere are united by their possession of nipples."

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

"I assume this is mostly a subconscious thing," mused Turtle, a little warily. "I mean, it's not like people just sit around and think to themselves, 'hey, I've got nipples. So does that guy. And this girl. We have so much in common!'"

...Except maybe Jeff did, but she didn't exactly want to think about that.

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

"Only if they wear mesh fabric," Jeff agreed.

He thought about it some more. "This might be the secret to world peace," he said.

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

"Nipples?" Turtle blinked.

"Nipples," she repeated, "are the secret to world peace, Jeff?"

Good Lord, her boyfriend was insane.

She was going to blame this all on that damned dog.

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

"It could be possible!" he argued. Jeff was, in fact, well aware at which point people tended to think he was mad. "I mean, if we recognise that everybody's got nipples, then we know we're all the same people. And they do say that the cause of most wars is people not understanding each other properly."

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

"So, if someone would have pointed out to Hitler that, hey, we've all got nipples..." Turtle let the thought trail off, because it was almost too ridiculous to favor with an actual vivid description of what could instead be suggested by a pointed silence and a look.

"We've all got skin and muscles and bones, too, though, Jeff. Not just nipples."

[scary-jeff.livejournal.com]

"It might have spared a bit of an ugly spot, yes."

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

"Well," Turtle sighed with a bit of finality, "if any new despots or rulers trying to take over the world any time soon, we'll just send you in, Jeff, and let you tell them all about nipples."