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Seto fiddled with every temperature control he could access; however, whatever had altered the settings to near subzero temperatures was not something he'd be able to fix without more specialised equipment. While he had fairly adept mechanical skills for the average layperson he did tend to leave the more mundane tasks to the proper staff. Most likely he'd need a trained repairman to sort whatever had happened here. Frustrated he slammed the box closed. 'Great,' he muttered, unsure what to do now.

He looked over at Jounouchi, hoping he'd have an answer, but the other man just looked lost and very cold. Seto was uncomfortably cold in his thick coat and sweater, he wasn't sure how Jounouchi was still standing in just a t-shirt, especially having remained motionless for the almost half an hour that Seto had spent failing to repair the AC control. Sighing he took off his coat and threw it over Jounouchi's shoulders. Refusing to make eye contact he began to walk away, saying, 'come on, we should keep moving while we think it'll circulate blood and keep us warmer longer.'

((Yup, I'll be pretty sad if I get to an afterlife that isn't paved in lava. xd ))

'As high up as we are there is no way anyone will notice a signal, I don't exactly keep a spotlight up here. Even if anyone was in any of the neighboring buildings we are at least 7 stories higher than the second tallest one, given that each floor of Kaiba Corp is actually the height of two stories. And yes, the windows won't open. I don't think we are getting out of here tonight, what we need to do is keep warm,' Kaiba said, heading back toward his office.

In the corner of his office was a plush, comfortable chair that he tended to take naps in during the days he refused to leave the office. It was comfortable, and there was a small blanket atop it. With a sigh, flushing slightly with embarrassment, he said, 'okay, what we need to do is keep warm. We can't keep walking around all night, I'm already exhausted. Security and the morning staff will be here in around 5 hours. It's warmer in the office, and this chair is a great conductor of heat. So we are going to sleep in this and stay close to conserve heat.' He paused, a bit awkward about what he was going to say next, 'of course shared body heat with our clothes lumped on top of us would be most effective,' Seto's voice trailed off to almost a whisper, he refused to make eye contact as he continued, 'we could keep underpants on, but generally, if we don't want to freeze to death...' He couldn't finish, Jounouchi should get the point. Of everything that had gone wrong over the last few days nothing seemed as horrible and humiliating as having to propose naked cuddling to a rival.

Seto stood motionless, hardly breathing, in the tense silence while Jounouchi slowly processed his proposal. He half expected to be punched, though really he was only making a logical proposition; not that logic was necessarily the best way to appeal to the other man, particularly when he was uncomfortable. Still, Seto found himself unprepared when Jounouchi acquiesced to his plan. Mostly because now they were faced with actually stripping and getting into the chair. He looked down uncomfortably at his feet, not prepared to make the first move, even if this was his idea. Finally, with an uncomfortable growl and a string of curses he kicked off his shoes, pulled off his sweater and began to fumble uncomfortably with the buttons on his shirt. When he was stripped down to his underpants and socks he scrambled into the armchair. Visage flushed candy apple read he glared at his toes, refusing to look at Jounouchi who still hadn't moved. He refused to speak about their situation further, he'd just sit their petulantly and freeze to death if Jounouchi didn't get into the chair on his own.

Seto tried not to stare as Jounouchi stripped, though he couldn't help but notice the contrast between his own flawless skin and the other man's more 'athletically' marked flesh. Probably years of gang activity, he reasoned, although having a drunk for a father probably meant having to duck a bottle or two every now and then. Seto had more experience with the emotionally abusive parentage, probably why he was a bit better versed with cutting quips rather than violent swings, not that he couldn't hold his own in a battle of fisticuffs.

He was jerked abruptly from his idle thoughts as Jounouchi climbed into the chair, slightly seated in Seto's lap as they squished together for warmth. Glad that the blond wouldn't be able to see him flush further unless he turned around, and he didn't imagine that would be happening anytime soon, Seto pulled the blankets and clothing items around them before softly murmuring, 'we should try and sleep,' against the back of Jounouchi's neck.

((Don't think we had, but definitely didn't think we were going for the fanfic beat/rape type deal, so no worries there. And so sorry I've gone so poof, so many deadlines, trying to put away my second chapter and start a new chapter of my thesis, a new job, a new blog for the postgrad forum I run, etc etc. I'm definitely going to disappear in December between the 16th-21st. I'm taking a holiday in Amsterdam and have promised the boyfriend it will be technology free, so probably won't even take a comp or tablet with me. Other than that I will hopefully refrain from vanishing for over a week again until then. Guess we'll see, running a journal is a lot more work than I thought it'd be and I'm taking on so many things. Hopefully it'll all pay out in the end with a nice padded CV of academic accomplishments. Maybe. stressed ))

At least 30 minutes had passed and while Jounouchi didn't say anything, he clearly wasn't sleeping. However, he'd finally relaxed a bit, and Seto was finally sufficiently warm enough to stop over-thinking the situation and trust closing his eyes for a few moments. 30 seconds later his head had nestled forward against Jounouchi's neck, breathing softly and rhythmically against the other man as he peacefully slept.

((There were spam posts this morning attempting to sell kitchen furniture, two from two different accounts - though likely still the same or affiliated posters. I deleted them but first time I've ever noticed spam on Gaia. I realise even in random forum nonsense I haven't noticed such things. I was quite confused at first.

I definitely agree on the well-written b/c that is a vein I generally like, they are just so rarely well-written that I usually don't have the patience to try. Plus I think they are quite unrealistic as Jounouchi's personality would probably be different if sexual abuse was a constant element of his home life.

And yea, who would've thought a PhD would be lots of work and little fun? Ah well, only two years left to go, I hope. xd Hope you are enjoying the holiday work.))

Barring bouts of unconsciousness Seto hadn't properly slept in days. He had been warm, comfortable and momentarily unafraid of death, sleep was something he could avoid no longer. Seto had never been one to share space in bed though, and his body was well used to cuddling around a pillow or two for extra support. So in his sleep, beyond the realm of his own conscious control, Seto unconsciously kicked the recliner lever positioning the pair on their backs. At which point Seto, once again unintentionally, curled his body around his chair partner, snuggling with the other man. His legs wrapped tightly around Jounouchi's thighs, head resting comfortably on the other mans chest as he held him tightly in his arms.

((Sorry, I was on my tablet which really reduces what functions I can access and was quite distracted with making it go away. Having never come across random spam in a guild it wasn't until after it was gone that I thought, 'damn, I really should have reported that.' Next time, I will wait until I'm on my laptop to make sure I report before I delete, though hopefully there won't be a next time. It did seem bizarre to target a not very active guild.

Whenever I'm not in school I feel like 'man I want to be back in school,' and when I'm there I'm always like 'man, I want to be done already.' Grass is always greener. Ah well, sometimes I really enjoy it, just not always, but I guess that's life. It'd probably be less stressful if I was even partially funded though. At least you enjoy who you work with, I think the hardest thing about anything is working with people you don't want to work with. Working on a public engagement project now and feeling a lot of that. It's really stressful doing an unpaid project and have it be unfulfilling in that sense too. Ah well, holidays will be over soon enough and I'm sure you'll have plenty of home time then. Granted as Thanksgiving isn't a thing here the UK doesn't really have plural months of Holiday season, so even outside of retail I can tell it hasn't gone chaotic yet. There are ups and downs to living in a less commercial country. Downs usually being when I forget to buy food for dinner on a Sunday and everything closes around 4pm.))

Seto drifted into a REM stage. The dream was somewhat lucid, yet he couldn't quite make out the details. He was aware that his lips felt quite dry though. Dream Seto started to nibble on them in an attempt to moisten them, in the real world Seto's sleeping form promptly followed suit. His tongue slowly slid across his top lip in rotation with him softly chewing the bottom lip. Given his position the sleeping Seto inadvertently began to nibble at Jounouchi's chest, his tongue idly brushing against a pert n****e.

((No it was in the guild, I have rarely gotten spam to my PMs and I always report those, but I didn't see an easy option for reporting guild spam so I just deleted it without really thinking about it. But yea they posted new threads in the main forum, both the same home product advertisements spam so the fact that it was two separate threads was bizarre as well. I guess it also wouldn't be too obvious to an outsider we aren't overly active as Morgey was back on here a few weeks ago as well as Yurei Surana (who have both since gone poof again), so we have several threads that appear to have been active recently. Still, personally knowing this probably isn't the best guild to get your spam seen in it was pretty amusing.

I do also enjoy being a postgraduate - in terms of actually doing academic work - than being an undergraduate. The best parts of my undergrad were often related to my job and band, and while I think I'd say at least 75% of the time breadth undergrad degrees make more sense than depth ones (and I definitely think breadth was better for me) you don't feel a deep connected purpose to your 'work' a lot of the time. Especially with some of the GE courses, like I really loved a religious study course I took but most of them were filler. And some of the required courses for my major even I could have done without. Even on my masters which was a taught research degree I picked which courses I was going to take (and only had to take one I didn't like as it was paired to one I did want to take) and picked any thesis topic I wanted. My PhD is even more 100% what I want to research - though that wouldn't be true in the states, which is why I kind of lean toward Europe when it comes to postgrad because I think depth is more important the further along you go. I also really resent things like the GRE, why should I have to pay to take a maths test in order to undertake an English doctorate? It feels like a monetary scam and not an actual skills requirement. You can look at my bachelors transcript and see that I have taken all the requisite levels of mathematics (and then some). So standardised tests for a doctorate (and even a masters) just seem ridiculous and don't really assess anything. I understand MCATs and LSATs, but in those cases you are going for a very specialised degree and they are assessing your knowledge of that field (not of some unrelated field). However, the stress never lessens, so yea, there is no getting away from that. And my PhD is going to be do or die (the one paper you've spent 3 years writing either passes or fails pretty much), so that's scary as heck. Although, I and my supervisor really should know going into the viva (oral defense of my thesis) at the end whether I'm going to pass or not (even if it's pass with minor or major corrections or something). I think nobody has failed a PhD who didn't realise they hadn't turned in a PhD worthy thesis, so that's something. And I will shut up now, many why do I like to ramble about this so much. stressed ))