Thinned Ranks

[i_got_5_meters]

"Hey Birdie. Are you looking for your meds?" Gilbert peaked his scruffy head through the door of the hut when he heard the rustling within. "You gave them to me when you got loopy on them the first time, remember?"

The patchy-faced albino stepped into the rustic hut and flopped down onto the fur covered bed he and his genius boyfriend shared,

Comments

[tino_suomi]

"You, son, of, a bitch." Eeva glowered, thick golden drops running down from the top of her head and across her face, dripping onto her clothes. "I should kill you where you stand."

It was honey and milk. In a bucket, that had been rigged in a simple mechanism across the path between their hut and the one Eeva shared with Linus. Typically only Eeva and Linus would walk in that direction, but it didn't matter even if someone else did. Eduard was a brilliant fuck. The trip line for the mechanism was low to the ground. Everyone else here was taller and when they walked they picked their feet up higher to take their longer stride. Eeva not only was shorter and had feet closer to the ground, but she was known to drag her steps a little bit on occasion, guaranteeing that the feet that would trip the wire and dump the bucket was in the highest probability going to be Eeva's.

She ran a hand over her face, trying to keep the dribbling concoction out of her eyes, but all it did was push her bangs up and the honey causing them to say up like some humiliating form of hair gel.

She took in Gilbert's startled expression before pointing at the German. "Oh, no. I'm not even mad at you Gil. You're off the hook. Nooooooo. I know exactly which mad scientist has the tech know-how to rig this mess up. Especially because we formulated this one together two years ago when we dumped cranberry juice and seltzer water on Tino two years ago, but I see you've made some improvements, a trip line huh? We had to trip it ourselves with a pull cord. Oh brilliant Eduard, if only you'd use your powers for good instead of evil, because then you might not have needed to die." He glowered, stomping over into their general direction as she rolled up the sleeves on her hangerok.

[darth_eduard]

Eduard tried, in vain, his very best to feign innocence as he approached the scene of the crime. The effort was all for naught as his face was alight with a stifled grin and tears of mirth still gathered at the corners of his blue green eyes. "Oh whatever do you mean, dearest sõsar. I would never do such a thing, especially to you now would I?"

Despite all of his planning and meticulous setup earlier on, Eduard was still thoroughly impressed at the spectacular coverage he had attained with the chosen mixture. He'd been considering a myriad of different ingredients to use, but in the end he sided with the milk and honey because not only would it dry very sticky and awkward, but it wouldn't be overly odorous or harmful. The last thing he wanted to do was to cause any real harm...just a good deal of embarrassment and entertaining inconvenience.

"Meing gott, Birdie...you did all this?" Gilbert, while very much relieved at not being the object of the witchy finnish wrath, stood in awe of his boyfriend's skill. In his heyday of mischief and reckless living, Gilbert was himself well known for some epicly diabolical pranks, so he could definitely appreciate what he saw in front of him. Despite the stories he'd heard of past camping trips, however, he still didn't expect the dorky, unassuming genius he'd fallen for to be every inch his equal in such fields. "You are so fucking evil and perfect." He looked Eduard up and down almost as if seeing him for the first time. "I think I'm even shedding a tear of pride here."

"You're not serious about killing me, are you E?" Eduard questioned in hopes of his skin being saved. Laughter still edged his voice, however. He just couldn't help it.

[tino_suomi]

"That all depends." She shrugged daintily. "On how fast you can run. Ten second head start." That was generous for Eeva. Having a boyfriend must have really softened her up because under any normal circumstances she would probably have just tackled him and rubbed his head in the dirt. "And don't you worry Gil, I'm not going to get you for this. I'm gunning for something a lot smaller than bear. It's squirrel season." She glowered at Eduard, steadily approaching. "SO YOU BEST PROTECT YOUR NUTS!"

[darth_eduard]

Eduard's grin faded into a slightly nervous expression as Eeva slowly began edging forward. He had faced her wrath a good many times growing up and he knew just as sure as he knew the periodic table of elements, that her vengeance was something to be dreaded. "Ummm...E? Sa ei teeks paha sant...eks??" Eduard gulped, edging back further, prepared to use Gilbert as a pasty human shield.

Nearly as quick as the animals charging out of the bush during their hunting venture, Eeva seemed to make her move. Eduard turned awkwardly in an attempt to escape with his hide intact. He didn't want to end up like a wookiee taken captive by a trandoshan...skinned. The frantic physicist managed to make a few desperately scrambling strides with a milky-honey covered Eeva hot on his heels before tripping over his viking-era outfit. "Frak!" he cursed as he fell to the ground with a thud.

Eduard was about to pay for his moment of mischievous triumph, it seemed...

(Sa ei teeks paha sant...eks?? - You wouldn't hurt a cripple...would you??)

[tino_suomi]

"Sa ei sant!" Eeva belted in just about fluent (her pronunciation could be off on occasion) Estonian as she made a mad, sticky dash after her best friend in the fraking world. It looked as though she might have to give this battle up for lost, Eduard had become a little more athletic in his time living with her mini-jock of a cousin and the testosterone charged mammoths of the same household... when of course his true nature decided to shine from above and that was the have the hilariously terrible luck of tripping over his own damn clothes. It may have been scarier vengeance if she wasn't laughing about him falling as she came upon him to exact it.

Springing from her feet she landed atop of him and pinned him down at the waist with her legs (he was as good as family, practically a brother, modesty could go fuck itself, so what if her hangerok was pushed up a bit, there were more important things to see to, like: ) And she proceeded to duck her sticky, moist head down and rub her hair against Eduard's cheek and neck. Getting his own hair filthy and not caring two smidgens if a few blond locks splattered on his glasses. She knew this was torture enough for a boy who was obsessive compulsive about his personal hygiene. (The whacko had shaved since he was, like, 12, as soon as the faintest of stubble had appearing.) Especially because there is nothing worse for those worried about their hygiene than to be sticky. Sticky was a wonderful punishment. And it was all over his face and neck and glasses! Perfect revenge. And of course she topped it off with the completely unsanitary action of licking his cheek.

Finally satisfied that he'd probably been left paralyzed with horror she rolled off him and stood proudly over her handiwork. "Proper vengeance has never been so sweet." She had a shit-eating-grin on her face as she turned to Gilbert. "Well, what do you think? I even licked him. He'll have to go scrub in vinegar if he ever wants to feel clean again."

("Sa ei sant!" "You're no cripple!")

[i_got_5_meters]

This prank on Eduard's part had ended in a vastly different fashion than most of the pranks Gilbert himself had pulled off in his time. Most of his hapless victims (Mads and his bruder were common exceptions) didn't retaliate after the trap had been sprung, so he watched the scene play out before him with humorous interest. Seeing Eeva's vengeance was something to behold. THIS was the family he was getting himself into?? Gilbert, in his past, left his interactions with females to the realm of one night stands and for good reason, in his opinion. Estrogen was crazy stuff and his boyfriend now found himself on the receiving end of that craziness.

"Gil, help!" Eduard called out amidst the attack.

Gilbert couldn't help but laugh at the scene playing out in front of him. He knew full well just how compulsive Eduard was about his hygeine (hell, there was ALWAYS a shower after sex, even if they didn't make a mess)and it was frankly hilarious seeing him struggle under the sticky attack. "I don't think so, Birdie. Bitch is crazy."

After vengeance was deemed sticky sweet, Eduard was released from Eeva's grasp. He was one royal sticky hot mess of nerdy genius laying in the dirt and Gilbert couldn't keep himself from continuing to laugh. "He looks like that guy from the ghostbuster movie when he got covered in that green scheiße. The lick was a good touch too. I'll have to try that one myself." He replied to Eeva while looking over the hapless victim with his signature daft grin.

"You are both terrible horrible people." Eduard grumbled, taking off his glasses. "Linus, I suggest you watch yourself around this woman. She can be quite the handful when she wants to be." While giving his new friend a companionable warning, Eduard attempted to wipe his glasses off on his sleeve,but all it served to do was smudge more of the honey around. Cleaning them would be utterly futile while he was in such a state, meaning he would need help finding his way to the lake to clean up. "I'm going to require some assistance in finding the washing facilities in a moment.Jumal...now I know how Berwald feels now when he is without his glasses."

[tino_suomi]

Linus had popped in just as Eeva had started chasing her compatriot around in her thirst for revenge. He stood back and let her have it. He was quite aware of the warning Eduard had given him, already. Eeva was a strong woman, in control of herself and her situation and she was not shy about her revenge. She was so spunky, and it was one of the things he loved most about her. While he'd always said he'd be content if a girl ever talked to him or gave him the time of day he had to admit that he preferred women who were self-aware over women who allowed themselves to be defined by their man. Self-Respect and confidence as sexy, flat out.

But it seemed that now that she'd had her revenge she went back to loving Eduard as a brother. "I'll need to wash up too, come on, I'll lead you down to the water if you want. You boys coming?" She asked over her shoulder at Gil and Linus.

"I could probably use to wash the funk off of me." Linus confessed. "I was so busy running formulas in the dirt that I've become somewhat schmutzy."

"Schmutzy?" Eeva giggled.

Linus nodded. "It's from the German Schmutz, meaning 'dirt.'" He smiled looking over at Gilbert with it. Oh yeah, that was a little linguistically impressive.

Eeva raised her eyebrows a bit. "You know German?"

"The smallest most insignificant amount." Linus confessed.

"Where did you pick up GERMAN of all things?" She laughed.

"Some of the greatest physicists of all time were German; Albert Einstein, Hans Geiger, Goetz Oertel..."

"Oh my god you're going to nerd me to sleep. Yes, okay, your point has been made darling can we please just go wash and you can scrub the honey out of my hair?"

Linus turned his nerd-powers off just long enough to get excited about that prospect and vigorously nod as he followed after them.

[i_got_5_meters]

"Ihre übersetzung war in ordnung...neuling." Gilbert commented to Linus, actually surprised at the nearly spot-on pronunciation but not letting on to that fact as the newcomer was still under clear "virgin rules". It was a sort of hazing state that Gilbert and Mads had come up with in one of their crazy drunken moments for members of their football team, but had (after meeting him) decided it was more than appropriate to apply it to Linus as well. He was a member of their motley extended family after all and in their eyes deserved to be given just as a hard time as anybody else.

Eduard, despite not having the clearest vision minus his glasses, gave his boyfriend a warning look. Having a natural affinity for languages and a German boyfriend, he understood the language spoken and the tone behind the comment well enough to get the gist of what the albino was up to. "Spielen schön, Gil." Eduard had never been subject to such a hairbrained set of rules himself as Gilbert hadn't been absorbed into the family (thus bringing the rules with him) until AFTER the two had been intimate. He very much identified with Linus though, so he attempted to stick up for his new compatriot whenever possible.

"You can be nerded to sleep, E?" Eduard asked in surprise. "I didn't think such an occurrence was even possible. I have actually grown accustomed to being mauled after such intellectual outbursts." The honey and dirt-covered blond chuckled in acknowledgement of his boyfriend's strange, quirky turn-on. "And Linus, don't forget Maxwell Planck, the pioneer of quantum theory, major player in the field of black-body radiation theory and winner of the 1918 Nobel Prize for physics. Mmmm...I can't deny I have quite the soft spot for quantum theory, myself." At that, Eduard purposely distanced himself from Gilbert by following Eeva and Linus down the path in order to stave off the aforementioned nerd-induced mauling. Most of his geek moments were unintentional, but this one was to purposely give his boyfriend a difficult time for hazing Linus...and for his own amusement, of course.

"SO not awesome, Birdie." Gilbert sputtered where he stood, before he realized he was being left in the dust. Eduard could be such an unparallelled tease sometimes in the most inconvenient of situations. It drove the German up the wall, but it was one of the strange bits of fun that he loved (YES Francis, he can say it now...AMOUR!) about his genius boyfriend. "So not awesome..."

(Ihre übersetzung war in ordnung...neuling- Your translation was okay...newbie.)

(Spielen schön, Gil.- Play nice, Gil.)

[tino_suomi]

Linus scratched his head at Gilbert's comment. "Ja. Sorry. I only have German 101. You know, colors, numbers, I can basically speak fluently to a German toddler." He did, though, understand 'Neuling' he was a PC gamer who played shooter games, sometimes Germans played on their servers too, he was quite familiar with the saying and was even able to throw it back in some Teutonic faces after he'd fragged them and their corpses.

"Oh of course, I could never forget Planck, I was just listing some names off the top of my head. The actual list would just be too long and I'd make my little lovely nod off because she doesn't recognize the names. Mention Madam Curie and she'll give you her full attention for an hour-"

"Her story is powerful and dramatic!" Eeva interjected. "She was a brilliant woman and revolutionized medicine!"

"We're both nerds, E. You're a medical nerd and I'm a physics nerd." Linus chuckled.

"What ever will our kids do? They'll probably be all artists and musicians." She joked, but sadly missed the startled look on Linus' face, as she was leading their little expedition. She'd just implied that they would be together long enough to have children... it was as though his chest was a port hole and you could analyze the exact second his heart started fluttering.

[i_got_5_meters]

It took some effort but Gilbert was soon able to shake his mind out of the gutter and catch up with the group. Even after realizing the benefits of "one at a time", he still had a drive that could put a rabbit to shame on a slow day. Now that he had somebody important to him he was slowly starting to get better at controlling such urges when he had to. The flight over to camp was difficult though because there was nothing to distract him from his boyfriend's nerdiness. Damn that fucking Danskie for bating Eduard into a Star Wars rant... Gilbert now firmly believed that this recent turn on of his was karma kicking him in the pasty white ass for having picked on people mercilessly for much the same behavior over the years that he now found so appealing in Eduard.

Even though he couldn't see particularly well without his glasses, Eduard caught Linus's change in demeanor at Eeva's comment because, once again, they were cut from a very similar cloth. "Direct hit by phasers set to stun, am I right?" The genius patted his friend gently on the back. He could all but feel the erratic beating of the lanky Finn's heart through his back. "Trust me. The feeling doesn't get any easier to cope with, minu sõber.You are fortunate though. Her ema isn't set on becoming a vanaema in the near future so there is no need to placate her with a puppy just yet." Words of assurance and comfort from one awkward nerd to another. Eduard had, and still did, find himself running headlong into that brick wall of "holy frak, I'm in a serious relationship that could spawn additional human units some day" and it still made his insides flutter like a mass of mynocks on occasion. The difference in the orientation of their relationships did nothing to make that possibility any more or less likely for either of them.

A few minutes of easy walking later, the group reached the water and before anything was even said, Gilbert had stripped to his underlayer and dove right in. The water was brisk and cold at first but it felt amazingly refreshing against the skin once he got his breath back. "Come on. The water's awesome." Gilbert commented, mid backstroke.

[tino_suomi]

"Well I would like to get undressed first!" Eeva harped as she struggled out of her clothes.

"I'll be in, just a moment." Linus appeased, getting his clothes off as well.

The thing about the Finns was that they didn't bother keeping their underwear on. They were going to wash their clothes while they washed themselves. Linus' clothes were rather clean, but Eeva was soaked through by the milk and honey and so he assisted her in washing some of the layers of her hangerok before they both just took to floating around as they both worked to get her hair as clean as possible.

Eeva chattered freely with Eduard, both accustomed to seeing the other completely nude or in various degrees of undress from their childhoods of participating in saunas together. "You're hair's still sticking straight up." Eeva commented, slashing a gentle wave over onto the back of Eduard's head.

[i_got_5_meters]

Eduard wasn't phased one iota seeing Eeva unclothed in front of him or of undressing in front of her himself as they had indeed spent a lot of time throughout the years in such a state while going to saunas...but knowing that Gilbert was watching him was another matter. Sure they undressed in front of one another almost every day, but the physicist still found his insides buzzing like a hive of insects on occasion when faced with those red eyes admiring him.

Shaking such things from his mind, Eduard slid into the water with Eeva, leaning back slightly so she could get the water through his hair. "Jaa, you got me pretty good, E. Though I suppose I had it coming this time. I left it far more open than last year when I catapulted all of your underwear into the middle of the lake." Oh that had been SUCH a brilliant success and one of his favourite camp pranks to date. He prepared for a bop on the head as Eeva washed the honey from his hair, but he wasn't sure just how much she still held that prank against him.

"Hey newbie." Gilbert addressed Linus with a bit of a splash. "What's got you so quiet? What? Haven't you seen people naked before?" When the lanky Finn sort of mumbled at him and wiped the water from his face, Gilbert all but facepalmed and rolled his eyes. "Jeez, we're going to have to get that big V off your forehead sometime, ja."

[tino_suomi]

"I've seen plenty of people naked." Had been Linus' mumbled reply. It wasn't as though he hadn't spent his own life in and out of saunas where starkers was the tradition. But Eeva, even in a setting not meant to be sexualized had the power to rile him right up. He was quiet because he'd been transfixed by cleaning Eeva's hair, as though he was analyzing the differences in shade between each individual strand and committing it to memory, yes, stored right there in his mind-room next to the periodic table.

"When's not for me to decide." Linus mumbled, Eeva was too engrossed in conversation with Eduard to be paying either of them any mind. "I mean, it's not like I become a different person afterwards. Right?"

Meanwhile Eeva did indulge in her moment of retribution (she'd had many, but this was just another one) "I had to go commando for a whole day while I waited for something to air dry inside the cabin because it started raining outside." She harped, flicking Eduard's ear before returning to focusing on a particularly stubborn clump of honey in his hair. "This was a good one though, sad we can't use it on Tino, Bear would be horrified and kill us dead."

[i_got_5_meters]

"I don't think he would kill us, E. He would probably thank us for giving him a reason to go 'clean Tino off' so to speak." At that mental image Eduard shuddered with a a slight grimace on his face. He didn't want to have a thought like that floating around amidst the equations in his head, although in his absent friend's defense, he and Gilbert most likely put unwanted images into their housemates' heads simply by their bedroom being the closest one to the kitchen where most people spent their time.

"I don't know, stretch." Gilbert shrugged. "Birdie over there was just as awkward as you are before we got together. He had no idea how awesome he is." The german stopped himself before he ended up getting too sappy in front of the newcomer. "You should build her something, ja. Birdie got me by building me something seriously awesome. Make her something and you'll be set." Then Gilbert looked around as if he expected somebody to jump out of the bushes. "Don't tell the Danskie I'm giving you advice, ja? Against the rules and scheiße."

[tino_suomi]

"There are rules?" Linus questioned, raising an eyebrow and casting shadows over his sharp face. "New-Guy rules or Virgin-Rules?" He sardonically added.

Eeva groaned. "No mental images PLEASE! It's like mentally walking in on your little brother." She quietly wailed, as though rubbing her forehead would clear the images away.

[i_got_5_meters]

"Ja there are rules, but I've said too much already." Gilbert tapped a pale finger to his nose to signify a secret being kept. "Don't worry too much though. You're Birdie's friend now, so you'll at least make it out of this camp in one piece. That's not saying you're going to make it out of here without a couple flagons of mead under your belt. Saw some of it stashed in the mess hut a while ago and we are SO raiding that bitch." Oh yeah, you bet he'd been eyeing up that cask in the hut and was now planning on upping the "awesome" at dinner later on. Got to man up the newbie and get everybody having a good time!

"If you don't want mental images like that, then be careful if you ever come visit us on the island." Eduard chuckled a little sheepishly. "Ummm...yeah...because mine and Gil's room is the one closest to the common area." While Eduard was still very much a quiet person the vast majority of the time, there had been a number of occasions where he had stumbled from his room to the shower only to hear the television turned up louder than normal. "ANYHOW..." The bashful physicist coughed, attempting to straighten up his glasses until he remembered that he had left them on top of his clothes on shore. "Enough of THAT...what's in store for sustenance tonight, E?" Totally NOT trying to change the subject that he had stumbled into at all...not a chance...