Johann stirred as instructed, brow furrowed.

"Why would Hannah in a swimming costume help? At this time of year it could be quite cold, and certainly impractical for her job." Johann had one of his beautifully dim moments where he missed the point of his friend having a great deal of physical potential in catching eyes and convincing wizards to agree with her. Then again, Johann had only ever considered her 'pretty' in any mild sense of the word for her brain and ability to match him in conversation.

"Would you also wear a swimsuit?" He asked Colin, "Would that help?"

Colin looked at Johann with an expression that said it all - and was one he'd had to look at Johann with more than once. The look said, rather plainly: Really? Johann was a strange man sometimes; Colin honestly didn't get him. Bombay - for all her...well, personality...was quite and attractive woman. He was in no way going to deny that fact. Even if he did want to toss her under a train every time they met.

Johann seemed oblivious to it...both the dislike and the fact Bombay was quite good looking.

"Tits sell things, Johann," he said, waving a hand to indicate the posters he had plastered all over the flat's walls. Most of them were...well, they were things Colin liked: Zombies, death, gore. Vampires. And on well over half of them, a blonde woman lay screaming or fainted in some highly suggestive position. "Men will pick up things because they're sexy. Sex sells-"

He cut off at Johann's last remark, and after a pause he began cracking up. "Godric's garters! No! No one's going to buy something because my hairy arse is on the cover."

"Its not that hairy."

The words came out of Johann's mouth without any thought engaging first as to how appropriate it would be that Johann had taken such interest, or even noticed Colin's bare buttocks at all. They were housemates, blokes, but Johann had never been the sort to walk around the place in a state of undress. Bare foot, yes, but never without a shirt. He was far too weedy looking, and since moving in with Colin and his physique, Johann felt a little more self-conscious, even if he hadn't consciously noted it.

The fact that he'd glimpsed Colin without underwear would perhaps, in a normal situation between two blokes, been avoided by not mentioning the accident, or looking the other way, or pretending to be completely unphased while carrying on conversation. Johann had gone for the first, then snuck a look back when he figured Colin couldn't notice, and had admired with curiosity.

Johann stirred the soup, his expression neutral until he turned to look at Colin curiously to deliver his next line.

"Well, apart from when you're a wolf, then I imagine it would be like a dog's backside, hmm?" His face frowned, "Have you ever seen a photograph of yourself transformed?"

Colin was silent, looking at Johann with a very careful look. He couldn't think of when Johann would have seen his arse. Colin had once been in the habit of walking around his flat in the raw, but had dropped that after Johann had moved in (the occasional complain from the elder lady across the street had not phased him, however). He wasn't particularly modest but he did have some semblance of shame.

Still, it was...an odd comment. From an odd man.

"Yeah? Well, you should see it right around the full moon," he drawled, choosing humor instead of anything else to try and ignore some of the implications. "I'd be arrested for scaring small children and the elderly."

The next comment wasn't too helpful, really. Colin wasn't sure what it meant to have a backside like a dog's. He'd seen Roxie's backside almost every day for years and wasn't quite sure exactly how one translated one type of backside to the other. Did that imply a perky backside? One with a tendency to wag?

"No," he said, flatly. "Saferoom, remember? I'm not exactly posing for the press when I'm slavering for blood, now am I?"

"Yeah? Well, you should see it right around the full moon..."

Strangely, a feeling in Johann confirmed he would, but his head dismissed it as chatter. His head was full of such these days.

"Well, obviously." Johann replied back quickly, "I hadn't meant did you weres have a dedicated photographer." His tone was suddenly a little irritated with his best friend, and it reflected in the categorisation of Colin with other werewolves, rather than as a person with an affliction.

"I'd be curious, that's all, if it were me, about what I looked like. But, perhaps that's me." He shrugged and walked away from the soup on the stove, rubbing at his ribs under his shirt from where the stun had met him not long before. Ow, that would definitely be coming up in a bruise. He wasn't keen on being hurt at the best of times, and it smarted more that his father had caused it.

"No, I'm not going to visit you to take a photo either." He added quietly, locating a loaf of bread and giving it a suspicious sniff before chopping it down for them to have with the soup. "Sorry Col, this evening's been a bit of a downer already -." He caught Colin's eye and chuckled silently at the choice of words "I shouldn't have brought it up."

Colin responded to Johann's open irritation the same way he usually did - by mostly ignoring it, face impassive save the slight quirk of an eyebrow. Johann being annoyed at him was a bit unusual, true, but generally annoyance was a pretty common reaction as far as Colin was concerned.

"Not much to be curious about, I suppose," he said, with a shrug. "I'm a big brown wolf, pretty much. Maybe a little more ferocious and shaggy looking, but that's about it. Oh, and a bit bigger, supposedly." Colin had never seen a real wolf up close, so he'd have to take the experts at their word when it came to that particular topic. He slumped forward across the bartop, chin falling to his folded arms as Johann fussed around the kitchen.

He smirked at the pun, shrugging as best he was able with his arms pinned. "No worries," he said, with a grunt. "Your old man seems to be something of a walking downer. Should've switched last names."

Johann looked at Colin oddly, unaware he was slicing his finger with the bread knife by doing so.

"Swap names, oh no, you wouldn't want to be a Storm or him a Downer, Merlin, that'd be awful, autsch!" Cursing, he laid down the knife and hurried to run his bleeding digit beneath water - a part of him a little cautious that Colin would want to lick his finger for the blood, or so a voice in the back of Johann's head was wondering.

"Trust me, being a Downer's a lot better, or are they more dysfunctional?" Finger rinsed, Johann returned to the bread, tearing off and swiftly eating a part that had been bloodied before stowing the rest away again, shooting curious glances at Colin and where his flatmate's gaze fell.

Wonder if he does ever think about eating me? Johann's mind pondered. For once, he had the sense not to ask.



OOC: Although this has been a fun thread, its ok if we wind it down to move on to something in current timeline.

Colin was busy snorting at Johann's quick dismissal of the idea when the man sliced his finger. The blood was interesting - more so that it should have been - and he busied himself staring instead at the pot on the stove, trying not to smell it too much. He wasn't about to do anything, but the smell of blood making him hungry was a distinctly...werewolf thing. Full mooney, too.

"You alright?" He asked, though the other man seemed more or less fine, as he kept talking.

"Being a Downer's a lot duller than being a Storm, I can tell you that," he said, shaking his head. "I don't even have stories I can tell. Go find any middle-income family in a small town and you've got my parents." He rubbed his chin. His parents were terribly polite about the entire magic 'thing', as his father put it, and they had no idea about his status as a werewolf - something he wanted to make sure stayed that way. "But I suppose dull is better than dysfunction, isn't it?"

He leaned over the top of the counter, gingerly sticking a finger into the boiling soup and testing it for taste. The pain was easy enough to endure.

"Seems ready. Let's eat before you bleed to death, mm?"