Bathing Fours

Chapter 2: The Alley Guys (Hank, Dale, Bill, Boomhauer)

(Dale and Boomhauer - Explosives)

"Did you know that an 'ordinary bubble bath' can also be used to make a bomb?" Dale asked. In the buff. Sitting in the tub - you know the premise of this story already. That should not need to be explained. "I gotta say, I've got to have at least... three bombs. Would have been more. But, you know, can't find too many discarded tubs."

Boomhauer nodded.

Then a tank turret peeked out from the bath. Dale absolutely freaked out, leaping back, holding his arms out in the defensive.

"Shi-shi-SHHAAAW OH NO! It's THEM! The government! They overheard me talking about bombs and now-"

"Heymanchill likeIsayits justalittlefling upmanlikeheyman comewannaseemy interdimensionalbathtub and shesalllike, ya' know, 'Yo.' Man." Boomhauer replied.

As he clearly said, the turret turned out to really just be a costume piece (specifically a hat. You don't wear clothes to a bath tub!) of a woman, who emerged fully and soon got herself wrapped around Boomhauer's arm.

"Oh." Dale nervously chuckled. "Right, right..."

"Yeah. Because the real government agents don't emerge from the tub! They creep up behind you. Like this."

Dale turned around and gasped, seeing a muscular man behind him wearing a full suit, and with sunglasses that actually had cameras in the lenses.

Shoot.

(Bill and Boomhauer - Single)

"Yep." Bill nodded, waving his head back and forth as he sat in his tub. "I mean, yep. Just two single guys... livin' the single life... sharing a single bath together..."

Boomhauer stayed silent.

"I mean, I've accepted that there's not much wrong with not having a wife, or anything. It would be nice, but... oh, and having a son would be nice, too, but... well, that's where friends come in."

Boomhauer stayed silent.

"Yep. I'd like to think of Hank as, like, a 'neo-wife.' Something that goes beyond having a spouse. Oh, and Peggy especially. Every time I'm near her - this is just between us 'neo-spouses' - I smell the lovely sent of-"

Boomhauer reached down in the bathtub, pulled out another tub that was the same size, held it up, and slammed it down on the ground so that they were parallel. Then the ranger got out of the 'shared' tub, got in his own, and put on a set of noise-cancelling headphones.

Bill frowned.

Boomhauer stayed silent.

(Bill and Dale - Guns)

"NO NO NO DON'T POINT THAT AT ME WE'VE BEEN THROUGH THIS, WE'VE BEEN THROUGH THIS! I PROMISE I WON'T TRY TO KILL MYSELF THIS CHRISTMAS!"

Bill exclaimed that. Because Dale, across the bath from him, had a gun pointed in his general direction.

Dale fired.

In to the water. Shadows beneath the surface danced around.

"Damn fish!" Dale swore. "The term 'shooting fish in a barrel' is used for easy things! This should be easy too!"

"Well, now, have you tried using bait? Uh... something about... flies and honey? Boomhauer talks about that all the time, but I've been drinking a lot lately, so I can never remember his words. I can't remember Hank's much, either..."

"That's a great idea! Do you have the tools-"

Bill reached to the sides of the bathtub with both hands. In one hand, a fishing rod. In the other, a box full of worms.

"...How-" Dale began.

"Oh, I fish while I bathe all the time! I even get most of my bait from here! I'm even called... the bathtub master baiter!"

Yeah that was too obvious of a joke, let's move on. NEXT.

(Hank and Boomhauer - Business)

"Heymanlike what'reyoudoing manonthetublike withapaperandpenandfaxmachine andinthisImean, thisislikepersonal time, man."

Boomhauer asked that while he was looking at Hank, who typed furiously on a... well, typewriter of all things on his side of the bath tub. Hank only looked up once from his quick typing, and replied with but one word:

"Business." He said.

(Hank and Dale - Wives)

"Ya' know Hank," Dale said, casually using a back-scrubber to scrub his back. "I just realized something."

Hank sighed on the other end. Again, trying his damndest to avoid... conflict. Contact. Just about anything that could be thought of to begin with the letters 'co.' "What is it, Dale?"

"What if our wives know that we've been having these weird baths together like this? You don't think that they'll think something funny is going on, will you?"

"...I'm pretty sure they would, Dale. You don't just explain what we've been all doin' lately. Hell, it took a lot to convince me to do this! And it took me even more to oversee those two people and their vidya games. I mean, teleporting through a toilet? What on Earth did I agree to when I signed up for that?"

Dale nodded. "I see... I see..."

"There ain't much to see about it."

A sigh from the man with the hat and sunglasses. Yes, that he was wearing to the bath. "Ya' know I just don't want Nancy to get the wrong idea. I mean, imagine if she got suspicious of me cheating on her-"

"You realize she was cheating on you with John Redcorn for fourteen years, right?"

Hank clasped his hands over his mouth once he said that.

Dale, 'surprisingly,' just calmly nodded. "Oh, yeah! You didn't watch 'To Sirloin With Love?' I figured that out! I thought the writers did a pretty good job of implying that!"

(Hank and Bill - Lonely)

Hank kept his head down. Until, just finally, he said it.

"You know what, Bill? I'm glad it's just the two of us now. 'Cuz I think you're the closest friend who understands what I'm feelin' right now. Ya' see... I don't like this new... anything I've been goin' through."

"'Anything' what?" Bill answered. Previously, he was just kind of staring at Hank and humming.

"Well... I mean, come on! Reality-bending bath tub situations? Cross-overs with series I didn't even know existed! I've- I've seen the script! I die in many of these stories! Sweet Jade and Hella John, I'm gunned down by some weird 'troll' with this blue blood that wears all this gold. In the original. Might happen in the 'remake' too. Bill- I mean- sorry to bring this up. You know, old wounds and whatnot, but... you've... felt like this, haven't you? Lost... and empty... and nothing makes sense..."

Bill turned his head downwards and began looking at his toes through the water, which he wiggled around. "Yeah... I mean- yeah. After all of this... all this magic, all this fun, meeting weird new aliens... I'm still the same loney single guy I was back when it was just us in Arlen. It felt like nothing really changed."

Hank glanced off to the side, but lightly 'swam' over towards Bill. "It felt like everything's changed for me..."

"...We're still the same. Mostly."

Hank, by that point, had approached Bill completely. As the usually-bespectacled man got near him, Bill blushed. He blushed harder when Hank put a hand on his chin.

"Yes. We are the same."

"The four of us."

"Well, right now, it's more like just the two of us..."

They kissed.

(All Four - Yep)

They were sitting with their knees buckled to their chests, horizontally across the wide end of the fancy, white curved tub, each holding a can of beer.

"Yep." Said Dale.

"Yyyyyep." Said Bill.

"Mm-hmm." Said Boomhauer.

Hank sighed, standing up. "You know what? No. This is dumb. Why are we bathing together?"

The other three men stared at him. Hank continued:

"We should be showering instead!"

He stood up and went to the nozzles, which got Dale to lean in in protest:

"Uh, Hank, I don't think that's a good idea..." He said.

"Why not? There should be a built-in shower head. All baths are now required to transform in to showers. It's state law."

"Because I used those tools to start a bomb-"

BOOM!

Yep.

The guys were all sent flying around the bathroom. Screaming. "BWAH!"ing in Hank's case. Bill went through the window, flying out. Boomhauer just fell on the floor, landing on his chest with his whole lower half sticking up (his legs comically flopping over). Dale just hit his side against the room's sink.

Hank hit his groin against the toilet. That made him cry out in pain.

"AAAAARRRGH!" He screamed. Or, the sound he made was the exact same sound he made when Bobby kicked him in the groin.

A mildly-annoyed Homer Simpson opened the door, peering in.

"Hey! Keep it down, will you? I mean, I am up next, after all!"

Closing AN:

So at first I wanted to "begin this year" on ffn with something Mario-related, as I ended last year with something Mario-related (the "Reset Button" SBIGlet). And yet I wrote this to be King of the Hill-related anyway. But then I realized something: technically Reset Button ended with a stupid, non-"canon" KOTH-related clip, so... I ended last year with KOTH, I'll begin this year with KOTH!

Does this fan fic have anything to do with Bobby Hill Gets Hit by a Car? I have no idea. But it's unlikely.

Next up: I have no idea, although I confirmed Homer I guess. But, if you could tell from the little things here and there about this, I'm kind of setting up something of continuity with this piece of garbage.

"Will we see Soos, Melody, .GIFfany, and Rumble again?" If you have to ask this in any story they appear in (except Rumble, I've been kinda giving him the shaft screentime-wise) then you obviously don't know my Gravity Falls fanworks.

Also I didn't really look this over at all that much. Happy Valentine's Day.

"Hey that thing of _Roy you just posted had four people bathing together was that a reference to this?" Actually it wasn't. That's just a coincidence. Or me being semi-unoriginal and unknowingly taking stuff from myself. Heck, I didn't really get to writing this until a few days before I planned to publish it, and I think by that time I already planned out the bathing part, so maybe the bath scene in URMOD kind of lit a spark in my head to come back to this and finally give you a Hank Hill, Sage of Forest chapter.