Day 55: Male Showers [4th Shift]

[zack_fair]

Having to be around food that he couldn't eat hadn't been nearly as bad as it could have been considering what that food was, and so Zack felt fairly decent as he left the cafeteria and headed through the Sun Room into the showers. Actually, it was his feet that were bothering him more than his stomach. He hadn't been allowed to sit down all day (

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[heroesdontshave]

Snow hadn't thought anything of it when the jerk over the intercom announced they were being taken to the showers. Thinking about it, he guessed he really hadn't taken one since waking up, huh? Not like it was really his fault anyway, but he honestly hadn't even thought about it. Something about being captured and thrown in a monster-filled prison to die kind of made personal hygiene take a back seat in priorities, you know? But if they were going to go ahead and deliberately set time aside just so they could take a bath, it's not like he was going to complain about it. As long as they didn't expecting him to go and do jumping jacks while he was there, too. Bastards... Anyway.

He was escorted through one of the doors connected to the Son Room to a new area. Like every other room in this place, it was designed really strangely, but he could get the general gist of it. Sinks and stuff were over there, yaddayadda, got it. Guessing by the sound of running water, the next room was where the showers were supposed to be. "Supposed to be" being the most accurate damn word choice ever. Because looking in, there weren't any showers in the next room. It was actually just one big room with shower heads on the wall shooting down on you. Only there were a whole bunch of them and... whooooooaaaaaaa. Snow backed out a few steps, looking really shocked at first then... just utterly confused.

Hold on a sec. You mean they were all expected to clean in there? In one big room? As in, in front of each other? Seriously? Completely foregoing the usual rage he'd been shooting his escort all day, Snow stared at the soldier like he was absolutely insane. The idea of communal showers was completely alien to him and basically anyone from Cocoon. The existence of something like that had never even crossed his mind. In fact, if there weren't already some guys in there, Snow would have figured he was somehow misunderstanding. But no. The people in this place actually did take a bath in front of each other. And judging by the completely serious expectation written all over the soldier guy's face, that was apparently the normal custom here. It was kind of crazy to think that was true. A whole society of people who'd never heard of showering in separate rooms... Man.

If that was the way these people did this, then he guessed only him and a few others would even be uncomfortable. Everyone else probably didn't even care. Which was great for them and all, but it was more the concept of being naked and bathing in front of a bunch of people in a big open area like this that was bothering him. Everyone could have been wearing blindfolds, and he'd still be weirded out.

A familiar face suddenly pulled him out of his stupor; one of those goons that used to follow him and his nurse around after the first time he'd gone and attacked the staff. The guy didn't look much friendlier than he had before, but compared to those freaking soldiers he was practically a ball of sunshine. The goon was apparently helping hand out towels and stuff or something, pushing one into Snow's hands and telling him he should hurry and go clean up. It wasn't stated as a barked out order, so rather than immediately resisting, he just looked at the guy. The uncertainty and discomfort was probably obvious. Then lo and behold, the freaking goon proved he was actually capable of being nice kind of.

It was only a brief exchange, but somehow or other, the guy had managed to convince Snow to stop sulking around and just go shower already. The fact that the guy was actually talking to him and trying to sound reasonable about it rather than yelling orders at him helped, even if a big part of Snow really wanted to remain stubborn. The soldier guys weren't going to leave him alone until he finished like everyone else anyway. Might as well just go and get it over with. It made sense when he thought about it, but actually doing it was still really embarrassing.

[heroesdontshave]

After getting out of his clothes, Snow tied the towel around his waist and wandered toward one of the shower head area things. There were more people now than there had been when he'd first looked, so it was kind of impossible to go anywhere completely away from everyone else. For now though, he was just going to distract himself by trying to work the shower head nozzles. Which proved to be extremely distracting as soon as he actually managed to turn one. GYAHHH!! COLD. Okay. Distraction accomplished. Now he was fiddling with the damn controls trying to stop the water from going from one extreme to another to something relatively comfortable. It'd probably help if he stopped turning the nozzles so far each time.

[zack_fair]

While Zack had allowed himself to tune everything else out for a while, that became less possible when he realized someone had taken up the shower head next to his. More than that, it was the guy he'd spotted with Lightning before, and who she'd confirmed as being the infamous Snow.

Actually, there wasn't anything that really made him infamous. All Zack knew was that he was Lightning's friend. Or, for all he knew, he wasn't even that close to her. But she'd mentioned him of her own volition the first time they'd talked and two of them had been together this morning, which also meant that they'd probably exchanged blows with the soldiers together yesterday at breakfast. That implied a whole lot on its own, didn't it?

While Snow had cut an impressive figure when he'd seen him earlier, that wasn't quite the case now. Sure, the guy was huge and muscled, which made it clear that he probably knew what he was doing in a fight, but right now he had a towel tied around his waist and he was fighting with the knobs on the shower like it was a complex equation he was trying to solve.

Zack wasn't the sort to outright laugh at someone, but there was a small smile tugging at the side of his mouth as he watched for a moment. "Hey," he called over, "you're Snow, right? Lightning pointed you out to me." Well, in a way. It was more like he'd noticed them together and then asked later, but he didn't need to get caught up in details. "Did you need some help with that, by the way?" The guy really seemed to be struggling, and in such a situation Zack always felt the need to offer a hand. Ridiculous as the image was.

[heroesdontshave]

Things always seemed to be unnecessarily complicated in this place. He couldn't even remember a time back home when he actually had to worry about adjusting temperature this much. Normally you just turn it on. Water was always kept at very neutral temperatures to begin with, so adjustments were only slight when you needed it. And then it was never anything complicated like this. Apparently, the two knobs each controlled the absolute extremes of either hot or cold, and you had to somehow manipulate them both simultaneously until you managed to get something that worked for you. It was the kind of thing that was impossible to get right except through trial and error. Why would anyone design something like that on purpose?

He'd somehow managed to get it back to mind-numbingly cold when the guy under the shower next to him called out to him by name. He turned to him immediately, surprise more than evident on his face until he mentioned Light. That right there clicked immediately. Oh. A friend of Lightning's? And she pointed Snow out to him? .... Sad thing was he actually wasn't sure if that was good pointing out or bad pointing out.

Either way, the surprise melted away almost immediately and he just laughed, lifting both hands in an "I give up" gesture as he stepped away from the knobs. "Hey, if you know how to work this thing, be my guest." Snow knew it'd take several more minutes of screwing with the damn thing before he could get it to anything close to normal. And by then he'd be either half-frozen or his skin would be seared off.

"So you're a friend of Light's, huh? What's your name?" He kind of wondered if they met here or if this was a friend from back home. Not that he's recognize the name either way.

[zack_fair]

As it turned out, Snow was much more personable than the stony Lightning, though in a way that made sense. Zack just had to think about himself and Cloud and it made perfect sense. He had no idea of these two were as close as he and Cloud were, and yet he found himself making connections either way. Maybe it was because of what Lightning had accidentally seen, a scene that should have remained private between himself and Cloud.

He knew she wasn't going to mention it to anyone unless she had to, so it wasn't a huge deal, and yet somehow it still chafed. He didn't blame her, of course, but it also wasn't the sort of thing he could just forget about.

Right now, though, he was simply going to focus on helping someone else out. When Snow moved out of the way, Zack abandoned his own shower and migrated to Snow's so that he could start manipulating the knobs. It really wasn't a difficult process; he just stayed out of the direct spray of the water, turning up the heat first and then bringing the cold up bit by bit until it was about right.

"The name's Zack," he said as he turned back to Snow and nodded in greeting. "I've only known her a couple days, but you got mentioned once before." Mainly through a name mishap, but he didn't need to go into details. "Anyway, try that out, let me know if it feels okay." Some people liked their water on the hot side and some didn't, so he just wanted to be sure.