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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[notachick]

The showers were a godsend. Okita still felt like he had the man's blood on his hands from the previous night and, while there was a sense of victory in that knowledge, it was unclean and he needed it off him. Getting out of the new uniform was more of an endeavor than last time though. Western pants had strange metal pulltabs and metal buttons and lines that needed to be followed in order to be folded correctly, and the hat was apparently easily crushed. He wasn't used to wearing hats and the boots were strange on his feet

[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

[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

[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

[not_rly_fai]

It'd been an off day, all things considered. And really that was putting it all very mildly. The change in hierarchy, the oddly nice way the soldiers treated him, and the arrival of their old traveling companion Mokona, along with the new uniforms of course, all combined in a way that put him on pins and needles. Was it anticipation? Fear that something was going to happen? That nothing at all would? It was hard to say. What would become of things now that Mokona was here. He still couldn't be sure how the little ball of fluff knew Yue, of all people, but with how many people had connections to the time witch, it shouldn't have been all that surprising. Still

[winged_moon]

"This almost seems a tradition, now." As soon as he'd noticed the magician already in the shower Yue moved to join him; there was no one else he needed to speak to, after all, and this always provided a good opportunity to speak to Fai when he couldn't just turn around and leave. His greeting this time, however, indicated that he was in a somewhat better mood than he had been in the past- relatively speaking, of course. The fact of Mokona and Fai's connection had given him something to puzzle over, a momentary distraction from... other things going on.

Yue glanced briefly in Fai's direction before turning back to fuss with the shower controls, apparently absorbed in that. It did take time to attend to his hair, after all, since his magical abilities were so limited. "I spoke to Sakura this morning," he observed after a moment. "She apologized for... last night."

[not_rly_fai]

Somehow he wasn't so surprised to see that Yue was the one who picked the shower next to his. He was easy enough to pick out, in spite of everything; not many other patients sported such large tattoos on their backs. But it was something of a relief when the guardian chose to talk about Sakura, rather than any of Yuuhi's recent strange behavior. Even if it was only a handful of words, it reminded him a bit of how they spoke before... well, before he'd ruined things in the basement

[winged_moon]

Yue offered only a small half-shrug as he attended to his hair. There was certainly quite a bit to deal with, so it might have been possible that all his attention truly was on that, though in truth he was still watching Fai for his reactions. By now it was habit to assume there was more the magician didn't say, and perhaps it would be possible to determine some of it by keeping an eye on him. Or perhaps not; he was quite skilled at lying both through speech and attitude.

"She seems unharmed. Though she insists on carrying some guilt that isn't hers." If anyone other than the Institute was to blame for what had happened it was Yue himself- he was supposed to be her guardian, after all, and he had slept the entire day rather than keeping watch on her as he should have. Of that he said nothing, though his expression did grow more somber as he considered it.

After a moment he ducked beneath the spray again to begin to rinse away the lather, and only then did he continue. "I also spoke to Mokona this morning."

[tasteoftruth]

'Cleaning'. It made it sound like they were dishes going to the dishwasher. But Badd really felt like he could use a shower after all that. The mass of naked men around him wasn't a problem, the police department showers were only segregated by the most token of walls. It was a blessing that they'd even gone to the trouble of separating the sexes instead of herding them all into one room with no regard to common decency

[herr_inspektor]

As much as Lunge would have liked time to relax, the Institute showers weren't the place to do it. At home, when he didn't have a case to work, he might have considered spending a little more time under the streaming water, but here he was on-duty one hundred percent of the time. When time could be more effectively spent checking the bulletin board or interviewing other patients, he could hardly justify wasting it where a perfunctory wash would suffice. He washed, dried and redressed in record time, then made for the Sun Room.

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