Day 48: Men's Showers [Fourth Shift]

[not_rly_fai]

After a rough morning, Lunch was actually fairly easy to sit through.  Sechs and Kibitoshin hardly knew him, so light conversation was fine.  The things from Breakfast and this morning though, would be sticking with him for a while.  When the nurse arrived to take him to showers, he was relieved to find he was the first one there.  With that, there

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[winged_moon]

Though he'd noticed Fai's presence when he entered Yue chose to ignore it for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that he was still displeased about the magician's comments when they'd spoken that morning. He seemed to be in a hurry anyway, so Yue didn't bother to so much as glance in his direction as the guardian moved into the shower room and chose an empty spot well removed from the others present. Cleanliness had been far simpler at home, when he hadn't had to deal with everything that he did here, and do so with barely a fraction of his power available to him.

He suppressed a faint sigh and turned on the water, fussing with the controls until it was somewhere just shy of glacial runoff, then pulled his hair forward and began slowly pulling it out of its braid as he stared unseeing at the silvery strands. With the conversation with Fai that morning brought to mind once more, his uncertain had returned with full force. What were they going to do tonight? Their options for exploration were even more limited now

[guardiancomplex]

Touya had no idea what to make of the day. Or, really, the lack of day

[winged_moon]

It was something that he should really mention to Sakura -- as his mistress, she was the one who should decide what they did next. At the same time, though, in this situation she was even more powerless than he was, and Yue was reluctant to let her decide to head directly into potential danger. His hands paused briefly at their work, the strands of the damp, half-undone braid sliding from his fingers as a thought made him freeze in place. The last time he'd made a decision they'd all been dropped into the most danger they ever had been in this place. Shouldn't that mean....

A familiar presence abruptly registered just as Touya spoke, and the guardian glanced briefly toward him before returning to what he'd been doing. Lunch had been uneventful, but for Yukito's usual effort to eat the entire food supply in the building, though his other self had kept watching the door for someone who'd never arrived and now felt a flicker of relief (and a moment of shyness and a sense of averting his eyes, at which Yue inwardly sighed

[guardiancomplex]

Touya frowned. How comforting.

"Well then I should've been kicked out when I first got here, right?" Touya shot back, perhaps with more barb than he'd intended. Still--how could Yue suggest something like that in front of Yuki (if he was listening/could hear)? And Yuki aside, Touya didn't want to find out what happened when a patient was 'released'. It was kind of like saying increased appetite was a sign of massive multiplying tapeworms--unpleasant and a drastic conclusion.

Touya started scrubbing his hair a bit more enthusiastically than was really necessary, looking down at the tile as he did so.

[tartaros_avatar]

Well, this wasn't usually the most pleasant part of the day, but it had certainly had its moments before. Recluse ignored his nurse as usual, disrobing quickly and finding an unoccupied stretch of showers, choosing one and turning on the water. He closed his eyes, the room still far too bright for comfort, but the hot water helped soothe the relatively minor headache he was dealing with today. It probably helped that Landel was obviously sick, however minor a discomfort it might be for the verbose bastard.

Any little inconvenience would make things more difficult for Landel to keep this operation running.

[Free!]

[unheroed]

It was never going to be pleasant for Harvey to take a shower in this place. He'd learned by now that trying to argue with the nurses was a lost cause, though, and so he let himself be led into the steamy room with little more than a scowl on his face. (Which was more or less how he always looked, but it was emphasized.) He got the feeling that the steam would be good for his wound, too, and yet they refused to let him remove the bandages even now

[tartaros_avatar]

Recluse opened his eyes when he heard someone approach, looking down to see the man with the bandaged face he'd met some days previous. Dent. It was rather hard to forget the name after Scourge had made such a childish fuss about it. It was in all fairness a terrible name, really.

And regardless of the setting, if Recluse had something to ask, he was going to ask it. Subtlety was only situationally a strong point of his. "They won't let you remove the bandage?" Some sort of disfiguring injury incurred some time before arrival here? This place healed any fresh wounds, so why insist on keeping the bandages when anything that could be healed already would be by now? Patient insecurity likely had nothing to do with it, the nurses seemed almost drone-like in their insistence in following whatever rules they were bound to.

[unheroed]

So he'd been noticed. More than that, Recluse didn't seem to have any issues with talking while in the shower. It made sense that different sorts of people had different levels of comfort in a place like this, but in Harvey's case he couldn't say he was too thrilled with it. It had been a long time since he'd played soccer back at Gotham University, which was the last time he'd been forced to shower in the presence of other people.

It might not have been so bad if he didn't have his deformities to worry about. Even if he was covered up, there was still that feeling of exposure that was hard to kick. Harvey only half-glanced at the other man when he asked his question. "Nope. They think it'll scare the other patients if they have to see what's underneath." That cryptic statement would probably spark the other man's imagination pretty well. In the meantime, Harvey just focused on soaping himself up. Even though the circumstances were bothersome, it was nice to get clean.

[hes_deadjim]

Public showers weren't a big deal but it'd been awhile since he'd actually had to make use of one. As an officer, he had his own quarters on the ship, which meant that'd come with its own wash area too. McCoy couldn't complain too much all the same. He hadn't had a decent shower since he got here: he was starting to feel a little less than human.

The doctor stripped off and stepped under a shower head. It took a moment's fumbling to get the temperature to a comfortable one. McCoy was startled for a second to find that warm water came cascading out. Water showers just weren't common on a starship. There was the matter of rationing resources and water for a simple shower wasn't on that list. After being stuck with sonic showers for over a year, he had to admit that a nice, easy water shower was a pleasant change. A sonic shower might be more efficient in getting everything off but there was something nice and simple about a flow of warm water. You just couldn't beat it.

Admit it, you're a sensualist, McCoy thought, even as he sat back

[doneinthree]

Buoyed by his first productive encounter with a female humanoid in a long time, Kirk spent a few extra minutes teasing the nurse who came to escort him to showers. He could imagine the dry comments if a certain doctor saw him flirting so shamelessly, but it wasn't as if the nurse was having any of that. She steered him through the Sun Room and bathroom with stoic determination, and wordlessly walked off to retrieve another patient when Kirk invited her to stay and watch. Still, he could have sworn he saw her smile before turning away.

Kirk surveyed the new area as he thought back to the last time he'd had a proper shower. A little over a week ago, maybe, despite being in dire need of one long before then. It was hard to stay refreshing when in a single day, you went from sweating from an alien virus to running the whole breadth of a starship to crossing kilometers of icy tundra to duking it out with angry future Romulans twice, but somehow, Kirk had managed to retain his sparkling appeal. While Landel's did something to make him feel

[hes_deadjim]

Military men as a rule didn't regard communal showers and nudity as anything terribly noteworthy. McCoy didn't. Spock didn't. Jim just happened to make it look like a goddamn event with his own nudity. It was one thing not to pay too much attention to one's own nudity: it was about as startling as an eye or ear or nose at this point. It was another thing when you were Jim Kirk, and even if he wasn't consciously glorying in it, it somehow felt like he was being positively shameless about the matter

[doneinthree]

Kirk's grin merely widened at his grumbling, in that way people tended to find either infuriating or infuriatingly attractive. Evidently middle age hadn't sweetened Bones' demeanour either, but Kirk had to admit that he was rather fond of his friend as he was. In his three years at Starfleet, only Uhura could be more reliably irritated by his antics, except she would've never put up with him for longer than fifteen minutes. He hadn't yet found the absolute limits of Bones' patience, but at least felt confident that a little teasing in the showers wasn't it.

"Well, of course my body wouldn't," Kirk answered with the all-knowing assurance of a twenty-five-year-old. He fiddled with the temperature dial as he spoke. "But you've never been much for workouts or cutting down on your bourbon intake. Not that there's anything wrong with the latter

[lostonlifesroad]

Kakashi had taken a day off. Sort of

[toadally4boobs]

Jiraiya has also done the same, keeping to himself, but for a far different reason--porn. Or, rather, the writing of the literary form of it. He hadn't been able to find Naruto, so porn was his... er, release of frustration over that. And it kept him from having to think too deeply about how Naruto was taking news of him being alive

[lostonlifesroad]

Jiraiya's approach naturally drew Kakashi out of his thoughts; he'd be a dead ninja if he hadn't long ago developed the skills to sense someone drawing close. Well, dead a lot earlier, anyway. The point was, even as absorbed as he was with his own situation, Jiraiya didn't sneak up on him completely unnoticed. And Kakashi didn't miss the dryness of the Sannin's tone, either. Nice to know that none of them could apparently escape the pressure

[toadally4boobs]

"Gai?" Jiraiya's question was more of a groan.

Oh, sure. Gai was a skilled ninja--Jiraiya was much aware of that--but his fashion sense left something to be desired. Which was thankfully not going to be a problem in Landel's, unless he got his clothes back like Jiraiya; but for now, Jiraiya was going to hope for small miracles, though.

And Gai was also competent... even if it was his own version of competent. His own unique brand of ninja, one that he was passing on to the younger generation, supposedly. Although Jiraiya had been incredibly amused with the idea of a Hyuuga on his team; they needed to learn how to relax anyways. And really, once you got used to Gai, you just kind of learned to ignore his... Gainess.

But Gai being Gai wasn't important at the moment. He sighed and started washing his arm, expression growing serious.

"I hope you had a better time at telling him what we're up against than I did Naruto," Jiraiya stated, admitting his own sort of guilt. "I couldn't get him past the 'I'm alive' bit before nighttime ended

[zack_fair]

In the end, lunch had turned out to be pretty quiet. Maybe most people wouldn't have seen that as a bad thing, but Zack was always up for talking to someone, and there were definitely a lot of people around here. Whether it was just to have a fun chat or to talk about important things regarding escape, he preferred finding someone to speak to rather than just sitting by himself