damned_institute | DAY 26: Men's Showers (Second Shift)

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DAY 26: Men's Showers (Second Shift)

Gluttony didn't want to leave his Lust, not after he'd just found her! But the mean tasty nurses said he had to. "You can't join her in the women's showers" was a bad excuse. He didn't like the mean tasty nurses. Maybe Lust would let him eat them later. Still, he knew he would see his Lust again, and that was good. He liked Lust. She was good and beautiful and smart and kind. Why did they have to take him away from his Lust?

Still, he would see her again. And she would tell him it was okay to eat the tasty nurses, and that would be good. His new friend liked eating people, too. That made him happy to find a friend who shared a love for eating people. Today was a very good day.

As he entered the showers, he stood under a shower head and opened his mouth wide to drink up the water. It wasn't as good as eating people, or eating waffles that didn't scream when he bit into them so weren't nearly as good as eating people, but it was still swallowing something, and that made him feel better.

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"All right, all right, so long as you don't dislocate something new trying to wash yourself," said Ren, turning back to his own spray of water and ducking his head under to get a good rinse. "Nerves of steel, or are they giving you something for the pain?"

Farfarello was quiet for a moment, trying to figure out the logistics of this, himself. Finally, he decided that, aside from the usual prison-shower-issues, bending at the waist was not going to be possible today. So instead he brought one leg up and braced his foot against the shower wall, in a stretch that would do a ballet dancer proud, then washed the leg that way. "I'll manage."

As for the actual question, Farfarello smiled a little. "I don't feel pain." It did come in handy, at times like this.

Internally, he winced at Farfarello's blurred image out of the corner of his eye. Saying he couldn't feel pain probably wasn't figurative in this light. Wasn't that like... He snapped his fingers suddenly. "That's a medical condition, right? Congenital... something or other."

Though those kinds of wounds didn't come from a lifetime of accidentally bumping into jagged shards of glass. "Monsters?" On the other hand, Ren didn't care to know if it was a knife fight between two people.

If it wasn't a job, then knowing the details would be an unnecessary irony.

Farfarello looked over at Ren briefly; he didn't have any qualms about looking at other men in the shower, because he didn't really care what people thought about his sexuality either way. That, and making other people uncomfortable didn't bother him in the least. "Congenital insensitivity to pain. You must be from Earth, and a reasonably modern time period, to know that." It was almost a refreshing change, to run into someone else from the same sort of time period. Almost. In the end, people were all the same to Farfarello.

"Haven't run into any monsters yet, actually. One brainwashed patient, one patient attacking my... temporary employer, I suppose. I'm a bodyguard." Some of the time. The rest of the time he was an assassin, but this guy hadn't annoyed him enough to bring that up in hopes of driving him away, just yet.

Really friendly kid. Ren smiled, and said, "You too, then? Japan for me. 2007 last time I checked."

It was lucky he was in the human world so much as it was, or he probably wouldn't have been able to give a clear estimate of time. It kind of ceased to have a meaning when you were immortal. Back in the day, there hadn't been a technical term for people afflicted with that condition. The best guess was demon possession or something like that.

"Oh, a bodyguard, huh. That's a risky business, I guess." A pause. "Ah... I guess I'm too new. People are getting brainwashed?"

Farfarello finished the leg he was working on, put it down, and then repeated the stretch-and-wash sequence with his other leg. "You're about nine years ahead of me, then. I was in Japan, too, though." He very clearly was not Japanese, though, and spoke the language with a distinct accent.

"Risky? Can be, I guess. Depends on the quality of the opposition." From the disdain in his voice, Farfarello obviously had a pretty low opinion of the usual opposition. "Different story here than at home, at least."

He sighed a little, getting tired of explaining the whole 'brainwashed patients' thing to people; this made three, now. "Yeah. Happens every other night, apparently. Patients get brainwashed, get their powers back, revert to normal for this place in the morning, with full memories of the night before." Blah blah blah, etc.

He'd meant plenty of bodyguards, assassins, and random serial murderers in his time. Time warps were a little different though.

"Oh. The 1990s were okay, I guess," was all he could think to say to that. Then he shrugged as if realizing how ridiculously bland his reaction had been. "I'm ready to believe anything in this place. Good to know; thanks."

Although it seemed the more detailed explanation came with some reluctance, Ren figured he was a pretty easy guy to please. He took the information, turned it over in his head with a, "Hm," and nodded. Okay. Now it seemed more like one giant test tube experiment then ever. "I'm Ichimoto Ren, by the way. Nice to be showering next to you." It was kind of hard not to see that this person probably had blood on his hands. "Do you have any special powers?"

Couldn't hurt to ask.

A scuffle elsewhere in the room distracted Farfarello for a moment, and he looked that way, scowling. Someone was fighting Hakkai. That was annoying, he would have to check on them occasionally to make sure the other man didn't kill Hakkai; he had plans for Hakkai, damn it. Hopefully the staff would get its act together and take care of things.

"Hmm? Oh. Whatever." The 90s were okay? Nice showering next to you? Weird comments. Weird guy, in general. "You're kinda funny in the head, kid." Said the complete psychopath.

That last question made Farfarello snort softly. He was used to being the only one in a group without powers, Schwarz being composed entirely of psychics except for him, but it was still a bit weird to be somewhere where there were so many people with powers. "No, no powers."

In turn, Ren didn't seem to be paying any of the fights any mind, even if that wasn't the case. He lathered up his sides, stomach, and arms, and gave the back of his neck a thorough cleaning for any remaining traces of leech innards. "Yeah, I get that a lot," he said, smiling into the cold spray. It was better playing the goofy card; he could get away with more. "So what's your name?"

So if the guy had no supernatural ability of his own, then he was probably fighting battles with people who did. Or just regular people - being insensitive to pain must make it difficult to catch any injuries unless you actually spotted them. He wasn't sure he cared to see what the other guys looked like, as these injuries were pretty severe all on their own.

"Why are you fighting?"

Farfarello snorted at Ren, most of his attention still on the fight between Hakkai and the blond man; finally, a large orderly appeared and sedated the blond, and Farfarello nodded to himself, turning away. Good, Hakkai was not seriously harmed.

"I'm Farfarello." Not many people would choose to name themselves after a demon from Dante's Inferno but Farfarello gave the name calmly, without any trace of arrogance or pretentiousness--he was just so used to the name, by this point in his life that it rarely occurred to him that people might find it odd.

Done with his legs, Farfarello turned to the relatively easier task of washing his belly and sides; his back and his good arm were going to be a real challenge, so he left them for last.

He laughed a little, at Ren's second question. "Well, why not? It's fun, and I'm good at it."

Farfarello.

Ah, how fitting. Ren didn't appreciate the illusion. It was bad enough dealing with the real thing, and like the others, he really didn't like putting up with the Lord of Hell's minions. Even if he was one by association. (Not that they thought of it like that, no way.)

"It had its consequences, that's all." He smiled a bit, eyes closed while he continued to work his hair. It was harder to get slime residue out of it, he was finding.

As it was, he knew perfectly well he had nothing valuable with which to barter for information, physical or otherwise, so he didn't bother asking. He was content enough to have learned what he had from this 'Farfarello'.

"So it did." Farfarello was discovering that one such consequence was not being able to wash his own back or left arm very easily. Usually Schuldig took care of such things, when he was injured, but the German was obviously busy at the moment. "Hey, give me a hand, here?" Shy, Farfarello was not. Obviously.

Ren wanted to do his best to help, but one thing he wasn't interested in was putting a kid who obviously knew - and enjoyed - how to punch someone's face in back on his feet any quicker. If he wasn't in serious harm, then he preferred letting the guy stew in his injuries for a while. But asking for a wash was fairly innocuous.

He nodded and stepped behind Farfarello, answering, "Sure, of course."

Even if he was inwardly sighing at the irony. And after he'd had this conversation with Daemon too... Ah well. It wasn't exactly a nod to the usual polite customs of Japanese society, but he couldn't very well say no. So long as no nurses took it the wrong way. Weren't they supposed to be watching after these things themselves?

The Irish didn't exactly tend to bathe together at all, and Farfarello hadn't been allowed near bath houses when he was in Japan, probably because Schwarz rightly feared that he'd kill someone with a towel or something. But today he needed help, so he was being good. Or relatively good, anyway.

Farfarello was not a telepath or psychic of any kind, but he could still make a reasonable guess at Ren's thoughts. "Don't trust the nurses. They cluck and coo and make sad faces at the scars." Nurses were always so... nice. Sympathetic. Caring. It was infuriating.

"Real nurses tend to do that, so I suppose they're playing their cards correctly," Ren commented absently. Real nurses would have probably wanted to call social services if they'd met Farfarello anytime when he'd been underage.

He guessed Farfarello could register discriminative touch, so didn't bother thinking on it when he soaped up the other's back and went about washing it for him. Though, if Farfarello wanted any area beneath the small of his back to be cleaned, he could suffer through nurse intervention.

If Ren tried to wash lower than the small of Farfarello's back, Farfarello would probably try to hurt him--they were quite in agreement on the issue of boundaries. "The nurses are realistic. The rest of this place isn't." And Farfarello would know, being an institutional veteran.

Farfarello extended his left arm, glancing back at Ren. "Get the arm, too?" Please wasn't really in Farfarello's vocabulary, unless it was in a sarcastic sense, but at least he was phrasing it as a question/request rather than a demand; for Farfarello, this was excellent behaviour indeed.

"I think I'm learning pretty fast with that part," said Ren, moving on to Farfarello's arm as asked. The other man also had a slim frame, but was fairly muscular - scars aside, Ren was absently thinking he found his own body more attractive. Broader shoulders, he thought.

After a moment, he asked, "If the brainwashing thing happens every other night, then what happens during the time it doesn't?"

Farfarello did not particularly care whether or not Ren found him attractive, fortunately; he didn't much care if anyone found him attractive, and was entirely convinced that Schuldig was the only one who ever would, anyway. Also, Schuldig was better at this whole back-washing thing than Ren was.

"Experiments on the patients," Farfarello answered, when Ren asked the obvious question. He all but spit the word 'experiments', much angrier about this idea than the brainwashing, largely because Schuldig had already been the victim of the experiments and Farfarello didn't like people messing with his partner.

Ren's hands still for a split second, taking in what Farfarello said and letting the words sink in. It wasn't surprise, really, but a sense of weary acceptance. So that was it, huh? Experiments. Farfarello couldn't very well see Ren's expression from that angle, and whatever change in demeanor he underwent, it was gone by the time he finished with the other man and stepped away.

Well, that had been slightly awkward.

"Thanks." He figured Farfarello wasn't interested in any kind words about his experience with the experimentation. "What is it tonight, then?"

"Tonight?" Farfarello cocked his head to the side, counting back the very few days and nights he'd been here--it seemed so much longer than it actually was. "Brainwashing. If they come for you or your roomie after dinner, that's why."

Hopefully that that would be the end of the conversation; Farfarello was just about done showering now, quickly washing the few bits of skin as yet not taken care of, and further conversation would just delay him at this point. Besides, he felt he'd given enough information to be a fair trade for the help washing his back.

Well, wasn't that good to know. And no doubt if they came, they'd come prepared to deal with whatever abilities or weapons people used to defend themselves. They must have had a pretty effective method for

Alec, Daemon, Kirihara, those were the three he was most familiar with in the few short days he'd been here, and they came to the forefront of his mind first. Then Eddie, Javert, William, and even Farfarello. Ren frowned to himself. There was such a huge number of prisoners. What could he do to put a stop to any of this? Not much.

Yet.

"Thanks for the information," he said, and smiled. "Don't let me hold you up. But can I ask after the 'temporary employer' you mentioned? Is he or she someone you met here, or someone you knew before coming here?"

Farfarello gave his face another few moments under the spray, wishing he could tell if it was really pleasantly warm, or punishingly hot. Well, he was turning pink but not blistering, which was a fairly good sign he hadn't misjudged.

He barely heard Ren's question, with the shower spray so close to his ears, but he did hear it. Turning his face away from the spray for a moment, he said plainly, "Someone my partner met here. I only dealt with him on a professional basis." And from the tone of his voice, he wasn't too keen on doing so again. Hopefully Schuldig was over that by now, with how ungrateful Rufus had been the night before.

He'd been hoping that Farfarello and his... partner had only been allying themselves with someone they already knew, but like he was never lucky like that. Figures that there would be a 'fighter for hire' situation going on. Wasn't it always like that? Humans were always scrambling for a way to introduce familiarity when they were put in a tight spot. Businessman would try to put themselves on top of the social ladder, and opportunists would offer their skills for payment.

Why couldn't anyone get that there wasn't any 'professional basis'? There was only one boat, and it was a big ocean.

Ren scanned the room absently, attention caught by the beginnings of another fistfight, only this one involved a combatant he knew: Daemon. With a frown more pronounced then the last, he was a split second away from involving himself along with the orderlies.

_{[moves here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/173704.html?thread=11754120#t11754120)]}

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DAY 26: Men's Showers (Second Shift)

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