damned_institute | Day 37: Men's Showers

Entry tags:

Day 37: Men's Showers

I wouldn't really call this a locker room. More like a bathroom with lockers. The place was uncomfortably crowded, with almost every adult male patient being hustled into the showers at once, but Phoenix wasn't as annoyed by the claustrophobic, milling throng of bodies as he might have otherwise been. Every extra person was one more person who might end up standing between himself and Edgeworth.

He knew that the prosecutor would have a fit if he found out about this. He'd known since he'd tacked that first response up on the bulletin board. And in a way, he couldn't blame him. Phoenix knew that he jumped into things all-or-nothing more often than most people. At the same time, he had some kind of reality testing. He wasn't going to learn the basics of how to defend himself and suddenly decide that he was Rambo.

He found an unoccupied locker in the southwest corner and glanced around, trying to gauge how long he could possibly stall in a locker room, looking as if he was expecting something, before people started looking at him strangely. It would have been easier if he'd known something of the description of the man he was supposed to be meeting. As it was, all he had was handwriting and a military rank, neither of which guaranteed any particular appearance.

It's not as if there was a better way to plan this, though. "Yeah, meet me by the lockers. I'll be wearing gray and a smiley face, just like about a hundred other guys."

[for Hughes]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Communal showers were not Tony's idea of a good time. Not, perhaps, for the typical reasons, but because of the very real danger posed by being so exposed in public. He was wondering if he could charm the nurse into letting him take a shower later in the day when, instead of ushering him directly to the showers, she instead bullied him into sitting still while she applied a thick mat of waterproof bandages to his chest. Her logic, that it was best not to get the device wet, was of a sort he was itching to correct, but it did solve one problem for the present. It wasn't as though anyone who'd been there overnight would question signs of injury, and the faint gleam of blue through the gauze was all but invisible in the light of day.

The confirmation that the staff knew was not entirely welcome, but was hardly unexpected.

This left only the more usual irritation of public nudity amongst unknown and suspect persons. Tony did his level best to ignore the other patients as he stripped down and found a free showerhead next to the tall blond man. Peripheral notice was all he took initially, enough to register vague characteristics without attendant details. He nodded vaguely in acknowledgment, then turned the shower on, grimacing as it ran first cold, then warmer, stinging against the still-ugly wounds marring his arm. Not for the first time, he found himself wondering just how the staff did manage to justify the injuries their patients took away so neatly.

While this was the sort of event that would usually warrant a double take, Steve thought, he managed to avoid doing anything that cliche when he glanced at the man that had taken she shower next to his. He returned the nod, and spent a brief moment deciding the best way to strike up a conversation.

The shower was hardly an ideal place to say hello for the first time. Despite the fact that Steve had seen Tony Stark naked before, this Stark was from another reality or dimension. This was a very awkward situation, and Steve looked away from Tony, making a careful study of the wall in front of him.

Well, he should probably introduce himself first. "You're Tony Stark, aren't you? I'm Steve Rogers," he'd see if that name sparked any recognition. If not, he had already more or less decided on the best approach to take to this conversation.

Tony hesitated before replying, checking the name against his admittedly-patchy mental database and coming up with nothing. It wasn't all that surprising, at least, being recognized by those he'd never met, or had forgotten. The past several days had been an anomaly in that regard, and one that had not ceased to grate on his nerves.

"Yeah," he confirmed, resisting the typical urge to look at the person he was addressing. Normal social convention most definitely did not apply in this situation, despite the pockets of small talk that seemed to be surfacing throughout the shower room.

"Weird choice of places for an introduction," he noted, though the prevailing quality of his tone was wry amusement. Something in the place had to be humorous, after all, and it certainly wasn't the fauna.

The tone of voice used when Tony spoke made Steve smile just slightly. It was good to know this Tony was just as capable of making jokes in stressful and awkward situations as the one he knew.

There was a slight pause before Steve went with this next question. "How much do you know about alternate reality and multiple dimensions?" If this Tony did know something about it, things would be a little bit easier.

Steve close his eyes as he put shampoo into his hair. This was very awkward, this sounded like his Tony, and from the glance Steve had gotten, looked a lot like his Tony, but it wasn't.

Were there even Avengers in this Tony's reality? He was getting ahead of himself, though, questions like that could wait.

"Alternate..." Tony's eyes winced shut, though it owed nothing to the proximity of stinging suds in his case, and everything to the silent internal mutter of profanity elicited by the question. Or rather, by the implications of the question. He supposed it could be a simple theoretical exercise, but found it all too likely that this would end up a similar situation to the one with Logan.

It disturbed him to be on that sort of unequal footing. Disturbed him a little for other reasons as well, all the more so after learning a small bit about the man the staff and outsiders here expected him to be.

"In theory, or practically?" he asked, otherwise even tone holding a hint of wariness regarding the topic in general.

Tony really didn't sound happy about this particular subject. But Steve got the impression that he did have some knowledge of the subject. Though right now it really didn't matter, Steve could guess that it was primarily from meeting Logan.

"In theory," Sooner or later, Steve was going to reach the part where he'd end up telling Tony that they were very close friends in his dimension. Though Tony probably wouldn't just nod and accept that as being true without a lot of convincing.

"It's a popular interpretation of quantum mechanics," Tony replied, sparing a moment to reflect that it was the second reference to the topic he'd found that day. He wondered if it was about to become a theme. "The idea that reality branches to an infinite or near-infinite degree, and every possible event has occurred or will occur at some point in its own universe."

He paused in his reply to tend to the necessity of actually washing up. The soap stung worse than the water, and he didn't bother to refrain from wondering if this was in some measure deliberate.

"It's also popular here to explain why different groups have different recollections of reality, none of which match up to the explanation we're being fed."

"It also happens to be true... at least partly," Steve rinsed the shampoo out of his hair and turned to look at Tony directly instead of out of the corner of his eyes.

Tony was at least familiar with the theory, and the application of it to explain what was going on here.

"I know another version of you, in my dimension." Though that might be hard to accept if this Tony hadn't had to deal with the sort of things that kept coming up in Steve's dimension.

In spite of what some branches of popular opinion might still have held as truth, Tony did have a concept of dignity. Enough, certainly, not to actually bang his head against the wall, in hopes that the resultant headache would drive out the one currently threatening.

Temptation, on the other hand...

"Do you?" he replied, a hint of wariness creeping in. "I hope he's having better luck than I am."

"I do too," Steve looked Tony over a little better now, noting the injuries and the waterproof bandages on his chest. They looked to have a faint blue glow.

It wasn't all that surprising, considering this was Tony, but he hadn't been dependent on a chestplate for years now. Plus this was too small to be like Tony's original chestplate.

"He had... chest problems, for a while, but those are better now," Which was certainly one of the better things that came out of what Tony had done lately.

The shift from somewhat wary to strung with tension was not a terribly obvious one, but it wasn't invisible, either. Tony looked up at Steve, really looked, for the first time, expression closed off and dark eyes searching, guarded. "Are they? Now that's a stroke of luck. That sort of thing doesn't usually just go away."

It was an effort to revert to the demeanor he usually favored, to shrug carelessly and ask, "So, are you suppose to be from the same alternate dimension as Logan? Or do we have three going now? Or thirty? Get a few more and we could hold a convention."

"More like a bit of genius and recklessness," Steve commented. Though there was some luck involved as well, from what he knew of the whole ordeal.

"I think Logan and I are from the same, or a nearly identical one... I have a question for you, though. Since you didn't recognize me or Logan, are there Avengers in your dimension?" It would explain a lot of things if the answer was 'no'.

A low snort of amusement greeted that. Tony dipped his head, faint grin obscured by the spray of the water. "That sounds about right..."

The question brought him up short, and he hesitated before answering, weighing the options in his mind. For the question to have been asked in the first place, the other man had to know something. Still...

"Yeah," he answered finally. "As of a few days ago."

If the Avengers had only recently formed in Tony's dimension, they probably hadn't had time to find him, then. Assuming he was there to be found, that could have been one of the things that was different in this Tony's reality.

"You and I are both Avengers in my reality... but who are the Avengers in yours?" Steve couldn't help but be curious about this other reality, and Tony.

"Are we?" Long practice at maintaining emotional barriers left Tony's voice largely neutral, though there were faint tricks of inflection hinting at warring skepticism and curiosity. While he wouldn't take the words at face value, he could hardly dismiss them outright. Disturbing as he found the implications, they intrigued him just as well.

He grimaced and shook his head, raking his hair back to keep the water from running into his eyes as he glanced up again. "That's the question, isn't it?"

Tony's reply to Steve's question caught him a little bit by surprise. Tony should at least know the members of a team he helped start. Unless, of course, this Tony hadn't been a founding member of the Avengers in his dimension.

"I think your dimension might be a little further removed from mine than I thought... what's been going on recently in your dimension?"

Tony shrugged and offered a slight, wry grin. "Or a little further behind. When I said a few days, I meant including the time I've spent here. We got the ball rolling the night before I woke up here. I actually figured that had something to do with it, at first." He laughed, though it wasn't the sort of laughter that was born entirely of humor. "Just a guess, but by the sound of things, you've got a bit of a head start."

"I'd say I have a considerable head start," Steve smiled at Tony.

So this Tony hadn't met him yet, and the Avengers had only just been formed. They wouldn't have had a chance to locate the Captain America in Tony's dimension, then.

They'd just have to be sure to get Tony back to his dimension close to the time that he'd left. Steve glanced again at Tony's chest, though. Whatever that was, it was a lot more discrete than the chestplate that had kept him alive when Steve had first known him in his dimension.

Steve returned his gaze to Tony's face, and it was only then that he noticed it. Tony's eyes were the wrong color. "Are you wearing contacts?"

"It'd be cheating to ask too many questions, wouldn't it?" Tony replied, though the wry humor saturating his tone was evidence enough that he had no intention of refraining. Further information would allow him to better judge how well he believed the tale. And besides that, he was curious. It would have been hard not to be.

He couldn't keep the faint grimace entirely from showing on his face as he noticed the direction of Steve's glance. It drove home the reason he was uncomfortable with this situation in the first place. One of the reasons. The question that followed came as almost a relief, even though he found it baffling. "No. I've never had a problem with my eyes."

...And even if he had, he wouldn't have worn glasses into the shower. "You don't mean corrective, do you?"

"Your eyes are naturally that color, then? Your eyes are blue in my dimension," Now THAT was really strange. Of course, eye color probably didn't matter much in the grand scheme of things, still.

"Would not ask questions if I said it was cheating?" Steve said in regards to asking too many questions. "I'll admit, I have a few questions of my own. I think our dimensions are probably different enough that events won't happen the same way, though hopefully I'll join the Avengers in your dimension."

"Huh." Despite the monosyllabic nature of the sound, Tony managed to infuse it with puzzlement. Now that was weird. Inconsequential, but weird. "Yeah, they've always been brown. Weird."

Tony's grin at the question was a little more genuine, all self assurance and casual indifference to the way things were supposed to be done. "No," he replied. "But I'd know how likely you'd be to answer." He sobered, however, and glanced away. "Maybe. It's hard to say." He hesitated before posing one of the questions that had been nagging at him. "When is it, in your world? What year?"

"I'll admit, there are things I'd rather not talk about, but the year in my world is 2006," Steve didn't see the harm in answering that question, and he was curious what year it was in Tony's world.

"What about your world?" Steve turned his gaze back to the wall directly in front of him.

"Don't we all," Tony muttered, turning away to give a dark look to a patch of grouting beneath the showerhead he was standing under. A crease of puzzlement dug deep into his brow at Steve's answer, however, and surprise jolted him out of his train of thought before it managed to progress very far at all. He'd expected the other man to be from some time well ahead of him, not two years behind. "2008," he replied. "It's 2008."

"That's..." Well, it wasn't impossible. Odd, but not impossible, certainly. "2008?"

Steve wasn't going to try to justify the time difference. That was much, much later than it should have been for the Avengers to get started. This conversation really was full of surprises, and not the sort that Steve expected from dealing with another dimension.

"2008," Tony confirmed, still sorting through his own surprise at the difference in timelines. Odd as it was, it lent a further note of truth to the situation, the way that something more predictable would not have. "When did we get started in your dimension? Just out of curiosity." It was code, of a sort, for the much harder to definitively answer question of just how different the two realities were.

Day 37: Men's Showers

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)