Day 37: Men's Showers

[pleading-ngri.livejournal.com]

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]

Comments

[whohitreset.livejournal.com]

"Well, I dunno. The fact that you're still alive is something, isn't it?" Matt shrugged. It didn't seem to be something the man wanted to talk about much, and again he could understand that. (Awkward shower time and all.) Really, he was surprised enough at himself for initiating conversation in the first place.

From the glimpse he'd gotten at it, he imagined it had to be a fairly recent injury, at least as far as how fast this place healed people. He still couldn't make a sure estimate, but it had really already been obvious that he'd received it here. It wasn't an older scar.

[31st-of-china.livejournal.com]

Sanzo didn't say anything for a moment. There was still that question of whether he'd really survived or not. If that numb feeling earlier had been anything to go by, Obi-Wan had severed his spine. If having his insides vaporized like that didn't do him in, then that and the spine should have.

To his credit, he managed to push down the faint taste of bile rising in his throat.

"...It is something," Sanzo admitted. It was a bad move, even dignifying that with a response, because it'd make the other patient think it was okay to keep on talking. Sanzo hadn't realized he'd even muttered that until it was out, exhaustion and pain making it hard to focus.

Shit, he needed to get his act together. Now. It didn't matter how tired he was, or how much it hurt, because an enemy wouldn't give a damn about it. Sanzo's face darkened into a scowl.

[whohitreset.livejournal.com]

It was obvious that Sanzo wasn't interested in conversation, and Matt wasn't usually the sort to pursue it. Seemed wrong somehow to just leave things on that note, however. He was bothered by something, and there was a fifty-fifty chance that asking him about it would get him somewhere. (And if it didn't, heck - the guy wasn't in the best of moods already. It couldn't hurt much.) Mello'd been going on about him needing to make connections, and all.

"You okay there, mate?" Matt did his best to keep his gaze averted, as Sanzo had already gotten ticked off at him for staring. It was possible the injury was still bothering him if it was relatively new.

[31st-of-china.livejournal.com]

The obvious answer was no, he wasn't okay. Sanzo was far from it. But he'd bite his own tongue off before he ever admitted that out loud.

"I'll manage," Sanzo grumbled. Despite the fact that the monk was busy trying to cold-shoulder the patient, he was being surprisingly persistant. Why the hell did he always manage to attract people trying to talk to him?

Sanzo finally looked back him.

"Are you usually this nosy?"

How the hell did his look any different from the wounds the other patient's suffered?

[whohitreset.livejournal.com]

Had he heard the complaint out loud, Matt would have made sure to point out that most wounds the other patients had looked as potentially fatal as his had and thus didn't draw as much attention.

"Actually no," he answered Sanzo's question with a short laugh. "I'm usually pretty good at minding my own business, so I'm very sorry for making you an exception." He wasn't, of course, counting any instances when he was spying on others. He didn't generally make conversation at that point.

He turned his attention elsewhere, then, finally catching sight of Mello standing with Near, of all people. Near, who seemed to have gotten himself pretty badly hurt that night before. That was new. He'd have to find out what had happened on that end.