Day 40: Greenhouse [Fourth Shift]

[toxicspiderman]

Most days, fish and chips (and a cold beer or three) was pretty goddamned high on S.T.'s list of perfect expense-account lunches. Today, the idea of picking at greasy hunks of unidentified bottom-feeder odds-and-ends (politely known as scrod, to the delight of teenagers all across the Northeast) didn't appeal.

He begged off and collapsed into his bed, after using his damp shirt as an excuse to surreptiously check the contents of his closet. Bingo. His nurse watched his little show, unimpressed but (more importantly) unsuspicious. Not that his hairy chest was much of a catch today, pale and sweating from fever. At least she didn't tuck him in.

The intercom woke up up right on schedule, and pulling the sheets back over his head almost won. But a handful of unanswered missives and a vague sense of duty dragged him out to the bulletin, and from there it was easier to stagger over to the greenhouse.

It was warm inside -- a deep, humid warmth that actually penetrated to the aches in more joints and muscles than he could remember the names of. Like a sauna, without the hassle of finding someplace to look that wasn't a mound of pasty middle-management cellulite. Or a sweat lodge, without the opposite hassle of being conscious that he was the only white guy in the room. In fact, besides the nurses in holding patterns, he was the only person in the room.

He located a tray of tomato seedlings going rootbound in their tiny six-packs, and a potting bench whose location was a quick-and-dirty approximation of equidistantly far from anything blooming. He assured his nurse he knew what he was doing, and after a couple of successful repottings, gently sliding the little seedlings out and loosening the tangled roots, she seemed to agree and backed off. It was, by far, the most fucking theraputic thing he'd found in this hellhole so far, and he let himself sink into the rhythm of the task.

[Free!]

Comments

[scarletspeedstr.livejournal.com]

"Either your Germany is a lot smaller than mine, or you're going to have to be more specific. Or it this a new game? 'Guess my town of origin'?" he joked, his smile hopefully showing that he didn't mean too much by the comment. "But I'm from the US, Central city actually, so I don't know how much luck I'd have with that game."

Wally wasn't particularly bothered by Badou wanting to help out or, as the case may be, not. As Sanzo had found out earlier that day, he just had difficulties standing around not doing anything, and while he'd have preferred running, doing something with his hands while he talked was also good. "That pretty much sums it up," he laughed. More accurate than Badou knew, though Clark had always been the one called 'boy scout'.

"But if you really wanna know? It's also 'cause she makes fantastic cookies. I'd probably help out anyway, but that's a pretty nice bonus after working hard in the garden." Normally for all of a few minutes in normal time, but that was often hours of work in subjective time. And truthfully Wally hadn't ever asked for any kind of payment, but it wasn't exactly a secret that the Flash needed to eat a lot to get by.

[strayfag]

Of course the one time he tried to be accommodating it was unnecessary. "It's shrouded in mystery." He replied dryly. "Maybe you should use your investigative skills to find out. I've never heard of yours either, but I don't really know much about the geography outside of the city."

So Badou was friends with a terrorist who had MPD, a little boy who took on the mob in his spare time, and couple of reasonably unhinged mercenaries and hit men, but Wally had to be the weirdest guy he'd met so far. He was just so... well-adjusted. Badou had been almost certain that was a myth he made up. Like unicorns and tax breaks.

"Cookies? Seriously?" Badou laughed. "Man, you are a boy scout. Your world must be nice. The little old ladies back home can get pretty bossy." Not that he ever wanted Granny Liza to hear that. She'd probably kill him and then dock the cleanup cost from his funeral.

[scarletspeedstr.livejournal.com]

"I know a lot of places like that," Wally answered. "But it's no big deal. We might not even be from the same Earth anyway, right? Seems like there's a lot of them around the place, judging from all the differences people have been talking about." A few days back that idea would have really bothered him, or he would have been insisting that the Justice League were going to turn up and save the day. Bruce showing up here as well had really killed that idea though, but at the same time... Wally was confident that if anyone could come up with a way to get them out of here, Bats could.

Besides, moping about things without doing anything really wasn't his style.

Wally grinned and laughed along with Badou. "Yeah, seriously cookies," he said, setting aside the weeds he'd been pulling and wiping some dirt off his cheek. "Or sometimes cake. All in a day's work, you know? Man, I hope everyone's coping okay without me..." Not just Central, but the League as well. He was going to have to have serious words with them all if he came back and found they'd all flipped out or gone crazy-evil or whatever.

"So anyway, what'd you do with your spare time?"

[strayfag]

"Yeah, that whole multiple worlds thing takes some getting used to. It's pretty sad when it makes more sense to believe we're all just nuts." Badou replied, tugging at a weed for something to do with his hands. He wasn't actually gardening, just destroying the leaves of some defenseless plant.

"And I'm sure she'll find someone to eat that cake," Badou offered. "We might not even be missing from our worlds anyway. How else would that whole multiple timeline thing work out?"

He actually had to think about what he did in his spare time. Smoking didn't count as 'spare time' since he did that pretty much all the time. He counted it off on his fingers as he spoke. "Sleep, get shot at, bitch at Haine for being an inconsiderate dick... Drink. Uh, sometimes I eat." He shrugged, "The little old lady I work for pays cash."