Day 51: Men's Showers [Second Shift]

[lawful_perfect]

Bah. So much for yet another suggestion of von Karma's. Such priorities this Institute had. They would implement a foolish suggestion to introduce origami lessons and to offer sewing supplies to select patients, yet refused to allow them to cleanse themselves more often than twice a week -- and, of course, without any additional privacy? How many more of his reasonable suggestions would the Head Lunatic make a point of ignoring?

von Karma scoffed, shaking his head as he entered the shower facility. Fortunately, it appeared that he was the first one in here. As soon as the announcement over the intercom had blared out signaling the shift change, von Karma had been quick to excuse himself from his conversation with Naraku to promptly head for the showers. It had been bad enough last time that there were already three men in the showers by the time he arrived. This time, he would make certain that he would be the first one there.

Without wasting a single second, he disrobed, meticulously washed off the grime from the past several days, dried himself, then got dressed. All within a perfect three minutes, zero seconds, before anyone else had a chance to enter. He would have preferred a much longer time to devote to hygiene, but he didn't want to risk any needless immodesty in front of anyone.

Now finished, he exited the restroom and entered the Sun Room.

[To here]

Comments

[kindalikedit]

"Nurses seem like they're a real tough sell," Dean snorted. He'd been sure that Hello Nurse had checked him out a few times but that was basically it. She didn't strike him as the kind of chick to go for a casual screw.

Out of habit, Dean kept the guy in the corner of his vision as he ran some shampoo through his hair. Looked like the other patient noticed the same thing he had, that whole healing too fast for a human thing which was well past the point of just being a badass or having a load of luck. He still wasn't sure how they did it. Sure, there were probably spells for that sort of thing. Not saying it was totally impossible. But the whole implication of it wasn't exactly comforting - healing them up so they'd be nice and fresh (sorta) for the next round of ass kicking, he figured. One hell of a dick move in the long run. In the short run? He'd pick healing freakishly fast over stone cold dead.

He ducked his head under the water, scrubbing at his hair with his fingers.

"I'm Dean," he said. Rather skip the last name if he could. The thing responsible for this place probably already knew who they were - who everyone was, there had to be some kind of twisted logic why each of 'em was here - but that didn't mean anything else here had to. "Think it'd be better to skip the handshake."

He flashed the guy a quick, sidelong smile.

[doneinthree]

Kirk laughed at Dean's last comment. "Kirk," he offered in lieu of a handshake, hesitating for only a second. He usually offered his full name to others, as much for reasons of vanity as anything else, although he had noticed how some people went to special lengths to hide their identities on the bulletin board. A little too late for him, with all his check-in posts, not that Kirk was really bothered with making himself a public figure in Landel's patient population.

But there was a casualness to this situation which he liked, and he let himself roll with it, instead of dredging up the seriousness with which he'd greeted Doctor Jones last shift. Still, he'd been aware enough of himself to choose "Kirk" over "Jim" — nothing against Dean, only that he was realizing more and more that the name which was most relevant in this hell-hole was the one he carried as a Starfleet officer.

He wasn't just Jim Kirk anymore. Part of him, he realized, was perfectly okay with that. "So, speaking of war wounds," said Kirk, and hit his own neck with one hand, in the same place he'd noticed an injury on Dean's. "Do I want to know what kind of animal did that to you?"

[kindalikedit]

Kirk.

You got to be kidding me.

That was either the most badass name ever to get given to a kid or Kirk here was the most badass man alive for picking that name to run with. Maybe the men’s showers wasn’t the right place to almost go gay for someone but hey, the guy had some real class there. Dean had to fight to keep the grin from getting too wide, especially when it was already approaching smirk territory there. Kirk and Spock, both here. Next thing he knew, they'd probably roll out the red carpet for Scotty. Awesome.

Dean just barely resisted the urge to throw out another Vulcan salute. Maybe he wasn’t the classiest, most educated guy out there, but he figured even he could draw the line at not Vulcan saluting someone ass naked, thanks. Taking a moment to keep the grin under wraps and splashing his face with water, rinsing out the soap, he glanced over when Kirk pointed out the bite on his neck.

“This? Wasn’t no animal,” Dean’s smile faded, expression hardening even though his voice was still friendly, casual. “I didn’t get a good look at him. Wish I did,” at the very least he could have a description and track the bloodsucker down, try to put the thing down before he snacked on more people. “Felt like a human, though. I’d watch your back out there, don’t get stuck out there solo like I did.”

Come to think of it, aside from the freak strength and the hankering for blood, it had felt like a human. It’d hurt, sure. Still, looking back on the attack, he hadn’t actually felt any fangs, which was plain weird right there. Typical vampire like that should’ve had that secondary set of fangs. Even if it had been something like an offshoot, most of the bloodsuckers out there didn’t rock regular human teeth – or faces – when they went for the jugular (or whatever major arteries they felt like going for).