Manfred von Karma (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lawful_perfect) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
damned_institute2010-08-10 09:30 am
lawful_perfect) wrote in damned_institute2010-08-10 09:30 am
Day 51: Men's Showers [Second Shift]
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]
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]
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He glanced back over at Gren, mostly keeping his eyes on the other- on his face. He suddenly felt pretty awful, and awkward, and a million other things that he normally felt, but they were magnified at the moment because this was someone he'd met, and would probably meet again; besides, he actually liked Gren. Dude was cool, and knew games, and played the sax. He was one Matt actually didn't mind having around, which was a revelation on its own.
An apology was in order... right?
"I'm- I'm sorry." His flush deepened as soon as those words left his mouth. "I'm not good with people."
Wow, Matty, he thought in Mello's voice again. What an understatement.
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"You don't have to apologize," he replied, keeping his voice perfectly neutral. "I'm pretty sure this would be awkward even if you were good with them." At least this was an honest reaction. It would have annoyed him far more had he been pretending there was nothing out of the ordinary. "Although I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention this to anyone."
Not that he thought Mason was a gossip. He definitely didn't seem the type.
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At least the nurses hadn't followed them in...
That was when something struck him. Matt looked over at Gren again, the flush fading as his mind zeroed in on a new, slightly less uncomfortable subject. "Hey. Do the nurses know about-" He didn't take his eyes off the other man's face, but he did make a slight gesture with his left hand.
If Gren's own personal cheery warden hadn't the faintest clue about her charge's physical... whatever you wanted to call it, that might mean that they weren't privy to a good lot of knowledge about the so-called "patients." That might leave them with an opening later - one that could prove useful in their eventual escape from the facility.
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He didn't usually have any trouble with people catching on. He'd been doing this for three years now, and if anything, the institute's rather unflattering wardrobe had made things easier in that respect. Certainly, he hadn't done anything around anyone--nurses included--that might have clued them in since his arrival. "They might not," he concluded, "I guess it depends on how personal they get when we're not conscious." It was a creepy thought, sure, but someone had obviously been doing things like tending to wounds in the time before they woke up in the morning, so it wasn't a total stretch. "Or they just don't care." Maybe they were used to seeing strange things and hadn't given his situation a second thought.
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He started washing the shampoo from his hair, working his fingers through the thin strands, darkened drastically by the moisture. As he took some soap into his palm and started working it into a lather along his shoulders, Matt realized that he legitimately felt better, just because he was cleaner. It was a new feeling, really, for something that was so meaningless before to be so important now, and it made him feel somewhat like a stranger to himself. The place was changing him, he knew, but the brunet wasn't quite sure yet if it was for the better or the worse.
Right then, a sharp cigarette pang hit him smack in the chest, and he exhaled slowly to calm himself.
"Well," he started again, determined to salvage his integrity; the conversation had definitely started off on a bad, awkward note, but hopefully Matt could figure out a way to redeem himself. "I get that you're a dude." An inward groan was his own reaction to that one; he knew that wasn't the right way to tell the guy I don't have a problem with you because of this. "What- What I mean is, it doesn't bother me." He blinked as he started to wash the soap away. "At all."
Somehow, conversation had made his public shower more bearable, but Matt decided it might not be smart to think too much on it.
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Instead, he took a moment, regained his calm, and nodded a little. "Thanks. If it makes it any less weird, I wasn't always like this. And it wasn't my choice." He didn't know how much that would help, really, except that at least it might answer a few questions that could be swirling around in the younger man's head. He couldn't stop people from thinking he was some sort of freak, but at least he could clarify his role as a victim in the whole sad ordeal. The last thing he needed to deal with was someone somehow thinking he'd wanted to be this way.
He was more or less clean now, but he stayed under the spray of the shower head a bit longer, letting the hot water do its work on muscles still sore from the last two nights worth of physical activity. If anything good came from this place at all, it would probably be in the form of regaining a little of the muscle-tone he'd lost to incarceration and illness.
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He looked away again, this time out of respect rather than awkwardness. It was an emotion he just couldn't seem to escape, but Matt was gung-ho about ignoring it for the moment.
And he was damn good at ignoring things when he wanted to. "I just. Don't let it get you down, man." He nodded sharply, a gesture meant to convey support, but his eyes were still trained on the wall in front of him.
It was a sad situation, he knew, when Matt was the one trying to buck someone up. It wasn't what he did best, and he knew it, and most everyone knew it, he liked to think, but the topic called for it; of that he was sure.
Finally washing the last bits of soap from his body, he stood, glancing over at the door. It had been nice, at least, to escape his nurse's close and ever-watchful eye for more than two seconds - even if he'd run himself smack into the most awkward conversation he'd been privy to since-
...well. Since before Mello'd left Wammy's, really.
"I hear they do things to people here. Weird things. Bad things." He continued to look away. "That-" Matt gestured to Gren, his hands shaking a little as he did. "-honestly seems like one of those things they'd do here, to mess with people's heads. But." Now he started to flush red again, just a little bit. "But if that was something someone'd done to you before you got here, and you managed to live through it - and with it? Then this place should be a cakewalk for you."
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"I try not to," he replied. The reassurance amused him a little in both it's simplicity and its awkwardness, but he appreciated the sentiment anyway. "I'd rather be an optimist than a pessimist anyway." The only other option, after all, was to let the weight of everything drag him down, and he was just a little too stubborn to let that happen.
"Do they?" He couldn't say he was surprised, to be honest. But it was a worrying new detail he was going to have to take into account, maybe find out more about, so he could avoid it. He'd survived his prison stint, and everything that had happened to him there, but becoming someone's guinea pig again wasn't something he was sure he could bounce back from, and he wasn't eager to test the theory.
He nodded a little. "It's a long story but... I've been somewhere like this before." Not exactly like, of course. There was a big difference between a military prison and even this sham of a mental hospital, but this was as close to that nightmare as he'd ever find, he was sure. "Living through it isn't so hard, really, when your other choice is to not live." He'd never been the suicidal type. Not really. Yes, he was going to die anyway, but he wanted to go with some pride still intact. He didn't want to let them win.
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The unsettling part of what he'd just heard was that there were other places like this one. Places where you were ruled completely by a nameless, faceless evil that wanted to eat your soul. Places where you could get lost in the dark and never find your way back. Places where they took you out of what was supposed to be your own private space - only to mangle you from the inside out and deposit you right back into your bed, so you could wake up the following morning feeling nice and refreshed and completely mutilated.
He had to wonder, really, what they would do to Gren, should they decide to subject him to further torment. The guy already seemed to have been through the ringer as it was; what more could they do in hopes of breaking him? In a way, Matt seriously envied the other man's ability to stay positive, to stay focused; this seemed like the perfect place to fall over and refuse to get back up.
Thankfully Mello was holding on, though the brunet knew that was mostly from sheer determination and stubbornness. There really wasn't much more to Mello, when you broke him down to his most basic elements. Matt had no idea what he was going through, and he had to say he was thankful for that.
...but it might not stay that way forever. Matt appreciated being in the dark as to Mello's current state of mind - hell, he downright enjoyed it. The facility was messing with his head as it was; to lock him in a room and do horrible things to him? That wasn't what he had in mind for the duration of his captivity, and he realized that he needed to prepare, should something like that happen. He didn't want it to - anyone with half a brain would be able to figure that out - but he was too logical a thinker to deny that it was a possibility. There was no telling what the sadistic fuck's running the Institute wanted with him, but he couldn't say they didn't. After all, there he was, right?
He was about to start trying to figure out something to add, something else to say - but really, what do you say to something like this? - when a familiar voice called from the entrance to the showers, "Marcus! That must be the longest shower I've ever seen you take! Come on now; we need to move along and let Gregory finish his own shower." When Matt turned, all he saw a hand waving him toward the door. Sighing, he started toward her slowly, hunching his shoulders again in discomfort. However, before he left, he glanced over his shoulder at Gren, offering a small wave. "See you later, optimist of optimists?" He had himself a nice chuckle over that one.
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"Sure thing," he called in response, waiting until he was gone to shut off the water and head out to dry off, get dressed, and deal with the nurse who was no doubt impatiently waiting for him to finish up.