ArterialCaucus
Bashful Zealot
13,850 Points
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500
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400
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500
The devil's in the sails of that there phantom ship...
『ωнєяє: Showers > Captain’s Quarters』 『ωιтн: Fife > Alex』 『мσσɗ: Barely contained rage』
『ωнєяє: Showers > Captain’s Quarters』 『ωιтн: Fife > Alex』 『мσσɗ: Barely contained rage』
The morning had not gone well for Titus.
To be fair, mornings rarely did, these days, especially with the way his evening routine had slipped so heavily into drink that it pushed the bounds of what a hangover should be allowed to be. This morning, though - not only did he feel like he might be simultaneously drunk and hungover, he had been woken up at four in the goddamned morning by [******** Fife on that dickhead Alex’s orders. There was a time, in the Resistance, where a lieutenant would be treated with some respect, he thought, irritably, staring at himself in the mirror and slapping the side of his chin. He was going to have to shave properly, now - none of his usual “shave half the face, nick yourself too many times, give up and take a pair of scissors to the other side” routine. He stared at the razor in his hands with a meaningful glare, just to let it know that not only had it let him down, but it was also going to disappoint everyone it had ever loved, and possibly all other related textiles made in the same factory as it had been. He wasn’t even sure it was intended for shaving a face. It was pink.
He had spent the morning being forced - practically at gunpoint - to take a shower. Titus complained that he’d already had his shower that year, and he still had some of the burn scars from the lye soap he used to prove it, but Fife was…insistent. Apparently, burning skin off “didn’t count” as “washing”, because at the end of the day Titus was “just standing under some water” and “still smelled like the back end of a sewer, pardon my French”. The French went unpardoned. Titus, for his part, released some good old-fashioned Russian against the locked door, but other than release some tension in his pounding head, this had accomplished nothing. He was locked in until he was clean.
It took Titus a couple tries, mostly because he had never, to his knowledge, “properly cleaned himself” before. He remembered vaguely that upon his first arrival in the Resistance, an older woman had scrubbed him from ankle to widow’s peak, but he couldn’t really remember the right way around the eight million bottles littering the inside of the shower. He read over the instructions as thoroughly as he could, but generally found himself at a loss. He would announce himself clean, only to have Fife tell him that, um, no, he wasn’t, sir. Get some pointers. Step back into the shower. Rinse. Repeat. The hot water ran out by maybe his third try, which was about when the grease in his hair gave out to hard-scrubbing fingers, and more than two decades of dirt and dried blood that had been caked into his scalp began to liquefy, pour down his neck and shoulders. If he’d had any concept of “gross”, that might’ve counted as it. His fourth try had included such tasks as “brushing his goddamn teeth / hair” and “yes, you have to clean your feet as well, I know they’re going to be in shoes, just clean them, sir”. And now…this. Shaving.
Trying to shave while drunk and hungover was practically impossible. He could barely manage it when it was one or the other - both at once was an exhaustive task that took a solid twenty minutes to complete. But complete it he did - and when he was done, he stared at himself intently in the mirror. He looked…well. He looked like an entirely different person. His scars, undisguised by the dirt, stood out brightly against the paler skin of his face, but he also looked younger. The man in the mirror was the sort of person Titus would give a kick in the a** to on recruitment day. Thoughtlessly, he reached back to re-braid his hair, chewed on his lower lip. Clothes. Definitely, he could use some clothes.
Fife didn’t help his own case by trotting into the bathroom and staring in apparent awe. Titus glared back, but he suspected that it lacked its usual menace. “Fife. Clothes,” he snapped, in case his point hadn’t been made clearly enough.
“Sir…you’re so…”
“Fife, I will kill you. Clothes. Now.” Thankfully, that was all it took. Fife broke himself out of his own reverie and passed Titus the (now unfortunately clean) bundle of clothes he’d been carrying, and in a moment of furious efficiency, Titus set about covering his naked - clean - body as immediately as physically possible. “Go tell your captain that I’ll be there within the hour,” he managed through clenched teeth.
Walking down the hallways was the hardest part, honestly. Where his subordinates normally flinched at his approach and drew back in awe or terror, they now failed to react to him at all. Without the dirt - and, by extension, the stench - Titus was apparently unrecognizable to the majority of the Resistance. Beyond the humiliation of being locked in a bathroom for two hours, beyond the terrible smell of the soaps drowning his senses out (apple crisp? Clean laundry?), the loss of recognition, of respect - that was the worst thing. By the time he reached Alex’s room, he was fairly certain there was steam pouring out of his ears. He gave a crisp rap on the door, waited for a response, hurled the door open with the force he couldn’t make himself contain.
I have never wanted anyone dead so intently as I want you dead in this moment, he thought to himself, staring his boss down, I will kill you one day. I will kill you. And when I kill you, I will have killed you for this. You are worth nothing more than a corpse. But what he said was, “Sir? You called for me?” It was important to be polite to superiors. Even when you wanted them dead.
You'd better hold fast...
