Jacq distracted herself from the meal's aftertaste with the multitude of panels that lined the walls of her "new" quarters. The more she saw of the ship, the more she doubted its ability to survive another landing.
Every surface was pocked with rust, dents, and scrapes, there were even a couple deep gouges all the way through the grated floors. The panels in her room either fell open at the lightest touch, or remained stubbornly closed. Luckily she was at least able to find a sink, toilet, and bed.
Standing in the center of the room and facing the door, she reached her arms out; both of her palms touched the panelled walls, and the space was only about twice as long in the other direction.
On the far wall away from the door was a knob at about chest height, though there was no spout or other device that it might have connected to.
She slowly turned the knob, listening over the warm hum of the ship for some sort of effect. She slowly continued turning the knob, scanning the room but finding it unchanged.
A lukewarm trickle ran down her hand; a thin sheet of water cascaded down the wall from a gap along the seam where it met the roof --
Excellent, a shower. She rolled up her sleeves and continued turning the knob, taking a step away from the gap in the wall. The stream intensified into a thin waterfall that broke over her wrist, disappearing beneath the grated floor. She continued turning the knob until it stopped, but the water barely pushed away from the wall it came from.
She heard pipes squeak behind the walls, and quickly stepped back as the stream came sputtering through the gap hard enough to send drips flying in random directions. Jacq laughed as she stared at the wall of water between herself and the knob that would shut it off, smattering the toes of her sport-shoes with tiny droplets as she unbuttoned her uniform shirt in the handful of dry centimeters she had left -- the pipes must have shared water pressure.
Another squeak traveled down the pipes in the walls, and water jettisoned from the gap at the top of the wall, over her and the door behind her in a torrent hard enough to press the cloth to her skin.
She pushed through the torrent with an arm raised defensively before her face, fumbling blindly and hitting her shin on something that hadn't been there a moment before. She found the knob and turned it as quickly as possible in the opposite direction. The torrent slowed back to a waterfall, then a trickle, running over her once again as she realized that what she'd hit her shin on: the panel that contained her mattress had been jostled open by the torrent of water.
She slid the panel towards her, plastic mattress sloshing in the centimeter-deep pool. She undressed, throwing her clothing at the wall with a wet plop as she sat naked in the mattress-puddle.
She brushed water off of her arms with her palms, throwing it into the grating only for more to drip down from her hair, or condense from the already humid air. Eventually, she redressed and left the room.
Her clothes stuck to her skin and each other with wet sucking sounds as she peeled them apart, scratching and chafing as she made her way back to the cargo bay with wide steps.
Nick turned as she entered, sitting in the center of the large chamber facing the bay door, His jacket fanning out around him as if he'd melted to the floor. His face cracked beneath wet hair he'd pulled to the side. "I see you've found yourself a room." He leaned back on his hips and pivoted to face her, jacket swinging around him. "I thought the water pressure felt a little weak," he chuckled.
"About that…"
"Do we have a dryer?"
Jacq wiped dark strands of hair from where they stuck to her face.
Nick waved for her to follow as he got to his feet, leading her to the dark corner where the bay door met the adjacent wall. A series of large pipes protruded from the shadows, and as her eyes adjusted to the darkness she noticed one of them had a large hatch built into the side. There was also a deep sink with two separate faucets protruding from the wall, barely out of sight from the catwalk ladder she'd climbed earlier.
"Might as well show you the whole process since you'll be doing your own laundry from now on." Nick hung his jacket on a nearby hook -- Jacq recognized the shirt beneath as disposable cloth like she'd worn at Estermere when participating in activities involving paints or sports that might have ruined her uniform. Nick's shirt was stained, and had already dissolved at the underarms.
He pulled the garment over his head, revealing six abdominal bricks supporting a boney rib cage adorned with toned, if not quite large pectoral muscles. His forearms were coated in thin scratches and burn marks the likes of which a soldier might gain in battle, but were consistent enough to appear self-inflicted, or at least not the result of something unexpected. He undid the latch on a half-meter wide pipe, hinging open a rectangular access hatch.
She watched as his arms and shoulders flexed in the dim light, following the multitude of carved valleys to the back of his neck where a rough-looking scar bulged at the base of his skull. Her hand subconsciously brushed against a similar mark on her own neck -- a remnant from the interface surgery she'd received as an infant.
She turned her attention to the hatch as Nick looked over his shoulder at her. The bottom of the hatch's opening came roughly to her collarbone, and she could just make out a handful of metal clips lining the roof. She could just barely make out a grate through the shadows deep in the pipe, just before it disappeared back into the wall.
Nick stepped around her to the large sink, and tossed his shirt into the basin. He turned a knob above one of the spouts, and let his shirt soak in the grey-green liquid that spewed forth. "This is a detergent of some kind. I've never bought any so I have no idea what it actually is -- it came with the ship, so use it at your own risk." He shrugged, "I've been using it for a couple standard years now. That said, I also have no idea where it's stored or how much is left, so use it sparingly."
He pushed a lever between the two spouts and the detergent began to drain. "This," he turned the other knob, "is just water. Once again, use it at your own risk." He let the shirt soak again as the detergent seeped out in a bubbly grey cloud.
He wrung the remaining liquid from the shirt and shook the drips from it, then moved back to the pipe with the hatch in it. "Finally-" He leaned into the opening, then pulled away with the shirt hanging on the clips inside. The hatch shut with a squeaking-clang and he latched it closed in one smooth motion, reaching under the pipe to pull an unseen lever that caused a low hum to resonate throughout.
Nick folded his arms while they waited, pectorals flexing involuntarily as they were pushed together. He raised an eyebrow at her as one of her gaze lingered.
She coughed and busied herself with staring at the latch on the large pipe.
Nick pushed the lever back and released the hatch once again with a wave of warm, stale air. He undid the clips and peeled his shirt from the roof of the pipe. "And there you have it."
Jacq pulled at her clothes while Nick donned his shirt. "Is there like, a towel or- oh." She looked up as he offered her his jacket.
He rolled his eyes. "The last thing I need around here is another nudist."
She accepted the jacket and returned to the quarters to change, claiming one of the other empty rooms rather than return to the one she'd soaked. The interior of the jacket was surprisingly soft given how the outside was made of thick, woven strands that flexed just easily enough to not feel stiff. The entire thing dragged around her feet, the sleeves hanging far past her fingertips and center far too loose to effectively close modestly without her constant attention.
She returned to the laundry apparatus with her wet clothes bundled in her arms, and did her best to repeat the steps Nick had shown her without the jacket falling open. Once she managed that, she turned to find Nick cross-legged on the floor, facing the bay doors with his chin on his thumbs. His back bent forward in a long arch for his chin to reach its resting place.
"You shouldn't sit like that…"
He stared into the darkness for a moment before looking at her out of the corner of his eye. "You shouldn't worry about what should and shouldn't be."
"What?"
"We can't control what should or shouldn't be." He turned his head to her, laying it sideways on his knuckles. "All there is is what's in front of us." His pupils were wide in the darkness, flickering rapidly in the failing light.
"And what's in front of me." Jacq raised an eyebrow. "Is someone asking for back surgery in the next few standards. Don't you know anything about posture?"
Nick smiled, stretching up towards the ceiling, then falling backwards to lay on the floor. "I once dreamt of being able to get back surgery." He laughed, head lolling to the side.
Jacq folded her arms, scrunching the jacket's sleeves around her forearms. "Like, bionics?"
"I mean like not worrying about medical bills." He rolled his head on the floor to face her.
Jacq rocked her head back, "then why did you dream of getting surgery?"
He lay his arms out above him as if laying on a giant mattress. "I tried to change my little world, and got shot out into space."
"Oh…" Her expression evened out. "You're high." She recognized the symptoms from the videos she'd been shown in health class. "You know ink stains your grey matter, right?"
Nick rolled onto his side, resting his head in his palm. "And what's wrong with darker grey matter?" He raised an eyebrow. "Presuming that's a medical fact, and not propagandistic nonsense."
"It's…" Jacq racked her brain, going over the video her class had run through her interface -- there had been in-depth footage of ink molecules connecting to the grey matter cells, images of the brains of ink-users side-by-side with sober people, but they hadn't explained what the ink actually did to the brain beyond changing its appearance. "It makes you lazy -- and besides, it's not the way your brain is supposed to be."
Nick took in a long breath through his nose, stuck out his tongue, and let it flap noisily as he exhaled. "Your type is always telling everyone how things are 'supposed to be' like you know something we don't, yet you can never explain why your point of view is so much more valid than anyone else's."
Jacq narrowed her eyes, fighting with the over-long sleeves of Nick's jacket to cross her arms. "What do you mean, 'my type?'"
Nick flopped onto his back, raising his arms above him. "The rich -- the upper class."
Jacq snorted, "I'm not rich, I'm an orphan."
"Me too!" Nick rolled his head back toward her with a grin. "I guess we must be the same, then."
"What? No, I- We…" She sputtered as he rolled onto his back again and laughed at the ceiling.
He calmed down quickly, almost suddenly. "What ink does," he rolled his head back towards her, smile wrinkling the bags beneath his eyes, "is make you curious. It makes you ask questions. Which is exactly why they want you to be afraid of it." His head rocked back and forth as his smile faded, eventually settling with him staring into the flickering light on the ceiling. "Maybe they were right."