"You know it."

He's a little rough about it, in an affectionate kind of way, and only pokes Z in the side occasionally.

Z threatens to splash him twice and tries to poke him with a spine.

And then, once he's been thoroughly scrubbed —

"Are you...good, though? Because I wouldn't be."

"--yeah. I am. Honestly."

Z is getting a hug, wet and naked or not.

"You're here. My family's okay. I'm fine."

...he hugs him back.

"...yeah. I can believe that."

A wisp of hair flutters against his cheek like a butterfly kiss.

"...I do need dry clothes now."

He's never had a feeling in his whole life.

"—oh. Yeah. Let me finish and I'll, uh...show you where you live now, I guess."

He sets about scrubbing the rest of his body clean, wringing out and re-wetting the cloth as he goes.

When he's done—

"...probably should've gotten fresh clothes first."

"Are you seriously telling me you don't just keep a spare set here. This is so predictable."

"I'm great at stuff," he says.

He grabs a towel to wrap around his waist and heads out the door and down the hall, pulling Camillo along with him.

When they reach the right door, Z opens it.

There's a queen bed, a desk with paper and pens, a few impressive mismatched shelves packed to overflowing with books. A few polaroids are tacked up to the wall.

"...yeah, okay, this looks like me."

There's a gorgeous Oxford English Dictionary taking up a shelf and a half of one of the bigger bookcases. How the fuck did he get that here.

"We do a lot of book runs. Cato's bored to fucking tears out there."

"Oh, poor kid, I bet. -- where's your room, you need clothes."

"Oh. Right. Forgot about that."

He slips out the door and down to the next room over.

Z's room is, as one might expect, a moderate disaster. He digs through the Clean Clothes Pile (and takes a peek in the Clean Enough Clothes Pile) until he's got something to wear.

"This is gonna last, like, five minutes. The laundry shift hates me."

"Why, what happens to it?"

"It doesn't, like, get torn up, usually. They just have to scrub out a lot of fluids."

—wait. Right.

"Since I spend a lot of time off base getting fucked up by monsters."

"...ah."

Yes. That tracks.

"It's ... pretty dangerous out there, I guess."

"Yeah. And I'm already infected, so."

Ha, there's socks.

"—plus if somebody rips my arms off I get back up after."

"Has that happened?"

"Yeah. It sucked. I hate the really big ripped guys, they've always got some shit to work through."

"Jesus, man. .. wait, there's, like -- patterns?"

"Kinda, yeah. You see a lot of big ripped dudes with huge dicks and anger issues, or girls with huge tits and — pheromones, or weird hair, or whatever. I think that's just what it does if you don't have anything more interesting going on."

Camillo snorts. "And you've got -- spikes? Because you're more interesting?"

"—nah, the spikes are from a guy who got me last week. I'm just me until I get in trouble."

"Oh, huh -- is that a normal thing, or special for you?"

"It happens sometimes — transferring stuff over, I mean. I've seen it. But I've never met anybody else who was...just a dude, otherwise. Except for the arms thing."