They've been reduced to bathing with dish soap. Orc misses the days when he had a bath tub. When he had skin that needed to be washed with white, smooth bars soap and bubbling hot water. But now there is only dish soap, because there is no water to bathe with. Howard has dark sores and rashes on his arms from the blue goop he scrubs himself with. But Orc's skin does not react. It never does. You could pour pitch on that skin and it'd be no biggie, Howard says.
"Bath is ready, big guy." Howard hoists a bucket of the combination of dish soap and some unidentified liquid that Orc thinks might be diluted beer over his head. His heart aches for water. For being able to fit in a bath tub. He wonders if it makes Howard feel ashamed. To wash him like a baby. Orc shuts his eyes as Howard pours the sludge mixture over his head.
Howard has a brush, the same kind of brush you'd use on a horse or a dog, Orc thinks, and Howard begins scrubs his arms. If he is ashamed he does not show it. Maybe a naked monster is easier to look at than a naked human. Animals don't wear clothes and no one gives them anything for it, right?
Orc is not an animal. Or at least, he hopes that he is not.
x
The image of Howard sitting in the tattered remnants of an armchair with a needle and thread would almost be funny. There is a pile of grey nylon shorts in his lap that he has cut into pieces with silver sewing scissors and then is sewing together again. None of them are exactly the same color. It reminds Orc of a movie he saw once, where a man created a monster and the monster was a patched together mess of a man with a nail sticking out of his head.
"Come over here," he says. Orc lumbers over to him.
Howard flicks a measuring tape out and wraps it around Orc's midsection. It does not bend easily and its edges dig into Orc's hips a little. Howard frowns and writes a measurement on his own arm with a Sharpie marker, then pulls the tape measure away and sits back down. Orc gingerly sits down on the mountain of mattresses Howard has stacked on top of each other for him. He watches Howard sew, watches how nimble and small his hands are. Hands less than half as big as Orc's, or so he thinks. He's never held Howard's hand. Maybe he could have, when they still went to school and they were only a playground bully and a wisecracker.
Someone knocks on the door and neither of them answer.
x
Orc's vision is hazy and his throat burns. Every time he breathes, he feels as though he's going to retch. Lying on his side makes his face feel squished and his vision blur, so he's flipped over on his back. His mattress feels lumpy and hard and is wet with a disgusting cocktail of fluids. The air is clammy and too hot.
A light appears in the hallway. Howard has bags under his eyes but his face is a not quite smile that shows no signs of irritation. No one wears pyjamas anymore. Orc knows Howard won't turn on the light in Orc's room, because the light would hurt both Orc's drunken eyes and Howard's sleep-deprived ones. And Howard knows where the rag and bucket are, even in the dark.
Orc watches his fuzzy figure in the grey dark as he gestures for Orc to roll to the other side of the bed and begins to run a wet rag across the mattress. Orc wonders, again, if he is ashamed. He hears Howard laugh to himself in the dark.
"What's funny?" He tries to say.
"You're like the princess. In that story. You know, the one with the prince and the lumpy mattresses. The prince wanted to marry this girl and his mom wanted to test if she was really a princess so they gave her this giant stack of mattresses and put a pea under it. And she was like, what the hell is under my sheets, fuckin' rocks? And they knew she was a princess because only a princess would feel that. Or something. I don't remember."
Orc laughs, which is a hoarse sound that makes him retch again. "Only a pea," he says, not quite knowing what he means himself.
"That's right. Only a pea," Howard says, and sleeps the rest of the night slumped against Orc's makeshift bed.
I dunno, man, I just really love Orc/Howard and the sort of almost domestic life they have in the FAYZ has always been so interesting to me?