It's dark in other Rex's room when Rex wakes up in the morning with a jolt. His breathing is heavy like he'd just come back from a long day out in the field instead of having just woken up from a relatively peaceful night's sleep.
Rex's body is confused, both from having slept in a new place and from the lack of a harsh morning wake-up call.
While Rex has a set wake-up time, it isn't too unusual for him to wake up in the early, early dredgings of the morning at least two days a week to fight some EVO halfway across the country. The other five days Rex would be waking up to a harsh beeping coming from his alarm clock telling him it was time to wake up, or Six forcibly dragging Rex from his warm bed.
So, despite the fact that it's clearly very early in the morning, Rex feels like he's overslept and missed something important. He doesn't have many days where he gets to wake up naturally, so it puts his nerves on edge when he does.
What time is it anyways?
Rex sticks his foot out towards the end of his bed to poke his room's screen before he remembers that, oh yeah, this is not his bedroom. He looks around to see if there's a clock on the wall or some other device with the time on it lying around before he spies a little table next to the door on the other side of the room with an alarm clock on it.
5:22 a.m, it reads in bright red letters.
Rex wonders faintly what time he and other Rex need to be up and out of the house before Violeta or someone else comes wandering into other Rex's room to wake Rex up and they find two Rexs instead of the usual one.
Rex leans over the edge of his bed to see if other Rex is awake yet. Who knows, maybe other Rex was just letting Rex sleep in.
He was not, and was rather impressively sprawled out on the floor, having escaped his sleeping bag sometime during the night. Other Rex was snoring softly and Rex didn't have the heart to reach an arm out and shake him awake.
He'll just have to wait and hope other Rex remembered to set the alarm he said he was going to set last night.
So, with nothing else to do, Rex takes to looking around other Rex's room and belongings to pass the time until other Rex wakes up or a morning alarm starts going off.
Other Rex's room is messy, a luxury that Rex would never get to experience in his own room, not in a million years, with clothes and old homework papers strewn about the floor. Rex mentally picks them up off the floor in his head and finds that other Rex (wow he really should get a nickname for other Rex soon) could easily straighten up his room if he took ten minutes out of his day and picked up after himself.
It was almost tempting to do that himself to pass the time while other Rex slept, but he has no idea where other Rex puts his dirty clothes and his bed was warm.
The rest of Rex's room is decorated in a plethora of collectable items from shows that Rex is unfamiliar with. Other Rex seems to have a love of robotic and armored characters judging by the majority of the posters and figurines scattered in his room being of that variety.
There were even a few figurines that were obviously handmade!
One figurine, in particular, catches his eye. It's standing on a shelf above a cluttered dresser, and it's big and orange and very rough. It was obviously made when other Rex was less experienced with making models, but what had caught his eye was the fact that its limbs…seemed to be exact replicas of Rex's builds.
Did this universe have nanites after all? Rex can't sense any nanites in the surrounding area and when he stretches his senses with his own nanites, there doesn't seem to be any in the general area that wasn't originating from Rex himself.
Maybe the model is this universe's one small reference to his.
The head is kinda ugly looking though, so Rex is glad he didn't have a build for his head. Stretching his neck like that looked like it would be painful anyways.
Other Rex's posters depict the same love for robots that were prevalent in the figurines he owned, although there were posters of other subjects as well. One poster depicted a sexy anime woman on it, which Rex feels conflicted about. On one hand, it's a very nice picture, it isn't perverted in nature, just a lady looking confident, but it makes Rex squirm regardless.
Why have something like that out in the open where everyone else could see?
Rex knew that it was normal for teens to have posters of people they found pretty on the walls, and that wasn't just something exaggerated by the media (he'd crashed through more than a few teen's bedrooms during EVO fights and had seen much worse posters than the one he's currently looking at) and it was the reason why boy bands and movie celebrities sold so many posters to teens and other age groups. But…who you found pretty seemed to be something Rex would like to keep private, thank you very much.
That being said Rex thought other Rex needed more variety…maybe a picture of…just maybe…?
Sensing that he's going down a dangerous line of thought that always makes Rex sad, Rex tears his eyes from the woman's poster and purposefully takes to judging how the other Rex organized his posters.
Wow, brick pattern!
Way more exciting than a grid pattern!
A purposely slanted poster!
Bet that keeps people on their toes.
A large one on a canvas above his head!
With!
Uh…
He can't see what's on the canvas.
From where he is, all he can see is that the canvas is definitely hand-painted as Rex can see the paint strokes on the edges of the frame from his position on other Rex's bed. He can't see the subject of the painting though…
Curious to see what's on the canvas, Rex slowly stands up on the bed. The bed creaks but holds Rex's weight as he carefully rises up until he is at eye level with the canvas.
The painting that meets his eyes is a dynamic acrylic painting of a character, labelled Sonic, with Rex's signature, or what he recognizes as his name in the corner. His own signature is very different than this universe's Rex is. That probably has to do with Rex not being exposed to the handwriting of peers his age; he's been told in the past he has the handwriting of an old grandma (thanks to Holiday and all her cursive workbooks), and he's only had about three months of practice writing his last name. So yeah, other Rex's signature, not his.
Back to the painting, Rex is only vaguely familiar with who Sonic is, amnesia plus not having access to the internet or even cable TV had left Rex with a very meager library of pop culture, but he can appreciate the painting. It's also very skilled, just like all the other handmade items in other Rex's room.
Rex is a little bit jealous.
While he's never had the desire or urge to grab a pen and pencil and put something down on paper (he would have to steal some from Holiday's office supply hoard, something that wasn't advisable if you wanted to live), and so seeing all the artwork left him a little bit hollow.
He never got to have any hobbies creating stuff at Providence, everything was just physical, physical, physical with the occasional "schoolwork" Holiday threw at him, and even those were on topics that were meant to keep Rex up to date with his job.
Tearing his eyes away from the painting, Rex lowers himself back down to the bed. He leans over the edge to see if other Rex had finally woken up.
He hadn't.
Rex looks at the alarm clock again.
5:29 a.m.
"Fuck this," Rex mutters and gets out of bed. He stretches his muscles briefly before he bends down to crouch, and he gently shakes other Rex's shoulder.
"Hey dude, wake up," he whispers quietly.
"Mhhhmmrg, I'm up!" other Rex says groggily. "Wha' time is it? Did m' alarm go off yet?"
Other Rex flails an arm out until it hits the table with the alarm clock. Other Rex shakes the table, and the alarm clock falls into his hands. He looks at it with a bleary expression.
"Mnnng, dude you woke us up a whole hour before my alarm? I value my sleep!"
"If you really liked your sleep you would have been asleep last night, not playing on the Wii U. What time does school start for you, anyways?"
"8 o'clock, but it takes the bus like…40 minutes to get to my school, so more like 7:20 a.m.?" other Rex yawns, shaking out the last dregs of sleep with a furious shake of his head. "Why'd you need to know?"
"If we assume we both need a shower, thirty minutes, plus five minutes of basic hygiene, plus twenty minutes of breakfast, maybe five or ten minutes of getting dressed and packed for school, aaaand we still need time to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to do while you go to school," Rex said matter of factly, his brain automatically making guesses to how long it was going to take to get ready. Six had drilled this exercise into his head every time he had arrived late to a boring Providence meeting because he wasn't 'ready for the day'.
"Add that up and we're at what? Just about at the 7 o'clock mark? We're cutting it a little close, waking up at 5:30 a.m, jeez you set your alarm for 6:30?!"
"Hrmmmmg," other Rex groans, and he takes Rex by the hand, guiding him out of other Rex's room. "I guess we need to get going. You wanna use the shower first or should I?"
He gestures to the opened bathroom he had stopped in front of. The light is off but Rex can tell it was fairly roomy.
"You should use it first…" Rex says slowly, "But show me what's okay to eat first? I cannot afford to miss meals, and I also can't afford to get caught by your parents, so I think it'll be best to get that knocked out first on my part."
"Fair point," other Rex says, and he tugs on Rex's arm, guiding him further into the house to wherever the kitchen is.
It's a fairly long walk down the hallway to get to the kitchen compared to Noah's house, but Rex gets the impression from the glimpses into some of the dark rooms that the house is shaped like a winding, spirally snake. Rex has to watch his step though, as boxes of random papers, books, and scientific equipment line the hallways, making them cramped.
Other Rex lets go of Rex's hand when they arrive at the kitchen doorway and they walk in together. Other Rex maneuvers around the large kitchen table that's smack dab in the middle of the kitchen over to a pantry on the opposite end of the room and opens the door.
Other Rex hums as he surveys the boxes of food. Rex watches as he half-heartedly pulls out a box of oatmeal and squints at it, trying to make out the box's tiny print in the dark, before he shakes his head and places it back where it was. It takes a whole minute of other Rex standing on his tiptoes, reaching into the end of the pantry, to finally grab a dusty box of off-brand sugar cereal.
"Here," other Rex whispers, handing Rex the cereal box. "I don't think anyone is really gonna notice if you eat a bunch of this cereal. Dad got it in bulk in a sale. Milk is in the fridge, but don't use the milk from the bottle, use the cartoon, my mom uses the bottled milk for her coffee. Um, fruit is in a bowl on the counter if you need a more complete meal? I would offer the opportunity to make eggs and chorizo for a more filling meal, but I don't think using the kitchen right now would be a good idea. My parents can be light sleepers at times."
"Thanks. Bowls?"
Other Rex raises a tired hand to a cabinet Rex could just barely make out in the dark.
"I'll let you know when the shower is open."
And with that Rex is left alone in the kitchen.
In the dark.
As quietly as possible, Rex makes his way over to the cabinet he thinks other Rex had pointed to when he asked for the bowls. He winces every time he hears the wooden floor beneath him creak under the weight of his foot, but he eventually makes it over to the cabinet without the other residents of the house stirring.
Opening the cabinet up, Rex finds himself staring at the most hazardous, yet also organized, kitchen cabinet he's ever seen. Granted, he's only ever seen Providence's and Noah's dish cabinets but those were relatively organized. This cabinet looks like mess married clean, which he supposes was likely an accurate guess.
Rex carefully pries a bowl out from a neat stack of bowls shoved in a space that was too small for the stack's height as best he can. He almost yelps out loud when the bowls shift in his hands suddenly, but he luckily manages to keep it together and not utter a sound. The kitchen drawers are in a similar state of oxymoron as the cabinets but are significantly less likely to have their contents come crashing down so Rex quickly grabs a random spoon and shuts the drawer as quickly as possible.
Rex seats himself at the head of the table and pours out a bowl of cereal before closing the box and slipping it back into the pantry. On the way back to the table, Rex grabs what he thinks is the appropriate milk from the fridge (seriously there were so many cartoons of liquid in the fridge, and not all of them actual cow's milk) and pours some milk into his bowl. Rex doesn't bother putting the milk back into the refrigerator and he sits down and starts shoveling cereal in his mouth.
The dark atmosphere of the kitchen with no lights on doesn't help Rex's nerves as he crunches down loudly on the cereal.
Every so often the shadows in the room move and Rex halts his chewing until he's sure he's just imagining things.
Rex finishes his cereal and is about to bring the dirty dishes to the sink when he hears footsteps rapidly coming down the hall.
Panicking, Rex leaves his dishes and the milk on the table and leaps over the high countertop that separates the kitchen from what had probably been originally designed as a dining room.
"Dude, did you just jump over the counter?"
Rex peaks over the countertop only to see that it was only other Rex standing wet and wide-eyed in the kitchen doorway.
"Better safe than sorry."
Other Rex hums and cautiously walks into the kitchen, his unsure steps betraying the fact he was still not used to the dark after having been in the bathroom with its lights on. As Rex comes out from behind the countertop, other Rex grabs Rex's dirty dishes and milk.
"Bathroom's open. Don't try to dry your hair with the hairdryer just yet."
Rex nods and makes his way back into the spiral hallway.
When he gets to the bathroom, the air is heavy and hot, fogged-up from other Rex's shower.
Rex needs to open up a window…
Rex checks to see if the bathroom window is openable. It's not, but that really isn't a problem for Rex.
Making a small sword build, Rex jams the end of the sword into a corner of the window, pushes and…
Pops off the entire window and surrounding frame. Drywall crumbles off the chunk of wall that came off along with the window.
The early morning breeze sweeps into the bathroom from the new hole in the wall, taking away most of the foggy-ness of other Rex's shower and replacing it with chilly air.
"Whoops, did not mean to do that."
Rex sincerely hopes none of other Rex's neighbors are taking a morning peak at the Salazar house right now since Rex can't quite reach the lights in this situation.
Rex balances the window on his knee with one hand and with the other he breaks off part of his sword build and concentrates.
After a moment's worth of sweat, Rex soon finds himself holding a couple of crude hinges and screws in his hand. He pops them into his mouth to free up his hands so he could insert the window back into the wall.
Rex hefts up the window chunk he's holding to chest height and slides it back into place in the wall, using his nanites to fuse the material back together.
He uses his handsand his natural-ish brute strength this time to pry open just the window and the frame holding the glass. He succeeds in not tearing out the wall along with the window this time.
Rex spits out the hinges and screws onto the window sill and makes quick work jamming the screws in place on the inside of the frame to hold the hinges down.
After Rex finishes with his accidental addition to the bathroom, he quickly strips off his clothes and hops into the shower. He only has a few minutes left in his self-proclaimed estimate on how long he and other Rex should spend showering since he had wasted a couple minutes on the window, which he should have just not touched in the first place.
But sue him, he didn't like starting a shower with heavy, foggy air!
Rex turns on the water, not bothering to wait and let it come to temperature, and starts to furiously scrub his hair.
He grabs soap bottles at random, only briefly checking to make sure they said the proper soap name he was aiming for before squirting them out onto his hand and scrubbing his body and hair. He didn't have time to worry about whether or not he grabbed the flower-smelling soap or the imaginary man scents, he just needed to be clean.
Rex hops out of the shower in record time, only to realize he wasn't ever given a towel. He briefly debates using one of the ones hanging up on the door before his inner Holiday told him that was a nasty idea, and to just use his own clothes to dry himself off.
Grimacing, Rex finally stepped out of the bathroom, his clothes very damp and clinging to his skin.
Other Rex must have finished his breakfast during Rex's shower as Rex spies light coming down the hall from other Rex's bedroom. Rex heads towards other Rex's door, only pausing to wipe the extra excess water that decided to come streaming down, right for Rex's eyes at the last minute.
When Rex enters other Rex's bedroom he finds that other Rex has already dressed for the day, yet is still knee-deep in the closet.
Rex opens his mouth to ask what other Rex is doing when he gets beaned in the head with a dress shirt.
"Ow!"
Other Rex pops his head out the closet.
"Sorry, I was aiming for the bed!"
Rex takes the dress shirt off his head and tosses it towards other Rex's bed, which is covered in various shirts and pants of other styles.
"What are you doing in the closet?" Rex asks other Rex as he peers into the closet. "Aren't you already dressed?"
"Yeah, I got dressed a while ago, but I'm looking for clothes for you right now. Since we're, you know, the same person, we need to throw people off our scent. Can't have people mistaking you for my twin when it's a well-known fact I only have one older brother to my name and his name is Cèsar."
Other Rex holds a polo up to Rex's chest experimentally.
Rex moves to grab it but other Rex yoinks it back into the closet as soon as it was clear that Rex's chest was too wide to fit into the shirt that would have been the perfect size on other Rex.
"You're extremely lucky I like dressing in baggy clothes, not me!" Other Rex says as he starts indiscriminately pulling all his baggy clothing out of the closet.
He pushes past Rex with his pile of clothing and dumps it with the other clothes other Rex had laid out on the bed previously. Other Rex stops to look at the pile and looks over to Rex.
"Here," he says, throwing a plain short-sleeved dress shirt and khaki pants. "Try these on."
Rex catches the thrown articles of clothing and turns to face a corner to change clothes. He peels off his damp clothing and neatly folds it before pulling on the dress shirt and pants.
"Is this good?"
Rex turns around to show off his new outfit.
"Hmmm, it kinda looks like you're going to church, but it is the complete opposite of the lazy gamer vibe I got going on which I suppose is a good thing. Now, we could either take this in a nerdier direction with some glasses or a fanny pack…."
Rex grimaces at the fanny pack comment. Ew.
"Wait, glasses!" Other Rex excitedly exclaims. "We can Clark Kent this!"
Whomst?
Rex finds himself being handed clunky fake reading glasses. Shrugging, Rex slips them on. They're a slightly larger size than what Rex thinks glasses should be, but they slide down his nose in a way that makes him feel wise. Like an old librarian.
"Perfect! Alright, I think I'm ready to go," says other Rex as he grabs a black backpack hanging off his gaming chair and a phone off his dresser. "You?"
"Born ready. Let's go!"
Rex runs to the bedroom window, unlatches the lock (without the help of his sword thank you very much), and slides it open. The air is nice and cool but promises warmer weather later on in the day.
Rex swings his leg out the window before he's interrupted.
"Bitch, what the fuck do you think you're doing?"
"Uhhhm?" Rex says. "Going out?"
"We can use the door, you heathen! My parents may be geniuses but I don't think they'd expect me to sneak out, so no window! I can lie about what time we went out the door if my parents ask about it."
Rex sheepishly puts his leg back inside the house and shuts the window closed before following other Rex out the house.