Chapter Text
Moving into the megabuilding had never been V's idea of anything but a lateral move when they'd left home for the last time, but crouched on the bathroom floor, arm deep in their fucking toilet for the third time that week, they were rather violently forced to reconsider the virtues of past lives spent in struggling nomad camps, abandoned worm farms, and disused pumping stations...
The damn place was so cheap, they'd have been a fool not to expect *some* cut corners here and there, but the idea that a development this large, in the year of our fucking lord 2077, would install plumbing without dry vents was just... beyond the pale. It was unfathomable... The bulk of the destitute, largely strung out residents probably didnt have the slightest inkling where the seasonal blight was coming from, probably accepted it in silence like the rest of their sorry lot, but V's old man had done his fair share of odd jobs, and with noone to watch his precocious offspring, they'd learned much more than they'd have liked about the inner workings of "urban development" before anyone had even bothered to teach them their ABCs. So, they knew exactly what the problem was, knew how futile their efforts were, and yet... every summer, when the rising stink would emerge from the plumbing, all because some cheapskate had decided they should forego the cost of a technical advancement from the 20th fucking century, V would break out the most corrosive chemical cleaning agents they could find and begrudgingly go to work... Like Sysiphus, but with shit vapors...
"The cruelty is the point," V grumbled, as a splash of liquid from the bowl managed to reach above the glove line. Christ, it was madness. Every unit equipped with a state of the art, talking burrito machine, but not a single one with the capacity to vent the foul gasses that accumulated in the thousands of miles of plumbing that snaked through the building...
It was humiliating.
They should move.
Pull up stakes and high tail it literally anywhere else...
They had the eddies, but this was their first real apartment on their own terms. They'd toured the building with Jackie as their guide, still unfamiliar with the city sprawl. It was too much to just cut that wounded tether...
So, here they were, wasting their last moments on this earth, pouring bleach down their toilet and scrubbing as if their life depended on it, just for a few brief hours of olfactory peace, because they'd be dammed if they were going to come home every night to a house that smelled like the ghost of a thousand shits...
"The cruelty is the point," echoed again in their throbbing skull, head pounding from working in such close quarters with the military grade solvents... another one of their old man's lessons, this one intentional. It had been one of his favorite quotes, and it'd stuck with V not just through the frequency of use, but rather through the ubiquity of its truth. So evident on its face in every facet of V's adult life. They wished, ever so briefly, that they could remember his face instead, the smell of his cheap cologne, the feeling of his arms around them.... but you don't get to choose your memories, something V was becoming painfully aware of, as a jumble of grinding noise and flickering light materialized behind them.
"Fuck, V..." Johnny chuckled, leaning into their peripheral. "Always knew you belonged on your knees, but this is fucked up, even for me."