AO2: Lat Duty
By the third week of basic, Salem knew everything there ever was to know about toilets. God fucking bless the sarge; there were certain things the man said about getting real low and fingering triggers that - no matter how much he tried, he really tried - he just couldn't not laugh at. Laughing was an instant drop and gimme thirty, and if you were still laughing by the time you got up? Well, that spiralled down to latrine duty pretty quickly once the guy figured out that Salem could literally give him two hundred and still be losing his shit at the end of it. Attitude problem or no, it got to be such a common sight to see him scrubbing porcelain with a toothbrush that people started to act like it was his regular job. Some jackasses even started getting up on their high horses about it with shiteating comments; "Hey Salem, mess' got beans tonight and I'm saving it special for you." or "Hey Salem, you do windows too?"
Let 'em laugh- he knew just how to crack a combination lock and get a new toothbrush to do the job.
Even with all the wise asses it didn't even bother him much, really. So he had to scrub a few johns? All it meant was less time he had to spend listening to some redneck hee-haw about how he was gonna "git him a dozen towel heads" or some equally unlikely bullshit. And by the end of it, he was practically a shit-chute wizard. Trip lever not working? He was your man. Broken stop valve? No problem. Loose chain? Gotcha covered. Even knew how to service a ball cock, and not in the way you might automatically think. Yeah, look it up, it actually was what they called the little lug nut center of the fill apparatus, and try as he might to keep it to himself, that little nugget of intel just struck him as something the rest of the world needed to know. Specifically, the rest of his unit the next time the sarge bellowed at him that he was gonna have another week of scrubbing the shitters. Turned out the sarge didn't find it quite as funny as Salem did though, and that was the end of it- he was looking down a half dozen bowls every afternoon at sixteen hundred sharp for the rest of his training career.
After that, it didn't matter what he did because he knew he was already getting pretty much the worst of what they could throw at him. He got so used to it that the day the sarge ordered him to take off the gloves to unclog a particularly nasty sonofabitch the only thing he could think to do was laugh and ask if that was the kind of thing that got him going. He knew the drill so well, that that day he got the signoff on the job with all of the supply tubes cranked off to just a quarter turn. They finally decided to bust off the next day in the middle of running a sniping drill, and you could see the water jetting out the latrine door all the way from the back field. It was almost as good as jacking off, watching a half dozen guys come flying out cursing and hollering and spitting onto the ground. From then on, he resolved that whatever degrading shit they made him do here, he was going to find a way to make it even worse for them.
In the months that followed, a rash of bizzare pranks the likes of which Shelby had never seen went down. He never pulled the same one twice, and he always made sure there was no way they could pin any of them on him. Toilets that overflowed with gallons of shaving cream when levers were pulled, faucets that dyed troops' hands bright flamingo pink, even urinals that sprayed angry hornets the one time he lucked onto a nest out in the back hills. And every single time, Salem was off drilling or marching like a good little soldier, having left nothing but a sparkling, gleaming, pristine, so-clean-you-could-eat-off-it facility in his wake. They never once managed to pin it on him, and the record didn't follow him out of Shelby- as much as his superior officers tried everything they could to make it stick.
Given all that, it shouldn't really have come as a surprise that he was staring down into dubious waters once again, on his hands and knees with good ol' Scrubby the Toilet Brush trying to figure out why this single stubborn bastard of an ivory throne wasn't wanting to flush. He'd already wrenched the plastic stick in as far as he could fit it, shoved it around to see if there was anything jammed in there... nothing. The plunger had done jack shit for the situation, aside from give his arms a bit of a burn, and it was starting to look like he was going to have to reach in there. Joy.
The only thing he couldn't understand about the situation was just how he'd gotten turfed down here so insanely fast. Ranger training was shaping up to be tougher than he'd suspected it'd be, if nodding off for half a second during a powerpoint snoozefest was going to land him on lat duty for a week. Still, it was kinda nostalgic, and it could be worse. He could be stuck at an hour to lights out with nothing to do but try to socialize with the jar heads out there that thought they were all hot shit for bagging a few towel heads, and just 'cause of that figured they had what it took to run with the big boys. Fuck 'em. He was here to prove something, and the only thing he'd get for entertaining their pinhead combat fantasies was a headache. There was hardly a single person on the whole squad that he wanted a damn thing to do with, even from his dick's perspective. There were more likely pieces of ass back in the desert.
He rolled up his t-shirt sleeve with a sigh and a sinking feeling. Something had to be shoved in there, and it was down deep enough that the brush just wasn't budging it. Whatever it was, it had to come out before he was finished with this, and it was time to man up. He plunged his arm into the icy water, craned his neck away as far as possible in case it decided to backwash on him, and groped. In no time at all his fingertips found purchase on something smooth and springy. Something that gave slightly beneath his grasp, but was wedged so tightly in place that he couldn't quite get a good enough grip to yank it free. Removing his dripping arm, he reached for the screwdriver in his toolkit. One deft stab, and whatever it was in there was peirced straight through. It took some sawing and swearing and splashing his shirt, but by the time he was finished committing righteous murder, the offender floated slowly up to the top of the water. ...An orange. Someone had fucking shoved a piece of fruit down the latrine, knowing the next person to get lat duty would have to dig around in there to get it out. For the first time in his life, he was ready to take that screwdriver to the next person who walked through the door.
Calm down, Elliot. There's a better way to get 'em back.
He finished his cleanup, put the tools back, and waited for the inspection to be done with. Looking sour and chastised for the officer didn't take any acting this time- he was still about ready to start a brawl to let off all the steam he had building up because of this bullshit. Did someone already have it in for him or were the guys around here just that big of assholes that they thought it was funny to pull idiotic shit like this? No matter. Once he got the signoff on the job, it was payback time. Just a short trip to the mess hall while everyone's back was turned, swipe some baking soda and some dish soap, and it was all good to go. He made it back to the latrine with just ten minutes to spare until curfew was called, and was just finished emptying the two into the bowl and the tank, respectively, when he heard the door open.
As nonchalantly as he could manage he slipped the stuff into the tool box, and strolled out to the sight of one of the biggest motherfuckers he'd ever seen in his entire life looking at him with raised eyebrows and a dubious expression. A wicked, jagged scar split his skin from near the top of his hairline to the edge of his lips, and the way he was gazing down at him made it seem like half of his face was glaring.
"Ahaha...hey, uh.." Whatever it was about this guy, something told him he just didn't want to mess with him. Might've been the fact that he was a good head taller than him and at least a foot wider, maybe it was the fact that he was staring like he could tell exactly what he was up to, or maybe it was just that he looked like he probably wasn't the type of guy who needed to shove food into toilets to feel superior. Whatever it was, the next thing he said was a stupid mistake; it gave his game away entirely, it left him open for this guy to rat him out to his superiors... but for some reason he just didn't think the guy deserved an ass full of burning suds.
"Probably want to stay away from that one, buddy." A light clap on his shoulder gave him the momentum to sidestep the towering soldier and then he was out the door and jogging down the hall like a flash. Come what may, he didn't want to get caught with his tools red handed, and there was only five minutes left to get back to his bunk before it was game over.