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Quackity had a double vanity in his bathroom. He lived alone.
There was no point in saying he hadn’t known what overtook him when he’d first designed the bathroom’s interior of a house that had meant to be a fresh start from the past—from Manburg, from Schlatt . There was no point in lying, not when he was the only person around to believe it. And it was a simple truth, it really was. He just so happened to hate himself for it.
The vanity itself was simple enough, boasting a few drawers that Quackity could stash his things in and feel a semblance of pride for not being a complete and utter slob (they mainly held cheap razors that, to be fair, he did use often, just not on his stubble). Then there were the sinks. Despite them having been carved into the same porcelain top, they were in vastly different conditions.
The sink on the left was practically begging for someone, anyone to come and clean it. The faucet was horrifically grimy, and the bowl itself was no better. Its original white color was almost entirely obscured by a myriad of dark stains Quackity couldn’t even begin to identify—no, he took that back; he recognized the rust-red ones as dried blood from that time he’d woken up at the crack of dawn with a bloody nose to deal with.
He vividly remembered making his way over to the bathroom just to stare at himself in the mirror, hunched over as blood dripped down past his parted lips and onto the sink. When the bleeding eventually came to an end, he’d lifted a trembling hand to the side of his face and caressed it in the same way Schlatt always would after having too much to drink and taking out his anger on him.
An all too familiar voice in the back of his mind began to murmur apologies and sweet nothings, and it had taken him much longer than it should’ve to snap out of his stupor.
In the end, he’d turned on the faucet for a few seconds and lazily splashed some water on the blood before heading back to bed. A feather he’d pulled out during one of his outbursts (long story short, attempting to preen his wings by himself after binding them for a year straight had turned out to be a bad idea) was clogging the drain, so letting the water run for too long would’ve made the sink overflow. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to go through the process of turning the faucet on and off again until all the blood finally washed out, so that would have to do.
Needless to say, the sink was repulsive.
The one on the right, however, appeared as if it belonged on the front cover of some furniture catalog, what with the way it was practically sparkling. Despite it having yet to see a day of use, Quackity made it a point to scrub it down regularly, often with enough vigor to leave his palms raw and aching when he was done.
It was worth it, though, because that was the way Schlatt liked it. Quackity hadn’t expected it at first, but the man was by all definitions a clean freak—at least, he had been until he’d lost himself to the lure of cigarettes and whiskey bottles.
Back when the White House was still standing and the two lived together in their shared quarters, it had been the maid’s job to ensure the bathroom was perfectly pristine at all times (Schlatt had fired a total of four maids within the span of a month in search of someone whose cleaning was on par with his standards).
Now, Quackity put it upon himself to do the same. The feeling he got from attempting to appease a dead man was near cathartic, and hey, who was he to say it wouldn’t someday be enough for Schlatt to come back to him?
It was pathetic, he knew, but he swore that on his darkest days he could make out the faint silhouette of ram horns in the mirror above the sink.
Sure, waiting was painful, but letting go would kill him.