Work Text:
There's a spill on the floor.
Some elevator resident caused it, brought something wet and sticky and germ filled and spilled it all over the nice carpet in one of the ROKEA displays. Someone else walked in it while it was still wet and now there's dirty footprints tracked from the spill to the next two displays, probably beyond that...
Lampert sighs, adjusting his r95 respirator and rubber gloves. He got to his knees, assessed the damage, and got to work. Grabbing a sponge from his mop bucket and dunking it in the lukewarm soapy water he had filled it within prior, he began scrubbing the carpet.
He swears he's gonna start banning food and drinks on his floor-- though he's certain that that wouldn't change anything. The elevator grovelers wouldn't care, they already play by their own rules.
"Another case of you being a bossypilled control-freakazoid." Scag had said once when he had gotten mad at an elevator goer for standing too close to him. He could practically taste their breath with just how on top of him they were, it's not unreasonable for him to be upset about that!
.. is it?
He had barely made a dent in the stain, he dunked the sponge for what had to have been the seventh or eighth time, the carpet becoming more soaked than clean. If this stain never comes out then this one ROKEA display is just gonna have some gross hardened spot forever-- and not just this one, but probably the other displays it was tracked through too. Lampert shuddered at the thought.
What if he just ends up making it worse? He's just making the carpet wet, it could be moldy.
Then there'd be mold over a hardened spot. And mold is bad, mold is really bad. It'd be a massive health hazard.
Lampert scrubbed the carpet with more ferocity, gritting his teeth. He’s just going to make it worse, there’s gonna be mold in the carpet now. It’s gonna fester. He’ll be inhaling it every day and it’ll make him sick as a dog. Is that what he wants? He’s going to create a mold problem. Black and filthy and cancerous and infectious and permeating the air and spreading and growing and
He practically throws the sponge into the soapy water of the bucket, panting like he'd ran a marathon. He peeled his gloves off and
He needs to wash his hands. What? No. No I don’t… I’ve had gloves on this whole time. He doesn't need to wash his hands in between replacing them, that's.. Oh but what if his gloves soaked through? They definitely soaked through, something about the rubber is faulty. He has germs on his hands now. He doesn’t know what this spill is exactly but it could be infectious. That doesn't make any sense. But now his hands feel dirty.
Lampert gets up with haste and washes his hands in the nearest sink.
A full minute on each, rub the back meticulously, rub the palms, get between his artificial joints, underneath his nails...
He uses too much soap.
-
With new, clean gloves adorned he grabs a towel from the storage cubby and begins attempting to dry the spot he thoroughly wetted, only succeeding in completely soaking a towel. Great, just great.
Lampert removes his gloves. He goes to the sink and washes his hands.
His hands are clean, he doesn't need to be doing this. He was already thorough enough the first time.
He takes a minute on each hand. He uses too much soap.
Afterwards, Lampert tracks down a laundry bin in the expanse of the floor he calls home, hauling it to the problem area and putting a new pair of gloves on. He chucks the soaked towel in the bin and retrieves another from the storage compartment on the mop bucket.
This towel also ends up soaked. Thankfully he's prepared this time and doesn't need to disinfect before touching anything else, so he tosses it in the bin alongside the other.
The fifth towel is finally starting to show some progress. Jeez, he really did just soak the mess, huh? Didn't really clean anything... He pulls the towel back up, holding it as far away from his person as possible, and looks down upon the stain.
It's pink, probably fizz up, he's seen the folks in the elevator have those before-- hell, he's been offered some. It's.. alright. Not his cup of tea personally.. He didn't expect it to be such a pain in the ass to clean up though, it's really seeped into the fibers.
What if it's vomit? What the fuck? No? It's not. It's not vomit. Logically speaking it isn't. But it could be, in which case this would be a bio-hazard and also teeming with disease and it’s been tracked through multiple displays and he has no idea how far or where exactly once the trail ends. It's not vomit. But it could be vomit. Lampert shakes his head vigorously. Stop, stop thinking about that. It's not vomit it's not vomit it's not vomit it's not vomit. It totally is vomit. IT'S NOT.
Lampert washes his hands again. A minute on each. And he changes clothes very meticulously, choosing something he doesn't care about contaminating. His breathing is so labored, why is it so...
He adjusts his mask. Fuck, wait, he shouldn't have touched that he just touched his dirty clothes. Goddammit, he needs to replace the mask now and wash his hands again, fuck, fuck. He does just that, ripping the offending article off his face and rinsing his hands off under the running facet. He doesn't need to do a full scrub, he's just gonna have to wash them again later.
He ends up doing a full scrub anyway.
-
He’s back at the stain, staring at it with a burning contempt. It’s tracked across the store and he hasn’t even been able to clean up the main brunt of it in the past 10 minutes that he’s started. He does a double-take at the clock on the display wall. Has it really only been 10 minutes? It’s felt much longer… Whatever, adjusting his new mask and gloves, he gets back to work with the sponge, wringing it out thoroughly before rubbing it against the offending fibers of the carpet.
If it’s vomit then soapy water isn’t good enough. Furthermore he’s just making it dirtier, isn’t he? The sponge is infected now, and so is the water in the bucket. They’ve both made contact. Lampert tries to ignore the nagging at the back of his head. That’s stupid, he thinks. The “solution” to that “problem” would be replacing the sponge every other dip, it’d be a time consuming waste. Why is his heart pounding so fast? He tries to focus solely on scrubbing, but he’s only rubbing it in, isn’t he? He’s rubbing it in. He’s rubbing it in. He’s rubbing it in. He’s rubbing it in. He’s
Lampert gets up again. He takes off his gloves again. He washes his hands again.
-
Lampert throws another contaminated sponge into the trash bin across from him, fetching a new one from the box he brought to the spill area. I’m glad people seem to know me so well, he thinks, as the box itself was a 40 pack that Poob had gotten him as a secret santa gift. They’d seen some use throughout the year following leaving him with only 20, but he could make this work. He could make this work. It has to work like this.
That mantra failed when he reached the last one and realized that he’d have to dunk it in the newly replaced water of the mop bucket more than once. He couldn’t do that, that’d be contaminating the water, he’d be right back at square one of just rubbing the disease into the carpet instead of cleaning anything again. Lampert tries to ignore the way his hands shake as he weighs his options, all of which are losing odds. He can’t leave it, it’d be gross forever. He can’t use the water again, he’d contaminate it and be spreading the disease further by scrubbing the fiber. He swears to God, if he has to get up again and do some stupid routine to appease the constant whining and bitching in his head instead of actually getting any work done he’s going to actually lose it.
… He needs to get this mess cleaned.
Lampert gets up, his legs shaky. His whole body feels warm and he doesn’t know why. Why is his breathing so shallow now? He peels off his gloves and walks to the sink. No distance in ROKEA is a short walk. He nudges the faucet on with his elbow and pumps the soap dispenser seven times. He washes his hands, then he changes his clothes again, and then realizes that he did that in the wrong order so now he has to wash his hands again and
Huh, the finish on his hands look… Well, “raw” wouldn’t be the right word. They’re not flesh after all, nothing on him is. “Worn down?” Yeah, yeah, worn down.
... This is stupid. He thinks bitterly, rushing through his hand washing routine as quickly as he can manage. He doesn’t even bother drying them off, simply flicking his hands in the direction of the sink and getting water splattered everywhere. Who cares? Who the fuck cares? He crouches down and opens the cupboard underneath the sink, grabbing as many cleaning agents and chemicals as his arms could carry. He’s going to get this fucking mess cleaned, one way or another.
-
He sprays the offending spot carelessly, scrubbing violently at it with a wet wipe afterward. The gloves and mask are starting to become rather uncomfortable, but he tries not to pay it any mind. He needs to clean up this mess, that’s all that matters now. Nothing else. And he has to clean it up the right way. The stain somehow looks even worse now than how it did when he started, an ominous dark patch around it from the various soaks and cleaning agents Lampert’s applied to it. Lampert wonders if anyone else has this much issue cleaning…
Split wouldn’t, surely, she’s so relaxed about everything, and Pilby probably keeps everything tidy by default so a mess isn’t something they have to worry about. Kas–
Infected doesn’t clean ever so she’s completely off the table, he doesn’t know enough about STAT to make an assumption. DrRETRO should be cleaner, based on her being a doctor, but she’s also a katball and not only are cats filthy but balls roll and track dirt everywhere, and thinking about it now is making his skin crawl stop thinking about it STOP THINKING ABOUT IT.
He’s not paying attention when he swaps one of his sprays out for another. He doesn’t– he can’t, he can’t think. All that matters right now is getting this stain clean, that’s all that matters, stop thinking about anything else, there’s vomit on his floors and he needs to clean it up and not get dirty in the process and not worsen it in the process and then he’s gotta clean up the rest of the mess too once he has this one taken care of and it’s going to be another cycle of this stupid, stupid experience where he washes his hands 30 times and changes his gloves every other towel used and the laundry bin is full so he’s gonna have the run laundry after this and change his clothes again and swap his mask out and he’s running out of masks and gloves he can’t keep replacing them like this– It’s so easy for everyone else, why is it so hard for me? Why is it so hard for me? What’s wrong with me?
He coughs, screwing his eyes shut. Dammit, now he’s crying, he’s spiraled himself into a crying fit. Stupid, stupid, this is all so stupid. He coughs more aggressively this time, this one forcing him to sit up straight and away from the blemish on the carpet in front of him. His eyes are really, really watering, fuck, the itch in his throat won’t leave. He… Wait. Lampert grabs the spray bottle closest to him and reads the contents. Though really, he’s only looking for one in particular.
Sodium hypochlorite.
He stifles another coughing fit as he digs around for the other cleaning agent that he used before discarding it carelessly into the mop bucket’s storage compartment in favor of the other, checking it’s contents as well. He prays to any God that’s listening that he didn’t just make such a rookie mistake, but his heart sinks when he reads the printing on the label.
Ammonium hydroxide.
Oh. He’s a fucking idiot.
-
Thankfully it’s not exactly difficult to air out ROKEA, with it being such an expansive space and all– Though that didn’t stop Lampert from requesting that the regretevator not stop by Floor 3008 for a while, at least until he was sure that the air had actually cleared of the chloramine that he had accidentally created.
That, and he had requested Mannequin_Mark and Wallter come over and help him deal with the mess. They were both very understanding once Lampert explained the ordeal, but it didn’t ease any of the embarrassment of having to ask for help. Just as he feared, his attempts to clean it had in fact made it worse. While the spilled substance was no longer part of the problem, the dark blemish on the carpet haunted him every time he walked past it.
Once that ordeal was over and done with however, it was back to business as usual. The regretevator came to his floor, he was found rather quickly, and now he’s standing here in this enclosed space that takes him places without his input with like, ten other people that he doesn’t know.
Feels good to be back to some normalcy, he thinks fondly.
…
I wonder if they have any trouble cleaning like I do.