The Final Countdown - Season I

Episode I : Part 1 : It's Not Me, It's You

Val's toothbrush was gone.

Mossy teeth. Breath that could kill the wrong end of a yak. Was there a 'right' end to a yak? Did yaks even have ends?

She stared at the toothbrush holder-thingy that she shared with...him.

Perfectly scrubbed. No gross residue at the bottom. Clean, hygienic, and one-hundred percent anal retentive. The toothbrush holder-thingy. Not him. He needed to shower more often. Maybe shave once in a while. Deodorant might mask his unfortunate musk.

Only ONE toothbrush leaned against the holder's edge - lonely, destitute - maybe even a little forlorn.

"Eddie!" 

No answer. She stared at her own face in the mirror for ten slow seconds. Every strand of her frizzy red hair doubled its own frizz DNA as each second ticked by, until her hair more closely resembled steel wool than an actual human head.

"EDUARDO!"

A floppy-haired, well-fed face popped around the corner of the bathroom door. His smile said everything - 'I know you're cranky, but I have a perfectly good explanation...' It was a smile she'd seen ten thousand times before.

"Val...my love, my life...what seems to be troubling you?"

"Don't 'my love, my life' me, Eduardo Vitch." She held up the too-light toothbrush holder for the world to see. "Where's my -"

In this case, the world was one dude. One dude currently watching his life flash before his eyes.

"Toothbrush...yeah. I can explain that."

He wedged his way into the bathroom. His potbelly knocked a loofah off the counter.

It was a communal loofah. Both he and she enjoyed a good loofing.

"So." 

He bent down and picked up the loofah.

"Explain it."

"I read a thing." 

She slapped a palm to her face and shook her head. 

Here we go, she thought.

"It said that toothbrushes can hold bacteria for months and months, and you never properly wash yours, so I -"

"Threw it out."

"Yeah. I threw it out."

She breathed. 

She counted to ten.

Didn't work.

She counted to twenty.

"My toothbrush." Her heart pounded. "Yesterday, I wasn't allowed to drink milk. Last Friday, I couldn't Google anything because of the power grid."

"Better safe than sorry, right?"

"Wrong. I can't handle the conspiracies anymore! I can't live my life thinking someone's going to hack my brain and sell it to the highest bidder on the black market!"

He grimaced. She knew what he was going to say before he even opened his mouth.

"But that could happen! You never -"

She held up a hand to shut him up and shoved past him out of the bathroom.

"You know, this is not how I saw this day going." Eddie always knew the perfectly wrong thing to say at the most inopportune moment.

Five minutes later, she was out the door.