myownface | Near The Grandvalira Pass, Pas de la Casa, Andorra, Friday Morning

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Near The Grandvalira Pass, Pas de la Casa, Andorra, Friday Morning

It was Christmas morning. Which, for a lot of people, probably really meant something. To Sparkle, it had tried to mean something for years and years on end, but he'd gotten so used to not letting himself care for ages and ages that, maybe aside from giving Atton a gift and making some bullshit excuse for it even existing, Sparkle was going to try to pretend that it was already Boxing Day. At least that way, he'd be able to take advantage of the strong American dollar against the Canadian and save craploads of money buying nice shit on sale.

Either way, he had coffee and a great view of skiers falling on their asses out there, so it wasn't a bad start to a Christmas morning. And there was enough there for seconds, or for Atton to have some if he was feeling generous. It was Christmas, he probably should get generous.

[OOC: For that guy, or copious slowplay if anyone wants to call!]

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"Well, I'm not going to sing," Atton said. He gave the pastry-thing a little shove towards the well-decorated tree (look, they sold them like that) and then puttered back to his bed, squatting down to reach under it. "But I think I have the rest of it covered."

Sparkle stood there in kind of stunned silence, taking in the tree and the... was that some kind of fruitcake? And Atton making his reach under the bed, and...

Oh god, this really was Christmas, wasn't it? Complete with, like, garlands and gifts that hadn't been supplied by the island and people that meant something to you, and everything like that? Sparkle swallowed a little lump that had taken up residence in his throat, and then kind of forced his legs to remember how 'walking' worked so that he could inspect the tree more closely.

"It's okay," he decided. "Maybe I can get the WiFi to cooperate long enough for me to bring up a playlist on YouTube or something. No singing required."

And then he'd hunt down the more irreverent Christmas songs he could find, perhaps. In the hopes that this wouldn't get weird.

It wasn't like Atton had brought like, a bag full of presents, anyway; just a couple of packages, four in all. He didn't exactly like to spend a large portion of his life shopping, which the regular Christmas thing seemed to be all about.

He set 'em down on the bed.

"Don't take this the wrong way, or anything," he said. "It's just been a crappy year and you don't have the usual house-and-other-kids-and-Lewis crap for Christmas because Lewis is a mynock's ass, and you're as close to family as I've got."

Which was as fuzzy as he was going to get about this whole thing. Unless you counted the wrapped package he was shoving at Sparkle, anyway.

Sparkle took the wrapped package with a look on his face that was at the very least somewhat less panicked than a deer caught in the headlights, and stared down at it for a few seconds.

Yep, this was for real. Atton had just shoved a Christmas present his way, and the year from hell was actually shaping up to end on an up-note, barring, like, Fandom suddenly embracing a new policy on extradition or something.

He chewed his lip for a moment more, and then unwrapped the gift and stared down at the contents. Which were staring back up at him, sort of.

"Oh my god. Oh my god he's so grumpy!"

And squishy, and cat-shaped! He was no Velcro, mostly because, you know, he was a stuffed animal, but the fact that Atton had given him a stuffed cat for Christmas in the first place was thoughtful in like a million little ways that Sparkle had never seen coming.

Atton had to, y'know, restrain himself from just shoving the other three packages (terrible aprons, kitchen implements that had been sorely missing from his kitchen for some time, and a datapad) at Sparkle and calling it a day; a king of handling sentiment, he was not.

But 'cat's so grumpy', he could work with.

"Yeah, he kinda takes after your old cat," he said, "Except he poops less, which makes him about ten times less annoying."

"And he won't cling to your jacket?"

Sparkle knew how you felt about cats on your jacket, Atton, and he was giving a broad grin as he plucked the cat out of the rest of the wrapping paper and made him go for a little trot across the counter. Because, shut up, it was Christmas morning and he could play with his stuffed cat if he wanted to.

"He won't get upset if I leave him to hang out in my backpack for too long, either." Which, incidentally, Sparkle was making a reach for. Because Velcro had camped out in there, peeking out the top, like any time he'd gone for a walk and brought the cat along. He needed to check to see just how stuffed-cat-compatible the current setup was.

And, you know, pull out the carefully wrapped gift he'd been toting around with him for the past few days, while he was at it. That was just going to be a little bit of a rummage.

You know, to make sure the cat was comfortable.

"He doesn't even have claws long enough to hang off my jacket," Atton said. If he sounded a little exaggeratedly pleased with himself, hey, he was trying to entertain here.

(Or distract from any more fuzzy stuff.)

He watched Sparkle move, figuring out pretty quickly what was going on there - sorry, Sparks, but you were dealing with a professional here - but he said nothing about it.

Look, Sparkle probably would have chickened out and ended up sitting on this stupid thing until, like, June or something, and then the wrapping paper with the skiing snowmen on it would have given away what had happened here all pretty much at once.

Plus, like, the present would be pretty definitely dead by then. That, too.

"Yeah, he's definitely been declawed," he mused, tucking the cat in neatly so that he was peering out of the top of his bag the way that Velcro used to. "I'll overlook that just this once, just because he seems to be doing pretty fine without. He did find this, though."

He held up the box he'd pulled out of his bag for Atton to see.

"I think it's for you."

Atton took the box.

Atton unwrapped the box.

Atton... squinted at the box.

"Did you get me plants?" he said.

Plants you wouldn't murder, Rand.

"I might've gotten you plants," Sparkle replied with a shrug. "I mean, you don't have to keep the plants if you don't like plants..."

Pauline might have something to say about that, though.

Well, damn it, Sparkle. You'd hit on the one situation in which Atton wasn't going to make a big deal about being gifted plants.

"Nah, it's fine," he said, taking the thing out of the box. "I mean, it's actually kind of pretty." He held it up. "Looks like something that'd be right at home in the Temple."

"Right?" Sparkle grinned a little, encouraged by that response. "And they're succulents, so they don't need to be, like, watered super often or anything when you're away. They'll just, like, hang out and wait for you to get around to it, mostly."

He'd put a lot of thought into this.

"Should've gotten me ones with spines, I could've hidden it under Mical's pillow," Atton said. "But hey, living things that don't get dead - we're probably of the same genus, at least."

"There's the hope," Sparkle agreed. "It'll last you a while. And if it does get dead, you can re-use the little bubble thing and plant some more. Easy!"

... He was feeling kind of proud of himself, here.

Atton was still not a plant person and he was still going to get them killed, but he wasn't going to kick a huge fuss because, hell, Sparkle had put some thought into this. "Easy," he agreed.

He reached behind him and grabbed the pack of three terrible novelty aprons, passing it to Sparkle.

Awww. See, Atton, you'd totally beaten Sparkle at the holiday game, here, and it wasn't even your holiday.

"I only got you the one thing," he confessed, maybe a touch awkwardly, as he took the package and opened it. At least his worries about losing at Christmas were quickly wiped away with a grin at the first apron, and then a cackle. And then a clap of his hands. "Oh, shit, these are awesome. How the hell did you find the three best aprons on the planet, anyway?"

The internet? Had it been the internet, Atton?

Either way, he was pulling on the tiny weiners one already, just because he could. He wasn't going to, like, wear it on the ski hill or anything, but it was too awesome not to.

"I went on your internet," Atton said, scratching the back of his head.

Honestly, he hadn't had much else in mind besides making sure Sparkle had a decent Christmas; getting a gift at all had been something of a surprise, so that part, he was happy to just shrug off.

"I mean, I searched for 'Christmas gifts' first, but I didn't figure you wanted a Ratman Lego set and I am not giving you shower gel that smells like daisies. Wound up finding those instead."

And maybe losing like, several hours of his day on Cafepress, but he was not telling Sparkle that. "Just in the interest of disclosure, I've got two more, but I can give you those at the same time if it helps."

"And then I can pretend they're the same gift?" Sparkle laughed a little and shrugged his shoulders. "However you want to, I guess. I mean, you didn't have to do, like, any of this."

And Sparkle was trying like hell to not get too fluffy and squishy about this. There were pretty good odds that the more gifts Atton lobbed his way, the squishier Sparkle was going to get.

Good thing there were only two more, or they'd probably hit critical mass and Atton might find himself forced to go shoot something just to make a point.

(Or at least bitch loudly.)

"No, I don't," he agreed. "But hey, I wanted to."

He was totally giving both of the gifts at once now, though. One was a very clumsily-wrapped package that shifted and clanged with the weight of the various - in Atton's opinion, bizarre - kitchen implements within. (Who needed a special spoon to lift stuff out of water with? Or a garlic-squasher? Or a whisk? Or... okay, the tiny hammer thing with spikes, he could see potential in. Still.)

The other one was square with rounded corners, but he'd get around to explaining the datapad when Sparkle got to it.

Okay, the clumsy shifty one was getting opened first, because Sparkle couldn't contain his curiosity about something as ridiculously packaged as that. He could have pointed out that Atton could have tried putting the stuff into a thing, but he was still too busy being kind of touched by this whole gesture to think about taking the piss out of Atton a little bit for it.

But really, Atton. Cardboard was this neat thing they had on Earth, man. Came in a box shape and everything!

"GARLIC PRESS!" See? See how excited this made him, Atton? "Aaah, I don't have to chop it anymore! And a whisk'll save our pots when I need to stir things and yes, no more water in the veggies!"

Sparkle was dancing some more, and already testing to see which kitchen tool would fit best in which apron pocket. There was a pause, and then he was smirking as he held up the mallet.

"Let me tell you how not surprised I am that you included a meat tenderizer, man."

He appreciated it all the same. He was gonna tenderize so much meat!

Edited 2015-12-26 19:03 (UTC)

Look, sorry that Atton had been busy working on becoming an overcompetent super-assassin with magic wiggly-finger powers to learn how to wrap gifts, okay? When you min-maxed, you had to dump stat something. Even when you put most of your points in DEX.

"It seemed like the only genuinely useful thing in the shop," he said, "I mean, you can actually kill a man with that thing if you have to."

"It has some really awesome heft to it," Sparkle agreed, bouncing it a little in his hand to get a feel for the thing. "I mean, I'm probably not going to, like, wander around Fandom with my kitchen tools with me in case of an invasion or something," anyway, he had his blaster for that, "but you never know, huh?"

He liked the kitchen stuff, Atton. Good job!

"Maybe next time something with big teeth will burst into the apartment while you're making steak," Atton said, shrugging. "More weapons is always good."

Not that there was a blaster carbine in the closet and two lightsabers in the nightstand, or anything.

Of course not! That would just be silly!

Or, at the very least, paranoid.

"If something with big teeth bursts into the apartment, I'm throwing the steak at it first, and then running like hell," Sparkle snorted. "If it's strong enough to bust in, there's no fucking way I'm getting close enough to hit it with a hammer."

Training or no, that seemed like a stupid plan.

"Nah, you've just got to go for the right spots," Atton said.

He waved that off, in fact. Physically, even. "You could do some real damage to a monster eyeball with that thing. Or the solar plexus, if it's got one."

"Yeah?"

Sparkle gave the mallet another little heft, looking it over thoughtfully.

"Well, you might have to show me, then. I don't have a hell of a lot of experience hitting monsters with kitchen tools."

"We'll get around to it when we get back," Atton promised. "We did kinda let your combat training languish for a while there."

He was a practical man. Teaching Sparkle to kill with cooking utensils just seemed sensible.

Considering the fact that he seemed to have one hell of an arsenal all figured out back at the apartment already, and now it was growing...

"I'm going to have to start picking out recipes for dinner based on how lethal the stuff I'm going to need to make them with is, aren't I?"

He could ~~ask Hannibal for suggestions~~ consider it a challenge!

Atton tilted his head. "Eh, if you want," he said, "But hey, it might be good practice."

He idly pushed the last package forward.

"Can't hurt," Sparkle decided. "Especially being back on the island again."

Sparkle reached for the last package, tilting his head at it curiously as he picked it up and turned it around in his hands a few times before opening it.

And then he tilted his head at it again.

"Is it, like, a tablet?"

It had a screen! And it wasn't like Sparkle really had much experience with tablets or datapads.

"Datapad," Atton said, shrugging - and maybe rubbing the back of his neck some, shut up. "I put a bunch of stuff on there. Nerf recipes, a Guide to Coruscant, the addresses of some good restaurants on Coruscant, some course material on Aurebesh... oh, and there's some Learn Twi'lekki and the 50 Most Common Huttese curses stuff on there. Just to help you translate Cade-to-regular-people." Beat. "It also hooks up to the internet in case you just want to chuck all of that and replace it with porn."

Which he wouldn't even be able to blame Sparkle for.

Aww, Atton. There you went being all thoughtful again.

"That's all pretty awesome," Sparkle replied, looking down at the datapad and poking at it a little. Oooooo. Shiny. "We'll have to give the nerf recipes a try next time I have access to all the ingredients."

And he was going to be up late tonight, studying Aurebesh, because that seemed quieter than trying to learn how to speak Twi'lekki in the middle of the night.

He waved the datapad around a little.

"Handy," he decreed. "Thanks, man. I'll probably get a lot of use out of this."

Maybe even for looking up porn! But the stuff Atton had put on it was probably going to stay there at least until Sparkle had a handle on it all himself.

"If we were still back home, I might've brought some nerf steak or something."

Atton put his little globe-y plant thing down on the nightstand. "As it is, we're probably better off raiding the buffet today anyway."

"Probably," Sparkle agreed. "I wonder if they have anything special out because Christmas. Or if they even bother. Either way, I'm going to eat potatoes until I get sick."

It was always important to have a goal in life, Spark.

Atton squinted at him. "Keep aiming for those stars, Sparks," he said. "Go eat your bread thing. It looks like it's got sugar in it."

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Near The Grandvalira Pass, Pas de la Casa, Andorra, Friday Morning

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