MCA #4, Tuesday Evening

[myownface]

Sparkle had been... less than functional today. The episodes of Sesame Street that an errant wish yesterday had bestowed upon him had gone away again, and so even getting his hands on his brainless g-rated amusements would have involved stealing from, like, PBS or whatever. Which Sparkle wasn't entirely opposed to, but figuring out torrents and shit involved thinking. And brains. And... combining the two, somehow, so that brains were doing thinking, and Sparkle wasn't exactly feeling that so much just yet.

So he'd kind of pottered around the apartment aimlessly for a while. At some point, he'd remembered how cereal worked. Somewhere around noon he'd realized that he was halfway through cleaning the bathroom for what was apparently the third time already, and around what would have been suppertime, he was already on his fifth shower.

By the time the evening rolled around and Sparkle could see his reflection in the bathroom floor, he'd given up on shower six and had mostly just deposited himself on his back in the otherwise empty tub, poking halfheartedly at whatever stupid cell phone game he could get for free from Google. There was a game that involved tapping the screen. Just tapping the screen. And it was just cartoony enough that the little cartoon character swinging the sword around to beat up cartoonish monsters didn't even bother him all that much.

If anyone asked, he'd just say that it was cooler in the tub than anywhere else in the apartment. He was Canadian. He wasn't made for... comfortable planetoid weather.

Shut up.

[OOC: Open mostly for phone calls, though that guy who lives here is welcome to check up on Sparks in person for our hilariously mismatched SP if he so desires.]

Comments

[myownface]

It was probably kind of sad how Sparkle was actually proud of himself for not wincing at that thump. And hearing Atton calling his name after it was okay, too. Or, at least, it didn't immediately make his guts do backflips or anything. That, too, was improvement.

"Bathroom," he called back, after grasping the fact that Atton was probably also expecting a reply. "S'okay, 'm decent."

Just in a bathtub without water, fully clothed. As you do.

[suitably_heroic]

"Right," Atton said. He rubbed at the back of his neck, then said screw it and walked towards the bathroom, to take in the state of Sparkle.

He winced.

[myownface]

"You are making a face right now, aren't you," Sparkle accused, not even looking, attention almost fiercely on his stupid tap-tappy game. "Don't. You don't need to make whatever face. I'm just playing a game."

In the tub. In a bathroom that reeked a bit of cleaning solutions. He hadn't even put on his make-up today, which was a rare happenstance on its own, especially after so long without.

Maybe make that face a little.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton tilted his head. "I dunno, from where I'm standing, you're playing 'miserable teenage bum in a tub'," he said, "If anything. Which doesn't seem like a great time, if you ask me, but who am I to judge?"

Sparkle's friend. He was that.

[myownface]

"Somebody who clearly doesn't understand that there's a fine distinction between 'teenage bum' and 'awesome adult cleaning service,'" Sparkle shared, pausing in his tapping to wave at the sparkling bathroom. "You're welcome."

... It had really only needed the one cleaning.

[suitably_heroic]

"Fantastic. Now I can see myself in the toilet, which is everything I've ever dreamed of in my life."

Atton was... still overcompensating by over-Attoning everything. He'd get back to it eventually, probably.

"Have you had dinner yet?" Or, you know, any kind of food. "Besides the giant bite you clearly took out of whatever was in the tub before this."

[myownface]

"I ate cereal today," Sparkle replied, with that sort of dawning uncertainty that betrayed in no uncertain terms that it had probably been hours and hours ago, but that he wasn't completely sure. "With the marshmallows?"

That didn't actually make that better.

[suitably_heroic]

"Right," Atton said. He walked over to the tub, hands in the pockets of his jacket. (It was nice to have the jacket back.) "Get your ass out of there. I brought pasta."

Figured they could use a break in favor of something they could actually pretend was sort of healthy.

[myownface]

"... I do like pasta," Sparkle replied, peering up at Atton as he stepped into his line of sight. "I will accept this bribe."

Bribe, peace offering, whatever it was.

He paused for another second to turn off his tappy game. And then he sat up.

[suitably_heroic]

"Good, because I'm all out of bribes outside of that," Atton said, offering Sparkle a hand. "I tink I might clear out of here for a while at the end of the week."

Get his head screwed on straight, give Sparkle some space.

[myownface]

Sparkle eyed the hand for a second before taking it, and then switched to eyeing Atton, instead.

"... Yeah? Where to?"

No just completely vanishing this time, dammit.

[suitably_heroic]

Okay, good. Atton was going to focus on dragging Sparkle upright and out of the tub, first, before he answered that.

"Home," he said. "I'm taking an extended vacation in the Hawk. No extracurriculars."

[myownface]

Sparkle was now upright. Upright was kind of cool. Even if he was standing awkwardly in a tub, now.

"... Will you call?"

Not that Sparkle was going to be all needy or anything. See? He'd asked if Atton would call. Not if he would answer. Totally the opposite of needy.

Ish.

[suitably_heroic]

"Sure," Atton said. Eyeing him carefully. "No reason not to."

[myownface]

"Okay," Sparkle said, gaze dropping downward. Mostly so that he could climb safely out of the tub. Really. "Okay, good. You're just... getting some breathing room, then?"

He could appreciate the need for some of that, for once.

[suitably_heroic]

"I guess that is one way of putting it," Atton said, not entirely sure why he wasn't comfortable with putting it like that. "Cruise around, maybe hang out on Nar Shaddaa, get the stink back on my ship."

Feel like Atton Rand again.

[myownface]

"A respectable sort of stink," Sparkle offered, shoving his phone into his pocket. "Just don't track too much of it into the apartment when you get back."

When. There was some emphasis on that word.

[suitably_heroic]

"I'll probably be back here a couple of times before fall," Atton said, turning around. Walking back towards the kitchen. "So be prepared with the cleaning gear if you're worried about the stink."

[myownface]

Sparkle cast a kind of quiet glance around the bathroom again before he started to follow along.

"I'm gonna have to stock up, then."

Because he'd kind of used up a lot of it.

[suitably_heroic]

"Maybe wait a couple of days with that, though," Atton said, a sigh in his voice. "Seems like you scrubbed the place so clean, you killed anything living in a 5-mile radius."

[myownface]

Sparkle swallowed, but shrugged his shoulders, a touch lopsidedly.

"It was something to do. Sesame Street went away."

Big Bird, why had you forsaken him?

[suitably_heroic]

"You guys don't have more dweeby kid's TV shows?"

Atton led him all the way into the kitchen, where the cooling containers of pasta were still sitting, ready to be emptied.

He snagged two plates out of a cabinet and got to hauling some of it over. Classy eating, for once.

[myownface]

"Sure we do," Sparkle replied, shuffling along behind. "But that dweeby kid's show has nostalgia to it, you know? Kid shows these days are, like, mostly totally stupid anyway."

He watched Atton work, taking note of the plates. Huh. That was a nice touch, actually.

[suitably_heroic]

Yeah, well. Don't think Atton was going the extra mile here to make Sparkle feel normal, or anything.

He stuck a fork into the penne on both plates, then offered Sparkle one. The sauce was green, because the red stuff seemed too on the nose, or something. Maybe Atton was overthinking it. Whatever.

"I don't know, I don't watch them," he said easily, "Since I'm a fully-grown adult."

[myownface]

"Even fully grown adults can appreciate the wisdom offered by Elmo and Oscar, the great philosophers of our time," Sparkle scoffed, reaching to take a plate, and then tilting his head at it. "Huh. You went for something with green in it."

Pesto kind of counted, right?