myownface | MCA #4, Tuesday Morning

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MCA #4, Tuesday Morning

Sparkle had fashioned a little trauma fortress out of the bathroom. It had every houseplant he could carry, his stuffed cat, a fish, and a small mountain of Pop-Tarts, which had mostly been left untouched since he'd hauled them in with him on Sunday night so that he would have something to snack on while he cleaned. And how he had cleaned. He'd cleaned all Sunday night on into a chunk of Monday morning, and at the rate he was going the mirror was going to be so polished that it would develop the ability to see through time or something.

And then he'd settled in for a shower. He hadn't even taken his clothes off, he'd just kind of stumbled into the tub around noon on Monday, and he'd stayed there, scrubbing blood off his hands, off his face, out of his clothes, not really satisfied, not ever feeling clean enough. If he looked at his hands, he could swear there was still blood under his fingernails, and he was filthy besides, and then he'd have to clean the blood out from the tub, too, and--

It was an ugly cycle. He hadn't even thought twice about falling asleep in a ball under a stream of water, fully dressed with the fish tank tucked into the tub next to him, out of the shower's path. It would have been hard to think twice, anyway, since he hadn't really slept in days, by that point and fatigue had finally taken the wheel.

Someday, if he looked back on this year, it would go down as the one where he'd basically given up on trying to function.

[OOC: For one in particular! I'd say open for phone calls, but let's be real, his phone is probably dead in his pocket.]

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"... Cleaning?"

Sparkle wasn't going to argue one way or another, letting Atton steer him to pretty much wherever. He was leaving puddles along behind, but he wasn't exactly paying that much attention to that, just then. Maybe once he realized, he'd freak out and run back for a towel. Maybe.

"Picking the absolute worst coping method you can think of. I mean, not eating's one thing, but locking yourself in a bathroom with a fish is a whole new level of 'no, seriously'," Atton said.

As per usual, he was mostly talking to fill the air as he ushered the kid into Sparkle's bedroom.

"Door wasn't locked," Sparkle replied, because... look, it hadn't been. This was apparently the hill he was going to die on today as he squidge-squidged his way to his room. "Wasn't just the fish, either."

Have fun clearing all the houseplants out of the bathroom, Atton.

"Am I going to be sad when I look in there?" Atton asked. "Did you get me a sad bathroom as a welcome-home gift? 'Cause you really shouldn't have."

He nudged Sparkle. "Lay down in a real bed."

"S'not sad. It's shiny." Sparkle stumbled a few steps into the bedroom, and stared at his bed. He kind of stood there for a moment, processing what the next step here was, with his exhausted brain. He was wet, the bed was dry. There was a step in the middle... Right. Peel off wet shirt. He was going to fumble with that for a bit. "Shiny bathroom."

With Pop tarts in it!

"Ugh."

Atton shook his head, turning around to walk back into the hallway. "I am getting you a towel," he said, "And possibly some Pepto-Bismol."

"I don't need Pepto," Sparkle muttered, setting the fish down on his nightstand to better facilitate the shirt-peeling that was going on, there. "I don't have nausea, heartburn, indigestion... all that stuff..."

He was just soggy. Extra soggy. The wrinkles on his toes had wrinkles.

"You missed all the fun."

'Fun.'

"Do I want to ask what happened this time?" Atton called. He leaned into the bathroom to get a towel, and--

"...And why the hell the plants are in here, Sparkle."

"Because they aren't dead," Sparkle called back, his words a little strained, but at least a little more coherent than before. "Because everything was fucking awful and there was fog and there were monsters and the plants weren't dead."

They had kinda been his only company on Thursday and most of Friday. And they had been dead, then. There was a sort of logic there, if you dug for it.

Atton shut the door behind him and immediately walked back into Sparkle's room, tossing the towel towards him. "So you thought you'd have a little 'you're still alive' party in the bathroom," he said dubiously. "Sure, that makes sense."

Sparkle caught the towel and kind of stared down at it quietly before shrugging his shoulders and starting to dry himself off. He was starting to feel cold, and the chill of the air on the water was doing wonders to drag him back to something approaching sanity.

"... No, I lost it," he admitted. "I didn't have an 'I'm still alive,' party. I had an 'I fucking gutted myself, I don't want to be alone right now, and I'm never going to be clean again' party."

Very different parties.

"Well, obviously it's not up to me, but from here you look about as clean as anybody could ever get," Atton said.

After a moment's thought, he sat down on the bed. "As cliché as it sounds, I'm here, and also your entrails seem to be where they're supposed to be. So let's leave the bathroom for what it is."

"Mine are fine," Sparkle muttered, wrapping the towel around himself and kind of shivering into it. "There was... it was another me. Like, me, but emptied out. I dunno. He bled a lot."

That tended to happen, yes.

He shrugged.

"I guess other people had it worse, so, there's that."

"Another you?" Atton prompted. "Creepy."

"I guess there were other... lots of people," Sparkle sighed, shrugging his shoulders a little. "I didn't really meet many of them. Well. I met other Pinkie Pie. She was fucking creepy. I stabbed her in the face."

You knew something seriously stepped over the creepy limit when Sparkle went right ahead and stabbed it.

Yeaaaah. "Eesh," Atton said, pulling a face. "I mean, good on you for making sure your reflexes were still working. But stabbing the pony? How creepy was she?"

Sparkle shuddered.

"Teeth like daggers and skittering up the sides of walls? Appearing right behind you when you think she's gone? That 'no matter how fast you run she can keep up at a casual walk' horror movie shit. Creepy."

You missed some fun times, Atton.

"... Okay, okay, I get the picture, you can stop now," Atton said, holding his hands up. "So no hanging out with the pony any time soon, I got it."

"No lots of things," Sparkle muttered, then looked between the bed and Atton before sighing and going to rummage for some dry pajama bottoms. "The pony was nothing. I mean, creepy at the time, but it wasn't, like, everlasting trauma or anything."

Ooh. These bottoms were fuzzy. Fuzzy was good.

"Pinkie's probably still cool."

Pinkie really wasn't why he was freaking out.

"Okaaay," Atton said slowly. "So what part is the everlasting trauma?"

Was it the hollow Sparkle thing?

That was probably a safe bet, yes.

Sparkle kind of blinked over his shoulder at Atton. Squinted at him. Then shrugged and wrapped his towel around his waist, keeping his back turned so that he wouldn't flash his bare ass at his roomie while he peeled his way out of his sodden jeans. Ugh, what had he been thinking?

"An exact copy of me comes shambling out of the alleyway in the dark on a version of the island where everything I care about is either dead, dying, or turned into some giant nightmare monster thing." His voice had gone quiet again. Flattened out to neutral. "And it tries to kill me. Some me tried to kill me. Ran at me, ripped apart my cheek, and I gutted it. With a knife. I didn't even think. It was just on me and then it was dead and it was me."

Slightly more traumatic than a sneaky pony.

"In some other Fandom I'm a gutted corpse in an alleyway, and in that other Fandom, I'm probably better off like that."

It was all right, Sparkle. Atton was making an active effort not to get flashed by your bare ass to begin with, through the novel approach of eyeing the wall.

"I dunno. This version of you is alive, which is the way I like it," he said. "At least your reflexes are getting better."

Sparkle was silent for about ten whole seconds, under the guise of being really engaged in pulling on his fuzzy jammies.

"... Right. I'm gonna go lock myself in the bathroom again," he muttered, making his way back to re-claim the fish.

"Don't do that," Atton said, sighing. "Look, I'm sorry, all right? I should've been here."

"Not like you knew it was coming," Sparkle sighed, picking up the tank and just sort of standing there with it, feeling stupid. "Did you? Not like I could've called you once it came either way. It's not you I'm mad at."

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