myownface | An Airbnb in Baltimore, Tuesday Afternoon

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An Airbnb in Baltimore, Tuesday Afternoon

Sparkle had given the island's weirdness one night! One.

One was enough. The message that he'd left for Atton in the wake of that night was dubiously coherent and had been left without a single breath taken between words, and Sparkle could not get off the island fast enough after being caught out after the airhorns sounded, thank you very, very much. Sparkle had put up with years of Fandom horror, but very little could prepare a guy for the things he'd seen, stabbed, and screamed at while trying to make his way to somewhere that didn't involve...

... those.

It was a frazzled, tipsy Sparkle, wielding a tupperware container with a fish in it in one hand and half a bottle of Fireball in the other, who made his way up to the Airbnb that Hernando had booked and who knocked on the door. With his face.

There might have been sobbing involved? Or it could've just been frazzled ranting in between bouts of quiet screeching. It was hard to tell.

Sparkles were not made for Silent Hills.

[OOC: For the one, or for texts and/or phonecalls! NFB for distance!]

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Wiry. Yeah, that worked for Sparkle. He was a terrier. Or a cat? He was leaning a little more into Hernando's touch, anyway, while his mind idly tried to pick out words, while he let the distraction carry him off.

"So it is," he murmured. "Huh. Weird."

When had that happened, anyway? He hadn't really been paying attention, between when Atton had started training him after high school and now.

"My panther," Hernando murmured against his ear. He smiled and tented his fingers, drawing the fingertips across Sparkle's abdomen toward his chest. Together, not spread apart - nothing like claws. To make the muscles tense. Sparkle didn't realize just how many muscles he had; Hernando knew this and also that he paid far, far more attention to Sparkle's body than Sparkle himself often did. It wasn't a six pack, no. Nothing nearly that defined and nothing truly noticeable until he tensed it.

And when? Hernando ran his palm over the taut muscle and made a very particular noise, possessive and appreciative all at once. Right against Sparkle's ear.

And that drew another soft chuckle out of Sparkle something fond and maybe faintly perplexed, something that was still half-in and half-out of a nightmare, the water hitting his arms bringing a fresh new sting to the gouges there.

"Beginning to think I don't spend nearly enough time flexing," he mumbled.

"Mm, you do," Hernando told him with a smile, "You're just not paying attention to it when it is happening. I usually have you at least a little distracted." He drew his fingers across again and murmured, "Not that I object to more time to admire you. It's a shame I can't draw."

He could, he sketched quite decently, but Hernando was far more harsh about his own skill than anyone else would have been.

"Only one way to get better, right?" Sparkle's smile actually managed to start looking like one, now. "But god, imagine me sitting still long enough."

Hernando could be delightfully distracting.

"I would have to catch you when you were sleepy but not yet asleep," Hernando answered with a smile, "You are very calm then. Perhaps I will sometime make a sketch of my sleepy panther, laying in a sprawl with his eyes half-lidded but still very watchful."

Which meant, of course, that his hand smoothed up Sparkle's torso to touch his face. First tracing the arch of his brow, then down to his lips. "Watching me with that very particular little cat smile on your lips."

The content one that said 'mine all mine'. That smile.

Hey, Sparkle knew that smile! He wasn't quite there yet, but he was leaning his face into Hernando's hand. Then seemed like a good time for it, at least.

"It's the smile of a guy who knows that what he's got in his life is good," he murmured. "Cat with the cream."

"Mmmmhm," Hernando hummed while his fingers gently explored all his favorite features of Sparkle's face, "That smile, yes. Where your dimples are playing hide and seek, showing when you catch me watching you." Which was pretty much always.

He kissed the side of Sparkle's head and murmured, "Turn around. I need to kiss you and then I'm going to fix the mess I've made of your hair." Translation: He wanted to play with your hair and had both shampoo and conditioner as an excuse.

Sparkle hummed a little, but turned around anyway.

"I promise it was a mess already," he murmured. "But you're welcome to fix it." He wouldn't complain.

Hernando leaned in and cupped Sparkle's face for a lingering, slow and gentle kiss. Sighing a contented little sigh into it and nuzzling his nose when they surfaced for air. Reaching for the shampoo and shaking a dollop into a hand, emulsifying it between his palms before beginning to work it into the hair. "Oh, I'll fix it," he murmured, "I've all the time in the world to work the knots out." Both of the hair and the scalp underneath, letting his fingers slowly, firmly work their way through. Careful to keep the suds away from Sparkle's face so they didn't get in his eyes.

Smiling, he nuzzled again, "You know how I love playing with your hair." Fact.

"You keep reminding me," Sparkle agreed, nose nuzzling Hernando's. "S'good, though. Nice. Your hands and all, like, this."

He breathed out a little sigh.

"M'tired."

And this was relaxing. Safe. Good.

"I know, baby," Hernando said. Knowing 'tired' wasn't just physical, that his boyfriend was exhausted in almost all ways just now. He continued working his fingers through the hair, gently untangling the knots and smoothing it back. "Maybe when we're done in here, I'll just carry you to bed if you think you can sleep."

Sparkle's shoulders hiked upwards a little bit. A shrug. Not because he didn't know, necessarily, but because he did know, but didn't want to admit that it'd be a while still before exhaustion won out over nightmares.

"S'dumb," he muttered, eyes half-lidded as fatigue warred with stubbornness and then called for reinforcements from Hernando's relaxing hands. "M'fine. By now? This many years of stupid? Should be fine, you know. So, s'dumb."

Yeah. You tell 'em, Sparkle.

"It is not dumb," Hernando said quietly, "This many years of stupid is not fine nor should you be fine with it. I do not expect you to be fine right now, baby. You're still coming off the adrenaline. You are not dumb." He eased Sparkle's head back into the spray to rinse the suds out, stroking his fingers through the wet hair. To ensure all the suds were gone, of course.

"You've mentioned before," Hernando began hesitantly while reaching for the conditioner and working that between his hands, "that sometimes getting high helps. Would that help now or would it make things worse?" He didn't really know how pot worked but had also never heard of someone having a case of the screaming jeebies from it.

And Dani had sent him home with something she thought was a joke for Hernando.

Sparkle shrugged a little.

"Kinda depends on the pot, I guess," he mumbled. "Kinda wanna smoke my fucking brain right out right now but the last thing we need is, like, somebody bitching about the smell." He paused a moment. "I might've shoved some gummis into my bag, maybe. Kinda just... like... grabbed shit on the way out."

Mmm, edibles. All the THC, none of the skunk smell.

Hernando's smile was wry, "Baby, Dani sent me home with things I have no reason to take. I can guarantee it would be well-sourced and probably very potent. I was, I guess, a little more anxious than I thought I appeared and she suggested I chill out." With a recreational form he had only ever rarely used. He'd kept them because Sparkle was a not infrequent recreational user.

"But I don't want you taking it if it will do anything bad."

"I mean..." Sparkle leaned back a little to look at Hernando, mulling that over. "... After we get out and dried off, lemme take a look at it? I don't figure Dani would give you something that'd freak you out and tell you it's meant to do the opposite."

Heck, maybe it was clearly labeled or whatever. Hernando was talking about weed, right? Could be just about anything, he realized.

Hernando worked the conditioner in and answered, "She would not. Dani would never do that, not even as a prank. She has.." He paused and sighed, "Dani has a very wide and very large experience with drugs, especially cocaine and marijuana. Her father is in the import/export business. One of the largest in Mexico. And she knows I will not touch cocaine. Nor would she send me on what she thought was an airplane with it."

So that should answer the unasked question.

Sparkle nodded a little. Gave a soft, thoughtful hum.

"I mean, I'm sure America doesn't love if you're flying in with pot in your bag either," he noted, "but ahahahaha fuck, at least one will fuck you up significantly less than the other, and fucking up Hernandos is bad. Hernandos are for fucking, not fucking up..."

There was a lot of incoherent mumbling going on, again.

"... I mean, maybe if I can't sleep, we can break it out and see what it's about."

He wouldn't be able to sleep.

Hernando listened to the babbling, still playing with Sparkle's hair and asked even more carefully, "Baby? Do you need fucking tonight?"

He had zero illusions that Sparkle would be able to sleep on his own. He knew that wasn't going to happen. If Sparkle needed to be fucked to falling, it wouldn't exactly be a chore.

Hernando wasn't in that particular state of mind at that exact moment but that could be changed very, very quickly. He'd assumed Sparkle needed care and comfort.

But there were many forms of comfort.

"I need..." There was a long pause, there. And then, tentatively, as though there were just enough critters crawling around in his brain that he worried about any negative reaction to a 'no,' Sparkle shook his head. "I don't know what I need," he murmured. "But sex is the last thing from my mind right now, babe. I'm sorry."

What was he apologizing for? He didn't know. Seemed like the thing to do.

He'd blame being Canadian.

Hernando immediately shook his head and kissed Sparkle. "The comment made me ask because you're sometimes very bad at asking for what you need. I think you need to be carried into bed so you can rest, that is all that is on my mind." Rest. Not sleep. He knew that was unlikely for a long while.

Tipping Sparkle's head back again, he rinsed the conditioner, working his hands through.

There was another pause, shorter, before Sparkle hummed a little, more or less in agreement.

"That sounds about right," he admitted, replying to the whole of it. "Should eat, too. Haven't yet today. But..."

No appetite to speak of, and not so sure anything would stay down, either. But he'd been doing a lot of drinking! He was totally fine, honest.

"That too, yes. It can wait until your stomach has settled a little," Hernando agreed, all too familiar with Sparkle's heave reflex. "There's ice cream in the freezer if we need to get your blood sugar up, but after Fireball, more sugar may not be wise."

Thought about it and said, "Toast and tea, maybe. Something without caffeine."

Sparkle tried to gauge just how much of either he'd be able to get down, and then shrugged and nodded. At least the toast was relatively inoffensive from pretty much every angle, and tea came with water, water was good...

"Sounds like a plan," he agreed. "Toast and tea. No sugar."

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