myownface | Nar Shaddaa, Monday Morning

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Nar Shaddaa, Monday Morning

"Shit, do you think we lost them?" Sparkle's (admittedly very stupid) question had been answered pretty immediately as the hot white glow of a blaster shot just barely missed his head. He squawked and ducked down low before turning wide eyes to Atton. "We haven't lost them."

In case Atton needed the update. Odds were pretty good that he didn't. They'd come to Nar Shaddaa because on some pollen-warped desperate level it had seemed more appealing than Baltimore, what with its distance from Fandom and tendency toward questionable morals and its Twi'leks. Possibly mostly for the Twi'leks. And this had turned out to be a very good idea for them both for a while. Right up until they found out, and not for the first time around here, that perhaps they had been getting a little too comfortable with the wrong Twi'leks.

So, now there was a Hutt mafia boss who was extremely upset (or else bored and feeling especially vindictive, which generally worked out to the same thing when it came to the Hutts in the first place), and Sparkle and Atton were sort of being chased. Ruthlessly. Not by the Hutt, obviously. But by a handful of people who worked for him, who were all, apparently, actually pretty decent at their jobs.

"Shit. Shit, fucking shitfuck fuckshit. How is it that we always end up in the wrong place at the wrong time when we come here?"

See, that was the thing. On Nar Shaddaa, it was always the wrong place, and always the wrong time.

[OOC: NFB for distance, of course, and for that guy!]

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"I dunno," Atton said. "I have this recurring nightmare where your hair and his hair have a baby and usher in the apocalypse..."

Yeah, joking about this was a whole lot easier than whatever had been going on with Sparks a few minutes ago. Especially since he could neatly sidestep reminding anyone of the part where his own coping methods with rights to losing people were... pretty much the opposite of theirs.

"Yeah, because any part of me having anything to do with any part of him probably would be a sign of the end-times," Sparkle snarked. And then, with a sigh, he stubbed out the rest of his cigarette on the side of the speeder and wrinkled his nose. "Portal's gonna be here like any minute. I wonder what other stupid shit I can get up to this week."

He was pretty sure none of it was going to top this.

Atton let out a snort.

"I shouldn't leave my apartment again this week," he said. "Can't get myself to get laid, can't get myself not to lose my head..."

"Baltimore probably would've worked out better," Sparkle noted, shrugging a little. "But you probably have enough pizza that you could manage to pull off the whole hermit thing at least until you have class to teach or something. I don't think anyone would blame you."

Hell, Sparkle had a mini-fridge in his dorm room now. He was tempted to go into full-on hermit mode, too.

"Honestly, I'm not sure if Baltimore would've been better," Atton muttered.

At his feet. Which were up on the speeder, still, so at least he wasn't staring down at anything.

Sparkle gave Atton a quick, sort of curious glance.

"... Probably there would've been less shooting." For a start, anyway. "But you're talking about baggage again, aren't you?"

The kind that wasn't obsessed with glitter, and who probably had much prettier hair before she died.

Atton sighed. This was the kind of conversation that needed a drink - or at least something that looked like a drink so he could pretend he was drunk. "Yeah," he said. "Unfortunately, I don't think that one's going to wash out with the pollen."

"Probably not," Sparkle agreed, pursing his lips a little and digging for another smoke. "It's sex pollen, not 'magically baggage-free' pollen. But, like... what would've happened if we did manage to score with those Twi'leks? You'd feel guilty? You're change your mind? You're allowed to do that, you know. The changing your mind part."

"I'd have had a nice score," Atton said. "Then I'd have gone back to the island and sat in my apartment and-- stuff."

He waved his hand vaguely. There was in fact a lot of stuff that came after that - feeling alone again, feeling hurt again, thinking about Sia moving on with her boyfriend and how simple and whole her life seemed to have wound up, thinking about Anakin at home with his family doing much the same...

But feelings. He couldn't even get himself to say out loud that he'd loved her, yet.

"Stuff," Sparkle echoed, slouching back in his seat.

Fuck. This was another her thing. Wasn't it? Of course it was. Why else would Atton be thinking of shoving the whole past in a box, donating it to some thrift store of strong hurts and nasty traumas, and just starting clean over?

"Still too much of it, huh? The 'stuff?'"

"Like I said," Atton said. "I should probably be clearing house."

So... yeah. It was a her thing. In more ways than one: she'd also shaken loose a lot of the past debris he'd been ignoring. Ever since he came back to Fandom to lick his wounds, he'd been dealing with it piling on him at the worst possible times.

Which would've been fine, if she'd been there to talk him through it like she'd been at the beginning. Now? Now he was just alone. He could babble his way through the worst of it with Anakin, and then drag Sparkle out for a distraction, but at the end of the day... there was only a lost corpse and an empty apartment.

"Well... if you ever figure out how, maybe you can teach me, sometime."

Couldn't hurt to know. People left, right?

God, people left.

Atton's only answer to that had always been don't get attached to people and bail before you do. But Kreia had made that one impossible back when, blackmailing him the entire time until he was in so deep he couldn't get out.

She'd probably yell at him for blaming her for it, but whatever. Kreia was dead, he wasn't.

"I'll keep trying and let you know," he said.

He hopped out of the driver's seat, landing on the ground feet-first. That portal should be here any second now, right?

(Bailing again.)

Bailing again.

Sparkle watched him for a moment, and then slipped out of the passenger seat shortly after him. He wanted to say something else, but he'd always been shitty at words of encouragement, and had no idea where the hell to start. And when he opened his mouth to try to say some kind of meaningless teasing, some normal Sparkle forgettable bullshit drivel just to keep the banter going, that was when the portal appeared.

So instead, he closed his mouth and he nodded.

Keep trying.

Maybe it would be worth it, in the end.

Atton gave him the most meaningless of meaningless shrugs he could think of - an artifact of Atton past, if nothing else. Then he stepped through the portal.

That was the end of it, as far as he was concerned. Time to go sit around his apartment and try not to think about anything.

Sparkle stepped through the portal a few moments later. It was cold, colder than he'd dressed for because he didn't exactly need a shitload of winter gear for their trip to Nar Shaddaa, but he decided to linger on the causeway anyway. He had a smoke to finish. Hannibal's class would be meeting here soon for a field trip and he didn't much feel like hanging around on the island. He'd stick around.

Fuck, was he tired.

"So maybe I was wrong," Atton said casually, reaching into his pocket for his own pack of cigarettes. "I mean, there's one thing you did screw up on. Got me stuck with this smoking habit. You try explaining that on Coruscant. 'Are those death sticks?!' No, go away."

Huh. Sparkle hadn't even thought about that. And Atton's casual observation sort of jolted him back to reality a bit. Which was good, because otherwise he might've started to wallow or something, and that kind of sucked.

"... That why we were getting those weird looks back there?"

That explained so much. So much.

And if you didn't think Atton had said that to get exactly that reaction, on all fronts... you hadn't been paying attention.

"Yep," he said. "The rest of us is bog-standard normal Human, but the setting things on fire and putting them in our mouths, hey, that's new."

"... That's.... actually kind of fucking hilarious," Sparkle decided. "Like, we'll put damn near anything in our mouths to smoke it."

Seriously. Damn near.

Especially Sparkle.

"Funny, of all the bullshit on Nar Shaddaa, that's what got them staring, though."

Atton shrugged. "Hey, we're more sophisticated," he said, "So our drugs are a little more sophisticated."

Sparkle would've argued, except that he'd just spent his morning in a high-speed aerial chase with blaster guns and aliens, and he didn't have a leg to stand on.

"... I guess that makes sense," he allowed. "I mean, in the end, they probably all get you just as fucked up anyway."

"Just ask Cade!"

"Just ask Cade," Sparkle agreed, smiling and shaking his head. "Fuck. Death sticks."

They kind of made Sparkle's habits look healthy by comparison. Sort of.

Atton shrugged. "Guy's got a lot on his plate, too," he said. "But he got Jedi training before he got all messed up, so my guess is he uses to shut up the Force."

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