From Sparkle's Toronto to Atton's Coruscant, Saturday

[myownface]

Sometimes, Sparkle did stupid shit. Sometimes he did it knowing full well that it was stupid, and really, he didn't care. Why the fuck should he care? There were already murmurings around the neighbourhood, around the high and poncy Mapleview Lanes about the no-good group home teens who were living there, about property values and bad influences on their kids and number 459 was empty and it wasn't like it was even hard they were practically asking for it.

Raine couldn't believe it when he came back into their room in the dead of night and started to tally off the most useless shit from his backpack. She'd stared, sat in shock, told him that this was exactly what they expected them to do.

She didn't get it. Of course she didn't get it. One of her best friends on the street was the same wrinkled old bat who had started the shocked murmurs along the local phone tree about how much trouble they were going to be, and maybe Raine would get it eventually, that you couldn't trust that type and they didn't fucking deserve a shred of the respect they pretended they were owed, and when she did it was going to suck to be her, he guessed.

She'd asked him why he'd done it. She tried to make him promise not to do it again.

She mentioned that Lewis would be mad at him. And that, Sparkle couldn't leave alone.

"Ohhh, 'Lewwwisss' is it?" He laughed. "It's so obvious you have a big wonking crush on him, the way your voice sort of wavers when you say his name."

"Mr. Chance?" Raine sounded perfectly incredulous in turn. "Are you kidding me?"

"It's okay. Everyone has a crush on him."

"Well I don't. I think he's an asshole."

"Yeah?" Sparkle snorted at that. "If you think he's such an asshole why do you stare at him?"

And then he grinned in victory as Raine blushed. Blushed a lot.

"I stare at Mr. Chance?"

"You can't take your eyes offa him," Sparkle agreed, bolstered by that reaction. "Anyway, darling, he's taken."

"He's married?"

"Hah!" Yeah, that was a good, hard, long laugh. "Hahaha! I think he was, actually, so some shopgirl from New Brunswick with too much lip liner and a name like Sherry Lynn when he was like in high school. But not now, silly. Now he has a boyfriend."

"He's gay."

"Well duh." Sparkle snorted. He was testing the waters, now. See what her reaction there was. It was... incredulous, maybe. Weirdly flat. And Sparkle felt an irresistible urge to dial his own reaction up to fifteen to compensate. It had been a long, long time since someone had that look, that processing look like they were trying to make a decision about someone based on something like that, people on the island never did and he hated - hated it. "Dozy head. DUH--"

"Why are you being--so--"

"He doesn't like girls," Sparkle stressed. "Is that clear?"

"Sparkle." Raine sounded more than a little on the exasperated side, now. She couldn't often tell when Sparkle was cranking up the bullshit to try to deflect, but this time, she seemed to have it figured out. "I am not in the least interested in Mr. Chance. It has never occurred to me, actually, and I resent you implying that I--"

"Yakety yakety yak." Sparkle pulled his cigarettes and lighter from his pocket. "You talk too much, girlfriend."

He was quiet, then, as he lit his smoke.

"I think you're the one with the crush on Mr. Chance."

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck, too much, he'd pushed too much. Fuck.

"Who, me? Please. He is totally not my type. He is so lower middle. I mean his shoes? Did you happen to notice his shoes?"

There was nothing the matter with his shoes. Maybe they didn't go with the blazer he sometimes wore, but otherwise, they were perfectly acceptable shoes.

Sparkle found them kind of charming, on Lewis.

"I still think you have a crush on him."

----

As Sparkle stepped through the portal into the Portalocity lounge on Coruscant, he was feeling a bit better. Nobody had mentioned the break-in the day after. The family who had been away clearly wasn't back yet, hadn't noticed. And Raine wasn't even awake and out of bed yet by the time he slipped outside to go.

Sure, there was still a bunch of random shit in his bag. An actual sterling silver fork, and a spoon and a knife to go with it, because if he was taking one he had better get place settings for one to match, right? And two five dollar bills, which he'd tucked away into that girly-girl's flowery pink diary, which was going to be the best book he'd read ever. But he'd brought the necessities, too. Pop Tarts. Taco seasonings. Garlic. Sparkle was convinced that Atton's entire galaxy was suffering horribly for lack of garlic, poor things, and he'd snagged a few cloves from that fancy-assed house while he was there, too, because of course it was the sort of rich snob family that had fresh everything just sitting around even when they were going to be gone for a week and they'd come home and it would all go in the fucking garbage and he hated them.

Hated them. Them and their fancy house and their overabundance of crackers in like sixteen different flavours and the jewelry and the Siamese cat that had reminded him of Velcro and had rubbed against his leg the whole time he was there. He hated them. And liberated their garlic. Maybe he'd plant some while he was here. You're welcome, Coruscant. You're welcome.

[OOC: A bit more canon catchup sandwiched in with the usual 'Sparkle visits Atton' Saturday post! The Toronto parts are taken from Habitat, and slowly plunking along toward... more bad life choices, mostly. Sparkle no. For that guy!]

Comments

[suitably_heroic]

"I know, but who looks at the entire range of possible illegal things you can export for enormous amounts of money, and goes, you know what, I'm going to go make a killing on cheap mozzarella?"

You'd never catch a Hutt in that business!

"I mean, imagine explaining that to your fellow cons in jail."

[myownface]

"I think the whole point was that it was cheese, so who the hell was going to pay close enough attention to even notice?"

... Said Sparkle, who not ten minutes ago was saying the same thing about a diary.

[suitably_heroic]

"Somebody did, clearly," Atton said. He shook his head. "See, these guys get overconfident. Then they get their butts thrown in jail with the rest of the smugglers. No haul's ever inconspicuous enough."

He shook his head. "And smugglers in jail are assholes, trust me. I got no small amount of shit back when I got caught trying to move a few dozen rare gizka up the Hydian Way."

[myownface]

"Those are those weird cute frog-looking things with the two legs, right?"

Sparkle still really wanted one.

"You were smuggling those?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Might've been the Corellian Run, actually," Atton muttered to himself. Hydian Way? Where the hell had he gotten that from? Maybe his brain wasn't fully unscrambled just yet.

"They're considered a delicacy in some places," he said, slightly louder. "I thought 'hey, why not?'. And then I found out why not. And trust me, it wasn't just that they caught me. Gizka can burn in whatever hell you believe in."

[myownface]

"Better or worse than cats?"

Look, sometimes Sparkle just needed to ask these things. He felt it would be a good gauge of Atton's feelings on the subject.

[suitably_heroic]

"Cats don't reproduce at a speed of two new cats a minute."

[myownface]

"..."

Well, that changed about everything.

"But imagine if they did!"

They would probably eat the planet, Sparkle.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton came to a brief stop and pulled a most thoroughly terrified-slash-disgusted face.

"Damn it, Sparks. I'm going to have nightmares for weeks! Stupid, selfish furry animals crawling all over everything, screwing and hacking up hairballs, sometimes from both ends at the same time, probably eating all of my pizza-- laughing the entire time--"

[myownface]

"Cats don't really laugh," Sparkle corrected, beaming. "They sort of just sit there and slow-blink at you to demonstrate that they know they've won."

Yeah, Sparkle was forever going to be a cat person.

[suitably_heroic]

"How do you live with those animals?" Atton complained. "They're almost as bad as droids. And the only reason they're only almost is because they can't cheat at cards."

[myownface]

"Some of them can be, like, super affectionate," Sparkle offered. "And, I don't know. I guess they were domesticated because they keep mice out of grain sheds or something? Workin' cats."

It should be made clear that there had been nothing 'working' about Velcro back when Sparkle still had him.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton shot him a Look that communicated more or less that last point, yes. He had met Velcro, Sparkle. Do not try to bullshit him.

"Since when does anyone we know own a grain shed?"

[myownface]

"Maybe there are grain sheds all over Canada," Sparkle countered, putting his nose into the air. "You don't know."

There weren't.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton rolled his eyes. "And you have a miniature grain shed attached to your room at the house?" he said. "To store all of your stolen cutlery?"

[myownface]

"I might need one," Sparkle decided. "There are a lot of assholes in need of finding themselves one fork short around there, you know."

[suitably_heroic]

"Maybe you can build them a little fork effigy right before you leave," Atton said. "Throw some toilet paper on it and set it on fire."

What? He wasn't Sparkle's teacher anymore.

[myownface]

"... Oh my god that's fucking brilliant."

Careful, Atton. Sparkle would take this whole 'burning' thing to heart, at this rate.

"Make little fork-people to represent the whole neighbourhood and just douse them in gasoline and asswipe and light 'em up. 'This is the old guy from number 462 who yelled at me for using the sidewalk too close to his precious freshly-fertilized lawn.'"

[suitably_heroic]

"Right? It'd be symbolic, plus by that time, nobody'd be able to trace the forks back to where they came from."

Atton shrugged. "You hook up a webcam so you can still see their faces, then you bust out of town, laughing all the way."

It was a more constructive payback strategy than murder?

[myownface]

"This is elaborate and wonderful and perfect and I'm gonna do that. That thing? That's exactly what I'm going to fucking do."

No, it wasn't. But he'd definitely take some important cues from it.

[suitably_heroic]

"Just save it for when you're leaving, all right?" Atton said.

One day he'd get his moral compass recalibrated. One day.

[myownface]

"For when I'm leaving," Sparkle promised. "It'll be my last middle finger on my way out of there, seriously."

Moral compasses were terribly overrated anyhow.

[suitably_heroic]

"Good," Atton said. "Because people get weird about arson, otherwise." Beat. "Though I guess if they don't know it's their cutlery, you could always claim it's a performance art project."

[myownface]

"If I use enough gasoline, they'd have to risk losing their eyebrows if they want to get close enough to I.D. that cutlery before it's a useless puddle of sterling silver slag," Sparkle agreed. "Which, hey, could also be funny..."

[suitably_heroic]

"Don't singe anybody's eyebrows off," Atton sighed, long-suffering, "That's the definition of conspicuous."