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Demon Marcus, Sunday

Sparkle didn't wanna.

He just... didn't, okay? It was his birthday. He was turning twenty. And the past year had been a shitty year. He'd lost a home, basically skipped out on his entire reality so that he wouldn't have to face the music and go to court, his heart had been broken, one of his friends was dead, and now his best-friend-slash-roomie was missing-presumed-not-dead-yet-fucking-hell-Atton. Sure, there were good things about the past year too. He'd met Leto, for one. Moved in with said best-friend-slash-roomie for another. But overall, on the big old scale of good versus shitty, Sparkle would be perfectly happy to not repeat that particular year of his life ever again.

He wasn't doing much at work today. Just sitting up on the counter lighting sparklers one by one and watching them burn out. Fuck it, he didn't care.

[OOC: Open!]

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Avoid the pyrotechnics.

Embrace the pyrotechnics.

Sometime around the afternoon, a delivery person showed up. He looked bored, and didn't say much, but he put down several containers of Thai food on the counter, along with a note. (Happy birthday, blah blah blah, bitch bitch bitch. No sender, but someone had clearly thought it was obvious.)

The delivery guy turned around and walked out without another word.

It did help a little bit that only one person ever stopped by to bring him Thai food, and the note and the fact that the sender even knew Sparkle's birthday helped with the rest. Sparkle frowned a little at the food, then shrugged and sighed and stuck a sparkler into a carton of pad thai.

Eating alone still sucked, but knowing that Atton was still doing well enough to remember his birthday did help. A bit.

"You're still a dick," he muttered under his breath as he dug in.

Sparkle had mentioned that it was his birthday when they'd had dinner, and while Leto hadn't said much about it at the time, he did want to give Sparkle something. Turning 20 was apparently important in both Fandom and Sparkle's time, so that was one reason more.

Sometime during the afternoon, wrapped in brown paper, a small cactus with one yellow flower was delivered to the shop. Included was also a knife, slightly larger than the one Leto had given him before, because you always needed more than one. With it came a card with only the words Wishing you a happy birthday and that a good year ahead.

Awww, Cactus. Awwww, Leto. Sparkle's mood was steadily improving now, as he read the card with a little smile and then looked thoughtfully at the cactus and the knife.

The knife, he was going to wear right away, because damn that was a nice knife.

The cactus, he was making a tiny hat for out of receipt paper and sticky tape. It looked to Sparkle as though Pauline was about to get a new friend. But what to name it? Maybe Mario. Or Francesco.

Was your phone ringing, Sparkle? It was! It was ringing!

It was fortunate that Sparkle had allotted personalized ringtones to all of his friends. It meant that when 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' started playing, he wasn't going to immediately answer with "Atton?"

Not that he didn't love you, Minako. He was just still kind of super worried, Thai or no Thai.

"Hey! You!"

"They say it's your biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirthday!" Minako sang into the phone, even making the 'nah nah nah nah' guitar sounds. "Happy birthday to youuuuuuuuuuuuu!"

She could even be as loud as she wanted, despite it being past midnight in Tokyo, since it was technically Sailor Venus calling, sitting 3/4ths of the way up the Tokyo Tower for shits and giggles.

Now that was one heck of a birthday song. Sparkle laughed in spite of the mood he'd been in, settling back with a sparkler and with the phone, smiling a little.

"Yeah, I've heard them say that," he agreed easily. "Apparently that's a big deal or something, huh?"

"Well, you're now old enough to smoke and drink legally in Japan!" Minako informed him cheerfully. "You're an adult, Sparkle!"

Who was a troll? MINAKO was a troll.

"Yeah, well, I was old enough to smoke and drink legally in Canada last year, and I still can't in America," Sparkle pointed out, wrinkling his nose. "I'm not an adult until a country will trust me to both go to war for it and get drunk in it."

It was exactly the sort of double-standard he lived to call out. So sue him.

"America is weird, no one understands American rules," Minako pointed out. "I still think it's their fucked-up government system; how does that even work?"

"I'm pretty sure it involves leprechauns," Sparkle mused. "I don't pretend to understand how the hell American government works. I just put my fingers in my ears and go 'la la la' more and more every time they do something, that's all."

The thing about having friends - or even friendly individuals who enjoyed mentoring you to realize your potential for ~~evil~~ artistry - was that they tended to remember pesky things like birthdays.

Hannibal came in, watched as another sparkler burned down, and smiled. "Very thematic."

Sparkle glanced up at Hannibal, gave him a little wry grin, and then held a sparkler out towards him in offering.

"They're kind of my thing," he replied, shrugging, "but some days are just good days for sparklers, you know?"

Hannibal took the sparkler and kept holding it out, so Sparkle could light it.

"And today is very much a day for you and your namesake," he said. "Happy birthday."

Sparkle gave a little grin, holding out his lighter to get the sparkler going.

"Thanks," he replied, setting the lighter off to the side and then holding out another Sparkler of his own to light against the one he'd given Hannibal. "I mean, it isn't that big a deal, though. I already hit the drinking age everywhere in Canada last year, and I won't hit it in America until next year. Twenty's still that weird in-between year where I should be able to be whatever as an adult back home, but where I'm at, not so much."

And since 'back home' was basically never going to be a thing again, he was still kind of floating in 'not so much' territory. Sure, it meant he was finally shedding that unfortunate 'teenager' mantle he'd been carrying around. Maybe it was sort of like a fresh start, between the 'here' and the 'adult' bits.

Today didn't feel much different from yesterday yet, though.

"Still, you're no longer a teenager," Hannibal pointed out. "And two decades seems a bit of an accomplishment, don't you think?"

"Guess so."

Sparkle pursed his lips a little bit, thinking that over.

"I mean... Being totally honest, I used to kind of figure that I'd be doing a lot worse than I am right now. But I guess if I didn't have the option to run here, I probably would be." He'd be in prison. Period. The end. "Spending my twentieth birthday in relative freedom is kind of a step up from there."

"Complete freedom and relative comfort, I would argue." Hannibal smiled. "And with a very good dinner?"

Freedom to go anywhere but the one place he knew? It seemed kind of relative, still. Sparkle didn't argue, though, giving Hannibal a little smirk.

"The good dinner part is news to me," he replied, "but I didn't have any plans otherwise, so I could probably be persuaded to add something to my busy schedule later."

That super busy schedule that involved sitting at home with a pair of houseplants to keep him company, eating hot pockets and watching cartoons on Netflix.

"Excellent. I'm pleased to be worked into your day." Hannibal grinned. "What time shall I have it ready for?"

"I could probably head over right after I've closed up here," Sparkle mused. "I mean, it means the cactus is coming along, but Francesco here is pretty well-behaved so long as he's out of the reach of cats."

And Pauline would be so jealous. She didn't get to tag along for a fancy birthday dinner.

"Is five too early?"

"Not at all." Hannibal nodded. "Five it is." He saluted Sparkle with his now-dead sparkler. "I'll see you then."

I have no pyrotechnics.

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Demon Marcus, Sunday

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OOC