fandomtownies | The Causeway, Monday Evening

"Maybe, yeah," Sparkle muttered, feet scuffing more tiredly along the ground than they had in a long time. "Pizzas are easy..."

He gave a little, noncommittal shrug. Easy seemed good, right?

"I'll have whatever."

He wasn't all that hungry. But he was starving. It was the worst combination basically ever.

Edited 2016-07-04 16:24 (UTC)

So a cheap pizza would do as well as an expensive one with a ton of vegetables, was what Atton was gathering. He sighed, sliding his phone out of his pocket. "Okay," he said. "I'm calling now. We're almost home anyway."

"Home, huh?" Sparkle chewed his lip as he ambled along after Atton. "Can't wait."

He really couldn't. He wanted to curl up under a blanket in something hideous but cozy and just never come out again.

Maybe he'd come out for pizza. Yeah. That was probably a good idea.

"Yeah, it's basically all you've said in the past day, so I caught that," Atton said, rubbing at his forehead.

Not exasperated at Sparkle, per se. Just tired, too. He'd been all fired up on anger for a long time, there, and now it'd dissipated and just left him-- yeah, tired.

"Oh..." Sparkle chewed on his lip, and then sighed. "Yeah, I guess I have, huh?"

He'd be more sorry about that if he wasn't so tired, himself.

"I can talk about something else. I can talk about..." Nothing was exactly coming to mind. "Music. Or... alcohol? I can probably carry on a conversation about alcohol."

Atton sighed. "You don't have to push it," he said. "I figure what you need is some food and your own bed."

He'd needed that, back when he'd been a shit-scared just-about-seventeen-year-old.

Sparkle swallowed, but he nodded a little.

"Yeah," he admitted. "That sounds about right. Maybe I'll, like, find something stupid on Netflix, meant for preschoolers or something."

Bright, happy colours, and, like, cute talking animals sounded awesome right about then. Just so long as they came with a blanket burrito situation. And food. And cuddly pajamas. And maybe his squishy cat doll.

"I'll just surrender the queue to you, then," Atton said.

He wasn't really in the mood for watching TV anyway. Food and maybe some kind of jog around the island, that was about his speed.

"Better not be episodes of Cake Boss in there in the morning, though."

"Nah, no Cake Boss," Sparkle replied, shaking his head. "That's way too much drama for cake. I can't promise there won't be any Sesame Street, though."

He felt you, Oscar. You were a pretty cool dude, for a Grouch.

"I guess if there's any time to go back to being five years old, it's now, huh," Atton said.

And hey, look. There was the apartment building. Home sweet home.

Sparkle gave his shoulders another little shrug.

"Guess so. Big Bird and I could be buds. It'd be great."

Big Bird was also, like, five. So they'd be great friends.

"I might even graduate to, like, that new cartoon with the robot lions or something. We'll see how ambitious I'm feeling."

"Good plan."

After that, Atton fell silent. At least for the rest of the way up to apartment #4, unless you counted the pizza-ordering he did via the internet.

He shoved his key into the lock and opened up the door, stepping into the room, and... damn, it felt like it'd been a year since the last time he was here. He actually had to stop in the living room for a few moments. Take it all in.

Sparkle, on the other hand, was kind of content to just hang back in the doorway for a moment, looking around the place in a sort of quiet daze. He had all these great plans for once he got home, earlier in the week. He'd run through them in great depth when he was locked away with nothing better to do with his time.

Now he mostly just felt overwhelmed, like he had no clue what to even do, here.

Maybe he'd just shuffle over to the sofa, and then sit in it and stare at things for a minute until he remembered what to do next? Yeah. The sofa was... good.

Atton finally shut the door behind the two of them, taking off his coat and tossing it at a chair in the corner. He rubbed at his face, finally getting his bearings again.

"Right," he muttered. "Drinks. Do we have drinks?"

Sparkle gave a little nod, eyes kind of fixed on a random point on the far wall. Maybe he'd clean the walls. They didn't need it, but you could never be too clean, right?

"Yeah, I stocked up a few... a while... you know. Before I left."

He wasn't even sure how long it had been. He'd sort that stuff out after rest and food and stuff, anyway.

"Lots of drinks. Nothing that'll spoil left in the fridge, though."

He'd made sure to take care of that before he left, too, since he'd had no idea how long he was going to be away.

"You want one?"

The state Sparkle was in right now-- Atton wasn't even going to pretend to know which way he'd swing on that offer. He was just gonna go, walk into the kitchen, and if he heard a yes, he'd snag something extra.

After that? There'd be pizza.

There was a pause, and then, erring on the side of caution, Sparkle shrugged his shoulders and called back, "Sure. I'll have whatever."

Maybe he wouldn't touch it, but the option was there. Hell, maybe he'd start and he wouldn't stop. At this point, he'd kind of earned that, too.

Atton pulled a bottle of juma out for himself, then a bottle of some Canadian beer thing Sparkle had laying around. He took a deep breath. Right. Okay. Back to being Atton in earnest.

He walked back and set the beer down in front of Sparkle without another word. He picked a spot on the other end of the couch and sat down on it, pouring juma into his glass.

Quietly.

Oh, hey. Beer. That was a good choice. Sparkle leaned forward with a quiet little nod, reaching for the bottle, and then leaned back again and just sort of... held it.

Yeah. Good ol' bottle. You and Sparkle were going to have a lot of quality time just sitting there before he got around to drinking from you.

Livin' the dream.

"Home sweet home."

Yep.

"Yep," Atton agreed. He set his bottle down on the ground and took a sip from his glass.

Should he just put Netflix on? Maybe he should put Netflix on.

Or maybe he should just leave Sparkle to process on the sofa. Honestly, beyond getting him home, he had no idea. "At least it hasn't caught fire. That would have been a pain in the ass - and just like the island, too."

Okay, so his Atton needed some practice after leaving it behind for so long.

"Nah," Sparkle murmured with a shake of his head. Was he hugging his beer? He was hugging his beer. "The island wouldn't light it on fire. You're confusing the island with me. The island would turn all the walls into Jell-o and fill the bathtub with, like, ducks or something. Big difference."

"No, you said you weren't going to set the apartment on fire," Atton argued, putting his juma down on the coffee table. "So I'm going to give you that benefit of the doubt and call island on it, if it happens."

"Well, I wouldn't set it on fire on purpose," Sparkle allowed. "All my stuff lives here."

Such as it was.

Sparkle wriggled his toes, realized they were still in his shoes, and then kind of halfheartedly kicked them off onto the floor. Then he gave the toe-wriggling another attempt.

"I can't promise I wouldn't burn down the preserve if the island burned down our apartment, though."

"That would only be fair, though," Atton said.

He gave in and reached for the remote. "An eye for an eye, a pile of lumber for a pile of lumber..."

"That, and now that I've said it, the island knows not to fuck with our place."

Either that, or to better fireproof the preserve. Yes.

Couple of clicks, and there they were. Netflix. Atton activated Sparkle's account and threw the remote somewhere in the space between them on the sofa.

"Fear the wrath of the firebug with the hair," he said. "Now there's a threat."

"Well, you know me. I'm very wrath...ful."

Yeah, that fell a bit short. Sparkle frowned, and then reached for the remote. Good way to save face right there, even if it meant he wasn't cuddling the beer anymore.

Now they were going to commence roughly an hour of mindlessly clicking through the selection. Lucky them, right?

"I'm all full of... you know."

Wrath.

"Yeah, you are."

It seemed like the time of mindless... everything, including conversation. They could talk about what happened some other time. Atton was pretty sure that was going to take more energy than Sparkle had.

"Lots of it," he said, stretching his legs out. "Do they even have Sesame Street on Netflix?"

"Hell if I know," Sparkle admitted. He kept on clicking through the kids programming, and then sighed. "It's looking like it isn't. Kinda wish it did, though."

Click. Click. Click.

"Oh, found it. Nevermind."

And... play. Time to zone out in a wonderful world of learning about friendship and counting to twelve.

Atton let out a sigh. "And I sense the pizza guy coming up," he said, sliding back off the sofa. "Back in a sec."

"Okay, cool." Sparkle wriggled back into the couch, getting more comfortable as Atton wandered over to intercept the pizza guy at the pass. Or whatever it was that Jedi did with pizza guys, anyway.

Somewhere in there, he even opened his beer. Which was good and bad. It meant he couldn't hug it anymore. And that was probably for the best, too. Hugging the bottle meant that the colour-change mountains were going from blue to white again. Mmm, warm beer.

Sparkle found that he did not much care about how warm the beer was, anyway.

Atton came back not much later, two pizzas in hand. He set the boxes down on the coffee table and flipped them over. There was cheese, sauce, and pepperoni. Simple. He hadn't been in the mood for anything more complicated.

"So where are we at on the Street?" he said. "Anybody start a riot over the number '5' yet?"

Well, pepperoni was a classic. It was hard to go wrong with pepperoni. And the odds that any of it was going to make its way into Sparkle's mouth before it and the beer met in the middle, temperature-wise, were slim.

"Nah, no riots," he mused, "but Bert is getting pretty frustrated about Ernie eating crackers in bed."

Because crumbs, you see.

"They're the gay couple, right?"

Atton snagged a slice of the pepperoni pizza in front of him. He was hungry. He was also extremely jaded and beyond the implications of the fading anger buzz, he was fine.

Mostly.

He still wanted to kick Mical's head in, and he was still aware that was a bad thing.

"Well, they were supposed to just be roommates. But, you know, some parents got all pissed off and assumed that a pair of puppets were fucking or something, because, you know, we queers are gross."

Sparkle scowled a little, and then knocked back a mouthful of warm Coors.

"Would've been nice to make 'em actually gay. I could've used some Sesame Street reinforcement telling me I wasn't all fucked up."

He said, as Ernie climbed into Bert's bed to avoid getting crumbs in his own. That part was actually the way the skit had always gone, too.

Sparkle could get behind Ernie's way of thinking, here.

"Your planet is so messed up about this stuff," Atton opined lightly.

He took a bite of his pizza.

"Let the damn puppets cuddle." Beat. "If that's G-rated."

"Oh, I know," Sparkle muttered. "And it gets more fucked up all the time."

Sparkle was kind of vaguely thankful that Fandom wasn't technically currently in the US these days. The news coming out of... basically everywhere... was heartbreaking and terrible.

As always.

"S'tiring. Lots of shit is tiring, I guess."

Life was tiring. Sparkle needed a nap.

"Well, eat your pizza, you can go to bed," Atton said.

Still lightly.

He kinda needed his walk, but he wasn't doing that before he was sure Sparkle was packed up and snoring.

"Oh, right..." Sparkle hesitated for a moment, then set down the remote - he'd been clutching to that, too - and reached for a slice of pizza, which he was going to kind of reluctantly take a bite of.

...

At least that reminded him that yes, he was hungry. It wasn't long before he was reaching for seconds.

Atton relaxed in his chair, satisfied with that. He ate at a much slower pace, sipping his juma every now and then. Keeping an eye on Sparkle from the corner of his eye.

Been a while since their fussing roles had been reversed, but there you go.

The Causeway, Monday Evening

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