The Perk, Tuesday Morning

[myownface]

The island was doing that mistletoe thing again. That mistletoe thing, Sparkle remembered it vividly from a precarious situation in a stairwell back when Alec was still a part of his life, and no amount of lecturing the island on people's right to choose who the hell they kissed for themselves had apparently dissuaded it from making it tradition. But then, he supposed he wasn't surprised. This was the island with the pollen thing, after all. That pollen thing.

Either way, he'd decided that his sanest course of action was to at least get out of the vicinity of people he didn't particularly want to kiss. Not that he didn't love Atton - he did more than almost anybody, and that was the hell of it, but not like that - he just really didn't want to find himself being pestered to kiss the guy by a freaking plant.

Anyway, it was peppermint hot chocolate season at the Perk, and the mistletoe had, for the most part, kept its attention on corners of the place with more people in it than the little table by the window that Sparkle had staked out. Sure, he'd had to give the barista a quick, chaste peck on the cheek to get his drink without being tackled by a plant, but this was the price one paid for getting out of the apartment without having to, like, french-kiss one's roomie.

"You know you're considered a parasite," he informed one creeping garland of mistletoe as it slithered past. "I'm really starting to see why."

[OOC: Open for coffee or kissy, I'm easy and Sparkle's resigned to it.]

Comments

[intotheout]

Thanks to her family's relative proximity to Baltimore and the causeway, and to Tip's managing to have landed not one but two jobs on the island -- a fact that made Tip's mom proud as much as it made her worry about her daughter's ability to have fun -- it'd been agreed that Tip would spend most of her break staying in the dorms, coming home just for the Smekday celebrations themselves on the 25th.

Tip hated this plan. But mostly because she would be perfectly happy if the entirety of December just got cancelled. They could replace it with "Dan Landry Month" for all she cared. She kind of hated everything this month.

Currently, she was hating very loudly on the fact that the world had apparently decided all caramel flavors had to have salt in them, now. "Why would I want a salty hot chocolate?! That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard! You drink stuff to not be thirsty, and salt makes you thirsty!"

Sorry, Sparkle. Tip hadn't even noticed yet that she was getting her bitter-and-angry all over your morning coffee shop time.

[myownface]

And Sparkle... had noticed Tip. Tip was kind of hard not to notice, really, what with the fit-pitching that was going on over there.

Hooboy.

"Salt is actually a flavour-enhancer," he offered, from where he was sitting. "Makes you taste the sweet stuff even more. Fortunately, 'not salted' is also an option, if you ask nice."

Hey, Sparkle hated the holiday as much as the next person, but it wasn't like the barista had put the item on the menu to piss anybody off. Minimum wage was not enough to put up with even the most righteous angry teenager's yelling.

[intotheout]

"Don't try to pull a tone argument on me!" Tip. Tip, no. She might've been slightly less pissed off if her pet billboard hadn't spent all morning flirting with sentient mistletoe. But, well. "I get to be angry when I'm angry!" She spun back on the barista and pointed at her. "I'm sorry I'm yelling! Can I please have a non-salted caramel hot chocolate!"

Well. It was a step in the right direction?

[myownface]

"At this rate, she's gonna spit in it," Sparkle muttered to himself, sighing but settling back to watch the show all the same. At least he had his drink to keep him company while all of this unfolded.

The barista looked only slightly mollified, but had clearly put up with worse crap than this before and set to work making Tip's drink. She even only rolled her eyes the once.

[intotheout]

Tip had put up with worse than spit in a drink. At least the barista probably didn't spit lighter fluid or something. And that spit-upon drink was coming over to join your table, Sparkle, lucky you!

"You know what the fastest way to rile someone up is?" Tip asked, still grumping hard, as she plopped down across from him. "Telling them to calm down."

Bill spelled an apology. Tip aimed her glare at him instead.

"Oh stay out of it. He can't even read that anyway."

[myownface]

Sparkle raised an eyebrow at her, but shrugged his shoulders, taking another drink from his hot chocolate. He was hardly going to apologize. The barista hadn't deserved to be yelled at. He was gonna stand by that.

"Sucks, doesn't it? Probably almost as much as it sucks to be yelled at in customer service when you can't do anything about it." Casual sip. "Shitty day, Tip?"

Look, he got you, kid, but even Sparkle had moments where he bordered on 'decent human adult' mode. He tried to avoid them in general, but sometimes they poked through.

[intotheout]

Tip opened her mouth, but miracle of miracles, realized that continuing to argue about the barista and Tip's attitude would only just make everything worse. So she jammed her hot chocolate in there instead, and burned her tongue.

"I hate everything."

Bill drew a little bubble heart over her head and floated down to land on her a few times in a tiny little robot version of a comforting pat.

[myownface]

"It's December," Sparkle replied knowingly. "Usually it's either one way or the other. I don't think I've ever really met anyone who sits somewhere in the middle."

He gave her a faint, sympathetic smile.

"Stupid island gets a bit aggressive about the holiday. Sucks sometimes."

[intotheout]

"A bit." Ah, the scathing sarcasm of the American teenager. "I think even if I liked this stuff I'd be pissed."

If the island ended up giving her a stocking, she was going to burst into tears.

[myownface]

"If you liked it," Sparkle echoed, nodding. "Which... you clearly don't."

Very clearly. He chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment.

"Wanna talk about it?"

[intotheout]

"No." Tip took a petulant sip of her drink. "My world got invaded by aliens on Christmas when I was eleven."

So . . . yes. She did want to talk about it.

[myownface]

Apparently so. Sparkle nodded a little, setting his drink down on the table and tilting his head at her. A few years ago, that would've been his go-to reply, and he would have been entirely full of shit. He didn't think she was, though.

That just made it worse.

"Harsh," he replied. "I don't even know particulars, but that sounds like it's gonna kinda ruin the season right away, huh?"

[intotheout]

Tip didn't even need to make up smart ass answers to questions. Such was the true legacy of the Boov.

"They abolished Christmas and renamed it 'Smekday' after their general."

[2_old_for_this]

Peter had mostly missed the mistletoe so far, on account of being an antisocial angsty loner on his own for the day.

But he was trying to be good and get out and have tea, so. Here he was.

He nodded at Sparkle and smiled at the familiar face. "Hi. Haven't seen you around in a while."

[myownface]

"Well, you haven't needed new clothes in a while," Sparkle replied, shooting Peter a little smirk. "And anyway, I'm a homebody. How goes it?"

[2_old_for_this]

"I...yeah, homebody pretty much describes it." Peter sank into a chair at Sparkle's table. "Last week was...something."

[myownface]

"Last week can go fuck itself sideways with a rake, and if it hurts itself in the process it had it coming," Sparkle replied, vehemently.

So, there was that.

"Stupid island."

Seriously, this place. Seriously.

[2_old_for_this]

Peter winced. "I could've lived without seeing it." It had brought back more than a few memories, none of them pleasant.

He gave Sparkle a lopsided grin. "That's some image, though."

[myownface]

Sparkle hiked his shoulders up, not quite able to muster much of a smile in return.

"It's Fandom island standard. Seems like everyone made it back here alive, anyway. That's... something."

[2_old_for_this]

"I meant the rake," Peter said a bit weakly. "I'm glad everyone did, though. That's...a miracle, mostly."

[myownface]

"I meant the thing you could've lived without seeing," Sparkle countered, wrinkling his nose. "But yeah. People usually make it through. The people in that other timeline weren't as lucky, but the most we usually end up with is trauma."

Lots of that.

[2_old_for_this]

"I've been hoping what we did made it better for them." Peter shrugged. "That's pretty much all we can do."

He shook his head. "Sorry. Didn't stop by just to go through it all again. Apparently I'm bad at letting things go."

Said the fifteen-hundred-year-old man.

[myownface]

Sparkle raised an eyebrow at that.

"Hey, I spent three days having a frigging nervous breakdown in a bathtub after," Sparkle replied, dryly. "If you want to talk about being bad at letting shit go, line starts behind me. It was the first big throw-down on the island for you, wasn't it?"

[2_old_for_this]

"Yeah." Peter gave Sparkle a closer look. "Are you doing okay now?"

[myownface]

Sparkle's shoulders hitched up a bit.

"Sure. I'm still alive, aren't I?"

Nope, not really okay. But he was getting better at faking.