fandomtownies | The Perk, Tuesday Morning

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The Perk, Tuesday Morning

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.]

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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."

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

"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.

"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.

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?"

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

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.

"It's a start." Peter shrugged back. "Can't do much else without that, right?"

"I mean, depends who you are, I guess," Sparkle replied. "I've seen plenty of people where being alive didn't mean shit, either."

Even when things were okay.

"Most humans," Peter amended. "And Shadows, as far as that goes. Sometimes alive's all you have."

And sometimes you had a sneaky tendril of mistletoe sneaking up on you, but Peter hadn't figured that out yet.

And Sparkle was still too busy making faces into his hot chocolate to really be paying much attention, himself.

"Sometimes it is," he agreed, frowning. "I mean, for all it's worth, sometimes. Alive without, like, freedom, or your mind, or... whatever..."

He shrugged.

"I really, really hope I don't live long enough to see my mind go."

You know. No reason or anything.

"I've..." Peter grimaced. "I've been there. It's not nice." Understatement.

Something tickled his elbow, but he shook it off.

"I'm... never really there long, but I've been, too," Sparkle muttered. "Mostly around this place. God, I hate this place sometimes."

Seriously, he'd punch Fandom straight in the box if he knew where to find it.

"Still better than Hell," Peter said, as much reminding himself as anything. He puffed out a breath. "But...yeah."

And there was a plant grabbing his arm. "What the -"

"Huh?" Sparkle blinked up at that. And then rolled his eyes and slumped back in his seat. "Oh god, seriously? Fuck advent in the ear."

That was very helpful, Sparkle, thank you.

"Advent? Hey!" Peter hastily shoved his tea out of the way before the plant knocked it over. He misted his arm long enough to get out of it, but as soon as he was solid again, the plant grabbed it again. "What the heck!"

Sparkle... took a moment to kind of blink and rub his eyes, because Peter's arm turned to mist, there. And he knew Peter could do some funky shit, but that was still something to get used to, there.

Of course, when he went to put his arm down, he couldn't, because now there was mistletoe wrapping around his wrist. Which meant Sparkle was going to just facepalm with that hand while it was by his face, instead.

"It's mistletoe," he muttered. "You know what people do with mistletoe, this time of year."

"Hang it all over and pretend it's not poisonous," Peter answered wryly. "It's not usually mobile, though."

"Fandom island, man," Sparkle sighed. "It's mistletoe. It wants us to kiss."

Duh, Peter. Duh.

Peter snorted. "We're not together. Go away, plant." He waved futilely at it; it just tried to grab his other hand. "Stop it! Look, if this stuff's sentient, can't it figure out 'not interested'? No offense, I just don't like being dictated to about kissing."

"Yeah, none taken," Sparkle replied, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling. He'd hurt himself if he rolled them any harder, really. "Anyway, I don't know if it's sentient or not. It almost killed me once in a stairwell trying to get me to kiss my ex, so it's definitely got stubbornness going for it."

Also it was a jerk.

Peter scowled at that. "Someone needs to teach it no means no."

On the last word, he changed his arm to flame, charring to cinders the vine looped around it and sending the rest shooting away from him as fast as it could go.

He changed it back, leaving a few flames dancing on his fingertips, and reached toward the one holding Sparkle.

Sparkle... Sparkle was going to sit there wide-eyed and kind of in shock at that one. The mistletoe that had been wrapped around his arm bid a hasty retreat before it could be charred to ash, leaving Sparkle blinking at the fire.

...

"Ooooooooo."

That was an awesome trick and Sparkle wanted it.

Sorry, Sparkle; that one came of being a Shadow. Though there was probably a magical way of doing it, too, come to that.

Peter watched the plants go and gave a sigh of annoyance. "Sorry. I have a thing about consent."

"That is so fair," Sparkle replied, smiling faintly. "I'm no big fan of being dragged into a kiss with someone who isn't feeling it, either."

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