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Demon Marcus, Sunday

So, after coming in and doing a thorough check of his back room to make sure no more old guys in suits were going to just appear there in a flash of light (not that he even knew what he was looking for, but last weekend had made him paranoid, and having checked things out at least let him relax a little), Sparkle settled in for a long day of...

... Of mostly just being bored. Sundays were generally pretty quiet. He figured it was a small-town thing.

It was days like these, especially leading up to Valentine's Day, that he kinda wished he still worked at Dite's, too.

Demon Marcus was open. And the manager was sitting behind the counter, doing his nails.

[OOC: No OCD today, la.]

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"I hate this month," Atton announced as he stepped in, bag of Mexican food in one hand.

Atton, you hated every month. August, double.

"You know, I have yet to meet a person who actually likes February," Sparkle pointed out, raising an eyebrow faintly and offering Atton a little smile. "Shitty month. Trick is to do less shitty things to compensate."

Said the guy who was casually dating an emperor.

"I was going to stay in bed for the entire morning again, but that was me all week. Thought I'd change up my schedule."

Beat.

"I think it was a bad idea."

He set the bag down on the counter.

"I dunno, man. If there are churros in that bag, then I think it was probably worthwhile." Sparkle was helping! "Why, what's today done so far to make it not worth getting out of bed, anyway?"

Besides being a part of February.

"Nothing, it's just cold and it rained in my face," Atton said, producing... a bag of churros, yes.

There was even chocolate involved.

"Fair enough," Sparkle replied, giving his hand a shake in an attempt to get his nail polish to dry faster. Because churros. "You need a towel or something warm to throw over your shoulders or anything like that? I can throw on some water for, uh, tea."

He would get some instant coffee in here eventually, but having Alluka working here meant that tea was basically always a given, at the very least.

"Why don't you have coffee here yet?" Atton complained. He shook his head. "I'll be fine," he said. "I lied." Surprise. "Mical called this morning. I yelled at him. That part was satisfying."

"I get my coffee on the way in, because I will absolutely be the person to burn the place down just boiling water before I'm caffeinated," Sparkle shared. "What'd Mical do this time?"

Because it was always something. Sparkle stood extra strongly by his 'Mical is a jackass' assessment after that whole... thing... that one time.

"He heard I've been doing some stuff around the galaxy lately, so he's trying to hit me with the recruitment pitch again, even though I technically never left."

Just kind of abused the fact there was no real hierarchy in place yet to pick up his bags and leave for a while.

"He's... really not so great at that giving you space when you need it... thing. Is he?"

That was kind of part of what had caused that whole mess the last time, too. Go figure Mical hadn't learned from it.

"I'm pretty sure he's never going to be satisfied until we all sing 'Happy, Happy Ewok Friends' around the campfire together and maybe do a group hug," Atton said.

He reached into the bag to fish out a burrito.

"Eugh," Sparkle said eloquently, and then, deciding that his fingernails were dry enough, he leaned in to snag a churro. Because so help him, if he couldn't start lunch with dessert, then what was adulthood for? "I mean, it's great wanting everyone to get along and all, but that's not going to happen if he doesn't stop dictating in favour of maybe listening now and again. The Jedi Order isn't a one-man show, is it?"

"That was not the general idea, no," Atton said. He sighed. "Maybe I should throw myself at the whole thing again. If he's pulling this poodoo on the others, we're in trouble."

"Maybe," Sparkle replied, frowning thoughtfully and leaning against the counter as he rummaged around for the chocolate sauce. "I mean... if that's something you think is best for you, too, you know? But if you're coming back to Mical making all the same stupid mistakes..."

He shrugged.

"I dunno. He was told what the problem was before. If he hasn't taken steps to fix it, maybe you go in and throw a brick at his face, first."

"Oh, I'm thinking about it."

Atton unwrapped the tin foil around his burrito. "Anyway, that's me. What's going on around here?"

"Here? Not a hell of a lot," Sparkle admitted. "Sales are going... okay. Sold a few sets of underwear, and Ada had a sale on pajamas earlier in the week, but besides that... the store's a store."

Surprise surprise.

"Kinda looking forward to the break. Go somewhere warm, not have to worry about scraping together enough brain cells to talk to teenagers who know everything about shit most of them don't actually know anything about."

"And this time you're going on your own dime," Atton said. He took a bite before he said anything else. "How's teaching going for you these days?"

Sparkle broke into a little cackle that was somewhere between 'relieved' and 'still overwhelmed.'

"I mean, they listen to me. Mostly they listen to me. I've had a few students butting heads in class over stupid shit, but they've mostly behaved themselves since I started threatening to bring a spray bottle or a rolled-up newspaper with me," he replied. "It's... weird to talk about this stuff, though. I mean I know it. I know I know it. They know I know it, and they actually listen to what I'm saying and they even got pretty gung-ho helping out when I volunteered everyone at a food bank. But it's... fuck, you know how much I talk about that stuff."

"Yeah, I do," Atton agreed. "But at least you're getting your feet under you just fine." He took another bite of that burrito. "There's always going to be kids who pitch an attitude about something, though. So keep that newspaper arm ready."

"Trust me, the newspaper is sitting in the desk, just waiting."

As was the spray bottle. If students thought he'd been making that up, they were in for a shock if they started throwing attitude at one another in class again.

"Still weird," he added. "I mean, it isn't even my first time teaching. Had a teacher vanish mid-semester once while I was pulling TA duty, so I wound up playing sidekick to Electroclash for the rest of it. But that was... you know. Sidekick duty. This time around I have to actually pretend to be responsible and also not an idiot."

That last bit was a hard sell.

"You had to write the syllabus and decide on what information's important, yadda yadda, and you can't hide behind the 'I'm a student' defense," Atton agreed.

He picked some lettuce out of his burrito. "But I have faith in your ability to pretend not to be an idiot for an hour at a time. What's next week?"

"Water," Sparkle replied with a shrug. "We covered food last week, but water is so much more than just something you drink, you know? I figured it probably deserves an entire class, between drinking water and bathing and laundry and all."

"How to live in a garbage container with no shower for a month without choking on someone else's body odor?" Atton offered.

"How to live in a garbage container with no shower for a month and still actually manage to smell presentable when you're scouting for potential employers," Sparkle countered, smiling faintly. "Also important."

"Okay, you got me on that last one," Atton admitted. "Never did figure that out."

Then again, it was entirely possible he'd cultivated the smell for a reason.

"Depends where you're living and what you have access to, just like everything else," Sparkle replied, shrugging. "Public bathrooms are the secret, man. Public bathrooms. At least where I'm from."

Thank god for those, anyway.

"Or there are fountains or outdoor swimming pools, if you can sneak in after dark and it isn't too cold out. Even better if where you're at has a stream or something flowing through it, but, like, you're not gonna find that on like Nar Shaddaa. And if somehow you did, I sure as hell wouldn't trust it to drink from it."

"And going to a public bathroom on Nar Shaddaa is just asking to walk away with at least five different diseases you didn't know existed," Atton said. "But hey, on Earth, it might be doable."

Sparkle gave his shoulders a shrug.

"All you really need is the sink," he shared. "If you have a container you can carry in and out with you and you can't trust the water, find a way to boil it somewhere else, and then go for the sponge bath. At the very least, Nar Shaddaa never really struck me as the sort of place that cared too much about people lighting fires in back alleyways."

"No, though it's also a good way to get punched for setting fire to something on someone's turf," Atton said. He snorted. "But I don't think the kids will need the Nar Shaddaa module. Oh, warn them about not getting suckered into gambling dens."

"Gambling dens and drug habits," Sparkle replied. "Neither of them really do anybody any favours."

And drug habits were really easy to pick up when you were at the bottom of the barrel and bored out of your skull. Sparkle knew that one from experience.

"But it's easy to fool yourself into thinking they do," Atton said. "Especially when you're a kid."

"And doubly so when you already figure you have nothing left to lose," Sparkle agreed. "I want to think my students are smarter than that... but... they're teenagers. They're like idiots by default."

Look, it was more or less true.

"They're going to mess up," Atton said frankly. "Your job is to do your best to make sure that if they do, the results don't do a lot of damage."

"Well, that's... intimidating as fuck," Sparkle admitted. "But I guess it's nothing I didn't know going into the job, either."

"You're in luck," Atton said. "I mean, students have to take at least two classes a week, so you're sharing that burden with someone else."

Beat.

"Let's hope it's not Deadpool."

"Oh, sweet shitting Christ," Sparkle muttered, shaking his head. "Now I'm going to have to check the rosters just so I know how messed up my students are going to be be the end of this semester."

At least a few of them were apparently going to be very messed up, going by the Sparkle-and-Deadpool rubric.

At least Deadpool was just teaching Pokémon?

"Of course, if you're lucky, they've got Steve Rogers and you can basically sit back and do nothing for the next few months," Atton offered. "Some teachers really like to go overkill."

He liked to run his classes at a net impact of zero, outside of the skills involved.

"Next time, I'm going to just teach a class about cookies," Sparkle decided. "It's really, really hard to fuck people up with cookies. Unless they've got, like, a gluten sensitivity or something, I guess."

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Demon Marcus, Sunday

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