The park, Tuesday night

[what_the_shock]

Miguel had made plans with Sparkle to head into the park tonight and look at the stars. Which should be interesting; Miguel hadn't had much of a chance to look at the stars ever, and he was pretty bad at relaxing, too. He was determined to get better at that.

So, he'd come out to the park, grabbed a spot on the grass away from the trees, and sat to wait. Sparkle was going to bring the coffee, he'd said, but Miguel had grabbed a huge bag of pretzels to munch on and share.

Now he was waiting.

It was so quiet around here, he was going to go nuts.


[Expecting the one, but open for anyone who wants to drop by!]

Comments

[myownface]

"The fun has arrived!"

By which, of course, Sparkle meant the coffee. The coffee had arrived, courtesy of Sparkle, because he'd said he was going to bring it and so help him, he was a Sparkle of his word.

"So, you haven't started stargazing without me, have you?"

[what_the_shock]

Miguel grinned. "Not even a glance, promise." He hefted his bag. "I brought pretzels."

[myownface]

"And I brought the coffee," Sparkle replied, holding up his tray. "I was tempted to stop for burgers too, but I figured I was running late enough as it was. If I took any longer, I'd miss the nighttime or something."

Okay, they weren't that slow at the Perk, and Sparkle had been running a little late all on his own.

[what_the_shock]

Miguel laughed. "I'm sure the night'll still be here." He paused. "Well, I'm not sure, but there's a good chance of it."

He reached up to take the tray so Sparkle could sit.

[myownface]

Sparkle quite happily handed the tray over and deposited his ass on the grass with a grin.

"A pretty good chance of it," he agreed. "If the night up and takes off in the time it takes me to get a couple of coffees, we probably have bigger problems anyway."

[what_the_shock]

"Oh, yeah," Miguel agreed. "Which one's mine?"

[myownface]

"The one that doesn't smell like I dumped an entire bowl of sugar in there," Sparkle replied with a little grin. "There's a little M on yours in the white grease pencil, for 'Miggy.'"

[what_the_shock]

Miguel sighed, though he was still smiling a little. "Thanks." He took his and held Sparkle's out to him.

"So are we looking for anything specific, or just stars in general?" he asked.

[myownface]

"No idea," Sparkle confessed. "I've never really gone stargazing before. Though I guess we could look up what's supposed to be in the sky right now and see if we can find it? That seems like a thing people do, maybe."

[what_the_shock]

"Sure, we can do that."

Miguel took out the phone he'd gotten and after only a moment of remembering how it worked called up Google and looked up... "Wait, it's asking for our longitude and latitude." He barked in laughter. "I actually have no idea where on Earth we are. Can I look that up in my phone?"

[myownface]

"You can," Sparkle laughed, "you can look up plenty of stuff. Are you on iPhone or Android?"

The answer would really only change whether Sparkle told Miguel to talk to Google or Siri, really.

[what_the_shock]

"Um. Android," Miguel said. "I think." He tilted his phone so Sparkle could see it.

[myownface]

Sparkle gave the phone a once over, and then nodded his agreement.

"So you just have to know how to talk to it," he shared, smirking a bit. "Okay Google?"

The phone's little 'now listening' pop-up appeared on the screen.

"Latitude and longitude of Fandom Island."

And lo, a Google search.

[what_the_shock]

"Huh. Okay." Miguel made a note of the numbers, then put them into the other window, which called up a map in red of the stars they could expect to see. "So here's our sky."

[myownface]

Sparkle leaned in to look at the map, and then nodded as he looked upwards.

"So, like, the really easy one to find should be one of the dippers," he noted. "The big one, I think?"

He pointed it out on the phone.

"It's really distinctive, and apparently you can use it to find the north star at the end of the other dipper..."

He traced his finger down on the screen to that other more 'nother dipper, and then looked up at the sky.

"It might be kind of low on the horizon, I guess. Hopefully the trees aren't in the way."

[what_the_shock]

Miguel looked from the phone up to the sky and back again. After searching for a bit, he pointed. "There."

He traced the line of the dipper. "Can you see it?"

[myownface]

Sparkle squinted upwards for a moment, and then broke into a little grin.

"Well, shit, yeah. It really is distinctive, isn't it?"

Also, dipper-shaped. Madness.

[what_the_shock]

Miguel grinned. "Okay, so the other one is...there." If the site he'd found was accurate and he was picking out the right stars.

He stopped and glanced up, taking in all the stars overhead for a moment. "This really is pretty great."

[myownface]

"Kind of goes on forever," Sparkle replied, smiling lopsidedly and flopping back onto the grass to look at the whole stretch of it up above them. "You know, I never really cared about this sort of thing back home. Way, way too much light up there to really pull it off, you know?"

[what_the_shock]

"Yeah," Miguel agreed. "Not that Nueva York's lights can't be pretty on their own, but you really don't get to see the stars."

He lay back, too, just looking up. With his eyesight, the sky was filled with stars, the Milky Way a distinct band across it. "Nice."

[myownface]

"Nice," Sparkle agreed. "It's stupid, for as long as I've been here, I never thought to do this before."

And now he kind of regretted that.

[what_the_shock]

"Glad you did now," Miguel said. "This is nice. Peaceful. Pretty."

[myownface]

"All of those things," Sparkle agreed, and then kind of laughed and turned a grin toward Miguel. "I feel like I should thank you for having great arms, now. If you didn't, and if I wasn't so shameless and shallow, I totally wouldn't be out here doing this right now."

He was probably joking.

But not completely joking.

[what_the_shock]

Miguel laughed. "My arms thank you. And the rest of me." He grinned back at Sparkle. "My eyes, too. This is really something."

[myownface]

"It really is," Sparkle replied with a little nod, settling back into the grass and smiling up at the sky. "I guess this place isn't so bad all of the time, after all."