fandomtownies | Caritas, Sunday

"Tino," Sparkle called as he stepped into the bar. "Tino, I need a fucking dr--Atton!"

Look, Sparkle hadn't expected Atton was going to be here tonight. He'd just had a long, stupid day at work, he still had like four Big Bad Wolf designs to crank out for Wednesday, Seivarden was a grade-A asshole, and he wanted to spend tonight smashed.

Which he was willing to forget about for just one moment, because it was far more important that he take a flying tackle to throw his arms around Atton.

... He'd been missed.

"Hey, Spark--"

That was about as far as Atton got before getting the wind knocked out of him. "--ss!"

Don't worry, Atton. Sparkle wasn't going to be velcro for too long. He was going to just kind of cling like a limpet for a few seconds and then ease off, smiling sheepishly.

"Uh. Hey. Look at you, you're back! Hi."

HE'D HAD A DAY.

Edited 2018-01-14 18:24 (UTC)

"Yeah, I got in like five minutes ago," Atton said, "Uh, good to see you too, I guess."

Don't mind him, he was just getting that wind back.

Sparkle actually had the decency to look apologetic. So, there was that?

"Shit. Didn't even let you get settled, huh?"

"I was about to start looking for the whiskey," Atton said. "You want whiskey? Tino, where's the drinks?"

"I want whiskey," Sparkle agreed, because god, nothing sounded better in just that moment than a stupid amount of something hard to help put the day behind him. "It was a whiskey kind of trip, huh?"

Sparkle, you didn't know the half of it.

"I've gotten shot at about a million times, I've been blown up, I've been part of a massive army on the streets of future Coruscant, and Sia's an empress now," Atton said, "And that only brings us up to last week. How's Fandom been?"

Sparkle opened his mouth to reply, but it just sort of hung that way for a few seconds, instead.

Okay. He'd figured Atton's trip was going to be eventful, but jeeze.

"... I have a shitload of homework and for some fucking stupid reason, I decided to teach again."

That was pretty much most if it, Seivarden business aside.

Atton probably needed the whiskey more.

"And Sia jumped me on my way out the door, so now you're not the only one to make out with someone who gets called 'your Imperial highness' on a regular basis," Atton added, screwing the top off the bottle and taking a big swig. "How's teaching?"

Huh. Well, there was a club Sparkle hadn't figured Atton would ever join. Not because of the Imperial highness bit. More because of the making out with anybody at all part.

"... I mean, it's teaching," he replied, just flat-out blinking while he processed this new development. "I think I had an argument with my TA about injustice and fucking thought-crimes last week, which was an interesting development in a class where we were supposed to just be talking about human needs. So... Fandom students are still Fandom students, I guess."

He paused, and then tilted his head a little.

"Should, like, I be offering you a high-five or something right now?"

Atton made out with somebody. That seemed deserving of... something? Maybe just more whiskey.

Hey, now. It wasn't like Atton had been a complete monk.

"Okay, that feels insulting somehow," Atton said. "What do I look like, a college frat boy?" Beat. "Oh space, arguments with self-righteous students, I do not miss that."

Nah, but with someone he knew and presumably respected, instead of just the Twi'lek dancer down the street that he'd never see again?

"I don't know!" He hadn't even had any whiskey yet, and already Sparkle was flailing around. "College frat boys are easier!"

Well, they were.

"And I don't even know if she was self-righteous. She was arguing that curiosity and critical thinking were dangerous, and I was just, like..." He was flailing some more. "Like holy shit, if you can get shot for having fucking opinions, the problem probably isn't your critical thinking skills, oh my god."

"Too much information," Atton said immediately, and then segued into, "What? Okay, who brainwashed this kid?"

"Probably whoever had her friend shot," Sparkle replied, only after taking a moment to stick out his tongue at Atton over the too much info comment. "Like, it's obvious she's seen some shit, but she never struck me as somebody who thought having a mind of your own could be a bad thing."

Not that they'd met much before class, but still.

"Like, she's throwing me off more than the girl I think was raised in... either a slum or a penal colony. Not that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive."

"Maybe she's reading you wrong," Atton offered. "Or she doesn't put A and B together - her thoughts and the concept at large. Sometimes it happens with these kids, especially if they're traumatized."

Sparkle fell silent for a moment, and then nodded a little.

"I mean... I've seen traumatized kids. Grew up surrounded by them. But the kinds of traumas that people bring to the table here are... fucking something else," he sighed. "I can't even begin to guess at what things were really like there, if she's come to accept the idea that just being able to process thought is dangerous enough to be a threat to one's life."

And he was almost curious enough to ask Seivarden, since he'd already gathered they were from the same reality. But he had already promised Breq that he wouldn't mention her presence here to her and didn't want to accidentally give her away without realizing, and he didn't entirely trust Seivarden with conversations like that, anyway.

Atton snorted softly.

He took a glass from the bar and poured some whiskey into it. "It makes sense to me, if you're talking self-preservation," he said finally. "That's a little like why I left the Sith."

There was probably an opening for some kind of 'the Sith weren't big on thinking' quip there, but considering the topic, Sparkle didn't much feel like digging to find it anyway.

"That bad, huh?"

That seemed a little more appropriate.

"They had ways of figuring out what was going on inside people," Atton said, shrugging. "The moment I found out I was Force sensitive... they'd find out sooner or later. It's not quite the same as having the wrong opinions, obviously. But simply knowing that little tidbit put me in danger."

Sparkle reached a hand up to scratch at his cheek, processing that.

"Guess I'm going to have to figure out how to teach my class in a way that'll be useful for people who have, like, fucking Big Brother staring down at them, too."

Next semester he was going to just teach Show and Tell again. Goddammit.

"Why do you think I put this much effort into making myself telepathy-proof?" Atton said. "And why I keep trying to imprint on people that there are ways to do that? Because trust me, there's no end to the line of people who'll abuse that power if they get the chance."

"I still forget about the telepathy thing a lot," Sparkle confessed. "Since it's not a thing back home. Or if it is, people are really good at hiding it. I think what my student was talking about was more... acting on those thoughts, but she was so adamant that having thoughts like that at all was the danger."

It was... scary. It was actually fucking terrifying, having students take a class like his, not being able to fully grasp what it was he was supposed to be preparing them for.

"And that's just the student who spoke up. I just finished class two and I feel more out of my depth than I did the whole fucking semester I was teaching it the first time around."

"Is this the wrong time to point out you - and Karina - back in the day were those students for a few people at this school?" Atton said. "Not bringing this up to rag on you, but you maybe you should think about the times you got upset with a teacher about the way they were approaching their subject. What would you've liked to hear from the teacher?"

Sparkle wrinkled his nose a little. Yeah, his mind was going right back to that one Ethics class. That one. The one with the line.

He sighed.

"I mean, just to be clear, I was halfway being that student just to be a spiteful little shit," he noted. "I don't think that's what she was going for."

Sparkle had had a lot of points to prove. Mostly about how all his teachers were probably just wasting their time even making the attempt, with him. Still, he pursed his lips for a moment, actually giving it some thought.

"... Hell of it was, in the end, it wasn't the teachers telling me what I wanted to hear that did me the most good. It was the ones who weren't afraid to tell me the shit I hated hearing. They had it figured out."

Atton shrugged. "That's also a good place to start, I guess," he said. "Did you?"

"I don't know," Sparkle muttered. "The ones who did that were smart."

And were also generally the first teachers he'd blown it with, with his own stupid tendency to latch on aggressively to people who treated him like a person. He ran a hand through his hair, and then sighed.

"I guess the other option is just... I don't know. Listening. It'd be weird to ask if she wants to talk about it after class, wouldn't it? Like, 'hey, I guess you're from some kind of oppressive regime that kills people for thinking, maybe would you like to tell me about that?' seems a little forward."

"You could just make it a general invitation," Atton suggested. "Y'know, an if-anyone-wants-to-talk-after-class thing. Like a, uh, subtle teacher."

Sure. Subtle.

Sparkle kind of stared at Atton at that.

"Think anybody on the island would buy that I can be subtle?"

"Maybe if you bring it as over the top as you possibly can, it'll somehow turn subtle?" Atton, after a brief moment of consideration.

"... Huh." Sparkle tilted his head at that. "Okay, so I'm going to need a megaphone, and maybe to get up on top of one of the desks..."

"Bring a lot of glitter, maybe a sign," Atton agreed, nodding along.

"It's gotta be a neon sign," Sparkle declared. "Possibly just stolen right out of a bar or something. You know, like one of the ones that flashes, 'OPEN' in big red letters?"

"And you can add a whole song and dance routine, like one of those old-fashioned magic shows," Atton added. "You know, end it on a big, dramatic wave at the sign."

"Shit, I love it," Sparkle laughed. "But where am I going to find a half dozen doves around here for the grand finale?"

Caritas, Sunday

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