Pick Your Poison, Wednesday

[myownface]

Sparkle came in to work today twenty minutes late and immediately set to cleaning the place.

It didn't need much in the way of cleaning, but didn't today seem like a good day to just, like, deep scrub the floors?

Sure did.

Pick Your Poison was open, and it had a door open because otherwise someone was going to get high on cleaning solution fumes, and that was not actually the goal here today.

[OOC: Open!]

Comments

[spectre_alenko]

Kaidan, stop enabling Sparkle's petty.

"Better than a kitten, I suppose," Kaidan ventured.

[myownface]

"Atton hates cats," Sparkle muttered. "I'd have one, but that stupid asshole is more important to me than a housepet, anyway."

Which was why his phone had about a million photos of a fish, instead.

[spectre_alenko]

"Best stick to plants, then. Hat, googly eyes, nametags," Kaidan agreed. "Did the doctors give you a timeline?"

[myownface]

Sparkle shrugged.

"The kolto will work at whatever rate kolto works. It's still a miracle he's not dead, apparently he smacked the ground hard and tore open the burns when he fell."

He squirmed a little, and then exhaled it all in another shaky breath.

"I have no fucking clue. I just want to take him and shake him and I can't."

[spectre_alenko]

"No, for that you have to wait until he's fully healed," Kaidan agreed, "and then you shake him until his teeth rattle. Possibly with shouting."

God knew that's what he'd wanted to do, the few times John had gotten hurt. He hadn't, but only just.

[myownface]

"If I'm pissed enough, maybe he'll give me a freebie," Sparkle mused, and then huffed out a rough little laugh and pulled back, claiming his personal bubble again. "If not, I will clean his room."

[spectre_alenko]

Kaidan let go, now that Sparkle seemed less fragile. "Maybe. I don't really know the guy, I can't say."

[myownface]

"But you brought him dessert," Sparkle noted, faintly bemused. "You trying to butter him up for something?"

[spectre_alenko]

"Not really? I felt I owed him for taking one for the team with Seivarden," Kaidan said, "But if it'll buy enough goodwill for him to tell me about his galaxy, all the better."

[myownface]

"I mean, you get him bitching and you'll get to hear about that for free," Sparkle noted. "Why you wanna know, anyway?"

[spectre_alenko]

"Never met a Twi'lek before Hera," Kaidan shrugged, "She doesn't seem to want to talk about home. I'm curious. This galaxy is close enough to the one I'm from that it's damn near parallel, but theirs? Different, and thus, interesting."

Because he'd never, y'know, asked her about it.

[myownface]

Sparkle tilted his head a little, but shrugged and let that slide.

"It's a lot bigger than I'm used to," he offered. "More dangerous. But that probably has just as much to do with the idiot I run around with. Going around asking other people about a home someone doesn't want to talk to you about seems a little, uh, stalky, though. Which probably isn't what you're aiming for? You seem more decent than that. But you wanna keep an eye out for it, hey?"

[spectre_alenko]

"From what I understand, her folk aren't treated very well over there," Kaidan said, "I'd rather make sure I don't bump into topics that she might find sensitive. I don't even know if Atton knows anything about it, he's not from the same timeline, from what I understand. Just knowing about the galaxy in general might help give me a feel for things I should avoid. At least it doesn't sound like something Atton wouldn't want to talk about. His galaxy, I mean."

[myownface]

Sparkle had been to Nar Shaddaa. Yeah, he had some idea of how her people were treated over there.

"Galaxy's a mess," Sparkle offered. "Sounds like that's a constant no matter what timeline people come from."

[spectre_alenko]

"Sounds unpleasant," Kaidan frowned. Granted, he hadn't heard anything yet that made him believe it ever wasn't.

[myownface]

"Isn't everywhere?"

Sparkle shrugged.

"Everywhere with people, anyway."

[spectre_alenko]

"No," Kaidan said firmly, "So far, the only consistent awful I've found has been where the humans are."

[myownface]

Sparkle cast Kaidan a little side-eye at that, and then he shrugged a little.

"Humans suck," he allowed. He couldn't deny that one. He'd seen some non-humans doing some horrible shit over the years too, but hey. Humans sucked. "Guess what one of the most common races is in that galaxy, either way."

[spectre_alenko]

"I think maybe that's why things aren't so bad, where I'm from," Kaidan shrugged, "We're outnumbered and outgunned by races who've had certain laws since before the Industrial Revolution."

[myownface]

Sparkle managed a wry smile.

"I mean... I'll believe they're all better than we are when I see them," he replied. "But it does sound great. Besides how we apparently need fucking babysitters in order to not be trash at everything we touch."

[spectre_alenko]

"Oh, they have their flaws," Kaidan said wryly. Like releasing a genophage on another species, or killing off inorganic lives they'd created, "On the whole, things sound like they were better there, but maybe that's just the devil I know. The other races had more time to evolve and learn to play nice in the galactic sandbox."

[myownface]

Yeah, attempts at xenocide didn't exactly give anybody the right to claiming a moral high ground.

"Maybe it is," Sparkle agreed. "I'm willing to bet there'd be people from here and now who would be just as fucked up about the way things are where you're from as you are about shit here."

[spectre_alenko]

"Likely true," Kaidan agreed, "especially if they arrived there before the war. Right now, every species is too stupified and focused on rebuilding to bother anyone else."

[myownface]

"Distractions have a funny way of doing that," Sparkle noted. "Give it another, what, fifty, sixty years, and then see if you've got yourself a utopia or not."

He shrugged.

"People suck."

[spectre_alenko]

"I'm a soldier, I'd have nothing to do in a utopia," Kaidan said wryly, "I don't think any galaxy is, and wouldn't want to go there if it were, but places without rampant ugliness? Sure. They must exist somewhere."