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 knew Sparkle worked at PYP on Wednesdays, so he headed over there with a small cardboard bakery box. The fumes coming out of the store almost staggered him, but his will was strong so he entered and just tried not to breathe.

"Sparkle? What the hell, are you trying to kill your sense of smell?" Then he looked at what was going on, at how obsessive it was, and frowned, "What's wrong?"

[myownface]

"I'm fine," Sparkle ground out between his teeth, punctuating both of those syllables with another hard scrub. "Everything's fine. It's fine. Why would anything be wrong?"

... He was clearly full of horse shit, there.

"I'm not, like, fucking pissed off or worried or anything. Why would I be any of those things?"

There was a lot of scrubbing happening, here.

[spectre_alenko]

"Uh huh," Kaidan said, not buying it, "You tell me - why would you be pissed off or worried? If you were, which, you know, you're not. But if you were, why?"

[myownface]

Sparkle sat up and glowered down at the floor.

"If I was worried, which I'm not, it would be because my fucking asshole of a roommate went and got himself shot in the guts," he muttered. "And if I was pissed off, it'd be at my own idiot self for not calling him on his bullshit when I knew he was lying right to my fucking face about the shit that led up to it happening."

He lifted his scrub brush into the air, and then chucked it at the floor. Hard. A piece of plastic snapped from the handle and skittered under a shelf somewhere.

"But I'm not worried and I'm not pissed off, I'm just cleaning the fucking floor."

... Sorry, Kaidan.

[spectre_alenko]

Oh, Atton. You utter asshole. Kaidan understood exactly why he would lie to Sparkle about going into a situation where he could, let's say, get shot in the guts, but still. Dick move, bro.

"He went into a dangerous situation, knowing it was dangerous, and let you believe it was a cakewalk," Kaidan translated, "He got hurt. Did they get him into a tank in time?"

[myownface]

"Yeah," Sparkle replied, glowering at the floor, "he was stable when I made it back there Sunday night. It was fucking ugly, but Atton's too stubborn to die, anyway."

Which was good. Anybody else wouldn't have made it.

"Kolto's pretty good shit," he muttered. "At least there's that."

[spectre_alenko]

"Stable is good," Kaidan said, leaving out everything about gut wounds and sepsis. Sparkle didn't need to hear that, and who knew, Kolto might take care of that too. "How are you holding up? Besides the fury, worry, and cleaning?"

[myownface]

"Oh besides that never better," Sparkle sighed, and then picked up the brush and frowned at it, scratching at the broken handle with one fingernail. Those had clearly been neglected since Sunday, too; the paint was pretty badly chipped. "I mean, there hasn't been much besides that. Freaked out at an old mutual friend of Atton's and mine for a while. That was... nice, I guess?"

Karina was good for freaking out at. She was eternally cool-headed. Mostly.

[spectre_alenko]

"Is there anything I can do?" Kaidan asked. Sighing, he put the box on the counter, "Oddly enough, that's for Atton, not that he's in a condition to eat it. We were at a bakery yesterday and they had caramel bombe. I thought he might like it, since he likes caramel coffee. I didn't know he'd been hurt."

[myownface]

"I don't think anyone really knows," Sparkle admitted, looking at the bakery box, and then pulling himself to his feet with a sigh. "I mean, like, Mical called me. I called Karina. That's about as far as the word went. Shit, people are going to throttle me for not calling it around."

Skywalker, Cade, Sia... who the hell else did Atton hang around with?

People, anyway.

[spectre_alenko]

"Would Atton want people to know he was hurt?" Kaidan asked. God knew HE wouldn't want all the fuss. He'd hated his time in the hospital. The only person he'd wanted to see was John, because John didn't know how to fuss.

"And you didn't answer the question."

[myownface]

"I never know how to answer that question," Sparkle muttered after a long pause. "I don't even know what I can do."

He made a frustrated sound and glowered at the scrub brush.

"I can clean floors."

He hated feeling helpless almost as much as the rest of it.

[spectre_alenko]

"I didn't mean for Atton," Kaidan clarified.

[myownface]

"Oh." Sparkle stood there awkwardly for a moment, and then dropped his brush back into the bucket he'd been using. "I... don't know."

He was great at knowing what he needed. He was terrible at trusting people enough to be able to ask for it.

"But... thanks."

[spectre_alenko]

"Would a hug help, or would it harm?" Kaidan asked, eyeing the amount of awkward the question had instigated.

[myownface]

"It would..." Sparkle kind of hung on that for a moment. "... I'd probably cry."

Well. That was three words of brutal honesty, right there. Shit.

"And now I'm worried that if I do, maybe I am oversensitive," he added, in a much quieter mutter.

Sparkle, your best friend's guts had been burned into by a blaster bolt.

[spectre_alenko]

Kaidan ...growled. There was no other word for that noise, really. He invaded Sparkle's personal space and pulled him into a hug. "She's a bitch, and she's wrong," he all but snarled, "You're lucid, which is better off than I'd be if it were one of my friends, and I dare her to say that about me. I'd 'oversensitive' her head straight off her fucking neck."

[myownface]

Sparkle made a little "Mmm--?" As he was pulled into that hug, mostly surprised by it. It was nice in a big protective kind of way, the way he used to think hugs from Lewis had been, back when he'd been head-over-heels for the man.

He blew out a little breath, anyway, and ducked his head, and muttered, "She just... fucking assumed it was nothing. Didn't even know why I was crying all over you, but I was clearly having an oversensitive episode or something, that time we first met. That's why I've been so pissed off about it. It was never about fucking tea."

This was a lot easier than talking about Atton. He still wanted to scream and cry and hit things, when it was about Atton. Seivarden was a good distraction, if temporary.

[spectre_alenko]

Big and protective, he could do. He tilted his chin and stared down at the top of Sparkle's head, "I don't think she'd have understood if you'd told her. I don't think she's capable of empathy."

[myownface]

"She is," Sparkle muttered, "when she doesn't have her head so far up her own ass that she can inspect her own tonsils. She gets things, when she wants to. She just never wants to. And that's what makes it so fucking frustrating when she pulls shit like that."

He huffed out a little breath, pressing his face into Kaidan's chest and muttering, "I'm oversensitive because every time she sees me upset, it's because of some bullshit she's pulled and she can do no wrong, that's all."

[spectre_alenko]

His arms tightened a little. "You're not. She's wrong. You have a right to your feelings. It's ok to cry when you're upset, angry, in pain. If people in her universe think it's not, then they're just seriously fucked up and thank god I'm not from there. I go to fucking pieces when my friends are hurt. In the moment, I'm good and useful, but the second I have to sit there helpless, waiting on a doctor or just waiting on time? I'm a wreck."

[myownface]

Sparkle had seen Seivarden cry too, was the hell of it. He frowned, and closed his eyes, and then tried like hell to bite back a little mewling sound in the back of his throat, to little avail.

"I hate it," he complained. "The being useless. Everyone else here can fucking hold their own and I get to be the one who doesn't get told shit because I'll go get myself killed, and then I get phone calls at work, oh, your best fucking friend's gotten hurt again, there's even a chance he won't die and there's fuck-all I can do about that either. What the fuck can I do? I can clean floors."

[spectre_alenko]

"As far as Jedi are concerned, it's their job to protect everyone else," Kaidan said, "It's annoying, I agree. I'm a soldier, I'm trained six ways from Sunday how to kill people, and my best friend would've done the same damn thing yours did, likely for the same damn reason. If he got hurt, there's nothing I could do about it, except be there for him when he got out, and kick his ass up to his shoulders about it once he'd healed up enough for said ass kicking. Sometimes, all you can do, is be the reminder of why they do this stupid hero shit in the first place. You be the reason they fight to come back home." He looked around, "And you burn off the anxiety any way you can. If cleaning is your method, so be it. Starch his damn underwear."

[myownface]

"Cleaning was a better idea than spitefully burning down the temple," Sparkle muttered.

Because it was true on a few different levels, really.

"There's merit to that starch thing, though."

Sparkle, don't starch Atton's underwear.

[spectre_alenko]

"That was definitely a better idea than burning down the place you're living," Kaidan noted dryly, "Especially if that's where they're storing your pickled friend." He seemed almost amused, "Did you clean his room there, too?"