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Pick Your Poison, Friday

Ino came into her shop with a bounce in her step today. She always did love showing off her plants and some of them really deserved admiration.

She stopped and blinked at just… how… clean her shop was.

Wow.

Wow, Sparkle had outdone himself.

So she was also going to send him a text as she opened up the place and waited for Hernando to come by.

Pick Your Poison is Open!

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It took Sparkle about twenty minutes before he finally trudged his way into the shop, a box of donuts in his hand because... hey, maybe he'd kind of taken a roundabout route and was procrastinating a little.

He set the box on the counter.

"Hey."

Ino squinted at him, taking in his appearance, even as she came around the counter to hug him briefly.

"You look terrible," she said, since tact was for other people. But it was true, he did. "Get your ass up to my lab. There's a shower on the left. Use it."

He was going to come out of it smelling like freesia and vanilla, but his skin and hair would be silky smooth.

"Once you're dressed, I'll have tea ready for you. Get."

Sparkle blinked at her, but didn't argue, nodding and kind of slinking his way to the shower.

Which he took longer in than was strictly necessary, but he'd been bad at functioning for nearly a week now, and all his crazed cleaning sadly hadn't translated into actual self-care very well.

So it was a good forty minutes before he finally slunk back out, hair still damp, eyes on the floor. Hey. He could see himself in it. Good job, past Sparkle.

Forty minutes had given her a lot of time to do things.

Ino studied him. The clothes she'd switched his out for fit well enough--not perfectly, but not terribly either since she hadn't wanted to break into his place and had invaded Demon Marcus instead.

(She'd left the money and tags on the counter there.)

And he looked better, if still rather pathetic.

"Much better," she decided. It was a start. She nudged him, gently, towards the stool. Egg drop soup awaited him, along with some crackers. Ino couldn't cook like Hannibal, but she could do that, and easily. "Eat," she said, "the tea'll be ready shortly."

Once he'd sat down, she was going to stick a blanket around his shoulders. Not a heavy one, but a soft one. For comfort.

Sparkle was... not exactly weirded out by all of the attention, but was, at least, a little bit bemused by it. That was not stopping him from hunkering down in that blanket, though, and making a reach for one of the crackers.

"... Thanks," he said, biting his lip. "You don't need to... like... all this."

Ino thought of smacking him for that, but he looked like a beaten dog, so... no.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said, genuinely surprised. "Of course I do. You're my minion."

"... Is that how that works?"

He'd been Electroclash's sidekick, once. She'd never wrapped him in soft warm things before. This was a weird adjustment.

Not a bad one. But a weird one.

"Of course it is," Ino said easily. "I have staked a claim on you, ergo, if you're feeling like shit or need a hand or anything at all, that means I'm obligated to help you out. Furthermore, I'm rather fond of you, obnoxious minion that you are, and would be doing this anyway, even if you weren't my minion, so don't get shit in your head 'bout this bein' just 'cause you work for me."

Sparkle's mouth pulled in a slight quirk of a smile.

"I mean," he ventured, "we've like gone to the zoo and stuff together. Kinda figured that was a friends thing."

"Prescisely," Ino said loftily, though in some moods she'd go to the zoo with an enemy because, hell, that sounded amusing. "But I wanted to pre-empt any doubt on your part just in case."

Sparkle fidgeted, and then he nodded.

"Okay," he replied. "Thanks."

And then he sat there awkwardly for a moment, just holding a cracker in his hand.

"Could get used to the minion treatment, here."

"Then get used to it," Ino said, reaching out to ruffle his hair. "'Cause you're mine and you're just gonna have to cope."

By being fussed at, the horrors.

"I'm bad at letting go of people." She really, really was. There was a reason Lucille was still on the payroll. "You want any kind of tea in particular?"

"Something that is more candy than tea," Sparkle decided. "Or something that's more bitter than anything. I can't decide yet, but I probably need, like, a kick in the face right now, and that's the next best thing."

"You don't want me to kick you in the face anyway," Ino said, since it was true. Ino wasn't nearly as strong as Zack but she kicked like a truck for someone her size, even before she augmented that with chakra. "Eat your soup and I'll figure out tea."

Sparkle nodded and quietly reached for the soup. He hadn't had an appetite in a few days, and now he was realizing both how hungry he was, and how thankful he was that she had prepared simple foods for him to get down.

"Thanks," he said, quietly. "For... this."

Those donuts were going to go ignored. He didn't really want them anyway. He'd just needed a detour.

Hernando made his way to Iris' shop after work. He was getting better at reading the map and finding his way around. He stepped inside and his eyes widened at the very well kept store. "Hello, Miss Iris. What a very clean store you have."

"Hello, Hernando!"

A beat.

"Do you mind if I call you that?" she checked, since he was pulling out the whole 'Miss' thing. "And thanks, though I can't take credit for it. One of my minions is having a rough time and stress cleaned."

Like. A lot. It was terrifyingly clean.

"I do not mind," Hernando smiled. He looked around the shop and said, "They did a very good job."

Happy Friday!

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