fandomtownies | Pick Your Poison, Wednesday

Kaidan showed up, and while his eyes were puffy like he'd been run over a mile of bad road and his fingernail polish was a total horror show, he seemed clear and cogent enough. Though he possibly smelled faintly of something called 'Vanilla Breeze', since that's what it said on the bottle of bodywash he'd used to scrub off the used vodka scent coming out of his pores that morning.

Sparkle looked..well.. better than he had the last time Kaidan saw him, which he thought might be good. "Hey, Sparkle. How're you?" he asked, entering the store.

"You know," Sparkle replied, "pretty sure my roomie is avoiding me, but he's not dead or anything, so I'm--"

He turned to face Kaidan and paused a moment.

"... Better than you. What rickshaw ran you over last night?"

"He's alive, he's stubborn, and he probably is avoiding you because he knows he's got at least one solid headslap coming to him," Kaidan confirmed, "Bumped into him in the park the other day. Told him you had cake for him. We had.. a really long talk."

Kaidan scrubbed a hand through his hair, "Nothing ran me over. Except maybe everything did. Some of the things Atton said hit home in a big way, because he could have been talking about the best friend I have on this island. Except they're separated by about five thousand years." He shrugged a shoulder, "And since both of them are of the 'no, we can't possibly have feelings, we are Jedi and Jedi don't do that whole feelings thing'.. I decided to invite some vodka over and have some feelings for them."

....That made sense in his head. It sounded worse, spoken.

Sparkle's head tilted progressively further to the side the more words came out of Kaidan's mouth.

When he thought of Atton Rand, the last thing he thought of was somebody who didn't do feelings. Maybe he wasn't public about them, but they were definitely there, being shitty and simmering under the surface until yelling or spectacular malfunctions happened.

Which was maybe one of the reasons they got along so well.

Skirting sideways from that, he decided to go a different route, instead.

"... You have feelings for them?"

Because Sparkle would never not be a little shit.

"Someone has to," Kaidan said, frowning a little.

Oh, Kaidan.

Sparkle was kind of staring, now.

Such a clueless boy.

"Yeah," he said, at length. "I guess someone does. Not that you getting yourself all fucked up is going to do either of them any real good, is it?"

Come on, Kaidan. He knew 'freshly fucked up' like the back of his hand.

"Getting good and fucked up helped deal with the amount of good I can't do either of them," Kaidan clarified. He scrubbed a hand through his hair.

Sparkle squinted at him in silence for a few moments more. And then said, "We should go drinking sometime."

Because Sparkle and life choices. Really.

"You know you don't have to, like, do anything for Atton? He's been through hell, but... like... he doesn't want your help anyway, I promise."

"I don't, generally," Kaidan said, "Drink, I mean. Usually I limit it to a couple beers unless it's for therapeutic effects, like last night."

His hand scrubbed through his hair again, "Atton's not the type who'd want my help even if he damn well needed it, though if he did need it and I could help, I would and he could scream at me all he wanted afterward. This isn't about him. His war is, from what I understand, over. He's just not the only Jedi I know. Padawan. Fuck. Whatever."

"Atton's no Padawan," Sparkle noted mildly, tilting his head a little. He'd point out that drinking was a... kind of bad therapeutic decision, but he really didn't have a leg to stand on, here. "So you got all fucked up because of something Atton told you, and... now what?"

"Now?" Kaidan asked, "I see whether a timeline thousands of years before my friend's timeline is willing to do anything to stop a purge still in progress." He shrugged and handed over the unsealed envelope containing the letter he'd written that morning, "Next time you're home, if you're willing to help me, give that to the head of the temple you live it?"

"If they're not willing to help," Kaidan continued after a breath, "I go looking for help elsewhere."

Sparkle took the letter and kind of frowned at it for a moment. Head of the temple? Mical, maybe? Mical... probably.

"I mean, they have plenty of their own shit to sort out," he noted. "And a few thousand years is a long time. But I can pass it on. See if the future of the order is as important to them as the present..."

It wasn't his place to decide, anyway.

"I need to go back to get my fish, anyway. I'm sticking around here a little more, these days."

Since Atton got shot. A little more since then.

"If the future of the order isn't important to them, so be it," Kaidan said calmly, "It's their right to say no. If they do, I go looking for help through other avenues. The island is a nexus to at least several dozen realities. I'm sure I can find some help somewhere."

He tilted his head a little, "Keeping an eye on your stubborn-ass roommate?"

Sparkle shrugged again.

"Here's home," he replied. "My stubborn-ass roommate is the only reason I was on Coruscant in the first place. There's nothing there if there's no Atton, I mean."

Except his fish. Who he was going back to get.

That was adorable. Kaidan was absolutely not telling Sparkle how adorable that was.

"And your fish, of course," Kaidan noted.

"Milady is the best fucking fish and I need to go back to get him, right," Sparkle agreed, making his way toward the counter and pulling his backpack out from behind it so that he could tuck the letter in there. "I dunno. He's family. I get being worried about him, but self-medicating with booze isn't gonna do shit for anyone. Been there, tried that."

Edited 2018-07-25 18:11 (UTC)

"Isn't Atton I'm worried about," Kaidan clarified, "He's just too damn stubborn for his own good. Mostly, it was that I've been hanging around Jedi or.. whatever, fuck that, I'm calling him that even if it's not what he is.. hanging around Jedi too much, and I know what my average level of emotion can do to them. I've been pretty well locked down for awhile now. Booze was the lubrication on the drawbridge to that wall, so to speak. Crying's usually not a chore for me, but after the last few weeks, it took some work to get to."

Sparkle zipped up his bag again, and then turned and hiked himself up to sit on the edge of the counter.

"... Sounds like you all need a swift kick in the ass," he informed Kaidan. "And I say this as someone who fucking melts down. Spectacularly. Next time you're gonna drink yourself to tears, at least, like, have someone around. Call me. Don't even fucking argue, I don't give a shit that you're gonna be a sobbing mess or whatever, don't be a moron."

Kaidan tilted his head, "What makes you think I was drinking alone?"

Sparkle's 'bitch, please' look was fabulously on point, here.

"Because we've met like five times and I already know you well enough to put money on how you'd rather claw out your own eyes than inconvenience somebody for something you think is a self-indulgent emotional train wreck," he pointed out. "Am I wrong?"

Kaidan smiled faintly, "Yes. I had a babysitter."

He hadn't planned to have a babysitter, but Hernando had been rather insistent.

Sparkle squinted a little.

"Well. Good. Don't stop having babysitters, then."

Do as he said, not as he did, and all that.

"No promises," Kaidan said, then followed up with, "Like I said, it's not a normal thing for me. This is the most alcohol I've had since I hauled Peter out for his birthday and wound up accidentally tipsy on cake-flavored vodka." He thought for a moment, "It helped. My brain was a lot clearer this morning."

You wouldn't think it would be, considering.

Sparkle was still frowning, anyway.

"So long as you don't figure that's how it usually works," he hedged. "Because that's pretty much never been my experience."

He shrugged, and then reached for an un-lit stick of incense to just kind of roll between his fingers.

"Feel better now, anyway?"

"Most people would have hangovers, they drank what I did last night," Kaidan shrugged, "I don't. Maybe it's different for me. I feel like someone kicked me in the sinuses, but that's the crying, not the drinking, caused that."

"Better? No. More clear-headed and with some ideas instead of a starched void of helplessness? Yeah. So, y'know, progress."

"Well, don't make a habit of it," Sparkle muttered. Because the pot was now giving the kettle instructions for proper self-care. "You're gonna make people worry about you, asshole."

Now you had done it, Kaidan. Sparkle cared enough to call you names in the same sentence as he admitted he gave a shit.

He shrugged a shoulder, "Should I say the same to you? Would you listen if I did? Because if you will, I will totally repeat all of this back to you."

"I haven't been properly hammered in ages," Sparkle muttered. "Not since it went legit shitty on me that one time."

That wasn't answering Kaidan's question.

But it kind of was?

"Do you need to?" Kaidan wondered aloud, since Sparkle had made an earlier comment about going drinking together, "Because if you need me to babysit, I can do that."

Sparkle was quiet for a few moments.

"Hell if I even know anymore," he admitted with a sigh. "I get a big mouth when I drink. I'll say shit. I'll probably get snot on you. I might try to break into someone's house."

There were reasons he needed babysitting, generally.

Kaidan eyed him, one eyebrow arched, "Is this shit you would rather not have heard by someone, or just general jaw-jacking? If it's stuff that would cause morning-after regret, that's probably a bad plan. The rest doesn't bother me. I could probably convince you to find a different outlet than breaking into someone's house."

"It's..." Sparkle frowned a little. "Some of it is shit I shouldn't talk about, anyway."

Like Hannibal, for example. Sometimes he needed to do a lot of drinking and bitching about the cannibal he used to wish had adopted him.

"Then I'm probably the wrong babysitter," Kaidan said with a single-shoulder shrug, "For that, you probably need someone who already knows what it's about. I mean, my security clearance is the highest you can have but that doesn't mean anything in this galaxy."

Sparkle was quiet at that.

There was the tricky bit, wasn't it? As far as he was aware, there wasn't anyone who knew.

So he just kind of hiked a shoulder up a little.

"Guess so."

"Being someone else's secret keeper sucks," Kaidan said, "but if there's ever a time you need to vent about things you can talk about, we can always go to the gun range."

The hell of it was, it was a secret that Sparkle absolutely loathed keeping.

It was a secret he wished he wasn't too much of a coward to share. And even he wasn't sure if it was because he was afraid of losing whoever he told, or of losing Hannibal.

"The gun range?"

Kaidan nodded, "Shooting the absolute hell out of things is another good way to blow off steam, and I did offer to teach you how to use a gun."

"You did," Sparkle agreed, fidgeting a little. "It'd be a more productive use of my time than getting all fucked up and stealing forks, I guess."

You know. Probably.

"Probably," Kaidan agreed, "I mean, unless you need forks for something."

"I've got plenty of forks," Sparkle sighed. "And there's like no sport in stealing them from the temple. Nobody even gives a shit, there."

Or if they did, they had yet to bring it up with him. Possibly because he got bored and put them back eventually. There wasn't any sport in it.

Kaidan's turn to squint at Sparkle. "Are you pouting that your thefts are unpunished?"

"It's more boring if nobody even cares."

Sparkle shrugged. What was even the point if nobody was upset, right? He could go back to breaking into rich people's houses and taking useless shit they'd never miss, at least when he did that it was more about being somewhere he wasn't supposed to be, but the only 'rich people house' on the island was Hannibal's. And that way only led to madness.

"Well, if you stole things people cared about, it'd go from being some sort of strange sport to just plain mean," Kaidan pointed out.

"They probably started it anyway," Sparkle muttered.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Pick Your Poison, Wednesday

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