suitably_heroic | Atton's Office, Saturday

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Atton's Office, Saturday

Talking to Mira again that morning had actually been a pretty good thing - gave Atton a little energy boost he sorely needed. Okay, all he was planning to spend that energy on was going home and maybe watching something on TV, but still: energy. It was nice.

Had been nice, anyway. It lasted all the way down to the hotel lobby, where he'd bumped into Mical and suddenly his life had gotten a whole lot worse. Now he couldn't go home, because Mical would follow him there and talk at him and that was the absolute last thing he wanted to deal with. So instead he'd told the guy he had work to do and made a beeline to the school.

Mical had followed him anyway.

Well, at least now Atton knew for sure he actually had an office, and he'd gotten to it before Sparkle could. There was that.

"Why are you still here?" Atton asked him. He wasn't looking at the man, though, he was going through his many, many, many very important (empty sheets of paper) files. "There could be students' parents coming in any minute."

Mical heaved a sigh. "You are going to have to talk to me eventually," he said. "There are important matters to di--"

Atton pointed a pen at him. "No, I am not going to have to talk to you eventually," he said. "I came here all this way just to make sure I wouldn't have to talk to you eventually. You'd think you'd take a hint after a while."

"This is very childish," Mical told him. "I don't know why you are still this hostile to m--"

"Because you say things like that!"

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"It's going fine," Atton told Sparkle. "Though if you see that idiot on your way out of the office, please punch him in the face for me."

He didn't turn to Lewis until that issue was out there in the air. "Hey," he said.

Basically the verbal equivalent of a smile and a polite nod.

"Who, that Mical guy?" The one with the ass? Sparkle remembered the ass, Atton. "I'll punch him twice, just for you."

"Spark..."

"... Probably. Anyway, Atton, meet Lewis! Lewis, this is Atton. I've... like... told you both about one another. Ish. Lewis puts up with me in his house and makes his apologies to my parole officer, Atton is a terrible role model but he bails me out of shit before I wade in too deep and he makes me drink water when I've been an idiot."

A beat.

"It's an important job. I usually forget."

"He does," Atton said dryly. "I mostly made him my TA so he'd be off the street for at least an hour instead of throwing my office full of glitter."

Lies and slander.

"Office glitterbombs are how he tells you he cares, I've found," Lewis shared, chuckling as he crossed the room to offer Atton a handshake. "Right up there with jumping on you at a run whenever he thinks he can get away with it, and stealing your cigarettes."

Sparkle made a face.

"No way. Lewis smokes Export A. I wouldn't touch those if they were the last smokes on Earth."

"Which is exactly the reason I smoke Export A," Lewis supplied, helpfully.

"Smart," Atton said, taking the man's hand and giving it a firm shake. "Probably a little more effective than just whacking him around the ears. Of course, I don't technically smoke, so that helps."

Instead he just stole Sparkle's cigarettes. It was like the circle of life.

"I've been trying to be not technically a smoker for years," Lewis shared. "It would be much easier if people would stop selling them to me."

The jerks.

"So, you're teaching now, huh? I hope Sparkle isn't giving you too much hell as a TA. I was just telling Doctor Lecter yesterday how impressed I am that he's been taking such an interest in actively participating in his education."

Atton was mature enough not to roll his eyes at the mention of Hannibal, promise. Mostly. "Hey, I could tell you the kid's smart as long as he's got someone keeping him motivated," he said, "But that makes me sound like too much of a teacher for me to be comfortable with. But yeah, Sparkle's been doing pretty good around here. I'm thinking about unleashing him on my students at some point."

"And then I can teach everyone about important life lessons. Like how to find a good lawyer," Sparkle chirped.

He was mostly joking. Lewis took it as such, at least, giving a good-natured roll of his eyes as Sparkle barreled on.

"Or some kind of how-to on making sure you don't freeze to death in the middle of winter if you don't have a place to crash," he added, dutifully.

"See, now that would be useful," Atton mused. "Mira also seems to think that a lesson in 'how to hunt teal deer' might be a good idea..."

... Anyway.

"Anyway," he said, "Hey, I finally get to meet the famous Lewis. Has anything managed to scare you off the island yet, or are you holding on to your sanity just fine?"

"I haven't gone looking for emergency tickets back to Toronto just yet," Lewis replied, clearly amused. "I've been here almost a full day now, and there still hasn't been a gremlin or a zombie to be found."

He hadn't gone to Caritas yet, and refused to take Sparkle there, on principle.

"Is it really as exciting as he says it is?"

"Sparkle has warped ideas about what exciting means," Atton said dryly. "It's kind of boring here. I like it that way."

But Atton had his own, even more warped ideas about what exciting meant.

"But some people have an easier time adjusting than others."

"There's small towns for you," Lewis supplied, missing the stinkeye that Sparkle was shooting Atton just then. "They're never all that exciting. But he seems to be doing pretty well, if he's on the Student Council and has consistently been taking TA positions since he started here."

He chuckled and shook his head, though he couldn't help but be a little proud of the kid.

"I don't know if I should be thanking you for keeping him out of trouble or warning you about his love of mischief."

They were sort of the same thing, Lew.

"Yeah, I know. I've known him for what-- ei-- two years now?" Stupid time differences. Atton pulled a face. "He's not that good of an actor. Hell, we all pulled some pretty stupid stuff back in the day."

Beat.

"But not anymore. Mostly."

He was responsible!

"See, it's that mostly that I feel I should be worried about," Lewis replied. "But I guess nobody ever really grows out of it. They just sort of get better at talking themselves out of the really stupid decisions."

Speak for yourself, Lewis.

... Yeah, Lewis was about the only one in this office right now who could make that claim without lying his face off.

"Exactly," Atton said, lying his face off. "I'd say Sparks here is starting to get the hang of the rudimentary part of that one."

"I'm just trying not to get myself deported," Sparkle offered with a shrug. "I mean, who knows when I'm going to end up having to come fleeing back across the border, living the life of a fugitive? It'd really suck to have burned that bridge already."

He was probably mostly not serious.

"I keep telling you, Mexico would be a better idea because it's not so damn cold," Atton told him.

"Yeah, but it isn't like I know the language," Sparkle replied, shrugging. "And anyway, I've gotta get that far. That involves going through, like, Texas. Ew."

"I can see you two have been putting a lot of thought into this one," Lewis mused.

"I'm not enough of an animal that I'd willingly let a friend run off and freeze his ass to death. I hear up north here's a lot like Hoth," said Atton. "I'm just sharing some helpful advice."

Lewis had no idea what in the world a 'Hoth' was, but he was willing to roll with it.

"Well, we're Canadians," he replied. "We have the good sense to get in out of the cold, whenever that's an option."

That was an important caveat. Lewis was the sort who sometimes had over a dozen teens in his home at a time. He knew damn well that 'in out of the cold' wasn't always a possibility.

"He might have better luck in one of the warmer states. Maybe California," he added, because hey, conversation was conversation. "Mexico isn't a place I'd ever want to see any of my wards getting in trouble in."

Space, this guy really was too normal for his own good, wasn't he? It was starting to make Atton almost tired, here, except he'd had enough practice acting like the gulf between him and other people wasn't there.

"It's Sparkle," he pointed out. "He might actually thrive in a place like that." He shrugged. "But then I don't know that many Canadians. Maybe you people lose your superpowers outside of the cold."

"Or at least our ability to figure out how to dress for the weather," Sparkle added, leaning back against Atton's desk, and then shooting Atton a look over his shoulder. "But, like, see? See?"

That stuff he'd been saying all along, about Toronto being too damn normal, about how of course he wanted to go home, because check out this guy, right?, but Jesus Christ, how was he supposed to fall back into a life like this?

"I need the cold to live."

Yes. Yes, that's what he'd been getting at.

"Yeah, I think now I get it," Atton said dryly, like it was a joke.

It wasn't, really, because he got what Sparkle was getting at.

Sparkle was going to start taking bets during his lead up to graduation, about just how long he'd last in Toronto before either getting arrested or committed or having to flee the country. He was figuring maybe three, four months. Tops.

"Anyway, that's Lewis," he said to Atton, "and that's Atton," he said to Lewis, "and there we go, this is pretty much my life in a nutshell."

Minus all of the dying and not staying dead he did around here. And Velcro, who was sleeping in his sock drawer in his room. And Doctor Lecter, who was in his own office or something. And most of the crazy. The crazy seemed to be taking a break this weekend.

"You know, when you put it like that," Atton said meditatively, "Your life is pretty sad, Sparks."

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Atton's Office, Saturday

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