Grakk's Diner, Near The Jedi Temple, Coruscant, Tuesday Morning

[suitably_heroic]

It'd been a decent couple of days - training Sparkle, avoiding Brianna, finding new places to leave rude things scribbled on the walls of the Temple that Mical probably wouldn't find out about until he was fifty - but all decent things had to end. For one thing, most of Atton's stuff was on the island, and for the other, he didn't actually want to miss the couple of quiet days there before the next term.

Why squander a perfectly good place without people he hated?

"All right, portal leaves in two hours," Atton said, pushing open the door to a charming local diner that screamed GRAKK in offensively neon-and-glittery words from the rooftop. Inside, a plethora of people of various species were hovering or sitting in their seats, but there were still a couple of booths open, including one facing right across from the diner's four-armed cook, so hey, Atton would sit down right there.

"Stick to the blue part of the menu," he said, "The white part's living food. Yellow's not for humans, and red... let's just not talk about the red."

[[ for sparks! ]]

Comments

[myownface]

"Nah, but I'm acting president on the Board of Keeping Atton Healthy," Sparkle replied, along with a grin that was surprisingly cheeky, considering what they were talking about a couple of minutes ago. "They might get me to resign if I slack off, you know."

[Niiight!]

[suitably_heroic]

"I'm not dead and I still have all my limbs," Atton said. "Isn't that good enough for you?"

He still had what they were talking about a couple of minutes ago in his head. Hard to shake, but pretending usually worked out in the end.

[myownface]

"When is anything ever good enough for me?"

Pretending was pretty much how Sparkle got by, about ninety percent of the time.

[suitably_heroic]

Hell, 'I'm not dead and I still have all my limbs' was the definition of health, physically, emotionally and mentally, at least if you asked Atton. Two pinnacles of healthy living, sitting right here.

As it stood, Atton bitchfaced at him.

"Space, what have I done," he muttered, "now I'm going to have some yappy thing with giant hair wandering after me with a basket of carrots. People are going to think we're starting a vegan orphanage around here."

[myownface]

"A vegan orphanage that otherwise subsists on sliders," Sparkle agreed, sticking out his tongue. Maturely. "Anyway, I wouldn't use a basket. That's what my backpack is for."

The carrots would have to survive in there alongside Velcro and whatever the hell he stole from here or there, and a glut of pop tarts. But they'd be fine anyway, right? Carrots were tough.

[suitably_heroic]

"All I'm getting from this is that you need to stop taking all of these cooking classes," Atton retorted. "You're getting weird ideas about food."

Like that it needed to be nutritional and crap.

[myownface]

"I'm taking a baking class this semester," Sparkle replied, smugly. "So I'm going to get you so sick of cake, man..."

Carrot cake.

[suitably_heroic]

"If you're trying to audition for Temple cook, take it up with Mical," Atton said, flicking a bit of sad, sort-of-green leafy thing at Sparkle.

[myownface]

"Yeah, but that involves taking to Mical," Sparkle pointed out. "And wow, cooking here would be an adventure. 'I need to season this nerf, here. Pass me that container of white grainy stuff with the minus-sign V, crocodile, backwards check-mark, and explosion symbols on it, would you?'"

More commonly known as salt.

[suitably_heroic]

"Nah, we'd just give you a droid," Atton said mildly. "We'd program it to translate 'salt' to 'minus-sign V, crocodile, backwards check-mark, explosion', you'd be fine."

The joys of living in a galaxy that wasn't completely ass-backward.

[myownface]

"... You could program it to only understand a Pig-Latin variation of biblical Hebrew and I would figure out a way to make the damn thing work, if it actually meant I got a helper droid," Sparkle decreed. "Like, I would even cook sliders every day for your picky ass."

[suitably_heroic]

"'Get Sparkle a droid so he gets off my ass'," Atton mused. "Now there's a resolution for the new year on Earth."

[myownface]

"It's really surprisingly easy to bribe me with shiny things," Sparkle shared with a solemn nod of his head. "I was probably a magpie in a past life or something."

[suitably_heroic]

"And yet when the island turns you into something, it's usually a stupid-looking dog," Atton said. "What's up with that, anyway?"

[myownface]

"It probably knows I don't even like dogs," Sparkle sighed, wrinkling his nose. "I mean, I'm obviously a cat person. They're all... independent. And not stumpy."

Stupid corgi legs.

[suitably_heroic]

"Maybe you're a self-hating canine at heart," Atton offered, digging into the last of his sliders.

[myownface]

"... I guess there could be that," Sparkle mused. "I think I drool less, though."

A beat.

"Though I do like dressing up, so maybe it balances?"

[suitably_heroic]

Atton squinted at him. "I don't think spiking your hair or shoving on fishnets counts as 'dressing up'," he offered.

Look, he never went to the kind of occasions that prompted Sparkle to dress up. They clashed with his aesthetic.

[myownface]

"You, like, haven't seen me at a school dance where I wasn't a dog, have you?" Sparkle pursed his lips a little at that, and then shook his head, amused. "I leave the hair down, the make-up off. Actually dress up nice. I know how to dress myself, man, like, believe it or not."

[suitably_heroic]

"I usually picture Student Council holding you down and attacking you with a suit," Atton said, after a moment's thought.

[myownface]

"Pffft," Sparkle replied, chuckling. "If anything, I'm the one who'll be shoving them into suits. I mean, I do work at the clothing store."

...

"When I feel like it."

[suitably_heroic]

"Last time I saw you working, you had a boa on and you were dancing around a giant cock," Atton said. "I mean, it's your life, but I'm just saying."

[myownface]

"It was a boring day!"

Sparkle's working methods were glorious. Never doubt that.

"But, hey, whatever, right? I'm just saying, I do own nice clothes. I just don't pull them out of the closet often."

[suitably_heroic]

Atton would go with 'somewhat terrifying', but hey. Like he said, it was Sparkle's life.

"That just leaves me to ask why the hell your hair looks that stupid," Atton said.

[myownface]

"Because it keeps people guessing," Sparkle shared, oddly pleased by this question. "One of these days, I'm going to come to class looking like everyone else, and half the people in the room won't even recognize me, just watch."