The Jedi Temple, Coruscant, Thousands Of Years Before *THAT* GFFA, Saturday

[suitably_heroic]

So the whole 'teach Sparkle self-defense on Saturdays' was working out pretty well, schedule-wise, so far. He'd be in on Friday and talk through his next deployment with Mical, he'd get the training done with Sparks the next day and grab some food, and then he'd be off into the galaxy to do the job. Made a guy much happier than barricading himself in his apartment for three weeks.

"Anyway, the others know you're going to be stopping by more often," he said. "If you ever get here and I'm not here, they'll either help you out if they have the time, or they'll at least make sure you get some nerf in you before putting you on the next portal back home."

Beat.

"Try not to sass Brianna too hard if that happens, 'cause she knows more nerve strikes than I do."

[[ for the kid. ]]

Comments

[suitably_heroic]

"'Accident prone' is when you trip over your own feet," Atton said. "Which is not what I'd describe what tends to happen to you."

[myownface]

"I did step in a zebra once," Sparkle offered, crouching down to get a good look at the weights. Yep. Totally weighty. "I think that counts."

Also, it had been nasty. So fucking nasty.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton rolled his eyes. "Take two of those weights and lay down on that bench over there," he said, picking up two of his own. "And don't get so queasy about the zebra. You eat dead animals all the time."

[myownface]

"Yeah, but they're not actually rotting and crawling with maggots when I put them in my mouth," Sparkle countered, taking two of the weights in hand and, giving them an experimental little lift, making his way to the bench in question. "So I just, what, lay down and then...?"

Lift the weights, Spark. You lay down and lift the weights.

[suitably_heroic]

"You lay down, hold your upper arms at a 90 degree angle, and then you push up the weights with the rest of your arms," Atton said. "This isn't rocket science, Sparks."

As you could see by how karking easily Atton did it.

... but then Atton could also do one-armed pushups.

[myownface]

"Yeah, well, you know how far behind my planet is when it comes to rocket science," Sparkle snarked, doing as he was told. Up went the weights! Shit, he was actually doing it!

... They were pushing the piddly side of puny, but look, he'd done it, and that was what counted here.

"And then, like, slowly bring them down again, right?"

Like they did in the movies. Presumably so they wouldn't smack themselves in the face, right?

[suitably_heroic]

"Well, you're accident prone, so that seems like a great idea!"

Stop snarking at the kid, Atton, god.

[myownface]

"Well, it's either that, or I just chill out here until my arms turn to spaghetti and I break my face," Sparkle snarked right back, lowering the weights again. "How many times do you want me to do this, anyway?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Ten times, then take a break, then ten times," Atton said, rolling his eyes.

[myownface]

To his credit, Sparkle didn't stick his tongue out at that. Mostly because he didn't trust himself to not drop a weight on his face and end up biting it off or something as he did so.

"Ten, okay. Should be easy enough."

Said the guy who had never had to hold his arms up with something in them that way. Repeatedly. Said that guy.

He was somewhere around seven when this fact started to dawn on him.

[suitably_heroic]

And see, here the problem was, Atton and his rudimentary shields couldn't fully block out what was going on with Sparkle over there, as much as he'd been working on those. (He didn't actually like infringing on people's privacy like that. Karking stupid Force sensitivity.)

"Keep going," he said, "Don't give up now, you're almost there."

... To the point where you could take a thirty-second break. That second set of reps was going to be fun.

[myownface]

Fuck soup. After he was done with this, whatever meal Sparkle asked for was going to have to be something he could drink with a straw.

"Nine... ten."

Oh god. Spark had so many regrets. He lowered the weights and tried to shake his arms out a bit, like maybe that would help somehow with the next set of reps. Maybe? Yes? Please?

[suitably_heroic]

Such a drama queen, Sparkle, god.

"All right, you get thirty seconds," Atton said easily. "Work on your breathing or something."

His weights had wound up on the floor like ten seconds ago already.

[myownface]

"Never breathing again. Probably dying. If my arms fall off before I can write one last letter, can you tell my cat I said goodbye?"

See, now he was being a drama queen. If he got thirty seconds to dick around, he was going to make the best of it.

[suitably_heroic]

"If this is how you die, your cat is getting nothing," Atton told him. "I'm going to tell that cat his owner died a pathetic puddle on the floor of the Jedi Temple and never thought of him."

[myownface]

"Aw, Velcro knows me better than that," Sparkle protested, reaching up to rub at one kind of gooey bicep, and then the other. "I mean, like, because I'd have to actually make it as far as the floor in order to die there, and I'm not leaving this spot until I have to."

[suitably_heroic]

"It'll be easier next time you do it," Atton said. Because he couldn't make fun of Sparkle forever. Sometimes you needed to take breathers from that, too. "Right now your muscles are all, 'aaaaaah, we can't do this!'. Then you give them a day or two to think about it, and they wind up coming up with solutions."

[myownface]

For the record, Sparkle was going to cherish the memory of Atton going, 'aaaah, we can't do this!' forevermore. That actually made this whole thing worthwhile, all on its own.

"Okay, so this is only a temporary form of sadistic torture. That's reassuring."

[suitably_heroic]

Shut up. Atton had never been ridiculous in his life ever and anyone who claimed he had, was stupid and needed to go lay down in a ditch somewhere.

"You're going to be happy about this in four weeks," Atton told him.

Because that was usually the point where you woke up and you suddenly realized you could lift the heavy thing.

[myownface]

Sparkle was not going to confess to just how many ditches he'd woken up in over the years, thanks.

"Is four weeks how long it takes for this to stop sucking?"

Before they went for something heavier and he sucking started anew?

[suitably_heroic]

"Two weeks," Atton said. "Four weeks is just when you go 'huh, this was worth it'."

Okay, so maybe the times could vary, but he wasn't going to harsh Sparkle's puddling by making him think this was 28 days of suffering.

[myownface]

"God," Sparkle complained, "I can't even wait four weeks for a movie I want to see to come out in theatres before I'm trying to find a leaked torrent of it. And that isn't even physically painful, either."

His life was the most super-duper hardest. Poor thing.

"But it'll be good, right? Like, this helps."

[suitably_heroic]

"It helps," Atton confirmed. "You're buying yourself an extra shot at making it out of a fight each time."

Maybe if he phrased it like that, Sparkle would stop whining?

[myownface]

Sparkle would never stop whining. Unless he was teasing, or just being an antagonistic little shit, whining was Sparkle's thing.

"And that's what I'm here for," Sparkle agreed, and then frowned a little back down at the weights. "And that thirty seconds is way up already, isn't it?"

[suitably_heroic]

"Yep," Atton said, chipper. "So get back to it."