The Jedi Temple, Atton's Coruscant, 3949 BBY, Saturday

[suitably_heroic]

After Sparkle had left last weekend, Atton'd spent one glorious half day rolling around in ignorance for as long as he could. The next day, the then-upcoming date had struck him, and he had hidden away in his apartment and gotten spectacularly drunk. The day after, they had held a small, respectful mourning ceremony, and they had sat together and traded stories about Meetra for hours.

Well, the others had, anyway. Atton had mostly brooded in the back.

On Tuesday, he'd beaten the hell out of holotargets for hours. On Wednesday, Mical had yelled at him for aggravating his healing wounds, and shoved him in a kolto tank. On Thursday, still reeking of kolto, Atton had resumed lurking around his apartment.

Now it was Saturday, and Sparkle was showing up, and while Atton had only ten percent of his usual motivation to do this, he had left his apartment. He was sitting on the steps of the Temple now, smoking an Earth cigarette and glaring at passers-by. A more difficult exercise than it seemed; most foot traffic kept a respectful distance of the Temple itself. Still, he managed.

Somehow.

[[ for the kid, and phone calls, what have you. ]]

Comments

[myownface]

"Shitty week," Sparkle shared, managing, at least, to keep a sulk out of his voice. "Headache. There's too much sun on Coruscant, did you know that?"

... No more than the usual, really.

[suitably_heroic]

"No, there isn't," Atton said, looking up at the sky. "You know they regulate the weather around here? Actual scientists worked this one out. Perfect amount of sunlight for the area. It's kind of annoying, really."

But he found almost everything annoying this week. Or sad. Or both.

[myownface]

"That's... really obnoious, actually," Sparkle decided. "Is that something they do, like, normally? All over the place?"

Sparkle was squinting up at the sky as though it had personally offended him, now.

It sort of had.

[suitably_heroic]

"Mostly just on Coruscant, because it's such a huge city and the weather here gets crazy without supervision," Atton shared. "You know there's actual guidelines here for when it's allowed to rain?"

[myownface]

"... That's so weird," Sparkle decided, looking back Atton's way. "But maybe that's just my all... backwardsy Earth-ness talking."

Sparkle was pretty sure that if humans had control over Earth's weather, the first thing they'd do would be to reverse climate change so that people would stop complaining, and the second thing they'd do would be proceed to turn around and fuck everything up even worse than it had been to start.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton shrugged. "It made sense when they were building this place, I guess," he said.

He chucked his cigarette towards the foot of the stairs. "So what's the shitty week?"

They could be miserable together. That sounded like a great idea.

[myownface]

Sparkle chewed his lip for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders. God, just opening up and spilling his heart out on the floor was hard. Even with Atton, when it came to things like this.

"Raine visited that miserable old bitch friend of hers to try to talk her into maybe getting the neighbourhood to give us another chance," he settled on. That was big. Bigger than all of the losing his mind that Lewis had been doing. Sparkle had already made up his mind that Raine was the number one priority in this situation, and now he was clinging to that for dear life.

It terrified him a little.

[suitably_heroic]

"And let me guess, it was all sunshine and roses after that," Atton said dryly.

They should probably move, if Sparkle had an actual headache. But Atton was going to need a few moments to drum up the motivation.

[myownface]

"Yeah. A real laugh riot." Sparkle exhaled, and then shrugged his shoulders and wondered how much he wanted to share. And how much Atton wanted to hear. "She lost it. Just... completely fucking lost it."

[suitably_heroic]

Atton winced a little. He pushed himself up onto his feet with some difficulty. "Crap," he said.

For his current state of mind, that was actually a 'crap' he fully meant.

[myownface]

"Yeah," Sparkle agreed, quietly. "And then so did I."

Not quite the same way Raine had, granted. She did her emotional meltdowns her way, and Sparkle would do them in his.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton sighed. "How bad was it?" he asked, motioning Sparks to wander up the stairs with him.

[myownface]

Sparkle kind of bunched up in the shoulders a little as he nodded and started heading up the steps.

"Sort of got drunk," you know, a tiny bit, "and broke into the old bitch's house. And... smashed half her living room. And... yeah."

Maybe he wouldn't admit to the crying at her feet part.

[suitably_heroic]

"That was probably not the smartest thing you've ever done."

Not a lot of judgment in his voice, though, since that still beat 'going on a killing spree for several years'.

[myownface]

"She took it surprisingly okay, considering she was in the room at the time, and all."

He wasn't in jail right now, so... that... was good?

[suitably_heroic]

Atton paused half a step into the Temple and shot Sparkle a look with both eyebrows raised.

"So that's the sort of thing that made your buddy Raine think she was sympathetic, I guess."

[myownface]

"I guess," Sparkle replied, swallowing at a lump in his throat. "She... like... she was scared. Of me. And then... and then, I don't know. I think maybe she had her head so far up her own ass she didn't even realize she was fucking hurting Raine."

[suitably_heroic]

"That's not particularly rare among most sentient species, unfortunately," Atton said. "You ever have anyone looking at you like that before?"

Dammit, Sparkle looked all pathetic, and Atton was not exactly mr. Comforting or Physically Demonstrative, here, but the kid sounded like he really needed a hug.

So Atton was going to reach out and, like, try to give him a short half-hug kind of thing, tossing his arm over Sparkle's shoulders.

[myownface]

And Sparkle... needed that. God, he needed that more than he realized, and sort of half-leaned into that half-hug in a half-clingy-but-without-clinging kind of way.

"Scared? Or sorry?"

[suitably_heroic]

"I was gonna go with scared," said Atton, who figured the best thing to do here was to let Sparkle cling without, like, acknowledging that any clinging was going on. "But surprise me."

[myownface]

"Scared, I've seen before," Sparkle replied, after a pause. "Not just from the island that one time I ripped a friend's throat out with my teeth."

Thanks for that, Fandom.

"Trouble kids. Like, okay, we're fucking terrifying. Just... maybe not as terrifying as I was the other night? I don't know."

The 'sorry' was new.

[suitably_heroic]

"You sound like you were pretty desperate," Atton said, maneuvering them in the direction of the gardens. It seemed like a gardens kind of meltdown-day for Sparkle, here.

"So, the sorry part...?"

[myownface]

Sparkle went quiet at that, eyes on the ground as they walked. If he'd noticed that they weren't headed toward the training area, he wasn't going to make a big deal of it.

The gardens sounded like a great idea right about then.

"... I... don't know. Like... I don't think I've ever seen..." He shrugged. "It was like I fucking gutted her with words. I've never seen anything like it."

The prostrating himself on the floor at her feet and sobbing about his friend had probably helped.

[suitably_heroic]

"Yeah, well. Not a lot of people have seen you mid-breakdown either, probably," Atton said. "Especially not in the middle of their living room, about something they ignored because that made things easier on them."

[myownface]

"... That's... true," Sparkle agreed, frowning a little. "Breaking down in general is something I kind of try avoiding."

Because he didn't do 'obviously vulnerable' well, especially in front of people who were obviously in a place of power over him.