A Touristy Bar Somewhere In Central Baltimore, Friday Evening-ish

[suitably_heroic]

Yesterday had wound up being a heavy day of drinking and carousing and... a lot of crying. Atton wasn't great with crying people. He'd done his damnedest to be there for the squad, but he'd be lying if he said it hadn't worn on him.

Especially with all their feelings seeping in through the Force.

So he texted Sparkle to meet up with him well over an hour after he'd already gotten to this bar, some tourist trap that was guaranteed not to want any trouble or have any crappy links with anybody who'd want to ruin their day. He needed the time. Ordered some food, had some soda.

Let out a few sighs.

At least this way, he'd feel like a normal person by the time Sparkle showed up. Or as close as he ever got, anyway.

[[ open, mostly for that guy ]]

Comments

[myownface]

"Don't know," Sparkle admitted, and threw back another good mouthful of beer. "It's not a thing I need to figure out right away, but... Fuck. He... Like. You know?"

Sparkle was well aware he'd need to put words to it if he took things that direction. But right now? Nope. Nuh-uh. Busy drinking.

[suitably_heroic]

"I'm still mad I didn't get to punch him," Atton muttered. "If you want, we can just set this up so it looks like it's happening, but it's really just an excuse for me to show up and punch him."

[myownface]

"I mean, ideally, both?"

That was Sparkle's preference, anyway.

"But if I only get one, I'd see that asshole do prison time. They'd fucking destroy him in there, you know?"

[suitably_heroic]

"I know, it's less an either or than a 'if all else fails and you can't do it, I'm more than happy to rough him up a little'," Atton said.

Beat.

"Or a lot. Space, I hate that guy."

[myownface]

"I think you're at the top of the really long list of people who hate that guy and wouldn't mind roughing him up a bit," Sparkle replied, smiling wryly. "But you get in line after me, there. I get the first swing, and if I blow that chance, then you get to step in and rearrange his face. But I want to watch."

He really wanted to watch. He would probably be a wreck but hey, at least it'd get the point across.

[suitably_heroic]

"Of course, that's half the point," Atton said, taking a sip of his scotch. "Maybe three quarters of it. Space, get someone to grab a phone and record a video."

He looked at Sparkle, a thoughtful expression passing over his face briefly, but he said nothing else.

[myownface]

Don't think Sparkle missed that look either, Atton.

"... What?"

Given the current conversation, he kind of had to ask.

[suitably_heroic]

"Nothing," Atton said smoothly, and took another sip of his whiskey. "Look, it's-- never mind."

Not so smoothly.

[myownface]

Yeah, there went the smooth, right out the window.

See Sparkle. See Sparkle just quick an eyebrow and look at Atton expectantly.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton sighed.

"Look," he said finally. "I know I haven't been the steadiest this year. But you haven't-- I try not to listen in because it's rude, but I pick things up, and you've been squirrelier since spring. Doing some big, important things I am really proud of you doing, but sometimes it's like you're a little-- smaller--"

He made a frustrated noise. Tapped the rim of his glass.

"If there's anything I can do to help besides sit here and threaten people, tell me, all right? You didn't use to avoid telling me anything, but after that whole-- thing a few months back-- are you okay? With all of this? Outside of the island losing its karking mind, I mean."

[myownface]

Sparkle fell silent for a moment, looking at Atton and chewing the bottom of his lip. Forgetting, at least for the moment, about his beer.

"It's been a weird year," he allowed. And... didn't want to stop there. Knew he really shouldn't, considering. Took a breath. "Have you ever... like... looked back on something you didn't really think of at the time, and let yourself finally process just how fucked-up it actually was? And, like, it's a million fucking years ago and there's nothing you can do to change what it did to you and how it meant you lived your life, not really, but maybe you can sort of... like..." He flailed a hand around a little. "God, I hate looking at it. At what I can bring myself to do and what I can't bring myself to do and why and like, you know how many of those cookie pizza things I have mowed through just dealing? It's stupid. I'm gonna get fat on cookie pizzas, Atton."

That... probably had a point. Somewhere in there.

[suitably_heroic]

"I haven't," Atton said, after a very long pause. "Done that. Seemed like a great way to stop moving on a permanent basis. You know."

[myownface]

"Feels like it sometimes," Sparkle muttered, staring down at his beer. And he knew that what he was dealing with had nothing on the shit Atton had seen, done, or been. He sighed. "I want my life back. Which is a stupid thing to fucking say, because it was never really completely my life to start with. There's always been this... like... This empty, you know? This big stupid fucking dark lurking in the back, and what I want going forward has changed but the thing underneath it's always, always, always been family. I went back to Toronto wanting it and what I got was Carla spooking and a broken heart, and when I went back before what I got was Lewis and all... that. All that. And like even with the island. I fucking sold my soul for it, for the chance, and Leto asked me once if I wanted to adopt and it broke my brain. Like. I can't be responsible for kids I can barely be responsible for myself and I can't say I want my life back but I really... I really fucking want a chance at having my life. And I don't know what that even means yet, but I know I have to deal with this shit if I ever want to get there and even when I get it right I feel like I'm fucking it up and I don't get it. Maybe I just keep waiting for it to burn down."

[suitably_heroic]

Atton wasn't. Really thinking about what he'd dealt with himself. Outside of the reason he'd said what he said, anyway: a sense of deepseated sympathy and respect because he know how hard it was, and that nagging, self-destructive urge to feel utterly inadequate in the face of people he cared about this deeply that had characterised much of his life.

"But you're still doing this," he said quietly, and that was both of the above, too. "No wonder you're bouncing around in like fifty directions at once."

[myownface]

Sparkle nodded a little, still staring at his drink. It wasn't doing tricks or anything. But maybe that was the appeal. Beer was easy. This talk was... hard. Very hard.

"I need to get it right," he said, quietly. "I have spent my whole fucking life thinking family's something it's not, terrified that I'll be those things too, but I always wanted it, there had to be something to it, everyone else was so fucking happy to have it and... I don't... I don't remember ever thinking that maybe it wasn't completely my fault that I didn't get to be that, too."

He sat silently for a second, and then shook his head suddenly, angrily, though he wasn't sure if that anger was at himself or at a long, long line of people who had spent his entire life fucking him over.

"But now I finally have shit I did that I can point at, and I can draw lines and find the ways they're fucking me over, and I have to fix it. I have to, Atton. So that I can point and go, 'see? I fixed it,' and start to think maybe I do deserve the good, too. I can't go back and tell my father he was wrong but maybe I can keep Lewis from hurting other people like he hurt me. I can't go back and tell Alec that I'm not just a Mundie, I'm a fucking competent one and I deserve to be happy whether I can fight or not but guess what? I can fight, too, I can keep my people safe even when it hurts me so deep I want to die. I can't tell him that. But I can tell myself that enough and I'll believe it, maybe. I know other people already do. I don't get why I can't."

[suitably_heroic]

It was a hard talk, yeah. Hard enough that for once, some of Atton's mask dropped off of his face without a meltdown, without a too-much-right-now, and left him looking at Sparkle like. Something.

Like he knew exactly what that was like. Like it hurt, hearing those words coming from Sparkle's mouth, because of all the people in the galaxy he didn't deserve to feel like that. Like he wanted to jump over the table and give Sparkle a hug and say some cloying, sentimental, true poodoo about how important he was, how Atton was an ass who spent so much time in meltdown mode and not enough time telling the guy that he cared, that-- something something.

He sat back after a moment, out of the light, and let the mask slide back across his face. Took a deep breath.

"'Cause that gets in you, buries itself deep, and won't let go until you rip your own heart out to get at it," he drawled. "Probably."

[myownface]

"Probably," Sparkle agreed, closing his eyes, breathing out a sigh, and then shrugging and taking another pull from his beer. Almost out. Maybe he'd get another one when the waitress came by again. "I don't remember a time without it, you know? It's like I was born with it, and I know who to blame for that, too. It's all got faces to it. They're just... faces who have been really good at convincing me it's my fault."

He'd tried to wear too many cute shirts with butterflies on them, stolen from his sister's drawer. He wasn't an adorable little girl, and people only ever wanted to adopt adorable little girls. He didn't smile enough, why did that kid look so sad all the time? He wasn't... quite like other little boys. He's been in trouble, hasn't he? He keeps telling stories. The cutlery vanished again. We found those drugs in his bag. He's been stealing from the liquor cabinet. He keeps running away. He wasn't he didn't he hadn't been able to. Alec had been the one guy in school who would kiss other guys, so clearly it was meant to be. Lewis never really tried to get Sparkle to stop getting too close, so maybe he actually stood a chance...

"I guess eventually I just started doing their work for them." He barked a soft laugh. "The island didn't help with that much."

[suitably_heroic]

"Liked its funhouse mirror versions of you," Atton said. He was still nursing that scotch, focusing on the way the glass was cold beneath his thumb, counting every click the ice cubes made as they banged together.

"All new ways to make you seem like something terrible, I guess."

[myownface]

"God, I ate one of my friends once," Sparkle muttered. "Straight-up murdered another one. Funhouse mirror isn't wrong, I was an evil carnie at the time. Stabbing that Hollow me to death fucked me up but at least I don't know what he'd been doing. Which almost makes it worse, then I start wondering."

And Sparkle could come up with a lot of horrible things he could have done, once memory started to fade into instinct, and instinct into aggression.

"Freaked out once because a teacher went off to live his life. A teacher. He gave me good advice and I took it to heart and I was personally betrayed because suddenly he wasn't there. I think he's back now teaching again and I can't even picture myself going up to him to say anything because I'd probably just fall all over myself apologizing for being such a needy little fuckhead. Someone was nice to me, how dare they leave."

[suitably_heroic]

Atton thumbed the bridge of his nose. "Sparks," he said quietly. "Not to shut you up, but you're veering off into actually beating yourself up now."

[myownface]

Sparkle paused a moment at that, glancing up at Atton, frowning a little as he reviewed what he'd just been saying. And then grimaced and finished off his beer before just kind of groaning and flopping forward to thunk his head against the table.

"But I'm so good at it," he muttered into the tabletop.

Which was sort of the point he'd been making, and so he followed that up with a wry laugh before sitting up again and shrugging.

[suitably_heroic]

"I know," Atton said. His face wasn't sure what expression it wanted to make, and so - clack clack, that was thirty-three - it slid studiously into Atton-neutral. "And you have to teach yourself how to believe otherwise."

He brought up that glass. Took a sip.

"Nothing I say will change that," he said. Thought about throwing in some caveats, the usual protestations about not telling anyone he said that, that kind of thing. Very deliberately decided not to do that. Not now. Maybe not the rest of this conversation. "But you are good enough."

Better than some of us, he didn't say. Wouldn't make things better.

[myownface]

Would really just give Sparkle something to argue against. Neither of them probably needed that, just then.

He thumbed the rim of his empty bottle, staring into it, feeling personally betrayed by it for not having more beer in it. And then he sighed.

"I can do this, right?"

He wasn't just tilting at windmills hoping to defeat giants?

[suitably_heroic]

"You can do this," Atton confirmed. Looked up at him, and added, "And whenever you start worrying that you can't, remember there are a whole bunch of people around here who believe in you, all right?"

[myownface]

"Crazy people, each and every one of them," Sparkle replied. But he was smiling a little, trying like hell to take that to heart. And maybe actually managing to, a little. "Atton?"

He fidgeted with his bottle a moment more, and then set it to the side of the table so that someone could come collect the empty.

"... Thanks. You're one of the reasons I got this far."

Instead of just crashing and burning and never getting up again, years ago.