fandomhigh | Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

Entry tags:

!event: welcome picnic

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

Despite the not-so-great weather earlier in the week, the weather today looked nice and... well, decent for the end of December, and while the rest of town might still have signs of last week's snow, there were no traces left outside the school. (It just meant one less uncomfortable question for the big siblings to deal with, you're welcome.)

The buffet table was ready, set as far as possible from the glittered-out blue and gold tables and chairs. The winter bonfire was crackling for warmth and food-toasting opportunities. The lists of siblings and roommates had been double-checked. It looked like everything was ready for a picnic!

[OCD is up! This is part one of the picnic, specifically for meeting siblings, roommates, and teachers. The rest of the picnic is happening here. Since it's outside, the picnic is open to all students, teachers, and townies!]

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Sorry, Atton. Sparkle would never take your side on this one point. Not after the way you'd carried on about his cat, back when he still had one.

"Yeah, there aren't enough rolled-up newspapers in the world," Sparkle replied, grinning.

She imagined his hair flipping and startled grumpy-cat expression if Sparkle did manage to smack him on the nose with a paper and laughed.

Mostly because she could see Sparkle trying.

Jack could sit here all day trading cheerful snides about a guy she'd met all of once and who'd been nothing but polite at the time, but she was feeling kind of mellow at the moment.

Fuck knew why.

"Shirt fit ok?" she asked as a complete change of subject.

"Shirt fits great," Sparkle replied, his grin getting a little brighter. "The whole thing fit great, actually, I save it," save them, really, because who else would have gotten him that second outfit in the exact same size except for Kaidan, Jack, or both? "for, like, special occasions or whenever I just feel like I want people to think I'm gonna fuck some shit up."

"Good. Wasn't sure it would, your shoulders are a little bigger than mine even with the boobage included."

She was pleased he liked it. It shouldn't have meant anything and yet.

"Ah, you settled the question then," she teased him, "I wondered if it was yelling 'don't fuck with me' or just 'fuck me'. Kaidan thought both when I asked." The other one was for pretty. That was from the big dumb squish. Hers? Hers had a purpose.

She realized what she'd just said - twice, and grumbled. Digging out two single-credit chits from one pocket she moved them to the other and pulled just the mother of all cranky faces.

Edited (swear jaaaaaaaaaar) 2018-12-29 23:08 (UTC)

Sparkle, meanwhile, just kind of grinned a bit.

"Both," he agreed. "Both, depending on the day."

And it had worked out great for him on Boxing Day. So...

"Trying to watch your mouth around the impressionable littles?"

"Good for you," she approved, giving herself a small congratulatory mental backpat for picking that one out.

Take that, Kaidan. You and your squishy pretty shit.

"Yeah," she admitted with a scowl, "Kahlee got me doin' it some time back and now it's just sort of habit."

"Not a bad habit," Sparkle decided, though he couldn't quite bite back a smirk. "I mean, I'm pretty sure most of these students already know those words and use 'em themselves on the regular, but there's really no telling what the new batch is like."

Some of them might be wilting flowers or something.

"It's not so much for them as an exercise for me," Jack grumbled. "She's not wrong, Kahlee. I don't even hear it anymore."

It made it too easy to say some pretty horrible, hurtful things when you didn't listen to the words coming out of your mouth. She was trying to do better. Had been doing better. It had been weeks since she'd verbally lashed out at someone. It was sort of a new record for her.

Sparkle considered that for a few moments. And then nodded a little.

"I think I get that, yeah."

He'd gotten much better about his tendency to break into horrible, elaborate lies every time a topic got a little too close to home, himself. Granted, horrifying people with the truth of things sometimes wasn't much better.

"This whole giving a rip thing is the pits," Jack grumbled, "Why'd I start again? Right. Because an entire ship full of do-gooding as..jerks.. got their caring cooties all up in my atmosphere until I was terminally contaminated. Who let that happen? Who thought that was a good idea?"

Shepard had. She grimaced a little. "I'm a teacher, Sparkle," she said in a voice that was only a little bit plaintive.

She hadn't wrecked anything in.. Ok, days, but that was at Liara's direct request so it didn't even count.

"Teaching," Sparkle offered, "will never stop being weird. Maybe over the summer I'll trot out my class again, now that there are a few new faces."

It was an exhausting class. Sparkle didn't teach that one often. Or lightly.

"In the meantime I'll be right here, perfectly happy to watch you call people as-jerks."

Brat.

"Only when the kids are flocking around like awkward geese," she informed him, "Any other time, my words are my own."

Brat.

"What do you teach?" Come on you knew that question was coming, "And do you make them call you Mr. Sparkle?" She could see that.

Sparkle snorted.

"Mr. Sparkle is a brand of soap flakes."

He'd spent a weekend as a box of those soap flakes once. He didn't like to talk about it.

"And I teach... well, I call it 'Urban Survival,' for what it's worth."

It was a nicer way to put, 'being homeless and not fucking dying in a gutter.'

She snorted and shook her head. "Soap flakes? If they don't have glitter in 'em, that's just f..wrong."

Jack looked at him. She knew what those two words meant. "Stealing and scrounging, huh? Useful. How many of the little s..darlings .. think it could never be them?"

Probably too many. Though she considered that probably too many of them had already or were coming up through that. Grimaced a little.

"Around here?" Sparkle shook his head. "Never had anyone come through my class who believed down to their core it couldn't be. Had a few who already had too much experience. A few who were planning on going back to situations where it was inevitable."

He made a little, ragged, frustrated noise.

"Hate this place sometimes."

She reached to ruffle his hair briefly. "Hey," she said as gently as Jack was capable, "They go back to the sh..stuff.. after your class, they're better off than otherwise, yeah? Heck, even being here has to give 'em a few better coping skills."

"I mean," Sparkle huffed out a little laugh, waving a halfhearted hand at her as she ruffled his hair, "in the long run, it kind of does, sure. This place fucked me right up for a while there, but if it doesn't kill you, and all that shit..."

"Turns you into one badass bi..bugger," she agreed readily, "Surviving any kind of crap always does."

She let him swat the hand away. Wasn't much for touching people but Sparkle was like an adorable little puppy. Jack wasn't unaware that even puppies had teeth, no.

"Know what's weird, though? The way the island accounts for some of it. Like... I've been an older version of myself around here a few times now, and so far the island's had me play both 'shitty ex-con' and 'grifter fugutive' since I got here."

Not to mention all the weird future AU kids that for the most part seemed to actually have him as a functional parent. He wasn't holding his breath for any of them, but at least those ones were kind of reassuring.

"Could be worse," she mused, "Could have one where you just blink out for that weekend because there is no future for you. Huh. Kind of wonder what'll happen if it hits me with future-me. I never figured for having one."

Still didn't on most any day. It was weird to care if she did. There would never be any future babies for her. She'd had that mess tied off years ago.

Sparkle grimaced a little.

"Some people have blinked out," he replied. "Thankful I haven't come to that yet, at least. I'll take a shitty future over none."

He considered her thoughtfully.

"I hope yours is good," he decided. It wasn't even really meant as anything but a statement of fact. A lot of people came out of that weekend pretty fucked up, after all.

"Figured," Jack said with a grimace of her own.

She hiked her shoulders in a shrug. "Can't be worse than my past. The fu..heck the island think it could throw at me I haven't already lived through?"

Thought about it a second and gagged. "I suppose it could put me in heels, a pearl necklace and a dress and make me all Suzie Homewrecker."

Privately Jack figured herself for one of the blink outs. That wouldn't bother her. She'd never figured herself for having a future.

"... Yeah," Sparkle said after a moment. "I super can't see that."

The idea kind of scared him, honestly.

She grinned evilly, "What, you can't see me rocking some fantastic mom-pumps?"

... No. Not really.

"I mean, sure, I can see it," Sparkle replied, "but there are probably gremlins involved, and it doesn't end well for anybody."

Fandom High Welcome Picnic, Front Lawn of the School, All Day: Part I

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