Hallway to MCA #5, Monday Afternoon

[electrocynic]

Ugh.

Sarah had been away for a while, back in London. For reasons. Nothing very good, though nothing very horrible, either. She'd ducked out this morning, though. It would've been otherwise fine to spend her birthday in dear old London, except her parents had threatened to pay her a visit, and she just wasn't feeling up to her old favourite game of disappointing her dad extra hard by pretending to be even worse than he thought. So, she'd come back.

And once she'd come back, she'd realized she'd missed graduation. Sparkle's graduation, to be exact. So now she felt like shit. And she had no plans for her birthday, and she was spending it alone, and she found herself missing Guy and April and who the fuck ever she'd ever managed to care about only to lose touch.

Yeah.

This all probably explained why she was making her way towards her apartment with a great big bag of groceries, where bottles of Green Lamp Ale clinked together, packets of crisps made crisp-packet noises, and there was enough ice cream to probably get a class of first-graders into a sugar coma.

[ooc: Oooopen post! Of birthday frowning.]

Comments

[suitably_heroic]

Atton reached for the second beer and opened it up, because see: at least making a show of drinking it. "Now there's a pain I know well," he said, "Good enough for me."

The young people even started off stupid, antagonizing fake future mob bosses.

[electrocynic]

Great way to elicit a snort from her, though. She did so love watching people be stupid when it didn't affect her personally.

"Mm hmm," she replied. "I also left London because my parents were coming to visit. So, so far, the day is looking up when compared to that."

[suitably_heroic]

"Hey, I'm the better part of someone's day," Atton said, taking a bite of a chip. "I can live with that."

Space knew it didn't happen to him often.

[electrocynic]

Sarah glanced over. "But these are pretty low standards, mate."

She didn't think it mattered, though.

[suitably_heroic]

"You could've just left me in the illusion," Atton said, taking a slight sip of that beer.

[electrocynic]

She tsked, reaching out for some chips for herself. "You're my current football team, so I can't bloody well let you think you're special. You know that."

[suitably_heroic]

"Well, that serves me right for not leading with 'Nice tits' when I saw you in the hall just now," Atton said. "Now you're walking all over me."

[electrocynic]

"Nah, think that's just a question of tone," Sarah decided, after leaning back and popping a few chips into her mouth. Thoughtfully. "I'd still be walking all over you. Just with more feminine wiles involved."

[suitably_heroic]

"So now I'm missing out on feminine wiles," Atton sighed. "Either way, not fantastic choices on my part."

Not that he was as into the one night stand thing these days, but flirting as a cover was a personal specialty.

[electrocynic]

Sarah cracked half a crooked smirk at him. "Well, if you get upset, I can always adjust my shirt for more cleavage."

Flirting just to kill time was also a thing. Of course, in her style, it was always a little dry and kind of like she was making fun of the other party.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton tilted his head at her. "You know, that's tempting," he said, making sure he actually looked at the cleavage in question. "Give it some space to breathe."

[electrocynic]

Sarah sighed like it was a hardship, then put her beer down tug the front of her shirt further down, until there was ample cleavage and just a tiny sliver of a predictably dark green bra showing from underneath the upper edge of the shirt, below the electric current sign pendant that rested against her chest.

"Better?"

[suitably_heroic]

Atton gave that the look it deserved.

"Okay, now I feel appeased," he said. "You do good cleavage."

[electrocynic]

That deserved getting the beer back in her hand. "I may be getting older, but I do still have great tits."

And she had no trouble acknowledging that, no matter how many times she'd told Devlin to stop leering at them.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton snagged a chip and popped it in his mouth, returning his attention to the holo. "See, now you're starting to see the light side of things," he said. ... Pun not intended, his brain-voice muttered. "We're not getting older, we're just acquiring more skills while still looking pretty."

[electrocynic]

"This is the first I've ever heard of good cleavage as a skill." Not that she objected. In fact, giving it a thought, she was pretty sure some of the women in the holo had benefited from the skill in question to get their parts. "Suppose there's value in that."

[suitably_heroic]

"It also helps to know how to deploy it properly," Atton pointed out.

Helpfully.

[electrocynic]

"True," Sarah replied, nodding sagely. "I should know, I've used to bloody marvelous effect in upsetting my parents."

The level of maturity, it was astounding.

"But it's almost as fun to use it as a lure."

[suitably_heroic]

"I have a friend who does that," Atton said, right as one of the idiots in the holo tried to pull it on an opposing idiot in the holo. The two were clearly slated to be the starcrossed romance of the piece. "She wears this thing that's practically just a bikini, and when people are distracted by the breasts, she swings them in the face." Beat. "Or hits them with a rocket, or... well, she's pretty inventive."

When you were a guy, you had to go slightly more subtle than that.

[electrocynic]

"Admirable." That sounded sarcastic out of habit, but was relatively sincere. "Tried to get my friend to do that back when we were a team. She wouldn't go for it, though."

Maybe LadyTrouble would've taken off more if you hadn't been so nice, Jenny. Just a thought.

[suitably_heroic]

"See, this is why people teaming up need to share the same core values," Atton said, taking another small sip of his beer.

It wasn't completely impossible that he and Mira had wound up the go-to Jedi for field assignments purely because out of the entire group, they were the bags of attitude with slightly shaky moral compasses.

[electrocynic]

"Right. Otherwise there's no point." Kind of like this holo, but she was enjoying it all the same. "I'm never working in a team again. Too much bickering, not enough cleavage."

[suitably_heroic]

"It has its upsides from time to time," Atton said. "Usually when the rest of the team is at home making sure you can go where you need to go."

He grabbed some more chips.

... Damn it, he actually kind of agreed with what he'd just said.

[electrocynic]

Sarah shook her head as she glanced over at him again. "Doesn't work like that for capes," she said. "Everyone wants to be where the action is."

That was how you got in the papers and on the news, and got sponsorship deals.

[suitably_heroic]

Atton shrugged. "I'm a Jedi," he said, and that got easier to say every time he did it. "We're allegedly all about the collective and blah blah. In the end, I think it's just that the others prefer me and Mira risking our necks while they poke their noses in ancient holocrons, but hey."