Second Floor Common Room, Friday Evening

[myownface]

"I used to have this girlfriend known as Elsie
With whom I shared four sordid rooms in Chelsea
She wasn't what you'd call a blushing flower
As a matter of fact she rented by the hour!"

No, it wasn't a repeat of that weird day when everybody was prone to bursting spontaneously into song.

"The day she died the neighbors came to snicker
"Well, that's what comes from too much pills and liquor"
But when I saw her laid out like a Queen
She was the happiest corpse, I'd ever seen!"

Sparkle hadn't been bitten by a gremlin, either.

"I think of Elsie to this very day
I remember how she'd turn to me and say
"What good is sitting all alone in your room?
Come hear the music play
Life is a cabaret, old chum
Come to the cabaret!"

Truth be told, the television wasn't even on.

"And as for me
And as for me
I made my mind up, back in Chelsea
When I go, I'm going like Elsie!!"

No, it was none of the above. The occasion, really, was that Sparkle was making a sandwich on a Friday night, and he damn well felt like singing show tunes, and to hell with anybody who didn't like it if he was doing so at the top of his lungs. They should just count themselves lucky that he hadn't brought his tin pennywhistle into the common room with him, to play between verses.

[So, so open!]

Comments

[godscrankshaft.livejournal.com]

Thomasina had been wandering back into the dorms after collecting dinner -- Hannah was still giving her what she felt was a rather generous allowance; it allowed her, once a week, to purchase a meal from one of the establishments in town rather than eating in the common rooms or the cafeteria -- from the Outback Steakhouse when she heard the singing. (She had become rather fond of the so-called blooming onions, and remained convinced that her mother would have thought them the height of culinary blasphemy -- which made them all the tastier.) It was quite unlike any sort of song she had heard before, certainly nothing like the modern music to which Hannah had introduced her, and nothing she'd come across in her own tentative internet explorations.

Cue Thomasina coming down the hallway to the common room and poking her head in. "Excuse me," she asked, smiling brightly. "But could you tell me what sort of music it is that you're singing?"

[myownface]

"Show tunes," Sparkle replied, shooting the girl a broad grin over his shoulders. "The kind that people get up and dance to in a crowded room full of too much smoke and the kind of old men you probably wouldn't want to take home to mother."

And if he gave his hips a suggestive little sway at that, well, that wasn't entirely your imagination, either.

"You don't know Broadway, girl?"

[godscrankshaft.livejournal.com]

"I wouldn't particularly take any old men home to mother, even if I could," Thomasina retorted, grinning back.

Something about Sparkle inspired grinning.

"But no, I do not -- I've barely caught up with one-tenth of the things I want to learn about the last two centuries. Really, you should all have been much less creative, it would make it ever so much easier on me."

[myownface]

"Oh, yeah, but where would the fun be in that?" Sparkle plucked his sandwich from the counter, waved it around to illustrate his point, and then turned to jump up and sit on that very came counter, fuck it. "You're from that far behind, huh? Shit, you've missed like all the good stuff. How do you live?"

[godscrankshaft.livejournal.com]

Thomasina blinked before holding up her bag from Outback. "Generally, through eating food, which my body turns into energy through a process known as digestion," she told him, laughing a bit. "Why? Do you have a different method? I assure you, that hasn't changed in two hundred years."

[myownface]

"Oh, I eat through osmosis," Sparkle replied, and he didn't give a damn if osmosis was just the absorption of water and the word he was looking for was diffusion, screw you, "I haven't had real food in years."

He says, as he takes a giant bite of his sandwich.

[godscrankshaft.livejournal.com]

Thomasina laughed again. "So that was... Broadway, you said?" she asked, getting back to the original topic. "Is that the musician who sang it originally?"

[myownface]

Oh. Oh, oh honey no. Please pardon Sparkle for a moment while he takes this opportunity to howl with laughter.

"What? What? No, no Broadway is where it's performed. Please please please tell me they had like musicals back in the dark ages oh my god."

It was a wonder he hadn't choked on his sandwich, actually.

[godscrankshaft.livejournal.com]

"... We had music," Thomasina said, "but much has changed, culturally, since 1812."

She considered that for a moment, running over things she'd heard about. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Musicals -- those are the plays that are like operas, except performed in English, yes? I've never seen the opera; Mother thought that I was too young and would not let me to go London, even when Septimus offered to chaperone me," or perhaps because Septimus offered to chaperone, Thomasina allowed, "but I have heard they are most marvellous productions."

[myownface]

There we go! Now they were speaking the same language!

"Well, if you want to see one and have your mind like totally blown right out of your head, Broadway is the place to do it," Sparkle said, with all the authority of a kid who had never been to New York, and who probably never would be. "It's like this whole street full of fancy theatres and huge shows with budgets that would make small countries cry."

[godscrankshaft.livejournal.com]

It took Thomasina a moment to parse that slang -- having one's mind blown wasn't something oft-discussed in 1812, and she was still hesitant about modern media as she adapted, taking recommendations from Hannah that were helping her acclimate -- but eventually, she took it to mean something along the lines of 'if you wish to see something that will expand the previous limits of what you understood to be possible'.

Really, it would be rather difficult to blow her mind more than had been done by her rather sudden appearance in 2012.

"Perhaps we should discuss a trip, among our classmates!" Thomasina suggested. "Where is this street? In what city can we find it?"

[myownface]

"New York, New York," Sparkle replied, and yes, you better believe he sang that, too. "You had New York City in 1812, right?"

Otherwise known as the year Canada kicked America's ass, right? If there was any other significance to that number, Sparkle certainly didn't know it.

[godscrankshaft.livejournal.com]

Thomasina nodded enthusiastically. "Yes! That is... I have no idea how far it is from this island," she allowed, deflating a little. "Is it very far, do you know?"

[myownface]

"Same coast, at least," Sparkle replied with a shrug. "I don't know, I'm Canadian."

And road trips out of Toronto had been few and far between, too.

[godscrankshaft.livejournal.com]

"It is, at least, something to look into!" Thomasina's mood flipped right back around. "Perhaps we could suggest it to the school as an activity!"

And given that this was Fandom, they might even get one of the good shows like Boulevard W that a normal high school would never touch.

[myownface]

Sparkle would kill to get to see Boulevard W in person, for real, instead of from some cheap torrent of video taken with someone's cell phone camera.

"... Think they'd go for it?"

Because he was almost willing to behave himself if there was half a chance.

[godscrankshaft.livejournal.com]

"Why shouldn't they?" Thomasina asked. "It would be a much needed relief after... that to which the island submits us."

Which was a roundabout way of saying 'last week'.

[myownface]

"I got to light things on fire and booby trap teachers' offices without getting in shit for it," Sparkle shared. "I'm about as relieved as I'm going to get."

Seriously. His week? Had been awesome.

[ultron_junior]

"Dude," Victor commented, as he flopped into the second-floor common room for the second time in a day (hush, he got lonely and his floor was quiet) and began poking through the fridge for a soda, "that is one dirty song."

[myownface]

"Oh, the whole show is like that," Sparkle replied, sounding about as chipper as possible as he leaned over to inspect his sandwich. "There's one where the emcee of the show sings about being in bed with two ladies..."

Sparkle kind of loved that movie. He'd never be able to afford to see it live, but he'd heard that the stage show was vastly different, and damn it, he wanted to.

"You never heard it before, huh?"

[ultron_junior]

"Not really a musicals person," Victor shrugged. "I always thought it was ... you know, pretty girls singing about how much they wanted to get married. Cheesy. Is a lot of it like that?"

[myownface]

"Oh, god man you have no idea." Sparkle picked a piece of meat out of his sandwich and popped it into his mouth. So what if that wasn't what sandwiches were for? He did what he wanted. "There's one about, like, these women who want to be show girls in the big city and they end up in prison, on death row for murder, and it's all about what they do to get off scot free. And there's this other one with puppets? Full frontal puppet nudity I shit you not."

He could go on forever.

[ultron_junior]

Victor took a moment to process that. "Okay," he said, leaning back against the fridge. "I believe you, easy, but who wants to see a puppet naked?"

Other than Chase Stein, probably, Victor thought. But Chase didn't count.

[myownface]

"Well, it's like comedy you know? They sing about what guys use the internet for and how it's okay to be queer and about laughing at other people when shit goes wrong for them. It's kind of like what would happen if Sesame Street was written by a bunch of college grads with nothing better to do with their time except maybe smoke pot or something."

Didn't that clear it all up, Vic?

[ultron_junior]

Oh, totally. Which was why Victor was going to nod like he understood, claim a bag of chips from the cupboard, and go sit down.

"Like ... what's that one with the big gay fuzzy alien looking things who eat custard?" he asked. "I practically felt stoned just watching that one."

Victor, it should be noted, had never even touched a joint in his life, much less inhaled.

[myownface]

Sparkle actually needed to take a moment to digest that one.

"The kid's show? The one with, like, the vacuum cleaner or whatever? And parents got all pissed off like because the purple one had a triangle on his head and was clearly part of the gay agenda or something?"

If you asked Sparkle, a lot of people could stand to have a joint or two in their lives.

[ultron_junior]

"You got it," Victor nodded. "Because if I was gay, I know I'd want to take over children's TV to sneak evil triangles into things. It'd be my favorite thing to do."

[myownface]

"I'd just, like, have homoerotic rainbow popsicle licking or something," Sparkle decided. "Make it good and obvious what my agenda is."

And this was why Sparkle would never be involved in children's entertainment, folks.

[ultron_junior]

Which was a tragedy, given his name.

"Could you do it in a Speedo?" Victor asked. "Just in case the popsicles melted too fast."

[myownface]

"If they were to melt that fast and I were to end up with like popsicle bukkake all over myself, a Speedo would probably be the best bet," Sparkle mused. "See, Victor, we should host a children's show."

Oh god.

[ultron_junior]

Victor looked nervous.

Very, very nervous.

"How about you host," he suggested, "and I'm, you know, the genius behind the camera?"

[myownface]

"Or we could stick you into the mandatory Smoochy suit," Sparkle suggested. Because Sparkle was a horrible person that way. "What do you think, Victor? How's your rhino impression these days?"