geniuswithasmartphone | 75 Godiva Street, Saturday Afternoon

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75 Godiva Street, Saturday Afternoon

So, everything was terrible again. Hardison was pretty sure that Tony and his TA were evil, Eliot had brought home a version of Kathy that needed babysitting a lot more than she needed to be out heroing, there were slugs pretty much everywhere, and last night Eliot had insisted they all sleep down in the panic room in the basement. Which was actually more like a 'panic suite' because Eliot had built it and he was kind of extra about things, but even so, it was a little more claustrophobic than Hardison was comfortable with. He'd found himself calculating how much air was available in their hidey hole, which wasn't something he'd done since they'd moved from Portland.

That itchy restlessness hadn't left him, even when they'd all come back upstairs for brunch. He needed to get out for a little while. Do something. Spend some time in the open air while feeling useful. So once the meal was over, Hardison grabbed for his jacket and his laptop bag. A walk across the island to the school for some quality research time would hopefully settle him.

[Open for housemates and visitors!]

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"Where the hell do you think you're going?!"

Hardison thought he was twitchy? Eliot was buzzing. He still hadn't slept. Even with his people in the safe room (most of his people, he had one Kathy, but he was sure there was still another one out there), his brain still hummed with anxiety, bad memories, and all the worst things that might happen if he didn't watch out every moment. He couldn't let Hardison out of his sight. He'd barely let them all come upstairs to eat.

Kathy was very carefully copying down all the notes she'd written on her hands and arms. She'd promised to help with the dishes, but she was worried that all of her reminders would wash away. And then she'd be even worse at remembering anything!

Ooh, and maybe after the dishes, a shower? She was wearing some of Eliot's old clothes while hers were being washed, but she wanted to get clean, too.

And then she'd go and fight because slugs bad and Stop the bad guys were things she'd just copied down onto the paper and those were important!

Whoops. Looked like Hardison was making a break for it without planning it first. Well, she'd help. Mainly by distracting Eliot, probably.

[ooc: back in 2 hours or so.]

"To the library," Hardison said calmly. Anything else would just feed right into Eliot's anxiety spiral again. "They probably need folks to help research. An' maybe I'll stop an' check on Tony an' Steve. He was doin' me a real concern the other day."

Oh, yeah, that'd definitely help his case.

"You want to stop along the way?" Yeah, there really wasn't much avoiding that anxiety spiral. "So you can get caught by some kind of giant sphinx thing again?!"

He didn't need to sneak to get out of his own house! He was a grown ass man, he could come and go as he pleased!

...Also, there was no way in hell he could outsneak anybody in the house, other than possibly Kathy, so he saw no reason to really try. Sometimes boldness worked where subterfuge would fail.

This did not seem to be one of those times.

"Dammit, Eliot!"

By the time they were fifty, all of them would be saying "Damnit ___" at least once a day.

"Whoops." Parker looked outside and said, "I don't see any worms." Which meant nothing, so. "Do you want my taser?"

Kathy smiled at Parker, picking up the plate that she'd been using. "Are you done with this?" Kathy asked. "I'm doing the dishes." Beat. "I'm sorry, what's your name again?"

This wasn't the first time she'd needed to ask.

"Parker." And didn't that just make her heart all squeezy every time. "But you know, you can call me whatever you want. I'll know who you mean." And then, "And you don't have to do the dishes." Especially if she was going to forget she was doing them in the middle, or wash off any of the important writing on her arms.

"Parker!" Kathy said, excited. "I know you! I have your name on my arm!" She pushed up the sleeve of Eliot's old t-shirt to show her upper arm, where the names Eliot, Parker, Hardison were written in a circle over her bicep. The letters were faded, written over ghosts of previous iterations from where she'd updated them over the year. "Is Sarah here too?"

Ow. "No, she's not here right now. She's... somewhere safe." Parker kept her face as convincing as possible. "She's having fun." She lightly touched Kathy's bicep, where the writing was. "You did a good job with this. And with finding us." She paused and said, "You should write that on yourself somewhere too. 'Good job, Kathy.'"

"Radio ain't said nothin' about monsters this time," Hardison reminded. "Just slugs an' weird people."

One of which was probably his TA, which had him extra-worried.

"Slugs, mama," Hardison said absently. "They're slugs."

Not that taxonomy was really important right now.

"You think Eliot'll be any less panicked I go out there armed?"

"Nooooo," Parker admitted. Unfortunately, Eliot had gone round the bend on this situation, and was acting like a mama bear with too many cubs. Needing eyes on everyone even though he didn't have six pairs of eyes to make that work. "But you need to be there. Do you think he'd be okay with taking us all to the library?" Ha. Ha ha.

"Who is she?" Kathy asked, because there wasn't a conversation her lack of memory couldn't make worse. "I thought maybe that was the puppy's name, but Eliot says her name is Val."

The number of times Eliot had told her Val's name was now in the double-digits.

"You really think I should?" she added. "What if I don't always do a good job?"

"Somebody you love." Did it matter if they were family? Would it matter if Kathy forgot again, two minutes from now? "So what if you don't always do a good job? You've done a great job this time. And it's not like it'll make you stop trying." Parker's smile was a little more genuine now. "Nothing makes you stop." Not amnesia, or evil, or death, or anything.

"I don't think the library allows for padlocks on the door, so naw," Hardison said. "I mean, I know why he's bein' like this, but..." The weight of the weird world last year hung on him differently than it did Eliot, but it was still there. "But like you said, I need to be there."

"That's a good point," Kathy said, snagging her sharpie and writing Good job Kathy in the inside crease of her elbow. She'd forgotten she was planning on taking a shower in a moment. "And now I have my name on me, too!"

Which was good for when she forgot that, too.

"Tackling him wouldn't slow him down." He'd just try to drag Hardison back inside with Parker clinging to his back like a limpet. "...I could fake being sick. Or starting to forget things, to give you a minute to leave. But I'm pretty sure he'd completely lose it if I did."

"Can I have that for a second?" Parker asked, biting her lip. "I want to write something nice on you too." Even if it would wash off eventually.

"Okay," Kathy said, handing over the sharpie and then held out her arms. "Whatcha gonna write?"

Her arms were a map of words, names, and messages all jumbled about. Most were written in English, some in Hangul. A few started in one language then drifted to another and back without any rhyme or reason

It was less of a word, and more of am emoji equation.

Me: <3 {{ U }} 4vr

Maybe it would stick better that way, in someone else's writing.

"Naw, we can't do that to him," Hardison said immediately. "He's brittle already. Somethin' like that could break him. We just gotta try to reason with him or somethin'."

"Reason with him," Parker said, sounding very dubious. "The guy who made us sleep in Chez Fall-out Shelter last night." Well. She was pretty much out of other ideas. "I guess we can try. Since he's too paranoid to escape sneakily right now."

"He watched us die last year," he reminded Parker quietly. "You know how he feels about what his role is. I don't think he even cared that them other us's killed him. But he watched us die an' that messed him up real good. Then he lost that Kathy again an'..."

He shook his head. "I shoulda talked to him about it more. This is on me, yo."

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75 Godiva Street, Saturday Afternoon

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