Roughly On Par with the Cakemaker of Kiev

At some point on Saturday--Hardison had stopped keeping track of time after his fifth shot of Red Bull and Orange Soda--Eliot and Parker had shown up at the library covered in shark goo and hustled him home, talking about sleep and showers and real food. Probably. By the time they'd shown up, Hardison had been hopped up on so much caffeine he could practically see through time and most of what they'd been saying had sounded like a teacher from the old Peanuts cartoons.

After almost twelve hours of solid sleep, a shower that felt great even though it was cold, and a breakfast that was too good to have come from the camp stove Eliot had cooked it on, Hardison was starting to feel like a person again. He was standing in the living room, staring out the window and sipping his cocoa. "We can fix up the guest room for the girls again," he was saying. "Let 'em stay with us. An' Luke's is busted, but the freezer's still workin' an' folks can get to--oh shit!"

That oh shit? Was for the two--no three--was that four sharks being propelled through the air towards their house. At high speed. "Get down!" he yelled flinging himself behind the couch, just before a total of five sharks slammed through the front walls of the house and causing serious structural damage to most of the downstairs.

He should have stayed in the library.

[For them that are there!]

After Hardison got home from the diner, Eliot had summarized the conversation he'd had with Sparkle about his sister, mostly going over the points that were relevant to find her. He hadn't even gotten halfway through the it before Hardison had pulled out his laptop and started the searches, narrowing down options with every detail Eliot provided.

Still, of those details, there weren't many and most were years out of date, which meant the search had taken a long time--by which Hardison meant more than a few hours. But even with the extended timeframe, the end result was the same: he had a hit. (Technically, he had several, but this one wasn't just the most promising, it was straight-up promising.)

"Eliot!" he called. "You wanna grab Sparkle? I'm pretty sure I found his sister."

( Family is complicated )

[Preplayed with the wonderful vdistinctive, whoisalicewhite, and myownface. Broadcast fine, NFI, OOC is love]

So this day was all kinds of fired. First, Hardison had met some crazy, murder hobo version of his boyfriend in the park and had gotten to have not-so happy funtimes with the wrong end baseball bat. And then on his way home, he'd kept seeing things out of the corner of his eye, but when he'd turned to see what was out there, there was absolutely nothing.

Was that a sign of a concussion? He was pretty sure that was a sign of a concussion. Or maybe some kind of brain swelling thing. Or was brain swelling what a concussion was? He couldn't remember off the top of his head and that was probably a bad sign, too. And staring at a computer screen would just make his headache worse and he was already squinting out of his left eye, as bruised and blackened as that one was and rather than look up Web MD and discover that he had some form of cancer, he was going to rest right here on Eliot's couch and steal Eliot's last sandwich and use Eliot's good William's Sonoma handtowel to wrap around the ice he was holding against his bruised face.

Hardison...might have been a tad grumpy at Eliot, yes, even though it wasn't, technically speaking, his fault a crazy version of him had kicked Hardison's ass earlier. Not that being grumpy kept Hardison out of Eliot's house and waiting for either of his partners to come home so he could demand cuddles and sympathy.

Man, he wished he had some kind of neat superpower so he could see when the island was going to go crazy and ruin his whole goddamn day.

[For the crew, please!]

Hardison was grinning as he lugged the second screen into Eliot's living room. "Eliot! Yo, Eliot, where you at? Guess what!" Dropping his voice, he added to Parker, who was carrying her own load of chips and foam fingers, "He ain't never gonna guess."

Probably because most people wouldn't assume that their partners would just decide to throw a Superbowl party at their house without prior agreement. But Hardison wasn't going to let something like that stop him. If he hadn't been stymied by Eliot's lack of TVs, he wasn't going to be bothered by something like this, either.

Eliot leaned against the door jam and stared at the televisions coming in through the door. "For the last time, Hardison, I ain't lettin' you set up your six screen office thing in here."

Parker waved a foam finger at him. It was bright blue and orange and bigger than she was. “We’re here for the party! I brought the snacks. So you can just relax and not have to worry about being the host.”

Eliot opened his mouth, pointed at the foam finger, then let his head drop into his hands. "Of course you are."

"C'mon, mama, we talked about this," Hardison reminded. "We ask first. Yo, Eliot, you mind if we borrow your house for a Superbowl party? Our place is too small to fit a lot of people." Look, Eliot! He wasn't even putting up the screens while he was asking! Sure, he was subtly running a stud-finder over the walls to make sure they could be hung properly, but that was all!

"It's also traditional not to just show up with the supplies like you know I'm already gonna say yes." Don't be dumb, Eliot. They completely already knew you were going to say yes.

“There’s going to be puppies.” Parker had gotten some very unclear ideas about how the Super Bowl worked. “And maybe kittens. Val will like that!” Look, she even used your preferred name for your dog!

Of course they did. But they still asked. Even if the discussion before they left the house had ended with a 'Let's go steal a living room.' That was just tradition at work, okay? "So, I figure we'll have the big, big screen with the game on it, an' then the other slightly-smaller big screen have the Puppybowl. Then everybody's happy an' got somethin' to watch. Also, for refreshments, look what I found!"

Beaming, Hardison pulled out a six pack of Thief Juice. "We can introduce the island to it!"

Poor Eliot. He was doomed. Had been for years. "I am not hosting," he said. "I am not cleaning. I am not responsible for any part of this, and if anything breaks, I'm holdin' you two personally responsible."

Parker bopped him on the head with the foam finger, grinning. “Super Bowl!”

[Open to the all the townies of the island. Invites send out handwavily over email. Co-written with the wonderful vdistinctive and whoisalicewhite! OCD up, come one come all!]