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dorothydalmati1 · 7 months

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Obscure Animation Subject #33: FantomCat

Originally posted on February 2, 2023 on Twitter.

Requested by @EngageRidley1

Created by Andy Roper, it was produced by Cosgrove Hall Films and aired on ITV from September 7, 1995 to December 18, 1996, with two seasons of 26 episodes, each with a runtime of 21 minutes.

The show is about Phillipe L'Entrique Elan de Chanel, a swashbuckling hero who thrived on the stormy evening of December 31, 1699, in mortal combat with his nemesis Baron von Skelter, a sword-wielding caped Skeletoid alchemist.

But Von Skelter was not alone in Castle Fantom, as he had brought with him two of his henchmen. Von Skelter trapped Phillipe in a frame for about 300 years, and was freed on December 31, 1999 by the Wildcat Detective Agency, and joined the agency on January 1, 2000.

With the Wildcat Detective Agency on his side, Phillipe tries stopping the villains on their plans and would always battle when an evil plan comes by. What makes the show notable is that its one of the first digitally colored shows, being animated on Animo, a British software.

The first season was directed by Ben Turner, but the second season was directed by its creator, Andy Roper. I watched the first episode, and found it okay, the animation is alright and the character designs are spot on, but the voice-acting sounds cheesy and the writing is weak.

I heard that it has a cult following though, being remembered by those who grew up with it when it was airing. There’s even furries in the show like Tabitha "Tabs" Wildcat for an example. She has the best design in the show in my opinion as well. It isn’t for me but find it okay.

If your curious, see if its for your tastes. It’s quite nostalgic but the flaws don’t make it good for me. Cosgrove Hall has done better shows like Danger Mouse, which I like for its humor and the action. In the UK Cosgrove Hall is a British Disney but this show isn’t good to me.

#FantomCat #obscure animation

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boinae · 1 year

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#jk rowling #feminism

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thesegivinghands · 1 year

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Excellent new podcast.

Host Megan Phelps-Roper writes a letter to J.K. Rowling—and receives a surprising invitation in reply: the opportunity for an intimate conversation in Rowling’s Scottish home.

Produced by Andy Mills, Matthew Boll, and Megan Phelps-Roper, with special thanks to Candace Mittel Kahn and Emily Yoffe.

#j.k. rowling

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motorpedia · 2 years

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First Hagerty RADwood UK event a tremendous success

- Thousands of guests attended the first ever Hagerty RADwood event on Saturday at Bicester Heritage - Hundreds of RADwood-era cars, built in the 1980s and 90s, were on display with an eclectic selection ranging from Italian supercars to Japanese rarities - The prize for Raddest car of the show, presented by Paul Cowland, was awarded to an ultra-rare Nissan Exa Cabriolet, owned by Eddie Rattley - A special RADwood 80s and 90s DJ set kept crowds entertained away from the cars, along with a BMX and skateboard display, graffiti demonstrations and a selection of famous film star cars of the period

Hagerty’s first RADwood UK event celebrated the excess of '80s and '90s car and lifestyle culture in style, blending period-correct dress with automotive awesomeness.

Thousands of guests and hundreds of Radwood cars filled Bicester Heritage on Saturday, with many owners dressing in period-correct clothes to match the era of their car. From over-sized linen suits and Testarossas, to tracksuits and hot hatches, and city-brokers with red 911s the RAD spirit was fully embraced by UK car enthusiasts, creating the same fun and relaxed atmosphere the US RADwood events are famous for. Paul Cowland was a part of a panel tasked with judging 50 cars in the Show & Shine display, an area that perfectly embodied the spirit of RADwood with vehicles ranging from a period-modified 80s Honda Civic, to a ‘red top’ Vauxhall Nova, along with a Transit camper and a selection of 80s and 90s Americana. Many prizes were awarded, including trophies given to an immaculate BMW 840ci, a daily-driven Polo G40 and an all-original, low mileage Audi 90. The coveted Raddest of Show prize was awarded to Eddie Rattley and his immaculate, ultra-rare Nissan Exa Cabriolet. The show carparks contained hundreds of RAD cars, filling the grass areas of the Bicester Heritage site. All manner of 80s and 90s cars featured, from FOTU worthy Fiestas to 90s excess V8 German super-saloons, and guests spent hours enjoying the spectacle with many rare and unique vehicles being proudly displayed by enthusiastic owners. RADwood celebrates automotive and lifestyle culture of the 80s and 90s to the fullest, with a host of period-correct entertainment provided by Hagerty to please the crowds in addition to the cars. Absolute Radio 90s DJ Andy Bush played 3 hours of 80s and 90s music, while guests enjoyed BMX and skateboard displays, graffiti demonstrations and a selection of film star cars which included the KITT Pontiac Firebird and the A-Team GMC van. Mark Roper, Managing Director of Hagerty International, said, “The first Hagerty RADwood UK event exceeded all expectations, with hundreds of amazing cars and many owners embracing the RADwood spirit in period attire. UK classic car culture is wide and varied and Hagerty is at the heart of a new generation of enthusiasts with events like Festival of the Unexceptional and now RADwood. I would like to thank everyone who made the first Hagerty RADwood UK event such a success and we will be back, bigger and better, in 2023.” Read the full article

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fyeahameliabullmore · 5 years

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#nicholas gleaves #amelia bullmore #scott and bailey #andy roper #gill murray

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robbiesblogdotcom · 2 years

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30 x First Name, Last Name Available Dot Com from 2000

Check out this list of 30 x Available to register First Name, Last Name Dot Com domain names that were first registered in the Year 2000, a Nice list that you can pick up many of these domain names for registration fee by clicking on the links in the table to check availability, you prefer to use another registrar then please help us out by clicking on these links – To Register via…

View On WordPress

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dmsden · 2 years

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Darkest Dungeons - Advice for running Underdark adventures

Hullo, Gentle Readers. This week’s Question from a Denizen comes from the wonderfully named thedeadhandofseldon. They ask, “Hi Andy, do you have any advice for running adventures in the Underdark?”

Sweet, short, and to the point. And yes, deadhand, I do.

The Underdark can be a fascinating environment. I once played in a campaign of The Night Below, a mega-adventure in the Underdark from the days of 2nd edition. It was full of terror and paranoia, and I think that’s a good start to my advice. The Underdark is a wholly alien environment to most PC races. It should be terrifying. The PCs should constantly be on their guard and afraid of things that lurk here that are so much better suited for the place than they are. It is a place of predators, and the PCs are the prey.

So how do we foster these feelings? I would look at the various basic needs people have and exploit them to maximize themes of fear and paranoia. In order to survive, you need air, water, food, perception, and protection. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

Almost everything needs to breathe in order to survive. If you play with the party’s access to breathable air, you can really creep them out. Maybe a tunnel begins to fill with a poisonous gas. It’s not lethal enough to kill them, but they might need to make Constitution saving throws to avoid being poisoned, or to avoid gaining a level of Exhaustion. Or you could use the rules for holding your breath and suffocating. Flooded tunnels also mess with the PCs’ ability to breathe. They may have to have someone dive in order to determine how long the flooded tunnel is. Imagine the terror of trying to negotiate a pitch black tunnel while holding your breath. Yeah, there you go.

Water can be plentiful in the Underdark, but that doesn’t mean all water should be consumed. Sure some characters will quickly get around this with magic, but, especially at lower levels, you can use access to water as something to strike fear into the party. No one wants levels of Exhaustion. You could put an awful choice in front of them - do they drink this obviously tainted water and deal with whatever side effects it has, or do they deal with Exhaustion and slowly die of thirst? And what about things living in the water? Who wants to drink water that came from anywhere near an aboleth? Or you can borrow a bit from Tomb of Annihilation and infest that water with throat leeches. No fun.

Food is very similar to water, but it’s likely to be more scarce. Can the PCs eat that lichen? Are these beetles safe to consume? How long has this crate of rations been abandoned here? Who else might want this food, and what might they have to overcome to claim it? If they find evidence of living creatures, is it something they can hunt? Or are they now being hunted?

The Underdark is immediately a threat to Perception thanks to its lack of most natural light. Sure, a lot of PC races have Darkvision, but most critters in the Underdark have better Darkvision than yours, and they might be lurking just outside of your range. Beyond sight deprivation, there’s also camouflage to take into account. Creatures like lurkers, mimics, cave fishers, piercers, chokers, ropers, and their ilk are all likely to be common in the Underdark. What looks like a safe, empty tunnel could, in fact, be full of hidden dangers that will devour you given half a chance.

Protection is an obvious one. Sure, the PCs are capable people, but this is an environment full of danger. Nations of drow, derro, duergar, aboleths, beholders, mind flayers, neogi, and more lurk in the deep places of the world. Friendly settlements of svirfneblin and friendly dwarves are going to be rare. If you alert the wrong guards to your presence, an entire city of nation might shortly be searching for you, wanting to devour you, enthrall you, or worse.

Beyond simply scaring the bejeebers out of the players, I would also play on the utter alien nature of the place. There’s no natural from the sun, moon, or stars, but phosphorescent or bio-luminescence might come into platy, lighting the scene with lurid colors. There are no trees, but there could be towering forests of fungi. Black, oily sunless seas or lakes made of ooze might be there to block your way. Terrain is likely to be broken and ragged in many places, forcing you to climb or descend. Stalagmites of massive size may make it impossible to peer ahead into the darkness. Emphasize how different the Underdark is...the temperature unchanging, the lack of wind or rain, the utter silence.

If someone wants to play a creature from the Underdark, I would use them to emphasize how terrible a place it is. Yes, you know your settlement and some tunnels surrounding it, but beyond that, you know things are awful and danger is lurking. Or tell them what they’re used to in their own home...and then emphasize how strange it is in these unfamiliar chambers and halls.

For a bit of research, if you have the chance, visit an actual cave complex. I’ve had the pleasure to visit several, including Rio Secreto in Mexico, where I got to swim through a flooded cavern and had the guide turn his light off to emphasize how incredibly dark it was. Being in a cave will inform you better than anything else. Short of that, watch movies like The Descent or the old Journey to the Centre of the Earth (or better yet, read that last one). If you want a specifically D&D source, look for 1st Edition’s Dungeon Survival Guide, or the 2nd edition Caverns & Catacombs book. Both can be had in PDF format from DriveThruRPG.

I hope this helps, deadhand. The Underdark is one of D&D’s great evocative landscapes. Tell a great story there!

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thegirl20 · 2 years

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Watching this scene on mute, it struck me how much the body language is like an intensely awkward double date. Rachel’s done something to piss Gill off, so they’re not talking. Janet and Andy are trying to ignore the obvious tension by being overly normal. Everybody’s wishing they were somewhere else. Love it.

#gill x rachel #janet x andy #gill murray #rachel bailey #janet scott #andy roper #scott and bailey

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ladyfloriographist · 3 years

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This is kinda building on this little tidbit where Reader—under Roper’s instructions and coercion—has assumed an identity in order to pose as Jonathan’s girlfriend/lover/partner/significant other. Enjoy!

Prompt: 40. “Stop being a fucking dick.”

Pairing: Jonathan Pine x femme!Reader

Warnings: staged/fake argument, Jed (Jemima) Marshall is in this for a second, fake name/identity for Reader

XXXX

Jonathan glances at his watch.

A minute to go. Sixty seconds until you and he had to create a convincing distraction.

He takes a casual sip of white wine and stretches an arm across the back of your chair languidly. “Darling,” he croons, interrupting your conversation with Jed with a voice as smooth as rippling silk.

You turn and glance coquettishly at him, batting your lashes. “Yes, Andy?”

Jonathan smoulders at you. Slowly, intimately, he leans closer and ducks down to your ear. He whispers, “Fifty seconds to the drop—and I’ve just said something naughty.”

You let your face break into a smile and you giggle.

“Excellent,” he breathes into your ear, then pulls away to look lovingly at your face, runs his finger under your chin, and leans in again. “Something even worse now,” he hums a breathy, sexy laugh, his hot exhale fanning over your neck. “Something about taking you to bed. Ravaging you for hours on end. Very sexy. Makes you flustered.”

“Oh, Andy—you fiend. We’re at dinner,” you giggle and whisper, pretending to glance around for any onlookers while hoping, at the same time, to go undiscovered.

You are picture perfect—just like two people new to being in love with each other.

“Well done,” he murmurs into your ear, “remember—throw a drink or slap me. Race off to the—”

“Your mouth, Andrew Birch!”

“—good—stairs. I’ll follow you. We leave when Dicky finds us.”

He presses a kiss to your cheek and stands from his seat. “May I get you another, princess?” he says, wetting his lip and pulling it between his teeth for a moment.

You push your empty glass towards him. “Thank you, darling.”

Jonathan strides with deliberate, designed swagger to the bar, and your gaze follows him with adoring bedroom eyes. He leans over the bartop and you rest your chin in your palm, gazing at his form. You can’t see his face from here, but you know he’s started flirting with the woman behind the bar because the look on her face changes.

She’s smiling, but bashfully. He leans further over the bartop, and must say something else to her—because she laughs, and a delighted twinkle shines in her eyes.

You’re on. You sit up straight in your chair and drop your arm to the table. Your brow creases as you watch Jonathan.

“Ok, Liv?” asks Jed from your other side. Her voice is soft, but concerned.

“I don’t know yet,” you reply with a hard edge to your tone.

Jed plays her part. She follows your gaze and mutters, “Oh, no.”

Jonathan’s body shudders with laughter. You scoff and scoot back in your chair, incredulous anger painting your features. He turns and strolls back to your table, holding two drinks.

“Oh, no. Oh, bad,” Jed says, taking a sip from her gin and tonic and turning away from the impending lovers’ quarrel.

Jonathan reaches the table and sets the two glasses down. “Now,” he croons, “where were we?”

You fold your arms as he makes to sit down. “What do you call that?” you say, flicking your chin in the direction of the bar.

Jonathan pauses, regarding you with cautious, careful eyes. “Darling—”

“No,” you reject his telegraphed attempt at a lie, “try again. What was that?”

Jonathan raises open palms to you, and takes a slow half-step back. “Olivia,” he says calmly. “Nothing. Honestly.”

You shoot to your feet. “Giggling and laughing. Do you think me a fool?”

“Darling, of course not.”

“In front of my own eyes.” You point your finger and poke it towards him, taking a half-step with the movement. “The hide. The gall of you.”

Jonathan takes an obvious step back, ‘trying’ to diffuse the situation. “Liv, please,” he pleads, looking around furtively and, again, ‘trying’ to keep this conversation under wraps. “Not here.”

“Don’t!” you raise your voice, drawing more attention your way. “Don’t lie to me, Andy. I’m not as silly as you think I am.”

Jonathan softens his eyes and tilts his head to the side. “Princess, why would you say such a thing?”

“Christ,” you spit out. “Are you fucking her?” You gesture vaguely in the direction of the bar.

“Olivia. Please.” Jonathan slings you a stern look. “Lower your voice.”

You shove his chair out of your path, making sure the feet scrape noisily on the floor, and step towards him. “How long?”

He steps back. “Let’s just go back to the room and talk about this.”

“How long, Andrew?” Heads are turning. People are starting to watch you.

“It’s nothing. She’s nothing, darling. Believe me.”

“Believe you!?” you scoff, your inflection rising in pitch. “Stop being a fucking dick. How long?”

“Not long!” Jonathan raises his voice to match yours, then winces and puts the heels of palms to his eyes like he regrets it. “Oh, God in Heav—sod it,” he mutters and mumbles. “Not long, Liv,” he says, guilt lacing his features. “I swear it. Not long.”

His voice sounds louder than it should have. The people around you are quiet: listening.

You make your lower lip tremble. “You’d want to tell me, Andy.”

Jonathan sighs, and his shoulders slump. “Since we arrived,” he sighs, remorseful and resigned. “The second night.”

You snatch a glass from the table and hurl the contents towards him.

The alcohol splashes onto his face and his chest and he gasps. His shirt and jacket will need immediate laundering.

“Liv,” murmurs Jed quietly, touching you gently on the arm. “Come on, let’s… let’s go, love.”

“Fuck off, Jed,” you shrug her off and stare daggers at Jonathan, who’d grabbed a napkin and was towelling off his face. She’d given you the signal. The trade was done. You could storm off now.

“Don’t follow me,” you snarl at Jonathan as you stride past him, your heels click-clacking on the floor.

“Olivia,” Jonathan says as you breeze past him. “Olivia, wait!” he calls again, louder, and you pick up your pace, heading for the stone staircase around the corner.

Jonathan tosses his napkin to the table and follows you. calling out to you with your fake name and fake nick name and fake pet names. It’s quite a scene, quite a debacle for those unaware—which included almost everyone watching.

It was perfect.

Jonathan catches up to you quickly, grabs your wrist and murmurs quickly and quietly, “Ready?”

“Yes,” you reply, your voice scraping just above a whisper.

He tugs your arm and crowds you up against the stone wall. He cups your face and kisses you deeply, with need and fervid passion.

You return his kiss eagerly, clutching his lapels and crinkling the expensive material in your palm. Your mouths move together with a rough and desperate hunger, and the press of his lips and sweep of his tongue is insistent.

You grab his hips and pull him toward you, and you gasp.

To your great surprise, you feel a bulging stiffness pressed up against your body through his slacks.

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan gasps.

No time for that now. You all have parts to play—and biology just gets in the way of the ruse.

His hands find your waist and he kisses along your jaw to your ear. “Truly. I’m, I’m so sorry. I can’t—"

“It’s fine. Just kiss me,” you mutter, breathless and thankful that he can’t tell, like this, the state of your own arousal.

Jonathan plants a long, sensual kiss to your mouth, then comes back again and again for more, licking your tongue and your bottom lip.

You run your hands up the back of his neck and try not to grind against his erection. “Put your hand up my dress.”

“What?”

“Do it.”

You chase his mouth for more hot, messy, turbulent, undignified kisses, and Jonathan finds the slit in the side of your dress. He slides his hand up your thigh, and his fingers and palm are warm on your skin.

You moan at his touch—completely involuntarily—and he does the same—a total accident—when he hears the pleased sound and swallows it.

“Alright there, Birch?”

Roper’s sardonic, gravelly baritone slices through the fake-true, pretend-real atmosphere, and Jonathan breaks the kiss instantly. For a few fleeting moments, he pants into your open mouth while he catches his breath.

Jonathan spins on his heel and straightens his collar. He clears his throat, standing in front of you to somewhat shield you from prying eyes. “Fine, sir. My apologies.”

Dicky hums dismissively. “Quite alright, old chap.”

Roper’s ‘business associate’ catches an eyeful of you. “Ah, there now,” the man says in a thick accent, “I see you two have made up nicely, huh?”

Jonathan laughs it off. You play at righting your dress. “I believe so, sir.”

“Quite a commotion, earlier.”

“Ah,” says Roper, clapping his business partner on the shoulder. “I’m sure you remember, dear friend,” Roper subtly leads his associate away, “what it was like to be young and in love?”

#jonathan pine x reader #jonathan pine x you #jonathan pine #the night manager #andrew birch x reader #andrew birch x you #tom hiddleston #g writes prompts

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we-are-a-dragon · 2 years

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Andy (playing Una): I'd like to make a Dungeoneering check. 34.

DM: You enter a cavern and Una spots signs of roper inhabitance. Ropers being horrible monsters like a pillar of flesh with one eye and a big gnashing mouth and a lot of grabby tentacles.

Hamish (playing Thaddeus): Ugh.

Tati (playing Seraph): Don't like that.

DM: You don't actually see any ropers, but there are definitely some around. Una finds a safe side-tunnel to take you down instead.

Hamish: Nice. Alright, we've been going a while. I use Endurance. 30.

DM: You, er... I'm struggling to come up with ongoing descriptions of wayfinding in the caves. You succeed.

Marijn (playing Godric): History check to see if we're going the way I think we should be. 38.

DM: You've had this niggling feeling that you've been bearing too far west for a while. You come to a branch and one option sort of doglegs back almost the way you came, and that's exactly what you were hoping for. You convince the party to go that way.

#funny #dnd #caves #monsters #Una #Thaddeus #Seraph #Godric #Lyra DM #just little d&d things #ooc #skill challenge #dungeoneering #don't like that #endurance #poor DM #history #travelling trauma centre

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distinctivelibrarians · 4 years

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@mcghosts for your prompt for a continuation of my Old Guard Leverage fic! Thank you!

Stain the Morning Sun

(read on ao3)

It takes...weeks. Months. To translate most of the journal. When the days are bright, and the nights long, Hardison finds it fun. It’s a new challenge - and one he can hold, can turn over in his hands and pick apart. So, it’s already a step up on the whole not dying thing he’s got going on.

He finds experts. Pores through decades old dictionaries and forgotten dissertations. He can’t quite wrap his head around the actual language, but he can pick out words, here and there, phrases, as more time passes.

He’s had to have Parker steal the journal back five times from overenthusiastic professors before he starts just giving out copies. It gets him less data, and more people calling him a liar and a fake, but it also means less damage to the journal itself.

Parker...Parker’s interested in the journal, sure. Flits around him while he’s working on it. Asks questions occasionally when he makes some excited chirp or annoyed grumble - often enough, he doesn’t even realize he’s made a sound at all until she’s popping up at his side asking what he’s found.

But it’s not the same. Not for her.

She’s...not better at this, than him. But she hides it better.

She takes bigger risks in her jobs. Comes back more full of energy than Hardison thought one person could hold.

She doesn’t ask what he doesn’t offer, and she just.

Lives.

And if both of them are pretending the journal ends one page earlier. Well.

Like he said, she hides it better.

Hardison wouldn’t even call it pretending. As far as he’s concerned, that page does not exist. If he wasn’t sure they’d wreck the binding tearing the damn thing out, he’d toss that singular page into the fire.

Just thinking about it puts the taste of copper and lead in his mouth.

And, frankly, there’s only so much orange soda a man can drink to wash the taste out.

(No, no, Alec! Look at me! Look at me! You’re going to be fine - you’re going to be- you’re going to be okay! Somebody call 91- Nope. No. Nu-uh. He had enough nights waking up screaming, ash on his tongue and no sound coming out, a pain in his chest flaring bright and hot and the memory of bright light searing into his brain, even as all he can hear is his Nana screaming. He had enough nights. Enough mornings. Enough days. Without the added memory, thank you very much.)

What really pisses him off though - what really sets his teeth on edge?

He’s not even fucking mad.

But he should be.

He should be so fucked off about being left alone. He should want to tear the journal apart, piece by piece, just for that last page, just for that weak attempt at an apology.

He should.

But he isn’t.

And, because emotions are a goddamn mess on the best of days in the best of people, that’s what pisses him off.

Because, as much as he can, he gets it.

Oh, sure, he didn’t at first. At first, when he’d found the journal full of chicken scratch over a hundred years old written in a language far older than even that, with one page in the back picked out in carefully precise english, he’d read through it with so much excitement, he’d given himself whiplash when he’d actually read the page.

I’m sorry I can’t be there.

The rest of the page talked of others - a small group, together for a century. Another, closer to home, that this stranger collided with and ran away from.

Nowhere in there did it say why they were separate. What made them - either this stranger and his friend, or hell, him and Parker - different, if they were all in this together.

So, yeah, when Hardison first read it, he’d been pissed.

And he’d been scared.

And then he’d started translating.

They weren’t perfect translations - not by a long shot. Not quite google translate levels of bad but… close. Very close.

But they spoke of everything. And absolutely nothing.

Daily observations. A passing memory. Stories shared between two kindred spirits.

He can’t get the depth, but he can scratch the surface. And what he’s seeing is a pair of lonely people, passing by each other in a dwindling orbit, but never quite colliding. One managed to find a family in that loneliness, as far as he could tell. It took halfway through the damn journal for him to get names for the faces in his dreams - but that moment he connected them? Connected Nicky and Joe and Booker and Andy with the flits of memories he only barely got to see…

Parker’s eyes, her smile, when he shared that finding with her would stay with him for the rest of his days, he was sure.

The last page had been signed with an ‘E’. Simple as anything, and all the more annoying for it. Hardison doesn’t get the name ‘Eliot,’ or ‘Sophie,’ until he’s almost done with the journal.

And by that point...he’s not mad anymore.

He doesn’t have the years, yet (and that is still terrifying to think of, so no thank you), to understand the loneliness that prompted the secrecy and the avoidance. Not by a long shot.

But he has a hollow in his chest, some nights, remembering those years before Nana. Those months before Parker.

There’s a… comfort, in knowing yourself. In knowing who you can count on and limiting it to yourself.

Parker gets it, probably better than he does, in her own way.

So. Yeah. Hardison gets it.

The page’s words sink like fire in his bones - pain flaring from his sternum uncomfortably hot and bright, and he knows he should be mad.

It takes months to admit he never was.

---

“You think we’d fit in with them?” He asks, softly, into the dark. The apartment he’s got right now is large. Spacious. And empty. The windows overlooking the city stretch from floor to ceiling, and, at this height, the cars are just twinkling lights, zipping by and creating fluorescent memories across the asphalt. If he squints his eyes just right, they bleed into the stars above.

“...Maybe.” Parker says, from somewhere above him. It’s soft enough that Hardison knows she’s still thinking on it. Stays quiet to give her time. “Maybe not. Does it matter?”

And the question’s genuine, sinking into the quiet between them with a weight that makes Hardison’s shoulders sag. “No, I guess it doesn’t.” They had their family. And, who knows, maybe a new one would come along and fit right in that empty space that even Hardison could see, thousands of miles away.

But it wasn’t them. They were where they were for a reason, and it wasn’t with Andy and them.

And, as he watches the lights twisting and dancing so far below, he could admit, to himself and Parker, that that was okay.

---

“We could try to find them?”

“Who?” And Hardison doesn’t even need to look over to know Parker’s glaring at him. Groaning, he pushes himself away from his computer, meeting her glare head on. “Okay, why?”

“Why not?”

“Because he doesn’t want to be found. And, apparently, neither does Sophie.” After all, it’s been months, and the journal was still their only point of actual contact.

They still had the dreams, of course. Flashes of a tired face and a worn out body, brief glimpses of bright eyes and sharp smiles. But nothing...nothing to hold onto. Nothing to give shape to the names they had.

And, most days, that fact still hurt. But, after the initial fervor had died down, after him and Parker had settled into...into whatever it was they were doing, he could admit that the sting was muted now.

She doesn’t even bother replying out loud.

“All we have are names they likely made up about a century ago.”

A quirk of her eyebrow.

“First names, at that by the way. Not even a fake last name. I can track an alias. I can not track a first name pulled out of nowhere.”

Rolled eyes.

“...Alright, alright, I already looked. Nada. Zip. Zilch.” Hardison admits, throwing up his hands and turning back to the computer.

He wanted to find them as much as Parker did. To at least get...he didn’t even know. Not closure, that’s for damn sure.

But something.

Something he could touch, and turn over, and work with.

But they were impossible.

“You checked into Dubeniwhatever’s offer?” He asks, in some vague hope it’ll throw her off the trail for a little while. The snort he hears tells him he failed miserably, but, thankfully, she seems to take pity on him.

“Looks easy enough. He said he’s bringing in two others - a roper and a hitter, but that’s normal.” Normal, easy, clean.

Hardison could work with that. “Friday, right?”

When he doesn’t get a reply, he glances over. An open window is all that greets him back, and all he can do is smile.

#leverage #alec hardison #parker #violence tw #brief non-graphic description of someone in the aftermath of being shot #long post #my writing #ff

19 notes · View notes