You Get Angry (I Turn Black and Blue) (3/3)
Title: You Get Angry (I Turn Black & Blue)
Author: paracaerouvoar
Artist: deadflowers5
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Supernatural/Leverage
Pairing: Dean/Eliot, past Eliot/Hardison
Word count: 16000~
Summary: Eliot loves Dean, he really does, but if love hurts this bad, then he figures he’s really better off without it…
A collection of moments during one year of Eliot’s life. He meets Dean, falls head over heels, goes to hell, comes back and realises that just because you love someone, doesn’t mean it’s enough to make them stop hurting you, or stop you from hurting them. Sometimes, you just have to take the memories, and get out while you can.
Warning: Abuse, alcoholism, graphic sex, not-quite-character death (in true Supernatural fashion)
Chapter Two
three hundred sixty six.
He slips the photograph into the box with the papers, because he’s damned if he’s leaving it behind. He takes another look at Parker’s smiling face, and feels the dull ache of guilt. It’s been too long since he spoke to her, and he knows it’s petty, but he just can’t. He knows she’s in love, disgustingly happy, and he also knows you can’t choose who you love [himself being exhibit A and this whole fucked up year of something he calls a relationship], but every time he looks at his best friend, he sees the face of the man he used to love, and he remembers how they ended, messy tear stains dripping onto the memories slowly, like spilt oil.
minus fourteen.
It’s almost six months before he tells Alec the truth. It’s not like he hadn’t noticed things before that, when Eliot would limp through the door half dead, when they were hunting together and he would throw himself in front of Alec, in front of anyone. Almost like his mortality just wasn’t relevant anymore, Alec tells Eliot when he confronts him about it. Like Eliot doesn’t care whether he lives or dies anymore, he says, and Eliot doesn’t say anything. Just stares at his hands, chewing on his bottom lip, until Alec kneels in front of him, forces his head up and asks him, plain and simple, what are you not telling me?
And Eliot looks at Alec, looks him in the eyes, and realises he can’t dodge it anymore, can’t lie anymore. So he tells Alec all he can.
‘Six months ago, in Cold Oak… I told you that we nearly lost you. Well… we did lose you. You died in my arms, Alec.’
Alec lips his lips, slowly, cautiously, like he’s tasting the words he’s about to say. ‘I… I died? Then…’ he stops, and looks at Eliot, hurt and anger, and worse than that, betrayal, rearing their heads. ‘Eliot,’ he begins, and he voice is low, tight, controlled. ‘Eliot, what did you do?’
‘I brought you back. I needed you, the team needed you.’
‘So you fucked with fate, with destiny? Eliot, what’s dead should stay dead. You told me that when you nearly died. You always said you’d hate your dad forever because of what he did, and now you’re doing the exact same thing, you hypocritical bastard!’
‘Alec,’ Eliot begins, but Alec’s on his feet and heading for the door, slamming it behind him. He waits for him to come back, thinks he just needs to cool off.
When he hasn’t come back an hour later, Eliot stands up calmly, walks over to the same door Alec left through, and he puts a hole through the drywall next to it.
three hundred sixty six.
More photos go into the box, ones of him and Parker, him and the team. Folded up and stuffed into a clip frame, he finds one of Alec and Parker, one that she gave him last month, because he’s trying to accept it, he really is. He looks at it for a long time before he tosses it in the box with the others. He’s starting to hate all the memories in this apartment, happy or sad [there doesn’t seem to be much of the former, and altogether too much of the latter], so he dumps the box on the floor, now full and duct tapes it shut, locking the memories inside.
three hundred one.
He remembers pain, and then he’s awake, trapped in a cube of stale air. There’s rotting wood above him, below him, surrounding him, and he fights off the start of a panic attack, can’t afford to waste the foul tasting oxygen, doesn’t want to start screaming. He screamed enough in hell.
Helll. He was in hell. So where is he now? It doesn’t feel like hell. They did a lot of things to him down there, burnt him, sliced him up, flayed him until flesh peeled from sulphur yellow bones. The sulphur stains everything down there, turned his bones the colour of nicotine teeth, the whites of his eyes putrid and yellow, his skin the colour of pus and fat. He remembers that it was hot in hell, just the wrong side of too hot, and he could never breathe through the smog of humid air, and when he could breathe, all he could taste was rust and blood. In this box, he can taste dust, and the musty smell of something dead just a few days too long.
He remembers Alistair, remembers the offer.
He remembers saying no, always no, until he was spitting blood when he talked, and his chest cavity was cracked open. He remembers seeing his own heart beating inside his chest, and he remembers praying, praying to anyone, God, the devil, whoever is listening. He remembers praying to die, to cease existing.
He remembers the colours down there, like some hellish acid trip, all burgundies and purples and reds, the colour bleeding into his pores like the smell of demon.
Up here, in this box, it’s just dark. There’s no knife, no demon asking him the same question, every day for… he doesn’t know how long. Time passes differently in hell, of course it does, and he was down there for decades.
So he’s established this place isn’t hell, it’s still an enclosed space, and he’s struggling to take long, even breaths, because he’s slowly suffocating, and he never did like being trapped in a small space. He lashes out above him at the rotten wood of his coffin, and it buckles, forcing him to screw his face up in defence as pebbles and clumps of dirt fall on his face. He claws at the dirt, and it’s soft, recently dug, so he pulls himself up, out of the coffin and there’s fresh air on his face, and he don’t think he’s ever smelt anything as beautiful as the freshly turned earth. He wipes his eyes free of mud, and spits a mouthful of dirt out before brushing off his now filthy clothes. He doesn’t know where he is [and he’s still not convinced it’s not hell] so he looks up, sees the sun and walks north, because isn’t that the way they always go in movies?
As he’s walking, he thinks, tries to remember, but all he can see is pain, white hot and searing, burning like ice. He thinks about before Hell, knows there must have been a time when Hell wasn’t all there was, but for the love of God, he just can’t remember it. He remembers New York, and flash of green eyes, and thinks there must be something out there, someone, so he keeps walking north and hopingwishingpraying that there’s someone out there looking for him, missing him. Waiting for him to come home.
three hundred two.
He’s sitting on a bus on the way to New York, after breaking into an abandoned gas station and stealing a few dozen bucks out of the register, and helping himself to bottled water and Snickers. He bought a bus ticket and more food when he reached the station, and now he’s three hours into a twelve hour of so bus ride. There’s no one sitting next to him, or around him, and he’s fairly grateful for that. He stretches out on the cramped seat and shuts his eyes, listening to his joints crack. He dozes off about ten minutes after passing a state line, and that’s when the dreams start.
Fire. Fire and lightning everywhere and Eliot’s skin is made of nerve endings, like being hooked up to the mains and left to fry. It’s so hot, but so dark, and Eliot can’t see a thing until his vision turns white and someone blankets him in ice water. He sizzles and it’s like all the nerves are cauterised, and he feels nothing. He’s numb, and he thinks it the best he’s ever felt. There’s a high pitched buzzing in his ears, and since he’s been deaf to everything but screaming, this electronic keening sounds like music, harps playing in the silent screams that cut him like glass. There’s a hand gripping his shoulder and pulling, but tendrils of hell, black and bloody, wrap themselves around his feet, legs, torso, holding him down, and he feels like he’s been torn in two.
The buzzing gets louder, and the light brighter, and he hears hissing as the tentacles fall away, back into the shadows, and the hand lifts him higher, flying right over Hell and Eliot can’t help but wonder if this is just another torture, taunting him with the possibility of escape and then snatching it away. They’re still flying up, and with gentle hands, the thing carrying him throws him, and he’s falling through water, until he lands on his back, hard, and feels like he’s been electrocuted, sensations running over his skin. It’s not entirely unpleasant, and he feels solid, suddenly, real. In the distance he hears a screeching cry, and feels a burning pain in his shoulder, like he’s being branded. There’s a sinking feeling in his stomach, and he doesn’t know why.
He wakes with a jolt, and the woman sitting a few seats in front turns round to level a steel glare at him. He just smiles apologetically and tries to look like the good ole country boy he thinks he used to be. As soon as she’s turned back around, he pulls the sleeve of his t-shirt up and his eyes widen.
Seared into his arm is the perfect shape of a handprint, almost like someone’s dipped their hand into burning oil and pressed it to his skin. He prods at it, and it doesn’t hurt, but he realises it looks old, faded and white, like it’s been there for years.
Eliot wishes he knew what the hell was going on. He checks his watch, miraculously still working after god knows how many months underground and he’s slept for about eight hours, and the coach is pulling into a station in New York.
He gets off and stands in the hustle and bustle of the bus station, and looks around himself, looking for something, maybe a map. There’s a subway one painted on the wall, and he surveys it, looking for a street or a station that sounds familiar.
Kingston Av. He doesn’t know why it sounds familiar, but it does, so he makes his way to the nearest subway station and hops onto the next carriage, heading for Brooklyn.
It takes him about a half hour, but he gets off at Kingston and just starts walking, remembering the flash of green eyes. He doesn’t know who they belong to, but he knows that it’s someone important to him. He’s thinking, just trying to remember anything, even just a name when he rounds a corner, and parked in front of an apartment building is a black Chevy Impala, the ’67 model, and memories come flooding back.
His name is Eliot Spencer, and he’s a hunter. He died and went to hell, and now he’s back.
He remembers Parker, and Nate, and Sophie. He even remembers Alec, and most of all he remembers Dean. Dean. There’s someone coming out of the building and he grabs the door and slips inside, heading for the apartment he knows is his. He can see it, the apartment he shares with Dean, knows that when the door opens, he’ll be able to see the couch they found on the street. They dragged it home and disinfected it, and now it sits in the middle of the living area. There’ll be a bottle of scotch standing on the desk in the corner, and Dean’s shoes will be scattered by the door.
He still doesn’t understand how he could forget Dean, of all people. Forget the way Dean’s hands roamed over his skin, forget the sounds he heard Dean make when he was buried deep inside Eliot. He reaches the floor his apartment is on and bangs on the door. He’s suddenly tired, overwhelmed, and he takes a step back to lean on the wall behind him. He can hear movement inside the apartment, and then the door opens, and Eliot’s speechless, just for a few seconds. Dean’s clearly just out of the shower, wearing sweats and a thin t-shirt that has damp patches on his shoulders and stomach. Water beads in his hair, making it spiky and runs down his temples to drip onto the floor. His green eyes are vibrant and wide as he stares at Eliot, mouth hanging open slightly. Eliot says nothing, takes a step forward, but Dean backs away, until he’s standing well in the apartment. His eyes are still wide, shocked. Eliot glances down, sees a line of salt trickled across the door frame, and he smiles, because at least Dean hasn’t forgotten everything he was taught before Eliot died. He takes another step forward, looks up and sees the devil’s trap painted on the ceiling, and smiles wider. He steps into the apartment, over the salt line and stands under the devil’s trap, before taking another step until he’s standing in the apartment, right in front of Dean, who licks his lips nervously. ‘What are you?’ he whispers, his voice haggard, rough.
‘It’s me, Dean. It’s Eliot.’
Dean shakes his head, and Eliot wonders if he’s in shock. ‘Eliot’s dead,’ he breathes, hugging his arms to himself. ‘You’re a ghost, or a demon, or something, because my Eliot died four months ago.’
Eliot closes his eyes for a second, because this Dean isn’t his Dean. This Dean is broken, and Eliot feels so guilty for leaving him. He opens them, and casts his gaze around. There’s a knife of his lying on his desk, and it’s pure silver, he remembers. He moves around Dean, who watches him like a cornered animal. He picks up the knife, and runs it across his arm. Blood beads to the surface, but hopefully it’ll prove he’s human. He turns back to Dean and holds the bloody arm up, with the knife. ‘It’s silver. It doesn’t harm humans. It’s me, Dean.’
Dean blinks, and moves, and it’s like he’s been snapped out of it, because suddenly he’s there, wrapping his arms around Eliot and their lips meet, and fuck, kissing Dean is like coming home. They part, and Eliot realises they’re both crying, messy tears slipping down their faces, but they won’t let each other go. Dean’s face is buried in the juncture between Eliot’s neck and shoulder, and he’s shaking, racked with sobs, and all Eliot can do is run a soothing hand over the bigger man’s back, running down the knobs of his spine.
It’s hours later, and Eliot’s showered and changed into fresh clothes [turns out Dean couldn’t bring himself to throw out any of Eliot’s stuff], and they’re sitting on the sofa with Parker, who hasn’t let go of Eliot since she turned up a half hour ago, like she’s been turning up every time she’s in town, Dean tells him, just to check up on him.
As soon as he was done showering, Dean had been waiting with a tumbler of scotch, just like they always used to drink, but when he smiled and took a sip, he could taste the underlying holy water. He cocked an eyebrow at Dean who just laughed, grinning his lopsided smirk that Eliot had no idea how much he’d missed, and he allowed the towel to slide off his hips and grabbed the front of Dean’s belt, pulling him into a kiss, searing and possessive, biting the soft flesh of his lower lip to leave a mark.
He had to shower for a second time afterwards, but it was worth it, in Eliot’s opinion.
There’s a hand on his thigh, and it should feel possessive, but Parker’s hanging off his other arm and it’s nice to just feel the touch of other people. They’re catching him up on what he’d missed the past four months when Parker’s phone rings, and she slides off the sofa to answer it, padding out of the room quickly. Eliot looks at Dean, who shrugs, but there’s something guilty in his expression. Eliot decides to let it slide though, and is content to sit there quietly, with a hand running up and down the inside of his thigh slowly. He shakes his hair out of his eyes, and wonders if it was always this long, bangs falling in his face every time he moves his head.
He can hear Parker pacing in the kitchen, and she’s trying to keep her voice low, but Eliot can still pick out a few words here and there, but he frowns when he hears Alec and don’t know when I’ll be home, wonders what the hell she’s talking about, who she’s talking to, and he climbs off the cough, untangling himself from Dean to follow Parker into the kitchen as she hangs up, flinching when she turns around to see him leaning on the counter opposite her. ‘Who was that?’ he asks, trying to sound light, like it’s unimportant, but there’s an edge to his voice that makes her wince, and she slips the phone back in her pocket.
‘Just Hardison,’ she says, before throwing herself at him, tiny frame hugging him as hard as she can. ‘I missed you Eliot. So much.’
Eliot’s known Parker for a long time, and he knows when she’s deflecting, and right now, he’s pretty damn sure she’s deflecting, so he peels her off him, holds her by the shoulders and just looks at her. She’s smiling, but it’s fake, and now he knows there’s something she’s not telling him. ‘Parker…’ he says, and that horrible, hard edge in his voice is back. ‘Unless something’s drastically changed in the past few months, you barely know Hardison.’ It doesn’t escape him that since Alec left, he doesn’t call him Alec. Not anymore. Not out loud.
Her gaze drops suddenly, until she’s staring at her socked feet. She’s shifting from side to side. ‘He was there when we…’ she pauses, clears her throat. ‘when we buried you. It was him who wouldn’t let us burn you. “If anyone could find a way to claw their way out of hell, it’d be Eliot” he said, and we believed him.’ She shrugs. ‘I mean, it’s not like he was wrong.’
‘Yeah, except I didn’t claw my own way out.’ Eliot speaks low, doesn’t want Dean to know about it just yet, until he’s sure that whatever threw him out isn’t going to yank him back in. He’s pretty sure Dean hasn’t noticed the scarring on his shoulder, or if he has, he figured it was an old scar. It looks old, anyway, like it was from years ago, not hours.
He pulls the sleeve of his t-shirt up over the mark, and turns until the lights of the kitchen reflect off it. Parker frowns, runs fingers over it, tentative. ‘What could do that?’
Eliot shrugs, gently, skins the sleeve back down. ‘I’m gonna call Nate in the morning, see what he has on being raised from hell.’ They head back into the living area, but he stoops and whispers in her ear, telling her that he hasn’t forgotten about the Alec thing. He’s prepared to let it go, just for this evening, and just sit there with his best friend and his lover.
three hundred three.
It feels odd, almost surreal when he wakes up in the morning, and he’s lying in a bed. There’s a leg thrown over his thigh and an arm curled over his stomach, and he doesn’t ever remember waking up like this in hell.
He doesn’t ever remember waking up in hell, period. There is no sleep in hell, no reprieve from the pain and the heat and the screaming. He remembers dreaming about it last night, feels the hold hell still has over him, and he doesn’t think it’ll ever let him go. He woke up sweating, holding back screams, and if he still believed in God, he’d thank whatever deity is up there that Dean’s a heavy sleeper, always has been. He wriggles out from under the restricting limbs and pads into the kitchen to put the coffee on. He’s in there for about a half hour before he hears noise from the bedroom, and he puts more coffee on for Dean, before going to shower.
When he ventures into the kitchen again, he smells frying bacon, and his stomach roils, the smell of the cooking meat making him retch. He makes it to the bathroom before heaving, throwing up thin dribbles of acidic bile. It stings his throat, and the inside of his nose and he coughs, waving Dean off as he follows him in, approaching Eliot, knelt on the floor.
Instead, Dean stands by, holding a glass of water to hand over when Eliot stands up, knees wobbly and skin pallid. He drinks slowly and wipes the back of his hand over his lips when he’s done. ‘You OK?’ Dean asks, a hand on the small of Eliot’s back.
He nods, brushing the hair out of his face. ‘Yeah, just… I dunno. The smell of the bacon must have brought back something subconscious. Looks like I’m eating veggie for a while.’ He’s lying, he knows exactly why he threw up. But how does he tell Dean that the smell of human flesh being stripped from the bone with a white hot blade smells exactly the same as bacon in a frying pan?
Dean smiles, sympathetically, and goes back into the kitchen, shutting the door behind him. When he opens it again, the smell of bacon is gone, and there are two plates of pancakes sitting on the table.
Eliot thinks he’s missed pancakes almost as much as he’s missed Dean. Maybe more, he says to him, and dodges a swipe with the dishcloth, laughing.
He’s not gonna pretend that this is what it’s gonna be like from now on. Just because he came back from the dead doesn’t mean that Dean’s stopped drinking, or that Eliot’s forgotten how to throw words like knives, or that Dean will start hesitating before beating the crap out of him. He knows that their relationship is every kind of fucked up they can make it, but Dean’s is his, and he’s Dean’s, and as much as they fight with each other, they’ll fight to the death for each other, and really, doesn’t that make all the difference?
Parker turns up again, with Nate and Sophie in tow, and Nate wraps him in a hug first, and hits him in the face with holy water from his hip flask second. Sophie laughs, but there are tears in her eyes, and he pulls her in, kissing the top of her head. She smacks him in the chest with the flat of her hand, but she’s still smiling, and he hugs her again.
The celebration is short lived, because there’s a box of books at Nate’s feet, and Parker’s carrying another one, and Eliot just knows he’s in for a day of research. Dean excuses himself, and he heads out of the apartment in sweats and a tee, heading for the gym two blocks over.
In the living area, Nate unpacks the boxes and divides them into piles, seemingly arbitrarily. Eliot frowns at one big, golf leaf plated book in the bottom of one of the boxes. ‘The King James? Really, Nate?’
Nate shrugs, and pulls out a battered pack of smokes and his lighter. Eliot rolls his eyes and curls fingers around the back of Nate’s collar, lifting him up and pushing him in the direction of the window. ‘If you’re gonna smoke, fuckin’ do it over there, and blow it out into the damned street.’
Nate smirks, and clicks his lighter. Eliot stares at the flame, and sees brands being seared onto skin and flesh and bone. He turns away and walks out of the room, knowing that if he smells the rancid smoke from Nate’s cigarette, then he’s going to throw up again. He sits in the kitchen, head in his hands when Parker comes in, confused and concerned. ‘What’s the matter, El?’
‘Just… hell’s making me a little sensitive to crap like this right now,’ he says, rescuing some mugs from the top shelf of the cupboard and making tea, just for something to do.
By the time he’s done, Nate’s done smoking, and Sophie sprayed some flowery girly shit that makes him wrinkle his nose, but is a thousand times better than the smell of nicotine and burning, so he sits down, cross-legged, in front of one pile of books and starts flipping through one, taking a sip of the too hot tea and almost burning his tongue. He sets it to one side to cool, and asks what he’s supposed to be looking for.
‘Any demon that’s powerful enough to make you his bitch, and ride you out of hell.’
‘And isn’t that a lovely thought?’ Sophie mutters, stirring honey into her tea.
Eliot just pulls a face and returns to his book. ‘Lilith would have been powerful enough to do it, but why would she want to?’ he asks, flicking past a crudely drawn imitation of a soul in hell..
‘Lilith’s dead,’ Parker says, quickly, dropping the book she’d just picked up and reaching for another. ‘Me and Alec hunted her down a couple months ago.’
Eliot turns to look at her, and she colours faintly and pores over the book in her lap. ‘And you were going to tell me that you killed the demon that sent me to hell when, exactly? And eventually, you’re going to have to tell me what the deal is with you and Hardison.’
‘Parker, you didn’t tell him?’ Sophie asks from across the room. ‘He has a right to know.’
Eliot takes a deep breath. ‘A right to know what?’
Parker starts babbling, words tripping over each other. ‘Well, you know, you were dead, and we were all lonely and it just kind of happened, I mean we were already hunting together, and we killed Lilith, and we were both just ecstatic, so we went and had a few drinks to celebrate and well, we uh-’
‘You fucked him,’ Eliot says, bluntly, very careful to dispel any emotion in the words.
Eliot,’ Sophie gasps, offended, but he shrugs it off and keeps looking at Parker, waiting for a reply.
One doesn’t come, and so he just shrugs it off, starts flipping through the book with unnecessary force. There’s silence around him, until everyone resumes what they were doing, and all he can hear is pages being turned and the clatter of mugs being plonked on tables, until he hears Nate drawl ‘Well fuck me.’
He looks up to see the older man holding the bible from earlier. There’s a picture of something with wings holding a man by the shoulders. Fire licks at their heels, and there are hands reaching for them that Eliot assumes are demons. The winged man looks almost like…
‘Angels, Nate? No friggin’ way. There’s no such thing as angels. They’re myths.’
‘Well, says here that these myths are the only thing that can “raise a soul from perdition”,’ Nate returns, following the quote with a finger. He looks at Eliot over the top of his glasses. ‘Clap your hands if you believe.’
Eliot stands, managing to knock the mug next to him over. The dregs of his tea dribble onto the carpet as he heads for the door, shucking his shoes on and grabbing a jacket and his keys.
‘Eliot?’
‘I just can’t deal with this right now, Parker. Not you and Ale- Hardison, not being alive, not fucking angels, none of it. I just… I need time to think. To adjust.’
As soon as he’s outside the apartment building he takes a deep breath. New York air tastes like gasoline, but it’s clean, and it doesn’t remind him of hell, so he inhales again and starts walking, doesn’t care where.
It’s evening by the time he returns home, and he’s been gone for almost nine hours. Parker, Nate and Sophie are gone, but there are several messages on his cell, and Dean’s sitting on the couch by the time he gets home, and Eliot knows he’s been drinking, still is drinking, but that’s OK, because Eliot’s been drinking too, just enough to dull the memories, just enough to stop him from going insane. There are a lot of memories trying to drive him insane.
They hurl words at each other, but they’re both slurring them, and neither of them seem to be sober enough to get angry enough to trade blows, so eventually Eliot throws a fuck you, Winchester at Dean, and stalks off to bed.
He wonders if Dean’ll sleep on the couch, or sober up enough to follow him eventually.
The nightmares are worse without the bigger man curled around him, and he wakes up several times in the night, gasping for breath, running cold and hot at the same time, and it feels as if he’s in hell again, because there’s a tightness in his chest. He wonders vaguely whether this is what a panic attack feels like.
When he wakes up for the fifth time, it’s almost six AM, so he just gets up and puts coffee on. It seems to be all he’s doing these days, making coffee. The apartment is empty when he wanders through, and Dean’s shoes are missing.
Eliot sits on the couch and drinks his coffee, waiting for Dean to come home.
Seems he does a lot of that, too.
three hundred sixty four.
Eliot’s been alive for two months, give or take, and he’s barely seen Dean. They live in the same apartment, sleep in the same bed, and yet they seem to be existing entirely separately. For the most part Dean’s been sleeping during the day and working heists with his brother and the rest of their crew during the night. Eliot doesn’t ask, and Dean doesn’t tell.
Eliot’s still not hunting, not since he went on a salt and burn about two weeks after hell, and he had a full blown panic attack in the cemetery seeing the open grave, so he’s mostly doing research for other hunters, slinging some cases over to the Roadhouse for Sophie to dole out.
Parker moved out of the roadhouse and started living on the road with Alec. They drop by every now and then, whenever a case brings them into the New England area. He gets on better with Alec now. They got past whatever crap they were both still sore about, and their relationship is civil, if nothing else, for Parker’s sake.
He’s in the kitchen one evening, making spaghetti sauce [even after two months, the smell of raw of cooked meat turns his stomach] when the door slams open, and he drops his head for a second. The smell of whiskey and smoke invades the kitchen, and Eliot tries not to retch. Smoke doesn’t affect him as much as fire or meat, but Dean knows it makes him want to fall to his knees and throw up until there’s nothing in his stomach. He turns to face him, but Dean’s there, inches from his face, hands tight on the collar of Eliot’s shirt, and breathing the scent of cheap alcohol and cheaper smokes into his face.
Eliot places his own hands over the top of Dean’s and tries to pry them off, but his grip is like steel cable, and he’s not budging. ‘Dean,’ he tries, but there’s no reaction. His eyes are glassy and unfocused, and Eliot has no idea how he’s even walking, the amount of alcohol in him, but he tries again. ‘Dean.’
Dean lets go, and Eliot takes a step back, reaching behind him to turn the stove off. He’s just turned his attention back to the bigger man when he’s sent crashing to the floor as Dean catches him on the side of the jaw with his fist. He spits blood on the floor, screws his eyes shut to ward off the bubbling nausea that seeing his own blood brings and opens them again, struggling to his feet. He tries to hit back, but Dean’s fast, too fast, and he grabs Eliot’s wrist and pulls him in towards his chest, trapping him. Eliot struggles, but Dean’s bigger, stronger and a better fighter than him, so all he’s doing is wasting energy. He stills, can feel his heart beating faster than it should. He can feel the blood from his split lip dripping down his chin, but Dean has an arm around him neck and he’s squeezing, and Eliot’s fighting for breath. His vision spots and blurs, but then he lets go, and Eliot drops to the floor, coughing.
He’s never seen Dean like this, eyes hard, nostrils flaring with anger, completely and utterly silent, and honestly? It scares him, almost as much as hell did. [Almost. Not quite.]
Dean hits him again, and Eliot can’t find it in himself to hit back. He’s dizzy, short of breath and now there’s a cut opening just above his eye, blood sliding red into his vision. He rubs at it, trying to clear his vision, but Dean knees him in the stomach, and he gives up, just curls into a ball and waits for it to be over.
Dean kicks him a couple more times, but he gets bored, or the alcohol finally this him, or something, because Eliot can hear footsteps leading away, and a door shuts in the distance. He hears bedsprings, and figures he’s gone to sleep it off.
He stands, gingerly and probes at his ribs; they hurt, but they’re just bruised, not broken, and everything else is superficial damage, so he makes his way to the couch and drags a blanket over himself.
His dreams of hell are worse than they’ve ever been that night. All the demons have Dean’s face as they carve him up over and over again, and he thinks it’ll never be dawn.
three hundred sixty five.
Eliot sleeps fitfully, and is woken by the intercom buzzer, incessant and unbearable this early in the morning. He stumbles over, his ribs stiff and sore after last night and mutters at the buttons, hitting the one that’ll open the door. Minutes after, someone’s battering at the door, and it’s driving through Eliot’s skull like six inch nails.
He opens the door, just to make the noise go away, and it’s Alec, who’s early morning smile slides off his face when he sees Eliot.
‘What the fuck, man?’
‘It’s nothin’, Hardison. What the hell’d you want at this time on a morning?’
‘Nothing? Your face looks like so much raw steak, and you’re walking like someone cut off one of your balls.’
‘I’ve had worse,’ Eliot insists, sitting back down on the couch and hanging his head back. ‘What do you need?’
Alec gives him a look that says we are not done talking about this, Spencer, but sits on the couch next to him. ‘Parker needed some info for a hunt, said you’d have it for her.’
‘Uhh…’ Eliot thinks. ‘The coven up in Westchester?’ Alec nods. ‘Yeah, it’s uh, on that desk, in the purple file.’ When Alec levels a look at him, he adds ‘It keeps things organised. Purple for witches, green for ghosts, yellow for demons.’
Alec rescues the file and flicks through it, before turning his attention back to Eliot. ‘So. Come on big man. Spill. Who you been pickin’ fights with now?’
Eliot glances at the still open front door, and notes that Dean’s workboots are missing. He doesn’t care where, but he’s gone. Alec follows his gaze, and his eyes turn dark. ‘Oh, hell no. You letting Dean beat the crap out of you?’
Eliot shrugs, and regrets it instantly, as it jolts fire up and down his ribs. ‘Not like I can stop him. The guy’s got three inches and twenty pounds on me, not to mention, he’s essentially a professional fighter.’
‘Bullshit,’ Alec offers, eloquent as always. ‘Show his ass the door.’
‘It’s not that easy, Hardi-’
‘Like hell it isn’t, Eliot. If you can’t make him leave, then you get the fuck out and leave his ass on his own.’ Alec gets up, heads for the closet and stands up on his tiptoes to reach for a cardboard box. He offers it to Eliot, who just frowns. ‘Pack your shit, and get the hell out..’ Suddenly, he’s more serious than Eliot’s seen him in a long time, and there’s something in his eyes that Eliot can’t recognise. ‘Please Eliot. Get out before it kills you.’
He makes a split second decision. He takes the box from Alec and stands up, pulling the smaller man into a hug. ‘Thanks, Alec,’ he whispers, and he hopes he knows how much Eliot means it.
three hundred sixty six.
one.
It’s sunny when Eliot finally leaves, finally leaves Dean, leaves this self destructive, suicidal… it’s not even a life, it’s an existence.
But whatever it is, he knows it’s killing him. Yesterday told him that.
Notes
Author: paracaerouvoar
Artist: deadflowers5
Rating: NC-17
Fandom: Supernatural/Leverage
Pairing: Dean/Eliot, past Eliot/Hardison
Word count: 16000~
Summary: Eliot loves Dean, he really does, but if love hurts this bad, then he figures he’s really better off without it…
A collection of moments during one year of Eliot’s life. He meets Dean, falls head over heels, goes to hell, comes back and realises that just because you love someone, doesn’t mean it’s enough to make them stop hurting you, or stop you from hurting them. Sometimes, you just have to take the memories, and get out while you can.
Warning: Abuse, alcoholism, graphic sex, not-quite-character death (in true Supernatural fashion)
Chapter Two
three hundred sixty six.
He slips the photograph into the box with the papers, because he’s damned if he’s leaving it behind. He takes another look at Parker’s smiling face, and feels the dull ache of guilt. It’s been too long since he spoke to her, and he knows it’s petty, but he just can’t. He knows she’s in love, disgustingly happy, and he also knows you can’t choose who you love [himself being exhibit A and this whole fucked up year of something he calls a relationship], but every time he looks at his best friend, he sees the face of the man he used to love, and he remembers how they ended, messy tear stains dripping onto the memories slowly, like spilt oil.
minus fourteen.
It’s almost six months before he tells Alec the truth. It’s not like he hadn’t noticed things before that, when Eliot would limp through the door half dead, when they were hunting together and he would throw himself in front of Alec, in front of anyone. Almost like his mortality just wasn’t relevant anymore, Alec tells Eliot when he confronts him about it. Like Eliot doesn’t care whether he lives or dies anymore, he says, and Eliot doesn’t say anything. Just stares at his hands, chewing on his bottom lip, until Alec kneels in front of him, forces his head up and asks him, plain and simple, what are you not telling me?
And Eliot looks at Alec, looks him in the eyes, and realises he can’t dodge it anymore, can’t lie anymore. So he tells Alec all he can.
‘Six months ago, in Cold Oak… I told you that we nearly lost you. Well… we did lose you. You died in my arms, Alec.’
Alec lips his lips, slowly, cautiously, like he’s tasting the words he’s about to say. ‘I… I died? Then…’ he stops, and looks at Eliot, hurt and anger, and worse than that, betrayal, rearing their heads. ‘Eliot,’ he begins, and he voice is low, tight, controlled. ‘Eliot, what did you do?’
‘I brought you back. I needed you, the team needed you.’
‘So you fucked with fate, with destiny? Eliot, what’s dead should stay dead. You told me that when you nearly died. You always said you’d hate your dad forever because of what he did, and now you’re doing the exact same thing, you hypocritical bastard!’
‘Alec,’ Eliot begins, but Alec’s on his feet and heading for the door, slamming it behind him. He waits for him to come back, thinks he just needs to cool off.
When he hasn’t come back an hour later, Eliot stands up calmly, walks over to the same door Alec left through, and he puts a hole through the drywall next to it.
three hundred sixty six.
More photos go into the box, ones of him and Parker, him and the team. Folded up and stuffed into a clip frame, he finds one of Alec and Parker, one that she gave him last month, because he’s trying to accept it, he really is. He looks at it for a long time before he tosses it in the box with the others. He’s starting to hate all the memories in this apartment, happy or sad [there doesn’t seem to be much of the former, and altogether too much of the latter], so he dumps the box on the floor, now full and duct tapes it shut, locking the memories inside.
three hundred one.
He remembers pain, and then he’s awake, trapped in a cube of stale air. There’s rotting wood above him, below him, surrounding him, and he fights off the start of a panic attack, can’t afford to waste the foul tasting oxygen, doesn’t want to start screaming. He screamed enough in hell.
Helll. He was in hell. So where is he now? It doesn’t feel like hell. They did a lot of things to him down there, burnt him, sliced him up, flayed him until flesh peeled from sulphur yellow bones. The sulphur stains everything down there, turned his bones the colour of nicotine teeth, the whites of his eyes putrid and yellow, his skin the colour of pus and fat. He remembers that it was hot in hell, just the wrong side of too hot, and he could never breathe through the smog of humid air, and when he could breathe, all he could taste was rust and blood. In this box, he can taste dust, and the musty smell of something dead just a few days too long.
He remembers Alistair, remembers the offer.
He remembers saying no, always no, until he was spitting blood when he talked, and his chest cavity was cracked open. He remembers seeing his own heart beating inside his chest, and he remembers praying, praying to anyone, God, the devil, whoever is listening. He remembers praying to die, to cease existing.
He remembers the colours down there, like some hellish acid trip, all burgundies and purples and reds, the colour bleeding into his pores like the smell of demon.
Up here, in this box, it’s just dark. There’s no knife, no demon asking him the same question, every day for… he doesn’t know how long. Time passes differently in hell, of course it does, and he was down there for decades.
So he’s established this place isn’t hell, it’s still an enclosed space, and he’s struggling to take long, even breaths, because he’s slowly suffocating, and he never did like being trapped in a small space. He lashes out above him at the rotten wood of his coffin, and it buckles, forcing him to screw his face up in defence as pebbles and clumps of dirt fall on his face. He claws at the dirt, and it’s soft, recently dug, so he pulls himself up, out of the coffin and there’s fresh air on his face, and he don’t think he’s ever smelt anything as beautiful as the freshly turned earth. He wipes his eyes free of mud, and spits a mouthful of dirt out before brushing off his now filthy clothes. He doesn’t know where he is [and he’s still not convinced it’s not hell] so he looks up, sees the sun and walks north, because isn’t that the way they always go in movies?
As he’s walking, he thinks, tries to remember, but all he can see is pain, white hot and searing, burning like ice. He thinks about before Hell, knows there must have been a time when Hell wasn’t all there was, but for the love of God, he just can’t remember it. He remembers New York, and flash of green eyes, and thinks there must be something out there, someone, so he keeps walking north and hopingwishingpraying that there’s someone out there looking for him, missing him. Waiting for him to come home.
three hundred two.
He’s sitting on a bus on the way to New York, after breaking into an abandoned gas station and stealing a few dozen bucks out of the register, and helping himself to bottled water and Snickers. He bought a bus ticket and more food when he reached the station, and now he’s three hours into a twelve hour of so bus ride. There’s no one sitting next to him, or around him, and he’s fairly grateful for that. He stretches out on the cramped seat and shuts his eyes, listening to his joints crack. He dozes off about ten minutes after passing a state line, and that’s when the dreams start.
Fire. Fire and lightning everywhere and Eliot’s skin is made of nerve endings, like being hooked up to the mains and left to fry. It’s so hot, but so dark, and Eliot can’t see a thing until his vision turns white and someone blankets him in ice water. He sizzles and it’s like all the nerves are cauterised, and he feels nothing. He’s numb, and he thinks it the best he’s ever felt. There’s a high pitched buzzing in his ears, and since he’s been deaf to everything but screaming, this electronic keening sounds like music, harps playing in the silent screams that cut him like glass. There’s a hand gripping his shoulder and pulling, but tendrils of hell, black and bloody, wrap themselves around his feet, legs, torso, holding him down, and he feels like he’s been torn in two.
The buzzing gets louder, and the light brighter, and he hears hissing as the tentacles fall away, back into the shadows, and the hand lifts him higher, flying right over Hell and Eliot can’t help but wonder if this is just another torture, taunting him with the possibility of escape and then snatching it away. They’re still flying up, and with gentle hands, the thing carrying him throws him, and he’s falling through water, until he lands on his back, hard, and feels like he’s been electrocuted, sensations running over his skin. It’s not entirely unpleasant, and he feels solid, suddenly, real. In the distance he hears a screeching cry, and feels a burning pain in his shoulder, like he’s being branded. There’s a sinking feeling in his stomach, and he doesn’t know why.
He wakes with a jolt, and the woman sitting a few seats in front turns round to level a steel glare at him. He just smiles apologetically and tries to look like the good ole country boy he thinks he used to be. As soon as she’s turned back around, he pulls the sleeve of his t-shirt up and his eyes widen.
Seared into his arm is the perfect shape of a handprint, almost like someone’s dipped their hand into burning oil and pressed it to his skin. He prods at it, and it doesn’t hurt, but he realises it looks old, faded and white, like it’s been there for years.
Eliot wishes he knew what the hell was going on. He checks his watch, miraculously still working after god knows how many months underground and he’s slept for about eight hours, and the coach is pulling into a station in New York.
He gets off and stands in the hustle and bustle of the bus station, and looks around himself, looking for something, maybe a map. There’s a subway one painted on the wall, and he surveys it, looking for a street or a station that sounds familiar.
Kingston Av. He doesn’t know why it sounds familiar, but it does, so he makes his way to the nearest subway station and hops onto the next carriage, heading for Brooklyn.
It takes him about a half hour, but he gets off at Kingston and just starts walking, remembering the flash of green eyes. He doesn’t know who they belong to, but he knows that it’s someone important to him. He’s thinking, just trying to remember anything, even just a name when he rounds a corner, and parked in front of an apartment building is a black Chevy Impala, the ’67 model, and memories come flooding back.
His name is Eliot Spencer, and he’s a hunter. He died and went to hell, and now he’s back.
He remembers Parker, and Nate, and Sophie. He even remembers Alec, and most of all he remembers Dean. Dean. There’s someone coming out of the building and he grabs the door and slips inside, heading for the apartment he knows is his. He can see it, the apartment he shares with Dean, knows that when the door opens, he’ll be able to see the couch they found on the street. They dragged it home and disinfected it, and now it sits in the middle of the living area. There’ll be a bottle of scotch standing on the desk in the corner, and Dean’s shoes will be scattered by the door.
He still doesn’t understand how he could forget Dean, of all people. Forget the way Dean’s hands roamed over his skin, forget the sounds he heard Dean make when he was buried deep inside Eliot. He reaches the floor his apartment is on and bangs on the door. He’s suddenly tired, overwhelmed, and he takes a step back to lean on the wall behind him. He can hear movement inside the apartment, and then the door opens, and Eliot’s speechless, just for a few seconds. Dean’s clearly just out of the shower, wearing sweats and a thin t-shirt that has damp patches on his shoulders and stomach. Water beads in his hair, making it spiky and runs down his temples to drip onto the floor. His green eyes are vibrant and wide as he stares at Eliot, mouth hanging open slightly. Eliot says nothing, takes a step forward, but Dean backs away, until he’s standing well in the apartment. His eyes are still wide, shocked. Eliot glances down, sees a line of salt trickled across the door frame, and he smiles, because at least Dean hasn’t forgotten everything he was taught before Eliot died. He takes another step forward, looks up and sees the devil’s trap painted on the ceiling, and smiles wider. He steps into the apartment, over the salt line and stands under the devil’s trap, before taking another step until he’s standing in the apartment, right in front of Dean, who licks his lips nervously. ‘What are you?’ he whispers, his voice haggard, rough.
‘It’s me, Dean. It’s Eliot.’
Dean shakes his head, and Eliot wonders if he’s in shock. ‘Eliot’s dead,’ he breathes, hugging his arms to himself. ‘You’re a ghost, or a demon, or something, because my Eliot died four months ago.’
Eliot closes his eyes for a second, because this Dean isn’t his Dean. This Dean is broken, and Eliot feels so guilty for leaving him. He opens them, and casts his gaze around. There’s a knife of his lying on his desk, and it’s pure silver, he remembers. He moves around Dean, who watches him like a cornered animal. He picks up the knife, and runs it across his arm. Blood beads to the surface, but hopefully it’ll prove he’s human. He turns back to Dean and holds the bloody arm up, with the knife. ‘It’s silver. It doesn’t harm humans. It’s me, Dean.’
Dean blinks, and moves, and it’s like he’s been snapped out of it, because suddenly he’s there, wrapping his arms around Eliot and their lips meet, and fuck, kissing Dean is like coming home. They part, and Eliot realises they’re both crying, messy tears slipping down their faces, but they won’t let each other go. Dean’s face is buried in the juncture between Eliot’s neck and shoulder, and he’s shaking, racked with sobs, and all Eliot can do is run a soothing hand over the bigger man’s back, running down the knobs of his spine.
It’s hours later, and Eliot’s showered and changed into fresh clothes [turns out Dean couldn’t bring himself to throw out any of Eliot’s stuff], and they’re sitting on the sofa with Parker, who hasn’t let go of Eliot since she turned up a half hour ago, like she’s been turning up every time she’s in town, Dean tells him, just to check up on him.
As soon as he was done showering, Dean had been waiting with a tumbler of scotch, just like they always used to drink, but when he smiled and took a sip, he could taste the underlying holy water. He cocked an eyebrow at Dean who just laughed, grinning his lopsided smirk that Eliot had no idea how much he’d missed, and he allowed the towel to slide off his hips and grabbed the front of Dean’s belt, pulling him into a kiss, searing and possessive, biting the soft flesh of his lower lip to leave a mark.
He had to shower for a second time afterwards, but it was worth it, in Eliot’s opinion.
There’s a hand on his thigh, and it should feel possessive, but Parker’s hanging off his other arm and it’s nice to just feel the touch of other people. They’re catching him up on what he’d missed the past four months when Parker’s phone rings, and she slides off the sofa to answer it, padding out of the room quickly. Eliot looks at Dean, who shrugs, but there’s something guilty in his expression. Eliot decides to let it slide though, and is content to sit there quietly, with a hand running up and down the inside of his thigh slowly. He shakes his hair out of his eyes, and wonders if it was always this long, bangs falling in his face every time he moves his head.
He can hear Parker pacing in the kitchen, and she’s trying to keep her voice low, but Eliot can still pick out a few words here and there, but he frowns when he hears Alec and don’t know when I’ll be home, wonders what the hell she’s talking about, who she’s talking to, and he climbs off the cough, untangling himself from Dean to follow Parker into the kitchen as she hangs up, flinching when she turns around to see him leaning on the counter opposite her. ‘Who was that?’ he asks, trying to sound light, like it’s unimportant, but there’s an edge to his voice that makes her wince, and she slips the phone back in her pocket.
‘Just Hardison,’ she says, before throwing herself at him, tiny frame hugging him as hard as she can. ‘I missed you Eliot. So much.’
Eliot’s known Parker for a long time, and he knows when she’s deflecting, and right now, he’s pretty damn sure she’s deflecting, so he peels her off him, holds her by the shoulders and just looks at her. She’s smiling, but it’s fake, and now he knows there’s something she’s not telling him. ‘Parker…’ he says, and that horrible, hard edge in his voice is back. ‘Unless something’s drastically changed in the past few months, you barely know Hardison.’ It doesn’t escape him that since Alec left, he doesn’t call him Alec. Not anymore. Not out loud.
Her gaze drops suddenly, until she’s staring at her socked feet. She’s shifting from side to side. ‘He was there when we…’ she pauses, clears her throat. ‘when we buried you. It was him who wouldn’t let us burn you. “If anyone could find a way to claw their way out of hell, it’d be Eliot” he said, and we believed him.’ She shrugs. ‘I mean, it’s not like he was wrong.’
‘Yeah, except I didn’t claw my own way out.’ Eliot speaks low, doesn’t want Dean to know about it just yet, until he’s sure that whatever threw him out isn’t going to yank him back in. He’s pretty sure Dean hasn’t noticed the scarring on his shoulder, or if he has, he figured it was an old scar. It looks old, anyway, like it was from years ago, not hours.
He pulls the sleeve of his t-shirt up over the mark, and turns until the lights of the kitchen reflect off it. Parker frowns, runs fingers over it, tentative. ‘What could do that?’
Eliot shrugs, gently, skins the sleeve back down. ‘I’m gonna call Nate in the morning, see what he has on being raised from hell.’ They head back into the living area, but he stoops and whispers in her ear, telling her that he hasn’t forgotten about the Alec thing. He’s prepared to let it go, just for this evening, and just sit there with his best friend and his lover.
three hundred three.
It feels odd, almost surreal when he wakes up in the morning, and he’s lying in a bed. There’s a leg thrown over his thigh and an arm curled over his stomach, and he doesn’t ever remember waking up like this in hell.
He doesn’t ever remember waking up in hell, period. There is no sleep in hell, no reprieve from the pain and the heat and the screaming. He remembers dreaming about it last night, feels the hold hell still has over him, and he doesn’t think it’ll ever let him go. He woke up sweating, holding back screams, and if he still believed in God, he’d thank whatever deity is up there that Dean’s a heavy sleeper, always has been. He wriggles out from under the restricting limbs and pads into the kitchen to put the coffee on. He’s in there for about a half hour before he hears noise from the bedroom, and he puts more coffee on for Dean, before going to shower.
When he ventures into the kitchen again, he smells frying bacon, and his stomach roils, the smell of the cooking meat making him retch. He makes it to the bathroom before heaving, throwing up thin dribbles of acidic bile. It stings his throat, and the inside of his nose and he coughs, waving Dean off as he follows him in, approaching Eliot, knelt on the floor.
Instead, Dean stands by, holding a glass of water to hand over when Eliot stands up, knees wobbly and skin pallid. He drinks slowly and wipes the back of his hand over his lips when he’s done. ‘You OK?’ Dean asks, a hand on the small of Eliot’s back.
He nods, brushing the hair out of his face. ‘Yeah, just… I dunno. The smell of the bacon must have brought back something subconscious. Looks like I’m eating veggie for a while.’ He’s lying, he knows exactly why he threw up. But how does he tell Dean that the smell of human flesh being stripped from the bone with a white hot blade smells exactly the same as bacon in a frying pan?
Dean smiles, sympathetically, and goes back into the kitchen, shutting the door behind him. When he opens it again, the smell of bacon is gone, and there are two plates of pancakes sitting on the table.
Eliot thinks he’s missed pancakes almost as much as he’s missed Dean. Maybe more, he says to him, and dodges a swipe with the dishcloth, laughing.
He’s not gonna pretend that this is what it’s gonna be like from now on. Just because he came back from the dead doesn’t mean that Dean’s stopped drinking, or that Eliot’s forgotten how to throw words like knives, or that Dean will start hesitating before beating the crap out of him. He knows that their relationship is every kind of fucked up they can make it, but Dean’s is his, and he’s Dean’s, and as much as they fight with each other, they’ll fight to the death for each other, and really, doesn’t that make all the difference?
Parker turns up again, with Nate and Sophie in tow, and Nate wraps him in a hug first, and hits him in the face with holy water from his hip flask second. Sophie laughs, but there are tears in her eyes, and he pulls her in, kissing the top of her head. She smacks him in the chest with the flat of her hand, but she’s still smiling, and he hugs her again.
The celebration is short lived, because there’s a box of books at Nate’s feet, and Parker’s carrying another one, and Eliot just knows he’s in for a day of research. Dean excuses himself, and he heads out of the apartment in sweats and a tee, heading for the gym two blocks over.
In the living area, Nate unpacks the boxes and divides them into piles, seemingly arbitrarily. Eliot frowns at one big, golf leaf plated book in the bottom of one of the boxes. ‘The King James? Really, Nate?’
Nate shrugs, and pulls out a battered pack of smokes and his lighter. Eliot rolls his eyes and curls fingers around the back of Nate’s collar, lifting him up and pushing him in the direction of the window. ‘If you’re gonna smoke, fuckin’ do it over there, and blow it out into the damned street.’
Nate smirks, and clicks his lighter. Eliot stares at the flame, and sees brands being seared onto skin and flesh and bone. He turns away and walks out of the room, knowing that if he smells the rancid smoke from Nate’s cigarette, then he’s going to throw up again. He sits in the kitchen, head in his hands when Parker comes in, confused and concerned. ‘What’s the matter, El?’
‘Just… hell’s making me a little sensitive to crap like this right now,’ he says, rescuing some mugs from the top shelf of the cupboard and making tea, just for something to do.
By the time he’s done, Nate’s done smoking, and Sophie sprayed some flowery girly shit that makes him wrinkle his nose, but is a thousand times better than the smell of nicotine and burning, so he sits down, cross-legged, in front of one pile of books and starts flipping through one, taking a sip of the too hot tea and almost burning his tongue. He sets it to one side to cool, and asks what he’s supposed to be looking for.
‘Any demon that’s powerful enough to make you his bitch, and ride you out of hell.’
‘And isn’t that a lovely thought?’ Sophie mutters, stirring honey into her tea.
Eliot just pulls a face and returns to his book. ‘Lilith would have been powerful enough to do it, but why would she want to?’ he asks, flicking past a crudely drawn imitation of a soul in hell..
‘Lilith’s dead,’ Parker says, quickly, dropping the book she’d just picked up and reaching for another. ‘Me and Alec hunted her down a couple months ago.’
Eliot turns to look at her, and she colours faintly and pores over the book in her lap. ‘And you were going to tell me that you killed the demon that sent me to hell when, exactly? And eventually, you’re going to have to tell me what the deal is with you and Hardison.’
‘Parker, you didn’t tell him?’ Sophie asks from across the room. ‘He has a right to know.’
Eliot takes a deep breath. ‘A right to know what?’
Parker starts babbling, words tripping over each other. ‘Well, you know, you were dead, and we were all lonely and it just kind of happened, I mean we were already hunting together, and we killed Lilith, and we were both just ecstatic, so we went and had a few drinks to celebrate and well, we uh-’
‘You fucked him,’ Eliot says, bluntly, very careful to dispel any emotion in the words.
Eliot,’ Sophie gasps, offended, but he shrugs it off and keeps looking at Parker, waiting for a reply.
One doesn’t come, and so he just shrugs it off, starts flipping through the book with unnecessary force. There’s silence around him, until everyone resumes what they were doing, and all he can hear is pages being turned and the clatter of mugs being plonked on tables, until he hears Nate drawl ‘Well fuck me.’
He looks up to see the older man holding the bible from earlier. There’s a picture of something with wings holding a man by the shoulders. Fire licks at their heels, and there are hands reaching for them that Eliot assumes are demons. The winged man looks almost like…
‘Angels, Nate? No friggin’ way. There’s no such thing as angels. They’re myths.’
‘Well, says here that these myths are the only thing that can “raise a soul from perdition”,’ Nate returns, following the quote with a finger. He looks at Eliot over the top of his glasses. ‘Clap your hands if you believe.’
Eliot stands, managing to knock the mug next to him over. The dregs of his tea dribble onto the carpet as he heads for the door, shucking his shoes on and grabbing a jacket and his keys.
‘Eliot?’
‘I just can’t deal with this right now, Parker. Not you and Ale- Hardison, not being alive, not fucking angels, none of it. I just… I need time to think. To adjust.’
As soon as he’s outside the apartment building he takes a deep breath. New York air tastes like gasoline, but it’s clean, and it doesn’t remind him of hell, so he inhales again and starts walking, doesn’t care where.
It’s evening by the time he returns home, and he’s been gone for almost nine hours. Parker, Nate and Sophie are gone, but there are several messages on his cell, and Dean’s sitting on the couch by the time he gets home, and Eliot knows he’s been drinking, still is drinking, but that’s OK, because Eliot’s been drinking too, just enough to dull the memories, just enough to stop him from going insane. There are a lot of memories trying to drive him insane.
They hurl words at each other, but they’re both slurring them, and neither of them seem to be sober enough to get angry enough to trade blows, so eventually Eliot throws a fuck you, Winchester at Dean, and stalks off to bed.
He wonders if Dean’ll sleep on the couch, or sober up enough to follow him eventually.
The nightmares are worse without the bigger man curled around him, and he wakes up several times in the night, gasping for breath, running cold and hot at the same time, and it feels as if he’s in hell again, because there’s a tightness in his chest. He wonders vaguely whether this is what a panic attack feels like.
When he wakes up for the fifth time, it’s almost six AM, so he just gets up and puts coffee on. It seems to be all he’s doing these days, making coffee. The apartment is empty when he wanders through, and Dean’s shoes are missing.
Eliot sits on the couch and drinks his coffee, waiting for Dean to come home.
Seems he does a lot of that, too.
three hundred sixty four.
Eliot’s been alive for two months, give or take, and he’s barely seen Dean. They live in the same apartment, sleep in the same bed, and yet they seem to be existing entirely separately. For the most part Dean’s been sleeping during the day and working heists with his brother and the rest of their crew during the night. Eliot doesn’t ask, and Dean doesn’t tell.
Eliot’s still not hunting, not since he went on a salt and burn about two weeks after hell, and he had a full blown panic attack in the cemetery seeing the open grave, so he’s mostly doing research for other hunters, slinging some cases over to the Roadhouse for Sophie to dole out.
Parker moved out of the roadhouse and started living on the road with Alec. They drop by every now and then, whenever a case brings them into the New England area. He gets on better with Alec now. They got past whatever crap they were both still sore about, and their relationship is civil, if nothing else, for Parker’s sake.
He’s in the kitchen one evening, making spaghetti sauce [even after two months, the smell of raw of cooked meat turns his stomach] when the door slams open, and he drops his head for a second. The smell of whiskey and smoke invades the kitchen, and Eliot tries not to retch. Smoke doesn’t affect him as much as fire or meat, but Dean knows it makes him want to fall to his knees and throw up until there’s nothing in his stomach. He turns to face him, but Dean’s there, inches from his face, hands tight on the collar of Eliot’s shirt, and breathing the scent of cheap alcohol and cheaper smokes into his face.
Eliot places his own hands over the top of Dean’s and tries to pry them off, but his grip is like steel cable, and he’s not budging. ‘Dean,’ he tries, but there’s no reaction. His eyes are glassy and unfocused, and Eliot has no idea how he’s even walking, the amount of alcohol in him, but he tries again. ‘Dean.’
Dean lets go, and Eliot takes a step back, reaching behind him to turn the stove off. He’s just turned his attention back to the bigger man when he’s sent crashing to the floor as Dean catches him on the side of the jaw with his fist. He spits blood on the floor, screws his eyes shut to ward off the bubbling nausea that seeing his own blood brings and opens them again, struggling to his feet. He tries to hit back, but Dean’s fast, too fast, and he grabs Eliot’s wrist and pulls him in towards his chest, trapping him. Eliot struggles, but Dean’s bigger, stronger and a better fighter than him, so all he’s doing is wasting energy. He stills, can feel his heart beating faster than it should. He can feel the blood from his split lip dripping down his chin, but Dean has an arm around him neck and he’s squeezing, and Eliot’s fighting for breath. His vision spots and blurs, but then he lets go, and Eliot drops to the floor, coughing.
He’s never seen Dean like this, eyes hard, nostrils flaring with anger, completely and utterly silent, and honestly? It scares him, almost as much as hell did. [Almost. Not quite.]
Dean hits him again, and Eliot can’t find it in himself to hit back. He’s dizzy, short of breath and now there’s a cut opening just above his eye, blood sliding red into his vision. He rubs at it, trying to clear his vision, but Dean knees him in the stomach, and he gives up, just curls into a ball and waits for it to be over.
Dean kicks him a couple more times, but he gets bored, or the alcohol finally this him, or something, because Eliot can hear footsteps leading away, and a door shuts in the distance. He hears bedsprings, and figures he’s gone to sleep it off.
He stands, gingerly and probes at his ribs; they hurt, but they’re just bruised, not broken, and everything else is superficial damage, so he makes his way to the couch and drags a blanket over himself.
His dreams of hell are worse than they’ve ever been that night. All the demons have Dean’s face as they carve him up over and over again, and he thinks it’ll never be dawn.
three hundred sixty five.
Eliot sleeps fitfully, and is woken by the intercom buzzer, incessant and unbearable this early in the morning. He stumbles over, his ribs stiff and sore after last night and mutters at the buttons, hitting the one that’ll open the door. Minutes after, someone’s battering at the door, and it’s driving through Eliot’s skull like six inch nails.
He opens the door, just to make the noise go away, and it’s Alec, who’s early morning smile slides off his face when he sees Eliot.
‘What the fuck, man?’
‘It’s nothin’, Hardison. What the hell’d you want at this time on a morning?’
‘Nothing? Your face looks like so much raw steak, and you’re walking like someone cut off one of your balls.’
‘I’ve had worse,’ Eliot insists, sitting back down on the couch and hanging his head back. ‘What do you need?’
Alec gives him a look that says we are not done talking about this, Spencer, but sits on the couch next to him. ‘Parker needed some info for a hunt, said you’d have it for her.’
‘Uhh…’ Eliot thinks. ‘The coven up in Westchester?’ Alec nods. ‘Yeah, it’s uh, on that desk, in the purple file.’ When Alec levels a look at him, he adds ‘It keeps things organised. Purple for witches, green for ghosts, yellow for demons.’
Alec rescues the file and flicks through it, before turning his attention back to Eliot. ‘So. Come on big man. Spill. Who you been pickin’ fights with now?’
Eliot glances at the still open front door, and notes that Dean’s workboots are missing. He doesn’t care where, but he’s gone. Alec follows his gaze, and his eyes turn dark. ‘Oh, hell no. You letting Dean beat the crap out of you?’
Eliot shrugs, and regrets it instantly, as it jolts fire up and down his ribs. ‘Not like I can stop him. The guy’s got three inches and twenty pounds on me, not to mention, he’s essentially a professional fighter.’
‘Bullshit,’ Alec offers, eloquent as always. ‘Show his ass the door.’
‘It’s not that easy, Hardi-’
‘Like hell it isn’t, Eliot. If you can’t make him leave, then you get the fuck out and leave his ass on his own.’ Alec gets up, heads for the closet and stands up on his tiptoes to reach for a cardboard box. He offers it to Eliot, who just frowns. ‘Pack your shit, and get the hell out..’ Suddenly, he’s more serious than Eliot’s seen him in a long time, and there’s something in his eyes that Eliot can’t recognise. ‘Please Eliot. Get out before it kills you.’
He makes a split second decision. He takes the box from Alec and stands up, pulling the smaller man into a hug. ‘Thanks, Alec,’ he whispers, and he hopes he knows how much Eliot means it.
three hundred sixty six.
one.
It’s sunny when Eliot finally leaves, finally leaves Dean, leaves this self destructive, suicidal… it’s not even a life, it’s an existence.
But whatever it is, he knows it’s killing him. Yesterday told him that.
Notes