If it wasn't for the TV and the fridge being so far apart, some of us wouldn't exercise at all.
So, uh, I woke up this morning and thought "you haven't finished a fic in years, so obviously you should crank out 2000 words about that new TNT show Leverage. Also, there should be gay nightclubs and glitter." I REGRET NOTHING.
The Hole
*
"Oh, hell no," is the first thing Hardison says. "Excuse me, uh, can we get a little, I mean can y'all just take a step back for a minute and realize this is the stupidest idea we've ever had," is the second.
"I don't think that's fair," Nate contradicts, perched on a desk.
"Yeah, I've come up with a lot worse," Parker adds.
Sophie is bent over him with a critical eye and a long worm of measuring tape. "Stay still," she admonishes, swatting at his chest, necklaces dangling over her cleavage in a distracting way. Nate would kill him, so Hardison looks instead at Parker hand's locked around his wrists in a steel-iron grip -- and seriously, where does a skinny chick get that kind of power? What else is she eating with her balanced breakfast of crazy? He gives her a dirty look but she only smiles at him in a terrifying way.
"I feel we're missing an important question here," Hardison tries. "Why isn't Eliot getting the makeover? You know, the guy who sleeps in his clothes and thought Herbal Essences was some kind of tea?"
Eliot is lounging in the doorway, all scuffed boots and Southern drawl. "I'll pull my hair back," he says.
"Maybe you should wash it first," Nate says pointedly.
"I have a distinctive style," Eliot replies, unconcerned.
Sophie looks at him with the well-practiced scorn of a fashionable woman surrounded by men. "I'm surprised you take the effort to shave."
Eliot shifts, suddenly uncomfortable. "Parker threatened to do it for me," he admits.
There's a pause as everyone in the room thinks of the consequences of Parker with a sharp object.
"Let's go back to the part where I'm supposed to infiltrate a gay club looking for Russian mobsters," Hardison says.
Nate raises his eyebrows. "What don't you understand about it?" He seems highly amused by the whole thing, a luxury he is only afforded because his cellphone works and his computer is virus-free and his cable is still on. Oh, Hardison will fix that.
"Why am I doing it?" he demands. "Why can't you do it?"
"Someone has to be here to laugh," Nate says honestly. "I feel I'm the best laugher."
Sophie does some measuring very close to his important parts. "I offered," she says -- she pokes something vital and Hardison tries not to wince -- "because I've been a lesbian before, it was in my play Clawface Vagina, I even told Nate I could bring in the video and we could all watch it together -- "
Nate, Eliot, and Parker all make frantic throat-slitting gestures, their eyes wide and panicked. Hardison is almost tempted to say that he thinks that's a great idea, except he's a little afraid of getting on Parker's bad side.
"I guess I'll do it," he says with a martyred sigh. "Parker, you don't have to sit on me. I am a man with dignity."
"So do you want the yellow thong or the leopard print one?" Sophie asks.
"Leopard print," Eliot suggests, his laughter drifting in the room. "To match the fearsome beast within."
Nate gives him a thumbs up. Parker settles more serenely on his thighs.
*
The bar is called The Hole.
"I have a moral objection to this," Hardison says. The line is snaking around the corner and seems to be made entirely of glitter and hats from High School Musical. Beside him, Eliot rolls his eyes, like Hardison's anal chastity is a laughing matter.
"Come on, bar bunny," he says, clapping a hand on his shoulder and leading them to the front of the line. People call out "hey!" and "not cool!" as they pass, to which Hardison yells "yeah, yeah, you're all jealous" and "suck it!", which upon reflection might not have been the most intelligent thing to suggest.
"Hi," Eliot says to the bouncer. "I'm Brad Gyllenhaal Patterson."
Hardison gives him a disbelieving look, but the bouncer is instantly friendly. "Brad," he says warmly, reaching out and grasping Eliot's hand with both of his own, "good to see you again," and wait, what?
"Can we go on in?" Eliot asks.
"Be my guest," the bouncer says, and oh, oh that is a definite leer. Hardison is going to need a thousand showers. It's even worse when the bouncer is openly reluctant to let go of Eliot hand, letting his touch linger in a suggestively filthy way, and then he blocks Hardison's way into the club when he cranes around to watch Eliot's retreating backside. Hardison feels vaguely insulted.
"I'm wearing a leopard print thong," he says.
"...Gross," the bouncer replies.
"Brad has a contagious skin disease," Hardison hisses, and pushes past him.
The club isn't actually what he expected. He was anticipating a frenzied orgy of semi-nude male models who shoved dildos in him as he passed, sobbing hysterically and wondering if he could still wear white at his wedding. Instead, it's just a bunch of guys dancing and trying to infect each other with mono.
"Underwhelmed?" Eliot asks. Hardison casts him a dark look from the side.
"I don't know, Mr. Brad Gyllenhaal Patterson. Seriously, you're supposed to be a con artist?"
"At midnight there's a drinking game called Sausagefest," Eliot tells him.
"I hate you so much right now," Hardison confides.
Eliot cracks a smile, and he actually looks decent. Sophie had gotten him to wash his hair -- probably under pain of death -- and he wore a messy ponytail and a low-slung belt that was already catching eyes. He cleaned up well, as long as Hardison didn't remember the time Parker brought a puppy to headquarters and Eliot had sat in its pee and no one noticed for three days.
In contrast, Hardison was a beanpole in a tank top and skinny jeans, which apparently sent out homosexual waves in the way, say, a hazmat suit wouldn't. Though he had argued the merits.
"All right, guys, there should be cameras at the north and southeast exits." Parker's report is a tinny sound in their ears. "We don't know what the Russians are planning, so see if you can do some poking around, feel the place out."
"Did you have to phrase it that way?" Hardison whines.
"Buck up," Eliot says, "take one for the team," and disappears into the gyrating masses of the club, leaving Hardison to shout "I'm not taking anything! My body is a sacred temple, you know!" after him.
*
An hour later they're still empty-handed, at least that's what he tells Nate when he checks in, because in truth he's holding some little drink with a straw and he doesn't hate it as much as he should. To his surprise, the guys here aren't bad at all. Real friendly. He finds the attention flattering, because Hardison has always been the most irresistible guy Hardison knows.
"I went through a lot for this outfit, you know?" he's saying when Eliot finds him again. "I primped. I plucked. But who appreciates it? No one." He burns at the injustice.
"Uh, Hardison," Eliot murmurs in his ear, "maybe you should take a step back."
"Why?" he asks. "I'm talking to a nice guy. At least someone in this place understands me."
"He's unzipping your girlpants," Eliot points out.
Hardison looks down, then gives an unmanly yell. The dude he was talking to -- babbling at, Hardison realizes with horror -- spits out his zipper, looking remarkably unrepentant.
"Maybe we could go someplace a little more private," he hints. He's eyeing Hardison with open, shameless appraisal, the kind of look Hardison fully appreciates from beautiful women after he's hacked someone's funds and transferred a few thousand to their account so they'd sleep with him, but from some slutty gay stranger it's just disturbing, especially when his bare chest is covered in glitter and something wet, and he-- oh my god, was he licking his mouth?
"I'm taken," Hardison snaps, before he can register the words.
"I don't think cartoon porn counts," Eliot says fairly.
Hardison whirls around, because they were supposed to be in this birdcage together. "First, it's called doujinshi, which is a perfectly respectable business revenue in the back alleys of Japan. Second, what's that supposed to mean? And third." He raises his eyebrows meaningfully. "I saw you looking at some Utena, don't even try to deny it."
"Were those girls?" Before Hardison can work up the proper indignance for this, Eliot leans in close and whispers, "We're being watched. Sell it." In a normal voice, he adds, "Maybe this just isn't working out."
Hardison stares at him. Eliot ever-so-slightly jerks his head to the left.
Hardison thinks, double overtime, double overtime, and asks out loud, "Are you trying to break up with me?"
His best friend the zipperlicker looks between them, sensing blood. "So listen, if you want to ditch this clown -- "
Hardison plants his hand on the guy's face. "Excuse me," he demands of Eliot, dimly aware of a few heads turning in their direction. "You did not just dump me."
Eliot looks vaguely annoyed, like he didn't know what he was getting into. Hardison has three sisters, he knows how to play this.
"Maybe... you weren't... fulfilling my emotional needs," Eliot says, sounding like every word is causing him great pain.
Hardison is enjoying himself now. "Listen, horseboy, I don't know what kind of trolled-up tramp you've got waiting in your trailer -- "
The crowd oohs, which is gratifying.
"But I don't roll like this," Hardison continues. "You only want to play at Brokeback, you know, whatever, but I aint cheap. I have standards." He gets right up in Eliot's face.
Something flashes in Eliot's eyes. He takes one step forward, just one, and suddenly they're so close that Hardison can feel his breath ghosting his cheek when he speaks. "Don't even try," Eliot warns.
Hardison thinks, in for a penny, and crashes their hips together.
The crowd explodes, and the music kicks in; there's a moment of pure astonishment on Eliot's face that Hardison's never seen before, not even when Eliot has been on the wrong end of a dozen heavily-armed nuns. He had meant it as a joke -- had only wanted to knock some of the smugness out of him -- but there's something about that brief, shocked look, something about the unfiltered surprise on Eliot's face before he could school it away -- a thrill goes up Hardison's spine.
Never one to waste opportunity, he cocks his head a little, looks Eliot straight in the eye, and challenges, "What are you gonna do about it?"
Eliot looks back at him, considering. After a moment, he says, "Dance."
Hardison smirks, because there's no way a white boy is going to beat him at this.
Their version of dancing is really just stomping around together in a thoroughly ungraceful fashion, because Hardison's got several inches on him but Eliot's heavier, and neither of them will lower themselves to anything resembling a shimmy. At one point Hardison is sure Eliot is grabbing a handful of his ass, so Hardison retaliates with a rather violent grind, and then someone's tearing his shirt off, and he blinks and there's a drink in his hand, and Eliot's hair has come undone and his pants have gotten, if possible, even tighter. Hardison feels light, bright-eyed and lighter than air, the sounds of the club rushing over him in unimportant waves, but Eliot is intense and strangely focused, drawing Hardison in with all that arrogant confidence, like a man who's always gotten whatever he's wanted by any means necessary, and knows he can do it again. Behind him, the pulsating penis lights glow with subliminal invitation.
Just as Hardison is drunkenly contemplating if he can, indeed, shimmy, there's a little voice in his ear saying, "Uh, guys?"
That's when the back wall explodes.
*
"You put it on youtube?" Eliot groans.
Parker beams at them, a sunny, ponytailed pain in Hardison's ass. "Just the dryhumping," she explains. "I cut out the part where the Russian mafia tried to blow up the club, I figured you guys didn't want to wind up on the FBI's to-watch list for questionable associations."
From the next room comes Sophie's triumphant shout. "FIRST!"
Hardison puts a hand over his face. Eliot slumps further in his seat. The morning after has treated him with stubble, an ugly hangover and all that magical hair sticking to one side of his face. Hardison doesn't know how he could have ever found him attractive.
Nate wanders in the room with a cup of coffee. "Well, I think we all learned a valuable lesson today."
"Watch who's unzipping your pants?" Eliot asks.
"Hardison is a slut," Parker offers.
"That was really impressive, though," Sophie tells Eliot, handing him a cup. Hardison opens his arms wide, offended, but she continues to play terrible, ungrateful favorites. "I especially liked when you killed everyone without smudging your eyeliner at all."
"I meant a lesson about keeping your mind on the job," Nate appeals to the room at large. "So you won't blow yourselves up," he adds, but no one's listening.
Hardison drags himself to his feet. "I'm going to crash youtube forever," he announces ("Can he do that?" Sophie demands), and on the way to his computer he steps over Eliot's outstretched legs.
It triggers a memory, of Eliot's strong, solid thigh between his own, his hands roaming over Hardison's bare back amid slurred cheering and way too much vodka, and --
He's not sure, but he thinks Eliot was staring at his ass on the way out, so he grabs a clipboard and holds it over his backside as he leaves the room.
Hell no, he thinks.
But he still saves the video.
The Hole
*
"Oh, hell no," is the first thing Hardison says. "Excuse me, uh, can we get a little, I mean can y'all just take a step back for a minute and realize this is the stupidest idea we've ever had," is the second.
"I don't think that's fair," Nate contradicts, perched on a desk.
"Yeah, I've come up with a lot worse," Parker adds.
Sophie is bent over him with a critical eye and a long worm of measuring tape. "Stay still," she admonishes, swatting at his chest, necklaces dangling over her cleavage in a distracting way. Nate would kill him, so Hardison looks instead at Parker hand's locked around his wrists in a steel-iron grip -- and seriously, where does a skinny chick get that kind of power? What else is she eating with her balanced breakfast of crazy? He gives her a dirty look but she only smiles at him in a terrifying way.
"I feel we're missing an important question here," Hardison tries. "Why isn't Eliot getting the makeover? You know, the guy who sleeps in his clothes and thought Herbal Essences was some kind of tea?"
Eliot is lounging in the doorway, all scuffed boots and Southern drawl. "I'll pull my hair back," he says.
"Maybe you should wash it first," Nate says pointedly.
"I have a distinctive style," Eliot replies, unconcerned.
Sophie looks at him with the well-practiced scorn of a fashionable woman surrounded by men. "I'm surprised you take the effort to shave."
Eliot shifts, suddenly uncomfortable. "Parker threatened to do it for me," he admits.
There's a pause as everyone in the room thinks of the consequences of Parker with a sharp object.
"Let's go back to the part where I'm supposed to infiltrate a gay club looking for Russian mobsters," Hardison says.
Nate raises his eyebrows. "What don't you understand about it?" He seems highly amused by the whole thing, a luxury he is only afforded because his cellphone works and his computer is virus-free and his cable is still on. Oh, Hardison will fix that.
"Why am I doing it?" he demands. "Why can't you do it?"
"Someone has to be here to laugh," Nate says honestly. "I feel I'm the best laugher."
Sophie does some measuring very close to his important parts. "I offered," she says -- she pokes something vital and Hardison tries not to wince -- "because I've been a lesbian before, it was in my play Clawface Vagina, I even told Nate I could bring in the video and we could all watch it together -- "
Nate, Eliot, and Parker all make frantic throat-slitting gestures, their eyes wide and panicked. Hardison is almost tempted to say that he thinks that's a great idea, except he's a little afraid of getting on Parker's bad side.
"I guess I'll do it," he says with a martyred sigh. "Parker, you don't have to sit on me. I am a man with dignity."
"So do you want the yellow thong or the leopard print one?" Sophie asks.
"Leopard print," Eliot suggests, his laughter drifting in the room. "To match the fearsome beast within."
Nate gives him a thumbs up. Parker settles more serenely on his thighs.
*
The bar is called The Hole.
"I have a moral objection to this," Hardison says. The line is snaking around the corner and seems to be made entirely of glitter and hats from High School Musical. Beside him, Eliot rolls his eyes, like Hardison's anal chastity is a laughing matter.
"Come on, bar bunny," he says, clapping a hand on his shoulder and leading them to the front of the line. People call out "hey!" and "not cool!" as they pass, to which Hardison yells "yeah, yeah, you're all jealous" and "suck it!", which upon reflection might not have been the most intelligent thing to suggest.
"Hi," Eliot says to the bouncer. "I'm Brad Gyllenhaal Patterson."
Hardison gives him a disbelieving look, but the bouncer is instantly friendly. "Brad," he says warmly, reaching out and grasping Eliot's hand with both of his own, "good to see you again," and wait, what?
"Can we go on in?" Eliot asks.
"Be my guest," the bouncer says, and oh, oh that is a definite leer. Hardison is going to need a thousand showers. It's even worse when the bouncer is openly reluctant to let go of Eliot hand, letting his touch linger in a suggestively filthy way, and then he blocks Hardison's way into the club when he cranes around to watch Eliot's retreating backside. Hardison feels vaguely insulted.
"I'm wearing a leopard print thong," he says.
"...Gross," the bouncer replies.
"Brad has a contagious skin disease," Hardison hisses, and pushes past him.
The club isn't actually what he expected. He was anticipating a frenzied orgy of semi-nude male models who shoved dildos in him as he passed, sobbing hysterically and wondering if he could still wear white at his wedding. Instead, it's just a bunch of guys dancing and trying to infect each other with mono.
"Underwhelmed?" Eliot asks. Hardison casts him a dark look from the side.
"I don't know, Mr. Brad Gyllenhaal Patterson. Seriously, you're supposed to be a con artist?"
"At midnight there's a drinking game called Sausagefest," Eliot tells him.
"I hate you so much right now," Hardison confides.
Eliot cracks a smile, and he actually looks decent. Sophie had gotten him to wash his hair -- probably under pain of death -- and he wore a messy ponytail and a low-slung belt that was already catching eyes. He cleaned up well, as long as Hardison didn't remember the time Parker brought a puppy to headquarters and Eliot had sat in its pee and no one noticed for three days.
In contrast, Hardison was a beanpole in a tank top and skinny jeans, which apparently sent out homosexual waves in the way, say, a hazmat suit wouldn't. Though he had argued the merits.
"All right, guys, there should be cameras at the north and southeast exits." Parker's report is a tinny sound in their ears. "We don't know what the Russians are planning, so see if you can do some poking around, feel the place out."
"Did you have to phrase it that way?" Hardison whines.
"Buck up," Eliot says, "take one for the team," and disappears into the gyrating masses of the club, leaving Hardison to shout "I'm not taking anything! My body is a sacred temple, you know!" after him.
*
An hour later they're still empty-handed, at least that's what he tells Nate when he checks in, because in truth he's holding some little drink with a straw and he doesn't hate it as much as he should. To his surprise, the guys here aren't bad at all. Real friendly. He finds the attention flattering, because Hardison has always been the most irresistible guy Hardison knows.
"I went through a lot for this outfit, you know?" he's saying when Eliot finds him again. "I primped. I plucked. But who appreciates it? No one." He burns at the injustice.
"Uh, Hardison," Eliot murmurs in his ear, "maybe you should take a step back."
"Why?" he asks. "I'm talking to a nice guy. At least someone in this place understands me."
"He's unzipping your girlpants," Eliot points out.
Hardison looks down, then gives an unmanly yell. The dude he was talking to -- babbling at, Hardison realizes with horror -- spits out his zipper, looking remarkably unrepentant.
"Maybe we could go someplace a little more private," he hints. He's eyeing Hardison with open, shameless appraisal, the kind of look Hardison fully appreciates from beautiful women after he's hacked someone's funds and transferred a few thousand to their account so they'd sleep with him, but from some slutty gay stranger it's just disturbing, especially when his bare chest is covered in glitter and something wet, and he-- oh my god, was he licking his mouth?
"I'm taken," Hardison snaps, before he can register the words.
"I don't think cartoon porn counts," Eliot says fairly.
Hardison whirls around, because they were supposed to be in this birdcage together. "First, it's called doujinshi, which is a perfectly respectable business revenue in the back alleys of Japan. Second, what's that supposed to mean? And third." He raises his eyebrows meaningfully. "I saw you looking at some Utena, don't even try to deny it."
"Were those girls?" Before Hardison can work up the proper indignance for this, Eliot leans in close and whispers, "We're being watched. Sell it." In a normal voice, he adds, "Maybe this just isn't working out."
Hardison stares at him. Eliot ever-so-slightly jerks his head to the left.
Hardison thinks, double overtime, double overtime, and asks out loud, "Are you trying to break up with me?"
His best friend the zipperlicker looks between them, sensing blood. "So listen, if you want to ditch this clown -- "
Hardison plants his hand on the guy's face. "Excuse me," he demands of Eliot, dimly aware of a few heads turning in their direction. "You did not just dump me."
Eliot looks vaguely annoyed, like he didn't know what he was getting into. Hardison has three sisters, he knows how to play this.
"Maybe... you weren't... fulfilling my emotional needs," Eliot says, sounding like every word is causing him great pain.
Hardison is enjoying himself now. "Listen, horseboy, I don't know what kind of trolled-up tramp you've got waiting in your trailer -- "
The crowd oohs, which is gratifying.
"But I don't roll like this," Hardison continues. "You only want to play at Brokeback, you know, whatever, but I aint cheap. I have standards." He gets right up in Eliot's face.
Something flashes in Eliot's eyes. He takes one step forward, just one, and suddenly they're so close that Hardison can feel his breath ghosting his cheek when he speaks. "Don't even try," Eliot warns.
Hardison thinks, in for a penny, and crashes their hips together.
The crowd explodes, and the music kicks in; there's a moment of pure astonishment on Eliot's face that Hardison's never seen before, not even when Eliot has been on the wrong end of a dozen heavily-armed nuns. He had meant it as a joke -- had only wanted to knock some of the smugness out of him -- but there's something about that brief, shocked look, something about the unfiltered surprise on Eliot's face before he could school it away -- a thrill goes up Hardison's spine.
Never one to waste opportunity, he cocks his head a little, looks Eliot straight in the eye, and challenges, "What are you gonna do about it?"
Eliot looks back at him, considering. After a moment, he says, "Dance."
Hardison smirks, because there's no way a white boy is going to beat him at this.
Their version of dancing is really just stomping around together in a thoroughly ungraceful fashion, because Hardison's got several inches on him but Eliot's heavier, and neither of them will lower themselves to anything resembling a shimmy. At one point Hardison is sure Eliot is grabbing a handful of his ass, so Hardison retaliates with a rather violent grind, and then someone's tearing his shirt off, and he blinks and there's a drink in his hand, and Eliot's hair has come undone and his pants have gotten, if possible, even tighter. Hardison feels light, bright-eyed and lighter than air, the sounds of the club rushing over him in unimportant waves, but Eliot is intense and strangely focused, drawing Hardison in with all that arrogant confidence, like a man who's always gotten whatever he's wanted by any means necessary, and knows he can do it again. Behind him, the pulsating penis lights glow with subliminal invitation.
Just as Hardison is drunkenly contemplating if he can, indeed, shimmy, there's a little voice in his ear saying, "Uh, guys?"
That's when the back wall explodes.
*
"You put it on youtube?" Eliot groans.
Parker beams at them, a sunny, ponytailed pain in Hardison's ass. "Just the dryhumping," she explains. "I cut out the part where the Russian mafia tried to blow up the club, I figured you guys didn't want to wind up on the FBI's to-watch list for questionable associations."
From the next room comes Sophie's triumphant shout. "FIRST!"
Hardison puts a hand over his face. Eliot slumps further in his seat. The morning after has treated him with stubble, an ugly hangover and all that magical hair sticking to one side of his face. Hardison doesn't know how he could have ever found him attractive.
Nate wanders in the room with a cup of coffee. "Well, I think we all learned a valuable lesson today."
"Watch who's unzipping your pants?" Eliot asks.
"Hardison is a slut," Parker offers.
"That was really impressive, though," Sophie tells Eliot, handing him a cup. Hardison opens his arms wide, offended, but she continues to play terrible, ungrateful favorites. "I especially liked when you killed everyone without smudging your eyeliner at all."
"I meant a lesson about keeping your mind on the job," Nate appeals to the room at large. "So you won't blow yourselves up," he adds, but no one's listening.
Hardison drags himself to his feet. "I'm going to crash youtube forever," he announces ("Can he do that?" Sophie demands), and on the way to his computer he steps over Eliot's outstretched legs.
It triggers a memory, of Eliot's strong, solid thigh between his own, his hands roaming over Hardison's bare back amid slurred cheering and way too much vodka, and --
He's not sure, but he thinks Eliot was staring at his ass on the way out, so he grabs a clipboard and holds it over his backside as he leaves the room.
Hell no, he thinks.
But he still saves the video.