horses made of sticks
Title: horses made of sticks
Pairing: Eliot/Parker/Hardison, background Nate/Sophie
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Some violence
Summary: Eliot deals with his past, and tries to get a grip on the present.
A/N: Trust me to write a threesome fic with no actual sex in it. Sorry?
It's been more than five years since he's fired a gun, but the shape of the acrylic grips and the recoil against his palms are so familiar that it feels like coming home. Eliot's body has always remembered what the rest of him tries to forget.
All he can smell is jet fuel and gunsmoke. His jeans are soaked to the knee and he's starting to shake as the adrenaline leaves his body. He feels fucked-up and raw, like the bones of him are sitting on the surface where anybody can see them.
Sophie asks if he's okay, and he nods. He doesn't meet Hardison's eyes, and he flinches when Parker touches his arm.
***
Damien didn't have any dirt on him. That's not how it went down. Damien was a big man on the scene, and Eliot had been cooling his heels in Guinea for three months, getting restless and broke and dangerously bored.
Damien smoked cheroots and had a well-bred, snake-eyed charm that pissed Eliot off almost as much as it fascinated him. It was never about the money, not really. Somebody with Eliot's skills could always find work.
***
He asks Nate not to say anything, but they're not stupid. Hardison's been doing clean-up for them since the beginning, and a hanger full of bodies takes a whole damn lot of clean-up, even if none of them are the kind of guys anybody's gonna miss.
He burns the clothes, wipes down the guns and dumps them in Boston Harbor. The day before they fly down to San Lorenzo, there's a thirty-second clip on the nightly news about a gang shootout down by the waterfront. Open and shut. Tragic.
On the plane the next morning, he matches Nate drink for drink and waits for one of the others to say something.
Hardison greets him with an easy smile and a half-assed gripe about the time of day and Parker's driving. He's wearing a t-shirt, and Eliot can see the half-healed grooves that the handcuff cut into his wrist a week and a half ago. Chlorine is an irritant and the bruising was pretty bad. Hardison has some muscle on him, for a geek. Not enough to break the chair apart, but plenty enough to break his own thumb, if he'd thought to try that, and more than enough to bruise the hell out of his wrist trying to get loose.
Parker whacks him with her bag until he gets out of her way, drops into the seat next to Hardison and puts her hand on his knee with the kind of proprietary attitude Eliot's only ever seen her direct at stacks of money. Hardison lays his hand next to hers, fingers just brushing like they're eighth-graders at the homecoming dance. His smile is sweet and kind of stunned.
Eliot manages to find a smirk for them, then turns to look out the window so he doesn't have to watch Hardison lace his fingers together with Parker's, gentle and slow like she couldn't knock him on his ass without breaking a sweat if she felt like it.
When they land there's the job to think about. He's always at his best when he's working, but that's the one thing that doesn't make him different from the rest of them.
***
"You got something on your neck," Eliot remarks blandly while they wait for their flight back home, and Sophie slaps the hickey like it's a bug she's gonna squash.
"You are a bad man," she says sternly and he thinks, yeah, ain't that the truth.
***
"I told you I'd get it taken care of."
"Yes, you did, didn't you?" Clink of glasses, and Damien slid a stack of bills across the table. The rest of the money was already in his account. "Nicely done. Somewhat messy, though, I take it?"
Eliot had come to collect his payment without showering or changing his clothes, and he could see Damien's well-bred nose wrinkle delicately at the effluvia of sweat and grease and gore that clung to him. His flannel shirt was torn, there was blood in his hair, and he stood out like a very sore thumb in this rich-boys club-house of thousand dollar suits: his little way of leveling the field between them. He bared his teeth in a grin. "Just breaking some eggs, Damien. The job's taken care of."
"Nobody saw you leave?"
The question was meaningless, because he already knew the answer. If anybody had seen him leave, Damien would have tossed him to la Sûreté Nationale without a second thought, and Eliot knew it. Working with Damien always did mean working without a net, but the benefits were worth the risks, if you were good enough. There was five grand American on the table, and that was just the tip for services rendered. Eliot was very good.
Eliot tossed back his own drink, still smiling. "Nobody who's still breathing."
Damien smiled back, charming as a shark. "Good, good. I always know I can count on you, Spencer."
***
Eliot doesn't have nearly as many nightmares as a man like him deserves.
If the world was a fair place, he'd dream about bloody pillows and the dark shadows of Paris streets through the windows and how a silencer doesn't quiet it enough to keep the children asleep when their room is right next door. About Damien Moreau's laugh and the burn of good whiskey.
Parker has nightmares, and he's sure Nate does, too. Hardison has late-night gaming to stave off insomnia, and Sophie has her whirlwind shopping sprees.
The first night back in the States, Eliot waters the herb garden he's cultivating on his kitchen windowsill, cooks risotto for dinner and turns on the old tube TV that Hardison threatened to scrap to watch hockey while the city dozes around him.
He falls asleep on the couch for an hour or so in the dark of morning, and wakes up when Nate calls him in for their next job.
Sophie sits with Parker on the couch, heads together and giggling like they're just two pretty girls in a coffee shop and Hardison fast-talks through the slides while Nate smiles benevolently over the whole thing.
When Hardison sits down to let Nate take over for a pep talk, he sits with his leg slotted up against Parker's even though there's plenty of space and Parker has a habit of absently emptying the pockets of whoever happens to be sitting closest during meetings.
Nate is gesturing extravagantly, and Eliot watches Hardison slap Parker's hand as it slides in the direction of his pocket. The smile she gives him in return is proud.
"--Eliot?" Nate says, and Eliot blinks.
"Sorry, what?"
"Dozed off," Hardison says sagely. "He's getting old."
"Shut up, Hardison," Eliot growls, and Hardison grins at him. He still hasn't got past the habit of looking for fear or anger in that smile, for suspicion, for something to have changed, but either Hardison's a much better liar than Eliot's had any reason to suspect, or things really are somehow okay between them.
If it was the other way around, he knows Hardison would keep on poking at it, but Eliot's never been the kind of man to look a gift horse in the mouth. He takes what he can get, and he runs with it. It's the only way he's still sane.
"Guys, seriously," Nate says, sighing. "Eliot, we're getting you in as private security for Sophie. You'll have to wear a suit, but--"
"I got it."
Sophie pats his hand. "I'm sure Eliot will take very good care of me."
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Parker's hand slip into Hardison's pocket while he's distracted, but he doesn't say anything.
***
Chapman was a fucking amateur, eighteen years old and scrubbed shiny in a fancy suit that didn't quite fit him. He'd get better at it as he got older, blending in with the rich guys and working his James Bond impression to death, but when Eliot first met him he was a trigger-happy street-brawler of a kid.
Quick, though, and vicious as a kill-mad weasel. Just how Damien liked his boys.
***
The best thing about being with a crew is having somebody to watch your back. He's never actually needed it, but the idea that it's there if he does isn't bad.
The worst thing is having someone to be afraid for. That one happens a lot more than he'd like. The job goes sideways when it turns out that the mark had a security camera they didn't account for. In the bathroom, which tells Eliot way more than he ever wanted to know about the guy, but he can't exactly get into it in the back of the ambulance.
Sophie's out cold, anyway, and Nate doesn't want to hear it, so there's nothing to distract him from Hardison's voice on the comms, alternating between cussing out the bastard who whacked Sophie upside the head with a champagne bottle before Eliot could get to him and apologizing anxiously for missing the camera.
"--gonna be okay, right? Right? Seriously, I get my hands on that dude, he ain't gonna know what hit him--"
"Hardison," Eliot interrupts finally. His own gut is clenched with the reminder of how close it was, how close he let it get, again, but it didn't happen. Take the win and walk away. That's all he can do. "Shut up already. She's gonna be okay."
Nate gives him a red-eyed glare over Sophie's unconscious body, but doesn't argue. There are EMT's who could overhear, and he's gotta know that Eliot's right. Sophie is breathing on her own, and her color is good. Eliot knows a lot about knocking people out, and this was an amateur's work. She'll be fine.
Nate's hand is wrapped around her fingers tight enough that he's probably bruising them, though, and his lips are moving with a constant litany that Eliot can recognize as Hail Mary, so he doesn't try to be reassuring. Nate will be reassured when Sophie opens her eyes, and not a minute before.
"Are you sure? I can get this locked down and get to the hospital in like thirty seconds if I have to--"
He's halfway across the city, so Eliot doesn't know exactly how he'd manage that, but this is Hardison. Eliot wouldn't put it past him to have some kind of transporter stored in his closet for emergencies.
Parker chimes in, then, sounding whatever the Parker approximation is of human concern, and Hardison leaves off his own fussing to reassure her.
***
Sophie wakes up a block from the hospital, rolls her eyes at Nate, and asks if they got the money. Eliot puts his head back and laughs, and Nate kisses her hand, fiercely. He looks diminished, strangely human, and it makes Eliot wonder if this is how he used to be with Maggie, back before his life fell apart, back when he was chasing bad guys instead of playing at being one. Nate used to be a better man than he is now, just like Eliot used to be a much, much worse one. They're both reaching equilibrium, maybe.
Hardison shows up at her room twenty minutes later with a massive bouquet and a mouthful of rambling apologies, and Parker swings in through the fourth-story window a little while after that. Sophie puts up with the bedside vigil for nearly ten minutes before she kicks all of them but Nate out, and Eliot takes a cab to McRory's instead of heading home.
After an hour of sitting in the pool of empty space that his glare creates by the bar, he gives up and goes upstairs. He's not fit company for other human beings tonight, and Hardison has a bigger TV than him.
***
It was Chapman's fault, which Eliot could have predicted if anybody had bothered to ask him beforehand. Fucking trigger-happy little Scottish bastard started shooting before the guards even saw them, blew their cover clear out of the water. Two guys down, just like that, and the rest of them had to scatter.
The job was hosed before they made it inside, but leaving without the merchandise wasn't really an option. Eliot had seen what Damien did to people who screwed him over. Damien liked him as much as he liked anybody, but that wasn't gonna be nearly enough to keep him breathing if he came back empty-handed. Chapman thought he could charm his way out of this, because Chapman was a fucking idiot.
"We're going in."
Chapman was twirling his two Berettas around on his fingers like some kind of circus performer, like they weren't hiding out behind a shot-up Beemer with eight very pissed off security officers gunning for them. "You're the cowboy. I'm not going anywhere."
"Fine," Eliot snapped. "You cover my six, I don't tell the bossman just how bad you fucked up. Deal?"
"Of course," Chapman said lazily.
Eliot grabbed his collar, pulled him in close enough that they were nose to nose, sharing breath for just a moment. "You screw me on this and you'll be lucky if I leave enough for Moreau to play with afterward. We clear?"
Chapman's head bounced off the side of the car when Eliot let him go, and he rubbed his throat, aggrieved. "We're clear."
There was resentment in his voice, and a little fear, but that was more than okay with Eliot. "Good."
***
It isn't Hardison who opens the door; it's Parker, and she's naked. "Oh, hey, it's Eliot!"
"Uh," Eliot says. She hops up and hugs him. He tries not to react, but that's a whole lot of gorgeous naked woman pressed up against him and he closes his eyes and thinks Parker, it's Parker, she's Hardison's girl and she's crazy as hell, while he gently extricates her without grabbing anything he shouldn't be grabbing. "Uh, Parker--"
"Oh, no," Hardison says from the dark hallway behind her. When he emerges, all the salient parts are covered, but his thin cotton boxers don't leave a whole lot to the imagination. He has the long, lean build of a runner, which Eliot already knew--good reach, if he bothered to do any training--but it's different to see like this. Way different. "We are not doing this in the hallway where the neighbors can see."
"I thought you owned the building," Eliot says, because it's better than stuttering. Hardison snorts.
"Yeah, but I ain't an exhibitionist. Come on inside."
"I think exhibitionism could be fun," Parker says thoughtfully, tugging on Eliot's wrist, and Hardison reaches around both of them to pull the door shut, throwing them into darkness. "Under the right circumstances."
"I'm not even going there." Hardison touches Eliot's elbow. It's slow and tentative, which is something Hardison has learned over the course of an acquaintanceship that's gotten him punched more than once for getting grabby when Eliot wasn't expecting it, but Eliot tenses anyway. It's not like he doesn't have a pretty good idea of where this is going, but he still hasn't made up his mind whether or not that's a good thing. "Eliot, you okay, man? You good with this?"
Parker is warm against his side and she smells like clean sweat and flowers. Hardison's hand is on his arm, long dexterous fingers and the promise of strength. They're both just waiting. It's his move. Has been for a while now, maybe.
"Yeah," Eliot says finally. The hallway isn't narrow, but they're all standing well inside of arm's reach, and he's the only one even remotely dressed. It should feel like too much, too close, but instead it feels like slotting in a piece he didn't even know was missing. "Yeah, I think I am."
He's not a quick-draw anymore, but he can still move pretty fast when he feels like it and he's already got a grip on Hardison's arms and yanked him in close enough to touch, close enough to feel his pulse and the stutter of his breath as he sucks air in, then lets it out on a laugh. His hands settle easily on Eliot's hips, just above the waistband of his jeans. "Oh, now look at you, being all--"
Hardison will talk all night if he gets going. "Shut up," Eliot growls, and drags him down to kiss the rest of the words out of his mouth.
Hardison is laughing when they break apart, but he doesn't start talking again, and Parker's hands are sliding nimbly between them to start undoing the buttons of Eliot's shirt. Hell with it. He wasn't all that attached to his sanity anyway.
***
At the end, he walked away on his own two feet, which is more than you can say for most of the guys who worked for Damien Moreau.
It wasn't a crisis of conscience so much as a belated attack of common sense in the wake of the botched job. The crisis of conscience didn't come until a long time later, and that was a good thing. You have a full-scale guilty meltdown in the kind of job Eliot used to work, you end up dead. If you're lucky, that's all that happens to you.
Not that Damien would have minded if he left in a body bag, but by that point Eliot Spencer was a legend. Stone cold killers walked soft around him, and that's a reputation he's still milking when he has to.
Figured he's earned that much, with what he had to do to build it.
***
Parker kicks in her sleep, and Hardison takes up three quarters of the mattress with his sprawling limbs. Eliot doesn't sleep in unfamiliar places anyway, and once they're both out he slides out of the bed and crosses the room, silently, to sit down in the chair in the corner. The blackout curtains block the streetlamps, but there are tiny pinpricks of light scattered across the dark room, from all the electronic crap Hardison has lying around.
If he had any common sense, he'd be long gone by now. This is one more layer of complication in a life that has way too many of them already. They'd understand, he thinks. Thieves are unpredictable, but guys like Eliot aren't, not usually. They have to be expecting him to leave, and if he had any common sense at all that's exactly what he'd be doing.
Then again, if he did, he'd have walked away months ago. Years ago.
He sits in the blinking darkness of Hardison's bedroom instead, and listens quietly to the sound of two sets of breathing.
Pairing: Eliot/Parker/Hardison, background Nate/Sophie
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Some violence
Summary: Eliot deals with his past, and tries to get a grip on the present.
A/N: Trust me to write a threesome fic with no actual sex in it. Sorry?
It's been more than five years since he's fired a gun, but the shape of the acrylic grips and the recoil against his palms are so familiar that it feels like coming home. Eliot's body has always remembered what the rest of him tries to forget.
All he can smell is jet fuel and gunsmoke. His jeans are soaked to the knee and he's starting to shake as the adrenaline leaves his body. He feels fucked-up and raw, like the bones of him are sitting on the surface where anybody can see them.
Sophie asks if he's okay, and he nods. He doesn't meet Hardison's eyes, and he flinches when Parker touches his arm.
***
Damien didn't have any dirt on him. That's not how it went down. Damien was a big man on the scene, and Eliot had been cooling his heels in Guinea for three months, getting restless and broke and dangerously bored.
Damien smoked cheroots and had a well-bred, snake-eyed charm that pissed Eliot off almost as much as it fascinated him. It was never about the money, not really. Somebody with Eliot's skills could always find work.
***
He asks Nate not to say anything, but they're not stupid. Hardison's been doing clean-up for them since the beginning, and a hanger full of bodies takes a whole damn lot of clean-up, even if none of them are the kind of guys anybody's gonna miss.
He burns the clothes, wipes down the guns and dumps them in Boston Harbor. The day before they fly down to San Lorenzo, there's a thirty-second clip on the nightly news about a gang shootout down by the waterfront. Open and shut. Tragic.
On the plane the next morning, he matches Nate drink for drink and waits for one of the others to say something.
Hardison greets him with an easy smile and a half-assed gripe about the time of day and Parker's driving. He's wearing a t-shirt, and Eliot can see the half-healed grooves that the handcuff cut into his wrist a week and a half ago. Chlorine is an irritant and the bruising was pretty bad. Hardison has some muscle on him, for a geek. Not enough to break the chair apart, but plenty enough to break his own thumb, if he'd thought to try that, and more than enough to bruise the hell out of his wrist trying to get loose.
Parker whacks him with her bag until he gets out of her way, drops into the seat next to Hardison and puts her hand on his knee with the kind of proprietary attitude Eliot's only ever seen her direct at stacks of money. Hardison lays his hand next to hers, fingers just brushing like they're eighth-graders at the homecoming dance. His smile is sweet and kind of stunned.
Eliot manages to find a smirk for them, then turns to look out the window so he doesn't have to watch Hardison lace his fingers together with Parker's, gentle and slow like she couldn't knock him on his ass without breaking a sweat if she felt like it.
When they land there's the job to think about. He's always at his best when he's working, but that's the one thing that doesn't make him different from the rest of them.
***
"You got something on your neck," Eliot remarks blandly while they wait for their flight back home, and Sophie slaps the hickey like it's a bug she's gonna squash.
"You are a bad man," she says sternly and he thinks, yeah, ain't that the truth.
***
"I told you I'd get it taken care of."
"Yes, you did, didn't you?" Clink of glasses, and Damien slid a stack of bills across the table. The rest of the money was already in his account. "Nicely done. Somewhat messy, though, I take it?"
Eliot had come to collect his payment without showering or changing his clothes, and he could see Damien's well-bred nose wrinkle delicately at the effluvia of sweat and grease and gore that clung to him. His flannel shirt was torn, there was blood in his hair, and he stood out like a very sore thumb in this rich-boys club-house of thousand dollar suits: his little way of leveling the field between them. He bared his teeth in a grin. "Just breaking some eggs, Damien. The job's taken care of."
"Nobody saw you leave?"
The question was meaningless, because he already knew the answer. If anybody had seen him leave, Damien would have tossed him to la Sûreté Nationale without a second thought, and Eliot knew it. Working with Damien always did mean working without a net, but the benefits were worth the risks, if you were good enough. There was five grand American on the table, and that was just the tip for services rendered. Eliot was very good.
Eliot tossed back his own drink, still smiling. "Nobody who's still breathing."
Damien smiled back, charming as a shark. "Good, good. I always know I can count on you, Spencer."
***
Eliot doesn't have nearly as many nightmares as a man like him deserves.
If the world was a fair place, he'd dream about bloody pillows and the dark shadows of Paris streets through the windows and how a silencer doesn't quiet it enough to keep the children asleep when their room is right next door. About Damien Moreau's laugh and the burn of good whiskey.
Parker has nightmares, and he's sure Nate does, too. Hardison has late-night gaming to stave off insomnia, and Sophie has her whirlwind shopping sprees.
The first night back in the States, Eliot waters the herb garden he's cultivating on his kitchen windowsill, cooks risotto for dinner and turns on the old tube TV that Hardison threatened to scrap to watch hockey while the city dozes around him.
He falls asleep on the couch for an hour or so in the dark of morning, and wakes up when Nate calls him in for their next job.
Sophie sits with Parker on the couch, heads together and giggling like they're just two pretty girls in a coffee shop and Hardison fast-talks through the slides while Nate smiles benevolently over the whole thing.
When Hardison sits down to let Nate take over for a pep talk, he sits with his leg slotted up against Parker's even though there's plenty of space and Parker has a habit of absently emptying the pockets of whoever happens to be sitting closest during meetings.
Nate is gesturing extravagantly, and Eliot watches Hardison slap Parker's hand as it slides in the direction of his pocket. The smile she gives him in return is proud.
"--Eliot?" Nate says, and Eliot blinks.
"Sorry, what?"
"Dozed off," Hardison says sagely. "He's getting old."
"Shut up, Hardison," Eliot growls, and Hardison grins at him. He still hasn't got past the habit of looking for fear or anger in that smile, for suspicion, for something to have changed, but either Hardison's a much better liar than Eliot's had any reason to suspect, or things really are somehow okay between them.
If it was the other way around, he knows Hardison would keep on poking at it, but Eliot's never been the kind of man to look a gift horse in the mouth. He takes what he can get, and he runs with it. It's the only way he's still sane.
"Guys, seriously," Nate says, sighing. "Eliot, we're getting you in as private security for Sophie. You'll have to wear a suit, but--"
"I got it."
Sophie pats his hand. "I'm sure Eliot will take very good care of me."
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Parker's hand slip into Hardison's pocket while he's distracted, but he doesn't say anything.
***
Chapman was a fucking amateur, eighteen years old and scrubbed shiny in a fancy suit that didn't quite fit him. He'd get better at it as he got older, blending in with the rich guys and working his James Bond impression to death, but when Eliot first met him he was a trigger-happy street-brawler of a kid.
Quick, though, and vicious as a kill-mad weasel. Just how Damien liked his boys.
***
The best thing about being with a crew is having somebody to watch your back. He's never actually needed it, but the idea that it's there if he does isn't bad.
The worst thing is having someone to be afraid for. That one happens a lot more than he'd like. The job goes sideways when it turns out that the mark had a security camera they didn't account for. In the bathroom, which tells Eliot way more than he ever wanted to know about the guy, but he can't exactly get into it in the back of the ambulance.
Sophie's out cold, anyway, and Nate doesn't want to hear it, so there's nothing to distract him from Hardison's voice on the comms, alternating between cussing out the bastard who whacked Sophie upside the head with a champagne bottle before Eliot could get to him and apologizing anxiously for missing the camera.
"--gonna be okay, right? Right? Seriously, I get my hands on that dude, he ain't gonna know what hit him--"
"Hardison," Eliot interrupts finally. His own gut is clenched with the reminder of how close it was, how close he let it get, again, but it didn't happen. Take the win and walk away. That's all he can do. "Shut up already. She's gonna be okay."
Nate gives him a red-eyed glare over Sophie's unconscious body, but doesn't argue. There are EMT's who could overhear, and he's gotta know that Eliot's right. Sophie is breathing on her own, and her color is good. Eliot knows a lot about knocking people out, and this was an amateur's work. She'll be fine.
Nate's hand is wrapped around her fingers tight enough that he's probably bruising them, though, and his lips are moving with a constant litany that Eliot can recognize as Hail Mary, so he doesn't try to be reassuring. Nate will be reassured when Sophie opens her eyes, and not a minute before.
"Are you sure? I can get this locked down and get to the hospital in like thirty seconds if I have to--"
He's halfway across the city, so Eliot doesn't know exactly how he'd manage that, but this is Hardison. Eliot wouldn't put it past him to have some kind of transporter stored in his closet for emergencies.
Parker chimes in, then, sounding whatever the Parker approximation is of human concern, and Hardison leaves off his own fussing to reassure her.
***
Sophie wakes up a block from the hospital, rolls her eyes at Nate, and asks if they got the money. Eliot puts his head back and laughs, and Nate kisses her hand, fiercely. He looks diminished, strangely human, and it makes Eliot wonder if this is how he used to be with Maggie, back before his life fell apart, back when he was chasing bad guys instead of playing at being one. Nate used to be a better man than he is now, just like Eliot used to be a much, much worse one. They're both reaching equilibrium, maybe.
Hardison shows up at her room twenty minutes later with a massive bouquet and a mouthful of rambling apologies, and Parker swings in through the fourth-story window a little while after that. Sophie puts up with the bedside vigil for nearly ten minutes before she kicks all of them but Nate out, and Eliot takes a cab to McRory's instead of heading home.
After an hour of sitting in the pool of empty space that his glare creates by the bar, he gives up and goes upstairs. He's not fit company for other human beings tonight, and Hardison has a bigger TV than him.
***
It was Chapman's fault, which Eliot could have predicted if anybody had bothered to ask him beforehand. Fucking trigger-happy little Scottish bastard started shooting before the guards even saw them, blew their cover clear out of the water. Two guys down, just like that, and the rest of them had to scatter.
The job was hosed before they made it inside, but leaving without the merchandise wasn't really an option. Eliot had seen what Damien did to people who screwed him over. Damien liked him as much as he liked anybody, but that wasn't gonna be nearly enough to keep him breathing if he came back empty-handed. Chapman thought he could charm his way out of this, because Chapman was a fucking idiot.
"We're going in."
Chapman was twirling his two Berettas around on his fingers like some kind of circus performer, like they weren't hiding out behind a shot-up Beemer with eight very pissed off security officers gunning for them. "You're the cowboy. I'm not going anywhere."
"Fine," Eliot snapped. "You cover my six, I don't tell the bossman just how bad you fucked up. Deal?"
"Of course," Chapman said lazily.
Eliot grabbed his collar, pulled him in close enough that they were nose to nose, sharing breath for just a moment. "You screw me on this and you'll be lucky if I leave enough for Moreau to play with afterward. We clear?"
Chapman's head bounced off the side of the car when Eliot let him go, and he rubbed his throat, aggrieved. "We're clear."
There was resentment in his voice, and a little fear, but that was more than okay with Eliot. "Good."
***
It isn't Hardison who opens the door; it's Parker, and she's naked. "Oh, hey, it's Eliot!"
"Uh," Eliot says. She hops up and hugs him. He tries not to react, but that's a whole lot of gorgeous naked woman pressed up against him and he closes his eyes and thinks Parker, it's Parker, she's Hardison's girl and she's crazy as hell, while he gently extricates her without grabbing anything he shouldn't be grabbing. "Uh, Parker--"
"Oh, no," Hardison says from the dark hallway behind her. When he emerges, all the salient parts are covered, but his thin cotton boxers don't leave a whole lot to the imagination. He has the long, lean build of a runner, which Eliot already knew--good reach, if he bothered to do any training--but it's different to see like this. Way different. "We are not doing this in the hallway where the neighbors can see."
"I thought you owned the building," Eliot says, because it's better than stuttering. Hardison snorts.
"Yeah, but I ain't an exhibitionist. Come on inside."
"I think exhibitionism could be fun," Parker says thoughtfully, tugging on Eliot's wrist, and Hardison reaches around both of them to pull the door shut, throwing them into darkness. "Under the right circumstances."
"I'm not even going there." Hardison touches Eliot's elbow. It's slow and tentative, which is something Hardison has learned over the course of an acquaintanceship that's gotten him punched more than once for getting grabby when Eliot wasn't expecting it, but Eliot tenses anyway. It's not like he doesn't have a pretty good idea of where this is going, but he still hasn't made up his mind whether or not that's a good thing. "Eliot, you okay, man? You good with this?"
Parker is warm against his side and she smells like clean sweat and flowers. Hardison's hand is on his arm, long dexterous fingers and the promise of strength. They're both just waiting. It's his move. Has been for a while now, maybe.
"Yeah," Eliot says finally. The hallway isn't narrow, but they're all standing well inside of arm's reach, and he's the only one even remotely dressed. It should feel like too much, too close, but instead it feels like slotting in a piece he didn't even know was missing. "Yeah, I think I am."
He's not a quick-draw anymore, but he can still move pretty fast when he feels like it and he's already got a grip on Hardison's arms and yanked him in close enough to touch, close enough to feel his pulse and the stutter of his breath as he sucks air in, then lets it out on a laugh. His hands settle easily on Eliot's hips, just above the waistband of his jeans. "Oh, now look at you, being all--"
Hardison will talk all night if he gets going. "Shut up," Eliot growls, and drags him down to kiss the rest of the words out of his mouth.
Hardison is laughing when they break apart, but he doesn't start talking again, and Parker's hands are sliding nimbly between them to start undoing the buttons of Eliot's shirt. Hell with it. He wasn't all that attached to his sanity anyway.
***
At the end, he walked away on his own two feet, which is more than you can say for most of the guys who worked for Damien Moreau.
It wasn't a crisis of conscience so much as a belated attack of common sense in the wake of the botched job. The crisis of conscience didn't come until a long time later, and that was a good thing. You have a full-scale guilty meltdown in the kind of job Eliot used to work, you end up dead. If you're lucky, that's all that happens to you.
Not that Damien would have minded if he left in a body bag, but by that point Eliot Spencer was a legend. Stone cold killers walked soft around him, and that's a reputation he's still milking when he has to.
Figured he's earned that much, with what he had to do to build it.
***
Parker kicks in her sleep, and Hardison takes up three quarters of the mattress with his sprawling limbs. Eliot doesn't sleep in unfamiliar places anyway, and once they're both out he slides out of the bed and crosses the room, silently, to sit down in the chair in the corner. The blackout curtains block the streetlamps, but there are tiny pinpricks of light scattered across the dark room, from all the electronic crap Hardison has lying around.
If he had any common sense, he'd be long gone by now. This is one more layer of complication in a life that has way too many of them already. They'd understand, he thinks. Thieves are unpredictable, but guys like Eliot aren't, not usually. They have to be expecting him to leave, and if he had any common sense at all that's exactly what he'd be doing.
Then again, if he did, he'd have walked away months ago. Years ago.
He sits in the blinking darkness of Hardison's bedroom instead, and listens quietly to the sound of two sets of breathing.