vdistinctive | The loft above Luke's, Friday morning

Eliot woke with a start, choking on his breath for a moment -- which was weird and drew far too much attention to him if there was someone watching, waiting to use his weakness against hi -- right, okay, no. He was in the loft. On the couch. Where he'd been sitting up waiting to see if ferret!Parker would come out and eat the chicken they'd left out for her.

There was a ferret sitting on the back of the couch next to him, staring at him tensely. When he looked at it it bounced in place and chittered at him. Eliot rubbed his hand down his face, trying to shake the nightmare he'd just had.

"Well at least you showed back up." His voice was still a little choked, his whole body tensed and on the alert. This dream had thrown everything at him: people he'd lost, people he'd killed, torturers, prisons, wars, the whole nine, and his heart rate was still speeding along. Parker scrambled closer to bump her nose against his, and he managed a faint smile for her. "Yeah," he said. "I'm alright. Just --" He let out a sharp breath. "Just gimme a minute. Where's Hardison? He was waitin' up for ya, too."

[ooc: for the boyfrien]

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"Yo, I ain't like your ex," Hardison informed Eliot, unable to repress a violent shudder. "This ain't like a Nicky thing, right? Where she's gonna be around all weekend?"

Their girlfriend's dead brother had been hard to deal with, but at least he'd given Parker some closure. This chick seemed unwilling to provide anything but snide comments.

Eliot's eyes went wide at the very idea, and Bojana laughed.

"Nicky didn't look like he did after he got hit by the car," Eliot said finally.

"Am I no longer pretty enough for you, Eliot?" Bojana leaned forward, sticking out her bloody, partially collapsed chest and pursing her lips. "It's your own fault, no?"

"I ain't the one who dropped the bombs."

"No. But I was only where they fell because I waited for you."

Shit shit shit. This was just unfair. "Look," Hardison said, lifting his head up to stare at the dead woman. His head felt like it weighed a million pounds, but this needed to be said. "Apparently it's 'Put The Crew Through The Emotional Wringer Day' or somethin' like that, but it's stupid o'clock an' Eliot don't need you here addin' to his guilt complex, a'ight? You died. It wasn't his fault. He's sorry it happened, though. Hell, I'm sorry it happened an' I don't even like you. But you can't blame him for what happened an' you can't blame him for not holdin' a torch for the last sixteen years. Get over this, resolve your damn issues and just move on, a'ight?"

Eliot stuck his face in Hardison's shoulder. Hardison wasn't supposed to have to defend him -- but it felt good to hear him do it, anyway. Bojana huffed and rolled her eyes -- and vanished.

"Fuck," Eliot muttered. "And I thought dreamin' about all that shit this morning was bad."

"Yeah, me too," Hardison said glumly, resting his head back on Eliot like God had intended. "We need coffee. So much coffee. An' maybe booze. In the coffee. Or maybe we can just go back to bed an' hopefully when we wake up again, everythin' will suck less."

"Coffee," Eliot said. He was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to fall back asleep right now. Bojana was going to stick to him. "You dream about the coffin again?"

"Yeah," Hardison said softly. "That an' a buncha other stuff. You dream about her?"

Eliot nodded. "Among other things. That can't be a coincidence."

Fandom wasn't that nice.

"You know, I kinda miss the tiny horses an' the ugly sweaters," Hardison huffed, trying to sound more like his regular self. He didn't make it anywhere close, but he was at least making the attempt. "Can we regift this?"

Reluctantly, he started to unwind himself from Eliot. The coffee wasn't going to make itself or something. "You wanna talk about her?"

"Not really," Eliot muttered, but then he did anyway, maintaining contact with Hardison as long as possible. "She's -- she was -- a Serbian actress. Kind of a terrible one, actually. We met when I was workin' ground force in the Balkans. You're probably too young to remember, but NATO bombed the hell out of Belgrade, tryin' to end the conflict. My team was sent in to, uh. Make sure certain people didn't make the survivors list."

He'd been 23. It was his last mission before he left the army, went rogue. Back when he enjoyed taking his targets out.

"She was right," he continued softly. "It was my fault. We knew all the targets -- we had to, to make sure we were out of their way. I was supposed to come see her show that night."

In his head he could still hear the bombs going off, echoing in the distance. He'd tensed up at thunder ever since. Explosions right in front of him he was used to, could handle fine, but that distant rumble got him every time.

"Her theater was next to one of the targets. That's why she -- why she looked like that. No burns, just -- crush injuries. I thought she'd clear out when I didn't show. Everyone else did."

"Damn, man." There went all the progress he'd made towards unwinding himself, arms wrapping tight around him again. "I'm sorry. That...that's rough. I'm s'posed to be better at stuff like this, but I ain't got nothin' but that. It sucks an' I'm sorry." He hugged Eliot again. "Dammit, I'm sorry about everythin'. This past month has sucked an' I'm sorry. Can we just...not be angry anymore?"

"Yeah, man," Eliot said, wishing it hadn't taken something like this for Hardison to actually apologize -- or that Eliot himself hadn't cleared the air properly much, much earlier. Their whole crew was pretty terrible at 'I'm sorry', though. "That'd be good. I've missed you."

His own apology to Hardison would come before all this was over. But like Hardison had said, he was the one who was better at this stuff.

"Missed you, too," he said, breath warm on Eliot's neck. He lived here now, in Eliot's lap. "Ain't been all that easy on Parker, neither. We should probably apologize to her, too."

There was a small noise from where she was perched, tucked away against their sides. "When she's person-shaped again."

Eliot's laugh was a little pained, but perfectly genuine. "Yeah. That sounds like a plan."

The loft above Luke's, Friday morning

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