Eliot's kitchen, Wednesday morning

[vdistinctive]

Eliot had slept in.

He was having a quiet morning, a sort of quiet he hadn't had much of since he'd started spending most nights in bed with Parker and Hardison. He closed his eyes before stepping into the kitchen, feeling the morning sun on his face and just breathing in the peace of the moment.

Now. What to make for breakfast?

He grumbled faintly under his breath when he opened the fridge and found the entire thing filled only with orange soda. He could have sworn he had eggs and bacon. Or at least a six pack of beer. "Dammit, Hardison."

He tried the cabinets, figuring he could at least make himself some oatmeal, and had to dodge an avalanche of fortune cookies, only to find that all his dry goods had been replaced with sugary breakfast cereals. "Dammit, Parker."

He had not anticipated this side of cohabitation. He probably should have.

Val ran up to him, barking excitedly. She bounced up on her hind legs and did a little doggy pirouette like a circus dog, then ran over to the back door, beaming at him over her shoulder.

"Yeah yeah." Eliot followed after her. "Keep your damn pants on."

[ooc: for one. NFB, please, for reasons which will become clear]

Comments

[vdistinctive]

He was going to rip that damn pinata's head off.

Again.

Eliot clamped his hands onto either side of the small opening and tried to force the door wide enough for him to fit through. It wouldn't budge another inch.

"We can talk about anything you want," he told her, gasping a little from the effort. "I just gotta know you're safe first."

She didn't look safe. She didn't look safe at all.

[spin_kick_snap]

"I'm safe when I'm on the island," Kathy pleaded, while bloodless wounds bloomed long her skin like vines. "You'll keep me safe, won't you? You won't let me get hurt, I know it. You won't say goodbye without telling me you love me."

[vdistinctive]

Except he had. Because he was an idiot. Who couldn't even protect his own --

"Kathy, just hang on. I'm comin' in, darlin', I promise, just hang on for me, okay?"

Except the door was closing now, instead of opening, and no matter how hard he pulled at it, or which angle he tried, he couldn't get it to go the right way. His arms felt like noodles, scrawny, worthless things, and in a few more moments, the door was going to slam shut on his hands.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Eliot..." Kathy was silently weeping now, though only a few muddy tears made it down her face, cloudy and pinkish-red. The pinata had her rainbow dash in its mouth, pulling her away from the door by her gi. "I don't want to go..."

She flung her hand towards him, filthy with jagged nails and streaks of old blood trailing up her arm.

[vdistinctive]

"Kathy!" Eliot just managed to jam his hand through, his fingertips just barely brushing hers before she was yanked out of reach.

The door clamped shut onto his forearm like a set of sharp, tearing teeth, ripping through muscle, tendon, and nerve. But none of it hurt as much watching Kathy get torn away from him again. He pounded his free hand against the glass and bellowed her name.

And slammed awake with the force of a truck, hands clenched painfully tight against the sheets.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Yo man, what?" A sleepy mumble from Hardison as he half-woke from his own dreams, one arm slung low around Eliot's hip. "You 'kay?"

[vdistinctive]

Not even a little.

Eliot breathed firmly in through his nose, held it for a five count, then slowly exhaled through his mouth. He unknotted his hands from the sheets and shifted one to rest on Hardison's arm.

Or, you know, maybe cling a little bit to Hardison's arm. Just a little. Not too tight.

(Maybe a little too tight.)

"Yeah," he said, voice even grouchier and more gravely than usual. "Just -- dreams."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

Hardison disentangled himself from Parker and pushed himself up on the arm that didn't currently have an Eliot clinging to it. It was a little tighter than was comfortable, but in the face of Eliot's obvious (for Eliot) distress, Hardison wasn't going to complain.

"Wanna talk 'bout it?" he asked.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot peered at him sideways through the dark. "Do I ever?"

His dreams -- the bad ones and the neutral ones -- tended to be a little too full of graphic violence to be that shareable. This one had been almost tame on that end.

But the way Kathy had looked right at the end, her bloodless, decaying skin, her milky eyes, her ragged fucking fingernails -- those were going to stick to him regardless. They'd been more detailed than what he remembered from his zombie Kathy dreams this summer. She'd been more detailed.

He took another tightly controlled breath and consciously forced himself to ease up on Hardison's arm. If he ended up bruising him, that would just fuck with him even more.

"It was Kathy," he said finally. "And, uh. What probably happened to her."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Ahh, hell man," Hardison said quietly, leaning in to wrap his arms around Eliot--but loosely, to keep him from feeling restrained. "That must have been one hell of a thing to imagine. Somethin' on your mind? Or just a holdover from last month?"

[vdistinctive]

"Dunno." Eliot sighed, leaning ever so slightly into Hardison's hug, his heart rate starting to slow. It was still a strange feeling, coming down from a dream lying in bed, instead of amping himself up and running the adrenaline out of his system the way he used to. He wondered if he'd ever actually get used to it. "Maybe just a restless head, ya know?"

He should go for a walk later. Out in the woods, maybe. There was something out there he was supposed to go see.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

He should probably not mention that to Hardison. Unless he felt like getting dragged down into the safe room, just to be safe. Hardison was pretty sure that any feeling that led you out into the middle of the woods was the start of a horror flick.

"Yeah, maybe," he said. "It was a hell of a few days an' now that everything's calmin' down, maybe your brain is just tryna process all of it."

[vdistinctive]

Eliot huffed. "I been processing it all along."

Freaking out was the same as processing, right?

[geniuswithasmartphone]

There was a moment of silence.

"Yo, you know the only reason I'm lettin' you get away with that nonsense is cause you just woke up from a nightmare an' your brains are still all muddled. Right?"

[vdistinctive]

"Dammit, Hardison," Eliot grumbled, though there was no heat in it at all. "You think I'da lasted this long if I didn't know how to process shit?"

Admittedly, for a not insignificant portion of his life, processing had involved shutting himself off emotionally so he didn't have to feel it.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"You mean pretendin' not to have no feelin's an' punchin' away the ones that remained?"

Hardison was just checking, making sure they were on the same page and all.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot peered at Hardison sideways again. "And which part of your copin' mechanisms am I s'posed to be usin', then?"

The part where he focused on being afraid of the sphinx instead of dealing with the hell versions of the three of them, perhaps? Or maybe the bit where he threw himself full-force into a project he hadn't managed to crack in over six months, to avoid thinking about the same thing?

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Yo, if all my copin' mechanisms were perfect, I probably wouldn't be a thief," Hardison admitted. "Ain't none of us perfect specimens of functionality, you notice." He paused, and then said in a quiet voice. "But I know copin' ain't the same as processin'. They just keep me goin' till I can process stuff."

[vdistinctive]

"And you are?" Eliot checked. The two of them had been pretty steadfastly not talking about anything with each other, and even knowing Hardison as well as he did, Eliot couldn't tell everything just by watching. "Copin', I mean?"

[geniuswithasmartphone]

There was a long silence and then, "Copin'? Yeah. More'n that? I dunno." More silence, the kind where Eliot could almost hear Hardison's thoughts turning over in his head. "I keep gettin' hung up on how useless I was. How helpless."

More silence. And then finally.

"I never thought I'd see of version of you that could kill a version of me. I know that wasn't me, that it was for the best, that he was barely you. But still. I never thought I'd see it."

[vdistinctive]

Eliot's expression didn't change, but he couldn't stop the small shudder that ran through him at the memory.

"You weren't useless," he said softly. "You did more back there than I did."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

Even in the dark, Hardison's 'the hell are you talking about?' look was loud and clear.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot rubbed his eyes. "Don't give me that look. You don't have to pretend I didn't fuck up."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"You paused for like two seconds," Hardison told him. "I hid in the diner an' let you fight a damn sphinx."

[vdistinctive]

"Paused --" Eliot stared at him. "Protectin' you two is my job, but I still let you go runnin' in, even after I stabbed you and I --"

Oh. He'd just referred to the other Eliot as "I", hadn't he.

Shit.