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"This is creepy," Hardison says when Eliot gets the door to the hunting cabin open and everyone inside. "Like serial killer creepy. Like Cabin in the Woods creepy. Does anyone else find this place creepy?"
Eliot agrees in the privacy of his own mind, but feeding into Hardison's anxiety isn't going to help keep it in check. "I've had worse," is what he says instead.
"He really probably has," Parker says to Hardison, though she's looking around the cabin with some trepidation as well. She's wound pretty tight, all things considered. The job is done, but the timetable is way off. What that really means is that they've successfully played the good guys once again, but they're still stuck out here in the wilderness of Wyoming just in time to sit and twiddle their thumbs through a good old-fashioned snowstorm.
"Of course he has. That's why his rating scale doesn't count." Hardison shifts, hand moving to where he's holding both his and Eliot's go-bag on his shoulder. "Eliot, tell me honestly. Is this like a Marriott compared to some of the places you've slept?"
Well, he did ask for honest. Eliot pulls out the flashlight from one of the pockets of his pants, clicking it on to check the cabin out and make sure they aren't about to run into any nasty surprises. "It's more like an Econo Lodge," he says, and very carefully doesn't smile at the noise that Hardison makes. "Stay here."
The cabin is straightforward and simple, but looks as though it hasn't been touched in a while. Small kitchen that was really just part of the small front room, one small room with a twin bed and a closet full of blankets, and one bathroom that could be a lot worse than it is. One door in, the one that Parker had picked the lock on but Eliot had to force open anyway. Exactly two windows, which are both locked tight. A wood stove in the front room with a chimney, with an axe leaning against the wall nearby and a small basket of wood and newspaper next to it. Canned food in the kitchen cabinets, but no electricity that works, as far as he can tell.
"There probably used to be a generator," Eliot says when he gets back to where Parker and Hardison have, thankfully, stood where he left them in front of the now-closed door. "No one's been here for at least a couple months, though."
"So it's safe?" Parker says. She's still short, but looking a little more relaxed.
"Safe enough." Eliot nods. "No one should be coming this way anytime soon. We're looking at a few days here, though, with that snowstorm blowing in. Wood stove should keep us warm enough, and I saw more wood outside under a tarp. Should be enough to last us. Canned food in the kitchen, so we won't starve, either." He looks at Hardison, gives him a faux-apologetic look. "I didn't find a wiffy box, sorry."
Hardison rolls his eyes at Eliot's purposeful mispronunciation. "I mean, I can live with that as long as you didn't find a deranged mass murderer hiding anywhere," Hardison replies. He's tired, Eliot knows - he can see the tightness around Hardison's eyes, the loose, yet tense way that he's holding his body that indicates he's running on low fuel. He and Parker need a good meal and some sleep.
"Don't lie to me, man, I know you get itchy if you're away from the Internet for more than twenty-four hours."
Hardison huffs, but there's something that might be a smile starting to show on his face. "Man, you are lucky you're so attractive."
Eliot's heart stutters a little in his chest. He can feel his cheeks heat in the chill of the Wyoming winter air, and he's suddenly glad that he didn't find electricity to get the lights working so that Hardison and Parker can't see the flush. This has been a thing lately, a complimenting-Eliot thing, a thing that sounds a lot like flirting, and Eliot's not desensitized to it yet. He can't brush it off yet. He's projecting, he knows it, but his brain won't let him differentiate between this change in their friendly banter and what he wants.
He realizes that he's been silent maybe a second too long. "I just don't want you to start going through withdrawals or anything," he finally manages, which isn't too bad of a comeback even if he knows he sounds a little off when he says it.
If Hardison catches it, he doesn't say anything. "I'll live, I promise. We can go old-school and tell stories or something."
"Ghost stories?" Parker perks up, finally moving away from the front door now that Eliot's given the all-clear. She drops her go-bag on the sofa, and wrinkles her nose when a small cloud of dust kicks up as a result. She doesn't say anything about Eliot's pause either, is either too tired to bring it up or genuinely didn't notice.
"No," Hardison and Eliot say in unison. Parker's ghost stories are interestingly weird at best and absolutely terrifying at the worst. They remind Eliot of that podcast show Hardison made him listen to a few episodes of, the one with the eerily soothing narrator and the crazy stuff that was supposed to be normal and the apparently very attractive scientist. Now Eliot feels like he's gotta be on the lookout for black helicopters.
It's close enough to normal, though, that the moment passes, and Eliot feels like he can breathe again. Kind of. Enough that he can move over to the stove and start seeing about making a fire. He hears the soft thump of Hardison dropping the two bags onto the sofa next to Parker's, and the sound of a cabinet opening, followed by drawers. The tip-tap of fingers over cans in the cabinet, the way that Eliot can just barely hear the drawers, the barely-there creak of weight on old flooring - it's all a familiar rhythm that lets Eliot know Parker's going through drawers to see what she can find.
He doesn't hear the sound of Hardison sitting down, though, so Eliot figures that he's probably hovering, waiting to see if there's anything he can do. "Hey, come here and hold this light for me," Eliot says, turning just enough to beckon Hardison over. He hands over the flashlight when Hardison reaches for it, and very carefully doesn't react when their fingers brush. It's nothing new. They touch.
It's just lately there's something that feels a lot like connotation.
But also, Eliot's mind supplies a second later when he's crouching down to deal with the stove, Hardison's fingers are really cold, colder than usual even with Hardison's alleged terrible circulation. He frowns at the wood stove as though he can make fire just appear, even though he's just started stacking the wood. "Just hold that light as steady as you can, we'll get it warm here in a little bit."
"Yeah, I know you'll warm me up, man," Hardison says, voice low and rough like he's tired or just woke up or like Eliot imagines he sounds like when he's really aroused.
Eliot fumbles the wood. So much for the moment passing.
Thankfully, Hardison doesn't add anything else that Eliot's traitorous brain can turn into innuendo, and Eliot manages to get the stove built up enough with wood, kindling, and newspaper. He stands and takes the flashlight back from Hardison to shove back into the pocket of his pants. This time Hardison's fingers are warmer, more like they usually are. It still makes his mind trip over itself a little, in a way that it shouldn't be doing after this long working together and practically living in each others' pockets as they do.
When he turns around, he finds that Parker's finished snooping and has found the blankets. She's got two of them, one wrapped around her shoulders and the other draped over her legs, sitting on one end of the dusty sofa. From the looks of it, she hasn't bothered to remove her knit hat or her jacket. And honestly, Eliot can't blame her - the cold is starting to get to him too, and he wants nothing more than to be warm and back home in Portland, with a beer and a hot meal.
"We'll leave the grate open and let it warm the room," Eliot says. "I'll go out and get more firewood to get us through the night."
"Yeah, if you leave it up to me and Parker we'll start burning furniture." Hardison's still standing next to Eliot, hands stretched out toward the stove.
It's not caught up enough yet to give Hardison the warmth he's seeking, and Eliot can suddenly feel icy cold fingers brushing against his, even though Hardison's not touching him. Before he thinks about it, he's reaching and folding his hands around Hardison's, pressing them together between his palms, recalling every time that he's heard Hardison talk about how cold his hands get and how much the joints hurt in the winter and the rain, when he brings those fingerless gloves out to work at his computer and holds those disposable hand warmers every chance he gets. Eliot runs hot, so it makes sense, right?
"Thanks," Hardison says quietly, and it feels charged in a way that it shouldn't, because Hardison is Eliot's colleague and partner-in-crime and, most importantly, his friend. He can't let go, though, because that would be kind of a dick move now that Hardison's hands are finally starting to warm up. Not to mention, it would draw attention to Eliot feeling some kind of way about it, which would make everything awkward.
Instead, he clears his throat and says, "Yeah, well, you need your hands to type, and frostbite is nothing to laugh at." It's not as quick as it should be, not as witty, doesn't feel like the banter that they're used to. It feels personal, and a little too close to the truth - Hardison needs his hands to do what he loves, and Eliot has seen what frostbite can do, which really translates into "let me take care of you." Eliot's losing whatever game they're playing here, but he's holding on with both hands. Literally, in this situation, considering he's still got Hardison's hands wrapped in his own, and he's not sure whose column that point is in.
"We wouldn't really burn the furniture," Parker says, and Eliot feels cold as he suddenly remembers that Parker is in the room, where Eliot is currently holding her boyfriend's hands. "I know how to make a fire. I also know how to make an explosive or two, but I don't think that would help much here. Though I guess that is a kind of fire?"
Not that Eliot really forgot that Parker was there. Eliot always knows where Parker is in the room, always knows where Hardison is, too. It's more that Eliot forgot that this, that holding Hardison's hands to warm them up, is something he should probably be more self-conscious about, something that he needs to get a handle on. Parker is incredibly observant, sharp eyes catching almost everything even if she can't parse some of it, and she'll know that there's something different about this, at the very least.
Eliot drops Hardison's hands. "I have to go get firewood for the stove," he mutters, and escapes the cabin before he... he doesn't know what. Has a panic attack or something, for the first time in a long time.
The cold air helps, hits him in the face and steals his breath for a moment, douses him in reality.
Eliot needs to get a handle on himself and his reactions. Parker could ask Eliot to explain it, because that's what she does sometimes, and Eliot would have to either come up with a convincing lie (which is out of the question because he doesn't lie to Parker) or outright confess that he not only wants to hold Hardison's chilly hands to warm them up, he also wants to hold Parker's. Which will lead to admitting how he feels about the both of them. Which will be awkward, because both of them are good, and they wouldn't tell Eliot to pack up and leave, but he doubts they would feel as comfortable with him. Which means that eventually they'd pack up and leave him instead.
Either way, Eliot ends up alone.
"Get a grip," he tells himself, and the words come out in little clouds in the frigid night air as he stomps his way through the snow that's already on the ground to the firewood on the side of the cabin.
He needs to pull back, is what he needs to do. He needs to go find a girl back in Portland that he can get a little wrapped up in for a while, needs to work his way through the feelings just like he always has when they crop up. Because they always crop up. Eliot's given up thinking he can get this pining out of his system at this point, instead he just keeps slapping Band-Aids over it and doing his best to ignore it. Clearly, he's in need of another Band-Aid if he's coming unglued over Hardison's cold hands.
So, Eliot decides as he starts stacking wood in the crook of his arm. He'll go back into the cabin, he'll keep the fire going all night. He'll let Hardison and Parker curl up on the couch together, and he'll find something to keep himself busy enough that maybe he won't be so obvious in his crush on them. If he can even still call it a crush. He probably can't call it just a crush anymore.
He hears the quiet crunch of boots on snow and dead leaves, and he bites back a sigh. "Go inside, Parker, it's freezing out here."
"You always know when it's me," she says instead of actually listening to him and going back into the cabin, which is pretty par for the course. Parker knows when listening to Eliot is a life-or-death kind of thing, knows when she needs to back down in favor of Eliot's expertise. She also knows when she doesn't need to listen to Eliot, though, and he's not sure if that's a fortunate or unfortunate thing. Jury's still out, he guesses.
"You have a very distinctive walk," Eliot replies, and gets one more little log onto the pile on his arm. "Help me get this tarp over the wood if you're not going back inside."
She does, helps him get the rest of the firewood covered so that it doesn't get snowed on. It's old and dry, at least, so it should burn well enough to keep them warm. The snow's already coming down in big flakes, and the road out of these woods closed around the same time they finished the job. They'll be fine, Eliot knows, because he'll make sure that they're fine.
"You just have Parker senses." Parker doesn't make any move to go back into the cabin yet, hands shoved into her coat pockets now that she's not holding the tarp. "So does Hardison, you know? He always knows when I'm in the room these days, even when he's not looking at me."
Eliot shifts his armful of wood. "Of course he does. You stopped walking silently around him," he says. He has no idea why they're having this conversation out here in the snow while he's holding a bunch of firewood, but he doesn't know why he does half of what he does for Parker and Hardison anyway, so.
"So I wouldn't scare him as much," Parker says. She sounds like she's trying to be patient with Eliot, like there's a point here that he's missing. "Because I care about him, and I want him to be comfortable."
"Get to the point, Parker." Eliot goes for a growl and misses, lands somewhere around exhausted and vaguely frustrated instead.
She blows out a breath, big eyes boring into him. "You warmed his hands up. You want him to be comfortable too. You care about Hardison, too. Right?"
There's a headache somewhere behind Eliot's left eye, and it sounds a lot like panic. He thinks he knows where this is going now, but he doesn't know how it ends. "Of course I do," he replies, as neutrally as he can. "And he has that joint thing with his hands, they hurt when it's cold."
Parker's slightly-annoyed expression softens a little, and she rocks on her boots, shifts her weight back and forth while Eliot waits for her to speak again. "You care about me, too, right?"
This isn't what Eliot expected, but he aches a little, somewhere in what's left of his heart. "Of course I do," he replies, finds a smile for her. He's been afraid of intruding, but maybe he's been pulling away too much, maybe he's given a signal to her that he's playing favorites or something. Eliot knows she doesn't always get what isn't laid out in front of her in terms of social things and emotions and relationships. Maybe she's taken his weird silences and haste to leave the room as something against her. He wishes he weren't holding the firewood right now. "Parker, did I... did I do something to make you think I don't care about you?"
"You're not getting it." He can't place the look on her face, but she steps closer. "I stopped walking silently around you, too, Eliot. So I don't startle you, either. But then I figured out it didn't matter how quiet I was or how loudly I walked, because you still always know when it's me."
Eliot can see her breath, and he doesn't feel the cold like he did just minutes ago. It feels like this is one of those moments that he needs to get this for Parker, one of those things in life where he won't have a second shot. "So... you care about me, too," he says, mind working over what she's said and translating it from Parker-speak to Eliot-speak. "And Hardison-"
"Thinks we're being too subtle," Parker says, with a little fond smile on her face. Eliot loves it when she smiles - lights up everything on her expression.
And that's the key word, isn't it? Love. Not just a crush that he can keep slapping Band-Aids over.
But even with that smile, Parker's starting to shiver, tensing in the cold. Eliot's a runner, it's what he's best at, but there's nowhere to run out here in the snowy woods of northern Wyoming, so he does the thing he's second-best at - he takes care of Parker and Hardison.
"Let's... go inside the cabin," he manages, like he's not having some kind of crisis here. "You can keep trying to drill whatever this is into my head when we're warmer."
Parker listens this time - goes back to her knowing when to listen and when to push, and Eliot's thinking about that a little more now on the heels of the conversation she just tried to have with him. He doesn't want to try and put more here than there is, doesn't want to keep projecting onto the two of them, but he wants in a way that he's ashamed of, in a desperate, longing kind of way.
The walk back to the front door is shorter than Eliot would like it to be. He moves on autopilot, starts placing the firewood into the basket, past where Hardison's wrapped up in blankets on the sofa now. The room is warmer, at least, but he's out of firewood too soon, and then he's at a loss because Parker hasn't started talking again, and Hardison hasn't said anything either.
That's when he gets it, crouched in front of the wood stove and feeling the heat of the fire on his face. They care about him, of course they do. "Listen," he says past the tightness in his throat, knows it comes out rough and vulnerable in that way that he hates. "You don't have to do this, okay? I know what... I can read the writing on the wall here, you don't have to let me down easy or anything."
"Eliot," he hears Hardison say.
He doesn't stop, stands but doesn't turn. "No, you don't - listen, if you want a new hitter, I have a couple guys I can call, that's fine." Because if he leaves first, they won't leave him. Eliot would leave right now if they wanted him to, would walk out into the woods of Wyoming.
"Eliot," Parker says, and this time it's sharp, a voice that Eliot's heard over the comms and in the middle of a job.
He turns, forces himself to lift his head and look at them. Hardison's exactly where he was when Eliot came in, but Parker's scrunched up on the other end of the sofa instead of right next to Hardison, leaving a space between them.
"We're not letting you down easy." Hardison's voice is soft, and when Eliot looks at his face in the flickering light of the fire, his face is too, gently smiling and eyes searching. "We've been trying to tell you that we love you, too."
Eliot breathes out, looks between them. There's a space there, on the sofa, that's big enough for him if they squeeze together.
"You're right," Parker says. "We have been too subtle."
The walk from the stove to the sofa isn't far at all, but Eliot can't make himself move. "You really, really have," he finally gets out. "That joke about me warming you up, Hardison? Was that supposed to clue me in?"
"I called you attractive not even half an hour ago." Hardison's grin splits wide open, and god, but Eliot loves it when he smiles too, would give anything at all just to see that smile every day for the rest of his life. "I think we blew past 'subtle' awhile ago."
"Eliot," Parker says, and she's bright in the light of the fire Eliot built for them, shining. "Come here, and warm us up."
"I thought you were done being subtle." Eliot moves though, drops down between them and lets his breath catch when Parker curls into his left side while Hardison presses close to his right.
Hardison's breath tickles Eliot's neck in the little bare patch of skin his coat doesn't cover. "We are," Parker says, and then turns his face with a hand on his cheek to kiss him properly.