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Kiss+7 days
“This spot’s for you, you know,” said Hardison. He was sitting in the middle of his couch, Parker cuddled up against him on one side, plenty of room on the other. Eliot grunted and continued toward the single chair.
“I’m fine over here.”
“‘kay,” said Hardison, and turned his attention to the movie. He didn’t seem bothered, but Eliot sat through the opening credits with his stomach roiling.
He’d been wondering what was coming next. Hardison could go either way with something like this. He might let the subject drop for six months, or he might produce a video game designed to “help Eliot work through his feelings,” or anything in between. Here it was, both smaller and more alarming than he’d expected. An invitation: come sit closer.
It was a pretty innocuous move. It wasn’t like they’d never sat side by side on a couch before. But it was a move, and that changed everything. Eliot wasn’t ready to start anything, wasn’t ready to be thinking about how many inches were between his knee and Hardison’s, definitely wasn’t ready to get wrapped up in their little cuddle pile. But now he’d had to reject a move and he was worried about how Hardison would take it.
Onscreen, Brendan Fraser was making comically alarmed faces in the desert, and Hardison glanced over to share a laugh with Eliot. His look was so easy and familiar that Eliot’s body responded before his brain could catch up, answering the grin.
Okay, maybe it wasn't going to change everything. Not quite yet.
K+11 days
A guy was harassing a woman at the brewpub, following her even when she changed seats. Probably from out of town: most locals knew better by now, and a few turned to watch with interest as Eliot emerged from the kitchen and stood behind the man.
“Walk away,” he said.
The man turned. Sized him up. Mistakenly thought the seven inches and fifty pounds he had on Eliot meant something. Ten seconds later he was on the ground with arms twisted painfully behind his back. Ninety seconds later he was out the door.
“Got another face for the ban list,” Eliot said, walking into the back rooms. Hardison had evidently been watching on the security cameras, and he was already putting the harasser’s face into the file that would toss up an alert if he came in again.
“You know,” Hardison said conversationally, “it’s sexy as hell when you do that.”
Eliot froze. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that.”
“Don’t gotta say nothing. I’m just making an observation.” After a second he added, “Would you rather I didn’t?”
No. Yes. No. “Do what you want,” he said gruffly. “But I can’t — I don’t have anything to say back.”
“I know.” Hardison said easily. “Take your time.”
Time was the problem. One of the problems. No matter how relaxed Hardison seemed, Eliot knew he was on the clock. Hardison wasn’t just going to wait around forever; Eliot would be the first person to say he shouldn’t. The window was going to close at some point, and Eliot had to solve his shit before that. He had no idea how to do that, and no idea how much time he had.
In his bleakest moods, he thought it would be better to just run the clock. Let Hardison get over him and then they’d go back to the old status quo. In his bleakest moods, he found a grim satisfaction in how desolate that future felt.
K+18 days
The first time Hardison brushed fingers across Eliot’s back, it struck Eliot that he’d been underestimating the man’s restraint. Somehow there hadn’t been any lapse in the high fives, the occasional hug, their own special fistbump — all the comfortable physical affection Hardison had slowly earned over the years. Eliot had not clocked just how scrupulously platonic all those touches were, until the first one that wasn’t.
It was just a light tracing up and down his spine while Hardison crossed behind him to get to his seat. Eliot was a grown-ass adult who until recently had enjoyed a healthy and varied sex life... so there was no excuse for how a tiny brush of fingertips over his shirt sent him spinning.
Problem was, just the touch got him feeling it all again: Hardison’s broad hands behind his shoulders, his lean, hard body against Eliot’s chest and thighs, one full lip between his teeth. This was not a convenient time for that memory to come back, and he realized Parker was asking him a question he hadn’t heard.
“Sorry, what?” he muttered, too embarrassed to even pretend to be annoyed. Parker glanced sideways at Hardison, who shrugged.
“Not during briefings,” she said.
“Noted,” said Hardison, and Eliot didn’t have to look to know that he was grinning smugly, over-the-top pleased with himself.
K+27 days
Most of the time, Hardison’s cheeky compliments were drive-bys. He’d say them on his way out the door, or he’d roll smoothly into another subject before Eliot had time to respond. This whole business was playing hell with Eliot’s usual facilities, so it took him an embarrassingly long time to realize that this was entirely deliberate. Hardison wasn’t leaving him any room to feel panicked about what to say. He was being handled. It made him feel foolish, and he complained to Parker about it.
“I don’t know what he thinks this is gonna solve. He’s just gonna keep throwing compliments at me and then one day I’ll be ready to go?”
“Like a jack-in-the-box,” Parker said. “You don’t know when it’s going to pop but if you keep turning the crank you know it will.”
“I’m not a jack-in-the-box!”
“Of course not. You’re much less scary.”
He didn’t want to get sucked into the world of Parker-logic, so he skipped that. “I don’t know what he wants from me.”
Parker looked confused. “Yes you do. He wants you to be his boyfriend.” She narrowed her eyes. “You know that, right? We all talked about it.”
“Yes I know that! That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“I can’t do that. And I don’t know how to make it okay. I’m trying, Parker, I am, but I can’t get past it.” With Parker he didn't have to clarify what 'it' meant, which was good, because he couldn't. He didn't have clearer words for the thicket of fear, anxiety, and shame that blocked his way whenever he tried to imagine actually being with Hardison.
“Why are you so worried about him? Hardison likes telling people how he feels.”
“Nobody likes doing that forever, without getting anything back.”
Parker shook her head at him. “You’re trying to solve the whole thing again. Just —”
“Work the problem that’s in front of you. I know.” He said it impatiently, and went away unsatisfied.
K+35 days
“You’re gonna be cool around Nate and Sophie, right?” he said to Hardison, when those two announced that they’d be coming through Portland next week.
“When am I ever not cool?”
“You know what I mean.” Hardison in a teasing mood did not bode well.
“I do have a few new toys I could show off... I wasn’t planning to bring them out during dinner, but if you think —”
“Hardison!”
Whatever Hardison saw on his face made him take pity. Sort of. “I get it, man. You don’t want them to know how bad I’ve got it for you.”
Today it hit him like sunlight. Eliot had given up trying to find a pattern in his own reactions, why the same kind of comment felt like a gut-punch one day and a kiss the next. Today it felt good, and he let himself just enjoy that for a second.
A gleam rose in the dark eyes, and Eliot was sure he was about to make a bigger move: lean forward, maybe touch his hand the way he’d done once last week, say something bold and impossible that would leave Eliot standing completely helpless, frozen and melting all at once.
Instead, Hardison spun back around to his desk. “I’ll be cool,” he promised, and his fingers starting clicking the keyboard again.
Eliot went away slowly, trying to decide what it meant that Alec Hardison, crowned king of pushing things too far, had just let the moment go.
K+42 days
After dinner, Sophie asked Eliot to walk her to her old theater. A quirk of Nate’s eyebrow and a tiny angle of her head was enough to settle between the two of them that she wanted Eliot to herself for a bit, and Eliot caught it all with glum dread. He really thought Hardison had kept his word: to Eliot’s eye he’d been pretty much normal throughout dinner. Apparently he’d gotten so used to the flirting that it could be obvious to Sophie without even registering for him.
Sophie didn’t waste any time. “Eliot, how long have you been in love with Hardison?”
Eliot stopped dead, and Sophie touched his arm.
“It’s all right. I won’t even tell Nate, if you don’t want me to. I just want to know how I can help.”
“I don’t need any help.”
“Of course not.” She smiled and shook her head, and they started walking again. “Then will you help me, please? Help me not to worry. I do worry about you three, you know, I can’t help it. Knowing that you’re taking care of each other means I can worry less, and if something’s changed...”
“Nothin’s changed about that. And it’s not going to.” It was the one thing that felt solid under his feet, these days.
“I’m glad you feel that way, Eliot, but very intense feelings, even if you’re keeping them under control, can come out in ways you didn’t expect.”
He’d had it under control just fine for years, until Hardison had gotten ideas. And, come to that, why was she talking about Eliot’s feelings, which were nothing new, and not Hardison’s? “You should really be talking to Hardison about this. He’s got more to say than I do.”
“Hardison isn’t the one whose body language was screaming romantic frustration.”
Eliot’s mouth went dry, and he tasted something bitter.
“He knows how you feel, then?” Sophie asked.
Eliot said nothing. His heart was hammering and he was furious that he’d gotten dragged into this, when none of it had been his idea.
Sophie waited, and then asked even more softly, “And Parker? Does she know?”
“Of course she knows!” That one just burst out of him. “You think either one of us could even consider sneaking around on Parker?”
“No, of course you couldn’t,” she said, with a little smile that told him he’d gotten played. He wouldn’t have forgiven it from anybody else. “And Hardison — does he feel the same way about you?”
That bitter taste. “Why don’t you tell me? Apparently you’ve spent the whole evening reading us.” It came out a lot harsher than he meant it to. Sophie looked at him with compassion.
“I didn’t come here to read you, Eliot, I came to spend an evening with my friends. I didn’t pick up on anyone else’s feelings, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there.”
She didn’t pick up on them; the rest seemed barely relevant. Sophie read people better than anyone he’d ever known. Could she really have missed something like that, from open-book-Hardison? Or was his window already closing?
The thought made him miserable enough to come all the way clean.
“Years, Soph,” he said quietly, and she looked at him in soft surprise. “I’ve been — I’ve felt this way for years.”
“Oh, Eliot...”
He shook his head, shaking off her pity, and folded his arms. “So it’s not new for me, you see. So I’m wonderin’ — how come you thought something had changed for me, and not for him?”
She was being very delicate with him; another thing he wouldn’t tolerate from anybody but her. “It was your tension that struck me, Eliot, not your feelings. Something has changed for you, hasn’t it? You were, perhaps, more at peace with those feelings before now?”
Eliot laughed shortly. That was one way to put it. Sophie continued.
“You know, I never stopped loving Nate, even while I knew trying to have that sort of relationship would be a disaster. Loving someone you can’t be with — it isn’t always all anguish and frustration. Sometimes you just accept it, and feel glad to have them close even if it can’t be everything you want. But you don’t need me to tell you that. If what you’re saying is true, I suspect you know it as well as I do.”
He did, of course... but he’d never considered that Hardison might feel the same way. It had never occurred to him that anyone could feel that way toward him. But if anyone could...
“Hardison doesn’t seem distressed by your relationship," Sophie continued, "but I truly don’t know what else he feels, or doesn’t feel. You’ll need to ask him about that.”
Ask him. He had a sudden image of Hardison’s face if he did. The stunned, incredulous look. The astonishment that would escalate into dramatic outrage: Seriously? You’re askin’ me that, SERIOUSLY?? It started a smile he couldn’t hold back.
“I don’t need to ask him.” Although it would be funny.
“Because...?”
“Because I know how he feels.” His smile got wider, because he was still hearing the rant in his head: What do you think I’ve been DOING here, some kinda wacked-out performance art? What’s a man gotta do to be taken seriously? Tell you how I’m feeling every damn day for weeks and then you come in here and ask me that. Unbelievable. He was almost tempted to do it, just to watch Hardison’s head explode.
Sophie caught his smile and shone it back at him. “Then I’m not going to worry.”
After that, Eliot stopped counting days.