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Eliot threw the truck into park and stared out the windshield at the desolate view: a cabin in the middle of the woods, looking small and forlorn in the wind that had been picking up speed over the last hour. Rain was driving diagonally across the picture, and he didn't want to make any bets on how long it would be until it was going fully horizontal. “Damn it, Hardison, that's the best you can do?”
“Hey man, you wanna try finding a place to stay in the middle of nowhere during a rainstorm, with no advance warning?” Hardison twisted in his seat and stabbed a finger at him. “I'm not freaking clairvoyant, couldn't have known it woulda hit so hard!”
“Yeah, well, always actin' like you are,” Eliot growled as he unbuckled his seat belt. There was no use arguing, they were out of other options. Not that it would stop him from doing it anyway. “C'mon, let's look at that rat's nest you found for us.”
“No appreciation, man,” Hardison mumbled. He took off his seat belt, then twisted around and nudged the lump that was Parker on the backbench, just a shock of blonde hair peeking out from under the blanket she'd wrapped herself in. “Hey mama, we're here. Time to wake up!”
The lump protested sleepily but finally uncurled to reveal the thief who stretched and yawned mightily. “Where's here?” she asked.
“Cabin in the woods,” Hardison said. “Storm's getting pretty bad, so Eliot wanted to stop driving. Never mind that we're in a Faraday cage,” he added, raising his voice so the hitter just about to close the driver's side door could hear him, “but apparently the only thing frightening big bad Spencer is some lightning. Can't hit that, eh?”
“Hardison,” Eliot said grumpily, pulling the door open again, “you wanna wrap the car around a tree 'cause you can't see with the rain comin' down so hard, be my guest.”
Parker snorted and leaned forward to give Hardison a quick peck on the nose. “He's got a point there,” she pointed out.
Eliot flashed her a quick look of thanks, fighting down the incongruous urge to have a corner of his mouth tick up. It wasn't a smile; it wasn't. And it wasn't a problem that his face constantly wanted to do that around those two lately. He finally slammed the door shut and switched on the heavy-duty flashlight he kept in the truck's cabin at all times. He more sensed than heard the passenger side's door opening and the other two hustling after him as he made his way towards the cabin, the rain soaking him down to the skin within moments.
The door was locked; he contemplated it for a moment, then stepped aside. “Parker, do your thing,” he commanded, directing the beam of light onto the lock. She gave a quick sound of delight and dove forwards with her lock picks appearing in her hands like magic. That lock wouldn't take her more than five seconds, he knew, but even that was probably a treat for her after an exhausting job that had her do most of the grifting. No matter how much she had grown and learned since they had become a team, coming into her own in both the grifter and the mastermind role, she would never love it as much as she did the jobs where she could be what she really was, a cat burglar and safecracker.
It was maybe eight seconds until the lock clicked and Parker stood back up. She frowned a bit at the door as she pocketed her lock picks. “Sorry, I'm off my game,” she said.
Hardison huffed and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Don't be ridiculous, babe, you're fine. A bit tired, that's all.”
Eliot nodded and gave her a quick pat on the back before he pushed open the door and went ahead into the cabin. “Stay here,” he told them as he swept the flashlight's beam through the room.
Hardison rolled his eyes so hard Eliot could hear it even though he had his back turned. “No need to unpack the guard dog routine, El,” he said, and another flashlight beam joined his. “It's a cabin in the middle of the woods. If there's anything dangerous, it'll be a bunch of spiders or a raccoon at best. C'mon, I wanna get inside and get dry.”
Eliot flashed him a nasty grin over his shoulder. “You're the geek, tell me how many horror movies there are that look just like this,” he said. “And how the black guy usually does in them.”
“Damn, man, don't you use pop culture against me, that's just wrong,” Hardison complained.
Parker snorted a laugh, still leaning against Hardison's side. “We'll protect you, Eliot and I,” she told him earnestly, then slipped from his arm and had his flashlight in her hand a blink of an eye later. “I'll help him make the security sweep, and you find out if there's electricity.”
Hardison sighed in defeat and waved them off, shaking his head. “Then go do what you gotta do.”
“Nice to know we have your approval,” Eliot said with a smile that was all teeth and very little warmth (no matter that he wanted to put a lot more into it). Nevertheless, he didn't further protest Parker's joining him and sent her off to check one of the two doors leading from the main room while he finished sweeping its meager contents – a small table with two rickety chairs, a wood stove and an old cupboard that held a little bit of crockery, a battered pot and a few cans of soup. He left Hardison to poke around near the stove, mumbling to himself about barbaric conditions and using his phone as a flashlight, and headed for the second door.
It didn't take much time to determine that this was the bathroom, such as it was, and little more to check the shabby toilet and sink – they worked, which was probably the best they could hope for. When he emerged back into the main room, he found that Parker had just done so, too, and was now perched on the table. For once he could not fault her for her propensity never to sit on a chair like a normal person; the table looked like a much safer bet.
“That's the bedroom,” she reported immediately once she caught sight of him coming back, pointing at the room she had checked. “Nothing there but a lot of dust and spiderwebs.” She grinned brightly. “Only one bed, though. We'll have to snuggle close, it's not very big.”
“Wa---” Eliot was vaguely aware that he was standing there gaping like a moron but his mind was stuck on Parker talking about snuggling in one bed.
“Huh, what was that, Eliot?” Hardison had abandoned whatever he had been doing with the stove – couldn't have been lighting a fire, he severely doubted Hardison could do that – and came over, leaning against the wall next to the table with Parker on it, both of them weirdly illuminated by the display light of Hardison's phone.
Eliot finally marshaled his thoughts enough to grind out: “I'm sure you'll be fine for one night. I'll take the floor.” Parker must have been talking about herself and Hardison anyway, no reason to assume that she wanted to snuggle with him – even if his traitorous heart had done just that.
Parker frowned. “What? No, you won't,” she said with a shake of her head. “Not when there's a bed and no reason for you to be on watch. We'll fit in there the three of us.”
“Wha-- Dammit, Parker, you can't just get into bed with any man!” Eliot protested.
“Fine, then Hardison and you can take the floor.” She folded her arms over her chest and stared at him, the challenge more conveyed by her tone than by her expression he couldn't see too clearly in the gray light on her face. Next to her, Hardison made an outraged sound, just as Eliot sputtered:
“What? No, why should Hardison sleep on the floor?”
“Well, if I can't get in bed with any man, then I can't get in bed with you two, since you're both men,” she said with a shrug, in that tone that clearly said that she thought she was being perfectly reasonable.
“But he's not any man,” Eliot pointed out, “he's your boyfriend.”
“Okay,” she said, cocking her head to the side in one of those moves that made her look sort of like a bird, “but you're not any man, too. You're Eliot. My--” she broke off, gave a short sideways glance to Hardison and then continued: “Our-- You're Eliot. So you can come, too.”
Eliot sputtered again, and how did she always manage to have that effect on him? He was Eliot goddamn Spencer, he was always in control, but she stole it from him as easily as pick-pocketing a watch was for her, with nothing more than a few words and looks. He desperately looked to Hardison. “Back me up here, c'mon, man!”
Hardison, the son of a bitch, just shrugged, his teeth white in the dim light as he grinned. “You heard the lady,” he said, “you're not any man, so you can get in bed with her, I mean, with us, any time.”
“I-- But--!” Eliot raked his left hand through his hair, casting around for the right thing to say, to make sense of these words in a way that didn't make warmth spread through his chest and … somewhere else that had made a very specific sense of it and was sitting up and taking notice. In the back of his mind, another part was busy pointing out that in a way, any man was probably better to have in your bed than Eliot Spencer. It was surprisingly easy to disregard this voice, though, just as Parker and Hardison disregarded his words whenever he pointed it out to them. He had told them so a hundred, a thousand times, even had shown them glimpses of it a few times – the swimming pool, probably even the warehouse, despite Nate's promise not to tell anyone – and they had always sailed past it without the slightest worry despite what he had been, what he still was. And he knew it was true: whatever danger he presented, it never was a danger connected to his past. Only to a present that he held sacred in his heart like a talisman, like he had held preciously little since he had lost faith in God and the American flag and whatever else he had believed in once upon a time.
“Helloo-ho!” Hardison suddenly loomed up in front of him, his face just inches away from him. “Earth to Eliot!”
Eliot honest to God flinched and took a step back. “Dammit, Hardison!”
The hacker raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “You back with us, man?” He looked him over seriously. “Honestly, I'm starting to think you're getting sick. You're usually more with it than that.”
Eliot took a deep breath and ran a hand over his face. “I'm fine,” he gritted out. He let his shoulders slump down. Sleeping in one bed it was. “You had any luck with that stove?” he asked Hardison in a bid of hopefully redirecting the conversation.
Hardison shrugged. “Not really, there's some old ashes and half-burnt wood in it but I don't have a lighter. I'm sure you can get it going, right? Don't tell me you haven't been a Boy Scout, too.”
“Nope.” Eliot hoped the relief and eagerness with which he fell into their banter was not too obvious. “Army boot camp's better than that, anyway. Plus, y’know, spending lots of time in the actual wilderness, not some parent's backyard.” He dug into one of his pockets for a lighter and wandered over to the stove, angling the flashlight beam into the open compartment.
Parker had her chin in her hands as she watched him with her usual Parker intensity. “Backyards sound boring,” she agreed. “But you should take us camping some time! We can throw Hardison off a cliff instead of a building!”
This time it was Hardison who was sputtering, and Eliot couldn't resist, he laughed, a bark that reverberated deep in his chest. “That's a great idea, darlin',” he drawled, grinning at the hacker.
“Now that's just unfair! Two against one! And no one's throwing Hardison off any cliffs, are we clear? Are we clear?”
Parker pouted at him. “Aww. You went on that fishing trip with Eliot, didn't you? I want to do something like that with you, too, with both of you.”
Eliot scowled at the reminder of how their fishing trip hadn't happened after that stand-off with a white supremacist militia. “Not exactly like that, preferably,” he growled under his breath. Louder, he said, “I think Hardison had a problem with the cliff thing, not with going on a trip with you, Parker. We can keep that in mind, okay? For now, just let's get through the night.”
In the meantime, he had kept working on the stove, pushing the old ashes to the side and rearranging the partly burnt wood into a neat pile. He looked around for some old paper to start the fire, then reconsidered. The small fire would be pretty useless to heat or light the room.
“Any of you hungry? There's some soup in cans.”
Hardison and Parker exchanged a look, then shook their heads.
Eliot sighed and stood up, brushing off the knees of his jeans. “Then we don't need to bother with the fire. We'd need some candles or a torch for some real light. Don't think it would produce much heat to get the room warm, either.”
Parker shrugged. “I don't have any candles.”
Hardison grinned. “I guess if we're cold, we just need to snuggle close in our bed,” he said, and Eliot's belly did another backflip at the thought of the three of them in one bed together.
Parker laughed and dropped down from her perch on the table, grabbed Hardison's hand, then lunged and did the same with Eliot's. “Come on, I'll show you,” she said brightly and pulled them over to the door she'd discovered the bedroom behind earlier.
“Parker, that's --- Parker, I can walk on my own,” Eliot protested but it was halfhearted at best. He turned towards Hardison but found little sympathy there.
“Just go with the flow,” the hacker told him. “Relax.”
Eliot bit back a retort and instead just took a deep breath, his feet automatically following where Parker led. Relax. As if that was a thing he could do when he was about to get into the same bed as his two best friends. As the two people he-- He-- His thoughts kept stalling but he knew the word that should go there.
In the small bedroom, Parker let go of his hand, and he took in the room and the furniture occupying it, which was just one more of those rickety chairs, with Parker's flashlight on it casting a beam through the shadows, and the bed itself. It was small indeed, and short enough that Eliot guessed Hardison's feet would hang over the edge. Parker and he should be fine – for a certain measure of fine when he was intruding where he didn't belong. Never mind that they seemingly didn't see anything wrong with it, even though they were the couple…
Meanwhile, Parker had taken possession of the bed, pulling back the covers. She looked back at the two men contemplatively, then shrugged and quickly pulled off her shirt, sending it flying toward the chair. At Eliot's spluttered “Parker!”, she shot him an annoyed glare. “What? It's wet,” she explained as she unzipped her pants and shimmied out of them, then threw them after the shirt. Eliot averted his eyes and prayed for strength.
When he looked back, she had slipped under the covers, and Hardison was sitting at the edge of the bed, taking off his shoes and socks, his phone on the quilt next to him. Hardison looked up at him, and his dark eyes were soft in the beam of Eliot's flashlight. “Eliot, man,” he started, then stopped, then started again. “Look, man, you don't have to if you don't really feel comfortab-- Ouch, Parker!” The thief had straightened up and slugged him in the back of the shoulder. “C'mon, he should only do it if he really wants to!”
“But he does!” she hissed at him, then turned towards Eliot. “You want to, right? You want to be with us. Like, here with us.” She gestured between the two of them and then the bed as a whole, and Eliot's heart constricted in his chest. Yes, God, how he wanted to.
“Because we want you, too.” She looked at him hopefully, not bothered in the least that the blankets were pooling in her lap and she was only wearing a simple black sports bra in the cabin's cool air. He tried to look away but couldn't, not when her eyes were holding him captive like that. They wanted him? Just for snuggling in a small, unheated cabin in the middle of nowhere? Or… for something more?
Eliot pushed that thought way back in his mind. He needed to stay in the here and now. And maybe, just maybe, he could just be selfish tonight and take what they were offering. If that was all it was, he would deal with it. Would it be better or worse than never having had any of it? He didn't know.
Hardison was looking at him steadily. “Your decision, El,” he told him, “but we're here. Whenever you're ready, we'll be there.”
And that—that did actually sound like this was more than just a night of snuggling close for warmth. Eliot took a deep breath, closed his eyes and released it. When he opened them again, he nodded. “Yeah,” he said roughly. “Yeah, I'm--” He stopped and decided to give up trying.
Instead, he put his flashlight on the chair next to Parker's, then bent down to untie his boots and quickly stripped off his jeans and his soggy outer layers, leaving him in a mostly dry T-shirt and boxers. A few more steps brought him to the bed where Hardison had joined Parker under the covers, his torso bare. Both of them were looking at him with so much hope that it was the easiest thing in the world to lift the edge of the covers and slip in after them. He smiled at them and said softly, “Hey.”
“Hey you,” Hardison said and as if it was nothing, he put his arm around Eliot's shoulders and pulled him close. From his other side, Parker put her arm across Hardison's body until her small, strong hand rested on Eliot's chest. “I'm glad you're here,” she told him. Then she gave him a short whack. “So now, snuggling and sleep,” she ordered. “The rest can wait until tomorrow.”
Eliot felt his smile grow into a grin and turned it into the crook of Hardison's neck. “Yes, ma'am,” he replied seriously.
And as he crowded closer to Hardison and reached for Parker with an arm across the other man's stomach, Eliot did as any good soldier would do and followed the order given by his leader. It was probably his favorite order of all time.