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There’s Parker hanging from the ceiling napping like a bat, and there’s Eliot at the table cleaning his knives (which he’s been doing for hours now, and it’s honestly disturbing how much he plays with knives when he’s upset.) And here’s Alec, head doing that thing where it jerks up suddenly and that’s how he knows he’s been dozing, late night infomercial playing at low volume on the tv. And he should get up off the couch, just get up and go to bed. But it was a rough job, the kind where kids were getting hurt. And sure, they shut the bad guys down, but not without seeing the damage that had been done before they got there.
And if Alec has to crawl into the big bed alone he’s just going to lie there with his eyes wide open staring at the ceiling counting his failures. It’s amazing how the transition from bone deep weariness and soft sleepiness on the couch turns into bone deep weariness and wide awake mind running a mile a minute if he tries to go to bed on nights like these.
If his mind races too far he’ll find himself crying, and isn’t that pathetic, alone with no one to hold him just like nights in foster care. (Before Nana of course.) And if he starts crying and thinking about how he’s alone when the two people he loves are right there in the other room, he’s going to feel guilty for not just saying outright what he needs. But they need their thing too; they need their space, he knows this.
At least while he’s on the couch, even if they’re not touching, he can see his people. Alec knows he’s not alone with his thoughts, alone with the grief they all feel about the people they didn’t know needed saving in time. Kids had already been harmed before the client came to them, of course he couldn’t have known – can’t know every bad thing that’s happening in the world. But it presses down onto him, like a thumb pressing into a bruise, the memory of being young and knowing no-one cared if he was hurt.
So he’s got his legs tucked up on the couch, staying tuned in to Parker’s gentle rhythmic snuffling, the soft scrape of Eliot honing a knife, the painfully energetic voice of the man on tv demonstrating a tool that slices vegetables into spirals for no good reason that Alec can make out. His eyes are tight and dry and his head is aching with the dull hum of being awake for too many hours past the latest point in the night when it would have been reasonable for him to start trying to go to bed.
It's.
He's not alone.
Not really. Parker and Eliot are right here and if he said anything, made a move beyond curling his arms around his knees, they’d come to him. Probably. Definitely. He’s not a kid anymore, swallowing down scrapes and bruises and hard words, swallowing down tears. Holding himself as small as can be, alone in a room full of too many other kids.
He's just so tired.
He wants to go to bed, if it meant being held, if it meant three bodies pressed together and Parker’s hair in his mouth, and Eliot growling at him to lie still and go to sleep already.
He doesn’t mean the sound that comes out of him, half a hiccup, half a cough, a sob pushed down like he knows to. If he weren’t so tired, he’d notice how it broke out of him, but he’s focused down inside himself, pulled in tight, and he doesn’t notice that exhausted tears have started trickling down his face.
Eliot is not sleepy. The farthest thing from it. He’s finding his meditative space in the repetitive motion of polishing and sharpening metal. It was a rough job and none of them came through it in a good mood, but more than that, the room is tense with something unspoken and he doesn’t know what it is. He’d go wind down somewhere else, but he’s got an instinct that it’d be a bad choice tonight.
Eliot is not sleepy, and when he hears the harshest, driest sob from Hardison, he’s at full alert. Worse than hearing someone take the safety off on a gun pointed at your head, worse than the soft click of stepping on a mine. He’s up, moving toward the couch, before he’s consciously registered what’s going on.
When Eliot moves, Parker’s awake. She blinks down and sees Alec looking so small and folded in on the couch. She’d wanted the safety of distance when they got home, the safety of remembering that no one could put their hands on her unless she wanted them to. Now she wants to fix what’s wrong with Alec. He should have been sleeping; he’d been up the last two nights breaking into the mark’s security, moving identities around, chasing money around the world. Why isn’t he in bed?
Parker drops to the floor gracefully and joins Eliot where he’s kneeling by the couch. He’s got Alec’s hands in his and is talking to him quietly.
“Hey, babe, you doing okay?” Eliot rasps out, not liking the distant look on Alec’s face.
Hardison nods, his face settling into a neutrality that would be closed-off if he were any less tired. As it is, the “Hardison is Not Okay” bells ring loudly in Parker’s head.
“Yeah. Yeah, you know. Just tired,” Alec says, trying for a smile.
“Ooookay,” Parker says, “so you should go to bed.”
Hardison gets up suddenly, jerkily, almost kneeing Eliot in the face.
“Bed, yes, I do not want to wake up with the pattern from this couch pressed into my face,” he says, mustering the last energy he has to front for these people who know him so well that this is an entirely wasted effort.
“Why don’t you want to go to bed?” Eliot asks, kindly but bluntly.
“No, it’s fine,” Alec says, trying to push past his partners.
But Eliot’s got one strong hand on his arm, and Parker’s touching his chest and he just wants to lean into this. This is all he wanted, not being in the room with them while they were as far away as the coldest star. He knows they weren’t, they would have – if he’d asked, they would have been next to him. If he could have asked.
Eliot and Parker look at each other, exchanging information Hardison is too tired to read. Then they’re on either side of him, shuffling him toward the bedroom. Eliot’s pressed close, tucking himself under one of Hardison’s arms. He’s still getting used to being hugged where other people can see him, but when they’re at home, Eliot has no shame about how tight Hardison holds him. On the other side, Parker has her fingers twined through Alec’s.
They don’t bother to undress, just quietly taking their shoes off and helping him with his sneakers, and then Alec is being pulled into the bed, pressed into the middle, Parker’s arm warm across him, claiming him like he’s precious metal. Eliot’s lying on his side next to Alec, one of Alec’s hands in his, firm fingers massaging the knots out of the tired hand and forearm. It is the most intentional of touches, from each of them.
“What do you need, baby?” Eliot asks.
“Stay with me?” Alec asks.
Parker digs her fingers into Alec’s chest, not gently.
“Try to get rid of us,” she says.
“Don’t wanna,” Alec breathes out. He can feel the weight of the exhaustion setting in, like a post-adrenaline crash from the mood he’d worked himself up into. They barely needed to be asked. His eyes close.
Eliot keeps on massaging, leaning over to grab Hardison’s other arm and smooth out the tense hand muscles.
“He’s sweet like this,” Parker whispers.
Eliot hums agreement. He’s got a worried wrinkle on his forehead that Parker doesn’t like.
“We should have noticed he was sad sooner,” she says.
Eliot sketches a shrug, not moving enough to disturb Alec, “Don’t think he wanted us to notice. You get used to makin’ sure no-one knows you want something, in case they get mad that you do, or use it against you. You know that.”
Parker nods, her face creased unhappily, “so we’ve got to make sure we see it, even if one of us is trying not to want something.”
“Yeah,” Eliot says. Alec is snuggled soft against him, the tension melted out of his body at the closeness of his two loves. He can’t help looking at Alec’s face with extraordinary fondness.
“Come to think of it, maybe I wasn’t noticing what I wanted too well either,” he says. Seriously, Eliot might have needed to wind down after the job, but that could have been half an hour of meditating, not hours of sitting there while the tension rose. They could have been close like this hours ago. And showered and naked, at that.
Parker tenses, and Eliot reaches over to smooth her hair.
“What is it?” he asks.
“Sometimes I’m not ready to be touched when people want to,” Parker says, “sometimes I might have to be somewhere you can’t reach, at least for a while.”
Eliot’s lips twist in a sad smile.
“Darlin’, it’s no hardship for me to make sure Alec’s not on his own in the bed. You can always take the time you need. We’ll be right here. When you’re ready.”
Alec mumbles crossly about the talking that's going on over his sleepy head. He wriggles, pulling them this way and that until he’s got them so close they might as well be under his skin. Parker and Eliot let themselves be pulled about, let him move them around, like he could never use their bodies against them, like he’s everything they trust in the world.