Work Text:
Alec finds him in the courtyard at one in the morning, nursing beer still. It’s what he’d been doing, where he’d been doing it, four hours ago as well. He didn’t bother to ask if he could join, he simply kicked out the chair and sat himself down.
Eliot reached down to the little red and white igloo icebox and produced an Abita Amber for him.
“You seem sad,” Alec said softly, looking down as he opens his bottle. Abita’s not his favorite, a little heavier than what he prefers, but he’s not gonna complain.
Eliot shrugs, looking out into the far distance, which isn’t a no. “You’re home though,” he finally mutters out, a ghost of a smile flitting over his lips.
Alec takes a sip and wishes for a green Dos Equis. Now that’s his jam. Some chips and salsa and a Dos Equis? Yessir. “So have you tried at all? Get her back? Win her over?”
Eliot frowns, looking at him. “Who?”
“Maria,” Alec says, arching an eyebrow at him. “Don’t play dumb with me, boy. You been moping around since she walked away. I know my man.”
Irritation flickers over Eliots face but Alec doesn’t miss the pain in his eyes, is the thing. “M’not… I’m not mop–” Eliot cuts himself off, rubbing a hand roughly over his face. “Damnit Hardison, can’t a guy just. Wallow?”
“You been wallowing,” Alec says gently, and then stands, walks over to the serving station and grabs a couple of bags of single serving chips. Zapps, Cajun Style. Hell yes. “You been wallowing for weeks, man. And you know I can’t just sit here and watch you like that.”
Eliot sighs. “Just. No. Okay? No I haven’t.” He sighs again and shakes his head, his mouth pinching up over words he wants to say but won’t. Not yet anyway. Alec’ll get him there. He’s figured out how to do that over the past twelve years. “I’m not gonna. She was right.”
“You’re a criminal,” Alec asks.
Eliot meets his eyes. “By definition, yeah.”
“But still a good man though, right?”
Eliot twists his beer bottle around, tracing fingers over the filigree of the yellow label. “I hope so.”
“Oh no,” Alec bites out, voice brooking no argument. “No, you’re not gonna start doubting that again, not after all these years. Took us too long to beat that shit into your head for one dame, no matter how fine she is, to yank it out.”
Eliot’s mouth curls up into the sightest bit more genuine of a smile. “Yeah” he says, huffing out the tiniest of laughs through his nose. “Yeah, alright, I’ll give you that.” He grins, and tilts his beer bottle up at Alec. “I’m the goodest bad guy I can be.”
“Damn straight,” Alec says, smacking his against Eliots bottle hard enough for the clink to echo in the courtyard. He grins his widest, most shit eating, cockiest smile he has and relaxes when Eliot lets out a chuckle. “Now try again. Why haven’t you tried?”
“She’s.” Eliot takes a deep breath and blows it out. “She’s right. She’s a good woman, Hardison. And she. She might still care about…” He cuts himself off, shaking his head. “And I might still. Do still. Care. About her. But.”
“But?”
“But she’s the law, man. And she’s seen the crooked and it makes her crazy, and she’s fighting it from the inside best she can, but she’s.” Eliot shakes his head. “She’s not there. She’s not where we are. Knowing that from the inside ain’t good enough anymore. It’s only gotten worse, we’re barely making a goddamn dent, but. She’s not ready to give up doing it the way that oughtta be good enough.”
“Damn,” Alec says, curling in towards Eliot, elbows on the table. “Musta been a hell of a woman, for you to still talk like that about her after she stomped all over your heart.”
Eliot smirks. “She didn’t, is why,” Eliot says softly. Quiet. Painfully gruff. “She didn’t stomp on nothing. Did it as kind as she could.”
“That hasn’t stopped Parker from drawing up fifty plans on how to hang her upside down from the superbowl megatron in the middle of the next game,” Alec counters.
Eliot’s face turns serious. “You don’t think she’d actually.” He frowns, pauses. “She can’t really… Hardison, we can’t let–”
“Boy I don’t know what you think you can do but there is no let or don’t let that girl do what she wants to do when she really wants to do it,” Alec says, grinning and holding up his hands. “Most I could do was tell her she had to make sure the harness was secure enough. Scare her, don’t kill her, I was able to convince her of.” He frowns, shifting. “I think.”
Eliot scrubs his face with both hands this time. “God damnit, Parker.”
“That’s my girl’s version of protecting her man’s heart, ain’t no stopping that,” Alec says, reaching over and opening up the bag of chips. Popping one in his mouth he crunches loudly while he watches Eliot start tearing at the wet label of his beer. “Least she got to meet her.”
Eliot smiles softly. “You woulda loved her,” he says. “Kicked my ass easy as anything.”
“I do love a woman can keep you on your toes,” Alec says. “Doesn’t hurt she had a brick shithouse of a body though too, huh?”
Eliot laughs. “No it did not.”
“So if you’re not gonna even try, and you don’t blame her for her choices,” Alec says, tapping his finger over Eliot’s heart. “Why are you so sad?”
“I guess I just.” Eliot frowns, looking down. “I guess just for once, the first time in… I guess there was just a flicker of…”
“Of what?”
“Hope,” Eliot says, meeting Alec’s eyes again. They’re glossy, red rimmed, like the tears are just about to spill but Eliot’s holding on with all he’s got to keep them in. Alec reaches across the table to take one of Eliot’s hands in his. That he lets him is the surest sign of all that Eliot’s in a bad place. “She gave me just the littlest sliver of hope back, man, and. And I learned a long time ago that hope is. Hope is.”
‘Neccessary.”
“A death knell,” Eliot says, shaking his head and taking his hand back to pick up his bottle and drain it.
Eliot tosses his bottle into the trash can five feet away, it crashes and breaks, taking several others out with it. It seems symbolic.
“I was engaged once,” Eliot says, his voice coming out rough. “You met her. One of our first jobs with…” Eliot clears his throat. “With Nate. Horse ranch. Her name was Aimee.”
Alec nods. “You’ve mentioned her a few times. Promised her and the army at the same time, so she married someone else. Sounds like her loss.”
Eliot ignores him. “I thought we'd grow old together. Own a ranch. Horses. Kids.” Eliot smiles softly. “I’d be stern but fair, I told myself. I always told myself I’d be fair, first. My Dad…” Eliot clears his throat again. “He forgot the fair part sometimes. Forgot the part where your kid’s not supposed to question if you love them or not. I never wanted to do that.”
Alec flashes back to The Toy Job, remembers Eliot having some very damn strong opinions on what kind of Dad he wanted Hardison to write him as. Makes a whole lot more sense to him now.
“And I let go of that,” Eliot says, hand curling into a fist as his voice darkens. “I let go of it when I let go of my humanity. And I kept it tucked away, in this box I never touched.”
Alec tries to reach for Eliot’s hand again but Eliot backs up, pulling his body away from the table and away from Alec. Alec lets him this time.
“But. I started to think maybe I could. Maybe one day I could find a good woman who loved me for me and ....” He shakes his head, lets out a bitter laugh. “And maybe it wasn't dead. That the dream, that kid me had. That maybe it wasn’t dead, just. Just sleeping. It would be different than I originally thought but.” He shakes his head, breathing unevenly. “But maybe I could still.”
“You could,” Alec says sternly.
“No,” Eliot says just as sternly. “I couldn't.”
“Yes. Eliot. You could.” Alec watches Eliot hold himself tight, unmoving, reigning himself in. Losing the battle. “Quit Leverage. Retire. Settle down somewhere. Oklahoma. Texas. Montana. Get you a ranch, find you a woman.”
Eliot shakes his head, and the tears are so near the surface Alec feels like he can taste them. “No.”
“You could though,” Alec insists. “All you have to do is let yourself.”
“Damnit, Hardison, I said no!”
“Why,” Alec yells back, just as loudly.
“That's not who I am anymore!”
Alec sighs frustratedly. “There's a difference between can't and won't Eliot.”
“Listen,” Eliot says, stabbing a finger into the table and leaning forward, speaking passionately. “I want someone that loves me. Real love. Loves me for me.” He takes a shaky breath in and looks into Alec’s eyes. “Who I am now, not who I was, and not who I could be. And who I am now does this. THIS,” he says, pointing all around himself at their newest headquarters. “I love this. What we do here. It matters. I don't want someone who loves me despite whatever it is they don’t like about me, I want someone who loves me for exactly who and what I am, right here, right now.”
Alec waits until he’s sure Eliot’s done, lets him finish his rant and take a few deep breaths. When he has, Alec nods. “You've already got that.”
Eliot, still breathing hard, waves his hands. “What?”
“I love you,” Alec says. Simply. Easily.
Eliot closes his eyes and tilts his head back. “Hardison.”
Alec reaches over and grabs Eliot’s hand whether he wants him to or not, tugs him and his chair loudly and scrapingly closer to him. “I love you. Who you are. What you are. Here. Now. Forever.”
Eliot looks at him, half angry, half broken into pieces. A tear falls and he doesn’t even notice. “Please.”
Alec continues. “Parker loves you, same as me. Wouldn’t have you any other way.”
Eliot shakes his head. “Stop. Please.”
“I told you a long time ago there was space for you with us,” Alec says, refusing to give in to the pleading look at Eliot’s face. “I’ve told you that again and again, at least once a year, for the past forever.”
Eliot shakes his head. “I'm not gonna blow up what y'all--”
“You wouldn’t be blowing it up,” Alec interrupts on a yell. Angry and sad and happy and hopeful all at once. “You're making it bigger. Stronger. Safer.”
Eliot swallows heavily, loud enough for Alec to hear him. “Hardison,” he says, breathless. “You know how I feel about both of you. You know how much I love you. How much I love Parker.”
Alec grits his teeth, presses his lips together. “Then what are you so fucking afraid of?”
Eliot laughs then, his grip tightening inn Alec’s. “Afraid. You know, she asked me that. What was I afraid of?” He reaches up his other hand to hold onto Alec’s with both, gentle but tight. “Said something like I’m afraid what we’re doing isn’t good enough. That there’s no good enough, never will be. What I didn’t say is I’m not afraid of that at all, I know that. I know.”
“So you’re saying you’re not afraid of us not working, you know it won't work,” Alec says.
“No.” Eliot slumps in on himself then, somehow making himself look smaller than he is. More breakable than he is. More vulnerable than he’d ever let anyone else see. “ God, no, I know it will. For as long as it can. It’ll be good. It’ll be so good.”
Alec frowns. “Then why–”
“But then someone loves someone else just a little bit more,” Eliot continues. “Someone’s just a little bit better in bed. Someone’s mad that you talk to the other one more than you talk to them. That they make you laugh more. Or know better how to talk you off a ledge, and then. Then it’s over man.” He smiles, and two more tears fall out unbidden. “But we won’t. We’ll fight it. You won’t tell me. I won’t tell you. We’ll drive it further and further into the grave and we’ll burn through it until nothing’s left but ashes and.” He takes a deep breath, his lips trembling just slightly before he’s able to go on. “And I’m terrified of that. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Alec tightens his grip, pulls Eliot’s head forward and stops just short of knocking their skulls together. Then he grins. “See, this is why you’re an ass.”
Eliot tries to jerk back but Alec doesn’t allow him too. “What?”
“We,” Alec says, lowering his voice and speaking just as fiercely as he can manage. He reaches up his other hand to grab Eliot around the neck, behind his head. This gesture that means, I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I’m with you. That means it’s me and you, us, just us. Be here with me. “We are already we, Eliot. We is the three of us. It’s not one and one and one. It’s not two and one. It’s us. The three of us. It has been. It will be. Forever.” His nails dig into Eloit’s neck because he needs to get this. Reject them again or not, he needs to get this. “We’re we already.”
Eliot’s eyes fall shut. “Hardison.”
“I’ve been living my life in love with two people for the past ten years.” Alec leans forward and presses a kiss on the pinched up skin between Eliot’s eyebrows, pours all his love out right there directly into his brain, because he’s pretty sure Eliot’s heart isn’t the confused one here. He leans back to fix Eliot with a smirk. “Whatchu been doing?”
Eliot’s hands grasp so tightly to Alec’s arms and it says the exact opposite of the no that’s in Eliot’s eyes. “It’s good man. It’s so fucking good where it is. I love us, now.”
Alec leans back but doesn’t let go. Moves his face til Eliot’s looking at him again. “Except for the part where you’re alone and miserable for the other half of the time you’re awake and we’re not there.” He arches his eyebrows and hums at him. “And knowing you, you’re probably alone and miserable part of that time too cuz you’re a stubborn, stubborn ass.”
Eliot’s mouth crumbles, his face falling, eyes closing. “Hardison.”
“I’m so tired, Eliot,” Alec says, letting go of Eliot’s hand to reach up and wipe Eliot’s face clear of tears. He cups Eliot’s cheek until Eliot leans his head further into it despite himself. “I’m so tired of you not admitting that we are what we already are.”
“I just love you so goddamn much,” Eliot says, like it’s somehow a valid excuse.
“We’ve already made our vows, man,” Alec whispers. “We change together, for better or worse. Take care of each other til our dying day. You might have said that last part, but I sure as hell meant it. Didn’t you?”
“You know I did,” Eliot says, leaning closer, resting his forehead against Alec’s. “I couldn’t. Alec, I couldn’t take it if it fell apart. I couldn’t. I could never. I wouldn’t.”
“It hasn’t yet,” Alec says, wanting with his whole entire body, every cell of him, to kiss him into submission. It’s the closest Eliot’s ever been to accepting it. “You’ve been a third of our whole this whole time, Eliot. You’re just missing out on the blowjobs and orgasms part.”
Eliot huffs out a laugh at that, and he fists a hand in Alec’s shirt, holding him close. “That’s not fighting fair.”
Alec grins. “It’s a pretty cool part, man. Parker’s got a wicked mean streak that’ll put you on the edge for hours until you’re begging. And I?” He leans in, speaks directly in Eliot’s ear. “I could swallow you whole, right on down, no problem.”
Eliot lets out a shuddery breath. “Okay.”
“I’ll buy you a ranch,” Alec says, resting his mouth on Eliot’s temple. “I already bought you a fucking restaurant man. I’ve got your food trucks all over this globe.”
“I said okay,” Eliot says, frustratedly pulling out of Alec’s hold to reach forward and grab Alec’s face with both hands. “Fucking kiss me already, I give. I’m yours. I’ve always been yours, just kiss… Hardison, just–”
Alec grins and crawls off his chair til he’s kneeling in front of Eliot, reaching up to bring him into a kiss. A slow breath of a kiss, filled with love and promise and the vows they made a long damn time ago.
Before he can open his mouth to wind his tongue with Eliot’s he hears a clump-thump behind him and then two tiny hands yanking him back as Parker hisses, “cheater!” and kisses Eliot herself.
“Woman, you gotta stop repelling into our heart to hearts,” Alec says, not meaning a word as he grins up at his two favorite people sharing the sweetest kiss he’s ever seen.
“You promise,” Parker says as she leans away from the kiss, looking deadly serious into Eliot’s eyes. “You’re not gonna change your mind and back off again, go hide in your hole and lick your wounds and come back all ‘never happened’ to us again?”
“God help me,” Eliot says, framing Parker’s face in his too big hands. “Yeah, I promise.”
“You’re in,” Alec asks, standing up and reaching out for Eliot’s hand.
Eliot reaches down and takes it. “Yeah. I’m in.”
“For good,” Parker asks, stepping back.
“I’m in,” Eliot grouses out, face pinching in annoyance. “How many times I gotta say I promise, I’m in, I’m not getting out again, I’m in, for good, forever, okay? If you’ll have me, I’m in forever.”
“You’re just so sweet to us,” Alec says on a wry grin.
Parker pumps a fist in the air and screams as loud as she does when she’s jumping off the tallest building she’s been able to find, and then she’s reaching down and peeling her shirt off.
“Woah, woman, woah woah,” Alec says, reaching out to drag her shirt back down. “What are you doing?”
“Consumating,” Parker says like Alec’s the dumbest person to ever exist on the Earth.
Maybe he is actually, so Alec reaches out and takes her top off himself before reaching down to peel his own shirt off.
“Hey, hey, now, woah, no,” Eliot’s saying, backing away and flailing his hands. “We’re in public ya’ll.”
“Yeah,” Parker says on a snort. “In New Orleans. I’m pretty sure public nudity is like, required here, even if it’s not Mardi Gras.”
“Okay, but, hey,” Eliot squawks as Hardison reaches over to start trying to unzip his jeans. “Your sister is on a date and she’s gonna be back any minute now and I am not going to fuck you guys out here in the open in front of Breanna.”
“Hold up,” Alec says, frowning down at his watch. “She’s still out at 2am? The hell is she–”
“Freak out about curfews tomorrow, Alec, tonight we sex up this idiot,” Parker says, grabbing Eliot by the ear and starting to pull him alongside her. “Come on boys.”
Alec frowns long and hard at the empty courtyard and grumbles to himself for another minute, looking down at his watch and then back at the street several times.
He hears a door bang open and then giggling and grins to himself before following them.