Archive of Our Own

As Hardison stands at the hotel bathroom sink and brushes his teeth, he wonders if he’ll actually be able to get some decent sleep tonight.

It’s such a toss-up at hotels. Always has been. Which just feels so ridiculous to him, because hotels—the kinds of hotels that he stays at, at least—are supposed to be the pinnacle of luxury. There’s supposed to be a joy, an indulgence, even, in sleeping someplace that’s not your own bed. The extra pillows, the crisp white sheets, the thermostat that’s set way, way chillier than you’d ever set at your own place because, y’know, bills… It’s all supposed to be heaven. You’re supposed to feel like you’re somewhere so special and fancy that it turns the simple act of sleeping into something luxurious. You’re supposed to sleep the best you’ve ever slept in your life.

Unfortunately, he can’t say he’s ever understood it. First of all, from a physical standpoint, there’s nothing a hotel room’s got that his own bedroom doesn’t have too: He always has an abundance of pillows, and he keeps things as cold as he pleases ’cause he’s got oodles of money and he can do whatever he wants with it, including spending it on keeping things ice-box cold to achieve the perfect sleeping environment. The one thing he doesn’t have is the crisp white sheets, but he’s never liked those anyway. They always feel too stiff and impersonal. Nah, give him a good jersey cotton and he’s a happy man.

He’s also never, ever gotten the best sleep of his life at a hotel. In fact, it’s a miracle if he gets any sleep at a hotel at all.

It remains a mystery to him why this is the case, because any time he’s slept somewhere that’s not his own bed but also isn’t a hotel, there’s been zero problem. When he goes to visit Nana for a weekend and gets put in his oldest brother’s old bedroom for the length of his stay because his own old room is now the quilting room? Boom, out like a light. That time he went with Eliot to visit one of his old service buddies and they spent an unplanned night in said buddy’s guest room because they got too tipsy to drive home and they were too far for an Uber that didn’t cost a million (because despite all their money, Eliot won’t pay for “a glorified cab” when they could “just take their own damn car home tomorrow”)? Zonked. Even spending the night in one of Parker’s warehouses has never been an issue, eerily empty and echoey as they can be. It’s just the hotels, for whatever reason. Always the hotels.

He spits his toothpaste into the sink and turns the water on to rinse his brush. At this point, he’s given up trying to figure out why this always happens. It’s just a fact of his life that it does, and as such, he just has to deal with it. At least it’s better now than it used to be—used to be that eight or nine out of any given ten nights of hotel stays would be sleepless ones. Now he’s down to about five or six. Again, no idea what’s caused that, but it’s a gift horse he’s sure not gonna look in the mouth.

He really hopes that tonight won’t be one of those five or six. Especially since this job is one that’s not too far from home either. The closer they are to Portland, the better luck he seems to have, and since they’re only in Seattle this time, those odds are definitely in his favor. Could be asking for a lot, seeing as he’s only caught four or five hours a night so far for the whole week they’ve been here, but fingers crossed anyway; you never know. Stranger things have happened.

Once he wipes the toothpaste off his mouth and shuts the bathroom light off, he walks back into the main room, and when he sees what’s waiting for him on the bed he can’t help but snort. This could actually be considered one of those stranger things: Sitting in the middle of the mattress is Eliot Spencer, career hitter and arguably the scariest man alive (to his enemies, at least), with his hair pulled into about a half-dozen pigtails. He’s propped against a pillow which is subsequently propped against a Parker who’s kneeling up on the mattress and creating those aforementioned pigtails. At the moment, she’s braiding one of them.

Eliot’s got a book in his hands, and he doesn’t look up from it when he says, “Say one goddamn thing about it and I’ll rip your arms off,” calm as can be.

Hardison claps a hand over both his mouth and his nose before another laugh can manage to leak out. He breathes as deep and as slow as he can through his hand to try to distance himself from any sense of amusement. When he says “You look great, babe,” the words muffled against his palm, he thinks he sounds remarkably unaffected by the whole thing.

Eliot—still not looking up from his book—gives him the finger.

Hardison rolls his eyes and lets his hand fall to slap against his thigh. “Awww, c’mon,” he says. “I mean it. You look cute.”

Parker grins. “He does, doesn’t he?” she says. She sounds very pleased with herself. She finishes the braid she’s working on, and then she puts her hands on her hips and surveys Eliot’s head like she’s a farmer appreciating the vast spread of her domain. “I did some good work here.”

“That you did,” Hardison agrees.

He crosses over to the bed and sits next to Eliot. Eliot swats at him, but it’s a light swat, no actual power behind it. Uncaring, Hardison twangs one of his pigtails. Eliot swats him again, equally as lightly.

“Don’t mess ’em up,” he warns.

“I would never,” Hardison says. “I’m surprised you’re the one telling me that, though.”

“Well, Parker worked hard.”

“I did,” Parker says, and she throws her arms around Eliot’s neck and bestows approximately two dozen kisses upon his cheek. “My Eliot,” she murmurs between them. “Such a good boy.”

They’ve only got the bedside lamps on right now, and of course it’s dark outside the windows given that it’s bedtime, so all together it’s not the best lighting situation. Still, Hardison’s pretty sure that he sees Eliot’s cheeks turn pink, and when he does, that’s it—he has to lean in and give Eliot two dozen cheek kisses too. Parker cackles when he joins, and then they’re egging each other on and both going twice as hard, an unending chorus of mwahmwahmwahmwahmwahs to Eliot’s sweet, sweet cheeks.

Eliot sets his book down so he can shove at them both like he hates the attention, but the gesture has all the power of a pre-teeth baby biting gummily at your fingers, and when he grumbles “Alright, alright, that’s enough,” the grumbling does absolutely nothing to hide the fact that there’s a clear note of enjoyment poorly hidden beneath the words. If Hardison didn’t think it’d get him pushed off the bed, he’d even go so far as to say that Eliot is preening beneath their ministrations—there’s a tiny smile tugging at his lips, and he’s doing a real crap job of not leaning into his and Parker’s touch. Hardison would roll his eyes if it wouldn’t throw off his groove.

“Nooooo,” Parker says, still talking between kisses. “You’ll—mwah—take—mwah—all—mwah—the kisses—mwah—we give you—mwah—”

“She’s—mwah—right—mwah,” Hardison agrees. “All—mwah—the kisses—mwah—in the world—mwah—”

He starts to broaden his area of attack then to more than just Eliot’s cheek, going for his temple and his brow and his jaw and the side of his nose too. Parker must register that because she makes an approving sound and starts darting around as well. Delightfully, Eliot’s fully smiling now, no hiding it, and he manages to hold out for another fifteen seconds or so before he finally says “Alright, alright!” again and pushes at them with enough strength that they do finally separate from him. They’re not gone for long, though—Parker dives back in with a gleeful shriek to toss away the pillow that’d been between them and get her arms around his middle this time instead, yanking him into a hug. When they topple to the bed Hardison follows them, and he slips a hand beneath the hem of Eliot’s sweatshirt to touch his bare skin; Eliot lets out a breathless laugh at the brush of his fingers, followed by a fragile moan when he shifts those fingers to skim over his waist. Hardison gets his head on one of the pillows so he can rest there and look at him, and when their eyes meet, he grins.

“Touch slut,” he says affectionately.

Eliot wrinkles his nose like he’s gonna say something (probably in protest, because the man’s a pill like that), but then his breath’s stuttering when Hardison squeezes his hip. Whatever he might’ve been thinking seems to disappear—now he’s just caught there, his pretty lips parted and his eyes squeezed shut tight, cheeks still pink.

He really is a touch slut if Hardison’s ever seen one. He’d thought no one could be clingier than Parker, and then Eliot Spencer said “hold my beer” and came in with the steel chair. Not at first, of course, because as mentioned the man’s a pill, and for all his flirting and handsiness with the ladies he’d sometimes pick up on jobs or after-hours during off nights at McRory’s, he’d started out awful skittish with him and Parker—once they got together, all of a sudden he wouldn’t touch them the same way he used to. No more casual hands on their waists to steady them, no more light touches to their arms to check that they were still close. Instead he kept his hands mostly to himself, and he’d freeze up during hugs too, or go still during kisses.

Hardison had asked him about it once, after he’d finally developed the guts to ask tender questions like that without fearing he’d get his fingers bitten off in the process. After he’d posed the question, Eliot had gotten quiet, and after a few false starts he’d finally said, “It’s— It’s different when it’s real.”

Lord have mercy. If Hardison hadn’t already been ass over tits for the guy by that point, that sure would’ve pushed him over the edge. His boy—his ladies’ man (and man’s man), his Fabio—was too moony over him and Parker to be able to relax at their touch. And wasn’t that just the cutest thing? Made him a little sick, honestly. Still makes him sick even now, even when things have gone one-eighty and Eliot’s lost all hesitance around them, because that hesitance has been replaced by something even better: When him and Parker touch him, Eliot melts beneath their hands like gelato in July, marshmallows held to the heat of a campfire. Everything about him turns sticky-sweet and liquid and he oozes closer and all over them, seeking out more of their hands, their mouths, their bodies as a whole. It’s like as soon as he feels you a switch flips and he goes starving, suddenly desperate to lap up as much of your touch as he possibly can.

Case in point: With his hand still on his hip, Eliot’s scooting closer to Hardison, head coming to his same pillow so his face can get close and dig into his throat, nose burrowing into his Adam’s apple as he lets out a soft, high sound of utter bliss. Hardison’s grin stretches so wide that his cheeks start to hurt, and obviously he has to shift his hand one more time so it can come to the small of Eliot’s back instead. Bingo: Eliot hiccups and grips his elbow tight like he’s trying to hold him in place. Hardison kisses the top of his head.

“Look at him, mama,” he says. “So needy.”

“He is,” Parker says admiringly, and then again: “Such a good boy.”

“Shut up,” Eliot replies, clearly trying to spit, but the words come out so light and so thready, you can see all the way through them.

Parker snickers, and when she holds up a hand for a high-five Hardison meets her halfway. Then he goes back to tickling circles over Eliot’s tailbone, drinking in the way his handsome face has gone so lovely and lax. He had a long-ass day today—taking out a trio of ex-Marines in a cramped hallway is no joke—so Hardison’s glad to give him this moment of rest.

He’s not sure how long the three of them lay there for; he doesn’t care to keep track. Not too long after he’d started scritching circles over Eliot’s back, Parker had scooched in closer as well and pressed her face to the top of Eliot’s spine while she snaked a hand around to rest on his stomach. It’s there they’ve stayed up until this very moment, which is when Eliot finally takes a deep breath and seems to come back to the land of the living for the first time in a long while.

“Hey,” he says, and his voice is low and gravelly. He clears it, but it doesn’t sound much better when he says “Y’all are menaces.”

Parker giggles and kicks her feet into the mattress, nipping at the side of Eliot’s neck before she kisses his shoulder. “No,” she says, “you’re just easy. Big slut.”

“Biiiiiig slut.” Hardison kisses Eliot’s forehead this time, and then he tugs on one of Eliot’s pigtails. “Can you let Parker do your hair like this all the time?”

“Oooooooh, yes pleaseeeeeee,” Parker croons at the same time that Eliot says “Hell no.” Parker swats him on the ass, and when Eliot hey!s, she shushes him. “Oh, you’re fine,” she says. “I think Hardison’s right. You should wear your hair like this all the time.”

“Liability,” he says. “People’re gonna grab at my hair. Bad for fighting.”

“Says the man who leaves his luscious locks down all the time just so they can get all in his face when he’s throwing punches.”

“Ain’t been a problem so far.”

“‘So far.’”

“Yeah, ‘so far.’ Do this, though, and I’m practically giving ’em handlebars.”

“That sounds dirty,” Parker says.

“It is dirty. Handlebars are for riding. Now, ‘handles’ sans bars, that’d be more like it. But our boy’s mind is always so far in the gutter—”

“Oh my god. Do I need to go downstairs and ask for a separate hotel room—”

Parker and Hardison both whine a “nooooooooooo” and clutch at Eliot, sandwiching him between them so hard that it squeezes a wheezy breath out of him. He wriggles around like he’s trying to break out of their hold, but Hardison thinks it feels more like he’s settling himself into place.

“Okay, jeez,” Eliot mutters, “I’ll stay here. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”

“Yaaaayyyyyyy,” Hardison cheers at the same time Parker does, the two of them in unison once more. When he smooches Eliot’s cheekbone, she plants one on the back of his neck.

Eliot tucks his face beneath Hardison’s chin (not fast enough to hide the way he’s smiling again, though). “I hate you two,” he says.

“Nuh-uh you don’t,” Hardison says. “You loooooove us.”

Eliot huffs. “I dunno. Maybe. You’re stupid, though.”

“Stupid perfect, more like,” Hardison counters. “And stupid smart, and stupid funny—”

“And stupid hot,” Parker adds.

“And stupid hot. We’re the full package, baby. Consider yourself lucky.”

Eliot shakes his head. “God,” he mutters, fondly exasperated, and when Hardison says “Nope, just Alec,” he laughs a genuine—and genuinely beautiful—laugh.

The three of them lapse back into silence after that, more of a collaborative one this time with Eliot not being so knocked out and everything. He’s still got his head tucked beneath Hardison’s chin, and occasionally he’ll nudge his face into Hardison’s sternum; where Parker’s hand is still on his stomach, he’s got his own hand over top. Hardison watches him periodically rub his thumb over the back of Parker’s wrist, steady and slow. They’re all so close. Hardison can feel the heat radiating off Eliot’s body, can smell Parker’s floral shampoo. Parker’s also squeezed one of her calves between Eliot’s and her foot has found Hardison’s own, their ankles brushing. They’ve got a whole California King to themselves (he books them the good hotels, remember?), but even with all that space, the three of them are crammed into a little sliver toward the left edge, piled together when they could be spread out instead.

The realization abruptly makes Hardison mildly dizzy. Y’know, it took months before he felt like he was maybe kinda sorta used to the fact that Parker was his girl, like capital-H capital-G His Girl. And then, just when he had that somewhat sorted out, Eliot came in to knock him right back on his ass. Now it’s been more than months and even if he finally feels like maybe he’s kinda sorta gotten used to this again, there’s still moments like these where it hits him all at once that these two are his and he’s theirs. It’s forever a miracle that that knowledge doesn’t just, like, make him explode or something. Years of staring after the two of them, of wishing Parker would put her chin on his shoulder while she sat and watched him do his computer thang, or that Eliot wouldn’t shove him off when he tried to pull him into a hug, and now he’s in bed with the both of them, Parker’s ankle tangled with his and Eliot squished against him and nuzzling into his chest.

Ain’t life grand? He’s the luckiest bastard in the whole world.

Eventually, Parker’s the first one to speak up again—she yawns a big yawn and says “Can we have sleepytime soon? M’tired. Long day.”

It was indeed a long day for her too—for her part of their current con she’s grifting as a fake fitness influencer, and Hardison knows the intense personality has been taxing on her. That’s actually most likely why Eliot let her do what she’s done with his hair. He’s always down to let her play with it, especially after a tiring day, but usually he doesn’t let her go so crazy with the style; he must’ve known she needed it today, though. The thought warms Hardison’s heart. You might not think big scary Mr. Punchy would be all that indulgent, but if Parker were to tell him to jump, she’d barely be able to get all the words out of her mouth before he was launching himself into the stratosphere. Anything for their girl.

And boy, does he know that feeling.

In fact, speaking of: Hardison reaches over Eliot to brush some of Parker’s hair off her face and tuck it behind her ear. His heart warms further to see the way it makes her smile, and to feel her nose at his palm in response.

“You got it, babygirl,” he says. “You ready for bed too, E?”

Eliot makes a vague noise that Hardison can only assume is a “yes.”

“Alright alright alright. Sleepytime, then. Time for all good little polycules to go to bed.”

Eliot chuckles, and Parker snorts. There’s a brief moment where they all stay right where they are, as if they don’t want to break the spell that hovers over all of them, but then when they move they move in perfect sync—Parker pushes up to sitting at the same time that Hardison does, and then they both get a hand on Eliot to help him sit up. That makes his cheeks go pink again, and he kisses both of them on the cheek before he gets up and shuffles off to the bathroom, presumably to brush his own teeth since he’d offered to take his turn last. While he’s in there, Hardison helps Parker turn down the covers, and then they slide into the sheets; as soon as he’s horizontal she’s gluing herself to his side, arms and legs and hands and everything else sticking to him like she’s covered in octopus suckers.

Man, he’ll never get tired of this. Parker’s so warm, warmer than anything, and so strong too, so solid—she holds him with a good grip, and she weighs him down just enough to make it feel like she’s keeping him tethered to this moment, to reality. It’s times like these that make him understand why the woman loves her weighted blanket as much as she does. Him and Eliot joke sometimes that they’d never need one of their own because they’ve got a Parker instead, and she’s all the blanketing weight they’d ever need.

“Hi,” Hardison says with a smile as she gets her head on his chest.

“Hi,” Parker says back. Her hips wiggle against his while she gets herself settled, her hand searching for just the right spot on his ribs. Once she’s apparently found it, she sighs a great sigh. “Missed you today,” she says. “I don’t like when we all have to be separate.”

Hardison knows exactly what she means. Usually he’s at least in the parking lot of wherever they’re working, camping out in Lucille while everyone does their stuff inside, but his work today had involved some data retrieval from City Hall and their system was old as dinosaurs, so he’d had to be onsite while everyone else was several blocks away. The comms help, sure—doesn’t hurt to be able to hear your sweeties in your ear while you putter around in government file cabinets (and Nate and Sophie too, he supposes, but this ain’t about them)—but it’s not the same. It’s not the same as being able to look up at the sound of an opening door and feel a wave of relief at the sight of an Eliot climbing into the van, sweat still drying on his brow as he walks over to plop down next to you to catch his breath, or to turn when you hear a knock on the window and feel a smile split your face to see a Parker beaming and waving at you before she comes through the door. Those moments are really something special.

Hardison gets a hand between Parker’s shoulder blades and starts rubbing. “I know,” he says. “I missed you too. Really wished I could’ve seen you breaking down Mr. CEO this afternoon—sounded like you had him hook, line, and sinker in no time at all.”

“Yeah,” Parker says, “I did great. Barely had to bat my eyelashes or anything.”

Hardison laughs. She’s come so far; Sophie’s taught her well, and she’s soaked it all up like the genius sponge she is. But he has to ask: “You still did anyway though, right? That’s, like, one of the hottest things you do.”

“Oh, is it?”

When she says that, Parker pitches her voice low and sultry, and just as soon as Hardison picks his head up to look down at her, she looks up at him coyly and flutters those lashes all soft and pretty like she does. And okay, fine, yes: Hardison’s stomach flips over to see it. So sue him! His girlfriend is hot as hell, and she makes him feel a dozen kinds of flushed and overwhelmed even when all she’s doing is existing. So when she gives him one of those cartoon vixen looks where you can practically see the animated sparkles around her eyes? It’s the O-ball. He’s done for. Kaput. Almost makes him feel bad for their marks, ’cause if he was one of them and she hit him with her flirty eyebeams like this, he’d be on his knees in an instant, giving her the info for every single one of his bank accounts and probably handing over the keys to all his houses and his cars too. It’s ridiculous. He’s obsessed with her.

So, naturally, upon seeing this Hardison clutches his heart and yelps like he’s just been shot, falling back onto his pillow with a dramatic flop. Parker hehehes in victory before pecking him all over his face, lips quick and light and full of love. When she finally snuggles back down into his side, she hums happily, even throws a thigh over his own for good measure.

“Gotcha,” she says.

Hardison laughs, and he runs a hand through her hair. “That you did,” he says. “And you always will,” he adds. And he’s telling her the truth—she’ll never not have him. Never ever ever. That’s his Parker, and she’s brilliant and she’s funny and she’s sweet and she’s gorgeous, and his heart’s all hers.

Hardison picks back up with rubbing Parker’s back while they wait, making sure to dig his thumb in along her spine every so often like he knows she likes; when there finally comes the sound of running water from off to their right, he looks up, and there, emerging from the now-dark doorway of the bathroom, is the other person who owns his heart. Eliot smiles when he sees them, and he leans against the jamb with his arms crossed over his chest. There’s a softness to his expression that makes Hardison wish he was closer so he could kiss it.

“What are you lookin’ at?” Hardison asks, even though he already knows the answer.

Eliot’s smile kicks up higher on one side than the other. “Just wonderin’ how a couple of chuckleheads like us ended up with someone the likes of her,” he says, nodding toward Parker.

Parker trills and chirps and makes all manner of extremely pleased sounds. Hardison gapes in (admittedly exaggerated) shock.

“‘Chuckleheads’?” he repeats in disbelief. “‘Chuckleheads’?! I can’t believe you! That’s just— What a bold thing to say— You just— I can’t— How dare you!”

“I said ‘like us’!” Eliot says. “Included myself there, darlin’. Makes no sense to me.”

Technically Eliot’s still smiling, but it doesn’t fully reach his eyes. There’s a hint of genuine questioning in his words too; anyone else might miss it, but Hardison’s fluent in Eliot, has been for years, and he can hear it clear as day. Judging by the way Parker stops trilling, she does too.

“Hey,” Parker says. Her voice is a little sharper, no longer pleased. “I thought we said we wouldn’t talk like that anymore. I love you, okay?”

She sounds deadly serious, and when Hardison peeks at her, she’s frowning and her brow is furrowed. When Hardison peeks at Eliot too, he sees that the man looks a smidge shamefaced. He crosses over to the bed, and as soon as he sits down, Parker snatches one of his hands. Some of that softness creeps back into his expression as he puts his other hand over Parker’s as well. A few heartbeats pass, and then he exhales.

“M’sorry, sweetheart,” he says quietly. “I just…” He shakes his head. “M’sorry.”

Hardison watches Eliot’s face. He wonders what Eliot must’ve been thinking about while he brushed his teeth; he doesn’t remember anything particularly remarkable about the day other than the fact that the three of them had to be further apart from each other than they usually are. He runs through the injuries he remembers Eliot tending to once they got back to the hotel, tries to recall what he heard over the comms while he was working, tries—

Oh. A snippet of a voice comes back to him, something he’d forgotten he heard while he was digging through files. Between the sounds of surprise those ex-Marines had made upon seeing Eliot and the echoes of thuds and smacks and unconscious bodies hitting the floor, one of the guys had said “Eliot Spencer?” “Eliot Spencer” with a question mark after it, like he was surprised to see him there. Like he knew Eliot but didn’t know what he could’ve been doing in that cramped hallway. It had struck Hardison as strange at the time, but then he’d dropped a whole goddamn folder of files on the floor (and a chunky one at that), so he’d been thoroughly distracted by trying to scoop all the papers back up. Now that it’s come back to him, a flag pops up in his brain.

“One of those guys recognized you earlier, didn’t they?” he asks, softly.

Eliot hesitates for a beat before he nods. Hardison sees Parker’s hands tighten around his.

“Bad guy?” Parker asks.

Eliot’s jaw twitches. He seems to think through a few things before shaking his head.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” he says, and it’s another one of those things where anyone else might not hear anything off in Eliot’s words. But to a Hardison who’s had years to learn all his different inflections, it’s all too clear—there’s an edge of a wound in his voice, something that clearly hurts but he’s trying hard to cover up. If he was talking to anyone else, he’d probably be successful with that.

Of course, he’s not talking to anyone else.

Even so, the other part of being fluent in Eliot—beyond just being able to hear through his BS—is also knowing when to push him and when to leave things alone. After Hardison does some quick mental math, he figures this is definitely a time to leave things alone. It’s late, and Eliot’s tired and sore (literally—when he’d gotten out of the shower earlier, Hardison had seen bruises starting to blossom on his arms and his back). Plus they’ve already decided they’re ready for bed, so any attempt to put that off for something like this will just make the man cranky. Him and Parker could maybe ask about it tomorrow morning, but not before then. And that’s okay. It’s not like they all came back to the hotel and Eliot completely shut down; it’s a bad memory, clearly, but it can’t have been that bad. They can figure things out later. They’ve got time. It’ll be alright.

It’s also a good thing the three of them are what they are, because it means that Hardison doesn’t have to say any of this out loud—he just leans in and pecks Eliot on the temple as if to say Alright, that’s fine, and Parker picks up their hands and kisses Eliot’s knuckles to say the same. Instantly, Eliot sighs and his shoulders slump. He tips forward until his forehead comes to rest against Parker’s shoulder, and he lets the weight of her body hold his own up.

“Thanks,” he whispers.

Hardison hums. “Don’t gotta thank us,” he says. Then he pats Eliot’s back. “C’mon, then—should we go to bed?”

“Mmmmmmmhm,” Parker answers, and then in a blink she does one of those magic tricks where she makes a few adjustments to him and to Eliot and all of a sudden they’re all tucked beneath the covers, him in the middle with her and Eliot on either side. Once she’s pulled the sheets up and over them and she’s got her head back on his chest, she makes a sound of satisfaction. “There,” she says. “All cozy with the boys.”

Hardison shakes his head in disbelief. “Girl, you’re like a wizard with that. How do you do it?”

“A wizard never shares his secrets,” Parker replies solemnly. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

“Oh,” Hardison says. “Well, in that case, definitely don’t tell me. I’m too young and too cute to die.”

“At least one of those is true.”

As happy as Hardison is that Eliot seems to have recovered from the little Thing™️ that happened a few moments ago, he also can’t stand for this jackassery—he smacks Eliot’s chest. “Dick,” he says. “How about you shut up?”

“How about you shut up?”

“How about you shut up.”

“No, how about you shut up—”

“Uh-uh, how about you shut up—”

“Oh my god! Boys!!”

Parker pokes his cheek and then reaches around to poke Eliot’s too, and when Eliot tries to chomp after her fingertip, she swipes at his chin like she’s a kittycat smacking him with her paw. He rubs that same chin theatrically and pouts like she took a chunk out of it, to which Parker simply blows him a raspberry.

Jesus. Absolute clowns, the two of them. Hardison loves them so much he’s gonna blow up.

“It’s sleepytime,” Parker reminds them with emphasis. “Sleepy. No fighting.”

“We’re not fighting,” Hardison says. “Eliot started it and I was simply defending myself.”

“Lord in starry heaven, Alec. Don’t you start with me—”

“Alec?! Alec?! Oh, you think this is a first name situation? After you deliberately offended me—”

“Take a joke, babe, good grief—”

“‘Good grief,’ he says, like the old man he is—”

“‘Old man’?!”

“Oh my GOD!”

This last exclamation comes from Parker in nothing short of a screech, both loud and shrill enough to shut both him and Eliot up. He looks at Eliot. Eliot looks at Parker. He looks at Parker. Parker looks at both of them, and—

And Eliot cracks the hell up.

In return, neither him nor Parker really have any option other than to crack the hell up alongside him. When Eliot really laughs, see, like really really laughs, it’s more infectious than just about anything. Well, except when Parker gets going on one of her giggle-snort rips. Those are both equally infectious. Anyway, regardless—when Eliot really gets going, like full-on belly laughs where his nose crinkles up and his smile flashes bright and brilliant and he looks like he’s lost about ten years of all the crap that Hardison knows follows him around every day, it’s just… It’s beautiful. One of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen.

Through his own laughter, Hardison turns and tucks his face into the round of Eliot’s shoulder, one of his arms laying over Eliot’s stomach so he can feel the way it shakes and shivers as he loses it; Parker gets an arm over him too, strapping them all together like they’re a raft in the ocean. Eliot’s hand comes to grasp at Parker’s forearm, completing the circuit, and when he sees that, Hardison feels like he could float right off the bed. He’s honestly surprised he manages to stay beneath the covers—he feels lighter than air, light as a sunbeam, so weightless he barely knows where his own edges are anymore.

They’re all breathless when things die down, the only sound in the room for a few moments them panting and reaching for oxygen. Once they’ve caught their breath, Parker squashes them all closer.

“My boys,” she mumbles into Hardison’s shirt. “Love you love you.”

Hardison puts his hand over top of Eliot’s over top of Parker’s arm. “Love you love you, babes.”

“Mmmm,” Eliot practically purrs. “Love you love you.” His thumb strokes a few back-and-forths over Parker’s skin, and he turns to press his lips to Hardison’s forehead. “Should we call it a night, then? Like we were gonna a few minutes ago?”

“Yesssss,” Parker hisses. “Sleeeeeeeep.”

“Mmhm,” Hardison agrees.

“Good. Oh, wait—” Eliot sits up and reaches for his hair. “Gotta take these things out first.”

Parker gasps, her hands immediately flying to cover his. “Wait! No!”

Eliot raises a brow at her. “‘No’? Park, it’s not like I can sleep with these things in. Won’t exactly be comfortable.”

“But they’re so cute.” She gives him a pout. “Can’t you keep them?”

Woof, that look is lethal. Probably the only thing more lethal than her lash-fluttering, truthfully. First she gets those big sad wet kitten eyes going, and then her sweet lower lip sticks out just so, and honestly, Hardison doesn’t know how Eliot’s resisting this. How is he resisting this? He’s zeroed in on their boyfriend’s face for any sign of breakage, any sign at all, but there’s just nothing. There’s nothing. He’s perfectly still and placid, both unmoved and unmoving, and Hardison is just gobsmacked. This is ridiculous. He can’t believe Eliot isn’t just puddling at the sight of—

Eliot finally blinks. “Alright,” he says. “You can do ’em again tomorrow morning before breakfast.”

Parker whoops and speed-punches the air with onetwothreefourfixesix jabs lightning-fast before flopping back onto the bed spread out starfish-wide and looking like the cat that caught the damn cream.

“Hahahaha!” she says. “I win.”

Hallelujah. Hardison’s happy both for her and for himself, because he’d very much like to see Eliot like this again. Although he feels like he should warn her, even though she’s probably already aware of this: “You know this means we’re eating in the room tomorrow morning,” he says. “He’s not gonna wear that out in public.”

“Oh, I know,” Parker replies. “He doesn’t have to. I just wanted to see him like this again.”

Hardison looks back at Eliot to gauge his reaction, and although their boyfriend rolls his eyes as he starts pulling out his pigtails, he’s also smiling. It’s not hard for Hardison to imagine what he might be feeling—anything for their girl, remember? Including letting her put your hair back into ridiculous pigtails for breakfast in bed.

Before Eliot can get them all out himself, Hardison reaches for his hair to take out the last couple of elastics. Once they’re out, he gives his man’s hair a gentle fluff. He also takes a moment to admire the way this makes Eliot’s eyes fall shut, a rumbly sigh leaving his chest like he’s a dog who’s pleased you decided to ruffle their fur.

“Maybe for breakfast tomorrow,” he says, “we can try that bakery at the other end of the block?”

Every time they go by the same sign has been taunting him: SORRY, CLOSED FOR VACATION!! it reads in bubbly lettering. BE BACK ON THE 20TH :) UNTIL THEN, HERE’S WHAT YOU HAVE TO LOOK FORWARD TO! And then it lists the menu they’ll have when they reopen. The two things that always catch Hardison’s eye are the dill and havarti croissant and the chai streusel muffin; all he’s been able to think about ever since the first time they passed the place is how bad he wants to just smash both of those. Well, it’s the 19th today, so tomorrow is his chance.

“Mmm, sounds good,” Eliot replies, eyes still shut. “You’re goin’ t’get it, though—Parker’s gonna be on hair duty, and you’re right, I ain’t leavin’ the room like that once she’s got me all done up.”

Adorably, his words are starting to slur, probably because Hardison hasn’t been able to stop himself from fluffing his hair. He works his hand in harder, nails scraping over Eliot’s scalp, and his chest feels fizzy when that makes Eliot sway slightly and let out another rumbly sigh, this one even rumblier than the last.

“Yeah, yeah, alright,” he says, and he tries to make it sound like it’s some kinda trial, but he actually really likes that idea. To be fair, he will admit that he’s greatly enjoyed the recent mornings when Eliot’s been the one to get breakfast, because there’s truly nothing like getting to sleep in with your beautiful girl until you’re eventually woken up by your beautiful boy greeting you with hot coffee and fresh pastries. It’s one of life’s greatest gifts. But the alternative sounds nice too: Instead it’ll be Eliot sleeping in with Parker, so he’ll get to walk in to see them all curled up together in bed (and maybe if he’s lucky they’ll even be making out, because they’re both early risers and Eliot likes an early-morning smooch), and then he’ll get to start their day on a good note by bringing them treats. Yeah, okay—that sounds goddamn spectacular. Much as he hates being out of bed before either of his loves are out themselves, he’s confident he can make an exception for something like this. Anything for his girl, and anything for his boy too. He’s gonna give them such a good morning that they won’t even know what to do with it.

As he’s still ruffling Eliot’s hair and scritching his scalp, Hardison feels a warmth at his side; he looks down to see that Parker has put her head on his thigh and wrapped her arms around his waist.

“Hooray,” she says, “treats. Yummy.” She rubs her cheek against the fabric of his pajama pants. “Will you get me one of the tiramisu cream puffs? And one of the blueberry cream cheese muffins. And a dark chocolate croissant. Ooooh, and an apple pecan scone.”

Hardison chuckles. “Damn, babe. You memorize the whole menu?” Not that he has any room to talk, seeing as he’s been dreaming about his own croissant and his muffin for days.

Parker scrunches up her nose. “Uh, duh. Breakfast pastries are important. Of course I’ve been keeping track of what I wanted.”

And there you have it. She gets it, and he absolutely can’t fault her. He starts petting her hair as well as Eliot’s because he’s got two hands, y’know, and when Parker makes a soft little mrrp like a happy sleepy cat, Hardison wonders if he could just stay in this moment for the rest of his life. He doesn’t need to sleep, right? Or eat? Or shower, or work, or any of those other dumb things he supposedly “has” to do every day? Nah, none of that is important anymore. His only purpose in life now is to play with Parker and Eliot’s hair so they make their unreasonably precious kitty/puppy noises for the rest of eternity. It ain’t much, but it’s honest work. Amen.

Although maybe everyone should be laying down before they settle in for eternity so that no one falls and hurts themselves. Parker has the right idea, thankfully, but Eliot, on the other hand, is dangerously close to tipping over. Hardison can feel him leaning into his palm with a weightiness that makes him worried the man might just pass right out with no warning at any given moment.

“Hey—how ’bout we all get back under the covers, huh?” he offers.

Parker and Eliot make vague noises of agreement, and with a little bit of shuffling they get settled again. Parker tucks back into his side and Eliot tugs him to rest on his chest, and for a moment, they’re all still and silent. Then, Hardison feels Eliot nudge the top of his head with his chin.

“You gon’ be able t’sleep?” he asks, words still a little stuck together.

Oh, that’s right. He’d been worried about that earlier. Kinda hard to remember something like that when you’ve got the two cutest people in the whole world distracting you with just how cute they are. But not anymore—he’s definitely remembering it now. And not only that, but he’s also now very aware of how very awake he feels. Very, very awake.

To be clear, he does consider telling the truth. He’s not a natural-born liar or anything. The problem with telling the truth, though, is that Eliot sounds so sleepy, and it sounds like Parker might already be snoring behind him, and he can’t keep them from their sleeps. Obviously not. And that is what’ll happen if he tells the truth—Eliot will feel like he has to fix the situation, and Parker will stubbornly stay up out of solidarity because she “can’t let her boys do it all on their own,” as she often says, and all of that would just be unacceptable. Sweet, but unacceptable. They both had comically long days and they deserve their rest.

So Hardison clears his throat and does his best to fib: “Yeah, I’m good,” he says. “I’ll be able to sleep.”

“Liar,” Parker and Eliot both say in spooky stereo. Miss Ma’am was not asleep, then. Great. Now he’s got two people to convince instead of just one.

“I’m good,” he says again, vehement this time. “Y’all need to relax. Close your eyes and start counting sheep or something.”

“He’s deflecting,” Parker mumbles into his thigh like a traitor, tired but still sing-song somehow.

“Oh, trust me—I’m hearin’ it,” Eliot says to her. Then to Hardison he says, “No dice. What’s gonna help, hmm?” Eliot nudges the top of his head with his chin again, and when he says “What can we do?” his voice is silk-soft.

God. Is it terrible that Hardison immediately wants to fold in the face of that question? Like, c’mon. You try telling Eliot Spencer “no” when you’re laid out against him while he’s being all muscly and toasty and solid and asking you in that low, loving voice of his what he can do to help you fall asleep. It’s practically impossible. Downright unimaginable.

Still, Hardison does try one more protest: “You guys are falling asleep,” he says. “I don’t wanna keep you up.”

“I’m awake, darlin’,” Eliot says, and to Hardison’s surprise (and dismay (and guilty sense of relief)), he does sound awake again. It’s probably one of his freaky ninja tricks he taught himself to do a billion years ago. Goddamn him. Can’t make anything easy.

Hardison knows he should insist again. He does, he swears. But then Eliot gets a hand on the back of his neck and starts rubbing gently, and that is, unfortunately, one of his biggest weaknesses, so it’s with a groan of both pleasure and disappointment in himself that he finally says, “Alright, fine. Don’t come cryin’ to me if you’re tired tomorrow, though. Let the record show that I did try to make you both go to bed.”

“It’s, like, nine-thirty,” Parker points out. “It’s not that late.”

Hardison looks at the clock up on the wall. Well, he’ll be—she’s right. Still. It’s the principle of the thing.

“Still. It’s the principle of the thing.”

“You’re so noble,” Eliot says, the words paper-dry, but with an edge of tenderness to them too. “C’mon, then. What might help?”

Hardison considers. Seeing as this isn’t the first time this has happened, the three of them—or really the two of them, he supposes, since Eliot and Parker are the ones who actually remedy these situations—have built up a bit of a repertoire: Eliot might tell him about one of his particularly interesting pre-Leverage jobs, or Parker might rank for him a list of something, such as all her favorite security systems organized by both difficulty and ingenuity; Eliot might sing to him like he did that very first time they did this in Paris, maybe with Parker joining in. Or the two of them might collaborate—they might find something random to yammer about, or—if Hardison’s lucky—they might try to make up a story together. This never ends very well, but Hardison would take their bickering about character motivations and plot sequencing over something genuinely coherent any day.

Now that that’s come to his mind, a story actually sounds good. And it’s something they haven’t tried yet this trip—up until now it’s just been the job re-tellings and the list-making and the singing. He doesn’t want to ask them to come up with something after the day they’ve had, though. Let their brains have a rest. But then what’s the alternative? He’s just starting to cast about for one when he spies Eliot’s book where it was discarded to the duvet earlier. Hey, that’s an idea. He points toward it.

“How about a bedtime story?” he asks.

Eliot hums contemplatively. “Yeah, alright,” he says after a moment. “I could read. I’m a couple chapters in, though,” he warns as pushes himself up to sitting and reaches for his book. “Want me to start over or just pick up where I left off?”

“Mmm… Just pick back up,” Hardison says as he re-adjusts to curl up alongside Eliot’s leg with a head on his hip. “But fill us in on the important stuff when it comes up.” He tries to catch the cover to pick out the title. “What is it?”

Parker’s hand reaches around him to push the front of the book into better lighting. “‘The Haunting of Mrs. Heatherington,’” she reads.

Now that he can see it, the art on the cover is very vintage, a painting of a young woman with a white dress holding a candle as she walks up a flight of stairs into some dark beyond. Behind the young woman, there floats a silvery wisp of a lady who looks an awful lot like her.

Hardison snorts. “You and your haunted love stories,” he says.

“They’re not ‘haunted love stories,’” Eliot fires back, heated. “They’re Gothic romances. Honestly, though, I’m not sure how much you can call this one a romance. These two are— You’ll see. Anyway, my point still stands.” He pokes the top of Hardison’s head. “Educate yourself.”

“Jeez, Mr. Professor, we get it,” Hardison says. He pinches Eliot’s thigh in retaliation, but he’s also smiling. A couple of years ago, if you’d caught Eliot reading something like this, he probably would’ve sworn you to silence under threat of busting both your kneecaps if you breathed a word to anyone. God forbid someone like him read something so “dramatic” and “weird,” of course. Now, though? Now he gives you crap if you give him crap about his little guilty pleasure books. The man likes a melodramatic love story with a few ghosts and also hopefully a creepy, crumbling house thrown in, and that’s simply that. Tell all the people you want about it, but if you give him any guff you’ll have a problem on your hands, and that problem will be an Eliot who’s not gonna take any of your judgemental garbage.

As Eliot flips to where he left off, Hardison finds the crinkly sound of the pages turning surprisingly comforting. He’s tried more than once to convince Eliot to get an e-reader that can hold all the books he could ever dream of, but the man’s stubborn as hell and insists on his thrifted mass-market paperbacks with their white-lined spines and their worn-soft pages and their pre-folded page corners. Usually Hardison doesn’t get it—you can’t futz with the interface on a hard-copy book, nor can you have multiple reads going in the same place (and the thrifted ones can be so musty too)—but he has to admit that this is one thing real books have over digital ones. That paper-flipping sound is pretty darn good. (Hard copies do also mean that you can trade books back and forth, which is what Eliot and Sophie—queen of the haunted love story (sorry, Gothic romance)—have started doing. They’ve practically got their own little book club going, and it’s downright adorable.)

When Eliot finds his spot, he clears his throat. “Okay, here we— Oh, wait.” He leans off to his side and grabs something off the nightstand, and when he comes back, he’s got his glasses on.

God. Dammit. Hardison moans. Behind him, Parker whines.

“Oh, come on, man,” he says. “You’re really gonna do this to us?”

“Do what?” Eliot asks, cool as can be, but Hardison can see the hint of a smirk playing about his mouth. Son of a bitch.

“You know what,” Hardison says. “You know exactly what. Don’t you play dumb with me.”

“Don’t got a clue what you’re talking about,” Eliot replies, still easy-breezy. Then he wiggles his glasses this way and that a little bit to straighten them out before pushing them up his nose, and that’s when that smirk finally wins out.

Unbelievable. The bastard! Oh, he is so in trouble. He’s doing this on purpose. Because if there’s one thing that’s gonna rile him and Parker up, it’s seeing Eliot in his little silver grandpa glasses. They’re just—they’re so precious. It’s almost like they’re too delicate for what you’d expect of someone like him, too sweet and too dorky, and as such that just makes them painfully devastating.

There’s also the fact that by this point in their relationship, Hardison’s got some pretty, uh… Let’s say some “significant” memories that include the glasses. Eliot with the glasses knocked askew and his hair and shirt rumpled after him and Parker got him pinned against Lucille because he’d just been too damn cute that day while he played one of his nerdy office worker roles… Eliot off-duty but still in one of those nerdy get-ups with the glasses pushed up onto the top of his head while he pores over job files with his first couple button-down buttons undone and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows to expose his forearms… Eliot looking up over the rim of the glasses at him while he’s down on his knees, hair pulled back at the nape of his neck with his eyes foggy and his lips parted and—

Okay, not helping with the whole “let’s try to fall asleep” thing. Hardison makes more of a groan than a moan this time, a sound that’s low and pained and clearly displeased, and he attempts to bury his face right into the top of Eliot’s thigh so he doesn’t have to look at anything anymore. At his back, he can feel Parker doing the same thing between his shoulder blades.

“I don’t know what y’all’s problem is,” Eliot says mildly. “I just needed ’em to see. Eyes are starting to hurt.”

“You’re evil,” Parker insists.

“Miss Girl is one hundred percent correct,” Hardison agrees. “You are evil. You’re gonna put those on again tomorrow and we’ve gonna have our way with you, you got that?”

“Yeah,” Parker says. “You’re gonna be all ours. Well, you’re already all ours, but you’ll be all ours even more than usual, and you’re gonna do everything we tell you to do. Capisce?”

When Hardison takes a peek up at Eliot, he sees that his man’s cheeks are once again pink and he’s grinning something stupid, and as much as he minorly hates Eliot in this moment, he also feels a rush of affection go through him. He loves when his boy knows he’s pretty and he ain’t afraid to taunt him and Parker with it; hot and smarmy Eliot is one of his favorite Eliots, that’s for sure. In fact, he’s loving hot and smarmy Eliot so much at the moment that he has to push himself up far enough to be able to reach Eliot for a kiss.

Eliot responds immediately, sighing into the touch of his lips and getting a hand on the back of his neck again but to hold him in place this time, not to massage; he tastes like good oral hygiene, fresh and minty. Hardison’s tempted to just say screw it and chase this impulse for the rest of the night. Maybe some fooling around will tire him out enough for sleep instead.

If he’s honest, though… He really would like a bedtime story. Eliot’s voice is just so lovely to listen to, see, and he’s so comfy squished in bed between his two loves, and as nice as some fooling around sounds, he’d really, really like to just lay here and be cozy. Is that soft to the point of ridiculous? Maybe. If you were to tell fifteen-year-old him that there would eventually come a day where he’d just want to lay in bed with the two hottest people he’s ever met in his life instead of, y’know, the very naked and very sexy alternative, he probably would’ve told you you were outta your mind. It’s true, though. All he wants right now is some snuggly bed time.

So after he gives Eliot a parting nip to his bottom lip, Hardison bumps their foreheads together and says, “Read your damn book, idiot.”

Eliot lets out a breathless laugh. “Yessir. But only as long as that’s a promise about tomorrow,” he adds.

Hardison shakes his head, but he’s thrilled. “Yes, horndog—we promise,” he tells him. “Now shut up and read.” And after he kisses the corner of Eliot’s boyishly lopsided smile, he sinks back down to lay on the mattress, slipping an arm across Eliot’s waist and nestling into his stomach, ready to call it a day.

Before he can get too comfortable, though, there’s a poke to his shoulder.

“’Sup, mama?” he says.

“Hey,” Parker says back. “Can I have a kiss too?”

Like she even needs to ask. In lieu of an answer, Hardison just rolls over onto his other side to face her. Parker wastes no time before swiftly moving in for the kill. She tastes fresh too, a hint of watermelon instead of mint since she buys kids’ mouthwash because she claims it’s “more fun,” and he’s sure not complaining about it. That’s his Parker—clean and a little fruity at the same time, put-together and cool and collected on first blush, but when you dig deeper you find something bright, something playful, something sweet. God, she’s perfect; he loves her. He’s still not sure how he got lucky enough to have her love him back.

When they separate, Parker looks at him with crinkly eyes and damn near all her teeth showing, pleased as all get out. She pecks a few more kisses over his cheeks, and then she’s pushing him back onto his other side, face digging into his spine once more. She loops an arm over his middle too, her hand stealing beneath his shirt to flatten against his stomach. Her fingertips start doodling nonsense patterns, curlicues and swirls and zigzags; they might tickle if they weren’t so soothing.

“Okay, Eliot,” she says. “Read us our bedtime story, please.” Then, immediately: “Oh, wait—one more time. Night night, my boys. Love you love you.”

Sweetiegirl. Always has to stick to tradition. As she should, and as he would hope she would—he loves this one just as much as she does.

“Love you love you, baby,” Hardison returns. “And you, big man.”

“Mmmm. Love you love you both.”

“Yayyyy,” Parker cheers. “Yay love. Okay, Eliot—now read us our bedtime story.”

Eliot chuckles. “Ma’am, yes ma’am,” he says. His hand reaches past Hardison, and Hardison hears another one of those mrrps; then Eliot’s hand shifts to the top of his head, and he doesn’t poke him again—he just strokes a hand over his scalp, fingertips briefly massaging just behind his ear. At that, there’s simply nothing else for Hardison to do other than to sink back down and curl into Eliot’s side.

“Okay,” Eliot says, “let’s see… Here we go: ‘Chapter five. After breakfast, I decided I’d finally try to explore the attic.’ That’s Mrs. Heatherington,” he explains. “‘Charles’—that’s her husband—‘was out, so there was no chance of me running into him, and the staff was busy preparing for that night’s dinner, so no one would notice if I slipped off. I’d take Brutus’—their dog—‘with me just to be safe, but I told myself that I had nothing to be scared of. This was my house now, after all—I was Mrs. Charles Heatherington of Foyle Hall, and there was nothing in this whole place that had the right to frighten me…’”

Eliot goes on like this, narrating Mrs. Heatherington’s adventures in his warm twang. You’d think the contrast between his drawl and the antiquated writing style might be weird, but somehow it works; as he reads, Hardison finds himself growing almost hypnotized by it. Also doesn’t hurt that Eliot’s keeping one hand on top of his head and still tickling his scalp, only stopping briefly when he needs to turn a page. Eliot’s stomach is wonderfully soft beneath his cheek too, rising and falling gently as he breathes. Oh, and of course Parker’s cuddled up to his back as close as she can be, her face against the back of his neck now and her breaths slow and even against his skin as she snores softly, actually asleep this time. Seeing as she’s down for the count she’s not doodling over his stomach anymore, but that’s perfectly alright—her hand’s still warm over his stomach, her fingers occasionally twitching with dreams.

Honestly? Hardison’s not sure he’s ever felt more relaxed in his whole life.

He’s so relaxed, in fact, that he eventually finds himself drifting. It shocks him, especially since Eliot has only made a dozen or so page turns, but he’s afraid to question it too much lest the feeling suddenly disappear. Actually, to that point, he tries not to focus on how sleepy he’s starting to feel, and instead attempts to focus even harder on Eliot’s story. Mrs. Heatherington has long since explored the attic now, in which she’d found an old moth-eaten wedding dress stuffed into an ancient steamer trunk that was tucked into a corner of the room, so hidden by the shadows that it was almost as if someone was trying to hide it; now it’s early evening and she’s at the big dinner the staff had been preparing for all day. Mr. Heatherington had come home just before the guests started to arrive, so she hadn’t had time to question him about the dress even if she’d wanted to, and now she’s sitting at the opposite end of the table from him, trying to participate in the ongoing conversation but continually being distracted by her wonderings about why that dress could’ve been upstairs, and who it could’ve belonged to.

Clearly, the current Mrs. Heatherington isn’t Charles’s first wife. Hardison could tell her that in a second. If he could talk to her, he’d also tell her to run, baby, run, because her new husband’s temperamental moods and furtive, abrupt disappearances to “the lodge” on random afternoons are just glaring red flags. This man is trouble, and this girl—and she is indeed just a girl, Eliot had said she’d barely turned eighteen before they got married (which, like, yikes no matter what, but especially here since the dude’s twice her damn age)—deserves way, way better.

The Heatheringtons and their guests are just about to cap off their dinner with coffee and dessert when Hardison hears a yawn above him. He looks up in time to see Eliot’s jaw stretch wide, his eyes squeezed shut behind his glasses.

“Ready for bed?” he asks him.

Eliot scrubs a hand over his face. “Shoot,” he mumbles. “Knew you weren’t asleep.” He shakes his head as if to clear the cobwebs. “Nah, m’good,” he says, less mumbly. “I can keep goin’.”

“You don’t have to,” Hardison says. “You had a long day. I want you to get some sleep too.”

“I’ll be fine,” Eliot says.

“Eliot,” he insists.

“Hardison,” Eliot insists right back.

Hardison rolls his eyes. “Seriously, man, ain’t that big a deal. I’m most of the way there. I’ll be fine.”

When Eliot looks down at him again, he does so with a frown, one so deep that it makes Hardison feel like he suggested something completely unfathomable. “Yes it is a big deal,” Eliot says. “You gotta get your sleep. That’s more important than me losin’ a few minutes of my own.”

Well, if that don’t just about make Hardison’s heart give out. Another thing you might not think if you were to glance at him and take the surface read of his serious eyes and his scowly expression and his general air of badassery as one-hundred percent true: Eliot Spencer is just about the worst mother hen on this planet and all the rest. It might be annoying if it wasn’t so damn endearing. Never let it be said that the man doesn’t do everything in his power to take care of the people he loves. If you even breathed a word of suggestion to that point, actually, he’d probably kick your ass all the way to Neptune.

As before, Hardison really, really tries to hold his ground. But Eliot’s got on The Glasses™️, y’know, and behind them the blue of his eyes is softened by how sleepy he’s become, and his hair’s all ruffled and fluffy from the pigtails and from his own handiwork earlier, and it’s just impossible, really, for a man to maintain his composure in the face of that. If you wanna judge Hardison for letting it crumble him, how about you try surviving the same thing, huh? Yeah. He didn’t think so.

With a decidedly defeated slump to his shoulders, Hardison hangs his head. “Alright,” he says. “You win.”

“Ha-ha.” Eliot’s laugh of victory is snotty, but also he chucks Hardison under the chin so he can tip his face up and kiss his forehead. “Get back down there, sweetheart.”

“That’s what she said,” Hardison mumbles, and his own laugh gets caught behind his closed lips when Eliot surprises him with a kiss on the mouth. Then he’s following orders, slipping back down to lay with his head on Eliot’s stomach/hip zone, and he snuggles in close as he hears his wonderful man pick his book back up.

“Alright,” Eliot says, “where were we… They said goodbye to the guests, yadda yadda… A-ha, okay. ‘With the last of the guests gone,’” he continues, “‘Charles and I finally retired to our room. On the walk there my resolve threatened to waver, but I thought to myself the same thought I’d had earlier about exploring the attic: I was his wife. I was Mrs. Charles Heatherington, and I ought not to be afraid of my own husband. We would have a simple conversation about the dress, that was all, and when we were done, oh, how we’d laugh. “What a queer thing to still be up there,” Charles would say. “There was no reason to keep that dress—it’d been a costume, you see, a costume that one of the staff had worn for our yearly autumn ball. Everyone was expected to dress up for those, even the staff…” And then he’d tell me all about last year’s ball, and we’d laugh some more, and everything would be fine, just fine in the end…’”

From there, Hardison starts to lose track of the words as he begins to drift once again. The one semi-solid thought he manages to have is that they should ask Eliot to read to them again tomorrow night, assuming he doesn’t mind sharing his book. His current drifting isn’t at all an indication of his feelings about the story—he’s actually gotten sucked in, and he wants to know what happens next. That’s his last thought, though. After that, his mind floats out to sea, bobbing amongst the clouds and stars reflected upon the water, well on its way to Dreamland. The knowledge that he has his Parker tucked up against his back keeping him warm and safe and his Eliot lulling him to sleep with his low, steady voice is the perfect gentle breeze to nudge him ever closer to shore.

Just before his boat kisses the sand and he loses himself to the void, he catches a few final things: The carefully quiet sound of a book being set on a nightstand, followed by the soft click-click of glasses being folded up. The bedside lamp snicks off, and everything goes dark. Fabric rustles as the other body beside his settles down fully onto the mattress and pulls the sheets up over itself. Shifting, and then an arm comes to lay over his waist, just next to the other arm that’s laid over him. Lips against his cheekbone; a forehead against his.

“You’re almost there,” a voice whispers. “Sleep tight, sweetheart.” The forehead presses more firmly against his own.

And then quiet.

Inexplicably, Hardison’s throat goes tight. Or maybe it’s perfectly explicable. Regardless—his throat tightens. Something tells him that if he wasn’t so close to unconsciousness, his eyes would probably be prickling too. And god, when he’s awake again tomorrow? He’s gonna kiss Eliot Spencer into the mattress. And Parker. That’s what happens when you date two people—you’ve gotta keep things even. And afterward he’s gonna buy Eliot and Parker everything in that bakery, and then he’s gonna keep them in bed until the very second that they have to leave and meet Nate and Sophie in the lobby, and if it turns sexy, great, if it doesn’t, equally great (for the morning, at least—tomorrow night after work, when they’ve got all the time in the world, him and Parker have a promise to fulfill for their boy. Maybe even one that’ll iron out whatever had Eliot briefly upset and clearly down on himself earlier). Either way, all he knows is that he’s not gonna let them go, not for anything. He won’t let them get more than arm’s length away.

His loves. His two loves of his life. How he managed them, he’ll never know; probably best not to question, honestly. He’s lucky enough to have them, lucky enough to have them take care of him—such good care, the best care in the world—and that’s all that matters.

Finally, Hardison’s boat bumps up against the shore. Amazing that he made it, but that’s another thing it’s probably best not to question. That’s just the power of cuddles and a haunted love story, baby. Into the back of his neck, Parker nuzzles her nose and lets out an exhale so soft it’s almost a purr; Eliot’s knee nudges against his own, and his arm settles more securely over his hip. Hardison does his best to take the moment and wrap it around his shoulders, to let it blanket him and keep him protected.

He steps onto the sand. The world fades darker and darker around him, stars winking out one by one, the sound of lapping waves growing fainter and fainter. He takes another step, and then another. The last star disappears, leaving him in darkness.

Deeply—and all through the night—he sleeps.