Work Text:
The first text message alert vaguely registered to Aimee’s sleeping brain, but not enough to actually wake her up. It wasn’t the repeating ringtone of the emergency signal Hardison had written a program for, and as such, could be anything. From Hardison forgetting what time it was to Quinn knowing and not caring about things like time zones. The second reminder beep did wake her up though. At least it woke her up enough that she reached for her phone, although she did it without opening her eyes, patting the bedside table blindly until she found it.
Forcing her eyes open, she immediately closed them again, blinking against the sudden brightness of the screen. Squinting, she tapped in her passcode mostly from muscle memory. Her vision was still blurry when she managed to make out what the text said, but the questionable state of her vision and her consciousness wasn’t why it didn’t make very much sense.
Quinn
PSA- Wearing assless chaps results in embarrassingly painful sunburn
Aimee rolled her eyes, annoyance waking her up a little more, and flipped over onto her back, holding her phone above her face as she texted back.
Aimee
All chaps are assless.
She didn’t have to wait very long for a reply, but it wasn’t from Quinn.
Eliot
Ignore him. Was hoping he didn’t wake you up. Tequila. Took his phone.
Aimee closed her eyes, resting her phone face down on her chest, and considered just going back to sleep. It was 4am after all. But she’d have to be up in a couple of hours anyway, and there had to be a story. She sighed, deep and weary, with nothing but the shadows to bear witness, and mentally calculated the time difference.
Aimee
It’s barely even dark there. What have you two gotten into this time?
Eliot
Long story.
Eliot
Okay not long. There was a festival. Decided he needed to “blend in.” Not my fault.
Aimee let out a snort, the sudden mental image of Eliot in nearly nothing but chaps more amusing than he’d probably appreciate. Especially because in her head he was murderously unhappy about it. She knew not even Parker or Hardison could have talked him into that though, let alone Quinn. Then she snorted again at the thought of Parker and Hardison finding out about this.
The thought brought her up short. She fumbled in her haste to exit out of Eliot’s message and go back to Quinn’s. When she got it open, she face palmed, phone and all. Of course. Of course he’d sent that as a group text. She could hear his logic now. You couldn’t make a public service announcement to just one person. What was the point in that?
At least this was his personal phone. Not that the burners he used for work had a long list of contacts in them. But that still meant that it had gone out to a list of people that included Parker, Sophie, Peggy, Maggie, and Tara. She was never going to hear the end of this at the next ‘Girl’s Night’. Hell, she could probably expect the first text or phone call to give her shit any minute now. At least she’d realized it was a group text before she’d sent anything personal. She flicked back to her conversation with Eliot.
Aimee
Pics or it didn’t happen.
Aimee
Also I hope you realize he texted EVERYBODY. Including Sophie and Nate.
She could practically see Eliot pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. She almost, almost felt bad for him. She had no doubt that Quinn, drunk and sunburnt, had been whiny to begin with, and was now pouting about his phone being taken away. Giving it back to him would just encourage him though, because Quinn and tequila was an amusing, but somewhat risky mix. Which meant Eliot was going to be left fielding replies when people texted him because Quinn wasn’t responding.
Not that Aimee had a lot of room to talk herself when it came to tequila. (None. She had no room to talk. But she wasn’t quite as ridiculous as Quinn. At least she knew better than to group text all of her contacts, no matter how drunk she was. And Parker’s hair might have gotten singed, but that part wasn’t really her fault and nobody had died. Peggy had gotten to beat up some asshole. Tara had found a handsome man with questionable morals to debauch. All in all it had been a pretty successful night. Technically, they’d made it home in time for church on Sunday (except for Tara). Not that any of them went to church).
Aimee grinned as the next text message came in, followed by a picture.
Eliot
Remember you asked for this.
She clicked on the picture to make it bigger and cringed before almost immediately bursting into laughter. Like she’d almost felt bad for Eliot, she almost felt bad for Quinn. He was flat on his stomach on a hotel bed, with the most ridiculous sunburn lines she’d ever seen. It was clear he’d been wearing nothing but a thong and a pair of chaps. Well, if she hadn’t known what she was looking at, she might have had a hard time figuring it out, which just made the whole thing funnier, frankly. He was right; it did look embarrassingly painful. All of him was a little pink, but his ass (where it had been bare) was a particularly angry shade.
He was also a little bit shiny. Probably owing to the half empty bottle of aloe next to him. She didn’t know what he’d been thinking. Just because he had the legs and abs, (and a decent enough ass, though Eliot won in that regard), to maybe get away with the look, didn’t mean he could get away with letting it all hang out without sunscreen. She thought about the unusually shaped tan lines he’d have once the sunburn itself had faded and started laughing even harder.