Chapter Text
“Eliot Spencer!” called a voice across the bar. “Wow. Of all the gin joints in all — Portland.”
The man seemed harmless: normal, cheerful, no hidden menace in his voice. Which was why it was so interesting, the way Eliot’s shoulders tensed at the greeting. Like they did in the first moment when he sensed a threat in the room. Hardison didn’t even know he noticed that kind of thing until it showed up here, in the brewpub, on a relaxed evening where their mark and anyone connected with him was a hundred miles away. Just seeing that tension put Hardison on alert, made him run a quick inventory: the back was locked and dark, Parker was across the room. If anything went down, the other patrons were the only worry.
But instead of shifting into fighting mode, Eliot put on a warm smile before turning around. “James. How ya been? What’ll you have? On the house.”
“I’ll take an old fashioned. Is this your place? I had no idea! Never expected to see you settle somewhere like this... that must be quite a story.”
“Yeah,” said Eliot, glancing sideways at Hardison. “Yeah, it is. What about you, what brings you here?”
“Conference,” said the man, wrinkling his nose. “This is a nice surprise, though. If you happen to be free later...” In any other context Hardison would have been sure of what that tone meant, and he watched in astonishment as Eliot swallowed, nearly fumbled with a glass, and very carefully did not look anywhere in Hardison’s direction.
“Uh. I’m not sure. We’re shortstaffed this week and I’ve got — listen, sorry, I’d love to catch up, I’ve just got to check on something in the back...”
The visitor waved the glass Eliot had just handed him. “Say no more. Duty calls.” He looked after Eliot a little wryly, and sipped his drink.
Hardison wanted a drink himself. More, he wanted someone else to see what he was seeing. By virtue of furious hisses, he got Parker to come over.
“That guy knows Eliot,” he whispered to her. They both looked the stranger over. He was dark-haired, handsome, expensive suit. Not a bruiser, and certainly not someone from Eliot’s hometown.
“Business contact?” Parker said. “Maybe a former boss, from before Nate?”
Hardison shook his head. “He doesn’t tend to like his former bosses. And they seemed friendly. Maybe... more than friendly.”
“What do you mean?”
“How do you think Eliot would act if a girl he used to go out with walked in here unexpectedly? Someone he liked, but wasn’t sure he wanted to see again.”
Parker frowned. “I don’t know. How would he act?”
Hardison turned his back on the bar and gave a quick, hushed pantomime of Eliot’s manner. “Hey, how you been? What’ll you have? I’d love to catch up, I just need to go check on something...”
Parker grinned. “Oh yeah. That’s exactly how he’d be.” She looked over Hardison’s shoulder. “So you think he and that guy...”
“Is that crazy? Tell me that’s crazy.” He wanted her to say yes, there was no way Eliot had ever been involved with a man, he was being weird and everything could go back to normal. Or he wanted her to say no, it made total sense, in fact she’d suspected for some time...
Parker just shrugged. “We could ask him,” she said.
“No. No way. Eliot would kill us.”
“I meant we could ask Eliot.”
“How we gonna ask him that?” Parker narrowed her eyes at him like he’d said something nonsensical. And she was right, it was a simple question, only the thought of asking it made Hardison want to disappear into the floor. “You know what? Never mind. It’s probably nothing, I’m probably reading too much into it.”
She gave him a look he knew well, a careful scan of his face and body language, making sure she was taking in all the data and drawing the right conclusion. Sometimes it made him feel cared-for, covered, warm. Sometimes, like now, it made him feel uncomfortably exposed.
“Why are you so anxious?” she asked. Before Hardison could think how to answer that, the stranger at the bar stood up and pulled his wallet out. Scribbling something on a bill, he finished his drink and left. Parker flashed a grin at Hardison and strolled casually to where the man had been sitting.
“He left his number on it,” she reported back. “You want it? You could find out who he is and maybe how he knows Eliot.”
“Eliot would kill us,” said Hardison. “Besides, it’s his private business. I don’t even know why I cared. We should just leave it alone.”
Parker was plainly unconvinced, and no wonder. He made up a reason to go back into the office, and even he knew his casual tone was a failure. His heart was hammering. It felt like the room had turned upside down, only instead of everything crashing to the ceiling, several things were falling neatly into place, like Tetris blocks, clicking into the spot where they had always belonged.
***
Parker slipped into the kitchen after the rest of the staff had left, and Eliot was doing prep for the next day. He handed her a knife without speaking; he’d established the rule months ago that if you wanted to hang out while he was working, you were going to be working too. She began slicing yesterday’s bread into small, even cubes. “Did you used to go out with that guy who was here earlier?”
He paused, holding an empty eggshell over a bowl. “What guy?”
“The one who left his number and a 60% tip.”
Eliot began whisking the eggs rapidly. “Um. Yeah. Yeah I did. Long time ago.”
Parker nodded. “Are you going to call him?”
“I dunno. Thinking about it.” Spices and milk went into the bowl. Parker watched Eliot curiously. She’d come to ask him in the first place because something about it was making Hardison anxious, and clearly it was making Eliot anxious too. Why, she couldn’t tell. The pieces she had didn’t fit together in a way that made sense, so she must be missing one. She slid the bread into the pan that was prepared for it, and waited.
“Are you surprised?” Eliot asked after a long time. “That I dated — him?”
Parker considered. “A little I guess. He looks more like the kind of people we take down. Very expensive suit.”
Eliot laughed explosively. “He’s a doctor. I guess there’s a conference in town — he’s not a suit.” He poured the egg mixture into the pan. “I meant because he’s a guy.”
“Oh,” said Parker. “No. Why would I be?”
Eliot blinked, then shrugged. “Can’t answer that. People are, usually.” Normal people, he meant, and she filed that away in her vast catalogue of ‘normal people’ reactions. It was useful when she had to play one.
Eliot covered the pan and put it in the refrigerator. Still with his back to her, he said, “Does Hardison know?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing much.” She watched as he piled dishes into the sink and scrubbed furiously. “Why are you and Hardison so freaked out?”
Eliot paused, then scrubbed harder. “He’s freaked out?”
“I don’t know. He was being weird. You’re both being weird. I don’t like it.” The way the three of them normally understood each other, trusted each other, was essential for their job, but to Parker it was more than that. It was the water she swam in: it was what let her feel for the first time in her life like she could breathe, just breathe, instead of flopping and gasping when other people were near. Something was disturbing that water now, and she needed it to go away.
Eliot sighed. “Guys I work with — they don’t like to know. That I sometimes date other guys. It’s why I don’t talk about it.”
“It’s Hardison. What does Hardison have to do with the guys you used to work with?”
He shook his head. “You’re the one who said he was freaked out.”
“So are you.”
“I’m not freaked out. I just... I didn’t want it to be a thing. What I do in my off time — it doesn’t have anything to do with the two of you.”
She could have said a lot of things to that, starting with the very logical ‘Then why does it matter whether we know or not?’ But he was lying when he said he wasn’t freaked out, and it was very clear that she was missing a key piece of this, so she didn’t know what she could say that would actually help.
She wished Sophie was in town. Sophie would know what was happening and how to fix it. But after Sophie, the person she trusted most with people stuff was Hardison. Whatever was going on, he wouldn’t let it get in the way of their being a team. “Just talk to Hardison. Figure it out.”
“Yeah,” said Eliot. He sounded like he’d rather face down an entire room full of Russian mobsters, but she knew he’d do it.