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He fell back to the ground, and since they were still cuffed together, Hardison fell on top of him. They stared at each other for a long second, and then suddenly they were kissing fiercely, Hardison’s free hand tangling in his hair, his own finding smooth skin at Hardison’s waist —
Eliot woke with a rush just when it was getting really good. He stared up at the ceiling, heart thudding, and shouted “Dammit!” into the empty room.
***
A cold shower was really the only option, and Eliot stood under it trying to talk himself into believing this was nothing more than a sex dream about a colleague. It happened sometimes, and it was always awkward, especially when you saw them the next day and couldn’t shake the feeling that something had happened between you. Awkward, but it would pass, it always did. You just stayed professional and let it fade away on its own. That’s all this was. That was all he’d have to do.
***
What was throwing him, he decided as he toweled off, was that he thought he’d already gotten well past this with Hardison. He’d gotten under Eliot’s skin from day one, it was just annoying, the way he went around looking like a Roman sculpture and talking like a kid on a radio set who hadn’t left his basement for days. He’d spent the whole first job playing 'Would I or Wouldn’t I' in his head, and the sheer dazzling competence of the man had landed him on yes I would by the end of it, but he wasn’t disappointed when his half-joking trial balloon went nowhere. It was a complicated attraction, and Eliot liked his affairs simple.
Then the one-time job turned into a regular gig, and it became a moot point: he had a very strict rule about fucking people he worked with. He’d tuned in hard to the annoyance side of his reaction to Hardison, and successfully doused that crush in pretty short order.
Sure, over time Eliot had slowly gone from “I wanna slap him” to “I’d die for him AND I wanna slap him,” but that was fine. He’d die for any of them, and not just because they were his crew and that was more or less his job. He loved them fiercely and individually. He loved Nate, teetering on the knife-edge between his best and worst selves, always brilliant and never more than a few falls from complete destruction. He loved Sophie, seeing and caring for them all with an attentive kindness that she’d only lately started to show toward herself. He loved Parker, pushing her own way through the world, tiny, disruptive, and unstoppable, the only bullet he’d ever liked. They were his people, and if protecting them wasn’t the noble calling he’d dreamed of as a kid, it was the first job he’d had in many, many years that he could do with his whole heart behind it.
***
He fixed himself a sandwich, because he did not trust his subconscious if he tried to go back to sleep. He loved all of them, so it was fine that he loved Alec Hardison too, and did he really need to think about it any further than that? It was just a sex dream, and really it was surprising he hadn’t had more of them over the years. The man’s looks hadn’t changed, and Eliot’s eyes worked fine.
Something totally different to focus on, that was what he needed. He cued up a language lesson: he was working on Turkish now. He got three phrases in before his uncooperative brain tossed up a thought: it’s because he made you go back.
Eliot paused the lesson. Why was his heart pounding again? Yeah, Hardison had insisted they go back and stop the militia, even though their escape route was barrelling past them on the tracks. Eliot had been very carefully not thinking about the implications of what he saw and smelled back at the militia camp, because priority one was getting Hardison out of there safe. Thinking he could save everyone — that had been one of the very first illusions to shatter after Eliot joined the force, and he didn’t let it bother him any more.
He didn’t let it bother him, he just concentrated on saving the people it was his job to save — but he still felt the tension of it, and he’d never expected Hardison to be the one to make that tension break. Hardison had decided that they were going back. Hardison wouldn’t let Eliot get him clear at the expense of whoever those bombs were meant for.
It changed something between them. He’d always respected Hardison on Hardison’s terms, but today for the first time he’d started to respect him on Eliot’s terms. And apparently, because it was happening again, apparently his body was channeling that new respect straight into arousal.
***
It really didn’t matter, he told himself in his second cold shower of the night. Whatever feelings he was having, and however long they stuck around, there wasn’t anything to act on. Hardison had still never given any signs that he was into guys in general, or Eliot in particular. And Eliot still had a strict rule about fucking people he worked with, especially people he worked with and loved. And besides, there was Parker.
In the bracing clarity of cold water, Eliot questioned for the first time the weird relief he felt every time he caught the sparks between Hardison and Parker. He could maybe admit now, since he was admitting things, that it was partly because it kept him safe, made an even more solid reason for him to never consider pursuing Hardison. He wanted them both happy way more than he wanted anything for himself. They’d find their way together, eventually, and Eliot was going to be truly from-the-bottom-of-his-heart happy for them, and if there were still some complicated ripples in his feelings about it, nobody had to know that but Eliot.
It was all going to be fine.