geniuswithasmartphone | 75 Godiva Street, Monday Afternoon

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75 Godiva Street, Monday Afternoon

Another weird weekend and Hardison wasn't entirely sure what to do with it. Being a teen seemed a lot more fraught than being a little kid and that wasn't even taking getting beaten up by a tiny version of his boyfriend into account.

But that wasn't the main issue on his mind right now. Hardison was looking at the howling wasteland that was their kitchen and shaking his head. Tiny!Parker had kindly left some of his sodas behind during her burglary spree, but not much else.

"How'm I supposed to get breakfast?" Hardison asked Val, who was sitting by his feet. "No bowls, no fridge--I'm pretty sure she even stripped the countertops!"

Hopefully she hadn't gotten very far with their belongings, or Eliot was going to have to remodel their kitchen. Again.

[Open! Will pickup pings when I'm conscious again.]

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Eliot had spent the weekend hiding out on the preserve, which was thankfully much less crowded than the damn beach around here. On Saturday, that was because he was a broody, emotional mess who couldn't be trusted around people. On Sunday -- it was because he was a broody, emotional mess who couldn't be trusted around people and old enough to know better. But as tempting as it was to just hide out as a hermit for the foreseeable future, he knew he had to face the music eventually. So he headed home.

Plus, he really needed to wash his hair.

He stopped dead in the doorway when he saw Hardison in the kitchen. What was left of the kitchen. Maybe he could claim that he was freezing up because of Parker's thoroughness. Hardison wouldn't believe it for a moment, but he could try. . . .

Parker was looking just a little sheepish. Because while she was proud of her teenage self, she kind of thought the guys would be... less than pleased right now.

"Take out for breakfast?"

"I know the loss of all that Williams-Sonoma is a damn tragedy," Hardison said without turning around, "but even that ain't enough to make you go all still like that."

See? Eliot had been right.

"Sup?" His voice was carefully neutral, giving nothing about his emotional state away. In part because he didn't even know what his emotional state was right now.

Yeah, Hardison sounding that level and neutral was never a good sign. The man flipped out over the tiniest things -- he only went quiet like that when things were major. Eliot closed his eyes with a wince, wishing he could find his own teenage self and kick him in the ass.

"You want me to clear out for awhile," he said, his own voice just as even. "I'll understand."

Eliot gave a small nod, and exhaled through his nose in what might almost be called a laugh, if the circumstances were different.

"Real breakfast," he said. "I'm guessing you ain't ate much more than ice cream in awhile."

"Think we're gonna need takeout for a lotta meals, little mama," Hardison said, reaching out to draw her into a hug. He really needed a hug right now, and she, at least, was safe. She wasn't an emotional minefield waiting to happen. "You did not kid around when it came to this place, did you?"

"Dammit Eliot," Hardison said with a sigh, "Just gotta put it all out there up front. Can't let a man figure stuff out in his own time."

He turned around finally, looking at Eliot. Val also ran over to him, sniffing in excitement, cataloguing all the time he'd been in the Preserve. The bruises hadn't gone away when he'd gotten older, and the cut on his lip pulled when he smiled a bit at her antics--though it faded fast enough when he looked at Eliot again.

"Let's just get through a conversation and breakfast before we start making any big decisions, okay?"

It wasn't a yes?

It wasn't a no, either.

Eliot was pretty sure trying to talk about anything else first would just make everything worse, but he didn't really feel like he was in any sort of position to turn Hardison down. So he just nodded, shoving his hands into his pockets as he came into the kitchen proper.

"Parker take all the food?" he asked. "Or just the stuff with processed sugar?"

No worries, Hardison had meant having a conversation about the weekend. There was no way he could focus for long on talking about anything else. But there was no way they could talk at all if Eliot wasn't here to talk to.

"I ain't even had a chance to check," he replied. "Just had to take a second to appreciate the scope of her ambition."

Eliot rubbed the back of his neck. "I, uh. Mighta encouraged her a little. She was stealin' from the diner, and teen-me kinda figured the big fancy house's kitchen was a better target."

Well. There. At least 'teen Eliot' had now been brought up.

Hardison laughed, but it was a tired sound. "Teen-you made a lot of choices over the weekend, didn't he?"

Particularly, ones that Eliot would come to regret as soon as he came back to his senses as an adult.

"Maybe we'll be lucky an' Parker ain't got too far with anything. Some on-island safehouse somewhere?"

For someone who'd intended to talk, he sure wasn't saying much.

"Was tryin' to protect small businesses," Eliot said. Because not everything he'd done as a teenager had been terrible.

Just most of it.

"One of the abandoned warehouses, I'd guess." Eliot was just going to follow Hardison's lead, here. "It'd take time to set up fences for all this stuff, and she wouldn't know what was on the other end of the causeway."

"If it helps any, I offered to trade her all the laptops and electronics in the house for leads on fencin' the cellphones she stole," Hardison said, shaking his head. "I wonder how many were ours an' how many she lifted off folks on the island."

And then he turned and abruptly strode over to Eliot, wrapping his arms around him and resting his head against his chest. "Don't argue'," he said, holding Eliot tight. "I just--I need this okay? I can need a hug from my boyfriend even if he's the reason I need a hug right now anyway."

Eliot stiffened automatically, but didn't pull away. He slowly relaxed as Hardison spoke, and wrapped his arms around Hardison in return.

"I'm so sorry." His voice broke, and he didn't even try to stop it. "I done some shitty things in my time but that --"

Well. It wasn't worst thing he'd done, but at the moment, it felt that way.

"I know," Hardison murmured, voice muffled by Eliot's shoulder. "I know it wasn't you--but at the same time it was you, you know? An' I shouldn't be mad or upset or afraid, but..."

"Don't do that," Eliot said. "I wish that wasn't inside of me, but I can't -- denying it's there doesn't help."

"But I just hate that whenever this island twists you up somehow, it comes out for me," Hardison said quietly, remembering the time with Gaunt, too.

Eliot flinched away, stepping out of Hardison's arms to lean against the wall, facing away. He remembered Gaunt all too well, too.

"You're the one who's always there."

"An' I don't ever not wanna be because I'm scared that it's gonna lead to another clinic trip," Hardison said, mirroring Eliot's body language and leaning against a cabinet that was missing all of its fixtures.

"So . . . what're we gonna do?" Eliot asked. "I can't stop the island from turnin' me into a scared teenager."

Because that was the thing, what Caleb had hit nail on the head: teen!Eliot had been terrified. And even now, Eliot wasn't handling fear super well, when it came to his partners.

"There were chips," Parker admitted, shifting from foot to foot. "At Steve and Tony's party." She paused and bumped into him, watching him closely. "Did you eat? After I ran away?"

"Shit, man, I dunno," Hardison said, scrubbing the side of his face. "I don't think any number of notes sayin', Eliot, you grow up an' accept yourself an' these fine-ass people an' y'all are gonna live happily ever after would have fixed this." He felt hungover and he hadn't even drunk anything. "An' it's not like I didn't push, I know that."

"I was a teenage boy, darlin'," Eliot said, leaning into that bump a little. "It takes a lot to keep 'em from eating."

Clinging to Hardison wasn't something she usually did; but letting him cling, then burrowing in, was. And it was good to have tall-confident-known Hardison back. "I had plans for how to make money off the house, too. Eventually." She sighed into his neck, and whispered, "Are you okay?"

Yeah, notes from his 'future self' were never going to be super reassuring for young Eliot. At least not after the age of about 13.

"I'da gone off on someone by the end of the week," Eliot said, hand coming up automatically and finding -- nothing. The wolf necklace, the one Hardison had given him to replace the long lost claw, was sitting safe and sound on his bedroom dresser. Assuming teen!Parker hadn't stolen it. "I could play polite around grown-ups alright, but I wasn't exactly known for my self control at that age."

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75 Godiva Street, Monday Afternoon

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