75 Godiva Street, Monday Afternoon

[geniuswithasmartphone]

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.]

Comments

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"I don't either," Hardison said with a sigh. "Cause, I mean, the danger ain't you, man."

Wouldn't stop him from flinching a few times over the next few days, but at least his head knew that much.

"So stop thinkin' stupid thoughts, cause I know you are. It ain't you."

He just wished that argument didn't sound like something straight out of a Lifetime Original movie about spousal abuse.

[vdistinctive]

"Except it is," Eliot said. Because -- yup. Of course he was doing this. "We're not talkin' about the times I get turned into someone else, here. I was like that as a kid. I have all that inside of me, every day."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Yeah, but you know what else you got inside you every day?" Hardison asked. "Control. More control than anybody I ever met. Enough control that we planned a whole con around it. Control earned in sweat, blood, an' tears an' ain't none of those exaggerations."

[vdistinctive]

Eliot stepped into Hardison's space, watching for a flinch.

"Fat lot of good that does us when this damn place is all about stripping control away."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

Hardison tried to stand his ground. He did. He knew the point Eliot was making, after all.

He still flinched. Small, quickly controlled, but he wasn't stupid enough to believe that Eliot didn't notice.

"Then we gotta figure somethin' out. We ain't never found a rule yet we couldn't figure out how to break. The important thing is that we figured it out together."

[vdistinctive]

Eliot nodded a little and stepped back again. "That a 'no', then?" he asked quietly. "On the clearing out for awhile?"

Because he wasn't sure how often he could see that flinch and still keep that firm handle on his control. He held himself back from breaking down as often as he did from lashing out.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

Maybe the breaking down would help?

Hardison hesitated. "You do what you feel you gotta do for your own peace of mind," he said quietly. "But you ain't gotta go for me. In fact, I'd rather you didn't. But I'd understand if you felt you had to."

[vdistinctive]

Eliot was pretty thoroughly convinced that couldn't be true.

"If I did, the island'd probably find some other way to smack you, anyway," he said.

Why leave when he could self-flagellate just by looking at his boyfriend's bruises?

[geniuswithasmartphone]

Eliot could be very wrong sometimes, though!

"Also, you'd be leavin' me an' Parker alone in a house with a half-demolished kitchen to fend for ourselves," he reminded. "We'd probably end up starvin' to death with scurvy."

Beat.

"Well, not scurvy. I still have my orange soda."

[vdistinctive]

The strangled sound that came out of Eliot's throat could potentially be mistaken for a laugh. "She didn't steal that, huh? 'Least teen Parker had some taste."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"She just knows some things are worth more than the dollar value assigned to them," Hardison declared because that definitely sounded like a Parker conclusion, yes.

[vdistinctive]

Yeah, Eliot just raised his eyebrows at that.

The only things Parker might think were worth more than the dollar value assigned to them were actual dollars.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"You don't know," Hardison grumbled. "Coulda happened."

In the Upside Down, maybe.

"Besides, aren't you supposed to be worryin' about breakfast an' makin' sure I don't expire from malnutrition or somethin'?" Oooh, a deflection! No one ever saw through those!

[vdistinctive]

"What am I, your food slave?" Eliot asked, even as he moved into the kitchen proper (finally) to scope out the damage for himself. "You can make a call to the diner as well as I can."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Reparations," Hardison drawled. "Besides, you let me order from the diner, you get whatever I decide to order from the diner."

Nutritional value need not apply.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot kind of wanted to make a crack about Hardison being a grown up now who should eat grown-up food, but then he caught sight of the bruises again and just winced.

"Fine. Then I'm orderin' you an egg-white omelette. With spinach."