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Sometimes things got to be too much.
This is true of all of them, honestly. In Alec's most poetic terms; they'd all seen some shit. So, not all the time, not even most of the time because you'd struggle to find tougher offspring-of-possibly-very-nice-women around, but sometimes, things got to be too much.
Sometimes, Nate looks a little too longingly at the whisky bottle (and sometimes he doesn't just look).
Sometimes, Sophie will just blink at you when you call her name, like she can't quite remember who that's supposed to be.
Sometimes, Elliot will up and vanish for a few days and by the time Alec has started narrowing down his location he'll be back with nothing to show for it but bruised knuckles and looser shoulders (and occasionally news reports of mysterious beatdowns that left local gang members hospitalised two towns over).
Sometimes, Parker gets high. No wait, not recreationally, literally high. She'll find somewhere quiet and dark and close-quartered around her. Somewhere with only enough room for one. Somewhere to not-people for a while, because sometimes people were difficult.
Sometimes, Alec will disappear online, go to all the places he isn't big enough or strong enough to get into, but he's damn smart enough. And then, once he's reassured himself enough of his own god-like, amazing, shiny brilliance (read: importance to team) he'll surface back into the world, just as bullet-proof and brash as ever and with a couple of new stories of bad dudes he'd fucked over with the power of limitless wifi.
Working around each other's triggers as a team was easy at first; you ignored them. They were all people that had survived a lot longer on their own than they had together and their coping strategies reflected that. Gradually, though, as the walls started to come down... Well, maybe nothing really changed, looking at their interactions, but a growing awareness was there, and the unspoken support always offered when you needed it.
Which is all well and good, found-family tropes for miles, but when you were in a couple... Alec stared up at the vent over his head, trying to convince himself that he wasn't going to have a panic attack about this. The vent stared back, and it didn't seem convinced. Alec took a long breath through his nostrils. Held it. Released. Repeat. He very firmly told himself that what he was smelling wasn't grave dirt. They were three stories up in his apartment, there wasn't a cemetery around for miles. There was no grave dirt in his apartment.
It was three o'clock in the morning. Parker needed help. She had woken up silent, small and shaking... and now she was in a vent. Alec was not in the vent, because every time he got close he saw the dark, enclosed space and... nope.
It was three o'clock in the morning. Parker needed help and Alec had been convulsively wiping non-existent grit off of his face for the last five minutes.
It was three o'clock in the morning. Parker needed help. So did Alec.
He called Elliot.
Later, after Elliot had arrived and pulled Alex into a hug (he was safe, he was safe and he could breathe again, Parker had saved him and Elliot had held him together, he was safe) and got enough of his body into the vent to reach in and hold Parker's hand for a while, they all collapsed on the sofa. Elliot sitting like a normal person, Parker curled sideways into as small a ball as she could make herself with her head on Elliot's lap. She had one arm slung around Alec's chest where he was sitting on the floor, leaning back against Parker's curled knees and keeping an anchoring hand wrapped around Elliot's ankle, breathing just as steadily as he knew how.
Nobody said anything for a while. For his part, Alec wasn't sure what to say. 'Thanks' was what he'd said to Elliot 10 hours ago when he brought him a coffee. The same term couldn't possibly apply now.
So he said 'stay' instead.
They ended up in the same bed that night, curled around each other and shivering. Alec finally fell asleep with one of Elliot's hands firmly held in his and it didn't seem strange until he woke up the next morning with empty palms. Alec and Parker sat up in their bed and looked at the place between them where a third person had been just hours before. The bed seemed bigger with just the two of them occupying it. They didn't talk about that either.
It became a thing. Sort of. A thing they didn't talk about. Without anyone ever mentioning it, early morning emergency calls evolved into early evening requests to hang out after particularly bad days. And then after just sort of rubbish days.
Alec would text 'I'm bored come entertain me' or Elliot would call and say he'd accidentally made too much food, again, and he could maybe use some more mouths at the dinner table, possibly, if they didn't have plans already of course, but if they wanted to...
Parker would text 'come over' because boys are dumb and that's what they were all saying anyway.
And then there was bad job.
Later, Alec could admit to himself that they were getting close to a breaking point anyway. The excuses were getting flimsier, the raised eyebrows getting more obnoxious. Plus he was starting to get sick of the carefully maintaned distance between them all. He wanted Elliot in his and Parker's bed all the time, not just when one of them was having a rough time (or, more recently, felt like they could get away with it). He liked holding Elliot's hand under the cover of darkness but he wanted to hold it in broad daylight too. And, on a not-so-inconsequential note, he would really, really like to know how Elliot would feel moving inside him while Parker whispered terrible, sexy things in his ear. He had been going to have a mature and adult conversation, dammit all. He'd made notes and everything!
Instead:
"Elliot, Elliot, did they hurt you, where did they hurt you," Alec babbled in the darkness of the cell - God, it was so dark, why was it so dark, dark like a grave, no - hand flickering over Elliot, invisible in the gloom. Beside him Parker was worryingly silent but he brushed over her fingers once, twice, thrice, as they searched Elliot by touch for injuries together. Elliot, who had been taken away from their cell, from them. Elliot, who had been gone for at least an hour. Elliot who still hadn't said anything-
"I'm okay," Elliot said finally and both Parker and Hardison froze. Elliot's voice sounded off. It was a very distinctive kind of off.
"Where?" asked Parker, fierce with it. Eliot sighed.
"Look, it's really a very minor stab wound..."
"Where."
"Lower abdomen. Didn't hit anything vital, just stings a bit."
"Stings a bit," repeated Alec in disbelief. "And I suppose your immanent death by exsanguination is just a 'bit crap', is it?" Alec blathered as he gently, gently, eased his hand down Elliot's side.
"Ow, dammit, Hardison."
Part of Alex's mind noted the way that Elliot could tell the difference between his and Parker's hands in the dark. The rest of his brain was much more concerned with the wet slickness coating Elliot's side.
"Elliot," Alec said, his voice breaking.
"We'll kill them," hissed Parker. "We'll kill them all."
"Parker, it's really not that-"
"They're dead," Alec agreed, "I need a phone or something first but, yeah, dead."
"Hardison, you don't-"
"They hurt you and you're ours." Parker said furiously and that was pretty much that. Well, there was a moment that Alec could have salvaged it. Parker said Parkerish things all the time, after all. It wouldn't have been difficult to play it off as 'ours' meaning team, meaning friend, meaning our totally platonic buddy-pal-mate who we definitely don't want to see naked and rub all up against. There was definitely a moment. He could have said so many things. Hell, maybe Elliot would have even believed them. But it was dark and Parker remained dangerously still beside him and Elliot was bleeding and-
"You're ours," Alec echoed, "If you want to be."
"Oh," said Elliot faintly.
And then Sophie, dressed as a General and barking orders, busted down the door and there wasn't time for any more awkward revelations in the dark.
Later, much, much later - after Sophie and Nate had corralled them out and Elliot had (reluctantly) received medical attention and nobody had noticed Parker and Alec go missing for half-an-hour and then a lot of people had noticed the complex they'd been held in mysteriously exploding and then Nate had put together a mad plan out of nothing, and a fair amount of banter - they went home. Which is to say, Parker and Alec went home. Together. And alone.
They sat on the couch for a while and waited, without talking about how they were waiting. They held each other's hands tightly and huddled against the way there was too much empty space without a third person filling it.
Alec tried not to imagine tomorrow or the days after, when Elliot would smile and nod and get annoyed at Alec and at no point would he come back to this apartment and hold his hand in the dark again.
Parker drew breathe to speak, then let it out again. Alec knew what she was going to say, and why she didn't want to say it. She was going to suggest that they go to bed, and it was going to mean that they'd given up. Parker drew another breath, and the doorbell rang.
'Please,' thought Alex, 'please'. Parker and Alec opened the door together, every line of them studiously casual, barely breathing.
"Hi," said Elliot on the other side. "Um, can I come in?"
When all three of them had found a spot to sit down in the lounge room the silence quickly became oppressive. Alec couldn't think of anything to say. His head was a jumble of 'please' and 'don't go' and 'I'd like to have your dick in my mouth' and 'I might be slightly in love with you' and not one of those would help the situation but it was quickly becoming apparent that if nobody else fucking said something then Alec was going to open his mouth and one of them was going to drop out in a big ol' bag of awkward.
"So," Elliot started and Alec heaved an internal sigh of relief. "You, ah, you blew up the complex?"
"You have no proof," Parker said immediately and Alec grinned and Elliot rolled his eyes and for one beautiful moment everybody was themselves again.
And then the silence came back. Alec looked at Elliot and saw how uncomfortable he looked sitting there in his and Parker's apartment and realised he was here to let them down easy. That was okay, he guessed. Elliot would say something nice like 'I'm just not a guy who settles down' or something horrible but well intentioned like 'I'm just not gay' which would make it Alec's fault that he wouldn't stay and maybe he should just leave so Parker and Elliot could be happy together and-
Parker placed a hand on Alec's knee and interrupted his internal spiraling. Breathe, the look she slanted him said, so he did. That was what Parker did, she kept Alec sane inside his own head. He did the same for her, kind of, becoming a safe space where she didn't have to continuously translate 'normal' into 'Parker' and back again. Or he tried to, anyway. He just wished Elliot wanted to be part of that. Parker turned her attention back to Elliot and studied him critically. Her face made a hmm expression and Alec felt a surge of hope. Parker might sometimes need world-translation services, but that had only ever been because she saw it too clearly. It was the social lies that confused her, not the truth.
"You're wondering if we meant it." She said and Elliot jerked his eyes from where he'd been gazing at Parker's hand on Alec's knee.
"What- I- um-"
"We did. We meant it all, everything. Change together, right?" Parker faltered slightly when she got to the last word (because even Parker couldn't be brave all the time) but Elliot was smiling now.
"For better or worse," he agreed and Alec suddenly knew what to say.
"Stay."
It was Elliot who made the first move that night. Stupidly brave Elliot who was always a little too quick to sacrifice himself. With one trembling hand he reached across the miles and miles of everything separating him from them and rested his fingertips, butterfly-light, on Parker's cheek. Everybody froze for a moment, the whole room held it's breath... and then they broke. Faster than Alec could make sense of, Parker was across the floor and in Elliot's space, one arm braced against the back of the couch as she leaned over him.
"Last chance," Parker warned and Elliot nodded, wide-eyed and nervous and very obviously turned on. She leaned in and Alec watched as two different pairs of hands slid into two different shades of blonde hair and carefully searched himself for jealously. What he found was mostly an all-consuming kind of lust (and some softer, sweeter emotion that he was going to ignore for now).
After a solid minute of turning Elliot's brain to mush, Parker pulled back, looking a little mussed and a lot smug. There was a tiny glimmer of worry there however, tucked into the corner of her eye, as she turned to face Alec.
"Last chance," she said again, this time to him.
"Don't need it," he said firmly, meaning it. His last chance had come and gone in a pitch-black cell with Elliot's blood on his hands and Parker fierce in the darkness beside him. He wasn't going to look back now. He turned to Elliot and grinned. Somehow, maybe without her even noticing it, Parker's flickering thief fingers had undone every single button on Elliot's shirt plus the fly on his jeans. Alec raked his eyes down, appreciative and obvious with it.
"Dammit, Hardison," muttered Elliot, looking like the world's best, partially-unwrapped present. "Would you just-" Alec cut him off with his mouth. Which, if he was being honest, was what he'd wanted to do since that very first job. Elliot sighed into the kiss, sweeter than Alec could have ever imagined. He kissed Elliot until he felt like he was floating and then made himself pull back just enough to check-in with Parker.
She was flushed and biting her lip and any hesitation that Alec might have been feeling vanished at the sight her standing there, watching them kiss and enjoying the hell out of it.
"Well," said Parker in that abrupt way of here, "I think everybody needs to be naked." And then she walked off towards the bedroom, dropping clothes along the way. Alec watched her go, transfixed as always by each inch of skin she bared, that paleness, so unexpectedly delicate... until Elliot shoved his shoulder and shot him a look that clearly said Well, what the hell are you waiting for?
Alec and Elliot raced after Parker, laughing and (mostly ineffectually) trying to remove clothing as they run. Eventually, all three of them make it into the bedroom, and there they stay.
Elliot doesn't stay with them every night. For one thing, he's a busy dude and, for another, three is a lot of people to get used to when you've spent a lifetime on your own. So he doesn't stay with them every night. Then again, neither does Parker. She loves her boys but they're still people and, sometimes, people are still hard. Vents are easier, but only some days. And, occasionally, Alec will eschew all human contact and the inside of his own mind to go and do great and terrible things from their lounge room, so he's not there every night either.
Sometimes... Sometimes things get to be too much and they always will. But those times come less and less often now.
Most days there are three of them in the apartment, in the room, in each other's lives. Bickering and bantering, fighting and fucking. Most days there are three of them in the bed, in the dark. Holding hands.