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They're just on the way back from one of the weird jobs, the ones that pay a bit too well but leave everyone a little more confused than they started out. Eliot can tell that Hardison is close to locking himself in a little room with no windows and lots of blinking boxes; he can hear the directionless mumbling and picture Hardison's head exploding and he's not even in the same cabin class.
For which he is very grateful, because it's a commercial flight and Parker will not shut up about swings and suspension bondage and Hardison cannot make her understand that those people were not training.
"Or maybe they were. But not for that. Come on, Parker, it's like the thing. You know, the thing that you like? That we cannot let Eliot walk in on again. It's like that. Please stop talking."
and then
"Does she listen? No, she does not. Is Alec the smart, worldly, educated one here? Yes. But does she listen? No, she does not."
Eliot has never been more thankful for his air marshal badge than he is now.
He does pretend to go to the toilet, just so he can walk past and give Hardison a big grin. "Trade with me, man?" Hardison says, but they both know he doesn't mean it, and Eliot just shakes his head and pretends he doesn't know them.
Parker doesn't let it go. Not that week, or that month, and Eliot is so far on edge he's taken to throwing knives inside again. Hardison hasn't complained, either; they're going to rip the bar out and redo it, so it's probably that and not that Hardison is in way over his head as usual, but still. It's just not right.
"Damnit, Hardison," he mutters.
"Hey, this one ain't on me," Hardison says, from somewhere over, vaguely, there.
"Damnit, Hardison!"
"Wait, did I get you? Did I get you?" Hardison sounds gleeful.
"Yeah, you got me." Eliot knows better than to try to argue that one. Maybe Hardison will get the sneaking thing out of his system now, that would be just great; one less thing to make the place feel like a powder keg with an extremely short fuse.
"I don't think Parker's about to let this one go," he says, after a minute, long enough for Hardison to savour the win and also forget it ever happened.
"Yeah, I actually wanted to talk to you about that," Hardison says, and it's so innocent, and Eliot knows that tone of voice, heard it a hundred times aimed at a mark.
"Aw, hell no."
"I haven't even asked you yet."
"Don't say it." Eliot does not like feeling fidgety but this has him riled, he can't quite put his finger on why, though.
"Would you? It just has to be once, man, one time."
"You do it." Which would seem the obvious thing, like, they're already together, a unit, with all the unspoken communication and secret handshakes and in-jokes that make no sense even though he knows both of them like his chef's roll.
"I can't. I just, I can't." And well, so he loses some and he wins one, because Hardison has a weak spot and that's worth endless hours of teasing, in the right moment. Which this isn't.
He closes his eyes and counts. Five. Ten. Twenty five.
"So, you're asking me to..."
"No. No. Nope. Just the thing." Hardison seems very clear. "Unless you want to, I mean."
"What? No. Parker's your girl. I wouldn't."
Hardison blinks, like that's news.
"Parker's not like that."
"Oh," Eliot says, even though he doesn't really get it. And then he does, crystal clear. "Oh."
"Yeah. So just the thing."
"Well, that make sense," he says, and it does, like, it makes so much make sense. Everything. "And you don't want to... like... watch? Or..."
"Nope. No." Hardison puts his hands over his ears and pretends he can't hear.
"And, Parker's cool with this?"
"Her idea."
Because of course it was. And she probably needled Hardison for weeks about it and, yeah, he has a picture of how that conversation may have gone. And Parker being very invested in Hardison being cool with it is really, actually, well, cute. And he did not just put cute and Parker in the same...
"Well, that was awkward," Hardison says. "Good talk." He grabs one of his stupid orange sodas and goes back into his bat cave den thing.
"You talked!" Parker pops out of the ceiling. "It would be weird if you didn't talk. Wouldn't it? I can't wait."
Eliot cannot wait for this whole thing to just, go away.
Thing is, with what they do and how it never, ever, actually lets up, there's no time to actually get it over with before they're off on another job, and another. (One day, this franchise thing is going to get off the ground, Eliot is going to have his own kitchen, and he can smoke a side of beef and plate it and eat it - all of it, and not at once - without having to go save a country.) The idea just sits under his skin, worming it's way into nearly every single extraneous thought he has, and it keeps sounding like less and less of a bad idea.
Parker, though, is infuriatingly normal. Like, okay, it is Parker and that usually explains a lot, but.
Hardison just seems so relieved that he cannot stop joking about everything and would Eliot dearly love to know just what the hell that's about? No, he would not. There will be a deep and meaningful and extremely short talk at some point that he would very much then like to at least pretend to forget ever happened; it's Hardison, so for all he knows the dude just stumbled on the wrong website back when or would be like, "Two words: Foster. Care." and clam up but still. No way taking the tiniest bit of pressure off should be that much of a relief to anyone. And if he's honest, which he is absolutely not going to be outside his head, it's kinda nice that Hardison and Parker chose him to do that.
The idea that Parker's being normal because Hardison isn't occurs to him as they dump their gear in the fourth hotel room in three weeks. They always get two rooms but end up mostly using one for work and one for sleep (okay, Parker and Hardison use one for sleep, which apparently, is actually sleep, and he just takes whatever bed is left when he's tired, because priorities.) They do their own little thing where they have a conversation with even less words in it than usual and then Parker's just, like there.
"Can you show me that swing thing now?" And she's so earnest and bright about it, like her eyes are lit up and she has that big smile like he's about to give her six million in cash in a locked safe, and Hardison is already halfway into a soda and three laptops with what looks very much like the DoD mainframe and, okay, yeah, maybe he could do with letting off some steam right about now.
"Okay, but it's not "that swing thing", it's called bondage, okay. And we're not going all out, and there are ground rules."
But it's like Parker doesn't even listen, or maybe she does; sometimes he can't tell. They're through the connecting door and Parker's asking if she needs to be naked before he really gets to assess whether she took that part in at all.
"Do you want to?" he says, and Parker's nose wrinkles, just a bit and, oh, okay. "You don't have to."
"So that's the sex part. Got it. Well, what do I do?" And she, like, Parker, the Parker, sits on the bed and waits for him to actually tell her.
Eliot's never actually done this without all that, and if he's really honest, the idea of not having to, while just being in the moment and focused is one of the things that got its claws in him every time he turned this over in his head, wondering if maybe just the idea that it was possible had been enough for Parker, she'd forgotten about it and it wouldn't ever happen. (Like it is. He should really have known better, because then he'd be prepared, damnit.) Also with Parker. With Parker trusting him. And like, mind fuck. But.
"The point is you don't do anything. Just, if something hurts the wrong way, or you want to stop, you gotta say it; don't just put up with it. Some of this can turn real dangerous real fast."
He'd nearly expected Parker to ask what the right way was, but she just nods. "Verbalise my feelings."
"Yep."
"But I didn't bring my puppets." And damn if she doesn't look sad about that.
"Parker." He closes his eyes for a minute and holds his fist to his head; ten... twenty... he breathes.
"If your hand goes numb or something, or you want me to stop, just say so. Don't assume I'll be able to magically know that. It doesn't have to be detailed or anything, just like, tell me how you feel. Okay?"
"Okay," she says.
So, in the spirit of being relatively well prepared for all eventualities, Eliot does have suitable rope, and of course, there's all Parker's gear. He gravitates towards that without really thinking about it; he's just, sort of, on auto-pilot. To cope, he tells himself, not because he's into it. But it is a total trip having Parker just go along with him on something, not even that it's this, and he kind of likes the idea of tying her up with her own gear.
"Are you going to tell me your feelings too?" she says, back to being bouncy and almost, like, vibrating on the bed, except it's a shitty hotel bed that has exactly zero bounce and is probably the least comfortable surface in the entire room, at least.
"I'm going to tell you what I'm doing, yeah," he says. "And right now, I want you to lie down, with your hands behind your back."
And she just does.
And he ties her, just her wrists first, so he can get a sense of how much she's likely to need to shift, and whether she's going to have a moment when she realises she doesn't have free movement. He has a fair idea of her physical abilities what with her propensity for jumping off buildings and all, so he's not exactly worried about her being pushed to far just with what he has and can do here, but he still has to get to know her in this way, where her fine limits are and just how far he can push her, which by the time he's brought her ankles to her thighs and her wrists up away from her back, seems to be quite a lot.
"I get it!" she says, and well, that was loud, but she's also perfectly still and like, he would have had no idea just from her body which is, like, okay, he needs to work on that. (And this happen more than once? Also mind fuck.)
"Yeah?" he says, more to acknowledge that she said something than because he's hoping for more; he's still focused on the ties and Parker's skin, still pale, no signs of redness yet, just the slightest quiver that's only more obvious because she's still in close-fitting black that hugs in close and really, is making his job here much easier.
"It's like being in a vent, but not in a vent!"
And Eliot cannot exactly argue with that, because he hates vents and he does not like being restrained, and the two do have some features in common. And it's kind of a compliment, because he knows very well that Parker really likes vents.
"Okay, you can let me out now," she says, and he does. She does the thing where she checks her fingers and toes after he releases her, same way she checks herself over after a rough landing, and then she nods. "We should do this again. I liked it. And you still have to show me the swing thing."
And she leaves, and he just cannot stop his brain, being like okay, yes. Also he kind of wants to know if she'll compare a full suspension to jumping off a building. And then he has to think about that later, because she's back. "Hey, Hardison has something."
Hardison can't keep his hands off her while he's throwing up files that look like walls of numbers and Eliot thinks maybe he's reassuring himself that Parker's good, and there. But they don't talk about it, not when the job is over, or when Parker insists on overhead beams rated to support her weight when they finish refitting the bar, or ever. It becomes a thing they do; their thing, that fits and just is, and if he feels like a bit less of a third wheel, then, well, nobody else really needs to know.