Title: Endless, numbered days

Sun, 31 Oct 2021 19:21:47 GMT

Two years is a long time to spend alone together with the two people he’s in unrequited love with. There are countless nights Eliot stares at the ceiling while they fuck in the bedroom next door. The walls are soundproofed of course, but he doesn’t need to hear for his keen senses to know what they’re doing.

It seems like forever ago that there were five of them under one roof. It was easier to ignore then, the bunch of them an odd-ball family rather than a couple and him being the odd man out.

There are many days he thinks he should leave, but doesn’t quite have the heart to, can’t bear to give up the small slice he has. They give no impression that his presence bothers him and he would know if they were lying.

He cooks for them and they enjoy the meals and that’s something. But now they can cook well enough for themselves. They can fight well enough for themselves. They can live well enough for themselves.

And after all this time, he thinks maybe he should move on. They’ve taught him well that there’s no point in dwelling. And perhaps it would be good for them more than they realize.

“I think I should move out,” he tells them, he knows how just stating it outright would go.

“Why?” Parker asks, as though he’s said something truly bizarre.

“I need my own space, and you guys do too.” He means, I can’t be the third wheel forever.

“Where are you going to go that’s an improvement on here?” Hardison asks gently, curiously.

And he supposes the words aren’t supposed to cut in the way they do. He stays.

Three years is a long time. But also too short, too busy, they are running four teams around the world and working on starting up a fifth.

And then working on stopping the fifth from collapsing in on itself. And then letting it collapse in on itself. And then starting it again anew.

It’s been a very long, very short, crazy few days. He’s exhausted and weary and frustrated. And they wordlessly pull him into their bed.

At first he thinks it’s sexless, just a desire for closeness, just to let him sleep beside them. And then they begin stripping his clothes. There’s a point in his mind, distant and vicious, that considers that it’s pity. He knows that’s wrong, they would never pity him.

This is because they love and care for him, just not in the same way he does for them.

He drinks them in, takes what comfort he can.

Four years is a long time. Peppered with too many and too few nights with them. Every few weeks they come to him or pull him to them and he goes, every time. He never approaches them. They will say no. They are not his in the way he is theirs. It hurts.

He decides to leave. “I’m going to expand the food truck business.”

“I’ll come with you,” Parker says, “After all we have seven teams now we need to check in on.”

They’ve all worked smoothly enough so far with them helping remotely, but no one mentions that.

Five years is a long time. Him and Parker spend more time travelling than at home. They both miss Hardison, but there’s no strain between the happy couple, even as Eliot at times feels as though he’s being torn apart sinew by stringy sinew.

And then team number nine is in too deep. And they help and help and help until they just step in and take over. There’s fighting and bullets and rappelling off of a twenty storey building and they both almost die. And they joke that it’s just another Tuesday. But the truth is it’s been half a decade since they’ve been in the field themselves.

And there are ways that Eliot and Parker are the same in a way no one else is, the darkness, the realism.

Eliot presses her against the wall of a cheap motel room and her fingers dig into him as though she could claw the two of them into one being. His hands draw up her thighs, but he forces himself to pause, opening his mouth to say how wrong this is. But she crashes their mouths back together and that’s the end of the conversation.

Afterwards he stays in the shower long after the water has gone cold. He thinks about how he’s once again broken something irrevocably. He wants to punch the wall, wants to break himself on the tiles. But he knows eventually he’ll have to go back into the room and him and Parker will discuss how they will tell Hardison. Because he has no doubt that they will be telling Hardison.

The scene he finds is surreal. Parker laughing as Hardison speaks on the laptop screen.

And Eliot quickly realizes Hardison knew all along, of course Parker would be honest about this from the outset.

Six years is a long time. Eliot is in bed with them more nights than he isn’t. And sometimes he forgets that he’s separate to them, not one of the happy couple. It’s too easy to pretend.

He lets himself fall for days at a time, sometimes weeks, loving them and letting them love him. But the longer it goes on, the more it hurts when he comes back to reality.

“I can’t do this anymore,” he tells them.

“Okay,” Hardison says.

“Why?” Parker says.

Hardison is sad. Parker is angry.

He leaves.

Seven years is a long time. Eliot comes back after Nate dies. It’s a reminder that lives are too short, especially in their line of work.

And he’s back where he started, staring at the ceiling while Parker and Hardison fuck in the bedroom next door.

Eight years is a long time. It’s a relief to have more people back in one place again, even if he doesn’t necessarily trust the newcomers. And it’s a relief to be out in the field regularly again.

He encourages Hardison to leave, recognises that the man has a calling he needs to respond to, but it still cuts too deep when he goes.

And then Hardison is back, and all is as it should be again. Eliot has even moved on, he has a girlfriend- until he doesn’t.

Parker and Hardison encourage him to open up and he laments his lost love.

Parker says, “Hardison and I are going to be here for you forever.”

“Yep,” says Hardison.

“We’ll always be together,” Parker adds.

Eliot smiles. He knows. “’Til our dying day.”

Then the most surreal of statements passes Parker’s lips, “No, past that, even after we get the robot bodies.”

And Eliot can tell, from Hardison’s reluctant explanation of robot bodies, what has happened here.

(Because Hardison imagines they’ll all live into old age together. Whereas Parker knows they’ll likely die long before that, probably hopes they’ll go at the same time so no one’s left alone. And thus has told Hardison to make them robot bodies and Hardison- though he’s definitely warned her of the unlikelihood of success- is choosing to indulge her on this.

Parker knows he’s indulging her, but she has faith that Hardison can do the seemingly impossible. All the while the strength of Parker’s certitude is probably the one thing that would lead Hardison to actually achieving this lofty goal).

And apparently they want him along for the ride. That’s when he finally realizes it, they are his as much as he is theirs, in every way.

Twenty years is a short time when spent with two great loves.

Luckily it looks like the robot bodies will be happening after all.

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Title: Endless, numbered days