#parkerhardisoneliot
hehe. Nah, I hardly ever write it, either. And usually don’t read it. I mean, sometimes. When in the right mood or headspace. But the idea of them going after him and it turning into a massive Euridice thing where they get him back - that does appeal.
OH I forgot that I said that. Sorry.
Don’t worry, that fic’s getting written too, soon as I level up on writing again. Like, the idea is so good it deserves to be written by a slightly better writer than me. But yeah, I call it The Fic I’m Not Writing because I’ve spent so long denying I’m gonna write it.
But lbr I love the idea so fucking much and already have the perfect first scene written and final sentence written that, you know. It’s happening.
poppetawoppet replied to your post “Okay, @poppetawoppet asked for 2, 13, 19, and 40. Since I already did…”
Lol oops. Let’s say Right Round then
Hahaha remember the time I totally forgot to do this one?
Okay, so. Remember, folks, this one was “ Write an alternative ending to [insert fic title] (or just the summary of one).”
And see, the thing about Right Round is that I am a terrible person and considered leaving it at Day 42. That’s, uh, the suicide one. In case you forgot. You know, just leave it with Eliot dead and Parker and Hardison horrified/confused//traumatized/etc. Maybe, oh man, maybe it would’ve done an ABRUPT GENRE CHANGE (because I fucking love those) and segued into my Orpheus & Eurydice fic. Because you fucking know that if any one of them died for any reason, the other two would stop at literally nothing to bring them back.
But no, I am not that cruel. So here, let me figure out how to do a Read More and tell you a story.
This starts from Day 100, and I will give you a little refresher of what happened then (aka: the entire scene up until where the changes start):
One Hundred
It’s Thursday 100, he thinks, and Parker’s pulling him gently off a guy. He doesn’t look down to see what he’s done to him. Just dully lets Parker buckle him into the truck, watches as she slides in and Hardison slides in the other side. They leave plenty of space around him in the middle, and it feels like an ocean. It doesn’t matter that they’ve seen what he’s really capable of, because tomorrow will be another Thursday and they won’t remember.
“I love you guys,” he says suddenly, the words catching in his throat and tearing out, rough. His eyes are burning, and he scrubs at them with bloody hands.
“I’d do anything to keep you safe,” he says. “Anything.”
He flinches when Hardison’s hand comes up, forces himself to still against his automatic reflex.
Hardison’s thumb rubs gently at a spot on Eliot’s face, and crusted dried blood flakes into Eliot’s lap. “We know,” Hardison murmurs.
Parker keeps glancing over at him, but is silent as she drives.
After a while, she pulls up to a cheap motor lodge, goes into the main office and returns with a key, which she pushes into Hardison’s hand. That’s okay, Eliot thinks. That’s okay, he can sleep in the truck.
But they pull him out after them and he lands on unsteady legs. He feels dazed, and everything is fuzzy.
They hustle him inside and into the bathroom, take his bloody clothes and push him into the shower before leaving him alone. It takes a long time for the water to run clear.
Long after his fingers have pruned, when he can’t stand the way the water sliding down his body starts to feel like blood, he gets out and dries off. They left him his go bag. He pulls on clothes and opens the door.
They’re already asleep, together on the bed, Parker curled up and Hardison curled around her, not quite touching. Eliot stands and watches, for a long moment. He doesn’t know what they want.
Instead of trying to guess, instead of waiting for them to wake up, or waking them up to ask, he readjusts the go bag over his shoulder. He doesn’t let the door slam on his way out.
If he were a good man, if he were a man deserving of the trust they put in him, he would wait in the truck, make sure they were safe for the rest of this Thursday and start again in the Thursday morning. But he’s not. They’re safe, and it’s night, and while it doesn’t matter what he does because tomorrow is still Thursday, he can’t stay here.
There’s a highway running along the motor lodge, and it’s easy enough to hitchhike up the road in the dark alone. Everything is still fuzzy, he’s still numb, and it’s enough to let him fall asleep against the window of a semi.
He wakes up at 2am and stares blearily at the clock for a moment before it registers. He asks the driver what day it is. When it finally sinks in that it’s Friday, he knows he should feel relief. Knows he should feel something, anything.
He’s just so tired.
At the next truck stop, he gets out and goes into the tiny, 24-hour restaurant attached. He sits down, gets a plate of sausage and eggs. He doesn’t know why he’s running from them, he just has a vague sense that he should be gone. That they would want him gone, after watching him-
And yet, he’s not surprised when two bodies slide into the seat across from him. Somewhere, he’d known they would come after him. Somewhere he’d known that it wouldn’t be this easy to slip away.
“Hey,” Hardison says, quiet. “What’s going on, man?”
When Eliot looks up, Parker is looking scared – of him? He doesn’t know – and Hardison is looking worried. Eliot wants to smooth out the crease between his brows, to tell him it doesn’t matter, but instead, he says, “It’s Friday.”
“Yeah,” Hardison agrees. “What’s special about Friday?”
“It hasn’t been Friday in a long time,” Eliot says. He feels like a glass figurine that’s been glued back together. Like moving wrong is going to shatter the perfect stillness inside of him.
Hardison nods, like that makes any sense. He reaches across the table, and carefully pries the fork out of Eliot’s hand, carefully slides his fingers through Eliot’s, to stop him from digging his fingernails into his hand.
“Okay,” Hardison says. “Okay, but it’s Friday now, and that’s… good?”
Parker gets up, slides into the booth next to him. They’re boxing him in, and that’s- He should feel threatened, obvious escape routes cut off by people who could be planning to- But he doesn’t. His knuckles are white where he’s gripping Hardison’s hand.
“I don’t know if tomorrow’s gonna be Saturday,” he says into the silence. “Or if this’ll-”
“If what will?” Parker asks when he drifts off. She takes his other hand, slow and careful like she’s afraid he might break.
He shudders once, twice, and takes his first deep breath since he beat the man in charge of the whole operation to death. He explains the whole thing to them. Explains how he knew what was going to happen yesterday morning, how he knew how to get them safe, how it didn’t always work.
How he’d watched them die over, and over, and over again.
When he’s done, Hardison’s knuckles are white, and Parker’s clutching his hand so tight he can feel the bones grind together.
“I-” he says. “I didn’t know if-”
Parker leans across him, grabs his go bag from the seat next to him, and gets up, but doesn’t let go of his hand, pulling him out of the booth after her. She drops a couple crisp bills on the table as Hardison comes round so Eliot’s sandwiched between them, a hand in each of theirs.
They walk him out to the truck, bundle him in like they had less than twelve hours ago. He can feel new cracks spreading through the cold that’s been surrounding him as Hardison pulls him tight against his body, as Parker slides in and presses against his side. Like they know he needs this to be grounded, like it doesn’t matter that Hardison hates having people touch him while he drives, and Parker doesn’t like being this close to people, period, most the time.
They pull into an econolodge an exit down the highway. Parker goes into the main office to get them a room, and Hardison stares out the windshield while he says, “I don’t know if you’re having a psychotic break or what, but- You gotta know we wouldn’t leave you behind. No matter what.”
Eliot nods a little, because yeah, he does know that usually. He thinks.
Up in the room, they push him toward one of the double beds. When they both get in after, cuddled up to him on both sides and holding on tight, he feels something crack inside of himself and he starts shivering, hard.
“You’re okay,” Hardison murmurs. “You’re gonna be okay. We’ve got you.”
He keeps up a steady stream of meaningless words and sentences while Parker just tightens her grip on him until he knows her fingers will be leaving bruises. And still, he can’t stop shivering.
He’s not sure if he falls asleep or passes out.
When he wakes up, he’s on his side with Hardison curled around him, still fast asleep, and Parker sitting up against the headboard, on the edge of the bed.
“Sorry,” he croaks out. He’s sorry for making them watch him kill someone, for making them worry, for not being okay, for making them take care of him, for making them uncomfortable. He’s sorry for so many things, but not that it’s finally Friday.
Parker just shakes her head and grins. “As long as you’re here, it’s okay,” she says.
“We love you, too,” Hardison says from behind him, his arm tightening. “So whatever this is, we’ll deal with it. If it’s- it’s- if you’re going crazy or it’s magic or whatever. We’ll be okay.”
Eliot lets himself relax back into Hardison’s grip. He wasn’t sure he believed that, but as long as the days kept moving forward, he could hope.
THE END
Epilogue
And then they done had sex.
THE END FOR REAL
Seeing this made me realise I hadn’t checked out your fic yet so I went and saw a Groundhog Day one and oh my god. My heart
Oh jesus, I should warn you that that fic is, um. Significantly lower on the trash-fic-y-ness than the rest of my fic. Like, significantly. Like. I’m just saying, the rest are nothing like that one because they are trash and I am trash and I live in a trashcan. jsyk
Okay, internet. Who is:
A) around,
B) knows what kind of trash I write,
and C) wants to message me and help me figure out a bodyswap fic scene that is giving me hella trouble?
poppetawoppet replied to your post “But think of how much $ they would save on earbuds if they had…”
OH GOD THEN THE PANIC WHEN ONE OF THEM GOES ‘SILENT’s c r e a m i n g
Like, they’d learn pretty damn quickly what it feels like in their heads when Eliot has a concussion, what it feels like when he’s been knocked out and they need to go rescue him (which, okay, has happened, like, once, in the entire time they’ve been connected, but still.) It was terrifying at first, because lbr concussions do not feel great, and being knocked out is like a concussion combined with a bad trip for Eliot.
But they’ve never felt the complete and utter panic they felt when Eliot is just… gone. They’re both stuck on the same thing, obvs. That Eliot is dead, that they had failed at protecting him, that if the telepathy couldn’t tell them when he needed them then what fucking good was it?
And like. They race to the last place they knew Eliot was, because fuck. Fuck. They can at least- They can’t give him a proper burial, but they can… do something. Except he’s not there.
Hardison has never been so glad for sticking a tracker in everyone’s shoes than he is right then.
So they find him, fight their way through a bunch of Bad Guys, because it’s for Eliot, so obvs they are desperate and ruthless enough to just. Cut a path through them, figuratively.
And they’re finally at the room his body’s in, and they both pause outside the door because neither of them knows if they can do this. They’ve been holding the panic at bay by like. Concentrating on getting to him. But now that they’re almost there… Parker looks like she’s about to cry, and Hardison is kinda shaky. And finally, they’re like, we have to go in and they force themselves to open the door.
Eliot is strapped down to a chair, and drugged to the gills, but very, very obviously alive. Just… not conscious.
And, idk, they beat up the scientist after making sure it’ll wear off. And when Eliot comes to back home, there is a lot of, like. Clingyness and residual panic because now they know what it’s gonna feel like, when Eliot finally is killed. How there’s gonna be just an empty spot in the back of their brains, a dead spot that they can feel all the time.
That night, while Eliot’s sleeping and Parker and Hardison are both too keyed up to actually sleep, they make a pact, that no matter what, Eliot’s not gonna die without them. They change together, they die together. Full stop. Because living with that empty space… it’s literally unbearable. And stuff.
OTHER THINGS I HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT: How this would affect – and how they would be affected by – Eliot’s PTSD. (Like, we can agree that the flashbacks in s1 aren’t actually funny, right? Because like, yeah, he’s learned to shake them off p quickly, but they’re still- Like, you know?)
Parker’d probably be the most jumpy getting Eliot’s flashbacks, and Hardison would be calm but really fucking disturbed, even hours later.
As far as dealing with it, all the h/c with Eliot’s PTSD, man. All the h/c. Like Parker attempting (and miserably failing) to make his favorite foods for him. Hardison knowing if Eliot wants or doesn’t want to be touched/alone and giving Eliot what he needs.
But above all, them making it clear that Eliot should never, ever apologize for the flashbacks. Eliot still feels guilty for subjecting Parker and Hardison to them, and Parker and Hardison knows he feels guilty, but they never blame him for his trauma.
(and thank you yes I agree s1 flashbacks were a little stilted)
Also other things I thought of randomly in regards to telepathic!Leverage:
- Hardison singing tunes that have been stuck in Eliot’s head, which used to bother him since bluegrass/country wasn’t his thing but now he doesn’t really mind anymore
- Eliot getting headaches when Hardison is doing some hardcore computer hacking and has been staring at a screen for x hours
- Parker driving Eliot up the wall with something annoying, like a phrase or an expression that she loops on repeat until he blows his top
- Hardison and Eliot reminding Parker to speak, because when you can read minds you sometimes forget and it’s easy for Parker to stop speaking altogether
- there are no such things as passwords. Or safe words.
- Parker picking up various languages from Eliot
- When one of them gets drunk the others (especially Parker) find everything funny and will randomly start sniggering at things like household objects or everyday words
dammit I’m supposed to be outlining this fic (which operates oddly along the same vein, a little)
MOTHER FUCKER I JUST HAD A WHOLE HUGE POST HERE AND TUMBLR ATE IT I AM SO MAD. I will try to reconstruct. Jesus christ.
SO. I definitely think you are right that Eliot would feel awful about Parker and Hardison having to see his memories. Like, he has done some awful shit, and they don’t deserve to have to see that. Especially some of the more terrible memories that leave even him kind of shaken up for a while afterward. (And yes, every sentence in this paragraph is carefully worded to mean exactly what you think it means.)
But I also think that Eliot would never, ever, ever, admit that he has ptsd. Or even like, begin to consider that he has ptsd. I feel like he’d feel that ptsd is for people who have really had bad shit happen to them. That ptsd is for people who… idk how to phrase this right. People who don’t deserve it? I guess? Like, sometimes life hands good people shit cards. But he is not a good person.
And, I mean, he thinks ptsd is a real and valid thing, and a reasonable response to shit, and like, he doesn’t look down on people with ptsd. ,It’s just… not something he has.
He just has really vivid memories sometimes, is all. And, yeah, there are ways he doesn’t like to be touched and things Parker and Hardison learn not to do, but everyone is like that. I mean, there are things Parker doesn’t like them doing, ways she doesn’t like them touching her. So, you know. It’s normal. Not ptsd.
And I also think that Hardison would bring it up once (and only once) and Eliot would basically have a total shouting meltdown at him about how disrespectful he’s being to people with real problems, etc. Probably they would actually fight about it, like really fight that leaves them both angry for days, and then Hardison would never mention it again.
Ialso think that Eliot would like. Be so Not Okay with anyone trying to… do nice things for him? After one of these memories has surfaced? Like, it’s not a big deal and he should be doing some caretaking of them because they had to experience it too, and they… they don’t deserve that. So he would be super terrible about accepting any comfort. Like, at all. Because if anything, he should be punished for subjecting them to his stupid bullshit.
Probably, a lot of the time, he would just leave right after, ostensibly so they couldn’t try to be kind to him, but really because he’s so ashamed of… whatever.
re: languages, I totally bet Parker is about languages the same as she is about like. Art. Like, “I thought everybody could do that” sort of thing. So, yeah, obviously she picks up a bunch of different languages from Eliot, Hardison has too! And Hardison is just like um babe, I definitely haven’t.
OTHER THINGS: now I am thinking about how each of them would deal with the lack of privacy. Because even Hardison needs time that is just him. Not as much as Parker and Eliot, sure, but still. And, weirdly, he’s the one who learns to kind of… block them out first. Like, he doesn’t go silent, they can still feel that he’s there, but they can’t get any actual thoughts off of him.
Both of them find it wildly upsetting, to varying degrees, because what did they do? And Hardison is like nothing? I just needed some me time. Weren’t y’all just complaining the other day about how there’s no privacy anymore?
So, you know, he teaches them how to do it, and now that Parker’s gotten used to being able to see things in their heads, she’s actually the one who uses it the least? Because like. It turns out knowing intent and what people expect of her – especially because Hardison and Eliot don’t expect anything she’s not willing to give – is oddly calming?
And Eliot, at first, tries to use it all the time. Because they don’t- He’s just got so much nasty shit in his head, they’re probably relieved that they don’t have to have it as background radiation anymore. He can’t always control it during one of those really intense memories – he thinks he just has to practice more, but…. – but, you know, overall, he uses it all the fucking time.
And then Hardison and Parker come to him and are like um, do you want us to undo it? like we can go back to the lab and probably get them to-
Which, what the fuck? Of course he doesn’t want them to undo it, they almost died adding him to their little telepathic ring, why would he want them to cut him out again??
And probably Hardison would be the one to explain that he, you know, seemed like he… didn’t really want to be connected to them anymore. Like maybe the fun had worn off and he wanted out. Since he was always blocking them.
And Eliot is just like … at them, and once again feels bad because once again he’s fucked up and once again they’re being so fucking nice about it. But, you know, etc.
I have so many other feelings but this post is too long as it is. But let me tell you, this trashfic is definitely what I’m working on next.
