#that took longer than i expected
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
