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Eliot knows something’s wrong almost at once. Thing is, Parker’s just spent five hours making dinner for him and he might snap and growl and grumble, but she was glowing as she set the tray down on his lap. Eliot isn’t taking that away from her.
With Nate and the others out of town on a con, it’s just the two of them in Boston for the next few days. It’s already been just the two of them for the last three, and Parker was bored within the first twenty-four hours. Not like either one of them deals well with boredom, but Eliot’s normally able to spend his downtime on his hobbies: training, cooking, gardening, fishing - he’s got plenty.
Thing is, the reason they’ve both been left behind is that Eliot took enough of a beating his left leg isn’t quite able to hold his weight and Parker asked to stay behind and look after him. Eliot’s almost sure this is another of those things where Parker dislikes some element of the con and just isn’t saying, but she already got over her fear of horses for him and as soon as Nate admitted his plan didn’t absolutely need Parker that was the end of it. Parker was staying and Eliot had a babysitter.
Eliot had been planning on spending the time in his own place, holed up and healing, but somehow it was all arranged he’d stay at Nate’s, and so would Parker.
He doesn’t mind, exactly. It’s just…he’s been thinking over what being with the team means, and whether, after the thing with Moreau, he should even be around them. He thinks they don’t look at him differently now. He thinks. But maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
It’s been weeks. They’ve had plenty of time to say something, to make it clear they want him gone, and maybe he should just accept they really don’t mind, that they feel exactly the same about him as they did before. But he can’t. He can never forgive himself for some of the things he’s done, and he doesn’t quite see how they can forgive him for the things they know about. He’s found himself half thinking he should leave.
Still, Parker said she wanted him to stay with her at Nate’s, so they’d be on hand if the team needed help, and if Eliot half thinks it’s as much an excuse to avoid whatever she doesn’t like about this job as it is anything else, he can deal. So he lets the team insist he stay on the couch and rest, and he watches three of them walk away, and he doesn’t feel torn between wanting to run after them and wanting to run away. Not at all.
And now he’s got a bowl of something…glistening to eat.
“You sure this is food?” he asks, but he picks up the fork and prods at a lump of something strangely red.
“Yup,” Parker says. She bounces a little on the balls of her feet. “It’s to make you heal faster.”
Which means she’s been doing research, and that could mean anything. Eliot spears one of the lumps and holds it up, tempted to sniff it. That might put him off eating it, though, and it’s not like it’ll be the first questionable thing he’s eaten. At least this time he’s sitting on a couch with his injuries tended to, and isn’t in some cell calculating how far the food is evidence he won’t be executed.
“Thanks,” he risks, and shoves the food into his mouth.
He makes it through most of the bowl, Parker watching him intently, before he feels the first shiver. It ripples through his body, the kind of chill that can mean he’s is reacting to something. He isn’t often ill, but when he is he can almost shake apart with cold.
“That was great,” he says, faking a smile that turns real at the pride on Parker’s face. “I’m just full, is all. You gonna eat any?”
“Nope,” Parker says, shaking her head. Her ponytail sways behind her. “This is just for you.”
She doesn’t say what she is eating, and Eliot doesn’t end up asking, because he feels a wave of exhaustion roll over him. By the time Parker’s taken the tray away and come back, he’s shivering and blinking just to stay awake.
“Lie down and nap,” Parker tells him. “I’ll get you a blanket. Do you want me to stroke your hair? I saw someone do that.”
He doesn’t know if she means to him personally, which brings up worrying images of the few times he’s ever let anyone stroke his hair, or if she’s been spying on people generally, or even if she means on TV, but he manages a glare.
“No! I do not need you to stroke my hair!”
She seems to take that in stride, urging him again to lie down and bringing him a blanket, which she insists on spreading over him from his toes right up to his chin. She even tucks him in, and before he can stop her she leans in and drops a kiss on his forehead. The quizzical look she gives him afterward suggests she’s checking the success of her efforts, but Eliot’s done with fighting sleep. He does see her nod to herself as his eyes slip closed and he drifts off.
***
He’s warm when he wakes up. Too warm.
He tries to sit up and throw the blanket off, but somehow it’s over his head and he can’t seem to get his arms to work. At all. He isn’t claustrophobic, not since the shed, but that doesn’t mean he likes being smothered or unable to get away. He’s got plenty of reasons not to like feeling trapped. Being able to deal with something isn’t the same as being okay with it.
Eliot gives up on coordination and twists his whole body until he slides from under the blanket and onto the floor.
He lets himself have a moment to process, noting it’s night and not hearing any movement from Parker. She’s either found herself somewhere to sleep or she’s gone out. Eliot told her the first night he hates being watched while he sleeps. She’ll know he’s safe here in Nate’s apartment, even if she doesn’t know he’s currently on the floor between the couch and the coffee-table.
Thing is, the perspective’s off. He shouldn’t fit in this space, not without his shoulders hitting both pieces of furniture. The light seems weird, too. It’s dark, but he can see. It’s a grainy kind of sight, but it isn’t his normal night-vision. And the smells… He knows his senses are acute, but he shouldn’t be able to smell Parker when she’s clearly not here, and he shouldn’t know from where he is that she ate her current favorite brand of potato chip for her meal, let alone that she also ate mint sauce.
He rolls, aiming to get upright as quickly as possible so he can work out what’s wrong with his senses. He makes it to his feet pretty quickly, but his eye-level is barely above the couch’s seat, and-
“What the hell?” he mutters.
Or tries to. Instead, as he registers the fact that all four limbs are touching the ground, he hears himself whine. He’s on his hands and knees when he meant to get up, and he’s whining. He has got to pull himself together.
Only…only he isn’t on his knees. He doesn’t feel his shins touching the floor.
There’s an unsteady, rolling sickness in Eliot as he looks down at himself, and then around, and then does it again. It isn’t cleared at all by what he sees. Fur. He sees fur and paws and more fur.
He’s far shorter than he should be and he has fur. And paws. And…yeah. And a tail.
Before he can process it and come up with a plan, the sound of the door opening draws his attention and there’s Parker, slipping inside and heading in his direction. She’s holding a bag that he knows contains some of her rigging, and she sets it down in the armchair as she passes, her attention on the couch.
“Eliot?” she asks, quietly. “You still sleeping? Wanna watch a movie?”
It’s got to be the middle of the night, but time doesn’t always mean much to Parker.
“Eliot?”
He tries to move, to put some space between them so she doesn’t walk into him, but he hasn’t got the hang of four legs yet, one of them still injured, and he knocks into the table. Another whine escapes him, this one, if he’s honest, more of a yelp, and Parker freezes.
“Eliot?” she asks again. “Is that a dog? Do you have a dog in here?”
When she moves, it’s back to the light switch, and Eliot manages to shift himself through a few steps by the time the lights come on. It’s not enough to get himself out of sight, though, and he hears Parker’s indrawn breath.
“How’d you get in here?” she asks. “Where’s Eliot?”
He wants to tell her he is Eliot, but he has no idea how. He’s a fucking dog? That’s…not one of the contingencies he has plans for.
“Did you eat Eliot?” Parker asks, sounding sterner.
“No!”
That comes out as a bark, and Eliot growls in irritation. Turns out, growling is still something he can do.
“No you don’t!” Parker says. She skips back and picks up something - Eliot’s baseball bat - brandishing it in a way that says she will absolutely use it on a dog if she has to. “Eliot! Where are you? Why do we have a dog? Did it eat you?”
Eliot needs Parker to not hit him with that bat. He has no idea how to fight as a dog, but he’s pretty sure a good swing from a bat could hurt him. He tries to make himself smaller, hunching and finding it feels natural to sit, to lower his head and, yes, to whine. Again. Damn it.
It does the trick. After a few moments, Parker tilts her head and takes a step toward him. She still holds the bat, but it isn’t with the same intent. As she reaches him, she drops the bat entirely and goes to her knees, resting her hands on her own thighs.
“Hey,” she says. “You didn’t eat Eliot, did you?”
He tries to show he didn’t just with his eyes and with his body language, but he could be fucking it up.
“You look scared,” Parker says. “Don’t be scared, Mr Dog. We’ll find you some bones to eat and Eliot will know what to do with you. You’ll like Eliot. He’s the kind of person who knows about dogs and outdoors things. He’ll probably throw a stick for you. You’d like that, right?”
Eliot says nothing.
“And don’t worry,” Parker goes on, lifting a hand and holding it out under Eliot’s nose, “he acts grumpy, but he’s soft really. Just give him puppy eyes and he’ll scowl and look after you.”
She says it conversationally, as though it’s just a fact that’s known about Eliot Spencer, and Eliot wants to glare at her but instead he’s distracted by the scents of Parker and soap and a dozen other things that cling to her skin. He wants to know what they all mean, and he finds himself sniffing at her hand without meaning to.
Parker smiles and lifts her other hand to pat at his head. He flinches, but when she waits for a second he goes back to sniffing and this time she strokes over his head and down to one of his ears. Well, across to one of his ears.
“Hey, you have those perky ears with floppy bits at the ends,” she says. “Cute. You’re scruffy, too. You don’t have fleas, do you? Eliot will not like it if you have fleas.” She frowns, pulling her eyebrows down and narrowing her eyes, and her voice drops into something gruff. “I don’t want any damn fleas, Parker! Get rid of that mutt!” A moment later, she laughs and her face opens up again. “That’s when you give him the puppy eyes. Hardison does it all the time. Not about fleas. But it’ll probably work the same. Hey, do you want a biscuit? Or water? Or a ball? I think I have a ball somewhere.”
She takes her hands away and Eliot misses the gentle petting. Wait. No. No, he doesn’t. That must just be whatever weird shit has turned him into a freaking dog.
Parker disappears up the stairs and Eliot tries to follow her, but as much as he finds it easier to walk this time, his injured leg easier to deal with when he has three others, he can’t work out how to get up the stairs. She’s back before he can do it, sitting on the bottom step and patting his head again. He tells himself he isn’t filled with relief both to see her and to feel her hand on him.
“Here,” Parker says, and holds up a tennis ball with her other hand. “Do you want it?”
Not really. It’s just a ball. Still, when she holds it out to him he sniffs it. That’s an almost automatic reaction, it seems. He looks up at her and tilts his head, feeling one ear flop. He’s got no idea what kind of dog he is, not really, but he saw rough fur when he looked at himself and Parker has called him scruffy. He has the horrible feeling he really is some kind of mutt, and not a dog that could strike fear into an enemy if anyone came after Parker. The fierce need to protect Parker is, at least, familiar.
“No to the ball?” she asks. “Oh, well. Okay. You don’t know where Eliot went, do you?”
Eliot knows exactly where Eliot went, but he has no idea how to get that across to Parker and he doesn’t know why he’s now a dog.
“I’ll send him a message,” Parker says, and stands.
Again, Eliot finds himself filled with a sense of loss as soon as she’s not touching him, and it’s worse when she walks away from him, so he follows her. She goes to her bag and pulls out her phone, frowning as she taps at the screen. Next, she tries the comms, but Eliot knows his is tucked away in a pocket. Finally, Parker sighs and inspects the couch, apparently okay with Eliot being nearly close enough for his nose to touch her leg. It’s better when he’s closer to her. It’d be better still if she would look at him, or talk to him, or pat him, but close is better than not close. He’s very sure of that.
“He’s left his clothes,” Parker says, pulling Eliot’s sleep-pants from under the blanket. “Why would he do that? I suppose he wanted to wear outdoor clothes if he’s gone out, though. Do you think he went looking for me? Or did he go to get your owner, Mr Dog?”
Sighing again, Parker turns and drops onto the couch, leaning back and pulling a face.
“I guess we’ll have to wait for him to come back,” she says, but she doesn’t sound very happy about it. “I shouldn’t worry, because he’s Eliot, but he’s got a busted leg and I was supposed to be looking after him. Sophie said.”
Parker doesn’t make clear exactly what Sophie said, and Eliot makes a mental note to ask exactly why Sophie thinks Eliot needs looking after, but right for now he’s more focused on getting Parker to look at him again. He whines and she glances at him.
“What’s the matter? Do you want to help me look after Eliot?”
Another whine, and Parker pats the seat next to her.
“Come and lie down,” she says. “We’ll wait for a bit and if he’s isn’t back we’ll call Sophie.”
It takes Eliot three tries and some help from Parker, who grabs him round the middle and hauls, but he ends up next to her. Right next to her. He gives in to need and rests his head on her thigh, feeling tension melt out of him at the warmth from her. When she drops a hand onto his back he feels his tail wag. He didn’t tell it to, and it’s one of the weirdest things Eliot has ever experienced in his life, but there it is.
Eliot Spencer is curled up next to Parker, partway on her lap, and he’s happier than he’s been in ages because she has her hand on his back and is stroking it in slow circles.
It’s a good thing he’s covered in fur, because he thinks he should be bright red in embarrassment.
It doesn’t make him move.
***
“What do you mean, Eliot’s gone?” Nate asks from the screens.
Parker shrugs, throwing her arms out, and Eliot watches her from the floor, wanting to lean against her leg and not quite knowing if he should. Nate hasn’t reacted to him at all and he probably can’t see Eliot. He wants Nate to notice him. He wants Nate to step through the screens and pat Eliot on the head and tell him he’s done a good job guarding Parker, and he did not just fucking think that.
“I went out when he was sleeping and now he’s gone,” Parker says. “I can’t get hold of him. He isn’t answering any messages. Nate, I don’t know where he is. Did I lose Eliot?”
Nate’s quite for a minute, and then he clears his throat.
“Listen, Parker, we’re almost done here. The con went better than expected. Hardison’s just scrubbing a few images and taking care of a transfer. We’ll be heading back in a few hours. You track down any leads you can come up with and we’ll find him. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Parker sounds small and worried. That isn’t right. Parker should be happy.
Eliot gives in, shuffles across the floor, and leans against her leg. One of her hands drops to rest on his head and it’s better. It’s just immediately better.
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll wait here with the dog.”
There’s another pause and then Sophie’s face pops up next to Nate, looking startled.
“Dog?” she asks. “What dog?”
***
Hardison is far, far taller than Eliot remembers him being.
“How’d the dog get in here?” Hardison asks, as he looms over Eliot and stares down at him. “He just appear out of the damn ether?”
“He was just here,” Parker says, from behind Eliot.
Eliot wants to back up until he’s pressed against her again, but he holds his place and stares up at Hardison. He wants Hardison to reach down, but Hardison just keeps staring.
“He’s one ugly mutt,” Hardison says.
Eliot feels his ears droop and all the wag goes out of his tail. Not that he was wagging. Well, all right, so he was wagging a bit. Turns out it’s a tough instinct to squash. Hell, he wanted to wriggle right up to all of them and say hello, and no way is he sinking that low. Doesn’t mean he could suppress a few wags, up until Hardison looked at him like he was dirt on a laptop screen.
“You’ve hurt his feelings,” Parker says, and a moment later she’s crouched next to Eliot with one hand on his shoulder and the other on his chest, holding him, and he almost doesn’t feel bad anymore. “Don’t you listen to him, Mr Dog. You’re cute. You’ve just got scruffy hair. Like Eliot. And Hardison doesn’t think Eliot is ugly.”
He has scruffy hair? Hardison doesn’t think he’s ugly as a human? Eliot isn’t sure what he’s feeling, and some part of him vaguely registers that he doesn’t want to feel any of it, that this isn’t him, but he’s still finding his responses hard to manage as a dog. He grumbles.
“Sounds like Eliot,” Hardison says. “All grumbling and bad-tempered. You sure it ain’t gonna attack me?”
“You’re probably scaring him, Hardison,” Sophie says. “He’s hardly a huge dog, is he? Someone as tall as you probably looks like a giant.”
Eliot is not scared of Hardison! He tries to move forward, to show them he’s not scared, but Parker holds him in place. Leaning in, she whispers in his ear.
“Don’t worry,” she tells him. “Hardison won’t hurt you. He’s just worried about Eliot. He gets like this when Eliot might get hurt on a job, as well.”
Which is not something Eliot knew. Being a dog gives a different view of a lot of things.
In any case, he ends up sitting on the open patch of floor between the couch and the dining table as Hardison does something on the computer and Nate and Sophie discuss what to do with him. He wants to push his head into their hands, but neither one of them touches him. They just sit with the dining chairs turned to face him and talk about him.
“We can’t keep a dog, Parker,” Nate says. “We’re out of town too often, and we don’t have a yard here. And have you even taken him out for a run?”
Parker has. She used some cord as a leash, and Eliot does not want to know why she already had a dog-collar. The local park was…interesting, and Eliot is not over having Parker follow him around while he tried to work out the whole toilet business. He lost her long enough to hide behind a bush, but he isn’t looking forward to the next time. Speaking of which, he really could do with that being about now. He whines.
“He sounds like he needs to go out now,” Sophie says. “Dogs need exercise. And his bladder must be full to bursting. Poor thing.”
“I took him out,” Parker says. And frowns. “Once. Do you think he needs to go again?”
Sophie most definitely does, and she ends up going with Parker and Eliot for a walk. Parker brings the ball. Eliot does not chase it. He doesn’t.
All right, he chases it a bit.
***
Parker’s gone upstairs to sleep. She told Nate she didn’t need to sleep, that she could stay awake until Eliot came home, but Nate insisted she get some rest and told her to use his bed. The others all slept on the plane, but Parker’s not slept since thinking Eliot has gone missing.
Which means that now she’s upstairs and Eliot isn’t. This is proving to be a problem.
He sits at the bottom of the stairs and gazes up. He’s much better coordinated now and sure he could make it up, but Nate told him he wasn’t allowed. Eliot had a hard enough time ignoring Nate’s orders as a human, even though he could do it when he really thought Nate was wrong. It was more that he chose to give Nate the control. Eliot’s always been good at taking orders.
As a dog, it seems he’s even better at it.
“You can stop looking so glum,” Sophie says, stopping on her way back to the couch and looking down at him. “She’s only having a sleep. Parker will be back down in a few hours and you can follow her around with big puppy-dog eyes again.”
“You talking to the dog, Soph?” Hardison asks. “You know it can’t understand you, right?”
“He’s a very intelligent boy,” Sophie says, sounding stung. “Aren’t you, Mr Dog?”
Eliot thumps his tail on the ground. And hates himself, just for a moment.
“Pretty good at hiding it,” Hardison mutters, and Sophie probably doesn’t even hear it. “Are we really calling it Mr Dog?”
“It’s what Parker calls him,” Sophie says.
“Hardison’s right,” Nate says from the couch, and the tension that sits in all of their voices is in his, too. They’re doing a good job of covering it from each other, but Eliot can hear it. “We should come up with a better name for him.”
“I thought we weren’t keeping him,” Sophie says from where she’s still standing next to Eliot.
“Well, we’re not. But we should call him something until we can work out where to take him.”
“Have you even said hello to him, yet?” Sophie asks, and clicks her fingers as she makes her way back over to Nate. Eliot follows. “See? He’s a very good boy. Here, Nate. Just let him sniff your hand. And Parker says he likes having his head rubbed.”
Sophie sits next to Nate and gestures for Eliot, who stops in front of her and waits. When she reaches out and strokes his head, he leans into it. It’s not like they know he’s him. And it does feel good, like he’s being accepted, like he’s not damned anymore.
Dogs probably don’t go to Heaven, really, but Eliot’s damn sure they don’t go to Hell.
He straightens when Nate huffs and leans across, his hand out and his expression expectant.
“Go on, then,” Nate says. “Sniff my hand. Sophie wants us to be friends.”
Eliot sniffs Nate’s hand. It feels weirder than with any of the others. Not that Hardison has come near Eliot yet, but he pushes that thought aside.
“Just rub his ear,” Sophie says, and smiles when Nate does as she says. Now, Eliot has both of them stroking his head. He still wants to go up to Parker, but this makes it much more bearable. “There. You see? He’s friendly.”
Nate’s expression looks a lot softer now, and his sigh isn’t nearly as exasperated as he probably means for it to sound.
“Fine. We can keep him until we find Eliot. Maybe he did bring this dog home. We should ask him at least. But I’m not calling him Mr Dog.”
Eliot ends up curled on the couch between Sophie and Nate and it might be the most restful sleep he’s had in years.
***
Nate regards the screens with the kind of icy detachment that usually means Eliot goes on high alert, but right now Parker is rubbing his belly and that’s taking up most of Eliot’s mind.
“There has to be something,” Nate says.
Nearby, Hardison throws up his hands.
“Like what? I’m telling you, Nate, I already tried everything. All right? I got nothing. Eliot’s missing.”
Eliot isn’t missing. Eliot’s curled into a pretzel next to Parker, and Sophie’s on the other side of him, looking worried but casting tender looks at Parker and Eliot every now and again. He’s already tried telling them it’s him, though. He figured maybe he could tap out a message on Hardison’s keyboard, but trying to jump up high enough just got him yelled at and Parker made to hold him on his leash until he behaved.
The cord. Not his leash. He doesn’t have a leash. He’s not an actual dog. This is just temporary. Probably.
Barking at them, tugging on their clothing, trying Morse code, anything else to get their attention at key moments just got brushed aside, and now Eliot’s decided to think of something else. Right after this belly rub. And maybe another run. He’s almost got the hang of jumping just right to catch the ball now.
“You must have something,” Nate says, implacable.
“Well I don’t!” Hardison shouts. “Nate, man, I’m telling you, the footage I have does not show Eliot leaving this place. Not any way. Less he learned to teleport, he never left and that damn dog was never brought in.”
“Then someone messed with your footage,” Sophie says. “Nate, someone must have gone to a lot of effort to plan this. We really need to find him.”
“Maybe he left by himself,” Nate says, his expression giving nothing away. “It’s not as though Eliot shares everything with us.”
“And you think, what, that he just decided to up and leave without leaving us a message?” Sophie asks. “I know he wasn’t happy we found out about all that business with Moreau, but I don’t believe he’d do that. Not these days.”
“Besides,” Hardison says, “even if Eliot upped and left without telling us, you think he suddenly sprouted the ability to use a computer well enough to fool me?”
“I’m just saying, we need to consider every option,” Nate says.
“Eliot wouldn’t leave us,” Parker says, sounding stubborn. Eliot feels the way her hand stops moving, the way she grips on to his fur. “He wouldn’t. Take that back, Nate.”
The argument that follows sends Parker, and therefore Eliot, out for another run, and he makes sure to miss the ball a few times because it makes Parker laugh to see him send the thing flying in another random direction and have to take off after it again.
Once they’ve played and run and Parker’s decided that’s enough, she buys them each an ice-cream and they sit under a tree to eat them. Eliot lets Parker hold his and licks at it when she holds it out to him. Just because he’s a dog doesn’t meant he wants to eat off the floor, something Parker worked out even before Nate and the others got back.
“I’m worried, Mr Dog,” Parker says. “I don’t like feeling worried. It’s all squirmy inside. You know what I mean?”
Eliot thumps his tail once and perks his ears up to show she has his attention.
“I think something might be really wrong with Eliot. He wouldn’t just leave and let us be worried like this. And Hardison knows magic. He should be able to find Eliot on a camera somewhere. When I got stuck in that building, they all came to get me. Did you know that? No. Of course you didn’t. How could you? Eliot got all the way up the side of the building to come get me, and then he helped me get what we needed to stop the bad guys. If Eliot’s in trouble, I should be helping him.”
Eliot licks up the last of the ice-cream and licks once at Parker’s wrist to say he gets what she’s saying. Thing is, it’s killing him that he’s right here and she doesn’t see it, but over the last few days he’s lost track of how he held so many thoughts in his head at once, of how he kept a tight grasp of the anger and irritation and passion that wound through him all the damn time. So, he cares. He does. But…he also feels the breeze in his fur and he just enjoyed the taste of ice-cream and Parker is right here, with him, where she should be. It’s hard to be too upset.
“At least you’re here, Mr Dog,” Parker says, and wraps her arms around him.
Yeah. It’s tough to be too upset at all.
***
Hardison puts fliers up. Or he puts out a message somehow. Parker isn’t pleased.
“He’s Eliot’s dog,” she says, her face tight with displeasure as she faces Hardison down across Nate’s apartment. “Eliot brought him here before he vanished. We have to look after him until we find Eliot.”
“We still ain’t got a clue how that mangy mutt got here,” Hardison says. He doesn’t look at Eliot. He hardly ever does. “And we don’t need it here. We need to stay focused on finding Eliot. Harder to do that with you running out to play ball every five minutes.”
“Guys,” Nate says. “Guys, this isn’t helping. Parker, if someone turns up who owns the dog, we can’t keep him from them. Hardison, the dog’s not a problem. I thought he would be, but Parker’s looking after him and he’s a good dog. Leave the dog alone. He isn’t the problem. Eliot being missing is the problem.”
But Nate only pats Eliot when Sophie tells him to. He ignores him almost as much as Hardison does the rest of the time.
Eliot isn’t surprised when Nate suggests contacting people they’ve been avoiding so far, but it doesn’t mean he’s easy about them getting in touch with all of the people who might know about a hit out on Eliot. He’s pretty sure Moreau will have at least one plan to get payment from Eliot, no matter what deep hole the guy’s buried in, and there are others he worked with in the past. That’s before they get to all of the people he’s helped Leverage take down. Just because they haven’t got him doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to remind them he exists.
Sure, Nate doesn’t directly contact them, but putting out feelers is as good as an invitation to some of them.
Still, that doesn’t come to anything, either, and nearly two weeks after Eliot turned into a dog, the team accept they need information they just can’t find. That’s the same day a woman stumbles into the bar desperate for help saving her son, and Nate takes the case.
***
“Without a hitter?” Hardison asks. “We got a death wish, now?”
From his place under the dining table, Eliot rests his chin on his front paws and watches his friend. Hardison’s always expressive, always full of life, but over the last few days he’s become angrier and more bitter than Eliot remembers seeing him. Sure, Hardison can rant and rage, but it’s a summer storm, over and done, and hardly ever about anything serious.
There’s something different about him now.
“Tia Lewis needs our help saving her son,” Nate says, and of course Nate won’t be able to turn away from this one. “Are you suggesting we leave her to struggle on her own, Hardison?”
“I’m suggesting we have some damn sense about this!” Hardison gestures, his arms out wide, and his glare is impressive. There’s no give there, but Eliot does think he sees some desperation. “What we gonna do if we get in trouble? Ask them to come back when Eliot drags himself home?”
“Of course not,” Nate says. He says it in that calm, measured way that means Eliot needs to keep a close eye on him. “I’ve called help.”
Hardison opens his mouth, closes it, and turns away, his shoulders slumped. Nate says nothing. When Hardison turns back, his eyes are wet.
“So that’s it?” he asks. “We just giving up on Eliot now? Would you give up on the rest of us that fast?”
It’s only Nate and Hardison in the apartment, except for Eliot. If Sophie were here, she’s day something, make them see sense and stop sniping at each other. If Parker were here, she…well, she might do all sorts of things, but it’d break the tension one way or another. Hell, if Eliot were in his right body, he’d knock their heads together. Or rant. Not like it’d be the first time he took to ranting as a way of redirecting someone on the team.
As it is, he can only lie and watch them, because neither one of them will do more than tolerate him unless Parker or Sophie makes them. He tells himself again it doesn’t hurt. They don’t know who he is.
“Of course I’m not giving up on him,” Nate says, still calm, still steady. “I’m not going to give up on him. But we don’t have any leads just now and we do have a woman whose son is in danger. Mikel will help us. And perhaps she’ll have heard something about Eliot.”
Mikel. Huh. Eliot’s seen her a few times since that first meeting, and each one has been memorable. Right now, though, he’s more concerned with the emotions playing out across Hardison’s face, and the ones buried in Nate’s measured speech.
He might say he isn’t giving up, but Eliot can’t see how the guy’s ever going to hit on the answer to his disappearance. It’s not like ‘has turned into a dog’ is anywhere in the playbook, not even the highly unusual and convoluted one that Nate Ford uses.
Eliot wants to go to Nate and lean against him, he wants to go to Hardison and have him sit with Eliot the way Parker sits with him. But he doesn’t. There’s no point: Hardison doesn’t want anything to do with Eliot.
Instead, he watches Hardison sigh and return to his computers, and he sees Nate watch the guy, unspeaking, for what feels like forever.
***
Mikel picks Eliot up and laughs when Parker says it’s making him grumpy.
“He’s cute,” she says. “Scruffy and cute.”
“He ain’t a lapdog,” Hardison says, showing more of an interest than he has most of the time when Mikel sits on the couch and won’t let Eliot get down. “He’s a floor dog.”
Mikel smiles and rubs Eliot’s ears. It doesn’t feel right. He likes Mikel, he does, but she isn’t one of his people, and normally contact between them has been fighting or… Well, Mikel being close to him, Mikel touching him, doesn’t give him the same sense of safety and warmth that he gets when anyone on his team does it.
He wriggles, grumbling, but she taps him on the nose.
“Stay,” she says, and that’s something else that has a totally different context now.
Eliot’s starting to think that if he ever gets out of this he’s finally going to need therapy.
After a while, Parker slides in to sit next to Mikel. During a pause in Nate’s briefing, she leans in and nudges the hitter.
“He’s Eliot’s dog,” she says. “Eliot wouldn’t want his dog to be unhappy.”
“The dog is happy,” Mikel says. “Dogs like attention and being petted. Like some men I know.” She seems to consider for a moment. “And some women.”
“Ya’ll can discuss your sex life later,” Hardison says, gesturing at the screens.
“Of course,” Mikel says easily. “You didn’t really explain where Eliot is.”
She’s smart and she’s well-trained, and she must sense the mood shift in the room at once. Eliot feels her go still, and her hand on his head stops moving.
“Where is Eliot?” she asks, slowly.
When Nate explains, Mikel is quiet for the rest of the briefing, apart from when she contributes her expertise. She’s clipped and business like, and she makes no move to stop him when Eliot slips off her knee and onto Parker.
“You haven’t any idea where he is, have you? No clues? No leads?” she asks, once Nate has announced what they’ll be stealing and has walked out. “Do you think someone got to him?”
“We don’t know what to think,” Sophie says. She’s sitting with her legs crossed at the ankle and her hands clasped in her lap. “Hardison can’t find anything. Everyone Nate’s contacted says they have no news.”
“I should know,” Mikel says. “If someone put out a hit on Eliot Spencer, I should know. I’ve heard nothing.”
“He has to be somewhere,” Parker says. She tightens her grip on Eliot’s fur. “Eliot wouldn’t just leave us.”
“No,” Mikel says. “I know loyalty. He is loyal. If he’s able to, he’ll come back.”
“If he was so damn loyal, he wouldn’t have left in the first place,” Hardison says, and no-one else says anything about it after that.
***
When the team come back from the latest stage of the con, Mikel is supporting Parker’s weight. Eliot skids to a halt partway across the apartment, the wriggle going out of him as he sees the tightly controlled pain on her face.
Parker’s hurt. Parker’s hurt and he wasn’t there to protect her.
He waits until Mikel helps Parker onto the couch before he approaches, sliding his nose under her hand and wagging his tail slowly.
“Don’t worry, Mr Dog,” Parker says, though she doesn’t sound as cheerful as she normally does when she speaks to him. “It’s not much. I’ll be fine in a few hours. You get around with a limp.”
He does. His bad leg is still hurt, but nothing like as much as it had felt as a human, and it doesn’t stop him from running and playing. Um. Exercising. But this is Parker. Parker isn’t meant to be hurt at all.
Eliot has to try five times to crawl up onto the couch next to Parker, because Nate and Hardison keep stopping him, but once he’s on he rests his head on Parker’s stomach and vows silently he won’t let her be hurt again.
***
Eliot’s supposed to be back at the apartment. Parker told him to stay. Nate told him to stay. So did Mikel, but even though he still likes her, Eliot doesn’t feel any real need to do as she says. She was only ever in charge because they both agreed it was more fun that way. With his team, it isn’t about it being fun. Besides, she’s a lot less fun when he’s a dog.
So he should be back at Nate’s, lying under the table or curled up on the couch. Hell, Sophie probably thinks he should be in the bed she bought for him, the one with the designer label. Like a dog needs a designer label. Eliot doesn’t need designer labels when he’s human. Didn’t need them when he was human.
He’s starting to worry he might be stuck like this forever.
If he is, he isn’t going to wait behind for his team for the rest of his life, so he sneaked out after Hardison, who has the worst zanshin of anyone on the team, and slunk into the back of Lucille. He’s tucked away behind a couple of large boxes, hunkered down real small, and so far no-one’s noticed.
Over Hardison’s comms, he hears the voices of his team. He can’t make out what they’re saying, but he can just pick up when they’re speaking, and so far they don’t sound under stress. Hardison doesn’t seem any more worked up than he has been all week, either, and it’s worth hiding if it means he knows they’re all safe.
Right up until he knows they’re not.
Parker’s voice sounds more tense, a quick, staccato burst of sounds, and then Hardison bolts upright, his spine straight and his expression tight.
“Parker?” he says. “Parker, those guards shouldn’t be there. How many did you say?”
However many it is, it’s too many. Eliot listened to the plan. The place they’re breaking into to get the material they need for the next step of the job is only supposed to have a couple of security guards. They’re old and used to guarding nothing and shouldn’t be an issue. They shouldn’t be making Parker sound worried.
The back doors aren’t shut right. Eliot hits them hard and ignores the pain as the force jars him. It doesn’t matter. It works. He’s out, Hardison’s voice calling after him, and he’s racing in the direction he knows Parker went. He might be a dog, but that doesn’t mean he’s leaving his Parker to fight off guards on her own.
He’s still Eliot Spencer, and he’s still going to protect his people.
***
Parker’s partway through the building, facing off against five men. Five. Even with her taser she can’t take give of them on at once.
If he were himself, Eliot could handle them. They aren’t showing signs of being special forces or anything he’d have to work up much of a sweat over. Thing is, he isn’t himself right now. Right now, he’s a not overly large scruffy brown mutt, and he’s barreling into them anyway.
He leaps, hitting the first guy in the chest and knocking him back. After that, things get confusing.
Then there’s a blow that swipes him sideways. Then there’s pain. Then there’s nothing.
***
Parker has tears in her eyes when Hardison reaches her. He saw that damn dog rocket out of the van and followed, but he’s too late to stop what happens. Hell, he doesn’t know if Parker and he could have fought off the men facing her alone, but he was ready to try. Eliot’s taught them both a few things over the years.
But he doesn’t have to, because the bundle of fur on the ground looks to have sorted it out.
The very still bundle of fur.
“Parker?” he asks, dropping to his knees next to her and the dog. He can’t see blood, but the dog isn’t lying naturally and it’s not likely it’d be taking a nap all of a sudden. Besides, Hardison saw that last guy swing the baseball bat, and he saw it hit. The dog pretty much crumpled around it. “It hurt?”
“He saved me,” Parker says, her voice tight the way it gets when she’s too overwhelmed with feeling. “And now he’s hurt, Alec.”
Hardison doesn’t know why he can’t stand the damn dog. He just knows that every time he’s looked at it, every time he’s been near it, his skin has felt like something’s crawling on it. He just knows there’s something not right. So he’s kept his distance and he’s tried to get them to search for the dog’s owners, because a dog should have owners, and he’s resented every moment that he hasn’t spent looking for Eliot.
Now, though, he sees how upset Parker is and he reaches out to search for the dog’s pulse. If that’s something you can do with dogs. He has no idea.
“We’ll help it, mama,” he says, and thinks of how this little dog flung itself right at the guys threatening Parker. “We’ll help him.”
***
Nate doesn’t say much when they tell him they’re taking the dog to a vets. Parker has her part of the job completed and Mikel is covering Sophie on her next step. Hardison and Parker can take a few hours if they need it. Even if it is just a dog.
He tells himself the worry in his gut is just due to getting the child back to his mother. And Eliot, of course. He can admit to himself he’s worried about Eliot, and frustrated they still can’t find the guy. The kind of people Eliot’s gone up against in the past, it’s not a good sign they can’t even find a trail, and Nate doesn’t feel much better about the idea Eliot might have left them. Nate thought he’d made it clear that nothing they’ve learned about Eliot makes them want him gone, but perhaps he still isn’t good enough at letting his people know how he feels, how he values them.
“They’ll tell us if he’s okay,” Sophie says. “Or if he’s not.”
For a moment, Nate thinks she means Eliot.
She’s partway through a meeting with a CEO they really can’t afford to tip off, and Nate frowns as her voice filters through the comms. He hears Mikel murmur agreement from her place by Sophie’s side.
“Concentrate on the job,” Nate tells them.
Sophie snorts.
“Oh, Nate. Come on. He’s stepped out to take some call about his golfing schedule. And I know you’re as worried about Mr Dog as we are.”
“He’s a very cute dog,” Mikel says.
Nate feels his jaw clench.
“I am not… Just focus on the job.”
Neither of them answer, but a moment later Sophie is back in role and in full flow, so he doesn’t need to tell them again.
He doesn’t care about that dog, anyway. Not any more than he’d care about any dog they came across. The dog being hurt doesn’t have anything to do with Eliot, so he doesn’t know why he can’t shake the association from his mind.
Nate forces himself to keep his mind on the con. They need to get the boy back to his mother. At least one family will be reunited today.
***
Mikel peels off the jacket and drops it on the floor, smirking as Nate looks away. These men Eliot works with are so chivalrous in their own ways, but she’s well aware both Hardison and Nate know how dangerous she is, and it’s refreshing to work with people who don’t need to remind themselves to be respectful.
It’s a shame Eliot isn’t around.
She’s not said anything to them about finding him, because Mikel knows all too well that getting people’s hopes up is a bad idea, but she’s already got plans on where to ask around once this job is done. Eliot’s time in bed with her, or on whatever they’ve used for a bed each time, isn’t enough to make her go looking, but Eliot is more than that. She doesn’t form attachments easily, and she knows how dangerous they can be, but Eliot is at least something of a friend, and she’s not going to walk away without a thought when he’s missing.
She’s partway through changing out of the smart business outfit Sophie had her wear when Hardison’s voice filters through the comms.
“Guys, the vet says he’s bruised up, but nothing’s badly damaged.”
“Oh, good,” Sophie says from her place at the table. She hasn’t bothered to change out of her outfit, but Sophie always dresses well. If Mikel couldn’t imagine Eliot’s reaction to it, she’d have made a play for Sophie at one point. Right now, Sophie’s claimed a large glass of red wine from somewhere. “Can you bring him home?”
“We’re just waiting for the pills the vet wants him to have. Gonna be real fun to trick a dog into eating those.”
“Nonsense,” Sophie says. “Put them in a piece of cheese and he’ll eat them. Dogs love cheese.”
“And we’re done,” Nate says. “Our client has her son back.”
But there’s that thread left hanging, the one that says they won’t be finished until they know where Eliot is.
Mikel shrugs on a looser top and pulls out her phone. She won’t feel this job is done, either, until she can see that scruffy, long-haired man back with his family.
***
Sophie watches Parker carefully. The dog is asleep in the bed Sophie got for him, looking smaller and even scruffier now he isn’t moving around. Parker sits on the floor next to him and rests one hand on his head, unmoving.
“We should find out where that dog came from,” Nate says, not for the first time.
“He’s giving Parker something to worry about that isn’t Eliot,” Sophie says. “And who’s to say he belongs to anyone? Perhaps Eliot really did bring home a stray.”
They’re both silent for a moment. Eliot does have a soft spot for strays, but not usually the kind with four legs and a tail. He locks onto children who need saving, and Sophie can’t quite shake the idea that, in some ways, Parker and Hardison count as strays to Eliot. But a dog?
“Maybe,” Nate says. “You know, we can’t keep waiting for Eliot to come back. Not forever.”
Her grip on the wineglass tightens. She doesn’t look at Nate. She also doesn’t challenge him on his continued assumption that Eliot might have walked out on them.
“What are you suggesting? We just forget about him?”
Nate sighs.
“Listen, Mikel worked well with us today. And Eliot trusts her. At least enough he wouldn’t throw her out of the room if he found her here. I’m not saying we just give up, but if Hardison can’t find any trace, and none of our contacts have anything, then…”
Nate trails off.
Sophie sighs, takes a drink, and turns enough that she can see his face. He’s got that distant look, the one that means he’s shutting down the parts of himself that would get in the way of carrying through with a decision.
“We’re keeping the dog,” she says. “And we can ask Mikel to stay, but we keep looking for Eliot.”
Parker’s still sitting with the dog when they all call it a night, and Sophie makes sure to pat him gently on a part of him that isn’t bruised before she goes. As she’s slipping out of the door, she sees Nate go over and do the same.
***
Nate can’t sleep. He can’t stop thinking about where Eliot could be and what could be happening to him.
It’s times like these he wishes he knew nothing about Eliot’s past, but it’s hard not to piece together the details the guy lets slip, and the information he has from chasing Eliot for IYS. The edges and glimpses tell him enough that he’s sure if Eliot has been taken it won’t be good. Hell, by now there might not be anything left to save. Easier to tell himself Eliot might have left through choice, even if that does cause its own kind of pain.
By three in the morning, he finds himself back down in the main room, a glass of whiskey in hand.
Parker’s asleep, leaning back against the wall by the dog bed, her body slumped and her chin on her chest. Her hand’s slipped from the dog’s head, and Nate feels like he should go over and nudge it back into place. Startling Parker is never a good idea, though.
He does cross the room until he’s near enough to see the dog’s chest rising and falling, and shakes his head at himself for finding that comforting. It’s just that Parker will be upset if the dog dies, and she’s already channeling most of her fears about Eliot into that animal.
He’s about to turn away when he sees the glimmer of the dog’s eye, open just enough to be able to tell its watching him.
“Well, so you’re awake,” Nate says. “I don’t suppose you want a drink.”
He raises the glass, tilting it in the dog’s direction, and feels a smile tug at his lips as the dog’s ears prick up and it opens its eyes more fully.
“I don’t think Sophie would approve,” Nate tells it, and he could swear the dog looks disappointed. He hesitates, but Parker isn’t touching the dog at all now and if she does wake up she’ll be happy to see the dog’s alert. “But I suppose just a little won’t hurt.”
Either the dog understands English or its picked up on Nate’s body-language, because it struggles to its feet, moving slowly, and pads over to Nate. It’s limping, something Nate didn’t really notice before.
“How’d you hurt your leg?” he asks it, because Hardison never mentioned it. The dog manages an expression that almost suggests it’s scowling. “You know, Mikel’s right. You really do remind me of Eliot.”
He find a saucer and pours a dribble of whiskey into it, and the dog laps it up as soon as Nate sets it on the ground. No doubt Sophie will find out about it somehow, because she always does, but right now Nate feels in need of a drinking buddy, and Eliot isn’t here.
“No driving until you sober up,” he tells the dog.
They end up on the couch, Nate lifting the dog up so it can sit next to him.
“You know,” he tells it, “if we don’t find Eliot soon, I think we’re going to have to get creative.” He checks that Parker is still asleep, and thinks about waking her up so she can go lie down someplace, but she’s letting out little snores and he doesn’t know if she’ll get back to sleep. “I’ve gotta say, Mr Dog, I don’t like to think what might be happening. Eliot has more enemies than the rest of us combined, and they tend to have weapons. I want him to have just…wandered off, but Eliot isn’t really the wandering off type. You might think he is, but you’d be wrong. He sticks around. He’s loyal.”
The dog shifts, one of its ears flopping over at the end, and Nate must have drunk more than he thought he had, because the dog looks like it’s actually listening.
“I can’t think of any reason Eliot would leave us. Not without at least letting me know. And not without arranging for us to have another hitter. So, what do you think we should make of it?”
The dogs shuffles closer, leaning forward and nudging its nose under Nate’s free hand.
“I don’t think patting you is going to bring Eliot back,” Nate says, but he lets himself be persuaded to pat the dog anyway.
He thinks about going to get another drink, but the dog is warm and oddly soothing, and he finds himself drifting off before he can move.
***
Eliot wakes slowly, scrunching his nose and trying not to sneeze. It tickles.
It takes a moment to realize that’s because his nose is pressed into the fuzz of Nate’s sweater, and even longer to work out Nate isn’t large enough. At least, Nate isn’t as large as he seemed to Eliot the last time he checked, when he finally got to curl up and snuggle next to Nate-
Snuggle?
He’s upright and most of the way across the room before he fully combines the information and reaches a conclusion: he’s human again.
He’s human and he’s naked and he’s been tucked right up against Nate as a naked human. And now he’s standing naked in Nate’s apartment, with both Nate and Parker right there, and they all think he’s missing. Eliot thinks back over the last few days and presses a hand to his ribs. And winces.
Yeah. Okay. So the pain’s carried over, and he has no clue how to explain any of this to them.
He keeps spare clothes at Nate’s. They all do. He manages to grab sweatpants and a T-shirt and pull them on, not taking the time to do any more before he makes for the door. His leg still hurts, and now he’s back on two legs it’s more noticeable, but he can walk on it. He’ll go home, take stock, process. Then he’ll come back and…and think of something to tell them. Not that he’s been a dog.
For one thing, he doesn’t want to admit that Sophie has spent hours lately rubbing his belly.
Yeah. Eliot needs time on his own to work through what the last week has been about, because he remembers whining, actually full-on whining, for someone to pat his head, and that… Yeah. He needs some time.
The door opens before he reaches it.
Hardison appears, his expression turning to shock as he takes in Eliot. Shock, then relief, then something that might be a mix of anger and something else.
“Eliot!”
Hardison launches himself across the space and has Eliot wrapped up in a hug before he can escape. A moment later, Hardison lets go, dropping his arms quickly when Eliot winces.
“Shit. Sorry, man. Where’ve you been at? You just up and left! Did someone grab? You okay? We need a doctor?”
Hardison’s too loud to have any hope Nate and Parker will stay sleeping, and they’re on their feet and staring when Eliot looks round. Parker’s lips are parted. Nate has the look of someone seeing a lifeline and being afraid to believe it’s there.
“Eliot?” Nate asks.
“Yeah,” Eliot says, scowling. He doesn’t want to go over and nudge at Nate until the guy rests a hand on Eliot’s head. He doesn’t. “Why’re you both asking that? I not look like me?”
“Why are you wearing Mr Dog’s collar?” Parker asks, suddenly in front of him.
Eliot can’t think of anything to say. His hand goes to his throat, and, yeah, there’s a collar. He’s got used to wearing it the last few days, to the point where he didn’t even notice he still had it on. How it’s not strangling him he has no idea, but it seems to have expanded with his body. And now all three of them are staring at it.
“I, er…” he says. Even shouting and snapping isn’t going to get him out of this one.
“You’re Mr Dog,” Parker says, nodding as though she’s solved that mystery and is now happy to move on. “You didn’t leave us. You were just being a dog for a bit. Do you want a treat?”
He almost says yes. God help him, but he almost tells Parker that he does want a treat. And a hug. And to basically follow her around everywhere and be close to her. He clamps his mouth shut and tries glaring.
“Did we all fall down a rabbit hole or something?” Hardison asks. “Parker, Eliot ain’t spent the last two weeks as a mutt.”
“Then why’s he wearing the collar?” Parker asks, her tone reasonable.
Hardison throws out his arms.
“Hell if I know. Maybe it’s a different collar.”
“You think I go around wearing collars as some fashion choice?” Eliot asks, and presses his lips together. It’s too late, though. He sees the quizzical look on Nate’s face.
“For some con you’re working,” Hardison says, sounding exasperated, like Eliot is being difficult here. “Don’t get why you’d go off on your own or why you need a collar, but-”
“I didn’t go off on my own!” Eliot snaps, because it turns out that’s something that jabs. The idea he’d leave his people… It hurts. Hurts even more because he’d half been thinking about it, but he’s sure now - no way would he have done it. “I’ve been right here!”
Which is as good as an admission. He gets that as soon as he says it, but there’s nothing to be done about it, now. Hardison opens his mouth, no doubt to argue, but Nate cuts in.
“You’ve really been a small, scruffy dog? That’s the theory we’re working on?”
“Ain’t a theory,” Eliot says, but he knows he must sound surly. His hand twitches with wanting to reach up and take off the collar, but he can’t quite make himself do it. “I don’t get how it happened, but it happened.”
“Why didn’t you say?” Parker asks.
“Say?” Eliot finds it hard to keep up the glare as his eyes widen in disbelief. “I was a dog. I tried to say, but it just came out as whining. It was… It…”
He has no idea how to get across to them what it was like. There are no words for what it was like.
“So you went with belly rubs and following Parker around?” Hardison asks. He sounds amused, but there’s an edge to it like he partway believes what Eliot’s saying. “Because I gotta say, man, I did not picture you for the belly rub kind.”
“Are you still going to want me to rub your belly now you’re Eliot shaped again?” Parker asks, apparently in all seriousness and with no innuendo.
Which is when Sophie arrives. She pauses in the doorway, seemingly overlooking the fact Eliot’s close to choking, her expression shifting from the almost concealed worry of the last two weeks into surprise and relief.
“Eliot,” she says, and there’s nothing but warmth and welcome there.
A moment later, she has him gathered into her arms, and Eliot, who normally pulls away within a few moments when anyone manages to catch him in a hug, finds himself pushing his nose into Sophie’s neck and holding on. She hesitates, and after a moment sets a hand on his head. A moment later, she strokes down his hair. He almost melts into her.
“Okay, I’m seeing the dog thing,” he hears Hardison say from nearby. “Never seen anyone pet Eliot before, but now I’m seeing it.”
Eliot pulls back, stung, and just has time to see Sophie’s confusion before he wheels to face Hardison, already scowling.
“Seeing what?” he demands.
Somehow, Hardison is still taller than Eliot always thought he was. Eliot can’t quite forget that Hardison is the only one who never took to him as a dog. Even Nate did, at times, and at the end there. The memory of Hardison staring down at him is stronger than he wants it to be.
Hardison waves a hand vaguely in Eliot’s direction. The expression on his face is odd.
“You liking being stroked,” he says. “Suddenly thinking you do have something of the small, scruffy mutt about you.”
“Excuse me?” Sophie asks, and her eyes widen as Hardison fills her in. She turns to Eliot once it’s done and it’s impossible to tell if she believes it or not, but there’s sympathy there. “Oh, Eliot. You have been through a weird time, haven’t you? Are you all right?”
Of course he isn’t all right. His head is spinning and he isn’t even sure he feels okay being this far off the ground. That will pass. He’s sure it will. After all, he got used to being dog-height, and being Eliot height is what he ought to be more familiar with.
And he’s thinking like Parker does. It’s having spent so much time following her about, listening to her because she was the only one who really spoke to him. It seemed…okay when he was a dog, but now he’s thinking about Parker knowing it was Eliot who kept pushing his nose against her, that it was Eliot who wanted to rest his head on her thigh, and embarrassment flares up.
With a growl, he finally reaches up and pulls the collar off, working at the buckle as quickly as he can and knowing it’s not nearly fast enough. He flings it at Parker once it’s free and turns away without meeting anyone’s eyes.
“I’ll be fine,” he says, and slams his way out of the apartment.
He makes it three blocks before he registers he’s left without boots, and one more before he has to fold his hands into fists to stop himself from turning around and going back.
***
Sophie reaches out and gets hold of Hardison’s arm before he makes it two steps after Eliot.
“Don’t,” she says. As Hardison opens his mouth, she raises a warning finger. “No. Whatever is going on here, Eliot’s clearly struggling to deal with it. You know what he’s like. He hates losing control. Give him a bit of space.”
“He was a dog,” Parker says. “I don’t get what the big deal is. He liked being a dog. He was happy chasing his ball and being petted. And I liked it, too. Wait. Do you think he misses it?”
And there’s this to be said about her life: Sophie barely even misses a step.
“I don’t know, Parker. I think we should let him calm down before we ask him about it, though, okay?”
She sees Nate nodding and feels Hardison give in, some of the immediate tension going out of him. She lets go and pats his arm, then turns away to head to the kitchen. Any and all patting suddenly seems…off limits.
Parker can’t really mean the little dog Sophie had sprawled over her lap the other day is their hitter. An image of Eliot, of real Eliot, stretched over her on the couch wanting fuss springs to mind, and she has to cover her surprise by pretending she’s coughing.
“I wonder how Eliot turned into a dog,” Parker says, and Nate doesn’t challenge her.
When Sophie turns around from filling the kettle, Parker’s holding that collar in her hands. From here, it really does look like the one Mr Dog wore. Larger, but otherwise the same.
“Where is Mr Dog?” Sophie asks.
Parker looks over and frowns.
“I told you, he turned back Eliot shaped.”
There’s an uncomfortable silence before Sophie moves again, setting the kettle on the burner and busying herself with the process of making tea. It gives her space to think, space to compose herself, and Sophie is well versed in the importance of being composed.
When she heads back to the others, they’ve settled on the couch and armchairs, Parker still holding that collar in her hands. She’s staring down at it, turning it over and over in her hands.
Sophie sets down her tea-tray and takes the time to pour a cup, adding a squeeze of lemon and carefully placing everything tidily back on the tray. Nate’s watching her when she looks up.
“What do you think’s going on?” she asks him, because Nate being this quiet is usually a worry.
“I think,” Nate says, “that the dog was curled up against me when I fell asleep, and now it’s vanished. And Eliot’s back. And he was wearing the dog’s collar. These are…facts.”
“So, you’re saying Eliot really has spent the last few days as a dog?” Sophie asks, wishing the feeling under her breastbone was disbelief, but knowing it isn’t: it’s concern. She has no road-map for how to help a person who’s just been a dog. And Eliot isn’t exactly good about the control thing. “But he rolled on his back for pats. Parker had to take him out for walks so he could…”
She stops and takes a drink, but she feels heat creeping up her face at the thought of being in that situation. And, oh Dear Lord, she seems to be accepting it. Quite without meaning to, she’s accepting that Eliot has actually been a dog.
Fuck a duck.
“He is never going to want to see any of us again,” she says, and no-one corrects her.
***
Eliot isn’t sulking. He isn’t sulking and he isn’t hiding. He’s just…processing. Like he told himself he would.
He’s processing while buried under a pile of blankets in his bed, but that doesn’t undermine his point.
After days of being at the mercy of other people, having to wait until they wanted to take him out, he thought he’d want to get out for a run, but instead he found himself almost overwhelmed with the desire to just crawl into bed and stay there. He’s so tired. Must be something about transforming.
Once he’s over this, he needs to work out how it happened. He can’t risk it happening again.
He finds himself running a hand over his own hair, and makes himself stop every time he notices. He has to stop himself a lot.
Thing is, he feels a bit…lost. Maybe a bit sad. Only he can’t have liked being a dog. That would mean he liked something about being petted and taken for walks and… Well. Okay. He liked having an excuse for being so close to his people, and so affectionate, without feeling like he was letting down his image. He liked an excuse for being so close to Parker, especially, and he would have loved for Hardison to let him be the same way with him, and he did not just think that.
Only he did.
He rolls over and hauls the blankets with him, burrowing into the pillows.
It doesn’t matter whether he liked anything about it or not. He’s back to being himself again now, and the team aren’t going to get over this, not quickly. Hell, he rolled over on his back and begged for them to rub his belly. How exactly does a guy go back to having a coffee or a whiskey with someone after that?
Someone he isn’t involved with, anyway.
He’ll hide…stay…here until he’s less tired, and then Nate will call him at some point about a job, and he’ll just try to pretend it never happened. It’s the best he can do.
***
Mikel is sitting next to him on the bed when he wakes up.
She smiles down at him, her hair falling forward as she tilts her head, and she looks far too pleased with herself.
“Morning,” she says. “I was going to wake you up, but you looked like you needed the rest. So I kept watch. Are you feeling better?”
He glares at her with the eye that’s above the covers. He has a good cocoon going here and he doesn’t need anyone getting in the way of that.
“What do you want?” he asks when she doesn’t take the hint and leave. “I ain’t in the mood for anything just now.”
He means sex. She has to know that. But she nods as though he’s not rejecting her advances, because with him and Mikel being in the vicinity of each other and anything approaching a flat surface is an advance, and reaches out to tap him on the nose.
He flinches, but he doesn’t fight her. They’re past that.
“Your family are worried,” she says. “When they told me you were the dog, I thought they were joking, but even Nate said it. I should have known - I’ve spent time petting you before.”
“Little bit different,” Eliot growls.
“Yes,” Mikel says, nodding solemnly. “But I doubt most people have seen you on your back for as long as I have. But, you see, your team think you’re mad with them. I think they’re wrong. Yes? I think you’re hiding.”
“I ain’t hiding!” Eliot says, and the force of his own outburst brings him upright, until he’s sitting up next to her in bed, the covers tucked over his lap. He didn’t bother putting on clothes to sleep, Mikel doesn’t even blink. “I ain’t.” Softer now, not looking quite at her. “I just… You ever been through anything like that?”
“Turning into a dog?” she asks, and pulls a face. “No. But I’ve had times when I’ve worried people might see me differently. My sisters, the first time I went home. After.” She doesn’t say after what. Eliot doesn’t ask. There are only a few things that tone can mean. “You should stop hiding. They care about you. They’ll only tease you a little.”
“You think I can’t handle a little teasing?” he asks, stung.
She frowns, her gaze flicking up and down him, and he manages not to pull the blankets up. This is far from the most Mikel has ever seen of him.
“You aren’t upset you were a dog,” she says. “Their dog. You’re upset now you aren’t.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says, but he feels his shoulders hunch and his jaw tense.
“I am sure they would let you be as much their dog as you want to be,” she says, as though that’s a thing a person can just ask for. “You should get dressed and come back to them. They’re worried and I have another job.”
“You don’t have to babysit me,” Eliot says.
Mikel shrugs.
“I’m not babysitting.” The grin catches him out, and she scoots off the bed, smoothing her dress down as she stands. “I’m dog-sitting. And I want to return the puppy to his owners. Come on, Puppy!”
She smacks her hands on her own thighs in a ‘come here’ gesture, and Eliot really does consider leaping out of bed and seeing just how much of his weight she could take. See if she kept smirking then.
Instead, he throws a pillow, which only makes her laugh harder.
***
Eliot isn’t sure what to expect when he walks back into Nate’s apartment. It’s not much time at all since he was last here, but it feels longer. There’s a kind of shock to seeing them all just sitting there, like nothing’s happened, like there isn’t a world of weird between them all now.
“Hey, man,” Hardison says, casual as you like. “How you doing?”
“Awesome,” Eliot says, one side of his mouth quirking up into a smile he really doesn’t feel. He isn’t sure if it comes off as sarcastic or not. It’s closer to panic. He’s faced down guns with far less worry than he feels now. Not exactly something he has training for, facing his team after letting them take him for walks and feed him kibble. “Just awesome.”
Sophie shifts in the armchair nearest to the door and twists to face him, smiling warmly. It doesn’t even look forced. Not that it means much with Sophie.
“Eliot,” she says, “come and join us. Mikel, are you staying?”
From next to Eliot, Mikel speaks up, sounding warm and amused.
“No. Now your puppy’s home, I’ll be on my way. You make sure to look after him or I’ll have to come and claim him.”
And she’s gone before Eliot can snap out any kind of response.
It leaves him standing on his own with them all looking at him. Sophie sighs and gestures to him.
“Come and sit. We won’t bite.”
“Yeah, we should be more worried about you biting,” Hardison says, and has the decency to look embarrassed at having said it.
Something of Eliot’s comfortable irritation flares up.
“Oh, I’ll show you biting,” he says, before he can think that through.
At Sophie’s slight cough, he blinks and looks away, pushing his hair behind his ear. He’s tried to sort at least some of this out in his head, working through which of his confused feelings are a layover from being a dog and which are from what he felt before, but maybe hadn’t quite admitted to himself. Biting is too close to that line just now, and he really doesn’t want to get into it.
Instead, he makes himself walk over and stand in front of them, only to startle as Parker grumbles and pats the couch next to where she’s sitting.
“Come sit next to me,” she says. “I don’t like you standing all the way over there.”
Next to Parker. Next to Parker where he’s been as much as he can be for the last two weeks. He hesitates. Hardison is right there, too, and he wasn’t keen on Eliot as a dog.
Hardison rolls his eyes.
“Just sit your ass down,” he says, and glares until Eliot moves.
Once he’s sat, not as relaxed as he normally would be around Parker and Hardison, Nate clears his throat and Eliot’s attention goes to him at once. He can’t tell if it’s like before, or if some part of being a dog, with a dog’s habit of focusing on his people, has carried back over. He isn’t sure he wants to know which it is.
“So, a dog?” Nate asks. “What was that like?”
“Nate!” Sophie says, as though they were all supposed to pretend it never happened.
“The man was a dog,” Hardison says. “Not exactly something we can just delete.”
Eliot closes his eyes, just for a second, not sure what he wants to say. Or if he can form any words about it at all. He feels Parker’s hand slip into one of his and opens his eyes to see her looking at him. She offers him one of those tiny Parker smiles he cherishes, and leans in.
“It’s okay if you still want me to pat you,” she says. “I’d like that, too.”
“Girl, you did not just say that,” Hardison says. “What did we talk about?”
It’s Parker’s turn to pull a face, but she keeps Eliot’s hand in hers.
“Not to embarrass Eliot,” she says. “But I don’t see what’s embarrassing about that. I can pat you, too, if you think you’ll feel left out.”
The sound of Hardison choking turns out to be just as fun as it would have been before being a dog. Good to know some things don’t change.
“Listen,” Nate says, when Hardison’s spluttering has died down, “I don’t know how we could have known you were, well, you, but I’m sorry you got stuck like that for so long. If you need some time, I understand, but we…” Nate stops and looks to be taking his words apart and putting them back together before letting them out again, and that’s something Eliot normally only sees him do for Sophie. “I am glad to know you’re safe. We were starting to think we’d lost you.”
“Yeah,” Eliot says, because one thing he’s come to understand while in his blanket nest is that he needs them to hear this. They should never have had a moment’s doubt that he might have walked away on his own. The old Eliot might have done that, but not this Eliot. Not their Eliot. “Not really planning on going anyplace. Not if I don’t have to.”
Parker hits him with her whole body, wrapping her arms and legs around him and burying her face in his hair. Her breath is damp against the side of his face. He has time to draw breath to ask if she’s okay before Hardison attacks from the other side, folding both Eliot and Parker up in those long arms of his.
“Well, I don’t want you going anywhere, either,” Sophie says. “But, er, maybe we can all talk about it some more later. Nate? I feel like a proper drink. Join me?”
Which is how Eliot ends up on the couch, cocooned by Parker and Hardison, with no-one else around.
“Breathing,” he says, at last, because he needs to break this up before he lets himself think it means more than it does. They thought he was missing, maybe worse, and this whole thing is a clusterfuck of strange, and that’s all it is. “Gimme some space, here.”
They back off, each withdrawing far enough that there’s air between them, but they still seem closer than he’d normally expect.
“You were really that scruffy brown dog,” Hardison says, his eyes roving up and down Eliot as though there’ll be actual fur there. “How’d that happen?”
“Man, I got no idea,” Eliot says.
There’s a significant silence from Parker.
“Parker? You got an idea?” Hardison asks.
Eliot looks at her to find Parker looking the way she does when she’s done something and isn’t sure how they’ll react. She’s looking at her hands.
“I didn’t think it’d turn you into a dog,” she says.
“You didn’t think what would turn me into a dog?” Eliot asks. “Parker, you got an idea how I turned into a dog? What the Hell?”
She shrugs, and looks up, something defiant flashing in her eyes.
“I looked up stuff that’d make you feel better. That’s all. It didn’t say it’d make you a dog!”
After some prompting, she gets up and brings back an old book from somewhere, setting in down in Eliot’s lap and cuddling up next to him with her head on his shoulder. He doesn’t point out how close she is, not even when he feels one of her hands start playing with the hair at the back of his head.
It’s a book. Looks kind of like a spell book from a movie, but it says it’s…
“A recipe book? That food you cooked for me? You think that’s what did it?”
Parker reaches over and turns the pages until she gets to one about halfway through. She taps the page.
“That one.”
It says it’s for healing what ails you. Only that makes no sense, because Eliot still had his bed leg as a dog. He still has it now, even though it’s much better than it was.
“That don’t make any sense,” he says, but Hardison looks thoughtful.
“I dunno, man,” he says. “Suppose it depends on how you was hurting.”
“You think I had a deep-seated, unfulfilled desire to go walkies? Eliot asks, scowling, but something under his breastbone feels uneasy.
Hardison looks thoughtful. In its way, that’s worse than a gun.
“Maybe not to go walkies,” he says, and his gaze drifts from the book, up to Eliot’s face, and on to a spot behind Eliot’s head. To Parker’s hand on Eliot’s hair, most likely. “You ever think how dogs got it easier, in some ways?”
“Not really,” Eliot says. “Turns out not being able to talk ain’t fun.”
Or having to rely on someone else to decide he can go out, or to feed him, or making choices about whether he sees a vet… All right, so Eliot’s had more than enough times in his life, in the army or when he’s been captive, when he’s had other people make choices for him, or about him, but the level of dependency in being a dog was something else. And he’s gotten used to deciding a bunch of stuff for himself over these last years.
“Yeah,” Hardison says, his attention still on Parker’s hand. He seems to be tracking her movements, and Eliot can feel the gentle tug as she cards her fingers through the ends of his hair. “Yeah, I guess so. But kinda easier to ask for affection, though, right?”
“I’m starved for affection, now?” Eliot asks. “Man, I keep telling you, I ain’t the one-”
“Not talking about your one night stands, here, El,” Hardison says, dismissively. “I’m meaning real affection. From people maybe you don’t feel you can ask otherwise. You think…you think maybe that has something to do with it?”
And Parker’s hand pushes up into the hair at the base of his skull. Eliot lets his eyes fall shut and shivers. He doesn’t want to admit that Hardison has a point.
“Shut up,” he says, because he’s Eliot Spencer, and Eliot Spencer does not just give in without a fight. Even if it’s a battle he maybe doesn’t want to win.
He feels the warmth and the pressure a moment before he registers it’s Hardison’s hand, right on his knee.
Startled, Eliot opens his eyes and sees Hardison closer, his eyes steady and considering. He looks to be waiting, assessing, ready to move whichever way Eliot needs him to. Eliot needs him to be closer.
“What are you talking about?” he asks, because he wants to move, he wants to reach out and pull Hardison in, but he’s not sure what’s being offered, not from either of them. This would cross a line he isn’t sure they ought to cross.
But he wants to. Fuck, but he wants to.
Parker’s hand stops moving, and he feels her fingers splay out over the back of his skull. He feels gentle pressure - Parker urging him to move toward Hardison. He goes with it.
Hardison moves a second after Eliot does, leaning in slowly enough it shouldn’t be a shock when their lips meet. But it is. Somehow it still is.
Eliot hears Parker’s approving murmur from behind him, and a moment later he feels her shift so her body’s pressed against him, her hand still buried in his hair.
The kiss is quick, set against every kiss Eliot’s ever had, and far less heated than he’s been with other people. That doesn’t matter. It’s Hardison, and it’s Parker, even if so far she’s done nothing more than stroke his hair. Not really.
Hardison pulls back, watching Eliot with the kind of care he normally reserves for his tech, and whatever he sees seems to worry him a little. Hardison lifts a hand and rests it on Eliot’s face, his palm curving around Eliot’s cheek. Now he has Parker holding the back of his head and Hardison holding the side, and he feels grounded. And like he needs to run. And like he wants to stay here forever.
“You okay, man?” Hardison asks. “’Cos you don’t gotta do this. You get that, right?”
“Yeah,” Eliot says, and has to wet his lips, because that came out hoarse and faint. He tries again. “Yeah. I get that.”
“So…do I gotta back off and let you run or we good?” Hardison asks, raising his eyebrows. He sounds casual, but there’s something like need thrumming through his words, and Eliot feels Parker practically vibrating against his back.
“Nah,” Eliot says. “I mean, no running. We’re good.”
Hardison smiles, and Eliot lets himself smile back.
“Awesome,” Parker says, right by Eliot’s ear. “My turn?”
And Eliot agrees it is.
***
It isn’t until much later, after they’ve left Nate’s place and ended up at Hardison’s, which turns out to have a bed large enough for at least three people, that Eliot gets around to asking Parker if the offer of a belly rub still stands.
It does.