By Paths Coincident

Chapter 17

There was, Hardison decided, something wrong with people who liked to get up early in the morning. Particularly when they were waking up people who had been up all night. He hadn't actually planned to fall asleep. With Doctor Who reruns playing on one laptop while three other laptops, his tablet, and the main computer were running various searches, all more or less requiring his attention to make sure they didn't trip any firewalls or alert any other security measures, he had thought he was good to pull an all-nighter. He was surrounded by his requisite orange soda and gummi frog fuel, and he even had a small electronics project with which he was dabbling to fend off any spare moments of boredom.

Nevertheless, he was definitely startled awake by the arrival of Eliot looking like he had already run the Boston Marathon, his T-shirt sweat-slicked to his body, and his hair, in spite of being yanked back in a ponytail, doing that frizzy thing it did whenever Eliot got near humidity. He was out of breath too, which was unusual.

Both Eliot and Parker always made Hardison feel like the most out-of-shape creampuff. Which really wasn't fair. Hardison was in perfectly good shape compared to the rest of humanity. He just happened always to find himself in juxtaposition to Batman and Spiderwoman.

Ain't nobody gonna look good compared to that, Hardison consoled himself.

So for Eliot to be as winded as Hardison usually was when he had been forced by his athletic teammates to over-exert, well, that meant something.

Blinking the sleep out of his eyes, he quickly checked his screens to make sure nothing was in imminent danger of melting down. Everything looked peaceful as servers continued to roll over and show their throats to his software. Hardison patted his laptop fondly.

Then he turned back to scrutinize Eliot, who was being uncharacteristically quiet, just allowing Hardison to work.

Eliot looked like hell. It wasn't just the fact that he had obviously run himself into the ground. Mere exercise did not account for the beaten look in his eyes, an expression Hardison did not recall ever seeing on Eliot's face. And although going for a run usually burnt off some of Eliot's tension, this morning every line of his body remained as strained as an over-tuned violin string.

"You're up early," Hardison said, for something to say.

Eliot gave him one of his you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me looks. "I am not. I'm up late."

Hardison tilted his head in an acknowledging nod. He waited to see if Eliot would say anything else, but was unsurprised when no further information was forthcoming.

Eliot had spent half his life hoarding secrets the way Parker squirreled away cash. What little they had learned of his former life had been mostly accidental revelations, bits of unsavoury expertise, hints of explanations, the occasional anecdote, doled out in miserly fragments, crushed into silence almost as soon as Eliot had divulged them. This was the man who had done his best to avoid telling his team anything about his time with Damien Moreau even when they were set to go head to head with that slime mold.

Breaking open those rusty gates to allow Jacob Stone access to everything that was most painful and sordid in Eliot's past was going to be—well, excruciating was a word that came to mind. No wonder their most taciturn of hitters was looking like he might be sick.

Hardison was not usually at a loss for words, but he really did not know what to say to Eliot. The silence grew awkward. A string of code caught his attention and he turned back to his computer with relief.

"Mind if I borrow your shower?" Eliot asked, eliminating the necessity of conversation. He loosed his hair from the band that held it back and shook it out.