"You, uh, got a lighter?" came the static-y voice Eliot's comm picked up from the guy at the start of the line. Nate and Hardison sat up, exchanging anxious looks as they doubled attention on the screen where they had been watching Eliot play bouncer on stolen security camera feed for the past thirty minutes. They watched him step forwards, hand over his lighter, make small talk over the velvet line while the guy lit his cigarette and then finally get the lighter back - quickly wrapped in a piece of paper that lighter guy fished out of his pocket.
"There," Hardison said, pointing at the lighter and paper that quickly vanished into Eliot's own pocket as he let the man into the club. Nate sighed, then got up, leaning over the table, getting ready for action.
"Finally. We've got him," he announced to the comms. Hardison scrambled to get face recognition from the fresh footage. "Alright everyone, next stage-"
"No we don't," Eliot interrupted, closing the velvet barrier again and getting back to position.
Hardison stopped his fingers hovering above the keyboard, frowning up at Nate who, in turn, frowned at the screen.
"What do you mean, Eliot? We just saw you make contact."
"That wasn't our guy." The tiny Eliot on the screen quickly scratched behind his neck. He was fidgeting. Hardison and Nate exchanged nervous glances. If he was piling an outside job on top of this...
"Eliot, what's going on?" Nate asked sternly. Only a cough in response. "Eliot. What did that guy just give you?"
An audible sigh from the comms preempted, "...his number."
Hardison's eyebrows shot up. Nate didn't get it. "And why the hell would you pocket that?"
They saw Eliot cross his arms on the security footage, his voice in the comms getting angrier, "you're a smart guy, Nate, why do you think?"
Nate only frowned, "what-" He was interrupted by Hardison tapping him on the shoulder.
"Hey, Nate, I uh," he whispered, leaning away from their mic, "I think he means it."
"Means what?"
"You know..." Hardison attempted to explain with various vague gestures, until he gave up and landed on the classic bagel-and-hotdog, which got the job done. Nate's eyebrows went to the top of his forehead.
"...oh," he said, finally, blinking rapidly, "Um, well..." He stalled over the mic, at a loss for words. "Congratulations...?"
Eliot sent a murder glare to the security camera. "On what," he snarled.
"I... Nothing, I guess," Nate said, falling back into his chair.
The club stint was a success, despite the unexpected delay. Their mark was now walking around with a bug in his phone and his head in the clouds from the promise of five hundred grand in the shape of one Lakota Dannish - Sophie. For the next part of the con, this left them waiting - which mostly meant taking turns breathing down Hardison's neck waiting for his computer to magically conjure up something for them to do, but that was nothing he couldn't handle.
Right now it was Eliot's turn leaning over from the adjacent chair. Hardison really didn't mind - he was disappointed when Parker finally got bored of her self-appointed shift (very quickly, as with most things) but it was nice always having company regardless. He couldn't help being a social creature.
Eliot's phone vibrated once and he quickly picked it up and gave a small soft smile to whatever text that was. Hardison immediately thought up some teasing comment about lady loves - then he remembered the incident at the club stint right as he opened his mouth. He tried switching the genders in his head but ultimately found it didn't have the same effect, so that awkward silence just hung while he looked back at the screen.
Eliot sighed and put his phone back down on the table roughly. "It's not who you think it is," he said, but when he leaned forward again, his shoulders were closing in a little.
"So..." Hardison said, leaning back and stretching his arms behind his chair. "Guys, huh?"
Eliot sent him a quick warning glance, but he didn't seem mad. Yet.
"You know there's really just one question I have," Hardison mused.
"And it will be the only question?"
"...Maybe," he ceded, spinning in his chair a little. "Why did you never hit on me?"
Eliot sputtered, then laughed. "You're not my type, Hardison."
"So what, is it just white guys or-?"
"You're tall," Eliot said without missing a beat, leaning back on his own chair with his arms crossed.
It was Hardison's turn to laugh. "Seriously? Even to be gay, you're all macho about it?"
"I'm not gay, just... Non-discriminating."
"It's the 21st century, Eliot, you can say bisexual."
"I can say what?"
Hardison deadpanned. "You really ain't gay." After a pause, he added, "What about Nate? He's about your height."
"I'm not like Nate," Eliot looked him straight in they eye, "I don't shit where I eat."
Hardison raised an eyebrow. Was he..? "See now, that felt like it wasn't actually about Nate."
"Are we gonna talk feelings all day, or are you gonna check your thing that just beeped?"
"My "thing" did not just..." Hardison began to dismiss, but then saw the signal Eliot was referring to and immediately locked into focus. "You should get the others."
"So is Nate your type?" Hardison asked, checking up on the feed he'd just finished setting up on the laptop he kept in the van. They'd already established Nate and Sophia as the buyers and they needed Parker to infiltrate the building on the blindside, so, as fate would have it, Eliot was the one on the proverbial and literal backseat with Hardison. "You never actually denied it."
"Dude," he motioned angrily at the computer. Hardison waved it away.
"I turned off our mics. We can still hear them, but they can't hear us."
Eliot frowned, "you can do that?"
"I usually don't bother," he shrugged. "So. Is he?"
"No," he answered, still eyeing the laptop suspiciously. "Why'd you wanna know so bad?"
"I guess I'm just trying to make sense of a guy with an active sex life on both sides of the fence in the year of two thousand and eight not knowing the word bisexual."
Eliot groaned. "Not this again."
"I'm just saying, how much are missing out on by just sampling the goods without leaning into the culture? Twinks, bears, leather daddies, cruising..."
Eliot frowned at Hardison, not sure which part of that he was least terrified to start with. "Cruising?"
"You know, you lock eyes with a guy at the park and within 5 minutes you're going at it in a public bathroom."
"I call that gettin' lucky," he dismissed. "And I ain't ever need all that lingo just to get with a guy. Why do you know so much, anyway? You're straight."
"I'm in the forums. You never know what kind of information can be of use eventually."
Eliot side-eyed him. "Terrific," he muttered under his breath.
"Who would be your type, then?"
"Riveting conversation, you guys," came Sophie's voice from the laptop.
"Yeah, can we focus, please?" Nate complemented.
"You didn't actually turn it off?" Eliot hissed at Hardison, whose blood drained from his face as he frantically checked the controls. They heard a low muffled giggle which was probably Parker.
"Shit, man, I'm sorry, I- I swear I thought I did."
"You are so dead, Hardison."
"Can this execution wait until after the job?"
Eliot glared. "Maybe."
They went back to HQ to pop the proverbial champagne (a six pack, plus burgers ordered in at Parker's request) after watching the money fall through on Hardison's laptop. Nate raised his can first.
"Here's to making those bastards pay up," was met with general cheering.
"To petty thievery leading to greater thievery," from Parker, got a smile out of everyone.
"To hoping the feds never decide to actually get smart about this technology stuff," Hardison offered, and received silent prayers in favor from Nate and Eliot. Sophie laughed. She offered her toast in his direction.
"To a total lack of personal boundaries."
"Come on, I said I was sorry," he protested at the same time Eliot groaned at the memory. Hardison might've been more opposed if he didn't catch Parker smiling at him in the corner of his eye. Alright, laughing, but that's a type of smile.
"Okay, guys, jokes aside," Nate interrupted, looking at Eliot reassuringly, "you know you could have told us, right?"
Eliot looked back at him. It was... strange. He saw the rest of the team nodding along and... he appreciated the gesture, and it wasn't that small a gesture all things considered - but what he wanted was to keep being annoyed at Hardison, and roll his eyes at Sophie's idea of a joke and Nate's bumbling cluelessness and Parker... Parker was okay, actually. He just really didn't feel like being bundled up in kumbaya circle therapy right now.
"I know," he said, finally, raising his can, "I was just hoping I wouldn't have to."
"It's nothing to be ashamed of," Sophie protested. "Everyone's a little bit bi."
"Nope," Hardison quickly retorted.
"Well, us girls are, anyway," she winked at Parker, who just shrugged. Now, that beautiful notion was one nobody in the room was particularly inclined to dispel, though they surely all knew better.
"See, being included in "us girls" is exactly the type of thing I was trying to avoid."
Sophie shot him a half-pitying, half-ironic look from over her can. "You know that's not what I meant."
"On upside," Nate himself saved him from dealing with that, "we've just doubled our options for honeypots." Maybe "save" was a strong word.
"No, no," Eliot said, frantically looking between these four faces nodding along like this was a perfectly reasonable idea.
"Eliot, it's hard to believe, I know," Sophie put on her favorite jokingly obtuse tone, "but some guys just won't go for me," she pouted, for effect, and the fact that she remained as beautiful as ever teasing him like that was feeling a lot like divine punishment.
Eliot ranted for a while, calling them all kinds of crazy, but it was half-hearted. He knew when it came down to it, he probably would. When push came to shove, if he saw it would really save a con? Eliot was a man of action - he'd barely hesitate.
It was the pleasant buzz of the booze and another satisfying end to a job, or maybe he was just emboldened by the giddy feeling that bubbled up in his chest at the latest text message he got, but when he and Hardison walked out of the HQ's building, alone together for the first time since that little comms blunder, Eliot said,
"You wanna know what actually is my type? In guys?"
Hardison froze where he stood on the sidewalk. His guess? Waifish blondes in their early 20's with closets full of over sized tank tops that had never seen a gym or beach in their existence. But he wasn't about to waste an opportunity like this on guesswork.
"Do tell."
"Latinos."
Hardison stared at him. "You're joking."
"Get me five-foot-four of muscle and tan, with the black hair and the accent, and man, I'm done for. I'm a goner."
"You're joking."
Just then, a motorbike pulled up on the other side of the street. The biker, clad in blue jeans and a black leather jacket, took off his helmet to release a shower of dark curls just long enough to rest above his dark brown eyes, atop the sandalwood skin of his face. He whistled in their direction and nodded to the spare helmet hanging off his bike.
"Hello, Fernando," Eliot murmured to himself next to Hardison in a low, drawn out purr that was too much a spiritual successor to a wolf whistle to not be genuine.
Hardison looked back and forth between the two rapidly. "Wait, is that lighter guy?"
"God, no," Eliot laughed. "I met Fernando in my book club." He paused to watch Hardison's eyes go crazy and let it hang for a few seconds, enjoying sweet revenge. "Now that was the joke," he finally said, turning to go to his biker. "Bye, Hardison."
Hardison watched in abject shock as Fernando greeted Eliot with a peck on the lips and handed him the spare helmet. He was still stuck in place on the sidewalk where he watched the end of the street the pair had vanished into when Parker came out.
"Hardison. You're still here." She paused, seeing his face. "Are you okay?"
"I just watched... Eliot Spencer... ride off into the sunset on the back of the motorcycle of a 60's Mexican soap opera papi."
Parker laughed, "you're drunk."
"I'm- I'm not. I'm really not."
"Alright," she shrugged, already walking away.
"...wait!" He called after her, "Are you taking the bus or something, cause I could-"
"See you, Hardison," she shouted back barely turning around, already halfway down the street.
He sighed, "man..."