A scream pulled their attention to the doorway and a burly man with a buzz cut and a nasty snarl of a smile on his face entered the room, a body draped over his shoulder. Eliot couldn’t see who it was. Then it hit them like a punch right to the solar plexus. Parker. Then Eliot saw it; the blood trail following the man into the room, dripping from the ends of her blonde hair. Suddenly he thought he was going to be sick. The fuzz in his head had become overwhelming. Everyone moved in slow motion.

“Eliot!” Alec dodged the bodyguard’s right hook and he didn’t even have the wherewithal to hide the shock from his face. He threw a terrified glance at Eliot when the guy pulled out a pistol. “I need a little help here! Come on!” Eliot had clocked the gun the moment the bodyguard walked in but then he assumed it wouldn’t be a problem. The situation had clearly changed.

The anger and panic in Alec’s voice sounded far away like he was yelling from a different room. Alec turned to the man with Parker over his shoulder.

“What did you do?!” The hacker lunged at the man and before anyone could react Buzz Cut lifted his arm. Two echoing gun shots pulled Eliot back into his body. He gulped in air as time caught up with him. A fire inside him shook what was left of the shock out of his system and finally he snarled, bright eyed and furious at the two men who had just taken the people he loved most.

A loud BANG echoed off the walls. This was it. He tasted blood. With everything left in his body he lunged at the man with the gun but he didn’t make it that far. A third gunshot. But maybe it was better that way.

##

Eliot was lying on his back. His hair was damp and his breath came in short, shallow, sharp gasps. The ground became soft around him. Someone was shouting his name in his ear. It was like they were right there-

“ELIOT?”

But...how?

“Eliot, you’re safe! You’re here with us.” The ground bounced beneath him like it was soft, like there were springs. A bed. Eliot couldn’t move. His thoughts were slow, he couldn’t figure out what was happening.

This time when Alec spoke it was with trepidation. “What’s wrong with him?”

Wrong with me?

“Nightmares,” Parker spoke from experience. She looked up at Alec and motioned him to move away. “Don’t touch him, he could get violent.”

A dream. Eliot opened his eyes. Alec and Parker pulled back in sync. They were ready for the man in their bed to react with the violence they’d become accustomed to, although never directed at them. It hurt him to think that they would ever be afraid of him. That they could even for a second think he’d do anything to hurt them.

He didn’t say anything, neither of them did. He just kept breathing. Nightmares were not a new occurrence for Eliot, he’d been having them since his service. What was different is how seeing Parker’s body and Alec shot affected him. He had just shut down, gone numb, something he promised himself he wouldn’t do again. He was not a hired gun. He was a hitter and a good one. For a team that needed him. Pure anger pulsed through him as he remembered the dream. Then his chest ached.

“E- Eliot,” Alec said softly. “Can you hear me? Are you awake?”

Eliot looked at him and then at Parker. Something in his stomach dropped. These are the people he most cared about. Parker took a measured risk and put her cold hand on his cheek. Eliot leaned into it, blinking at her. Just feeling their presence.

“You were-” he didn’t want to say it.

She shook her head. “I’m right here.” When he was sure she wasn’t lying he turned his attention to Alec, eyes wide. “Hardison,” Parker growled.

Alec’s eyes were glued to Eliot’s pale face. “You were sleep fighting - which really isn’t that weird - you do that all the time. But then you started yelling our names. I thought you were mad, I thought I pulled your hair in my sleep or put pressure on your cracked rib. But then you started…” Parker took his hand, steadying him. “You were crying, man.”

Eliot wiped his face and sat up. “I gotta-” he needed air. “I have to go.” When he got up Alec reached for him but he wouldn’t be pulled back. He needed room to think. All he could do was focus on their smell, their soft warm bodies next to him. Warm. All he wanted to do was feel the blood pulsing under their skin, feel their chest rising and falling. The ultimate signal that their breaths were still coming, that they were still here. Solidify that his dream was nothing more than that. A fiction his brain had come up with to deal with….

“Eliot.” Parker called, worry deep in her voice. He didn’t look back. In fact he changed into sweats - in plain view of the bed - and went out for a run.

Confusing her like this ached deep in his stomach. He’d promised never to give her mixed signals, she explicitly asked him when she was still struggling with voicing the things she was feeling. He insisted it was just as hard for him but he knew what she meant. She’d spent too many years yearning after abusive people, family who couldn’t decipher the difference between pain and love, relationships where manipulation was top priority. She’d become hardened, faced everything with a smile but she hadn’t let anyone in for years before them. She’d come so far since then. He’d promised he wouldn’t hurt her- or either of them - you don’t get into this business without needing to hide some scars yourself.

And yet. He never thought about how losing them would hurt him.

##

The run had given him time to think but it hadn’t calmed his nerves. He was still weighed down by the contents of his dream, still jumping at every sound. This was not good, a spring loaded hitter was dangerous. Every time he closed his eyes he snapped right back to seeing them both, lying still and covered in blood. It was hard to get close to people as a Hitter. He knew that, they knew that. But somehow they’d snuck up on him.

After three hours of running his chest was burning and he was legitimately worried his legs were about to give out under him. But he didn’t want to see them. Not because he didn’t want to see them, because he did. More than anything he wanted to collapse into their arms and let them take care of him like they often did in the comfort of their shared apartment. A role reversal that took him a long time to come to terms with but now treasured above all else. But he didn’t want to be reminded that he’d acquired such a weakness. Knowing that he had to deal with that, and that knowing he’d die for them at any given moment. It killed him to think about leaving them open to threats from all sides.

It wasn’t dying he was afraid of. It was losing them, not being a part of this thing they’d built. This comfort they’d fought endlessly to achieve. He coughed and his throat burned.

Entering the seemingly empty apartment from the front door always set off alarm bells in his head. He always felt the urge to check every bedroom for intruders and tense his shoulders for a fight. Today he was too mentally and physically exhausted.