Dream melodramatic ot3 declaration of feelings scenario (that I’m thinking about post-s5, but could certainly work for Redemption) is this:
This time it’s Eliot who steps on the bomb.
They’re only meant to be doing recon, and he almost wants to laugh when he hears the click, a little past the boundary of their mark’s sprawling land. Years of precautions and paranoia and he’s about to get taken out by a fucking booby-trap like an expendable character in one of Hardison’s action movies.
Parker and Hardison are still walking up ahead, and for a second he thinks about letting them go, letting them get clear of the danger zone and then just lifting his foot. Only he swallows, watching them, lump rising fast in his throat—he hasn’t been scared of death itself for a long, long time, but the idea of never talking to them again, never looking at them again, never telling them—
Well. It’s unbearable.
Besides that, while the placement of the device suggests it’s the only one, he can’t be sure, and besides that, it doesn’t take them long to notice he’s no longer right behind them.
‘You okay?’ Hardison calls, and the look on Eliot’s face must be answer enough, because they’re both coming back to him before he can choke out a warning.
‘So yeah,’ he manages, when they’re within a few feet of him. He holds himself very, very still, even as his heart seems to hurl itself over and over at the walls of his chest. ‘Looks like our guy went to the Udall school of home security.’
‘Eliot,’ Parker whispers, eyes dropping to his feet. Her mouth sets into a firm line. ‘How do we fix this?’
‘You can’t.’
‘It’s okay; we’re gonna figure it out,’ Hardison assures him.
‘You should get out of here,’ Eliot says, through gritted teeth. There are no wires for Parker to pull this time, no clever computer resets for Hardison to try.
‘We’re not doing that,’ Hardison says immediately, dropping to a crouch to try to get a better look at the barely-buried pressure plate, and Eliot wants to scream.
‘You need—I’m serious, you both need to get as far away as possible. We don’t know if this thing’s on a timer or—’
‘Then we’d better figure it out fast,’ Parker says, squatting down next to Hardison.
Then they’re talking to each other, the two of them, but he’s not really processing what they’re saying. Instead his pulse is thundering in his ears and he’s thinking about the pie he’d planned on making later. How they’d have both picked at the raw pastry and he’d have pretended to be annoyed at them. How they’d have argued they had just as much say in how this pie came together, because Eliot had dragged them out of the city to pick the berries specially (had watched the two of them goof around—Parker smushing a ripe blackberry against Hardison’s mouth and then kissing the deep purple stains away, Hardison putting Parker up on his shoulders so she could reach high into the hedgerows—and felt the odd mix of longing and deep contentment that is sunk into his bones by now, thrumming warm and sweet through his veins, settled forever into every atom).
It would’ve been good, that pie, and it would have been even better to watch them eat it, Parker with so much ice cream she’d get brain freeze, Hardison with that awful powder mix custard, at their dinner table in their home that they built together.
‘I need to tell you something,’ Eliot says.
‘—makes sense that it’d be deactivated remotely,’ Hardison is saying.
‘I need to tell you something,’ Eliot says, louder.
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