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Eliot wakes up to a sore everything. He feels like he’s been hit by a car, warmed over in the sun, and then stuck in the fridge. His head pounds. His fucking teeth hurt. For a bare second, he’s more concerned about what his state of being is, and then he hears an intake of breath.
Eliot freezes.
He doesn’t open his eyes immediately though. He’s smarter than that. His senses kick into hyperdrive and he tries to record what he’s feeling even without his eyes: It’s cold, like there’s air conditioning. He’s lying down. It’s a bed, it’s uncomfortable, and the blanket has been washed stiff. And there’s a lot of sounds, sounds he’s surprised he didn’t notice immediately; footsteps, idle background chatter, what sounds like announcements over loudspeaker not melding well with the clinging scent of antiseptic in his nose —
Fuck. He’s in a hospital.
Double fuck, he thinks as he hears two voices speaking right above him, neither of which he recognizes.
“Oh! Oh, I think he’s waking up — Eliot—”
“— Mm nnh no, babe, don’t — you shouldn’t touch him right now, remember what the nurse said—”
“Oh, right… Do you think we should call her? Do I press this button? Isn’t this for morphine—”
“No, he doesn’t — he’s not on morphine, he’d kill us if we let that happen, I’ll just —”
The word morphine makes his eyes open all the way, because like hell he’s going to get pumped with that shit no matter what kind of pain he’s in. And his suspicions are confirmed immediately; stark white walls, bright light overhead, an IV hooked up to him—
Two faces. On one side of his bed; a skinny white girl blonde, looking over him with worried eyes, a little too close for comfort. On the other side of his bed; a black guy, real tall, looking both worried and hesitant, standing a more reasonable distance away. Eliot knows in his bones that if he wanted to, it wouldn’t be hard for him to take these two out. Neither of them look armed, neither of them are in any kind of stance that’d let them fight back faster.
They just… they just look worried. And familiar. In a way that makes Eliot increasingly uncomfortable, nauseous, because he doesn’t recognize them but he feels like he should, somehow. He just does.
Just when he’s about to chance knocking them both out anyway so he can make a run for it, another figure steps into his peripheral. One he actually does recognize.
“I see he’s awake,” Gail says, walking closer. She looks so different in hospital scrubs. He’s more used to seeing her bandage him up, but in her favourite heels. Either way, it’s a fucking relief to see a familiar face — it makes him relax, marginally. “How long has he been up?”
“He just woke up,” Tall Guy answers, looking a little more relieved with Gail’s presence in the room. “We were just about to call you.”
“I’ve been known to have good timing,” Gail answers easily, and then walks closer, face morphing closer to the professional one she wears so well, the one that usually means Eliot’s hurt in more ways than one. “Eliot? You with us?”
Eliot opens his mouth to answer, but it abruptly becomes real clear to him that his throat is as dry as a desert. Off to his left, there’s a glass of water by his bedside with a straw in it. When Skinny Blonde reaches for it, he doesn’t even realize he’s tensed up until Gail catches his eye.
Thankfully, she knows him. Doesn’t hesitate to take the water from Skinny Blonde, and wraps her own lipstick’d mouth around the straw and drinks. He watches the water go in, watches her swallow.
“Um,” Tall Guy says, “Are you supposed to —”
“He won’t drink it otherwise, trust me.” Gail says, passing the glass back to Skinny Blonde. This time, when she comes closer with the glass and straw, Eliot drinks it gratefully, feels the water like balm to his throat. Christ, that’s good.
When he’s done he rests his head back against the pillow, and feels a little more human. “Gail,” he says.
“Eliot,” she replies. “Do you know where you are?”
“Hospital,” Eliot says, and then scrunches his nose. Glances out the window. The view looks… familiar. “Portland?”
The smile on her face makes him feel relieved. Portland. Yeah. That… feels right.
Tall Guy breathes a sigh of relief himself and finally comes closer, grinning wide and bright as he leans his broad hands on the side rail of Eliot’s bed. “Man, you scared the hell out of us, it’s so good to have you back. You been out for a solid day, you know that?”
He… didn’t know that. That’s concerning. For someone like Eliot, that is a long time to be unconscious.
“Don’t worry!” chirps Skinny Blonde, “We know you don’t like hospitals, but this one is the one with Gail in it, and she and the doctor said you’ll be okay, but you still have to stay overnight to make sure your brain’s not gone all funny.”
Brain? Wait, why is he even —
“Quinn’s not here, but he should be any minute,” Tall Guy continues, “So just relax, okay man? Just one night, then as soon as the good doctor says it’s okay you can go home —”
Home?
Eliot doesn’t even realize he’s said that aloud until he realizes the abrupt silence around him. The worried look is back on Tall Guy’s face. Both Gail and Skinny Blonde are frowning, in a way he doesn’t like. That’s the look Skinny Blonde gets when she doesn’t know how a situation is going to pan, like being dumped in a bank without knowing where the exits are, and Tall Guy looks like he always does when a plan suddenly makes a left turn because he doesn’t fair well with sudden changes like that and why does Eliot know this.
“Eliot,” Gail says slowly, carefully, in a way Eliot hates. “Do you know where you are?”
Eliot frowns. “Portland.”
“Do you know why you’re here?” Gail asks again, frowning. “... Do you know who they are?”
Eliot can’t answer. He’s sure the conflict is showing on his face. His head is pounding as he tries, tries to think about who they are, how he knows them, why he knows them, and why he knows they’re not out to get him and that they’re terrified right now. He’s trying, he’s trying. It’s on the tip of his tongue, somewhere vaguely there in the blurry mess of his mind, but it’s just out of reach and it’s making him panic more than he’d ever admit to.
Skinny Blonde is surprisingly the one who breaks the silence. “I’m Parker, that’s Hardison,” she says, brows furrowed in a way that he wishes he could worry away with his thumb and maybe some cereal and how does he know she likes that, “We work together, we, we’re—”
“—We’re a team,” Tall Guy — no, Hardison, finishes. His fingers grip the side railing tighter. “We just finished a job at the docks, you got hit by a car trying to take out one of those Czech dudes. You remember that?”
… Vaguely, actually. The sensory memory helps, his aching body and throbbing head a massive endorsement for the fact that yeah, he got hit by a car. He shuts his eyes and thinks harder, even though it just makes his head hurt more, reaching and reaching for — he got —
The memory slams into him like a. Well. Like a van, like the one that hit him and sent him barrel rolling over the top of the hood, and Eliot remembers being thrown into the water and goddamn it, this isn’t even the first time he’s been hit by a car and tossed into the ocean. Why is that a thing? At least last time was because he was trying to protect his team from that stupid car thief ring, this time the guy was just trying to get away and Eliot had stupidly stepped out at the wrong moment chasing a different guy right as Parker sprang onto the van’s windshield because she’s always been —
“— Twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag.” Eliot breathes.
Parker’s face lights up, even if her eyes are wet. Hardison’s looking almost the same, except he wheezes when Eliot whacks him in the leg with his right hand. “Man, what the hell—”
“Did we get ‘em?” Eliot hisses, “What happened after? Are they arrested or what?”
“Yeah, totally, busted red handed and everything all gift-wrapped for the cops,” Hardison says, rubbing that spot on his thigh like a sissy because Eliot did not hit that hard. “Probably. I — Do not hit me again, man, I’m sorry we were a little too preoccupied getting you to the hospital!”
“Which is a good thing, by the way, seeing how you are,” Gail interrupts, crossing her arms, hips tilted. Eliot is reminded yet again about how hot she is, both in and out of those scrubs. (Mostly out.) “No internal damage, no broken bones, because you’re still a tank, but you’re obviously having some spots in your memory. Probably as a result of the traumatic head injury.” She waves her hand dismissively. “But it’s not uncommon, and it seems like your memory’s already starting to come back. We’re still gonna run you through some tests though, keep you at least overnight to monitor you, and if your brain isn’t scrambled eggs by tomorrow morning we can release you by noon.”
Eliot groans, throwing his head back against the pillow. He hates hospitals, hates being in them too long. Staying overnight does not sound like a good time, but.
He does feel it. The ache, the throbbing in his head. He hates how much he’d forgotten, how long it’d taken to remember his team, his family, they’ve been his life for the last five years. (If he could go the rest of his life without making them both look that scared again, it’d be too soon.)
“Don’t worry, we’ll be right here with you!” Parker chirps. “You won’t be bored, I promise!”
“You know we do have a closing time on visiting hours,” Gail points out, only to have Parker wave a hand dismissively.
“Look, I even got you these,” Parker says and reaches off to the side to grab — what the fuck is that — and dumps it on his chest, like he hasn’t just been hit by a fucking vehicle. He growls, but she just grins because she’s Parker. “It’s one of those Switch thingies, and a book!”
It sure is a book. It says Fifty Shades of Gray. Eliot takes one look at it and makes direct eye contact with Gail.
“You can just discharge me today,” he says, not pleads, but okay yeah he’s pleading a little bit, “I can just come back tomorrow.” And then, because he’s not blind, he offers a charming little smile and adds, “Or you can come back to my place.”
Gail gives him a look he can’t decipher, and an amused little smile. “Unlike some people, I do have an actual job with actual hours, and my shift doesn’t end until tomorrow morning. You’re not going anywhere.”
Eliot throws his head back on his pillow and groans. “Ugh, alright, alright. But the second I’m allowed, I’m out of here. And then maybe we can grab a drink and catch up.”
The smile on her face gets a little… sympathetic. What? “I don’t think so.”
Eliot’s about to frown and ask why not when he suddenly hears rapid footsteps down the hall, and then into his doorway. Another familiar face makes itself known abruptly, but this one doesn’t have quite so good associations with it.
“Eliot,” Quinn says, eyes wide, panting, “Are you— Jesus christ!”
He’s got good reflexes, Eliot has to admit, dodging the book thrown like that. Gail is cussing him out for throwing shit in a hospital, but Eliot can’t pay her any attention, not when he’s tensing up, gearing up for a fight. If Quinn’s here that means Sterling’s around, means they’re in trouble, and head trauma or no, Eliot’s not going to let Quinn hurt them. He’s just about to sit up and jump out of his bed when he feels a strong hand land square on his chest and hold him down. He growls, but stops when he realizes it’s Parker doing it, her eyes confused and then sad, and that alone is enough to make Eliot pause.
“Eliot, do you recognize him?” Hardison asks, slowly.
Eliot frowns. “Yeah, of course I recognize him, he’s the guy Sterling sent after me during the David job, fucker broke my ribs. The hell is he doing here?”
Parker and Hardison and Gail all trade glances that frustrate Eliot. Quinn — Quinn doesn’t even move. Just stays where he is at the doorway, brows furrowed, but gaze abruptly just… blank. Eliot feels an itch under his skin. Why is everyone looking at him like that?
“Why the hell is he here?” Eliot hisses when he can’t stand the silence, and hates the way Parker looks at him with what looks like pity.
“He’s your boyfriend,” is all Hardison says, and Eliot feels his brain go blank.
What?
“... I’ll go grab the doctor,” Gail says, and that’s that.
All things considered, Eliot’s gotten off pretty lucky despite being hit by a van. He’s not entirely happy, mostly because he ends up staying an extra day longer just because of the tests the doctor insists on to make sure he’s okay, but you know. It’s worth it, just a little bit, to see Hardison and Parker look as relieved as they do when the doctor tells them that Eliot’s for the most part physically fine, internally and externally.
Not that he entirely buys that. He doesn’t get much sleep at all that night, and not just because he hates hospitals. For the longest time, Eliot’s only thing he could trust was his own body and mind. It’s the only thing that’s kept him safe despite all the shit he’s been through. And even though the memories start coming back more and more, especially with Hardison accompanying him through the night and jogging his memory some, there’s still some pretty big spots in there, especially over the two goddamn years.
It makes Eliot fidgety, makes him tense and upset, because he doesn’t like this. He hates not being able to trust his own memory. The only thing left going for him is his gut, and it’s pretty much the only thing that stops him from doubting Hardison entirely.
And throughout it all, Quinn’s hanging off at the edges of his peripheral, like a shadow.
Not literally. But close enough. It’s hard enough for Eliot to stomach the idea that he’s got a whole two years and change of loose memories rattling around somewhere he can’t touch in his own brain — it’s another to forget another person, one apparently so important that even Gail knows about him. He so badly wants to believe it’s a joke, some fucking con, but he knows his team enough that they wouldn’t fuck with him, not like this. Not with something this important.
But, fuck. God. It’s just — Quinn? Of all people? Eliot hasn’t had a steady relationship in… well, since Aimee. And for good fucking reason. Forgive him for being skeptical that he’s apparently in one for the first time in over a decade with the guy who Eliot only remembers as being the hitter who broke his ribs in the airport hangar years ago. Like, yeah, sure, Quinn’s got a voice like liquid velvet and gin and looks handsome to boot (especially now with the long hair, when did that happen) but Eliot would think he’d be good for a roll around in the sack at most.
But they’re dating, apparently. Going steady, for lack of a better word, for over a year now.
So why can’t Eliot remember?
It’s so fucking ridiculous. The last memory Eliot has of Quinn (besides nearly braining him in the hospital with Fifty Shades of Gray) is from years ago, during the Second David job, where he’d tasted blood on his lips and an ache all over from how fast Quinn knocked him down. And now everyone — everyone, including fucking Gail, who’s supposed to be Eliot’s most neutral ally in this — looks like he’s fucking wounded everytime Quinn is even mentioned, because god forbid Eliot be uncomfortable with the idea of years of his memory missing and around one man whose last interaction with him was entirely violent, a threat to the team.
The stupidest thing is that Eliot feels ridiculous. He feels bad. Quinn hadn’t stayed beyond visiting hours, probably because everyone and their mother could tell how uncomfortable and tense Eliot was around him, but from what Eliot's managed to see of him so far is just… a neutral blankness in his gaze. A calm that can only be carefully schooled. The only other thing Eliot ever saw was the second of just… worry, worry and palpable fear when he first appeared in Eliot’s doorway, and nothing since. Even when Quinn had spoken to Parker (and that’s something too, the fact they were talking like they were friends now, and it makes Eliot sick with how much he has to be missing) he’d smiled vacantly, before leaving. Something about keeping him updated, but not wanting to impede Eliot’s recovery by sticking around. Fuck.
Hardison does his best to help jog Eliot’s memory some overnight, but by the time morning passes, and then the next afternoon, Eliot’s memory of the past year or so is still full of wide, gaping holes. He’s still trying to wrap his head around the fact they apparently stole a potato at some point two years ago when Gail smuggles him out of the hospital. The word Verdagra feels incredibly familiar, but like everything else in the last two years, is just slightly out of his reach.
Hardison had been with him all night before going home to shower and check on Parker, so Eliot’d been fully ready to just call a cab to head home. So he’s a little startled when his orange Dodge Challenger pulls up, and it’s Quinn in the front seat.
(He’s also startled because this is the first time he’s ever seen the man in something other than a pressed suit. The light blue button up and cream slacks look almost too good on him. What the hell?)
“It’s okay,” Gail says when Eliot stands a little too long staring at the car and it’s driver, “If you don’t show up at your follow-up appointment at the end of the week, I’ll know who to investigate first.”
Eliot glares at her instead of replying, and then grimaces before biting the bullet and opening the car door.
Quinn turns to look at him as soon as Eliot sits, and there’s a little smile on his face that Eliot’s never seen before. It lights up his eyes. “All good, cowboy?”
“Uh. Yeah, sure.” Eliot says, haltingly. Quinn’s smile falters a little, and Eliot suddenly hates himself a lot for it. He shakes it off, changes the topic. “Didn’t think you’d be the one driving me home.”
“Well, it made the most sense, seeing as we live in the same place.” Quinn says, looking away from Eliot and onto the road, driving out of the hospital area. Probably a good thing. Eliot thinks his eyes are bugging out of his head. “Besides, you really want Parker to drive you?”
“I don’t want another concussion, thanks,” Eliot says immediately, and is rewarded by a surprised, genuine laugh from Quinn. It makes something in Eliot’s chest loosen immediately. Something in his gut saying this, this is what feels right, this is what’s supposed to be.
Quinn flashes him an amused look with those oaky browns before turning back to the road, turning into traffic so smoothly that Eliot finds himself a little hypnotized. Rough hands handle the steering wheel of Eliot’s car like he’s done this a thousand times before, turns counterclockwise and flicks on the signal with the same hand, the evening sun backlighting him and turning him movie-perfect. To Eliot’s memory, he’s never seen Quinn anywhere close to his Challenger in his life, and yet his eyes are feeding him an image that screams that he belongs there. Like he just… clicks somehow.
Not for the first time in the last 24 hours, Eliot wants to shake his brain by the collar until it spits out the memories it’s holding out on him. He resists, though. He really doesn’t want another concussion, and besides, he’s too busy also memorizing the direction of where they’re going. He only just sort of remembers moving to Portland with the team, with Nate and Sophie (and they’ve left, haven’t they, but when? To where? What did they do before they went?) but his gut says the direction Quinn is driving in is not the one he used to live in.
His suspicions are confirmed tenfold when Quinn turns into an urban neighbourhood with an honest to god house. It’s a house. Eliot hasn’t lived in a house since high school.
Eliot’s still fucking wilded by the idea, even as Quinn parks the car. “We rented a house?”
“We bought a townhouse, yes.” Quinn confirms, turning off the engine and stepping out, Eliot following suit. Eliot can’t even protest Quinn taking his shit out of the car and carrying it for him — he’s too busy staring at the other car in the garage, a sleek blue 1964 Mustang.
The staring doesn’t stop even as he gets into the actual house. It’s… perfect, pretty much. Not a house Eliot ever really visualized for himself, but mostly because he stopped visualizing ever having a house ever since he left the military and started going on the run.
This one, though. It’s the right size — not cramped like his previous apartments have been, but not so big that it’s a pain in the ass to clean or scope around on his most paranoid days. The floors are solid hardwood, and there’s a huge flatscreen on the wall that Eliot remembers Hardison liking. The furniture and placement look homely, unlike those magazines with manufactured rustic hospitality. There’s multiple throw blankets on the couch, a coffee table with scratches in the wood. There’s knick knacks on the shelves. There’s an umbrella stand, and an entryway dresser, and three guitars hanging on the wall (two acoustics, one semi-electric) and honest to god plants. There’s plants.
Hitters don’t have plants. They don’t have things. They don’t have more than they can stuff in a single bag in case they have to run, for whatever reason. The only reason Eliot ever started a vegetable garden is because of the team, and now he has houseplants?
Eliot continues to wander the house wordlessly while Quinn puts Eliot’s things in the bedroom. ( Their bedroom, holy shit. That’s a huge fucking bed. They sleep there together.) He’s equal parts fascinated and sick. It’s so much, the fact they bought a house together means more than Eliot could ever explain to the average person, and Eliot can’t remember any of it. It’s just there, just out of reach, and Eliot could punch something in frustration. (There’s a room for that too, by the way — they have an entire room for working out, complete with punching bag and floor mats, what the hell.)
By the time Eliot’s done wandering, Quinn’s sitting on the living room couch, on the phone. He doesn’t even look up. Eliot clears his throat awkwardly and watches Quinn startle, as if Quinn’s let his guard down enough to not hear Eliot coming. God. How close are they?
Close enough that you live with him, but not close enough that you remember him, his mind unhelpfully provides. Eliot strangles that thought, and shoves it into a box for later.
“Oh, hey, sorry. Was just ordering dinner.” Quinn says, after he’s done talking to the person on the phone. “You feelin’ okay?”
“What do you think?” Eliot snaps, because his primary go-to emotion is anger, and then catches himself. Shuts his eyes, shakes his head. “I. Sorry. How long have we—”
“It’s fine. We moved in three months ago. If you don’t believe me, I can show you pictures of all the paperwork we did. Your name’s on it.”
Eliot hates the calm, almost robotic tone Quinn says that in. Like he’s rehearsed it over and over before Eliot teed it up for him.
He doesn’t call it out though. What right does he even have, when Eliot can’t even remember the guy?
Quinn definitely seems to remember him, which only makes Eliot feel even more fucking conflicted. There’s a part of his brain that still clings to the idea that this is all some ruse, some con, something the team is doing for a job. He knows it’s a cruel thought, knows they’d never be cruel enough to do that to him but — it’s somehow more comforting than the idea that Eliot has a massive chunk of lost memory. Two years in his life jumbled into a mess. Even more than Quinn (which is hard to outdo, seeing as he’s apparently seen it fit to start a life together with this man he can only remember meeting one time now) it throws a ton of worrying wrenches into his life.
Is there anything else he’s missing? He hasn’t had contact with any of his previous contacts since Moreau, but who knows what he’s done without the team knowing in the last two years that he doesn’t remember now? What if he’s made a deal that he can’t remember, a bargain he can’t keep now that it’s out of his memory? It’s terrifying to the bone. The worst part being he can’t even check it out without possibly telling every enemy in a thousand mile radius that he’s got a hole in his head that he can’t cover up.
And even if he could ask, there’s no guarantee he’ll remember. Take for instance Quinn, who Eliot can see watching him, but doesn’t knock any memories loose. It makes Eliot agitated, gets his back up more than he can say, even though Quinn’s doing nothing but sit there.
When dinner arrives, Eliot keeps his eyes trained on Quinn and the food. He knows that they’re… together, supposedly (they have to be, if they have a home together, if Quinn is friends with Parker and Hardison now, but still) but he can’t shake the base instincts his brain has factory reset itself to; namely, being wary of anything and everything. He watches Quinn take the food, watches him pay, even watches him put it down in front of Eliot like he isn’t aware that Eliot’s memorizing every move he’s making in case it’ll fuck him up later.
There’s no stopping the growl in Eliot’s stomach at the smell of pad thai though. Fuck, if there’s something he hasn’t forgotten, is that he loves pad thai.
And judging by the way Quinn opens up the container of it, mixes it up with the spoon it came with and takes a spoonful before handing it to Eliot, Quinn knows it too. Enough that he knows Eliot wouldn’t have touched it if Quinn didn’t take a spoonful in good faith first.
Fuck.
Not even pad thai can stop how rattled Eliot feels about all of it. He ends up only eating half his meal. He barely notices Quinn’s own half-empty takeout container before Quinn’s picking both up, sticking them in the fridge before Eliot can even protest.
“You can refry ‘em tomorrow if you wanna,” Quinn says without looking at him, “But I think you probably need your rest now, huh?”
Eliot blinks, and then grimaces. “... Yeah.”
He must give away something in his voice, because Quinn turns to look at him. And then — and god, Eliot doesn’t know how much he can keep hating things about this situation — a flicker of understanding goes into Quinn’s eyes, and Eliot can see his smile go stiff and plastic.
“Yeah, it’s no problem, cowboy. Just let me grab my go bag and I’ll be out of your hair.” Quinn says breezily, at odds with how tense his shoulders are. It makes Eliot feel like shit, much like everything else is.
He can’t say no, though, is the thing. He knows to the barest bones of his soul that he won’t be able to sleep with another hitter in the same space as him, knows it’ll be hard enough to sleep in such an unfamiliar environment that has so many familiar things. He can’t.
So instead he asks, “Where’re you gonna go then?”
Quinn shrugs, and his brown eyes have the same amount of give as stone. “Plenty of hotels in Portland. Not gonna be opposed to some room service.” Another plastic smile. “No worries, I’ll only be a phonecall away if you need me. You’ve got me, Parker and Hardison on speed dial.”
Eliot grimaces again at the tone of Quinn’s voice, and smashes down the urge to check his phone to see if that’s true. He has a feeling it is anyway. He struggles for a few moments to find something to say, before finally giving up and just saying, “Sorry,” when Quinn comes back from the bedroom with his go bag slung over his shoulder, jacket on and weighed on one side like he’s packing now.
“It’s fine,” Quinn says, sounding decidedly not fine no matter how much he tries for it, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Spencer.”
The way his last name on Quinn’s tongue feels painfully wrong. What’s even more wrong is the way Quinn walks past and then pauses, hand trembling like he’s stopping himself from doing something stupid, like… Like touching Eliot. And it’s distracting enough that it doesn’t even occur to Eliot that he could’ve just stayed with Hardison for awhile so Quinn didn’t have to be kicked out of his own house. By the time it does, Quinn’s long gone.
Suffice to say, Eliot doesn’t get much sleep that night.
He tries. He really fucking tries. He hopes against hope that a good night’s sleep will knock some memories loose and, granted, he does sleep better than he did at the hospital, but he still wakes up and feels disoriented and misplaced. Like an imposter. He wakes up in a bed that’s too big for him but smells like him, to his clothes and his things hanging in the closet, none of which he can remember ever putting there. His favourite brand of toothpaste is on the bathroom counter next to toothbrushes he’s never seen, and his favourite brand of conditioner is by the shower next to a shampoo he doesn’t recognize.
It’s all the signs that this is his place, that he lives here, and it’s driving him out of his goddamn mind that he doesn’t know how. He’s being haunted by his own ghost, and it’s driving him crazy.
Eliot gets dressed in clothes he knows he owns, and then heads downstairs to the kitchen he’s unfamiliar with that has his favourite coffee mug Parker got for him three years ago as a gag gift from the airport gift shop in San Lorenzo. He tries to find coffee, mostly to see if that’ll wake up his system some, but mostly only finds some fruit juices in the fridge. So he just gets water from the tap instead, and racks his brain for solutions he doesn’t have hard enough that he almost misses the knocks on the door.
Eliot is careful when he goes to look, of course. The whole thing still has him on edge, but he finds himself both weirdly soothed and… sort of sad, guilty, when he finds it’s just Quinn on the outside, holding up packages of. Something.
The way Quinn’s eyes go warm and honey-soft when Eliot opens the door makes something in his chest skip a beat. It makes him feel stupid. He knows he should be familiar with Quinn being here, because they’ve apparently started building a home together, but he can’t muster the feelings he can’t even remember having — but he can’t react to Quinn with the full range of his wariness either. Not when Quinn’s looking at him like this. Hopeful.
“Brought breakfast,” Quinn says by way of greeting, holding up the bag.
“Don’t you have the key?” Eliot replies instead, stepping aside and trying not to feel too weird about letting Quinn into his own home.
It’s the wrong thing to say. Quinn’s smile doesn’t turn as plastic as it was yesterday, but it’s halfway there. “Figured I could avoid a broken arm if I didn’t randomly show up in the living room.”
Eliot can’t argue against that. He wouldn’t know what to say even if he could. So he lets Quinn in and shuts the door and watches as Quinn walks into the kitchen like he knows it with his eyes closed, watches the early morning light wash over Quinn through the peaks in the slats of the window blinds, and wonders how this could feel so wrong and so right at the same time. Mostly, Eliot just follows, and sort of hopes Quinn’s here to kill him after all. At least he’d know how to react to that.
Quinn’s digging around in the cupboards when Eliot sits down at the table and looks at the containers. It’s a pair of breakfast wraps and some salads, with mainly one difference — one salad has beets in it, and the other has it separated in a different little container altogether.
“You hate beets,” Quinn says abruptly, appearing over Eliot’s shoulder and surprising Eliot hard enough it’s a miracle he doesn’t punch the guy in the face.
Eliot manages to calm himself down, and hates how his chest feels constricted anyway as he stares at the stupid fucking beets. “I know.” And then, “What’re you making?”
“Coffee,” Quinn answers simply, moving across the kitchen to — oh, fuck, he’s grinding the coffee beans by hand. Eliot can tell by smell alone that it’s heavenly. “How’re you feeling?”
Eliot takes a moment to consider that. Physically, he’s… well, pretty fine, surprisingly. His body still aches like a dull all-over bruise, but considering he got hit by a van he likes to think he got away mostly scratchless.
Quinn actually chuckles when Eliot tells him as much, and the sound of the man’s low, easy laugh makes a starburst of warmth and ugliness burst in Eliot’s chest. “Yeah,” Quinn says once the coffee is done, “You never were good at stayin’ down.”
Eliot remembers the last fight they had, and finds comfort that there’s at least one shared memory they have that Eliot’s retained. “I’m not here to stand still and look pretty,” Eliot snorts, taking the coffee mug from Quinn gratefully.
He knows he shouldn’t be surprised when he takes a sip. It’s just coffee. It’s fantastic coffee, yeah, but it’s just coffee, but.
It’s just the way he likes it. Eliot’s worked with this sort of coffee before — the brand of beans Quinn messed with is something Eliot knows, another remnant of his own self haunting him, but he knows most people usually make the mistake of adding —
“No sugar, one cream, right?” Quinn interrupts, and Eliot’s head snaps up to stare at him.
“How do you—” And then he catches himself in time, and shakes his head. “Right. Nevermind.”
Quinn’s smile is both sad and plastic. It feels like shit. On a level even beyond the base discomfort that is not trusting your own mind, it makes Eliot feel like a fraud. Like some better Eliot’s been living this life, and then he got taken away and replaced by an exact replica but slightly worse. A cheap knockoff. Here’s a guy Eliot only knows by name and fighting style, meanwhile Quinn knows exactly how he takes his coffee and that he hates beets.
“I fucking hate this,” Eliot snarls, glaring into his mug like it’ll somehow give him the answers.
“... I can leave, you know.” Quinn says, and startles Eliot into looking up at his face. He actually looks kind of guilty. “I know this is hard. Ain’t easy on normal people, let alone people like us. And if your last memory is of me kicking your ass in a fight —”
“You weren’t even awake for the last part of that fight,” Eliot interrupts, and watches the impossible as Quinn’s eyes light up and die down at the same time. A candle flame lit and then immediately snuffed. Eliot hates it, so he continues, says, “No, just. Shit. It’s not you,” Eliot half-lies, “It’s. Everything. How much more have I forgotten? What else am I missing? Goddamn it!”
Quinn’s face softens at that. “Yeah, I know, pal. The doc said to give you a little while. Your memories started coming back after you woke up, maybe you just need a little more time to rattle the rest loose.”
Eliot scowls. “It fucking better. I can’t just — it’s two whole years, man. And I only remember fractions of it. Like, like — I know we had to steal a potato at some point. Verdagra. I remember Hardison being buried alive, I remember getting drugged by Sterling —”
“—But you don’t remember me,” Quinn completes, “Among other things.”
Eliot looks up, and grimaces at the half-vacant look on Quinn’s face. “Don’t know why the hell I would forget, if we’d gone… steady enough to have. This. Together.”
He half expects Quinn to make a joke or a quip about going steady. Instead he watches Quinn’s emotional shutters just… hatch down completely, in a split second.
“Yeah,” Quinn says, and smiles like he doesn’t know what a smile looks like. “I wonder that too.”
Eliot doesn’t have words. He wishes he did, but he doesn’t. He’s angry and upset and frustrated and lost and so he just sits there, opens up his container, and eats the salad like it’s done something to personally wrong him. He expects this to mostly end up like last night — awkward eating, awkward clean up, and then Eliot sitting around with his thumbs up his ass as he tries to figure out what he’s going to do next.
He doesn’t expect a hand to come close to his at the table. Not touching him, not even close — but just, there. Like it wants to touch him, but is holding back. And that hand belongs to Quinn, whose face has softened, just a little bit.
“We’ll figure this out together. All of us,” Quinn says, “Give it a little bit, yeah?”
Eliot stares, stares deep at Quinn’s oaky toned eyes, and then breathes a sigh. “Yeah.”
He only hopes he can believe it.
To their credit, they do help him. All of them. If Eliot were to ever doubt this being sincere, he’d just have to look at the way Parker and Hardison seem to have completely erased their personal schedules to focus on him — taking him in Lucille, talking to him about the jobs they’ve done, showing him security footage and details from previous cons that Eliot only barely remembers. They fill him in on the big stuff; who’s behind bars now and who they’re currently looking at, what the status is on all their current major intel; and they fill him in on the little things; Eliot’s role at the gastropub (currently on medical leave for as long as it takes, according to Hardison) and where exactly Parker’s stashed some money in Eliot’s home.
And there’s Quinn too. Obviously. And while a part of Eliot is still screaming in suspicion, the rest of him is… grateful, mostly. Guilty also. Because while Quinn never fully loses the look in his eyes that says he’s blocking something out, smiling like he only knows how to from reading a book, he sticks around. Tries to help Eliot, tries to accommodate. He doesn’t even go back once to their apparent shared home, and when Eliot asks, Quinn shows where he’s staying without hesitating for a second. Room number and everything.
The amount of trust Quinn still puts in him, even though Eliot barely remembers a single thing about Quinn, speaks volumes as to what they’ve been before Eliot had gone and unintentionally fucked it all up.
Besides, Eliot can see from the way Quinn talks to the rest of the team that they trust him. Parker laughs open and loud around him, smacks him in the shoulder and shares her chocolate stash with him, and it’s almost enough to make Quinn smile for real sometimes. At one point Eliot finds Hardison and Quinn watching the game together on one of their many HQ HD TVs. Hardison’s even sharing his beer with Quinn. Quinn even fucking drinks it. If there’s anything that comes back to Eliot quickly, it’s that Hardison’s beers taste like if a Monster Energy decided to have a sloppy one night stand with the shittiest hops known to man, and that Quinn either has dead taste buds or an intense loyalty to him and the team if he can power through a whole bottle like that without complaint.
So that’s how most days go, the rest of the week. Hardison and Parker have him for most of the day, filling him in, trying to jog his memory, even at one point calling in Nate and Sophie to see if they could help with anything. Quinn stops by in the morning, bringing breakfast every time, getting Eliot’s coffee right every time, and then stops by again at night with dinner. (Eliot lets him, because the one time he cooked, he’d apparently made a dish Quinn’s allergic to, a fact Eliot’s apparently supposed to have known for ages, and the look on Quinn’s face after hurt more than being hit by the van.) He never stays, and Eliot finds himself unable to ask. In the night, Eliot still wanders their home, trying to find bits and pieces of the him he’s lost, piecing things together like he’s trying to exorcise the spirit of himself.
Eliot’s favourite times are when all of them are together. Himself, Hardison and Parker, and Quinn. Those are the times that have the highest chances of him remembering things, because with all three of them there he finds it more inclined to trust what they say (and also because those are the only times over the course of the entire thing that Quinn looks anywhere close to smiling and laughing like he means it.)
He likes it. He really likes it, he finds. And he hopes against hope that his memory comes back fully, because if this is how the current him is living, he wants to keep it that way.
The week passes. When the end of the week arrives, Eliot allows himself to be shunted into the hospital and let Gail stick him full of needles and in tons of machines, turning him this way and that like a rotisserie science experiment from sun up to sun down. Then, because Gail’s got a professional streak a mile long for how much Eliot likes teasing her about how her legs are longer in those heels she loves, she questions Eliot half to death about everything. Eliot answers truthfully for the most part, and only tries to flirt with her once before the sad eyes she gives him reminds him that he’s stuck (not stuck, no, he’s not stuck ) with a guy he doesn’t even remember, and he stops.
The results come back negative, for the most part. Eliot should be fine. He’s regaining his memories, slowly but surely, so the doctor gives him another week before he has to come back and check again.
Then another week.
Then another.
Here’s the thing: Eliot is recovering his memories. That’s the good news. They come in slowly but surely, more and more as one memory leads to another in a domino effect, and by the second week Eliot remembers the name of all the CEOs they’ve tackled in the last two years, remembers the how and when and why, can even map out the set they’d used for the White Rabbit job. Hardison takes him around in Lucille, and Eliot can remember how she’d gotten that stain in the lower right corner of the back (answer: Hardison and one of his terrible beers and Parker behind the wheel.) Parker walks with him around town, and Eliot can remember her favourite food stalls.
By the second week, Eliot’s more or less cleared to work at the gastropub again. His body’s recovered for the most part, nothing he can’t walk off, and he remembers all the staff and where everything is and all the regular’s orders. By all rights, he’s got most of his memory back.
Most. Not all. And therein lies the problem.
Eliot supposes if it’s one or two missing memories, he’d learn to live with it. Seek it out and study them in his own time, work together with Parker and Hardison to piece together whatever he’s missing.
But he can’t do that, not with the Quinn-shaped hole in his mind. It’s frustrating and confusing as all hell because it makes no sense. From what Eliot’s gathered, Quinn’s been an integral part of Eliot’s life for the year at least, and yet every memory that Quinn’s a part of comes back to Eliot as vaguely blurry at best. He remembers what happened to Nate’s dad all up until the part he’d apparently flown to Kiev, and then everything’s only in fragments from there. He remembers something about handcuffs, but he doesn’t remember where and why and how. He remembers an underground tunnel, but he doesn’t remember what went on inside there. He remembers the details of what happened but the images aren’t coming to his head, and the second there’s supposed to be a memory of just him and Quinn, there’s nothing there at all.
It’s not like he’s not trying. Eliot is doing his fucking best, okay? He hangs out with Quinn, asks him questions, asks them all questions to try and get his memory running, and nothing works. Quinn seems to remember every single detail, can produce proof for most things Eliot asks that Eliot can’t find a single reason to doubt him now, and yet Eliot can’t reciprocate with a damn thing. The doctor’s put him through enough medical tests that Eliot feels he’s going to have to steal another country to put up with the medical bills he’s racking up, and yet according to the science, there’s nothing wrong with him. Just some light bruising now, and a hole in his memory where Quinn should be.
He doesn’t understand why it is that way, and it’s frustrating. More than that, it’s frustrating to see how much it’s hurting Quinn. The guy’s made himself as accommodating as possible to Eliot, hasn’t once complained, but Eliot can see it. Can see the way his smiles never reach his eyes, can see how tightly he holds himself, can see how eager he is to leave. If it weren’t for the fact that Eliot opens the door for him every day to see the light of hope in Quinn’s eyes, only for it to be immediately extinguished, he wouldn’t know any better.
By the end of the third week and the third round of tests that all point to Eliot apparently having nothing wrong with him, Eliot’s close to taking down the city’s branch of the Russian mob just to have a reason to punch something, he’s that fucking frustrated.
He doesn’t though. Mostly because Parker’s got a bigger scheme going on to help tie up some mob ends in the city that require more brain power than Eliot’s fists, and Eliot doesn’t want to ruin that by turning a few dozen men into his personal punching bags. So he walks instead, in the hopes that the cold evening air will help clear his head, stop the angry thrum in his blood and the edge he’s standing so close to, frustrated and helpless.
He’s used enough to his… home, now, that he can follow the route and know the routine. So he thinks he’s allowed to be plenty surprised to find the lights already on, and when he quietly walks into the home — to find Quinn sitting on the couch, papers in hand, staring at the floor.
Eliot frowns, confused. “Quinn?”
Quinn looks up, and he doesn’t even seem surprised. There’s something even more guarded than usual behind his eyes, and something even more wrong with his smile than usual. “Hey, Spencer. How’d the doc go?”
“Same shit as usual,” Eliot replies slowly, and hates the way he sees something die behind Quinn’s eyes at that. “We havin’ dinner early or?”
Quinn blinks, and then laughs, and it sounds wrong. “No, sorry, not — not tonight, pal. There’s still leftovers in the fridge though, and the menus of your favourite takeout places in the usual stack by the keybowl. No, I’m — just wanted to drop something off.”
“Drop what off?” Eliot frowns, before looking at the papers. Quinn moves to stand when he does, and Eliot hates how Quinn looks like a stranger in their own home. “That? The hell are those?”
Quinn shrugs, shoulders tight. “Nothing important. Mostly stuff about the property. Just gotta sign a few things and the house is all yours.”
Eliot… blinks. And then the words sink in.
“You’re leaving?” Eliot says, disbelieving.
“I mean,” Quinn says with a fake nonchalance, “I haven’t really lived here for a month now. Besides,” and here Quinn smiles again and Eliot wants to punch it off his stupid fucking face, “You were the one who picked the place. Only seems right you get to keep it.”
“No.”
Quinn blinks. “No?”
“No!” Eliot snaps. “You’re not fucking leaving, and you’re not moving out. Put that shit away, Quinn.”
A crack in Quinn’s armour. His smile falters. “Spencer. Just sign the damn papers. What, you want my car too?”
“ No, I don’t want your fucking car!” Eliot takes a few steps forward, fists clenched. All the frustration of the day feels like it’s radiating from his fucking spine and to his chest, and it burns. “You’re not leaving, Quinn. We’ll figure it out, if — if it’s because you haven’t lived here in weeks, you can move back! I can stay with Hardison or go to one of Parker’s safehouses and park my ass there until we figure this out, I’m not kicking you out of your own home just because of my hangups—”
“I’m not staying here,” Quinn grits out, “So just sign the fucking papers and—”
“Why not?!” Eliot barks.
“Because it doesn’t fucking matter without you!” Quinn explodes, and Eliot’s jaw snaps shut with an audible click.
Eliot watches, in both fascination and horror as Quinn’s armor melts away, his facade of nonchalance and accommodation melting into a face of pure misery, of anger and frustration and just — like he’s given up. Like he’s tired, like he’s running on empty, and Quinn doesn’t seem like the kind of man who easily shows his emotions without a fight, but now he looks like he’s close to breaking something, chest heaving from the force of the shout.
“D’you know how long it took for us to decide to settle down together? D’you know all the shit we’ve been through just to get here?” Quinn asks, demands, and Eliot feels his stomach drop when he realizes again that he can’t give Quinn the answer he wants to it. Quinn seems to realize that too, if the hurt in his eyes is indication. “I know this ain’t your fault, but I can’t do this anymore. I can’t. It took us so long to decide to build this together and this whole — all of this is us, it’s me and it’s you, and now the you that built this with me is gone. What the hell am I supposed to do?”
The misery in Quinn’s voice makes Eliot want to grovel. It’s heart wrenching. It hurts. “I’m — I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out. There’s still time, maybe —”
“It’s been a month, Eliot!” Quinn shouts, throwing a hand in the air. “You remember everything except me! We’re gonna have to accept the fact that this might be forever. And I know it ain’t your fault but — “ And here Quinn spits, frustrated, eyes looking miserable, “I can’t do this. I can’t. It took us so long to get here, I already gave you everything I had. I can’t give it to you a second time.”
“We can try, Quinn,” Eliot is — he’s begging, he knows he’s begging, and he doesn’t know why he’s begging because Quinn is right and the current version of Eliot he is doesn’t have the same bond with Quinn as old Eliot did, but he just. He knows he can’t let Quinn leave. Not like this. “You can let me learn you again, we can learn each other, goddamn it Quinn, we can start again! ”
Quinn’s smile is bitter and brittle. “It’s easy for you to say. You’ve already forgotten me once. Me? I don’t know how I could ever forget you.”
That hurts more than the van ever did. Eliot grits his teeth, and tries not to succumb to the cold feeling in his chest. “Quinn, you can’t do this. This ain’t either our faults, you can’t just walk out on me —”
“Sure I can. It’s a selfish thing to do, sure, but I’ve never claimed to be a good man.” Quinn shrugs, and then meets Eliot’s gaze directly, pained and haunted and smiling like he’s dying. “But you knew that already. Maybe that’s why it was so easy for you to forget.”
Eliot stares. He. He doesn’t — he can’t —
Eliot can’t remember the last time he was this angry.
“I’ll leave the papers here,” Quinn’s saying, dropping them on the coffee table as he makes to move to the front door, “Sign them… whenever. I’ll get Parker to help me pick them up. I—”
“No.”
Quinn sighs harshly in frustration. “Eliot, I’m leaving, whether you like it or not.”
“No,” Eliot grits, and blocks Quinn’s path with his own bulk. “You’re not leaving until we figure this shit out.”
Quinn throws his hands in the air, exasperated. “What the hell else is there to figure out?? You don’t even remember the reason why we’re even friends! I’m trying to let us walk away from this without any more damage!”
“I ain’t leavin’ you, Quinn,” Eliot hisses, “And you’re not leavin’ either.”
“Eliot,” Quinn growls, “Let me go.”
Eliot snarls right back. “If you wanna leave, you’re gonna have to get through me.”
Quinn’s eyes narrow. “You just recovered from being hit by a goddamn car. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Then I guess you’re not leaving.” Eliot states.
Eliot supposes Quinn’s definitely improved over the years, because Quinn almost gets away with darting past Eliot. He doesn’t, though, and Eliot grabs his arm and yanks him back, and that’s all he gets before he gets a starburst of pain in his side where Quinn’s spun around to elbow him in the chest. Eliot snarls, an animal thing, and he watches the primal part of Quinn spark in his eyes as Quinn’s fist comes sailing to him, blocked by Eliot’s forearm at the last second.
This is a language Eliot’s used to speaking, and one that Quinn’s speaking volumes with in return. Quinn’s only gotten faster, more efficient, more deadly in his skills, but Eliot’s got years of experience and a stubbornness to outlast the heat death of the universe. He meets Quinn blow for blow — Quinn striking hard and fast, not so much hurting Eliot as he is trying to disable him at the soonest opportunity, with the intent of ending the fight as soon as possible, probably so he can get away. Eliot meets him at every turn, blocks every strike and absorbs the ones he can’t, and makes every move he can to grapple and grip Quinn, to make sure Quinn can’t go.
And yeah, maybe he’s being unreasonable. Maybe he’s being selfish. But, fuck it. Like Quinn said, it’s not like he’s a good man. Maybe that’s why they fit so well. Maybe that’s why this is the most honest Quinn’s been around him in weeks, his moves getting stronger and stronger as his frustrations leak into his combat, getting some good hits into Eliot that send him sprawling and then coming to give him more. All the fury and frustration and confusion and hurt seems to spill into Quinn’s moves, and Eliot can’t help but welcome it, stoking the fire, encouraging him because Eliot’s angry too, because this is fucking unfair on the both of them, because this is the most Eliot’s seen of Quinn’s true feelings since he first woke up. Quinn roars as he tackles Eliot to the ground, and Eliot snarls back as he kicks Quinn back into the shelf and hears the books tumble down.
Quinn’s nose is bloody when he stumbles back into standing, matching the split lip Eliot has, both of their chests heaving for air and eyes narrowed into fire. The blood stains Quinn’s teeth. Eliot wants to fucking taste it.
“C’mon,” Eliot taunts, and feels the air get punched out of his chest when Quinn runs up and kicks him square in the gut.
He wheezes, barely keeps upright, bends over just enough that when Quinn straightens up he can lunge forward to knock him to the floor, kicking him when he hits with an audible crunch. For a moment, Eliot pauses — worried, because he didn’t mean to seriously injure him, but — that’s his mistake, anyway, because the second he pauses Quinn snarls and gets to his feet and grabs Eliot by the neck, bends him down and drives his knee into Eliot’s chest again and again and —
Crack —
“Now that rib’s broken,” Quinn snarls, animal and bloodied in his ear —
— Quinn’s eyes, longing and almost hopeful, Eliot realizing he can’t do this dance anymore, he can’t go another day without telling Quinn, so he walks forward and tells him with his lips and mouth and feels his soul ascend when Quinn melts into it, gives back as good as he gets —
— The shaking doesn’t stop, Eliot can feel it in his fucking teeth, and he wants it to stop but his blood is still pumping with adrenaline and anger and fear, and then there’s, there’s a hand on his own, and a body over his, warm and holding and normally Eliot would lash out, would react violently at any other person’s touch, but he knows this one, has spent months getting to know and getting to love it, getting to trust it more than he ever thought he could trust anyone with the monster he is —
— “I love you,” Eliot says. His lower lip and fists and soul trembling, but more sure than he ever has been, here, in bed, holding onto Quinn and skin to skin and tightly, so tightly, mouth against Quinn’s temple, “I love you. I ain’t ever gonna leave.”
Quinn shakes in his arms, trying to still himself where he’s still finding it hard to breathe. The aftermath of a nightmare still behind his eyelids, the fear of losing everything, and Eliot can feel the fragile hope behind Quinn’s teeth when he ducks down to lick into his mouth. When Quinn pulls away his eyes are wide, caramel under the moonlight but determined, and he moves, pushes Eliot down so he can straddle him and press their foreheads together like a promise, breathing shaky but true and willing,
“Me too,” Quinn says, more air than sound, “I love you too. Don’t go, please, don’t ever go, E —”
“—liot?! Eliot!”
Eliot’s ears are loud with thunder. Everything hurts. When did he hit the floor? More than just his ribs — his head is pounding, his heart is racing, he feels the edges of his vision growing white and fuzzy and the last thing he sees before he goes down is Quinn kneeling over him, shaking him, eyes wide and worried and with more fear than Eliot’s seen in a long time, and the last thing he thinks is oh, sweetheart, don’t look like that, I've always hated it when you look like that, I’m gonna be just fine, and then the world goes black.
Eliot wakes up to a sore everything, but his ribs most of all. They’re broken, he knows that for a fact, and his head pounds. His fucking teeth hurt. He can taste copper where he’s pretty sure his lip is split. The rest of his senses come in one by one, taking note of what’s around him: it’s cold, like there’s air conditioning; he’s lying down on an uncomfortable bed, blanket washed stiff; there’s background noises, idle chatter and announcements over a speaker and the smell of antiseptic and for a bare second he thinks shit, I’m in a hospital again, when he hears an intake of breath.
“Eliot?”
Eliot cracks open his eyes, and winces at the bright lights above before he tries a second time. Everything is thankfully familiar when his vision adjusts. The hospital he’s in, the noises in the background — the man by his side, sitting by Eliot’s bed, looking punched in and beaten and sitting in a way that lets Eliot know that his ribs are also broken, brown eyes wide with fear and hesitance and fragile, fragile hope.
Eliot knows what that hope looks like. He knows, too well by now, how fast that light gets extinguished.
He’s done it too many times before. He’s not going to do it again.
“Hey there Huckleberry,” Eliot says, voice rough with just being woken up, “You alright there?”
It’s a miraculous thing. One of the most beautiful things Eliot’s ever seen; the way the hope in Quinn’s eyes brighten enough to power the whole damn city, his face cracking into joy and relief and the way he stands, wincing because of the pain and going anyway to stand by Eliot, bending down to grab Eliot’s face and kiss him like he hasn’t in weeks, oh god. It’s like balm on Eliot’s fucking soul. It’s been weeks, and yeah, he knows he didn’t miss it then because past Eliot was a fucking idiot who lost his memories, but current Eliot remembers everything and he’s starved for it, melting and melding into Quinn’s mouth like he can apologize that way.
The only reason they stop is because of the sound of a throat clearing in the doorway. When they part — Eliot a little sheepish, Quinn looking slightly flushed and possessive and sexy as hell — he sees Gail standing in the doorway, looking both amused and relieved.
“Didn’t think tongue-fucking people back to consciousness would work,” Gail comments, “Maybe I should propose that to the board, see if that could work on our coma patients.”
Quinn relaxes a little, and straightens up, though he still has a hand on Eliot’s jaw. “He was awake before I started mouth-to-mouth, so I don’t think that’ll fly. And something something ethics committee.”
Eliot snorts, before looking back to Gail and nodding. “Hey, Gail.”
“Hey, asshole.” Gail greets back. “How’re you feeling?”
“Like someone just broke my ribs, but,” Eliot shrugs, “Fine. Better than fine.”
Gail’s gaze softens. “Yeah? You remember now?”
Eliot nods, and then reaches up to feel Quinn’s hand. Squeezes it, and feels Quinn squeeze it right back. “Yeah.”
“Good.” And then Gail smacks his ankle with her clipboard. “Next time, don’t fucking forget. You’re the only idiot I know who would need his memories punched back into him. Take care of him, will you?”
The last bit is directed to Quinn, who nods as she leaves. And then he’s leaning back down to press his forehead to Eliot’s, breathing a shaky sigh.
“Fuck, Eliot.” Quinn breathes, voice low. “You scared the shit out of me, asshole. You left.”
Eliot frowns, unhappy, and reaches up for Quinn’s face. Strokes the warm cheek he’s grown to adore, and feels his heart explode and melt when Quinn looks at him, gaze soft and vulnerable, and just. Turns, presses his mouth into Eliot’s palm. Kisses it softly, Eliot feeling it like a gunshot.
“I came back, didn’t I?” Eliot says, “It’s okay. I remember. I remember everything, I’m sorry I forgot. I’m so fucking sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“It better fucking not,” Quinn says, and then smiles, eyes wet.
Eliot kisses him like it’s a promise. Because it is. And he knows he won’t forget this one.