Because Eliot/Cassandra is my CrossOTP, and if nobody's written it yet, then by God, I will do it my damned self. And because I really wanted some smut today.

Eliot did not like hospitals. Not in any way, shape, or form. They made him anxious in a way that he couldn't shake, which was why he rarely ever went to one, not to be treated. He could pull off a con in a hospital if he had to, but he would never go as a patient. Not only no, but hell no. Most hitters didn't, but that was because hospitals asked questions, like why he had so many broken ribs and why his hands were scraped all to hell and why he had a bandanna tied around what was definitely a knife wound on his arm instead of an actual bandage. That was his excuse. But in reality, they just creeped him out.

So, like any good hitter, he had other places to go when he needed to be patched up. And lucky for him, he had the best fixer in the world. He waved off Hardison and Sophie's protests that he should really go to a doctor and left the brewpub, flagging a cab to take him across the bridge. He knew that he was in a lot more trouble than he let the team in on, and by the time he stumbled his way up the stairs of the apartment complex, his entire midsection was one big hurt and when he tried to take too deep a breath, his vision would slide side-to-side a bit, like a TV set that wasn't tuned in properly. He slumped against the doorframe, trying not to make pain noises when he breathed, and knocked.

The door jerked open, and standing there in a Mickey Mouse nightshirt was the one person that he'd wanted to see the most. "Hey, sugar," he rasped out, dry throat protesting the words. "Mind if I come in?"

Cassandra's eyes went soft. "Oh, Eliot…" She didn't ask what he'd done to himself this time, just drew his less-hurt arm around her shoulders like she always did, helping him to stagger into her apartment, and he leant against her gratefully, knowing that she could hold him up. She pulled him over to the kitchen table, letting him down in one of the chairs. "Where's it the worst?" she asked, opening a drawer and handing him a clean dishtowel.

"Ribs. Broken, more 'n one," he replied.

Cassandra nodded. "Can you lift your arm at all?" she asked. He could, but only about shoulder-level, and even that hurt like a son of a bitch. She grasped the bottom of his shirt and rolled it up a little, hissing through her teeth when she saw the bruising on his side. "My poor baby," she murmured under her breath, more to herself than him, and laid a hand against his side as lightly as she could whilst maintaining contact. Eliot rolled up the towel and fit it between his teeth, nodding to her. Cassandra's magic could fix up his ribs in seconds instead of weeks, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt; he could feel the bones grinding back into place, snapping back together like pieces of a kid's toy. "You're bleeding internally," she noted, her voice sounding faraway over the rushing in his ears. "Nicked a lung." Which explained why it wasn't so easy to breathe. He had to take the towel from between his teeth to gasp in air through his mouth when she drew the blood out of his lungs, snatching away his breath in the process.

By the time she was done, he was shivering a little, despite the fact that he was sweating and flushed all over. Cassandra smoothed his hair back out of his face, murmuring to him softly, and he leant against her gratefully, tucking his face into the crook of her neck. The pain faded slowly, receding back into a faint achiness in his side that was entirely bearable, and he realised that she must've taken the opportunity to heal some of his older injuries. "You leave some bruises?" he asked after a few moments.

"Yes," she replied, stroking the nape of his neck, though she didn't sound happy about it. If he let her, she'd heal that, too, but he insisted that she at least leave the bruises, otherwise it'd look real suspicious real fast. A hitter without bruises wasn't normal. Not to mention he worked with four of the most inherently nosy people on the damn planet, and Cassandra was a secret he'd like to keep to himself for a while longer. He took a deep breath with only a little twinge of discomfort and smiled. She kissed his temple. "You want me to call you a cab?"

Eliot hummed. "I'd like to stay. If you don't mind."

"Mm. One leetle problem with that," Cassandra murmured.

"What's that?"

"I no longer have a bed." When he lifted his head to stare at her, she quickly went on. "Just a little incident involving a couple of minor elementals that weren't too pleased we stole their stuff and thought it'd be funny to set my mattress on fire as payback, so…I'm going to the store this weekend, but for now, no bed."

Eliot huffed softly, shaking his head. "And there are days when I think my job is weird. So, what now?"

"Well, we have a few options. We can go back to your place, we can get a hotel room somewhere, or we can try to fit on my sofa."

Eliot glanced past her to look at the sofa in question; no way in hell could they both fit on that thing, not unless she slept on top of him…which didn't exactly sound like a bad night.

"Or," Cassandra went on, and he slid his gaze back to her, "we can make a pillow fort."

"A pillow fort," he repeated.

"Mm-hm. There's plenty of spare bedding in the linen closet. All of my pillows survived, too. What do you say?"

Eliot stared at her for a long moment, trying to keep the corners of his mouth from twitching, but finally gave up and smiled. "I'll get the cushions off the sofa, you get the pillows," he said.

"When's the last time you made one of these, do you think?" Cassandra asked, giggling as she crawled into their rather sturdy little fort, stretching out on the sofa cushions that they'd put on the floor and surrounded with extra pillows, covering the whole thing with a sheet to somewhat hold it together.

"Oh, hell, I was at least in single digits," Eliot replied, ducking in after her. "What about you?"

"I never did growing up. Frivolity was not encouraged. But I'm kind of starting to see the appeal. How's your ribs feeling?"

Eliot took a deep breath as he laid down on the sofa cushions, feeling a dull ache in his side, but it was nowhere near the level of pain it was at before. Now it just felt like a bad bruise. "A lot better. Thank you. And for letting me stay."

Cassandra shrugged as she lay next to him, turning over to put her back against his chest; Eliot turned on his side and put an arm over her waist. "You know it's no problem, Eliot. Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

Eliot listened to her breathing, slow and soft, but he knew she wasn't asleep, not yet. He breathed in the warm scent of her. Strawberries and honey, with a sweet-spicy undertone that he could only describe as the smell of her magic, like cloves and cinnamon and nutmeg. She smelt good enough to eat, some days. The warmth of her body so close seeped through his clothes, and he could feel the small movements she made as she breathed. After a good ten minutes of waiting for sleep to come and finding nothing, he nuzzled her silky hair, rubbing his cheek against the soft curls. "I know you're still awake, Cassandra," he murmured, his fingers slipping down a little to toy with the bottom hem of her nightshirt.

"And so are you, Eliot," she replied, one arm coming back to lay over his hip, hand on his thigh. "Still sore?"

"No." He was, but not that sore.

"Liar," she murmured, rolling in his arms until she faced him, tilting her face up to kiss him. Eliot wound his arms around her back, bringing her in close, and he kissed her until they were both gasping and dizzy with pleasure, tongues delving and exploring. Liquid heat uncoiled in the pit of his stomach, suffusing his limbs languorously, easing away aches and tension. With slow, careful reverence, he untangled his limbs from hers and rose up, straddling her body with his. He began to kiss his way across her body, seeking out every bit of exposed skin he could find. Drawing up the bottom hem of her nightshirt, he traced patterns across her soft belly with the tip of his tongue. She giggled soft and breathless when he teased her navel, a place he knew was ticklish under the right ministrations. He moved further down, having to kneel on the floor once he ran out of sofa cushion, pulling aside the loose fabric of her tiny sleep shorts and the silken scrap of her knickers to taste the sweetness between her thighs.

"Oh!" Cassandra gasped, her hands clenching in his hair. "Eliot, if you're going to do that, there needs to be a lot less clothes."

"As you wish, High Priestess," he replied with a smile, and she tugged on his hair again. Hooking his fingers in the elastic waistband, he drew the shorts down her legs and cast them aside, taking her knickers with them. Next went her nightshirt, sliding his hands up under it and pulling it over her head. As he came back up her body, she reached for him, grasping the bottom of his t-shirt and rolling it up; Eliot lifted his arms for her to pull it off him, barely repressing a shiver as she dragged her fingernails oh-so-delicately over the sensitive skin of his ribs and underarms. When she reached downwards, he caught her wrists. "Not yet. I've missed you, sugar. Let me do this my way. You mind?"

"No," she murmured, watching him languidly through lashes the colour of fine rust.

Eliot worked his way across her body with his mouth, laying a trail of kisses over her throat. He drew the taut peak of her breast with teeth and tongue until she groaned aloud, spine bowing. He pressed kisses to the bones of her ankles, the backs of her knees, the inside of her thighs. He drew his tongue across the delicate hollow of soft flesh where her hip met her groin, feeling her shiver and whimper—the body had so many more erogenous zones than the obvious. Finally, he moved lower, exploring the sweet depths of her with his tongue before tracing over the slick pearl of her clit with firm, sure strokes. Cassandra cried out above him, hands knotted tightly in his hair as her hips lifted to meet his mouth; he didn't stop until her shudders had subsided.

"Are you sufficiently reeducated?" she asked breathlessly, her head lolling back bonelessly on her slender neck. "Because I feel quite thoroughly relearned."

"It's a good start," he replied. Curling an arm beneath her back, he turned them over, reversing their positions so she was atop him. "Now I want to watch you."

Cassandra smiled down at him before bending to kiss him; she moaned softly when she tasted herself on his mouth. "Like honey," she murmured. "Is it like that for you?"

"Yes."

She made a low, hot purring sound in her throat, moving down to nibble and bite at his neck, drawing the skin between her teeth to leave a magnificent hickey he'd have for days. Her silken hair spilled forward over her shoulders to drag against his skin like a caress, tantalising and soft. She moved down him as he had done to her, kissing and nipping at his chest and stomach, taking her time to explore all his scars with her tongue, turning old pain to new pleasure. Cassandra hooked her fingers in the waist of his shorts and drew them down, raking her nails gently across his thighs as she went; he hissed through his teeth when she blew softly on his shaft, wrapping her hand around him and dragging her tongue across the head once before pulling away. "I'm not as patient as you are, Eliot," she murmured, rising up on her knees and using her hand to guide him into her, sinking down slow, inch by gloriously tormenting inch until she was fully seated on him.

Leaning back slightly, she moved her hips in small, circular motions, head back; the ends of her hair tickled his thighs when she arched her back. Before her surgery, she would murmur strings of numbers in patterns he could scarce make sense of, in order to keep herself grounded. Sometimes, he missed her breathless counting, but the sight of her made speechless like this more than made up for it.

Once she'd caught her breath, she leant forward, hands braced on his chest as she moved differently, rising and sinking back down onto him, creating a slow, glorious friction. Eliot growled softly. He might have more patience than she did, but even his strength of will had its limits. Grasping her tightly, he turned them both over once more, putting her beneath him. He rocked between her thighs, braced up on his forearms and watching her face; her eyes held his for a moment before fluttering shut, head tilted back.

Cassandra wasn't a screamer, but she was a biter. And a scratcher. He knew she was close by the way her nails dug into his back, scrabbling at his shoulder blades, when she lifted her head to bite down on his shoulder, letting out sharp, muffled little yelps into his skin. Eliot buried his face in the hollow of her shoulder, his breath coming in hard pants to match her gasping cries, hips thrusting hard and fast, until the waves built and broke again and again. Her body convulsed in honey-sweet spasms around his, yielding to him entirely; she clawed at his back and arms, raking fire across his skin with her nails, and the sweet sting of pain was just enough to tip him over the edge, shuddering and groaning a sound that might've been her name.

They'd knocked the sofa cushions and most of the pillows askew in their fervor, and they gathered them back into a vague semblance of order before settling against each other. In the aftermath of love, Cassandra seemed entirely boneless and pliant, melting against him. Eliot stroked her back, feeling the faint sting in his own back where her nails had scratched him bloody.

"We should do this more," he murmured after a stretch.

"Ready for another round already, Eliot?"

"That's not what I meant. Although it's not a bad idea, either," he added with a smirk, earning a little chuckle out of her. "No, I meant this." He reached out with one hand to touch the quilted 'wall' of their fort. "It's nice."

Cassandra lifted her head slightly, propping her chin on his chest. "It is, isn't it?" she sighed, sounding content and well-loved. "Oh, I left a mark," she observed, touching his shoulder; he glanced down to see there was a red double-crescent mark where she'd sunk her teeth in. Not quite deep enough to bleed him, but just this side of it. There'd be a bruise, definitely. "I'll fix it."

"No, leave it," Eliot countered, catching her hand as she reached for the bite. "I don't mind it."

She arched an eyebrow at him. "Bragging rights?" she asked wryly.

"Nah, more like proof that I'm already called."

"Called? What, like I have dibs?" she giggled.

He smiled back at her, drawing his fingers up her spine to the back of her neck, pulling her into another kiss. "You know you do, sugar," he replied, getting another giggle from her as she curled up against him, resting her head on his chest. He ran his fingers through her hair in slow, languid motions, feeling her heartbeat slow and her breathing level out. Only once she'd completely fallen asleep did he turn over and wrap both arms around her, closing his eyes.

He slept, and did not dream.