Notes: Fourth in my Trust and Sobriety arc (Three more to go).|

What Hardison Knows
Hardison likes to think he knows the most about the team, though not all of it comes from being a hacker.

Hardison likes that he knows more about the team than anyone else on the team (except maybe Nate but that doesn't count).

For example, he knows that Jenny is in fact not actually Sophie's real name. He figured out how to track her activities back almost twenty years by using her acting resume (which she actually never falsifies), tracking the city and doing mixed database searches with surrounding cities.

Her earliest activity he has record of is in 1990 when she conned a French Nobleman while playing a role in a local production of My Fair Lady. But she told Hardison, when he asked, that her first role was a bit part in Taming of the Shrew and he hasn't given up on finding that yet.

He knows Parker has been connected with the mysterious deaths of at least two of her foster parents that were under investigation for abuse.

He also knows her real name, though he knows better than to ever call her by it.

But really Hardison knows the most about Nate and Eliot.

As an honest man Nate was almost boringly easy to track. Over the time they've worked together Harrdison traced nearly every paper trail an honest life leaves. Someday Hardison is going to write a book about making an honest man based on what he found.

Though he'll add an entire chapter about not killing his kid.

Most of what Hardison knows about Eliot he wishes he didn't.

He knows the name of this Eliot Spencer first appeared as a sixteen-year-old street urchin on the streets of the bad part of L.A. who was hospitalized after being shot when he was trying to fight off a mugger set on taking his shoes, jacket, and the few dollars he had to his name.

He got someone at the hospital to dig out the file and fax it to him, though later he really wished he hadn't.

Hardson wished he didn't know even at sixteen Eliot had had more than a dozen healed broken bones and that his thin medical file had read like a text book case of a survivor of horrific abuse that had to have gone on for years.

Then, two days after he'd been released from the hospital and put into foster care Eliot Spencer disappeared entirely.

Eliot next showed up eight years later on his very first (though far from last) hit list. A Russian crime lord named Nishka had posted a hefty bounty on Eliot's head and an even heaftier one on him being taken alive.

He paid the bounty for Eliot being caught alive and made no secret of what he did to the thief afterwards. Hardison knew it would only take a few keystrokes to find pictures and documentation of what had been done but he knew he didn't want to know.

The next report of Eliot was mercifully only four months later (which meant he couldn't of been there very long, right?) from a surprising source.

Nathan Ford, upon returning to IYS after a job in Cairo reported on why he was over a week late to check in. He'd been captured and held prisoner by a local crime boss. His cell mate, a young retrieval specialist named Eliot Spencer, had helped Nate escape with him after they shared a cell for two weeks.

It made Hardison curious. He hadn't known they'd met as allies. Though, as he thought back to the first jobs, they did seem to settle easily into a working relationship.

Hell, despite Nate's protests Hardison might say they'd been the first on the team to act like friends.

He discovered one other interaction between them. Five years after Cairo Nate went hunting Eliot for IYS. After a long chase they met in an Italian Prison's interrogation room. They talked, finished a (what was curiously an obviously previously started) chess game, and Eliot gave up the location of the merchandise with little hesitation.

Two days later Eliot disappeared from his cell and Italy entirely.

If Hardison didn't know better he might of thought that Nate had been returning a favor.

Hardison liked to think he was the only one who knew their shared history so well. It was a matter of interest and pride for him and every so often, when he thought he could get away with it, he'd indulge his curiosity by looking into their mutual activities outside work and gaining little facts.

Hardison knew, for example, that Eliot had gone to Nate's hotel room after the job in Chicago and stayed there several hours and only after he left did Nate change his plane ticket.

Hardison also knew they'd started meeting after work, though in the beginning he was positive it was jut to play chess or maybe talk about sports or something. Guy stuff. Guys who are friends stuff.

Hardison wasn't sure when he first noticed the change in how they acted around each other. It was subtle enough that it was only subconscious that he registered it. It was little things, things he'd remember later once the secret was out.

But Hardison knew how he found out.

One time after the Juror job he'd been doing some late night follow up when a flag had been raised. Unsure what to do he called Nate, with no answer, then since after a surprisingly painless experience he knew Eliot wasn't angered if he was woken up for an important reason he'd called Eliot.

No answer there either.

Worried he'd traced both their cell's gpses and discovered they were in the same place.

An apartment across town.

Now very worried Hardison had gone to investigate and discovered, after meeting the landlord's daughter who proved Hardison wasn't alone in being insomniac, that Eliot and Nate were living together in every touchy/feely sense of the words.

It came as a shock and that he could manage to not give away what he knew was a sign he'd gained some acting skills.

It wasn't like he had a problem with it… it was just… Nate and Eliot…

When the team broke up Hardison kept track of the others. He knew they wouldn't stay away long. Even as he looked for Parker he knew if he didn't find her it'd only be so long before she came looking for him. Until Nate and Eliot went looking for eachother.

Until they all went looking for each other.

So even when their first reunion didn't go so well and Hardison knew Nate was still being Catholic and pushing Eliot away and Eliot's still being paranoid and fighting instinct to try to be with Nate. Even when the first hours of subtext came up looking like the relationship was heading for a crash landing Hardison knew they'd be all right.

He knew because a little something he'd been smelling even before he consciously recognized what it was. Something he saw in Nate's bathroom. Something that reminded him of one more fact Hardison knew from the times he'd risked teasing Eliot about it.

Nathan Ford did not usually use the kind of shampoo currently sitting his bathroom. He usually used nondescript stuff that didn't have a scent. But there was someone whose favorite fruit was apples, who would never admit it but probably used the shampoo in part because the scent it left behind, someone who Nate was trying very hard to deny he'd been missing for six months.

Yeah, Hardison knew they'd be fine, a half empty bottle of Eliot's favorite shampoo in Nate's bathroom was all the proof he needed.