Fic: The Elephant In The Room (Is Me Loving You)

[sunspot]

Dear Mr. Spencer,
I want to again thank you for agreeing to come on board with us here at The Greater Cityopolis Area Zoo for this momentous undertaking. I'm speaking not only on behalf of myself as zoo director, but also for our board of trustees, our staff and volunteers, our patrons and guests, and especially on behalf of the elephant we'll all be saving together.

We're all looking forward to meeting you when you arrive. If there is anything I can do to make your transition any easier, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,
Nate Ford
General Director
Greater Cityopolis Area Zoo

Eliot read the email for the seventeenth time and still didn't feel any better about it. His boss at the sanctuary had been pretty insistent that he go. "We've been trying to get this rescue for nearly eighteen months, you know," she said. "That damn circus is killing her. You go and see if these Cityopolis people can take care of her, and if not, you bring the poor baby back here, okay?"

So, between Nate Ford sweet talking him to come on the one side, and the sanctuary staff on the other side begging him to go, he ended up agreeing even though he really hadn't wanted to. It wasn't that he had to leave his apartment or anything, he thought as he watched most of his stuff leaving through the front door. Eliot had only put up the flyers yesterday afternoon, but when he had unlocked his front door earlier that morning, there had been a small crowd of people ready to rifle through his belongings. He let them take it all because it meant less to move.

"Ten bucks," he told the lady who was pointing to the coffee table.

"Really?"

"Sure." Easiest ten bucks he had ever made. By one-thirty, most of his stuff was gone and some guy had agreed to haul the rest to the dump for fifty bucks. Eliot put the two boxes of books and the duffle bag of clothes he was taking with him in the back of the truck and was gone before two. He had a long way to drive before he hit Cityopolis.

He had to drive by the elephant sanctuary on his way to the interstate. Eliot vowed not to look up, but of course he did. He had said his goodbyes the day before and it damn near broke his heart. His favourite girl, Apple, was standing on the edge of the property and he could see her through the fence. She couldn't see him, of course, but the stupid emotional part of his brain imagined she had walked out that far from the barn to see him off.

He was four mile markers down the highway before his grip on steering wheel loosened and he could breathe normally again.

--

Driving was never something Eliot had thought of as a hostile activity, but for every mile that stretched out behind him, he felt more and more hostile. By the time he passed the cheery, green 'Welcome to Cityopolis' sign sixteen hours after leaving his old place, he was feeling downright nuclear.

He had gotten turned around twice on roads that weren't even on his map before he finally found his new place a good nearly-three hours later than he'd planned. He had the first floor of a house all to himself, and even though the house looked old and decrepit, he found that his apartment wasn't really that bad. Eliot unloaded his things and felt like he only had time to wish he had a bed before the alarm on his watch went off.

"Time for work," he muttered heading back out the door.

--

Eliot had to argue with the security guard at the gate before he finally let Eliot in and gave him directions to the main administration building. A man in khakis and wraparound sunglasses greeted him warmly when he got there. "Oh, hey there! You must be Eliot. I'm Nate. How was your trip?"

"Long," Eliot said, shaking the man's hand.

"I'll be honest, Eliot, I wasn't really expecting you until this afternoon," Nate said. "But if you want to head in to my office there on the left, I'll be in in a few minutes to get you set up with the HR paperwork and whatnot." Nate went back to talking with a tall guy in a ball cap, passing a clip board back and forth and bickering about shipping something. Eliot went in to the room Nate had pointed out and sat down.

He didn't mean to go through Nate's things, but he wanted a better idea of who he was going to be working for. There were a couple of framed photos on the wall, most of them of Nate and a pretty brunette woman with various animals. The place of pride seemed to go to a photo of them both wearing wet suits and petting an orca, which Eliot thought was kind of cool. Off to one side on the back wall, almost unnoticeable, was a pair of diplomas; one was for conservational biology and one in business management. So it seemed Nate was qualified and experienced but not the kind of guy who would brag about it. That was a good sign, though it didn't preclude the possibility that Nate might be an asshole for other reasons.

His desk was absolutely pin neat, not a single paper out of order or a file not exactly lined up with the ones underneath it. Order and organization were good qualities in a boss, though it made Eliot a little wary that Nate might be too much of a control freak. While he appreciated having a boss that was interested in what he did, he wanted to be able to make his own calls without someone trying to micro-manage. Especially because in one of his earlier emails, Nate had admitted that the only thing he knew about elephants is that they were big.

"Eliot, hi!" Nate said, coming in and closing the door behind him. Eliot quickly stopped trying to read the papers on the desk. "It's good to finally meet you. I can't believe today is already here."

"Yeah," Eliot said stiffly. They'd been in negotiations for five weeks, and he agreed that it had just flown by.

"So I'm going to start you with the usual HR crap and the payroll stuff, then we'll get you an ID badge and a nice, new GCAZ shirt, and then I'll show you around. Give me just a second to make a call, though, okay?" Nate pulled a file folder from the stack in his inbox and handed it to him with a pen.

Eliot started filling out the payroll information while eavesdropping on Nate's call.

"Hi, Hardison, come on down to the admin building in about twenty minutes, okay? Whatever it was that the aquarium in Boston sent you is here... No, I don't know, I didn't ask. Didn't they tell you?... Isn't it a fish or something?... Maybe, did you ask for coral?... Well then, do you really think it's coral? Jesus, I don't know!... Fine, okay, sure."

"Some people, right?" Nate said when he set the receiver back down. "I'm sure you'll meet Hardison soon. He's the aquarium guy, bit of a character."

"Alright," Eliot said, as non-committal as possible. He wasn't looking forward to making friends and playing nice with the locals. He wanted to get the elephant, assess its condition, and find a replacement so he could leave the moment his contract was up in six months. He glanced at the clock while stifling a yawn. Only quarter after seven. It was going to be a very long day.

Eliot finished the paperwork in record time and handed it all back to Nate his driver's license to copy and his CV of qualifications.

"Great, great," Nate said, barely looking. "How about I find someone to take you on a little tour of the place?"

"Really, I'd just like to go and meet the elephant and the rest of the team, if that's okay," Eliot said in a way that made it sound a lot less like a request and more like a simple statement of fact.

Nate frowned. "Well, you are the team, so you've probably done all the introductions already."

Eliot felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Okay, so just point me to the elephant, and I'll sort the rest out. You may need to hire me an assistant, though," he warned. Once he said it out loud, he actually didn't mind it so much. Maybe he'd be fine on his own, or if he wasn't, at least he'd be able to have some say in who was hired to help him. It was sort of better than he'd hoped.

Nate stared at him. Eliot stared back.

"You know the elephant isn't here, right?" Nate said finally.

Eliot was pretty sure he knew what Nate meant, but he was not one hundred percent prepared to accept it. "You mean, not in your office, don't you?"

"The elephant is still at the circus. We're taking possession of her once the USDA finalizes the seizure paperwork and secures the police escort to pick her up. They're not sure, but the woman I spoke to yesterday said it might be another eight weeks even."

"I see." Eliot was not happy. "And the elephant habitat, I'm guessing that's not even finished?"

"Not even started, nope. We were waiting on you for your design input." Nate smiled and didn't even have the courtesy to look sheepish.

Eliot took a deep breath and counted to ten in his head before he responded. "I'm not sure I can really do that. I'm not an architect."

"Don't worry about any of that," Nate said. "I've got an architect for you, and a whole construction crew and an environmental engineer. You tell them what you want, and they'll make it happen. Now, let me get you that tour."

Eliot waved him off again. "I'll, uh... just go exploring, okay? I'll get my ID from the security people and just ask someone if I get turned around."

"If you insist," Nate said with a shrug. "You're also going to get a walkie-talkie from security. Some of our section heads have them; we're all on channel four. Let me know if you have any problems, and be back at the elephant site by ten because that's when your architect is showing up."

Eliot escaped the office without further issues and headed down the hall to the security office. "Thanks," he said to the guy who handed the stuff over with a release for him to sign. "Which way to where they're building the elephant habitat?"

"Yeah, go straight out here towards to aquarium and, hey, just follow him," the guy said, pointing to a man walking past the door. "Alec, hang on!"

The guy stopped and stuck his head in. "Hey, Derek, I've got to get these boxes back. What's up?"

"Take the new guy to where they're building the elephant thing."

Alec nodded. "Come on, new dude. You can help me carry." Eliot wasn't exactly pleased that he had suddenly been relegated to carrying duty, but he took one of the styrofoam boxes Alec was holding and followed him out.

"You're the new elephant guy, right?" Alec asked when they were outside. Eliot blinked a few times in the light, not expecting it to be so bright.

"Yeah," Eliot said. "Eliot."

"Cool, I'm Hardison. No one calls me 'Alec' except my Nana and that weirdo in there," he said with an easy smile. Eliot made note of the name change, if not the back-story.

"Stoked to start work?" Hardison asked.

"I guess."

"You sound real excited," Hardison said with another smile.

"Sorry," Eliot said, not really feeling sorry. "It was a sixteen hour drive, and I came straight here. What do you do?" It was meant to be politely inquisitive, but it came out suspicious.

"I manage the reef exhibit," Hardison said, probably not noticing he was being mildly interrogated. "So, all the aquarium and fish stuff, with the added bonus of being the only person in my department because everyone else thinks fish are weird."

Eliot couldn't fault anyone for that point of view. "Do I want to know what's in these containers?"

"Oh, it's so cool," Hardison said happily. He grinned at a few women as they passed them on the trail. "Sophie! New England came through and sent me the goods."

"Did they ever," the brunette said with a wink to Eliot. He recognized her as the dark haired woman in Nate's photos. He was a little taken aback, but he didn't think that he'd let it show.

"Not even remotely what I meant," Hardison said, glossing over what could have been a very uncomfortable conversation in one smooth sentence. Eliot forgave him for the carrying thing. "Sophie, Parker, this is Eliot, the elephant guy. Eliot, the creeper is Sophie, and the blonde is Parker. They work with the wolves."

"I handle the Eurasian wolves," Parker said quickly. "Sophie just does Arctic wolves." She said it like it was some big conspiracy or like Sophie's wolves weren't as good or something. Eliot's knowledge on wolves rivalled Nate's knowledge of elephants.

"Cool," he said, because it sounded like an appropriate response.

"I know," she said happily.

"Love to stay and chat, girls, but we've got to get these specimens to the quarantine tank, right, Eliot?" Hardison nodded towards the stone building looming ahead of them. "Parker, lunch around two today?"

"Sounds good," Parker said, stepping aside to let them pass with their crates. "I hope there's nothing poisonous in those boxes."

Once they started walking again, Eliot realized he really hoped there was nothing dangerous in the boxes either. "Uh, so what kind of specimens?"

"Oh, so cool," Hardison said again. "One of them is tridacna derasa, a smooth shelled southern clam -- just a baby though, 'cause those things get giant -- and the other should be a mating pair of foureye butterfly fish. I had a pair, but the male wasn't doing well. I'm really excited to get them unpacked."

Eliot couldn't think of anything he could be less excited for, except for maybe meeting with the architect in a few hours. Hardison unlocked the door to the reef building and ushered Eliot and his styrofoam cargo inside. "Straight through the other door there," he said. "I've got to turn on all the lights out here. Just set the box down anywhere."

The office on the other side of the employees-only door was cluttered with tanks of all sizes, most empty, but a few with murky looking water or bizarre looking fish. The desk had about six computer monitors on in, with one half-assembled CPU on its side, spilling forth its internal wiring. The walls were covered in newspaper clippings and posters of weird-looking sea creatures, and the only light was given off by the fish tanks, making the whole room seem like it was underwater. Definitely not the same kind of office as Nate's, but Eliot was comfortable in his assumption that Hardison was a very different kind of guy.

Hardison came in behind him and set his box gently on the floor. "Yeah, maybe it's a bit cluttered, but that's okay. There's enough room for me and my fish. And my little side project," he said, nodding to the desk full of computer parts.

Eliot set his crate down next to Hardison's and made the mistake of looking a bit closer at whatever was in the tank next to him. It looked back at him, or maybe it didn't. It was hard to focus on what its eyes might be doing because it was about the same colour as clown vomit.

"Oh, you like Bill? He's a psychedelic mandarinfish. He wasn't doing well in the big tank, so I pulled him out until he gets a bigger." Eliot looked at the violently coloured Bill until his eyes watered a bit.

"The other fish were picking on him?" Eliot said, with only a touch of sarcasm.

"Yeah, a bit."

"Don't most animals know to stay away from something so bright? I thought that was the deal with those poison dart frogs and stuff."

Hardison laughed. "Fish aren't like most animals. So, you want to help me get these bad boys in a tank?"

"Not really," Eliot said honestly. "Sorry, man, but I need to kind of get situated before I start work. Maybe another time."

"No, sure, of course," Hardison said easily. "Don't let me keep you. Come back when you have a little while and I'll show you the big tank. Got some stuff I know you'll like."

Again, that was something Eliot doubted pretty highly, but he nodded and left.

He saw the sign on a chain link fence right outside the aquarium doors proclaiming, 'Elephant Habitat, Under Construction. Opening Soon!' He couldn't find a gate, and no one seemed to be around in the early morning light, so he climbed the fence and walked around the property the zoo had set aside for their new arrival.

It wasn't half bad, Eliot had to admit. The number one problem facing elephants in zoos, in Eliot's opinion, was a lack of knowledgeable staff. Luckily, GCAZ had avoided that issue by hiring him on. The second biggest problem was a simple lack of space, but it didn't seem they would have that issue either.

The property they had secured for the new elephant was nice. It was spacious, and there were lots of trees and grass. Hardly any rock at all, except for one sort of rocky looking hill far back in among the woods. It was a cool little place with a pond nearby with a waterfall coming down from the cliffs that penned in the enclosure on the far side; sort of picturesque, actually.

By the time Eliot had walked all the way around the habitat, it was nearing nine o' clock. Ninety minutes to walk around the whole enclosure wasn't bad at all. He had come to Cityopolis looking for reasons to hate it, and so far he wasn't coming up with many.

He climbed back over the fence and got the briefest strange look from a family who had been going past the empty habitat on their way to look at something more interesting. He scowled and pointed to the zoo logo on his polo shirt, and they continued on. He waited a few moments then went in the direction they had gone. He still had time before he had to meet anyone and he wanted to see a little more of the zoo.

East of the elephant enclosure, winding around behind the aquarium building was something called 'The Great White North Exhibit,' which turned out to be moose and beavers and a happy baby black bear running circles around the tired looking mother.

He watched them for a few moments -- a little longer than he intended to, really. Something about the quietness of the mother and the exuberance of the cub got to him. It was one of those quiet, honest moments he could sometimes see with animals but never with people over the age of four (and Eliot was almost convinced that people under that age were actually monsters). People were overly complicated and always concerned with what other people were thinking. Animals never got hung up on that kind of stuff.

Eliot took a deep breath of fresh, morning air and was about to turn to leave when the bear cub caught sight of him. The cub fell backwards from her half-standing position and stared over the fence at Eliot with wide eyes. Eliot stared back, holding back a grin. The little bear looked absolutely baffled, like she had never noticed the people on the other side watching. Finally, she decided to be brave and gave Eliot a little growl, showing off her impressive teeth.

He took that as his cue to continue on. Bears were cute, so long as he didn't have to actively make the connection to the fact that they would be happy to tear him apart and eat his inside parts. That was why he preferred herbivores.

The zoo was quiet for a weekday during the school year. He had expected children underfoot everywhere, but other than a couple of families and one small group of high school photography students, he didn't see any big crowds. Eliot made a mental note to ask someone about it.

When he checked his watch, he knew it was time to start heading back and meet the builders. He checked out a few more exhibits on the way and was barely late.

There were three men standing by the 'coming soon' sign when Eliot got back. One of them was Nate and the other two were wearing visitor ID badges, so Eliot assumed they were part of the building crew.
"Fellas, this is the guy," Nate said with a smile.

One of the men stepped forward with an outstretched hand. "Ted Mosby, architect."

Eliot shook his hand, deciding instantly that the guy was an idiot. "Eliot Spencer, elephant specialist."
Nate gave him a sharp look, but Ted didn't seem to notice.

"So I'll leave you gentlemen to make some magic. Radio me if you need anything." Nate sauntered off, leaving Eliot with Ted (Mosby, architect) and the other man who turned out to be the environmental engineer. Nate's vision for the elephant habitat was carbon-neutral, the engineer told him. Eliot was impressed.

The first meeting went really well. Despite his initial reservations, Eliot found Ted's enthusiasm for the project was contagious. The architect and the engineer left a few hours later after a walking survey of the land and an intense brainstorming session at a picnic table near the lion enclosure. They promised to bring back preliminary designs as soon as possible.

The radio on Eliot's hip had been crackling on and off all afternoon with vague messages he barely heard for people who he hadn't met yet. He was checking out the side of the zoo furthest from the front gate when he heard his name come through the static.

"Uh. Hello?"

"Eliot, it's Nate. If you've got a minute, come to the admin office."

Eliot turned around and glanced back the way he had come, but he quickly realized he wasn't sure which way that actually was. Eliot headed off in one direction -- not the direction he had come from, but Nate had only said 'when you get a second,' and that wasn't the same as 'right now' in Eliot's book, so if it took him forty minutes to figure out where he was going, so be it.

Parker, the excited blonde from earlier that morning, waved to him as he walked past the wolf exhibit (Eurasian wolves, he reminded himself). He gave her a smile and nod to be polite.

When he reached Nate's office, Nate was on the phone but waved him in. For the second time that day, Eliot eavesdropped on one of Nate's conversations.

"Yeah, well, you can tell him that I don't care. If it's a full out case of animal abuse, your entire department can pull all-nighters until you get the paperwork done... Our habitat will be ready in three weeks, tops... Yes, you've got my word. Make it happen... Thanks, you too." He dropped the receiver into the cradle carelessly, and then collapsed into his chair.

"Seriously," Nate muttered into his arms. Eliot wasn't sure if he was supposed to respond to half-audible muttering, so he didn't.

"So," Nate said, sitting up and pretending like that hadn't just happened. "Everything go okay with the architect?"

"Yeah, we got some stuff worked out. He said they'd be back in a few days with a contractor to take another look. I think it might be alright."

"Good, good."

"I'm a little concerned, though." Nate's expression darkened, but Eliot pressed on. "You just told the woman on the phone that we'd be ready to take on the elephant in three weeks. I'm not sure that's true."

"There's no such thing as having a job done fast, well and cheap, but we can pick two out of three. I opted to go with 'fast' and 'well.' Anything's possible," Nate said with a smile. "So whatever you think will be best for the animal, that's what I want you to do, okay?"

Eliot knew he was being forward, and in the past, he never would have questioned what his boss wanted of him, but Nate didn't seem like a regular kind of boss. Nate seemed like the kind of guy who maybe needed someone to ask the hard questions.

Nate gave him an unreadable smile. "Something bothering you?" he asked.

"Why is Cityopolis only getting elephants now? My former boss was under the impression it was because you weren't very high up on the zoo rankings and couldn't get the endangered animal approval until recently. The approval was only granted after you took over. It seems like a lot of things started changing when you became director and head of the board of trustees." Eliot didn't ask how Nate had managed that conflict of interests. He felt it was strongly implied.

Nate made a face like he was considering what Eliot had said. Whether or not he actually was was a different story. "I thought you'd be the kind of guy who doesn't like surprises. Good. Okay, Eliot, I'll explain. I took over the zoo after some scary stuff with the former director. I suppose the endangered animal registry is more confident in my leadership." The unspoken 'and you should be, too,' hung between them. Eliot nodded once and got up to leave.

"Eliot?"

"Yeah?"

"You'll fit in fine here."

Eliot left without another word. He got the feeling people didn't really question Nate very often, but Eliot wasn't prepared to back down. If he ever had doubts about what Nate was doing or saying, he was going to voice them. When it came to the welfare of the animals, Eliot wasn't going to pussyfoot around with submitting complaints in writing or being polite. He was going to march into Nate's office and demand answers.

With that in mind, Eliot realized he'd been up for way too long and needed to sleep soon, or he was going to crash.

"Oh, hey, Eliot, how's it going?"

Eliot looked up to see Hardison approaching. "I'm fine," he said.

"What's up, man?" Hardison asked. He sounded concerned.

"Nothing." Eliot gave him a little warning scowl. He made a mental note to keep an eye on the observant Hardison. A guy who could read Eliot like that could turn into a very powerful enemy or a big liability.

"It's just, well, I heard Nate calling you, and I thought maybe there was a fight or something. Nate's not really the easiest guy to talk to sometimes, especially if you work for him. Unless you're Sophie." Hardison waved his walkie-talkie in Eliot's direction as if to say 'I wasn't creepily eavesdropping,' which Eliot wouldn't have blamed him for.

"No, it's fine. I'm just quickly realizing that the terms I agreed to were a little less based in reality than I was hoping."

"And you tried to talk to him about it, didn't you?"

Eliot nodded, and Hardison smirked. "Yeah, you never want to do that. Nate's more of an 'ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies' kind of guy. Three months ago, the New England Aquarium wouldn't even take my calls, and now they're helping me with my breeding program, sending specimens they think I'd like, CCing me on all their cool internal news... It's like they're trying to date me. Not that I mind." He laughed. "You'll get used to it. It's a lot better now that Nate's in charge."

"All right," Eliot said, too tired to do anything but take Hardison's word for it.

"You sure you're okay, man?"

"Just tired," Eliot said, checking his watch again. "Been up for thirty-nine hours, drove for about sixteen of them, and been walking around for the last six; just tired."

"Holy shit, yeah. I can't go more than twelve hours without dying for a nap. Why don't you head home or something? Take tomorrow off and just sleep through it. I mean, what are you even doing here if we don't even have the elephant for you to take care of yet?"

"I don't even know," Eliot said darkly. "Supervising the guys building the habitat so they don't screw it up, I guess. But the architect says he won't even have plans to start on for three days."

Hardison gave a low whistle. "'Less based in reality' is right. So you're just going to be doing nothing for the next few weeks?"

"Seems like it."

"Dude, so take tomorrow off." Hardison seemed pretty insistent. Eliot was about to explain he didn't really do days off, especially when in the grand scheme of things, there was so much he should be doing to get ready for the new arrival, but Hardison cut him off. "Hey, where are you even staying? Do you need a place to crash? I've got room, if you need it for a few days until you get somewhere."

"No, I've got a place," Eliot said, then remembered that his apartment had exactly zero pieces of furniture in it. Eliot wasn't usually the one to ask for help, but if it was being readily offered, he thought that didn't count. Besides, other than his borderline-annoying enthusiasm about everything, Hardison didn't seem so bad. "And don't just offer your apartment to strangers. What if I'm the guy with a collection of human ears in a shoebox or something?"

"I doubt it. You get all soft and mushy when you see a cute animal. I don't think you've got an ear peeling knife in your back pocket."

Eliot glared, more at the insinuation that he was ever soft or mushy than at Hardison's heavily implied doubt that Eliot couldn't peel an ear if he wanted to. "Whatever, I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sophie saw you making goo-goo eyes at the bears, and Parker says you spent like, twenty minutes watching the Pallas cat and that she... heh. Yeah, you like cute, fluffy animals," Hardison said with another smirk.

"I was just getting a feel for the place," Eliot said. He didn't realize anyone had seem him standing at the Pallas cat lookout, and he really hadn't realized that he was a topic of conversation. "Wait, what did she say?"

Hardison tried to put on an angelic expression, but it failed pretty miserably. "No, nothing."

Eliot narrowed his eyes, a trick he knew always got results.

"Hah! That's pretty much what she said, actually. That she really saw the family resemblance."

"...Between me and a cat?"

"A terminally grumpy cat, yeah. Hey, don't shoot the messenger. That's just what she said."

Eliot took a deep breath and counted to ten in his head. When that didn't help, he counted to twenty. "I'm not going to comment on that," he said. "But I'll take you up on your offer of a place to crash tonight. I don't have any furniture."

"Cool, that's fine," said Hardison, giving Eliot only the briefest strange look. "You're going to leave my ears alone, right?"

Eliot rolled his eyes. "Yeah, sure."

"Well, I still have a few more hours of work and then Parker and I were going to get dinner or something. It's her turn to buy. You're welcome to join us if you want."

"I'll pass. I'm going unpack a bit, maybe see about buying some real furniture. How about I text you?" Eliot was not up for that level of socializing, especially with someone who thought he looked like an angry cat.

Hardison nodded and pulled out a cell phone. "Sure, gimme your number."

They traded numbers and Hardison sent a text message just to make sure it worked. "Thanks," Eliot said, a little gruffly.

"No problem, just let me know whenever you want to come over and I'll give you directions or I can come get you or whatever."

Hardison headed back to whatever he was doing, and Eliot slipped out through the front gate back to his truck, where he sat for a few moments behind the wheel and just tried to relax. There was an incredible tension between his shoulder blades that he couldn't explain with just being tired or the long drive. It was like he'd been saving all his stress, worry, and reservations about the job and the move as physical torment for his body.

He'd survived his first day, possibly even made an ally (Eliot was always hesitant to use the term 'friend' in reference to another human because of the delicate nature of any human-to-human interaction, but he was willing to concede to 'ally' for the time being. All his real friends weighed over twenty-two hundred pounds), and so maybe things were looking up. The doom and gloom attitude he'd originally affected was starting to wear on his nerves anyway; he was more of a realist than anything else. With a deep breath and a shake of his head, Eliot headed home.

--

A hot shower in his cramped little bathroom was the first step in feeling vaguely human again, and he was surprised at how much it helped. Eliot changed into clean clothes and looked around his apartment. Besides being empty, it seemed nice enough. Just as he thought he should find a phone book and try to track down the right store, his cell phone rang.

"Hey Eliot, it's Parker. Where do you live?"

"Uh. Hello?"

"Hi. It's Parker. Where do you live?"

"Parker, how did you get my number?" Eliot looked around like his empty apartment held a clue.

"Calling from Hardison's phone. Answer my question."

"Seventh street," he told her. "What does that matter?"

"We're coming to get you for dinner," she said brightly. "Hardison got confused and thinks you said you didn't want to come, but it's okay because we're almost to Seventh anyways, so we can just pick you up. What number?"

"Look, like I told Hardison, thanks for the offer, but I think I'll just --"

"Never mind, we're here. You don't have any curtains yet, huh? Are you ready to go?"

Eliot turned to the front window to see a van pulled up in front of the mailbox. Parker waved from the passenger seat. "...Yeah, I'll be out in a second." He snapped his phone shut and went searching through his duffle bag for a sweatshirt.

"Hi!" Parker said when he got in the van. "We can't decide on dinner, so you have to pick. Pizza or Hardison's crappy choice?"

He looked between Parker's sunny smile and Hardison rolling his eyes in the driver's seat and shrugged. "If those are the choices, then pizza, I guess."

"Thanks, man," Hardison grumbled, but he didn't argue any further while he merged back into traffic.

Dinner surprised Eliot by being pretty good. The place they'd taken him to didn't look like much, but the pizza was amazing. They talked about work stuff while they ate. Parker was really enthused about the zoo getting an elephant, which was a bit of a pleasant shock to Eliot. He had imagined her sitting quietly with her wolves, stroking their fur and calling them 'precious.' In Eliot's mind, just like in nature, herbivores and carnivores didn't really live together. Or they didn't live together for very long.

"It's really exciting," she said, for the fourth time. "I think it's going to be awesome."

Eliot nodded. "Yeah, it'll hopefully drive visitor numbers up. Is the zoo always as dead as it was today? I wandered around for most of the day, and there really weren't a lot of people."

"Yeah," Parker said, sneaking a piece of pepperoni off Hardison's slice of pizza. "I saw you out by the --" She stopped mid-sentence and there was a bump to the table as Hardison kicked her under it. It might have been a delayed reaction to the pepperoni theft, but then Eliot remembered Parker's family resemblance crack.

He scowled at both of them. "Pallas cats, I know."

"Sorry, yeah," Hardison said, glossing over the potential fight. "The zoo gets a lot more visitors on weekends. Weekdays can be pretty slow. It's not bad on holidays, either."

"But how --"

Hardison silenced him with a flick of his fingers. "Remember the 'ask me no questions' thing we talked about earlier?"

"Right. Sorry."

"Do you know how soon before the elephant shows up?" Parker asked.

"No idea. So far, Nate's told me about eight weeks, then three, then just 'soon.'"

"No offense," Hardison said, "but I don't see why it's such a huge deal."

"Hardison, hey! Of course it's a big deal. Eliot moved so far to be here. And they're elephants, so it's clearly a huge deal." She paused, barely long enough for the words to be out of her mouth. "Get it? Huge? Elephants? Because they're big?" She swatted Hardison on the arm for emphasis and caught him just as he was taking a drink. He dropped his cup and covered her in orange soda.

"Oh, come on!" Parker sighed and patted her jeans with a napkin, but to very little avail. "Don't let him drink anything else," she warned Eliot as she got up.

Once she flounced off, Hardison sunk lower in his chair. "Jeez, I'm going to be paying for that for a week."

Eliot chuckled. "How long have you two been together?"

Hardison sat up like a shot. "What? No. Not me and Parker. We're just friends. Why? Does it seem like we're together? Because we're just friends."

"Bullshit," Eliot said. "Do you not realize the way you look at her?"

"Shut up," Hardison said, slumping again. "I know. But she's not into me. It's complicated."

"That's people. People are always complicated," Eliot shrugged. He really hadn't planned on his first night in town involving him giving romantic advice, but Hardison looked so dejected, and he'd been nice to Eliot so far. "So you like her. Do something about it."

"We tried that. Went on a few dates for few months, and she just never... said anything about it."

"She's kind of a weird girl, isn't she?"

Hardison shook his head. "You really have no idea, man. She's like another species." Eliot got the feeling that if it didn't live under thirty feet of water, it baffled Hardison on multiple levels, but he didn't say that out loud.

"You're a decent guy," he said instead. "Decent guys always get the girl."

"Maybe," Hardison said, obviously not wanting a pep talk on this particular subject.

"If this stains, you're going to be sorry," Parker said, coming back to the table and giving Hardison the evil eye again.

"I already am," Hardison shot back. They bickered a little, and Eliot watched in quiet amusement.

Eliot was yawning when the waiter came back with the cheque, and he continued to yawn while Parker and Hardison argued about who was going to pay.

"Want to stay at my place?" Hardison asked. Eliot just nodded because he was way too tired for further discussion. He tried not to fall asleep in the van while they dropped Parker off at her place. Eliot had been expecting a couch or maybe a futon in an office, but when they got to Hardison's place, Eliot was pleasantly surprised to find that there was actually a half decent guest room.

"Never mind the sheets," Hardison said quickly, when he showed Eliot to the spare room. "Just, uh. Have a good night."

Eliot glanced at the sheets and couldn't identify the cartoon character on them, but he didn't say anything about them. "Thanks, Hardison."

The fact that he didn't bring his toothbrush didn't even cross his mind because Eliot was asleep as his head hit the pillow.

--

The next morning was as easy and awkward-free as a morning waking up in someone's strange house on strange cartoon sheets could be, but Hardison made good coffee, so Eliot was willing to pretend it wasn't awkward.

"Are you taking today off, or do you want a ride to work?" Hardison asked once he'd refilled both their mugs.

"Work," Eliot said. "I want to check on some paperwork and see if I can't get some more information about the actual condition of this elephant."

"You think she'll be in bad shape?"

Eliot sighed. "That's what I've been hearing. I want to know exactly what I'm going to have to do to get her back to where she needs to be."

"Cool, cool." There was a long, extended moment of awkward silence, brought about by a lack of readily available topics of conversation and Hardison's lack of pajama bottoms. It was a few moments of that awkward silence before Hardison realized he wasn't wearing pants.

"I'll just go throw something on and we can leave." Hardison said, retreating behind his bedroom door.

"All right," Eliot said, a little too quickly.

--

The morning flew by in productive meetings with other zoo staff, sorting out who was going to be available to help him hands-on in the first few days of the elephant's arrival, which veterinarians had the large animal experience to work with him, and where he could get any supplies he was going to need to stock up on.

By noon, Eliot was ready to talk to the boss again. He tracked Nate down to the Arctic exhibit, talking quietly to Sophie.

"Sorry to interrupt, but Nate, I need to talk to you for a few minutes. When you're done."

Eliot leaned on the railing and watch a big arctic fox sleeping in a depression in the ground for a few minutes and tried not seem like he was enjoying it too much, in case Parker could see him again.

"Hey, Eliot, what's going on?" Nate asked, coming up behind him.

"I want to meet this elephant. Soon. Like, preferably tomorrow."

Nate frowned. "I don't even know if that's going to be possible."

"Well, make it happen," Eliot told him. He turned and walked away. A hand didn't land on his shoulder, and he didn't hear shouting, so he figured his gamble had paid off.

An hour later, Eliot was sitting at a picnic table he'd dragged in front of the 'elephants coming soon' sign as his home base until they got the building built. He was on hold with the produce company who delivered the fruit and vegetables to the zoo. The woman in purchasing had given him the number, even though she had insisted she could handle it. Eliot was just a lot more comfortable sorting it out on his own. Nate sat down across from him and put his elbows on the table. And waited.

Eliot stared expectantly, waiting for him to say something. Nate stared back. They sat in silence, staring at each other like a pair of bull rhinos in a stand off until finally, Nate opened his mouth to say something, and the man on the other end of the line finally picked up again.

"Yeah, no, it's fine," Eliot said as the guy apologized. Nate's mouth snapped shut again, and he continued to stare. "Okay, so it's a go? You guys can deliver on that schedule?" The man on the phone affirmed it again. "Great, thanks a lot. I'll call you back when I know for sure the first day I need you. Thanks."

"Sorry," he said to Nate. "You were saying something?"

"Yeah," Nate said, giving Eliot yet another look. Eliot was still not a hundred percent sure he was reading any of them right, but Nate didn't really seem like he was irritated. Just faintly amused. "The circus that has the elephant now is expecting you."

"Tomorrow?" Eliot said, already flipping open his planner and scrambling through pages.

"If you want. I told them it might be later today, so I'm sure you can go whenever and they'd be fine with it. Well, not fine with it. But they can't really do anything about it. So have fun. Don't piss off any clowns."

He probably meant it as a light-hearted warning, but Nate's eyes went dark when he mentioned clowns. Eliot made it a very strong point not to go there. "Thanks for your help, Nate. I'm going to go now. Give them less of a chance to hide away their sins and all that."

"You sure you don't want back up? I'm sure we can find someone to go with you."

"No, it's fine. I don't think there's going to be any trouble. I'll just keep it quick and stay out of their way."

"Good luck," Nate said with a shrug as he watched Eliot go.

--

It was one of those travelling circuses, currently being held up by the USDA while the cruelty investigation continued. Eliot called to the guy in charge of the investigation on the government end and was pleasantly surprised to realize they had worked together before.

"Damon! Hey, it's Eliot Spencer."

"Eliot, hello! You're the one in charge at Greater Cityopolis now?"

"In charge of the elephants, anyways." Eliot was happy to hear Damon's voice. When he thought about how messed up the next few weeks were going to be, especially if Nate kept being the creepy mafia kingpin type of boss he had been for the first two days. It was good to know he was going to have Damon as an ally.

They'd worked together before on elephant-related stuff through the sanctuary a few times, so Damon was willing to be a little more open and candid than Eliot had expected.

"Eliot, they're typical circus types. Very closed off, very distrusting. Couple that with what you're actually going to be doing there, and they are not going to be friendly or even remotely polite to you," Damon said with a sigh. "So, for the love of everything, just relax and be calm, okay? All things considered, they've been remarkably cooperative thus far. If you piss them off, or haul off and belt the bearded lady, we have no way of knowing what's going to happen."

Eliot groaned at the reference. "That story got blown way out of proportion, Damon. You were there, you saw it happen."

"Like I told the state troopers, man, I don't know what I saw. Just be cool with them, okay? It's not like they're abusing her outright, not like that time in Cali. She's just... not getting the required level of care. She's pretty underweight, but none of the current handlers can see it. They say she refuses food all the time, so they figure she's eating enough."

"Oh, that's a load of --"

"I know!" Damon interrupted. "I know, and you know, and you know that I know. Just go make your assessment, file your R99 report with my secretary, and I'll call you on Tuesday."

"Thanks, man," Eliot said. He flipped the phone shut. The drive over to the field where the circus had set up temporary camp was a tense one. He kept rehearsing what he was going to say to the people when he got there. It depended on the animal's condition, though. He kept interrupting his own thoughts with horrible imaginings of what he was going to find when he got to the elephant. If she was really bad, there was no way he could stay polite. The poor thing deserved better than whatever she was getting. He just had to keep in mind that he was there to help her, not to condemn the people who had failed her.

He hadn't even shut off the engine before someone was approaching his truck. "Hi," he said, eyeing the man carefully. He was just a regular looking guy in jeans and a t-shirt.

"You from the USDA?" the guy demanded.

"Not exactly. I'm Eliot from the zoo. I'm just here to take a quick look so I know what we're going to do when we get her back there."

"Steal her, you mean," the guy snapped. "Yeah, follow me." Eliot slid out of the truck and followed, biting his tongue at the man's attitude. His phone vibrated on his hip, proclaiming a new text message.

'It's Parker. Drinks tonight w me and Hard. KARAOKE night.'

He rolled his eyes, noting her lack of inclusion of a question mark. He was quickly coming to understand that Parker didn't ask for things; she just expected them to be done. He put his phone away, deciding to deal with that train wreck once he dealt with the one in front of him.

"You know we take good care of her, right?" the man asked, suddenly stopping and turning back to Eliot.

"Sir," Eliot said, trying desperately to keep his nasty comments in check. "I have no doubt that you love her very much. I'm not here to throw around accusations or blame or whatever. I just want to see the elephant."

The man rolled his eyes. "Her name is Panya."

"Panya, then."

"Yeah, I know the stories you people always tell. We love her, and we can't see that we're hurting her and all that bullshit. If we were abusing her, wouldn't she be dead? Panya's been a part of the Sherman and Sons family since she came to America in nineteen seventy-five."

"I read the file," Eliot said. "Look, I don't mean to be rude, but I want to get this done."

"Fine," the man snapped. "Follow me."

Eliot saw the elephant as they approached. Right away, he could tell she was underweight, but her stance looked good. She was standing with her back to them at the top of a small hill, and there was an old man with her. When he caught sight of Eliot and his guide coming up the hill, he jumped off his chair and headed towards them.

"No, no, get him out of here. I don't care what branch of the government you work for, boy. You're not taking her for experiments!" The man was spry for an older guy, Eliot noted as he held his ground.

"Dad," the first man said, holding up his hand and stepping in front of Eliot, which only made Eliot bristle a little. "Dad, it's okay. He's only here to meet Panya."

As much as Eliot had considered decking the first man before, he felt a wave of sympathy for him now.

"Adam, don't tell me bullshit about it. I know what the government is trying to do," the old man said, taking another step towards Eliot. Eliot took a step back, not because he was afraid of the guy, but because he was still trying to be on his best behaviour and avoid any fist fights.

"Stop, Dad. We talked about this. Panya's got to go somewhere else where there's other elephants and stuff so she can retire. Remember? She worked really hard all these years like you and Mom, and now she gets to retire."

When Eliot looked a little closer, he could see that the younger man, Adam, probably hadn't had a full night's sleep in a while. His father was probably dealing with some kind of dementia or Alzheimer's or something and was fixating on the elephant. They were most likely the owners of the circus, and the old guy could even have been the original owner of the animal. It seemed like a difficult time for them.

"I'll be out of your hair in a few minutes," Eliot said quietly, edging around them. "Just want to check her out."

"I'm watching you, you hear me, boy?"

Eliot did hear, but he tried to ignore it. He walked towards the elephant, making a wide arc so he could approach her from the front. He stopped about twenty feet from her and leaned against a tree. Eliot knew he could get most of the information he wanted just by observing, and he was hoping if he stayed far enough back, he wouldn't get shouted at again.

She didn't notice him at first while he jotted out a few basic notes. She was thin, like he had first noticed, but up close, Eliot could see just how thin she actually was. Judging by her height, she should weigh around twenty nine hundred kilos, but if Eliot was any judge, she was barely two thousand. There was some kind of abrasion on her ear, like a cut or something. He started to wonder if it had even been looked at or treated, but he stopped himself from going down that road because it would just aggravate him.

Eliot was making a little list at the bottom of his page about supplies he was going to need for Panya's first week when he had a sense of movement in front of him. One of her back legs was chained to a tree on the other side of the hill with a heavy chain, but she had managed a few shuffling steps towards him, trunk outstretched.

"Hi," he said, keeping his voice low and watching her closely. He set his paperwork on the grass and took a small step towards her. When he reached his hand up slowly towards her trunk, she flinched momentarily, but then she relaxed and let him touch her.

Eliot had always figured that any interaction he had with an elephant was a lasting one, but this was still kind of incredible. She just stood still for a long moment, letting him rest his hand on her trunk, until finally she reached up and touched him back. She was tentative, clearly unsure as to who or what he was, but Eliot thought she sensed that he wanted to help.

"Hey there," he said again, getting a little closer and letting her get used to his smell as she ruffled his hair. Whatever it was she was picking up on, either his smell or his positive energy or just the difference between him and the other humans she was used to, she approved.

Eliot bit back a laugh. She might not be in great condition physically, but she was alert and inquisitive, and that made him very... hopeful.

He reluctantly left and headed for his truck again. Eliot only looked back at Panya on the hill twice, which is something he would normally never had done, but he couldn't shake the feeling that she was watching him go so he had to glance back to check.

Once he was in the truck again, trying to fit the key into the ignition, Eliot realized his hands were shaking. Something felt different, something inside him or maybe just in the air, and he couldn't identify it at all. He felt so much better about what was going to happen in a few weeks when the USDA finally cleared them to take the elephant away, back to the zoo. It was a weight lifted from him in a way he couldn't describe properly. Eliot shuffled through the papers on his clipboard, feigning something important so he had an excuse to sit for a few minutes while he tried to relax.

Eliot drove back to the zoo with a new enthusiasm for his job and for the somewhat daunting task ahead of him. He smiled at the girl in the ticket booth as he hopped the turnstile.

"Good trip?" Nate asked, leaning just on the other side of the entrance gate. It wasn't even something Eliot could find creepy because nothing about Nate was shocking him anymore.

"Somewhat. She looks fairly terrible, but I think I can work with her. She's not the worst I've seen."

"Did you punch a circus person?" Nate fell into step next to Eliot without being asked or asking if Eliot needed an escort.

Eliot didn't tell him to bug off, though he considered it. He was on a weird high after finally meeting Panya, and wasn't sure anything could bring him down. "Have you been talking to Damon? I don't do that anymore. Anyways, no, it was fine."

Nate smiled brightly. "Good, good. I spoke to the foreman of the construction team while you were gone and he'll be here at seven tomorrow morning with the architect and a couple other guys. We want to get construction started this week so we can wrap it sooner rather than later."

"Great, because I want her here ASAP," Eliot said, passing Nate his clipboard. "Would you mind faxing the top two sheets to our contact at the USDA? I'm going to gather up my stuff and head home."

"Sure. I imagine that was stressful. Thanks for going."

Eliot walked away once again a little unsure of where he stood with Nate, but he decided that was something he might never be comfortable with, so he dismissed it. He wasn't going to accomplish anything by over-thinking it.

Once he left, he drove around the city aimlessly, getting used to feel of the place. Eliot happened to pass by a promising looking department store, so he went in and absolutely made the sales associate's day by buying an entire apartment's worth of furniture with minimal fuss. They even arranged for next day shipping, meaning Eliot only had to endure one more night without a real bed.

He sat on the floor with his back against the radiator when he got home, with three books spread out in front of him and one in his lap. He was reading up on anorexia in animals and the merits of certain convalescence diets in regards to putting healthy weight back onto a sick or stressed animal. It was a lot of academic mumbo jumbo, and his progress was slow going, in his opinion, but slowly it started to make sense.

Eliot tapped the end of his pencil against the nearest textbook as he read until he realized it was the most annoying thing ever and stopped. A few moments later, he was doing it again.

"Dammit," he muttered to himself. Clearly his mind wasn't focused. He glanced back over his page of notes and yeah, there were some helpful things written down, but there was also a large amount of swirly doodles in the corners and margins.

But Eliot knew when to quit. If he forced himself to keep reading , he was going to burn out on this project before it really even got underway. Sighing, he reached for his cell phone to text Parker.

'Hey what's going on tonight?'

Less than a minute later, Parker sent her reply. 'Karaoke at McMillan's. We already here. Meet us?'

She sent a few mixed up messages about directions to the bar and it turned out to only be nineteen blocks from his apartment. Eliot jogged over there, partly to clear his head and partly because it was starting to rain.

"Hey, Eliot!" Parker said, throwing a careless arm around his shoulders and pulling him towards a booth within three seconds of him walking through the door.

"Hi guys." Eliot poured himself a glass of beer from the pitcher on the table. "How's... stuff?"

"Stuff's good," Parker smiled, offering him a plate of fries. They made small talk for a little while and listened to a couple really bad karaoke performances.

Halfway through his second beer, Eliot felt himself relaxing. It was nice to unwind and to not have to think about the ups and downs of the day. A little part of him felt bad, felt like he was slacking off when there was an animal out there that needed his help. He told himself that the whole situation was tied up in the legalities and the bureaucratic red tape, which was absolutely true, but did little to stifle the uneasy feeling. The beer helped with that, though, and Parker's laughter.

There was a lull in casual conversation, and Hardison turned the topic back to work. "So, Nate says you went to see the elephant today. How did that go?"

"It was interesting," Eliot said. He took another long pull from his beer and tried not to fiddle with the glass when he set it down. "She doesn't look good, but I'm still optimistic."

"Oh?" Hardison gave him a funny look. "So she looks sick and stuff, but you feel good about it?"

"Not good," Eliot said, rolling his eyes. "Optimistic. I don't know how to explain it exactly, but I feel like it's going to go well."

"Well, that's awesome!" Parker said, patting Eliot's arm. "I can't wait to meet her."

"She's pretty great," Eliot admitted.

"Sounds like you're talking about your secret girlfriend or something," Hardison chuckled. Eliot shot him an indignant look.

"Never mind him, I think it's cute," Parker said, smiling brightly again.

Eliot was pretty sure that was worse than Hardison's comment, but he let it slide. He was prepared to let most things go tonight because, he was a little alarmed to discover, he was in a pretty good mood.

Parked cleared her throat. "So... do you like, have a girlfriend?"

Eliot heard the slightest noise from Hardison, something halfway between a sigh and a snort. "Uh. Nope," he said, trying not to look at Hardison.

"Oh, cool," Parker said, like it didn't really matter. She was pretty funny, Eliot thought, because she wouldn't have asked if she didn't have some plan cooking in that blonde head of hers, but she was really good at pretending nothing was up.

"I'm going to the bathroom, then signing you up for something awful," Hardison said, tapping Parker on the nose. "Brace yourself."

"It's like... the world's worst contest to be in," Parker explained to Eliot. "Every time we come here, we try to pick the worst songs ever for each other to sing for karaoke. So far I'm ahead by six points. Sometimes I don't think he's even trying to embarrass me."

Eliot bit his tongue to keep from commenting on that statement, but couldn't resist the urge to speak entirely. "So, you and him do this kind of thing every night? Dinner, drinks, karaoke, and stuff?"

"Sometimes. He's pretty fun to hang out with. But you can hang out with us too. Like, it's not like we're exclusive friends or anything."

"No? You know, I think you guys are a cute couple." Normally, there would be alarm bells going off in his head by now, telling him to get out while he still could, telling him he didn't want to be friends with these people (simply because they were people), but there was a spark in Parker's eye and Eliot wanted to see her smile again. He was pretty sure he was drunk.

"We're not... What did he say?" There was that smile, Eliot thought, but it was awkward and a little too bright. Parker was clearly hiding something, and that something was obviously about her feelings regarding Hardison.

"Just that you guys went on a couple dates but it didn't pan out."

"Yeah," Parker said slowly, like she was trying to phrase her next words carefully.

"Look," Eliot said. He took a deep breath and plunged onwards. "I'm not sure what exactly is possessing me to even have this conversation or take this interest, but we'll blame good humour. He likes you, you like him. Personally, I can't see how either of you will do better, so you should go for it."

Parker stared at him for a few seconds, eyes wide and mouth in a little 'o' shape. Slowly, she broke into a grin. "Oh wow. Wow, wow, wow."

He was completely sure he didn't want to know, but he found he was compelled to ask. "What?"

"Never mind what you said, Hardison said there was no way you were going to get involved. He said you didn't like people very much and you were trying to distance yourself. You've only been here a week and you're already giving me advice? Clearly you do care."

"Don't," Eliot said with a growl. "Actually, don't speak to me ever again." Of course he had to meet probably the only two peopl

"Uh oh," said Hardison. "Either this was the worst or best time for me to come back. Parker, you're up next, singing The Hills Are Alive With The Sound Of Music." He grinned to them both as he sat down.

"I'll knock it out of the park," Parker scoffed. She leaned over and gave Hardison a peck on the cheek as she passed, winking to Eliot at the same time. On anyone else, it might have seemed clumsy, but Parker pulled it off. Eliot couldn't help but smirk.

Hardison freaked out, just a little. "What? What was that? Why did she do that? Did you say something to her? Dude, you weren't supposed to tell her."

"Hey," Eliot said, shrugging. "Public service."

Hardison stared at him for a second, open mouthed and looking incredulous, but then he broke into a grin. "She kissed me."

Eliot chuckled dryly. "You're welcome."

"I might love you, man."

Parker belted out the words to the show tune standard Hardison had signed her up for like it was nothing, and she and Hardison left together about twenty minutes after with big, stupid, matching smiles.

Eliot settled the bill and walked himself home. He didn't even want to think about what was going on with Hardison and Parker, off on their own, but at the same time, he knew he was wearing a stupid smile too. It had been just over forty-eight hours and he felt like a different person. Maybe he was.

--

Things were taking shape fast enough to be literally remarkable. People kept remarking to Eliot how fast the building had gone up. It was aggravating.

"Exciting to see your dreams realized, hmm?" chuckled a man Eliot only barely recalled from one of the few round-table staff meetings he hadn't been able to skip out of in the last few weeks. The man clapped him on the shoulder in an overly familiar way before walking away. Eliot gritted his teeth together and tried to think of babbling brooks and playing puppies chasing butterflies.

"Whoa there," Hardison said, coming up to Eliot just as the man was out of ear shot. "Don't kill Jerry. We don't have anyone to take over his job if he dies unexpectedly."

"What does he even do?" Eliot asked, a little viciously, still glaring after Jerry.

"Something boring," Parker said, suddenly on the other side of Eliot. He managed to not look overly startled. "Tapeworms, I think."

"Do we even have a tapeworm exhibit?"

"The point is, Jerry's boring and his job is boring." Parker looped one arm around Hardison's waist and looked around like she was just suddenly seeing where she was. "So, what's going on here? Nate said we're doing environmental somethings?"

Eliot blinked. "He's making you guys help with the environmental survey? Shitty. Sorry, guys."

"What that?" Hardison asked, suddenly sounding wary where a few moments ago he'd been cheery.

"I asked for interns or something to help me walk the entire enclosure to make sure there's nothing there. Like, foreign objects or garbage or poisonous plants." Eliot stretched his arms up over his head and stretched.

"Yeah, we have like, three interns," Hardison said, motioning to a little knot of people standing a ways away. "So we got roped in. Is this going to take a long time? I wanted to move some coral this afternoon."

"This will be way more fun," Parker said. She was bouncing on the balls of her feet like she actually thought manually combing through one hundred and ninety-nine acres of grass, trees, and rocks was going to be a 'fun' way to spend the next three days.

She would figure out soon enough that that wasn't true, so Eliot wasn't going to rain on her parade prematurely. "Let's just get started and get as much done before dark as we can." As he walked away, he heard Hardison muttering under his breath at Parker.

"Worst plan I ever heard of, I can't believe I got roped into this. The things I do for you, woman."

Eliot felt weirdly accomplished when he heard that, but he couldn't blame alcohol if he tried to start a conversation about their fledgling romance this time. He focused instead on the small group of people who were supposed to be helping with the habitat survey. It was a ragtag little group, not one he would had chosen for himself, but he fixed in his mind every underdog story he'd ever heard and tried to stay positive.

"Okay everyone, thanks for agreeing to help out. We're going to split into groups of four and each group will be responsible for a section. Some of the sections look bigger than the others on the map, but that's because the small sections have tougher terrain. You're looking for anything that could hurt an animal. Bits of scrap metal, garbage, plastic, glass, and any of the plants in the booklet I handed out. If you have even the slightest doubt about something, mark it off on your GPS and make a note for me, and I'll check it myself. That way, if anything goes wrong, I can't get mad at anyone, right?" he smiled to the crowd, making it seem like he wasn't sort of threatening them, and they seemed to go for it.

With assignments, radios and trash bags in hand, the crowd divided into their groups and began to head out.

"We traded with Stella and Robin," Parker said to Eliot, elbowing Hardison closer to the picnic table loaded with work gloves. "So we can be the best team. Well, the best team and Jerry."

Eliot, of course, had assigned himself the hardest part of the enclosure to prep and within the first half an hour of their hike out to the starting point, Hardison was complaining. "I don't do woods, guys," he said. "When it comes to habitat visits, if I can't swim there, I don't want to go at all."

"I think this is all so nice," Jerry said, holding a branch out of the way for Hardison and Parker to pass. "Such a lovely spot. You've done real good work, Mister Spencer."

Eliot forgave Jerry then for the comment earlier. "Thanks," he said. He didn't go in for empty praise, but a little recognition every now and again was kind of nice.

When they got where they were going, it was the one part of the enclosure that was basically rocks with a couple shoots and twigs jutting out of the cracks. The shade combined with the noise of the water from just on the other side of the rock pile made a friendly little cave. "Just inventory the plants," Eliot said. "I've got a team coming out first thing tomorrow morning to check and make sure there won't be a rock slide if Panya decides to go for a climb, but it will probably okay for us."

"...Probably? I'm not okay with probably," Hardison said, staring at the rocks and flatly refusing to budge. "I'll get 9-1-1 on standby for you guys, though."

Parker scrambled up the rocks like death by falling rocks was something she'd never heard of before. "I found a quarter!"

The land they were building the elephant habitat on used to be an empty lot, so Eliot wasn't really sure what they were going to find. He was hoping for nothing -- nothing that would require a lot of clean up or the CDC, anyways. He'd heard horror stories of projects like this before.

But two hours of Hardison's complaining and only the mildest of bruises and mosquito bites later, and they hadn't run across anything really concerning. And Parker was currently four dollars and seventeen cents richer, mainly in nickels.

While they toured the area looking for trash or, in Parker's case, more treasure, Jerry told them all about his work with his exhibit, which turned out to be flatworms.

Parker mouthed 'boring' over Jerry's shoulder while he talked and Hardison struggled to keep a straight face. Eliot tried to stay attentive, but invertebrates were really not something he could even feign interest in for very long. Somehow, Eliot convinced Jerry to check the far side of the rocks, even though Parker had already been around that area.

"I'm sorry, but flatworms? Really?" he said.

Hardison was finally unable to contain himself. "I know, right? Like, I even have a couple things that are kind of like flatworms and I don't even like them that much. Man has issues."

"I didn't know they did that with their penises," Parker said. She was studying a leaf she had picked up very intently. "This isn't poison ivy, is it?"

"Yeah, nightmares for a very long time, that's all I'm sayin'," Hardison said. He leaned in to get a better look at Parker's leaf. "Hey, isn't that something you should have asked before you handled it?"

Eliot watched them bicker about the plant for a few moments before he realized. "Dammit, Parker, drop that."

"It's not really poison ivy, right?" she said, dropping the plant immediately and staring wide-eyed at her hands.

Eliot heaved a sigh and picked up his radio. "It's poison oak. You didn't find any more of it, did you? Hey, Nate? Can you make sure there's a bottle of rubbing alcohol in my office? We had a bit of a poison oak incident."

"Oh my god," Parker said, shaking her hand like she could shake it all off. "I'm going to die."

"It's not that bad," Eliot told her, taking her by the elbow and pulling her away from the plants. There were about six of them, all in a cluster, and Parker had been standing in the middle of all of them. Eliot felt bad, and he wasn't exactly sure why because it hadn't been him who had asked them to come out, and it sure as hell wasn't him who put Parker in the middle of the poisonous plants.

Hardison jumped back. "Isn't it contagious?"

Eliot rolled his eyes. "Not unless you rub yourself against her skin. Come on, let's get you cleaned up before the oil sets. You're not going to be happy if it does."

Hardison looked forlorn. "What if I want to rub --"

"Don't finish that thought," Eliot warned. "Make a note of right here on your GPS for me and let's head back. We can finish tomorrow."

They started back towards the building with Parker getting more and more frantic about her hands until Eliot growled at her to stop. "You're only going to make it worse by freaking out." He wanted to be reassuring, to tell her she wasn't going to die or anything, but he only managed to snap at her.

"Poison oak is psychosomatic?" Hardison asked, sounding sceptical. "Or are you one of those 'everything is mind of matter' kind of guys?"

Eliot wasn't going to grace that with a response, until he remembered. "Shit, we left Jerry."

"We're not going back," Parker said, still fighting the note of panic in her voice. "I want this stuff off of me. I think it's on my legs, too."

"Told you not to wear shorts."

"Hardison, stop sounding so smug or I am going to --"

"Enough," Eliot said again, using his thunder voice.

By the time they finally got back to Eliot's office and the bottle of rubbing alcohol he claimed would be Parker's salvation, she was already breaking out in a bright red rash all up her legs to her knee and her right arm.

"It's so itchy," she moaned, dancing wildly on the spot. "Why can't I scratch?"

Eliot wasn't prepared to explain it for a fourth time. He carefully poured the contents of the rubbing alcohol bottle into a plant mister and pushed Parker into the desk chair. "Hold still." He helped Parker clean up with the alcohol and some clean gauze while Hardison thumbed through one of the magazines from the shelf and tried not to look concerned.

"Where'd you learn so much about poisonous plants and stuff?" Hardison asked, glancing up when Eliot admonished Parker for squirming again.

"I don't know how you guys don't know how to recognize poison plants when you pick them up," he said, reaching for the rest of the rubbing alcohol. "Give me your arm."

As Eliot explained what he was doing, he got the feeling that there were making faces over his head. "Stop it," he said, and smirked to himself when Parker stiffened guiltily.

"Are you going to live, do you think? Take some Benadryl and don't scratch it," Eliot said when he was done.

"Yes, doctor." Parker sounded meek, but Eliot wasn't sure he bought it.

He scowled. "We still have at least another five or six hours out there tomorrow and you'll about as useful as a screen door on a submarine to me if you scratch yourself to death." Eliot sent Parker and Hardison home with another fierce look and then went looking for Jerry.

All things considered, he got away from work at an almost-respectable hour.

--

Friday morning, Eliot got the exciting, heart-pounding news he'd been waiting for since he'd arrived in Cityopolis. Nate had the official date for the elephant's arrival.

Eliot went to Nate's office with butterflies in his stomach. "So?" he said once Nate opened the door. "Do you have good news?"

"I have... news," Nate said. He offered Eliot a chair and coffee and didn't seem fazed when Eliot refused both. After what seemed like an obscene pause, Nate smiled and said "Monday."

"Monday?"

"Yeah. Is that a problem?"

"Not at all," Eliot said with a smooth grin. "Monday... is great. Now, I have tons of stuff to do, so radio me if there's anything else, but I'd like to get back."

Nate paused for a second with the pen in his hand held aloft like he was deep in thought, but then nodded. "By all means. Let me know if you need anything."

The rest of the day was spent absolute buzzing with prep work, phone calls, and paperwork. Eliot felt like he’d been running in circles by the time the sun had started to set. He retreated to his office in the north corner of the elephant outbuilding, but it had been the last part of the building to be finished and it still smelled strongly of paint. It only took five minutes of sitting at his desk and staring blankly at the page before he realized he hadn't read a single line of the medical supply list the veterinarian had sent him.

Eliot sighed, annoyed with himself for not having everything ready, despite the short notice This had been what they’d been planning for all along. He decided on a quick walk in the fresh air to clear his head. He very carefully avoided looking at the clock as he left, knowing it would only make him feel more antsy. Eliot hated that feeling.

The first gust of wind when he stepped outside nearly took his breath away. It was bracing and perfect and just what Eliot had needed to bring everything back into focus. The zoo had been closed for about half an hour, so there weren't any people in the zoo that weren't staff. Eliot nodded to the groundskeepers he recognized, but didn't stop to chat. He only wanted to spend ten or fifteen minutes out of the office so he could really make a dent in his to-do list when he got back. He would work all night to get everything done if he had to.

He didn't work all night, because Parker woke him up at ten the next morning when she burst into his office with coffee and a box of muffins. "Nate says you worked all night," she said, politely not noticing as Eliot swiped the back of his hand across his mouth in case of drool.

He gratefully accepted the coffee. "Most of it, I guess."

Hardison breezed in without knocking, took a seat on the edge of Eliot's desk and grabbed a muffin. "Nate says we have to make sure you don't kill yourself this weekend. What's he so worried about?"

"Panya gets here Monday.” Eliot took a sip of his drink. “This coffee is amazing."

"I have a guy," Parker said, tapping her nose secretively. "I only had to... wait, Panya the elephant?"

Eliot nodded, too engrossed in his breakfast to reply with more than that.

"Oh, wow!" Parker was almost vibrating with excitement. "Eliot, that's amazing."

"No," he said, around a mouthful of whole grain and blueberry. "What it is is way too soon." Eliot brushed crumbs off his shirt and scowled at the papers on the desk.

"What else is there to do?" Hardison asked, glancing around at Eliot's otherwise pin-straight office.

Eliot grumbled under his breath. "Everything. It feels like everything, anyways. I need to sort out a produce delivery for first thing Monday, and I need a veterinarian with elephant experience and the nearest one I trust is in Tempe and isn't returning my calls. I can just imagine the... ugh."

Hardison didn't even try to hide the face he pulled. "Dude, I think you're freaking out. Ease up a little."

Eliot considered physically throwing him out of the office and onto his ass, but instead he gave Hardison a dirty look and pointed them both towards the door. "Thank you for the coffee," he said to soften the blow of the harsh dismissal.

"Thanks for the coffee, now get out?" Hardison joked, but it was the truth. Eliot closed the door behind them and waited ten seconds to be sure they were out of earshot before he locked it. He wanted no more distractions until everything was in order.

He left another message for the veterinarian and set up the fresh fruit delivery for late Sunday afternoon so he'd have everything on hand if and when he needed it. Eliot felt damn near out of his mind, wondering why Doctor Snyder wasn't calling him back.
Eliot was reading case studies about other circus refugee elephants and their mental and emotional recoveries afterwards when he realized how warm it had gotten in his office.

Someone must have cranked up the heat, Hardison trying to play a joke or something, because Eliot could barely breathe through the hot, oppressive air. The lights in the hallway seemed to dance a little when he wrenched the door open again and he didn't feel any cooler.

He was completely ridiculous, he thought, as he shouldered through the outside door into the elephant pen. Eliot leaned heavily on the rough brick wall and stared at the waving green grass. He had locked his friends out so he could focus without distractions and he'd given himself an anxiety attack instead.

A short jog to the pond cooled him off and gave him something to blame for his quickened heartbeat. He looked around, looking for something to get angry at or anything else to divert his attention from to the churning feeling in his stomach and the sudden weakness in his joints. There was nothing but trees and grass and sky for him to hate though, and that just didn't seem worth the effort.

Eliot sat on the grass with his back against a skinny birch tree and closed his eyes. His heart was still racing, but he forced the feeling away and concentrated on breathing until he had it back under control. Eventually, he stood and walked slowly back to the outbuilding.

There wasn't a message from the vet waiting for him when he got back to the office and nothing came through while he finalized the last of the transport arrangements between the USDA and the truck company. That was okay, he told himself, because he had a plan.

Despite Eliot ignoring the massive time zone difference and calling him at his home in Kenya really late at night, Eliot's second-choice vet, Doctor Lee, agreed to be on-call if he needed anything. It was mostly the flattery Eliot had inadvertently given when he ignored all the veterinarians on the same continent to call the one halfway around the world. "I want the best," Eliot said bluntly.

Doctor Lee expressed his regret for not being able to be there in person and even gave Eliot a sound piece of advice: "In the next few days, you're going to want to go crazy and murder everyone you know, but don't do that."

Eliot felt a knot of tension loosen up between his shoulder blades, though he still wasn't feeling good about how close it was to Monday.

"Go home," Nate said when he dropped in on Eliot mid-afternoon. "If there are any major developments here, I'm sure you'll feel it in the Force and race right back."

Eliot started to explain all of the reasons that was a terrible idea, but he could tell with one glance that Nate was not remotely interested in any arguments. That made Eliot want to argue just on the principle of 'screw what everyone else wants,' but he remembered the turning-spinning-falling feeling of his almost-anxiety attack (no way he was admitting to an actual attack of anything). He had no desire to relive that, ever, so he nodded once to Nate and left for the day.

As it turned out, where he was didn't make much of a difference because he still worried. Eliot tried to relax in his apartment, but he kept turning back to the sea of case studies and damage reports from other elephants in similar situations. It wasn't hard to turn back to it, really, because those books and papers had taken over the majority of his living room.

Parker called to ask for a favour and Eliot agreed before she even told him what she wanted. "Cool, see you soon then," she said, clearly amused. She rattled off a short set of directions to her apartment and Eliot was there in under half an hour.

"What's going on?" he asked, seeing Hardison behind Parker in the apartment. "You guys okay?"

"Sure," Parker said, giving him a weird look as she let him in. "Why wouldn't we be?"

Eliot shrugged. "What did you need me for then?"

Parker pointed to the couch Hardison was leaning on. "That needs to get moved."

Eliot scoffed. "What is it about me that screams 'let me help you move'?" He nudged Hardison out of the way and started pulling cushions off. "Come on, you two grab that side."

"He's funny when he gets huffy," Parker said to Hardison in a stage whisper, but she helped with the last cushion and stood near the couch and waited for directions.

They moved the couch six inches back and set it down again. "Wait, where are we putting this?" Eliot asked.

"Oh, right here is good," Parker said, reaching to push the cushions back. "I like it here."

Eliot just stared at her. "You asked me to come over to help move the couch a couple inches? It's not even a huge couch."

"Thanks for your help," she said.

Hardison grinned. "Yeah, thanks, buddy. I had to move that bookshelf by myself last week. This was easier to move with help."

"I can't believe you two," Eliot muttered. He looked between Hardison and Parker, who were trading weird looks. There was some tension in the air that Eliot didn't understand. "What?"

"Nothing, just..." Hardison sat on the couch. "Want to watch a movie or something?"

Eliot thought about all the things he could be doing at home or at work to prepare for Monday. Then he thought of all the anxiousness and nausea and collapsed onto the couch. "Sure."

"Awesome," Parker said, inserting herself between them on the couch and picking up a remote from the coffee table. "Kung fu or a western?"

"Kung fu western," Hardison said automatically.

Eliot let them bicker. He didn't really care what they watched, as long as it would take his mind off anything and everything. Even their chatter was helping to distract him. He’d never thought that he'd be thankful for having people talking incessantly around him, but here he was.

Parker and Hardison settled on some random movie that apparently neither one of them liked very much. Hardison made microwave popcorn and some kind of mixed drink with way too much rum in it. It was shaping up to be a lovely, mindless evening until Parker started talking.

"So, Eliot... Nate says the elephant is coming on Monday. Got everything ready?"

"Oh my god." Eliot sighed explosively, dropping his head against the arm of the couch. "No. I should go. There's still so much I haven't done." He made to stand up, but Hardison reached across Parker to pull him back down by the shirt.

"Whoa, whoa," Hardison said, patting Eliot's knee in an awkward attempt to soothe him. "Nate says you have everything as ready as it can be. You can relax tonight."

"I don't, I still have to... 'Nate says'? He says an awful lot, doesn't he?"

Hardison shrugged, wearing an overly mild expression that Eliot didn't buy for one second. Parker wouldn't look at him. "What? Did Nate say you guys had to babysit me or some shit?"

"Don't be mad," Parker said, offering him the bowl of popcorn again. "He was just worried you were going to burn yourself out before the real work even starts."

Eliot bit back a hundred nasty things he wanted to say because it wasn't right to snap at Parker and Hardison for something Nate had said. While he took a moment to gather his composure, he realized it wasn't really even that bad of a thing for Nate to say. Okay, he should have gone to Eliot if he’d been having a problem with the way Eliot was doing things instead of creeping around behind Eliot's back and getting everyone else involved. That was pretty unprofessional, really, almost something you would do it if you thought...

"Are we friends?" Eliot asked. "Nate asked you guys to look after me like we're friends."

"Are we not friends?" Hardison said, crossing his arms and giving Eliot a look. "Because I feel like we are. We hang out and talk about stuff and I invited you to meet my fish. I think that means we're friends."

Parker nodded enthusiastically. "In some cultures, you two are married."

Eliot rolled his eyes. "Okay, so what now?"

"What do you mean, 'what now?'" Parker asked, stretching without standing up and then curling back against Hardison like a cat. "There's no 'what now.' There's just movies and popcorn and you telling us what's really going on."

Eliot looked over at them, the both of them watching him expectantly, but not prying for answers. He was reminded of the quiet, but constant presence he felt when he was working with an elephant. The thought startled him a little. Finding in another person, alone two, that undemanding peace that he’d always associated with an animal that couldn't talk back... It was like they just wanted to be near him, without having secret agendas, no handing out of declarations or ultimatums. Friends really weren't so bad after all; the trick was finding good ones.

"I think I'm going to fuck everything up," Eliot said after a long pause. He was sure he was going to trip over the words when he finally said them, but he'd managed it quite well. "I never done this before, on my own, in charge. I met her and she was so beautiful and sad, and I just can't fuck this up. I can't fail her." Eliot was looking across the room at the lacy curtains hanging over the window. He couldn't look at Hardison and Parker, not while he was admitting weakness, because then the ground actually would have to open up and swallow him. He studied the curtains instead.

He sensed shifting on the couch next to him, but he didn't look over for fear of being met with sad puppy eyes. Parker crawled into his lap and kissed him on the chin, which was somehow so much worse and so much better than what he’d been expecting.

"I don't think you'll fuck it up," Hardison said, sliding over onto Parker's vacated cushion. "Like, I don't think you're physically capable of screwing this one up. You're so dedicated."

"Yeah, but if --"

"No," Parker interrupted. "Hardison's right. And I don't say that often."

"Thanks," Hardison said, rolling his eyes. "But I meant it, man. With the passion and the love you've got... You can't screw it up. And we'll be around. If you need anything."

Parker was nudging her nose along Eliot's jaw line while Hardison was talking, all casual and quiet like it was something she thought was totally normal. Eliot thought it was very distracting. "Thanks, Hardison," Eliot muttered. "Parker, what are you... What are you doing?"

Her voice was muffled when she answered. "You said that we're friends, right?"

"This is friends?" Eliot wasn't sure, since he didn't really do 'friends', but he was pretty sure groping wasn't supposed to be part of the equation.

"You're cute," she added.

"Parker's got a bit of a thing for you," Hardison said with a shrug.

"I thought you guys were... together?"

"I think you're cute too," Hardison said by way of explanation.

Eliot laughed, genuine instead of nervous, and pushed Parker gently backwards into Hardison's lap. "We're going to need to lay down a few ground rules, I think. You guys have been trying to seduce me this whole time and never tried just, you know, mentioning it?"

There was general muttering and shifty looks. "Sort of?" Hardison said it like a question, like he wasn't sure how Eliot was going to react. They were both watching him closely, once again not prying or demanding an action from him.

Eliot took a few moments to think. He thought about options and futures and what exactly any of this was supposed to mean. Then he decided that he didn't care and he would figure it out later because Parker's couch was actually kind of comfortable. Plus, her hair had smelled really nice, especially when she was in his lap and he found it weirdly easy to talk to Hardison.

"I'm going to be so busy," Eliot said. "And my contract here is only for another four and a bit months. I don't know --"

"We don't have to talk about it right now," Parker said quickly. She had her fingers twisted through Hardison's and together they took Eliot's hand. "It can be one of those things that is, but we don't talk about it."

Eliot thought that sounded fair. Complicated, maybe, but fair. "We have to talk about eventually. It would be stupid not to."

Hardison was grinning into Parker's hair and when Eliot caught his eye, he started to laugh. "So if this is a thing or whatever... It's the elephant in the room."

Eliot groaned and pulled his hand away. "No cheesy jokes or I swear I will walk out and never speak to you again."

Hardison mimed zipping his lips shut with a smirk.

"Like I said," Eliot continued. "We obviously have to talk about it because it won't work at all if we don't, but tonight maybe isn't the best time. We could just --"

"Shut up," Parker said happily before dragging him into a kiss.

Comments

[blueswan]

I really enjoyed this. It gave me the gave me the warmest fuzziest warm fuzzies ever.

[sunspot]

Well, that is fabulous news. :D Thanks!

[cybel]

Boy, were you ever too hard on yourself about this one. It's absolutely lovely, and I'd love seeing a sequel at some point!

[sunspot]

Oh goodness, thank youuuu <33 I've been kicking around ideas for time stamps, but I'm not sure what I want to do.

[cybel]

There's lots of story still to be told, so hopefully something will inspire you.

[schneefink]

Awww, Eliot and elephants. Lovely warm story.

[sunspot]

Thanks :D