Last month, I was putting together a bookshelf and texting some friends about my struggles. Namely, with nails not going in straight. Part of the dialogue from here is directly from that chat; after I used the word "leveraging" it all kinda just spiraled out from there. And so, thanks go to frankiemcstein and domina tempore for their assistance with this fic. And yes, it's short and sweet, but that's kind of the point. ;) Just a fun little humorous one-shot to brighten your day!

Unbetaed. Standard disclaimers apply.

Eliot Spencer had walked in on his team involved in enough random activities that he was sure nothing they did could surprise him. Parker in a nun's habit? Normal. Sophie re-enacting a scene from Macbeth? No surprise. Hardison building a supercomputer from scratch? Run of the mill. Even on a day when they had no current jobs, he expected someone to be up to something in Nate's apartment. Yet somehow, he still found himself pausing at the sight that greeted him that afternoon.

A half-dozen boards of various lengths and widths were spread around the floor, some with screws sticking out of them and some lying there with empty holes where screws were supposed to go. Different-sized nuts, bolts, screws, and nails were piled in openings on the floor amongst the boards. Hardison was kneeling on the far side of the room, frowning as he tried to maneuver a hammer on one of the boards in his hands. Several other pieces of wood were balanced to his right, having already been screwed together in various places.

"Hardison?" Eliot was almost afraid to ask, but he couldn't help himself. Call it morbid curiosity. The hacker wasn't exactly one to perform manual labor without being forced.

Hardison dropped the hammer in surprise. "Oh, hey, Eliot! Didn't hear you come in," he greeted as he reached over the board to retrieve his tool.

"What are you doing?"

"Oh, uh, well, see, I bought a new bookcase, but it said there was some assembly required." Hardison frowned. "More like 'all assembly required,'" he complained, reaching for the coffee mug that sat off to the side.

Noticing his friend draining the last drops of the mug's contents, Eliot sighed. "How long have you been working on this?"

"Um, I dunno. What time is it?" Hardison paused mid-swig and raised an eyebrow at Eliot, his voice muffled by the drinkware.

"Almost four."

Hardison blinked and lowered his mug. "Oh shoot! Man, I've been here since lunchtime." When Eliot raised an eyebrow of his own, Hardison felt the need to explain himself. "See, so I went to the store to pick up a new… well, you won't care, but something for the computers in Lucille. Anyway, and so I found this shelf and it looked like just what I've been saying Nate needs, and so I brought it back here - and let me tell you, getting it up the stairs was no easy task since it wouldn't fit in the elevator and all - and then I figured I'd just throw it together real fast, but then I had to find the toolbox and then I had to decipher the dang instruction manual - I think somebody in China somewhere just threw it all into Google Translate, because let me tell you, some of this makes no sense - and then-"

"Hardison!" Eliot barked. He felt a headache coming on from trying to follow the jumbled explanation.

There was a brief pause after Eliot's outburst, then Hardison gestured with his hammer. "These nails won't go in straight," he finished.

Eliot sighed. "Crooked nails usually means they're bein' hit too hard, as stupid as that sounds," he explained. "Make sure you hold 'em at the base for as long as you can, and tap 'em rather than hitting. As for getting stuck nails unstuck, claw hammer is your best bet, but you'll need to replace the nail."

"Well, I knew the pulling them out part," Hardison defended himself, even as he worked at the nail again. "I tried using the hammer to pull them out; it's not working… Oh, wait. There we go. Yeah, the hammer wasn't working at first, but I think I was leveraging it wrong." He rolled his eyes. "Dang nails shouldn't be so touchy."

"It ain't the nail's fault, Hardison," Eliot growled. He moved closer and squatted down to examine the closest boards. Then he frowned. "Hardison, why would you buy this? It's shoddy workmanship."

"It was on sale!" Hardison defended, grunting as the nail finally came loose.

Eliot's brow furrowed. "It's a false economy, man! You're gonna spend… gimme that hammer. Give it!"

"Oooh, are you gonna hit Hardison with the hammer?"

Both men jumped at the sound of Parker's voice and glanced over at the couch simultaneously. The blonde was perched cross-legged on the top of the seat, watching them with interest.

Hardison recovered first. "Excuse you, woman?"

"Oh." Parker blinked. "I mean, uh, no? Don't hit Hardison with the hammer?"

"I'm not hittin' anyone!" Eliot glared. "I'm just gonna fix this mess he made."

At that, Hardison pointed to the partially-assembled pieces of shelf in front of him. "It's already half-finished!" he protested.

"Half-finished ain't finished; now give me that hammer." Eliot held out his hand.

Hardison now had said tool behind his back. "Do you really need the hammer, man? Why don't you just, uh, supervise? Or use something else? Like your bare hands?"

Glaring darkly at the other man, Eliot reached for the directions. "Fine. You want me to supervise?"

"Um… what's the safer answer?"

And that was how, an hour later, Nate and Sophie walked into the apartment to be confronted by a solid, six-foot-tall bookshelf with arguing voices drifting from behind it.

"That nail goes right there, Hardison."

"You sure about that? That don't look right."

"I'm tellin' you; you gotta make sure the backing is secured or else it's gonna buckle and look worse than it already does."

"But it said every twelve inches!"

"Exactly! And twelve inches is right there!"

Nate exchanged a look with Sophie, and both of them looked over at where Parker was sitting on the kitchen counter, watching the goings-on as she munched on a bowl of popcorn. She offered a wave even as she stuffed another handful of kernels in her mouth. Nate sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose, then cleared his throat.

Both voices halted at that, and a second later, both Eliot and Hardison glanced around opposite sides of the shelf. A sheen of sweat illuminated Hardison's face, and the word "frazzled" was the only one appropriate enough to describe the look in his eyes. Eliot's look nearly matched the other man's, hair that had come loose from his ponytail was hanging in his face, and he was glowering as he took a breath.

"What are you boys doing?" Sophie asked, barely hiding her laughter.

"Hardison bought a cheap bookshelf, and Eliot didn't hit him with the hammer," Parker summarized. She nodded as she reached back into her bowl of popcorn.

"I wasn't gonna hit him with the hammer," Eliot growled.

Parker made a face. "That's what I said."

"I ain't so sure about that," Hardison coughed.

"I'm not even going to ask," Nate sighed. He waved a hand at the packaging that was now strewn around his floor as he went up the stairs to his bedroom. "Just clean this up, will you? I don't want to step on any nails in the middle of the night."

Sophie walked over to the refrigerator and pulled the door open as Parker hopped off the counter. The younger woman moved to put her empty bowl in the sink, even as she looked over at the bookshelf eagerly. "Can I hit somebody with the hammer next?" she asked.

Hardison made a choking sound.

"We ain't hittin' anybody with the hammer!" Eliot exclaimed.

"But what if they're a really bad guy?" Parker defended her question. "Sophie hit that guy in Nate's apartment that one time."

"Tell you what, Parker," Sophie said, "if someone tries to kill Nate again, you can hit them with whatever you want."

"Promise?" Parker asked excitedly.

The other three exchanged glances.

"I think we're starting self-defense classes tomorrow," Eliot muttered, shaking his head and turning back to the shelf.

Fin.