Hardison howls as he topples over the edge - he'll never not, he can't help it, he wasn't made for this - but even as he flies down the rope, his heart racing painfully, adrenaline telling him you're going to die, he trusts in the very hands that landed him out here. The hands, strong and sure, that pushed him into the open air, that laced the harness that wraps chokingly tight around him, that have plucked him from and pushed him into danger a thousand times.

Small hands check him over with gentle efficiency as he lands, and Hardison yelps protests at Parker and glares at Eliot and neither of them do anything but grin, dragging him off in their wake yet again, in an endless free fall Hardison long gave up on escaping.