Summary: Written for comment fic on LJ. Prompt: Leverage, Hardison/Eliot, the fake birthday date, why Hardison didn't find the real birthday date.

Not much Hardison in this, and not really pairing-like…er…I have no idea how this came about. I mean, that prompt should not have made me think of this, but it did. Sorry!

Story title from "Ramblin' Man" by the Allman Brothers.

Born in the Backseat of a Greyhound Bus

Mama had never been much good at counting. She hadn't counted on her God-fearing parents throwing her out of the house when she'd told them she was gonna have a baby. She hadn't counted how much money she'd had on her when she'd got on that bus and thus didn't know how much of her life savings she'd lost to some bastard pickpocket who'd thought a very pregnant fifteen-year-old was a good mark. At least he'd left her some money. She hadn't counted how many weeks it had been since that no-good football player boyfriend of hers had knocked her up either.

Which is how she'd ended up giving birth in the backseat of a Greyhound Bus, just like the old song. Ironically, they were going down Highway 41, too.

She'd started feeling the pains right around lunchtime, but put it up to the fact that the baby was a real energetic baby, keeping her up all the night through, jabbing an elbow in her ribs, a knee in her liver, and a foot in her bladder the whole time. She'd thought, maybe she was just hungry. She'd thought, maybe the baby disagreed with the hot dog she'd had for lunch. She'd thought, well, it was too early anyhow, wasn't it?

By the time she was sitting in a puddle of water on the dirty pleather seat in the back of the bus, they were already rolling bumpily along, and the busman had said they wouldn't stop 'til breakfast the next day.

So she'd kept quiet, didn't want to upset nobody, until she'd bit right through her lip trying to keep from screamin' her head off. All afternoon, and all night, she'd kept quiet, and even though just about everyone on the bus but the driver had known something was up with the little slip of a girl with the watermelon belly squirming in the back seat, no one had spoken up or said anything. Didn't want no trouble, butting into someone else's business.

Come morning, the bus pulled up into the station, and there was one more passenger howling his anger at the world.

Mama had never been much good at counting, and she was never quite sure when exactly her baby boy had been born, havin' been half out of her mind with pain by that time (and she'd lost her bus ticket with the date on it somewhere between Tennessee and Kentucky), but she always made sure he knew he could count on her for anything.

So when Hardison storms in, sayin' Eliot'd lied about his birth date and demands to know the real day, he just laughs and says, "What does it matter when I was born? I was born."