The Cat-Burglar Job.

Chapter 1

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

The next day, as Eliot slouched in the door late, Parker popped up and waved something under his nose: “Look!”

It was her phone, showing a photo of three cats in what he presumed was some sort of insanely expensive cat-box. It was upholstered, and crammed with teeny cat-size gymnastics challenges, and Hardison’s hand could also be seen in the photo, making one of the cats wave a paw.

“Hardison helped me name them,” she explained. Eliot very carefully did not wonder if she’d called him ‘Hardison’ all of last night.

“This one is Benjamin,” she said, pointing at one who was looking off, unfocused, “and this one is Susan,” the one Hardison was using as a posable action-figure, “and the black one is Grover.”

Eliot couldn’t help help asking. “Like the muppet?” He couldn’t quite imagine kid-Parker watching Sunday morning TV in her pyjamas, eating Froot Loops, but she’d grown up in America, so she must have.

Parker looked at him like he was a new kind of idiot. “Like the thousand. They’re mommy’s little one-thousand, one-hundred and one dollars,” she proclaimed. And Eliot had thought Parker in a relationship would be weird.

That began the month of daily cat stories. Nate would put on his sunglasses and sip thoughtfully at whatever he had in his hands, as if he was listening. Sophie made vague encouraging noises. Hardison, apparently, was excused, since he had explained to her about cat-litter. But Eliot was required to demonstrate interest in each and every update, such as:

“Benjamin broke into my closet and spread all my socks out across the hallway! I told you guys he was a natural.”

Or, “Susan can jump 62 inches from a standing start. That’s phenomenal, isn’t it? Think what she’ll be able to achieve after training!”

And even once, terrifyingly, “He likes his belly rubbed,” which had caused Eliot to cry out in horror, before she clarified, “Grover, I mean.”

At first Eliot suspected her good mood was from getting laid regularly, deflected onto the cats since she was incapable of expressing normal human appreciation. But eventually he concluded that she was, in addition to just plain nuts, also nuts about the cats.

Presumably she was nuts about Hardison too, since he wandered around with the dazed look of the well-laid man, but she didn’t ever talk about that.

It was a little weird, Parker and Hardison; not just because, well, Parker, but also because he suddenly became aware that he had been spending time with them, and now they were spending time with each other, and, well. Awkward. Still, he was a grown-up, so he gave them space.

Which would have worked out better if Parker hadn’t dragged him to her home (and, really, he knew Parker had a place to live, but he hadn’t ever associated it with the word “home”, and if he’d thought about he might have imagined a well-padded coffin) “to meet her cats.”

“No, it’s okay, I– I feel like I know them already. From your stories.”

“But they don’t know you, Eliot, although I’ve told them about you. They need to become familiar with you now so that when it comes time for you to teach them to fight, they’re comfortable learning.”

He gaped at her.

She looked at him earnestly, and then collapsed giggling. “I’m kidding. You’ll like them. They’re thieves.”

“Is Hardison going to be there?” he asked warily. It felt weird if he was going to be alone in her apartment with Hardison’s girl.

“Would you like him to be?” asked Parker, in a way which made Eliot dimly suspect that he and Parker were having two subtly different conversations.

“Well, that’s-” he started, and gave up. It wasn’t as if Parker had any inclinations in his direction, which, thank god. Even if it wasn’t very flattering. Sophie might have been crazy for Nate, but at least she looked now and then. “No, it’s fine.”

And it was fine, until Parker opened the door and took one step inside, and froze. “Someone was here,” she said, and Eliot automatically pushed her behind him, scanning the painfully clean apartment as he edged through doors.

The place was empty, but one of the window panes was broken; a clumsy job, he thought, although they’d have to get Hardison in to check how the security had been compromised.

“They’re gone,” he reported, returning to the kitchen. “Did you call the others?”

Parker was staring at a note taped to the fridge. “I can’t,” she said, her voice flat. “He took them.”

And Eliot realized that the apartment was empty empty.

“He took them. He took my cats,” Parker said. She kicked the fridge door, emptied the knife block into the sink, and then slid to crouch on the floor, making high, suffocated noises that were much worse than real crying.

Eliot’s usual response to upset women was the standard shoulder-pat-there-there, but Parker was coiled like a rattlesnake. Instead, he gently tugged the crumpled note out of her hand, careful not to touch her, and scanned it.

It was pretty much what he’d expected; do this job and get the cats back, I’m watching you, tell no one. It was signed “Fish.”

“Someone you know?” he asked.

“Fish is why I started working alone,” Parker said, her face drawn into stark lines. “I can’t believe this. He took my cats.”

“It’ll– " and Eliot had been accused of being slightly prone to charging into rescue a damsel in distress, but first, Parker was no damsel, and second, cats. She was making the quiet, high noise again, and he didn’t know if she knew she was making it, and he had to make her stop. “It’ll be okay. We’ll get the team on it, Hardison and Nate will find him, and then we’ll fuck him up so bad that his grandpa will walk funny. We’ll get them back.”

She grabbed his ankle, still on the floor, and her fingers were like claws. “No. I am doing what he says. I am getting my cats back. They’re small and mine, and if he hurts them, then– I’ll do the job, and get them back safe. Don’t tell anyone don’t you fucking dare.”

She was crunched into a small space in a corner where two cupboards met, and he couldn’t tell if she looked small and fragile or like a bomb about to explode.

He moved carefully, and slowly. “Okay. Okay, whatever you want. Just. I’d really like to rearrange this guy’s face, and maybe his ribs, so if you could see your way to introducing us, that’d be. Good.”

She looked at him properly for the first time, and something sparked in her eyes. “Okay. You come with me. When I make the drop.”

He nodded, and carefully did not say that if this went like most hostage situations, in his experience, the guy only needed one cat to make his threat good. “What’s the situation? Why’d he target you?”

“He was the people man,” she said. “He did logistics and mapping from the inside. But I didn’t like him. More than I don’t like most people. And he touched me sometimes.”

There was a familiar black roaring in his ears, a sound that usually indicated he was about to put someone’s head through a wall.

Her mouth twisted up at the corners. “He was addicted to Turkish Delight. You know, the candy? So I dusted a new laxative tab into the box every time he put his hand on my knee.” She sighed happily. “He had diarrhoea for three weeks. And then I took the score, both his half and mine, and moved to Rome.”

Not a damsel. Right. But still… “Okay. If he’s watching, which he probably isn’t, then he already knows I was here,” he said. “You’re coming back to my place tonight. You can’t stay in a compromised location.”

“Okay,” she said, and unfolded. “I’ll do the job on Thursday. Don’t tell anyone, don’t, or I swear-”

“I promise,” he told her. “Grab your things.”

* * *

It was pretty grim at the office. They weren’t actually running a con–a job, as Nate liked to call it–but they were doing the prep-work for one, checking out a client’s story to make sure they weren’t being worked, checking out their target for soft points. His work was mostly warm-body stuff–strolling around outside the target’s mistress’s apartment to see what the security was like, for no reason he knew of yet; just big picture stuff which would turn into whatever fiendish plan Nate would eventually produce in bits and pieces, pretending he didn’t love screwing the mark.

Parker didn’t pretend nothing was wrong, precisely; she just shut down, and didn’t react to anything at all. Luckily, she was supposed to be planting bugs in the target’s corporate headquarters, but even in the brief period she was in the office to get the electrical company coveralls, he realized how much of her was just missing. And that six months ago, he wasn’t sure it had even been there to go missing.

He caught her shoulder as she left with her toolbox. “Hey. You okay?”

She looked at him dead-eyed, but when he didn’t let her go, she slowly regained a little bit of animation, some kind of emotion appearing in her eyes. He sort of thought it was passionate hatred, but he also sort of thought he preferred it to zombie-Parker. He sort of thought he might be a little fucked up.

“Busy. Job to do,” she said, and bared her teeth in something smile-shaped.

“Hey, Parker,” said Hardison, swinging around the doorway, “you want me to come along in the van and keep you company over the ear-pieces? ‘Cuz you know I don’t mind talking to all my invisible friends. I’ve got a spider digging through his history,” he added, to Eliot, as if he needed to defend his work ethic, “It won’t turn up anything for a couple hours, if there’s anything to find.”

Parker turned to Hardison, and some play of emotion crossed her face that Eliot couldn’t decode. She was struggling with something, and Hardison’s easy smile slowly faded to something more confused, and then to suspicious as she still said nothing. Eliot realized his hand was still on Parker’s shoulder and snatched it back.

“I don’t–” said Parker, finally. “I don’t want you to. Thank you.” And left.

Hardison looked at him, open confusion on his face. “That was weird, right?”

“Honestly, I can’t tell normal Parker-weird from weird Parker-weird,” Eliot said, but had no idea if he sounded convincing. Hardison was giving Eliot a slightly milder version of the baffled and concerned look he had just given Parker. “But, yeah, that was maybe a little bit weird. Because… of the thank you.”

“Oh, she’s thanked me before,” Hardison said, but it didn’t come off as smug as he probably wanted it to, and his forehead wrinkled immediately after.

Eliot tried to play along, grimacing. “I don’t need to hear that, like, ever. And if you’re itching for action, you can come with me.”

“Why, where are you going?”

“Jogging,” Eliot said.

Hardison nodded. “Yeah, okay. I got some sweats in the closet.”

And he went to get them, while Eliot’s jaw dropped. “What the fuck?” he muttered. Still, Thursday was tomorrow. He could take this one day of Parker being weird and Hardison catching it from her. He’d promised. And if Parker got three furry little bodies back instead of three furry little thieves, he was breaking that promise and bringing the others in to rain all holy hell upon this Fish’s ass.

But he didn’t really want to talk to Hardison – who apparently thought “sweats” should be colour-coordinated and matched with high-end cross-trainers, jesus – when he couldn’t tell him the truth, so he set the pace high. Hardison kept up, for a mile, and then stumbled to a halt, bending over to gasp.

Eliot jogged back and ran in place, keeping his knees up.

“Just tell me-” Hardison gasped, and then bent again, coughing hard “-just tell me, is she gonna break up with me?”

Eliot stopped. “Wha-?”

“Like, has she come up to you all, ‘Hey, Eliot, you break up with people. How do people do that?’” Hardison had a great poker face, but it was nowhere in evidence. “I mean, I thought we were doing okay, but-” and he shrugged, and in that shrug Eliot could see all the insight and understanding a man dating Parker would have to use every day, and his respect for Hardison rose several notches.

“No, man, no,” he said, and risked: “Nothing like that. Maybe it’s just her, you know… that time.”

“That was last week,” Hardison said absently. “Yeah. I don’t know.”

Eliot accepted that he was now going to have a mental calendar ticking off weeks for Parker that he would never be able to be ignorant of. Then he realized that might be the best-case scenario: if things went wrong this time, he didn’t think sending Nate after her in her mystery bolt-hole would cut it.

“Listen,” he told Hardison awkwardly, “it’s probably just– you know, temporary. Maybe if you give her some time?”

Hardison squinted up at him, still bent over. “You think?”

Eliot wanted to say, “I promise,” but that would sound too suspicious and was stupid besides. “Probably?” he said instead, even though it sounded pretty weak.

He kept the pace down on the jog back, pretty much from guilt, and at a more reasonable pace, he thought it was possible that Hardison’s fitness actually might be improving. Then he suddenly thought about where Hardison might be getting his exercise these days and sprinted the rest of the way back.

The images wouldn’t get out of his head, though, and that was really unfortunate, because Parker was sleeping in his bed. Of course he’d offered the bed, and of course Parker didn’t know she was supposed to say, “No, thanks, Eliot, that’s very generous, but I’ll sleep on the couch.” She’d just said, “Okay,” and started stripping.

So he lay on his couch, which was great for watching the game on, but not long enough for proper leg extension, and stayed awake, and tried not to think of Parker and Hardison doing whatever Parker and Hardison did,

He had dreams that night that he was never going to admit having to any living soul, and woke sour-faced and angry at 4 a.m., when Parker slipped in the door.

“I got them,” she said, hoisting a small black bag that clinked. Her face had none of the evil joy that usually accompanied a successful score, and he was moving to hug her before he even thought about it.

If he had thought about it he wouldn’t have done it, and Parker stiffened for a moment that made him afraid he’d done a very bad thing, but then she awkwardly put her free arm around his waist and squeezed.

“It’ll be all right,” he said, moving slowly as he let her go. “What time’s the drop?”

“Six,” she said. “I’m gonna. Go lie down.”

Eliot tried to do the same thing, but he couldn’t forget that skinny little arm curling around him.

Crap.

* * *

Fish hadn’t killed the cats. He turned up at the warehouse on time, with all three caterwauling in a carrier that was way too small; didn’t the man know anything about animals? He was a tall guy with balding blond hair, and a face that said “trust me”. Eliot knew the type.

And Fish knew Eliot, at least by reputation, because his face sort of stuttered for a second when he saw him standing beside Parker.

“Yeah,” Eliot said, unfolding his arms. “I’m Eliot Spencer.”

“I don’t want any trouble,” Fish said carefully. “I just want the score, Lucinda. Just what you owe me.”

“Give them back to me,” Parker said, zombie-calm.

Fish took a careful step forward, and set the carrier down on the concrete of the warehouse floor without looking away from Parker. Eliot couldn’t decide whether he approved of Fish’s respect for Parker’s abilities, or if he was going to make sure that he mentioned to Fish that he didn’t like being overlooked while he broke his toes.

“Lemme see ’em,” said Fish, and Parker upended the bag into her palm and tipped it slightly toward him so he could see the uncut gems. She picked one off the top and underhanded it to Fish. She didn’t even throw it so he’d have to scramble to catch it; just an easy lift of his hand and it was trapped. Fish pulled out a loupe from around his neck and gave the stone a cursory inspection, but apparently he didn’t think Parker was going to try to pull a switch, because he pocketed the stone.

“Okay, Spencer sits down cross-legged, you put the stones by the door. When you put them down, I’m going to leave the cats, and you can come get them while I leave the building. Understand?”

Parker nodded her agreement, and started walking, but Fish said, “Wait. Spencer first.”

Apparently Fish wasn’t completely stupid. Eliot knelt down on the filthy concrete, sitting seiza.

“Cross-legged,” said Fish, and unlatched the carrier door to gently flick one of the cats’ ears. Parker took a shaky breath next to him that Eliot was pretty sure Fish couldn’t hear.

“Hey,” Eliot tried, “Parker’s the flexible one, not me. You want me to dislocate a hip?”

Fish didn’t look terribly bothered by the thought, so Eliot unfolded himself and sat cross-legged. Fish nodded at Parker, and she wordlessly stalked toward the building’s only remaining entrance.

Fish looked at Eliot curiously. “She paying you for this, or are you here because she’s… flexible?”

Eliot smiled at Fish in a way which communicated, he hoped, the joys of having one’s larynx crushed.

“You do know she’s totally bugfuck, right?” tried Fish. “She won’t give you whatever she’s promised, and she’ll screw you over just for giggles.”

Eliot was actually planning to go with ‘smile like you’re going to enjoy his pleas for mercy,’ but found himself saying, “Coming from a guy who kidnaps cats, that carries a lot of weight.”

Fish looked baffled and fascinated by Eliot now, which he hadn’t before, but Parker put down her bag of gems and started walking back. Fish jerked his head to one side, pulled out something, and Eliot was already rolling, rather than try to get to his feet fast enough, but it wasn’t a gun, it was a can, and Fish maced him, then turned and ran.

Parker sprinted back toward her cats, but when Eliot yelled, (a manly bellow of indescribable fucking pain) she hesitated between the carrier and Eliot. Eliot could still see, sort of, through his tears, out of one eye, so he waved Parker off. “I’m good, check the cats,” and her hesitation before doing so was kind of flattering, if one could feel flattered while crying tears of snot and agony.

“I am going to FUCKING TEAR OFF HIS EARS AND USE THEM AS BARMATS,” Eliot choked. He’d been maced before, and he knew he’d survive it, but god and all his harp-playing angels, it didn’t feel like it. Blindly, he began stumbling toward the door.

“Eliot– hold on,” said Parker, suddenly in closer than he realized she was, and putting a hand on his arm. “Stay here, I’ll get the saline from the van.”

So Eliot kept the cats company in the middle of the warehouse, all of them making pathetic mewling noises. After a moment he opened the carrier door, mostly by feel - they must have been fucking cramped in there - and let them crawl over him. One settled in his lap and rolled over, and he dimly remembered to rub its belly.

Parker made a choked noise, and leaned over him. Her hands were shaking slightly, which was a bad sign in a world-class thief, but she got the saline into his eyes and he blinked and blinked until his vision cleared a bit, to show him Parker’s face, a couple of inches from his own.

There were tears running down her cheeks, but she was smiling like the sun coming up. “It’s okay,” she said, gasping a bit. “You told me it would be okay, and it is.”

Then she kissed him. It was just as well that his arms were full of cats, or he would have tugged her down onto the concrete floor right then and there, and that would have been the biggest fuck-up of his impressive personal record.

This is just a thank you kiss, he told himself. She’s only - she’s not right, she don’t know how people - and then he gave up and enjoyed it until she pulled away.

She looked faintly startled, as if she’d surprised herself too, and then she picked up the grey tabby and snuggled her. “I’m here, Susan,” she cooed. “Mommy is here. She will never leave you behind. She’s going to get the bad man. Yes, she is! Yes, she is!”

“Right,” Eliot said, staggering to his feet with Grover and Benjamin batting at his jacket. “Let’s get to the office.” Where they had the means for incredible revenge, and the really good painkillers.

But Parker wanted to go by her apartment first, to pick up all the cat junk she claimed was necessary to get them over this traumatic period. He had to concede that if the kittens went to the bathroom on any of Hardison’s stuff instead of in their litter box, there’d be hell to pay. His stomach sort of curdled when he thought of Hardison, but it was just a thank you kiss. It didn’t mean anything.

Parker had to lead him up her stairs, which was just humiliating, and he mentally added fingernail extraction to his list of entertainments for Fish. But his eyes were clearing more every second.

Enough so that when Parker pushed the door open, and froze, he could see the reason why.

“So,” Nate said, lounging in the corner of the kitchen. Sophie was inspecting the curtains, but she turned to smile at both of them. Hardison wasn’t smiling, arms folded as he slouched against the table. “Tell us about Mr. Fish.”

Chapter 2

Chapter Summary

Wherein Eliot begins to realise the extent of the hole he has dug, and Fish does not.

Chapter Notes

Eliot wasn’t quite sure when seeing Nathan Ford had become the signal for thank god, someone to take over this clusterfuck, but even half-blind and still weepy, he was relieved. He couldn’t quite feel that way about either Sophie or Hardison; Sophie could make him feel like a hick with hay in his hair at the best of times, and Hardison– Eliot stumbled his way to Parker’s kitchenette and ran more water over his face to make sure he’d gotten all the atomized chili pepper out of his eyes. Although the water was running, he could hear Parker tell them more or less what she’d already told him.

“Spencer?” said Nate, “what can you add?”

Eliot, with a jolt, realized Nate hadn’t called him Spencer for a while; Nate was pissed. “He’s going to look pretty funny when I rip out his tongue?” Eliot suggested, stalling a second, while he tried to put together something helpful from his ten minute impression. “He uh. I’d bet he’s never worked with a partner twice in a row; he’s most comfortable when a relationship is on a cash basis. He keeps his promises, but mostly because it’s bad business otherwise. He’s careful, and he’s afraid of physical pain.” Eliot grinned to himself at the last one.

Nate nodded. “Does that sound right to you, Parker?”

Parker was on the floor, looking perfectly relaxed, while a cat tried to climb the front of her chest, and although Eliot wasn’t quite sure because she was in front of him, he thought she might be leaning against Hardison’s leg. Parker looked up when Nate said her name.

“I guess? Did you notice anything about him, Grover?”

Grover had no contribution to make.

Eliot thought Hardison looked– tense. Unhappy. Obviously, he’d bugged them, but the important question was, where had he put the bugs, and had they made any noise during the thank you kiss that meant nothing at all and especially not that he was going to make a play for Hardison’s girl.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Hardison asked.

Parker looked up. “He said not to.”

“But you should have– we’re –”

“Oh. Is this part of the dating thing?”

Hardison winced, nodded, and crouched beside her. “I saw you upset,” he said, careful and plain. “That made me upset, you get me?”

Parker tilted her head. “Huh. Okay. Yeah.”

Eliot thought that he might be in the clear, but then Hardison looked at him and said “And why didn’t you tell me?”

“That is an excellent question,” Sophie said. “Parker, these drapes have got to go. I can recommend a fantastic interior designer.”

“I promised Parker I wouldn’t,” Eliot said. And while Nate rolled his eyes, and Sophie made a tut-tut noise, Hardison nodded as if he understood, and something eased in Eliot’s stomach.

“I like the curtains,” Parker said. “Beige is very soothing. What are we going to do to Fish? I vote for explosions.”

“That might be excessive,” Nate suggested.

Parker rose to her feet, handed Grover and Susan to Hardison, and stalked towards Nate. “He stole my cats.”

“Prison,” Sophie said. “He locked your cats up; we’ll lock him up. How about a new sofa, then?”

“Bastard fucking pepper-sprayed me,” Eliot pointed out. “Whatever the plan is, there needs to be a part where I break his face.”

Nate looked inscrutable. “I’ll try to work that in.”

* * *

Hardison tracked Fish’s airport departure time and Eliot resisted his nagging urge to ask him if he was sure Fish was going to be there, or if he had just bought tickets to throw off possible pursuit, because he was, actually, sure that Hardison was at least as serious about this as he was.

“Stop watching over my shoulder, man, it’s freaky. It’s like trying to hack into the city electric while the librarian checks every fifteen minutes to make sure you ain’t watching porn.”

“Sorry,” said Eliot, and went back to pacing the hallway. His eyes and nose had stopped running, but the urge to rub them clear hadn’t receded, so he was trying to keep his fingers knit to stop himself from rubbing them red again. Nate and Sophie were out setting up the hook, so Sophie couldn’t threaten him, and Hardison had his headphones on, so Eliot figured it wasn’t like he could hear him anyway, except a couple minutes later something flew out and hit him in the shin.

“Sit yo’ ass down, man!” Hardison called, and held up his hand for whatever he’d thrown. Eliot retrieved it; it looked like one of his USB data things. “C’mon, he pepper-sprayed you, does it really bother you so much?”

Eliot snorted. “You’ve never been maced, obviously.”

Hardison continued as if Eliot hadn’t spoken. “‘Cuz if you think you gotta win a fight with him to prove something, I promise, you’re still manly enough for me.”

“Yeah, but so’s Parker,” Eliot pointed out, and then heard what he’d said and tried to figure out if he’d just insinuated something he hadn’t meant to. “Anyway,” he said, quickly, “that’s not it. Not all of it. I don’t like someone loose out there who’s gotten one over on us.”

“Yeah,” said Hardison. “I get that.”

“I really want to pound him.”

“Not in the plan,” Hardison said.

Which was part of the problem. Eliot had pissed and moaned about it, not least because everyone else got to do what they were good at, and his role was restricted to staying out of sight. It wasn’t a bad plan; it just didn’t have nearly enough broken teeth.

“Okay,” said Hardison. “Here’s what’s gonna happen. You sit in that chair and face that screen, and I introduce you to the wonderful world of Azeroth, where Alliance and Horde have united against the curse of the Scourge.”

Eliot stared at him. “That’s not even English.”

“Shut it, sit it. You’re playing a warrior. The more damage you deal, the more powerful you are.” He nodded, lips pursed. “Yeah. Eliot smash. I’m hacking airport security cameras here, which they will eventually notice, so I got to concentrate.”

“I’m not going to play games with elves,” said Eliot, crossing his arms.

“That’s cool. You could play a gnome, or a– " Hardison abruptly cut himself off and rose a hand for silence. “He’s on your left, Sophie, twenty meters, at the gate-”

Eliot crowded over Hardison’s shoulder, and didn’t even mind when the other man shoved him back a step. In the sketchy black and white security footage, Sophie walked in a little black trenchcoat and dark glasses, just a little too fast. Nothing anyone normal would notice, but a pace that would catch a professional’s eye right away. Fish lifted his head, and froze, the same recognition tell he’d given Eliot, but with none of the fear.

Maybe he was a moron.

“Yeah, baby,” Hardison crowed. “Fish is flopping. Set the hook.”

Sophie teetered on one spindly heel and crashed right into him, then helped him up, her expressive face all polite apologies as she glanced behind, and then a really good look of dawning recognition.

“Sound,” Eliot said. “Hardison, I wanna-”

“Backseat goddamn driver,” Hardison muttered, but he fiddled with one of his computers, and the sound came out over the speakers, Sophie’s voice warm and intimate:

“–heard about your work in Chicago, very impressive, Mr. Fish.”

Fish’s voice was a little flatter. “From the famous Ms. Deveraux, quite a compliment! I wish I could say that was entirely skill, but there was some luck involved, too.”

“I find the very best in the business consistently make their own luck.” Eliot could almost feel Sophie turning that hot look on him, the one that managed to promise everything without saying anything, and then a moment later disappeared so fast you’d think you’d imagined it.

“Have you been lucky, lately?”

“As it happens…” she said, her voice low, “I’ve run into a spot of bad luck. Tell me, Mr. Fish. Have you ever heard of Nathan Ford?”

“The IYS washout? Sure.”

“The ex-IYS, now private agent, non-washout,” she corrected, with a little grimace. “The man is relentless. And he’s been following me for three weeks. He seems to think I have something to do with a large number of missing items from various art galleries and museums, stored right here in L.A.”

“That’s your cue,” Eliot said, but Nate was already moving, just a glimpse of him behind a row of seats - facing the other direction and clearly hunting for her. Sophie directed Fish’s eye, grabbed his arm, and pulled him off-camera.

“Go back corner,” Hardison said, fingers flying. “Okay, gotcha.”

The screen dissolved, then came up, showing the two at a table in the near-by bar.

“I was going to leave my lovelies and run,” Sophie was saying, “but once he’s sure I’ve left the city, I think the irritating Mr. Ford will find them in my absence. He’s almost as good as he thinks he is.”

Eliot bit back a chuckle.

“You can’t move them?”

“Mr. Fish, I can’t go to the bathroom without Ford two steps behind.” Sophie’s lashes went down, then up again. “I don’t suppose I could prevail upon your good nature? For a fee, naturally.”

“Come on, come on,” Eliot said, bouncing on his toes. “Take it, take it.”

Fish’s face was settling into smug lines. “Sorry, Ms. Deveraux. No can do. But I might be able to take these things off your hands. Depending on what you’ve got, I might be willing to go as high as three million.”

“Three million! The collection’s worth three times that! I just want them moved.”

Fish spread his hands. “Look, I’d be taking all the risks here. I get the goodies, and you get three mil in nice, easily transportable diamonds to set you up in your new digs. That’s my offer. Sorry.”

Sophie glared at him and stood abruptly. “I’ll think about it.”

“What is she doing?” Eliot demanded.

Fish settled back into his booth. “Now or never, Ms. Deveraux. You agree, or I’m leaving tonight.”

Sophie hesitated, radiating tension from every line in her back, then flipped him a business card and said, “Fine. Meet me at this hotel bar tomorrow. 8. Sharp.”

“I’ll be there,” he said and tipped an imaginary hat as she walked out. Nate followed her a moment after, never glancing into the bar interior.

Hardison, because he was an enormous geek hit something on his keyboard that made fireworks go off across the screen. “Victory is ours!” He spun his chair in a circle and stretched his arms over his head in something about like a touchdown celebration, but also a bit like an office-worker’s stretch, palms turned up to the ceiling. His sweater pulled down a little and showed his wrists.

“Eliot, go give Mr. Fish his scare,” said Nate, catching his attention back.

That was Eliot’s cue, so he swung around to Fish’s hotel, and lurked. “Not too obvious, Eliot,” said Nate in his ear.

“I was running the Liverpool Loom when you were still tracking down stolen bicycles,” Eliot growled, but Nate actually laughed at him.

“Not unless you were an incredibly menacing toddler.”

Fish hadn’t spotted him yet, so Eliot unfolded a newspaper and installed himself at the cafe across the street. “If he doesn’t see me by the time this place closes, I’m going to heave a brick through his window.”

“Patience, Mr. Spencer. Is that today’s edition? Let me know if you figure out eighteen across.”

Nate probably solved the crosswords when they were typeset the morning before, but the crossword did provide ten minute’s amusement until Hardison came on-line and said, “I got a program that can solve that doing Bayesian regression of the writer’s last two-hundred puzzles and a dictionary,” and then he occupied himself arguing with Hardison over whether or not Google was going to come alive one day and enslave them all.

“I’ve seen their algorithms,” Hardison was saying, “They can find out what kind of toothpaste you– wait, he’s just opened his room, he might be going down to the lobby.”

Eliot picked up his newspaper and slouched a little behind it.

“Yep, the desk is calling him a cab.”

“And you think Google is creepy,” Eliot muttered.

“Are you trying to hurt my feelings?” said Hardison, managing to sound curious without sounding in any way sincere.

Eliot folded his paper and put his phone up to his ear as the bellhop held the door for Fish, and by the way Fish gave a slight jerk before he got in, he was pretty sure he’d been seen. “All right, there better be some beer left,” Eliot said, folding up his phone as soon as Fish’s cab rounded the block. Now Fish knew he had a stalker, and Sophie had a stalker, and if he couldn’t come up with a brilliant plan from that, well, hopefully Nate would be open to Eliot’s suggestions involving barmats.

* * *

It was part of the plan that Parker kept staying with Eliot, so if Fish did any checking, they’d look like partners. Parker agreed to it as long as she could take her cats, and no one bothered to ask Eliot what he thought.

So he walked in to the totally terrifying sight of Parker in the middle of his living room floor cooing over the cats and assuring them that their daddy-Hardison would be able to visit soon.

“If you spoil them, they won’t be an effective ninja crime squad,” he pointed out.

Parker looked at him. “They’re little and they deserve nice things,” she said, and he shied away from that to go and get a beer.

Sitting on his kitchen table was a computer that looked like the electronic equivalent of a Navy Seal fixed-blade commando knife, all black surfaces and clean lines with an air of ruthless efficiency. It had a big red bow stuck to the monitor.

“What the hell is this?”

“It’s your present from Hardison,” Parker said, popping up on his right from god knew where, Benjamin riding on her shoulder.

“I don’t even… what am I gonna do with this?”

His phone rang.

“Play chess,” Hardison said. “And do crosswords. And I’m gonna get you into WoW man, you watch me, I’m relentless.”

“Hardison-”

“You are welcome.”

Eliot gave in. “Thank you,” he said, because he was holding out hope that Parker could learn from example when it came to manners.

“Thank you,” Hardison said, and hung up before Eliot could protest he hadn’t done anything to be thanked for.

Eliot downed half the beer and watched Parker throw sparkly things for the cats to chase, occasionally bending herself in distracting ways to retrieve the toys. The hollow of her throat was too appealing. There ought to be a law, except she’d break it.

“I’m going to bed,” he said at last, pointedly.

“It’s only ten.”

“I’m tired.”

“Whatever,” Parker said, and gathered the cats, storming into his bedroom - his bedroom, which he still wasn’t allowed to use! - without so much as a good night. She wasn’t even human.

Eliot dreamt of the hollow of her throat, and the press of her lips on his, and woke aching into the new day, desperate to hurt someone. He had a crick in his neck and, on top of that, had to bear Parker eating her breakfast. Which was a mustard sandwich.

“I have stuff you could have put on that,” he protested, trying not to watch her chew happily on the bread.

“I like my sandwiches.”

Even though he ate it with his back to her, Eliot’s fig and prosciutto tartine was pretty much ruined.

Afterwards, they went out to get Hardison the footage he wanted, slightly handicapped by Parker’s unwillingness to be separated from her cats.

“It won’t be a problem, I’ll carry them in my jacket,” she told him, and stuffed the cats inside her windbreaker. While they certainly all fit, they would occasionally writhe visibly under its surface, making her look like she was host to some kind of alien parasite, and when they settled down, she looked vaguely pregnant, which was almost as disturbing. Eliot found he couldn’t quite look at her full on; he tried to look like inserting his earpiece required his total attention while they rode the elevator down to the lobby.

“Eliot, checking in,” he said before the elevator door opened, so as to avoid talking to himself in front of the doorman. His opinion of Eliot was already going to take a blow when he saw him escorting a pregnant woman out the door in the morning.

He hadn’t seen Parker put her earpiece in, but she said, “Hardison, what’s our itinerary?” and Hardison answered:

“You’re going to be casing a courier service, Hensen Direct. Don’t take more than an hour, but I want some nice CCTV footage of you opening and closing doors. I’ll give you directions once you’re inside.”

Parker had no particular difficulty getting into the Hensen offices, but before she popped the lock on the service entrance, she suddenly fished into her jacket and handed Eliot a kitten. “Here, she’s a bit energetic this morning.”

Eliot looked at the kitten nonplussed. The kitten looked back at him, or, from the way her eyes were focusing, a point about three feet behind him. Eliot checked over his shoulder, just in case, but the alleyway was empty.

He had planned to wait for Parker across the street, browsing through the magazine stand where he could keep one eye on the alleyway entrance to make sure no one else entered it before Parker came out, but he wasn’t sure how the cat fit into that plan. “Are you going to be a problem?” he asked it.

“Me?” asked Hardison. “Why would I be– you got something you want to confess?”

Eliot’s heart thumped against his ribcage like a two-handed punch. “Jesus! No, I mean– I was talking to the cat.” He stared at the cat, as if she was Hardison, suspicious and watching over his shoulder. She shrugged in his grip like she wanted out, but he wasn’t going to put her down so she could run off.

“They’re good listeners,” said Hardison, as if Eliot hadn’t just admitted– Eliot remembered that he hadn’t admitted to anything, and for lack of a better option, stuck the kitten down his jacket so he could go browse magazines. Maybe he’d look like he had a beer gut.

They didn’t have the New York Times, but there was a cuisine magazine that had some interesting things to say about beef marinades. Eliot was thinking about acidity levels and keeping half an eye on the alley, when the female voice spoke from behind him.

“Oh my god,” she cooed, and Eliot looked down to see the grey head poking out of his zip. “That is so cute!”

Eliot did a quick assessment. Actress-slash-model-slash-waitress, tight pink T-shirt, silver glitter picture of a pony.

No. Well, maybe… no.

“I just love animals!” she said. “What’s his name?”

“Susan.”

“Awwww, look at little Susan.” She poked her finger at the kitten’s face, which Susan, predictably, took offense to. It wasn’t a bad swipe, but her balance was off, so the claws missed the intrusive, red-enamelled finger. “Cats just love me! She’s so cute!”

“What’s going on?” Parker said.

“Some girl’s flirting with Eliot,” Hardison replied, in between bursts of offensive and highly inappropriate laughter.

“Do you want to have sex with her, Eliot?”

“No!” Eliot said, then had to convert it to, “No, she’s not that cute. She’s kind of a… you know, a little rascal.” He hoisted Susan out and rearranged her on his arm.

The woman squealed and held a hand to her heart. “Oh, you have a southern accent! That’s so cute! Are you from Texas? I bet you’re from Texas!”

“Are you sure?” Parker persisted.

Eliot choked, caught between correcting the woman’s stupid and downright insulting misapprehension - Kentucky was nothing like Texas - and getting out of the conversation before Parker showed up and tried to be his wingman.

“Got all the footage I need,” Hardison said.

“Because if you want to have sex with her I want to get Susan back first.”

Eliot smiled weakly. “Well, uh, there’s my…uh, Parker.” He nodded at the alley, where Parker was emerging, did a twist-shuffle, and fled.

“Man, you are so smooth,” Hardison said.

“Shut up.”

“I’m just saying, brother, you ever need some tips, I am there, okay?”

“Shut up.”

“Alec Hardison: Love Doctor.”

“Hardison, you’re gonna need a doctor,” Eliot growled, and met Parker at the van.

“Didn’t you think she was sexually attractive?” Parker wondered, and Eliot was forced to beat his head against the steering wheel a couple times.

But other than that, the operation was a success.

* * *

There was no reason for them to go back to the office and listen in on Sophie’s appointment with Fish, but Parker wanted to, and Eliot was kind of being her bodyguard right then. Well, no one had said so, but he was, right? For appearances, if nothing else. So they swung back around to his apartment to get the cats’ crate, since Parker had developed some kind of hopefully-temporary cat-separation anxiety, and got back to the office with a quarter of an hour to spare before Sophie’s appointment.

“Sorry about the video,” apologized Hardison. “All I got in there is the security cam up behind the cash, and you’re better off not watching it, seriously, it’s got, like, two frames per second, you don’t even want to see it, it’s too brutal.”

Eliot followed Parker’s example and ignored him until he started talking in English. “Where’s Nate?”

“Said he was working out some details, and left humming. Did you know he’s tone-deaf? Because I don’t think he knows.”

“I knew,” said Parker. “He can’t tell an E flat from an F sharp.”

There was something about Parker that always made Eliot check the reaction of those around him: just to make sure she was really as bizarre as she seemed on first impression. But no, Hardison was looking at her with pretty much the expression he knew was on his own face.

Parker noticed their expectant silence and looked up from where she was amusing (or possibly annoying, hard to say) Benjamin, and expanded. “Once, when he was trying to stop me from taking something from the Antiquities Museum in Cairo, he set off the fire alarm to try to make me think I’d hit a security alarm. Hee!” She snickered happily at this memory before noticing that neither of them seemed to be getting the joke. “Because, see, the fire alarm was an F sharp, so that was just ridiculous.”

“Right,” said Eliot, because there didn’t seem to be anything else to say.

“I’m going in,” said Sophie’s voice, and Hardison swung his chair back around so he was facing his tentacled monster computer.

“Reading you loud and clear, Sophie.”

“I can’t go ahead,” Fish said, jerky and grey in the video footage. Eliot smirked, and worked the kinks out of his right hand.

Sophie’s voice was glacial. “We had a deal, Mr. Fish.”

“I know. I’m sorry. That’s why I’m keeping this meeting. But something’s come up and I’ve got to-”

“Mr. Fish,” Sophie said. “I think you know that I am someone with a reputation in our… society. You have a reputation too. As a smart businessman. Who keeps his promises. If I were to make it known that this reputation was, shall we say, undeserved-”

“Is he sweating?” Parker asked. “If he’s sweating the threat is working.”

Fish wiped at his forehead. “You don’t understand. I’m- I had business with a top-storey woman who owed me a favour, and it turns out she’s shacked up with Eliot Spencer.”

“Oh,” said Sophie.

“Yes, oh. Did you know he once disabled a US Marine with a paperclip?”

Eliot sat up straight. “What did he say?”

Hardison waved him off. “It don’t matter-”

“I’ve never disabled a US Marine with anything!”

“I’m trying to-”

“He was from Beli Orlovi, and it was a key ring.”

“Shut up,” Parker said, and flicked the back of his head, really hard.

“It’s the principle,” he muttered, and settled back into his chair, scritching under Grover’s chin. “Semper Fi.”

“-disappointing,” Sophie was saying. “With Ford on me and Spencer and his partner on you. It’s a shame we can’t sic them on each other.”

“Guy does not take a hint,” Hardison observed.

“Just a minute,” Fish said, with sudden glee. “Hmm. Yeah. Maybe we can.”

And that was it. Eliot was not going to get a chance to smear this guy’s face over the pavement, and he was just going to have to live with it. Sophie let Fish spin out the plan, only steering him when she had to, such as on the subject of a hacker she knew who owed her a favour and would work without questions. By the time she was done, Fish was so puffed up with his own brilliance that Eliot half expected him to explode. But it wasn’t like he ever got that lucky.

“Time to break out the brew and catnip,” said Hardison, grinning like a loon. A little early, but Fish was on the line, and Sophie was rock solid, there was no reason, except a certain learned cynicism, that it couldn’t be down-hill from here.

“I don’t–” said Parker, frowning, and Eliot remembered she didn’t like beer.

“Maybe not catnip,” said Hardison, “no reason to get them started on the hard stuff.” He bounced out of his seat and went off humming, possibly to demonstrate that he could tell the difference between E-flat and F-sharp.

“Are you sure you didn’t want to have sex with that woman?” Parker asked.

Eliot jerked, which Grover protested by flexing tiny daggers into his thigh. “No! Why do you keep asking?”

She shot him a look under her bangs. “I was curious. I can be curious. Grover likes you.”

Grover slitted open one eye and gave Eliot a look that he’d once seen, scaled up, on a leopard in Zambesi. The leopard had decided against disembowelling him, so maybe Parker was right.

Parker wasn’t saying anything and he wasn’t saying anything and Eliot wasn’t sure when silence with Parker had stopped being a welcome relief and started being a terrible opportunity to think about kissing her again. Hardison was just down the hall. He couldn’t do this, he could not.

“Hey-” Parker said, leaning over her crossed legs.

Eliot stood up. “I gotta go,” he said, and exchanged Grover for a beer as Hardison came back in. “You don’t need me, right? I’m gonna- go.”

He didn’t move fast enough, and he’d left the door open. “What’s with that?” he heard Hardison say. “Is he sore about the computer? I thought it was a nice gesture. You know?”

“There’s something wrong with him,” Parker diagnosed, as he stabbed the elevator button.

The worst thing was, she was right.

Chapter 3

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

Wherein it all comes together in the most delightful way.

The next day, Eliot got up and went jogging at dawn to avoid Parker. Her breakfast, he meant, because there were some things a man shouldn’t have to face in the morning, and Parker dripping mustard down the front of the wife-beater she seemed to think was somehow appropriate as pyjamas was one of them. Because of the mustard, he reminded himself. Mustard, dammit.

Ten minutes in, he realized he was getting a blister on his heel because he’d jammed his feet into his trainers without socks and, swearing steadily under his breath, limped back three blocks before he managed to flag a taxi the rest of the way.

“Eliot!” said Parker, sounding pleased to see him, which startled him into a smile. “Ford wants us. You forgot your com.”

Eliot wrenched himself away from her–it wasn’t even a smile, for godsake, it was a parker-smile, a kind of neutral face that had a hint of a–he stuck his head under the tap in his bathroom until he felt the temptation to describe her eyes as ‘sparkling’ recede. When he turned the tap off, she was saying:

“- on comms, and I’m not allowed to do them myself since I talked Sophie through setting a fuse.”

At the office, Hardison was putting on a disguise for his part, and trying to do something at the computer at the same time. “Just– Don’t touch anything, and don’t– if she beeps ignore her, unless it’s more like a ringing, that’s our intrusion alarm. Leave her on, though, and don’t –” he struggled into a jacket with patched sleeves, and then lunged back at the keyboard, and typed something frantically, causing windows to blossom and collapse sequentially on the screen. “Right, you shouldn’t be able to break her unless you–don’t break her.”

“Okay,” said Parker, and did a handstand. The hem of her T-shirt fell down, exposing a pale, toned stomach and the smooth parentheses of her waist.

“Did I miss something? Aren’t you Alec Hardison for this one?” Eliot asked, tearing his eyes away from her and staring at Hardison’s machine. With no prompting, its screen suddenly erupted code, which scrolled up and then disappeared.

Hardison snapped open a pair of heavy-rimmed glasses. “I’m getting into my role.”

“Is this like the thing Sophie did where she stared at that point on the ceiling and said the same word over and over?” asked Parker, upside down.

Eliot ignored this, as he ignored all of Sophie’s crazy “character investigations” on principle, even by proxy. “Your role as Alec Hardison, Computer Geek?”

Hardison pulled his glasses down to glare at him over the rims, which was disturbingly… something. “My role as hacker-for-hire who’s never done the wild thing with Parker.”

“You need props for that?” asked Eliot, because his mouth was evidently faster than his brain.

Hardison leered, and there was the disturbing again: Eliot couldn’t tell why it unsettled him so much.

“Hardison, you’re on in 10!” said Nate’s voice over the coms.

Hardison looked at his computer with heartbreakingly sincere and incredibly dorky anxiety, and then at Eliot. “Just don’t… don’t touch her,” he said, and went for the door.

“I won’t,” Eliot muttered, and set himself up at the other end of the room, with a stack of new weapons spec intel briefs between himself and Parker, who was still twisting herself into shapes designed to torment him.

When the speakers started, he had to stop sneering at the latest Ukrainian AK47 modifications, and advance cautiously towards the octoputer, but he could have handled that if Parker hadn’t come up on his left side and leaned her hip on his shoulder.

“He’s so good,” Parker observed approvingly, watching Hardison drop his pen and giggle nervously while Sophie introduced him. Fish’s eyeroll dismissed him as a harmless geek.

Eliot could smell jasmine.

She’s Hardison’s girl, he reminded himself. She’s not right in the head. She eats mustard sandwiches.

Sophie wandered away from the men and towards the bathroom, while Hardison showed Fish the security footage he’d altered of Parker and Eliot opening doors at Hansen Direct. The timestamps now showed them there two years ago, at the same time Sophie had apparently been fleecing someone who’d inherited a Swiss bank vault full of Nazi-acquired French valuables and sending the goods through Hansen.

“This is great,” Fish said. “This is a perfect set-up. The cops aren’t going to be interested in us at all.”

All Eliot was going to do was turn his head, so he did that, and Parker was looking at him, so he started to rise, and she began to lean down, and her hands landed on his shoulders and her lips tilted towards his and Fish said, “If you screw me I’ll kill you.”

Eliot whipped his head back to the screen, and Parker fell into his lap, both her hands bracing against his thighs as she knocked him back into the chair, but he barely noticed. Besides, she was looking where he was, all her attention on Fish and Hardison and the gun in Fish’s hand.

“Maybe I should take care of that anyway,” Fish said. “I don’t know you, Alec. No hard feelings. But I don’t want you wrecking my big score.”

“Fuck,” Eliot breathed. “Sophie! Get back!”

“We could get down there in 19.4 seconds,” Parker said.

Eliot shook his head. “That don’t beat a bullet. Hardison, drop your eyes and hunch your shoulders.”

The Hardison on the screen cowered.

“Babble,” Eliot said. “Babble and plead. You just need to stall him until-”

Sophie swept into the room, hair flying. “Mr. Fish! The last thing we need is an unexplained body!”

“I was thinking,” Fish said. “We could blame it on Spencer. California’s a death sentence state.”

Sophie laid long fingers on his hand and gently tugged the pistol down. “Eliot Spencer doesn’t like guns.”

“How do you know that?”

Sophie managed to convey withering scorn and self-deprecation in the same tinkling laugh. “Mr. Fish, everyone knows that. Besides, Alec is my contact. You’re being very… discourteous. It’s not what I’d expect of you.” She flicked a glance at Hardison, who was still doing a very good impression of an abject coward. “Are you done?”

“Ma’am, yes, Miss Devereaux, I’m done, ma’am.”

“Then shoo.”

And Hardison shoo’d, out the door, around the corner and up the back elevator. “Son of a bitch,” he was muttering. “Son of a goddamn bitch.”

Eliot realised he still had a lap full of Parker when the elevator rang, but she stood up when he did, both of them moving to Hardison.

“You okay?” Eliot demanded, standing down only when Hardison nodded. Hardison didn’t really respond to Parker’s quick pat-down, absent touches and random brushes as if she were trying to find his wallet; he didn’t think Parker knew she was doing it.

“He doesn’t go armed!” Parker said. “I hate him, he took my cats, he maced Eliot, he threatened you, I want to make him hurt.”

“Kids, I hear you,” Hardison said. “But right now Sophie’s on her lonesome, so get out of the way so I can work.”

Eliot stepped aside to let him have his big, blinky security blanket, but stepped back close as soon as he sat. Hardison’s hands were shaking. The problem, the really fucking big problem, with Ford’s plan was that it was going to give Fish a chance at all of them, one by one, while keeping Eliot too far away to intervene. And Grand Theft wasn’t going to hold him for nearly as long as it would take to make Eliot feel okay about not crippling him.

“You don’t have to keep patting my shoulder, man, I’m okay.”

Eliot dropped his arm; he hadn’t even noticed he was doing it. Parker reached out and took his hand, and tugged Eliot back and out the door. He let her do it, little fingers curled in his, and let her pull away too, as soon as the door was closed behind them. Breath hitching, she stepped back, then in, and brushed his face with her palm.

“We can’t-” he whispered.

“I know,” she said. “I don’t mean to but you’re there and I have inappropriate feelings because most people don’t date more than one person, right?”

Eliot blinked, brain short-circuiting in the certain realisation of where she was headed next.

“But what if they did?” she asked, her pointed face intent. “We don’t have to keep to the rules, do we? I mean, we’re thieves.”

“I don’t- I’m not really the expert on-” He took a deep breath, but it caught in his throat, because did she mean she would date both Hardison and Eliot, or would he be dating both of them and did that mean Hardison’s over-the-rims leering meant something, and what did he think about that?

“Alec doesn’t mind that I’m not normal. Do you mind?”

Eliot had been put on the spot by women before, but never quite like–

She gave one of her Parker-smiles, a sort of smugly amused one. “It’s okay. You don’t have to answer right away. I’ll let you think about it.”

“Think about what?” Nate said, poking his head out of his office. Dammit, Eliot was going to start hanging bells around their necks. Nate was smiling in a way that indicated not only that Maggie had agreed to her part but that the conversation had gone well in other ways Eliot didn’t want to think about.

“None of your business,” Parker said, which pretty much guaranteed that Nate was now going to snoop.

“We all set up?” Eliot asked hastily.

“She’s making the call on my signal.”

“Just like that?”

“I may have made some promises about helping her find a few things,” Nate conceded.

“And Sophie’s okay with that?”

Nate’s eyebrows wrinkled. “As it happens, Sophie made the offer.”

“Huh,” Parker said. “Women.”

Eliot caught himself before he gave her the same look Nate did; the brow-furrowed Parker Special.

“So we’re all set,” Nate said. “Sophie’s taking Fish to the warehouse tonight to make the handover.” He made little fingerquotes, smirking. “Parker, you’re good to carry two?”

She snorted. “Please. I could carry an elephant on that rig. Sophie’s not that fat.” On the receiving end of two Parker Specials, she shrugged. “What? She’s not.”

The corners of Nate’s mouth twitched. “Sure. Okay. Eliot, you’ll stay here.”

“About that,” Eliot said, settling on his heels. “No.”

“Spencer, people in our line of work develop certain instincts. If you trip Fish’s– it’s safer if you’re not there.”

“Not gonna happen. He stuck a gun in Hardison’s face.”

“You could ruin the-”

“You ever seen brains spray a wall?”

Nate opened his mouth, then closed it again, looking thoughtful, and Eliot realised that he should have found a way to make it seem like Nate’s idea. Nate couldn’t easily back down now, and Eliot wasn’t going to.

“I feel safer when Eliot’s there,” Parker said suddenly. “And so does Sophie.”

And just like that, she made it about Nate looking after the team and not about him giving in to Eliot. Smart girl, Eliot thought, and then, Get your shit together, boy, you’re on the job.

“If you stay out of sight,” Nate said. “And intervene only in an emergency.”

“Okay,” Eliot said. “Whatever, fine, I better go and get hidden.”

“It’ll be a couple of hours yet,” Nate told him, with the same inquisitive look he’d worn when he first poked his head into the hallway.

Parker looked innocent. “You could use the time to think!”

“No! I mean– no, I wouldn’t want to trigger his instincts. I better– yeah.” He backed out sideways, trying to keep both Parker and Nate in view until he turned the corner.

“Hey –whoa!” said Hardison, swinging into the hallway and nearly colliding with him. Eliot reared back like a horse seeing a rattlesnake, but with Nate and Parker at his back, there wasn’t really anywhere to go. Hardison–Alec–Hardison raised his eyebrow. “You that eager to get this party started?”

Eliot really couldn’t tell if there was innuendo there, or if Parker had just permanently broken him. Alec didn’t back off, and they were standing a bit too close for– well, for anything, really, except fighting, or–

“Alec,” said Parker, right behind him oh jesus, “Your wallet was in my pocket.” She sounded mystified by this, and a little annoyed, but more critically, she was reaching around Eliot to hand Hardison back his wallet, bracketing him between herself and Hardison, like–

“I’m going now!” Eliot blurted, and ducked under Parker’s arm, and then dodged around Hardison. He heard Hardison, at his back, talking to Parker:

“That man ain’t right.”

Eliot had to agree. But he was beginning to wonder if that might be okay.

* * *

He did try to think about it.

The problem was, thinking wasn’t so much Eliot’s specialty – not that he was dumb, he’d pulled off the thing in Bangkok, and that had taken some smarts, and he could count cards like a pro because he was – but he had the sort of brain that made snap decisions and then put his body in the best place to carry them out. He just wasn’t the type to make relationship pros and cons lists, or put together elaborate seduction schemes, and the one time he’d tried, with Parker and the kittens, it had taken Nate and Sophie to make it actually work anyway. His version of deciding whether to court someone came down to whether they seemed interested and then just sort of going for it. Like most normal people.

Parker was right. Normal wasn’t going to cut it.

He palmed his hair out of his eyes and wriggled a little further back between the two crates.

The thing was Parker was smart and tough and he could vaguely remember thinking she was unattractive but clearly he had been deranged at the time because now she was freaking magnetic. And Hardison – Alec – okay, that was slightly different.

Not completely different, because now that he was thinking about it (and this was where that was coming in handy, even if he had to do it in a dark warehouse on an empty stomach) there was the rangy, corded wrists, and the smart mouth, and the loyalty. And it wasn’t as if he’d never with a guy. But he’d never really done like a real thing. He knew what to do with women with relationships, so far as he’d had them - he bought them flowers and carried their bags when they shopped and cooked for them, until they got sick of unexplained absences and weird injuries and not taking them to their cousin’s wedding because he’d been a little occupied with that shark tank in Dubai. But what was he supposed to do for Alec?

Well, the cooking was probably the same, although Parker would no doubt pour ketchup over everything.

“They’re on their way,” Hardison said in his ear. He had been mercifully silent the whole time, which was so much not like him that Eliot had come to the conclusion that he and Parker were definitely teaming up on him.

He tore his mind away from the images that thought brought up, and tapped his ear piece. “Ready.”

“Maggie made the call,” Nate said. “You’ve got about twenty minutes.”

The warehouse door cracked open, and then Sophie’s heels clicked over the concrete floor. Eliot squinted so that he didn’t lose all his vision when the fluorescents came on.

Fish’s intake of breath was audible across the room.

“Sophie, if you get him thirty feet towards the back wall and four feet to your left, Eliot’ll be able to help out,” Hardison said.

“Only if it’s necessary,” Nate added.

Sophie’s laugh was low and sultry as she wandered towards Eliot’s hiding place, laptop case tucked under her arm. Fish trailed behind her, taking in the sheer number of wrapped paintings and carefully padded crates. Eliot’s fists clenched at his first glimpse of the jackass’s face, and wouldn’t relax again. “Impressed?” she asked, stopping right on the mark, and conveniently further blocking any view of Eliot in the shadows.

Fish pursed his lips. “Very. Ms. Deveraux, have you ever thought of working with a permanent partner?”

“I’ve always been a loner,” Sophie said smoothly. “But it’s an intriguing proposition. I could consider it… for the right price.” She held out her hand. “My diamonds, Mr. Fish.”

“I want confirmation that the setup worked,” he countered.

“But of course.” She held the laptop open for him and pushed a button.

Fish leaned over, face intent as he watched the completely convincing and totally fake footage of Parker and Eliot getting arrested by two of Sophie’s acting acquaintances who’d thought they were auditioning for a cop show. “What did you get them caught with?”

“A minor O’Keefe, a couple of Goya fakes, an early Hotere, and a rather nice Hokusai. I assure you, most of the really pricy stuff remains.”

“And the cops think they have it hidden somewhere?” Fish chuckled. “No jury’s going to be sympathetic to that.”

Sophie gave him a razor-edge smile. “The diamonds?”

Fish fished them out of his breast pocket. Eliot saw the edge of the shoulder harness and went up on the balls of his feet, but Sophie smoothly handed Fish the laptop as she took the diamonds, and tapped the play button again. Fish watched, smiling at the part where the one “cop” began listing charges for Eliot.

He seemed to barely register Sophie tucking the diamonds into her cleavage and drifting further into the warehouse.

“I am good,” Hardison said.

“Shush,” Parker said amiably, and Eliot caught a shadow moving in the skylight directly above Sophie’s position. “Ready when you are.”

“Too soon,” Nate said urgently. “Stall, Sophie.”

Eliot clenched his fists tighter, but then Sophie did something that made him think maybe he loved her a little, in a very scary big sister kind of way.

“Mr. Fish,” she called. “From the moment you broke into Parker’s house, it was over for you. It was only a decision between the easy way or the hard way.”

Parker dropped behind her on the zipline. “This is the easy way,” she said, and snapped her harness to the one that had been hidden under Sophie’s coat. “Actually, I think it’s too easy, but Nate manipulated me. He does that.”

And then the sirens started. Fish’s eyes popped. “What the fuck?” he choked. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t indulge in theatrics,” Nate ordered, like the hypocritical ass he was. “Just get out of there.”

Sophie ignored him and smiled at Fish, nearly as wide as Parker’s crazed and beautiful grin. “Isn’t it obvious? You’re about to be arrested and charged with multiple accounts of grand theft. If the video evidence of you breaking into the courier to retrieve various bits and pieces doesn’t convince the jury, I’m fairly certain being caught red-handed will.”

“But that footage- You set me up?” Fish shouted. “You and her and the geek… and Nate? Nathan FORD? You’re fucking kidding me!” He dropped the laptop and fumbled in his jacket. He was side-on to Eliot, focused on Sophie and Parker, paying no attention to his surroundings.

Eliot took three steps from between his crates and, as the gun cleared the holster, landed a punch that would have made angels sing.

The gun skittered over the concrete floor as Fish caved around his solar plexus. Eliot made a mental note of where it had landed, grabbed the back of Fish’s head and brought his knee up. There was a crunch of expensive dental work. Fish made a noise that was more gurgle than scream, collapsing in a way that satisfied Eliot on a very deep level.

“SPENCER,” Nate yelled, but Hardison was cheering in his ear and Parker was whooping, “Go, Eliot, go go go!”

Fish scrabbled at the floor, trying to get away, and it was just too easy to catch him in an arm bar. “Think of this as a deposit,” Eliot breathed in Fish’s ear. “The day you walk free, I collect the rest.” Then he dislocated his shoulder.

Fish’s shriek nearly drowned out the shouts at the door.

Eliot dropped him, face down on the filthy concrete. “Stay away from my people,” he said, and scooping up the laptop, ran towards the girls. “Room for one more?”

Parker wrapped her arms around him, still grinning like a loon, and he wriggled his hands into her straps. Sophie was warm and tight against his back, and disturbing particularity for others in the team or not, he’d have to be dead not to appreciate that. “And that would be the hard way,” she whispered in his ear, voice rich with quiet approval.

They cleared the roof as the FBI broke down the door.

* * *

Eliot had pretty much figured that he’d cast some reasonable doubt on the set-up part of the plan. People didn’t often dislocate their own shoulders, after all. But it turned out Maggie had called the dumbest federal agents in the country, and they’d taken Fish’s injuries as self-inflicted during an escape attempt on the rig that Parker had left hanging from the roof.

Smart girl.

Fish hadn’t argued. Fish had nursed his shoulder and spit out some teeth and asked for his lawyer in a voice so dead Eliot was sure he’d be pleading guilty. Even Nate had conceded on that, before loudly declaring his intention to get a drink and signing off comms.

Parker and Sophie had taken their own cars, of course, so Eliot ended up driving himself back to the office, to discover Hardison watching the footage from his hidden cameras (lingering with delight on the part that started with Eliot’s fist in Fish’s gut) and Parker perched on the desk beside him. It was just those two, and Eliot hovered in the doorway to Hardison’s office, uncertain of whether he should come in or stay out.

Parker noticed him, of course. She gave him a slanted Parker-smile, and flicked Hardison’s ear.

“Are you nearly done with that?” she asked. “I want to go home.”

“I’m gonna vid this up,” Hardison said. “I’m gonna get a rhythm behind it, play with some lighting, do the jump-cut thing. It’s going on the Youtubes, baby, Colbert is gonna greenscreen this, I swear to you. Dance clubs across America will go crazy to Fish’s screams and my phat beats.”

“I want to go home,” she repeated. “Eliot’s here.”

“Oh,” Alec said, and swung in his chair. “Cool. Are you coming with us?”

As if it was as simple and easy as that.

Eliot looked at Alec’s wrists and Parker’s throat, took a deep breath, and let go of normal. “Yeah.”

“Cool,” Alec said again, something wicked and promising and warm in his eyes. Parker said nothing at all.

* * *

Later, Eliot said, “Jesus! Grover’s staring at me, that’s really disturb– Damn, do that again.”

And Parker said, “I think they’ve learned how to use the door-handle. We can start them on locks next.”

And Alec said, “Am I boring you? Because we could go level up Eliot’s warrior instead,” which Parker took as a challenge. And Grover’s stare wasn’t really hurting anyone, and anyway, after that, Eliot got more than a little distracted.