Work Text:
Eliot knows it’s gonna be bad from the moment he hears the knock on his window.
Because of the limited number of people who can get to his window eight stories up, the only person who would knock is also the only one who never has to. And that spells more trouble than he’s prepared for two beers and three quarters into a hockey game. He hops up off the couch and hustles across the apartment to his kitchen table, fighting the urge to look exaggeratedly put upon because in his bones he knows this is bad news.
Sure enough in the dark, there’s Parker’s shock of blonde hair, her pale face fuzzy through the glass, but as he flicks on the kitchen light since she no doubt will require snacks, he gets a better view of the rest of her, the light pink leotard she’s been wearing for this dance studio job they’ve been doing and the splattered stain of blood across the front of it.
For a moment he almost freezes, waiting to suddenly jerk awake on the couch, maybe another three beers in, to swear off the spicy plate of Thai he ordered because it always gives him weird nightmares.
But he doesn’t wake up and gratefully his body moves on autopilot, unlatching the locks and throwing the window open. Everything in him feels at war, his body trained to hold itself tightly and steadily while his brain and his heart rebel into squirmy chaos.
“Parker,” he says, reaching and pulling her through the window on instinct, even though it’s Parker who never needs help with climbing into things. Then again he’s never had to open a window for Parker before, he’s never seen Parker bleeding out.
She goes easily, almost falling against him when her feet land on his hardwood floor, and it twists in his stomach like a knife, but there’s no time for that. He pats his hands lightly and carefully over her front, over her sides and her stomach, searching desperately for somewhere to apply pressure.
“Where?” he asks after a second of coming up short. “Parker, where?”
She shakes her head and his attention snaps suddenly to her face, the red swelling spot on her cheek, the faint discoloration around her neck that indicates a forming bruise.
“It’s not mine,” she says, her voice carefully flat and blank. She takes a step back as best she can this close to the window and he scans her carefully. There are no tears in the fabric of her leotard but the stain is huge, and her hands and arms are dotted with flakey sticky streaks of red.
“What happened?” he asks, barely fighting the relieved urge to grab her again, crush her into his chest. All these rivaling instincts, these rules he’s always been sure of that he feels desperate to break. Never grab Parker, let her come to you.
Though he takes her in again, and realizes that she’s a little less Parker right now, face empty, eyes unblinking, standing stick straight even though he’s close enough to see the slight slight tremor that courses through her.
“Parker,” he says again urgently.
She swallows and blinks. “The mark,” she starts. “He’s not firing the dancers, he’s killing them.” It pangs through him, shifts the whole parameter of the job, the way he approaches it as the executive expert on keeping them safe, and priority one suddenly should have been not letting Parker pose as a dancer and become a regular at the studio where the goddamn company owner is apparently a serial killer.
“Was,” Parker says though, her blinks coming faster, the Parker of it all coming back in her eyes slowly. “He was killing them. He’s…” She pauses on the word for a second, eyes widening fractionally. “Dead.”
Her breaths start to come faster, the tremors wracking harder.
“Okay,” he says, pulling steel reserves from deep in his chest into his voice. Priority one shifts again: fix this now. He reaches slowly, but Parker doesn’t move at all, one way or another. He presses his hand onto her shoulder, against the edge of her collarbone, where he can feel her heart pound beneath his hand, where she can feel him steady in front of her. “It’s okay. We’ve got this.”
It’s almost funny actually. Of all the unspeakable things he knows he’d do for them, burying a body is so low on that list. Die for them, kill for them, burn down anything for them. This should be easy.
“Where did it happen?” he asks her, tilting his head a little to catch her eye, drawing her away from that blank and empty middle distance she keeps slipping to. “Were there cameras? Or…” he shakes his head. “We’ll call Hardison to be sure—”
“No,” she says suddenly and sharply like a bark. “We can’t tell Hardison, we can’t— that’s my call. I’m-I’m in charge and that’s my call, we’re not telling him.”
She doesn’t bat his hand away, doesn’t pull back and go disappearing out the window, which is the only good sign in this.
Parker so rarely pulls rank. She rarely needs to, her plans are great, and there’s so little he and Hardison won’t drop anything to do for her. But even when she does, it’s to be cute, to be funny, in situations where she knows they’ll listen anyway or know they won’t but wants to make them work for it.
This is different, the tone of her voice and the sharpness in her words, in her face, in her eyes. It’s fear. And so’s when it falls. When her breath hitches and she sees him standing in front of her, sees him.
“Please,” she says. “Eliot, please, he can’t know.”
He swallows carefully. There’s dried blood along the side of her face and tears in her eyes, and he resigns himself to the cold hard fact that she is not their mastermind right now. He needs to call the shots on this right now. She needs him to do his job right now.
“C’mon, darlin’,” he says, stepping back and trusting her to follow. “Let’s clean up.”
She looks worse in the bathroom, under the harsher lightbulbs the welt on her cheek looks angry, the mark on her neck, a bruise in the vague shape of a fucking thumb against her windpipe, is coming in. He guides her easily to a seat on the toilet, indulging himself for a moment with a hand ghosting over the back of her head, pressing a kiss to the space between her eyes.
“Alright,” he says, grabbing the to-go first aid kit from the medicine cabinet. “Give me the blow-by-blow and tell me where you’re hurt.”
Compartmentalize. Prioritize. Get a scope of the landscape, the practicals, and then call Hardison in to figure out the rest.
He wets a hand cloth, moves over to lean his back against the side of the sink, and slowly traces paths across her face, carefully wiping the blood away while avoiding irritating the cut on her cheek.
“Some of the other dancers were heading to the studio to help Kathy with some filing,” she says plainly, eyes unfocused on the wall across from her. “I joined to see if there were any important files I could slip out. Then when we were done I pretended to need the bathroom to get a couple bugs in the main office and one of Hardison’s cloners up for the main desktop.” She pauses, her teeth grinding together, that flash of anger and fear and fury in her eyes. “He got the drop on me in the parking lot. Barely.” She gestures vaguely over her shoulder, and he tilts his head to get a look at her back, another deep red stain, this time around a short tear in her leotard, just along her shoulder blade. His knuckles go white around the washcloth. “He had a knife, got me on the back, but it was shallow. I, uh, I did that thing you taught me with the knees and the elbow but…” She swallows hard, and he brings himself closer, crouches carefully by the side of her knee. “I hit my head on the ground. No concussion symptoms. He got his hands around my neck but I, uh, I got the knife and—”
He can picture her quick fingers finding the hilt, lifting the thing completely out of sight and planting it exactly where she wanted it to go.
“Good,” he says gently, letting his hand fall over hers, barely fighting the urge to press his fingers into the pulse point on her wrist, just to feel her heart beating. “Where’d you get him? There a chance he’s still kicking?”
She blinks at him, her eyes flickering through emotions faster than he can keep up with.
“I didn’t feel anything,” she says flatly, her eyes bearing into his. “I didn’t feel anything at all until I got home and…” Her breath hitches. “And then I couldn’t go inside, I don’t, I don’t know—”
“Parker,” he says, planting his hands on her shoulders. Her eyes are still in space, her breaths still too fast. “Look at me.” It takes a moment to catch her eyes, ground her back into the world. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
She shakes her head quickly. “But—”
“Hey,” he says. She swallows, pressing her lips together tightly. “It’s me. You know what I’ve… that I’ve…” He exhales, scooting towards her, to bump his forehead against hers. “He was going to kill you. Right? If that’s the story, that’s the story.” He trails his hand up along her neck, feeling her pulse like a blessing against his fingers, the soft tangle of her hair as he cups the back of her head. “If it isn’t, if it wasn’t exactly like that, you can tell me, okay? It won’t change a thing.” He suspects it’s the same for Hardison, that this thing runs that deep, that there’s so very little she could do that would ever sever these ties that they’ve painstakingly tied between them.
“I should have found another way,” she says firmly. “I… I could have… p-probably.”
It’s the only answer he needs.
“He was going to kill you,” he says firmly. “I’d’ve killed him. I will, if he isn’t actually dead.”
She shakes her head, her eyes fluttering shut. He can feel the relief shift in her. “He’s dead.”
“Okay,” he says. He leans in to press a gentle kiss to her Cupid’s bow, and then ducks his head to press another to bruise on her throat. She makes a soft pleased noise in the back of her throat, so he gives her another, letting it linger for a second. “I’m gonna call Hardison.”
She inhales sharply, leaning back to glare at him, eyes flashing with betrayal.
“No,” she says.
“Parker,” he says carefully. They rarely fight with each other, usually find themselves in line, but also because fighting with Hardison is easier. He’s good at conflict, at injecting enough humor to keep things from stinging, smart enough to drill into the heart of whatever the problem is. He and Parker are bad at it, the sharp pieces of theirs that fit together so well becoming more dangerous if they shift without caution. So he treads forward carefully. “The mark is dead. We need to clean up and clean out. And we can’t do that without Hardison.”
“He’ll—”
“He won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“He loves you.”
She shoves at his shoulders, slipping off the toilet, and flattening herself against the back wall, out of reach, and still glaring. She’s not leaving though.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” she grumbles. He sees it for what it is, a scared lashing out, another shove at him, to push him away, to back herself into a corner.
She did come here though. She’s here, with him, and she’s not leaving.
“I’m gonna call him,” he says slowly. “I’m gonna take care of it, okay?”
She crosses her arms over her chest, but stays put, doesn’t protest again.
It’s going to be a long night, he knows, and pulls his phone out as he heads for the door. She needs a moment and he needs to be able to give Hardison the full run down.
“This isn’t the first time,” she says before he can slip out into the hall. She’s still not looking at him, still pressed against the wall and holding herself small and tight.
It’s nothing he hasn’t suspected, for years now.
“I’m not gonna ask,” he says, measuring out each word as precisely as he can. “Because it doesn’t change a thing. Because that’s what we do for each other, Parker.”
He stares at her for another moment, in case she needs anything else, before he steps out and closes the door.
.
Hardison was having a perfectly fine and calm night before Eliot called, thank you very much. While he ultimately does prefer nights when Eliot stays at theirs, it is also equally nice to pop some old Doctor Who on the large TV without rebuke and mess around with some Skyrim mods. But the nice ease of the steady quiet, the slight heaviness of his eyelids, are cut through immediately by the sudden sharp ringing of his phone.
“I need you to not freak out,” Eliot says, like as soon as he picks up.
“Well, you should have started with something else,” he squeaks over the line, heart already racing. The apartment is suddenly too quiet, too calm, and he’s too still, and he’s hopping up from the couch to pace.
“Hardison,” Eliot says, sharply.
“What? What’s going on?” he asks, his sneaker scuffing off the edge of the carpet.
“Breathe, man,” Eliot says. “Look, Parker is at mine. There was… We need you here.”
“You really need to work on your calming techniques,” he says. He’s already by the door, his other there a blur, and he slips into his sneakers as fast as he can, grabbing car keys off the table by the door.
“Yeah,” Eliot says, sounding resigned. Which is maybe the most horrifying thing he’s ever heard. Eliot. Resigned. Not arguing or grumbling or anything. He nearly trips on the stupid stairs on the way down.
“What happened?” he asks, even though he’s deeply, deeply terrified of the answer. He’s gotten in the habit of jumping off buildings, which is the only reason he thinks he’s able to keep asking these questions. “Is Parker okay?”
“She’s… gonna be,” Eliot says and Hardison is more than glad to collapse in the front seat of the van. “She’s just a little banged up, but she’s safe. I’ve got her.”
“I know,” he breathes. It's one of the easiest truths of the universe, the safest place for either of them to be is with Eliot, so if Parker’s there, she’s safe, nothing’s gonna get at her. His hands shake but he pulls himself out of the parking space. “I’m on my way.”
“Okay,” Eliot says. He sounds so relieved like somehow Hardison is gonna fix the problem. Who knows, maybe he can, as soon as he learns what’s going on. He hits the gas a little harder than he should. “I, uh…” He cuts himself off, swearing under his breath. “Love you, man. See you soon.”
He hangs up before Hardison can reply. Hardison decides to focus on driving rather than letting his brain grind through all of his worst nightmares a couple times over, since he won’t be able to fix shit if he crashes his stupid car.
.
Inside Parker’s chest, she feels like she’s losing a game of whack-a-mole, all these sudden feelings jumping out at her, while she desperately tries to smack them back down.
It was easier when Eliot was here, before when she didn’t have to add being mad at him to the mix of everything. (It was easier when she was feeling blank and empty and nothing, when she was half turned off. Power saver mode, she thinks Hardison would call it.) It’s not like this is Eliot’s fault though.
Her chest feels too tight.
Anger burns through her. Anger and fear and this aching sorrow because she knows the exact measurement of the joy she’s about to lose.
She pulls away from the wall, paces quickly along the line of the bathroom, trying so desperately to convert the emotions into raw physical energy until it’s all gone. She doesn’t make it a full turn of the room though, freezes when she turns. There’s a streak of blood across the wall where she was standing, a harsh red line across the otherwise flawless eggshell white.
Shame explodes out of a little hole and she slams her too small hammer into it as fast as she can.
It’s fine. She’ll just fix it. She’ll just…
There’ll be paper towels in the cabinet, and she bends over to grab it, pulling at the cut on her shoulder.
It’s not that deep but she keeps forgetting about it, because it doesn’t hurt half as much as all the stupid, pushy emotions. But it sure hurts now, sharp and almost blinding for a second, her vision spotting with the pain.
She grabs onto the edge of the sink as hard as she can, anything to ground herself back in, to keep her on her feet. A sharp keen steals its way out of her though, and she lets her head hang low, trying to breathe through her gritted teeth, through the dumb whack-a-moles flying up and out.
“Parker,” Eliot says urgently, back in the doorway, eyes raking over her nervously.
Fuck.
There’s still blood on the wall, and blood on her, all over her, cold and dried now where it used to be warm and wet and slippery. She wants it all gone. She wants Eliot to stop looking at her like that. She wants him to cook something for her, and she wants to poke at his arm until he grabs her hand to make her stop and then hold on for a little longer. She wants to be all giddy and excited about Hardison coming, not feel sick and scared and sad.
“You gonna let me help with that?” Eliot asks, slow, careful, glancing at her back.
She closes her eyes for a second. Everything is too much right now, taking away sight helps for a second. She wants to shake her head, wants to slam the door shut and lock it and hide forever. But she nods instead, listens carefully as Eliot steps closer, comes up next to her along the sink.
She opens her eyes when the water starts running, watching Eliot’s hands as he lines up the first aid equipment on the counter. He reaches for one of her hands, and she concedes after a second, letting him guide her fingers into the water, working his hands against hers. She looks away when the runoff water starts to turn red, focusing on a spot on the tiled floor.
“It’s gonna be alright,” he says after a moment. Which doesn’t help, her shoulders tightening, pulling at the skin around the cut again. Eliot’s not supposed to lie to her. He’s not supposed to baby her. They’re supposed to get each other, they’re supposed to have some… understanding about these things, but all night it feels like they’ve been speaking different languages.
She knows it’s her fault, that she’s the one who’s all different and wrong.
She knows she shouldn’t have come here. She shouldn’t have gone anywhere, she should have gone to ground, hid out for a little, or figured out how to take care of the body so no one would ever find out, not Hardison, not Eliot.
But she didn’t know what else to do. She didn’t want to be alone. She wanted Eliot to look her in the eyes the same way he did a few years ago down in that cave, where he knew that she was different and wrong, but made her feel like it was okay, that they were okay.
And now she was gonna have to pay for it, for wanting, like always. Her stomach turns over violently, and she lets out a weak involuntary noise.
Eliot reaches for her other hand, pulls it into the water, rubs his thumbs along her skin. And he starts to hum, low and under his breath, but near enough to her ear that she doesn’t miss a single note. His hands smooth up her wrists and arms, delicately and preciously.
They’re both so nice with her, always. And she likes it, likes that they always take care of her, that they’ll always trust her to do her job, but that they want to touch her gently and hug her close and love her.
She just wants to be that for them, that Parker who’s soft and smiley and… loved.
Eliot isn’t looking at her, when she scopes out the situation again, he’s focusing on her hands, on her arms, on cleaning her up and taking care of her like Eliot always does for them.
And for a moment, and for the first time all night, she feels like herself again.
.
Eliot knows that they need Hardison, to clean the trail, that he needs Hardison to navigate this fucking minefield, that Parker needs Hardison to know that everything is going to be fine. But he still allows himself the slight sting of frustration when they hear the front door open and Hardison calls out for them, since it makes Parker jolt, snapping closed where she’d been slowly inching open again.
“Bathroom,” he calls to Hardison before he tears the apartment down searching for them. “Gimme a second.”
“I—” he starts, footsteps starting towards the room. Parker’s eyes are wide and wild and cutting to the thin bathroom window far too fucking often.
“Hardison,” he says sharply. The footsteps stop and he exhales. If Parker runs, like this… he doesn’t even want to think about how hard it’ll be to find her, to coax her back, not to mention finish this thing without her.
He grabs a towel off the rack, runs it carefully up and down her arms.
“You wait here,” he says, trying his best to sound conspiratory, light like they usually do when messing with Hardison. “I’m gonna tell him.”
Her jaw tightens and he’s too familiar with the flash of guilt and anger in her eyes. “I can—”
And he knows that self-sacrificial desire, that running headlong into the bullet even if it’ll hurt worse, just so it’ll hurt faster.
“C’mon,” he says, bumping her shoulder with his. “You know the blood’s gonna freak him out, gotta give him a warning.”
He wants to smooth the line out of her forehead, wants to tell her again that she has nothing to worry about, wants to go back in time and restart this job and take care of this for her.
Instead, he steps away, letting the towel drape over Parker’s shoulders, like a shock blanket.
He gives her a look, a careful beat of eye contact before stepping out of the room. Trust, he thinks they’re sharing. Trust that she’s gonna stay and wait for them. Trust that he’s gonna explain it right.
But they’re good at trust. When they’ve got nothing else, that’s what they’ve got.
“That was longer than a second,” Hardison says, all huff, no bite, nearly bouncing on his toes outside in the hall. “It’s semantics but I’d like my patience to be noted because—”
Eliot can’t help but roll his eyes because he’s so goddamn annoying, but yanks him close into a tight quick hug that shuts him up.
“Eliot,” he says, and his voice is soft and nervous and shaking. “Man, what—?”
He grips Hardison by his shoulders. “The mark is dead,” he says. “He’s been killing the dancers. He went after Parker.” Hardison jerks forward suddenly, eyes locked on the half-closed bathroom. Eliot holds him in place for an extra second. “She’s fine. She’s fine, man, I swear.” He drags Hardison’s attention back to him.
“She—”
“Just a little scraped up,” he assures him. “But she’s in a bad place, okay? She stabbed him and she’s all freaked out about it.” He swallows hard, strokes his thumb carefully along the line of Hardison’s neck. “She… didn’t want you to know.”
Hardison blinks for a moment like it doesn’t compute.
“She… what?” he breathes, eyes darting back to the bathroom door like he can see right through it. “What do you mean? Why, man? What did I—?”
“She’s scared,” he clarifies quickly, carefully. “Of how you’re gonna react. To her killing this guy.”
It’s a little bit of a test. To actually say it out loud, to have Hardison hear it. But he doesn’t even flinch.
“He was gonna kill her,” Hardison replies, immediate and fierce. “He—“
Eliot nods, smoothing a hand over the curve of his shoulder. “I know, man,” he says. “I know. I’m just giving you the rundown, okay? This is where she’s at.”
Hardison nods urgently, his hand coming up to close around Eliot’s and squeezing.
“Okay,” he says slowly, like he’s already planning the exact path to convincing Parker that everything is gonna be okay. And he’ll know. He’ll find it where Eliot’s been getting lost.
There’s still a little hurt written in the lines of his face, so Eliot stops him one more time as he steps towards the bathroom.
“Hey,” he says gently. “She only came here because she knows I’ve done worse.” He tries to find the exact words to explain the rest of it, how much Parker loves him, how hard she tries to earn it, even though she doesn’t have to. “She wants to protect you from the ugly parts, or like, what she thinks are the ugly parts of her.” It’s not exactly right, but it’ll have to do.
Hardison nods, solemnly, like he sees the task ahead of him, of them, to convince Parker that there’s nothing wrong.
“Okay,” Hardison says, squaring up for it. “But, Eliot…” His voice is already gentle and steady, perfect for the conversation ahead. “You know she came here because she trusts you, right? Because you understand those parts in ways I can’t always.”
Eliot shrugs loosely. He doesn’t know, not exactly, but it doesn’t really matter why Parker came, just that she did, just that she’s here, with them, when she very well couldn’t be. But it feels like a special sort of honor to have Hardison say it like that, to lay it out in those kind, loving terms.
Hardison squeezes his hand one more time before heading into the bathroom. And Eliot hangs carefully back and watches after him in wonder.
.
Hardison hasn’t felt this nervous around Parker in literal years.
But he feels like he might as well be on one of those stupid early jobs, walking up to her and not knowing a thing about how it’d go. Unlike then though, Parker looks equally nervous, shifting on her feet, eyes darting around the room but always coming back to his.
His feet move on autopilot, one in front of the other, until he’s right in front of her with nowhere else to go.
He focuses on her face, to not notice the bruising along her neck and how it makes him burn, the bile in his stomach lurching. She opens and closes her mouth around a series of false starts and he reminds himself to be patient, to wait for her, to let her take her time. He feels like he’s been hurtled far back into time, and he’s trying desperately to remember what it was like to not feel so close to Parker, to understand exactly what she needed from him.
Waiting, though. That was always a good move.
“Alec,” she chokes out, her voice a frayed hurting thing, her eyes growing wet as she blinks quickly at him.
And he feels like something in him is breaking suddenly. Her hand shifts absently towards him, like she wants to reach out but doesn’t know how.
He nearly throws himself forward, wrapping his arms around her, tight around her waist, across her back, pulling her tight into his chest before he can question the urge. Her breath hitches in his ear, and she grabs at him just as urgently, her fingers digging sharply into his back.
“Oh,” he exhales, feels the desperation deep in his gut. “Parker, oh my god.”
“I’m sorry,” she breathes, and he can’t help the wounded whimper that sneaks it’s way up his throat.
“Don’t,” he says, tucking his nose into the side of her head, her soft loose strands of hair tucked behind her ear. He shakes his head, closing his eyes, burrowing further into her, so he can better feel her pulse, the shift of her breathing.
“Alec,” she says, her voice like broken glass. “I-I didn’t…”
“Shh,” he hisses, because if he hears her try to apologize again, he’s gonna lose it, just a little. And he’s determined not to, knows he needs to be calm for her, and for Eliot, so they can fix all of this. “It’s okay. It’s all fine.”
“No, it’s not,” Parker snaps, pulling away from him. He feels the loss of her keenly, but holds his hands out calmly. “It’s not fine.”
It’s not. She’s not. That much is very clear.
He’d be a bad fucking boyfriend if he wasn’t familiar with the different levels of Parker breakdowns, so he’s confident enough that while this one is dire (either a code red or a level three) it hasn’t progressed to a complete Kiev-Embassy-2009 breakdown yet. So now it’s time to work it back from that edge. It’s not great that he, and Eliot in the doorway behind him, are technically facing off with her, not great that her hands are flirting through shapes at her sides (but better than being scarily still), not great that her chest is visibly rising and falling with quick panicked breaths.
But her eyes are still meeting his, and she’s still talking, still trying to communicate.
“I didn’t feel anything,” she says. “I didn’t hesitate. He was gonna kill me, so I killed him.”
At his back, Eliot gives a grunt of approval, that fierce unerring pride and satisfaction. And Hardison is right there with him on the whole killing this guy thing, but it doesn’t seem to be helping Parker right now.
“You didn’t have a choice,” he says carefully. He wants to be holding her again but settles for leaving his hand particularly out for her to take when she’s ready to be reeled back in.
“There’s always a choice,” she says bitterly. “But I didn’t choose right, I never…” Her breath hitches and her eyes squeeze shut.
“Parker,” he says, as lightly as he can, halfway to a hum. “It’s okay, baby.”
She shakes her head once, firmly. “I don’t wanna change backward. I want to change forward, together.” Her eyes dart nervously over his shoulder at Eliot. “I know that we… what we do…” She trails off, her hand coming up to tug at the hair on the top of her head. Her face tightens sharply, the movement of her arm jerking to a halt as she hisses through her teeth.
Eliot steps further into the room, and Hardison feels the same urge to move forward too, to reach out. Eliot’s shoulder brushes against the middle of his back, and it’s lovely support, makes the gravity of the room shift to their side. He can tell Parker feels it too, the sudden pull to sway into each other’s space, to snap together like puzzle pieces.
“You gonna let me look at that cut, sweetheart?” Eliot asks.
Hardison barely manages to bite back the rush of concerned and distressed questions he suddenly has about what other injuries she has and how actually dead this guy is and if they should just kill him a little more again to be sure. Instead, he takes a careful breath and offers Parker his hand. She watches it suspiciously, and it throws him back years, but he doesn’t waver, doesn’t hesitate or second guess.
“Everything is okay, mama,” he says. “We’re together. We’re gonna clean it all up. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
She blinks a couple times, chin tipping down into her chest.
“Hey,” Eliot says, his voice low and gentle, his own little extended hand to her. “C’mon, mastermind. If it was me, or Hardison, what would you want us to do?”
Her eyebrows furrow, just a little, her mouth quirks into an uncertain line. There’s something a little off, catching his interest like a loose thread on a jacket.
“You wouldn’t,” Parker offers, but it’s half-empty, slightly rote. “You’d find another way.”
Eliot starts to reply, but Hardison reaches back to tap at his arm.
“We would if we had to. Like you had to,” he says. “But that’s not the problem, right?”
Parker’s eyes narrow and she shakes her head, staring back at him steadily, her unsteady gaze asking him pleadingly for the answer.
Right. Finding the answer. For Parker. He can do anything if it’s for Parker. He just has to keep pulling at the thread, keep working out the lines of this until they lead to the solution. For as guarded as Parker holds herself right now, they haven’t actually slipped backward in time. He’s still spent years now, learning Parker, learning her reactions, her processes, her rules.
Eliot hums consideringly, probably searching through his own unique way of understanding Parker, that silent intuitive connection they have.
“You said you didn’t feel anything,” Eliot offers, a refocusing of the lens, a slight nudge of their scope.
Parker nods slowly.
And it all slips together, a clean sudden clarity.
“You don’t feel bad,” he says, and her face shutters for a moment, her nostrils flaring with a sudden inhale. She looks down at her feet and nods quickly. Eliot sighs out solemnly, too guilty, too knowing.
“Yeah,” Parker says, all croaky and downtrodden.
“I don’t either,” he says quickly. Eliot’s hand slips around his wrist, as he steps a little to the side, shifting them into more of a loose huddle. Parker glances up, scanning him carefully, glancing over to check in with Eliot too. “I don’t feel bad. I’m actually kinda glad he’s dead.”
Parker’s attention on him is hard and unwavering. Don’t lie , her eyes say. He doesn’t blink, doesn’t flinch.
“Me too,” Eliot says. He shrugs half-heartedly. “For what it’s worth.”
Parker’s shoulders slump, some little bit of essential tension unwinding.
“We shouldn’t,” she mumbles.
Hardison steps forward, closer to her, ready to catch her if he needs.
“Maybe not,” he says. “But we can figure that out. Together, right?”
Parker reaches for him, her thin fast fingers slipping into the closest belt loop of his jeans, not pulling, just holding. She glances over at Eliot and for a moment both their faces shift in silent conversation. Eliot steps in closer, and there it is, that snap, the fit of them all together, even if bogged down by all the cramped spaces of the bathroom.
“Okay,” Parker says, starting to sound like Parker again, their Parker, their thief, their mastermind. “Let’s clean up.”
.
The boys touch her like she’s breakable.
She decides to allow it. She still feels a little… frazzled, scattered, untethered. It’s nice to have their attention on her, holding her in place, reminding her again and again that they’re together, she’s not alone inside or outside.
They help her out of the leotard, gently pulling the fabric away from her skin where the blood seeped through and dried stickily. Eliot unwinds her hair from the tight bun, plucking out each bobby pin and setting them on the sink counter until he’s smoothing her hair flat against the back of her neck. Hardison plays with her fingers with one hand, working on his phone with the other to scrub any and all security footage of her from the past three hours, anything that places her near the studio, everything within a three-block radius of the parking lot.
“Was it on a camera?” she asks, a little petulantly because Hardison keeps angling the screen away from her and she can’t chase it with Eliot’s hands in her hair.
“Not entirely,” he says slowly. “The one at the backdoor caught a little. Just him following you, and then a flash of something in the corner before you left.”
She’s glad. It makes his job easier, and she also doesn’t really want him or Eliot or anyone to see it happen. Not that the image would be that good from a security camera on the fritz, but she thinks she doesn’t even want to know what her face looked like when she got a hold of the knife, when she pushed the body off her and onto the ground, when she walked away.
Hardison steps into the shower with her, while Eliot stands on the other side of the sheet and calls in a favor from one of his sketchier friends to deal with the body.
This part of the plan settles weird in her chest, but she works it over a few more times in her head, that her alias at the studio has no connection to any of Eliot’s, let alone his own underground connections. Bringing in a complete outsider protects their identities. She can’t be spotted near the dance studio again tonight, so she can’t go back, and she certainly won’t send Hardison or Eliot there alone to clean up her mess. (To see what she did). And Eliot’s sketchy friend owes him, and knows how to cleanly dispose of bodies.
They were already working on connecting the mark to various illicit activities with the Russian mob, so they’ll lean heavy on that angle staging the cover-up. And they’ll find proof of what he did to the other dancers, but that’s most likely a problem for the morning.
Hardison scrubs some of Eliot’s fancy shampoo into her hair, pressing light kisses to the tops of her shoulders through the suds, and despite the swirl of dark thoughts in her head, and pink water down the drain, it makes her want to giggle. She can’t work herself that up yet though, so instead, she smiles, pokes gently at his arms in a half-rhythmic sequence of fingers and beats.
She doesn’t know Morse code, no matter how many times Eliot has insisted they learn, but she thinks this is a good enough way to say I love you.
Hardison gets it, smiles at her, big and dopey, resting his forehead against hers.
The water stings at the cut on her back even though Hardison tries to gentle the flow around the wound. He hands her the loofah, lets her scrub herself down, which she appreciates. And then the water flows clear and she feels clean and smells like Eliot and soap.
Hardison rinses down the tub as she steps out, where Eliot waits with a big ratty towel. He wraps it around her front, and his arms stay around her for an extra moment, as she tucks her face into his neck and breathes.
She’s been slipping and sliding all over the place in her own brain, and it’s nice to have this moment where she remembers that Eliot is here, sturdy and strong, ready and willing to protect her, more than capable, the best security system in the world.
“Better?” he asks, and knows exactly how hard to squeeze, to let her feel properly pinned without feeling trapped or constrained. She knows he knows what it’s like to do this alone, to clean up alone, to try to rub the grime off even though it’s stepped beneath your skin. And she knows he’s promising her that he won’t anymore, that she won’t, that they’ll do this together.
She nods, butting her head against his jaw like cats do, thanking him silently.
“Parker,” he grumbles sharply, jerking his head back because she maybe does it a little too hard.
She apologizes, smoothing a small kiss along the line of his jaw, kitten soft, which makes his pulse jump against her lips. It makes everything feel bright and heavy, makes her need to squint to calm all her senses and be able to see.
Hardison’s hand settles on her back, his fingers stroking through her wet hair and pulling it up and tying it away.
“Oh,” Hardison says. “You know, this cut doesn’t even look that bad all cleaned up.”
“That mean you’re gonna do the butterfly stitches this time?” Eliot asks skeptically, shooting him a look over her shoulder.
“Well, you know, I just don’t have your delicate touch, El,” Hardison stammers back. Eliot rolls his eyes and steps back.
Parker tucks the towel around her body. It’s a poor substitution for the hug, but she’ll survive.
Eliot grabs the rest of the first aid stuff, and he and Hardison switch places. This at least is familiar, Eliot’s fingers steady and sure on her skin as he patches her up.
Hardison stands in front of her, holding her hands, letting her rest her head against his chest, his smooth bare skin sliding against her cheek as she nestles into him. Usually they’d be talking still, planning the next step or going over the job, but she’s glad for the silence now, anchors herself against the twin sounds of her boys breathing.
Eliot flattens a bandage across her shoulder blade and throws the rest in the little trash can in the corner. He moves to put the rest of the supplies away, but she clears her throat pointedly, leaning back towards him.
Hardison laughs, and she feels the rumble against her face.
Eliot sighs begrudgingly but tips his head down anyway, dropping a perfunctory kiss to the center of the bandage.
And she knows he doesn’t believe in magical feel-better kisses, but she swears it all hurts a little less for a second, and she breathes out, melting into Hardison and closing her eyes. Eliot gives another unamused grunt, and tips back in, his hair brushing across her skin as he mouths a line between her shoulders.
His hand brushes her side before he steps away again, cleaning up.
They have to get the spot on the wall, probably burn the leotard, (which is exciting, she hadn’t exactly been a fan of it this week). But things feel mostly settled right now.
“You wanna talk feelings more?” Hardison asks gently, the tip of his nose tracing along the shape of her ear.
They probably should. Her gut is still half-twisted and tight with all those red emotions, anger and shame and fear.
“Not yet,” she says though. It’s enough, for now, to just feel safe, to be with them, to know that if there’s something wrong with her, it doesn’t matter here. To know what they do doesn't matter.
Not as long as they make it home.