Fanfiction || The Intervention Job || OT3 || Part Six
Title: The Intervention Job
Author: Sapphire Smoke cuzimastripper
Fandom: Leverage
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Hardison/Parker/Eliot
Length Thus Far: 55,997 words
Summery: Sophie's been in the habit of holding interventions ever since the one with Nate, and this time Hardison is her next victim.
A/N: Yes, it turned into a OT3. My bad. And with OT3 comes naughtiness, because I'll take any excuse to get Parker naked.
Other Parts: PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR | PART FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Close Call
Five days into this whole “treatment plan”, Sophie decided that apparently what was needed was a house call, just to see how things were working out. Why she couldn’t just call Parker or Hardison and ask was beyond him, maybe because she thought that they would lie for him if he threatened them enough. Which they would, lie for him that is, but not because they were being threatened. No, it’d just be for their own selfish purposes.
Unfortunately, the day Sophie decided to make her house call was the day Eliot finally decided to try giving Hardison head.
“Oh god… oh fuck, keep doing that… yeah, that’s… damn Eliot…”
Apparently he wasn’t as bad as he thought he was going to be. But then again, he did end up getting a little lesson from Parker while Hardison was in the shower that morning. He didn’t want one, but that’s what he gets for giving her a banana on her breakfast plate. Eliot doesn’t think he’ll ever look at bananas the same way again.
It was terrifying at first, but like he’ll ever admit that. But his head was filled with thoughts of ‘should I use my hands during it? How much tongue is too much? Is there even such a thing as too much? Should I play with his balls?’ Seriously, his mind just wouldn’t shut up. At least, not until Hardison’s loud moans of approval gave him the confidence he needed to just go with his instincts.
Parker was on the other side of the bed, getting herself off as she watched. At first she was being a fuckin’ life coach or whatever, trying to give Eliot pointers while he was doing it, but that stopped after Eliot flipped her the finger and Hardison told her that her technicalities were ruining the moment. She pouted, but decided to let them have their little accomplishment and just sit back and enjoy. And she was… enjoying, that is. Loudly.
“Yes, cum in his mouth Alec!” she encouraged as her digits worked at supplying her own pleasure inside of her body. “Cum all over his fucking face!”
Parker was… okay, Eliot’s half convinced Parker used to be some kind of dominatrix porn actress. For someone so tiny, so loopy, so just out of it and weird normally… when she got in the bedroom she was like the slut from all of your favorite porn movies. It was weird at first to get used to, maybe just because of the shock of it. But the bitch was… kinda fuckin’ dirty and very vocal about it. And it was all kinds of hot. She had like a damn switch and then she’d be someone completely different.
Normally Eliot does the ordering around in the bedroom. But when it came to Parker, he was willing to let her drive. He can’t wait till they can dress her up in some tight little corset and thigh high boots. He might orgasm just from the sight of her. He would give her a whip too, just for the visual candy, but he’s too afraid she’d actually try to use it. And no, he is not getting whipped, thank you very much.
Hardison was so close, so close Eliot could fuckin’ taste it already… when the doorbell rang.
“SHIT,” Parker gasps out, and actually does manage to have an orgasm in the nick of time. The lucky bitch. She shudders and gasps as she falls back down to earth, and as she breathes heavily she looks at the two of them. “What do we do?”
“Just… oh fuck… just get it, probably fucking… Yes, ELIOT, GOD… UPS or something…” Hardison manages to gasp out, his fingers digging into the bedding. Eliot was too into what he was doing to even give half a shit about who was at the door, though now he wishes his did.
“But what if its-?”
“JUST GO PARKER!” Hardison gasps out one last time, and Parker makes a face at him and waggles her a head a little in mocking as she picks herself up off the bed, pulls back on her jeans and leaves the room.
“God, Eliot don’t stop…”
Like he was fucking planning on that. Please.
But then they hear Parker say very loudly, to make sure they would hear, “HI SOPHIE!”
But Hardison’s too close to stop, he’s on the brink and already starting to tumble over. Eliot takes his mouth off of his cock and says, “Shit,” under his breath as he uses one hand to cover Hardison’s mouth and the other to work him over the edge.
Hardison starts to cum, the sticky mess flying fucking, shit, everywhere (okay, maybe he’s exaggerating a little, but that’s what it seemed like under the current stressful situation). Eliot puts his hand over the head of his dick to stop it from becoming a bigger mess than it already is, and he can hear Hardison’s muffled pants and cries from behind his hand.
“NO, SOPHIE!” They hear Parker yelling, again. The girl seriously needs to work on vocal tone. “COME WITH ME TO THE KITCHEN! LOOK WHAT I MADE!”
“Shit, get up,” Eliot tells him in a whisper as he grabs the closest thing he can find to clean up with - one of his shirts - and wipes his hand and Hardison’s lower body.
“Can’t… move…”
“If you don’t fuckin’ get up and Sophie sees us like this-” Eliot starts, but apparently that’s enough.
“I’m up, I’m up,” Hardison says quickly and tries to find his pants.
“Here,” Eliot says and picks them up, throwing them in his direction. Hardison just managed to put them on and look presentable, Sophie walks through the bedroom door.
“But see! It’s a hundred dollar bill!” Parker tries, running in after her with her carved pumpkin in her hand.
Oh, so that’s what it was supposed to be. Eliot peered at it. Still really didn’t look like one.
“Bedrooms are private,” Eliot growls at her as he stands up.
“And yet I see you have Hardison in here,” Sophie says, in this tone of voice Eliot really doesn’t like. It makes her seem like she knows things.
“I was borrowing some jeans,” Hardison says quickly.
“What happened to your other ones?”
“I gave them to charity!” Parker announces forcefully, in that horrible way that she tries to lie. Shit, they’re doomed.
Sophie cocks and eyebrow and turns around slowly to look at her. Parker noticeably swallows.
“That’s so sweet to think of the underprivileged, Parker,” Sophie says, and once again, Eliot hates her tone of voice, like she’s playing along in some little game. “But what did you give that was yours?”
“Everything!”
Yeah, they’re doomed.
“Ha, what Parker means is… she gave everything to charity that she brought with her here, not everything she owns of course, duh,” Hardison tries to cover, and moves to take Parker by the shoulders and steer her out the door. “Come on Parker, since you gave everything away, lets go shopping for more clothes.”
“Er, okay,” Parker says, her whole body still twitching from the lie as she’s steered out of the room.
Sophie looks at Eliot.
D-O-O-M-E-D.
“You have cum in your hair,” she tells him flatly.
Shit. Eliot runs his fingers through his hair to get it out of his face while he goes into the bathroom, Sophie hot on his heels. “Yeah well, I have bad aim when I jack myself off,” he tells her as he turns the water on in the sink.
“Eliot, I really wish you wouldn’t lie to me like I’m stupid.”
Eliot starts washing his hair and refrains from saying something like, ‘But you are.’ Because one, that’s just false, and two, just plain bitchy. “I’m not fucking anyone,” he tells her, because he’s not. Once again, third base is not sex.
“You know, I might have believed that if I didn’t walk in and hear someone have an orgasm while Parker loudly, and let me add, obnoxiously, try to cover it up,” Sophie tells him. Does the woman have fuckin’ bat ears or something?
“Like I said, I was jacking off,” Eliot tells her.
“With Hardison in the room.” Not even a question, just kind of a mock.
“I don’t see why you’re lecturing me when clearly Hardison’s the one into voyeurism,” Eliot says flatly, and grabs a towel to dry his now clean hair.
“If that’s true, you’re still the one who let him watch.”
“He was in the closet, I didn’t know. And frankly, you storming in didn’t really allow for me to properly kick his ass for it,” Eliot grumbles. He probably really shouldn’t be blaming this whole thing on Hardison.
Sophie just stares at him, and their eyes meet. After her, Eliot is the best grifter in the group, and it’s starting to show by how much Sophie clearly can’t figure out if he’s lying or not. Finally she asks, “Are you being serious?”
“No, actually I’m the one into exhibitionism, and I love having Parker and Hardison watch as I get myself off,” Eliot says in an even tone. Now he’s just trying to confuse her.
“Oh god, Eliot. Just stop! I don’t know what the bloody hell you’re doing, but Parker and Hardison are dating now, and you shouldn’t be-”
“No, seriously. They both say the nastiest things you wouldn’t believe to cheer me on.” You know how hard it is to try to screw with Sophie with a straight face? Really hard. But he knew if he didn’t do it, and didn’t make both sides of it sound convincing and yet mocking at the same time, Sophie would know what was going on. This way, she can’t figure out if he’s being serious or not, and gives her enough possibilities to not know which ones the truth.
“Okay, now you’re just mocking me,” Sophie says in a huff. “Fine, sorry I… okay, no. I’m not apologizing for that. I still know you’re up to something, I just don’t know what.” A pause. “But I can find out.”
“No mommy, please don’t read my diary!” Eliot says in this desperate pleading tone in a little girls voice, and Sophie’s eyes flash.
“This won’t be my last visit,” she warns. “And frankly, I’m disappointed in you, Eliot. I thought you would actually try and change.”
Eliot doesn’t say anything, for fear of blowing up and revealing too much. Instead he just shows her to the door, “Thanks for stopping by, Sophie. It’s been a real pleasure.” Ha.
Sophie stands in the doorway, just looking at him, like she’s studying him. “I’ll find out.”
“Good luck with that.”
Sophie flashes her eyes one more time before turning on her heel and leaving. Once Eliot closed the door, the hall closet door opens and Hardison and Parker stick their head out of it. “She gone?”
“What the hell are you doing in a closet? I thought you two left.”
“Seemed like a good idea at the time,” Hardison defends as he tries to squeeze out of it.
“I made friends with a spider,” Parker tells him, and that makes Hardison screech and jump head first out of the closet and dive onto the floor. Pansy.
“THERE WAS A SPIDER NEAR ME AND YOU DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING?!”
“Relax, he’s nice… see?” and she holds out her hand as she steps out of the closet, holding the said spider. Hardison scrambles backwards on his hands and knees away from it.
“ELIOT KILL IT!”
Oh, jeez.
“No! He never did anything to you!” Parker says, and takes a step back as she shields the spider with her other hand, protecting it.
“He existsssss!” Hardison hisses, and points at it like it’s the devil.
Man, he’s such a mediator in this relationship, isn’t he? “Parker, why don’t we let your friend go outside, huh?” Eliot asks, and kind of nudges her towards the door. She thinks about this for a minute, then apparently decides it’s a suitable arrangement because she starts walking towards the door.
Eliot opens it and follows her outside as she sits on the grass, the spider still in her hand. “This is where I leave you,” she tells it, and places it on the ground. “Live long and prosper!” Oh jeez, what the hell is that that she’s doing with her hand? This is Hardison’s fault, he’s sure of it.
“Okay, come on,” he tells her, and extends his hand so she can grasp it to get back up. When she’s finally reached a standing position, right up next to Eliot face to face, she sighs a little.
“I wish I could have seen him cum all over you,” she says, like someone just stole the last cookie from her or something.
“Trust me, you’ll have another opportunity to see that,” Eliot tells her, but she still looks sad. “Hey,” he says and kisses her lightly on the lips. “Smile, okay? Not seeing an orgasm is not the end of the world.”
“Yeah… okay…” Parker says, and bobs her head a little back and forth before letting a sly smile creep across her face.
He takes her back inside, and Hardison looks up from the couch like he’s a bit wary, “Spider gone?”
“Yeah,” Eliot says, and Hardison looks relieved. Parker jumps over the edge of the couch to sit next to him, and is about to tell her to not use his furniture as a vault but he knows it’ll just be pointless, so the hell with it. He sits down next to her.
“What did you tell Sophie?” Hardison asks, and that makes Parker turn around.
“I lied okay, right?” she asks.
No. No Parker, you did not. “Er, yeah.”
“Really?”
“No. No, not really.”
“Does she know?” Hardison asks, more impatient this time. Worried. Maybe even paranoid. He wrings his hands together.
“She thinks she knows something, she just don’t know what. I confused her enough times for her to not know what the hell is actually going on.”
“So we’re good?” Hardison asks.
“No,” Eliot says, and sighs a little. “She’ll find out eventually, guarantee that. But for right now, yeah we’re fine.”
“Why can’t we just tell her?” Parker asks, a little bit of whine in her voice. “All this lying is stressful. If I lose my hair… actually no, that wouldn’t be that bad. I can get a pink wig or something.” She smiles, managing to lose herself in her own world mid sentence. But that was Parker. “Maybe blue…”
Hardison looked at Eliot, and their eyes meet. They knew why they didn’t want Sophie, or Nate, to know. Embarrassment. Plain and simple embarrassment. Sure, they can go out with each other in front of people they don’t know. That’s easy. But if they tell them, they’ll expect PDA… and that’s just weird. They ain’t ready for all that. And while they could just make the choice not to do it, with Parker in the mix? It gets a little more difficult.
But they both knew they would have to be honest about it, one day. But that day was not today.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
The Insecurity
“She did something, I know it. I feel it.”
“Jesus, Hardison, you’re being paranoid,” Eliot says as he watches the boy search the room, convinced Sophie did something while she was here like plant a hidden camera or something, like she actually had time to do that or something.
“Come to bed,” Parker pouts, holding the covers up to her chin.
“I’m not being paranoid,” Hardison says, searching the walls. “She left here too easily.”
Jeez.
“Hardison, get your ass into this bed. If you make me get up-”
“One minute.”
This is ridiculous.
Eliot sighs and throws the covers off of him, and his feet hit to the cold floor. He wants to be sleeping right now, not executing physical force. “Hardison, you have three seconds.”
“Eliot, can you just give me one minute please?”
“One.” Hardison continues to search the walls. “TWO.” Hardison’s still ignoring him. “Fine. Three,” Eliot says, and comes up behind him, wrapping his arms around his waist… and picks him up.
“ELIOT! Let me down! I’m not some kind of child that you can just-”
But he’s interrupted as Eliot throws him on the bed, and climbs in next to him. Hardison tries to get up, but Eliot hovers over him and puts a hand on his chest and holds him down. “No, it’s time to fuckin’ sleep, Hardison.”
“Eliot…”
“SHHHH,” Parker hisses really loudly, and covers Hardison’s mouth with her hand. Hardison’s eyes go wide. “SLEEPING. TIME.” Hardison just nods mutely under her hand. “Good. Now take off your pants, your jeans are scratching my legs.”
What would he do without Parker? Hardison apparently only listens to her, and Eliot has the sneaking suspicion its out of fear. Though why he’d be afraid of her and not him, he has no idea. Then again, he might have a little fear of Parker too. But it’s that kind of fear that’s not really bad or anything. It’s the one where you know they have control, and you better listen or else. Which, now, come to think of it, reminds him of his freaking mother.
Wow, he doesn’t wanna dwell on that one.
Eliot doesn’t know what woke him up in the middle of the night, but it was probably the bathroom light. Eliot grumbles sleepily and pulls himself out of bed, cussing under his breath. He coulda swore he didn’t leave the damn thing on. But as he walks into the bathroom and has his hand raised in the air to flip the switch, he pauses.
Parker looks up at him from inside the bathtub. But she isn’t taking a bath… she’s just sitting there, naked, legs curled up to her chest. Eliot blinks at her for a moment, wondering if he’s hallucinating in his half awake state. “Parker?” he asks, sleepily.
“Hi,” she says in a small voice. She fidgets a little, but doesn’t really look at him.
“What are you doin’ in there?” he asks, and leans down to sit on the edge of the tub next to her. “And why are you naked?” Not that Parker really needed a normal reason to do anything, half the time she never did. But hell, this might be the time where something she does actually makes some sort of sense. He runs his fingers through her hair. Something was up.
Parker shrugs lightly. “Went to bed this way,” she tells him, but doesn’t answer his other question.
Eliot doesn’t say anything for a little bit, but watches her. She looks so… small. “You wanna take a bath?” Parker just shrugs, and lets out a little breath. “Let’s take a bath,” Eliot says, and stands back up to slide off his boxers before turning on the water in the tub.
Parker just sighs.
He doesn’t like this Parker. Something’s wrong with her, and not in the usual way. As the bath water fills up, he scootches her forward so he can climb in behind her. She leans against his chest, and the only thing that can be heard is the sound of the running water.
“I want bubbles,” she says finally.
“I don’t have bubblebath.”
Parker doesn’t answer him, just picks up a bottle of shampoo and starts squeezing it into the running water until small bubbles start to form. Then she turns off the water, sits back, and sighs again. Eliot’s hating this silence. Parker usually never shuts up.
“You’re getting hard,” Parker tells him, as she notices it against her back.
“You’re naked, it happens.”
“Do you want to have sex with me?”
“No, darlin’. I want you to tell me what’s wrong,” Eliot says, and wraps his arms around her torso, running his fingers across her stomach under the water.
“It’s stupid.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
Parker rolls her eyes and little and settles into him more, turning her head to lay on his shoulder, her face in his neck. “Nightmares,” she tells him. “I know that’s dumb. But I have them all the time. I just want them to go away.”
“It ain’t dumb, honey. Everyone get’s nightmares,” Eliot tells her, looking down at her. Her eyes flutter up to look at him.
“Even you?”
Eliot smiles, like the thought of him not having nightmares in his line of work is amusing, because it is. “Yeah, even me.”
Parker purses her lips together and nods, wrapping and arm around Eliot’s waist. Eliot thinks he’s fixed everything (go him) when she says, “Tell me I’m pretty.”
“What?”
Twilight zone. Parker became a girl. Hold on. Back up. Rewind.
“Tell me I’m pretty. Don’t you think I am?” she asks, and sits up more to look at him.
Eliot blinks at her. How the hell did they switch subjects so quickly? “Yeah… yeah of course I do, Parker. You’re beautiful.” Because she… she is. She’s really beautiful. But what’s with this sudden insecurity?
Oh no, is she on her rag? Oh lord…
Parker licks her lips nervously, and Eliot’s wondering what’s going through her mind. Finally she asks in a small voice, “Then why do you like him better?”
Oh shit. See? He knew this was going to happen.
“Parker, I don’t like either of you better than the other,” Eliot tells her. Shit. This… okay this sucks. Awkward three in the morning relationship conversation. Not. Liking. It.
“Yeah you do, you’re always touching him more,” she says. “And you always wanna do sexual things with him more than me.”
She’s gotta be on her rag.
“Parker, if you want to go down that route… you and Hardison have had sex together, as in without me present. And let me remind you that I heard you two when I was watching the Celtics game, so it wasn’t just before we were all together,” Eliot tells her. And frankly, as much as he thought it would bother him… it actually didn’t. That’s when he figured that it might work after all. But now with Parker…
“So?”
“So if anyone has an insecurity issue here, it should be me with you guys.”
“Do you?” she asks, looking at him like she’s trying to know the answer before he reveals it.
“No,” he tells her, honestly. She blinks, like she’s surprised that it came out so honest, and then she nods a little. There’s silence, and Parker isn’t letting him know what the hell’s going on inside of her head, so he asks, “We good? You better now?”
“Yeah,” she says, but just as Eliot relaxes, these emotions or thoughts, or hell just something, flashes across her face and she takes it back. “No.”
Damnit.
“Then what…?”
Parker turns around to face him then, so fast that it makes the water swish and splash out of the tub. She looks in his eyes as she accuses, though in a monotonic voice that creeps him out. “You only fucked me that night because I was naked and easy, and you only fuck me now because I come attached to Alec.”
Eliot blinks at her, and then the angry part of him starts to ignite, or maybe that’s the offended part. They all feel the same. Who cares if she’s on her rag and all emotional, he is not gonna take that. “That’s not…! Parker, are you fuckin’ serious? You really think that’s what this is?”
“Yes.”
Yeah, alright, this was making him mad now. He likes Parker, he fucking likes her. And yeah, maybe he never thought he would and yes maybe she was right about the sex the first time. She was naked and she was easy and he just took it. But that is not the case now! And he’s fucking offended if she thinks that he’s in this little relationship with the three of them just because he thinks it’ll be fuckin’ easier or something than just trying to steal Hardison away from her.
Which he wouldn’t do, just for the record. Not that he couldn’t, but he wouldn’t.
And what was making him even madder about this? He had NO idea how to fix it. Comfort is not his strong point.
“Parker, you’re… you’re just fuckin’… you’re...”
“See, you can’t even think of a word to-”
Fuck this. “You are fuckin’ amazing, okay?!” Eliot bursts out, and Parker blinks. But he isn’t done. “You are one of the most talented people I have ever met. You’re fuckin’ smart, you’re damn beautiful, and I still have no fucking idea why you - either of you - want me, okay? So just stop fuckin’ thinking that you’re not special to me, cause you are. OKAY? SHIT, PARKER.”
Damn. Feelings. He hates expressing though. It makes his stomach feel like he’s gonna be sick.
“What the hell are ya’ll screaming about?” Hardison asks as he sleepily stumbles into the bathroom. Shit.
“Sorry man, I didn’t mean to wake you up,” Eliot apologizes, and then just sighs and leans his head back against the tile heavily. There was a bit of a smacking sound, and Parker’s eyes go wide. “I’m fine,” Eliot says automatically.
“So what’s going on?” Hardison asks with a yawn, looking at the two of them in the tub.
“Eliot likes me,” Parker says with a smile, suddenly chipper. Well hey, at least he fixed it. Fucking hormones.
“And that’s why ya’ll were screaming?” Hardison says, looking at them like they both went insane. “Well then don’t like each other anymore so I can get some sleep.” And then he shuts off the light on them, his little way of saying ‘fuck you, I’m tired’ and leaves. They can hear the bed squeak in the bedroom as he flops back down.
Silence.
“It’s dark,” Parker says, stating the obvious.
“Yeah.”
More silence, and Parker moves back over in the tub to lean against him again. “We should go to bed.”
“Probably a good idea.”
But neither of them move. Parker turns her head and looks up at him, her hand raising up to brush his hair out of his face. He gives her a little smile, not really knowing what she’s up to, before she slowly presses her lips against his. It wasn’t like any of her other kisses, her kisses that are rushed, needy, desperate, and passionate. This was soft, this was… almost like a word he is so not going to use right now.
She turns and straddles him, making the water move around them. But they’re just kissing, and it’s weird that Parker doesn’t seem to have any other ulterior motives. But it’s nice… it’s really nice. Her hands are in his hair, and while the kissing’s getting deeper, and hell, he’s getting harder (he can’t help it, blame the nakedness), she doesn’t go for his dick. She just kisses him, like she’s never kissed him before in his life.
And then they break, and she’s breathless for a moment, beautiful in the dim light, her hair hanging down her shoulders only half wet from being submerged and she whispers, “Tell me I’m beautiful again.”
The way she says it, it’s almost as if she’s never been called beautiful before in her life outside of her and Hardison. It almost makes him wonder…
“You’re beautiful,” he tells her, not dwelling on his thoughts right now, and she smiles and her lips meet his again, pressing his back up against the tile again. It may have been ten minutes, or maybe twenty, or maybe even just five before they break again, and she snuggles back into his chest.
The water’s starting to get cold, but neither of them move. “Parker?” he asks in a soft voice. She looks up at him. He’s not sure if he should ask this question, but he thinks he needs to. Just to know what exactly he’s working with here. “Have you ever had a relationship before?”
Parker chews on her bottom lip a little and shrugs. “I’ve had sex.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
She sighs a little before she admits, “No…”
He tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, and she looks down into the water, seemingly embarrassed. “Hey,” he says softly and she looks up at him. “We won’t hurt you,” he promises. She looks at him for a long time, as if seeing if she can detect any hint of a lie. And then she smiles, slowly at first, until it lights up her whole face.
Finally they both fall asleep, both still naked and damp from the tub, her in between him and Hardison on the bed. And for the first time Eliot has ever seen, Parker falls asleep with a smile on her face.
However, the next morning, something happened that made the smile go away… and her “special angry place” to rear it’s ugly head again.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
The Exposure
“Oh no.”
“Have I ever told you how much I hate when you say that?” Eliot tells him from in the bedroom, putting away their laundry. There’s never an excuse to be messy, but Parker doesn’t seem to understand that.
“Oh no.”
“HARDISON.”
Hardison pokes his head out of the bathroom, with the biggest oh no face Eliot thinks he’s ever seen on him. He puts the laundry down on the bed and looks at him, knowing he’s about to tell him something that’s potentially gonna make the world crumble around them. “What?”
“You remember when Parker ran out of here and out the door?” he asks slowly, fiddling with something in his hand.
“Yes, seeing as it only was a half an hour ago.” Seriously. He hates when Hardison gets like this. How hard is it to just get to the point?
“And you remember you saying I was paranoid?”
Oh no.
“Hardison, get to the point, and get to it quickly,” Eliot says as he starts to walk over the man, picking up his coat from off of the bed, just knowing he was about to have to run out the damn door.
“Well…” Hardison says, and holds up what he had in his hand.
Oh… shit.
“Please don’t tell me that’s a bug.”
“Okay, it’s not a bug, and I didn’t find it laying on the sink, where Parker didn’t put it after she found it.”
“DAMNIT, HARDISON,” Eliot growls and runs his fingers through his hair as he starts heading towards the door, Hardison behind him. “Why didn’t you find that when you were being all paranoid scavenger last night?! Where the hell is Sophie right now? Fuck, Parker’s gonna explode all over the bitch if she hasn’t already.”
“I didn’t check the bathroom! I thought she just was in the bedroom with you!”
“Why didn’t you ask Parker where she was going?!” Eliot fumes, opening his truck door and getting in the drivers seat. He starts the engine just as Hardison gets in.
“Why is that my responsibility? She’s a big girl; I figured she just went out to steal something!” Hardison yells back.
“WHERE THE HELL ARE WE GOING?”
“Try Nate’s, she’s always over there,” Hardison says, and Eliot steps on the gas. God, that fucking… bitch. She stooped as low as planting a BUG?! This is nine shades of fucked up, and what’s worse is that if she listened to last nights tape, then she heard the entire fucking conversation between him and Parker. Parker doesn’t share much, and sharing something unwillingly was bound to piss her off to holy hell and back.
Usually it takes twenty minutes to get to Nate’s. Today? It took seven.
They could hear the yelling from the hallway. “Shit,” Eliot swears under his breath and rushes over to the door, Hardison right behind him. Eliot had absolutely no idea how the hell he was gonna stop this disaster, but hell, least he can make sure Parker isn’t carrying any sharp objects.
When Eliot opens the door, Sophie’s backed up against the counter in Nate’s kitchen, seeming to be avoiding Parker behind the island counter who’s screaming at her like it’s going out of style. Nate seemed like he was trying to get close to Parker to calm her down, but kept taking steps back like he’s afraid she’s gonna spontaneously combust and kill everyone within a ten foot radius.
“YOU TAKE AWAY EVERYTHING!” Parker screams at her, the fury written all over her face, her knuckles white from gripping the island counter so hard. “YOU TOOK AWAY MY MONEY, YOU TOOK AWAY HARDISON’S PRIVACY, YOU TOOK AWAY NATE’S BALLS, AND YOU’RE TAKING AWAY ELIOT’S DICK!” Oh. Shit. Yup, this isn’t going so well. “AND I WANT HIS DICK, DAMNIT!”
“Parker, please calm down,” Sophie says, her hands up in the air as she goes the opposite way around the counter that Parker’s going. “I was just trying to help-”
“BY SPYING ON HIM? ON US?! WHAT WE DO IS NONE OF YOUR BUISNESS, SOPHIE!”
“Parker!” Eliot and Hardison yell at the same time, and her head turns to look at the two of them. But her fury doesn’t soften, doesn’t waver. She’s pissed and nothing is gonna fix it.
“I’M HANDLING THIS.”
Yeah, not in the best way.
“Parker, hey… calm down…” Hardison tries, taking a couple steps towards her. Bad idea.
“I SAID I’M HANDLING THIS!” she screams at him, and Hardison takes a couple steps back. Wise move. Parker in this state doesn’t seem to quite understand that there’s a difference between friend and foe. She’s just built to destroy at this point. She’s exposed, vulnerable from being spied on, and her first reaction is to eliminate the person that made her feel that way.
“Parker, I know this is hard for you to understand, but Eliot could have taken advantage of you and Hard-”
“ARE YOU FUCKING RETARDED?!” Parker screams, and Sophie scared look changes to one of scared and offended, and also surprised. “ELIOT IS OUR BOYFRIEND. AS IN WE ALL GO ON DATE’S TOGETHER AND WE ALL ARE GONNA HAVE SEX WITH EACH OTHER, OKAY?! ELIOT DIDN’T TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ANYTHING! WE SEDUCED HIM!”
“You take this side, and I’ll circle around,” Eliot whispers under his breath to Hardison, not even caring right now what Parker’s revealing to both Sophie and Nate, cause that seriously is not his main concern right now.
“To do what?” Hardison whispers, looking at him like he’s insane.
“We need to grab her before she gets her hands on Sophie.” Frankly he’s surprised she hasn’t vaulted the counter yet. But it’s a good thing she hasn’t - means she’s still exercising some self control.
“You might have a death wish, but I don’t,” Hardison protests softly, looking at Parker like she’s some kind of upper level elite monster in his little game.
Don’t look at him like that, Hardison’s trying to corrupt him. Obviously.
“Relax, I’ll get her arms, you just focus on her legs,” Eliot tells him, and starts moving towards Parker without getting confirmation from Hardison. He was going along with this whether he likes it or not.
“Okay, okay I’m sorry, Parker…” Sophie says, hands up in surrender. “I just worry about you, and what you may think is a relationship might not actually be one because you’ve never…” Sophie trails off, but Parker knows what she was about to say. She knows she was about to reveal that she listened to last nights recording, when Parker told Eliot that she’s never had a relationship before. She just screwed herself in a major way, basically.
“I… HATE YOU,” she says slowly, dangerously. “I trusted you, and you just came in and fucking… DESTROYED EVERYTHING! STAY OUT OF MY BUISNESS, STAY OUT OF EVERYONE’S BUISNESS! You think we have problems? LOOK AT YOURSELF! Just fucking LOOK IN THE MIRROR! You’re more screwed up than the rest of us, Sophie, Catherine, FUCKING WHOEVER YOU ARE!”
Eliot signals to Hardison, who’s still looking wary of this whole ordeal. But Parker’s hands that are gripping the counter are now curling, like she has claws, and Eliot watches her whole body posed, like she’s ready to spring. It’s now or never.
Eliot really doesn’t want to just… jump her like this, but he weighed the pros and cons of not restraining her, and the possibly scenarios that played in his head if they didn’t made him think to hell with it, they’re gonna have to hold her until she calms down. The scenarios in his head where she isn’t restrained always ended in some sort of violence, because she’s seriously like a trapped wild animal right now. Exposure like that makes people lash out in whatever way they can to protect themselves, and they didn’t need the casualties.
He goes for one arm, and almost misses the other. She’s defensive, and once she’s realize she’s being held back her instinct is to fight. She does manage to elbow him in the ribs, but he takes it. “LET ME GO!” she screams… and kicks Hardison right in the chest.
Hardison gets the wind knocked out of him, but when she goes to kick again he grabs both of her feet and they settle her on the ground. “Parker! Parker, calm down!” Hardison tries.
Parkers struggling against them, but Eliot and Hardison have the advantage. “Shhh, come on girl calm down, please chill out…” Eliot whispers in her ear, but his grip with her arms behind her back firmly in place.
“Let go of me!” she yells again, but its not at loud, not as fighting anymore. She tries to get loose, tries to kick again, but the fights slipping out of her.
“Baby, its okay, come on…” Hardison tells her soothingly, and Parker’s bottom lip noticeably trembles, even though anger is still written all over her face. “Come on, it’ll be okay, Parker please…”
Parker chokes back a sob, and screams again, but it’s out of enraged defeat as she suddenly still. Eliot lets go of her arms and wraps his around her, and when Hardison lets go of her legs he comes up to wrap her in a hug too. “I hate her…” she whispers, holding onto the two men. She’s shaking, maybe an aftershock of her rage, but that just makes them hold on to her tighter, not giving half a fuck about Sophie and Nate knowing anymore.
Parker was hurting, and they had to fix that, above everything else.
“Parker…” Sophie tries, and starts to come over to them.
“Stay away from her,” Eliot growls at her, and Sophie stops mid stride, and for the first time in his life… he sees Sophie look devastated.
“But I just…”
“Sophie,” Nate says, and she looks over at him. He shakes his head. “Just leave them alone.”
Sophie bites the inside of her cheek, and Eliot can see her let out a heavy breath before her eyes flicker over to look at Eliot. “I’m sorry…” she says softly.
Eliot doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even acknowledge her apology. He just doesn’t wanna deal with any of that in front of Parker. He rubs Parker’s arms softly, then lets one fall slowly down until he’s grasped her hand tightly. “Come on,” he tells her as her and Hardison help her up. “Let’s go back to my house.”
Parker nods slowly, and when she’s standing, he nods at Hardison. “Take her back there,” he says, and hands him the keys to his truck and to his house. “I gotta deal with…”
Hardison nods, and wraps his arms around Parker’s shoulders and steers her out of the apartment. Eliot closes the door behind them and looks at the two people left in the room. “Nate, I know it’s your house but can I get a second alone with Sophie?”
“Yeah,” Nate says, for once not bitching about people in his apartment. He looks at Sophie, and he looks… disappointed. As he should be.
When he leaves, Sophie tries to talk, but Eliot holds up his hand. “Just don’t,” he says, and she closes her mouth. “You have no idea what you just did, do you?”
“I was just-”
But Eliot doesn’t wanna hear her fucking voice right now. “You know how fuckin’ hard it is for that girl to share anything about herself? And look what you fuckin’ did! You spied on her, made her feel fuckin’ violated - and me too, by the way - and you just proved to her that yeah, maybe sharing ain’t the best idea ever. Way to go.”
“Eliot…”
But he isn’t done. “Look, I’ll give you the fact that yeah, maybe I did have a problem, okay? I’ll admit to that. But what I got going on with Parker and Hardison…. It ain’t like that, okay? So just back the hell off of me, and leave them out of this.”
Sophie goes to open her mouth to say something, but Eliot interrupts her again, “And if you say one word about this three-way relationship not being healthy, or just fucking how it ain’t gonna work, or whatever the hell else… just keep your damn opinions to yourself.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
Eliot looks at her, and cocks an eyebrow at her. He doesn’t believe that for a second. Sophie sighs.
“I don’t get it, alright? I don’t bloody understand how you can be with two people at once and everyone’s okay with it. I worry about Parker because she’s so…” Sophie sighs again, “She’s like a child sometimes. And Hardison, he’s young too, doesn’t know what he wants and has been going through something really confusing for him.”
A pause. “And me?” he asks slowly.
“I don’t worry about you, Eliot. You can take care of yourself. Out of all of us, you’re the one who, for the most part, has their shit together,” Sophie tells him, and Eliot’s eyebrows raise. He wasn’t expecting that.
“Then why did you try to ‘fix me’?” he accused in a low voice, still thinking she’s a bit of a liar.
“Because you could have so much more than that,” Sophie stresses, and for once actually looks like she’s genuinely meaningful with her words. “You underestimate yourself, Eliot. But I guess… I guess you found it. So I’m happy for you.”
Eliot looks at her skeptically.
“I mean it.”
Eliot looks at her, trying to figure her out. He doesn’t know how to deal with this side of Sophie though, mainly because she was the enemy for the last week. So he chooses to just not deal with it right now, “It won’t be this easy with Parker,” he tells her. Not exactly a ‘you’re forgiven’, because she’s not, but just that… he understands her side. Somewhat.
“Or Hardison,” she says.
“Yeah,” Eliot says softly, and his eyes flicker to the door, thinking about them. He wanted to be home. Curl up into fucking bed, have him and Hardison put their arms around Parker and just make all this shit just go away.
“Go to them,” she tells him, and when he looks at him, she nods at the door. Their eyes lock for a moment, and then he nods slowly.
Hopefully Sophie didn’t do any permanent damage to his… girlfriend.
A/N: Just so everyone is aware, most likely I will not be stating specifically what Parker went through as a child. I've written about it before in other stories, and while they aren't all the same they still have a very general theme. So take this, take the fact that she can't get pregnant, and draw your own conclusions. I'm just saying that because people have asked me.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
The Panic Attack
The first sight he saw when he walked into his house was Hardison rushing towards the door after he heard it open. Eliot looked at the man, at the pained and distressed look he had plastered all over his face, and Eliot’s stomach dropped six feet under him. There was only one word, one word that didn’t need to be said, because it already spoke volumes on his face.
“Help.”
Eliot doesn’t remember his feet carrying him into the bedroom, but he found himself standing there in the threshold of the doorway almost instantly, looking at something he wish he could find a way to erase from his memory.
He can’t even describe it, its too… heart wrenching, horrific, painful. Parker, a strong woman a few years shy of thirty, was curled up at the base of the bed in a fetal position, and Eliot can see the small tremors of involuntary muscle twitches that are spasming through her body. He can hear her hard bursts of breath, noises that sounds painful to force up her lungs. Her arms moving, only barely, tucked underneath her body. She’s staring straight at the far wall, barely blinking. Breaking.
She’s having a panic attack.
“When did this start?” Eliot asks, still unmoving. He’s dealt with panic attacks before, and everyone’s different. He doesn’t want to stride right up to her without knowing what he’s dealing with.
“I-I dunno, about ten minutes ago?” Hardison says, strain obvious in his voice. “We were just talking, and then she just… broke, I dunno man. I tried to touch her and she… she screamed and curled more into herself. She won’t talk, she just stares and shakes, I don’t know what to do!” Hardison’s looking at him in desperation to fix her.
Eliot had to remind himself to breath, and after he takes a breath he asks, “What happened right before the attack? Exact words. This is important.”
“I.. uh, I dunno, I…” Hardison starts to say, thinking, as he wrings his hands together nervously and starts to pace. “I said something about how it was wrong how Sophie violated our privacy like that, and she just… started rambling about cameras and lies and disgusting… disgusting…”
“Disgusting what?”
“Habits? I don’t know, she just was talking so fast I could barely keep up and then she just… this.” He looks at Eliot, his eyes portraying so much sadness. “Eliot, I don’t know what to do…”
Eliot bites the inside of his lip, and looks down at Parker. Shit. He slowly makes his way over to her, crouching down in front of her, but he doesn’t touch her. He makes sure to stay a respectable distance away, not wanting to threaten her. “Parker? Parker, it’s Eliot. Hey darlin’, can you look at me for a second please?”
But Parker doesn’t look, doesn’t blink, just keeps staring, her ragged breathing the only noise to be heard in the room. He can see how tense her muscles are in one arm, and he knows he needs her to untangle herself from this ball. She’s gripping something, and she’s gripping it hard. She could be cutting off circulation. “Okay, hey girl… can you blink for me? Blink if you know it’s me.”
Parker shakes some more, but then suddenly she forces a blink. It’s hard, cold, so distant, but it was there. “Okay good, good Parker…” Eliot says in a soothing voice. “You’re safe here, okay. I promise you that, me and Hardison will never let anything bad happen to you. But you need to breathe, sweetie. Can you do it with me? In through your nose, out through your mouth. We’ll count them, okay? It’ll be a like a game. Can you do that for me?”
Parker doesn’t do anything for awhile, but then she blinks hard again. “Okay,” Eliot says, and takes a deep breath through his nose and out his mouth, “One,” he says, encouraging Parker to mimic. She’s always been good at mimicking. In through his nose, out through his mouth one more time, and this time he can see Parker start to do it. “Good, two…”
They got to fifteen before Parker started breathing more regularly. “See? Everything’s fine here, you’re okay here. Can you nod?” Parker curls more into herself, but nods. Her eyes are starting to look at him now, instead of just staring at the wall. Slow progress, but progress none the less.
After a minute of regular breathing, her looking at him, and the shaking starting to subside slowly, he says, “I’m going to touch you now, okay?”
Parker’s eyes go wide, like she forgets where she is for a moment. But then the fear slips away from her eyes and Eliot can see the strength behind them as she nods, allowing him to do so. Something that in this moment, is very hard for her.
He smiles at her, reassuring her, as he gently untangles her from herself. As he gets to her arms, sitting her back up, he holds out one of her wrists. “Hardison, get the antiseptic,” he tells him softly, and Hardison runs into the bathroom.
“Darlin’, you dug your nails in too hard when you were holding yourself, so we’re going to clean you up, okay?” he tells her, and she just nods mutely. It wasn’t anything really bad per say, it wasn’t bleeding in any kind of massive way, but she did break the skin. And since he’s sure she didn’t wash her hands right before this, something like that can get infected really easily.
When Hardison comes back with the antiseptic, he takes Parker’s wrist from Eliot gently and starts to apply it. Parker’s eyes are beginning to move more, now looking at Hardison, to Eliot, down to the little cuts on her wrist. When her eyes flicker back up to look at Eliot under her eyelashes, he can see her take a shuddered breath and tremble all through her body, before closing her eyes as trying to get herself under control.
“You’re strong, remember that,” Eliot tells her softly. “They’re just memories, okay? Nothing more than the past.”
Hardison looks at Eliot, probably wondering how he knew that was what’s wrong with her. But he didn’t know, not really. Just a feeling, a guess. Something horrible and unspeakable happened to that woman when she was a child, and though Eliot is sure she will never let either of them know what it is, he still know it exists, and therefore needs to acknowledge it.
H e won’t leave it like this though. He’ll find out, fuckin’ trust him on that. He’ll find out who did this to her and he’ll make sure he can finally give Parker piece of mind. He won’t ask, he won’t pry… but he’ll find out. A promise he’ll sign in blood if he has to.
After Hardison has finished wrapping her wrist, Parker took back her hand and curled it back into herself, tight to her chest. “Are you alright?” Eliot asks her carefully, and she looks at him, and then over to Hardison. She slowly scoots to her left until she’s leaning against Hardison’s chest, and as he wraps her arms around her, she holds out her hands for Eliot.
He’s not exactly sure how to take that gesture, but he’ll consider it a plus that she wants to be touched now. He takes her hands and she pulls him over to her, guiding him down so that his head is laying in her lap. Okay, kind of the opposite than what he was expecting, but hell, if it’ll make her feel better. He’s never really laid his head in anyone’s lap before, it’s always been kind of a woman thing. But she sighs a little and starts to run her fingers though his hair softly, and Eliot realized it was kind of nice.
Finally she spoke, but it was in this very even monotone, like she was reading something. “Once upon a time, there was a little girl,” she tells them, and both Eliot and Hardison look up at her, knowing to say nothing. She doesn’t look at them, just looks out the far window as she strokes Eliot’s hair, leaning hers against Hardison’s shoulder. “Her room was very tiny, very cold. A monster used to watch her from the shadows, and make the world black.”
Eliot isn’t sure how healthy disassociating with this is for her, but he can hardly believe that she’s talking about it, even in this way. But she apparently thought twice about going on, and as her hand stops running through his hair, emotions flash across her face and she says, “The end.”
Eliot and Hardison know not to pry. There’ silence for a while, until Hardison tells her, “There are no monsters here.”
She looks at him, and she smiles, only a little. Barely there, but it was such a relief to see that it shone from her face. “I know,” she says, and then looks down at Eliot. He smiles at her softly.
Parker takes a deep breath, and purses her lips together. “I’m sorry,” she says, which makes Eliot sit up and turn to look at her.
“There ain’t nothing to apologize for, darlin’.”
She shrugs a little, and Hardison tightens his hold around her before kissing her on the forehead. “Don’t ever be sorry for having feelings.”
“I don’t like them.”
Hardison smirks a little and says, “Sure you do, without feelings then you wouldn’t be so happy with us.” A pause, then a look a doubt. “You are happy with us, right?”
That makes Parker giggle, and Eliot’s never been so glad to hear a sound like that in his entire life. “Yeah, I’m happy.”
“Can we get off the floor?” Eliot asks. It was starting to hurt his back.
“Yeah,” Parker says, and Hardison helps her to her feet. Eliot gets up and flops back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. Man, what a fucking day. He closes his eyes, before he lets out a “oof!” as the wind is knocked out of him and he pops his eyes open. Parker just jumped on top of him, giggling.
“Don’t go to bed, we haven’t even had dinner,” she tells him.
“I wasn’t, just closin’ my eyes,” Eliot protests, but Parker doesn’t get off of him, instead chooses to lay her head on his chest. Hardison smiles at the two of them, ruffles Parker’s hair a little, and then gets up to get his laptop. Man, it’s like the man is glued to the damn thing.
“Come on man, don’t get on that thing. We won’t see you again for like fuckin’ hours,” Eliot tells him.
“He likes it,” Parker tells Eliot, like he needs to learn and accept that fact. “It makes him happy, playing with imaginary things.”
“Hey, its not imaginary,” Hardison tells her, but then I guess realized how stupid that sounded so he revised, “Okay, well, the people playing with me on their computers aren’t imaginary.”
“Come on man, seriously,” Eliot says, and his eyes shift to Parker. I mean come on, the girl just got through that freak out.
“No, let him play,” Parker says, and now Hardison looks confused on who to listen to.
“I thought you guys were having like a… moment, or something,” Hardison says, motioning to Parker who’s sprawled all over Eliot. “Thought I’d give you space. I mean you’ve let me and Parker have ours before.”
“That’s not… I wasn’t gonna fuck her,” Eliot says. “Besides, if I was, I’d want you here.”
“I didn’t say ‘fuck’,” Hardison says, and gives him this knowing look.
“If the words ‘make love’ come out of your mouth, I’m gonna smack you.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Parker asks, now looking at Eliot. “Don’t you want to make love to me? To us?”
Deer in headlights.
“Well, I don’t think we should have sex now,” Eliot defends. I mean shit, she just got over whatever… hardly the fucking time, right?
“No one said now,” Parker tells him, and sits up so she can look down at him. “You don’t want to make love, ever?”
“Right? For real,” Hardison chimes in, and both of them are looking at him like he said something wrong.
“What? Shit, I just don’t like the term, alright? Sounds all fuckin’… mushy.”
“What if I want mushy? I’ve never had mushy,” Parker says, and blinks at him. “What if I like it? I don’t know, I should try. We should try.”
“I just don’t do mushy, alright?” Jeez.
“Bullshit,” Hardison says, and puts down his laptop and comes over to them on the bed. “You got some mushy in you, I’ve seen it.” And now he pokes him, like he’s teasing him. Hell no.
“Lying sack.”
“No, he’s right. You were mushy with me in the bathtub.”
“I yelled at you in the bathtub.”
“Yeah, but it was mushy.”
Lord.
“Look, making love is for like… I dunno, fuckin’ old married couples, alright?” Eliot says, and sits up, running his fingers through his hair. He’s uncomfortable with this conversation, and he’s not really sure why.
Parker peers down at him and then asks, “So when all of us are all old and married one day, living in some big house with a yard and a little yappy dog, then you’ll make love to us?”
Eliot stares blankly at Parker. Married? Seriously? Did she just actually say that? He gets up off the bed, and puts on his shoes, not answering her question. He just can’t… think. MARRIAGE?
“Where are you going?” she asks him.
“Out. Just out,” Eliot tells her, just needing to get away for a minute. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, smothered. As he walks away and out the door he hears Hardison tell Parker:
“Parker, you seriously shouldn’t have said anything about marriage to Eliot…”
Yeah, probably not.
BLAH BLAH TOO BIG AGAIN
PART SEVEN IS HERE.
Author: Sapphire Smoke cuzimastripper
Fandom: Leverage
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Hardison/Parker/Eliot
Length Thus Far: 55,997 words
Summery: Sophie's been in the habit of holding interventions ever since the one with Nate, and this time Hardison is her next victim.
A/N: Yes, it turned into a OT3. My bad. And with OT3 comes naughtiness, because I'll take any excuse to get Parker naked.
Other Parts: PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR | PART FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Close Call
Five days into this whole “treatment plan”, Sophie decided that apparently what was needed was a house call, just to see how things were working out. Why she couldn’t just call Parker or Hardison and ask was beyond him, maybe because she thought that they would lie for him if he threatened them enough. Which they would, lie for him that is, but not because they were being threatened. No, it’d just be for their own selfish purposes.
Unfortunately, the day Sophie decided to make her house call was the day Eliot finally decided to try giving Hardison head.
“Oh god… oh fuck, keep doing that… yeah, that’s… damn Eliot…”
Apparently he wasn’t as bad as he thought he was going to be. But then again, he did end up getting a little lesson from Parker while Hardison was in the shower that morning. He didn’t want one, but that’s what he gets for giving her a banana on her breakfast plate. Eliot doesn’t think he’ll ever look at bananas the same way again.
It was terrifying at first, but like he’ll ever admit that. But his head was filled with thoughts of ‘should I use my hands during it? How much tongue is too much? Is there even such a thing as too much? Should I play with his balls?’ Seriously, his mind just wouldn’t shut up. At least, not until Hardison’s loud moans of approval gave him the confidence he needed to just go with his instincts.
Parker was on the other side of the bed, getting herself off as she watched. At first she was being a fuckin’ life coach or whatever, trying to give Eliot pointers while he was doing it, but that stopped after Eliot flipped her the finger and Hardison told her that her technicalities were ruining the moment. She pouted, but decided to let them have their little accomplishment and just sit back and enjoy. And she was… enjoying, that is. Loudly.
“Yes, cum in his mouth Alec!” she encouraged as her digits worked at supplying her own pleasure inside of her body. “Cum all over his fucking face!”
Parker was… okay, Eliot’s half convinced Parker used to be some kind of dominatrix porn actress. For someone so tiny, so loopy, so just out of it and weird normally… when she got in the bedroom she was like the slut from all of your favorite porn movies. It was weird at first to get used to, maybe just because of the shock of it. But the bitch was… kinda fuckin’ dirty and very vocal about it. And it was all kinds of hot. She had like a damn switch and then she’d be someone completely different.
Normally Eliot does the ordering around in the bedroom. But when it came to Parker, he was willing to let her drive. He can’t wait till they can dress her up in some tight little corset and thigh high boots. He might orgasm just from the sight of her. He would give her a whip too, just for the visual candy, but he’s too afraid she’d actually try to use it. And no, he is not getting whipped, thank you very much.
Hardison was so close, so close Eliot could fuckin’ taste it already… when the doorbell rang.
“SHIT,” Parker gasps out, and actually does manage to have an orgasm in the nick of time. The lucky bitch. She shudders and gasps as she falls back down to earth, and as she breathes heavily she looks at the two of them. “What do we do?”
“Just… oh fuck… just get it, probably fucking… Yes, ELIOT, GOD… UPS or something…” Hardison manages to gasp out, his fingers digging into the bedding. Eliot was too into what he was doing to even give half a shit about who was at the door, though now he wishes his did.
“But what if its-?”
“JUST GO PARKER!” Hardison gasps out one last time, and Parker makes a face at him and waggles her a head a little in mocking as she picks herself up off the bed, pulls back on her jeans and leaves the room.
“God, Eliot don’t stop…”
Like he was fucking planning on that. Please.
But then they hear Parker say very loudly, to make sure they would hear, “HI SOPHIE!”
But Hardison’s too close to stop, he’s on the brink and already starting to tumble over. Eliot takes his mouth off of his cock and says, “Shit,” under his breath as he uses one hand to cover Hardison’s mouth and the other to work him over the edge.
Hardison starts to cum, the sticky mess flying fucking, shit, everywhere (okay, maybe he’s exaggerating a little, but that’s what it seemed like under the current stressful situation). Eliot puts his hand over the head of his dick to stop it from becoming a bigger mess than it already is, and he can hear Hardison’s muffled pants and cries from behind his hand.
“NO, SOPHIE!” They hear Parker yelling, again. The girl seriously needs to work on vocal tone. “COME WITH ME TO THE KITCHEN! LOOK WHAT I MADE!”
“Shit, get up,” Eliot tells him in a whisper as he grabs the closest thing he can find to clean up with - one of his shirts - and wipes his hand and Hardison’s lower body.
“Can’t… move…”
“If you don’t fuckin’ get up and Sophie sees us like this-” Eliot starts, but apparently that’s enough.
“I’m up, I’m up,” Hardison says quickly and tries to find his pants.
“Here,” Eliot says and picks them up, throwing them in his direction. Hardison just managed to put them on and look presentable, Sophie walks through the bedroom door.
“But see! It’s a hundred dollar bill!” Parker tries, running in after her with her carved pumpkin in her hand.
Oh, so that’s what it was supposed to be. Eliot peered at it. Still really didn’t look like one.
“Bedrooms are private,” Eliot growls at her as he stands up.
“And yet I see you have Hardison in here,” Sophie says, in this tone of voice Eliot really doesn’t like. It makes her seem like she knows things.
“I was borrowing some jeans,” Hardison says quickly.
“What happened to your other ones?”
“I gave them to charity!” Parker announces forcefully, in that horrible way that she tries to lie. Shit, they’re doomed.
Sophie cocks and eyebrow and turns around slowly to look at her. Parker noticeably swallows.
“That’s so sweet to think of the underprivileged, Parker,” Sophie says, and once again, Eliot hates her tone of voice, like she’s playing along in some little game. “But what did you give that was yours?”
“Everything!”
Yeah, they’re doomed.
“Ha, what Parker means is… she gave everything to charity that she brought with her here, not everything she owns of course, duh,” Hardison tries to cover, and moves to take Parker by the shoulders and steer her out the door. “Come on Parker, since you gave everything away, lets go shopping for more clothes.”
“Er, okay,” Parker says, her whole body still twitching from the lie as she’s steered out of the room.
Sophie looks at Eliot.
D-O-O-M-E-D.
“You have cum in your hair,” she tells him flatly.
Shit. Eliot runs his fingers through his hair to get it out of his face while he goes into the bathroom, Sophie hot on his heels. “Yeah well, I have bad aim when I jack myself off,” he tells her as he turns the water on in the sink.
“Eliot, I really wish you wouldn’t lie to me like I’m stupid.”
Eliot starts washing his hair and refrains from saying something like, ‘But you are.’ Because one, that’s just false, and two, just plain bitchy. “I’m not fucking anyone,” he tells her, because he’s not. Once again, third base is not sex.
“You know, I might have believed that if I didn’t walk in and hear someone have an orgasm while Parker loudly, and let me add, obnoxiously, try to cover it up,” Sophie tells him. Does the woman have fuckin’ bat ears or something?
“Like I said, I was jacking off,” Eliot tells her.
“With Hardison in the room.” Not even a question, just kind of a mock.
“I don’t see why you’re lecturing me when clearly Hardison’s the one into voyeurism,” Eliot says flatly, and grabs a towel to dry his now clean hair.
“If that’s true, you’re still the one who let him watch.”
“He was in the closet, I didn’t know. And frankly, you storming in didn’t really allow for me to properly kick his ass for it,” Eliot grumbles. He probably really shouldn’t be blaming this whole thing on Hardison.
Sophie just stares at him, and their eyes meet. After her, Eliot is the best grifter in the group, and it’s starting to show by how much Sophie clearly can’t figure out if he’s lying or not. Finally she asks, “Are you being serious?”
“No, actually I’m the one into exhibitionism, and I love having Parker and Hardison watch as I get myself off,” Eliot says in an even tone. Now he’s just trying to confuse her.
“Oh god, Eliot. Just stop! I don’t know what the bloody hell you’re doing, but Parker and Hardison are dating now, and you shouldn’t be-”
“No, seriously. They both say the nastiest things you wouldn’t believe to cheer me on.” You know how hard it is to try to screw with Sophie with a straight face? Really hard. But he knew if he didn’t do it, and didn’t make both sides of it sound convincing and yet mocking at the same time, Sophie would know what was going on. This way, she can’t figure out if he’s being serious or not, and gives her enough possibilities to not know which ones the truth.
“Okay, now you’re just mocking me,” Sophie says in a huff. “Fine, sorry I… okay, no. I’m not apologizing for that. I still know you’re up to something, I just don’t know what.” A pause. “But I can find out.”
“No mommy, please don’t read my diary!” Eliot says in this desperate pleading tone in a little girls voice, and Sophie’s eyes flash.
“This won’t be my last visit,” she warns. “And frankly, I’m disappointed in you, Eliot. I thought you would actually try and change.”
Eliot doesn’t say anything, for fear of blowing up and revealing too much. Instead he just shows her to the door, “Thanks for stopping by, Sophie. It’s been a real pleasure.” Ha.
Sophie stands in the doorway, just looking at him, like she’s studying him. “I’ll find out.”
“Good luck with that.”
Sophie flashes her eyes one more time before turning on her heel and leaving. Once Eliot closed the door, the hall closet door opens and Hardison and Parker stick their head out of it. “She gone?”
“What the hell are you doing in a closet? I thought you two left.”
“Seemed like a good idea at the time,” Hardison defends as he tries to squeeze out of it.
“I made friends with a spider,” Parker tells him, and that makes Hardison screech and jump head first out of the closet and dive onto the floor. Pansy.
“THERE WAS A SPIDER NEAR ME AND YOU DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING?!”
“Relax, he’s nice… see?” and she holds out her hand as she steps out of the closet, holding the said spider. Hardison scrambles backwards on his hands and knees away from it.
“ELIOT KILL IT!”
Oh, jeez.
“No! He never did anything to you!” Parker says, and takes a step back as she shields the spider with her other hand, protecting it.
“He existsssss!” Hardison hisses, and points at it like it’s the devil.
Man, he’s such a mediator in this relationship, isn’t he? “Parker, why don’t we let your friend go outside, huh?” Eliot asks, and kind of nudges her towards the door. She thinks about this for a minute, then apparently decides it’s a suitable arrangement because she starts walking towards the door.
Eliot opens it and follows her outside as she sits on the grass, the spider still in her hand. “This is where I leave you,” she tells it, and places it on the ground. “Live long and prosper!” Oh jeez, what the hell is that that she’s doing with her hand? This is Hardison’s fault, he’s sure of it.
“Okay, come on,” he tells her, and extends his hand so she can grasp it to get back up. When she’s finally reached a standing position, right up next to Eliot face to face, she sighs a little.
“I wish I could have seen him cum all over you,” she says, like someone just stole the last cookie from her or something.
“Trust me, you’ll have another opportunity to see that,” Eliot tells her, but she still looks sad. “Hey,” he says and kisses her lightly on the lips. “Smile, okay? Not seeing an orgasm is not the end of the world.”
“Yeah… okay…” Parker says, and bobs her head a little back and forth before letting a sly smile creep across her face.
He takes her back inside, and Hardison looks up from the couch like he’s a bit wary, “Spider gone?”
“Yeah,” Eliot says, and Hardison looks relieved. Parker jumps over the edge of the couch to sit next to him, and is about to tell her to not use his furniture as a vault but he knows it’ll just be pointless, so the hell with it. He sits down next to her.
“What did you tell Sophie?” Hardison asks, and that makes Parker turn around.
“I lied okay, right?” she asks.
No. No Parker, you did not. “Er, yeah.”
“Really?”
“No. No, not really.”
“Does she know?” Hardison asks, more impatient this time. Worried. Maybe even paranoid. He wrings his hands together.
“She thinks she knows something, she just don’t know what. I confused her enough times for her to not know what the hell is actually going on.”
“So we’re good?” Hardison asks.
“No,” Eliot says, and sighs a little. “She’ll find out eventually, guarantee that. But for right now, yeah we’re fine.”
“Why can’t we just tell her?” Parker asks, a little bit of whine in her voice. “All this lying is stressful. If I lose my hair… actually no, that wouldn’t be that bad. I can get a pink wig or something.” She smiles, managing to lose herself in her own world mid sentence. But that was Parker. “Maybe blue…”
Hardison looked at Eliot, and their eyes meet. They knew why they didn’t want Sophie, or Nate, to know. Embarrassment. Plain and simple embarrassment. Sure, they can go out with each other in front of people they don’t know. That’s easy. But if they tell them, they’ll expect PDA… and that’s just weird. They ain’t ready for all that. And while they could just make the choice not to do it, with Parker in the mix? It gets a little more difficult.
But they both knew they would have to be honest about it, one day. But that day was not today.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
The Insecurity
“She did something, I know it. I feel it.”
“Jesus, Hardison, you’re being paranoid,” Eliot says as he watches the boy search the room, convinced Sophie did something while she was here like plant a hidden camera or something, like she actually had time to do that or something.
“Come to bed,” Parker pouts, holding the covers up to her chin.
“I’m not being paranoid,” Hardison says, searching the walls. “She left here too easily.”
Jeez.
“Hardison, get your ass into this bed. If you make me get up-”
“One minute.”
This is ridiculous.
Eliot sighs and throws the covers off of him, and his feet hit to the cold floor. He wants to be sleeping right now, not executing physical force. “Hardison, you have three seconds.”
“Eliot, can you just give me one minute please?”
“One.” Hardison continues to search the walls. “TWO.” Hardison’s still ignoring him. “Fine. Three,” Eliot says, and comes up behind him, wrapping his arms around his waist… and picks him up.
“ELIOT! Let me down! I’m not some kind of child that you can just-”
But he’s interrupted as Eliot throws him on the bed, and climbs in next to him. Hardison tries to get up, but Eliot hovers over him and puts a hand on his chest and holds him down. “No, it’s time to fuckin’ sleep, Hardison.”
“Eliot…”
“SHHHH,” Parker hisses really loudly, and covers Hardison’s mouth with her hand. Hardison’s eyes go wide. “SLEEPING. TIME.” Hardison just nods mutely under her hand. “Good. Now take off your pants, your jeans are scratching my legs.”
What would he do without Parker? Hardison apparently only listens to her, and Eliot has the sneaking suspicion its out of fear. Though why he’d be afraid of her and not him, he has no idea. Then again, he might have a little fear of Parker too. But it’s that kind of fear that’s not really bad or anything. It’s the one where you know they have control, and you better listen or else. Which, now, come to think of it, reminds him of his freaking mother.
Wow, he doesn’t wanna dwell on that one.
Eliot doesn’t know what woke him up in the middle of the night, but it was probably the bathroom light. Eliot grumbles sleepily and pulls himself out of bed, cussing under his breath. He coulda swore he didn’t leave the damn thing on. But as he walks into the bathroom and has his hand raised in the air to flip the switch, he pauses.
Parker looks up at him from inside the bathtub. But she isn’t taking a bath… she’s just sitting there, naked, legs curled up to her chest. Eliot blinks at her for a moment, wondering if he’s hallucinating in his half awake state. “Parker?” he asks, sleepily.
“Hi,” she says in a small voice. She fidgets a little, but doesn’t really look at him.
“What are you doin’ in there?” he asks, and leans down to sit on the edge of the tub next to her. “And why are you naked?” Not that Parker really needed a normal reason to do anything, half the time she never did. But hell, this might be the time where something she does actually makes some sort of sense. He runs his fingers through her hair. Something was up.
Parker shrugs lightly. “Went to bed this way,” she tells him, but doesn’t answer his other question.
Eliot doesn’t say anything for a little bit, but watches her. She looks so… small. “You wanna take a bath?” Parker just shrugs, and lets out a little breath. “Let’s take a bath,” Eliot says, and stands back up to slide off his boxers before turning on the water in the tub.
Parker just sighs.
He doesn’t like this Parker. Something’s wrong with her, and not in the usual way. As the bath water fills up, he scootches her forward so he can climb in behind her. She leans against his chest, and the only thing that can be heard is the sound of the running water.
“I want bubbles,” she says finally.
“I don’t have bubblebath.”
Parker doesn’t answer him, just picks up a bottle of shampoo and starts squeezing it into the running water until small bubbles start to form. Then she turns off the water, sits back, and sighs again. Eliot’s hating this silence. Parker usually never shuts up.
“You’re getting hard,” Parker tells him, as she notices it against her back.
“You’re naked, it happens.”
“Do you want to have sex with me?”
“No, darlin’. I want you to tell me what’s wrong,” Eliot says, and wraps his arms around her torso, running his fingers across her stomach under the water.
“It’s stupid.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
Parker rolls her eyes and little and settles into him more, turning her head to lay on his shoulder, her face in his neck. “Nightmares,” she tells him. “I know that’s dumb. But I have them all the time. I just want them to go away.”
“It ain’t dumb, honey. Everyone get’s nightmares,” Eliot tells her, looking down at her. Her eyes flutter up to look at him.
“Even you?”
Eliot smiles, like the thought of him not having nightmares in his line of work is amusing, because it is. “Yeah, even me.”
Parker purses her lips together and nods, wrapping and arm around Eliot’s waist. Eliot thinks he’s fixed everything (go him) when she says, “Tell me I’m pretty.”
“What?”
Twilight zone. Parker became a girl. Hold on. Back up. Rewind.
“Tell me I’m pretty. Don’t you think I am?” she asks, and sits up more to look at him.
Eliot blinks at her. How the hell did they switch subjects so quickly? “Yeah… yeah of course I do, Parker. You’re beautiful.” Because she… she is. She’s really beautiful. But what’s with this sudden insecurity?
Oh no, is she on her rag? Oh lord…
Parker licks her lips nervously, and Eliot’s wondering what’s going through her mind. Finally she asks in a small voice, “Then why do you like him better?”
Oh shit. See? He knew this was going to happen.
“Parker, I don’t like either of you better than the other,” Eliot tells her. Shit. This… okay this sucks. Awkward three in the morning relationship conversation. Not. Liking. It.
“Yeah you do, you’re always touching him more,” she says. “And you always wanna do sexual things with him more than me.”
She’s gotta be on her rag.
“Parker, if you want to go down that route… you and Hardison have had sex together, as in without me present. And let me remind you that I heard you two when I was watching the Celtics game, so it wasn’t just before we were all together,” Eliot tells her. And frankly, as much as he thought it would bother him… it actually didn’t. That’s when he figured that it might work after all. But now with Parker…
“So?”
“So if anyone has an insecurity issue here, it should be me with you guys.”
“Do you?” she asks, looking at him like she’s trying to know the answer before he reveals it.
“No,” he tells her, honestly. She blinks, like she’s surprised that it came out so honest, and then she nods a little. There’s silence, and Parker isn’t letting him know what the hell’s going on inside of her head, so he asks, “We good? You better now?”
“Yeah,” she says, but just as Eliot relaxes, these emotions or thoughts, or hell just something, flashes across her face and she takes it back. “No.”
Damnit.
“Then what…?”
Parker turns around to face him then, so fast that it makes the water swish and splash out of the tub. She looks in his eyes as she accuses, though in a monotonic voice that creeps him out. “You only fucked me that night because I was naked and easy, and you only fuck me now because I come attached to Alec.”
Eliot blinks at her, and then the angry part of him starts to ignite, or maybe that’s the offended part. They all feel the same. Who cares if she’s on her rag and all emotional, he is not gonna take that. “That’s not…! Parker, are you fuckin’ serious? You really think that’s what this is?”
“Yes.”
Yeah, alright, this was making him mad now. He likes Parker, he fucking likes her. And yeah, maybe he never thought he would and yes maybe she was right about the sex the first time. She was naked and she was easy and he just took it. But that is not the case now! And he’s fucking offended if she thinks that he’s in this little relationship with the three of them just because he thinks it’ll be fuckin’ easier or something than just trying to steal Hardison away from her.
Which he wouldn’t do, just for the record. Not that he couldn’t, but he wouldn’t.
And what was making him even madder about this? He had NO idea how to fix it. Comfort is not his strong point.
“Parker, you’re… you’re just fuckin’… you’re...”
“See, you can’t even think of a word to-”
Fuck this. “You are fuckin’ amazing, okay?!” Eliot bursts out, and Parker blinks. But he isn’t done. “You are one of the most talented people I have ever met. You’re fuckin’ smart, you’re damn beautiful, and I still have no fucking idea why you - either of you - want me, okay? So just stop fuckin’ thinking that you’re not special to me, cause you are. OKAY? SHIT, PARKER.”
Damn. Feelings. He hates expressing though. It makes his stomach feel like he’s gonna be sick.
“What the hell are ya’ll screaming about?” Hardison asks as he sleepily stumbles into the bathroom. Shit.
“Sorry man, I didn’t mean to wake you up,” Eliot apologizes, and then just sighs and leans his head back against the tile heavily. There was a bit of a smacking sound, and Parker’s eyes go wide. “I’m fine,” Eliot says automatically.
“So what’s going on?” Hardison asks with a yawn, looking at the two of them in the tub.
“Eliot likes me,” Parker says with a smile, suddenly chipper. Well hey, at least he fixed it. Fucking hormones.
“And that’s why ya’ll were screaming?” Hardison says, looking at them like they both went insane. “Well then don’t like each other anymore so I can get some sleep.” And then he shuts off the light on them, his little way of saying ‘fuck you, I’m tired’ and leaves. They can hear the bed squeak in the bedroom as he flops back down.
Silence.
“It’s dark,” Parker says, stating the obvious.
“Yeah.”
More silence, and Parker moves back over in the tub to lean against him again. “We should go to bed.”
“Probably a good idea.”
But neither of them move. Parker turns her head and looks up at him, her hand raising up to brush his hair out of his face. He gives her a little smile, not really knowing what she’s up to, before she slowly presses her lips against his. It wasn’t like any of her other kisses, her kisses that are rushed, needy, desperate, and passionate. This was soft, this was… almost like a word he is so not going to use right now.
She turns and straddles him, making the water move around them. But they’re just kissing, and it’s weird that Parker doesn’t seem to have any other ulterior motives. But it’s nice… it’s really nice. Her hands are in his hair, and while the kissing’s getting deeper, and hell, he’s getting harder (he can’t help it, blame the nakedness), she doesn’t go for his dick. She just kisses him, like she’s never kissed him before in his life.
And then they break, and she’s breathless for a moment, beautiful in the dim light, her hair hanging down her shoulders only half wet from being submerged and she whispers, “Tell me I’m beautiful again.”
The way she says it, it’s almost as if she’s never been called beautiful before in her life outside of her and Hardison. It almost makes him wonder…
“You’re beautiful,” he tells her, not dwelling on his thoughts right now, and she smiles and her lips meet his again, pressing his back up against the tile again. It may have been ten minutes, or maybe twenty, or maybe even just five before they break again, and she snuggles back into his chest.
The water’s starting to get cold, but neither of them move. “Parker?” he asks in a soft voice. She looks up at him. He’s not sure if he should ask this question, but he thinks he needs to. Just to know what exactly he’s working with here. “Have you ever had a relationship before?”
Parker chews on her bottom lip a little and shrugs. “I’ve had sex.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
She sighs a little before she admits, “No…”
He tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, and she looks down into the water, seemingly embarrassed. “Hey,” he says softly and she looks up at him. “We won’t hurt you,” he promises. She looks at him for a long time, as if seeing if she can detect any hint of a lie. And then she smiles, slowly at first, until it lights up her whole face.
Finally they both fall asleep, both still naked and damp from the tub, her in between him and Hardison on the bed. And for the first time Eliot has ever seen, Parker falls asleep with a smile on her face.
However, the next morning, something happened that made the smile go away… and her “special angry place” to rear it’s ugly head again.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
The Exposure
“Oh no.”
“Have I ever told you how much I hate when you say that?” Eliot tells him from in the bedroom, putting away their laundry. There’s never an excuse to be messy, but Parker doesn’t seem to understand that.
“Oh no.”
“HARDISON.”
Hardison pokes his head out of the bathroom, with the biggest oh no face Eliot thinks he’s ever seen on him. He puts the laundry down on the bed and looks at him, knowing he’s about to tell him something that’s potentially gonna make the world crumble around them. “What?”
“You remember when Parker ran out of here and out the door?” he asks slowly, fiddling with something in his hand.
“Yes, seeing as it only was a half an hour ago.” Seriously. He hates when Hardison gets like this. How hard is it to just get to the point?
“And you remember you saying I was paranoid?”
Oh no.
“Hardison, get to the point, and get to it quickly,” Eliot says as he starts to walk over the man, picking up his coat from off of the bed, just knowing he was about to have to run out the damn door.
“Well…” Hardison says, and holds up what he had in his hand.
Oh… shit.
“Please don’t tell me that’s a bug.”
“Okay, it’s not a bug, and I didn’t find it laying on the sink, where Parker didn’t put it after she found it.”
“DAMNIT, HARDISON,” Eliot growls and runs his fingers through his hair as he starts heading towards the door, Hardison behind him. “Why didn’t you find that when you were being all paranoid scavenger last night?! Where the hell is Sophie right now? Fuck, Parker’s gonna explode all over the bitch if she hasn’t already.”
“I didn’t check the bathroom! I thought she just was in the bedroom with you!”
“Why didn’t you ask Parker where she was going?!” Eliot fumes, opening his truck door and getting in the drivers seat. He starts the engine just as Hardison gets in.
“Why is that my responsibility? She’s a big girl; I figured she just went out to steal something!” Hardison yells back.
“WHERE THE HELL ARE WE GOING?”
“Try Nate’s, she’s always over there,” Hardison says, and Eliot steps on the gas. God, that fucking… bitch. She stooped as low as planting a BUG?! This is nine shades of fucked up, and what’s worse is that if she listened to last nights tape, then she heard the entire fucking conversation between him and Parker. Parker doesn’t share much, and sharing something unwillingly was bound to piss her off to holy hell and back.
Usually it takes twenty minutes to get to Nate’s. Today? It took seven.
They could hear the yelling from the hallway. “Shit,” Eliot swears under his breath and rushes over to the door, Hardison right behind him. Eliot had absolutely no idea how the hell he was gonna stop this disaster, but hell, least he can make sure Parker isn’t carrying any sharp objects.
When Eliot opens the door, Sophie’s backed up against the counter in Nate’s kitchen, seeming to be avoiding Parker behind the island counter who’s screaming at her like it’s going out of style. Nate seemed like he was trying to get close to Parker to calm her down, but kept taking steps back like he’s afraid she’s gonna spontaneously combust and kill everyone within a ten foot radius.
“YOU TAKE AWAY EVERYTHING!” Parker screams at her, the fury written all over her face, her knuckles white from gripping the island counter so hard. “YOU TOOK AWAY MY MONEY, YOU TOOK AWAY HARDISON’S PRIVACY, YOU TOOK AWAY NATE’S BALLS, AND YOU’RE TAKING AWAY ELIOT’S DICK!” Oh. Shit. Yup, this isn’t going so well. “AND I WANT HIS DICK, DAMNIT!”
“Parker, please calm down,” Sophie says, her hands up in the air as she goes the opposite way around the counter that Parker’s going. “I was just trying to help-”
“BY SPYING ON HIM? ON US?! WHAT WE DO IS NONE OF YOUR BUISNESS, SOPHIE!”
“Parker!” Eliot and Hardison yell at the same time, and her head turns to look at the two of them. But her fury doesn’t soften, doesn’t waver. She’s pissed and nothing is gonna fix it.
“I’M HANDLING THIS.”
Yeah, not in the best way.
“Parker, hey… calm down…” Hardison tries, taking a couple steps towards her. Bad idea.
“I SAID I’M HANDLING THIS!” she screams at him, and Hardison takes a couple steps back. Wise move. Parker in this state doesn’t seem to quite understand that there’s a difference between friend and foe. She’s just built to destroy at this point. She’s exposed, vulnerable from being spied on, and her first reaction is to eliminate the person that made her feel that way.
“Parker, I know this is hard for you to understand, but Eliot could have taken advantage of you and Hard-”
“ARE YOU FUCKING RETARDED?!” Parker screams, and Sophie scared look changes to one of scared and offended, and also surprised. “ELIOT IS OUR BOYFRIEND. AS IN WE ALL GO ON DATE’S TOGETHER AND WE ALL ARE GONNA HAVE SEX WITH EACH OTHER, OKAY?! ELIOT DIDN’T TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ANYTHING! WE SEDUCED HIM!”
“You take this side, and I’ll circle around,” Eliot whispers under his breath to Hardison, not even caring right now what Parker’s revealing to both Sophie and Nate, cause that seriously is not his main concern right now.
“To do what?” Hardison whispers, looking at him like he’s insane.
“We need to grab her before she gets her hands on Sophie.” Frankly he’s surprised she hasn’t vaulted the counter yet. But it’s a good thing she hasn’t - means she’s still exercising some self control.
“You might have a death wish, but I don’t,” Hardison protests softly, looking at Parker like she’s some kind of upper level elite monster in his little game.
Don’t look at him like that, Hardison’s trying to corrupt him. Obviously.
“Relax, I’ll get her arms, you just focus on her legs,” Eliot tells him, and starts moving towards Parker without getting confirmation from Hardison. He was going along with this whether he likes it or not.
“Okay, okay I’m sorry, Parker…” Sophie says, hands up in surrender. “I just worry about you, and what you may think is a relationship might not actually be one because you’ve never…” Sophie trails off, but Parker knows what she was about to say. She knows she was about to reveal that she listened to last nights recording, when Parker told Eliot that she’s never had a relationship before. She just screwed herself in a major way, basically.
“I… HATE YOU,” she says slowly, dangerously. “I trusted you, and you just came in and fucking… DESTROYED EVERYTHING! STAY OUT OF MY BUISNESS, STAY OUT OF EVERYONE’S BUISNESS! You think we have problems? LOOK AT YOURSELF! Just fucking LOOK IN THE MIRROR! You’re more screwed up than the rest of us, Sophie, Catherine, FUCKING WHOEVER YOU ARE!”
Eliot signals to Hardison, who’s still looking wary of this whole ordeal. But Parker’s hands that are gripping the counter are now curling, like she has claws, and Eliot watches her whole body posed, like she’s ready to spring. It’s now or never.
Eliot really doesn’t want to just… jump her like this, but he weighed the pros and cons of not restraining her, and the possibly scenarios that played in his head if they didn’t made him think to hell with it, they’re gonna have to hold her until she calms down. The scenarios in his head where she isn’t restrained always ended in some sort of violence, because she’s seriously like a trapped wild animal right now. Exposure like that makes people lash out in whatever way they can to protect themselves, and they didn’t need the casualties.
He goes for one arm, and almost misses the other. She’s defensive, and once she’s realize she’s being held back her instinct is to fight. She does manage to elbow him in the ribs, but he takes it. “LET ME GO!” she screams… and kicks Hardison right in the chest.
Hardison gets the wind knocked out of him, but when she goes to kick again he grabs both of her feet and they settle her on the ground. “Parker! Parker, calm down!” Hardison tries.
Parkers struggling against them, but Eliot and Hardison have the advantage. “Shhh, come on girl calm down, please chill out…” Eliot whispers in her ear, but his grip with her arms behind her back firmly in place.
“Let go of me!” she yells again, but its not at loud, not as fighting anymore. She tries to get loose, tries to kick again, but the fights slipping out of her.
“Baby, its okay, come on…” Hardison tells her soothingly, and Parker’s bottom lip noticeably trembles, even though anger is still written all over her face. “Come on, it’ll be okay, Parker please…”
Parker chokes back a sob, and screams again, but it’s out of enraged defeat as she suddenly still. Eliot lets go of her arms and wraps his around her, and when Hardison lets go of her legs he comes up to wrap her in a hug too. “I hate her…” she whispers, holding onto the two men. She’s shaking, maybe an aftershock of her rage, but that just makes them hold on to her tighter, not giving half a fuck about Sophie and Nate knowing anymore.
Parker was hurting, and they had to fix that, above everything else.
“Parker…” Sophie tries, and starts to come over to them.
“Stay away from her,” Eliot growls at her, and Sophie stops mid stride, and for the first time in his life… he sees Sophie look devastated.
“But I just…”
“Sophie,” Nate says, and she looks over at him. He shakes his head. “Just leave them alone.”
Sophie bites the inside of her cheek, and Eliot can see her let out a heavy breath before her eyes flicker over to look at Eliot. “I’m sorry…” she says softly.
Eliot doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even acknowledge her apology. He just doesn’t wanna deal with any of that in front of Parker. He rubs Parker’s arms softly, then lets one fall slowly down until he’s grasped her hand tightly. “Come on,” he tells her as her and Hardison help her up. “Let’s go back to my house.”
Parker nods slowly, and when she’s standing, he nods at Hardison. “Take her back there,” he says, and hands him the keys to his truck and to his house. “I gotta deal with…”
Hardison nods, and wraps his arms around Parker’s shoulders and steers her out of the apartment. Eliot closes the door behind them and looks at the two people left in the room. “Nate, I know it’s your house but can I get a second alone with Sophie?”
“Yeah,” Nate says, for once not bitching about people in his apartment. He looks at Sophie, and he looks… disappointed. As he should be.
When he leaves, Sophie tries to talk, but Eliot holds up his hand. “Just don’t,” he says, and she closes her mouth. “You have no idea what you just did, do you?”
“I was just-”
But Eliot doesn’t wanna hear her fucking voice right now. “You know how fuckin’ hard it is for that girl to share anything about herself? And look what you fuckin’ did! You spied on her, made her feel fuckin’ violated - and me too, by the way - and you just proved to her that yeah, maybe sharing ain’t the best idea ever. Way to go.”
“Eliot…”
But he isn’t done. “Look, I’ll give you the fact that yeah, maybe I did have a problem, okay? I’ll admit to that. But what I got going on with Parker and Hardison…. It ain’t like that, okay? So just back the hell off of me, and leave them out of this.”
Sophie goes to open her mouth to say something, but Eliot interrupts her again, “And if you say one word about this three-way relationship not being healthy, or just fucking how it ain’t gonna work, or whatever the hell else… just keep your damn opinions to yourself.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
Eliot looks at her, and cocks an eyebrow at her. He doesn’t believe that for a second. Sophie sighs.
“I don’t get it, alright? I don’t bloody understand how you can be with two people at once and everyone’s okay with it. I worry about Parker because she’s so…” Sophie sighs again, “She’s like a child sometimes. And Hardison, he’s young too, doesn’t know what he wants and has been going through something really confusing for him.”
A pause. “And me?” he asks slowly.
“I don’t worry about you, Eliot. You can take care of yourself. Out of all of us, you’re the one who, for the most part, has their shit together,” Sophie tells him, and Eliot’s eyebrows raise. He wasn’t expecting that.
“Then why did you try to ‘fix me’?” he accused in a low voice, still thinking she’s a bit of a liar.
“Because you could have so much more than that,” Sophie stresses, and for once actually looks like she’s genuinely meaningful with her words. “You underestimate yourself, Eliot. But I guess… I guess you found it. So I’m happy for you.”
Eliot looks at her skeptically.
“I mean it.”
Eliot looks at her, trying to figure her out. He doesn’t know how to deal with this side of Sophie though, mainly because she was the enemy for the last week. So he chooses to just not deal with it right now, “It won’t be this easy with Parker,” he tells her. Not exactly a ‘you’re forgiven’, because she’s not, but just that… he understands her side. Somewhat.
“Or Hardison,” she says.
“Yeah,” Eliot says softly, and his eyes flicker to the door, thinking about them. He wanted to be home. Curl up into fucking bed, have him and Hardison put their arms around Parker and just make all this shit just go away.
“Go to them,” she tells him, and when he looks at him, she nods at the door. Their eyes lock for a moment, and then he nods slowly.
Hopefully Sophie didn’t do any permanent damage to his… girlfriend.
A/N: Just so everyone is aware, most likely I will not be stating specifically what Parker went through as a child. I've written about it before in other stories, and while they aren't all the same they still have a very general theme. So take this, take the fact that she can't get pregnant, and draw your own conclusions. I'm just saying that because people have asked me.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
The Panic Attack
The first sight he saw when he walked into his house was Hardison rushing towards the door after he heard it open. Eliot looked at the man, at the pained and distressed look he had plastered all over his face, and Eliot’s stomach dropped six feet under him. There was only one word, one word that didn’t need to be said, because it already spoke volumes on his face.
“Help.”
Eliot doesn’t remember his feet carrying him into the bedroom, but he found himself standing there in the threshold of the doorway almost instantly, looking at something he wish he could find a way to erase from his memory.
He can’t even describe it, its too… heart wrenching, horrific, painful. Parker, a strong woman a few years shy of thirty, was curled up at the base of the bed in a fetal position, and Eliot can see the small tremors of involuntary muscle twitches that are spasming through her body. He can hear her hard bursts of breath, noises that sounds painful to force up her lungs. Her arms moving, only barely, tucked underneath her body. She’s staring straight at the far wall, barely blinking. Breaking.
She’s having a panic attack.
“When did this start?” Eliot asks, still unmoving. He’s dealt with panic attacks before, and everyone’s different. He doesn’t want to stride right up to her without knowing what he’s dealing with.
“I-I dunno, about ten minutes ago?” Hardison says, strain obvious in his voice. “We were just talking, and then she just… broke, I dunno man. I tried to touch her and she… she screamed and curled more into herself. She won’t talk, she just stares and shakes, I don’t know what to do!” Hardison’s looking at him in desperation to fix her.
Eliot had to remind himself to breath, and after he takes a breath he asks, “What happened right before the attack? Exact words. This is important.”
“I.. uh, I dunno, I…” Hardison starts to say, thinking, as he wrings his hands together nervously and starts to pace. “I said something about how it was wrong how Sophie violated our privacy like that, and she just… started rambling about cameras and lies and disgusting… disgusting…”
“Disgusting what?”
“Habits? I don’t know, she just was talking so fast I could barely keep up and then she just… this.” He looks at Eliot, his eyes portraying so much sadness. “Eliot, I don’t know what to do…”
Eliot bites the inside of his lip, and looks down at Parker. Shit. He slowly makes his way over to her, crouching down in front of her, but he doesn’t touch her. He makes sure to stay a respectable distance away, not wanting to threaten her. “Parker? Parker, it’s Eliot. Hey darlin’, can you look at me for a second please?”
But Parker doesn’t look, doesn’t blink, just keeps staring, her ragged breathing the only noise to be heard in the room. He can see how tense her muscles are in one arm, and he knows he needs her to untangle herself from this ball. She’s gripping something, and she’s gripping it hard. She could be cutting off circulation. “Okay, hey girl… can you blink for me? Blink if you know it’s me.”
Parker shakes some more, but then suddenly she forces a blink. It’s hard, cold, so distant, but it was there. “Okay good, good Parker…” Eliot says in a soothing voice. “You’re safe here, okay. I promise you that, me and Hardison will never let anything bad happen to you. But you need to breathe, sweetie. Can you do it with me? In through your nose, out through your mouth. We’ll count them, okay? It’ll be a like a game. Can you do that for me?”
Parker doesn’t do anything for awhile, but then she blinks hard again. “Okay,” Eliot says, and takes a deep breath through his nose and out his mouth, “One,” he says, encouraging Parker to mimic. She’s always been good at mimicking. In through his nose, out through his mouth one more time, and this time he can see Parker start to do it. “Good, two…”
They got to fifteen before Parker started breathing more regularly. “See? Everything’s fine here, you’re okay here. Can you nod?” Parker curls more into herself, but nods. Her eyes are starting to look at him now, instead of just staring at the wall. Slow progress, but progress none the less.
After a minute of regular breathing, her looking at him, and the shaking starting to subside slowly, he says, “I’m going to touch you now, okay?”
Parker’s eyes go wide, like she forgets where she is for a moment. But then the fear slips away from her eyes and Eliot can see the strength behind them as she nods, allowing him to do so. Something that in this moment, is very hard for her.
He smiles at her, reassuring her, as he gently untangles her from herself. As he gets to her arms, sitting her back up, he holds out one of her wrists. “Hardison, get the antiseptic,” he tells him softly, and Hardison runs into the bathroom.
“Darlin’, you dug your nails in too hard when you were holding yourself, so we’re going to clean you up, okay?” he tells her, and she just nods mutely. It wasn’t anything really bad per say, it wasn’t bleeding in any kind of massive way, but she did break the skin. And since he’s sure she didn’t wash her hands right before this, something like that can get infected really easily.
When Hardison comes back with the antiseptic, he takes Parker’s wrist from Eliot gently and starts to apply it. Parker’s eyes are beginning to move more, now looking at Hardison, to Eliot, down to the little cuts on her wrist. When her eyes flicker back up to look at Eliot under her eyelashes, he can see her take a shuddered breath and tremble all through her body, before closing her eyes as trying to get herself under control.
“You’re strong, remember that,” Eliot tells her softly. “They’re just memories, okay? Nothing more than the past.”
Hardison looks at Eliot, probably wondering how he knew that was what’s wrong with her. But he didn’t know, not really. Just a feeling, a guess. Something horrible and unspeakable happened to that woman when she was a child, and though Eliot is sure she will never let either of them know what it is, he still know it exists, and therefore needs to acknowledge it.
H e won’t leave it like this though. He’ll find out, fuckin’ trust him on that. He’ll find out who did this to her and he’ll make sure he can finally give Parker piece of mind. He won’t ask, he won’t pry… but he’ll find out. A promise he’ll sign in blood if he has to.
After Hardison has finished wrapping her wrist, Parker took back her hand and curled it back into herself, tight to her chest. “Are you alright?” Eliot asks her carefully, and she looks at him, and then over to Hardison. She slowly scoots to her left until she’s leaning against Hardison’s chest, and as he wraps her arms around her, she holds out her hands for Eliot.
He’s not exactly sure how to take that gesture, but he’ll consider it a plus that she wants to be touched now. He takes her hands and she pulls him over to her, guiding him down so that his head is laying in her lap. Okay, kind of the opposite than what he was expecting, but hell, if it’ll make her feel better. He’s never really laid his head in anyone’s lap before, it’s always been kind of a woman thing. But she sighs a little and starts to run her fingers though his hair softly, and Eliot realized it was kind of nice.
Finally she spoke, but it was in this very even monotone, like she was reading something. “Once upon a time, there was a little girl,” she tells them, and both Eliot and Hardison look up at her, knowing to say nothing. She doesn’t look at them, just looks out the far window as she strokes Eliot’s hair, leaning hers against Hardison’s shoulder. “Her room was very tiny, very cold. A monster used to watch her from the shadows, and make the world black.”
Eliot isn’t sure how healthy disassociating with this is for her, but he can hardly believe that she’s talking about it, even in this way. But she apparently thought twice about going on, and as her hand stops running through his hair, emotions flash across her face and she says, “The end.”
Eliot and Hardison know not to pry. There’ silence for a while, until Hardison tells her, “There are no monsters here.”
She looks at him, and she smiles, only a little. Barely there, but it was such a relief to see that it shone from her face. “I know,” she says, and then looks down at Eliot. He smiles at her softly.
Parker takes a deep breath, and purses her lips together. “I’m sorry,” she says, which makes Eliot sit up and turn to look at her.
“There ain’t nothing to apologize for, darlin’.”
She shrugs a little, and Hardison tightens his hold around her before kissing her on the forehead. “Don’t ever be sorry for having feelings.”
“I don’t like them.”
Hardison smirks a little and says, “Sure you do, without feelings then you wouldn’t be so happy with us.” A pause, then a look a doubt. “You are happy with us, right?”
That makes Parker giggle, and Eliot’s never been so glad to hear a sound like that in his entire life. “Yeah, I’m happy.”
“Can we get off the floor?” Eliot asks. It was starting to hurt his back.
“Yeah,” Parker says, and Hardison helps her to her feet. Eliot gets up and flops back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. Man, what a fucking day. He closes his eyes, before he lets out a “oof!” as the wind is knocked out of him and he pops his eyes open. Parker just jumped on top of him, giggling.
“Don’t go to bed, we haven’t even had dinner,” she tells him.
“I wasn’t, just closin’ my eyes,” Eliot protests, but Parker doesn’t get off of him, instead chooses to lay her head on his chest. Hardison smiles at the two of them, ruffles Parker’s hair a little, and then gets up to get his laptop. Man, it’s like the man is glued to the damn thing.
“Come on man, don’t get on that thing. We won’t see you again for like fuckin’ hours,” Eliot tells him.
“He likes it,” Parker tells Eliot, like he needs to learn and accept that fact. “It makes him happy, playing with imaginary things.”
“Hey, its not imaginary,” Hardison tells her, but then I guess realized how stupid that sounded so he revised, “Okay, well, the people playing with me on their computers aren’t imaginary.”
“Come on man, seriously,” Eliot says, and his eyes shift to Parker. I mean come on, the girl just got through that freak out.
“No, let him play,” Parker says, and now Hardison looks confused on who to listen to.
“I thought you guys were having like a… moment, or something,” Hardison says, motioning to Parker who’s sprawled all over Eliot. “Thought I’d give you space. I mean you’ve let me and Parker have ours before.”
“That’s not… I wasn’t gonna fuck her,” Eliot says. “Besides, if I was, I’d want you here.”
“I didn’t say ‘fuck’,” Hardison says, and gives him this knowing look.
“If the words ‘make love’ come out of your mouth, I’m gonna smack you.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Parker asks, now looking at Eliot. “Don’t you want to make love to me? To us?”
Deer in headlights.
“Well, I don’t think we should have sex now,” Eliot defends. I mean shit, she just got over whatever… hardly the fucking time, right?
“No one said now,” Parker tells him, and sits up so she can look down at him. “You don’t want to make love, ever?”
“Right? For real,” Hardison chimes in, and both of them are looking at him like he said something wrong.
“What? Shit, I just don’t like the term, alright? Sounds all fuckin’… mushy.”
“What if I want mushy? I’ve never had mushy,” Parker says, and blinks at him. “What if I like it? I don’t know, I should try. We should try.”
“I just don’t do mushy, alright?” Jeez.
“Bullshit,” Hardison says, and puts down his laptop and comes over to them on the bed. “You got some mushy in you, I’ve seen it.” And now he pokes him, like he’s teasing him. Hell no.
“Lying sack.”
“No, he’s right. You were mushy with me in the bathtub.”
“I yelled at you in the bathtub.”
“Yeah, but it was mushy.”
Lord.
“Look, making love is for like… I dunno, fuckin’ old married couples, alright?” Eliot says, and sits up, running his fingers through his hair. He’s uncomfortable with this conversation, and he’s not really sure why.
Parker peers down at him and then asks, “So when all of us are all old and married one day, living in some big house with a yard and a little yappy dog, then you’ll make love to us?”
Eliot stares blankly at Parker. Married? Seriously? Did she just actually say that? He gets up off the bed, and puts on his shoes, not answering her question. He just can’t… think. MARRIAGE?
“Where are you going?” she asks him.
“Out. Just out,” Eliot tells her, just needing to get away for a minute. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, smothered. As he walks away and out the door he hears Hardison tell Parker:
“Parker, you seriously shouldn’t have said anything about marriage to Eliot…”
Yeah, probably not.
BLAH BLAH TOO BIG AGAIN
PART SEVEN IS HERE.