A/N: So this has now officially become a series, because I cannot let it go right now! We started with 'Poker Face', then came 'Tales of Matchstick Men'. Now here's the pay off y'all were waiting for ;)

Disclaimer: All recognisable characters belong to John Rogers & Chris Downey and other folks that aren't me... but you knew that, right?

Raising the Stakes (3rd in the 'Aces High' series)

It was the waiting that drove Eliot crazy. He was fine with the jobs, being in the thick of it was better sometimes, the pressure and the adrenaline and all. It was the hanging around, wanting to get started but unable to do so that made him feel like a caged animal. He couldn't settle to anything, no book appealed, and there was no TV here in Hardison's empty mansion.

This job was the big one, the one where they finally brought down Ian Blackpoole once and for all, got the revenge Nate needed, and then they walked away. It was a new beginning and the final ending all at once, and maybe that was what really had Eliot rattled.

"Could you maybe stop doing that?" asked Parker from her place sat cross-legged on a pile of pillows on the floor, "The pacing is making me dizzy" she complained as she looked up at Eliot going back and forth between the window and the door again.

"I just want this over with" he growled some, though his frustration was not meant for her and she never took it as such.

"Me too" she admitted, continuing to shuffle the deck of cards in her hands.

She had been playing solitaire, but had clearly grown bored of it in this long, apparently never-ending afternoon. Hardison was going over the museum blueprints with a fine tooth comb, whilst Nate entertained Maggie, and Sophie stayed close by, alternately nervous that she might be needed or that she wouldn't be at all. That left Eliot and Parker alone upstairs, trying to waste the time and coming up empty as to the how. The pack of cards she found only entertained for so long, and now she was done with her game, Parker was just flipping the deck around, a variety of clever shuffling techniques playing out between her hands like she'd done them a hundred times before. Maybe she had, Eliot didn't know, but it was none the less intriguing to watch.

"I didn't know you could do all that" he said as she showed off her tricks for no-one in particular.

"There's a lot of things you don't know about me" replied Parker, never actually looking up from her own hands as they expertly flipped and shuffled the cards some more, "There's probably a lot I don't know about you either" she added thoughtfully, as she looked up at him then.

All arms-folded and glowery, most people would run scared from Eliot Spencer right now. Not Parker. She actually kind of liked it when he was this way, or any way really. She didn't wonder too much on it or bother to tell him, she just accepted it and carried on like normal. That was her way of dealing, and always had been.

"Maybe it's better that way" he said then, cutting off her train of thought, "That we don't know too much"

"Hmm" Parker considered, but only for a moment, before holding up her deck of cards to him, "You wanna play something?"

Eliot figured he may as well, though even as he sat down opposite her, copying her position, he couldn't stop his mind flashing with scenarios.

The night he taught her poker and they came so close to sleeping together.

The day in Paris when she confessed a little of the horrors of her past and he offered to take some of the pain away.

Several times since then when he pulled out a matchstick he'd won from her, and she paid the debt she owed for each - one beaming smile.

"What are the stakes?" he asked Parker as she dealt the hands.

"Secrets" she said easily, as if one word explained itself, but the look on Eliot's face when she glanced up soon told her otherwise, "It's easy. I win a hand, I ask you a question and you answer, but if you win, you ask me" she shrugged., "Any question we want"

Eliot wasn't sure he liked those stakes, and it wasn't just because there was a whole bunch of things in his past that he wouldn't be too happy to have to share with Parker. The truth was, he was actually more worried about her. She didn't share, any more than he did, not really. Now here she was offering to give up her secrets if he would do the same. It was true that they were closer with each other in some ways than anyone else on the team, but this was still a huge deal for her as much as it was for him, and Eliot knew it too.

"Dangerous game" he noted, looking seriously at her over his hand.

"Not really" she told him, staring at her own cards, "Since we're probably never going to see each other again after this job, it can't really matter much" she noted, and Eliot would've sworn he heard a real sadness in her voice, something he really hadn't expected, "Or maybe you're just afraid?" she smirked then, a look to rival any he'd ever worn himself on her face right now, "I thought Eliot Spencer didn't do scared?" she teased him.

"Everybody does scared sometimes" he said solemnly, before a smile broke through unbidden, "but I ain't afraid of you, sweetheart" he assured her.

"Then let's play"

Eliot was doing better at cards today. He had started to wonder if Parker had hustled him that first night, that she had actually played poker before and his teaching was a moot point. It couldn't be true. For a thief, Parker was shockingly honest and straightforward, especially with the team. Maybe it had just been beginners luck that served her well the first couple of times, or maybe this was the first time they played when Eliot's mind hadn't had so much of a reason to wander.

They were pretty evenly matched. She would win a couple of hands and then he would. The questions that brought out secrets hadn't gotten too crazy. Simple stuff that nobody minded sharing that had just never come up before. Do you have any tattoos? Where did you get that scar? What was the first thing you ever stole? This last hand, Eliot had even dared to ask about Parker's singular name.

"Is it for real?" he wanted to know, "Like the name you've always had, since you were a kid?" he asked her curiously.

"Yes" she replied with a single nod, "Parker is my real name" she assured him as she shuffled the deck to deal one more time.

"First or last?" Eliot asked then and she looked seriously at him then.

"Uh-uh. You only get one question" she reminded him, "No breaking the rules"

Eliot rolled his eyes at how stupidly strict she was being. He picked up his new hand and realised he certainly wasn't going to get to re-pose his question any time soon. Minutes later she proved him right, stomping all over his two pair with her full house.

"C'mon, darlin'. Hit me with it" he prompted when she sat quiet and thoughtful too long, not asking her question.

She didn't get like that too often, and not at all during this whole game. Every hand she won, she seemed to have a pre-prepared question. Whether she was coming up with them on the spot at random, Eliot couldn't be sure. She may have had this list in her head for all the weeks and months they had been running together in this crew. There was really no way to tell with Parker.

"Eliot" she said at last, fixing him with a look he genuinely couldn't read, but it was enough to make his hands still over the cards on the floor and pay rapt attention to only her, "Do you... Do you ever think about that night when we almost had sex?" she forced out then.

"Yes" he answered immediately, his eyes fixed on her own and the honesty just spilling out of his lips before his brain had time to filter it, "Do you?" he asked her back, though clearly the thought had certainly occurred to her, or she never would have brought it up.

"It's not your question" she shook her head, looking away quickly.

She was going to bolt and he knew it, and Eliot wasn't going to let that happen, not now.

"Parker" her name in that tone of his was enough to stick her to the spot.

She turned back slowly and met his eyes again, nodding her head, yes.

Of course she thought about that night, there was no way for her to forget it. There weren't a lot of men in the world that Parker had ever gotten this close to, that she ever really cared about. She wasn't some frightened virgin, of course, she'd had sex and everything, but somehow even making out Eliot had been different. She had intended for them to get closer than this already, and when they were forced to walk away from each in other in LA, the larger part of her heart ached because it was him she had to turn her back on more than anyone else. Now they were back, and he was here, only for a brief time. They would part again within twenty four hours, and they would be done, quite possibly forever.

"We should go downstairs" said Eliot suddenly, "They probably need us, there's work to do..."

He was on his feet and headed for the door in a second, muttering all the way. Parker nodded absently in agreement as she went towards the door too, and they both reached for the handle at the same moment. Their fingers touched, their eyes following a path from that contact to each others face. This was insane. They both just all but confessed to wishing their time together had gone differently and now they were walking away, possibly permanently, without ever getting closer than this. It couldn't happen, it would be too much of a waste, and they both knew it implicitly in that second as their bodies crashed together, lips on lips, and fingers in each others hair.

It wasn't like before. As passionate and hungry, most definitely, but there was way more to it than a need to be close to just anyone. This was about the two of them, about the connection they made these past few months that was way too precious to give up without a fight. Maybe they would have to part ways after this, maybe for good, especially if things went south, but that would be okay. At least they would have now, this moment, this time together where the world went away and nothing else mattered.

The team downstairs might have been miles away, the job they must pull tonight a distant thought that occurred to neither Eliot nor Parker as they laid down on the floor together, amongst scattered pillows and forgotten playing cards.

Maybe this was the dumbest thing either of them ever did, maybe the smartest, neither knew. All they knew was how good it felt, how completely right. They had connected on levels they never could have imagined, and there was only one left for them to make now. She had never flinched when he touched her, not like with so many others, and it was all she wanted him to do now. He was no less lost in the moment, no less happy to be so. If this all ended tonight, so be it. They would walk away tomorrow and maybe never see each other again, but they had today, they had this passion-filled hour or two, and they were going to make the most of it. It wasn't exactly much of a gamble, when they had nothing at all to lose.

The End