Title: Letting Things Go
Disclaimer: I do not own Leverage or its characters and I make no profit from this. It's just for fun.
Spoilers: None.
Pairing: Nate/Parker
Summary: Things have gone from mild, to cool, to frigid. Hardison isn't asking for tropical, but he'd like to see things room temperature again, at least. Nate/Parker
Author's note: Started this awhile ago and was fixing it up today…I wavered on posting it, wondering if people would get sick of me, but then I thought, those who love N/P will like it no matter when I post it. Those who hate N/P will hate it no matter when I post it. So what does it matter? And it's official, I don't care anymore - I'm going to keep writing N/P stories until I get sick of them. And I don't see it happening anytime soon.
XXXXXX
She'd always gotten along with the others. Always. Well, she and Sophie had to get past some differences, and Hardison was usually humoring her, and Eliot seemed to dislike (even outright hate) her at times…but still, she got along with them, for the most part.
Nate was trickier to read. For the longest time, whenever he'd really had it with her, he would only roll his eyes or appear otherwise exasperated with her. "She's Parker," he would say, infusing as much grievousness into the sentence as he could, while also implying that there was nothing any of them could do, and they just had to deal with her. And at the worst of times, he could almost seem like he didn't want to deal with her for even one more day – but then he always would.
As such, she'd managed to make a place for herself with them without giving even an inch of who she was. They had to accommodate her, and it was a way of dealing with things that lasted without too many issues for quite awhile. If they were unhappy with her? Well, that wasn't her fault. They eventually learned they had to just let it go. Because she sure as hell was never going to change, which meant they had to. That was the way Parker liked it, and the way it should be, and she'd had them understanding that fact for awhile.
Things were fine for a very long time.
Until one day, out of the blue, Nate suddenly stopped letting things go.
And it aggravated her to no end that he'd gone and changed the rules she'd established (which worked just fine, in her opinion). What gave him the right?
Take the matter at hand. Here she was, having to sit and listen to him yell at her about the risks she took. And why? Because he had called off their latest plan while she was in the mark's residence. She knew she had enough time to plant the listening device in the master bedroom, but Nate had ordered her out when the man's wife came home early.
She'd done what anyone would (or at least what anyone named Parker would), which was pretend she hadn't heard him, and gone ahead with the plan anyways.
And she got out just like she'd calculated. So it might have been close, and she might have had to hide in the bathtub for twenty minutes while the man's wife went to bed, but who could blame her for that?
Oh wait, Nate could.
"Don't pretend like you didn't hear me telling you to get out of the building. It's not the first time you've done this!"
She sat, silently seething, and trying to tune him out. It was a skill she'd yet to master despite her many years of trying, because everything he said was crazy enough to make her want to fight back. How did you ignore that?
"I knew what I had time to do and I made an independent decision to do it!" She finally shot back, in the middle of his tirade about how she had no respect for him, or the team, or her own safety.
Nate took a step toward her. "You can't make those decisions. That's why I'm in charge," he reminded her. As if she weren't aware of his overbearing management style. In that moment, she wanted to wring his neck. That couldn't be indicative of a good leader.
"Maybe you shouldn't be in charge," she challenged. "Why, I think Eliot, or Sophie, or Hardison – no, God forbid Hardison had to direct us – but Eliot or Sophie could do it perfectly fine. Better than you."
He paced away from her and ran his hands through his hair, as if he honestly couldn't believe what she was saying. "You do realize you're the only one who feels this way, which means you are wrong."
"No, it means I'm the one who's right, and that the others are too loyal to you to ever speak up."
Nate didn't appear to take that too well, if the way his voice grew cold was any indication. "How long have you felt this way?"
She shrugged, no longer looking at him. She didn't really mean it, but he made her so mad sometimes that she said things without thinking. Truthfully, for what he did – keeping them all together and always guiding them to successfully pull off jobs – she'd never seen anyone as brilliant as him.
Only she was always too angry with him to ever tell him anything of the sort.
"If you're really that unhappy with me, Parker," Nate was saying, "you don't have to stay with us."
She turned to him, worried now. "What do you mean by that?"
He sighed. "Nothing. I meant nothing." He gave up and left the room. He could never get anywhere with her. That never used to bother him, but now? He couldn't take it anymore. What did she want? Half the time he thought she wanted to be part of their team, the rest of the time he truly thought she was planning to leave. Or maybe that she wanted them to tell her to leave so she wouldn't have to make that decision for herself.
After he left she sat at the table, thinking back over the past few months. When had things changed? She couldn't pinpoint an exact time, but things had been bad for awhile now. She knew she must have done something at some point in time to infuriate him, and he'd never gotten over it. But what? If she knew she'd have fixed it. Except his unhappiness had gone on long enough now that she began to think that if she did know, she still wouldn't be able to fix whatever it was.
He never talked to her anymore except to tell her why he disagreed with her suggestions, or to criticize something she'd done, or was doing, or planned to do. Every time he opened his mouth lately, she knew it was to tell her some way or another in which she was wrong. No, they'd never been close friends, but they used to at least have conversations that didn't end with his eyes full of displeasure, and hers as blank as ever while she thought to herself that it was a good thing she didn't believe in expressing emotions like Sophie, or she might sincerely hate him for making her miserable all the time.
She listed today's incident (another in a long line) in the mental column headed "Reasons I can't stand Nathan Ford." The list was getting far too long (though she suspected if he had a similar list about her, his would be much longer).
XXXXXX
A few weeks later, right when things were getting back to more or less normal between them, Nate figured she would have to ruin it by overreacting to something that was completely inconsequential.
"I can't believe you're serious right now," he told her, as she stared him down, hands on hips, and all her fury directed toward him.
"What do you expect? You replaced me!" She yelled at him. She wondered if it were payback for her disregarding his 'order' a few weeks ago in that bathtub incident. More than likely.
"Parker," he hedged, "I needed someone with more finesse."
"On what planet does Hardison have more finesse than me?" She bit out with annoyance.
"If I may," Hardison tentatively raised his hand. "That would be every plant in the known and unknown universe."
"I swear to God, Hardison, if you don't lower your hand I'm going to rip it off," she hissed at him.
"Hey, you're mad at Nate. Not me! Remember that," he quickly shut up when she turned to glare at him again.
"I have more than enough anger to go around," she warned him.
Nate was sick of her indignant and unwarranted outrage. "You should be thanking me that I asked Hardison to do something you would have found nearly impossible."
Parker was almost speechless at his audacity. It wasn't as if what she was supposed to do was that hard – just accompany Sophie to the local building inspector's office and be charming. Okay, so the charming part might be difficult, but she still had no idea how Nate thought Hardison could be more charming than her.
"You are incredibly arrogant," Parker told him, "expecting me to thank you for pulling me from a job and putting Hardison in my place!"
"It's not like we still don't need you –" he tried to explain, but she wanted none of it.
"You better figure out how to make it work without me, then, Nate, because I'm no longer participating in this one," she crossed her arms and settled on his couch with an air of finality he knew would be futile to argue against. The masochist in him had to try anyways.
"Parker," he said, trying to stay as rationally calm as was ever possible when dealing with Parker, "I think you're letting your emotions get the better of you. Now, I'm going to need you to –"
"Finish that sentence, Nate. Go ahead. And then be absolutely secure in the knowledge that I am not going to do what you asked, and I'm going to not do it with pleasure."
He clenched his hands into fists and silently cursed her. She gave him more grief than his ex-wife and all his ex-girlfriends combined. And that was quite a goddamn feat.
"Fine! Don't participate! We don't need you anyways," he said firmly.
Parker made sure not to look at either one of them, because if she did they would see just how much his last sentence had shaken her. She'd heard it before, but this time it was much worse.
Hardison looked back and forth between them, worry seeping into his tone. "Nate, are you sure that's the best way to go?"
"Ask her," Nate said angrily.
Parker started flipping through TV channels, proud of the way she was able to keep herself composed. And even if her hand was shaking and she didn't hear a single word being said on the TV, so what? Neither Nate nor Hardison knew that.
"Parker, we still need you for this one. Think about it," Hardison tried to cajole her into responding.
Nate answered before she could, and she was actually grateful because her voice would not have been steady. "It's already thought about, and if Parker wants a break, then fine. Take a break, Parker."
"But Nate –" Hardison tried again.
She didn't answer him and Nate went on, speaking right over Hardison's pleas. "Take a break. That means, not here."
Hardison whipped around to stare at Nate in shock. "Are you kicking her out?"
Parker stood to face him as well. She didn't need to ask because she saw the answer to Hardison's question on Nate's face. "You are. You're kicking me out." At least her anger covered up any amount of hurt that might have been in her voice.
"I'm merely suggesting you leave because you very obviously don't want to be here. Don't stay on our account."
"Nate," Hardison said urgently, "what is wrong with you? Parker, don't listen to him."
She looked back and forth between them.
"This is my apartment!" Nate said, aggravated, before composing himself, and then tried to justify it. "And besides, you are the one who just told me you wanted nothing to do with this job. I didn't say that, you did."
"Because you replaced me!" She yelled.
"We switch roles all the time," he argued back. "You're the one taking it personally."
"Okay, maybe I shouldn't have taken that part so personally," she relented, as Hardison relaxed and thought maybe the situation would simply diffuse.
He should have known better.
"I'm glad we're on the same page," Nate said.
"What I do take personally," she said, without acknowledging he'd even spoken, "is you telling me I'm not welcome here anymore. And I'm certainly not going to stay after that." She barely resisted the urge to throw the remote she was holding at him, dropping it instead on the couch.
She didn't run out, or do anything else dramatic. She merely walked, as if she were in no hurry for anything. Her goal was to not give any hint whatsoever that she'd been bothered by what he'd said, by what had just happened.
She won, too, because Nate didn't say anything to make her stay.
Why, then, didn't it feel like winning?
XXXXXX
Parker didn't show up for two weeks after that, and though they tried to find her, she was good at hiding. Hardison was beginning to despair of her ever coming back again, but then, on the day after they finished the con she and Nate had fought about, she simply walked in and sat down at the kitchen table as if she'd never stopped coming in the first place.
No one said anything, not even Nate, though he did stare at her for a very long time. And then things were the way they'd always been. Except for a distinct chill in the atmosphere that was always worse when Nate and Parker were in a room together.
There was one thing Hardison always had to have, and that was for everyone to get along. He despised fighting, and although Nate and Parker didn't outright fight for a few weeks (besides the occasional sniping or sarcastic comment directed at the other), the rigidity of it all reminded Hardison too much of a friend he'd had as a child. He hated going to the other boy's house because his parents always had the tenseness between them that was standard issue for Nate and Parker these days.
Still, things were at least bearable. Nearly anything was better than outright fighting.
But nothing – or rather, no one – can stay in such a constant state of precariousness for so long. It was bound to tip one way or the other.
It eventually did, and no one saw it coming, which made it ten times worse than it might have been.
Of course the other three were aware of the problems between Nate and Parker; even those who were blind could have recognized it, because you didn't have to see anything to hear the anger in their voices, or feel the unnatural stillness that came over a room when they both entered.
They didn't talk to each other unless they absolutely had to.
They never touched each other unless it was an accident, and that usually involved an insincere apology on Nate's part, or immediate withdrawal on Parker's.
Sophie later said she knew they had problems but figured they'd work them out. She always prided herself on being optimistic. Besides, the one time she'd tried to talk to Nate about it, his anger had run over at her and he'd said some hurtful things he later apologized for. She'd learned not to question him about it again. When she talked to Parker, the woman had completely shut down and walked away, and Sophie had been afraid she would pull another stunt like before, not coming back the next day (though she had).
That was why Sophie hadn't tried to do anything. As for Eliot? He later claimed that he'd honestly had no idea what was going on. Sure he'd noticed that their boss and their thief weren't particularly friendly, but when was Parker particularly friendly with anyone? Besides, Eliot was as unhappy with Parker as Nate was, most of the time, so it only amused him when Nate started calling her out for doing dangerous or crazy things, or for completely ignoring the things they said to her.
Finally, he'd thought, someone was addressing the things she got away with for far too long. Half the time he backed up Nate's side of the argument, and he had no idea that it grated on Parker just a little more each time.
Hardison, though, berated himself long after. Because he should have seen it coming, he should have recognized the signs. He tried to be the peacemaker, and though he had attempted to talk to both of them, he got nowhere. He'd given up just like Sophie. And he'd pretended to be as oblivious as Eliot actually was.
Which turned out to be a huge mistake. Because if Hardison had really let himself see what was coming, they all would have been spared a lot of grief.
XXXXXX
TBC – I don't envision this as being too long, and it's quite different than the lighter stories I usually write. Angst! But if you know anything at all about me, you know that I can never get too sad. I don't have it in me. (Plus the fact that the pairing is N/P must give some things away ;)
Everything I write will be finished. All thoughts welcome.