A/N: So I take a week off and don't post my usual fics... and then I come in here and post a one-shot anyway. I guess this proves that I just cannot take a break! lol This one-shot came to me the first time I watched The Queen's Gambit Job but required some thinking time and a rewatch before it became an actual fic on the page. I would apologise to the P/H fans, but seriously? None of themwould ever venture into one of my fics, surely! lol
Disclaimer: All recognisable characters from Leverage belong to other folks that aren't me.
Thinking of You
People think Parker is naive when it comes to feelings and relationships. They're not entirely wrong, of course. She has limited experience of any kind of friendship, nevermind romance. The team are her family, she knows that, even though there is no blood connection between any of them.
What she has with Hardison is new, a special kind of bond. He cares about her a lot, and she thinks she feels the same sometimes. Other times not so much. It's as if he looks at her and sees wedding bands and a little house with roses around the door. When she looks at him she sees a loyal friend and a fun team-mate, but she hasn't a clue how to tell him. Parker just hopes that it'll all work out in the end, since Hardison always promises her they'll go at her speed. Parker isn't even sure what her speed is, but if they go any slower they'll start tripping backwards, even she sees that.
Usually Parker is so busy focusing on the job, she doesn't have time to think about it all that much. This one is a little different, since she is paired up with Hardison. He has her in boots full of ball bearings, trying to play Dance Dance Revolution. She feels as if she's going crazy, with the computer voice yelling at her, and Hardison trying to be encouraging but failing badly.
All at once she's screaming at him about slowing her down and how she hates it. How she'll die if he keeps holding her back. The words come out unchecked, unfiltered, usual for Parker in any other circumstance but not this one. She turns her face away, unwilling to face his pain. There was such a thing as too much truth she had learnt, and this was a moment when she should have kept her mouth shut.
Hardison is talking, apologising, trying to help. He takes her words as they sounded, panic about the job. He doesn't know it's not all she meant and Parker isn't so cruel as to tell him. He would never hold her down on purpose, but it's what he wants. She was born to fly and he is so grounded sometimes. He would make her more normal if he could, she knew, and whilst a part of her wishes to be that way for him, another part gets the urge to run every time she realises it's true.
Guilt bubbling inside her is enough to make her turn into him when he asks, to allow him to put his arms around her. He mentions the job against Duberman, the high school reunion and she smiles. It was fun to see what it might have been like if she had been that girl, nice to experience a real high school dance with someone she trusted, but that was all.
Hardison read stuff into these things. He starts humming a tune, perhaps the one that had played that night, Parker isn't sure. She steps onto his toes and he moves the two of them around, slow dancing moves that are supposed to help - they don't.
When her eyes fall closed, Parker no longer has Hardison's arms around her, and he is no longer humming flatly in her ear. Instead, she is in the work out room at Eliot's place. The mat is beneath her feet and he's talking to her about the fighting skills he is helping her develop.
"It's all about the rhythm, like dancing."
"Dancing?" she echoed, opening one eye to look at him.
"Yes, dancing," he ground out, annoyed at her interrupting or her questioning, maybe both. "You must know how to dance, Parker."
"Not really," she shrugged. "It's not like I go to places where there's a lot of dancing around."
Eliot had to let her have that one. The crazy woman lived for her job, and now any spare time was spent with the team. When she might've learnt to dance, he couldn't imagine!
"Okay," he sighed then, stepping in so close Parker could feel the heat of his body against hers.
She didn't flinch, she never had with him, though she couldn't possibly explain it. Since he started teaching her self-defence a few weeks ago, the trust she showed in him was important. He had to touch her, move her limbs around, grab her in holds in order to show her how to escape. These days she was perfectly comfortable, even when he pinned her to the ground, though she did prefer when he let her be on top.
"Now, for example, we have the tango," he said, as he took hold of one of Parker's wrists and put his free hand to her waist.
On instinct, her other hand found his shoulder, and when he started counting, shoving her feet where they should go, she followed easily. She was smiling widely as he moved her easily around the room, wondering at how simple this was, and how strangely fun.
"This is easy," she told him, almost giggling into her words. "It's just one, two, three, four," she counted aloud as she had been in her head up to now.
"That's exactly it," the hitter agreed. "One, two, three, four," he echoed as they moved through the steps. "Open your eyes," he told her then, and Parker gasped without thinking as he did as she was told and met the intensity of Eliot's baby blues.
His hands dropped away from her body, letting her own fall too.
"Keep counting," he told her, taking a step back from her, and then faking a combo of punches.
She deflected just as he had taught her. Duck, cover, strike, block. One, two, three, four. It was such a perfect set of movements to Parker, so weirdly elegant for a fight. They were completely in synch as he spun her into a head lock, and she forced her way out, always to the same rhythm.
When they had run though every sequence he had taught her, he spun her back towards him, and she collided lightly with his chest muscles, breathing hard from the exertion of the excercise.
"We don't have anymore moves," she noted, blinking up at him through hair that had fallen from her ponytail.
Eliot smiled then, one of those genuine smiles she loved to see, especially when directed at her. It seemed to Parker that much like diamonds, something so rare was that much more worth the effort made to get it.
"Then I'll have to teach you something different," he told her, grabbing her hand and spinning her away and then back.
He had her in a hold meant for anything but a fight or self-defence practise. They started out to dancing again, all across the mats, with Parker falling into dips and throwing herself into spins with the same gay abandon that she threw herself from a fifty storey building. The counting in her head faded when she realised there was music to concentrate on, a song Eliot was humming that slowly developed words as he danced her all around the room...
...and the lights are bright and colourful, the floor before her inviting. It's a simple task of lifting whatever she can get from the patrons of the Memphis country bar, and yet she can't help but fall into the rhythm, the catchy music. She spins like a top, pirouettes and kicks out her legs. Eliot would be proud, she knows, and smiles as she thinks of it, hearing his voice in her head even though he isn't singing yet...
One, two, three, four.
"It's all about the rhythm, like dancing."
Eliot's words echo in her mind, and Parker drifts out of Hardison's arms, almost forgetting he was ever there. She doesn't feel the weight in her boots or the fear of being held down. The little thief is walking on air, taking flight as she was always meant to do. The tug on her hand pulls her in close and she opens her eyes with a smile on her lips, anticipating bright blue eyes and a rare smile.
Hardison leans in as if to kiss her and there is a flash of panic in her eyes. He had to have seen it, it's why he backs off. Parker's heart breaks a little to realise she caused that. She can't be what he needs, that normal grounded girl he wants to share pretzels with. Even in this moment when he's trying to get closer, she's day-dreaming of something else, someone else.
People think Parker is naive when it comes to feelings and relationships. They're not entirely wrong, of course, but she sees what is happening here now and she knows it mustn't go on any longer. Every dance has to end somewhere, and Parker is very clear now that Hardison is not supposed to be her partner.
The End