A/N: I thought for a while I had forgotten what I was doing with thic fic, after the whole needing to write The Twin Souls Job thing, but here we are, back on the ever-popular Faking It, and I am so grateful for all the supportive reviews/messages from you wonderful reader peops. I promised to work on this fic this weekend and looky looky - thats exactly what I did! :-)
(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)
Chapter 9
"Listen to me, Parker, you'll be fine" Sophie assured her via the phone, as the thief sat in her little hiding place waiting for further reassurance that this job would go okay, "Just don't say anything and trust the diamond" the grifter told her, having already offered up an emergency dress and heels combo for the blonde to wear as she played the part of Hardison's girlfriend to catch a jeweller that robbed his own truck.
"Okay, I can do that" she said, with more confidence than she felt, as she went over the idea in her head one more time and tried to breathe properly.
"Anyway, how's everything else going?" asked Sophie, unable to help her curiosity, "How are things with Eliot?" she checked, biting her lip the very next moment and wondering if she ever should have let the question in her mind slip out of her mouth.
"He's fine, we're fine" said Parker a little too quickly, and after a brief pause changed her mind, "Okay, so we're not exactly fine, but..." she craned her neck to peer back over her shoulder and ensure that one of the guys, but most especially Eliot, was not going to overhear her at all, "Sophie? What does it mean when a guy dreams about you?" she asked with a smile on her face that she just couldn't help right now.
Parker was still feeling kind of giddy at the prospect of a guy liking her so much that she was haunting his sleep, but she was a little worried that this wasn't as positive as she maybe thought it was. She needed advice, specifically from Sophie, since she seemed to know so much about relationships and was the only woman Parker had ever really been close to. Sure, she messed up that one time which had led to her hearing things she'd rather not have, but she was still more use than any of the guys in Parker's life.
"He told you about that?" gasped Sophie on the other end of the line, making Parker frown some at her tone and choice of words.
"He told you about that?" she checked, pretty sure that was what the grifter meant.
"Um, no" Sophie floundered, "Well, sort of" she admitted, "but Parker if he told you then..."
"He didn't" she cut in to explain, "He told Nate, but I overheard and now... well, I don't know what I'm supposed to do" she shrugged pointlessly since she could not be seen by the woman she was talking to.
There was a long pause in which Parker almost wondered if Sophie had hung up on her completely or just lost signal on her cell maybe. Just as she was about to ask if her friend was still there, she spoke.
"I can't tell you that, sweetheart" she sighed, "I only wish I could, but all I did when I tried to help was make matters worse" she said sadly, "I really think you should handle this on your own, Parker" Sophie advised the younger woman, hating that she was once again leaving her unassisted but feeling just a little better about what she said next, "but the job, now that I can help with" she assured her, "The diamond will do all the work for you, trust me on that" she said definitely.
"Say nothing, trust the diamond" Parker intoned like a good student who had learnt well.
At least focusing on the job would stop her wondering too much on how to deal with Eliot. Besides, for now she had to pretend to be in love with Hardison... again. She found it strange that Nate always seemed to put the two of them together when it came to playing a couple. He had to know she saw the hacker like a kind of brother and nothing else. He was one of the coolest geeks she knew, no question on that, but she wouldn't want to get any closer to him, in a sex way or anything. That would just be too weird.
Shaking herself from thinking too much, Parker crept out of the kitchen and up the stairs to Nate's room. At the back of the closet, as promised, she found Sophie's emergency mini-dress, and high-heeled shoes named after some guy the thief herself had never even heard of. Holding the dress up in front of her, she looked into the mirror on the back of the closet door and frowned. It wasn't really her, she didn't dress this way, and she couldn't help but recall the other times she'd gone on the grift like this. Memories of finger breaking and fork stabbing made panic bubble up inside her, but this would be different, she told herself. She would have Nate in her ear, and Hardison and Eliot wouldn't be far away. No harm would come to her, and if she followed Sophie's advice, maybe no harm would come to the mark either, not of the snappy or stabby variety at Parker's own hand anyway.
'Say nothing, trust the diamond' she reminded herself as she tossed the fancy dress and shoes on the bed and set about removing the access cover to the airduct above her head. She had to go get the diamond from its hiding place first!
"What's taking so long?" asked Eliot, irritated as always by things not going exactly as planned, "I thought she was right behind us" he said into his ear, as Hardison shook his head.
Seriously, just dropping a fork in front of the hitter could set him off sometimes. They'd been getting into position in this bar/pool-hall for all of two minutes, and he expected Parker to just be there. Maybe he forgot how nervous she could be on the grift, or maybe he was just worried about her. Yeah, that made sense to Hardison, because he would probably be nervous for her himself, were it not for the fact he was needing to concentrate on his own performance right now.
"Cool down, Eliot" Nate advised, just as the sound of high-heeled shoes came into each of the guys' ears.
"I'm here, stop freaking out" said Parker, taking a deep breath as she descended the stairs.
The con was on, and the last thing the thief needed was a bunch of voices in her head. Nate told the other two to be quiet as he advised Parker on her words and actions both. Honestly, she didn't hear much, just kept repeating Sophie's words of wisdom over and over, until she had the mark hooked. When she led him through to where Hardison and Eliot were playing pool, she barely spared the hitter a glance, concentrating on the part she was playing, Hardison's girlfriend. She therefore failed to notice the way Eliot's eyes raked over her body, taking in the curves and shapely legs usually hidden but now entirely prominent in a tight mini-dress and heels.
Thankfully, the hitter was not so distracted that he could not do his job, and things ran fairly smoothly, not counting Hardison over-selling his part. The Ice Man was going to ruin this whole thing for them, and everybody seemed to know it, except for the hacker himself.
The moment the mark and his Russian back up left the room, Nate beckoned the team over and told Hardison they needed to have a talk about his behaviour at some point. Eliot couldn't help but smile at the idea of their leader playing Daddy to the hacker, it did amuse him.
"Whatever, man" he rolled his eyes, "I totally got the guy hooked. It's all good" said Hardison, cool as ever, not at all concerned that he might have screwed up apparently, "Hey, Parker. You want a ride home?" he offered as she stumbled a little in her heels behind the guys.
"Sure, thanks" she agreed, taking the shoes off altogether as she followed him out.
Nate couldn't fail to notice the way Eliot's eyes strayed to her figure as she left the bar. The poor little thief seemed oblivious to the hitter's feelings, but then it was very easy to think that perhaps he didn't have any. Eliot was hardly the caring and sharing type, though Nate was pretty sure all the necessary emotions existed within.
"You know, as much as you might think it's... I don't know, not masculine?" he struggled to find the word he wanted as he looked in the same direction as his friend, "You could just tell her how you feel about her" he suggested, watching as Eliot's eyes swivelled to meet his, incredularity present there.
"Yeah, great plan, Nate" he shook his head, evidentially mocking, "Stick to cons, you're pretty good at those" he advised as he made to leave.
Of course, those words came easy, pretending he didn't care and like Nate was an idiot, but it wasn't true. Eliot did care about this situation he'd landed up in and a part of him did think maybe he should just act as he normally would, on instinct. Actions spoke louder than words and there were easy enough ways to show Parker how he felt if telling her wasn't going to work. With any other girl, he'd have just done it by now, but she was so different, and that had to be at least some of the reason why he felt so different about her.
Men that put the moves on Parker ended up injured, and telling her in words that he liked her would probably only serve to make her laugh at him, which Eliot would not stand for. Besides, even if they did get it together somehow, throwing the team dynamic all out of whack wasn't going to help anybody.
It almost made Eliot wish Sophie was here right now. She was usually better at handling this kind of thing, usually better at handling Parker too, when she wasn't busy running out of the door. Maybe it was time for that talk she'd offered him a while back, after all, that was what phones were made for.
"C'mon, Eliot, you're not scared, are you?" asked Sophie, grateful she was on the other side of the world and talking into a phone rather than stood before the hitter right now.
"Seriously?" he asked her, more of a growl than a word as he paced the ground beside his truck, agitated as anything by this whole situation, and so far the grifter he thought might help him was just making it worse.
"I know you can take a hit, a shot even" she admitted, " but you don't seem so brave when it comes to sharing how you're feeling"
"I don't know what I'm feeling" he admitted with a tired sigh, "Y'know, Parker is... she's hot, and she's funny sometimes, and I care about her, obviously, but..." he shook his head, pointless since Sophie could not see him but somehow she could imagine how frustrated he looked just from the sound of his voice.
"Eliot, stop torturing yourself" she advised, "You know Parker likes you, I told you before" she explained, pre-empting the fact he was going to cut in and continuing quickly, "And before you interrupt, if she's been a little off with you since we last talked about this, that could be my fault... but she does still like you" she insisted, "If you like her too, for heavens sake just tell the girl before we all die of old age, because she won't make the first move on her own!"
Through her rambling on, Sophie would not let Eliot interrupt for a second, in spite of the fact he was trying to do so for good reason. Of course, she had no idea that Nate had just dropped Parker off and she was now stood mere feet from Eliot's side, grabbing necessary items from the back of his truck so they could continue with their latest con.
By the time he managed to get Sophie off the line, thanking her for her help (if that was indeed what she had given) the thief couldn't fail to have noticed he was talking to someone significant on his cell.
"Who was that?" she asked curiously.
Parker accepted Eliot's answer when he told her it was the cable company, even though that made no sense. The issue now was the con, and whatever else they needed to figure out would come later, so they both thought as they slid into their white bio-haz suits and headed into the building.
Just as soon as Parker saw Hardison's car she said she was riding home with Eliot, without her brain even really processing what that meant. Being trapped in the small space that was the front of the hitter's truck, alone with him, she really hadn't thought about how she was going to handle it until it was too late to turn back.
They had been so comfortable around each other when the team first got back together here in Boston. Comfortable silence worked, or they could talk a little without any problem. Sure, he said there was something wrong with her at times, and she made faces when he got mad about the smallest and dumbest things, but that was just the way they were, and it worked. It had changed so much from that day when she first laid her lips on his. Eliot hadn't known what hit him, and Parker was similarly afflicted despite the fact the action was all her own doing.
Weeks later, things had settled down to a point where they seemed almost normal to everybody else and even to each other for the most part, but the ability to read minds might have been handy for these two to really figure things out. Verbalising what they were feeling did not come easy for the hitter or the thief. Both had a tendency to bottle up whatever was bothering them until it came out in an explosion of punches, kicks, fork-stabbing, and running away. Avoidance tactics worked better, or so Parker decided.
"I can't believe Hardison bought that stupid car" she laughed, glad when Eliot joined in and chuckled himself.
"Yeah, he's going way over the top on this character" he shook his head, a little more serious as he considered how dangerous that might be, "Let's just hope the Ice Man doesn't do us more harm than good"
"If anyone's gonna screw up the grifting it's me" Parker lamented, reaching down to pull off her shoes and almost hitting her head on the dash in the process, "These heels are killing me already, I don't know how Sophie does it"
"Hey, you're doin' good" Eliot insisted kindly, happy to have to keep his eyes on the road as he felt Parker staring at him now, "I know this stuff isn't easy for you, but you are, you're doin' good"
"Thanks" she replied, pulling one ankle up onto her opposite knee so she could rub her foot that was hurting, inadvertently making her already short dress ride up even higher on her thighs.
Eliot made the mistake of glancing from the road to see what she was doing and immediately regretted it. Parker wasn't completely oblivious to the action and very nearly asked him what was up, before thinking better of it. Sometimes she really thought Eliot liked her as much as she thought she liked him. Despite her usually straight-forward style of asking outright what she wanted to know, those words just stuck in her throat. It was fear, she assumed, that he would laugh at her and say there was something wrong with her if she thought he'd ever want her that way. Of course, she didn't necessarily need words. She could kiss him like before, she certainly got a response she liked then. Of course, after that, both she and Eliot had told Hardison it all meant nothing. It was a total lie. She and the hacker making out on the David job, now that was fake as the home-made statues themselves had been, but not with Eliot, that had been something else entirely.
This was a perfect opportunity, Parker realised, as Eliot stopped the car at the next set of traffic lights that signalled red. She dropped her foot down off her knee and seriously considered leaning over and planting a kiss right on his lips, just to see what he would do...
"Which way?" he asked, snapping her from deep thoughts and her imagination that had started to run wild.
"Huh? What?" she replied, looking around.
"Which way do I turn here? To get to your house?" he repeated with a little more explanation of what he meant and a lot more over-pronunciation as if she were slow.
"Oh" Parker shook her head, unclipping her seat-belt and picking up her shoes so fast he barely realised what she was doing.
In point of fact, Eliot had actually started to let the truck roll forward through the now green light when Parker reached to open the door and throw herself out.
"This is close enough" she gabbled and then she was gone, the truck door slamming behind her.
If not for the light scent of jasmine left behind in the space beside him, Eliot might have believed she'd never been there at all.
To Be Continued...
A/N2: I promise you, we are getting closer to what you might call 'the good stuff'. Just a little more of that virtue they call patience if you please ;-)