Disclaimer: See chapter 1.

Author's note: Part 6! Not as much humor here which is solely attributable to the fact that I am a romantic at heart.

XXXXXX

For her part, Parker didn't realize what had changed until one day Hardison started teasing her about her and Nate's closeness. As usual, she'd taken immediate offense.

"You're delusional, Hardison," she said firmly. "Name one odd thing – a specific thing, not a general sense of, as you call it, 'weirdness.'"

"You slept here last night," he said, and wow he'd come up with something a lot quicker than she thought he would.

"That's…how is that unusual?" Even as she said it, she pretty much already knew.

"Because you don't live together, because you're not dating. Therefore, sleeping over here is strange," Hardison said firmly.

"We were working on the latest job. It got late, and I was tired, so I slept here. What's the big deal?"

"The big deal," Hardison said, dragging the words out, "is that we don't have a con going on right now!"

"It was…we were working general contingency plans. You'll be thanking us the next time we need one of those to get out of a bind," Parker insisted.

"Uh huh," Hardison had skipped past skeptical and was now on outright disbelief. "You keep telling yourself that. It's still outside of the normal parameters."

Where did he come up with this stuff? "Aren't you forgetting something?" Parker reminded him, "You slept over here four nights ago."

"I…oh yeah," Hardison muttered. "But there were extenuating circumstances."

Eliot couldn't resist, the guy made it way too easy. "Seeing an ex-girlfriend – which I still can't believe you have one by the way – downstairs in the bar, running up here to escape her, and then refusing to leave is not an 'extenuating circumstance.' It's called not being a man."

"Vanessa was crazy! Ca-ra-zy," Hardison enunciated. "You know why we broke up? Because she wanted me too much. I couldn't handle it anymore, she was suffocating me."

"Really? Because that's not the way Vanessa told it," Sophie hummed.

"You talked to her? Sophie!" Hardison was suspiciously close to whining as he wondered how the conversation had turned to his own issues.

"She told me that after her husband found out that you two were dating, she had to break things off. And then you tried to have her husband deported?"

"Hey!" Hardison yelled, leaping up from the sofa in his indignant outburst, "That was never proven!"

"This is why I love you," Eliot said, kissing Sophie briefly.

"As if this night weren't bad enough already," Hardison said, put out at their affection. He wandered to the kitchen, grateful that plenty of clients liked to give alcohol as gifts and though Nate didn't drink too much anymore (that night with Parker notwithstanding) he kept them on hand. He pulled out the most expensive bottle of wine he could find.

"No wonder you ran away that night," Parker looked over the back of the couch to smirk at him, and, he was sure, to otherwise mock him in any way she could.

Hardison pointed at Sophie with his wine glass. "I can't believe you just betrayed me like that. I should have gone after you when I had the chance, then you'd love me and keep my secrets, well, secret."

Sophie laughed so hard at that scenario that she almost couldn't answer him. "Good one, Hardison!"

"Dream on, Hardison," Eliot said, equally amused. "Though it would have been fun watching you try to hit on Sophie. I do say try because of your obvious ineptitude in that area."

"Hardison and Sophie?" Parker shook her head, and stared off into space as if picturing it. "That's wrong."

"More wrong than you and Nate?" Hardison pounced.

Parker glared at him. Just when she thought they'd completely forgotten about her.

"Right, we were talking about you before Hardison's pathetic excuse for a love-life came up," Eliot said to her.

"Nate and I are not together," Parker sighed, and why was she the only one who seemed to ever know that fact? "You know, aside from the married thing," she coughed to hide her discomfort.

"Yeah, aside from that," Hardison came back to the living room with glasses for everyone. "Parker, you know I'm the last person in the world to judge –"

"Ha!" Sophie cried, as Hardison wisely ignored her.

"However, I must know, Parker. What's going on with you two lately?"

"Nothing! How many times do I have to say it? We're friends." She really wished Nate were there to back her up. This would be the night he was meeting a potential client for dinner – though maybe that's why the other three were only confronting her now.

"You're very close for friends," Sophie was saying.

"Well," Parker thought about that, "if we were distant then...we wouldn't be friends, would we?" She hoped that made sense.

Hardison turned to Eliot and Sophie. "Come to think of it, you two are very close, as well."

"That's because we're more than friends," Eliot said. "Much more, in fact –"

"Oh come on, man," Hardison whined, downing half of his glass in record time. "Up until now I only suspected. And I was living in the bliss afforded to those who are ignorant of certain circumstances. I don't need to hear the details."

Parker watched as he refilled his glass. "Hardison, I'm not the most observant person in the world, but even I knew Eliot and Sophie were seeing each other."

"How so?" Hardison said miserably.

"Didn't the fact that we kiss all the time tip you off?" Sophie asked, genuinely curious.

"Well, friends…kiss each other…sometimes," Hardison tried to argue, though it didn't hold much weight with anyone in the room.

"Please," Parker said. "Do I go around kissing you or Eliot?"

"I certainly wouldn't object," Hardison said. "And stop changing the subject," he added. "You and Nate – strangeness abounds!"

Parker would have ignored him, except Sophie and Eliot were nodding along in agreement with Hardison's words and thus, she had to really consider if Hardison's accusations had any merit.

"You always sit next to him," Hardison was saying. "And you two seem much closer now. You always…talk to each other!"

"God forbid I talk to Nate," Parker said, rolling her eyes.

"No, it's not that," Sophie said. "It's that before you only talked about cons we were doing, but now, you talk about everything."

"So what?" Parker shrugged, as if it didn't matter, though she couldn't get rid of the increasing unease she felt at Sophie's words.

"It is different," Eliot asserted, and it must have been a hell of a change if he had noticed, and decided to comment on it. "You're both different now."

Parker didn't know what to make of any of this. "I don't get what is that disturbing that the three of you would notice a sudden change," she argued.

"I can't quite put my finger on it," Hardison said, distressed. "But it's something – you two agree, right?" He glanced toward Sophie and Eliot for confirmation.

"Definitely," Eliot said.

"It's a…familiarity," Sophie tried to explain. Which explained nothing at all.

Parker sighed. "I don't believe any of you."

This led to an intense debate among Sophie, Eliot, and Hardison on what exactly had changed between their two friends in the past few months. Parker tried to tune them out as best she could, though that was impossible when Hardison occasionally yelled random things like "Let's calculate their agreement to disagreement ratio!" and Eliot high-fived him, even though Parker doubted any of them even understood what that meant.

The fact that Hardison went to get several more bottles of wine didn't help matters at all.

"We've figured it out!" Hardison said to her, sometime later, as she was starting to fall asleep. He was much too excited.

"Feeling alright there, Hardison?" She asked him warily, but he ignored her and started reading from a piece of paper (what was this, a verdict?).

Well, she realized as he read, it might as well be for the gravity with which he pronounced it. "The three of us have concluded that the main difference between you and Nate, as opposed to before the Las Vegas trip, is that you touch each other much more often."

"This is going to be fun," Parker muttered, already dreading the rest of her evening.

"You touch each other," Sophie reiterated. "All the time!"

"That is crazy," Parker said, already knowing it was a futile effort. "We do not do anything of the sort."

"Aha!" Eliot cried, holding up a wine bottle, as if she'd proven some point. "But you do! As my lovely Sophie says, all the time."

Hardison nodded. "Where do you sit during briefings? Or when we go out to dinner? In fact, I'm surprised you aren't with him right now!"

Parker had to truly think about this, because she was absolutely sure they were wrong. Except…the more she thought about, the more she thought they might be on to something. She hadn't really noticed it, nor had she really cared. But now that they pointed it out, it seemed glaringly obvious. She and Nate were far too comfortable with each other, and that led to actions the others perceived as romantic.

"We're too close!" She whispered, somewhat horrified. This was awful!

"That's what I've been saying," Hardison declared.

"It's just…I never really thought about it," Parker admitted, though apparently she should have been.

"It's…" Hardison paused, as if to point out something especially dramatic, but it seemed more like he'd had just enough to drink to be gathering his thoughts. "…bizarre!" He finished.

"Kind of," Eliot agreed.

Parker looked to Sophie who merely shrugged, as if the fact that it was strange was something she couldn't help.

And it made Parker really consider how she acted around Nate. If the rest of them thought they were acting strange, then they must be. She'd have to change it. And she did.

XXXXXX

Parker had no idea how hard it would be, because she hadn't realized just how much contact she had with Nate until she started avoiding him constantly. And then she saw it, and more than that, it was hard to avoid him.

It wasn't like she was all over him, but they touched each other a lot, casual moments here and there. Perhaps much more than before they'd accidentally gotten married. Parker hadn't thought anything of it, because it had only gradually increased the past few months. When? And how? She had no idea.

Still, she managed to stop it completely. It was hard, but she did it. (Which led to another startling observation – how much she missed him.)

But the others had a point, so she stayed strong.

As for Nate, well at first, he didn't really know what was going on. All he knew was that something was…off.

It took a few weeks to figure it out.

The answer came innocuously enough one day, when he reached out to touch Parker's shoulder and direct her to the TV screens where Hardison was showing images of their latest mark.

Instead of letting her gaze be directed, as any normal person would have, she jumped the second he touched her and then dove to the other end of the couch.

It was strange. But then, he'd never been able to really classify Parker as "normal" to begin with, so he shrugged it off.

Except ten minutes later, when Eliot and Hardison got into a fight over what type of soda was the best (really, this was what he had to put up with), Eliot had thrown his empty can of Pepsi at Hardison, which triggered a shoving match. Nate had leaned over to pull Parker out of the immediate line of danger, but she jumped over the back of the couch in her haste to escape him.

That was when he knew something was going on with her. It was like he was radioactive or maybe like she thought he was going to murder her (and he'd really thought they'd put that issue to rest weeks ago).

"Is something going on, Parker?" He asked.

"Um…no?"

"Are you guessing?"

Parker merely looked at Sophie for help in trying to explain. But Sophie, damn her, kept her gaze averted.

"Parker!" Nate said, and she looked back to him guiltily.

"Nothing!" She said loudly, then realized that didn't make sense. "I mean…what?"

He got up and rounded the couch to face her. "Explain."

"There's nothing to explain," she said. He didn't miss how every time he took a step toward her, she took one away. It was a very disconcerting (and if he were being honest, troubling) turn of events.

"Are you scared of me?" He asked, concerned now. He couldn't really think of anything he might have done to upset her, but if so, he had to fix it, because if there was one thing he couldn't stand to think of, it was her actually being afraid of him.

"Why would I be scared of you?" She said, so quickly that the words ran together and he almost couldn't make them out. As a test, he reached out to touch her, and she quickly skirted him, jumping back onto the couch. "I'm…exhausted! I'm going to lie down."

"Parker," he said sternly, leaning over the back of the couch and looking down at her. "Start talking."

"Uh…Hardison?" She tried.

Hardison only shook his head. "See what I was saying? Weird, it's weird."

Sophie sighed, leaning back where she was perched on the arm of Eliot's chair. "I think we may have made things worse."

Eliot, for some reason, took pity on her. "Parker, forget what we said."

"How can I forget it?" She asked, distinctly upset. "You told me that –" she abruptly stopped talking when she remembered Nate was two feet away, watching her intently.

"Alright," he ordered, glancing at the other three in turn. "What did you tell her and why is it making her act like I have the plague?"

"We didn't say anything!" Hardison defended himself, before mumbling quickly, "You know aside from the fact that you two touch each other all the time."

"What?" Nate asked.

"We may have pointed out…that you two are much friendlier since we've returned from Las Vegas. That's all," Sophie said.

Nate glanced at Parker, who was studiously avoiding his gaze, then back to the others. "What did you say, exactly?"

"You touch each other all the time!" Hardison burst out. "We noticed."

Nate was beginning to feel quite irrationally angry. "You told her we touch each other too much? What is wrong with you?"

Sophie almost felt bad. "We were just joking with her. Besides, it is true."

Nate sighed, wanting to remind them that you couldn't ever joke with Parker because she took everything so literally. But then, they knew that already, and maybe they really had been upset by how close he and Parker seemed lately.

But if so, that was their fault, not his, and not Parker's. He glared at each of them and then joined Parker on the couch.

"Parker, everything they've told you – ignore it."

"No, Nate," she said, as if this were something extremely important. "They're right. We're too close!"

"Right now?" He asked, motioning at the four feet of space between them.

"No, in general," she huffed, crossing her arms. She hated this, because she didn't really know how to gauge normal. And if the others had thought it was strange, that meant it must be strange, and it was upsetting that she hadn't picked up on that before.

Hardison was beginning to feel as if they had made a big deal out of nothing, and worse, he was feeling awful about it. "Nate's right, forget everything we said. It's none of our business what you two do."

Parker only shrugged, but she looked so miserable that Hardison wondered if she'd ever had a relationship with anyone where it was normal to simply hug them or casually touch them. The more he thought about it, the more he figured she probably hadn't, and if possible, that made him feel worse. Since he and the others had basically told her that the one relationship she did have that was that way was wrong.

"I think we should all touch each other more!" Hardison declared. "Parker, come sit with me." He held out his arms in welcome to come join him.

She stared at him like he was deranged.

"Okay, I'll come to you." He said, as he came to sit next to her on the couch and put his arm around her. "See? This is what friends do! This is comfortable, right?"

Sophie and Eliot watched in astonishment at how stiffly Hardison and Parker were sitting. "Sure looks comfortable," Eliot said, watching as Parker fought not to flee.

"Oh forget it," Hardison sighed, letting go of her.

"No…it's okay," Parker said. "You're right. I just never really had friends before…you guys. I don't know what's normal for friends."

Sophie looked stricken at the words. "Oh, Parker, you can hug any of us whenever you want to!" She cried.

"Here we go," Eliot sighed, as Sophie jumped up and went over to hug Parker.

"Yeah, thanks Sophie," Parker said, after a record two seconds. "That doesn't mean you have to smother me."

"Right," Sophie said, as she and Hardison went back to their seats.

"I can't believe I couldn't place it before," Nate said. "I knew something was different, but I didn't know what. It's that you've been avoiding me."

She looked at him apologetically, but then her eyes couldn't quite meet his as she went back to scanning the room. "I didn't know what else to do."

"Parker," he said quietly, "no one's saying what you have to do with anyone else. How close you are with anyone, that's your choice."

"Yeah," she said, more to herself than anyone else. She got the feeling he was more than aware that for most of her childhood, contact with other people had not been her choice and it most certainly had not been pleasant. She'd had more than her fair share of bruises back then to prove it.

And now things were much, much different.

She glanced up to see Nate watching her so closely that she instinctively wanted to look away, but couldn't. It was as if he were trying to determine what would scare her, and to see that much consideration in someone else, directed at her? It was…well it was something she'd never known.

He shrugged as if to say whatever she did was fine with him.

And that was what made her spring herself at him and hug him for all she was worth.

Until that moment he hadn't realized, in the past few weeks, how much he'd missed her.

"Sorry, Nate," she whispered into his shoulder, and he didn't answer – but then from the way he hugged her back, he didn't have to.

"Oh man, oh man – this is so emotionally moving," Hardison said, his voice shaking slightly. He looked at Eliot and Sophie who were shaking their heads at him. "You two are heartless!"

Parker pulled back from Nate but then settled onto the couch next to him, as his arm went around her without any thought on his part.

"Hardison, pull yourself together," she ordered, feeling unexpectedly happy for a reason she couldn't quite name. Or maybe didn't want to name.

Hardison cleared his throat and then went back to explaining what had brought them to Nate's apartment in the first place.

Parker listened and tried desperately not to fall asleep. Nate started talking about his latest plan and she listened more to the tone of his voice than the actual words. When he explained what she'd have to do, she tilted her head back to look at him, and the thought struck her, with terrifying force, that this wouldn't last forever.

Because they were going to get divorced and while they'd still be on the same team, she didn't expect him to stay single forever. He'd move on and find someone he loved, and whoever he ended up with would certainly not like the fact that Parker preferred to sit with him like this during their briefings. She tried to imagine Nate dating someone, or touching someone, or marrying someone who…was not her.

She should be separating herself from him. She should have been taking the others' advice and trying to stay away from him, to distance herself, so that when the inevitable happened – him moving on – she wouldn't get hurt. Only she couldn't do that.

It wasn't that she didn't know how to do this without him. It was that she didn't want to do any of this without him.

She wondered what he'd say if he knew that. She suspected it was something she wouldn't like, because she knew he didn't love her. What's more, she didn't want him to love her.

You couldn't love someone just because you accidentally got married to them! It was crazy. Worse than crazy. Incomprehensible.

She fiddled with her necklace, and Nate asked if she agreed with something she hadn't heard him say, and she realized, for the first time, that it didn't matter how she should or shouldn't feel, because that had nothing to do with how she actually felt. It was a terrible realization, indeed.

XXXXXX

TBC – I'll try to bring back more humor as I near the end of the story – I do have it pretty much done, the problem is I have to connect the final sections together, which is harder than it sounds, but it will get done!