A/N: Y'all are still with me in this fic, right? Cool, 'cause we're on the road again...

(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)

Chapter 5

Parker and Eliot were on the road again by ten a.m. Of course, he had planned to start sooner, and to be more awake by the time he got there, but that was okay. Eliot couldn't really be mad at Parker, not when her reasons for destroying his sleep pattern had not been deliberate, and borne only out of her own pain and distress.

After they both got some sleep, there was breakfast, eaten in relative silence, and then packing themselves back into the truck to continue their journey. Though she had offered to drive last night and he implied he might let her, Eliot still took the driver's seat, never mentioning any other arrangement. Parker almost protested but decided against it in the end.

Eliot seemed in a better mood since their talk last night, even though the topic of conversation hadn't started out pleasant. Maybe they had connected, that was the word Sophie used when she talked about hooking marks or even about the team bonding over the years. Yeah, Parker figured that the conversation about their pasts had connected her and Eliot in a different way to however they were before. She always figured they were team-mates, then later they were friends, but theirs had always been the most undefined relationship in the group.

Nate played father figure to all of them when he wasn't drunk, and felt more like a kid to take charge of when he was wasted. Sophie was definitely trying to be everybody's mother, even Nate's sometimes, though that would be weird, Parker considered, given how much they clearly wanted to make out! She was good friends with Hardison, he was almost like a brother, except not really because that would be squicky when they had to make out on cons.

Eliot was different. He protected Parker like a brother might, and teased her the same way too sometimes, but somehow she just couldn't file him into that box so easily. Maybe it was because she had caught herself checking out his well-built body one too many times, but it could also run deeper.

Parker never thought to over-analyse it before and it made her uncomfortable as she thought on it now. Her confusion must have showed in her face or maybe she made a noise, Parker wasn't sure, but she suddenly realised Eliot was glancing over the top of his aviators at her for just as long as he dare take his eyes off the highway.

"You okay?" he checked, and immediately Parker nodded like a reflex.

"I'm fine," she lied, hoping he wouldn't notice, but clearly he did.

"Is this about you wanting to drive?" he asked, unable to think of anything else in this moment that should've made her act so strange.

They had been travelling for the better part of an hour and a half, and so far Parker really hadn't said more than two words. She wasn't singing along to the radio or tapping her feet to the music. She hadn't fidgeted once, or asked any questions. Something was not right here, and all Eliot could think of was that she was pissed at him for not giving her the turn at the wheel she seemed to want so badly.

"What? No, I don't care," she shrugged, confusing Eliot even further. "I was just thinking... about stuff."

"Stuff?" Eliot echoed with a smirk he couldn't help. "Yeah, that's really descriptive."

Parker wasn't sure if she wanted to tell him what she was wondering about or not. Most of the time she let whatever she was thinking spill straight out of her mouth unfiltered, but this was different. This whole situation was completely different, because she and Eliot were alone and far away from where they really belonged. They had never been in such a circumstance before, and Parker never did well with change, even if she was sure when she started she was ready for it.

"It's just weird that I can talk to you and that we get along," she considered aloud, never taking her eyes off the view rushing by the window. "I mean, when we pulled the first couple of jobs, I didn't think you liked me much, and I wasn't so sure I liked you either, but we just worked well together," she shrugged. "Even though I knew all about your reputation and everything, I was never afraid of you."

Eliot wasn't sure how to answer that. It was sort of sweet and nice to think she was never afraid of him, and at the same time he knew it was as strange as she said. Parker was afraid of all men, or so it seemed, but never him. She had noticed just the same as he had that she never did flinch at his touch or cower from his arms. She trusted him enough to teach her self defence not long after they set up in Boston. She bodily threw herself into his arms on a really early job in Miami...

"I guess it's just instinct, the same as I have for cracking safes and dodging laser beams," Parker went on without him ever having answered her. "I knew you were never going to hurt me no matter how mad you got. You always seemed... safe somehow."

When Parker started to bust up laughing then, Eliot was even more confused than he had been by her confessions. He failed to see what was funny, but then Parker did laugh at the most inappropriate moments sometimes, so he wasn't exactly worried.

"Oh, that sounded so stupid!" she said eventually, holding her ribs that ached from all the laughter. "Wow, I didn't know I could be that corny," she added, leaning back in her seat at last, the moment of hilarity seemingly over.

Eliot let it go. He didn't know what to say anyway and so letting the moment drift past seemed easier somehow. It didn't change the fact he totally got what Parker meant. He trusted her from the start too, not to ever be normal or sensible about anything, but to get the job done, no matter what it took. She liked to cut things fine and run timings close, but she never, ever let the team down. She wouldn't be able to live with herself if someone got hurt because of her, Eliot knew that first hand.

The few times he had been badly beaten whilst watching her back, she had looked so sad and guilty about it. She was first in line to help him get patched up, never asking if she could help like Hardison might or trying to mother him like Sophie tended to do. Parker would just jump in, fill a bowl with warm water to clean up the blood, untangle the medical tape he was trying to use one-handed, run to the store for painkillers when the box in the bathroom ran low.

It hit Eliot then, how little gratitude he showed, mostly because he was concentrating on not bleeding to death or getting infected. More than that, he was trying not to show the fact he was in agony to those that would smother him with care if he let them. Parker cared, way more than anyone ever noticed, way more than even she probably realised, and Eliot really didn't give her enough credit.

Less than twenty four hours into this journey with her (he didn't count the first part when she was stowing away), Eliot was already realising so much about Parker that he never knew before. It bothered him that he never took the time to notice these things the past three years they spent together on Team Leverage. What bothered him even more was letting his own guards down too much in front of her.

Last night was fine, stories from his childhood were not a problem, though he kept the names and locations down to a minimum, just fixing on events that could've happened to anyone at any place or time. The truth of him, of who he was and where he came from, of what he was truly capable of, these were the things he must keep hidden from her at all costs, for both their sakes.

"I'm hungry," Parker declared in the silence that seemed to have settled in when no-one was looking.

"We ate breakfast like two hours ago," Eliot pointed out, but it made no difference, as the thief beside him produced a small bag from each inside pocket of her jacket. "Did you lift those from the motel?" he asked, glancing sideways at her.

"No?" Parker tried when she realised apparently he wasn't going to approve. "It's just chips and pretzels," she sighed when Eliot growled low in his throat.

Why did guys always have to make such a big deal out of little things? It made her think of Hardison as she made to open up the bag of pretzels and then changed her mind, throwing them onto the dash. She opened the potato chips instead and began crunching away.

Eliot tried not to notice but it was hard not to. Eyes on the road was always preferable when driving, but Parker always had been a distraction, in more ways than one. Her off-beat behaviour was not helpful when a person needed to be concentrating elsewhere.

"Eliot?" she said then. "Why does Hardison like me?"

The truck might have swerved completely off the road into a tree if Eliot was even the tiniest bit less controlled than he was. The hitter used to think he was un-freak-out-able, but that was in the days before he ever met Parker. Still, most people could not throw him off his game so easy, but once again the little thief beside him proved to be an exception to his every rule.

There were no right answers to Parker's question, of course, Eliot only wished there were. Hardison had waxed lyrical over the years about the wonder that was the blonde cat burglar, and Eliot had listened like any good friend or brother would. The trouble was that it wasn't exactly the kind of thing you wanted to repeat to the girl in question, especially when said girl was Parker.

Hardison liked Parker because he thought she was hot, because he thought she was sweet, because the idea of having a girlfriend that flexible and crazy appealed to men in unseemly ways that even a geek understood. Eliot knew he could name a hundred and one reasons for Hardison to like Parker, and yet telling her any of them seemed wrong, not least because it was not his place to be saying it.

"Didn't he ever tell you himself?" he asked, clearing his throat, really wishing this conversation would just go away, or maybe that he was on the passenger side so he could tuck and roll right out of the moving vehicle!

"Seriously?" she scoffed around a mouthful of potato chips. "I mean, yeah, he told me he likes the way I turned out, and there was that whole thing with pretzels always being there for me but... I'm not even sure I understand that the way I thought."

Eliot vaguely remembered a while back when Hardison had mentioned pretzels meaning more to him now than ever, that Parker had given him some great sign. The hitter never saw any particular evidence that things had changed between thief and hacker, and he was the expert in behavioural patterns and all. Parker was still the same Parker after Hardison's supposed breakthrough, and he was the same love sick puppy around her from that day to this.

"I mean, Hardison is great, he's like... he's like a combination of the best foster brother I ever had," she went on to explain, holding up one hand and then the other, "and... and the best partner for a con. Mostly because he'll let me get away with anything," she smirked then, a look that bordered on evil.

Eliot noticed that, could feel the expression before he ever turned his head slightly to see it and then he hated it when he did see it. He pulled the truck over into the lay by so fast that Parker's head missed the dash by an inch and the last of her chips went spilling out into the foot well.

"Dammnit Parker!" he yelled the moment the engine was off, slamming both hands against the steering wheel.

"What the hell, Eliot?!" she shouted back at him.

"I thought you were better than that, that's what!" he told her angrily, hardly able to stay in the seat he was so mad. "Hardison, he loves you, okay? He pretty much kisses the ground you frickin' walk on, and you like havin' him around because he'll let you get away with the crap nobody else will? That's low, Parker, even for people like us."

Parker's jaw worked up and down but no sound came out. She hadn't meant it like that, had she? She never meant to imply that she used Hardison for fun, that she led him on or whatever. That couldn't be what she'd been doing, they were just playing around. He liked her, sure, of course she knew that, but she never saw him that way. She never looked at Hardison the way Sophie looked at Nate, or had thoughts of happily ever after with him. Hell, Parker couldn't imagine that kind of fairytale story happening for her with anybody.

"I didn't," she choked out eventually, shocked to realise her own voice was shaking and her eyes felt suddenly damp.

Somehow in the last forty eight hours she had cried more than the past twenty years put together, at least it seemed that way. Eliot was mad at her and she was mad at herself, and it'd all come out of nowhere. How a trip that was meant to help her hitter friend had turned into her spilling her guts and making him mad all in the space of a day, Parker really wasn't sure at all, but she hated it.

Eliot felt the anger start to drain out of him the moment Parker started crying. He hated when she did that, always had and always would. Women shouldn't have reasons to cry, it was something his Daddy always said. The old man's voice in his head often made him feel guilty by reminding Eliot of such things and today was no exception.

Parker didn't understand relationships and hurting people's feelings. They all got used to the fact that even three years in she still screwed up sometimes, said some awful thing to one of them without a clue of how harmful it could be. She really could have been playing around with Hardison's heart, never knowing she was doing any harm. It wouldn't be plausible with any normal, well-adjusted woman her age, but this was twenty pounds of crazy and she had her own rules.

"You okay?" he asked her then, forearms leant on the steering wheel as he sucked in a much-needed calming breath.

Parker shook her head and turned away when he tried to look at her. It hurt, what he tried to say she had done wrong, and yet Parker knew most of the pain was borne of the fact she knew he was right. She had used Hardison, she had let him think she liked him in a way she never could, and she hardly realised she was doing it until now.

"I'm gonna tell him I'm sorry," she said so softly Eliot almost didn't hear her. "I have to tell him, don't I?" she checked, turning to look at him the simultaneously wiping her sleeve under her eyes.

"Yeah, I think you do," he nodded solemnly back at her.

She knew he was sorry for yelling, and he knew she never meant the harm she now realised she was causing. They didn't have to say anything, the moment was over. Eliot gave Parker a minute to pick up the worst of the mess she made with her chips, and when she was settled back into her seat again, he put the truck in drive and got back on the road.

The radio crackled and buzzed, needing to be retuned.

"You wanna fix that?" Eliot asked her.

Parker was smiling again as she leant forward and found the country rock station from before. Everything was fine.

To Be Continued...