A/N Yay! It's time for chapter three! This is actually the first half of the chapter because the word count was getting out of control, so here it is!

And as always my eternal thanks go to Alexandra926 who is the absolute bestest ever 3... I hope you all enjoy!

Parker took Eliot's setting up the guest bedroom as an open invitation to start spending as much time at his place as she wanted. Eliot wanted to be annoyed about it, but this time he knew in his heart of hearts, that he really had brought it on himself. Instead of showing up before dinner, or in the middle of the night and disappearing after breakfast, now Parker would sometimes spend the whole day making herself at home in the hitter's condo.

It wasn't that she'd moved in completely. She was just a guest, despite the fact that he was constantly finding Parker-shaped belongings all over the place. A brush full of blonde hair now lived on the guest bathroom counter, next to the toothbrush he had given her that first night. He'd gotten used to stepping over her Converse, discarded by the front door, in spite of the fact that she very rarely entered or exited that way of her own volition. And when he'd gone on a hunt for dirty laundry since he knew he was missing shirts, he was hardly even surprised when he found a box of locks underneath the guestroom bed and climbing harnesses hanging in the closet.

But despite all of that, she had not moved in. He was very firm on that point. Or at least he would have been, had there been anyone who knew enough about their new arrangement to ask. It was just that in any given week, she spent the night in the spare bedroom more often than she didn't, and if they had downtime between jobs there was about a 50/50 chance that Parker would spend most, if not the whole day hanging around.

Of course, she was still Parker, so she couldn't be completely predictable. To Eliot's eye there was no rhyme or reason to when Parker chose to stay over and when she didn't. One time, after a particularly rough job - both of them took jobs that involved abused kids a little harder - she'd stayed for six days straight. The next time they had a job go sideways and almost end extremely poorly for all of them, he had expected much of the same. Instead, she'd all but vanished until Nate had called them all in for their next job.

And although he would rather face off against the entire Solntsevskaya Brotherhood than admit it, he was always a bit relieved when he woke up to find the door to the guest bedroom closed, knowing that he'd left it open when he'd gone to sleep, if Parker hadn't been around for more than four or five days in a row. He purposely chose not to examine the reasons why he felt that way, too closely. He never asked her where she went when she disappeared for days at a time, and she never volunteered. He would simply make two cups of coffee and wait for the smell to bring her to the kitchen like it always did, then ask her if she wanted an omelet or waffles for breakfast.

That wasn't to say that all of it had been smooth sailing, or that there weren't times when Eliot seriously regretted opening his home to the thief. Because it wasn't and he did. There had been a steep learning curve as they learned how to cohabitate, even if it was only part-time. The only reason it worked at all was through developing a series of rules and compromises.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

The same day that Eliot had shown Parker the guest room for the first time, Nate had called them in for a job that had taken them over two weeks to run. It had been a grift-heavy con, without nearly enough fighting for Eliot's taste. So when they finally had their first day off in weeks, the hitter took advantage of his free morning to take in a nice, long workout session. When he had announced his intentions to Parker over the breakfast dishes, he figured she would take that as her cue to leave, but when she simply wandered over to the couch and turned on the TV, he'd just shrugged and went to go change into his exercise clothes.

He went through his normal routine first, skipped some rope to warm up, lifted weights, and stretched out before turning to the heavy bag he had strung up in the corner of the room. He worked the bag until his shoulders burned and his shirt was soaked through with sweat, and then he worked for an hour more. Finally, when his muscles felt like jelly and each breath was like fire in his lungs, he reached out and grabbed the bag with both hands to stop it from swinging, leaning on it heavily while he waited for his heart rate to slow. Once he felt like he could move again, he pulled the clammy shirt over his head, wiped the sweat off his face, and threw it over one shoulder while he crossed to where he'd left his water bottle sitting on the treadmill. Sitting down heavily on his weight bench, he drained the bottle and worked on peeling the tape he had wrapped his knuckles with from his hands.

What he really wanted to do next was take a shower, but he could still hear the TV faintly from the living room, which he assumed meant that Parker hadn't skipped out while he was working out. Curious as to what she could possibly be doing while left to her own devices all morning, he went to check on her and make sure she hadn't tried to burn his house down before going to shower. He found her sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table, a variety of locks and a stopwatch spread out around her. She was still dressed in nothing but the shirt she had slept in, her long pale legs stretched out in front of her.

"Parker, it's almost noon," he said by way of announcing his presence. Not that he was under any kind of delusion to think that he could sneak up on her, well aware that the thief's situational awareness rivaled his own.

"Does that mean it's lunch time?" she asked hopefully, not looking up from the lock she was working. When it opened with a click she looked at the stopwatch and grinned; she had shaved another quarter-second off of her best time.

"No. Well, yes. Almost," he conceded, "but what I mean is, why aren't you dressed yet?"

Parker looked down at herself. She was completely covered up; she didn't know why Eliot was getting all huffy. "I am dressed."

"You're not wearing pants, Parker."

"You're not wearing a shirt, but you don't see me judging," she countered.

"I was working out."

"Obviously. You're all sweaty," she shrugged, clearly having no idea what that had to do with anything.

"Are you planning on getting dressed in something other than that, today?" Eliot asked again, leadingly.

"Am I going somewhere?" she asked, her brow scrunched up in confusion.

Now Eliot was confused. "Are you going somewhere?"

Parker cocked her head to the side, clearly considering his question. "No," she said finally, picking up another lock and resetting the stopwatch. "I don't think so."

It took Eliot a beat to realize that Parker apparently thought that that was the end of the conversation. "Go put on some pants, Parker." Phrasing it as a suggestion hadn't worked, so he tried a flat-out order.

"Why? I'm not going anywhere, so I don't need pants."

"You can't just sit around in your pajamas all day." Her pajamas, his shirt, it was all just semantics at this point.

"Why not?" she countered.

"Because you just can't!"

"Well, that's stupid. It just means there's less laundry to do at the end of the day," she said reasonably. "Besides, you know what they say."

The hitter looked up at the ceiling like he was praying for strength, or possibly deliverance. He didn't want to ask, but he had to know. "No, Parker," he sighed. "What do they say?"

"Home is where the pants aren't," she informed him with a grin.

Eliot scrubbed a hand down his face. "Okay. One, absolutely no one says that, Parker. Two, this is my home, not yours, so you should be wearing pants. And three, the phrase is, 'home is where the heart is.'"

Parker completely disregarded his first two points and zeroed in on the third. "Home is where the heart is?" she repeated, her face scrunched up, reminding him of the time he'd been baking and she swiped the container of vanilla extract, thinking that if a little tasted good in cake, a big swig of it straight from the bottle must be even better. "No, that doesn't sound right."

"I assure you, that's right."

"It doesn't even make sense," she said, shaking her head. "Your heart is in your chest, so you're always with your heart, which would mean you're always home. And I know that's not true. Unless you took your heart out of your chest, but then you'd be dead. Unless you had a heart transplant and kept your old heart in a jar, then I suppose you could leave your heart at home. That would be so cool, but that seems like an awfully small demographic for them to have their own saying about it."

"Not your physical heart, Parker," Eliot huffed. "It's a metaphor. It means your home is with whatever you love and care about the most."

"So my home is with my money?" Parker asked, looking even more confused, trying to reconcile the logistics of 'home' being spread across banks and vaults scattered around the world.

Eliot threw his hands up, conceding defeat. "I'm gonna go take a shower," he announced spinning on his heel.

"And then lunch after?!" she called at his retreating back.

"Whatever!" he growled in the way that Parker knew meant that she was getting what she wanted.

Grinning to herself, Parker lined her locks up for a relay and picked up her stop watch. This time she would pick them with her eyes closed.

COMPROMISE: Parker was allowed to live a pants-free lifestyle within the confines of Eliot's home.

RULE: There are certain activities in which pants are compulsory. The list of such activities could be amended or added to at Eliot Spencer's leisure. Said list included, but was not limited to such things as leaving the condo for any reason, going up to the rooftop garden, and whenever she was working out in the home gym with Eliot. Since for some reason that Parker couldn't figure out, Eliot was extremely averse to teaching her any new fighting or grappling moves if she wasn't wearing pants.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

"I'm gonna go to the farmers' market, if you want to come," Eliot offered, as he and Parker walked out of McRory's, their work on the job done for the day.

Sophie had left twenty minutes earlier, talking about some new boots she had her eye on, Hardison was on his laptop hard at work creating the identities they would need for the con tomorrow, and Nate… well, Nate was doing what he did best; drinking and plotting. Not in the mood to watch the mastermind do either of those things, or even worse, listen to Hardison talk about how brilliant he was, Eliot had announced he was leaving and Parker had wordlessly followed.

"No, that's okay," Parker declined.

Eliot couldn't help being a little surprised at her reply. When she'd followed him out of the bar, he had assumed he was going to have a Parker-shaped shadow for the rest of the day.

Plus, the last time he had gone to the farmers' market she had invited herself along, much to his dismay. He had been sure it was going to end in nothing but trouble, and had made her promise to be on her best behavior the whole drive over and swear not to steal anything while they were there. His concern had only doubled after they had arrived, when he'd turned around to ask her a question about her dinner preferences and discovered that she had disappeared into the crowd while his back had been turned.

He'd completed his shopping as quickly as possible, keeping an eye out for his wayward thief, hoping he could track her down before she caused too much trouble. He was a regular at this particular market and all his favorite vendors knew him by name. Well, they knew him by one of his alias's names, but that wasn't the point. The point was that he didn't want to have to find a new place to shop.

It turned out, however, that all his worrying had been for nothing when he eventually found Parker holding a shopping bag, deep in conversation with a local apiarist. They were discussing all of the advantages and benefits of using local raw honey instead of store bought. He didn't even mind when she'd all but demanded he buy a box of beeswax candles, some hand balm, and of course, several jars of honey.

When he'd asked her about the shopping bag he'd found her with on the walk back to the car, she had showed him the salted caramel and chocolate-covered pretzels she had bought - thank you very much - and the receipt to prove it. Then she really surprised him by pulling several cloth sacks out of the bag.

"What are those?" he'd asked.

"I bought them for you!" she said clearly excited about her purchase. "They're reusable hot/cold packs. This one has foxes, and this one has raccoons which are my favorite, because they're the thieves of the animal world, and look! This one has rubber duckies on it!" She shook it in his direction. "Quack quack, I'm gonna help sore Eliot, quack quack." She shoved the pack in his face, "Sniff it! It smells really good."

Eliot grabbed her wrist before she could accidentally punch him in the nose, but did take a tentative sniff. She was right, it did smell good. He was able to distinguish peppermint, eucalyptus, lavender and lemon verbena. "Thanks darlin', that's real… thoughtful."

Parker beamed at the praise, and practically skipped back to the car.

He'd purposely chosen not to ask her how she'd paid for them, since he knew for a fact that she never carried money. He'd take his victories where he could.

Back in front of McRory's, Eliot shook off the memory. "You sure?" he asked again, since this time he actually wouldn't have minded taking her along.

"Yeah, I already have plans," Parker revealed vaguely, before turning and walking away without so much as a goodbye.

Eliot watched her disappear around the corner, until he realized that he looked like an idiot standing by himself in the middle of the sidewalk. Shaking himself out of it, he headed for his truck, remembering that he had plans of his own.

It was a few hours later when he was letting himself into his condo, arms laden with reusable canvas bags full of groceries. He'd only taken a few steps past the entryway before he realized something was wrong. On first glance, nothing was amiss. But the honed instincts that had kept him alive his whole adult life told him that there was someone else already inside his home.

Senses on high alert, he left the groceries on the floor and began silently moving through the condo, watching for any trace of the intruder. He paused in the kitchen only long enough to pull a knife out of the butcher block, before continuing to systematically clear rooms.

Every room and closet was empty, until all that was left to check was the master bedroom. When he silently pushed the door open, he started to realize that maybe things weren't quite what he was anticipating. Because his intruder was definitely in the en-suite bathroom. And while he'd had plenty of people lay in wait to try and kill him, none of them had ever used his bathtub while they did it. If the steam pouring out of the cracked doorway and the distinctive sounds of the jacuzzi jets were any indication.

Leaving the knife on his dresser since he was now pretty confident he wasn't going to need it, he pushed open the bathroom door and found Parker lounging in his whirlpool tub, completely submerged in an absurd amount of bubble bath, only her head, blonde hair piled in a messy bun on top of it, visible.

"Hey, Sparky," Parker drawled without opening her eyes, sounding utterly relaxed. "How was the farmers' market?"

It took Eliot a few moments to put together any kind of response. He was still stuck on the fact that Parker had now escalated to breaking and entering while he wasn't even home. And then she had the nerve to take advantage of his personal bathroom.

"I thought you said you had plans," he ground out between clenched teeth.

"I did," she replied. "You're looking at them."

"Your plans were to take a bath in my tub?" he asked, feeling his blood pressure rising.

"Mhmm," she hummed her assent, unrepentantly.

Eliot opened his mouth and tried to say about ten different things at once, but all he eventually got out was, "Why?!"

"Would you just come in and shut the door," Parker asked, finally cracking one eye open, totally unaffected by the glare he was leveling at her. "You're letting out all the hot air."

"No!"

Parker rolled her eyes and used her toes to turn the tap on, topping off her bath with hot water. If he was going to let all the warm air out, she would just make more of it.

"Damnit Parker!" he exclaimed, fully entering the bathroom to angrily shut the water off again.

That finally got Parker's attention."Hey!"

"What are you doing in here?! There's a tub in the other bathroom!"

"But your tub is amazing," she said, as if that explained it all.

Which actually, it kind of did. The first thing Eliot had done when he'd bought the condo was to renovate the kitchen and the master bathroom. He'd spent the vast majority of his adult life living a spartan lifestyle with just the barest of amenities, and on occasion even less than that. He could certainly survive on daily five-minute cold showers, if that was all that was available, but now he had finally reached a point in his life where he didn't have to. When it seemed as though the team was actually going to settle in Boston for a while, Eliot had decided to take advantage of his millions for once and went all out. As a hitter, and one who was only getting older, his top-of-the-line shower and tub were some of the best investments he'd ever made. He could still take the same punishment he could ten years ago, but being able to soak away his sore muscles in a whirlpool tub sure made his recovery time a lot faster and easier. And if they ever ended up having to burn Boston like they had LA, the upgrades would only help his resale value.

"Your shower is just as awesome," Parker added, sweeping up a handful of bubbles off the top of her bath water and blowing them in Eliot's direction. "I didn't even know you could put all those shower heads in the walls like that."

"You were in my shower, too?!" he growled unimpressed, as he wiped the suds from his shirt.

"Of course," Parker gave him that look that always made him feel like he was being the unreasonable one. "I didn't want to soak in dirty water."

That… made sense actually. He would give her that one.

"Would you just get out of my bathroom, already!"

"Fine," Parker shrugged. "My fingers are all pruney anyways."

Completely heedless of her nudity as always, Parker pulled the drain and stood to climb out of the tub.

"Jesus, Parker, I'm standing right here," Eliot growled, as he grabbed her a towel and blindly handed it in her direction.

"Geez, first it's 'get out of the tub, Parker', then it's 'what are you doing getting out of the tub, Parker'," she grumbled, taking the offered towel and drying off. "You're full of mixed messages today. Usually the farmers' market puts you in a better mood. You like to be judgmental of other people's produce."

Eliot scoffed, but couldn't in good conscience tell her she was wrong. "My mood was fine until I came home to find you trespassing in my tub!"

Parker just rolled her eyes. "You can turn back around. I'm all covered up," she informed him as she wrapped the towel around her torso, tucking in one corner so it would stay up on its own. "I don't know why you do that."

"Do what?" he asked warily.

"Turn around or close your eyes whenever I'm naked. You and Hardison both do it. I know I don't have anything that you haven't seen before," she said with a delicate shrug of her shoulders. "And pretty much every other man I've gotten naked in front of has liked looking."

Eliot once again felt that urge to ask for names so he could personally deliver some dental work. "It's not about what I have or haven't seen, Parker. It's about respect."

He could practically see Parker turning this information over in her head. "So you don't look at me when I'm naked, because you respect me?" she asked, her head cocked curiously to one side.

"Yes darlin', because I respect you," he confirmed, wishing she didn't sound so surprised by this revelation.

"But you didn't even look on the Dubenich job," she recalled. "We'd just met. You didn't know anything about me. Except that you thought I was crazy."

"I still think you're crazy," he retorted, with a fond sort of smirk. "That hasn't changed. But even before I met you, I knew you by reputation. Back then, I respected you as a thief and a professional. Now, I respect you as a person."

"Huh," was all she said as she mulled that over. "But you still respect me as a thief, right?"

Eliot had to resist the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose to stave off the tension headache he felt building behind his eyes. The priorities of this woman would never cease to amaze him. "Of course I do, Parker."

A wide smile spread across Parker's face, "I think that's one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me," she said. "I'll go get dressed now."

She paused when she passed him on her way out of the bathroom, leaning in to plant a kiss on his cheek, so quick that he nearly missed it. And then she was gone, as though she had never been there at all.

COMPROMISE: Parker would show that she respected Eliot as a person by not breaking into his condo when he wasn't home, unless he knew beforehand that she was going to be there.

RULE: Parker could use Eliot's amazing bathroom, as long as she asked first. But she wasn't allowed to use bubble bath anymore because it wasn't good for the jets.

A/N So there we have it, like I said this is the first half of the chapter so there will be more rules and compromises next time ;) So until then you can come hang out with me on tumblr where you can find me there as danimydear where I'll be mourning the fact that they're taking leverage of netflix...

So yeah, I hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween and please let me know what you think!