Nate trudged up the stairs to his apartment, looking forward to a quiet night in. The crew's latest job took place at a shady nightclub. After three days of EDM and four A.M. bedtimes, he was fully ready to admit that he was too old for this shit.
The moment he walked through the door, however, he was greeted by the sound of Hardison shouting.
"No! I told you to aim toward my left. Not your left. Dammit, man. You just got us killed!"
The hacker was sitting on Nate's couch, white-knuckling a video game controller as the phrase "Game Over" flashed across all of the interconnected monitors on the living room wall.
Nate felt like taking Hardison's controller and throwing it for him.
"You do know this is my apartment, don't you?" he grumbled, tossing his keys onto the kitchen island instead.
Hardison muted his headset and glanced over the back of the couch. "Oh, hey, Nate!" he said casually before resuming his game. "OK, man. This time, I'm shooting. You can drive."
Nate shrugged out of his coat and headed up to his bedroom. As much as he wanted to kick Hardison out, it was a Friday night. Whatever multiplayer shoot-em-up crap the kid was playing probably looked better when it was blown up across six screens, anyways.
The next morning, Nate came downstairs to a vacant living room. The only trace of Hardison's game night was a pair of empty two-liters, which sat on the coffee table. Rolling his eyes, he picked them up and turned toward the kitchen.
He practically jumped out of his skin when he saw Parker sitting on the island, cross-legged, with a bowl of cereal.
"Boo," she said belatedly, and spooned another bite into her mouth.
"Jesus Christ, Parker," he wheezed. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Eating cereal."
He chided himself for even asking. This wasn't the first, and it wouldn't be the last time that he found her randomly in his apartment.
He tossed Hardison's bottles in the trash and turned on the coffee maker.
"So, what did you steal and return last night?" he enquired, leaning against the counter.
"And that's how I managed to convince the museum staff that their permanent exhibit was actually a traveling one. They packed it up for me and everything."
Sophie finished her glass of wine and set it on the dining room table.
Nate took another sip from his coffee and smiled. "You know, I almost caught you on that one. Your fence gave you up the moment we threatened to report him for tax fraud."
"Yes," she cooed, standing up. "But I was out of the country and using a different alias by the time you got to the airport."
Nate followed her into the living room. "Speaking of planes, are you taking off?"
"Tragically, yes. I have to run some errands tomorrow morning. I told myself I wouldn't stay here past nine, and its already quarter to ten."
"Really?" Nate shot a glance at the clock. "Well… I will see you on Monday, then."
He helped Sophie into her coat and walked her to the door. One awkward goodbye later, he was staring at his empty apartment, kicking himself for letting her go.
He collected her wine glass and took it to the kitchen sink. Next to the fridge was a half-empty gallon of milk, which Parker had forgotten to put away earlier that day. Doubly frustrated, he rinsed Sophie's lipstick off the rim of the glass and poured the rest of his milk down the drain.
Eliot showed up an hour earlier than he usually did on Sundays during football season.
"Have you eaten lunch yet?" he asked as he unloaded three bags of groceries into the fridge.
"No," Nate replied cautiously, reaching over the hitter to grab a bottle of water. "Why?"
"Try this." Eliot handed him a zip-lock bag that contained a half a sandwich made with sourdough. "I baked the bread this morning."
Nate took a bite. And then another. Like most things Eliot made, it was delicious.
"What's with all the food?" he finally asked.
"Hardison and Parker are coming over, so I grabbed some meat and cheese at the grocery store. Ingredients to make lasagna too, in case we all stay for dinner."
"Dinner? It's only 11 a.m."
"Exactly," Eliot chuckled. He cracked open an IPA and began to rummage through Nate's cabinets. "Now get out of your kitchen. I want to I want to prep the lasagna before the games start."
Seven hours later, Nate's coffee table was littered with a menagerie of drinking vessels: beer bottles, pop cans, even a cup of hot chocolate.
Nate stood up to take his plate to the sink. Eliot's lasagna was a good call – perhaps the only one, considering he and Hardison were currently yelling at the ref on the TV.
Parker was sitting on the floor, drawing the schematics of an NFL stadium that she once burgled, while Sophie was laying across the armchair, enjoying her second glass of wine. She'd stopped by – unannounced of course – once her to-do list was complete.
Nate grabbed another soda from the fridge. As much as he wished everyone would stop treating his apartment like a clubhouse, he had to admit to himself… this wasn't so bad.
Idle hands were the devil's playground, and the team's antics between jobs kept him from doing anything too foolish during their downtime – whether that was cracking open a bottle of bourbon or pouring his heart out to Sophie.