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“Grumpy is too obvious, and it can’t be Plan G, because that’s Plan A.”
“Right,” Parker nods. “How about Guitar Hero?”
Hardison smirks, “Girl, I like the way you think! But, that’s also kinda obvious, isn’t it?”
With a shrug, Parker points out, “He’s not gonna think it is until after the fact. Or maybe not, since it’s our plan.”
“True, true, but don’t you think that’s gonna poke some of the other issues?” As if that isn’t part of their plan, getting Eliot to see that he’s really not such a bad guy anymore – and especially not for the past few, after they moved to Portland and all the insanity they’ve cooked up here – up to and including the cons they’ve begun to slowly run on those in the Black Book.
Heck, Vance called him back a few times with government sanctioned jobs!
(Which, okay, Hardison knows that that’s probably happened before, and even when Eliot was one of the scariest Hitters/Retrieval Specialists – which he still probably is, but that’s beside the current point, because the important thing is that they’re less hush-hush jobs, or as much as they can get considering what the jobs are.)
“Oh, right.”
Neither speaks for a few more minutes, staring at the board of crossed out code names scattered across the glass board. They’ve been at this for so long, they’ve started repeating names.
“Oh! I have an idea!” Parker beams.
“Yeah?”
“Pumpkin Spice Latte.”
“That – that could work, yeah,” Hardison erases their previous attempts, and adds the newest to the board, and circles it.
“Yeah, he won’t know exactly what we’re talking about, and he really likes them, so it’s perfect!”
“Only if we can get him convinced by November. Then they stop selling them and switch over to Christmas stuff, and I don’t wanna be switching the plan name every season, you know?”
“It’ll be fine! We can go slow and maybe he’ll think it’s like pretzels, which it is, even if neither of us like Pumpkin Spice Lattes, except we like this Pumpkin Spice Latte.”
“Exactly!”
“You’re doing what to my coffee?” Eliot asks with a growl.
“Holy shit, okay, man, you gotta stop doing that!” Hardison yelps.
“Parker knew I was coming in,” Eliot says, with a nod in Parker’s direction.
She nods. “Yup, he’s right on time!” And didn’t hear anything beyond, “we like this Pumpkin Spice Latte,” which is important for the plan to work without Eliot getting spooked.
“I’m early.”
“Exactly! Right on time. You normally get here ten minutes and thirty-five seconds early, on average.”
Eliot rolls his eyes and settles into his chair, while Hardison glares at Parker, mouthing “What if he came in while we were talking?”
She just rolls her eyes at him. As if she’d have let that happen. Besides. She has contingency plans.
“Alright, what’re we looking at this time?”
Hardison, with one last glare at his girlfriend, pulls up the various windows he has open.
“Since the government instated the ‘Common Core’ system, there’re a couple of state legislators who’ve been making the most of the curriculum change. Which is a shit change, and I have a lot more to say about that, but right now we’re after these legislators.” He pulls up their pictures, with a brief profile underneath each one.
“A’right, how’re we playing this one?” Eliot asks. “You said you had to burn all the aliases we used in Boston, but if you can borrow some of the stuff from that weird prep school job, I can probably use that as an in, even if I’m not a teacher as directly affected – unless they’ve changed the damn gym curriculum?”
Eliot glances at Parker to see if this was going to interrupt her plan, but she nods.
“Which part of ‘burned’ did you not get, I know you’ve done this for years,” Hardison complains, but brings up the appropriate windows.
“Yeah, but we can’t have someone on the phones for all the calls that we’re gonna be dealin’ with, not with how the school system works. See, it’s like the cheerleading job we did, but about ten times slower, and with twice the paperwork and phone calls.”
Hardison and Parker stare at him for a moment before blinking.
“What?”
“Nothing, dude, nothing. I hear you on that insanity though, I had enough stupidity to deal with when hacking the places because of those things like ‘must keep the paper for a minimum of five years for a record of student’s progress’ or something, like anyone ever reads the stuff that little Mary Ann wrote in the fifth grade. Girl’s a genius with math and writing, who cares if she forgot when the War of 1812 ended?” Hardison says with an eye roll.
“Anyways, yeah, I gotchu. Parker, you thinking secretary, or administration? And where do you want me? Administration? Janitor, so I can get access to the system? It’s easy to hack, but they tend to also have a fair bit on-site only, since the systems are so old.”
“I’ll be concerned aunt Alice White, who got involved to help people like her godson!”
“Will do, babe.”
“And you can be Jerry, the custodian. Or maybe the secretary. That guy goes through secretaries like people with tissue paper when they have a runny nose.”
“A-right. Aaaaaaand, we’re set.”
“Great! Let’s go steal a state education system,” Parker chirps, ending the meeting.
~IiI~
The con goes as well as expected, and while they weren’t quite expecting the former football players to be acting as security guards for one of the systems, or for them to just so happen to change their patrol routes that night, it all worked out. The legislators are going to prison, Eliot got to hit some people, and Parker had fun with the rope course in the gym (it was easy for her, sure, but the kids sure seemed to enjoy seeing her up there on the last day).
“So, coffee?” Hardison asks. “There’s a Starbucks on the way back.”
“Yes! Chocolate chips for me!”
Eliot shurgs. “Sure.”
~IiI~
They get him a Pumpkin Spice Latte.
He grins behind his cup, but not quite subtly enough, because Parker smiles back at him in the rearview mirror, and then Eliot has to return to studying the scenery.
~IiI~
They keep buying him those lattes.
~IiI~
“It’s March, why’re you even talkin’ about Pumpkin Spice Lattes? You don’t like ‘em.”
Apparently, he interrupted something, because Hardison has his ‘I’m totally lying face’ on, while Parker’s eyes get just a little wider than before.
“Uh, because they’re secretly amazing. What’re you talking about, Eliot?” Hardison asks.
“Man, you don’t even like pumpkin pie, you spat out the weird Pumpkin Juice thing from Universal – which actually has pumpkin in it, I don’ know why you thought you’d like its – and you’ve been wrinkling your nose at my coffee every fall since we started working together.” Eliot levels Hardison with a stare, that anyone else might mistake for a full-out glare.
“Uh – that is…”
“It’s a surprise!” Parker blurts out. Darn it, she’d used that other contingency earlier this week to get out of admitting who have relocated Eliot’s winter clothes as part of Stage 2, which had been what they were arguing about when Eliot came in. Seriously, though, it was March – spring time! Easter was in March (well, this year)!
“A surprise.”
“Yeah!” She emphasizes the word with a nod.
“Am I gonna like the surprise?” Eliot asks with a raised eyebrow.
“Uh, we hope so,” Hardison replies.
“Yup!”
Eliot stares at them for a minute before shaking his head and muttering “Whatever,” before ducking into the kitchen to start making dinner for them.
Parker sighs, while Hardison does that thing with his eyebrows and eyes that says ‘I win.’
She sticks her tongue out at him, but has to concede that moving Eliot’s knives next weekend would make him even more suspicious.
~IiI~
“Alright, try this one.”
“Hardison, this isn’t one of your beers; this is coffee.”
Hardison tries to not be offended by the look Eliot is giving his masterful creation – no, seriously, does he know how much work he went through to get not only the recipe, but also to try and make it as close to the dang drink as possible? Does he know how many of these things he even drank, along with Parker, for taste-testing purposes?
Well some of it must show on his face, because Eliot looks up and sighs before sipping at the concoction in the mug.
“It’s a Pumpkin Spice Latte.” Always the tone of surprise, Hardison swears.
“Yeah, cuz you keep ordering it when we go to Starbucks in the fall and I know you’re an amazing cook, but I could never figure out how you never made that latte for yourself so I made it for you – and Parker helped with the taste-testing, which is good, because there are only so many things like that I can drink, man.”
“Yup, there were a lot of mugs to try,” Parker adds, nose still scrunched up in distaste at the memory.
“Is that why you both were so hyper this week, and kept breaking into my apartment?”
“Maybe.”
“Aw, man, c’mon, can’t we get a ‘Thank you’ before you start in on us and caffeine?”
Eliot looks abashed – or, at least slightly embarrassed, and his ears go a little pink (which, since he’s cut his hair short again, is easier to see), and coughs before saying, “Yeah, thank you, Hardison. Thanks, Parker.”
And wonder of wonders, he actually stands up and gives Hardison a hug over something that isn’t life or death.
(It’s more than nice.)
“So, will you move in with us, if we make you Pumpkin Spice Lattes, and you can make us pancakes and chocolate cake, and we can have movie night every night we want! Unless you want to go to the gym, or hand out with friends, or go hit something, or we’re on a job, or I want space, or to steal something, or Hardison has a raid thingy, or is hacking something for fun, or messing with Chaos because that’s fun – and even if one of us is busy we can have movie night with two of us! And then we can sleep or have sex.”
“Wait, what? Parker, are you asking me to a threesome? Hardison?”
“Well, yeah,” Hardison says, “But more than that – we want to date you, and sleep with you, if that’s okay, and maybe have sex if you’re up for that, but mostly we want you here with us, for good, and for as long as you’re comfortable with it.”
“Yeah! We wanna date you, and maybe romance you, and seduce you – do Pumpkin Spice Lattes count as romance, or seducing?”
Hardison looks at Eliot, who looks like he’s still processing, if all the blinking and redness is any indicator.
“Yeah, Eliot, romancing, or seducing?”
“…Prob’ly both,” he mutters to the floor.
“And is it working?” Parker asks.
Eliot looks back up at them and sighs. “Yeah. Yeah, I reckon it is workin’, Parker.”
“Awesome! So I can kiss you now?”
Eliot swallows, but he nods, “Sure, darlin’.”
She stands up, wanders right in front of him, and stands on her toes, arms open and Eliot leans in and kisses her, letting her wrap her arms around his shoulders.
“Sure is a pretty show, can I get in on that?” Hardison asks, making his way from around the back of the kitchen counter.
Unfortunately, it means Eliot and Parker have to break their kiss, but then he’s kissing Eliot, and it’s better than he thought it’d be.
Eliot – in their lives, living with them, keeping close. Hardison isn’t sure how long this will last, but he’s going to do his best to make it last forever.
Parker settling in between the two of them to make swapping kisses easier, seems to be on the same page.
Eliot’ll need his space – they all do, at some point, but they’ll always come back, and that’s what’s more important.
And I totally lost steam at the end but I've a dorm meeting to get to and it's gonna go on forever, so *shrugs* Sorry.
As always, kudos, comments, and concrit welcome! Poke me at fins-illusion.tumblr.com
~Fins