The first time Hardison thinks about it, he’s doing their regular, seasonal ID clean up.
The team burns through IDs so quickly that he has to take the time to maintain them, even when there hasn’t necessarily been an emergency. Whether it’s burning identities they’ve destroyed, or just solidifying some—a Facebook post here, an updated LinkedIn profile, some new online friends, filing their taxes—they need maintenance.
He makes IDs practically every day, tailoring them to fit cons. These are more…these are like old favorites, he thinks, to continue the clothes metaphor. Tailored already, well-worn, in the back of the closet for when they’re needed again. Taken in or let out as needed.
The adjustments usually aren’t too big, by design. These are, for the most part, boring people. Each of them has one more outlandish ID, but most passports they keep under their bed are for boring people, people who could get on a plane without causing any fuss, people who could get a loan just fine without being extraordinary. Ordinary, every day people don’t need many major life updates.
Except Parker had just torn her ACL on a job, and the hospital hadn’t told him anything while she was unconscious. Nothing. Not a damn word.
So he quietly marries Alice White and Didi Grant to Alexander Smith and Luke Waters.
And then he goes and marries Jane Smith and Michelle Frank to Derek Jones and Kurt Dowe. He even frames up some nice Honeymoon pictures for Parker and Eliot.
And then, while he’s at it, he marries Matthew Smith to David Price.
When he’s done, most of their most significant IDs are married to one or the other of their little trio. He’s doctored well over a hundred pictures—wedding shots for fancy ceremonies, and little elopements, and private, small, intimate weddings, and honeymoon shots, and dates, and everything else to make these relationships real—and he’s filed their taxes jointly. He’s legally changed some last names, filed change of address forms, and gotten official marriage licenses sent to him.
In short, he’s spent more time on this little fantasy world than he would ever care to admit.
Parker and Eliot don’t really monitor their IDs, he knows, other than keeping track of whose licenses and passports they plan on carrying at any given time. They probably don’t know what he did.
But he does. And he can tell himself all he wants that it’s just in case one of them gets hurt, but that doesn’t make it any more true.
Good thieves don’t lie to themselves, after all.
They say the words for the first time when they’re in DC together, and Parker is good enough with people now to know that they don’t understand them the same way she does.
Maybe Alec does. The way he looks in her eyes, the small smile he gives her after…She’d have to ask Sophie, to be sure, but she knows. Alec gets it.
Alec gets everything, has since the very beginning. He got pretzels and got her, even when he doesn’t really understand what’s going on inside her brain. He still gets her.
Eliot…he gets what’s going on inside her brain. They’re too alike, she knows. And it’s good, that they’re both on the team, that they do what they can do. But he doesn’t get it, because a few months ago, she wouldn’t have gotten it.
Still, the way Eliot’s eyes soften when she reminds him of their agreement, of how they’re in this together, for better or worse, the way he doesn’t send them away even when he wants to…maybe he’s getting it too.
Eliot doesn’t get it the same way she and Alec do. They’ve made their promises, said their words aready. Eliot…Eliot sleeps in their bed and kisses them sometimes and doesn’t leave, never leaves. It’s enough.
She wants more. She let them take down her walls, like Sophie said. She fell into love like jumping off a building, and she knows they’re always there to catch her. She just wishes they could all jump into this together.
Still. Alec was patient with her. She can be patient with Eliot.
Several months later, Eliot looks at the two of them with a softness in his eyes she’s never seen before and says he’s never needed anything but them, and promises to be with them until his dying day. Parker watches him back, catches his eyes. He doesn’t look away.
Parker looks away first, heart thrumming in a way it gets during a particularly good robbery. Like the diamonds are in her hand. Like she cracked the whole vault.
Forever, she wants to say. For better or worse, forever.
Some people might argue different, and, to be fair, it has taken him a while to figure it out.
Sophie sends them a gift for their anniversary. It’s a painting, of course, and it probably could keep the Brew pub afloat for years if they sold it on the back market. Hardison hangs it in the apartment.
Eliot…Eliot is aware he works here, both in the Pub and doing his real job. He sleeps here, too. As a matter of fact, he sleeps in their bed, and has for…well, since long before Nate and Sophie left. Pretending he was handling the Pub’s business was a good enough excuse to always be there.
He kisses them, too, in that soft way they like, Hardison always overly affectionate and Parker letting down her walls enough to demand the affection she was denied so long. With any other friends it would be strange, or wrong, but not with them. It just…is.
He loves them with his whole heart, will love them until his dying day, and that’s enough.
And then the painting comes. And then the painting comes addressed to them and their aliases, to not one, not two, but six married couples.
Eliot blinks at it a bit, but doesn’t say anything, just uses the computer Hardison set him up on to search up those names.
Pictures of them, doctored by Hardison, on honeymoons and anniversaries, romantic dinners and walks on the beach. Couples, just like Sophie said.
For better or worse, we change together.
Eliot swallows, and goes shopping.
Alec stares at the rings. “For…for Matthew and David? Or—“
Eliot’s already shaking his head. “For Alec Hardison. And Parker. And me,” he clarifies. Eliot doesn’t get nervous anymore. That was beaten out of him long ago. Somehow, he still feels it, his heart seizing, waiting for its absolution. He could have read this wrong. They’re a team, the IDs are convenient, the words mean family and team too. They could want to get married. They could love him as they always have, and he could have ruined it, because they’ll never be convinced he’s okay with that again.
He’s not convinced he’ll be okay with that again. He will be, for them, of course he will be when the alternative is being lost again, but—
Parker, he realizes, has already stolen the band from his hand, the one with the diamonds he knows she’d appreciate, and slid it on her left hand, studying it in the setting sunlight. “I like it.”
Alec takes his own band, but doesn’t put it on. “No going back now,” he warns.
Eliot slides the band on for him. “Haven’t you heard?” He says, and then has to stop a moment when Alec picks up the last band, then takes Eliot’s hand, “I’m in this for the rest of my life.”
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