#classiqve

               THIS  ISN’T  SOMETHING  SHE  NORMALLY  DOES.  a  thing  or  two  pocketed  in  an  expensive  store ,  an  emptied  wallet  from  a  victim ...  but  full  on  SINGLE  HANDED  breaking   &   entering   ?     organised  thievery   ?     yeah ,  it’s  not  so  much  eliza’s  style.

          BUT ...  this  guy’s  a  dick ,  ok   ?     she’s  seen  him  around  the  circus ,  heard  him  talking  to  the  other  acrobats     (   like  he’s  so  far  ABOVE  them  because  he  has  a  little  money   &   a  big  house   &    thinks  a  circus  is  a  dirty  job   ).     it  didn’t  take  much  to  figure  out  where  he  lived :  BIGGEST  HOUSE  AROUND   !     and  that  he’s  got  some  pretty  expensive  stuff  in  there.  it’s  not  difficult  to  find  one  of  a  hundred  windows  that’s  left  open.  in  fact ,  so  easy  to  slip  into  that  she’s  hardly  inside   &   looking  around  for  where  to  START  that  another  set  of  footfalls  follow  after  hers ,  landing  silently  on  wooden  floors.

                                        NOT  SILENTLY  TO  HER ,  THOUGH.

ngl i can’t even remember what happened in spectre….

Being in D.C. again is pretty sweet, especially since this time Hardison is pretty sure that the visit won’t involve bioterrorism or mild treason. There’s always some risk of that sort of thing, but the only thing Hardison has planned for this visit is meeting an acquaintance of his and seeing if she’ll join his crew for a hot second and the right price. He’s pretty sure she will, unless she’s already mixed up in something else.

He’s waiting for her -- Takara Kurosawa -- in a tea shop about a block off Dupont Circle. She’d picked the place (Because what the hell does Hardison know about tea shops in D.C.? Nothing.) and he’d gone along with it because where ever the lady feels the most comfortable is the place that’s best to meet. Eliot and Parker and skulking around somewhere nearby, because Parker is a little salty about whether or not this thief Hardison knew before he knew her is really good enough and Eliot will literally never take Hardison’s word about one of his criminal contacts being “perfect safe” to meet up with alone.

Hardison has still chosen to go in without an earbud or anything; he and Takara last worked together like half a decade ago, before he got all caught up in running around with his current crew, and he’s heard good stuff about her since. They’re not exactly friends, but working with her had always been easy and smooth and he’d learned a lot of things about how to work with other thieves from her, things that definitely kept him from getting himself screwed over or killed later on. Who knows what she’s heard about him, or what she thinks about it, him running around with Parker and Eliot Spencer and Sophie Devereaux and Nate Ford, but she’d agreed to meet and she does love a profitable venture.

When she comes in, he almost doesn’t recognize her. It’s not that she’s changed, he thinks, so much as that he’s changed. He wasn’t even quite 21 yet when they last worked together.