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Parker likes cities best—she likes her cities best. Her cities are the ones built of air ducts and places to hook climbing rigs, cool metal surrounding her and holding her up, holding her in.
The kind of city other people live in, the ones where you have to brush past people on the street or chat with them, the ones that grifters like Sophie live in all the time, takes second place. Those cities have invisible lines criss-crossing through them, lines of conduct and expectations, lines of social obligation. Parker's learned to skip around them, through them, like a laser grid—but she's still rarely comfortable.
The country, though. The country doesn't even have that. The country has wide-open spaces with nothing to hook a rig to. The country has animals she doesn't know how to account for, doesn't know how to predict. And all the invisible lines of protocols and social rules are different.
So when Eliot comes into the room above the brewpub one April morning and says, "I found us a job. Friend of mine owns some land out in eastern Washington is having trouble with a loan shark," Parker's first reaction is to flinch.
Hardison puts down his orange soda. "Friend friend? Eliot, man, you need to stop bringing us in on jobs with your old flames."
"He's a cow farmer," Eliot says, with enough undertone of dammit, Hardison that Hardison rolls his eyes and asks for details. They end up taking the job; the loan shark's a smaller target than most of the ones they handle these days, but a job's a job, and a friend's a friend, after all.
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Eliot's friend is indeed a cow farmer. Parker has to wear cowboy boots and Hardison grifts his way into the local courthouse and Eliot stays in the farmhouse with his friend. They keep in touch over coms mostly. It's a small enough town that staying in the same hotel would be noticeable. Parker gets lonely for Hardison's touch, but she finds she doesn't mind the cows the same way she still hates horses. They're almost friendly.
Anyway, she's there to make the flip when the mark storms out to the fields. A few well-placed remarks and off he goes again, bouncing back toward Hardison. Parker touches her ear, says, "He's on the move." She listens to the rest of it play out, Eliot showing up with his friend at the right time to drive the point home.
They all eat dinner at Eliot's friend's house. He's a bachelor, never married, Parker knows from the background check, but with Sophie's guidance humming in her ear she thinks she would have guessed anyway. Eliot said they met in the service. Parker and Hardison didn't ask which. Eliot's friend is muscled from working with the cows. He has a rangy energy that Eliot seems to find nerve-wracking—at least, that's how Parker reads it, because the job's done but Eliot can't settle. Oh, he's leaning on the counter, sure, but he's fiddling with the cap from his beer bottle in the way that he does when he's thinking about something too hard.
As the night wears on Eliot vanishes, the way Parker more than half expected him to, and twenty minutes later she makes an excuse and wanders out the door to the nearer field. The cows have bunched up for the night. Wind rolls through the grass, the noise keeping Parker aware at every moment that she's outside, uncovered, exposed.
Eliot's sitting on the fence looking at the cows, beer bottle loose in one hand. Parker hops up to join him. He doesn't look around but with Eliot that doesn't mean anything, because he always knows who's there.
She says, "You don't run a con on your own team." Matter-of-fact. It's not a question.
Eliot lifts his chin a fraction of an inch. Parker watches him, but it's too discomforting, so she looks at the cows instead.
"No," Eliot agrees eventually.
Parker knows that he knows that she knows. And he's not very good with words—she knows that, too. If he was, he could've said it instead of dragging them out here for three days and making Parker leave her beloved air vents behind. No: Eliot shows you things.
"I learned this week cows can be skittish sometimes," Parker says. "You've got to ease them in through the gate."
He looks at her this time. "You know that I sent that carnivorous plant."
Parker nods.
Eliot doesn't ask the next question but Parker can feel it waiting for him. It's amazing what you can notice, if you pay attention to people. Sophie taught her how, and she's still learning from Hardison and Eliot why.
"People are like locks," Parker says when Eliot has been quiet long enough that she doesn't feel like she's interrupting. "They're fiddly and complicated..."
Eliot's laughing softly. "Hardison told me."
Parker looks at him, dumbfounded, and then she laughs too. Of course Hardison would have told him—of course Hardison would have asked him what to do.
"They take time," Eliot says after a moment. "I know."
Parker's noticed Hardison noticing Eliot. Hardison has noticed it too, she's sure of that. It was in the way Hardison snapped to the old-flame explanation, and it's in the way that Hardison hasn't said anything about Eliot and his friend, even though it's clear from their motion around each other that they were something sometime maybe. Parker believes Eliot that they were never dating or having sex, but there are other things you can be with someone that leave that kind of stain.
Eliot's trying to explain something by showing them, the same way he tried to explain to them that first year who he was by taking them to the horse farm to help his ex-fiancee's father. Good man, but he runs away from commitment. Nice to animals, but he's got something dark in his heart he can't escape. It's all true enough but Eliot putting it out there for them was a front.
Now—now, Eliot's showing them one of his regrets. He's opening it up on the table for them to see. For Parker and Hardison, Hardison maybe most of all, if he can let himself see it.
"Hey!" Hardison's voice cuts through the night air. He's standing on the porch, screen door open in his hand. "Hey, what are you doing out there? Ouch! Hey, there's bugs out here!"
Parker and Eliot trade a fond, exasperated look and slide off the fence.
"Someday," Parker says, and squeezes his hand. He goes still for an instant, and then squeezes back. On the porch, Hardison's doing a ridiculous little dance, slapping at bugs.
"Someday," Eliot says, like a promise.