vdistinctive | The loft above Luke's, Saturday morning

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The loft above Luke's, Saturday morning

Eliot's clothes had all wound up in the general door to couch area, and it wasn't like he had any spares lying around (and trying to wear Hardison's would make him look like a kid playing dress-up), so after a quick shower (when did Hardison and Parker get all this hair stuff? And why was it all the stuff Eliot used?), he wandered out into the living room area in nothing but a towel to at least find his shirt before he got started on breakfast. (He'd learned early in his cooking career that you just didn't work with those kinds of temperatures without covering your chest. And aprons didn't count.)

And froze, grabbing onto the towel to hold it in place, when he spotted the twelve year old girl standing over by the door.

"The kitchen staff downstairs said you'd be up here," she said.

"Um," said Eliot.

"Why are you living with Uncle Hardison and Aunt Parker?" she asked.

"Um," said Eliot.

"You guys need to clean up in here better, Daddy." She nudged the crumpled pile of pants by the couch with the toe of her shoe. "Mummy would not approve."

Eliot rubbed his hand down his face. "Goddammit, Fandom."

[ooc: generally for the assortment of folks currently at or soon to be arriving at the loft, with bouts of slowplay on all sides, but also open!]

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"Thank you," Ada said, taking the juice without letting go of Parker. "This is my favorite."

And another reminder that she wasn't really Daddy would never have let the fridge run out.

"You're in trouble?"

"Naw, little girl, he ain't in trouble." Not as much anymore. "We just gotta set some ground rules for this house, too." He rolled his eyes. "Since apparently I ain't allowed to cook or something."

That got Ada giggling and her grip on Parker loosened.

Hardison turned to Eliot and nodded to the door. "Shall we?"

"Yeah, man." Eliot straightened and started back towards the door, making sure he was facing away from the small child before he let his exhaustion show in his face. "Not to the diner, though. They're pissed I'm not wearin' shoes."

"We can chill on the stairs outside," he said, leading them out the door and pulling it shut behind them. "I just ain't gonna argue with you in front of the kids. They don't need to see that."

Not that he expected it to be much more than a heated discussion. But with a strictness that belied how quickly it had occurred to him, Hardison had realized that he would never, ever fight in front of the children. Not when there was real anger that they could pick up on.

Which was an instinct Eliot didn't have, as he was just realizing. He'd never even thought seriously about being a father, not since he was a teenager. He was good with kids, he liked them, but he beat people up and got shot at for a living. He'd only barely manged to reconcile that with getting a puppy.

"Yeah," he said, scowling to himself. "Look, man, I'm sorry about that, but this -- I ain't -- and then she's sayin' we're -- I am not prepared for this!"

The system left its marks on everyone who went through it, even someone like Hardison who'd been relatively lucky.

"Oh, cause me'n Parker are?" he demanded. "You saw her! She practically froze when they saw her. But you know what? She managed not to make anyone cry this mornin'! Even if she did get blamed for it."

"Parker doesn't have two of those kids claimin' they came from her! And that -- Adelaide or whatever the hell her real name is -- me and Sophie? And then the little's talkin' about the three of us all bein' married and --" He cut himself off, realizing the panic he was feeling was actually spilling out of his mouth, now. He turned on his heel and strode down a few stairs, then stopped himself before he decided to actually run away. He ran his hands through his hair instead, and held it back, concentrating on the pull against his scalp, and just breathed. "I didn't mean to make her cry, I was just gettin' her goddamn juice."

"She thought you were mad at her," Hardison said evenly, recognizing another person's set of issues even as he sat mired in his own. "She realized that something she said or did upset the hell outta you an' since all she was doin' was tellin' you about her life, assumed that meant that she upset you. They're some bright girls in there. Perceptive. But still kids. So they're gonna see stuff an' they're gonna try to interpret it and god only knows where it'll end up."

He rubbed his chin, tiredly sitting down on the steps. This was so not how he'd anticipated his morning after.

"They ain't ours. You get that, right? I know what they're sayin' and what they believe, but they ain't ours. Not definitely. Not for real. The futures they're talkin' about? They ain't real. Not yet. Maybe not ever."

Eliot closed his eyes and sighed, then let his hair go and looked back at Hardison. "Yeah, man, I'm not an idiot." It did make him feel better to hear it, though.

"Then why you actin' like one?" Hardison asked. "So, we're...fosterin' kids for a weekend. We're gonna be the cool grownups that let 'em eat Spaghetti-Os an' stay up too late an' whatever else. Then at the end of the weekend, we'll send 'em home to their parents in their crazy worlds that ain't ours, an' I dunno, get drunk and pretend like it didn't happen."

"This freakin' island, man." Eliot shook his head. "I tell you one of the teachers has met Sophie before? Apparently a version of her used to live on the island. And a Parker went to school here."

His head had already been exploding. There were only so many paradigm shifts a man could take in less than a week.

"Not our Sophie, right?" he checked. "And definitely not our Parker, no."

Parker? In high school?

"See, man? These kids probably belong to, like, the Eliot who worked here as a janitor and the Hardison who was a devastatingly sexy swimsuit model. Wait, no, that's too close to this reality, hold up."

That's what Eliot said.

"Really? A janitor. And yet that kid thinks I married you." Or her Eliot married her Hardison. That was way easier to think about when it was other people having alternate selves.

"Probably so you could have access to my sweet modeling money," Hardison laughed. "I'll be yo' sugar-daddy, don't you worry, Eliot. You won't have to ruin your pretty hands scrubbin' bathrooms forever."

If absurdity couldn't do the trick...

"We met on a job that set us both up for life." Eliot shook his head. "Alright. I can do cool babysitter. I just -- think there's any way I can convince them to stop callin' me 'Daddy'? It's kinda creepy."

"An' look what happens when you don't let me invest it for you," Hardison chided. "You lose it all an' have to become a janitor to make ends meet until you meet a dead sexy swimsuit model."

If he was a little more certain about where things stood between them, Hardison would lean in and kiss him there.

"I don't think you can, man. They look at you an' see their Daddy. I know it's weird for you, but...when they look at you they also see a man that loves 'em unconditionally. That dude ain't you, but they don't really get that. Don't--don't that that away from them."

Yeah, it would make Eliot uncomfortable for a few days, but he was a grown man. He could deal. The alternative could mess the kids up for life, because even after they went home to their Eliot, they'd remember the one that didn't really want them.

Eliot ran his hands through his hair again. He really needed to brush it; at this rate it was going to be sticking out sideways. "Yeah. Alright. This is not how I wanted to be spendin' the weekend, man."

"Heeeeeyyyyy," Hardison said. "They got bedtimes, don't they?"

Speaking of...where were they going to put them?

"Yeah, I'm thinkin' they'd notice, Hardison."

They hadn't exactly been quiet last night.

"And they're too young to stay at the apartment while we go to your place...Right?"

JUST CHECKING!

"Overnight?" Eliot asked. "Joey might be old enough to babysit, but you really trust those two alone together? They're our kids."

Oh, hey, he even managed to say that without freaking out.

"God, we'd come home to chaos," Hardison groaned. "The one kind that might even be worse than that asshole by the same name." That was a grudge that would linger forever, yes. "Let's hire that student you like. The apologizing one. She seemed responsible!"

Hardison saw nothing wrong with hiring a student to babysit their pseudo-offspring for an epic booty call, no.

"That . . . could possibly work." Apparently, neither was Eliot. "Teenagers are always up for makin' some money, right?"

"Make it money and extra credit," Hardison suggested. "Impossible to resist."

Brilliant!

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The loft above Luke's, Saturday morning

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