What, was "Rudy" on cable last night?

The colors from the previous days were still holding, if maybe slightly more muted, Fandom's magic slowly fading but still managing to hang on for another day.

Seemed like a good omen as any for a wedding that Eliot still couldn't quite believe was happening.

Eliot's boat wasn't big enough for all their guests so they had "rented" (long story) a well-appointed yacht for the day. It was docked in the Port of Fandom, waiting for all the guests to board. Once the last person had crossed the gangplank, it sailed almost to the edge of the island, where blue water lapped with gray. Eliot's boat was already there, anchor down, Hardison in a tux, playing around with a sound system.

A few minutes to futz with mics and the speakers set up discreetly around the yacht came to life. "Testin'...Testin'..." Hardison murmured. Good. Everybody would be able to hear the ceremony on the second ship.

Looks like it was time to begin.

[TIME FOR A WEDDING! If you think you were invited, you were. Some OCD coming]

The Leverage team had been in Fandom more than long enough to know exactly what came after the school prom. Eliot's anticipation of seeing Spike and Gracie again had been tempered by his dread over whatever fresh hell of a revelation of his alternate selves' sex lives. He'd already met a daughter some version of him had had with Sterling, for chrissake, but he knew better to think the island couldn't somehow top that.

But Saturday morning had come and gone, and no "you don't get to be with your partners in my universe" child arrived to taunt him. And it turned out, spending time with a couple kids who belonged to all three of them was really nice.

He leaned back on the couch with his coffee, a giant spread of brunch foods arranged on the coffee table, the end tables, and pretty much every other flat surface not currently occupied by a piece of Hardison's tech (yeah, Eliot lost that battle before it ever began), and watched as Hardison finished setting up a video link to Kathy. Parker was perched on the back of the couch next to him, her knee touching his shoulder, looking about as happy and relaxed as he'd ever seen her, and not just because her mouth was full of chocolate cereal. The kids were sprawled on either side of them, teasing and poking each other in a way that reminded Eliot so much of himself and Trudy as kids it almost hurt. Somehow, after everything, he'd still managed to end up with a family. A large one, even. He could get used to this.

He bit his lip thoughtfully, and took a long sip of his coffee.

Maybe he should start taking steps to make sure he got the chance.

[for the fam, and slow play. AU KIDS!]

Eliot had spent the week in Oklahoma, visiting with Tru and hiking around some the state's larger parks, just generally reminding himself who the hell he was without his crew along for the ride.

And it was good. Cold, a little bit lonely, but just what he needed. Hell, he'd even thrown in a visit to the local VA center to check in with the counselors there -- people who actually knew a thing or two about PTSD, thank you very much Hardison -- and got himself a prescription for anti-anxiety meds, in case Fandom decided to throw something extra nasty at them again. All told, it'd been a very successful week.

But this? Hanging out with his crew in what was basically the romance capital of the world, on a holiday when tradition called for lots of kissing?

He absolutely needed this, too.

[ooc: for the crew, up early for sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowplay.]

Trudy had said Eliot and his family were going to be her guests, so he wasn't allowed to cook dinner. He'd said she shouldn't have to cook it either, and they'd both refused to make everyone eat leftover funeral casserole.

So Eliot pulled the rental car — rental van, because four adults was a lot to fit into a sedan and renting a van was almost tradition — into the lot of a little mom&pop Italian restaurant.

"There's Tru's car," he said as he set the parking break and turned the car off. He looked back towards Kathy and Parker. "Y'all ready for this?"

[ooc: FAMILY DINNER TIME! For those who know, and epic slow play.]

The house had been quiet all night. The family spent about another hour at the hospice with Emerson's body before Trudy finally let them take him away, then everyone had gone back home. It was too late to call most people with the news, so there wasn't much to do that night but try -- and fail -- to sleep.

Morning broke to a large breakfast, what Eliot had managed to accomplish with his sleepless hours. Ellie and Cassie both picked at their food, Ellie barely managing to eat anything, but Johnny happily cleaned their plates for them. Trudy's eating was more dutiful than enthusiastic, though she managed to look up and nod at Eliot and give him a small smile of thanks.

( There was a lot to do, when someone died )

[ooc: NFI, OOC welcome. Preplayed with the marvelous age_of_the_geek. Almost done!]

Eliot considered swinging by the diner to get his spare change of clothes, but honestly, all he wanted was a nice, hot shower in his own damn bathroom. He'd been in worse spots, certainly, and for much longer.

But he wasn't sure he'd ever been in weirder.

Val went barrelling over as soon as he put his key in the door, and he swooped down to scoop her up and let her lick his chin even though he had god only knew what still stuck in his beard. "Honeys," he called. "I'm home!"

[ooc: for thems as live here]

So. Hardison and Parker were officially going to be moving in. The first rush of "yes, please, be where I can keep an eye on you and make sure you're not turning into creepy zombie versions (or alien bug versions, or any other kind of creepy versions) of yourselves" had worn off, and Eliot was starting to realize what that actually meant, logistically. The house couldn't just be his place, anymore. He had to make sure that they had the space to make it their own, too. It wasn't as if Eliot's house was small, but, well. He'd been living there for coming up on three years now. It had stuff in it.

So today, Eliot was cleaning house. He'd cleared out the dining room (never used, they always ate in the kitchen, so that'd be great as, like, an office or study or something) and was now tackling the basement.

Which would be how a box full of bear traps ended up on his front stoop.

He had no idea what he was going to do with those.

[open!]

If Parker had been any less than 100% enthusiastic about having Archie around, Eliot would have happily let him spend the whole weekend getting room service at the Arms.

But Archie was, however grudgingly, family. Which meant he got an invite to the small family brunch Eliot planned for Nana. And -- well, honestly, the old guy was pretty fun, once you got past the whole "could have been so much better for Parker growing up" thing. He had some amazing stories about his days at the top of his game. Eliot's favorite was the one about thwarting Nate the one time IYS sicced him on him.

And, well. Eliot wouldn't trade getting to see both his partners happily interacting with their family for the world.

[for the team and guests, and likely a lot of slowplay]

Eliot was still in full-on "pretend everything is fine" mode, so he was on his couch with Parker and Hardison sat in dignified positions next to him (well, that was the intention, anyway, Parker didn't sit still well even when she was human) and a bowl of popcorn on the coffee table.

They were watching a movie. It wouldn't have been Eliot's first choice, but Parker had seemed slightly more like she was paying attention when he paused on the title while flipping through the options on one of Hardison's streaming services, so he'd settled for it.

About halfway through, he pulled the Hardison bear into his lap.

When the delivery guy showed up with the telegram, he found himself squeezing Hardison hard enough to set off the voice box.

"Wuv you beary much!" Hardison said.

"Shut up," Eliot sniffled. "You saw nothing."

[ooc: for one]

Eliot had always been a fast healer -- a definite advantage in his line of work, no one was going to respect a hitter who was covered in bruises all the time -- so while he still had a black eye and a fairly impressive mass of scab on his temple, the swelling had gone and the side of his face was more yellow than purple. It'd taken a few hours to convince Hardison that he really wasn't letting the man out of his sight for longer than it took to use the bathroom, but once they'd managed to move from escape attempts to resigned depression, Eliot had even managed to get some actual rest in, so his headache was down from sometimes-literally-blinding to dull-throb-with-painkillers-if-I-don't-move-too-quickly. With his hood pulled up to both cut down on excess sunlight and hide the mess that was his temple, he felt almost normal.

Physically, anyway. Hardison wasn't the only one dealing with masses of guilt over what happened over the weekend. Eliot was just more used to carrying stuff like that around.

Parker wasn't going to let Eliot stand up in the kitchen long enough to even make some decent omelettes, so he called and had the busboy at the diner bring them enough food to cover all three of them for a day. This of course led to an argument with the busboy about whether him not coming in at all meant the kitchen staff had a day off, which set off exciting new throbs in Eliot's head, which in turn made Parker go all growly mama bear at the busboy, who eventually ended up running away shrieking. Then Eliot had to hurry back to the living room to make sure that Hardison hadn't tried to escape through the back door.

"You know," Eliot said as he grabbed yet another ice pack from his freezer. "We're not s'posed to have to tie you to a chair after you're done being evil."

[ooc: for the crew. Wheee aftermath!]