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Chapter Text

Milton Friedlander is still choking on his whiskey when an ear-piercing screech comes from the other end of the theatre.

Sophie’s barely on her feet when Eliot’s shooting out from the kitchen with Harry on his heels; Eliot barrels towards the front door in the direction of Parker’s voice while Harry skids to a stop at Sophie’s side. “What the…?” 

“I don’t know,” she puts a firm hand on Milton’s shoulder. “Stay here, Mr. Mastermind.”

Once the shock of the sudden commotion passes, Sophie can tell that those are Parker’s happy-screeches, hears Eliot’s rumbling voice join in. Then they round the corner, and her heart understands what she’s seeing before her brain does and she puts out a hand to stop Harry from intruding further on the scene in the vestibule.

“Let me look at you.” Eliot’s hands are on either side of Hardison’s face while next to him Parker bounces on the balls of her feet, hands pressed to her heart. “There he is,” Eliot, well, murmurs, there’s really no other word for it. “There’s my boy.” 

Sophie’s hand tightens on Harry’s arm and she quickly makes herself let go of him. She can’t see Eliot’s face but she can hear the smile in his voice, see it reflected on Hardison’s face a moment later when the hitter draws him into a ferocious embrace.

“So…are they…” Harry asks in her ear, but before he can finish a coil of rope drops to the tile floor in front of their feet and Breanna comes sailing down, “Aleeeec!” echoing off the walls.

Hardison’s face is a mask of comic surprise as he looks pointedly between Breanna, Parker, and the ceiling, before holding his arms out. “Look at you, baby sis, part of the family now, huh?”

Breanna shimmies out of her rig and he grabs her in a bear hug while she laughs and asks a million questions. 

Parker catches sight of them, still loitering at the edge of the group and starts beckoning wildly. “Sophie, Sophie, Sophie, look! Hardison’s back!”

“Yes, I can see that,” Sophie pulls on a warm smile, it’s genuine enough but when she glances towards Eliot it falters a little. He knows that she saw what she saw, and whatever jubilation he’d felt at Hardison’s return has been replaced by self-recrimination and fear. She can see the fight-or-flight instinct warring behind his eyes and feels her own heart rate start to pick up just looking at him.

Under cover of Hardison and Breanna still talking over one another she steps over to Eliot, links her arm through his and gives it a little squeeze. “This is a happy occasion, Eliot. Smile, yeah?”

She comes in for her share of Hardison’s attention then, hugs him tight and asks the question she still hasn’t heard an answer to: “What are you doing here?”

“Aw, well, I figured after that whole fake-Nate-stealing-our-lives thing, y’all might need some real-family time. I know I do.” He’s got Breanna under one arm, reaches out to pull Parker in too. Then he lifts his chin, grinning at Harry. “Sup, New Guy?”

“He’s not the new guy anymore, Hardison, he’s our Mr. Wilson.” She draws him forward into the group, catches the flush of surprise and pleasure in his face. “But now that you mention it, there is a new guy…Fake-Nate is still here, he’s back at the bar.”

“You — hold up now. You brought him back here?”

“We had to do something with him, he knows too much to just cut him loose. We’re still working out next steps and so, yes, for now, he’s here.”

Breanna, who seems to have regressed a few years in the presence of her big brother, is now tugging on his shirt, utterly uninterested in hashing out the whys and wherefores of the stranger in their house and saying he has got to come over with her to meet Alay-na in person and see what she’s been doing with Cheng’s system and also will he please please come up and see her room so she can show him the Queen Zeal card, and, and…

“You guys go,” Eliot says, nodding at Hardison and tipping his chin towards the stairs. “Hang out for awhile, I’ll make something to eat. Hey — apple cake, yeah?”

Sophie watches as Hardison, whose face has been lit up this whole time, grinning around at his family and trying to talk to and listen to everyone at once, suddenly goes still, looks right at Eliot like he’s really seeing him, only him, for a moment. His eyes turn soft, brimming with emotion, and he’s come such a long way from the cocky little boy she’d first met all those years ago, but in all those years she’s not sure she’s ever seen him look so young.

“Yeah,” he says simply, “sounds good, man. Thanks.”

Hardison turns with Breanna and Parker, making for the stairs, and she hears Harry fall into step behind her as she trails Eliot towards the kitchen.

“Apple cake?” She asks. “What’s that about?”

Eliot glances back without actually looking at her. Probably checking to see if Mr. Wilson is still in earshot. “Rosh Hashanah started yesterday. There’s a bunch of traditional dishes, Hardison likes apple cake the best, it’s a whole thing.”

“So when he talks about ‘in the Jewish faith,’” Harry pipes up, but Eliot doesn’t let him finish: “He ain’t just talking.”

“You didn’t know he was on his way home, did you?” Sophie asks.

Eliot shakes his head. “I thought maybe next week, maybe he’d make it back for Yom Kippur, but no, I didn’t know.”

“Is anyone out there? Hello? Can I come out now? Is everything okay?”

They all stop, look at each other as Mr. Friedlander calls out again from where she’d left him at the bar.

“What are we gonna do about him?” Eliot asks, low, and she sees the conflict in his eyes — the resolve that’s at the heart of him to do what needs to be done, warring with a very human desire to be selfish for once, to put what he wants at the top of the list and take it.

She opens her mouth to make a suggestion, but Harry is already offering. “Oh, I’ll take care of him. Yeah, he said he’s never been to New Orleans before, I’ll show him around, sound him out, make sure he’s not gonna run and find him a nice hotel for the night. We can regroup tomorrow, he’s probably exhausted anyway.”

“Oh, that sounds perfect, but are you sure? We could—”

“I’m sure, absolutely. You guys need some family time.”

She takes his hand in both of hers. “You’re a part of this family too now, our Mr. Wilson.”

He smiles at her, squeezes her hand. “That’s very kind of you, and I appreciate it, but—”

“Dinner’s at seven,” Eliot claps him on the shoulder. “Don’t be late.”

“See,” she says softly as Eliot walks away. “Part of the family.”

He ducks his head, humming tentative agreement, then looks up after they hear the kitchen door close. “So, the three of them, is that like…is that a thing?”

She presses her lips together, avoiding his eyes for the moment. “I’d be lying if I said I’d never suspected that there were…feelings. But whatever it may be in actuality… Seems I am not in their confidence.”

Harry tilts his head, a puzzled line between his eyes. “Well, I don’t know if I’d put it that way,” he starts to say, but then Milton Friedlander is there, poking his bald, nervous head out into the passageway and asking again if everything is all right.

Harry turns on the charm, sweeping him out the door with alacrity, promising Sophie in an aside that he’ll be back by seven.

Chapter Text

“I was talking to Harry the other day,” Eliot says abruptly, not taking his eyes from what he’s doing. “And he said you once told him that Hardison is ‘his father’s son.’” He finally glances up at her, makes eye contact. “Did you mean Nate?”

Sophie can’t remember the last time she actually blushed. She keeps her hands busy, counting out forks and knives for the table. “I may have said something like that. A bit of self-indulgence after our first job back together again.”

Eliot’s knife is the only thing speaking for a moment, then he sets it down, starts folding the apple slices into the batter, movements rhythmic and practiced. “When Nate was running the crew, we really were like a family. Not always in the best way, I mean, for better or worse, we spent five years looking to the alcoholic control freak to call the plays. It worked, though. In part cuz we were all playing our roles. You know? Like in any family, you got the troublemaker, you got the smart one, you got the peacemaker, whatever. And up on top, you got mom and dad.”

He throws her a look, keen and unapologetic. “Then you and Nate left, and the three of us, we had to figure out how to be…more.”

“You broke out of your molds,” she says quietly. She’d seen the result of their journey together from the day they arrived on her doorstep, it was the first thing that got through to her, forced her to start clearing the film of grief from her eyes and start seeing the world around her again. It should not come as a surprise that Eliot himself was so aware of the process; that it does surprise her speaks volumes about how, despite the evidence of her own eyes, her heart hasn’t quite accepted that they went on this journey without her. That they changed, for the better, when she wasn’t there to see it.

He’s watching her, waiting until she makes eye contact again. “The best thing Hardison ever learned from Nate Ford was how not to run a crew.”

She laughs sadly and ducks her head. “Fair enough. What about you?”

“What about me?”

She gives him a look. “Eliot, you just spent the past three days doing everything in your power to show us that you are ‘more than just a hitter.’ Even though we all know that what he wrote in that book isn’t truly what Nate thought about us, reading it really did a number on us, all of us, even Parker, I’m sure.”

Eliot snorts, fondness buried deep but unmistakable behind the grumpiness. “Sure, the legendary thief, so horribly misrepresented.”

“The legendary thief who wouldn’t look you in the eye while she recited the security specs for every major museum, that’s not the woman who told me that she missed me when I stopped returning her calls, or apologizes when she feels it’s necessary.”

Eliot’s quiet, gaze turned inward as he divides his apple cake batter between two pans. “That’s true,” he says finally, and looks up at her. “But me, I’m good. I mean it, Sophie. Nate and me, we always knew where we stood. That book may have pissed me off but I knew it wasn’t really Nate talking.”

Sophie smiles, Eliot’s words relieving the last of the lingering ache in her chest. “Seems obvious in retrospect,” she says on a quiet laugh, gesturing around at the controlled chaos of the kitchen. “There was nothing in there about any of this. No one who really knows Eliot Spencer could write a story that didn’t end with him cooking a celebratory dinner for his family.”

He leans across the center island, treating her to the first smile she’s seen on his face since Hardison’s return. “Exactly.”

She watches him as he loads the pans into the oven, fussing over the dials with his back to her. “So tell me about all this,” she says after a moment, turning the pages in a spattered and marked-up cookbook full of kosher recipes. “I remember him saying once that his mother had been Jewish, but I had no idea he was observant.”

He’s slow to turn, stacking up a few bowls in the sink and washing his hands, drying them methodically before coming back to stand across from her. “About a year after you left, we took in a refugee family. One of those jobs that just found us, you know, like literally wound up on our doorstep, and for a couple days the safest place for them was right at the brewpub where we could keep an eye on ‘em while we figured out what to do. But when people are scared like that, you can’t just let ‘em sit around, so they ended up helping out in the restaurant, dishes and stuff where they could be out of sight but keep busy. But one of ‘em knew how to cook and asked if he could use the kitchen after hours, make a holiday meal for his family. It was Passover, I think. Anyway, Hardison told them how his birth mom was Jewish, how it’s one of his only memories of her, singing in the synagogue, and it was like…” 

Sophie looks up when he trails off, finds him gazing down at his hands, into the past. He shakes his head. “It was like a long-lost family reunion. They asked him to eat with them and, well, sharing meals,” he folds his arms over his chest, at ease and confident surrounded by the tools of his trade. “Why do you think I do what I do? I know what it means. Anyway, that meal, it kickstarted something inside of Hardison, made some connections that big, stupid brain of his hadn’t worked out yet. All of a sudden, this random fact of his life suddenly meant something, connected him to something way bigger than himself. And it wasn’t about something he could hack, or con his way into, it was something real, like getting a whole history and a place on the map and somewhere to rest his head at night.”

“It set him on a spiritual journey,” Sophie says when Eliot’s been quiet for a minute. “That’s really beautiful.”

“Yeah.” He aims a private little smile down at the counter top, then shakes himself and starts clearing away the apple cores. “So I figured out how to cook kosher and Parker memorized the holidays and came up with, like, theological excuses to go nuts with presents and decorations for all of ‘em. Cuz you know, Parker, she’s like dandelion fluff on the wind. Couldn’t tell you where she comes from or where she’s going, but she’ll be good wherever she lands.”

“And you?” Sophie prompts when he hesitates, wiping his hands on a towel. 

“Me. Well, I know where I come from,” he looks up, all southern twang and easy smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “And I ain’t there anymore and I ain’t going back, and that’s what matters. Parker and me, we don’t need much. Hardison ain’t like that.”

“No,” she agrees. “And I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t realize that about him, not for a long time.”

“I did,” he says, gruff. “From day one. And I thought it was something he had to grow out of. Or get it beaten out of him,” he adds, eyes sliding away from hers. 

She touches his arm briefly. “He was a boy, when we first met him. So were you, for that matter. And we were all...none of us had our eyes open back then, not fully.”

“That’s for damn sure,” Eliot mumbles, still looking over her shoulder before his gaze shifts, he straightens up, rebalances his weight. All his tells, not even trying to hide from her. “I’d walk into hell for him. For both of them.”

“I know you would. But surely they’d never ask that of you.”

He narrows his eyes. Waits. And then, “Are you gonna ask me?”

“Ask you what, to walk into hell?”

“Sophie…”

“Do you want me to? To ask you about them?”

He waits again, longer this time. Finally: “I don’t know.”

Their phones ping and buzz at the same time, and Eliot comes as close to jumping as she’s ever seen him. It’s Harry in the group chat: Fake Mastermind tucked away in the Grand, camera planted in the hall outside his room and tracker in his shoes. Back in 10.

“Our Mr. Wilson is really finding his feet,” she remarks, as Eliot goes back to his meal prep, putting the final garnish on the salad.

“Harry’s on his way back so — Oh, hi Sophie!” Parker’s already speaking as she bursts into the kitchen, reaching to take the salad bowl from Eliot. “Go upstairs,” she tells him.

“I got the cake in the—” 

“Did you set a timer?”

“Of course I set a damn — Parker get off that—”

“I think Parker and I can handle this,” Sophie gently detaches Parker and takes the towel from his shoulder, shooing him out of the kitchen.

In the silence that falls after Eliot leaves, Parker turns to face her, squaring her shoulders.

“Eliot is going upstairs to make out with Hardison before Harry gets back and we all sit down to dinner.”

Sophie feels a grin trying to break out on her face, and manages to dial it down into an amused little smile. “I figured as much.”

“Oh.” Parker blinks. Then nods firmly. “Cool. Is this ready, should we set the table?”

Sophie is laying out the salad forks when Parker says, “For the record, I wanted to tell you like ten years ago, but Eliot doesn’t want anyone to know because it would make him vulnerable and put us in danger if the bad guys figured out that me and Hardison are his weak spot.”

“That makes a tragic kind of — hang on, ten years?”

“Ten years?” Parker gives a high, fake laugh. “Who said ten years? Is this kale?  I love kale.” She dives into the salad bowl and shoves a huge piece of kale into her mouth.

Chapter Text

Dinner is a mad jumble of everyone talking at once.

Hardison is king for a night, naturally, and it’s not until plates are being passed around for seconds that side conversations lull and the decibel level drops such that everyone can hear everyone else.

”And,” Parker is saying, plopping another huge serving of potato kugel onto her plate, “Eliot seduced the ex-queen in like two seconds flat — new personal best.”

“Course he did,” Hardison beams at Eliot across the table. “That’s our boy.”

“That’s not what— dammit Hardison don’t give me a high five for that, that is not high-five-worthy!” But Eliot is already reaching back, tap tap bump, that special handshake they’ve had for so long Sophie can’t even remember the first time she noticed it.

“I have a lot of questions,” Breanna says with a glint in her eye. “When you say ‘personal best’, what was the time to beat—“

“Do not,” Eliot has his finger in the air, pointing menacingly between Parker and Hardison. “I mean it.”

Hardison lifts his hands in concession, and a moment later Parker whispers to Breanna out of the side of her mouth, “Page 150 is totally true.”

Eliot gives an enormous roll of his eyes and gets up, looking very put-upon, and disppears into the kitchen. Harry watches him go with a look of discomfort on his face, shooting glances up and down the table as though he wants to ask if he’s the only one who noticed that Eliot was upset, flooding Sophie with sudden fondness. The dear man really has found his feet with them, remarkably so considering where he came from and the very short amount of time that separates now from then, but there are times it’s impossible to forget that he is the newcomer in this little band, even more than Breanna who grew up with Leverage bedtime stories but who also, Sophie realizes suddenly, has probably known about the three of them for awhile.

It hits her as it has been since they sat down, a little jolt when she remembers that this is not a simple case of three best friends who get a kick out of taking the mickey. She drags her gaze away from Eliot’s retreating back only to have her eye caught by Hardison. He throws her a wink before his face flickers through a more complex set of expressions, settling on something just this side of shy as he leans in a little so that only she can hear him say, “Thanks for playing it cool with Eliot, Soph. Means a lot.”

At a different time and in a quieter place she might have taken it upon herself to remind Hardison that she’d been the one to ask Eliot to take care of him and Parker all those years ago and as such had been standing right there when he pledged himself to them ‘til his dying day and so really, compared to that level of intensity, nearly anyone was bound to look cool as a cucumber. As it is she only tells him quietly, “Of course. I’m very happy for you, really.” The smile that lights up Hardison’s face at that can only be described as ‘blinding’ and Sophie leans back in her seat, giving Harry a warm smile in return for his questioning look.

Eliot returns ten minutes later, holding the elaborate apple cake confection in both hands. It’s piled high with whipped cream and decorated with intricate swirls of honey. Oh, and candles, of course.

“Heyyy, opa!” Breanna shouts, throwing her hands in the air. Parker and Hardison twist in their seats and add to the ruckus.

“Okay,” Harry murmurs, seemingly to no one in particular, “I may not know much about this holiday but is it usually celebrated with birthday candles?”

“I think that’s a very special Parker addition,” Sophie whispers back, still smiling.

“Hey,” Eliot says once the candles are extinguished and the noise has died down, that way he has of capturing the attention of the whole room without raising his voice. He’s looking at Hardison, his face as soft as his voice, gaze telling an entire story for anyone with eyes to read. His lips twitch into a small, utterly sincere smile as he tells Hardison, “Shana tova, my friend.”

“Good year!” Breanna toasts her glass of orange soda.

“And sweet,” Parker chimes in with such emphasis that Sophie finds herself laughing along with the rest of them.

“Can I ask a question?” Harry says, when Breanna and Parker are both digging into their second pieces of cake and the rest of them are winding down.

Hardison looks pointedly around the table, then licks his fork. “You asking me?”

“Yeah,” Harry says, with a glance around at the others and back, then says more firmly: “Yes. I was wondering if you’d mind telling me more about what we’re celebrating here. All I know about Rosh Hashanah is that it’s the new year and the lead-in to Yom Kippur which, I believe, has something to do with atonement and redemption?”

Hardison grins. “Hey, not bad, New Guy. You got the basics. Traditionally speaking, these next ten days are a chance to take stock, you know, rebalance. Around here, we kinda take this time to like, you know…” He trails off, looks to Eliot.

“Reflect on how the job’s going,” Eliot offers, clarifies: “How we are doing, with the job. What’s good, what needs to change.” Eliot lifts one shoulder, nods at Parker.

“Usually Hardison puts together a presentation,” she says, looking a little wistful. “And then we go over everything we’ve done the past year. Check in on the people we’ve helped…”

“Or the people we’ve hurt.” Eliot and Parker hold eye contact for a long moment, then turn back as one to look at Harry.

“Redemption is a process,” Harry says quietly and it sounds almost like a mantra, like he’s been repeating it to himself all this time, ever since Hardison said it to him all those months ago.

On that day she’d made the leap easily — it hadn’t even been a leap, really, Hardison had come out and used him as an example — from what Hardison was saying about repentance to what she knew about Eliot’s journey away from his past and into his ever-evolving present. Listening to the three of them now, it could not be more plain that this has been an ongoing process for them. As a team, yes, but also as individuals; even Hardison, the only one from their first little band who Sophie would have expected to lay his head to rest at night without warding himself against ghosts of the past. It’s a powerful reminder that not even a grifter — not even a friend — can ever know the inner workings of another person. Not entirely.

Sophie sits back, lets the ebb and flow of voices wash over her as the conversation continues around the table. These are her people, this is her family, she’s as certain of it as she’s ever been of anything in this mad and uncertain world. And these are her issues, too, this melancholy that the holidays — any holiday — brings out in her. Whether it’s yet another reminder of the relentless passage of time, or a reminder that the extraordinary life she has lived has not been without sacrifice, there’s something about watching other people celebrate that makes her feel like she’s stuck in one of those dreams where she’s about to step out on stage to perform a role she hasn’t rehearsed.

She looks up to see a seat swap in progress. Hardison wants to show Eliot something on his phone so he and Parker are trading places and Parker drops into the chair beside Sophie with a contented sigh, immediately turning to say something to her but stopping short. Sophie watches Parker’s eyes track over her face the way she’s seen her scan a map or a building schematic, a puzzled line between her brows and Sophie opens her mouth to assure her that she is fine. But before she’s done more than draw breath, Parker is reaching out, putting an arm around her shoulders and gingerly pulling her close for a sideways hug.

“Oh,” is all she can think to say, and Parker bumps their foreheads together gently when she nods.

“I’m sorry that Nate is gone,” she says, straightening up. “But I’m really happy that you’re here. Everything is better when you’re around.”

“Oh,” Sophie says again, and quickly swipes at her eyes. “Thank you, Parker. I feel the same about you.”

Parker gives her a brilliant smile and nods, reaching out to snag a slice of apple from a platter, dip it in honey and offer it to Sophie. “I hope your new year is full of sweetness and money.”

Across the table Hardison shakes his head and Eliot pinches the bridge of his nose. “Just cuz ‘honey’ rhymes with ‘money’…”

She waves them off, saying loftily, “Some things are too good to be a coincidence.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Sophie says. She feels her heart lifting as she raises her glass, as wishes for health and happiness are passed around, as candlelight catches and sparkles in the glasses of wine, whiskey, and orange soda and the sound of clinking crystal fills the air with a raucous chorus that is still, to her ears, incredibly sweet.