Apartment Above Lukes, Friday Afternoon

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy was prepping for Pride over the weekend. Most of the merchandise she was planning for the booth had already been boxed up at the store, but she was folding pamphlets and making bracelets out of embroidery floss and beads that she'd picked up from Hobby Lobby when she'd taken a trip over there to discuss which store was going to hand out the birth control. The bracelets all corresponded with the various Pride flags; it was like an eighth grade craft project up in here.

But it was fun and relaxing and made for nice breaks between constant pamphlet folding while still letting her feel like she was being productive. Win/win.

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[vdistinctive]

Eliot sighed. "Because Fandom. That do ya?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"You know, I don't know if it's comforting or terrifying that an ex-dead girl wandering around the island is barely weird enough to earn a mention," Kathy said with a sigh.

[vdistinctive]

"Who says it can't be both?"

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"Porque no los dos," Kathy mumbled.

It was a meme, Eliot, one of those internet things. Never mind.

"Is this what you used to think about doing with your kid when you were younger?" she asked. "Teaching them to play guitar and talking them through teenage crises? I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you never pictured adopting a zombie orphan."

[vdistinctive]

"You kidding? That's just what I always dreamed."

A joke answer was easier than admitting that the last time he'd pictured himself as a father was back when he was still a kid himself.

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy had pretty much guessed that herself. You didn't spend a lot of time thinking about the next generation when you thought you were going to die young.

"So you thought about kids around the same time you were debating being a fireman and an astronaut?"

[vdistinctive]

"Cowboy or pirate," Eliot said. "I read a lot of old adventure novels when I was a kid."

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"Settled on cowboy, huh?" Kathy asked.

Look, daughters were supposed to tease their dads about their, well, everything.

[vdistinctive]

"I'm pretty sure you could argue I became both."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Eliot choose both, news at 11," Kathy teased, tossing a bisexual pride bracelet at him.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot caught the bracelet with a laugh. He recognized this color scheme -- Cassie had taken to emailing him bisexual pride memes. "Well, it's worked out damn well for me so far."

[spin_kick_snap]

"I can't argue with that, Captain Cowboy," Kathy said. "How did you know you loved them? Was it at the same time, or...?"

She'd realized she'd never heard the story before. And it seemed a nice beginning to Pride.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot smiled and shrugged. "Wasn't really an instant thing, you know? Kinda creeped up on me. I was still in lone-wolf mode when we first met. Took me awhile to break the habit of keepin' everyone at arm's length."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Well, what happened?" Kathy asked, cupping her chin in her hand. "You were grumpy 'I don't need anyone' for awhile, they ignored you because it was patently obvious you were wrong, and then...?"

[vdistinctive]

"Well, first Hardison had to get over himself and actually make a move with Parker. We were all known for workin' alone when we first got together as a team." This wasn't just Eliot being dense, was what he was saying. "Hell, watchin' Hardison moon over Parker and Parker learn what the hell feelings for other people even were was part of why I didn't get around to makin' my own for so long."

[spin_kick_snap]

"So it was basically a sitcom, everyone trying to figure out what the next step was?" Kathy asked. "I bet your friend Sophie was amused."

[vdistinctive]

"Sophie had a grand old time with all of us," Eliot said. "And bein' the angel she was, pitched in to help where she could, too. Nate was just oblivious, too wrapped up in his own drama." Eliot shook his head fondly. "Anyway. Hardison and Parker finally hooked up officially some time around when we moved to Portland, I think -- nah, little before that. They musta already been solid by the time he got into his thick head to buy a damn brewpub to 'woo' me without actually telling me about it."

[spin_kick_snap]

"How do you buy a brew pub to--ohhh," Kathy said, snapping her fingers as realization dawned. "He bought you a restaurant to make you happy. Awww! That's so sweet."

[vdistinctive]

"He bought a restaurant to run it into the ground and make me fix it for him," Eliot grumbled. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to design a menu for --" He bit off the rest of the rant with a grumble. "Anyway. By then I'd already worked out these two idiots were my life now -- knew the crew was family by the time Nate got his ass arrested taking out a corrupt mayor and an arms dealer. Figured out I was more'n just attracted to Hardison and Parker sometime around when we tried to take on a whole Alaskan mountain." Leverage had a storied past. "Anyway, it was so obvious that they needed to be with each other that I just figured if I tried for anything romantic I'd be . . . in the way."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Yeah," Kathy said, face falling a bit. "I know that feel."

Fractions of a second later, though, she was smiling again and motioning him to continue. "So, then they worked their thing out and decided that they needed you to be complete and bought you a brew pub?"

[vdistinctive]

"So Hardison bought the brewpub," Eliot said. "Parker started askin' me for advice on how to feel things about art." That had been a weird one. "We saved the world from a deadly flu virus in DC and I got shot a coupla times." And yet thinking about that job made him grin like an idiot. "That was a -- I think that job was when I figured out even if I wasn't gonna be with the two of 'em I wasn't gonna not be with 'em, if that makes sense. Hell, I was pretty sure we were all gonna die by the end of that one and the only thing I regretted was not actually kissing either of them yet."

He shook his head and lifted his hands in a shrug.

"But Hardison had literally never let on that he liked guys at all, much less me, and Parker was still figuring out what romance even was. So when we got the hell out of dodge and moved to Baltimore, I went lookin' for a place of my own where I'd be out of the way, but not too far to count on. Wound up here."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Well, did you ever let him know that you liked guys at all?" Kathy asked. She could think of a few reasons why a nerdy black guy wouldn't be forthcoming about his sexuality, just saying. "So you moved here and they came after you?"

Again, super-romantic.

[vdistinctive]

"I mean, I didn't think me and Quinn flirtin' was that subtle," Eliot protested.

"It took 'em a little while, but they followed. Parker showed up first. I guess she was worried I'd be replaced by a 'time ghost' or a robot or something. Hardison didn't get his ass to the island until February or so. They were apparently hatching a whole plan to win me over, but then Gaunt showed up, and . . . yeah, anyway, wasn't until after Hardison got his fool-ass sick trying to impress me by going skinny-dipping in Lake Michigan in April that I worked out what they were trying to do. And then showed 'em how it's done by just asking for a threesome."

After flirting wildly with them all night at Prom but waiting to reveal his whole plan until after they'd been convinced he was going to go home with someone else.

These three were super classy, really.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Ewwwwwwww, dad-sex," Kathy teased. "Gross."

[vdistinctive]

Eliot laughed. "It gets better -- that was the first prom any of us had spent on the island. Woke up the next morning to three different precocious moppets callin' me 'Daddy'."