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Eliot isn't the last kid in school to get his soulmark, but it was a pretty close thing.
Most of the others got theirs around the time they were starting school. Some had them younger, a few were born with them, and each year more and more joined the ranks. Eliot is twelve years old when he gets his, and it's a relief more than anything else.
Some of them make a whole deal of it, hold parties to celebrate. Others are constantly scouring through the school records to try and figure out who the mark goes to. Some come out clear, full names, easy to identify, they're already dating - most are nicknames, not clear just yet, lead to many an awkward conversation in the halls.
Girl adorns his wrist, and he knows he won't be able to track her down. There's no reason to think she's not local, but some part of him knows, he won't find her in this town. At twelve, he already knows he needs to get out.
He checks the mark every night. Some change quickly, often, but hers doesn't even flicker until a few years later, where it settles down as Parker. He doesn't know any girls named that, which pretty much confirms she's from somewhere else. He tries to imagine how they might meet, but it's hard, with just a name.
It stays the same for another year, before it shifts into big sister. That's the same time he gets the second name - Alec. He's sixteen, and he stares a that for a good long while, trying to work the c into an x, to have more ambiguity.
Two soulmates is unlucky. On TV, it means one of them is gonna die, and given that she's older, probably Parker. He reads a lot about soulmates, on multiples, how they don't all have to be the marrying type. He tries to find comfort in that.
He doesn't share Alec with anyone. On his eighteenth birthday, he signs up for the Army, and takes care to only show big sister. It isn't quite a lie. No one looks.
It's while he's in basic that sister becomes problem becomes runaway. He doesn't know what changed, but he can kind of guess the shape of it, knows it's nothing good. He knows what happens to kids who go into the system, not like him. He wishes he knew where she was, wishes that soulmarks were useful. He takes that energy and channels it into training instead.
Once he's deployed, he stops checking the marks regularly. He misses the point runaway becomes thief. Worse ways that could have gone. He still wonders, at night, how exactly they'll meet, and even that information doesn't help him try and figure that out.
Alec knows his life is going to be like a cartoon from as soon as he learns to read and sees his soulmarks staring back at him, declaring themselves hero and thief. How cool is that? Sometimes he says the thief part and adults look at him funny, but mostly they ignore it, and him, and really, he's too busy devouring every superhero stuff he can get his hands on, trying to imagine all the adventures they're going to have once they meet.
Thief becomes pickpocket becomes getaway driver becomes car thief, and he tracks the path, the new skills, adding cool cinematic shots to his daydreams. He has a toy car that's his, that he gets to take between foster parents, and its always his thief's, as she drives while hero shoots the bad guys from the passenger seat and he...well, he's still working that part out.
The switch from hero to soldier is a little disappointing, but he's old enough by then to know a real life superhero had never been realistic. He imagines the two of them like Han Solo and - well, not Luke, because he's Luke, but Leia's pretty heroic, isn't she, and she knows her way around a blaster, and that's kind of like being a soldier.
He's moved in with Nana when his thief becomes a cat burglar, and he hasn't said anything to an adult about it in years and years, but he tells her, and she gets a weary smile, says he's trouble, to stay safe, but not in the way adults usually do, annoyed, instead she's just worried. He promises, and thinks about Batman and Catwoman and tries to figure out if that makes him Robin or if he's Batman or what.
Soldier becomes Special Forces, and he has to look up what that means, but it means that his soulmate's moved from normal soldier stuff to the A-Team or SHIELD, which is so cool. He catches it switch to orphan and back a few times, and that's sad, but it's just something they get to have in common. He wonders if his soldier's nerdy, because he can't think of any characters who are both, but he can't imagine being soulmates with someone who isn't a bit of a geek.
World's Greatest Thief declares itself loudly the first time he starts getting into hacking, like an encouragement and a challenge all in one. If his soulmate's the best cat burglar, and the other's one of the best soldiers, well, he's got to keep up and be the best hacker to match.
He doesn't really notice when Special Forces becomes Black Ops, because they're the same thing, aren't they - but he notices when it becomes weapon. It feels like a sign he should have been worried about the first change more.
Hacking into the Pentagon is easier than he thought, but trying to track his would-be hero down, without even a name...he reads through everything he can about Special Forces and Black Ops, learns more than he ever wanted to, things he wishes he didn't know.
He stops reading, and he waits for the mark to change back, to hero, or at least to soldier, or to anything else.
It's Archie who teaches her about soulmarks.
Everyone else has talked about them, but not in any way that helped. She knew that they were names, but secret inner names, not the ones that adults would call you. She knew that they were special, important, but no one ever explained what they meant by that. They were always so weird about it, and the other kids were weird about it, and she didn't like talking about it, or them, very much.
But Archie, he explains: your soulmate is a weakness. It's the person who people can track down and hurt to get you to stop pulling jobs. The reasons why you hide your face and your name and leave no trace, even if you don't care who knows you stole something. Because if they know you, they can find your weakness, and you can't let them get found, get hurt.
She knows that Archie has a soulmate, has a family. She knows it's so big a weakness that she isn't allowed to get close.
Parker had a weakness, once. Sometimes she wishes they were soulmates, but she doesn't want to see that name stare back at her from her skin. It would be worse if it was there, and then it was gone. So it's good it's not at all.
Instead, she has two weaknesses, and their names are Eliot and Alec, except mostly they're other things. It's a good thing, because that's harder to track than names, but she doesn't know if she wants them at all. She can't imagine being like Archie, keeping a house and a family and secrets. But if that isn't what they are, what do they mean?
Eliot doesn't seem like much of a weakness. Soldiers have guns, and armor, they're like cops but more of a threat. He's good at it, apparently, and of course he is, she's the best, so her soulmates are also the best. Why else would they be hers?
Alec bounces around a lot more, never seems to sit still, usually geek or nerd but also genius and prodigy and violinist (she's stolen some violins, that had been fun). It isn't until he starts to be hacker she understands - he's a thief, like her. She doesn't work with hackers, doesn't need to, but she could, because the security systems are becoming more computerized, and so she needs to learn more and more, and having someone who could turn off the security cameras would be nice.
So, she has a hacker, and a hitter (a weapon, and does that mean when they are soulmates proper, she gets to use him?) and that makes a crew. She doesn't like crews, working them is a pain, they slow her down. She doesn't like having weaknesses, and that's what soulmates are.
Eliot considers burning his soulmarks out completely. He knows a lot of guys who do it, so that no one can use it against them, track them down. When they do it, it's a girl back home, someone they know, and he hasn't met his soulmates yet. They wouldn't make a good way in, soulmate or not, it's spending time with someone that makes them good leverage.
It's a good excuse, at least, to rationalize the way he can't find it in himself to get rid of them completely, to lose the one way he can keep track of them.
It wouldn't be hard to get files on them. He has connections, with the kind of people who keep track of hackers and thieves. But it's been a long time since he was that naive. He won't paint targets on their backs, won't let anyone have a file with all the information he's gleaned. Would rather someone had to torture it out of him than have it handed over.
The marks aren't clear, at least, don't spend much time as names. He gets glimpses of Hardison, and hopes to hell it's not a real surname, but at least Alec only lives in his head. Most of the time it's dumb nonsense, at least, always flitting about as a bunch of stupid references and geek shit, arrogance about being the greatest hacker ever.
Matches with Parker, who only ever gets that or World's Greatest Thief. That's what makes him think for the first time that the pair of them might be soulmates too, trying to compete to be the best. He hopes it's true, and not the hubris that would get them both killed. He hopes even more his marks on them don't declare him as World's Most Dangerous Man or something dumb as that.
He wonders if they've met, already. He hopes they have, that they're being happy little criminals, destiny keeping them clear of all his shit. They'd be better off together, never knowing he was their soulmate.
Hardison has a program that tracks major heists and burglaries, and lines them up with his own entries for everytime that Parker shifts to World's Greatest Thief in glee. Not all of them make the news, either because it's rich people who don't want to admit something's gone, or because no one notices the forgeries, but even from what his program picks up, the stuff she's gotten away with...art, diamonds, gold...it's an impressive dragon's hoard. He wonders if she sells it, or if she keeps it. He thinks about trying to track down black market fences.
He's stolen millions, so he's catching up, but he also does it all from the basement, and doesn't have much to show for it, instead getting funneled into paying off bills. He wants to try and do something eventually, get a prize to prove it, but he doesn't know what he'd want. Something you couldn't just buy, probably.
Weapon has finally changed to chef, for a few weeks that summer, which is great news, until it goes back to being soldier. He wishes it was thief, but at least it's better that than weapon. He doesn't want to see that on his wrist ever again.
He's in a hotel room for a con when soldier becomes killer. He thinks a lot about what that means, because he's sixteen, he's not a kid - Special Forces get into some hinky shit, even normal soldiers kill. Real life isn't a comic book, he knows his soulmate has a body count, that it probably isn't small. So what does killer mean, then? What crossed that line?
He expects it to fade back. Like chef. Like orphan. Like weapon. He really wants it to fade back, for his soulmate to let go of the guilt, and it doesn't. Killer, killer, killer. It makes him wonder exactly what road he's walking down. He's not a white hat, but he's not extorting people, when he sees horrible shit he dumps that out on to the web. All he's stealing from is a bunch of rich pricks, he's not - but you can only spend so much time on the dark web and not wonder how far away you are from-
It isn't long before he starts keeping that wrist covered. Stops checking.
Parker doesn't do crews.
She doesn't do jobs for hire at all, really, because they're usually boring, and it's more fun to keep stuff, or to just find a fence when she wants money. But sometimes they have floorplans she can't get herself, and want her to steal fun things she's never thought about stealing before, so she always reads the files.
This one has two names; Eliot Spencer, retrieval specialist, and Alec Hardison, hacker. They're hers, and this is how they meet.
She still doesn't know if she wants soulmates. But for all he calls them a weakness, Archie loves his family. She wants that too. And she kind of wants the challenge. It's not like she can't leave if it goes bad.
It goes good, and then it doesn't, because someone took her money. She liked them, and she liked working with them, and she thinks she might like the idea of a crew, really, but she doesn't like them more than money, and she doesn't like people who betray her, turn her in.
When she shows up in that warehouse, she keeps the gun on Ford, though.
Instead, it was the client (this is why she hates doing jobs for people), and the warehouse is the set up for a bomb. If she thought Ford had been good for the first, he's great for the second job. She sees the way they all fit together like puzzle pieces, and she wants more of that.
They split, and she watches as all of them loop around, and there isn't any doubt in her mind as she joins them too.
The moment he realized they were his soulmates, he'd thought about running.
With all the things he'd done, all the people after him, it was better not to get close. But the faces in the file Victor Dubenich shares with him stare up off the page, and he thinks, if he has one purpose in this world, it's to make sure these people stay safe.
Even after everything else, he can at least do that.
He has no idea how much they've seen on their wrists, although he's got a pretty good idea what it is now, what it's been for years. Hardison's an open book, so the way he doesn't react, he doesn't have a name, just, what army or soldier or whatever fool idea he'd gotten into his head when he'd first left. Parker's older, been his soulmate longer, but she's harder to read. Twenty pounds of crazy. She might have gotten a name, or maybe just quarterback, might know who he is, but she also might not even know what a soulmate is. Or not care.
It's for the best. They don't need to know he's their soulmate. Nate doesn't need to know. No one needs to know but him.
Instead, he'll keep them safe. At least that, he knows he can do.
"We should track down our third," Hardison says, late one night. "Get them to join."
Parker stares at him. "We could steal him, but he's already ours," she says, confused.
"Well, yeah, he's our soulmate," and the pronoun isn't surprising, because he knows the gender balance of special ops, but Parker knowing it kind of is. "We should find him and steal him."
"No, I mean, we already have him," Parker repeats. "It's Eliot."
Just like that, everything falls into place, hits him in the head.
Because yeah, he knew hero was a hitter. With the line of work they were in, the way he'd clearly fallen out of special forces to something a bit less legitimate, how could he be anything else? It feels so ridiculous, to not piece together that it was their hitter.
"Why hasn't he said anything? He knows. He has to know."
"It's Eliot," Parker shrugs.
And, well, yeah.
Eliot doesn't talk about his feelings, he didn't say shit about Moreau (and oh, that's what killer was. He wishes after San Lorenzo it had changed, but it's still there.) and he walked off pain, but there was no way he'd missed seeing Parker's name, had to know, so the fact he wouldn't tell them....
Maybe it was about not showing weakness, or maybe it was the good ol' southern boy not able to handle the two soulmates or the him of it. Maybe it was Moreau, the fear of him tracking them down, but he was locked in the Tombs, and they were Leverage, it wouldn't change anything.
"I think he wants to stay with us," Parker says, like she can read his mind. "Protect us. And he doesn't think he can do that and be close."
"Of all the dumb-ass..." he trails off. "You're right. I think we're gonna have to con him into this."
When Nate explains the plan, the move to Portland, he scours the city, then buys a brewpub.
Every time he's alone, or it's just him and Parker, he starts checking his soulmark again, watching it closely to catch the moment when, after years, killer finally flickers, and Chef takes its place.
It's not even an hour, before it goes back, but it's something.