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Eliot is six years old when the family next door is given a new foster placement. He’s used to different kids coming and going from next door, but he just knows she’s different.
She’s two years younger than him, and small for her age in a way that system kids always are. Her prized possession is a stuffed rabbit who’s half her size, ratty in a way that screams well loved. Eliot didn’t have to ask to know the bunny was one of the few things she had to her name through multiple different homes. She's skittish and crazy and Eliot is obsessed with everything about her in the way six year old boys are obsessed with new things out in front of them.
The first time they meet — not staring through windows or across the grass from one another as their respective parents drag them into the house — but properly meet, she puts her hands on her hips, looks him up and down, and declares that Eliot is her best friend.
She wraps her tiny fingers around his wrist and pulls him towards the swing set in her new family’s backyard. He doesn’t know it yet, but this is his future. His future is all wrapped up in a small blonde girl with a stuffed rabbit.
Eliot is seven years old the first time “Uncle Archie” comes to visit.
He doesn’t like this stranger. Archie takes her away for the weekend and when she comes back she’s always strangely silent. Eliot himself is quiet. His teachers and parents have been working on skills to help him vocalize; but he thrives off of her nonstop chatter and her verbalisation of every thought that fills her head. He’s always been too quiet — for the last two years he would get pulled out to talk to Ms. Hooper on Wednesdays to talk about how to use his words and work on verbal skills. But with her, he doesn’t have to; she has enough words for both of them. And she always knows what Eliot wants to say.
Sometimes he imagines that Archie and their weekend trips are about learning to use less words like his weekly meeting with Ms. Hopper, which Eliot doesn’t understand. How are you supposed to know what’s the right number of words? It’s easier to stay quiet and let Parker use both his and her words.
Parker doesn’t make him talk like everyone and besides normally she has enough words for both of them.
Eliot is eight years old when the adoption is finalized.
She’s his ever present shadow and his friends from school don’t understand why he puts up being friends with a baby. He doesn’t understand her, but yet understands her perfectly. She only eats chicken nuggets and grilled cheeses but only if they’re in the shape of dinosaurs and she leaves the crusts for Eliot to eat.
She’s different in all the best ways possible. Eliot wrinkles his nose at his friends and declares her the most important person in the history of ever.
Eliot is nine years old the first time she climbs through his window from the darkness of night with bruises in the shape of handprints on her arms.
Eliot doesn’t ask who they're from, he might be nine but he knows the handprints are from her fathers. She hides under his covers, cries into her rabbit, and is gone by the time the sun rises. Eliot’s parents don’t know about their secret and if her parents know, they don’t say anything. Her father is scary — even more so than Uncle Archie — and he doesn’t know how to fix this for her.
So, Eliot promises her between his Power Ranger sheets with all the might of a fourth grader that he’ll be her protector.
Eliot is ten years old when she starts hiding important things in his closet.
It’s things she didn’t want her parents to take, things she didn’t want to lose. Eliot can’t stop the bruises her adopted father gives her, but he can protect what little things she declares to be important. Archie has been taking her away on weekend trips more and more, and the only reprieve for Eliot is that the only bruises she has after those weekends are the normal scraps and bruises from bumping into things.
Archie doesn’t hurt her. He doesn’t like Archie, but his best friend does, so he smiles at the older man and plays nice.
Eliot is eleven years old when her rabbit is placed into his closet for safe keeping.
Her father took it away as punishment for her grades not being up to his standards and she doesn’t want to lose Bunny again. She hesitates when she leaves it. She’s scared that when she turns around and climbs out the window that Bunny will disappear. Eliot promises the nine year old that he’ll guard the stuffed animal with his life.
Besides, she spends more time hidden under Eliot’s covers then her own anyway.
Eliot is fourteen years old when she tells him to call her Parker now.
He doesn’t question her. She’s a weird and crazy and his best friend. If she wants to be Parker then she’ll be Parker. It’s three weeks after that her birth certificate is added to the box of things that are mentally labeled as hers in his closet.
Eliot knows why she took it, the bruises have gotten worse, and weekends with Archie are becoming fewer and farther between.
Eliot is fifteen when he joins the football team. Parker watches every game bundled in his letterman jacket and complains to whoever’s nearest about the Oklahoma cold.
Parker never misses a game and by the end of the season, Eliot is named starting quarterback for the next school year.
Eliot is sixteen when Parker climbs through his window shortly after school lets out and launches herself into his arms already crying.
Parker doesn’t tell him what happened, but Eliot knows. There are hand prints on her throat, red and bruising. There is another set of hands imprinted into her wrists. There is a raging anger burning in him. Parker’s father is out of town on a business trip to Tulsa. It couldn’t have been him, these are red and fresh and her father has been gone for three days.
He asks, “Who did this to you, Parker?” and after a moment she answers.
Eliot is sixteen the first time he gets suspended from school.
He sits in the principal's office with a bloody lip and bloody knuckles and tells him he regrets nothing because his linebacker touched Parker. She’s supposed to be safe when her father is gone. He doesn’t leave often, and Archie hasn’t visited in well over a year. Her only reprieve from the hand prints and vile words is business trips.
Eliot sets his jaw, takes his punishment — from the school and his parents — and doesn’t let Parker out of his sight for two weeks. Parker is supposed to be safe with him and he let her down.
Eliot is seventeen when he gives Aimee Martin a promise ring. Parker helped him pick out the ring. He wants to spend forever with Parker by his side and Aimee as his wife. He promises to love Aimee forever while in the backseat of his father’s Chevy. He says it in the same sure tone he told Parker he’d protect her forever. He knows that his days in this town are numbered, so he might as well hold on to what he wants to take with him.
He’s seventeen when Parker starts doing things he pretends to not see. He doesn’t see her steal wallets and jewelry and he doesn’t tell anyone when she gets away with it. Parker always gets away with it. He helps her count stolen money and drives to pawn shops six hours away on weekends to help her sell the jewelry she doesn’t want to keep.
Eliot is eighteen when he enlists.
He fights with his father about it until they reach a boiling point and Eliot promises Billy Spencer he ain’t ever gonna to come back. He kisses Aimee goodbye at the bus stop, and holds Parker tight against his chest.
He promises Aimee that he loves her. He whispers to Parker that it’s going to be okay.
He’s nineteen when his Aimee breaks up with him. Aimee didn’t send him letters, just asked when Eliot called when he’ll be home. He never had an answer and she moved on.
He’s nineteen when he realizes that Parker is still more important to him than anyone else in the world. Parker sends him letters. More than he can count in his two years in service. He keeps each one, and realizes that they probably mean more to him than Aimee’s phone calls ever did.
He’s twenty when he takes leave in Corpus Christie. Parker meets him on base and crashes into him the second she sees him. She’s grown up, or maybe she’s just left their suffocating town and her abusive father and it looks better on her then military service looks on him.
He knows what she’s doing to fund her life. He knows that he probably has a responsibility to report crimes seeing as he has a flag on his sleeve and metals on his chest, but he doesn’t. He drives her to a pawn shop miles away from base and they fence her stolen goods. She steals the whole week he’s with her, wallets and Jewelry sticking to her fingers like she doesn’t even fully comprehend she’s doing it.
They don’t talk about it.
He’s twenty-one, in Lakewood, New Jersey on a Naval base because he’s being loaned out like he’s an object to be borrowed and passed around. Parker visits him and they only have an afternoon before Eliot is on a plane back to the Middle East. They end up in Manhattan because New Jersey is nothing but a gateway to a bigger city.
Eliot spends the whole morning watching Parker take anything that’s in arm's reach and he’s the only one who is any wiser. By mid-afternoon they’re in Central Park and Parker is holding a pair of rings she’d stolen earlier in the day.
“What if we got married?” She asks and Eliot blinks at the wedding rings she had stolen.
“We don’t have to.” He says instead. They’ve never kissed, they’ve not been dating all this time like some might imagine they have been. Like kids in high school used to say. They’ve just been Eliot and Parker. The same as they’ve been since they were children.
“Maybe I can see you more if I’m your wife.” She says, like that's a logical reason to get married. Like United States military leave takes into account spouses when they determine who gets what.
He thinks about it. Looking at the stolen rings clasped between her fingers — one for a woman and one for a man — and doesn’t say, “If we get married you’ll get my benefits, and if I’m killed you’ll be taken care of for the rest of your life.”
Instead he says, “Fuck it.”
They’re married in a Court House two hours later with a stuffed bunny and the ordained judge’s secretary as their only witness.
Eliot is twenty-two when the name Parker starts getting whispered even in his circles of black op elites. He’s scared to lose her, he’s scared she'll get hurt, he’s scared she'll get caught.
Parker isn’t the name on their marriage certificate, or the benefit paperwork. But he’s scared they’ll catch her and he won’t be there to protect her.
Eliot is twenty-three and then without warning he’s twenty-four. The time blurs together as he scrubs government sanctioned blood off his hands. He scrubs and scrubs and his hands will never be clean again. He scrubs and scrubs and maybe he doesn’t deserve Parker anymore. Her fingers aren’t clean but his crimes are worse than hers.
Eliot is twenty-five when he’s offered the opportunity to be honorably discharged in exchange for doing contract work for the military. The pay is better, but the jobs are worse. He’s already got so much blood on his hands that it doesn’t matter anymore.
At least he can see Parker more.
Eliot is twenty-six the first time he and Parker do a job together. They steal a painting from the Louvre in broad daylight. They don’t get caught, Parker never gets caught, and Eliot isn’t afraid to throw a punch if need be.
They crash back into a Paris hotel and have sex for the first time. It’s passion and love and Eliot takes care of her just like he always has.
Eliot is twenty-seven and he builds a name for himself. He doesn’t steal — he won’t take the title of thief from Parker — he retrieves things that have been misplaced. He’s a thief in all but name.
He steals lives too, when the military sets a contract in front of him or enough money has been put on the table that he can’t refuse.
Eliot is twenty-eight and he and Parker make an effort to make sure no one knows of their connection. Parker’s safe houses are his safe house and what’s his is hers. Eliot works with bad people, worse people than the increasingly higher level thugs and mobsters and monsters who hire Parker to steal for them. He wants to keep her safe. She wants to be known as Parker, the greatest thief who's ever lived and she doesn’t need a partner for that. So they crash into each other when they can, but keep their careers utterly separate.
He’s twenty-eight when he takes a contract from Damien Moreau. He kills a man, and Moreau decides to keep him around.
He’s twenty-nine and then he’s thirty, and then thirty-one. He stands by Moreau’s side with a wicked smile, and does anything the man says he should do. There is nothing Eliot Spencer won’t do for Damien Moreau.
Eliot is thirty-two when he kills for Moreau — not for the first time but the first time Eliot registers it as being a kill of pure convenience. It’s not deserved; it’s not to send a message. It’s a kill because Damien had a whim to see a man dead and it’s Eliot’s job to see to Damien Moreau’s whims and fantasies.
He’s thirty-three when Moreau asks for Parker to be brought to him. He needs a thief and Damien Moreau only hires the best of the best. Eliot’s life skids to a halt the second he hears Damien Moreau say his wife's name.
Him and Parker have a routine, they have their shared life and their careers. They don’t mix. Even if they did, Eliot would rather kill himself than hand Parker over to a man like Damien Moreau. His boss doesn’t seem to know their connection; Eliot is just his retriever and he just has to retrieve the girl.
Eliot is thirty-three when he tells Moreau after six months of a wild goose chase that he was unable to find Parker anywhere, and not long after that Eliot tells Moreau he's walking away for now.
Moreau lets him leave and it’s a minor miracle. Eliot has all of Damien Moreau’s secrets and he was able to just leave like it was nothing. Eliot spends a week scrubbing his hands until they bleed, he only stops when Parker gets to their shared safe-house and pulls him into bed.
Eliot is thirty-four and he pretty much exclusively works for the government again. Parker doesn’t ask about it, but they’re spending so much time together again just the two of them that he doesn't think she would protest to anything he was doing.
Eliot is thirty-five and he's back on his feet. No more guns and no more killing. He makes sure that no matter how hard he works, after every job he returns home to Parker.
Eliot is thirty-six and Victor Dubenich hires him for a one and done walk away. He doesn’t work with people — not since Moreau — and Dubenich won’t tell him the names of the other people.
He takes the job as a leap of faith.