Archive of Our Own (BETA rev. 2101)

"I miss Peggy," Parker says.

The client is a woman a little like Peggy might be, after a year of what amounts to indentured servitude to a 'technical college' which teaches no useful skills at a wildly inflated price.

The others look at one another. "Do you want to go back to L.A. and see her?" asks Sophie. Sophie still goes to L.A. to read for commercials and music videos and the like.

"Alice White is still a clean identity," offers Hardison. "She moved up here after we did, but she can afford to take a plane down a couple times a month, if she wants. Hell, the company should probably buy a share in a private plane, anyway."

"No," says Parker, decisively. "I didn't like being Alice. I liked being with Peggy. And Peggy only knew Alice." Her eyes shift to look at Nate, and her mouth is round and sly. "Can I be friends with—?"

"No," says Nate. "Too many things go wrong when the job is personal. Remember your little ice cream trip?"

Parker shrugs and says, "I bet a cheap school like that has cheap locks. They only need to keep students out, right?"

---

Maggie is not part of the team. Maggie has a clean public reputation, and only Stirling and Stirling's goons can connect her to Eliot, Parker, Hardison, or Sophie. Everyone knows she's Nate's ex-wife, and some people, too many for comfort really, know that Nate is on the breaking it side of the law. But again, only Stirling and Stirling's goons know that Maggie knows anything about Nate's trespasses.

The public story is that they're talking out their son's death, the additional damage heaped on them by Nate's addiction, by a divorce that happened so fast and so fairly that neither of them really felt the difference between the end of their marriage and Nate sleeping it off on the couch.

Privately, she and Nate and Sophie are working something out that Parker does not understand and doesn't really want to. What has Parker interested is that Maggie is a woman who knows about Parker—knows as much about Parker as her teammates do—and these two things together make her a candidate, the only candidate, for Parker's new girlfriend. Friend who is a girl.

She calls Maggie. "Would you like to go rock climbing?"

Maggie says, "I don't know an Ernestine Smart and none of my friends rock climb. I think you have the wrong number."

"No. It's Parker. And I would like to be your friend. And I like rock climbing. So I thought we should…do that."

"Oh!" says Maggie. "You're one of Nate's, um, friends."

Parker does not know the word for her relationship with Nate, but she knows that word is not friend. She says, "Yes," any way. Sophie has impressed on her the importance of being agreeable with people when you are trying to get them to do things for you.

"I don't think I would make a good rock climber," says Maggie.

Parker nods. She had asked Peggy to go rock climbing also, and Peggy had said no. Parker thinks maybe being named Margaret makes you hate vertical motion. "Coffee? There are some very nice coffee shops in Portland."

Maggie stammers a bit and finally says, "I'll be with Nate, the next time I'm in Portland."

Parker lets the silence linger a little too long. She can tell it's too long because it's longer than fifteen seconds, but she doesn't know what exactly Maggie was getting at, by saying she will be with Nate. "Are you rejecting my offer of friendship?" she asks finally.

Maggie exhales really loudly but doesn't say anything else.

"You can say yes," says Parker, and then hangs up, because she's not stupid.

She walks down the hall to Nate's office, but he's already on his cell phone saying, "Yes, Sweetheart?"

She goes to Sophie's and says, "I don't care that I make people uncomfortable but I would like to have one friend."

Sophie looks up at her. "Did something happen with Hardison?"

Parker blinks. "Not as far as I know." She cocks her head to the side. "I don't want to be friends with Hardison. I want to be friends with a woman."

Sophie doesn't say anything, and Parker doesn't know why. Conversation is supposed to be an exchange of information.

"Maggie," says Parker, and she doesn't know what to say after that.

"Oh," says Sophie. "No, that wouldn't work, would it?" She tilts her head to the side. "Do you want to be my friend or do you want me to teach you how to be friends with other people?"

Parker shrugs. "I need to be friends with someone who knows what I am."

"Which means me or Maggie. Or perhaps a former client." She pulls a sheet from the pad on the upper right corner of her desk, and places it on the naked wood in front of her. "Tell me what a friend is." She has a cheap, disposable pen in one hand and waves at the seat in front of the desk with the other.

"You know," says Parker. "Better than me." Parker knows she's bad with people, so she's getting some expert help. Sophie is great with people, so why she wants information from Parker, Parker couldn't imagine.

Sophie sits back in her chair and Parker can see the arms of it falling from the shift in weight. "Parker, there's a lot of different ways to be friends with someone. I don't know who you were with Peggy. I don't know if you've ever had other friends or who you were with them." She lists off on her fingers, "There are people you do things with. There are people you talk to about your life. There are people you talk to about your emotions. There are people you exchange favors with. There are people with whom you form alliances. There are people who would consider all of this," she waved her hand from one side of the room to another, "an exercise in friendship."

Parker thinks about that for a second, tries to put it all together. "I want someone to like me. I want to know that they like me."

Sophie shrugs. "Hardison likes you."

Parker shakes her head. "Hardison wants to fuck me. It's not the same."

"No," says Sophie slowly, "liking a person and wanting to have sex with them aren't the same, but someone can do both at the same time to the same person. I really think Hardison both likes you and wants to fuck you." She shrugs. "But it is difficult to really be friends with a man who wants to fuck you; the sex gets over everything."

Parker nods. That isn't exactly what she meant. It's more that, if someone wants something from you, you can't tell—she can't tell—if they're nice because they like you or because of the thing they want, and that's especially true with sex. "So, how do I make you like me?" she asks.

Sophie freezes. It's interesting, because it's not as if Sophie was moving very much before, but now all her muscles are tensed, like she's hiding in a niche and depending on some guard's poor peripheral vision for safety. She's wearing shiny clothes and jewelry loose enough to swing a little, so it probably wouldn't work. "It won't work with me," she says slowly. "You'll never know if I'm lying about it."

"Hardison wants to fuck me. Nate needs me for the team to work. Eliot wants me to go away. You don't want anything from me. I don't even own artwork or jewelry; my cache is all currency and bearer bonds and precious metals and unset stones."

"You're wrong about Eliot, you know?" Sophie relaxes, muscle by muscle, like she's hoping the guard has really gone around the corner.

"He calls me crazy and looks at me like I'm dangerous. I know what that means," says Parker.

"Sweetheart," says Sophie, her voice soft like a new social worker's, "he's stopped doing that, because he doesn't feel like that anymore."

Parker doesn't believe anything said in a voice like that, not to her. She nods and smiles anyway, because it makes it stop faster.

"You don't believe me," says Sophie. "Why?" She puts up a hand. "No, never mind." She turns to the side and reaches next to her desk, pulls out a matte black & white trifold brochure, puts it on the desk between them. "Eliot suggested I try this, in case he can't get there fast enough."

Parker pulls the brochure to her. She can read upside down, but she'd rather re-align herself and the text. "Parkour?"

Sophie nods. "He described it as the discipline of running away."

Parker puts the brochure down. "You should take Hardison with you. You both depend on talking, but it won't work if they want to hurt you."

Sophie shakes her head. "Hardison wanted to learn how to fight." She jerks her head to one side, like she's trying to get Parker to look somewhere, but there's nothing in the corner. "I thought maybe you and I could try this out, see if we could like each other."

"What?" asks Parker.

Sophie shrugs. "If being friends means liking each other and knowing it," she pauses until Parker replays the phrase mentally and hears the rising intonation, then nods, "well, I don't know if you like me. If you could like me."

"Everyone likes you," says Parker. "I'm not that…different."

Sophie goes still again, and then she says, slowly, "You don't like Sophie. She likes things just because they are pretty or sexy, and you don't care. She likes shopping for clothes and other wearables, and you only care about finding the equipment that will do things most efficiently. Maybe also cleverly or minimally. Sophie likes money because it makes things comfortable. I think, I'm not sure but I think, you like money because it makes you strong. Sophie enjoys manipulating other people and their emotions. You're aware that other people have emotions but you have little to no idea how or why people's emotions change or how one recognizes the emotions other people have. You ignore your own emotions and only allow them to influence you in the sense that they fuel your somatic state."

Parker gets up to leave. She knows that friendship is reciprocal, and when Sophie puts it that way, she can see the truth. It's not that she dislikes Sophie, but she likes Hardison and Eliot more, even though Hardison wants to fuck her and Eliot is—was?—afraid of her. Sophie has something she wants, unencumbered emotional approval, but Sophie can't get it from her in exchange.

Maybe she'll ask Hardison about making friends with the computer.

"Parker. I said you don't like Sophie." She shakes her head, just a little. "I didn't say you wouldn't like me."

Parker recoils a bit, and almost bumps into the little table by the door, not expecting her own physical reaction. "Are you…really crazy?"

"I don't have multiple personalities, if that's what you're asking." She beckons with her hand. "Come on, Parker, sit back down."

Parker waits but nothing is said and neither of them move. Parker eventually decides that the options are sitting and leaving, and chooses sitting. Parker can always leave later, but it's not clear that returning actually is an option. Crazy people are okay if they're predictable, but the crazy people who are good at pretending to be regular, Parker doesn't know how to tell if they'll be predictably crazy or even more unpredictable than everyone else.

"Alice is a role, yes?" Her necklace, cheap glass jewelry which can't retail for more than seventy-five American, swings a little when she puts her forearms on the desk. "She had your ideas and emotions and thoughts and beliefs, but you weighted them a certain way to make Peggy more comfortable."

Parker thinks about that and says, "I didn't tell her things she didn't know or that weren't in Alice's file." Is that an agreement or not? Parker doesn't know.

"Sophie is also a role, one I use for people who know I'm a grifter. I've let that slip some, with Nate, with the rest of you. But I could let it slip more, with you, if you wanted to see if we can be friends."

Parker thinks about that, thinks that maybe the unknown things about the not-just-a-grifter across the desk might be likeable. "But Parker isn't a role for me. If you don't like me already, it's not going to work."

She laughs, and it's not her usual smooth trill, it's more of a gross-sounding snorty thing. "I like you. Sophie," she raises her hand, shakes it from side to side, "Sophie sort of ignores people she can't emotionally manipulate. But I like people like that, I like not knowing what the next thing to come out of your mouth will be."

"Huh," says Parker, and her shoulders go loose, which is a surprise, because Parker hadn't even noticed they'd tensed up. "I don't like coffee. Let's go get sodas."

---

Parker traces a thumb over the Chocolate Bar™ logo on the cup. Sometimes when they come here, Parker thinks there's a temperature difference between the lettering and the unprinted parts of the cup. Last month's theory was that it was true for hot beverages, like the hot chocolate in December, and not for the fall's iced Italian sodas. But Parker has an egg cream today, and it's the same cold all over the label.

"What do you want to do today?"

Parker looks up and shrugs. It doesn't make any difference, what they do today. The important thing is to spend time with a friend, and, really, they could just sit in The Chocolate Bar for a couple of hours and not talk, and Parker would be happy. But that's not how their friendship works. They have a drink, and decide what to do, and then they do it. And if one of them's not done having a friend, sometimes they have dinner afterwards. "You wanted to go case that museum last month."

"I wanted to see a traveling Chinoiserie exhibition, not steal it. Porcelain's too fragile." She puts down her cup and says, "What do we usually do?"

Parker ticks the usual suspects off finger by finger. "Case something. Watch a heist movie and figure out how to do the job in real life. Talk about Nate or Hardison. Go for a parkour run. Talk about investments. Teach each other stuff."

"Hmmph." She looks out a window.

Parker follows her gaze. It's cloudy and drizzly, but it doesn't look like it's going to really rain any time soon.

"I just want to curl up on my bed and nap for a couple of hours."

"Okay," says Parker.

"I—what?"

"I could take a nap with you, if that's what you want to do."

"Oh," she says. "I didn't—I…."

"You can say no." Parker looks away, gives her a second to pull herself back together.

The silence lasts a very long time, so the egg cream is finished before Parker restarts the conversation by asking, "What's your name?"

"Sophie?" she says, doubtfully.

Parker disagrees with a headshake. "If Sophie is a role with a name, then doesn't 'Parker's friend' have its own name?"

They've argued, a couple of times, about whether or not Parker's friend is a role. Parker is really just expecting some sort of impassioned speech about roleplaying and friendship and whatnot, but instead is answered, "Hermia. My mother loved Shakespeare, did I ever tell you that?"

"No," says Parker. "We've never talked about family."

"Hmmph," says Hermia. She stands up and grabs her empty cup and the lid and the napkin she used to dab at her mouth. "Come on. I really am tired."

"Okay," says Parker. "So, we're going to take a nap?"

Hermia's walking away from the table, and she nods without looking back.