i’m just obsessed with the fact that the three of them still work so many years later. from what i’ve gotten textually from the show, yes, hardison and parker are dating, but the family unit is hardison/parker/eliot.
hardison and parker are shown to be physically affectionate, but there’s an electric and stable type of connectedness between all of them showing how in each other’s lives they have been:
eliot and hardison pointing where the stolen art belong,
parker and eliot always ending up together,
parker and hardison getting excited together,
the inside jokes,
the big decision making.
parker highlights his emotional connection to this specific team and eliot brings out his sense of duty. the other couldn’t provide the emotional support the other can, but as a unit, there’s help at every corner. parker still has eliot who has been her partner in (undoing) crime for years. eliot has parker, his partner that keeps him sharp. and both of them rest easy knowing hardison is using his big heart for good.
however, while canon has established that they have thoroughly,
thoroughly,
thoroughly
been in each other’s lives, it has not been explicitly stated it’s a polyamorous thing. canon, for me, would be them saying in no uncertain terms that eliot has also lived with them, or something like that. or perhaps, they would establish it in the middle of the second half of the season.
that being said, i have an enormous amount of fun with the show, and for whatever reason we haven’t been able to get our canon ot3, i’m so happy we see them as a family first and foremost, because it would have been so easy to let that disappear between the years.
