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Eliot is weird about food.
That’s one of the first things Parker learns about him, beyond him being grumpy and a good hitter (and also, not scary, despite the other two things).
She learns this while working the job for Theresa Palermo while the team is posing as wedding consultants for Moscone’s daughter. Eliot spends the con in the Moscone’s kitchen while she spends it in a very pink, very itchy bridesmaid dress, so she doesn’t have time to catalogue this fact as interesting or not in the moment, and Eliot’s rants about lemon and basil and poaching peaches go in one ear and out the other.
Later, when the job is done and the team celebrates their victory with Theresa at her husband’s restaurant, she won’t be distracted by the team’s voices buzzing in her ear over the coms, the scratchy fabric against her skin, or Hardison’s comment about the dress looking nice on her (she’ll have catalogued it already and found it Interesting), Eliot will come out of the kitchen of the little Italian restaurant with plates of food. And she’ll notice that, while the rest of them dig in, he mostly just sits there and watches.
Interesting.
Maybe he wasn’t very hungry. Or maybe he didn’t like the food very much (even though he made it?). Parker can understand that; the food was good, but she has food she would rather eat, given the choice. Like cereal.
Maybe Eliot had cereal at home?
The question is just as distracting as itchy dresses, so even though it’s late, Parker, compelled to scratch the itch, leaves her warehouse to get the answer.
Eliot’s place is easy to find (she’s known where he lives for weeks now) and just as easy to get into. She slides quietly and effortlessly through his apartment window and makes her way in the dark to the kitchen.
Nothing on the counters. At least, nothing that could be classified as cereal; he’s got various containers and jars laying around, but none of them have cereal in them. She moves on to the cabinets, slowly opening the one closest to the fridge—
“How the hell did you get in here?”
The cabinet closes with a dull thud as Parker startles at the sound of Eliot’s voice (but only a little, because Eliot isn’t scary and this is his house), and she turns as the light flicks on to reveal him standing there in a t-shirt and sweatpants, looking at her with sleepy confusion.
“The window,” she says pointedly, hoping it’s very clear to him how easy it was. “You don’t have a security system.”
“I am the security system.”
She doesn’t bother to point out that security systems are meant to keep threats from getting in, and she was able to get all the way to his kitchen and snoop around.
“Maybe the question I should be askin’,” Eliot continues as he scrubs a hand down his face, “is why the hell you’re here.”
Oh, right. “Cereal.”
Eliot’s hand falls back to his side as he squints at her across the room. “Huh?”
“Cereal,” she repeats in the most patient way she can manage, slow enough that Eliot’s sleep-addled brain can keep up. “I was wondering if you had any.”
“You’re in my house in the middle of the damn night for cereal.”
It’s not a question, but she hears skepticism in his tone. “Why else?”
“Well.” He gives her a searching look before sucking air between his teeth as he comes further into the room. “Normally, late night guests are either here for emergencies or…non-emergencies.”
Parker’s brow furrows as she looks at him questioningly; wouldn’t that just be everything?
“Oh my god,” he groans, rolling his eyes, “no, I don’t have cereal, Parker, buy your own.”
“I have my own,” she retorts, hands on her hips. The implication that she’d have to resort to buying something as easy to obtain as cereal is almost offensive. As if she of all people couldn’t just get it whenever she wanted. “I needed to see if you did because you barely ate anything at the Palermo’s restaurant, but you don’t even have anything good to eat here, so why didn’t you?”
There is some relief to the itch of the curiosity now that she’s asked the question directly, but the answer doesn’t come right away. Instead, the kitchen is silent as Eliot glances away, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Didn’t really make it for me,” he says after a moment. “Made it for y’all.”
That doesn’t make sense either. They can all feed themselves, she’s sure. “Why?”
“Just ‘cause,” he says with a shrug before looking at her again. “I like to cook.”
“Oh.” Parker considers that a moment, then nods decisively. “Okay,” she says as she heads back to the window.
“‘Okay’ she says,” she hears Eliot mutter, and then he raises his voice as she pulls herself back through the window into the night air. “Weird conversation to have in the middle of the night. Glad you’re satisfied!”
Definitely satisfied. Parker steals things just because she can, more often than not. Eliot cooks just because he likes to. Not weird at all.
Still interesting.
~
Eliot likes to cook. Parker does not.
Cooking requires patience and a whole lot of time, at the end of which leaves you with a mishmash of a bunch of surprise flavors and textures. Some of them are gross.
No thank you. She’ll stick to her quick and safe foods that she knows and loves. Like cereal!
At least when she’s alone. When she’s with everyone else, it’s a different story because Eliot likes to cook, and even though Parker doesn’t, she likes that he likes to cook.
Because Eliot is very good at cooking.
He makes all kinds of things Parker has never even thought of trying. Beef bulgogi, jambalaya, butternut squash risotto, all things that, if anyone else tried to feed her, she’d very quickly pass on.
But she trusts Eliot to catch her when she jumps out of windows, so she might as well trust the food he makes for her and the team.
She’s never fallen, and it’s always delicious, so when Eliot slices off a piece of bell pepper for a salad he’s making and wordlessly holds it out to her, she leans forward across the island counter in Nate’s apartment and takes it from him, enjoying the satisfying crunch as she bites into it.
“Don’t I get some?” Hardison asks over top of a wine glass full of orange soda.
A quick slice of the knife and Eliot has another piece, which he holds out in Hardison’s direction. Hardison doesn’t move.
“Nah, you gotta feed me,” he says, grinning. “Slowww-lyyy,” he adds, drawing the word out.
In response, Eliot scoffs and lobs the slice of pepper, which drops into the wine glass with a plop.
“Dude, really?” Hardison protests. “You don’t mess with a man’s drink.”
“Barely counts as a drink, first of all,” Eliot retorts, “and second, you don’t mess with a man who can decide not to feed your ass.”
“Ay!”
Parker listens to them squabble, Hardison pointing at him with the bell pepper he fished out of his glass while Eliot gestures with his knife to punctuate his argument, knowing that, in the end, Hardison will get a plate full of food no matter how much Eliot threatens otherwise.
That’s how it always goes.
~
Reaping the benefits of Eliot’s skill is all well and good, but Parker likes watching that skill in action just as much, if not more so.
There’s something about the way that Eliot chops and slices, stirs and flips…she never gave much thought to any of those actions before, but if she had, she might have categorized them as mundane or ordinary, like skipping rocks. Or taking the stairs instead of bungee jumping off the side of a high-rise. Boring.
But cooking isn’t boring at all, at least not when Eliot does it. There’s a certain finesse to it, similar to how Sophie can suddenly become someone completely different in a matter of seconds, or how Hardison can hack the strictest of security systems or access any information he wants to get, or how she herself can crack any safe with just the right touch.
Parker has spent quite a few hours watching Eliot work, watching him flip and pour and stir and chop. He makes it look easy, but there’s no way that she could dice celery with the speed that he does or toss stir fry in a pan without spilling it all like he can.
It must take a lot of control, she reasons, which makes sense. The hands he uses to cook are the same ones he uses to incapacitate the bad guys he faces off against on a regular basis, the same hands he’s offered to kill for her with. That definitely takes skill, which Eliot possesses in spades. Maybe the skill transfers over? Same control, just…gentler. More delicate.
Whatever the reason, she never gets tired of watching him in the kitchen.
“Parker, you’re hoverin’.”
Eliot only minds sometimes. He throws her a scowl that she ignores as she leans farther into his space to watch as he dices up a carrot to discover the secret behind his talent. Proximity has the opposite effect, though, since the knife stills as Eliot grumbles.
“How do you do that?” she asks, looking up at him.
It seems to take a moment for Eliot to hear the genuine interest in the question, but the scowl slowly morphs into something a little kinder as he stares down at her. “Cut vegetables? Ain’t hard.”
Cutting vegetables is a start, though she meant the cooking process in general. How does he know what spices to add? Why does he pair certain dishes together? What is the point of the green things he puts on the side of their plates sometimes that they’re not supposed to eat?
As she rifles through the list of questions in her head, trying to figure out which one is most important to ask first, Eliot sets the knife down on the cutting board and side-steps away from her.
“It’s not,” he insists, apparently mistaking her silence for doubt. “Try.”
Oh, that’s…really not what she wanted. Her interest in food doesn’t really go beyond eating it, but she also doesn’t want to look like she’s backing down from something she doesn’t think she can do. She moves to take his place in front of the cutting board and grabs the very sharp looking knife. It’s heavy, much heavier than any she’s held (she had a few pocketknives she used as a teen) and glints in the light as she holds it up. Grabbing one end of a carrot, she places the blade over the end of the other side, lining it up. Then, she cuts down, meeting some resistance as she does before pressing a little harder and slicing through, hitting the cutting board below.
There’s no satisfying chopping sound like when Eliot does it, and it’s not as graceful of a movement as she’s seen from him as she slides the carrot forward slightly, lifts the knife up again, and repeats the same movement.
After the third slice, Eliot steps a little closer. “It’s not a straight down motion,” he says. He grabs another knife out of the stand, this one thinner but just as sharp and pointy looking and slides another carrot across the board. “More like forward and down. The tip rests on the cutting board and you raise the back end up, slicing down that way.” He demonstrates as he talks, then looks to her.
Parker follows his instructions, the knife cutting through much easier this time. Eliot nods when she glances back at him.
“The knife slides over as you go, not the carrot,” he continues, demonstrating once again.
It’s hard to follow precisely what he’s doing, and at her look of confusion he puts his knife down again.
“Easier if…can I?”
Parker trusts Eliot even when she’s not holding sharp objects, so she lets him reach around to place his hand over hers on the knife, keeping a respectful (enough) distance while doing so. His hand feels as gentle as it always seems when working with food, and just as capable.
“Tip of it’s down already,” he goes on, “so slice, slide, slice, slide…”
The feel of the movement seems easy enough, and after a moment, Eliot lets her lead them.
“There you go,” he says, letting go altogether once it’s clear she’s got it and stepping away. Parker feels the absence of his warmth and suppresses a shiver. “See, ain’t hard, right?”
She finishes slicing the rest of the carrot and smiles triumphantly. “Right.”
“Good,” Eliot replies, a returning half-smile on his face. “Now make yourself useful and finish those up or get the hell out of the way.”
She makes a face at him as she grabs another carrot and starts cutting away, the task much easier now. Still not quite as speedy as Eliot, or as elegant, but manageable at the very least. She does a good job, if she does say so herself.
Even though she gets a little distracted watching Eliot’s hands as he continues on to something else, mesmerized.
~
“Too many cooks in the kitchen makes the soup taste like shit” according to Eliot, which is always code for “everyone get the hell out of my kitchen before I beat you to death. Except for you, Parker, you can stay.”
He never actually says that last part, but it’s implied, and most of the time, Parker stays. She stays and learns from him, either by watching or by doing, depending on her mood. The doing part is never perfect, but for all that he can be high-strung about food and in general, Eliot never demonstrates more patience than when he’s teaching her something new.
Parker appreciates all the facets of Eliot’s personality but likes kitchen Eliot a lot. When things are going right, the hard edges to him sand down a little, his steps are lighter, his smiles easier. When she isn’t helping (which is more than half the time), she likes to sit on the kitchen counter because it’s the highest point from which to observe. It’s also a good angle for when Eliot, who has long since given up griping at her for doing so, glances up to explain what it is he’s doing, and she gets to see the open contentment there, along with something that makes her feel like she’s snugly wrapped in a heavy blanket.
It's the same thing she sees in his gaze when he looks at Hardison and they do that secret handshake of theirs, solid and warm and true, proof that whatever they all have is just different versions of “a little more than a team”. For Eliot and Hardison, it’s a loud and benignly antagonistic version of that, whereas she and Eliot’s version is quiet provocation or just quiet existence. And then she and Hardison…she and Hardison have pretzels.
Pretzels are maybe a lot more than a team.
Feelings are complicated, and though she’s slowly learning how to deal with them, big and small, she’s still not great at it. Sometimes, it’s easier to put off the Big Feelings and find a distraction, and luckily, she’s found one that calms her instead of amping her up with adrenaline. Even luckier that she’s gotten good at knowing when Big Feelings are being felt across the board, because that’s when she knows she can go to Eliot’s.
Eliot cooks for the team at Nate’s, most often after they finish a job and they have time to sit down and breathe, but he also cooks at his apartment by himself. Most often when he’s having his own Big Feelings. He doesn’t seem to mind her company; her favorite spot on the counter’s already cleared off when she arrives and there’s two plates out for when the food is ready.
The night that the team lands back home after the job in San Lorenzo, they go their separate ways as usual. Parker makes her way back to her warehouse, body tired but mind wide awake with thoughts of the past few days, of the events that transpired and the revelations that came into light about Eliot’s past with Damien Moreau.
He had said that the worst thing he ever did was for Moreau. Parker’s curiosity was cut short by a tearful plea not to ask what it was, and she didn’t. She won’t. Not ever.
She suspects that there’s more, that Eliot had to do something else unspeakable before they eventually caught and took Moreau down. It was there on his face as they chased Moreau to San Lorenzo, a resigned, unrepentant grief that he didn’t explain. Neither did Nate. It’s just as well; that, too, Parker doesn’t need to know.
It isn’t curiosity for answers to Eliot’s deepest secrets that propels her out of bed early the next morning after a restless night of sleep, but the weight of some Big Feeling that sat heavy on her chest as sleep evaded her. With no idea what the feeling is, she makes her way to his apartment and lets herself in.
Something in her unwinds when she’s greeted by the sound of soft instrumental music, a kitchen already in disarray, and Eliot scooping something powdery and white into a mixing bowl. He doesn’t look up as she enters, and she doesn’t announce herself as she takes a moment to watch as he grabs a wooden spoon and begins to stir with some effort. It might be her imagination, but he looks like he stands a little taller, less burdened by the weight of a secret that no one knew he carried.
It's not what she expected to find, but the quick relief in knowing that he’s okay is apparently all she wanted. If Eliot’s okay, then she can be, too.
Everything’s okay.
“You could help,” Eliot says as he glances over at her, voice just as light and untroubled as the music that’s playing, “unless you ain’t hungry.”
Food wasn’t really on her mind, but her stomach suddenly growls, and she realizes how long it hadn’t been.
“What’s my job?” she asks as she goes to the sink to wash her hands.
“Help with this dough,” he replies.
“What are we making?”
“Cinnamon rolls.”
As she comes over, he puts the spoon down and adds more of what she now sees is flour into the bowl of sticky dough, then reaches in and starts to mess with it.
“Too tough to stir now, but not tough enough. Mix the flour into the dough like this,” he says, demonstrating as he speaks like always. Parker watches, transfixed (as always), as his fingers deftly roll and rub the sticky dough. “Called kneading. It’s a little messy but keep adding flour until it isn’t. Little at a time.”
The last remnants of the flour disappear as he grabs a small handful of dough, rips it, then kneads it into another. Then he grabs the measuring cup and adds a little more flour, and she waits expectantly.
“Parker,” he fusses.
She starts a little. “What? I’m listening,” she says defensively.
“To what?” He pushes the bowl over to her. “It’s your turn.”
Making cinnamon rolls turns out to be a long process, but once she’s done with her task and Eliot takes over again, she munches on strawberries and cantaloupe that he instructs her to take out of the fridge and cut up so she’s not quite so hungry. By the time the sweet smell of the rolls starts to waft from the oven, he’s made scrambled eggs and she’s finished the icing to top them with.
They have quite a spread when all is said and done. The first bite Parker takes is of her cinnamon roll, gooey and sweet and warm, and she hums in appreciation and satisfaction with both their efforts. They eat in comfortable silence that continues after they’re both comfortably full, the music a nice background noise. It’s Eliot’s who eventually speaks over it first.
“We did good.”
At first, she thinks he means with the food, but she turns to see something steely in his expression, a serious resolve that his tone reflected, and realizes he means something else. Her gaze flits to his hands on the table.
Because she’s always watching him in the kitchen, she knows how he looks when he works, how he moves, how skillful his hands are. Today, though, that skill looked more careful than normal, easier. Kinder.
Like proving he could be.
Parker doesn’t need proof, regardless of what she doesn’t know about his distant and not-so-distant past.
“We’ll do more,” she replies, and his answering nod tells her he believes her.
They do a lot more, both good and cooking. And eating.
And when they fall down an ice cave, Parker feels. And when they pull Hardison from a grave, she feels. And when he hums to her through the coms in Dubai, she feels.
Eventually, feelings stop being quite so scary, and food continues to be delicious.
~
Parker knows Eliot likes food.
“Teach me to like stuff.”
It’s not until she asks this of him that she realizes he loves it.
Food is yummy. It’s a distraction. It’s something that has a lot of steps but can be fun if you know what you’re doing. In the end, though, it’s just food.
Not to Eliot. For him, she learns that it was never a distraction from feelings. In fact, all the times she was distracting herself from feelings she was too afraid to have, he was feeling all over the place.
And sharing those feelings with everyone else.
Of course, because she asks, he teaches her, and she learns what food can mean and how to feel things in a new way.
“Taste this,” Eliot says, dipping a spoon into a pan full of thick sauce and holding it up to her.
Parker closes her eyes and leans forward where she sits on the counter. She lets him feed it to her, lets the flavors coat her tongue, savoring them for just a moment.
“Hmm,” she replies contemplatively, “kind of nutty. Very creamy.”
Eliot’s eyes light up. “And?”
“Makes me think of jumping in a pile of leaves.”
He chuckles at that. “It’s velouté.”
She has no idea what that is but likes how pleased he looks. “Cool,” she says earnestly, a warm fondness in her chest.
Feeling things has never tasted so good.
Food becomes a language she and Eliot both speak. Given that he’s had far more practice, Eliot’s much more fluent, but Parker’s pretty good, too.
So good, in fact, she begins to identify something specific in each dish that Eliot makes when Sophie and Nate aren’t around, when it’s just him, her, and Hardison. Something that’s familiar, something that’s sweet and fervent, something that makes her feel safe and like she’s free falling all at once.
When she shares this with Hardison, he gives her both a theory and a confession that he knows the feeling too.
So does she, she realizes.
“So…what do we do?” Hardison asks when they’ve sat with their twin confessions for long enough.
Feelings are meant to be felt and shared, and since she’s long stopped being afraid to feel, she replies, “See if we’re right.”
~
“Taste this,” Eliot says.
“Kiss me first,” Parker replies.
Theory confirmed.
“Think I want me a taste, too.”
“Dammit, Hardison…c’mere.”
~
The warm smell of sweet spices and sugar wafting around the kitchen makes Parker feel cozy. She slices down with her knife once, twice, three times, chopping a handful of pecans into smaller pieces before inhaling deeply, making her mouth water a little as she does.
“Don’t make ‘em too small.”
She glances up at Eliot across the kitchen island. With a red bandana in his hair to keep it out of his face and an offset spatula in his hand, he scoops frosting onto a cooled spice cake and neatly spreads it across the top with care. Pecans forgotten about, she watches him turn the turntable in a slow circle with his other hand as he does, the tool sweeping back and forth across the surface of the cake with delicate movements of his wrist.
“You hear me?” Eliot prompts.
“I like your hands when you cook,” Parker says matter-of-factly.
The turntable jerks to a stop as he looks up at her. “Huh?”
“And when you bake,” she clarifies quickly. “Anytime you’re in the kitchen, really. I mean, I do like your hands everywhere else, too, they’re nice hands. But I can’t stop watching them when we’re in the kitchen because they’re beautiful and the way they move makes me feel things.”
Slightly winded by the rambling confession, and only just now realizing exactly what she means by it, Parker giggles, feeling silly.
“I think you’re hot.”
At that, Eliot, cheeks pink, points his frosting coated spatula at her. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?” she asks, giggling again.
“Flirting with me,” he grumbles. “No messin’ around in the kitchen. There’s sharp things, hot stuff—”
“Yes,” she agrees with a silly grin, abandoning her post to slink around to his side of the counter.
“Hey,” he warns, tracking her movement with the spatula, “being serious here. No messin’ around.”
She works to look innocent and bats her eyelashes in the way she’s seen Hardison do when he’s flirting with Eliot. “Not even a little?”
It works; his serious expression cracks slightly as his lip wobbles into a half-smile. Still, he says firmly, “We have to agree on this, Park.”
“Fine,” she relents with a sigh, “we agree.” She raises her right hand in oath and mimics his gravelly voice as she repeats, “No messin’ around in the kitchen.”
He rolls his eyes good naturedly as he gets back to work, and she hops up on the already cleared off counter space beside him to watch. After layering the top with a thick coat of icing, he gets to work on the sides, using the same back and forth motion.
“Can you hand me the piping bag?” he asks once he’s done.
She grabs the one sitting on her other side. “When do we get to eat this thing?” she asks as she hands it over. “It doesn’t have to be fancy if it’s just for the three of us.”
He uses the spatula to scoop the frosting into the bag. “It’s fancy,” he says, “because it’s for us.”
The frosting is squeezed out of the bag in wavy lines as Eliot moves it in a circular motion around the cake, starting on the outside and working his way toward the middle. Parker leans back and grabs for a handful of the pecans she’d chopped and sprinkles them around, trying her best to be artistic. She must do an okay job because Eliot makes no comment.
It looks nice, she thinks, and she decides that he’s right; they do deserve fancy cakes.
He makes it even fancier by making swirls around the outside edge that curl at the top, going around almost the whole cake but then stopping with a little room still left.
“Wanna try?”
Definitely. She hops down and takes the piping bag from him, moving to stand in front of the cake. “Show me how.”
Standing close behind her, he moves her hands into position and then helps her make two swirls before he lets go.
He doesn’t move away. “Last one’s all you,” he says, breath tickling her ear.
Parker carefully squeezes the bag and imitates the movement, making a nice swirl of her own. She smiles triumphantly as she inspects it; there really isn’t a difference between hers and his.
“Hmm.” Eliot steps away. “S’a nice cake, right there.”
She can’t help but agree. “Are we done with this?” she asks, indicating the bag.
“Mhm.”
With a gasp of delight, she puts it to her mouth and gives a little squeeze. Eliot chuckles as she hums in pleasure, the icing sweet on her tongue but not overwhelmingly so. Licking her lips, she sets the bag down.
“I like cooking with you,” she says.
“Oh yeah?” he asks, amused. “Icing that good?”
“No,” she replies, and then “well, yes, but…”
She’s not sure how to tell him. Food used to not mean anything, to her, but it means a lot more now. Through him, she learned to appreciate it, how to make it good. How to make it mean something. But explaining it feels complicated.
“I don’t know,” she says with a shrug. “I guess I just like knowing what love tastes like.”
Maybe that was the wrong way to explain it, because Eliot’s face goes all funny. For too long of a moment, he doesn’t say anything, but before she can decide to take it back and apologize, he sucks in a shaky little breath.
“Parker,” he says softly, “don’t think this is me setting a precedent.”
He leans in and kisses her, so gently and so, so sweetly that it takes her breath away, and she wraps her arms around his neck and kisses him back. His hands go to her waist, holding her close, not seeming to mind at all when she deepens the kiss. Maybe it’s greedy, and definitely going against the rule that he’s tossed out the window, but she can’t help it.
Of all the flavors in the world, love is definitely her favorite, and she wants every bit that she can taste.