Work Text:
When Parker wakes up, the first thing she notices is how disgusting the inside of her mouth feels.
The second thing she notices is that she is very much not in her own bed.
Panicking, she tries to launch herself into a standing position, only to find that she’s being weighed down by something on top of her whole body and she can’t move.
She can’t move she can’t move oh god she can’t move-
“Parker! Hey, Jesus, no it’s okay, it’s just me, it’s Eliot!”
“Eliot,” Parker gasps through her panicked tears, “Eliot, help, please I can’t move-“
The weight lifts from her body immediately. She shoots into a sitting position and starts to stand, but her legs just aren’t working with her and she falls back. Her breath is coming in short, panicked bursts now, her vision is blurred and hazy, and she wonders wildly somewhere in the back of her mind whether she’s going to die because it certainly feels like she is.
“Hey, Parker, listen to me,” Eliot’s voice breaks through the haze, “Can you take a deep breath? Just one, okay? With me now, in… out…”
She follows his lead for what feels like forever. In for 4 seconds, hold for 7, out for 8… in for 4 seconds, hold for 7, out for 8… Eventually that panicked feeling starts to subside, and she can realizes that she can release the tension in her muscles she didn’t even know she was holding. Which she does, immediately feeling more like a deflated balloon than a person.
“There you go,” Eliot says gruffly, a gentle hand on her chest. “You’re okay.”
Parker takes a deep breath, then scoffs. She’s definitely not okay- something is very wrong with her body. “M’not okay,” she mutters. She tries to think of how she ended up with Eliot, but there is a very large gap in her memory that unnerves her to the core. “Everything hurts, I’m cold and heavy. What the hell is happening? Where even am I?”
“You’re at my place,” Eliot explains. Parker’s eyebrows shoot up, immediately making her wince from the resulting head pain. “Nate sent me to go check on you when you weren’t responding to any messages or calls for the new job, and when I got there I found you collapsed on the floor with a hell of a fever.”
It comes back to her in a rush, then: feeling sick, trying to take medicine, feeling sicker, curling up in her bed, and of course, falling down when she got up to take more medicine. The flush that spreads through her at the memories has nothing to do with her fever.
“Why couldn’t I move earlier?” she asks.
A soft smile flickers over Eliot’s face for all of half a second before vanishing. “You were running a fever, but you said you were feeling pretty cold. So you, uh, kind of asked me to give you all the blankets I had. You were just tucked in really well under about 6 of them, which you appreciated at the time.” He frowns then. “Do you not remember that? I guess you were still pretty out of it, so I’m not too surprised, but…”
“I don’t,” Parker said. Strangely enough, though, she isn’t too worried about that. No, if Eliot found her and took care of her, that means that she was always safe and never in any danger. She didn’t have to worry at all if Eliot was around. He would never hurt her. He was safe.
Unfortunately, that’s the part that worries her.
She needs to get a better read on her body, and fast. It isn’t performing properly, which, to be fair, is normal when people get sick, but she isn’t just any person, she’s freaking Parker! These kinds of things can get her arrested, kidnapped, killed even, the list just goes on. It just isn’t safe for her to feel safe.
She tries to stand up again, doing better this time than when she was hyperventilating, but Eliot still catches her before she collapses. Frustrated, Parker yanks her arms out of his.
With a little too much force.
“Christ-!” Eliot hisses as he catches her again from what would have been a backwards fall into a coffee table. Parker winces as her body immediately makes its aches known.
“Eliot, I’m fine!” she whines. He just raises an eyebrow at her and deposits her back on the couch.
“No, you’re not,” he huffs. “But that’s okay. Nothing wrong with being sick.”
Parker groans. “No, Eliot, you don’t get it! I’m fine.” She makes to stand up again, trying to be more careful. Eliot moves to help her, clearly worried. “I’m just going to the bathroom,” she says, glaring at his expression. “I’ll be fine, really!”
“Will you?” Eliot asks sharply from behind her, “Or are you just trying to convince yourself that you’re fine so you can go back to being alone?”
Parker freezes in place. Panic settles in deep in her chest again- was she truly that easy to read?
Oh, this is so much worse than she had thought.
“Shit,” Eliot groans, “I didn’t mean it like that, Parker. I just- I- You-“
Parker blessedly reaches the bathroom and makes to fling herself inside and close the door- to finally be alone. Alone is safe. I can only trust myself. Can’t rely on anyone else- they’ll let me down or give me up. I can only trust myself. I can only ever rely on myself.
“Goddamn it, Parker!” Eliot growls, throwing himself between her and the door. “Will you please hear me out? I didn’t mean it like that, earlier, but-“
“But what, Eliot?” Parker snaps. “Because you know what? You were fucking right! I need to be alone. I can’t trust anyone- I can never rely on anyone- I have to be able to handle myself on my own because that is the only way I know that I’ll survive!”
Eliot sucks in a breath, looking gutted. Parker is absolutely shaking (like some kind of feral animal, her mind supplies unhelpfully), struggling to stay standing and out of breath from her tirade.
“Do you remember,” Eliot says, moving so he isn’t directly facing Parker and his eyes are looking out of the nearby window, “Way back when, one of our first jobs, when we were dealing with those orphans in Kyiv, and you went off on your own to save those kids?” He doesn’t wait for an answer before continuing. “When we realized we had the one kid we came for and completed the job, but you weren’t there anymore, my first thought was about how crazy stupid you were to just run off without telling anyone.” He chuckles mirthlessly. “Back then we were still mostly strangers to each other, y’know? I would have had your back if you told me you were going, but you didn’t, so I figured you didn’t want the help- my help. And that hurt. More than it should have, for how poorly I knew you. And Nate and Hardison and Sophie, they all went after you without even thinking about it. I think I realized it in that moment, that we were more than just a team, just coworkers, just a bunch of petty thieves working towards a common goal with barely any regard for each other.”
He turns to look at her, and Parker is momentarily stunned by how vulnerable he looks in that moment.
“Parker, we’re more than just a team. We’ve all seen each other hurt or sick, been on the wrong end of a gun, had a few close calls with death. We’ve been together for, what, 4 years now? You’ve seen me at some of my lowest moments, you’ve seen Hardison oversell an alias so badly we had to break into a secure diamonds vault for him, you’ve seen Nate and his drinking habits- hell, we’ve been to Sophie’s funeral on two separate occasions because we got in over our heads! None of our jobs could be done with just one of us. We work together for a reason- no one person is invincible.”
Parker can feel the unshed tears in her eyes, but she refuses to let them fall. I can’t… show weakness to anyone, right?
But then Eliot looks her right in the eyes, seemingly baring his whole soul to her, and takes her hands so gently, and says, “You can’t get through this world alone, Parker. Even- and especially when you live a life like ours.”
The dam breaks.
Parker finds herself completely powerless to stop the sobs that tear through her body. She is fully aware that she’s on the ground, clinging to Eliot like a child, and that only makes her cry harder. Distantly she’s aware that Eliot is speaking to her, and that he sounds choked up himself, but she can’t really hear him over the roaring in her ears.
“I’m sorry,” she gasps. “Eliot, you were so good to me, and I- I-“
Eliot hums, and holds her.
She doesn’t know how long they stayed like that, half kneeling on the ground, but eventually the tears stop. Eliot pulls back from their hug, smoothing out her hair.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I think… I really needed to hear that.”
“I did, too.” Eliot says. Parker blinks at him. “Once, maybe a year or two after we formed the team, I had an infection that wasn’t getting better. Didn’t wanna go to a hospital, so I was just trying to go about my life as usual. Sophie and Nate barged into my place, kept me in bed, and force fed me soup and medicine until I was better.” He smiles. “Had a long talk with me about how trusting the team enough to tell them the truth about how I was doing was better, both for me and for the team, than if I showed up and started working like I was at 100% when I was at 10%. And that they needed me for me, not only for my hitter skills.”
Parker smiles a little. “How did Sophie get Nate to ever admit that?”
Eliot laughs, a full and rich sound. “To be honest, Sophie did most of the talking, and would elbow Nate in the ribs when he was supposed to jump in. It was funny enough to disarm me, but also remind me that they were being sincere. I don’t know, it felt genuine to me. That’s ultimately why I believed them and started to trust everyone more.”
“I thought I did trust everyone, at least with jobs and stuff,” Parker says, hugging herself a bit, “But there was something about being sick and not being able to rely on myself at all that just… scared me. I guess.”
Eliot stands up, reaching out a hand to help her. “They say old habits die hard.”
Parker looks at his hand, then up at Eliot himself. Right there, waiting to help her. She lets out a stupid smile and takes it.
As they make their way back to the couch, Eliot starts telling her about the homemade chicken soup he’s making and how he was going to have to let the team know that she was awake (“Don’t worry, I’ll tell them you’re not quite visitor ready- Hardison was ready to come over the minute I found you.”), and all Parker can do is smile.
And that’s okay. Eliot and her team will take care of the rest.