Chapter Text
Eliot, despite what Hardison likes to tell people, doesn’t inherently hate Christmas. It’s just that he’s lost touch with all the things he used to like about it. Family; church; the vaguely liminal sense of time that settles when everyone collectively agrees to abandon their regular schedules, entirely free of consequence. These days the festive period is associated with other, less pleasant things. Grief, to replace the family. Guilt, to replace the church. An itchiness under his skin, a rejection of the exception, a– need to go back to normal as soon as possible, because he’s not comfortable with that kind of purposeless drifting, anymore.
Plus, you know, the PTSD. Operation Kansas, while far from the only contributing factor, certainly likes to rear its head every December to make sure Eliot hasn’t forgotten why he left the military.
And that’s to say nothing of the mundane problems, the type that have only arisen since Hardison and Parker’s festive expectations became relevant to his own plans. Mundane problems like the fact that he still hasn’t met Nana, this incredible woman who means the world to his partners of nearly ten years, because he spent about six of them convinced that he’d put their family in danger just by knowing them, and then by the time he worked up the courage to change his mind, it wasn’t the sort of time to be having big family gatherings.
Besides, he’s still only just working out who he wants to be to her.
He knows it shouldn't be this difficult. The ghost of Christmas past had him doing literal war crimes, for crying out loud, and he's already gone and changed his ways. The fear of Christmas future should not even come close to having the same hold over him. But it's turned into a huge thing, and every year that passes makes it even huger, and he doesn't know how to make it smaller anymore. He needs the ghost of Christmas present to show up and just tell him what he has to do, give him a shove in the right direction or something.
The thing is that every time he’s imagined meeting Nana, he imagines that she welcomes him like yet another adopted son, like he’s family, and it hurts.
He doesn’t know how to make Hardison, who spent half his childhood desperate to belong to somebody, understand that the idea of being adopted into his frankly perfect family is impossible to reconcile with the mess Eliot made of his own. He doesn’t know how to explain to Parker, who had apparently zero problems slotting Hardison's family into the empty spaces in her life, that he can’t do the same. Doesn’t want to, in fact, even though he doesn’t talk about either of his parents with either of his partners, because they’re anything but empty spaces for him.
And even beyond that, Eliot doesn’t want to be co-opted into Nana’s household, at least not based on his long-standing relationship with her foster son. There’s a place reserved for him, he knows, and it’s the same shape as Parker’s, and he doesn’t want it.
He knows how their relationship looks, knows exactly how questionable his involvement might seem, the mysterious third, bloodstained counterpart to a perfectly nice, well-established, one-man-one-woman situation.
It’s not that he thinks he won’t be accepted; Hardison has long since disabused him of that particular notion. No, he fears that he might be accepted too well, shoehorned into a role that isn’t accurate out of a pressing need to demonstrate the belief that he belongs in it. And he may have recently acquired new words for his relationship to Hardison and Parker, but he still hasn’t quite mastered the art of cooling off third-party observers once they’ve hit the ‘oh, you’re so perfect for each other’ phase that they seem to think is necessary. There’s nothing better guaranteed to land him in a sour mood than effusive romanticism, and the festive season has a nasty habit of bringing it out in people.
So, no, he doesn’t tend to have big Christmas plans. But it’s only October. He’s still got plenty of time to have his annual crisis over it.
T-59 days
“So,” Breanna says, sidling up alongside him as they watch Sophie and Harry pretend not to flirt out on the terrace. She’s been carving a pumpkin, butchering the poor thing with a kitchen knife that Eliot’s already written off as ruined, and she’s currently working on adding far too many teeth into its smile. “You’re coming to Christmas at Nana’s this year, right?”
Eliot fumbles the knife he’s holding, swears, clenches it firmly in his fist as he rounds on Breanna. She arches one eyebrow at him, unflinching, and they stay frozen like that for a moment before he shakes his head and puts the knife back on the counter. He scoops the now-scattered mess of chives he had been chopping back into one neat pile. Attempts to do the same with his thoughts.
Christmas is– hard, for him, and apparently it’s starting early this year. Hardison always tries to make it into a joke, likens Eliot to the Grinch like Eliot’s acting this way on purpose, like he’s never once wanted to be able to enjoy it the same way he had as a kid.
Eliot lets him. It helps to be able to buy into the idea that one day it might click again.
“Hey, c’mon, Eliot,” Breanna says, going for a sort of playful whine and tugging on his sleeve. She hasn’t put her own knife down, but she’s probably blunted it on the damn pumpkin to the point where it’s not a threat. “It’s pretty much the biggest foodie holiday of the year, at least out of the ones that anyone here celebrates. You can just hide in the kitchen the whole time if you hate it.”
“Did Hardison put you up to this?” he grumbles, pretending that the answer doesn’t matter to him. “Parker, maybe?”
He doesn’t think it’s something either of them would do, because they know exactly how multifaceted his hangups with the festive season are, and he’s still only known Breanna for less than a year. But hey, who knows, maybe Hardison’s finally gotten tired of Eliot’s refusal to meet his family and has called in backup to continue the campaign in his absence. God knows Eliot’s getting pretty tired of saying no at this point, too.
“No,” Breanna says, unimpressed. “I put me up to this, because you’re my friend and I want you to come to Christmas at Nana’s.”
He narrows his eyes at her, but there’s no trace of the squirmy, slippery facade she gets when she’s lying, so he’s forced to accept that she’s come up with this line of attack all by herself. Something relaxes slightly in his chest, both at the knowledge that his partners aren’t pushing from behind the scenes, and at Breanna’s unabashed overture of friendship towards the guy her brother gets nasty with on the reg.
That’s probably selling her short, though, given how often Eliot trusts her with his life these days.
“C’mon, Bre,” he says, making a conscious effort to soften his edges as he steps away from the chopping board and goes to clean his hands. “You know why I don’t do that stuff.”
She doesn’t, not really, because she’s Hardison’s kid sister, and he’s been trying so hard not to show her the ugly parts of him ever since she was in middle school, long before they ever actually met.
“Yeah, because you don’t want to deal with being Hardison’s plus-one, or plus-two, or whatever. That’s fine. Be mine. Nobody’s gonna misinterpret that.” She crosses her arms with an air of finality.
And– that’s enough to startle a laugh out of him. She might not know the ugly stuff, but she’s also the only person to have really understood the mundane stuff, even before he knew there was something to understand. Being– aromantic– has never been the whole issue, maybe 30% at most, but the way she’s extended this invite is obviously a carefully considered manoeuvre, expertly crafted to remove some of the pressure from the situation, and– he can’t deny that it sounds much more appealing than invites from his partners have ever done. Christmas at a friend’s is something that he knows how to do. And he does want to meet Nana, and the idea of Bre being the one to introduce them, rather than Hardison– he’s surprised to find that it sits easier than anything he’s imagined ever has.
Hardison won’t mind. Hardison will be ecstatic. When three people have been each other’s home for as long as they all have, they learn to appreciate the stuff that works, regardless of how it might appear to outsiders.
So. Maybe Eliot can hear Breanna out.
“Don’t you have anyone you actually want to invite?” he hedges.
“Eh,” she shrugs. “Nobody that’s more important than uniting the complete chosen fam under one roof. Gotta catch ‘em all, or whatever. Plus I forgot to start thinking about Alec’s Christmas present until, like, last week, and you just know he’s gonna have something insane planned for me, so. Really you’d be doing me a favour.”
She goes back to work on her pumpkin, adding yet another row of teeth, pretending to be casual about it in a perfect imitation of her brother. And– well, he can’t fault her angle. And this year he misses Hardison, too, and he’s kind of sick of spending Christmas being a problem, making his partners choose between things they want to do, just to accommodate him when he doesn’t even necessarily want to be accommodated.
He’s been wondering how to break the spell for a while now, but it looks like Breanna’s way ahead of him, offering him exactly the justification he needs at exactly the right time.
“Well,” he says slowly, watching Breanna pretend not to hang on his every word. “I guess I do owe you one.”
Her answering grin is somehow wider than the pumpkin’s.
T-58 days
“What?” Hardison says, a giant grin spreading slowly across his face when Eliot calls to let him know about his updated plans for the festive season. “Sorry, the connection must be faulty, because it sounded like you were coming to Nana’s for Christmas this year?”
“Don’t make it a big thing,” Eliot grumbles, trying to hide his own smile even as something twists ominously in his stomach. He fights it down. “I’m still stressed about it.”
“Yeah?” Hardison says. He softens slightly. “What managed to convince you?”
Eliot wants to be able to feel him, lean into his side and talk about everything and sense his response instead of having to look for it. Instead he tries to school his expression into something that won’t cause Hardison to worry, takes what reassurance he can from the three-inch picture of his partner and ignores the way that presenting himself to the camera chafes.
“Your sister made some very strong arguments,” he says. “Apparently we’re friends now.”
“Hah,” Hardison says. “That’s my girl. I knew I could trust her to look after y’all.”
“Yeah,” Eliot says. “She does a decent job of it. We– I– miss you, but. Not for your tech skills, so how does that feel?”
“You wound me,” Hardison gasps, always one to allow the out, to follow someone else’s lead when it comes to conversational tone. “You be careful, man, I might start misplacing the login info to your dumb horse girl magazine subscriptions, see how you feel about my tech skills then.” A pause, as he squints at the camera. “Hey, but– seriously, E, you know you can change your mind any time, yeah?”
“Sure,” Eliot says, trying not to let himself consider the option. He wants to see this through, dammit, not overthink it any more than he’s spent the last near-decade doing. “I think I’m supposed to be your surprise Christmas present, though, so you better still act surprised.”
Hardison whistles, low and long, cutting in and out of the microphone sensitivity threshold.
“Damn, Bre. How’s she think I’m gonna top this?”
T-20 days
Parker catches Eliot entirely zoned out on the sofa, staring at the Christmas tree with his head propped on one arm, stuck in a foggy recollection of the last big family Christmas he’d been to. Shelley’s, a few years ago, an uncomfortable confluence of military upbringings that had seemed like a good idea right up until Shelley’s dad had started asking a few too many questions about his service. Eliot had given up on the whole endeavour after only a couple hours, excused himself and driven almost a hundred miles on dark, icy roads before he had enough of a handle on things to shove down the gnawing feeling of guilt in his chest. Standard festive stuff.
Shelley’s brother-in-law had made a mean meatloaf, though, so it wasn’t like it had all been bad.
Now, Parker sits down next to him and tips sideways onto his shoulder, poking him in the chin with the stupid pointy elf ears on her santa hat. She’s been wearing it for maybe three days solidly and it’s only the first week of December. Eliot is currently the sole resident of the bar with a clearance level high enough to know that she hasn’t taken it off to sleep, either.
“What’s in your brain?” she asks, poking him in ribs bruised from their last job. He blinks himself back into awareness, dark blurry ghosts of the tree lights floating in his vision. Runs his palms down his jeans, feels the fabric fold and release. Exhales, and knows she feels it from the way she leans into him like she’s trying to squeeze the stress out.
“What was meeting Nana like?” he asks quietly. “That first time?”
“Oh, she was terrifying,” Parker says, entirely blasé. “She’s got these really sharp eyes and a permanent frown and whenever I looked at her I had to think about how much she loves Hardison and how much I had to measure up to.”
He glares sideways at her. She looks back at him blankly.
“Whoops,” she says after a moment. “You probably wanted me to say something more reassuring.”
“Y’think?”
“She’s great, though,” Parker says, apparently in all seriousness. “Terrifying, sure, but. I hadn’t had a family to do Christmas - well, it was actually Thanksgiving - with in– most of my life, but she made it easy to remember how. But not like I was remembering - it was all new. New memories.”
She hums contentedly, vibrations passing through his shoulder.
“I like the sound of that,” Eliot says, trying to internalise the way Parker manages to make it sound so simple. “New memories.”
“Is that what you’re worried about?” she says, twisting her finger in the bottom hem of his henley. “Making Nana like you?”
“Mm,” Eliot says. “It’s on a pretty long list, but. Yeah.”
“Oh, she’ll love you,” Parker says dismissively. “I had to be ‘house trained’, and I still don’t get why I’m not allowed to build a molotov out of the Christmas pudding brandy. The whole point is lighting it on fire. You’re so– domesticated. Nana’s going to love you.”
Eliot pushes her up into a sitting position so that he can level an appropriately skeptical glare at her. ‘Domesticated’ is not exactly an accusation he’s used to being levied at him, but then Parker’s always had some strange ideas about domesticity.
“Pretty sure I’ve made more molotovs than you, Park,” he says, once he’s established that she’s actually being serious. “Most– most of them weren’t recreational, either.”
“Well, yes,” Parker says, rolling her eyes like it’s somehow a non-issue, “But you wouldn’t do it with the Christmas pudding brandy.”
He huffs a laugh, but it must not be convincing enough because she leans in close and frowns, folding her arms.
“Eliot,” she says. “Do you want her to love you?”
Something cold shoots through his chest, piercing low in his ribs, and he has to force himself to relax, suppress the instinct to laugh at the question. Parker does this, asks the stuff that nobody else will because she’s better than anyone at predicting the stuff that trips him up, extrapolating from past behaviour and following trains of logic that other people would dismiss. Even if she’s not as good at reading it from his face.
And sometimes, like now, it leads her to places that Eliot would dismiss, if it wasn’t her asking.
“Uh,” is what he says. “I– Christ, Parker, I don’t know.”
She tilts her head at him, silently waiting for him to continue.
“I want to meet the people Hardison came from,” he says, trying to start from the things he’s confident in. He’s listened to Parker work through enough of these kinds of problems that he knows the process. “I want to show them that they don’t have to worry about where he is now. But I don’t– I don’t need any more family than the one I’ve got.”
“Nana has adoptive tendencies,” Parker agrees. “But she has lots of friends, too. Maybe you can be friends.”
Eliot considers that, turning it over in his mind. He’s someone who struggles with the pressure of expectation, he knows, will always default to conformance and has far too many latent, unchallenged assumptions about who and what he’s supposed to be. The greatest achievements of his life have come from building up the strength of will to break free of that, not once, but two critically important times.
He can always count on Parker to have never even known such expectations exist.
“Hmm,” he hums, squeezing her thigh. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
She grins, and he receives two pointy elf ears to the chin for his troubles.
T-7 days
“You're right, I should've come to visit when Hardison first asked me,” Eliot says, dropping his head onto the table. “At least back then I wouldn't have had to memorise all the niblings along with the siblings.”
“That was, what,” Breanna says, putting her who’s-who slideshow on hold to do some quick mental arithmetic at his expense. “2014?”
“2013,” Parker says. “He’s been putting it off forever.”
“I wasn’t– hey–”
“Damn,” Breanna whistles. “Yeah, so that would have only been– let me think. At least three of the siblings have had kids since then, dude, so yeah, you’re cooked.”
“If you can name them all by the end of the week, you can drive us to Nana’s,” Parker says.
“Okay, no, wait–”
“For the last time, Parker, you’re not driving–”
T-4 days
“Do you– am I supposed to bring presents?” Eliot says suddenly, swerving to avoid roadkill with slightly more force than necessary and sending Harry scrabbling for the grab handle. “For Hardison’s niblings? Or, hell, his siblings? Or Nana? Is that why Breanna gave me the briefing?”
“Oho,” Harry says, halfway between apprehension and delight. “You haven’t–?”
Eliot refuses to take his eyes off the road but it doesn’t seem to prevent his ‘murder aura’, as Tara calls it, from filling the truck, because Harry gulps and hastily changes tack. Eliot grits his teeth and tries to tone it down. This, for once, is a crisis entirely of his own making.
“Oh,” Harry says, and Eliot tries hard not to read into his tone. “That’s okay, we can fix that. I know all the tricks. Perks of being an absentee father, you get to know exact Christmas delivery timetables for all the major players, and there’s a bunch of great stores I know that will still have stock of the good stuff. I can come with you after we finish here, if you want?”
“Uh,” Eliot says. “I– yeah. Yeah, I’d appreciate that.”
Harry sneaks a look at him sideways like he thinks he’s being subtle about it. Eliot breathes through his nose and focuses on reading the license plate on the truck in front, just on the edge of where his vision lets him resolve the letters. These days, it’s closer than he’d like.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Harry says, “But for the most unflappable guy I know, you seem pretty– well, flapped.”
Eliot says nothing. The truck in front slows down for the junction, bringing the cartoon oranges on its Florida plate into full focus, and he pulls out smoothly to overtake.
“Look,” Harry continues, because he’s never met a problem he couldn’t solve by talking. “Sophie warned me this was all a lot more complicated than it seems, and Breanna said– well, it’s probably none of my business, but I’ve dealt with my fair share of complicated Christmasses. If you did want to talk.”
It’s a sign of how far he’s come in the last dozen years that Eliot even considers it. Harry’s a good guy, for all that he plays up the evil lawyer shtick. He would listen, if Eliot poured his heart out right here in the food truck. Might even have some words of wisdom to offer.
There’s far too much to cover in one food truck journey, but– Harry’s trying. Eliot doesn’t want to push him away.
“What did Breanna say?” he settles for.
“Oh– just that you wanted to make the right impression. That was the word she used, ‘right’, not ‘good’. And, look, I can't say I understand what the exact situation is between the three of you, and Breanna can vouch for how many times I’ve tried to get a straight answer out of her about it, but one thing I've never had any cause to question is how much you care for each other. Speaking as a parent, that's the most important thing. So.”
Eliot swallows tightly. Words of wisdom, indeed. At some point in the last couple months the idea of Harry leaving the team has become inconceivable, despite their rocky start, because he’s exactly what they all need right now: fresh but far from naïve; simultaneously jaded and optimistic. It means more than Eliot would have expected, to hear his reassurance, even when he’s missing most of the important details.
Maybe Eliot will be able to give him those details once the current crisis has passed. It's not like he has any better ideas for New Year's resolutions.
“What’s the latest you ever left your Christmas shopping?” he asks, clearing his throat when the words come out a little rough.
Harry pauses, mouth hanging open like he expected to be answering a different question, then closes it and grins softly to himself.
“‘Twas the night before Christmas,” he says gamely. “I was not in my house; but lost in the night market, unbeknownst to my spouse–”
T-1 day
Eliot’s been trying to cut back on swearing, what with the impending meeting of the niblings, but there’s really no polite way of describing his Christmas Eve.
It’s quiet by the time he makes it back to the base, shaking hands stuffed into pockets, gunfire ringing in his ears only serving to disrupt the echoing whine of the alarm from the afternoon’s library fight. Blanche said the saline would have done its job by now, and maybe it has, but it’s like someone stopped digging around in his mind and threw their shovel down and left. It’s done nothing to repair the holes, the disturbed earth and uprooted plants left in RIZ’s wake.
“Hello?” he calls out into the dark of the bar, hoping for an answer and preparing himself for none. But Sophie pokes her head out from the laundry room and he could cry from how relieved he is to see her.
“Eliot?” she says, then steps out fully, wielding a bar towel in each hand, when she catches sight of him. “Are you all right?”
Eliot shakes his head mutely, throat closing up in a way that makes it impossible to pry his jaws apart. He knows he needs to pull himself together but he can’t remember how, disturbed memories in his head refusing to settle and burying his well-practiced grounding techniques in a haze that hurts to dig through.
The last time he remembers feeling loneliness this acute was on his first tour, staring out at the desert and getting nothing but sand back and– well, there’s more than one factor dredging that feeling up tonight.
Sophie, bless her, has an actionable plan, as she gently takes him by the elbow and leads him to a sofa by the front door, pushes him down into a seat and runs a hand firmly along his back. He concentrates on breathing, grasps Sophie’s free hand and tries not to crush it too hard between both of his, brings the bundle of all three up to his forehead and plants his elbows on his knees, pushing painfully into his thighs to draw his attention away from the lump in his throat.
“Oh, Eliot,” Sophie says. “I’m just going to sit here, okay? I’m not going anywhere. And you let me know when you want to do something else.”
She manoeuvres herself to sit next to him, not crowding him but maintaining contact so he can feel her. She doesn’t try to fetch Parker, doesn’t try to pretend that she’s unqualified to do this by herself, and it’s grounding, the way they can still fall in tune with each other after all the years apart.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Sophie asks, and she sounds worried, which– fair. Eliot can’t do much more than shake his head again, forcing air out and in through his nose as his jaw is still fused shut. She doesn’t push any further.
He wants to cry, wants to give in to the cavern that’s opening inside his ribcage and sob to release the pressure, but he’s too shot through with adrenaline, hypervigilant and flinching at every noise from the street. Outside, he can still hear the drummer he passed on the way back home, drawing out syncopated rhythms that refuse to settle on the inside of his skull. There’s some yelling from revellers and the sound of a door slamming shut, and he startles so hard that he’s back on his feet before he knows what’s happening, heart pounding in his chest.
“Oh–” Sophie says, and extracts her hand from his white-knuckled grip to go and rummage behind the bar. “Parker brought these down for you earlier, but we didn’t know where you’d gone–”
She passes him the small plastic box that contains his latest set of earplugs, the most recent generation of a design Hardison had commissioned for noise sensitivity, without asking, back in that first year after Nate and Sophie left. Eliot had been aggressively dismissive at first, then skeptical, and then when he’d finally agreed to try them he’d been overcome with relief, not even bothering to hide it from Hardison’s smug grin when he managed his first full night of sleep in about a month.
He takes the box from her and puts them in his ears, installs himself on a bar stool and wills his heartrate to steady as the muffling of the street noise finally allows him to direct his attention elsewhere.
“Thanks,” he says roughly once he discovers that he can form words again, running his hands over his face so that he doesn’t have to think about the unreadable look that Sophie’s levelling at him.
“Is there anything else I can get you?”
“Don’t leave,” he says immediately, almost by accident, and he doesn’t miss the flash of hurt that crosses her face. “Sorry, I don’t mean– if you have somewhere to be–”
“I’m not leaving,” she says firmly.
Eliot exhales.
They stay like that for a while, Sophie drawing up a bar stool next to his and amusing herself by flicking through the worn pages of the cocktail menu they keep behind the bar. Eliot watches her, sees the pages turn under her delicate touch and can just pick out the soft noises of paper-on-paper that accompany them. It’s almost meditative, the way she pauses on each page and traces her eyes gently across the words.
He’s so tired.
He has no idea what time it is.
“Okay,” he says after a while, because it’s a long drive up to Nana’s tomorrow and he’s already disrupted Sophie’s– evening? night? enough as it is. “I’d better let you get on.”
She turns to him, gaze assessing.
“Breanna will understand if you don’t go tomorrow,” she says, which at least places them firmly on the friendly side of midnight. “Everyone will. And if you want company, you’d be welcome at Maggie’s with me–”
“I’m going,” Eliot says. There’s some petty sensation of revenge that accompanies the words, the devastation of his dad’s no-show spurring him towards a family that’s been trying to welcome him for nearly a decade. It’s not a comfortable sensation, but it is useful. If he backs out now, he’s giving himself permission to back out next year as well, and the one after, and he desperately doesn’t want to forfeit the progress he’s made this time around.
“Okay,” Sophie replies simply, and he’s never been more grateful for her.
T-0
“We’re leaving in ten minutes!” Breanna hollers up the stairs the next morning. Eliot cracks his eyes open and discovers Parker crouched silently above him like some kind of sleep paralysis demon, the bedroom door wide open and the distinctive sounds of heavy bags being dragged towards the truck drifting up from the lobby.
He’s not sure how he managed to fall asleep so soundly, but he’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. ‘Tis the season for gift horses, after all.
“Come on,” Parker says. “It’s Christmas!”
“Okay, okay,” he says, pushing her off him and managing to generate a chuckle in his dry throat before it turns into a cough. Parker tosses him a water bottle from the nightstand and rolls off the bed.
“See you in the truck,” she says.
He’s got a headache coming on, because of course he has, but for the moment it’s nothing that painkillers won’t fix. He even remembers to pick up the fancy bottles of wine that they’d reserved for the occasion, bundled up in their carry case with a ribbon on the top. He makes it out to the truck with all his stuff in twelve minutes: far off his usual response time, but nothing to scoff at given the circumstances.
Parker’s sitting in the passenger seat, Breanna in the back. He stops short.
“Uh,” he says. The argument they’ve been having all week comes flooding back, Eliot finally managing to bribe Parker out of driving with judicious application of whipped cream just two days ago. But after the night he’s had, the prospect of maintaining concentration on the road for the next four hours seems like asking for disaster.
He weighs his options, none of which are appealing, then swallows and opens the passenger door. “Parker, you’re driving.”
She narrows her eyes at him, but takes the keys from his outstretched hand and hops out of the truck without comment. Breanna has no such sense of discretion.
“Wait, no,” she says. “We agreed, you bribed her and everything, please don’t make me–”
“I’m not driving, Bre,” he says, firmly as he can. “And you’re sure as hell not, unless you want to talk about your last test results again?”
“Mm, no thank you,” she says delicately, deflating and dropping back against the seats. “Parker, try not to kill us, yeah?”
“It’s Christmas,” Parker says as she pushes the driver’s seat back and cracks her knuckles in anticipation. “I’m not killing anyone on Christmas.”
Eliot flinches, can’t help himself, and the other two definitely see it. Neither of them say anything, though, and Breanna clears her throat and sets about queueing up her festive road trip playlist. He wordlessly buckles himself into the passenger seat and tries to shake it off.
Parker drives at about seventy percent of her usual speed, and when they make it out onto the highway she reaches over and rests her hand on Eliot’s thigh. He wraps his fingers around her wrist, feels her pulse, and breathes.