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Parker got home three days after the boys did, on that particular mission. When they were planning it, they seemed to think this wasn’t fair, and she’d told them they were right; she felt terrible, having so much fun without them. Still, they’d just have to keep a stiff upper lip about it and she’d let them have all the fun next time.
(When she mentioned that, Alec got his “You have misunderstood my intentions” face, but she l…she lo…she loved Alec in part because even when she didn’t understand, he wasn’t ever mean or judgey. He didn’t always explain, but he always accepted. In this case, he just got her a GoPro so she could tape herself on the stunt bike course during the mission.)
Anyway, she spent three days having so much fun, and didn’t even mind the long drive back to Portland in the taquito truck. But when she finally arrived home, letting herself into the loft above the brewpub, she was met with a mystery. As she entered she found, draped over the kitchen island, a large fold of cloth, heavily embroidered in the style of the Bayeux tapestry.
“Did you take an entire other job without me?” she demanded, as Alec walked into the kitchen carrying an empty plastic takeaway container. He shouted, flailed, and threw it at her. She caught it and tossed it into the sink. (She was all for throwing them away, but Eliot got a really pinched look when they did that, so now they washed them and saved them forever in the Sacred Take Away Container Reliquary, aka the bottom drawer on the right of the dishwasher.)
“Parker!” Alec yelped.
“What kind of job would you need the Bayeux tapestry for, anyhow?” she asked.
“Woman,” Alec sighed, but he hugged her. Once she’d gotten used to them, hugs were nice, so she enjoyed that part. “Welcome home. It’s not the Bayeux tapestry. I have some bad news.”
“If you’re getting some 7535 you might as well grab the 7110!” Eliot’s voice drifted out from the bedroom.
“Eliot’s lost his damn mind,” Hardison finished.
In theory, Parker knew that this job would be rough on Eliot. It required their hitter to take a beating. Eliot had said he was fine with it, but he’d taken more of a hit than anyone (possibly including the bad guys’ goon) had intended. In practice she’d been prepared for him to be bedridden, doped up, and cranky, but she hadn’t been prepared for cryptography.
“What’s 7535?” she asked in a whisper.
“Embroidery thread,” Hardison replied, reaching for a plastic bin on the counter. He held up a hank of either very thick thread or very thin yarn, wrapped in a piece of paper that did indeed read 7535. “Did you know there are seven different shades of black?”
“Well, yeah,” she said, perplexed. “I mean, Venetian Black is totally different from Cherry Black, and then there’s Dark Black – oh! I found it!” she added, plucking the other color, 7110, out of the box. “What does Eliot want with red and black yarn?”
“Thread. Embroidery thread,” Alex said. “He got high and picked up a hobby.”
At that point Eliot himself, apparently impatient with Alec’s lack of speed, thumped into the kitchen on a crutch.
“It’s not a hobby, it’s a historical tradition,” he said. “Hi Parker, welcome home. Textiles have always been dismissed as crafts while paint and sculpture are arts,” he added, aggrieved.
Parker turned to Alec. He shrugged.
“He found a really compelling Pinterest right as the opioids kicked in,” he said.
“I learned how to embroider at three in the morning,” Eliot said to her proudly. He held out his next project after the fake Bayeux tapestry. It was a cross stitch announcing All Cheese is Hubris. Parker studied it, impressed.
“He also almost burned the building down,” Alec interjected, as if he wasn’t used to both of them almost burning things down on a very regular basis. It was cute how he always acted surprised.
“It’s a long story,” Eliot said. “Anyway once I got the hang of it, I thought, I’ve never forged a textile before.”
“Ooh, me neither,” Parker said thoughtfully.
“But there’s a couple of panels from the Bayeux missing, right?” he continued. “And like…why shouldn’t one of the missing panels have aliens in it?”
Parker checked the tapestry on the kitchen island. Among other more traditional motifs, it did indeed have two large-eyed aliens abducting a monk.
“He’s still high?” she asked.
“Another two days on the Vicodin,” Alec confirmed.
“It looks very authentic,” she said loyally. “Construction-wise, I mean.”
“Thanks,” Eliot said. He accepted the thread Alec handed him. “I’m gonna go finish this one. It’s for the kitchen.”
He hobbled off. Alec looked at her, his face a careful mask.
“Poor baby,” she said. “I got to base-jump twice and you’ve been trip-sitting him through the hobby store.”
“ART STORE,” Eliot’s voice drifted out from the bedroom.
“Yeah, well, you know, it’s been rough, but I held up,” Alec said, putting on a mock-brave face. She grinned and kissed his cheek.
“Go play some video games. I’ll handle him from here. With a little nudge, he might learn to knit before we have to get him off the hard stuff,” she pointed out. She felt the benefits of knitting were self-evident, but Alec frowned.
“Why do we want Eliot to learn to knit?” he asked.
“Hello? Custom sized winter hats?” she pointed out. Hardison fell well within the one-size-fits-all range of most machine knitted hats – she’d done measurements while he slept – but she just knew if he had a tailored toque he’d feel better about wintering somewhere it rained every single day from Halloween to St. Patrick’s Day. She herself had quite an oval head and hadn’t gone back to off-the-rack hats since her first tailored ski mask.
“I’m gonna go…Goose Game,” he said.
“Be extra horrible for me!” she told him, and bounced off to initiate a subtle campaign to shift Eliot from embroidery to knitting.