Mod Gift for Boysinperil - 2014 Leverage Secret Santa Exchange
Title: New Things to be Thankful For
Author: telaryn
Mod gift for: boysinperil
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Team (kinda), OT3 v1.0
Word Count: 1886
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: Only own the effort involved.
Summary: The first Thanksgiving after Nate and Sophie leave requires some changes in the family routine. Eliot finds out, however, that not all changes involve loss.
Author's Notes: For boysinperil - thank you so much for playing with us!
Holidays had always been a strange point among the members of the Leverage team. Sophie and Parker, predictably, were all about Christmas - and in Sophie’s case, Valentine’s Day. Halloween was Hardison’s favorite time of the year, a banner Parker quickly took up for herself. Nate would have preferred to forget the concept of holidays altogether.
It fell to Eliot to bring them together at his favorite time of the year. “Food, family and being grateful - something we could all use more of,” he’d explained to Nate the first year he’d cooked for the team. The mastermind hadn’t argued his point and hadn’t actively opposed him hosting a traditional dinner, but he hadn’t gone out of his way to support the idea either.
Eliot wasn’t naïve. He knew that first year it was only the promise of his best culinary efforts that had drawn four completely disparate and often anti-social personalities to his table. As far as he was concerned, the important point was that they came and for a few hours they enjoyed each other’s company without the pressures of their different past or present traumas getting in the way.
The next year Hardison had rigged the office monitors to play the best of the college football games the day had to offer, and while Eliot put his foot down about having television playing during dinner time he’d appreciated the effort and being able to experience a bit more of the traditional day’s offerings for himself while he was working in the kitchen.
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was added to their viewing line up the year after that. Nate and Sophie blamed Parker for forcing Hardison’s hand, but by that point Eliot had learned that the hacker rarely did anything he didn’t already want to do. Whoever was responsible, they’d all ended up thoroughly enjoying the experience.
Relocation to Portland had required some logistical reworking of the day, but something in Eliot’s soul had blossomed at the challenge of a professional kitchen to work in. That was the first year he could look at and say they were a real family. Nate had grown more comfortable in the kitchen over the years, to the point where Eliot could trust him as an assistant. Hardison was still in charge of the day’s entertainment, while Sophie took decorating as her task. Parker floated between the two of them, picking up any task that required an additional pair of hands.
It was also the first year they had shared what they were grateful for. Parker had insisted on it, and the result was by turns funny, poignant and absolutely inappropriate.
Eliot had loved every second of it.
The next year was after Nate and Sophie had left. “Are they coming home for Thanksgiving?” Parker had asked just after Halloween. “You said families are supposed to be together at Thanksgiving.” All of which was true, and while the subject had never been raised either before mastermind and grifter had left Portland, or during the few conversations they’d had in the time since, Eliot really couldn’t raise a good argument against at least posing the question.
”We weren’t planning on seeing you three until Christmas,” had been Sophie’s immediate reaction when he’d posed the question during a private Skype session a week later. ”They’re already discussing the possibility of snow in Paris, Eliot - think about it. It’s going to be positively magical!”
Which again - not really an argument he could win - but he turned his appeal to Nate nonetheless. After Eliot himself, Nate had the most traditional relationship with holidays of any of them. Unfortunately he’d been no easier to sway than Sophie. ”It’s a good opportunity for you and Hardison to show her that she still has a family - that even if Sophie and I aren’t physically there, her world hasn’t changed all that much.”
Like the rest of it, Nate’s observations made perfect sense - the problem was, when Parker got her mind set on something things like ‘sense’ and ‘logic’ tended not to be very useful. Nate laughed when Eliot told him as much, a response Eliot didn’t think was fair or nice.
”Give her some credit. Being in a steady relationship has calmed her down a lot.” He paused just long enough to let Eliot sweat then added, ”And if she still won’t let it go, I’ll talk to her.”
Eliot still didn’t have a lot of faith in his and Hardison’s ability to convince Parker of anything, particularly since Nate had let her nominally in charge of the business side of their lives - but he knew Nate’s offer to bat clean-up was the best he was likely to get.
Even though he knew it was the coward’s way out, Eliot still waited until the following Sunday before raising the subject. Sunday breakfast had become as much of a tradition amongst the three of them as any holiday, and after eating nearly a whole pig’s worth of bacon Parker could usually be talked into anything.
“Can we still have sweet potato casserole?” was all Parker asked after Eliot laid out the situation and he and Hardison explained the mechanics behind families sometimes not being together on important holidays.
“For Thanksgiving?” Eliot asked, feeling the beginnings of a headache stirring just behind his sinuses. “Of course!’’
“No,” Parker replied, shaking her head. “In Paris. For Christmas. We could mash the two holidays together if there was sweet potato casserole.”
Eliot tried to remember if sweet potatoes were even a thing he could acquire in Paris, and finally gave it up as a bad job, reaching for the coffee pot and refilling his mug.
“You going to need help in the kitchen this year?” Hardison asked, once talk had turned to other subjects.
Unable to predict how well he would be able to control his reactions, Eliot tried very hard not to imagine a kitchen with either Parker or Hardison as his sous chef. “I think I’ll be good,” he managed at last. “With fewer people it should go fine. Parker will probably need your help with decorating anyway.”
Neither hacker nor thief seemed inclined to argue with his assessment. Eliot settled back with his coffee and revised his earlier list of ill-wishes against Nate and Sophie’s holiday to something a bit less catastrophic.
His trade-off for having the brew pub’s professional kitchen to work his magic was that prep work needed to be restricted to those hours when the restaurant wasn’t open and making money. Eliot had worked out the logistics so that he needed to spend only the two mornings before Thanksgiving itself on getting the easier dishes ready, but it was two solid days of work.
Parker and Hardison would occasionally drift through the kitchen, curious to catch a glimpse or a taste of what he was doing. He allowed the voyeurism and punished the theft in equal measure; it was only when they tried to talk to him that things got testy.
Thursday morning dawned cold and clear. The sun peaking in the windows of the restaurant found Eliot already at work, lifting the turkey from the brine, setting it in the rack and starting to stuff it. In order to meet his target for a midday meal, the bird would have to begin cooking sharply at seven o’clock.
Once the matter of the turkey was settled, he turned his attention to making breakfast for Parker and Hardison. It wasn’t quite Sunday breakfast sized, but he’d learned the hard way that feeding the two of them was the best way to keep them out from underfoot as the clock ticked closer to dinnertime and the smells from the food became harder to resist.
By the time he was setting plates of food to warm, Hardison stumbled into the kitchen - cutting a wide enough path to the coffee pot that he was able to stay out of Eliot’s way. After half a cup he retrieved the plates and took them back to the office area without uttering a single word. Eliot continued working, and twenty minutes later heard the monitors firing up.
The morning fell into a comfortably familiar ritual cadence. Eliot didn’t need to check on Parker and Hardison to know that they were doing their parts for the meal, and the two of them stayed dutifully out of his way until late morning, when Hardison appeared in the doorway. “They just announced a musical number from that Broadway show you talked about,” he said.
Eliot was in the process of swapping the green bean casserole for Parker’s sweet potatoes. “Jersey Boys?” he asked, just to make certain Hardison was remembering correctly.
“Yeah man,” Hardison said. “I can’t tell how long it’s going to be though. You know how those TV guys are.”
Finishing the swap-out, Eliot straightened up with a soft groan at the ache in his back. “Can you keep an eye on things out here?”
Smiling somewhat in disbelief Hardison nodded. “Sure. Go ahead. I promise not to touch anything and to scream if I see smoke.”
“Or if a timer goes off,” Eliot added, wiping his hands on a dishtowel and setting it aside. “Thanks.”
He started forward, but pulled up short when he saw that Hardison’s expression had gone strange. “What’s wrong?”
The hacker looked as though he was considering his next choice of words very carefully. “Ah, me and Parker…we don’t want you to go home alone tonight.”
Realizing in a rush exactly why Hardison’s expression had looked strange, Eliot’s first instinct was to brush aside what he’d said; make a joke of it, anything but hope that Hardison was barreling down the very road Eliot had been too terrified to travel himself. “Well unless you’ve got a date in your back pocket I don’t know about…” he began.
“Come home with us,” Hardison said, the words nearly tumbling over themselves into the air between the two friends. “Me and Parker. Tonight.” Then before Eliot could say anything, he ducked his head forward - catching the hitter’s mouth in a kiss.
Closing his eyes, Eliot inhaled mingled scents of orange juice, coffee and Hardison as the hacker moved into him. Moaning softly, he put his arms around the other man’s shoulders, lips parting as he traced the swell of Hardison’s bottom lip with the edge of his tongue. Growling low in his throat, Hardison kissed Eliot again - this time open mouthed and hungry, determined to taste every inch of Eliot he could.
“Tell Eliot he’s missing that song he wanted to see!”
Eliot’s knees buckled as Parker’s announcement drove them apart. Hardison caught him and steadied him on his feet. “I can take that as a yes then?” the hacker asked, his dark eyes filled with laughter now.
Still rocked, Eliot nodded wordlessly. “Go watch your bit,” Hardison said, urging him on.
Parker looked up as he entered the office. Eliot didn’t know what she read in his expression, but she grinned as happily as he’d ever seen her. “He told you?”
Nodding, Eliot crossed to her chair and perched on the arm. “Are you okay with it?” he asked, taking her hand in his own.
“Are you kidding?” Parker asked, laying her head on his thigh. “I get both my boys at last. This is the best Thanksgiving ever.”
Author: telaryn
Mod gift for: boysinperil
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairing: Team (kinda), OT3 v1.0
Word Count: 1886
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: Only own the effort involved.
Summary: The first Thanksgiving after Nate and Sophie leave requires some changes in the family routine. Eliot finds out, however, that not all changes involve loss.
Author's Notes: For boysinperil - thank you so much for playing with us!
Holidays had always been a strange point among the members of the Leverage team. Sophie and Parker, predictably, were all about Christmas - and in Sophie’s case, Valentine’s Day. Halloween was Hardison’s favorite time of the year, a banner Parker quickly took up for herself. Nate would have preferred to forget the concept of holidays altogether.
It fell to Eliot to bring them together at his favorite time of the year. “Food, family and being grateful - something we could all use more of,” he’d explained to Nate the first year he’d cooked for the team. The mastermind hadn’t argued his point and hadn’t actively opposed him hosting a traditional dinner, but he hadn’t gone out of his way to support the idea either.
Eliot wasn’t naïve. He knew that first year it was only the promise of his best culinary efforts that had drawn four completely disparate and often anti-social personalities to his table. As far as he was concerned, the important point was that they came and for a few hours they enjoyed each other’s company without the pressures of their different past or present traumas getting in the way.
The next year Hardison had rigged the office monitors to play the best of the college football games the day had to offer, and while Eliot put his foot down about having television playing during dinner time he’d appreciated the effort and being able to experience a bit more of the traditional day’s offerings for himself while he was working in the kitchen.
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was added to their viewing line up the year after that. Nate and Sophie blamed Parker for forcing Hardison’s hand, but by that point Eliot had learned that the hacker rarely did anything he didn’t already want to do. Whoever was responsible, they’d all ended up thoroughly enjoying the experience.
Relocation to Portland had required some logistical reworking of the day, but something in Eliot’s soul had blossomed at the challenge of a professional kitchen to work in. That was the first year he could look at and say they were a real family. Nate had grown more comfortable in the kitchen over the years, to the point where Eliot could trust him as an assistant. Hardison was still in charge of the day’s entertainment, while Sophie took decorating as her task. Parker floated between the two of them, picking up any task that required an additional pair of hands.
It was also the first year they had shared what they were grateful for. Parker had insisted on it, and the result was by turns funny, poignant and absolutely inappropriate.
Eliot had loved every second of it.
The next year was after Nate and Sophie had left. “Are they coming home for Thanksgiving?” Parker had asked just after Halloween. “You said families are supposed to be together at Thanksgiving.” All of which was true, and while the subject had never been raised either before mastermind and grifter had left Portland, or during the few conversations they’d had in the time since, Eliot really couldn’t raise a good argument against at least posing the question.
”We weren’t planning on seeing you three until Christmas,” had been Sophie’s immediate reaction when he’d posed the question during a private Skype session a week later. ”They’re already discussing the possibility of snow in Paris, Eliot - think about it. It’s going to be positively magical!”
Which again - not really an argument he could win - but he turned his appeal to Nate nonetheless. After Eliot himself, Nate had the most traditional relationship with holidays of any of them. Unfortunately he’d been no easier to sway than Sophie. ”It’s a good opportunity for you and Hardison to show her that she still has a family - that even if Sophie and I aren’t physically there, her world hasn’t changed all that much.”
Like the rest of it, Nate’s observations made perfect sense - the problem was, when Parker got her mind set on something things like ‘sense’ and ‘logic’ tended not to be very useful. Nate laughed when Eliot told him as much, a response Eliot didn’t think was fair or nice.
”Give her some credit. Being in a steady relationship has calmed her down a lot.” He paused just long enough to let Eliot sweat then added, ”And if she still won’t let it go, I’ll talk to her.”
Eliot still didn’t have a lot of faith in his and Hardison’s ability to convince Parker of anything, particularly since Nate had let her nominally in charge of the business side of their lives - but he knew Nate’s offer to bat clean-up was the best he was likely to get.
Even though he knew it was the coward’s way out, Eliot still waited until the following Sunday before raising the subject. Sunday breakfast had become as much of a tradition amongst the three of them as any holiday, and after eating nearly a whole pig’s worth of bacon Parker could usually be talked into anything.
“Can we still have sweet potato casserole?” was all Parker asked after Eliot laid out the situation and he and Hardison explained the mechanics behind families sometimes not being together on important holidays.
“For Thanksgiving?” Eliot asked, feeling the beginnings of a headache stirring just behind his sinuses. “Of course!’’
“No,” Parker replied, shaking her head. “In Paris. For Christmas. We could mash the two holidays together if there was sweet potato casserole.”
Eliot tried to remember if sweet potatoes were even a thing he could acquire in Paris, and finally gave it up as a bad job, reaching for the coffee pot and refilling his mug.
“You going to need help in the kitchen this year?” Hardison asked, once talk had turned to other subjects.
Unable to predict how well he would be able to control his reactions, Eliot tried very hard not to imagine a kitchen with either Parker or Hardison as his sous chef. “I think I’ll be good,” he managed at last. “With fewer people it should go fine. Parker will probably need your help with decorating anyway.”
Neither hacker nor thief seemed inclined to argue with his assessment. Eliot settled back with his coffee and revised his earlier list of ill-wishes against Nate and Sophie’s holiday to something a bit less catastrophic.
His trade-off for having the brew pub’s professional kitchen to work his magic was that prep work needed to be restricted to those hours when the restaurant wasn’t open and making money. Eliot had worked out the logistics so that he needed to spend only the two mornings before Thanksgiving itself on getting the easier dishes ready, but it was two solid days of work.
Parker and Hardison would occasionally drift through the kitchen, curious to catch a glimpse or a taste of what he was doing. He allowed the voyeurism and punished the theft in equal measure; it was only when they tried to talk to him that things got testy.
Thursday morning dawned cold and clear. The sun peaking in the windows of the restaurant found Eliot already at work, lifting the turkey from the brine, setting it in the rack and starting to stuff it. In order to meet his target for a midday meal, the bird would have to begin cooking sharply at seven o’clock.
Once the matter of the turkey was settled, he turned his attention to making breakfast for Parker and Hardison. It wasn’t quite Sunday breakfast sized, but he’d learned the hard way that feeding the two of them was the best way to keep them out from underfoot as the clock ticked closer to dinnertime and the smells from the food became harder to resist.
By the time he was setting plates of food to warm, Hardison stumbled into the kitchen - cutting a wide enough path to the coffee pot that he was able to stay out of Eliot’s way. After half a cup he retrieved the plates and took them back to the office area without uttering a single word. Eliot continued working, and twenty minutes later heard the monitors firing up.
The morning fell into a comfortably familiar ritual cadence. Eliot didn’t need to check on Parker and Hardison to know that they were doing their parts for the meal, and the two of them stayed dutifully out of his way until late morning, when Hardison appeared in the doorway. “They just announced a musical number from that Broadway show you talked about,” he said.
Eliot was in the process of swapping the green bean casserole for Parker’s sweet potatoes. “Jersey Boys?” he asked, just to make certain Hardison was remembering correctly.
“Yeah man,” Hardison said. “I can’t tell how long it’s going to be though. You know how those TV guys are.”
Finishing the swap-out, Eliot straightened up with a soft groan at the ache in his back. “Can you keep an eye on things out here?”
Smiling somewhat in disbelief Hardison nodded. “Sure. Go ahead. I promise not to touch anything and to scream if I see smoke.”
“Or if a timer goes off,” Eliot added, wiping his hands on a dishtowel and setting it aside. “Thanks.”
He started forward, but pulled up short when he saw that Hardison’s expression had gone strange. “What’s wrong?”
The hacker looked as though he was considering his next choice of words very carefully. “Ah, me and Parker…we don’t want you to go home alone tonight.”
Realizing in a rush exactly why Hardison’s expression had looked strange, Eliot’s first instinct was to brush aside what he’d said; make a joke of it, anything but hope that Hardison was barreling down the very road Eliot had been too terrified to travel himself. “Well unless you’ve got a date in your back pocket I don’t know about…” he began.
“Come home with us,” Hardison said, the words nearly tumbling over themselves into the air between the two friends. “Me and Parker. Tonight.” Then before Eliot could say anything, he ducked his head forward - catching the hitter’s mouth in a kiss.
Closing his eyes, Eliot inhaled mingled scents of orange juice, coffee and Hardison as the hacker moved into him. Moaning softly, he put his arms around the other man’s shoulders, lips parting as he traced the swell of Hardison’s bottom lip with the edge of his tongue. Growling low in his throat, Hardison kissed Eliot again - this time open mouthed and hungry, determined to taste every inch of Eliot he could.
“Tell Eliot he’s missing that song he wanted to see!”
Eliot’s knees buckled as Parker’s announcement drove them apart. Hardison caught him and steadied him on his feet. “I can take that as a yes then?” the hacker asked, his dark eyes filled with laughter now.
Still rocked, Eliot nodded wordlessly. “Go watch your bit,” Hardison said, urging him on.
Parker looked up as he entered the office. Eliot didn’t know what she read in his expression, but she grinned as happily as he’d ever seen her. “He told you?”
Nodding, Eliot crossed to her chair and perched on the arm. “Are you okay with it?” he asked, taking her hand in his own.
“Are you kidding?” Parker asked, laying her head on his thigh. “I get both my boys at last. This is the best Thanksgiving ever.”