Disclaimer: I don't own anything. At all.
Author's note: So, I loved this show. So much. And I can't get these two out of my head. So I think this piece is going to be kind of epic, judging by what I have so far. I hope, if there's anyone else still out there looking for this stuff, that you enjoy it.
The day that she gets back to Chicago its grey, and raining ever so slightly. A light drizzle that's just there enough to be annoying, but not heavy enough to warrant an umbrella. So by the time that she gets to the restaurant her hair is doing that thing where it curls at the ends and sticks to her forehead and she's pissed off because when she left the hotel she looked really quite nice, and now she looks like something akin to a damp rat.
She walks into the restaurant and immediately spots her father. He's standing by the bar talking to a customer and laughing in that charming way that he has that she knows can get anyone to do anything he wants. She's seen him do it, she's been on the receiving end of it several times in her life, but it's still a marvel to watch when it's not directed at her.
She stands there for a few minutes just watching him, and she feels this warmth surging up inside of her, she's missed him. More than she ever thought she would when she agreed to move to Australia. She'd assumed that she'd be ok, that she wouldn't feel the loss of him as it appeared she had, but even with everything that had passed and all the anger that she'd felt for him when she was a teenager, she'd found that that the lack of her father had affected her more than she'd imagined. But then she always had been good at overestimating her own strength.
She's just standing there with this goofy smile on her face when he spots her, and his face lights up just like it used to when she was little.
"Gracious!" He shouts and waves her over, his grin growing as she makes her way over to him. He catches her in a huge hug and throws her around in a circle, and she can't help but giggle because his excitement has always been contagious and she's just missed him so much.
When he puts her down he's still grinning, and he's holding her by the shoulders and studying her face and grinning even more.
"Honey, you look so beautiful. And grown up! Where did my Graciousness go?" He looks exasperated and happy and he pulls her into another hug and she chuckles again as he kisses her on the side of her head.
"Dad." She whines half-heartedly, because she feels like she should, but she can't really bring herself to be annoyed at him like she used to when he's obviously just so happy to see her. She wonders briefly why she never understood that when she was fifteen, but then she remembers herself at fifteen and realises that she never really understood anything like she thought she did.
"Alright, alright, I'm sorry." He gives her one last squeeze before he pulls away again. "I just missed you is all. You ready for lunch?"
She smiles and nods in reply and he leaves her there standing at the bar with a promise of returning with his wallet and his coat. She leans back on her elbows and looks around the restaurant. She can see herself all through her childhood running around this place, chasing Zoe. For a while when she was young this place was her castle. It has completely changed since those days, way has been made for the bookstore portion and decor has been updated to keep up with the times, but she can still picture it, smell it as it was when she had made her world out of table legs and shined shoes and dropped napkins. It's almost like home, but more like something else, something she used to understand completely but can't really grasp anymore, knowing what she knows now.
She feels him before anything else. Before she hears his soft voice to her left, before she turns her head to meet his smiling eyes across the expanse of the mahogany Tiffany had insisted would be gorgeous for the restaurant furniture. Before any of her actual senses catch up with her she can feel his presence. So it's not so much of a shock when she does hear that slow rumble of mirth that comes in the form of his question.
"Reminiscing?"
It's not a shock to her to hear him, she was waiting for it, but she doesn't expect what she sees when she tilts her head around to look at him. She sees a man. Not the guy she knew, not Eli Sammler, rockstar wannabe and general rebel, but a real, honest to goodness man looking at her out of that guy's face. Because on the outside he hasn't really changed, sure he's had a haircut and he's wearing a button-up shirt and leather shoes, but his face is as familiar as ever it was to her, his lean body recognisable in an instant. But there's a light in his eyes now that wasn't there before, the last time she saw him. A light that she thinks she likes as he grins warmly at her and walks around the bar to give her a hug.
It's not as enthusiastic as her father's hug and is much shorter, but there's something strangely intimate in the way he's almost completely bent over and so practically surrounds her with his upper body, and the way his fists curl into her lower back. He's soft and she practically folds right into him and she remembers this so well, this feeling of something between them, pulling them towards each other.
'Of course' she thinks, this is how it always was with him, this feeling of closeness that never really existed but was always just there.
He looks sheepish when he pulls away but he doesn't let go of her completely, instead his hands come to stop on her forearms, just resting there, as if he's afraid she'll try to run. He looks right at her, right into her eyes for a minute and his grin just keeps getting bigger, she thinks at one time she would have tried to look anywhere but back at him, and probably tried to move away as well. But she's grown up a lot in the last two years, and part of that apparently, is being able to be near him without feeling like she wants to die, so she just looks straight back at him with a smile of her own, until she starts to think it might look a bit weird, them just standing and staring at each other.
So she looks down at her feet for a moment and that appears to break the spell, because when she looks back up he's taken a half a step back and he's looking her up and down.
"You look really good Grace. All grown up." He adds after a moment with a slight eye roll, as though he can't believe he's saying those words, and she laughs as she tells him,
"You look just the same." He grabs his heart, like she'd shot him straight through it and fakes a stumble backwards, laughing lightly the whole time, and she smiles.
"That's harsh Gracie, real harsh. And to think, I was looking forward to you coming home."
"Don't call me Gracie. And I'm sorry, you do look different, older." He smiles at her again and it feels ridiculous, as if they've both been smiling for this long, it's not natural. "Cleaner." She quips, to try and get a different reaction out of him, but he throws his head back and barks out a laugh, a real laugh and he looks so much like his own father that she thinks maybe she hasn't realised how much he really has changed.
"You're a gas Gracie," he smirks pointedly, raising one eyebrow in her direction and she scowls, but she can't pull it off completely and he laughs softly and grasps one of her arms gently between his thumb and forefingers and rubs lightly along the inside of her wrist. "Sorry," he repents, and shrugs "couldn't resist."
There it is again, she thinks, that intimacy that they share. The feel of his thumb on her wrist and the affectionate look in his eyes, it's keen and hopeful, and slightly too much. But she wants it. She moves into it like she would a patch of sunlight in a darkened room. She doesn't think she could ever have too much of that feeling, no matter how overwhelming it was.
"You here for lunch with your dad?" He asks, his tone light again, but his hand still encircling her wrist, like he's not quite ready to let go. Maybe he isn't. Maybe she's imagining things. She's gotten sick of trying to guess, so she just lets it go and accepts whatever it is. She nods at him again, not quite certain of her voice.
"What are you doing later?" She's thrown, for a moment, because he's there, and still touching her and looking at her, and she can't seem to remember what she's doing later.
"I don't know." She tells him, because it's not a total lie, and it makes it seem like she has options for things to do later that she hasn't quite decided on. And he nods sombrely, so she thinks he probably went for that explanation in his head.
"You should come by my place. We could catch up." Grace laughs, because who would have thought three years ago that Eli Sammler would ever use a phrase like 'catch up'? It throws her, again. He's so different from how he was.
"You have a place?" She asks with a grin, to mask her amusement at his language.
"Of course. Where did you think I was living?"
"Your mom's?" He looks hurt momentarily, and she's almost sorry she said it, but he recovers quickly and is smiling at her again before she can blink.
"Nah, moved out about a year and a half ago. I have a small apartment downtown. It's next door to a bar, but it's a pretty cool area, and it's cheap. You should come see if you're not busy, I'd like you to."
His thumb presses harder into her wrist as he says the last part, and she gets the feeling that her answer now is really important. That he's hanging on it. That they're hanging on it. He's looking at her with so much hope that it's almost desperate and her breath catches in her throat at the sight of him. So she does the only thing she can do. She nods. And then clears her throat before asking for his address. He grins quickly and reaches across the bar for a piece of paper and a pen, scribbling it down quickly and passing it to her.
"Grace! I'm ready." She hears her dad call out from the door and she turns and nods in acknowledgement.
She turns back to Eli one last time and offers an apologetic smile and a wave before heading off. She sees him nod and go back to whatever he was doing before he'd seen her and she feels this buzz of anticipation. She knows, much like every other interaction she's had with him in her lifetime, whatever else tonight is going to be, it's definitely not going to be what she expects.