Rating: Pg
Characters: Eliot + Nate
Prompt/Prompter: After The Order 23 Job Eliot goes back to Nate's apartment.
Tea
He doesn't know why he goes back to Nate's place after watching Randy get taken away.
Maybe a part of him wants to be around a "good father" to remind himself they actually exist. Maybe it's just that Nate's place feels more like home than his own.
Maybe he knew, somewhere, that when he walked in the door Nate would be at the kitchen counter reading some old book with a mug of coffee in one had pretending he wasn't waiting up for Eliot to come by.
A pretense that would have been a lot more effective if there wasn't already a mug of tea and an apple sitting on the other side of the table.
Eliot sat, wrapping his hands around the warm mug and letting it's heat dispel the chill that had settled into them from sitting in a unheated car on a cold night like tonight before he took a sip and let the tea work at the cold inside.
The later rarely worked, but as always he'd take what he could.
Nate didn't say anything. He didn't need to. Just that he was waiting up for Eliot was evidence enough he knew something went wrong. Eliot knew there were enough cameras and records that Hardison could have found or figured out what had been going on. And Nate would already know that Eliot knew what he did was stupid but he couldn't have done anything else. And Eliot doubted Nate would have been able to do anything else either.
Well, he might have had more style at expressing his rage than hanging the poor excuse of a father over a railing but to each their own.
But Nate didn't really need to say anything and Eliot didn't need to say anything and sort of Eliot knew Nate was giving him the chance to open up about what was going on with him but…
No.
Eliot shook his head not saying anything but giving a small smile and mock toasting Nate while he finished his tea. He could share, but those old injuries were long healed and the skin had grown back and even if they maybe hadn't healed quite right this wasn't the time to go prodding them and try to fix damage that was two decades old.
He drained the last of the tea, surprised to find it was actually working to ease away the cold that settled into his chest tonight. He put the mug in the sink and picked up the apple on the way out the door. He called back over his shoulder "Thanks for the tea."
As Eliot closed the door he caught a glimpse of the small, unreadable, smile on Nate face before the door shut and Eliot slipped back away into the night.