A/N: So obviously lack of leverage has kept the inspiration pretty slack I think I had two sentences written for this chapter until I got hit with the muse stick and pretty much wrote this whole thing in an hour. I decided that my grammar mistakes were worth me getting mocked if I could end your wait, and as of posting time I'm probably late for work! Hope you enjoy it!
Though he had gone through the motions of grumbling at Parker for packing his clothes in pillowcases instead of the duffel bags in the closet, and making a grab for his plants to pull them up by the roots Eliot was still reeling. He separated himself from Parker to turn in his key and settle his bill with the manager and couldn't remember getting down the stairs. He had known intellectually that Parker was a gorgeous woman it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out, despite that he had never felt that attraction that hit him out of the blue on the roof. Before that moment he would swear up and down that they had a brother-sister relationship and now he knew that was the farthest thing from the truth. He shook the managers hand passing him a basket of the fully grown vegetables from his garden he picked before loading them into the truck.
A loud bang pulled his attention from the manager to the glass door that gave full view of the parking lot. His eyes immediately followed the source of the noise to a duffel bag sitting on the roof of his truck. Before he could even comprehend what he was seeing another joined it with an equally loud bang. "Parker" he grumbled taking off ignoring the chuckle from the man behind him.
"Hi Eliot!" he looked up and saw Parker half hanging off the balcony waving enthusiastically at him.
"What the hell are you doing?" he shouted back using a hand to shield his eyes from the sun and choosing to ignore the tightening in his chest at the sight of her smiling face aglow with the light of the sunset.
"Packing!" she replied heaving the third bag over the edge of the railing and letting out a whoop as it fell on top of the truck with the others.
"I could have carried them." He told her not even bothering to argue, there was only one left and she already had it propped on the railing. Even if he had chosen to fight with her about it she would have it over the edge before he got out his first word, he knew better than most that with Parker it paid to pick your fights. Despite that decision he still winced as he heard the metallic clang of what he imagined to be one of his belt buckles hitting the roof of his truck and most definitely denting it.
"Would have taken too long, we're roommates!" He rolled his eyes already moving to catch her having anticipated that the next thing she would throw over the railing would be her own body. Unlike the last time he caught her in such a fashion he was prepared and braced enough that her weight barely shook him.
"Your insane." He told her as she squealed delightedly in his arms. He took a moment to breathe her in, he knew from his shower that she didn't use any scented products so he knew the soft whiff of vanilla was only her and the fact that he was the only person close enough to know what she smelled like made him smile.
"We need to go to a hardware store." She informed him jumping down from his arms seemingly without a care in the world.
"Why?" he asked moving the bags from the roof of his truck into the back seat so they wouldn't squish the troughs of plants he loaded into the bed of the truck before they started packing.
"You need man sheets, and man walls." She told him definitively as she placed his guitar on the passenger seat.
"I'll be fine for tonight, we can go in the morning and start fresh. It'll give me a good chance to pick up some wood for those bookshelves too." He muttered the second part to himself forgetting for a moment that Parker's hearing was almost equal to his own.
"What's wrong with my bookshelves." She demanded darting around the truck to the driver's side so they stood toe to toe.
"Ignoring the fact that they don't match, they're mostly made of balsa wood from wall mart and that if you put one more book on them they're likely to collapse… absolutely nothing!" he told her with a fake smile plastered on his face.
"I thought I did ok." She muttered clearly with no response to his accusations.
"It's not that you did a bad job it's just that building stuff isn't exactly your forte." She still looked absolutely devastated and he couldn't stop the familiar feeling that he was a terrible person for hurting her. "I know you had a pretty specific idea of what you wanted, why don't you sketch it tonight while I set up our garden and we can try to turn it into whatever you decide?" he asked scrambling for a way to get the downcast expression off her face.
"Ok!" she exclaimed and danced off to the Camaro leaving Eliot wondering if she had honestly been upset or of Sophie had finally helped her develop the skills to play him. He left that concern for another time and hopped into the truck just in time for Parker to screech past him onto the highway leaving skid marks and several terrified commuters in her wake. Eliot sighed and followed at a more leisurely pace sending up a prayer for whatever cop would try to pull over his taser happy thief.
He had known he would not beat her home so he instead had chosen to enjoy the ride, picing up Chinese at a place he noticed on the way to the loft and following the speed limits the entire way. When he pulled up to the House he found the second garage door left open for him and impatient Parker sitting on the roof glaring from her perch. "You took forever!" she shouted waving her sketch pad in an effort to get his attention.
"I got food." He replied holding up the bag of fortune cookies that had made the cashier look at him like he was a crazy person.
"Yummy." Eliot didn't even bother making a motion to catch her as she dropped lightly onto the hood of his still running truck with barely a sound. "Did you get egg rolls?" she asked ignoring him in favor of digging into the bags. He jerked them away from her and nodded to the front door; she scowled but seemed to get the hint as she opened the door allowing him entry. He placed the bags on the counter and Parker immediately started in on them. "Ew yours." She handed him a container of beef teriyaki with her nose scrunched up in a sign of disgust as she bit into her egg roll.
"Did you make any progress with your sketch?" he asked settling in with a plastic fork he requested along with the chopsticks for Parker.
"I want it to be all books; Sophie thought I was for real crazy." Parker told him pushing the sketch pad across the table. It was pretty much what he expected with floor to ceiling bookshelves but she had added a platform with three raised steps on the far side of the room. She had re-positioned the furniture so that the elevated platform would serve as a backing for the couch and chairs already in there and a couple of desks and a white board could go where the furniture currently was.
"What's this?" he asked gesturing to the changes already deciding the best way to essentially lift the library four feet.
"That way we can work in there. I help Nate sometimes with the break-ins and I know you do to so now we can both help him together!" she smiled at him brightly. "And we can use it to plan our own jobs if we get them."
Eliot couldn't have stopped himself if he tried as he reached over and hauled a startled Parker into his lap hugging her tightly. When he had moved in with Amy it had been a fight every step of the way over colors and furniture placement and drapes. Nobody had ever just casually drawn him into their lives like Parker did; the entire thing was made better by the fact that she had no idea what she had actually done. She was the first person to invite him into her life for pure reasons. He took an extra moment to enjoy the feeling of her breath washing over his neck and her entire body pressed against him before he placed her back on her own stool.
"Hmm." She scooted back a bit still a bit shocked by his hug. "Huggy Eliot… does that happen a lot?" she asked watching him warily as he picked up his beef and happily continued to eat. "Eliot?" she asked again when he didn't answer her. "Are you going to do that more?" she asked again. She paused for a moment longer before reaching out and poking him in the arm with her chopstick. "Are you still there?"
"Huggy Eliot will happen again." He told her smirking as she froze clearly unsure what to do with that statement. He chuckled and took the last bite from his food before heading off to the garage to get the extra potting soil and get his plants transferred into the ground.
"Can you at least warn me next time!" she asked almost scaring him half to death. He had been so thrilled that his impromptu hug hadn't earned him a chopstick in the eye or something equally unpleasant that he forgot how damn quietly she could walk.
"Why? Didn't you like it?" he asked pulling both bags of fertilizer and a hoe from the truck before heading off into the backyard leaving her spluttering behind him. She had been correct about her yard; the fence came to about chest height and was a solid brown color that matched the trim of the House. She had easily enough room for his garden and a dog, he could even see putting in a pool next summer if they wanted to. He ignored the vision in his head of a swing set with children crawling all over it and instead focused on finding the right spot for his garden.
This time he heard her coming up behind him breathing a bit harder as she carried the last bag of fertilizer on her back. "What is this for?" she asked clearly choosing to ignore the hugging issue.
"That feeds the plants." He told her using the hoe to mark off a ten by ten area to start the garden.
"It's dirt." She told him poking the open bag lightly with her foot, "Plants eat dirt?"
"They get nutrients form the soil, like how we get ours from vegetables." He told her raising an eyebrow pointedly. Her desire to avoid anything green was the stuff of legends around the Leverage offices. The battles waged over lettuce in salad between the pair of them were epic.
"I don't want to eat something that eats dirt." She told him turning on her heel. He watched her leap gracefully onto the picnic table and use that to spring onto the roof easily catching the edge and pulling herself up. Instead of facing the street she turned so she faced him and pulled her sketch pad from under her shirt. He continued to watch her until she turned to a new page and became absorbed in another sketch. As he began planting his garden he couldn't help but think that he hoped they would have more nights like this him working in the garden and her close by and safe, it was almost perfect.