A/N: Real life is kicking my ass right now.
Cassie opened the refrigerator in Nate's apartment hoping to find something along the lines of eggs and unsalted butter, only to be confronted with a fridge full of nothing but orange soda in all shapes and sizes. She shut the door and leaned back to look at Hardison typing away on his computer with an orange soda by his elbow.
"You do know that there's not a shortage of orange soda at the grocery store, right?" she asked the hacker concernedly as she stood beside the fridge. "It's not like you can't stock other food in the fridge."
"Hey," Alec defended himself, "There's food in the other fridges. And have you seen Sophie's fridge? Half of it's full of shoes!"
"That's no excuse." She shook her head and went to the door, calling over her shoulder toward where Eliot sat reading a book, "I'm going downstairs to the bar to get some yarn or something to keep my hands busy. Unless that's forbidden too."
Eliot didn't look up as he commanded, "Hardison, go get Cassie some yarn and knitting needles."
Hardison glared at the older man, "An' why d' I gat ta go?"
The hitter looked up at this and jovially said, "Because you still need your fingers to type, don't ya?"
Hardison started grumbling under his breath as he obediently picked up his jacket and made his way to the front door, calling over his shoulder, "What kind da ya want?"
Cassie's answer was immediate, "Worsted weight Paton's Bamboo Angora Baby Yarn - it has a pastel colored label. I'd like a few different colors for a baby blanket. I'll also need a crochet hook in size H, if you please."
Haridson stopped in his tracks and turned around on his heels to look at Cassie, "Really?"
She gave him a cool look and a smile as she responded, "It's a lot less complicated than buying a new computer or cell phone, Alec. It's yarn."
He looked utterly petrified by now, "But that means I gatta go ta the ... the old lady store."
Cassie rolled her eyes and muttered something in a language that sounded vaguely Arabic but wasn't anywhere close to a dialect Eliot knew. "You go in, you tell the nice lady behind the counter what you need, and then she goes and gets it. Simple, n'est pas?"
Hardison started grumbling again as he put on his jacket and made his way out the door, "It'd probably be a whole lost simpler if Eliot let you go with me. ... Or if you stopped speakin' so many freakin' languages."
As the door shut behind him, Cassie turned to Eliot with a slight shake of her head, "Three languages isn't much. You should hear Daniel when he gets excited about something." She frowned, "Or when he's really upset. He starts mixing languages the way you mix spices."
"How many does he know?" Eliot asked, turning the page in the riveting book he was "reading" as he pushed his glasses up on his nose a little further.
"Umm," Cassie mentally counted before saying, "Twenty-five Earth bound languages and ten alien dialects."
Eliot let out a low whistle in appreciation of that amount of knowledge. "And you?"
Cassie grinned, "Seven. You?"
He thought about all the languages he knew and mentally added them together, subtracting the ones that he shouldn't know. With a smirk he looked at her and said, "Five that I can tell you about."
She let out a laugh as her stomach started shifting in a very unpleasant manner. Looking around the apartment from her perch on the sofa she softly asked, "Where's the bathroom?" as she tried most desperately not to throw up all over Nate's living room.
Eliot seemed to hear the unsaid desperation in her voice as he pointed to the staircase. "Up the stairs and to the left. Can't miss it?"
"Thanks," Cassie replied as she leapt up the stairs three at a time.
"Want me to hold your hair back?" he offered even though her hair was a good six inches shorter than his own.
"No," she shouted from the bathroom a few seconds before the sounds of violent retching were heard through the open door.
Eliot frowned as he set his book down and searched the kitchen for a tea towel, which he proceeded to wet with cold water before grabbing a dry one and a cup of cold water as well. He made his way up the stairs and when the bathroom came into view his heart constricted at the sight he found.
Cassie was leaning with her head against the cool ceramic of the toilet and her eyes closed. Her face had lost all color and she looked positively frightful. "Please tell me this won't last the whole time," she begged him as he flushed the toilet and used the wet cloth to sooth her forehead.
"I don't know darlin'," he replied as he tried to hand her the cup of water.
She pushed him away weakly with a groan as she dropped her head so that she could once again empty her stomach of whatever it was that was irritating it.
Eliot was at a loss of what to do. Hangovers he could handle. Injuries he could handle. Morning sickness? His sister's pregnancy had been relatively free of actual vomiting. There had been plenty of nausea, but not so much of the sickness.
After the spell passed her wiped her forehead again with the wet cloth and offered her the water, which she took. She rinsed out her mouth and spit the water into the toilet before flushing it again and attempting to stand. Cassie was wobbly on her feet, so Eliot helped her stand so she wouldn't slip and fall.
"Don't go fallin' down now, darlin'," he teased her as she leaned heavily against him while attempting to regain her balance.
"Walking on two legs is hard, you know," she reminded him with a jab of the finger into his side and a slight smile. Given the circumstances it was the best she could manage.
He let out a bark of laughter as she took her weight off of him and leaned against the wall, allowing him to pick up the items he'd brought with them so Nate's bathroom wouldn't be left a complete mess. "Want to brush your teeth now or later?"
Cassie wrinkled her nose. "There wasn't anything in my stomach so I'll settle for mouth wash."
Another minute later and the pair was walking carefully down the curved staircase just as Hardison was walking back through the door.
"Cassie, no matter what you say I'm never goin' back into one of those stores again!" Hardison exclaimed as he threw down the reusable shopping bag he'd acquired (and filled to the brim) on his short trip. He wasn't really looking at anything as he kept up the rant, "Sixteen different shades! Sixteen, woman! And - and the sales clerk ..." he brought his fist up to his mouth as he kept on shifting his weight from one foot to the other in a nervous dance, "Don't make me go back there."
Cassie would have snorted if her stomach hadn't still been upset from the walk down the stairs. She was leaning heavily on Eliot as he walked her toward the sofa where Hardison had dumped the bag. "Looks like you brought the store with you," she said as she sat down with a thankful smile to the hitter. "What are you trying to do? Keep me busy for the next nine months?"
Hardison shuddered as he finally looked at her and noted her pale face and still damp hair, "What happened?" he asked, his mood changing from aggravated by the store attendant to concerned in a flash.
She waved him off as he started to hover, "Morning sickness. What's in the box?" she switched the subject to the small cardboard box Hardison still had in one hand.
The hacker smirked as he remembered the box that had just arrived that day at one of the P.O. Boxes he had in the city. "Hacker's delight," he replied as he started working on the shipping tape with his fingers.
"That anything like Turkish delight? Because I'm not sure my stomach could handle even smelling something like that right now," she teased him as he practically skipped over to the table where his hacking equipment was set up and sprawled out.
A thud was the only notice either was given that Eliot had moved and thrown a folded up Swiss Army knife at the table Hardison was working at. The hitter was in the kitchen making tea. Hardison looked between the knife, the kitchen, and Cassie, finally settling on the knife, "You're damn lucky you didn't break anything."
The knife didn't respond.
A few minutes later Eliot came out of the kitchen with two steaming cups, one of ginger mint tea in his hand, which he set on a coaster in front of Cassie before moving back to his favorite chair and his magazine with the other one, which probably held coffee. Within moments the trio was silently occupied with their own separate tasks: Eliot was keeping an ear on the apartment to make sure they weren't surprised while reading; Hardison was opening his package and taking out what looked like a touch screen cell phone; and Cassie was drinking her tea slowly while going through the plethora of yarn Hardison had picked up for her, finding a pack of crochet hooks ranging from E to K at the bottom of the bag, along with a selection of yarn that ranged from baby weight to bulky.
Hardison looked up from his new toy about ten minutes later. He'd been modifying it to work better than his hacker friend had been able to, and was ready to show it off. Cassie was busy working on something that looked like the start to a blanket, using the light blue yarn he'd picked out. Inwardly he preened that he hadn't messed up her request too badly. She looked good with her hands moving swiftly, hook in her right and the yarn in her left, making some sort of repeated set of movements he was having a hard time following. The thing she was making was getting bigger and she seemed content to stop every so often to sip her tea. It would be a shame to interrupt her when she was in a flow.
That left Eliot. He was just "reading" a magazine. Ha. He wasn't even wearing his reading glasses. Probably just watching Cassie crochet while pretending to read. With a smile Hardison got up and made his way to the hitter. "Hey, it's an ordinary cell phone, right?," he started, showing him the "phone." The only response he got was a disinterested look from Eliot as he picked up his own coffee mug and took a drink. Alec continued, undeterred, "It's not, man, it's a metal detector." He sat down beside Eliot and went into a more detailed explanation of what the device did and only after a while noticed that Eliot was still "reading" his magazine.
"Are you even listening?" Hardison asked, annoyed that he was being ignored by the older man.
"Yeah," Eliot nodded, glancing at the hacker and deciding to get back at him for interrupting his brief reprise.
"What did I say?" Hardison demanded in a childish tone.
"You were explaining how you're still a virgin," Eliot replied, unperturbed and with a completely straight face as he looked at that man sitting next to him.
Cassie let out a snort at Hardison's indignation as the door opened and Nate and Parker came back form their meeting with their new client. Cassie moved the bag of yarn from beside her on the sofa to the floor by her feet.
Nate was clearly irritated with Parker's performance and in the middle of his berrating her Eliot chimed in, "I told you not to take her."
"Yeah, well you were right," Nate replied, moving into the living room. "Where's Sophie?"
Eliot shrugged, "I don't know."
"Well we're not waiting," Nate said briskly as he sat down in the middle of the sofa, next to Cassie. He gave her a brief nod of acknowledgment as he motioned to Hardison and Eliot, "Come on. Let's go."
Hardison was suddenly up and in front of the monitors, talking. Cassie crocheted as she listened to what was being said by the hacker. "Daniel Fowler. Sixty-one, CEO FTP Fidelity ..."
As he went on, Cassie's crocheting became slower and slower until when Parker sat down on the arm of Eliot's chair she wasn't even pretending to crochet and was just listening and watching. Part of her wondered why they were letting her hear all of this, another part answered that it was probably some sort of test Nate had concocted to see how trustworthy she was.
"The FBI's very thorough, huh?" Eliot asked when Hardison was finished explaining how the man's assets were frozen and the house arrest. It seemed like a slap on the wrist compared to everything he'd done to people.
Hardison crossed his arms over his chest as he confidently (and a little patronizingly) said, "Extremely."
"So what'd they miss?" Parker asked before taking a bite of the cereal she'd gotten for herself. Cassie was very glad she was sitting so far away because the smell of the milk even at that distance made her stomach turn.
"Twenty million dollars," Hardison replied in a light tone, pleased that he'd found what the FBI couldn't. "They moved it off the books right before the warrants came down."
"Yeah, well, he knew the end was near and he was getting ready to bolt," Nate explained. Cassie almost wondered how he knew that, but then again, he was something of a profiler.
A/N: If you in any way wish to help ease my real life troubles, go to www (dot) daisybookworm (dot) etsy (dot) com. It's not my shop, but it is a friend of mine's and her troubles are greatly impacting my life right now due to a very long story that I don't want to get into.
I'll post more as soon as I can.