A/N Hello hello! I'm back with the next chapter of Feels Like Home :) Like chapters three and four this is actually only the first half of what was planned to be one chapter, because once again the word count got absolutely out of control, even split in half this is the longest chapter yet... also because I split both chapters the time line gets a little fuzzy, so FYI these vignettes are happening concurrently/intermixed with the rules and compromises chapters... And as always a million thanks go out to Alexandra926 for taming my tenses and wrangling my run-ons

Alrighty then that's enough of me... I hope you enjoy!

Eliot knew there was several inconvertible truths in life.

Always mount a horse from the left side.

Never tell a Chechen that his sister has a nice smile.

Cooking a good cut of steak to well done should be a punishable crime.

And a bored Parker, is a dangerous Parker.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Eliot and Parker were having a fairly typical day off.

The job had gone later than expected the night before, and they hadn't trudged through Eliot's front door until the sun was rising in the sky. They had both wordlessly agreed that Parker would stay over through simple practicality, in that Eliot had been her ride and he lived closer to where they were working and they were both exhausted. Crawling into their respective beds so late meant they'd slept most of the morning away. It was only force of habit that had Eliot waking up before noon and it was the smell of breakfast food as he made brunch that had Parker stumbling into the kitchen, rubbing at her tired eyes and asking if he was making waffles.

After they'd eaten, they had made their way back to his home gym where they spent a couple of hours working on Parker's self-defense skills. Eliot was proud of the progress she'd made over the last few years since the first time he'd first taught her how to properly throw a punch way back when they were still in LA. Her gymnastic abilities gave her amazing flexibility and body memory, and that made her an excellent student to work with. Especially when it came to grappling. There were times that he honestly didn't know how she got out of certain holds without breaking or dislocating something. But the way he figured, if it worked, it worked.

But now, Eliot had moved on to some solo work against his heavy bag, while Parker kept him company by literally hanging out, dangling from his chin-up bar, telling him all about some exhibit down in Philadelphia that had something she wanted to steal. To be honest, he was really only half-listening to her; Parker's rapid chatter of her detailed heist plans simply becoming a background counterpoint to the low thumping of his fists against his punching bag. He would have paid more attention if he thought she'd actually follow through on her plans. But as things stood now, he wasn't overly concerned. Because while they might have had today and possibly tomorrow off, since they were officially in the middle of The Stall, they had to be on call for the rest of the con to kick off at any moment. And despite the fact that sometimes he seriously wondered if Parker was actually magic, the way she seemed to just appear or disappear from thin air, there was no way that even she could get down to Philly, pull off a heist, and get back to Boston before the exhibit closed at the end of the week.

What did keep his attention was the fact that even after half an hour, she was just as solid as she had been when she'd first jumped up on the bar. He knew that in her position, his own hands and shoulders would have been screaming at him by now, but she showed zero signs of fatigue as she explained the best way to get past a Glen-Reeder 5400 alarm system with both heat and motion sensors. He hadn't even seen her adjust her grip. That wasn't to say that he wasn't already well aware that Parker was much stronger than she looked. Especially when it came to her upper body strength. She did hang from buildings by her fingertips for a living, after all. He couldn't help but be continually impressed by it, though.

Just a few weeks ago, they had been running surveillance on a mark that liked to work out in the park, and he and Parker were undercover as fellow fitness enthusiasts. In order to stay looking busy while keeping eyes on the mark who was doing tai chi under a nearby tree - poorly, he might add - they'd somehow ended up having a pull-up contest. And while he knew for a fact that that he was physically much stronger than Parker, there seemed to be no end to her endurance. Not only had he tapped out before she had, the only reason that she'd eventually stopped at all was that the mark had moved and they'd had to go jog after him.

His ego was healthy enough that he didn't really care that she had undeniably kicked his ass at their little contest. What was going to make him snap one day, however, was the fact that Hardison, who had been in the van at the time, not doing anything that resembled physical activity, would not shut up about it.

He was lost in contemplation, wondering whether it was possible that Parker just didn't feel pain the same way most people did, or if maybe she had some weird genetic mutation where she just didn't produce the lactic acid that caused muscle fatigue, that he didn't even notice right away that she had stopped speaking.

"What's wrong, Parker?" he asked, when he glanced over and saw the dejected look on her face.

"I wanna go steal something," she pouted.

"Give it a day or two, and I'm sure Nate will have something for you to nab," he offered in consolation, throwing another combo at the bag.

"But I'm bored now," she said in a tone that was dangerously close to a whine.

That got Eliot's attention. He was pretty sure each member of their team had had an unfortunate experience with the aftermath of one of Parker's fits of boredom at one time or another.

He reached out with both hands to stop the punching bag's swing, before giving her his undivided attention. "It's a nice day. Go out and do something," he suggested, not really wanting a bored Parker wreaking havoc in his home. And it really was a nice day; it seemed as though the harsh Boston winter was finally behind them and spring had officially arrived.

Parker just sighed, switched her grip and flipped backwards, hooking her knees over the bar and letting her arms dangle towards the floor. "It's an 'I don't want to be around people' day," she shrugged, which looked more than a little odd now that she was upside down.

"In case you haven't noticed, darlin'," he drawled, as he started peeling the tape from his hands, "I'm right here."

"Don't be silly," she scoffed. "You're Eliot, you don't count as people."

"Thanks, Parker," he said dryly.

"You're welcome," she chirped.

He just rolled his eyes and shook his head. Then, he had an idea.

"Come on, hop down and go put some shoes on," he told her.

"But I said I didn't want to go out," she frowned, locking her knees down on the bar harder, like she was afraid he was going to physically pull her down.

"We're not going out, we're going up."

"The roof?" Now Parker was intrigued. She did like roofs, mostly jumping off of them. But one of the house rules was that she wasn't allowed to rappel down during the day, lest one of Eliot's neighbors see her and start asking questions. "Why?"

"Like I said, it's a nice day. And because you could use some Vitamin D," he told her.

"Huh?"

"Are you coming or not?" he asked, glancing over his shoulder just in time to see Parker execute a far more complicated dismount than was strictly necessary, landing silently as always. He gave her a minute to slip on some shoes and then they headed upstairs.

The private roof access was what had actually sold Eliot on this particular condo. He had plenty of space for a year-round greenhouse, as well as raised garden beds for the regular growing season, with just enough room left over for his grill and a small patio set.

He'd been using the greenhouse all winter, but the garden beds had been lying fallow since fall and it was going to take an afternoon of hard work to get them ready for spring planting. He figured that was as good of an activity as any to keep Parker busy for the day.

"Why do you have a plant shed?" Parker asked, as she followed him to the structure in the corner of the roof that she'd always ignored in the past.

"It's a greenhouse, Parker," he said, giving her his patented 'what's wrong with you' look.

"Ugh, it's hot in here," she complained, when she followed him inside.

"It's a greenhouse," he repeated. "It's supposed to be warm. That's the point. Or else everything would die in here during the winter. Besides, what are you complaining about? You think steam vents are an acceptable mode of travel."

"That's a dry heat." Parker wrinkled her nose distastefully, "This is humid. Sticky."

Eliot wanted to know what part of steam implied a dry anything, but he knew any answer of Parker's would probably only lead to a headache and not much understanding. So he just sighed and let it go.

"It's good for the plants," he said instead, walking over to the small chest where he stored his gardening tools.

"Plants," she said slowly, like she was tasting the word on her tongue. "I still don't get the point." She wandered over to the swiss chard and pulled off one of the leaves, holding it up to the light like she might with a diamond to appraise its clarity.

"Leave that alone. This isn't a flower garden, Parker," Eliot said annoyed, as he dug around for the spare gardening fork that he knew was in there somewhere. "Everything in here is edible. The spinach you ate in the spanakopita I made last week," he said, pointing to a row of leafy greens. "The peppers you had in your omelette this morning. The tomatoes and eggplants I'm gonna use for the lasagna later."

"Oh, you're making lasagna?" Parker asked, perking up as she reburied the chard leaf so it was standing straight up in a bare patch of dirt in the middle of his green onions.

"I was thinking about it, but that's not the point," he said, trying to bring her back on topic, while making a mental note to grab the leaf when she wasn't looking. "The point is you've eaten pretty much everything in here at some point, and if you want to keep eating, maybe you should try to have a little more respect for what's happening in here."

He could see her turning it over in her mind, deciding how much credence she was going to give his words. "These are plants… with a purpose," she said, finally.

"Yeah, I guess that's a good way of putting it," Eliot shrugged, as he finally found what he was looking for. Gathering up the tools they needed, he herded Parker back outside. He handed her a three-pronged hand fork, a decision he immediately regretted when she promptly threaded her fingers through the tines and started making slashing motions through the air.

"Hey look, I'm Wolverine!"

"Damnit Parker, that's sharp!" he scolded, ripping it back out of her hand. "And you've been spending too much time with Hardison."

"So what are we doing out here?" she asked dubiously, ignoring his admonitions. "There's no plants, just boxes of dirt."

"That's the problem, they've been empty since last fall, so we gotta get 'em ready for spring planting," he explained, kneeling down next to the first box. "The soil's been compacted by snow and ice all winter. It needs to be turned over and aerated. Also, we need to pull out all the weeds and any other organic matter left over from last year," he said, demonstrating what needed to be done. He gave her back the tool he had confiscated earlier, "Here, give it a shot."

She looked a little doubtful as she took her first stab at it, but a small grin began to form at the sound of roots ripping as she raked the metal prongs through the soil. Soon enough she was swinging the fork with more enthusiasm than was was really called for. Before he knew it, dirt clods were flying in every direction, and Parker was occasionally letting out an evil sort of giggle that someone who didn't know her the way he did might find worrisome. But instead, Eliot just smirked at Parker's obvious enjoyment, before leaving her to it and going to start on another box. He had figured the inherent violence involved in turning over and preparing a garden bed would appeal to her.

They worked with minimal conversation for the next few hours, systematically working their way through the rows of boxes. Eliot was working faster mostly due to experience, but also because Parker was more focused on the destruction she was causing, than she was concerned with efficiency.

When he realized that he hadn't heard her cackle in a while, Eliot looked over his shoulder and spotted Parker sitting back on her heels, staring intently at something in her hand. "Whatcha got there?"

"What?" Parker asked, her head snapping up as though she had forgotten he was there. "Oh, it's a ladybug," she said, showing him.

"They're good for the garden," Eliot told her, a hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth as he watched the tiny red and black bug crawling across her palm. "They eat aphids and the like. And they're supposed to be good luck."

"I don't believe in luck," she replied absently, turning her hand over to give the little bug more room to move.

"Of course you don't," he said fondly, turning back to his aerating.

But Parker wasn't done with the conversation. "They call them ladybirds in England, which never made any sense to me. I mean, they're obviously bugs, not birds."

"If you wanna get technical, I think they're actually beetles," Eliot said with a shrug. "But I agree with you on the bird thing. The Brits always have to have weird words for things. You could try asking Sophie if she knows why. Maybe she'd have an answer for you." He doubted it, but it was worth a shot.

"But I guess it makes more sense than what they call them in Russia," she continued, as the little bug finally flew away. She watched it go and then went back to work.

Eliot turned to look at her when he realized that she wasn't planning on following that thought to its logical conclusion. He actually spoke conversational Russian, but he realized that he'd never needed to learn the word for ladybug and therefore had no idea what the translation was.

"What do they call them in Russia?" he prompted.

"God's little cows," she informed him.

For a moment his brain stuttered and he was sure he had misheard her. "God's little cows?" he repeated dubiously. "You're joking."

"Nope," she said simply.

He realized that she was, in fact, completely serious and all he could do was blink. "Why would they call them that? I mean at least birds fly, so I can kinda see the connection, but a cow? Did the person who came up with that one ever actually see a cow?!"

"It's the same thing in Polish and Welsh, too," she added.

"What...why?!" He couldn't wrap his head around how three such completely different languages could have come up with the same strange name.

Parker just nodded solemnly. "These are the questions that keep me up at night."

He had no doubts that she was telling the truth about that, as they both went back to work.

"So what do we do now?" Parker asked, when she'd finished clearing the last box.

"Now, we-" Eliot glanced over at Parker and quickly did a double take. "Now you go back inside," he told her, amending what he had been about to say.

"What? Why? I'm helping!" she said defensively.

He crossed over to where Parker was standing and took her chin gently between two fingers, giving her face an evaluative once-over. "Because you're gettin' some color there, darlin," he said. "Your shoulders too. Gonna need to put on sunblock or something if you want to come up here again. Or at least wear a hat next time."

Parker looked down at her shoulder, repeatedly pressing down hard with her finger, watching her skin go from white back to a darkening pink where she was starting to burn. She was still doing it in the time it took him to wash off and put away the tools they were using.

"Stop that," he scolded, knowing it couldn't feel good, mentally rolling his eyes at the fact that at least his weren't the only injuries she liked to poke at. "Let's go downstairs before you get any worse."

"Aren't you going to actually plant something?" she asked curiously, even as she let herself be herded towards the stairs.

"Can't yet," he shrugged. "Wasn't actually planning on getting this done today, so I haven't been to the nursery to pick up the fertilizer I'm going to need to amend the soil."

"Why would you go to a nursery for fertilizer?" Parker asked, the very picture of confusion.

Eliot was equally confused until he realized where the communication breakdown was. "A plant nursery Parker, not a baby nursery," he clarified.

"Oh... yeah, that makes more sense. So what, they have baby plants?" she asked, heading into the kitchen for a glass of water.

"Among other things," he confirmed, chuckling to himself, shaking his head slightly as he leaned against the kitchen counter, crossing his arms over his chest. He'd never cease to be both amazed and amused at how spotty and random Parker's knowledge base was. She knew the translation for ladybug in god only knew how many languages, but a nursery, that was a mystery.

"Are you going to buy any baby plants?"

Eliot could only imagine what Parker was picturing a nursery must be like. "Uh, maybe. I have some seedlings in the greenhouse that I'll transplant, and seeds from last year. I'll probably take a look around and see if there's anything that jumps out at me."

"Could you grow cherries?" she asked hopefully, quickly downing the first glass and then filling it again, drinking that one slower. "I like cherries. Especially when they're covered in chocolate."

"Cherries grow on trees, Parker," Eliot informed her. When she didn't lose the expectant look on her face, he continued. "It's a roof… I can't… no… it's a tree. We could plant some strawberries," he offered, as an alternative. "I'll get you a terracotta planter and they could be your own special project. How about that?"

"Cool," she beamed, filling the water glass once more and offering it to Eliot. "Can I come with you?"

He almost told her that he could get his own water, but then mentally shrugged and took the proffered drink. "Where, to the nursery?" he asked, after gulping down half the glass. "I guess so."

"Awesome! I'll change and then we can go," she said, already disappearing down the hallway.

"Wait, Parker! Hold on." But she was already gone. "I didn't mean right now," Eliot said to the empty room. He glanced at the clock on the microwave. He supposed that they did have a couple of hours before the nursery closed. With a sigh he deposited the now empty glass in the sink and went to go change himself. So much for not leaving the house today.

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

"Eliot!" Parker croaked pathetically from the couch in the living room, where she was doing her best impression of a blanket burrito.

Eliot's knife made a solid thud as it connected with the wooden cutting board where he was currently deboning a whole chicken, parts of which would eventually become the second batch of chicken noodle soup that he'd made this week.

"What do you need, darlin'?" he called back.

"I'm bored," she whined. "Entertain me!"

"I'm not your dancing monkey, Parker! Watch TV!" he shouted back. "I'm kinda in the middle of something right now."

"There's nothing good on," she grumbled.

He found that hard to believe. Once Hardison had found out that yes, Eliot did have a TV, the hacker had gotten him set him up in style. "There's like six hundred channels. I'm sure there's something to watch."

"No, there isn't," she insisted, "and I'm bored."

Eliot sighed, put the knife down, and gave his hands a quick wash so he wouldn't track salmonella all over the place. Walking over to the couch, he stopped in front of a miserable-looking Parker with his arms crossed in front of his chest.

"What can I do for you, Parker?"

"I don't know," she said dejectedly. "I'm tired of just lying here watching TV. I want to do something."

Eliot looked at her with sympathetic eyes. The first couple days, she had been so ill that she'd been content to just lay on the couch, sleeping more than she was awake, not entirely aware of what was going on around her. She'd been a fairly easy patient, simply eating and drinking what he put in front of her. Medicine had been a bit more of a struggle, since even as sick as she was, she tried to insist that she didn't do drugs. But even that she'd taken with a minimum of convincing. However, now it seemed that she was just well enough to realize how rotten she still felt, and was looking for a distraction.

He reached down to rest his hand on her forehead. She wasn't burning up like she had been, but she was definitely still running a low grade fever. "You're still warm, sweetheart," he told her, letting his hand sweep down to her cheek, where Parker unconsciously closed her eyes and leaned into his palm. "Which means your butt stays parked on this couch."

She attempted to huff to show her displeasure at that pronouncement, but it backfired and sent a wracking coughing fit through her body. Eliot helped her sit up and even rubbed her back until it passed.

"Can I have more orange juice?" she asked weakly, eyeing the empty glass on the coffee table.

"That I can do," he said, picking up the empty glass which was sitting between a still mostly-full glass of water and a half-empty mug of lukewarm tea.

He was carrying the glass back to the kitchen when his eyes landed on the portfolio case that was leaning against the wall near the front door. It was full of the art supplies that Parker had used a couple jobs back when she'd had to grift as a caricaturist of all things. The bag should have stayed at Nate's, but for some reason unbeknownst to Eliot, it had made its way to his place instead. However, now he was grateful because it seemed like the perfect solution. It was a nice quiet activity that could keep Parker busy, but not interfere with her recuperation.

When Eliot reappeared in front of her, with both her juice and the portfolio case, Parker's brow furrowed in confusion. "What's that for?" she asked with a sniffle.

"To give you something to do, besides watching TV," he explained, trying not to outwardly wince when she used the sleeve of the sweatshirt that she was currently wearing as a tissue. He wouldn't have cared, except for the fact that said sweatshirt was actually his.

"You want me to draw a caricature?" she questioned.

"What? No, Parker," he said, pinching the the bridge of his nose. "You can draw, or paint, or whatever you want. You've got a talent for it, so use it."

"You think so?" she asked dubiously. She'd really only tested out her artistic abilities in the context of the job, never having really given it much thought outside of work.

"Yeah Parker, I do," he told her sincerely.

Parker didn't really seem to know how to take that, but when she shrugged and started pulling art supplies out of the case, he considered it a job well done and went back to the kitchen to finish what he'd started.

As he went back to methodically deboning the chicken, setting aside the carcass to make into stock, he let his mind wander back to how they had gotten to this point.

It had all started during their last job, which had taken them cross-country. When they'd landed in Arizona and met up at the rendezvous point, Parker had mentioned in off-handed disgust that the old man sitting next to her on the plane hadn't stopped coughing the entire flight. Nothing probably would have come from it, except that the con had unexpectedly paid off at the Grand Canyon at sunrise, and in one of the mastermind's more convoluted plans, it had necessitated Eliot and Parker staking out Yaki Point for several freezing predawn hours.

On the flight back to Boston that same evening, with them no longer having to pretend not to know each other, the group sat together. Eliot wound up sitting next to a strangely subdued Parker. His first indication that something was wrong with the normally hyperactive thief should have been that instead of driving him crazy with her constant fidgeting, she simply pulled the hood of her jacket up around her face and stared listlessly out the window for the entire flight back to Logan. But he had chalked that up to it being a long day that he was feeling the effects of himself.

It wasn't until they were waiting for their luggage and he watched her miss her bag going around on the carousel for the third time, that he really took a good look at her and noticed her flushed face and glassy eyes.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked, sidling up next to her. "Parker?" he snapped his fingers in front of her face when she continued to stare unseeingly at the luggage going around the conveyor belt.

"Huh?" she asked inelegantly, blinking at him slowly.

"You alright, there?" He reached over and rested the back of his fingers against her flushed cheek. "Damnit Parker, you're burning up. Why didn't you say something?"

"I'm fine," she insisted, though the way she slurred her words implied otherwise.

"Like hell you are," he grumbled. He steered her over to a nearby bench and left her sitting down, propped up against a pillar, with orders to stay put.

Despite the fact that he never checked luggage himself, Eliot always stuck around to help load up all the tech gear that Hardison insisted was necessary to bring with them every time they traveled and Sophie's ridiculous mountain of extraneous baggage that she swore were only the essentials. But after explaining the situation to the others, they quickly waved him off, trusting the hitter to get their sick teammate home in one piece. He grabbed her bag off the carousel, tossing it over his shoulder alongside his own carry-on, before going back to collect Parker from where he had left her.

"You ready to go, darlin'?" he asked, concerned by the fact that she was now listing dangerously to the left.

"Yeah," she said roughly, pushing herself to her feet with far less grace than he was used to seeing from the thief.

"Are you okay to walk to the car?" he asked worried, grabbing her firmly under the arm when she wobbled on her feet.

"Of course," she snapped, obstinately pulling her elbow out of his grasp.

Eliot just rolled his eyes and moved his hand to the small of her back to steady her in case she needed it, and led her towards the long term parking lot. He was just grateful that he'd chosen to drive himself to the airport, instead of riding with one of the others from Nate's like he sometimes did.

Once they got to the car, it didn't take Eliot long to get Parker installed in the front seat and for him to toss their bags in the back. By the time he was sliding behind the wheel and starting the ignition, Parker already had her head tilted back against the headrest with her eyes closed. He had thought she'd drifted off, which was why he was surprised when she spoke, just a few miles down the road.

"Just drop me off at my place," she said, without opening her eyes.

"You really are crazy if you think I'm gonna just drop you off and leave you alone when you're in this kind of condition."

"I'll be fine. I can take care of myself," she said grumpily.

The mental picture of Parker all alone, curled up in bed in the middle of her big drafty warehouse, flashed across Eliot's mind. No one to check on her. No one to help her get better, or make sure she didn't get worse. No one to make sure she was eating. He actually didn't think she even had anything to eat at her place except for cereal. The whole idea was immediately dismissed as unacceptable.

"Don't care. I'm taking you home with me," he told her.

"I just want to be alone," she insisted.

It wasn't that he didn't understand her impulse. Like a wounded animal, she wanted to hide herself away while she was weak and vulnerable, unable to protect herself like she normally would. He understood, because it was an instinct he had himself when he was injured worse than usual. But he wasn't going to let her indulge in it. Not this time.

"And I want to keep an eye on you," he retorted. "So I'm not giving you a choice."

"Bully," she sulked, giving in.

"Yup," he agreed unrepentantly. The fact that she'd conceded with so little fight, just confirmed that he was making the right choice. If she had been feeling anywhere near normal, she wouldn't have thought twice about simply jumping from the moving vehicle, rather than be taken somewhere she didn't want to be. "I'll make you soup," he offered as an olive branch.

"Okay," she said weakly.

"And I think I might have a box of Jell-o in the back of the pantry," he added. It was what his mother had always made for him, when he was sick as a kid, and although it wasn't something he indulged in often, it was his version of comfort food.

"No, no Jell-o," Parker said quickly, shaking her head from side to side on the headrest.

"You don't like Jell-o?" he asked surprised, after all he didn't think Parker had ever met a dessert she didn't like.

"No. Jell-o," she repeated firmly. "Pudding?" she asked hopefully.

Eliot chuckled fondly, "Sure Parker, I'll get you pudding."

And once he'd gotten her home, she seemed perfectly content, if not exactly happy, considering how sick she was, to stay there. Which was how he had found himself playing nursemaid to a thief with the flu.

Eliot was lost in thought and the rhythm of the bread he was kneading while the chicken stock was simmering, so he wasn't completely aware of how much time had passed before he caught Parker shuffling in his direction out of the corner of his eye.

"What are you doing up?"

"I'm done," she said, extending a single piece of heavy stock paper that she'd ripped out of the sketch book.

Wiping the flour off his hands, Eliot took the offered paper, more than a little curious about what Parker would come up with, left to her own devices. His eyes widened when he saw what she had done. Using the watercolor pencils, she had recreated the view from the Grand Canyon at sunrise from their last job, exactly as he remembered it.

"You did this from memory?" he asked, impressed. Eliot knew that he excelled at more than his fair share of things in this world, but art was not one of them. His job necessitated knowing about art of all kinds, but his own artistic abilities were relegated to somewhere around stick figures.

"Yeah," she shrugged negligently, not at all understanding why he was so impressed by that.

"This is amazing, Parker," he told her sincerely.

"You can have it if you want. I mean I painted it for you, anyways," she explained simply, between her sniffles. "After the sun was up, you said that you wished you'd thought to take a picture. So I guess this is the next best thing."

Eliot couldn't help but find the gesture touching. After all, Parker probably found the security system at the Louvre to be a far more interesting subject to paint, but she'd thought about what he might like, instead. "I'm gonna frame this and hang it up."

She just shrugged again, looking vaguely disinterested, wordlessly telling him to do whatever he wanted with it.

"But until then…" on a whim, he turned around to snag the magnet that usually kept his shopping list attached to the side of his fridge, and used it to stick Parker's work to the front of the wide expanse of stainless steel.

Parker's jaw dropped when she realized what he'd just done. "It's good enough to go on the fridge?" she asked softly.

Eliot looked at her askance. "I just said I was gonna hang it on the wall," he reminded her. "Of course it's good enough to go on the fridge."

"I've never done anything that went on the fridge before," she said with wide eyes.

He didn't understand. "Parker, what-"

"The fridge was for the real kids," she explained innocently, before he could even finish his question. "Not the fosters."

Eliot wondered if he would ever stop feeling like he'd been sucker punched, when Parker dropped hints of her upbringing on him like that. He struggled to find the appropriate words to respond, and came up empty. But he felt like he'd been let off the hook when when she smiled brightly for the first time since she'd gotten sick, and then shuffled back to the couch.

He watched her settle back onto the couch, and couldn't even find it in himself to be annoyed when he took a look at the mess on the coffee table; not even when he realized that she'd used her drinking glass for her dirty paint water. Instead, he glanced back at the painting on the fridge that had made her so happy, took a moment to adjust it so that it hung straight, and made a mental note to buy more magnets as he returned to the loaf of bread he was making.

A/N and there we have it! Another chapter in the books... I just wanted to thank everyone again who has taken the time to comment in the past, I cherish each and every one of them and they really mean the world to be and inspire me to keep going... especially when writing for a fandom that isn't as active as others... so thank you again :D and if you liked this chapter I'd be delighted to know what you thought!

Until next time at the same bat time on the same bat channel!