fandomtownies | Luke's, Monday

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Luke's, Monday

Neither Eliot nor Nana would have let the team's trip to Chicago end without Eliot going home with at least a few of her recipes. If nothing else, Hardison was bound to get sick or injured by being stupid again, someday, and when it happened Eliot wanted to be able to make the right sorts of comfort food.

In fact, Eliot had come home with quite the stack, and a list of detailed notes on cooking techniques his haphazard country-western/French provincial chef training hadn't covered. So the trick today was picking out just a few recipes to start with.

The kitchen staff had at least learned to just get the hell out of Eliot's way when he came in with a sheaf of notes and that look on his face.

Today's specials
Buttermilk brined-fried chicken
Fried pecan okra
Sweet potato pie

Luke's was open. And soul food-filled.

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A couple of the servers are in the corner trying to top each other's James Brown impressions.

He does not have a James Brown impression.

That he'll cop to.

Kathy hadn't learned that Eliot required a large berth when he was in the middle of a million recipes. And even if she had, she might not have cared. Not now, anyway.

"Umm, Eliot?" she asked, standing in the doorway of Luke's, like she was uncertain of her welcome into the diner. It was like she'd lost a full year's emotional growth all at once; her posture was uncertain, and she was rubbing circles in her palms with the opposite thumb, a self-soothing ritual she had all but abandoned recently. "Ummm?"

Well, the rule didn't actually apply to family anyway, so Kathy was alright.

Eliot looked up and immediately set aside the batch of okra he was chopping, signaling to the cook to take over and to the busboy to grab the box of Korean teas he'd started keeping in his office. The cook got it and immediately stepped in. The busboy had no idea what Eliot was signaling and went to hide in dry storage.

"Kathy, darlin'." Eliot stepped out into the dining room anyway, making a beeline for her. "What's wrong?"

Dammit, busboy. This was why you were never promoted.

"I, ummm, I..." She looked up at him and burst--not into tears, but into slightly hysterical laughter. "I think I know why you hate guns so much. Wait. I think I still have the one I took from the cop. No, wait, I must have dropped it. Oh well! I guess my prints are in the system now!"

Okay, maybe not slightly.

Dammit, Kathy, Eliot had already just barely avoided killing someone this weekend. Let's not make him think he might have to find someone and take them out for you, too.

"Hardison can take care of that," he said, moving to guide Kathy out of the doorway and towards a table back by his office door. "Take a seat and try again from the beginning, huh?"

"I don't think he can," she explained as Eliot helpfully steered her to where he wanted her to go. She still wasn't firing on all cylinders yet. "It's a kind of parallel universe, I think. Unless my world has demons in it and I don't know about it."

It did and she didn't.

"But I might not because I can't see them or, rather, when I do they look like harmless little old ladies on the end of a giant sword while cops are trying to shoot us!"

"Darlin', that ain't the beginning." Eliot got her seated and ducked into his office just long enough to grab the box of tea and the small, elegant celadon tea pot he'd picked up at the same Korean market in Baltimore as he had the tea. One of the servers spotted it and came over with a carafe of hot water.

Well, at least some of his staff was paying attention.

"Take a breath, now," Eliot suggested, getting some nok cha started (and thank you, Sophie, for the unsolicited tea preparation lessons). "You need somethin' to eat?"

Kathy managed to smile at the teapot. Her grandma back in Korea had one just like it, as did three of the ajummas in her apartment building.

"I'm not hungry," she said, which probably told Eliot a lot more about her current state than anything else she'd said so far. Kathy was always hungry. She took a few, long, shuddering breaths. "Sorry. For coming in and falling apart. Sorry."

It did. Though he was ready to start feeding her again the minute her appetite came back.

Eliot shook his head. "That ain't somethin' you need to apologize for. I just want to know what happened, so I know how I can help you."

"I don't think you can," Kathy said quietly. She looked down at her hands again, noticing that her skin was chapped and red from all the scrubbing. "A man--"

"Oh I--I just died in your arms tonight."

While rooting around in dry storage, the busboy had apparently found bits of the old sound system. And had chosen the absolute worst song possible for the moment. Kathy went chalk white, staring in horror at the closest speaker and burst into tears.

No promotion for you, busboy.

Eliot really probably shouldn't be killing his own busboy. "GODDAMMIT SOMEONE TURN THAT CRAP OFF!"

The number of people who immediately ran into each other/doors/walls in their attempt to snap-to and do just that would be heartening if it weren't so embarrassing.

"Kathy," Eliot said, much more softly (though, really, anything would be much softer than what he'd just bellowed). He reached out, not entirely sure if he should be trying to hug her or not. He was starting to get an inkling of what might have happened, but he wasn't sure -- and he was really hoping he was wrong. "Go on and let it out, darlin'."

Edited 2015-10-19 18:38 (UTC)

"I'm s-sorry," she said, trying to make herself stop crying, which, of course, was completely useless. Her dad hated histrionics, said that tears were just emotional manipulation, but she wasn't trying to manipulate Eliot, she just had a lot going on! "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's just a song, I'm being stupid, I shouldn't even be freaking out like this, they were cool and they're probably not crying, I'm just--j-just--"

She'd be more coherent in a second, Eliot. Sorry.

Edited 2015-10-19 18:44 (UTC)

One day, Kathy would realize that the best thing she could do for her own mental health was realize that for the most part, the opposite of what her father told her growing up was what was actually true.

"It's alright," Eliot said, deciding that Sophie would definitely go for a hug in this situation, so he should at least try putting his arm over Kathy's shoulders. "Sounds like what happened was pretty heavy."

To say the least.

Kathy nodded. "But I'm the only one who's freaking out about this," she said. "I practically shut down out there. It was dangerous and stupid, but I had the taste of his blood in my mouth and it was hot on my face and I just--I couldn't--he was so heavy, Eliot. And the other cop, he just--he just kept coming at us. He was pretending to panic, but he was just dead-eyed and coming at us! I think he was smiling."

"I'm so sorry, darlin'." Any doubt about the hugging went right out the window at that. Eliot pulled Kathy in tighter, one hand rubbing her back, even as he mentally kicked himself for being caught by surprise by this. He should have seen it coming the minute she called him asking for help with Gorgon's bullet wound.

Well, you know, maybe not the dead-eyed-smiling-demon-maybe? part. But you get too involved with guns and gangs and someone dying on you, literally on you, was pretty inevitable.

True, though for once it wasn't Kathy's after-dark hobby that had gotten her in this position. It was her stupid refusal to leave anyone behind that had, however.

Kathy buried her face in Eliot's arm and just let it all out. All of the fear and confusion and, yes, the anger all came bubbling up and out of her in a wellspring of tears. For a few minutes she just cried. That was all she could really do.

But not fighting herself over it made the storm pass more quickly and eventually Kathy pulled away, wiping at her reddened eyes. "Thanks," she said hoarsely. "Sorry."

"Got nothin' to apologize for," Eliot assured her, pulling back to look her in the eye if she'd let him. "Ain't no shame in havin' a reaction." He let go with one arm to pour her a cup of tea, but didn't let go yet with the other. "You think you can tell me just what happened now? I worked out a good bit of it, I think, but talkin' may help."

Kathy met his eyes briefly, long enough to nod, before dropping them again to stare into her teacup. She didn't even want to drink it yet, just appreciate the warmth in her hands.

"So, I was out, today, with friends. In town." Stupid to be so cagey with Dante's name since radio would report everything anyway, but she'd promised him that she wouldn't tell anyone about what he could do. She wasn't even sure how long she'd remember not to say his name when she got going, but for now, while she could remember, she'd at least make the attempt. "We got caught by a portal, I think. It brought us to somewhere else. A friend's home. He tried to make us leave, to get on a bus and come back here. He knew some of what was going to happen. They've been trying to kill him for years. The demons have, I mean."

So the idea of a portal just showing up and sucking people in was about as far from a comforting one as Eliot had heard, even for Fandom, but he didn't comment on it, not wanting to interrupt Kathy now that she was actually managing to give him a narrative. He just held on instead, keeping up a steady, soothing rhythm of circles on her back.

If nothing else, that'd hopefully give her poor hands a break.

"But I--I wouldn't go. You understand, Eliot, right? I wasn't just going to leave him there, all alone to face whatever." Her eyes were on his again, searching for some sign that she'd done right, that he wouldn't have left either. "I mean, I know he's been fighting the demons for years and he's stronger and better than me--I mean, he saved my ass in the fire and all--"

Oops. She hadn't told Eliot about the fire yet.

"But you just don't leave when someone is in danger! ...Right?"

"I understand, Kathy." But, no, he couldn't tell her it was the right thing. Eliot had seen and done enough to know when you really did have to get out of there and leave someone else to handle things themselves. He hadn't even argued with Sophie when she kicked them all out of her apartment when she was stuck holding a motion sensitive bomb, after all. "I know you were doin' what you thought was right."

He'd explain that it wasn't later. When she'd gotten some distance from it and could approach the situation with a clearer head.

Good luck with that. It wasn't a lesson that was going to stick.

"Da--He ended up vanishing anyway. He got sucked into another dimension that's connected to his world, kind of? It's where the demons live, I think. He had to fight it but the effects of their battle had real-world consequences. Buildings started collapsing and billboards fell over and people were hurt and Anders tried to save people but that's when the cops showed up. And pulled guns on us. I swear, Eliot, we weren't doing anything other than helping people, but they were yelling and screaming contradictory orders at us and ignoring the wounded civilians...so Anders iced them."

To be fair, it was not an easy lesson for some people to learn. It was probably one of the few places where Eliot's years of being emotionally cut off from himself had actually helped.

"Cops'll do that," Eliot said. "If they can't explain something, most of 'em will go with the nearest easy scapegoats."

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