May Not Have Good Taste (But I Know What Tastes Good) [pg13?] Eliot/Hardison
Title: May Not Have Good Taste (But I Know What Tastes Good)
Author: queenklu
Beta by: shri_amato
Pairing: Eliot/Hardison
Rating: ...eh. Not porn.
Word Count: ~1700
Summary & A/N: Prompt number three from my 21/21st birthday prompts: Eliot baking a birthday cake. ...Huh, so THAT didn't happen. EEP. IN ANY CASE ~HAPPY BIRTHDAY pennyplainknits!~ It's such a ridiculous delight knowing you! <3 <3 <3 (p.s. set directly after The Wedding Job, but only vaguely.)
“So,” Hardison said, making like to hop up on the counter.
“That counter is for things I get to slice with this knife,” Eliot warned, flipping his cleaver. Alec aborted the movement, crossing his arms with a casual hip check as if that’d been his plan from the start.
“Sooo…” he said again with a wide, white-toothed smile. “Who knew you had iron-chef-tacular skills, huh?”
Eliot didn’t look too hard at why that made him want to get his back up before he shrugged it off. “You had a Nana. I had a Memaw.”
“Memaw?” Hardison repeated like he was choking on a snort.
“You got a problem with that?” Eliot snapped, cleaver held to maim.
“No! What? No way! I? I. Hey, I am offended. Memaw is a perfectly respectable name for a Nana.” Another flash of pearly whites, and a dangerous warmth curled up in Eliot’s belly. “I was just picturing baby Eliot playing cowboys and Indians-my mistake,” he added fast, holding up his hands.
“Yeah?” Eliot said after a strange uncertain second. “And I was…?”
“Indian,” Alec said like That shit should be obvious! “Rooting for the underdog even at a tender age, I bet. Plus you dug the war paint and sticking feathers in your hair.”
Eliot’s gut clenched, reminding him of exactly what the hell he was doing in the kitchen. “You wanna help,” he said without making it a question, and Alec shrugged yeah and shoved up his sleeves. “Wash your hands,” Eliot growled, smacking one away from the chives.
“Tell me about your Memaw,” Hardison countered, but obeyed without waiting for an agreement on the offer. So either it didn’t matter, or he had no doubt Eliot would be doing a little obeying of his own.
Screw it. He was too hungry for mind games. “What do you want to know?” he stalled, tense in ways he really shouldn’t be with the security in this joint.
“Just-I dunno.” Eliot tore his eyes away from the frothing white lather on Hardison’s hands. “I talk about my Nana all the time. Never heard you mention yours before, is all.”
It happens when you make it a point to never talk about yourself. “I’m a private guy.”
Alec bumped shoulders real light and friendly. “Can be a private guy and still keep close with family.”
Pulling the family card. Their little dysfunctional unit was probably healthier than any other family Eliot had been a part of, even-well. So Eliot wasn’t missing the subtlety, seeing as he was being knocked over the head with it; he just chose to ignore it. He had gravy to freaking stir.
“She teach you to cook?” Alec nudged him.
“Hardison!” He’d dropped the spoon in the pan. “Shit. Yes. Yeah, she did. Happy now?”
“Eeeenteresting,” Hardison drawled, fished out the spoon and licked it clean in ways that were not in any way eliciting a familial response. “My Nana? Good for a great many things, but most nights we got a can of spaghettios and some carrot sticks.”
“Speaking of,” Eliot cut in before he could say that explained so much about Alec’s eating habits. “Cut these.”
“You-You’re gonna let me hold a knife? See this? Right here, this is why I like you best.” His fingers flexed, working out the kinks, and Eliot needed to get laid. Yesterday. Hell, last week. When the resident computer nerd’s hands get you tingly…
A carrot piece hit him right in the face.
“The hell-?” Eliot caught Alec’s forearm like it was going to come down on a small child. Which meant his palm was pressed flat to Alec’s skin, right up against the pulse point beating in his wrist. And because Eliot was a sick, twisted fuck, his brain instantly presented him with a list of every way he could snap that wrist with one pound of pressure or less.
Alec looked over his shoulder, innocently wide eyed, and Eliot snapped back to himself. “Don’t you know how to cut a freaking carrot?”
“Did I not just say spaghettios?”
“And carrot sticks.”
“Ha! You think Nana let us anywhere near sharp objects? Good thing you’re pretty.”
There wasn’t anything to say to that, so Eliot fixed a glower in the direction of Hardison’s head and crowded up beside him-to show him how it was done. “You put the knife tip down first on the cutting board, over your carrot. Then pull the knife handle down, like one of those big paper cutter things in the office. See? Carrots don’t jump.”
“And white men can’t dance,” Alec said like a nod, and gave Eliot a grin he had to look away from.
They split the pot pie, mostly because Hardison compared his homemade-from-scratch masterpiece to a hot pocket. He really didn’t mean to make feeding Hardison a habit.
~*~
“I don’t-I don’t-What is this?” Nate demanded, waving his hands in vague flapping motions towards their tupperware.
Eliot paused just long enough to fix Nate with a look. “Lunch.” Then he had to smack Alec’s fork away from the duck. “Seriously, man, I’ve got a sauce for it!”
“How was I supposed to know? Last night you about brained me with the ketchup bottle when I tried to add sauce.”
“Ketchup is a condiment, not a sauce. You can put it on a hot dog, but not my $40 steaks.”
“Aw, you’re at the $40 steak stage already?” Sophie fluttered, the same moment Nate blurted, “Last night?”
“Hey, now,” Alec said, his mouth full of watercress-which that? Right there? Eliot considered one of his greatest achievements, getting Hardison to eat veggies. “Mind out of the gutters, please. Eliot and I-“
“I just feed him,” Eliot growled, hackles up at…everything. “You know what he had in his cupboards? Ramen. That’s it.”
Alec had been trained by now to look a little sheepish, but Parker put on her thinky face. “What’s wrong with Ramen? Have you tried it raw? I put mustard on mine.”
Eliot was so stunned, so viscerally disgusted, that he didn’t even register the hand Alec stroked over his hair until it settled on his shoulder. “It’s okay, baby, she didn’t mean it.”
Then Eliot jerked free, and Hardison actually had the nerve to look startled about it.
“So…you are dating?” Nate-Mr. Tact-asked, and Eliot felt like he’d just landed from a two-storey fall.
“Not hungry,” he grit out, fingertips spinning the tupperware Alec’s way before he left.
“Now you’ve done it,” Sophie hissed, figuring wrong on what constituted out of ear shot. “Now Hardison will starve. Are you happy?”
Nate squawked a little and Alec said something, but Eliot officially tuned them out until he could slam a couple doors between himself and their bullshit.
The food wasn’t romantic. Parents cook food for their kids. If anything, this was putting some much needed distance-
“Hey, wait up!” Hardison had a runner’s boy buried in that geek shell, because a few loping strides caught him right up, even when he was juggling about six different plastic containers. “Come on, man, we’ll go to the park. I don’t know what to do with this sauce-do I drizzle or dip?”
And yeah, okay, maybe most parents made their kids PB&Js instead of aromatic duck wraps, but-fuck ‘em.
~*~
Melted butter was one of Eliot’s favorite smells. Sometimes after a bad case he’d come home and bake cookies just for the excuse to pop a couple sticks in a bowl and press START.
Today was not a cookie day, though. Today deserved something thicker, richer, something filling.
“Whoa.” Alec stopped dead just inside the apartment, hands outstretched at his sides and his eyes shut as he breathed. “What…”
“Cake,” Eliot grunted, tucking the mixing bowl to his side as he headed for the sofa. “You want a drum stick?”
“A what?” Eliot frowned a little at Alec’s breathlessness. Nothing in the ingredients were anything he’d said he was allergic too, so…
“Egg beater,” he corrected himself, holding one out, careful not to drip double fudge chocolate cake batter on the floor. “I used to call them drum-“
For the first time he caught a good look at Hardison’s face. His wide, dark eyes, the quick flutter of his pulse in his throat as he swallowed.
Holy fuck.
“If you didn’t know how to sauté my gonads with fava beans,” Alec said in a rush, “your virtue would be in so much danger right now.”
Holy fuck.
“Right,” Alec said, choking like he’d just realized he’d said that out loud, “I’mma go back to my diet of hot pockets and cheetos now, and I’ll only cry a little bit, just please please please let me keep my-“
“Hardison.” His growl was so low it felt like straddling a Harley, which was close but no cigar to what he really wanted to wrap his legs around. He swiped a dollop of batter up on one finger, watched it drip onto two as he set the bowl down and prowled towards Alec. “I offered you a taste. You gonna be a bad guest and turn me down?”
“Do not fuck with me, man,” Hardison swore, backing up as Eliot advanced.
“Oh, fucking you enters into it.” Alec made some sort of whimpering noise as his back hit the door, and Eliot forgot all about the batter as he ate the sound from his mouth. Which meant he smeared it over Alec’s throat hauling him closer, but Eliot was willing to sidetrack to clean it up.
“If you burn that cake because of me I will never forgive myself,” Alec panted, slumping low on the wall as Eliot manhandled him there.
“Yeah?” Eliot rumbled, hiding his grin under the sharp edge of Alec’s jaw. “Gonna help me frost it later?”
Hardison pulled back just far enough to give him a look. “You tell me you hand-made that frosting and I will jizz my pants, hand to god. You have any idea what you’ve been doing to me? I don’t eat freaking watercress for anyone, you know?”
“You need something else in your mouth to shut you up?” Eliot demanded, only, oh, 34% serious, and Alec dropped to his knees.
They barely managed to save the cake in time, but Eliot had to make a whole new batch of frosting.
But hey, Eliot would do a lot worse for family.