Chapter Text
If there’s one thing that Kate learns about Lucy very early on in their relationship - once they have a real relationship, anyway, not one that’s being kept hidden behind sly smiles and closed doors - it’s that food is one of Lucy’s love languages.
Of course, Lucy has a veritable ton of ways that she shows her affection for Kate. She shows her love in little physical ways: playing with Kate’s hair when they cuddle up together, brushing her hands across Kate’s arms and back, playing with their joined fingers. She shows her love in the way that she hugs Kate so tightly when it’s been a few days since they’ve seen each other, reaching up on her tiptoes to hook her chin on Kate’s shoulder. Even at work, Lucy will reach out, just a brush of their fingers together or a quick hand squeeze.
Lucy shows her love verbally as well, beyond saying the words. Kate can hear it in the different way Lucy says her name. On a sigh, through a laugh, fondly exasperated, overly excited, frustrated and annoyed, Kate’s heard her name said in all manner of ways and each of them she can hear the love in Lucy’s voice, see it in her eyes.
She can feel Lucy’s love in the way they kiss, in relief and joy after a mission that could have gone terribly wrong. A short peck when they are running late or they steal a moment between meetings and missions and cases. A slow, languid kiss when they wake up together, a heated pressure when they stumble in through the door, roaming hands and teasing bites a precursor to so much more. A kiss on the cheek when they are moving in opposite directions but need some small connection.
Lucy shows her love in a myriad of ways and Kate has very much enjoyed learning how to receive and reciprocate in time. Still, Lucy’s strongest love language, far away, is the sharing of food. And, much to Kate’s own personal amusement, the root of her food sharing love language seems to be a direct result of Lucy’s southern upbringing.
She is just cooking for the two of them the first time Kate noticies it. Well, not the first time she notices but the first time that is consciously curious about it. They’re having dinner together at Kate’s apartment, after a solid three days of almost zero interaction. Lucy’s team had two cases that seemed to be not connected but soon became one in the same and Kate, while there in her official capacity as the liaison between NCIS and FBI, hadn’t been able to interact with Lucy that much. Kate had been coordinating with Tennant and working with Ernie while Lucy had been in the field with Kai and Jesse. They hadn’t shared much more than longing glances across the bullpen until they were finally able to leave together, piling into Kate’s car at the end of the never ending case.
Now Kate is sitting at her breakfast bar, watching Lucy move around her kitchen. They’ve both changed out of their work clothes and Kate can’t deny that it makes the sight before her even better because she knows that Lucy is wearing a shirt that she took from Kate’s closet. The sweater is oversized even on Kate and dwarfs Lucy’s tiny frame, half of her shoulder exposed from where the neckline had ridden down. It’s a silent testament to how much Lucy had missed her over the past few days and that makes Kate fall just a little bit more in love with her. Even if Lucy had to roll up the sleeves five times so they wouldn’t get into any of the pans she has going on the stove, which is quite a few.
“What are you making?” Kate asks, blinking herself out of her Lucy induced stupor. Lucy glances at Kate over her shoulder, smiling.
“Nothing special,” Lucy says. “It’s something my parents used to make for me and my brothers after something big happened. Steaks, sauteed vegetables, and homemade biscuits. I might make some gravy, too.”
“Oh,” Kate blinked. “That’s a lot of food.”
“Yeah.” Lucy was evidently done stirring what Kate realized were peppers, onions, and mushrooms in a greased pan, and turned to her girlfriend with a slightly sheepish smile. “Sorry, I know it’s a lot.”
“Hey, you don’t have to apologize, babe.” Lucy grins at the term of endearment that slips past Kate’s lips. “I love your cooking, you know that.”
“You just don’t love how much of everything I make.” Lucy jokes but Kate can see the hint of embarrassment in her eyes.
“It’s not that I don’t love it, I just can’t eat it all.” Kate laughs. “You make a lot of food, Luce. How many steaks are you making?”
“Four.”
“Two for each of us?”
“...No?”
Kate laughs again, standing up from the breakfast bar to walk around it. Lucy turns back to the stove to stir the vegetables again so Kate steps up behind her, wrapping her arms around Lucy’s waist.
“It’s not a bad thing, baby.” Kate says reassuringly, leaning down to press a kiss to Lucy’s shoulder and then settling her chin in the same spot. “It’s just a very you thing.”
“A me thing?”
“You show your love through food.” Kate says it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, smiling at Lucy when she turns her head to look at her girlfriend with a skeptical expression. “You do! And not just to me, though I admit that I benefit from it far more than anyone else. Between lunch dates and leftovers, I haven’t had to make my own lunch since we started dating.”
“Excuse me for wanting to make sure my work-aholic girlfriend eats.” Lucy’s voice is full of mirth as she reaches for a pair of tongs to flip the steaks she has cooking.
“I love the way you take care of me,” Kate squeezes her waist. “But you do it for other people too. I know you’ve handed Ernie a full tub of biscuits before, and you have your whole team's favorite coffee order memorized.”
“Most of them drink it black, it’s not hard to remember.” Except for Jesse’s stupidly complicated mocha cappacino but Lucy wasn’t going to bring that up.
“And I know you have all my usual orders for every restaurant we go to listed in your notes app.” Kate grins as Lucy blushes slightly, clearing her throat.
“I actually have most of those memorized too, we just go to a lot of restaurants.”
“I love you.” Kate laughs, pressing the words into Lucy’s neck. “But you’re proving my point. Food is your love language. One of them, at least.”
“I plead the 5th.”
“Sure,” Kate lets go of Lucy when she taps the hands laced over her stomach, stepping back to lean against the sink as Lucy pulls the biscuits from the oven and returns to the veggies. “But it makes me wonder: is this a you thing or a Texan thing? Because I had a friend in college who always had snacks with her and she would hand them out like candy. Even when I visited her dorm, I swear that if she had a way to cook a full meal in a college dorm, she would have fed all of us.”
“So?” Lucy half turned to Kate, clearly not understanding the connection that Kate was trying to make.
“So, she was from San Antonio.” Kate said. “I know that two people doing similar things is a little bit of a stretch to make this kind of assumption, but I don’t think I’m wrong.”
Lucy groaned slightly. “You’re not.”
“I’m not?”
“No,” finished cooking, Lucy turned off all the burners and gestured to Kate to come closer so they could put their food onto plates. “It’s a thing. A southern thing for sure but also a Texan thing. Most people who are born and raised in Texas follow a simple set of rules: southern hospitality.”
“That’s a real thing?” Kate blinked in surprise. “I totally thought they made that up for movies.”
“No, it’s very, very real.” Lucy reached into the drawer to grab cutlery for them while Kate carried their plates to their usual spots at the small dining room table. “We just try to be generally nice people, at least on the outside. Though if an old woman ever tells you ‘bless your heart’ you should probably start thinking about how you’re going to make up for whatever you did wrong.”
Kate hums slightly, enjoying Lucy’s laughter.
“Southern hospitality is really a bunch of little things like holding doors open, having manners, waving at other trucks on the road, things like that. But a major part of southern hospitality is the innate understanding that no one will ever leave any Texas home hungry.”
“I understand that,” Kate says, “but why make so much food?”
“Well, you never who’s going to pop by for dinner. Or show up while you’re cooking. My house had an open, standing invitation for a lot of people to just show up around dinner time and we would feed them. Friends, family, coworkers, didn’t matter. If they were there at dinner time, they ate too. I learned how to cook knowing that the people in the house weren’t an accurate reflection of who would actually be at dinner.” Lucy shrugged slightly. “It’s a hard habit to break.”
“Well, don’t break it on my account.” Kate said, emphasizing her point by taking a healthy bite of the sauteed vegetables and releasing a moan at the flavor. “This is so good.”
“Clearly,” Lucy smirked, her eyes dark. Kate looked at her, blushing slightly when her own mind registered both the look in Lucy’s eyes and the sound that she had made.
“Sorry,” Kate mumbled.
“Don’t apologize babe,” Lucy said, smirk still in place. “You know I love it when you’re loud.”
Lucy’s smile is positively devilish and Kate feels her throat bobbing in a swallow entirely of its own accord. Lucy laughs as Kate coughs, hurriedly taking another bite.
“If southern hospitality is all about being nice, why are you such a tease sometimes.”
“Oh, bless your heart baby,” Lucy grins. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”