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Quinn doesn’t say, I trust you. But when he’s run down and exhausted, he breaks into Eliot’s place and burrows fully clothed under his favorite throw blanket, the one folded with crisp, military precision hidden in the bottom of the linen closet.
When Eliot drags himself home at the end of a long day, it’s to the sight of messy blond hair and a sleeping hitter curled up on his couch with the only damn blanket in the house that’s both ugly as sin and scratchy as anything. He’s tried replacing the godawful thing with nicer ones, but they all go untouched by his uninvited guest.
Shaking his head, he leaves Quinn be, and halfway through the night isn’t surprised when a warm presence slips in behind him on the bed. Neither speaks a word and in moments the only sound in the room is the steady breathing of deep sleep.
By morning, Eliot’s alone again.
In the days to come, he’ll invariably find some sort of rare ingredient hidden in his pantry, or a useful piece of intel scrawled on a post-it note tucked into his cutlery drawer. This time it’s a priceless throwing knife in the glove box of his truck, beautifully crafted and perfectly weighted.
“You’re welcome,” he says to nothing in particular.
Parker drops down from the roof of the cab, suspended upside down in the passenger window, and Eliot clutches the steering wheel tighter, clamping down on the instinct to jump.
“Who’s welcome?” she asks.
“Nothin’,” he grumbles, letting the hint of a smile break through to show her he’s not mad. “Now get on in here, or we’re gonna be late.” She beams at him and then they’re off to pick up Hardison and run the next con.
Eliot never says, I trust you. But he keeps the blanket.
The next time he finds Quinn asleep in his house, this time sprawled across the entirety of his bed like some kind of deadly octopus, he seeks out the familiar black suit jacket carefully draped over the handle of his bedroom door and tucks a key and a set of alarm codes inside.