Fic: Out of Context (7/13)

[katiekins22]

Boston, present time

After they’re all safely out of Kiev and back in Boston, after Maggie leaves, while Nate is sipping his whiskey-laced coffee and contemplating her parting words, Eliot wanders over and slides into the booth across from him.

Nate raises his eyebrows at the man, wondering if he’s going to be subjected to more personal observations he isn’t really ready to hear, but after a moment, Eliot takes a drink from the glass of whiskey he’s replaced his beer with and then grins at Nate as he lowers it, the big goofy grin that takes ten years right off his face. Nate finds himself grinning back.

“Did you have fun, flexing your mental muscles for a change?” he asks, setting his mug down.

Eliot rolls his eyes, the grin fading into a more subdued, but still honestly happy expression. “Yeah, cuz it’s such a no-brainer keepin’ all’a you idiots alive through every crazy con you pull out of your ass,” he mock-grumbles.

Nate chuckles and turns his mug on the table with one hand. “Well, alright, a different set of mental muscles, then.” He glances toward the bar, where Hardison, Parker and, surprisingly, Tara, are all still huddled, looking as grumpy as Eliot usually does. “…I’m really not sure how you pulled it off, but Maggie got the impression Sterling still thinks you’re just overly-hyped muscle.”

That wipes the smile off Eliot’s face, replacing it with a familiar scowl, and Nate realizes he’s sorry to see the man’s mood shift. Eliot snorts and empties his glass. “Sterling’s just… shit.” He shrugs and tosses his hair over one shoulder like a huffy cheerleader. “I hate that guy.”

Nate smiles and nods. He’s not fond of Sterling himself these days. Although sometimes he looks at Eliot and sees the devious, ruthless bastard that he can be, and Nate wonders, if things had been a little different, if he could have eventually worked himself up to a real friendship with Sterling. Nate does seem to have a type, when it comes to his friends.

“I’m surprised you let him have the egg,” Nate prods, taking a sip from his cooling mug. It’s the one detail of the job he has left to work out. Eliot has explained the rest of what happened in Nate’s absence with his usual dismissive brevity, but he’s made no mention of any plans he had for the egg itself. If it had been Nate in Eliot’s place, if Nate was a thief, he knows he would have needed to figure out a way to swipe the egg back from under Sterling’s nose, just to be an asshole. And Eliot can be just as much of an asshole as Nate when he’s pissed off, which is pretty much always, so.

Eliot chuckles, relaxing slightly again. “Thought about it,” he admits. “Had a couple ideas, but…” He shrugs, smiles a little too warmly at the waitress when she brings him a fresh drink, scowls at Nate when he kicks him under the table. Rolling his eyes, he takes a sip and shakes his head a little. “I thought about it,” he repeats. “But I’m not Nate Ford.”

Nate raises his eyebrows, confused. Eliot chuckles at him, eyes crinkling at the corners, warm and fond. “The crazy plans, the last-minute cons, the stupid risks that somehow manage to pay off… that’s your thing, Nate. You’re good at it, which is the only reason I go along with your batshit idiotic ideas. Me… well, I ain’t bad at it. Pulled some wacky shit outta my ass in my time. Amazin’ how ten guys with machine guns and tear gas’ll inspire you to think on your feet.” He chuckles again, but there’s a tightness around his eyes for a moment that makes Nate wonder if he’s really kidding. Knowing Eliot, probably not.

“But anyway, yeah, not really my thing,” Eliot continues, shrugging away whatever memory he brushed against and taking a long drink. “And nothin’ I could come up with had good enough odds to be worth it.”

“Doesn’t it bother you, though, that Sterling… won?” Nate presses, leaning forward over the table, suddenly truly annoyed that despite everything Eliot managed to accomplish, Sterling’s still off somewhere being smug, shining his new Interpol badge - fucking Interpol! - and thinking Eliot Spencer’s just not in his league. “If it was me, I would have at least tried - ”

“Yeah, I know you woulda, Nate,” Eliot snaps, blue eyes narrowed. “Like I said, that’s what you do. But it’s not what I do. I’m a retrieval specialist. I retrieve the merchandise. I don’t fuck around cuz I’m distracted by somethin’ shiny along the way,” he explains, voice sharp with the bite of sarcasm, then empties his glass and sets it down hard on the table.

Nate frowns. “But then… I mean, you didn’t retrieve the egg, so - ”

Eliot silences him with a direct stare and a rumbling growl, as he does when a simple eyeroll is just not enough to express his frustration. When he’s done channeling his inner werewolf or whatever, he takes a deep, even breath, jaw set and lips pressed away into a thin line of annoyance. “The egg. Was not. My objective,” he grates out through clenched teeth, sounding as if it causes him physical pain to have to explain something so basic. From the way his eye is twitching, Nate thinks it just might.

Nate frowns to himself, thinking about what Eliot is saying. The egg was not his objective. It’s true enough, although they had needed to steal it back to clear Maggie’s name, it wasn’t what he’d asked Eliot -

Oh.

Nate smiles. “I asked you to retrieve Maggie,” he reasons out slowly. He chuckles. “And you did. You did exactly what you set out to do, and got away clean with the goods.”

Eliot’s frustration visibly melts away at Nate’s amused understanding, and he lets his soft, honest smile out for a moment as he signals for another drink.

“Yep,” he agrees easily. “So Sterling can go right on thinkin’ I’m an idiot and he beat me. I did what I came to do, and fuck him and that damn egg.” Then Eliot’s smile shifts into his nasty smirk. “Shoulda seen his face when I threw the dang thing across the room at him, though.”

Nate laughs at the idea, and they fall into a comfortable silence as Eliot’s whiskey arrives. Nate mentally reviews the past few minutes and frowns thoughtfully.

There are limits to his hypocrisy, really, but…

“Hitting the bottle a little hard tonight, aren’t you?” he asks casually.

Eliot lowers his half empty glass a bit and raises his eyebrows, casting a significant glance at Nate’s mug. “Is this a conversation you want to start?” he asks flatly.

Nate shrugs and smirks. “Hey, I’m a drunk, we all know it. You drink, but not usually this much this fast. I’m just… curious,” he explains. “Are you celebrating, or…?”

Eliot sets his glass down and slumps back in the booth, looking away from Nate, his face suddenly closed off and blank but his eyes gone dark and weary. Nate follows the line of Eliot’s gaze to the bar, to the small huddle of their team. Tara has disappeared by now, so it’s just Hardison and Parker, looking relaxed and comfortable.

“They don’t really get it, you know?” Eliot says softly, something wistful and sad coloring his voice. He’s speaking quietly, the usual raspy edge is missing, and he sounds tired. “The work they did, it wasn’t… Parker can throw a punch if she needs to, but she didn’t deal with violence like I have, and Hardison…” He just shrugs, mouth quirking softly in a fond grin.

“They don’t get what?” Nate presses carefully. He’s only rarely thought of Eliot as fragile in any way, but at this moment… he seems perhaps a bit brittle, at least.

Eliot looks back at him, and his eyes hold a dark sort of knowledge, and a quiet desperation, as they intently study Nate, as if Eliot is trying to imprint Nate’s image on his memory. And okay, so maybe he’s more than a bit brittle tonight.

“They had two hostages, Nate,” Eliot says simply. “They didn’t need two hostages. One’ll generally do.”

Nate blinks, and leans back in his seat, letting the plainly stated truth of what Eliot has had running through his mind since Nate woke up in that embassy basement with Maggie sink in. “You thought they might kill me before you could get to us,” he says slowly, testing out the idea. It’s different from the bomb in the elevator, the idea of just having been casually disposed of, not going out in a blaze of glory.

Eliot shrugs, dropping his gaze to the table and clutching his glass again, finishing it off in one long drink. He sets it down and stares into it, fingers tight against the glass. “One of you. Was a good possibility,” he agrees. “I’ve worked jobs like this before. Kidnappings. They didn’t always… I didn’t always reach my objective in time.”

“But this time you did,” Nate offers, trying to comfort, fingers twitching with the vague urge to lay a hand on Eliot’s arm, or something. He’s never sure how the younger man will respond to physical contact, though, and Nate’s not really big on touching people anyway, so
he doesn’t.

“This time,” Eliot repeats softly. He looks up, bright, almost fearful eyes catching and holding Nate’s. “What about next time?”

Nate opens his mouth, but realizes he doesn’t have an answer for that that won’t sound like a meaningless platitude, and Eliot’s not a man to appreciate platitudes. He closes his mouth again and thinks, for about the millionth time, that it’s a damn good thing he never became a priest. He’s not good at providing comfort and hope.

Eliot returns to playing with his empty glass. “It’s gonna happen, you know,” he states calmly. “One of these days, somethin’s gonna go down, and it’s gonna be too big for me to handle. I’m not gonna be able to get somebody out.” He looks over at Hardison and Parker again. “What happens to us then, Nate?”

Nate looks at Eliot’s hand on the glass. By the tightness of the knuckles, he thinks maybe Eliot is holding on to it so Nate won’t see his hand shaking. But Nate knows Eliot, and he knows the questions Eliot won’t ask out loud.

What happens to me then, Nate? What do I do when I fail the people I’ve let myself care about?

Nate stares into his Irish coffee, and hears the shrill whine of a flat-lined heart monitor echo in his memory. For a moment he can feel his son’s body in his arms. He finishes his cold drink in a gulp, and reaches out, gripping Eliot’s forearm tightly, both to anchor himself in the present and dismiss the painful memory, and because… because he should have, when the impulse first struck him.

Because he cares about Eliot, as he does about the rest of the team, although he’d never planned to, and because he asks more of Eliot than he does the others, even if no one realizes it but Eliot and himself. Being responsible for keeping everyone safe, getting them all out alive and reasonably well… it’s a heavy burden to bear. Eliot’s shoulders are broad and strong, but he’s only human, and all too aware of his limits, and the dangers they all face.

Eliot’s muscles tense at the unexpected touch, but relax more quickly than Nate would have expected. But then, Eliot trusts him. And that makes Nate pretty damn important to Eliot. Eliot’s also learned to trust Hardison and Parker, to an extent, though Nate knows he has his doubts about Sophie and there’s no chance of Eliot trusting Tara yet, but it’s different with Nate.

He’s known, for a long time, that Eliot sees him as an equal. He’s not sure when it happened, but at some point in the long years of their acquaintance, Nate came to return the sentiment, even to sort of like Eliot, as much as he could allow himself to like a criminal. And then, somewhere along the way when Nate wasn’t paying attention, mutual respect and reluctant fondness turned into a real friendship, acknowledged or not.

And then there’s maybe that other thing with the curly hair and the smile and dangerous men with cold blue eyes who flirt with waitresses in McRory’s. But now isn’t the time to think about that.

“You hold on, the best you can,” Nate finally replies quietly to the questions Eliot didn’t ask, meeting Eliot’s intent stare with his own. “You wait for your chance, and you destroy the bastard that took him - that took someone away.” He pauses, swallows, and Eliot’s arm shifts under his hand, but doesn’t pull away.

Nate lets a small, rueful smile curve his lips. “And maybe, if you’re really lucky, some jerk will be looking out for you, and help you along the way.”

Eliot quirks an eyebrow at him, smirking a little, some of the darkness in his eyes receding. “Guy’d have to be an awful good friend to bother. Or maybe kind of an idiot.”

Nate nods and smiles wryly, grateful Eliot is willing to accept what questionable wisdom and carefully disguised gratitude Nate is able to offer.

Eliot’s smirk widens. “Kinda like a guy who tries to quit stealin’ and drinkin’ and lives over a thief bar?”

Nate laughs at that, a little helplessly, a little sadly, because, yeah, this is his life now, and it’s nothing like what he’d planned, and Eliot Spencer is certainly not someone he ever expected to become his best friend, and he still misses Sam so much sometimes that he could break down and cry, and maybe he’s not ready to like who he’s become yet, but…

Nate wonders when he stopped hating himself.

And he wants to see if he could learn to like himself. And he thinks maybe Hardison and Parker and Sophie and maybe even Tara, and maybe especially Eliot, maybe they can teach him how. They certainly seem to like him, anyway.

“Yeah,” he agrees, smiling at Eliot, “a guy like that. Some masochistic bastard with a jones for lost causes.”

Eliot shakes his head and snorts and grins and rolls his eyes and manages to look all of twelve for a moment. And Nate hopes, if it’s him that’s lost, that one of the other jerks they call friends will care enough to notice and try to pick up the pieces if Eliot breaks.

Paris, nine years ago

After Eliot fell off the face of the Earth for a year, Nate was more than startled to catch a glimpse of him strolling casually down a street in Paris. He hesitated a moment, watching the other man walking away from him, wondering if that jolt of recognition he’d felt had been real or imagined. There’d been a time or two when he’d thought he’d seen Eliot over the past few months, but it was never him, and considering the type of man who bore a passing resemblance to Eliot Spencer, cases of mistaken identity could be a bit on the dangerous side.

But this time was different. Even though he’d caught only the briefest glimpse of the man’s face, and even though the hair was longer and lighter and straighter than he remembered, he’d felt that particular sense of familiar danger that meant Eliot Spencer.

Why the feeling inspired him to follow the younger man to the seedier side of the city rather than returning to the safety of his hotel room, Nate couldn’t be quite sure.

After numerous twists and turns down progressively emptier side streets, Nate turned a corner and discovered his quarry had vanished. He took another few steps before easing to a stop, suddenly unnerved and not so sure why trailing Eliot had seemed like a good idea. Actually, he wasn’t so sure it had even been an idea so much as an instinct. But however screwed up some of his instincts might be, now they were screaming danger and ambush, and Nate had never quite forgotten his first meeting with Eliot, three years earlier. He wasn’t inclined to go poking into dark alleys looking for the man.

But as Nate hesitated, a small group of burly, determined men rounded the corner behind him and stomped purposefully past, spreading out across the empty street and peering into alleys as they went.

Before they’d gotten far, a single man stepped out from between two buildings and strode slowly to the center of the street, stopping just outside the small pools of illumination cast by the weak streetlights and settling into a fighting stance.

Nate backed up slowly to lean against a building in shadow as that familiar voice, a little gruffer and lower than he remembered, growled, “C’mon, boys. Let’s do this.”

There were five men ranged across the street, most of them taller and all of them bulkier than the man beckoning them into the shadows. Nate frowned and slid a hand under his coat to the butt of his pistol.

Eliot Spencer was a criminal, but he was a criminal Nate knew, and these other guys were clearly thugs. He supposed it would be smartest for him to just turn around and walk away, but… well.

He was curious where Eliot had been for the past year, if nothing else.

So Nate eased his gun out of its holster, but kept it aimed carefully at the ground, waiting to see what would happen.

He’d never actually seen Eliot fight before. The stories didn’t do him justice.

Within moments, Nate was mesmerized. The man looked like something out of an action movie, ducking and weaving, punching and kicking, sliding smoothly from one opponent to the next. This wasn’t the mindless flailing of a brawler, but the controlled elegance of an artist.

Eliot made no sound as he fought, only the grunts and yells of his opponents echoing down the street. One heavy body after another fell, and one by one they stopped getting back up. Eliot fell once or twice as well; as good as he obviously was, five guys at once were bound to get a few solid hits in, but he never stayed down. Nate’s hand clenched tighter on his gun every time Eliot staggered from a blow or slammed into the pavement, but the next moment the man would be swinging himself back around or rolling and springing to his feet, and dealing powerful, precise strikes in return.

In a matter of minutes the fight was over. The five thugs lay sprawled on the ground, and Eliot stood in his pool of shadow, shoulders heaving as he caught his breath.

Then he began to stalk slowly, menacingly, in Nate’s direction.

Nate blinked, startled at the younger man’s advance, then licked his lips uneasily and hastily shoved his gun back into its holster, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. Eliot stopped walking, and Nate moved forward a few steps into the light from a streetlamp, smiling nervously.

“It’s just me,” he offered mildly. “I was… in the neighborhood.”

Eliot was already standing still, but when Nate stepped into the light he somehow went even stiller. When Nate spoke, he started slightly, then a low, raspy chuckle barely reached Nate’s ears. Eliot seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then the tight line of his shoulders eased, and he ambled slowly towards Nate, the focused menace of moments earlier vanished as if it had never been.

“Nate,” Eliot acknowledged as he stopped a few feet away, crossing his arms. “Been a while.”

“More than a year,” Nate agreed, studying the younger man. “I was almost starting to believe the rumors you were dead.”

Eliot didn’t look all that different, Nate supposed. The hair was, as he’d thought, longer, completely unnaturally straight, and sun-bleached. The powerful, compact body seemed leaner and harder, as if Eliot had been pared down to nothing but muscle over bone. A new scar marred the full upper lip just slightly, and the sharp blue eyes held an emptiness that sent a shiver down Nate’s spine.

Eliot smirked grimly at him. “Nah, I’m too damn ornery to die, Nate.”

Nate frowned, wondering if he was imagining the bitterness in Eliot’s voice.

“Where’ve you been?” Nate asked.

Eliot shrugged, looked away. “Around,” he muttered. Nate waited patiently. Eliot heaved an irritated sigh and grumbled reluctantly, “Croatia.”

Nate’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Croatia? What were you doing in Croatia?”

Eliot’s jaw tightened, his eyes narrowing as he continued to stare out into the darkness. “…forgetting,” he murmured after a long pause.

Nate bit his tongue on the urge to ask what Eliot had been trying to forget, and how he’d been trying to forget it. Obviously the man didn’t want to think about it. Searching for a change of topic, his eye fell on the men still crumpled on the ground further down the street. “That was quite a fight,” Nate murmured. “I knew you were good, but I didn’t think anybody was that good.”

Eliot shrugged. “Not many are.” He didn’t sound proud, or smug, or… anything, really.

“Let me buy you a drink, we can catch up,” Nate offered, surprising them both.

Eliot’s mouth quirked in a small, bemused grin. “I don’t have the damn manuscript, Ford. Fucking Caffrey beat me to it and left me with all the local heat. I’ll be after his ass tomorrow.”

Nate blinked, filed that information away, and shrugged. “I’m actually in town looking for some missing jewelry, but thanks for the tip. So how about that drink?” For some reason, now that he’d offered, he was determined to get Eliot to accept his company. Nate supposed he was curious what had the other man so subdued. Not that he cared, not really, but Eliot was always an engaging puzzle.

Eliot’s grin faded back to blankness, but he studied Nate intently for a moment, and then shrugged. “Fine. But I’ve had e-fucking-nough of this city with its snotty waiters and shitty wine. I got some good vodka back at my place.” And without waiting for a reply, Eliot strode off down the street.

Nate raised his eyebrows. That was odd. Sure, they had a sort of courteous professional rivalry, and alright, so maybe he kind of liked Eliot as much as he could like a criminal, but it was still a little out there for Nate to ask the man to join him for a drink. So it was therefore downright bizarre for Eliot to invite Nate Ford, insurance investigator, to his place, even if it was just a hotel room.

Intrigued, Nate followed.

Eliot led him in tense silence to a small, slightly rundown but well-kept hotel a few blocks from the street where they’d left the thugs. It seemed odd to Nate that Eliot would have chosen to fight the other men so close to where he was staying, rather than leading them away, but he didn’t ask. Eliot knew his business, after all.

Eliot greeted the old woman at the front desk with badly-accented French and a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, but she didn’t seem to mind as she handed over his room key, beaming. Eliot tended to have that effect on women.

Eliot let the smile drop again as he turned away and headed up the narrow staircase. Nate followed him to the second floor, and into a small corner room with a single bed and a nightstand, and no space for anything else.

Eliot looked around the room with a frown, as if he’d forgotten how tiny it was, then shrugged and slumped against the wall, sliding down to sit on the floor, knees pulled up to his chest. He glanced at Nate and nodded toward the bed in invitation.

Awkwardly, Nate settled himself on the edge of the low mattress as Eliot leaned over to rifle through the single black duffel bag in the corner. He pulled out a largish, unlabelled bottle with a rusted screw-top cap. Eliot opened the bottle, gave the neck a quick wipe with his sleeve to remove the reddish dust, and took a drink before offering it to Nate.

Nate accepted the mostly full bottle and took a drink as well, barely managing not to spew the liquid fire all over the room. He shoved the bottle back in the general direction of Eliot’s low chuckle, as he coughed and wheezed. “I think I may be blind. That is really, really horrible vodka,” Nate gasped out after a moment to recover.

Eliot snorted. “Nah, if it makes ya blind, it’s really, really good vodka.” But he screwed the cap back on the bottle and set it aside, apparently not that keen on another drink of glorified turpentine himself.

“So you’re not dead,” Nate observed again, after a long moment of silence, as the vodka sent a pleasant tingle of warmth through his body that almost made the experience of drinking it worthwhile.

Eliot gave a little shrug, rolling his head against the floral wallpaper to study Nate with empty eyes. “Not for lack of tryin’.” Nate frowned at that, and Eliot gave a small, grim smile. “Too fuckin’ good at fightin’, Nate. Even when I just wanna lay my head down, can’t make myself give up.”

Nate shifted on the edge of the bed, uncomfortable and again regretting his decision to follow Eliot. He didn’t want to hear this, wasn’t interested in playing counselor to a dangerous criminal, didn’t care if Eliot was having another personal crisis. Which made it very odd that his legs seemed to have no inclination to get up and walk him out of the cramped hotel room.

“This wasn’t my fuckin’ plan, you know?” Eliot spat suddenly, breaking the silence. He glared at the ceiling, face set in familiar lines of anger, but eyes lacking the fire that usually burned so close to the surface. “I mean, this whole retrieval thing was just… I needed somethin’ to do, something to - but it was only supposed to be one time. But then, ya know, when you get some money, suddenly you need more money, and I was good at this, an’…” Eliot growled, shoving a hand into his shaggy hair and tugging. He heaved an angry sigh. “It just… wasn’t supposed to be a fuckin’ career. I had plans.”

“And they fell through?” Nate prodded quietly, after Eliot stopped ranting.

The younger man gave a sharp bark of unamused laughter. “Yeah. Fell through.” Finally meeting Nate’s eyes again, his own bleak and barren, Eliot stated bitterly, “Turns out you can only break so many promises before other people stop keepin’ theirs to you.”

And Nate didn’t know what to say to that because, well, it was true.

Eliot chuckled wearily, closing his eyes and tipping his head back against the wall. “Shoulda just taken your shot out on the street tonight, Ford. Woulda been doin’ me a favor.”

Nate frowned and shifted on the bed. It was annoying, seeing Eliot Spencer act so defeated and pathetic. He hadn’t been expecting it, and he didn’t like it. “I wasn’t planning on shooting you,” he muttered irritably. “Although the whining is making it a more attractive option.”

Eliot snorted, a faint smile curving his lips. “Don’t lie, I know you had your gun out.”

“Yeah, because you were outnumbered, and I didn’t know you were God damned Batman,” Nate groused, barely resisting the urge to kick the morose younger man.

Eliot’s eyes opened at that, and he raised his head to frown at Nate, a dim spark of curiosity lit in cold blue depths. “You… YOU… were gonna gun down the local talent to save my ass?” he demanded incredulously. His mouth quirked into a crooked grin that brought the first hint of warmth and true amusement to his eyes. “You don’t even like me,” Eliot pointed out.

Nate scowled and looked away. “Shut up. You’re a violent criminal, but you’re, uh…” My violent criminal? Yeah, that wouldn’t sound strange at all, true though it might be. Nate could be a little possessive of some of his favorite opponents and Eliot happened to be one of them. He wasn’t about to tell the bastard that, though. “I might, perhaps, you know… like you slightly more than a bunch of random goons.”

Eliot laughed at him. Nate tried to be annoyed, but there was a brightness returning to those familiar blue eyes that made it really hard for him to stay angry, for some reason.

Part 8