Comment fic. Again. ^_^
Prompt: Eliot and any, rescuing Eliot from a Nightmare Date
Nate looked up in surprise from his book when his phone started vibrating. The team was between jobs at the moment, and he didn’t get many calls when that was the case. He picked up the phone and glanced at the caller ID with a frown.
“Eliot?” he answered, surprise coloring his tone.
“Nate, thank god,” Eliot’s harsh whisper responded, sounding ragged and desperate. Nate set his book aside and sat up straight in his chair, worried. “Please, man, you gotta help me, you gotta get me out of this-” Eliot babbled.
“Eliot,” Nate interrupted sharply, rising to pace as adrenaline surged through his system. Had Eliot been kidnapped? Attacked? Arrested? “Calm down and tell me what’s going on. Are you hurt?”
There was a pause, while Nate’s concern ratcheted up a few more notches, then Eliot replied slowly, “I’m on a date.”
Nate stopped pacing, mouth falling open in confusion. “You’re… what?”
“I’m on a date,” Eliot growled, sounding annoyed as usual at having to repeat himself. “And it’s the date from HELL, and I need you to get me out of it!”
Nate sighed and rubbed the side of his face wearily, irritated at Eliot for scaring him for no reason. “It’s a bad date, Eliot, not a death trap,” he pointed out grumpily. “Tell her you have an early morning and politely excuse yourself, this is not rocket science.”
“Don’t you think I tried that?” Eliot snapped, sounding ever so slightly hysterical. “I have been on bad dates before, you know, but this - I mean, she came on pretty strong when we met the other night, but I figured, why not, I like a woman that can take charge, but now - shit! She won’t take no for an answer, man! I’ve tried every excuse I can think of, and I can think of a lot, I’ve tried being plain rude, hell, I’ve tried to just cut and run twice now, and she’s about three minutes from tracking me down again! It’s goddamn ridiculous, I’m starting to think she’s got a damn tracking device on me or-”
“Alright, alright, calm down,” Nate finally cut him off, running a hand through his hair. Eliot babbling was a new and unnerving, if mildly amusing, experience. “I get it, she’s too clingy.”
There was another ominous silence on the line, and Nate waited expectantly for the usual growled rejoinder, but after a moment, Eliot gave a nervous little laugh and muttered, “Clingy. Yeah. Clingy like she’s talkin’ about chainin’ me up, and usually I’d be up for that, but I’m not sure she means it in the fun way. Nate. I am serious. Help. Me.”
Nate sighed, pushed the TMI to the back of his mind, and flopped back down in his chair, not exactly sure what Eliot expected him to do. “Okay, calm down, I’ll save you from the scary lady. Just… give me a minute to come up with a plan.”
“Plan?” Eliot yelped. Nate knew he would deny it later, but he definitely yelped. “No no no, I don’t need a plan, I just need a lifeline, man! Just call me so I can pretend it’s an emergency and get the hell away!”
Nate frowned. “And why will that work if you’ve already tried making excuses?”
“Because it’s a legitimate external - look, will you just call me? You’re my last resort here, man!” Eliot pleaded.
“Last resort?” Nate echoed, a little peeved.
“Yeah, and you better not let me down,” Eliot snapped. “Hardison laughed at me, Parker said she was busy, and Sophie - Sophie freakin’ put me on call waiting for five minutes before hanging up and now she won’t answer my calls! So you’re it, and unless you want to cover your own ass on your next job because this psycho’s got me cuffed to the bedpost-”
“Don’t you think you’re being a little overly dramatic about this?” Nate cut in, smiling slightly. He doubted the woman was a true danger, she would have tried to take Eliot down by this point if she were, and it was kind of hilarious to hear Eliot so flustered. Not that he wouldn’t help. Eventually.
“Overly - okay, fine, Nate. You want to be an asshole? Then I’m callin’ in the favor you owe me for Barcelona,” Eliot growled flatly.
Nate’s eyes widened in surprise. Eliot was well beyond flustered, and probably down to a very short list of solutions, if he was willing to burn old favors over this. Nate’s amusement drained away quickly. “That’s… quite a hefty IOU to pay off with a simple phone call,” he pointed out.
“Nate. Get me out of this,” Eliot snarled, then ended the call.
Nate stared at his phone for a moment, then sighed, and dialed.
“Yes?” came the slow reply after the third ring.
“You should call her off now, Sophie,” Nate said.
“…I can’t imagine what you’re talking about, Nate,” Sophie replied blithely.
Nate sighed and rolled his eyes. “Look, you’ve had your little joke, but it’s not funny anymore-”
“On the contrary, it’s still extremely funny,” Sophie cut in, giving up her pretense of innocence with a chuckle. “You should see him - oh, well, I’m sure Hardison could be persuaded to burn you a copy of the video. Parker’s doing an excellent job filming it-”
Nate winced, all of his suspicions confirmed. He understood they were all testing their boundaries with one another lately, trying to work out the changing dynamics of the team, but some of them weren’t always so good at knowing when to stop. Not that Nate always was, either, but he was a little more wary of pushing Eliot’s buttons.
“Yeah, well, I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase ‘it’s all fun and games until somebody puts an eye out’?” he drawled. “Because Eliot gets a little paranoid when he can’t shake someone off, and I’d guess he’s about five minutes away from looking for convenient places to dump the body.”
Sophie was silent for a moment, then she sighed. Nate guessed she was watching Eliot, either in person or on camera, and had finally taken a really good look at his body language, which Nate could guess was all coiled tension and deadly intent at that point. “Alright, fine, I suppose we’ve had our fun,” she muttered petulantly, and hung up.
Nate shook his head, waited a moment, then called Eliot back. “Is she gone?” he asked when Eliot picked up.
“Yeah,” Eliot replied, sounding relieved and surprised. “She got a call, and she just… what did you do?”
“I got you out of it,” Nate replied easily.
“Thanks, man,” Eliot said quietly. He sounded tired, tired enough to not even be suspicious of how Nate had gotten rid of the woman, apparently, and Nate frowned, wondering if the others realized the kind of scare their little scheme might have caused Eliot. None of them had enemies quite like his, and what they’d intended as a simple joke had probably begun to feel like a very real and present danger to Eliot by the time he’d called Nate. Nate felt a little bad for having been amused by his friend’s panic.
Letting Eliot know it had all been a practical joke was going to require careful handling. Nate cleared his throat. “Listen,” he said, heading for the stairs that led down to the office space below. “Why don’t you pick up a bottle of Bushmill’s and come over, tell me the whole story.”
“…yeah, okay. Freaky night, man,” Eliot murmured. “See you in a few.”
Eliot hung up, and Nate sighed, looking around what had once been his apartment. He was just as guilty of taking liberties as anyone lately, but maybe it was time to address, as a team, that certain lines should not be crossed without good reason.
Then again, he thought with a smirk as he pulled a pair of highball glasses from the cabinet, maybe that could wait until after Eliot got his revenge for this escapade. He really did owe the man a little more than a phone call for Barcelona, after all.
Prompt: Eliot/Hardison, "I did it thirty-five minutes ago." (Watchmen)
“Honestly, Mr. Hogarth, this is not the first time someone’s threatened one of my people to get me to cooperate. I assure you, they’re all fairly disposable. He’s a good hacker, and it would be annoying to replace him, but not as annoying as letting you blackmail me. You want to kill him, go ahead.”
Nate’s bluffing, Eliot knows Nate’s bluffing, but his fists still clench at the callously delivered words. He’d feel better about this part of the backup plan if he was able to keep an eye on Hardison, instead of wasting his time playing Nate’s bodyguard, but he has to trust the plan, trust Nate, trust Hardison-
“And this is not the first time I’ve had to prove my sincerity, Mr. Ford. It’s good to know disposing of one of your members won’t incapacitate your team, because, you see, I don’t bluff. I did it thirty-five minutes ago.” And Hogarth turns his computer screen around to show them the image of Hardison sprawled on the floor of a barren room, the pool of blood surrounding him black in the monochrome.
Nate stiffens, and Eliot knows this isn’t part of the plan. This is the reason Nate had been frowning when Hardison stopped answering them over the comms. He was supposed to stay in touch, and it wasn’t a tech glitch, and it wasn’t distraction, it was-
And that’s when Eliot stops thinking.
The next thing he’s aware of is not Nate’s hands digging into his shoulders, trying to restrain him. It’s not the stillness of Hogarth’s body beneath him, or the wet, meaty thud of his fist impacting flesh. That’s all just background noise, not even consciously registering in his mind, because in a world where this bastard has killed Hardison, all these things have to be happening.
No, the next thing Eliot is actually aware of is Hardison’s voice in his ear.
“Eliot? Eliot, c’mon, answer me, you’re - whatever’s goin’ on up there is freaking Nate right the hell out, man, talk to me,” Hardison is coaxing, sounding worried and confused and gentle and alive. Alive.
Eliot discovers he’s gasping for breath when he manages to raggedly interject a “Hardison?” into the babble.
“Yeah, man. Yeah. You okay? Nate said you kinda flipped out when - look, I’m sorry, I just had to-”
“You’re alive,” Eliot interrupts again, purely for clarification. He decides maybe he can stop hitting Hogarth, although he can’t quite seem to make the hand the man’s tie and collar are twisted around release its iron grip. Not that it looks like it would matter at this point. Nate’s grip on his shoulders eases a little.
“Yeah, man. Yeah. I’m alive,” Hardison agrees, voice going even softer, gentler, and Eliot closes his eyes and lets the relief wash over him with a shudder as the world realigns into one he maybe doesn’t need to tear apart with his bare hands.
“You okay?” Hardison asks quietly into the silence that follows.
Eliot finally manages to get the hand strangling Hogarth to let go, the body dropping limply to the floor. “Yeah,” he says flatly. “I’m great.”
“Slight change of plans,” Nate adds calmly. “Hogarth... ran. Killing you, or trying to anyway, and I want to know how you managed that camera footage, must have been his parting shot. See if you can clean out his accounts before he can get to them, we’ll just have to take the payoff as all the win we’re getting on this one.” His hands squeeze Eliot’s shoulders once more before releasing him, and Eliot sits back on his heels, straddling Hogarth’s corpse, and starts working out how to get rid of it. It doesn’t take him a lot of thought.
“Already done, man. Cleaned him out thirty-five minutes ago,” Hardison says smugly. “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair,” he adds, laughing in the way he does when he’s made an obscure geek joke he knows no one else will appreciate.
It’s one of the sweetest sounds Eliot has ever heard. “You’re gonna despair when I get my hands on you,” he growls. “Springin’ that shit on us, the hell’s wrong with you? Warn a guy when you’re gonna fake your death, man.”
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry I scared ya.”
“You didn’t scare me, jackass. Just… don’t do it again.”
“Aw, I love you too, sweetheart.”
“…shut up,” Eliot agrees. Yeah. This world, he can live in.
Prompt: Hardison/Eliot, Hardison is working for the government when he goes AWOL. Eliot is sent to retrieve Hardison and his work before he falls into enemy hands, if he hasn't already.
Alec liked Miami. It had its drawbacks, every city did, but overall, it was a hell of a lot better than Langley, Virginia. Not too many girls in bikinis to be found there, especially this time of year. Alec leaned back in his beach chair with a happy sigh before returning his attention to the game on his screen.
If the government didn’t want to give him a vacation, then he felt he was completely entitled to take one.
A few minutes later, when Alec was just starting to get involved in looting digital bodies, a very analog body dropped into the chair next to his. Regrettably, not in a bikini. Or maybe, he corrected himself, not regrettably, since the body was decidedly male. His eyes roved thoughtfully up the length of powerful denim-clad legs to a tee-shirt stretched over a taut, toned belly and chest, and he changed his opinion back to regrettably.
He met blue eyes that were giving him the same sort of once-over with his most charming smile, that faltered only slightly when the guy babbled something at him in Russian.
“Ah, sorry, my man, no speakski? Nyet?” he tried.
The man nodded, smiling amiably, and said in heavily accented English, “You like to have drink with me?”
Alec considered for all of about two seconds before nodding eagerly and getting up to follow the shorter man away from the beach. The guy led him down the street toward a car, and Alec began to feel a little uncertain. He’d assumed he was being invited to one of the bars within walking distance of the beach. “Uh, hey, dude, there’s plenty of places to get a drink right here?” he hedged, slowing his steps as the guy pulled out car keys and a big black SUV bleeped and flashed its lights.
The guy flashed him another bright smile and shook his head. “I think my hotel, it’s more nice, da?”
“Uh, no da, buddy. Listen, you’re cute and all, but I think I’m just gonna head back to the beach now and-”
Before Alec even finished his sentence, the guy had closed the distance between them, and the barrel of a gun was digging into Alec’s belly, expertly hidden from passerby by the way the man had positioned his body. “I think you will find my hotel, it’s nice, yes?” the man intoned flatly, blue eyes gone cold, smiling like a shark.
Oh, hell. Alec should know better than to just go wandering off with Russians. He was the worst CIA agent ever.
And okay, so he wasn’t actually an agent, but-
“You get in car now, da?” The guy growled. “Or I just shoot you and take computer. Either way it’s fine for me.”
Alec sighed and wondered how long he’d survive once the guy figured out he only had his recreational laptop with him. He climbed into the rear seat of the SUV at the guy’s urging, and pressed himself up against the far door when the guy climbed in after him.
They stared at each other for a moment, then the guy shook his head and snorted, shoving the gun down the back of his pants.
“How are you still alive?” the guy demanded, all traces of the thick Russian accent abruptly replaced by a subtle but very American southern drawl. Alec stared at the guy with his mouth hanging open as the guy pulled out a cell phone, hit a button, and said shortly, “Yeah. Got him. Heading in.”
“Who the hell are you?” Alec demanded when the guy put his phone away.
The guy smirked at him and offered a hand. “My name’s Eliot. Agent Spencer. The agency doesn’t like it when their pet techies go running off. You can consider yourself on a very short leash for the foreseeable future, son. And I’ll be holdin’ it,” he added.
Alec was torn between indignation and mental images of being on Eliot (Agent) Spencer’s leash. He finally took the offered hand and shook it slowly before his new handler rolled his eyes and crawled into the front seat. Alec took advantage of the opportunity to evaluate Spencer’s ass.
At least if he had to be on a short leash, he’d have a nice view.
Prompt: Leverage, Nate/Eliot, Trust - damaging it, losing it, winning it back
(It's maybe not as slashy as it should be ideally, but hey, comment-sized. And I tend to just consider them a couple by default, so they're almost always slashed in my head.)
“You never answered my question.”
Eliot paused on his way out the door of the offices, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth at the familiar, long-absent sound of Nate’s voice. It would be a few days, he supposed, before having Nate back stopped taking him by surprise. He wondered how long it would be before it stopped just being a painful reminder of why he’d been gone.
“Eliot,” Nate prompted, impatient and demanding, as if he was entitled to an answer, just like that, after six damn months.
Eliot spun around and stalked back across what was once Nate’s apartment, scowling fiercely. Nate watched him come, wary but stiff-backed, hiding behind the whiskey in his glass and the walls in his eyes. That was just fine. Eliot could break glass and knock down walls if he chose.
“What question did you want an answer for, Nate?” Eliot snapped, standing beside the table where Nate was still sitting. Nate looked up at him, frowning thoughtfully, blue eyes dark with calculation. Eliot knew what question Nate was talking about, and Nate probably knew Eliot knew, but Eliot was feeling inclined to make Nate work for what he wanted. For once.
Nate cleared his throat and took a sip of his drink, then shrugged, and asked again what it had taken him six months and being strapped down in a dentist’s chair to think to ask in the first place. “Are we okay, Eliot?”
Eliot snatched the glass away from Nate and drained the contents in one swallow, then slammed the glass down on the table, looming over the older man. “Are we okay?” he repeated in a growl. “You lied to us, Nate. You knew when we got on that ship that you weren’t getting off it, and you decided not to let us in on your big sacrificial master plan. That was your choice, Nate, to jerk us all around without knowing what the hell was going on in your head. You conned us, Nate, so no, we are definitely not okay.”
Nate frowned at him, opened and closed his mouth a few times, then carefully laid two fingers on the back of Eliot’s fist where it was braced on the table. “I know that the team’s not okay with me, Eliot. I meant… us. You and me. Are we okay?”
Eliot glared at him for a moment before he trusted himself to speak. His voice still held more of a tremble than he would have liked when he did speak, caught somewhere between rage and pain. “You lied to me. You lied to me and you put me in a position that - I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, Nate! I need to know what you’re planning if I’m going to do my damn job, Nate, and… hell! Have I ever not backed your play, no matter how stupid it is? Have I ever given you one damn reason to not trust me, in all the time we’ve been working together, all the time we’ve been together?” When Nate just regarded him silently, Eliot slammed his fist on the table and shouted, “Answer me!”
Nate flinched just slightly, then closed his eyes and sighed. “No, Eliot,” he replied quietly. “You’ve never given me any reason not to trust you.”
“That’s right, I haven’t,” Eliot growled. “But you just keep piling up the reasons on my end. So no, Nate, we are not okay.”
Eliot watched Nate, breathing hard with the force of releasing his pent-up emotions. It felt good, cathartic, to finally have the chance to let it all out after festering for so long. As angry and hurt as he still felt, it was a cleaner pain, not the crippling, creeping sickness that had been twisting his gut in knots for months.
Nate finally met Eliot’s gaze, and apparently Eliot had managed to knock down some walls without even trying, because there was a raw look of fear and uncertainty in Nate’s eyes. He looked lost, staring at Eliot like a man watching his life go up in smoke. Eliot felt a tiny, vengeful thrill of satisfaction, recognizing the look he knew had been in his own eyes as he’d climbed aboard that helicopter.
“I only did it to save you. All of you,” Nate whispered raggedly. “I only lied because I love you.”
Eliot sighed and closed his eyes. It hurt, god, it still hurt, that Nate hadn’t trusted him, and that was going to have to change. But the wounds had been lanced, now, and maybe it was time to start healing.
“I know,” Eliot murmured, opening his eyes again to meet Nate’s desperate, fearful stare. “And that’s why… we will be okay.”
Prompt: Eliot/Aimee, (pre-series) he's home on leave but he seems like he's a million miles away
Once upon a time, Aimee’s life was a fairy tale. Cinderella, to be precise. Growing up, she was a tomboy, more interested in horses than boys, and by the time that started to change, she’d become known as the tough girl with horse shit on her boots. She wasn’t a cheerleader, wasn’t on the pep squad, wasn’t at all the type of girl the quarterback of the football team should have even noticed.
But Eliot Spencer didn’t go in much for stereotypes. He took Home Ec and turned out to be a better cook than most of the girls, and he asked Aimee Martin to go steady one afternoon when she was covered in dirt and hay and horse shit from mucking out stalls, and looked absolutely thrilled when she agreed.
And after that, well, Cinderella got to go to the ball. Aimee wasn’t the horse shit girl anymore, she was the quarterback’s girlfriend, and she got invited to all the parties and everyone wanted to be her friend. He took her to prom, and she felt like a princess in her ball gown, and when their names were called for the spotlight dance, she could see her future unfolding in his bright blue eyes.
She loved his eyes, the way they looked directly at her and really saw her, like she took up all his field of vision. He was her Prince Charming, and when he took her home at the end of the night and offered her a promise ring on the porch instead of a roll in the hay out in the stables, she knew he’d be her happily ever after.
Now, Aimee leans against the paddock fence and watches Eliot ride in the golden light of late afternoon. He loves horses, always has. It always made her happy, because she saw him with the horses and she could imagine him settling down, taking over her dad’s stables with her. He’d always wanted the same life she did, and once he’d served his time with the army, he’d come back to her, and live that life. That was what she’d told herself, what she’d believed. Her happily ever after was just being delayed a little.
The first year or so he’d been full of stories and smiles when he came home, but lately he’s been filling up with secrets and shadows instead. The time between visits stretches longer and longer, but she could bear with that, she really could. But last night, after dinner, he’d been sitting out on the porch swing, staring out towards the tree line beyond the barn where the fireflies were dancing. She’d watched him for a moment, then she’d wandered over and settled on the porch railing, directly in his line of sight. And for the first time ever, he stared right through her.
For a while now, his bright blue eyes had been growing more clouded and his gaze more distant when he was left alone with his thoughts too long, but she’d still been able to catch and hold his attention. And if, when she did, he’d wrap his arms around her and hold on a little too tight, well, she didn’t mind. But now, his eyes were dark, the mouth that used to smile so easy and sweet whenever he saw her was set in a grim line, and she knew he hadn’t been watching the fireflies. She didn’t know where his thoughts had drifted, but they were far away from the porch, and the fireflies… and her. She didn’t know what he was seeing, what he could be thinking of, and for one terrifying moment she found herself wondering if she knew anything about him at all anymore, or if he was just a handsome stranger who sometimes came to visit.
She leans on the paddock fence and twists her promise ring on her finger and watches him ride. He leaves in the morning, and she wonders when he’ll come back again. She tries not to let herself wonder if he’ll keep coming back. He’s her Prince Charming, after all, he has to come back for their happily ever after. He promised. But she doesn’t feel like Cinderella anymore, she feels more like Sleeping Beauty these days, frozen in time, just waiting for her prince to come back as the world moves on around her.
She twists the ring on her finger, the ring that seems more like a lie every time he leaves, and she wonders how much longer she can keep believing in fairy tales.
Maybe just a little bit longer, she thinks wistfully, as she watches Eliot ride into the sunset.
Prompt: Leverage/Supernatural, Dean/Eliot, Unfortunately, Nate reminds Dean of his Dad.
Eliot doesn’t bounce, literally or otherwise. He’s just not that kind of guy. Which makes sense, because Dean could not possibly date a bouncy guy. Bounciness has its place, specifically in the boob area of friendly waitresses and bartenders, and not anywhere in relation to Eliot. Or Dean. Dean is not a bouncy guy, either. It’s kind of the basis of their relationship.
So anyway, Eliot doesn’t bounce, but Dean’s pretty sure that if he did, he would be right now. This team Dean’s heard so much about obviously means a lot to Eliot, and he’s excited to be introducing Dean to them. Dean gets that, maybe not the excitement - for him it had been more like stomach-clenching anxiety to introduce Eliot to Dean’s own cobbled together from spare parts family - but that it’s important, that these people, their approval, mean more to Eliot than he could ever express or admit. Dean’s a little leery of the whole exercise, it wasn’t exactly fantastic when he tried it. Sam’s still making butt sex jokes, Bobby’s not much better, and don’t even get him started on Cas. But Eliot’s got this nervous grin that makes him look like a little kid, and Dean would never tell him but it’s kind of adorable, and he’s very plainly not-bouncing in an eager puppy sort of way, like Sam with a new library book when he was little, and…
So Dean’s meeting the family.
For the most part, it goes okay. There’s Parker, who’s hot but off-limits, and doesn’t seem as crazy as Eliot had warned him. Dean doesn’t think sniffing people you’ve just met is really any odder a behavior than slipping holy water into their beer, or randomly yelling “Christo.” Anyway, she seems okay, reminds him a little of Sam. She’s got the same “I’m not sure I want to share my big brother with you” vibe going that Sam had when he met Eliot, but Sam adjusted, so Dean figures she will, too.
Hardison - Dean tries for like ten minutes to call the guy Alec, mostly just to make Eliot’s eye twitch, but Hardison really does fit him better - seems like a cool guy. He’s obviously the one that’s going to give Eliot the most shit over the whole ‘sorta gay’ thing, but he also obviously isn’t bothered by it a bit. Also he promises Dean limitless untraceable credit, since he’s part of the family now, which is freaking awesome.
Sophie’s dangerous, Dean can tell that right off the bat, fuck-me-now smile and high-heeled boots to match or not. Eliot’s a little wary of her, too, but not the ‘I may need to kill you one of these days’ kind of wary, more the ‘I wish you’d make it a little easier for me to trust you’ kind of wary, so Dean offers his most charming smile and flirts outrageously with her until Eliot mock-growls and drags him away to meet the last member of the group. Dean’s laughing, because he can tell Eliot’s pleased, despite the almost-bruising grip on his arm, it’s going well so far.
And then Eliot stops, lets go of Dean’s arm to cross his own, and smirks at the man sitting at the table, drink in hand. Eliot stands just a little straighter, just a hint of challenge in his shoulders, and Dean knows, this is the important one. Not that the others weren’t, but this guy… he’s the dealmaker or breaker. Dean braces himself and steps forward, offering a hand. “And you must be Nate,” he says cautiously.
Nate Ford looks up at Dean, ignoring his hand, eyes narrowed and calculating and assessing. Dean’s being sized up and evaluated. It’s a feeling he knows well; though it’s been a while, it’s not one he’s likely to ever forget. He’s trapped by that cold, hard stare, like a mouse in front of a snake, and he knows, this is a man with demons, with a hole in his heart, with a driving, burning passion for revenge on whatever hurt him, or possibly just on the entire world if no better target presents itself. He knows the kind of man that has eyes like that.
His mouth goes dry and his knees want to shake as the silent stare goes on. He feels like a kid again, caught doing something stupid and waiting for punishment, waiting to have all his failings spied out and laid out on the table between them. It’s all so painfully familiar, right down to the glass of whiskey.
And then Nate blinks, and offers a vaguely edged but genial smile, shaking Dean’s hand with a firm grip, and Eliot’s rolling his eyes and smacking Nate in the shoulder. Nate pins Eliot with that same flesh-searing stare, but Eliot just smirks at him again, obviously not bothered or intimidated. Which maybe makes sense, because Dean can tell from the softer smile Eliot gets that Nate was only checking to make sure he was happy, not to see if he was worthy. There’s an easiness between the two of them, mutual respect and affection, and Dean almost can’t breathe around the cold lump of envy suddenly lodged in his chest.
He swallows it down and smiles and goes to talk to Hardison again. He likes Eliot’s family, even if they’re kind of weird. But Nate…
It’s just going to take some getting used to, how much he reminds Dean of his Dad.