There is no "I" in Team (3/3)
Title: There is no "I" in Team (3/3)
Author: LittleFairy78
Fandom: Leverage
Rating: T due to some language and violence
Summary: Tag to "The Wedding Job". It takes some time for a lone wolf to get used to being part of a team. For Eliot Spencer, it might have taken too long to learn that there is nothing wrong with asking the people you work with for help.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything Leverage. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made with this story.
Genre: Episode tag, slightly AU-ish concerning the end of the episode. Whump.
Spoilers: Everything up to "The Wedding Job" is fair game.
Pain.
It hurt. It hurt so much that every fiber of his body wanted to scream, but all his mind could come up with was the urge to laugh.
He knew all about pain. Over the years, he had dealt it out just as much as he had received it. He had learned how to deal with it. If they thought it was going to break him with pain, they were mistaken.
They could as well stop the interrogation and get it over with.
He wasn't going to talk.
…
…
…
"What did he say?"
Female voice, accented. British, probably. Had there been any British people involved in this job? He couldn't remember, it was all so hazy.
"Eliot?"
Huh, so she knew who he was. Had his identity been compromised? Come to think of it, which identity had he been using, anyway? Didn't matter, he wasn't going to tell them anything. No matter how bad the pain was.
He tried to put defiance into his voice, he really did, but even breathing hurt. If any words actually left his lips, they couldn't have been more than a whisper.
Silence.
Then another voice.
"I think he's hallucinating."
A male voice this time, with a distinct lilt to it that made Eliot associate dark skin an a cocky grin, though he had no idea why.
"Why, what did he say?"
"He said 'I don't have the monkey'."
There, he had said it. Let them see what they made of that. He wasn't going to give them anything else.
Another wave of pain coursed through his body, and Eliot gave in to the darkness.
…
…
…
"…made us watch it, to unwind, as he said. Sitting still for hours and drinking orange soda, that's unwinding for him. But did they let me leave? No. They forced me to sit through the entire thing and said that Nate was going to call if anything changed over night."
It was a different voice. Another woman, but her voice higher, and not accented. And she was talking a mile a minute, like an excited girl who had too many stories to tell and was trying to get them all out at once.
Did they really think he was going to break by this? Rapid-talking torture? Seriously, this was f-ed up. There was pain, his whole body was a collection of various pains and hurts, but none of that pain was caused by the rapid talking.
It felt like he was floating, at times connecting with his hurting body, then drifting away again, the rapid words a background staccato that lulled him away.
"…and seriously, eleven guys to rob a casino? Everybody knows that you don't work a break-in with eleven people on the job. Okay, so it was three casinos, but it was only one vault, right? So technically, it only counts as one. And all that high-tech really only made the thing look flashy and cool, but it's all crap. I would have been in and out of that thing, with the money, in thirty-six minutes. And I wouldn't have needed a Chinese acrobat, or a duplicate of the vault in some abandoned warehouse. Really, whoever made that up had no idea what they were talking about. They should ask me how it's done. And Hardison actually shushed me when I said what a load of crap that whole scheme was. Can you believe that? Anyway, I hid his laptop after that, and he wasn't so cocky then, let me tell you that…"
Eliot couldn't make much sense of the words. Not really. But they were soothing, in a weird and twisted way. They gave him something else to focus on aside from the pain. So he listened, word after rapid word, as his mind blanked and he drifted off again.
…
…
…
"…and dude, I'm telling you, I wasn't going to go in between that. Cooping Parker up for longer than an hour at a time? Not a good idea, if you know what I mean. I don't envy Nate right now, but that's what you get for being the boss."
It was the black man's voice again, Eliot noticed. Though he still had no idea why he was so convinced that the man was black without ever actually seeing him. Those people who had him seemed to come and go continuously. He never seemed to be able to tell when one of them came and the other left, which told him a lot. Either they were drugging him, or he was injured badly. And either way it meant he was fucked. But at least then it would be over soon. And he was damn sure that if he went out, he was going out without telling those people anything.
"Anyway, before I forget - you owe me, man. I really liked that scarf, you know? It wasn't just a scarf, it was a fashion statement."
Scarf. What scarf? He was fairly sure that he hadn't been working a scarf-retrieval job. The thought alone was ridiculous. So what scarf was the guy talking about?
It didn't make sense, but then, nothing did. Nothing but the pain - pain always made sense. A dull throbbing all over his body that reminded him with every heartbeat that a whole lot of things were wrong, and he had no idea how to get out of this.
"Or you could just pay up for the scarf. I have a feeling that there's a pair of expensive boots I'm going to have to compensate for."
This was getting more and more ridiculous. Scarves and boots? Eliot would have laughed, wanted to laugh, but breathing was already difficult enough. In fact, it was getting harder and harder, and he suspected that all that talk about scarves and boots had only been meant to distract him while they did something to him.
Something started beeping to his right. A timer? A bomb?
He didn't know. Didn't care, because he couldn't breathe.
"Eliot?"
He was sucking in air, but nothing ended up in his lungs.
"Help! I need some help in here!"
Hurried footsteps, voices mingling, talking. People crowding around him, and he couldn't move a muscle to defend himself.
"What's going on?" The black man all but yelled.
"Please leave the room, sir."
Another female voice, not one he had heard before.
"The hell I will! What's wrong with him? What's happening?"
"Call Doctor Williams, he needs to get down here stat!"
"Acute respiratory distress."
"O2 saturation going down."
The voices started to mingle as the haze grew.
"…pulse 146…"
"…BP going down…"
"…crashing…"
And then the man's voice again, in a distinctly panicked tone. "Eliot!"
Then…darkness.
…
…
…
Awareness was a disconcerting experience. It felt as if Eliot became gradually aware of every part of his body, one after another. And every single one of them hurt or was in a state of discomfort. Arms, legs, torso, head. Everything was heavy, and hurting. His limbs felt weighed down. His chest and side were stinging something fierce. And a marching band was holding practice in his head.
But he was alive. At least he thought he was. That was something, at least.
There was something on his face, sneaking over his cheeks and running into his nose. A tube. A tube spilling something in his nose. It smelled like plastic and antiseptic. Something was beeping beside his head, slowly and regularly.
Hospital.
It made sense, he guessed. He remembered pain, and the thought of a job gone bad. It wouldn't have been the first time that he ended up in hospital after a job that went to hell. Maybe he should open his eyes to try and find out more about where he was and what had happened. Maybe he had gotten at least a little lucky and had ended up in a country where they understood his language.
The lights in the room were dimmed, but it was still bright enough to see after he had blinked a few times to adjust his eyes to the light. He wasn't in a room, that was the first thing he noticed. Not a normal hospital room, in any case. He was in a cubicle with curtains closing it off on both sides. There was a couple of monitors standing to his left, and a shockingly large number of wires and tubes ran from those into an IV in the back of his hand or sneaked underneath the thin sheet covering him and out of sight.
ICU.
He still had no idea how he had ended up here, but if he was in ICU that meant it must have been bad.
There was a small flash of movement to his right, but Eliot had to realize that he was too weak to turn his head as quickly as he would have liked. Weak, that's what he was right now. He was weak. And he hated it.
After the laborious process of turning his head so that he could see better, he realized with quite some surprise that there was somebody sitting beside his bed. He must have been pretty out of it to not immediately realize that he wasn't alone. Normally he never once let his guard down like that.
It was Nate who was sitting next to him. He was sprawled uncomfortably in a chair, arms crossed over his chest, head hanging slightly to the side. His eyes were closed, mouth hanging slightly open in sleep.
Nate. Of course, how could he have forgotten? The team. The job at the wedding. The Butcher of Kiev. Eliot remembered the feeling of the knife going into his side. He knew that the wound had been bad, but he had really thought he was going to hold out until the job was over and done with.
Obviously, he had been wrong.
Eliot's recollection of what had happened was a bit fuzzy, but he was sure he hadn't heard the last of it yet. Which was only right. He had nearly screwed up the job, after all. Endangered the others, too. If that wasn't the definition of a screw-up, Eliot didn't know what was.
But it seemed to be night, and for now Nate was still asleep. Nate wouldn't be here if any of the others was in trouble because of what happened, or if the job had gone so far downhill that they had to work hard to keep everything under wraps. For now things seemed to be under control.
No reason why he couldn't close his eyes and drift off again.
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo
The next time Eliot woke, it was a clearer, easier process. He drifted slowly back towards awareness, but once he struggled his mind out of the mental haze, it was only a matter of a few seconds for his brain to catch up with the fact that it was conscious again. He opened his eyes, blinking rapidly against the bright lights.
So it was no longer night.
His eyes slowly adjusted to the light in the room, giving his brain time enough to process as much as he could from his surroundings.
He was still in the same bed, in the curtained off cubicle he remembered distantly from the night before. And seen in daylight, the shocking amount of machinery situated next to his bed left no doubt about the fact that he was in ICU.
An IV was running into the back of his left hand, and an oxygen tube was running into his nose. There were sensors on his chest, and some wires and tubes that he couldn't even guess the purpose of vanished underneath the sheet and out of sight.
There was no real pain, just a numb sting in his left side. But Eliot knew the slightly dull and floating feeling that was coursing through him right now, and he held no doubt whatsoever that a lot of pain medication was taking the edge of a whole lot of pain right now.
But he was awake and coherent, that was something. Enough to get him out of here soon, he thought.
The chair next to his bed that Nate had been sleeping in the previous night was empty. Not that Eliot had actually expected Nate to be sitting here holding his hand when he woke up. But Nate was the one who'd back him up in his quest to get out of here as soon as possible. Or at least so he hoped.
A few moments passed, then Eliot heard voices approach the cubicle. Instinctively he tensed when one of them was a voice he didn't recognize, but then he heard Nate's voice answer and felt himself relax a little.
Nate, when he finally came into sight, looked rumpled, as if he had woken up not too long ago. He was still wearing the same clothes as he had done the previous night, the top button of his shirt was undone, he was unshaved and his hair was ruffled. At first, he didn't even seem to notice that Eliot was awake but continued speaking to the doctor who was walking beside him.
"Ah, Mr. McIntyre. Good of you to finally wake up."
Nate looked up at the doctor's words, looking at Eliot with an expression that was somewhere between surprise and disbelief. But it lasted only a second, then he smiled and stepped up to the bed.
"Daniel, it's good to see you awake."
The relief in his voice rang true, even if everything else was fake. Eliot was already processing the information. Daniel McIntyre. Of course they had needed an alias for him, they couldn't risk an extended hospital stay under his real name. No doubt Nate had given the doctors a story about who he was and why he was here, and it was a story he needed to catch up on quickly. Explaining away a knife-wound must have been hard for the team, and he couldn't afford another screw up and blow their cover story after he had already nearly screwed up the job.
But for now, he had no idea what role Nate was playing. He didn't think he was capable of a lot of acting, anyway, so he settled on a weak smile and a neutral "Hey" in Nate's direction. It must have worked, because the doctor at least didn't seem to notice anything amiss.
"Now Mr. McIntyre, I'm sure you must be confused. You're at the County Hospital. I'm Doctor Williams, I've been treating you since you were brought here with a stab-wound two days ago."
Two days ago? He was missing two entire days? Eliot thought that couldn't be right, but when he looked at Nate for confirmation, the older man nodded silently.
"You lost a lot of blood, naturally, but I can tell you that you were very lucky. The knife barely missed the lung, and while the blood loss was substantial, no major arteries were damaged either. Otherwise I'm afraid to say you probably wouldn't have survived until help arrived. It took us a while to get you stabilized, but we had to move you to the ICU yesterday afternoon."
Eliot frowned. "Why?"
That one syllable scratched like barbed wire over his throat, and he couldn't help the coughs that started to tear loose from his chest at the unexpected sensation. It hurt, even with all the painkillers running through his system. Every single cough tore at his injured side and sent spikes of agony through his body.
Dr. Williams was at his bedside in two large steps and quickly raised the mattress into a more upright position. Breathing became a bit easier after that, but it didn't stop the coughs entirely. From out of nowhere, a half-full glass of water suddenly appeared in his line of vision. Eliot struggled hard at suppressing the coughs enough to get a good look. From the other side of the bed, Nate was holding out the glass of water to him, his free hand hovering unsurely beside Eliot's head, as if he wasn't quite sure whether to help him drink the water or not.
But there was just no way that Eliot was going to lie here - well, half-sit here - and accept help with something as simple as drinking a glass of water. Despite the slight shaking of his hands, Eliot reached for the glass and brought it up to his lips. The only reason why he didn't slosh water all over himself was that Nate had only filled the glass halfway to begin with, but he wasn't going to think about that now. He'd be as good as new in a day or so. It couldn't have been that bad.
Nate took the glass out of his hands and put it on the bedside table as the doctor started speaking again.
"You need to go easy on the speaking. We had you on a ventilator for the first night, your throat is still sore from that. The damage by the knife was worse than we initially assumed. Due to your extremely low blood pressure, we missed a small bleed during the initial treatment. Once your blood pressure stabilized again, the bleeding got worse. The blood put pressure on your lung and caused some respiratory distress. It was a bit of a setback, but we're monitoring you closely to avoid something like that from happening again. That you're conscious and coherent is already a good sign."
Eliot swallowed against his sore throat and deliberately kept his voice low. "When can I get out of here?"
The doctor's eyebrows shot up and vanished below his hairline. "I'd say we worry about getting you stable enough to move you out of ICU first. If your progress is good, that can be as soon as this afternoon. But I would like to keep you at least for another 48 hours to make sure that the wound starts healing and no infection sets in. Right now you're on a lot of pain medication, Mr. McIntyre. But don't underestimate how bad your injuries are. You nearly died."
Well, that definitely wasn't the first time it happened. And Eliot had never been good at recuperating in hospital. He was going to talk about that with Nate, right now talking to the doctor didn't promise any success in that department.
Williams checked various readouts on the monitors beside Eliot's bed, wrote something down in the clipboard file at the foot end of Eliot's bed, then nodded at Nate and Eliot.
"All right. Your vitals are looking good. I'll drop by in a little while for a more thorough examination of the wound. For now I'll leave you and your brother alone for a little while, I'm sure you have a lot of catching up to do. If you need anything, just use the call button and ask the nurses."
Nate thanked the doctor, then they silently listened to his receding steps until they were sure he was out of earshot. Only when he was sure that they were alone and nobody could overhear them did Eliot turn towards Nate.
"So we're brothers?"
Nate shrugged and sat back down in the chair beside Eliot's bed.
"Easiest way to get around visitation restrictions, and Hardison had three identities with the same last name, so we picked those."
"Three?"
A small smile spread on Nate's face. "Your wife is going to be back later in the morning."
Eliot rolled his eyes. His wife. Of course. Because he so loved acting that kind of stuff. Now the only question was who played the part of the happy wife.
"Who am I married to?"
"Officially, to Linda McIntyre. Though you might know her as Sophie."
Eliot smiled, but didn't say anything to interrupt. Nate was giving him the run-down of their cover story, so he needed to pay attention.
"Linda and Daniel McIntyre run a small, family owned catering business called Deli Delight. Mostly they cater to weddings, bar-mitzvahs and other family festivities. Linda is the organizer, and as a trained chef you take care of the catering. There are raving reviews about your stuffed mushrooms on the Deli Delight website."
Nate made a small pause, and Eliot could just imagine the fun Hardison must have had putting that website together. Their computer expert always got a little over the top with these things.
"Deli Delight was hired to cater the Moscone wedding, not knowing about the criminal connections Moscone had. During the festivities when everyone else was attending the wedding ceremony, you left the kitchen on a supply run. When you returned, you found two men fighting in there. When you tried to go in between and break them up, one of them stabbed you in the side with a kitchen knife. You managed to get out of the room, but you were too badly injured to get outside and call for help. You collapsed in the garage, where you were later found by a party guest who then called the ambulance."
Eliot nodded as he committed those facts to memory. It was a good cover story, especially considering the small amount of time Nate and the others must have had to come up with it. There was only one thing.
"What about the Butcher? And didn't the hospital contact the police?"
Nate nodded. "They did. They were referred to Agent Washington, who is the FBI-liaison officer. Interestingly, the men who were fighting in the kitchen were both on the FBI-watchlist with warrants outstanding on them. One of them was known as the Butcher of Kiev in certain circles. Agent Washington assured the doctors that the FBI had taken over the case, and that it was going to add Assault with a deadly weapon to the Butcher's charges. Since the Butcher is now in the hands of the real FBI, we don't need to worry about the hospital trying to involve the police again. They've been sufficiently reassured by Agent Washington in person. The story isn't fool-proof, but it's definitely enough to make sure that we're not found out until you're well enough to be released from the hospital."
Nate said it as if it was not much of an effort, but Eliot knew how much work must have gone into this plan, especially under the time constraints. The team had to work out an entire con just to make sure that he could stay in hospital without them being detected. It wasn't a simple thing. They were using three of the identities Hardison had set up for them in a way that would make them unable to ever use them again, they had made up a whole back-story for him, Sophie and the business they supposedly ran, they had needed to intercept the hospital's call to the police and work out a story to satisfy them in what they thought was their professional duty. Not to mention that one of them, possibly Hardison, was posing as an FBI agent, and with the real FBI in town working the Moscone case that was even more of a risk than it normally was.
He had really screwed this one up royally.
"What really happened?"
Nate sighed. "I send you out to deposit the money in the car. When you didn't come back from that, we spread out and searched for you. Hardison found you in the garage. He staved off the bleeding until the ambulance arrived. On the way to the ER we figured out the back-story. You pretty much heard the rest from the doctor."
Eliot nodded tiredly. This had been the run down, and he knew that the chewing out would be the next thing to follow. Best to go into the offence immediately.
"I screwed up."
Nate sighed and rubbed a hand over his unshaved face. "Yeah. Yeah, you did."
And for a fleeting moment Eliot wondered if that was it, the moment where Nate told him that he wasn't going to be a part of Leverage anymore after this. Of course he would continue to do what he did. He didn't need Nate or the team for that. Over the years he had acquired quite a reputation, it wasn't going to be difficult to find something else to do. And with all the money that was left from his share of their very first job, he didn't have to worry, anyway.
But - and the realization came as quite a surprise - Eliot didn't want his time as part of Leverage to be over. He wasn't used to it, but working with the team had been fun. He'd be sad to see it over.
But what was he supposed to say? It won't happen again? I'm sorry? Eliot wasn't someone to toss out platitudes. And more importantly, Nate wasn't the kind of guy to accept platitudes. It was one of the reasons why Eliot had come to respect the man so much. So Eliot said nothing.
For a moment, silence settled over the room, only interrupted by the regular beating of the heart monitor beside the bed. Nate looked down at his folded hands for a few moments, then he looked up with a sigh.
"Is there any way that you can explain this to me?"
The question surprised Eliot, because he had no idea what there was to explain. He had misjudged the Butcher during their fight and had ended up with a knife in his side because of it. There wasn't much to explain. But if Nate wanted the details, he was going to give them.
"I made the mistake to let him corner me against the counter. It was stupid, but once it happened there wasn't much I could do anymore."
Eliot looked straight at Nate after those words, trying to judge his reaction. He didn't know what reaction he had expected, but surprise and bewilderment certainly hadn't been it.
"What?"
"What 'what'? The Butcher, that's what. You wanted me to explain. He cornered me against the counter and I couldn't dodge the knife."
Nate stared at him for a few seconds, then he slowly shook his head.
"I wasn't talking about that, Eliot. For crying out loud, I know that there's always a chance that an opponent gets the better of you in a fight. That's absolutely not what I meant. What I want to know is why you didn't call for help after it happened. You still had your microphone on you when Hardison found you in the garage. Hell, I came into the kitchen right after it happened! Why didn't you say a single word about the fact that you were hurt?"
Eliot swallowed hard, despite the lingering rawness of his throat. His memories of everything after the fight with the Butcher were hazy, but he remembered how he had thought about calling for help right before he had passed out. It had been too late then, and he had seriously thought he could get through it until the job was done.
"I thought I could manage. I've worked jobs injured before."
Nate shook his head. "You were bleeding out, Eliot. You put a pressure bandage on the wound yourself, and even that didn't stop the bleeding. I know how much you know about field triage, so don't even try to tell me that you had no idea that the wound needed immediate medical attention."
"We had a job to finish!", Eliot interrupted, raised voice tearing painfully at his throat. But he wasn't going to sit back and take this without trying to justify his decision. "We had to wrap up the job."
Nate shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and index finger. Eliot could literally see how he was trying to keep his calm, and he didn't quite understand why. When he spoke again, his voice was carefully measured and calm.
"To make one thing perfectly clear, Eliot. If you, or anybody else on the team, gets hurt on a job, I need to know. Immediately. With what we're doing, we can't afford something like this to happen again."
Eliot nodded, even though he wasn't sure whether he was about to be kicked off the team or not. "I understand."
Nate shook his head again. "No, I don't think you do."
"What do you mean?"
Nate pulled his chair a little closer to the bed, shifting so that he was sitting facing Eliot.
"What we're doing always bears the risk of one of us getting hurt. And when that happens, I don't give a damn about the job, and whether or not it gets wrapped up. This time the job was nearly over with. But what if it hadn't been? What if the bad guys had still been on the loose? I care about the people we work for, but my priority is always the team. The most important thing about each and every single job we work is that we all get out without getting caught, and without getting hurt. As soon as that is no longer safe, I'll pull the plug. No matter how important the job seems. Am I making myself clear here, Eliot?"
And honestly, Eliot wasn't too sure. Because of course he knew all these things, but he also knew that Nate was aware that he was the kind of guy to solve problems on his own, without calling for help.
Nate rubbed a hand over his face again at the lack of verbal reaction from Eliot.
"Right. Then let me put it in uncertain terms. You're a part of a team now, Eliot. I know that you've done things differently in the past, but that's over now. If you're a part of my team, you play by the rules. And that means that if you get hurt, you cut out the macho-bullshit crap and tell me about it. If you lose control over a situation, you call for help. That's the only way we all can focus on the job and get it done."
He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair as he searched for the right words.
"You are a part of this team, Eliot. And a team takes care of each other. Until the doctor called me out earlier, you haven't been alone for more than a few minutes since you were brought into the recovery room. That's the thing about being part of a team. We don't only work with each other. And that takes trust. The others and me, we trust you to have our backs. The question is, do you trust us to have yours? Because if that isn't there, we have a problem."
But strangely, Eliot didn't even have to think much about Nate's words. He didn't trust easily. He couldn't afford to trust people, especially not in a line of business where everyone was only concerned about their own gains.
He still wouldn't tell Sophie or Parker what he had done with the money from their first job. He wouldn't spill his soul to Hardison, or share some deep dark secrets with Nate.
But he trusted that Nate would always find a backup plan to get them out of a mess, that Hardison would hack his fingers off if that was what it took, that Parker would do the craziest things, and that Sophie would act the hell out of just about anything to get a job done and get them all out. As far as the jobs were concerned, he trusted these people. It was still building, but it was there.
It's just that he wasn't used to it.
He wasn't used to have anybody to fall back on when things went south. His first thought upon a situation getting out of hand wasn't to call for help, but to figure out a way to get himself out of it.
And maybe that was it.
Maybe that was what he had to do as his part of being on the team. Not only make sure that the others got out of whatever job they were working, with physical force if necessary. But trust them to do the same for him. They already had, after all. They had gotten him out of this mess, and they had stuck around after the job was done.
Nate was watching him with both eyebrows raised, waiting for Eliot's answer. And it was clear that this was one question he wanted answered, and wouldn't accept any elusive answers. So he looked Nate straight in the eyes and nodded.
"I do."
Nate nodded, the lines on his face easing somewhat.
"So we don't have a problem?"
"No. No problem."
"Good." Nate leaned back in his chair and checked his watch, his posture a lot less tense than only minutes ago. "You should probably try to get some more rest before the doctor comes back."
Now it was Eliot's turn to frown. "Why?"
"Well, you won't be getting much rest after he's done with his examination. And the others want to come see you. Hardison spent every free minute of the past days downloading every movie ever made onto that small portable DVD…," he waved his hand around helplessly. "…thing, so that you won't get bored stuck here in the hospital. And Parker is going to be here in a little more than an hour. Trust me, she's been cooped up without anything to do for a little too long. Sophie told me that yesterday she crawled through the air-conditioning shafts at headquarters because she was bored. She has a little too much leftover energy right now."
Eliot chuckled. "I can imagine."
Nate shook his head. "No, I don't think you can. She's like Robin Williams on caffeine. Once she sees that you're awake, she's probably going to talk your ears bloody. And I can't stick around to save you because right now it's not a good idea to leave Hardison and Sophie alone for too long."
That surprised Eliot, because the two of them had always seemed to get along just fine. "What happened?"
Nate gave a long-suffering sigh.
"There's that little matter of a pair of boots."
"Boots." Why did that sound familiar? Eliot had no idea, but somehow the fact that Hardison and Sophie had a problem concerning boots didn't surprise him as much as it probably should have. "Sophie's boots? What happened?"
Nate rolled his eyes. "Obviously, vomit and leather are not a really good combination in her opinion. She and Hardison have been having a non-too small argument about how much a pair of boots can possibly cost. Their opinions on that matter differ quite a bit."
Eliot shook his head. "Do I even want to know?"
"No. Trust me, you don't."
There were steps approaching Eliot's cubicle, and a moment later Dr. Williams stepped into view.
"Mr. McIntyre? I'd like to examine you now. I'd have to ask your brother to leave for a little while for that."
Nate turned towards the doctor. "Of course. Just one moment."
The doctor nodded and took a few steps away from the cubicle. When he was out of earshot, Nate turned back towards Eliot.
"I'll be outside until Parker comes."
Eliot nodded. "Okay."
Nate turned to leave, but after a few steps turned around again as another thought struck him.
"And while we were already talking about clothes earlier, you owe Hardison a new scarf."
Eliot had no real idea what this was about, but he laughed and nodded. He probably owed all of them a lot more than that.
Nate gave a small nod of his head, then he turned and left the cubicle.
Eliot watched him leave, taking a moment to sink back into his pillow and think about what had just happened. Somehow, he had the feeling that he had made a commitment somewhere during this conversation, without even being consciously aware of it. But maybe he had already made that commitment a while ago, and hadn't noticed until now.
Part of the team.
And what an odd bunch they were that had been jumbled together into this team. Parker was ten kinds of crazy, but in a way that made it almost impossible not to like her. Hardison, for all his geekiness and rambling about things Eliot didn't really understand, was just as laid back as Eliot was, and not someone he had problems connecting with. Sophie wasn't too good of an actress outside of a con to hide that she really cared for what they did. And Nate, well. Nate was as good an example for a heavy load of past ghosts that were still haunting him as any of them were. But he was holding them together, and somehow he made it work that all their differences didn't cause them to fall apart, but actually made them work as a team.
And somehow, that bunch of people was a team Eliot didn't mind being a part of.
The End
Author: LittleFairy78
Fandom: Leverage
Rating: T due to some language and violence
Summary: Tag to "The Wedding Job". It takes some time for a lone wolf to get used to being part of a team. For Eliot Spencer, it might have taken too long to learn that there is nothing wrong with asking the people you work with for help.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything Leverage. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made with this story.
Genre: Episode tag, slightly AU-ish concerning the end of the episode. Whump.
Spoilers: Everything up to "The Wedding Job" is fair game.
Pain.
It hurt. It hurt so much that every fiber of his body wanted to scream, but all his mind could come up with was the urge to laugh.
He knew all about pain. Over the years, he had dealt it out just as much as he had received it. He had learned how to deal with it. If they thought it was going to break him with pain, they were mistaken.
They could as well stop the interrogation and get it over with.
He wasn't going to talk.
…
…
…
"What did he say?"
Female voice, accented. British, probably. Had there been any British people involved in this job? He couldn't remember, it was all so hazy.
"Eliot?"
Huh, so she knew who he was. Had his identity been compromised? Come to think of it, which identity had he been using, anyway? Didn't matter, he wasn't going to tell them anything. No matter how bad the pain was.
He tried to put defiance into his voice, he really did, but even breathing hurt. If any words actually left his lips, they couldn't have been more than a whisper.
Silence.
Then another voice.
"I think he's hallucinating."
A male voice this time, with a distinct lilt to it that made Eliot associate dark skin an a cocky grin, though he had no idea why.
"Why, what did he say?"
"He said 'I don't have the monkey'."
There, he had said it. Let them see what they made of that. He wasn't going to give them anything else.
Another wave of pain coursed through his body, and Eliot gave in to the darkness.
…
…
…
"…made us watch it, to unwind, as he said. Sitting still for hours and drinking orange soda, that's unwinding for him. But did they let me leave? No. They forced me to sit through the entire thing and said that Nate was going to call if anything changed over night."
It was a different voice. Another woman, but her voice higher, and not accented. And she was talking a mile a minute, like an excited girl who had too many stories to tell and was trying to get them all out at once.
Did they really think he was going to break by this? Rapid-talking torture? Seriously, this was f-ed up. There was pain, his whole body was a collection of various pains and hurts, but none of that pain was caused by the rapid talking.
It felt like he was floating, at times connecting with his hurting body, then drifting away again, the rapid words a background staccato that lulled him away.
"…and seriously, eleven guys to rob a casino? Everybody knows that you don't work a break-in with eleven people on the job. Okay, so it was three casinos, but it was only one vault, right? So technically, it only counts as one. And all that high-tech really only made the thing look flashy and cool, but it's all crap. I would have been in and out of that thing, with the money, in thirty-six minutes. And I wouldn't have needed a Chinese acrobat, or a duplicate of the vault in some abandoned warehouse. Really, whoever made that up had no idea what they were talking about. They should ask me how it's done. And Hardison actually shushed me when I said what a load of crap that whole scheme was. Can you believe that? Anyway, I hid his laptop after that, and he wasn't so cocky then, let me tell you that…"
Eliot couldn't make much sense of the words. Not really. But they were soothing, in a weird and twisted way. They gave him something else to focus on aside from the pain. So he listened, word after rapid word, as his mind blanked and he drifted off again.
…
…
…
"…and dude, I'm telling you, I wasn't going to go in between that. Cooping Parker up for longer than an hour at a time? Not a good idea, if you know what I mean. I don't envy Nate right now, but that's what you get for being the boss."
It was the black man's voice again, Eliot noticed. Though he still had no idea why he was so convinced that the man was black without ever actually seeing him. Those people who had him seemed to come and go continuously. He never seemed to be able to tell when one of them came and the other left, which told him a lot. Either they were drugging him, or he was injured badly. And either way it meant he was fucked. But at least then it would be over soon. And he was damn sure that if he went out, he was going out without telling those people anything.
"Anyway, before I forget - you owe me, man. I really liked that scarf, you know? It wasn't just a scarf, it was a fashion statement."
Scarf. What scarf? He was fairly sure that he hadn't been working a scarf-retrieval job. The thought alone was ridiculous. So what scarf was the guy talking about?
It didn't make sense, but then, nothing did. Nothing but the pain - pain always made sense. A dull throbbing all over his body that reminded him with every heartbeat that a whole lot of things were wrong, and he had no idea how to get out of this.
"Or you could just pay up for the scarf. I have a feeling that there's a pair of expensive boots I'm going to have to compensate for."
This was getting more and more ridiculous. Scarves and boots? Eliot would have laughed, wanted to laugh, but breathing was already difficult enough. In fact, it was getting harder and harder, and he suspected that all that talk about scarves and boots had only been meant to distract him while they did something to him.
Something started beeping to his right. A timer? A bomb?
He didn't know. Didn't care, because he couldn't breathe.
"Eliot?"
He was sucking in air, but nothing ended up in his lungs.
"Help! I need some help in here!"
Hurried footsteps, voices mingling, talking. People crowding around him, and he couldn't move a muscle to defend himself.
"What's going on?" The black man all but yelled.
"Please leave the room, sir."
Another female voice, not one he had heard before.
"The hell I will! What's wrong with him? What's happening?"
"Call Doctor Williams, he needs to get down here stat!"
"Acute respiratory distress."
"O2 saturation going down."
The voices started to mingle as the haze grew.
"…pulse 146…"
"…BP going down…"
"…crashing…"
And then the man's voice again, in a distinctly panicked tone. "Eliot!"
Then…darkness.
…
…
…
Awareness was a disconcerting experience. It felt as if Eliot became gradually aware of every part of his body, one after another. And every single one of them hurt or was in a state of discomfort. Arms, legs, torso, head. Everything was heavy, and hurting. His limbs felt weighed down. His chest and side were stinging something fierce. And a marching band was holding practice in his head.
But he was alive. At least he thought he was. That was something, at least.
There was something on his face, sneaking over his cheeks and running into his nose. A tube. A tube spilling something in his nose. It smelled like plastic and antiseptic. Something was beeping beside his head, slowly and regularly.
Hospital.
It made sense, he guessed. He remembered pain, and the thought of a job gone bad. It wouldn't have been the first time that he ended up in hospital after a job that went to hell. Maybe he should open his eyes to try and find out more about where he was and what had happened. Maybe he had gotten at least a little lucky and had ended up in a country where they understood his language.
The lights in the room were dimmed, but it was still bright enough to see after he had blinked a few times to adjust his eyes to the light. He wasn't in a room, that was the first thing he noticed. Not a normal hospital room, in any case. He was in a cubicle with curtains closing it off on both sides. There was a couple of monitors standing to his left, and a shockingly large number of wires and tubes ran from those into an IV in the back of his hand or sneaked underneath the thin sheet covering him and out of sight.
ICU.
He still had no idea how he had ended up here, but if he was in ICU that meant it must have been bad.
There was a small flash of movement to his right, but Eliot had to realize that he was too weak to turn his head as quickly as he would have liked. Weak, that's what he was right now. He was weak. And he hated it.
After the laborious process of turning his head so that he could see better, he realized with quite some surprise that there was somebody sitting beside his bed. He must have been pretty out of it to not immediately realize that he wasn't alone. Normally he never once let his guard down like that.
It was Nate who was sitting next to him. He was sprawled uncomfortably in a chair, arms crossed over his chest, head hanging slightly to the side. His eyes were closed, mouth hanging slightly open in sleep.
Nate. Of course, how could he have forgotten? The team. The job at the wedding. The Butcher of Kiev. Eliot remembered the feeling of the knife going into his side. He knew that the wound had been bad, but he had really thought he was going to hold out until the job was over and done with.
Obviously, he had been wrong.
Eliot's recollection of what had happened was a bit fuzzy, but he was sure he hadn't heard the last of it yet. Which was only right. He had nearly screwed up the job, after all. Endangered the others, too. If that wasn't the definition of a screw-up, Eliot didn't know what was.
But it seemed to be night, and for now Nate was still asleep. Nate wouldn't be here if any of the others was in trouble because of what happened, or if the job had gone so far downhill that they had to work hard to keep everything under wraps. For now things seemed to be under control.
No reason why he couldn't close his eyes and drift off again.
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo
The next time Eliot woke, it was a clearer, easier process. He drifted slowly back towards awareness, but once he struggled his mind out of the mental haze, it was only a matter of a few seconds for his brain to catch up with the fact that it was conscious again. He opened his eyes, blinking rapidly against the bright lights.
So it was no longer night.
His eyes slowly adjusted to the light in the room, giving his brain time enough to process as much as he could from his surroundings.
He was still in the same bed, in the curtained off cubicle he remembered distantly from the night before. And seen in daylight, the shocking amount of machinery situated next to his bed left no doubt about the fact that he was in ICU.
An IV was running into the back of his left hand, and an oxygen tube was running into his nose. There were sensors on his chest, and some wires and tubes that he couldn't even guess the purpose of vanished underneath the sheet and out of sight.
There was no real pain, just a numb sting in his left side. But Eliot knew the slightly dull and floating feeling that was coursing through him right now, and he held no doubt whatsoever that a lot of pain medication was taking the edge of a whole lot of pain right now.
But he was awake and coherent, that was something. Enough to get him out of here soon, he thought.
The chair next to his bed that Nate had been sleeping in the previous night was empty. Not that Eliot had actually expected Nate to be sitting here holding his hand when he woke up. But Nate was the one who'd back him up in his quest to get out of here as soon as possible. Or at least so he hoped.
A few moments passed, then Eliot heard voices approach the cubicle. Instinctively he tensed when one of them was a voice he didn't recognize, but then he heard Nate's voice answer and felt himself relax a little.
Nate, when he finally came into sight, looked rumpled, as if he had woken up not too long ago. He was still wearing the same clothes as he had done the previous night, the top button of his shirt was undone, he was unshaved and his hair was ruffled. At first, he didn't even seem to notice that Eliot was awake but continued speaking to the doctor who was walking beside him.
"Ah, Mr. McIntyre. Good of you to finally wake up."
Nate looked up at the doctor's words, looking at Eliot with an expression that was somewhere between surprise and disbelief. But it lasted only a second, then he smiled and stepped up to the bed.
"Daniel, it's good to see you awake."
The relief in his voice rang true, even if everything else was fake. Eliot was already processing the information. Daniel McIntyre. Of course they had needed an alias for him, they couldn't risk an extended hospital stay under his real name. No doubt Nate had given the doctors a story about who he was and why he was here, and it was a story he needed to catch up on quickly. Explaining away a knife-wound must have been hard for the team, and he couldn't afford another screw up and blow their cover story after he had already nearly screwed up the job.
But for now, he had no idea what role Nate was playing. He didn't think he was capable of a lot of acting, anyway, so he settled on a weak smile and a neutral "Hey" in Nate's direction. It must have worked, because the doctor at least didn't seem to notice anything amiss.
"Now Mr. McIntyre, I'm sure you must be confused. You're at the County Hospital. I'm Doctor Williams, I've been treating you since you were brought here with a stab-wound two days ago."
Two days ago? He was missing two entire days? Eliot thought that couldn't be right, but when he looked at Nate for confirmation, the older man nodded silently.
"You lost a lot of blood, naturally, but I can tell you that you were very lucky. The knife barely missed the lung, and while the blood loss was substantial, no major arteries were damaged either. Otherwise I'm afraid to say you probably wouldn't have survived until help arrived. It took us a while to get you stabilized, but we had to move you to the ICU yesterday afternoon."
Eliot frowned. "Why?"
That one syllable scratched like barbed wire over his throat, and he couldn't help the coughs that started to tear loose from his chest at the unexpected sensation. It hurt, even with all the painkillers running through his system. Every single cough tore at his injured side and sent spikes of agony through his body.
Dr. Williams was at his bedside in two large steps and quickly raised the mattress into a more upright position. Breathing became a bit easier after that, but it didn't stop the coughs entirely. From out of nowhere, a half-full glass of water suddenly appeared in his line of vision. Eliot struggled hard at suppressing the coughs enough to get a good look. From the other side of the bed, Nate was holding out the glass of water to him, his free hand hovering unsurely beside Eliot's head, as if he wasn't quite sure whether to help him drink the water or not.
But there was just no way that Eliot was going to lie here - well, half-sit here - and accept help with something as simple as drinking a glass of water. Despite the slight shaking of his hands, Eliot reached for the glass and brought it up to his lips. The only reason why he didn't slosh water all over himself was that Nate had only filled the glass halfway to begin with, but he wasn't going to think about that now. He'd be as good as new in a day or so. It couldn't have been that bad.
Nate took the glass out of his hands and put it on the bedside table as the doctor started speaking again.
"You need to go easy on the speaking. We had you on a ventilator for the first night, your throat is still sore from that. The damage by the knife was worse than we initially assumed. Due to your extremely low blood pressure, we missed a small bleed during the initial treatment. Once your blood pressure stabilized again, the bleeding got worse. The blood put pressure on your lung and caused some respiratory distress. It was a bit of a setback, but we're monitoring you closely to avoid something like that from happening again. That you're conscious and coherent is already a good sign."
Eliot swallowed against his sore throat and deliberately kept his voice low. "When can I get out of here?"
The doctor's eyebrows shot up and vanished below his hairline. "I'd say we worry about getting you stable enough to move you out of ICU first. If your progress is good, that can be as soon as this afternoon. But I would like to keep you at least for another 48 hours to make sure that the wound starts healing and no infection sets in. Right now you're on a lot of pain medication, Mr. McIntyre. But don't underestimate how bad your injuries are. You nearly died."
Well, that definitely wasn't the first time it happened. And Eliot had never been good at recuperating in hospital. He was going to talk about that with Nate, right now talking to the doctor didn't promise any success in that department.
Williams checked various readouts on the monitors beside Eliot's bed, wrote something down in the clipboard file at the foot end of Eliot's bed, then nodded at Nate and Eliot.
"All right. Your vitals are looking good. I'll drop by in a little while for a more thorough examination of the wound. For now I'll leave you and your brother alone for a little while, I'm sure you have a lot of catching up to do. If you need anything, just use the call button and ask the nurses."
Nate thanked the doctor, then they silently listened to his receding steps until they were sure he was out of earshot. Only when he was sure that they were alone and nobody could overhear them did Eliot turn towards Nate.
"So we're brothers?"
Nate shrugged and sat back down in the chair beside Eliot's bed.
"Easiest way to get around visitation restrictions, and Hardison had three identities with the same last name, so we picked those."
"Three?"
A small smile spread on Nate's face. "Your wife is going to be back later in the morning."
Eliot rolled his eyes. His wife. Of course. Because he so loved acting that kind of stuff. Now the only question was who played the part of the happy wife.
"Who am I married to?"
"Officially, to Linda McIntyre. Though you might know her as Sophie."
Eliot smiled, but didn't say anything to interrupt. Nate was giving him the run-down of their cover story, so he needed to pay attention.
"Linda and Daniel McIntyre run a small, family owned catering business called Deli Delight. Mostly they cater to weddings, bar-mitzvahs and other family festivities. Linda is the organizer, and as a trained chef you take care of the catering. There are raving reviews about your stuffed mushrooms on the Deli Delight website."
Nate made a small pause, and Eliot could just imagine the fun Hardison must have had putting that website together. Their computer expert always got a little over the top with these things.
"Deli Delight was hired to cater the Moscone wedding, not knowing about the criminal connections Moscone had. During the festivities when everyone else was attending the wedding ceremony, you left the kitchen on a supply run. When you returned, you found two men fighting in there. When you tried to go in between and break them up, one of them stabbed you in the side with a kitchen knife. You managed to get out of the room, but you were too badly injured to get outside and call for help. You collapsed in the garage, where you were later found by a party guest who then called the ambulance."
Eliot nodded as he committed those facts to memory. It was a good cover story, especially considering the small amount of time Nate and the others must have had to come up with it. There was only one thing.
"What about the Butcher? And didn't the hospital contact the police?"
Nate nodded. "They did. They were referred to Agent Washington, who is the FBI-liaison officer. Interestingly, the men who were fighting in the kitchen were both on the FBI-watchlist with warrants outstanding on them. One of them was known as the Butcher of Kiev in certain circles. Agent Washington assured the doctors that the FBI had taken over the case, and that it was going to add Assault with a deadly weapon to the Butcher's charges. Since the Butcher is now in the hands of the real FBI, we don't need to worry about the hospital trying to involve the police again. They've been sufficiently reassured by Agent Washington in person. The story isn't fool-proof, but it's definitely enough to make sure that we're not found out until you're well enough to be released from the hospital."
Nate said it as if it was not much of an effort, but Eliot knew how much work must have gone into this plan, especially under the time constraints. The team had to work out an entire con just to make sure that he could stay in hospital without them being detected. It wasn't a simple thing. They were using three of the identities Hardison had set up for them in a way that would make them unable to ever use them again, they had made up a whole back-story for him, Sophie and the business they supposedly ran, they had needed to intercept the hospital's call to the police and work out a story to satisfy them in what they thought was their professional duty. Not to mention that one of them, possibly Hardison, was posing as an FBI agent, and with the real FBI in town working the Moscone case that was even more of a risk than it normally was.
He had really screwed this one up royally.
"What really happened?"
Nate sighed. "I send you out to deposit the money in the car. When you didn't come back from that, we spread out and searched for you. Hardison found you in the garage. He staved off the bleeding until the ambulance arrived. On the way to the ER we figured out the back-story. You pretty much heard the rest from the doctor."
Eliot nodded tiredly. This had been the run down, and he knew that the chewing out would be the next thing to follow. Best to go into the offence immediately.
"I screwed up."
Nate sighed and rubbed a hand over his unshaved face. "Yeah. Yeah, you did."
And for a fleeting moment Eliot wondered if that was it, the moment where Nate told him that he wasn't going to be a part of Leverage anymore after this. Of course he would continue to do what he did. He didn't need Nate or the team for that. Over the years he had acquired quite a reputation, it wasn't going to be difficult to find something else to do. And with all the money that was left from his share of their very first job, he didn't have to worry, anyway.
But - and the realization came as quite a surprise - Eliot didn't want his time as part of Leverage to be over. He wasn't used to it, but working with the team had been fun. He'd be sad to see it over.
But what was he supposed to say? It won't happen again? I'm sorry? Eliot wasn't someone to toss out platitudes. And more importantly, Nate wasn't the kind of guy to accept platitudes. It was one of the reasons why Eliot had come to respect the man so much. So Eliot said nothing.
For a moment, silence settled over the room, only interrupted by the regular beating of the heart monitor beside the bed. Nate looked down at his folded hands for a few moments, then he looked up with a sigh.
"Is there any way that you can explain this to me?"
The question surprised Eliot, because he had no idea what there was to explain. He had misjudged the Butcher during their fight and had ended up with a knife in his side because of it. There wasn't much to explain. But if Nate wanted the details, he was going to give them.
"I made the mistake to let him corner me against the counter. It was stupid, but once it happened there wasn't much I could do anymore."
Eliot looked straight at Nate after those words, trying to judge his reaction. He didn't know what reaction he had expected, but surprise and bewilderment certainly hadn't been it.
"What?"
"What 'what'? The Butcher, that's what. You wanted me to explain. He cornered me against the counter and I couldn't dodge the knife."
Nate stared at him for a few seconds, then he slowly shook his head.
"I wasn't talking about that, Eliot. For crying out loud, I know that there's always a chance that an opponent gets the better of you in a fight. That's absolutely not what I meant. What I want to know is why you didn't call for help after it happened. You still had your microphone on you when Hardison found you in the garage. Hell, I came into the kitchen right after it happened! Why didn't you say a single word about the fact that you were hurt?"
Eliot swallowed hard, despite the lingering rawness of his throat. His memories of everything after the fight with the Butcher were hazy, but he remembered how he had thought about calling for help right before he had passed out. It had been too late then, and he had seriously thought he could get through it until the job was done.
"I thought I could manage. I've worked jobs injured before."
Nate shook his head. "You were bleeding out, Eliot. You put a pressure bandage on the wound yourself, and even that didn't stop the bleeding. I know how much you know about field triage, so don't even try to tell me that you had no idea that the wound needed immediate medical attention."
"We had a job to finish!", Eliot interrupted, raised voice tearing painfully at his throat. But he wasn't going to sit back and take this without trying to justify his decision. "We had to wrap up the job."
Nate shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and index finger. Eliot could literally see how he was trying to keep his calm, and he didn't quite understand why. When he spoke again, his voice was carefully measured and calm.
"To make one thing perfectly clear, Eliot. If you, or anybody else on the team, gets hurt on a job, I need to know. Immediately. With what we're doing, we can't afford something like this to happen again."
Eliot nodded, even though he wasn't sure whether he was about to be kicked off the team or not. "I understand."
Nate shook his head again. "No, I don't think you do."
"What do you mean?"
Nate pulled his chair a little closer to the bed, shifting so that he was sitting facing Eliot.
"What we're doing always bears the risk of one of us getting hurt. And when that happens, I don't give a damn about the job, and whether or not it gets wrapped up. This time the job was nearly over with. But what if it hadn't been? What if the bad guys had still been on the loose? I care about the people we work for, but my priority is always the team. The most important thing about each and every single job we work is that we all get out without getting caught, and without getting hurt. As soon as that is no longer safe, I'll pull the plug. No matter how important the job seems. Am I making myself clear here, Eliot?"
And honestly, Eliot wasn't too sure. Because of course he knew all these things, but he also knew that Nate was aware that he was the kind of guy to solve problems on his own, without calling for help.
Nate rubbed a hand over his face again at the lack of verbal reaction from Eliot.
"Right. Then let me put it in uncertain terms. You're a part of a team now, Eliot. I know that you've done things differently in the past, but that's over now. If you're a part of my team, you play by the rules. And that means that if you get hurt, you cut out the macho-bullshit crap and tell me about it. If you lose control over a situation, you call for help. That's the only way we all can focus on the job and get it done."
He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair as he searched for the right words.
"You are a part of this team, Eliot. And a team takes care of each other. Until the doctor called me out earlier, you haven't been alone for more than a few minutes since you were brought into the recovery room. That's the thing about being part of a team. We don't only work with each other. And that takes trust. The others and me, we trust you to have our backs. The question is, do you trust us to have yours? Because if that isn't there, we have a problem."
But strangely, Eliot didn't even have to think much about Nate's words. He didn't trust easily. He couldn't afford to trust people, especially not in a line of business where everyone was only concerned about their own gains.
He still wouldn't tell Sophie or Parker what he had done with the money from their first job. He wouldn't spill his soul to Hardison, or share some deep dark secrets with Nate.
But he trusted that Nate would always find a backup plan to get them out of a mess, that Hardison would hack his fingers off if that was what it took, that Parker would do the craziest things, and that Sophie would act the hell out of just about anything to get a job done and get them all out. As far as the jobs were concerned, he trusted these people. It was still building, but it was there.
It's just that he wasn't used to it.
He wasn't used to have anybody to fall back on when things went south. His first thought upon a situation getting out of hand wasn't to call for help, but to figure out a way to get himself out of it.
And maybe that was it.
Maybe that was what he had to do as his part of being on the team. Not only make sure that the others got out of whatever job they were working, with physical force if necessary. But trust them to do the same for him. They already had, after all. They had gotten him out of this mess, and they had stuck around after the job was done.
Nate was watching him with both eyebrows raised, waiting for Eliot's answer. And it was clear that this was one question he wanted answered, and wouldn't accept any elusive answers. So he looked Nate straight in the eyes and nodded.
"I do."
Nate nodded, the lines on his face easing somewhat.
"So we don't have a problem?"
"No. No problem."
"Good." Nate leaned back in his chair and checked his watch, his posture a lot less tense than only minutes ago. "You should probably try to get some more rest before the doctor comes back."
Now it was Eliot's turn to frown. "Why?"
"Well, you won't be getting much rest after he's done with his examination. And the others want to come see you. Hardison spent every free minute of the past days downloading every movie ever made onto that small portable DVD…," he waved his hand around helplessly. "…thing, so that you won't get bored stuck here in the hospital. And Parker is going to be here in a little more than an hour. Trust me, she's been cooped up without anything to do for a little too long. Sophie told me that yesterday she crawled through the air-conditioning shafts at headquarters because she was bored. She has a little too much leftover energy right now."
Eliot chuckled. "I can imagine."
Nate shook his head. "No, I don't think you can. She's like Robin Williams on caffeine. Once she sees that you're awake, she's probably going to talk your ears bloody. And I can't stick around to save you because right now it's not a good idea to leave Hardison and Sophie alone for too long."
That surprised Eliot, because the two of them had always seemed to get along just fine. "What happened?"
Nate gave a long-suffering sigh.
"There's that little matter of a pair of boots."
"Boots." Why did that sound familiar? Eliot had no idea, but somehow the fact that Hardison and Sophie had a problem concerning boots didn't surprise him as much as it probably should have. "Sophie's boots? What happened?"
Nate rolled his eyes. "Obviously, vomit and leather are not a really good combination in her opinion. She and Hardison have been having a non-too small argument about how much a pair of boots can possibly cost. Their opinions on that matter differ quite a bit."
Eliot shook his head. "Do I even want to know?"
"No. Trust me, you don't."
There were steps approaching Eliot's cubicle, and a moment later Dr. Williams stepped into view.
"Mr. McIntyre? I'd like to examine you now. I'd have to ask your brother to leave for a little while for that."
Nate turned towards the doctor. "Of course. Just one moment."
The doctor nodded and took a few steps away from the cubicle. When he was out of earshot, Nate turned back towards Eliot.
"I'll be outside until Parker comes."
Eliot nodded. "Okay."
Nate turned to leave, but after a few steps turned around again as another thought struck him.
"And while we were already talking about clothes earlier, you owe Hardison a new scarf."
Eliot had no real idea what this was about, but he laughed and nodded. He probably owed all of them a lot more than that.
Nate gave a small nod of his head, then he turned and left the cubicle.
Eliot watched him leave, taking a moment to sink back into his pillow and think about what had just happened. Somehow, he had the feeling that he had made a commitment somewhere during this conversation, without even being consciously aware of it. But maybe he had already made that commitment a while ago, and hadn't noticed until now.
Part of the team.
And what an odd bunch they were that had been jumbled together into this team. Parker was ten kinds of crazy, but in a way that made it almost impossible not to like her. Hardison, for all his geekiness and rambling about things Eliot didn't really understand, was just as laid back as Eliot was, and not someone he had problems connecting with. Sophie wasn't too good of an actress outside of a con to hide that she really cared for what they did. And Nate, well. Nate was as good an example for a heavy load of past ghosts that were still haunting him as any of them were. But he was holding them together, and somehow he made it work that all their differences didn't cause them to fall apart, but actually made them work as a team.
And somehow, that bunch of people was a team Eliot didn't mind being a part of.
The End