More Than A Team
Title: More Than A Team...written for leverageland challenge
Rating: PG
Fandom: The always perfect Leverage (gonna miss the cast & crew!)
Genre: Gen
Spoilers: None
Warnings: A little violence
More Than A Team
Eliot Spencer had the week off from Leverage Consulting and Associates. He had planned to use the time to undo the horrors that can only occur when Nate let Parker and Hardison decide to add dishes to the dinner menu. His dinner menu, which was perfect, thank you very much.
Then one of his Army buddies called, and there were greater wrongs to be righted than Kraft macaroni and cheese being listed on the same page as his risotto. The same risotto that once won a five star review in the Boston Globe alongside that bright yellow-he took a deep breath. Unacceptable.
****
He glanced over at the man driving the van. “Hey, how much farther to the compound?”
“About fifteen minutes,” the ex-colonel replied, with a twitch that most people would not have noticed. He was not most people. He was about to be double-crossed (it was a very distinctive twitch) on a compound in the middle of nowhere. He began re-evaluating how to rescue his friend’s kidnapped wife while dealing with a traitor. Suddenly, he wished he hadn’t refused Hardison’s offer to help. He almost smiled-- to think, he was actually missing Hardison. The mac and cheese fumes must have gone to his head.
***
Eliot was down to three guards and he had the suspicion that he’d cracked a rib. He’d been in worse situations but damn, just once he’d like things to go according to plan. Six more men, armed to the teeth, entered the room, weapons at the ready.
“Stop! The Captain wants him alive!” said the man bringing up the rear. Obviously in charge, the others surrounded him and he let them lead him out of the room.
“The Captain’s here?” whispered one of the thugs nervously. “I heard the last time he had to visit a unit-”.
“Shut up!” his comrade whispered back. “Let’s not buy any trouble.”
Eliot was shoved into a chair.
“This is the man we caught trying to take Annette out, Captain.”
“Exactly,” the man in the army fatigues whirled to face them-wait, was that Nate?? “I sent him to see how secure this compound really was. How did he get past security?” There was a quiet menace in Nate’s voice that made the men shrink back from him, almost unconsciously.
“Captain-” the squad leader began.
“I don’t want to hear it. You just failed your spot test. Bring me the girl. And get something for this man’s wounds. We’ll be leaving immediately to a unit that knows how to spell ‘security’. Imbeciles.”
The squad members rushed to obey orders.
***
Eliot adjusted himself in the back of Lucille in an attempt to breathe less painfully.
“How’d you know, man?”
“Oh, so now you want to avail yourself of my considerable expertise?”
“Hardison started looking into your friend’s case when you told him about it. He found that the colonel was being paid off and figured you’d need help. Hardison called Nate, Nate came up with a plan and here we are,” Parker chipped in in a bored tone.
“Why would you try to rescue her without us? You know we’re a team.” She had no idea how much pain Eliot could read in her eyes as she asked that question. It made him gentle his tone.
“It was supposed to be a simple-” Parker snorted and folded her arms “-retrieval. I promise I wasn’t trying to cut you out. Besides, I owed Randy; you guys owe him nothing.”
Sophie sighed, exasperated. “We either have each other’s backs, or we don’t. How do you think we would have felt if you had gone and gotten yourself killed in there today? Of all the-”
Nate put a calming hand on her arm. “What I think they’re trying to say, Eliot, is it doesn’t matter. We’re...” he floundered, looking for the right word.
“Family,” Parker supplied emphatically. “And families don’t let the big brother go wandering off to get beat up by bad guys, when the family has a perfectly good surveillance van and a world class grifter, hacker and thief led by a mastermind. Cuz that’d be stupid.”
She flounced off to sit beside Sophie. Eliot stared at her before turning to Nate.
“This is gonna cost me, isn’t it?’
“Oh you have nooooooooo idea!” Sophie replied.