Fic: If It Happened To You
Title: If It Happened To You
Fandom: Leverage
Characters: Hardison, Eliot, Parker
Word Count: 2,173
Rating: T
Summary: A job nearly got botched and Hardison is not happy... so he takes it out on Eliot.
Author's Notes: Aaand... we're back. I'm still a little overwhelmed about the response to this and I can tell you that it makes finding my footing in this fandom a lot easier. So again... thank you :) Also, everyone thank mackenziesmomma that she now even keeps asking about the Leverage bunnies (usually, she only asks about the Stargate bunnies) and keeps poking at me to publish when I'm done with another piece. Anyway, this one takes places a while after You Can Dance, during the time in Season Two when Sophie was gone.
Also: language warning. Really, I mean it.
If It Happened To You
“It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if it happened to you.”
Lesley Gore, “It’s my Party”
The urge to call Sophie is starting to get really strong but he’s got the distinctive feeling that they won’t let him talk to her in private anyway. Also… she would probably give him as much hell as the rest gave him.
He still has no idea why Nate and Hardison went up against him because he was the one saving all their asses when the con went down the drain because Parker… he doesn’t even know what Parker actually did but it ended in a big mess and probably another search warrant on all their heads. Not to mention a client they probably have to tell that he can say goodbye to the custody over his little girl. Dammit.
Okay, so before he went down to the pub to get some ‘coffee’, Nate told them they’d just have to regroup, start from scratch, take another approach… and sleep on it, for at least a night. And he’d been ready to do that, despite his seething anger at Parker for ruining this and forcing him to shoot people and making him worry about her, worry himself sick… Ah, fuck. And what’s worse is that… Hardison just won’t stop shouting at him.
“Hey, are you listenin’? I’m talkin’ to you, man!” God, he wants to shut the hacker up, make him stop his ranting… he’s just this close to just turning around, smacking Hardison a good one and being done with it. “Ey, listen to me!”
Curling his hands into fists to try and curb all the furious energy in him that makes him such a good fighter, he stops his walking out of the door but doesn’t turn around. His voice is low and has a dangerous tint to it when he says, “Leave me alone, Hardison, or I swear someone will get hurt. And it won’t be me.”
Hardison, however… doesn’t know what’s good for him. “You know what? I don’t care. Come on, gimme that punch.” Keep yourself under control, he thinks. Control is the most important thing you ever learned. “I can take it. You think I can’t but I can. I don’t care. As long as you stop treatin’ Parker like that.”
Parker… what’s Parker got to do with it? Okay, yes, he’d taken some of his anger out on her, telling her… telling her he’s fed up with all her antics and her solos and that head of hers where no one ever knows what’s going in there… if there is anything going on in there at all. But he had every reason - still has - to do that. Pissed at Hardison, he does turn around now and… catches a short look at Parker, sitting on the stairs, curled up and peering down at them, the expression on her face unreadable.
He forces himself to look away and concentrate on Hardison again. “She blew the con, Hardison. You really wanna tell me I ain’t got any right to kick her ass for that?” Again, his gaze flickers up to the top of the stairs and Parker’s still there, still staring down at them… at him. Crap. He hates it when she looks at him like that; like she can see right through him, see what’s going on in his head… see the clamp around his heart that appeared when those goons found her and she told them they just put a gun to her head. Even now the damn thing isn’t quite gone and the thought of what could have happened still makes him feel like something is suffocating him. But that’s really not the point here.
“You stinkin’ asshole! Don’t you get it? She ain’t to blame for what happened!” Yeah, right. He’d seen her movements, seen that she’d been sloppy to cover up her tracks… she had, hadn’t she?
He really doesn’t want to discuss that now because it’s late and he’s got bruises all over and there are Parker’s looks burning down from the staircase, now looking strangely… guilty? Incomprehensive? And dammit, what’s it to him how she looks at him? And why does Hardison keep on telling him she isn’t to blame? “Sure she is. Didn’t you…”
“No, she’s not. She could have never have seen that one coming. You’d have seen that if you’d just looked a little closer. But no, all you did was brood and… ey; you wanted her to fail, didn’t you? Ever since we started working together, you been waiting for her to…” The only reason why he doesn’t just put his fist into Hardison’s face right now is that Parker’s still watching and he knows she’s fond of Hardison and for some reason she’s fond of him also and something tells her she wouldn’t take too well to them exchanging blows, especially after something that almost got her killed. Also, Nate would probably not exactly approve of them ruining his furniture again.
He never wanted Parker to fail. In fact… in fact he loves it when she’s all confident and gleeful after a successful job. For Hardison to even suggest that he wants Parker to fail… No. But there’s one thing… one thing Hardison… may actually be right about. He could have looked closer. And he could have been cooler about this, not let himself be driven to red hot fury the moment they had a visual of Parker with the gun to her head.
Fuck.
He really, really, really wishes Sophie were here. She would have defused this situation with grace and style, not let Hardison get all riled up and him have to embarrass himself and Parker looking so damn miserable. Nate might be the brain but Sophie… Sophie was the heart, the glue that held them all together and now that she’s gone on some self-discovery trip… everything seems to fall apart. He shakes his head. “Know what, Hardison, I’m gonna…”
But apparently, Hardison is on a roll now. “Ey, she got feelings, too, man! She ain’t one of your usual hussies, okay? Parker got feelings and you’ve got no right to trample on them!” He knows that. Lord knows he does. The fact that Parker can’t always express feelings accordingly doesn’t mean that she’s incapable of having them. It’s just that… for Hardison it seems so easy to read her, see if there’s something genuinely distressing her or if she’s just being Parker and he envies Hardison that.
Maybe… maybe that’s what this is all about. That there might be something between Parker and him - it’s been a few weeks since Sophie’s dancing lesson and Parker still invades his mind at any given moment, even his dreams - but Hardison… Hardison understands her, something he never really accomplished and something that’s been bugging him ever since they started working together. Or, to make it short… this is about plain good old fucking jealousy. And he reacted all wrong to it… let Parker get caught in the crossfire.
He takes a long, deep breath but before he can say something Hardison shakes his head and says, “You know what, this is wastin’ my time. I don’t even know why I’m talkin’ to you. I think I’m gonna talk to the one who really needs some attention now.” No… no, he won’t. Not this time.
Stepping past Hardison and into the direction of the staircase, he simply shakes his head and murmurs. “No. I will.” Hardison sputters and rants a little more but he tuned him out the moment he was behind him and now he’s slowly walking up the staircase, to where Parker’s still sitting, still curled up, still with her face inscrutable… no, not inscrutable. Blank. Fuck.
And yeah, when he’s just two stairs away from her, she suddenly jumps up, takes the last two steps and walks into the room. He knows he should probably leave her alone because when she’s in that kind of mood - caged animal driven into the defense is probably what describes it best - she becomes unpredictable. But he’s got the feeling that he needs to clean this up now or she won’t ever trust him again.
Carefully, he takes a step towards her, holding up the palms of his hands. “Parker… for what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” he tells her in a low voice, so as not to startle her.
She’s regarding him warily and her arms are folded tightly in front of her chest. After another moment of seizing him up, she almost blurts out, “It’s alright.”
The hell it is. It came way too fast and there’s a reason why she looks like she’s ready to bolt. So he keeps on talking in that low, soothing voice. “No… no, it’s not.” When she doesn’t say anything, he dares running his hand through his hair and add, “I… went off on you for all the wrong reasons.”
She keeps her arms folded but her stature somewhat relaxes and she states matter-of-factly, “You thought I screwed up.”
With Parker, he realizes, it’s all in the details. And right now, a few little things - like her eyes and her fingers - tell him how much that must have hurt her. Unfortunately the first thing that comes out of his mouth is, “Yeah.” As soon as he said it, he moves to correct it, trying to salvage from the wreckage what’s still there. “No. Look, I just…”
“You know I don’t screw up.” Still matter-of-factly, but now with a definite hurt and angry undertone to it. “Not when the team needs me. Not anymore.” Starting to become more agitated. Crap. That’s getting to her way more than he thought. “I know you think I’m crazy and maybe I am but I’m not dumb or incompetent.”
Damn. He really, really screwed this one up. He can’t help but take another step towards her and he has to give her credit for still trying to look very much like it doesn’t even interest her. He takes a deep breath, resolved not to let it all go FUBAR. “I know you aren’t. And I never… I wouldn’t…”
She narrows her eyes and that’s what tells him how angry she really is. “You yelled at me, Eliot. And you can’t even tell me why?”
Unfortunately, she’s just so right. He was being an idiot. “I was… I’m sorry, Parker.” He can see that she doesn’t believe him so he only has one option left: be completely honest with her. “But I was just… I was worried about you.”
For a moment there’s silence and then she looks at him, genuinely puzzled. “Why would you be worried about me?”
Jesus. She really has no clue why he would be so worried about her that he could become so furious at her for placing herself in harm’s way. “Because I…” Another puzzled frown. “What I meant to say is that…” Why can’t he be like Hardison? Hardison would just spill the news, no matter if he confused her even further with that or made himself vulnerable. “I am…”
He realizes that words won’t do. He was never really good with them. Actions, though… actions are more his style. But he can’t help growling “Dammit, woman, don’t you see?” before taking that one last step towards her and bend down to kiss her.
At first… there’s no reaction at all and he’s ready to withdraw as fast as he’d been with kissing her but suddenly he feels her respond and he’s even dimly aware of her arms unfolding and making it possible for him to take her in his arms and deepen the kiss… until oxygen starts to become an issue.
He’s not quite sure who breaks the kiss first but when he looks into Parker’s face now he sees understanding. Wary understanding, but understanding none the less. He half expects her to make some remark about it, one of her off-hand comments that always perplex him but all he gets is her biting her lip and looking down and he realizes how hard this all was on her and how tired and confused and hurting she must be.
Wanting to say something - anything - he opens his mouth but she beats him to it. “Drive me home, Eliot?” she asks in a small voice, smaller than he has ever heard before of her and it does tug at his heart strings. Actually, more than tears would have.
So all he does is swallow and say, “Yeah,” and then he can’t help giving her a kiss on the forehead before gently steering her to the exit, past Hardison who is still giving him dark looks, down to his truck… off to her place and he silently swears to himself he won’t ever hurt her like that again and that he will make it all up to her once she’s ready for it.
~*~
TBC in What a Diff'rence.
Fandom: Leverage
Characters: Hardison, Eliot, Parker
Word Count: 2,173
Rating: T
Summary: A job nearly got botched and Hardison is not happy... so he takes it out on Eliot.
Author's Notes: Aaand... we're back. I'm still a little overwhelmed about the response to this and I can tell you that it makes finding my footing in this fandom a lot easier. So again... thank you :) Also, everyone thank mackenziesmomma that she now even keeps asking about the Leverage bunnies (usually, she only asks about the Stargate bunnies) and keeps poking at me to publish when I'm done with another piece. Anyway, this one takes places a while after You Can Dance, during the time in Season Two when Sophie was gone.
Also: language warning. Really, I mean it.
If It Happened To You
“It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to
Cry if I want to, cry if I want to
You would cry too if it happened to you.”
Lesley Gore, “It’s my Party”
The urge to call Sophie is starting to get really strong but he’s got the distinctive feeling that they won’t let him talk to her in private anyway. Also… she would probably give him as much hell as the rest gave him.
He still has no idea why Nate and Hardison went up against him because he was the one saving all their asses when the con went down the drain because Parker… he doesn’t even know what Parker actually did but it ended in a big mess and probably another search warrant on all their heads. Not to mention a client they probably have to tell that he can say goodbye to the custody over his little girl. Dammit.
Okay, so before he went down to the pub to get some ‘coffee’, Nate told them they’d just have to regroup, start from scratch, take another approach… and sleep on it, for at least a night. And he’d been ready to do that, despite his seething anger at Parker for ruining this and forcing him to shoot people and making him worry about her, worry himself sick… Ah, fuck. And what’s worse is that… Hardison just won’t stop shouting at him.
“Hey, are you listenin’? I’m talkin’ to you, man!” God, he wants to shut the hacker up, make him stop his ranting… he’s just this close to just turning around, smacking Hardison a good one and being done with it. “Ey, listen to me!”
Curling his hands into fists to try and curb all the furious energy in him that makes him such a good fighter, he stops his walking out of the door but doesn’t turn around. His voice is low and has a dangerous tint to it when he says, “Leave me alone, Hardison, or I swear someone will get hurt. And it won’t be me.”
Hardison, however… doesn’t know what’s good for him. “You know what? I don’t care. Come on, gimme that punch.” Keep yourself under control, he thinks. Control is the most important thing you ever learned. “I can take it. You think I can’t but I can. I don’t care. As long as you stop treatin’ Parker like that.”
Parker… what’s Parker got to do with it? Okay, yes, he’d taken some of his anger out on her, telling her… telling her he’s fed up with all her antics and her solos and that head of hers where no one ever knows what’s going in there… if there is anything going on in there at all. But he had every reason - still has - to do that. Pissed at Hardison, he does turn around now and… catches a short look at Parker, sitting on the stairs, curled up and peering down at them, the expression on her face unreadable.
He forces himself to look away and concentrate on Hardison again. “She blew the con, Hardison. You really wanna tell me I ain’t got any right to kick her ass for that?” Again, his gaze flickers up to the top of the stairs and Parker’s still there, still staring down at them… at him. Crap. He hates it when she looks at him like that; like she can see right through him, see what’s going on in his head… see the clamp around his heart that appeared when those goons found her and she told them they just put a gun to her head. Even now the damn thing isn’t quite gone and the thought of what could have happened still makes him feel like something is suffocating him. But that’s really not the point here.
“You stinkin’ asshole! Don’t you get it? She ain’t to blame for what happened!” Yeah, right. He’d seen her movements, seen that she’d been sloppy to cover up her tracks… she had, hadn’t she?
He really doesn’t want to discuss that now because it’s late and he’s got bruises all over and there are Parker’s looks burning down from the staircase, now looking strangely… guilty? Incomprehensive? And dammit, what’s it to him how she looks at him? And why does Hardison keep on telling him she isn’t to blame? “Sure she is. Didn’t you…”
“No, she’s not. She could have never have seen that one coming. You’d have seen that if you’d just looked a little closer. But no, all you did was brood and… ey; you wanted her to fail, didn’t you? Ever since we started working together, you been waiting for her to…” The only reason why he doesn’t just put his fist into Hardison’s face right now is that Parker’s still watching and he knows she’s fond of Hardison and for some reason she’s fond of him also and something tells her she wouldn’t take too well to them exchanging blows, especially after something that almost got her killed. Also, Nate would probably not exactly approve of them ruining his furniture again.
He never wanted Parker to fail. In fact… in fact he loves it when she’s all confident and gleeful after a successful job. For Hardison to even suggest that he wants Parker to fail… No. But there’s one thing… one thing Hardison… may actually be right about. He could have looked closer. And he could have been cooler about this, not let himself be driven to red hot fury the moment they had a visual of Parker with the gun to her head.
Fuck.
He really, really, really wishes Sophie were here. She would have defused this situation with grace and style, not let Hardison get all riled up and him have to embarrass himself and Parker looking so damn miserable. Nate might be the brain but Sophie… Sophie was the heart, the glue that held them all together and now that she’s gone on some self-discovery trip… everything seems to fall apart. He shakes his head. “Know what, Hardison, I’m gonna…”
But apparently, Hardison is on a roll now. “Ey, she got feelings, too, man! She ain’t one of your usual hussies, okay? Parker got feelings and you’ve got no right to trample on them!” He knows that. Lord knows he does. The fact that Parker can’t always express feelings accordingly doesn’t mean that she’s incapable of having them. It’s just that… for Hardison it seems so easy to read her, see if there’s something genuinely distressing her or if she’s just being Parker and he envies Hardison that.
Maybe… maybe that’s what this is all about. That there might be something between Parker and him - it’s been a few weeks since Sophie’s dancing lesson and Parker still invades his mind at any given moment, even his dreams - but Hardison… Hardison understands her, something he never really accomplished and something that’s been bugging him ever since they started working together. Or, to make it short… this is about plain good old fucking jealousy. And he reacted all wrong to it… let Parker get caught in the crossfire.
He takes a long, deep breath but before he can say something Hardison shakes his head and says, “You know what, this is wastin’ my time. I don’t even know why I’m talkin’ to you. I think I’m gonna talk to the one who really needs some attention now.” No… no, he won’t. Not this time.
Stepping past Hardison and into the direction of the staircase, he simply shakes his head and murmurs. “No. I will.” Hardison sputters and rants a little more but he tuned him out the moment he was behind him and now he’s slowly walking up the staircase, to where Parker’s still sitting, still curled up, still with her face inscrutable… no, not inscrutable. Blank. Fuck.
And yeah, when he’s just two stairs away from her, she suddenly jumps up, takes the last two steps and walks into the room. He knows he should probably leave her alone because when she’s in that kind of mood - caged animal driven into the defense is probably what describes it best - she becomes unpredictable. But he’s got the feeling that he needs to clean this up now or she won’t ever trust him again.
Carefully, he takes a step towards her, holding up the palms of his hands. “Parker… for what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” he tells her in a low voice, so as not to startle her.
She’s regarding him warily and her arms are folded tightly in front of her chest. After another moment of seizing him up, she almost blurts out, “It’s alright.”
The hell it is. It came way too fast and there’s a reason why she looks like she’s ready to bolt. So he keeps on talking in that low, soothing voice. “No… no, it’s not.” When she doesn’t say anything, he dares running his hand through his hair and add, “I… went off on you for all the wrong reasons.”
She keeps her arms folded but her stature somewhat relaxes and she states matter-of-factly, “You thought I screwed up.”
With Parker, he realizes, it’s all in the details. And right now, a few little things - like her eyes and her fingers - tell him how much that must have hurt her. Unfortunately the first thing that comes out of his mouth is, “Yeah.” As soon as he said it, he moves to correct it, trying to salvage from the wreckage what’s still there. “No. Look, I just…”
“You know I don’t screw up.” Still matter-of-factly, but now with a definite hurt and angry undertone to it. “Not when the team needs me. Not anymore.” Starting to become more agitated. Crap. That’s getting to her way more than he thought. “I know you think I’m crazy and maybe I am but I’m not dumb or incompetent.”
Damn. He really, really screwed this one up. He can’t help but take another step towards her and he has to give her credit for still trying to look very much like it doesn’t even interest her. He takes a deep breath, resolved not to let it all go FUBAR. “I know you aren’t. And I never… I wouldn’t…”
She narrows her eyes and that’s what tells him how angry she really is. “You yelled at me, Eliot. And you can’t even tell me why?”
Unfortunately, she’s just so right. He was being an idiot. “I was… I’m sorry, Parker.” He can see that she doesn’t believe him so he only has one option left: be completely honest with her. “But I was just… I was worried about you.”
For a moment there’s silence and then she looks at him, genuinely puzzled. “Why would you be worried about me?”
Jesus. She really has no clue why he would be so worried about her that he could become so furious at her for placing herself in harm’s way. “Because I…” Another puzzled frown. “What I meant to say is that…” Why can’t he be like Hardison? Hardison would just spill the news, no matter if he confused her even further with that or made himself vulnerable. “I am…”
He realizes that words won’t do. He was never really good with them. Actions, though… actions are more his style. But he can’t help growling “Dammit, woman, don’t you see?” before taking that one last step towards her and bend down to kiss her.
At first… there’s no reaction at all and he’s ready to withdraw as fast as he’d been with kissing her but suddenly he feels her respond and he’s even dimly aware of her arms unfolding and making it possible for him to take her in his arms and deepen the kiss… until oxygen starts to become an issue.
He’s not quite sure who breaks the kiss first but when he looks into Parker’s face now he sees understanding. Wary understanding, but understanding none the less. He half expects her to make some remark about it, one of her off-hand comments that always perplex him but all he gets is her biting her lip and looking down and he realizes how hard this all was on her and how tired and confused and hurting she must be.
Wanting to say something - anything - he opens his mouth but she beats him to it. “Drive me home, Eliot?” she asks in a small voice, smaller than he has ever heard before of her and it does tug at his heart strings. Actually, more than tears would have.
So all he does is swallow and say, “Yeah,” and then he can’t help giving her a kiss on the forehead before gently steering her to the exit, past Hardison who is still giving him dark looks, down to his truck… off to her place and he silently swears to himself he won’t ever hurt her like that again and that he will make it all up to her once she’s ready for it.
~*~
TBC in What a Diff'rence.