Fic: What Livin' is For, Losers/Leverage, Eliot/Cougar/Jensen pt 1
Title: What Livin’ is For
Author: ladyjanelly
Artist: entwashian
Beta: peaceful_sands
Fandoms: Leverage/Losers
Characters/pairing: Jensen/Cougar/Eliot
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Violence, language, attempted non-con, vague mentions of previous non-con
Summary: A one-night-stand becomes a whole lot more. If only life were that simple.
Art Link: ( Banner + Fanmix )
They pick him up in a bar, which Eliot thinks has to be the most mundane possible way for guys like them to meet a guy like him.
It’s just after seven on a weekday, in a place that’s more “bar” than “gay,” working-class guys hanging out and having a beer, and if they happen to be looking for other working-class guys to head home with (assuming they didn’t come in with one), it’s low-key and never flashy. The joint is all dark wood and pitted brass, sports on the TVs over the bar and not a single piece of glitter or strobe light to be found.
Then they walk in and Eliot clocks them as trouble at first glance. The way they move, he IDs them as US Army, Special Forces. Enough of this-and-that to their walks that he thinks it’s been a while since they wore dog-tags. The kind of guys who should be above going out and starting fights, but aren’t always.
The one that’s Eliot’s height has shoulder-length dark hair and a hat that hides his eyes and the tall blond is the flashiest thing in the room, John Lennon glasses and a short goatee, neon pink shirt stretched tight over arms and chest and abs of dense muscle. They move as a team, staggered and covering separate sections of the room. The cowboy orders their drinks at the bar, pays cash, while the blond watches his back and then they find a table, lounging with false ease as they scope the room.
Eliot watches them in the mirror but he can’t catch what they’re saying. The normally friendly crowd gives them a wide berth. Nobody jostles their table or comes over to say hi.
“Him? Seriously?” The blond’s voice raises with surprise and Eliot frowns over to see who he’s going to have to defend, because he’ll be damned if he lets some bastards get their kicks rolling faggots in his bar.
Blondie’s eyes meet Eliot’s through the lenses of his stupid glasses and they just stare at each other. Then he licks his lips and murmurs something to the Cowboy, but all Eliot can catch is the “I swear to God, if he kills me,” and then the man’s standing, downing a shot for courage and heading Eliot’s way.
As he approaches, Eliot runs through his opponent’s most likely openings, his own blocks and counter-strikes. He inventories six different possible improvised weapons, figures where he’s going to drop the body and when he’ll have to be ready for the Cowboy to join in.
Still out of strike range, the blond stuffs his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. He rocks forward on his toes, feet too close together to kick effectively, off-balance, intentionally so. Not an attack then. Eliot is intrigued.
“Hey,” Blondie says, “So uh, you come here often?”
Eliot waits and the man rocks up to his toes again, nervous smile plastered on his face.
“So I like your hair,” the man offers. He makes a vague gesture at Eliot’s head. “It’s real… long?”
Eliot gives him the “Get to the damn point” glare.
“Strong and silent, I get it, I can work with that, believe me.” He takes a deep breath. “So I’m Jake, and over there, that’s Cougar.”
Eliot looks over and Cougar tips his hat, lips quirking in a wicked smirk.
“So we had a bet,” Jake explains, and here it is, some tough-guy dare they’ve got going on and Eliot’s only glad it’s him they’ve decided to target and not someone who’d take the fucking-with a little more personally.
“The winner gets to choose who and the loser has to do the pick-up. And man, this goes so much better when I win the bets. I mean not that you’re a bad choice. I mean you’re not. I might have chosen you. Probably would have chosen you. I just mean that guy?” he gestures back at Cougar, “Is so much smoother than I am and if he was the one here asking you to have sex with us you’d already be saying yes instead of making the Oh-god-stop-talking face.”
Eliot looks back over at the Cowboy and Cougar is already sliding out of his chair, strong and graceful. Head tipping back as he finishes his drink, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows.
“Come with us,” Jake implores, “It’ll be epic, swear to god, he does this thing with his tongue and it’s just-”
Cougar is there by then, and he pulls Jake down for a kiss that’s equal parts fierce and loving.
“Too much talking,” Cougar complains as they part. He turns to Eliot, the look in his eyes seductive and challenging. “Come with us,” he says, his words a softly accented echo of Jake’s. “Be with us. One night.”
It’s not safe, it’s not right. Eliot knows that saying yes to a couple of mercenaries is the least-safe type of sex there is. But Jake’s smile is so damn hopeful, and Cougar’s gaze respectful as much as it is arousing.
They should feel like the bait in a very attractive trap, but they don’t.
It’s dangerous, but there’s fire and steel in a soldier’s touch that Eliot’s been missing for a long time.
“Yeah,” he says, “Okay.” Jake leans in, a brush of lips and flick of tongue over Eliot’s mouth like a promise.
“We can use my place,” Eliot says, because he knows where the exits are, where he’s got weapons hidden. Worst case scenario he has to burn the safe-house when he’s done, leave and never come back. There’s nothing there he can’t replace though, and better than letting them choose the venue, have him outnumbered and on their turf.
“Sure,” Jake says and Cougar nods and they step out into the night, walk together the few blocks down to the brownstone where Eliot lives now.
He should feel herded by them flanking him as they walk, but they’re smoother than that. Making him the head of their wedge, stepping in clean almost behind him as they cut through a knot of pedestrians, spreading out again when there’s room. More like bodyguards than anything. Sharp and competent. They walk with him up the flights of stairs to his door. Cougar turns there, leaning with his back to the wall. As Eliot slots his key to the lock Jake slides behind him, hands circling his waist, rubbing low on his stomach, fingers dipping just below the waistband of his jeans.
“Jesus,” he grumbles, “You know I have neighbors, right?”
“Hall’s clear,” Cougar says, smug and sure.
“Besides,” Jake adds, low and sexy in Eliot’s ear, “The sounds we’re going to get out of you, they’re gonna know how good you’re getting fucked.”
Cougar huffs in amusement and Jake scoffs. “What? That was sexy. I can do sexy.”
Eliot gets the lock open and turns the knob, grabbing Jake’s shirt to drag him in. “You try too damn hard,” he says, but the blunt critique doesn’t seem to dim anyone’s ardor much. Jake’s grinning like he won the lottery and Cougar’s closing in on Eliot’s other side.
“Hey,” Eliot says, before it gets too far. He turns a little, angling so only one of them will have a clear shot at him if they object. “I don’t like guns in my place. You can leave ‘em on the side table there.”
Cougar quirks a wry smile and reaches under the back of his un-tucked shirt, pulls a revolver out of a waistband holster there. He pops the cylinder and drops the bullets into his other hand, leaves it open and empty on the table, ammo beside it.
“I left mine in the car,” Jake says with a grin and a shrug.
Cougar’s jaw clenches and a shadow passes over his expression. Eliot doesn’t know the guy, but for a second he expects an explosion of violence.
“You deserve to have your dick shot off,” Cougar growls, accent thick with anger, and Jake looks repentant.
“Nobody’s shooting my dick off here,” he says like it’s supposed to be soothing. He looks to Eliot as if to confirm that Eliot isn’t planning to emasculate him. “I’d just be leaving it on his table with yours. Right?
“Speaking of our sexy host,” Jake murmurs, when Cougar looks like he might be deal-breaker pissed, “I promised him that thing you do with your tongue. You know? The thing?”
“Your boy makin’ promises your mouth can’t keep?” Eliot asks, low and just this side of teasing.
Then Cougar’s on him, one hand in his hair and the other at his hip, mouths slotting together as they kiss, setting the pace intense but slow, plundering Eliot’s mouth, coaxing him to open up, to meet him half-way. Even with his eyes open, Eliot doesn’t even realize he’s been walked backward until the wall’s at his back and Cougar’s thigh is sliding between his.
“Oh my fucking God,” Jake breathes, “That’s gotta be the hottest thing since Lara Croft.” And he starts stripping his shirt off over his head there in Eliot’s entry way, kicking his shoes off in random directions, wriggling out of his pants.
“What do you want?” Cougar asks, low and slow, a sharp contrast to Jake’s rush. “How do you want us?”
Eliot kind of expected them to take charge, outnumbering him and all. The wealth of options is sort of overwhelming. “His dick,” he says, because it’s out there already, huge and hot and ready. “Your mouth,” he says to Cougar, because if he sucks like he kisses, Jake wasn’t exaggerating about the epic-ness.
“You have a bed?” Cougar asks as Jake’s hands pop Eliot’s belt buckle open and start work on his fly. He half-nods in the right direction and they stumble that way together, pieces of Eliot’s clothing and then Cougar’s finding their way to the floor.
“Lube?” Jake asks as they get to the bedroom and onto the bed. “Condoms?” Eliot points and then Cougar’s on him, the point of his tongue making tiny circles around Eliot’s left nipple, the soft prickle of his mustache adding another layer to the sensation.
They move in tandem-Cougar rolls him to his side and slides his knee up as Jake’s slick fingers rub lube on his hole. “Got you,” Jake soothes, and then pushes inside, one finger at first followed by two. “God, you’re so tight,” he says as he opens Eliot up, pushes a third in just a little too soon, letting him feel the stretch.
He grunts at the feeling, trying to convince his body it’s not an attack, that it’s a good hurt. Cougar slides up and kisses him again, slower, gentle. “Shhh,” he soothes, “He’s good at this.” Eliot deliberately relaxes his shoulders, breathes through his nose and tips his head back. Cougar’s kiss is soft, his tongue teasing at the scar on Eliot’s lip, his free hand massaging at the back of Eliot’s neck. Jake adds more lube and Eliot wills himself into complicity, tries not to tense up again as Jake slides into him from behind in one slow push.
“Fuck,” Eliot groans, because Jesus, that dick’s every bit as big as it looked. Jake rocks into him twice, slow and steady, and then he wraps his top arm around Eliot’s waist and rolls them so Eliot’s on top, face up. Jake’s legs push between Eliot’s, spreading him out and opening him up. God, it’s almost too much, too deep, Jake’s hands dancing over his exposed chest and stomach and dick.
And then Cougar is there, kneeling between Eliot’s spread knees, ducking in and breathing over his balls, tongue flicking out to where the skin of Eliot’s asshole is stretched tight around Jake’s dick. He licks and nips and teases, pushes his tongue like he’s going to slip it in beside Jake’s dick.
“We’ve got you,” Jake murmurs again, and Eliot realizes he’s been panting, swearing, fucking moaning at the intensity of it all, at Jake’s slicked-up hand on his dick and Cougar’s mouth on his balls. At the pressure on his prostate from the inside and from Cougar’s thumb on his perineum.
He gasps and groans and Jake thrusts into him, hands on his hips man-handling him into the power of his pushes. And fuck, it’s the most intense thing he’s known, giving it up to them, letting them have him in so many ways at once.
“God, so fucking beautiful,” Jake says like he means it, fucks like he means it and Eliot’s coming, hot spurts of come spattering his stomach and chest, all the way up to his chin. Jake right behind him, groaning into his neck and burying himself deep.
Cougar’s strong hands smear the come over Eliot’s belly as Jake and Eliot pant for breath, his eyes dark and hungry. He leans in and flicks the point of his tongue into the slit of Eliot’s dick, collecting the last taste of his come. Eliot twitches with aftershocks, and Cougar looks up as his lips close over Eliot, fucking him with the intensity of his gaze. Jake’s hands wander gently over Eliot’s chest, his sides, lips kissing and sucking at Eliot’s neck. Dick still in Eliot’s ass, although he’s soft now.
Cougar’s mouth closes around the head of Eliot’s dick, slow and gentle, coaxing it to rise again. “Yeah,” Jake whispers behind him. Fingers skim his nipples.
Cougar pulls back, until the very tip of Eliot’s cock rests on his lower lip. “Can I fuck you?” he asks and Eliot’s spent but willing and he nods. He expects to be rolled over, but Jake just hooks his hands under Eliot’s knees and lifts him off of his dick, pulls Eliot’s knees up and opens him up for Cougar to slide on in. He’s sore, can’t help but hiss as Cougar pushes into him, the cool-slick of the condom. It’s some kind of kinky-good to be used like this, Jake holding him as he’s fucked hard.
He wraps his hand around his own dick, feels the second orgasm building in his balls, breaking free. Cougar makes one last thrust, pushing deep and holding himself there and then he half-collapses on them, holding part of his weight up on his arms, head bowed and hairs that have worked their way loose from his ponytail tickling at Eliot’s face.
“Oh Jesus,” Jake groans from the bottom of their pile, “As sexy as this all is, you fuckers are crushing me here.”
Cougar huffs and pushes himself up and off, crawls to the edge of the bed. Jake rolls Eliot to the same side, into the space Cougar’s left for him. Warm hands rub over his arm, his hip. Cougar leans in and kisses him one last time, soft and chaste.
“Washcloth?” Jake asks and Eliot waves him towards the bathroom, knowing they aren’t all that hard to find once you’re in the right room. He listens to Jake fumble around. Watches Cougar’s eyes close, his eye lashes short and dark and curled.
“Here,” Jake says and passes Eliot a wet washcloth. He uses the one in his other hand to clean up Cougar, who murmurs sleepily and tries to squirm away from the damp.
Eliot wipes down his chest and then gets his back-side. Checks the cloth but there’s no blood.
“Hey,” Jake says, “I’m gonna go try to find my clothes, that okay with you?” Telling Eliot that he’s going into the room with the gun before he does it, and Eliot appreciates it.
“Yeah,” he says, figuring that leaving a sleepy Cougar behind is enough of a show of good faith.
Jake goes out and wanders back in a few minutes later, underwear on over that fine ass but nothing else.
Cougar snorts and rolls over, back to them both.
Jake grins, so much affection in his smile that Eliot aches to see it. “So he’s down for the count.” Jake crawls back into bed on Eliot’s other side. “Whenever you’re done with having us here, just let me know and we’ll get out of your way.” Despite his words of leaving, he settles down and runs his fingers through Eliot’s hair.
“Hey,” Jake whispers, glancing at Cougar to see if he’s still asleep. “Can you keep a secret?”
And what kind of fucking idiot would tell secrets to a one-night-stand anyway. But Jake seems to take Eliot’s lack of reply for a promise of secrecy and continues on.
“He thinks I’ve got a kink for hair. That’s why he picked you. Long hair for me, blue eyes for him.”
Eliot’s stomach jumps with unexpected laughter, because it’s just too ridiculous.
“Dumb-ass,” he mutters and he should get up. Go look at those blue-prints Hardison printed out for him. Read a book on the couch. Something other than lay here between these dangerous men and cuddle.
In a minute, he thinks. Any minute now.
=============
Eliot doesn’t sleep. Not in a bed with two men he doesn’t know. He sort of lets himself zone though, watching as the dull glow of the streetlights warms and brightens as the sun starts to come up. Eventually he pries himself out from under Jake’s arm and Cougar’s thigh and climbs off of the foot of the bed. He’s heading for the shower when Jake stops him with a soft word.
“Want company?” Jake suggests and Eliot chuckles. Cougar’s eyes are open, dark and mysterious.
“Tempting as the offer is, I think you guys wore me out.” In the cold light of day, this seems even less-smart than it did the night before.
“Hey, you could fuck me instead, if you wanted to,” Jake offers. “I’m an equal-opportunity fuck-buddy.”
Eliot considers it but shakes his head. “My dick’s raw and my balls ache from how hard I came last night. I appreciate it, maybe next time.” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, and he wants to kick himself. God-damn sleep deprivation. He’s getting old and soft, saying the first thing to come to mind.
Jake shrugs. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Stick around,” Eliot offers, because, besides the unavoidable ache in his backside, they were pretty damn considerate and it seems rude to kick them out. “Let me grab a shower and I’ll make you breakfast.”
He goes into the bathroom before they’ve said yes or no, lathers up and washes down in record time and pulls on a pair of sweats.
“I didn’t break him, you broke him,” Jake is hissing at Cougar when Eliot comes out.
“I ain’t broke, just fucked-out,” Eliot objects and herds them out to the kitchen. Cougar slides into one of the kitchen chairs and Jake stands behind him, finger-combing his hair back from his face. It’s intimate, even more than watching their kisses and he opens the fridge and pokes around as an excuse to look away.
“Feta and spinach omelets?” he offers and smirks at their surprise. Apparently whatever type of hitter/merc/thug these guys are doesn’t eat any better than the hacker and thief he’s more familiar with.
Eliot pulls out the ingredients and Jake draws Cougar’s hair back, ties it with a black elastic. Eliot heats the pan and whips the eggs and Jake keeps trying to wander off, to go exploring and Cougar keeps bringing him back with the force of his glare. Jake looks longingly at the laptop Hardison insisted Eliot have and Cougar gives him a firm “No.”
They eat when Eliot serves their plates, Jake’s moans of appreciation damn near obscene and Cougar’s “Gracias” heartfelt enough that it feels square. That they gave him the fucking of his year and he gave them some pretty good sex and breakfast after.
“Thanks,” Jake says as they’re standing to leave, stepping forward to kiss Eliot one last time, casual and sweet.
“Next time,” Cougar says, leaning in for a kiss of his own, a god-damn work of art of lips and tongue and Jake rolls his eyes behind Cougar’s back at being so deliberately shown up.
They both grin and Jake waves and Cougar collects his weapon on the way out the door. Eliot takes a slow breath in the sudden quiet of his home and then picks up his phone to make a call.
“Hardison? I need you to check out a couple guys for me…”
============
“Holy shit,” Jensen breathes and the tap-tapping at his laptop stops. Cougar looks up from where he’s field-stripping his rifle.
“Eliot,” Jensen continues, “Last-night Eliot? We fucked Eliot mother-fucking Spencer. C’mere, you’ve gotta see this; this is him, right?”
Cougar snorts and shakes his head. “You didn’t know?”
======
"Anything you noticed,” Hardison says as he types, “Anything at all.”
“Cougar,” Eliot starts, “Five-foot-ten, one-seventy maybe. Hispanic, dark hair and eyes.” He thinks of the faint sweet smell of banana bread on the man’s hands, figures it for Hoppe’s gun cleaner. He remembers the carbon residue down deep into the creases of Cougar’s fingerprints, the six-shot revolver on Eliot’s entryway table, a back-up piece at best. “Gun guy but not short range. Sniper, probably.”
Hardison taps at the keyboard a bit. Makes a non-committal noise.
“The other said his name was Jake. Six foot even, probably one-ninety. Blond hair, blue eyes. Muscular. Tattoo on his left bicep, a steer of some sort, horns down. Both of them three, maybe four years out of the US Army. Jake’s no shooter though. Not attached to his gun. Demolitions, maybe?”
“Tech?” Hardison offers and Eliot remembers the way Jake looked at his laptop, like a few hours off of the computer had been too long.
“Yeah, could be.”
Hardison whistles low and long. “And you say these guys tried to pick you up in a bar?”
“That’s what I said, Hardison,” Eliot grumps, doesn’t add that they’d been successful. “So who the hell are they?”
“It’s not so much who they are as what they are,” Hardison says and Eliot holds back from smacking the back of his head. “What you’ve got is a pair of ghosts.” He turns the screen around and Eliot’s looking at Jake and Cougar’s faces, the word “Deceased” across each one.
“Army reported them dead four years ago. That thing in Bolivia? Looks like it was them.”
Eliot shrugs. He’d been busy in Syria around that time. He remembers something about a helicopter full of kids, remembers thinking it didn’t add up. Having met Jake and Cougar though, it makes even less sense. Not that he thinks fucking is the window to the soul or anything, but he doesn’t figure either of them for the kind of guy who could do something like that.
He gives the file one more glance-over, noting the faces of the other men who supposedly died in the same crash. Doesn’t matter though, he thinks. It was a fun fuck but he’s not likely to run into them again, unless picking him up really was part of a job for them and he’s the target.
Hardison goes into a flurry of typing then. “This Jensen dude was J-mageddon. The guy’s a legend among hackers. People like him don’t just stop working because they faked their death. He’s got to be still active, just using a different signature, a different set of cracks, like trading in his Ocean deck for a Fire one. But the play. Maybe I can find him by the way he plays the hand…”
Eliot leaves him to it, feeling just a little disappointed that these two are too dangerous to open himself to again.
==============
Jensen has never been great with down-time. Since the first time Cougar met him, he’s been able to deal with any kind of pressure, any deadline. Three days between finalizing their next job (data extraction, Jensen on the ground, Cougar covering him if he runs into trouble) and actually getting on a plane is driving him batty. Cougar doesn’t need a scope to see it, how the man is all fidgets and restless energy, interspersed with these weird moments of staring into space. What the tech needs is a distraction, he decides, something more complex than Cougar can provide on his own.
It’s no big thing to get Jensen worked up, to throw out a challenge he knows the man will take and to make a bet that Cougar expects to lose.
“Your choice then,” Cougar sighs with mock-sorrow, and they head to a bar, not too bright or loud, and sit for two fucking hours while Jensen tries to make up his mind.
“That one maybe?” Jensen says at last, pointing over to a lumberjack in red plaid standing by the jukebox. Cougar rolls his eyes at the lack of enthusiasm.
“What do you really want tonight?” he asks, because at this rate they’ll be out of time before Jensen decides.
Jensen looks uncertain at the question, and in all the years they’ve been doing this, taking strangers to their bed for one-night stands, there’s never been anything Jensen has been afraid or ashamed of asking for. Men, women, butch, femme. From clean-cut to punked-out pierced and tattooed, from vanilla to a little kinky. His tastes run much wider than Cougar’s, but Cougar has always been okay with it, when it was Jensen’s turn. He can’t fathom what could suddenly be the problem.
“Remember Boston?” Jensen asks, and Cougar’s guts twist in a strange combination of trepidation and arousal. Arousal because it had been a particularly satisfying experience. Trepidation because this is the first time either of them has wanted the same person a second time. It scares him, that Jensen would want Eliot again. That he wants Eliot again.
“Hey,” Jensen’s voice draws his attention back to the here and now. “I’m just saying it was nice, right? Having him watching over us while you got some sleep. And that breakfast. He was just nice.”
“Si,” Cougar agrees, and despite his worry that this will be the one who messes them up somehow, he too remembers the night with inordinate fondness. He runs the numbers in his head. “Two hours to Boston, two hours with Eliot, two hours back. We’d still make our flight.”
“Yeah?” Jake asks, hopeful but guarded. “You’re sure?”
===============
He gets back from Croatia at three in the morning. Nate lets them scatter from the airport, with orders to be at the headquarters around noon for a debriefing and to talk about prospective cases. He’s home for less than an hour when there’s a tap at the door and his body goes on high alert, tense and ready.
He goes to the door, keeping his center-mass behind the reinforced panel set in the door as he looks out of the peep-hole.
Jake Jensen is on the other side, grinning goofy and hopeful, a shadow that has to be Cougar behind his shoulder.
“Hey Eliot?” he calls through the door, “So that next-time you were talking about last time, we were wondering if you were in the mood for it now.” Like a vague suggestion made months ago was a date and a promise.
Eliot knows he should go. Slip out the back and disappear. He never gave them his name, and there’s no reason getting his dick wet is worth risking his life.
“Hey,” Jake’s voice is softer now and he has to lean in to hear it through the door. “Don’t be like this, baby.” Teasing, sweet. “If we wanted to hurt you Cougar would have popped your head off from half a mile away. It’s okay. We’re here to be with you. Nothing else. Been thinking about you. All the sexy things we could do together.”
His voice stops for a second, comes back half-indignant. “It does not automatically make it un-sexy to use the word sexy in a description. No, I’m not talking too much; the door is closed. If he wants a word in edgewise he’ll have to open it and then you can do that thing with your eyes and we can talk if he wants to, and then everyone gets laid.”
He shouldn’t. It goes against every bit of logic and sense. But his heart tells him the only risk is that he’ll forget this is just sex. That they have each other and he has his team and this can never be more than fucking. He flips the dead-bolt and turns the knob. Opens the door.
Cougar already has his gun out, cylinder popped and offered butt-first into Eliot’s hand. He takes it and goes to put it on the table but Jake’s on him, hands like an octopus, everywhere at once.
“So do we have to have some sort of a talk?” Jake asks, and then licks up the side of Eliot’s neck. “Or can we just get to the fucking? ‘Cause that part’s a lot more fun.”
Cougar comes up to them then, covers Jake’s hands and stills them where they grope at Eliot’s body.
“Eliot,” he says, dark eyes serious, “We won’t sell you out. You don’t sell us out. Deal?” In all Jake’s noise, one thing he’d said was true. A man like Cougar? If he wanted Eliot dead, he’d never see it coming, and there are enough “dead or alive” contracts out on Eliot to make it worth his while. At this point Eliot would have to either kill them both or leave the Leverage team, change states, maybe even find a new country to live in if he wants to make it so Cougar can’t kill him. Or he can trust that they mean him no harm.
And there’s a certain amount of relief. That he doesn’t have to pretend with them. They know who he is, and more important what. There’ll be no ugly surprises later, no need for lies in the meantime.
“Yeah,” he says, “It’s a deal.”
“Fantastic!” Jake says with a grin. “So you’ll fuck me now?”
Eliot glances to Cougar, double-checking for jealousy, but all he sees is smoldering lust in the man’s eyes. What the hell; he’d slept on the plane. What’s another hour or so before he gets to crash?
“Bedroom,” Eliot says and waves them down the hall. Jake leads the way, dropping clothing as he goes, carefree and unselfconscious. He looks over his shoulder as he struggles to get his pants off over his boots. Blue eyes meeting Eliot’s like he’s not just a convenient fuck. Smiling like this means something good.
Jake is naked by the time they get to the bed, crawling up on Eliot’s covers and sprawling on his back, hand stroking his dick as he watches Eliot and Cougar stripping out of their clothes, ridiculous glasses still perched on his face.
Cougar takes off his hat and tosses it onto the dresser, his eyes on Jake like he’s going to eat him alive. He strips down, and Eliot watches as he kisses Jake, slow and sensual and then light and teasing, fingers running through the short spikes of Jake’s hair. Jake stops touching himself in favor of touching Cougar, his lips, his hair, his neck. Eliot rubs his palm over his own hard cock, and he thinks sometime he’d like to just watch them, let them put on a show for him while he sits in a chair and strokes himself.
Another time, he thinks. If there is another time.
He slides his clothes off and climbs on the bed with them, up against Jake’s other side, adding his own kisses and petting to those Cougar is giving the man. He watches Cougar’s hand slide down Jake’s stomach, shying away from his dick at the last minute, short nails scratching at his skin, at the wiry hair of his pubes. Jake twitches and moans and Cougar denies him the touch he’s so clearly desperate for. Eliot joins in the tease, fingers following the sharp cut of Jake’s hip, the line of muscle down into his groin, licking and kissing at his neck while he does.
Jake’s hand moves to stroke himself and Eliot’s fingers close around his wrist. Not a grip that Jake couldn’t break, but a request. Let us do this for you, Eliot’s touch says, Let us tease you to the limits of what you can take. And Jake’s hand goes up into Eliot’s hair, drawing him down into a kiss that bruises, the sharp nip of his teeth on Eliot’s lips.
“If somebody doesn’t fuck me soon,” Jake warns and Cougar huffs out a laugh.
“Careful what you ask for,” Cougar warns, and scoots closer to the headboard. Jake rolls over, eyes on Cougar’s dick, his ass in the air. Eliot watches as Jake slides his hand down Cougar’s shaft, drawing back the foreskin, caressing the head of his cock with his lips, the tip of his tongue. And as beautiful as the sight is, his own arousal is throbbing with need. He reaches into the bedside table and gets out lube and condoms, slides in behind Jake. The first brush of Eliot’s fingers makes him jump, the second makes him moan.
“Oh, shit,” Jake groans as Eliot scissors him open, just this side of too-fast, “He’s gonna fuck me, Cougs. Are you watching this?”
Eliot looks up and Cougar is definitely interested, his hips twitching up against Jake’s lips in time to Eliot’s finger-fucking. Eliot lines himself up and Jake draws in a breath. He grabs Jake by his hips, pushes in and Jake opens his mouth over Cougar, takes him in, lets Eliot drive him forward and down until his lips are as far down as he could go. Slowly back, Cougar’s hands in Jake’s hair to keep him from coming all the way off, and then Eliot pushes in again.
Cougar’s dark eyes meet Eliot’s blue and they find a rhythm, Jake lax between them, letting them fuck him and use him, his noisy moans of appreciation just urging them on every time Eliot thinks maybe they’re getting too rough.
Jake tries to balance himself on one hand, tries to get the other up under himself to get some sort of friction on his dick but Eliot stops him, “I’ll do it,” he says, guiding Jake’s hand back to support his upper body before he falls. He reaches under, feels Jake hot and throbbing and slick at the tip with pre-come. He wraps his hand around, squeezes and then strokes.
“Come for us,” Cougar urges and that plus Eliot’s hand is all it takes, Jake tensing and shaking, swallowing and gagging as Cougar thrusts up into his mouth one last time, clenching around Eliot’s dick and bringing him along for the ride.
Cougar is the first to pull away, shifting back and to the side a little so Jake can breathe again. Eliot rests his cheek between Jake’s shoulder-blades until he can get his breathing under control. Bounty or not, they just might kill him if they keep this up.
Cougar strokes Jake’s cheek with his fingertips, wipes sweat from his face. “What you wanted?”
“Yeah,” Jake whispers, “Perfect.” He tries to crane his neck to see behind him and Eliot rolls to the side, grabs the base of the condom and pulls out with a hiss.
“Was it as good for you as it was for me?” Jake asks and Eliot surprises himself with a laugh.
“No, I just come like a freight train for mediocre sex,” he mutters, and he feels so heavy. Tired. Cougar gets up this time and gets the cleaning supplies, slips the condom off of Eliot’s softening dick and throws it away. Goes to gather up the trail of Jake’s clothes, tugging on Jake’s legs and helping him slide into his underwear and then jeans.
They’re leaving, Eliot realizes. He wants to tell them they don’t have to, that it’s three AM and to just crash here, but he knows he’ll sleep restless with other people in his space and Nate has plans for them in the morning.
“Hey,” Cougar says as he kisses Eliot one last time. “Come lock up after us?” Eliot drags himself out of bed, slipping into the bathrobe that Cougar holds out for him.
Jake kisses him at the door, slides his fingers through Eliot’s sweat-sticky hair.
“I won the bet this time,” Jake says with a soft smile, “Cougar totally should have been the one trying to talk our way in here.”
Then they’re gone and Eliot locks the door, the apartment feeling empty and quiet with them gone.
================
They’re six days into the con, their target a mobster turned movie producer, dirty up to his eyeballs. Sophie is playing the British investor, all posh charm and confidence. Eliot goes in as her body-guard, not a grift at all besides the name he’s using. He’s there to make her look important, to add perceived value to their end of the negotiations.
Rubino wants to meet at his offices, the penthouse suite in a six-story building of glass and aluminum, glittering in the California sun. Eliot shadows Sophie’s steps, unobtrusive, hand up to his conspicuous ear-piece as Nate and Hardison give him information from the earbud below it. They step out of the elevator on the top floor and Rubino’s own security man opens the door to the office for them.
“Ms. Ellsworth,” Rubino says with a predatory grin, “So nice of you to come to our humble studio,” and he stands to greet her. The man makes Eliot’s skin crawl, his fake cheer and dead eyes, but he stands at his post by the door, prepares to watch Rubino hug Sophie. Of course Rubino is going to cop a feel. Eliot will follow her lead, take outrage if she does, blow it off if that’s the play.
Rubino smirks, arms open for that hug, eyes meeting Eliot’s over Sophie’s shoulder in some stupid sort of challenge. Then Rubino’s head explodes into red mist, just gone. The spatter of it covers Sophie’s front, her face, her arms. No fucking sound at all, just the tap of the bullet going through the window, the shooter half a mile away at least and Eliot moves, grabbing Sophie, covering her with his body (not that it’ll do any good with that caliber of weapon). She’s silent as he runs for the door with her, past Rubino’s slack-jawed gorilla.
The reception room is safer, not that the walls are much protection, but the windows face a different direction so at least the sniper doesn’t have line-of-sight.
“Oh,” says Sophie, and Eliot takes a second to wipe at the blood, looking for wounds, for flying splinters of bone or teeth to have hurt her but he doesn’t see anything.
“What the hell just happened?” Nate demands, too-loud on the ear-buds.
“Sniper!” Eliot calls back. “Rubino’s down!” An alarm starts screaming and Rubino’s muscle are going to be locking down exits. He hustles Sophie for the stairs, good strong fire-walls and the only threats within are the security guards coming up. Eliot jumps down to meet them, closes in too tight for them to use their guns and like most people they forget what else they could do, struggling to get the barrel pointed at him instead of hitting him with a fist. It’s over in seconds and he has to go back for Sophie, still staring at her shaking hands.
They get down and to the back entrance. Nate speeds up in a car and there’s only twenty yards or so of open ground to cover.
Then a security guy appears from around the far corner of the building, pistol drawn. Eliot turns he and Sophie as he runs, covering her with his body. He expects the crack of the pistol but the sound he hears is more of a thwack and when he looks over, the guard is going down, a hole the size of a fist in his chest.
Nate flings open the door and Eliot shoves Sophie inside, pushing her over and getting in himself. “Go, go!” he says and Nate hits the gas.
They drive but nobody follows them, no bullets pierce the car. Eliot breathes out a sigh only when they’re a full mile away from the office building.
“He…” Sophie stutters from the passenger seat, “He…his head…”
Eliot rubs her back while Nate drives. “Large caliber bullet. High velocity. That was a whole lot of overkill. Somebody wanted him dead and then some.”
They park in the hotel’s garage and Eliot runs upstairs for a wet towel and change of clothes. Nate and Sophie are talking in the back seat when he gets back down, and he passes over the supplies and then stands guard while she cleans up and changes. The blood-stained clothes he bags for disposal, and then they all three go to Hardison’s room to try to figure what the hell is going on.
Parker lets them in, opening the door when they’re still four feet away. Hardison is on his computer, typing like a flurry of hail on a skylight, fast and furious.
“What? What, oh heeeell no!”
“What’s going on?” Nate wants to know.
“I’m trying to get some images of our shooter off the roof, but there wasn’t anything, and then I went back to try to scrub Eliot and Sophie off of Rubino’s security cameras and the data’s disappearing as fast as I can pull it up to delete it. We got another hacker poking around in our operation and trying to trace my location at the same time.”
And Hardison might not put the pieces together, about a hacker/sniper team Eliot mentioned once, four months ago, but Eliot’s mind can’t help going to warm nights and fiery touches, Cougar’s lips and Jake’s hands.
A three dimensional image of the surrounding city spins on one of Hardison’s screens, one building highlighted as Hardison tries to find their sniper leaving.
“Not there,” Eliot says, calculating the angle of the bullet that came through Rubino’s window, the shot that took down the guard on the ground floor. He points at a different structure. “There. It’s got the height and the trajectory is right for the two shots that I saw.”
“That’s half a mile away!” Hardison squawks, but changes his target, images flickering on his screen faster than Eliot can process them. He pauses and there’s a shadow, hat and rifle on a human shape on the screen.
And then the screen goes black.
“No,” Hardison says in disbelief, “No, no, no.”
A video of a hyena pops up, its cackling laugh filling the room. The computer begins to make a whirring noise, and Eliot pulls the cord as the smell of smoke starts to emanate from it.
“That…” Hardison stares in horror. “That shouldn’t even be possible.”
“Okay,” Nate says, “We have to figure out who we’re up against and what they want. We need a different revenue source to get the client her life savings back.”
“I need to go,” Eliot says and stands.
“What?” asks everyone else in the room at the same time.
“Give me an hour. Let me see what I can come up with.”
He goes back down the elevator, raises his face to make eye contact with every camera he passes. Walks through the poolside doors and sits down at one of the outdoor bar’s tables. The sun is bright and it isn’t long before a shadow passes over him, Jake sliding into the chair on his right, Cougar into the one across from him.
“We didn’t know,” Jake says without preamble. “I hadn’t poked into your team. I mean besides your hacker, who’s pretty good for a civilian. But I wasn’t tracking him or anything. Seriously, Eliot, we wouldn’t fuck with you like this. We didn’t mean to blow your operation.”
Cougar’s eyes are lowered, his trigger-finger idly rubbing over his lower lip. “Is your woman hurt?” he asks and Eliot thinks he actually cares what the answer is.
“Shook up,” he sighs, “She’ll be okay.”
“Here,” Jake says and slides a camera bag into Eliot’s lap. “Half our take from this job.”
There’s no reason for them to do this. No code of honor that says they owe him anything.
“Buy Har-dwire a new computer,” Jake says, and smiles regretfully. “Sorry I had to melt that sweet system, but I couldn’t let him have a picture of Cougs. I’ll do the tidying up since he’s out of commission. Your room keys will work through the weekend, but they aren’t under your aliases anymore.”
Jake looks at him, like he wants to see something else besides Eliot’s stoic wall.
“Are we cool?”
“Yeah,” Eliot sighs. “I’ll let the team know.”
He stands and puts the strap of the camera bag on his shoulder. Walks away knowing they could have put a bullet in him today if they wanted to.
The team is jabbering at each other when he comes in, closes the door behind himself and dumps the cash on the bed.
“What?” Nate asks, “Where did you get that?”
“Professional misunderstanding,” Eliot explains. He figures there’s about seventy-five grand there. He takes one of the bricks of hundreds and tosses it to Hardison.
“Don’t look for the man in the hat again,” he warns.
“Did you just beat up a pair of hit-men for their lunch money?” Hardison asks and Eliot shrugs.
“Something like that.”
There’s a lot of talking after, but the target is gone, the money from the camera bag will pay for the client’s losses and their expenses. What can they do but go home?
“And we just let these murderers go?” Sophie asks.
“How many times have we left a target with pissed-off mob bosses or drug dealers or Yakuza on their tails? You think they get a good scolding and let go? Hardison, how many of our old targets have died within the year of us hitting them?”
Hardison shrugs. “I could tell you if my computer wasn’t slag. I’d guess the percentage is pretty high.”
“So Rubino ended up dead sooner than later. We gonna go after every hit-team that ever took down a bad man now?” He looks around but nobody seems to think that’s a solid plan.
“Look,” Eliot says, “They saw their mistake. Offered restitution. They aren’t gunning for us. I see no reason to make it a problem. Are we done? I’d like to hit the gym before we fly out again.”
“Yeah, no,” says Nate, but his eyes are calculating, knowing. “By all means, go ahead. I think we’re done here.”
“Wait!” Hardison yells behind him, “Was that J-Mageddon? J-Mageddon thinks I’m a threat?” He sounds oddly star-struck by the idea.
Eliot goes back to his room, thoroughly unsurprised to find a folded piece of paper under his door, nothing on it but a room number. He thinks on it for less than a minute and then he’s leaving his room again, taking the stairs down two flights and knocking on Jake and Cougar’s door.
“You came,” says Cougar when he opens the door, a twitch of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. He steps back to let Eliot in.
Jake sits at the room’s little table, tapping away at a laptop. “Almost done,” he calls, distracted, and Eliot’s familiar enough with post-mission hacking to not take it personally.
Cougar’s hand on his arm is warm, steady. “We good still?” and Eliot can’t think of a single reason to stay pissed. He knew what they were. He just never expected his team to bump into them by accident.
“We’re good,” he says, and Cougar takes that as permission to step into his space, to breathe his air and press their lips together, to kiss him slow and sensual. They slow-step across the room to the foot of the bed.
“Will you fuck me?” Cougar asks, and Jake’s head pops up, eyes wide.
“If you want that,” Eliot assures him. Jake closes the laptop and Eliot really hopes he finished enough clean-up that the upcoming sex isn’t interrupted by the police knocking down their door.
“Cougs, you sure?” Jake asks as he joins them. He swishes Cougar’s ponytail to the side and kisses the back of his neck.
“Si,” Cougar says and meets Eliot’s eyes. “I want that. I want you.”
Of them all, Jake still seems the most on-edge. “Look,” he says, blue eyes meeting blue over Cougar’s shoulder, “Just to be clear, since my Mexican Silent Bob wanna-be isn’t going to say it, this is ‘apology accepted’ sex, right?” he searches Eliot’s face. “This isn’t anger-sex. This isn’t hate-sex. You don’t get to hurt him.”
“I don’t plan on it,” Eliot promises. Cougar lets out a breath and Eliot realizes that maybe he was braced for it to be some sort of revenge-fuck.
Jake relaxes too, reaching up and taking the rubber band from Cougar’s hair, sliding his fingers through all that beautiful darkness and setting it free.
“Got you, Cougs,” Jake murmurs against his neck. “Eliot’s got you too.”
There’s something going on, something Eliot is missing, but he takes Jake’s cues, leans in to kiss the corner of Cougar’s mouth as his hands slide his outer shirt off of his shoulders, slow smooth caresses down his arms. Jake draws the undershirt up over Cougar’s head, leaves teasing kisses across his shoulder.
Jake walks them back towards the bed, crawls on and urges Cougar to come up with him. Eliot unfastens Cougar’s pants and pulls off his boots while Jake opens the bedside drawer and pulls out lube and condoms. His focus is all on Cougar, like he doesn’t even see Eliot getting naked, and that would hurt, if he couldn’t sense the deep water just a step away.
Jake settles himself up at the head of the bed, stroking Cougar’s hair, drawing him back to rests his shoulders on Jake’s chest. Eliot stretches out over him, kisses down his throat and chest, licks circles around his nipples, blows lightly against the trail of hair from navel to pubes, smiling when Cougar groans and squirms. He flicks his tongue over the head of Cougar’s dick, so smooth, damn he tastes so good. He brushes his fingers over Cougar’s balls, the crease of his thigh, back down between his ass-cheeks and Cougar jumps, his gasp caught in Jake’s mouth.
“Yeah,” Jake whispers, “Want this, don’t you? You want him.”
Eliot gets the tube of lube, pops the cap. Cougar’s hands clench in the bed covers, the muscle in his jaw tenses as Eliot slides a slick finger over the tight pucker of his ass.
“It’s okay,” Jake soothes. “Look, it’s Eliot. He’s got you,” and Cougar’s eyes open to look down, to see Eliot there between his knees, to watch his arm move as Eliot slides one finger into him, slow and gentle until he starts to relax.
“Gonna be good,” Eliot promises. “Gonna take care of you, darlin’.”
Jake snorts a laugh. “And you guys say my lines are corny.” But his eyes are warm with affection, like he’s grateful to Eliot for breaking the tension.
Eliot slips another finger in, and Jake distracts Cougar from the beginnings of a stretch by playing with his nipples, circling them, tugging them. Eliot gets the third one in and Cougar starts to softly swear in Spanish, his eyes closed and lips parted with breathy pleas.
“He’s ready,” Jake says and Eliot slides the condom on and slicks it up. He moves in closer, lifting Cougar’s left leg up over his shoulder, lining himself up.
“Cougar,” he calls softly, “Come on, I need you to look at me.”
Cougar opens his eyes. He looks fucked already, glazed and disconnected.
“Are you ready?” Eliot asks, because messing things up now is a land mine he’d rather not step on.
“Si,” Cougar says, “Fuck me.”
Eliot presses in, slow and steady and inexorable. Pushes in until he bottoms out, until Cougar is panting with the stretch of it and Eliot’s shaking to hold himself back, to not fuck hard into that heat and tightness.
“Jesus,” Jake whispers, “Look at you two.”
Eliot reaches down between their bodies, takes Cougar’s dick in his still-slick hand and strokes him, keeping him hard when he may have lost some of his arousal.
“You still with me?” he asks, and Cougar nods. He pulls back a few inches, thrusts in again slow. Tries another time, longer, stronger. Feels Cougar shifting to meet him, legs relaxing, opening himself up.
Jake just stays where he is, petting Cougar’s hair, whispering about how beautiful they are, how hot and sexy it all is.
“Come for him,” Jake murmurs and leans down to lick Cougar below his earlobe. “Come for him, you sexy beast.”
And then Cougar laughs and comes, body tightening around Eliot’s dick, drawing the orgasm out of him.
He’d love to collapse after, but forces himself to pull back, to get rid of the condom and close Cougar’s legs. He curls in beside him, as they both ease back down and Jake watches over them.
“We’re real glad we didn’t fuck things up,” Jake says and Eliot shakes his head. The last thing he wants to think about in the afterglow is Sophie covered in blood.
“Stop talking about it then,” he grouses and nuzzles in against Cougar’s hair.
Cougar moves, languid and slow, hand reaching out to where Jake’s dick is pressed against the jeans he’s still wearing. Presses hard with the palm of his hand and rubs him through the thick denim. Jake hisses and squirms, gasps out “Here, let me…” and tries to unfasten his jeans with one hand and Cougar still laying on him.
“I got it,” Eliot says and sits up to reach over and undo the button and zipper, to pull them open and down, just enough for Jake to get his dick out of his underwear. Cougar licks his palm and reaches out to stroke him, Jake’s fingers curved over the back of his hand, guiding, urging, and Eliot watches as Jake spurts thick and white over his t-shirt.
They’re beautiful, but they aren’t his. Not for keeps. They belong to each other, and Eliot rolls to the side of the bed, swings his feet down to the floor so he doesn’t have to watch the tender way Jake pets Cougar’s hair, the way their eyes meet.
“I should get back to my team,” Eliot says. He’s pretty sure Nate didn’t believe his story, and Hardison or Parker could decide to go looking for him at any moment.
“Yeah, okay,” Jake says, and Cougar’s fingertips brush over Eliot’s spine. There’s shifting around behind him, and then Jake is at his side, a plain white business card with a ten-digit number on it held out on Jake’s fingertips. “This is us,” Jake says. “We’ll be out of the country for a while, but if you ever need us, need anything, call, okay?”
Eliot nods and picks his jeans up off of the floor, tucks the card into the pocket.
“I will,” he says, though he can’t imagine why he would.
===============
Hardison pokes through hardware specs on his i-Phone, alone again in his room, and thinks about how weird it is to have nothing to do after a job, no loose ends to tie up, no data to erase. If it was anybody else, Chaos maybe, or that Haardvark dude, it would make him crazy, not knowing if they got everything, but this is J-mageddon, and Hardison has never heard of him getting caught. A little thrill still goes through Alec’s stomach, to have run up against a hacker of J-mageddon’s caliber, to be thought of as a threat. Next time, man… His brain is already spinning with the system he’s going to build next, the safeguards he’s going to put in place. Completely separate hardware managers to stop him from doing that over-over-clocking thing he did. New firewalls, not so much strong as flexible and…
“Why doesn’t Eliot just say what he means?” Parker pipes up, way too close to the back of his ear, and he startles, juggles the phone and clasps a hand to his chest.
“Girl, don’t do that.”
She hops over the back of the hotel couch and settles in next to him.
“When he said he was going to hit the gym? By Gym he meant those guys, the hit team with the sniper and the hacker who fried your computer. I wonder which was which. And by hit? He meant lots of sex. Does that make any sense to you?”
Heat rises up Hardison’s neck, flushes his cheeks warm with embarrassment. “I did not need to know that,” he protests, but the image is already there, Eliot and Jensen and Alvarez. “Why’d you have to go and tell me a thing like that?” he asks Parker, but she’s distracted with the puzzle of semantics and not paying attention to him.
=============
( part 2 )
Author: ladyjanelly
Artist: entwashian
Beta: peaceful_sands
Fandoms: Leverage/Losers
Characters/pairing: Jensen/Cougar/Eliot
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Violence, language, attempted non-con, vague mentions of previous non-con
Summary: A one-night-stand becomes a whole lot more. If only life were that simple.
Art Link: ( Banner + Fanmix )
They pick him up in a bar, which Eliot thinks has to be the most mundane possible way for guys like them to meet a guy like him.
It’s just after seven on a weekday, in a place that’s more “bar” than “gay,” working-class guys hanging out and having a beer, and if they happen to be looking for other working-class guys to head home with (assuming they didn’t come in with one), it’s low-key and never flashy. The joint is all dark wood and pitted brass, sports on the TVs over the bar and not a single piece of glitter or strobe light to be found.
Then they walk in and Eliot clocks them as trouble at first glance. The way they move, he IDs them as US Army, Special Forces. Enough of this-and-that to their walks that he thinks it’s been a while since they wore dog-tags. The kind of guys who should be above going out and starting fights, but aren’t always.
The one that’s Eliot’s height has shoulder-length dark hair and a hat that hides his eyes and the tall blond is the flashiest thing in the room, John Lennon glasses and a short goatee, neon pink shirt stretched tight over arms and chest and abs of dense muscle. They move as a team, staggered and covering separate sections of the room. The cowboy orders their drinks at the bar, pays cash, while the blond watches his back and then they find a table, lounging with false ease as they scope the room.
Eliot watches them in the mirror but he can’t catch what they’re saying. The normally friendly crowd gives them a wide berth. Nobody jostles their table or comes over to say hi.
“Him? Seriously?” The blond’s voice raises with surprise and Eliot frowns over to see who he’s going to have to defend, because he’ll be damned if he lets some bastards get their kicks rolling faggots in his bar.
Blondie’s eyes meet Eliot’s through the lenses of his stupid glasses and they just stare at each other. Then he licks his lips and murmurs something to the Cowboy, but all Eliot can catch is the “I swear to God, if he kills me,” and then the man’s standing, downing a shot for courage and heading Eliot’s way.
As he approaches, Eliot runs through his opponent’s most likely openings, his own blocks and counter-strikes. He inventories six different possible improvised weapons, figures where he’s going to drop the body and when he’ll have to be ready for the Cowboy to join in.
Still out of strike range, the blond stuffs his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. He rocks forward on his toes, feet too close together to kick effectively, off-balance, intentionally so. Not an attack then. Eliot is intrigued.
“Hey,” Blondie says, “So uh, you come here often?”
Eliot waits and the man rocks up to his toes again, nervous smile plastered on his face.
“So I like your hair,” the man offers. He makes a vague gesture at Eliot’s head. “It’s real… long?”
Eliot gives him the “Get to the damn point” glare.
“Strong and silent, I get it, I can work with that, believe me.” He takes a deep breath. “So I’m Jake, and over there, that’s Cougar.”
Eliot looks over and Cougar tips his hat, lips quirking in a wicked smirk.
“So we had a bet,” Jake explains, and here it is, some tough-guy dare they’ve got going on and Eliot’s only glad it’s him they’ve decided to target and not someone who’d take the fucking-with a little more personally.
“The winner gets to choose who and the loser has to do the pick-up. And man, this goes so much better when I win the bets. I mean not that you’re a bad choice. I mean you’re not. I might have chosen you. Probably would have chosen you. I just mean that guy?” he gestures back at Cougar, “Is so much smoother than I am and if he was the one here asking you to have sex with us you’d already be saying yes instead of making the Oh-god-stop-talking face.”
Eliot looks back over at the Cowboy and Cougar is already sliding out of his chair, strong and graceful. Head tipping back as he finishes his drink, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows.
“Come with us,” Jake implores, “It’ll be epic, swear to god, he does this thing with his tongue and it’s just-”
Cougar is there by then, and he pulls Jake down for a kiss that’s equal parts fierce and loving.
“Too much talking,” Cougar complains as they part. He turns to Eliot, the look in his eyes seductive and challenging. “Come with us,” he says, his words a softly accented echo of Jake’s. “Be with us. One night.”
It’s not safe, it’s not right. Eliot knows that saying yes to a couple of mercenaries is the least-safe type of sex there is. But Jake’s smile is so damn hopeful, and Cougar’s gaze respectful as much as it is arousing.
They should feel like the bait in a very attractive trap, but they don’t.
It’s dangerous, but there’s fire and steel in a soldier’s touch that Eliot’s been missing for a long time.
“Yeah,” he says, “Okay.” Jake leans in, a brush of lips and flick of tongue over Eliot’s mouth like a promise.
“We can use my place,” Eliot says, because he knows where the exits are, where he’s got weapons hidden. Worst case scenario he has to burn the safe-house when he’s done, leave and never come back. There’s nothing there he can’t replace though, and better than letting them choose the venue, have him outnumbered and on their turf.
“Sure,” Jake says and Cougar nods and they step out into the night, walk together the few blocks down to the brownstone where Eliot lives now.
He should feel herded by them flanking him as they walk, but they’re smoother than that. Making him the head of their wedge, stepping in clean almost behind him as they cut through a knot of pedestrians, spreading out again when there’s room. More like bodyguards than anything. Sharp and competent. They walk with him up the flights of stairs to his door. Cougar turns there, leaning with his back to the wall. As Eliot slots his key to the lock Jake slides behind him, hands circling his waist, rubbing low on his stomach, fingers dipping just below the waistband of his jeans.
“Jesus,” he grumbles, “You know I have neighbors, right?”
“Hall’s clear,” Cougar says, smug and sure.
“Besides,” Jake adds, low and sexy in Eliot’s ear, “The sounds we’re going to get out of you, they’re gonna know how good you’re getting fucked.”
Cougar huffs in amusement and Jake scoffs. “What? That was sexy. I can do sexy.”
Eliot gets the lock open and turns the knob, grabbing Jake’s shirt to drag him in. “You try too damn hard,” he says, but the blunt critique doesn’t seem to dim anyone’s ardor much. Jake’s grinning like he won the lottery and Cougar’s closing in on Eliot’s other side.
“Hey,” Eliot says, before it gets too far. He turns a little, angling so only one of them will have a clear shot at him if they object. “I don’t like guns in my place. You can leave ‘em on the side table there.”
Cougar quirks a wry smile and reaches under the back of his un-tucked shirt, pulls a revolver out of a waistband holster there. He pops the cylinder and drops the bullets into his other hand, leaves it open and empty on the table, ammo beside it.
“I left mine in the car,” Jake says with a grin and a shrug.
Cougar’s jaw clenches and a shadow passes over his expression. Eliot doesn’t know the guy, but for a second he expects an explosion of violence.
“You deserve to have your dick shot off,” Cougar growls, accent thick with anger, and Jake looks repentant.
“Nobody’s shooting my dick off here,” he says like it’s supposed to be soothing. He looks to Eliot as if to confirm that Eliot isn’t planning to emasculate him. “I’d just be leaving it on his table with yours. Right?
“Speaking of our sexy host,” Jake murmurs, when Cougar looks like he might be deal-breaker pissed, “I promised him that thing you do with your tongue. You know? The thing?”
“Your boy makin’ promises your mouth can’t keep?” Eliot asks, low and just this side of teasing.
Then Cougar’s on him, one hand in his hair and the other at his hip, mouths slotting together as they kiss, setting the pace intense but slow, plundering Eliot’s mouth, coaxing him to open up, to meet him half-way. Even with his eyes open, Eliot doesn’t even realize he’s been walked backward until the wall’s at his back and Cougar’s thigh is sliding between his.
“Oh my fucking God,” Jake breathes, “That’s gotta be the hottest thing since Lara Croft.” And he starts stripping his shirt off over his head there in Eliot’s entry way, kicking his shoes off in random directions, wriggling out of his pants.
“What do you want?” Cougar asks, low and slow, a sharp contrast to Jake’s rush. “How do you want us?”
Eliot kind of expected them to take charge, outnumbering him and all. The wealth of options is sort of overwhelming. “His dick,” he says, because it’s out there already, huge and hot and ready. “Your mouth,” he says to Cougar, because if he sucks like he kisses, Jake wasn’t exaggerating about the epic-ness.
“You have a bed?” Cougar asks as Jake’s hands pop Eliot’s belt buckle open and start work on his fly. He half-nods in the right direction and they stumble that way together, pieces of Eliot’s clothing and then Cougar’s finding their way to the floor.
“Lube?” Jake asks as they get to the bedroom and onto the bed. “Condoms?” Eliot points and then Cougar’s on him, the point of his tongue making tiny circles around Eliot’s left nipple, the soft prickle of his mustache adding another layer to the sensation.
They move in tandem-Cougar rolls him to his side and slides his knee up as Jake’s slick fingers rub lube on his hole. “Got you,” Jake soothes, and then pushes inside, one finger at first followed by two. “God, you’re so tight,” he says as he opens Eliot up, pushes a third in just a little too soon, letting him feel the stretch.
He grunts at the feeling, trying to convince his body it’s not an attack, that it’s a good hurt. Cougar slides up and kisses him again, slower, gentle. “Shhh,” he soothes, “He’s good at this.” Eliot deliberately relaxes his shoulders, breathes through his nose and tips his head back. Cougar’s kiss is soft, his tongue teasing at the scar on Eliot’s lip, his free hand massaging at the back of Eliot’s neck. Jake adds more lube and Eliot wills himself into complicity, tries not to tense up again as Jake slides into him from behind in one slow push.
“Fuck,” Eliot groans, because Jesus, that dick’s every bit as big as it looked. Jake rocks into him twice, slow and steady, and then he wraps his top arm around Eliot’s waist and rolls them so Eliot’s on top, face up. Jake’s legs push between Eliot’s, spreading him out and opening him up. God, it’s almost too much, too deep, Jake’s hands dancing over his exposed chest and stomach and dick.
And then Cougar is there, kneeling between Eliot’s spread knees, ducking in and breathing over his balls, tongue flicking out to where the skin of Eliot’s asshole is stretched tight around Jake’s dick. He licks and nips and teases, pushes his tongue like he’s going to slip it in beside Jake’s dick.
“We’ve got you,” Jake murmurs again, and Eliot realizes he’s been panting, swearing, fucking moaning at the intensity of it all, at Jake’s slicked-up hand on his dick and Cougar’s mouth on his balls. At the pressure on his prostate from the inside and from Cougar’s thumb on his perineum.
He gasps and groans and Jake thrusts into him, hands on his hips man-handling him into the power of his pushes. And fuck, it’s the most intense thing he’s known, giving it up to them, letting them have him in so many ways at once.
“God, so fucking beautiful,” Jake says like he means it, fucks like he means it and Eliot’s coming, hot spurts of come spattering his stomach and chest, all the way up to his chin. Jake right behind him, groaning into his neck and burying himself deep.
Cougar’s strong hands smear the come over Eliot’s belly as Jake and Eliot pant for breath, his eyes dark and hungry. He leans in and flicks the point of his tongue into the slit of Eliot’s dick, collecting the last taste of his come. Eliot twitches with aftershocks, and Cougar looks up as his lips close over Eliot, fucking him with the intensity of his gaze. Jake’s hands wander gently over Eliot’s chest, his sides, lips kissing and sucking at Eliot’s neck. Dick still in Eliot’s ass, although he’s soft now.
Cougar’s mouth closes around the head of Eliot’s dick, slow and gentle, coaxing it to rise again. “Yeah,” Jake whispers behind him. Fingers skim his nipples.
Cougar pulls back, until the very tip of Eliot’s cock rests on his lower lip. “Can I fuck you?” he asks and Eliot’s spent but willing and he nods. He expects to be rolled over, but Jake just hooks his hands under Eliot’s knees and lifts him off of his dick, pulls Eliot’s knees up and opens him up for Cougar to slide on in. He’s sore, can’t help but hiss as Cougar pushes into him, the cool-slick of the condom. It’s some kind of kinky-good to be used like this, Jake holding him as he’s fucked hard.
He wraps his hand around his own dick, feels the second orgasm building in his balls, breaking free. Cougar makes one last thrust, pushing deep and holding himself there and then he half-collapses on them, holding part of his weight up on his arms, head bowed and hairs that have worked their way loose from his ponytail tickling at Eliot’s face.
“Oh Jesus,” Jake groans from the bottom of their pile, “As sexy as this all is, you fuckers are crushing me here.”
Cougar huffs and pushes himself up and off, crawls to the edge of the bed. Jake rolls Eliot to the same side, into the space Cougar’s left for him. Warm hands rub over his arm, his hip. Cougar leans in and kisses him one last time, soft and chaste.
“Washcloth?” Jake asks and Eliot waves him towards the bathroom, knowing they aren’t all that hard to find once you’re in the right room. He listens to Jake fumble around. Watches Cougar’s eyes close, his eye lashes short and dark and curled.
“Here,” Jake says and passes Eliot a wet washcloth. He uses the one in his other hand to clean up Cougar, who murmurs sleepily and tries to squirm away from the damp.
Eliot wipes down his chest and then gets his back-side. Checks the cloth but there’s no blood.
“Hey,” Jake says, “I’m gonna go try to find my clothes, that okay with you?” Telling Eliot that he’s going into the room with the gun before he does it, and Eliot appreciates it.
“Yeah,” he says, figuring that leaving a sleepy Cougar behind is enough of a show of good faith.
Jake goes out and wanders back in a few minutes later, underwear on over that fine ass but nothing else.
Cougar snorts and rolls over, back to them both.
Jake grins, so much affection in his smile that Eliot aches to see it. “So he’s down for the count.” Jake crawls back into bed on Eliot’s other side. “Whenever you’re done with having us here, just let me know and we’ll get out of your way.” Despite his words of leaving, he settles down and runs his fingers through Eliot’s hair.
“Hey,” Jake whispers, glancing at Cougar to see if he’s still asleep. “Can you keep a secret?”
And what kind of fucking idiot would tell secrets to a one-night-stand anyway. But Jake seems to take Eliot’s lack of reply for a promise of secrecy and continues on.
“He thinks I’ve got a kink for hair. That’s why he picked you. Long hair for me, blue eyes for him.”
Eliot’s stomach jumps with unexpected laughter, because it’s just too ridiculous.
“Dumb-ass,” he mutters and he should get up. Go look at those blue-prints Hardison printed out for him. Read a book on the couch. Something other than lay here between these dangerous men and cuddle.
In a minute, he thinks. Any minute now.
=============
Eliot doesn’t sleep. Not in a bed with two men he doesn’t know. He sort of lets himself zone though, watching as the dull glow of the streetlights warms and brightens as the sun starts to come up. Eventually he pries himself out from under Jake’s arm and Cougar’s thigh and climbs off of the foot of the bed. He’s heading for the shower when Jake stops him with a soft word.
“Want company?” Jake suggests and Eliot chuckles. Cougar’s eyes are open, dark and mysterious.
“Tempting as the offer is, I think you guys wore me out.” In the cold light of day, this seems even less-smart than it did the night before.
“Hey, you could fuck me instead, if you wanted to,” Jake offers. “I’m an equal-opportunity fuck-buddy.”
Eliot considers it but shakes his head. “My dick’s raw and my balls ache from how hard I came last night. I appreciate it, maybe next time.” The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, and he wants to kick himself. God-damn sleep deprivation. He’s getting old and soft, saying the first thing to come to mind.
Jake shrugs. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Stick around,” Eliot offers, because, besides the unavoidable ache in his backside, they were pretty damn considerate and it seems rude to kick them out. “Let me grab a shower and I’ll make you breakfast.”
He goes into the bathroom before they’ve said yes or no, lathers up and washes down in record time and pulls on a pair of sweats.
“I didn’t break him, you broke him,” Jake is hissing at Cougar when Eliot comes out.
“I ain’t broke, just fucked-out,” Eliot objects and herds them out to the kitchen. Cougar slides into one of the kitchen chairs and Jake stands behind him, finger-combing his hair back from his face. It’s intimate, even more than watching their kisses and he opens the fridge and pokes around as an excuse to look away.
“Feta and spinach omelets?” he offers and smirks at their surprise. Apparently whatever type of hitter/merc/thug these guys are doesn’t eat any better than the hacker and thief he’s more familiar with.
Eliot pulls out the ingredients and Jake draws Cougar’s hair back, ties it with a black elastic. Eliot heats the pan and whips the eggs and Jake keeps trying to wander off, to go exploring and Cougar keeps bringing him back with the force of his glare. Jake looks longingly at the laptop Hardison insisted Eliot have and Cougar gives him a firm “No.”
They eat when Eliot serves their plates, Jake’s moans of appreciation damn near obscene and Cougar’s “Gracias” heartfelt enough that it feels square. That they gave him the fucking of his year and he gave them some pretty good sex and breakfast after.
“Thanks,” Jake says as they’re standing to leave, stepping forward to kiss Eliot one last time, casual and sweet.
“Next time,” Cougar says, leaning in for a kiss of his own, a god-damn work of art of lips and tongue and Jake rolls his eyes behind Cougar’s back at being so deliberately shown up.
They both grin and Jake waves and Cougar collects his weapon on the way out the door. Eliot takes a slow breath in the sudden quiet of his home and then picks up his phone to make a call.
“Hardison? I need you to check out a couple guys for me…”
============
“Holy shit,” Jensen breathes and the tap-tapping at his laptop stops. Cougar looks up from where he’s field-stripping his rifle.
“Eliot,” Jensen continues, “Last-night Eliot? We fucked Eliot mother-fucking Spencer. C’mere, you’ve gotta see this; this is him, right?”
Cougar snorts and shakes his head. “You didn’t know?”
======
"Anything you noticed,” Hardison says as he types, “Anything at all.”
“Cougar,” Eliot starts, “Five-foot-ten, one-seventy maybe. Hispanic, dark hair and eyes.” He thinks of the faint sweet smell of banana bread on the man’s hands, figures it for Hoppe’s gun cleaner. He remembers the carbon residue down deep into the creases of Cougar’s fingerprints, the six-shot revolver on Eliot’s entryway table, a back-up piece at best. “Gun guy but not short range. Sniper, probably.”
Hardison taps at the keyboard a bit. Makes a non-committal noise.
“The other said his name was Jake. Six foot even, probably one-ninety. Blond hair, blue eyes. Muscular. Tattoo on his left bicep, a steer of some sort, horns down. Both of them three, maybe four years out of the US Army. Jake’s no shooter though. Not attached to his gun. Demolitions, maybe?”
“Tech?” Hardison offers and Eliot remembers the way Jake looked at his laptop, like a few hours off of the computer had been too long.
“Yeah, could be.”
Hardison whistles low and long. “And you say these guys tried to pick you up in a bar?”
“That’s what I said, Hardison,” Eliot grumps, doesn’t add that they’d been successful. “So who the hell are they?”
“It’s not so much who they are as what they are,” Hardison says and Eliot holds back from smacking the back of his head. “What you’ve got is a pair of ghosts.” He turns the screen around and Eliot’s looking at Jake and Cougar’s faces, the word “Deceased” across each one.
“Army reported them dead four years ago. That thing in Bolivia? Looks like it was them.”
Eliot shrugs. He’d been busy in Syria around that time. He remembers something about a helicopter full of kids, remembers thinking it didn’t add up. Having met Jake and Cougar though, it makes even less sense. Not that he thinks fucking is the window to the soul or anything, but he doesn’t figure either of them for the kind of guy who could do something like that.
He gives the file one more glance-over, noting the faces of the other men who supposedly died in the same crash. Doesn’t matter though, he thinks. It was a fun fuck but he’s not likely to run into them again, unless picking him up really was part of a job for them and he’s the target.
Hardison goes into a flurry of typing then. “This Jensen dude was J-mageddon. The guy’s a legend among hackers. People like him don’t just stop working because they faked their death. He’s got to be still active, just using a different signature, a different set of cracks, like trading in his Ocean deck for a Fire one. But the play. Maybe I can find him by the way he plays the hand…”
Eliot leaves him to it, feeling just a little disappointed that these two are too dangerous to open himself to again.
==============
Jensen has never been great with down-time. Since the first time Cougar met him, he’s been able to deal with any kind of pressure, any deadline. Three days between finalizing their next job (data extraction, Jensen on the ground, Cougar covering him if he runs into trouble) and actually getting on a plane is driving him batty. Cougar doesn’t need a scope to see it, how the man is all fidgets and restless energy, interspersed with these weird moments of staring into space. What the tech needs is a distraction, he decides, something more complex than Cougar can provide on his own.
It’s no big thing to get Jensen worked up, to throw out a challenge he knows the man will take and to make a bet that Cougar expects to lose.
“Your choice then,” Cougar sighs with mock-sorrow, and they head to a bar, not too bright or loud, and sit for two fucking hours while Jensen tries to make up his mind.
“That one maybe?” Jensen says at last, pointing over to a lumberjack in red plaid standing by the jukebox. Cougar rolls his eyes at the lack of enthusiasm.
“What do you really want tonight?” he asks, because at this rate they’ll be out of time before Jensen decides.
Jensen looks uncertain at the question, and in all the years they’ve been doing this, taking strangers to their bed for one-night stands, there’s never been anything Jensen has been afraid or ashamed of asking for. Men, women, butch, femme. From clean-cut to punked-out pierced and tattooed, from vanilla to a little kinky. His tastes run much wider than Cougar’s, but Cougar has always been okay with it, when it was Jensen’s turn. He can’t fathom what could suddenly be the problem.
“Remember Boston?” Jensen asks, and Cougar’s guts twist in a strange combination of trepidation and arousal. Arousal because it had been a particularly satisfying experience. Trepidation because this is the first time either of them has wanted the same person a second time. It scares him, that Jensen would want Eliot again. That he wants Eliot again.
“Hey,” Jensen’s voice draws his attention back to the here and now. “I’m just saying it was nice, right? Having him watching over us while you got some sleep. And that breakfast. He was just nice.”
“Si,” Cougar agrees, and despite his worry that this will be the one who messes them up somehow, he too remembers the night with inordinate fondness. He runs the numbers in his head. “Two hours to Boston, two hours with Eliot, two hours back. We’d still make our flight.”
“Yeah?” Jake asks, hopeful but guarded. “You’re sure?”
===============
He gets back from Croatia at three in the morning. Nate lets them scatter from the airport, with orders to be at the headquarters around noon for a debriefing and to talk about prospective cases. He’s home for less than an hour when there’s a tap at the door and his body goes on high alert, tense and ready.
He goes to the door, keeping his center-mass behind the reinforced panel set in the door as he looks out of the peep-hole.
Jake Jensen is on the other side, grinning goofy and hopeful, a shadow that has to be Cougar behind his shoulder.
“Hey Eliot?” he calls through the door, “So that next-time you were talking about last time, we were wondering if you were in the mood for it now.” Like a vague suggestion made months ago was a date and a promise.
Eliot knows he should go. Slip out the back and disappear. He never gave them his name, and there’s no reason getting his dick wet is worth risking his life.
“Hey,” Jake’s voice is softer now and he has to lean in to hear it through the door. “Don’t be like this, baby.” Teasing, sweet. “If we wanted to hurt you Cougar would have popped your head off from half a mile away. It’s okay. We’re here to be with you. Nothing else. Been thinking about you. All the sexy things we could do together.”
His voice stops for a second, comes back half-indignant. “It does not automatically make it un-sexy to use the word sexy in a description. No, I’m not talking too much; the door is closed. If he wants a word in edgewise he’ll have to open it and then you can do that thing with your eyes and we can talk if he wants to, and then everyone gets laid.”
He shouldn’t. It goes against every bit of logic and sense. But his heart tells him the only risk is that he’ll forget this is just sex. That they have each other and he has his team and this can never be more than fucking. He flips the dead-bolt and turns the knob. Opens the door.
Cougar already has his gun out, cylinder popped and offered butt-first into Eliot’s hand. He takes it and goes to put it on the table but Jake’s on him, hands like an octopus, everywhere at once.
“So do we have to have some sort of a talk?” Jake asks, and then licks up the side of Eliot’s neck. “Or can we just get to the fucking? ‘Cause that part’s a lot more fun.”
Cougar comes up to them then, covers Jake’s hands and stills them where they grope at Eliot’s body.
“Eliot,” he says, dark eyes serious, “We won’t sell you out. You don’t sell us out. Deal?” In all Jake’s noise, one thing he’d said was true. A man like Cougar? If he wanted Eliot dead, he’d never see it coming, and there are enough “dead or alive” contracts out on Eliot to make it worth his while. At this point Eliot would have to either kill them both or leave the Leverage team, change states, maybe even find a new country to live in if he wants to make it so Cougar can’t kill him. Or he can trust that they mean him no harm.
And there’s a certain amount of relief. That he doesn’t have to pretend with them. They know who he is, and more important what. There’ll be no ugly surprises later, no need for lies in the meantime.
“Yeah,” he says, “It’s a deal.”
“Fantastic!” Jake says with a grin. “So you’ll fuck me now?”
Eliot glances to Cougar, double-checking for jealousy, but all he sees is smoldering lust in the man’s eyes. What the hell; he’d slept on the plane. What’s another hour or so before he gets to crash?
“Bedroom,” Eliot says and waves them down the hall. Jake leads the way, dropping clothing as he goes, carefree and unselfconscious. He looks over his shoulder as he struggles to get his pants off over his boots. Blue eyes meeting Eliot’s like he’s not just a convenient fuck. Smiling like this means something good.
Jake is naked by the time they get to the bed, crawling up on Eliot’s covers and sprawling on his back, hand stroking his dick as he watches Eliot and Cougar stripping out of their clothes, ridiculous glasses still perched on his face.
Cougar takes off his hat and tosses it onto the dresser, his eyes on Jake like he’s going to eat him alive. He strips down, and Eliot watches as he kisses Jake, slow and sensual and then light and teasing, fingers running through the short spikes of Jake’s hair. Jake stops touching himself in favor of touching Cougar, his lips, his hair, his neck. Eliot rubs his palm over his own hard cock, and he thinks sometime he’d like to just watch them, let them put on a show for him while he sits in a chair and strokes himself.
Another time, he thinks. If there is another time.
He slides his clothes off and climbs on the bed with them, up against Jake’s other side, adding his own kisses and petting to those Cougar is giving the man. He watches Cougar’s hand slide down Jake’s stomach, shying away from his dick at the last minute, short nails scratching at his skin, at the wiry hair of his pubes. Jake twitches and moans and Cougar denies him the touch he’s so clearly desperate for. Eliot joins in the tease, fingers following the sharp cut of Jake’s hip, the line of muscle down into his groin, licking and kissing at his neck while he does.
Jake’s hand moves to stroke himself and Eliot’s fingers close around his wrist. Not a grip that Jake couldn’t break, but a request. Let us do this for you, Eliot’s touch says, Let us tease you to the limits of what you can take. And Jake’s hand goes up into Eliot’s hair, drawing him down into a kiss that bruises, the sharp nip of his teeth on Eliot’s lips.
“If somebody doesn’t fuck me soon,” Jake warns and Cougar huffs out a laugh.
“Careful what you ask for,” Cougar warns, and scoots closer to the headboard. Jake rolls over, eyes on Cougar’s dick, his ass in the air. Eliot watches as Jake slides his hand down Cougar’s shaft, drawing back the foreskin, caressing the head of his cock with his lips, the tip of his tongue. And as beautiful as the sight is, his own arousal is throbbing with need. He reaches into the bedside table and gets out lube and condoms, slides in behind Jake. The first brush of Eliot’s fingers makes him jump, the second makes him moan.
“Oh, shit,” Jake groans as Eliot scissors him open, just this side of too-fast, “He’s gonna fuck me, Cougs. Are you watching this?”
Eliot looks up and Cougar is definitely interested, his hips twitching up against Jake’s lips in time to Eliot’s finger-fucking. Eliot lines himself up and Jake draws in a breath. He grabs Jake by his hips, pushes in and Jake opens his mouth over Cougar, takes him in, lets Eliot drive him forward and down until his lips are as far down as he could go. Slowly back, Cougar’s hands in Jake’s hair to keep him from coming all the way off, and then Eliot pushes in again.
Cougar’s dark eyes meet Eliot’s blue and they find a rhythm, Jake lax between them, letting them fuck him and use him, his noisy moans of appreciation just urging them on every time Eliot thinks maybe they’re getting too rough.
Jake tries to balance himself on one hand, tries to get the other up under himself to get some sort of friction on his dick but Eliot stops him, “I’ll do it,” he says, guiding Jake’s hand back to support his upper body before he falls. He reaches under, feels Jake hot and throbbing and slick at the tip with pre-come. He wraps his hand around, squeezes and then strokes.
“Come for us,” Cougar urges and that plus Eliot’s hand is all it takes, Jake tensing and shaking, swallowing and gagging as Cougar thrusts up into his mouth one last time, clenching around Eliot’s dick and bringing him along for the ride.
Cougar is the first to pull away, shifting back and to the side a little so Jake can breathe again. Eliot rests his cheek between Jake’s shoulder-blades until he can get his breathing under control. Bounty or not, they just might kill him if they keep this up.
Cougar strokes Jake’s cheek with his fingertips, wipes sweat from his face. “What you wanted?”
“Yeah,” Jake whispers, “Perfect.” He tries to crane his neck to see behind him and Eliot rolls to the side, grabs the base of the condom and pulls out with a hiss.
“Was it as good for you as it was for me?” Jake asks and Eliot surprises himself with a laugh.
“No, I just come like a freight train for mediocre sex,” he mutters, and he feels so heavy. Tired. Cougar gets up this time and gets the cleaning supplies, slips the condom off of Eliot’s softening dick and throws it away. Goes to gather up the trail of Jake’s clothes, tugging on Jake’s legs and helping him slide into his underwear and then jeans.
They’re leaving, Eliot realizes. He wants to tell them they don’t have to, that it’s three AM and to just crash here, but he knows he’ll sleep restless with other people in his space and Nate has plans for them in the morning.
“Hey,” Cougar says as he kisses Eliot one last time. “Come lock up after us?” Eliot drags himself out of bed, slipping into the bathrobe that Cougar holds out for him.
Jake kisses him at the door, slides his fingers through Eliot’s sweat-sticky hair.
“I won the bet this time,” Jake says with a soft smile, “Cougar totally should have been the one trying to talk our way in here.”
Then they’re gone and Eliot locks the door, the apartment feeling empty and quiet with them gone.
================
They’re six days into the con, their target a mobster turned movie producer, dirty up to his eyeballs. Sophie is playing the British investor, all posh charm and confidence. Eliot goes in as her body-guard, not a grift at all besides the name he’s using. He’s there to make her look important, to add perceived value to their end of the negotiations.
Rubino wants to meet at his offices, the penthouse suite in a six-story building of glass and aluminum, glittering in the California sun. Eliot shadows Sophie’s steps, unobtrusive, hand up to his conspicuous ear-piece as Nate and Hardison give him information from the earbud below it. They step out of the elevator on the top floor and Rubino’s own security man opens the door to the office for them.
“Ms. Ellsworth,” Rubino says with a predatory grin, “So nice of you to come to our humble studio,” and he stands to greet her. The man makes Eliot’s skin crawl, his fake cheer and dead eyes, but he stands at his post by the door, prepares to watch Rubino hug Sophie. Of course Rubino is going to cop a feel. Eliot will follow her lead, take outrage if she does, blow it off if that’s the play.
Rubino smirks, arms open for that hug, eyes meeting Eliot’s over Sophie’s shoulder in some stupid sort of challenge. Then Rubino’s head explodes into red mist, just gone. The spatter of it covers Sophie’s front, her face, her arms. No fucking sound at all, just the tap of the bullet going through the window, the shooter half a mile away at least and Eliot moves, grabbing Sophie, covering her with his body (not that it’ll do any good with that caliber of weapon). She’s silent as he runs for the door with her, past Rubino’s slack-jawed gorilla.
The reception room is safer, not that the walls are much protection, but the windows face a different direction so at least the sniper doesn’t have line-of-sight.
“Oh,” says Sophie, and Eliot takes a second to wipe at the blood, looking for wounds, for flying splinters of bone or teeth to have hurt her but he doesn’t see anything.
“What the hell just happened?” Nate demands, too-loud on the ear-buds.
“Sniper!” Eliot calls back. “Rubino’s down!” An alarm starts screaming and Rubino’s muscle are going to be locking down exits. He hustles Sophie for the stairs, good strong fire-walls and the only threats within are the security guards coming up. Eliot jumps down to meet them, closes in too tight for them to use their guns and like most people they forget what else they could do, struggling to get the barrel pointed at him instead of hitting him with a fist. It’s over in seconds and he has to go back for Sophie, still staring at her shaking hands.
They get down and to the back entrance. Nate speeds up in a car and there’s only twenty yards or so of open ground to cover.
Then a security guy appears from around the far corner of the building, pistol drawn. Eliot turns he and Sophie as he runs, covering her with his body. He expects the crack of the pistol but the sound he hears is more of a thwack and when he looks over, the guard is going down, a hole the size of a fist in his chest.
Nate flings open the door and Eliot shoves Sophie inside, pushing her over and getting in himself. “Go, go!” he says and Nate hits the gas.
They drive but nobody follows them, no bullets pierce the car. Eliot breathes out a sigh only when they’re a full mile away from the office building.
“He…” Sophie stutters from the passenger seat, “He…his head…”
Eliot rubs her back while Nate drives. “Large caliber bullet. High velocity. That was a whole lot of overkill. Somebody wanted him dead and then some.”
They park in the hotel’s garage and Eliot runs upstairs for a wet towel and change of clothes. Nate and Sophie are talking in the back seat when he gets back down, and he passes over the supplies and then stands guard while she cleans up and changes. The blood-stained clothes he bags for disposal, and then they all three go to Hardison’s room to try to figure what the hell is going on.
Parker lets them in, opening the door when they’re still four feet away. Hardison is on his computer, typing like a flurry of hail on a skylight, fast and furious.
“What? What, oh heeeell no!”
“What’s going on?” Nate wants to know.
“I’m trying to get some images of our shooter off the roof, but there wasn’t anything, and then I went back to try to scrub Eliot and Sophie off of Rubino’s security cameras and the data’s disappearing as fast as I can pull it up to delete it. We got another hacker poking around in our operation and trying to trace my location at the same time.”
And Hardison might not put the pieces together, about a hacker/sniper team Eliot mentioned once, four months ago, but Eliot’s mind can’t help going to warm nights and fiery touches, Cougar’s lips and Jake’s hands.
A three dimensional image of the surrounding city spins on one of Hardison’s screens, one building highlighted as Hardison tries to find their sniper leaving.
“Not there,” Eliot says, calculating the angle of the bullet that came through Rubino’s window, the shot that took down the guard on the ground floor. He points at a different structure. “There. It’s got the height and the trajectory is right for the two shots that I saw.”
“That’s half a mile away!” Hardison squawks, but changes his target, images flickering on his screen faster than Eliot can process them. He pauses and there’s a shadow, hat and rifle on a human shape on the screen.
And then the screen goes black.
“No,” Hardison says in disbelief, “No, no, no.”
A video of a hyena pops up, its cackling laugh filling the room. The computer begins to make a whirring noise, and Eliot pulls the cord as the smell of smoke starts to emanate from it.
“That…” Hardison stares in horror. “That shouldn’t even be possible.”
“Okay,” Nate says, “We have to figure out who we’re up against and what they want. We need a different revenue source to get the client her life savings back.”
“I need to go,” Eliot says and stands.
“What?” asks everyone else in the room at the same time.
“Give me an hour. Let me see what I can come up with.”
He goes back down the elevator, raises his face to make eye contact with every camera he passes. Walks through the poolside doors and sits down at one of the outdoor bar’s tables. The sun is bright and it isn’t long before a shadow passes over him, Jake sliding into the chair on his right, Cougar into the one across from him.
“We didn’t know,” Jake says without preamble. “I hadn’t poked into your team. I mean besides your hacker, who’s pretty good for a civilian. But I wasn’t tracking him or anything. Seriously, Eliot, we wouldn’t fuck with you like this. We didn’t mean to blow your operation.”
Cougar’s eyes are lowered, his trigger-finger idly rubbing over his lower lip. “Is your woman hurt?” he asks and Eliot thinks he actually cares what the answer is.
“Shook up,” he sighs, “She’ll be okay.”
“Here,” Jake says and slides a camera bag into Eliot’s lap. “Half our take from this job.”
There’s no reason for them to do this. No code of honor that says they owe him anything.
“Buy Har-dwire a new computer,” Jake says, and smiles regretfully. “Sorry I had to melt that sweet system, but I couldn’t let him have a picture of Cougs. I’ll do the tidying up since he’s out of commission. Your room keys will work through the weekend, but they aren’t under your aliases anymore.”
Jake looks at him, like he wants to see something else besides Eliot’s stoic wall.
“Are we cool?”
“Yeah,” Eliot sighs. “I’ll let the team know.”
He stands and puts the strap of the camera bag on his shoulder. Walks away knowing they could have put a bullet in him today if they wanted to.
The team is jabbering at each other when he comes in, closes the door behind himself and dumps the cash on the bed.
“What?” Nate asks, “Where did you get that?”
“Professional misunderstanding,” Eliot explains. He figures there’s about seventy-five grand there. He takes one of the bricks of hundreds and tosses it to Hardison.
“Don’t look for the man in the hat again,” he warns.
“Did you just beat up a pair of hit-men for their lunch money?” Hardison asks and Eliot shrugs.
“Something like that.”
There’s a lot of talking after, but the target is gone, the money from the camera bag will pay for the client’s losses and their expenses. What can they do but go home?
“And we just let these murderers go?” Sophie asks.
“How many times have we left a target with pissed-off mob bosses or drug dealers or Yakuza on their tails? You think they get a good scolding and let go? Hardison, how many of our old targets have died within the year of us hitting them?”
Hardison shrugs. “I could tell you if my computer wasn’t slag. I’d guess the percentage is pretty high.”
“So Rubino ended up dead sooner than later. We gonna go after every hit-team that ever took down a bad man now?” He looks around but nobody seems to think that’s a solid plan.
“Look,” Eliot says, “They saw their mistake. Offered restitution. They aren’t gunning for us. I see no reason to make it a problem. Are we done? I’d like to hit the gym before we fly out again.”
“Yeah, no,” says Nate, but his eyes are calculating, knowing. “By all means, go ahead. I think we’re done here.”
“Wait!” Hardison yells behind him, “Was that J-Mageddon? J-Mageddon thinks I’m a threat?” He sounds oddly star-struck by the idea.
Eliot goes back to his room, thoroughly unsurprised to find a folded piece of paper under his door, nothing on it but a room number. He thinks on it for less than a minute and then he’s leaving his room again, taking the stairs down two flights and knocking on Jake and Cougar’s door.
“You came,” says Cougar when he opens the door, a twitch of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. He steps back to let Eliot in.
Jake sits at the room’s little table, tapping away at a laptop. “Almost done,” he calls, distracted, and Eliot’s familiar enough with post-mission hacking to not take it personally.
Cougar’s hand on his arm is warm, steady. “We good still?” and Eliot can’t think of a single reason to stay pissed. He knew what they were. He just never expected his team to bump into them by accident.
“We’re good,” he says, and Cougar takes that as permission to step into his space, to breathe his air and press their lips together, to kiss him slow and sensual. They slow-step across the room to the foot of the bed.
“Will you fuck me?” Cougar asks, and Jake’s head pops up, eyes wide.
“If you want that,” Eliot assures him. Jake closes the laptop and Eliot really hopes he finished enough clean-up that the upcoming sex isn’t interrupted by the police knocking down their door.
“Cougs, you sure?” Jake asks as he joins them. He swishes Cougar’s ponytail to the side and kisses the back of his neck.
“Si,” Cougar says and meets Eliot’s eyes. “I want that. I want you.”
Of them all, Jake still seems the most on-edge. “Look,” he says, blue eyes meeting blue over Cougar’s shoulder, “Just to be clear, since my Mexican Silent Bob wanna-be isn’t going to say it, this is ‘apology accepted’ sex, right?” he searches Eliot’s face. “This isn’t anger-sex. This isn’t hate-sex. You don’t get to hurt him.”
“I don’t plan on it,” Eliot promises. Cougar lets out a breath and Eliot realizes that maybe he was braced for it to be some sort of revenge-fuck.
Jake relaxes too, reaching up and taking the rubber band from Cougar’s hair, sliding his fingers through all that beautiful darkness and setting it free.
“Got you, Cougs,” Jake murmurs against his neck. “Eliot’s got you too.”
There’s something going on, something Eliot is missing, but he takes Jake’s cues, leans in to kiss the corner of Cougar’s mouth as his hands slide his outer shirt off of his shoulders, slow smooth caresses down his arms. Jake draws the undershirt up over Cougar’s head, leaves teasing kisses across his shoulder.
Jake walks them back towards the bed, crawls on and urges Cougar to come up with him. Eliot unfastens Cougar’s pants and pulls off his boots while Jake opens the bedside drawer and pulls out lube and condoms. His focus is all on Cougar, like he doesn’t even see Eliot getting naked, and that would hurt, if he couldn’t sense the deep water just a step away.
Jake settles himself up at the head of the bed, stroking Cougar’s hair, drawing him back to rests his shoulders on Jake’s chest. Eliot stretches out over him, kisses down his throat and chest, licks circles around his nipples, blows lightly against the trail of hair from navel to pubes, smiling when Cougar groans and squirms. He flicks his tongue over the head of Cougar’s dick, so smooth, damn he tastes so good. He brushes his fingers over Cougar’s balls, the crease of his thigh, back down between his ass-cheeks and Cougar jumps, his gasp caught in Jake’s mouth.
“Yeah,” Jake whispers, “Want this, don’t you? You want him.”
Eliot gets the tube of lube, pops the cap. Cougar’s hands clench in the bed covers, the muscle in his jaw tenses as Eliot slides a slick finger over the tight pucker of his ass.
“It’s okay,” Jake soothes. “Look, it’s Eliot. He’s got you,” and Cougar’s eyes open to look down, to see Eliot there between his knees, to watch his arm move as Eliot slides one finger into him, slow and gentle until he starts to relax.
“Gonna be good,” Eliot promises. “Gonna take care of you, darlin’.”
Jake snorts a laugh. “And you guys say my lines are corny.” But his eyes are warm with affection, like he’s grateful to Eliot for breaking the tension.
Eliot slips another finger in, and Jake distracts Cougar from the beginnings of a stretch by playing with his nipples, circling them, tugging them. Eliot gets the third one in and Cougar starts to softly swear in Spanish, his eyes closed and lips parted with breathy pleas.
“He’s ready,” Jake says and Eliot slides the condom on and slicks it up. He moves in closer, lifting Cougar’s left leg up over his shoulder, lining himself up.
“Cougar,” he calls softly, “Come on, I need you to look at me.”
Cougar opens his eyes. He looks fucked already, glazed and disconnected.
“Are you ready?” Eliot asks, because messing things up now is a land mine he’d rather not step on.
“Si,” Cougar says, “Fuck me.”
Eliot presses in, slow and steady and inexorable. Pushes in until he bottoms out, until Cougar is panting with the stretch of it and Eliot’s shaking to hold himself back, to not fuck hard into that heat and tightness.
“Jesus,” Jake whispers, “Look at you two.”
Eliot reaches down between their bodies, takes Cougar’s dick in his still-slick hand and strokes him, keeping him hard when he may have lost some of his arousal.
“You still with me?” he asks, and Cougar nods. He pulls back a few inches, thrusts in again slow. Tries another time, longer, stronger. Feels Cougar shifting to meet him, legs relaxing, opening himself up.
Jake just stays where he is, petting Cougar’s hair, whispering about how beautiful they are, how hot and sexy it all is.
“Come for him,” Jake murmurs and leans down to lick Cougar below his earlobe. “Come for him, you sexy beast.”
And then Cougar laughs and comes, body tightening around Eliot’s dick, drawing the orgasm out of him.
He’d love to collapse after, but forces himself to pull back, to get rid of the condom and close Cougar’s legs. He curls in beside him, as they both ease back down and Jake watches over them.
“We’re real glad we didn’t fuck things up,” Jake says and Eliot shakes his head. The last thing he wants to think about in the afterglow is Sophie covered in blood.
“Stop talking about it then,” he grouses and nuzzles in against Cougar’s hair.
Cougar moves, languid and slow, hand reaching out to where Jake’s dick is pressed against the jeans he’s still wearing. Presses hard with the palm of his hand and rubs him through the thick denim. Jake hisses and squirms, gasps out “Here, let me…” and tries to unfasten his jeans with one hand and Cougar still laying on him.
“I got it,” Eliot says and sits up to reach over and undo the button and zipper, to pull them open and down, just enough for Jake to get his dick out of his underwear. Cougar licks his palm and reaches out to stroke him, Jake’s fingers curved over the back of his hand, guiding, urging, and Eliot watches as Jake spurts thick and white over his t-shirt.
They’re beautiful, but they aren’t his. Not for keeps. They belong to each other, and Eliot rolls to the side of the bed, swings his feet down to the floor so he doesn’t have to watch the tender way Jake pets Cougar’s hair, the way their eyes meet.
“I should get back to my team,” Eliot says. He’s pretty sure Nate didn’t believe his story, and Hardison or Parker could decide to go looking for him at any moment.
“Yeah, okay,” Jake says, and Cougar’s fingertips brush over Eliot’s spine. There’s shifting around behind him, and then Jake is at his side, a plain white business card with a ten-digit number on it held out on Jake’s fingertips. “This is us,” Jake says. “We’ll be out of the country for a while, but if you ever need us, need anything, call, okay?”
Eliot nods and picks his jeans up off of the floor, tucks the card into the pocket.
“I will,” he says, though he can’t imagine why he would.
===============
Hardison pokes through hardware specs on his i-Phone, alone again in his room, and thinks about how weird it is to have nothing to do after a job, no loose ends to tie up, no data to erase. If it was anybody else, Chaos maybe, or that Haardvark dude, it would make him crazy, not knowing if they got everything, but this is J-mageddon, and Hardison has never heard of him getting caught. A little thrill still goes through Alec’s stomach, to have run up against a hacker of J-mageddon’s caliber, to be thought of as a threat. Next time, man… His brain is already spinning with the system he’s going to build next, the safeguards he’s going to put in place. Completely separate hardware managers to stop him from doing that over-over-clocking thing he did. New firewalls, not so much strong as flexible and…
“Why doesn’t Eliot just say what he means?” Parker pipes up, way too close to the back of his ear, and he startles, juggles the phone and clasps a hand to his chest.
“Girl, don’t do that.”
She hops over the back of the hotel couch and settles in next to him.
“When he said he was going to hit the gym? By Gym he meant those guys, the hit team with the sniper and the hacker who fried your computer. I wonder which was which. And by hit? He meant lots of sex. Does that make any sense to you?”
Heat rises up Hardison’s neck, flushes his cheeks warm with embarrassment. “I did not need to know that,” he protests, but the image is already there, Eliot and Jensen and Alvarez. “Why’d you have to go and tell me a thing like that?” he asks Parker, but she’s distracted with the puzzle of semantics and not paying attention to him.
=============
( part 2 )