Serenelystrange - FIC - The SNAFU JOB
Title: The SNAFU Job
Author: Valawenel
Giftee: serenelystrange
Rating: ? nothing disturbing in it
Characters/Pairing: The team, gen, canon (N/S, H/P)
Word Count: 8.400 words
Spoilers: Major spoilers for Season 5, the fic is a Tag for The Rundown Job
Warnings: no warnings
Disclaimer: /
Summary: Just a couple of hours after the events in Washington, the Team, though on opposite sides of the country, has to deal with one more problem.
Notes: This was a tough one. I really have no idea is this what you wanted (mainly because I still don't know exactly what fluff means) I tried to keep it full of good vibes, positive thinking, warm feelings, etc. and there's a happy end. When the list of your prompts grew ( and thank you for that, I was despairing, FleurB is my witness :D ), I took all of that and mixed together glimpses of hurt/comfort, H/P+E fluff, general fluff and N/S temporarily breaking up. I couldn't do AU - I don't do that, I can't. I hope you'll like it :/
- The SNAFU Job -
PART ONE
The funny thing was, he liked Washington. A lot. But not any more.
Even Batman needed at least a few days to save a city or a world, and they did it in one afternoon, yet Hardison somehow skipped the gloating. He couldn’t even feel a simple satisfaction with a job done. Too many very stressful moments in so short a time - his nerves were still trembling.
He fidgeted with a phone, staring somewhere besides the only window of a small apartment, trying a few casual and calm approaches before he called Nate. Eliot was resolved - no panicky messages about him being shot. The last thing the hitter needed was Nate and Sophie catching the first flight to Washington, Nate probably being dragged, but flying nevertheless. Eliot and Parker were only three meters away. He calmed his hand on the phone. They were too perceptive sometimes.
He didn’t feel like superhero, he dreaded every single moment of this day. He could say it started with thirty seconds of panic when he had to think of how to divert a sniper. Eliot and Parker had just left to do their part, not even thinking that he might not be able to think of something, and no matter how flattering that really was, it was frightening at the same time. After that, arrest came as relaxing intermezzo.
He sighed, exhaling the tension that still coiled inside him.
After the arrest and Vance, everything went down - discovery of the flue, and realization what was at stake, fucking Claymore mine, hundreds of dead pigs, a corpse… he didn’t stumble upon dead people on regular basis, thank you very much. And fear. Lots of fear.
Now when he was thinking about it, he realized that he hadn't been as scared when Parker was on the train, or maybe he was too occupied with two of them being chased, trying to get to her on time. He simply didn’t have time to picture what she had to do on the speeding train to stop it and get in. Yet, the rest of the train episode was cut deeply into his memory with every single detail. And feeling.
He glanced at Eliot and Parker, the hitter in the chair, and Parker sitting on the armrest, entering his personal space and trying to make him go to bed. Completely usual mixture of grinning and growling, annoyance and poking - both of them behaving like it was any other day in the office, like they didn’t all almost die just a few hours ago.
He couldn’t. All of it was too fresh in his mind. Parker cornered just one meter from the gun pointed at her, the two of them too far away, panic that held him when crazy old man waved the gun, shock when he saw blossoming purple where a bullet went through Eliot, red numbers ticking furiously fast, blinking countdown for all of Washington…
He cleared his throat. They both looked at him as if he was trying to say something and not just get rid of lump in it. “I’m thinking what to tell Nate,” he said lightly.
“Tell him we’ll stay two more days to visit National Museum of Natural History,” Parker offered with a spark in her eye. “To say hi to the Hope diamond and Hall necklace, and Dom Pedro aquamarine-“
“We don’t want them here, Parker,” Eliot said frowning at her.
“No, you don’t want them here. I don’t mind if they come. Maybe Sophie would be more efficient in pouring some sense in you.”
“Chair is comfortable.”
“So is the bed.”
“Nope.”
Hardison muted their voices, just looking at them, still holding the phone, but not quite thinking what to say to Nate anymore. This day had been disturbingly close to utter disaster. He could’ve lost them both.
He got up and went to the window that overlooked a quiet back street with two parks. The small hotel was a safe place, though Parker had to snatch one long coat to hide Eliot’s bandages when they checked in. He still wasn’t sure that skipping the hospital was such a clever idea, but Eliot stated that he knew, precisely, that this one went just through his shoulder, not damaging the lungs, and then grinned at him, challenging him to say something about it.
As if that version was completely benign. Right, my ass, two holes in the body demanded a hospital and not just a silent, grim man who came after Eliot made a phone call - being in a Washington that buzzed with news of his return had some advantages. The man chased them away and they spent one hour shopping. They traveled light and they needed new clothes, and Eliot needed a full set of everything.
The man just nodded and left when they returned, without any word. But Eliot looked much better. New, properly applied bandages, not over the clothes, for crying out loud, and the bleeding had stopped.
“If you’re so eager to put me to sleep, you should know I can sleep on the plane, too. Just sayin’.”
Hardison turned around when Eliot’s words stirred him from thinking, and he glared at the two. “No way, man, we’re staying here. Either this, or a hospital.”
“Idiots,” the hitter sighed as he closed his eyes and rested his head on the chair.
He didn’t look well, and this quick acceptance, without growling and arguing showed much more than his posture. Hardison studied his face, pale and tired, with lines of suppressed pain, and wondered how the hitter really felt after this afternoon, how he was dealing with all that shit that troubled him. Probably as if nothing special happened, he answered himself immediately. Yet, his grim mood wasn’t improved with getting shot twice, that was sure. They were joking this morning about things that could’ve made him smile, he remembered, and though that memory felt like years before, he knew the reason for the hitter’s bad mood. He joined them in Washington from Boston, not Portland. Obviously, those four days he spent there were too short. He grinned.
“If you want, we can fly to Boston,” Hardison said innocently, just to test his theory, watching him. “So you can recover there in more pleasant surroundings… in gentler hands than ours.”
A quick, broad smile flew over Eliot’s face before he opened his eyes to frown at him.
“Portland, Hardison.” A gruff reply, somehow softened by the smile that preceded.
“Riiight…” he said, “But I wasn’t talking about small weird blondes in Boston. I was talking about visiting Betsy. The real nurse, instead of a mute butcher, might come handy.”
“What?! No way,” and the softness was gone, just as he thought it would. Hardison grinned directly into his mad glare, letting him know, exactly, that he noticed his smile, and turned his back on him again, pressing a button on his phone.
“Yo, Nate, what’s up man?”
***
“You’re on the plane already?” Nate sighed, trying not to show how he hated that ‘what’s up’ expression. He poured a coffee and glanced sideways to the tables where Sophie held her class in frozen concentration over something.
She avoided his eyes.
He sighed again and concentrated on Hardison’s words.
“-and if you don’t need us right away, we thought we could - should - let Parker have a little fun. You know, sightseeing, but supervised, don’t worry. Responsibility as it’s best. In fact, funny thing is, she’s not even too eager to stay, but we thought it would be-“
Sophie’s soft voice, distant and gentle, cut off the hacker’s explanation. This time Nate didn’t try to catch her eyes. She would think of it as a distraction, and it would only add more fuel to the-
“- we are certainly not trying to avoid any work, you should know that. You do know that, right?” Hardison didn’t wait for answer. “There’s plenty of time before you meet the next client, and we are not needed there. We wrapped up everything that needed wrapping, diamonds are on their way, and we’re gonna enjoy a day or two, that’s all.”
We wrapped up everything? Nate blinked, noticing that we being dominant in hacker’s speech, usually full of me myself and I, and he felt his tail switching and ears going up. Hardison was bringing the group ahead and putting individuals in the background. Just great. Collective guilt.
“Is that so?” he asked lightly.
He could feel Hardison’s eyes widening in quick thinking.
“What do you mean?” A slight note of caution was evident in the casual remark.
“What’s going on, Hardison?” he asked, letting the briefing tone of voice creep into his words.
“What? Nothing is going on!! We booked an apartment and we’re just preparing to go out, Eliot knows good restaurants. They're practically out the door already, I gotta go now, they’re calling me. Call if anything happens, okay?”
The line went dead before he could say anything to keep him on, and Nate suppressed a curse, putting the phone in his pocket.
This didn’t sound as if they were in trouble, but surely it sounded as if they were up to something. He dearly hoped they weren’t planning a heist on the National Museum of Natural History.
He kept his eyes on the coffee, not watching the tables. He could still hear Sophie’s voice softly explaining some difficult expressions, and he remembered the same softness from the last evening, when they got home after yesterday’s mess with Sterling and Ma Mystere.
He remembered even better how quickly that softness disappeared - and he still couldn’t figure out what, exactly, he did, said or thought wrong. He could, with painful clarity, recall everything that went wrong after that, when the fight exploded, when fire burned into the white heat and then went into ice cold, frozen silence.
Yep, he sighed; they better be not in trouble.
Because if they were, the rest of the Leverage Consulting & Associates would travel in separate planes.
***
“That went smooth,” Hardison said, staring at his phone. Eliot had his head bowed and one hand over his eyes. Parker was biting her lip and looking at him with a bland stare. “What? He might, mark my words, might sense something, but there’s no way to prove anything. We’re cool.”
“Indeed,” Eliot said wearily.
“And now, time for resting,” he put the phone in his pocket and motioned Parker to move. “We all need it, so don’t argue. If you need anything, call, okay?”
Parker put two bags beside the chair and emptied them on the small table, within Eliot’s reach. “This one - clothes. This one - stuff.”
The hitter glanced at the things she brought and frowned again. “Parker, we’ll stay here just tomorrow, I don’t need - I surely won’t use the hotel’s spa - what’s this?”
Hardison took a few small steps closer to the bathroom that divided their two rooms.
“Avocado oil and shea butter hair conditioner, Garnier,” Hardison sang. “We thought you would be glad-“ He ducked as fast as he could. He was prepared but still the bottle went dangerously close to his head. “Nah, shame on you,” he grinned. “If you wanted that scent to fill the room, what, I understand completely, you could just empty it on the table, you didn’t have to - okay, okay, we’re going.”
He pushed Parker in front of himself, checking once more the level of annoyance in hitter’s eyes - surprisingly, not so much.
***
“It’s not evening yet. I don’t need to rest,” Parker said when she joined him, still pink from the shower and with wet hair. Her black clothes were ruined, they had to buy a new set. She wore his shirt as a robe.
“I have to.” And he did need the rest, he was dead tired. “Besides, he might leave the chair now when we’re not around, and go to bed. That was the point of this apartment, right?”
“Right,” she sighed and plunged onto the bed. He moved over to make room, but she stayed on the lower half, resting her chin on her fists.
“What?” he asked gently.
“Lies ruin everything,” she murmured barely audible.
He froze. Sooner or later, she would find out why they moved to Portland, and she would know he lied - kept it for himself - and for the moment he feared that she sensed something about it.
“We should’ve told them why we’re staying, and simply told them not to come.” He started to breathe again when she continued.
“Maybe. But there’s no harm in this, and it might be useful. One or two days of rest, and he’ll be able to travel. That’s all. Now, get over here.” He tapped the bed beside himself.
The thief rolled over and landed in his arms. He pulled her closer, squeezing her tighter than he wanted, but much less than he needed. He managed to keep his kiss light, not to show her how fear was ebbing too slowly, still present as a shadow behind his shoulder.
“You won’t lose me, ever,” she whispered. She knew he was thinking about that moment in front of the train, when panic left him breathless, shaken, when a simple embrace meant the world, meant she was alive, meant he won’t lose her.
“Of course I won’t,” he said lightly. “And if I did, I would track you, and find you, and bring you back - there’s no escaping from this, mama.”
She chuckled and snuggled closer; they both knew he avoided that moment in the darkness, but he wasn’t ready to speak about it. Not now.
Her hair was wet and it soaked his collar, but he didn’t care; he just kept holding her, allowing her warmth to clear all shadows from his mind, just enjoying the moment. He didn’t need anything else now.
And he knew she needed it too.
***
Parker sneaked one hour later to check on Eliot. She was the only one who could enter the room without him noticing it.
When he heard her pissed off hiss, Hardison quickly jumped from the bed.
The damn idiot was still in the chair, with his leg stretched out on a small table. He was texting.
“I’m resting. Go away.”
“Of all stupid things-“
“It’s the same. I’ll sleep later. I’m fine.”
Hardison didn’t have to guess whom he was texting - instead of growling, Parker got only a normal, soft explanation. Any other time he would enjoy immensely seeing Eliot Spencer texting like a teenager, with soft light in his eyes and that hidden smile, but not now, not when he needed - wait a minute. Hardison erased his own smile and looked better.
Nope, that wasn’t a soft light - his eyes were glazed. He bit back the curse and came closer, noticing sheen of sweat on his forehead.
“What?” the hitter’s eyes were blurred when he looked at him.
“We should go to hospital, Eliot, you have a fever.”
“That’s good. Fever is just the body’s reaction to trauma, defensive mechanisms are doing what they ought to do. Nothing to worry about, it was expected. It’ll pass tomorrow.”
“You’re sitting.” Parker’s voice was deadly even.
“I’m amazed with your perceptiveness. Now go away.” Eliot lowered his head and sent the message.
“What would Betsy do? You would be in that bed faster than you could say 'Yes Ma’am'!”
“I’m comfortable, Parker. Leave me alone.”
It wasn’t just a matter of comfort, Hardison realized glancing across the room. The chair was positioned three meters from the door, turned slightly so he could cover both door and the window - in case of an attack, he would spring from the chair and be at the door before knob turned; the thing he couldn’t do from the bed. People knew he was in Washington, dangerous people. A search for them could easily, and very quickly, lead them to this hotel.
He learned a long time ago to calculate danger according to Eliot’s behavior, and though the hitter obviously was very cautious and prepared, they weren’t in imminent danger. If he thought they might be attacked, he would never have agreed to stay. This was just a precaution, not paranoia.
But Parker didn’t catch any of that - she stood in front of the chair with her fists on her hips.
“You have to lay down,” she continued.
“No, I don’t,” Eliot started to lose his patience rapidly, and Hardison took another chair so he could see them both. He would usually avoid getting caught into exchange of glances as nasty as these were - they glared with the same strength - but now he flinched, remembering their exchange on the train, remembering the panic that froze him when he realized what they were preparing to do. And the realization that there was no way he could stop them was the worst of all.
“We can eat now, and then continue with resting,” he jumped in, trying to calm the situation down, but they didn’t react, as if he didn’t say anything. Honestly, there wasn’t anything that Parker could do to make Eliot change his mind. She was already too pissed off to try puppy eyes and Eliot wasn’t playing with a full deck either - in pain, with fever and tired, his patience at extremely low levels.
“You asked for it,” Parker said, pulling out her phone.
***
“Yes dear?” Sophie waved to the last of her students, collecting her notes from the table. “Are you on the plane yet?”
“Nope - Nate didn’t tell you? We’re staying two more days here, two of them want to show me Washington.”
“Ah, I see.” Sophie glanced to Nate who was sitting at the bar, talking with the waiter, with his back turned to her. She hesitated a second. “No, we didn’t talk, he is not here…I just finished with my class. Have fun.”
“How do you make a man do what you want when he is against it?” When Parker blurted her question, Sophie stopped her hand on the papers. The thief sounded aggravated.
“Why is he against it?” she carefully asked. “If Hardison is stopping you from doing something that he thinks is not…clever… maybe you should listen to his reasons before you decide what to do.”
“It’s Eliot. He, he…” Parker stopped. “We had a quarrel about restaurants. Food. That stuff. And he won’t listen.”
Sophie rubbed her forehead. “What kind of quarrel, Parker? Argument, fight, usual snarling, what?”
“Irrelevant. He won't agree to do something clever, and Hardison is one my side. What do you do to make him do what you want?”
“I don’t.”
“What does Nate do?”
“I don’t know. Listen, Parker-“
“Give me Nate.”
“No, I can’t…” she hesitated. “He is busy. Listen, darling, if you can’t agree about food or restaurants - and you never can - maybe you should find something else, the third option.” Sudden suspicion hit her unprepared. They were always fighting about food, but Parker never before asked for advice about that particular subject. This fight was either very nasty… or it wasn’t about food at all. “This is about food? You’re not doing something else, fighting over something else?”
“Of course not,” Parker’s chuckle sounded one octave higher than usual, and Sophie sighed. Dear God, what they were up to?
“When did you say you’ll return?” she asked softly.
“Two days. Why can’t you give me Nate, where is he?”
“Around… doing things. You don’t need him, just simply stop fighting and decide something that will make all of you happy, okay?
“Okay,” Parker mumbled and cut the line.
Sophie stared at the phone, wondering what, exactly, did she just tell her to do.
Sightseeing, the three of them, like normal people? Right.
She had a very, very bad feeling about this. She looked at Nate’s back. She should tell him, but they obviously called him first and told him about their delay, so he knew. If there was something suspicious, he would notice it.
She didn’t want to talk to him.
She put the papers into her bag and went home without turning back.
***
Parker stared at the phone while the two of them patiently waited for the verdict.
“So?” Eliot was the first to lose the patience. “Knock it off, Parker, no grifting will move me from here - when I said I would stay here, I meant it.”
“You talked to Nate, Hardison,” Parker ran over his words, looking at him. “How did he sound?”
“Why?” he exchanged glances with Eliot. “Pretty silent, a little suspicious, and like I caught him in thinking…. what means, usual Nate.”
“Sophie sounded strange,” Parker murmured, turning the phone in her hand, frowning. “Like leave-me-alone strange. And her smile was fake, the one she uses when she doesn’t want to smile.”
“Maybe she had-“
“I asked her twice about Nate, and she hesitated a second both times, and said she can’t call him. The first time she said he was not there, and the second time that she couldn’t call him because he was busy with doing things. And that doing things sounded as if she made it up, quickly.”
“And your point is?” Eliot growled.
“Something’s happening in Portland. Something’s wrong.”
They both looked at her. She sounded serious, not pissed off. Hardison tried to remember how Nate really sounded, but he had concentrated more on the things he was telling him, he didn’t pay full attention to the mastermind’s voice and words, except to search for suspicion.
Eliot was silently looking at Parker, all annoyance cleared from his face, and watchfulness returned into his eyes.
Silence spread for some time while they were thinking, and Hardison could swear that the ticking from their heads was almost audible.
“They would tell us if they were in trouble, or if something bad happened,” he said quietly.
“Yep, just as we told them about him,” Parker pointed at Eliot. This time, her eyes were unhappy. Hardison suppressed a smile - if she now tried to move him to the bed, it would take less than a minute… but the bed was forgotten for now.
He stood up and went into their room, returning with a laptop bag. When he opened it, he knew it was a sign that trouble was now official.
“They don’t know anything about you being shot,” he said waiting for system to boot up. “If they knew, it might be a reason for not telling us about trouble. But there’s no logic in keeping that from us. Why? Not to ruin our two days vacation? Doesn’t make any sense.”
“Nate is keeping something from us since we came in Portland, don’t tell me you didn’t notice that,” said Elliot. Hardison kept himself busy staring into the still blank screen, not meeting his eyes. “I would usually think that they simply fought over something, but I’m not so sure now,” the hitter continued. “We should go back.”
“You’re not going anywhere. You can’t. Not until we’re sure that Parker is not imagining things.”
“Ha!” she hissed. “I’m not the paranoid one here - I just know Sophie, and I know how she sounds when she’s upset and worried.”
“But you were upset and worried, too,” he tried, but shut his mouth when she glared at him. “Okay, okay, I trust you - something is wrong.”
“They finished their part with Castelman and diamonds without problem, and before we did our part,” said Eliot. “They wouldn’t hide it if that’s connected with the job. Something else is going on.”
“There isn’t much I can see from here,” Hardison said. “I have nothing to work with, except to start searching for random enemies that could-“
“Well, there is one way to do research without that damn typing,” Eliot pulled out his phone.
***
Nate was just replacing his coffee with a Jack when his phone rang. He checked the display. Eliot. The three of them pulled off the entire Castelman case without one single call, Hardison called only this morning to tell him, in two sentences, that it was finished, and now they were calling every ten minutes? If he didn’t already think that something was happening in Washington, now he would start to worry.
“What are you doing?” The gruff voice made him smile, though he wasn’t feeling like smiling.
“Good evening to you, too, Eliot,” he said softly. “How can I help you?”
“With answering my question, for starters. What are you doing?”
“I’m sitting at the bar, my right hand holds the phone, I’m looking at Mike who is eyeing me very suspiciously, my left hand-“
Low growl stopped him. “What’s going on in Portland, Nate? Where’s Sophie? Are you in trouble, and if you are, what kind of trouble?”
This was going from bad to worse, he sighed. They were projecting. He wondered if they knew how much they revealed about their doings with simply stating their suspicions about his.
“Nothing is going on, Eliot, and there’s no trouble here.”
“You can talk freely?”
“If I can’t, if I’m held on the aim of the gun, how do you think I would tell it to you? No, I can’t talk freely? That question is absurd.”
“Why are you snapping?”
“I’m not snapping,” Yes, he was snapping. He rubbed the back of his neck, hiding the sigh. “I’m just not in the mood to answer your paranoid questions.”
“Why?”
“Stop it.”
“Where’s Sophie?”
“Not here. If you want to talk to her, call her. In fact, I strongly suggest you do that. Now.
“Why?”
Now, he sighed.
“Because nothing is going on. Maybe you’ll believe her.”
“Define nothing.”
“Goodbye Eliot.”
He really missed old telephones that could be slammed; simple pressing the button to end the conversation wasn’t enough.
Only after he put the phone on the table did he became aware of the strange silence around Eliot; not a word, not a sound. They weren’t in the restaurant, nor on the way to one. At least he wasn’t.
What the hell was happening in Washington?
.
Author: Valawenel
Giftee: serenelystrange
Rating: ? nothing disturbing in it
Characters/Pairing: The team, gen, canon (N/S, H/P)
Word Count: 8.400 words
Spoilers: Major spoilers for Season 5, the fic is a Tag for The Rundown Job
Warnings: no warnings
Disclaimer: /
Summary: Just a couple of hours after the events in Washington, the Team, though on opposite sides of the country, has to deal with one more problem.
Notes: This was a tough one. I really have no idea is this what you wanted (mainly because I still don't know exactly what fluff means) I tried to keep it full of good vibes, positive thinking, warm feelings, etc. and there's a happy end. When the list of your prompts grew ( and thank you for that, I was despairing, FleurB is my witness :D ), I took all of that and mixed together glimpses of hurt/comfort, H/P+E fluff, general fluff and N/S temporarily breaking up. I couldn't do AU - I don't do that, I can't. I hope you'll like it :/
- The SNAFU Job -
PART ONE
The funny thing was, he liked Washington. A lot. But not any more.
Even Batman needed at least a few days to save a city or a world, and they did it in one afternoon, yet Hardison somehow skipped the gloating. He couldn’t even feel a simple satisfaction with a job done. Too many very stressful moments in so short a time - his nerves were still trembling.
He fidgeted with a phone, staring somewhere besides the only window of a small apartment, trying a few casual and calm approaches before he called Nate. Eliot was resolved - no panicky messages about him being shot. The last thing the hitter needed was Nate and Sophie catching the first flight to Washington, Nate probably being dragged, but flying nevertheless. Eliot and Parker were only three meters away. He calmed his hand on the phone. They were too perceptive sometimes.
He didn’t feel like superhero, he dreaded every single moment of this day. He could say it started with thirty seconds of panic when he had to think of how to divert a sniper. Eliot and Parker had just left to do their part, not even thinking that he might not be able to think of something, and no matter how flattering that really was, it was frightening at the same time. After that, arrest came as relaxing intermezzo.
He sighed, exhaling the tension that still coiled inside him.
After the arrest and Vance, everything went down - discovery of the flue, and realization what was at stake, fucking Claymore mine, hundreds of dead pigs, a corpse… he didn’t stumble upon dead people on regular basis, thank you very much. And fear. Lots of fear.
Now when he was thinking about it, he realized that he hadn't been as scared when Parker was on the train, or maybe he was too occupied with two of them being chased, trying to get to her on time. He simply didn’t have time to picture what she had to do on the speeding train to stop it and get in. Yet, the rest of the train episode was cut deeply into his memory with every single detail. And feeling.
He glanced at Eliot and Parker, the hitter in the chair, and Parker sitting on the armrest, entering his personal space and trying to make him go to bed. Completely usual mixture of grinning and growling, annoyance and poking - both of them behaving like it was any other day in the office, like they didn’t all almost die just a few hours ago.
He couldn’t. All of it was too fresh in his mind. Parker cornered just one meter from the gun pointed at her, the two of them too far away, panic that held him when crazy old man waved the gun, shock when he saw blossoming purple where a bullet went through Eliot, red numbers ticking furiously fast, blinking countdown for all of Washington…
He cleared his throat. They both looked at him as if he was trying to say something and not just get rid of lump in it. “I’m thinking what to tell Nate,” he said lightly.
“Tell him we’ll stay two more days to visit National Museum of Natural History,” Parker offered with a spark in her eye. “To say hi to the Hope diamond and Hall necklace, and Dom Pedro aquamarine-“
“We don’t want them here, Parker,” Eliot said frowning at her.
“No, you don’t want them here. I don’t mind if they come. Maybe Sophie would be more efficient in pouring some sense in you.”
“Chair is comfortable.”
“So is the bed.”
“Nope.”
Hardison muted their voices, just looking at them, still holding the phone, but not quite thinking what to say to Nate anymore. This day had been disturbingly close to utter disaster. He could’ve lost them both.
He got up and went to the window that overlooked a quiet back street with two parks. The small hotel was a safe place, though Parker had to snatch one long coat to hide Eliot’s bandages when they checked in. He still wasn’t sure that skipping the hospital was such a clever idea, but Eliot stated that he knew, precisely, that this one went just through his shoulder, not damaging the lungs, and then grinned at him, challenging him to say something about it.
As if that version was completely benign. Right, my ass, two holes in the body demanded a hospital and not just a silent, grim man who came after Eliot made a phone call - being in a Washington that buzzed with news of his return had some advantages. The man chased them away and they spent one hour shopping. They traveled light and they needed new clothes, and Eliot needed a full set of everything.
The man just nodded and left when they returned, without any word. But Eliot looked much better. New, properly applied bandages, not over the clothes, for crying out loud, and the bleeding had stopped.
“If you’re so eager to put me to sleep, you should know I can sleep on the plane, too. Just sayin’.”
Hardison turned around when Eliot’s words stirred him from thinking, and he glared at the two. “No way, man, we’re staying here. Either this, or a hospital.”
“Idiots,” the hitter sighed as he closed his eyes and rested his head on the chair.
He didn’t look well, and this quick acceptance, without growling and arguing showed much more than his posture. Hardison studied his face, pale and tired, with lines of suppressed pain, and wondered how the hitter really felt after this afternoon, how he was dealing with all that shit that troubled him. Probably as if nothing special happened, he answered himself immediately. Yet, his grim mood wasn’t improved with getting shot twice, that was sure. They were joking this morning about things that could’ve made him smile, he remembered, and though that memory felt like years before, he knew the reason for the hitter’s bad mood. He joined them in Washington from Boston, not Portland. Obviously, those four days he spent there were too short. He grinned.
“If you want, we can fly to Boston,” Hardison said innocently, just to test his theory, watching him. “So you can recover there in more pleasant surroundings… in gentler hands than ours.”
A quick, broad smile flew over Eliot’s face before he opened his eyes to frown at him.
“Portland, Hardison.” A gruff reply, somehow softened by the smile that preceded.
“Riiight…” he said, “But I wasn’t talking about small weird blondes in Boston. I was talking about visiting Betsy. The real nurse, instead of a mute butcher, might come handy.”
“What?! No way,” and the softness was gone, just as he thought it would. Hardison grinned directly into his mad glare, letting him know, exactly, that he noticed his smile, and turned his back on him again, pressing a button on his phone.
“Yo, Nate, what’s up man?”
***
“You’re on the plane already?” Nate sighed, trying not to show how he hated that ‘what’s up’ expression. He poured a coffee and glanced sideways to the tables where Sophie held her class in frozen concentration over something.
She avoided his eyes.
He sighed again and concentrated on Hardison’s words.
“-and if you don’t need us right away, we thought we could - should - let Parker have a little fun. You know, sightseeing, but supervised, don’t worry. Responsibility as it’s best. In fact, funny thing is, she’s not even too eager to stay, but we thought it would be-“
Sophie’s soft voice, distant and gentle, cut off the hacker’s explanation. This time Nate didn’t try to catch her eyes. She would think of it as a distraction, and it would only add more fuel to the-
“- we are certainly not trying to avoid any work, you should know that. You do know that, right?” Hardison didn’t wait for answer. “There’s plenty of time before you meet the next client, and we are not needed there. We wrapped up everything that needed wrapping, diamonds are on their way, and we’re gonna enjoy a day or two, that’s all.”
We wrapped up everything? Nate blinked, noticing that we being dominant in hacker’s speech, usually full of me myself and I, and he felt his tail switching and ears going up. Hardison was bringing the group ahead and putting individuals in the background. Just great. Collective guilt.
“Is that so?” he asked lightly.
He could feel Hardison’s eyes widening in quick thinking.
“What do you mean?” A slight note of caution was evident in the casual remark.
“What’s going on, Hardison?” he asked, letting the briefing tone of voice creep into his words.
“What? Nothing is going on!! We booked an apartment and we’re just preparing to go out, Eliot knows good restaurants. They're practically out the door already, I gotta go now, they’re calling me. Call if anything happens, okay?”
The line went dead before he could say anything to keep him on, and Nate suppressed a curse, putting the phone in his pocket.
This didn’t sound as if they were in trouble, but surely it sounded as if they were up to something. He dearly hoped they weren’t planning a heist on the National Museum of Natural History.
He kept his eyes on the coffee, not watching the tables. He could still hear Sophie’s voice softly explaining some difficult expressions, and he remembered the same softness from the last evening, when they got home after yesterday’s mess with Sterling and Ma Mystere.
He remembered even better how quickly that softness disappeared - and he still couldn’t figure out what, exactly, he did, said or thought wrong. He could, with painful clarity, recall everything that went wrong after that, when the fight exploded, when fire burned into the white heat and then went into ice cold, frozen silence.
Yep, he sighed; they better be not in trouble.
Because if they were, the rest of the Leverage Consulting & Associates would travel in separate planes.
***
“That went smooth,” Hardison said, staring at his phone. Eliot had his head bowed and one hand over his eyes. Parker was biting her lip and looking at him with a bland stare. “What? He might, mark my words, might sense something, but there’s no way to prove anything. We’re cool.”
“Indeed,” Eliot said wearily.
“And now, time for resting,” he put the phone in his pocket and motioned Parker to move. “We all need it, so don’t argue. If you need anything, call, okay?”
Parker put two bags beside the chair and emptied them on the small table, within Eliot’s reach. “This one - clothes. This one - stuff.”
The hitter glanced at the things she brought and frowned again. “Parker, we’ll stay here just tomorrow, I don’t need - I surely won’t use the hotel’s spa - what’s this?”
Hardison took a few small steps closer to the bathroom that divided their two rooms.
“Avocado oil and shea butter hair conditioner, Garnier,” Hardison sang. “We thought you would be glad-“ He ducked as fast as he could. He was prepared but still the bottle went dangerously close to his head. “Nah, shame on you,” he grinned. “If you wanted that scent to fill the room, what, I understand completely, you could just empty it on the table, you didn’t have to - okay, okay, we’re going.”
He pushed Parker in front of himself, checking once more the level of annoyance in hitter’s eyes - surprisingly, not so much.
***
“It’s not evening yet. I don’t need to rest,” Parker said when she joined him, still pink from the shower and with wet hair. Her black clothes were ruined, they had to buy a new set. She wore his shirt as a robe.
“I have to.” And he did need the rest, he was dead tired. “Besides, he might leave the chair now when we’re not around, and go to bed. That was the point of this apartment, right?”
“Right,” she sighed and plunged onto the bed. He moved over to make room, but she stayed on the lower half, resting her chin on her fists.
“What?” he asked gently.
“Lies ruin everything,” she murmured barely audible.
He froze. Sooner or later, she would find out why they moved to Portland, and she would know he lied - kept it for himself - and for the moment he feared that she sensed something about it.
“We should’ve told them why we’re staying, and simply told them not to come.” He started to breathe again when she continued.
“Maybe. But there’s no harm in this, and it might be useful. One or two days of rest, and he’ll be able to travel. That’s all. Now, get over here.” He tapped the bed beside himself.
The thief rolled over and landed in his arms. He pulled her closer, squeezing her tighter than he wanted, but much less than he needed. He managed to keep his kiss light, not to show her how fear was ebbing too slowly, still present as a shadow behind his shoulder.
“You won’t lose me, ever,” she whispered. She knew he was thinking about that moment in front of the train, when panic left him breathless, shaken, when a simple embrace meant the world, meant she was alive, meant he won’t lose her.
“Of course I won’t,” he said lightly. “And if I did, I would track you, and find you, and bring you back - there’s no escaping from this, mama.”
She chuckled and snuggled closer; they both knew he avoided that moment in the darkness, but he wasn’t ready to speak about it. Not now.
Her hair was wet and it soaked his collar, but he didn’t care; he just kept holding her, allowing her warmth to clear all shadows from his mind, just enjoying the moment. He didn’t need anything else now.
And he knew she needed it too.
***
Parker sneaked one hour later to check on Eliot. She was the only one who could enter the room without him noticing it.
When he heard her pissed off hiss, Hardison quickly jumped from the bed.
The damn idiot was still in the chair, with his leg stretched out on a small table. He was texting.
“I’m resting. Go away.”
“Of all stupid things-“
“It’s the same. I’ll sleep later. I’m fine.”
Hardison didn’t have to guess whom he was texting - instead of growling, Parker got only a normal, soft explanation. Any other time he would enjoy immensely seeing Eliot Spencer texting like a teenager, with soft light in his eyes and that hidden smile, but not now, not when he needed - wait a minute. Hardison erased his own smile and looked better.
Nope, that wasn’t a soft light - his eyes were glazed. He bit back the curse and came closer, noticing sheen of sweat on his forehead.
“What?” the hitter’s eyes were blurred when he looked at him.
“We should go to hospital, Eliot, you have a fever.”
“That’s good. Fever is just the body’s reaction to trauma, defensive mechanisms are doing what they ought to do. Nothing to worry about, it was expected. It’ll pass tomorrow.”
“You’re sitting.” Parker’s voice was deadly even.
“I’m amazed with your perceptiveness. Now go away.” Eliot lowered his head and sent the message.
“What would Betsy do? You would be in that bed faster than you could say 'Yes Ma’am'!”
“I’m comfortable, Parker. Leave me alone.”
It wasn’t just a matter of comfort, Hardison realized glancing across the room. The chair was positioned three meters from the door, turned slightly so he could cover both door and the window - in case of an attack, he would spring from the chair and be at the door before knob turned; the thing he couldn’t do from the bed. People knew he was in Washington, dangerous people. A search for them could easily, and very quickly, lead them to this hotel.
He learned a long time ago to calculate danger according to Eliot’s behavior, and though the hitter obviously was very cautious and prepared, they weren’t in imminent danger. If he thought they might be attacked, he would never have agreed to stay. This was just a precaution, not paranoia.
But Parker didn’t catch any of that - she stood in front of the chair with her fists on her hips.
“You have to lay down,” she continued.
“No, I don’t,” Eliot started to lose his patience rapidly, and Hardison took another chair so he could see them both. He would usually avoid getting caught into exchange of glances as nasty as these were - they glared with the same strength - but now he flinched, remembering their exchange on the train, remembering the panic that froze him when he realized what they were preparing to do. And the realization that there was no way he could stop them was the worst of all.
“We can eat now, and then continue with resting,” he jumped in, trying to calm the situation down, but they didn’t react, as if he didn’t say anything. Honestly, there wasn’t anything that Parker could do to make Eliot change his mind. She was already too pissed off to try puppy eyes and Eliot wasn’t playing with a full deck either - in pain, with fever and tired, his patience at extremely low levels.
“You asked for it,” Parker said, pulling out her phone.
***
“Yes dear?” Sophie waved to the last of her students, collecting her notes from the table. “Are you on the plane yet?”
“Nope - Nate didn’t tell you? We’re staying two more days here, two of them want to show me Washington.”
“Ah, I see.” Sophie glanced to Nate who was sitting at the bar, talking with the waiter, with his back turned to her. She hesitated a second. “No, we didn’t talk, he is not here…I just finished with my class. Have fun.”
“How do you make a man do what you want when he is against it?” When Parker blurted her question, Sophie stopped her hand on the papers. The thief sounded aggravated.
“Why is he against it?” she carefully asked. “If Hardison is stopping you from doing something that he thinks is not…clever… maybe you should listen to his reasons before you decide what to do.”
“It’s Eliot. He, he…” Parker stopped. “We had a quarrel about restaurants. Food. That stuff. And he won’t listen.”
Sophie rubbed her forehead. “What kind of quarrel, Parker? Argument, fight, usual snarling, what?”
“Irrelevant. He won't agree to do something clever, and Hardison is one my side. What do you do to make him do what you want?”
“I don’t.”
“What does Nate do?”
“I don’t know. Listen, Parker-“
“Give me Nate.”
“No, I can’t…” she hesitated. “He is busy. Listen, darling, if you can’t agree about food or restaurants - and you never can - maybe you should find something else, the third option.” Sudden suspicion hit her unprepared. They were always fighting about food, but Parker never before asked for advice about that particular subject. This fight was either very nasty… or it wasn’t about food at all. “This is about food? You’re not doing something else, fighting over something else?”
“Of course not,” Parker’s chuckle sounded one octave higher than usual, and Sophie sighed. Dear God, what they were up to?
“When did you say you’ll return?” she asked softly.
“Two days. Why can’t you give me Nate, where is he?”
“Around… doing things. You don’t need him, just simply stop fighting and decide something that will make all of you happy, okay?
“Okay,” Parker mumbled and cut the line.
Sophie stared at the phone, wondering what, exactly, did she just tell her to do.
Sightseeing, the three of them, like normal people? Right.
She had a very, very bad feeling about this. She looked at Nate’s back. She should tell him, but they obviously called him first and told him about their delay, so he knew. If there was something suspicious, he would notice it.
She didn’t want to talk to him.
She put the papers into her bag and went home without turning back.
***
Parker stared at the phone while the two of them patiently waited for the verdict.
“So?” Eliot was the first to lose the patience. “Knock it off, Parker, no grifting will move me from here - when I said I would stay here, I meant it.”
“You talked to Nate, Hardison,” Parker ran over his words, looking at him. “How did he sound?”
“Why?” he exchanged glances with Eliot. “Pretty silent, a little suspicious, and like I caught him in thinking…. what means, usual Nate.”
“Sophie sounded strange,” Parker murmured, turning the phone in her hand, frowning. “Like leave-me-alone strange. And her smile was fake, the one she uses when she doesn’t want to smile.”
“Maybe she had-“
“I asked her twice about Nate, and she hesitated a second both times, and said she can’t call him. The first time she said he was not there, and the second time that she couldn’t call him because he was busy with doing things. And that doing things sounded as if she made it up, quickly.”
“And your point is?” Eliot growled.
“Something’s happening in Portland. Something’s wrong.”
They both looked at her. She sounded serious, not pissed off. Hardison tried to remember how Nate really sounded, but he had concentrated more on the things he was telling him, he didn’t pay full attention to the mastermind’s voice and words, except to search for suspicion.
Eliot was silently looking at Parker, all annoyance cleared from his face, and watchfulness returned into his eyes.
Silence spread for some time while they were thinking, and Hardison could swear that the ticking from their heads was almost audible.
“They would tell us if they were in trouble, or if something bad happened,” he said quietly.
“Yep, just as we told them about him,” Parker pointed at Eliot. This time, her eyes were unhappy. Hardison suppressed a smile - if she now tried to move him to the bed, it would take less than a minute… but the bed was forgotten for now.
He stood up and went into their room, returning with a laptop bag. When he opened it, he knew it was a sign that trouble was now official.
“They don’t know anything about you being shot,” he said waiting for system to boot up. “If they knew, it might be a reason for not telling us about trouble. But there’s no logic in keeping that from us. Why? Not to ruin our two days vacation? Doesn’t make any sense.”
“Nate is keeping something from us since we came in Portland, don’t tell me you didn’t notice that,” said Elliot. Hardison kept himself busy staring into the still blank screen, not meeting his eyes. “I would usually think that they simply fought over something, but I’m not so sure now,” the hitter continued. “We should go back.”
“You’re not going anywhere. You can’t. Not until we’re sure that Parker is not imagining things.”
“Ha!” she hissed. “I’m not the paranoid one here - I just know Sophie, and I know how she sounds when she’s upset and worried.”
“But you were upset and worried, too,” he tried, but shut his mouth when she glared at him. “Okay, okay, I trust you - something is wrong.”
“They finished their part with Castelman and diamonds without problem, and before we did our part,” said Eliot. “They wouldn’t hide it if that’s connected with the job. Something else is going on.”
“There isn’t much I can see from here,” Hardison said. “I have nothing to work with, except to start searching for random enemies that could-“
“Well, there is one way to do research without that damn typing,” Eliot pulled out his phone.
***
Nate was just replacing his coffee with a Jack when his phone rang. He checked the display. Eliot. The three of them pulled off the entire Castelman case without one single call, Hardison called only this morning to tell him, in two sentences, that it was finished, and now they were calling every ten minutes? If he didn’t already think that something was happening in Washington, now he would start to worry.
“What are you doing?” The gruff voice made him smile, though he wasn’t feeling like smiling.
“Good evening to you, too, Eliot,” he said softly. “How can I help you?”
“With answering my question, for starters. What are you doing?”
“I’m sitting at the bar, my right hand holds the phone, I’m looking at Mike who is eyeing me very suspiciously, my left hand-“
Low growl stopped him. “What’s going on in Portland, Nate? Where’s Sophie? Are you in trouble, and if you are, what kind of trouble?”
This was going from bad to worse, he sighed. They were projecting. He wondered if they knew how much they revealed about their doings with simply stating their suspicions about his.
“Nothing is going on, Eliot, and there’s no trouble here.”
“You can talk freely?”
“If I can’t, if I’m held on the aim of the gun, how do you think I would tell it to you? No, I can’t talk freely? That question is absurd.”
“Why are you snapping?”
“I’m not snapping,” Yes, he was snapping. He rubbed the back of his neck, hiding the sigh. “I’m just not in the mood to answer your paranoid questions.”
“Why?”
“Stop it.”
“Where’s Sophie?”
“Not here. If you want to talk to her, call her. In fact, I strongly suggest you do that. Now.
“Why?”
Now, he sighed.
“Because nothing is going on. Maybe you’ll believe her.”
“Define nothing.”
“Goodbye Eliot.”
He really missed old telephones that could be slammed; simple pressing the button to end the conversation wasn’t enough.
Only after he put the phone on the table did he became aware of the strange silence around Eliot; not a word, not a sound. They weren’t in the restaurant, nor on the way to one. At least he wasn’t.
What the hell was happening in Washington?
.