Fic: Head-Hunted
Title: Head-hunted
Rating: PG (language, blood, vague allusions to violence)
Gen, no pairing
Summary: SHIELD has been trying to head-hunt Retrieval Specialist Eliot Spencer for a while now.
Word count: 4156
AN: I've wanted to do a 'SHIELD tries to hire Eliot' for a while, but also wanted to write the scene where Clint gets out of the building he crashes through and over to Stark Tower. These moshed together in some pointless, self-serving fun. :D This is TECHNICALLY a 5+1...
0
"Mr. Spencer."
The man standing at parade rest by the train station exit is a stranger, and Eliot had to forcefully resist the urge to correct him with a rank. He'd not been disappeared long, and some habits were going to be harder to break than others, especially when faced with a cheap suit with visible forces training.
Eliot wasn't going to be cowed. There was a gun in the back of his jeans, and he wasn't going back to the Army.
"Who's asking?" he replied. His voice was rougher than he'd expected, and he found himself trying to work out when he'd last spoken to anyone.
"The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division." The suit let that settle for a moment, took a breath. "You've probably not heard of us," he added, deadpan.
Eliot restrained a snort. "With a name like that I'd be surprised if anyone's heard of you."
There's a flicker that might be the edge of a smile on the guy's face, but his posture doesn't relax one iota. "We've followed your military career closely, Mr. Spencer, and given you seem to have no career path in mind as yet, following your departure from the Army, we'd like to offer you a job."
Eliot is stumped for a moment, still trying to parse the idea of some shady governmental 'division' keeping an eye on him. "I'm not interested in a government job," he said firmly, realising the guy was waiting for an answer. He wanted to walk away, to push out through the train station doors and make it clear and final, but he didn't want to give this spook his back. There was something dangerous behind the lean frame and tacky suit, and the Army wasn't going to let him just walk away like he had without some kind of retaliation. "Besides," he said, to cover his itch to move. "I can't see the government being so enthusiastic about my skill set." His voice might break a little at the end there, but he can blame it on the hoarseness still haunting his throat.
Spook work had always seemed so restrictive anyway, too many parameters and rules. Too many versions of 'Sorry son, but we just can't risk any more lives going after them'. Too many 'acceptable losses' and 'predicted outcomes'. There were always more lives to throw at the machine, and it wasn't one where Eliot saw a place for himself.
"You might be surprised," the spook said, his voice a little softer than Eliot had expected, given he'd just turned down his pitch, and who knew how hard he'd had to look to find him in the first place. He had a little frown between his eyes, something like pity. "If you find independent contracting gets boring or... too interesting for you, think of us. This is not a time-limited deal. If, however, you start making trouble for our Division in your new role, this interaction may stand against you."
Eliot huffed a breath of laughter at the disclaimer and let the man leave without causing a fuss. He was much more careful about covering his trail after that.
~
Damien Moreau held a folder - hard copy only - that was periodically updated by his more computer-savvy minions. In it were profiles on a handful of people who, while not worth the investment of time and money to actually track down, should be taken out on sight should any of his menagerie come across them.
Eliot, as befitted his position as Damien's current attack dog, made a point of checking for additions and amendments regularly, and had been in receipt of five-figure bonuses for the four individuals he had taken out of the folder already.
He'd been working for Damien for a year, and was well entrenched as his right-hand man, when his spook friend appeared in the folder. The profile was neatly entitled 'Coulson', the man's picture caught glancing over his shoulder, a gun in his hand, suit jacket flapping as he ran. His employer's cumbersome name had been shortened to 'S.H.I.E.L.D.', which made Eliot grin at the sheer cheese of it. He wondered if the acronym predated the full title - he couldn't remember what half of the letters stood for any more, from that brief conversation three years ago.
The profile was poorly filled, physical descriptions which sounded like Damien's words and no background or family listed. Skills listed were subterfuge and infiltration and his 'preferred weapon' section was a list that included - after several guns and blades - 'grenade launchers'. He wished he'd seen the confrontation that had led to this profile being made, but Damien was trusting him with a longer leash these days, and he was often overseeing international efforts while Damien was at home, or guarding his wife while he undertook the more riskier efforts.
He could contact S.H.I.E.L.D. easily enough, Eliot had no doubt that at least one of his sources reported back to the spooks, and it would be useful to know which one. He could tell Agent Coulson he was reconsidering that job offer. A meeting somewhere quiet would put another bonus in his pocket and cement Eliot's place in Damien's pocket.
He would tell himself, much later, that he just never got around to it. But then he always had been good at lying to himself.
~
It wasn't something he ever really thought about. Even in the most out-of-control and terrifying parts of his freelance career post-Moreau; not sleeping, not staying in one place for more than a few days at a time, learning to live not attached to a gun, learning not to die that way; even then he hadn't reconsidered the vague offer a spook had extended when he was still just a kid.
It seemed a long time ago now, a lifetime ago, and the white hat wasn't made for someone so steeped in red as he was now.
Maybe he'd even forgotten the Agent and his offer, ruled it impossible and put it to the back of his mind, it was hard to tell after the fact; but coming face to face with him gave immediate recognition.
It was obviously not a planned interception - the Agent was in jeans and a pale coloured shirt, open at the collar. He was sitting in a booth with three others; two were hard to see from the angle Eliot had entered the bar, and the third was a balding guy in glasses. There was a serene smile on the Agent's face that folded the moment he locked eyes with Eliot, and he muttered something to the others as he slid out of the booth.
He took the bar-stool next to Eliot, back tight and eyes hard. "Killing me won't get you back in with Moreau," he growled, as soon as the barman had taken Eliot's order and moved away.
Eliot startled at the name, not for the first time. He couldn't imagine a day when that name wouldn't invoke nightmares. "I'm not here to..." He shook his head, re-set. "I don't want to get 'back in' with Moreau," he bit out, finally. "I lost enough getting away from him."
There was confusion in the Agent's eyes, maybe a bit of surprise, "Then why are you..." He glanced back at his friends, as if Eliot might be there for one of them.
Eliot smiled, shook his head. "Just looking for a beer," he chuckled, nodding to the barman as he slid his beer across the bar to him. "Same as you." Eliot glanced back at Coulson's table. The guy in glasses didn't look like much, smart suit not-withstanding, but there was a pair of very muscled forearms visible on the table, and a red-head making no odds of leaning around the booth to stare at Eliot. She looked small, petite, but strangely terrifying despite that. Maybe it was her threatening look, Eliot had been taken down by women with less.
"You know... that job offer's still..." the Agent started, and stopped when Eliot started laughing out loud. His answering grin was wry. "I guess not," he said.
"You're persistent," Eliot said, still getting his laughter under control. "I get why Damien had you kill-listed." He'd meant to say Moreau, but he's still proud of himself for being able to say his name without falling apart. "Did you really go after him with a grenade launcher?"
"You know," the Agent said, "We tried to get you out of there. On two separate occasions. Mr. Moreau didn't take kindly to the second attempt... Or the grenade launcher." He went quiet, then turned to quirk him a grin. "Thanks for not taking up the contract."
He slid off the bar stool and went to rejoin his friends, leaving Eliot staring into his beer.
~
"You look better than you did last time I saw you." The voice from behind him startled Eliot, not that he was going to let it show in front of the spook that had melted out of the shadows.
"Funny how sleep does that," Eliot muttered, as much to himself as to the other man. He was briefly distracted by a shadow shifting on the rooftop opposite, and another in a deeply shadowed alleyway. He wondered if the shadows where there for him, or for the Agent. Maybe this time he wasn't just going to ask nicely.
"Keeping good company is a good start," the spook offered. As if chastised, the two shadows stilled.
"Ford keeps us on our toes," Eliot agreed easily, stepping back to lean against the nearest wall, covering his back and making his field of vision as wide as possible. He was thankful for San Lorenzo's wide streets and low buildings.
"It's been a while since you took up with a team. Mr. Ford is certainly... different to your previous employer."
Eliot took the time to take in Agent Coulson, his new suit definitely richer stock than the one he'd been wearing when they first met, sharply tailored and almost completely hiding the gun holster at his side and the knife down his forearm. Beyond that he hadn't changed, and his expression didn't let on to anything more threatening than any other time they talked. He was curious though, and they were both here in San Lorenzo on the day of Moreau's imprisonment.
"Stop fishing, Coulson," Eliot bit out. "I'm not giving you anything on Ford. You saw Moreau fall, and you know we were there. That's all you know."
There was a moment when Eliot thought the man might have been disappointed, but his smile turned wry quickly. "So you're still not interested in that job offer..."
"I'm in with Ford for the long haul," Eliot replied, sharing a smile. It was strange to think that this man he'd only met a handful of times might actually be a friend.
"Maybe your hacker then, his work is truly sterling."
Eliot turned prickly. "You leave my team alone, Coulson. You hear me? You don't get to leverage us against each other. We're too good for that."
"Well," Coulson nodded, something approving in his gaze. "At least with Ford I get to talk to you directly."
A throat cleared behind him, "Only for as long as I approve of the conversation, Agent Coulson."
Eliot grinned smugly at Coulson's startled expression. "Yeah, he does that," he commiserated, hoping the two shadows didn't see Nate as a threat. Preparing to move if they did. One day Nate was going to get taken out by accident for his grand-standing bullshit.
Once Coulson had slunk away, and the distracting shadows had disappeared back into the scenery, Eliot turned to Nate.
"You'd make a pretty terrifying spook," he mused, his grin teasing.
"SHIELD isn't in the intelligence business, you know," Nate said, heading back towards where the others were camped out, waiting for Eliot so they could walk shoulder-to-shoulder. "They're more intervention, enforcement, logistics... Quite your skill set."
Eliot considered this; ever so briefly comparing his Retrieval Specialist days to his current work. It wasn't a hard decision, even now, with Moreau behind bars. "Hmm... Maybe I'll reconsider next time Parker tries to braid my hair."
~
"I told you there was something going on in New York!" Alec shouted across the room - bigger than it had been an hour ago because of the hole blown out of the ceiling and the gaping glass-less windows. They both flinched, ducking instinctively, as another impact on the building blew out a pane of glass on the floor above, sending it showering down through the hole. Wires sparked in the corner, and then quieted again.
"Damnit Hardison," Eliot ground out, "This isn't our kind of 'something'!"
"Can you get to the..." Alec gestured to the laptop, still spooling something across the screen on the remarkably intact work station.
"Is that really our priority right now?" Eliot shouted. Another window burst inwards above them, and Eliot pulled back from his attempt to get to the laptop. "Damnit!" he said again, for good effect, and then sprinted across the room, grabbing a fire extinguisher from the wall on his way back to the table they were using as cover.
Hardison had the laptop turned towards him, fingers rattling across the keys. "Main phone-lines are all jammed," he reported. "Parker says Grand Central's in a bad way, but she's organising survivors and they're holding the café." He closed the laptop, checking over the case before shoving it into the messenger bag still slung over his shoulder. "Tell me you have some secret-extraction-plan for this building."
Eliot shook his head, more frustration than in a negative. "I wasn't expecting a warzone and freaking... aliens, man. Give me a minute."
Alec took the opportunity to look back at the alien, lying either dead or unconscious (damn, he hoped it was dead) in the middle of the office space, surrounded by the work stations it had destroyed when it had fallen through the hole in the ceiling.
Eliot grabbed Alec by the collar, and he ignored the indignity in favour of getting his feet under him and following Eliot into the stairwell, ducking as a handful of plasterboard panels fell from the ceiling above them.
"Was that your plan?" he asked, brushing the plaster dust off his suit jacket and taking in the concrete stairs and emergency lighting.
"Part of it," Eliot replied, distracted enough not to snap.
"What's the rest?" Alec pushed.
"Working on it."
On the stairs was the still body of a guard, and Alec realised that Eliot had to have come up this way to make it into the office. The guy was clearly unconscious - still breathing regularly. The stairwell looked pretty structurally sound, given the state of the rest of the building. Eliot came back from the guard with his utility belt - walkie, torch, first aid kit and kit knife, not a bad haul but it was hardly going to cover an alien invasion - leaving the guy in the recovery position.
He must have seen Alec looking, because he glared, and muttered- "We don't know how long it's going to be before someone finds him. There would normally be a patrol, I don't think anyone's gonna be patrolling today."
Alec shook it off and forced himself to focus on a plan. "OK, so... All of the... aliens..." Alec suppressed a hysterical giggle, "Are going to be on this side of the building." He pointed down the stairwell. "We can't go down here."
"You still got the blueprints? How far across the building is the second stairwell?"
Alec pulled his tablet out of his bag, blueprints up on the screen with a couple of taps. "If we stay to the inner-most corridors I think we can avoid most of the damage... And any more aliens."
Alec was already moving, eyes on the tablet and trusting Eliot to monitor their surroundings. They found their first survivor huddled under a table in a glass-covered room, wind whistling through shattered window frames.
It didn't take much encouragement to get the guy to follow them, and by the time they'd made it half way through the building they had a gaggle of a dozen office workers, two IT guys, a maintenance engineer and a janitor. Between them they'd gathered another half a dozen fire extinguishers - just in case - three more first aid kits, and enough walkie talkies to make them useful. They started sending out small scouting parties to make sure they didn't miss anyone, and kept forging ahead.
The battle outside was quietening, less breaking glass and more low thump-booms that seemed to be more felt than heard. Something out there was making terrifying low war-cries that seemed to pierce every wall and door in the place.
They were more than three quarters of the way to the other end of the building when there was the sound of breaking glass from the room they were about to investigate.
Eliot and Alec exchanged a glance. Eliot reached for the door handle.
"Don't!" The shout made them both jump, and they scowled as one at the IT guy whose tag identified him - bafflingly - as 'Doo-wop'. "It might be another one of those things!" he hissed in explanation.
One of the nervier women screamed a little as Alec opened the door and stepped into the room.
It wasn't another alien, it was just a guy, albeit one with a bow and arrows, and more than a little glass in him. He was sitting, looking more than a little dazed, in the middle of the glass-littered floor, and there was a relatively small hole in the plate glass window.
"Hey, man. Are you alright?"
There was another round of nervous screams from the onlookers as the guy jumped up, and span to face them with an arrow already nocked.
Alec had his hands up in front of him, shouting 'FRIEND', even as Eliot dragged him bodily back out of the room and around the corner.
"You alright?" Eliot asked him, looking him over like he expected to find arrows sticking out of somewhere.
Alec frowned, still processing. "Woah, I thought SHIELD was a myth," he said eventually.
"SHIELD?" Eliot asked, thinking of shadows on rooftops and muscled forearms.
"That's the logo on his..." Alec gestured at his chest. "Uniform?" he hedged.
Eliot moved back towards the doorway, took a glance to see the guy - the Agent - pushing himself up off the floor. It looked painful.
"We're friends of SHIELD," he shouted, physically holding Alec back as he stepped into the doorway. "We just want to help."
The guy looked up, bow slung over his shoulder and his arm already welling red as he brushed glass carelessly out of his skin.
"Yeah, yeah," he acknowledged.
Alec barged past him, first aid kit at the ready. The guy had looked up, seemingly suck on Eliot for a moment. Eliot had to wonder how hard he'd hit his head coming through plate glass. It wasn't something he'd want to try.
"Aren't you one of Coulson's pet projects?" he said at last, then shook his head, muttering- "Weren't, come on, Barton, it's not hard."
"Is Coulson..." Eliot started, surprised by his own distress at the idea the man might be dead.
"You're not SHIELD," the Agent said, obviously still processing, but not reacting to Alec pulling bits of glass out of him with deft movements of the first aid kit's tweezers.
"We look like SHIELD to you?" Eliot asked, gesturing to the braver souls who'd come into the room to investigate what was going on.
"He does," he gestured to Alec. "With the... suit. You not so much, but Coulson always did have strange projects," he chuckled, and Eliot couldn't help but think he'd been one of those projects once. The bow kind of lent weight to 'strange'. The Agent pushed Alec away as he started pulling bandages out of the kit. "Thanks, but I need to get to Stark Tower. Do you guys know a way down?"
"We're on our way out now," Eliot said, handing the guy a bottle of water from the desk behind him. Letting him wash the blood from his arms into a puddle on the office floor.
"It's a shame Coulson didn't get a chance to hire you two," the Agent said later, as he headed towards the building with the terrifying portal spiking out of the roof. "We'd've gotten along great."
"Be safe," Alec shouted back, and they relinquished their flock of office staff to the police's direction and headed cautiously through ruined buildings and the bodies of aliens towards Grand Central station, and Parker.
~
"Congratulations, I'm told you're going to be a Godfather." The voice inspired a brief rush of satisfaction, and Eliot had to work to keep a grin off his face.
"You guys aren't anywhere near as smart as you think you are," he retorted, turning to face Agent Coulson, the man classically dressed and eyes hidden behind sunglasses. At least this was one staple of his life returned to him, in the wake of everything else changing.
"I'm glad you called," Coulson continued, "Clint had only good things to say about your impromptu rescue last year."
Eliot thought back to the now-legend 'Battle of New York' - not that they'd really known what was going on at the time - and the archer they'd pulled from a glass-littered office floor. "He one of yours?"
Coulson seemed to consider that for a moment, his smile softening. In the end, he shrugged. "In that I met him in similar circumstances to yourself, having assessed his skill set and seen an opening for it, and offered him work in much the same way as I did you. But he has his own team these days, and I have a new cohort of young potentials."
"He thought you were dead, back then," Eliot said, not daring to mention how that had felt. They barely knew each other, it was stupid to admit having grieved for the man in amongst all the other deaths that day.
"He was under a lot of strain," Coulson's expression turned sombre. "Else he would have seen through the unfortunately necessary deception."
Eliot considered this for a while, let the world pass him by as he stood in the street surrounded by people who didn't know what he'd done, didn't know who the suited man was, had never heard of SHIELD. "If I join you guys, you don't tell anyone I'm dead, understand?" he met Coulson's gaze, making his firm. "Even if something happens - as far as anyone will ever know, I'll have just disappeared."
The Agent frowned. "Are you sure that's wise?"
"No." Eliot shrugged. "But I don't want someone standing at my friend's door because I got too old or too slow."
Coulson chuckled, as if that was far from likely. Eliot appreciated the faith in his abilities. "They'll notice when their child starts to receive your pension," he pointed out.
"She won't need it," Eliot grinned. "She has Parker. Give it to a charity or something."
Coulson's eyes widened - barely noticeable, but surprised. "Well, that's a first. I've never had anyone turn down family support before."
Eliot let his smile soften, eyes trawling the sidewalk again, noting faces. "So are you going to offer me a job, or what?"
"No matter what your credentials, you'll have to pass rigorous testing," Coulson warned.
Eliot's eyes jumped back to him. "I don't handle guns," he said firmly.
Coulson rolled his eyes, "We are aware of your various psychological triggers," he said, blasé about personal information in a way Eliot had expected.
"Bullshit," he retorted. "You have my army records. A lot's happened since then."
"It'll be handled, exceptions will be made where necessary." Coulson gave him a firm look, questioning. "Anyone would think you were trying to talk me out of taking you on."
"Just making my position clear." Eliot stepped out into the flow of people, letting them move him away.
"Welcome to S.H.I.E.L.D., Mr. Spencer," Coulson said as he passed.
Rating: PG (language, blood, vague allusions to violence)
Gen, no pairing
Summary: SHIELD has been trying to head-hunt Retrieval Specialist Eliot Spencer for a while now.
Word count: 4156
AN: I've wanted to do a 'SHIELD tries to hire Eliot' for a while, but also wanted to write the scene where Clint gets out of the building he crashes through and over to Stark Tower. These moshed together in some pointless, self-serving fun. :D This is TECHNICALLY a 5+1...
0
"Mr. Spencer."
The man standing at parade rest by the train station exit is a stranger, and Eliot had to forcefully resist the urge to correct him with a rank. He'd not been disappeared long, and some habits were going to be harder to break than others, especially when faced with a cheap suit with visible forces training.
Eliot wasn't going to be cowed. There was a gun in the back of his jeans, and he wasn't going back to the Army.
"Who's asking?" he replied. His voice was rougher than he'd expected, and he found himself trying to work out when he'd last spoken to anyone.
"The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division." The suit let that settle for a moment, took a breath. "You've probably not heard of us," he added, deadpan.
Eliot restrained a snort. "With a name like that I'd be surprised if anyone's heard of you."
There's a flicker that might be the edge of a smile on the guy's face, but his posture doesn't relax one iota. "We've followed your military career closely, Mr. Spencer, and given you seem to have no career path in mind as yet, following your departure from the Army, we'd like to offer you a job."
Eliot is stumped for a moment, still trying to parse the idea of some shady governmental 'division' keeping an eye on him. "I'm not interested in a government job," he said firmly, realising the guy was waiting for an answer. He wanted to walk away, to push out through the train station doors and make it clear and final, but he didn't want to give this spook his back. There was something dangerous behind the lean frame and tacky suit, and the Army wasn't going to let him just walk away like he had without some kind of retaliation. "Besides," he said, to cover his itch to move. "I can't see the government being so enthusiastic about my skill set." His voice might break a little at the end there, but he can blame it on the hoarseness still haunting his throat.
Spook work had always seemed so restrictive anyway, too many parameters and rules. Too many versions of 'Sorry son, but we just can't risk any more lives going after them'. Too many 'acceptable losses' and 'predicted outcomes'. There were always more lives to throw at the machine, and it wasn't one where Eliot saw a place for himself.
"You might be surprised," the spook said, his voice a little softer than Eliot had expected, given he'd just turned down his pitch, and who knew how hard he'd had to look to find him in the first place. He had a little frown between his eyes, something like pity. "If you find independent contracting gets boring or... too interesting for you, think of us. This is not a time-limited deal. If, however, you start making trouble for our Division in your new role, this interaction may stand against you."
Eliot huffed a breath of laughter at the disclaimer and let the man leave without causing a fuss. He was much more careful about covering his trail after that.
~
Damien Moreau held a folder - hard copy only - that was periodically updated by his more computer-savvy minions. In it were profiles on a handful of people who, while not worth the investment of time and money to actually track down, should be taken out on sight should any of his menagerie come across them.
Eliot, as befitted his position as Damien's current attack dog, made a point of checking for additions and amendments regularly, and had been in receipt of five-figure bonuses for the four individuals he had taken out of the folder already.
He'd been working for Damien for a year, and was well entrenched as his right-hand man, when his spook friend appeared in the folder. The profile was neatly entitled 'Coulson', the man's picture caught glancing over his shoulder, a gun in his hand, suit jacket flapping as he ran. His employer's cumbersome name had been shortened to 'S.H.I.E.L.D.', which made Eliot grin at the sheer cheese of it. He wondered if the acronym predated the full title - he couldn't remember what half of the letters stood for any more, from that brief conversation three years ago.
The profile was poorly filled, physical descriptions which sounded like Damien's words and no background or family listed. Skills listed were subterfuge and infiltration and his 'preferred weapon' section was a list that included - after several guns and blades - 'grenade launchers'. He wished he'd seen the confrontation that had led to this profile being made, but Damien was trusting him with a longer leash these days, and he was often overseeing international efforts while Damien was at home, or guarding his wife while he undertook the more riskier efforts.
He could contact S.H.I.E.L.D. easily enough, Eliot had no doubt that at least one of his sources reported back to the spooks, and it would be useful to know which one. He could tell Agent Coulson he was reconsidering that job offer. A meeting somewhere quiet would put another bonus in his pocket and cement Eliot's place in Damien's pocket.
He would tell himself, much later, that he just never got around to it. But then he always had been good at lying to himself.
~
It wasn't something he ever really thought about. Even in the most out-of-control and terrifying parts of his freelance career post-Moreau; not sleeping, not staying in one place for more than a few days at a time, learning to live not attached to a gun, learning not to die that way; even then he hadn't reconsidered the vague offer a spook had extended when he was still just a kid.
It seemed a long time ago now, a lifetime ago, and the white hat wasn't made for someone so steeped in red as he was now.
Maybe he'd even forgotten the Agent and his offer, ruled it impossible and put it to the back of his mind, it was hard to tell after the fact; but coming face to face with him gave immediate recognition.
It was obviously not a planned interception - the Agent was in jeans and a pale coloured shirt, open at the collar. He was sitting in a booth with three others; two were hard to see from the angle Eliot had entered the bar, and the third was a balding guy in glasses. There was a serene smile on the Agent's face that folded the moment he locked eyes with Eliot, and he muttered something to the others as he slid out of the booth.
He took the bar-stool next to Eliot, back tight and eyes hard. "Killing me won't get you back in with Moreau," he growled, as soon as the barman had taken Eliot's order and moved away.
Eliot startled at the name, not for the first time. He couldn't imagine a day when that name wouldn't invoke nightmares. "I'm not here to..." He shook his head, re-set. "I don't want to get 'back in' with Moreau," he bit out, finally. "I lost enough getting away from him."
There was confusion in the Agent's eyes, maybe a bit of surprise, "Then why are you..." He glanced back at his friends, as if Eliot might be there for one of them.
Eliot smiled, shook his head. "Just looking for a beer," he chuckled, nodding to the barman as he slid his beer across the bar to him. "Same as you." Eliot glanced back at Coulson's table. The guy in glasses didn't look like much, smart suit not-withstanding, but there was a pair of very muscled forearms visible on the table, and a red-head making no odds of leaning around the booth to stare at Eliot. She looked small, petite, but strangely terrifying despite that. Maybe it was her threatening look, Eliot had been taken down by women with less.
"You know... that job offer's still..." the Agent started, and stopped when Eliot started laughing out loud. His answering grin was wry. "I guess not," he said.
"You're persistent," Eliot said, still getting his laughter under control. "I get why Damien had you kill-listed." He'd meant to say Moreau, but he's still proud of himself for being able to say his name without falling apart. "Did you really go after him with a grenade launcher?"
"You know," the Agent said, "We tried to get you out of there. On two separate occasions. Mr. Moreau didn't take kindly to the second attempt... Or the grenade launcher." He went quiet, then turned to quirk him a grin. "Thanks for not taking up the contract."
He slid off the bar stool and went to rejoin his friends, leaving Eliot staring into his beer.
~
"You look better than you did last time I saw you." The voice from behind him startled Eliot, not that he was going to let it show in front of the spook that had melted out of the shadows.
"Funny how sleep does that," Eliot muttered, as much to himself as to the other man. He was briefly distracted by a shadow shifting on the rooftop opposite, and another in a deeply shadowed alleyway. He wondered if the shadows where there for him, or for the Agent. Maybe this time he wasn't just going to ask nicely.
"Keeping good company is a good start," the spook offered. As if chastised, the two shadows stilled.
"Ford keeps us on our toes," Eliot agreed easily, stepping back to lean against the nearest wall, covering his back and making his field of vision as wide as possible. He was thankful for San Lorenzo's wide streets and low buildings.
"It's been a while since you took up with a team. Mr. Ford is certainly... different to your previous employer."
Eliot took the time to take in Agent Coulson, his new suit definitely richer stock than the one he'd been wearing when they first met, sharply tailored and almost completely hiding the gun holster at his side and the knife down his forearm. Beyond that he hadn't changed, and his expression didn't let on to anything more threatening than any other time they talked. He was curious though, and they were both here in San Lorenzo on the day of Moreau's imprisonment.
"Stop fishing, Coulson," Eliot bit out. "I'm not giving you anything on Ford. You saw Moreau fall, and you know we were there. That's all you know."
There was a moment when Eliot thought the man might have been disappointed, but his smile turned wry quickly. "So you're still not interested in that job offer..."
"I'm in with Ford for the long haul," Eliot replied, sharing a smile. It was strange to think that this man he'd only met a handful of times might actually be a friend.
"Maybe your hacker then, his work is truly sterling."
Eliot turned prickly. "You leave my team alone, Coulson. You hear me? You don't get to leverage us against each other. We're too good for that."
"Well," Coulson nodded, something approving in his gaze. "At least with Ford I get to talk to you directly."
A throat cleared behind him, "Only for as long as I approve of the conversation, Agent Coulson."
Eliot grinned smugly at Coulson's startled expression. "Yeah, he does that," he commiserated, hoping the two shadows didn't see Nate as a threat. Preparing to move if they did. One day Nate was going to get taken out by accident for his grand-standing bullshit.
Once Coulson had slunk away, and the distracting shadows had disappeared back into the scenery, Eliot turned to Nate.
"You'd make a pretty terrifying spook," he mused, his grin teasing.
"SHIELD isn't in the intelligence business, you know," Nate said, heading back towards where the others were camped out, waiting for Eliot so they could walk shoulder-to-shoulder. "They're more intervention, enforcement, logistics... Quite your skill set."
Eliot considered this; ever so briefly comparing his Retrieval Specialist days to his current work. It wasn't a hard decision, even now, with Moreau behind bars. "Hmm... Maybe I'll reconsider next time Parker tries to braid my hair."
~
"I told you there was something going on in New York!" Alec shouted across the room - bigger than it had been an hour ago because of the hole blown out of the ceiling and the gaping glass-less windows. They both flinched, ducking instinctively, as another impact on the building blew out a pane of glass on the floor above, sending it showering down through the hole. Wires sparked in the corner, and then quieted again.
"Damnit Hardison," Eliot ground out, "This isn't our kind of 'something'!"
"Can you get to the..." Alec gestured to the laptop, still spooling something across the screen on the remarkably intact work station.
"Is that really our priority right now?" Eliot shouted. Another window burst inwards above them, and Eliot pulled back from his attempt to get to the laptop. "Damnit!" he said again, for good effect, and then sprinted across the room, grabbing a fire extinguisher from the wall on his way back to the table they were using as cover.
Hardison had the laptop turned towards him, fingers rattling across the keys. "Main phone-lines are all jammed," he reported. "Parker says Grand Central's in a bad way, but she's organising survivors and they're holding the café." He closed the laptop, checking over the case before shoving it into the messenger bag still slung over his shoulder. "Tell me you have some secret-extraction-plan for this building."
Eliot shook his head, more frustration than in a negative. "I wasn't expecting a warzone and freaking... aliens, man. Give me a minute."
Alec took the opportunity to look back at the alien, lying either dead or unconscious (damn, he hoped it was dead) in the middle of the office space, surrounded by the work stations it had destroyed when it had fallen through the hole in the ceiling.
Eliot grabbed Alec by the collar, and he ignored the indignity in favour of getting his feet under him and following Eliot into the stairwell, ducking as a handful of plasterboard panels fell from the ceiling above them.
"Was that your plan?" he asked, brushing the plaster dust off his suit jacket and taking in the concrete stairs and emergency lighting.
"Part of it," Eliot replied, distracted enough not to snap.
"What's the rest?" Alec pushed.
"Working on it."
On the stairs was the still body of a guard, and Alec realised that Eliot had to have come up this way to make it into the office. The guy was clearly unconscious - still breathing regularly. The stairwell looked pretty structurally sound, given the state of the rest of the building. Eliot came back from the guard with his utility belt - walkie, torch, first aid kit and kit knife, not a bad haul but it was hardly going to cover an alien invasion - leaving the guy in the recovery position.
He must have seen Alec looking, because he glared, and muttered- "We don't know how long it's going to be before someone finds him. There would normally be a patrol, I don't think anyone's gonna be patrolling today."
Alec shook it off and forced himself to focus on a plan. "OK, so... All of the... aliens..." Alec suppressed a hysterical giggle, "Are going to be on this side of the building." He pointed down the stairwell. "We can't go down here."
"You still got the blueprints? How far across the building is the second stairwell?"
Alec pulled his tablet out of his bag, blueprints up on the screen with a couple of taps. "If we stay to the inner-most corridors I think we can avoid most of the damage... And any more aliens."
Alec was already moving, eyes on the tablet and trusting Eliot to monitor their surroundings. They found their first survivor huddled under a table in a glass-covered room, wind whistling through shattered window frames.
It didn't take much encouragement to get the guy to follow them, and by the time they'd made it half way through the building they had a gaggle of a dozen office workers, two IT guys, a maintenance engineer and a janitor. Between them they'd gathered another half a dozen fire extinguishers - just in case - three more first aid kits, and enough walkie talkies to make them useful. They started sending out small scouting parties to make sure they didn't miss anyone, and kept forging ahead.
The battle outside was quietening, less breaking glass and more low thump-booms that seemed to be more felt than heard. Something out there was making terrifying low war-cries that seemed to pierce every wall and door in the place.
They were more than three quarters of the way to the other end of the building when there was the sound of breaking glass from the room they were about to investigate.
Eliot and Alec exchanged a glance. Eliot reached for the door handle.
"Don't!" The shout made them both jump, and they scowled as one at the IT guy whose tag identified him - bafflingly - as 'Doo-wop'. "It might be another one of those things!" he hissed in explanation.
One of the nervier women screamed a little as Alec opened the door and stepped into the room.
It wasn't another alien, it was just a guy, albeit one with a bow and arrows, and more than a little glass in him. He was sitting, looking more than a little dazed, in the middle of the glass-littered floor, and there was a relatively small hole in the plate glass window.
"Hey, man. Are you alright?"
There was another round of nervous screams from the onlookers as the guy jumped up, and span to face them with an arrow already nocked.
Alec had his hands up in front of him, shouting 'FRIEND', even as Eliot dragged him bodily back out of the room and around the corner.
"You alright?" Eliot asked him, looking him over like he expected to find arrows sticking out of somewhere.
Alec frowned, still processing. "Woah, I thought SHIELD was a myth," he said eventually.
"SHIELD?" Eliot asked, thinking of shadows on rooftops and muscled forearms.
"That's the logo on his..." Alec gestured at his chest. "Uniform?" he hedged.
Eliot moved back towards the doorway, took a glance to see the guy - the Agent - pushing himself up off the floor. It looked painful.
"We're friends of SHIELD," he shouted, physically holding Alec back as he stepped into the doorway. "We just want to help."
The guy looked up, bow slung over his shoulder and his arm already welling red as he brushed glass carelessly out of his skin.
"Yeah, yeah," he acknowledged.
Alec barged past him, first aid kit at the ready. The guy had looked up, seemingly suck on Eliot for a moment. Eliot had to wonder how hard he'd hit his head coming through plate glass. It wasn't something he'd want to try.
"Aren't you one of Coulson's pet projects?" he said at last, then shook his head, muttering- "Weren't, come on, Barton, it's not hard."
"Is Coulson..." Eliot started, surprised by his own distress at the idea the man might be dead.
"You're not SHIELD," the Agent said, obviously still processing, but not reacting to Alec pulling bits of glass out of him with deft movements of the first aid kit's tweezers.
"We look like SHIELD to you?" Eliot asked, gesturing to the braver souls who'd come into the room to investigate what was going on.
"He does," he gestured to Alec. "With the... suit. You not so much, but Coulson always did have strange projects," he chuckled, and Eliot couldn't help but think he'd been one of those projects once. The bow kind of lent weight to 'strange'. The Agent pushed Alec away as he started pulling bandages out of the kit. "Thanks, but I need to get to Stark Tower. Do you guys know a way down?"
"We're on our way out now," Eliot said, handing the guy a bottle of water from the desk behind him. Letting him wash the blood from his arms into a puddle on the office floor.
"It's a shame Coulson didn't get a chance to hire you two," the Agent said later, as he headed towards the building with the terrifying portal spiking out of the roof. "We'd've gotten along great."
"Be safe," Alec shouted back, and they relinquished their flock of office staff to the police's direction and headed cautiously through ruined buildings and the bodies of aliens towards Grand Central station, and Parker.
~
"Congratulations, I'm told you're going to be a Godfather." The voice inspired a brief rush of satisfaction, and Eliot had to work to keep a grin off his face.
"You guys aren't anywhere near as smart as you think you are," he retorted, turning to face Agent Coulson, the man classically dressed and eyes hidden behind sunglasses. At least this was one staple of his life returned to him, in the wake of everything else changing.
"I'm glad you called," Coulson continued, "Clint had only good things to say about your impromptu rescue last year."
Eliot thought back to the now-legend 'Battle of New York' - not that they'd really known what was going on at the time - and the archer they'd pulled from a glass-littered office floor. "He one of yours?"
Coulson seemed to consider that for a moment, his smile softening. In the end, he shrugged. "In that I met him in similar circumstances to yourself, having assessed his skill set and seen an opening for it, and offered him work in much the same way as I did you. But he has his own team these days, and I have a new cohort of young potentials."
"He thought you were dead, back then," Eliot said, not daring to mention how that had felt. They barely knew each other, it was stupid to admit having grieved for the man in amongst all the other deaths that day.
"He was under a lot of strain," Coulson's expression turned sombre. "Else he would have seen through the unfortunately necessary deception."
Eliot considered this for a while, let the world pass him by as he stood in the street surrounded by people who didn't know what he'd done, didn't know who the suited man was, had never heard of SHIELD. "If I join you guys, you don't tell anyone I'm dead, understand?" he met Coulson's gaze, making his firm. "Even if something happens - as far as anyone will ever know, I'll have just disappeared."
The Agent frowned. "Are you sure that's wise?"
"No." Eliot shrugged. "But I don't want someone standing at my friend's door because I got too old or too slow."
Coulson chuckled, as if that was far from likely. Eliot appreciated the faith in his abilities. "They'll notice when their child starts to receive your pension," he pointed out.
"She won't need it," Eliot grinned. "She has Parker. Give it to a charity or something."
Coulson's eyes widened - barely noticeable, but surprised. "Well, that's a first. I've never had anyone turn down family support before."
Eliot let his smile soften, eyes trawling the sidewalk again, noting faces. "So are you going to offer me a job, or what?"
"No matter what your credentials, you'll have to pass rigorous testing," Coulson warned.
Eliot's eyes jumped back to him. "I don't handle guns," he said firmly.
Coulson rolled his eyes, "We are aware of your various psychological triggers," he said, blasé about personal information in a way Eliot had expected.
"Bullshit," he retorted. "You have my army records. A lot's happened since then."
"It'll be handled, exceptions will be made where necessary." Coulson gave him a firm look, questioning. "Anyone would think you were trying to talk me out of taking you on."
"Just making my position clear." Eliot stepped out into the flow of people, letting them move him away.
"Welcome to S.H.I.E.L.D., Mr. Spencer," Coulson said as he passed.