Full Circle (11/23)
Title: Full Circle (11/23)
Author: neensz
Word Count: ~29,600 total so far
Pairing: Eliot/Shawn pre-slash
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language, violence, drug use, kid!fic, un-beta’d
Disclaimer: Psych and Leverage and SG:A don't belong to me, nor do any of the characters or places or quotes I'm borrowing for my nefarious slashing purposes. I make no monetary profit from the aforesaid borrowing, or only in the currency of sqeeing fangirly joy.
A/N: Um. Universes colliding is apparently a thing of mine now. SG:A has officially made itself firmly a part of the epic crossover.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10
***
Eliot lowered his hands to his side, telegraphing his movements and carefully keeping his hands out of his pockets. There weren’t any guns trained on him now, but knew that wouldn’t last long if he made any sudden movements or did anything that could be misconstrued as reaching for a weapon. “It’s cool, Hardison,” he said without lowering his voice or taking his eyes off John. “You can let Jesse go now. This is his dad; he won‘t hurt him.”
Hardison muttered something Eliot didn’t catch, but then Jesse was flying past him and flinging himself on his dad. John caught him with a grunt and hastily rearranged him so he wasn’t clinging to the P-90, passing the gun off to the big guy directly behind him. “Daddy! Daddy! Uncle Ernon! Uncle Kay! Auntie ‘La! You’re here, you’re here, you’re here!” Jesse screeched at a decibel that Eliot hadn’t ever heard come out of anything other than a high-powered speaker before. “You gonna go play in’a snow wi’ me?!”
“Holy shit.” That voice hadn’t come from inside the cabin.
Eliot saw Shawn’s face over the big guy’s shoulder for an instant. Then there was a flash of red light and the big guy was shrugging in response to John’s glare and Eliot was kneeling beside where Shawn was sprawled out on the porch without remembering how he’d got from point A to point B, checking for a pulse on Shawn’s neck with fingers buzzing so hard from adrenaline that he couldn‘t tell if he was feeling Shawn’s heartbeat or his own.
***
“I swear, El, if you let Parker tase me again, I’m gonna…” Shawn heard himself talking before he even realized he was awake, and trailed off after he opened his eyes. “…do …something,” he finished half-heartedly, staring up at the people glaring down at him. “Seriously?” Was he hallucinating, or were there really paratroopers in Eliot’s cabin? Maybe he was still stoned. “Please don’t tell me you’re here to kill me,” he muttered to himself, “because I really don’t want to hear the I told you so’s.”
“You’d be dead already and couldn’t hear them, anyway,” the one with the… hair… pointed out after a moment. He was gonna have to think of a better description; that guy wasn’t the only one of them with impressive hair. But words were kind of failing him at the moment. That hair was what his hair wanted to grow up to be--at least in the mornings after he’d rolled out of bed.
The past day--hell, the past month--or so was a little blurry, probably either from the vodka before the lesson, or the pot when he woke up that morning, or from being tased. Or a mixture of all three. Shawn wasn’t really sure how he ended up lying on Eliot’s cabin’s porch surrounded by paratroopers staring down at him, but he figured it wouldn’t have made sense regardless of how sober or un-tased he was. That sort of thing never made sense--he assumed. He’d never been in this situation before, after all. He wondered how long he’d been out of it, but there was no way he was gonna ask. He pushed himself up to a sitting position, holding his head in his hands, and finally noticed Eliot, who was kneeling beside him. Dear Pineapple in the Sky, he hoped whatever was fucking up his observational skills would wear off soon--dude was practically sitting on him. And kinda grey, he noted. Maybe it was the porch lights--not exactly anyone’s best lighting. Eliot noticed him noticing him and clenched his teeth, huffing out a breath, and was on his feet and inside the cabin before Shawn had done more than open his mouth, not even sure what he was gonna say yet.
The big dude with the dreadlocks yanked Shawn to his feet like it cost him as much effort as it did Shawn to pick up a magazine. Whoa. The chick inserted herself under Shawn’s arm and practically carried him to the kitchen table, way stronger than Shawn had expected her to be, as she took most of his weight. His legs were still kind of weirdly tingly and numb at the same time, almost like sleeping limbs waking up--except for not the same at all. Shawn couldn’t remember if this was what being tased had felt like the last time. The chick settled him in one of the chairs, somehow managing to be oddly formal even as she unavoidably groped him in the process, then retreated back to the doorway to hover with the other three paratroopers over the kid, who’d glomped onto Dreadlocks and was climbing him like a tree while chattering as fast as a squirrel. The paratrooper with the …hair was the one Shawn assumed was in charge of the rest because they all kept glancing at him like they were waiting for orders, and he eventually drifted over to the kitchen table and into one of the other chairs. As soon as that happened, Eliot appeared from wherever he’d run off to and sat down across the small table from the paratrooper, but slightly closer to Shawn than the paratrooper was. Shawn was starting to believe that Eliot was the person they’d invented the phrase ‘mixed signals’ for.
A few minutes later, Eliot, Shawn and the boss paratrooper guy were still sitting around the kitchen table, uneasily staring at each other, but the three other paratroopers and the guy Gus wanted to grow up to be had responded to some intangible ‘let the guys responsible for this shit figure it out’ signal that Shawn had apparently missed and had quietly made their unobtrusive way outside where he figured they were entertaining the kid in the snow, probably with the same amount of uneasy awkward staring. “So, Eliot,” the guy broke the silence, hitting Eliot’s name hard, and he noticed Eliot’s stoic mask become a little more… stoic. The hair slouched back in the chair, his expression so calm and collected it was slightly disturbing. Shawn still didn’t know why he was at the table for this discussion in the first place, other than the whole ‘legs not working properly quite yet’ thing, or the ‘encroach on Eliot’s territory to get him to come running’ thing, but didn’t really want to bring attention to himself enough to ask, considering he was trapped at the table with two freaking super soldiers. Or Terminators. He briefly wondered what came after the T-1000. Maybe Eliot was a T-5000, and considering he was sitting down with the guy and not putting him through a wall, maybe the guy was a T-6000. He really needed to watch the movies, so he could get this straight, even though he’d had nightmares of Linda Hamilton breaking him in half when he was a kid just from watching the previews. Because Psycho wasn’t a problem, no, but Linda Hamilton? Scary.
The guy’s voice was tightly controlled as he continued to talk, and slightly quieter than was easy to hear. Shawn recognized the technique used when questioning a suspect to pull them into your space and give you a one up on them via body language; he’d learned it from Henry when he was nine. “I’d think we’d both agree that I need the full story, here. And it’s probably better for you if it comes from you than me finding out later from McKay that you lied to me. Your hacker might be good, but my guy’s the smartest man in two galaxies, and it will go pretty badly for you if I find you’ve left anything out.”
“That’s oddly specific, the ‘smartest man in two galaxies’ thing.” Shawn hadn’t realized he’d commented out loud until both stares landed on him. “Sorry, shutting up,” he mumbled, crossing his arms over his chest and not even caring that he was displaying defensive body language. It’s not like anyone could blame him, what with two Terminators glaring at him across a tiny, chipped Formica table.
He could see the guy decide to ignore the Shawn’s remark and Shawn figured the galaxies thing might have been an unintentional slip the hair didn‘t want attention on, and what the hell--maybe he was a closet geek? “Seriously, Eliot. It’d ruin my day to fill out all the paperwork--just tell me what’s going on.” He rested his elbows on the table, hands folded in front of him and looking down at them for a moment. Shawn couldn’t tell if he was girding his loins to fill out the apparently dreaded paperwork, connecting to SkyNet, wondering what was for dinner, or deciding whether or not to kill them all. The guy was super controlled; none of his body language was giving anything away. It was disconcerting.
“John,” Eliot began, then sighed. Aha! The hair had a name. Or the guy underneath the hair, anyway. Eliot suddenly leaned back and slapped his hands on the table. Shawn jumped, startled, and they both looked at him again. He really wished they‘d stop doing that. “Cut the interrogation crap, man. I’ll tell you. I just didn’t want to drag you all into this, because I know you’re dealing with your own shit.” He held up a hand when John looked ready to say something. “I know I did anyway, bringing Jesse here, but I swear to God, man, I’d die before I let Jesse get hurt. You know that.” John relaxed back in his seat, obviously waiting very patiently while Eliot took a few minutes to collect his thoughts.
“First off, this is Shawn. Spencer. No relation.” Shawn twinkled his fingers at John, but didn’t get a reaction from either of them. Oookaaay. Apparently he was more flaming than he‘d thought. “I’ll get to him later. I’m Eliot Spencer. That’s Alec Hardison,” he waved in the general direction of the front door the four adults and the kid had left through. “We work with three others. I’m sure you know all this already.”
“As well as the fact your criminal record is longer than a Learjet,” John interjected sourly.
Eliot put his face in his hands for a moment, looking like how Shawn felt when he was trying to logically explain his leaps in intuitive deductive reasoning to Lassy. “About that… I was with the government for a while, working for them doing black ops and wet work and retrieval and all that--I‘m pretty sure it’s all still classified--I wasn’t even cleared to read my own file after one of them.” John’s face shifted very slightly at that, and Shawn realized John had probably broke some--a lot of--rules and managed to see the whole thing. Eliot didn’t notice though, because he wasn’t looking at anything but his hands, and he went on, “But then things went south on an op and they, the government, they cut me loose. They’d got me right out of high school, so what they taught me was all I knew, and, well, I used it. Hired hitter, stealing shit, all that. But then Nate came along, and it was the first time I’d worked with a team since I--since Uncle Sam cut me loose. The job went FUBAR, but Nate pulled us together and we fixed it, and made the big score, too, the one to retire on. We could have all lived like kings and never worked again. But… Anyway, we went white-hat.
“We started fixing people’s lives for them. When some rich fucker screwed them, they came to us and we screwed the fucker back and got them--our clients--back on their feet. And it went on that way for a while.” Shawn was fascinated, and tried really hard not to be noticed and sent away or censored in front of. It seemed to be working. John was focused on Eliot, and Eliot was still staring down at his hands. “But then this Italian bitch got her hooks in Nate, and threatened to kill us if he didn’t do what she wanted.” He stopped staring at his hands and fixed John with a glare that practically sizzled. “The bitch threatened his team. My team. He couldn’t ignore her. I understood that. You better fucking understand that too.”
John met the glare with a calm gaze and a mildly sardonic eyebrow-raise. “Believe me, I understand. I’m just surprised you do.”
Eliot nodded sharply, like the comment had been a hit below the belt, and looked back at his hands. It was like breaking secrecy or whatever was actually physically painful for him. “She sent us at this international crime lord, king-pin, whatever you want to call it. His name’s Damien Moreau. We’d been working on getting closer to him for a while, and then when we were doing a job in Santa Barbara, the job that Shawn was helping us with,” he cut a glance over at Shawn, who avoided his eyes, “we found out he--Moreau--was coming there. It was the chance to take him down, tossed right in our fucking laps. Nate got fixated on it, and I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t looking at all the possibilities, maybe one of us fucked up, maybe his guys were just better than us, but he found out we were there and looking for him before we knew what happened. We were made, and he was out to kill. He wanted to fucking erase us just for thinking about going after him, let alone actually trying. So we scattered. Only way we could think to live long enough to go after him again. Stayed off the grid. We were sure he didn’t know about Shawn’s help, especially since he’d been helping us with the Santa Barbara job and not the Moreau thing, and that he’d be safe, but then he disappeared. Completely off the face of the earth.” Shawn winced, but noticed the flicker across John’s face at Eliot’s word choice nonetheless. Interesting.
“So you figured this Moreau guy had gone after him,” John concluded with a glance at Shawn. Shawn avoided his eyes, too. He might have been channeling a five-year-old’s ploy of ‘if I can’t see you, you can’t see me,’ but it seemed to have been working so far, because both of them were mostly ignoring him.
“Yeah. But then I talked to his friend and Gus said he thought Shawn had just run away again, and we tracked him down here.” Eliot looked at John earnestly. It was an expression Shawn hadn’t seen on Eliot’s face before. It looked out of place. “I swear, John, if I’d thought for a second that Moreau had really stashed him in some Podunk ski-lodge, I wouldn’t have brought Jesse here. I wouldn’t put him in danger, you know that.”
John was silent for a few moments. Shawn felt awkward and tense, and Eliot looked like he was strung tighter than… something that was strung really tight. He’d never really gotten that metaphor. Simile? Whatever. John broke Shawn’s train of thought by sighing loudly.
“Dammit, Tom--Eliot, I really kinda wanted to kill you for this,” he muttered under his breath, and Eliot relaxed. Shawn had no clue why John’s talking about killing him was relaxing to Eliot. Maybe it was a military thing. “Damien Moreau, you said?” At Eliot’s nod, John tapped an ear and Shawn finally paid enough attention to notice there was a little radio-thing tucked in his weirdly pointed ear. Maybe he was a Vulcan, not a Terminator. That’d explain the ‘two galaxies‘ thing, at least. “Okay, guys, safe to come in. You get all that, McKay?” He was silent for a moment, then made a face. “Well, that explains part of it. Fucking Trust.” Maybe that was a Vulcan curse or something, because it certainly didn’t make any sense otherwise.
The paratroopers, Hardison and the kid (who wasn’t, after all, Eliot’s and Hardison’s love child, thank God) all came in covered in snow and red from the cold. Jesse flung himself at his dad again, and John hefted the kid to his shoulders as he stood up. “We’ve gotta head back. This wasn’t exactly… official.” He had a muttered conversation with his kid that Shawn couldn’t overhear, then grinned at the beaming kid. “Okay, buddy.” He looked back at Eliot. “I’m taking Jesse to At- taking him with us for the night. I’ll bring him back tomorrow--there’s a couple of things I can find out that might help you with this Moreau guy, if I can get clearance to tell you.” He paused for a moment, then added thoughtfully, “I don’t think I’m gonna kill you for lying to me, since Jesse wasn’t in any danger. But do it again, and I can’t promise anything for Ronon. He’s kinda trigger happy, I think you noticed earlier, and Jesse‘s like a little brother to him.” Eliot nodded, shooting the big guy a glance that had respect and hatred all rolled up into one. Shawn wondered what that was all about.
John tapped his ear-radio-thing again, even though all his paratroopers were standing right next to him. “Daedalus, five to bring home. Repeat, five. Extra signature JJS07232008JSLC. Confirmed.” He stared levelly at Eliot for a moment, then winked at him, including Shawn in the gesture. “Oh, and in return for us helping out with your Moreau little thing, here, I totally expect to see both of you buckin’ bales on the ranch next summer.”
Shawn didn’t even have a chance to wonder what the hell ‘buckin’ bales’ meant or what ranch John was talking about before there was a flash of intense white light and they were gone. Shawn blinked rapidly and stared at where the five of them had been standing. He hadn’t really thought John was a Vulcan. Holy shit. He totally agreed with the stunned mutter coming from where Hardison had been standing.
“If some dude with a strobe light comes to wipe my memory now, I’m going to be so pissed.”
***
Chapter Twelve
Author: neensz
Word Count: ~29,600 total so far
Pairing: Eliot/Shawn pre-slash
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Language, violence, drug use, kid!fic, un-beta’d
Disclaimer: Psych and Leverage and SG:A don't belong to me, nor do any of the characters or places or quotes I'm borrowing for my nefarious slashing purposes. I make no monetary profit from the aforesaid borrowing, or only in the currency of sqeeing fangirly joy.
A/N: Um. Universes colliding is apparently a thing of mine now. SG:A has officially made itself firmly a part of the epic crossover.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10
***
Eliot lowered his hands to his side, telegraphing his movements and carefully keeping his hands out of his pockets. There weren’t any guns trained on him now, but knew that wouldn’t last long if he made any sudden movements or did anything that could be misconstrued as reaching for a weapon. “It’s cool, Hardison,” he said without lowering his voice or taking his eyes off John. “You can let Jesse go now. This is his dad; he won‘t hurt him.”
Hardison muttered something Eliot didn’t catch, but then Jesse was flying past him and flinging himself on his dad. John caught him with a grunt and hastily rearranged him so he wasn’t clinging to the P-90, passing the gun off to the big guy directly behind him. “Daddy! Daddy! Uncle Ernon! Uncle Kay! Auntie ‘La! You’re here, you’re here, you’re here!” Jesse screeched at a decibel that Eliot hadn’t ever heard come out of anything other than a high-powered speaker before. “You gonna go play in’a snow wi’ me?!”
“Holy shit.” That voice hadn’t come from inside the cabin.
Eliot saw Shawn’s face over the big guy’s shoulder for an instant. Then there was a flash of red light and the big guy was shrugging in response to John’s glare and Eliot was kneeling beside where Shawn was sprawled out on the porch without remembering how he’d got from point A to point B, checking for a pulse on Shawn’s neck with fingers buzzing so hard from adrenaline that he couldn‘t tell if he was feeling Shawn’s heartbeat or his own.
***
“I swear, El, if you let Parker tase me again, I’m gonna…” Shawn heard himself talking before he even realized he was awake, and trailed off after he opened his eyes. “…do …something,” he finished half-heartedly, staring up at the people glaring down at him. “Seriously?” Was he hallucinating, or were there really paratroopers in Eliot’s cabin? Maybe he was still stoned. “Please don’t tell me you’re here to kill me,” he muttered to himself, “because I really don’t want to hear the I told you so’s.”
“You’d be dead already and couldn’t hear them, anyway,” the one with the… hair… pointed out after a moment. He was gonna have to think of a better description; that guy wasn’t the only one of them with impressive hair. But words were kind of failing him at the moment. That hair was what his hair wanted to grow up to be--at least in the mornings after he’d rolled out of bed.
The past day--hell, the past month--or so was a little blurry, probably either from the vodka before the lesson, or the pot when he woke up that morning, or from being tased. Or a mixture of all three. Shawn wasn’t really sure how he ended up lying on Eliot’s cabin’s porch surrounded by paratroopers staring down at him, but he figured it wouldn’t have made sense regardless of how sober or un-tased he was. That sort of thing never made sense--he assumed. He’d never been in this situation before, after all. He wondered how long he’d been out of it, but there was no way he was gonna ask. He pushed himself up to a sitting position, holding his head in his hands, and finally noticed Eliot, who was kneeling beside him. Dear Pineapple in the Sky, he hoped whatever was fucking up his observational skills would wear off soon--dude was practically sitting on him. And kinda grey, he noted. Maybe it was the porch lights--not exactly anyone’s best lighting. Eliot noticed him noticing him and clenched his teeth, huffing out a breath, and was on his feet and inside the cabin before Shawn had done more than open his mouth, not even sure what he was gonna say yet.
The big dude with the dreadlocks yanked Shawn to his feet like it cost him as much effort as it did Shawn to pick up a magazine. Whoa. The chick inserted herself under Shawn’s arm and practically carried him to the kitchen table, way stronger than Shawn had expected her to be, as she took most of his weight. His legs were still kind of weirdly tingly and numb at the same time, almost like sleeping limbs waking up--except for not the same at all. Shawn couldn’t remember if this was what being tased had felt like the last time. The chick settled him in one of the chairs, somehow managing to be oddly formal even as she unavoidably groped him in the process, then retreated back to the doorway to hover with the other three paratroopers over the kid, who’d glomped onto Dreadlocks and was climbing him like a tree while chattering as fast as a squirrel. The paratrooper with the …hair was the one Shawn assumed was in charge of the rest because they all kept glancing at him like they were waiting for orders, and he eventually drifted over to the kitchen table and into one of the other chairs. As soon as that happened, Eliot appeared from wherever he’d run off to and sat down across the small table from the paratrooper, but slightly closer to Shawn than the paratrooper was. Shawn was starting to believe that Eliot was the person they’d invented the phrase ‘mixed signals’ for.
A few minutes later, Eliot, Shawn and the boss paratrooper guy were still sitting around the kitchen table, uneasily staring at each other, but the three other paratroopers and the guy Gus wanted to grow up to be had responded to some intangible ‘let the guys responsible for this shit figure it out’ signal that Shawn had apparently missed and had quietly made their unobtrusive way outside where he figured they were entertaining the kid in the snow, probably with the same amount of uneasy awkward staring. “So, Eliot,” the guy broke the silence, hitting Eliot’s name hard, and he noticed Eliot’s stoic mask become a little more… stoic. The hair slouched back in the chair, his expression so calm and collected it was slightly disturbing. Shawn still didn’t know why he was at the table for this discussion in the first place, other than the whole ‘legs not working properly quite yet’ thing, or the ‘encroach on Eliot’s territory to get him to come running’ thing, but didn’t really want to bring attention to himself enough to ask, considering he was trapped at the table with two freaking super soldiers. Or Terminators. He briefly wondered what came after the T-1000. Maybe Eliot was a T-5000, and considering he was sitting down with the guy and not putting him through a wall, maybe the guy was a T-6000. He really needed to watch the movies, so he could get this straight, even though he’d had nightmares of Linda Hamilton breaking him in half when he was a kid just from watching the previews. Because Psycho wasn’t a problem, no, but Linda Hamilton? Scary.
The guy’s voice was tightly controlled as he continued to talk, and slightly quieter than was easy to hear. Shawn recognized the technique used when questioning a suspect to pull them into your space and give you a one up on them via body language; he’d learned it from Henry when he was nine. “I’d think we’d both agree that I need the full story, here. And it’s probably better for you if it comes from you than me finding out later from McKay that you lied to me. Your hacker might be good, but my guy’s the smartest man in two galaxies, and it will go pretty badly for you if I find you’ve left anything out.”
“That’s oddly specific, the ‘smartest man in two galaxies’ thing.” Shawn hadn’t realized he’d commented out loud until both stares landed on him. “Sorry, shutting up,” he mumbled, crossing his arms over his chest and not even caring that he was displaying defensive body language. It’s not like anyone could blame him, what with two Terminators glaring at him across a tiny, chipped Formica table.
He could see the guy decide to ignore the Shawn’s remark and Shawn figured the galaxies thing might have been an unintentional slip the hair didn‘t want attention on, and what the hell--maybe he was a closet geek? “Seriously, Eliot. It’d ruin my day to fill out all the paperwork--just tell me what’s going on.” He rested his elbows on the table, hands folded in front of him and looking down at them for a moment. Shawn couldn’t tell if he was girding his loins to fill out the apparently dreaded paperwork, connecting to SkyNet, wondering what was for dinner, or deciding whether or not to kill them all. The guy was super controlled; none of his body language was giving anything away. It was disconcerting.
“John,” Eliot began, then sighed. Aha! The hair had a name. Or the guy underneath the hair, anyway. Eliot suddenly leaned back and slapped his hands on the table. Shawn jumped, startled, and they both looked at him again. He really wished they‘d stop doing that. “Cut the interrogation crap, man. I’ll tell you. I just didn’t want to drag you all into this, because I know you’re dealing with your own shit.” He held up a hand when John looked ready to say something. “I know I did anyway, bringing Jesse here, but I swear to God, man, I’d die before I let Jesse get hurt. You know that.” John relaxed back in his seat, obviously waiting very patiently while Eliot took a few minutes to collect his thoughts.
“First off, this is Shawn. Spencer. No relation.” Shawn twinkled his fingers at John, but didn’t get a reaction from either of them. Oookaaay. Apparently he was more flaming than he‘d thought. “I’ll get to him later. I’m Eliot Spencer. That’s Alec Hardison,” he waved in the general direction of the front door the four adults and the kid had left through. “We work with three others. I’m sure you know all this already.”
“As well as the fact your criminal record is longer than a Learjet,” John interjected sourly.
Eliot put his face in his hands for a moment, looking like how Shawn felt when he was trying to logically explain his leaps in intuitive deductive reasoning to Lassy. “About that… I was with the government for a while, working for them doing black ops and wet work and retrieval and all that--I‘m pretty sure it’s all still classified--I wasn’t even cleared to read my own file after one of them.” John’s face shifted very slightly at that, and Shawn realized John had probably broke some--a lot of--rules and managed to see the whole thing. Eliot didn’t notice though, because he wasn’t looking at anything but his hands, and he went on, “But then things went south on an op and they, the government, they cut me loose. They’d got me right out of high school, so what they taught me was all I knew, and, well, I used it. Hired hitter, stealing shit, all that. But then Nate came along, and it was the first time I’d worked with a team since I--since Uncle Sam cut me loose. The job went FUBAR, but Nate pulled us together and we fixed it, and made the big score, too, the one to retire on. We could have all lived like kings and never worked again. But… Anyway, we went white-hat.
“We started fixing people’s lives for them. When some rich fucker screwed them, they came to us and we screwed the fucker back and got them--our clients--back on their feet. And it went on that way for a while.” Shawn was fascinated, and tried really hard not to be noticed and sent away or censored in front of. It seemed to be working. John was focused on Eliot, and Eliot was still staring down at his hands. “But then this Italian bitch got her hooks in Nate, and threatened to kill us if he didn’t do what she wanted.” He stopped staring at his hands and fixed John with a glare that practically sizzled. “The bitch threatened his team. My team. He couldn’t ignore her. I understood that. You better fucking understand that too.”
John met the glare with a calm gaze and a mildly sardonic eyebrow-raise. “Believe me, I understand. I’m just surprised you do.”
Eliot nodded sharply, like the comment had been a hit below the belt, and looked back at his hands. It was like breaking secrecy or whatever was actually physically painful for him. “She sent us at this international crime lord, king-pin, whatever you want to call it. His name’s Damien Moreau. We’d been working on getting closer to him for a while, and then when we were doing a job in Santa Barbara, the job that Shawn was helping us with,” he cut a glance over at Shawn, who avoided his eyes, “we found out he--Moreau--was coming there. It was the chance to take him down, tossed right in our fucking laps. Nate got fixated on it, and I don’t know. Maybe he wasn’t looking at all the possibilities, maybe one of us fucked up, maybe his guys were just better than us, but he found out we were there and looking for him before we knew what happened. We were made, and he was out to kill. He wanted to fucking erase us just for thinking about going after him, let alone actually trying. So we scattered. Only way we could think to live long enough to go after him again. Stayed off the grid. We were sure he didn’t know about Shawn’s help, especially since he’d been helping us with the Santa Barbara job and not the Moreau thing, and that he’d be safe, but then he disappeared. Completely off the face of the earth.” Shawn winced, but noticed the flicker across John’s face at Eliot’s word choice nonetheless. Interesting.
“So you figured this Moreau guy had gone after him,” John concluded with a glance at Shawn. Shawn avoided his eyes, too. He might have been channeling a five-year-old’s ploy of ‘if I can’t see you, you can’t see me,’ but it seemed to have been working so far, because both of them were mostly ignoring him.
“Yeah. But then I talked to his friend and Gus said he thought Shawn had just run away again, and we tracked him down here.” Eliot looked at John earnestly. It was an expression Shawn hadn’t seen on Eliot’s face before. It looked out of place. “I swear, John, if I’d thought for a second that Moreau had really stashed him in some Podunk ski-lodge, I wouldn’t have brought Jesse here. I wouldn’t put him in danger, you know that.”
John was silent for a few moments. Shawn felt awkward and tense, and Eliot looked like he was strung tighter than… something that was strung really tight. He’d never really gotten that metaphor. Simile? Whatever. John broke Shawn’s train of thought by sighing loudly.
“Dammit, Tom--Eliot, I really kinda wanted to kill you for this,” he muttered under his breath, and Eliot relaxed. Shawn had no clue why John’s talking about killing him was relaxing to Eliot. Maybe it was a military thing. “Damien Moreau, you said?” At Eliot’s nod, John tapped an ear and Shawn finally paid enough attention to notice there was a little radio-thing tucked in his weirdly pointed ear. Maybe he was a Vulcan, not a Terminator. That’d explain the ‘two galaxies‘ thing, at least. “Okay, guys, safe to come in. You get all that, McKay?” He was silent for a moment, then made a face. “Well, that explains part of it. Fucking Trust.” Maybe that was a Vulcan curse or something, because it certainly didn’t make any sense otherwise.
The paratroopers, Hardison and the kid (who wasn’t, after all, Eliot’s and Hardison’s love child, thank God) all came in covered in snow and red from the cold. Jesse flung himself at his dad again, and John hefted the kid to his shoulders as he stood up. “We’ve gotta head back. This wasn’t exactly… official.” He had a muttered conversation with his kid that Shawn couldn’t overhear, then grinned at the beaming kid. “Okay, buddy.” He looked back at Eliot. “I’m taking Jesse to At- taking him with us for the night. I’ll bring him back tomorrow--there’s a couple of things I can find out that might help you with this Moreau guy, if I can get clearance to tell you.” He paused for a moment, then added thoughtfully, “I don’t think I’m gonna kill you for lying to me, since Jesse wasn’t in any danger. But do it again, and I can’t promise anything for Ronon. He’s kinda trigger happy, I think you noticed earlier, and Jesse‘s like a little brother to him.” Eliot nodded, shooting the big guy a glance that had respect and hatred all rolled up into one. Shawn wondered what that was all about.
John tapped his ear-radio-thing again, even though all his paratroopers were standing right next to him. “Daedalus, five to bring home. Repeat, five. Extra signature JJS07232008JSLC. Confirmed.” He stared levelly at Eliot for a moment, then winked at him, including Shawn in the gesture. “Oh, and in return for us helping out with your Moreau little thing, here, I totally expect to see both of you buckin’ bales on the ranch next summer.”
Shawn didn’t even have a chance to wonder what the hell ‘buckin’ bales’ meant or what ranch John was talking about before there was a flash of intense white light and they were gone. Shawn blinked rapidly and stared at where the five of them had been standing. He hadn’t really thought John was a Vulcan. Holy shit. He totally agreed with the stunned mutter coming from where Hardison had been standing.
“If some dude with a strobe light comes to wipe my memory now, I’m going to be so pissed.”
***
Chapter Twelve