Man I Used to Be #5
Title: Man I Used to Be
By: Jendavis
Rating: PG-13 for now
Spoilers: Up through 2x07
Pairing: Alec Hardison/ Eliot Spencer
Genre: Drama
Warnings: WIP
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, don't take this too seriously.
Summary: The present's a mess, and the past isn't helping.
A/N: Posting because I can't stand to look at it any longer.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
This was getting old.
Don't have time for this.
It wasn't like keeping quiet was going to prevent anyone from knowing he was there.
Ship's long sailed on that one, son.
But talking meant one of two things. Asking for information, or giving it away. The latter was the more obvious of the two, but the former was more dangerous. It wasn't just requesting information that was the problem. It was admitting that you didn't understand in the first place.
It meant putting yourself at their mercy, just a little bit more.
And he was already sitting on a gritty concrete floor, without shirt, shoes, or weapons. He had nothing. Down to his jeans and his pride, both felt a little more valuable than they'd been a week ago.
So Eliot remained silent. Mostly to alleviate the cramping in his gut, he paced the room again, trying the door handle on every hundredth pass. He wasn't expecting to find it open, but it allowed him the illusion that he was taking action-any sort of action at all.
He had a little while yet before the room would be too dark to see, and he was fighting sleep on his feet already, well past weary of the routine.
This time last, what, week? A few days ago? He'd been worrying about setting foot in a bar, of all places. Been sure that it would destroy him.
But it hadn't. Apparently his radar was off by a few days, nearly to the point of being comical. Instead, then, he'd shot some pool, and felt more comfortable than he'd expected. At least until finding Hardison sitting there in an obnoxious green sweatshirt, grinning at him like it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen.
No. Wait. That was later on.
Hardison had been convinced he was there for some nefarious purpose, and he hadn't known, at first, whether or not to be insulted by that assumption, or wary of the man making it.
Or a little of both.
But, flashing forward again, to when Hardison was smiling. Comfortable where he was sitting at the bar, only acting nervous because of Eliot's unease.
Even then, he hadn't been surprised that Hardison rolled with the punches, even if everything else-
God, you can't even think it.
Even if everything else was a little messed up.
Hardison was supposed to be at home, playing his stupid game, stuffing his face with junk food and shouting obscenities at the computer screen. Destroying monsters that went down a whole lot easier than the ones they encountered at work. He wasn't supposed to have a life.
Eliot hadn't let himself think about it, not much, but he was running out of other options. It was either Hardison, or the same four walls, the cool grittiness of the concrete floor under his feet, and whatever was due to come through the door the moment he let his guard down.
Given the options, maybe thinking a bit more on the topic of Alec Hardison wasn't so insane.
He wondered how he'd managed to figure everything out, how he'd probably done so at a fairly young age. If it really had been as bad as Eliot suspected. A broken wrist wasn't the hardest knock a body could take, but it wasn't fun. He tried to guess what Hardison would be like if he hadn't gone through it. More obnoxious? Less?
The guy was just a kid. Eliot wasn't sure how old he was, not really, but it rankled, just a little, to think that he'd already found his way through it all, that he was finished with that entire self-discovery bullshit. He was whoever he was now, and the big headfuck of getting there was over and done with. Yesterday. Old news. And Hardison had to have been with guys before. As geeky as he was, he was just too damned sociable.
It was an infuriating thing to be concerned with, all things considered, but it didn't stop Eliot from circling around it.
If it were anyone else- if both of them were someone else, maybe he'd have asked about it. What he'd done, what it had felt like, how much did it change him. If it had screwed with Hardison's head the way the mere idea of it was screwing with Eliot's.
But they weren't other people. He hadn't asked. And there they were. Well, there he was. Hardison was out in the world somewhere, existing. It was a little surreal to think about, impractical, how in his mind Hardison and Not Here were coming to mean the same thing, but Eliot was cold, worn out, and out of options. A little irrationality under the circumstances was one of the few things he could afford.
As long as he kept an eye on it.
---
He'd held out for hours, days maybe. Hadn't sipped any of the water, eaten any of the sandwich sitting on the paper plate, too sure that the water was drugged and the food was poison. The need for both was winning out, though, and Eliot had to admit to himself that at this point, it probably didn't matter. And he had to do something, even something stupid, to get this moving forward.
He ate the stale sandwich and drank the water and waited for it to kill him. Tried to tell himself he wasn't giving in, that it wasn't an act of surrender.
He was already weak, and his head hurt too much to concentrate. At this point, they didn't need to drug him. They already had every advantage.
You're whining again. Get over it, get a plan, and get out of here.
The cell had grown dark. He lay down, resolving to only fake sleep. He needed to be awake when the door opened.
---
Alec grunted and hefted another shovelful of earth up towards Parker, who caught it in the screen, sifting through the dirt, and thankfully, finding nothing.
It was just past one, and the heat was becoming unbearable, but with one more shovelful, he was finally done digging. He signaled Sophie, who knelt to hand the last three pieces of pottery down, her movements slow and careful.
Alec bit back a rude comment or two. Thing's been broken for a few hundred years. Ain't like another crack is going to ruin it.
He was pretty sure he wasn't cut out for this sort of thing, but he set his jaw. For now, he would concentrate, and keep his mouth shut. Arguing now would only cause more delays. Wasn't good for anyone.
By the time Nate caught up to them, camera in tow, Sophie was already on the phone, alerting the news. They were nearly finished.
---
He figured it had been a day or so since he'd caught sight of the person out in the hall. Since then, there had been no further change in routine, other than his failed attempt to avoid sleep. He was still tired all the time and still ached, deep in his joints, low in his spine.
But he was growing certain that it wasn't the drugs, it wasn't the near starvation, and it wasn't the lack of water that was going to kill Eliot. It was the boredom.
He'd been pulling out for longer and longer. Disassociating. He'd already thought about his garden, concentrating on creating it exactly from memory, down to the twine that held the young vines up against the trellis, and every cheap plastic garden stake that he'd meant to remove once the plants were grown enough to identify.
He'd mentally gone through the steps of building the Desperado cycle kit he'd picked up after getting back from Pakistan, belt drive to break lines to front end. Tried to remember every twist of the wrench it had taken, but it had started to get hazy.
It wasn't working as well as it had yesterday. He couldn’t concentrate. Kept thinking about the others. Trying not to hope that they were coming for him.
It's been too long, now.
Eliot tamped down on the panic that started to rise, recognizing it as the first twitches of dreaming. He'd been falling asleep again.
Dreaming that Parker was crawling through the air vents while Sophie distracted the guards out front, wherever out front was. That Nate was holed up in an office somewhere, standing over Hardison's shoulder. Watching, monitoring, impatient for updates.
He could see Hardison staring at his screen, too focused to notice Nate's hovering. Silent, for once
Wait, no. That was all wrong. That silence wasn't his, it was here.
It wasn't just the dark that was beginning to get to Eliot. The quiet took its own toll.
---
Alec spent the afternoon shutting down the project, setting the timer on a couple of alerts, and clearing out the hotel room, packing Eliot's belongings with his own before settling down in the lounge, drinking a soda, and checking his crawlers.
Nothing on Eliot. He tried not to be surprised.
Up in the corner, the television was on, quietly, but when it struck five, the bartender turned the volume up. It was the local news.
Weather, first, and a report on the preparations for the new community pool, but after a commercial, Sophie was on. Alec spun around to see if Parker or Nate had arrived yet, to see if they were watching too, but they still hadn't made it back.
He watched, intently, and strained to listen to the conversations around the room. She was really selling it. Hell, Alec knew Sophie, had gone over the story with her, but now, watching her in action, he was half convinced to take the classes she was teaching over at the University.
It would take a hell of a lot to remove the story from the video archives later, but for the moment, it was worth it.
The bartender came round down to his end again, curious. "So that was what you guys were working on?"
"Yep." Alec held up his right hand, showing the blisters that had formed on his palm, feeling like an asshole for thinking that Eliot should have been there to take some of the damage. "Hell of a day, man. The artifacts should tell us a lot."
"That's not all they're gonna do," the bartender replied. "See. You're new in town, but there's this guy. DeWitt. Been building up office parks, trying to pull more business into the area. Says he's reinvigorating the town, but the truth is, he's a snake. Whatever he touches turns to shit, you know? He's been destroying everything that makes this place home, you know?"
"Uh." Alec didn't know what to say to that. Truth be told, he hadn't noticed that the bartender was aware of what they were doing, why they were there. It all made sense, though, when he spoke again.
"So, that Susan. The research assistant, or whatever they called her. She seein' anyone?"
Alec wanted to consider that as much as he wanted to consider any more of this job. His fingers were already twitching, knowing that soon, he'd be able to put it behind him, toggle over, and get to work on tracking Eliot. But he played it off with a laugh and a shrug, and after a moment, the bartender was heading back into the kitchen anyway.
Looking back down to his laptop, Alec checked the Historical Society email servers again. Already, it seemed that some of the artifacts were coming into question, that a Dr. Henrikson had apparently found one of the more unique bowls the not six months ago, and it had disappeared from the site.
Another few emails, and it was apparent that DeWitt being the only one to know about the excavation was cause for concern. The paperwork, it seemed, had never arrived, and the State Archaeologist's office was already sending someone up from Kansas City.
It was cause for some mild concern, but he'd been carefully sloppy, ghosting everything through DeWitt's office server. To anyone looking, it would be clear that DeWitt trying to cover his trail.
The news hadn't aired fifteen minutes ago, but the mess the team had carefully left was already snowballing towards scandal. Another day or two at the most, and the Bradshaw ranch project would be scrapped. DeWitt would be ruined.
And Alec could get some real work done. Important work, though he knew better than to say so in front of the others. Something in his shoulders began to unclench, and his mind was beginning to spin into gear.
---
Eliot noticed two things upon waking. The first was that he felt worse than before, and that he was starting to shiver again. The second was the light. It was glaring, and felt like sunshine until he noticed that the bulb hanging from the ceiling was glowing.
He shut his eyes again, before opening them again carefully, adjusting to the brightness.
His mouth was too dry to even consider swallowing, but there was another half sandwich, and another cup of water in the middle of the room.
He'd failed, then. Fallen asleep again, and missed another chance.
He bit back a groan, the closest thing to sound he'd made since arriving.
Something caught his eye, then, over by the door. It took a few moments to focus enough to see.
A picture, glossy, hanging on the wall. A photograph.
He was rolling over, willing the strength to get up and inspect it, when he noticed a second, on the right hand wall. On a hunch, he turned his head to find a third, across the cell to the left.
They were unsettling, from here, even without knowing what images they showed.
None of them, however, made him as uneasy as the fourth, which he didn't see until he finished standing. It had been hung mere inches above his head. Someone had leaned over him while he'd been asleep. Someone had gotten that close.
It was the sort of thing that wasn't supposed to happen. All of this was.
Taking more time than he was comfortable admitting, he managed to tear the pictures from the wall. Gathering them together before settling down again, water temptingly close to hand, he set to examining them.
All four were of the same man, taken over several years. One had been taken inside a car. Another had been taken outside, in a place where the sun shone too brightly, bleaching everything out. One was in a crowded square, a banner in the background bore the Olympic rings, and writing in kanji. Nagano, then, probably 1998.
The man had dark hair in what seemed the earliest picture, but it was dyed nearly white in the three later ones, Eliot could see the roots showing. The grin was the same in all of them, never reaching the dark eyes, which were hidden by dark glasses in two shots anyway.
Eliot had the sinking feeling he was supposed to know who it was.
He turned the photos over, hoping for some further explanation, but he found nothing except the imprints striped up the backs. They'd all been developed at the same time. Recently. It didn't tell him when the film had actually been used.
---
Even after he'd memorized them, Eliot stared at the photographs for a long time, because there was nothing else in the cell worth examining. Something, however, an hour or several later, made him look up.
The noise was so faint that he couldn't be sure that he'd heard it. Voices. No. Wait. One voice, sharp and urgent and quiet. He strained to listen, long after it had faded, trying to confirm what he thought he'd heard, trying not to get his hopes up, but there was nothing for a long while.
And then, again, that same voice, whispering.
"-disabled the alarm."
It was Parker.
Eliot crawled up into a sitting position, ran a hand through his hair, and didn't move his eyes from the door. Breathless and waiting, he'd never paid so much attention to anything in his life.
So when the gunshot sounded, Eliot felt it rip through him, sure that he'd been struck dead.
But he was still sitting there, in the middle of the cell, with nothing but echoing reverberations shuddering through him. Once he was able to comprehend the notion that he was still there to feel them, he was on his feet, all weakness and resolution to remain silent forgotten.
"Parker!" His voice was a scraping rasp against his throat, and he wasn't sure how much of it actually made it out, and how much he only heard in his head. But it didn't seem to matter, either way. There was no response at all.
Just some shuffling out in the hallway, the sound of a body being dragged across a basement floor.
It's a very distinctive sound, Eliot thought hysterically, his hands clutching tightly into fists as he waited to fall apart.
He could feel the first tremors already.
---
"Hardison, tell me you've got something."
As he'd been getting out of the car the previous night, Nate had promised Alec eighteen hours to work before banging down his door.
He was thirteen minutes early, and didn't wait to be invited in. Standing in the middle of Alec's kitchen and barely noting the three open laptops on the table, he looked like he'd gotten twice as much sleep as Alec had. Zero twice was still zero.
"Just dead ends, all around. For all the sleep I didn't get, the results ain't turning up to be worth it."
"Nothing?" Nate assessed him with a glance, not liking the answer. His tone was needling. "You're sure about your sources?"
Alec snorted his frustration. "What did I just say? Man, I looked. I looked damn hard. I got military, police, every lease and title under every alias. I have pictures of him with a fantastic mullet back in high school. I've been tracking every dude and every lady who he's crossed, with us and before us, and there ain't nothin' goin' down with any of 'em. Only lead I haven't run down is his sister, and that's only because-"
"Don't," Nate intoned, his voice a warning as he picked up a deck of playing cards from the shelf, riffling through them with his thumb distractedly. "Don't even."
"But she might know-"
Still, though, Nate was shaking his head. "Alec, you've been keeping files on us since we started. What do they tell you about his sister?"
"She went off the radar the same time as his last posting in Afghanistan. Probably got her name changed. He hasn't contacted her or her kid since, far as anyone should be able to tell."
"He's been keeping them safe since the mid-nineties, then," Nate reasoned, cutting the deck single handedly.
Alec leaned forward, trying to catch Nate's attention. "But I already know where she-"
Any illusion that he'd been distracted died with Nate's glare. "Not the point, Hardison."
"Yo, man. Look. It don't sit right with me, neither, but for all we know, she could have been involved."
"You have any evidence to back that up? Anything at all? No?" Nate seemed close to shouting, but he stopped himself, his tone going quiet and patronizing. "Fine. Whatever. Tell me what will happen once we call Eliot's sister."
Alec wanted to throttle the older man, he really did. "We get some information? Even if it's a dead end, we'll know it's a dead end."
"Two," Nate picked up the narration impatiently, holding up two fingers to continue the list. "We tell her something's up, she worries, and starts looking into it on her own."
"If I can't find him, how the hell is she going to?"
"Then what's the point of asking in the first place?" Alec snorted, but Nate ignored him. "Three. She finds out what her brother's life looks like. We find Eliot, he comes back, whatever, and he finds out not only that she knows, but how." Nate looked away, out the window, or at it, maybe, his voice finally losing some of its rancor. "You're looking for a way to kill a man, destroy his family. Got it?"
"Yeah," Alec swallowed, sensing that the argument was closed, but refusing to let it go without making his point. "Just. If this was anyone else, if this was a client, we'd check it out. Wouldn't even talk about it."
Nate nodded, like he'd been in agreement with Alec this whole time. "This isn't just anyone else, though, is it? Listen. You get me anything that points in that direction, and I'll make the call myself. But for now, we leave his sister out of it. Are we clear?"
"Yeah, man. We're clear."
---
Eliot had mourned himself to sleep with the light still on, sure that there were only so many more times he'd be opening his eyes again. Only so many times he even wanted to try.
It wasn't the waking that surprised him, though. It was the presence of someone else in the room. He could hear the sound of breath, somewhere behind him, towards the center of the room. He could feel the stirring of the air against the bare skin of his back. They were close.
This is your chance. Don't fuck it up.
Eliot took one slow, measured breath, before going into action.
He swung his body over, swept his leg wide, hoping to connect with the back of a knee, but he wasn't dismayed to find that the inside of his ankle caught the intruder in the torso.
It brought him down even faster.
Eliot scrambled to drag himself over before the man, who had to outweigh him by more than he wanted to consider, had a chance to recover. His hand already wrenched into a fist, he got two hits in, sloppier than he'd like, but heavy enough for the time being. Caught him in the throat, the second time.
He would kill this man.
He began to press down, putting all his weight into it.
All his weight, these days, wasn't near enough, and something was off, even if he couldn't tell exactly what it was. He was still trying to identify the sound of the door opening when he felt the hands grab him from behind.
They pulled him roughly off his target, dragging him back and up until he was almost kneeling, but before he could shift his weight, get his feet under him properly, they'd thrown him down onto his back.
His head hit the floor sharply, but then he had a moment to look up at his assailants, only mildly surprised to find that he couldn't see their faces, not with the bright light turning them into silhouettes and the dark spots blurring his vision.
One of them had killed Parker, and the anger was starting to rise, trying to gain the foothold that shove him back into the violence, but the first kick came like a storm breaking.
Sharp and definite and different, it was everything he'd wanted, right up until he felt the second crashing into his hip, grinding his skin across the floor as the force pushed him away.
He began to lose track of the individual sensations a moment later, too focused on curling in, trying to protect what was left of himself.
His knee screamed as it gave out under a boot heel, and the pummeling kicks, faster now and to numerous to count, were pressing the air from his lungs too quickly to be replaced. A foot glanced off his face, leaving him choking on his own blood, unable to stir enough air to cough.
Didn't matter, though. With his ribs feeling this broken, it hurt too much to try.
He started to black out, then, but it saved him the embarrassment of flailing, of begging them to stop. His last thought was that this falling, this fading out and under, was the first mercy that came for free.
Some small part of Eliot had won, and the rest followed him down.
---
The splinters were starting to show. Nate was burning himself at both ends, and looked worse than he'd done during his rehab stint. Parker was pacing and feral, snapping at anyone for looking in her general direction. Sophie, always the sort to care wherever and whenever she could, was starting to worry about the three of them, more than she worried about Eliot, and Alec really would have liked it if they could all just stay on topic.
Nate had finally determined that Parker was going to start eating into his security deposit if she was stuck there much longer, and that Hardison needed to unpeel himself from Nate's screens, so he'd kicked them out.
It was just as well, Alec decided, staring down in dismay at the desk shoved in the corner of Eliot's living room. It got him out of the place, away from the couch where he had nothing to do besides wish for intel that wasn't there, wondering if his basic assumptions weren't wrong.
It was insane to assume that Eliot would always be there, or that he'd be gracious when the time came that he decided he was through with the group. But things had been going well, Alec had thought. They were just starting to get their groove back after months apart, finding that nothing had changed, not really. Hell, maybe things had even been a little better than before.
Except- and it had been creeping up on him for days, but it stung fresh- Eliot might have left because of him, because of what he knew.
Maybe he didn't want to be found.
---
True to Eliot's word, Alec found no evidence of a television in Eliot's house. He did, however, have a computer. Of sorts.
The modem probably hadn't worked for ten years. It wasn't even plugged in, and the shoebox in the file drawer held, in equal amounts, floppy discs and dust. Indiana Jones himself would have choked.
Parker was finishing up in Eliot's insanely well-stocked and organized kitchen, having found nothing but a few dishes in the sink and an obscene number of cookbooks in the cupboard.
"I'm going upstairs to start on his room," she called out, and Alec couldn't understand, for a moment, why that made him nervous. Thought for a moment it was because he was hearing it on the comms, as well as from down the hall, then realized it was something else.
Alec shot out of his chair. "Nah, hey. Parker. I got it."
"You're still-"
"I've got everything from his computer."
"If he has a safe, it would probably be-"
"I'm just saying. You know. Man probably wouldn't appreciate a lady pawing through his underwear drawer, you know?"
"What, having another guy do it makes it any less weird?" But Parker's footsteps were creaking down the staircase again. "Fine. I call dibs on the garage, though."
"Fair enough," Alec agreed, confused by her happy grin as she passed by him coming out of the hallway.
---
As she rummaged through Eliot's truck, Parker described everything she found in the glove compartment, running it by Nate to see if he thought it would be useful.
Alec, for his part, kept his findings quiet. He'd already gone through the closet and the dresser, and was running out of things to check that weren't the bed, which had two bare pillows and a comforter piled on the bare mattress, and the nightstand.
Stay focused. Ain't here to know about that. Find out what happened. That's all. Ignore the rest.
Unable to put it off any longer, he pulled the drawer out of the nightstand. Found another knife, not the first that had been stashed away in the house. A half-finished Sunday crossword, a scattering of keys and paper clips. The small box of tissues and the bottle of lotion were so unsurprising that he should have barely noticed them. It wasn't until he flipped the crossword aside to find the magazine underneath that he was finally faced with what he'd been steeling himself to find.
One porno mag, with two men on the cover. It was six months old, and a little torn along the spine, but not so much that the cover was in danger of falling off.
It was a stupid detail to note, compared to the rest of it. But the alternative was to open it up and flip through, just to satisfy his own curiosity. To wonder which of the models were Eliot's type, if the images inside actually did it for him, or if they weren't quite enough. If Eliot was just making do with this outdated issue until he could get up the gumption to replace it.
This ain't what you're here for. Quit perving over his porn and get yo' ass to work finding him.
"Hardison, you find anything?" He jumped at the sound of Nate's voice.
"What? Ah. Nah, man. Just crossword puzzles and the usual," he righted the contents of the drawer and slid it closed gently. "Bed's been stripped, though."
"There are sheets in the washing machine. They got all moldy and gross," Parker said, and the crash of the lid back over the offending materials was deafening over the comms. "There's a pitcher of ice tea on the back porch, though I wouldn't recommend drinking it, and I found a book lying on the floor, though it looks like it got spilled on. Broken glass, too, but no blood. Doesn't look like there was much of a struggle, or a cleanup."
Go figure, while you're being creepy all up in Eliot's business, Parker's going all Grissom. She'll probably have one of those purple flashlights out by the time you get down there.
Alec cast one last glance around Eliot's room, mentally apologizing to the nightstand for intruding. Some pink material had gotten caught in the door of the closet when he'd been going through Eliot's pockets. Finding nothing in the pockets, he'd ignored the shirt, but now he tried to remember if he'd seen Eliot wearing it. If he'd given him any shit for wearing pink. Hoped he had.
Not because it mattered. It wasn't as if Alec himself didn't have a colorful wardrobe. But Eliot was the kind of guy to throw six fits over getting called on it, and it would have been a shame to miss such a great opportunity.
He was getting distracted again.
He was also being a total girl, holding Eliot's pink shirt in both hands, staring blankly into the closet while pretending that he wasn't considering the grown up version of yanking-on-pigtails.
The sheer number of bad jokes he could have made about his train of thought, at that moment, was overwhelming. It was fucked, the way his sense of humor worked sometimes. Suddenly needing to get out of there, he shoved the shirt haphazardly into the closet, and headed for the stairs.
He was trying to find a parking space near McRory's, half-listening to Parker explain all the reasons that sun tea was disturbing, even without finding it spilled at a likely crime scene, when his brain spit out the data that he'd forgotten he'd been trying to recover.
At the auction house, where they'd come across Chaos's crew. When Eliot had met and not fought that Mossad chick, he'd been wearing that shirt.
It wasn't an epiphany, not really. But it was getting there.
He tapped the comm. unit back on. "Ah. Guys? I think I just figured something else we gotta check out."
---
Chapter 6
By: Jendavis
Rating: PG-13 for now
Spoilers: Up through 2x07
Pairing: Alec Hardison/ Eliot Spencer
Genre: Drama
Warnings: WIP
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, don't take this too seriously.
Summary: The present's a mess, and the past isn't helping.
A/N: Posting because I can't stand to look at it any longer.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
This was getting old.
Don't have time for this.
It wasn't like keeping quiet was going to prevent anyone from knowing he was there.
Ship's long sailed on that one, son.
But talking meant one of two things. Asking for information, or giving it away. The latter was the more obvious of the two, but the former was more dangerous. It wasn't just requesting information that was the problem. It was admitting that you didn't understand in the first place.
It meant putting yourself at their mercy, just a little bit more.
And he was already sitting on a gritty concrete floor, without shirt, shoes, or weapons. He had nothing. Down to his jeans and his pride, both felt a little more valuable than they'd been a week ago.
So Eliot remained silent. Mostly to alleviate the cramping in his gut, he paced the room again, trying the door handle on every hundredth pass. He wasn't expecting to find it open, but it allowed him the illusion that he was taking action-any sort of action at all.
He had a little while yet before the room would be too dark to see, and he was fighting sleep on his feet already, well past weary of the routine.
This time last, what, week? A few days ago? He'd been worrying about setting foot in a bar, of all places. Been sure that it would destroy him.
But it hadn't. Apparently his radar was off by a few days, nearly to the point of being comical. Instead, then, he'd shot some pool, and felt more comfortable than he'd expected. At least until finding Hardison sitting there in an obnoxious green sweatshirt, grinning at him like it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen.
No. Wait. That was later on.
Hardison had been convinced he was there for some nefarious purpose, and he hadn't known, at first, whether or not to be insulted by that assumption, or wary of the man making it.
Or a little of both.
But, flashing forward again, to when Hardison was smiling. Comfortable where he was sitting at the bar, only acting nervous because of Eliot's unease.
Even then, he hadn't been surprised that Hardison rolled with the punches, even if everything else-
God, you can't even think it.
Even if everything else was a little messed up.
Hardison was supposed to be at home, playing his stupid game, stuffing his face with junk food and shouting obscenities at the computer screen. Destroying monsters that went down a whole lot easier than the ones they encountered at work. He wasn't supposed to have a life.
Eliot hadn't let himself think about it, not much, but he was running out of other options. It was either Hardison, or the same four walls, the cool grittiness of the concrete floor under his feet, and whatever was due to come through the door the moment he let his guard down.
Given the options, maybe thinking a bit more on the topic of Alec Hardison wasn't so insane.
He wondered how he'd managed to figure everything out, how he'd probably done so at a fairly young age. If it really had been as bad as Eliot suspected. A broken wrist wasn't the hardest knock a body could take, but it wasn't fun. He tried to guess what Hardison would be like if he hadn't gone through it. More obnoxious? Less?
The guy was just a kid. Eliot wasn't sure how old he was, not really, but it rankled, just a little, to think that he'd already found his way through it all, that he was finished with that entire self-discovery bullshit. He was whoever he was now, and the big headfuck of getting there was over and done with. Yesterday. Old news. And Hardison had to have been with guys before. As geeky as he was, he was just too damned sociable.
It was an infuriating thing to be concerned with, all things considered, but it didn't stop Eliot from circling around it.
If it were anyone else- if both of them were someone else, maybe he'd have asked about it. What he'd done, what it had felt like, how much did it change him. If it had screwed with Hardison's head the way the mere idea of it was screwing with Eliot's.
But they weren't other people. He hadn't asked. And there they were. Well, there he was. Hardison was out in the world somewhere, existing. It was a little surreal to think about, impractical, how in his mind Hardison and Not Here were coming to mean the same thing, but Eliot was cold, worn out, and out of options. A little irrationality under the circumstances was one of the few things he could afford.
As long as he kept an eye on it.
---
He'd held out for hours, days maybe. Hadn't sipped any of the water, eaten any of the sandwich sitting on the paper plate, too sure that the water was drugged and the food was poison. The need for both was winning out, though, and Eliot had to admit to himself that at this point, it probably didn't matter. And he had to do something, even something stupid, to get this moving forward.
He ate the stale sandwich and drank the water and waited for it to kill him. Tried to tell himself he wasn't giving in, that it wasn't an act of surrender.
He was already weak, and his head hurt too much to concentrate. At this point, they didn't need to drug him. They already had every advantage.
You're whining again. Get over it, get a plan, and get out of here.
The cell had grown dark. He lay down, resolving to only fake sleep. He needed to be awake when the door opened.
---
Alec grunted and hefted another shovelful of earth up towards Parker, who caught it in the screen, sifting through the dirt, and thankfully, finding nothing.
It was just past one, and the heat was becoming unbearable, but with one more shovelful, he was finally done digging. He signaled Sophie, who knelt to hand the last three pieces of pottery down, her movements slow and careful.
Alec bit back a rude comment or two. Thing's been broken for a few hundred years. Ain't like another crack is going to ruin it.
He was pretty sure he wasn't cut out for this sort of thing, but he set his jaw. For now, he would concentrate, and keep his mouth shut. Arguing now would only cause more delays. Wasn't good for anyone.
By the time Nate caught up to them, camera in tow, Sophie was already on the phone, alerting the news. They were nearly finished.
---
He figured it had been a day or so since he'd caught sight of the person out in the hall. Since then, there had been no further change in routine, other than his failed attempt to avoid sleep. He was still tired all the time and still ached, deep in his joints, low in his spine.
But he was growing certain that it wasn't the drugs, it wasn't the near starvation, and it wasn't the lack of water that was going to kill Eliot. It was the boredom.
He'd been pulling out for longer and longer. Disassociating. He'd already thought about his garden, concentrating on creating it exactly from memory, down to the twine that held the young vines up against the trellis, and every cheap plastic garden stake that he'd meant to remove once the plants were grown enough to identify.
He'd mentally gone through the steps of building the Desperado cycle kit he'd picked up after getting back from Pakistan, belt drive to break lines to front end. Tried to remember every twist of the wrench it had taken, but it had started to get hazy.
It wasn't working as well as it had yesterday. He couldn’t concentrate. Kept thinking about the others. Trying not to hope that they were coming for him.
It's been too long, now.
Eliot tamped down on the panic that started to rise, recognizing it as the first twitches of dreaming. He'd been falling asleep again.
Dreaming that Parker was crawling through the air vents while Sophie distracted the guards out front, wherever out front was. That Nate was holed up in an office somewhere, standing over Hardison's shoulder. Watching, monitoring, impatient for updates.
He could see Hardison staring at his screen, too focused to notice Nate's hovering. Silent, for once
Wait, no. That was all wrong. That silence wasn't his, it was here.
It wasn't just the dark that was beginning to get to Eliot. The quiet took its own toll.
---
Alec spent the afternoon shutting down the project, setting the timer on a couple of alerts, and clearing out the hotel room, packing Eliot's belongings with his own before settling down in the lounge, drinking a soda, and checking his crawlers.
Nothing on Eliot. He tried not to be surprised.
Up in the corner, the television was on, quietly, but when it struck five, the bartender turned the volume up. It was the local news.
Weather, first, and a report on the preparations for the new community pool, but after a commercial, Sophie was on. Alec spun around to see if Parker or Nate had arrived yet, to see if they were watching too, but they still hadn't made it back.
He watched, intently, and strained to listen to the conversations around the room. She was really selling it. Hell, Alec knew Sophie, had gone over the story with her, but now, watching her in action, he was half convinced to take the classes she was teaching over at the University.
It would take a hell of a lot to remove the story from the video archives later, but for the moment, it was worth it.
The bartender came round down to his end again, curious. "So that was what you guys were working on?"
"Yep." Alec held up his right hand, showing the blisters that had formed on his palm, feeling like an asshole for thinking that Eliot should have been there to take some of the damage. "Hell of a day, man. The artifacts should tell us a lot."
"That's not all they're gonna do," the bartender replied. "See. You're new in town, but there's this guy. DeWitt. Been building up office parks, trying to pull more business into the area. Says he's reinvigorating the town, but the truth is, he's a snake. Whatever he touches turns to shit, you know? He's been destroying everything that makes this place home, you know?"
"Uh." Alec didn't know what to say to that. Truth be told, he hadn't noticed that the bartender was aware of what they were doing, why they were there. It all made sense, though, when he spoke again.
"So, that Susan. The research assistant, or whatever they called her. She seein' anyone?"
Alec wanted to consider that as much as he wanted to consider any more of this job. His fingers were already twitching, knowing that soon, he'd be able to put it behind him, toggle over, and get to work on tracking Eliot. But he played it off with a laugh and a shrug, and after a moment, the bartender was heading back into the kitchen anyway.
Looking back down to his laptop, Alec checked the Historical Society email servers again. Already, it seemed that some of the artifacts were coming into question, that a Dr. Henrikson had apparently found one of the more unique bowls the not six months ago, and it had disappeared from the site.
Another few emails, and it was apparent that DeWitt being the only one to know about the excavation was cause for concern. The paperwork, it seemed, had never arrived, and the State Archaeologist's office was already sending someone up from Kansas City.
It was cause for some mild concern, but he'd been carefully sloppy, ghosting everything through DeWitt's office server. To anyone looking, it would be clear that DeWitt trying to cover his trail.
The news hadn't aired fifteen minutes ago, but the mess the team had carefully left was already snowballing towards scandal. Another day or two at the most, and the Bradshaw ranch project would be scrapped. DeWitt would be ruined.
And Alec could get some real work done. Important work, though he knew better than to say so in front of the others. Something in his shoulders began to unclench, and his mind was beginning to spin into gear.
---
Eliot noticed two things upon waking. The first was that he felt worse than before, and that he was starting to shiver again. The second was the light. It was glaring, and felt like sunshine until he noticed that the bulb hanging from the ceiling was glowing.
He shut his eyes again, before opening them again carefully, adjusting to the brightness.
His mouth was too dry to even consider swallowing, but there was another half sandwich, and another cup of water in the middle of the room.
He'd failed, then. Fallen asleep again, and missed another chance.
He bit back a groan, the closest thing to sound he'd made since arriving.
Something caught his eye, then, over by the door. It took a few moments to focus enough to see.
A picture, glossy, hanging on the wall. A photograph.
He was rolling over, willing the strength to get up and inspect it, when he noticed a second, on the right hand wall. On a hunch, he turned his head to find a third, across the cell to the left.
They were unsettling, from here, even without knowing what images they showed.
None of them, however, made him as uneasy as the fourth, which he didn't see until he finished standing. It had been hung mere inches above his head. Someone had leaned over him while he'd been asleep. Someone had gotten that close.
It was the sort of thing that wasn't supposed to happen. All of this was.
Taking more time than he was comfortable admitting, he managed to tear the pictures from the wall. Gathering them together before settling down again, water temptingly close to hand, he set to examining them.
All four were of the same man, taken over several years. One had been taken inside a car. Another had been taken outside, in a place where the sun shone too brightly, bleaching everything out. One was in a crowded square, a banner in the background bore the Olympic rings, and writing in kanji. Nagano, then, probably 1998.
The man had dark hair in what seemed the earliest picture, but it was dyed nearly white in the three later ones, Eliot could see the roots showing. The grin was the same in all of them, never reaching the dark eyes, which were hidden by dark glasses in two shots anyway.
Eliot had the sinking feeling he was supposed to know who it was.
He turned the photos over, hoping for some further explanation, but he found nothing except the imprints striped up the backs. They'd all been developed at the same time. Recently. It didn't tell him when the film had actually been used.
---
Even after he'd memorized them, Eliot stared at the photographs for a long time, because there was nothing else in the cell worth examining. Something, however, an hour or several later, made him look up.
The noise was so faint that he couldn't be sure that he'd heard it. Voices. No. Wait. One voice, sharp and urgent and quiet. He strained to listen, long after it had faded, trying to confirm what he thought he'd heard, trying not to get his hopes up, but there was nothing for a long while.
And then, again, that same voice, whispering.
"-disabled the alarm."
It was Parker.
Eliot crawled up into a sitting position, ran a hand through his hair, and didn't move his eyes from the door. Breathless and waiting, he'd never paid so much attention to anything in his life.
So when the gunshot sounded, Eliot felt it rip through him, sure that he'd been struck dead.
But he was still sitting there, in the middle of the cell, with nothing but echoing reverberations shuddering through him. Once he was able to comprehend the notion that he was still there to feel them, he was on his feet, all weakness and resolution to remain silent forgotten.
"Parker!" His voice was a scraping rasp against his throat, and he wasn't sure how much of it actually made it out, and how much he only heard in his head. But it didn't seem to matter, either way. There was no response at all.
Just some shuffling out in the hallway, the sound of a body being dragged across a basement floor.
It's a very distinctive sound, Eliot thought hysterically, his hands clutching tightly into fists as he waited to fall apart.
He could feel the first tremors already.
---
"Hardison, tell me you've got something."
As he'd been getting out of the car the previous night, Nate had promised Alec eighteen hours to work before banging down his door.
He was thirteen minutes early, and didn't wait to be invited in. Standing in the middle of Alec's kitchen and barely noting the three open laptops on the table, he looked like he'd gotten twice as much sleep as Alec had. Zero twice was still zero.
"Just dead ends, all around. For all the sleep I didn't get, the results ain't turning up to be worth it."
"Nothing?" Nate assessed him with a glance, not liking the answer. His tone was needling. "You're sure about your sources?"
Alec snorted his frustration. "What did I just say? Man, I looked. I looked damn hard. I got military, police, every lease and title under every alias. I have pictures of him with a fantastic mullet back in high school. I've been tracking every dude and every lady who he's crossed, with us and before us, and there ain't nothin' goin' down with any of 'em. Only lead I haven't run down is his sister, and that's only because-"
"Don't," Nate intoned, his voice a warning as he picked up a deck of playing cards from the shelf, riffling through them with his thumb distractedly. "Don't even."
"But she might know-"
Still, though, Nate was shaking his head. "Alec, you've been keeping files on us since we started. What do they tell you about his sister?"
"She went off the radar the same time as his last posting in Afghanistan. Probably got her name changed. He hasn't contacted her or her kid since, far as anyone should be able to tell."
"He's been keeping them safe since the mid-nineties, then," Nate reasoned, cutting the deck single handedly.
Alec leaned forward, trying to catch Nate's attention. "But I already know where she-"
Any illusion that he'd been distracted died with Nate's glare. "Not the point, Hardison."
"Yo, man. Look. It don't sit right with me, neither, but for all we know, she could have been involved."
"You have any evidence to back that up? Anything at all? No?" Nate seemed close to shouting, but he stopped himself, his tone going quiet and patronizing. "Fine. Whatever. Tell me what will happen once we call Eliot's sister."
Alec wanted to throttle the older man, he really did. "We get some information? Even if it's a dead end, we'll know it's a dead end."
"Two," Nate picked up the narration impatiently, holding up two fingers to continue the list. "We tell her something's up, she worries, and starts looking into it on her own."
"If I can't find him, how the hell is she going to?"
"Then what's the point of asking in the first place?" Alec snorted, but Nate ignored him. "Three. She finds out what her brother's life looks like. We find Eliot, he comes back, whatever, and he finds out not only that she knows, but how." Nate looked away, out the window, or at it, maybe, his voice finally losing some of its rancor. "You're looking for a way to kill a man, destroy his family. Got it?"
"Yeah," Alec swallowed, sensing that the argument was closed, but refusing to let it go without making his point. "Just. If this was anyone else, if this was a client, we'd check it out. Wouldn't even talk about it."
Nate nodded, like he'd been in agreement with Alec this whole time. "This isn't just anyone else, though, is it? Listen. You get me anything that points in that direction, and I'll make the call myself. But for now, we leave his sister out of it. Are we clear?"
"Yeah, man. We're clear."
---
Eliot had mourned himself to sleep with the light still on, sure that there were only so many more times he'd be opening his eyes again. Only so many times he even wanted to try.
It wasn't the waking that surprised him, though. It was the presence of someone else in the room. He could hear the sound of breath, somewhere behind him, towards the center of the room. He could feel the stirring of the air against the bare skin of his back. They were close.
This is your chance. Don't fuck it up.
Eliot took one slow, measured breath, before going into action.
He swung his body over, swept his leg wide, hoping to connect with the back of a knee, but he wasn't dismayed to find that the inside of his ankle caught the intruder in the torso.
It brought him down even faster.
Eliot scrambled to drag himself over before the man, who had to outweigh him by more than he wanted to consider, had a chance to recover. His hand already wrenched into a fist, he got two hits in, sloppier than he'd like, but heavy enough for the time being. Caught him in the throat, the second time.
He would kill this man.
He began to press down, putting all his weight into it.
All his weight, these days, wasn't near enough, and something was off, even if he couldn't tell exactly what it was. He was still trying to identify the sound of the door opening when he felt the hands grab him from behind.
They pulled him roughly off his target, dragging him back and up until he was almost kneeling, but before he could shift his weight, get his feet under him properly, they'd thrown him down onto his back.
His head hit the floor sharply, but then he had a moment to look up at his assailants, only mildly surprised to find that he couldn't see their faces, not with the bright light turning them into silhouettes and the dark spots blurring his vision.
One of them had killed Parker, and the anger was starting to rise, trying to gain the foothold that shove him back into the violence, but the first kick came like a storm breaking.
Sharp and definite and different, it was everything he'd wanted, right up until he felt the second crashing into his hip, grinding his skin across the floor as the force pushed him away.
He began to lose track of the individual sensations a moment later, too focused on curling in, trying to protect what was left of himself.
His knee screamed as it gave out under a boot heel, and the pummeling kicks, faster now and to numerous to count, were pressing the air from his lungs too quickly to be replaced. A foot glanced off his face, leaving him choking on his own blood, unable to stir enough air to cough.
Didn't matter, though. With his ribs feeling this broken, it hurt too much to try.
He started to black out, then, but it saved him the embarrassment of flailing, of begging them to stop. His last thought was that this falling, this fading out and under, was the first mercy that came for free.
Some small part of Eliot had won, and the rest followed him down.
---
The splinters were starting to show. Nate was burning himself at both ends, and looked worse than he'd done during his rehab stint. Parker was pacing and feral, snapping at anyone for looking in her general direction. Sophie, always the sort to care wherever and whenever she could, was starting to worry about the three of them, more than she worried about Eliot, and Alec really would have liked it if they could all just stay on topic.
Nate had finally determined that Parker was going to start eating into his security deposit if she was stuck there much longer, and that Hardison needed to unpeel himself from Nate's screens, so he'd kicked them out.
It was just as well, Alec decided, staring down in dismay at the desk shoved in the corner of Eliot's living room. It got him out of the place, away from the couch where he had nothing to do besides wish for intel that wasn't there, wondering if his basic assumptions weren't wrong.
It was insane to assume that Eliot would always be there, or that he'd be gracious when the time came that he decided he was through with the group. But things had been going well, Alec had thought. They were just starting to get their groove back after months apart, finding that nothing had changed, not really. Hell, maybe things had even been a little better than before.
Except- and it had been creeping up on him for days, but it stung fresh- Eliot might have left because of him, because of what he knew.
Maybe he didn't want to be found.
---
True to Eliot's word, Alec found no evidence of a television in Eliot's house. He did, however, have a computer. Of sorts.
The modem probably hadn't worked for ten years. It wasn't even plugged in, and the shoebox in the file drawer held, in equal amounts, floppy discs and dust. Indiana Jones himself would have choked.
Parker was finishing up in Eliot's insanely well-stocked and organized kitchen, having found nothing but a few dishes in the sink and an obscene number of cookbooks in the cupboard.
"I'm going upstairs to start on his room," she called out, and Alec couldn't understand, for a moment, why that made him nervous. Thought for a moment it was because he was hearing it on the comms, as well as from down the hall, then realized it was something else.
Alec shot out of his chair. "Nah, hey. Parker. I got it."
"You're still-"
"I've got everything from his computer."
"If he has a safe, it would probably be-"
"I'm just saying. You know. Man probably wouldn't appreciate a lady pawing through his underwear drawer, you know?"
"What, having another guy do it makes it any less weird?" But Parker's footsteps were creaking down the staircase again. "Fine. I call dibs on the garage, though."
"Fair enough," Alec agreed, confused by her happy grin as she passed by him coming out of the hallway.
---
As she rummaged through Eliot's truck, Parker described everything she found in the glove compartment, running it by Nate to see if he thought it would be useful.
Alec, for his part, kept his findings quiet. He'd already gone through the closet and the dresser, and was running out of things to check that weren't the bed, which had two bare pillows and a comforter piled on the bare mattress, and the nightstand.
Stay focused. Ain't here to know about that. Find out what happened. That's all. Ignore the rest.
Unable to put it off any longer, he pulled the drawer out of the nightstand. Found another knife, not the first that had been stashed away in the house. A half-finished Sunday crossword, a scattering of keys and paper clips. The small box of tissues and the bottle of lotion were so unsurprising that he should have barely noticed them. It wasn't until he flipped the crossword aside to find the magazine underneath that he was finally faced with what he'd been steeling himself to find.
One porno mag, with two men on the cover. It was six months old, and a little torn along the spine, but not so much that the cover was in danger of falling off.
It was a stupid detail to note, compared to the rest of it. But the alternative was to open it up and flip through, just to satisfy his own curiosity. To wonder which of the models were Eliot's type, if the images inside actually did it for him, or if they weren't quite enough. If Eliot was just making do with this outdated issue until he could get up the gumption to replace it.
This ain't what you're here for. Quit perving over his porn and get yo' ass to work finding him.
"Hardison, you find anything?" He jumped at the sound of Nate's voice.
"What? Ah. Nah, man. Just crossword puzzles and the usual," he righted the contents of the drawer and slid it closed gently. "Bed's been stripped, though."
"There are sheets in the washing machine. They got all moldy and gross," Parker said, and the crash of the lid back over the offending materials was deafening over the comms. "There's a pitcher of ice tea on the back porch, though I wouldn't recommend drinking it, and I found a book lying on the floor, though it looks like it got spilled on. Broken glass, too, but no blood. Doesn't look like there was much of a struggle, or a cleanup."
Go figure, while you're being creepy all up in Eliot's business, Parker's going all Grissom. She'll probably have one of those purple flashlights out by the time you get down there.
Alec cast one last glance around Eliot's room, mentally apologizing to the nightstand for intruding. Some pink material had gotten caught in the door of the closet when he'd been going through Eliot's pockets. Finding nothing in the pockets, he'd ignored the shirt, but now he tried to remember if he'd seen Eliot wearing it. If he'd given him any shit for wearing pink. Hoped he had.
Not because it mattered. It wasn't as if Alec himself didn't have a colorful wardrobe. But Eliot was the kind of guy to throw six fits over getting called on it, and it would have been a shame to miss such a great opportunity.
He was getting distracted again.
He was also being a total girl, holding Eliot's pink shirt in both hands, staring blankly into the closet while pretending that he wasn't considering the grown up version of yanking-on-pigtails.
The sheer number of bad jokes he could have made about his train of thought, at that moment, was overwhelming. It was fucked, the way his sense of humor worked sometimes. Suddenly needing to get out of there, he shoved the shirt haphazardly into the closet, and headed for the stairs.
He was trying to find a parking space near McRory's, half-listening to Parker explain all the reasons that sun tea was disturbing, even without finding it spilled at a likely crime scene, when his brain spit out the data that he'd forgotten he'd been trying to recover.
At the auction house, where they'd come across Chaos's crew. When Eliot had met and not fought that Mossad chick, he'd been wearing that shirt.
It wasn't an epiphany, not really. But it was getting there.
He tapped the comm. unit back on. "Ah. Guys? I think I just figured something else we gotta check out."
---
Chapter 6