Man I Used to Be #18
Title: Man I Used to Be
Rating: R
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: Whew! Okay... Finally hitting the home stretch!
Banner by the wonderful and amazing and brilliant cybel
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Ears ringing from the loud crack of the gunshot, Eliot stared down at the gun in his hand, his finger still wrapped around the trigger.
Same as it had been a moment ago, when Nicola had blown his own brains out.
It would've been a relief, if it hadn't meant he'd been too slow, that there were a thousand other things that could have gone wrong.
Parker's voice broke over the comms, anxious and angry. "What the hell's going on?"
"We gotta move." The blood spattered on his shoe was making it hard to prioritize. "Now. Undo his legs, and get everyone out of here."
"Where are we going?" Tara rose, staring horrified at the bloody mess before her.
"Their van's parked through the double doors, straight shot, and the first door on the right opens out to the loading dock," Parker instructed. "What happened?"
"Nicola shot himself," Eliot grunted.
"Shit," Nate interjected. "Sophie?"
"I'll explain later to all of you, but right now, we've got to go." She backed up slightly covering as Tara pulled a handful of zip strips out of her purse. Eliot leveled his gun on the guards, covering the two that Sophie couldn't, and Tara quickly bound the wrists of all three guards.
"Damn it," Nate's voice muttered on the line. "Is anybody we care about hurt?"
"We're fine," Eliot pulled the larger guard to his feet warily, but the man was too shocked to take advantage of Eliot's momentary precarious balance. "We're heading out, but the countdown looks like it's got twenty minutes before it goes."
"It should cut out as soon as the receiver on this set of charges is severed." Parker explained, unworried. "Just a few more seconds."
Stunned, Eliot raised his eyebrows. "What? How'd you find them?"
"Later," Nate advised. "Just go while you're still clear. Parker, you said the second? What about the first?"
Eliot and Sophie trailed their prisoners as Tara led the way, navigating slowly towards the loading dock.
"Apollo got it already."
"He did?" Sophie seemed honestly surprised, but caught herself before she dropped her guard. "Apollo?"
Eliot listened, but there was no answer that he could hear, he was about to ask, when Parker growled, "Apollo! Hey! That's you!"
"Oh, ah. Sorry. Yeah, we're good. I'm heading back through Central Park right now."
"Where's Hardison?" Eliot finally asked, surveying the loading dock and finding that for the moment, at least, they were still alone.
"He's, ah. Indisposed," Nate's tension was palpable. "In the men's room, puking his guts out. He's fine," Nate added, before Eliot had time to worry. About that, anyway.
Sophie pulled the van door open, searching for possible weapons, and the three guards clambered awkwardly in, slowly. Tara moved forward with the zip strips and a roll of duct tape, intent on binding their legs as well, but Eliot waved her back, glaring inside at each guard in turn.
"Any of you stupid enough to come running back to a dead body in a room covered with your fingerprints?" They shook their heads. "Okay. Uh, you," he gestured at Tara. "Cut 'em loose."
"No way, I-"
"Just do it. We don't have time for this."
Nate's voice cut in again, impatient and too late, the van was already moving, turning up into the garage. "Ah, Eliot? What are you doing?"
"Evidence. We gotta do something about the body, Nate. Guys don't usually stick a gun in their mouth when they're about to receive a few million dollars, and we don't have time to deal with lackeys."
"Ah, right," Nate stumbled, probably finally catching onto the enormity of the situation, but changing gears already. "Parker, Apollo? Meet us in the basement. We need all the cleaning supplies you can find on the way." Like it was business as usual, something he'd done a thousand times before, and Eliot would have to ask about that, sometime. "Sophie, we have to talk."
"Can it wait until I've washed the blood off?"
"Ah, yeah. Sure. Eliot? What do you need?"
Eliot hurried back into the room where they'd been holding Hardison. Nicola lay in an increasingly large pool of blood, bits of hair and bone sprinkled throughout. There was something horrible sliding slowly down the wall.
They needed bleach, towels, and lots of both. Plastic bags. A shower curtain would be nice. For all he knew, Hardison's fingerprints were all over the place. Relaying as much to the others, he reached down to take the laptop from where it had been resting in the corner, and almost dropped it the moment he looked at the screen. "Shit!"
"Eliot, what is it?"
He exhaled heavily through his nose. Get a grip, man. He smirked at himself. This entire business was making him damned jumpy. He didn't mind it, he'd get sloppy. "Nothing. Spooked, that's all. Saw the timer running and thought-"
"Wait, what?" Parker sounded surprised, and that was never good. Defensively, she continued. "We broke the last connection. There shouldn't be anything feeding back in!"
"So. Great." Nate snorted in annoyance, already rolling with it. "So there's another bomb, somewhere. Yeah, great. Probably not here in the building, but it could be anywhere."
Everyone hung breathlessly on the line as they took it in, but after a brief scuffling sound, Hardison's was the one to speak.
"I'm on my way," he stated hoarsely. "How much time we got?"
"Sixteen minutes. Think you can do it?"
"No sweat. Hang on."
---
No sweat my ass, Alec thought, rinsing his mouth out one last time and grabbing the paper towel Nate was offering.
He was sweating, knew damned well how awful he smelled, and even though he'd since figured out they were fine, he'd been hearing nothing but that single, awful gunshot for the past ten minutes. He was starting to miss the ticking already.
His hands were scraped, sore, and still shaking. So yeah. Deactivating a bomb. No sweat at fucking all.
But that wasn't what Nate needed to hear, so he instead he asked, "We miss something on the map?"
"Nicola played us."
"Fuck." His mind spun out, trying to remember what he'd missed. "So Parker-"
"She can't get to it in time if we don't know where to send her." Nate explained. "So I gotta ask. It's coming from the laptop Nicola had. Can you deactivate it?"
"Where's the countdown at?"
"Just under fifteen minutes," Eliot was close in his ear, and even under the circumstances, tense and rattled as he obviously was, it was a damned fine sound.
"Be cool," he decided. "I'm on my way."
Nate put his hand to his ear. "Sophie, Tara? We're evacuating if he can't get it in six."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Alec grumbled. You sure you wanna wait? He pushed through the bathroom door and having no trouble staggering the unwashed bum the guests needed to think he was. Nate followed close, hurrying him towards the stairs.
"You know where you're going?" he paused on the landing, clearly not intending to follow Alec down.
"I got this. Go. Do your thing." He flew down the stairs fast enough that it felt like falling. "Parker, talk to me, girl. What are we dealing with?"
"Apollo got the first one handled, I just finished the second. Wireless transmitters, no independent display. Other than that, it's the same fittings we saw at the warehouse."
"Okay, cool."
"Cool?" Eliot growled. "You mean when the warehouse blew up?"
"Because they were able to get to the transmitter, which is what you've got there. We didn't have time to do a full teardown."
"You can get it this time, though, right?"
Alec rolled his eyes, turning down the hallway and speeding up. "I don't know, man. Figured I'd stop, grab a shower, maybe find something to eat. Read some emails-" he broke off, though, coming around the last corner.
Eliot was standing frozen, just inside what had, up until recently, been the room where Alec had been kept prisoner. He was holding the laptop gingerly, like it was waiting to blow the moment he stopped watching. Alec didn't need him to raise his head to know the face he wore. He'd seen it before, in a sunny parking lot, hiding behind the hood of a truck. In Sophie's apartment, too close not to be noticed. On a video feed in the dark, well past caring that he was being watched.
Maybe he could hear the ticking, too. But now really wasn't the time to ask. "Here, man, give." Finally reaching the doorway, he stretched over to pry the laptop from Eliot's hands.
It was that exact moment that he saw Nicola's body lying on the floor. He almost lost his grip on the computer.
Eliot caught his flinch and his knuckles went white and rigid on the plastic. "Focus, man, or we're all ending up worse."
Crouching on the floor, he set the laptop down carefully, his back to the gruesome scene.
His shredded fingers were eager to feel the slide of keys underneath, brushing over them as he scanned the screen, planning his attack as he read. They stopped when his ring finger slid over something sticky and gritty.
Don't even look, he warned himself, but still managed to disobey. Trying not to breathe, he flicked what was probably a skull fragment towards the floor, and got to work.
All he needed to do was get around the password, and without a reader, there was no way of knowing even how many characters it would take, but there. There it was. Another track, and a jagged edge in the code, something to work at, pry up piece by piece…
"Eight minutes," Eliot murmured, looking out into the hall as Alec typed furiously. "Apollo? Parker? Want you guys across the street. Wait for my signal."
"Or, you could..." Alec's command went through, and after a brief examination of the code, scanning for traps, he tapped the final three keys and began to breathe again. The countdown stopped, hanging, and the connection was broken. His laugh probably wasn't as manic as it sounded in his head. "Come on in and pay your respects, because the master has it all under control."
"You're sure?" Nate asked.
"You seriously want to rain on the parade right now? Hell yeah I'm sure! It's dead." Shutting down the program, he was relieved to see that they still had control of the hotel's security feeds. The ghosted cameras on this floor looped again, still showing empty rooms.
"Okay. I've got the truck, bringing it down around back. Sophie, get in with security, make sure they're not going on rounds any time soon. Tara? Or whoever you are?"
"Yeah?"
"I want you to skim the lost and found, and at some point I'd like to meet you. Everyone else, downstairs."
Head aching, Alec ripped the out ill-fitting earpiece and rubbed at his side of his head, wanting to lie down, find a wall to lean against somewhere. He didn't realize he'd been in the act of doing so until he felt Eliot grab his arm, hauling him back upright, and pinching at the skin at his inner elbow, hard.
"Ow! What the-"
"That was for standing me up the other night." Eliot smirked as he pulled out his own earpiece, dropping it in his pocket before reaching an arm down to help Alec stand. "But mostly, it was to stop you passin' out, just now. What I need you to do right now, is walk forward and don't turn around."
"Sorry, but the ship's already sailed on the dead-"
"Yeah, well, if you wanna stay around and help me scrub this guy's brain's off the wall, feel free."
The man has a point. "I'll go keep watch." It was hard to talk around the gorge in his throat. He slipped out to stand in the hall for a moment, hugging Parker hello around an armload of shower curtains, and would have shook Apollo's hand, were it not for the buckets he held. For a moment, it felt like they were coming over for a dinner party.
But they weren't. Not at all.
Hoping to block out the sounds coming from behind him, he concentrated on Sophie's voice as she described, to hotel security, no doubt, the strange noises she'd heard up on the seventh floor. He had to admit that it wasn't helping much, but beyond the snapping of plastic gloves, and the grinding drag of plastic curtains, there was little to hear, anyway. He wasn't the only one that didn't feel like talking.
The man was dead. Killed himself. Apparently, he tried not to append, but the idea was there anyway. Threw him for a slow-grinding loop until he finally forced it through his skull that he'd already heard the fallout and knew the score. He hadn't heard the slightest accusation from anyone. Even Dog, Cheap Sneakers and Halitosis had gone quietly.
Used to be, Alec was better about considering his sources.
"Coming through," Apollo said, after Nate had checked with Sophie and given the order to move out. Alec stepped aside to let him and Eliot pass, carrying the wrapped body between them. The double doors swung back heavily. He took a steadying breath, and turned back into the room.
It wasn't much better, not with the wads of towels, some paper, some stolen from the laundry, soaking in the blood. When Parker glanced up from the patch of wall she was scrubbing, her eyes were distant, locked down. Unhappy.
At least he wasn't the only one. "You need some help?"
She shrugged, tilting her head towards the box of rubber gloves, and coughed a little before asking, "Other than this whole…area, was there anywhere else in the room that you touched?"
"Back wall," at least he was remembering clearly. "This side, and the vent."
"Um. Okay. Use that spray bottle over there, and pretend you're just washing windows." It sounded insane, but not Parker-insane. It was the same sort of thing anyone might have said in the same fucked situation.
He got to work, was just getting around to wiping at the vent, when he heard the approaching argument.
"…at least, not with your shoulder like that," Nate was complaining.
"He's right, man. I can find a dumpster and be done with it, it's faster."
"I'm fine. Let's just finish this, okay? I can handle it."
"Fine," Nate paused in the doorway, hanging there like a puppet with the strings cut off. Apollo was the first inside, gingerly began shoving blood-soaked towels into the plastic bag Parker was holding open.
Out in the hall, Eliot's voice was low. Alec pretended not to notice. "I'll be out and back in ten minutes. Soon as this place is cleaned up, we're gone, but the. Body. Gotta deal with that first."
"And just how are you going to do that?"
Eliot grimaced at the floor, cocked his head and raised it challengingly at Nate. "You really want to know?"
"Ah." Nate rubbed at his neck, trying to decide, and everyone else looked elsewhere. "No. Just. Stay in touch."
---
Waiting underneath the bridge, listening to the traffic overhead, Eliot didn't have long to wait before the barge passed underneath.
By the time he'd made it the ten feet to the tunnel's opening, he'd been able to see why Tyler had shown this place to him, years ago. Sophie's Land Rover was invisible from the road above, and it had been easy enough, if unpleasant, to haul the body the thirty feet out to the ledge.
Watching the barge's approach, he crouched behind a support strut and uncoiled the heavy cord he'd found in the trunk Probably Parker's.
Careful to get the knot right, and checking it twice, he dug his heels in against the concrete and wrapped the cord's ends around both hands, bad arm first. As the wide-open bed of the barge began to pass below, he carefully, slowly, lowered the heavy weight down towards the water. The movement set the gruesome package swinging just enough that with a little work, he was able to cast it out far enough to clear the edge of the barge.
His shoulder wrenched, painfully, just before he released one end of the cord, and he could feel the knot give as sprawled back against the concrete, no longer tethered to the weight. A heavy thud below told him he'd reached his target.
Just like Tyler had sworn he could, years ago. Eliot wondered if this place would have occurred to him, if he hadn't been packing Tyler's Desert Eagle, hadn't come so close to using it.
Setting the coiled cord on the seat next to him, he put the truck into gear, then stopped. Taking the keys with him, he again headed down towards the ledge, but this time, he carried the gun instead of the cord.
The barge had passed, now, and the wind was picking up. Removing the clip, he wiped the gun down, and tossed it into the water. One by one by one, clean bullets followed it down.
He wanted to stay there, for a minute. Think about things a bit more, but he'd already pressed his luck here, tonight. He had to get gone.
---
In the back seat, dressed in clothes stolen from the lost and found, Alec leaned heavily against the window. Though Sophie was riding over with Tara, and there was enough room for everyone, including Apollo, it was all feeling too damned close. Up front, Eliot's face was a hard mask as he drove, still in his battered suit. There was no doubt he was feeling it, too.
Next to him, Parker's discomfort was obvious. Periodically, whenever she remembered that Alec was there, she'd tug at his sleeve, catch his eye and try to smile, not knowing what to say, but canny enough to know she was supposed to try. Thankfully, whenever the discomfort grew to be entirely uncomfortable, she'd avert her eyes, remember that Apollo was there, too.
Nate, however, was the one most obviously agitated. Alec caught him checking the rearview every few seconds, saw the horrified expression on his face every time, and tried not to follow suit.
---
When they caught up with Sophie and her friend at the hotel, it wasn't even midnight, and there was something insanely wrong with that. Reaching their floor, Nate ordered everyone to go and clean up, get back to his room when they were ready.
Eliot wasn't sure when, exactly, that would be, but it wasn't worth mentioning. Over by the door, Tara was shaking her hair loose from the knot she'd been wearing, and saying something about going down to get a room. Hardison, on the other hand, standing there in a sweater and jeans that were too wide and too short, didn't seem to notice that they'd even arrived. Lost, like he was stumbling, unseeing, through his own head and none of it was making much sense.
"C'mon," Eliot said, because the rest of the group was already breaking up, everyone turning towards their own rooms. "Shower. Clothes." While it would have been great to get some sort of response, it was easier this way, to lead him back to his own room, grab the sweats from the bag, shove them in his hands, and point him towards the bathroom. If Alec didn't get the chance to think it through, maybe he'd stay.
As soon as he heard the shower turn on, he went back into the duffel, pulling out the painkillers and shooting one down. The bottle was reburied at the bottom of the bag. Other than that, though, there wasn't much he could do besides wait his turn for the shower, and try not to think.
When Hardison emerged, he was dressed in the sweats Eliot had brought. His hands were a mess and that dazed look was still there, and whatever that asshole Nicola had done to him, he'd died too quickly. By the time Eliot was showered and dressed in jeans, two sweatshirts and his cap, Hardison was gone.
Eliot wasn't ready for that, to be walking into an empty room, not by half. He was jerking the strap for the sling back into place and trying not to think about how he'd re-injured it, or how badly, but the straps wouldn't go where they needed to, and it shouldn't have been an issue in the first place, wouldn't have been, if he'd kept his head clear, and now Hardison was-
Hardison was coming back in through the door, an ice pack held in his rough, scraped hands, and his smile wasn't reaching his eyes yet, but he was trying. Handing it over, he said, "So which room is Nate staying in?" and when Eliot answered, this time, at least, he looked like he was hearing him.
"Across the hall. You doin' all right?"
"Yeah, I'm cool. You?"
"Fine," Eliot lied, and followed Alec out the door.
---
It was with some dread that Eliot sat down next to Hardison on the small couch in Nate's hotel room, and waited for his inquisition to begin.
"So. Anyone here know where you want to start? Because I don't have a goddamned clue." Nate finally stopped his pacing now that Parker and Apollo had arrived. When he got no response, he snorted in irritation. "Sophie? Tara? Feel like filling the rest of us in? How did you find him so fast?"
Tara smirked. "Fast? I've been working on it for weeks, now." When nobody laughed with her, Sophie stepped in to explain.
"Well, it seemed the one thing we hadn't tried, yet, was the one thing that Hardison had wanted to do from the start. Mikel Dayan."
"What?" This, evidently, wasn't what Nate wanted to hear. "I don't. How did you-"
"When her name came up, I got to thinking. Hardison checked each of us out at the very beginning." A quick glance in his somewhat abashed face confirmed this. "I thought it reasonable that his evil alter ego would have kept tabs on his own crew."
"So you talked to, what's his name. Chaos?"
"No." Sophie nodded to Tara. "She did."
"I don't understand, when did you put this all together?"
"A few weeks ago, when I said came up to visit a friend here in town? I wasn't lying. We needed another face, one that nobody knew, not Chaos, and not Nicola. Tara was just finishing a job, and it worked out."
"That's all well and good," Eliot caught the ice pack as it slid out of position, pressing it back underneath the sling. "But why the hell didn't you say anything?"
"At first, it was because I didn't want to step on any toes," she said to Nate. "And then, well, Hardison's kidnapping complicated things. I didn't know who to trust. And nothing personal," she turned to Apollo, "but you were working with the man who tried to kill me. No offense."
"None taken."
Hardison rubbed a hand over his face, looking like he was awake by sheer force of will alone. "How did you get Chaos to spill the beans?"
"I told him I was in a position to make a deal regarding his sentence if he helped us catch you. Told him your crew had split up, and that you were working with Mikel Dayan these days. Having a good run of it, too."
At Hardison's confusion, Eliot's laugh turned into a dry cough. "He actually bought that?" You must be one hell of a saleswoman.
"Oh yeah. He told me where he kept his backups. He had phone records for Dayan that went back as far as I wanted, and it was easy enough to find Hastings once I had the right name."
Nate nodded. "So you never spoke to Dayan?"
"Are you nuts? She killed a friend of mine with a mop," Tara shook her head. "Anyway, I lured him out here, which, unfortunately, gave him the perfect invitation to come in and grab Hardison. I'm sorry about that, by the way," she amended, leaning diagonally towards the couch.
Hardison nodded, once Eliot nudged him with his foot, but Nate was impatient. "And?"
Rolling her eyes, Tara continued. "I found out that he'd applied to several organizations looking for grants. Talked my way into the Rigg foundation posing as the representative for a private philanthropist with an interest in Myanmar. I would broker the deal, the foundation would get the credit."
"You find out anything about Hastings?"
"It's bad," Tara began, after a long moment, checking with Sophie before continuing, trying to get a read on the room. "Once I had his name, I was able to do some more digging. He wasn't lying, what he said before, but there's more. After his son got hurt, he got involved in some shady dealings to get medical treatment, make ends meet. His daughter in law and his granddaughter got caught up in it." With an apologetic look in Eliot's direction, she finished. "Earlier this year, both of them were murdered."
Eliot stared at his hands. "Why didn't he say anything?"
"He was probably working up to it," Nate guessed, grimly. "Think that was what put him over the edge?"
Tara nodded, suddenly very interested in her bottle of water.
"All right, Nate said, thankfully not wanting to go there, for the moment at least. "Getting in with the foundation. How'd you manage that?"
"Old school. Got Sophie to make some calls when I needed a different voice or three on the line."
Nate steepled his fingers, giving his next words some thought. Evidently, he wasn't the only one reluctant to say what he was thinking. But he wasn't one to leave shit hanging, either, team be damned. "Well that's great, but the fact of the matter is. Sophie went behind-"
"Wait," Parker interrupted. "That wasn't part of the plan?"
"No." Nate replied, crossly, cutting a glance in Sophie's direction, but not quite reaching. Eliot knew when someone was planning their second attack, and in another few seconds, this was all going to come falling down, and while the sound of gunfire echoed in his brain, it was this he-said, she-didn't-say that would trigger it all. Eliot held his breath and waited.
"Who slipped me the earpiece?" Hardison suddenly asked. Managing to figure it all out with his eyes closed, literally, he missed the exchange and evasion of wary glances, but moved them onto a different track. Forced them to keep it together, just a little bit longer.
Eliot didn't know if the reprieve would last, but Parker was passing around her phone, displaying a text message. Gibberish. Some code Eliot couldn't crack. He nudged Hardison, who opened his eyes and squinted at the display, before hanging his head again. "That doesn't help. At all."
"It's the ventilation path that led down. There. Apollo sent me the plans, and after Sophie-" Parker pulled up short. "I went in, but the branches off the main were too small, so I tossed it down and hoped for the best."
"If you were climbing through the vents," Nate started, his earlier chagrin forgotten for the moment, "how did you find the bombs?"
"I had the ventilation system sussed before you all showed," Apollo explained. "Heard 'em talking about pulling the van around back, so I headed for the garage, waited, and followed them on my bike."
Nate scowled. "Bicycle?"
"Ducati."
Parker was again scrolling through her messages, also written in code, and Tara reached out for the phone. "He fed me the locations. I followed, easy as lyin'." Hardison exhaled through his nose, it might have been a laugh.
"You two have your own language?" Tara asked, curious.
"HVAC systems, in most modern buildings, are not adequately described within the confines of a single text message," Apollo was still being smug, but Parker hit him in the leg.
"While we're at it," Nate spoke carefully, tilting only slightly in Sophie's direction. "Hardison wound up with Sophie's comm. unit. I presume you had an extra?"
Sophie raised her eyebrows, wary. "I had two," she admitted. "One, I passed to Tara when I went to pick up the clothing. The other I and one to replace the one I dropped."
Reminded, Tara handed Parker's phone back, and pulled an earpiece out of her pocket, placing it on the table. "These are great, by the way. Really clear."
Hardison nodded, but didn't bask in the praise, which probably shouldn't have been troubling. Obviously exhausted, he wasn't doing much of anything. But that wasn't all of it, not if how sharply he'd evaded Eliot's every look was any indication. There was no way to tell if it was because he didn't want to be seen by Eliot, or didn't want to see him.
Eliot tried to keep his eyes to the floor. Concentrate on what matters, he chided himself, but a steadily sinking feeling had him pretty sure that he already was. But if he'd been paying more attention to Nate and Sophie, he might've heard something important.
He looked up to find Sophie pressing herself away from the desk she'd been leaning against, her irritation bubbling over as she stalked in Nate's direction. "This wasn't a normal job. He had us made from the very start! He managed two kidnappings and I'm still not sure how! It does lend one to become a bit distrustful, don't you suppose? So, yes, I played it close. Yes, I knew where he was the moment he arrived at the Carlyle. I wanted it to work, so I made it work, and I'm sorry- to all of you- for keeping you in the dark, but would you have had me do nothing at all? Would you really have me risk it?"
"Yes!" Nate was red-faced, his hands claws at his side, but Apollo's uncomfortable cough seemed to shake him out of it. He deflated. "Well. I mean. I suppose I should thank you, you know? I mean. I wouldn't have." He shook his head and started again. "You're right."
Agreement, Eliot hadn't been expecting, and even if Hardison was barely in the room, Parker was equally baffled.
"If you hadn't walked out on us, I wouldn't have had the idea to let Parker out in the wind. So, thanks for giving us something to fight about."
"That does seem to be working well for you," Sophie muttered, still bitter,
Nate's mouth was a grim line. "Yeah, well. Not intending on letting it happen again, believe me."
The full import of his words hung icily in the air, and even he looked surprised at them. The only movement was Sophie's face, trying not to crumble, and Parker twitching, about to run. Hardison was frozen, his eyes shut tight.
Eliot leaned over, catching at Parker's arm before she could flee. She knew what this was, same as him, and if he didn't derail this, it would only get worse.
This entire fucking thing had been an inquisition, right from the fucking start, but it hadn't been his.
"Okay," he said, swallowing a scream. "We're dropping this. Right the hell now." He knew damn well that he was pushing it, the daggers he was shooting at Nate, but didn't care. "We got out alive. Cleaned up our trail. We'll be out of here first thing in the morning, and we can talk about it. Later."
He was surprised to see his order carried out so efficiently, everyone filing out of the room without another word until it was just him and Nate, who was too tired to keep fighting. Unfortunately, Eliot's momentum had only been temporary, and he found himself with nothing to say.
Nate, though, standing at the window and looking out, summed it up perfectly.
"We were never supposed to have to worry about any of this. We weren't supposed to have bodies to hide."
Eliot nodded, forced a calm breath or two as he slowly stood up, measuring his words. "That wasn't Sophie's fault. She's not the one that deserves this. None of them are."
"Hm," Nate said, over his shoulder, as Eliot reached for the doorknob. "Either do you, you know."
"Yeah." That ain't for you to decide.
---
Alec was too tired to actually get into bed properly, and too anxious to sleep. Not with Eliot across the hall, having some secret meeting with Nate. Not with Nate's last angry words looping through his head. Not with a dead body hidden somewhere in the city.
Evidence. It's evidence. You clean up evidence every day. It's what you do.
Being rescued from kidnappers, he reasoned, wasn't supposed to be the beginning of a downward spiral.
You don't even know what a good day looks like anymore, do you?
The sound of the door opening startled him out of his reverie so much that he forgot to not look at Eliot head-on. His sudden appearance didn't make him any less uneasy, and he was starting to get pissed, waiting for himself to just get over it, already. Whatever this was.
It wasn't murder.
"Hey," he offered, when he got caught staring. "Uh. Wasn't thinkin', man. Just kind of wound up in here. I can go, see about getting another room, if you want."
"What?" Eliot squinted at him. "Don't worry about it."
"I'm good," Alec affirmed, and wondered when, exactly, that was going to become true, before a yawn stretched his throat. "Tired," he mumbled.
Eliot didn't respond, so he summoned the last of his energy to pull the covers back and climb into bed. Finally he lay down, a little warm already. The shirt stayed on, though, and he told himself it was because of exhaustion.
A man died tonight, and took the team down with him.
Eyes closed, he listened to Eliot puttering around the room for a minute, then brushing his teeth in the bathroom. He was a little surprised to find that he was still awake when he felt the bed dip next to him.
Eliot turned off the bedside lamp, before lying down on his back. He wasn't wearing the sling anymore, but he was holding his injured arm carefully in place.
Probably re-injured it digging you out of your mess while you were upstairs puking, he thought guiltily. Nice..
Eliot was rigid as a board, and as close to the edge of the bed as it was possible to be without falling off. If Alec hadn't been so slow to figure out what the hell was going on, he probably would have done the same. But moving now would be too obvious.
And maybe it was all this dark shit hanging overhead, but he was starting to think that he didn't really want to. He could have done with Eliot being a bit closer, actually, if he was being honest. Like maybe he thought it could dispel a little more gloom. He wasn't about to say it, though, wouldn't have known even if they were the people they'd been last week, so he asked instead, "El. We cool?"
"Yeah," came the hoarse reply, and a little more of the tension melted away, down into the mattress. A minute or an hour later, Eliot might have said something more, but Alec might have dreamed it.
---
Hardison was asleep, dead to the world, and Eliot tried to follow suit.
It wasn't working, particularly. Not in the least. He lasted all of fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, muscles tensed, debating every second whether he should ask Hardison, again, if he was actually all right.
If he was too freaked out to be here, you'd know. It's fine, he tried convincing himself, but it would have sounded better, coming from Hardison. If he would have said something, if he would have fucking answered.
Another two minutes, and he gave up. He moved slowly, unable to tell if he'd woken him or not, and cast around the darkened room, trying to find a practical reason to be up.
His bag was sitting on the dresser, next to the television, open and inviting the way everything else wasn't, not any more. He began to pack.
It didn't take long, even one-handedly.
You're still a fucking professional when it comes to leaving, he thought angrily, jerking the zipper shut.
Over on the bed, Hardison was stirring, maybe even waking up, and professional or not, this scene never worked with an audience.
He waited, frozen, for a long moment, fingers clasped on the zipper pull, His brain sped on, taking a mental inventory of the duffel bag's contents. Pill bottles, tools, the computer drives that Parker had slipped him back in the elevator. There would be noise, when he picked the bag up. No way to make it out without waking Hardison.
Who's so unsettled by your presence, so afraid of you, so untrusting, that he fell asleep two feet from you.
Who's exactly that naïve.
Eliot released his hold on the bag, carefully. He'd have to go without.
His wallet slipped silently into the pocket of his shirt, picking up his shoes as he crossed to the door, he stooped to put them on only when the door was eased shut behind him, leaving him in the empty hallway.
He heard hushed giggling in the room next door as he passed, Parker's voice cutting off happily. It should have made him smirk, at least, but instead it tore at him, the thought that when it finished falling apart, when they went their separate ways, at least she might not have to go it alone. It was selfish, and he knew it, and he punched the call button on the elevator more sharply than he probably needed to.
Stepping into the ornate lobby downstairs, he nodded at the woman behind the counter, whose tired face still managed to break into a bright smile. It was probably why they hired her, being so cheerful at three in the morning. Any other day, he would have grinned back, but instead he wished he hadn't noticed.
Five floors above, everything he wanted was circling in a holding pattern, awaiting final descent. He didn't have it in him for manners.
Noise. Lights. Traffic. Cold air cut through him as he stepped out into the night. Drunken laughter drifted from across the street and the world was still moving, for everyone else, at least, if not for him. Another cab was pulling up to the queue at the end of the block, and it was as good a destination as any.
The rest, he'd figure out at the airport.
---
The only reason he'd survived as long as he did is that he never missed the people in the shadows, even when he wasn't looking for them. Especially then. He knew when to pretend to overlook them, and he knew when to engage.
So the lone figure standing, cigarette in hand, just outside the pool of light spilling from the hotel's entrance wasn't any sort of challenge, even though it was a surprise.
"I didn't know you smoked," he stopped, rocking on the balls of his feet and trying for casual.
"I don't, not often," Sophie grinned with damp eyes. "I had to borrow one from the girl at the counter."
What's your excuse, she didn't ask, and he was relieved not to have to answer.
There was a long moment where he didn't know what to say. Goodbye seemed harsh, even in the relative darkness. "So," he trailed off, words failing to follow naturally, and he cast about, eventually coming up with the most basic of questions. "What are you doin' out here?"
Wiping at her face, she ground the cigarette into the concrete ashtray, grinning bitterly. "It's a lot harder to ask for forgiveness when you actually care whether or not you'll get it, you know?"
He nodded, Yeah. Got that, and tried to guess what his mom would say. She'd always been good, most of the time, with things like that. Once upon a time, and he fucking missed her. "You got mine, if it counts for anything," he said, reluctant to continue. "But you had to know that you could trust Nate, at least."
"It wasn't any of you I didn't trust, it was the rest of this mad world."
"And Tara," Eliot raised his palms in surrender as his words hit too hard. "Not. I'm not lookin' to start a fight. Tired of it. Far as I'm concerned, we're good. I mean. Weren't for you doin' what you did, we'd be screwed. Even if you did scare the hell out of us."
Sophie tipped her head forward, her hair sliding down her face like a theater curtain. "I know. And I'm sorry. I just." She raised her head again, tossing her hair over her shoulder and looking out over the lights like she could steal them all, if she wanted, but she still needed a moment to collect herself, it seemed. "You should get back inside. Check on Hardison, the poor thing's had a tough time of it."
Awareness of shapes in shadows wasn't the only thing that had kept Eliot living so long. Reprieves, though more rare in occurrence, he understood equally well. He took one step back, and then another.
"And Eliot? Thank you."
"You too," he said, heading back inside. Despite himself, he was a little taken aback to find that he meant it.
He was a little more surprised to see Nate standing at the front counter, begging the still-smiling night clerk to find him a flower shop that delivered this late at night.
---
Chapter 19
Hah! Here's a twist: no cliffhanger for once! Bet you never saw that coming!
And, in case you missed it, here's the link to download Eliot's half of the soundtrack. Enjoy!
Here's the tracklisting:
1. John Mellencamp- What if I Came Knocking
2. Extra Fancy- Sinnerman
3. Therapy?- Straight Life
4. Alabama 3- Too Sick to Pray
5. Depeche Mode- Walking in My Shoes
6. K-os- Man I Used to Be
7. Moby- That's When I Reach for My Revolver
8. Richie Kotzen- You Can't Save Me
9. The Rasmus- Still Standing
10. Linkin Park- Leave Out All The Rest
11. Shinedown- Second Chance
12. The Twilight Singers- Hyperballad
Rating: R
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: Whew! Okay... Finally hitting the home stretch!
Banner by the wonderful and amazing and brilliant cybel
Previous Chapters: Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Ears ringing from the loud crack of the gunshot, Eliot stared down at the gun in his hand, his finger still wrapped around the trigger.
Same as it had been a moment ago, when Nicola had blown his own brains out.
It would've been a relief, if it hadn't meant he'd been too slow, that there were a thousand other things that could have gone wrong.
Parker's voice broke over the comms, anxious and angry. "What the hell's going on?"
"We gotta move." The blood spattered on his shoe was making it hard to prioritize. "Now. Undo his legs, and get everyone out of here."
"Where are we going?" Tara rose, staring horrified at the bloody mess before her.
"Their van's parked through the double doors, straight shot, and the first door on the right opens out to the loading dock," Parker instructed. "What happened?"
"Nicola shot himself," Eliot grunted.
"Shit," Nate interjected. "Sophie?"
"I'll explain later to all of you, but right now, we've got to go." She backed up slightly covering as Tara pulled a handful of zip strips out of her purse. Eliot leveled his gun on the guards, covering the two that Sophie couldn't, and Tara quickly bound the wrists of all three guards.
"Damn it," Nate's voice muttered on the line. "Is anybody we care about hurt?"
"We're fine," Eliot pulled the larger guard to his feet warily, but the man was too shocked to take advantage of Eliot's momentary precarious balance. "We're heading out, but the countdown looks like it's got twenty minutes before it goes."
"It should cut out as soon as the receiver on this set of charges is severed." Parker explained, unworried. "Just a few more seconds."
Stunned, Eliot raised his eyebrows. "What? How'd you find them?"
"Later," Nate advised. "Just go while you're still clear. Parker, you said the second? What about the first?"
Eliot and Sophie trailed their prisoners as Tara led the way, navigating slowly towards the loading dock.
"Apollo got it already."
"He did?" Sophie seemed honestly surprised, but caught herself before she dropped her guard. "Apollo?"
Eliot listened, but there was no answer that he could hear, he was about to ask, when Parker growled, "Apollo! Hey! That's you!"
"Oh, ah. Sorry. Yeah, we're good. I'm heading back through Central Park right now."
"Where's Hardison?" Eliot finally asked, surveying the loading dock and finding that for the moment, at least, they were still alone.
"He's, ah. Indisposed," Nate's tension was palpable. "In the men's room, puking his guts out. He's fine," Nate added, before Eliot had time to worry. About that, anyway.
Sophie pulled the van door open, searching for possible weapons, and the three guards clambered awkwardly in, slowly. Tara moved forward with the zip strips and a roll of duct tape, intent on binding their legs as well, but Eliot waved her back, glaring inside at each guard in turn.
"Any of you stupid enough to come running back to a dead body in a room covered with your fingerprints?" They shook their heads. "Okay. Uh, you," he gestured at Tara. "Cut 'em loose."
"No way, I-"
"Just do it. We don't have time for this."
Nate's voice cut in again, impatient and too late, the van was already moving, turning up into the garage. "Ah, Eliot? What are you doing?"
"Evidence. We gotta do something about the body, Nate. Guys don't usually stick a gun in their mouth when they're about to receive a few million dollars, and we don't have time to deal with lackeys."
"Ah, right," Nate stumbled, probably finally catching onto the enormity of the situation, but changing gears already. "Parker, Apollo? Meet us in the basement. We need all the cleaning supplies you can find on the way." Like it was business as usual, something he'd done a thousand times before, and Eliot would have to ask about that, sometime. "Sophie, we have to talk."
"Can it wait until I've washed the blood off?"
"Ah, yeah. Sure. Eliot? What do you need?"
Eliot hurried back into the room where they'd been holding Hardison. Nicola lay in an increasingly large pool of blood, bits of hair and bone sprinkled throughout. There was something horrible sliding slowly down the wall.
They needed bleach, towels, and lots of both. Plastic bags. A shower curtain would be nice. For all he knew, Hardison's fingerprints were all over the place. Relaying as much to the others, he reached down to take the laptop from where it had been resting in the corner, and almost dropped it the moment he looked at the screen. "Shit!"
"Eliot, what is it?"
He exhaled heavily through his nose. Get a grip, man. He smirked at himself. This entire business was making him damned jumpy. He didn't mind it, he'd get sloppy. "Nothing. Spooked, that's all. Saw the timer running and thought-"
"Wait, what?" Parker sounded surprised, and that was never good. Defensively, she continued. "We broke the last connection. There shouldn't be anything feeding back in!"
"So. Great." Nate snorted in annoyance, already rolling with it. "So there's another bomb, somewhere. Yeah, great. Probably not here in the building, but it could be anywhere."
Everyone hung breathlessly on the line as they took it in, but after a brief scuffling sound, Hardison's was the one to speak.
"I'm on my way," he stated hoarsely. "How much time we got?"
"Sixteen minutes. Think you can do it?"
"No sweat. Hang on."
---
No sweat my ass, Alec thought, rinsing his mouth out one last time and grabbing the paper towel Nate was offering.
He was sweating, knew damned well how awful he smelled, and even though he'd since figured out they were fine, he'd been hearing nothing but that single, awful gunshot for the past ten minutes. He was starting to miss the ticking already.
His hands were scraped, sore, and still shaking. So yeah. Deactivating a bomb. No sweat at fucking all.
But that wasn't what Nate needed to hear, so he instead he asked, "We miss something on the map?"
"Nicola played us."
"Fuck." His mind spun out, trying to remember what he'd missed. "So Parker-"
"She can't get to it in time if we don't know where to send her." Nate explained. "So I gotta ask. It's coming from the laptop Nicola had. Can you deactivate it?"
"Where's the countdown at?"
"Just under fifteen minutes," Eliot was close in his ear, and even under the circumstances, tense and rattled as he obviously was, it was a damned fine sound.
"Be cool," he decided. "I'm on my way."
Nate put his hand to his ear. "Sophie, Tara? We're evacuating if he can't get it in six."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Alec grumbled. You sure you wanna wait? He pushed through the bathroom door and having no trouble staggering the unwashed bum the guests needed to think he was. Nate followed close, hurrying him towards the stairs.
"You know where you're going?" he paused on the landing, clearly not intending to follow Alec down.
"I got this. Go. Do your thing." He flew down the stairs fast enough that it felt like falling. "Parker, talk to me, girl. What are we dealing with?"
"Apollo got the first one handled, I just finished the second. Wireless transmitters, no independent display. Other than that, it's the same fittings we saw at the warehouse."
"Okay, cool."
"Cool?" Eliot growled. "You mean when the warehouse blew up?"
"Because they were able to get to the transmitter, which is what you've got there. We didn't have time to do a full teardown."
"You can get it this time, though, right?"
Alec rolled his eyes, turning down the hallway and speeding up. "I don't know, man. Figured I'd stop, grab a shower, maybe find something to eat. Read some emails-" he broke off, though, coming around the last corner.
Eliot was standing frozen, just inside what had, up until recently, been the room where Alec had been kept prisoner. He was holding the laptop gingerly, like it was waiting to blow the moment he stopped watching. Alec didn't need him to raise his head to know the face he wore. He'd seen it before, in a sunny parking lot, hiding behind the hood of a truck. In Sophie's apartment, too close not to be noticed. On a video feed in the dark, well past caring that he was being watched.
Maybe he could hear the ticking, too. But now really wasn't the time to ask. "Here, man, give." Finally reaching the doorway, he stretched over to pry the laptop from Eliot's hands.
It was that exact moment that he saw Nicola's body lying on the floor. He almost lost his grip on the computer.
Eliot caught his flinch and his knuckles went white and rigid on the plastic. "Focus, man, or we're all ending up worse."
Crouching on the floor, he set the laptop down carefully, his back to the gruesome scene.
His shredded fingers were eager to feel the slide of keys underneath, brushing over them as he scanned the screen, planning his attack as he read. They stopped when his ring finger slid over something sticky and gritty.
Don't even look, he warned himself, but still managed to disobey. Trying not to breathe, he flicked what was probably a skull fragment towards the floor, and got to work.
All he needed to do was get around the password, and without a reader, there was no way of knowing even how many characters it would take, but there. There it was. Another track, and a jagged edge in the code, something to work at, pry up piece by piece…
"Eight minutes," Eliot murmured, looking out into the hall as Alec typed furiously. "Apollo? Parker? Want you guys across the street. Wait for my signal."
"Or, you could..." Alec's command went through, and after a brief examination of the code, scanning for traps, he tapped the final three keys and began to breathe again. The countdown stopped, hanging, and the connection was broken. His laugh probably wasn't as manic as it sounded in his head. "Come on in and pay your respects, because the master has it all under control."
"You're sure?" Nate asked.
"You seriously want to rain on the parade right now? Hell yeah I'm sure! It's dead." Shutting down the program, he was relieved to see that they still had control of the hotel's security feeds. The ghosted cameras on this floor looped again, still showing empty rooms.
"Okay. I've got the truck, bringing it down around back. Sophie, get in with security, make sure they're not going on rounds any time soon. Tara? Or whoever you are?"
"Yeah?"
"I want you to skim the lost and found, and at some point I'd like to meet you. Everyone else, downstairs."
Head aching, Alec ripped the out ill-fitting earpiece and rubbed at his side of his head, wanting to lie down, find a wall to lean against somewhere. He didn't realize he'd been in the act of doing so until he felt Eliot grab his arm, hauling him back upright, and pinching at the skin at his inner elbow, hard.
"Ow! What the-"
"That was for standing me up the other night." Eliot smirked as he pulled out his own earpiece, dropping it in his pocket before reaching an arm down to help Alec stand. "But mostly, it was to stop you passin' out, just now. What I need you to do right now, is walk forward and don't turn around."
"Sorry, but the ship's already sailed on the dead-"
"Yeah, well, if you wanna stay around and help me scrub this guy's brain's off the wall, feel free."
The man has a point. "I'll go keep watch." It was hard to talk around the gorge in his throat. He slipped out to stand in the hall for a moment, hugging Parker hello around an armload of shower curtains, and would have shook Apollo's hand, were it not for the buckets he held. For a moment, it felt like they were coming over for a dinner party.
But they weren't. Not at all.
Hoping to block out the sounds coming from behind him, he concentrated on Sophie's voice as she described, to hotel security, no doubt, the strange noises she'd heard up on the seventh floor. He had to admit that it wasn't helping much, but beyond the snapping of plastic gloves, and the grinding drag of plastic curtains, there was little to hear, anyway. He wasn't the only one that didn't feel like talking.
The man was dead. Killed himself. Apparently, he tried not to append, but the idea was there anyway. Threw him for a slow-grinding loop until he finally forced it through his skull that he'd already heard the fallout and knew the score. He hadn't heard the slightest accusation from anyone. Even Dog, Cheap Sneakers and Halitosis had gone quietly.
Used to be, Alec was better about considering his sources.
"Coming through," Apollo said, after Nate had checked with Sophie and given the order to move out. Alec stepped aside to let him and Eliot pass, carrying the wrapped body between them. The double doors swung back heavily. He took a steadying breath, and turned back into the room.
It wasn't much better, not with the wads of towels, some paper, some stolen from the laundry, soaking in the blood. When Parker glanced up from the patch of wall she was scrubbing, her eyes were distant, locked down. Unhappy.
At least he wasn't the only one. "You need some help?"
She shrugged, tilting her head towards the box of rubber gloves, and coughed a little before asking, "Other than this whole…area, was there anywhere else in the room that you touched?"
"Back wall," at least he was remembering clearly. "This side, and the vent."
"Um. Okay. Use that spray bottle over there, and pretend you're just washing windows." It sounded insane, but not Parker-insane. It was the same sort of thing anyone might have said in the same fucked situation.
He got to work, was just getting around to wiping at the vent, when he heard the approaching argument.
"…at least, not with your shoulder like that," Nate was complaining.
"He's right, man. I can find a dumpster and be done with it, it's faster."
"I'm fine. Let's just finish this, okay? I can handle it."
"Fine," Nate paused in the doorway, hanging there like a puppet with the strings cut off. Apollo was the first inside, gingerly began shoving blood-soaked towels into the plastic bag Parker was holding open.
Out in the hall, Eliot's voice was low. Alec pretended not to notice. "I'll be out and back in ten minutes. Soon as this place is cleaned up, we're gone, but the. Body. Gotta deal with that first."
"And just how are you going to do that?"
Eliot grimaced at the floor, cocked his head and raised it challengingly at Nate. "You really want to know?"
"Ah." Nate rubbed at his neck, trying to decide, and everyone else looked elsewhere. "No. Just. Stay in touch."
---
Waiting underneath the bridge, listening to the traffic overhead, Eliot didn't have long to wait before the barge passed underneath.
By the time he'd made it the ten feet to the tunnel's opening, he'd been able to see why Tyler had shown this place to him, years ago. Sophie's Land Rover was invisible from the road above, and it had been easy enough, if unpleasant, to haul the body the thirty feet out to the ledge.
Watching the barge's approach, he crouched behind a support strut and uncoiled the heavy cord he'd found in the trunk Probably Parker's.
Careful to get the knot right, and checking it twice, he dug his heels in against the concrete and wrapped the cord's ends around both hands, bad arm first. As the wide-open bed of the barge began to pass below, he carefully, slowly, lowered the heavy weight down towards the water. The movement set the gruesome package swinging just enough that with a little work, he was able to cast it out far enough to clear the edge of the barge.
His shoulder wrenched, painfully, just before he released one end of the cord, and he could feel the knot give as sprawled back against the concrete, no longer tethered to the weight. A heavy thud below told him he'd reached his target.
Just like Tyler had sworn he could, years ago. Eliot wondered if this place would have occurred to him, if he hadn't been packing Tyler's Desert Eagle, hadn't come so close to using it.
Setting the coiled cord on the seat next to him, he put the truck into gear, then stopped. Taking the keys with him, he again headed down towards the ledge, but this time, he carried the gun instead of the cord.
The barge had passed, now, and the wind was picking up. Removing the clip, he wiped the gun down, and tossed it into the water. One by one by one, clean bullets followed it down.
He wanted to stay there, for a minute. Think about things a bit more, but he'd already pressed his luck here, tonight. He had to get gone.
---
In the back seat, dressed in clothes stolen from the lost and found, Alec leaned heavily against the window. Though Sophie was riding over with Tara, and there was enough room for everyone, including Apollo, it was all feeling too damned close. Up front, Eliot's face was a hard mask as he drove, still in his battered suit. There was no doubt he was feeling it, too.
Next to him, Parker's discomfort was obvious. Periodically, whenever she remembered that Alec was there, she'd tug at his sleeve, catch his eye and try to smile, not knowing what to say, but canny enough to know she was supposed to try. Thankfully, whenever the discomfort grew to be entirely uncomfortable, she'd avert her eyes, remember that Apollo was there, too.
Nate, however, was the one most obviously agitated. Alec caught him checking the rearview every few seconds, saw the horrified expression on his face every time, and tried not to follow suit.
---
When they caught up with Sophie and her friend at the hotel, it wasn't even midnight, and there was something insanely wrong with that. Reaching their floor, Nate ordered everyone to go and clean up, get back to his room when they were ready.
Eliot wasn't sure when, exactly, that would be, but it wasn't worth mentioning. Over by the door, Tara was shaking her hair loose from the knot she'd been wearing, and saying something about going down to get a room. Hardison, on the other hand, standing there in a sweater and jeans that were too wide and too short, didn't seem to notice that they'd even arrived. Lost, like he was stumbling, unseeing, through his own head and none of it was making much sense.
"C'mon," Eliot said, because the rest of the group was already breaking up, everyone turning towards their own rooms. "Shower. Clothes." While it would have been great to get some sort of response, it was easier this way, to lead him back to his own room, grab the sweats from the bag, shove them in his hands, and point him towards the bathroom. If Alec didn't get the chance to think it through, maybe he'd stay.
As soon as he heard the shower turn on, he went back into the duffel, pulling out the painkillers and shooting one down. The bottle was reburied at the bottom of the bag. Other than that, though, there wasn't much he could do besides wait his turn for the shower, and try not to think.
When Hardison emerged, he was dressed in the sweats Eliot had brought. His hands were a mess and that dazed look was still there, and whatever that asshole Nicola had done to him, he'd died too quickly. By the time Eliot was showered and dressed in jeans, two sweatshirts and his cap, Hardison was gone.
Eliot wasn't ready for that, to be walking into an empty room, not by half. He was jerking the strap for the sling back into place and trying not to think about how he'd re-injured it, or how badly, but the straps wouldn't go where they needed to, and it shouldn't have been an issue in the first place, wouldn't have been, if he'd kept his head clear, and now Hardison was-
Hardison was coming back in through the door, an ice pack held in his rough, scraped hands, and his smile wasn't reaching his eyes yet, but he was trying. Handing it over, he said, "So which room is Nate staying in?" and when Eliot answered, this time, at least, he looked like he was hearing him.
"Across the hall. You doin' all right?"
"Yeah, I'm cool. You?"
"Fine," Eliot lied, and followed Alec out the door.
---
It was with some dread that Eliot sat down next to Hardison on the small couch in Nate's hotel room, and waited for his inquisition to begin.
"So. Anyone here know where you want to start? Because I don't have a goddamned clue." Nate finally stopped his pacing now that Parker and Apollo had arrived. When he got no response, he snorted in irritation. "Sophie? Tara? Feel like filling the rest of us in? How did you find him so fast?"
Tara smirked. "Fast? I've been working on it for weeks, now." When nobody laughed with her, Sophie stepped in to explain.
"Well, it seemed the one thing we hadn't tried, yet, was the one thing that Hardison had wanted to do from the start. Mikel Dayan."
"What?" This, evidently, wasn't what Nate wanted to hear. "I don't. How did you-"
"When her name came up, I got to thinking. Hardison checked each of us out at the very beginning." A quick glance in his somewhat abashed face confirmed this. "I thought it reasonable that his evil alter ego would have kept tabs on his own crew."
"So you talked to, what's his name. Chaos?"
"No." Sophie nodded to Tara. "She did."
"I don't understand, when did you put this all together?"
"A few weeks ago, when I said came up to visit a friend here in town? I wasn't lying. We needed another face, one that nobody knew, not Chaos, and not Nicola. Tara was just finishing a job, and it worked out."
"That's all well and good," Eliot caught the ice pack as it slid out of position, pressing it back underneath the sling. "But why the hell didn't you say anything?"
"At first, it was because I didn't want to step on any toes," she said to Nate. "And then, well, Hardison's kidnapping complicated things. I didn't know who to trust. And nothing personal," she turned to Apollo, "but you were working with the man who tried to kill me. No offense."
"None taken."
Hardison rubbed a hand over his face, looking like he was awake by sheer force of will alone. "How did you get Chaos to spill the beans?"
"I told him I was in a position to make a deal regarding his sentence if he helped us catch you. Told him your crew had split up, and that you were working with Mikel Dayan these days. Having a good run of it, too."
At Hardison's confusion, Eliot's laugh turned into a dry cough. "He actually bought that?" You must be one hell of a saleswoman.
"Oh yeah. He told me where he kept his backups. He had phone records for Dayan that went back as far as I wanted, and it was easy enough to find Hastings once I had the right name."
Nate nodded. "So you never spoke to Dayan?"
"Are you nuts? She killed a friend of mine with a mop," Tara shook her head. "Anyway, I lured him out here, which, unfortunately, gave him the perfect invitation to come in and grab Hardison. I'm sorry about that, by the way," she amended, leaning diagonally towards the couch.
Hardison nodded, once Eliot nudged him with his foot, but Nate was impatient. "And?"
Rolling her eyes, Tara continued. "I found out that he'd applied to several organizations looking for grants. Talked my way into the Rigg foundation posing as the representative for a private philanthropist with an interest in Myanmar. I would broker the deal, the foundation would get the credit."
"You find out anything about Hastings?"
"It's bad," Tara began, after a long moment, checking with Sophie before continuing, trying to get a read on the room. "Once I had his name, I was able to do some more digging. He wasn't lying, what he said before, but there's more. After his son got hurt, he got involved in some shady dealings to get medical treatment, make ends meet. His daughter in law and his granddaughter got caught up in it." With an apologetic look in Eliot's direction, she finished. "Earlier this year, both of them were murdered."
Eliot stared at his hands. "Why didn't he say anything?"
"He was probably working up to it," Nate guessed, grimly. "Think that was what put him over the edge?"
Tara nodded, suddenly very interested in her bottle of water.
"All right, Nate said, thankfully not wanting to go there, for the moment at least. "Getting in with the foundation. How'd you manage that?"
"Old school. Got Sophie to make some calls when I needed a different voice or three on the line."
Nate steepled his fingers, giving his next words some thought. Evidently, he wasn't the only one reluctant to say what he was thinking. But he wasn't one to leave shit hanging, either, team be damned. "Well that's great, but the fact of the matter is. Sophie went behind-"
"Wait," Parker interrupted. "That wasn't part of the plan?"
"No." Nate replied, crossly, cutting a glance in Sophie's direction, but not quite reaching. Eliot knew when someone was planning their second attack, and in another few seconds, this was all going to come falling down, and while the sound of gunfire echoed in his brain, it was this he-said, she-didn't-say that would trigger it all. Eliot held his breath and waited.
"Who slipped me the earpiece?" Hardison suddenly asked. Managing to figure it all out with his eyes closed, literally, he missed the exchange and evasion of wary glances, but moved them onto a different track. Forced them to keep it together, just a little bit longer.
Eliot didn't know if the reprieve would last, but Parker was passing around her phone, displaying a text message. Gibberish. Some code Eliot couldn't crack. He nudged Hardison, who opened his eyes and squinted at the display, before hanging his head again. "That doesn't help. At all."
"It's the ventilation path that led down. There. Apollo sent me the plans, and after Sophie-" Parker pulled up short. "I went in, but the branches off the main were too small, so I tossed it down and hoped for the best."
"If you were climbing through the vents," Nate started, his earlier chagrin forgotten for the moment, "how did you find the bombs?"
"I had the ventilation system sussed before you all showed," Apollo explained. "Heard 'em talking about pulling the van around back, so I headed for the garage, waited, and followed them on my bike."
Nate scowled. "Bicycle?"
"Ducati."
Parker was again scrolling through her messages, also written in code, and Tara reached out for the phone. "He fed me the locations. I followed, easy as lyin'." Hardison exhaled through his nose, it might have been a laugh.
"You two have your own language?" Tara asked, curious.
"HVAC systems, in most modern buildings, are not adequately described within the confines of a single text message," Apollo was still being smug, but Parker hit him in the leg.
"While we're at it," Nate spoke carefully, tilting only slightly in Sophie's direction. "Hardison wound up with Sophie's comm. unit. I presume you had an extra?"
Sophie raised her eyebrows, wary. "I had two," she admitted. "One, I passed to Tara when I went to pick up the clothing. The other I and one to replace the one I dropped."
Reminded, Tara handed Parker's phone back, and pulled an earpiece out of her pocket, placing it on the table. "These are great, by the way. Really clear."
Hardison nodded, but didn't bask in the praise, which probably shouldn't have been troubling. Obviously exhausted, he wasn't doing much of anything. But that wasn't all of it, not if how sharply he'd evaded Eliot's every look was any indication. There was no way to tell if it was because he didn't want to be seen by Eliot, or didn't want to see him.
Eliot tried to keep his eyes to the floor. Concentrate on what matters, he chided himself, but a steadily sinking feeling had him pretty sure that he already was. But if he'd been paying more attention to Nate and Sophie, he might've heard something important.
He looked up to find Sophie pressing herself away from the desk she'd been leaning against, her irritation bubbling over as she stalked in Nate's direction. "This wasn't a normal job. He had us made from the very start! He managed two kidnappings and I'm still not sure how! It does lend one to become a bit distrustful, don't you suppose? So, yes, I played it close. Yes, I knew where he was the moment he arrived at the Carlyle. I wanted it to work, so I made it work, and I'm sorry- to all of you- for keeping you in the dark, but would you have had me do nothing at all? Would you really have me risk it?"
"Yes!" Nate was red-faced, his hands claws at his side, but Apollo's uncomfortable cough seemed to shake him out of it. He deflated. "Well. I mean. I suppose I should thank you, you know? I mean. I wouldn't have." He shook his head and started again. "You're right."
Agreement, Eliot hadn't been expecting, and even if Hardison was barely in the room, Parker was equally baffled.
"If you hadn't walked out on us, I wouldn't have had the idea to let Parker out in the wind. So, thanks for giving us something to fight about."
"That does seem to be working well for you," Sophie muttered, still bitter,
Nate's mouth was a grim line. "Yeah, well. Not intending on letting it happen again, believe me."
The full import of his words hung icily in the air, and even he looked surprised at them. The only movement was Sophie's face, trying not to crumble, and Parker twitching, about to run. Hardison was frozen, his eyes shut tight.
Eliot leaned over, catching at Parker's arm before she could flee. She knew what this was, same as him, and if he didn't derail this, it would only get worse.
This entire fucking thing had been an inquisition, right from the fucking start, but it hadn't been his.
"Okay," he said, swallowing a scream. "We're dropping this. Right the hell now." He knew damn well that he was pushing it, the daggers he was shooting at Nate, but didn't care. "We got out alive. Cleaned up our trail. We'll be out of here first thing in the morning, and we can talk about it. Later."
He was surprised to see his order carried out so efficiently, everyone filing out of the room without another word until it was just him and Nate, who was too tired to keep fighting. Unfortunately, Eliot's momentum had only been temporary, and he found himself with nothing to say.
Nate, though, standing at the window and looking out, summed it up perfectly.
"We were never supposed to have to worry about any of this. We weren't supposed to have bodies to hide."
Eliot nodded, forced a calm breath or two as he slowly stood up, measuring his words. "That wasn't Sophie's fault. She's not the one that deserves this. None of them are."
"Hm," Nate said, over his shoulder, as Eliot reached for the doorknob. "Either do you, you know."
"Yeah." That ain't for you to decide.
---
Alec was too tired to actually get into bed properly, and too anxious to sleep. Not with Eliot across the hall, having some secret meeting with Nate. Not with Nate's last angry words looping through his head. Not with a dead body hidden somewhere in the city.
Evidence. It's evidence. You clean up evidence every day. It's what you do.
Being rescued from kidnappers, he reasoned, wasn't supposed to be the beginning of a downward spiral.
You don't even know what a good day looks like anymore, do you?
The sound of the door opening startled him out of his reverie so much that he forgot to not look at Eliot head-on. His sudden appearance didn't make him any less uneasy, and he was starting to get pissed, waiting for himself to just get over it, already. Whatever this was.
It wasn't murder.
"Hey," he offered, when he got caught staring. "Uh. Wasn't thinkin', man. Just kind of wound up in here. I can go, see about getting another room, if you want."
"What?" Eliot squinted at him. "Don't worry about it."
"I'm good," Alec affirmed, and wondered when, exactly, that was going to become true, before a yawn stretched his throat. "Tired," he mumbled.
Eliot didn't respond, so he summoned the last of his energy to pull the covers back and climb into bed. Finally he lay down, a little warm already. The shirt stayed on, though, and he told himself it was because of exhaustion.
A man died tonight, and took the team down with him.
Eyes closed, he listened to Eliot puttering around the room for a minute, then brushing his teeth in the bathroom. He was a little surprised to find that he was still awake when he felt the bed dip next to him.
Eliot turned off the bedside lamp, before lying down on his back. He wasn't wearing the sling anymore, but he was holding his injured arm carefully in place.
Probably re-injured it digging you out of your mess while you were upstairs puking, he thought guiltily. Nice..
Eliot was rigid as a board, and as close to the edge of the bed as it was possible to be without falling off. If Alec hadn't been so slow to figure out what the hell was going on, he probably would have done the same. But moving now would be too obvious.
And maybe it was all this dark shit hanging overhead, but he was starting to think that he didn't really want to. He could have done with Eliot being a bit closer, actually, if he was being honest. Like maybe he thought it could dispel a little more gloom. He wasn't about to say it, though, wouldn't have known even if they were the people they'd been last week, so he asked instead, "El. We cool?"
"Yeah," came the hoarse reply, and a little more of the tension melted away, down into the mattress. A minute or an hour later, Eliot might have said something more, but Alec might have dreamed it.
---
Hardison was asleep, dead to the world, and Eliot tried to follow suit.
It wasn't working, particularly. Not in the least. He lasted all of fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, muscles tensed, debating every second whether he should ask Hardison, again, if he was actually all right.
If he was too freaked out to be here, you'd know. It's fine, he tried convincing himself, but it would have sounded better, coming from Hardison. If he would have said something, if he would have fucking answered.
Another two minutes, and he gave up. He moved slowly, unable to tell if he'd woken him or not, and cast around the darkened room, trying to find a practical reason to be up.
His bag was sitting on the dresser, next to the television, open and inviting the way everything else wasn't, not any more. He began to pack.
It didn't take long, even one-handedly.
You're still a fucking professional when it comes to leaving, he thought angrily, jerking the zipper shut.
Over on the bed, Hardison was stirring, maybe even waking up, and professional or not, this scene never worked with an audience.
He waited, frozen, for a long moment, fingers clasped on the zipper pull, His brain sped on, taking a mental inventory of the duffel bag's contents. Pill bottles, tools, the computer drives that Parker had slipped him back in the elevator. There would be noise, when he picked the bag up. No way to make it out without waking Hardison.
Who's so unsettled by your presence, so afraid of you, so untrusting, that he fell asleep two feet from you.
Who's exactly that naïve.
Eliot released his hold on the bag, carefully. He'd have to go without.
His wallet slipped silently into the pocket of his shirt, picking up his shoes as he crossed to the door, he stooped to put them on only when the door was eased shut behind him, leaving him in the empty hallway.
He heard hushed giggling in the room next door as he passed, Parker's voice cutting off happily. It should have made him smirk, at least, but instead it tore at him, the thought that when it finished falling apart, when they went their separate ways, at least she might not have to go it alone. It was selfish, and he knew it, and he punched the call button on the elevator more sharply than he probably needed to.
Stepping into the ornate lobby downstairs, he nodded at the woman behind the counter, whose tired face still managed to break into a bright smile. It was probably why they hired her, being so cheerful at three in the morning. Any other day, he would have grinned back, but instead he wished he hadn't noticed.
Five floors above, everything he wanted was circling in a holding pattern, awaiting final descent. He didn't have it in him for manners.
Noise. Lights. Traffic. Cold air cut through him as he stepped out into the night. Drunken laughter drifted from across the street and the world was still moving, for everyone else, at least, if not for him. Another cab was pulling up to the queue at the end of the block, and it was as good a destination as any.
The rest, he'd figure out at the airport.
---
The only reason he'd survived as long as he did is that he never missed the people in the shadows, even when he wasn't looking for them. Especially then. He knew when to pretend to overlook them, and he knew when to engage.
So the lone figure standing, cigarette in hand, just outside the pool of light spilling from the hotel's entrance wasn't any sort of challenge, even though it was a surprise.
"I didn't know you smoked," he stopped, rocking on the balls of his feet and trying for casual.
"I don't, not often," Sophie grinned with damp eyes. "I had to borrow one from the girl at the counter."
What's your excuse, she didn't ask, and he was relieved not to have to answer.
There was a long moment where he didn't know what to say. Goodbye seemed harsh, even in the relative darkness. "So," he trailed off, words failing to follow naturally, and he cast about, eventually coming up with the most basic of questions. "What are you doin' out here?"
Wiping at her face, she ground the cigarette into the concrete ashtray, grinning bitterly. "It's a lot harder to ask for forgiveness when you actually care whether or not you'll get it, you know?"
He nodded, Yeah. Got that, and tried to guess what his mom would say. She'd always been good, most of the time, with things like that. Once upon a time, and he fucking missed her. "You got mine, if it counts for anything," he said, reluctant to continue. "But you had to know that you could trust Nate, at least."
"It wasn't any of you I didn't trust, it was the rest of this mad world."
"And Tara," Eliot raised his palms in surrender as his words hit too hard. "Not. I'm not lookin' to start a fight. Tired of it. Far as I'm concerned, we're good. I mean. Weren't for you doin' what you did, we'd be screwed. Even if you did scare the hell out of us."
Sophie tipped her head forward, her hair sliding down her face like a theater curtain. "I know. And I'm sorry. I just." She raised her head again, tossing her hair over her shoulder and looking out over the lights like she could steal them all, if she wanted, but she still needed a moment to collect herself, it seemed. "You should get back inside. Check on Hardison, the poor thing's had a tough time of it."
Awareness of shapes in shadows wasn't the only thing that had kept Eliot living so long. Reprieves, though more rare in occurrence, he understood equally well. He took one step back, and then another.
"And Eliot? Thank you."
"You too," he said, heading back inside. Despite himself, he was a little taken aback to find that he meant it.
He was a little more surprised to see Nate standing at the front counter, begging the still-smiling night clerk to find him a flower shop that delivered this late at night.
---
Chapter 19
Hah! Here's a twist: no cliffhanger for once! Bet you never saw that coming!
And, in case you missed it, here's the link to download Eliot's half of the soundtrack. Enjoy!
Here's the tracklisting:
1. John Mellencamp- What if I Came Knocking
2. Extra Fancy- Sinnerman
3. Therapy?- Straight Life
4. Alabama 3- Too Sick to Pray
5. Depeche Mode- Walking in My Shoes
6. K-os- Man I Used to Be
7. Moby- That's When I Reach for My Revolver
8. Richie Kotzen- You Can't Save Me
9. The Rasmus- Still Standing
10. Linkin Park- Leave Out All The Rest
11. Shinedown- Second Chance
12. The Twilight Singers- Hyperballad