Fic: Taking Care (Part 2A)
Fic: Taking Care Part 2
Author: LMX
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Hardison/Eliot/Parker, Nana, OMC
Spoilers: Future!Fic, potential general spoilers for all Seasons 1 and 2. Specifics for The Two Horse Job and The Two Live Crew Job
Warnings: Abstract discussion of child abuse, grumpy teenagers being grumpy teenagers.
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to the studio, producers and writers except the words themselves and the order I've put them in. Dean, Lana, Reph, my rancher (Sully) and his mare and foal are original characters with no basis in canon or the real world. (Well, the mare and foal might be based on Candy and Robin, but... I'm sure the two of them won't mind)
Summary: Eliot's got dreams. Dreams he'd thought he'd grow out of once upon a time. Meanwhile Nate and Sophie are finding their dreams don't match up to reality quite how they expected.
AN: Can someone tell me when the Leverage Exchange deadline is? It's all well and good saying I'm going to match it, but...
This part is looking to be divided into 3 at this point. Apologies for dragging this out. XD
- - -
Previously, on Taking Care:
Prologue
Hardison comes out to his Nana, and finds out that she needs someone to take care of her grandson, Dean, while she goes in for heart surgery. Parker is enthusiastic, Eliot less so.
Part 1A
While Eliot has to travel for his job 'liberating' food stocks for those in need, Hardison and Parker head immediately out to Chicago to meet Dean and spend some time with Nana. Parker struggles through memories of her time in foster care while Hardison, and later Eliot, are subject to Nana's intense scrutiny. Leaving Nana at the hospital unhappily, the four head back to Boston.
Part 1B
Eliot, struggling with his worry over unknowingly causing untold damage to a young psyche, withdraws from them all as they settle into life with a child around. Hardison takes charge sets him straight and they find a new routine of sorts. Parker only loses Dean once. When Nana is back on her feet, all three of them are sad to see Dean go back home.
- 0 -
And now, the continuation...
- 0 -
Eliot wouldn't admit it to anyone, not even Parker and Alec, but since he was young he'd dreamed about being a wrangler on a proper ranch. Not a cowboy; a cowboy's job was long and boring most of the time. He'd be someone to look after hundreds of mostly-wild horses. Break 'em, train 'em, teach 'em how to wrestle with bulls twice their weight. He'd have to hand them off to the cowboys eventually anyway, and that part'd be hard. But if he had time he could keep one or two back for the yard. Keep a full stable, maybe a couple of studs and brood mares, see if he couldn't raise a racer. Maybe if he got one with real talent he'd contact Willie and tell him he had a new champion for him.
The colts would be like his kids. New batch each spring, watch them grow.
Things had changed. Life had caught up with him all a sudden, but it was one of those dreams that was persistent. Even after he stopped sleeping long enough hours to hit REM sleep, the mustangs would gallop across his thoughts every so often and remind him what he'd wanted to be, once.
Someone who made things. Not destroyed them.
- 0 -
They had been on the road for nearly three weeks, heading to Chicago to see Dean and Nana for a couple of days to celebrate Nana's last major check-up after her operation, and then to Las Vegas for Parker to empty the brand new top-of-the-range vault in the newest casino on the strip in celebration of its first day at full capacity.
The elephant in the car with them had been Parker's near-breakdown after spending two weeks travelling between foster care centres and orphanages with Nate and Maggie, looking for the kids who would be the best fit and who'd benefit the most from Nate's experiences house-training his rabble of thieves.
It had been an impossible situation, and Alec and Eliot had seen it going in. There was no kid there who *didn't* deserve the love and attention Nate and Maggie could give. No kid who wouldn't benefit from that opportunity. In the end they'd taken all the notes that Parker had made - pages and pages of personal details and observations - and handed the decision back to Nate and Maggie. Only they could make that choice, after all.
They'd been debating where to go next, driving aimlessly south just because they weren't ready to go home yet. Because Parker wasn't ready to go home yet. They got as far as the Kentucky border when Alec suggested they visit Willie Martin and they'd taken the turn-off for his stables. Eliot had refused to be surprised. It felt like the two of them had been thinking about springing this on him for months.
Willie didn't seem all that surprised to see them either, dragging them all down to the stables and not taking Parker's wary refusal for an answer as he introduced them to every one of his current racing stock. For an old man he wasn't doing at all bad, still working his horses and travelling to see brood mares. He had plenty of help on hand these days, and he needed it too.
Of the four horses Willie had bought with the money they'd made him six years ago, two were now working stud after their own very successful racing careers. Because he owned them, that meant they were still making Willie money - enough that the stable had gained a new thoroughbred every year since it had been rebuilt. For the first time in a long time, and despite the global downturn, Willie was looking for more stabling, and thinking about working stud for himself.
Willie had been sad to see them go, but he had too much to do without looking after visitors. Feeling like they'd come full circle, they'd finally started out for Boston, headed home.
Sat in the back seat and staring blankly out the windows at the lands he'd grown up in, Eliot was feeling strangely distanced from it, thinking back on everything he'd done here over his life. They passed a ramshackle ranch, a huge herd of mustang grazing in the far distance, and a couple of mares with youngsters in enclosed fields closer to the house and barn. It was like something out of one of his dreams, using a little trails pony to track the mustang herd, coming home to check up on the foals...
"Shit. Stop the car. Go back!" he said, his mind registering what his eyes had seen moments too late, the ranch already in the rear window.
"What? What!?" Hardison asked, pulling over sharply and letting the other cars pass them.
"Back at the entrance to that farm. There was a foal on the trail down to the yard, had its leg stuck in the fence."
"You saw that, at that speed? You saw the sad horse." Hardison shook his head, looking over his shoulder for an opening in the sparse traffic. "Man, you're like... Lassie or something."
- 0 -
Eliot stumbled out of the car before it had stopped, getting a hand on the foal's neck to stop it shifting and rearing against the wire that had closed around its leg. There was already blood matting its fetlock, and the mother was shifting uncertainly in the distance, startled by their arrival.
"Hardison, drive up to the house," Eliot ordered without looking up as he started to ease the wire free. "See if there's anyone up there. Parker, give me a hand here."
"What can I do?" Parker asked, suddenly right at his side.
"I'm gonna lift him free, can you keep the wire off his leg?"
By the time Alec had reappeared with the owner, the foal was suckling from his mother and she was snuffling at him carefully as he limped around her.
"Thank you!" the man said, rushing over to kneel in front of the pair, coaxing the mother away a step as he checked over the foal's leg. "What trouble have you got into this time?" he muttered as he ran soothing hands over the mare's flanks.
"Wire on those fences is too loose." Eliot pointed out critically.
"I know. It's… It's just me here at the moment. I don't have enough coming in to keep any staff. I barely have enough to keep the animals healthy. The cattle might as well be living in my vegetable patch, I've sold off that much land. I've… I've been offered good money for the horse meat." He shook his head tiredly. "Figure in a year I'm going to have to sell up and move somewhere I can make enough money to feed myself."
Eliot wandered back over, running a hand down the foal's scruff of mane. "You got enough to get someone out to to take a look at that leg?"
The other man eyed him for a minute, frowning. "I'll scrape some together. For this lad I'll do it." His expression softened as he looked down at the foal as he returned to his mother. "Spent a lot getting his lineage registered, so he can race when he's old enough. Provided he doesn't cripple himself in the meantime. Got a lot resting on him."
Eliot nodded once. "Let me cover this one," he said firmly. "If it ever comes that you have to sell him… just let me know, alright? Don't let him go for meat."
The man's eyes widened. "I can't be indebted to…"
"You're not," Eliot interrupted him abruptly. "You keep an eye out for this one and I'll be happy."
The owner left to phone the vet with Eliot's personal cheque in his hands, looking over his shoulder with a shell-shocked expression as he did. Eliot didn't notice, perched on the fence as Parker and Hardison moved to stand at his shoulders.
"There's lots of farms like this around the country," he said wistfully. "People just don't have the money to take care of anything but themselves anymore."
Parker and Alec shared a glance behind his back and then went back to paying attention to the newly freed colt and his mother as they fussed around each other.
"He's got good lines on him." Eliot observed. "He'll make a good race horse. Gotta wonder, a horse like that being left like this. Time was he'd be treated better than the family inside."
"Come on, man," Hardison coaxed. "Let's get out of their hair. They've had a rough day of it."
Eliot looked reluctantly away from the ranch and out at the fading daylight. "We should get back on the road anyway," he sighed.
"Yeah, better to get back before it gets dark," Hardison agreed, seeing the spark of something in Parker's eyes and hiding his own smile. Eliot was nesting, who knew what was coming next.
- 0 -
Eliot felt like an old man, dumping the bags by the door and falling into his favourite chair with a sigh, accepting a coffee off Alec and letting Parker wriggle and shuffle until she found a comfortable spot tucked into his side with her feet over the back of the chair. This was the kind of moment that made him realise how much of a home they'd made for themselves in this apartment. In Boston. There was still part of him convinced that the idea of 'coming home' should be an alien one.
There was a bigger part that was just glad to be back where he belonged. Alec made a happy noise as his computer welcomed him home in a synthetic girl's voice, and Eliot knew he wasn't the only one feeling that way.
"I miss Nate," Parker declared suddenly. "And Sophie. Nate and Sophie and Maggie, but not Marcus. He can stay away."
"Want to phone them?" Alec offered. "'S gonna be late now in London, but you know Sophie's a party animal."
"Their house is in Manchester, and Sophie ain't gonna be partying," Eliot pointed out. "She's eight months on. She's gonna be feeling heavy."
"Well, we could phone Nate and Maggie," Alec retorted.
Eliot nodded agreeably. "Invite them over. But not tonight."
Parker launched herself off the wall to land behind Alec's computer nook, careful not to touch any of the computer equipment - she'd been told off for that before. Alec rolled his eyes and after a couple of taps his computer started to make phone noises.
Eliot rolled his eyes and relaxed back onto the sofa. They'd be able to hear him if he spoke from where he was, and he was too tired to move around to be in front of the camera.
"Hardison!" Nate's voice was tired, but he sounded pleased to hear from them. "Hello Parker," he added, presumably as the video feeds resolved and he saw Parker draped over Alec's shoulder. "Is everything alright? Everyone ok?" It said something about how rarely they spoke, that Nate's first response to contact was: 'what's wrong?'.
"Hey man, no problems. We hadn't heard anything for a while, just got back into town. Wanted to see y'all were alright over there."
"Yes," Nate replied after a delay. "Yes, we're great."
"You sound exhausted," Eliot said from across the room.
"Umm... Feeling a little institutionalised, uh really. It's great to hear..." Nate trailed off.
"Nate?" Parker asked, frowning. Eliot sat up straight, studying their faces for signs of what was going on on the camera feed. He was half way out of his seat when Nate's voice returned.
"Greg's been having nightmares," he said. "Can I phone you back in a few hours?"
"Go," Alec agreed. "We'll talk soon."
Parker slouched back over to Eliot as Alec hung up the call and started ramping up something else on his computer, typing at a million words a minute or something. "Greg," Parker mused as she sat back down, wedging herself firmly in Eliot's personal space. "Greg Ford."
Eliot couldn't help but grin. "Yeah."
- 0 -
Parker had headed out to do whatever it was she did at night when they were home by the time Nate phoned back, and Alec had a pair of headphones on, deep in his game as he caught up with his online friends. Nate called in on the landline instead of Alec's computer, his face popping up on the TV. Eliot moved across the sofa so he was in the centre of their own camera view and studied Nate's face.
"Shit, man. You look worse than you sound," he observed, smiling at Nate's hair in disarray and his shirt collar askew. Noting the dark lines under his eyes, too. Still, he looked happier than Eliot could remember him looking in all the time the team had been working. Calmer, less strung out. Something was working for him.
Nate just shook his head, taking a sip of the coffee on the table beside him. "How was your trip?"
"Long," Eliot rolled his eyes. "Some of the shit the two of them come out with..." Eliot stopped with a grin as a gummy frog came hurtling across the room at him.
Nate chuckled and sat back in his seat, glancing up and out of shot briefly. "How was Alec's Nana, and Dean?"
"That woman's gonna outlive us all. She's like a machine. Alec tried to convince her to get some help round the house, she wouldn't hear of it." Eliot grinned easily. They had been all but adopted by Alec's Nana, it was impossible not to love her company. "Dean's a great kid, seemed to survive his time living with us alright. He's keeping up his karate, taken over his Nana's computer with games, and he ain't blown anything up or stolen anything we know of. We can't have done him too much damage."
"That's good to hear." Nate nodded absently, eyes off the video feed. "And the Martin stables?"
"Nate," Eliot said gently.
Nate looked up, "Yes?"
"You didn't call back at this time for small talk, man. It's like one am." Eliot shrugged, glancing over at Alec who was peering around a screen curiously. "We're all still up, but you ain't normally."
"I... umm... no. I wanted to ask..." Nate hesitated, glancing up past the camera again. "You don't have to..."
Eliot wondered who else was in the room. It was making him edgy. "Nate." Eliot resisted the urge to growl. "If I don't want to answer, I won't. Just get on with it."
"I'm worried about Greg not sleeping." Nate said on the exhale, as if with a sigh. "He's reluctant to talk about the nightmares, and I'm not going to push, not yet, but the worse his dreams are the less he wants to sleep."
Eliot glanced over at Alec, mostly hidden by the computer screens. In the handful of years they'd been together Alec had been working away at his insomnia, making him read all the literature, trying all the obscure techniques. It was always the nightmares that got him in the end, set him right back at square one. Alec ignored him, pretending he wasn't listening in.
"Is Maggie there?" Eliot asked, nodding as Nate's wife came round to sit down beside him. "Hi Maggie."
"Hello Eliot." Maggie smiled softly. "I wasn't sure if... if you'd rather just speak to Nate about this."
"I'm not ashamed of my nightmares, Maggie. If I can help at all..." Eliot shrugged.
"We just thought you might have a better understanding," she sighed, and Eliot realised she looked just as tired as Nate, just slightly less rumpled by it. "Anything you could suggest would help right now. It's been weeks, and he hasn't slept through any one night. The others are starting to get angry with us for not fixing it."
"Others?" Eliot asked, grinning as he realised Alec owed him a twenty. "You adopted more than one?" Another couple of gummy frogs were pelted across the room at him.
"Three boys, brothers." Nate gave a small smile, enough for Eliot to know he was as happy as he'd ever seen him. "Greg is the youngest, twelve, and Danny and Jake are fourteen and fifteen," he added.
"It's adrenaline that stops you sleeping." Eliot said, heading for the easy stuff first. "Once you've had a couple of bad dreams you're afraid of it happening again, and the adrenaline is a response to the fear. Get them all really tired before bed. Go for a run or something, throw a ball around, take an exercise class. If you think it's more than nightmares..." Eliot grimaced, not really wanting to go there. "Make sure everyone goes to bed at the same time, so he's not listening for what you're doing downstairs or thinking about the others. He's not anticipating anything bad." Eliot glanced up as Alec wandered over to sit down beside him.
"The other two aren't going to like that," Maggie pointed out wryly. "They're old enough that they're reluctant to stick to bedtimes."
"Tell them who they're doing it for." Alec said quietly. "He's their brother - if they see he's hurting they're gonna want ta help."
"And if they're having problems too and they're just keeping it quiet, they gain from the routine and they can make like they're doing it for their little brother," Eliot added.
"I've been wary about giving them 'big brother' responsibilities," Nate said, frowning now. "I don't want to put that pressure on them, and this isn't going to go away overnight."
Alec shook his head. "They're already there, Nate. If you've got a way that'll work, they'll listen."
"We all need some time out of the house." Maggie sighed. "There have been so many checks and tests and surprise visits, it's impossible to plan anything."
"And they're not young enough to take out to the park in the evening." Nate added. "They have their own lives, and they're making new friends here."
"Bring 'em over whenever," Eliot offered. "Come over tomorrow. We're all in, there's nothing too illegal in the house right now. Other than possibly the C4. I don't ask about that."
Nate glanced tentatively at Maggie, then back at the two of them. "Are you around for a couple of days? I have a favour to ask as well." From the looks of the curious glare Maggie was now shooting Nate, not a favour Maggie knew about. "Maybe if..."
"Come over after five," Eliot interrupted. "I'll make dinner."
"Jack is vegetarian," Maggie added, breaking off her glare abruptly. "I think he only said it to be stubborn on his first night here, but that's his story and he's sticking to it."
"I... Sure." Eliot chuckled. "I did that to my Da. It was supposed to be an objection to enforced Sunday dinner with the family, but I wasn't brave enough to ever tell him that. Ended up joining all these cruelty to animals campaigns. Drove him crazy with it. Started me on growing my own food though, so maybe gained somethin'."
"We'll be over at five. Make enough to feed an army." Maggie cut off the call with a broad smile.
Eliot met Alec's stare with a frown. "What?"
"How the hell did you know they'd end up adopting more than one kid?" Alec asked, handing over the bill reluctantly. With the economy as it was, a twenty was pocket money, but it was the principle of the thing.
"They'd been thinking about having more kids when Sam got sick the first time around," Eliot answered blandly, getting up and wandering through the house locking the doors and windows in preparation for Parker coming home.
"Shit," was all that Alec could think to say to that, stalling for a minute. "But no, that's cool," he continued, following Eliot through into the kitchen. "The more kids they can get out of there the better."
"I want to get their advice on puppies," Parker added from the stairwell, making them both jump and grinning wickedly.
- 0 -
Nate and Maggie arrived with three kids in tow, all five of them looking fairly put out and frustrated. Maggie at least had a smile for Hardison and Parker at the door, Nate escaping past them to the kitchen.
"Where do you keep your corkscrew?" were his first words to Eliot as he looked over the dinner preparations.
"That bad, huh?" Eliot grinned, opening a drawer and throwing the implement across the room to Nate before pulling out glasses from the cupboard and setting them on the sideboard.
"Jake had plans tonight, which he's made very clear we've spoiled for him, and Greg spent at least an hour looking for one shoe, and then decided he wanted to wear a different pair. Danny was planning on just ignoring us and hoping we'd go away." Nate poured three glasses of wine and Eliot poured one of orange soda and one of water, and then they hesitated on the last three glasses.
"You better go find out what they want to drink," Eliot pushed.
"You're the host, damnit," Nate grumbled, downing half of his glass of wine. Eliot wordlessly topped up his glass.
"Parker, find out what people are drinking," Eliot called through into the other room.
"How's she doing?" he asked carefully, glancing over his shoulder. "She seems better."
Eliot took a minute to think about that, mind lingering on Parker so caught up in memories of her childhood that she couldn't look them in the eye let alone sleep with them at night. "It took a while, but she trusted you two to make the right decision and being away from home has helped. She's been stealing things and making donations to care homes all over the country, so she's had an outlet at least." Eliot shrugged carefully. "She's doing better."
"Well, you'd doing better settling her down than we are with these kids." Nate sighed heavily.
"You're doing fine, man. You got them here, together. That's really something."
"The something I'd like would be peace and quiet," Nate mumbled.
"Bull," Eliot replied, handing Nate Maggie's glass of wine and shooing him towards the door. "You love this. That's gotta be why you took us in, right?"
Nate shot him a sharp look, and Eliot smiled. "Maggie!" he called over Nate's shoulder as his wife appeared in the doorway. "Nate's got your drink, and now he's getting the hell out of my kitchen."
- 0 -
With Alec on the computer - the big screen one they usually used as a TV - introducing the three kids to the concept that you really could do anything on the internet with a little know-how, and Maggie and Parker discussing God-knows what over the dirty dishes across the dinner table, Eliot took the opportunity to pull Nate aside.
"How are you doing, man?" he asked. "You look beat."
"They're still not settled in yet, none of us are sleeping right, everyone's a bit on edge and the constant interviews and meetings and surprise visits aren't helping anyone." Nate took a minute, let his eyes settle on each of them across the room. "It's been a long time since I really had to look out for anyone else," he finished.
"Bull-shit," Eliot shot back.
"Excuse me?" Nate frowned and raised a critical eyebrow.
"You looked out for us for six years, man," Eliot replied slowly, as if explaining a difficult concept. "You house-trained us in less than a year and we were... well..." Eliot shrugged and glanced over Nate's shoulder at Parker. "It's only been a couple of months for these guys, and you've all but locked yourselves into the house. I expected you to be sending them out on jobs already."
Nate cleared his throat awkwardly. "Oh, yes. On that note..."
"You found us a job?" Hardison appeared over Eliot's shoulder and Eliot suppressed a grin as Nate jumped. "Y' know we're all retired, right?"
"I'm sorry, it's just..." Nate started.
"Naw man." Hardison shook his head. "We been waitin' for it."
"You just can't stop," Parker added, appearing on Eliot's other side, "You're very Nate."
Nate gave up. "How is best to do this?" he asked with a sigh, glancing back to make sure the boys were still engrossed in the computer, now showing off their new-found skills to Maggie.
"In front of your kids, man," Eliot said with a grin. "Show 'em how awesome you are. You got a plan, right? You're not going to just drop the job on us."
"I'm not showing off my law breaking tendencies in front of the children I've just taken away from that life," Nate objected at a hiss.
"You... oh no..." Parker pressed her hands to her mouth dramatically. "You're back to denying you're a thief again, aren't you?!"
"Damn Nate," Hardison rolled his eyes, reaching for his phone. "How many times we gotta beat this into your head? I'm phoning Sophie."
"Hardison... Alec!" Nate hissed, trying not to draw attention as Alec side-stepped him with his phone already to his ear.
"Nu-uh." Alec shook his head. "I'm phoning Sophie right now."
Nate gave up trying to get the phone off him and just shoved him through into the kitchen, phone and all. "All three of them have been in and out of detention centres, Alec," he pointed out when he was moderately more sure they were out of earshot. "I'm not going to..."
"So teach 'em to be good enough not to get caught," Eliot shrugged, pouring another glass of wine as Parker turned on the little screen in the kitchen and Hardison transferred the call onto it, the kitchen speakers piping out the ringback tone.
"I didn't take them away from..." Nate started, just as the tone stopped, Sophie picking up on the other end.
"Nate...?" Sophie's face popped up on the screen, backed by an Irish bar, the Irish Tricolour hanging on the wall proudly. "God, it's so good to see you. You just dropped off the face of the earth. How are you? How are the kids?"
"They're fine, and law abiding, and they're going to stay that way," Nate retorted.
"Alright," Sophie replied, bemused. "I'm obviously missing part of this argument."
"Nate wants us to do a job for him," Eliot explained, "But he won't talk about it in front of his kids."
"Oh, Nate." Sophie sighed. "How long do I have to get there?"
"Wait, no..." Nate glared at Eliot with clear intent. "Sophie, you're pregnant!" he finished.
"Nate." Sophie set a glare of her own, eyes narrowing. "Are you saying you *didn't* plan me into this job?"
Nate visibly deflated under her glare. "You're in a different country," he pointed out. "On a different continent!"
"Ahh! Damn you." Shaking her head, Sophie started collecting the things that were on the table around her into her handbag. "I'm coming over there right now. You can introduce me to your gorgeous kids and catch me up on your NEW plan. The one that does involve me."
"Sophie," Nate tried, only to interrupted immediately.
"And don't you ever try to leave me out of something like this again," Sophie added, throwing on a coat and standing to show off her visibly pregnant belly.
"Sophie..." Nate tried again.
"And one more thing..." Sophie continued oblivious.
"*SOPHIE*!" Nate shouted, seeing the kids in the other room look up out of the corner of his eye.
"What?!" she demanded, hand already reaching for the camera.
"It'll take you two days to get here, at least," Nate pointed out.
Sophie's hand closed around the camera and the picture disappeared. "No it won't," she explained. "I'll be there in twenty minutes." There were the distant sounds of doors opening and closing, the background sounds of a bar giving way to background sounds of a busy street.
"I... what? Sophie, where are you?" Nate asked, glancing at the others and happy to see that they looked just as surprised at the turn of events.
"In O'Rourke's. You know, the Pub just down the road from my old place." Sophie's smile was audible.
"What are you doing in an Irish bar in Boston?" Eliot asked flatly.
"Waiting for your call, of course," she laughed lightly and the street sounds went quiet, replaced with engine noise and the muted sound of Sophie rattling off their address to the cab driver.
"Where's Marcus?" Nate ignored the obvious question, fairly sure he didn't want to know.
"Boston zoo," she replied with a huff. "That bastard wouldn't let me work this job with him," she declared. "I'll be damned if you're going to do the same."
"I'll..." Nate looked up at the others, unable to restrain the grin that was escaping. "I'll get on that new plan."
- 0 -
Part 2B
Author: LMX
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Hardison/Eliot/Parker, Nana, OMC
Spoilers: Future!Fic, potential general spoilers for all Seasons 1 and 2. Specifics for The Two Horse Job and The Two Live Crew Job
Warnings: Abstract discussion of child abuse, grumpy teenagers being grumpy teenagers.
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to the studio, producers and writers except the words themselves and the order I've put them in. Dean, Lana, Reph, my rancher (Sully) and his mare and foal are original characters with no basis in canon or the real world. (Well, the mare and foal might be based on Candy and Robin, but... I'm sure the two of them won't mind)
Summary: Eliot's got dreams. Dreams he'd thought he'd grow out of once upon a time. Meanwhile Nate and Sophie are finding their dreams don't match up to reality quite how they expected.
AN: Can someone tell me when the Leverage Exchange deadline is? It's all well and good saying I'm going to match it, but...
This part is looking to be divided into 3 at this point. Apologies for dragging this out. XD
- - -
Previously, on Taking Care:
Prologue
Hardison comes out to his Nana, and finds out that she needs someone to take care of her grandson, Dean, while she goes in for heart surgery. Parker is enthusiastic, Eliot less so.
Part 1A
While Eliot has to travel for his job 'liberating' food stocks for those in need, Hardison and Parker head immediately out to Chicago to meet Dean and spend some time with Nana. Parker struggles through memories of her time in foster care while Hardison, and later Eliot, are subject to Nana's intense scrutiny. Leaving Nana at the hospital unhappily, the four head back to Boston.
Part 1B
Eliot, struggling with his worry over unknowingly causing untold damage to a young psyche, withdraws from them all as they settle into life with a child around. Hardison takes charge sets him straight and they find a new routine of sorts. Parker only loses Dean once. When Nana is back on her feet, all three of them are sad to see Dean go back home.
- 0 -
And now, the continuation...
- 0 -
Eliot wouldn't admit it to anyone, not even Parker and Alec, but since he was young he'd dreamed about being a wrangler on a proper ranch. Not a cowboy; a cowboy's job was long and boring most of the time. He'd be someone to look after hundreds of mostly-wild horses. Break 'em, train 'em, teach 'em how to wrestle with bulls twice their weight. He'd have to hand them off to the cowboys eventually anyway, and that part'd be hard. But if he had time he could keep one or two back for the yard. Keep a full stable, maybe a couple of studs and brood mares, see if he couldn't raise a racer. Maybe if he got one with real talent he'd contact Willie and tell him he had a new champion for him.
The colts would be like his kids. New batch each spring, watch them grow.
Things had changed. Life had caught up with him all a sudden, but it was one of those dreams that was persistent. Even after he stopped sleeping long enough hours to hit REM sleep, the mustangs would gallop across his thoughts every so often and remind him what he'd wanted to be, once.
Someone who made things. Not destroyed them.
- 0 -
They had been on the road for nearly three weeks, heading to Chicago to see Dean and Nana for a couple of days to celebrate Nana's last major check-up after her operation, and then to Las Vegas for Parker to empty the brand new top-of-the-range vault in the newest casino on the strip in celebration of its first day at full capacity.
The elephant in the car with them had been Parker's near-breakdown after spending two weeks travelling between foster care centres and orphanages with Nate and Maggie, looking for the kids who would be the best fit and who'd benefit the most from Nate's experiences house-training his rabble of thieves.
It had been an impossible situation, and Alec and Eliot had seen it going in. There was no kid there who *didn't* deserve the love and attention Nate and Maggie could give. No kid who wouldn't benefit from that opportunity. In the end they'd taken all the notes that Parker had made - pages and pages of personal details and observations - and handed the decision back to Nate and Maggie. Only they could make that choice, after all.
They'd been debating where to go next, driving aimlessly south just because they weren't ready to go home yet. Because Parker wasn't ready to go home yet. They got as far as the Kentucky border when Alec suggested they visit Willie Martin and they'd taken the turn-off for his stables. Eliot had refused to be surprised. It felt like the two of them had been thinking about springing this on him for months.
Willie didn't seem all that surprised to see them either, dragging them all down to the stables and not taking Parker's wary refusal for an answer as he introduced them to every one of his current racing stock. For an old man he wasn't doing at all bad, still working his horses and travelling to see brood mares. He had plenty of help on hand these days, and he needed it too.
Of the four horses Willie had bought with the money they'd made him six years ago, two were now working stud after their own very successful racing careers. Because he owned them, that meant they were still making Willie money - enough that the stable had gained a new thoroughbred every year since it had been rebuilt. For the first time in a long time, and despite the global downturn, Willie was looking for more stabling, and thinking about working stud for himself.
Willie had been sad to see them go, but he had too much to do without looking after visitors. Feeling like they'd come full circle, they'd finally started out for Boston, headed home.
Sat in the back seat and staring blankly out the windows at the lands he'd grown up in, Eliot was feeling strangely distanced from it, thinking back on everything he'd done here over his life. They passed a ramshackle ranch, a huge herd of mustang grazing in the far distance, and a couple of mares with youngsters in enclosed fields closer to the house and barn. It was like something out of one of his dreams, using a little trails pony to track the mustang herd, coming home to check up on the foals...
"Shit. Stop the car. Go back!" he said, his mind registering what his eyes had seen moments too late, the ranch already in the rear window.
"What? What!?" Hardison asked, pulling over sharply and letting the other cars pass them.
"Back at the entrance to that farm. There was a foal on the trail down to the yard, had its leg stuck in the fence."
"You saw that, at that speed? You saw the sad horse." Hardison shook his head, looking over his shoulder for an opening in the sparse traffic. "Man, you're like... Lassie or something."
- 0 -
Eliot stumbled out of the car before it had stopped, getting a hand on the foal's neck to stop it shifting and rearing against the wire that had closed around its leg. There was already blood matting its fetlock, and the mother was shifting uncertainly in the distance, startled by their arrival.
"Hardison, drive up to the house," Eliot ordered without looking up as he started to ease the wire free. "See if there's anyone up there. Parker, give me a hand here."
"What can I do?" Parker asked, suddenly right at his side.
"I'm gonna lift him free, can you keep the wire off his leg?"
By the time Alec had reappeared with the owner, the foal was suckling from his mother and she was snuffling at him carefully as he limped around her.
"Thank you!" the man said, rushing over to kneel in front of the pair, coaxing the mother away a step as he checked over the foal's leg. "What trouble have you got into this time?" he muttered as he ran soothing hands over the mare's flanks.
"Wire on those fences is too loose." Eliot pointed out critically.
"I know. It's… It's just me here at the moment. I don't have enough coming in to keep any staff. I barely have enough to keep the animals healthy. The cattle might as well be living in my vegetable patch, I've sold off that much land. I've… I've been offered good money for the horse meat." He shook his head tiredly. "Figure in a year I'm going to have to sell up and move somewhere I can make enough money to feed myself."
Eliot wandered back over, running a hand down the foal's scruff of mane. "You got enough to get someone out to to take a look at that leg?"
The other man eyed him for a minute, frowning. "I'll scrape some together. For this lad I'll do it." His expression softened as he looked down at the foal as he returned to his mother. "Spent a lot getting his lineage registered, so he can race when he's old enough. Provided he doesn't cripple himself in the meantime. Got a lot resting on him."
Eliot nodded once. "Let me cover this one," he said firmly. "If it ever comes that you have to sell him… just let me know, alright? Don't let him go for meat."
The man's eyes widened. "I can't be indebted to…"
"You're not," Eliot interrupted him abruptly. "You keep an eye out for this one and I'll be happy."
The owner left to phone the vet with Eliot's personal cheque in his hands, looking over his shoulder with a shell-shocked expression as he did. Eliot didn't notice, perched on the fence as Parker and Hardison moved to stand at his shoulders.
"There's lots of farms like this around the country," he said wistfully. "People just don't have the money to take care of anything but themselves anymore."
Parker and Alec shared a glance behind his back and then went back to paying attention to the newly freed colt and his mother as they fussed around each other.
"He's got good lines on him." Eliot observed. "He'll make a good race horse. Gotta wonder, a horse like that being left like this. Time was he'd be treated better than the family inside."
"Come on, man," Hardison coaxed. "Let's get out of their hair. They've had a rough day of it."
Eliot looked reluctantly away from the ranch and out at the fading daylight. "We should get back on the road anyway," he sighed.
"Yeah, better to get back before it gets dark," Hardison agreed, seeing the spark of something in Parker's eyes and hiding his own smile. Eliot was nesting, who knew what was coming next.
- 0 -
Eliot felt like an old man, dumping the bags by the door and falling into his favourite chair with a sigh, accepting a coffee off Alec and letting Parker wriggle and shuffle until she found a comfortable spot tucked into his side with her feet over the back of the chair. This was the kind of moment that made him realise how much of a home they'd made for themselves in this apartment. In Boston. There was still part of him convinced that the idea of 'coming home' should be an alien one.
There was a bigger part that was just glad to be back where he belonged. Alec made a happy noise as his computer welcomed him home in a synthetic girl's voice, and Eliot knew he wasn't the only one feeling that way.
"I miss Nate," Parker declared suddenly. "And Sophie. Nate and Sophie and Maggie, but not Marcus. He can stay away."
"Want to phone them?" Alec offered. "'S gonna be late now in London, but you know Sophie's a party animal."
"Their house is in Manchester, and Sophie ain't gonna be partying," Eliot pointed out. "She's eight months on. She's gonna be feeling heavy."
"Well, we could phone Nate and Maggie," Alec retorted.
Eliot nodded agreeably. "Invite them over. But not tonight."
Parker launched herself off the wall to land behind Alec's computer nook, careful not to touch any of the computer equipment - she'd been told off for that before. Alec rolled his eyes and after a couple of taps his computer started to make phone noises.
Eliot rolled his eyes and relaxed back onto the sofa. They'd be able to hear him if he spoke from where he was, and he was too tired to move around to be in front of the camera.
"Hardison!" Nate's voice was tired, but he sounded pleased to hear from them. "Hello Parker," he added, presumably as the video feeds resolved and he saw Parker draped over Alec's shoulder. "Is everything alright? Everyone ok?" It said something about how rarely they spoke, that Nate's first response to contact was: 'what's wrong?'.
"Hey man, no problems. We hadn't heard anything for a while, just got back into town. Wanted to see y'all were alright over there."
"Yes," Nate replied after a delay. "Yes, we're great."
"You sound exhausted," Eliot said from across the room.
"Umm... Feeling a little institutionalised, uh really. It's great to hear..." Nate trailed off.
"Nate?" Parker asked, frowning. Eliot sat up straight, studying their faces for signs of what was going on on the camera feed. He was half way out of his seat when Nate's voice returned.
"Greg's been having nightmares," he said. "Can I phone you back in a few hours?"
"Go," Alec agreed. "We'll talk soon."
Parker slouched back over to Eliot as Alec hung up the call and started ramping up something else on his computer, typing at a million words a minute or something. "Greg," Parker mused as she sat back down, wedging herself firmly in Eliot's personal space. "Greg Ford."
Eliot couldn't help but grin. "Yeah."
- 0 -
Parker had headed out to do whatever it was she did at night when they were home by the time Nate phoned back, and Alec had a pair of headphones on, deep in his game as he caught up with his online friends. Nate called in on the landline instead of Alec's computer, his face popping up on the TV. Eliot moved across the sofa so he was in the centre of their own camera view and studied Nate's face.
"Shit, man. You look worse than you sound," he observed, smiling at Nate's hair in disarray and his shirt collar askew. Noting the dark lines under his eyes, too. Still, he looked happier than Eliot could remember him looking in all the time the team had been working. Calmer, less strung out. Something was working for him.
Nate just shook his head, taking a sip of the coffee on the table beside him. "How was your trip?"
"Long," Eliot rolled his eyes. "Some of the shit the two of them come out with..." Eliot stopped with a grin as a gummy frog came hurtling across the room at him.
Nate chuckled and sat back in his seat, glancing up and out of shot briefly. "How was Alec's Nana, and Dean?"
"That woman's gonna outlive us all. She's like a machine. Alec tried to convince her to get some help round the house, she wouldn't hear of it." Eliot grinned easily. They had been all but adopted by Alec's Nana, it was impossible not to love her company. "Dean's a great kid, seemed to survive his time living with us alright. He's keeping up his karate, taken over his Nana's computer with games, and he ain't blown anything up or stolen anything we know of. We can't have done him too much damage."
"That's good to hear." Nate nodded absently, eyes off the video feed. "And the Martin stables?"
"Nate," Eliot said gently.
Nate looked up, "Yes?"
"You didn't call back at this time for small talk, man. It's like one am." Eliot shrugged, glancing over at Alec who was peering around a screen curiously. "We're all still up, but you ain't normally."
"I... umm... no. I wanted to ask..." Nate hesitated, glancing up past the camera again. "You don't have to..."
Eliot wondered who else was in the room. It was making him edgy. "Nate." Eliot resisted the urge to growl. "If I don't want to answer, I won't. Just get on with it."
"I'm worried about Greg not sleeping." Nate said on the exhale, as if with a sigh. "He's reluctant to talk about the nightmares, and I'm not going to push, not yet, but the worse his dreams are the less he wants to sleep."
Eliot glanced over at Alec, mostly hidden by the computer screens. In the handful of years they'd been together Alec had been working away at his insomnia, making him read all the literature, trying all the obscure techniques. It was always the nightmares that got him in the end, set him right back at square one. Alec ignored him, pretending he wasn't listening in.
"Is Maggie there?" Eliot asked, nodding as Nate's wife came round to sit down beside him. "Hi Maggie."
"Hello Eliot." Maggie smiled softly. "I wasn't sure if... if you'd rather just speak to Nate about this."
"I'm not ashamed of my nightmares, Maggie. If I can help at all..." Eliot shrugged.
"We just thought you might have a better understanding," she sighed, and Eliot realised she looked just as tired as Nate, just slightly less rumpled by it. "Anything you could suggest would help right now. It's been weeks, and he hasn't slept through any one night. The others are starting to get angry with us for not fixing it."
"Others?" Eliot asked, grinning as he realised Alec owed him a twenty. "You adopted more than one?" Another couple of gummy frogs were pelted across the room at him.
"Three boys, brothers." Nate gave a small smile, enough for Eliot to know he was as happy as he'd ever seen him. "Greg is the youngest, twelve, and Danny and Jake are fourteen and fifteen," he added.
"It's adrenaline that stops you sleeping." Eliot said, heading for the easy stuff first. "Once you've had a couple of bad dreams you're afraid of it happening again, and the adrenaline is a response to the fear. Get them all really tired before bed. Go for a run or something, throw a ball around, take an exercise class. If you think it's more than nightmares..." Eliot grimaced, not really wanting to go there. "Make sure everyone goes to bed at the same time, so he's not listening for what you're doing downstairs or thinking about the others. He's not anticipating anything bad." Eliot glanced up as Alec wandered over to sit down beside him.
"The other two aren't going to like that," Maggie pointed out wryly. "They're old enough that they're reluctant to stick to bedtimes."
"Tell them who they're doing it for." Alec said quietly. "He's their brother - if they see he's hurting they're gonna want ta help."
"And if they're having problems too and they're just keeping it quiet, they gain from the routine and they can make like they're doing it for their little brother," Eliot added.
"I've been wary about giving them 'big brother' responsibilities," Nate said, frowning now. "I don't want to put that pressure on them, and this isn't going to go away overnight."
Alec shook his head. "They're already there, Nate. If you've got a way that'll work, they'll listen."
"We all need some time out of the house." Maggie sighed. "There have been so many checks and tests and surprise visits, it's impossible to plan anything."
"And they're not young enough to take out to the park in the evening." Nate added. "They have their own lives, and they're making new friends here."
"Bring 'em over whenever," Eliot offered. "Come over tomorrow. We're all in, there's nothing too illegal in the house right now. Other than possibly the C4. I don't ask about that."
Nate glanced tentatively at Maggie, then back at the two of them. "Are you around for a couple of days? I have a favour to ask as well." From the looks of the curious glare Maggie was now shooting Nate, not a favour Maggie knew about. "Maybe if..."
"Come over after five," Eliot interrupted. "I'll make dinner."
"Jack is vegetarian," Maggie added, breaking off her glare abruptly. "I think he only said it to be stubborn on his first night here, but that's his story and he's sticking to it."
"I... Sure." Eliot chuckled. "I did that to my Da. It was supposed to be an objection to enforced Sunday dinner with the family, but I wasn't brave enough to ever tell him that. Ended up joining all these cruelty to animals campaigns. Drove him crazy with it. Started me on growing my own food though, so maybe gained somethin'."
"We'll be over at five. Make enough to feed an army." Maggie cut off the call with a broad smile.
Eliot met Alec's stare with a frown. "What?"
"How the hell did you know they'd end up adopting more than one kid?" Alec asked, handing over the bill reluctantly. With the economy as it was, a twenty was pocket money, but it was the principle of the thing.
"They'd been thinking about having more kids when Sam got sick the first time around," Eliot answered blandly, getting up and wandering through the house locking the doors and windows in preparation for Parker coming home.
"Shit," was all that Alec could think to say to that, stalling for a minute. "But no, that's cool," he continued, following Eliot through into the kitchen. "The more kids they can get out of there the better."
"I want to get their advice on puppies," Parker added from the stairwell, making them both jump and grinning wickedly.
- 0 -
Nate and Maggie arrived with three kids in tow, all five of them looking fairly put out and frustrated. Maggie at least had a smile for Hardison and Parker at the door, Nate escaping past them to the kitchen.
"Where do you keep your corkscrew?" were his first words to Eliot as he looked over the dinner preparations.
"That bad, huh?" Eliot grinned, opening a drawer and throwing the implement across the room to Nate before pulling out glasses from the cupboard and setting them on the sideboard.
"Jake had plans tonight, which he's made very clear we've spoiled for him, and Greg spent at least an hour looking for one shoe, and then decided he wanted to wear a different pair. Danny was planning on just ignoring us and hoping we'd go away." Nate poured three glasses of wine and Eliot poured one of orange soda and one of water, and then they hesitated on the last three glasses.
"You better go find out what they want to drink," Eliot pushed.
"You're the host, damnit," Nate grumbled, downing half of his glass of wine. Eliot wordlessly topped up his glass.
"Parker, find out what people are drinking," Eliot called through into the other room.
"How's she doing?" he asked carefully, glancing over his shoulder. "She seems better."
Eliot took a minute to think about that, mind lingering on Parker so caught up in memories of her childhood that she couldn't look them in the eye let alone sleep with them at night. "It took a while, but she trusted you two to make the right decision and being away from home has helped. She's been stealing things and making donations to care homes all over the country, so she's had an outlet at least." Eliot shrugged carefully. "She's doing better."
"Well, you'd doing better settling her down than we are with these kids." Nate sighed heavily.
"You're doing fine, man. You got them here, together. That's really something."
"The something I'd like would be peace and quiet," Nate mumbled.
"Bull," Eliot replied, handing Nate Maggie's glass of wine and shooing him towards the door. "You love this. That's gotta be why you took us in, right?"
Nate shot him a sharp look, and Eliot smiled. "Maggie!" he called over Nate's shoulder as his wife appeared in the doorway. "Nate's got your drink, and now he's getting the hell out of my kitchen."
- 0 -
With Alec on the computer - the big screen one they usually used as a TV - introducing the three kids to the concept that you really could do anything on the internet with a little know-how, and Maggie and Parker discussing God-knows what over the dirty dishes across the dinner table, Eliot took the opportunity to pull Nate aside.
"How are you doing, man?" he asked. "You look beat."
"They're still not settled in yet, none of us are sleeping right, everyone's a bit on edge and the constant interviews and meetings and surprise visits aren't helping anyone." Nate took a minute, let his eyes settle on each of them across the room. "It's been a long time since I really had to look out for anyone else," he finished.
"Bull-shit," Eliot shot back.
"Excuse me?" Nate frowned and raised a critical eyebrow.
"You looked out for us for six years, man," Eliot replied slowly, as if explaining a difficult concept. "You house-trained us in less than a year and we were... well..." Eliot shrugged and glanced over Nate's shoulder at Parker. "It's only been a couple of months for these guys, and you've all but locked yourselves into the house. I expected you to be sending them out on jobs already."
Nate cleared his throat awkwardly. "Oh, yes. On that note..."
"You found us a job?" Hardison appeared over Eliot's shoulder and Eliot suppressed a grin as Nate jumped. "Y' know we're all retired, right?"
"I'm sorry, it's just..." Nate started.
"Naw man." Hardison shook his head. "We been waitin' for it."
"You just can't stop," Parker added, appearing on Eliot's other side, "You're very Nate."
Nate gave up. "How is best to do this?" he asked with a sigh, glancing back to make sure the boys were still engrossed in the computer, now showing off their new-found skills to Maggie.
"In front of your kids, man," Eliot said with a grin. "Show 'em how awesome you are. You got a plan, right? You're not going to just drop the job on us."
"I'm not showing off my law breaking tendencies in front of the children I've just taken away from that life," Nate objected at a hiss.
"You... oh no..." Parker pressed her hands to her mouth dramatically. "You're back to denying you're a thief again, aren't you?!"
"Damn Nate," Hardison rolled his eyes, reaching for his phone. "How many times we gotta beat this into your head? I'm phoning Sophie."
"Hardison... Alec!" Nate hissed, trying not to draw attention as Alec side-stepped him with his phone already to his ear.
"Nu-uh." Alec shook his head. "I'm phoning Sophie right now."
Nate gave up trying to get the phone off him and just shoved him through into the kitchen, phone and all. "All three of them have been in and out of detention centres, Alec," he pointed out when he was moderately more sure they were out of earshot. "I'm not going to..."
"So teach 'em to be good enough not to get caught," Eliot shrugged, pouring another glass of wine as Parker turned on the little screen in the kitchen and Hardison transferred the call onto it, the kitchen speakers piping out the ringback tone.
"I didn't take them away from..." Nate started, just as the tone stopped, Sophie picking up on the other end.
"Nate...?" Sophie's face popped up on the screen, backed by an Irish bar, the Irish Tricolour hanging on the wall proudly. "God, it's so good to see you. You just dropped off the face of the earth. How are you? How are the kids?"
"They're fine, and law abiding, and they're going to stay that way," Nate retorted.
"Alright," Sophie replied, bemused. "I'm obviously missing part of this argument."
"Nate wants us to do a job for him," Eliot explained, "But he won't talk about it in front of his kids."
"Oh, Nate." Sophie sighed. "How long do I have to get there?"
"Wait, no..." Nate glared at Eliot with clear intent. "Sophie, you're pregnant!" he finished.
"Nate." Sophie set a glare of her own, eyes narrowing. "Are you saying you *didn't* plan me into this job?"
Nate visibly deflated under her glare. "You're in a different country," he pointed out. "On a different continent!"
"Ahh! Damn you." Shaking her head, Sophie started collecting the things that were on the table around her into her handbag. "I'm coming over there right now. You can introduce me to your gorgeous kids and catch me up on your NEW plan. The one that does involve me."
"Sophie," Nate tried, only to interrupted immediately.
"And don't you ever try to leave me out of something like this again," Sophie added, throwing on a coat and standing to show off her visibly pregnant belly.
"Sophie..." Nate tried again.
"And one more thing..." Sophie continued oblivious.
"*SOPHIE*!" Nate shouted, seeing the kids in the other room look up out of the corner of his eye.
"What?!" she demanded, hand already reaching for the camera.
"It'll take you two days to get here, at least," Nate pointed out.
Sophie's hand closed around the camera and the picture disappeared. "No it won't," she explained. "I'll be there in twenty minutes." There were the distant sounds of doors opening and closing, the background sounds of a bar giving way to background sounds of a busy street.
"I... what? Sophie, where are you?" Nate asked, glancing at the others and happy to see that they looked just as surprised at the turn of events.
"In O'Rourke's. You know, the Pub just down the road from my old place." Sophie's smile was audible.
"What are you doing in an Irish bar in Boston?" Eliot asked flatly.
"Waiting for your call, of course," she laughed lightly and the street sounds went quiet, replaced with engine noise and the muted sound of Sophie rattling off their address to the cab driver.
"Where's Marcus?" Nate ignored the obvious question, fairly sure he didn't want to know.
"Boston zoo," she replied with a huff. "That bastard wouldn't let me work this job with him," she declared. "I'll be damned if you're going to do the same."
"I'll..." Nate looked up at the others, unable to restrain the grin that was escaping. "I'll get on that new plan."
- 0 -
Part 2B