Fic: Call On Me
Fic: Call On Me
Author: LMX
Fandom: Leverage/Angel
Rating: PG-13 for excessive language. Seems when I get the McDonald boys on the phone to one another they're potty mouthed.
Characters/Pairing: Lindsey/Darla
Spoilers: Angel: Dead End, Not Fade Away, Leverage: Two Horse Job, but set post season 3
Verse: McDonald Family
Warnings: Language. Slightly odd story construction (all by phone...) There is an RPF-esque-fusion reference in here, but it shouldn't offend the sensibilities of anyone who doesn't like that kind of thing. You get cookies for spotting it though.
AN: I wrote an epic thing that got way out of scale and off the point, and themonkeytwin has suggested some ways of fixing it. This whole story is pretty much stripped out of that epic, and I'm not entirely sure how well this is going to work in isolation.
-
"Do you think our family's cursed?" the voice in his head asked. Lindsey opened his eyes sluggishly and blinked a couple of times, trying to work out how late it was, when he'd fallen asleep on his case files, and how long it had been since he'd last heard that voice. "You there?" his headset piped up again, and Lindsey adjusted it until it wasn't digging into the side of his face before answering.
"You drunk, Eliot?" he replied to the question blandly, stretching slowly before pushing himself up from his desk and walking across the room to pour himself a glass of water. At least ten years, he decided, since he'd last heard from his brother.
"D'ya think our Ma sold us to something before she died?" Eliot asked, perhaps tellingly not answering his question.
"No. My soul was my own to sell to whoever I wanted," he answered the hanging question, curious but not willing to start asking questions until he was sure this wasn't some kind of elaborate... whatever the fuck. With the people he worked for, you never knew.
"I'm not drunk," Eliot slurred, and somehow Lindsey didn't believe him, his brother a step behind in the conversation like always. "I'm a little high," Eliot finished. Lindsey rolled his eyes and tried to scrape the sleep-fuzz off his teeth with a plastic fingernail.
"I thought you weren't going to do that any more, after the monkey," Lindsey asked, sitting back down at his desk and casting an eye over the notes he'd fallen asleep on. There was noise in the background that was the same no matter what the country, and Lindsey's heart sank. "Are you in a hospital?" he asked sharply. That was considerably more likely to explain his missing brother. And whatever drug he had taken.
"I told you, man," Eliot insisted. "It wasn't a real monkey."
Lindsey clenched his hand into a fist and tried to ignore the urge to punch something. Some things did run in the family. "Eliot do you need help getting out of there? Getting back home?"
"Not going anywhere, Linds. Not for a while at leas'." There was a noise that might have been an pained groan.
"Where are you, are you safe there?"
"As anywhere," Eliot drawled.
He was drugged, Lindsey reminded himself, asking too many questions at once wasn't going to help anything. "Fuck, Eliot," Lindsey swore.
"Nu-uh. None of that either." Eliot sniggered. He was such a fucking child.
"Are you handcuffed to the bed?" There was a moment of silence, and Lindsey debated whether that was don't-want-to-talk-about-it silence or Eliot was so out of it he'd had to check.
"Nope," came the delayed reply, leaving Lindsey to assume the latter.
"So I'm guessing they don't know who you are," Lindsey acknowledged. That was something. "Where are you, Eliot? What country at least?"
"'M supposed to be undercover. Falling in with the Dutch fucking mob. Fucking Holland… Netherlands. Whatever. Phonin' home ain't exactly safe."
Lindsey's stomach bottomed out. "Eliot, you phoned *me*."
"You're a dirty LA lawyer." There was a clear eye-roll in Eliot's voice. "You, I can phone without anyone looking twice."
"You're a fucking idiot, you know that?" Lindsey declared. Eliot went quiet on the other end of the line and Lindsey took the moment to regather himself. "Been a while since I heard you call anywhere but Kentucky home," he mused absently.
"Been a while since Croatia," Eliot drawled back, a practised reply to an old debate.
"You still referring to that whole thing as 'Croatia'?" Lindsey fought down a smile. Whatever the circumstances on Eliot's end of the phone it was rare to hear from him at all. Confirmation he was alive was a good thing. "I know it was a bit of a shock, but Aimee..."
"Too stoned for this argument," Eliot interrupted in a loud sigh.
Lindsey decided he was the better man, and didn't sigh back. "You ready to tell me why you're in the hospital yet? Because, seriously, I'm thinking about getting a flight out."
"The appearance of my brother might throw my spoilt only child cover a bit," Eliot slurred, and he was slowing down, sounding like he was most of the way out of it.
"I think you're way too stoned to be playing spy."
Eliot chuckled, and something in Lindsey instinctively unwound. "Who knows."
"Hang up, Eliot," he ordered. "I'm going to phone your team, see if we can't get you out of Holland."
"Linds, don't." Eliot's voice was back to tight and pained.
"Give me one good reason why not."
"I don't want them to see this," Eliot said, too quiet. And fuck if his brother didn't keep getting himself into these fucking situations and then sounding so... vulnerable.
"Eliot, I'm coming out there."
"Cavalry, bro?" Eliot chuckled hoarsely. "You're not built for it."
There was an argument about push-ups - nearly fifteen years old - on the tip of his tongue. Eliot was so good at riling him. "Fuck you, Eliot. What hospital are you in?"
"Give me a couple of months, Linds. Try not to get into any trouble." There was noise in the background, voices. "I'm relying on you being there when I call."
Lindsey debated his options. Knew he had nothing, and searching for Eliot would just blow his brother's cover. "Just call, you idiot," he managed. "Just fucking call." And then he was listening to a dial tone.
=
Lindsey wasn't expecting his phone to ring, and it caught him with too much in his hands - case under one arm, coffee cup carefully hooked on prosthetic fingers and a file in the other hand. He got the cup down on the nearest flat surface - someone else's desk as it turned out - and glared at the startled paralegal as he shoved the file on top of his case and fished his phone out of his pocket, flicking it open without checking caller ID.
"Lindsey?"
He nearly dropped the case and the file as he abandoned his coffee and high tailed back to his office. "Eliot? Fuck. Where the fuck've you been?" he demanded as soon as he was out of earshot of everyone else. "It's been... Willie held your funeral. Always thought I'd be there, just didn't... shit man." Lindsey took his shock by the throat and forced himself to calm down. Alive. Jesus. He was alive.
"Was it good?"
It took Lindsey a couple of minutes to work out what Eliot meant, still readjusting his world view to one where Eliot wasn't dead. "Willy's got his own horses now, making good rent. He said you did that."
"He did good by us. Thought I oughta give something back." Eliot sounded tired, but not in pain or medicated like he had six months ago.
"Aimee seemed real friendly with your crew. I kinda expected some kind of cat fight when the pretty blond turned up."
Eliot snorted dismissively. "Got no interest in that pretty blonde. She's cute as kittens, but crazy as they come."
"Good to know."
"Plus, I think Hardison has dibs," he added into the pause while Lindsey struggled for something else to say.
"The black guy, computer geek? He was pretty wrecked." Lindsey hesitated, debated trying his luck. "You should call him, tell him you're alright."
"I'm dead," Eliot's voice was flat and neutral. Lindsey squashed down the images of the recently deceased Partner who had come to their most recent financials meeting. Eliot didn't live in his world, he reminded himself. "Anythin' else is kinda meaningless, doncha think?" Eliot continued.
"Can *I* tell your friends you're alive?" Lindsey pressed, already searching - a little clumsily, right handed - through his contacts book.
"Might not stay true."
Lindsey's stomach bottomed out again, and he swallowed hard. "Francie's pregnant again," he said, trying to keep the thickness in his throat out of his voice. "Five months. You going to be back for the christening?"
"Bit early to be planning that, don't you think?" Eliot asked, but Lindsey could hear the smile in his voice.
"Was a bit early for your funeral, too," he shot back. Lindsey considered telling Eliot about Darla for a beat or two. But then he wasn't even sure what they were to each other, and he couldn't find the right words.
Eliot sighed. "Look, Linds. I got a plan to get me home, but I'm gonna need your help. In two weeks you're gonna phone me as my lawyer and tell me... tell me my mama's died and I gotta go over there to sort her affairs, collect my inheritance, shit like that. Book me flights and cars, whatever I'll need, whatever a lawyer would, y'know."
"You know we held your funeral, right?" Lindsey asked.
"We had this conversation," Eliot shot back.
"What's left of your stuff is in a storage locker. You don't have a home. I got your truck and some bits. Felt I should inherit something from your lame ass. Nate and Sophie cleared out all of your lock ups and garages. I think Nate kept a fair amount of your shit."
"You've been keeping tabs on my friends?"
Lindsey sighed and sat back, pushing the contacts book out of the way. "They're friends of my deceased brother," he replied tiredly. "Nothing wrong in finding out what they did with his stuff."
"That truck better be in good condition when you give it back."
"It was barely running when I picked it up," Lindsey objected. "I swear you let the damn thing rot on purpose."
There was a moment of silence on the other end before Eliot returned with; "You took the old Ford? You fucking sap," and the smile back in his voice again.
"It's the car you left home in. Screw you."
Eliot chuckled, softly. "Sorry for dying on you, man."
"I'll talk to you in two weeks," Lindsey replied, trying to make it into a command. "You're not getting your truck back. Or your boots."
"My *boots*?!" Lindsey hung up on Eliot's less than reserved ranting.
=
"Eliot, you safe?" Lindsey asked as soon as he had the phone to his ear, reaching as an after thought to turn on the hazard lights on the car and wave his apologies to the guys he'd stopped in front of. There were horns from the queue of traffic quickly forming behind him and he shoved his headset on before edging his car out of the flow and onto the side of the road.
"Yeah," Eliot's voice sounded distant, but the confirmation was enough to release the ball of tension in Lindsey's chest. "Not quite to plan, but I'm back in the states."
"Thank fuck. Was gonna come across and meet ya at the airport before you transferred out to Boston, but things got weird as hell back here." A beat later, Lindsey flinched at his own description. You did not compare your working day to Hell at Wolfram and Hart.
"You alright?" Eliot pressed.
"It looks like I might get a promotion," Lindsey offered, not entirely sure if he was happy about that or not. Getting promoted for failing to save Darla and then failing to stop a massacre at his boss' house... seemed beyond counter intuitive. He reached out and brushed his fingers over the cross on his dashboard.
"Good kind or bad?" Eliot asked, as if he'd heard that entire inner monologue.
"Only you and Francie would ask that, Eliot."
"Bad?" Eliot assumed.
"I don't know. I got... an appointment made for me."
There was an uncertain hesitation and Lindsey checked the traffic moving around him.
"For what?"
"Hell if I know." There was a traffic cop in his rear view and Lindsey pulled forward a little more, getting himself right off the road, adding absently; "Don't think it can be good."
"You want me down there?" Eliot offered, sounding concerned. "I can bring backup."
"You and your army aren't gonna get me out of this, Bro."
"You call me, alright?" Eliot pressed, sounding solid and reassuring on the other end of the line, like he hadn't just rescued himself from a six-month job gone wrong. "If you need me, I have a team that's good at what we do. We can get you out if you need it."
"It's not just me any more, Eliot."
There was a hesitation on the other end of the line, and then Eliot continued with an edge to his voice like maybe he was proud. "A girl? You get her pregnant?"
Lindsey shut his eyes with some futility against the image of him and Darla and 2.5 children.
"If we're gonna be the cavalry, we need to know who's in play," Eliot pressed, sounding more like the eager gossip he was than the hard ass he tried to be.
"This isn't a retrieval, Eliot. You stay out of this."
"You need help, you get a message to me," Eliot insisted. "I owe you one."
"Welcome home, Eliot," Lindsey replied. "Be safe."
=
Three years later, Eliot got one last call. By the time he got to LA it was too late.
Author: LMX
Fandom: Leverage/Angel
Rating: PG-13 for excessive language. Seems when I get the McDonald boys on the phone to one another they're potty mouthed.
Characters/Pairing: Lindsey/Darla
Spoilers: Angel: Dead End, Not Fade Away, Leverage: Two Horse Job, but set post season 3
Verse: McDonald Family
Warnings: Language. Slightly odd story construction (all by phone...) There is an RPF-esque-fusion reference in here, but it shouldn't offend the sensibilities of anyone who doesn't like that kind of thing. You get cookies for spotting it though.
AN: I wrote an epic thing that got way out of scale and off the point, and themonkeytwin has suggested some ways of fixing it. This whole story is pretty much stripped out of that epic, and I'm not entirely sure how well this is going to work in isolation.
-
"Do you think our family's cursed?" the voice in his head asked. Lindsey opened his eyes sluggishly and blinked a couple of times, trying to work out how late it was, when he'd fallen asleep on his case files, and how long it had been since he'd last heard that voice. "You there?" his headset piped up again, and Lindsey adjusted it until it wasn't digging into the side of his face before answering.
"You drunk, Eliot?" he replied to the question blandly, stretching slowly before pushing himself up from his desk and walking across the room to pour himself a glass of water. At least ten years, he decided, since he'd last heard from his brother.
"D'ya think our Ma sold us to something before she died?" Eliot asked, perhaps tellingly not answering his question.
"No. My soul was my own to sell to whoever I wanted," he answered the hanging question, curious but not willing to start asking questions until he was sure this wasn't some kind of elaborate... whatever the fuck. With the people he worked for, you never knew.
"I'm not drunk," Eliot slurred, and somehow Lindsey didn't believe him, his brother a step behind in the conversation like always. "I'm a little high," Eliot finished. Lindsey rolled his eyes and tried to scrape the sleep-fuzz off his teeth with a plastic fingernail.
"I thought you weren't going to do that any more, after the monkey," Lindsey asked, sitting back down at his desk and casting an eye over the notes he'd fallen asleep on. There was noise in the background that was the same no matter what the country, and Lindsey's heart sank. "Are you in a hospital?" he asked sharply. That was considerably more likely to explain his missing brother. And whatever drug he had taken.
"I told you, man," Eliot insisted. "It wasn't a real monkey."
Lindsey clenched his hand into a fist and tried to ignore the urge to punch something. Some things did run in the family. "Eliot do you need help getting out of there? Getting back home?"
"Not going anywhere, Linds. Not for a while at leas'." There was a noise that might have been an pained groan.
"Where are you, are you safe there?"
"As anywhere," Eliot drawled.
He was drugged, Lindsey reminded himself, asking too many questions at once wasn't going to help anything. "Fuck, Eliot," Lindsey swore.
"Nu-uh. None of that either." Eliot sniggered. He was such a fucking child.
"Are you handcuffed to the bed?" There was a moment of silence, and Lindsey debated whether that was don't-want-to-talk-about-it silence or Eliot was so out of it he'd had to check.
"Nope," came the delayed reply, leaving Lindsey to assume the latter.
"So I'm guessing they don't know who you are," Lindsey acknowledged. That was something. "Where are you, Eliot? What country at least?"
"'M supposed to be undercover. Falling in with the Dutch fucking mob. Fucking Holland… Netherlands. Whatever. Phonin' home ain't exactly safe."
Lindsey's stomach bottomed out. "Eliot, you phoned *me*."
"You're a dirty LA lawyer." There was a clear eye-roll in Eliot's voice. "You, I can phone without anyone looking twice."
"You're a fucking idiot, you know that?" Lindsey declared. Eliot went quiet on the other end of the line and Lindsey took the moment to regather himself. "Been a while since I heard you call anywhere but Kentucky home," he mused absently.
"Been a while since Croatia," Eliot drawled back, a practised reply to an old debate.
"You still referring to that whole thing as 'Croatia'?" Lindsey fought down a smile. Whatever the circumstances on Eliot's end of the phone it was rare to hear from him at all. Confirmation he was alive was a good thing. "I know it was a bit of a shock, but Aimee..."
"Too stoned for this argument," Eliot interrupted in a loud sigh.
Lindsey decided he was the better man, and didn't sigh back. "You ready to tell me why you're in the hospital yet? Because, seriously, I'm thinking about getting a flight out."
"The appearance of my brother might throw my spoilt only child cover a bit," Eliot slurred, and he was slowing down, sounding like he was most of the way out of it.
"I think you're way too stoned to be playing spy."
Eliot chuckled, and something in Lindsey instinctively unwound. "Who knows."
"Hang up, Eliot," he ordered. "I'm going to phone your team, see if we can't get you out of Holland."
"Linds, don't." Eliot's voice was back to tight and pained.
"Give me one good reason why not."
"I don't want them to see this," Eliot said, too quiet. And fuck if his brother didn't keep getting himself into these fucking situations and then sounding so... vulnerable.
"Eliot, I'm coming out there."
"Cavalry, bro?" Eliot chuckled hoarsely. "You're not built for it."
There was an argument about push-ups - nearly fifteen years old - on the tip of his tongue. Eliot was so good at riling him. "Fuck you, Eliot. What hospital are you in?"
"Give me a couple of months, Linds. Try not to get into any trouble." There was noise in the background, voices. "I'm relying on you being there when I call."
Lindsey debated his options. Knew he had nothing, and searching for Eliot would just blow his brother's cover. "Just call, you idiot," he managed. "Just fucking call." And then he was listening to a dial tone.
=
Lindsey wasn't expecting his phone to ring, and it caught him with too much in his hands - case under one arm, coffee cup carefully hooked on prosthetic fingers and a file in the other hand. He got the cup down on the nearest flat surface - someone else's desk as it turned out - and glared at the startled paralegal as he shoved the file on top of his case and fished his phone out of his pocket, flicking it open without checking caller ID.
"Lindsey?"
He nearly dropped the case and the file as he abandoned his coffee and high tailed back to his office. "Eliot? Fuck. Where the fuck've you been?" he demanded as soon as he was out of earshot of everyone else. "It's been... Willie held your funeral. Always thought I'd be there, just didn't... shit man." Lindsey took his shock by the throat and forced himself to calm down. Alive. Jesus. He was alive.
"Was it good?"
It took Lindsey a couple of minutes to work out what Eliot meant, still readjusting his world view to one where Eliot wasn't dead. "Willy's got his own horses now, making good rent. He said you did that."
"He did good by us. Thought I oughta give something back." Eliot sounded tired, but not in pain or medicated like he had six months ago.
"Aimee seemed real friendly with your crew. I kinda expected some kind of cat fight when the pretty blond turned up."
Eliot snorted dismissively. "Got no interest in that pretty blonde. She's cute as kittens, but crazy as they come."
"Good to know."
"Plus, I think Hardison has dibs," he added into the pause while Lindsey struggled for something else to say.
"The black guy, computer geek? He was pretty wrecked." Lindsey hesitated, debated trying his luck. "You should call him, tell him you're alright."
"I'm dead," Eliot's voice was flat and neutral. Lindsey squashed down the images of the recently deceased Partner who had come to their most recent financials meeting. Eliot didn't live in his world, he reminded himself. "Anythin' else is kinda meaningless, doncha think?" Eliot continued.
"Can *I* tell your friends you're alive?" Lindsey pressed, already searching - a little clumsily, right handed - through his contacts book.
"Might not stay true."
Lindsey's stomach bottomed out again, and he swallowed hard. "Francie's pregnant again," he said, trying to keep the thickness in his throat out of his voice. "Five months. You going to be back for the christening?"
"Bit early to be planning that, don't you think?" Eliot asked, but Lindsey could hear the smile in his voice.
"Was a bit early for your funeral, too," he shot back. Lindsey considered telling Eliot about Darla for a beat or two. But then he wasn't even sure what they were to each other, and he couldn't find the right words.
Eliot sighed. "Look, Linds. I got a plan to get me home, but I'm gonna need your help. In two weeks you're gonna phone me as my lawyer and tell me... tell me my mama's died and I gotta go over there to sort her affairs, collect my inheritance, shit like that. Book me flights and cars, whatever I'll need, whatever a lawyer would, y'know."
"You know we held your funeral, right?" Lindsey asked.
"We had this conversation," Eliot shot back.
"What's left of your stuff is in a storage locker. You don't have a home. I got your truck and some bits. Felt I should inherit something from your lame ass. Nate and Sophie cleared out all of your lock ups and garages. I think Nate kept a fair amount of your shit."
"You've been keeping tabs on my friends?"
Lindsey sighed and sat back, pushing the contacts book out of the way. "They're friends of my deceased brother," he replied tiredly. "Nothing wrong in finding out what they did with his stuff."
"That truck better be in good condition when you give it back."
"It was barely running when I picked it up," Lindsey objected. "I swear you let the damn thing rot on purpose."
There was a moment of silence on the other end before Eliot returned with; "You took the old Ford? You fucking sap," and the smile back in his voice again.
"It's the car you left home in. Screw you."
Eliot chuckled, softly. "Sorry for dying on you, man."
"I'll talk to you in two weeks," Lindsey replied, trying to make it into a command. "You're not getting your truck back. Or your boots."
"My *boots*?!" Lindsey hung up on Eliot's less than reserved ranting.
=
"Eliot, you safe?" Lindsey asked as soon as he had the phone to his ear, reaching as an after thought to turn on the hazard lights on the car and wave his apologies to the guys he'd stopped in front of. There were horns from the queue of traffic quickly forming behind him and he shoved his headset on before edging his car out of the flow and onto the side of the road.
"Yeah," Eliot's voice sounded distant, but the confirmation was enough to release the ball of tension in Lindsey's chest. "Not quite to plan, but I'm back in the states."
"Thank fuck. Was gonna come across and meet ya at the airport before you transferred out to Boston, but things got weird as hell back here." A beat later, Lindsey flinched at his own description. You did not compare your working day to Hell at Wolfram and Hart.
"You alright?" Eliot pressed.
"It looks like I might get a promotion," Lindsey offered, not entirely sure if he was happy about that or not. Getting promoted for failing to save Darla and then failing to stop a massacre at his boss' house... seemed beyond counter intuitive. He reached out and brushed his fingers over the cross on his dashboard.
"Good kind or bad?" Eliot asked, as if he'd heard that entire inner monologue.
"Only you and Francie would ask that, Eliot."
"Bad?" Eliot assumed.
"I don't know. I got... an appointment made for me."
There was an uncertain hesitation and Lindsey checked the traffic moving around him.
"For what?"
"Hell if I know." There was a traffic cop in his rear view and Lindsey pulled forward a little more, getting himself right off the road, adding absently; "Don't think it can be good."
"You want me down there?" Eliot offered, sounding concerned. "I can bring backup."
"You and your army aren't gonna get me out of this, Bro."
"You call me, alright?" Eliot pressed, sounding solid and reassuring on the other end of the line, like he hadn't just rescued himself from a six-month job gone wrong. "If you need me, I have a team that's good at what we do. We can get you out if you need it."
"It's not just me any more, Eliot."
There was a hesitation on the other end of the line, and then Eliot continued with an edge to his voice like maybe he was proud. "A girl? You get her pregnant?"
Lindsey shut his eyes with some futility against the image of him and Darla and 2.5 children.
"If we're gonna be the cavalry, we need to know who's in play," Eliot pressed, sounding more like the eager gossip he was than the hard ass he tried to be.
"This isn't a retrieval, Eliot. You stay out of this."
"You need help, you get a message to me," Eliot insisted. "I owe you one."
"Welcome home, Eliot," Lindsey replied. "Be safe."
=
Three years later, Eliot got one last call. By the time he got to LA it was too late.