4x Fics in Leverage, the Losers and Human Target
Fic: Five Second Gift
Fandom: Human Target
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Guerrero (what? he totally deserves a warning)
AN: A Comment Fic for hawk_dancing
There's a moment where everything stops, a jarring moment in a simple plan. He'd done everything he needed to do, gotten himself to where he needed to be, his gun was a solid weight in the holster in his middle back, everything was perfect except...
The man in front of him is holding a baby in his arms.
Delicately, gently, a look of vague terror in his eyes.
The kid is maybe a month old, wrapped in a blue blanket and dwarfed by a knitted hat, and Guerrero remembers this phase. Remembers the terror that didn't seem to fade for... well for a year at least, he knows if he looks there's maybe still some of that in the back of his mind.
The mark looks up at Guerrero and the look changes, turns into something hard and protective. His body turns to shield the child, and Guerrero sighs.
"Go put him down, make sure he's alright, and come back here." He keeps his voice low, but he knows he doesn't have to be loud to be forceful. "Don't go anywhere else, don't warn anyone, don't raise any alarms. You have five seconds. Consider it a gift."
There's a consenting nod, the baby stays sleeping and the man moves quickly towards the stairs. Guerrero has never done this before, never taken this kind of risk. He's not a messy kind of person and this situation could get messy.
He gives the mark twenty seconds, and he reappears with tears in his eyes, clutching the blue blanket to his chest.
Guerrero takes him outside.
Later, he'll bury him with the blanket.
--
Fic: Snipers
Fandom: Losers/Human Target
Type: Crossover
Rating: PG
AN: A Comment Fic for blinddreamer
Guerrero had been on a hell of a lot of roof-tops, mountainsides, bits of scaffolding, power lines and cherry pickers to do what he needed to do with a high powered rifle. It's not like it's his favourite thing to do, anyway. He's much more a fan of... well, of his tacklebox if you get the drift.
This... well this is new.
He was stalled one step onto the rooftop. It was a nice rooftop, expansive, two exits, good cover, minimal windshear and good line of sight to his target. Excellent for a sniper placement. And apparently he wasn't the only one who thought so.
The other sniper stood slowly, hand already on the holster at his side. He was wearing a cowboy hat and denim, and looked like he'd just fallen off the border.
Guerrero hitched his rifle on his shoulder and didn't take his other hand off his sidearm. He wasn't going to draw if he didn't have to. This was not a battle over territory.
"We got no problem here, dude," he hedged, "You good to share your perch?"
There was a flicker of a sneer from the other sniper and Guerrero's grip tightened on his gun. "Si," the other guy snapped out, and dropped back into position behind his rifle like Guerrero wasn't even there.
"I'm Guerrero," he said, settling his own perch on the adjacent wall.
There was a snort, and a glance across from the sniper. It wasn't a long glance, but still managed to contain the entirety of the other sniper's disbelief.
"Su nombre es Guerrero? No pareces español."
One of these days he was going to get some fucking Spanish lessons in, it was getting faintly ridiculous. And his name sounded way cooler in that accent.
He heard the other sniper go silent next to him, a slow long exhale and then one shot. Guerrero stayed silent and low, not wanting to draw attention to either of them, and watched the other guy pack his rifle like a pro. He had a short window now before the guys on the ground identified the origin of that shot and came to investigate.
He nodded to the other sniper as he left and dropped into position. Less than thirty seconds later he was on his own way out of the building and into the crowd.
Strange day.
--
Fic: Laughter
Fandom: Leverage
Rating: PG
Pairings: Eliot/OMC
AN: A Comment Fic for jazzyroses13
He doesn't laugh at the usual things. At first Rob thinks it's his fault, thinks the guy's just being polite in his company, doesn't really have any interest, but Rob offers him an out and he doesn't take it. He stays, keeps talking, keeps drinking away.
It becomes a challenge. Rob tries funny anecdotes from his university days, tales of misadventure, self-depracation and even throws a 'that's what she said' in there purely for irony. Not a flicker of laughter.
The guy's got a face that says a smile from him is gold and a laugh would be worth dying for. Rob's starting to see that it's gonna take a bit to move him. But there was maybe a smile or two in there. Maybe he's getting closer?
He changes tack, starts asking questions. 'What do you do?' he asks, and there's an immediate smile reward. He likes what he does, Rob can work with that, *filed for later*. He listens as the guy spools out some crazy excuse for a job. It sounds like fun, like more fun than a person should have working.
'I guess you get to work with some wild people, huh?' he presses, hopeful. The smile grows, hesistates, widens. Rob holds his breath. The laughter trickles out and crescendos. Rob feels like his heart might explode. He might have to marry this man, for laughter like that. And so hard to achieve...
'Tell me about them,' he presses. After all, now he has the key. That laugh is all his.
--
Fic: Bracelets and Beads
Fandom: Leverage
Rating: PG
Pairings: Soft Nate/Sophie/Eliot if you want, otherwise Gen
Spoilers: End of season 2.
Warnings: Eliot thinks (brielfy) about cutting his hair...
AN: An overlong Comment Fic for poestheblackcat
His daddy used ta say if you dressed hard you looked hard and you were hard. And no boy in the Army wanted to look anything less than hard. Wanted to be anything but the hardest motherfucker in town...
He'd travelled all over the world looking at beautiful things and meeting beautiful people, and he'd spent most of it trying to be the best, the hardest, the strongest, in a uniform and with a haircut that made him one in a crowd of identical men.
And fine, he'd managed to sleep with a lot of the beautiful people and he'd bought and stolen some of the beautiful things along the way, but he'd never been brave enough for this. Here though, in this team and this place, he felt strangely... safe.
He starts out small. He's seen plenty of guys wearing leather jewellery, no one's gonna think any less of him for that, right? Hell, he doesn't think the team'll even notice. It's a little thing, braided leather round his wrist, it feels nice.
He feels obvious, out of place. He's sure every minute someone's gonna point out the jewellery and crack some kind of joke. He doesn't feel normal until he gets a chance to punch a guy; it doesn't even take him longer or anything... not that he really believed what his daddy said, not really.
He waits a little while before he tries anything bigger, not that he isn't secure in himself, but... Well he's enjoying that first little taste of something new.
His hair's pretty long now, especially for Pakistan at that time of year. It's part of this... thing... he's got going on though, and he's reluctant to let it go. A woman offers to braid it for him when she notices how much he's suffering, and he takes her up on it. The cornrows feel strange at first, but then lots of strange things happened out there and that really was the least strange.
He takes the braids out when he gets back on home soil, it's such a relief to finally get to wash his hair properly and it takes weeks for the frizz to go away, but he leaves a couple - one on each side, deep in his hair - for the memories. They're kinda like jewellery and they're hidden from everyone else. Just for him.
He's got a collection of things, things that he looks at sometimes. They're in a box, one of many boxes in storage, and he manages to head back there on his way to Sophie's... Oh God, he knows this is gonna be hell before he gets anywhere close, but... He has missed her, and she's probably the only person who would get this.
He picks out a silver bracelet, dresses nice and doesn't think too long before pulling out a long sleeve shirt. Sophie would understand.
He puts the box in his car, though. Just in case.
He moves slow, but no one's even pointed it out yet. Just adding the occasional necklace, sometimes another bracelet. He's careful to suit the display to the con, he revels in the occasional chance to show off.
It's Parker who first threads beads onto his two braids; she does it while he's sleeping off a concussion and he wakes with the imprint of the beads on his cheekbone. When he looks in the mirror he finds the beads match the bracelet and necklace he fell into bed in, and he wonders what Parker was thinking.
It's not too long after that when he's storming into a hotel room with Parker and Hardison and even with Sophie, missing for so long, but not with Nate.
Stupid mistakes, not paying enough attention, not being fast enough or smooth enough... he was weak. And he can't help but think...
He tears bracelets off over skin rubbed raw from plasti-cuffs, and breaks the chain on the necklace trying to get it off quickly. He uses scissors on the braids because just undoing them won't express his frustration, and he leaves it all in the hotel room.
He can be hard again. If this is all it takes... hell he doesn't even know why he started with all that shit in the first place. He's not the kind of guy that's ever gonna work on.
It takes a lot for Sophie to convince him not to cut his hair short, let alone to put jewellery on again, it takes him right back to square one if he's honest.
But he knows he can do it now. And he can get that back, when he's feeling brave enough.
Fandom: Human Target
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Guerrero (what? he totally deserves a warning)
AN: A Comment Fic for hawk_dancing
There's a moment where everything stops, a jarring moment in a simple plan. He'd done everything he needed to do, gotten himself to where he needed to be, his gun was a solid weight in the holster in his middle back, everything was perfect except...
The man in front of him is holding a baby in his arms.
Delicately, gently, a look of vague terror in his eyes.
The kid is maybe a month old, wrapped in a blue blanket and dwarfed by a knitted hat, and Guerrero remembers this phase. Remembers the terror that didn't seem to fade for... well for a year at least, he knows if he looks there's maybe still some of that in the back of his mind.
The mark looks up at Guerrero and the look changes, turns into something hard and protective. His body turns to shield the child, and Guerrero sighs.
"Go put him down, make sure he's alright, and come back here." He keeps his voice low, but he knows he doesn't have to be loud to be forceful. "Don't go anywhere else, don't warn anyone, don't raise any alarms. You have five seconds. Consider it a gift."
There's a consenting nod, the baby stays sleeping and the man moves quickly towards the stairs. Guerrero has never done this before, never taken this kind of risk. He's not a messy kind of person and this situation could get messy.
He gives the mark twenty seconds, and he reappears with tears in his eyes, clutching the blue blanket to his chest.
Guerrero takes him outside.
Later, he'll bury him with the blanket.
--
Fic: Snipers
Fandom: Losers/Human Target
Type: Crossover
Rating: PG
AN: A Comment Fic for blinddreamer
Guerrero had been on a hell of a lot of roof-tops, mountainsides, bits of scaffolding, power lines and cherry pickers to do what he needed to do with a high powered rifle. It's not like it's his favourite thing to do, anyway. He's much more a fan of... well, of his tacklebox if you get the drift.
This... well this is new.
He was stalled one step onto the rooftop. It was a nice rooftop, expansive, two exits, good cover, minimal windshear and good line of sight to his target. Excellent for a sniper placement. And apparently he wasn't the only one who thought so.
The other sniper stood slowly, hand already on the holster at his side. He was wearing a cowboy hat and denim, and looked like he'd just fallen off the border.
Guerrero hitched his rifle on his shoulder and didn't take his other hand off his sidearm. He wasn't going to draw if he didn't have to. This was not a battle over territory.
"We got no problem here, dude," he hedged, "You good to share your perch?"
There was a flicker of a sneer from the other sniper and Guerrero's grip tightened on his gun. "Si," the other guy snapped out, and dropped back into position behind his rifle like Guerrero wasn't even there.
"I'm Guerrero," he said, settling his own perch on the adjacent wall.
There was a snort, and a glance across from the sniper. It wasn't a long glance, but still managed to contain the entirety of the other sniper's disbelief.
"Su nombre es Guerrero? No pareces español."
One of these days he was going to get some fucking Spanish lessons in, it was getting faintly ridiculous. And his name sounded way cooler in that accent.
He heard the other sniper go silent next to him, a slow long exhale and then one shot. Guerrero stayed silent and low, not wanting to draw attention to either of them, and watched the other guy pack his rifle like a pro. He had a short window now before the guys on the ground identified the origin of that shot and came to investigate.
He nodded to the other sniper as he left and dropped into position. Less than thirty seconds later he was on his own way out of the building and into the crowd.
Strange day.
--
Fic: Laughter
Fandom: Leverage
Rating: PG
Pairings: Eliot/OMC
AN: A Comment Fic for jazzyroses13
He doesn't laugh at the usual things. At first Rob thinks it's his fault, thinks the guy's just being polite in his company, doesn't really have any interest, but Rob offers him an out and he doesn't take it. He stays, keeps talking, keeps drinking away.
It becomes a challenge. Rob tries funny anecdotes from his university days, tales of misadventure, self-depracation and even throws a 'that's what she said' in there purely for irony. Not a flicker of laughter.
The guy's got a face that says a smile from him is gold and a laugh would be worth dying for. Rob's starting to see that it's gonna take a bit to move him. But there was maybe a smile or two in there. Maybe he's getting closer?
He changes tack, starts asking questions. 'What do you do?' he asks, and there's an immediate smile reward. He likes what he does, Rob can work with that, *filed for later*. He listens as the guy spools out some crazy excuse for a job. It sounds like fun, like more fun than a person should have working.
'I guess you get to work with some wild people, huh?' he presses, hopeful. The smile grows, hesistates, widens. Rob holds his breath. The laughter trickles out and crescendos. Rob feels like his heart might explode. He might have to marry this man, for laughter like that. And so hard to achieve...
'Tell me about them,' he presses. After all, now he has the key. That laugh is all his.
--
Fic: Bracelets and Beads
Fandom: Leverage
Rating: PG
Pairings: Soft Nate/Sophie/Eliot if you want, otherwise Gen
Spoilers: End of season 2.
Warnings: Eliot thinks (brielfy) about cutting his hair...
AN: An overlong Comment Fic for poestheblackcat
His daddy used ta say if you dressed hard you looked hard and you were hard. And no boy in the Army wanted to look anything less than hard. Wanted to be anything but the hardest motherfucker in town...
He'd travelled all over the world looking at beautiful things and meeting beautiful people, and he'd spent most of it trying to be the best, the hardest, the strongest, in a uniform and with a haircut that made him one in a crowd of identical men.
And fine, he'd managed to sleep with a lot of the beautiful people and he'd bought and stolen some of the beautiful things along the way, but he'd never been brave enough for this. Here though, in this team and this place, he felt strangely... safe.
He starts out small. He's seen plenty of guys wearing leather jewellery, no one's gonna think any less of him for that, right? Hell, he doesn't think the team'll even notice. It's a little thing, braided leather round his wrist, it feels nice.
He feels obvious, out of place. He's sure every minute someone's gonna point out the jewellery and crack some kind of joke. He doesn't feel normal until he gets a chance to punch a guy; it doesn't even take him longer or anything... not that he really believed what his daddy said, not really.
He waits a little while before he tries anything bigger, not that he isn't secure in himself, but... Well he's enjoying that first little taste of something new.
His hair's pretty long now, especially for Pakistan at that time of year. It's part of this... thing... he's got going on though, and he's reluctant to let it go. A woman offers to braid it for him when she notices how much he's suffering, and he takes her up on it. The cornrows feel strange at first, but then lots of strange things happened out there and that really was the least strange.
He takes the braids out when he gets back on home soil, it's such a relief to finally get to wash his hair properly and it takes weeks for the frizz to go away, but he leaves a couple - one on each side, deep in his hair - for the memories. They're kinda like jewellery and they're hidden from everyone else. Just for him.
He's got a collection of things, things that he looks at sometimes. They're in a box, one of many boxes in storage, and he manages to head back there on his way to Sophie's... Oh God, he knows this is gonna be hell before he gets anywhere close, but... He has missed her, and she's probably the only person who would get this.
He picks out a silver bracelet, dresses nice and doesn't think too long before pulling out a long sleeve shirt. Sophie would understand.
He puts the box in his car, though. Just in case.
He moves slow, but no one's even pointed it out yet. Just adding the occasional necklace, sometimes another bracelet. He's careful to suit the display to the con, he revels in the occasional chance to show off.
It's Parker who first threads beads onto his two braids; she does it while he's sleeping off a concussion and he wakes with the imprint of the beads on his cheekbone. When he looks in the mirror he finds the beads match the bracelet and necklace he fell into bed in, and he wonders what Parker was thinking.
It's not too long after that when he's storming into a hotel room with Parker and Hardison and even with Sophie, missing for so long, but not with Nate.
Stupid mistakes, not paying enough attention, not being fast enough or smooth enough... he was weak. And he can't help but think...
He tears bracelets off over skin rubbed raw from plasti-cuffs, and breaks the chain on the necklace trying to get it off quickly. He uses scissors on the braids because just undoing them won't express his frustration, and he leaves it all in the hotel room.
He can be hard again. If this is all it takes... hell he doesn't even know why he started with all that shit in the first place. He's not the kind of guy that's ever gonna work on.
It takes a lot for Sophie to convince him not to cut his hair short, let alone to put jewellery on again, it takes him right back to square one if he's honest.
But he knows he can do it now. And he can get that back, when he's feeling brave enough.