[Fic] Nothin' But A Numbers Game (R) (Leverage) for lmx_v3point3
Title: Nothin' But A Numbers Game
Author: mizzy2k
Written for: lmx_v3point3 for the 2011 Leverage Secret Santa
Rating: R
Characters: Nathan Ford/Eliot Spencer
Spoilers: All the way up to "The Experimental Job"
Warnings: Assassinations. Violence. Non-linear.
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine.
Summary: This first one, he's a weedy shmuck in his late forties, skin taught and peeling. Eliot comes up from behind him, just enough in sight for the guy to see Eliot's eyes in the reflection of his window, and then Eliot snaps the guy's neck.
Notes: Thank you to whiskyinmind for the prompt.
Nothin' but a numbers game
"Eight," Eliot says. There's blood on his knife. He stares at it.
"So we're at that point." Nate temples his fingers, and looks at Eliot without flinching, because he's brave. He's always so damn brave. "The final question."
Eliot swallows. "Do you know me?"
"I'm losing count," Nate says, and Eliot knows it's a lie.
They both know the numbers.
"Five," Eliot says.
"Five," Nate repeats. "You went back to the army. That was when you liberated Croatia, right?"
Eliot grunts. A grunt doesn't have to be yes, or much of anything. A grunt doesn't have to be anything at all. It's not like Nate was really asking, after all.
"They asked you to do dark things, darker things, things that made you look at the blackness in people's hearts. Things which drew lines deeper than there should be lines. And on some level, the fact that you were still being told what to do irked, as much as someone thinking you're a Texan. You were given a handful of orders that weren't right that you followed anyway, but one was too much. You rebelled, took your punishment, did your time, but when you came back they hadn't changed."
Eliot's silence is all the yes Nate's ever needed.
"I like being on the road," Nate says, out of nowhere. "In Boston, I have to be Nate Ford, Mastermind. Nathan Ford, devoted IYS employee and loyal husband. On the road I can be anyone I want to be."
It's a lie. At least to Eliot. On the road's the only place Eliot's ever known where he can be who he really is. In Boston, with the team, that's where the labels are.
Hitter. Retrieval specialist. Bad guy masquerading as a good guy.
Five, Eliot thinks, is only a smudge. One moment of red light on his chest, one moment in the viewer to see his pinched look of disbelief, one moment of his finger sliding over the trigger and then a pool of red and screaming.
More than one moment of that.
Nate doesn't even blink when he throws the hold-all into the back seat. His eyes graze Eliot's knuckles like he can see the metaphorical blood for a moment, then he looks back to the road.
A hit at 600m isn't even going to leave a physical mark unless you're a rookie with the weapon and it recoils in your face.
Eliot's not a rookie with any weapon, except maybe feelings. He's never learned how to use emotions as a weapon.
He thinks that leaves him one step up from the bottom of the bottom, but it's a short step. There's one set of people who are lower than him, and there's three of them left to go.
There's this game they play after a part of the plan is complete.
Each part of the plan is an island, disconnected, a piece; it'll only be when all the pieces are finished that the authorities will put the jigsaw together. By then, Eliot will be a long, far distance away with a new identity and nothing else new about him to tip anyone off to what he's spent his summer doing.
No one but Nate knows what this summer's about, and that's by accident rather than design. Turns out you can't stop Nate's brain thinking, any more than even a trained assassin can stop Eliot's fists and his goddamned will.
Eliot completes each jigsaw piece of the plan, and gets back in the car, and drives. Sometimes he takes the wheel and sometimes he can't stop Nate from taking the wheel.
He's found it's easier to bring Nate along. Whenever Eliot ditches him, Nate shows up anyway at the next hit, getting in the way and presenting a shiny target to Eliot's dwindling list of foes. No, it's easier to drag him along on the ride.
Eliot can keep an eye on him there.
It's easier than thinking about what Nate might get up to on his own in Boston, nothing but his bored brain and bottles of booze to keep his constant song of grief occupied.
No, keeping Nate with him is better all round.
Not that it had been his plan to start with.
On number four, Nate breaks his own pattern. He plays the game while Eliot deals with number four.
Four holed up in the mountains. Tiny little shack. Had a pump-action rifle and a snare trap and four different kind of hand-guns, and it's easy, too easy for Eliot to find him. String him up. Bleed him dry.
Nate puts the lid of the toilet seat down as the man spins around above his porcelain bath tub, and plays the game while four's still alive.
"You bummed rides. Did what you had to. Learned how to fix cars, let your voice take you some of the way. Maybe a soldier helped you at some point. Caught the army bug and you signed up, but on leave you met a girl from Kentucky. You used to know her. She had relatives nearby, maybe she spent summer holidays with you. She was from a Southern state and was everything you wanted to be. But you'd signed up to fight for others to have the freedom you never got as a kid. And you were frightened that you could fall for a girl as much as you wanted that elder of the church who led you astray. You were betraying someone by being with her. So aware of your own part in your downward spiral that you don't even realise it was yourself you were betraying."
Nate's voice is slow. Eliot can't believe it's only now he's figured out some of the truth about why Nate's here.
He'd thought Nate was here to stop him. Nate hadn't lifted a finger to stop him at all.
Nate's here to keep him company.
Nate doesn't disagree with Eliot's course of action at all.
Sam, Eliot thinks, and refrains from making another kinder incision.
Four can take his time.
Nate started the game after the first kill.
The first one was the easiest of the eight on Eliot's list. Before, when a list like this didn't matter so much, he used to start with the hardest, showing off his kill to Damien Moreau like a child showing their coloring in to a parent, look, papa, see how the blood pours out real nice when you rip a knife through the carotid artery?
Now he starts with the easiest. It's less like picking up windfallen fruit the morning after a gale now, more like a game. Eliot knows he's sharper when it's a challenge.
All eight of them are going to be dead by the end. It doesn't matter what order Eliot takes them out. All that matters is that they're not breathing by the end of the week. It's an unofficial deadline, but that's what Eliot is.
A deadline.
"I have sources even Hardison doesn't know about," Nate explains. Eliot keeps driving, because there's a hundred points between her and number one where he can drop Nate out of the car on his ass. "I knew about what had happened about a minute after you did."
Eliot says nothing. Which doesn't ever make an ounce of difference to Nate. Nate gets as much information about people from their silences as their words.
"This isn't a roadtrip," Eliot grinds out.
Nate looks at him like he's stupid.
Compared to Nate, everyone probably is stupid.
This first one, he's a weedy shmuck in his late forties, skin taught and peeling; he's spent too long on a tanning bed or sprawled outside on his back in a sunnier state, scratching his skinny belly and not even giving any kind of crap about his appearance. His teeth are distended and his hair is in clumps. His breath smells of peanut butter and Jack Daniels, and Eliot comes up from behind him, just enough in sight for the guy to see Eliot's eyes in the reflection of his window, and then Eliot snaps the guy's neck.
Snaps it clean and walks away, leaving the guy's body like discarded litter in the dirt. He doesn't bother hiding the identity of the guy. Eventually word will get around and the rest of the eight will scatter in fear.
As they should.
Nate's in the car, even though Eliot's sure he ditched him pretty well in Tucson. He's at the wheel, saying something about being Eliot's getaway driver when really it's loaded with what are you doing and I hope you have a plan. Eliot threatens to chuck him out, but of course Nate has an alphabet of plans racked up, and this one's a cell phone with the local sheriff's home number pre-programmed in. He's not Hardison but he's good enough with numbers.
Numbers, Eliot think. Seven's the only number that counts now. Seven and eight.
He gets in the car. Eliot's always the calmest after a kill. He runs the old statistics through his head and tags this one onto the end. Face. Expression when they died. How they died. What they last ate.
This one didn't have any last words. Eliot didn't let him.
He doesn't tag any of his victims as deserved or undeserved. He doesn't have the right to decide whether anyone should have lived or died; killing them has little to do with that right.
Can and do have very little to do with should when all's said and done.
Nate's smug. It's a flaw. He'll admit it himself. We all have to have flaws, he's said, on more than one occasion. The trick is, the trick is-
Those occasions, he's been somewhat drunk. It's a sad indication of their life that drunk to them now means incapable of running a con whereas tipsy means inebriated and will probably risk all our lives but hey let's go steal a chocolate factory, why not.
The trick is, Nate says, is not to get hung up on the flaw. Celebrate what the flaws enhance. The negative shows up the positive. Functioning alcoholic; celebrate the functioning.
It's unfair that Nate's clarity is not impaired by his insincere relationship with sobriety.
I know your flaws, Nate tells him, driving them across state lines to victim number two before Eliot can even say that's his plan.
"You don't know me." Eliot throws it out like he throws all his gauntlets. Heavy-handed and maybe not all the way thought through, but he sticks to them like he sticks to his loyalty.
Nate smiles, one of his terrible stretched smiles, one of his God complex smiles, and says, I know enough.
Bullshit, Eliot thinks, or maybe says. It doesn't always matter with Nate around. "So tell me about me," he settles for instead.
Some people think you're from Texas. That irks you. You make sure we know it irks you. Which makes smarter people think you're an Oklahoma boy. You encourage that, fly that Sooner flag, and in another life that's where you'd fit right on in. But you're not from the buckle of the Bible belt.
One down, Eliot thinks.
Nate leans on the hood of the car, his eyes hooded as he looks out into the distance. They're in Phoenix now. Sixth most populated city in the whole United States.
Apt place to run down number six.
"You're counting them. It's on your face. My da ran numbers. Numbers make any rational person's brain twitch. Especially if they've had some issues with authority in educational establishments."
You're starting early, Eliot thinks, number six isn't dead yet. It's too early to play the game.
"I'm not playing the game," Nate says. He pauses. Considers. Chews a handful of gas store tortilla chips like they're not three days old. "I'm not playing."
That could be the problem.
Seven. Blunt head trauma. Eliot uses the same tire iron that they used on Jamie. Sometimes drama and poetry makes a man stupid, but Nate's got his back, and seven, seven did the most.
"Why are you here?" Eliot wants to ask Nate, back when they're in the car and Eliot's wrapping a rag around the tire iron, because eight is left and eight deserves it most. Eight knows he's coming.
He doesn't ask Nate. He's addicted to the game now, as much as Nate is.
"You took contract work to retrieve things because you didn't know what else to do," Nate says. "Some assassinations, but only grown, older men; it was easier to think they deserved it, it was easier to see each one as the elder from church who led you astray."
And that's it. If Nate was going to cross a line he crossed it weeks ago, insisting on joining Eliot on this mission when Eliot's been trying so damn hard to keep them all out of the darkest parts of himself. But Nate kept pushing, so Eliot let him, push and push further into the worst things he's done, and this is a line Eliot didn't know he had to be crossed.
"How-" Eliot says, meaning how did you know, it is on my face, no one ever knew-
Nate, of course, knows what he means. "He made you think it was okay. You made you think none of it was."
Eliot doesn't understand, until, until-
"You come with me," Eliot says, "and I swear you'll regret it."
"I regret most things," Nate says. "My life is a thousand regrets. It's never stopped me."
"You won't be able to stop me. I'll hurt you if you get in my way."
"I know."
"I'm not lying."
"I'm not getting in your way," Nate says. "I'm helping. As far as I'm concerned, this summer won't exist when we get back to Boston. We went on a roadtrip."
A roadtrip, Eliot thinks, and wonders about running one of the eight over.
The pounding thrill of number seven and the memory of slow number four lingers between both of them. Four was intimate. It's inevitable. Eliot hits a bar, downs more drinks than Nate's had in two days, and means to find a woman.
He moves to the bar, cocksure and confident, and Nate stands in his way.
"I said, get in my way and I'll hurt you. I told you."
Nate doesn't move. Eliot boils with the anger then, tense and unhappy, because he doesn't want to hurt Nate, he doesn't want to, but he will. He takes his fist and bunches them into Nate's shirt and Nate smirks and moves in.
Eliot kisses back until his brain kicks back in, and he stares. Nate stares back, head tilted. Confrontation Eliot can't win with just his fists.
"How did you think I knew," Nate says. "If I was an elder of your church, I would have too." He leans in. "Might have waited til you were old enough."
When Nate's pushed up against him, and Eliot shows Nate another way to know him, Eliot sort of understands. This is something both of them have wanted, all their lives.
This is something that, for all their lives, has been completely wrong.
But when has something being wrong ever stopped either of them?
Number two.
Number two is a garrotte made of an old guitar string. It's not one of Eliot's broken strings. The poetry of that would be glorious, but poetry and elegant drama can make a man stupid in the head.
Eliot leaves it tangled around his neck like a curling collar, one last hurrah for the metal length. A broken string doesn't make music any more but death's a sort of song.
He'd shaken Nate off after number one, but it's not too much of a surprise to find him sitting on the edge of the bed in Eliot's motel room. Nate's still very good at his job. They've played this game across Europe. Belgrade, 1998. Nice, 2001. Vienna, 1996.
"You don't take heat as well as a true Southerner," is all he says. "I'd guess Mormon corridor if I didn't know you."
"You don't," is all Eliot says in return.
Nate nods, like he doesn't.
"Eight," Eliot says. There's blood on his knife. He stares at it.
"So we're at that point." Nate temples his fingers, and looks at Eliot without flinching, because he's brave. He's always so damn brave. "The final question."
Eliot swallows. "Do you know me?"
And there's the answer to the question that's been the undercurrent to this all.
Are you willing to lie about this summer?
When we go back, will you think anything different of me?
There's never been any real question of Nate knowing Eliot. Nate knows everyone, piece by piece, from everything that people don't say. The less people say, the more Nate can deduce. Eliot's never been loquacious; to Nate he's practically an open book.
"Do you know me?" was the replacement question for "Will you continue to lie for me? Will you continue to deny these dark parts of us so we can keep on with the good?"
Six, six, and the car is the weapon and Eliot's driving, even though Nate's a back-seat driver throughout like Eliot has no idea how to drive through a busy city.
Six should be scared. The message should be out by now, but six has responded by surrounding himself by people. Like random civilians will keep him safe.
The pedestrians around him part, a fluke of a movement, an inevitability of statistics. Eliot's a professional. He ramps up the speed and number six literally doesn't know what hits him.
"Someone helped you out of the army," Nate says, as they ditch the fake number plates and speed out of Phoenix. "Moreau, or someone like him. You graduated to doing work like you had for the secret service. You'd crossed so many lines doing secret ops for the American government that each step downwards for Moreau was hardly noticeable. You kept doing worse and worse things, but because the slide was so gentle you couldn't see. Then one day, you looked up and there was so much blood on your hands so you ran, ghosts following you every step."
"How can you even bear to let me touch you?" The question comes out despite his guards. Nate laughs. Eliot can feel it through his whole body.
"You don't have blood on your hands right now," Nate says. "Let me distract you."
And oh, that's not what Nate's doing. He's not saving Eliot. He's just distracting him. He's stopping the voices in his head, just for a moment. Hoping one of the moments might be the one where Eliot, on his own, might have considered the bullet in his brain again.
Nate's hope might be distracting enough for that, Eliot thinks.
Three is blood. Three is Eliot's bare fists. Three, Nate's at his car again, sunglasses perched on his nose, lying in the passenger car seat like he's sunbathing. But it's not a convertible.
Besides, it's night time.
It's fake casualness. Like Nate's pretending this is a road trip, not revenge.
"You were too comfortable in the snow when we stole mountains," Nate says, as Eliot climbs into the driver's seat and clenches his fingers around the steering wheel like he's refraining from clenching them around Nate's neck. "You flinch as much in church as I do. I'd guess Wasatch Front. Near enough the Uinta mountains to get a trip or two as a teenager. Mormon family, the church forced on you, the rules stifling. You weren't allowed to be who you were. Escape was the only option. You hitched a ride on out of Utah with..."
Nate straightens, and his fingers itch towards the sunglasses. His hand stills and falls to his lap. "An elder of the church who led you astray," Nate finishes.
"You're buying dinner," Eliot grinds out, instead of trying to throw Nate out of the car. It hasn't worked before. Nate keeps coming back.
"After this," Nate says, arching his back, "you're buying me breakfast. Or dinner for breakfast. From the diner."
"From the diner?" Eliot squints.
"Only place around."
Only Nate, Eliot thinks, would talk about food in the middle of sex. Eliot appreciates it. Makes this a little more action, a little less emotional connection, please.
"Your taste is terrible," Eliot tells him.
Nate smiles, slow. Seductive. "Would you disagree?"
His red phone, Hardison calls it Eliot's bat-phone. Whenever it goes off, Eliot goes. Maybe for a day. Maybe for a week. It doesn't go off much.
Yesterday it went off. Eliot didn't go anywhere. Nate looked at him, sharp and too-knowing, but continued on with the briefing. It's summer, and the crew are mostly splitting up while Sophie runs part of a long con on a fellow they're after.
Today they're supposed to be going over some last minute things. Parker's already gone, but no one's surprised - there's a Van Gogh exhibit in Berlin.
His bat-phone goes off again. Nate's quiet inhalation is all Eliot can hear amongst the pounding of his heart. This time, Eliot stares down at the text message. It's from Pedro, and it's a day earlier than he anticipated. His weapons are in the car already.
Eliot doesn't even make a real excuse. He goes down in the lift and heads to the car.
It didn't occur to him that Nate might climb out the window to get there first. It should have done. But then again, he's a hitter, not a mastermind.
Eliot drags out number eight. He knows it, Nate knows it, number eight knows it. Number eight takes it personally. Thinks Eliot's playing with him. It makes him tetchy. He leads them on a merry chase through a dark forest. Eliot holds Nate's hand to keep him safe as they run through the undergrowth, after the man that ring-led the attack on Eliot's sister's camper van.
On the man that personally stole Jamie's sight with his blitz of violence and greed.
Eliot holds Nate's hand the whole time to keep him safe.
To keep him safe.
He repeats the lie.
It's a goodbye. When they wake up, when number eight's blood stains the ground, this will be another thing left behind.
In Boston, this roadtrip will have never happened.
When they catch him, it's an anticlimax.
"Eight," Eliot says. There's blood on his knife as he pulls it free. He stares at it.
"So we're at that point." Nate temples his fingers, and looks at Eliot without flinching, because he's brave. He's always so damn brave. "The final question."
Nate's pushed up against him, and Eliot's showing him another way to know him, and Eliot sort of understands. This is something both of them have wanted, all their lives. Nate whispers promises against his skin that they'll never keep. They enjoy the chase and they enjoy the kill and if they don't go back to Boston, they can keep this. They can keep running, and running, and Nate can know Eliot as much as he likes.
Eliot pushes his mouth into the space where Nate's neck meets his shoulder. Are you willing to lie about this summer? Nate bites down on Eliot's hip. When we go back, will you think anything different of me?
"Sometimes," Nate says, in between the eight stabs that Eliot delivers number eight. Eight for each stab wound Eliot's family received. "Sometimes you knew you were crossing lines, and you crossed them anyway."
"So we're at that point." Nate temples his fingers, and looks at Eliot without flinching, because he's brave. He's always so damn brave. "The final question."
Eliot swallows. "Do you know me?"
Nate's voice is steady. "Not at all."
Author: mizzy2k
Written for: lmx_v3point3 for the 2011 Leverage Secret Santa
Rating: R
Characters: Nathan Ford/Eliot Spencer
Spoilers: All the way up to "The Experimental Job"
Warnings: Assassinations. Violence. Non-linear.
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine.
Summary: This first one, he's a weedy shmuck in his late forties, skin taught and peeling. Eliot comes up from behind him, just enough in sight for the guy to see Eliot's eyes in the reflection of his window, and then Eliot snaps the guy's neck.
Notes: Thank you to whiskyinmind for the prompt.
Nothin' but a numbers game
"Eight," Eliot says. There's blood on his knife. He stares at it.
"So we're at that point." Nate temples his fingers, and looks at Eliot without flinching, because he's brave. He's always so damn brave. "The final question."
Eliot swallows. "Do you know me?"
"I'm losing count," Nate says, and Eliot knows it's a lie.
They both know the numbers.
"Five," Eliot says.
"Five," Nate repeats. "You went back to the army. That was when you liberated Croatia, right?"
Eliot grunts. A grunt doesn't have to be yes, or much of anything. A grunt doesn't have to be anything at all. It's not like Nate was really asking, after all.
"They asked you to do dark things, darker things, things that made you look at the blackness in people's hearts. Things which drew lines deeper than there should be lines. And on some level, the fact that you were still being told what to do irked, as much as someone thinking you're a Texan. You were given a handful of orders that weren't right that you followed anyway, but one was too much. You rebelled, took your punishment, did your time, but when you came back they hadn't changed."
Eliot's silence is all the yes Nate's ever needed.
"I like being on the road," Nate says, out of nowhere. "In Boston, I have to be Nate Ford, Mastermind. Nathan Ford, devoted IYS employee and loyal husband. On the road I can be anyone I want to be."
It's a lie. At least to Eliot. On the road's the only place Eliot's ever known where he can be who he really is. In Boston, with the team, that's where the labels are.
Hitter. Retrieval specialist. Bad guy masquerading as a good guy.
Five, Eliot thinks, is only a smudge. One moment of red light on his chest, one moment in the viewer to see his pinched look of disbelief, one moment of his finger sliding over the trigger and then a pool of red and screaming.
More than one moment of that.
Nate doesn't even blink when he throws the hold-all into the back seat. His eyes graze Eliot's knuckles like he can see the metaphorical blood for a moment, then he looks back to the road.
A hit at 600m isn't even going to leave a physical mark unless you're a rookie with the weapon and it recoils in your face.
Eliot's not a rookie with any weapon, except maybe feelings. He's never learned how to use emotions as a weapon.
He thinks that leaves him one step up from the bottom of the bottom, but it's a short step. There's one set of people who are lower than him, and there's three of them left to go.
There's this game they play after a part of the plan is complete.
Each part of the plan is an island, disconnected, a piece; it'll only be when all the pieces are finished that the authorities will put the jigsaw together. By then, Eliot will be a long, far distance away with a new identity and nothing else new about him to tip anyone off to what he's spent his summer doing.
No one but Nate knows what this summer's about, and that's by accident rather than design. Turns out you can't stop Nate's brain thinking, any more than even a trained assassin can stop Eliot's fists and his goddamned will.
Eliot completes each jigsaw piece of the plan, and gets back in the car, and drives. Sometimes he takes the wheel and sometimes he can't stop Nate from taking the wheel.
He's found it's easier to bring Nate along. Whenever Eliot ditches him, Nate shows up anyway at the next hit, getting in the way and presenting a shiny target to Eliot's dwindling list of foes. No, it's easier to drag him along on the ride.
Eliot can keep an eye on him there.
It's easier than thinking about what Nate might get up to on his own in Boston, nothing but his bored brain and bottles of booze to keep his constant song of grief occupied.
No, keeping Nate with him is better all round.
Not that it had been his plan to start with.
On number four, Nate breaks his own pattern. He plays the game while Eliot deals with number four.
Four holed up in the mountains. Tiny little shack. Had a pump-action rifle and a snare trap and four different kind of hand-guns, and it's easy, too easy for Eliot to find him. String him up. Bleed him dry.
Nate puts the lid of the toilet seat down as the man spins around above his porcelain bath tub, and plays the game while four's still alive.
"You bummed rides. Did what you had to. Learned how to fix cars, let your voice take you some of the way. Maybe a soldier helped you at some point. Caught the army bug and you signed up, but on leave you met a girl from Kentucky. You used to know her. She had relatives nearby, maybe she spent summer holidays with you. She was from a Southern state and was everything you wanted to be. But you'd signed up to fight for others to have the freedom you never got as a kid. And you were frightened that you could fall for a girl as much as you wanted that elder of the church who led you astray. You were betraying someone by being with her. So aware of your own part in your downward spiral that you don't even realise it was yourself you were betraying."
Nate's voice is slow. Eliot can't believe it's only now he's figured out some of the truth about why Nate's here.
He'd thought Nate was here to stop him. Nate hadn't lifted a finger to stop him at all.
Nate's here to keep him company.
Nate doesn't disagree with Eliot's course of action at all.
Sam, Eliot thinks, and refrains from making another kinder incision.
Four can take his time.
Nate started the game after the first kill.
The first one was the easiest of the eight on Eliot's list. Before, when a list like this didn't matter so much, he used to start with the hardest, showing off his kill to Damien Moreau like a child showing their coloring in to a parent, look, papa, see how the blood pours out real nice when you rip a knife through the carotid artery?
Now he starts with the easiest. It's less like picking up windfallen fruit the morning after a gale now, more like a game. Eliot knows he's sharper when it's a challenge.
All eight of them are going to be dead by the end. It doesn't matter what order Eliot takes them out. All that matters is that they're not breathing by the end of the week. It's an unofficial deadline, but that's what Eliot is.
A deadline.
"I have sources even Hardison doesn't know about," Nate explains. Eliot keeps driving, because there's a hundred points between her and number one where he can drop Nate out of the car on his ass. "I knew about what had happened about a minute after you did."
Eliot says nothing. Which doesn't ever make an ounce of difference to Nate. Nate gets as much information about people from their silences as their words.
"This isn't a roadtrip," Eliot grinds out.
Nate looks at him like he's stupid.
Compared to Nate, everyone probably is stupid.
This first one, he's a weedy shmuck in his late forties, skin taught and peeling; he's spent too long on a tanning bed or sprawled outside on his back in a sunnier state, scratching his skinny belly and not even giving any kind of crap about his appearance. His teeth are distended and his hair is in clumps. His breath smells of peanut butter and Jack Daniels, and Eliot comes up from behind him, just enough in sight for the guy to see Eliot's eyes in the reflection of his window, and then Eliot snaps the guy's neck.
Snaps it clean and walks away, leaving the guy's body like discarded litter in the dirt. He doesn't bother hiding the identity of the guy. Eventually word will get around and the rest of the eight will scatter in fear.
As they should.
Nate's in the car, even though Eliot's sure he ditched him pretty well in Tucson. He's at the wheel, saying something about being Eliot's getaway driver when really it's loaded with what are you doing and I hope you have a plan. Eliot threatens to chuck him out, but of course Nate has an alphabet of plans racked up, and this one's a cell phone with the local sheriff's home number pre-programmed in. He's not Hardison but he's good enough with numbers.
Numbers, Eliot think. Seven's the only number that counts now. Seven and eight.
He gets in the car. Eliot's always the calmest after a kill. He runs the old statistics through his head and tags this one onto the end. Face. Expression when they died. How they died. What they last ate.
This one didn't have any last words. Eliot didn't let him.
He doesn't tag any of his victims as deserved or undeserved. He doesn't have the right to decide whether anyone should have lived or died; killing them has little to do with that right.
Can and do have very little to do with should when all's said and done.
Nate's smug. It's a flaw. He'll admit it himself. We all have to have flaws, he's said, on more than one occasion. The trick is, the trick is-
Those occasions, he's been somewhat drunk. It's a sad indication of their life that drunk to them now means incapable of running a con whereas tipsy means inebriated and will probably risk all our lives but hey let's go steal a chocolate factory, why not.
The trick is, Nate says, is not to get hung up on the flaw. Celebrate what the flaws enhance. The negative shows up the positive. Functioning alcoholic; celebrate the functioning.
It's unfair that Nate's clarity is not impaired by his insincere relationship with sobriety.
I know your flaws, Nate tells him, driving them across state lines to victim number two before Eliot can even say that's his plan.
"You don't know me." Eliot throws it out like he throws all his gauntlets. Heavy-handed and maybe not all the way thought through, but he sticks to them like he sticks to his loyalty.
Nate smiles, one of his terrible stretched smiles, one of his God complex smiles, and says, I know enough.
Bullshit, Eliot thinks, or maybe says. It doesn't always matter with Nate around. "So tell me about me," he settles for instead.
Some people think you're from Texas. That irks you. You make sure we know it irks you. Which makes smarter people think you're an Oklahoma boy. You encourage that, fly that Sooner flag, and in another life that's where you'd fit right on in. But you're not from the buckle of the Bible belt.
One down, Eliot thinks.
Nate leans on the hood of the car, his eyes hooded as he looks out into the distance. They're in Phoenix now. Sixth most populated city in the whole United States.
Apt place to run down number six.
"You're counting them. It's on your face. My da ran numbers. Numbers make any rational person's brain twitch. Especially if they've had some issues with authority in educational establishments."
You're starting early, Eliot thinks, number six isn't dead yet. It's too early to play the game.
"I'm not playing the game," Nate says. He pauses. Considers. Chews a handful of gas store tortilla chips like they're not three days old. "I'm not playing."
That could be the problem.
Seven. Blunt head trauma. Eliot uses the same tire iron that they used on Jamie. Sometimes drama and poetry makes a man stupid, but Nate's got his back, and seven, seven did the most.
"Why are you here?" Eliot wants to ask Nate, back when they're in the car and Eliot's wrapping a rag around the tire iron, because eight is left and eight deserves it most. Eight knows he's coming.
He doesn't ask Nate. He's addicted to the game now, as much as Nate is.
"You took contract work to retrieve things because you didn't know what else to do," Nate says. "Some assassinations, but only grown, older men; it was easier to think they deserved it, it was easier to see each one as the elder from church who led you astray."
And that's it. If Nate was going to cross a line he crossed it weeks ago, insisting on joining Eliot on this mission when Eliot's been trying so damn hard to keep them all out of the darkest parts of himself. But Nate kept pushing, so Eliot let him, push and push further into the worst things he's done, and this is a line Eliot didn't know he had to be crossed.
"How-" Eliot says, meaning how did you know, it is on my face, no one ever knew-
Nate, of course, knows what he means. "He made you think it was okay. You made you think none of it was."
Eliot doesn't understand, until, until-
"You come with me," Eliot says, "and I swear you'll regret it."
"I regret most things," Nate says. "My life is a thousand regrets. It's never stopped me."
"You won't be able to stop me. I'll hurt you if you get in my way."
"I know."
"I'm not lying."
"I'm not getting in your way," Nate says. "I'm helping. As far as I'm concerned, this summer won't exist when we get back to Boston. We went on a roadtrip."
A roadtrip, Eliot thinks, and wonders about running one of the eight over.
The pounding thrill of number seven and the memory of slow number four lingers between both of them. Four was intimate. It's inevitable. Eliot hits a bar, downs more drinks than Nate's had in two days, and means to find a woman.
He moves to the bar, cocksure and confident, and Nate stands in his way.
"I said, get in my way and I'll hurt you. I told you."
Nate doesn't move. Eliot boils with the anger then, tense and unhappy, because he doesn't want to hurt Nate, he doesn't want to, but he will. He takes his fist and bunches them into Nate's shirt and Nate smirks and moves in.
Eliot kisses back until his brain kicks back in, and he stares. Nate stares back, head tilted. Confrontation Eliot can't win with just his fists.
"How did you think I knew," Nate says. "If I was an elder of your church, I would have too." He leans in. "Might have waited til you were old enough."
When Nate's pushed up against him, and Eliot shows Nate another way to know him, Eliot sort of understands. This is something both of them have wanted, all their lives.
This is something that, for all their lives, has been completely wrong.
But when has something being wrong ever stopped either of them?
Number two.
Number two is a garrotte made of an old guitar string. It's not one of Eliot's broken strings. The poetry of that would be glorious, but poetry and elegant drama can make a man stupid in the head.
Eliot leaves it tangled around his neck like a curling collar, one last hurrah for the metal length. A broken string doesn't make music any more but death's a sort of song.
He'd shaken Nate off after number one, but it's not too much of a surprise to find him sitting on the edge of the bed in Eliot's motel room. Nate's still very good at his job. They've played this game across Europe. Belgrade, 1998. Nice, 2001. Vienna, 1996.
"You don't take heat as well as a true Southerner," is all he says. "I'd guess Mormon corridor if I didn't know you."
"You don't," is all Eliot says in return.
Nate nods, like he doesn't.
"Eight," Eliot says. There's blood on his knife. He stares at it.
"So we're at that point." Nate temples his fingers, and looks at Eliot without flinching, because he's brave. He's always so damn brave. "The final question."
Eliot swallows. "Do you know me?"
And there's the answer to the question that's been the undercurrent to this all.
Are you willing to lie about this summer?
When we go back, will you think anything different of me?
There's never been any real question of Nate knowing Eliot. Nate knows everyone, piece by piece, from everything that people don't say. The less people say, the more Nate can deduce. Eliot's never been loquacious; to Nate he's practically an open book.
"Do you know me?" was the replacement question for "Will you continue to lie for me? Will you continue to deny these dark parts of us so we can keep on with the good?"
Six, six, and the car is the weapon and Eliot's driving, even though Nate's a back-seat driver throughout like Eliot has no idea how to drive through a busy city.
Six should be scared. The message should be out by now, but six has responded by surrounding himself by people. Like random civilians will keep him safe.
The pedestrians around him part, a fluke of a movement, an inevitability of statistics. Eliot's a professional. He ramps up the speed and number six literally doesn't know what hits him.
"Someone helped you out of the army," Nate says, as they ditch the fake number plates and speed out of Phoenix. "Moreau, or someone like him. You graduated to doing work like you had for the secret service. You'd crossed so many lines doing secret ops for the American government that each step downwards for Moreau was hardly noticeable. You kept doing worse and worse things, but because the slide was so gentle you couldn't see. Then one day, you looked up and there was so much blood on your hands so you ran, ghosts following you every step."
"How can you even bear to let me touch you?" The question comes out despite his guards. Nate laughs. Eliot can feel it through his whole body.
"You don't have blood on your hands right now," Nate says. "Let me distract you."
And oh, that's not what Nate's doing. He's not saving Eliot. He's just distracting him. He's stopping the voices in his head, just for a moment. Hoping one of the moments might be the one where Eliot, on his own, might have considered the bullet in his brain again.
Nate's hope might be distracting enough for that, Eliot thinks.
Three is blood. Three is Eliot's bare fists. Three, Nate's at his car again, sunglasses perched on his nose, lying in the passenger car seat like he's sunbathing. But it's not a convertible.
Besides, it's night time.
It's fake casualness. Like Nate's pretending this is a road trip, not revenge.
"You were too comfortable in the snow when we stole mountains," Nate says, as Eliot climbs into the driver's seat and clenches his fingers around the steering wheel like he's refraining from clenching them around Nate's neck. "You flinch as much in church as I do. I'd guess Wasatch Front. Near enough the Uinta mountains to get a trip or two as a teenager. Mormon family, the church forced on you, the rules stifling. You weren't allowed to be who you were. Escape was the only option. You hitched a ride on out of Utah with..."
Nate straightens, and his fingers itch towards the sunglasses. His hand stills and falls to his lap. "An elder of the church who led you astray," Nate finishes.
"You're buying dinner," Eliot grinds out, instead of trying to throw Nate out of the car. It hasn't worked before. Nate keeps coming back.
"After this," Nate says, arching his back, "you're buying me breakfast. Or dinner for breakfast. From the diner."
"From the diner?" Eliot squints.
"Only place around."
Only Nate, Eliot thinks, would talk about food in the middle of sex. Eliot appreciates it. Makes this a little more action, a little less emotional connection, please.
"Your taste is terrible," Eliot tells him.
Nate smiles, slow. Seductive. "Would you disagree?"
His red phone, Hardison calls it Eliot's bat-phone. Whenever it goes off, Eliot goes. Maybe for a day. Maybe for a week. It doesn't go off much.
Yesterday it went off. Eliot didn't go anywhere. Nate looked at him, sharp and too-knowing, but continued on with the briefing. It's summer, and the crew are mostly splitting up while Sophie runs part of a long con on a fellow they're after.
Today they're supposed to be going over some last minute things. Parker's already gone, but no one's surprised - there's a Van Gogh exhibit in Berlin.
His bat-phone goes off again. Nate's quiet inhalation is all Eliot can hear amongst the pounding of his heart. This time, Eliot stares down at the text message. It's from Pedro, and it's a day earlier than he anticipated. His weapons are in the car already.
Eliot doesn't even make a real excuse. He goes down in the lift and heads to the car.
It didn't occur to him that Nate might climb out the window to get there first. It should have done. But then again, he's a hitter, not a mastermind.
Eliot drags out number eight. He knows it, Nate knows it, number eight knows it. Number eight takes it personally. Thinks Eliot's playing with him. It makes him tetchy. He leads them on a merry chase through a dark forest. Eliot holds Nate's hand to keep him safe as they run through the undergrowth, after the man that ring-led the attack on Eliot's sister's camper van.
On the man that personally stole Jamie's sight with his blitz of violence and greed.
Eliot holds Nate's hand the whole time to keep him safe.
To keep him safe.
He repeats the lie.
It's a goodbye. When they wake up, when number eight's blood stains the ground, this will be another thing left behind.
In Boston, this roadtrip will have never happened.
When they catch him, it's an anticlimax.
"Eight," Eliot says. There's blood on his knife as he pulls it free. He stares at it.
"So we're at that point." Nate temples his fingers, and looks at Eliot without flinching, because he's brave. He's always so damn brave. "The final question."
Nate's pushed up against him, and Eliot's showing him another way to know him, and Eliot sort of understands. This is something both of them have wanted, all their lives. Nate whispers promises against his skin that they'll never keep. They enjoy the chase and they enjoy the kill and if they don't go back to Boston, they can keep this. They can keep running, and running, and Nate can know Eliot as much as he likes.
Eliot pushes his mouth into the space where Nate's neck meets his shoulder. Are you willing to lie about this summer? Nate bites down on Eliot's hip. When we go back, will you think anything different of me?
"Sometimes," Nate says, in between the eight stabs that Eliot delivers number eight. Eight for each stab wound Eliot's family received. "Sometimes you knew you were crossing lines, and you crossed them anyway."
"So we're at that point." Nate temples his fingers, and looks at Eliot without flinching, because he's brave. He's always so damn brave. "The final question."
Eliot swallows. "Do you know me?"
Nate's voice is steady. "Not at all."