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Fic: Once Trust is Broken (Leverage, Gen, PG)
Title: Once Trust is Broken
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Some plot point spoilers for 3.15 "The Big Bang Job"
Word Count: 1583
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they were, Eliot would have a mandatory shirtless scene in each episode.
Summary: Hardison finds himself struggling to trust Eliot after the events of "The Big Bang Job."
Author’s Note: Written for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
leverageland. If you saw it over there, I've edited it to tweak some of the places I thought were a little undone.
The coffee shop was bursting at the seams with people, and that’s the way Alec Hardison liked it. He knew he spent an inordinate amount of time hunched over a laptop, so every once in a while, he figured he ought to pry himself out of the virtual world and see what the average person did with their time.
As he leaned back in his chair, caramel latte in hand, he watched as men and women in business attire bustled by on their way to their next big meeting, occasionally stopping to make meaningless small talk with strangers. He could hear—not that he was listening, because that would be wrong—two women at the adjacent table chatting about someone’s “drop dead gorgeous” gardener and how he totally into one of them. And a frat boy a few feet away was telling his buddies about his string of broken hearts. Yeah, people-watching over the years had taught Hardison one important lesson—the average person was all about connection. Sometimes it was fleeting, sometimes imagined, and sometimes it was something they had let slip through their fingers.
Either way, his brief brushes with reality tended to make Hardison all the more grateful he had the team. They may have been a bunch of misfit criminals, but they cared about each other, and they offered each other shelter from the outside world.
Hardison took a sip of his latte and let his eyes wander toward the window. To his surprise, he saw a familiar face on the street in front of the coffee shop. It was Eliot, and he was talking with a guy who was a little taller than him, blue-eyed, and brown-haired. Their body language told Hardison that the conversation wasn’t a pleasant one. Eliot was standing in his defensive “ready-to-pounce” position, and his companion stood ramrod straight with his fists clenched by his side.
After a few seconds, the guy took a step into Eliot’s personal space and stood eye-to-eye with him. Eliot remained rigid, but Hardison knew from his stance that he was poised to knock the shit out the guy if the need arose. Before it came to blows, the guy took a step back and he and Eliot started to walk away from the shop.
Hardison slipped out of his chair and took a few steps toward the door, trying to give Eliot and his playmate a chance to get ahead of him. He had no idea what he was planning to do, really. A combination of concern for Eliot and sheer curiosity, though, compelled him to see what he could find out about the confrontation he’d just witnessed. He pushed open the door just as Eliot and the other man were heading around the corner. Out of instinct, Hardison pulled out his cell phone and snapped a shoddy picture of the pair of them.
Once he was back at Nate’s place, it didn’t take long for Hardison to figure out that Eliot’s little friend was Reese, a retrieval expert who had had his hands in all kinds of bad stuff. The guy had a scary-long list of atrocities he had committed since getting out of the Army seven years earlier. And Hardison was smart enough to know that most of the crap Reese had done probably wasn’t recorded in a file at all. As he sat there gazing at the screen, Hardison’s stomach started to churn. Was the guy gunning for Eliot? He tugged at his bottom lip. Eliot was always telling the team that he had prices on his head. Maybe this guy was here to collect.
What really worried Hardison, though, was that this seemed to be another case of Eliot’s secret past coming back to haunt him. They all had pasts; that was true. But Eliot had lied to the team about knowing Damian Moreau, and even though the team decided to put his deceit behind them, Hardison would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit he was waiting to see if Eliot owned up to this Reese character being in town. Reese was obviously bad news, and if Eliot kept that little nugget of information to himself…
Hardison let out a breath. He wanted to go back to the blissful ignorance he’d had before he had learned about Eliot’s past with Moreau.
When Eliot finally opened the door and stalked into the office, Hardison kept his eyes glued to his laptop. Eliot breezed past him into the kitchen and pulled a bottle of water from the refrigerator. His body reeked of the same tension it had when Hardison had seen him in front of the coffee shop.
Still not chancing a direct look at Eliot, Hardison reached for his orange soda, only to discover that it was empty. Damn. Well, he didn’t really need a drink. He turned his attention back to his laptop.
After a few seconds, Eliot lowered himself into a chair beside Hardison and deposited a cold bottle of soda on the table in front of him. “Thought you might want another,” he said.
“Thanks, man,” Hardison muttered and started tapping away at nothing on his computer. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Eliot gazing at him, and pangs of guilt started to swirl around in his gut. This man was his friend, and yet he was walking on eggshells as though Eliot were a mark who would discover his true identity at any moment.
Hardison looked up and grabbed the bottle of soda. Trying to keep his voice casual, he said, “So what did you get up to today?”
“Let’s save time,” Eliot said. “I know you saw me earlier.”
Plastering his best “calm, cool, and collected” look on his face, Hardison leaned back in his chair. “What you talking about, man? When?”
“Two hours ago, a block away from here outside of the coffee shop. I know you saw me, and you’re damn lucky no one else did.”
Hardison felt his muscles tense. “By no one else, you mean Reese? I would have said hi, but you looked busy.”
Eliot rubbed at a weathered spot on the table. “So you already did a background check on my buddy, then.”
“Your buddy?”
“Yeah.” Eliot folded his arms across his chest. “Me and Reese old friends. He saved my life.”
“You two didn’t look all that friendly from what I saw.”
“Well, you didn’t see much. Besides, friends argue. Right?” Eliot bit his bottom lip. “You and me argue all the time.”
Hardison looked away. “Right.”
“I just didn’t expect him to show up in town. The conversation got heated. It’s no big deal.”
“No big deal? Your buddy Reese is one bad dude.”
Eliot leaned forward. “Hardison, I’m one bad dude,” he said. “The stuff Reese has done? Well, I’ve done as bad or worse, and you need to remember that.”
Hardison chewed on his bottom lip. Yeah, he was definitely missing the days of blissful ignorance. “So you gonna tell Nate this guy’s in town?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Eliot said. “It’s not relevant. Reese has a gig, and he swore to me it won’t cross wires with us. He’ll be gone in two days.”
“So much for being straight with your team,” Hardison muttered.
Eliot slammed his palms down on the table. “You wanna tell Nate? Go ahead.”
Hardison clenched his fist under the table. Eliot was going to cop and attitude with him? Fine, he could give it right back. “Maybe I will,” he snapped. “What if this guy isn’t being on the up and up, Eliot? You ever thought of that? Nate needs to know he’s here.”
“Like I said, tell him. If you don’t wanna trust my instincts about Reese, fine.”
Trust. That’s was what it was about in the end, wasn’t it? Hardison closed his laptop and pushed it aside. “You haven’t been making it easy to trust you lately, Eliot.”
A look of mild surprise ghosted across Eliot’s face. “I thought we were all right.”
Hardison shook his head. “They threw me in a pool, Eliot. I thought I was gonna die, and you kept me in the dark about your connection to Moreau. You should have let me in..”
“I’m sorry,” Eliot said, his voice quiet. “I couldn’t tell you. It wouldn’t have done any good.”
They were both silent for a moment, then Hardison half-whispered, “You wouldn’t have let me drown, right?”
Eliot clenched his jaw. “The fact that you have to ask me that tells me we still have a problem.”
“Look,” Hardison said. “I’m not trying to be this way, man. But after that thing with Moreau… I’m just saying it’d be easier to trust you if you let us in once in a while. I don’t care if you’re trying to protect us or not. We’re a team, dammit.”
“You know, I may not have told you about Moreau, but I’ve never pretended to be anything other than what I am.” Eliot stood up and started for the door. “Don’t blame me ‘cause you just now figured out I’m a monster.”
The pangs of guilt Hardison had felt earlier gurgled in his gut again. “Eliot, hold up,” he said. He watched, unmoving, as Eliot slammed the door behind. He knew he should go after him—and he would. They would be all right in time. But for now, he just stared at Eliot’s empty chair and wondered if he’d ever really known him at all.
Master Fic List
***
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Some plot point spoilers for 3.15 "The Big Bang Job"
Word Count: 1583
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they were, Eliot would have a mandatory shirtless scene in each episode.
Summary: Hardison finds himself struggling to trust Eliot after the events of "The Big Bang Job."
Author’s Note: Written for
leverageland. If you saw it over there, I've edited it to tweak some of the places I thought were a little undone. The coffee shop was bursting at the seams with people, and that’s the way Alec Hardison liked it. He knew he spent an inordinate amount of time hunched over a laptop, so every once in a while, he figured he ought to pry himself out of the virtual world and see what the average person did with their time.
As he leaned back in his chair, caramel latte in hand, he watched as men and women in business attire bustled by on their way to their next big meeting, occasionally stopping to make meaningless small talk with strangers. He could hear—not that he was listening, because that would be wrong—two women at the adjacent table chatting about someone’s “drop dead gorgeous” gardener and how he totally into one of them. And a frat boy a few feet away was telling his buddies about his string of broken hearts. Yeah, people-watching over the years had taught Hardison one important lesson—the average person was all about connection. Sometimes it was fleeting, sometimes imagined, and sometimes it was something they had let slip through their fingers.
Either way, his brief brushes with reality tended to make Hardison all the more grateful he had the team. They may have been a bunch of misfit criminals, but they cared about each other, and they offered each other shelter from the outside world.
Hardison took a sip of his latte and let his eyes wander toward the window. To his surprise, he saw a familiar face on the street in front of the coffee shop. It was Eliot, and he was talking with a guy who was a little taller than him, blue-eyed, and brown-haired. Their body language told Hardison that the conversation wasn’t a pleasant one. Eliot was standing in his defensive “ready-to-pounce” position, and his companion stood ramrod straight with his fists clenched by his side.
After a few seconds, the guy took a step into Eliot’s personal space and stood eye-to-eye with him. Eliot remained rigid, but Hardison knew from his stance that he was poised to knock the shit out the guy if the need arose. Before it came to blows, the guy took a step back and he and Eliot started to walk away from the shop.
Hardison slipped out of his chair and took a few steps toward the door, trying to give Eliot and his playmate a chance to get ahead of him. He had no idea what he was planning to do, really. A combination of concern for Eliot and sheer curiosity, though, compelled him to see what he could find out about the confrontation he’d just witnessed. He pushed open the door just as Eliot and the other man were heading around the corner. Out of instinct, Hardison pulled out his cell phone and snapped a shoddy picture of the pair of them.
Once he was back at Nate’s place, it didn’t take long for Hardison to figure out that Eliot’s little friend was Reese, a retrieval expert who had had his hands in all kinds of bad stuff. The guy had a scary-long list of atrocities he had committed since getting out of the Army seven years earlier. And Hardison was smart enough to know that most of the crap Reese had done probably wasn’t recorded in a file at all. As he sat there gazing at the screen, Hardison’s stomach started to churn. Was the guy gunning for Eliot? He tugged at his bottom lip. Eliot was always telling the team that he had prices on his head. Maybe this guy was here to collect.
What really worried Hardison, though, was that this seemed to be another case of Eliot’s secret past coming back to haunt him. They all had pasts; that was true. But Eliot had lied to the team about knowing Damian Moreau, and even though the team decided to put his deceit behind them, Hardison would be lying to himself if he didn’t admit he was waiting to see if Eliot owned up to this Reese character being in town. Reese was obviously bad news, and if Eliot kept that little nugget of information to himself…
Hardison let out a breath. He wanted to go back to the blissful ignorance he’d had before he had learned about Eliot’s past with Moreau.
When Eliot finally opened the door and stalked into the office, Hardison kept his eyes glued to his laptop. Eliot breezed past him into the kitchen and pulled a bottle of water from the refrigerator. His body reeked of the same tension it had when Hardison had seen him in front of the coffee shop.
Still not chancing a direct look at Eliot, Hardison reached for his orange soda, only to discover that it was empty. Damn. Well, he didn’t really need a drink. He turned his attention back to his laptop.
After a few seconds, Eliot lowered himself into a chair beside Hardison and deposited a cold bottle of soda on the table in front of him. “Thought you might want another,” he said.
“Thanks, man,” Hardison muttered and started tapping away at nothing on his computer. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Eliot gazing at him, and pangs of guilt started to swirl around in his gut. This man was his friend, and yet he was walking on eggshells as though Eliot were a mark who would discover his true identity at any moment.
Hardison looked up and grabbed the bottle of soda. Trying to keep his voice casual, he said, “So what did you get up to today?”
“Let’s save time,” Eliot said. “I know you saw me earlier.”
Plastering his best “calm, cool, and collected” look on his face, Hardison leaned back in his chair. “What you talking about, man? When?”
“Two hours ago, a block away from here outside of the coffee shop. I know you saw me, and you’re damn lucky no one else did.”
Hardison felt his muscles tense. “By no one else, you mean Reese? I would have said hi, but you looked busy.”
Eliot rubbed at a weathered spot on the table. “So you already did a background check on my buddy, then.”
“Your buddy?”
“Yeah.” Eliot folded his arms across his chest. “Me and Reese old friends. He saved my life.”
“You two didn’t look all that friendly from what I saw.”
“Well, you didn’t see much. Besides, friends argue. Right?” Eliot bit his bottom lip. “You and me argue all the time.”
Hardison looked away. “Right.”
“I just didn’t expect him to show up in town. The conversation got heated. It’s no big deal.”
“No big deal? Your buddy Reese is one bad dude.”
Eliot leaned forward. “Hardison, I’m one bad dude,” he said. “The stuff Reese has done? Well, I’ve done as bad or worse, and you need to remember that.”
Hardison chewed on his bottom lip. Yeah, he was definitely missing the days of blissful ignorance. “So you gonna tell Nate this guy’s in town?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Eliot said. “It’s not relevant. Reese has a gig, and he swore to me it won’t cross wires with us. He’ll be gone in two days.”
“So much for being straight with your team,” Hardison muttered.
Eliot slammed his palms down on the table. “You wanna tell Nate? Go ahead.”
Hardison clenched his fist under the table. Eliot was going to cop and attitude with him? Fine, he could give it right back. “Maybe I will,” he snapped. “What if this guy isn’t being on the up and up, Eliot? You ever thought of that? Nate needs to know he’s here.”
“Like I said, tell him. If you don’t wanna trust my instincts about Reese, fine.”
Trust. That’s was what it was about in the end, wasn’t it? Hardison closed his laptop and pushed it aside. “You haven’t been making it easy to trust you lately, Eliot.”
A look of mild surprise ghosted across Eliot’s face. “I thought we were all right.”
Hardison shook his head. “They threw me in a pool, Eliot. I thought I was gonna die, and you kept me in the dark about your connection to Moreau. You should have let me in..”
“I’m sorry,” Eliot said, his voice quiet. “I couldn’t tell you. It wouldn’t have done any good.”
They were both silent for a moment, then Hardison half-whispered, “You wouldn’t have let me drown, right?”
Eliot clenched his jaw. “The fact that you have to ask me that tells me we still have a problem.”
“Look,” Hardison said. “I’m not trying to be this way, man. But after that thing with Moreau… I’m just saying it’d be easier to trust you if you let us in once in a while. I don’t care if you’re trying to protect us or not. We’re a team, dammit.”
“You know, I may not have told you about Moreau, but I’ve never pretended to be anything other than what I am.” Eliot stood up and started for the door. “Don’t blame me ‘cause you just now figured out I’m a monster.”
The pangs of guilt Hardison had felt earlier gurgled in his gut again. “Eliot, hold up,” he said. He watched, unmoving, as Eliot slammed the door behind. He knew he should go after him—and he would. They would be all right in time. But for now, he just stared at Eliot’s empty chair and wondered if he’d ever really known him at all.
Master Fic List
***