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”Eliot, why don’t you take the rest of the job off?”
Nate didn’t pay attention to anything after that point. He didn’t notice the way Eliot left without a word or that Parker went after him or that Sophie looked disappointed. He knew those things happened, of course, but they didn’t matter. His mind was completely focused on the job, on the problem of Rockwell.
The only thing that caught attention through the many thoughts in his mind was Hardison’s words. He got past Hardison’s usual babble of exposition and got him to make the point.
“It means we can’t nail Rockwell for the car accident.”
Nate sat and deliberated on that for awhile. He wasn’t going to let that be the end of it. There was no way he was going to let Rockwell slide. The man took everything about the life Nate lived and used it to make good people suffer. Nate might not be a good person anymore, but he remembered the suffering he’d undergone and he wouldn’t let anyone else go through it if he could help it.
So Nate worked the problem, ignoring Sophie’s attempts to talk about what had just happened.
“Okay, okay,” he said, as it finally clicked. “We don’t have to nail him for the car crash; we nail him for a different car crash. Yeah, we use his techniques…against him.”
“And how are we gonna do that?” asked Hardison, finally looking up from the photos. “Uh, where did Parker and Eliot go?”
Sophie looked pointedly at Nate but he ignored her again and explained the plan. He explained how all the pieces would fit together, feeling more and more of that satisfaction he usually felt when a plan formed in his mind. Not the perfect plan, no, but the plan that would work and that would cause the mark to destroy themselves.
When he finished, Hardison wandered off, muttering something to himself about image replacement, and Sophie turned to Nate.
“You realize the problem with your plan, don’t you, Nate?”
He nodded.
“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry, it will get done.”
She continued as if he hadn’t spoken.
“Because the only one of us who can safely cause that car crash is the man you just sent off the job.”
“Eliot’s a grown man,” Nate said, willing to discuss it now that he had his plan. “He can deal with a little pressure.”
“Yes, the grown man who can’t deal with a little pressure,” she replied, “is sitting next to me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, though he probably shouldn’t have.
“It means that whenever Eliot questions your decisions on the jobs, any job really, but especially the jobs when your judgment is emotionally compromised, you shut him down.”
“He likes to think he know what’s going on in my head,” said Nate scornfully.
“He does know,” said Sophie. “We all know, Nate. We’ve worked together for too long and we’ve seen you at your worst.”
“There’s not one of us who can claim to be perfect,” Nate shot back.
“No,” said Sophie, and he got the feeling she’d been planning this for a long time. “But the difference is that you’ve never seen Eliot at his worst, not even when you chased him, and you know it.”
“Maybe,” Nate mumbled, his mind automatically going back to a warehouse full of men with guns and Eliot’s eyes when he told Nate to go.
The problem with that, Nate knew, even at the time, was that though he knew what Eliot was about to do, he also knew Eliot was doing it for him.
“You can’t keep doing this to him, Nate,” said Sophie. “One of these days, he’s going to walk out that door and he won’t come back. And Parker and Hardison will go with him. I might go with him.” She put her hand on his arm. “We are a team and it doesn’t matter how good you are or how much good you do together if we don’t feel like we belong apart from our ability to take down thugs or pick locks or hack servers. We won’t work anymore, we’ll fall apart, and you’ll lose the only good thing you have left in this world.”
Nate sighed and rubbed at his temples. He didn’t want to listen to her or admit she was right. He avoided it on general principle, but he couldn’t deny her point, at least about this job. Eliot was the only one who could pull off that rather key part of the con. Nate had flicked through the possibilities of someone else doing it, but Parker was needed to drive the other car and there was no time to get anyone else outside of their crew.
Nate was going to finish this job. It was very necessary to put Rockwell away, so Nate would do what he had to do, but only what he had to do.
“I’ll go and talk to him,” said Nate.
Sophie watched him closely.
“You’ll ask him to come back,” she clarified.
“I’ll tell him there’s a job to finish,” said Nate.
Sophie sighed and held her hands up in surrender. She normally did whenever they had this discussion or a variant of it. Nate counted on that.
She and Eliot were generally the ones who challenged him and Nate had to actually take it seriously. But whereas Sophie had an emotional connection and insight to him Nate couldn’t deny, Eliot just saw who Nate really was and Nate didn’t quite know how he did it and he had a gnawing feeling of annoyance whenever he looked at Eliot, especially after Damien Moreau.
Nate sighed and got up to find Eliot, despite all of that.
***
Eliot could feel Parker following behind him, but he didn’t bother to acknowledge the fact. Parker would do what she wanted to do, with or without his approval.
He went to the backroom downstairs. He was furious enough to want to leave the city, the kind of quiet rage he didn’t feel the need to vent on the people around him, and that was by far the most dangerous kind of anger he could feel. Yet he knew that about himself and he knew putting himself entirely out of reach right now was a bad idea.
So he went to the backroom and took his com out, stuffing it roughly into his pocket. He got himself a beer and nursed it before finding himself more annoyed about the lurking thief than Nate’s inability to see past taking down a mark.
“Either come in or go back upstairs,” he said, taking a pull at his glass.
Parker appeared behind him, flipping over the bar casually, and sat down beside him.
“I didn’t know if you really wanted to be alone,” she said.
“Of course I want to be alone.” He scowled at her.
“You can be alone with me,” she answered and he rolled his eyes.
That was Parker and he couldn’t deny feeling some kind of warmth from her following him.
Their team dynamics were odd at the best of times and it often meant Eliot felt more alone than not. It wasn’t just because Nate and Sophie were still trying to hide some kind of friends with benefits deal. Did they honestly expect Eliot Spencer to walk into the aftermath of a night of debauchery and not guess what was going on? It wasn’t just because Hardison and Parker were dancing around each other like teenage idiots either.
No, it was because when Nate went on a bender or pulled stunts like he’d just done, Eliot was the one left out in the cold.
Parker and Hardison were too young, too naïve, too excited about their jobs half of the time to be able to take a firm stand with Nate unless Sophie and Eliot were standing behind them. As for Sophie, she was the personal connection to Nate, which left Eliot the unenviable position of bad cop.
He didn’t mind most of the time, but he couldn’t deny that this time, when he’d exchanged a look with Sophie as he was leaving, he’d found himself strangely bitter that she would stay there and be Nate’s warm conscience while Eliot was forced to leave, scolded like an errant employee.
Still, Parker had followed him and Eliot doubted Hardison had even clued in to what had happened.
“Do you think he meant it?” asked Parker.
“If he hadn’t meant it, I wouldn’t be sitting down here,” said Eliot.
“But we’re a team,” said Parker.
“Tell that to Nate,” said Eliot bitterly.
“Doesn’t he already know?” she asked and he couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not. It was hard to tell with her sometimes.
“Nate’s in too deep on this one,” he said. “He’s looking in a mirror and it scares him. So he’s going to do everything he can to make that image go away. He’s not thinking about what caused the image in the first place.”
“Does it make you mad?” she asked.
“Parker, everything makes me mad.”
She smiled, and then frowned.
“Mad enough to leave?”
He glanced at her. Her face was open and sad, not filled with manic glee or a childish pout like it normally was. He tried to put aside his own anger and anxiety and focus on her. She only had them, losing even one of them would be devastating for her.
“I was asked to leave, Parker,” he said. “I didn’t choose to go. It’s just for the job.”
“But maybe one day,” she said.
He nodded. He couldn’t deny that sometimes he wondered if Nate would finally push too far. Eliot admired the man and was infinitely grateful to him for the life he now had, but sometimes Eliot worried that they would all crash and burn because of Nate. Eliot was too invested in their lives now and it was too hard to watch Nate do that to himself and the team. So Eliot definitely thought about starting over on occasion.
“Nobody makes me do anything,” he said roughly. She perked her head up and turned to him. He gave her a tiny smile, just a tiny one. “If I go-” he held up a finger, “-if. You can come with me. Hell, I’ll even take Hardison. But…you don’t have to. You can stay right here, you can do whatever you want. I won’t disappear and you can count on me to always protect you. Got it?”
There was something soft now in her eyes and she nodded, the panic and worry disappearing.
“You wanna steal some stuff?” she asked, her grin coming back.
There was a sound from the door, someone clearing their throat. Eliot didn’t look up; he’d known Nate was there approximately twenty seconds ago. He was sure Parker had as well.
“Let’s talk,” said Nate. “Just us.”
Parker looked to Eliot and he nodded at her. She got up and left, staring pointedly at Nate as she did so.
Nate wordlessly crossed to the bar and took out the bottle of whiskey he kept there. He slopped some in a glass and sat down next to Eliot before taking a big gulp.
“If it were any man but you, I’d say that was the act of imbibing liquid courage,” said Eliot wryly.
Nate cocked half an eyebrow and then started talking, laying out the rest of the job, describing a second car crash caused by none other than Eliot himself. Eliot listened, caught between admiration at the way Nate’s mind worked and annoyance at the way Nate just assumed Eliot would act like nothing had happened.
Most of the time he would be right. Eliot didn’t like to hash over things, didn’t like to talk about tension, didn’t want to over analyze what he was feeling. He simply knew himself, the way he was, simple and honest and not afraid to point out the obvious. If the obvious was an interpersonal team issue, that didn’t make it less a fact and Eliot appreciated facts.
But this time, this time, Eliot couldn’t let Nate slide. There was a fine line between being an ornery bastard who didn’t like anyone looking too closely at his rational for decisions and completely undermining the legitimate concerns of people who had placed himself under his care. Nate had firmly fallen on the latter end of that spectrum earlier and Eliot wasn’t going to ignore that this time.
It was like dealing with a child, he thought, let them get their own way once and they’ll expect it every time.
“So here’s where I need you to be,” Nate continued.
Eliot held up a hand and interrupted him.
“You’re really going to play it that way, Nate?” he asked calmly.
Nate sighed and took another sip.
“You’re a professional, Eliot, and there’s a job to finish.”
“A job I was told to leave,” said Eliot. “Technically, I’m a free man.”
“Now I’m telling you to come back,” said Nate.
“Telling me?” Eliot said in disbelief.
“Asking,” said Nate, waving a hand like the semantics didn’t matter.
“See that, right there,” Eliot said, pointing, “is your entire problem.”
“My problem?”
“We’re not pieces on a chess board,” said Eliot. “You can’t just move us around at will; throwing us away and picking us back up whenever you feel like it.”
“I would think that was fairly obvious,” said Nate.
“Except not to you,” said Eliot. “I’m tired of this, Nate. I’m bone tired of it. We picked you as the leader; you’re the one making the calls, but that means you have to be more careful than any of us. Most of the time that’s fine. You set up your game and we knock it down, but there are too many jobs where you get too close and I’m the one who ends up getting knocked down and I don’t mean literally.”
“You’re being more dramatic than normal,” said Nate.
Eliot slapped the counter and then leaned back.
“What’s your beef with me? Honestly, why can’t you ever take anything I say? My brain may not work the way yours does, but you can’t do what I’ve done without knowing people, and, man, there’s something ugly in the way you look at me sometimes. So, what is it? My past? The fact that I won’t hesitate to call you out? You don’t trust me.”
Nate calmly looked him in the eyes and there was ice there that chilled Eliot.
“I know what you can do, Eliot. I may not have seen it all, but I know. I trust you with my life, with their lives, and there’s nothing in your past that makes me want to take that trust back.”
Eliot couldn’t deny having wanted to hear words like that from Nate before. Hearing them now felt good but there was something behind the words that made him pause.
“Anything about the warehouse bothering you, Nate?” asked Eliot.
Something popped in Nate’s jaw. His face was a study in casual indifference, but Eliot saw it. He was trained to look for weakness in people.
“You’re too dangerous in my hands,” Nate finally said, leaning forward. “It’s not you I don’t trust, Eliot. It’s me.”
“You don’t control me,” said Eliot, something clicking in his brain. “I make my own decisions. What happened there wasn’t your fault.”
“I made you someone Damien Moreau wanted to take out with a warehouse full of men with guns,” said Nate wearily. Eliot opened his mouth to disagree, but Nate kept talking. “But that doesn’t matter. The point is, you do make your own choices, and you choose to let me call the shots.”
“Not when I don’t agree with them,” said Eliot.
“There’s the nub of it,” said Nate, smiling bitterly. “See, I don’t trust myself with you but I don’t trust myself without you. That’s my internal struggle and to have anyone else see that, well, that doesn’t feel too good.”
Eliot couldn’t help but laugh a little. Nate watched him, frowning.
“You really can’t help it, can you?” asked Eliot finally. “Being the most insecure and arrogant man I’ve ever met.”
“Perhaps not,” said Nate.
“Here’s the deal,” said Eliot, the rage inside of him subsiding with understanding and a shared pain. “I only leave when I want to. I keep telling you my job is to protect you, from everything. From you, from me, from everyone else. So, let me do my job, Nate. You can’t keep trying to hook a leash on me just because you’re afraid of yourself. It will blow up in both of our faces.”
“You would know,” said Nate, but without insult.
Eliot studied him for a second. The man didn’t look defeated or repentant or particularly disturbed, but for one second Eliot had seen inside him and that was enough for him.
“Ask me to come back,” he said. Nate flashed him an annoyed look. “No one’s watching,” Eliot said, teasing him. “Just ask me.”
“Come back to the job, Eliot,” he said more than asked, but Eliot would take it.
“I’m never going to stop calling you out when I think it’s right,” said Eliot.
“Well, I doubt I’ll ever take it well,” said Nate.
Eliot stood up and clapped Nate on the shoulder on his way to take his glass to the bar.
“We’re not exactly known for detachment in our crew,” he said. “Been together too long.”
“Because we choose to be,” said Nate.
“Then let me choose,” said Eliot.
Nate nodded and slammed back the rest of his whiskey. He stood up.
“Let’s go steal a car crash.”