Title : Finding a New Road

Author : peaceful_sands

Fandom : Leverage

Rating : PG-13

Characters :Eliot, Sophie, Nate with appearances by Parker and Hardison (there are mentions of Nate/Eliot prior to the fic)

Word Count : 35,900 words

Disclaimer : All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

Author's Note : Thanks to cougars_catnip for betaing this. All mistakes still belong to me.

Part One – Where It All Went Wrong

Chapter One

It wasn't the reaction that Nathan had expected. The con done, the others talking of maybe a celebratory drink or two, it was all sounding pretty good, but he hadn't failed to notice that Eliot was standing just that step too far away, not part of the group, his eyes just that fraction clouded and before they'd finished deciding where to go, where to meet up to properly celebrate, Eliot had already been heading for his bike, pulling on his helmet and firing up the engine without a glance back in anyone else's direction.

"Have you two had a falling out?" Hardison asked with an eye roll.

Nathan had just frowned his disgust at the question. For once, he was sure that whatever was wrong with Eliot wasn't his fault . . . or at least pretty sure he hadn't done anything. What the matter was, well right now, that was anyone's guess.

Nathan had stayed long enough to celebrate with Hardison, Sophie and Parker, but somehow, for him at least, it seemed wrong to be celebrating without Eliot, on this job more than any of the others they'd done so far. This was Eliot's job, he should have been leading the celebration. They'd got the better of Foss, Sterling and seen Eliot's friend Willie get Baltimore back. Eliot should have been ecstatic, not running off and sulking on his own.

He debated all the way home what might be the problem, hoping against the odds that when he got home, Eliot would be there. He'd stayed over all but the occasional night for the last few weeks; to the extent at which he'd even got a small duffle bag with a change of clothes and some toiletries stashed at the bottom of the guest room closet. Nathan had had to smile when he first saw it, for the bag was filled with almost as many hair products as clothes, then again, as Eliot succinctly pointed out, Nathan liked his hair so if he liked it he had to accept that it took effort to keep it like that.

He let himself into his apartment and was locking the door behind him when he first sensed the presence of someone else even before he heard their movement. Something was wrong, it didn't feel right for Eliot, but then Nathan reminded himself, Eliot had been . . . out of sorts earlier. Maybe it was Eliot, maybe it wasn't, nothing was certain so Nathan was on guard before Sterling broke the silence. Not Eliot then, Nathan thought as he half listened to Sterling's irrelevant ramble.

It was a relief when Sterling finally left and Nathan could give his attention over to pondering Eliot's absence more fully. He sat for a while in contemplation before coming to a decision. So far everything had kind of been on his terms; he and Eliot hung out at ihis/i apartment; he'd sort of expected Eliot to do the running, the feeling it gave ihim/i of being worth enough to be pursued but also the power it gave to have Eliot off-kilter, not on home ground. It hadn't been entirely conscious on his part, more some sort of self-defense mechanism, if he didn't want Eliot around he could make it clear and Eliot would leave. He'd got everything he wanted or needed to hand, whereas Eliot would have to manage with the contents of his duffle bag or by borrowing. A wave of guilt washed through Nathan as he made a promise to himself to take better care of Eliot. He kind of wanted Eliot around, wanted this between them to work and this had made him realize that whatever they had between them was a whole lot more tentative and fragile than he'd thought before and also a whole lot more worth the effort of working to nurture.

He had no idea whether Eliot would come back and that bothered him. He thought over the time they'd been on the job of the way Eliot had tried everything to get justice and to protect Willie and his daughter Aimee. Huh! Aimee! She'd been feisty, determined not to give Eliot an iota of forgiveness for whatever had gone on between them before. He wasn't sure but he couldn't see that Eliot was really to blame but then again maybe that was just because he himself was more likely to side with the hitter than with a girl he hadn't met before.

He'd given some thought to what they'd said, how she'd accused and Eliot had defended his actions. Nathan could imagine the 'work-related' reasons that had kept Eliot away but then again the fact that she'd been getting married made it seem completely unjust of her to expect him to return to watch, stand back and see her go off with someone else.

He slid his cell phone out of his pocket and dialled Eliot's number. No answer, not that he found it particularly surprising. Nathan picked up the jacket he'd shed when he returned to the house and headed for the door. He didn't really know where to try looking, but first he could at least check out Eliot's apartment. He could make an effort to try and find him even if he didn't hold out much hope of success.

Eliot's apartment was in darkness, not the faintest glimmer of light showing through any of the windows and Nathan figured there was no point in going to the effort of climbing the stairs and knocking on the door when he could see that from street level. So with a last disappointed look in its direction, Nathan resolved himself to start a tour of the local bars to track Eliot down.

He asked the bartenders in the first few places he tried, doing his best to describe Eliot . . . "Shorter guy, long hair, kinda muscular" got him a variety of responses from "Huh?" to the somewhat incredulous "Look around you, does that look like anyone else I might have seen?" to possibly the most frightening "Sugar, if I'd seen a guy like that, you think I'd have let him go again!" Nathan found himself hurrying out of that bar somewhat disconcerted by the reaction.

He wasn't sure where else to look for Eliot and so instead, after yet one more failed attempt, he hailed a cab and headed for home; after all, tomorrow in the office would have to do, he wasn't going to gain anything from any more hours spent trawling bars without a clue where to start looking.

Eliot had felt exposed throughout the whole of the con. He couldn't turn his back and ignore the fact that Willie and Aimee had needed help. It wouldn't have been right to do that, no matter how much he'd suspected it would hurt. But it had been worse than he thought; Nathan had taken the opportunity to dig and tease at the wounds left by Aimee, fueled further by her snide and bitter remarks and at the end of the day, he'd felt like everyone was laughing at him. He was an idiot; weak, a joke for them all to sneer at. He would, if he were on the other side, be laughing at the fool who'd fallen for a girl who'd promptly got herself engaged to someone else but still expected him to hang around at her beck and call. The more he thought about it, it was no wonder that Nathan didn't want people to know about them, didn't want to commit to anything more than repeated one night stands . . . Eliot knew what he meant to them all and he figured he only had himself to blame.

The apartment was cold, darkening steadily as night drew in, but Eliot didn't need the lights on to maneuver round the furniture. It was something he always did anywhere he was going to stay . . . even if it were only a room for a night, he made himself memorize the lay of the furniture, the weakpoints and safe zones. He made his way across to the cupboard in which he kept the whiskey, pulling the bottle out and swinging it gently back and forth in his hand for a few moments as if considering something. He drew a deep breath and came to a decision moving away without getting a glass, taking the bottle with him.

He retreated across the room, finding the tightest corner and pulling a blanket from the sofa with him and curling up, pulling the blanket tight around himself and up to his chin, before taking a long drag from the whiskey bottle, only pulling it away when the threat of choking from lack of air became a possibility. He'd fucked up his life iagain/i; it wasn't even worth pretending it was for the first time anymore, and for the minute he just wanted to forget, just for one night before he had to face up to reality again.

The beep of the alarm on his phone began at nine the following morning (the usual post con easy morning to recover from the night before celebrations, even if that wasn't the case this time), and Eliot grudgingly stirred from his corner, groaning at the heavy feeling in his head as he trudged into the bathroom. Refreshed and considerably more alert when he emerged later, he made himself breakfast and took a couple of painkillers to get rid of another layer of the self-inflicted pain of the previous night's drinking and wished that the rest of it was as easily dealt with.

He made it to the offices on time, but had deliberately not left much time to spare. On his way to the conference room, he picked up a bottle of water and then went straight for his usual seat, dropping down into it and promptly focused on opening the bottle of water with the curtest of hellos that were possible before all politeness was lost.

Hardison and Parker gave a brief return of the greeting before turning back to the conversation they'd been having before he came in. Sophie entered shortly afterwards, shot him a quick greeting before again turning her attention to the pair chatting animatedly at the other end of the table.

It left him time to return to his own thoughts and the growing suspicion that his time here was up and he should be thinking about moving on. He'd have to resign himself to the fact that he'd done the right thing for Willie, even though he felt like he was losing everything because of it. Willie had been thankful to Nate for getting the horse back, Aimee had been thankful to see him go, Sophie, Parker and Hardison didn't give a damn about him, probably just thought of him as vaguely amusing if they spared him any thought at all and Nate . . . Well he'd have to wait to be certain just how low Nate's opinion of him was now, but he clearly didn't mean as much to the man as he'd wanted, not as much as Nate had started to mean to him and so it was better if he got out now, while he still had some pride and dignity left.

When Nathan finally made it into the office, he was late and hungover . . . very on the former and only just on the second. Yeah, to be precise, he'd stopped drinking, he peered blearily at his watch as he rode the elevator up to the offices, five, or maybe it was only four hours ago, almost. So in reality it was somewhat of a toss up between drunk and hungover . . . a continuum, yeah definitely a continuum.

He almost lost his balance as he stumbled out of the elevator, but valiantly straightened up before he had to face the others. He'd not been able to track Eliot down the night before and, on his general round of bars, had had a few drinks. Returning home, he'd got to thinking, hadn't liked the track his thoughts were taking and so had managed to down a substantial portion of a bottle of whiskey before falling asleep.

This morning he'd been certain it was Eliot's fault. Eliot was an ass who was trying to guilt trip him into . . . yeah something. He hadn't quite worked out what Eliot was guilting him into and that was the only reason it wasn't working clearly. Not that he had any need to feel guilty he'd reminded himself. He hadn't promised Eliot anything, hadn't committed to anything more than a . . . 'friends with benefits' wasn't that the term nowadays. Anyway, less of the friendship and more of the benefit sounded good to him and if Eliot was looking for something other than that, well in that case, maybe they were better calling it a day now.

The rest of the team were sitting in the conference room waiting for him, and so the meeting had started more or less as soon as Nathan had sat down. The man had been brusque, impatient and scathing. He'd sniped at Sophie, Hardison and Parker; 'too British', 'too geeky', 'too crazy', much to their disgust but he'd also very noticeably ignored Eliot, consistently speaking over the hitter as if he hadn't started to say something, cutting him off mid-sentence or just ignoring anything he did manage to get out as if he hadn't spoken at all.

Nathan knew he was being a bit of an ass, but seriously, sometimes people just needed to listen and do what he said and stop arguing. Eliot was the worst of all, picking the plans apart, looking for the weak points, like he was driving to get under Nathan's skin. Honestly, it was really pissing him off and what he wanted most was to tell Eliot to shut the fuck up, and if he was so unhappy with the way things were he should just get the fuck out and stop making everyone else's life a fucking misery. Maybe it was a good thing he hadn't said that out loud because even in his own head it sounded a bit strong and quite a lot like Nathan was actually still drunk rather than the hung over that he was trying to convince himself of. If he'd let that slip out he'd have definitely found himself on the receiving end of one of Sophie's lectures on the evils of alcohol and what a waste of space he was, which would have been ironic given the woman's actual opinion of Eliot.

Anyway, it wasn't like Nathan had ever tried to lead Eliot on, make him believe they'd be something more than 'friends with benefits', so what right did Eliot have to suddenly up and decide he wanted more out of their relationship.

In truth, Nathan knew Eliot had done no such thing, he'd asked for nothing beyond what Nate had been willing to give him, regardless of what he wanted and he'd allowed everything that Nate insisted on. Nathan knew he'd treated Eliot badly, taking advantage of the younger man and that he'd not been fair.

He bit off another snipe at Eliot before it could slip out and tried to be logical and rationalize what it all meant. He was hurting; he'd wanted a fling, nothing serious, nothing that meant anything out of the sack, nothing that hinged on real emotion, real attachment and somehow, against his wishes, Eliot had snuck in under the safety net and weakened Nathan's defences. He didn't want that, so the only course of action was to finish it now, before he took the chance of Eliot doing something that would hurt him. He didn't need to see Eliot get hurt on some con and end up not recovering. He'd been through enough pain with Sam's illness and death; he didn't need to put himself in a position to watch anything like it again.

Nathan barely held back a curse as Hardison tried to question one of his demands, controlling himself enough to grit out, "iYou/i agreed to follow my lead on this, to do as I say. You want to change that agreement now? Fine, leave!"

There was a shocked look on more than just Hardison's face at Nathan's outburst. "Anything more to say on the subject? No? Good, then you can go, all of you. I've told you what you need to do," he finished dismissively.

The team looked at each other, most of them unnerved and unsure what to do. Hardison moved first, slamming his chair backwards and stalking from the room without another direct word. Parker gave another uncertain glance at Nate, before she too fled the room, in pursuit of Hardison. Sophie turned a glare on him and didn't budge, instead waiting to see if he would turn on her as well, but for the time being she got no response.

There was silence in the room as both Nathan and Sophie waited for her to break the silence like they knew she would. She wouldn't leave it be, they knew that. Only Eliot seemed outside the tension of the bristling argument and he hadn't made any move to try and break it up. Nathan was almost sorry for that. For weeks now, he'd counted on Eliot to have his back in the conference room as well as outside on the job and he missed it.

Sophie inhaled deeply before finally breaking the tension and beginning to speak, "You, Nathan, you got this team and made it into something more and now you're in danger of blowing it all out of the water, so you need to think about what you really want to achieve here and how you go about doing that, because seriously, the undercurrent of feeling just now is for us to go and leave you to rot here alone. Oh, and while you're thinking about it," she slipped a hand into his jacket pocket and removed a hip flask, "You'll be needing a clear head, so I'll take this for now." She left the room before Nathan could say a word and Eliot just silently watched the exchange without a word.

Nathan cursed briefly, before glaring at Eliot, "No doubt you want to get your two cents in as well!"

Eliot shrugged and looked away, reluctantly saying, "You do what you want, Nathan, it's got nothing to do with me, but don't expect me or them to stick around."

"Oh heaven forbid that you ever do anything for anyone else," Nathan sneered, ignoring the voice inside that was telling him to shut up, warning him not to hurt Eliot because he really didn't want to do that. It didn't stop him though, he just couldn't rein in the vitriol at the sight of Eliot alone and defeated. "Aimee had a point when she said you weren't welcome there. Someone should tell you how people here feel about you."

"Yeah, you might be right, then again maybe I don't need telling, maybe I've already got the message," Eliot replied quietly. "Nate, I'll tell you one thing though . . . you might be right about me, but you're losing a good thing right now. If you don't get a handle on the drinking, man, you'll lose them all; Hardison and Parker will go and they won't look back, and Sophie . . . I don't think even Sophie will hang round much longer."

"What would you know?" Nathan's tirade grew louder, the insults more derisive and Eliot just sat and took it all, soaked it up like a sponge and when Nate showed no signs of stopping any time soon, he drew the last of his self-respect together and stood and with a quiet 'goodbye, Nate' left the room and walked out of the office.

Sophie wasn't that surprised when Hardison and Parker appeared at her office door a short while later. It wasn't like today's behavior was completely without precedent, although it was showing a very definite worsening of late. Nate's drinking was becoming unmanageable. She'd thought he was trying to get it under control, trying to deal with it, in the same way she'd thought there was something between him and Eliot.

She'd heard the murmurs of discontent weeks ago from Hardison and Parker, the talk of leaving that had calmed down as Nathan seemed to ease back on the drinking. She didn't think they'd noticed that Nathan had seemed to be growing much closer to Eliot, how often the two men had arrived at the office together or left together, how often Nathan reached out to touch Eliot to draw his attention to something as if the contact was important, more important than just saying his name.

She resented Eliot for it. She'd hoped that Nathan coming to find her, to ask her to join the team, had meant something; that this time maybe they'd have had the chance to make things work between them and so the realization that Nathan merely saw her as convenient, as a colleague and nothing more had hit hard.

She'd been professional enough to keep most of her thoughts about Eliot to herself in front of Hardison and Parker, although in honesty, she'd let a few slip through. She was a grifter and she knew how to work people round to her way of thinking and sometimes it didn't take a hard sell for people's own judgmental side to come to the fore. The odd slipped in comment about Eliot being 'just muscle' or 'not intelligent like you' had had Hardison eating out of her hand, but she'd had to keep them light so that no one noticed the coercion. Parker in some respects had been easier still. The younger woman was pretty useless at reading or even vaguely understanding people, so it had been easy to overwhelm her by just 'being friends', by 'understanding' and by criticizing anyone – Eliot - who was negative toward her by saying 'they didn't understand Parker', the unspoken implication being that she did.

Nathan had seen through her actions quickly, although at first he'd missed the link to Eliot and so she'd had to be a lot more discreet, making sure she was completely professional in front of him, the consummate actress if nothing else. She knew he'd been watching trying to work out what she was trying to gain by being so close to the youngest two members of the team. When he'd challenged, she'd defended herself with claims of trying to make sure they understood what it meant to be a team and how they were only used to thinking of themselves and she was trying to nurture the secure feelings of being protected and wanting to protect in return. In the end, he'd let it slide, telling her to just be their friend and to stop trying to manipulate them. He hadn't thought to question why she made no attempt to be friends with Eliot.

She hadn't been able to hide it forever though. Things would have been different if she harbored any illusion that Nathan would respond to her but even she knew that she'd lost that battle months ago, when Nathan and Eliot had got together. She'd resented it but she'd also made the mistake of allowing it to fester inside as she tried to manipulate things round so that Nathan would get rid of Eliot and want her instead.

Over time, whenever she could, she had taken out her jealousy on Eliot. She'd always ensured that Hardison and Parker weren't around, she didn't want them to see this side of her but she also didn't want them to know that she'd lost to the brawn, that her brains and beauty hadn't been enough to tempt Nathan to her bed. Whenever she'd had the chance she'd slip a denigrating remark into whatever she was saying to Eliot, something about 'going slowly to make sure he could follow' or 'brute force not exactly needing style or intelligence to get things done'. She'd known she was being unfair and she didn't really give a damn until Nathan had taken her on one side and tried to work out what exactly her problem with Eliot was. She hadn't been prepared to turn round and say 'I think he's got you wrapped round his little finger when you should be wrapped round mine.'

She knew then that with the situation like this, she couldn't remain forever. She'd resigned herself to sticking around for a while longer to see what she could get from the situation before she moved on.