Leverage
Trust in Family
He didn't know why he had stayed with the team for as long as he had. He almost always worked alone, before they came along. Now...Now was different. He had someone in his ear the entire time, someone watching his back, someone who relied on his being there to back them up if things went wrong. Eliot didn't even know when he'd started to trust them. And that was new too. Trust. Every fibre in his being had screamed not to trust them. They were loud, arrogant, reckless and far too eager to jump in with both feet before they'd analysed the situation properly. They were thieves and grifters. Liars. Except one. The 'Honest Man'. And yet Eliot hadn't been able to fully trust him at first either. But he does.
Sophie had proved that she was always the Grifter. Trusting her after the Two David's fiasco was difficult. You didn't con your own team. Anyone else was fair game but you never betrayed your own. His time in the military had taught him that. And underlined it when they left him for dead. He'd crawled out on his own and stayed that way, doing anything that he had to, to survive. It had led him, eventually, to his new team. But Sophie had shaken his new faith in them. Finishing that job had been difficult. Maybe he should have walked away after that but he couldn't bring himself to do so. A wise man had once told him that a man could not live in a world without trust. Even if it's trusting just one person. And so Eliot had set about rebuilding his trust in them. He let Sophie talk him into cooking for them all, to attending her plays (and what was up with the terrible acting? She was fine on a job but get her on a stage and MY GOD!), to trying to socialise Parker. He knew she was there if he needed to vent about Nate's latest booze-fuelled plan. Or advice on what tie to wear with certain suits for his part in the con. She had become something like an older sister/mother hen, always cooing over the latest injury he received trying to protect them. He knew she would be there for them. Unless there was a shoe sale.
Hardison was just plain old annoying, the way little brothers were supposed to be. Yes, the kid was a genius (Don't ever tell him i thought that!) but the techno babble in his ear all day long made Eliot want to strangle him. When trying to listen for the Bad Guy creeping around, the last thing you want to be hearing is how the latest release of World of Warcraft rocked or how CGI Yoda ruined the Star Wars films for life. Besides one Alec Hardison, who actually cared? Yet, despite his complete geek-ness, Hardison was always there to help where he could. Ask him to hack a security system? Done. Shut down the cameras? No problem. Play Scheherazade on the most expensive violin he could ever hope to handle? Note perfect. His English accent could do with a little work but overall, Hardison was okay. Just don't ask what happened to his van. Or tell him you're out of orange soda.
Nate had always had Eliots' respect. From day one. He was an honest man, doing his job, chasing criminals like the rest of the team had been. And then his company had turned their backs on him and left his son to die. He fell into a bottle and, except for a brief period of sobriety, never climbed out. And yet, he became their mastermind, their leader. He helped them to focus on the job, gave them all new paths to follow. Eliot had always used his skills to help those with the money to pay him. Now he used his skills to protect his team and the people who had nowhere else to turn, but to a group of thieves. Nate made sure they did the right thing, the wrong way, for the right reasons. And he'd built up their trust in him. He acted like a parent, keeping them in line, telling them to behave. Then he'd conned them. Just like Sophie. Eliot understood that Nate had done it in order to keep the rest of them safe. But that meant that Eliot had had to leave someone behind on that ship, surrounded by Federal Agents. Bleeding. To keep the others safe. Nate sacrificed himself, and that Eliot had to respect. He didn't like it but he had to respect it.
Parker was different from anyone else Eliot had ever met. She had almost no fear. She'd willingly throw herself from the tallest building she could find, with nothing but a piece of rope and a harness to prevent her from going splat on the sidewalk. She could crack any safe in a matter of seconds. Beat any security system (besides the Sterenko) and walk away with a grin. Roaming laser trip-wires? Piece of cake. She was ten pounds of crazy in a five pound bag. But he trusted her at his back on a job. Never with his wallet mind. Or diamonds. Or jewellery of any kind. Eliot also knew that if he ever needed help getting in (or out) of anywhere, Parker would be the first person he called. Like his sister was the first one he'd told when he enlisted. Sure, Parker wasn't normal. But she was getting there.
No. Eliot didn't fully understand why he trusted this mismatched team so much. But he was glad that he could. His work had taken him all over the world, had made him plenty of enemies and placed several large prices on his head. He'd never tell them all that he had done for the likes of Damian Moreau. That might just be more than any of them could take. He didn't want them to look at him as that man. Because he wasn't that guy any more. He wanted, needed, them to trust him to do his job. Of all the people he'd worked with, these four people were the ones who had made him care about them, about himself. They had gotten him to let his guard down for them. Well, partly.
As he stood at the kitchen counter, drinking his coffee, Eliot watched the rest of the team in the office. Sophie was nagging at Nate about something, as usual. It sounded like the call for the meeting had interrupted her shoe shopping. One of the biggest crimes imaginable in Sophie's book. "And then, as I was answering my phone, some bimbo picked up the shoes I had just been looking at and went off to buy them! You lost me some amazing shoes!" Or maybe she'd just found a new top crime. Nate was in so much trouble. Hardison and Parker were sat at the new interactive desk. Hardison was trying, and failing, to explain why Inception was such a good movie. For the fifth time. As usual, Parker wasn't having any of it. "But they're asleep! Why is breaking into someone's mind when they're asleep, considered fun? It's creepy!" Eliot tried to hide his snicker in his coffee cup but, judging by the dirty looks thrown his way, didn't succeed. They shouldn't be able to work so well together, being as different as they were. A Thinker. A Grifter. A Hitter. A Hacker. A Thief. And yet they did. Because they could trust each other. And in some ways, they'd become more than thieves and colleagues. They were friends. They were family. A highly dysfunctional family but it worked for them. It worked for him.