This one is a bit longer that the other, but I wanted to make some points clear.
Of course, I know nothing about military so that basically came from my mind. I want to excuse myself for the mistakes that you'll probably find.
Thanks for reading!
Sophie sneaked out of the cave and headed outside, smiling when he saw Eliot sat down at the pavement.
"Hey. You okay?" She asked, sitting down next to him.
"Yeah." He replied.
"C'mon Eliot, I can tell something is going on and I want to help you out with it if I can." The British said, placing a hand in his arm.
Eliot let out a breath, knowing that he could trust Sophie in matters like that. "Are you… angry?"
"For what? Because you didn't invite us at your house?" She didn't get an answer, but she knew the hitter enough to understand his very special body language. "Look, Eliot, I told you before, you don't have to tell us anything. I understand that you don't want us sneaking into your private life and I totally respect that. It took me more than one year to tell you my real name. You don't want us to invade your personal space, that's fine with me. And with Nate too, but you should talk with Hardison and Parker. To Hardison you are his best friend and for Parker… you are like a big brother."
"I know that." He sighed and rubbed his eyes. "I never meant to hurt you, I's just that Quinn knows things."
"Things? Like what?"
"Like what it is to be a hitter, for a starter. He knows how to joke around with things that will scare you for life, he knows some things that I've done that not even Hardison could find."
"Do you trust him?" She asked softly.
"Quinn? Yeah."
"He tried to kill you." The grifted pointed.
"It was a job, Sophie. He was paid to do a job and he had to do it, even if he didn't success. Do you know how many people I was target to murder have haired me back to protect them? A lot." He chuckled before he tucked his hair behind his ears. "Want me to tell you how Damien hired me in the first place?"
"Damien?"
"Moreau." He always forgot not to call his old boss for his first name when he was around the others and she nodded. "I killed his grand-father. Jacques Moreau was the head of a criminal organisation in France and I was hired to kill him. Not a big deal if it wasn't for the fifteen bodyguards who were always with him. I succeed on my mission: I killed Jacques Moreau plus his guards. And, one day I hear his grandson is looking for me."
"What did you do?" Devereaux asked, startled that Eliot is telling her all of this. Something from his past.
"Snuck into is house, into his dinning room and waited for him after knocking his men." He shrugged. "We got a deal and then I became the best man he ever got."
"So you killed his grandfather and he hired you to protect him?"
"Yeah. This is how our world works, Sophie. None of your rules applies to us. We have our own code."
"Did ever occurred to him that you could turn against him?"
"I don't think so. Among all the things I'm known for, one of them is being loyal. And with a good sum of money…
"Yeah, I got it." She smiled and patted his shoulder when she heard steps approaching.
Sophie nodded at Quinn who nodded back before standing next to Eliot, visibly uncomfortable.
"Did I mess up?" The blond asked after a few minutes of silence.
"What?"
"Did I mess up?" He repeated.
"No. No. It's my fault, you didn't do anything wrong." The southerner calmed him and patted the spot next to him. "Are you still going to stay at my house?"
"Only if you want me to."
"Sure. I like having someone to whom I can talk without scaring him off." Spender said, smiling at him.
"Yeah. I like that too." They sat down. "Why haven't you invited them?"
"Don't need them asking and/or going through my files." He said and smiled up at him.
After a few minutes, they stepped inside the cave and Eliot went to Parker and Hardison. "Can we talk?" He asked them.
"Do you want to talk?" Hardison countered, folding his arms, making clear that he was angry with him.
"Would I be here if I didn't?" The hitter replied harshly and then sighed. "Look, guys I'm sorry. I truly am." He was uncomfortable doing that, he wasn't known to apologise and it had been really long since the last time he had done to someone he really cared about. "But I need my space. In need to have something that you can't steal and you can't hack and that's my house." He said pointing at each one respectively.
And they could tell that Eliot really did mean it, that he was sorry for not having considered their feelings.
"But why did you let him in? He tried to kill you." The hacker said, frowning.
"Because I know you two. You would start asking questions. Questions I couldn't reply. You two have never seen what I've seen. No one in this room has ever seen or done things like the ones I have. Not even Quinn. And I intend to keep it that way. So please, don't ask me to bring you to my house because some things that you could find there would scare you for life." The hitter said, voice calm and low.
"You still haven't answered my question." Hardison said. Parker was just listening, without interrupting, strange thing on her.
"Do you respect him?" Eliot asked as he pointed Chaos.
"Him? No! Why would I?"
"That's the biggest difference between our worlds: you hackers don't respect each other. We do. We both know that if he tried to kill me is because he was hired to, otherwise he wouldn't have done it. This is how we live. Professionalism, respect and punches." He said chuckling and the black male chuckled along with him. "We good?"
"Yeah." Hardison smiled and briefly hugged him before Eliot shoved him off.
"Parker?" The hitter said, looking at the blond girl.
"What? I was never mad at you." She said and went to Archie.
"She definitely is one of a kind." Eliot said as he walked away, shaking his head, and sat down next to Quinn.
"Everything alright?" The blond asked, taking his eyes off his gun to look to the bright blue eyes.
"Yeah. Nice gun you got there." He said.
"Thanks. Heard you don't like guns." Quinn replied.
"And I don't. I can use them but I prefer hand to hand." He said taking it from the other hitter's hand. "I've done terrible things with one of those, you know? Killed so many people that shouldn't have died."
Michael nodded: he knew what Eliot meant, in their job, it didn't matter if the target was a good guy or a bad guy, the job had to be done and that was final. If not, you were the one ending dead.
"Guys. Let's get to it."
The mission had been a complete success: Dubenich and Latimer where gone, they had stolen their money and Nate's dad was avenged.
Eliot should be happy because of this, but he wasn't looking forward for one thing in particular: saying good-bye to Quinn.
The blond was packing everything up when he stepped in. "Got a minute?" He said and Quinn spun around, nodding. "I was thinking… would you like two stay over a couple of days? You haven't really seen the city and I thought we could do some tourism."
And Quinn nodded, a grin creeping up his face. "I would love that." He replied, stopping to pack his things up.
"Great. Besides, I think I told you I would cook dinner for you if you didn't kill Chaos."
"That you did. What are you gonna make?" He asked, unpacking his things again.
"Surprise." Eliot said and then went to the kitchen, quickly followed by the younger man. "Take a sit."
Michael did so and couldn't be more surprise for what he saw for the next two hours: Spencer moved around the kitchen like he belonged into the cooking business. The way he used the knives, how he picked the ingredients up, how he measured everything… He found himself completely relaxed observing the smaller man move around the kitchen.
"You okay?" Eliot said after a few minutes of silence.
"Yeah. I just like watching you cooking. You don't seem Eliot Spencer right now." He teased and Eliot chuckled.
"Cooking saved my life. I was about to lose it and then Toby helped me, he taught me everything I know." He smiled melancholically and wiped his hand in the rag on his shoulder. "Come here." Not even bothering to ask, Quinn did as told and went next to Eliot, who handed him a knife, position himself behind the blond and took his hands.
"W-what are you doing?" He stuttered, suddenly nervous.
"Teaching you how to use a knife… without killing anyone." He said and then started to move his hands, forcing Quinn's to move too.
The movements were precise and fluid and, after a few minutes, Eliot let go his hands and let Quinn do it in his own but Spencer didn't step back, he kept his chest pressed against the blonde's back.
"You are good." Eliot praised and Quinn felt a warm and fuzzy feeling filling him from the inside, he didn't know what it was, and it felt weird, but he liked it. A lot.
Neither of them seemed to realise that Eliot had his hands in his hips and his chin on his shoulder, telling him what to do. After another half an hour they were sitting around the table and eating.
"God. You are really good at this." Quinn said, startled: he didn't really thing it could be this good.
"Told you." He smiled smugly. "So, how was the experience of working on a team like mine?" He asked.
"Well, it was a new experience, that's for sure. Although I don't know how you put up with people like Hardison or Chaos." He said.
"He is not that bad. A geek, yes. A good friend, too." He replied, smirking.
"You care for them." The blond male said. It wasn't a question.
And Eliot nodded without hesitation. "They have become my family. A really weird one but… A family nonetheless."
"Was it difficult?" Quinn asked.
"What?"
"Working in a team for so long." He said. He knew Eliot had done jobs with other guys, hitters, but if the rumours were true, Eliot didn't usually cared for them since he more than once had abandoned them, did the job without them, and, in the worst scenario, killed them.
"Yes. At the beginning I couldn't understand why was I doing it. But then I saw that we were fucking amazing at what we did and I decided to stay. Besides, like I told you, I still freelance. After a big con, like this one, when we know we are being searched all over the states, we split up and reunite after a few months."
"Oh yeah. Nate mentioned something that you guys were going to be on your own for about six months." Michael said.
"Well, not exactly. Nate and Sophie probably are going to stay together most of the time. Hardison probably will man up and ask Parker out."
"And you?" Somehow, for some reason, Quinn wanted to know if Eliot was going to stay with some girl.
"I'll head out to Iran. Some guys need my help for some black ops." He explained.
"I thought you no longer were in the military."
"And I'm not. But sometimes they need people who know how to deal with stuff that the younger ones can't. When this happens, they call me. I've done some work in Pakistan with them too."
"Doesn't the White House interfere?"
Eliot chuckled and stood up, going to the shelves filled with folders and took a couple of them and then handed them to the younger male. "The U.S government doesn't know I'm hired to do some of the risky jobs. They don't know that some of their money goes to my account."
"You are not under surveillance?" He asked surprised.
"I've never done anything that could have put my country in danger, so no, I'm not. Although I know for a fact that the FBI, CIA, NSA, Interpol, Mossad, MI6, the North-Korean Secret Intelligent Agency and some other have a very thick and long files about me. Also in some other countries like Myanmar, Colombia and Croatia."
"What did you do in Pakistan?"
"Can't tell you. Classified information. Or as it Hardison refers to it 'Hinky stuff.'"
Quinn nodded, not pushing the subject, knowing that Spencer wouldn't tell him and started to read the papers in the folder that Eliot gave him. "You killed Al 'Qaeda's boss?"
"Yeah. Crawled three fucking miles." He grumbled.
"I thought that was done by a Black Ops team or something like that."
"No. Partially. I was sent by one General there because I'm the most qualified man that this one General knows. The team was sent to make it look real. I did my job, earned a really good sum of money and no one ever talked about that. The team was threatened with treason and being judged by War Crime if they ever said that they didn't do it." He explained.
"Would have you and this general in problems if they did?"
"Probably. We were acting behind the President's back. But they never saw me, so no one would have ever them." The man with brown hair said, shrugging. "Besides, I doubt that they would have done something to me. I've god friends in the top, Quinn. People who knows a lot of things that I've done… and yet, I'm still here. A free man."
Quinn kept reading the files while Eliot did the dishes and some coffee.
"Eliot."
"Yes?"
"According to this file, you deserted. According to this one, you didn't. This one says you are paraplegic."
"That's why no one knows a lot of things about my past. Everything is messed up. Not that I'm complaining, I can do what I want."
"What did you do? Did you walked away or not?"
