Caring takes Courage (4/?)

Fandom – Leverage

Rating – pg13

Pairing – Gen

Warnings – typical violence

Disclaimer – I do not own anything but the copy right to this story.

Summary – Nate hates getting shot, because then the rest of the team become protective and he can't get any peace.

A/N - Sorry that this has taken me so long. I've been trying to figure out the plot and what to do next and stuff. I don't think anyone will be disappointed. There will be more Nate Torture in the future. Not much. No worries. Anyway, thanks for reading.

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Part 4

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Rebecca sat in the hot tub and gazed at the flower garden. She and Macey shared the Mansion that sit outside of Boston and which is easily an hour's commute to their offices. Neither of them cared, it was big enough for the both of them and sat in a quiet neighborhood. They had a huge yard, which partially went to Rebecca's rose garden. She'd ensconced the hot tub so well that no one would know it was there unless she or Macey revealed it's location.

It is very private.

Which is good because one only plans a murder in private. Rebecca had the jets going and she sipped at a Vodka Martini. There was also a glass of ice water at her elbow. She scrunched her brows and watched the water rove over her body.

Killing isn't the sort of thing she'd gravitate towards naturally, that is more Macey's thing. Macey is a moron though, so Rebecca doesn't think her plans will come to any sort of fruition. Which means that Rebecca not only has to clean up after Macey but have contingency plans involved as well.

The problem with taking Ford, alive or dead, is that his team is rather protective of him. Well, to be fair they are protective of each other. Ford went to jail for them, he destroyed evidence for them. He not only saved his reputation as a Mastermind by going to the clink for them, but they respected him more for it, not that they'd admit it.

Rebecca snorted at herself; she could only make suppositions on the team's feelings toward Ford. But everything she'd been able to dig up on them led her to believe that they thought very highly of Ford despite his rather stupid honest streak making an appearance every once in a while.

Still, she liked the idea. It was noble.

They would do anything for Ford; and that is their weakness. She nodded and sipped at her drink, she would have to take the whole team down to make sure they didn't destroy her. She didn't care what happened to Macey. If she happened to get in the way, well, that was problem.

Rebecca turned her thoughts over to how she'd get rid of each team member, individually would work best. She decided.

And boy did she have ideas for all of them.

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"Are we seriously going to do this while Nate is hurt?" Eliot asked as he sat down at the "desk" area before the wall of screens. Parker and Sophie had joined him and Alec and now they were waiting for the run down.

"Life doesn't stop just because one of us gets hurt." Alec rolled his eyes. He took the remote and flicked a button.

"Macey McCormick and her sister Rebecca run a multi-national, fortune 500 company. Basically it's all gimmicks to get people to waste their money with promises that never work out in the end; mostly stuff for stay at home moms and what have you. They promise that their techniques will make people lots of money, minus taxes, and then they want you to buy in. Then you buy a manual. Then you go to a convention at a hotel. It's just a bunch of busy work." Alec switched the screens to show the goons Eliot had reported on.

"These two are Stefans and Vilis. They're from Latvia. They shouldn't have been caught off guard so easily yesterday, at least, according to what I dug up on them." Alec said, impressed as always with his own talents.

Eliot rolled his eyes; "They're ex-Israeli soldiers; they're also assassins; if the McCormick's hired them than they're intent on getting the job done. A little heat from the police isn't going to stop them. It's just going to make them more cautions."

"Thank you for the interruption," Alec glared. Eliot glared back.

"But what are they after?" Sophie put out, distracting the two boys from their stair down contest. "Why did the McCormick's send them here?"

There is a pregnant silence with Parker and Alec looking very guilty; they felt like they got caught red handed with their hands in the open safe.

"What did you do?" Eliot deadpanned, sounding more like a perturbed father than the Hitter he actually is. He glared at them both. Parker wilted a bit while Alec cringed. There is a beat of silence as the two exchange looks and communicate nonverbally. Sophie and Eliot simply wait for them to get their act together and tell them why they deserved to be grounded.

"We kinda took something from them…" Parker said, hiding behind Alec because now Sophie had turned on her. They both looked murderous.

"Well." Alec coughed, "I got an e-mail from a potential client, you guys were busy so Parker and I met her. We needed access to the mainframe and so I went in and planted a device and got some files. It's no big deal." Alec tried to sugar coat it.

"It is now, they probably found you on their video cameras, or did you erase those after you left?" Eliot snarled.

"Ahhh…" Parker and Alec looked at each other, and then back at Sophie and Eliot.

"You forgot, didn't you?" Sophie asked but she didn't need an answered. She face palmed while Parker and Alec made faces and Eliot tried not to break something.

"They found out, and now they sent someone to….what spy on us? Kill you?" Sophie muttered. She turned away and started pacing the office. She steepled her hands while she thought.

"It's not entirely ruined." She kept saying, trying to come up with a sort of plan. She wasn't the gifted Mastermind Nate is, but she'd come up with plans to steal various things for years. It wasn't like she didn't know what she is doing.

"We can't tell Nate," Parker said. "He'll get worried, he'll want to do something, and he can't."

Sophie turned, vexed, back to Parker; "Of course not!" she agreed. "He'd try to get out of bed and to do the con from a Wheelchair."

"We'll have to take care of it ourselves, no thanks to him!" Eliot pointed at Alec.

"Hey! I thought it'd be easy, just get the information of their scam and put it online; send some porn mags, I didn't think they were petty enough to send ex-whatever's after us!"

"Sssshhhhh!" Sophie waved her hands.

Above they could hear Nate's bed squeaking as he wiggled around.

"Fuck." Eliot cursed. He hurried up the stairs, two at a time to stop Nate from getting out of bed.

Sophie sighed. "This is going to be very fun."

And then she grabbed her purse and jacket and left. Parker and Alec looked around guiltily and then found useful things to do so as to try and stay on Eliot's good side.

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Nate wasn't sure who was yelling, but it sounded as if someone was going to get their ass beat by Eliot. Not the girls, of course, but Hardison sometimes didn't know when he probably shouldn't push Eliot's buttons and when Eliot was just playing around with him. Either way, the room was far too hot. The sheets were twisted about his legs and he needed to pee. Badly.

That is his motivation to get up, not to go see who was shouting or why. They probably forgot in the heat of the moment that he was upstairs sleeping. He couldn't blame them; really, it'd be stressful on anyone to have to be quiet all the time while someone was convalescing.

Nate kicked at the sheets; they landed on the end of the bed. He tried to sit up, but his head felt woozy and he had to lay back down because he didn't want to stumble into furniture on his way to the bath room.

It then that he hears heavy footsteps on the stairs and Eliot is at his side in seconds. Nate peers up at the younger man, Eliot runs a hand through his hair and grabs a hair band from the side table to pull his hair into a pony tail at the nape of his neck.

"What's wrong?" he asked, looking for signs of blood or other things. Nate blinked for a moment while he registered the question.

"I just need to piss." Nate said after long last.

"Okay," Eliot nodded. It took them a few minutes to get Nate up and to the bathroom. He wobbled from the combined effects of his sickness and injured leg but they got there. Eliot left him alone with the door slightly closed so that Nate could have a bit of privacy. Eliot didn't want Nate to feel awkward because he was seeing him naked for medical reasons and Nate didn't want Eliot to feel awkward in helping him when it came to normal bodily functions.

Their combined feelings of trying not to be awkward made them both aware of the other even more and the awkwardness grew a bit, even though Eliot was on the other side of the door, watch Nate with the help of the mirror's reflection.

Nate tried to ignore Eliot's presence as he did his business. Using the counter as leverage. Then he washed his hands and Eliot helped him back to bed.

"That was an adventure." Nate muttered.

"Yeah, stay awake to eat something okay?" and then he was gone. Nate rubbed the sleep from his eyes. The medications were wearing off. The one Mimms had given him did help with the nausea. He wasn't throwing up or becoming as miserable with the pain meds now that he had the nausea medication. He also didn't feel like he had to sleep for a hundred years.

He sat up against the head bored and reached for the TV remote. Nate turned it to the History Channel and wondered what Eliot was going to make him.

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"It has to be done to night." Parker insisted.

"Woman, there's a bunch of security at night and we're three members down, remember it's just us." Alec gave Parker an incredulous stare. She returned it with an added pout and crossed arms over her chest.

"What are you two doing? I thought we told you not to take a job while Nate is down." Eliot glared as he went into the kitchen and started to pull out pots and dishes. He hadn't been able to make anything home made, but there were canned soups and for now those will have to do.

"We aren't." Parker and Alec said together, lied more like. Eliot rolled his eyes.

"Look, we've gotten out of the habit of doing things alone, you'll just gonna botch it up and get yourselves hurt and I won't be there to help you."

"We're not going to do anything stupid." Alec said with as much forced confidence as he could muster. "We're just gonna waltz in, and place some bugs and then waltz out."

"Bugs? Where?"

"The McCormick's office. They don't come in on Fridays so it'd be the best time," Alec replied.

"No, night is the best time. Their air ducts are awesome!" Parker insisted.

They launched into another argument and Eliot felt like kicking them both out of the apartment. Eliot put the soup on the stove to warm while he prepared a sandwich; he decided to go simple. Comfort food that everyone grew up with while sick is soup and peanut butt and jelly sandwich. Thanks to Hardison liking to be nosy, Eliot knew that Nate's mother used to make him tomato soup with a pg&j. Eliot frowned as he turned the other two out. He didn't have the best relationship with his own dad, but from what Nate said about his and how he acted the one time they had met him, it didn't seem like the man would do something like this for Nate as a kid.

Eliot didn't mind picking up the slack for their Mastermind when it came to things like this. Nate gave him something he hadn't known he needed and Eliot wasn't going to ruin it, or let other ruin it for him.

"How about you come?" Parker was at the bar watching him cook Nate's food. Eliot put a large gob of creamy peanut butter onto home made bread. Bread he'd been able to make a few days before Nate got shot.

"What? No!" Eliot glowered, "and you shouldn't go either."

"We have to find out what the McCormick's were doing sending two known assassins after us." Alec said from the couch. He guzzled down orange soda and Parker didn't even try to steal the finished sandwich when Eliot turned to the stove to stir the soup and add some salt and pepper to it.

"I can't leave Nate alone." Eliot replied.

"Nate will be fine, he sleeps like the dead when he has his pills." Alec reasons.

Eliot growled again but didn't go against that logic.

"And besides, we need you, it'll be for a couple of hours," Parker put in. She battered her eyes and tried to pout. Sophie was still helping her with those acting skills. Still, over the months she had gotten much better.

"All right, when?" Eliot replied. Seriously, he couldn't let the two youngest members go off and do something stupid. They'd die, or worse, get caught.

"Tonight."

That made Eliot stop, close his eyes, and count to ten. When he felt like he wouldn't hit something – mainly Hardison – he opened his mouth and said; "Tonight?"

"Yeah." Parker nodded.

Eliot couldn't help but feel this was the most stupidest thing they'd ever pulled him into.

"I'll call Sophie to get her to come back. Nate will have to know, just in case." Eliot replied. Parker and Alec just looked at each other before both started pouting and giving him puppy dog eyes.

"No way, he's sick. We shouldn't stress him out. Besides, all Parker is gonna do is go in and get the info off the computers." Alec explained.

"Didn't you do that all ready?" Eliot asked.

"Yeah, but the main boss lady's is on a different, internal, hard drive. It's not connected to the main Ethernet connection."

"How does that even…." Eliot sighed at himself for even starting to ask a stupid question.

"Look man, it just does."

"Anyway if she accidentally sets off an alarm we'll need you to make a distraction so she can get out. It's simple. Seriously. Ten minutes tops." Alec put the simulation on the wall of screens and Eliot watched it through once.

"And I have to place the bugs too." Parker reminded them both. It sounded easy in theory, but they all knew that this could go sideways easily if they were off their count.

He growled and poured the soup into a bowl and then put it on the big plate that held the sandwich. This he put on a tray with a napkin and silverware along with some water.

"Fine."

He took the tray upstairs to Nate and the other two got back to planning.

Against his better judgment; Eliot didn't inform Nate.

TBC