A/N: Here's the second and final chapter of the Two Live Crew Job. This chapter went in a somewhat different direction than I expected. Please read and review. Thank you to all who are reading, following, favoriting, and reviewing. Reviews make my day. I'd love to know what you think.

I don't own Leverage or any of the characters within, except those of my own creation. I write for fun and not for profit. I don't write slash. Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy.

Chapter 10

He put his hand on the knob, then stopped. He debated whether going inside was a good idea. Parker was unpredictable, and that was what made her the most dangerous. Clearly, she didn't want to talk to him right now, but he couldn't leave things between them the way they were. He had to try to make things right between them again. She had just recently started to really trust him, and he couldn't bear the thought that he might have screwed all of that up.

"Parker, I'm coming in. I won't hurt you. I just want to talk to you." With those words, he turned the knob and opened the door just a crack. To his surprise, the bed was empty. He had pictured her lying face down on it, sobbing into a pillow. Curious now, he knelt down next to the bed on the floor and raised the spread to look under the bed. She wasn't under there either. She wasn't on any of the other furniture in the room. He finally found her where she had folded herself up into a tight little ball in the corner of the closet, hugging a small decorative pillow she was resting on her knees. He walked inside and sat down, just far enough away that she couldn't lash out and hit him if she took a notion.

"I'm sorry, Parker. I shouldn't have snapped at you. You scared me, that's all."

"I-I did?" Parker had stopped sobbing and was looking at him. He nodded. "You're not scared of anything. Why would you be scared of me?"

"I wasn't scared of you, Darlin'. I was scared I was going to hurt you." He held her gaze for a moment. "I wouldn't hurt you for anything in the world, Parker. You know that, right?"

"Then why did you yell at me?"

"Because when someone touches me like that, my instinct is to hit the person first and then ask questions, and I almost hit you. Hitters like me, we need that instinct, Parker. It has kept me alive many times. I can't afford to lose it, but I don't want to hit you or Sophie or anyone else on the team." Do you understand?"

"I think so." They fell silent and neither spoke for a while, and then she said, "So, I just need to warn you before I touch you from now on?"

"Yeah. That's all."

"Okay. I can live with that. Let's go see about Nate and Sophie."

He stopped her words with a finger on her lips. "When we get in there," he said, smiling, "will you clean and bandage my hands for me?"

She met his smile with one of her own. "I'd be very glad to do that, Eliot."

"Come on then."

Without a word, she rose and walked with him out of Nate's guest bedroom, down the stairs, and into the treatment room, and if, while they were walking, a tiny hand slipped into a larger one, and if the larger hand squeezed the tiny one gently, well, neither of them chose to comment.

The Two Live Crew Job: Day 2

Nate and Sophie were still stiff and a tad sore, but thanks to Eliot's nursing skills and combined with the hot showers they each took this morning, they were feeling considerably better. So much so, in fact, that they had gotten through the day without major incident, and had staged a funeral, scoped out the museum, stolen their client's artwork back, plus four other identical paintings the man had planned to sell, and they had even managed to have Chaos arrested and save Starke's life.

Now it was Eliot who was feeling the after-effects of the job, pounding away at the boxing bag that stood in a corner of the treatment room just off of Nate's apartment, and thinking. He had found, in Mikel Dayan, a person whose skills were pretty evenly matched with his own. They even seemed to think alike, as she seemed able to anticipate every move he planned to make. Between the steam, their matched skills, and the way she looked as they were sizing up one another, and then later, while they were fighting, he couldn't really believe how much their fight had turned him on. That might have been what allowed her to get in a few more hits than he would normally have allowed, though, if he was honest with himself, he wasn't sure he could have stopped her, even if he hadn't been so turned on by her. He was still feeling the after-effects of that fight, in fact, he was pretty sure she had cracked a couple of his ribs. His head was throbbing and the cut above his eye was stinging, even though it was no longer bleeding. Various muscles and bones in his chest and abdomen ached from the hits he had taken, but he knew the best thing he could do for himself was to work the kinks out of his muscles through a good workout. Finishing up and throwing a clean pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and a button up over his shoulder, he stalked into the bathroom in one corner of Nate's treatment room, wanting a shower before the team met their clients in an hour, so Starke could return the painting he had 'retrieved'. Eliot needed to be ready to protect the team, in case any of the other team decided to try something along the lines of what Chaos had tried. Opening the medicine cabinet, he withdrew the smaller first aid kit he kept there, and rooted around in it until he found an alcohol pad. Opening the pad, he held it to the cut on his forehead, knowing it needed to be disinfected and cleaned.

Turning the water on, he turned the handle over as far toward hot as it would go, and then stripped off his sweaty clothes and slid under the water. He shampooed his hair, working the shampoo into a good lather, then rinsed it and washed himself. All the while, images of Dayan flashed through his mind—her dark, curly hair. Her eyes. The position she placed her fist in to cover herself. Where she put her stilletos. He told himself it was just habit—studying the way other fighters stood and acted was what kept him alive, after all, but in this case, unlike others, he couldn't stop thinking about them—about her. Shaking himself to rid his mind of the images, he reached out and turned the water all the way to cold. The icy liquid took his breath a way for a moment, and he stepped backwards so that he wasn't directly in the stream. When he acclimated somewhat to the water, he stepped forward again, finished rinsing himself, and turned the water off. Stepping out, he toweled his hair dry, bandaged his forehead, wrapped his ribs to keep them stable, dressed quickly, and then tied a bandana around his hair to keep it off his face until it dried.

He stretched, pleased to find that the workout and the shower had done their work, and he was good for several more hours of strenuous activity, if he needed to be.

(0o0)

Later, in the bar, he was seated in a booth across from Dayan, and they were comparing scars. That seemed a fairly safe thing for two hitters to do. He caught a faint fragrance of citrus from her, and when their eyes met, she smiled at him. When she held up the handcuffs, his heart skipped a beat, as he considered the possibilities. Even as he lowered the cuffs, covering her hands with his, he knew this could be an informative night. He didn't miss the faint blush that came to Dayan's cheeks when Hardison said, "Y'all nasty." Then, she looked up to see him watching her, and smiled a sly, seductive smile at him. A smile that told him she knew exactly what he was thinking, that she was thinking the same, and that she wasn't the least bit ashamed to be who she was, which was the same thing he was—two human beings, loners, who loved with all they had, no strings attached because they couldn't afford any.

He smiled back. Yes, this could be a very interesting night, indeed.