Author's note: all the usual disclaimers about not owning the Leverage characters/concept and not making any money from this apply.

See? A real second chapter. Happy reading!


Nothing looked out of place when they stepped into the suite. Granted, they hadn't really used the living room or kitchen up to this point, but the things they had put there all looked like they were where they had left them. Parker put the food they had brought back for Eliot down in the kitchen.

"Eliot?" Hardison called. "You here?"

The door to his room was closed. Parker knocked, and waited. No answer.

"Eliot, I'm coming in," she warned, pushing the door open slowly.

And, yeah. Here was the wreckage.

The floor next to the bed was littered with the detritus of medical aid: a half empty bottle of disinfectant; used rubber gloves, gauze, and sponges; torn wrapping and boxes from various supplies. No effort seemed to have been made to either contain or dispose of the waste. In its midst stood a waste basket from which the acrid smell of fresh vomit rose sharply. Half the bed still contained the remaining supplies that Eliot had stacked there, although the stacks had largely disintegrated into a patchy jumble. Eliot was on the other half, bed clothes and the blood-stained towels and robe from earlier rucked up under and around him.

He was on his side, head pillowed on one arm and pointed towards the foot of the bed, and his back was to the door. Not a position Eliot would have chosen, Hardison noted. The bullet wounds he could see from the doorway had been stitched but not bandaged, and an IV line ran from a bag of saline to a cannula that had been inserted – but not taped in place – in his left hand. Hardison swallowed down bile, trying not to imagine the sensation of the needle shifting inside his vein. And, damn!, if that was Eliot's left hand, that meant the arm stretched up under his head was the right...that had to hurt.

Anger joined the slow roil of nausea in Hardison's gut, getting his feet moving again to follow Parker into the room. She was crouched beside the bed, talking quietly to Eliot. She didn't seem to be getting much in the way of a response, but as Hardison dropped down next to her, pain-hazed blue eyes found his and focused. Up close, Hardison could see that not all the vomit had made it into the waste basket; there were streaks on Eliot's chin and chest, and on the towel his upper body was lying on.

"Damn, Eliot," Hardison said, his hand reaching out to comb through the sweat-soaked roots of his friend's hair. "What the hell did that woman do to you?"

Eliot just gave a small shake of his head.

"Okay," Hardison backed off. "Explanations can wait. Let's get you cleaned up and comfortable first."

Eliot moistened dry lips.

"Need to tape my hand," he said.

"Yeah," Hardison agreed, suppressing a shudder as shifting needles again intruded on his thoughts.

Parker was already moving to pick up the medical tape. She tore off a few strips and fixed the cannula and tubing securely in place on Eliot's arm.

"Pain pills?" Parker suggested.

"Yeah," he agreed.

"Where?" she asked.

"Between the couch cushions," Eliot told her.

"What?!" Hardison exclaimed. Parker had already disappeared through the door. "Why?"

"She would have taken them," Eliot said.

Hardison frowned. There would definitely be explanations later, because there weren't many scenarios he could think of that started with owing someone a favour and ended with leaving them lying in their own vomit and stealing their pain pills.

"How many?" Parker was back.

Eliot hesitated. Percocet always knocked him out harder than he liked, but he had already pushed past the pain limits it made any sense to endure. And he really didn't want to throw up a third time.

"Two," he said reluctantly.

Parker shook out the pills and placed them in his left hand, then picked up a glass of water from the floor beside her. Eliot slipped the pills between his lips and took the glass. She had only poured a swallow or two of water – enough for him to get the pills down easily, not so much it would spill everywhere when drinking from an awkward position.

"Thanks," he said, handing the glass back.

Parker nodded.

"Tell us when they kick in."

She stepped away. Eliot heard her take the glass back to the kitchen, then return and start cleaning up the mess next to the bed. Hardison was still crouched beside him, one hand resting in Eliot's hair. Part of him wanted to object, or pull away, but it was a sensation unlinked with pain, intended to soothe rather than hurt, and that was...nice.


Parker passed by on the way to the bathroom, waste basket in one hand and a collection of dirty towels over the other arm.

"Alec, can you clear all that stuff off the bed?" she asked.

Hardison ran his thumb over Eliot's forehead one more time, then stood.

"Sure," he said. "Where do you want it?"

"Just dump it in the dresser or something for now," Parker called from the bathroom.

Eliot heard water running, first swishing sounds as she cleaned out the waste basket, then the steady sound of the tub filling up.

"Cold water," Eliot said.

"What?" Hardison asked, pausing in the process of relocating all the items scattered across the bed to the dresser drawers.

Eliot was starting to drift. He could feel the medication lifting him above the waves of pain. He pictured it as a surfboard he could ride to shore, and felt a goofy grin start to twitch at the corners of his mouth. He struggled to find a more coherent thought for Hardison.

"Gets the blood out better," he said. "Tell her."

"Oh," Hardison replied.

Eliot didn't pay much attention after that, just letting the surfboard carry him for a while. He was brought abruptly back to ground by Parker poking him.

"Ow," he said, but without any real conviction. She hadn't picked any of his more painful body parts.

"You were supposed to tell us when the pain pills started working," she reminded him.

"Oh," he said. He thought about the surfboard again. Maybe the second Percocet had been unnecessary. "They're working."

"Time to move, then," she said.

"Okay."

He tried to help, but his brain wasn't processing things very well just then, and Parker's idea of directions generally required a fair amount of interpretation. Hardison took hold of the IV bag, trying to keep the line from tangling round everything.

"Just stop, Eliot," Parker said in exasperation after the first couple of tries. "Let us do this first part."

She sounded like she was about three steps away from bursting into tears, and the surprise at hearing that note in her voice ground Eliot to a halt. He turned his head to look at her, and she used that movement to roll him onto his back.

"Parker?" he asked, but she just shook her head.

"This is going to hurt," she warned him. She straddled his chest to reach his right arm, guiding it down to rest by his side. A wordless cry slipped between his lips before he reminded himself to breathe through it, and he clenched his jaw against the string of obscenities washing around his back teeth. Maybe the second Percocet hadn't been overkill after all.

"Okay?" Parker asked, when his breathing settled back down.

Eliot nodded, and she moved to lift his legs off the bed, setting his feet on the floor. Getting the idea, Eliot rolled further to his left and then used that arm to push himself into a sitting position.

The room rocked around him.

"Whoa," he said, catching himself against the bed with his left hand.

Parker patted his leg sympathetically.

"Wibbly-wobbly," she said. "I know."

"Yeah."

A warm washcloth seemed to appear from nowhere, efficiently wiping the vestiges of vomit and sweat from his face and chest and arms. He was vaguely surprised to find Parker the one wielding it. It seemed more like something Sophie or Nate would do. She wouldn't meet his eyes, though, and he couldn't tell whether she was uncomfortable doing it or if she thought he was uncomfortable having it done.

"Use Hardison to stand up," Parker instructed, picking up the last towel from the bed and taking it and the washcloth through to the bathroom.

Eliot reached for Hardison's shoulder. He had done this several times earlier in the day, but the wibbly-wobbly painkillers were making coordination as well as coherent thought very hard. They managed it between them, however.

"No more Percocet," Eliot muttered, as Parker slipped back around them. He watched hazily as she checked to make sure the bed clothes were clean, then straightened and folded them back.

"Okay," Hardison agreed, helping him sit back down.

Parker stopped him before he could lie back against the pillows.

"We need to at least get those covered," she said, gesturing between the stitched wounds on his shoulder and thigh.

Hardison handed her the IV bag and fetched the gauze pads, medical tape, and bandages from the drawer he had tipped them into just minutes before. Parker made quick work of taping pads over each of the four wounds and re-wrapping his thigh. The shoulder gave her more pause, and she revised her earlier mental criticism of the job the paramedic had done: there just wasn't a good way to get the bandages to stay where they needed to be. She frowned at her handiwork.

"That feel okay?" she asked Eliot.

He snorted, then yawned.

"Nothing feels like much of anything right now," he admitted. "Ask me again in a couple of hours."

"I will," Parker nodded, then nudged Eliot to lie back. This presented a slight problem for the IV. The only thing Hardison could see to hang it from was the bedside lamp, but with Eliot facing the right way on the bed, the lamp was on the wrong side, and either his arm or the IV line would have to lie across his body to make that work. They could try moving him to the other side of the bed, but it looked like Eliot was already riding the medicated waves of sleep, and probably wouldn't be much help.

"Give it to me," Parker told him. She was standing in the middle of the bed, a coat hanger in one hand. Wordlessly, he handed it to her it to her and she slid the hook through the hanging tab at the top of the bag, then hooked it onto the frame of the painting hanging over the bed.

"Huh," Hardison and Eliot said together, and Parker gave a small, tight-lipped smile. She liked surprising them. She stepped lightly off the bed.

"Thanks," Eliot said drowsily. "I owe you both one."

Hardison felt the anger that had been vibrating through Parker since they stepped into the room ramp up to a new frequency.

"No," she said emphatically, "you don't. I'm tired of people owing people things, and trading favours for favours. You'd do it for us, and we'll do it for you again if we need to, because we take care of each other. Let's just leave it at that."

Both men stared in startled silence at her outburst.

"I'm going to take out the trash," she said, wanting to escape the scrutiny.

"Parker."

It was Eliot's voice but Hardison's hand that stopped her. She could have shaken it off, but she let them.

"Why would she leave you like that?" she rounded on Eliot, tears welling in her eyes. "She obviously hurt you while she was here, and the way she left you was designed to cause more pain, whether you stayed still or tried to get up...If that's what owing favours means, I don't want any of them between us."

Eliot sighed. Explaining this to Parker and Hardison was going to be like trying to get Sophie to understand about MMA fighting. Doing it on drugs was going to make it especially fun.

"She'll have done a good job on the stitches," he said. "And she checked all my vitals and left me with the IV to counteract the blood loss... The rest...it's only pain. Sucks in the short term, but no lasting damage."

"I don't care," Parker said. "I don't want what keeps the team working to be anything like what brought her here tonight."

Hardison twitched a little beside her.

"It's not," Eliot said, trying not to let his words slur. That didn't really explain anything, though, and it didn't look like Parker was willing to take blanket reassurances. He sighed again.

"She's not an old teammate, Parker," he said. "It's...complicated."

"Complicated how?" Hardison asked.

"Years ago, she and her husband had information I needed," Eliot said.

"You...?" Hardison made a vague gesture that nonetheless conveyed what he meant quite clearly.

"Just him," Eliot replied. But that sounded like an excuse, or a justification, or something. So he added, "In front of her...And when the people who had what I was after figured out he'd been the one to talk, they killed him."

"How does that translate into her owing you a favour?" Hardison asked, confused.

"I was also the one who saved her son when everything went FUBAR," Eliot said, reluctantly. "You ever owed someone you have good reason to hate something like that?"

It was a rhetorical question, but both Hardison and Parker shook their heads.

"It's not a good feeling," Eliot said, eyes drifting closed again. "So if she took the opportunity to inflict a little pain of her own tonight, I get it."

"It's still wrong," Parker protested.

Eliot gave a one-shouldered shrug.

"I can take the punishment," he said. "And she knows that...Only idiots dish out more pain than they can handle themselves."

Hardison and Parker were silent, not entirely convinced that the grey-faced, semi-conscious, sweat- and vomit-covered mess they had found Eliot in really counted as 'handling' the pain.

"What did she do?" Hardison asked, eventually.

Eliot was three-quarters asleep.

"Eighty-six stitches without anaesthetic," he slurred.

"I-I'm going to take the trash out," Parker said again, shakily, picking up the bag of waste she had gathered earlier.

Hardison lingered a moment longer after she left the room.

"I'll be back in a minute," he said, in case the other man was still awake. "I'm just going to make sure Parker's okay...And not about to set off on some kind of revenge mission," he added under his breath.