AN: And the winner of the Baby Names Contest is...actually two people: whovian42 and l1bra, who gave me this awesome (okay, I think it's cute anyway) idea that I "borrowed" *cough* from Ultrawoman. This, however, sort of takes a back seat to the main part of the story. Thank you guys for all the great name suggestions, though. ("Emmy" Emerald is super-cute, and Troy is very clever, since it is an actual name. Glenn for Glenn-Reider safe? Lol! Jada Ryl: Seriously, Sterling? *shakes head* Shame on you. :D)
This idea comes mostly from FirstBorn, but also from other reviewers who wanted to see something like this. (In other words, sneaky Eliot slipped one past the goalie. *wink-wink* See how this collection is getting to be all about how much Eliot gets around, and how ninja-like his sperm is? Seriously. It wasn't supposed to go like this. It really wasn't.)
Summary: Eliot gets a very important phone call. "Sticky Little Fingers" verse, takes place after "The Most Important Role," "Always an Uncle, Never a Dad," and "The Leverage Family Business."
Son of a Gun!
"What's this little one's name?" Sophie asks, cuddling the newest Hardison baby to her chest.
"That one's Gil, short for Guilder," Hardison says, grinning. He nods at where Gil's twin is currently in the process of stealing her Uncle Eliot's heart. "Baby girl over there is Florin."
"Obsolete Dutch currency?" Sophie comments, and hands Gil over to Uncle Nate. "Very nice."
"Yeah," Parker says tiredly, helping her middle child, Ruby (no longer the youngest of the bunch), up onto the bed to sit with her. She snorts. "Sure. Dutch currency."
Nate smiles at Hardison's "sneaky" reference until Eliot pulls up short.
Hold on a minute... "Dammit, Hardison," the hitter growls. "I thought Parker was bad enough with her money names, but seriously? Princess Bride?"
"Ha!" the hacker cackles, and jabs a finger at Eliot. "I knew it! You a geek. Come on, say it. 'Anybody want a peanut?'"
Eliot scowls at Hardison until Baby Flo makes a little gurgling sound in his arms. The frown immediately melts into a slaphappy smile. "Hey there, honey," he coos at the baby. "It's not your fault your daddy gave you a silly name. You want me to beat him up for you, I'll do it. You only gotta say the word, sweetheart. I'll do it for you, darlin'."
The others - and their children - share looks and roll their eyes. Typical Uncle Eliot, the big softy.
Just then, a phone rings. There's a moment of whose phone is that? before Eliot hands Flo over to her daddy and fishes around in his pocket.
"Ooh," Frankie singsongs, "You're not supposed to have cell phones on in hospital rooms. They interfere with the- "
His sister smacks the back of his head. "We know that, Frankie."
The little boy pouts. "But I thought maybe Uncle Eliot didn't know," he says, rubbing his head. Then, the little lovetap from his sister all but forgotten in the excitement of finally not being the only boy in the family, he climbs up onto the bed with his mother to drop a kiss on his baby brother's forehead.
"Sisters are mean," he tells Gil, "But that's okay because I'll protect you from them. Uncle Eliot says that's my job. We guys have to stick together."
Baby Gil swats his big brother on the nose.
"Ow. Mommy, he has sharp nails."
"Sharp nails are good for climbing, Frankie."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Eliot takes his call in the hallway.
"Yeah."
"Is this Eliot?" a voice asks. A woman, but very faint, very tired.
"Who's askin'?" he replies. He doesn't know this woman.
"Charlene Roberts," the woman says. "You probably don't remember me, but we met about eleven years ago. Almost to the day, actually," she adds nervously.
The memory of a face surfaces in his mind at that name. "I remember you," he says cautiously.
She gives a small laugh. "You probably say that to all the women you sleep with."
"No, I remember you." Charlene does have a point. He makes sure to always remember the names of all the women he...interacts with. "Brown hair, blue eyes, neon green panties, no bra," he tacks on with a smirk. Oh yeah, he remembers her.
She really laughs this time. "Okay, I take it back. You do remember me. That makes this easier, I guess."
Eliot pushes his hair out of his face and puts the pieces together. "You have a kid," he says, "And you're calling to say I'm the father?"
"Unbelievable," Charlene says, "You are absolutely right. Has this happened to you before?"
Oh shit. Oh shit! "No," he finds himself saying, with a calm that he certainly does not feel. Oh shitshitshit! "Are you serious?!"
Charlene laughs. "Now that's more like it. Yeah, you have a son."
Eliot sits down on one of the hospital benches and lets out a breath. "A son? He's..." He does the math. "Ten?"
"Yeah," she says softly, "He's ten."
"Why now?" He has to ask. And he's a little...angry? Upset? Why didn't she tell him before? "Why are you calling now and not ten years ago? Are you sure he's mine?"
The woman on the other end of the line takes a deep, shuddering breath. "Yes, I'm sure he's yours. We can have a test done if you want, but...I'm sure. I'm calling you now because I'm dying. And there's no one else. I have no family, except for Michael. He's all I have."
Michael. His son. "Where are you?"
"San Francisco."
"Okay," he stands, and makes up his mind. "I'm coming."
"Thank you," Charlene says.
He clears his throat. "How long do you have?"
Her answer is quiet, as if she has become resigned to the fact that she is going to die. "Five months ago, they gave me three to six months to live. Please don't ask me why I didn't call sooner. I don't really know myself."
"It's okay," he tells her softly. "I know now. Does Michael?"
"I told him that he has a dad out there," she says, "but I didn't know if- "
"If I would come?" he finishes. "I'll be there on the next flight out."
"Thank you, Eliot."
"Thank you for calling, Charlene."
He hangs up, and stares at the wall in front of him in pure shock and disbelief. Holy shit. Holy frickin' SHIT! Holy- How in the hell-?! Holy fu- Shitshitshitshitshit! Shit!
When he has recovered from his minor nervous breakdown, he turns around and walks stiffly back into Parker's hospital room to tell everyone about the other new addition to the family.
Sheeee-it.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
He calls Charlene once he gets to San Francisco.
"Hello?" It's not Charlene's voice, but a kid's. Michael. His son. Maybe.
Keep it cool, keep it cool. "Is this Michael?"
"Yeah."
"Is your mom there?"
"Who is this?" Suspicious. Chip off the old block, a treacherous voice in his mind says.
Eliot doesn't know if Charlene has told her son about talking to him yet, so he just replies, "Eliot. Tell her Eliot called."
There's a pause, during which Eliot thinks that maybe, maybe she has told him. "My mom had another emergency. We're at the hospital."
But he just talked to her. "Which hospital?"
The kid tells him. Something about the hesitancy in his voice tells Eliot that he's used to doing things on his own without asking for help, used to taking care of himself, probably since his mother has been ill for so long.
"I'll be there in half an hour." Then, before he can stop himself, he adds, "You gonna be okay on your own 'til then, son?" Son.
"I'm fine. You don't have to come." It's said with none of the uncertainty from before. This kid isn't a kid, won't accept help from anyone, despite his momentary lapse in confidence.
Right. Chip off the old block for sure. "Okay. I'll be there soon, Michael."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
There's a boy sitting by the sick woman's bedside, reading a book, when Eliot arrives at the door of the hospital room. He's a scrawny shrimp of a kid, with a shock of dark blond hair that hangs down in his eyes in an unruly, uncombed mass.
Eliot stands in the doorway and looks. If there was ever any doubt, he doesn't have one now. The kid is a spitting image of him at that age.
Feeling eyes on him, the boy looks up and sees the stranger standing at the door. A myriad of expressions passes over his face before he settles on a scowl. "Are you Eliot?"
"Yeah. You must be Michael."
"Are you my dad?"
Your mom says so is what goes through his mind, but what comes out is "Yes." He won't order the test. He doesn't have to.
He steps into the room and looks down at the gaunt woman in the hospital bed. She looks different (of course, the years, and pain and suffering will do that), but he recognizes her. She's asleep.
"She gonna be okay?" Stupid question, when she'd called him to tell him that she was going to die.
"No," the kid says flatly, "The doctors say it's almost the end." He hasn't yet learned how to completely hide his emotions, so Eliot catches the twitch in his face, the slight quiver in his voice, that say that he is not okay with this, not okay at all, but darn it, he's not going to show it, at least not in front of a stranger (and not in front of his mother, either).
He's a brave kid.
Eliot snags a chair and sits down. "I'm sorry," he says. He doesn't know exactly what he's sorry for - that the kid's mom is dying, that he can't save her, for not being there, for not being enough.
Michael shrugs uncomfortably. Just then, Charlene moans and shifts on the bed. "Mom?" the boy says, shooting up onto his feet and taking his mother's hand. "Mom? Do you need anything?"
The woman opens pain-filled eyes and smiles at her son. For a moment, the hurt goes away and pure love takes its place. She has everything she needs right here. "Hey, honey." Then the pain comes flooding back and she closes her eyes with a sharp breath.
"Mom?" Michael says softly, "Eliot's here."
Charlene frowns groggily and turns her head. Eliot slides into her range of view. "Hi," he says, clearing his throat, "Charlie." The nickname - "My name's Charlene, but you can call me Charlie." - comes to his tongue unbidden. He knows this woman, was intimate with her, long ago.
Morphine-clouded eyes crinkle up at the corners in a radiant smile. "You can stop trying to prove that you remember our one night together," she quips. "I get it."
He chuckles and leans down to kiss her wasted cheek. "You look beautiful when you smile."
"And now I remember why I got into bed with you," she says, flattered, still a woman underneath all the weariness and pain.
Eliot raises an eyebrow and glances at the kid standing beside him.
"He knows," Charlie says softly, "No secrets between us, huh, buddy?"
"No secrets, Mom," Michael agrees, but Eliot can see that there are, like how scared he is that his mother is leaving him, and, Eliot thinks as he looks at the kid's worn clothing and holey shoes, how much he is sacrificing so that his mother won't have to worry as much about money and paying the bills. Looking back at the mother, he sees that she does know and does worry, but that she pretends she doesn't to give her son peace of mind and maybe some semblance of control.
"Well," he says, "I guess I better not have any, either. So you know all about that one night, huh, kid?" He settles back in his chair and crosses one foot over his knee. "Guess that means you know all about your conception. So much for sharing that story."
Michael makes a horrified face. "Ew."
His mother laughs, a full-hearted laugh. "No," she says when she has her breath back, "I didn't go that far into detail. We haven't had the sex talk yet," she says in an audible aside to Eliot, teasing her son.
"Oh," Eliot says, and winks, "So that's my job then. Talk about awkward. I remember the one I had with my dad. I don't know who ended up more embarrassed, me or him. Or the lady who lived next door, who just happened to stop by for a visit with my mama right when he was getting to the good part."
Charlie grins and shakes her head, and even Michael is swayed into giving Eliot a small smile.
The rest of the afternoon is spent telling anecdotes, ridiculous, empty stories, just to keep the sick woman laughing and her son's mind off of her impending death.
"I'll take care of him," he reassures Charlie when Michael gets up to use the restroom, although he is anything but confident in his ability to raise a kid without permanently damaging him. "You don't have to worry about him."
She'd smiled wanly and squeezed his hand. "Thank you. I knew you were a good one when I saw you that first time."
"Somehow, I doubt that this was what you were expecting that night eleven years ago," he says. "God knows I wasn't."
She shakes her head. "No, me neither. But I guess I saw something in you. Something good."
He doesn't know what to say to that.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Charlene Roberts dies the next day in the small hours of the night. She slips away with her son's name on her lips and a smile lighting up her eyes for the last time.
Eliot pretends not to see the quiet tears the boy sheds over his mother's body.
He's on his own now. And he doesn't know what to say, what to do to make it better.
So he takes his son home to his family. They'll know how to help him raise this kid who is too much like him; they've been dealing with him and his shit for years. They'll know how to handle him. Because he certainly doesn't know how to be a dad.
He's a dad. Oh shit.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
AN: There is more...in my head. Again, need to write it out. *drags ball and chain to laptop* Why do I do this to myself? Every year...Oh. I know. Duh. *points to self* Attention-whore.
So this verse started with Uncle Eliot. I needed Eliot to be an uncle and never a dad (like one of the earlier chapters says). That's why it's P/H and N/S. And then a bunch of people told me they wanted a mini-hitter, so...here he is. Because all of a sudden, I wanted to see that, too. I'd like to write at least one more that has Eliot as the dad of a ten-year-old who just lost his mom and is still mourning her, and as a result of that, gets into fights at school, etc. Because he is his father's son, after all. Would you guys read that? Whatever. I'm writing it.
Review Replies to anons (I know, I know, sooo behind, but I'm all caught up now, right? Did I miss anyone? Thanks so much by the way!):
Drjones: I actually found some fanfiction for Rescue 77. There's a crossover with Leverage on LJ called "A Good Man's Heart" by wah-keetcha. And then there's a site that's all about R77 fanfic (about 10-15 of them) that's on angelfire dot com by someone named jojosworld. If I could put links on this site, I would, grr.
Hm, Wick helping Eliot? So basically, Eliot getting hurt and ending up on Wick's ambulance? Hmmmm...
Jess: Eliot will not be the team's hitter in the Kimi-verse simply because he needs to take care of his kid. However, if the team ever needs two hitters for a job, or the new hitter gets injured and can't work, Eliot will work back-up if necessary.