Work Text:
1)
"Hey, Eliot," Hardison said, tapping Eliot on the arm. "There's something I think you should see."
"What?" Eliot asked.
Hardison handed Eliot a tablet, on which a video was paused. Eliot tapped the 'play' icon.
The video was surveillance footage taken in an empty alley. A second later, two figures appeared in the alley, walking away from the camera. Between them, they were holding up and dragging a half unconscious figure: a man wearing a tank top that was partially drenched in blood coming out of what appeared to be a bullet wound.
Midway through the alley, the figure lifted his head as the other two guys shoved him into a van, and that's when Eliot recognized Quinn's distinctive curls.
"Quinn?" Eliot frowned. "What happened to him?"
"As far as I can tell, he took a job for a Salvadorean gun-running gang called La Caravana."
Eliot let out a low whistle.
"Heard of them?"
"Yeah. They're brutal," Eliot said.
"As your friend here seems to be finding out the hard way," Hardison said. "Now, I tracked this van to a property out in East Oakland, but they didn't have any cameras on property. I'm pretty sure they haven't moved him since, though."
Eliot frowned. "So... what does any of this have to do with me?"
"Oh," Hardison said, raising an eyebrow. "I, uh... I thought you might want to know. You know, just in case you wanted to... uh. In case you wanted to know."
Eliot squinted at him for a moment.
"Or not," Hardison said, raising his palms up. "Forget I said anything."
With that, Hardison backed away and left the room, leaving Eliot the tablet on the counter.
Eliot frowned at it for a moment, considering. It was helpful to keep track of what one's professional rivals were up to.
He hadn't been in contact with Quinn since the latter had called that favour in; Quinn had taken out the director of emergency services of Washington D.C. only to turn on the news and realize that the job was part of something larger. Luckily, Eliot had been in town with Parker and Hardison on an unrelated job, and ended up getting roped into helping Quinn stop what turned out to be a bioterrorist attack involving the Spanish Flu, of all things.
It wouldn't hurt to check up on what Quinn was doing these days.
Eliot indulged his professional curiosity just long enough to find out that Quinn had gotten out, destroyed half of La Caravana on his way out, and proceeded to collect a large amount of money from Las Sobrinas. Not that Eliot particularly cared what sorts of jobs Quinn was up to.
*
*
2)
Eliot groaned when he realized that the next job, once again, involved going up against Chaos. He zoned out a little as Hardison explained the technical details of Chaos's plan to commandeer a leading HFT firm's new microwave towers.
"I've also managed to get my hands on the identities of the temp crew he hired for the job," Hardison said, filling the screen with four photos. He briefly described the forger, grifter, and thief that Chaos had hired, but Eliot's attention was immediately drawn by the last picture.
"Isn't that your Mr. Quinn?" Sophie asked giving Eliot a nudge. "Are you going to be okay with this?"
Eliot frowned at her. "Yeah? Why wouldn't I be?"
Sophie raised a single sculpted eyebrow at him.
"What, you think just because I've hired him before, I'm opposed to beating him up?" Eliot said. "We're hitters. We can't refuse to fight someone just because we've worked together professionally before."
"He didn't hire you for that job in D.C.," Sophie pointed out. "When you three helped him stop the bioterrorist plot."
"I owed him a favour," Eliot said with a shrug. "It's repaid now, so we're even."
"If you're sure," Sophie said.
"I'm sure," Eliot said.
*
Just like he had promised, Eliot was fine with fighting Quinn. Of course he was. If anything, it was exhilarating in a way that no fight had been in a long time.
Eliot had noticed when they were fighting Dubenich's guys together that Quinn had gotten stronger and even faster than he was back in that airplane hangar. He hadn't, however, realized quite the extent of it until they were circling each other, trading blows, checking kicks, and evading each others' take-downs.
In the end, Eliot was drenched with sweat and nearly gassed out by the time he finally managed to take Quinn's back and choke him out with a textbook rear-naked choke before the other hitter could manage to squirm away.
It was the most satisfying fight Eliot had had in a while.
*
"Well, it certainly looks like it was fine," Sophie said with a small smirk. "More than fine, if that bounce in your step and that smile is anything to go by."
Eliot quickly covered his smile with a frown. "I'm always smiling after I choke someone out."
"Are you, though?" Sophie asked.
"It was a good fight," Eliot growled. "That's all."
"If you say so."
*
*
3)
"G-d dammit," Riley said when he turned on the light and saw Quinn in his bedroom. "I was worried something like this would happen."
"Not worried enough, clearly," Quinn said.
"Look, the deal with Spencer, it was nothing personal," Riley said. "It was just business, you should know how these things work."
Quinn frowned. He opened his mouth and closed it. "It was just business to hire second tier hitters to try to take down Eliot fucking Spencer when you knew I was on the market?"
Riley stared at him for a moment with a frown. "Are you saying you'd have taken that job?"
"Of course I would have," Quinn said. "Why wouldn't I?"
"You did go out of your way to stop the death squad I hooked the client up with."
"Those guys?" Quinn scoffed. "They were about to embarrass themselves in front of Eliot Spencer. I was doing them a favour, really."
Riley stared at him.
"Anyway, we're getting off track," Quinn said. "Why wouldn't I have taken that job? I've taken out other hitmen before. I've even done it for clients you personally hooked me up with. Besides, Spencer's technically not even a hitman any more."
"Well... I thought you were..." Riley trailed off.
"Scared?" Quinn suggested. "You thought I was too scared to do a hit on Spencer?"
Riley considered that for a moment. Swallowed. "Uh, sure. Let's go with that."
Quinn glared at him. "Well. For your future reference, I'm not."
"Right," Riley said. "I'll, uh... Keep that in mind for next time?"
"See that you do."
*
*
4)
Quinn frowned at the laptop and then at Chaos. "So you think Alec Hardison sent you a secret message hidden inside background code files on some CIA agent's laptop asking for help?"
"No, I know Hardison sent me--There is no other possible meaning here--there's references to every comic book issue featuring a no-one-defeats-you-but-me plotline, Iron Man Armor Wars, Red Skull and Captain America, hell he even references the Mad Love issue of New Batman Adventures, the Batman Gambit trope namer--"
"Is this going somewhere? Because I stopped listening like five minutes ago," Quinn interrupted.
"The point is, I know this is what Hardison is saying."
"Why would he send you a message on a random agent's laptop? Don't you geeks have better ways to communicate?"
"Seriously? Were you not listening to anything I was telling you earlier?" Chaos sighed. "It wasn't a random agent's laptop. This was a laptop a high-level agent brought to an off-the-grid black site with no connection to the outside world."
"So you're thinking Hardison and his friends are being detained there, so to contact you, they managed to put a message in this laptop on the off chance that you'd happen to hack into this same laptop later."
"As much as it pains me to defend Alec Hardison, it was actually a good plan. It's against security protocols to bring outside electronics to a SCIF. So when a high-level agent does do something this stupid, it was a good bet that I would jump at the chance to poke around in it."
"Still sounds crazy to me, but fine," Quinn conceded. "And now you want me to help you rescue him. Why? You hate him."
"He's Alec Hardison. My arch nemesis. My arch nemesis. I can't let him be defeated by the fucking CIA," Chaos said. "Also, what sort of enemy would I be if I ignored a message like this? It's a Batman Gambit for fuck's sake, and he's asking me to be the Joker."
"You keep saying that like it means something."
"It would if you weren't a philistine."
Quinn ignored that. "What's in it for me?"
"This is Eliot Spencer we're talking about."
"So?" Quinn said. "I'm not a nerd. Hitters don't have a weird thing about rescuing our nemeses or whatever."
"Seriously?" Chaos said. "Are you kidding me? Wait, hang on, is this a you-don't-know-that-I-know situation, or you actually don't know?
"Don't know what?" Quinn asked.
"Wow, okay. I mean I'd heard that you muscle guys weren't the brightest bulbs in the onion patch, but this is something else," Chaos said. "Fine. Can you think of any reason it would be to your benefit for Eliot Spencer to owe you a favour?"
Quinn tilted his head. "I can work with that."
"Alright then," Chaos said.
*
*
5)
"You can drop the act, Eliot Spencer," Maynard said. "We know who you are."
Eliot swallowed his disappointment at this turn of events. He had been hoping to use this interrogation to figure out more of what Maynard's game was, and how to stop it, but that was now out of the question.
"In that case," Eliot said, "shall we dispense with this charade, maybe save you some broken bones? After all, you must know that I ain't gonna give you anything."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Maynard said.
"You got a professional interrogator stashed somewhere?" Eliot asked, internally gearing himself to fight his way out. Even a pro would get nothing out of Eliot, but he wouldn't bet on getting anything out of them, either, so there was no point sticking around.
Maynard smiled and licked his lips. "No. But I've got something better."
Eliot raised an eyebrow. "And that is...?"
"We know you wouldn't give anything up, not to save your own skin. But what would you give up to save someone else?" Maynard said. "Someone you care about, perhaps?"
Eliot's blood ran cold.
He was pretty sure he had kept Parker and Hardison out of harm's way. There is no way Maynard's people could have found them, and even if they did, getting through the security measures Hardison put into place would have been challenging, even for the most serious agencies. Could Maynard have found them anyway?
Or was there a chance they had gotten their hands on Nate or Sophie? The two of them had retired several months prior, but if these people managed to find out who Eliot was...
"Bring him in," Maynard said on the intercom.
Eliot almost laughed when the door to the cell opened and he instantly recognized the figure Maynard's men brought in, even with a bag over his head. He hadn't decided on his next move though, so he held in his laughter and focused instead on taking stock of Quinn's gait and movements, and noting with relief that he seemed, for the most part, uninjured.
By the time the thugs had sat Quinn down on the chair, and removed the bag from his head, Eliot had made up his mind about his next play. He did not like having to ask Quinn for help, but Maynard's shady corporate practices were getting innocent children killed. He knew Quinn would understand.
Eliot watched as Quinn took stock of his surroundings, gave Eliot a once-over, and turned an incredulous look at their captors. "Seriously? Him? You think I'm leverage on him? We barely know each other--we're--"
"Don't bother, darlin'," Eliot said softly, looking Quinn in the eye. "They know."
"What do you mean they--" Quinn started.
"They know about us," Eliot said. "What you mean to me."
Eliot could see the moment the gears clicked into place when Quinn deflated with a sigh. "Oh, you owe me for this one, sweetheart."
"I know, I'm sorry," Eliot said, trying to ignore the fact that he did mean it, at least a little. The role Eliot was asking Quinn to play was not a pleasant one. "I'll make it up to you."
*
When the job was over and Maynard's company was torn to shreds, there was still one more conversation to be had.
"Alright, next time your con involves telling people I'm your boyfriend, you gotta give me a heads up before you bait a bunch of guys into coming after me," Quinn said when they were alone. Then he narrowed his eyes. "Or is this just something you've been telling people? Because while I'm flattered, I think you may have--"
"I didn't--I haven't been telling people anything!" Eliot protested. "They just made some assumptions, I honestly have no idea why! And then I needed to know Maynard's play, so when he brought you in, I just... decided to go along with it. Because innocent lives were on the line."
Quinn deflated. "Lots of people making ridiculous assumptions about us these days."
"Tell me about it," Eliot agreed.