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It wasn't supposed to have gone this way. After all, who brings a sniper to a fucking fist fight? But it's too late to worry about that now. Eliot is pale and motionless in the dirt, blood seeping from a horrible wound as he lies pinned beneath his dead opponent.
When the shot had cracked the air, Parker and Hardison had frozen, disbelieving, watching the bullet rip through Lee's chest before burying itself in Eliot. Hardison had had to fling out one arm to stop Parker sprinting to Eliot's side and wrap another around her to hold her as she cried.
“Babe, babe.” His face was buried in her hair as he spoke, not that it was doing anything to make his cheeks any drier. She was still trying to pull herself free. “Eliot would be pissed if you got yourself shot too.”
“Parker...” She thought she had heard all of Eliot's growls. From stop-bugging-me, to I'm-gonna-kill-ya, to don't-stop-please-god-don't-stop, and everything in between. For the first time she could hear a little fear in the gravelly whisper in her earpiece.
“Eliot!”
“Sniper's on top of the parking garage. He's still watching me.”
Parker and Hardison look upwards with a practiced synchronicity. They can just see the rifle jutting over the brickwork.
“Eliot, you hold on, man. We're gonna fix this guy and come and get you. You hear me?”
They can practically hear Eliot's teeth gritting when he speaks again. “No,” he says. “You gotta get yourselves away from here.”
Parker and Hardison share a look. She nods at him, strips off her coveralls to reveal a tight-fitting, low-cut, royal blue dress. There's no time to get her high-heeled shoes from Lucille, but she plans to work so fast the guy's not going to have time to worry about her footwear. She hops the wall into the parking garage and holds out a hand to Hardison. He reads the expression on her face, reaches into his pocket and hands over the contents. She gives him a brisk nod and makes for the Mazda MX-5 they've 'borrowed' for the day.
Parker makes quick work of getting to the roof, slowing as she pulls up the last ramp so as not to spook her target. She can see the sniper casually dropping a large black bag into the trunk of car and spots an empty parking space next to it.
The guy's already in the car by the time she's pulling in, deliberately misjudging the space and ramming the Mazda against his Chevvy Malibu.
She can lipread his “You crazy bitch” through the windshield and reaches for her thigh holster. She scrambles from the car and pretends to totter around to where the nose of the Mazda is now buried in the Chevvy's door. Her display of ditzy panic would make Sophie proud she thinks.
“Ah'm so sorry,” she says as he lowers the window. “Listen, ma boyfriend's a mechanic. He can fix this up for you, no charge.”
As he opens his mouth to answer, she rams her hand inside the car and tases him into unconsciousness. She snaps a pair of latex gloves on, extracts a wad of the cartel's marked cash and a handful of sachets filled with their Ecstasy tabs from the package Hardison gave her and slips them into the gunman's pocket, removing his cellphone and car keys as she goes.
“Make the call,” she says.
“On it,” replies Hardison.
She listens to him calling Bonanno as she slides the phone and keys under the Chevvy. It's a short call. By the time she's running down the stairs, she can hear Hardison sprinting towards Eliot and his grunt as he rolls the dead guy out of the way.
“How bad is it?”
“I’ll live,” grumbles Eliot.
“You better,” says Hardison, trying not to stare at the stain blossoming Eliot’s shirt. “You need a hospital this time,” says Parker.
“No hospitals,” growls Eliot.
“You got the number of that clinic we saved?” Parker asks Hardison.
Hardison nods and they each tuck themselves under an arm and help Eliot back to Lucille, picking up the pace as the first wails of police sirens drift towards them.
***
“He gonna be okay?” Hardison asks Kay Maher as the doctor closes the door on them.
“He’s in good hands,” says Kay.
“What about you? Your doc didn’t look thrilled at treating a gunshot wound off the books.”
Kay smiles and shakes her head. “Don’t worry about him. He’s a pussy cat. And he wouldn’t have this job if you guys hadn’t got our money back, so he won’t complain for long.
“Can I get you guys anything?”
Hardison and Parker shake their heads.
“Well, take a seat. I’ll come get you when they’re done. There’s only David and me working this afternoon, so no one will bother you back here.”
Hardison eases himself into a corner of the couch and Parker drops down next to him, leaning closer than usual. He threads his fingers through her hers and squeezes.
“He’ll be okay, babe.”
“What if he isn’t? We’ve never told him…”
“Told him what?”
“Y’know…”
“Oh. Well, Eliot isn’t really a Three Little Words kinda guy. But he knows how we feel about him. There’s other ways to say it. Eliot says it to us all the time. Every time he makes dinner. Or today, when he told us to leave.”
“But we didn’t.”
“No, we didn’t. And that was us saying ‘we love you too’.”
“So he knows?”
“Yes, Parker, I know,” Eliot’s voice on the comms sounded odd. If you didn’t know him, you’d think it was just his usual grumpy frustration, but there was something else in there – an uncommon softness. “You should take your earbuds out if you’re gonna talk about me, y’know.”
Parker and Hardison exchange a look.
“Hey, man,” says Hardison, “how about Parker and I tell you how we’re going to look after you later?”
“I am not letting you anywhere near me!”
“But I was going to kiss you better,” says Parker.
They’re not sure, but they think they can hear Eliot swallow.
“You know how good she is at kissing things better,” says Hardison. “Those lips brushing against your throat. And then your chest. And then…”
“Dammit. Hardison.”
“You okay, tough guy?”
“I’m fine,” says Eliot through gritted teeth.
“And while she’s doing all that, I can be undoing your belt and then your pants and…”
There’s a sharp sound as Eliot’s earbud meets the tabletop.
“Sometimes that boy is no fun at all,” says Hardison.
***
It’s dark in the hotel room by the time Eliot comes round from sleeping off his pain meds. When he opens his eyes all he can see is Parker’s face, looming, concerned, over him.
“Parker,” he croaks.
She grins and her face lights up like the fourth of July. She leans in and kisses him softly. He can feel their lips clinging when she slowly draws back. She runs a hand into his hair. “Can I get you anything?”
“Just some water. Thank you.”
She reaches for a glass, while he pushes himself up with his uninjured arm. He sips at the water before dropping his head back against the headboard and holding out the glass for her.
“Where’s Hardison?”
“Clearing out the apartment. He should be back any minute.”
Eliot reaches for her hand and squeezes it. “Thank you for not leaving me today. It was stupid and reckless, but I’d probably be dead if you hadn’t, so…”
She ducks her head and says, “Well, that ‘till my dyin’ day’ thing doesn’t go just one way y’know.”
Eliot gives his strapped up arm a tentative wiggle and only the tiniest narrowing of his eyes betrays the sharpness of the resulting pain.
He looks at Parker ruefully. “Think Friday’s blindfold bungee jump is gonna get cancelled.”
She sits on the edge of the bed, stroking her thumb across his hand. “We’ll cancel if that’s what you really want …” She looks him dead in the eye, mischief glinting in her own like one of those super-expensive and illegally-obtained paperweights on her desk, “or …”, she grins, “you could bring binoculars and find a really good vantage point to watch Hardison go bungee jumping?”
***
Hardison opens the door to find them hooting and cackling, although Eliot occasionally has to brace himself against the bed and take some deep breaths when the pain gets too bad.
He makes it to the foot of the bed before Eliot sees him, freezes and then bursts into laughter again. Parker turns her head and stops laughing, only to start grinning in that unsettling way which makes you fear for life and/or limb.
“Nuh-uh. Hell, no. Whatever it is. N. O. No.”
Eliot pretends to look deadly serious. “Hey, man. I took a literal bullet for the team today. You owe me.”
Hardison glares at them – Eliot giving him That Look, Parker smiling sweetly – before throwing his hands in the air and giving up any resistance.
***
There is a blanket on the hillside, and on the blanket are tubs filled with homemade snacks and a cooler for the six-pack of beer that would otherwise be warming in the sun. Eliot’s a quick healer, supernaturally so, but even he can’t shrug off a bullet wound, so the powerful binoculars are on a tripod, aimed down the valley towards the bridge.
He has the smaller binoculars in his hand so he can track general movement and watches as Parker does her last checks on her harness, lets the guy blindfold her and lead her to the edge of the platform.
She dives towards the river below, her squeal of delight echoing up the valley to crease Eliot’s face into a fond smile. She bounces a while on her bungee rope before being pulled back up.
Through the binoculars, Eliot sees her beaming grin and the thumbs up she aims in his general direction. He moves the glasses to find Hardison, standing stiff in his harness, practically vibrating with ‘nope’ even as Parker gives him a pep talk, patting bits of harness, tugging on the carabiners and indicating her own safe return.
Finally, Hardison shuffles towards the platform, stopping to let the operator blindfold him and position him on the edge. He stands there for an eternity. A small movement makes Eliot drop the small glasses and swap to the big ones that are aimed below the bridge. He nods to himself to acknowledge that his instincts were correct as a yelling man doing a passable impersonation of a threshing machine drops briefly into view, disappearing and reappearing several times before finally hanging limply, swinging on the elastic above the water, waiting for the rope to be lowered. Eliot sees Hardison pull something from a pocket and move his hand to his head.
“You happy now?”
Eliot grins and presses a finger to his own earbud. “Ecstatic.”
The look that Hardison throws up the valley makes Eliot’s heart crease in two. As he gently bakes in the sunshine, wondering how a guy like him ever got this lucky, he sees Hardison clip the rope to his harness in readiness for being pulled back to the bridge. Hardison is disappearing from the view of the big binoculars as Eliot says one more thing. “Tell Parker, I have three little words for her. ‘Lunch is ready.’”