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1.
To be entirely fair, it was a mistake. Completely unintentional. At least, that’s Quinn’s defense when Eliot scowls at him as he shoves himself into the passenger’s seat of the sedan, slamming the door behind him.
“Did you seriously have to kill him?” Eliot hisses.
“Well, maybe he’s still alive,” Quinn says cheerfully, even though he’s pretty damn sure the guy is dead. Getting hit by a car and getting run over by it tends to usually have fatal results. But hey, no harm in being optimistic.
Eliot growls. “I told you, no casualties—”
“Look,” Quinn interrupts, just a little annoyed, “I didn’t mean to kill the guy. I was in a rush— to save your ass, in case you forgot—and he just happened to be in the way. If you’re not going to be grateful, then you can get out of the damn car.”
Eliot glares at him for a grand total of two seconds before he huffs and deflates, crossing his arms and sinking back into his seat. Quinn rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t make any sarcastic comments, because he knows when he’s crossed a line, whether it’s an accident or not. Team Leverage brought him in for this job and asked him to play by their rules, and Quinn had said yes to those terms. Terms are important. If you break a contract’s terms, you pay up. That’s how it goes in his line of work, and if Eliot decides Quinn needs to pay for his mistake, then Quinn can’t exactly complain.
But when Eliot fishes out his spare earbuds to get them back in contact with the rest of the team, he doesn’t bring up the mistake at all. Just says that Quinn fetched him and that they’re on their way back.
At the end of the job, Eliot doesn’t thank Quinn. But he doesn’t seem to hold it against Quinn, either.
Quinn’s relieved that he gets paid in full. That’s why the tension bleeds out of him all at once when Eliot shakes his hand as a sign of a job well-done. It has nothing to with the suggestion that the team might call him in again at some point. He’s just glad that he hasn’t had to forfeit his fee because he broke the terms. That’s all.
He’s not relieved that Eliot still smiles at him even if he messed up a bit. He’s not.
2.
It’s sheer coincidence that he gets mixed up with the team again, months down the road. He’s on a rooftop in Seattle to scope out an open plaza for a job he’s planning to pull off the next day when he hears gunfire erupt in the art gallery across the street to his left side.
Quinn moves from his perch to peer down his rifle’s scope to see what the hell’s going on. Half of the gallery’s front facade is made of glass, with the other half a light gray wall that partially obscures his vision. There are people inside the building; not a lot, but at least a couple dozen are on the second floor. They’re all facing something that he can’t quite see from this angle, but he suspects it’s whoever’s holding the firearm. Though the incident seems entirely contained within the building, a crowd is forming on the streets, obviously attracted by the gunfire. Quinn needs to get out of here before the police get here.
Except, he spots a familiar face inside the building.
“Hardison?” Quinn hisses to himself, and that’s the moment everybody in the building shifts, like somebody shouted at them to back off. Then another face that’d been obscured until now appears.
It’s Eliot. He’s standing a few feet away from Hardison, and from what Quinn can tell, he’s standing farthest from the gunman. He’s not making any move to go closer, though, which might mean—
“Ah, fuck,” Quinn mutters, because the gunman takes a step forward, angled diagonally from Quinn, and it’s easy to see the smaller figure in front of him and the gun pressed to her head. It’s a hostage. A very good deterrent to stop Eliot from rushing the guy. The guy is clearly no professional, though, because from where he’s standing, there’s no proper exit route, and he’ll be screwed the moment the authorities arrive. He’ll be arrested. Hardison and Eliot should be fine. It’s none of Quinn’s business, and he really needs to get out of here. His job that’s slated for tomorrow might be compromised if this incident gets any bigger than it already is.
But then he sees Eliot subtly move, not forward, but a little to the side, his shoulder slanting in a way that Quinn is familiar with. Like he’s lining up a clean shot. But Eliot wouldn’t have a gun on him, so…
Don’t tell me he’s about to throw a knife, Quinn thinks, and something twists in his gut. There’s no way for Eliot to injure the guy from that distance without risking the hostage’s safety. The only way to make it work from that angle with a projectile would be to deliver at least a near-fatal blow.
It’s stupid. It’s insane. There’s no way Eliot will actually go through with it, for a hundred logistical reasons, but Quinn also knows that Eliot is the kind of person who would go crawling for his earbud to reach his teammates before he even considers fighting the guy who sent him sprawling. Eliot is the kind of person who would contemplate murder if it were to save a friend from making that choice. Eliot is loyal and reckless and hardwired to protect people, even after everything he’s been through and all that he’s done, and Quinn wouldn’t be surprised if Eliot did the stupid, insane thing.
Well, fuck it. Quinn’s not going to get the job done tomorrow the way he wanted to, but he has backup plans anyway.
So Quinn aims, breathes in, breathes out, then pulls the trigger.
Thankfully, the glass isn’t bulletproof, so it shatters and lets him put a bullet through the gunman’s head in one shot.
There’s the sounds of screaming and sirens from far away, so he disassembles the rifle and packs it away as soon as he can, then bolts down the stairs. The building he’s in has a front door and the fire exit in the back, so he takes the fire exit.
He really shouldn’t be surprised to find Eliot waiting there.
“Quinn?” Eliot asks, clearly taken aback, lowering the knife he’d been holding. “The hell are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” Quinn throws an arm around Eliot’s shoulder, feeling it tense and relax under his touch, and starts steering them both out of the alleyway so that they’re not caught loitering by suspicious police officers. “This is pretty far from Portland.”
“Long story.” Eliot glances at the faux-guitar case slung over Quinn’s shoulder. “Do I wanna know why you were next door with a sniper rifle?”
“Long story.” Quinn offers Eliot a bland smile. He knows Eliot will read between the lines. “I swear I wasn’t stalking you, though. Just got lucky, I guess.”
They hit the main street on the opposite end of the block from the art gallery, and Quinn pulls his arm away, ready to head off, but then Eliot grabs his wrist at the last second. It’s the kind of gesture that would normally invoke an instinctive, violent reaction from Quinn, but he manages to restrain himself and allows Eliot to hold onto him. It’s strange, how Eliot’s touch registers less as a threat and more as—something else.
“Earlier,” Eliot says, “you didn’t have to.”
Quinn considers that for a long moment. “If I hadn’t, you would’ve, though.”
A muscle in Eliot’s jaw twitches, and that’s how Quinn knows he’s right. Still, even when he can’t deny what Quinn said, Eliot is stubborn as hell. “It wasn’t any of your business.”
“Jesus, Eliot.” Quinn feels exasperated and slightly offended. “Sometimes I help little old ladies carry their things up the stairs. I happened to have a firearm and a clear line of sight to a prick holding a kid hostage. What kind of asshole do you think I am?”
Eliot blinks, then lets go of Quinn’s wrist. His gaze flickers down, then to the side, then back to Quinn’s face. He looks genuinely chastised. “Sorry.”
The contrite look on Eliot’s face is enough to soothe Quinn’s annoyance. He sighs and shrugs. “Apology accepted. You better buy me a drink next time.”
“Next time, huh?” Eliot asks, just a hint of a grin hiding in the curve of his mouth. To his credit, he doesn’t ask Quinn why it can’t be tonight. Quinn still has to prep for his job tomorrow. “Yeah, drinks are on me.”
“I’ll be holding you to that,” Quinn says with a grin, then turns and walks away.
He has no idea when next time might be, or what it would even involve at all. Whether it’ll be for a job or for a friendly time or for something else. It doesn’t really matter. Whatever it is, it’s bound to be pretty fun when Eliot Spencer is involved.
Quinn’s looking forward to it.
3.
It’s forty minutes til midnight in Amsterdam when Quinn is offered the job.
He looks at the photo he’s been given for all of three seconds, then looks up at the man sitting across from him in the cramped office. The prospective client is impatient and full of bravado, already laying out the terms and fees. It’s certainly a very generous offer.
Quinn doesn’t even hesitate. “No.”
“No?” The prospective client parrots, clearly taken aback. When Quinn sets the photo down on the coffee table between them and stands up, the man chews on the inside of his cheek. “I can double the fee.”
Hmm. “You must really want him dead.” Quinn glances down at the picture one more time as he straightens his suit jacket. “Well, it’s a good thing I’m the first person you made this offer to.”
His right hand moves smoothly from tugging on the bottom of his jacket to his back, and then he’s unclipping his gun from his belt and clicking the safety off as he aims it at the man’s head. The prospective client’s eyes have barely widened in surprise when Quinn’s put a bullet between them.
He leaves the body sagging on the couch, but he takes the photo. In it, there’s a surveillance shot of Eliot Spencer.
Quinn makes sure to burn it as soon as he buys a lighter.
4.
There’s a next time, and Eliot buys drinks. It’s fun and laid-back and comfortable, and that’s why they end up doing it again a few weeks later, though Quinn pays that time. Weeks and months go by, and they settle into a friendship where they catch each other once every couple weeks, drinking beer and talking.
It’s Eliot’s turn to buy drinks this week, but it’s a bust. Mostly because Eliot is in no shape to drink beer when he’s bleeding sluggishly, chained to a chair and gagged.
Eliot had been abducted during a con that went wrong two days ago. Parker had called Quinn for help, and he’d promptly cut his vacation short to get on the quickest plane to Portland. From what Quinn’s gathered so far from both Hardison’s intel and the men he left with several broken fingers over the past couple days, the gang leader who took Eliot captive genuinely thinks Eliot’s an undercover cop that he can use as a bargaining chip.
So after Quinn shoots out the guy’s kneecaps and leaves him screaming on the floor, he checks Eliot over to confirm that all the damage that’s been done to him is far from fatal. There’s no danger of Eliot bleeding out here, but just because the damage wasn’t fatal doesn’t mean it was superficial. The knife wounds across Eliot’s back and the two missing fingernails are obvious signs of sadistic treatment, and Quinn would wager his entire damn Swiss bank account that there were some equally sadistic beatings.
Still, it’s nothing exceptionally bad. This is just something that happens sometimes in their line of work—though Eliot shouldn’t have to go through this shit anymore, since he’s not in the game, and something about that thought makes Quinn want to shoot somebody—and ultimately, Eliot can walk this off. It’s not a big deal.
Except Eliot can’t walk this off yet, Quinn discovers, because the assholes drilled a nail through Eliot’s left foot into the floor.
Quinn curses under his breath in every language he knows, then goes off to search for the tools he needs. It’s easy to find the nail gun, but it takes a while for Quinn to find bandages and antiseptics. He does make an effort to check for any kinds of anesthetics or painkillers, but there aren’t any of those.
He does, however, find some heroin.
“This is gonna hurt,” Quinn says quietly, on his knees and in front of Eliot, his hands gentle as they settle on Eliot’s knees. Eliot looks at him, exhausted but alert. Lucid enough to make a decision. Enough to feel the pain if he says no. “Do you want the heroin?”
“No,” Eliot says.
Quinn doesn’t waste time. Doesn’t let his hands shake. He gives Eliot his belt to bite and then gets to work. He ignores Eliot’s muffled scream, ignores the stench of blood, ignores the ugly sight in front of him. He doesn’t dwell on the fleeting thought of how he’s glad he took out his earbud early on, before he’d started breaking the first fingers of the day. He doesn’t think about how glad he is that Hardison and Parker can’t hear this.
He works fast, disinfecting the wound and wrapping it up as quick as he can. He’s busy thinking of the practicalities: fastest route out of here, best way to carry Eliot to avoid aggravating injuries, where the nearest hospital is. He ignores the fury snarling in his chest and focuses on getting Eliot away from this godforsaken place as soon as possible.
Once he’s gotten rid of the chains, he takes a moment to examine Eliot’s eyes. They’re hazy with pain, slightly unfocused.
When Quinn moves to brush Eliot’s hair out of his face for a better look, Eliot flinches.
Quinn freezes, his hand hovering inches away from Eliot’s face, and he sees the chagrin in the set of Eliot’s jaw, hears the mumble of a gravel-rough voice saying he’s fine, he was just a little out of it. He processes all of this and something deep inside Quinn just snaps.
He stands up and turns, walking away from Eliot, ignoring the way Eliot calls his name, urgency bleeding into his voice when he sees Quinn advance on the gang leader still trembling on the floor.
“Hey, look at me.” Quinn kicks the guy in the ribs and feels the bones give away with a crack. He doesn’t really feel any kind of joy in the hoarse scream his action elicits. He doesn’t really feel anything at all. “Look at me.”
When terrified eyes meet his, Quinn presses the bottom of his boot against the gang leader’s throat.
Behind him, he hears Eliot’s voice. Quinn doesn’t care.
When the dark eyes looking up at him fill up with horror, Quinn brings his foot up, then stomps down.
He spends a moment standing there, still feeling nothing, then turns back to Eliot. He ignores the look on Eliot’s face and ignores the way he says Quinn’s name, and instead focuses on getting them both out of the building, across the street, into the van where Hardison and Parker are waiting.
The numbness only wears off when Eliot’s ensconced in the team’s headquarters, after he’s been patched up by a doctor and prescribed some pretty strong painkillers. Seeing Eliot looking more like his usual, invulnerable self, here in a safe environment and the pain no longer evident in his eyes, allows something to relax inside Quinn. The residual anger is there, but it’s easily forgotten in the face of the slowly dawning realization what just happened today.
Quinn’s gotten a lot of blood on his hands since he was very young. He’s done a lot of questionable things. He’s killed plenty of people.
But not like this. Never like this. He’s killed for a lot of reasons, but never because he’d just wanted to hurt somebody. The desire to kill overriding everything else. It’s entirely new and utterly terrifying, because nothing’s ever affected Quinn this badly before. Nothing’s hit so close to home as it did when Eliot Spencer flinched away from his touch.
“You shouldn’t have,” Eliot says, after Parker and Hardison go off to take care of the loose ends of their con.
“And you shouldn’t have been kidnapped by those amateurs,” Quinn snaps. “They weren’t even trained at all. Getting soft, much?”
Eliot twitches, and Quinn fully expects him to rise to the bait and lash out. But instead, Eliot does something worse: he asks in a soft voice, “Did it make you feel better?”
The question cuts deep, because there’s too much packed into those words and Quinn doesn’t know how to acknowledge any of it. There’s no answer he can give that won’t feel like a blade burying itself in his chest. Quinn never knew a single question could sting so much.
“Like it’s any of your damn business,” Quinn says, standing from the armchair he was sitting in next to the couch Eliot’s resting on. He’s promised Hardison and Parker to keep Eliot and the Leverage HQ safe until they’re back, but he doesn’t need to be in Eliot’s immediate vicinity to accomplish that. He might as well move to the other end of the room and give Eliot the silent treatment. “You just can’t be grateful for me saving your ass—”
His words are cut off when Eliot grabs his necktie right as Quinn is trying to slide by the couch to move towards the back of the room, yanking him closer. Quinn’s caught off-guard enough to momentarily lose his balance, and he has to catch himself with one hand on the back of the couch, right beside Eliot’s head, so that he ends up leaning over Eliot, leaving barely an arm’s length between them.
“Quinn.” Eliot says his name softly, like it’s a fragile thing, something to be treated with care, and Quinn hates it. “I’m okay.”
“Yeah, I know,” Quinn grits out, but Eliot sighs and tugs him close.
The blue of Eliot’s eyes is so bright, Quinn realizes. He feels like his ribs are contracting around his heart like a vise at the revelation. Fuck, there’s too little space between them right now.
Eliot’s voice’s is low and husky, sending a shiver down Quinn’s spine. “Listen to me: I’m okay.”
The way Eliot looks at Quinn in this moment isn’t annoyed. He’s not mad, or disappointed, or disapproving, or even resigned. He looks, for lack of a better word, honest. Completely sincere. The line of his mouth isn’t a grim and stiff, but soft and reassuring. Like it would open and let him in if Quinn pressed his lips to it.
Quinn swallows hard. His voice is small when he says, “I hear you.”
For a long, lingering moment, Eliot holds onto his tie, and Quinn, for one insane moment, wants Eliot to pull him all the way in. He wants to press Eliot down into the couch and feel the warmth of him, alive and solid under his weight. He wants to let Eliot disarm him completely. He wants, he wants, he wants.
Then Eliot releases his grip, the silk slithering through his fingers and slipping from his hand entirely as he lets Quinn go. Blue eyes flicker downwards, breaking away from Quinn’s gaze, and Quinn moves back and straightens up.
Without another word, Quinn walks off to grab a boiling hot mug of coffee. He drinks it so fast he nearly scalds his tongue, swallowing down all the words threatening to burst out of him and ignoring the bitter taste that lingers in his mouth. Ignores the echo of an ache in his chest and goes back to sit a careful few feet away from Eliot.
They don’t talk for the rest of the day, until Parker and Hardison come back.
5.
Quinn is sitting on the couch when the door to the apartment opens. Eliot pauses in the doorway, scowls, then closes the door behind him as he drops his keys on the hall table. “Quinn, what did I tell you about breaking and entering?”
“To not be an amateur about it?” Quinn tries, and Eliot rolls his eyes. Clearly, he’s not as bothered as he’s pretending to be.
“I’m out of beer,” Eliot says, because it’s still his turn. It’s the first time they’ve met up since that time two months ago, when Eliot tugged on Quinn’s tie and managed to pull Quinn’s entire heart out. Quinn idly registers that Eliot’s gait is normal, and that his fingernails are almost fully grown out. He’s healed up well. “You couldn’t have called ahead so I could stock up?”
Quinn allows himself this moment, this small, indulgent interaction where he gets to see Eliot at home and unguarded. Lets himself enjoy this little pocket of time where Eliot doesn’t mind Quinn in here. Then, he gets down to business.
“I got a job offer,” Quinn says.
Eliot blinks, looking curious. Not wary, not yet. “Yeah? You took it?”
“Yeah, I did.” Quinn keeps his facial expression and tone of voice as neutral as possible. “Client wants me to kill Damien Moreau.”
It’s impossible to miss the way Eliot’s entire body tenses up, all good humor leaving him as his expression hardens. Quinn wonders if the way Eliot crosses his arms is meant to be a defense mechanism or an attempt to hold back his anger. “Quinn, are you insane?”
“He doesn’t have enough influence to keep himself safe." He's done his research. He’s already prepared everything. All that’s left is Eliot. “It won’t be hard, it won’t be traced back to me, and nobody will put in that much effort to figuring out who did it anyway.”
Eliot stares at him for a long moment. Then he asks, hesitant and tense, “So what are you doing here?”
It takes more effort than Quinn imagined to maintain eye contact as he slowly states the true reason behind this visit. “Because I want your permission.”
“My,” Eliot says, his voice cracking on the single syllable in a way that feels like a blow to Quinn’s solar plexus, and he swallows and clears his throat to continue. “My permission?”
“Tell me yes.” Quinn keeps his hands folded on his lap, his body language relaxed, trying to gentle his words so that they’re not a blade pressed against Eliot’s throat meant to force an answer out of him. “Tell me, and I’ll go get it done.”
Eliot’s mouth presses into a grim line, his jaw clenching, and his eyes dart to the windows to the coffee table to the bedroom door. He doesn’t look at Quinn when he finally speaks. “Why’d you take the job?”
“Because if I didn’t, somebody else would’ve.” Quinn keeps perfectly still, like he’s trying not to spook a wary animal. “Somebody who wouldn’t come to you beforehand.”
That gets Eliot to look at him again. “Why does it matter? What’s the point in getting me mixed up in this?”
“Because you deserve to have a say,” Quinn answers.
Quinn knows, from the drinking sessions and the nights spent sharing jokes and stories and secrets in Eliot’s living room, exactly what kind of scars Moreau left on Eliot. He knows that the damage Moreau wrought upon Eliot will never be fully repaired. He knows that Moreau haunts Eliot more than he’s willing to let on. Moreau is Eliot’s nightmare, and Quinn wants Eliot to have the final say in how that nightmare ends.
Eliot swallows, looking away once more. It takes him a minute to finally look at Quinn again. “Killing him won’t fix anything.”
“I know.” Quinn knows it won’t undo any of the damage that’s been done to Eliot and countless others, but this was never about fixing things. Quinn isn’t the kind of person who fixes anything, after all. “But do you want him dead anyway?”
Eliot opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again. “I don’t know.”
Quinn raises an eyebrow. “You don’t know?”
“I don’t,” Eliot grits out. “He’s in the Tombs. It’s done; it’s over. He’ll rot there for the rest of his life. He might as well be dead.”
“So you want him alive?” Quinn asks. He’s seeing a lot of mixed signals in Eliot’s body language, in the way he speaks like he’s forcing the words out despite hating the taste of them. “Is that what you want?”
Eliot just stares at Quinn, his frustration broken open like Quinn’s question was a punch through a window. And through the jagged remains of Eliot’s angry facade, Quinn reads the helpless, lost, desperate look in those blue eyes and understands what Eliot means.
Eliot doesn’t know what he wants to do with Moreau because there is nothing that will ever compare to what Moreau’s done to Eliot. There is nothing that Eliot can think of that will be enough. There is no revenge great enough for Eliot to enact that would satisfy him, and so he’s left the matter alone. Allowing for it to remain a festering wound because he can’t imagine the best way to get rid of it.
“Tell me yes,” Quinn says, unfolding his hands and resting his elbows on his knees, leaning forward, earnest and willing. “Eliot, tell me yes, and I’ll never tell you what happens to him.”
Eliot stares at him.
“You can imagine whatever you want. Or you can never think about it ever again. I’ll take care of him, and all you need to know is that I’ll make sure it’s exactly what he deserves. You know I’m good at what I do.” He’s told Eliot a lot of things. Not everything, but enough for Eliot to be excruciatingly aware of the many creative ways Quinn can inflict pain upon somebody. “You’ll never find out what I do with him. You never have to care about him ever again. Just tell me yes.”
There’s a moment of hesitation, a breathless second where Eliot is clearly on the cusp of giving in, but then the moment passes, and he shakes his head. “No.”
“Why not?” Quinn is starting to feel a little impatient. He knows Eliot wants this. He’s pretty sure Eliot needs this. “I swear I’ll do a hell of a job.”
“That’s not…” Eliot exhales through his teeth. “This is mine.”
Quinn frowns. “You don’t want anybody else to touch Moreau because he’s yours to take care of?”
Eliot finally uncrosses his arms to pinch the bridge of his nose. “He’s—Moreau’s something that you shouldn’t have to take care of. He’s not your responsibility. I can’t make him your responsibility.”
It takes a moment for Quinn to process that, but the penny drops soon enough. He really should’ve seen it coming. “Eliot, it’s fine. You don’t need to feel guilty about letting me deal with him. Seriously, let me do this for you.”
Eliot sighs, his shoulders slumping in exhaustion. There’s an awfully pained shine to his eyes when he meets Quinn’s gaze, and it makes the insides of Quinn’s ribs hurt. Eliot looks like a man who desperately wants something but won’t let himself ask for it. Like somebody who’s drowning and still can’t bear to ask for help.
Because hitters like them don’t ask for these kinds of things. They can ask for money and reputation and a million sub-clauses on their contracts, but they can’t afford to ask for help, for kindness, for forgiveness. And Eliot, of all the hitters Quinn’s ever met, is the one who deserves those things the most.
So he decides to grant it to Eliot, whether he wants it or not.
“Eliot,” Quinn says in his calmest tone as he stands up, “I’m calling in the favor.”
Eliot stares at him, baffled. “Right now?”
Quinn allows himself a moment, just a heartbeat, to take in the blue of Eliot’s eyes. If Eliot doesn’t forgive him for this, he might never see them again. “Give me your permission to kill Damien Moreau.”
Eliot’s jaw drops. “Are you serious?” When Quinn doesn’t answer, he closes his mouth hard enough for his jaw to click. After a silent moment, Eliot grits out, “This is what you wanna waste that favor on?”
Favors are important. They’re just as solid and absolute as the terms of a contract. They are not given lightly in a hitter’s world; to owe a favor is to allow somebody to put a chain around your neck. When somebody calls in that favor, there is no other option but to fulfill it. Refusing to do a favor that is owed is tantamount to death, both in terms of reputation and life. Eliot had taken a risk by offering Quinn a favor, and Quinn could’ve asked Eliot for anything. To commit violence, a murder, a massacre. Quinn could have made Eliot do anything, and he chose this.
Maybe it’s a waste. Maybe it’s the hardest favor of all. Quinn doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care. All that matters is that Eliot can’t say no.
“You bastard,” Eliot says, his voice tight enough that it’s a miracle it doesn’t snap. “Of all the things you could ask.”
“Tell me yes,” Quinn says, quiet and soft.
Eliot grits his teeth, then spits the words out. “Fine. Yes. Do whatever you want with him.”
“I’ll do my best.” Quinn briefly considers thanking Eliot, but that’d be just rubbing salt on the wound. There’s no point in thanking somebody when you had a gun to their head. Instead, he opts to give Eliot a brief nod, then leaves.
It’s better this way, Quinn thinks distantly as he walks away from the place he’s felt safest in. Eliot is good at saving people. Quinn is only good at damning them.
Nine days later, Moreau goes missing from his cell. Nobody knows what happened to him. Nobody except Quinn.
A month after that, he sends proof of death to his client and to the San Lorenzo authorities, but they never find out the details of what exactly happened to Damien Moreau.
Eliot won’t, either. That’s all that matters.
+1
When Quinn arrives at his safehouse in London, somebody’s already there, waiting for him.
“Eleanor,” Quinn says after a long moment. “It’s been a while.”
She smiles faintly at him, looking impeccable in her three-piece suit and heels, sitting at the breakfast bar with picture-perfect posture. “Hello, Quinn.”
He takes a seat in the chair opposite of her, trying to quash the creeping sense of dread. “What brings you all the way here?”
Eleanor idly taps her fingertips against the wood of the bar. In front of her is a standard manila folder. Without saying a word, she pushes it toward him.
When Quinn flips the folder open, there’s a dossier. And photos. And instructions. He reads through all of it and feels bile rise in his throat. He swallows and looks at Eleanor, who is inscrutable as always. “Is this a job offer?”
For a moment, he’s sure she’s about to say yes, because she’s offered him a number of jobs over the years. Some, he’d taken. Others, he hadn’t. If this was a job offer, Quinn would say no.
“I’m collecting the favor,” Eleanor says instead, and Quinn forgets how to breathe for a minute.
It’s only when he remembers how to use his lungs again that manages to muster a deadpan response that hopefully hides how badly shaken he is. “After all this time, huh?”
“You were one of my best investments.” Her mouth curls just a little bit upwards at that. A rare sign of pleasure from her. Quinn has never hated a smile more than before. “Do you have any questions?”
“Why me?” Quinn asks, and hopes his despair doesn’t show in his words.
Eleanor hums. “Because you’re one of the few people I know who’re good enough to pull it off, and you’re the only one I can use who won’t be traced back to me.”
Quinn glances at the dossier again. “Deadline?”
“I’ll give you three days to plan. One day to execute.” Eleanor rises from her seat. “Anything else?”
“This could start a war, you know,” Quinn says in spite of himself.
Eleanor tucks her a strand of black hair behind her ear, already uninterested in him, her mind moving onto the next chess move. “I’m counting on it.”
-
There are jobs that Quinn won’t take. There are lines he won’t cross. Mostly for the sake of his own survival, but sometimes it’s for practical reasons. On the truly rare occasion, it’s because it makes his dead conscience roll in its grave.
He has three days to plan, and he spends every minute of it dreading the fourth day. He does, occasionally and wretchedly, daydream of worming his way out of this ordeal, but he knows it’s impossible. There’s no way for him to worm his way out of a favor, especially if it’s one owed to Eleanor Yoon.
If Damien Moreau was a great white shark, Eleanor Yoon is a killer whale. She has two thirds of Asia’s criminal enterprises eating out of her hand, and she’s expanding considerably westward these days, too. An empress on a bloody throne built upon multitudes of sins. She’s the only person Quinn’s ever owed a favor to; a debt he incurred when he was barely twenty years old and she’d been slowly rising to power. He’s witnessed her conquering the top of the food chain. He’s seen how far her influence reaches, how brutal she can be, and what she’s capable of with a single scalpel. To go against her would be signing his own death warrant.
Then again, this favor might kill him anyway. There’s a very real chance that he’ll die in the crossfire of this. He knows this, but he still prepares for it anyway.
Favors are important. They’re just as solid and absolute as the terms of a contract.
Quinn thinks of the last time he called in a favor. Thinks of blue eyes and a low voice and taking the choice out of two steady hands.
He wishes he could see Eliot one more time.
-
That wish is bewilderingly, abruptly granted on the fourth day, when he opens the door to a darkened townhouse just after sunset, and he finds Eliot waiting there for him in the living room.
“What the hell,” Quinn finally says once he’s swallowed his heart down from where it jumped up his throat, “are you doing here?”
“To stop you from doing the stupid thing,” Eliot says, unimpressed. “Put your damn gun down.”
Quinn lowers his Beretta, which he’d instinctively aimed in the split-second before he’d recognized Eliot, and then carefully clicks the safety on. He glances around the place and sees no trace of anybody else. Doesn’t hear anything but the traffic outside. “Where’s the family?”
“Safe,” Eliot says easily. “They’re none of your business anymore.”
Anger spikes through Quinn at the cavalier statement. This is his life on the line. “Eliot, I don’t know how the fuck you found out about this, but you need to get out of my—”
“The favor’s been called off.” Eliot looks calm. He pats the empty space on the couch next to him. “C’mere and sit down. You look like shit.”
After a long, hesitant moment, Quinn finds himself obeying, even as his mind whirls with the implications of what Eliot just said. He doesn’t understand what the hell is going on, and there’s a million questions he wants to ask, so he sinks down onto the couch and starts with the most important one of all. “What did you do?”
Eliot shrugs. “Hardison noticed that all the surveillance cameras near your safehouse went dark at the same time a few days ago. Did some digging and found out who paid you a visit. Did some more digging to find out what she wanted.”
“Why,” Quinn asks slowly, “did you know the cameras blacked out?”
“Because I’ve been keeping tabs on you,” Eliot says in an exasperated tone that is entirely unmerited. It’s not Quinn’s fault for not expecting this answer. It’s not on Quinn to have known that Eliot would even care, unless…
“You been trying to figure out what I did with Moreau?” Quinn asks, his words a little sharper than he intended.
Eliot shakes his head. “Just wanted to make sure nobody was gonna go after you for it. You did a good job, though. Doesn’t seem like anybody suspected you.”
“Told you so,” Quinn says automatically, but there’s no sense of triumph there. He’s still not sure what’s going on. He doesn’t ask about details, like how Eliot figured out Eleanor was behind this, or how he learned about what Eleanor wanted from him in the first place. He knows what the team is capable of when they’re motivated enough. “Eliot, what did you do to get her to call the favor off?”
“Went to talk to her.” Eliot’s gaze skitters downwards to his hands, and a sense of foreboding crawls up Quinn’s spine. “It was safe, so don’t worry. Just the two of us.” His mouth twists, bittersweet. “Of all the people in the world, you had to owe Eleanor Yoon a favor, huh?”
“I was twenty and in a real bad spot,” Quinn says, irritation flickering through him before concern drowns it out. “Eliot, tell me you didn’t make her a counteroffer.”
“I made her a counteroffer,” Eliot admits, and Quinn wants to throttle him. Before he can actually do that, though, Eliot continues, “She said no.”
“She said no,” Quinn repeats in confusion.
That doesn’t make sense. If Eleanor said no, then why is the favor gone? What could’ve Eliot done to—
“You son of a bitch,” Quinn breathes, and it can’t be. He’s wrong. He has to be wrong. “Eliot, what the fuck did you do.”
“I did what you would’ve done for me,” Eliot says, and Quinn wants to punch him. He wants to scream. He wants to hold on to Eliot and never let go.
“This was none of your damn business,” Quinn says, leaning away from Eliot. His whole chest hurts. “You shouldn’t have. God, you fucking idiot, she wasn’t your responsibility. Do you even know what you just did? This is going to start a war. You’re risking yourself. You’re risking Hardison and Parker. All for—”
“For you,” Eliot says quietly, and everything in Quinn screeches to a halt, His words, his thoughts, even his heartbeat. “I did it for you, even though you didn’t ask for it.”
“Eliot,” Quinn says weakly, and he doesn’t ever recall being weak before.
“And for the record, I ain’t risking jackshit. Like hell I’d put Hardison and Parker in danger.” Eliot snorts. “Managed to use this to get different factions to turn against each other. There might be a war, but not with innocent people. Not with us. There’s no way for any of ‘em to trace this back to you or me.”
Quinn doesn’t know what to say. It’s too good to be true. It’s too awful to be true. He wanted an out, sure, but not at the cost of Eliot’s conscience. Not with blood on Eliot’s hands.
“So, I got you out of a tight spot.” Eliot slants a small, hopeful smile at him. “Does this mean you owe me a favor?”
A favor. Allowing yourself to give somebody a chance to have you completely at their mercy. A dangerous thing, in a hitter’s world. It’s handing somebody a knife and giving them the power to press it against your jugular.
And Quinn is helpless but to say, “Yeah.”
“Good.” Eliot reaches over, slow and cautious, to brush an errant curl away, tucking it behind Quinn’s ear, and Quinn doesn’t flinch. Even now, even when Eliot’s hands smell of blood, his touch doesn’t register as a threat. It almost feels like kindness. Like forgiveness. “I’m calling it in.”
Quinn holds his breath. His heart thumps against his ribcage, once, twice.
“When you’re in trouble, you call me.” Eliot’s hand is still lingering, fingertips brushing the shell of Quinn’s ear. “Whenever you’re in over your head, regardless of how dangerous it is or how stupid it is, you call me. You call me every damn time you need help, okay?”
That’s impossible. That’s not how Quinn operates. He works alone, never has anybody to have his back, doesn’t ever count on somebody to bail him out. Because nobody will come for him. That’s how it works.
“Tell me yes,” Eliot says, and the words slam the memories back into Quinn. The desire to help somebody who doesn’t know how to ask for it. The determination to accomplish that, even if it means taking the choice away. Even if it means having that person hate them for it. “Quinn, promise me that you’ll call me whenever you need me.”
“Why are you wasting your favor on this?” Quinn asks.
Eliot’s fingers brush Quinn’s jaw. His hand cups Quinn’s cheek. His blue eyes are bright under the moonlight shining through the windows. “I never did say thank you, for the Moreau thing. Didn’t wanna admit it, but—it was what I needed.” His thumb strokes Quinn’s cheekbone, and Quinn’s whole body aches at the gesture. “So, thank you.”
“Is that what this is?” Quinn murmurs, because he doesn’t want gratitude. That’s not what he wants from Eliot, even if it does soothe his frustration somewhat. “Your way of trying to pay me back?”
“No, it’s me saying that I know you did it for me.” Eliot’s voice drops a little lower, sending a shiver across Quinn’s skin. “That you care about me.”
Enough to kill for me, he doesn’t say. Quinn hears it anyway.
“This is me saying, I’d do it all for you too, if you’d let me.” Eliot leans closer, pulling Quinn’s face in as he does so. “Quinn, tell me yes.”
“Yes,” Quinn says, because how can he say no? Eliot started a war for him, and Quinn wants this stupid, reckless, miracle of a man too much to ever give him up. He trusts Eliot, enough to offer him a hundred favors. Enough to believe that Eliot would never take advantage of him with any of them. “Yes, I’ll call you.”
“Good,” Eliot murmurs, and he closes the distance between them.
For two people who have done terrible things and have blood on their hands, the kiss is awfully sweet. It’s slow and soft, Eliot’s mouth opening easily when Quinn licks into it, and something melts in the cavity of Quinn’s chest.
When they break apart, they still stay close, sharing breath and foreheads leaning together. It’s a moment that Quinn wants to keep forever, bottled up and preserved for posterity.
Then Eliot huffs and says in an amused voice, “You really should stop killing people for me, though.”
Quinn grins. “I make no promises.”
“Yeah, I figured you’d say that,” Eliot grumbles, and somehow he sounds fond, despite the homicidal implications.
Bright, overwhelming emotion bubbling up inside his chest, Quinn bursts into laughter, feeling warmth settle over him like a blanket he could curl up under, and Eliot soon follows suit.
-
Eliot picks up the phone whenever Quinn calls. He comes for Quinn every time. Sometimes, Quinn calls him even when he’s not in trouble, and Eliot comes for him anyway. He doesn’t ever kill anybody for Quinn again, but it’s enough to know that he would, if it’s for Quinn. It’s more than enough.
(Quinn, on the other hand, doesn’t stop killing bad guys for Eliot, though he tries to keep the murders to a minimum. It’s the effort that counts.)