ultra_fic | HAPPY BIRTHDAY southrnbygrace - Fic: Fixers, Hawks, & Thieves ( (Reply)

A/N: For my fabulous friend southrnbygrace, who is so very supportive of my writing and just a wonderful person. She requested this crossover, so I really hope she likes how it turned out as her Birthday gift. Happy Birthday, my dear friend - may you have a truly awesome day! :)

Title: Fixers, Hawks, and Thieves
Author: Ultra
Summary: When Parker convinces Eliot to take her to a Hawks game, neither expected to meet friends both old and new.
Timeline: AU Season 4 Leverage / AU Season 1 Necessary Roughness
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: All recognisable characters belong to the creators of Leverage and/or Necessary Roughness - basically, they don't belong to me!

Eliot Spencer did not want to be here. Actually, to be more accurate, it wasn’t the exact location that was bothering him, it was the company. He looked sideways at the blonde in the base-ball cap, a foam finger on one hand and a hot dog grasped in the other, and shook his head. Usually he was only too happy to spend time with Parker. After all, she was pretty much his girlfriend now, even if they never had exactly put a label on it. The fact of the matter was, taking the world’s best thief out to places she didn’t know and therefore didn’t understand the rules of had its potential dangers. He trusted her not to make a scene in a restaurant these days, and to behave herself in bars. She left the taser at home since they started dating. She told him she really didn’t need an electrical safety device when she had the real thing holding onto her hand. That had brought a smile to Eliot’s face if nothing else.

In a lot of ways, Parker was becoming a lot better adjusted to public situations, but taking her to her first football game? That was not something Eliot had easily been willing to do.

Major football games were televised. Cameras meant faces being seen and Parker wasn’t always subtle when she wasn’t on a job. She could be practically invisible when cracking safes or breaking into buildings, but in other more social situations, the twenty pounds of crazy tended to spill out of the five pound bag and that could only lead to badness. No, Eliot had told her there was no way in hell she was coming along when he scored tickets to a play off game, and he meant it. She sulked some, until he took her to steal some diamond or other she had wanted forever. Of course, that didn’t mean she had forgotten about football.

Eliot never thought she would be that interested in any sports, she certainly never seemed to be. Now to look at her it’d be hard to tell where he got that opinion. Her eyes were fixed on the field, not even shifting to look at her food when she pushed it towards her mouth. Eliot rolled his eyes and tried not to laugh.

“What?” she asked around a mouthful of hot dog, seeming to have felt his expression somehow.

“I didn’t say a thing, darlin’,” he assured her, leaning back in his seat and putting his arm around the back of her. “I’m just kinda stunned that you’re so into this.”

Parker shrugged her shoulders, still not looking over at him even when she spoke again.

“You like sports, and Sophie says that in a relationship you should share interests.”

Eliot frowned a little at that. He would rather the grifter not give Parker too much advice on dating and love and all. Sure, she needed a girl friend to talk to, a few pointers from the female point of view. Eliot certainly hadn’t objected when Parker chose to persuade him into bringing her here all over the bedroom, but that wasn’t the point! Eliot didn’t want Sophie making Parker a project and turning her into a carbon copy of her or anything. He liked Parker as she was - crazy, sweet, unpredictable, and just uniquely Parker, that was his girl.

“Anyway, football is fun,” she told him with a grin as two guys on the field ploughed head-long into one another with a crash. “Guys hitting guys, stealing the ball from each other,” she mused. “It’s like you and me,” she smiled then, taking Eliot by surprise when she suddenly turned to face him, planting a ketchup-flavoured kiss on his lips before going right on back to the game.

The hitter wasn’t sure how to take her words. They were sweet, he guessed, for Parker anyway. Hitting and stealing, that was the two of them together, though he’d hardly call their relationship a football game. He let Parker have her odd metaphor if it pleased her and tried to focus his own attention back on the Hawks kicking butt. The problem was, Eliot had a strange feeling he was being watched, and it was throwing him all off. They hadn’t been followed down from Boston, he knew that much, but somebody in this stadium had their eye on him, he was sure of it.

“You’re doing that thing you do,” said Parker, looking towards him only when a time out was called for. “Is something wrong?” she checked.

“I don’t know,” he shook his head almost imperceptibly.

It was the truth, and Parker knew it. Eliot didn’t lie to her, he never had. If there was danger, he would tell her, even if he didn’t really want to. They trusted one another to react appropriately in a situation like that. Today was no exception.

Parker leant right over into his personal space and whispered;

“Is it safe for me to go pee?”

Eliot rolled his eyes.

“Yes, Parker, you can go to the bathroom,” he assured her, though even as she squeezed past him to go he was extra vigilant, checking no-one was following her.

Parker picked her way down the stairs and Eliot watched another woman in dark glasses do the same. She was right on the thief’s heels and immediately the hitter reacted. He was up from his seat and headed down behind the two women, sure that something was wrong. He felt eyes on him before, he knew it, and now someone seemed to be following his girlfriend. No way was this happening, no frickin’ way.

He broke into a jog when the crowd started thickening, determined not to lose sight of the short red-head following his girl. She didn’t exactly look dangerous, but looks could be deceiving, he knew that better than anyone.

“Eliot Spencer,” someone said behind him, a heavy hand landing on his shoulder.

It was a dangerous move by the guy stood right behind the hitter, or it would’ve been if his voice wasn’t immediately recognisable to his old friend.

“Nico Careles,” he answered in kind, a smile spreading across his lips unbidden as he turned to face him.

“Now what would a guy like you be doing in my world?” asked the fixer with a smirk. “And following a friend of mine? To the ladies room?” he questioned, folding his arms across his chest.

“Friend?” asked Eliot with a quirk of his eyebrow, almost mirroring his old friend’s distinctive stance, before realising how dumb they might both look. “I got news for you, Nico, women like that aren’t your friend,” he said with a knowing look.

The fixer was not so quick to answer that charge, but the expression on his face said everything. It was kind of stupid to expect Eliot to believe he was only friends with Dani. No man with eyes could fail to see she was beautiful, and her confidence exuded from her in waves. She was his kind of woman, and Eliot knew it.

“You and the blonde, huh?” he countered, adjusting his sunglasses. “Is she who I think she is?”

“Aren’t people always?” Eliot answered non-comittally. “So, security for the Hawks now, huh? Didn’t see that one comin’,” he admitted, folding his arms across his chest and leaning back on the rail.

“Me neither,” Nico admitted. “It’s amazing what you fall into, like being Robin Hood, for example,” he suggested, his meaning all too clear. “I didn’t realise you had the Parker on your team.”

“You’re gonna have the best team, you gotta have the world’s greatest thief,” he said, leaning in as much as Nico had to keep their conversation away from prying ears.

“You don’t fool me, Spencer,” the fixer shook his head then. “I know that look. How long have you been in love with her?”

Parker got done with washing her hands and prised the door to the ladies bathroom open carefully, peeking out around the edge. She closed it fast and backed up a step when she realised someone else was coming in, stumbling over the red-head who had come in after her minutes before.

“Hey,” the shorter lady complained, until Parker turned wide eyes upon hers. “Um, are you okay?” she checked, realising the blonde looked pretty freaked out.

“Yeah, I guess,” she said non-comitally, looking towards the door and back.

She wanted to leave, but at the same time, what Eliot said about being watched bothered her. He didn’t like her to be around when he was kicking ass, even though she did love to watch the show. He worried about her getting hurt and Parker did understand that. It made her wince when she saw some of the wounds he endured in fights too. People you cared about getting hurt was never cool.

“Seriously? You look like you just saw a ghost or something,” said the woman beside her.

Parker let out a snort of laughter at that statement.

“Ghosts aren’t real,” she chuckled. “I was just looking for my boyfriend,” she shrugged. “It’s not a big deal,” she insisted, a little bothered by the way the other woman was staring at her so oddly.

Backing up towards the door, Parker opened it again and stepped out, only for the red-head to follow. Immediately, Parker spotted Eliot talking to another man and considered the situation. They looked pretty friendly, so maybe it was okay, but she knew what it was like with her hitter boyfriend sometimes. One minute smiling, the next knocking a guy into a week on Thursday.

“Is that your guy?” said the woman beside her, pointing at Eliot. “Because the man he’s talking to? That’s Nico. He’s my guy,” she explained with a smile. “I’m Dani.”

“Oh,” Parker nodded once. “I’m... Alice,” she said after a moments consideration, taking the offered hand very briefly to shake. “So, who is he?” she checked, “Good guy or bad guy?”

“Er, good guy,” Dani said awkwardly, a little bemused by the nature of the question. “He works for the Hawks, we both do actually. He’s more the security side. I’m the therapist.”

“Great,” Parker painted on a fake smile. “’Cause I really need to meet another one of those,” she muttered.

“Oh, you’ve had bad experiences with therapists?” said Dani conversationally. “We’re not all the same, I promise.”

“I haven’t seen one since I was a kid,” shrugged Parker, looking up at the railings with a look of consideration. “These days if I have problems, I talk to Eliot,” she gestured towards the man in question, before pulling herself up to dangle off the fencing.

“Oh well... Oh,” said Dani with evident surprise as she looked from the two men still talking like best buddies to the blonde literally hanging upside down beside her. “Um, so, Alice?” she tried carefully to speak to her. “I’m guessing you’re the free spirit type...”

“What happened to us, man?” said Eliot with a wry smile. “Me playing for the good guys now. You settlin’ down with a good woman and taking on a couple of teenage kids?”

“I guess we grew up,” Nico shrugged as he leant back on the wall beside his old friend.

He was smiling until he spotted the blonde woman being helped down off some railings by his own girlfriend. Moving his sunglasses down his nose to get a better look, he realised Dani was now walking over towards them, arm in arm with the blonde he recognised from research. She looked just a little underwhelmed at being touched at all.

“Parker,” Eliot smiled when he saw her approaching. “Come meet an old buddy of mine,” he urged her.

“Parker?” Dani echoed, “I thought your name was Alice?” she checked.

“You can give her your real name, babe, it’s cool,” the hitter assured his woman as she disentangled her arm from the good doctors and eagerly ducked under Eliot’s instead. “This is Nico, and the woman you been making friends with is his better half,” he smirked at his old friend.

“Dani, Eliot,” the fixer introduced the pair, his gifrliend looking sceptically at the odd couple.

“A pleasure,” she said anyway as she shook the other man’s hand.

She was a little worried about Alice/Parker when she met her. The strange behaviour in the bathroom, the hanging off the railings, these were not what were normally termed reasonable things to do. The whole time she looked out of place, like she was trying to find her comfort zone. Now that Dani was seeing her with Eliot, his arm around Parker’s back and her head on his shoulder, it made sense. They completed each other, and whilst it might have been healthier if Parker felt complete on her own, Dani couldn’t find fault with the situation. She knew herself how much easier it could be to be made whole by another person, it was what Nico did for her.

“So, I probably shouldn’t ask how you two know each other, right?” she said as she followed suit and moved in close to her boyfriend until he put his arm around her.

“You know if you did, I’d tell you,” he promised, dropping a quick kiss on her lips as she smiled.

Eliot wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but he didn’t question it. It really wasn’t his place to say what Nico should or shouldn’t tell his woman. The fact was, he trusted the guy enough to know he wouldn’t say anything that’d endanger anybody. On the flipside, if Nico did tell Dani secrets that could do harm, Eliot had to believe it was because she could be trusted as much as he could.

Before anybody else had a chance to speak, to either part ways or get better acquainted, a yell went up on the field. Dani looked up in the stands as Lindsey and Ray Jay called for her attention too. Nico already realised what was happening - T.K. just started a fight.

“Damn it!” he cursed, turning to rush off.

Dani had a hold of his hand by now, ready to pelt down to the field with him.

“We kinda have to deal with this,” she told the couple they were leaving behind.

As if connected by some unknown force, Eliot and Parker’s cell phones both went off at that very moment, one new message needing to be read. It was Nate, and this was serious.

“We got our own things to attend to,” the hitter told them. “Maybe see you around,” he told Nico with a curt nod.

“Stay safe, Spencer,” the fixer reminded him. “For her sake, if not your own.”

“Same thing, Careles,” Eliot replied in kind. “You got a good one there, I can tell.”

There was but a nod and smile to be shared then, before the two men went their separate ways, alongside the women that had come to love so deeply, without hardly realising it was happening. Whether a fixer or a hitter, there was nothing like the love of a good woman to make your life complete.