Title: the only dependable people

Chapter: ii

Fandom: Angel the Series/Leverage

Disclaimer: not my characters

Warnings: unsure timeline?

Pairings: none

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 335

Point of view: third

Prompt: The team won't know what hit them if they hurt his brother.

Eliot's brother is even scarier than him, which Alec hadn't thought possible. Lindsey is cold and calculating in a way Eliot isn't. They're both smart, but Eliot hides his intelligence behind belligerence. Lindsey doesn't bother with the mask. And where Eliot's eyes are warm, Lindsey's are Arctic.

Lindsey doesn't like any of them, and he lets them know it. He dismisses Nate with a glance, and is icily polite to Sophie. He's barely even looked at Alec since Eliot introduced them. And Parker… well. For her, he turns on the same good-ole-boy charm Eliot pulls out around most women or when he's on a con. Alec's not sure why he does it, but he knows he doesn't like it. Not one bit.

Alec wants the brother to leave. Lindsey is frightening, and taking all of Eliot's attention, and looks at all of them but Parker like they're already dead and he's planning where to hide the bodies.

But Eliot is smiling. In a way Alec's never seen before, Eliot is goddamned smiling. Like it's his birthday and Christmas and Santa not only brought everything on his list, but all the stuff he wanted and didn't ask for, too.

Alec did in-depth background checks on the team before that first job, and then even deeper background checks after. Eliot Spencer is a ghost. Before the mid-nineties, he didn't exist. Alec couldn't find a hint of him. He has no idea what Eliot's real name is.

When he looks up Lindsey McDonald, he gets nowhere. The next morning, when Lindsey walks into the kitchen at Eliot's back, he smirks at Alec, like he knows Alec tried and found absolutely nothing.

Damn, but does Alec hate that man.

Not that it matters. Eliot didn't like any of them either, at the beginning. They won him over eventually. They'll get his brother, too.

(Alec hopes. Because Lindsey is scarier than Eliot, and if he's already decided where to hide the bodies, there really is nothing they can do.)