#I inhaled trivalentlinks' gorgeous quinneliot fic a few days ago so am probably taking vibes from that too tbh | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wolves-in-the-world · 2 years

Text

QWAT AU, just a little sideways, version goodness-only-knows.

(brief reference to drink spiking, standard hitter stuff, qwat-typical angst.)

[1.5k in all, also on Ao3]

—

Eliot and Quinn run into each other on the job for years, and they're enemies more often than not, but they're cheerful about it. Quinn's happy to banter a bit while they fight; Eliot's happy to give a little constructive criticism. They keep a count of the bones the other one has broken like it's a running joke.

It's comfortable, mostly. The nature of the job means they can't easily be friends, but they can be friendly. After a while they even share a few drinks, though they cover their tracks when they part ways afterwards.

When Eliot drops off the face of the earth for two years, it's... well, it's possible he's been captured or killed, but you'd think whoever did it would want to broadcast that fact. Unless it was an accident. A freak thing. A heart attack. And Quinn can't mourn, because... it's not like they were friends. It's not like he doesn't know what the job involves.

So he carries on.

Most hitters are, unfortunately, bastards. Quinn gets as far as going to a bar with one then has to lure them out the back to make a point then knock them out after they tried to spike his drink. His other attempts don't go any better. It irritates him. No honour among career criminals, fine, he gets that, but—

—But maybe the friendliness between him and Eliot was something that was worth protecting. Even if they were enemies more often than not.

Except that's not really an option now, is it?

So Quinn's being more careful and he's even more surly around the friends he does have (those he's vetted, those he refuses to work against, a few civilians he can only visit under certain aliases, that one volunteer at the animal shelter who lets him in after hours to hang with the kittens for a bit of socialisation (for the kittens, in theory.))

Then he hears a whisper.

He's not meant to do anything about it. Tracking Eliot down outside of a job falls firmly outside the rules of their old friendly rivalry, but... he can pretend he's on a job, maybe. Get a good idea of what kind of shape Eliot's in, fight a bit for the fun of it, think about how best to proceed with this isn't a friendship, but maybe we should treat it like one, at least a bit. Don't you think?

Then when he finds the safehouse and finds Eliot, still as stone and more dangerous than Quinn's ever seen, looking just as cornered as the most sorry-looking stray that's ever turned up, malnourished or worse, at the animal shelter... Quinn has to re-evaluate quickly.

If nothing else because Eliot seems to be drawing some conclusions about why Quinn is there. If nothing else because if he doesn't think quickly he'll be fighting for his life in the next five seconds.

He begins to slowly take out his guns and disarm them, crouching to access the holster at his ankle and set all the pieces on the ground, tossing one knife then the others onto the bare mattress in the corner. The entire time, Eliot's eyes don't move from his. The entire time, Eliot's a statue that feels like a bomb.

The last knife is Quinn's favourite, and it's not as professional, not as carefully chosen as the others. He feels his own reluctance as he tosses it after the rest, sees the faintest flicker of change in Eliot's eyes.

It's a relief, that. He had been starting to think that Eliot didn't recognise him.

"You'd best think this through, Quinn." Eliot's voice is rougher than it should be—illness or lack of sleep, Quinn can't be sure. "I'm not going back."

Quinn pieces this together with what he knows, what he's guessed, what he's heard over the past few years—nothing as simple as imprisonment, reading between the lines of what Eliot just said. Something that hurt him. Something someone like Quinn could be sent to drag him back to.

They're not friends, but maybe they can be. Maybe he can add Eliot Spencer to the short list of people he won't take jobs against, won't double-cross under any circumstance. Maybe he can allow himself this weakness, this indulgence. (Maybe Eliot can, too.)

He has the rough shape of things now. He just needs one more detail.

The first real crack in Eliot's armour—a shadow of confusion, a twitch down his arm like the kind of flinch it hurts to suppress—comes when Quinn asks him, his voice even, "Who did this to you?"

[part 2] [insp.]

#quinn leverage #eliot spencer #qwat au #orig #the inherent intimacy of totally disarming yourself in front of someone dangerous. letting them see all the clever little hiding places.#suit jackets must be perfect for hiding knives.#quinn's highly-valued criminal connections include animal shelter volunteers with no sense of self-preservation #who at least one accept a terrible cover story and let him use the doggy showers to wash off the blood.#(he tries to teach them to be less trusting #but he's so considerate of them as an Obviously Untrustworthy Person that it sort of doesn't help.)#I inhaled trivalentlinks' gorgeous quinneliot fic a few days ago so am probably taking vibes from that too tbh #it's ''what we owe each other'' on ao3 and I definitely recommend it.

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