Title: a good man
Fandom: Leverage
Rating: R
Length: 306
Content notes: Sexual content, mild kink, vague hints at violence
Author notes: For fan-flashworks for the "Locked" challenge.
Summary: Eliot wonders if a good person can love a bad person. Some angst. Past Damien/Eliot. Present Eliot/Parker/Hardison.



Eliot didn’t think a good man could love an evil man until the first time he kissed Damien Moreau.

And it’s not like Eliot had been that good of a man. He’d done things he hadn't proud of. But he could still look himself in the mirror most days.

Until he let Damien pull him onto a bed with 800 thread count sheets, licking 50-year-old whiskey out of the lines of Damien’s chest. Until he bit down on Damien’s shoulder, playful, almost laughing, and saw Damien's eyes crinkle with amusement, with pleasure, with relentless greed for the things they were about to do.

Until he learned every inch of Damien’s body, and worse, let Damien learn his.

After that first time, he didn’t say no to Moreau any more. He did things for love that he would have refused to do for money, for power, even for country. He did these things with the full knowledge that there would be no going back, that he was leaving the good man he used to be behind, his life locked irretrievably into a path of blood and dust.

Years later, Eliot would think back and shake his head, barely believing that he was able to find a way to do something good with his life again. He still wasn’t a good man, of course; he knew that about himself, and he could live with it. But he did good again. With some help.

Sometimes, he lay in bed, Hardison curled up sleeping on one side, Parker on the other, and wondered if good people could really love an evil man.

And then he remembered who he used to be, the stupid kid who sold his soul for love, and he thought, with a grimace, that the answer was yes.