#Eliot very direct

[independent-fics]

Love how in the beginning nearly all of them got angry (especially Parker) at Nate every time he gave up the money to make the con bigger. And then as the show progresses they either care less or (Parker) learns to trust a little more because she knows Nate will make sure the payoff is bigger in the end (money or emotional wise!).

[popper51]

MAN quentin in the book is somehow MORE of an asshole about his relationship w/ alice than in the show. like bro you REALLY shouldve broken up with alice ages ago and now you're blaming it all falling apart on JANET???? the person YOU cheated on your girlfriend with????

its kind of funny that he doesnt even have the emotion bottles to blame it on. he was just normal drunk on an otherwise normal day. and he doesnt even learn about filory until AFTER he cheats!!! and theyre not all in mortal danger at the time!!!!!! he's just being a piece of shit who's way too much of a coward to break up with alice

[soap-brain]

i think one of the nate eliot things is that they're both fucking unhinged. there's something feral about them, something that's capable of disregarding basic humanity. we know eliot is a killer, and a ruthless one at that, and he's not afraid of being in those kind of situations, which in a way dehumanises him, this inability to feel fear.

and nate. nate!! that man is terrifying! get in line, or get out of the way is his motto, and he applies it to absolutely everyone. especially in the earlier seasons, and yes he applies it to sophie (who is unarguably closest to him) too! for maggie he decides that she will get out of the way (because falling in line with him would mean that she would break the law, and she's a Good Citizen, not a Criminal or a Thief, and it never occurs to him that it's not a black and white situation... or that his ex wife matches his crazy).

and if you do neither, he ends you. simple as that. he doesn't kill you and he doesn't physically harm you, but what he does is arguably worse, because he ruins your life in ways eliot can't.

and they very quickly recognise each other as apex predators and both allow the other to use that for their crusade. eliot is a weapon that needs pointing in the right direction, that's what he's getting out of their relationship; and nate needs someone who'll have a go at him and who he can't actually hurt. because nate ruins lives by ruining their reputations, and what reputation does eliot have to lose? and conversely, not even nate ford could convince the world that eliot spencer isn't really fucking dangerous

(sidenote: that's why making moreau watch eliot spencer decrying the evil presidential dog fights is so fucking funny. there's an excellent post about it somewhere on here)

eliot thinks he's further along the path of being something inhuman, and he also thinks nate can still be saved from becoming that too. being an insurance cop, a "good guy" (btw a very laughable concept about how working in insurance makes you a good person. like. if that were the case then how come the same "good guys" let nate's son die so they didn't have to pay for his treatment?), was what kept nate on the straight and narrow before, and now giving him something to do might stop him from going completely off the rails ("how long until you fall apart again? a guy like you can't be out of the game, that's why you were a wreck. you need the chase" is what eliot's saying to convince nate to stay with the team).

unfortunately running with criminals doesn't fix nate the way eliot would like for it to, because the guy suddenly stops recognising any and all societal rules and overcompensates by trying to keep full control of everything all the time. he is so unreasonably mad at sophie for trying to help her friend teresa who got screwed over by marcone.

"she should've known what she got into, her husband working with the mob" and cpl perry from the ep before should've known what he got into, joining the military, but for some reason he's worth helping because he didn't "choose" to become a criminal. did teresa choose to get in with the mob or did she and her husband just not have another chance?

and when the entire team agrees they want to take that job, nate throws a hissy fit. tells them all to walk if they don't like the way he runs the team.

so does leverage fix nate? maybe after five seasons. but at first it makes him worse because between "not having to abide by normal human laws anymore" and the alcohol he completely loses his restraint

and eliot gets that. eliot has been there, has completely lost any and all principles (working for moreau mostly) and is now trying to glue the pieces of himself back together into something that isn't horrible. but nate isn't there yet. nate is still violent and dangerous, and eliot is the only one on the team who isn't disgusted by it. sophie certainly is. hardison and parker are too, even if they don't say it out loud. eliot may not like it, but he gets it.

and in return, nate is the only one who knows about what happened in the big bang job. he can hold eliot back with as little as a gesture or a look and it's not a slight to eliot at all. eliot trusts nate to point him in the right direction because they both need the same thing:

to be a good man.

also:

eliot: what, you think the only thing i know how to do is bust heads? nate: no... well, yeah. eliot: hold a knife like this, cuts through an onion. hold a knife like this, cuts thought like eight yakuza in 4 seconds. screams, carnage... nate: yeah good point actually

like apart from how it's funny, any normal person would react with some version of "that's so fucked up". and nate is just like yeah nah that tracks actually, fair enough, do carry on

also @scotchiegirl something about nate and eliot and violence? sorry for tagging you aslkdjfhasdlkfj i just had ThoughtsTM

[dont-read-this-im-dead]

Here are my take aways from The Nigerian Job.

-"I like plan M," Eliot says after Nate explains that Hardison dies in that one. This implies Eliot made a snap judgement about Hardison that made Eliot hate him.

But Eliot saves Hardison when the warehouse explodes. So clearly, Eliot DOES care if Hardison dies. Which means Eliot doesn't hate him. So why?

My theory? Eliot had a crush on Hardison at first sight, but since his last not-relationship didn't go so well (Moreau), he's pretty much closed his heart off to everyone, letting off steam in one night stands. He probably reverted back to his childhood when boys were supposed to pick on the girl they liked.

-"Don't you dare. If you kill anybody, you'll screw up my get away," Parker warns. Which implies she HAS a getaway plan, but waits until Nate is awake anyway. Why? She said it herself. She trusts him because he's an honest man.

This also implies that while Parker and Eliot have the reputation for working alone, she's heard about him only to the point where she believes that's what he does. But even before Eliot considers the team his family, he doesn't kill people willy-nilly. He punches them and knocks them out. So why?

My theory is that Parker has heard rumors of Eliot while he still worked with Moreau, but when she met him, she did not know he was a different person than he was back then.

-"What the hell's a Sophie?" Eliot asked as Hardison and Parker follow Nate out. Which implies Eliot is the only one with any common sense left in them.

I believe Eliot has stopped blindly following people since Moreau. He did some bad things for a bad man, and when he woke up, he found he couldn't wash the blood off. He wasn't going to be brainwashed again. If that meant questioning Nate, the man he says he trusts because he's an honest man, then that's what Eliot is going to do.

-"Is she injured? In the head?"

To the world, Parker is insane. To Parker, SOPHIE is insane. This makes me wonder how she views the world.

-"I promised. That would be very wrong." Hardison sounds like he's trying to convince his Nana that he didn't break the law, and I swear, the FBI has the wrong guy!

Did he really think that would work on Nate, or was he just messing around? If it's the latter, that means Hardison already feels comfortable in the group, and trusts Nate like a surrogate father, just like he trusts his Nana.

-"It was a nice try, man," Hardison sighs when Sophie doesn't immediately land the gift with Dubenich. He's already put his trust in Nate, but now he's showing doubt. But that's because he doesn't know all the plans from A-Z in Nate's head. We see in later episodes that he finally understands just how deep Nate's plan run, and he's able to put all his trust in him-not an honest man or a surrogate father, but a fellow thief, a mastermind.

-"I checked. The airport shuttle leaves in 15 minutes," is the very first line of dialogue in the episode, directed at Nate Ford.

WHY?

Nate is broke, living out of his car. Where is he planning on going after the airport?? Is he planning on bumming a ride on a plane? What's his thoughts process here??

[ohgriftwearereallyinitnow]

Listen ok Eliot is protective like whoa and that doesn’t just mean in the dangerous way; he’s mom friend, he’s the older sister you never had, he’s your actual mom, the “have you eaten today?” friend. All that being said, he routinely takes down private security teams, in his head, on his day off. Once he said he only sleeps 90 minutes a night and I’m not so sure he was lying - it’s half probably unnecessary hypervigilance and something he picked up when he needed to keep watch for two weeks straight with a team of three and four months of constant attack.

Alec Hardison is thirsty for someone to be close to. He had a great homelife (relatively) and he knows what it’s supposed to be like but he’s actually a classic computer nerd and has never been with someone past his fantasies of what romance should be like. Which brings me to my next point which is he’s a classic romantic. I think Hardison had a real job at some point, like he was a tech guy or he worked at a cybersecurity company or he hacked like garcia. Anyway he knows basic stuff. He’s the emotional one of the bunch, the one who experiences emotion like a typical person Like Eliot, can sense when someone isn’t telling the truth or isn’t being true to himself through high level CIA training but lacks the emotional intelligence to deal with it gracefully. Which is where Hardison comes in

Then there’s Parker. She keeps everyone at arm’s distance, to the point where it’s actually shocking if she touches you. She takes extreme risks because she’s incredibly impulsive. She doesn’t lie, doesn’t even know how or why she would because she always has an escape route. She hates hospitals because she spent her entire 7th year in one after a beating so bad she almost didn’t walk again. But she’s not adverse to romance and friendship, it just takes her a very long time to suss out whether you’re going to hurt her or not. She’s gullible about real world knowledge bc she has a very specific set of skills. A bizarrely blazeh attitude until helpless children being exploited or respect for Good dead men gets brought up, basically she knows what the right thing is but she needs people to point her in the right direction.

Eliot and Alec really do use that to their advantage but would rather kill each other and themselves before hurting her. Thus even though they fight, they really do go well together.

[skullcandy11111198]

Leveragetober23 Day 3: family

Soon after Breanna came to live with Nana, she got a visit from one of her new big brothers. Nana was all in a tizzy for a few days beforehand, when she first learned one of her children would be coming back home for a few days. Apparently Hardison was a legend around here. Nana was baking like crazy, and when Breanna built up the courage to ask why she was making so much food, she learned that her "big brother and his partners" would be coming to stay with them.

Now, Breanna was pretty open minded, her parents raised her well, but she will admit she did a slowblink when she was first told. No one else seemed to have any thoughts on that topic, no weird or judge-y faces from any of the other children in hearing range, so she shrugged and went with it.

When they finally arrived, she was only more intrigued. Hardison could best be described as a whirlwind. He moved fast and talked faster. His two friends, on the other hand, were the direct opposite. They both smiled when talking to others, and answered rather succinctly, but otherwise they didn't move very fast, and in the scheme of things, barely talked at all.

Breanna wasn't quite sure what to do with them. She had accepted her parents were gone, and her definition of family had to change rather quickly, but every time she met a new child of Nana's, it hit her again how much her life had changed over the last two-ish years. Therefore, she was back in her room, decompressing a bit after meeting Hardison and his "partners."

(After meeting them, she honestly couldn't tell if they were romantic-partners or business-partners. They talked about work, a lot. They were vague about it, but they obviously worked together. On the other hand, Parker was a very clingy person with both Hardison and Eliot. Inevitably she would be hanging off one of them, touching them in some way. Hardison and Eliot were known to share a knowing look with each other too, whenever Parker did something. Parker and Eliot always made sure an orange soda was in Hardison's reach, and Parker and Hardison would make googly eyes whenever Eliot even just talked about cooking.)

A knock on her door distracted her.

She opened her door to reveal a slightly nervous looking Parker, who kept checking over her shoulder while she asked if she could hide in Breanna's room for a little bit. Breanna was unsure about this new person, but eh, why not? When she said as much, Parker beamed and thanked her while sliding inside and sitting on the ground behind where the door would hinge open.

Okayyyy. Breanna hesitantly sat down criss cross apple sauce, facing her. "Not to, like, stop you or anything…but, why are we sitting on the ground, exactly?"

Parker looked at her with a sharp eye. "Well, I'm sitting on the ground. You just decided to do it because I did. Sophie says that has to do with psychology, but I don't remember which theory right now."

"Hey! It feels perfectly reasonable right now to go to ground when the only adult in here right now is doing the same!" Breanna pouted, but all she got back was a small smile from Parker. "And hey, don't distract me! Why are we on the ground?"

Parker laughed, then suddenly went quiet. Breanna started to open her mouth to ask her what was happening when Parker suddenly whipped her hand up to stop her from speaking. A few moments later Breanna heard footsteps walking down the hall, pausing at the end, then turning around and walking back to the main part of the house.

Once she was sure whoever it was was gone, she lowered her hand. Breanna was even more curious now, and slightly worried. She knew Nana, and she knew how she raised her children, but either way there was another woman in her room, an adult, who seemed to be hiding from the other adults. Breanna needed to know what was going on.

Parker must have been able to read her face because when she turned her head back towards the younger girl, she immediately started to explain.

"Okay, so to be honest, I've gotten wayyy better with people. Like, way better. I haven't stabbed anyone with a fork in two months, Hardison and Sophie are really proud of me. But there are still a lot of people out there, and they were starting to get loud, and I don't like loud. Loud means notice and I don't like to be noticed, so I went to the place I was sure no one would check because I know Hardison, which means I know Nana, which means I know they will give you privacy because new people are around, which means people are way less likely to come looking for me in here, and when Nana introduced you, you were really quiet, so you are not likely to be as loud as it is out there. So, safe space."

Breanna's head was reeling from trying to keep track of…all of that but yeah, it made sense, in a weird way. She was the newest kid, and one of the previous kids was coming home to visit for the first time since she arrived, plus they were bringing other people too, so Nana was likely to quietly tell everyone to give her some space.

Breanna nodded definitively. "Okay, that makes sense. But…floor?"

Parker nodded, very serious, "First lesson: even when you're hidden, don't assume you're safe, always hide somewhere in a hidden place. Then you're way less likely to be caught" She paused, eyeing Breanna's head speculatively. "You have really curly hair. That's good. You can hide a lot of things in there, lots of pins, maybe even a key or two." Another pause, Breanna felt like her soul was being weighed. "Do you want to learn how to pick a lock in less than 5 seconds?"

Oh, they were going to be friend-friends. "Okay!"

[onyxbird]

OK, the idea of a soulmate au where you can't look anyone but your soulmate directly in the eyes was not done with me yet.

Leverage version:

Sophie knows all the tricks for faking full eye contact. For a third-party observer, it's nigh-impossible to tell that she's not quite achieving direct eye contact short of using cameras with very good eye-tracking software. Trying to fool a mark into thinking she's their soulmate via “eye contact” is tougher, but on a mark who hasn't met their own soulmate (and thus has never experienced true full eye contact), Sophie still has a pretty good success rate. Every member of the team has been drafted as her fake soulmate on a con at least once. Or, at least, Sophie has tried. Parker failed to pick up on any of the hints Sophie was able to drop without blowing their cover, so Sophie had to switch tactics. Hardison tried valiantly to hold the near-eye-contact, and they pulled off the job, but he was struggling and his resulting nervous blather did not help the illusion at all. Eliot picked up her cues and pulled off the illusion flawlessly… and hated every second of it. The first time they faked prolonged eye contact, he ducked away to Nate's bathroom the second they got in the door, and Sophie (slightly insulted) wondered if he was going to throw up. He didn't, just practically boiled his skin off in the hottest shower he could stand. Nate is by far Sophie's most frequent “soulmate” on the job… None of the rest of the team are entirely sure whether the eye contact is fake or not, and neither Nate nor Sophie is telling.

Parker has never had any interest in making eye contact, and was genuinely unaware that this was a serious thing people actually believe in. (Sure, people talk about finding their “soulmate” through eye contact, but people also talk about summoning Bloody Mary through the bathroom mirror. That doesn't mean it's real.) The first time she looked directly into Hardison's eyes was both accidental and jarring. She averted her eyes and assumed they would never mention this uncomfortable situation again. She was not expecting Hardison to suddenly want to have an intense, excited conversation that was clearly loaded with some meaning she wasn't picking up on, and she definitely wasn't expecting him to do so while trying to eagerly stare into her eyeballs. When Eliot happened to walk in, she latched onto him like a spooked cat, demanding he do something about Hardison; there was something wrong with him, like he's possessed or something; make him stop!

Eliot has habitually avoided even the possibility of eye contact with anyone since he was in high school. (He certainly wasn't trying to lock eyes with people even before that, but, well, he and Aimee had tried once, back when they were young and naive and thought maybe they were meant to be. They weren't.) In his line of work… it was better not to know. There was just no way that would end well. He doesn't have anything against other people finding their soulmates, though. Really. So he's not quite sure why there's such a bite to his words when he snaps at Hardison to knock it off—that “soulmates” is no excuse for trying to look someone in the eye when they don't like it. But he's sure he can feel a headache forming as he's stuck between Parker's “'Soulmates'! Ha! …Oh, come on. You're kidding, right? That's not real” from one side and Hardison's horrified “Oh my god, I'm sorry! Parker, I am so, so sorry—I was just so excited, you know? I didn't realize—” start of what was clearly going to be a long and heartfelt apology on the other.

Hardison thinks soulmates are very romantic, and he's always hoped, you know? He tries not to talk too openly about it—dreaming of finding your soulmate was deemed “girly” and “wussy” by the popular boys at his high school, and he had more than enough targets on his back for bullying as a kid without drawing attention this one. He's always kind of thought he'd probably never find his, if he even had one. He did so much of his socializing with like-minded people online, and you can't make eye contact—not real eye contact—over a webcam. There have been some near misses that made his heart flip (Hell, back during that first Dubenich job, when Eliot had taken out all the Pierson guards and then given him that smug little smirk, for an instant—just for an instant—Hardison had almost thought their eyes met directly. He must have imagined it, too caught up in the incredibly sexy and unexpected display of competence on display in front of him to avoid a split second of daydreaming about what it would feel like to look straight into those incredibly blue eyes. Anyway, it had never happened again, and after working together for so long, they surely would have looked each other in the eyes by now if it were possible.), but no dice. Until now. Parker, though… Even while apologizing (he should have realized to be more careful with Parker), Hardison could barely keep the absolutely giddy smile off his face. There had been no mistaking that, and god when people talked about “getting lost” in their soulmate's eyes… Wow, they weren't kidding!

Nate will expound at length about how the concept of “soulmates” and consequently the act of making eye contact have been exploited and commercialized for all of recorded history, the absence of any scientific evidence that the rare ability to make eye contact with another person actually correlates with any real measures of relationship compatibility rather than being a random biological quirk that has been superstitiously fetishized, and (if the person who brought it up isn't desperately trying to escape the conversation yet) whether the concept soulmates is compatible with Catholic theology. Very few people last long enough through his disparagement of the entire concept to notice that he has skirted around ever actually saying whether or not he's ever made direct eye contact with another person, and even fewer are willing to risk touching off another lengthy tirade to press him on the matter.

Thanks @soulmate-au-bargain-bin for the fun idea!

[fablesrose]

Ch 20 - The Reunion Job

Series Rewrite Masterlist 

Pairing: Eliot Spencer x Ford!Reader

Description: The team goes back in time, to high school with all the insecurities of a nerd turned overly rich and successful bully.

Words: 5.7k

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was only a couple of days later when after Hardison met the client with Nate, he burst through my door complaining about Eliot being a lurker and Nate playing mind games with him which he very much did not appreciate. At least that’s what I could decipher from his frustrated ramblings. I’ll admit, I was only half listening to him as I was just reaching the most exciting part of the book I was reading.

“How do you deal with him?” Hardison finally asked. 

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, I mean, he’s your uncle, he raised you. You’ve gotta have dealt with his mind games and little psychological tricks all the time, so…” 

I sighed, realizing that he actually wanted an answer and not just a rant session. Meaning, I wasn’t going to be able to finish the chapter. I closed the book and turned to stare at Hardison. I contemplated whether I wanted to actually answer his question in a fulfilling and helpful way for my friend or find out what happened in the current story arc. 

I think the answer is obvious. Now how to go about completing the goal. 

“Well, Hardison, you are a very smart young man,” I began. 

It was obvious that he was not expecting the compliment and blinked, “Well, I– I’m not sure how that–”

“It is very relevant,” I cut him off, bringing the attention to me again. “The thing with dealing with manipulation tactics is that you first have to understand them.” I stood up from my couch, making a better connection with him by having more direct eye contact. “You see, Nate does use mind games, but it isn’t an always, every time thing so in order to identify when he is trying to manipulate you, well, let's say there is a learning curve.”

“And I am at the very bottom of the curve,” Hardison whined a bit. “I have never been at the bottom of a curve!”

I thought I had him hooked, so said a quick, ‘follow me’ and tried to walk towards my door, and to my satisfaction, he started to follow without a second thought. “That’s okay, I’m sure you will catch on. The thing about manipulation is that it is most often about subverting attention, whether that be to the manipulator, yourself, or somewhere else with a hyper focus that it is hard to redirect back to where you want if you aren’t looking out for it.”

He followed and listened intently, making a few interested comments. 

I walked him across the hall and entered Nate’s apartment, “It takes practice and a lot of self awareness both to spot it and to try to do it to someone. There’s also tricks that can help, in a way it is similar to grifting and hacking, just combining the two.”  I finally led him to where his computer was, “But, I won’t keep you any longer. I think it is better if you did some research on some psychology and the job for the client, right?” I nodded as I asked him that and he instinctively nodded back at me, agreeing as he sat down and placed his hands on his computer. 

“Okay, thanks y/n.”

I hummed in agreement and casually, but quickly, walked back across the hall to get back to my book. Hopefully Hardison didn’t think too much about what just happened when he was doing his research. 

Not too much later Nate came in to bring me along for the recon of an Iranian intelligence secret police hideout. 

“You’re lucky I just finished a really good part of this book and need to decompress a bit,” I said as I slipped a bookmark in and stood from my couch for the second time. 

“Mmm hmm, I think you’re the lucky one because you wouldn’t be able to pull the same thing on me that you did on Hardison,” he said, very self satisfied. 

I stopped in my tracks, “how do you know about that?”

“I was upstairs and heard you.”

“You’re not gonna tell him, are you?”

“Only if you hurry up, we’ve gotta go. Come on, birdy,” he insisted, ushering me along and out the door. 

“Okay! Okay, I’m going!”

Eliot and Hardison went into the restaurant as health inspectors. Sophie was already there as a customer with a bug in her food to give the boys an in to do an inspection. When Eliot wouldn’t help her get the roach away from her after her outburst, she told him that he would pay for it. I’m sure that will be interesting. 

Parker was breaking in one of the back rooms where we were sure all of their sensitive information was. Nate and I stayed in the truck monitoring. Once Parker plugged into their computer, Hardison cloned it so we could all see the screen and Hardison could search the files. Meanwhile, Eliot was doing the food inspection as a bit of a distraction, and if I didn’t know any better, I would have thought he was enjoying himself, just a little bit. 

“There’s nothing on Manticore, starting a syntax search” Hardison said as he remotely connected to the computer. 

“What about the Manticore?” I asked, vaguely gesturing to the graphic on the bottom corner of the screen depicting the creature. 

“The image on the bottom left there,” Nate said, since Hardison couldn’t see where I was gesturing. “Manticore is a mythological creature, Persian for ‘man-eater.’”

“Yeah, I was just about to click on that,” Hardison said unconfidently. 

“Oh yeah, right, sure,” I replied, making sure he knew of my skepticism. 

Hardison clicked on the graphic and a bunch of files opened on the screen. 

“Okay, let’s uh, copy Cyrus’s program,” Nate said. 

“I’d love to, but it’s not here,” Hardison said. “Doesn’t even look like they’ve heard of Cyrus.”

I looked at Nate, “That’s odd. Then who stole the program?”

“I’ve got payment records here,” Parker said. “The last one dated three weeks ago.”

After some searching, Hardison said, “The last Manticore update was also three weeks ago.”

“And who was that payment to?” Nate asked. 

Hardison answered with a low whistle. 

“Larry Duberman,” Hardison began once we got back for the brief on our new mark. “Founder and Ceo of Dubertech. Back in the 90s he wrote the book on digital database security. Literally wrote the book.”

Eliot stepped between Sophie and I with an intricate looking tea set and started pouring the both of us tea as Hardison explained how much revenue Duberman pulled in. I tried to make eye contact with either Eliot or Sophie to question what was going on, but Eliot was focused on pouring the tea, and Sophie wasn’t paying any attention to him at all.

“Why would Larry Duberman be selling software to Iran? He doesn’t need the money,” Sophie said and quietly thanked Eliot for the tea with a soft touch to his shoulder.

I repeated the sentiment to him, without the touch, and took a sip, noticing it was my favorite tea. I smiled a bit to myself, not quite listening to what Hardison was saying. I did catch that Duberman had a lot of competition in the tech industry which required him to expand his market share to make money. 

“So, he sells the technology to embargoed countries and the income is tax free?” Nate asked. 

“That’s a nice way to keep the bottom line from being squeezed,” Sophie commented. 

“Now Duberman has a long term contract around Manticore for Iran, this man has become the IT department for the axis of evil,” Hardison said definitely. 

“Alright, so Eliot was right,” Nate said. “The Veserate didn’t go after Cyrus, Duberman did.”

“It’s not about politics man,” Eliot said while squeezing a lemon into Sophie’s tea. “It’s bad business for him.”

“Okay, so Duberman’s our target,” Nate said, “what are we up against?”

Hardison explained how if we could shut off a certain one of Duberman’s servers then we could shut off Manticore. 

“So, get to hackin’ man,” Eliot said. 

“Dude, what is it about ‘wrote the book on database security’ that you don’t comprehend?” Hardison mocked. “I can’t just access Manticore remotely, we got to get to that server, in person.”

“Have any of you ever trimmed a Bonsai?” Nate asked. 

I looked at him quizzically before following his eyes to see where he was looking at an article saying that Duberman recently installed a Japanese garden. 

“I mean, I took a class in college,” I said, once I thought I had an idea of where he was going with the question. 

“Really?” Eliot said in an excited and almost conspiratorial whisper, “cuz I actually–”

“Maybe some other time, Eliot,” Nate cut him off, clicking on the screen to enlarge the article he was reading. 

“Okay,” he said, a little dejected, also seeming to realize why Nate asked, more hypothetically. 

I was about to give an encouraging remark to Eliot when my attention got pulled to the other side of the table. 

“Why is Eliot pouring your tea?” Parker asked. “Hmm? You brainwash him again?”

Again? When was the first time?

Sophie hummed in a negative tone. “Neuro-linguistic programming,” she corrected. “It’s amazing what you can do with the power of suggestion. ‘Sugar, squeezed,’” She said, only slightly directed at Eliot and patted his shoulder again. “And a few strategic pats on the arm.”

Eliot seemed to register what Sophie said and paused where he was about to pour her some more tea, “Damn it!”

“You owe me for that roach business!”

“Damn it!” Eliot repeated, “Sophie, not again.” He then took the cup of tea he was pouring for Sophie and marched off. 

Hardison was laughing at the front of the room, and it only took me a moment to give a laugh as well. It seems to be the job for mind games. 

I took a sip of my tea, which Eliot left in front of me, and leaned toward Sophie, “Thanks for including me in the tea, this is my favorite.”

“Oh, I didn’t tell him to do either of those things, but I’m glad you enjoyed it, dear,” she replied casually. 

That made me pause, because it didn’t seem like something Eliot would do on his own, but I took Sophie’s word for it and just assumed that maybe her programming accidentally implied something about me getting tea too. The tea being my favorite must have been a coincidence. 

Regardless, I was going to enjoy the drink in front of me. 

I had volunteered to go into Dubertech as a custodian/gardener to help in the break in, but Eliot ended up doing it. I assume because he also got some nostalgia from the bonsai as well as this part of the mini con involved literally running into Duberman and accidentally roughing him up a little. 

Eliot would shove a bonsai into his hands, spilling it everywhere. Hardison and Parker would immediately come in to clean it up, swiping his keycard and his fingerprint off the bonsai pot. Hardison and Parker then proceeded to break into Duberman’s office to gain access to the Manticore server. 

Sophie, Nate, and I were at his apartment watching through the camera Hardison had with him. When they walked into the supposed server room, they paused. 

“Whoa,” Parker said. 

“It seems like we stepped out of Japan and straight into high school,” Hardison said.

“In 1985,” Parker clarified. 

As Hardison panned the camera around the room, we could see that they were right. There was so much high school memorabilia and 80s tech on the shelves and in trophy cases. The lighting even seemed to be retro. 

“Did you find the server running Manticore?” Nate asked, trying to get them back on track. 

“Oh, I found it,” Hardison said. “Small problem: Nate, he’s running Manticore from his high school computer.”

The computer in question came into view and I was amazed that a program as advanced and complicated to spy on Iranians could even be run on the machine.  Parker picked up and waved a floppy disk with a Manticore sticker on it. 

“Question: can we just smash the computer? Would that work?” I asked. 

“No,” Hardison replied, but didn’t explain as he plugged in to the computer and began to try and hack it. 

“Fair enough, just thought I’d double check.”

“Vintage 1980s technology, man,” Hardison said, mostly to himself, “no wonder I couldn’t hack it from the outside. It’s speaking a dead language.”

“This is bringing a whole new meaning to ‘tech people don’t trust modern tech,’” I commented. 

We watched as Hardison ran passwords through the computer, trying to gain access. After a few moments, an announcement came through talking about a possible breach. 

“Hey, they’re onto us!” Parker said. “What’s the deal?”

“He’s got a multi-tiered password system,” Hardison explained. “Now, I’ve already broken into the first few: uh, Zavransky, MandyDD, a bunch of other random ones.” Hardison’s computer then made an unusual sound. 

“Is that a good beep or a bad beep?” Parker asked. 

“Ohh, that’s a bad beep. We just hit a wall.”

“You didn’t get the password?” Nate asked. 

“Not the master one,” Hardison said, “the last one I got is: L33R15L06.”

Sophie and Nate looked at each other and said ‘high school’ at the same time in a dejected voice. 

“That password is what tipped you off?” I asked sarcastically, mostly to cover up how I wasn’t sure how that password connected to the theme, but with all of the high school themed stuff in the room, it made sense. 

“Come on, let’s go,” Parker said anxiously. 

“Hold on, let me just copy this disk,” Hardison replied. “How did anyone get anything done in the 80s?”

They were able to make their escape once the download finished and made their way back to the pub. We all met down there to discuss what to do from there. 

“Nobody else thinks it’s weird that you can just buy anybody’s yearbook online?” Eliot said when Hardison pulled out Duberman’s yearbook to consult.

“You know, it’s real cute man how you still believe in privacy,” Hardison replied.  

“I’m just amazed he could get his hands on it so quickly,” I commented.

“Here we go,” Nate said as he flipped through it. “Zavransy: math teacher. Now I bet if we turn to the cheerleaders… Yes. Oh, Mandy.”

Eliot gave a low whistle. I glanced at the picture and, well, the double Ds in the password did make some sense. 

“What does the ‘DD’ mean?” Parker asked.

The boys gave some innuendoes towards Mandy’s chest which I rolled my eyes at. I just told Parker that she didn’t need to worry about it. 

“It was the last password that tipped us off,” Nate continued, “L33R15L06, now that has to be a locker combination, right?”

I nodded my head, agreeing, trying to disguise that I was just coming to the realization of what that was now. I guess I never remembered any of my locker combinations that way. Or remembered any at all.  

“So clearly, he’s obsessed with high school,” Nate concluded. “Memorabilia, his high school computer.”

“Yeah, he’s a classic computer nerd,” Sophie said. She glanced at Hardison and apologized. “The girls totally ignored him, the guys picked on him, now that he’s a success, he can’t leave the past behind him.”

“Yeah, he has to remember who he was because it made him who he is,” Nate said.

“I feel bad for the nerd,” Parker said with an almost sympathetic deadpan.

“Don’t feel bad for this guy,” Eliot replied. “Getting bullied in high school is no excuse for propping up dictators. Take Hardison, he got bullied his whole high school career, he’s not a criminal.”

We all looked at him incredulously. Sophie and Parker verbally disagreed.

“Not a bad criminal,” Eliot amended. 

“What makes you think I got bullied in high school?” Hardison asked. 

“A: you’ve got a green hornet doll.”

“First: it’s a limited edition action figure. Second: it is Green Lantern. Educate yourself.”

“Guys, listen, listen,” Nate interrupted, “we’ve got a locker combination, we have a teacher’s name, and we have a crush. So Duberman has made his old high school, his roman room.”

After a moment, Parker confidently said, “Of course.”

“Of course?” Nate asked her, “what’s a roman room?”

She crumbled and admitted she didn’t know. 

“It’s a memory technique,” he explained. “Each of his passwords corresponds with an object in a space he is intimately familiar with. In his case: the hallway of his old high school where he kept his locker. Now if I were to make this bar my roman room, everything I need to remember is in this room. For instance:” Nate stood and clasped me on the shoulder, “my, uh, email password would be Birdy here.” He then approached the bar and picked up a bottle of liquor, “and my bank password would be Balmore,” he said with a shrug. He then poured himself a drink from the very same bottle. 

“Hey,” Parker leaned across the table to Hardison, “Nate just gave us his passwords, huh?”

“No,” Hardison said, “but I already got all his passwords. Want to see his Netflix queue?” He continued with Parker’s nod, “He’s got, like, every season of ‘Rockford Files,’ every season of ‘Sex in the City,’ that show ‘Psych.’”

“Oh, that’s a good one,” I said. 

“Hey,” Nate came back and leaned over Hardison’s shoulder, “Listen, if we can’t get into the main server without Duberman’s master password, you can’t hack into that, right?”

“No, the password's up in the guy’s head. Can’t hack a guy’s head.”

“So the only option is to break inside his roman room.”

“You wanna break into his high school?” Parker asked. “Pft, I could do that blindfolded. Yeah, let’s do it blindfolded.”

“No, no, no, what we’re gonna do, is we’re gonna break into that high school, twenty five years ago.”

“Hmm, what do ya know,” Hardison said, looking at his phone, “Class of ‘85 has a reunion coming up. In eight months.”

We shared a passing look between each other with a smile. I think we could make that work. 

Sophie made some calls as different reunion committee members and was able to get the reunion moved up to this month. She then called Duberman to personally invite him to the party, naming some classmates that should incentivise him to come. And lo and behold, he said he ‘wouldn’t miss it for the world.’ 

Hardison went in and edited a picture of Sophie and put it in the yearbook under the name of Grace Pelts. Nate was going to pose as a student named Drake McIntyre and play the rival, or villain in Duberman’s story. When he came out in his chosen outfit, he for sure looked like the peaked in high school jerk that he was going for. 

Parker posed as one of the caterers and placed cameras around the school so Hardison could keep an eye on everything and help Nate and Sophie out when needed. 

“Oof, so many awkward people in so many ugly outfits,” Parker said as she took a look at the bulletin board with the ‘nostalgic’ photos. 

“You’re lucky you never went to high school,” Hardison said. “Nothin’ but heartbreak and homework.”

I sighed with a nod of my head, though he couldn’t see me, it was true. 

“Didn’t you go to your Prom?” she asked. 

“Uh… I was kinda busy,” he replied in a way that told me he was doing something that he wasn’t supposed to. Probably highly impressive and highly illegal.

“So you guys get to go to the reunion, and I’m stuck on goon patrol?” Eliot griped beside me as he pulled on his gloves.

“What am I? Chopped liver?” I asked, unamused. 

“No, you’re at least a nice Pâté,” he replied with a slight apologetic look. 

I squinted at him, not understanding what he was implying, “I’m gonna try and take that as a compliment, but you’re on thin ice right now.”

“Eliot, listen, once we get the password, you and y/n have to enter it on Duberman’s computer and destroy Manticore,” Nate explained. “Hardison is a little occupied.”

“Besides, I’m sure you already had your high school fun,” Hardison goaded. “Big man on campus. What? Quarterback?”

I watched as a slight smirk of reminiscence appeared on his face and he pulled his hood up, “I had many interests.”

He then waited until a lone employee walked out of the Dubertech building and knocked him out with one punch. I quickly rummaged through his pockets until I found his key card. Eliot then dragged him off to the side in the bushes where we were standing and I tossed his briefcase into the bushes after him. The two of us then entered the building and made our way to the so-called server. 

Meanwhile, Sophie was making first contact with Duberman, stroking his ego a bit to get him loosened up. She also helped make the introduction to Duberman of Nate being Drake McIntire. 

Apparently Drake was pretty popular in high school as it sounded like he was swarmed by people greeting him. Nate made sure to point out Duberman from across the room and address him as “doucherman!”

That seemed to sell it for Duberman.

“How’d you know that was his nickname?” Sophie whispered when she was able to take a step away from Duberman. 

“With a name like Duberman, it’s not exactly rocket science,” Nate replied as he greeted more people, asking Hardison to help him keep his cover. 

“Doucherman’s pretty good,” I commented. “If you wanted to just mispronounce his name you could go with Doberman but that might be too cool for him. I probably would have gone for gooberman or nooberman.” 

There was a moment of silence.

“Say, y/n, who were you in high school?” Hardison asked over comms. 

I scoffed, “Please, I didn’t conform to high school stereotypes.”

“Emo,” a couple voices said, including Eliot who was walking alongside me. 

I looked at him and sputtered a bit, trying to deny it. 

“Don’t even try it, y/n,” Hardison teased, “I can always look up your yearbook pictures.”

“Don’t you dare,” I said in the most threatening voice I could muster. 

“Mmhmm,” Hardison replied in a tone that told me he wasn’t convinced but then continued to help Nate by feeding him facts about his supposed classmates. 

Sophie was able to pull Duberman into the hallway and started reminiscing, trying to get any passwords she could out of him. 

“This hall is burned in my mind,” Doberman said as they walked. 

“Say, wasn’t that Mrs. Zavransy’s room?” Sophie asked. 

“Had her for homeroom. Yeah, Pat Brander once gave me a wedgie in front of the whole class,” He replied. 

“Pat Brander,” Sophie emphasized as if she was remembering too. 

“Check out Brander,” Eliot told me as I sat at the computer. 

I typed in the last name which didn’t work and then first, and then first and last, but none worked, “Name isn’t working.”

“Try Brander303, that was the room number,” Hardison said. 

I typed it in, “Uh, looks like we got payroll.”

“Alright guys, patience,” Nate told us. “If we get him riled up, he’ll lead us to the password we want.”

Nate entered the hallway in a drunken manner and started teasing Duberman in a way that was very reminiscent of teenagers. 

“We’re not eighteen anymore!” Duberman whined, trying to get him to stop. 

“I’m just reliving the good old times, ya know,” Nate replied. 

“Good times? You think they were good times for me? Like when you told Amy Tuttleton, the prettiest girl in school, that I had both male and female genitalia?”

Nate laughed, “I forgot about that! Yeah, that was classic.”

I typed in every variation I could think of for a password with Amy Tuttleton, with no hits. 

“Hermaphrodite?” Eliot asked over my shoulder. 

“I’m not trying that,” I said. 

After a few more passing comments between Nate, Sophie, and Duberman, Duberman finally said, “You just don’t get it, do you? I won.”

“Oh come on now, you’re not still steamed about things that happened twenty-five years ago. Come on! Listen, it wasn’t all bad, does your brain only remember the painful bits?”

“Just the important stuff,” he tried to defend. “Like what happened in the library.”

“Oh yeah, go on,” Sophie encouraged. 

“No, you remember, yeah, I was sitting there–”

He was cut off by a newcomer entering the hallway and their little group. It sounded like a flirty woman, who Nate, trying to stay in character, drew her attention to himself. Nate said her name was Nikki and she implied she was a cheerleader. Hardison got to work trying to give Nate information about her, but there were multiple cheerleaders who could have had the nickname Nikki. She then dragged Nate away from Duberman and Sophie to make out. 

“Nate, I hope you know, this is so gross,” I said, trying to block it out. “Hardison, can you mute him for me for a second so I can listen to Sophie?”

He did as I asked and tuned me to Sophie and Duberman’s conversation.

I kept trying passwords that Sophie was giving me, and while a few of them opened different capabilities, none were the master password we were looking for. Eliot paced around the room looking at memorabilia and giving me updates on the others. 

“Ha, Nikki locked Nate in a closet after he turned her down.”

I laughed as I tried another password, “serves him right, he probably broke that poor girl’s heart. And he broke my eardrums.”

“Yeah, Parker said the same thing along with high school being dramatic. She’s gonna go break him out.”

I scoffed, “she can say that again. High school was so over dramatic.”

“Says the emo.”

I glared at him and he changed the subject, looking back at the glass case in front of him, “They give out trophies for chess?”

“Chess is at least a strategy game. It’s better than a spelling bee trophy,” I countered.

He didn’t have the chance to reply as grinding noises and sparks started to shoot through the door. 

“It’s the Veserate, they’re comin’ in!” Eliot told me and the rest of the crew. 

Hardison unmuted Nate for me as he asked what the Iranians were doing here. 

“How are we supposed to know?” I told him. 

As I typed in another password, Nikki crashed Duberman’s and Sophie’s conversation again. She said she just wanted Drake out of the way so she could have Duberman all to herself, she spilled her drink on Sophie in the process, insisting she clean up. Well, there goes our audience with him and our opportunity to get the password. At least for now. 

“What happened? He get away?” Nate asked Sophie when they met up. 

“She took him!” Sophie lamented, “That, that… That bloody little slut!”

I’ll admit, that was not what I expected to come out of her mouth.

“Calm down,” Nate mediated. 

“Just because I’m not some cheerleader or something!” 

Oh, there was some bad blood here. Some history for Sophie. 

“Alright, let’s forget about it for now. Eliot and y/n have company and we’re no closer to getting the password, so I think we need to escalate.”

“You think he’s ready?” Sophie asked. 

“Uh, guys,” Hardison interjected, “I’ve accounted for all the Nikkis in the class of ‘85, your Nikki’s not even in the yearbook.”

“Wait, so she’s a fraud, like us?” Parker asked. 

“What, is she just some random hussy who’s out for his cash?” Sophie proposed. 

“Not exactly,” Hardison answered. “She’s a hired gun.”

I shifted my focus from the melting door to Eliot, “Well, this just got more complicated.”

“An assassin?” Sophie asked. “Nikki’s an assassin?”

“Yeah, I guess we weren’t the only ones with the bright idea to pose as alumni,” Hardison said. “This chick’s connected to wetwork jobs all up and down the east coast. Russian mob, Italian mob, there’s a New Zealand mob?”

“This is our fault,” Nate said. 

“I didn’t do anything,” Parker denied. 

“We lured him to an unsecured environment,” Sophie said. “We exposed him.”

“Now we have to save him,” Nate said. “We can’t destroy Manticore with him dead. Split up and find him. Eliot what’s happening on your end?”

“T minus five seconds,” he replied. “This reunion sucks!”

“I agree!” I said, surveying the room, trying to find something I could defend myself with. I finally settled on using a chair if I had to. 

We watched as a hole was finally punched through the door and a head appeared to assess the room. When he saw Eliot, he said, puzzled, “The health inspector?”

Eliot shrugged, “I’m gonna have to dock ya again.”

Two of them quickly entered the room, the first raising a gun to Eliot. He knocked it away and was able to knock one down at a time to fight off the other. The first was able to drive Eliot into one of the trophy cases, breaking the glass everywhere. I stepped up and stomped on the back of his knee, making him collapse. I then stepped back out of the way to play support, protect the computer, and input the password if necessary. 

“Duberman must have pissed off the Iranians,” Hardison said, “They hire an assassin to take him out while they raid his office? Eliot, you’ve got to keep them away from that computer.”

“He’s working on it!” I yelled at him at the same time Eliot said, “What do you think I’m doing?”

Eliot grabbed the chess trophy and was able to knock out the second Iranian, and for a moment, they were both down, and it was quiet. 

“Check mate,” Eliot said, but the first Iranian would just not stay down and stood up again, ready for another round. “Or not.”

Over comms, it sounded like Sophie was able to find Duberman and Nikki and fight her off.

“I always hated cheerleaders,” Sophie said. “It was always mean girls like you who ruined high school for the rest of us!” It sounded like they kept fighting for a bit before Sophie was able to get away.

Eliot kept playing whack-a-mole with the Iranians, as soon as one went down, the other popped back up. I tried to help where I could, taking any cheap shots that were available while Eliot kept them occupied. Luckily, anytime they turned to engage me, Eliot was freed up to take them down, or at least divert their attention to himself. 

I heard Duberman’s voice come through the comms again along with Nate, so he must have found him again. I was too preoccupied with the Iranians in front of me to pay attention to what was going on with them, but nothing seemed to be going horribly wrong yet. At least, not more than it already was. 

What I did hear was Nate saying, “And, it’s done.”

That was a signal that Duberman changed the password. Eliot was still engaged with the Iranians, so I took a risk to turn my back on them and type in the new password, testing if Sophie’s neuro-linguistic programming worked to put ‘Badger85’ in his head. 

“I’m in, Hardison,” I said, hearing Eliot finally knock both of them out enough to stay down. 

“Great, now deauthorize and delete all directories, like we talked about,” he replied. 

I typed in the commands and watched as the program fizzled out. “It’s done.”

“Manticore’s dead,” Eliot added with a note of finality.

Hardison was able to send some files to the FBI with an anonymous tip that should land Duberman in detention for a long while. 

“Well, I think it’s time we graduate,” Sophie said once the figurative dust settled for a moment. 

Nate agreed, but they were stopped by a loud announcement that even Eliot and I could hear through the comms. 

“Your votes are in for the king and queen of the reunion, and the lucky winner is: Grace Pelts and Drake McIntyre!”

I laughed. I could just imagine the shock on their faces. 

“Uh, very funny Hardison. Y/n?” Nate said. 

“Oh, you think I did this?” Hardison asked. “Nah, I don’t rig elections. I mean, I could, but…”

“How could I have pulled that off? I’ve been across town this whole time,” I pointed out. 

“Parker, was this you?” Sophie asked. 

“I didn’t even know they had kings and queens in high school,” she replied. 

“Yeah, um. I guess it was a good con,” Nate said. “Hardison, why don’t you set off the fire alarm right about now?”

“You two enjoy this, you earned it,” Hardison replied.

Music started and Hardison asked Parker for a dance. 

“Everybody having a good time at the dance, anybody wondering if we’re okay? If we made it out alive?” Eliot grumpily asked the team. 

“Do you want to dance? We can still hear the music,” I said, a blush coating my face at the question even though I asked it kind of sarcastically. 

Eliot paused, like the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “Well, uh–”

“My vote is we get some good food,” I amended before he could say no. 

“Oh, yeah. That, uh, that sounds great right now,” Eliot answered. “Much better than a dumb high school dance.”

I let out a huff of a laugh and pulled out my earbud, “uh huh.”

The employee that we stole the key card from stood up from the bushes and Eliot quickly knocked him out again with a punch. 

“Was that necessary?” I asked him. 

“Probably not, but it made me feel better,” he answered while he dug his own earbud out.

I nodded and jokingly linked my arm with his as we walked silently towards his truck for a few paces. 

“What should we eat?” he asked me. 

“I don’t know.” I thought about it for a moment and remembered what he said earlier in the night, “What’s Pâté? Is that good? Should I try that?”

“Maybe not tonight, let’s take a drive and see what we can find.”

“Sounds good to me.”

A/n: Reblogs and comments are welcome and encouraged! Thank you for reading!

Tags: @instantdinosaurtidalwave @kniselle @technikerin23 @kiwikitty13 @plasticbottleholder @wh1sp @who-actually-cares-anymore 

[trekscribbles]

The Bushwhack Job: Chapter Ten

Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine

(Disclaimer: This is a relatively rough draft and subject to change when I post to AO3. I'm just overly excited and want to share what I have.)

Nate looked the part when he walked into Lancaster’s downtown office. He’d changed into a black western shirt with a matching hat, courtesy of Sophie’s lifting of one of Lancaster’s company credit cards, and his new boots gave him an extra couple inches to play with as an intimidation factor. He wanted every piece of ammunition he could use for this job.

After all, it would probably be his last.

He gave his name to the receptionist and waited while she called up to Lancaster’s office, then tipped his hat to her when she directed him to the top floor. The elevator blared a terrible blend of bluegrass and pop, and Nate tried not to picture the disgusted expression it would have elicited on Eliot’s face. It was almost over. He could hold on for this last little bit, just long enough for the others to do their jobs. He could give them that much.

The doors slid open, and Nate strode down the hall and into Lancaster’s office without knocking.

“Mr. Riley,” Lancaster said, rising from his desk and offering his hand to Nate. “My girls downstairs say you have a proposition for me.”

Nate shook his hand and sat at the offered chair across from Lancaster. “Mr. Lancaster. I hear you’re in the business of historical acquisitions.”

“I’ve been known to take an interest in various historical items,” Lancaster said, smiling. “What have you got in mind?”

Nate grinned back. “How does the lost cache of the Jesse James gang sound?”

Lancaster went still. His smile was frozen on his face, but his eyes flashed with anger. “If you can find it. Nobody in the last 200 years has managed it.”

“Well, that’s because they’ve been looking in the wrong place.” Nate took off his hat, setting it top-down on Lancaster’s desk, taking up more space than he’d been allotted.

The smile disappeared. “And you think you know where to look?”

“I did,” Nate said, leaning back in his chair. “That’s how I found it.”

Lancaster’s eyes narrowed. He studied Nate for a moment, frowning, and then shook his head. “You didn’t find it.”

Nate paused, letting the silence stretch a beat longer than necessary. “I’m not sure you want to be calling a potential new business partner a liar,” he said softly. “Not given your own background. What’s that saying about casting stones in glass houses?”

“You’re calling me a liar?” Lancaster growled.

“Well,” Nate said. “For one, you’re making a reputation on this whole country boy thing, but your accent’s a little forced. Too much of an emphasis on the drawl, not enough on the consonants.” Sophie had pointed that one out—something about T-glottalization—Nate decided not to get into the specifics. “Based on your slip-ups, I’d say east coast. Back in the old days, I think they’d call you a tenderfoot.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Lancaster said, glowering.

“Oh, I do.” Nate’s voice was soft, barely audible. “It’s a very distinctive accent.”

Lancaster opened his mouth, but the phone on his desk gave a shrill ring, and he cut himself off. With one final glare at Nate, he ground out, “Excuse me,” and answered without speaking. His expression brightened as he listened, and a premonition of unease worked its way down Nate’s spine.

“Well,” Lancaster said, hanging up with a smile. “I suppose the ruse is up. You play a good hand, Mr. Ford, but the deck was stacked against you.”

Nate’s stomach dropped. He didn’t try to deny it—there was no point—but he couldn’t help the quick glance over his shoulder. Hardison would be in the server room by now, and Parker—

“That was my head of security,” Lancaster said. “My plan, at least, has gone exactly the way it was supposed to. The server room has locked behind your hacker, my man Janish is with your grifter—clever to set her up as a receptionist, by the way, I never even noticed—and my security team is tracking down your thief. That just leaves you, Mr. Ford.” He took in Nate’s clenched jaw and laughed. “Don’t feel bad. You couldn’t have known what you were walking into. If I do say so myself, I set a mighty fine trap.”

“To what end?” Nate asked. 

“Ending you,” Lancaster said. “My sources seem to think you’re dangerous, but I have to admit I’m disappointed. You really didn’t put up much of a fight. I suppose without your guard dog—”

Nate was lunging across the desk before he could tell himself not to fall for the taunt. He didn’t care. He would take the fall if he had to, but not like this, not without beating the smirk off Lancaster’s face. He wanted to see the man bleed, see him cry and cower and beg for mercy, he wanted him to—

A hand caught his. One minute there was nothing but Lancaster’s satisfied grin, and then another man stood in the way, his fingers closing over Nate’s fist, his eyes guarded. Nate stopped short, the desk between him and Lancaster, a spike of horrible, agonized hope rooting him to the spot.

“I told you to stay out of sight,” Lancaster snapped.

Eliot kept his gaze on Nate. “You’d rather I let him beat you up?” he murmured, tightening his grip on Nate’s knuckles.

Nate opened his mouth, but couldn’t form the words tumbling uselessly in his brain.

“Get back where you belong,” Lancaster said. “I can take care of him.”

Eliot stayed where he was, watching Nate with a blank expression. “You’re Nathan Ford?”

“You’re alive?” Nate whispered.

Eliot let go of his hand. “No thanks to you.”

Nate flinched; Eliot had always known how to land a good hit. 

Except… if there was anything Eliot was better at than landing punches, it was pulling them. Better than any of them, Eliot knew what guilt did to a person, and he wouldn’t use it as a weapon—not against Nate. There was more going on here.

But it was hard to figure out what that might be when the only thing Nate could think was you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive.

“Now isn’t the time,” Lancaster said. “Get back downstairs. I’ll call you when—”

“Eliot.” Nate’s voice broke over the name, so he cleared his throat and said it again. “Eliot… What happened?”

Lancaster placed his hands on the desk. “He turned on you. He works for me now, and nothing you—”

“Shut up,” Nate said. He looked at Eliot’s bruised face, at the apprehension in his eyes, and tried to read a message in them. He had to be playing some kind of angle, and if Nate could figure it out, he could play along. But he couldn’t think—it was too much, too much, and he couldn’t think.

“Is that my name?” Eliot asked. “I thought it was Spencer.”

Oh, God. Another rush of grief washed over him, draining him of everything except cold realization. “You don’t remember?”

“Head wound,” Eliot said, shrugging. “The memory loss is temporary. Probably. Jury’s still out on whether I want it back or not. But I’ve heard Lancaster’s version of things, and now I’d like to know yours. I’ll make my mind up from there.”

Lancaster reached for his phone. “Enough. If you’re not going to listen—”

Without breaking eye contact with Nate, Eliot reached out his right hand—bruised and bandaged—and yanked the phone from its cord. He tossed it across the room and spoke as if there had been no interruption. “How do you know me?”

Nate held his gaze. “I’m your friend.”

“And the others?” Eliot asked. “The hacker? The grifter? The thief? They’re my friends too?”

“Yes,” he said, scrambling for a better explanation. Our friend, our teammate, our family.

Eliot scoffed. “Then I am a criminal.”

“Eliot—”

“The blonde woman,” he said. “Who was she?”

Nate frowned. “You mean Parker? Lancaster sent you a message saying he had her, but he didn’t. It was a trap. He lured you into the LanCast building and blew it up. We thought—we thought you were—” He broke off, unable to voice it now, afraid it would somehow undo whatever miracle had brought Eliot back.

Eliot sucked in a breath. “She’s not dead?”

“He’s lying,” Lancaster said. “He’s trying to confuse you.”

“Why?” Eliot asked.

“He tried to kill you before you could come after him,” Lancaster pressed. “He knows what you’ll do to him if you figure that out.”

“That’s not true.” Nate kept his eyes on Eliot’s, his voice firm. “You may not remember me, but I know you. I’m not afraid of you.”

“You should be.” A hint of desperation worked its way into Eliot’s voice, contrasting with the emotionless mask he was still fighting to keep over his face. “You don’t know what I’m capable of. The things I know how to do. I don’t remember my friends, but I remember that. What kind of a person does that make me?”

“Don’t let him confuse you,” Lancaster needled. He stood and reached for Eliot’s shoulder, but he flinched away.

Nate stayed where he was. “You’re the only one who can answer that,” he said softly. “Whatever you might have done in the past… that’s not who you are now.”

“I’ve hurt people,” Eliot said, scowling. “Stolen. Killed. You’re really going to stand there and say I’m not evil?”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Nate said. “Yeah, you have a past, and if you want to know what it was, I’ll tell you. But it doesn’t matter. Lancaster wants to convince you that you’re a bad guy so he can use you, but you’re the one in control here. You decide who you want to be. But I’ll tell you, Eliot—” Nate took a breath, clutching at the remains of his composure. “Whatever you’ve done, bad guy or not, you’re a good man. One of the best I’ve ever known.”

Hurt and hope flared up in Eliot’s eyes—that old, familiar battle between who he’d been and who he wanted to be. Lancaster had tried to capitalize on that struggle, after everything, after everything he’d put them through.

They had to go. Now, before Nate did something Eliot would regret.

“Come on, Eliot,” Nate said, his voice rough. “Let’s go home.”

Eliot hesitated, frowned, and then turned to Lancaster and gestured to the chair. “Take off your belt.”

“My—what?” Lancaster sputtered. “Spencer, listen to me. He’s lying, and I can prove it.”

“I got all the proof I need.” Eliot folded his arms and dipped his head toward Nate’s hat, still resting on the desk beside the broken phone. “He knows to put that crown-down.”

Lancaster blinked at him. “What?”

“Maybe I was working for you,” Eliot went on. “But I don’t have to stay with you. Now take off your belt before I decide to break your wrists instead of binding them.”

Shaking in either fear or anger—Nate couldn’t be sure which—Lancaster undid his belt and dropped it onto the desk. Eliot nudged him onto his chair, pulled his hands behind his back, and secured them with the belt, and then loosened the tie at Lancaster’s neck and gagged him with it. When he was satisfied with that, he pulled the chair against the wall and tied Lancaster’s ankles with the phone cord.

Then he straightened and gestured toward the door. “Follow me. I’ll take you to the others.”

“The others?” Nate echoed.

“Yeah. The rest of your team.”

Nate trailed him out of the office, pausing only to close the door behind them. “You know where they are?”

“I…” Eliot turned away, avoiding eye contact. “I thought you’d killed her—Parker—and I needed to find you, so I made a plan for Lancaster. He described the people you were working with, their reputations, their strengths, enough for me to set a trap. I had him put out a press release to say he’d found something valuable, and that he was holding it here in his office. I figured you’d break in to get it, and I could make my move then. Lancaster sent Janish after the grifter—”

“Sophie.”

“Sophie,” Eliot echoed. “I didn’t know who she was, but I went back over the surveillance footage from the last few days and noticed her lifting a credit card, so I figured she was involved.”

“I’ve never been so glad to have you on our side,” Nate said, surprising himself with a chuckle.

“You’re not mad?”

Nate looked at him. Tiny cuts along the right side of his face were just starting to heal, and his hair covered some of the bruising on his cheek and ear—superficial injuries hiding something so much worse. As bad as it had been for Nate and the rest of the team, at least they’d had each other. What must it have been like to wake up with no memory, wounded and alone, and have to grieve someone he couldn’t even remember?

“No, Eliot, I’m not mad.” Nate’s voice was soft, if a little uneven. “But… When Lancaster told you I was the one who set off the explosion, you didn’t believe him. Or at least, you were willing to give me a chance to explain my side of things. Why?”

Eliot kept his eyes on the ground as they jogged down the hall. “I, um... I had a dream. About you. You and—and Parker, and another woman, and a man. I can’t remember their faces, but when I saw you in Lancaster’s office, it felt...” He shrugged, faint color flushing across his face. “I dunno. Familiar.”

Nate had never seen Eliot blush before. He’d never been this vulnerable before—forced to trust someone he didn’t know, forced to admit a weakness. But he’d chosen to anyway. Part of had him remembered, had reached out and found them against all odds. When Nate had been ready to give up, Eliot had kept fighting.

Of course he had. Memories or no, this was Eliot.

God… he had to tell the others.

He reached for his phone, but Eliot put out his hand to stop him from dialing. “That won’t work—I had Lancaster set up a dampener so you wouldn’t be able to communicate with your crew. Landlines only.”

Nate couldn’t help the grin that broke across his face. He threw his arm around Eliot’s shoulders as they reached the elevator, his chest constricting at Eliot’s uncertain expression even as he leaned into Nate’s touch.

“It’s good to have you back, Eliot,” Nate said.

Slowly, Eliot smiled.

[beaft]

I think you made the right choice - being Orlando takes a lot of commitment. An Eliot can spend a friday evening being their most flamboyant self, and then spend the entire saturday in non-matching slippers and bathrobe, safe from the scrutiny that would befall an Orlando.

friend, you're so correct and so wise. at this very moment i am wearing cut-off jean shorts with balding once-fluffy socks and a pair of adidas slides, drinking lemsip from a sports direct mug. that's not appropriately orlando-ish behaviour, but as an eliot i can just about get away with it.

[delta-pavonis]

July Kinkfest Days 4 & 5

The Sandman || Dreamling (Dream of the Endless/Hob Gadling) || Rated E || 939 words

Prompts: Possessive Sex | Body Worship | “I had a dream about you.”  - Exhibitionism | Aftercare | “I’ve always wanted to try this.”

Warnings (in addition to the prompts above): getting together, jealous Dream, rough sex, biting and other post-sex superficial injuries

Author's Notes: Two days combo platter! Five out of six prompts! Whoo!

As his lover dozes, Dream traces the marks left on Hob’s skin. Not the scars, but the recent ones, bruises and welts and scrapes, left not so long ago by Dream’s fingers and lips and teeth. And as he touches each one he checks that it is superficial, urges each gently into healing, and memories float to the surface.

It started with one of the New Inn’s regulars, Eliot Sutton, a New Yorker at the end of two years of post-doctoral work in astrophysics and cosmology, who had sought work abroad as he was fleeing his broken engagement and family strife. Dream knows these details immediately upon looking at the man, but what actually matters is that he and Hob are in the back of the pub, sharing a table and a pint, papers and books spread out before them, working in a familiar and companionable silence. 

On Hob’s hip, long finger-shaped bruises are starting to purple. Dream can hear the echo of Hob’s sob of pleasure, of relief, as Dream finally sinks his cock into his loosened, slick hole. “Yes! Sweetchristyes!”

As Dream gets closer to the table he learns more: Eliot Sutton has a black cat back at his apartment that he adopted from a local shelter because she was twelve and looked like she needed a friend. He has a collection of old manuscripts on Babylonian astronomy that probably should be in a museum. The man reaches to take a sip of his ale and spends a moment staring at Hob. Dream picks up the edges of an erotic daydream, no the memory of a dr-

“I had a dream about you last night.” The man interrupts Dream’s thoughts as much as Hob’s work and both stop mid-movement.

Long red welts along Hob’s back are receding, no longer as sharp-edged and raised as when Dream’s nails made them, scrabbling for purchase as Hob bent the Dreamlord in half as he fucked him with deep, rolling thrusts. “Let him see. Fuck, invite the entire college, the entire city… let them all see how I lose myself in you. Only you.”

“Did you now?” Hob takes his own pint in hand, downing a large swallow. “Let me guess, a nightmare about me, a lowly history professor, grading your uni papers?”

Eliot very clearly lets his gaze get dark, his voice suggestive. “Not quite. Although it did involve a desk.”

Hob blushes. “El…”

More nail marks, clear crescents in sets of four, overlap each other across Hob’s shoulders, a few crusted with dry blood. Dream cleans them with a careful touch and hears his own growls in his ears as Hob drops to his knees in front of him. “Is this how the most devoted priests feel when faced with their god?” He nuzzles into the base of Dream’s leaking cock, licks tentatively, making them both shudder. “Willing to exalt, to glorify, to praise, with mouth and tongue, with words and breath, with body and soul…” He presses the flat of his tongue to the underside, making Dream gasp and claw into his shoulders as he licks a line up to the tip. When next Hob speaks his lips brush the head with each word. “I would worship you, my Dream.”

Any further answer is interrupted when Hob catches sight of Dream in his peripheral vision and his face breaks into a smile wider than any he has seen directed at Eliot. “My friend!” Hob stands to greet him, to bring him to the table with a hand on his shoulder. “It has been less than a week since we last met! I was not expecting to see you so soon! Not that I am complaining, mind you – I welcome your presence, day or night.” Hob turns to his table-mate. “Eliot! This is my oldest and dearest friend D-”

“Morpheus.” Dream interrupts, putting out a hand to shake as is current custom. Hob blinks at Dream, confusion passing across his face for only the slightest moment, before he motions for Dream to sit with him in his side of the booth.

Eliot shakes Dream’s hand amiably enough, but his eyes narrow at how close Dream slides in next to Hob.

Smaller bruises litter the top of Hob’s shoulders, his collarbones, underneath his jaw. Dream touches each one and remembers its unique taste, remembers making them with his hungry mouth as he unbuttons Hob’s shirt. They are barely inside his flat, crowded into the corner behind the shut front door. “Oh fuck,” Hob moans, arching into Dream’s touch, tugging at Dream’s hair. “If only I had known, love… I would have ventured to make you jealous sooner!” 

Eliot leaves not ten minutes later and Hob gives Dream a pointed look. “Was that really necessary?” 

Dream stares right back. “He dreams of having you. Not just carnally. Intimate in all senses of the word.”

One of Hob’s eyebrows makes a break for his hairline. “And that is a problem because…?” But he must see something in Dream’s expression, because Hob leans in. “Does that make you…” Hob licks his lips and Dream’s eyes follow the motion of their own volition. “... are you jealous, Dream?”

The last bruise is a nebula of colors along the side of Hob’s nape, created through repeated attention from Dream’s mouth as he fucks Hob through another of his own orgasms. Hob’s cock has long since been exhausted, but still he pleads for Dream to take him, to fill him, to use him. Still he wishes only to be a vessel for Dream’s pleasure. So as Dream drifts downward, finally sated, he purrs into Hob’s ear. “Mine.”

[jomiddlemarch]

Each be other’s comfort kind

In some ways, Jem found being married to Mary née Vance was the easiest thing in the world.

To begin with, if he ever referred to her as Mary née Vance, she cuffed him lightly on the shoulder before she rolled her eyes and then drew him back down for a kiss. 

He’d learned the only place to refer to her as Mary née Vance was their bed.

Which he must refer to simply as their bed, not their marriage-bed or anything of a similar high-falutin’ tone which she would accept from his mother and tolerate from Rilla and would otherwise laugh at almost merrily.

As someone not much given to flights of fancy well before the War had made him watch his friends and fellow soldiers gassed and killed, his brother gone without the chance of a farewell, his mind and body scarred in ways he knew as a physician would never fully heal, he found Mary’s unmitigated pragmatism as refreshing as water in the desert.

It also put his father at ease, as Dad said Mary reminded him not a little of his own mother, though Mary was notably less concerned with the vast quantity of pie the Doctors Blythe could consume of an evening, and her piecrust was arguably the equal of Susan Baker’s, though they’d all agreed not to utter such heresy at Ingleside.

In the privacy of their non-marriage, most ordinary bed, with its soft white linens and goose-feather pillows, Jem was free to tell Mary her pastry was actually better than Susan’s, as she had a lighter hand and her piecrust never once reflected any sense of consternation or outrage over some doings in Glen St. Mary, which could not be said of Susan’s best tarts.

Mary was practical and matter of fact. She had a good head for accounts and was far more intelligent that he, any of the Blythes or Merediths (with the exception of Carl) had ever given her credit for. It was easy to discuss the running of his practice and the economic advantages posed by a move to one of the larger towns, the intellectual stimulation offered by hospital work.

Mary did not worry about leaving Mrs. Marshall Elliott behind and she did listen when Jem spoke of his mother’s broken heart with oblique allusions to Walter’s death and more direct remarks about Shirley’s move to Montreal. Even more, she was willing to allow his mother precedence in ways Faith Meredith would never have countenanced. 

(Who knew what Faith would truly have countenanced? She’d eloped with Bertie Shakespeare Drew shortly after their mutual return from England and had immediately bobbed the golden-brown hair Walter had once referred to as her crowning glory in a sonnet Jem was never meant to see.)

Mary was patient and funny, an impossibly good mimic. She had a seemingly infinite supply of riddles and could curse a blue streak with the fishermen down in the harbor, who respected Young Doctor Blythe all the more for his sharp-tongued wife.

She complained very little, never as much as she ought about what mattered most, and only to the degree she would amuse him about things that didn’t matter at all. 

She was never troubled by his nightmares, by being woken by Jem clutching her tightly, his tears falling onto her neck, salt on his lips when he kissed her.

Mary liked to be read to of an evening, but not poetry. She liked Dickens, which didn’t surprise him, and Eliot, which did. She liked mysteries the best, pulp, which made him chuckle, and Lupin instead of Holmes, but she didn’t press him on nights when anything French was the door opened to memories he couldn’t bear.

She was warm, save for her cold feet. She’d tuck them against his shins and it wasn’t like anything else in the whole world.

She was reliable, steady, quick to take his side. Quick to see his side, even before he did. 

She was pretty and she didn’t count it worth much, without any of the vanity of any of the Blythe women.

She was eminently, exceptionally lovable—except that she was difficult to love.

She shrugged off praise.

She didn’t care for ornaments or nosegays, perfume or sweets or what Rilla called a stunning new cloche just the exact color of blackberry fool. 

She looked after him and their home so well, there was little left for him to do.

He was at a loss, one she was aware of and found entertaining, when Rilla remarked one day how much Rosemary Meredith’s new cat reminded her of Mary.

Then he knew.

Mary liked to have a cup of tea made just so, with plenty of milk.

She liked to end the day sitting with her stocking feet tucked up under her.

She liked to have her hair stroked, even if his hand trembled, which stopped much sooner when he was paying all his attention to the silkiness of her fair hair and the delicate skin at her temple, her throat.

She liked to sleep early on cold winter nights.

And sometimes, when they were together in the shadows, she liked to be called Puss. She liked it exceedingly well.

[grandhotelabyss]

If one wants to a quality literary critic, what texts would you recommend they read? What past or present critics would you deem worthy of aspiration?

In answer to a recent question like your second one, I once made a list of favorite critical essays and collections. But it's a long list, and, in answer to your first question, you probably want more manageable advice. (My favorite piece of unmanageable advice is T. S. Eliot's line, "The only method is to be very intelligent.") Two pieces of manageable advice, then:

1. After you read a famous or classic work of literature, read critical essays about it, often essays that are themselves famous or classic or by famous or classic critics, so that you can sharpen your own methods and responses on the often fiercely divergent responses of others. (For print books, I recommend Norton Critical Editions or the Signet Classics editions of Shakespeare or anthology series of criticism like Bloom's Modern Critical Views, all of them readily available in public libraries. Online there's always JSTOR for licit activity and libgen for illicit.)

2. Read some large-scale foundational critical-theoretic works, works from the middle 20th century when, emboldened by developments in psychology, anthropology, and sociology, literary scholars attempted to put criticism on an almost scientific footing. (Note that I'm not sympathetic to this idea, but it's an idea to work with and wrestle with, and it produced some brilliant studies.) Perhaps the two most notable and classic of such books are Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism and Erich Auerbach's Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. The systematizing impulse in Frye and the historicizing impulse in Auerbach have a way of making everything that came before and after them line up, though their two approaches have almost nothing in common. Books like those will give you a solid foundation, even if it proves to be a foundation you need to repair, revise, demolish, etc.

Finally, I used to teach a class intended to be an introduction to the English major; it could have been considered a class in "how to become a critic," even if it was necessarily too focused on academic methodologies and their attendant political fashions. You can look at my old syllabi here, here, here, and here.

As with anything, you shouldn't worry too much about where to start; just jump in anywhere, and after a while you'll make your way. To quote the man who has been called the greatest literary critic in English, Samuel Johnson:

The traveller that resolutely follows a rough and winding path, will sooner reach the end of his journey, than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hours of day-light in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages.

[theladyragnell]

☕️ Leverage / Leverage: Redemption!

I feel like my adoration of Leverage is well-documented, so let's talk a bit about Redemption!

A lot of people have said that it's not as good as original Leverage, and I don't dispute that! Original Leverage was lightning in a bottle, the product of certain times and circumstances, and because it wasn't owned by Amazon, it had license to be a bit more pointed at times. I think in all of our minds, from the way the original show ended, what we wanted was Leverage: Black Book, where more and more crews signed on and they dealt with bigger problems, all of which is implied to be going on in the background but which doesn't get the focus in Leverage: Redemption.

But I think a lot of things are going on here that make people like it less, and I think some of them are really interesting!

So to start: there's no Nate (which, to be clear, is a good thing, given why the character was eliminated). And Nate was very much The Main Character. He had a team, but Nate got season arcs and the last word, he was the heist leader, and his abrasiveness and cynicism made for really specific character dynamics. They replaced him with Harry, a completely different character, which was wise, and Harry's first season arc in particular was a really cool one for the show to do, but he sort of moved the Shenanigans Window (like the Overton Window but for Shenanigans) in a totally different direction to Nate. So just by virtue of that, we've got a different show. (And actually a thing I really like about Redemption is that the first season was Harry's arc about his redemption and the second season is Sophie's. I'm really interested to see who comes up next, and it's going to be Very chewy when we get to Eliot.)

While we talk casting changes, we all of course miss more regular appearances from Aldis Hodge desperately. Brianna is great and I adore her, but also she's very much like Hardison as he was in the early days of the show, the youngest and most naive on the crew and often in need of protection, so it feels like the hacker hasn't matured at all when the rest of the team is in a totally different stage of career and character development.

And then there's the central problem, which is that things have gotten so much worse in the decade between the end of Leverage and the start of Leverage: Redemption. Everything sucks so much, corporations have incredible amounts of power, it's all So Bad, but Leverage is dealing with the same size of story. It's implied that Hardison isn't, and he's the window into the world's bigger problems, but again, he's a small part of the show due to actor constraints. So while the show has gotten a little sillier under Harry's influence (and quite possibly under the influence of the writer's room, they are choosing what to write for Harry, after all), the real-world stakes of the stories have gotten significantly more real to all of us, and it can be jarring!

There are other problems, things that don't quite fit characterizations, but I think the biggest problem is that Leverage: Redemption got pulled a little lighter by team dynamics when the world we live in got pulled a lot darker by Everything, so it's no longer really on the cutting edge and pushing the envelope the way it was a decade ago, and never will be because Amazon owns it.

And that sucks! I'd love to see a Leverage that went deeper and didn't have the corporate shine on it! But I think I'm also more forgiving of it than a lot of passionate Original Leverage fans.

[aardvaark]

having just watched the Rundown Job. that fucked. I feel like this is what it would be like if the Big Bang Job had just an iota more self respect. for some reason BBJ is just toooooo corny I can't take it seriously, smth about eliot trying to have his emo backstory and big gun fight in one episode, but hardison and his magic Hacker Overlay and the trio drift compatible action movie-ing thru without a mastermind had me by the THROAT

the rundown job is THE ot3 episode. whether you prefer parker/hardison/eliot, or parker/hardison & eliot, or any other formation of those three, they certainly undeniably work very well together. they move in sync. they know each other so well that they don't even have to talk half the time. they've developed so much trust for each other when you compare this episode to season 1 jobs, and that mutual trust has brought all of their already-incredible talents to a new level.

you'll find that the leverage producers/writers/etc call it "competence porn", ie having scenes of the characters being extremely competent at what they do. it's fascinating and awesome just to watch them, don't even need much dialogue or plot pressure or anything. and that's really a testament to the actors' acting abilities & the stunt performers' skills.

plus we get all of their paired dynamics too! i love the parker & eliot dynamic where they’re both very task-oriented, logical, dangerous people. in the lost heir job episode commentary, john rogers had this to say...

[from @leverage-commentary]

...which i love. i love that dynamic, and you can see it in the rundown job too. except the lost heir job was season 2, and the rundown job is season 5, and that makes a difference in some respects - they're not so much hiding that from hardison, for one thing. and hardison doesn't need them to hide it, cause he seems to mostly think they're super fucking cool. except for when they're scaring the shit out of him, like parker burning the disease at the last second or eliot getting shot etc etc. mostly he thinks they're super cool though lol.

and while i tend to think that the "seeing math in the air" thing is usually a cheesy trope (like the spencer reid version. why is jesus there), i honestly really liked seeing inside hardison's head for once. it wasn't just random numbers like the confused math lady meme:

no, he's mapping the whole thing out in his head: we see some if-then-else flowcharts, he's picturing the direction the gears will turn, etc etc. he's figuring out how it will logically work and how it will mechanically work. to figure out all these problems in his mind, which he does every episode... well, he really is a genius, never forget it!

plus of course we get parker showing off her skills by jumping on trains + laser gymnastics + upside-down bomb defusing, and we get eliot skills of disturbingly calm negotiations + of course the fight scenes. they've each come such a long way too... eg hardison being way calmer about leaning on a bomb (again!) lol... ugh i could rant forever about how much i love these characters!!

i think the big bang job's gun fight is part of the eliot angsty stuff cause he had to shoot (and therefore likely kill) people for the first time in a long time. for action movie enjoyers, The Implications TM certainly dampen the action fun, so i get what you mean. i don't mind eliot angsty moments though. eliot IS kinda emo deep down sometimes - however, if hardison or someone called him that, there'd be hell to pay lol.

thank you for the ask, i love discussing this show!! :)

[trivalentlinks]

🔥 - i'd like to order an unpopular opinion on leverage, please!

Sorry for the very, very late answer, but to make up for it, have two unpopular opinions:

The first one's a bit of a cop-out. I think it's the less popular opinion, but probably because most don't care that much either way:

I head-canon that Damien Moreau is actually a banker/financier, ie, his primary source of income is actually derivatives investments and market prediction, and all the buying countries, arms deals and other such clandestine activities is just to give markets slight pushes in the direction he wants. (I've previous talked about this here (my last reblog addition))

This opinion seems "unpopular" in that the more common reading is that he's a mob boss who just calls himself a 'banker' to make himself sound cooler than he actually is. Which I think is a totally valid reading, consistent with what we are shown in canon! Like, he's all about image, and it's totally believable that the entire financier/banker persona is just that.

One reason I prefer the actually-a-banker reading is, as I described in the other post, because I like the parallel with team leverage and their "alternative revenue stream". This is also why I like to head-canon that when Eliot and Moreau were starting out (after Eliot met Toby and left the PMCs with his newfound conscience), before things got bad, they actually did good--only destabilizing horrible, abusive dictatorships, using their alternative revenue stream to help people. The parallels are just so compelling to me this way.

Another reason I prefer the actually-a-banker reading is that it's more relatable to me. I know people who work as financiers (hedge fund/high frequency trading/crypto firm founders or high-level quants etc).

None of them (that I know of) would actually do illegal things to manipulate prices, but it sometimes seems like if they were a little less risk-averse, a little less ethical, who knows? And when they tell me about the people they know, people they describe as "if you took a person's stats and dialled 'ethics' all the way down to zero"... These friends think anyone too stupid to see through a cryptocurrency white paper deserves to lose their life's savings. So when they say someone has ethics dialled to zero, well. You don't wanna know.

On the other hand, I don't know anyone who's anywhere close to being a mob boss.

-

Here's a more genuinely unpopular opinion, in that I think most people believe the opposite, and actually do care:

I really like Jimmy Ford. I find the character very relatable and very compelling. I feel like a lot of people in the fandom just write him off as a bad father, but I don't think that's fair.

I talked a lot about this here (skip past the "..." paragraph; above that were my old early thoughts about Moreau, before I reformulated them to be my current thoughts)

As I mentioned there, I see in Jimmy Ford every parent who didn't understand their kid, but loved them, and as Jimmy said to Nate, that's more important.

Every parent who grew up at a different time, in another country, in a harder, less forgiving world, who wants to ensure their kid can survive that old environment, without realizing that that isn't the kid's world anymore, that their kid is actually thriving in this new world, the one their parents sacrificed to raise them in

Every parent who flipped out when their son decided to major in sociology instead of computer engineering, because they could never have made a living with a degree like that

(but he's going to do more than make a living with that degree; he's going to make a difference)

Every parent who constantly monitors their daughter to ensure she waits for marriage, because in the old country she would have been shunned or worse if she didn't

(but she's not there right? her parents worked and sacrificed and bled to bring her up in this more forgiving world)

Every parent who sits next to their kid for hours a day until they get their daily hour of piano practice done (and yells at them until they do every day, disturbing their neighbour, who's just trying to focus on doing her research and grading her students' papers, not that this is personal or anything), because the parent managed to survive and to move to this country by working relentlessly at everything they did and can't imagine a world where a 7-year-old is allowed to play and to find their own interests

(but they will, maybe not then, but one day, years down the line, they may even end up liking music)

Maybe it's that I'm a kid of immigrants who knows a lot of kids of immigrants, but I think I'm more forgiving of people who raised their children in a culture different from their own and struggled to adjust to that.