#and agent mcsweeten

[geeky-nightphilosopher]

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Friendly reminder today Eliot is making a feast and slapping Parker's hand away from all the desserts.

Breanna and Hardison are sitting there judging Eliot's food making skills.

Harry and Sophie are drinking wine.

And Nana is the only other one helping in the kitchen.

All for a proper Thanksgiving!

[leverage-ot3]

I’ve talked about this before but imagine what it’s like for someone in a country/place where eliot is Top Most Wanted and then your tech guy finds a breakout star baseball player on their visual scanner that looks EXACTLY like spencer. but…there’s no way that’s him, right???

and then the next year it happens again but this time it’s some one hit wonder country singer kenneth crane that has like 78 tween-run fangirl blogs dedicated to him. you see a grainy video of him being chased by a horde of screaming teenage girls and ??? no way Eliot Last Thing You’ll Ever See Spencer is a country singer star just. signing pictures of his face right…?

a few months later your intern shows you footage of an eliot lookalike who is in san lorenzo talking about how there is dog fighting in the presidential palace and you just. sigh. because of course. a scant few days later the political geography of the country changes drastically and damien moreau is imprisoned. …interesting

and then a year of silence goes by. he still shows up as blips on the radar but he must have a good hacker working for him because his tracks on the internet are expertly erased.

every time you ask through interagency channels some random interpol guy talks in (condescending?) riddles at you and it also somehow feels like he’s threatening you

and then your friend who recently got into foreign hockey teams sends you a dropyourgloves video of someone called jacques the bear. you immediately get a headache (and watch some more videos because even you can admit this guy is a good hockey player)

and you know he’s a Bad Guy but it’s been admittedly a bit entertaining seeing what claim to fame he will come upon next. and his most recent actions over the few years make you wonder.

a few months later your phone pings because multiple heads of state evacuated from DC. the reason? eliot spencer was in town. you hear two days later a bioterrorist was taken down by… the report was redacted. your hacker tells you spencer and two teammates were behind the successful operation. which, huh.

not even a full year later it is released that spencer is dead and… you don’t know how to feel.

[eg515]

Leverage - episode highlights: The Bank Shot Job

[queenshammer]

Crossing my fingers for a McSweeten cameo in Leverage: Redemption season 3, I have seen that man in Busch commercials so many times, get him on the phone!!!!

[hjbirthdaywishes]

October 1, 2024

Happy 54 Birthday to Gerald Downey.

[the-crooked-library]

Eliot Spencer in 1890s clothing is Exactly what I picture Quincey Morris looking like and I will take no criticism of that. if they ever did a Dracula ep (à la DB Cooper case) Nate would have been Van Helsing

[wipbigbang]

WIP Big Bang 2023 Round Starting April 1st!

What is the WIP Big Bang? Good question! This is a Big Bang with one goal in mind: to clean out your fanfic drafts folder. These are stories that were unfinished for whatever reason, that authors returned to and completed, and the art that goes with them!

Please read our FAQ/check out our schedule for more details.

[ladyelainehilfur]

awwww yeahhhh our once a season agent mcsweeten episode!!!

[leverage-ot3]

I'm channeling the cat cafe I went to an hour away from where I live and am saying that they have a certain number of cats that live there full time and the rest are cats that you can adopt (they have a chalkboard near the entrance OR the register with a continuous count of how many cats they have had adopted out. it's an IMPRESSIVE number. like, this probably is a world record but eliot is too afraid to check and hardison doesn't want to register it because of they can't be associated with notoriety)

the team members take turns naming each cat that comes through and they range from normal to unhinged

hardison's names are usually fandom-related and semi-easily understood: a bonded trio is han, leia and luke (OR rey, finn and poe) (jedistormpilot you will always be famous). hissy stand-offish cat is named dalek. charismatic cat named tennant. etc

eliot's cats have fairly 'normal' cat names, but sometimes he lets himself name them stereotypical ones (white cat = snowball; black cat = shadow, onyx, etc; black and white cat named spot; and so on)

sophie's cats are usually named after famous actors and actresses OR paintings that she has stole. sometimes she names them after her aliases (not that customers know that)

nate's cats are all given human names, like the names where you have to do a double take because it just doesn't feel right to call an animal by that Very Human Name (he thinks it's funny)

parker's are all the most unhinged by far: sir barfs a lot (barf for short); meowking 2000; steranko (derogatory); cosmic brownie (cosmo if you're a wimp and don't respect the name enough); diputs (stupid backwards. she has to explain to patrons how to pronounce it). she also names cats after different types of gems (diamond, emerald, jade, opal, etc)

the core cats that live at the cafe are diputs (named by parker-orange cat, say no more), mr mittens (american shorthair, black with white paws that was named by eliot), van gogh (elegant persian named by sophie), franklin (hissy tomcat named by nate), zuko (tan cat with eyepatch coloring named by hardison), nate (named by parker, hardison and eliot when nate was gone one weekend. it yowls constantly and oscillates from wanting attention and biting everyone), trashcan (tiny female runt with patterning similar to raccoons affectionately named by parker)

trashcan, mr mittens and zuko are a bonded trio much like the people that named them. trashcan, while favorited by parker, likes to ride on eliot and hardison's shoulders. zuko lets parker hold him when she dangles from her rigs (he arguably sleeps better upside down). mr mittens likes to play with hardison's empty soda bottles and bats them around on the ground of the briefing room

other headcanons under the cut because I can't shut up

sometimes their clients will be offered a free cat (they also get free supplies and coupons for a years worth of quality cat food and litter)

mcsweeten has adopted two from two separate visits to the cafe over the years. parker entices every time he comes and she has been wearing him down to adopting a third.

bonanno adopted a three legged senior tomcat who hisses at most people but loves to snuggle with him.

olivia begged sterling to get one for her and he relented (the cat immediately was his baby. you know the meme about the dad not wanting the pet but then babying it? that's him.) olivia has blackmail of sterling babying loki the cat and threatens him with them on the regular that she will send them to hardison

quinn fosters cats for them when he is around and not on missions. is surprisingly good at accommodating even the angriest and meanest of street cats and strays into loving and family-ready cats

shelly entered with no cats and never having owned a cat and left with luke, han and leia. he doesn't know how it happened and is too afraid to ask. all he remembers is parker going to show him a cute tio of kittens and then he had two cat carriers, three bags of toys from petsmart, one cat tree and enough food and litter to last for 6 months in his car. he would have called it a fever dream but there are three distinctive meowing animals coming from the carriers in his back seat

The Bridgeport Cat Café

New Leverage AU, based on this video of someone from a cat café account introducing their cats and describing what types of crime they (allegedly) engage in:

Hardison bought them a cat café instead of a brewpub.

Parker thinks it's a great idea. As soon as Hardison shared the idea with her, she started planning out the incredibly elaborate system of climbing structures, catwalks, tunnels, and hidey-holes at both cat and human scale. Hardison wasn't able to implement all of her ideas, especially not before the rest of the team arrived, but he managed a lot, including purchasing the rest of the building the original café occupied and expanding into that space.

The renovated café quickly becomes known for the fact that it is both the physically largest cat café any of the patrons have encountered and that sections of it essentially double as an indoor play structure for both kids and adults.

Hardison, as someone with allergies himself and knowing Leverage would want to bring clients here, poured a lot of thought into the cat-free and "allergy-friendly" side of the café, where patrons can enjoy all of the café's food and beverage offerings, watch the cats, and even climb a limited portion of their signature human-sized "cat tree" while remaining separated from the cats by enormous windows. The two areas are served by separate ventilation and both have thorough air filtration. The cat-free side quickly becomes popular with the remote-work crowd who like to bring their laptops and watch the cats without any actually climbing on them and their work materials. (There are also customer-free portions of the building the cats can retreat to and optionally view the customers through glass.)

Eliot and Sophie, of course, say the idea is absolutely insane. Sophie's mostly ticked off about the unilateral move to Portland and them taking on the extra burden of a (weird, niche) business (although she makes little secret of being charmed by many of the cats themselves), but Eliot is particularly incensed about the difficulties of trying to run a café that's full of animals. "Running a good café isn't child's play, you know. You planning make food on site with cat fur everywhere? You think the Health Department's gonna stand for that? Sure, you can probably get away with some kind of automatic coffee machine and prepackaged food, but that ain't a café, that's an animal shelter with a damn vending machine."

His complaints trail off as Hardison steers him into the (newly renovated) kitchen, through the airlock-style double doors from a hallway not open to the cats, each with an automatic air curtain to keep cat fur as well as cats from slipping through. The other side of the kitchen has pass-throughs and doors directly to the cat-free side of the café. The gleaming new espresso machines are already in place, along with other basic kitchen equipment, although Hardison comments that he's still researching the best ovens and layout for baking all of their pastries on-site (the printouts and notes on his research are already bundled up and ready to be "spilled" on top of the materials for their next job, in front of Eliot).

The kitchen also features several plexiglass tunnels so that cats can watch the action in the kitchen without contaminating the space. Eliot will never admit, even under torture, to making squinty eyes and kissy noises at the cats that come to hang out with him while he cooks with no other humans around to see, especially when prepping pastry in the wee hours of the morning before anyone but the cats is awake.

Finally, Nate regrets having turned Hardison loose with free rein to pick the Portland HQ. When he suggested a restaurant or something as a front, he assumed he knew the limits of what that could entail--in hindsight, he's glad they didn't end up operating out of a Medieval Times* knock-off. He's performatively grouchy about the cats, yet never seems to chase away the ones that mysteriously end up on his lap during job planning. There's one particular "shoulder cat" that seems to love nothing more than riding around on Nate's shoulders during a briefing, occasionally punctuating particularly passionate sections with supportive meows.

Another quirk the café becomes semi-known for is the prominent lost-and-found counter where patrons can try to reclaim items that have vanished from their pockets, as the cats at this establishment seem to be oddly prone to pickpocketing...

*Consciously or not, Nate is on some level aware of how much Hardison and Parker would enjoy watching Eliot "joust."

[fallout-lou-begas]

so the thing about Leverage is that by the fifth season you'll get to an episode called "The D.B. Cooper Job" and think to yourself, ah, of course, this thematic title hints at some kind of aerial crime, or perhaps a case of needing to vanish with a lot of money. Which is why it is so fucking insane that two minutes into the episode Agent McSweeten looks directly onto the camera and asks "hey can you guys please literally solve the real actual D.B. Cooper cold case. it would really mean a lot to my dad."

[geeky-nightphilosopher]

I just want to say; I appreciate that The Team is literally friends with a top FBI agent.

[leverage-ot3]

send me characters for leverage character bingo 🥺🥺🥺

[aknolan]

I figure he had some kind of hunch about Hagen. After all, he did ask her to help him steal something in that episode. Imagine doing that while thinking you're talking to a 100% legit super effective FBI agent.

In Leverage Redemption when Parker pretends to be FBI she doesn't use the agent Hagen alias anymore. Now this could have a simple explanation like the alias being blown and no longer useful. However there is an infinitely funnier option.

Agent Hagen is a legitimate FBI agent now, and therefore cannot be part of any illegal business.

I mean, look, it's been eight years and over the course of the original show agent Hagen was pretty good at her job! At some point McSweeten either found out agent Hagen wasn't really an agent and made some corrections or someone working administration found out agent Hagen wasn't getting a paycheck and fixed that problem.

I'm particularly fond of the idea that McSweeten knows that Parker, legendary thief, is agent Hagen but also figures she's helped out so much that he might as well give her a job. Maybe some sort of special investigator position where no one will question that agent Hagen never shows up at the office. Sometimes he finds out about fake FBI agents from the other leverage crews and just... adds them to Hagen's team.

(And of course, all of this applies to Hardison's FBI alias too.)

[hjbirthdaywishes]

October 1, 2023

Happy 53 Birthday to Gerald Downey.

[aardvaark]

leverage commentary from "the morning after job": the scene where parker leaves that guy in the trunk of the car with a green bow on his head, as a "gift" for agent mcsweeten.

this is another word-of-god leverage fact that i think we need to talk about more lol. both a) that she’s definitely given the team members their own stuff back gift-wrapped before lol and b) that gift wrapping is such a necessity that she makes sure she always has it on the go! im guessing she also keeps everything from a pack of hair ties to chloroform in her car for convenient access lmao.

[tracing-lines-in-the-infinite]

The Bank Shot Job is actually wild.

They're three feet from the end of the job and bankrupting a corrupt judge. Eliot laments the fact that they couldn't do more. Nate notices that the bank is being robbed and instead of getting out he stays with Sophie & they both end up trapped in the building with the thieves, bank employees & patrons, and the mark. Hardison & Parker go undercover as FBI agents and take over the scene from the local cops. They decide to help the robbers and use the mark's money to get the mom/wife of the robbers back from drug dealers. Eliot says "We'd be the cavalry." Parker gets to rob a bank that's being robbed. Hardison claims the robber has demanded a dozen pizzas, 3 copies of the new Hall & Oates CD, and an etch-a-sketch. Mark realizes his money is gone and takes over the bank robbery. Mark shoots Nate which causes Sophie to blow their cover. Hardison brings the mark his money in a pizza box while Parker & Eliot bring in a gurney then get the original robbers to swap clothes and take Nate to an ambulance as medics. Mark pulls gun on Hardison as local cops enter the bank. Eliot, Parker, and Sophie straight-up lie to the police and frame the mark. Hardison alters the security footage to match. They plant drugs in his briefcase. EVERYONE JOINS IN. Mark goes to jail. Eliot stitches Nate's bullet wound in the ambulance as the team head home together. Real FBI agents show up (McSweeten & Taggert!!) and take credit for the arrests of the mark and the drug dealers.