#and hardison is still hacking history people!

[ghostlyarchaeologist]

"Bruh, I gotta fake a masterpiece from 1633. Not only does the painting have to look identical, the materials I use have to be identical."

Leverage Redemption S01E01 The Too Many Rembrandts Job.

[catscraftsandcommentary]

@everything-but-the-not-natural hey, you want to play "how accurately can I predict Leverage?" (I've still only seen through "The Two Horse Job." So halfway through season 1.)

List of characters because I am SHIT at names:

- Nathan Ford, former insurance investigator and current hiest planner, son died after being denied insurance coverage for an experimental treatment

- Sophie Devereaux, professional chameleon (but only during crime/high stakes situations), clearly wants to get with Nathan

- Eliot Spencer, close combat expert (but dislikes guns), excellent cook, and (former?) horse girl

- Alec Hardison, tech expert and hacker

- Parker, thief, gymnast, and INSANE

- Jim Sterling, former rival to Nathan and current insurance investigator

So! Predictions:

- Eliot used to be military, probably Marines or other special forces. He presumably excelled at regular military fighting and got fast-tracked to black ops. (He may have gotten pulled into being a contractor after his official term of service ended.) I'm betting SOMETHING traumatic happened to cause his dislike of guns - if I had to guess, I'd say that he was ordered to kill (via sniper shot) someone who was using a human shield (most likely kids or someone Eliot cared about). Bonus points if the sniper target turned out to be not a villain, which Eliot could have figured out if he'd been closer to the action.

- He probably turned to crime to escape being chased by the military, to support himself, and possibly to find someone to protect him from all the enemies he made while serving whichever military/spooky government force he used to work for. He ABSOLUTELY feels guilty about all the harm he did in his Tragic Past (not everyone he fought/killed was evil, but I doubt he knew that then), but he won't let on about this until much later, after he's started to trust everyone. (Parker will just offer to blow his enemies up. Alec will want to hack them.)

- Eliot will 100% end up cooking for the team at some point. Probably frequently. There will probably be a funny scene where he throws out all of Parker's and Alec's shitty junk food and then aggressively cooks them something from scratch. With a shit-ton of vegetables minced into a sauce, because HOW ARE YOU TWO NOT DEAD ALREADY?!?!?

- Parker strikes me as a foster kid. Foster or group home after she fucking BURNED DOWN HER PARENTS' HOUSE, WTF PARKER. And of course, being in a place with OTHER troubled kids just taught her all sorts of tricks (on top of the ones she'd figured out by herself). At some point, she learned to use money as a way of keeping score of her success in life - possibly someone bullied her *specifically* because they had money and she didn't? In any case, her moral compass is "I do what I want, whatever's most fun in the moment, WHEE!" With her skills, this is TERRIFYING.

- She will ABSOLUTELY steal shit to try to make her teammates happy - things they mention they like or are nostalgic about. Eventually she'll learn to care about people and show affection WITHOUT first resorting to crime. (...but it will take a WHILE.)

- Alec is harder for me to pin down, partly because none of the episodes have focused on his backstory yet and partly because I can't identify with him as much. But SOMETHING drove him to not only *use* computers, but EXCEL at them. I'd guess he was a nerdy kid who liked computers, and then learned that coding/hacking was a way to escape an unpleasant real life. The more he learned about coding and hacking, the more he realized that he could change his real life by doing that...and thus his start in crime.

- He also learned to play a role pretty well (when he was an office worker for a job, and the flashback where he pretended to be a black celebrity). He's probably got a history of people expecting certain things from him (due to racial or economic status) and learning to either play to those expectations (and thus escape notice) or loudly call out how inaccurate those are to embarrass people into backing down (as he did when someone noticed he'd changed costumes in an elevator). This chameleon ability will continue to be useful.

- At some point, he'll probably pick up some more physical skills from Eliot and Parker, since right now he either works behind the scenes or as a distraction.

- Sophie can do flawless performances of any character, but ONLY IN HIGH PRESSURE SITUATIONS. She learned that *somewhere*, and I'm betting that when we find out where/when, it won't be pretty. I'd bet she was neglected or abused somehow, and playing different roles was the only way she could get what she needed to survive. (And if she was caught being a fake, she was punished somehow, so she learned that she had to be FLAWLESS.) But because she's used to using this skill in high stakes situations, she can't call it up the same way when the stakes are low - like an audition or a theatrical performance.

- We'll get to see more of her true (probably adorably awkward) personality - who she is when she isn't playing some flawlessly elegant beauty. When she's comfortable enough to relax like that around the team, THAT'S when Nathan will start to pick up that "oh shit, she likes me, this could be something REAL."

- Nathan used to be an insurance investigator for high value claims, but unlike his rival Jim Sterling, Nathan usually tried to FIX the situation instead of just screwing people over to save the company money. (For example, recovering stolen items instead of just saying "this was a conspiracy by the owner.") He thinks insurance companies should HELP people, and felt personally betrayed when his company refused to cover his son's medical care (I think someone mentioned that it involved an experimental treatment). He felt that the company should have covered his son's care - possibly that whatever loophole they used to deny care didn't apply, or just that "I've been such a good worker for so long, you should make an exception for me."

- Obviously that didn't happen, and the company was probably blunt to the point of nasty about it, which prompted him to quit. You've mentioned he has an ex-wife, so that may have been the last straw for her re their relationship. (First their son's illness, then the denied care/coverage, then using all their money to pay for their son's care, followed by their son's death.) When Nathan quit his - presumably well-paid - insurance job in disgust/grief, she saw it as throwing away their only chance to get out of the debt they'd taken on. Cue a huge fight, followed by a nasty and bitter divorce. So he lost EVERYTHING all at once - his faith in his job, his son, his marriage, his financial security...no wonder he turned to alcohol to cope.

- The functional alcoholism WILL be a recurring theme. It's probably his biggest character flaw at the moment, which makes it an easy way for the writers to trip him up or have the team criticize him. When he starts to cut back on the alcohol, that will be a major turning point. (But he'll almost certainly relapse at a plot-critical point.)

- Jim Sterling implied that Nathan had a more prestigious position than he did at the Sleezy Insurance Company (even if they were doing similar jobs). I'm guessing there was some sort of internal competition, probably tied to how much money they saved Sleezy Co or to how many claims they could justify denying, and that Nathan always beat Jim. (Bonus points if the winner of the company's competition got some sort of prize - a large annual bonus, a raise, a better office, etc. Which obviously Jim wanted and Nathan took for granted.) Jim is petty and bitter as hell about this, so he's going to happily screw Nathan and team over WHENEVER POSSIBLE.

[aardvaark]

ooo yes okay!!

basically, it’s a tv series (5 seasons in the original run from 2008-2012, but it’s recently been given a revival from 2021-onwards with 2 seasons released so far), in the comedy/action/crime genres. the main characters are a team of high-tech criminals who steal and/or take revenge on extremely wealthy people that have exploited or harmed others. big on the found family dynamic, lots of character development as the series progresses.

there are five characters on the team:

nathan ford, an ex-insurance claims investigator who left the insurance company when they refused to pay insurance for his dying son’s cancer treatment. he’s the only one who had a non-criminal history before the series. struggling with alcoholism since his son died. he’s the "mastermind" of the team, planning the heists. has tried multiple times to get the rest of these people to leave him alone but he’s stuck with them lol. one time they just break into his house and set up all their stuff and start doing home renovations and he just wakes up like "ummm get out of my house" but they end up staying for years.

sophie devereaux, the grifter of the team - ie, she makes people think she’s a lawyer or scientist or royalty or fellow extremely wealthy person, to then get close to them and con them. she’s nathan’s love interest. trying to keep the peace and emotionally support the team, but have you met these people?? her real name is not sophie, that’s also an alias, but we never find out her real name. aspiring actress who ironically cannot act even though she can grift.

eliot spencer, the hitter - ie, the guy who beats people up. can take out like 10 armed men without using weapons. constantly angry but in a comedic way (making a >:( face), and constantly getting into fights in the background/between scenes. turns back up with a black eye or whatever and is like "oh no one’s gonna ask if im okay?? noooo no one cares if eliot’s okay smh". wants to put his talents to good use for once - he’s been military, he’s been muscle for some very bad criminals, but he’s finally getting to do what he believes is morally right.

parker, the thief. she likes hiding in vents, non-sequential bills, jumping from rooftops and tasing people. heavily autistic-coded. if eliot is always making the >:( face, then she is always making the >:) face. as that meme you saw suggests, she knows full well that she’s "weird", and her unabashed weirdness is often comedic relief. however, she’s still insecure on some level about not being able to fit in, especially as she was in the foster system since early childhood and never had someone who loved her unconditionally. but she’s fallen in with this little found family situation, so she’s finally got people she can trust.

hardison, the hacker. frankly the team could not function without his skills for even a moment - he’s creating perfect fake ids, hacking to get all the information they need for cons, inventing tech for them all to use, etc. extremely kind & sweet guy. annoys eliot, usually on purpose, but in a friendly/sibling-y way. absolute geek and proud of it. has a crush on parker, which she is, of course, completely oblivious to for ages. sophie might think she’s holding this team together, but hardison actually is.

so in an episode, for example, a company that is knowingly selling potentially harmful pharmaceuticals and hiding the reports that show it’s harmful - the team would break into the company, steal the reports to make them public, manage to get the people hiding the reports fired or arrested, and con their way into getting money from the company to help the victims. all the while, the characters would be getting up to some funny hijinks, like infiltrating the company by pretending to be caterers & eliot would get way too into being a chef. or parker would have to briefly do some grifting and end up stabbing someone with a fork to get out of it.

i highly recommend it!! sorry for this massive wall of text, i’m just very passionate about this show lol. regardless of it you choose to watch it, i enjoyed ranting about it just now, so thanks for that opportunity haha!

wait have you seen leverage & you’re joking or have you not seen leverage & want to know? because i will happily explain the basics of my most beloved show if you want!! and if it’s just sarcasm then sorry to disturb you!

Explain it yes please! I haven't seen it myself but it keeps popping up on here and I can't help but be curious.

[buzzmcnab]

LEVERAGE APPRECIATION WEEK

HARDISON - DAY 6 - FAVORITE SCENE

hacking history

image ID under the cut

[IMAGE 1 ID: A gif from the King George Job of Alec Hardison (a black man with short cut black hair) wearing a black tank top. He is standing at a table in a hotel room in front of a window and a lamp. The table is covered in objects, including jugs of cleaning solutions, other various bottles, and his computer, running a software. Hanging on a clothesline in front of him are two sheets of old-looking paper with illegible text on them. Next to him is an I.V. bag full of a purple liquid that is hooked into something on the table. He is speaking animatedly and pointing to different objects around the room. Captioned under him in blue letters says, "You know what I’ve achieved here? Do you? I made ink from boysenberries, okay? I-I-I-I’ve tanned hide for the covers." END IMAGE 1 ID]

[IMAGE 2 ID: A gif of more of the scene from IMAGE 1. The camera has tightened into a shoulders-up shot of Hardison still speaking quickly, but looking more tired. Captioned under him in blue letters says, "I made glue for the binding from animal parts I do not care to discuss. I-I-I’ve made content for the filler pages using an algorithm from digitized colonial-era novels and diaries." END IMAGE 2 ID]

[IMAGE 3 ID: A gif of more of the scene from previous IMAGEs. Hardison finishes his speech. Captioned under him in blue letters says, "I-I-I-It’s Shakespeare in the house, people. Shakespeare." The camera cuts to a wide shot of the other side of the room, showing Eliot's (a white man with long brown hair wearing a grey henley and black jacket) and Parker's (a blonde white woman with her hair in braids wearing a black pantsuit) reactions. Eliot looks amused. Parker looks concerned captioned under her in white letters says, "Yeah, it sounds like a lot of work." END IMAGE 3 ID]

[IMAGE 4 ID: A gif of more of the scene from previous IMAGEs. Hardison is still speaking and looks intense, and he gestures in a different direction with each title he says. Captioned under him in blue letters says, "It is. In a single day, I’ve gone from apprentice to journeyman to master." After he finishes speaking he gets distracted and turns his head to look out the window. END IMAGE 4 ID]

[IMAGE 5 ID: A gif of more of the scene from previous IMAGEs. Eliot and Parker are speaking and slowly moving towards the door, looking uncomfortable. Captioned under them in white letters (for Parker's dialogue) and yellow letters (for Eliot's) says,

Parker: Okay.

Eliot: He's losing it.

Parker, pointing towards the door: Well, yeah, so, I’m gonna go steal some stuff.

END IMAGE 5 ID]

[IMAGE 6 ID: A gif of more of the scene from previous IMAGEs. Hardison points at the things on the table in front of him and draws a circle with his finger to point to all of it while speaking. Captioned under him in blue letters says, "Okay, but come back, ‘cause I-I’ve fused computer technology with– with– with this stuff. With– with– with– hmm" END IMAGE 6 ID]

[IMAGE 7 ID: A gif of more of the scene from previous IMAGEs. Hardison shouts after Parker and Eliot, who are leaving the hotel room out of the shot. Captioned under him in blue letters says, "I’ve hacked history! I’ve hacked history, people." END IMAGE 7 ID]

[onyxbird]

Okay, but what about a "We never had a hacker who wasn't Moreau's" hell AU? Elliot left Moreau as per canon, but Hardison has been working for the man off and on this whole time. WHO WOULD BE ABLE TO DISCOVER HARDISON'S HIDDEN TRACKS?? Even Elliot, who knows how Moreau works... is gonna find something that Hardison hid? And Hardison's anger/heartbreak in the Scheherazade Job. Because he trusted... he finally trusted these people and Nate turns around and does THAT???

O.o Well, my first impression is that you are plumbing new depths of Hell AU and have reached circles too awful to contemplate…

My second impression is that I'm not sure it would be compatible with Hardison's character in the way it is for Eliot (who canonically did work for Moreau) or Parker, who has a darker history than Hardison and started the series with a decidedly more tenuous moral code. Could a Hardison who worked for Moreau even resemble the canonical Hardison who has always been at the heart of what holds the team together? If he didn't, would the team ever form?

But OK, let's consider this horribleness in more detail:

Hardison is canonically 24 years old at the end of season 3 ("The San Lorenzo Job"), which implies he's 20-21 in "The Nigerian Job." If he's undercover for Moreau, then he's worked for Moreau long enough that he's trusted to 1) be turned loose on a job with minimal supervision and 2) grift two other thieves and Nate Ford (not one of Hardison's strong suits in canon, especially early on). Moreau having him continue to work with the team would mean he's trusted to keep that up on a very long con in close proximity to one of the best grifters in the business.

I don't think it's stated whether Dubenich told Parker, Hardison, and Eliot who else he'd hired, but Nate's discussion with him implies they'd probably be picky about who they worked with even for high pay. In that case, Moreau would know Eliot was part of the job (could be part of why he sent Hardison, which is an extra layer of yikes). That would further up the stakes on Hardison's grifting—Eliot's sharp, and he hates people conning their own teams, so any reason to suspect Hardison worked for Moreau would blow things up fast. (If Moreau didn't know about Eliot pre-Nigerian Job, he would by the time the team decided to continue working together.)

To have already built that kind of trust with Moreau, I think he'd have to have been working for him for more than a couple of years, so we're talking about him getting pulled in while still a kid (probably not as young as Parker got her start, but mid-teens?).

Pre-series canon Hardison seems to have been largely focused on providing for Nana (and probably foster siblings), building his reputation with challenging jobs, and funding luxury/fun for himself. Moreau could probably offer something for all three of those—promise that his family would be provided for as long as he worked for Moreau, provide challenging jobs (mixed with more mundane hacking work), and indulging Hardison's desire for luxury. IMO, Nana's medical bills or similar family crisis (possibly manufactured or exacerbated by Moreau) would be the most obvious way to pull him in.

Where things break down for me is how Moreau would keep Alec Hardison apparently loyal to him without fundamentally shattering/changing the Hardison we know. My inclination is to say that Moreau could string Hardison along for a while without him realizing what he'd gotten into, distracting him with charm and luxury and dangling fun challenges in front of him without telling him about the bloodier sides of the business. But Hardison in canon is insatiably curious. How long would it be before he started digging and realized what kind of business he's in? Or before the warnings/reprimands/threats required to keep him from digging clued him in?

Then what? It's Moreau, so he definitely would be willing to threaten Hardison's family to keep him in line, but how much can you really afford to use a genius hacker who is only working for you out of fear for his family without worrying about subtle sabotage? It doesn't seem like a situation where Moreau would send him to work unsupervised with an unknown team (especially not a team containing one of Moreau's former favorites who got away).

...Of course, there might also be a logical resolution for this that my brain is simply refusing to see due to the aforementioned "too awful to contemplate" assessment of this AU. 😉

(☠️☠️☠️ OK, it pains me to even say this, and anyone already traumatized this AU concept should leave before it gets worse, but...I think a more plausible version of this AU would be for both Eliot and Hardison to be undercover for Moreau, although I'm not sure why Moreau would be invested enough to devote two of his people full-time to this project. I could see Eliot feeling sorry for this poor trapped kid, Hardison latching onto Eliot due to him being nicer than the rest of Moreau's operation, and Moreau shamelessly using this to manipulate both of them--if Eliot wants to protect the "innocent" little hacker, he'd better make sure to keep him in line, while Hardison knows that if Moreau sends Eliot after Nana as a punishment for betrayal, Eliot's "niceness" is only going to extend as far making the execution quick.)

[aethersea]

May I request 41 - First Kiss and 94 - Hair Brushing/Braiding for the Leverage OT3, please? (Also extra bonus points if you give Eliot beads in his hair like in The Ice Man Job, because we didn't get NEARLY enough of that in the show) Thank you!

I cannot believe I wrote this whole thing out and then never published it. I’m so sorry, it’s been at least twenty-four years since you sent in this ask, please accept my humble apologies and also this ficlet.

However, this prompt is just pure fluff, and I hate to tell you this but I am not a fluff writer. I just can’t pull off that unadulterated sweetness. I am in this fandom for the shenanigans, first, last and foremost! So this fic is now a 5+1 of Eliot and Parker trying to seduce Hardison.

1. Parker thinks they need to give him gifts, so she goes through her stash and picks out the largest, fanciest jewel she’s ever stolen. Then she realizes: Hardison likes stories. He spends hours giving their aliases histories and pets and allergies and favorite foods, he can get a whole sordid history of jealousy and betrayal from a single corporate email chain, and Parker knows for a cold fact that he writes little stories with his online friends about being wizards together.

She goes through her stash again and picks out the most cursed thing she’s ever stolen.

It’s a jeweled statuette, almost as tall as her forearm, made of gold and studded with precious and semi-precious stones. Mysterious deaths have befallen five separate owners of this thing. Its base is dented from the time it was used to bludgeon Owner Number Three to death. The tiny rubies it has for eyes follow you across the room.

Parker puts a bow on it and leaves it in Hardison’s room while he’s sleeping. He wakes up to this horrible little statue watching him from his bedside table.

He texts the group chat, Hey did anyone put an evil little gold guy in my bedroom last night? But Parker chickens out and says nothing (drunkenly betting Eliot that she can seduce Hardison is one thing, but admitting that she likes him is something else altogether). Everyone else texts back variations on “nope.” (Except Sophie, who just sends back a string of heart eyes emojis and a wikipedia link. She loves cursed artifacts.) So Hardison puts the statue away in a closet somewhere and figures he’ll deal with it later.

Parker is mildly offended that he put her gift in a closet. She goes into his room the next night and puts it back on the bedside table, where it clearly belongs.

This goes on for a week. Hardison puts the statue in a desk drawer, then in one of the cabinets in the office downstairs, then in the dumpster down the street. Every day he wakes up to those glittering red eyes watching him sleep. He’s asked his internet buddies if anyone knows a good exorcist. Hardison doesn’t really believe in curses, but also? What the fuck. What the fuck.

~

2. Eliot assumes the drunken bet will be forgotten by morning. What kind of world would it be if people always followed through on promises they made while they could barely stay vertical? So he spends the morning nursing his hangover and cleaning his knives. Cleaning guns is no good while hungover—all the snaps and clicks of popping things in and out of place sound like actual gunfire when you’re hungover, it’s a nightmare—but knives are quiet and have no moving parts. Buffing and polishing them is soothingly repetitive work, and every once in a while he can throw one at one of the dartboards on the walls and reassure himself that his reflexes are still sound even after that much tequila.

It’s only when he gets Hardison’s text about the golden statuette that magically appeared in his room overnight that Eliot realizes Parker’s actually going for it. After some internal debate about whether he’s going to stoop to this or not, Eliot decides what the hell and starts making plans.

Eliot agrees that gifts are the way to go, but not stolen gifts. Not things. Anyone can give a thing. Proper wooing is about giving experiences.

Eliot plans for three days. On the fourth day, he and Hardison have their irregularly scheduled monthly coffee date, and Eliot texts him beforehand to say he wants to do it at the brewpub this time. Hardison arrives to find a deceptively simple meal: basic country fare perfected through years of experimentation, made with the best ingredients Eliot can get his hands on. And Eliot, after all, is still a retrieval specialist. There’s very little in the world he can’t get his hands on.

And yet the night ends and somehow he has not gotten his hands on Hardison.

This is just not right. Eliot knows how to deploy a smolder, okay, Tangled reference aside he is damn good at flirting and he knows the looks he’s giving Hardison are clear as day. It’d be one thing if Hardison had turned him down, or if he’d been uneasily unwilling, or even if his eyes had widened slightly in suppressed panic and he’d abruptly found a reason to leave. Eliot can take rejection, bet or no, and he’d have bowed out graciously without a fuss. But this was much, much worse.

Hardison didn’t even notice he was flirting.

He’s going to have to up his game.

~

3. “How do you seduce people?” Parker asks bluntly, turning up at Sophie’s door just past midnight.

Sophie, despite the hour, is utterly delighted by the question.

This goes as well as you would expect.

~

4. Eliot’s taken a lot of dates to sports games. Hardison may prefer sparkly elves with purple lightning magic to a decent MMA fight, but baseball is the American pastime. Eliot gets them perfect seats, hot dogs from the best vendor in the stadium, even chilled beer that he smuggles in without letting it get warm. It’s going to be a perfect game.

And it is. At first. Hardison, it turns out, has a lot of opinions about baseball. What he does not have is an understanding of the rules. They’re not even into the second inning by the time Eliot finally snaps and starts arguing with him about it.

They make it all the way to the fifth inning before Eliot realizes that Hardison’s basing his complaints off the rules of a game from a Star Wars novel.

They’re at the bottom of the eighth before Eliot will speak to him again.

~

5. Eliot and Parker are drunk again. This is not intentional. They didn’t even mean to come to this bar, but the smoothie place with the fried oreos that Eliot had brought Parker here to try was playing such incredibly bad music that they’d ordered the oreos to go and fled. The bar was just the coziest looking place on the block, and of course they’d ordered drinks to avoid being rude––Eliot had entertained himself for a few minutes scouring the menu for something that would pair well with fried oreos and popcorn chicken.

And now they’re drunk. The conversation has, perhaps inevitably, turned to the ongoing bet.

“I tried everything!” Parker wails. “I laughed at every joke, I touched my hair constantly, I got him talking about things he likes.” She thunks her forehead on the bar. “All that happened is now I know the complete history of orcs in western literature.”

“Hardison wouldn’t know flirting if it pinched him on the ass,” Eliot grumbles.

Parker slaps his arm. “No pinching Hardison!”

“I’m not going to—I don’t pinch people!”

Parker’s ignoring him. Eliot pouts and takes another sip of his drink. He’s not entirely sure what this one is––it’s blue and kind of fizzy, that’s all he can say for sure. Parker took over the drinks menu several glasses ago, and she’s been picking them based on what has the most fun name to say. Eliot’s pretty sure the alcohol content’s been doubling with each order.

“Eliot,” Parker slurs, “we need to work together.”

“What?”

Parker lifts her head from the bar and frowns at him, the way she does when she’s figured out the obvious solution and is just waiting for everyone else to get on the same page. It’s adorable. It’s always adorable, but right now her eyes are wide and slightly unfocused from the alcohol and she’s listing sideways a little, almost as if she’s unbalanced, and it is the most adorable thing Eliot has ever seen. Parker’s never unbalanced, but some part of Eliot’s fuzzy brain thinks she’s about to fall on top of him and cannot wait to catch her.

“You can’t seduce Hardison,” Parker points out. Eliot is drunk enough to get offended by this, but too drunk to get out a complaint before she continues, “I can’t seduce Hardison. But if we work together, the two of us can definitely seduce Hardison. Together.”

Eliot stares at her. Then he takes another sip of his fizzy blue drink. Later, when questioned, he will blame his next words on that drink.

“Worth a shot.”

They take Hardison to a movie. They research for three weeks beforehand. They find the best movie theater in town, with the nicest seats, the biggest screens, and concession snacks that Hardison likes, and they buy tickets for the midnight premiere of the superhero movie that Hardison hasn’t shut up about for the past month. Parker even hacks into the theater’s computers in a last-minute fit of nerves and cross-references the credit cards with drivers’ licenses to make sure the people sitting in front of them won’t be too tall.

Parker witnesses a kidnapping in the parking lot while the boys are getting popcorn. They don’t even stay long enough to catch the commercials.

~

+ 1. “Hey Eliot,” Hardison says during movie night, a little over a week later. “Remember the Ice Man Job?”

Eliot groans. “I try not to.”

Hardison throws a piece of popcorn at his face. “Shut up. Remember how you did your hair for that one? With the little—those little beads on, like, a braid?”

Eliot shoots Hardison a suspicious glance. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Teach me how to do that.”

Eliot shoots Hardison another, more deliberate look, this one pointedly directed at Hardison’s complete lack of braidable locks.

Hardison rolls his eyes as if that’s a silly detail to get hung up on and leans forward to dig around in one of the boxes he has under his coffee table. He emerges with a ziplock bag of plastic beads in no time flat and hands it triumphantly to Eliot. Then he yanks a few cushions out from behind Parker, who’s sitting on his other side, and puts them on the floor in front of him. “Sit here?” he asks Parker, patting the cushion pile.

Parker takes a moment to consider being offended at having her cushions stolen, but curiosity gets the better of her and she just plops down between Hardison’s legs, grabbing the bowl of popcorn as she goes, and waits.

Hardison lifts her hair with sudden gentleness, drawing it over her shoulders and letting it fall down her back in a golden wave. His fingers brush against her neck. Parker shivers. Eliot is distantly aware that he’s gone perfectly still, focused with a hunter’s intensity on Hardison’s dark, graceful fingers carding through Parker’s hair.

Hardison leans back, hands on his knees, and Eliot breathes again. “Well?” Hardison looks over at Eliot, a tiny smirk of challenge on his lips. “Show me how it’s done.”

Eliot is suddenly, brutally aware of how close they are. Hardison’s couch is obscenely comfortable, which is half the reason movie nights are at Hardison’s in the first place, but it is not large. Their thighs are touching. Hardison leans away, to give Eliot access to Parker’s hair, and he’s still so close that Eliot would barely have to reach out a hand to—

Eliot ruthlessly shoves that thought down into the dark where it belongs. He dealt with this, he dealt with this years ago, and accepting Parker’s stupid bet doesn’t mean he’s forgotten the way Hardison and Parker look at each other. It just means he doesn’t mind losing for a good cause.

So he keeps his tone steady and his fingers brisk as he shows Hardison how to braid the clunky plastic beads into Parker’s hair, and if he flushes with heat when their hands brush each other, well, nobody has to know. He’s been trained to withstand eight different schools of torture. It won’t show on his face. His voice never once falters.

Parker has had no such training. Her lips have parted, and her breathing is shallow. She’s staring glassy-eyed at the TV. Hardison can’t see her face, sitting behind her, but Eliot watches her carefully, worried that they need to call this off. Parker’s not used to intimacy, to closeness that means something, and for all the three of them have spent half their movie nights literally on top of each other, this is something else. This has weight.

Eliot puts a hand on her shoulder, pressing down just enough that Parker startles and cants a glance over at him. Eliot raises his eyebrows in question, and Parker glares back: don’t you fucking dare. Eliot backs off. Hardison, frowning in concentration as he threads a wisp of Parker’s hair through a green bead, graciously pretends he didn’t see the exchange.

Hardison gets the hang of the beading fairly quickly, and Eliot shows him a few different techniques. He’s almost managed to convince himself that nothing is actually happening when Hardison says, conversationally, “You two are really bad at this.”

Eliot glowers his confusion. “At movie night? You started this, if you wanted to actually watch Alien then you shouldn’t have—”

Hardison’s smile is soft, but Eliot decides for his own safety to focus on the laughter at its edge. “No, at this.” And then he slides his hand onto Parker’s neck, caresses her cheek, and isn’t the slightest bit surprised when she gasps.

Parker whips around, and there’s hurt on her face but it dies in the glow of Hardison’s gentle, unteasing smile. Hardison pulls her up with the lightest of touches, and she goes, eyes fixed on his like salvation.

They kiss sweet and slow, and Eliot’s heart twists in his chest and he can’t breathe. He needs to leave now before he shatters in half, but if he moves then they will look at him, and he would rather never breathe again than meet their eyes right now.

Hardison breaks off the kiss, gazing at Parker with something just this side of wonder, and then he does look at Eliot. Eliot flinches. He opens his mouth to…say something, make some joke or hasty excuse and scramble out the door, but Hardison raises a hand to Eliot’s face, slides his long fingers to cup Eliot’s neck, and pulls him forward, as gently as he did Parker.

It’s a chaste kiss, no more than a soft press of lips, because Eliot is too stunned to respond and Hardison doesn’t push. It lasts a long time. A whole era of change happens in the span of that kiss, as everything Eliot thought he knew tears out of place and then settles, gingerly, into a new understanding.

Hardison pulls away, his hand still warm on the back of Eliot’s neck. His smile is pure sunshine. Eliot finds himself smiling back, helpless.

Hardison’s grin turns smug. “And that,” he says, looking between Eliot and Parker, “is how you do it. Y’all are disasters, honestly, I can’t believe two master criminals working together couldn’t manage a single real date—”

Eliot heaves a deep sigh and drags Hardison into a headlock, pinning his arms when he flails. Parker surges to her knees and starts tickling him mercilessly.

They don’t finish the movie.

[falderaletcetera]

(a. this is very quick and scruffy b. no really and c. I can only apologise for the taxidermy dog. it should be clear I'm not exactly in control here.)

He was already steepling his fingers, but that didn't feel like enough for this, so he ducked his head and indulged in a sigh.

The client was an eccentric. This wasn't their usual sort of business - "eccentric" usually meant "rich", meant they could fight their battles themselves and normally screw innocents over in the process, but this was some friend of a friend of Sophie's who'd inherited the eccentricity and put the money towards good causes and all that was left to them was a house a bit bigger than one person really needed and furnishings that spoke of a solid family history of peculiarity.

(Yes, "them". He'd spent approximately ten seconds fishing after that before Sophie gave him a look and he committed the pronoun to memory. It's just not what he expected from a stuffy fifty-something in a sweater vest. He's no bigot. He's adjusting.)

It's Sophie who wraps up while he's trying to figure out what the problem is. Well, she does know artistic types - she's even been a muse herself, though not quite in the same way as this.

Maybe he's had a drink too many, maybe he's still feeling the effects of the last job's concussion - he brings it upon himself, he knows that, picking personas that play to his strengths - because Hardison's halfway through briefing them on the target when Nate comes out with, "Are we really going after the dog?"

All pairs of eyes turn to look at him. Sophie looks momentarily amused, Eliot's still technically finishing the washing up, the others-

"We're not leaving it behind," says Parker, a little disgruntled.

"We're not," says Sophie, reaching a hand out to touch the arm of the chair in comfort. The fact that Parker's perching on the back of the chair and not in it is beside the point.

"And the dog's important because, what, it's an heirloom?" Nate was there for this. He was there for this, and he maybe hasn't had enough sleep, and he let Sophie take over because she had a handle on the situation, and now he's beginning to think this job has gotten away from him already.

"Nate," says Sophie, "it was their grandfather's dog."

"Yes," he says - he'd gotten that much - "but,"

"That's not it, though," interjects Hardison. "It's... it's their rubber duck."

"We're... stealing a rubber duck?" says Parker. (Frankly, Nate's glad he didn't have to be the one to ask.)

"No, no," says Hardison, turning like he wished he had a powerpoint prepped for this. "It's part of the process," he says instead. "Some computer programmers keep a rubber duck on their desk to explain their problems to, yeah? A lot of the time just explaining the problem helps them find a solution. This writer..."

"...Talks to the dog instead," Nate finishes. He gets it. It's not the worst thing they've ever gotten back for someone, though he can see a hint of Eliot's I can't believe we're doing this shit expression as the man dries his hands on a teatowel. He really looks surprisingly at home in a flowery apron for someone in his line of work.

(Nate still isn't sure who's figured out that Hardison's the one who bought it and left it in the kitchen in the first place. Sophie, probably. Parker, he's not necessarily expecting to get a read on. Eliot... might be humouring Hardison, now that he thinks about it, and isn't that a thought.)

"Except they can't," says Sophie, a bite in her voice, "because that talentless hack hired people to steal the poor thing to keep Hargraves from writing any more books. All because they actually write queer people as people."

And that, really, is the crux of it - because from all Nate's heard about their work Hargraves is, in fact, a force for good; because the mark has worrying political associations and is definitely using her fame and fortune for some underhanded shit, and if the team can knock her down a peg in the process of this, all the better. And, okay, because this is something Sophie really seems to care about, and seeing that in her feels warmer than whiskey.

"Fiddle game won't work for this one," he says, catching her eye. "She'll be too paranoid for that." Sophie settles down a little, looks at him. Smiles like they know something the others don't.

"The Vieux Carré," she says, not quite a suggestion, and he feels his face mirror the expression.

Now he knows what he's doing.

He sets down his glass, stands up, sets palm to palm and has a quick look around the room. "Let's go steal a rubber duck."

okay so the need to write has been gnawing at my ankles again but the part of my brain that gets interested in things is still hibernating - if anyone wants to drop me a prompt, I promise I will pick one and at least try? barebones is fine, I just need the social pressure.

[vickyvicarious]

what do you make of Eliot's pre-show reputation for working alone? it makes sense for Parker and Hardison, who've always worked that way, but Eliot has a history of working as part of a team in various contexts

Yeah, it's definitely interesting! Really, Sophie never gets that label of 'always working alone' (and in fact later we see her bringing in Tara, which supports that she has friendly contacts still). It's just Parker, Hardison, and Eliot. And like you said, it makes complete sense for Parker, and even Hardison's hacking is just typically more suited to be done alone even if he is a social guy on a personal level. Eliot is different, given his history.

One thing I noticed a while ago, which is also interesting, is that Eliot's job by its very nature depends on other people. Sophie, Parker, and Hardison all steal what they want - as retrieval specialist, Eliot had to be hired. That's not to say he never just took something he wanted, necessarily, but his role majorly depended on people a) knowing of him in the first place, b) trusting his reputation enough to hire him, and c) being able to get in touch with him to hire him. I highly doubt he was handing out business cards left and right, so he had to have a network of contacts to at the very least pass his name along as an 'I know just the guy for the job' kind of thing. In fact, we see him bring in a friend on a con early in S1, and he is in contact with/does jobs for old military contacts throughout the show. (Once again, in the first episode Parker and Hardison were successfully recruited for someone else’s job, so it's not like that never happened for the others. But the general trend was that they picked their own heists; Eliot was hired on by other people.)

So we have a guy here who has a history of working on teams, a reputation as a loner, and yet still actively works for people who he has to keep on good enough terms to keep hiring him. How did that happen? In my opinion, it all comes back to Damien Moreau.

Eliot's timeline goes through some distinct phases:

Rural teen with a relatively poor family, I think they mention he played football; very all-American.

Joined the army with "a flag on his shoulder and God in his heart" or however that quote went.

Highly trained military operative involved in very classified operations.

Working for Damien Moreau.

Working solo as a retrieval specialist.

Leverage.

It's easy to track him through 1-3. He was recruited into the army with promises of heroism and glory, excelled at what he did, was eventually disillusioned. Getting from there to Moreau is a bit more of a jump, and likely didn't happen immediately. Given how protective Eliot gets over people he's working with, and how vigorously he hates betrayals of trust from his team, I think it's not unreasonable to assume that part of the reason he left the army had to do with whatever unit he was in getting very hurt. Likely in a way that made him feel he failed to protect them; maybe he was the only one who made it out of one specific situation. Maybe just a bunch of people he worked with got whittled down, or maybe it wasn't anything so deadly but he saw how little their lives mattered in the grand scheme of those in charge, saw how amoral the missions he was given were, and it was more of a gradual slide into illegality. There's also the detail that as he got into more and more classified work, he might be less and less likely to have a large group of people he could talk to/be a regular team with. Either way, I think Moreau didn't completely hire him straight out of the army, but there probably wasn't a tremendously long time between him leaving that group and joining up with Moreau.

*I originally thought Eliot didn't meet Toby until after he left Moreau, but a helpful anon corrected me on that! 'In the French Connection Job he says to Nate "I was out of the service and working for my 2nd PMC", doing wetwork.' He 'should've' killed Toby but instead stayed with him for months, 'learning how to cook and how to feel'. It certainly seems like he had gone some degree of numb after his experiences in the army and even since leaving it. His second private military contract/company... still implies he was working for organizations of some sort, though I get the impression he wasn't sticking around for terribly long times. Still, even if he then works solo retrieval type gigs for a while, I don't think he was nearly as insistent on working alone/had such a clear reputation about it, not yet.

Eliot no longer believed that he was doing good. He'd lost his naive patriotism and seems to have lost his religion for the most part as well. He didn't trust the system, but for the most part he still seemed to have faith in individuals. He still kept in touch with some old colleagues, he'd learned from Toby; he still wanted to be a part of something, even if that something couldn't be the US Army. He's a self-motivated criminal now but he still isn't averse to working with others.

Then comes Damien Moreau. Whether you read their relationship as romantic or not, it was undeniably important and personal. They knew one another well. Damien even still liked Eliot years after he'd left. There's good evidence for them having an emotionally abusive relationship where Moreau took advantage of Eliot's tendency to do things for those he cares about (I reblogged a great meta on this a little while ago). But essentially what we see here is that in all his time working for Moreau, no one else made such a strong impression on Eliot. Moreau definitely seems the type to play favorites and emotionally distance Eliot from other goons - Eliot isn't just another goon after all, he's the best. He's worthy of Damien's time and attention and specific assignments that only Eliot can be trusted to get done right. Whatever process of estrangement Eliot's superior skills may have begun, Moreau quickened until there was only one person who was the most important to him. Eliot didn't just work for him as a part of some vast criminal network by the end - no, he worked directly for and with Moreau himself. He was part of a team of two for all intents and purposes, regardless of how often he may have cooperated with others on specific jobs (though I suspect that got less frequent over time as well).

And when Eliot realized how deep he'd gotten, how terrible he'd become? He left, and left Damien Moreau specifically behind. Maybe he took a break for a while, went underground... it certainly doesn't seem like he had a conversation with Moreau and resigned so much as he just ran. And when he returned it was as a solo act. What this tells me is that not only did his time with Moreau break Eliot's trust in himself, it broke his ability to trust others. Not everyone necessarily, but in a working capacity. It probably was not the first time he'd experienced betrayal (in some form or another, his time in the army definitely qualified) but it was the most personal. Eliot trusted and liked Moreau - and he did the worst things in his entire life for him.

He couldn't repeat that. He couldn't leave himself open to getting sucked in like that again. And what's more, at this point he really didn't need to. His skills were such that he could get the job done himself (and had perhaps even honed those more solo skills while working for Moreau), and doing so meant that he never had to leave himself vulnerable to someone else like that again. He didn't have to be responsible for someone else getting hurt, and he didn't have to accept that he'd put someone else in charge of who he hurt. Eliot starts being more careful not to permanently injure or kill people, starts getting more selective with his jobs, and makes it a requirement that he works them alone. He still has to accept jobs from others, yeah, but he has ultimate control over what jobs he does accept, and if he operates purely on a freelance basis without getting too involved with any one client, then he can avoid the emotional entanglement that lead to such horrific loss of judgement in the past. It's hard, because he is naturally drawn to other people... but Eliot thinks that letting no one in is by far the safer option for everyone involved. He still builds relationships with others in order to get his name out, and may do repeat work for certain people, but no one is going to own him anymore. He is good enough that he can afford to set the terms like that; when he keeps getting the job done the word will spread that even alone he is worth the money. Eliot relies only on himself and any relationships he has are necessarily shallow. Professional, brief. This extends even to friendships (that seem to involve infrequent contact for the most part) and romantic relationships (he has plenty of sex but doesn't get emotionally close to anyone, does not fall in love). He is alone - in fact he is emphatically and outspokenly alone, because he doesn't want anyone to get their hooks in him like that ever again.

(*Doing jobs like this also limits the likelihood, especially in the beginning, that he's going to end up working for Moreau again in any real capacity. As time passes and Moreau doesn't attempt to bring him back too hard, that may become less of an issue in his mind, but it could certainly be a perk at least as the start.)

Then of course we eventually come to Leverage. It's been a while since Moreau. Eliot has built a solid reputation for himself - and he is being offered a LOT of money for a job that promises to be fairly quick. At this point, he probably feels like maybe he can trust himself as part of a team again without getting too sucked in - he will just keep it to one job and go his own way afterwards. It'll be fine.

...And then he immediately gets sucked in, bonds right away and wants so badly to stay. But even then, it's because of Nate. Eliot knows Nate, trusts him to be the 'honest man', is certain enough of Nate's moral compass that it's okay to get drawn in if Nate is the one making the plans. If it weren't for him, Eliot would have walked right away. Eliot was never going to allow himself to be ruled by others again... but Nate isn't like any of those people, he is a good man. Eliot can trust him not to lead him into anything too morally wrong, and in fact the work with Leverage is a way to bring some good back into the world. Not redeem himself, that won't ever happen, but under Nate's leadership Eliot can do something good for once. He doesn't want to stop.

By the time he moves past trusting Nate's judgement so much, he already trusts and loves the whole team. Parker and Hardison especially, so now he has to stay to keep them safe... even from Nate's plans sometimes, when he gets drunk and reckless. Eliot is secure in his role as part of a team again - and he probably was very lonely without one for all that time. It's not really in his nature to work alone long-term. And a key difference this time is that everyone else gets just as invested as he, and there's a good balance of power and respect unlike all of the more hierarchical teams he was in before (army, Moreau, they would have clear command structures - hell, even high-school football has a captain and a coach). Nate is nominally in charge but they talk back to him and lead where they have the most expertise. They dedicate themselves to him as much as he to them, they change together. And they change for the better, together.

[july-19th-club]

do i actually particularly value your opinion on media or do we just have the same birthday? i guess we'll never know! but you steered me well on soc so: i tried watching the first episode of leverage but i could not get into it because 1. gender and 2. it seemed like it was being silly when it should have been serious and serious when it should have been silly. do you have takes on this? is there a later episode i should have tried for my first go? whats the recipe for enjoying leverage

honestly unless you’re REALLY into the specific genre of ‘underproduced corporate thrillers from the early-mid aughts’ then you’re *not* gonna enjoy the leverage premier enough to be interested in the rest of the show, but you, zezander, are in luck because this ask has functioned as a sleeper phrase that triggers the release of the July’s Leverage Greatest Hits List, which i will herewith paste below. i’ve only listed episodes i think are really worth slowing down and enjoying, and i’ve included a few notes with each one as to why i think it’s worth the time; note that s1 was not released in the same order as it was aired so the order you watch it in literally does not matter at all except for the finale. without further ado:

SEASON ONE:

The Miracle Job (the first episode where things really have a rhythm; nate backstory that doesn’t suck eggs)

The Stork Job (strong parker/hardison ep.)

The Wedding Job (CHEESY - but extremely fun)

The Juror #6 Job (one of my personal favorites because i love a good trial bit)

The First David Job & The Second David Job (two-parter & v. good; maggie is here)

SEASON TWO:

The Order 23 Job (funny and fucking weird as hell)

The Fairy Godparents Job (another funny one & surprisingly touching)

The Three Days of the Hunter Job (god this one is weird. I love it)

The Two Live Crew Job (rival heist crew; sexy)

The Lost Heir Job (TARA! introduces one of my favorite characters)

The Bottle Job (the gold standard for bottle episodes and simple cons you can run at home)

The Future Job (STRONG parker ep. about fake psychics) 

and honestly at this point just finish out the season it’s plottier but still good + i love jeri ryan

SEASON THREE:

The Reunion Job (another sneaky parker/hardison ep.)

The Inside Job (clever escape episode; not really a heist)

The Scheherazade Job (the hardison’s unearthly violin solo episode)

The Studio Job (lots of people really like this episode and it’s good, I just don’t watch it often because i don't really like country music. Alona Tal is in it tho and i love her)

The Rashomon Job (told in flashbacks from each character’s perspective; very clever)

The King George Job (hardison hacks history; his arms look great in that tank top)

The Morning After Job (a very clever con)

The San Lorenzo Job (OH this fucking episode. It’s just very well put-together and Goran Visnjc is the big bad he’s all throughout the season really. sophie SHINES)

SEASON FOUR:

The Long Way Down Job (emotional parker/eliot ep; features extreme winter mountaineering)

The Van Gogh Job (fan favorite; hardison & parker play star-crossed lovers in wwii)

The Hot Potato Job (fun roleswap ep. for sophie)

The Grave Danger Job (emotional hardison/parker ep.)

The Queen’s Gambit Job (incredibly clever sterling episode, good parker/hardison content)

The Experimental Job (this one is good but it’s a Lot for me; i’m not sure why that is tho. premise: the team infiltrates a psychological experiment, requiring hardison to go undercover as a frat boy and eliot as one of the experiment ‘volunteers’)

The Office Job (fan favorite; heist shot like the office; just a fucking bucket of fun. The Sandwich(™) is here)

The Girl’s/Boy’s Nights Out Jobs (two-parter - the team splits up for extracurriculars; return of tara and harley)

The Gold Job (hardison runs the con roleswap ep.; some good parker/hardison/eliot)

The Last Dam Job (lots of old recurring characters in this one, incl. Tara and Mr Quinn)

SEASON FIVE:

The French Connection Job (eliot goes undercover as a chef; eliot ensues)

The Gimme A K Street Job (extremely clever episode about cheerleading)

The D.B. Cooper Job (another good flashback-starring-the-team ep. a la the van gogh episode)

The Broken Wing Job (bottle episode *man punching stage* TWO)

The Rundown Job (thee ot3 episode; lots of good parker/hardison/eliot stuff; biological warfare) 

The Frameup Job (the last sophie’s art theft adventures job & quite fun)

The White Rabbit Job (team confronts the ethics of pulling off the world’s toughest con)

The Long Goodbye Job (series finale, emotional and also quite good)

as you can see, i really like season four, and i’ll be the first to admit that the show has a slow start. but there are gems all throughout and i hope this helps break it down/give you a starting point! 

[some-little-infamy]

Dance With Us

(3x02 The Reunion Job - Coda Fic)  (Read on AO3) 

Eliot doesn’t care that no one bothers to respond to him once the mission’s over. He’s out of the office, he got to take his frustrations out with a few deserving human punching bags, and he’s fine. Let them have their fun… he had his. This is what he does. He doesn’t need all that.

He definitely doesn’t need to keep dwelling on how he heard Hardison ask Parker to dance before he pulled the com out of his ear and went back to Nate’s. He had plenty of those moments of his own back in actual high school, let the nerds have theirs now if they want. Whatever.

The problem is: the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that they were never moments he cared about. Even now, names and faces and, well, other assets, blended together in his memory, not worthy of any real distinction. Much like every other aspect of his life, it was always about the challenge, about the conquest, and then moving on. It never meant anything.

He definitely doesn’t need to dwell on the implications of that line of thinking, that if he were there with Parker or Hardison it would’ve meant something.

Half of a six-pack later, Hardison and Parker get back first.

“Where are Their Royal Highnesses?” Eliot asks, eyebrow raised when Hardison closes the door behind him.

“Couldn’t pull them away from their adoring fans,” Hardison quips. “So we left them for a few extra dances. Something tells me they didn’t even notice.”

Eliot lets out a ‘humpf’ sort of noise, because Nate and Sophie aren’t the only ones wrapped up in themselves tonight. Parker and Hardison haven’t stopped sharing these quick, knowing glances since they walked in, and even though it’s barely been a full minute Eliot’s had more than enough of it.

Grabbing the handle of the six-pack to take his last 3 beers with him, he’s surprised to feel Parker’s hand reach out with a firm grip around his wrist. “Thought you were going to show us how it’s done, Mr. ‘I’m The One Who Went to School Dances’?” she says.

“What?” Eliot asks, tensing instinctively when the lights dim, only for an almost disco-ball effect to project from the television screens on the wall accompanied by the opening chords of a slow rock ballad.

“You aren’t getting out of dancing with us that easily,” Hardison elaborates. Parker’s already leading Eliot by the wrist, which she still hasn’t let go of, over to where Hardison stands waiting expectantly.

“Us?” Eliot repeats, eyebrow raised.

“Well, on the way back we argued over which one of us would get to dance with you, and I won, but I also accidentally made Hardison cry so I felt bad and we agreed we’d just all dance together.”

“I did not-” Hardison starts, but one narrow-eyed glare from Parker has his lips snapping shut instead.

Hardison slides his right arm behind Parker’s back and holds his left hand out for Eliot to take. Parker holds her right hand out to do the same, and Eliot just stands there looking between them as if this must be some sort of joke.

“I don’t need your pity dance,” Eliot says, unable to find it in himself to feel anything other than defensive. That had to be it. He knows he made a few comments over the comms about no one checking in on him but he meant for them to sound sarcastic… maybe more of his actual disappointment bled through than he thought.

He knows he doesn’t quite fit in here. Nate and Sophie have their cat and mouse game history. Hardison and Parker have their secret spy stuff, with covert hacking and undetectable break-ins. All he has is violence and a short fuse. He’s the muscle, and if they didn’t need him he would’ve been gone a long time ago. He’s fine with it. Really. He doesn’t need this. He doesn’t even want it.

Except that doesn’t explain the way his heartbeat rises more staring down Hardison and Parker than it had fighting off guys twice his size earlier.

“I don’t pity anyone,” Parker says, motioning more exaggeratedly with her hand now, shoving it forcefully in his direction to take. “It’s the three of us. Always. Out there, in here. Doesn’t matter.”

The way Parker says it is the way Parker says anything - blunt and honest, which is the only reason why Eliot doesn’t doubt her words. It’s the reason instead of going back to his beer Eliot shrugs off the gray hoodie he still has on so that he’s left with just a tan flannel and his red-orange undershirt for better mobility before holding his hands out to take Hardison and Parker’s.

There’s a slight frown on his face at the immediate realization that his hands, rough and calloused, are such a stark contrast to the smooth, soft skin of the ones holding them… but even Eliot can’t frown for long when he looks up to see Hardison grinning like a damn fool and Parker giving that excited little half-smile he normally only sees her with before she’s about to jump off a building.

Without another word, they’re moving, perfectly in sync from the first step, in a three-person waltz that shouldn’t work as well as it does.

It’s perfect. Which is why he has to say something and ruin it, before something else does, not trusting the moment to last.

“This is a little ridiculous,” he points out. “No one waltzes at school dances.”

“Oh? Would you prefer something else?” Hardison asks, dropping Eliot’s hand. For a second Eliot is convinced that he did exactly what he set out to do - kept the people he cares about at arm’s length - and is surprised at the immediate disappointment he feels at succeeding. A moment later Hardison brings his hand back up to grab Parker’s, stepping closer so that Eliot is now sandwiched between them, Parker pressed against his chest, Hardison against his back.

They’re a comforting weight on all sides of him as they slow in pace down to a gentle sway back and forth. The knot in Eliot’s stomach over the assumption that he fucked everything up dissolves as quickly as it formed.

“Better?” Parker asks, her eyes searching his face to read his reaction, to make sure that it’s honest. He knows that if it isn’t, if he really wants to push them away and end this - whatever this is - he could do it and she’d let him. One hint that he doesn’t want this and she’s gone. They both are.

It’s tempting. Old habits die hard and this job would be a hell of a lot easier to do if he didn’t let himself get too attached in ways he shouldn’t be… then Hardison leans his head down just enough to rest his cheek against the back of Eliot’s head while they sway and the little stutter Eliot’s heart does tells him it’s a bit late for keeping himself in check as far as attachments go. 

“Better,” Eliot agrees.

In fact, when Parker tilts her head to rest her cheek on Eliot’s shoulder, the three of them moving just a little bit closer in the process, Eliot might grudgingly admit to himself it’s the best he’s felt in a long time.

[adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction]

Leverage fic idea

Eliot has a kid. I don't mean he acquires a kid in the course of the fic, I mean he already has one.

Years ago, he was with a woman and she ended up pregnant and wanted to carry the kid to term. At the time, Eliot was mixed up with the worst kinds of bad people doing the worst kinds of jobs and he knew that it wouldn't be safe for a kid to be around him. Instead, he put together some money to ensure that the kid would be taken care of. Maybe the woman gave the kid up for adoption to a nice family, maybe she decided to be a single mum, maybe she met someone else and they decided to raise the kid together, but whatever happened there, Eliot decided it was better for all of them if no one ever knew he was connected to the kid. He didn't want his many, very dangerous enemies getting it into their heads to target the kid. So his name appeared nowhere on the birth certificate and nothing official ties them together in any way.

But the parent(s) know who Eliot is.

After a few years, Eliot extracted himself from like likes of Moreau but he still didn't think he was safe to be around the kid and the parent(s) raising the kid were great, so he would just pay them a visit once or twice a year in secret, see his kid briefly, hand over piles of unmarked, non-sequential bills, and then leave again. Sometime close to birthdays and holidays, he'd find a way to send a card from somewhere in the world that wasn't wherever he was living at the time, but he'd never sign it. He wouldn't look the kid up online in case someone could hack his search history.

So the only people on the entire planet who knew Eliot had a kid were Eliot, the parent(s), and the kid themselves, who was older now and had been told about Eliot being their biological dad. Absolutely no one has any idea, and Eliot makes it a point to keep it that way.

When he runs across kids on jobs with the Leverage crew, he's so protective of them because he does what he would want someone else to do for his kid. He thinks about that kid at times like that, but he's got so used to keeping them a secret that he never mentions it even to the others on the crew.

But over the years, Eliot has given the kid methods to get in contact with him, to send a message if needed, because he's still afraid that no matter how careful he is, someone will find out and target the kid, and by now the kid is old enough to be trusted with something like that. So he gives the kid some way to always get in touch with him if ever there's an emergency.

Then one day, when he's in the middle of a job with Hardison and Parker, he gets the signal. His kid is in danger. And the first thing Parker and Hardison ever hear about this kid existing is when Eliot tells them they have to drop a job halfway through and travel across the country to save them.

[pale-silver-comb]

17 questions 17 people

Tagged by @dannosteve223 ​ @sgtbarnes107 ​ and @leverage-ot3 ​ <3

Nickname: Em, Emmy, Emela

Zodiac: Capricorn 

Height: 5′9″

Hogwarts house: Hufflepuff (but I’m not entirely unconvinced I couldn’t get into   Slytherin out of sheer want to be roomed in the dungeons where I can watch the merfolk go by).

Last thing I googled: Vegan Ben and Jerry flavours 

Song stuck in my head: All Is Found from Frozen 2

Number of followers: 9,203 (I still can’t believe so many people are still with me after I changed to a multi-fandom blog and I got hacked by that horrible bot. I appreciate you guys so much *boops all your noses*). 

Amount of sleep: I sleep better than I used to but it’s still very broken. Maybe 2 or 3 hours on and off throughout the night? 6 or 7 in total if it’s a good night?

Lucky number: 22 as it was the number of my Grandparent’s house 

Dream job: Oh boy. As a kid I wanted to be Kathleen Kelly from You’ve Got Mail (without my business going under). When I was 17 I got a job in a bookshop and worked there for 9 years while I studied. All in all I would say that was a kind of dream job, except working in customer service is often very frustrating and draining. Currently, I am training to be a teacher which is another kind of dream entirely. Knowing I have the ability to play a part in helping kids feel good about themselves and reach their goals? Best job in the world, as hard as it is.  

Wearing: My Sense8 Nomi and Amanita, Nancy Drew style t-shirt and leggings. 

Favorite song: If it came down to it, my default answer for this is always Hallelujah. That song moves me on so many levels. Unfortunately, whenever anyone asks me this I feel compelled to then add “the Shrek version” which....is what it is. Don’t judge me. 

Favorite instrument: To listen to? Anything with strings, really. I love the violin. A simple acoustic guitar is also lovely. (Violin and guitar. Emma, are you sure this isn’t your way of saying choose your favourite instruments based on if Alec Hardison and Eliot Spencer were instruments?) 

Aesthetic: Mermaids. Water. Lagoons. Bisexuals, bisexuals everywhere. Candles. Books. Cowboy boots. Staring up at the night sky from the back of a banged up jeep. (Do these count as aesthetics or am I just listing things?) 

Favorite author: That’s way too hard a question. I definitely have authors who I’d read anything by without even having to look at the book but I could never pick a favourite. Like @dannosteve223 it’s easier to name a favourite poet: Richard Siken (I know, I know, I’m a queer cliché). 

Favorite animal noise: Ummm, any and all baby animal noises are adorable???? That’s narrowing it down enough, I think. You cannot make me choose. (Unless it’s a bird. I have a proper phobia of birds and if I hear or see one I will run the other way.) 

Random: During the first year of my undergrad, I studied history. One class I took was Celtic Studies but the professors were very monotone and made me hate it, which in turn made it hard to study. When it came to the exam, I paraphrased the Boudica song from Horrible Histories for my essay. I passed and to this day I don’t know if that is a positive reflection on me or a poor reflection on my university’s standards....

Tagging anyone who would like to do this - that means YOU, darling person who is reading this - because this is always a fun way to let your followers know more about you and make unlikely friends! :D 

[mj-spooks]

Hey Mia. Guess what I found. If you managed to guess a flash drive with all my middle school anime music, you are correct. It's nostalgic and cringey and so much more of me makes sense right now. Anyway, Leverage Crew by bad trends they were into as "kids"

This would not happen to me because all my cringey music from middle school is on my spotify and I listen to it on the regular lmao

Also let the record show that I do not actually believe in or support cringe culture, the only thing cringey is bullying people for liking a thing, or gatekeeping said thing

Okay so the thing is, I tried to google trends from the 70′s, 80′s, and 90′s but everything is fashion related, which does not seem to be what you’re going for? So I just... picked “cringey” interests that seem to fit them vibe-wise, rather than timeline-wise. The term “trends” is also being applied loosely in a couple cases to mean “interests” rather than actual trends.

I think that Eliot probably saw Fight Club once and thought “seems legit.” Not that he’s not smart enough to recognize the core message of the film, just, I can definitely see teen-him watching a movie about a bunch of dudes forming a secret society dedicated to punching each other and getting in on it. There were a lot of attempts to catch the boys (and two girls) involved but they never panned out because, well, first rule of fight club is...

Hardison, meanwhile, is The Matrix kid all the way. He had the coat. He had the sunglasses. There was a solid four month period where he tried to emulate that weird low gruff voice Keanu Reeves does in the movie. He started learning to hack in earnest because he legitimately thought perhaps he was living in a simulation and wanted to hack it from ~the inside~.

Nate is was one of Those History Guys. He watched all the documentaries he could get his hands on and would lecture about them at the drop of a hat. He was a nightmare to have in your history classes because he would. not. stop. arguing with the teacher. The best thing that can be said for him is that he’s at least more well-rounded than those people that know every single thing about, like, WWII or Julius Caesar. He was an equal opportunity know-it-all.

Sophie was a theater kid, is that even a question? She spoke in quotes that were only vaguely related to the actual conversation being had. She was physically incapable of standing still when she spoke, emoting with her hands and arms so much that the quickest way to shut her up was to hold them still. She made dramatic entrances and exits. She had a bumper sticker on her first car that said All The World’s A Stage.

Now then, Parker specifically is a fashion trend, because she very definitely dressed like Disney Channel stars circa early 2000′s. Picture her in literally any of Ashley Tisdale’s outfits. How easy is it? Super easy, because she did and you can’t change my mind. I would love to see art of this. She dressed like that and the only reason she doesn’t still is because it’s not exactly effective dress for thievery.

[kilterstreet]

Three of my favorite Leverage episodes

And why I enjoyed them (putting this under a cut because of post length and some spoilers):

Rashomon Job

- The team trolling and teasing each other. Sophie’s accents! (Those accents are the best.) Sophie revising her story to give Eliot a freaking corncob pipe! Hardison portraying himself as the life of the party, while Parker remembers him as the awkward dude shoving food in his pockets. Hardison remembering Eliot as a knife-wielding sadist who was making out with Sophie at one point (probably accurate on both counts).

- I like how after Sophie describes the head of museum security as someone who’s practically as smart as Nate, he shows up in Nate’s story as a bumbling weakling (although one who’s totally in love with Sophie). 

- A nice look at the Parker-Nate bond, which doesn’t get that much attention in the show. They’re the only two people who are initially quiet about the dagger - and the only two who actually had their hands on it. Nate is the one who recognizes that Parker was at the museum that night too - and she then realizes that about him as well, and they exchange these fond looks. (One of the things I’ve always liked about the two of them is that they basically accept each other - she’ll matter-of-factly point out that he’s a drunk with serious control issues, and he’ll mildly note that she has a tendency to stab people, but that’s ok, he can work with that. They’re not quite father-daughter... more like irresponsible uncle and arsonist niece. Anyway, it’s a neat dynamic.) 

King George Job

- “In a single day, I've gone from apprentice to journeyman to master,” says Hardison in what is probably my favorite line in the show (if I had to pick one). I also love Aldis Hodge’s delivery, making Hardison look like he’s caught up between genius and madness.

- Nice spotlight on the team’s various strengths: Eliot pretending to be a simpleton to make his opponents lower their guard, after which they receive a well-deserved beatdown and get tied up in a humiliating fashion for the police; Hardison hacking history with a combination of tech skills, art forgery, and obsessive attention to detail; Parker lovingly breaking into a safe while delivering a beautiful monologue about it (making it seem like a person with its own history) and then running an auction where she not only identifies fake items, but also recognizes pieces she’d previously stolen; Sophie stepping into a character that isn’t even just a character, but a real part of her life, and highlights an extreme form of that tension between real and fake (and what’s real and what’s fake?) that she lives every day; Nate navigating the chaos and mostly skulking around behind the scenes checking that the team’s efforts are all coordinated and on schedule (except when he surfaces as the kind of loud, attention-grabbing character he tends to play, and needs to get his ass saved by Sophie).

- Nate overhearing how a man who used to love Sophie drank himself to death. Ouch. The show sometimes confronts the darkness of the team and the way they’ve lived - here there’s an emphasis on Sophie. As caring as Sophie can be, and though she’s changed in some ways, she’s still incredibly dangerous; she can mess with people mentally and destroy them. Likewise, she discusses the consequences of her own actions stealing art over the years - was she hurting only very rich people who could afford to lose some art, or were the repercussions broader?

- That scene where they’re all sitting around the table and Sophie is explaining about the statue, and they’re all so into it - that’s one of the show’s strengths, the fact that they learn from each other and admire each other’s competencies.

The Frame-Up Job

- Sophie is my favorite character on the show, so I enjoy the big role she gets in this episode. Playing several different characters while carrying out a murder investigation (bonus for sitting on Sterling’s lap and ruffling his hair while referring to him as Chauncey). And the episode shows more about her background.

- This is a nicely layered episode. Not only the layers of crime (art forgery, murder), but also the layers in Nate and Sophie’s relationship and the way the trust is shown to deepen. (I also like how even though Nate doesn’t know what Sophie is up to during the earlier parts of the episode, he just rolls with what’s happening, has her back, even as he’s trying to figure out what’s going on.)

- Sterling! Sterling looking thrilled and enraged. Like he’s going crazy but at the same time he’s never had more fun in his life than right at this moment, working with (or against) Nate and Sophie. His job, his very existence, would be duller without them. He’ll never admit it. Ever. But he practically invites them to work with him at the end. He can’t bear to say good-bye!

- I love how Nate and Sophie look so dashing and elegant as they torment Sterling.

- The energy in this episode is so good - the pacing, the humor and wit, the poignant moments.

[s-wordsmith]

Hardison and Babs go head to head. At some point, they start playing more than fighting. Babs is like "why do you want inside Wayne security?" Hardison sends her a short version of the client's story and says he's trying to help. Babs offers the security cameras and her help for him "and his friends" (whom Hardison didn't mention; Babs tells him later it was an educated guess) if they need anything further. They have a lot of fun.

Parker and Cass run into each other in and bond purely on neurodivergent peer-to-peer vibes. Cass expresses curiosity over Parker's actions and follows her but makes no move to interfere so Parker, who doesn't know who this is, has decided to adopt her as a criminal apprentice. Until they get to some security measure which Cass bypasses before Hardison can talk Babs into doing it. Babs, who has friendly-hacked their comms, tells them that's most likely Cass (confirmed when Parker addresses her and she smiles) and that she's fine in there (Hardison was like "why is there a kid in there?"). Cass follows Parker still.

After the party, later when they have to work together to avoid stepping on each other on this case, Parker and Dick and Cass bond over acrobatics. Hardison expresses his distaste for it all to the mutual scoffing of the entire batfamily; Alfred expresses pleasure that someone around here has an ounce of common sense for once.

Sophie and Tim dance around each other as intellectual peers at the party. Sophie is good at blending in just about anywhere, but Gotham society is a very particular niche who all know each other by name and face. Sophie impresses him enough by correctly cold-reading a number of people, including him, that he decides to help her with whatever she's doing with no questions as to what that is, introducing her to a few key people in full Timothy Drake-Wayne persona and straight up telling her whatever he can so she doesn't even have to go looking. She is very impressed by his code-switching and he by her insight and they bond based on the vibe of "high society elite by birth but secretly a chaos agent." Bruce later starts to dance with her and also bonds with her on that basis, though by this point he has checked in with his children and confirmed she's there for a good reason and is just checking her out for a personal read on her; it doesn't matter anyway because Nate gets jealous and cuts in.

This is one of the few places where Nate's usual aliases don't work as anybody from Gotham takes one look at that kind of eccentric and decides "villain." He is very frustrated. The others enjoy laughing at him. He and Tim ending up bonding over admiring Sophie and being crazy, misunderstood geniuses, literally standing there admiring Sophie as she works the room.

Eliot ends up bonding with all of them. He and Alfred share a load of arcane knowledge gathered from a very interesting history. He and Bruce (and Dick) share the point of view of weathered protectors looking out for their team first and foremost. He and Damian bond because he recognizes Damian's name and still treats him like his own person, not like a child but not like a threat either. Damian recognizes Eliot's name and expresses admiration for his skill, with more specific appreciation than most others have. They share a very brief unspoken moment over the concept of redemption. He and Jason (eventually) bond over being the ones willing to make the hard call when it's necessary and recognizing that it sometimes is necessary (he appreciates that that's not Damian's path, but it's also nice to have someone whose path it is); Jason offers his personal help and that of the Outsiders should Leverage ever need it. He bonds with the others mostly just by virtue of being in essentially the same line of work but more specifically because they bonded with his people and that's the best sign of a person's character for him. Every single one of them bond with Eliot because they view him as like them in being the only sane person surrounded by nut jobs; all of them.

Jason and Duke adore Sophie's theatricality and stories. She finds them clever young gentleman who understand the concept of crafting a narrative and how important it is in grifting. They set up a long-distance book club.

Steph just loves the whole wild story and all the crazy people on both sides.

(Selina and Parker go off for a side job; Selina lets Parker pet her cats.)

Leverage and batfam crossover where Batman has remained an urban legend but Bruce Wayne adopting a series of identical underage boys is common knowledge and people in Wayne Enterprises are concerned that some money just seems to regularly disappear and criminals are routinely hired in all departments. I can't figure out how Leverage's usual clientele would be impacted or how these concerns would stand up to direct scrutiny from the team, so Bruce probably isn't the actual target, but someone in Gotham elite is and Bruce is known to be currently cozying up to them so he's a peripheral target: someone to keep an eye on and someone whom it wouldn't be a loss to ruin. Hijinks ensue, probably at a party on Wayne property of some kind. Leverage figure out the Bats' identities. The Bats now have them as contacts. Batman Inc. and Leverage Inc. are connected somehow, even if only conceptually.

"Let's go steal a Batmobile."

Jason: "I tried that. I died." (Jason, like Sophie, is utterly unclear how to be dead. He adores her the moment he meets her.)

[leverage-ot3]

op: #i love this callback to the king george job where eliot gathers supplies for hardison#and hardison is still hacking history people!#i just think that harry is equally scared and impressed#and i will always love the 'pick lice off a damn cactus with his bare hands' line#oh hardison

"Bruh, I gotta fake a masterpiece from 1633. Not only does the painting have to look identical, the materials I use have to be identical."

Leverage Redemption S01E01 The Too Many Rembrandts Job.