#because eliot will maybe never GET parker but at this point he's learned to get on her level

[lindseymcdonaldseyelashes]

Leverage 4x1 - "The Long Way Down Job"

[augustheart]

leverage fighting supernatural creatures concepts from me and @theboost.

we used fighting kind of... loosely. we also used the concept of supernatural creature pretty loosely. this post is so long i had to put part of it under a cut.

mummy: they have to run a con on a museum at the request of another member of leverage international who has been trying to return a mummy to a burial site for months with no success. parker dresses as a mummy and keeps jumping out to scare people because the entire con hinges on making the mark believe the mummy is legitimately cursed. it gets breanna every single time and eventually she destroys the mummy costume. at the end of the episode breanna sees a mummy shuffling around a corner and asks where parker got a second mummy costume. "what second mummy costume?" parker says from next to her. EPISODE ENDS

werewolf: eliot and hardison are on a road trip together and end up in a small farming town that's terrified of whatever has been causing the deaths of their livestock. a guy with a condition where he's really hairy is being persecuted for being a werewolf. they meet a wise old lady with an adopted daughter who's sick who says something like "you know appearances... they can be deceiving. even in a place like this, not everything is as it seems, especially under the full moon." they uncover the mayor is behind a group that's poisoning the water (maybe by looking at the water under moonlight idk i'm not that kind of scientist), causing the girl's sickness and the deaths of the livestock. as they leave town hardison teases eliot for believing in werewolves (this has been a c-plot the whole time) and then looks out the window and sees two werewolves, the old lady and her daughter. EPISODE ENDS

witches: alice white joins an MLM based on ~divine feminine energy~ so parker can take it down from the inside. it's all based on easily faked "magic" and sleight of hand, and she keeps impressing them by pointing out how they're doing their tricks and then replicating them because hardison had a whole phase where he wanted to learn stage magic or something. they're so impressed they invite her to a ritual but they ask her to bring a virgin sacrifice. parker immediately brings harry ("i'm not a virgin?" "the magic isn't REAL harry"). they get some of harry's blood and start doing shit that can't possibly be faked. it goes wrong because he isn't a virgin and a demon kills the witches but allows parker and harry to live because they're using aliases and not their true names or whatever. somehow this destroys the MLM. EPISODE ENDS

mermaid: breanna meets a girl at the beach who keeps looking at her with big wet sad eyes and telling her about how the fish are dying because of pollution. she is only ever in the water up to her waist. breanna is immediately smitten and they stop the top polluter. they kiss in celebration and then the girl is like "i'm sorry... i can't be with you..." and she dives underwater and we see her tail as she swims away. EPISODE ENDS

ghosts part one: harry meets a beautiful lady because he heard someone crying and wandered down a street looking for them. he promises to help her save her destined-for-foreclosure house that she says has been in her family for 100 years or something. the rest of the team conveniently never sees her but is willing to help. after they save her house she kisses him (he's thrilled) and tells him she'll be right back before going into the house. a car pulls up and an older woman gets out. she's like "oh i can't believe you managed to save it. i really thought they'd destroy this place." harry asks her if she's a friend of the family and she says "it was my mother's before she died [x] years ago." harry goes inside to look for the lady but she's gone. EPISODE ENDS

ghosts part two, this one is insane: it's halloween. a car carrying a murderer crashes into something and the murderer dies while eliot tries to do cpr on him (he was next to the crash site but has no connection to the case) only to pull a charles lee ray and push eliot's soul out of his body and possess him. the serial killer wanders around in eliot's body observing before pulling a gun on hardison because he's annoying him too much. parker and hardison look at each other and Immediately go "serial killer ghost." breanna has had a ouija board tapestry hanging up on the wall that keeps falling down because eliot is trying to communicate with them. they lay it out and eliot explains things to them. hardison asks if they're sure this is eliot and not just another ghost trying to trick them. the ouija board painstakingly spells out "dammit hardison." they decide the only thing they can do is have eliot fight the ghost out of his body. he possesses a willing harry and makes him ragdoll around while he fights him. as the clock strikes midnight because idk ghosts can't stay in their bodies past midnight on halloween because they can only possess you on halloween Or Something eliot pushes the serial killer out of his body. EPISODE ENDS

faerie: sophie is kidnapped by faeries and brought before a jury because she didn't call queen titania back after they hooked up, which means the rest of the team has to go there to save her. eliot is pissed because he can't eat any of the food and they won't let him take stuff back to the human world where eating it would be harmless. harry is absolutely thriving because in a world of doublespeak a formerly evil lawyer is a king. it's revealed he actually has been to the faerie realm to do trials tons of times but they wipe his memory at the end of each one so he doesn't reveal any secrets to humans. they free sophie and bring her back to the human world when she promises to call titania back. she immediately throws titania's number away again. "so needy." EPISODE ENDS

dragon: the team has to infiltrate a crime ring. the crime ring is very dragon themed with dragon tattoos and ranks named after dragonslayers and shit like that. they just assume the dragon is metaphorical but then when eliot passes the test to rise through the ranks he's brought before a chained up dragon and they're like "the dragon will choose if you're worthy!!" he's like "WHAT the fuck." they save the dragon and set it free at the end of the episode despite parker begging to keep it. it says "thank you" and flies away despite never speaking before then. EPISODE ENDS

phantom of the opera: sophie has like a struggling theater she volunteers with and one of the girls there is being stalked by some weird guy. harry immediately asks if this is going to be like phantom of the opera and starts blasting the soundtrack constantly. sophie meets a guy with an eyepatch or a covid mask or something and recognizes him as a former broadway star. he ends up being the stalker. at the end it's revealed he is Literally the phantom of the opera. breanna says something like "okay so eliot and alec saw a werewolf and now we just fought the phantom of the opera. are there any other classic universal monsters i should know about?" hardison says "oh i fought the invisible man." they all turn and look at him. he shrugs. EPISODE ENDS

psychic: breanna dates a psychic who keeps saving her from improbable final destination style accidents. the team becomes convinced she's orchestrating these accidents for some nefarious purpose. breanna insists that no her girlfriend is just psychic and there's a montage like the one in quantum leap set to i want to know what love is but instead of a sex montage it's a romance montage because breanna is asexual. parker is disturbed due to her established understandable emotional turmoil after the future job. they have to help the psychic after she sees her own death. maybe the phantom of the opera is involved again idk. EPISODE ENDS

troll: someone is trying to put tolls on freeways by lobbying the department of transportation. they also keep making people answer really shitty riddles with answers that aren't at all obvious. when they answer one of their riddles right in the final ten minutes they explode. their name is like t. roll or something. EPISODE ENDS

the leprechaun from the leprechaun movies: okay at this point we were really tired and i'd been laughing hysterically for the past two hours. but someone finds his pot of gold and spends it on some stuff like medical bills and the leprechaun shows up and does his stupid bullshit. the client turns to the leverage team for help. they're convinced it's a gas leak until one of them sees the leprechaun not in the client's house. harry accidentally spends one of the leprechaun's coins. eliot keeps trying to fight the leprechaun but his bullshit magic lets him evade all his punches. i don't remember how we said this one would end

bigfoot: closing us out with the one i actually think could happen. they don't fight bigfoot!! they help conserve and protect some natural habitat by faking a bigfoot sighting and scaring off some shady developers (i am now realizing that i am describing a reverse scooby gang)! throughout the whole episode parker has been consistently reaffirming her belief in bigfoot and casually describing bigfoot encounters she's heard about while breanna and sophie try to convince her bigfoot isn't real. she manages to get harry, eliot, and hardison to be on her side. breanna sees bigfoot at the end of the episode but sophie doesn't believe her. EPISODE ENDS

[leveragedlibrarians]

Ok I was going to put this in the tags but it was too long so uh

Look. Everyone is going to point to nate and say that obviously he's the normal one but you're WRONG. The series premiere he tells us he used to run game on criminals to get stolen merch back. We all saw what happened between s1 and s2. Not to mention his father, his childhood, and the fact he was going to be a priest. Nate Ford may be an unseasoned piece of plain white bread of a man, but he has never ever been 'normal.'

Sophie lives for the drama. The glamor. The chase. Her 'normal' would probably be retiring to a little island off the coast of Sicily in a mansion full of art she stole and every now and again going off to some charity event as whatever fake identity she feels like pulling out of the closet.

Parker never had a normal to start with, not that she'd ever want one. She was born to commit crimes. Not just raised to (Archie my nemesis) but she /chose/ crimes. The earliest memory we see is of her stealing. She loves it, she lives it. She'll be in a retirement home stealing tapioca pudding for the kicks.

Hardison would never even consider a 'normal' life, okay? He'd be insulted at the prospect. He's /gifted/. Hacking is an art and he is an artist. He is the greatest hacker in the world and takes so so so much pride in that. I don't think Hardison could stop hacking if you paid him.

But Eliot? I think not only is Eliot the only one capable of normalcy, but I think part of him craves it. It's important to note that of all of them, he didn't initially seek out his role of being a hitter. The rest of them chose their roles, but Eliot didn't sign up for his. He joined the army. He didn't do it for the violence either, he did it because he wanted to be like his dad. Then he was just too good at his job, and kept getting pulled down darker and darker roads by his commanding officers.

I fully believe Eliot had a totally different life planned out. He was going to join the army, marry Amy, have 2.5 kids and settle down, maybe inherit his dad's shop. In s4 he tells Nate that he used to be someone completely different "before all of this started." He wasn't born a killer or a hitter. He was a kid who joined the army and "had god in his heart" and, importantly, Eliot still keeps looking for the person he used to be. We never see the rest of them lamenting the 'good ole days,' we never hear hardison talk about before he learned to hack except that he played the violin before /choosing/ to hack instead. Of all of them, I think that if Eliot could go back in time and change it all he absolutely would.

Over and over we see Eliot bonding with every kid and middle class character in the series. He throws himself into his grifting roles- miner, chef, singer- because I think on some level he /wants/ that. He wants to be the chef who owns the lil restaurant down the street, the guy you could grab a beer with. He wants to settle down, maybe get married, and leave the violence behind (except maybe to play hockey or box). I'm not saying he doesn't like his life with them at all- I think that after all he's been through already that Leverage is probably the happiest ending he could get- but I am saying that the middle part, between the army and when we meet him s1, is probably something that makes Eliot genuinely hate himself. He didn't want to be a killer. He doesn't like it. He tries desperately to save Nate from what he couldn't save himself from. If he liked killing, liked any part of the wetwork he used to do, he wouldn't have quit. Wouldn't have tried so desperately to get away from it. He never wanted to be a killer, he was just so Good at it.

Eliot was the normal kid next door who got pulled into a life that he hated by people far far more powerful and dangerous than him, and I think that he regrets that every day.

Sophie: Who would live a normal life outside of this job?

Eliot: Me. It would be me.

Me: *thinking about it*

[wolves-in-the-world]

Good Things in The First Contact Job:

- "They used to stamp their logo on the engine cowls of our chopper, and we’d have to file them off before we... went fishing. For fish."

- "Hardison, I said sea salt. This is iodized salt— who got the military satellite intercept? You’re not supposed to..."

- the sheer boldness and style of 'let's make this dude think he heard from aliens'

- "You know, Fermi’s Paradox says that it’s improbable for other life-forms to exist." "Yeah? Well, Drake’s equation shows that orbiting around the hundred billion stars in our galaxy, there’s up to ten thousand planets with technological civilization. [pause] You never know when you might have to fight an alien."

- "Five more steps left... two steps forward... two steps back... now hop."

- "Nate, we have liftoff. Get it? 'Cos of the..." "Yes. Yes, Parker, I get it."

- "Oh, that's chase music, baby."

- TWO GOOD OLD BOYS BEHIND THE WHEEL

- Willie Riker!! (this episode, of course, was directed by Jonathan Frakes)

- how he kept a straight face while talking about aliens wanting to breed with him I do not know

- "Eliot, I am just loving the choices you're making with this character." (Sophie 'Positive Reinforcement' Devereaux; you learn and you con.)

- "Can I get an orange soda?" "Yeah, yeah, you can get an orange soda."

- date competitions, negotiations and miscommunications! they're both Trying and it's Great.

- "The higher you go, the stronger the sky clarity. You got atmospheric dilution. You've got wind vector fluctuations." "I taught him that." —compare and contrast— "Do you want me to teach you about the wines again." "That's just hurtful . . . Yes, I need you to teach me about the wines again, yes."

- Sophie's codebreaking professor character seems like a LOT of fun at parties actually, at least any parties with puzzles and people to geek out with.

- the rare and exquisite Hardison & Parker fistbump

- the gentleness of Nate's lesson that he needs to learn to listen. the fact that he does. all his character stuff is so soft at this point and it's lovely.

- LOVE a show where you get to cheer from the sidelines as they gaslight an evil rich person into believing aliens are after him for fun and profit <3

- the muttered "put your hands on me, I'll break your frigging clavicle" because. it's Eliot. he's being very good about staying in character but Kanack is Incredibly Annoying.

- "Know the difference between us and them? We make this look good." YEAH YOU DO.

- the warrant that reads 'candlelight picnic under the stars' because Hardison is a dork and it's excellent.

- (this one is about Parker learning to listen, too, in such a gentle way.)

- "Each number represents a different character in the Mayan alphabet." "She gets it, man, she really gets it." Willie Riker and Dr Pearl O'Neal are terrible influences on each other and we should see more of them.

- 'Eliot has to successfully fend off mediocre security' is, by this point in the show, not hugely compelling. 'Eliot has to fend off mediocre security while preventing any breakages because it needs to look like they were abducted by aliens' is EXCELLENT.

- 'character wins a fight and has to deal with the indignity of being trapped under dead or unconscious bodies' will never grow old.

- Parker and Eliot sharing a look over an unconscious body. Eliot getting an idea. Parker grinning.

- the shoes are SO much fun you can't tell me they didn't enjoy that

- the odd mix of funny and touching and impressive acting on the character's part that is ex-picasso-of-the-hired-killer-world Eliot Spencer collapsing into the mark's arms and making like a terrified conspiracy theorist. power negative turned up to eleven.

- "That sucked." bet you're glad no-one else saw it, huh

- they maybe didn't NEED to be this extra with the visual effects and Sophie's abduction, but it IS glorious. they're really breaking this dude.

- "This gives me a good idea." "Whatever it is, no."

- "Oh, man, he flipped. He flipped like a coin. I wish Lenny would have seen it."

- followed by Eliot getting self-conscious and a little grumpy again

- followed by Sophie realising she really enjoys directing and is good at it

- ♫ two good old boys behind the wheel chasing down bad guys in Lucille ♫

- Nate Learned His Lesson. it's nice to see.

- ending on the promised picnic under the stars and shared geekery as a love language <3

[party-gilmore]

This is still just a half formed thought but @pebblesrus got me thinking bout The Pool Scene and Eliot viewing his body/safety as something to physically exchange for that of others, combined with the commentary about how Eliot was counting the seconds Hardison was without air, like

There's still the thrum of angry tension stretching out from Hardison between them through the night, during Flores's call, on the way in and through the airport... Eliot isn't avoiding Hardison's angry gaze, but he's not seeking it out either. It burns under his skin, a hot coil of discomfort and the sinking sensation of having ruined something unless he manages to make things even.

At some point midflight, Hardison gets up to pace near the bar (because it might have been last minute, but he's NOT gonna make the team fly coach - even though he's still upset with Eliot and may have thought about it for a minute). Eliot follows a few seconds later and catches Hardison on the way back, quickly shoving him into the small lavatory and locking the door behind them.

"Man! What the hell! If you don't get your hands off me, I-"

"One minute, nineteen seconds." Hardison stops flailing against Eliot's grip around his wrists and just... stares, incredulous.

"...what?"

"You were without air for one minute, nineteen seconds."

"...you were counting." It feels a little like a question, although it isn't. Not really. Eliot's grim expression softens often imperceptibly. Hardison would've missed it if they weren't crammed so tightly in the small bathroom. Eliot answers the non-question anyway, voice uncharacteristically gentle.

"Course I was."

Hardison tumbles that around in his head for a bit. Of course Eliot was counting. Probably to know when it was too dangerous anymore to stay in character. Hardison knows how important it was to gain Moreau's trust at the time. In his head, he knows that. Knew it, even then. He was just... so afraid, at almost drowning, and angry at the secrets Eliot was keeping... but he was counting. He would've gone in for him, if he needed. Blown the whole damn thing.

Yeah the situation just sucked all the way around, sure, and yeah Alec's still a little pissed - why wouldn't he be! He's got the right! - but Eliot was counting. That means even though he'd had to put Hardison's life at risk, he was willing to risk even more - his own safety, the entire con - to pull him back out if needed. That was something, right? That was still-

-Hardison's too busy turning the pieces around in his own head to notice Eliot shifting his grip from Hardison's wrists to his hands. Tugging them closer. Pulling them up.

Alec snaps back to the present when his fingertips graze the warm, flushed skin of Eliot's neck.

"What-"

"One minute, nineteen seconds." Eliot suddenly presses Hardison's hands tight around his throat, guiding his thumbs to the appropriate hollows beneath his jaw.

"You... you can't be fucking serious!"

He tries to pull away, but Eliot's grip holds fast.

"Damnit Hardison," his growl comes rough, grating, as he puts pressure on his own windpipe through Hardison's palm. "You were right! Okay? I risked your life. For one minute and nineteen seconds. So that's what you get. Just... just do it, man! Get it over with, then we're even!"

"Even-... man, do you not realize how fucked up this is? I'm not... I'm not doing this!"

With a growl, Eliot tears his hands away from Hardison's, and Alec snatches his newly freed palms back to his chest. Eliot clearly wants to pace, but can't in the cramped room, so he settles with carding his fingers through his hair.

"Then what the fuck else do you want from me, man!" His voice already sounds ragged, even with how short of a time Hardison (or rather, Eliot by way of Hardison) was pressing around his throat.

"I just wanted you to be honest with us! With me!" Hardison slumps back against the far wall, anxiously rubbing his jaw as he tries to find the words. "Alright, look, I get it, what you had to do at the pool. I do. That doesn't mean my being upset about it is just gonna... go away!"

"I know that!"

Hardison flinches as Eliot slams his fist against the side wall. He knows the strike wasn't meant to be pointedly 'at' him, that in such a small space there's not a whole lot of room to safely lash out in when feeling cornered, but it was still too close to him for comfort. Eliot clocks the flinch, and for a moment the frustration on his face morphs into a clear expression of the guilt he's been masking since the pool.

"I... I'm sorry. I didn't... fuck, I'm sorry," he pulls away, shrinking in on himself like he does on the grift, trying to consciously make himself seem smaller. "I just... I just don't want to have ruined us, man. Whatever is we've got... you and me, this team... I just wanna fix what I broke. I want us to be good."

"We are good, man," Hardison cautiously steps forward. He thinks to put a hand on Eliot's shoulder, but that's too close to his throat at the moment, so he goes for the outside of his arm instead. "You don't gotta... let me hurt you to make things even. That's... I don't know where the hell you learned that, but I don't like it. I'm not gonna do it. You just... you just gotta let me feel my feelings for a bit, okay? We'll get Moreau, and that'll feel fucking great, and have a little party, and everything will be fine. "

Eliot looks up at him and the ragged, raw desperation in his gaze about knocks Hardison back against the wall.

"...that's it?" Eliot's almost laughing, with a dry sarcastic bite behind his tone that makes him sound unhinged... well, more unhinged than usual. Although, he did just ask Hardison to choke him, so Alec figures we're not exactly working with the usual state of mind here.

"It's that easy, huh? You just... say we're good, and we're good?"

"Uh, yeah." Hardison shakes his head, tightening and loosening his grip on Eliot's arm in what he hopes is a soothing pattern. "That's how normal feelings work when somebody you care about pisses you off. You talk your shit out, it hurts for a bit while it heals up, then you're good. I don't know who fucking taught you you had to pay for-"

Oh. Oh but then it hits him. The dots finish connecting and he's looking down at Eliot, who's been strung tight and volatile as a clumsily stripped live wire ever since they closed in on Moreau, and in that moment Alec knows who taught him that.

He steps in close, carefully taking the back of Eliot's neck in a gentle grip, and ducks slightly to even out their gazes. Eliot’s whole body is tensed so hard he's almost shaking with it, but his eyes start to lose their sharp edge with Hardison's easy hold.

"I need you to hear me, Eliot. If I say we're good? Then we're good. No strings attached, no games, no doing any 'favors' for me first to prove any kind of loyalty or whatever. You know I don't play that shit. Yeah? You hearing me, man?"

Eliot's body starts to lose a bit of it's tension. A hesitant nod starts, but stops early. Hardison's seen Parker do that before, when she's too nervous to fully commit to a new idea even if she wants to, so he softens his tone and backs up a bit like he does with her.

"You hear me, babe?"

"I hear you," the reply is soft, almost embarrassed, and Eliot's eyes dart away. Hardison let's him go, indulging the gruff 'pretending to shake off the touch' Eliot does a second too late to be any kind of believable, and respectfully ignores the clearing of his throat and wiping at his eyes.

"We, uh..." Eliot turns to the door, fidgeting with the handle for a moment. "So, we'll talk. In San Lorenzo. When it's done?"

"When it's done."

Affirmation granted, Eliot darts out of the room. Hardison takes a few more minutes. Washes his face. Processes all the data thrown at him in the past few minutes as much as he can before filing it away for later. For 'when it's done.'

BONUS:

I feel like later, when they have their actual talk and Moreau is dealt with and both parties are a little more calm about it, Eliot is still like okay, I hear you, I understand that you don't need this to feel like we're square... but I do. Please.

And this time, knowing a little more of the whole story, Hardison is more comfortable accepting that like you know what, okay. If this is what you need, now that we've talked it out in a much less charged scenario and I can trust that you're in (more of) your right mind about this, okay. So long as you know I don't need this, that this is for you, and that if you need to stop early you swear you'll tell me.

Eliot probably rolls his eyes a bit at that like c'mon not even a full two minutes of getting choked out? He's had to go [absurd amount of time] without air in [equally absurd situation] in [obscure country], he'll be fine.

So Hardison sets a timer, and gently presses Eliot up against a wall, hands wrapping round his throat, Eliot's hands around his wrists - the deal is that he holds on for as long as he's good, if he let's go then so does Hardison - and he starts pressing in.

The whole scene is far softer and more intimate than either of them expected. They keep crazy intense but somehow still gentle eye contact almost the entire way through - the only exception being when Eliot's eyelids start to flutter a bit near the end, his grip loosening but not letting go - and when the time's up Eliot almost doesn't want Hardison to let go. He didn't even know that was a Thing for him. It had never been like that before, and like he said it's hardly his first time being choked... but something about trusting Hardison with that level of control... it makes him realize he maybe likes it a little too much. Putting his actual life in Hardison's hands in such a very physical, tangible way.

It kind of scares him, to be honest, how easily he'd be willing to let him do it again. And thinking about Hardison always leads to thinking about Parker, and thinking about Parker always leads to thinking about Parker's hands, and he realizes that he'd even trust "I hang off buildings by my fingertips" hand strength Parker to do it too... maybe even gets excited at the idea of it...

...and realizes he's well and truly screwed.

[darkfinch]

so what do u think happens After the confrontation

like is this an au where eliot drops off the face of the earth

is everything canon except like. no one trusts eliot. they don’t want to keep him they can’t risk getting rid of him either way he’s going to be their downfall?

or is it an entirely different story from there. they’re doing the cons but the team aspect isn’t there to nate it’s like when sam died. you’re still together, going through the motions, but chasing a ghost.

or do they somehow forgive eliot??

all i can think about is him finally having to Talk and Explain and all he can say is “i work for damien moreau. you really think i do anything he doesn’t tell me to?”

and hardison or someone is like. “uh. u don’t work for moreau anymore. we just took him down. right??” and eliot just kinda looks empty like, it’s the line from the big bang job but more “the worst thing ive done is work for damien moreau. i will never be clean of him”

ok so i honestly think that this au only works if, by the time we hit season 3, eliot's more loyal to the team than he is to moreau. like, he starts in season 1 as 100% moreau's dog, uninterested in being anything else (unaware that that's even an option) and reporting back on everything he learns.

he gives his payouts to moreau. he tells moreau about the team's backgrounds. he comes home from having his satisfying light-and-happy homecoming job moment and immediately gets called away to kill someone.

and then like...as the team grows closer, as they turn into A Little More Than A Team, eliot just starts...noticing. how they treat him. like, moreau's good to him, obviously, moreau's better than he deserves, but there's this massive ever-widening gulf between moreau's good and the team's good. and it feels like maybe moreau's treating him worse and worse until he realizes that it's just...that he's got the team to compare and contrast it to and so it Feels worse.

like, it feels bad to have people poke you in the shoulder and joke around with you and tell you that you don't have to let this guy beat you up just for a con because they'll Work A Way Around It, We're Worried, it's the tap out job and you're fine with it but they Care about how it might Affect you...............and then fly down to san lorenzo and have moreau take his anger out on you. get sent to do things you don't really want to do anymore but don't really have much say in. and he's still loyal to damien, he still wants to do what he's been told to do, but it's getting harder and harder to go back to damien when he's called.

so there's a turning point (maybe mid season 2?) where it changes from "eliot's grifting the team because those are his orders and he's loyal to moreau" to "eliot's grifting the team because those are his orders and he can't find a way out of if that wouldn't end with the team dead or him dead or both"

and they Care and they Notice things, so when he comes back fucked up from some errand damien's asked him to run, they notice that, too. and they extend a million little olive branches over two and a half years. and eliot Can't tell them, so he doesn't, but he does end up...talking around it, a little. not so much that they'll Know or that they'll think it's something they can Fix, not so much that they get "i'm conning you" vibes, but that they know there's Something. that there's Someone.

he asks hardison to help him hide some money and won't say why. he has weird ominous talks with nate about what nate might ask him to do, if a job ever got rough, if a con ever went too far. testing boundaries. has late-night chats with parker abt guilt and fault and being bad. asks sophie for really weird, general advice, no eye contact, about relationships and grifting and won't elaborate on anything.

so by the time we get to s3......he's already wanting a way out and can't find it and can't imagine that he'll actually get it. and then they're going after moreau, and he can't find a way out of That, Either, and he spirals a little more visibly than he does in the show. he's gone for long stretches of time (trying to convince damien that they're not a threat, that they don't need to be taken care of, that they won't actually get to him). he's panicking.

all this is to say: by the time the team Finds Out, eliot's 75% loyal to the team, instead, and along with all the betrayal and fear and disbelief etc comes the sound of a thousand weird little puzzle pieces falling into place. like, they didn't Know, but they Knew. and once some of the anger's subsided, it's like...oh.

he's been asking for help. this whole time he's been asking for help and knowing he can't have it. this whole time he's been watching them pull miracles out of nowhere, taking down people too big for the law to touch, and asking for advice, and he's still a fucking horrible person, it's a betrayal and it's horrible and their mental image of eliot has all of this awful shit overtop of it now, but. it lines up.

so the san lorenzo job still needs to happen. and they can't trust him, but they can help him.

(maybe parker's the one to ask it out loud. "do you need us to steal you?" "please. please.")

SO YEAH I THINK UR RIGHT eliot is of course assuming they'll want nothing to do with him, once this is all said and done. and. YEAH they do sit down, and they do make him talk, and maybe nate's like "what were you planning on doing, after we took him out" and eliot's just completely blank. like. he just hasn't thought about it. he didn't think he'd get that far. i work for damien moreau. there isn't an After. i'll never be clean of him.

anyway i think they DO keep him, against all odds, and they have to rebuild that trust piece by piece, but all of this is contingent on eliot being an active participant in the san lorenzo job and having previously shown a million little moments of "please god get me out of this" etc

[sergeant-angels-trashcan]

i get being upset about the shenanigans redemption pulled with the ot3 and i am upset too, and i get that it’s a weird inconsistent thing for eliot to do unless he’s finally experiencing post concussion syndrome and his brain can’t compute that parker and hardison actually want him all the time, and i do get being mad about it but also

like

yall. it is still scandalous to see queer representation in a lot of media, period, because being gay is too unbelievable or too adult or too distracting or too present and you don’t want to alienate your viewers (yes i am talking about supernatural. and star wars. and marvel. and disney.)

and i honestly could not tell you a piece of media that incorporated polyamory in a positive way that isn’t sense8. i think there was a show about sirens that might have had polyamory in it? oh, wait, professor marsten and the wonder women, that had polyamory in it. and say yes to the dress had a polycule in an episode this season and i was fucking floored that they had them on!! because i could not remember a time when polyamory was shown in a way that was “these people are normal, doing normal people things” and not “these people are scandalous and taboo and it’s all about sex and obviously this is unhealthy and unnatural and balanced normal people wouldn’t want this ever” on tv!! the first time i ever learned about polyamory was on a show literally called taboo!! is there polyamory representation that i’m missing somewhere? this is a very real possibility but as far as i’m aware polyam visibility happens so infrequently that the bar for polyamorus rep on tv or in movies is so low that it doesn’t even exist.

but i digress. the point i’m getting at is that people do watch the show and manage to not get (or deliberately ignore) the ot3 because of their beliefs, experiences, etc etc. and leverage redemption was probably sold to amazon as “a reboot of a beloved heist show”, not “polyamorous thieves make the world a better place by eating the rich”. maybe i lack imagination, but i literally cannot fathom a world where amazon, fucking amazon, would go “we want to throw our whole weight behind this ~*unconventional*~ relationship. totally go with it”.it’s. it’s fucking amazon. sometimes even now i sit with that for a minute, that jeff bezos’ company is financing a show that the entire premise is “fuck billionaires”. the fact that amazon greenlit this is unreal. 

and for people who miss or ignore the ot3--the show gave us an entire subplot that was “this romantic interest for eliot is incredibly well suited for him, is kind but also badass, they’re like a better version of mr and mrs smith” and also said “this person, who is ostensibly perfect for eliot, is someone he can never truly be himself with” and then went on to have eliot describe his ideal partner while next to parker and hardison, who fit eliot’s criteria, and are smiling knowingly at him before assuring him that they will be with him forever--and not just in a passive way. they are actively planning for a future with him. 

there must be some people who watched redemption without watching leverage first. for them, eliot and maria’s relationship was like a leverage original speedrun: eliot is happiest with parker and hardison, who are equally happy around him, and they all want to hang around each other for basically the rest of their lives.

honestly, that’s pretty fucking crafty. 

[moonlight-breeze-44]

Leverage Finale.

Thanks to my friend @echo-bleu, I just finished watching all five seasons of Leverage. The finale was exceptional, and the entire show is so extremely important to me. I’m going to do my best to articulate what I want to say, but it may come out jumbled. I apologise if it does - but this is too important and too meaningful for me not to comment on. 

I started watching Leverage because Echo told me that it was the “original found family” and featured a borderline canon autistic character who was both badass and scripted extremely well. When I first started watching the show, I thought to myself: “What’s another favour for a friend? Maybe I’ll end up liking it, anyway.”

This may have been the biggest understatement of my life. 

Leverage is so important to me. It’s genuinely one of the most meaningful, impactful shows that I have ever watched, and its message(s) shine clear as day. 

Message #1: Family

The Leverage team is made up of Alec Hardison, an expert hacker with a huge heart and a desire to be surrounded by people he loves; Sophie Deveraux, an accomplished grifter with multiple identities who wants someone (or a group of someones) that takes the time to get to know the real her underneath all of the masks; Parker, an esteemed thief who wishes for a family that teaches her & helps her grow while loving her for who she is and respecting what she can do; Eliot Spencer, a badass hitter who craves to be recognised beyond the violence of his past and loved for who he really is and the heart he carries with him; and Nate Ford, an ex-upstanding citizen turned criminal mastermind who wants to see corporations like the one that let his son die be brought to justice, but knows he needs help to do it. 

Together, they make up a ragtag team of criminals that love each other and have each other’s backs in every situation. Together, they form the Leverage team. They form a family. 

Family is about love, about trust, about caring for each other and staying together even when things get rough. Family is Nate Ford, Sophie Deveraux, Parker, Alec Hardison, and Eliot Spencer from Leverage. 

Leverage teaches its viewers that not all family has to be blood. Some families can be found. This show, these characters, this family? It’s exactly what family should be.

Message #2: Hope

Leverage doesn’t just appeal to every person’s desire to stick it to the high and mighty. While that’s a big part of it, Leverage is also about so much more than that. Leverage is about finding a home in the most unlikely of places, among the most unlikely of people. It’s downright inspiring.

Leverage is about hope. 

Hope that it’s not too late. Hope that you aren’t too broken to be loved. Hope that you can have a home, a real home, the kind of home that you always dreamed of having. Hope that you can make a difference. Hope that you can achieve your dreams. Hope that you can love and be loved in return. 

Everything about Leverage is executed perfectly, and the hope shines clear through it all. In the midst of nothing, a gang of criminals found their something. They found each other. 

Nate tells Eliot in the season finale, “You know, I’d say to call if you need anything, but you - you never need anything.”

Eliot smiles at Nate and says, “Yeah, I did.” He looks back at Parker and Hardison, and the message is clear enough. “Thanks to you, I don’t have to search anymore.”

Sophie asks Eliot to promise her that he’ll protect them; keep them safe. 

Eliot says, “Until my dying day.”

That kind of devotion, that kind of love, is something that everyone dreams of. Some of us have it. Some of us don’t. But regardless, it is everyone’s dream to belong. Everyone wants to belong in a different way, and everyone sees belonging differently, but everyone wants people who understand them and cherish them like the characters of Leverage understand and cherish each other.

With this finale, Leverage is telling everyone who has ever wished on a star or prayed to an angel that their hearts aren’t foolish or naive for daring to hope. Leverage is telling everyone who has ever wished to be loved and understood that they can be. They will be. 

Leverage tells us that we’ll find our people, even if it takes us a long time, and when we do, it’ll all be worth it. 

Message #3: The OT3

Over the course of the show, Parker, Hardison, and Eliot’s relationship continued to be something that spoke to me and made me feel more seen and validated than I had felt in years. 

Going into this show, I heard from Echo and a few of my other friends that Leverage had an OT3 that was “as close to canon as possible”, but I’ll be honest with you - I didn’t believe them. 

All my life, I’ve been queerbaited and kept on the edge of my seat by TV show after TV show, waiting for some big reveal that never happened because the show producers didn’t care as much about my views as they did about the views of their audience that might be offended by it. It’s not something that I’m even bothered by, anymore, aside from the principle of it; this is just the way the world works, and I’ve learned how to enjoy TV shows despite it. 

Still, with that knowledge and experiences in mind, I didn’t go into Leverage believing that the OT3 would be this. 

The Leverage OT3 is so much more than I could have hoped for; all three of them “died” holding hands, and they said words to and about each other that are the equivalent of marriage vows in the real world. The OT3 is, genuinely, as close to canon as possible for a USA 2012 television series, and that is beautiful. 

I know I’m not the only person that has watched Leverage and felt this deep, emotional connection to the OT3. I know I’m not the only person that has watched Leverage and felt so validated, so represented, and to me, that’s worth everything. The OT3 was given time to develop, and the characters align perfectly with each other in ways that most of us never would have dreamed of a TV show doing. The Leverage OT3 consistently tells me and people like me that we’re loved, we’re valid, and they understand. We’re not alone. 

The fact of that matter is, regardless of how much evidence there may be of that on the Internet these days, it can be easy to feel like you’re the only one in the world that’s like you when it comes to relationships if you never see relationships like yours or the ones that you want to have onscreen at any point. It’s easy to feel like you’re weird or strange or wrong somehow for how you feel without representation, and Leverage, I think, knows that. 

Leverage casts light on and says I love you, it’s okay to anyone and everyone who’s ever experienced attraction to multiple people at the same time, who’s ever been in a poly relationship, who’s ever been in love with multiple people at once, who’s ever considered a relationship with multiple partners, and who’s ever realised that they are polyamorous. And that, my friends, is NOT representation that we get every day. 

This kind of representation is so rare, but Leverage did it. 

Leverage did so many things, and all in all, watching this show was one of the best decisions of my life. I finished watching with love in my heart and validation in my smile and beautiful characters sewn into my soul. I love this show. 

There are so many more things I could say about why I love Leverage and why I think it’s one of the best shows to exist ever, but then this Tumblr post would be as long as a dictionary. For now, I’ll just settle with saying this: 

Leverage is one of the most amazing TV shows I’ve ever had the honour of watching.

[vickyvicarious]

Leverage Redemption Pros/Cons List

Okay! Now that I've finally finished watching the first half of Leverage: Redemption, I thought I'd kind of sum up my overall impression. Sort of a pro/con list, except a little more just loosely structured rambles on each bullet point rather than a simple list.

This got way out of hand from what I expected so I'm going to put it all under a cut. If you want the actual bulletpoint list, here it is:

PROS

References

Continuity

Nate

Representation

Themes

New Characters

General Vibe

CONS

'Maker and Fixer'

Episode Twins

Sophie's Stagefright

Thiefsome

You might notice the pros list is longer, and that's because I do love the show! I really like most of what it does, and my gripes are fewer in number and mostly smaller in size. But they do exist and I felt like talking about them as well as the stuff I loved.

PROS

References

There is clearly so much love and respect for the original show here. Quite aside from the general situation, there's a lot of references to individual episodes or character traits from the first show. For example, Parker's comments on disliking clowns, liking puppets, disliking horses, stabbing vs. tasing people. The tasing was an ongoing thing in the original, the stabbing happened once (S1) but was referenced later in the original show, the clown thing only had a few mentions scattered across the entire original show. The puppet thing was mentioned once in S5, and the horses thing in particular was only brought up in S1 once. But they didn't miss the chance to put the nod to it in there; in fact with those alone we see a good mix of common/ongoing jokes and smaller details.

We got "dammit Hardison" and "it's a very distinctive..." but also Eliot and Parker arguing about him catering a mob wedding, and Eliot being delighted by lemon as a secret ingredient in a dish in that same episode (another reference to the mob episode). Hardison and Eliot banter about "plan M", an ongoing joke starting from the very first episode of the original show. We see Sophie bring up Hardison's accent in the Ice Job, Parker also makes reference to an early episode when describing "backlash effect" to Breanna, in an episode that also references her brother slightly if you look for it.

Heck, the last episode of these first eight makes a big deal out of nearly reproducing the iconic opening lines of the original show with Fake Nate's "we provide... an advantage." And I mean, all the "let's go steal a ___" with Harry being confused about how to use them.

Some of the lines are more obviously references to the original show, but they strike a decent balance with smaller or unspoken stuff as well, and also mix in some references between the team to events we the audience have never seen. If someone was coming into this show for the first time, they wouldn't get all the easter egg joy but most of the references would stand on their own as dialogue anyway. In general, I think they struck a good balance of restating needed context for new viewers while still having enough standalone good lines and more-fun-if-you-get-it callbacks.

Continuity

Similar to the last point, but slightly different. The characters' development from the original to now is shown so well. I'm not going to go on about this too long, but the writers clearly didn't want to let the original characters stagnate during the offscreen years. There was a lot of real thought put into how they would change or not.

It's really written well. We can see just how cohesive a team Parker, Hardison, and Eliot became. We get a sense of how they've spent their time, and there's plenty of evidence that they remained incredibly close with Sophie and Nate until this past year. The way everyone defers to Parker is different from the original show and clearly demonstrates how she's been well established as the leader for years now - they show this well even as Parker is stepping back to let Sophie take point in these episodes. Eventually that is actually called out by Sophie in the eighth episode, so we might see more mastermind Parker in the back half of the show, maybe. But even with her leading, it's clear how collaborative the team has become, with everyone bouncing ideas off one another and adding their input freely. Sometimes they even get so caught up they leave the newbies completely in the dust. But for the most part we get a good sense of how the Parker/Hardison/Eliot team worked with her having final say on plans but the others discussing everything together. A little bit more collaborative than it was with Nate at the helm.

Meanwhile Sophie has built a home and is deeply attached to it. She and Nate really did retire, at least for the most part, and she was living her happy ending until he died. She's out of practice but still as skilled as ever, and we're shown how much her grief has changed her and how concerned the others are for her.

There's a lot of emphasis on how they all look after one another and the found family is clearer than ever. Sophie even calls Hardison "his father's son" - clearly referring to Nate.

Nate

Speaking of Nate! They handled his loss so, so well. His story was the most complete at the end of the last show, and just from a narrative point, losing him makes the most sense of all the characters. But the way he dies and his impact on the show and the characters continues. It's very respectful to who he was - who he truly was.

Nate was someone they all loved, but he was a deeply flawed individual. Sophie talks about how he burned too hot, but at least he burned - possibly implying to me that his drinking was related to his death. In any case, there's no mystery to it. We don't know how he died but that's not what's most important about his death. This isn't a quest for revenge or anything... it's just a study of grief and trying to heal.

Back to who he really was real quick - the show doesn't eulogize him as better than he was. They're honest about him. From the first episode's toast they raise in his memory, to the final episode where Sophie and Eliot are deeply confused by Fake Nate singing his praises, the team knows who he was. They don't erase his flaws... but at the same time he was so clearly theirs. He was family, he was the man they trusted and loved and followed into incredibly dangerous situations, and whose loss they all still feel deeply.

That said, the show doesn't harp on this point. They reference him, but they don't overwhelm new viewers with a constant barrage of Nate talk. It always serves a purpose, primarily for Sophie's storyline of moving through her grief. Anyway, @robinasnyder said all of this way better than me here, so go read that as well.

Representation

Or should I say, Jewish Hardison, Autistic Parker, Queer Breanna!

Granted, Hardison's religion isn't quite explicitly stated to be Jewish so much as he mentions that his "Nana runs a multi-denominational household", but nonetheless. He gets the shows big thesis statement moment, he gets a beautiful speech about redemption that is the emotional cornerstone of that episode and probably Harry's entire arc throughout the show. And while I'm not Jewish myself, most of what I've seen from Jewish fans is saying that Hardison's words here were excellent representation of their beliefs. (@featherquillpen does a great job in that meta of contextualizing this with his depiction in the original show as well.)

Autistic Parker, however, is shown pretty dang blatantly. She already was very much coded as autistic in the original show, but the reboot has if anything gone further. She sees a child psychologist because she likes using puppets to represent emotions, she stims, she uses cue cards and pre-written scripts for social interactions, there's mention of possible texture sensitivity and her clothes are generally more loose and comfortable. She's gotten better at performing empathy and understanding how people typically work, but it's specifically described as something she learned how to do and she views her brain as being different from ones that work that way (same link). Again, not autistic myself but from what I've seen autistic fans find a lot to relate to in her portrayal. And best of all, this well-rounded and respectful depiction does not show any of these qualities as a lack on her part. There's no more of those kinda ableist comments or "what's wrong with you" jokes that were in the original show. Parker is the way she is, and that allows her to do things differently. She's loved for who she is, and any effort made to fit in is more just to know how so that she can use it to her advantage when she wants to on the job - for her convenience, not others' comfort.

Speaking of loved for who you are.... okay, again, queer Breanna isn't confirmed onscreen yet, and I don't count Word of God as true canon. But I can definitely believe we're building there. Breanna dresses in a very GNC way, and just her dialogue and, I dunno, vibes seem very queer to me. She has a beautiful speech in the Card Game Job about not belonging or being accepted and specifically mentions "the way they love" as one of those things that made her feel like she didn't belong. And that scene is given so much weight and respect. (Not to mention other hints throughout the episode about how much finding her own space meant to her.) Also, the whole theme of feeling rejected and the key for her to begin really flourishing is acceptance for who she is, not any desire for her to be anyone else, is made into another big moment. Yeah, textually that moment is about her feeling like she has to fill Hardison's shoes and worrying about her past, but the themes are there, man.

Themes

I talked a bit about this yesterday, so I'm mostly just going to link to that post, but... this series so far is doing a really good job in my opinion of giving people arcs and having some good themes. Namely the redemption one, from Hardison's speech (which I'm gonna talk a little more about in the next point), and this overall theme of growing up and looking to the future (from above the linked post).

New Characters

Harry and Breanna are fantastic characters. I was kind of worried about Harry being a replacement Nate, but... he really isn't. Sure, he's the older white guy who has an angsty past but it's in a very different way and his personality and relationships with the rest of the crew are correspondingly different. I think the dynamic of a very friendly, cheerful, kind, but still bad guy (as @soundsfaebutokay points out) is a great one to show, and he's got a really cool arc I think of learning to be a better person, and truly understanding Hardison's point about redemption being a process not a goal. His role on the team also has some interesting applications and drawbacks, as @allegorymetaphor talked about. I've kind of grown to think that the show is gradually building up to an eventual Sophie/Harry romance a ways down the line, and I'm actually here for it. Regardless, his relationships with everyone are really interesting.

As for Breanna, first of all and most importantly I love her. Secondly, I think she's got a really interesting story. She's a link to Hardison's past, and provides a really interesting perspective for us as someone younger who has grown up a) looking up to Leverage and b) in a bleaker and more hopeless world. Breanna's not an optimist, and she's not someone who was self-sufficient and unconcerned with the rest of the world at the start, like everyone else. She believes that the world sucks and she wants it to be better, but she doesn't know how to make that happen. She outright says she's desperate and that's why she's working with Leverage. At the same time, Breanna is pretty down on herself and wants to prove herself but gets easily shaken by mistakes or being scolded, which is a stark contrast to Hardison's general self-confidence. There are several times when she starts to have an idea then hesitates to share it, or expects her emotions to be dismissed, or gets really disheartened when she's corrected or rejected, or dwells on her mistakes, or when she is accepted or praised she usually takes a surprised beat and is shy about it (she almost always looks down and away from the person, and her smile is often small or startled). Breanna looks up to the team so much (Parker especially, then probably Eliot) and she wants to prove herself. It's going to be so good to see her grow.

General Vibe

A brief note, but it seems a fitting one to end on. The show keeps it's overall tone and feeling from the original show. The fun, the competency porn, the bad guys and clever plans and happy endings. It's got differences for sure, but the characters are recognizably themselves and the show as a whole is recognizably still Leverage. For the most part they just got the feeling right, and it's really nice.

CONS (no, not that kind)

'Maker and Fixer'

So when I started writing this meta earlier today, I was actually a lot more annoyed by the lack of unique 'maker' skills being shown by Breanna. Basically the only time she tries to use a drone, the very thing she introduced herself as being good at, it breaks instantly. I was concerned about her being relegated into just doing what Hardison did, instead of bringing her own stuff to the table. But the seventh episode eased some of those fears, and the meta I just wrote for someone else asking about Breanna's 'maker' skills as shown this season made me realize there's more nuance than that. I'd still like to have seen more of that from her, but for now the fact that we don't see a lot of 'maker' from her so far seems more like a character decision based in Breanna's insecurities.

Harry definitely gets more 'inside man' usage. His knowledge as a 'fixer' comes in handy several times. Nonetheless, I'm really curious if there are any bigger ways to use it, aside from him just adding in some exposition/insight from time to time. I'm not even entirely sure how much more they can pull from this premise in terms of relevant skills, but I hope there's more and I'd like to see it. Maybe a con built more around him playing a longer role playing his old self, like they tried in the Tower Job? Maybe it's more a matter of him needed distance from that part of his past, being unable to face it without lashing out - in that case it could be a good character growth moment possibly for him to succeed in being Scummy Lawyer again down the line? I dunno.

Episode Twins

This was something small that kind of bothered me a little earlier in the season. It's kind of the negative side to the references, I guess? And I'm not even sure how much it annoys me really, but I just kinda noticed and felt sort of weird about it.

Rollin' on the River has a lot of references/callbacks to the The Wedding Job.

The Tower Job has a lot of references/callbacks to The White Rabbit Job.

The Paranormal Hacktivity Job has a lot of references/callbacks to the Future Job.

I guess I was getting a little concerned that there would be a 'match this episode' situation where almost every new Redemption episode is very reminiscent of an old one. I love the callbacks, but I don't want to see a lack of creativity in this new show, and this worried me for a minute. Especially when it was combined with all three of those episodes dealing with housing issues of some kind. Now, that's a huge concern for a lot of people, and each episode has its own take on a different problem within that huge umbrella, but it still got me worried about a lack of variety in topics/cases.

The rest of the episodes failing to line up so neatly in my head with older episodes helped a lot to ease this one, though. Still, this is my complaining section so I figured I'd express my concerns as they were at the time. Even if I no longer really worry about it much.

Sophie's Stagefright

Yeah, I know this is just a small moment in a single episode, but it annoyed me! Eliot made a bit of a face at Sophie going onstage, but I thought it was just him being annoyed at the general situation. However, they started out with her being awful up there until she realized the poem was relevant to the con - at which point her reading got so much better.

This felt like a complete betrayal of Sophie's beautiful moment at the end of the original show where she got over her trouble with regular acting and played Lady Macbeth beautifully in front of a full theater of audience members. This was part of the con, but only in the sense that it gave her an alibi/place to hide, and I always interpreted it as her genuinely getting over her stagefright problems. It felt like such a beautiful place to end her arc for that show, especially after all her time spent directing.

Now, her difficulty onstage in the Card Game Job was brief and at the very beginning of being up on stage. @rinahale suggested to me that maybe it was a deliberate tactic to draw the guy's attention, and the later skill was simply her shifting focus to make the sonnet easier for Breanna to listen to and interpret, but he seemed more enraptured when she was doing well than otherwise in my opinion and it just doesn't quite sit well with me. My other theory was that maybe she just hasn't been up on stage in a long time, and much like she complaining about being rusty at grifting before the team pushed her into trying, she got nervous for a moment at the very beginning. The problem there is that I think she'd definitely still get involved in theater even when she and Nate were retired. I guess she could've quit after he died, and a year might be long enough to make her doubt herself again, but... still.

I just resent that they even left it ambiguous at all. Sophie's skills should be solid on stage at this point in my opinion.

Thiefsome

...And now we come to my main complaint. This is, by far, the biggest issue I have with the show.

I feel like I should put a disclaimer here that I had my doubts from the beginning about the thiefsome becoming canon onscreen. I thought the famous "the OT3 is safe" tweet could easily just mean that they are all still alive and well, or all still working together, without giving us confirmation of a romantic relationship. Despite this, the general fandom expectations/hopes really got to me, especially with the whole "lock/pick/key" thing. I tried to temper my expectations again when the character descriptions came out and only mentioned Hardison loving Parker, not Eliot, but I still got my hopes up.

The thing is, I was disappointed pretty quickly.

The very first episode told me that in all likelihood we would never see Hardison and Parker and Eliot together in a romantic sense. Oh, there was so much coding. So much hinting. So much in the way of conversations that were about Parker/Hardison's relationship but then Eliot kept getting brought into them. They were portrayed as a unit of three.

But then there was this.

I love all of those scenes of Parker and Hardison being intimate and loving and comfortable with one another and their relationship. I really do. But it didn't escape my notice that there's nothing of the sort with Eliot. If they wanted a canon onscreen thiefsome, it would by far make the most sense to just have it established from the start. But there aren't any scenes where Eliot shares the same kind of physical closeness with either of them like they do each other. Parker and Hardison kiss; he doesn't kiss anyone. They have several clearly romantic conversations when alone; he gets important conversations with both but the sense of it being romantic isn't there.

Establishing Eliot as part of the relationship after Hardison is gone just... doesn't make any sense. It would be more likely to confuse new viewers, to make them wonder if Parker is cheating on Hardison with Eliot, or if they have a Y shaped relationship rather that a triangle. It would be so much clumsier.

Still, up until the Double-Edged-Sword Job I believed the writers might keep it at this level of 'plausible hinting but not quite saying'. There's a lot of great stuff with all of them, and I never expecting making out or whatever anyway; a cheek-kiss was about the height of my hopes to be honest. I mostly just hoped for outright confirmation and, failing that, I was happy enough to have the many hints and implications.

But then Marshal Maria Shipp came along. And I don't really have anything against her as a character - in fact, I think she has interesting story potential and will definitely come back. But the episode framed her fight with Eliot as a sexyfight TM, much like his fight with Mikel back in the day. And then his flirting with her rode the line a little of "he's playing her for the con" and "he's genuinely flirting." The scene where he tells her his real name is particularly iffy, but actually was the one that convinced me he was playing her. Because he seems to be watching her really closely, and to be very concerned about her figuring out who he really is. I am very aware though that I'm doing a lot of work to interpret it the way I want. On surface appearance, Eliot's just flirting with an attractive woman, like he did on the last show. And that's probably the intention, too.

But the real nail in the coffin for me was when Sophie compared herself and Nate to Eliot and Maria. That was a genuine scene, not the continuation of the teasing from before. And Sophie is the one whose insight into people is always, always trustworthy. She is family to the thiefsome. For this to make any sense, either Eliot/Parker/Hardison isn't a thing, or they are and Sophie doesn't know - and I can't imagine why in the hell she wouldn't know.

Any argument to make them still canon leaves me unsatisfied. If she knows and they haven't admitted it to her - why wouldn't they, after all this time? Why would she not have picked up on it even without an outright announcement? Some people suggested they wouldn't admit it because they thought Nate would be weird about it, but that doesn't seem any more in character to me than the other possibilities. In fact, the only option that doesn't go against my understanding of these people and their observational abilities/the close relationship they share.... is that the thiefsome is not a thing.

And furthermore, the implication of this conversation - especially the way it ended, with Eliot stomping off looking embarrassed while Sophie smiled knowingly - is that Eliot will get into another relationship onscreen. Maybe not a full-blown romantic relationship. But the Maria Shipp tension is going to be resolved somehow, and at this point I'm half-expecting a hook-up simply because of Sophie's reaction and how much I trust her judgement of such things. Even if she's letting her grief cloud her usual perceptiveness... it feels iffy.

It just kinda feels like I wasn't even allowed to keep my "interpret these hints/maybe they are" thiefsome that I expected after the first couple episodes convinced me we wouldn't get outright confirmation. (I mean, I will anyway, and I love the hints and allusions regardless.) And while I'm definitely not the kind of fan who is dependent on canon for my ships, and still enjoy all their interactions/will keep right on headcanoning them all in a relationship, it's just.... a bummer.

Feels like a real cop-out. Like the hints of Breanna being queer are enough to meet their quota and they won't try anything 'risky' like a poly relationship. I dunno. It's annoying.

.

That's the end of the list! Again, overall I love the new show a lot and have few complaints.

[eggy-tea]

Oh hey want to see what took over my brain yesterday night?

When they first start working together, Hardison repurposes a bunch of his personal identities for the rest of the team. He even dumps his entire unsold supply of fake IDs into the group resource pool -- the kinds of jobs they're pulling, it's not like he'll miss that extra pocket change anyway.

The problem is, that kind of easy-access back catalogue means nobody respects the time and effort that goes into creating a solid alias. You'd think they would; working alone meant that they all used to have to do the work for themselves, but it's not long before they're making up names in the middle of a con and expecting him to instantly back up their lies, as though what he does is simple -- poof, wave a magic wand and suddenly Tommy Palazzo is a real boy.

Of course he bitches about it -- if he doesn't complain, they'll never learn -- but Hardison's a team player. He starts working smarter. He's got multiple tiers of identities so they're not burning hours of his work on a cover that only needs to hold up to a quick google search. He's got his "blanks" -- IDs and occupation histories for each of them just waiting for a name to be filled in. And he's got his use-only-in-the-event-of-a-genuine-goddamn-emergency cache of utterly bulletproof, absolutely law-abiding alter-egos that he's been carefully maintaining in secret ever since they first had to leave LA in a hurry. The kind of identities that would fool a grandma into thinking she was your grandma.

Only they've been running a long con on some truly ruthless bastards, and things went real south real fast today in a way that might have just been bad luck, but also might mean that they need to leave town, like, yesterday. Become untraceable for a bit until things blow over.

Problem is, now that he and Eliot and Parker may actually have to use those last-resort IDs, Hardison has to admit that he might have maybe gone a tiny bit overboard with the whole thing. Just a little. It's just -- somewhere along the line, maintaining and updating his emergency files went from an item on the to-do list into a weird kind of hobby he'd poke at in his downtime.

Look, his priorities changed, and that's a good thing, right? Sure, it's always been safer for them to split up and lay low for a while when things have gone to hell, but also, that sucked. He doesn't like being away from his people for weeks, sometimes months at a time just because some asshole's got it out for them. What's the point of being a genius polymath hacker if he can't use his skills to build himself a safety net that lets him hold onto the people he loves?

So maybe it started out as him building little connections between the identities -- reasons for them to know each other that were so mundane, they wouldn't possibly trigger any alarm bells anywhere. And then maybe he started weaving in little things he knew Parker and Eliot liked -- normal things, nothing to arouse suspicion, but if they ended up stuck in these personas for a while he didn't want either of them to feel like they couldn't be themselves. Like he didn't want them to be themselves. Which maybe led a to something that, now that he's looking at it from an outside perspective, could possibly seem just a little like he was writing fanfiction AUs about his partners.

Also, he might have come up with the names way back when him and Eliot pissing each other off on the regular was only mostly a joke between them.

About thirty seconds ago, when Parker was looking all sad about how they might have to split up for a while and Eliot was trying his best to look gruff and stoic about it, Hardison was excited to reveal the ace he'd been carefully hiding up his sleeve for so long. Now that they're actually looking at that ace, though... he's starting to have second thoughts.

"Ricky LaBelle, Hardison? Are you kiddin' me?"

Parker leans over to look at the papers that Eliot's brandishing menacingly in Hardison's face.

"Ooh, it says here that Ricky's runs a food blog. It's even got the URL -- Hardison, pull it up on the big screen."

Hardison's not in the habit of denying Parker the things she wants, but he's got at least some sense of self-preservation. He splits the difference and pretends he didn't hear her -- easy enough to do when Eliot's pulling his looming angry man act. (How Eliot manages to loom over him when Hardison's got at least four inches on him, he'll never understand, but it's a neat trick. He's going to have to convince Eliot to teach him, someday.)

"You've gotta change that name, man. It could take us weeks to take down Merchant's organization. I'm not being Ricky LaBelle until then."

"And why not? There's nothing wrong with Ricky LaBelle."

"I knew a Ricky when I was a kid. He was terrible," Eliot says, like that's somehow justification enough for rejecting Hardison's creative genius outright. "I'm not being Ricky. And LaBelle -- what is that, some kind of Beauty and the Beast thing?"

"Ricky's Cajun! It's French! And here I thought you had culture. You think a foodie like you would recognize French when he sees it." Hardison takes refuge in bluster to try to hide the fact that yes, it was a Beauty and the Beast reference. Look, Hardison has eyes. Was he supposed to look at Eliot and somehow not notice that he is a very good-looking man? A very good-looking man who could almost certainly kill Hardison with his pinky finger if he ever chose to? Who could also be a bit of a jerk sometimes, especially in those early days? That made Eliot both a beauty, and a beast. At the time, Hardison had thought it was pretty clever.

"I know it's French, Hardison. I speak French. I speak enough French to know that you're using the feminine form, too."

Parker, praise Jesus, finally decides to come to his defense.

"I don't see what the problem is. You're very pretty, and we like it when you show your feminine side," Parker says matter-of-factly. "Now stop arguing. I'm trying to read your recipe for chocolate mug cake."

That manages to distract Eliot enough that he looks at the screen, where Parker has gotten tired of waiting on Hardison and pulled up Eat Well with Ricky LaBelle herself. It's part reviews, part recipes, even has a few of Eliot's more impassioned food rants that Hardison's pretty sure Eliot thinks he tunes out. Also, it has archives going back ten years. It's good work, is what it is. Ricky LaBelle is a labor of love.

So yeah, Hardison thinks it's a little unfair when Eliot takes one glance at the page and growls one of his Eliot-growls -- and not the sexy kind, the I-want-to-punch-a-hole-in-something kind.

"Is that -- did you just list cake mix as an ingredient?"

"Hey! This is an alias. An a-li-as. We don't want it to be too close to the truth. Besides, people still love your food! Ricky LaBelle is the Pinterest king of semi-homemade. He's got a following."

It's been a while since Hardison's been on the receiving end of one of Eliot's truly murderous glares. Turns out they're way less sexy when they're aimed at you.

"Take it down. Now."

"No! Do you have any idea how much work went into this? It's an integral part of the identity -- I can't just get rid of it without compromising the whole thing."

"Then give me the password. Delete it, or let me fix it."

That's... a fair demand, really. Plus, if Eliot takes over the blog, that's less work for Hardison. He can put more time into his alias's cosplay Instagram and Parker's -- sorry, Diana Noble's -- imported junk food reviews.

"If I let you take over, you have to promise not to ruin the brand. Not everyone has time to grow their own radishes, Eliot. People appreciate having recipes that are quick and easy and taste good."

Eliot's mouth twitches like he wants to say something, but he cuts himself off with a huff of breath somewhere between frustrated and resigned. Visibly bites back his next comment, too.

Hardison's a little worried he's broken Eliot. Parker won't be happy about that -- where is Parker, anyway?

After another moment, Eliot finally manages to grind out, "I promise that everything I post will be idiot-proof enough that even you could make it. But it's gonna be real food, real ingredients."

Hardison considers rising to the bait, but figures it's better just to take the win on this one -- especially if he's going to push for his next point.

"Stuff that can be made on a budget, Eliot. None of that 'only the finest peaches airlifted straight from Georgia' BS. Not everyone's a criminal multimillionaire."

"Fine. Budget-friendly eats for the family on the go. You happy now?"

Hardison nods, satisfied. "Eat Well is yours. It updates Wednesdays and Saturdays. I'll show you how to set up a queue and everything so you don't miss a day when we're on a job."

Eliot rolls his eyes, but he's starting to get that look on his face that means he's digging into a problem to be solved, so Hardison thinks he might be off the hook this time. Heck, he might even pick up a few tricks, if he keeps following the blog -- he wouldn't mind having a few Eliot-approved meals he can whip up quickly the next time he's gotten so hyperfocused on a project that he's forgotten to eat for twelve-plus hours.

He's starting to feel pretty good about the whole situation when Parker's voice comes wafting from the kitchen.

"Eliot, do we have any cake mix?"

"Dammit, Hardison!" Eliot glares daggers at Hardison before stomping off toward the kitchen. "Parker, I will bake you a cake as long as you promise to never insult my kitchen with that microwave abomination."

"Okay. Can you make the chocolate peanut butter one that I like?"

The sigh Eliot lets out speaks of long suffering in the face of unreasonable demands, but Hardison doesn't need to be able to see his face to know that he's got a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. They're neither of them any good at saying no to Parker. "Grab me the cocoa from the top shelf while you're up there, would you?"

Hardison listens to the sounds of Eliot getting to work as he putters around the briefing area, turning off the screen and tidying up the documentation packets. That wasn't so bad, really. At least they didn't fight him on using the linked identities. They still might have to skip town in a hurry if the next few days go as bad as they potentially could, but if they have to go, they'll go together. Hardison can deal with anything else that comes their way as long as he has Parker and Eliot by his side.

He wanders off in the direction of the kitchen, whistling tunelessly.

(Turns out it was just astoundingly bad luck that got them almost caught that day. The stress of it lights a fire under them. They take down Merchant's organization within the week.

They don't end up needing the identities, but now that he knows about it, Eliot refuses to cede creative control over Ricky LaBelle's blog. Hardison does the photography and design, but the content is all Eliot. To Hardison's surprise, its popularity explodes -- legitimately so; he wasn't even trying to make it go viral. Soon Ricky's fielding requests for guest posts and interviews. He's even got people asking for merch featuring some of his more colourful quotes, and companies are contacting him about sponsored content, which Eliot always turns down -- he refuses to do anything that might compromise Ricky's integrity.

Eat Well wins a Webby the next year.

Eliot never lets Hardison live it down.)

[redgoldblue]

IVY!!! 👀👀👀

CAIA!! love how this message looks out of context. like i am your dog and you've just seen me across the room sniffing something i definitely should not eat.

the context: end of year WIP ask game

👀

fic i technically started before this year and may well never finish, but i keep periodically returning to and adding like, two sentences:

“Sirs to see you, sir.”

Henry glanced up from his desk, then back down. “Captains Pierce.”

Hawkeye and Trapper looked at each other, then back at Henry.

“Hey, I’m not taking his last name.”

“No,” Hawkeye agreed. “I’m taking his.”

“Yeah. That’s Captains MacIntyre to you, Henry.”

[...]

“Do you want-” Hawkeye’s voice interrupts the stillness of the office.

“Yes. Six.”

“Oh.”

“.... Do you, sir?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I think if you’d asked me in 1949 my answer would’ve been ‘hell no.’ Now... yeah. I think I do.”

“You’d make a good father.”

Hawkeye’s laugh cuts sharply through the dark. “I know some opinions that would differ on that.”

“You’re doing everything you can. You don’t have to sit up with me.”

“Yeah, well, I won’t be able to sleep until I know we’ve found her parents.”

“Like I said, sir. You’ll make a good father.”

“Thanks, Radar. So will you, for the record. The six Junior O’Reilly’s will be very lucky. Call one of them Benjamin for me after I die of exhaustion here.”

[...]

“You don’t get it, do you? He wasn’t a hero, he wasn’t ‘fighting for democracy’. He was a child, who was forced through threat of violence to fly 30000 miles from his home and be killed trying to protect another child! The American government isn’t fighting some kind of righteous war, they’re committing murder, tenfold, hundredfold, thousandfold murder on Korea’s children and their own, and there’s no way to excuse that or to make it palatable or to tie it up in a nice pretty bow so these poor people don’t have to face the fact that their son died because the people at the top can’t see the humans for the blood!”

Trapper took a step back from the door of The Swamp as Margaret stormed out, door swinging shut behind her.

“What’d you do?” he asked her mildly, and she snorted.

"What'd I do? Try to help him, god forbid!"

👀

fic that I did not finish in time for Christmas this year, but I will finish. at some point. probably:

“Do you think Santa gets Christmas presents, or not, because he gives them all?” Parker muses, and Hardison blinks at the standard Parker non sequitur hypothetical. He’s assuming hypothetical.

Before he can answer, Sophie replies, “I think Mrs. Claus organises with the elves to make him a present.” Nate throws her a look of mild surprise and she shrugs. “What, I can’t have theories for other people’s holidays?”

“Never said that,” he murmurs, and she nudges against his side affectionately.

“Santa Claus is married?” Parker asks in a tone of faint astonishment, and Nate nods.

“In most modern renditions, yes.”

“How did he meet her? Is she an elf?”

“I… don’t know,” Nate answered. “She’s not usually an elf, no. But I don’t know how they met. Then again, maybe Santa just wanders around the globe eleven months of the year. Maybe she did too.”

“Like you and Sophie.”

Sophie grins and nods at Parker. “Maybe that’s actually how he gets all those presents. She steals them for him.”

“I think that makes us the elves,” Hardison says. “That’s okay, you make a cute elf. So would I. Eliot, I’m not sure about.”

“Eliot would be cute as an elf!” Parker objects, apparently offended on his behalf.

“If you could get him into an elf costume, yeah, but it’d be an ordeal.”

As if summoned, a faint “Dammit, Hardison!” floats out from the kitchen, and Hardison detaches Parker, kissing her on the cheek, and goes back in to see what he did wrong this time.

👀

currently being written fic, that will definitely be finished some point in the near future:

“You’re never gonna learn your constellations looking at me,” Hutch chided lightly, and pushed his shoulder enough into Starsky to get him upright and moving towards the car again.

“What, blintz, you never had stars in your eyes?”

“No, that’s you.” The night air had apparently cleared Starsky’s head at least enough for his vocabulary to come back.

“What, what’ve you got in your eyes, then?” Starsky asked, then stopped walking before Hutch could answer, pulling them both to a stop.

[...]

Instead, he took one last look over at the morose curled-up Starsky puddle on the other seat. As he pulled out onto the street, in a vain attempt to lift him out of it, he said, “As to the original question, I have retinas, pigment, and lenses in my eyes. Along with a dozen other things any ophthalmologist could probably tell you better than me. Why, what do you think I’ve got in my eyes?”

“I don’t know,” Starsky said, looking an inch off from kicking the dash like a toddler, but at least that was some kind of action. “The road. The ground. Wheatgerm.”

Hutch couldn’t help chuckling. “Having wheatgerm in my eyes sounds painful.”

“Yeah, well, so does having stars.”

Hutch frowned at the road. He couldn’t look properly over at Starsky, not now he was driving, but he took one hand off the wheel to gently shove at his shoulder. “Hey, I love that you still get starry-eyed. Metaphorically.”

“Which one?”

“Hm?”

“You metaphorically love me or I get metaphorically stierry-ard? Starry-eyed?”

That did make Hutch risk a glance over, for all the good it did. Starsky was still staring steadfast out the side window, meaning all Hutch saw was a streetlamp-lit flash of dark curls. The change from ‘love that’ to ‘love me’ hadn’t escaped his notice, but he replied, “…the latter,” anyway. This was shaping up to be a very strange conversation.

[dtrhwithalex]

TV | Leverage (Season 2, Rewatch)

Rewatch of the second season of TNT's LEVERAGE (2008-2012), created by John Rogers and Chris Downey together with Dean Devlin and his production company Electric Entertainment.

In anticipation of the show's reboot / revival / sequel LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION coming to IMDbTV on 09 July this year, I am rewatching the original 77 episodes and writing about my favourite moments and things from each episode, season by season.

201: THE BEANTOWN BAILOUT JOB

D: DEAN DEVLIN. W: JOHN ROGERS. Original Air Date: 15 July 2009.

We here at the Rabbit Hole adore the Beantown Bailout Job very much (and by we I mean me). It is such a great season-opener and everything about it sets up the season so nicely. Also let me just say, I love the cheesy intro. I like to imagine that this plays on whatever website the clients usually end up finding the team. It would be so confusing. And wonderful.

This episode, of course, also introduces another of my favourite characters: Lt. Patrick Bonanno, State Police. And I am very sad that there is zero chance we'll ever get to see him in the reboot, since the wonderful Robert Blanche has unfortunately passed away last year. Bonanno was such a fantastic addition to this show and I love him very much. He is just brilliant in every episode he is in.

Aside from the introduction of Bonanno, Beantown is a brilliant episode for various reasons, but I wanna talk about this one most of all. John Rogers talked about this on his blog, I think -- not one member of the team can come straight out and admit that they need the others. It is the impromptu meeting at Sophie's performance that brings them together again (very much against Nate's best attempts). Only once they're at McRory's and Parker suggests stealing something to cheer up Sophie is when they all fess up and tell Nate that they want this team back together again. And then, of course, we have one of my favourite sequences in this entire show: Nate forcefully being bullied back into this family. They do exactly what he did to them in The Second David Job -- they get him to contribute knowledge to the case that they, allegedly, lack. And he knows what they're doing, of course, he's not an idiot. Well played, indeed.

I would also like to personally thank one Nadine Haders, this show's most brilliant costume designer, for every single piece of clothing she put on Christian Kane for this episode. That green sweater with the brown jeans jacket? All my love to you, Nadine. All of it. Also, uncharacteristically, Nate has some very good looks in this episode (the man looks healthy for once!) and I am unreasonably mad about it (actually, he has some very good looks this entire season).

One last thing: I would like to have a word with whoever decided to play the Andy Lange song here that Sophie's departure in The Two Live Crew Job is set to. It makes this first half of the season a circle. Who do I need to have words with? Who?

202: THE TAP-OUT JOB

D: MARC ROSKIN. W: ALBERT KIM. Original Air Date: 22 July 2009.

An absolutely amazing episode for Eliot but also very much for Sophie. They are the Conference Of Mom Friends, and I adore them very much, thank you. It is a fantastic episode for them individually, but especially also for the specific relationship these two people have. There is an amazing post floating around on this website (this one here) talking exactly about this episode and Eliot and Sophie in the role of protectors in their team, their family.

There are a few scenes here that I really like and really, most of them are about or with Eliot. I love in the briefing at the hotel that Eliot does not just dismiss Sophie's misunderstanding of wrestling, but takes the time to explain to her what the sport is about -- and she listens. We also here get a nice glimpse at the fact that Eliot teaches them certain fighting skills and self-defence techniques, which I just love so much. Just as Sophie coaches them all in their grifts, he makes sure that they all have a certain know-how in fighting and protecting themselves. It's so good.

I am also very fond of both the moment where Eliot brings Sophie to the restaurant to meet with Rucker, but also Sophie showing up at the gym at night to talk to Eliot while he's preparing for the fight against Tank. Eliot gives away so much of himself in this episode, and it is very interesting to me that the person he does this with is, continually, Sophie. The others may be on comms, and might be, for all we know, listening in, but it is Sophie he tells these things to. It's like Hardison says later in The Two Live Crew Job: "We trust Nate to make sure the plan works, we trust you (Sophie) to make sure we're all okay." While I would not necessarily call Sophie the heart of the group (that's Hardison), she is very much the emotional centre of it.

This episode is also just very lovely to see how they all take to an environment that is, for once, not big city life. Eliot takes to it immediately, which makes sense, because he probably is from a town not much different from this one. Parker, somehow, fits in immediately as well (I love her I <3 Nebraska shirt). I feel like Nate never has any issues fitting in anywhere, he just takes things as they come. It is Hardison and Sophie who have difficulties -- Sophie because she is, after all, a bit posh and needs certain standards met, and Hardison because his world of technology does not mix well with a small, rural Midwestern town ("Can't hack a hick" anyone?).

203: THE ORDER 23 JOB

D: ROD HARDY. W: CHRIS DOWNEY. Original Air Date: 29 July 2009.

I occasionally see some posts on here that call what the team does to Charles Dodgson in 512: The White Rabbit Job the worst thing the team does to a mark. I have to say, objectively, I think what they do to Eddie Maranjian in this episode is much worse. Of course, Dodgson is a good person, and Eddie is a crook, but still. Objectively? This episode is more evil.

Anyway, this episode has some fantastic moments that I adore a whole lot. I love Eliot and Hardison as cops, Sophie's act is absolutely amazing, and I have a super soft spot for both Nate teaching Parker what he is doing, and also Eliot and his side quest of helping Randy.

I am so incredibly fond of all these little moments where Parker's eventual role of Mastermind is already being planted. She always asks Nate questions, if she doesn't have a part to play in the con, she is with Nate, learning. She says it in the pilot episode already: "I'm really good at one thing, only one thing, that's it. But you, you know other things, and I can't stop doing my one thing, can't retire." And then she does her best to learn the other things Nate knows. This episode particularly, how Nate explains to her how NLP works, that what he is selling is fear. Nate is so patient with her, too. I love them both so very much.

Eliot's side quest with Randy and his abusive dad is an absolutely excellent addition to this episode. Especially after the previous Eliot-centric episode, this small thing just goes to show that, at their core, these are good people. Yes, they are criminals, the lot of them. But they are not bad people. Things like this just make me think that, it had to have been this exact combination of people Dubenich put together. Any other thief, any other hacker, and Nate would have walked away from this alone. It had to be Parker, Hardison and Eliot for this to work exactly as it did. And Eliot looking out for Randy even though they are in the middle of a con, taking his time to make sure Bob, the U.S. Marshall goes to see Randy, is exactly something that brings this point home.

Lastly, I adore that everyone shows up at the court house when Eddie goes to find his money. He knows they all conned him, but they know no one is ever going to believe him. It's a fantastic gloat scene. And I also really love that Nate explains why this works to the others: "So, here's everything you need to know about criminal law. Every crime has two elements, Actus reus, the act itself, and mens rea, Literally "The Guilty Mind." ... Now, for escape, the prisoner has to both break out of custody and show the intent to escape. ... Which brings us back to our friend Eddie and how the brain reacts to fear. In the heat of the moment Eddie didn't ask himself a simple question, who would doubt his guilty mind?"

204: THE FAIRY GODPARENTS JOB

D: JONATHAN FRAKES. W: AMY BERG. Original Air Date: 05 August 2009.

This one was Bernie Madoff inspired, if I recall correctly, who was arrested in 2008, around the time Berg, Downey and Rogers were already bouncing ideas back and forth for this season.

There is so much to love in this episode! Where to even begin. Maybe with Parker replacing Sophie at the client meeting? Or Sophie immediately heading for both popcorn and the cookie tin after the breakup? How about Parker perching on Eliot's arm rest with her food? Nate's headmaster act? Eliot as Coach Brewer (red is a fantastic colour on him, thank you Nadine)? Hipster rich newlyweds Parker and Hardison? The return of my beloved FBI fools McSweetheart and Taggert? Taggert being McSweetheart's biggest supporter in his affection for Parker? Sophie and Widmark? The actual science-sical with all these adorable kids singing about science?

So much to love. Chock-full of greatness, this episode. Also Frakes, once again, directed the hell outta this. I love this episode so very much.

One moment that does, however, absolutely win out over everything else, is the scene at Nate's apartment after Hardison and Parker meet McSweeten and Taggert again:

Eliot: One of you two can identify the gunman, right? Hardison: Oh, yeah, sure. He stopped and let me take a picture of him as I was chasing him. Eliot: Hey, you know what, man? I've been around little kids all day. I don't need to come home and do all this crap.

That line, Mr Spencer? "I don't need to come home and do all this crap"? Home? Sir, we are four episodes into the second season, and you are already calling Nate's apartment home. Honestly, that boy has been invested into this group as a family from the moment Hardison hands him a check in the pilot episode, if not earlier. And I am very much here for all of it.

205: THE THREE DAYS OF THE HUNTER JOB

D: MARC ROSKIN. W: MELISSA GLENN & JESSICA RIEDER (GRASL). Original Air Date: 12 August 2009.

This is another one of those episodes which, when I think about it, I am not entirely into, but then when I watch it, I always love it. It's a brilliant episode, but the mark rubs me in all the wrong ways and I think that's why my general reaction to this episode in theory is mostly "ew". Which I think is kind of the point, as well.

There is much to love in this episode, though. Sophie being Nate in this one, Nate being very wary of this concept and also having difficulties letting someone else take control ("If you don't mind, I would still do the 'Hardison, run it' thing" Nathan you precious little man, I love you so much). I think it's so nicely done. I mean Sophie has run cons before -- she was the Mastermind behind the First David Job, and she runs their con in the Second David Job as well -- but then she was confident, now she is going through things, on the brink of rediscovering herself for who she is. And of course, it bites her in the ass a little bit.

I absolutely adore Conspiracy Nut Hardison and his fantastic apartment. Set Design did a magnificent job here. I am so fond of Parker asking Eliot about the different things -- the council, the moon landing, Loch Ness monster -- and also very much the bit at the end where he and Hardison answer Parker's questions while he prepares food. That ending bit overall is just absolutely excellent and I love it with my whole heart. Eliot cooking for all of them in Nate's kitchen, giving Parker stuff to try, while Hardison sits there and sips his orange soda out of a wine glass. Meanwhile Nate pouring wine for Sophie, and then going over to her to make sure she is alright. For his slightly more sadistic streak in this season, Nate is so good with Sophie here. And honestly I think this conversation here is one of the reasons why Sophie feels able to leave them for a while. It is Nate's reassurance of "Whatever you need, I'm here for you" that lets her take this leave of absence.

206: THE TOP HAT JOB

D: PETER O'FALLON. W: M. SCOTT VEACH & CHRISTINE BOYLAN. Original Air Date: 19 August 2009.

I adore this episode! The fantastic Veach and Boylan on the keyboard for this one (who, I've had to find out, are both tangentially involved with my latest hyperfixation, SHADOW AND BONE -- Veach having written my favourite episode, and Boylan being married to the showrunner), which is just lovely, because they are both excellent.

First off, I would like to, once again, give all my love to Nadine Haders for that Pizza Guy outfit she put Kane in for the recon sequence. A+ costuming, thank you Nadine.

This episode has so many excellent comedic beats and a wonderful many Hardison/Eliot moments. Sophie trying to set up Nate with their client is absolutely hysterical -- especially considering that she had just been broken up with and had been urging Nate to figure out what it is that is between them since day one. I especially love her attempt at finding things Nate has in common with Jameson: "She's a scientist. And well, you're a bit nerdy, aren't you? ... And food, she works with food. Well, you eat, don't you?" Like, girl, what are you trying to do here, really?

I absolutely adore Hardison and Eliot trying to get into the server room so Hardison can access the data they are trying to get before anyone can get rid of it. Eliot hooking Parker's rope to Hardison's belt, Eliot's complete awe at Hardison's ability to remote access their mark's phone ("You can do that?" Eliot, honey, he can do so much more), the two of them wedged underneath the desk, and then, of course, Eliot's huge smile when Hardison hacks the scanner at the door with the help of his gummy frogs. I love these boys together so much, and this episode has given me so many great moments.

I am also incredibly fond of Nate's magician act. That is a brilliant role and it suits him so well. And I love how genuinely enthusiastic he is about magic.

207: THE TWO LIVE CREW JOB

D: DEAN DEVLIN. W: JOHN ROGERS & AMY BERG. Original Air Date: 26 August 2009.

This is an absolutely brilliant episode for so many different reasons. Let me get two things out of the way straight off the bat: 1) Where do I address my "Chaos For Leverage: Redemption" campaign to? and 2) Where do I address my "Apollo Robbins For Leverage: Redemption" campaign to? I want both of them back desperately!

Of course, this episode is important as a major stepping stone in Sophie's character arc. Because of Chaos and his bomb, she has to kill off one of her aliases which is the last thing that then leads to her taking a leave of absence to figure out who she is and who she wants to be. That scene in her apartment with the bomb is also just an excellent moment for the team as a family. The care with which everyone interacts with Sophie, Parker's instant pudding hack, Eliot's instructions on how defuse this situation, Sophie's immediate shift into protector mode once it becomes clear that the only real solution is to run and telling everyone to leave immediately, Nate staying behind and even when Sophie tells him to leave, waiting for her by the apartment door -- they care for each other so much.

I also really love the con-off with Starke's crew. It is so nice to see how similar yet different he and Nate are, and the same goes for the other crew members. I adore their individual confrontations a lot. Eliot's non-fight fight with Mikel Dayan, Parker's thief-off with Apollo, Hardison and Chaos' baby monitor fight. It just really highlights who our beloved characters are and what makes them them, now that we see them, metaphorically, in front of their mirror.

And then, of course, the actual heist is also just amazing. I adore that Starke chooses Nate as his alias to gain access, it is such a great move. Parker and Apollo talking in the ventilation shaft about birds is also just so lovely. And as an admirer of Eliot's arms, I am also very fond of his fight with Mikel. Good choices have been made, I appreciate all of them. The reveal at the end is also absolutely amazing. To beat them they had to save them? Brilliant.

Lastly, of course, Sophie's goodbye at the graveyard with Nate. What a spectacular moment. Also just, the visuals are so beautiful. I love the lighting here. And of course the return of Andy Lange's song, which is just perfect. I am so happy that this is the journey they decided to give Sophie when it became clear that Gina would not be able to be in the full seasons due to her pregnancy. They accommodated her so beautifully and gave Sophie such an amazing moment of character growth. This is why I love this show and the people who made it so much. All my love, to all of them.

208: THE ICE MAN JOB

D: JEREMIAH CHECHIK. W: CHRISTINE BOYLAN. Original Air Date: 02 September 2009.

We love The Ice Man Job! Another fantastic episode by one Christine Boylan who we love in this house. Our very first episode without Sophie being there, and it's a great one. I absolutely adore how they worked in moments with our favourite grifter in a way that so wonderfully accommodates Gina's pregnancy.

I absolutely adore the moments where all of them eventually end up calling Sophie. Parker, hiding underneath the bar after Nate tells her she'll be the grifter in this one, calling her mom Sophie in a panic without wanting the others to know, but still needing her advice and missing her so much. Then Eliot, calling to complain to his mom Sophie about Hardison going overboard again with the grift, needing the knowledge that his concerns are being heard and aren't unfounded, needs to hear the other protector of the family acknowledge his rightful fear that things will go sideways. And of course also Hardison, calling mom Sophie so she can pick him up from the party help him out of the mess he's made, hoping against all hope that she'll be able to help without having to involve Nate. The others both had the luxury to ask Sophie not to tell Nate -- Hardison had no other choice but to let her call it in. Lastly, Nate too, at the end, calling his wife Sophie. And honestly, I love that Sophie drops her phone into her drink after the call, because Nate is the only one not giving her what she wants to hear. The kids, all of them, called with an "I need you" and that is the one thing Nate doesn't give her.

There are many other things in this episode that I love very much. The opening briefing, Parker feeling alone on the big empty couch, trying to sit next to Eliot, but he makes her move. Nate's big DadTM moment of "Eliot, can you please sit next to Parker" and Eliot's very long-suffering oldest child answer "No! I'm sitting here now."

Then of course Eliot and Hardison's two moments -- Eliot telling Hardison "I ain't bailing your ass out" and then when he eventually does anyway, Hardison's smug joy, forcing Eliot to sort-of-hug him back at McRory's. Eliot's unsuccessful attempt to make him helping Hardison a decision forced onto him by Parker, and Parker refusing to accept the "blame" immediately. Their whole dynamic this episode is just so good. Neither Eliot nor Parker being happy with Hardison in this role (Parker's refusal to ride with him in the Ferrari), Eliot proudly watching Parker do her thing over the security camera ("Stuck it!").

Lots of love also to Pasha Lychnikoff as our main Russian goon, who is just fantastic here, our much beloved Lt. Patrick Bonanno, and also Nadine Haders for so many amazing looks, especially on Eliot.

209: THE LOST HEIR JOB

D: PETER WINTHER. W: CHRIS DOWNEY. Original Air Date: 09 September 2009.

Court-room episode, which means we have our friend Chris Downey on the keys here, and he gave us an absolutely excellent introduction for Tara Cole played by the lovely Jeri Ryan. Honestly, the more often I watch this episode, the better it gets. Tara is just so good.

Highlights of this episode include: Sophie's immediate "who died?!" when Nate shows up at her apartment in London, Hardison playing "Where is Waldo Ford," Hardison and Eliot in prison, the first appearance of Nate's lawyer alias Jimmy Papadokalis who wears brilliantly loud and obnoxious suits in outrageous colour-combinations, Hardison stalling Blanchard at court security with his keys, Nate's reveal of Ruth as Kimball's daughter (I am fascinated that he completely drops the character here -- he is just Nate now), and of course, the reveal of Tara at the end.

Honestly, this is such a magnificent episode to introduce Tara's character. We have just watched the team scramble and fuck up without Sophie, and then their next job gets more complicated because of this random lawyer who shows up. And she's so righteous and law-abiding and absolutely not someone they should be taking with them on their job. And Tara plays it perfectly. Her honest try at getting Orson to talk to them, her confusion about her "dogs", her excited smile when she gets to con Blanchard and be a bit dishonest -- it is so good. And then we get that complete 180° when the team finds her in Nate's apartment. Not just visually, but the personality. Her voice drops a bit too. Jeri fucking rocked this introduction. The reveal is so damn good.

210: THE RUNWAY JOB

D: MARC ROSKIN. W: ALBERT KIM. Original Air Date: 13 January 2010.

I have zero interest in fashion but I honest to God love every single one of these characters at fashion week. Fashion!Eliot is absolutely fantastical and I love him. Julien, my beloved. Fashion!Parker is very cute with her braid and even before she gets the model makeover she outshines every single other person at the event. Fashion!Hardison is surprisingly understated but I dig it. Tara as Caprina is also just excellent. And I absolutely, un-ironically adore Fashion!Nate. Jacques is such a character. Nate exchanged the usual "obnoxious and greasy" with "gay," slapped some would-be-French that sounds like German on top of it, and called it a character. And I love it.

I also very much love the three video calls with Sophie in this episode. The kids calling in the beginning, complaining about Tara. I absolutely adore both the "she's hot" moment and Eliot's "...and all the way to Europe?" when Sophie says Nate lets what is good for him walk out the door. Parker's little "I just miss you" before they hang up has me all the way up in my emotions every damn time. Tara calling Sophie to complain about Nate is also just excellent. The whole bit with Nate's "I'm sexy because I'm broken" thing is just *chef's kiss*. And of course Nate's call at the end. I love that Sophie hangs up on him, it is so fair, it is absolutely justified. And I think he knows that too.

So many great other moments too -- Hardison's Steven Seagal comment about Eliot's clothes, Nate's "Julien, sweetheart" and Eliot's little clap before taking the money, Nate and Parker at the mark's house, Eliot and Tara vs the Triads, Eliot and Parker at fashion week together ("It's a fashion show, not Thieves'R'Us"), and of course Tara's "For what it's worth, Sophie was right. You guys are the best I've ever seen ... But no one in the world, is as good as you think you are."

211: THE BOTTLE JOB

D: JONATHAN FRAKES. W: CHRISTINE BOYLAN. Original Air Date: 20 January 2010.

This episode has got to be one of my favourites, if I were forced to chose some. I love a bottle episode, and this one is just magnificent. Excellent client, great mark, fantastic additional characters, wonderful episode for the team. All around just, so good. Not surprising if Frakes and Boylan are at the wheel together, of course.

The addition of Cora is so lovely. I would have loved to see more of her, to be honest. She is such a great character. I love what her presence does to who we see Nate as. I adore when characters get to show new sides of themselves, it's so nice. Also, Nate's comment to Eliot about him not wanting Eliot to like Cora because she's like his niece? Most excellent.

I adore our three police officers too. Mickey, Danny and Johnny are such great additions. I really liked them. How they just went with whatever Nate was planning and in the end decided to just pretend none of this ever happened, it's just so good.

Doyle and the Liams as our villains of the week are also just fantastic. Also I just love Irish accents, it sounds so good. I love to hear it.

Other highlights of this episode include: Tara's "I'm Trish and I'm lonely", the kids going for their individual emergency funds stashed in Nate's place (they are all so fantastically in character, I love it), Nate using his dad's name as his alias, everyone stopping to see if Nate is going to succumb to the booze again, Hardison's excitement about pulling off the wire in under 2h, Hardison faking the weather, Eliot and Parker on safe duty. Also, rewatching this episode, I am absolutely 100% convinced that what Eliot is doing to distract the Liams from Tara conning Doyle, absolutely categorises as flirting. The way he throws that dart at the board and then buys them beer? Mr Spencer, sir, you are flirting with these guys.

212: THE ZANZIBAR MARKETPLACE JOB

D: JEREMIAH CHECHIK. W: MELISSA GLENN & JESSICA RIEDER (GRASL). Original Air Date: 27 January 2010.

The wonder twins with yet another magnificent episode. No surprises here. We have not just the return of Maggie but also of Sterling! We love this!!! (Seriously, I want both of them back in the reboot. I don't care that they're most closely tied to Nate. Bring them back.)

This episode has so many absolutely excellent moments as well. I love the opening sequence in the bar, with them going over possible next clients together, Nate kicking Eliot for flirting with the bartender, and then of course also Sterling walking in. The interaction Nate and Eliot have here is just fantastic.

Sterling: *walks in* Nate: Eliot, I'm gonna ask you not do do anything violent. Eliot: Wha-what are you talking about? I only use violence as an appropriate response. Sterling: Hello, Nate. Eliot: *responds appropriately*

And to think that Sterling only gets beat up here because Mark Sheppard's son was visiting the set that day and wanted to see his dad get beat up by Eliot. We stan one Sheppard Jr.

I very much love the scene where Nate and Sterling go over what they have on Lundy, and then Parker interrupting them out of nowhere, just sitting there on the counter, like she's been there forever (which she probably has). Also just, fantastic clothes on Parker, thank you Nadine. Maggie showing up here is of course also brilliant and I am very fond of Parker making Maggie a fugitive bag. It is so completely adorable. I love my girl so much.

Another favourite moment is, of course, Tara and Eliot getting Chernov to tell them where the sale of the Fabergé egg will take place. Tara not saying a damn thing, Eliot grumpily doing what Tara tells him to ("Do that thing with your eyes that scares people" / "What -- I don't know what you're talking about"), Chernov's complete unease about this whole entire situation, and then of course Tara and Eliot's other interaction:

Tara: What we imagine is always so much better than reality. Eliot, with the tiniest voice possible: Like love? Tara: *just stares at him, confused*

Just, *chef's kiss* this scene.

The scenes in the embassy are also just excellent. Tara and Nate pretending to be a couple, Nate's inability to deal with the idea of Maggie and Alexander, Maggie and Tara hysterically giggling while talking about Nate, Sterling pretending to be drunk (and incredibly gay) to get Parker access to the egg room -- brilliance, all the way through.

I adore Eliot taking charge of the situation once it becomes clear that Maggie and Nate have been taken hostage. Parker doing her magic and switching the bomb with the empty briefcase in the elevators is beautiful. Maggie kissing Nate instead of Lundy in what could have been their final moment and regretting it instantly the moment Parker shows up is excellent.

And the final scene back at McRory's is also just wonderful. The kids watching the news about Sterling with Tara ("I hate this guy" / "Now, you're part of the team"), and Nate talking with Maggie. I adore Maggie in this scene so much. Her and Nate's relationship is so lovely. We know Sophie understands how Nate ticks, but Maggie knows him so well too, still.

213: THE FUTURE JOB

D: MARC ROSKIN. W: CHRIS DOWNEY & AMY BERG. Original Air Date: 03 February 2010.

This episode is so good for so many reasons. First off, I adore Luke Perry (I'm still sad about him) even if he plays creeps like Rand in most everything I've seen him in. He was just so good. Second, Medium Tara is probably my favourite role of hers. It's a lot softer than many of the other characters she's done, and I love it. Also the costuming is just excellent.

But I want to talk about Parker most of all. The scene where Rand cold reads her is so well done. Riesgraf knocked it out of the park here. Also, I love how Nate, as soon as Rand starts approaching and doing his act, barely ever takes his eyes off her. He occasionally glances at Rand, but his attention is on Parker at all times. And it just makes me feel things.

The team coming back to Nate's to find Parker sitting on the floor in front of the couch, crying also makes me super emo. They are all so very careful with her here. Even Tara, who hasn't been with them for that long. I quite like how Eliot and Hardison choose to sit a bit away, giving her space, and Nate carefully approaches and sits closest to her. They are all so good with her here, I love them all so much. And I absolutely adore this part of the conversation:

Tara: So what do we do now? Parker: Cut off his arms. And his head. Yeah. I wanna kill him. Can we make that happen? Eliot: Yeah, I can...I mean, I could...

Also earlier, after Tara acknowledges that Rand is good at what he does, Hardison says "He should be shot." I adore how both our boys would not hesitate to end this man for hurting Parker like this. That's their girl and he went too damn far. And even though Nate suggests a way of retaliation that is less final, he isn't above hurting the man either. Because that's his girl, too:

Hardison: Nate had me rig the table with a mild electrical current. Eliot: You electrocuted him? Nate, smugly: Yes, I did. It helped sell the bit. Parker: I approve. Nate: Thanks, Parker. Eliot: No, her agreeing with you is not a good thing. Nate, whispering to Parker: Thanks.

And add to that the absolute joy each and every one of them have when fucking with Rand to fulfil Tara's predictions? *Chef's kiss.* Absolutely beautiful.

There is so much more absolutely fantastic content in this episode, but I just wanna point out the ending where they meet with the client again. Nate is so good with them here. The way he talks to Jodie about her baby and how she will see her late husband in the child, makes me cry every damn time. Just like Tara says, "Yeah, now I see why you do it," this is why this show is so damn good. It's because of this exactly. Because for one shining moment within so much suck and tragedy, there is goodness and a wrong that has been made right. They help people and it isn't just fleeting momentary relief. They change people's lives for the better. I love this fucking show so much.

214: THE THREE STRIKES JOB

D: DEAN DEVLIN. W: JOHN ROGERS. Original Air Date: 10 February 2010.

First half of the second finale! Patrick Bonanno my beloved! I get so sad every time he gets shot here. My man deserves better than this. I love Bonanno so damn much, man. I absolutely adore that Nate goes to see his family at the hospital. Like, this is a cop. The very opposite side of the law Nate and his people operate on. But he goes to see him anyway, because this is their cop. And I love that Bonanno's wife recognises Nate's name. "He wanted to buy you a drink. And then arrest you." That's just so good.

I also absolutely love Richard Kind as Brad Culpepper, the corrupt mayor. I would love to see him back in the reboot, but I doubt there'd be any reasonable explanation why on earth they'd have to see this particular mayor again. I just think Richard Kind is an absolutely fantastic actor.

Anyway, favourite moments. Hardison and Eliot at Bonanno's house is beautiful. I am so fond of how Hardison deals with law enforcement while impersonating law enforcement. He tears them down and builds them back up again, every single time. And I adore how Eliot just smiles at his antics. He crawls around on that carpet with the young cop and Eliot just stands there and smiles. I love them, guys. I really do. Parker pretending to be Brad's pregnant lover with Tara's help is also just most excellent.

And of course: Roy Chappell. Baseball Eliot, my most beloved. There is so much to love about this whole concept. Eliot's reluctance at first because he doesn't like baseball. The discovery that baseball is actually something cool and something he is good at. His absolute childlike joy at the energy drink commercial Hardison made him. His damn hair during the actual game. The sandwich! The enthusiasm about the sandwich. Hardison admitting that the sandwich thing is cool.

I also absolutely love Hardison and Parker as Beavers Fans. The badly photoshopped picture of Dean Devlin and John Rogers as the radio hosts makes me smile so much. So does hearing their voices on the show. Both Hardison and Parker's phone calls to them are also brilliant. Parker speaking Spanish? Marvelous. The two of them demonstrating the Beavers leaving? *Chef's kiss.*

The final showdown with Brad and then the FBI is also just most excellent. Nate going ballistic on Brad because of Bonanno. Hardison and Lucille. Parker giving Lucille a little kiss before they send her to explode as a distraction. Hardison quoting Spock to say goodbye to Lucille. Hardison being pissed at Nate about Lucille. And of course: Jim Sterling, Interpol. The bastard. I love him.

215: THE MALTESE FALCON JOB

D: DEAN DEVLIN. W: JOHN ROGERS. Original Air Date: 17 February 2010.

Second half of second finale! And it's a good one, too. This show has absolutely brilliant finales, lemme tell you.

What do we love about this episode? MUCH. Tara's naked bit is excellent. Eliot and Parker sharing a look after watching Tara's naked bit is even better. Parker turning on the porn channels on the hotel tv is hilarious. Eliot talking to the receptionist about the gym is hysterical ("Ah, the fitness spa. Isn't the Zen Steam Garden divine?" / "Yeah....delicious").

Nate on stairs vs Sterling in elevator is probably the pettiest thing I have ever watched on television and it is absolutely amazing. I don't think anything can ever top this as pettiest moment. It is just so good.

Sterling, of course, is always great fun. I love that he has his own little villain theme that announces him before he even enters the screen. Love a good villain theme. And I adore his moment with FBI Bob outside Brad's hotel room.

Sterling: Name's Bob, right? Bob: Yes, sir. Sterling: You've been here the whole time, Bob? Bob: Yes, sir. Sterling: And nobody's gone in or out, Bob? Bob: No, sir. Sterling: Then would you mind explaining, where the HELL THE MAYOR IS?!

Absolutely perfect.

Nate going back to his place always has me all up in my emotions. Also, I think Sterling here absolutely believes that what he is offering Nate, is good for him. That he can save him from himself or something. They were something like friends at some point, after all. And of course, Nate calling Sophie. She is, of course, unbeknownst to him, already on the way to save his ass. But he calls her and finally tells her exactly what she wanted to hear at the end of The Ice Man Job: "I need you. Not the team, me." Sir. I am emo about you.

And then of course the final con and the reveal of Sophie's return. I absolutely love that Parker's first reaction to Tara possibly betraying them was to try and throw her off the roof. That's my girl (I love Tara, but that was fair). Also just, if you pay attention on the boat scenes, you can see Sophie from as early as Kadjic hearing Nate's offer and then leading Nate and Eliot below deck. If you can pick out her hair and know the colour of her coat from the scene in the helicopter, you know that she is there. And then, below deck, you can see her so many times -- at one point essentially back to back with Nate -- before any of the characters know she's there. And can I just say, I absolutely love Nate's completely shocked face when he hears her voice. Those comedically big eyes are just excellent.

Everyone seeing Sophie again is done so well. Hardison and Eliot's confused "Sophie?" when she walks past. Eliot winking at Sophie after they free Nate. Parker hugging her immediately once her and Tara arrive on the ship. Hardison putting his hand on the small of her back as he passes by her to go down the stairs. I just love them all so much.

And lastly of course, the reveal of the plan, Nate cuffing himself to the railing and making Sterling leave his family alone. What Nate says to them always makes me so emo too: "You guys are the most honourable people I have ever met in my life. You have become my family, my only family. And I will never forget that." John Rogers, sir, we need to have some words once I get this lake out of my eyes. And I obviously can't not mention the kiss. Finally, finally Nate gets his shit together. And she slaps him and it is perfect. And then they leave and he sits down and bleeds and Sterling, for a moment, is genuinely concerned about Nate as a person and not merely about Nate as his only way to nail Kadjic.

Bob: Who the hell is this guy? Sterling: I have no idea. Nate: My name is Nate Ford. And I'm a thief.

Yes. Yes you are, you magnificent bastard.

[image taken from the electricnow website]

[rotationalsymmetry]

Ahem (about Eliot Spencer as football captain in a high school au):

None of the Leverage “kids”/OT3/whatever — Eliot, Parker, Hardison — were popular in high school. Definitely not Parker, who was more or less raised by her thief mentor and was never even in high school, and has noticeable difficulty interacting with people as an adult when we first meet her in season one. Not anyone who found as much time to learn how to code as Hardison did. Not Eliot either — it’s canon both that he took home ec and that he got teased by other guys for it.

There’s a tendency to associate being good with the ladies with being gender-conforming (in men.) But you know what? When we see Eliot seducing women, he doesn’t put on a strong manly man vibe. Mostly he goes for sensitive and attentive and vulnerable and women love it. That’s not gender conforming. That’s...not intrinsically incompatible with football captain, but they don’t fit easily with each other either.

Even the one time his physical fighting skill is a factor, with the other fighter (Mikel Dayan), it’s less about his strength and more about mutual respect for each others’ skill. The attraction is about both of them being really into the same thing, a thing that most people don’t get that deeply into.

All of them are “nerds” in the sense of having a narrow range of interests that they get really, really into: Harrison’s nerdery is focused on computers, which is classic, but Eliot’s hard-skills nerdery that’s focused on fighting and cooking and paying incredible amounts of attention to sensory details, is actually the same sort of thing just with a different focus.

Parker’s is actually the most extreme: her interests at the start of the show are security systems and jumping off buildings and not much else, and she’s also the least good at “masking” or faking being normal. She asks what an ornamental houseplant is for, because at that point she really just doesn’t see the value in anything outside of her very narrow interests. She doesn’t even appreciate art as art, just as something that can be stolen.

And I’m not saying that to dis any of the characters. Rather? I’m thinking: these are my kind of people, people who get really into things most people don’t care about, and who tend to not get interested in things just because everyone else is. The sorts of people who don’t know how to answer when other people ask them what music they like to listen to. (Well, maybe Eliot does.) The sorts of people who barely know what football is, because either a thing is your entire world or you know virtually nothing about it and care even less, with no middle ground.

And they get to have an entire show about them doing amazing things and doing good in the world, you know? Their differences don’t make them lesser. Parker doesn’t have to be able to appreciate art or know what plants are for! Being able to thwart complex security systems and jump off tall buildings is actually enough for her to be living an amazing life and contributing to the world in a positive way.

And that means when Parker does start broadening her horizons, she’s able to do it for herself, because she decided she’s missing out on things, and not to “be normal” or fit in. Or because she has to do it to find people who care about her and support her, she was able to get that before making any changes. That’s such a powerful message, you know?

And when I see Eliot as captain of the football team high school AU headcanons, what I think is: that’s missing Eliot’s character, that’s flattening him to just being good at things like fighting and sports and making him as stereotypically male as possible. Because just like Parker didn’t need to be normal or popular or even know how to make small talk with a jerk without sticking a fork in his hand in order to find her people, Eliot also didn’t have to get on the football team to find his people, and that matters too. He found his people by being himself, his weird oddball self who notices things other people miss and grows his hair out and is a fighter who won’t touch guns and really notices people and is probably way too sensitive for his own good. Don’t let his ability to terrify strangers by looking at them and pound them flat when necessary keep you from seeing the rest of Eliot Spencer, the guy who never quite figured out how to be a normal guy and decided early on that he wasn’t going to bother trying.

And that coexists peacefully and comfortably with Eliot as a guy who gets around a lot; I’m polyamorous and kinky, and a lot of the guys in those worlds who get the most dates are absolutely not the sort of person who would have been captain of the football team in high school. Getting a lot of action does not support a narrative that Spencer is gender-conforming, even though getting a lot of action is something that manly men are supposed to aspire to.

There are a lot of people like that: who were loners, outcasts, bullied in school, and who later on were able to find people who didn’t care whether you made the cheerleading squad or whether you had the right kinds of celebrity crushes. Or the adult world equivalents. Who see value in people living their most authentic lives, rather than conforming as closely as possible to expected social roles.

Maybe I’m the one who’s missing something, and this sort of hc is about how you can be all that and get the social recognition of being homecoming king or queen as well. Maybe it’s coming from people who like to imagine that they could have had that without sacrificing parts of themselves. I for one am very firmly in the category of “fuck them and their arbitrary markers of acceptability, I’m going off and finding better goals to aspire to.”

Parker was not a cheerleader, even though she had all the physical abilities that being a good cheerleader requires (plus the looks for it.) Eliot was not football captain. They got to do amazing things with their lives because being football captain or chearleading whatever is not actually especially important. It’s just a marker of success within a very specific social context that’s disconnected from being able to do anything in particular outside of that context, and which prioritizes conformity, especially conformity to gender roles, over authenticity and diversity.

(Note, because apparently this is necessary: this is a personal opinion, people get to have whatever headcanons they want, don’t harass people, etc. it’s better to lift up examples of doing it well than be confrontational about people doing it badly. I just think it’s actually more meaningful and more consistent with canon to present Eliot as an outsider in high school than to present him as one of the popular kids, and popular in an extremely conventional/stereotypical way at that.)

(I can relate to the Eliot who got teased for taking home ec but felt secretly vindicated because he was the one getting close one on one attention from a hot lady teacher; I cannot possibly relate to football captain Eliot.)

(It’s a power thing? Within a high school social framework, football players and cheerleaders (not at my high school, but whatever) have the most social status and therefor the most power. The whole deal with the Leverage crew is that they’re restoring power imbalances. Putting them in positions of relative power makes no sense. Highschooler Eliot should be beating up the football captain for groping the girls or bullying weaker boys, not being the football captain himself.)

[flowers-creativity]

Fic: The One Bed Job

Fandom:  Leverage

Characters: Eliot Spencer, Parker, Alec Hardison

Warnings: None

Summary: A rainstorm forces Eliot, Parker and Hardison to take shelter in a cabin in the woods. There is only one problem ...

Notes: Written for Spud (@callipygianspud) for the @leverage-secret-santa-exchange with the prompts “Parker/Hardison/Eliot, oh no one bed?!?!, slice of life bickering”.

There are a lot of firsts in this story for me, most notably that it's my first Leverage fic ever! It was a lot of fun working on it - thanks to the mods of the Leverage Secret Santa Exchange for organising this 😊.

I’m late in posting it because I missed that the authors had been revealed but finally, here it is on my blog, too.

AO3 link

Eliot threw the truck into park and stared out the windshield at the desolate view: a cabin in the middle of the woods, looking small and forlorn in the wind that had been picking up speed over the last hour. Rain was driving diagonally across the picture, and he didn't want to make any bets on how long it would be until it was going fully horizontal. “Damn it, Hardison, that's the best you can do?”

“Hey man, you wanna try finding a place to stay in the middle of nowhere during a rainstorm, with no advance warning?” Hardison twisted in his seat and stabbed a finger at him. “I'm not freaking clairvoyant, couldn't have known it woulda hit so hard!”

“Yeah, well, always actin' like you are,” Eliot growled as he unbuckled his seat belt. There was no use arguing, they were out of other options. Not that it would stop him from doing it anyway. “C'mon, let's look at that rat's nest you found for us.”

“No appreciation, man,” Hardison mumbled. He took off his seat belt, then twisted around and nudged the lump that was Parker on the backbench, just a shock of blonde hair peeking out from under the blanket she'd wrapped herself in. “Hey mama, we're here. Time to wake up!”

The lump protested sleepily but finally uncurled to reveal the thief who stretched and yawned mightily. “Where's here?” she asked.

“Cabin in the woods,” Hardison said. “Storm's getting pretty bad, so Eliot wanted to stop driving. Never mind that we're in a Faraday cage,” he added, raising his voice so the hitter just about to close the driver's side door could hear him, “but apparently the only thing frightening big bad Spencer is some lightning. Can't hit that, eh?”

“Hardison,” Eliot said grumpily, pulling the door open again, “you wanna wrap the car around a tree 'cause you can't see with the rain comin' down so hard, be my guest.”

Parker snorted and leaned forward to give Hardison a quick peck on the nose. “He's got a point there,” she pointed out.

Eliot flashed her a quick look of thanks, fighting down the incongruous urge to have a corner of his mouth tick up. It wasn't a smile; it wasn't. And it wasn't a problem that his face constantly wanted to do that around those two lately. He finally slammed the door shut and switched on the heavy-duty flashlight he kept in the truck's cabin at all times. He more sensed than heard the passenger side's door opening and the other two hustling after him as he made his way towards the cabin, the rain soaking him down to the skin within moments.

The door was locked; he contemplated it for a moment, then stepped aside. “Parker, do your thing,” he commanded, directing the beam of light onto the lock. She gave a quick sound of delight and dove forwards with her lock picks appearing in her hands like magic. That lock wouldn't take her more than five seconds, he knew, but even that was probably a treat for her after an exhausting job that had her do most of the grifting. No matter how much she had grown and learned since they had become a team, coming into her own in both the grifter and the mastermind role, she would never love it as much as she did the jobs where she could be what she really was, a cat burglar and safecracker.

It was maybe eight seconds until the lock clicked and Parker stood back up. She frowned a bit at the door as she pocketed her lock picks. “Sorry, I'm off my game,” she said.

Hardison huffed and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Don't be ridiculous, babe, you're fine. A bit tired, that's all.”

Eliot nodded and gave her a quick pat on the back before he pushed open the door and went ahead into the cabin. “Stay here,” he told them as he swept the flashlight's beam through the room.

Hardison rolled his eyes so hard Eliot could hear it even though he had his back turned. “No need to unpack the guard dog routine, El,” he said, and another flashlight beam joined his. “It's a cabin in the middle of the woods. If there's anything dangerous, it'll be a bunch of spiders or a raccoon at best. C'mon, I wanna get inside and get dry.”

Eliot flashed him a nasty grin over his shoulder. “You're the geek, tell me how many horror movies there are that look just like this,” he said. “And how the black guy usually does in them.”

“Damn, man, don't you use pop culture against me, that's just wrong,” Hardison complained.

Parker snorted a laugh, still leaning against Hardison's side. “We'll protect you, Eliot and I,” she told him earnestly, then slipped from his arm and had his flashlight in her hand a blink of an eye later. “I'll help him make the security sweep, and you find out if there's electricity.”

Hardison sighed in defeat and waved them off, shaking his head. “Then go do what you gotta do.”

“Nice to know we have your approval,” Eliot said with a smile that was all teeth and very little warmth (no matter that he wanted to put a lot more into it). Nevertheless, he didn't further protest Parker's joining him and sent her off to check one of the two doors leading from the main room while he finished sweeping its meager contents – a small table with two rickety chairs, a wood stove and an old cupboard that held a little bit of crockery, a battered pot and a few cans of soup. He left Hardison to poke around near the stove, mumbling to himself about barbaric conditions and using his phone as a flashlight, and headed for the second door.

It didn't take much time to determine that this was the bathroom, such as it was, and little more to check the shabby toilet and sink – they worked, which was probably the best they could hope for. When he emerged back into the main room, he found that Parker had just done so, too, and was now perched on the table. For once he could not fault her for her propensity never to sit on a chair like a normal person; the table looked like a much safer bet.

“That's the bedroom,” she reported immediately once she caught sight of him coming back, pointing at the room she had checked. “Nothing there but a lot of dust and spiderwebs.” She grinned brightly. “Only one bed, though. We'll have to snuggle close, it's not very big.”

“Wa---” Eliot was vaguely aware that he was standing there gaping like a moron but his mind was stuck on Parker talking about snuggling in one bed.

“Huh, what was that, Eliot?” Hardison had abandoned whatever he had been doing with the stove – couldn't have been lighting a fire, he severely doubted Hardison could do that – and came over, leaning against the wall next to the table with Parker on it, both of them weirdly illuminated by the display light of Hardison's phone.

Eliot finally marshaled his thoughts enough to grind out: “I'm sure you'll be fine for one night. I'll take the floor.” Parker must have been talking about herself and Hardison anyway, no reason to assume that she wanted to snuggle with him – even if his traitorous heart had done just that.

Parker frowned. “What? No, you won't,” she said with a shake of her head. “Not when there's a bed and no reason for you to be on watch. We'll fit in there the three of us.”

“Wha-- Dammit, Parker, you can't just get into bed with any man!” Eliot protested.

“Fine, then Hardison and you can take the floor.” She folded her arms over her chest and stared at him, the challenge more conveyed by her tone than by her expression he couldn't see too clearly in the gray light on her face. Next to her, Hardison made an outraged sound, just as Eliot sputtered:

“What? No, why should Hardison sleep on the floor?”

“Well, if I can't get in bed with any man, then I can't get in bed with you two, since you're both men,” she said with a shrug, in that tone that clearly said that she thought she was being perfectly reasonable.

“But he's not any man,” Eliot pointed out, “he's your boyfriend.”

“Okay,” she said, cocking her head to the side in one of those moves that made her look sort of like a bird, “but you're not any man, too. You're Eliot. My--” she broke off, gave a short sideways glance to Hardison and then continued: “Our-- You're Eliot. So you can come, too.”

Eliot sputtered again, and how did she always manage to have that effect on him? He was Eliot goddamn Spencer, he was always in control, but she stole it from him as easily as pick-pocketing a watch was for her, with nothing more than a few words and looks. He desperately looked to Hardison. “Back me up here, c'mon, man!”

Hardison, the son of a bitch, just shrugged, his teeth white in the dim light as he grinned. “You heard the lady,” he said, “you're not any man, so you can get in bed with her, I mean, with us, any time.”

“I-- But--!” Eliot raked his left hand through his hair, casting around for the right thing to say, to make sense of these words in a way that didn't make warmth spread through his chest and … somewhere else that had made a very specific sense of it and was sitting up and taking notice. In the back of his mind, another part was busy pointing out that in a way, any man was probably better to have in your bed than Eliot Spencer. It was surprisingly easy to disregard this voice, though, just as Parker and Hardison disregarded his words whenever he pointed it out to them. He had told them so a hundred, a thousand times, even had shown them glimpses of it a few times – the swimming pool, probably even the warehouse, despite Nate's promise not to tell anyone – and they had always sailed past it without the slightest worry despite what he had been, what he still was. And he knew it was true: whatever danger he presented, it never was a danger connected to his past. Only to a present that he held sacred in his heart like a talisman, like he had held preciously little since he had lost faith in God and the American flag and whatever else he had believed in once upon a time.

“Helloo-ho!” Hardison suddenly loomed up in front of him, his face just inches away from him. “Earth to Eliot!”

Eliot honest to God flinched and took a step back. “Dammit, Hardison!”

The hacker raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “You back with us, man?” He looked him over seriously. “Honestly, I'm starting to think you're getting sick. You're usually more with it than that.”

Eliot took a deep breath and ran a hand over his face. “I'm fine,” he gritted out. He let his shoulders slump down. Sleeping in one bed it was. “You had any luck with that stove?” he asked Hardison in a bid of hopefully redirecting the conversation.

Hardison shrugged. “Not really, there's some old ashes and half-burnt wood in it but I don't have a lighter. I'm sure you can get it going, right? Don't tell me you haven't been a Boy Scout, too.”

“Nope.” Eliot hoped the relief and eagerness with which he fell into their banter was not too obvious. “Army boot camp's better than that, anyway. Plus, y’know, spending lots of time in the actual wilderness, not some parent's backyard.” He dug into one of his pockets for a lighter and wandered over to the stove, angling the flashlight beam into the open compartment.

Parker had her chin in her hands as she watched him with her usual Parker intensity. “Backyards sound boring,” she agreed. “But you should take us camping some time! We can throw Hardison off a cliff instead of a building!”

This time it was Hardison who was sputtering, and Eliot couldn't resist, he laughed, a bark that reverberated deep in his chest. “That's a great idea, darlin',” he drawled, grinning at the hacker.

“Now that's just unfair! Two against one! And no one's throwing Hardison off any cliffs, are we clear? Are we clear?”

Parker pouted at him. “Aww. You went on that fishing trip with Eliot, didn't you? I want to do something like that with you, too, with both of you.”

Eliot scowled at the reminder of how their fishing trip hadn't happened after that stand-off with a white supremacist militia. “Not exactly like that, preferably,” he growled under his breath. Louder, he said, “I think Hardison had a problem with the cliff thing, not with going on a trip with you, Parker. We can keep that in mind, okay? For now, just let's get through the night.”

In the meantime, he had kept working on the stove, pushing the old ashes to the side and rearranging the partly burnt wood into a neat pile. He looked around for some old paper to start the fire, then reconsidered. The small fire would be pretty useless to heat or light the room.

“Any of you hungry? There's some soup in cans.”

Hardison and Parker exchanged a look, then shook their heads.

Eliot sighed and stood up, brushing off the knees of his jeans. “Then we don't need to bother with the fire. We'd need some candles or a torch for some real light. Don't think it would produce much heat to get the room warm, either.”

Parker shrugged. “I don't have any candles.”

Hardison grinned. “I guess if we're cold, we just need to snuggle close in our bed,” he said, and Eliot's belly did another backflip at the thought of the three of them in one bed together.

Parker laughed and dropped down from her perch on the table, grabbed Hardison's hand, then lunged and did the same with Eliot's. “Come on, I'll show you,” she said brightly and pulled them over to the door she'd discovered the bedroom behind earlier.

“Parker, that's --- Parker, I can walk on my own,” Eliot protested but it was halfhearted at best. He turned towards Hardison but found little sympathy there.

“Just go with the flow,” the hacker told him. “Relax.”

Eliot bit back a retort and instead just took a deep breath, his feet automatically following where Parker led. Relax. As if that was a thing he could do when he was about to get into the same bed as his two best friends. As the two people he-- He-- His thoughts kept stalling but he knew the word that should go there.

In the small bedroom, Parker let go of his hand, and he took in the room and the furniture occupying it, which was just one more of those rickety chairs, with Parker's flashlight on it casting a beam through the shadows, and the bed itself. It was small indeed, and short enough that Eliot guessed Hardison's feet would hang over the edge. Parker and he should be fine – for a certain measure of fine when he was intruding where he didn't belong. Never mind that they seemingly didn't see anything wrong with it, even though they were the couple…

Meanwhile, Parker had taken possession of the bed, pulling back the covers. She looked back at the two men contemplatively, then shrugged and quickly pulled off her shirt, sending it flying toward the chair. At Eliot's spluttered “Parker!”, she shot him an annoyed glare. “What? It's wet,” she explained as she unzipped her pants and shimmied out of them, then threw them after the shirt. Eliot averted his eyes and prayed for strength.

When he looked back, she had slipped under the covers, and Hardison was sitting at the edge of the bed, taking off his shoes and socks, his phone on the quilt next to him. Hardison looked up at him, and his dark eyes were soft in the beam of Eliot's flashlight. “Eliot, man,” he started, then stopped, then started again. “Look, man, you don't have to if you don't really feel comfortab-- Ouch, Parker!” The thief had straightened up and slugged him in the back of the shoulder. “C'mon, he should only do it if he really wants to!”

“But he does!” she hissed at him, then turned towards Eliot. “You want to, right? You want to be with us. Like, here with us.” She gestured between the two of them and then the bed as a whole, and Eliot's heart constricted in his chest. Yes, God, how he wanted to.

“Because we want you, too.” She looked at him hopefully, not bothered in the least that the blankets were pooling in her lap and she was only wearing a simple black sports bra in the cabin's cool air. He tried to look away but couldn't, not when her eyes were holding him captive like that. They wanted him? Just for snuggling in a small, unheated cabin in the middle of nowhere? Or… for something more?

Eliot pushed that thought way back in his mind. He needed to stay in the here and now. And maybe, just maybe, he could just be selfish tonight and take what they were offering. If that was all it was, he would deal with it. Would it be better or worse than never having had any of it? He didn't know.

Hardison was looking at him steadily. “Your decision, El,” he told him, “but we're here. Whenever you're ready, we'll be there.”

And that—that did actually sound like this was more than just a night of snuggling close for warmth. Eliot took a deep breath, closed his eyes and released it. When he opened them again, he nodded. “Yeah,” he said roughly. “Yeah, I'm--” He stopped and decided to give up trying.

Instead, he put his flashlight on the chair next to Parker's, then bent down to untie his boots and quickly stripped off his jeans and his soggy outer layers, leaving him in a mostly dry T-shirt and boxers. A few more steps brought him to the bed where Hardison had joined Parker under the covers, his torso bare. Both of them were looking at him with so much hope that it was the easiest thing in the world to lift the edge of the covers and slip in after them. He smiled at them and said softly, “Hey.”

“Hey you,” Hardison said and as if it was nothing, he put his arm around Eliot's shoulders and pulled him close. From his other side, Parker put her arm across Hardison's body until her small, strong hand rested on Eliot's chest. “I'm glad you're here,” she told him. Then she gave him a short whack. “So now, snuggling and sleep,” she ordered. “The rest can wait until tomorrow.”

Eliot felt his smile grow into a grin and turned it into the crook of Hardison's neck. “Yes, ma'am,” he replied seriously.

And as he crowded closer to Hardison and reached for Parker with an arm across the other man's stomach, Eliot did as any good soldier would do and followed the order given by his leader. It was probably his favorite order of all time.

[kookicat]

The Price of Peace

He gives in, in the end, to the doc's increasingly worried questions, coupled with concerned looks from the team and lets the man drive him to the hospital. Maybe he’s more blasé about injuries than the rest of the team, but that doesn’t mean he’s stupid. He knows his body well enough to know when to worry, and while he’s pretty sure there’s no need now, he’s no longer responsible for just himself. He has a team who relies on him now, and that’s enough motivation to accept the offer. 

Nate herds Hardison and Parker back to the hotel and Eliot expects Sophie to go with them, but she follows him to the doctor's truck. His zip through hoodie is in her hands and she offers it to him, because the night air is taking on a chill and his skin and hair is still damp from the exertion. He slips it on, keeps his eyes averted from her as he eases his left arm into the sleeve, biting back a curse because moving hurts. It’s been a while since he did any real wrestling and the muscles in his back and thighs are letting him know they’re not happy about it. 

The doc unlocks the truck doors and climbs into the driver's seat, cell phone in hand as he makes quiet arrangements. Eliot tucks himself in the back seat next to Sophie with a groan he can't quite stifle. There's a nasty throb starting in his left shoulder and his left eye has started to swell closed. The gloves have worked to mostly protect his hands but his knees and elbows are already sore. It's nothing that he hasn't been through before, but he's not used to anyone looking out for him, more used to retreating to that week's safehouse and bunkering down until the worst injuries heal and he can take his next job. Having a team to care about -for- him is new, and he'd be lying to himself if he said he's totally comfortable with it. 

Sophie wordlessly hands him an instant ice pack and he presses it to his cheek, leaning back against the seat and letting his good eye close. His head aches, a sharper pain wrapping around his cheekbone and down through his jaw. The ibuprofen he'd swallowed back in the gym aren't doing anything but making him feel vaguely sick. The truck is chilly despite the hoodie and the ice pack isn't helping. He shivers once, a quick quake working through his body.

"Here," Sophie says quietly and shakes out one of her giant scarfs so it mostly covers him. The silk is cool on his skin at first but it warms quickly. It smells like Sophie- jasmine and musk and some hint of spice that he’s never quite figured out. It helps, blocking some of the cold sir and he feels himself relax, just a little, which helps his tight muscles. 

He has to swallow twice before he can answer and even then, his voice isn't quite as steady as he would have liked. "Thanks." He forces his good eye open and rolls his head so he can look at her. 

It's just dark enough to hide the expression on her face, but he thinks that she's frowning. "We could have found another way, you know," she says, softly. "No-one would have thought less of you." 

Something in his jaw clicks when he starts to speak. "How long would that have taken? We did the right thing." He shifts, fingers clenching under the scarf as his battered ribs join in the chorus of hurts playing on his body. "The Howorths are safe now, and Rucker can't try the same trick on anyone else." 

"Damn hard," the doctor says, "watching you taking that battering. Never seen anyone do that before." The doctor glances at them in the mirror, then turns his eyes back to the road. 

"It's what he does," Sophie says, with a tone in her voice Eliot can't quite figure out, because he’s exhausted and hurting and still feels vaguely sick. There's reluctant admiration in it, coupled with worry, because they all know there's only so much damage a body can take before something breaks beyond repair. 

It's not something he wants to think about, at least not while he's battered and bleeding. He closes his eyes again, leaning back against the seat, and lets himself doze, just a little, knowing it's a risk but doing it anyway. Trust has to start somewhere, and this is that place. 

--

"Eliot," Sophie calls softly as they pull into the hospital parking lot. He's quiet and still on the seat next to her, enough to worry her if it wasn't for the steady rise and fall of his chest. There’s a little blood on the corner of his lip, more caked in his hairline and the sight of it makes something fierce clench in her chest. We should have found another way, she thinks, even though she knows it would have taken too long, left the family they were trying to protect defenceless. As much as she hates it, he’d been right. 

He blinks awake, muscles in his jaw clenching as the pain hits again, sending measured breaths through his teeth until he gets it back under control. "Fuck," he breathes, fingers flexing in a way that makes her want to take his hand. He catches something in her expression and smiles, softly. “I’m okay,” he says and hands the scarf back to her. 

“Eliot, you’re bleeding,” Sophie replies, and hears the doctor chuckle dryly at her tone. He is though, a slow trickle threading through his hair. His face is lined with pain and she hadn't missed the slight shake in his hands when he passed the scarf back. 

He shakes his head, lost for words, and twists to open the truck door, bracing himself as he swings his legs out. Moving is a bad idea, because the slow, sluggish nausea that’s been plaguing him suddenly becomes much more acute, and he has to close his eyes, leaning back against the truck until the worst of it passes and he can breathe again. 

Cool fingers find his wrist, and he startles a little, twitching his arm away. “Sorry,” Sophie says, and reaches for his arm again. “May I try something?” 

He squints at her, then nods, once, and regrets it as a galaxy of stars filters through his brain. It’s all part and parcel of a concussion, and while he’s lived through it before, he’s not too thrilled to be living through it now. 

She presses her fingers against his wrist, feeling for the right spot, knowing she's found it when some of the tension in his jaw fades. "I learned this on a cruise. The ship had some wonderful art I was going to relocate, but we got hit by a tropical storm and I spent three days throwing up until one of the stewards took pity on me."

It helps, as does her warmth as she leans against the truck, close but not quite touching him. "Let me tell you, when he showed me this, I wanted to kiss him and kick him at the same time."

He huffs a quiet laugh at that and starts walking, gently disengaging her fingers. They follow the doc towards the hospital doors and Eliot wonders why in hell he let himself be talked into this. He has no love for hospitals, has spent more time than he'd like inside of them, and he already can't wait to be walking back out of this one. 

It's a handsome redbrick building, newer than he'd expected. The doc leads them straight into the ER and points to an open bay, where there’s already a nurse waiting. Eliot stops, thinking about walking back out to the truck, going back to the hotel and sleeping for at least twelve hours. A quick glance at Sophie’s face dissuades him of that idea; she’s frowning, clearly worried, and her eyes keep darting from the blooming bruise on his cheekbone to the still oozing cut on his hairline. 

“Eliot?” she says, and the frown deepens. “What’s the matter?” Her hand drifts to his elbow and he draws in a soft breath because the contact hurts. He's pretty sure that come the morning, he's going to be covered in nasty dark bruises. 

“Nothing,” he says, and resigns himself to god knows how much poking and prodding, taking a seat on the bed, idly rubbing his thumb over one aching knee. “Can we get this over with?” he asks the nurse, with the best smile he can muster and sighs. 

----

He walks out again four hours later, after enough scans and xrays to make him feel like he's glowing, a bag of prescription meds dangling from one hand, a pretty good buzz running through his veins and ten stitches in the cut in his scalp. All he wants is to find a vaguely horizontal place to occupy and sleep for at least eight hours. His limbs feel like they're made from lead, heavy and stiff and vaguely achy. His back aches too, each step jarring through him like he's in a car with a blown suspension. His left shoulder is taped, supporting a torn muscle, and he's starting to wish he'd accepted the offer of a sling. 

Sophie is sitting in the waiting area, silk scarf wrapped around her. She looks exhausted and he pauses, feeling a wave of fondness wash over him at the sight. She has nasty oily coffee from the ancient vending machine and she offers him the cup when he walks up to her. 

The smell makes his stomach roll and he shakes his head. "I'm good, thanks," he says, voice just a little hoarse, and thinks about sitting down. He's pretty sure he won't get back up any time soon if he does so he rests his hip on the row of chairs instead. 

He can see the question in her eyes just waiting to escape, and while she's not frowning any more he's got to know her well enough to know that she's still worried. "I'm fine. Nothing major," he says, carefully avoiding mentioning the hairline fracture in his cheekbone. "Worst of it is a couple of broken ribs and a damned concussion." 

She presses her lips together, a mix of anger and concern drawing her brows into a frown. "Just a couple of broken ribs," she mutters and shakes her head. 

"Soph," he says, fighting back a yawn. She looks up at the nickname, head tilting just a bit. "I'm fine. I've lived through worse. It'll suck for a couple weeks, that's all." He keeps his tone gentle, knows the anger in her is coming from a place of worry, knows she's probably blaming herself, because he knows for damn sure that's what he'd be doing if their positions were reversed. He'll tell Nate everything in the morning, because you don't hide injuries from your commanding officer, but Sophie doesn't need to know everything. It's just more weight to bear and God knows they're all already carrying enough. 

The doc breaks the moment by ambling over, Eliot's chart tucked under his arm. He offers it to the other man. "Figured you wouldn't want a record of your visit leaving here," he says and pulls his keys out of his pocket. "Can I interest anyone in a lift back to their hotel?" 

----

The gentle motion of the truck is soothing and he leans on the door, bruised temple resting against the cool glass and lets his mind drift. His eyes don't want to focus, turning the passing street lights into a pleasing blur. He's not sure if it's the concussion, the exhaustion, the drugs, or a combination of all three but he's content to just watch the darkened streets go by. He blinks heavy a couple of times, realising that he's dozing again and they're almost back at the hotel.

          The doc swings the truck into the parking lot and drives up to the door, pulling to a gentle stop. Eliot knows he should thank the man but he can't find the energy and settles for an exhausted nod as he opens the door and practically falls out of the vehicle. He desperately needs sleep, preferably before the painkillers start to wear off. 

         Sophie waves the doc goodbye and comes to stand at Eliot's side, one hand raised like she wants to help but isn't sure how. He digs deep, trawling reserves of energy he rarely ever uses, and forces his legs to move. They stumble into the waiting lift and he leans against the wall with his good shoulder, all the words he wants to say jumbled on his tongue. 

         She reads something of it in his expression and nods, once; message received and understood. 

        The lift stops and they walk out. He expects Sophie to head to the girls' room but she doesn't, pulling out a key card and leading the way to the third room they'd hired, the one Hardison had dubbed the control centre. "The doc said someone should keep an eye on you tonight. He listed a few gruesome ways in which you could come to peril," she says dryly and pushes the door open. "Besides, Parker snores. I hope you don't." 

       "No one has ever complained," he says and limps into the room, heading to the recliner, glad he's got running shoes on that he can just toe off unlike his usual boots. He's pretty sure he's going to have enough trouble getting up in the morning and the bed just seems like tempting fate. "I'm fine here," he tells her and eases down into the soft leather, tapping the button to raise the leg support. It takes him a second to get vaguely comfortable but he's honestly so exhausted that he's not sure comfort is really going to matter. 

       Sophie shakes a blanket out over him, watching him fight to keep his eyes open. There's something oddly endearing about it that makes her smile. "Go to sleep," she says softly and with a sigh, he does. 

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28907364/chapters/70920525 part two is posted here too. 😊

[somestorythoughts]

Leverage Hogwarts Houses

I’m sure someone’s done this but:

Nate is a Slytherin. Cunning and ambition are the key traits of the Slytherin house and I don’t think anyone will doubt Nate’s cunning. He’s got the craziest plans but they work. And he’s ambitious. As an insurance investigator he was well-known you can tell that partly by the fact that at some point he’s chased everyone on his team, each of whom are very accomplished criminals. And he loves the challenge of it all, his ambition (sometimes his team) pushes him to bigger targets. He’s more self-destructive than brave, and while he does care about helping people he’s too much of a sadistic bastard to be noble or chivalrous, he’s loyal, creative, and clever but none of these are a focus. So Slytherin.

Sophie could be a Ravenclaw but I’d say Slytherin. There’s something very ambitious about becoming a renowned art thief. I also associate the ability to manipulate people effectively, and in her case gracefully, with Slytherin cunning. However, there is a particular type of creative brilliance that can be tied to grifting, to acting, that could be very Ravenclaw. Knowledge and intelligence are key Ravenclaw traits but so is wit, which involves creativity. I read something, forgot the author, who suggested that Sophie had trouble with regular acting because there was a set story and she couldn’t build much on it, which could suggest that she has trouble when she can’t be as creative as she’d like. But creativity is in Slytherin cunning too. So mostly Slytherin with some Ravenclaw.

Hardison is a Hufflepuff with Ravenclaw tendencies. You could say a Ravenclaw with Hufflepuff tendencies but I think he’s a badger. I just posted about him being brilliant and I’m not going to repeat all of it, but Hardison is a creative genius. Intelligence, knowledge, wit (wit beyond measure), he’s got all that. So why Hufflepuff? Often we see the team turning to Sophie for advice and she’s good at that. But Hardison takes care of the team. He’s the one who finds their homes, builds their identities, does everything possible to keep his team safe, wants to sew these strangers into a family tapestry after one job because he loves the feeling of the word team. They are all loyal to each other, but I think loyalty and hard work are things Hardison particularly values as well as embodies. So Hufflepuff.

Eliot is tricky. Like Hardison he could fit 2 houses, either Gryffindor or Hufflepuff. He’s far from stupid and in a hostage scenario the team will all turn to him, and he’s passionate about cooking which is creative, but these don’t appear to be strong values or defining traits. He’s well known, but not because of ambition. Given the choice, he’d probably prefer that most people never learn his name. At the beginning, and for a lot of the show I’d say, he wouldn’t call himself noble or chivalrous, and maybe he hasn’t been for a while. But I think he might have started that way, before war and killing changed him. And yet, he pauses running away from a bomb to help this hacker he’s known for a day that he doesn’t seem to like. He never really lost the need to protect and that’s as much a Gryffindor thing as it is a Hufflepuff trait. He seems to value hard work and loyalty as well as bravery and nobility, so I really don’t know whether to put him in Gryffindor or Hufflepuff.

Parker is also tricky but I settled on Slytherin. There’s a lot of cunning required in becoming such an excellent thief and when it comes to thieving she’s very ambitious as well. Like Nate and Sophie, she loves a challenge, loves achieving increasingly complicated thefts. Daring comes into it but bravery and chivalry don’t and loyalty is something she learns, something she becomes when she is given it, when she has found a family that won’t turn her down, and hard work is important to her as it is to them all, but neither of these seem to be strong values or core traits. In thieving she is brilliant and creative so she could be Ravenclaw, but again that ambition is a very Slytherin trait. So I settled with Slytherin.

Bonus:

You know if you flipped Stirling and Nate’s positions you would probably have a pretty similar story arc. They’re a lot alike, both ambitious and cunning, both getting a thrill out of taking people down. Both all to happy to give their target enough rope to hang themselves with and yet. Not heartless. So Slytherin for him.

Maggie I would put in Ravenclaw, or she’s a Ravenclaw with Hufflepuff tendencies. Ambition doesn’t seem to be a defining trait for her, neither does chivalry though she is definitely brave, you’d need to be to keep helping the Leverage crew despite being a civilian. She’s intelligent and passionate about art, I’d say that’s fairly Ravenclaw. However. You’d need a lot of patience to be married to Nate Ford, she worked hard to get where she is and she’s an honest person, kind of The Honest Person. Those are Hufflepuff traits. I’d say Ravenclaw because intelligence and creativity are things she values, but there’s a good bit of Hufflepuff in her too.