#but Hardison and him have had to work in the fly before

[firebirdsdaughter]

Something that occurred to me this time…

… Is that Eliot deliberately brings Hardison w/ him to confront Moreau the first time. He tells Nate that he and Hardison will do it (don't worry, I also Love Hardison taking the moment to be like 'hey, are you okay?' bc those two usually express themselves through bickering so much that it clearly telegraphs just how off Eliot is being that Hardison is dropping the usual banter to be serious).

Which for one thing, says something about Eliot's confidence in Hardison in general, but also, like… Yes, Parker's probably not the choice for that introduction, it's not her style, but Nate or Sophie could also have played the part. He could have tried to go alone. But he pulls Hardison.

Obviously he's not trying to put Hardison in danger, he makes it quite clear in all other scenarios that he does not tolerate Hardison in danger (visual cues in The Gone Fishin' Job my beloveds), the others are well aware of the fact that he's Done Some Shit and are equally unaware of his connection to Moreau. And to be honest, I can't pinpoint an exact reason why I think he might have done it, chosen Hardison to be the one who finds out first. Maybe he suspected Moreau would underestimate Hardison, making him safer (relatively, if course), then someone like Nate or Sophie. Maybe he thought it would be best to have Hardison's tech skills as back up. Maybe he thought Hardison would roll w/ the punches the best. Maybe he just wanted Hardison there for morale.

I don't know, but it's a moment that didn't really occur to me the first time, but I think is actually quite meaningful in a more emotional way.

[hedgiwithapen]

Leverage timetravel, pre pilot/child ot3 meet their redemption era selves

(I took some liberties re: /meeting/) In hindsight, visiting the US Patent office was probably not their smartest move.  Never return to the scene of the crime, and all, at least not if the job was finished. 

But they'd put a pin in going back for the time machine, and not even a really bad idea could deter Hardison from an actual time machine. Well. Portal, like Eliot had said. 

It hadn't come with an instruction manual, but the three of them, Hardison, Parker, Eliot were professionals at figuring things out on the fly . Even lost in the past. Even scattered. 

Hardison knew he just had to wait, though. They'd find each other. They'd lived through the past once, they could deal with it again, especially knowing everything they did. And it wasn't like they had to live through the whole span of years, either. They just had to find each other, put the pieces back together, scattered with them, and go home. Easier said than done--he was starting to think they might have ended up in different times--but still, the Estimated range was fifteen to twenty years, so that was only five max before they met up, right?

Hardison had gotten right to work. Ads in every major newspaper in the heartland cost plenty, but he had years of criminal practice on top of knowing what tech to invest in, so he really wasn't that worried. He guessed Eliot would be betting on sports games, like in Back to the Future. Parker... well, it was hard to guess where she was. Once he and Eliot met up, they'd have to wait for her to get to them. He did have a few things to do, first.

He knocked on Nana's door, feeling like maybe he ought to be wearing a bow tie. 

"What is it? You from the county?" she asked, when she opened the door. He could see behind her a few curious faces, including his own. Damn, he'd been so tiny. 

"Yes, Ma'am," he said brightly. He could remember this day, vaguely. The box he held was more familiar than his adult face. "I'm here to install your new computer."

"I didn't order any computer," Nana said. "Run your scam someplace else."

"It's not a scam!" he heard his own voice say. "I entered a contest at school."

He had. And he'd lost. Stupid Jake Puckett had won, a kid who could have easily afforded a computer. Alec hadn't known that though, until Hardison'd checked idly. And he wasn't about to just let all of history change. Well, all his own history. 

"You got some proof of that?" Nana asked, and Alec went  scampering off to his room to find his copy of the essay.

Satisfied with the expertly forged documents (wow! it was much easier to forge past documents when you were in the time they were from!) Nana let him in and pointed to a corner desk near an outlet. 

"You ever use your own one of these?" Hardison asked Alec, who shook his head. " just the one at school. I really won?"

"Sure did. Now, let me show you what this thing can do."

~

Eliot stood at the edge of the field, a newspaper crumpled in his hand. Hardison was in Boston, if the ad was right, and of course the ad was. No one else put that much effort into a coded message. 

He watched the football fly. In two weeks, the kid throwing it would be on a bus to boot camp. He closed his eyes. There were options.  Kid wouldn't believe him, of course. There were no secrets yet, to spill as proof. And he was too stubborn to buy the warning.  A good solid tackle, though. Break his arm bad enough...

He'd thought about it. And then about the what ifs. The blood would still be spilled, he knew that. Someone else would end up on Moreau's chain. Someone else would end up with a half dug grave for Flores, and maybe keep digging it.  Everything he'd done for money, the money'd go to someone else. Job might not get done, or it might. 

He'd be there for his mother's funeral. He'd miss Katherine Clive's. Rebecca Ibanez.  the way the drinking might have gone... he'd miss Nate Ford's.  He'd go to school, like his dad wanted, never play college ball. Study something-- art history, maybe -- but no, that was him now. Not him then. Him then would be angry and broken. Him then wouldn't have... his people.

He crumped the paper further. "Dammit, Hardison," he said quietly, and walked away. 

~

Parker had a code. Some things, you just didn't do. Some were big and flashy and obvious. Some were smaller, quieter. 

Hardison would say she shouldn't do this, she knew, and she usually listened to Hardison. He knew what he was talking about, most of the time. You can't change the past. That'd been part of the lecture before they'd gone to steal the time machine.  You can do things, sure, but you always did them. 

Well, Parker hadn't done this. No one had, back the first time she'd lived through this day. But she was doing it anyways, breaking his rule and her own. You don't steal from kids who don't have anything. 

Carefully, she picked the lock on the child's bicycle chain. 

[richardsphere]

Leverage Log: The (Very) Big Bird Job

Ok time to start S5. Ok the courts just filed in favour of an airplane company. (im dissapointed, i really wanted this to be a Sesame Street crossover, but "plane" will have to do) --- Lesson of the day: Interpol makes good pretzels. Sophie is really pissed they dont get to go back to Nate's place. (I agree with Hardison, and with Elliot if you're gonna use a restaurant as cover do it well) In Sophie's defense, maybe tell her a bit earlier. But Hardison is 100% right to move places. (im assuming real life-wise, its a tax incentive thing, Portland probably gave incentives to TV crews that their previous place didnt) Also Parker and Hardison have officially said the word "dating", which implies that either they were trying to keep it on the down-low last season (did not fool Elliot or Sophie) or that they weren't "official" last season (does not fool me) --- Car-baddy scared me for a sec. Thought Hardison (and the showrunners) went through all this trouble justifying the switch to Portland, only for them to get their covers blown before any scams, cons or heists even happened. But the "they're on the move" is probably about the woman and child who just left Leverage Inc, rather then being about Leverage Inc. --- The Spruce Goose. Well yeah that most certainly is a verry big bird. Im gonna be honest, until he said "what a great man can do when the little people get out of his way", i actually sort of liked the mark. He seemed like a man genuinely passionate on the industry he works in. --- Ooh we get an actual scene of Parker doing burglary stuff. (by which i mean more then just pickpocketing) I get those scenes are probably hard to write/shoot but seeing as literally everyone in the show picks pockets and lifts ID badges every episode it was starting to seem like Parker was getting a bit redundant. --- Are they seriously going to con the guy into thinking he's flying this plane? Like yeah, i know Hardison apparently has an interest in flight simulators (IE: The cross my heart job) but that seems a bit extreme. Also i dont like that this season starts with a 9/11 reference. Like that is a bad sign for media from America that its about to get really Pro-Big Government, Anti-Islam and or generally extremely racistly patriotic. --- Yep they're gonna sell him the bridge, as well as the plane it connects to. --- Sophie sees a theatre for lease. (i assume knowing her and the teams money, she's gonna buy it outright). --- "company kills a guy, pays a fine. You kill a guy you go to jail". Nice work Nate. --- I mean yeah obviously it was in the bear... I suspected it from the start. (i just didnt write it down because, well the other option was they cast a child actor a few years too old for the character and were attempting to smooth over the gaps by giving them a cute little bear. And i felt that was a rude thing to comment on) --- Ah, Nate took a sec to compliment Hardisons' fake blueprints. --- Elliot has finally found a word he can't make sound badass. "i'm only gonna say this once; Give me the... teddy bear." Ok Parker, you just pickpocketed the magazine out of a loaded gun, Without removing the gun. Why do you feel the need to flex like this? You could've just stolen the whole gun. --- Ok Nate. You officially do not get to complain about Hardisons' goldheist. Like, nothing has gone against your plans in this con, you designed the con around Hardisons' ability to turn a plane into a flight sim, and then had him stage a crash-site. --- Well that was a verry well engineered confession. Congrats. --- Ok so our season-arc begins with an ominous shot of Hardison and Nate going behind the teams back on something. No theories yet but "all good things come to an end" is an ominous line for a shows final season to end at.

[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.

[be-gay-do-heists]

hardison/parker || masc day for parker, potentially while on date with hardison

i think it ended up a little more the dysphoria route with this one but i hope this at least touches on what u were looking for!! had a spark of an idea and had to write it :V

---

If it was just the dress, maybe Parker could stand it.

Hardison had won choosing date night this time around, and he had suggested a new restaurant that recently opened up on the other side of town. A nicer restaurant. Which meant fancier clothes and Hardison had said the dress code recommended dresses so. The dress. It had been fine, leaving the brewpub in it to go meet Hardison at the restaurant. It was comfy enough, the fabric had a nice texture, and it was the same kind of green that you could see if you looked sideways at a professionally cut emerald, which was one of their favorite colors.

It was only upon arriving at the restaurant that they realized they really, really, really did not want to be wearing it.

And if it was just the dress, maybe it would be fine. But they were out in public, and Parker had come to understand over the years that if people in public thought they had your gender clocked, you had to act, walk, and talk a certain way if you didn’t want weird stares, unwelcome attention. A performance that they didn’t particularly have the energy for if there wasn’t a con and the promise of a payout at the end of it. The first “miss” they got from the hostess made them twitch, but they made sure to keep their mask up as they saw Hardison, already at the table, who smiled sunnily as they approached and stood to help with their chair. He was wearing his purple suit, the deep plum colored one that reminded them of a bottle full of red wine.

“Wow. You look amazing, I can’t believe you’ve been hiding that dress for so long,” he said as they both sat down. “It’s not one of Sophie’s?” There was a trace of playfulness in his voice.

“No, it’s mine, I didn’t steal it,” Parker replied, latching onto his good mood for stability. They fidgeted, hyperaware of their bare shoulders and the cut of the dress around their torso. “Well, not from her anyways.”

Hardison snorted in that fond way of his. “Hey, it’s not stealing if it looks that good on you. That’s just proper re-appropriation. Anyways, you’re gonna love this place, the whole idea is normal fancy food, boring boring et cetera, but! They change the colors around so it messes with your senses and makes you experience it differently, you get me? I’m talking like green steaks, purple mashed potatoes. Cool, right?”

“Yeah, sounds great,” Parker agreed absently, discreetly hunching a little and hoping Hardison wouldn’t notice. They fiddled with the utensils on the table, which had little chameleons etched on them. That was fun. This was supposed to be fun, they reminded themselves.

“Hey, you ok?” Hardison asked, brows furrowed.

A waiter came up before he could say more. “Welcome, folks, pleasure to have you with us this evening. Can I start you with drinks?” After Hardison, concern still showing in his face ordered a fruity-sounding cocktail, the waiter turned to Parker. “And for the lady?”

They couldn’t help their flinch, knowing that Hardison saw it, and pulled out their most flawless grifting voice to respond. They deflated a little again once the waiter left.

“Shit. I shouldn’t have said dress. I should have specified that you could have worn anything you wanted, who even cares about restaurant dress codes,” the hacker said, rubbing his hands over his face. Parker had to give it to him, sometimes his brain worked faster than his computers, and he was always twice as perceptive. “Is it a they night? A he night?”

Parker shrugged a little apologetically. “I’m not sure. It’s just really, really not a she night.”

“I’m really sorry Parker, I should have checked in before we came,” Hardison sighed, and having him in the loop did actually make Parker feel a little better. “Do you wanna get out of here? I don’t want you to be uncomfortable for any longer than you have to.”

Parker immediately felt bad again. “No, you won date night, you were so excited about this place.”

“Man, don’t even sweat it,” Hardison reassured them, waving a hand. “We can come back some other time when we’re actually feeling it. Or if it’s never the date vibes, I can ask Sophie if she wants to try it sometime. You know she gets a kick out of dressing up and I’m sure she would call this place ‘an exercise in creative expression and reaction’ or something.” He smiled at Parker’s bark of laughter following his terrible impression of Sophie, which made a couple other patrons startle in their seats.

“I don’t really want to be in this dress anymore,” Parker admitted. “Maybe we could go back to the brewpub and do something there?”

“Hey, if I ever refuse a quiet night in, know that I’ve been replaced with a clone or maybe a mind-eating fungus,” Hardison beamed at them, and flagged down the waiter to pay for their drinks with a tip that made the man’s jaw drop, letting Parker lead the way out.

On the ride home, Hardison gave Parker his suit jacket, pretending he was too hot even though it was damp and cold out. It was far too big for the thief and they thought it was kind of ridiculous how it came down to almost their knees, but the broad shoulders on it made them feel good. And the wine color purple was fantastic, even though they thought it looked far better on Hardison. They said as much, and took a silent satisfaction in the way Hardison ducked his chin to hide his face.

Entering back into the safety of the brewpub and the upstairs apartment took a weight off Parker, and they sighed, kicking off their shoes and slipping off Hardison’s jacket to cast onto the back of the couch. Hardison picked up to carefully keep it from creasing with a “heaven help me” kind of look. “You got everything you wanna wear here? Need anything of mine?”

“Mostly, but…” Parker thought aloud. “Could I borrow one of your shirts? The soft ones?”

Hardison nodded fondly. “Sure thing, lemme grab one.” While he was in the bedroom, Parker stripped off their dress like it was burning them, shaking the feeling of it away once it was off. They spotted their good jeans on the chair by the hallway that Hardison liked to call “Parker’s wardrobe,” where all the clothes they had left while over lived, and rushed to put them on. They were comfy and boxy and had a button-up fly. More buttons felt good.

“Incoming,” Hardison’s voice called, and he entered with his eyes covered, tossing a shirt in their direction. Parker jumped to catch it, and quietly approved of his selection, a wooly flannel type. They wiggled it on, tucking it in slightly, and exhaled in relief on how delightfully big it was, draping off the prominent muscles in their shoulders, leaving enough room on their torso so that the fabric wouldn’t cling to them. They rolled up the sleeves to expose their strong forearms, looked down at their broad hands. Yeah, this was much better, they thought, tying up their hair high.

“I’ve still got those canvases from last time, and the same paints, if you wanna do that. Ooh, I just got some good charcoal too if you’d rather sketch,” Hardison was saying, sifting through his art supplies. Parker bounded over and pressed up against his side. He jumped slightly but turned to look at them. “Feeling better?”

“Lots,” Parker hummed.

The hacker took in their outfit change. “And looking damn handsome too. Real suave, James Dean kinda look.” When Parker wryly grinned and crossed their arms, squaring their shoulders and standing tall, he mimed a swoon (Parker could see the slight, genuine flush that rose to his face). “So what do you wanna do tonight?”

“Dunno, it’s still your date night,” Parker replied, putting a little more husk in their voice and enjoying the way they could see Hardison’s thoughts stutter slightly.

He recovered quickly. “Well, all I want is a nice night in with my fella, whatever we do is gonna be more than alright with me.”

Parker felt another glow of joy at the endearment, and moved to wrap their arms tightly around him, one hand coming up to grip the back of the hacker’s neck. “Thanks Hardison. I really mean it.”

Hardison softened a little against their firm embrace. “Of course, I never want you to be uncomfortable. I love you.”

“I know,” Parker responded, and smiled mischievously into Hardison’s shoulder as he sputtered.

“Oh no you did not—“

[schrijverr]

Surprise Hit

On a con Eliot is recognized by someone who has a hit on him and has to run.

On AO3.

Ships: none

Warnings: mentions of some mafia dealings

~~~~~~~~~~~

The con went to shit.

This happened often enough with a mark not making the expected choice, a firewall taking longer to crack than anticipated or someone showing up that was not supposed to. It was normal, however the way it went to shit this time was unique. “Nate, I got a problem,” Eliot announced.

“What is it?” Nate asked over the coms. It was an integral part of the plan that Eliot talked to their mark, John Fernsby, and convinced him to meet with Sophie. Nate would have done it, but he had already been the one to go in and convince the billionaire that thebusiness was worth investing in and Hardison was needed to help Parker into the safe. It had to be Eliot.

But Eliot said there was a problem, which was bad. However, it was about to get worse when Eliot answered: “He’s talking with a foreign dignitary, but I know he isn’t. That’s Mikhail Volkov, Russian mob. He has a hit out on me.”

“The fuck, man,” Hardison replied.

“I didn’t pick it either, okay,” Eliot hissed back. “But if he sees me, we’re fucked. Well, I’m fucked and someone has to take my part in the con.”

Hardison had pulled up the camera feed of the gala and watched how Eliot turned away from the mark and tried to leave them room without pulling any attention to himself. He almost managed too, were it not for a serenade band coming in right as he was near the exit.

It was such a stupid little thing that they couldn't have predicted and it was so incredibly ill-timed that Eliot had no room to come up with something. Mikhail turned to the band and saw Eliot, his brow furrowed and he yelled: “Stop that man!” as Eliot started to sprint, multiple people now on his trail.

He pushed over furniture behind him and swerved while a few bullets started to fly around his head, dangerously close. In his ear Hardison was giving him directions to Lucille, but he knew he could not return to the team. Not right now.

The Russian mob was not known for their leniency and if they thought he had people he worked with, then they would only target them as well. No, he had to go into hiding on his own and return to them later, when he could shake off his pursuers. In his ear he heard Hardison rant at him as he took the wrong turn, but Eliot didn’t care. He had a plan.

On the street it was easier to disappear, though he got many looks from people as they cleared the way for him while he ran like a madman. There were a few screams when the Russians appeared behind him with guns.

If it were a normal day and he was on his own, he would have stayed to fight them, but he was wearing a suit he couldn't easily fight in and Sophie and Parker had still been in the building, he couldn't risk them for something stupid he’d done in the past. And when he was outside, he didn’t have the surprise advantage or the closeness to take on that many guys with guns.

So, he ran.

His lungs were burning in his chest and his legs would be jelly were it not for the fact that he regularly ran long tracks in case he got in this exact situation.

It took a while, but the bullets stopped flying around his head and he couldn't hear any footsteps behind him anymore. He took a moment to focus on the chatter over the coms. His brain hadn’t heardany of the key words to get his attention in the background, so he assumed it was all fine.

“Eliot, Eliot, are you listening to me?” That was Nate.

“I’m here,” he grunted, checking in the alley if there was anyone still following, before starting to climb the fire escape.

“What are you doing? Hardison’s GPS says you’re nowhere near the hotel. We need to regroup and figure out our next move,” Nate said as Sophie asked: “Are you okay, Eliot?”

He replied: “I’m fine, Sophie. Just didn’t want to lead a group of armed mobster to our hotel room when their goal is to kill me and all my associates.”

“They’re coming to kill us?” Hardison’s squeaky voice came through the speaker.

“Not if they don’t know I’m with you,” Eliot assured him, “which is why I’m not at the hotel right now. I think I’ve shaken them off, but just in case I’m taking a long way round. Probably won’t come through the doors.”

Thenhe tuned them out again. It might be rude and he heard they were still asking him all sorts of questions, but he wasn’t in the mood to answer. He had other things to focus on and the last thing he wanted was to tell them why there was a hit on his head from this particular mobster.

Going through the city over the roof, he saw a few familiar stances and haircuts stationed at public places where he would hide, as well as at the hotels and he knew he had made the right decision to take this route.

Mentally he was trying to figure out why Mikhail was here of all places talking with their mark. It could be that he was laundering money and their mark having a connection with the mob could both help and be an issue. He could get into witness protection in turn for information, but it was also proof that his business wasn’t clean, even if they had wanted to get him for the stealing of company funds that screwed over his employees’ safety.

But that was not his business to think about, but Nate’s. He would wait for what the man had to say about this development, but in order to do that, he needed to get back to the hotel.

There were also “guards” at the entrance of their hotel, but the team was only on the fourth floor and while they weren’t close to the fire escape, Eliot could get up high and then go side wards over the ridge to their window.

He gave Hardison a heart attack when he got at the window. They hadn’t left it open, much to his chagrin, but were luckily there to open it for him and it was better not to have a weakness in the defense, so he couldn't blame them.

“What the hell, man,” Hardison said. “Give someone a warning before you go around showing up in front of the window. Did you even have safety or something? We’re up high. You could have fallen to your death, Eliot.”

“Yeah and if I had gone through the front door, I would have been shot,” he pointed out tiredly from where he was lying on the floor.

Parker was looking out the window and smiled: “Oeh, that’s a good climbing ridge indeed.”

“Woman!” Hardison exclaimed, while Eliot said: “We could do without the attention to our room, Parker, maybe next time.” She looked sad and glanced over one more time, before closing the window with a pout.

“Care to explain what happened?” Nate asked as he leaned over him. He did that face where he attempted innocence, but failed.

“Got recognized by someone who’s sort of actively trying to kill me,” Eliot replied with what they already knew.

“Sort of actively?” Sophie asked and Eliot was glad he could explain something not that bad to them instead of the other stuff. “Yeah, there’s a difference between saying, ‘hey if you manage to kill this person and prove it you get money,’ and ‘I am hiring you to kill this person within a time frame.’ Mikhail is the former. If I die, he would be happy, but he’s not putting extra resources in finding me and eliminating me.”

“And why would be be happy if you’re dead?” Fucking Nate always sticking his nose everywhere.

“I met him once,” Eliot wasn’t giving him shit.

“Would I be correct in assuming that the meeting ended in a loss on his end?” Nate replied.

“Maybe.” He was neither confirming or denying, not if there was no explicit reason. He hadn’t felt bad about the blow to Mikhail’s organization. It hadn’t been the worst he’d done and Mikhail had a smuggling ring of sex workers and that had been awful to find.

“Okay, so we know Fernsby has connections to the Russian mob,” Nate thought out loud. “So, he’s not only stealing money from his employees, but laundering dirty money as well. If we can tie those together then we’re set.”

“Mikhail has a weakness for brunettes,” Eliot informed him, not telling him how he got that tidbit of knowledge. “He also likes gambling.”

Nate got a glint in his eye as he looked to Sophie, who smiled back. Of course those two would have a plan without needing to communicate.

“You’re out for the rest of the con,” Nate told him. “Can’t have you risk the entire thing if you’re recognized.”

“What? No!” Eliot sat up. “I need to be there to have your back. With the Russians it’s only going to get more dangerous. I’m not leaving you to your fate with those people, they’re dangerous, Nate. This isn’t just some cushy billionaire anymore.”

“And what if he gets suspicious of Sophie because of you, what will you do then, Eliot?” Nate shot back. “I’m not saying you need to stay here, but I am saying you need to keep out of sight. You’re with Hardison in Lucille.”

Eliot wanted to protest, wanted to be closer to the danger in case it went to shit, he wanted to be there when a mistake from his past came back, but he couldn't argue with Nate’s logic and sometimes he hated that about the man.

So, he found himself watching the screens in Lucille as Sophie tried to get Mikhail to make a gamble on her company, to ditch Fernsby, because he was doing it without him and leaving him out of the profits.

He was filled with jittery energy, but so far so good.

“Hey, Eliot,” Hardison opened. “What’s it like, you know, to have a hit on your head? I mean, I’m wanted in some countries, but that’s just boring government stuff, not actual people, like persons, wanting me dead personally, you know.”

“Are you really asking me what it’s like when someone wants you killed?” Eliot asked him.

“I guess,” Hardison shrugged, trying not to look like he wanted to know the answer and failing miserably.

“It’s not that different from being wanted by the government, I suppose,” Eliot finally answered, surprising Hardison. “You just gotta watch out for different things and hope no one is desperate enough for cash to go after you. I have a good enough reputation that hardly anyone tries, but I’ve had periods where I had multiple people on my trail across a dozen countries. It was exhausting, but I get it. Kill me and you can make a lot of people with a lot of money happy.”

“Wait, hold on, reverse and repeat,” Hardison said. “A lot of people?”

“Yeah,” Eliot replied, didn’t Hardison know this? “I got more than one hit on my head. I think it’s five. Used to be six, but one of them died and the bounty fell through. Though I never knew if that one English guy put one on my head as well. And of course, the countries, but those are always lazy about it, so I don’t worrry too much about those.”

“What the fuck, man.”

Eliot didn’t see the big deal. He had done a lot to deserve it and he had learned to live with it. He hadalways kept one eye open anyway.

He focused back on the screen, despite the hiccup earlier with him, the con ran smoothly on its new course and Sophie was phenomenal as he pitted the two guys against one another, making them sell each other out in the end.

Nate was there with the police and both were arrested with illegal cash on their hands and a lot of bank records detailing their dirty schemes as well as showing the abysmal circumstances of the workers that had gone unaddressed in favor of laundering money.

Later when they were sitting in the bar, Nate turned to him and asked: “Any more of that we should be worried about?”

Before Eliot could answer, Hardison had jumped in: “Apparently between five and six more times.”

“No, between four and five,” Eliot corrected. “Mikhail is no longer on the list, but honestly we couldn't have predicted this and there are too many bad guys I’ve known, double crossed, worked for or left that are still out there. We can’t account for all of them. I’ll try to be aware of which marks could have ties to other’s I’ve known, but you don’t get to be good in my line of work without enemies.”

Nate wanted to say something else, but Sophie was quicker. “I’m not keeping track of all the people I have grifted either, Nate,” she said. “We all have a past and you’re not harping me about that or Parker on all she’s stolen. Just because Eliot’s past is a bit different, doesn’t mean we can treat it differently in our team.”

Eliot didn’t fully agree with the comparison. His enemies we’re not the same and one of them coming back would be worse than it was for others.

Still, he couldn't bring himself to disagree with her. Not right now.

He thought of all the people he killed, all the families he’d left behind with one member less. He thought of Moreau and the horrible things he’d done for that man. He thought of the US Army that had turned him into a killer and set him loose on foreign soil for the first time.

And he thought of his team. Of how glad he was he knew them and how they made him better and didn’t force him to be a person he hated. How much they meant to him and how badly he didn’t want to loose that.

So he stayed quiet and let Sophie defend him, hoping his past would not come back like that again.

~~

A/N:

Sorry that the con is kinda vague, I only had the ‘the mark/someone there has a hit on Eliot and he needs to run’ and no clear plan on running the con in the background. Hope it was still enjoyable :D

[leverage-ot3]

part 3 of my leverage witcher!au because I can’t resist myself.

featuring: hardison and eliot meeting dragon!parker for the first time. chaos ensues

part 1

part 2

- - - - -

Hardison giggled with unrestrained glee as the small dragon dashed between Eliot’s legs. The vial glowed brightly between its small, sharp teeth.

Eliot growled, “You gonna help me or are you gonna just stand there?”

“Looks like you have it under control man.” He snorted as the dragon skittered up a tree. A part of him wondered why it didn’t just take off and fly away, but he was enjoying the show too much to entertain the thought.

“Hey, get back here!” Eliot made a grab for the dragon but it just climbed higher, perching on a branch high enough above his head where it was just out of reach.

It peered down at them with slitted, bright green eyes. Hardison stared back at it as Eliot grumbled some more under his breath. He rolled his eyes and sighed, “Hey little guy, I don’t think you want that potion. I think the poison in it might taste bad to you.” Reasoning with a dragon. How much weirder could Hardison’s day get?

A distinctly feminine voice entered their heads as the dragon blinked at them, “It’s shiny. I like shiny things.”

Okay, Hardison could work with that. “What if I gave you some something else shiny?”

Her eyes gleamed and Hardison could swear he saw mischief in them. “Like what?”

“What do you want?”

“The swords could do.”

“The swords definitely will not do,” Eliot snapped. The dragon huffed smoke out of her nose at his tone.

“Eliot,” Hardison whispered, knowing the witcher could hear his lowered voice, “don’t antagonize the dragon that can fly away with your very expensive potion at any moment.”

Eliot pinched the bridge of his nose, “Not the swords- something else.”

She tilted her head, her slitted eyes squinting at the duo below her. “The brooch on the pommel?”

Hardison winced and frantically shook his head. Eliot grunted out a firm ‘no’.

“So definitely not the medallion then?”

“No.”

Hardison’s face lit up. “I have a lucky coin. You can have it if you take care of it and promise to give us the potion back.”

The dragon weighed her options. A coin was not much. After all, she had a hoard filled with riches already. But the bard’s coin had value, even if only to him. She loves valuable things. “Is it shiny?”

Hardison smiled, pulling it out of his pants pocket. He held it up so that the sunlight would catch the surface, making it gleam. “The shiniest.”

The dragon nodded her head in agreement before gliding off the branch and onto the ground between the two men. She gently put the vial down on the ground and extended a claws upwards. “Okay. Coin?”

Hardison glanced at Eliot and placed the coin in her waiting claws. As she inspected it, he picked up the vial and tossed it to Eliot.

“Dammit Hardison!” Eliot hissed. He caught the vial gracefully, of course. But it was expensive and Hardison should be the last person throwing things.

Hardison rolled his eyes and turned back towards the dragon who now grasped the coin securely in her right claws. “Thank you-” He realized he didn’t have a name to thank her by. “if I may ask, what is your name?”

The dragon hesitated for a moment, unsure if she should tell them. They were strangers, but neither of them were human and non-humans were generally less likely to want to harm her.

And they were nice to her.

Sure, the witcher was a little grouchy, but she did try to steal his potion after all. And the bard was nice and kind of funny.

“Parker. You can call me Parker.”

~~~ One Week of Chaos and Bonding Later ~~~

“She’s a troublemaker,” Eliot grumbled, eyeing Parker as she slept in her dragon form in the middle of the fire.

“She’s a delight,” Hardison grinned, “is what she is.”

“You just like her because she gives me a headache.”

Hardison winked, “Now why would I want that?”

[mvsicinthedvrk]

i’m going to go ahead and make this a combination starter/plot call because i don’t have the time or patience to do one call and then the other 

anyway, please LIKE if you want to plot, or REPLY W/ A CHARACTER OF YOURS if you just want a starter & i’ll either wing it or message you to plot if i have no idea

✌️

still in D.C. (in order of “dealing with this fine” to “not dealing well with this at ALL”):

ki yu ri-- ( 3 / ? with hardison, melody, yeon ) she’s not going to let these monsters take her down, no way. she can be pretty uh feral if the situation calls for it, which i believe it probably will. idk that she’ll want to partner with anyone she doesn’t know, but she can help watch your character’s back temporarily in exchange for food/supplies/etc.

peter pettigrew-- ( 1 / ? with john watson ) he’s a survivalist so he’ll be alright, but he will also ONLY be looking out for himself, so. he does have a functional wand as well. 

martin blackwood-- ( 4 / ? with entrapta, chi woo, connor walsh, angelica schuyler ) he’s faced a lot of nonsense at the Institute. this is just. another day. he’s exhausted already. honestly you’ll probably find him in a zombie-infested library researching as many creatures as he can to figure out their weaknesses before making a plan to deal with them, all while staying as in-hiding as he can.

noah czerny-- ( 1 / ? with magnus bane ) he’s dead & a ghost already?? so he’s not really concerned about himself. he can probably do communication runs between people from different parts of the city. and he can carry small objects at a time so he can bring supplies to people. at the same time, he is worried about his friends, so that is a bit of a distraction

patroclus-- ( 2 / ? with cullen rutherford, will solace ) he’s fought in wars before. nothing like zombies, of course, and he doesn’t like to kill things if he doesn’t have to, so he’ll be trying to stay away from the main areas of danger if at all possible. i can see him getting trapped by a weeping angel or something.

yuri plisetsky-- ( 3 / ? with sandor clegane, lizzie midford, light yagami ) will be freaking out and angry that this shit is happening. can this city not calm down for two weeks at a time????? anyway, he really has no strategy other than “chuck heavy things at the monsters and run” so, questionable success in his future

orpheus-- ( 2 / ? with ko mun yeong, annabeth chase ) much like on the cruise, he doesn’t do well when others are getting hurt or when there’s massive danger. overwhelmed with worry for everyone in the city that he knows and cares about. he’ll probably try to sing at the monsters to make them calm down. it will not work

on the Island (again, in order of “dealing with this well” to “dealing significantly less well”):

wen kexing-- ( 1 / ? with luke skywalker ) his wuxia abilities, especially his qinggong lightness skills (like his genre’s version of flying, essentially) will be handy. he can also heal others by giving them energy, which might be useful. he’s had to rule over a gang of thousands of criminals for years; he feels pretty confident he can handle a couple natural/supernatural disasters.

wei wuxian-- ( 5 / ? with jin ling, kurt hummel, jester lavorre, jiang yanli / texts with vic weasley ) personality-wise, he’s solid in a crisis. he’s really creative and knows enough physics/engineering to be able to rig up some preventative measures depending on what disaster he’s stuck in. unfortunately, he does still lack his memory so he’s not as useful as he would’ve been if he had his cultivation abilities. 

melanie king-- ( 3 / ? with glinda, jaina solo, bianca di angelo ) she’s not really about to trust anyone, friend or foe, to help her in this scenario. and she can’t punch her way out of an acid rain storm, etc, so... I’m not sure how well she’ll fare

pippin took-- ( 3 / ? with hallie parker, arwen, will byers ) on the plus side: woo, finally some adventure he’s been craving! some great stories are going to come out of this! on the negative side: he has very few useful skills or abilities other than the enthusiasm to live. he’s probably sunk tbh.

[kookicat]

To Bid Goodbye to the Past - Part Two

The magnitude of what he's done doesn't hit him until he's stepping into the first class cabin for the plane journey home. He pauses, ignoring the annoyed huff from the passenger behind him, and takes a second to just breathe, because he's pretty sure if he doesn't, he's going to throw up. His legs feel like they don't want to hold him and he braces one hand against the seat beside him while he gets the reaction under control, feeling the shake in his hands. 

The gun is warm from his body, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world to wrap his fingers around the grip, to bring it up-

"Move it, pal," the jerk behind him says, and nudges Eliot hard with his laptop bag. 

It takes an act of will for Eliot not to turn around and rearrange the man's teeth. "Shut the fuck up," he rasps instead, hearing just how on edge he is in his own voice. 

He moves forwards, dropping into his seat, pressing his head back against the cushion, counting breaths until his heart doesn't feel like it's going to explode right out of his chest. Until he can control the shake in his hands. The seat is in its own enclosure, hiding him from the other passengers, and he's damn grateful for that. 

The bastard is dead, he thinks. He can't hurt us again. He can't hurt me again. It hits him again, the relief, and it's so profound he doesn't know if he wants to laugh or sob under the weight of it. In the end, he does neither, just scrubs a hand over his face and pinches his eyes closed while he tucks all of it away in a mental box, to deal with later, when he's somewhere secure. 

Soft footsteps make him open his eyes. A red headed flight attendant is making her way down the aisle towards him. 

"Nervous?" she says, "Don't worry, sir. Flying is really very safe now. Can I get you a drink?" 

He blinks at her, because out of all the things that are likely to kill him, a plane crash is damn low on that list. "Whiskey, on the rocks," he says and forces a smile that feels sickly. The travel and the stress and just the sheer physical effect of seeing Damien Moreau again are starting to bite. His hands ache, a phantom throb that has more to do with his history with guns than any real physical ailment. A naggy headache spreads across his temples, a warning that he needs to sleep and eat. "Do you have any crackers? Something bland?" he asks, because his stomach is a bit unsettled. 

"Sure thing, hon," she says with a smile and heads off. 

He's exhausted but he's too wired to even think about sleeping. The cabin is quiet, just three passengers, and he silently thanks Hardison's genius, because if he'd been in economy, he's pretty sure he'd have lost it by now. The peaceful atmosphere is soothing and he runs through his breathing exercises again, nodding thanks as the flight attendant returns with his drink and a package of peanut butter crackers. 

"There you go, hun," she says and pats him on the arm.

He almost jumps at the unexpected contact, and feels the shake start in his fingers again. "Thank you," he manages to say, and swallows a generous mouthful of the liquor. It burns on the way down, and he relishes the feeling, because it's something he can use to ground himself. 

"Press the button there if you need anything," she says and leaves him. 

He leans back, staring at the ceiling, listening to the engines as they taxi. Despite his best intentions, he's asleep before the big plane makes it into the air. 

----

He knows he's not alone as soon as he steps into his apartment. It's quiet, but the place has a disturbed feel that sets his nerves on edge for a long second before he sniffs and catches the scent of tangerine shampoo and gummy frogs. It's the scent of home to him, lets him relax enough to unclench his fingers from the duffle bag, before the implications hit and he tenses up all over again, just for a very different reason. He scrubs a hand over his face and heads towards the flicker of the TV, because he's never hidden from confrontation and he's not about to start now. 

They're sprawled on the big leather couch, covered in a beautiful cashmere throw gifted to him by Sophie. Just the sight makes fondness bloom in his chest, brings a contented smile to his lips, even if he is worried about how they're going to react to what he did. It's too late to change it, and he wouldn't, even if he had the option, because for the first time in a long time, he can't feel the eyes on the back of his neck, doesn't feel hunted, and that's worth more than he can put into words. He doesn't think they'll hate him, but he's not sure and if they do, he knows it'll break something inside of him that he'll never be able to fix. 

The credits roll on the TV- it's one of the Star Wars movies, though he's too damn tired to remember which one- and he picks up the remote quietly, switching the TV off. 

Parker shifts, eyes opening slowly. "You're back," she says, "Did you kill him?" 

He thinks about lying, denying it, but he's always been truthful with her- apart from the single moment when he let the pain of his past show and begged her for mercy, and that was as much for her benefit as his. 

"Yes," he says and meets her eyes squarely, straightening his shoulders in unconscious reflex. 

A beat passes and he feels his heart rate pick up, feels the prickle as sweat breaks out along the curve of his lower back, because she's studying him like he's a new and particularly perplexing safe. 

"Good," Hardison says, voice heavy with sleep, but clear. "I hope that motherfucker rots in hell." 

"What he said," Parker says, and shifts over, so there's space on the couch for Eliot. 

He sits, because the relief in their simple and straightforward acceptance has gone straight to his knees and it's a choice between sitting and falling down. There's a hundred things he wants to say, defending his actions, explaining them, but there's also a part of him that never wants to think or speak about Damien Moreau ever again and he surrenders to that part, shuddering as the tension leaves him. 

"He was a very bad man," Parker says, and flips the blanket back over them. "Even with him in jail, we weren't safe, were we?" 

"No," Eliot says, tipping his head back against the couch, so he's looking at the ceiling. "It was just a matter of time, before he found a way out and came looking for revenge." He shudders again, for a very different reason, and licks his lips. "And believe me, it wouldn't have been pretty." 

"I'm glad, man," Hardison says. "But-" he pauses, glancing at Eliot, seeing just how much this one cost him. "But I'm sorry it had to be you." 

"I'm not," Eliot says, letting his eyes close. "It was always going to be me. Just a matter of when." 

"I'm disappointed," Parker says, and Eliot peels an eye open to look at her, feeling the sleepy contentment vanish at her serious tone. 

"Why, mama?" Hardison asks, before Eliot can. 

"I didn't get to taze him," she says, and sets them all off laughing. 

[anipologist]

Jailbreak+Fugitives+Leverage

I freely admit this is a totally random fic prompt that came to mind and wouldn’t leave. Someone on the team (not Mac since he’s already gotten the falsely accused of terrorism shirt) gets into deep trouble, like accused of treason or something trouble and they have literally no evidence otherwise so they ended up jailbreaking them and going on the lam. This is the resulting conversation as they flee in a “borrowed” mini-van from the early 2000s. Bonus points if it’s eggplant colored and they had to toss like three car seats in the back.

Also Jack never left and Russ and Desi are still around because I think it would be amusing to see them interact with each other....and codex still happened I guess, oh and they are all hopeless nerds...

(Also featuring a ridiculous amount of fourth wall breaking and pop culture references.) Anyways...

“We are not going to be the Leverage team” Mac says, half resigned, and half amused.

“Dude, we are so Leverage!” repeats Bozer with far too much enthusiasm for someone recently involved in a jailbreak and laundry list of felonies.      

“We are on the run,” points out Riley, “and you bet I can out Hardison anyone I want to.”

“True Riles,” Mac concedes, “But we’re not thieves, and this is not going to be a hi-tech rehash of Robin Hood.”

“You know who else was always insisting that Leverage weren’t thieves?” Bozer taunts.

Mac laughs for the first time in days, “Oh no, I am not going to be the Nate Ford in whatever this is, there is nobody like me in that show at all. Granted Riley is our Hardison, and somehow we ended up with twin Spencers.”

Desi and Jack shoot him identical startled looks.

“I am not Elliot Spencer.”

“Spencer, really?”

“What exactly are you lot discussing now?” Russ grumbles the backseat.

“Oh, Taylor is definitely Nate Ford” adds Desi, “He’s got the mind-tricks and everything.”

“Besides, he technically owns Phoenix” adds Mac, “So I guess Bozer and Mattie get to be Sophie and Parker…”

“Oh, it’s on Blondie,” Matty says laughing, “Who exactly are you then?”

“Nightwing to our Teen Titans,” laughs Riley, with a sideways wink at Bozer, “People do call you Boy Wonder an awful lot.”

“Murdoc calls me that…” mutters Mac unhappily, “and anyways I don’t look anything like Nightwing.”

“Whatever you say blue-eyes” and Desi smiles.

“If we’re going with superheroes, he’s Cap obviously,” argues Jack with a grin.

“Oh?” asks Matty.

“Well, itty bitty blond soldier boy? That’s not ringing any bells?”

“Mad scientist addition of Robin Hood” votes Bozer.

“Et tu Boze?” Mac quotes faux-mournfully, “It’s not like there are a lot of good mad scientist archetypes.”

“Well, there’s always Dr. Bishop from Fringe…” continues Bozer, “He’s not a bad mad scientist exactly.”

“He experimented on kids!” Mac says, scandalized into speaking rather louder than he had intended, “and he was insane and missing parts of his brain. Definitely not!”

“Oh, Mac is definitely more Peter Bishop…” says Russ thoughtlessly, “missing father, MIT dropout, reckless and doesn’t carry a gun, engineering skills…abandonment issues, crazy family that wants to destroy stuff…”

He trails off having finally noticed the glare that Matty is leveling at him.

“Well, I happen to know that I was not kidnapped from another universe,” Mac says with forced laughter after an awkward silence.

“Are you sure you’re not from another universe?” Jack asks, “cuz sometimes I wonder…”

“Imagine that,” laughs Riley, “Another Mac, another Jack…”

“What would alt-Mac be like I wonder?” asks Jack, “What do you’ll think?

“Longer hair, he can cook and he actually works at a think-tank…” volunteers Bozer.

“Ooo...kay, that was very specific and very quick?” Mac shoots him a suspicious glance.

“Don’t you guys spend time considering alternate realties?” asks Bozer with studied innocence, “I’ve also considered Sliders-style evil Mac, like Mac with Home Alone levels of evil traps in his lair and he’s really good at making bombs...”

“He’s already good at that Bozer...” says Russ dryly and another awkward silence ensues before Riley clears her throat.

“Well I think alt-Jack is probably a fly-by-night pilot who bums living space off of alt-Mac,” Riley says crisply with a smirk at Jack.

“Ouch” says a voice that sounds suspiciously like Bozer, except that he is rather obviously eating a chip by the time that Jack turns to glare at him.

Mac send her a greatful smile, he’d rather not think of evil versions of himself just yet, no matter what ancient tv show Bozer has been watching.

[leverage-commentary]

Leverage Season 2, Episode 7, The Two Live Crew Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Dean: Hi, I’m Dean Devlin, Executive Producer and Director of this episode of Leverage.

Amy: Hi, I’m Amy Berg, Supervising Producer and Writer of this episode.

John: John Rogers, Executive Producer and Co-Writer of this episode. Hold on. [Opens bee.] There we go.

[Laughter]

Dean: The beer has been opened.

John: The Guiness has been opened. Amy Berg where did this episode come from?

Amy: Well, I mean, when you have a show about a team of con men sort of- one of the first episodes that you think of is- 

John: Yeah, it was like one of the first ones we broke- we talked about last season-

Amy: What happens when they go up against another team of con men? And obviously that's not something you really wanna, sort of, pull the trigger on during season one, so we sort of sat on it for a bit.

Dean: But we talked about it a lot in season one.

Amy: We did talk about it.

John: Yeah. But really you have to have your- part of the fun is having your characters and opposition- of people that make a difference, having the opposition of you need to know the characters really well.

Amy: You need to learn who our people are before we can bring in a new set of people.

John: Yeah, so it was a lot of fun putting together the different combinations and different variations on this- the evil team of evil Leverage.

Amy: Loves it.

John: Why the Gustav Klimt?

Amy: The Gustav Klimpt, now you're testing me and it's been a while, I believe this painting was called Higeia and it was technically destroyed by the Nazis in 1945. And it was sort of a choice to pick a painting that wasn't actually in existence, so we weren’t stepping on anybody's toes, saying that this was a stolen painting.

John: The likeless- the equivalent of likeness rights on paintings is an enormous pain in the ass so as a matter of fact, there's a statue of Lincoln in the park that's in the sequence later that we shot and then we had to get the rights to using that statute, even in the background.

Dean: Yeah.

John: Now that's very tricky stuff. Dean tell us about the fun of shooting this.

Dean: Well we wanted to try and keep perpetual motion and show two different attempts. Our team, which tries to do a low tech break in through basically just cutting through a wall through this cheapo office behind the high tech office, and then the daring team that actually chases the bullet head on.

John: Yeah. And there is our villain, Griffin.

Amy: Griffin Dunne.

John: Exactly.

Dean: I've wanted to work with Griffin my whole life. I remember seeing him in An American Werewolf Through London and just falling madly in love with this guy; I just thought he was amazing. And then when we went to do this episode, it was actually Tim Hutton who said, ‘What do you think about my pal Griffin Dunne playing this part?’ And it was just like a gift from heaven.

John: Oh yeah, we are all over that. And this is a lot of fun and we built a fake wall- And that is Tim's assistant, correct?

Amy: That’s that’s Elle, yeah.

John: That's Elle, Tim’s assistant, in her big screen debut with us tormenting her.

Amy: Indeed. And they're playing detectives Marlow and Archer who, as you know, is an homage to both Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald.

John: That's right.

Dean: And there's fun outtakes from that which will be in the gag reel.

Amy: Excellent. This should have a lot of gag reel footage.

John: It's also- to tell you what's weird is, Archer actually- 

Amy: Was the name of Tim Spades partner in [mumbles]?

John: That's right. That's what the original reference was. That’s also Ross Mcdonald.

Amy: But Ross Mcdonald was inspired by that character in order.

John: Really?

Amy: Yeah.

John: I didn't know that. There you go.

Dean: Fans of the show In Treatment should know that this actress, Noa Tishby, is actually the Executive Producer of In Treatment on HBO.

John: That's right Noa is an Israli actress, she was in Israel, she saw the original show, she dug in, got the rights herself, brought it to America, and wound up executive producing the American version.

Amy: By the way, that's Wil Wheaton.

[Laughter]

Amy: Which is so awesome. And who cast Will Wheaton in this episode, John Rogers?

John: Well I technically cast him, but I believe you had the idea of hiring Wil Wheaton because I'm the one who actually signed the papers.

Amy: Thank you, I appreciate the credit on that.

John: Yes.

Dean: And I was so happy because Wil Wheaton and I actually used to play on the same hockey team together.

Amy: That's right.

Dean: And this was back when he was on Star Trek. And I was dumb enough to allow him to play goalie at the time and-

[Laughter]

Dean: And [Unintelligible]’s son took a slapshot that cracked his helmet open and gave him 17 stitches across the forehead.

Amy: You helped break Wil Wheaton's face.

Dean: And the producers of Star Trek called me screaming at me and forbidding me to ever allowing him to play on the team again.

Amy: Nice. Dogs Playing Poker, by the way, totally public domain. That’s why we chose that one.

John: There you go, there's a lot of variations of that, too, that’s right. And this is actually our little slam is not a part of the subtle on a lot of the CBS crime shows; just the sort of horrible-

Amy: Yeah, the over the top-

John: When we created Leverage, one of the reasons we did it was because so many shows were chasing serial killers. I think it was Chris Downey who said, ‘You know what? Serial killers are covered. Let’s chase rich white dudes in suits.’

Amy: I think they're done.

John: There's only ever been 10 and they've been caught 100 times. And that was Apollo Robbins. This is a great- this is one of Dean's signature roundy-rounds. And I was saying the other day-

Dean: An amazing steadicam shot.

John: I was saying the other day, we've actually learned in the writers room how to assign dialogue to make this easier.

Amy: Yeah.

[Laughter]

John: So rather than rewriting on the fly-

Amy: -we write towards the circle track.

John: Cause you can actually see. It goes- it's like triple play: it goes to Beth to Aldis to Chris to Tim and then back around again.

Amy: I love Parker; there’s always- always something secret going on, whether its secret nazis or- 

John: Yeah well, we kind of establish it in The Day of the Hunter Job, Parker’s realm of knowledge outside of stealing is not good.

[Laughter]

John: Like, anything that doesn't involve stealing, she will believe it if the other team members tell her. Oh this is great. I remember we shot this day. Dean, tell us about this bit.

Dean: Well this was one where we actually went full circle because we came in, we rehearsed it one way and it felt really good, but then we started to feel like, ‘Gosh we're not doing enough.’ And so then we reblocked the entire scene so we could all do more and have more happen, and then we all paused and went, ‘You know, the first one was much better.’

[Laughter]

Dean: And that's what we went with.

John: Yup. What I think was part of what was driving that was because I was on set that day, ‘Do not touch the motion sensitive bomb.’

Amy: Thank you.

John: Was the fact that this was gonna be Gina's last episode, full day with the cast- And also, she really dug in on the fact that the character was going to die and it genuinely upset the cast. Like the cast was a little freaked out here; they got way- cause this is a very claustrophobic set, very claustrophobic scene. The way we usually shoot is we shoot longer takes. So we do the whole thing, like we’ve shot entire acts in one take at some point.

Dean: That's true.

Amy: Yeah. By the way, this bit with the pudding, I've known John for two years and this is the only time I've ever turned him on.

[Laughter]

Amy: I wrote this bit, and he read the act and he came in and he burst into my office and was like ’hahaha’.

John: Remember you didn’t use it you; had talked about it and-

Amy: That’s true. That’s true. I brought it up in dialogue, but I didn't actually employ it. They didn’t- Parker didn't actually use it.

John: I actually kicked in the door- the only time I’ve yelled at you- 

Amy: Yeah, he yelled at me.

John: I kicked in the door and said, ‘How do you come up with instant pudding in a motion sensitive bomb and not actually use it?’ And so we had- and Parker, we had Parker do it. There's a lot of great acting in here, there's a lot of Gina digging in on, sort of, Sophie's past catching up with her. Hardison-

Amy: But this is a scene where it’s really easy to overwrite it, because your instinct is sort of to write to the emotion of this scene like Sophie could die. But the point is to underwrite and let your actors find the emotion between the lines.

John: That beat right there with Chris and Gina.

Amy: Yes.

John: There's a very nice recurring thing we try to do, which is, whenever it becomes something about killing someone, they go to Eliot because Eliot- because Eliot used to do that. And there's a nice moment there. I was actually there- oh look at that look. I love that look. Where-

Amy: Emotion between the lines.

John: Where basically Eliot signs off on the fact that she's probably gonna die and Gina and Eliot worked that out and it's just a lovely moment. Ahhh this is great, now how did we do this?

Amy: Gina just knocks this out of the park.

Dean: So Gina was very pregnant at the time, so we had to do a double for the wide shots, for the running, and Gina for the closeups.

John: Yeah, and then this is a miniature.

Dean: That's right. Well, the building is the actual building we shot at, but the explosion is a miniature that we shot at our parking lot that we digitally composited on top of it. Now at the time, people didn't know what we were gonna do with Gina's character because Gina was pregnant. So when we did this scene and we aired this episode a lot of people were really upset at this point because they actually thought we had killed her off of the show. 

Amy and John: Yeah.

Dean: And early Twitters were very upset.

Amy: Were not favorable.

John: Were very angry.

[Laughter]

Dean: How could you kill her off the show? But then-

Amy: This was originally intended to be the midseason finale, which in that case, the fans would definitely think for sure she was gonna be gone for a while or forever. 

John: Yep.

Amy: But we ended up adding two episodes to the end of the midseason run, so we did get to see her again.

Dean: I don't know what it is exactly, but for me, Parker’s performance- or Beth’s performance as Parker in this section here is reminiscent of some of the great comedians. 

Amy: Yeah.

Dean: Because it's so subtle what she's doing. And a lot of this came out of Beth herself who said -

Amy: I rewrote this scene based on Beth's notes that you were so kind to give me, and it sort of- it made the scene like 10 times better. I don't even remember what it was originally, but-

John: She's trying to remember what her lines are to say as Parker and her eyes roll up like ‘what am I supposed to say’ and then she gets freaked out at seeing Gina dead and loses it.

John: And then she totally spirals out.

Amy: There's a lot going on in, like, 20 seconds; it's pretty funny.

John: And then Hardison having to go up and bail her out. And again, there's a lot of- there's a lot of stuff going on in the structure this year with Gina leaving, and just for that tempering and having us to accelerate that storyline- There's a lot of Hardison/Parker relationship stuff between the lines on all the shows, we just never made it an A plot, but you can actually see the relationship evolve over the course of the season, when you watch the entire season particularly, the second half. And of course Chris is wearing a bandana under his hat because that's when he had slammed his head onto the set.

Dean: In the previous episode.

John: Exactly.

Amy: Yeah, he’s got a giant scar on his forehead right now.

John: Beautiful cemetery up on a big hill in Portland, nice enough to let us shoot there. Beautiful, gorgeous location. And that's a nice bit of acting, too.

Dean: Yeah, just the little moment of him seeing her and then getting that shock of losing someone that he cares about.

John: Yeah, and just processing.

Amy: So far you've pointed out that your favorite moments are the ones where there's no dialogue, so I'm glad I could contribute to that.

[Laughter]

John: Well you wrote- no no, that’s right, I usually go back and write the stage directions, but you do a lot of the-

Amy: This- and so it begins, when John makes fun of me throughout the commentary.

John: I don't make fun of you, just when you take too much credit.

[Laughter]

Dean: This is the controversy.

Amy: I was taking no credit!

Dean: In this scene, the gravestone says Cathrine Klive, her actor name, and at the end Sophie Deveraux and a lot of people thought that was actually a mistake, but why don't you address that?

John: Well we were really- it comes up in the end. We really wanted- and this is sort of a meta structural thing - she wants to kill Sophie Deaveraux. She realizes Sophie Deveraux as an identity, as a life, is a dead end, and so she changes the tombstone so that she can eventually give up that identity. And it's interesting because what Sophie is- realized is that she's going down a dead end, and in theory she’s the current criminal and Nate is the honest man. Nate is also going down a dead end, but he's way too obsessive and blind to realize it.

Amy: Yeah.

John: And so by the end of the season, you’ll see Sophie is a lot more emotionally evolved than Nate is.

Amy: It's true. This is sort of the beginning of Nate’s spiral where-

John: Yeah, maybe the end of Sophie’s thing.

Amy: His priority shifts and, like, winning becomes more important than servicing the clients.

John: We just sort of tease in 206. Great scene between Griffin and- really that was kind of fun. Once we knew we had Griffin Dunne, a lot of these scenes became, ‘Alright, it's really just gonna be head to head.’

Amy: Yeah, yeah.

John: Yeah. It's just- we’re just gonna have the two of them- And the fact that they're friends was really helpful.

Amy: And this the promise of the premise when you do a crew vs crew episode. What you are promising to the audience is you're gonna have one-on-one faceoffs between the characters and their counterparts.

John: And this is part of the evolution of writing an episode, is when we were breaking this, we had a really hard time getting that up as fast as possible, and that's what you wound up- doing the inner cut break in at the opening. Because even though they weren't facing off at each other, we gave the audience the promise of the premise.

Amy: Yes.

John: And the beautiful Hyundai Genesis. A fine automobile.

Amy: A fine, fine vehicle.

Dean: Beautiful peel out.

John: It was nice. In a cemetery!

[Laughter]

John: There was a moment where I was talking to one of the actors, I looked down and realized I was standing on a civil war veteran’s grave. That was a little disturbing.

Amy: That’s classy Rogers.

Dean: I absolutely love the little makeup and hair choices of Gina in this scene, it's so 40’s noir.

John: Yes.

Amy: Yeah, yeah the hair.

John: The whole episode she's playing 40’s noir. And it was a really interesting look, and not one we can do a lot because of the characters she's played, but this was interesting; she's not playing a character ever in this episode except in the opening.

Dean: Right.

John: I kind of liked her in the cop outfit.

Amy: It's one of my favorite running gags in the entire series of the show. Parker just not entirely buying that Gina’s actually alive.

John: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Amy: ‘I'm not dead!’

John: Some part of her brain understands it, but the emotional center is so screwed up.

Amy: ‘I saw her in a coffin, ergo, she must be, in fact, dead.’

John: This is also great, is digging in on the fact that the whole ex-boyfriend/crew/guy who runs the crew she used to be with. And for a while, for like a minute and a half in the room, remember that character was Sophie's boyfriend for the whole first half of the season and this was gonna be the payoff, but we just never knew if we were gonna get the availability for that actor and we just couldn't risk it. And it also seemed a little dishonest she would hide that, so.

Dean: I love the Hardison line, ‘You saw other teams before us?’

[Laughter]

Amy: ‘No, just another Nate.’

John: ‘Just another Nate.’ That's- yes, this is a big family beat of looks back and forth. 

Amy: Lots of looks.

John: Now how did you- I remember you were very, Dean, very big into designing the other team’s headquarters.

Dean: Yeah, well I really wanted to feel like a mirror of our headquarters. But in a believable way in that they don't have permanent space so they’re in a small space. But I was trying to mirror even screen direction-wise that one team is looking left-right the other team is looking right-left so that we can really feel like these are absolute mirror images of each other.

John: Yeah even the looks left-right and right-left match.

Dean: That’s right.

John: Yeah, no it's interesting. And there's Apollo Robbins, who we haven't mentioned yet.

Amy: Apollo Robbins! Yes, he's our technical consultant on the show. He is a master thief. But not anymore, he's a good guy now. I feel like I should point that out.

John: Yes we should. You can't hire him to do crimes.

Amy: When I say consultant, I mean he's not actually a thief anymore.

John: This is also great; this is also the Mona Lisa scam. Why don’t you explain the Mona Lisa scam since you’re a research freak?

Amy: Oh great, now I’m-

John: 1911.

Amy: Yes, 1911 there was a con man, I don't remember his name, but someone says it I think in this scene, where he created six forgeries of the Mona Lisa, stole the original, and then sold the six fakes on the black market to individual buyers as though they were the original and got six times the profit.

John: Some con and heist shows will just do that plot and act like they came up with it. [Coughs] Asshole! [Cough]. 

[Laughter]

John: Rather than mention the fact that this is something that really happened, that you should honor. 

Amy: This is something that really happened, that I actually read about.

John: Also used the Doctor Who's: The City Of Death written by Douglas Adams.

Amy: Oh yeah, oh yeah.

John: There you go. This is something else we did a lot of, which was the process of elimination bit with the screens. Remember we did it in Hunter too? And it's just kind of fun because it’s kind of something from my physics background which is all about probability. And the fact that a series of educated guesses- it's kind of like our version of detective work.

Amy: Yeah.

John: You know, it's like crime detection, it's a lot of fun. And yeah, and now we're really seeing Nate start to spin out of control.

Amy: But this is what I would call dueling competence porn.

John: Yes it is.

Amy: This, and the third act where the teams are doing their jobs and doing them well.

John: Competence porn, by the way, is a term- I forget how it came about, but it's basically-

Amy: It's just a room bit.

John: It’s a room bit. It’s like, you know what? I just like watching people who are good at their jobs doing it, especially if they're entertaining. A lot of it was from 208 was watching Beth Riesgraf- in 208 there was an entire act that's a break in-

Amy: Oh yeah.

John: That’s Beth breaking into a vault. And when you're writing it, you're like, ‘Gosh, that feels thin,’ and then you're watching it and you're like, ‘I'm watching Parker break into a vault for 15 minutes and this is amazing!’

Amy: I could watch it for 40 minutes.

Dean: This is one of my favorite bullet time shots that we’ve done.

John: Yes, now this is- now remember this is all done not digitally- well we do it really. We freeze everyone in the background and the cameraman walks through it and we digitally speed it up. What is this space? This is the- 

Dean: This is an actual museum in Portland that we turned into our space.

John: Yup.

Amy: Wasn't there a naked sculpture that you guys put a leaf on?

John: Yes, up in the upper level.

Amy: That's my favorite story.

John: Yeah. And then- yes, this is 4-way; this is not as insane as the one in the season opener.

Amy: But it’s still insane.

John: But this is a 4-way through about 100 extras.

Amy: I don't think Dean understands that we’re making television.

[Laughter]

Dean: Well, you know, honestly you don't even attempt a shot like this without a steadicam operator like Gary Camp.

Amy: Gary Camp is amazing.

Dean: He's a serious feature film guy. I mean, that was all one shot.

John: Yeah. That's stunning. And then you bring it back to Parker- and this is also fun, is the fact that we make fun in the show. And this was- even when we did tap out and some people were like, ‘Oh, you're making fun of Lincoln, Nebraska,’ when we had Sophie make fun of the food. We’re not making fun of the locations, we’re making fun of the fact that Sophie’s a little princess.

Amy: Yeah.

John: She's not someone who does well with things that- and the van, the van, actually, over the course of the second season becomes a character.

Dean: I love that she's says about how it smells a little whiffy.

[Laughter]

Amy: Which is a callback in The Future Job as well.

John: Yes, this is hard work, it smells like hard work. Yeah, Hardison's affection for the van.

Amy: Respect the van!

John: Respect the van, yeah.

Dean: Now this is actually the first scene where we’ll see the teams start to go head to head.

John: Yeah. Split up, call out your jobs.

Amy: This is the promise of the premise act, as we call it. And it's the Van Gogh that they're after, the Cafe Terrace At Night, I believe it’s called.

Dean: And this is a very important moment because it really established who Nate and Sophie were to the rest of the team. Nate being the one that makes the plans, but Sophie being the one who keeps them safe. And that had never been exposited before, and by doing that, it really set it up.

John: Boom! And then the parallel structure over to Hardison's opposite number, Chaos, played by Wil Wheaton, just four vans down. 

Amy: Nice.

John: That was really inspired. They’re the most twin of the bunch. Oh, and this is amazing. This is amazing because that's all real time. That wallet never came off. This was this whole section we just gave to Apollo.

Amy: Yeah. He's like, what can you do? And he just basically-

John: And he took Beth aside and they came up with a bunch of- it’s like, you know what? We're just gonna run camera, you just do a bunch of you do you, man.

Amy: By the way, there was no one else we had in mind for Apollo. Even when I was like- when I came up with the concept, and then I also did the outline, I also called the character Apollo, hoping at some point we would actually cast him.

John: But was the Wil Wheaton character originally a girl?

Amy: In fact, she was.

John: Yes, that’s right.

[Laughter]

Amy: Yeah, it was- I believe it was a hot Latina- 

John: Yes.

Amy: -that he was going up against, and then at some point, you know, in the casting process I turned to you and I was like, ‘You know, we've been talking about Wil Wheaton for something. Is this not the prefect role or not?’

John: And Noa Tishby rocking the dress. Noa was actually in the Israeli army. So that was kinda cool as we were looking at a lot of different actresses and Dean had seen her tape.

Dean: Yeah.

John: And it was like, you know, I wanna try a different ethnicity. I wanna try a different look, and brought her in. And what's great is she looks like she can take a punch, you know, that's a tough chick. And she really did great in the fight scenes and was a really- we got really lucky in this episode.

Amy: Oh yeah.

John: You know, we usually have to cast one big role; we cast five. 

Dean: Right.

John: And they were all great.

Dean: Now this fight scene was-

John: Ok I'm gonna take credit for this one because nobody else is-

Amy: I wasn't gonna take credit for it.

John: No shadow on this, I had to explain this 9 times.

[Laughter]

Amy: Oh yeah, that’s right.

Dean: And this sequence was actually getting directed by Marc Roskin and you, John.

John: Yes, at two o’clock in the morning. But I will give Mark Franco big props for throwing the old 1970’s film look.

Amy: The film reel stuff.

Dean: I love it.

John: That is so great. The Shaw brothers look is that and this is the whole-

Dean: That's how they see- in their minds that's how they see fights, like the karate movies they grew up watching. 

John: Yes. And this is based on two things. 1) a great story about samurais- I love that look that Chris did. Great story about two samurai who faced each other, knew each other’s skills so well they fought the entire fight in their head and walked away. And Warren Ellis’ character the Midnighter from The Authority comic book who has sort of the same thing. He does fights backwards in his head. Ah look at that, oh he's a great physical actor, too, it was really- it was nice, cause we cast Apollo, he's never done acting before, he'd never done TV before. And it's the one gamble on the whole show and he was fantastic.

Dean: And he totally pulled it off.

Amy: But he's just so damn charming, it’s like you, sort of, just believed from the beginning that he could do it.

John: Yeah, he's very dangerous. 

[Laughter]

John: It's really- if he ever turned evil, we'd be in a lot of trouble.

Amy: Oh my gosh.

Dean: This next sequence, outside, while I had done the storyboards for it, Marc Roskin shot the hell out of it. And what we wanted to do was an homage to the great Western movies, you know, the Spaghetti Western.

John: Well this was the challenge, and we talked about this when we were writing it. It’s like, nobody does hacking in an interesting way. There's no way to do hacking in an interesting way.

Amy: Visually it’s- filming it is not effective.

John: So abandon trying to do it with the computers and just do the metaphor, which is two guys pitting each other’s intellects against each other, and make it text.

Amy: And it's much more interesting, look at each other than looking at screens.

John: Oh and that timing is great, look at this, it’s just fantastic.

Amy: This is so nerdgasmic.

[Laughter]

Dean: He even had that Spaghetti Western whistle.

Amy: Yeah. I remember the first cut it was only in there subtly and you were like, ‘Hey turn that up, man.’

Dean: Listen, I’m-

John: And look at the little holster move, too. 

Dean: I'm all for subtly, I just want a lot more of it.

[Laughter]

John: Oh no, Wil knocked it out of the park in this. Did you know that he had been doing a bunch of shows and people have come up and asked him to sign his autograph as this character?

Amy: As Chaos.

Dean: That's great.

John: Somebody came up with the anarchists cookbook and asked him to sign it as Chaos.

Dean: And I love that Sophie can’t use a computer.

[Laughter]

John: Utterly useless.

Dean: She just closes it.

John: Well Hardison’s taught Eliot- and the look to the swords. We had so much fun coming up with different props in the scenes. And this was at 2 o’clock in the morning fight fight fight, you win. Fight fight fight, you win. And just- cause they had to learn the routines and we were banging it out in three sizes at a time, it was great. Then we shot the bird. 

Amy: So many looks.

John: And this- you could run the entire Parker/Apollo scene without dialogue and you'd know exactly what's going on.

Amy and Dean: Yeah.

John: Actually-

Dean: She's a little bit the Harpo. You know what I mean.

Amy: She's the Harpo.

John: She's the Harpo, he's Groucho in that scene, it's very subtle.

Amy: Is that Chase? Was that Chase walking towards the camera? It looked a little like Chase.

John: No, no. And this is, again, one of the rules, one of the hard rules of doing these shows. These shows are very hard, is that it can't be a random obstacle. Whatever is your obstacle heading into the third or fourth act must either be a product of the villains plan which you've already set in motion, or something that the team has screwed up or succeeded too well. And not screwed up too often cause that means they suck. So-

Amy: You make it sound like we did something good on purpose. That’s awesome.

John: Yeah, every now and then. And this is just- I want-

Dean: We almost didn’t do this.

John: We almost didn't do, but this is the punchline to the bit, that they're so locked into each other-

Dean: I'm so glad we did it.

John: Yeah. I actually was ready to bail on it, you were like, ‘Yeah, you know what? Let's make time.’ And the little look, and he gives them a bunch-

Dean: A bunch of crazy idiots.

John: Yeah, exactly. Now this is great, Nate’s totally lost in the need to win at this point.

Amy: Oh yeah.

Dean: I love Parker saying that, ‘The people in this line of work are unstable; we can use that.’

John: Yes.

Dean: Completely not realizing that she's in that line of work.

John: Tapping the pad look at that and look at the look Chris- that's another thing. 

Amy: ‘I'm totally helping.’ That's it.

John: Gina gives a little smile which I missed the first time I saw this show.

Amy: There's a lot of little subtleties.

John: And again, second season, you start pairing up things differently. Chris and Gina found a nice rhythm for Sophie and Eliot this year that wasn't there first year, just in the pairings. And we wound up working; it was nice. And this is- yeah, she killed a guy with a mop.

Dean: I love Hardison's jealousy about Chaos, the whole ‘ugh.’

Amy: ‘Chaos.’

[Laughter]

John: Cause, you know, and it's a great thing of acting on Aldis’ part, you know he's beat him. You know that Chaos has beaten him a couple times. He's really- he’s not a pleasant loser, Hardison. And the nice little fist tap for the Kobayashi Maru.

Amy: Nice little knuckle bump, Parker. 

John: Yup. Well that was another one of the little subtle things, that Parker has plainly sat down and watched like all nine Star Trek movies with Hardison because it was just something he did on a Saturday, you know?

[Laughter]

Amy: Well she wants to see, you know, what normal people do.

John: Yeah, Hardison's probably a bad example of that.

Amy: I don't think that's right- the right choice.

John: There's not- you know-

Amy: I gotta say, I love Tim in this scene.

John: Yeah. He’s really mad.

Dean: This one, out of all the cutting back and forth, this was the trickiest because it had to match rhythm, intensity-

Amy: And dialogue.

Dean: -and dialogue.

John: That's right. 

Dean: This was really tricky.

John: Line by line. And that was the tricky bit, too. We had to give both of them the entire script for each one so they could know what they were doing to each other. I think- did Griffin come down the first day and watch Tim?

Dean: I actually think this was Griffin’s either first or second day on the show.

John: That's right. Tim came down to watch- yeah, so he would know what he had done physically. There's a parallel structure even with the team. This was a lot of fun. But this is one of those things that looks really elegant, but scripting, it's a little chimpy. It’s like, once you know what you're going to do, this wrote pretty easy.

Amy: Ok, yes, but I'm gonna go on record in saying that this is the best third act we've ever done in the history of Leverage. I just love it so much.

John: Well, you know what? Again, this is something you sorta learn. We- you know what? You learn how to write the show while you write the show. This is when we really where we realize you only need to do one thing an act. We so tried to buff all the people and, ‘Oh look, at the incredible plot twist’ like, you know what? They're fun characters, they're good characters, let them do one thing.

Dean: Yeah, it's fun to watch them do their thing.

John: One thing every act.

Dean: And I love how they all started to get pumped up for it. On both sides, they are gearing up for game day.

John: This is a great act break.

Amy: Nothing about that act I dont like. And I had very little to do with it.

John: This is easily- this is one of my favorite shows of the season. Of both seasons.

Amy: Mine too.

Dean: And beautifully photographed by our great cinematographer, Dave Connell.

John: That's right, because we were shooting parallel; we were shooting inside the museum and outside. You were outside running back and forth.

Dean: Very intense.

John: And this is a lot of fun. All the security guys were great. Portland once again gave us a great, great acting pool. 

Amy: Go Portland!

John: And then this was a lot of fun, was setting up the snarky dialogue and Aldis and Wil basically sat and sweated in their vans-

Amy: Yeah.

John: -for 6 hours. Cause Aldis is always going, ‘Nobody knows what it's like to work in the van’. That van is hot. So he was very glad to have a playmate.

Amy: Aldis had like one full day of shooting in the van and nowhere else.

John: Yeah, exactly.

Dean: I love the character Tim came up with here, that was great.

John: And Emily is actually the girl I went to prom with. That's where the name comes from.

Dean: Nice.

John: Yep.

Dean: Poor Emily.

John: Yeah I’m- hey!

[Laughter]

Amy: I said nothing. If you noticed, I stayed quiet and said nothing. I'm learning.

John: And Tim plays drunk, distracting guy an awful lot this season. This- and by the way, the security guard that talks him down is great, he's got a really great comedic beat. This, by the way, is a stunning sequence.

Dean and John: 10 millimeter lens.

Amy: 10 millimeter lens? 

John: Down in the basement.

Dean: And look at this steadicam move - down the stairs!

Amy: Running down the stairs.

John: This is a guy walking!

Dean: And then whipping around, that is-

Amy: This is inhuman.

John: It really is.

Dean: For steadicam artists, they will understand how difficult that shot is.

John: By the way, I like the fact that we just locked Beth into the air conditioning system.

[Laughter]

John: ‘Are we gonna build one? No, there's one downstairs! Should we put Beth Riesgraf in moving machinery? If she's up for it.’

Amy: Not sure why we had to put the lock it, but that's ok.

John: It's a good look. And oh yes, it-

Dean: I think this is my favorite of all the air duct scenes, this is my favorite air duct scene.

Amy: This is actually-

John: Well like Two Horse- all of Two Horse where she was bitching while having to do it.

Amy: Oh yeah.

John: This is also- we built the most complicated duct system on earth for this.

Dean: Talk about the bird, because you were there for this.

John: Oh yeah, I- we thought the bird would be CG, much like, we thought we’d be on a CG roof the series premiere, instead we wound up in Chicago 40 stories up. Dean went and found a bird- 

[Laughter]

John: -a North American Kestrel. He said it would be easier to shoot a real bird that was trained, and so if you go on my blog you see pictures of the bird, but that's the last thing we did that night, so at 2 am we had this bird in a box, which was really beautiful.

Dean: Yeah.

John: And- 

Amy: No birds were harmed in the making of this episode.

John: No birds were harmed. It was a really beautiful bird. But yeah, the trainer was hiding right off screen to summon the bird to get it to fly across.

Dean: This was actually one of the most difficult fight scenes we've ever shot, mainly because of the small space they were in.

John: How did you get the camera up there?

Dean: We literally locked it onto the ceiling and just let it run for the whole day. And then hoped we had good material.

John: Oh cool. That everybody would hit their marks.

Amy: She's so intense, I love it.

John: And the- him switching back over to Hebrew, this was a lot of fun. Oh and ‘now I’ve got the lasers.’

Amy: ‘No, now I’ve got the lasers!’

Dean: His arrogance was just awesome.

John: The two of them were fantastic.

Amy: He’s almost too good at it.

John: Big thanks to Derek, yet again, for building a great interface that lets the audience know exactly what’s going on.

Amy: Derek’s our graphics guy, he's amazing.

John: Does all our computer stuff. And our security guards, you know, somewhat oblivious, but good guys.

Dean: That's just the oldest gag in the world that I love.

Amy: It flickers only when they're not looking at it.

John: You know what it is, it’s the Abbott and Costello, it’s the candle on Dracula’s coffin.

[Laughter]

Dean: And I love that.

John: I love that reveal.

Dean: And he comes in dressed as, and named as, Nate Ford. I mean, that is just fabulous.

Amy: He's with the insurance company, what?

John: It is a great little, ‘Fuck you,’ from that character. 

Dean: And Tim’s look at him for doing it, it’s just awesome.

John: But this was the fun of the fourth- and this was really hard when we were plotting. It's like ok, in the fourth act they have to be good, but they have to look like they’re losing. And they have to look like they're losing so bad you come into the fifth act not knowing if they won, and then we have to somehow pull it out.

Amy: Yeah. This, by the way, the scene with the two of them talking with the bird cage, was one of the first images that popped into my head when we were breaking this episode. I just love this.

John: But this duct tape- cause here's the thing, we have to shoot this direction and you have to shoot them crawling off these directions. This thing was huge, a human sized hamster trail. Took up an entire ball room for that one shot. Great fight scene, and we had talked about this, and this is a lot steamier and sexier than originally pitched.

Amy: It's literally steamy.

John: Dean was all over- like ‘I'm going to fight. I'm gonna shoot the steamiest fight scene that we've ever had.’

Dean: I thought it would be interesting to do a fight scene as a love scene.

John: Yeah.

Dean: And so the fight is actually foreplay.

John: Yeah.

[Laughter]

John: And a dance. It’s really like a dance sequence. We used to always say fights are like dances because of the movement and everything, but you know, you took that very literally and everything, which was great.

Dean: Now, by the way, we've done lasers in several episodes before. 

Amy: Yeah.

Dean: These are the best lasers we ever did by far.

Amy: It's pretty cool.

John: Yeah, and having them move, that was the key. It's yet another example of something that you think will be really hard, actually turns out to be a little easier and way cooler.

Dean: And way cooler.

John: Yeah.

Dean: And again, kudos to the effects artists. If you look carefully, you can see the lasers reflecting in her pupils.

John: Reflecting in her eyes. I know, that’s sick. 

Amy: That's really hot.

John: That was really great. This is a big ‘they are screwed’ act out.

Amy: Oh my god, look at that!

Dean: That is so cool.

Amy: Why did I not notice that before?

John: And wet people fighting.

[Laughter]

John: You know what? We give you everything on Leverage.

Dean: Little sex, little violence. 

John: And it’s good.

Dean: And now we were able to take the hat off cause we were able to use the real scar on his forehead finally in the episode!

John: Also kinda cool, Kevin, our stunt coordinator, had them fighting in Israeli military style. That they were both- they had both sort of picked up- we always had Eliot kind of fight in that style, but the fact that that would be her training-

Dean: And I love that these two are standing next to Honest Abe.

[Laughter]

John: And that's a great entrance. She's really got-

Amy: ‘Oohhh.’

John: She's got 3 great entrances this year. 

Amy: Yeah, she does.

John: One I'm not gonna talk about. 

Amy: Cause you haven't seen it yet.

John: You haven’t seen it yet. But the Annie Croy entrance in the season opener was one of my favorite Gina bits, and then that.

Dean: Fabulous. Gina absolutely brought her A game this season.

John: And yup, this is our double just whipping through this.

Amy: That was me.

John: That was you? I forgot about that.

[Laughter]

Amy: It's a secret skill. I don’t like to talk about it.

John: And that's the thing, that was footage of the gymnast whipping through those maneuvers with Beth popping up. The special effects people had to put the lasers through those moves to coordinate with- you know, ordinarily, you build these shots incredibly carefully. It was like, ‘No, here's the footage. Make it work.’

Dean: I love this old school crank.

John: ‘Can't hack a classic.’

[Laughter]

Amy: More competence porn.

John: More competence porn. Hardison- the staff will tell you the first year we had Christmas together, I got them all wind up radios and flashlights. 

Amy: Yes.

John: I'm a big believer in emergency preparedness for the apocalypse.

Amy: He cares! He cares about us. 

John: You mock.

Amy: Wants us to live through the world ending.

John: Well, you know. I play a lot of Left 4 Dead. I want to make sure my crew’s ready.

Amy: Alright, cool.

Dean: I love that - Parker not quite good at acting yet.

John: No. This is key, Parker can't do a long con. She can maintain it for maybe 4-5 minutes before her inability to mimic humans breaks down. And there we go.

Amy: By the way, this episode totally screwed my- the way I do story telling now, because I'm thinking as the criminal all the time.

John: Yeah.

[Laughter]

Amy: Like, it's terrible. ‘How would I break into an auction house? Well to control the motion sensors-’

Dean: I love this beat right here.

John: Yeah.

Dean: Like, ‘Ahh, screw the fight.’

[Laughter]

John: Well he knows he's won by this point, so it's just really- 

Dean: And she's so turned on by the fact that he did, cause no one else has ever beaten her.

John: Yeah, that was a lot of fun, was the idea that people- it's, again, you respect someone who’s competent. And the hand- yeah the little look after the handcuff-

Amy: Wow.

John: He actually looks a little scared there.

Amy: I know, I know.

John: He's like, ‘I got you! Oh wait, what did I get?’

Amy: ‘Is it over?’

John: This is nice.

Dean: In the original longer version, they originally kissed and then fell out of frame.

John: I missed that! I missed the fact that they banged out a quickie during the middle of the con.

Amy: Uh, no.

John: Alright, fine. By the way, Christian loves the badge on the chain. Anytime he can have the badge on a chain, he’s the happiest man alive. And Hardison-

Dean: A little bit of improv-ing by Aldis Hodge here.

Amy: Indeed.

John: Aldis- and again, this pops up in the next episode, Hardison always goes a little too far. He's never able to quite control the- he’s never able to get out without pushing it too far.

Amy: Are you saying that's going to catch up to him at some point?

John: That will catch up to him. The very next episode matter of fact. And yeah, this was a lot of fun driving police cars around Portland at six o’clock in the morning.

Amy: I'm sure no one was alarmed.

Dean: Now young filmmakers, that little move there is to get on the other side of the line.

Amy: Oh yes.

John: What was that?

Dean: So we- after we established them coming out of the building the camera slowly tracks over to the other shoulder on both sides, so now we're on the opposite side of the line and all of their looks have now reversed from the previous scene.

John: You and your looks.

[Laughter]

Dean: But this allowed us to now do our car gag, because we couldn’t really blow up a car in this location.

John: At two o’clock in the morning.

Dean: So we had to whip-pan off of a look to a parked car, then later we blew up a model car and replaced it.

Amy: We did two miniature explosions.

John: I love this reveal. I love this look. It’s like, ahhh, it's like Christmas.

Dean: Bingo.

John: Yeah.

Amy: Always knew you were evil, Wil Wheaton.

Dean: And now the evil speech of evil.

Amy: The evil speech of evil!

John: The evil speech of evil! A crucial part of the- well, this isn't really an evil speech of evil. The evil speech of evil is usually when they are-

Amy: Yeah, it’s the evil griping of evil.

John: The evil speech of evil is just: define your behavior. He's straight up monologuing here.

Dean: This is a little bit more of the, ‘I would’ve gotten away if it weren’t for you meddling kids.’

John: Yes, exactly.

Amy: Are you saying this is a Scooby Doo?

John: In the original version of this, he pulls off the Wil Wheaton mask only to reveal he's still Wil Wheaton.

[Laughter]

John: But he wears a Wil Wheaton mask. You know what? We should've called Wil for this.

Amy: Oh my god, why didn’t we do that? Now we gotta record it again.

John: I know. Maybe- You know what? We’ll do one on iTunes with him.

Amy: We'll do a special one.

John: And we may be playing Dungeons and Dragons while we actually do the commentary. This is great now. This is tough. And talk about- we had a couple different endings for this episode in this particular scene.

Amy: Yes.

John: Go ahead.

Amy: I don't remember them, I just remember there were multiple endings. [Laughs]

John: We actually, for a couple different versions of the outline, had him lose. Had Nate and the guys lose.

Amy: Oh, that’s right.

John: And then our team conned them about the painting. And the moral was basically our team kinda sitting around, pissed off they lost, but they were still a family while the other team broke up. And it just didn't feel-

Dean: Wasn't satisfying.

John: It was one of those good writer beats- and that's why Dean’s actually a very valuable producing partner, because he's all heart. 

[Laughter]

John: Seriously man, he’s- and he’s, ‘I don't feel it.’

Amy: And we have none.

John: And we have none, because we’re writers and our blackened little hearts are shriveled away.

Amy: And our dark souls.

John: It's very easy when you're writing a con and heist show to get a little too clever for your own good.

Amy: It’s true.

John: And Dean’s a very good barometer on, ‘You know, do I really-? Am I gonna be happy with this?’ And you know, he’s right.

Dean: I like a little fromage.

Amy: Well what were the reasons-?

John: No, not fromage, but just, you know-

Amy: I think one of the reasons we were gonna have them losing was that this was gonna be episode three or four, and then we had the wild thought that we would bring the evil team back for episode seven.

John: Yes.

Amy: And sort of do, you know, ‘We lost the first one, but we won the second one.’

Dean: There's the recall of your Emily story.

John: Yes, that's right, the little go to the dance with. No it's- oh and that's great.

Dean: Again, that was Apollo who came up with that idea. 

John: Yeah, that they're picking-

Dean: A lockpicking race.

John: And also Beth tossing the lockpick into the air and catching it? After a week with Apollo, she’d really gotten disgustingly good. I think they're actually picking there.

Amy: Well Apollo has gone on record as saying Beth can actually be a professional pickpocket if she wanted to.

John: She's got soft hands.

Dean: And this is, again, one of those scenes where Christian shows you how good he is at comedy. How subtle he is when he realizes she may be the person who actually shot him.

Amy: Look at that look!

[Laughter]

John: Yeah. 

Amy: His eyes widen just like a millimeter, but-

John: Yeah. And that was an improv, I think. ‘Y’all nasty’. He's supposed to just look at it. 

Amy: That’s awesome.

John: And Griffin doing the Nate Ford, ‘I'm an honest man’ speech here, incredibly uncomfortably!

Dean: Well, we always want the villain to suffer and this is how he suffers.

John: He’s just sweating it out.

Amy: He's getting more satisfaction out of watching Griffin Dunne lose than he is from getting the painting back to the clients.

John: Which is something wrong.

Amy: Yes, that's not right.

John: Sophie's actually the moral center of this scene.

Amy: This is the episode where they, in a way, sort of switch roles. She becomes the honest thief, and he becomes-

John: They were a lovely couple. God, these actors were nice.

Dean: Just amazing local actors.

John: No, this was a lot of fun. And then, again, giving him just enough rope to hang himself with. And making sure that he's pissed off enough to come back in season three.

Dean: The other part of this scene I like is, it really shows how far Sophie has come, that she’s actually not just doing this, she’s actually, really- she’s drank the kool aid by now. She really believes in what they're doing. 

John: To a little bit more than Nate at this point.

Amy: Yeah.

John: Yeah. Which, you know, and that- we really took the, ‘You killed Sophie Deaveraux.’ And the funeral was a late addition; that wasn't in the first outline.

Dean: Yeah.

Amy: No, it wasn't. That was something that we added later. 

John: Yeah it was. 

Amy: But that was an element of knowing we were gonna lose Gina and trying to set up an awesome departure.

John: Yup. And that bomb thing wound up being really- Because originally- it was originally a sort of investigatory clue path and then when we lose Gina it's like, alright let's scare the audience a little here.

Dean: How did you come up with this bit of how they tracked-?

John: I think that was some geek bullshit I had in the notebook, I’m fairly sure. Whenever it’s some tiny minutiae of how phones work, it’s you know-

Amy: Good old GPS.

John: Yeah well, you know what? I think at the time there were some protests about the fact that you couldn't turn off the GPS tracking in your phone, and it was- they were talking about a lot in England you being able to do that, so that just kinda stuck.

Amy: Well I imagine all this would-

Dean: There's Chase!

Amy: See, yeah, there's Chase. I knew I saw him at some point.

John:  Is this-? Yeah, here we go. All these great local actors.

Dean: And I love the security guard; this woman is fabulous.

Amy: So much personality, only a few lines.

John: And again, this is one of those things where you are trying to come up with a really clever way to screw him and then you suddenly realize, no, it’s just a box full of paintings; there's nothing really subtle about this. You’re just going to jail forever.

Dean: But in a way, this is what makes it work. ‘This is the real one.’

John: We had a couple of different notes, too.

Amy: He lost by winning. Cause what he wanted was the paintings, and we gave him the paintings, but that’s what did him over in the end.

John: Another rule: the villain must be brought down by their own sin. 

Dean: Now this, for me, is my favorite scene for a number of reasons. 

John: It’s a good scene.

Dean: First of all, just the lighting. We got this at the perfect time of day.

John: Yeah, how'd we get the lighting Dean?

[Laughter]

Dean: We accidentally went over that day and somehow went into-

Amy: Oh accidentally?

John: Oh did the director somehow go over in the morning, so we just happened to be shooting at the magic hour?

Dean: It was odd how that worked out.

Amy: Oh interesting.

Dean: That we just happened to be in magic hour to shoot the romantic scene.

Amy: That is so funny.

John: What I love is the fact that you’d never work again as a director for boning your producer that bad, except you’re the producer?

[Laughter]

John: No, this scene is stunning.

Dean: They both knocked it out of the park on this day. And for me, it's weird to say it because I directed the episode, but this is the best almost-kiss I’d ever seen before. And it's really the way they did it.

John: Yeah. This was another one where it was like, set up the cameras, let the actors work.

Dean: This was also a callback to what happened in the episode at the school, because-

Amy: Fairy Godparents.

John: Yeah.

Dean: Cause in the Fairy Godparents that she had never really been honest. 

John: Exactly.

Dean: And here she realizes she doesn't know who she is anymore because she's been so many other people for so long.

Amy: She got dumped because she wasn't being truthful with her boyfriend, and she actually recited all the names of her aliases, and this is sort of the callback to her having to bury them in order to move on.

John: Yeah, she's more attached to fake people than real people and it’s caught up with her. And this is the moment where Sophie Deaveraux becomes a better human being than Nate Ford.

Dean: And that red coat was totally Gina.

John: That was Gina. That's right, she came in with that she and Nadine went hunting for that. This is a great almost kiss.

Dean: Ow! Ow!

John: This was an Italian over. This is- what's that terminology?

Dean: It’s a French over. Rather than being in the front of them, you're over their backs and then this walk away.

Amy: The Italian over is you're drinking wine while you’re doing it.

John: And this walkaway was fantastic with that light right there!

Amy: Through the trees! It's so pretty.

John: You knew what scene was good when we were shooting it because I was watching it on the monitor and I turned around and all the local PA’s were standing behind us watching the scene and two of the girls were crying.

Dean: Yeah. It was awesome.

John: You just really nailed it. And that was going to be the summer season ender, 207, and wound up being still a great send off for that character. And really one of the best episodes of the two years I gotta say.

Amy: Yup, it's one of my favorites for sure.

Dean: For me it's almost like the two part season finale of one, season one, done in one episode.

Amy: Yeah, exactly.

Dean: So thank you for watching.

John: Thank you for watching.

Amy: Thanks everybody!

[ot3tropetober]

Parker has this idea, see. It’s been rattling around in her head for a while and now the perfect opportunity has come up.

"I wanna do one." she says, sliding onto the chair next to Hardison’s and rolling it up to his desk.

Hardison looks up, elbow deep in circuit boards. "One what?" he asks warily.

"You know, one of your little pretend stories, about how we met." She says it like it’s obvious, it never occurs to her that it isn’t.

"One- one of my- Parker you mean the aliases I build?” splutters Hardison with a quick and repetitive shake of his head. “The loving and painstakingly crafted aliases I use to keep us safe when we're running cons? Those 'little pretend stories'?"

"Yes, those. Exactly."

"Aliases then - you gotta call them aliases, or IDs. This is serious work woman."

"Pfft okay.” Parker’s smile turns sly. “Does that apply to that one you were photoshopping yesterday?”

Hardison’s reply is cagey. “... which one?”

“The one where Eliot was n-"

His hands fly up, cutting her off mid-explanation, 

"- Woah woah. No. That was… okay fine that one was one of my pretend stories okay.” He rubs the back of his neck and his eyes don’t quite meet Parker’s. “So sue me,” he mutters, “man looks good in it... not my fault if I… Anyway. The rest are still called aliases, okay?”

"Okay." She nods once in agreement.

"What's this even for anyway?” Hardison asks, still fiddling idly with wires. “If you need identities for a job I probably have some already that could work."

"I had an idea for the Yielder case that I'm fairly sure you won't have covered."

Hardison shrugs. "You'd be surprised… but sure, go ahead. If you wanna get started drafting what you want today then I'll pick up whatever hacking needs to be done. Probably take about a week to get three IDs decently backed up, longer if you need them to hold up to intelligence agency checks,” he pauses, “... do you need them to hold up to intelligence agency checks?"

Parker thinks about it. It’s fairly low risk; one of the reasons this job is the perfect time for this set of identities. "Not for this job."

"Cool, cool. You can use this laptop then. And holla if you need me."

"Thanks Hardison!"

His concentration returns to the circuitry spread out before him and his hands twitch towards a soldering iron. Then he goes still, looks over his shoulder as Parker’s walking out to grab snacks, and adds, "Please can we not tell Eliot about that edit."

"Okay." She hears a sigh of relief, and then thinks it might be important to mention, "But he already saw it." She pauses again, sorts though the memory to get to Eliot’s reaction "Got super blushy. I think he liked it."

Keep reading here

[swordandquill]

Title: Just a Call Away

Fandom: Leverage

Summary: Four times Eliot answers a call from his teammates, and one time they answer a call from him

Author’s Note: Written for Comfortember. The prompt for the first chapter is anxiety. I may hit some of the other prompts as I work my way through the chapters.

You can go here to read this on AO3 instead.

Eliot was asleep. Actually asleep. Under his nice fluffy down comforter, and he had just washed his sheets, and the bruising on his ribs was finally healed enough for him to sleep on that side without it hurting.

And his phone rang.

He should have left it in the living room, or turned it off, or tossed it out the window, or literally anything besides leaving it sitting on his nightstand. But he hadn’t. So he reached a hand out of his nice warm cocoon of blankets and groped blindly for it, pulling it back under the comforter to put to his ear.

“What?” he slurred, too groggy to even really be surly.

“I need help,” Parker said by way of greeting. 

The team had called him far more times than Eliot cared to keep track of for that exact thing, enough times that it no longer immediately incited panic in him, since it was, more often than not, not actually an emergency, particularly where Hardison and Parker were concerned. “We ran out of cookies” and “we need more blankets for movie night” were not conversations that should have started with “I need help.”

Parker’s voice wavered though, and there was just enough panic in it to have Eliot pushing himself out of bed and looking for the nearest pair of pants.

“Where are you?” Eliot asked.

“Nebraska,” Parker sounded nervous admitting it.

“Nebra…” Eliot dropped back to the edge of his bed heavily, “Parker, I’m in Boston!”

“I know,” something that sounded very much like desperation entered her voice, “I’m lost, and you know military stuff, so you can help.”

Eliot ran a rough hand over his face and tried calm both his frustration and his anxiety. Military stuff, Parker, and lost were not things that should go together, especially when Eliot was half way across the country from her. He could deal with that later though. For now, he needed to try to get her out of whatever mess she had gotten herself into. 

“What’s going on?” he did his best to keep his voice level; Parker could and would shut down on him if she thought he was angry with her.

“I got a tip that there was a stash of stolen World War II paintings hidden in an old cold war bunker in Nebraska,” Parker’s voice came across calmer now that she knew Eliot would help her.

As if that had ever been in questions.

“You’re lost in a cold war bunker?” Eliot couldn’t help the rise in his voice.

“I had the route all planned out, but then I got turned around, and all the halls look the same,” Parker snapped.

“They do that on purpose,” Eliot snapped back.

He could charter a private jet and be there in six hours, maybe five if he threw enough money at the charter company. He could call in a favor with one of his military buddies, and maybe, if he was really lucky, be there in four hours, but favors from military buddies could be complicated, and Parker would be fine for an extra hour or two… probably… maybe.

“See, you know military stuff,” Parker huffed, “tell me how to get out. There are markings on the walls, but I don’t know what any of them mean.”

There was a chance Eliot wasn’t going to know either. He had been in a handful of top secret military bunkers in his life, both with and without permission, but none of them had been cold war era, and while notation and signage was kind of standardized, it did change over time and a certain percentage of secret bases put up signage to intentionally confuse people.

He could at least try to talk Parker through, he guessed. She didn’t seem to be in immediate danger and if he could help her find her way out, that would be faster than her having to wait for him to get there.

“Okay, stay on the line and tell me what you see,” Eliot directed.

“I can’t,” the nervousness was back in Parker’s voice.

“Can’t what?” Eliot scowled, wishing Parker was there for him to scowl at.

“I can’t stay on the line,” Parker clarified, “I had to climb to the top of this big round room to get a signal, but I don’t think there’s any way out through here.”

“You climbed to the top of a missile silo,” Eliot said flatly.

“There’s no missile,” Parker countered, as if that was the problem.

This team was going to be the death of him, he just knew it.

“Okay, you are going to tell me exactly where this bunker is,” Eliot said firmly, “and I’m going to tell you what to look for so you can try and find your way out. You’re going to call me any time you can get a signal, and if I don’t hear from you with in an hour, I’m flying out there to get you.”

He kind of wanted to make the last part a threat, but neither of them would have believed that.

“Okay,” Parker agreed.

She listened carefully as Eliot explained how military notation usually worked, repeating the information back to him when he asked. Then, he had to let her hang up.

It was a very long four hours while Eliot was forced to wait for Parker’s irregular calls. He spent the time pacing restlessly, running through every possible scenario and outcome, all the things that could go wrong, from Parker getting hurt, to getting lost and not being able to reach him to tell him, to finding herself locked behind failsafe doors that didn’t unlock once they had been triggered, to the owners of the stash coming back and catching her or just killing her on the spot.

He almost chartered the flight out twice, but both times he was interrupted by Parker calling, and he hung up on the hold music to answer.

Finally, finally, though, Parker found her way out, and Eliot could hear crickets chirping and the wind rustling in the grass when she called, and he felt like he could breathe again without something trying to crush his chest.

“Thanks, Eliot,” Parker chirped, apparently none the worse for wear. Eliot was feeling much worse for wear and did not appreciate the cheerfulness.

“Now that I know how to get around, I should go back and get the paintings,” Parker continued happily, “there’s supposed to be…”

“No, you will not,” Eliot cut her off with a snarl, “you are going to get on the next flight home, and if I don’t see you in person in the next eight hours, I’m going to take all the diamonds you have stashed under the floor at that warehouse you own on 9th street, sell them for half of what they’re worth, and give all the money to a clown school.”

“I didn’t know you knew about that stash,” Parker said meekly, then added in a somewhat horrified whisper, “clowns have schools?”

That was definitely not the thing to be horrified about here.

“Eight hours, Parker,” Eliot said firmly, then hung up.

He slid to the floor and leaned back against his bed, muscles aching from the constant tension vibrating through him for the last four hours, and pressed his forehead to his knees. He didn’t think Parker really understood just how much trouble she had been in. Some of those underground facilities were huge, and with no easy way to stay in touch with her, it could have been days, if not weeks, until they found her, and that wasn’t even taking into account the possibility of her getting caught, and what the people who caught her would do to her.

He was glad she had called, glad she hadn’t waited until she was starting to suffer from dehydration and hunger, or the guys who the stuff belonged to came back and started shooting, but it was hard to quantify just how much stress his team created for him.

He glanced down at the floor where he had dropped his phone. He was tempted to call Hardison and ask him to track Parker and make sure she really didn’t go back down into the bunker, or Nate, so he would chew Parker out before he took on the job of recovering and returning the stolen art, or even Sophie, just to have someone to rant to. Anyone, just so he didn’t have to sit here alone with his frayed nerves.

Instead, he shoved himself to his feet and went to go spend some quality time with his punching bag. It wasn’t like he was going to get anymore sleep any time soon.

********

Seven hours and forty-three minutes later, Parker appeared next to him so abruptly he almost dropped his spoon into the stew he was stirring.

“Please don’t sell my diamonds,” Parker said quickly.

Eliot contemplated smacking her with the spoon. Not hard, just enough to sting. Maybe a little hard. He could say she had startled him and it was reflex.

Parker hugged him before he could decide, and he was forced to put the spoon down so he didn’t get stew on her shirt.

“Thank you for helping me,” she ducked her head against his shoulder.

Eliot sighed heavily and wrapped his arms around her, “anytime, darling.”

Because he always wanted her to call. No matter what, he wanted her to call him if she got into trouble. He didn’t want to find out about it after it was too late to do anything.

“Also, Sophie said you probably weren’t really going to sell my diamonds, and that you were just worried about me because you care, and I should apologize for scaring you,” Parker squeezed him a little tighter, “so, sorry for scaring you.”

Eliot wasn’t sure if Parker really understood what Sophie had been trying to tell her or was just doing what she thought would make him less upset with her. Either one seemed like progress in a certain way, and at least she was safe now.

He pressed his face into her hair and closed his eyes.

“I really would have sold your diamonds,” he assured her.

“Oh,” Parker frowned into his shoulder, “does that mean you care a lot or that I scared you a lot?”

“Yes,” he grumbled.

“Okay,” Parker was quiet for a moment, her grip still tight around his shoulders, “will you help me burn down all the clown schools?”

“No!” Eliot gave her a quick, hard squeeze, making her squeak, then let her go, “go set the table. Dinner’s almost ready.”

“Okay,” Parker grinned at him, then hesitated before kissing him on the cheek, “you scare me sometimes, too.”

Before Eliot could ask, she had turned away to start pulling things out of the cupboards. He stared at her for a minute before turning back to his stew. If anyone was ever going to turn his hair grey, it was going to be that girl, but he was glad to have her home.

[dylangasmsforusall]

An excerpt from a currently untitled WIP, but @alicenwrites needed to see this today, and I wanted to help. So here's a little ot3 fluff.

He was brought from his thoughts as fingers trailed through the hair at the back of his head.  He turned his attention from blindly watching the television to see Parker leaning over the back of the couch. One hand was trailing through his hair while the other moved to slide along his chest lightly.  

“Hey,” he sort of purred, closed his eyes briefly at the feeling her fingers elicited before opening them again to look at her.

“Hey, yourself,” she replied, leaning to brush their lips together lightly. “Kitchen’s all done. I’m gonna take a bath,” she kissed him lightly once again before pulling away and trailing her hands from his body to run along the back of the couch as she moved off towards their bedroom and the master bath.  “You wanna come read to me?” 

Eliot smiled slowly.  He loved this side of Parker; who loved to touch softly, and steal kisses, and just be near him and Hardison in any way.  Hardison had the better, softer, reading voice, but Eliot was charmed into a warm fuzziness when Parker wanted him to do something as simple as read to her; so he nodded a bit, finished off his beer, and then got up from the couch.

She was puttering around their bedroom when he’d finished tossing his bottle in the trash and followed her into the room.  He smiled a bit and moved into the bathroom to start her bath. 

Eliot had always paid attention to those around him; evidence in the fact that he’d sent Parker the venus fly trap and Sophie the roses that one time.  He knew what his team liked, what would relax them, what would drive them crazy and make them happy.  So he knew how to prepare the bath for her.  He knew that she didn’t like the water scorching hot like he did, but warm and relaxing like an embrace.  He knew she liked the softer scents of lavender and lemon, so he got to work making her a scented bubble bath while she undressed in their room.

When the tub had been halfway filled, Parker walked silently into the bathroom, where Eliot was swirling the water around to waft the scents into the air.  He’d lit some aromatherapy candles and placed them around the room, offering more warmth to the bathroom. 

“Mmm,” she hummed, running smooth hands up the planes of his back.  Eliot could hear the smile in her tone, “how do you always just know?”

“S’a gift.” Eliot replied, turning to gently scoop her up from the floor and twisting back around to carefully lower her into the warm bath.  “I like it when you’re relaxed and happy.”  He shrugged a little bit, moving his hands to gently gather her hair up and tying it into a loose knot on top of her head with the hair tie around his wrist.

“I like it when you do things like this,” she murmured, eyes closed as he fixed her hair.  Once it was finished and Eliot had removed his hands, she leaned back and sank down into the warm bath with an appreciative hum of approval.

“I know,” Eliot told her softly, moving out of the room for a moment to grab the current book that Parker was reading.  

It had always sort of surprised him that she liked to read a variety of different things, but mostly stuck to young adult stories wild with romance, fantasy, and excitement weaved throughout.  Eliot had to admit that when he read to her or over her shoulder while she snuggled into his side, he got a little into the story sometimes too.  He couldn’t help it; he was kind of a sucker for stories that ended up happily ever after, even when there was conflict, danger, and wildness along the way.

He moved back into the bathroom and settled himself on the floor next to the tub.  He’d lain a folded towel down for some cushion to sit on, leaning his back up against the side of the tub.  He drew one knee up and dropped the book down against his thigh, holding it open with one thumb between the pages.

And he began to read, hearing Parker shift in the tub to lean over the edge next to him.  Her head was pillowed on one curved elbow while her other hand moved to let her fingers drift through the hair at the back of his head and neck once again.

( a little skippage of plotlines here....)

Hardison said his goodbyes to Nana and hung up the phone with another frown.  What in the hell could have his Nana sounding so shaken?

He walked through their bedroom and stood in the doorway of the bathroom, letting his eyes take in the sight of Parker lounging in a bubble bath, arm pillowed on the edge of the tub, fingers in Eliot’s hair as he read aloud from her book on the floor next to the tub.

Fuck, they were breathtaking.

Hardison was a little disappointed in himself when his presence drew their attention from their warm and comforting little bubble and they both looked up at him.  Their soft smooth smiles turned into more serious expressions at what he could only assume was his posture and face.

“What is it?” Eliot asked, letting the book fall closed on his thumb.  Parker’s fingers stilled on the back of Eliot’s neck; Hardison could see how her fingers had slid around the back of Eliot’s neck at the shift in atmosphere.

“My Nana just called,” Hardison told them with a sigh, “we need to head out to her house as soon as possible.”

“Like, right this second soon as possible,” Parker asked, “or in the morning soon as possible?”

“Like, she called to ask for our help and I think we need to get there as soon as humanly possible.” Alec replied.  He tapped the edge of his fist against the door frame.  “I’m sorry to interrupt your bubble bath reading hour, but we should pack.”

Parker let out a disappointed sigh, “I like bubble bath reading hour.”

“There’ll be more, Darlin.” Eliot murmured, turning and brushing his lips along her jaw, then her forehead.  He shifted and let the book fall closed before he set it on the counter by the sink.  He followed his own momentum around and moved to dip his arms into the tub and pull Parker out of the water with such fluid movement that Hardison was a little astounded; he was always astounded by the way Eliot moved,though, if he was completely serious.

Once Eliot had lifted Parker out of the tub, he sat himself on the closed toilet seat and set her in his lap, reaching for a towel to start methodically drying her off with soft and gentle strokes of the soft turkish cotton.

There it is. A little sneak peak of what im workin' on. I hope it helped, darlin. 🥺😘

Also, @anduril made me do it.

[leverage-mytake]

S1E11: The Juror #6 Job

This episode was fun. Was nice to see Parker out of her comfort zone, and was funny to her forgetting Alice.

Eliot to Sophie about Parker: "You need to talk to her. This is not the first time she's gone loco"

............................

Parker and her interaction with other jurors lol

Parker: What'd you have for breakfast? You smell like gravy.

..................

This reminds me of Bull!!!! The earpieces and tech of the juror duty!

(I actually really liked the concept of Bull, but just hated Bull’s arrogance, anyway I digress)

....................

Aww and Sophie and Alec sticking up for Parker when she comes to them for help

Sophie: you know, she's never done that before. Nate: What, stormed out? Come on. Sophie: No, asked for our help. (walks out) (Nate looks toward Parker, then back at Hardison) Nate: What? Listen, there is a reason we put her in a jury trial. (Hardison mutes game) Hardison: You know, man, when I was a, when I was a kid, I was like 8 years old, I had a foster mom who was Jehovah’s witness. She used to dress me up in a suit and a bow tie and take me door-to-door to spread the word. Black neighborhoods, white neighborhoods, didn't matter. I would kick, I’d scream, or whatever, but she would say "Alec, you need to learn how to talk to people." See, everything I learned about people, I learned ringing doorbells and-and-and being in a bow tie. Parker never had that. I mean, jumping from a skyscraper, she's cool. But making small talk? It’s-it's like pure terror. Just cut her some slack.

:)

....................

GOOD ELI! TAKE YOUR BEER BACK!!!

Eliot: Tell you what, this is not happenin', bubba. You ain't takin' my beer.

......

And Eli and Parker team up! Yay! ha cute!

................

Hell yeah Parker was telling the truth! Take that Nate!

.........

Hardison: Hello. (looking at monitors) Earnshaw just ran a credit check on Alice White. Parker: Who's Alice White? Nate/Sophie: You are! Parker: Whoa!

Ha ha love this gag

....................

Eliot and Alec are well funny!!!

Eliot: It's your turn to be in the dumpster. Hardison: No, man, no. I-I have-I have peanut allergies. What if somebody threw in some extra crunchy Skippy? Then, you know, it's just a (wheezing) all up in my vocal area, man. Do you want to give me mouth-to-mouth? No, none of us want that. Hell no.

..............

The apple and orange persuasion sketch HAHAHAHAHHA

This is my favourite thing. EVER!

Sophie: Okay, today did not go well, but that's all right. You know, we learn when we fail. We're gonna-we're gonna go back to basics, and we're gonna do a little role-playing. Gonna start with-with persuasion techniques. So, Eliot (tosses him an apple) has an apple. Alice (tosses her an orange) has an orange. Eliot: I love apples. Apples are my favorite fruit. Parker: Good for you, sparky. Eliot (to Sophie): I-I don't have to sit here and take this crap. Sophie: Go on. Just do it for me. Eliot (to Parker): You have an orange, all right? Now, convince me that I want the orange, not the apple. I'm gonna take a bite. (slowly brings the apple to his mouth and takes a bite) Parker: I put a razor blade in that apple. Eliot (spits out the apple): Are you serious? Parker: Maybe. But do you know what doesn’t have a razor blade in it? This orange. (smells the orange) Don't you want it? (tosses the orange at Eliot and leaves) Sophie: You fell for that? (exits room)

Hahaha poor Eliot! Don’t blame him though! Parker could and would!

.........  ......

Parker and the stealing forman trick! Wowee!

...............

Parker: Wait! Wait a second. That was a secret. You just told me a secret, right? That's something friends do.

Peggy: Well, I guess so. You're the nicest one here.

Parker: Really? I mean, thanks.

Aww P ❤

..........................

Alec pretending to be a lawyer!

...................

Awwww man I love Parker! She's so cute!

....................

Nate: Now, listen, this is the middle game. This is where we trade pieces. We look for weaknesses. You have to buy Sophie a little more time to maneuver. Alec: I literally cannot make this slower or any more boring. Okay, y-you know why they say justice wears a blindfold? So you can't see that justice is asleep.

then

Hardison: Slide 162. This is-this is good stuff. Dr. Goldfarb, hi. Can you tell us how the chemicals work their way into the neurotransmitters? Judge (bored): Is this going anywhere, counselor? Hardison: Oh, I assure you, your honor, the next hundred slides are essential. 

HA

...........

HAHAHA Donnie! That was BRILL!!

............

AWW and I love Encouraging Nate and Sophie! They really are the parents!

Nate: A jury is 12 people. Just talk to them. You've been doing it your whole life. Just put on your bow tie and ring the doorbell. 

Sophie: Actually, Peggy is disgustingly normal. But the rest of them, they all have their own Alice White. You just, you just happened to give yours a name. 

.................

This whole scene!!!

Nate: Okay, we don't have court today, but we do have some work to do. Eliot: Am I gonna like this work? Nate: Uh, not the first part. 

................

ANd Nate in character! hA!

Nate: Are you kidding? I've been off the grid for years. Don't get me wrong. Electric car's a good way to start, but you can make fuel from your own bodily waste. Do you compost? The feeling when-when you close the digestive-to- internal combustion cycle, glorious.

..........................

Hardison: Oh, incident. Okay. (referring to file) Would that happen to be the incident on flight 732 out of St. Louis, where you-you fondled a flight attendant's buttocks? Or would that happen to be the incident on flight 1433 out of Chicago, where you drank 17 tiny margaritas, you took your pants off, you stood up on the drink cart, and you sang, quote, "I'm a sexy monkey"?

..............................

THE SWITCHING MONITERS THING! BRILL Hardison!!!

...............

And this whole interaction was just *chefs kiss*

Parker: Oh, sweet mercy, cooked flesh. (takes a bite of burger) Can we have fast food every time we make the bad guys go away? Nate: Did you realize what you just did? What you did? You won a jury trial without cheating. Hardison: Without chea--I hacked a government no-fly list and used it to humiliate a witness. Nate: Excessively. "Cheating excessively" is what I meant. But, I mean, think about it, I mean, if you applied yourself, Hardison, you could be anything you want. Hardison: You know what? I could. I could. You know, next week, I think I’m gonna be an astronaut. Nate: Well, that's not really what I meant. I meant if you studied, you’d-- Hardison: Yeah, if I--Who needs to study? You know, I’m gonna be a surgeon. A surgeon – ER. Surgeon. (Parker gets a text and checks her phone) Parker: Hey, it's Peggy from the trial! She wants to have coffee next week. Alice made a friend. Eliot: I'm gonna tell you one more time. You made a friend, not Alice. Parker: Oh, cool. Well, think she'd want to steal a painting with me? Sophie: Start small, Parker. Try coffee

.

[sasuhinasno1fan]

Stargazing- Lukadrien June Day 28

I actually liked this one. This was inspired by a Leverage episode, the one where the mark believed in aliens so much he would give up the thing he stole from the victim to be seen as the first person to have contact with aliens. Parker and Hardison were trying to decide on a date during the job and when the original plans got messed up, Hardison did what Luka does for Adrien here. Work starts tomorrow so we’ll see if I can post tomorrow. I’d like to do something either tomorrow or on the 30th to finish @lukadrien-june​ off. We’ll see, for now, enjoy. Stargazing

“You’ve never been stargazing before?”

Adrien shook his head. He knew it always surprised people when he talked about simple thing he never did.

“Other than the fact that I’ve been in the house most of my life and trying to drag Chloe to do anything that wasn’t shopping was impossible, Paris has too many city lights to see the stars that well. As much as I love watching the Eiffel Tower just glow in the night, I guess it would be cool to kinda just lay on your back and star up at the stars.”

“Would you like to go stargazing?” Luka asked.

The blond nodded slowly. “I would. One day.”

“What about this weekend?” Adrien raised an eyebrow at his boyfriend. “Well mom actually inherited this country coatage. We usually spend our longer breaks there when we were younger but since we grew up and have more friends, we don’t go as often. If you could convince Nino to lie for you, unless you really think your dad will say yes, we could go this weekend.”

“Really? You’d do that for me?”

Luka couldn’t help but feel a bit sad that Adrien felt like he needed to ask that. Even with his amazing friends and so far, well ended relationships he had, Adrien didn’t realise just how much some people would go to make him smile, the same he’d do for others.

“Of course, if you want to go.”

“Well, I might be able to slip it into the conversation with my father.” Adrien said, before kissing Luka, “Thank you for asking me this.”

“Not a problem. Hey, maybe I can make you s’mores while we’re there.”

“Marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers. I can hear Nathalie crying at my ruined diet already. I can’t wait.”

Luka laughed before kissing Adrien, looking forward to the weekend even more.

                                                   _______________

“Hey mom, can I ask you for a favour?” Luka asked as he came up to his mother moving like the storm she was in the kitchen.

“Yes, mon trésor?” Luka smiled at himself. He loved it when his mother called him and Juleka that. Most be the sea loving part of them.

“I wanted to take Adrien out to the coatage. He’s never stargazed before and I wanted to show him the stars. Can I?”

“You and your boyfriend out by yourself in the country? I know I won’t be getting any early grandchildren from either you or your sister but what makes you think I’ll do that?”

“Because you love Adrien?”

His mother gave him a small glare, but he was right. Anarka treated her children’s significant others like her own children and she took a special shining to Adrien.

“Besides, when have we ever given you trouble?” the extreme lax on rules in their house taught the siblings to prove that they deserved that trust. “Please?”

Anarka sighed before pointing the spoon in her hand at him. “The same rules that apply whenever I leave the boathouse to you kids apply there. If anything goes wrong, call me. I don’t care if it’s minor. Adrien’s father could make everyone life hell if we hurt his kid. Deal?”

“Deal. Thank you, mom.”

“Yes, yes. When are you going?”

“This weekend. We can leave Friday and be back Sunday.”

“Hmm, now I’m wondering if I should even let you go. Apparently, there’s a storm coming in during the weekend. I’d rather you both here that all the way out there.”

Not news he was really hoping to hear. Since he got the idea in his head about taking Adrien out stargazing, he didn’t want to go back on his word.

“How about if it looks fine on Thursday we can go? If not, Adrien can spend the night?”

“And somehow you win in both scenarios. Fine, that’s fine. But Thursday got it? If it’s bad, better find out an alternative.”

He nodded when a sudden thought came to his mind. “Can I buy something with expedited shipping?”

“Now what do you have planned?”

“Just getting all my bases covered. I’ll pay you back for the shipping.”

“That’s fine. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I do, promise.” With that, he went back to his room, mind creating a back up plan. He would take Adrien stargazing if it was the last thing he did.

                                             ______________

It seemed like things would work out at the start. Adrien did have to lie to his dad but he and Nino came up with the best cover story.

“His family is taking him and Alya out of town, so as far as my dad knows, I’m with them, along with Marinette. The usual gang that he somewhat trusts. I swear, when I don’t fear he won’t be totally over protective, I’ll introduce you to him.”

Luka had put a hand on Adrien’s, calming him. “I don’t mind him not knowing who I am right now. All that matters is come Friday evening, we’ll be laying on the hammock and I’ll be teaching you all the constellations you only read about.”

His back up plan had arrived but he still hoped he wouldn’t need it, but by Wednesday, the usual blue sky was dotted with dark clouds, the sky becoming even more clouded as the day went on. Nino’s parents cancelled their trip and Adrien changed the lie to Nino inviting him for a sleepover, but Luka still hoped. However, by Thursday morning, heavy wind was also added to the increasing dark clouds.

“Ow!” Luka yelped as a sudden dip in the waves caused the houseboat to move and him to crash into the wall. Like a cat, Adrien was perfectly fine as he led them to Luka’s room, even though Luka had been living on the houseboat since he was a kid.

“Are you sure we’ll be ok here?” Adrien asked as he put his bag on Luka’s bed. He did notice a lot of things had hooks and were attached to the wall.

“Yeah. If it’s ever really bad, Chloe’s dad issues to leave premises to anyone who lives on boats and houses them in Le Grande Paris until it’s safe to be back here again. Chloe usually never looks happy but we usually stay here unless it’s really bad. I’m sorry we couldn’t go to the coatage like we planned.”

Adrien was obviously upset but he hid it with a smile. “It’s fine.”

“Adrien.”

“Well, I’ll admit, I was really hoping we could go but safety is first.”

Now that he got Adrien to admit how he was feeling, he hoped his backup plan would work.

“Close your eyes.” He ordered.

“Why?” Adrien asked looking confused.

“Please?”

Still frowning, Adrien did what his boyfriend asked and closed his eyes. After quickly making sure Adrien had his eyes closed, he pulled out the star projector from his drawer under his bed and turned the lights off, making sure the windows were covered. He turned it on and watched his room become the inside of a nebula.

“Ok, open your eyes.”

He watched Adrien’s eyes fluttered open, the green eyes adjusting and widening at the sight.

“Oh Luka.” He said, breathlessly. “It’s beautiful.”

“So, you like it?”

“I love it.” His favourite smile of Adrien’s grew on the model’s face as he looked around the room. “How did you plan this?”

“My mom mentioned the storm and I wanted to keep my promise to take you stargazing. I know it’s not as great as the real thing.”

Adrien shook his head, “It’s prefect. I love this.” He took Luka’s face in his hands and kissed him slow and deep. When he pulled back, he whispered, “Thank you.”

Luka gave him a smile and pressed another kiss to his lips before he pulled Adrien into his chest to cuddle as they watched stars fly across the walls and ceilings. It might not have been the real thing, but Luka had to agree. It was perfect.