#eliot writes good

[elle-rosewater]

I’m trying to catch up on steel can’t carry me right now and DUDE every time I read it I feel exactly like Legend. I miss judged Warriors SO badly and you make it so heart breakingly clear.

<333

seaotter<3 maker of beautiful art and writer of the soup in my to-read pile!!

This made me giggle. You feel like Steel!Legend?? Oh, man! Haha, I'm so sorry, Legend feels BAD most of the time! The point of Steel isn't to make anyone feel like they've misjudged Warriors by 50 miles (they have), BUT IF IT WERE.... I will have done a good thing lol. People are sleeping on Wars.

thanks for giving the ol' fic a look! I hope you stop feeling like Lege soon lol. Cheers!

[leverage-ot3]

love how we all went into redemption either wary of or expecting to hate harry but within two episodes we all collectively went, oh, he’s just some lil weird guy and we adopted him just like the leverage crew did

[libraryofgage]

The Wish Job (One)

Part of: Steve Deserves Good Parents, Actually

Debbie and Fester Addams One | Two | Three | Four | Five Rick and Evelyn O'Connell One | Two | Three Harley Quinn One | Two1 0th Doctor and Rose One | Two (on the way!) Scooby Gang (there are plans for this one lmao, so plz be patient with me orz) Jedidiah and Octavius (from Night at the Museum) One | Two Queen Clarisse Renaldi One | Two | Three Leverage Crew One (you're here!)

This fic was line jumped! If you'd like to learn more about line jumping (getting to see your favorite fics updated sooner) you can read this post

I had a lot of thoughts for this AU, actually, so I'm really glad it got line jumped so I was forced to put them down into words lol

Steve becomes one of Nana's foster kids, but he spends a majority of this series with the Leverage crew working a job (as the name of this series suggests), and they fill similarly parental role.

As always, if you see any typos, no you didn't ;P

----

After his father's arrest, everything is a blur. Steve can remember flashes, sure, but nothing concrete. Nothing more than two FBI agents in the door of his classroom, the cold steel of interrogation room chairs, an agent's ponytail with split ends, a kind smile but clammy hand on his elbow, the broken A/C of the car when he finally left the FBI office, and the slippery feel of the garbage bag he's given to pack 14 years of a life he'll never see again.

Nothing comes back into focus until he's faced with an older black woman, standing outside a two-story house. The man with a kind smile but clammy hands introduces her, but Steve doesn't actually hear the name.

"You can call me Nana," the woman says, looking at the man like she doesn't know why he's still there when his work is obviously done.

"Well, uh, Steve, feel free to call if you need anything. We'll keep in touch," the man says, nodding before half-running down the walk way.

"Never liked him," Nana says, clicking her tongue. "Too damn squirrely for my tastes. Now, Steve, come inside and we'll go over some ground rules."

Steve follows her mechanically, gripping his trash bag tightly and wondering far too late why he wasn't allowed to pack his own suitcases. The house is a cacophony of noises: feet running across wood floors, a TV blaring from the living room, shouts coming from every direction, a microwave beeping while the oven timer rings, a crash from the next room over that makes Steve wince.

Nana stands in the doorway, takes a deep breath, and then shouts at the top of her lungs, "Y'all had better stop all this racket right the fuck now before I cancel pizza night!"

The house goes silent, and Steve feels his shoulders tense even more. He hates the silence. Silence means anger, and anger means punishment. He clenches his jaw, trying to keep himself small as Nana nods and leads the way into a dining room.

A girl appears in the room shortly after, carrying a mug and a soda. She places the mug in front of Nana and the soda in front of an empty seat, gesturing for Steve to sit. "Welcome. I can take your bag, if you want," she offers, looking at the trash bag with bright eyes.

"Don't make trouble, Breanna," Nana says, dismissing her easily.

Steve watches her leave before sitting. He licks his lips, opens the soda as quietly as he can manage, and waits for Nana to take a sip from her mug before saying, "Thank you for taking me in, ma'am."

"I said to call me Nana, none of that ma'am business unless you're in trouble, and you're not in trouble," she says, waving her hand dismissively. "Now, the rules. No complaining about sharing a room. No TV remote access after seven because that's when my shows start. We all eat dinner together on Wednesday night. You go to school every day unless you're sick, and you tell me when you're feeling sick. You got all that?"

"Yes, m....Nana."

"Good. Now, I know you're used to a fancier living than this, but I expect you to adjust without too much complaint. You still get your own bed, and whatever you brought is yours to keep, but money is tight. We save where we can, and I expect you to help with that. Turn off lights, use less water, unplug things when you're not using them."

Steve nods again, inexplicably feeling a little better as Nana speaks. She's not treating him like a spoiled brat, but she's not coddling him, either. She gets another boy (an older one named Hardison) to give him a tour of the house. He shows Steve the mezzuzahs on each door and the Kaaba directional marker in each room---"We're a multi-denominational household, kid, Nana will get whatever you need if she doesn't have it already," Hardison says, grinning widely at him---and makes sure he knows which spots are good for hiding when he needs a few minutes.

He ends the tour at Steve's new room. It has two bunk-beds, three of the bunks with rumpled sheets and one bottom bunk devoid of sheets altogether. Hardison gives Steve blue sheets, welcomes him, and then leaves Steve to unpack by himself.

It's new, it's unfamiliar, it's terrifying. Steve hopes, despite himself, that it's not a temporary stop.

----

"I don't care! He can't stay!"

"We're already in London, Hardison. We can hardly send him back on a plane by himself."

"Isn't that how he got here in the first place? He's 17, not seven."

Steve moves his gaze from Hardison to Sophie to Eliot, feeling like he's watching a tennis match. He's sandwiched between Nate and Parker, a hand on his shoulder holding him back from trying to defend himself. Not that he's upset about it. Keeping everyone from turning their frustration on him sounds like a great idea.

"Yeah, and how did he get here?" Parker asks, dashing Steve's hopes right as they're forming.

He shifts uncomfortably as everyone looks at him, ducking his head and staring at the floor. A small part of him is frustrated, angrily protesting the familiar move when its usual target has long been absent.

"Hey, give him some room," Hardison says, moving forward to push Nate and Parker back a few steps. He stands at an angle to Steve, leaving him plenty of room to move away if he wants. "Nobody's angry, kid. Well, I'm a little mad, but only because you could be putting yourself in danger. So, how'd you catch up to us?"

Steve wonders for a brief moment about whose wrath he'd rather endure. In the end, he decides Breanna is scarier than Hardison, so he lies. "Nana and I overheard you on the phone with Parker at Hannukah dinner, and then Nana said she gets worried about you sometimes," he says, meeting Hardison's eyes before glancing away. He makes himself small again, but it's on purpose this time, broadcasting shame as he adds, "I still have, um, access to my savings account...from my....from them. Enough for a plane ticket and cab ride, at least."

"Aww, Nana worries about us," Parker says, smiling brightly as she nudges Eliot with her elbow. "That's sweet."

"If it weren't a lie," Sophie says, her lips pursed and her eyebrows raised slightly as she walks closer to Steve. She taps his shoulder, his temple, and his hand. "Lowered head but not as low as before. Shoulders drawn in but tense to hold them there. Fingers twitching just slightly. Impressive, I will admit, but I'm a professional, darling."

Steve sighs and lifts his head, his shoulders relaxing some as he frowns. "You didn't have to call me out on it," he mumbles.

"Breanna got you here, didn't she? Ain't no way you'd lie to protect anyone else."

"She could ruin me, Hardison."

"I can ruin you, too, did you forget about that?"

Steve considers him for a moment before shrugging.

"Well," Nate says, clapping his hands together and pulling everyone's attention to him. "Steve is here now, we might as well use him. Sophie, give him an Italian accent and some suede shoes."

"I can already speak Italian," Steve says, "and I have my own suede shoes to match a Cesare Attolini suit." He feels something like guilt twinge in his stomach when Hardison glances at him. Steve's mother may have forfeited custody of him, but she still sends gifts every now and then. Steve usually sells them, slips the cash into drawers and wallets and couch cushions so they can be discovered by Nana and his foster siblings.

The suit and shoes, though? Steve couldn't bring himself to sell them. If there was one thing he missed about life before Nana's foster home, it was the clothes. It was the way his clothes made him feel like a better version of himself, a version everyone would admire and approve of. So, yeah, he'd kept the clothes and shoes his mother sent him two months ago, and he'd packed them for this trip just because.

He'd glad they seem to be coming in handy.

After processing his words, Nate blinks, a smile growing on his face like he's discovered a treasure he won't be letting go of any time soon.

----

Tag List

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[tracing-lines-in-the-infinite]

I love rewatching Leverage.

Started rewatching The Underground Job for some Eliot content and instead remembered that Parker is often taking notes when grifting - both in preparation and during. She was writing out a script for herself and in redemption we finally got to see it develop into using notecards to classify any possible interaction!

Also this is the first time I realized that the kid Eliot meets in the mines is the same kid whose birthday it is about to be when the mine exploded. Making him 14 two years prior (its unclear if he was turning 14 or 15)- which means Cory is only 16/17 years old... hence why the miners always try to keep him as far from "the action" as possible.

When the mine owner complains about how the union demanding workers be paid fairly and have safe working conditions is destroying the business Sophie and Hardison both let their disgust show- they both break!

Parker (or Hardison) keeps a pillow and blanket in Lucille so that Parker can take a nap after too much social interaction [which is now inspiring me to bring a blanket( or maybe a comfy sweatshirt) to my office so I too can nap after too much interaction]

Bonus!

Parker's observations of Pierce:

Image ID: Hardison holding a notepad to camera that says (in all caps):

Learned more on Pierce today, after hours of undetected observation:

She looks right to left...

Opens office door with right hand, answers phone with left...

Blinks 15 times per minute...

Uses hand sanitizer more than 10 [times] a day...

Has 2 cats...

/End ID

There's another shot where she wrote "Smells like Bubbles!" with Bubbles underlined. And Hardison apparently touches his chin every 2.5 minutes.

[yardsards]

a pet headcanon of mine is that after they're done with the sigil removal, emira expands her horizons and starts studying the psychological side of healing, pulling in some resources from the human realm and combining it with boiling isles methods (i imagine the field of psychology in the boiling isles, while existent, was often pushed aside as just a lesser branch of the healing coven back when belos was in charge. i do imagine there's often magic like the memory tweezers involved)

and i imagine she ends up focusing in on like, art therapy and self-expression, because she knows how important that can be, after having her individuality stifled so hard when she was young

[bloodonhissocks]

A thought as I’m rewatching Leverage...

In The Homecoming Job (1x2), Parker needed the sounds puh, tuh, ooh, uh, eh, oh, ah, kuh, a, and f from Charles Dufort in order to open the voice lock and Eliot uses the dish pate d’escargot avec beurre d’Argentine and making Dufort say “This is shrimp, you stupid fuck.” 

First of all, the fact that Eliot was just able to come up with a plan to get all the needed sounds is insane. He purposely manipulated Dufort into saying “fuck” with his set up and thought of a dish that used all the other sounds outside of f, uh, and kuh. This is just brilliant to think of on the fly.

Second, this scene sets up Eliot as someone who cooks and that part of his character becomes so vital to the rest of the series. When I first watched this episode, I didn’t completely understand what was going on. I thought that Eliot made up a dish name to get all the sounds. Disclaimer, I don’t understand French at all, so I couldn’t believe that Dufort actually repeated the whole phrase back to him. I was like “there’s no way he remembered that after Eliot said it only once.” But this is at least my 4th time rewatching and I realized that it made sense that Eliot was able to come up with something like that on the fly because he cooks. I never fully understood that scene because I didn’t know that Eliot cooked. And Dufort was able to repeat the phrase because it is, in fact, a real dish and given Dufort’s position, it makes sense that he would be familiar with such dishes that are normally served at such fancy events. 

Eliot’s character was so thought out in episode two of season one and this is just one of the reasons I love Leverage. It’s crazy to notice these things and connect these dots after having seen this show so many times. Let me know if you think I’m reading into things way too much, this is really only my second tumblr rant about shows. I just love Leverage so much someone please talk to me about Leverage because I’m going to have so much more to say as I continue to rewatch.

[humanmorph]

Lye „Lyke“ Lychen as a sacrifical altar (to Aterika’Kaal) (but he's also kind of the sacrifice)

my @secret-samol gift for @bronanlynch! for the Aterika’Kaal/Lyke prompt of „what if things had gone differently and Aterika'Kaal was still with Lyke“.

notes on this under the readmore!

AU

In this scenario Lyke would succeed in getting the heart of the Motherbeast in Episode 47 and while Alaway would notice & probably still call out to Aterika’Kaal the way he presumably did in canon, Lyke would be there and get to make a compelling case to Aterika’Kaal the likes of „If you stay with me I am going to feed you. I’ve taken care of you until now, I’ll keep doing that“ (argument supported by the fact he’s currently holding the heart of an incredibly powerful dead god). Aterika’kaal agrees and they barely escape through the Sanctum of the Stone Chorus portal. I think it's fun if Lyke then stays there after the hour described in the move is over, maybe knowing he can't convince Pickman & the others that what he's done is actually good, and fine, there's not even anything to worry about he has this totally handled, But yeah he then sets out from whereever in Sangfielle Aterika'Kaals domain is (Austin did say it was an actual place somewhere), and the rest of the Blackwick Group is left to wonder what the hell happened since Lyke just vanished! Alaway has possibly fucked off too after losing the heart. And them getting fired, the Carnival of Moted Light etc. would still happen (and I guess Chine would succeed at what they were doing since Lyke isn’t there?) and who knows if they’d take any action in finding Lyke after that! All that aside though, Lyke basically offers himself to feed on (through blood and/or energy) and to sustain that he keeps consuming(not literally eating) powerful objects/artifacts/resources and possibly eventually living things (I’d imagine he'd still take work as a „please deal with this weird shit for us“ person and when he has to kill a cursed beast or whatnot... might aswell feed Aterika'Kaal?) (What also plays into that decision, and is part of Lyke justifying this to himself, is that without him, Aterika’Kaal would become too powerful. So he aims to function as kind of a conduit & control the power intake so to speak. I think this probably doesn’t work for very long.) I think this eventually goes bad for him because it’s super taxing on his body and the whole deal kind of flips with Aterika’Kaal feeding/keeping HIM alive. He starts finding bodies in the domain again (alternatively, Aterika'Kaal gets better at hiding them because it knows Lyke doesn't particulary like it when it does that). Lyke probably gets stronger due to this power/magic wise, but also way more fragile (he's constantly anemic!). („I love you. I want us both to eat well.“ - Christopher Citro) („When I write of hunger I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and it is all one.“ M.K. Fisher) Notes: I put some resources Lyke’s canonically had in-game + some extra stuff in this picture (the arrow is a reference to Marn’s epilogue, the bugs are bugs (with possibly sinister connotations. If you want them to have those, it’s optional) and the fur is from the Ravening Beast). Another detail I came up with I might aswell tell you because otherwise noone might ever know: the ring with the blue stone is a gift from Es. Sketch Notes: 1. Lyke turning his head to kiss a rose / exposing his neck was one of my very first ideas/sketches I made while working on this, and I liked it too much to not include it. 2. This is supposed to be Aterika'Kaal giving Lyke a blood transfusion but it rather looks like it's feeding on him instead...! I like how the relaxed pose turned out. 3. I wanted to draw something smaller in a simpler style to fill the big canvas I was drawing these on (even though now I put them in separate files anyways...). The day I drew this I saw a tweet about a medieval monks sketchbook, so I was still thinking about that. I didn't even plan to color it originally but I ended up getting invested, haha

Inspired mainly by these 3 quotes: „KEITH: I’m a walking- I am a shrine to Aterika’Kaal.“ (Sangfielle 12: The Secret Ledger of Roseroot Hall Pt. 4) „KEITH: There's a version of dealing with Aterika'Kaal that ends with Lyke being satisfied that he rehabilitated a god or at least it looks […] like what he thinks Aterika'Kaal would have been before the YVEs showed up. That's probably his main retirement path, but it also might kill him instead.” (Sangfielle 47: Wax, Iron, and Ichor Pt. 4) „AUSTIN: As you’re fading, the last thing that you do is make this blood sacrifice to Aterika’Kaal. Your own blood.“ (Sangfielle 52: Six Travelers: Lyke)

[lizardkingeliot]

going back and forth between writing queliot and loustat is a wild fucking ride you guys lmao

[smallblueandloud]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Leverage Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Billy Spencer & Eliot Spencer (Leverage), Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer, Alec Hardison & Billy Spencer Characters: Billy Spencer (Leverage), Eliot Spencer (Leverage), Alec Hardison Additional Tags: Coming Out, Found Family, introducing your dad to your other partner, portland brewpub, Leverage: Redemption (2021) Spoilers Summary:

They’re in the kitchen -- Hardison’s talking about the number of times they’ve had to replace the dishwasher. Billy asks, “How long have you guys lived here?”

For the first time since he started the tour, Hardison hesitates. He glances at Eliot, who says, “About ten years, on and off. We don’t stay in the same place a lot. This one’s-- special.”

“I can see that,” says Billy, putting his hand on the brick wall in a way he hopes is comforting. “It’s a really nice place.”

(or, Billy comes to visit his son in Portland, and ends up meeting someone new)

[vulpinesaint]

i can't keep getting rewarded for doing the bare minimum kdjfshg... getting a perfect response to that paper that i wrote from 8-12 last night in one sitting was awesome but it also reinforces the idea that i can write papers in one night and turn them in without proofreading which is Not the lesson that i should be learning from this lmao. being so gorgeous and good at everything is devastating for my sense of academic rigor 💔

[whatithinkaboutdarkshadows]

Episode 507: Comparative strangers

Mad scientist Julia Hoffman has summoned sage Timothy Eliot Stokes to the Old House on the great estate of Collinwood, home of her friend, recovering vampire Barnabas Collins. Julia and Stokes talk about the ongoing Dream Curse, a distributed attack on the mental software of a series of people who are more or less connected with Barnabas. The curse takes the form of a nightmare that afflicts one…

[elle-rosewater]

suffered a humiliating defeat to the word count tonight

[ereborne]

Song of the Day: May 14

"Diamond on a Landmine” by Billy Talent

[muiromem]

Currently lying in bed like this:

Thinking about what it would be like if Voyager had an episode like Leverage's "The Long Goodbye Job".

Something where it looks like Janeway's plans and choices got her entire crew killed. She's been captured (by the Borg Queen? Some other threat?) and has to go through some kind of interrogation to explain how her gamble, her choice of risks, failed them all - that she not only didn't get them home but got them all killed. Her best friend Tuvok, the young officers like Harry that she'd tried to guide and nurture, even Chakotay...

Only of course in the end it's a lie, a ruse to distract and stall for time, in order to stop whatever threat brought her to this point in the first place.

I would love something like this....

[thebirdandhersong]

🌨

[thatgirlonstage]

I think “he might as well choose to belong to hands that adored him” is maybe one of the best sentences I’ve ever written and I’m a little mad I used it up in a 1.6k prompt one shot