#leverage au tag

[abubblingcandle]

How about pain, sling and/or bed?

Thank you love! I know what you are angling for and I will bite 😂 I also decided to do the sprint thing with each word to try and motivate me to write tonight so thanks for that too!!!

Sling - from God Forbid You Leave Me

“Thank you. For letting me bring him home,” Higgins sighed. “I know we said that we weren’t going to adopt anymore strays for a while,” he chuckled, rubbing at his eyes because he was tired of course … not any other reason. “I think this is a worthwhile cause love,” Julie smiled, and if her eyes looked a little wetter than usual who was he to point it out. “I can’t believe,” she started, then her voice caught but the sentence didn’t need to be finished. She nervously folded up Jamie’s sling and rested it over the back of the settee for when he woke up, something to do with her hands. “Me neither. When he said it, god I couldn’t leave him there but it took everything just to get him to come. A month, and that needed to be negotiated while he was high. Is that unethical?” Higgins frowned. “Maybe but necessary. We’ll look after him. Hopefully then he won’t want to go running back to his dad,” Julie smiled softly. That was the best-case scenario. It was what they tried to do with all their strays, leave them in a better place than they found them.

This sprint got 240 words!!

Pain - from The Richmond Job Ch3

“Stop where you are, I am not afraid to use this!” Ted screamed, arms outstretched in front of him. “Fuck sake Ted put that away,” the looming figure scoffed. “Roy?” Ted’s finger twitched over the switch in shock and he quickly tucked it away. The Jamie shaped bundle on the floor, groaned in obvious pain and rolled over to lay spread eagle and breathed laboriously. Roy huffed and switched on the lamp by the settee causing Ted to have to blink away the bright spots before he could take in the scene in front of him.

This got me 406 words!!! Yay!!!

Bed - from Everybody Wants To Be On TV Ch11

There was one problem with the camper van though. “Come on Roy,” Jamie huffed rolling his eyes and hands on his hips like a disapproving mother. “I’ll sleep on the floor,” Roy growled. “We’ve been sleeping on the floor for weeks. We’ve fallen asleep in the same bed before, and on the settee together before. Why is this different?” Jamie sighed dramatically, gesturing at the double bed he had just pulled down from the wall. The camper was tight on space, even on the boat Roy had taken the bed and Jamie the settee to preserve the modesty Roy seemed to have developed over night. “That was accidental, it doesn’t count,” Roy was stood straight and tall but also at the furthest corner away from the bed like it was going to eat him if he got too close.

For this sprint Ch11 of the Big Bang gained 225 words!

[wlwinry]

okay so about that d20 leverage au that won the poll. we're gonna do this in bullet points bc it just works better for my brain i suppose (see tangled au for examples)

postcanon

several years postcanon

we're talking early to mid twenties bad kids

funnily enough fig dropping out did a great job of setting up this whole thing bc the premise relies on the bad kids, while still loving each other and being a team, eventually splitting off to do their own thing. and their various "own things" spiral into crime, and they lose contact with each other, only to all be pulled into the same job later and end up being a team again. yay!

but first. context

FOR THOSE WHO DON'T KNOW. leverage is a tv series that ran from 2008-2012, following the heists of the leverage team: a group of criminals, each the best in their field (hitter, hacker, grifter, thief, mastermind) taking down corporations and ceos and giving the money to their victims. it's really fun and has the best found family portrayal ive seen in A While

back to the bad kids

fabian drops off the grid first in true dramatic fabian fashion. by faking his death to escape his mother's abuse for good. and then deciding to be better than his father--by doing a better job of stealing than him. he uses his dexterity to his advantage and becomes one of the most dangerous art thieves in spyre. he's the thief

gorgug takes on a few security jobs for the council of chosen when his parents' ownership of the tree is threatened, to ensure they'll have the money to keep their home. this spirals, however, and to keep both sets of parents safe he ends up taking a few jobs on the...more dangerous side. and once you're in, it's hard to get out. he's a retrieval specialist utilizing his specific barbaficer talents--he's the hitter and the maker

the court of stars goes back on their word regarding adaine's payments. with an understanding of arcanotech and her foresight, she takes to siphoning money from the people and organizations who don't need it to ensure that the mordred mortage stays paid, lydia's PT is covered, and that bee applebees's (who moved into the manor midway into senior year) college stays paid. she also takes a few jobs and challenges to pay her own bills. the oracle is, much like in batman, the hacker

being the former chosen one of helio and the lead cleric of a new pantheon gives you a lot of connections, and kristen has always been good at filling in gaps and better at negotiating than people realize. if she needs to cut a few backroom deals, dig up dirt on some prospective allies, she'll do it. the system's failed her and the others before. why shouldn't she work outside of it? kristen is the fixer.

fig's music career takes off--and then the dawn family decides to go after and disgrace sandra lynn after fig makes it clear that she's coming after them for hurting her mom. fig digs more and more into her disguise and con-artist talents to get them to back off, and by the time she takes them down...well, fig (no cig figs) might not be onstage anymore, but she's given some very impressive performances, and she's ready to take a more hands-on approach when it comes to getting what she wants. fig is the grifter

riz doesn't want to take the council of chosen job. he doesn't. his mom's biggest fear was always him following in pok's footsteps, and he doesn't want to work for them after how badly they've failed him and his friends (his lost, missing, or seemingly dead friends), but...they pay well now. really well. better than PI work, and he figures he'll work for them for a couple of years, save up enough to quit, and then maybe try some adventuring of his own. this goes on until he gets a mission: steal a particular set of new arcanotech spell components. his team has already been hired.

his team is the rest of the bad kids

it's one hell of an awkward reunion. everyone is happy to see each other but no one knows what to say, so they focus on the job and try not to think about how this might be the last time they work as a team. riz definitely doesn't let himself think about it.

until it's revealed that this was a ploy by the council to kill them all off. the company they stole for was in on it, because the council promised to put them ahead of the competitors that the team stole from.

unfortunately, they forgot that the bad kids are Very Hard To Kill, and very dangerous when pissed off

riz leads the team in a very elaborate heist to take down the company who was in on the plan and humiliate the council of chosen. it works. it's beautiful. they're a team. heartfelt conversations are had. they fall back into old dynamics with a side of new skills, new goals, new experiences. they missed each other. they love each other.

and then they win. and it's time to separate--except they don't. because they've fought plenty of bbegs in their time...but maybe it's time to take down the enemies that the law can't (won't) touch.

the six of them are the leverage team, and riz is the mastermind.

[baalzebufo]

speaking of art, I totally forgot to post this earlier! but I drew a fun spooky AU Gideon for the GF Halloween Zine hosted by @howtokillavampire. it was nice to have the motivation to actually do something finished for once, haha

everyone in town thinks his vampire gimmick is soooo cute! he's so committed to the character! you could almost let yourself be fooled into thinking he's a real vampire.

he's not telling.

[werewolfsmile]

tysm for answering my qs about werewolf!eliot !! not to keep bugging you lol but i remember you mentioned in the tags of a post one time about a hc/au of parker being some sort of fae or otherworldly being who’s just kinda found herself here in the non-magical world - could you elaborate on that? like how come she’s in the non-fantasy part of the leverage universe, or whether the other characters know, etc? only if you want to of course, no pressure :) i’m really enjoying reading your posts about all these ideas!

You're welcome! And you're definitely not bugging me, I love getting the chance to ramble about my thought lol (werewolf!eliot post here) (link to the post and my tags that started this)

Honestly I don't have as clear ideas for Parker as I did for Eliot, but I imagine her being some kind of changeling or air/wind sprite that was left with humans for whatever reason.

(ooh i'm getting more ideas for this the more i think about it..)

okay, Parker is actually half-fey, half-human

no one really knows who her parents were or how she came to be on her own (me included lol), she was just found on a doorstep as a baby

the people who took her in had their own issues and the state eventually intervened and sent Parker into foster care

she found out at a very early age that she was different to other kids - she could move around without making a sound, she could fit into tiny spaces - all very helpful for a young girl in a foster system that was chewing her up and spitting her out

she also discovered that she could ... not turn invisible exactly, but she could be less visible if she wanted to be; all she has to do is think about not being seen and people's eyes just drift over her

Archie had absolutely no idea what she was when he got his hands on her, but even he knew that she was beyond just a gifted child

he only realised there was something magical about her after she fell off the roof of the warehouse he'd been training her in - then walked it off like it was no biggie

fey creatures love puzzles and riddles, so of course Parker has always had a natural affinity for puzzles (aka locks)

her super artistic talent is a trait that is Entirely Parker and, given that she entered a life of crime early and was surrounded by artistic masterpieces all the time, she never even considered that other people would draw/paint/whatever with any lower skill level

this contributes to her not understanding what the fuss is over art

she gave herself the name Parker when Archie met her and asked her name; it was the first thing that came to mind

she doesn't remember her birth name and isn't bothered by that in the slightest

Eliot was the first of the team to figure out she was fey - being a werewolf, he can smell and/or sense that kind of thing on others

Hardison suspected something was up with her, but then felt bad for thinking that, but then strange things kept happening around her so he started to keep a list ...

pretty much Hardison has a red-string conspiracy theory-style board of Parker Things. He's too terrified of offending her to ask her outright, but he's more convinced every day

(he's also more in love with her and just thinks her fey-ness is another thing to celebrate)

Parker finds Hardison's board of Parker Things and is utterly fascinated. It's like he understands her better than she understands herself. He's super flustered when he finds her poring over the board and tries to make excuses, but Parker's quick to steamroll over that and demands if he knows what she is

Eliot finds them 15 mins later, stuck in an endless loop of confusion over which of them actually knows what Parker is

he just rolls his eyes, says she's half-fey, it's obvious, like, "what? it's a very distinctive smell!"

which leads to how the hell would he know what the fey are and Eliot's like, oh crap, right, they still don't know I'm a werewolf whoops

Hardison and Parker stage a coming-out for her to Nate and Sophie

(Eliot refuses to be involved but still gets roped into carrying the banner. He's still finding glitter in his hair weeks later)

Sophie is thrilled about the reveal and confesses to being a siren (or some other supernatural/magical creature that can manipulate people, idk i have less thoughts about her than i do about parker)

Nate is all like are you kidding me right now what the hell is my life

after a lot of badgering, he confesses he didn't know about Parker, although he has been ... aware of magical beings for some time

no he will not be discussing this any further, can we just get back to the con now??

Parker finds that, now she's aware of her fey-ness, her magical abilities develop further

she doesn't quite gain the ability to fly but ... yeah okay, she can pretty much fly

she wants to test how far this flying ability goes - by, of course, jumping off tall buildings with Hardison in her arms (and no harness for either of them)

Hardison flat out refuses this, so Eliot somehow finds himself the unwilling victim

of course, Parker masters flying while carrying people in no time and proves it to Hardison by just grabbing him and jumping off a building one day

(he's still in therapy for it)

Parker also discovers she can make herself kind of ... misty

this skill is harder to learn but she's already been able to make her hand go misty and whoosh inside a lock

picking the lock is harder in this incorporeal state but Parker's instincts say there's a way to do this, so she keeps practising until she can pretty much disintegrate herself and float through locked doors to rematerialise on the other side

it's a nightmare for the whole team because, sure, it's not like locked doors stopped her in the past. But now she's so excited about it all the time that any concept of privacy completely leaves her brain and she jumps in and out of rooms and safes etc any time of day or night

Wow. This ended up longer than expected! Guess I did have some ideas about fey!Parker after all..

[jamiesfootball]

Another piece of the leverage au I'm not fucking writing, damnit.

Under the cut for violence and Leverage-esque shenanigans:

At the first kick to the solar plexus, a shocked noise spilled out of Jamie's mouth. He hadn't been prepared.

"You don't fucking listen," Roy growled, winding his leg back for another kick. "What did I say? What did I fucking tell you when we first started?"

Jamie was ready for the second kick -- got his arms up in front of him just in time to intercept Roy's boot. He grunted, a sound too high and reedy to his own ears, and he tried to push aside the reflexive embarrassment at how loud it was, echoing off the walls as Bartlett and his cronies laughed and laughed.

On the third kick, he acted. He caught Roy's boot, wrapping his shivering body around it while the other man cursed. Roy kicked again, and Jamie's freezing hands scrambled for purchase against the leather, his nails digging into the collar.

"Come on," Roy scoffed under his breath, the same way he had when Jamie had held them up at the elevator. He didn't need to look up to know Roy was shaking his head.

Jamie bit his lip against the sudden, fierce wave of emotion building up in his chest.

His grip slackened, and Roy tugged his foot away with a violent grunt. He spat at the ground, missing Jamie by centimeters.

Bartlett tittered. His goons spread easily for Roy, welcoming him into the pack as the hitter rejoined their group. One of them fetched him a beer.

"Feel better then, Royo?"

Jamie closed his eyes; he didn't need to see this. His arms pressed protectively against his stomach. Hopefully they'd forget he was there.

"You don't know the half of it," Roy said, his rough timber carrying easily through the barren warehouse. A bottle fizzed open, followed by an audibly slurpy gulp and a relieved sigh. "The amount of headache's that prick's given me -- you wouldn't believe."

"No respect for their betters, these young ones." There was the tap of glass on glass- a toast. "Well, I've got good news for you. When we're done here, I plan to make a couple phone calls. You ain't the only one with a bone to pick with that little upstart. I know a few names who'd pay good money just to take a turn at him the way you did."

A beat of silence.

"Really?" Roy's voice stayed carefully neutrally, but even an idiot could hear that he was interested.

"What'd I tell you lads? Do I know this man or what?" Bartlett bragged. His men agreed, making all the appropriate noises for a goon chorus.

"So I do all the hard work, and you cash the check?"

Just as easily as flipping off a light, a threatening quiet smothered the warehouse.

Bartlett, the idiot, tried to backtrack fast. "Course I'd cut you in! A finder's fee. Hell, you could watch, if you're into that."

Another beat of silence, and then a low, dark chuckle that sent the hairs on the back of Jamie's neck to standing.

"You know me, don't you?" Roy remarked, sounding like a lion before the pounce. "Relax, Bartlett, I already got what I came for. You have your men wire over a cut of the haul, and that'll be the end of our business. The sooner I see the back of this place, the better."

Bartlett snapped at one of his men to initiate the wire. Roy rattled off the numbers.

When they were done, Bartlett laughed. "Roy Kent. A man of reason."

"Takes one to know one, doesn't it?"

"Yes it does."

Another clink of glasses echoed cheerily in the warehouse. Then-

"Woah, take it easy there, Kent. No need to rush when there's still the cleanup to..."

Bartlett trailed off and the goon chorus piped down. In the shivering silence, the sound of someone chugging a beer echoed disturbingly loud, like some sort of criminal underworld ASMR.

Jamie focused on not tensing his body; he didn't want to draw their attention.

Finally, smacking lips. A content sight. "Thanks for the beer, Bartlett. Would've been a shame for it to go to waste."

"What--"

At the sound of a glass smashing over someone's head, Jamie flexed his grip on the knife he'd snatched out of Roy's boot and sprung to his feet.

Roy had told him to wait for his cue, after all -- and it was his time to shine.

The little prick wouldn't stop grinning.

Roy ignored him. He dumped goon number five into the stolen ambulance.

"Check their pockets. If they've got anything that looks like a burner, Beard wants it back. We've got to make sure to wipe any traces of contact they might've had with Keeley--"

"You like me," Jamie sing-songed.

"It was a bit," Roy said through gritted teeth. "Hand me the body."

Jamie hauled over the unconscious man -- easily twice his size -- like it was nothing. The joys of youth.

With five other deadweights already filling up the vehicle, it was awkward angle to fit in a sixth. Jamie stumbled a bit, and Roy braced him upright. Together they maneuvered the body into the van.

"You can just admit it, you know. I won't ruin your reputation by telling everyone that Roy Kent's a softy."

Prick.

Jamie's usually styled pompadour was a flat mess from the fall in the Thames, and rolling around on the floor of an abandoned warehouse had lint-rolled a questionable layer of gunk onto his stylish clothes. He looked like a twit, leaning against the door of the ambulance while Roy did all the work tying the feet together.

Prick.

With his hair dripping into his eyes and a look of open fascination on his face, he looked like a kid who'd run through a sprinkler. There was far too much delight there for someone who'd been roughed up by a wannabe gangster. Fuck, and they still needed to check his ribs.

"He made us the second we walked in the door," Roy tried to explain again. "I needed to get him to trust me, to make him think I'd switched sides--"

"By making him think you kicked like an octogenarian?" quipped Jamie. "You barely made contact. If I'd been acting any harder, Rebecca would be out a job."

"I can kick you harder next time," Roy bit out, but even he could feel how toothless the words sat in his mouth.

"Sure, Grandad." Jamie beamed, smug and practically bouncing on his toes. "I'd like to see you try."

If Roy had less to deal with on his mind, he might worry about how sure Jamie seemed by the notion Roy wouldn't hit him.

"It wasn't a life or death situation. I knew we'd make it out."

Sure, Bartlett and his men had been armed, but Roy had dealt with worse. If it had been life or death, it'd be different. Roy would do whatever he needed to in those circumstances.

He would.

"You keep telling yourself that, mate."

[pelorsdyke]

kacy leverage redemption au

Professional thief Lucy Tara is world-renowned— she’s stolen money, jewels, art. All like taking candy from a baby. She should’ve known where she’d get into real trouble was her soft spot for her team. When Jane’s feeling low after her divorce, Lucy and the guys put together a silly little art museum heist— take home whatever might make you happy again— and Jane takes them perhaps too seriously, picking up a lawyer attempting her own rudimentary theft. Kate Whistler is a lot of things— confusing, determined, beautiful— but Lucy is hesitant to get involved with the team’s new hire. She’s the perfect inside man, but is Whistler really as changed as she claims?

featuring thief lucy, fixer kate, and mastermind jane

[innytoes]

No but really, Jess Mariano and Reggie Peters and Eliot Spencer in the sprawling 3fer crossover

Jess is somehow related to Eliot since Luke is his cousin, and Reggie could not be more jealous. Why does Jess get TWO cool plaid wearing grumpy but secretly softies adults and he gets NONE????

Jess hates Reggie because he's Too Cheerful and he's convinced the No Thought Head Empty Heart Pure thing is a ruse. Especially because sometimes Reggie will let out the snarkiest zinger ever.

You know Luke Danes has a soft spot for the Phantoms. Like, Luke Patterson is a nuisance but he's nothing compared to the Gilmores, at least he doesn't go behind the counter unless he needs a working pen stat. Alex is always annoyingly snarky to Taylor but always just on the side of plausible deniability, which has gotten him free donuts in the past. And Reggie is just so earnestly happy to get pie or a burger or whatever.

Eliot being an asshole and being like: if you won't make the kid your diner apprentice I'll take him. Okay step one, knives are like people...

And that's how Reggie got a part time job at the diner for the morning rush.

(He enables the Gilmores even more than Luke does when it comes to coffee. Lorelai declares him her new favourite. Luke tries not to be mad about it in front of Reggie.)

[somestorythoughts]

Back with some immortal Leverage Crew

I am back on my bullshit. Well. Just a little bit. I may have more. This is gonna be my day's writing requirement.

Anyway, one with the Leverage Immortals! This one's about Sophie:

It's been a while since she's held onto an identity for more than 15 years.

She's definitely had names that lasted longer. It's hardly unusual for her to take on an identity for a few decades, a life that she goes back to when she's taken off the mask of whoever she's pretending to be for her latest grift. She kept her birthname for the longest, but she's had other names that lasted anywhere from thirty to forty years. The longest lasted fifty-two.

But lately, none of the names seem to stick. Most of the names she's had in the past century barely lasted a decade if that, the fifteen-year name (Eliza Preston, she'd liked the sound of it) was the exception. She isn't sure why.

Sophie Deveraux is the current name and it's served her well, she's built up a nice reputation with it, but while she's not quite ready to let Sophie go she expects she will be within the next two years. She's taking a break from grifting now, trying out acting that doesn't come with lying.

Nate Ford knows her as Sophie Deveraux. That's the name he uses when he and three others ask for her help taking down a guy that conned them and tried to kill them.

She likes Nate, for someone on the other side of the law, and she heard about his son. She can come out of her little retirement for this.

She wouldn't say she trusts the other four of them by the end of the con, and it's too far to say she truly likes them, but well. She would enjoy working with them more. So when Alec Hardison goes back to Nate, followed by Parker and Eliot Spencer, she joins them.

Sophie is what they call her when she isn't being someone else.

And then. Sophie Deveraux doesn't die, not exactly, and she attends her own funeral where the empty coffin is buried under a stranger's name and it's just. She feels off-kilter. Unsettled. Like her foundations have been shaken and only now can she see how unsteady they've been. And the names she goes back to when she isn't grifting, they're not supposed to be personas, they're supposed to provide stability and something she can build a reputation behind if she wants, but they've become personas haven't they? How long has it been since she's been herself?

She needs to go. Needs to sort herself out, remember or decide or find out who she is under all the people she's been.

So she leaves.

And later, Sophie Deveraux returns to her family.

[kiwiana-writes]

for the au fun fact game! a leverage style heist au with alex, henry, and the rest of the super six? i'm surprised there aren't more rwrb leverage aus given how the super six is basically a pre-made heist team but yeah! i'm curious to see what you'll say 👀

Like the accidental marriage AU earlier, this is one that does already exist in my WIP folder! I'm hoping to tackle it in the first half of 2024; it takes a LOT more planning than I'm used to hahaha. So let's go.

ONE: The first time Alex comes across the famous Henry Fox, he's convinced it's a fakeout. There's no way someone that genteel, that pretty, is the sort of hitter that even the most hardened criminals whisper about with a mixture of fear and respect in their voices.

(The second time he comes across the famous Henry Fox is the day the team comes together, and if he wasn't in the room, he'd be convinced Nora doctored the footage—Henry takes out eight mooks without breaking a sweat, the lock of hair falling across his face and one scrape on his knuckle where one idiot opened their mouth right before Henry punched him in it the only evidence Henry had anything to do with the bodies lying at his feet in varying degrees of pain. Alex is impressed, grateful, and more than a little turned on.)

TWO: Nora is a terrible grifter. Absolutely atrocious. After a few disastrous attempts, they all agree that if the choices are between Nora grifting, and abandoning the con... well, you can't win 'em all.

THREE: Pez brings them together as a team, but June is their glue. She's the one who finds clients, and who keeps them... well, not honest, but on the right path.

FOUR: Henry worries, when he and Alex get together, when Nora and June and Pez are doing whatever it is they're doing, that Bea will feel like some sort of sixth wheel. He needn't have been concerned—Bea and Alex are a terrifyingly chaotic duo, Bea and June combine their big sister energy when needed, Bea and Nora occasionally disappear for a side job the rest of them know better than to ask about, and Bea and Pez gang up on Henry at any given opportunity. Some days it feels like she's the star they're all orbiting.

FIVE: Nora doesn't tell the rest of them—not even June and Pez—but she has contingency plans on top of contingency plans for when any or all of them get burned. There are fake identities living whole lives, at least according to their digital footprint, that any of them will be able to jump into at a moment's notice. The crew is her family, and she'll keep them safe.

[Send me a potential AU and I’ll tell you five fun facts that would happen in a story.]

[keep-this-all-in-mind]

it's wednesday, my dudes (incoherent screaming)

to those of y'all who have been following the redemption arc update schedule, you know what this means:

drop day for the second to last chapter in the entire fic!

to those of you who are less familiar, may i introduce you to a longfic au that includes: extremely high doses of batfamily, heists, and one of THE slowest birdflash slow burns on the entirety of ao3

start reading here! :)

[abubblingcandle]

Six Sentence Sunday

From The Richmond Job Ch24

Jamie had only a couple of inches on his dad but did have a much larger muscle mass that you think would make it look like he loomed over. Yet perceptions warped as James got closer. Like an optical illusion Jamie got smaller and his dad grew. Jamie’s hunched shoulders were tight, so tight that Ted was sure if he touched them they would be trembling. Ted hadn’t seen Jamie like this since he came crawling back with his tail between his legs to ask Ted and the team for help. But Jamie would ask if he needed saving.

[wlwinry]

(for context, it would be six one-shots or chapters divided into five sections each, detailing important character moments from one episode per leverage season)

[dandelion-wings]

Sometimes you have writing plans for the day pre-made, but then you wake up in the middle of the night from a wretched nightmare, can't fall back asleep, and end up twisting bits of the nightmare together with bits of canon to torment your blorbos with....

This is a very rough version of last night's 'can't get back to sleep' bedtime story, and I know what happens before and after and how it would go if I expanded it out (and @theabysscomeshome and I have spent today kicking around the sequel where Lisa and Kaeya actually reach Mondstadt XD), but I wanted something I could write in the two hours I was hanging out at the hospital this afternoon so I crunched it down into something that almost fit into that window. Maybe someday I will write the longer version (as if I need more WIPs), but hopefully this will exorcise the worst of the brainworms so I can actually work on the stuff I'd planned for the next week!

---

This is the third time Lisa has been left alone with Anatoli's most prized specimen.

She can't say she's developed a routine with him so soon, but he doesn't look surprised when she deactivates the shield around his cell and steps inside. Lisa reaches out, slow and careful, but all her care can't keep him from flinching when she touches the clasp of the shock-collar he's wearing. She keeps the static of her Electro Vision firmly tamped down so that at least she won't set it off as she takes it off him.

The shock-collar isn't supposed to keep him from talking, only from too-sudden movements. But it's tuned to its highest sensitivity, and she's seen it light up, crackling, when he cries out. She would go silent too if any exclamation ran that risk. Besides, no one on Anatoli's research team cares to listen to what he has to say.

He swallows a few times, his throat working, and looks up at her from under the loose fall of uncut bangs with his one remaining eye. His voice is small and hoarse and thick with suspicion as he asks, for the third time, "What do you want?"

"I have a question for you, Kaeya."

It's almost what she'd said the last two times, though she'd had many questions then. She knows his name (Kaeya Alberich; he'd looked at her warily as he gave the surname, as if he expected her to recognize it, and seemed almost disappointed when she didn't), and how long he'd been here (six years, by his best estimate), and how he'd come (he'd snuck onto a ship to Sumeru, looking for his family, and been caught in the desert by bandits who sold him on), and what, exactly, they've done to him (though there was only verifying what Anatoli's records already say). She knows that, whatever Anatoli says, the curse hasn't twisted his mind as it has his body. He's reacting exactly as any rational human would to the conditions he's lived under for the last six years.

Lisa would start biting people too, if they only ever touched her to cause her pain.

"Just one?" For all the suspicion, she can hear a thread of amusement in his voice.

"Just one, tonight." Lisa holds up a finger. "Wait a moment, though, sweetie. I have to do something first."

She steps back out of the cell, leaving the shield down, and takes what would look to any casual eye like a Canned Knowledge capsule out of her robes. It takes only a moment to sync with her Akasha Terminal; she waits for the double-chirp that confirms it's scanned her thoughts and is replicating them for the Terminal, then takes it off and sets it aside. If she's being monitored, the terminal will only pick up that she's still here, asking Kaeya the same set of questions she has the last two times she was trusted to supervise him.

Unless Lord Sangemah Bay has sold them a false bill of goods, or is cooperating with the matra. Lisa doubts the second, and has to simply trust the merchant's reputation on the first. They've certainly paid heavily for all she's sold them.

Once her terminal is, hopefully, disarmed, Lisa takes another of their purchases out and steps back into the cell. She sees Kaeya fix a wary gaze on the little device in her hand--shaped and sized almost like a terminal itself--and smiles at him as warmly as she can muster with her skin prickling with trepidation. She's very aware that she has her back to the door. Anyone who comes through will have a few seconds' advantage on her, and Lisa has no good excuse for what she's doing. None but a moral argument that Anatoli's team doesn't care to hear.

Cyrus had made it directly and passionately, to Anatoli and then to the Sage of Spantamad, and been turned away both times. Cyno had made it bureaucratically, filling out all the paperwork necessary to report a breach of academic ethics, and had seen it dismissed out of hand. By the Akademiya's ruling, Kaeya Alberich is a monster, not a human, and thus a designated test subject to be treated as Anatoli's team sees fit. He has the curse of Khaenri'ah, after all. It's active in him, manifested in his blackened and Cryo-lined right arm; that Anatoli's own records showed that he had triggered it deliberately in Kaeya's second year here didn't have any effect on the Darshan's decision.

Their options had been to take it all the way to the Six Great Sages, or to try another tack. The Six Great Sages, by a ruling of four to two, had determined that Cyno, in his youth, was a similar such test subject, and *he* didn't bear the curse of Khaenri'ah, nor elemental powers from the Abyss. None of them had expected that it would go any better in this particular case.

Lisa had already been slowly becoming disillusioned with the Akademiya. This was just the last nail in the coffin. She doesn't mind burning her whole career down behind her when she goes, and that's why she's here, late at night, holding the key that will deactivate the wards on Kaeya's cell.

"Kaeya, would you like to get out of here?"

"*Yes*," he says, in that low, hoarse voice, strained by desperation and a hope she can see him trying to restrain as his eye meets hers.

"Good. I will ask you not to do anything rash once I get them off of you. We don't want to set off the alarms."

Kaeya holds rigidly still as Lisa undoes the wards, one by one, that hold him physically restrained and his Abyssal powers in check. She can feel the cold rising off the stump of his right arm as she looses that ward, the Cryo veining it eager for release. It's the one she's tensest for, ready for him to lash out, senseless as it would be--he has no reason to trust her, and no reason to think her anything than another of her tormentors. She'd stood by and watched while they took what remained of the lower limb off to the elbow just two weeks go.

(She'd had to build trust. After Cyrus and Cyno's efforts, Anatoli was wise enough to be wary of her. Even after she'd repudiated Cyrus as too soft-hearted and said some truly horrible things about Cyno, it had taken time to convince him that she was truly breaking away from her academic clique. He hadn't let her start taking shifts supervising his specimens until after she'd managed to keep herself largely impassive through the collection of that particular 'tissue sample.'

If he'd known what she'd been fantasizing about at the time, he wouldn't have wanted her within a mile of his lab. Lisa has a perfect test designed for *his* pain tolerances, if the opportunity ever happens to arise.)

But he doesn't attack, as rigidly still when she'd finished as when she'd begun. For a moment Lisa wonders if the key had actually worked. Then he takes a deep breath, shivers all over, and lets it out. On the exhale, he rises smoothly to his feet.

"Robes," Lisa tells him, mostly so that he won't panic when she goes for the bag she'd brought with her tonight. Tossing the notes at the top aside--she won't need them anymore, and may Anatoli have whatever joy he may get from her careful records of Kaeya's answers--she holds out the bundle of fabric to him, then turns away.

The cold at her back puts a chill down her spine, but at least now she's looking at the door. She just has to trust that he'll maintain his restraint even with her back turned.

It seems to take a tortuously long time for him to get dressed, though Lisa has no intention of rushing him through something he hasn't been allowed to do since he was, by his own accounting, eleven. She doesn't look down at her jammed terminal or back over her shoulder at him. She watches the door and counts the seconds passing in her head.

Despite the tension of the wait, Kaeya finishes well within her time window. Lisa turns to see that she's guessed his size well. He still looks swamped in the robes, even though they end at his ankles, but that's an unavoidable consequence of the caloric pittance Anatoli budgets for him. At least it helps hide the missing end of the right arm.

She holds out her arm to him instead of reaching for his. Kaeya hesitates a moment, looking at her warily, then grasps her wrist with his left hand. His grip is far stronger than she'd expected for how few fingers he has left, almost bruisingly tight, but Lisa makes sure to keep smiling at him as she starts for the door.

The corridors of the lab are dark, barely lit. Anatoli's tight-fisted grip on mora will help them here. Lisa leads Kaeya through the turns in utter silence and a tingling aura of static and cold. She can't entirely suppress her Vision, jangling with both her own nerves and the close presence of Abyssal power, and she can't expect Kaeya to suppress his own abilities when control has only ever been imposed upon them from outside. That he's not giving her frostbite at the moment will have to be good enough.

Humid air hits them like a wet sheet across the face as they step out of the climate-controlled laboratory and into a summer night in Sumeru City. The heat damps the chill, the moisture the static, and Lisa sighs in something not quite relief. Kaeya gasps aloud, then flinches, going tense, no doubt anticipating the collar's buzz. Lisa turns to give him another smile.

In the next breath, he lets go of her and jerks away sideways, flinging himself down the path at a run. Lisa hisses under her breath and puts a hand to her Vision. It's her own fault; she should have expected that. But she can't let him get away.

Electro flashes at her throat, and a gleaming elemental barrier rises to his left as he careens down the street. His atrophied muscles are working in her favor, even with desperation driving him. He flinches away from the barrier and turns the other way, towards the rightward path. Lisa scrambles after him.

Just after he rounds the corner, she hears a grunt, and a yelp, and a crack of Electro. She comes around after him to find Cyno clutching him tight. Kaeya is limp in his grasp. It's his instinctive reaction to the shock-collar, which will keep reacting until he stops moving; Cyno's jolt must have felt just the same. The look on his face is one of open betrayal.

"Don't try that again," Cyno tells him, setting him back on his feet as Lisa approaches and holding him there until he takes his own weight. "If you run into any other matra, they would know you weren't a student, and you'd be lucky if they sensed the Abyss on you and killed you outright. It's more likely they would take you for a confused Elezear patient and return you straight to the Akademiya."

"And right back to Anatoli," Lisa adds. "Kaeya, this is Cyno. He's going to help us get out of the city."

"A *matra* is helping you steal a specimen?"

"A friend of mine," Lisa says, firmly, "is helping me get a badly injured young man away from those who injured him."

Kaeya gives her a dubious look, but doesn't argue further.

"Follow me," Cyno tells them, starting off down the side-street towards the darkness at its end. "We don't have much time if we're going to slip out between patrols."

Lisa holds her arm out to Kaeya again. He shakes his head, but starts after Cyno. She follows him, watching his increasingly heavy step. This is more exercise than he's been allowed for years, and their night has only just begun. Forcing contact, though, is only going to make him more nervous. There has to be a point at which he unleashes his Cryo in earnest, and she'd rather not push him to it.

Their path leads them through narrow gaps between buildings, alongside the brightwood stands behind them, and, eventually, out to the farmlands on the city's northern side. By the time they break out onto the slopes down to the river to its north, Kaeya is stumbling outright. This time, when Lisa offers him her arm, he takes it and leans into her a little. Lisa can feel him shaking through the robes.

"You're sure you're not going to get in trouble for this, cutie?" she asks Cyno. "You can't make General Mahamatra and reform the matra from within if you get accused of helping me out."

"There's a Kshahrewar scholar ready to swear that I've been drinking with him all night. If we'd run across a patrol and had to deal with them, there might have been trouble, but no one has any reason to guess that I noticed that hole in the schedule before you took advantage of it."

"Good."

As they reach the shore, a faint firefly-light glows just above the water. A literal fire-fly light; there's a handful in a jar, sitting at the feet of a young man in a canoe. Lisa can't make out much by that dim illumination, but he has long, pointed fox's ears, and she sees the whisking of a fluffy tail behind him.

"These are your passengers?" he asks Cyno, standing to look Lisa and Kaeya over.

Cyno nods, then turns to Lisa. "This is the Forest Ranger I told you about. He'll take you wherever you've chosen to go. Make sure to avoid Port Ormos. The matra there recently got an updated connection to the Akasha, and they'll know exactly what to look for before you can get there. But Caravan Ribat and Gandharva Ville are still on the old system and should be safe."

"Which way do you want to go, sweetie?" she asks, turning to Kaeya. "East or west?"

He jerks his head up and blinks at her as if coming out of a daze. Then he shakes his head. "Not back to the desert."

"East it is, then."

"Good," the ranger says. "I hate the desert. There's a mercenary and her company that I've heard good things about out that way, if you needed a trustworthy guide, but there's no guarantee you'd be able to hire her. It's not a good idea to go straight through Gandharva Ville, since we might be seen by other Forest Rangers, but I can take you past it and over the border to Lumberpick Valley in Liyue by myself."

"Thank you, cutie." Lisa gives him a warm smile, then turns to help Kaeya into the canoe.

He collapses onto the bench more than sits on it, and all the tension thrumming through him can't keep him from keeling over onto Lisa's shoulder once she sits down beside him. She puts an arm around him to steady him, but keeps her touch light so that he won't feel trapped. The ranger exchanges a wordless nod with Cyno, then pushes away from the bank.

They start off down the river, picking up speed as they go. Lisa yawns, giggles a little when Kaeya echoes it, and then giggles more when the ranger yawns, too, and grumbles under his breath about it. Settling more comfortably onto the seat as Kaeya grows heavier and heavier against her, Lisa looks up through the trees and the mist at the first gleam of light off in the east as they make their way towards the dawn.

[werewolfsmile]

About your werewolf Eliot au, I have an idea that somewhere in Nate's apartment there's a framed set of pictures in a folding frame: One picture of Eliot glaring at the camera while Parker pokes at him and one of 'Sparky' doing the exact same expression while Parker is laying on him like a pillow.

Across the bottom of the pictures, split between the two, is the sentence "but if I bite her ass / imma be the one in trouble" in Hardison's handwriting.

- @scotchiegirl

SCREAMING BECAUSE YES THIS WOULD FIT SO PERFECTLY I LOVE IT!!!

Eliot is so pissed the photos happened in the first place. The rest of the team conspired to make it happen. Nate was actually the one to frame them side-by-side but he always pretends he never has a hand in anything lmaooo.

Hardison's handwriting on the bottom? Talking about biting Parker's ass??? I'm S C R E A M I N G this is so freaking funny I am DEAD!!

Can't even lie, this message motivated me to work more on the next chapter so thank you for that! And anyone else who's reading The Full Moon Job should thank you, too!!

[jamiesfootball]

WAIT i just had another idea. jamie STARTS as a hitting apprentice to roy, but slowly comes to realize - and roy comes to realize - it's more upsetting to him than it is satisfying to do that job, and then they SWITCH him to hacking. which maybe they did or didn't have a dedicated hacker before and they were just making do, or maybe it was nate and he (temporarily) switched sides, or whatever. but maybe like jamie's injured for a minute and has to sit out hitting, and roy's doing that for a job, and then some kind of hackery shit needs to happen that whoever's doing that at the moment - beard? ted even trying it would be an unprecedented disaster, we know - doesn't know how to do or isn't doing the Best Way, and jamie just steps in (vaguely loopy on pain killers) and just. Does it. Perfectly. mumbling some jargony bullshit in fucking mancunian that no one can understand only half because of the mumbling and the accent. and they're all like okay jamie. congratulations on your new position. and he resists it at first because he doesn't think he fits the Archetype or whatever for a hacker, but like. he likes it and he's good at it, and it brings the team together so well to have him as The Guy In The Chair TM. and that's their "go through me" total football moment.

Homie I am sitting across from you and leaning in very closely and taking your face gently in my hands-

Because this implies, somewhere along the lines, that Jamie’s two-bit crime fixer dad pushed his kid into becoming a hitter.

He probably knew a guy who needed extra muscle in a pinch and offered up his son. His son who was athletic, who was on the football team and doing well at it, so he had a bit of muscle on him. It was just supposed to be to fill a gap, look intimidating a for a few hours and earn your dad a couple hundred pounds, what’s the problem, not like you can’t take a hit, can’t you?

And it didn’t matter that Jamie didn’t want to do it, cause his dad never listened to him anyways. Not when he was warning him ‘you know those messages ain’t just your phones anymore, the companies back em up so the police can search em’. Not when he tried to explain ‘no you ain’t got stick somebody up in an alley anymore, see I’ve got the skimmer you can just hit the ATM’. And definitely not when he said ‘they got CCTV everywhere now, you gotta be more careful’

And then James got arrested. And he took the fall for a crime boss that promised to do right by him but didn’t. And then, well, wasn’t anyone looking out for Jamie, and he had a book full of contacts his dad left behind, and a fucking reputation for all the goon work he’d done, and he’d only ever been good for one thing anyways, and that was the only thing he’d ever gotten paid to do so-

He became a hitter. And a fucking good one too. Simple as that.

[tetraterantula]

I’m currently working on an AVA leverage AU

Purple and king refs

Fsh and driving headcanons

(Notes and stuff below the cut)

Second - Mastermind (They/Them) ; Daddy issues

has a backup plan for the backup plan

Blue - Thief (They/She) ; Alchoholic

No claustrophobia, cannot sit properly on a couch

Red - Hitter (They/Them) ; Blackmail material

Might as well be the backup grifter, can do several dozen pushups with Yellow on their back

Green - Grifter (Genderfluid) ; Knows how to do makeup

So many fake names they've lost track of their true name, appearance will change for the con (sorry)

Yellow - Hacker (He/They) ; In way over their head

This is his fourth cup of coffee tonight and when will people learn to use a firewall seriously

Purple - Forger (They/Them) ; Daddy issues x2

Owns a hang glider, only really knows how to pickpocket and forge signatures but its ok we love them anyways

Mango - (He/Him) ; Insurance company pr rep

Mmmm a good law abiding citizen with a good law abiding basement holding good law abiding secrets mhm mhm

I have some plots in mind and I think I might make a comic? Just for fun