#undercover eliot au

[onyxbird]

Hello! I saw a post of yours saying you have a Leverage Hell AU series on Ao3. Any chance I can get the link to that? Thanks!

☠️ Warning ☠️: Consumption of Hell AU may result in Leverage brainrot and compulsions to write angsty fic. Experts* recommend against consumption of large doses of this AU in a short period of time, particularly for new users who do not know how they will be affected. Certain lines in this AU have been identified by the state of the comments section to be hazardous to human health. Writing while under the influence of Hell AU may pose a risk of spreading this contagion to others.

Please consume responsibly.

We Have Never Had a Hitter (That Wasn't Actually Moreau's)

*@darkfinch

[onyxbird]

Me, reaching this post after having read today's AO3 emails and Tumblr notes: 😬 "Yep, they sure did binge that AU."

Glad that you... uh......... whatever people do with this AU instead of enjoying it. 😉

Hello I have binged the entire Undercover Eliot AU tag in a little over 6 hrs and I’m now working my way through the attached fics and I am NOT OKAY PLEASE SEND HELP

It was fantastic and my brain chemistry is permanently altered so thank you for that

🩵💜🩵💜

!!! i'm SO GLAD that you enjoyed it but also i really do feel like i made a PSA like "hey guys don't eat 9 bars of chocolate in a row it's bad for you to eat 9 bars of chocolate in a row actually" and now people are lining up outside my door to tell me v earnestly how much they loved eating the 9 bars of chocolate in a row, but did i know it gives you tummy aches? did i know it irreversibly changes your gut microbiome? send help? thank you for the chocolate bars i ate 9 of them in a row?

lkjghlffhjgdh i'm very glad you're having fun though the fics are SO GOOD, enjoy <3

[thoughtsickles]

2024 Year in Fic

I read so much great stuff this year. Found several new fandoms I'm insane for, wrote a ton (I will publish.... at some point!) and went through pages and pages of A03 search results looking for those few gems... and I found some. Here are some faves:

you're in love (true love) and all's well that ends well to end up with you and i wanna be your endgame by orphan_account Brian Kinney/Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk US)

oh the pain of finding a new favorite author who's orphaned all their fics... luckily they titled all of them with taylor swift lyrics so you can pick them out from doing a ship search on A03 with orphan_account as author. they are all fabulous but these are my particular favorites. hijinks/misunderstandings, hot sexy scenes, beautiful character moments... they've got it all! I come back to these over and over again because they're just that good.

Of Cowardice and Frog-shaped soap by sakesushimaki Randy Harrison/Gale Harold (actor RPF)

finally some good fucking RPF!!! the yearning, the drama, the románce

every single one-shot by sakesushimaki Brian Kinney/Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk US)

the YEARNING... the sex-as-religion... the beautiful characterizations.... date last posted 2012. I reach through time to praise this author and politely ask if they are writing anything else lately. just wondering.

Taking Care by MB (Sidney_Allison) Brian Kinney/Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk US)

killer concept--what if Brian and Justin met during the cancer arc when Justin is hired as Brian's caregiver?--and killer execution. A beauty of a fic.

Lola by misomadness Tim Bradford/Lucy Chen (The Rookie) WIP

you know how sometimes the entire fandom of a ship seems overtaken by people who want to put them into an ooc suave dom/giggling schoolgirl kind of AU and you're out here like where are the Lucy/Tim understanders... where are the actual good reflections of their dynamic... well misomadness gets it! it's a WIP but c'mon, we aren't weak here on thoughtsickles.tumblr.com. we are willing to play the long game. we are willing to read WIPs with the proper matching of each other's freak in hopes it will be continued. and how can you resist an undercover op story?

(you are) my very best thing by portraitofemmy, stormcoming Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh (The Magicians)

beautiful fwb to lovers romance about growing up, finding your family, letting your dreams evolve, letting yourself grow and become changed.

A More Perfect Fall by cinnaluminum Carlos Reyes/TK Strand (9-1-1: Lone Star)

missing moments? tender!dom Carlos trying-to-play-it-cool pov? sign me up!

[jamiesfootball]

was really expecting that leverage au idea to go a different direction & was honestly pleasantly surprised by the jamie + zava positioning. but i thought i'd share what i thought was going to happen!

roy's getting old, so the rest of the current team is trying to find sort of an apprentice for him to train to be their new hitter and then he can eventually take over for ted as mastermind when ted magically gets suspicion off of him and can go back home to be with henry.

they find jamie. and they're like this guy is perfect. he's got that doggedness that you have roy. you could kill him and he'd still get up and kick your ass. he's perfect. and roy's like no he's a fucking prick. he can't do this job, he's only good for the old shit i was doing. he doesn't fit with this team, he's too volatile and he doesn't think with his heart. so they let him go on his not-so-merry way, but ted and beard keep an eye on him and keeley also keeps an entirely separate, secret third eye on him.

[nebulous in between times]

they get jamie back and roy starts training him, and while roy is still not fully warmed up to him is when jamie almost ruins a job by taking time out to Solve some random kid's Problem dad.

idk who would be hacker in this case though. but nate (shelley) is sterling lol.

*Griiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiins*

See yes yes- I also began this idea thinking like, well if Roy is the Eliot stand in (and obviously like who else would he be), then Jamie would make the perfect sense as the Quinn. The up-and-comer bruiser who thinks he can take on The Roy Kent. He does well when he catches Roy off guard at first but then we have the iconic Quinn line-

“Why won’t you go down?!”

So yes I started there but then it occurred to me: the sass, the clothing, the obnoxious quality to talk at length, the younger guy who looks at Roy in a ‘no really are you an antique?” way. The one who can’t believe the cops are using cassette tapes for surveillance. The one who is casually charming and makes friends and enemies whenever he’s undercover. The one who lied about stealing Roy’s sandwich and feels no shame (it was a damn good sandwich).

(“D-E-D dead baby.” “D-e-a-d.” “I know how it’s spelled. I can hack a bank, I can spell ‘dead.’”)

It’s Jamie.

But the BUTTER ON THE BREAD THE THING THAT SEALED THE DEAL FOR ME IS THAT THIS MEANS JAMIE WOULD GET TO RUN THE BRIEFINGS. IN THAT ACCENT. WITH HIS UNIQUE BRAND OF TALKING.

“Now our client’s ex is this posh twat named Danthony. He’s worth eleventy billion dollars and his taste in classic cars is a fucking joke. The good news is his shell companies are messier than Roy’s chest hair, so it wan’t hard to find where he stashed the money. I also found some embarrassing footage from when he auditioned for Love Island *plays video* it was not fire.”

[westiec]

made up fic titles:

Fast Forward

Butterscotch

If I Should Lose My Head

Fast Forward

Attempted time travel fix-it where the time traveler WILDLY overshoots. Gu Xiang from an even worse AU becomes Luo Fumeng, maybe? 🤔 I'd have to workshop it, but that could be interesting.

Butterscotch

Leverage fic where they've gotta go undercover at a fancy restaurant, and Eliot cannot be seen because the mark knows him, so it's pâtissier Parker and sommelier Hardison, and Eliot just dying on the comms the whole time.

If I Should Lose My Head

I dunno what the plot is, but this is a Sleepy Hollow case fic in an AU where none of the crap after season one happened but Ichabod somehow gets framed for murder.

[hook-on-fandoms]

Hardison and Wonder Woman

I saw an article saying that Aldis Hodge should turn his eyes to Mr. Terrific and I can’t help but thinking of an AU (which of course would lead to a different Mr. Terrific) of:

Wonder Woman was out undercover helping save people and get information in a less stable part of the world where being Wonder Woman would harm her info gathering. While gaining such info she ran into a group that was smuggling people at high risk to safety and she joined them. They got to a point where she thought they were trapped and was about to reveal herself when one of the guys got on the phone to call someone. She asked who he was calling and he started answering that’s before he heard what the person on the other side said and exclaimed TERRIFIC. The person on the other end of the phone led them to a secret exit and they got out with her cover in tact and everyone alive.

She was later introduced to the guy but before his name could be said she went up to him  and said it’s nice to meet you Mr. Terrific while shaking his hand and smiling.

She agreed to do more jobs with this group to get an understanding if they were outside the law good guys in a place the law wasn’t always good or exploiting the people they saved. After all, even if she has limitations on what she can do as a Justice League member she knows the law isn’t always just. Plus her alias doesn’t have such limitations. She kept the name Mr. Terrific as a nickname for him

After a while she saw him in the field once or twice and was impressed with how he handled himself and the tech that could just take control of things.

On one such job one of her supervillains was in the area and started to attack. He saw a way to temporarily capture them using his tech to take over certain tech in the area and make a cage so sent the rest of the group out while he did so. They left while he got to work but she stayed and made a choice. She revealed herself as Wonder Woman to him and they worked together to stop the guy.

There was a VERY interesting post op talk with the two of them after that. 

That happened a couple more times and when she was asked who she was working with she’d say Mr. Terrific.

Some stuff happened with the watchtower and she volunteered him to fix it. Hardison of course asks how he was cleared so fast and Diana reveals she put him in the Justice League files a bit after she revealed herself to him as a member.

Hardison is now fully terrified on how to explain to Parker and Eliot about how he accidentally joined the Justice League. He doesn’t know what scares him more, Eliot finding out he has been fighting supervillains or Parker and Eliot finding out he has been fighting supervillains without them.

He is allowed a room that he can call them from that makes it look like he is in normal space. He works with Diana on getting his team a “mission” to save him from space to sneak them onto the watchtower. At which time everything will be revealed. Her only ask in return is that Eliot cooks something because Hardison won’t stop comparing the food to Eliot’s and now she must know.

[yoyomarules]

@pebblesrus @darkfinch your posts got me thinking about Eliot bringing Hardison to the pool in Hell AU and why he’d bring someone in this scenario and uh. What if he brings him because Moreau orders him to.

He’s kind of decided, okay. The team are walking into a death trap, but maybe he can turn this around for them, be their spy on the inside instead of Moreau’s. Maybe, just maybe, he can navigate this thing without them ever learning the truth about him. When Moreau calls him to give him the address of a hotel and tells him to be there, he thinks, what if I just took him out there and then?

Except then Damien says, ‘Oh, and bring one of your friends along.’

Eliot’s heart lurches. ‘What?’

‘One of your little band of merry men,’ Damien says impatiently. ‘Bring one of them along with you.’

Eliot says, with a weak laugh, ‘Well, that’d give the game away pretty fast, wouldn’t it?’

‘A three-year head start and half a dozen armed men ought to give us the advantage, don’t you think?’ Damien’s voice is amused. ‘I think it’s time they understood what a dangerous game they’re playing.’

Eliot swallows. Best case scenario, any hope he has of keeping the truth from them is shot. Worst case—

‘The only question is which one,’ Damien’s saying. ‘Ford’s the reason I sent you to watch them in the first place, of course. Devereaux and Parker are both legends; I’d be curious to see what all the fuss is about.’

Eliot shuts his eyes, because Damien knows all about the team. Eliot’s dutifully fed him information—ammunition—on all of them, and he knows what’s about to happen before Damien says it.

‘But no. Bring Hardison. He sounds very entertaining.’

Eliot grips the phone so hard it might snap in his hand. ‘I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,’ he says, willing his voice to stay steady. ‘I’d rather have ’em not know anything’s amiss.’

‘Oh, Eliot,’ Damien sighs. ‘You worry too much. But, ah,’ and Eliot knows the sound of an incoming threat when he hears it, ‘if it’s such an inconvenience, perhaps I can send some people to meet all four of them.’

Stomach in free fall, Eliot says, ‘No. No inconvenience. We’ll be there.’

[havendance]

Man as a Living Weapon

Ao3

Fandom: Leverage

Written for the terribly evil ‘Eliot was working for Damien Morea the whole time’ AU that @darkfinch​ spawned. As promised, here are actual words written for it. Covers seasons 1 and 2.

Summary:

"I worked for Damien Moreau. You really think I did anything he didn't tell me to do?"

Eliot knew he was going to be working for Damien Moreau until the day he died; he was five bloody years into it when Dubenich started looking into the best of the best and Damien decided he wanted in.

Or: The one where Eliot was working for Damien the entire time and Eliot Spencer was the biggest con of them all.

Excerpt:

It started like this: it was supposed to be one job only, no encores. Damien had heard the rumors, everything made its way to him eventually. He’d heard that Ford was out of the game, that someone was looking to drag him back in. That someone was gathering up the best of the best for one lucrative job. Altogether, it was something intriguing enough to send Eliot after.

He’d offered it to Eliot like a reward, a chance to indulge in his little hobby of retrieval. It was more than that of course; everything Damien dangled in front of him had strings attached. It was networking and all the greatest in one spot. It was Damien sticking his finger into every criminal pie. It was a test, a piece in the latest game he was playing. Eliot still took it. Damien spoke and Eliot obeyed. That was the way the world worked, certain as the Earth revolved around the sun.

One story started a story of revenge. Another in a warehouse about to blow. A third with revenge of quite another sort. (Dubenich really had gathered the best of the best together for his little plot. There was Eliot of course, he knew what he was. Ford had a mind like a steel trap that grief hadn’t managed to dull. Parker was a ghost, Hardison a wizard with computers, and Devereaux practically a shapeshifter. He should’ve known better than to think he could double-cross them.)

The story could’ve ended with a check in Eliot’s hand that had far more zeros in it than any he’d seen in his whole life. Proof that the whole matter had been well worth it for Damien. It could’ve ended with him walking away and never seeing any of their faces again. It didn’t though, instead it was a beginning in some ways and a beginning of the end in others.

Keep Reading on AO3

[faorism]

Title: make my messes matter (make this chaos count) let every little fracture in me shatter out loud [1/1] Relationships: Eliot/Moreau, Eliot/Parker, Eliot/Hardison, Pre-OT3. Notes: E. 3000 words. COMPLETE. Dark!fic one-shot with an extreme oral (sex) fixation, emotional hurt no comfort, canon divergence, Eliot feels guilty because he's a double agent for Moreau, and lots of lying and hiding things. Dedicated to @darkfinch, @pebblesrus, and @bostonbakeddeans. Series: While not part of a series, this standalone fic plays within the hell au by finch, which you can catch up on at their undercover eliot au tag. Summary: Fucking Hardison and Parker is not the worst thing he's ever done, but as time goes by and he continues to work as Moreau's spy, Eliot wonders if loving them will be. → read here on ao3

[onyxbird]

...The Worse Than Worst AU, where Eliot and Parker are working for Moreau.

My initial gut reaction is that while they're still working for Moreau, Eliot would be the one trying to steer Parker away from the darker stuff and trying to take on the dirtier jobs to keep her from going deeper down that path (despite not even being sure why he's trying to protect this "crazy" thief), while once they meet up with the team, Parker would be the one to go "Hey, this team is way better. Let's keep them" without all the thorny misplaced loyalty to Moreau that Eliot has going on (and continuing to wear down all his arguments by bluntly pointing out the ways Moreau is shitty).

You know, the Leverage world is very lucky that Parker is a thief and that Archie is the one who found her, and not someone like Damien Moreau.

Because she would be terrifying as an assassin or something any way more lethal than a thief.

[onyxbird]

Today I have picked back up on working on my "Worse-than-Worst AU" WIP, i.e., the one where both Eliot and Parker are working for Moreau and still working for him when they join Leverage. (And I think I figured out some things about how I'm going to bring the situation to a head, so fingers crossed that that works out.)

However, as I read through and expand on what I already had written, I am discovering that certain things about The Nigerian Job work unsettlingly well for this AU without any tweaks other than the thought process behind them in the Parker internal monologue. 😬

[jamiesfootball]

more leverage/tl thoughts. any time they need someone undercover in sports or labor, they send eliot. which of course makes sense. for eliot. and also probably au roy.

but consider: jamie is NO good at any of that stuff. he can do a lot of sports, especially anything where you have to be fast or agile, and he takes the boxing job - though he has to fight roy on it, but roy is on his last legs and they all know it. but when it comes to labor jamie doesn't know how to do shit, and he's prissy too. doesn't like getting his hands dirty. he's totally comfortable in his own sweat, sure, but he even gets a bit squeamish at blood he was the one to spill especially if it gets on him (this was never a reason roy cited for why he didn't think jamie should be their new hitter, but in hindsight it's Very Obvious lmao).

anyway, so the team is always like yeah you send in the hitter to fill an undercover role in labor, because his asset is his body, right? wrong. there's a gradient when jamie switches from hitting to hacking, a small transitional period of time where he's doing both, but roy always has to step in for any "hitter" job that isn't... well, hitting. he gives jamie all kinds of shit for being a gen z city boy who doesn't know how to change a tire or whatever, but tbf he's glad for the excuse to only be part time retired lol.

& then when they bring isaac(?) on to be roy's replacement since jamie didn't work out (and roy never stops saying he told everyone so about that), he doesn't know how to do a lot of labor stuff too, but he's happy to learn - unlike jamie, who would do the work of course but he'd whine about it and even when he shut up and bore it you could still tell he hated every second - but usually they don't have time for him to get fully trained in stuff so they have roy on comms talking him thru it and jamie always chimes in with totally wrong info just to be obnoxious aksjfks.

My hand didn't slip so much as it went ice skating, stayed out past curfew, and forgot why we were here in the first place:

"How are you so bad at this?” Roy asked over comms, and it took every bit of his restraint for Jamie not to throw the big-scissors right through the mark’s window.

Bad enough that he had to put up with the older man critiquing his fighting style on a daily basis, and the smugness when he pinned Jamie in a headlock, and the eyerolls when he thought Jamie was being purposely ignorant about some complicated maneuver.

(And he wasn't being deliberately obtuse. Roy just knew more obscure fighting techniques than God, and appeared to think that Jamie should have learned capoeira on the back streets of Manchester while reading a dictionary.)

That's what Jamie had to put up with if he wanted to get better. That was the price of having a stable gig, one that paid per diem even when they weren't on the con. Ted basically paid him to hone his craft, on the off-chance it'd be useful to him later. Jamie banked money, his bones didn't break, and the only note on his head these days were the sticky notes Roy left on his forehead when Jamie nodded off in the breakroom.

("I think it says 'Dante's Inferno,'" Keeley said as they shared a stolen sandwich; Roy really was a good cook. She squinted at the tiny, furious handwriting. "Do you think it's a clue?")

He understood the old man was frustrated; his grandad knee had the structural integrity of a broken bottle that'd been glued back together. He'd be stuck in Beard's weird, smelly little van for at least the duration of the job. But it didn't give him the right to be a dick to Jamie about yard work. Where did Roy get off thinking Jamie had ever learned to prune a rose bush?

"You can't cut it down that low or you risk it having to grow up from the graft."

Jamie yanked the big-scissors back from a deadened stalk. “Then you should’ve swapped me with Keeley,” he hissed.

A while ago she'd been gagging over the comms. Her and Ted had a long debate--the kind Jamie could never get away with--about whether she actually had to clean the mark's bathroom as part of her reconnaissance. Yes, the tank was an excellent place to hide stolen jewels; no, she'd never found one there in her life.

Jamie wondered if the housekeepers wore maid outfits. Keeley would look dead fit in a maid outfit. He'd look dead fit in a maid outfit. Anything would look better on him than the gray, stiff-collared maintenance uniform Beard had presented him without comment.

The earbuds made it sound like Roy was right behind him, whispering disapprovingly, "Keeley's on the inside so she can crack the safe when she finds it. And you're supposed to be keeping a lookout on the armed guards. Focus." The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Focus, he said. Like Jamie had the luxury of forgetting that not ten metres away stood a burly man armed with an assault rifle and a blind spot in the cameras. All Jamie had was a pair of big-scissors and a prickly old bastard in his ear.

Honestly? He'd rather scrub the bathroom.

Jamie could scrub the hell out of a bathroom. Hell, he could scrub a carpet so well the landlord would never find the bloodstain. Roy might get high and mighty when Jamie admitted that he'd never used a drill or whatever, but Jamie knew the ins and outs of patching holes in the wall. He couldn’t change a tire, but he could steal a hubcap in under thirty seconds. He couldn’t slice an onion, but he could make twenty pounds at the grocers stretch for two weeks. Crouched eye-level with the rose bush and with a hidden spycam on his top button, him and Roy faced the same barren pot of twigs. Somehow Roy could see the instructions that would guide it to blooming, but Jamie couldn't. To him the rose bush was a dead thing, simple as that.

The big-scissors in his hand curved sharp and short with a thick handle for wielding. He was sure they had real a name for them, but he was also pretty sure his dad used to have something similar around for threatening the debtors who ran late on payments.

He could use a hammer. Roy never asked him if he knew how to use a hammer.

He made another go at the rose bush and got himself pricked for his trouble.

"Shit!" he swore, and over the comms Roy demanded to know, "Are you bleeding?"

"Don't leave DNA," Beard added. Jamie startled; he'd forgotten about the creepy weirdo entirely.

Danger shifted to his left. The guard rounded towards him, boots crunching in the gravel. "Hey! Is there a problem?"

Roy swore. Beard warned him not to engage.

Jamie rose to his feet with his best charming grin slapped on like a plaster over a nasty prick. He held his bleeding hand out like an offering, and with the other he slipped the big-scissors into the sleeve of his shirt.

One of Rebecca's first rules of the con: if you're uncomfortable, use it to make the mark uncomfortable.

He squeezed the big-scissors tight. "Yeah sorry, mate. Got a bit of a nasty cut--don't want it to infect. Could you point me somewhere I could clean up?"

[wolves-in-the-world]

I saw these photos of Moreau's actor [1, 2, 3] and thought: what if he can present himself convincingly as gentle and harmless? We only really see him when he's happy to come across as a threat, but he must walk in more civilised circles sometimes. Then I thought: he’s exactly the kind of person—rich, cultured, connected—Sophie used to rub shoulders with.

[1k, also on Ao3]

~

Sophie was on the job and he had his own reasons for being there, so she didn’t really clock him. He was nice enough, she thought, flattering and articulate, and she considered taking the risk of having a little more fun while she worked. In the end, though, the job came first.

Years later, when they get Nate out of prison and he tells them they’re taking down Damien Moreau, it takes Hardison putting the details up on the screen for Sophie to piece together the charming man she flirted with and the man who has so much blood on his hands. She feels sick to her stomach, but she tucks it away before Nate can see.

Not Eliot, though. He finds her in a quiet moment a few days later and she can tell there’s something serious here, recognises his game face while he’s putting the kettle on and getting a mug for himself, a cup and saucer for her. He confirms her suspicion when he speaks.

“You’ve run into Moreau before?”

Sophie sighs and sits back in her chair, letting him see her tiredness. He’s doing his job, after all—looking out for the team, just like she does, though he’s more about their physical safety. If either one of them is out of balance, it’ll hit the others in the end. She can admit this here at least. “Once, at a private event in Edinburgh,” she tells him. “I was after a lovely Monet and he was… charming.”

Eliot sets the tea in front of her and she casts him a grateful look, adding the milk and sugar herself. He leans back against the counter, folding his arms and keeping himself small. “He didn’t know what you were doing?”

“You know, I think he must have, now. At the time…” She winces and takes a sip, and the familiarity of the tea—too hot still—steadies her. Eliot doesn’t speak, just settles down in the chair opposite and wraps his hands around his mug.

“I’m meant to be able to recognise these people, you know?” she says. “Finding their weaknesses, stringing them along just long enough that they can hang themselves with it, that’s what I do. And I actually… I actually thought he was nice.”

Eliot’s quiet for a moment, looking down at his tea. “We haven’t actually been up against anyone like him before, Sophie. He got that powerful for a reason, and that reason is he’s good at what he does.”

“Well, so am I,” says Sophie, just a little bit of a joke in it, just a little bit of a smile to coax the same from him. He meets her eyes, but he isn’t smiling.

“You weren’t expecting him,” he tells her, his voice soft. “And it doesn’t sound like he was there for you, if you only found out now. People like him…” A moment’s hesitation. “They can be very charming. Good at hiding what they are.”

“You’re really worried about this one, aren’t you?”

He does smile then, a handsome thing with little enough warmth to it. “I’m always worried about this team, but yeah, I wish Nate hadn’t cornered himself into this. Moreau’s not someone you go after if you know what’s good for you.”

There’s something there, Sophie thinks, in the things he’s not saying and the smiles he’s not giving, the questions he asked of her. Maybe he’s been up against someone like this before. Maybe he crossed paths with Moreau and was lucky to escape.

It’s something the team might need to know, really, except that Eliot’s always been good at sharing things when they’re important. Nate’s methods aren’t always the best ones. There are bruises here, half-healed broken bones, and she’s not about to press any harder than she has to.

“You’re not the only one,” she tells him, and his eyes go still on hers. “Looking out for the team. We’ll get through this, Eliot.”

“You sure about that?”

The tone of his voice—something too small and too tired to be desperation—tugs at something inside her. She hasn’t often worried about Eliot, not like this, and she doesn’t like letting it go. She doesn’t like knowing he’ll do his best to hide it from the others, and even from her.

“You know, Eliot, I worked alone for a long time too, but sometimes I worked with others. Teams, partners…” She gives a little shrug. “I’ve never seen a team quite as capable as us. Maybe we won’t take this one down. Maybe we’ll have to drag Nate back from the brink and find another way to get the Italian off our tails. But I have faith we’ll walk away from it afterwards.”

Eliot glances down for a moment, tilting his mug in his hands. “The world owes us that much,” he says, and it almost sounds like agreement.

Sophie sits back and drinks her tea, watching the play of light across the surface of the liquid. “I suppose this is a good reminder,” she says, and catches Eliot’s questioning look. “That no-one’s good enough to think they can see everything,” she tells him, gesturing a hand.

“I think you already know my thoughts on caution,” Eliot tells her, and this time he’s smiling. She meets his eyes and returns it, though after a moment hers is fading again.

“You know,” she says, “I sat across the table from him and we talked for almost an hour. I never could have told you he was a monster.”

“Well,” says Eliot, and it sounds almost like there’s something caught in his throat, though it’s gone when he continues, “with people like him, you never can tell.”

[onyxbird]

#oh man Parker finding out Eliot still works for moreau#like Eliot recognizes that she Knows something because sometimes she’ll give him a Look#but he doesn’t think she could possibly know /that/

#until one time after a job where they really helped a lot of people and did a lot of good. Parker follows him home#to his apartment#she knows it already. has cased it before but hadn’t been inside#and it’s Empty. like completely barren of any personal items

#anyway she follows him back and into his place and he keeps trying to get rid of her so he can report back to moreau#and she asks like ‘do you report in after every job? or every five jobs? or once a week?’#trying to figure out how the system works bc if she knows the system she can break into it#the system being Eliot’s loyalty to moreau#but surprise she’s already stolen that a long time ago

#Eliot panics bc /she knows/ but she isn’t doing anything about it#she’s just watching and waiting#and if he refuses to answer she won’t ask again. but she had to ask at least once [via @thieves-never-say-die]

I see this and raise you:

They finish a job, probably one that went off the rails and took much longer than anticipated. Eliot's missed at least one of his normal call-ins and knows he absolutely has to report in ASAP or someone's going to come looking for him and it's going to be bad, but the rest of the team is celebrating the win and there's no way to extract himself without raising suspicions. (Not suspicions that working for Moreau--they'd never imagine--but if they think he's hiding an injury or something, it'll be even harder to get away.)

So Parker makes him an excuse. She demands a specific food that requires a trip to the grocery store for ingredients only Eliot knows how to pick out. Or volunteers them both to pick up take-out food from a specific hole-in-the-wall near his apartment that none of the rest of the team knows. Or acts really hyped up on adrenaline and disappears with some cryptic statement implies she's going to hotwire his car for a joyride so that he can chase after her.

And Eliot's out of his mind with frustration thinking this is how Parker finally intends to blow his cover, by deliberately making it even harder to slip away until the whole house of cards comes tumbling down... But the moment they're alone, Parker cheerfully tells him to go ahead and make his call in--she'll [drive on the way to the grocery store/pick up the food/whatever] and won't make a sound while he's on the phone--but he has to come back to join them afterwards.

it’s been a long time but……hell au thought that’s been bonking around in my empty brain, re: if the team figures it out pre-big bang job,

nate is smart but he’s playing an honest man, which would either make him blind to eliot’s con or make it easier for him to figure out. tbd. [if he does it’s hell au 2.0]

hardison is smart but he’s too good, too kind to expect one of his best friends is not entirely who he says he is 

sophie’s smart and can spot a grift a mile away but she can’t imagine actually hurting anyone (re: the homecoming job) 

parker though, parker could be the one to figure out it’s a con

and if parker is the one to figure it out, she might actually keep the secret 

vs. sophie or hardison wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret/look at eliot like he wasn’t a Monster/etc etc. but nate and parker would compartmentalize and use what they know. in different ways, but, still, two sides to the same coin

[ruinousaltruism-a]

.... maisy working for moreau and going up against charlie...

[lemissingmask]

[ID: Sketch of Sophie, Mr Quinn and Eliot. Quinn has a hand gently holding one of Sophie's arms and is standing behind her, forming a barrier between her and Eliot in the background, who is shooting a downwards and to the side. End ID]

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Whumptober 2022 Day 14: Desperate Measures

AU for The Last Dam Job in which Eliot shoots and kills Dubenich in the street. But he doesn't want Sophie to see it, so he asks Quinn to look after her, and he makes sure she doesn't see and guides her away from the scene, while Eliot deals with clean up like the well-trained hitter he is.

Stream-of-consciousness drabble for this below the cut

They all knew what was going to happen from the moment Eliot spoke. It wasn't so much the words, "Quinn, get Sophie outta here," as the way they sounded. Detached. Distant. Hardison was acutely reminded of hearing Eliot over comms while he was being interrogated while undercover for the psychology experiment. A voice like a sharp, serrated blade. Cold and calm and deliberate. Resolved. They all knew, in theory, what Eliot was capable of, and they knew first hand the lengths he would go to for the team. To protect them. Hardison had seen him throw himself into outnumbered fights against armed former-CIA or paratroopers or special ops or ninja-assassins or whatever, and always he fought harder when a member of the team was at risk. Even outside of his role as their hitter, Eliot looked after them. Cooked for them, offered Parker advice and support in a way Hardison never could, spent time with Hardison doing things he enjoyed (even if he grumbled about it at the time), bought gifts for Parker and Sophie on behalf of Hardison and Nate...he took care of them. That's all this was. Eliot taking care of them. Taking care of Nate. The gunshot was louder than Hardison expected, coming without warning and spiking the volume trace on Eliot's comms beyond Hardison's axes. An echo came through Sophie's signal, slightly more quiet. So Quinn had done as Eliot asked. At least Sophie didn't need to see it. Eliot putting a bullet in Dubenich, ending Nate's revenge spree and saving his heart from the burden of the kill. "You know why I remember these things?" Eliot's voice had stilled Hardison then just as the gunshot did now. "'Cus I can't forget." One more name, face, date, place, eye colour to remember. One more death in Eliot's ledger. Parker's left hand was gripping Hardison's right hard, painful, but the pain barely registered. "We can't let him go to jail," she murmured, voice sounding empty and lost, heart-breakingly afraid. Hardison forced a smile and lightly squeezed her hand back, "We won't." The thief nodded, attempting a smile in return, "We look after him. That's our job." Hardison nodded. It was their job. They may not be committing murder or acts of violence, they may not buy plants or cook or beat people up for just hinting at a threat towards Eliot. That was how Eliot took care of people. Hardison and Parker? They could make sure no cameras picked up Eliot at or near the scene, and no witnesses could be found to testify against him. They could clean up any trace of him from the sight of the assassination, sneaking into the crime scene unnoticed. They could be there when he finally returned and needed someone to remind him of who he was - who he really was - beneath the trained, hardened killer he had been forced once again to become.