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vickyvicarious · 3 years

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Leverage Redemption Pros/Cons List

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

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

PROS

References

Continuity

Nate

Representation

Themes

New Characters

General Vibe

CONS

'Maker and Fixer'

Episode Twins

Sophie's Stagefright

Thiefsome

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

PROS

References

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

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

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

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

Continuity

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

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

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

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

Nate

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

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

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

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

Representation

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

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

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

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

Themes

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

New Characters

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

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

General Vibe

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

CONS (no, not that kind)

'Maker and Fixer'

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

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

Episode Twins

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sophie's Stagefright

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

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

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

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

Thiefsome

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

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

The thing is, I was disappointed pretty quickly.

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

But then there was this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#leverage #leverage redemption #leverage spoilers #leverage meta #my meta #this turned into a BIG ol ramble #i planned to write like a couple of sentences for each point but noooo

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words-writ-in-starlight · 3 years

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also 9, 18, 29, and whichever other one you have the most potent Idea(TM) for, for leverage/dishonored au~??

GOD I love that AU so much yeah let’s do that. Starring Empress Parker, Lord Protector Eliot Spencer, and Natural Philosopher/Inventor Hardison. I lost this in my drafts, sorry about that.

9. What is the most embarrassing thing they have done in front of each other?

Hardison has blown himself up in front of his Empress and her bodyguard so many times that he should be over getting embarrassed by it, but he isn’t.

Parker knows she didn’t actually die--admittedly, the recovery time from jumping over the rail, sorely wounded, and landing badly in the water below the overlook was long enough that she doesn’t hold it against everyone for thinking otherwise, to say nothing of the rest of it--but she hates knowing she lost that fight. It was an attack she couldn’t have hoped to see coming, literally out of nowhere, and if even Eliot couldn’t stand against it, she didn’t have a hope in hell, but. She hates knowing that she lost that fight, and she hates knowing that she lost it in front of Eliot, and she hates what happened afterward, and she hates what it did to her people, and she hates what it did to Eliot, condemned to torture in Coldridge for a regicide that didn’t happen, what it did to Hardison, left lying to save his own life in the new court so that he could try to prove Eliot’s innocence, and it’s not embarrassment, it’s so much worse than that, but-- It’s close.

Eliot is both extremely embarrassed and not remotely embarrassed about falling more or less to pieces, when he finds Parker alive. On the one hand, he’s her guardian, he’s not supposed to look weak in front of her, it’s literally his job. On the other hand, she’s been dead over a year, Eliot and Hardison have been mourning her like a severed limb for over a year, and now she’s here, scowling and rubbing her wrists where he cracked the cuffs off her after handling Moreau in a very permanent fashion, and--

He’s entitled to a little bit of a breakdown, he thinks.

18. When they fight, how do they make up?

So...Coldridge changed a lot.

It wasn’t actually Coldridge, it was everything, but if you asked any of them, it was Coldridge.

Eliot and Parker have had some fucking arguments in their day, mostly early on, when Parker was a recently corralled and unwilling imperial heiress and Eliot was a Lord Protector that she picked because she thought he would be easy to convince into slacking off. Unfortunately for her, Eliot has never slacked off a day in his life, and the first time he caught her sneaking out via rooftop, he shouted at her like no one had dared shout since she was crowned. She yelled right back at him, but--

Ultimately, the thing is, he was only angry with her when she put herself in danger. She learned to think a little more carefully about what was likely to get her killed in a way that Eliot couldn’t protect her from, and Eliot learned to let her run a little wild, for her own sanity, as long as she took him with her and didn’t do anything actively stupid.

Eliot and Hardison bickered constantly, of course, and if either of them crossed a line, they’d go out of their way to make it up to each other--Eliot would leave one of Hardison’s favorite meals on the table so he’d remember to eat while he worked, or Hardison would build Eliot some new inadvisable gadget and invite Parker to come watch them test it for an hour or three. On the rare occasions that Parker and Hardison really fought, Parker would hide for a few hours and then Hardison would corner her and they’d have an emotional conversation about it and then they’d be fine.

And then...well. Then Parker was murdered, and Eliot was blamed for it, and Hardison was forced to lie for a year to stay alive in Moreau’s new court, and--

A lot’s changed.

Parker just wants things to go back to normal, as if she’d never been presumed dead for a year--she can’t bear the way they treat her like glass. Hardison is being eaten alive with guilt for what he said to the court, the lies he told to survive--he can’t let himself be angry with Parker or Eliot, under any circumstances, when he feels so much more to blame for everything. And Eliot--Eliot can’t speak. Can’t sleep much. Doesn’t like to be touched without a warning, doesn’t like to be alone, doesn’t like having his coat taken away from him, never goes anywhere without three knives. He hates teaching them sign language, but he hates not being able to talk to them more. Parker suggests bringing in a tutor, someone who knows the Serkonan sign language Eliot learned as a teenaged sellsword, and he scowls deeper and deeper until finally he just. Walks out of the conversation.

Parker is in possession of what could be called interrogation records, if you wanted to make the understatement of the century, so she knows that Eliot’s voice is gone for good. So does Eliot, if he’s forced to admit it. Too much damage from that time he almost cut his own throat, from his tongue being cut out, from screaming until he tore all the tissue to tatters. He just--hates it. He hates it.

He takes a few hours to pull himself up onto the roof he used to yell at Parker for crawling on, and just sit there and mouth curses in every language he knows. Then he takes some deep breaths, and climbs back down, and goes back and finds the Empress again.

29) Why do they fall a little bit more in love?

After they fix things--as much as they can fix, dragging every one of Moreau's lies into the light and scorching the fucking earth on his entire network--Parker sits up late at night, in the darkness of her quarters lit by the dull glow of the city below her windows. This isn't particularly new. None of them sleep all that well anymore. God knows she woke up from a nightmare. But tonight is...quiet. She's the only one awake.

Hardison is still asleep on the lounge, a sketch for a new kind of crossbow open under his hand and his head tipped toward the bed. Eliot is asleep on the bed, his back to the wall--Parker made them move her bed into the corner, after she came back, after probably decades of the imperial bedchambers being unchanged. He's curved toward her like a parenthesis, and he slept through her waking, something he hasn't done since she returned. The dim blue light of the city softens all the scars of the last year and a half, until Hardison's hands are clear of burns and Eliot's throat is unmarked. Parker can see them both breathing, slow, almost perfectly synchronized.

It's only because she's watching so closely that she sees Hardison stir and grimace, flexing his pencil hand and cracking all the knuckles. She holds a finger to her lips, and he nods, and she gestures him toward them.

That does wake Eliot up, the motion of the mattress sinking down as Hardison settles on her other side, and her guardian jolts up automatically. He makes a gesture toward the pair of them, not sign but an obvious pantomime of switch with me.

"You gotta sleep, man," Hardison says quietly, gently, and Eliot's face goes forbidding, and Hardison reaches out across Parker, moving with a syrupy half-asleep slowness that's probably at least half genuine, but also gives Eliot plenty of time to knock him away. Eliot doesn't, and Hardison pinches Eliot's sleeve and tugs on it like a kid, the way he used to when Eliot was ignoring him.

Parker blinks at Hardison's arm, stretching over her, and grabs Hardison by the wrist. He lets her manhandle him without a fight. She sets his hand on top of Eliot's, and then wriggles down until she's lying down between them, their joined hands on her belly, rising and falling with each breath.

"There," she tells Eliot. "This way, if we move, you'll wake up."

Eliot's hand is clenched around Hardison's fingers so tightly that it makes his knuckles white, and Hardison squeezes back, and Parker wonders if maybe it's not worth it, if maybe they should just let Eliot go back to watch and stop trying to honeypot him into a full night of sleep. But then--then Eliot lets out a breath and visibly forces his fingers to relax, and rubs a thumb over the burn scar on the back of Hardison's hand.

He nods, and Parker nods back.

She doesn't know how much Eliot managed to sleep, by the time they wake up in the morning, but his drawn, grey pallor is a little less in the sunlight.

#leverage #leverage ot3 #parker leverage #alec hardison #eliot spencer #dishonored au #ot3: til my dying day #ask meme #headcanon meme #starlight writes stuff #the ask meme i DIDN'T FORGET ABOUT #sorry kells i did not pick a fourth headcanon because these are all ESSAYS #anyway i'm still obsessed with this au as a concept #parker the involuntarily recruited empress in hiding!#hardison the brilliant natural philosopher forced to denounce his lovers in order to live long enough to clear their names!#eliot the god! damn! tragedy! the lord protector! the survivor of coldridge!#and then they all get a happy ending together #(for a given value of happy but LIKE. is that not life? is that last headcanon not pretty happy as such things go?????)#they do all end up fluent in serkonan sign but also they develop a half-coherent private shorthand #THEY understand it perfectly but it makes parker's imperial tutor (aggressively vetted by eliot) completely frantic #cthulhu-with-a-fez #asked and answered

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polyamoryinfandoms · 3 years

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Monthly Fic Roundup!

Hey gang! I’m posting the fics that were recommended on our last surveymonkey poll; thanks for everyone who recommended fics. Please note I did not get to read every fic on here and depended on your responses and the AO3 tags to mark for any triggers or story notes, so please read with caution if you’re worried about any content warnings!

If you want to recommend more fics, I’ll be posting another roundup poll later in the day today!

Under the cut are 32 fics from:

Agents of Shield (1)

Bill & Ted (1)

Castlevania (1)

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (1)

DCU (2)

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (4)

Game of Thrones (1)

Harry Potter (1)

Leverage (1)

Mission Impossible (1 -- series)

Sanders Sides (1-- series)

Sense8 (1)

Sherlock (1-- series)

Star Wars (1)

Stranger Things (8)

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1)

The Untamed/CQL/MDZS (2)

Teen Wolf (2)

White Collar (1)

Agents of Shield:

is it chill that you’re in my head? by lazyfish

Pairing: Lance Hunter/Bobbi Morse/Alphonso Mackenzie

TW/TAGS: PTSD, Referenced Torture

Summary: It doesn't take long for Mack to realize he's in love with Bobbi and Hunter and has been for a while. Other realizations take slightly longer.

Bill and Ted (movie):

Our Home, Our Family, Our Love by CaptainWeasley

Pairing: Bill/Ted/Elizabeth/Joanna

TW/TAGS: slurs, implied/referenced child abuse, internalized homophobia, self harm

Summary: A series of firsts in Ted's life, as he slowly comes to terms with his sexuality and learns how to handle being in love with both his wife and his best friend. When Billie and Thea come out as trans, each in her own way, he does everything he can to help them be who they are.

Castlevania:

Deliverance by cricketsong1985

Pairing: Trevor Belmont/Sypha Belnades/Alucard

TW/Tags: Blood kink, explicit sexual content, gore, trauma, angst

Summary: Adrian is beginning to think that Wallachia will be a smoking pile of ash long before he, Trevor, and Sypha can stop Dracula’s war on humanity. They’ve been chasing the castle for months, but each time they get close, it vanishes. Traveling with such genuine and trustworthy allies has been unexpectedly pleasant; Adrian doesn’t mind that Trevor and Sypha are involved with each other, but he is taken entirely by surprise when they open their relationship to him one evening. Hopelessly in over his head, his heart keeps urging him forward, even when he’s forced to confront the darkest aspects of his nature. Adrian must learn to swallow his pride and let himself be vulnerable if he wants a chance at happiness. Unfortunately, there isn’t much time for looking within when the world is drenched in blood and magic, and the path to victory may destroy him completely.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina:

We will be judged by the courage of our hearts by MagicClem

Pairing: Harvey Kinkle/Sabrina Spellman/Nicholas Scratch

TW/TAGS: mention of an abusive parent

Summary: It's been a month since the 13 almost destroyed Greendale. Now a full Witch, Sabrina tries to move on, with the help of one Nicholas Scratch.But one night, Harvey arrives at the Spellman's house and everything becomes complicated.

DCU:

not for the faint of heart by pasdecoeur

Pairing: Hal Jordan/Bruce Wayne/Clark Kent

TW/TAGS: Explicit Sexual Content

Summary: Clark opens a door that was meant to stay closed. Things spiral. or, What Not To Do When You’ve Fallen in Love with Batman: A Guide by Hal Jordan & Clark Kent.

All Good Things Come in Threes (Legends of Tomorrow) by IncendiaGlacies

Pairing: Gideon/Rip Hunter/Miranda Coburn

Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting

Summary: “Two is a couple, three is a crowd,” Gideon stated. In which Gideon navigates her polyamorous relationship with Rip and Miranda. Domestic slice of life goodness.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off:

Pairing for all of these are Pairing: Cameron/Ferris/Sloane and are written by @fbdo1986

it’s enough to be whiplash

TW: death mention (no character death), drowning

A/N: To put it plainly, I took a few tricks from John Hughes’s earlier scripts of the film, which were more surreal and up-front with discussing death and end of the world scenarios. It was inspired by a concept that I couldn’t seem to shake after I thought of it: what if the pool scene was just a bit more high stakes?

all the things I never told you

Summary: It’s Sloane, Ferris, and Cameron’s first afternoon alone at the Bueller residence in months. The busy twenty-four year olds who’ve struggled to find time together as their lives unfold in front of them try to think of what to do for the day when Cameron decides to let them in on what he’s been keeping from them.

bye bye love

TW: Death mention (none of the main characters)

Summary: A hopefully angsty number that details Sloane’s, Cameron’s, and Ferris’s journey through heartbreak and loss after their Sophomore year in college. The title is named after a song by The Cars by the same name!

firestarter

Prompt #5: Where it doesn’t hurt with the OT3

Game of Thrones:

Constellatory by blueandbulae

Pairing: Theon Greyjoy/Sansa Stark/Margaery Tyrell/Robb Stark (polycule, NO incest)

TW: Some canon typical violence

Summary: It’s strange and messy and maybe nobody else will ever understand them but it works. It’s theirs, and theirs alone, and nobody can take that from them.Or: Robb and Theon storm King's Landing, rescue the princesses, and save the kingdom. Then comes the hard part.

Harry Potter:

Unconventional by silver_fish

Pairing: Harry Potter/Ron Weasley/Hermione Granger

Summary: A few years, now, have passed since Hedwig’s death, and Hermione thinks it’s time Harry got a new pet. What sort of pet, though, neither she nor Ron know. Not until Harry himself offers her the perfect solution, that is.

Leverage:

for better or worse (we change together) by idkimoutofideas

Pairing: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer

TW/TAGS: Canon typical violence

Summary: The moment Parker saw the stranger standing by the elevator, a dozen alarm bells went off in her head. She froze, and Hardison nearly walked into her as he entered behind her. It took her a moment to realize that while half of the alarm bells were telling her to get the fuck out of there, the other half were telling her to look closer. Or, Eliot Spencer is a recent war veteran who just moved to Portland in an attempt to lead a calmer lifestyle. He ends up with some weird neighbors, but it's Portland, everyone's a little weird.

Mission Impossible:

Polyamorous Spies (series of 2 fics) by MagicClem

Pairing: Benji Dunn/Ethan Hunt/Ilsa Faust

TW/TAGS: Blood & injuries (2nd fic)

Sander’s Sides:

Love and Other Fairytales by SoDoRoses (Fairychess)

Pairing: LAMP/CALM (Logan, Roman, Virgil, Patton)

TW: violence, major character death, no NSFW in the main fic but there is a side series with NSFW, animal death, description of rot, nonconsentual control of another person, 'like death' state of being

Sense8:

Crazy Life by MagicClem

Pairing: Kala Dandekar/Wolfgang Bogdanow/Rajan Rasal

Summary: Rajan would admit that this past few years had been crazy and life seems determined to make it crazier and crazier.Or: This is "Amor Vincit Omnia" from Rajan's perspective.

Sherlock:

Lorem Ipsum by Saathi1013 (series)

Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson/Sarah Sawyer

TW: Abduction

Star Wars:

so just pull the trigger by Darnaguen

Pairing: Han Solo/Qi'ra/Lando Calrissian

TW/TAGS: Alcohol use

Summary: “Oh, don’t pout Haan.” Lando lounges back, licking his newly berry-tinted lips with a lazy grin. “You know all you have to do is ask.”(Qi’ra’s eyes are glinting and her smile is dagger-sharp. Han knows the look: it’s one she wears whenever she has a winning hand.The dice on the table are mediocre at best. He shakes his head and drinks deep.)

Stranger Things:

All pairings are Steve Harrington/Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler

The Hawkins Three by nonymos

TW: Some canon typical homophobia and slurs

Summary: It's two weeks after the Snow Ball, Nancy's officially with Jonathan, and Steve is trying to move forward. If only he wasn't on a path that keeps circling back to the both of them.

lovers in a dangerous time by diogxnes

TW/TAGS: Briefly: panic attacks/PTSD, parental neglect

Summary: “So,” says Robin, sitting back in her chair, “what’s the deal there, anyway? With the whole you-Nancy-Jonathan thing.”The question makes his mouth run dry. Why would she ask that? Can she tell, possibly, how much he’s been thinking about Nancy these past few days? How starstruck he was when Nancy showed up at his house? Does she know about the mysterious warmth in his stomach when he thinks about Jonathan? “What do you mean, the whole me-Nancy-Jonathan thing?” “Come on, Steve. She’s your ex and he famously beat you up two years ago and now they’re dating each other and all three of you somehow ended up a part of this weird little monster-fighting club together. There’s gotta be a story there.”“I don’t know, Robs,” says Steve, rolling his eyes, relieved beyond measure that that’s all she meant. “You pretty much just covered all of it. There’s not much more to tell.”

Have Happened by cortexikid

TW/TAGS: Homophobia

Summary: "I overheard you. You were talking in your sleep.”Steve's heart fluttered nervously.“It was a little funny at first,” Nancy admitted, her tone a mix of teasing and apologetic, “you were moaning my name and I thought it’d be kinda funny if Mike accidentally overheard you having a sex dream about his sister—”Steve couldn’t control the guffaw that escaped him. “But then you said Jonathan’s name. Right after mine. All in the same breath.”

it’s a risk, it’s a gamble by nondz (pinkjook)

TW/TAGS: NSFW

Summary: “I think we should pretend to date,” Robin says. "What?" Steve answers.

still turning out by scoutshonor

TW/TAGS: Homophobic language

Summary: Steve knows senior year's supposed to be tough, but seriously?Not only does his dad want him to take over his business, but he lands himself into a fight with his best friend leaving him friendless and booted out of his inner-circle, gets stuck watching a bunch of kids after school because of a missing credit, has to repeat eleventh grade history, and, oh yeah. He has the minor issue of having no idea what he actually wants to do with his life.But it's not all that bad: not the kids he has to watch, and certainly not Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers, two friends from his history class. Friends. Just friends. Yeah, he and you both know that's bullshit.Steve's got a lot of figuring out to do.(or: HSAU Stoncy with Steve as a senior, doing his best)

(Following Stoncy fics are by @pterawaters)

Now and For Always

TW/TAGS: Explicit, Sex where one party is drunk and the other isn't

Summary: Between graduating from college, starting new careers, and planning a wedding, the summer of 1990 is a busy time for Nancy, Steve, and Jonathan. When a war starts in the middle east, Jonathan gets called away just three weeks before the wedding. He’s determined to make it back in time, no matter what it takes.

It's not like people live like this

TW/TAGS: Car Accidents, Period-Typical Homophobia, NSFW

Summary: Concerned that Steve's less-than-stellar grades might have been making them look bad, his parents hired him a tutor, Jonathan Byers, they were sure he wouldn't find as distracting as his last one. Sure, Jonathan had good grades in school, but he really wished he didn't have to take the extra work to help his mother put food on the table. After all, everyone knew Steve Harrington was a jerk. Right? It turned out, not so much. After an impromptu study-session-turned-party and a game of spin the bottle, Steve and Jonathan both found themselves dating Nancy Wheeler. And that wasn't even the strangest thing that happened to any of them that week.

Mr. Sandman (series)

TW/TAGS: Canon-typical violence, Explicit scenes

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.:

Simmer On Low by canardroublard

Pairing: Illya/Napoleon/Gaby

TW/TAGS: semi-implied consensual voyeurism, whump

Summary: Scenes from five kitchens.

The Untamed/CQL/MDZS:

inclusions by keiyashi

Pairing: Sòng Lán | Sòng Zǐchēn/Xiǎo Xīngchén/Xuē Yáng | Xuē Chéngměi

TW/TAGS: NSFW

Summary: “I guess I feel left out. And I’m asking you to show me how not to?”“Show you?” Xue Yang laughs, easing the tension the only way he knows how. “Daozhang, if you aren’t careful, I might think you’re implying something quite forward.”Xingchen blinks at him. “Xue Yang, I feel like you’re trying to embarrass me, but that is what I was implying.”

melting the glacier by keiyashi

Pairing: Lán Huàn | Lán Xīchén/Mèng Yáo | Jīn Guāngyáo/Niè Míngjué

Summary: Wanting to be with Nie Mingjue is something Lan Xichen accepted about himself long ago. He wants only happiness for his friend, no matter what form it takes. Even if that form is quite lovely and possesses an enchanting mouth.

Teen Wolf:

Feels Better Biting Down by callunavulgari, hiza-chan (callunavulgari)

Pairing: Stiles Stilinski/Derek Hale/Lydia Martin

TW/TAGS: Blood

That I See You by FiccinDylan

Pairing: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski/Jordan Parris

TW/TAGS: NSFW, abo, m-preg (non graphic), werewolves, triads are normal

Summary: Deputy Jordan Parrish and Chef Derek Hale are in the prime of their lives and ready to take the next step in their relationship by courting an omega. Everything seems to be progressing smoothly until the new omega (aka Stiles Stilinski, the sheriff’s son) surfaces some unresolved tension from Jordan’s past. Jordan originally had the benefit of amnesia to block out his harried background, but now with his amnesia behind him, will he be able to resolve his past before he ruins his future?

White Collar:

Always Starts the Same, with a Boy and a Girl by lightgetsin

Pairing: Neal Caffrey/Peter Burke/Elizabeth Burke

Tags: AU

Summary: Summer, 1998. Neal Caffrey robs the gallery where Elizabeth O'Dell is working late, and comes away with a lot more than art. Agent Burke has no idea what's about to hit him.

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wordsaresimple-imnot · 4 years

Text

New Hope - Eliot x Reader drabble/one-shot

A/N: Okay, so I’m re-watching Leverage and I just wrapped season 2 where Nate is arrested and the angsty idea of his daughter being part of the team and losing him came to me so I started writing that and then the rest just sorta happened. Basically a drabble that turned into an unplanned one-shot I’m not entirely sure I like. I feel like I should give it additional parts but y’all can decide that. I also have another Eliot angst/fluff I’m almost done with and about 2-3 one-shots/multi fic ideas for Eliot I’m trying to organize.

Details: You are Nate’s daughter (either by Maggie or maybe gf/hs sweetheart before Maggie) that’s part of the team and already established gf/love of Eliot. Nate is arrested and it spirals you down, until you find something out and your life changes. Kinda sucks, please be kinda, haha.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the span of maybe two minutes, everything came to a screeching halt. Well, not quite a halt. More like trying to watching a video that was trying to load and play at the same time. Every part of your body felt heavy, heavier than you ever remember feeling. You try to focus on the situation at hand but things register too late.

Sterling, standing with cops, surrounding you and the team. Guns pointed at you. Trapped. Your dad speaking, walking to the rail. He cuffs himself to the rail. Why? What’s happening? Him and Sterling talking. What’s happening?

“Dad? What are you doing?” You take a half step towards him, when Eliot grabs your hand to hold you back. The guns shift in your direction.

Your dad tells the team how you’re his family and he will never forget that. None of this is computing. He’s yelling for you all to get on the helicopter. You feel Eliot tug at your arm to get you to move. It snaps you out of your haze and everything is in crystal clear focus. You pull away from Eliot and rush to your father.

“No. No! You aren’t doing this. There’s another way.” You frantically start tugging at the handcuffs, believing if you pull it hard enough it’ll break apart and free him. You hear your teammates call your name, but ignore them still rambling. “This isn’t happening. We lost Sam. I lost Sam. I can’t lose you too. You can’t leave me. Dad, no!”

He shifts his cuffed hand to gently and firmly grab yours, saying your name. You freeze and look up into his eyes. “Do you remember what I use to tell you when you were little?”

“That I was your first true love, and true love is about protecting each other.” You whisper, your voice shaking. He gave you a gentle smile, his eyes softening.

“That’s right. I couldn’t save Sam, and I’ll live with that guilt forever. But if I don’t do this to protect you, and them, I couldn’t live with myself. I love you, so much.” He leaned forward and gave your forehead a kiss. As he pulls back, he nods to Eliot to grab you.

“Daddy.” You try to keep hold of his hand, but Eliot pries you apart and keeps a firm hold on your arms, following the rest of the team to the helicopter. Your eyes lock with Sterling as you move past him. The look you give him makes him take a side step back. You hear Eliot telling him to watch his back; Eliot will be the least of his problems.

Then, it was like the video fully loaded and everything sped up at once. You barely remembered the flight, or the following weeks after your fathers arrest. It was a blur spent in bed, crying off and on with random bouts of anger. Sophie and Eliot spent the most time with you, trying to make you eat and stay somewhat in a routine of at least wondering around Eliot’s apartment. About a month after his arrest you tried to ease back into being with the team and wanted to help in planning his escape. Then you got sick.

You were sitting in the bathroom in your dad’s flat, loving the cool side of the tub against your neck as you focused on breathing. A soft knock made you open your eyes a crack, seeing Eliot quietly step inside and close the door again. He grabbed a washcloth, got it damp, and sat down in front of you while holding it to your forehead.

“How you feeling?” Every part of him showed concern.

“Like death.” You gave a dry chuckle. “Why aren’t you sick? We’ve been eating the same things for months.”

“Minus your comfort food,” Eliot joked.

You rolled your eyes, “I haven’t had that in...” You trailed off trying to remember the last time you had any comfort food aka period cravings. When you realized you couldn’t give a confident answer on the last time that happened, you said the only thought you had. “Uh, oh.”

Eliot tensed, “Uh, oh? What ‘uh, oh’?” His eyes follow your hands as they settle on your stomach, his own arm dropping from your forehead. “Uh, oh.”

One not-so-secret trip to the corner drug store (courtesy of Parker eves dropping and blabbing to everyone else in the apartment) and twenty minutes of drinking water and waiting to pee later had everyone sitting in the living room looking at the timer on your phone. Well, Eliot was pacing but everyone else was sitting.

“Man, if this is positive Nate is gonna break out just to kill you. We might not have to do anything.” Hardison tried to joke, looking at Eliot who was far from amused.

“Hardison I’m gonna jump over this couch and -” Eliot started before Sophie jumped in.

“Can everyone just stop for a minute? We need to be supportive right now.” She gave them a pointed look and went back to rubbing soothing circles on your back.

The timer went off and you couldn’t shut it off fast enough. Beyond that quick movement, you found yourself stuck to your seat. You turned and looked at Eliot, standing at your side, neither of you seemed able to move. Then you hear a huff and a flash of blonde as Parker sprints to the bathroom and comes back just as fast holding the stick. Her face is unreadable.

“Well?” Sophie asks.

“Negative.” Parker looks between you and Eliot.

“Oh.” You feel your shoulders drop, processing the news.

“That’s good, though, right? That’s what you wanted?” Hardison asked.

“I mean, yeah. That’s the smart outcome. It’s just...” You felt tears prick at your eyes and turn towards Eliot. He sits on the arm rest and hugs you to his side. “I guess I had just assumed it was gonna be yes so I started thinking of all the memories we’d make and our life...”

“Me too.” Eliot confessed, kissing the top of your head.

“Well, good news then. It’s positive.” Parker’s face broke into a smile. You and Eliot’s heads snapped over to her. “I lied before. Just wanted to be sure you knew your real emotions on it.”

You jump up and rush to grab the test from her hands. She’s still smiling like she somehow won the jackpot. “You are the craziest person I’ve ever met.” You mumble to her, but she didn’t seem remotely fazed. There it was, big and pink and plus. You look back up at Eliot and nod in confirmation. “It’s positive.”

He walked over and took the test from your hand, staring at the symbol as you had done. Then his arms wrap around you and hold you close, being as gentle as possible so you don’t get sick again. Your arms wrap around him and you start to cry and laugh at the same time. Eliot pulls back enough to see your face.

“Those happy tears?” He looked slightly worried. When all you could do was nod and smile at him, he smiled back. Eliot put one hand on your check and moved the other to rest on your stomach, leaning down he gave you a passionate and loved filled kiss. The euphoric moment ended once you heard Parker speak yet again.

“So what’s Nate gonna be more pissed about: Eliot getting his daughter pregnant or not knowing Sophie’s real name?”

“Those are problems for another day. Right now, we are going to celebrate the newest member of our family!” Sophie came forward and gave you both hugs, followed by Hardison and a typical semi awkward Parker hug.

You looked at your team, laughing and smiling. They would be there for you and Eliot and your growing baby, and that made you feel a happiness you’d been missing for the past month. Your dad was right - they are family. And you saw hope and a future for your family. You’d get your dad out and once everyone was together again, no one would be able to break them apart again.

#leverage #one shot #eliot spencer #nate ford #parker #alec hardison #leverage fanfic #fanfiction #drabble #eliot x reader #eliot spencer x reader #nate ford daughter #sophie devereaux #christian kane

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swordandquill · 3 years

Text

Title: Just a Call Away

Fandom: Leverage

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

Ch 2: Sophie - Sophie gets to enjoy a waltz. Eliot gets to enjoy good Thai food.

Author’s Note: At long last, chapter 2. Nate is up next, but I have no idea how long it will take to write his chapter.

You can go here to read this on AO3 instead.

Eliot had found a variety of good looking mushrooms at the farmers market earlier in the day and bought more than he really should have with no plan for what to do with them. By late afternoon, he had a mushroom risotto in the works for dinner and plans to make mushroom bourguignon the next day.

Nate had promised him the team wouldn’t take any more jobs until the stitches in Eliot’s arm were out, and while that didn’t necessarily mean much where Nate was concerned, Eliot was hoping for at least a few quiet days where he got to actually cook what he planned to cook.

The shallots and mushrooms were sizzling away in the sauté pan, and the chicken stock was just starting to simmer when his phone went off. It was the stupid Star Trek ship communicator beep that Hardison had programed into his phone for texts, and he hadn’t gotten around to figuring out how to change it yet. He really needed to change it.

The only people with the number for this particularly phone were the team, and they texted him all the time, so he wasn’t particularly alarmed when he leaned over to see what they wanted this time.

That changed quickly.

In trouble

Eliot hastily put his knife down on the pile of half chopped parsley and reached for his phone. It was Sophie, and she was considerably less prone to exaggeration than Parker or Hardison.

Need exit

If she was texting instead of calling, then she wasn’t in a position to talk, and he couldn’t call her to get her location. Eliot wiped his hands hastily on his apron and unlocked his phone to call Hardison to try to get a trace on her location, but the next text came through before he got that far.

Mandarin oriental ballroom

Eliot flipped off the burners without a second thought to his mushrooms, which were definitely going to be an oily ruin by the time he got back to them. He was almost to the door when one more text came.

Wear tux

Eliot groaned. Sophie had pulled him into her side cons once or twice before without warning, but he had made it clear after the second time that if she wanted help with that sort of thing, she needed to be straight with him, or they were both going to end up hurt. She had been good about not doing it since then.

That made him reasonably sure that the demand for dress attire was about getting into the place while drawing as little attention to himself as possible, but it was still a nuisance. He owned two tuxes, but both of them were badly in need of a trip to the dry cleaner, and his dress shoes were still muddy from the last con he had worn them on.

He hastily shrugged into the cleaner of his tuxes anyway and knocked as much mud off his shoes as he could running down the stairs to his car.

Twenty-five minutes later he was slipping through the service tunnels of the Oriental, tying his hair back in an effort to look more like he hadn’t just thrown on a somewhat rumpled tux and rushed across town. He managed to slip into the ballroom entirely unnoticed, and the relief was visceral when he spotted Sophie, back in a corner, surrounded by a semi-circle of enamored spectators. He hadn’t gotten anything from her since her clothing recommendation, and he hadn’t wanted to text her back in case it drew unwanted attention to her phone.

Now that he had eyes on her, he was confident he could get her out safely, and he took a moment to get a read on the room. The guy standing closest to her was definitely the problem. He was too focused on Sophie, too close, and she kept shifting away from him under the guise of listening or talking to other guests.

There were a number of bodyguards in the room, which was hardly a surprise given the type of party this seemed to be. Eliot recognized a gaggle of local politicians, a rather odd smattering of minor European nobility, and he thought he spotted at least one Fortune 500 CEO. This was the sort of crowd that Sophie loved to work.

Eliot was less enthusiastic about it. It wasn’t hard to pick out the bodyguards that belonged to Sophie’s stalker. There were three of them, one with eagle eyes on his boss and Sophie, and two watching the room. They looked like they knew their stuff, and one of them had the distinctive stance of former special ops.

Eliot wasn’t very eager to start a fight in the middle of a crowded ballroom, or anywhere else for that matter. He had no doubt he could do it, he just didn’t want to with fourteen stitches in his arm and a broken finger on his left hand. He definitely needed to have another conversation with the team about thinking through their back-up plans when they did side jobs, because ‘hope Eliot answers his phone and isn’t too injured to fight’ was not a great back-up.

All he really had to do was get Sophie away from the guy, then they could disappear into the crowd and slip out the back. There was a live quartet playing and a few dozen couples dancing in the center of the room. A pretty girl like Sophie had to have no shortage of people wanting to dance with her.

Eliot took his time working his way over to her, not wanting to draw the attention of the bodyguards until he had to. He could tell she had seen him because her posture had relaxed, and she had become more animate and fluid in her gestures and conversation.

By the time Eliot got to the group, Sophie’s stalker was holding her arm possessively, and Eliot considered punching him just for the hell of it. He looked like he would go down easy with just one punch.

He refrained though, slipping into the group surrounding them and stepping to the front.

“You look like a lady who could use a dance,” Eliot interrupted whatever inane story the man was telling.

“That would be lovely,” Sophie extracted herself gracefully and took Eliot’s offered arm.

“The lady is spoken for,” the guy reached for her, but she evaded him neatly, her grip tightening just slightly on Eliot.

“Don’t be such a prude, Atticus,” Sophie’s voice was light and teasing, and the gawkers around them laughed.

Atticus looked murderous, but he let them go, and Eliot pulled Sophie out onto the dance floor.

“Atticus? Really?” Eliot gripped as he guided Sophie smoothly into the first turn of the waltz that was playing.

“Thank you so much,” the smile on Sophie’s face didn’t reflect the anxiety in her voice, “I knew Atticus had a reputation for being a ladies’ man, but I didn’t know he was such a pervert or that his bodyguards were enablers.”

“Are you okay?” maybe Eliot would find the time to punch him after he got Sophie out.

“I’m fine,” Sophie assured him with a squeeze of his hand, “the wanker had his bodyguards ‘escort’ me everywhere, even the ladies’ room. I couldn’t find an opening to get away.”

“They’re definitely watching us now,” Eliot started leading Sophie in the direction of the service exit he had come in from, “we’re probably going to have to make a run for it at some point.”

“I can’t believe you made me teach Hardison to waltz,” Sophie huffed, clearly less worried about their escape plan than Eliot was, “we could have just swapped the two of you out.”

“Learning skills that don’t involve electronics is good for him,” Eliot snorted softly.

“Well, it’s your turn if we ever have to teach Parker,” Sophie was tracking movement over his shoulder, “my feet can’t take another round of being stomped on.”

Eliot turned them so he could see what Sophie had been looking at. Atticus was pushing his way through the crowd so he could keep an eye on them; the man was not subtle.

“I’ll just make them dance with each other,” Eliot was suspicious the former special ops guy had figured out which direction he was leading them.

The good news was that most special ops guys wouldn’t want to cause a scene, so they would likely be able to get out of the ballroom. The bad news was, the chances of them getting out of the building without Eliot having to fight someone were low.

“That’s brilliant,” the affectionate smile reserved specifically for the team’s two idiot lovebirds graced Sophie’s face, “I’ll have to talk to Nate about taking more jobs that involve dancing.”

“You should talk to Nate about your buddy Atticus,” Eliot suggested, “maybe you can make him jealous.”

“It’s just a con, Eliot,” Sophie rolled her eyes.

“You’ve never sat in the van with Nate when someone is getting handsy with you,” Eliot teased.

“Do you think Hardison has any recordings of that?” Sophie gave a devious grin.

“He does say he records everything,” Eliot shrugged, “when we get closer to the service hall, we’ll try to slip out, but we’ll probably have to deal with his bodyguards. Are you good to run?”

“Always,” Sophie smiled at him, completely confident in his ability to keep her safe.

It still made his chest go tight when he realized just how much the team trusted him, how sure they were that he would always save them. By this point, he had two lifetimes worth of people he hadn’t been able to save, and there were moments when the team’s unreserved trust made him feel sick to his stomach.

Not tonight though. Tonight, they would be walking out together.

******

“Walk me up?” Sophie asked, which was just another way of asking the same question she had already asked four times on their way to her place.

“I’m fine Sophie,” Eliot pulled into the underground parking garage of Sophie’s apartment building, “it’s just a few torn stitches.”

The bodyguards hadn’t really been a challenge, but his dress shoes had slipped on the linoleum floor, and he had ended up taking a hit from the special ops guy against his upper arm instead of blocking it against his forearm. The impact had popped a couple stitches and reopened the gash. It really wasn’t a big deal, but he was bleeding and that seemed to be bothering Sophie.

“I’ve had a very trying night,” Sophie said airily, “humor me. Anyway, I ended up with some of your clothes mixed in with mine last time we had to leave a hotel in a hurry. You should at least come up and change into something more comfortable, and I can get your jacket and shirt soaking before the blood stains sets in too badly.”

Eliot didn’t really care about the tux, but it would be nice to change into more comfortable clothes and re-wrap his arm before he got blood on anything else. Home wasn’t that far away though, and he had left a mess behind in his kitchen in his rush to get to Sophie. If he let Sophie drag him up to her place while she was feeling guilty about him getting hurt, it could be hours before he got home.

“I left dinner sitting out half cooked,” Eliot shook his head, “I should really get home and clean it up.”

He was going to have to toss the mushrooms for sure, but the stock would probably be okay as long as he gave it a good boil before he used it again. He still had a little bit of leftover chicken in the fridge. He could probably…

“Well, it’s not going to go anywhere,” Sophie pointed out, “stop being so stubborn and come up. I’ll order in for dinner. It’s the least I can do.”

Eliot knew a losing battle when he saw one.

“Fine,” Eliot gave up, “no dinner though. I’m just going to get changed, and then I really do need to head home.”

“Of course,” Sophie said without even attempting to sound sincere.

Eliot resigned himself to staying for dinner.

What he hadn’t expected was Sophie pulling out her med kit and demanding he show her how to take care of torn stitches. Eliot knew what she was doing. Parker was the only one on the team who had ever shown interest in expanding her first aid knowledge; the only reason Sophie even had a med kit was because Eliot had put it together for her.

It was hard for Eliot to pass up an opportunity to impart at least a little medical knowledge to a teammate, though, even if Sophie was only showing interest as a ploy to get him to take care of his arm sooner instead of later. He made her do the work just to poke at her a bit for trying to manipulate him.

Sophie wasn’t squeamish like Hardison or driven to drinking by all things medical like Nate, and she listened carefully as he talked her through removing the torn stitches, cleaning the wound, and putting in the new stitches. She balked a bit at doing the stitches, nervous that there was no lidocaine, but there were only three of them that needed to be redone, and Eliot hadn’t bothered to put any lidocaine in Sophie’s kit because she didn’t know how to use it.

Actually, that was kind of disappointing. He could have walked her through using it if she had had any. He had mostly let Parker stitch up the gash in the first place just to make her practice calculating lidocaine dosage and injection distribution. He’d have to grab some for Sophie’s kit next time he thought about it.

“All done,” Sophie said briskly, wiping her hands on a towel.

“Nice job,” Eliot gave the new stitches an appraising look.

“Thank you,” Sophie eyed the entire length of the gash with a displeased look, “I think I’ll leave it to you and Parker when there’s an option though.”

Eliot frowned at the crease that was forming between her eyebrows. Sophie had much stronger opinions about injuries than Eliot did, or at least stronger opinions about Eliot’s injuries than Eliot did.

“It’s good,” he assured her, “it just needs to be cleaned up and wrapped now, and it will be fine.”

“Go take a shower then,” Sophie shooed him away from the table, “I’ll find your clothes and order us some dinner.”

Eliot thought about protesting and trying to head home again, but a shower would be nice, and he really was hungry. He would have to cook himself if he went home, and as much as he liked cooking, it was late.

“Fine,” Eliot pushed himself out of his chair and headed to the bathroom.

Sophie ordered Thai from the really good place on 12th, and Eliot could tell just from the smell that she had ordered his preferred spice level and not hers, which she really didn’t have to do.

Eliot didn’t know how to make the team understand that it was okay when he got hurt; they didn’t need to feel bad about it unless they had done something really stupid to cause it. It wasn’t his job to get hurt (usually), but it just came with the territory. It had always come with the territory for him, and at least with this team, there was an effort made not to put him directly in the line of fire as plan A, or really even plan B or C.

The Thai was really good, though, and Eliot felt like he had talked himself hoarse more than once trying to get Sophie to understand and made almost no progress, so he let it be, kicking his bare feet up on Sophie’s coffee table and settling down to watch the French heist movie she put on without subtitles.

Sophie curled on the other end of the sofa, making a good go at pretending like the food wasn’t too spicy for her and drinking the absolute wrong type of tea to have with Thai food, although the amount of cream she had put in it was probably helping with the spiciness. It didn’t take her long to grab the blanket off the back of the sofa and pull it over both their laps, followed by shoving her cold feet under Eliot’s thigh, which earned her a half-hearted thump on her shine. At least her feet weren’t as cold and bony as Parker’s.

They settled down to watch the movie and pick at the remaining Thai. Sophie had gotten konom sai sai, koa tom mud, and black rice pudding for dessert, and Eliot could appreciate her absolute lack of shame when it came to her sweet tooth. She would probably like khanom tom or kanom baa bin, and Eliot had been looking for an excuse to try to…

“I’m sorry I didn’t do better recon on Atticus,” Sophie said abruptly.

Eliot was well into his mental ingredient list and which of his buddies’ grandmothers he’d have to suck up to to get authentic recipes, and it took him a moment to process what she had said, but when he did, he reached under the blanket and pinched her calf.

“Ow!” Sophie kicked him lightly in the thigh, then tucked her feet back under it, wiggling her toes in an obnoxious way that would have done Parker proud.

“Just let it go, Soph,” Eliot did the mature thing and didn’t tickle her under the knee the way he would have with Parker, “I’m glad you called.”

Sophie frowned at him, “it matters when you get hurt. You understand that, don’t you?”

Eliot was willing to admit, to himself at least, that he liked that it mattered to them if he got hurt. It felt a lot like being wanted as person instead of a skill set, and it had been a long time since that had happened. He liked it, but it was dangerous, for them and for him. He needed there to be no hesitation on their part to call him in when things got rough. He needed them to not stop to try to figure out if he would be hurt. He would tell them if he couldn’t do it; everything else in those kinds of situations needed to be irrelevant.

He was pretty sure it was a problem that he liked that it wasn’t.

It wasn’t a problem he was going to solve tonight, though, so he gave Sophie’s shin a pat and nodded, then pinched her again when she tried to say more.

“You’re insufferable,” Sophie huffed.

“Just doing my job, darling,” Eliot grinned at her.

“Well, thank you for doing it so well,” Sophie’s smile was genuine, less bright and flowery than the smile she used on marks.

“You’re welcome,” Eliot returned the smile, then settled back down to watch the rest of the movie.

*********

They hadn’t even sat down to brief for the job yet when Eliot found a shoe box sitting on top of his gear. There was only one person who would buy him shoes, and she was currently on the couch fawning over potential jewelry heists with Parker.

He opened the box and found a pair of new dress shoes in his size. They looked normal enough until he noticed the strange tread pattern on them and ran his hand over the soles. Sophie must have had them custom made to have slip-resistant bottoms.

There was a note tucked neatly into one of the shoes. When he unfolded it, it read, It matters.

Eliot pretended not to notice Sophie watching him out of the corner of her eye, a quietly pleased look on her face, as he carefully tucked the shoes back in their box and stored them with his equipment.

There weren’t any easy solutions to the particular problem the team was presenting him with, but maybe that was something he could live with.

#leverage #eliot spencer #sophie devereaux #Isabeau's writing

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afraschatz · 5 years

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Leverage - The Gone Fishin’ Job

The Gone Fishin’ Job aka Hardison and Eliot go on a date. So, here are a couple of things I love about this episode. I love...

... Eliot, angry right off the bat. Ah, I love you, man.

... Eliot and his close relationship to the ice pack - and the fact that, once again, we have this little “there are jobs in between the eps that we don’t get to see” notion here

...Parker’s outfit and her obsession with pinatas. WHAT HAPPENED IN JUAREZ??? I need to know! Did Eliot get into a fight with drug dealers smuggling their shit in pinatas? Did he get beaten up by a bunch of kids at a birthday bash with pinata that got out of hand??

... Hardison’s brief, Eliot instantly connecting all the dots, Parker busy eviscerating her latest victim <3

.. everyone’s fond amusement with Parker

... ‘That’s - me and Hardison, we got the bank!’ ‘We’re doing what now?’ - A DATE, HARDISON, IT’S A DATE!

... Beth being not entirely capable of holding in her amusement at Eliot’s resolution to the pinata story :D, Nate is slightly bemused, and Sophie? Shrugs it off. Cold, Sophie, cold.

... cut to the next scene that starts with... Eliot being angry. No, wait, that is glee. So hard to tell them apart sometimes

... grumpy!Hardison with his awesome fancy crowshirt

... ‘That thing had a beak, man!’

... ‘What’s that smell?’ - ‘It’s fresh air.’ - ‘I don’t like it.’

... Eliot getting in character in the five feet it takes him from the door to asking his question

... Eliot and Hardison profile shot. So pretty.

... Sophie’s accent of the week

...the solution for the supposed IRS audit being... killing the two IRS agents. Wow.

... Sophie helping herself to a drink

... ‘How did you know that? Do you know when I’m gonna die?’ - And Parker’s SMILE

... Hardison not being down with the prospect of a bait shop date, but DEFINITELY not down with random!thug INTERRUPTING his bait shop date. The nerve!

... the fact that we don’t even see the little red dots being pointed at Eliot (because we all know that guns can’t stop Eliot), in fact they don’t even register with ELIOT. Just the two right over Hardison’s heart.

... Hardison being low-key scared in the van. Even though Eliot is there. I so love that about him, that yes, of course he has all the trust in the world in Eliot, but he is also right in the middle of being kidnapped by crazies with guns. Of course he is scared.

...how BROWN the entire episode is, ha. I mean out in the woods, in constant rain, sure, but oh God, that fitness studio is so hideous.

... trainer!Parker

... Nate’s obnoxious accent

... Nate’s HUGE slurpie

... Nate’s flat cap. Wear that more often, Nate

... the money laundering con. I mean, I AM kind of sad that we didn’t get the whole fitness studio lark as the A-story in a separate episode because that would have been SO AWESOME (basically, I just want to see the entire team in leg warmers). But the con itself is so simple, so sleek, and just the perfect backdrop for the woodland date

... Eliot’s lowkey boredom in his “Your enemy?” response to the mini evil speech of evil

... the dynamic between Eliot and Hardison in that scene is SO interesting. Obviously, while the main militia guy Chester is talking, Eliot takes in everything going on around them, and obviously, he didn’t react to Hardison getting punched because there’d have been no point to it at that time. And obviously, he won’t let the henchman bring him to his knees because he can’t fight as well when kneeling down. But up until that point, he hasn’t done anything. What’s the plan here? And the plan, on the fly, comes from Hardison. And Eliot? Trusts him to know what he’s doing and plays along.

... “Menthol lights?” (cocky!Hardison is not only hilarious and hot both, but also the perfect distraction)

... why exactly were they standing ready with two bloodhounds? That militia has its priorities straight...

... Parker deleting all the outstanding debts. Thank you, Parker.

... that 360 shot of Hardison and Eliot in the woods? Such a thing of beauty.

... rock, paper, scissors in a perilous situation.

... secret room behind a bookshelf. Seriously, those militia dudes.

... Parker pretty much solving the case all on her own while everyone else is fooling around.

...I am not sure what turns me on more, Nate’s Latin skills or Nate’s random vexillology prowess

... how absolutely disgusted Nate and Sophie are by the evil speech of evil whilst having to agree with Whitman

... Nate asking Parker whether she heard anything from the boys. Cause that’s who I’d ask

... Eliot rubbing Hardison with leaves like he was some piece of juicy meat

.. GANGRENE, MAN, GANGRENE

...Hardison totally knowing what Eliot would like at Mama Creole’s Fish Shack. And being an incredibly cheap date. 5.99. Seriously.

... Eliot having a LOT of patience with Hardison’s griping. Possibly because it’s entertaining. Possibly because it’s hot. Possibly because that’s how he deals with his fear. Possibly because Eliot has a lot of patience with whatever Hardison decides to do.

...Hardison and the white guilt. Eliot and his eyerolling.

... Damnit, Hardison! Damnit, Eliot!

... a bit more Eliot history. Why did you log a dead body cuffed to you around, Eliot, huh?

... “Outta my way you old bat!” WTF what kind of desktop IS that?!

... Parker’s FACE

... how exactly DID they get up that tree...

... Nate and Sophie and Parker stealing a train. - Yet another episode I want by the way. Sort of Murder on the Orient Express like. The good version with Albert Finney.

... Parker being so computer savvy

... ‘on my celly’ hahaha Nate

... Nate’s and Sophie’s elaborate lies in contrast to Parker’s gruff ‘Rocks, yeah, big rocks!’

... that wide shot next to the railroad track. SO PRETTY

... ‘Go down.’ ‘I’m not saying it like that, man.’ (We all know he constantly is.)

... how dare you interrupt our fake relationship handcuff fight, random militia dude!

... Hardison just letting his wrist/arm go limp so Eliot can punch the guy. SO IN SYNC

... smugness that’s being answered with... two boots in the face.

... the conversation as the train passes. Hardison has caught on to the bomb making (not his usual field of expertise) and alerting Eliot. Eliot pretending he doesn’t understand. Because his first priority is to get Hardison to safety. Hardison insisting. Eliot giving in and explaining. Hardison AND Eliot making that decision. - That scene is SO great because there is so much going on there. We get a lot of exposition on the bomb. We get a train in the background, reminding us visually how close they are to safety. We get Hardison’s nobleness and Eliot’s priorities. We get how they communicate and understand each other. Aaaah, I love it so much.

... Parker and Nate being overheard. Now, you could call that a bit of lazy storytelling, but I don’t mind it here. They are worried about the boys, that excuses it. And Sophie, as always, realizes straight away the change in Whitman and makes an escape.

...I mean, I do love your MacGyver approach in the woods, guys, and a bit of woodworking is good for the soul and Eliot doesn’t like guns, but... you maybe could’ve taken the semi-automatic from the smug dude?

... Parker’s elevator skills

... Nate’s firealarm solution. So simple.

... ‘Oh, I have fear, and doubts, and very serious regrets. I should be fine.’

... Eliot randomly hanging from a tree

... ‘Science. It works.’

... seriously, it’s bugging me every time I watch this episode - that bank looks SO similar to the one they have been taken hostage in before...

... Nate’s gravelly five star general voice over the radio

... Parker’s crazy driving

... a conveniently identical briefcase in the boot :)

... ‘Eliot, I stole you a train. Have a little faith.’ (I love it when Nate is that kind of off-handedly arrogant. Seems very natural for him.)

...Sophie’s accent and the chewing gum

... Parker copying Sophie

... Parker nudging Sophie’s shoulder (just like Nate did with Eliot and Eliot with Hardison a minute earlier - and of course Sophie is the one to get a bruise)

... two sided-gloat

... Parker’s hat

... Hardison having gone to town on his fishing shopping spree. There are two seats, an umbrella, a cooler, a whole crate full of tack, two fizzy drinks for him and beer for Eliot, a thermos bottle, and, of course, Hardison’s Wellies that have never (nor will ever) see any mud

.. Eliot’s dejected ‘It’s not the same’ and Kane’s almost-breaking-into-a-grin. I feel you, man.

Oh, I love this show.

#leverage #leverage marathon #the gone fishin' job #nate ford #eliot spencer #alec hardison #sophie deveraux #things I love about

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jq37 · 5 years

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The Gary Gygax Job (An Adventure in Two Parts)

I was asked to post my “Hardison forces the gang to play D&D fic” that I wrote for @alexromero so here it is. It’s actually just the set up and not the game itself because that would have been a whole undertaking but, anyway, I hope the anon who asked for it enjoys it.

Part One

BASE. Gyutou. Paris.

It's Parker's idea, surprisingly. Well, surprisingly to someone who knows Parker well but not very well. The team is breaking up, at least partially (though the kids have a secret pool running about how much wedded bliss Nate and Sophie can stand before they're ready to get back into the fight). She's not ready to lose two people from her very small inner circle.

"We should do, like, a girls' night," she suggests out of the blue, over the comms while crawling through air ducts (she has some of her best ideas in air ducts, which makes sense, statistically speaking).

"Girls' night?" says Hardison from the van. "You and what girls?"

"Me and Sophie. But also you and Nate and Eliot."

"Tha-that's just hanging out Parker. It's not a girl's night if there are guys."

She shrugs (tries to shrug. There's not enough space in the air duct). "Whatever. We should do it. I miss Sophie. And Nate," she adds, belatedly.

"Me too."

"Me three," Eliot finally cuts in. He's been providing an ambient background of grunts and things smashing into other things for the past minute or so, but that kind of thing is surprisingly easy to ignore after a while. "But can we do this AFTER THE CON???" They grudgingly decide to put a pin in it while Eliot runs his hand through his hair in annoyance. Honestly.

When they call the "Call us if you need us but please try very hard not to need us," number, they get Sophie, which is good. She'll be easier to convince and if they convince her, they've got Nate too. Parker explains her idea and Sophie is very into it: Group activity, once a month, full team.

Sophie's in so they're in business. Hardison puts all of their names into a randomizer and Parker ends up with first pick.

"Greece!" she says, immediately.

"Excellent choice, Parker!" says Sophie, picturing the food and beaches and museums. And then she remembers who she's speaking to.

"Parker, what are we doing in Greece?"

They find out two weeks later and Hardison thinks that it's a good thing he loves Parker to death, because he's pretty sure she's going to get him killed.

BASE Jumping on Zakynhos Island.

"Oh, come on!" Hardison whines as he's tossed a parachute. Sophie is also not thrilled, but she seems to think that encouraging Parker's social skills is worth 5-ish seconds of sheer terror.

The jump order is Eliot, Sophie, Nate (who is choosing to be amused by this whole thing), Hardison, then Parker. Hardison and Parker are the last two on the cliff.

"Come on you big baby," she says. "You've jumped off of buildings before."

"Not for fun."

She touches his chest very deliberately. "Then don't do it for fun. Do it for me."

He shakes his head and steels his nerves. "Sophie's rubbing off on you and I don't like it."

He is so happy to land in one piece that he immediately drops to his back and makes sand angels. From above, he can hear Parker's adrenaline-high scream. He opens his eyes, sees her parachute explode out, and then closes his eyes again. Maybe if he pretends to be asleep, she won't make him go again.

Somehow, Eliot's pick is worse.

He says they're going for a cooking lesson which sounds safe enough. The lesson is at a tiny sushi place in Brooklyn and the chef is some Japanese buddy of his. They're not allowed to know how they know each other specifically (Eliot says he's a "work friend") and they're not allowed to know his name, so they just call him Chef.

Everyone's having a good time and whatever work Chef did with Eliot before, cooking is obviously his calling.

And then…well, Hardison's not sure. It happens really quickly. The door bursts open and a man in dark clothes bursts in. There's a flash of silver from Chef's side of the room and the man drops. Hardison doesn't even have time to jump.

Chef isn't holding his knife anymore, Hardison notices. He looks across the room. It's implanted in the intruder's chest. A gun falls out of his hand and Nate kicks it away.

"What just happened?" says Hardison, trying to keep his voice level.

"It's a Gyutou," says Eliot. "Sharpest knife in the game."

"I'm not asking ab--why would you think I was asking about the knife?"

"Because the guy's Yakuza. Obviously."

"Wait, Yakuza? Like, Yakuza-Yakuza?"

"No, one of the many other Yakuzas out there. Yes, that Yakuza!" In the time it's taken them to have this conversation, Chef has dragged their attacker's limp body into a supply closet, found a clean knife, and gone back to chopping ginger.

Hardison has so many comments that he doesn't know where to start. He just throws up his hands and goes to stand in the corner for a minute. When he remembers that the corner he's in very recently had a dead body in it, he picks a new corner.

Sophie takes everyone for a weekend in Paris because of course she does.

Paris is great. No one tries to kill anyone in Paris. There's no jumping off of anything in Paris.

But…

But it's a little like being on a three-day date with your parents sometimes. And Hardison has been Team Nate and Sophie since day one basically. That doesn't mean he wants to know every museum in Paris they've done it in. Not that he's asking, for the record. But they'll walk in and give each other this kind of smug smirk and he can just tell. It's disgusting.

So, when Hardison's turn rolls around, he feels exactly zero guilt for choice.

"Dungeons and Dragons?" Eliot says with the kind of scorn he reserves for especially bad bad guys and Hardison.

"Oh, I don't wanna hear that tone from you, alright? I don't wanna hear it from any of y'all. Little miss adrenaline junkie over there," Parker blows him a kiss, "And your crazy Samurai friends," Eliot rolls his eyes, "And y'all two making googly eyes at each other for three solid days."

Nate takes a second from doing just that to say, "You're exaggerating."

"He's really not," says Parker.

"BASE. Gyutou. Paris," Hardison rattles off again. "I did your thing now you're doing mine." He pulls a d20 out of his pocket and holds it between two fingers with a satisfied smirk. "Age of the geek, baby."

Part Two

Nate claims character creation is too complicated for him to understand which is a blatant lie because Hardison has seen him rig an election and manipulate the stock market on the fly and give a guy a nosebleed with his mind like he was freaking Professor X.

"This isn't my thing, Hardison," he says. "Just make a character for me. I don't care about the details. Do whatever you want."

Do whatever you want.

Famous last words.

Hardison makes him a dwarf barbarian character with an intelligence score so low he'll have trouble scratching himself.

Nate texts him a one-word response: No.

Well if you don't like my painstakingly created character you can make your own, Hardison texts back.

Just fix it.

Oh, he'll fix it alright. But first, he has to deal with Eliot.

He tries a different tactic with Eliot.

"Alright," he says when Eliot reluctantly drops in the chair across from him, looking like he's just been plunked into the heart of Gitmo. "You don't have to make a character. I premade one for you. Check it."

He fans out the materials he's printed out that show the character he created--premade for Eliot's approval. He's a human fighter, with a greatsword as his main weapon. He's proficient in several languages, weapons, tools--Hardison had to fudge the rules a little to give him so many skills at level one but it's nothing more ridiculous than what he can do in real life. He even had a sketch commissioned--he knows from experience that Eliot is a sucker for cool artwork of himself.

Eliot's eyes scan the sheets of paper and Hardison thinks he detects that trademark grudging approval he was going for.

"Did I do good or did I do good?"

Eliot looks up, scowls, and then something clearly goes off in his head because a slight smirk replaces the scowl. Hardison doesn't trust it but he doesn't react either.

"OK," says Eliot. "I'll play your character. One change though."

Just one? He can handle that. The way Eliot was looking at him he thought something much worse was coming.

"Sure, what?"

"I want to play as a pacifist."

Hardison's brain BSOD's and reboots in time to see Eliot's slight smirk go full Cheshire cat.

"What?"

"I'll play your guy in your little nerd game, but I want to play as a pacifist."

"You're telling me, you want to play this character, this fighter--a guy whose entire skillset is based on fighting--as a pacifist?"

"Yup."

Hardison scatters the papers in front of him as he thinks of all the high-level encounters he'd planned, counting on Eliot's super buffed fighter to keep the party alive, just like in real life.

"I don't get no respect around here."

While he's reworking the campaign, he gets a text from Nate re: the second premade character Hardison sent him--a sexy tiefling ranger. A sexy, female, tiefling ranger.

You're aware that I know where you live, right?, the text reads.

Not my fault you won't be specific. I'm working on pure guesswork here, Hardison texts back.

Fix it, Nates texts again. Then he adds, Don't forget I know how to hypnotize people.

Hardison snorts: And I can hack your bank account and spend everything on My Little Ponies. Make your damn character Nate.

Sophie is confused.

"If there's no goal, how do you play?" she asks him over Skype.

He never got a chance to really explain how the game worked and clearly, she hasn't looked it up in the meantime.

"There's a goal. There's just not one singular goal. You usually get some kind of quest and then you choose whatever you want to do. It's an RPG, just without the computer." When she squints in confusion he explains. "Role playing game."

Recognition goes off in her eyes and he realizes how he needs to sell the game to Sophie. "You get to pick a character. Well not pick. Make a character. You come up with a backstory and their abilities--"

"It's like coming up with a cover."

"Yes, exactly. It's exactly like that but you can also do magic if you want."

After she makes the connection, she's sold. The next day, she comes over with her backstory prepared. Or, rather, her backstories.

"I made more than one character because I couldn't decide on playing as a bard or a rogue. They're both very me. Oh," she gasps in much more excitement than Hardison thought he would ever see Sophie Devereaux show about Dungeons and Dragons. "Is there any way I could play as a bard and a rogue?"

"I got you," he says pulling out an info sheet he'd printed in anticipation of her request. "Bam. Sophie special."

"Songfilch?" she reads from the top of the sheet.

"It's not an official class," Hardison explains. "It's kind of a homebrew hybrid I whipped up. Half thief, half performer."

Sophie lights up. "You made me a grifter!"

"I told you this was a fun game."

"One more question," she says. "Is it possible I could play as a vampire? They get the thrall ability which would be useful I think."

"Uh, well you could," said Hardison. "But vampires also can't enter homes without being invited. The whole point of being a rogue is sneaking into houses without being invited to steal stuff. You can't expect them to just open the door and let you…" His words trail off as he remembers who he's speaking to. She bats her eyelashes at him, teasingly. "Yeah. Vampire songfilch. Go for it."

Nate texts him again later in the afternoon. He thinks it's gonna be in response to the munchkin baker character he sent (not a real race or class but Nate's not gonna check) but, miracles of miracles, it's a real character. Not a full character, mind you. It's just sketchy notes for a character: A cleric turned paladin. Servant of the god Helm--god of protectors.

There's not a lot there but there's enough for Hardison to know he actually put effort into it. He thinks Sophie must have gotten to him. Either way, it's enough for him to fill in the blanks and make Nate a character he will actually enjoy playing once he gives it a chance.

An enjoyable character who kicks ass since Eliot is still refusing to.

Parker is actually pretty game about the whole thing.

Which she better be, Hardison thinks. You can't force a guy to jump off of a cliff and then get mad about a little geekery.

She picks her class easily (rogue, natch) but she has trouble picking a race.

"What are you playing as?" she asks.

"I'm not playing," he explains. "I'm running the game. I'm like the narrator."

"Oh." She frowns. "That's lame. It would be more fun if you played."

"Someone has to run the game, Parker."

"I guess," she says. "It's still lame though."

He helps her finish her rogue (halfling rogue they decide), but he's only half paying attention. By the time they're done, he realizes there's someone he needs to call.

Hardison arrives at the game sesh with a guest. "Hey guys," he announces. "This is Chris, my foster brother. He's exactly like me, minus the criminal activity and rugged good looks."

He's also white, but no one mentions that.

"What's he doing here?" Eliot asks.

"Hardison asked me to DM for y'all," Chris answers.

Parker realizes what this means first. "You're playing?"

He nods. "Elven Wizard. I'm gonna hack reality, baby."

Chris rolls his eyes. "You can't just use the word hack whenever you want to. It has a very specific meaning."

"I can if I hack the language," Hardison shoots back as he sits down.

Chris grits his teeth like he's had this argument many times before (which he clearly has). "Let's do this before I kill you. Not in the game, in real life. Are you guys ready?"

Hardison looks around the table: Fighter, Songfilch, Paladin, Rogue, Wizard.

It's a weird group.

He grins.

"Ready. Let's do this."

#leverage #alec hardison #nate ford #sophie devereaux #eliot spencer #parker #does parker have a last name?#is parker her last name?#idk bro and I need to get to work

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afraschatz · 6 years

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Leverage - The Rashomon Job

‘The Rashomon Job’ is clearly one of the cleverest episodes ever, is pretty much sheer storytelling porn all over. And I’m not even trying to go for a full analysis why it is so awesome and instead just stick to a random list of stuff I love aboutit. I love (that)...

... how the ep starts with the bar being ready for closing but the team minus Nate are mid-argument and completely oblivious to the fact that everyone else has left. This is so their living room, and as much as I like the notion that they all have other friends (one of my favourite thing about The Girls Night Out / The Boys Night Out actually), there is nothing more lovely than proof of them hanging out, even when they are not on a job

... Parker having fetched Dad err Nate to resolve the argument

... Sophie’s “shush, you did fine in prison the first time”. Like, Moreau who? We’re having a SERIOUS argument here

...”I STOLE IT” and ALL their expressions, but particularly Parker’s facepalm (haha, you know you’re in trouble when Parker is the sane one in a fight) and Hardison’s MASSIVE eyeroll. And Nate’s utter GLEE. He is so evil. And I think one of my favourite things about this ep is that his smirk does not go away for the ENTIRE episode. He is just so amused for the entire thing <3

... Eliot and Hardison backing each other up re: Sophie is lying

... Sophie being the first one to tell her story. Which makes so much sense because everything we see - the museum itself, the guests in the background, the music, the food, everything, is what Sophie TELLS us. Even though we don’t hear her say all that of course, the fact that we as viewers see all that is due to Sophie setting the scene with so much attention to detail. It’s a setting that the others’ stories will continue using / warping to their convenience, but the ground work is all Sophie’s

... Sophie’s choice of dress for this. I love you, Sophie, but what an actual catastrophe is that pink thing? Whyyyyy? I mean, okay aside from the fact that everyone else is NOT wearing pink and clearly she is the center of attention (I mean, she takes the time to tell us that she got fricking APPLAUSE on arrival)

... Nate appearing out of nowhere behind her, completely not dressed for the occasion and the only one not smitten with her. His questions of course clue you in that this is Nate-in-the-pub asking these questions, but I am so in love with his sudden appearance, his casual clothes, his lack of admiration being the visible info that he is NOT part of the story. And don’t get me started on the mirror / Nate behind glass thing, and Coswell standing in exactly the same spot that Nate just vacated

... and there is the second thing about Sophie’s way of telling the story. She is so proud of her accomplishment and the scene she set and is setting again for Nate’s sake that she includes details such as other people’s jewellery etc, but she completely fails to focus even just once on other people. She dismisses the waitress/Parker without looking at her, same as she didn’t even glance at Coswell. Such a great bit of Sophie characterisation right there

... Bioko slapping the offended guest’s butt. Because of course Bioko is Hardison and while we can’t trust his account of events later on either (=being adored by every female in the room), THIS kind of behaviour doesn’t fit him either. So again, it’s down to Sophie’s kind of faulty storytelling here; she needs an oaf for a fall guy/distraction and Bioko kinda fits the bill and she leaves it at that

... Sophie hurrying up the storytelling when Bioko is coking. That contrasted to the amount of time she spent relaying to us how utterly enchanting Abernathy found her? Again, so neat, because Sophie isn’t really interested in any kind of drama she isn’t the centre of, and thus the entire man-dying-situation is merely a footnote to her - hastily told, strangely paced and comically overacted by Abernathy

...Sophie’s completely different body language when she plays the doctor. Her accents of course are legend, but man, the way she changes her walk and posture and gestures as well? So flawless

... Sophie perceiving Coswell’s attention to her as a threat and thus completely missing that he is flirting with her. That in combination of her thinking that Abernathy is flirting while Eliot definitely has other motives (as well)? Wow, Sophie, something really is going wrong with your pulling game that night :)

... Sophie even adding sound effects to the completely over-the-top (and imaginary) shotgun that Coswell in her story carries down the stairs

...”The dagger wasn’t in the shipment” - and Eliot’s GLEE. Seriously, he and Nate in this ep? Such dicks. Such brothers. <3

...the setting for Eliot’s part of the story. Where Sophie gave us an establishing shot of the museum, then the museum in all its glory and filled with guests, what does Eliot give us? Some concrete walls, cardbord boxes and neon light. What is far more important is a detailled account on the fight with two guys we don’t even know and that don’t even matter. Because fighting is important, damnit

... “If I’m not honest with you, you can’t improve”

...after Eliot re-used Sophie’s establishing shot of the museum, once again, he goes for the dark-corners-close up. In that car, with that poor guy. And all Eliot has to do to be seriously scary is to just not smile. He doesn’t even need to raise his voice

... Eliot taking the piss out of Sophie’s accent. We know he can do Sophie’s normal accent properly - he just DID it when he took over the story and told the team that he was Abernathy - so the sole reason why he uses that accent is because he wants to mess with Sophie <3

...the size of the knife. Thank you, Eliot, for clearing that up. That makes so much more sense than Sophie’s (or Hardison’s or Parker’s OR Nate’s version)

...Bioko and Eliot in the basement. Eliot being annoyed by Hardison without even knowing it IS Hardison, hahaha <3

... locked-up comedy frame. Always hilarious

...again, a very detailled and close up account of the fight

... Coswell carrying the box for the roses, not a gun, in Eliot’s story. Because different from the grifter, the hitter of course can tell a box from a shotgun

... “Ipcress. Weird eyes. Funny hair.” - Hahaha, so charming, Eliot

...Eliot throwing away that vase so it shatters. Given that the entire box of stuff belongs to Sophie? Just another way to mess with her

...Eliot’s story ending before he opens the box. Different to Sophie whose first version of the tale showed us her holding the dagger (“That was the plan”), Eliot is honest, he just leaves out the important bit. Too bad that Hardison knows what happened next

... “What, is stealing mail a crime?” Parker <3

...”Well, whatever it takes to get the job done, babe.” - WHY, Leverage? WHY is Eliot not calling Sophie “babe” all the time. I want that now. Give it to me.

...I also want Hardison to call Eliot “babe”. Why didn’t I get that either? Unfair

...such a neat way to wrap up Eliot’s side story of Gutman blackmailing him. So perfectly framed - because while watching it for the first time, you’re so hooked on the dagger theft that you don’t notice Nate’s expression and the suspiciously convenient way that got resolved

... Hardison’s villainous cackle and his grin <3

...Parker and the shell-game. Again SO NEAT. Because this is what’s being done to us as viewers here and we SHOULD know how the shell-game works, that Hardison doesn’t end up with the dagger either, that Parker as the one operating the shell game actually has the prize (well, is closest to it)

... Hardison’s accent. Accent porn

... Hardison’s repeated slip-ups (“My nana’s house, err my house”) and his competely over-the-top recollection of his flirting success in that ultra-short montage

... his version of the Eliot/Sophie dance and his grin of approval. Why exactly do you take a photo of that, Hardison??

...Hardison making Sophie sound like one of the dwarves from LotR. Because clearly he COULD do a better job at a British accent. But why should he? Especially since the boyfriend err I mean the partner in crime err Eliot so obviously approves

...Eliot, the maniac, tackling him to the ground, trying to open his throat with a figgin machete (what is a knife that size doing at that party?)

... “Let’s get you somewhere quiet now, where there is no witnesses” continued by Eliot being CREPPY in the basement and Hardison’s ultra-fake smile hahaha

...”I still beat you” - because for Hardison this is what this is about. Beating Eliot. Who are these other people even :)?

... the shell game reveal and Nate is SO PROUD of Parker <333

...Parker’s story is SO not about any of that mood-setting shit or any of the details like... other people in the room. She even interrupts Nate when he asks her for her way in. Because this is about where to stash her gear, and how to get to the prize. Nothing else matters.

...Hardison stealing food and being SO adorably Hardison, Sophie being weird in her Britishness, Coswell being annyoingly “there” in Parker’s story

... SOUND EFFECTS FOR THE HUGE KNIFE. Because Parker’s life clearly is anime.

...the hasty and jagged storytelling. Yes, that is also because we’re hearing the story for the forth time, but it definitely shows how Parker tells a story

... Parker skipping <3

...Parker being honest about losing the dagger

...Nate’s portrayal of the others in his version. Sophie being just that little bit arrogant, Parker being cold, Eliot and his swagger, and all that in contrast to the utter adorableness of Coswell (and Nate being a DICK to him) : All that is very realistic. And then he adds a dash of humour to it: the size of the knife that Parker hands Eliot and Eliot’s WTF reaction to it for instance

... the actor playing Coswell is just awesome. So awesome. I feel for him here, poor guy.

... Nate not being IN his version of the story except for the beginning and the end. Instead his job is to put the pieces together and get the most imporant (and realistic) bits from the others in a straight line

... “Pretty eyes, little ponytail in her hair” - Aw, Nate <3 (And Eliot’s AMUSEMENT in that version of the story. Really, Nate, in your world Eliot is a romantic softie? I am not judging. Actually, I approve. Of that and of “You need a tissue” compassionate Hardison as well)

... Nate being a cold-hearted insurance guy asshole. I mean I don’t love him like that because he is horrible, but I love the contrast of that Nate to Team-Leverage-Nate and what that says about the influence of these four people on him <3

... while Sophie, Parker, and Hardison run out, Eliot hangs back. That moment of silent communication between him and Nate? I LOVE their relationship

SUCH a perfect episode <3

#leverage #nate ford #sophie deveraux #alec hardison #eliot spencer #parker #things I love about #the rashomon job #episode reaction

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