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#hardison finding the perfect place for parker and eliot like 'how do i make it impossible for them to leave?'
greensaplinggrace · 2 years
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i still can’t believe hardison and parker babytrapped eliot with a restaurant lmfao
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asirensrage · 1 year
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Okay, first of all, @bluejay-in-flight, I am so sorry this took so long. I don't know why I struggled so hard on this but I like how it turned out...even if it's a bit short. I would guess this takes place between Leverage and Leverage: Redemption (which I haven't seen yet)
I hope you enjoy it! Thanks again for participating!
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She’s not what’s considered normal. 
Parker knows this. It’s never bothered her. She lives the way she wants and thrives off the challenges that she can find. She hasn’t related to others in years…until now. Until them. 
It’s not just Hardison who’s so incredibly patient. It’s all of them. They make her feel okay, that she’s normal, that there’s nothing wrong with her and she’s perfect the way she is. Okay, that might just be Hardison’s opinion, but it’s true. They make her want more. They make her want to be more. 
“You in there?” Hardison taps the table in front of her, smiling as he waits. He’s not touching her. He waits until she lets him know and Hardison always seems to be able to read her before he moves closer. “What’s on your mind?” 
“Pretzels,” she says after a moment, smiling softly. She remembers that first conversation, the way she couldn’t even bring herself to say the word but how he knew exactly what she was talking about. 
“Pretzels?” he asks. He shifts closer, pressing his leg against hers. 
Parker turns to look at him. “You know what I’m thinking? Burj Khalifa.”
“Burj Khal–oh no! Come on, this weekend's comic con, right? It’s my weekend.” 
She grins. Parker likes poking at him. She likes poking at all of them. Especially Eliot. It’s fun watching their reactions. Even when they act upset, she knows how they feel about her and how they feel about each other. It’s how they show they care. 
“I know,” she gives, focusing back on the conversation. “I’ve already mapped it out, including the paths the actors take.”
“Why you gotta do that?”
“Hmm?” she raises her eyebrows, blinking at him. “Do what?” 
He sighs but smiles as he leans in. “Drive me crazy.” He pauses, just before kissing her, giving her another chance to retreat. She’s not always willing and it’s taken her a long time to even admit what they are, but it’s the little things like this that make her love him even more. Not that she’ll tell him. Not yet. 
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everything taglist: @raith-way @chrissymunson @veetlegeuse  @chickensarentcheap @residentdormouse 
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soundsfaebutokay · 3 years
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The new age of the geek
I just wanted to collect all the canon information we have about Hardison's humanitarian work in one place.
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The Too Many Rembrandts Job
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SOPHIE: Why are you staying at home?
HARDISON: You know, just working with refugee groups, coordinating food drives to resettlement camps, getting medicine to aid workers. George Clooney's satellite that tracks all the war crimes? It's all software. Somebody's gotta run it.
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The Panamanian Monkey Job
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ELIOT: What was that?
HARDISON: It's nothing. Just some NGOs freaking out about supplies in Venezuela. I got some Russians trying to crack a pro-democracy group I'm babysitting.
~
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HARDISON: (on the phone) Okay. I'll put some Ukrainian white hats on it. No, don't worry, don't worry. We'll get your people to the border, all right? (hangs up)
ELIOT: I'm just saying, dude.
HARDISON: Uh, yeah, yeah. Don't get distracted by the side gig.
ELIOT: Is it a side gig? In our line of work, you're one of the best. But in that line of work...you're the only one, man. It's okay to grow up, realize you're not the person you used to be.
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So far, he's working with NGOs in Venezuela, a pro-democracy group in Russia, white hat hackers in Ukraine, and who knows what else. Then of course there's Sri Lanka.
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PARKER: Where are you going?
HARDISON: Sri Lanka. Currency is under attack. If I don't do something, it could trigger a total economic collapse.
PARKER: (tearing up) Oh, great, so if I want you here with me, I'm pro-famine. Cool. (steeling her resolve) You should go. I...I...want you to do this.
HARDISON: You know I wouldn't do this without your blessing, right, babe?
~
The Paranormal Hacktivity Job
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SOPHIE: We can't have guests. We can't have innocent civilians privy to any crimes we might be committing.
PARKER: But we're not committing any crimes since Harry and Eliot are in Brunei helping Hardison with that extradition.
~
Did I miss anything? This is a lot. We know Hardison's a genius, that he can move mountains from behind a computer, but this requires so much more than talent and skill. He's working with groups all over the world, people who are in various states of crisis, who are witnesses and victims of horrifying atrocities. It takes a special kind of leadership, and a heart as big as the world, to do this lifesaving work.
This is absolutely the perfect arc for Hardison, given his desire for a leadership role that he expressed in the original series. In The Scheherazade Job, Nate told him that he wasn't cold enough to push the necessary buttons that a mastermind needs to push. Parker, Nate's chosen successor, is not the same kind of mastermind that Nate was, but she does have that solid core of pragmatism essential for the job. Hardison is different, and I'm so glad that instead of changing himself, he found a place where he can make a difference using his particular strengths. Hardison's warmth and empathy are essential to his leadership style, and incredibly precious lifelines for the communities he's helping. He's still fighting against the same forces of injustice and oppression, but he's doing it his way.
We all miss Hardison, and we want more of him always, but this is so beautifully done it should be a masterclass for other shows. This is how you respect a character and the viewers who love him. Like his Leverage family, I find it bearable to share Hardison only because I know that he is out there doing good work that no one else can do. But he better come home once in a while or else I'm gonna cry.
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be-gay-do-heists · 3 years
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hello yall :) the holy month of elul started last night, which is typically a time for contemplation, so since it is impossible for me to stop thinking about leverage, i decided to write an essay. hope anyone interested in reading it enjoys, and that it makes at least a little sense!! spoilers for leverage redemption
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Leverage, Judaism, and “Doing the Work”: An Essay for Elul
When it comes to Elul and the approaching High Holidays, Leverage might seem like an odd topic to meditate on.
The TNT crime drama that ran from 2008-2012, and which released a new season this summer following its renewal, centers on a group of found-family thieves who help the victims of corporations and oligarchs (sometimes based on real-world examples), using wacky heists and cons to bring down the rich and powerful. In one episode, the team’s clients want to reclaim their father’s prized Glimt piece that had been stolen in the Shoah and never returned, but aside from this and the throwaway lines and jokes standard for most mainstream television, there’s not a ton textually Jewish about Leverage. However, despite this, I have found that the show has strong resonance among Jewish fans, and lots of potential for analysis along Jewish themes. This tends to focus on one character in particular: the group’s brilliant, pop culture-savvy, and personable hacker, Alec Hardison, played by the phenomenally talented Aldis Hodge.
I can’t remember when or where I first encountered a reading of Hardison as Jewish, but not only is this a somewhat popular interpretation, it doesn’t feel like that much of a leap. In the show itself, Hardison has a couple of the aforementioned throwaway lines that potentially point to him being Jewish, even if they’re only in service of that moment’s grift. It’s hard to point to what exactly makes reading Hardison as Jewish feel so natural. My first guess is the easy way Hardison fits into the traditional paradigms of Jewish masculinity explored by scholars such as Daniel Boyarin (2). Most of the time, the hacker is not portrayed as athletic or physical; he is usually the foil to the team’s more physically-adept characters like fighter Eliot, or thief Parker. Indeed, Hardison’s strength is mental, expressed not only through his computer wizardry but his passions for science, technology, music, popular media, as well as his studious research into whatever scenario the group might come up against. In spite of his self-identification as a “geek,” Hardison is nevertheless confident, emotionally sensitive, and secure in his masculinity. I would argue he is representative of the traditional Jewish masculine ideal, originating in the rabbinic period and solidified in medieval Europe, of the dedicated and thoughtful scholar (3). Another reason for popular readings of Hardison as Jewish may be the desire for more representation of Jews of color. Although mainstream American Jewish institutions are beginning to recognize the incredible diversity of Jews in the United States (4), and popular figures such as Tiffany Haddish are amplifying the experiences of non-white Jews, it is still difficult to find Jews of color represented in popular media. For those eager to see this kind of representation, then, interpreting Hardison, a black man who places himself tangential to Jewishness, in this way is a tempting avenue.
Regardless, all of the above remains fan interpretation, and there was little in the text of the show that seriously tied Judaism into Hardison’s identity. At least, until we got this beautiful speech from Hardison in the very first episode of the renewed show, directed at the character of Harry Wilson, a former corporate lawyer looking to atone for the injustice he was partner to throughout his career:
“In the Jewish faith, repentance, redemption, is a process. You can’t make restitution and then promise to change. You have to change first. Do the work, Harry. Then and only then can you begin to ask for forgiveness. [...] So this… this isn’t the win. It’s the start, Harry.”
I was floored to hear this speech, and thrilled that it explained the reboot’s title, Leverage: Redemption. Although not mentioned by its Hebrew name, teshuvah forms the whole basis for the new season. Teshuvah is the concept of repentance or atonement for the sins one has committed. Stemming from the root shuv/shuva, it carries the literal sense of “return.” In a spiritual context, this usually means a return to G-d, of finding one’s way back to holiness and by extension good favor in the eyes of the Divine. But equally important is restoring one’s relationships with fellow humans by repairing any hurt one has caused over the past year. This is of special significance in the holy month of Elul, leading into Rosh haShanah, the Yamim Noraim, and Yom Kippur, but one can undertake a journey of redemption at any point in time. That teshuvah is a journey is a vital message for Harry to hear; one job, one reparative act isn’t enough to overturn years of being on the wrong side of justice, to his chagrin. As the season progresses, we get to watch his path of teshuvah unfold, with all its frustrations and consequences. Harry grows into his role as a fixer, not only someone who can find jobs and marks for the team, but fixes what he has broken or harmed.
So why was Hardison the one to make this speech?
I do maintain that it does provide a stronger textual basis for reading Hardison as Jewish by implication (though the brief on-screen explanation for why he knows about teshuvah, that his foster-parent Nana raised a multi-faith household, is important in its own merit, and meshes well with his character traits of empathy and understanding for diverse experiences). However, beyond this, Hardison isn’t exactly an archetypical model for teshuvah. In the original series, he was the youngest character of the main ensemble, a hacking prodigy in the start of his adult career, with few mistakes or slights against others under his belt. In one flashback we see that his possibly first crime was stealing from the Bank of Iceland to pay off his Nana’s medical bills, and that his other early hacking exploits were in the service of fulfilling personal desires, with only those who could afford to pay the bill as targets. Indeed, in the middle of his speech, Hardison points to Eliot, the character with the most violent and gritty past who views his work with the Leverage team as atonement, for a prime example of ongoing teshuvah. So while no one is perfect and everyone has a reason for doing teshuvah, this question of why Hardison is the one to give this series-defining speech inspired me to look at his character choices and behavior, and see how they resonate with a different but interrelated Jewish principle, that of tikkun olam. 
Tikkun olam is literally translated as “repairing the world,” and can take many different forms, such as protecting the rights of vulnerable people in society, or giving tzedakah (5). In modern times, tikkun olam is often the rallying cry for Jewish social activists, particularly among environmentalists for whom literally restoring the health of the natural world is the key goal. Teshuvah and tikkun olam are intertwined (the former is the latter performed at an interpersonal level) and both hold a sense of fixing or repairing, but tikkun olam really revolves around a person feeling called to address an injustice that they may have not had a personal hand in creating. Hardison’s sense of a universal scale of justice which he has the power to help right on a global level and his newfound drive to do humanitarian work, picked up sometime after the end of the original series, make tikkun olam a central value for his character. This is why we get this nice bit of dialogue from Eliot to Hardison in the second episode of the reboot, when the latter’s outside efforts to organize international aid start distracting him from his work with the team: “Is [humanitarian work] a side gig? In our line of work, you’re one of the best. But in that line of work… you’re the only one, man.” The character who most exemplifies teshuvah reminds Hardison of his amazing ability to effect change for the better on a huge stage, to do some effective tikkun olam. It’s this acknowledgement of where Hardison can do the most good that prompts the character’s absence for the remainder of the episodes released thus far, turning his side gig into his main gig.
With this in mind, it will be interesting to see where Hardison’s arc for this season goes. Separated from the rest of the team, the hacker still has remarkable power to change the world, because it is, after all, the “age of the geek.” However, he is still one person. For all that both teshuvah and tikkun olam are individual responsibilities and require individual decision-making and effort, the latter especially relies on collective work to actually make things happen. Hardison leaving is better than trying to do humanitarian work and Leverage at the same time, but there’s only so long he can be the “only one” in the field before burning out. I’m reminded of one of the most famous (for good reason) maxims in Judaism:
It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to neglect it. (6)
Elul is traditionally a time for introspection and heeding the calls to repentance. After a year where it’s never been easier to feel powerless and drained by everything going on around us, I think it’s worth taking the time to examine what kind of work we are capable of in our own lives. Maybe it’s fixing the very recent and tangible hurts we’ve left behind, like Harry. Maybe it’s the little changes for the better that we make every day, motivated by our sense of responsibility, like Eliot. And maybe it’s the grueling challenge of major social change, like Hardison. And if any of this work gets too much, who can we fall back on for support and healing? Determining what needs repair, working on our own scale and where our efforts are most helpful, and thereby contributing to justice in realistic ways means that we can start the new year fresh, having contemplated in holiday fashion how we can be better agents in the world.
Shana tovah u’metukah and ketivah tovah to all (7), and may the work we do in the coming year be for good!
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(1) Disclaimer: everybody’s fandom experiences are different, and this is just what I’ve picked up on in my short time watching and enjoying this show with others.
(2) See, for example, the introduction and first chapter of Boyarin’s book Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man (I especially recommend at least this portion if you are interested in queer theory and Judaic studies). There he explores the development of Jewish masculinity in direct opposition to Christian masculine standards.
(3) I might even go so far as to place Hardison well within the Jewish masculine ideal of Edelkayt, gentle and studious nobility (although I would hesitate to call him timid, another trait associated with Edelkayt). Boyarin explains that this scholarly, non-athletic model of man did not carry negative associations in the historical Jewish mindset, but was rather the height of attractiveness (Boyarin, 2, 51).
(4) Jews of color make up 20% of American Jews, according to statistics from Be’chol Lashon, and this number is projected to increase as American demographics continue to change: https://globaljews.org/about/mission/. 
(5) Tzedakah is commonly known as righteous charity. According to traditional authority Maimonides, it should be given anonymously and without embarrassment to the person in need, generous, and designed to help the recipient become self-sufficient.
(6) Rabbi Tarfon, Pirkei Avot, 2:16
(7) “A good and sweet year” and “a good inscription [in the Book of Life]”
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gabolange · 3 years
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So, let’s talk about Leverage: Redemption. In which I am medium-whelmed at best.
Spoilers below the cut.
I finished the show a couple of days ago and I keep trying to figure out why I didn’t love it. This isn’t to say I didn’t like it, because I did, but it didn’t land for me the way it seems to have landed for a lot of people, and so here I am with, like, meta. Party like it’s 2008 and all that.
2008. I actually didn’t meet Leverage until 2010 despite friends telling me for ages I should watch. It one of those moments that became a forever memory for many reasons, but the most important is this: the show was perfect. Those first hours spent watching a rerun marathon on TNT on a hot-as-fuck July 4 in Albuquerque, New Mexico came with them the understanding that this show was truly special.
It was funny, it was topical, it was sexy, and it was so fucking smart. I fell in love right away with all of them, but especially with Sophie, and with Nate, and with their complicated, complex, adult history. And then over the course of catching up and keeping up, I fell even harder, with them and those themes, with watching Parker and Hardison grow into themselves, with watching Eliot deal every day with his demons. I loved the way the show balanced light and dark, how it could have Archie’s zappy cane in the same breath as Eliot giving Nate advice about what it would mean to kill. I loved that we all loved Maggie, even though ex-wives are known in television to be evil shrews. I loved Tara’s complexity, and Sterling’s wit, and how every episode was a chess game. And oh, how I loved Sophie’s journey, how she had to decide every day not how to live but who to be.
When I say it was perfect, I don’t mean it didn’t have its duds. Of course it did. But it did the thing it was trying to do better than anyone has ever done it, with intelligence and respect, and its finale is one of the three best series finales ever filmed.
This is all to say the bar for Leverage: Redemption was both sky high and very low. When I heard they weren’t bringing Nate back, my first thought was don’t you fucking dare break my heart. If Nate was drunk off his ass in a ditch somewhere, if he had broken Sophie’s heart--that would be the ultimate betrayal (hi, I still have feelings about The Doctor Blake Mysteries). And so the bar was: don’t break my heart, while also being something like the perfect show.
They didn’t break my heart. I said early the best thing would be to kill Nate after he and Sophie had good, long, happy years together. And they did, and it was the right place to start.
They gave me that, and I am grateful, but when I look at the rest, I guess I was underwhelmed. Or at least only whelmed. Medium-whelmed at best.
There were things I loved: Hardison and Parker’s relationship. Eliot’s careful watch over Sophie. Hardison growing up to become the most epic white hat hacker ever. The idea that getting back into the game would be the thing that would make Sophie happy. Hardison’s commentary on redemption. The idea of Leverage: International. Gina Bellman is still made of magic and heartbreak and perfection.
There were things I liked: I am fond of our Mister Wilson, even if I find Noah Wylie about as interesting as plain toast. There were some truly great Eliot beats. I don’t yet like Breanna, but I like the idea of Breanna. I liked the way Nate hovered over the entire thing, because Sophie brought him with her. I think the sets were great, and I was impressed at how much they were able to do in a pandemic. I found utterly baffling but nonetheless charming that we meet Harry in the middle of a failed heist in which the team judges his technique and then adopts him. I liked Fake Nate and everything they did with that. The show had many bright spots, and I don’t in any way want to diminish them.
But. It wasn’t smart. It wasn’t sexy. Except for Sophie’s grief and Hardison’s plans, it picked up the character beats where we left them ten years ago. Has Parker been mastermind for this entire time? I would have loved to see that. Have they learned how to do this well without Sophie and Nate? I would have loved to see that. Show me the history.
Show me the history. Breanna and Hardison and Parker all say this is the worst timeline, and we know it is because we have lived it. But in the universe of the show, it doesn’t really seem that bad -- the plots of the week were silly and so small. I remember finding Damien Moreau too big, once upon a time, but this all felt too easy, the stakes far too small for this to be a show where everything has gotten worse. Nate almost murdered two guys in cold blood, folks. The show was missing any of the darkness that made the original truly compelling, and so lost the balance we loved between that and finding joy. I don’t need it in every episode, but I need a hint that there’s something bigger and meaner out there other than throwaway dialog.
(And, when it tried to go dark, it swung and missed. The episode with the collapsed building was timely, but as someone with anxiety and PTSD, the way the crew played on this guy who had apparently tried to do better this time around...was kinda not okay, to be honest.)
I don’t have OT3 goggles, but I think if I did, I would find Hardison’s absence a little sad--he was the glue, and they needed to do more to bring Parker and Eliot together as friends / colleagues / long-term members of the same polycue / whatever. But even without OT3 goggles, I missed Hardison a whole lot. And I am SO happy for Aldis Hodge growing up to be a real movie star, but he brought so much presence and capability to every scene he was in, even when he was just a kid. Nobody else has his gravitas, or Timothy Hutton’s.
I do have Sophie goggles, and Sophie / Nate goggles. And they didn’t ruin the ship or anything, of course not. But I missed the frisson they brought, the way they made the show just that much more adult. And I am so very, very glad they got their happiness, but I am kinda sad that sexy got replaced with grief.
So yeah. I don’t know. I didn’t hate it at all. I am willing to give it a chance, to let it grow into something I love. But it isn’t, at least not yet.
(x-posted to dreamwidth)
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faorism · 3 years
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[also can be read/bookmarked on ao3 here. inspired by a conversation with @psqqa]
parker's nonbinary parker-genderedness comes from the heart, the texture of words and feelings in their body. how they bend and twist and slip in and out of being seen. being understood. they know every inch of their body: literally. they know to a fraction of a fraction of an inch the dimensions of their form in space, in movement, and at work. they always know how they will fall because they don't need a scale to feel their weight, give or take three pounds. for too long, every touch was like fire. it hurt like too tight handcuffs after a car chase; parker needed to learn just the way to always always get out of every trap and attempt to hold them back, and they did. its the way things can be said in ways that make their body flinch or laugh or pout in equal measure, and its how what people say about them enters their body and lingers, sometimes. eventually, they want that lingering when they find the right people. the right touch. they reach out and touch and poke and hug. and there's parts of their body that are just body parts and others that are useful and others that make parker's stomach twist if they think about it too long, so they just fucking don't. alice white is one of these parts, because alice white is a part of them but only as a familiar harness that doesnt need its straps readjusted when put back on: alice white is not parker because she is a woman and parker is not. parker is parker because parker can do the things they do, the only of their kind and the way they like it.
hardison's nonbinary manhood (lowercase, not uppercase Manhood and certainly not cis) comes from the head: the mind and a cerebral chase. its looking at the world and thinking, where is my place here. how do i engage and the clickclack a keyboard building the better world he knows can and will exist. even with nana being nana, being afk was a lot for alec as a queer black boy coming into his own; there was safety in the ways he could construct anonymous, countless, contradictory selves in the system of 1s and 0s. he doesn't have a hacker name because he never wanted to be known. until he does want to be known; by then, fuck it, know me. crime became his performance, the performativity of all that he is and can be online. he was the best and he was gonna prove it with his grand plans and grander successes. he researches and learns and asks questions and rehearses his powerpoints and designs. he's hacked into the mainframe, yall, and recreated it in the wonderful vision of him as himself in all the multiplicities he harbors within. age of the geek means a time for him to navigate the world in all his brilliant radiance; if he finds a barrier, he just comes up with new tech or Day Zero or a goddamn system for forging a musty ass journal. he was never expected to exist or survive or thrive, so he is a glitch in the system. and, baby, he is here to fuck shit up. [important credit: scholar legacy russell for the language around queer glitches from "glitch feminism."]
eliot's nonbinary he/him dykeness comes from the material, the tangible, the thing-yness of life. its in his apron and his knife and the beads in his braids, when he wears them. its in the small hoops he rarely wears but always has an option to. its a punching bag in every office and home grown vegetables and his toolbox and his "tool"box and its the fact that if he showed up with a ring of keys, no one would question it for a second. its the fucking flannels, man, and them big ugly ergonomic sneakers [that please yall invest in, from the mouth of a dyke i swear!!!! they are so fucking great and so gentle on your feet and knees] and its having leather wristbands but also specifically favorite leather wristbands. its a flat iron and its the ecofriendly hair products hardison got for him special. its the weight of his guilt and his regret at never taking the moment to ask himself, what is the cabinet of curiosities that is his life; god, there was once he had nothing but endless hotel rooms and nothing precious and nothing that can ever be tied to him. dykeness is a blanket of his compassion and the sigh of relief from those he's calmed down during a crisis. its in that fucking beauty of a challenger, still in perfect condition.
together, they ignite the world as one body, one hope, one vision threaded together in love, a united search for what else they must do, and beyond all else, fun.
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leverage-ot3 · 3 years
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bringing back the concept of leverage ot3 songs because my spotify playlist is inspiring me
I Wanna Get Better (Bleachers)
I didn’t know I was lonely 'til I saw your face || I wanna get better, better, better, better || I wanna get better || I didn't know I was broken 'til I wanted to change || I wanna get better, better, better, better || I wanna get better
they had their lives, their thievery and their crime. then they had one job to end all jobs, the perfect score, but that wasn’t enough. they wanted to do better, they wanted to get better
Us (James Bay)
So tell me how to be in this world || Tell me how to breathe in and feel no hurt || Tell me how 'cause I believe in something || I believe in us
Tell me when the light goes down || That even in the dark we can find a way out || Tell me now 'cause I believe in something || I believe in us || I believe in something || And I believe in us
not me having eliot feels today eliot doesn’t always feel the weight of his actions in his bones, but sometimes he does. sometimes his hands ache and he swears he sees blood coating them like he never left moreau in the first place and when he closes his eyes he sees all the faces of people he’s hurt, young and old alike
sometimes he can’t chase those thought away, not even when he locks himself in their home gym or sulks in the kitchen for hours on end. but then parker picks the lock and sits down next to him, hardison on his other side, not demanding attention or an explanation. just there, sitting by him at his worst and he can’t help but think about how unbelievably lucky he is that these two people love him and convince him that maybe, just maybe, he can be redeemed
Show Me What I’m Looking For (Carolina Liar)
Wait, I'm wrong || Should have done better than this || Please, I'll be strong || I'm finding it hard to resist || So show me what I'm looking for
Save me, I'm lost || Oh, lord, I've been waiting for you || I'll pay any cost || Save me from being confused || Show me what I'm looking for || Show me what I'm looking for, oh, lord
eliot was lost for a long time. wandering, stealing, hitting. going through the motions and getting paid for it. and then he meets these weird thieves and they almost get killed and then work together to get back at their employer and he can’t put his finger on it, but something feels right about working with them
and he can’t get that weird thief girl and snarky hacker out of his mind and as time goes on they get better, together. they change together and he uses them as a focal point for grounding himself
Hold Each Other (A Great Big World, Futuristic)
Something happens when I hold her || She keeps my heart from getting older || When the days get short and the nights get a little bit colder || We hold each other || We hold each other
Something happens when I hold him || He keeps my heart from getting broken || When the days get short and the nights get a little bit frozen || We hold each other || We hold each other
If I could build a perfect person honestly you would be it || And you know nobody knows you like I know you || I can't wait to come back home so I can hold you, yeah
eliot has parker and hardison. parker keeps him young and on his feet, always ready to catch her when she jumps from something tall. he has hardison to bicker with and gently make fun of, but his arms are warm and encompass him strong and firm and safe. and at the end of the day, they all have each other. they hold each other to feel warm and safe. to feel alright, to feel whole. they are all they will ever need when they are together.
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aethersea · 3 years
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May I request 41 - First Kiss and 94 - Hair Brushing/Braiding for the Leverage OT3, please? (Also extra bonus points if you give Eliot beads in his hair like in The Ice Man Job, because we didn't get NEARLY enough of that in the show) Thank you!
I cannot believe I wrote this whole thing out and then never published it. I’m so sorry, it’s been at least twenty-four years since you sent in this ask, please accept my humble apologies and also this ficlet.
However, this prompt is just pure fluff, and I hate to tell you this but I am not a fluff writer. I just can’t pull off that unadulterated sweetness. I am in this fandom for the shenanigans, first, last and foremost! So this fic is now a 5+1 of Eliot and Parker trying to seduce Hardison.
1. Parker thinks they need to give him gifts, so she goes through her stash and picks out the largest, fanciest jewel she’s ever stolen. Then she realizes: Hardison likes stories. He spends hours giving their aliases histories and pets and allergies and favorite foods, he can get a whole sordid history of jealousy and betrayal from a single corporate email chain, and Parker knows for a cold fact that he writes little stories with his online friends about being wizards together.
She goes through her stash again and picks out the most cursed thing she’s ever stolen.
It’s a jeweled statuette, almost as tall as her forearm, made of gold and studded with precious and semi-precious stones. Mysterious deaths have befallen five separate owners of this thing. Its base is dented from the time it was used to bludgeon Owner Number Three to death. The tiny rubies it has for eyes follow you across the room.
Parker puts a bow on it and leaves it in Hardison’s room while he’s sleeping. He wakes up to this horrible little statue watching him from his bedside table.
He texts the group chat, Hey did anyone put an evil little gold guy in my bedroom last night? But Parker chickens out and says nothing (drunkenly betting Eliot that she can seduce Hardison is one thing, but admitting that she likes him is something else altogether). Everyone else texts back variations on “nope.” (Except Sophie, who just sends back a string of heart eyes emojis and a wikipedia link. She loves cursed artifacts.) So Hardison puts the statue away in a closet somewhere and figures he’ll deal with it later.
Parker is mildly offended that he put her gift in a closet. She goes into his room the next night and puts it back on the bedside table, where it clearly belongs.
This goes on for a week. Hardison puts the statue in a desk drawer, then in one of the cabinets in the office downstairs, then in the dumpster down the street. Every day he wakes up to those glittering red eyes watching him sleep. He’s asked his internet buddies if anyone knows a good exorcist. Hardison doesn’t really believe in curses, but also? What the fuck. What the fuck.
~
2. Eliot assumes the drunken bet will be forgotten by morning. What kind of world would it be if people always followed through on promises they made while they could barely stay vertical? So he spends the morning nursing his hangover and cleaning his knives. Cleaning guns is no good while hungover—all the snaps and clicks of popping things in and out of place sound like actual gunfire when you’re hungover, it’s a nightmare—but knives are quiet and have no moving parts. Buffing and polishing them is soothingly repetitive work, and every once in a while he can throw one at one of the dartboards on the walls and reassure himself that his reflexes are still sound even after that much tequila.
It’s only when he gets Hardison’s text about the golden statuette that magically appeared in his room overnight that Eliot realizes Parker’s actually going for it. After some internal debate about whether he’s going to stoop to this or not, Eliot decides what the hell and starts making plans.
Eliot agrees that gifts are the way to go, but not stolen gifts. Not things. Anyone can give a thing. Proper wooing is about giving experiences.
Eliot plans for three days. On the fourth day, he and Hardison have their irregularly scheduled monthly coffee date, and Eliot texts him beforehand to say he wants to do it at the brewpub this time. Hardison arrives to find a deceptively simple meal: basic country fare perfected through years of experimentation, made with the best ingredients Eliot can get his hands on. And Eliot, after all, is still a retrieval specialist. There’s very little in the world he can’t get his hands on.
And yet the night ends and somehow he has not gotten his hands on Hardison.
This is just not right. Eliot knows how to deploy a smolder, okay, Tangled reference aside he is damn good at flirting and he knows the looks he’s giving Hardison are clear as day. It’d be one thing if Hardison had turned him down, or if he’d been uneasily unwilling, or even if his eyes had widened slightly in suppressed panic and he’d abruptly found a reason to leave. Eliot can take rejection, bet or no, and he’d have bowed out graciously without a fuss. But this was much, much worse.
Hardison didn’t even notice he was flirting.
He’s going to have to up his game.
~
3. “How do you seduce people?” Parker asks bluntly, turning up at Sophie’s door just past midnight.
Sophie, despite the hour, is utterly delighted by the question.
This goes as well as you would expect.
~
4. Eliot’s taken a lot of dates to sports games. Hardison may prefer sparkly elves with purple lightning magic to a decent MMA fight, but baseball is the American pastime. Eliot gets them perfect seats, hot dogs from the best vendor in the stadium, even chilled beer that he smuggles in without letting it get warm. It’s going to be a perfect game.
And it is. At first. Hardison, it turns out, has a lot of opinions about baseball. What he does not have is an understanding of the rules. They’re not even into the second inning by the time Eliot finally snaps and starts arguing with him about it.
They make it all the way to the fifth inning before Eliot realizes that Hardison’s basing his complaints off the rules of a game from a Star Wars novel.
They’re at the bottom of the eighth before Eliot will speak to him again.
~
5. Eliot and Parker are drunk again. This is not intentional. They didn’t even mean to come to this bar, but the smoothie place with the fried oreos that Eliot had brought Parker here to try was playing such incredibly bad music that they’d ordered the oreos to go and fled. The bar was just the coziest looking place on the block, and of course they’d ordered drinks to avoid being rude––Eliot had entertained himself for a few minutes scouring the menu for something that would pair well with fried oreos and popcorn chicken.
And now they’re drunk. The conversation has, perhaps inevitably, turned to the ongoing bet.
“I tried everything!” Parker wails. “I laughed at every joke, I touched my hair constantly, I got him talking about things he likes.” She thunks her forehead on the bar. “All that happened is now I know the complete history of orcs in western literature.”
“Hardison wouldn’t know flirting if it pinched him on the ass,” Eliot grumbles.
Parker slaps his arm. “No pinching Hardison!”
“I’m not going to—I don’t pinch people!”
Parker’s ignoring him. Eliot pouts and takes another sip of his drink. He’s not entirely sure what this one is––it’s blue and kind of fizzy, that’s all he can say for sure. Parker took over the drinks menu several glasses ago, and she’s been picking them based on what has the most fun name to say. Eliot’s pretty sure the alcohol content’s been doubling with each order.
“Eliot,” Parker slurs, “we need to work together.”
“What?”
Parker lifts her head from the bar and frowns at him, the way she does when she’s figured out the obvious solution and is just waiting for everyone else to get on the same page. It’s adorable. It’s always adorable, but right now her eyes are wide and slightly unfocused from the alcohol and she’s listing sideways a little, almost as if she’s unbalanced, and it is the most adorable thing Eliot has ever seen. Parker’s never unbalanced, but some part of Eliot’s fuzzy brain thinks she’s about to fall on top of him and cannot wait to catch her.
“You can’t seduce Hardison,” Parker points out. Eliot is drunk enough to get offended by this, but too drunk to get out a complaint before she continues, “I can’t seduce Hardison. But if we work together, the two of us can definitely seduce Hardison. Together.”
Eliot stares at her. Then he takes another sip of his fizzy blue drink. Later, when questioned, he will blame his next words on that drink.
“Worth a shot.”
They take Hardison to a movie. They research for three weeks beforehand. They find the best movie theater in town, with the nicest seats, the biggest screens, and concession snacks that Hardison likes, and they buy tickets for the midnight premiere of the superhero movie that Hardison hasn’t shut up about for the past month. Parker even hacks into the theater’s computers in a last-minute fit of nerves and cross-references the credit cards with drivers’ licenses to make sure the people sitting in front of them won’t be too tall.
Parker witnesses a kidnapping in the parking lot while the boys are getting popcorn. They don’t even stay long enough to catch the commercials.
~
+ 1. “Hey Eliot,” Hardison says during movie night, a little over a week later. “Remember the Ice Man Job?”
Eliot groans. “I try not to.”
Hardison throws a piece of popcorn at his face. “Shut up. Remember how you did your hair for that one? With the little—those little beads on, like, a braid?”
Eliot shoots Hardison a suspicious glance. “Yeah, I remember.”
“Teach me how to do that.”
Eliot shoots Hardison another, more deliberate look, this one pointedly directed at Hardison’s complete lack of braidable locks.
Hardison rolls his eyes as if that’s a silly detail to get hung up on and leans forward to dig around in one of the boxes he has under his coffee table. He emerges with a ziplock bag of plastic beads in no time flat and hands it triumphantly to Eliot. Then he yanks a few cushions out from behind Parker, who’s sitting on his other side, and puts them on the floor in front of him. “Sit here?” he asks Parker, patting the cushion pile.
Parker takes a moment to consider being offended at having her cushions stolen, but curiosity gets the better of her and she just plops down between Hardison’s legs, grabbing the bowl of popcorn as she goes, and waits.
Hardison lifts her hair with sudden gentleness, drawing it over her shoulders and letting it fall down her back in a golden wave. His fingers brush against her neck. Parker shivers. Eliot is distantly aware that he’s gone perfectly still, focused with a hunter’s intensity on Hardison’s dark, graceful fingers carding through Parker’s hair.
Hardison leans back, hands on his knees, and Eliot breathes again. “Well?” Hardison looks over at Eliot, a tiny smirk of challenge on his lips. “Show me how it’s done.”
Eliot is suddenly, brutally aware of how close they are. Hardison’s couch is obscenely comfortable, which is half the reason movie nights are at Hardison’s in the first place, but it is not large. Their thighs are touching. Hardison leans away, to give Eliot access to Parker’s hair, and he’s still so close that Eliot would barely have to reach out a hand to—
Eliot ruthlessly shoves that thought down into the dark where it belongs. He dealt with this, he dealt with this years ago, and accepting Parker’s stupid bet doesn’t mean he’s forgotten the way Hardison and Parker look at each other. It just means he doesn’t mind losing for a good cause.
So he keeps his tone steady and his fingers brisk as he shows Hardison how to braid the clunky plastic beads into Parker’s hair, and if he flushes with heat when their hands brush each other, well, nobody has to know. He’s been trained to withstand eight different schools of torture. It won’t show on his face. His voice never once falters.
Parker has had no such training. Her lips have parted, and her breathing is shallow. She’s staring glassy-eyed at the TV. Hardison can’t see her face, sitting behind her, but Eliot watches her carefully, worried that they need to call this off. Parker’s not used to intimacy, to closeness that means something, and for all the three of them have spent half their movie nights literally on top of each other, this is something else. This has weight.
Eliot puts a hand on her shoulder, pressing down just enough that Parker startles and cants a glance over at him. Eliot raises his eyebrows in question, and Parker glares back: don’t you fucking dare. Eliot backs off. Hardison, frowning in concentration as he threads a wisp of Parker’s hair through a green bead, graciously pretends he didn’t see the exchange.
Hardison gets the hang of the beading fairly quickly, and Eliot shows him a few different techniques. He’s almost managed to convince himself that nothing is actually happening when Hardison says, conversationally, “You two are really bad at this.”
Eliot glowers his confusion. “At movie night? You started this, if you wanted to actually watch Alien then you shouldn’t have—”
Hardison’s smile is soft, but Eliot decides for his own safety to focus on the laughter at its edge. “No, at this.” And then he slides his hand onto Parker’s neck, caresses her cheek, and isn’t the slightest bit surprised when she gasps.
Parker whips around, and there’s hurt on her face but it dies in the glow of Hardison’s gentle, unteasing smile. Hardison pulls her up with the lightest of touches, and she goes, eyes fixed on his like salvation.
They kiss sweet and slow, and Eliot’s heart twists in his chest and he can’t breathe. He needs to leave now before he shatters in half, but if he moves then they will look at him, and he would rather never breathe again than meet their eyes right now.
Hardison breaks off the kiss, gazing at Parker with something just this side of wonder, and then he does look at Eliot. Eliot flinches. He opens his mouth to…say something, make some joke or hasty excuse and scramble out the door, but Hardison raises a hand to Eliot’s face, slides his long fingers to cup Eliot’s neck, and pulls him forward, as gently as he did Parker.
It’s a chaste kiss, no more than a soft press of lips, because Eliot is too stunned to respond and Hardison doesn’t push. It lasts a long time. A whole era of change happens in the span of that kiss, as everything Eliot thought he knew tears out of place and then settles, gingerly, into a new understanding.
Hardison pulls away, his hand still warm on the back of Eliot’s neck. His smile is pure sunshine. Eliot finds himself smiling back, helpless.
Hardison’s grin turns smug. “And that,” he says, looking between Eliot and Parker, “is how you do it. Y’all are disasters, honestly, I can’t believe two master criminals working together couldn’t manage a single real date—”
Eliot heaves a deep sigh and drags Hardison into a headlock, pinning his arms when he flails. Parker surges to her knees and starts tickling him mercilessly.
They don’t finish the movie.
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vickyvicarious · 3 years
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how would you write a fic where: Nana meets Parker and Eliot
well, I wrote one possible version of Nana meeting Eliot in my fic 'Food Is', so there's that, but it wasn't really the focus of the story. But there's a ton of ways to go with this one, it's really hard to choose one method.
I think if it's something I would write then I'd leave off all my ideas about possible heist-related meetings where the team has to help Nana simply because the cons intimidate me too much to write in any detail. So, the first one to come to mind is something like:
Hardison has been uncharacteristically dragging his feet on introducing them to Nana. Parker brought it up, like, the once, and Eliot never has - they both don't have anywhere near the kind of family background where they'd feel comfortable on insisting. And it's not that Hardison doesn't want them to meet her, but he hasn't really taken the initiative to make it happen, and they certainly won't, so it just... hasn't. They all lead busy lives after all.
(Hardison talks them up to Nana all the time over the phone and whatnot. But it's. It's different, he wants her to love them as much as he does and he's kinda afraid she wouldn't. She knows what he does, knows what they as a team do... but the messy reality of it might put her off. Seeing the three of them in a romantic relationship might be something she objects to when it's in her face. What if she tells embarrassing stories about his childhood and they never let it go? What if Parker or Eliot don't like her? Her health isn't super great and he doesn't want to stress her out! She always polices his orange soda intake and he'd need that to handle the stress of such a meeting! He's never really been in love before, never had to do the whole 'introduction to your parents' thing and he wants it to be PERFECT when it happens. He knows most of his fears aren't realistic at all, but they're still making him super nervous and it's just easier to plan that he'll make it happen at some point in the future.)
But Nana gets impatient. She takes things into her own hands. By which I mean, she just shows up one day.
Of course, the crew is in the middle of a con at the time. Like, fully in the middle, on a timeline, can't stop what they're doing now. This means that despite all his best efforts to manage the entire meeting, Hardison physically isn't able to be there half the time. Nana's weekend visit or whatever involves her sitting in on strategy meetings, cooking with Eliot, talking knots and knits with Parker, playing video games with Hardison, just various snatched bits of time with all of them in between them running out to do things for the con. At one point she absolutely grabs the phone and plays the role of FBI handler or whatever. Maybe she plays a key role at the end of the con. She's definitely interested in what they do.
Hardison is all freaked out and overprotective, Eliot is terrified and trying to be very nonthreatening since he has no idea what's been said about him, Parker is openly and deeply curious about every single detail of this woman's life but also nervous about interacting with her. Nana meanwhile is trying to assess these people her son loves so much, and also have some fun while away from home. Since the focus is mainly on her POV/moments with the crew, I wouldn't have to write in a full con, just maybe snippets of what the others are up to at any given moment (sort of like in the Broken Wing Job).
Anyway, it obviously ends with her giving her approval and bonding with them all. She talks to Hardison about his lifestyle (in all senses) really being okay with her in practice, not just theory, and maybe gently scolds him for even unreasonably fearing otherwise. (Would she have preferred something safer? Yes. But he has people who will take care of him, he loves what he does and it uses his big brain to the fullest, and he is helping people. Of course she isn't disappointed. And, what. The two people thing? Maybe she hasn't been telling him enough stories about her wild youth if he thinks that's gonna phase her.) She teaches Eliot some family recipes and also definitely some funny Alec stories. She 'lets Parker talk her into' trying out a climbing rig (Nana's a little bit of an adrenaline junkie, Hardison is way more concerned for her health than she is) and essentially adopts her and says she already considers her family and she has an open invite whenever she wants to come by. She kicks everyone's butts in any variety of videogame (Hardison wins there but it's decently close) or board game. She is openly affectionate and loving and everyone loves her deeply.
FLUFF FLUFF FLUFF
There's a family dinner, and then she goes home. The fic ends with her arriving home, talking a bit to Breanna maybe, etc. etc. ...and then she goes up to bed or something and finds a stuffed animal on her bed, with a little note from Parker. She must've left like right after Nana did, beat her home somehow, broke in and gave her a little gift. Something to show she loves Nana too, and wants to be in her family as well.
Nana's heart is full and warm and she is so so happy for her baby boy that he has found a place to belong and people to do so with. She sends him a picture of the bear. Picks it up to move it, and notices it's weirdly heavy. Opens it up. Finds the inside is full of gems or something, and there's one more note saying 'just in case'. Nana laughs out loud.
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dtrhwithalex · 3 years
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TV | Leverage (Season 1, Rewatch)
Rewatch of the first season of TNT's LEVERAGE (2008-2012), created by John Rogers and Chris Downey together with Dean Devlin and his production company Electric Entertainment.
In anticipation of the show's reboot / revival / sequel LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION coming to IMDbTV on 09 July this year, I am rewatching the original 77 episodes and writing about my favourite moments and things from each episode, season by season.
(Just a note, this first season was aired out of order, so the dates won't actually form a chronology, since I'm going with the intended order rather than the one they were aired in.)
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101: THE NIGERIAN JOB
D: DEAN DEVLIN. W: JOHN ROGERS & CHRIS DOWNEY. Original Air Date: 07 December 2008.
I have lost count of how many times I have seen this episode (or any episodes of this show to be completely honest), but it holds up every single time. It is one of my favourite, if not the favourite TV pilot episode I have ever seen.
The way this pilot sets up who the main characters are and what the core of this show is, is simply perfect. The introduction of Nate at the bar being approached by Dubenich, then the intercut between him convincing Nate to do the job and the actual job happening -- just wonderful. The same goes for the individual introductions of the other players. Nate's comment about Parker ("no, but Parker is insane") which plants a thread for the rest of the show already, the flashbacks of each character to exemplify who they and what their talents are, combined with the episode then showing you those talents and what Nate can do with them -- which is, of course, his talent -- sets up this whole show so well.
So many seeds that come to fruition throughout the show are already planted right here. Nate's mentoring of Parker to become his eventual successor as Mastermind ("Haircuts, Parker, count the haircuts" -- "I would've missed that"), Eliot's role as protector, the iconic overhead shots and the gloating, the alternate revenue streams, "Hardison dies in Plan M" -- it's all already right here in this episode. A brilliant piece of writing. Hats off to Rogers and Downey, no questions asked.
Rewatching this episode made me think of what this show is about, in its essence. Yes, it is about standing up for those who can't do so themselves, taking on the bigger bad, showing how corrupt and terrible the world can be, but also how much good there is to still find in the world. But also, this show is about a lonely man being actively bullied into the family he didn't know he needed or wanted, but will eventually come to realise is the one thing, the only thing that is keeping him alive. LEVERAGE is the story of a man and his crusade to avenge the death of his child, but is is very much also the story of a man who finds a reason to keep getting up every morning in the four people who are on this crusade with him. And this pilot episode already holds the seed and the potential of all of that. And that is why this show is to this day still my favourite show of all time, because it is utterly perfect in every way.
102: THE HOMECOMING JOB
D: DEAN DEVLIN. W: JOHN ROGERS. Original Air Date: 09 December 2008.
I absolutely love how John Rogers was like okay first episode, some greedy asshole who does whatever he wants for his own gain, we'll take him down a notch. Episode two? Hmm, oh yeah, the government is completely corrupt, filled with rich greedy assholes who do whatever they want for their own gain and always get away with it. Not on my watch (I love him very much, thank you).
This episode, once again, so good. The re-introduction of every character in this new reality of Nate's crusade is just as brilliantly done as the original introduction of them all. Sophie at an audition (love the John Rogers cameo here) completely butchering it once again, Eliot beating up some thug, Parker stealing valuable art, and Hardison doing what he does best: creating a beautiful office-slash-home space for the team, putting his all into their backstories, the equipment, the behind-the-scenes workings of what they need to get the job done. My man.
The message of this particular episode is also just something I am very fond of. The rehab facility doctor's words in the beginning, and then in the end again -- "people don't just show up to help. that's not the way the world works" -- as well as Nate's ultimate answer to her, "so change the world." That right here is the message of this show. It's already right here, all up in your face, episode two.
I completely adore what this episode does for the character dynamics already. The detail Hardison puts into the other's backstories, the interactions around the conference table, Eliot sharing his knowledge, Nate explaining the money laundering scam, the whole thing about laws being in a wooden box, Sophie elaborating why she knew Congressman Jenkins was lying to her -- they don't just work together, they already start giving the others insight into their talents and their knowledge and share that. It's beautiful. I especially adore the shot of them at the end, everyone leaning against the car while watching Corporal Perry and the other veterans debating what to do with the money. They are already so comfortable and at ease with each other, leaning into each other's spaces. They're family. You can see it here already.
Absolutely fantastic episode. For a long time, whenever I thought about The Homecoming Job, I somehow associated a more negative emotion with it than with other episodes, but I don't quite know why, because this is a brilliant episode and I love watching it.
103: THE WEDDING JOB
D: JONATHAN FRAKES. W: CHRIS DOWNEY. Original Air Date: 13 January 2009.
We love Jonathan Frakes in this house and every single time his name shows up with the director tag on this show, I know that I will enjoy every last second of the episode I am about to watch. Frakes directed the hell outta this thing. The Wedding Job is an absolutely excellent episode. Dan Lauria as our main baddie Nicky Moscone is perfect casting and there are so many great comedic beats in the scenes with him and Nate. Everyone, generally, is so weirded out by Priest!Nate, but Moscone just takes the weirdness in stride. This episode holds a very special place in my heart because it contains the introduction of my favourite FBI duo -- McSweeten (McSweetheart, as we call him) and Taggert. I adore these two bumbling fools so much, and I am so glad they kept being brought back, because they are both just so lovely. McSweetheart especially is very dear to me because of the D.B. Cooper Job from the last season (where, I ask, do I start my McSweetheart for Leverage: Redemption campaign?). Overall just such an excellent episode, really. So many great moments between our main characters--Sophie and Nate and their little "relationship" problem, Hardison and Eliot talking about marriage, Parker pretending she was waiting in the screening room to have sex with Hardison, Hardison appreciating Eliot's cooking. I also absolutely adore the beginning, the four of them convincing Nate that Teresa is definitely the type of client they take on. And Nate's resigned "Yeah, okay, yeah. Let's go rob Nicky Moscone. A guy who kills people and lives in our city. Yeah, let's go do that" as if they weren't going to go above and beyond any of that in the five years they will spend together on this crusade of his. You're so precious, Nathan. Of course, the ending of this episode is beyond brilliant, and lives both in my heart and my head rent free. It is such a magnificent found family moment. Getting Teresa the restaurant back, the news footage regarding Ray's appeal, and of course, Eliot cooking for them all, and them celebrating together, all of them. It is such a beautiful moment.
104: THE SNOW JOB
D: TONY BILL. W: ALBERT KIM. Original Air Date: 27 January 2009.
I adore what the client says to Nate in the beginning of the episode: "You work hard, you play by the rules, but when you need help, you really need help? They let you hang. They let you hang and it's your kid who pays the price." This show hammers home its message so many times in such great character moments and it makes watching these brilliant people take on these greedy bastards and robbing them for all they've got that much sweeter. It is such a satisfying thing to watch. Especially because they're all so damn good at this.
This is a great episode but it is infinitely funnier if you know and speak German, because it makes the scenes between Sophie and Eliot absolutely hysterical. And the delivery of the line that Ute Ausgartner says when she discovers they replaced her with Sophie is just wrong enough to crack you up.
Again some wonderfully brilliant comedic beats -- the Frakes cameo in the hospital waiting room, Parker casually hanging off the ski lift, Hardison and Eliot arguing over who puts dye in the dead body, Eliot carrying off a pissed of Parker, and so many more.
This episode also, for the first time, really gives insight into Nate's drinking problem. We had the one moment in The Homecoming Job, but this episode starts to explore it more in depths. And something that I've always appreciated about this show is that it never glorifies the drinking, but Nate is also never vilified for it. It is a fact of Nate's life and they explore different aspects of it, and everything is done with such care (which does not surprise me one bit since this is John Rogers' show).
The ending of this episode is also, once again, so beautiful and nicely done. It is just so incredibly satisfying to watch these greedy bastards get what's coming to them, and to see the clients be compensated beyond anything they'd ask for.
105: THE MILE HIGH JOB
D: ROB MINKOFF. W: AMY BERG. Original Air Date: 20 January 2009.
Another fantastic episode (you will realise that I will say this about every single of the 77 episodes this show has)! Amy Berg wrote some excellent stuff for this show, and this episode is one of them. Always a lot of great character relationship moments, and absolutely brilliant comedic beats.
I am very fond of the fact that here, in the early days, we have the whole team present around the table during the client meeting. We see all their reactions and inputs here already, and not later when Nate or Hardison (usually) relays the information of their next job to the rest of the gang. It's a very lovely moment.
I am also very fond of the entire recon bit at the GenoGrow office. Sophie's French rave-girl act, the others having to climb stairs, Hardison's absence, the cut from Parker's bomb to the microwave at the HQ, Nate, Eliot and Parker yelling "Oh it's right behind us, it's chasing us!" and grabbing Sophie on the way out, meanwhile the security guys completely buying it. Absolutely brilliant, all the way through.
Both Hardison's adventure at GenoGrow as well as the others on the plane contain so many great comedic moments. Hardison's Spanish maintenance guy act, his interactions with both Cheryl and Steve (talking into the cupboard? His fake meeting and getting Steve to take a dive? The whole birthday thing? A+ all around. Amy Berg, everyone) and of course the reaction he has to the plane safely landing on the highway ("lord I was so scared, I wanna cry and call my momma" I love him so much, y'all). I also have big feelings about Nate's pep talk to Hardison, "you can do this, I trust you ... the only guy I can count on in a situation like this." Sir, I am experiencing an emotion alright.
The sequences on the plane are of course also absolutely fantastic. Nate and Sophie's domestic, Parker's day job and her interactions with Marissa, Eliot being a big softie who holds Marissa's hand all the way up to the in-flight bar and hugs the woman he sat down next to when they safely land (womaniser, big softie. tomayto, tomahto). Also big shoutout to the fake names Nate and Sophie have. We love our DOCTOR WHO references in this show. I love these nerds very much, thank you.
106: THE TWO HORSE JOB
D: CRAIG R. BAXLEY. W: MELISSA GLENN & JESSICA RIEDER (GRASL). Original Air Date: 16 December 2008.
This episode also holds a very special place in my heart because it contains the introduction of our dearly beloved antagonist, Mr Jim Sterling, the absolutely amazing Mark Sheppard. We love Sterling in this house, yessir (again, where do I have to address my Jim Sterling For Leverage: Redemption campaign to?). Every moment he is in is fantastic, but I especially adore the conversation he has with Nate at the race track (especially the "Nathan Ford is a common criminal" -- "Common. That's just hurtful" bit of it).
This, of course, is an episode by our wonder twins, Glenn and Rieder (now Grasl), which they ended up naming the in-universe safe company after. Always fantastic work when the two of them are involved. Some amazing character moments again here.
We get to see some of Eliot's backstory with Aimee which in turn gives us two fantastic moments with him and the women of the team. I love his interaction with Sophie at the racetrack: "I like Aimee, I do. I mean it, I like you both, Eliot. I just, I don't know what comes of chasing the past, you know." -- "Well Sophie, sweetie, I don't think you and Nate get to serve me that particular meal." Just fantastic moment between these two, who I like to call The Conference of Mom Friends whenever they are in scenes together. The other interaction is with Parker in the car: "We need you to do this. I need you to do this." I adore Eliot and Parker's relationship and this already is a very early glimpse at the dynamic they develop which will eventually lead to beautiful moments like that in the ice cave in The Long Way Down Job in season four.
I also love how it is Hardison and Parker's discussion about horses that ultimately reminds Nate of the Lost Heir con. Aldis' delivery of "Wilbur loved Mr Ed! He loved him like a second cousin twice removed" is absolutely brilliant. Unsurprisingly, however, my favourite interaction of this episode is the one Eliot has with Aimee at the end: "You're never gonna be the kind to settle down, but I'm glad you found a family." -- "Th-those guys?" Yes, Eliot, those guys. You might not know it just yet, but that is absolutely your family, and the fact that an outsider already comments on it this early is simply perfect. My deepest gratitude to you, wonder twins.
107: THE BANK SHOT JOB
D: DEAN DEVLIN. W: AMY BERG. Original Air Date: 30 December 2008.
Amy Berg on the typewriter once again (typewriter? Alex what are you talking about this was 2008...)! I really like this episode a whole lot. An excellent one for Nate/Sophie, as well as Hardison/Parker. I have a huge soft spot for my crime children pretending to be law enforcement. Any combination of them is good, but Parker and Hardison as FBI agents especially is just exquisite.
This episode is also just fantastic for illustrating some of the small town criminal activity that happens from the top down. Judge Roy's entire bit about how "these little people" will do and say whatever he tells them to do and that, because he is the law in the town, he gets to decide what is actually true and what is not. To then have Hardison fake security footage and them turning the story against Judge Roy is of course poetic justice. I adore the moment when the bank manager Frank decides that sticking with the false facts these random people have come up with is the better choice than having the judge remain in charge.
I also really love the interaction Derrick has with Sophie and then later with Parker, as well as the moment of uncertainty in-between. His "I don't know what to do with that" when Sophie tells him she's a thief is so funny and so good. The turn of "but they're criminals....then again" when he looks out of the window on the way to Parker is also just a nice moment to illustrate exactly what Parker then later says, "sometimes bad guys are the only good guys you get." Ethics and justice are such muddy concepts and especially in situations like Derrick is currently in, there is no way of knowing who is actually good, who is bad, and who is just trying their best. It is a lovely moment and once again, one of those great instances of "important message within character moment" that this show does so well.
Of course, I am also very fond of Hardison's mention of DOCTOR WHO, his "Geek power baby, stay strong" line, Eliot's fight scene with the crack dealers ("stay in the car!"), Hardison's bullshitting the demands at the bank (Hall & Oates!) and, of course, last but not least, the return of my favourite FBI fools, McSweetheart and Taggert, getting yet another win laid in their lap by the Leverage crew. This episode is filled to the brim with greatness.
108: THE MIRACLE JOB
D: ARVIN BROWN. W: CHRISTINE BOYLAN. Original Air Date: 23 December 2008.
An absolutely excellent Nate-centric episode! We finally get a bit more of a view into Nate's past, aside from the ever-present flashback to Sam's death at the hospital. I really like the relationship of Nate and Father Paul, which I think is very interesting and so well done. Through Paul we get another side of Nate, which may have stayed hidden otherwise. I am also very fond of how Maggie is introduced here. She doesn't get a voice yet, but we learn about her through Nate, Sophie and also Paul, and I quite like that. It sets up expectations for her appearance in the finale, which is really intriguing.
This episode has so many great comedic beats as well, and I barely even know where to begin. From the team's inability to deal with Sophie's acting talents (or lack thereof) to the whole "It's not Santa" gag, the amazing faces Sophie pulls when the mark tells her about Bibletopia, Hardison's "God will smite us" thing -- there is just too much good stuff in this episode.
One of my favourite interactions in this episode was on the construction site, after Grant takes what he thinks are his meds.
Sophie: What is that you just took? Grant: Xanax. For my nerves. Parker: Actually caffeine. With a dash of dextroamphetamine. Eliot: You have him speed? Hardison, shrugging: He beat up a priest!
The look Eliot gives them then with a half-shrug, an expression which cannot be described as anything but "aight, fair enough" -- just absolutely excellent.
What I also really loved about this episode, is that we get to see more of the HQ than just the conference room. We have the team meeting in Nate's office, we see Sophie picking through her mail, Hardison making space so he can build fake Saint Nick statues. Added to that, the team is setting into such a nice familiarity with each other. Eliot brings Sophie a cup of coffee to the meeting in Nate's office. The fact that they all do get mail at the office. This is their space. I love it so much.
What this episode also gives us, is a first instance of the con possibly going side-ways because of how convincing it is. I adore that their possible downfall will never be incompetence, but rather over-competence. They are so good at what they do that sometimes their talent comes to bite them in the ass. We see this again, a bit different, in The Juror #6 Job.
The ending of this episode is very dear to me. It is a very lovely moment between Nate and Paul, but also Nate and the team. It creates such a beautiful moment of intimacy between these characters, which I think is done with extreme care, and it shows. This episode also very nicely sets up a nice sort of grounded-ness for the next episode, which I think the subject matter really deserves and needs.
109: THE STORK JOB
D: MARC ROSKIN. W: ALBERT KIM. Original Air Date: 06 January 2009.
This one and the next episode are excellent Parker-centric plots and this one in particular also has some wonderful Parker/Hardison content. Nate, also, is just very good in this episode as well. Keeping the tone the last episode established especially toward the end, this episode has such a nice grounded-ness to it. Nate's first meeting with the client is so careful in a way, and we don't always see that. Generally, Nate is careful and considerate in this episode, I think. Even when Parker goes rogue, he is so good with Parker (I attribute the brashness entirely to his director role here). It meant so much that he doesn't shoot down the idea of coming back for the other orphans, he knows how important this is to Parker (and Hardison).
With this episode we learn that both Parker and Hardison have grown up in the foster system. I really adore the conversation they have at the van after they find out about the orphanage -- Hardison telling Parker about his Nana, Parker's fear that foster system will be cruel to those children, Hardison's "I like how you turned out" -- it is such a lovely and meaningful moment. This and the "we're a team" / "a little more than a team" moments are such great instances that highlight the importance of these characters and their relationships in this show. It isn't just some crime procedural where every characters is replaceable at any given moment -- this show is about people, and about these specific people.
On a lighter note, I also really adore Nate and Sophie's dynamic in this. How they coach Parker and Eliot individually but at the same time, while also arguing about Sophie conning Nate back in the day, is just brilliant. Their "delightful banter" as Hardison calls it, is so good, and I absolutely love that Nate figures out the way to con Irina is the same way he would have to con Sophie. It's just too good.
David S. Lee as Nicholas is also incredibly good, although since watching THE LIBRARIANS I always expect him to swoon over a blonde and call her Duchess any minute.
110: THE JUROR #6 JOB
D: JONATHAN FRAKES. W: REBECCA KIRSCH. Original Air Date: 10 February 2009.
The lighter of the two Parker-centric episodes, but a brilliant one nonetheless. This episode also brings us the introduction of Peggy played by the lovely Lisa Schurga. We love Peggy in this house and, once again, I ask: where do I address my Peggy For Leverage: Redemption campaign to?
This episode is great for many different reasons, one of course being that Hardison is so good at what he does, that Parker's alias has to go to jury duty. What a talent, we absolutely have no choice but to stan. I love him so much. Other fantastic things that make this episode absolutely excellent are
- Nate's "there is not some evil conspiracy lurking behind the curtain of every routine civic activity" speech which he then has to retract,
- Sophie teaching Parker about persuasion with the help of Eliot who is absolutely precious in this interaction,
- Eliot's friend Donnie, who poses as another employee from the company Sophie pretends to be from, who then turns out to be Scottish,
- Nate and Sophie sending the kids off to work at the door, with a briefcase and handshake for Hardison and a snack and high-five for Parker,
and Hardison's entire act as a lawyer. He is so good. Of course his stalling is brilliant, but the turn-around once he has to actually try and win the trial? A masterpiece. I love how he tears the doctor apart for his drunken airplane misconducts, but what takes the cake by miles is of course his closing statement. He is just, so good, and such a goodhearted, wonderful person. I love how he directly addressed Parker. Hardison is full of sunshine and I love. him. so. much.
And I would be remiss not to mention how incredibly fond I am of the rest of the team watching the feed of the jury room from the HQ with such proud looks on their faces as Parker leads the other jury members and they vote in favour of the plaintiff. This is their girl and she's done so well. What a brilliant episode. My love to Becky Kirsch, honestly.
111: THE 12-STEP JOB
D: ROD HARDY. W: AMY BERG & CHRIS DOWNEY. Original Air Date: 03 February 2009.
Another episode, another instance of me asking the question: Where do I address my Hurley for Leverage: Redemption campaign to? We love Hurley! Drew Powell is absolutely fantastic, I adore him. Also huge shoutout to Joseph LoDuca for that absolute banger of a song that plays during the intro and the credits.
This episode has some fantastic Eliot/Hardison moments that are very dear to me. The two of them looking for Hurley and fighting over Hardison's slushy spill is just lovely. The whole car bomb sequence is also just completely brilliant. It's such a step in their relationship and I love it so much. The moment of "D'you want me to kick it?" / "God, I'm gon' die" is a wonderful comedic beat in this tense situation, but it is the bit after that I really adore. Hardison figuring out how to trick the bomb and then,
Eliot: What's our margin of error here? Hardison: 'bout half a second. Eliot: Run the ba-bag of bricks by me again? Hardison: Are you ready? Eliot: No.
I am just, so fond of these two. Also the fact that Eliot's hand shakes when he reaches for the cables and waits for Hardison's signal always puts me all up in my feelings about him. I also of course adore the scene at the rehab facility with Hardison's "I'm with him. No, I am with him. See, he thinks the flirting makes me jealous, but it doesn't. But if you was like Brad Pitt or Denzel or somebody, oh girl it would be on." It love it so much.
Nate, of course, is also just great in this episode. His entire experience in rehab is another wonderful insight into his character, his issues, how he sees himself and so on. The hallucination of Sterling says so much about him. I think this also very nicely sets up how Nate behaves in the finale double episode.
I also really want to mention Parker here, because Parker in rehab is also something I am very fond of. I love the moment where she pickpockets the Koreans searching for Hurley and then so innocently comes to Nate to confess what she's done and tells him in this tiny voice "I didn't meant to, it was just instinct." I love her so much. And her, at the end of the episode, skipping along and then running toward her people, jumping on Eliot while tossing her stuff at Nate, and then going to hug Hardison, is such a lovely moment. I love how the three of them then walk toward the car arm in arm, too. I love these kids.
112: THE FIRST DAVID JOB
D: DEAN DEVLIN. W: JOHN ROGERS. Original Air Date: 17 February 2009.
First half of the first finale! I gotta say I really love the David Jobs very much. It is such a fantastic first finale. I really adore how the opening of this episode is mirrored in the opening of the second half.
Given the set-up of the previous episode, I really like how for a first time watcher, this opening sequence very much looks like Nate is completely off the rails doing his own thing getting revenge on the man who, basically, killed his son. It isn't until Blackpoole introduces Nate to 'Portia' and we see Sophie turn around that it becomes clear that we're on the con, which I think is done very nicely. Only then giving the viewer the "how we got here" part is just great.
This episode of course also brings us, finally, Maggie (yes, I'll ask again: where do I address my Maggie For Leverage: Redemption campaign to?). I absolutely love how she is introduced here as Eliot's date. I also love how absolutely terrified Eliot looks once he realises that she isn't just anyone, but Nate's ex-wife. Maggie is such an excellent character, and I adore her. I also am very appreciative that this episode holds the singular moment of jealousy Sophie has toward Maggie. After her momentary outburst as Maggie tells Nate she hasn't stopped caring about him, we never see it again. Even better, once Maggie learns about Nate's crew, Sophie and her even become friends. And it is lovely.
We also have some great Parker/Hardison moments in this episode as well. I adore Parker and her enthusiasm for their "little naked man" and Hardison being weirded out about it (and turning the little David around so Parker can change in private). I, of course, absolutely love the kiss (and Eliot's grinning question at Sophie who of the two of them Parker had kissed) and then the theft of the First David. Hardison is so in awe of Parker and it is a sight to behold.
I also quite enjoy the "downfall" in this episode. Sterling showing up (we love the bastard), the fight between Eliot and Mr Quinn, the conversation about Sophie conning them on the roof, and then of course the final confrontations on that same roof as well as the HQ. This whole thing of "and then I asked myself, what would Parker do?" / "but then I thought, what would Hardison do?" is just brilliant and lovely. It shows how far they have all come throughout this first season and how much they have learned from each other already. I am very fond of it.
I am sad about the offices being blown up, though. As much as I love both McRory's pub and Nate's apartment in Boston, as well as the Brewpub in Portland, I've always really liked the LA offices as well. It was their first home and it was lovely. I am however very happy that Old Nate made it out unscathed.
113: THE SECOND DAVID JOB
D: DEAN DEVLIN. W: JOHN ROGERS & CHRIS DOWNEY. Original Air Date: 24 February 2009.
And the last episode! As I've said above, I adore how this opening sequence mirrors that of The First David Job. Similarly, I also love how until Sophie notices Parker's laser pointer and Eliot sees Hardison, as a viewer you assume they are on the job together, which is again the reversal of the first half of the finale. Just lovely storytelling, I adore it. Speaking of mirrors, the scene in the MC Hammer mansion where Nate inconspicuously manages to get them all thinking about the con together and putting their differences aside once more, also mirrors one of my favourite scenes from the first episode of season two, where the team does the same to Nate.
This episode on the whole I also just marvellous. Eliot's awkward date with Maggie, Nate finally telling Maggie about Blackpoole's involvement (or lack thereof) in Sam's death, the team involving Maggie in the planning of the con and her, precious as she is, questioning Nate's ability to just get people to do what he wants -- it is all just so good. I love Maggie on the con, too. Sophie coaching her, how good Maggie is at it immediately. Just lovely.
Then, of course, the entirety of the con from the moment Nate shows up at the museum. Sterling hurrying all over the place trying to figure out what Nate's plan is, finding out about the mummy, the release of the gas, the evacuation, the David statue replicas, them finally getting in and finding Nate alone in the exhibit room. I adore that shot of him leaning against the display case with the two Davids still inside, only highlighted from the open hatch in the roof. It is such a beautiful shot. I really enjoy Nate and Sterling's dynamic here, too. And I am very happy that Maggie gets to punch Blackpoole just like Nate got to in the episode before. They both deserve to give this man hell.
The ending of this episode and therefore this season always has me in all of my emotions. If I didn't know there would be more after this, I would just go lie down and weep for a while after watching it. The trademark overhead walkaway shot is of course a must, but the fact that they stop, that all of them hesitate, thinking about turning around, thinking about changing their minds. And then it cuts to black, and if this had been it, we would've never known! Ah, what a show, what a first season. I am completely in love with this show, as pretty much everyone knows, but I just -- this show is so damn good. It gets me every single time. Every time.
[image taken from the electricnow website]
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pale-silver-comb · 4 years
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I have a meta question for you. As much as we would love to believe that our Leverage babies will be taking down the baddies forever. Eventually, especially for Eliot as his body is abused more often than the other two, they will have to retire from actively working cons. Do you see them training the younger generation to one day take over for them? Similar to the Avengers at the end of AOU.
I LOVE IMAGINING THE OLDER OT3.
I think Hardison and Parker would very much stay in the game - adapting their roles as they got older - but I think Eliot would eventually semi-retire. He even tells Sophie that’s how he sees his future, running “Hardison’s pub”. (Like that boy didn’t buy it FOR YOU, Eliot.)
 I think Eliot would still go on jobs - particularly jobs that meant something to him - but largely I think his life would become about running and cooking for the brewery and maybe bringing in kids/young adults to teach them skills and help them get back on their feet. If the OT3 did adopt older kids, or bring older kids in to train, you bet Eliot is teaching them how to cook and that each one of those kids will have at least a Saturday job working under Eliot at the brewery as long as they are with the team. 
(I have this thing it would 100% be older kids they took on, rather than adults. Older kids who have been crushed, cheated or let down by the system. Parker and Hardison have a particular interest in this, knowing what it’s like growing up in the foster system, but it’s always Eliot who is bringing kids in, a sucker from day 1. Even if the kids aren’t interested in the Robin Hood gig, he’s still teaching them the art of crème brûlée, okay?? Stop looking at him like that Hardison, crème brûlée trains you in at least 17 different skills, including self-defense!)
As much as I hate the idea of things coming to an end, I can totally imagine Parker training new master-minds, Hardison teaching the next world-class baby-hackers, and Eliot training kids to defend themselves. These kids learning to grift on the job from Parker, Hardison and Eliot much like Sophie taught them to grift better on the job. One of the kids managing to perfect Hardison’s video-game based con, The Double Pronged Monkey (he’s so proud).
And just like that, suddenly there are just mini-Leverage teams across the world, all trained by the very best. But more importantly, supported to become a family by the very best. Some of them even do the odd job with Sophie and Nate when they cross paths.
I think out of everyone Parker would get pretty restless staying in the one place over the years. Portland is home but I think the OT3 would travel a lot the older they got: Parker seeing it as prime locations for cons, Hardison seeing each one as a well-earned vacation, and Eliot grumbling the whole time but always instantly made happy when he finds some new ingredient for a recipe to bring back to the brewery. (That and he’s just a big ol’ softie who is content so long as he’s with Hardison and Parker and they aren’t causing too much trouble.)
Also can we please just imagine Hardison making things to keep them comfortable as their bodies get that bit older? Like installing a heated pad into Parker’s harnesses because her hip is a little stiffer these days. Custom making a mattress for the three of them to sleep on because Eliot can’t sleep on a firm mattress like he used to without feeling sore the next day. 
Eliot squeezing fresh orange juice for Hardison every morning for, like, forty years, because it’s the only way Hardison will be tempted away from starting each day with orange soda. Parker is harder to dissuade which is why Eliot also always finds himself making her whatever she asks for every morning and doing his best to load it with vitamins. 
Parker making sure Eliot takes his “old-man” medication, which annoys Eliot to no end. But he can’t refuse because she always brings it to him in a wee cup which she’s personally drawn a happy face on and proceeds to change to a frowny face if he begins to protest. (It’s better for everyone if he just takes the damn meds before she starts giving the face The Sad Voice.)
Oh. Also. They have a dog. They 1000% have a dog. Sometimes two, if one has happened to follow Eliot home or Parker has decided one was looking just a little too sad at the shelter. Hardison has a permanent subscription to several different dog-food companies because each dog they foster always has some kind of specific food needs due to health problems orrrrrr have become terribly fussy after being exposed to Eliot’s cooking for longer than a week.  
Honestly, I could talk about older Parker, Hardison and Eliot all day. I love reading all the posts and fics about it. It makes me terribly happy!  
(Pssssst, Eliot gets to live to a very old age, okay? He's prepared to die for Hardison and Parker - expects it, even - but THAT. IS. NOT. WHAT. HAPPENS. They all get to grow very old and very happy together. Okay??? Okay.)
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swordandquill · 3 years
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Title: Winter Break
Fandom: Leverage
Summary: The team find themselves snowed in in a little town in the middle of nowhere.
Ch 2: Fussing - Nate has to choose between supervising a shopping spree or supervising a grumpy hitter. He definitely chooses the lesser evil.
Author’s Note: I still don’t know where this story is going or when the next update will be. 
Many, many thanks to @whumpybliss for beta reading this chapter!
You can go here to read this on AO3 instead.
"I know what you're trying to do."
Eliot's glare was less impressive than usual, but Nate still would have bet his money on him. Not that he wouldn't always bet on Eliot, and with things much more valuable to him than money.
"Trying to get you to eat saltines, so you don't throw up when you take the prescription strength anti-inflammatories I know you have in your bag?" Nate waved the open sleeve of crackers in front of the hitter.
"Stop fussing," Eliot snapped and snatched the sleeve out of Nate's hand.
Now that Parker had pointed it out, Nate could clearly see Eliot was favoring his left arm. Or, possibly because Parker had pointed it out, Eliot was putting less effort into hiding it.
"They shouldn't be in there alone," Eliot pulled a few crackers out of the sleeve and shoved it back at Nate.
"They're not alone," Nate swapped the sleeve for a water bottle from the grocery bag at his feet, "they have each other. We might be living off of orange soda and Trix for the next two weeks, but I think they'll get each other out of the store in one piece."
Eliot gave him a dubious look but refrained from talking with his mouth full.
"Anyway, I'm listening," Nate tapped the comm he had slipped into his ear.
"Where's my…?" Eliot frowned and tried to reach behind the seat for his bag, wincing hard at the twisting motion.
"Stop it," Nate thumped his side lightly with the back of his hand, "I've got them. Parker hasn't managed to convince Sophie that Froot Loops are both a vegetable and a fruit. Sophie is giving her tips on being persuasive, and Hardison doesn't know the difference between a zucchini and a cucumber, but one of them has made it into the basket."
"How have they made it this far without dying of malnutrition?" Eliot let his head flop back against the headrest.
"Cereal is fortified," Nate said dryly and poked Eliot with the water bottle, "which bag are your meds in?"
"It can wait until we get to the cabin," Eliot grabbed the offending bottle away without opening his eyes.
Nate didn't have to wrangle an injured Eliot often. Most of the time, he was more than capable of managing his own injuries. When he wasn't, Nate usually let Parker take the lead in poking and prodding while he helped Hardison track down whatever medical help their hitter needed.
Parker needed to burn off some energy, though, and Nate would rather supervise a cranky Eliot than his team on a shopping spree. He had trailed Eliot through the first aid aisle, listened to him mutter over spices and knives on the baking aisle, and then dragged him back to the van with saltines and water bottles in hand.
"Just take the anti-inflammatory," Nate argued, "it won't make you drowsy, and the longer you wait, the less well they'll work."
"Stop. Fussing." Eliot growled, somehow managing to drink his water angrily. Nate was always impressed by how Eliot could make the most mundane tasks look threatening. Luckily for him and the rest of the team, Nate was not easily intimidated.
"Just for the sake of argument..." Nate started.
"No," Eliot said flatly.
"We're stuck in the car until Hardison picks a shampoo. Humor me," Nate ignored Hardison's protests over the comm about his sensitive scalp.
"They need to hurry," Eliot groused, 'the snow is getting worse."
"Right," Nate agreed and held the sleeve of saltines out to Eliot again. He was disproportionately pleased when the hitter grabbed a few more without protest, "so let's just say there really is some shadowy figure waiting behind the curtain to get us…"
Eliot raised an eyebrow at that, probably cross-checking his mental list of people who matched that description, but Nate ignored him.
"And they orchestrated stranding the five us in this specific tiny town, in the middle of nowhere, by waiting until we were both split up on five different planes, and there was a massive storm front to force our flights here…"
"Look, I know…" Eliot rubbed his eyes tiredly.
"Which is possible," Nate continued to ignore him, "highly unlikely, but possible. After all, shady figures are usually good at seizing opportunity when they see it. So let's say all of that is true. What's their next move? Where do they expect us to be?"
Eliot frowned before reluctantly admitting, "They expect us to be stranded, at the airport or one of the hotels."
"Right," Nate nodded, "and even if they somehow anticipated us renting a summer house, it would be almost impossible to control which summer house we rented. Hardison must have skimmed through a half dozen search pages worth before we went after this one."
Eliot's frown deepened as he worked the problem and thought how he would have managed something like this from the other side. Nate let him be for a minute because he was still eating crackers while he thought, seemingly without noticing.
"There are ways they could stack the deck in their favor," he finally said slowly. "Knowing what we would want in a place to lay low, making it available even though it looked unavailable, monitoring Hardison for the search criteria he was using, then populating it with multiple properties that they have control of."
"Possible," Nate conceded, "ridiculously elaborate and unnecessarily complicated, but possible."
"So, one of your plans, basically," Eliot snorted.
"I don't have the patience to wait on mother nature," Nate let the jab slide, "my point is, the best thing we can do in this situation is not be where we're most likely to be. The rest, we'll just have to deal with as it comes."
"I know that. It's just…" Eliot just looked worn out now, tired of having to run through every scenario and possibility for every given moment.
Nate had figured out fairly early on that Eliot's paranoia was rooted in both a lot of experience and a lot of trauma. It meant they would be idiots to ignore him when he said something was wrong (and Nate had, unfortunately, been that idiot on more than one occasion, although he tried not to be these days), but they also needed to be a second check on those things for him sometimes, because he could always work his way around to those perceived threats being possible, even if they weren't probable.
It had gotten a lot better over the years, and the team had gotten better at finding ways to help him deal with it when it did come up. There was never a perfect solution, but they were more than happy to settle for an imperfect one if it made things at least a little better.
"And we'll deal with everything a lot better if you just take your diclofenac," Nate cut him off again, "so what bag is it in?"
"Duffel," Eliot conceded defeat finally, "they really do need to hurry."
"I know," Nate turned around and started sifting through the bags they had tossed into the third row of seats, "they're almost done."
Parker had been sitting in the back row, and she had rearranged the luggage that hadn't fit in the trunk to make a nest of sorts for herself around the middle seat. Nate had to practically crawl over the back of the middle row to reach Eliot's duffel bag, and he only felt a little bad for messing up her carefully crafted arrangement.
Eliot carried prescription meds with him and had for as long as Nate had known him. He had worried at first about the bottle of oxi that was always packed in the hitter's personal medkit. In hindsight, he could see the hypocrisy of constantly watching Eliot for signs of opioid addiction while simultaneously getting blackout drunk on a regular basis.
It had only taken a couple months for that concern to shift from Eliot taking too many painkillers to getting Eliot to take them at all. Two years in, and Nate had been worrying about why Eliot felt like jobs would leave him in enough pain on a regular enough basis that he would need to always have that level of painkiller with him. These days, Eliot and meds were mostly a bargaining act, a give and take informed by context and where Eliot's head was at at the given moment.
Oxi made him disoriented and dizzy; he wouldn't take it if he didn't feel safe. Diclofenac made him nauseous if he didn't take it with food (sometimes even when he did). Of the two problems, that was the easier one to solve.
Nate finally managed to find Eliot's duffel bag and pulled the medkit out, tossing the bag back in the pile of luggage for Parker to rearrange and poke through to her heart's content once they got back to the van.
"You want one or two?" Nate opened the kit and sorted through the neatly labeled bottles.
"Just one," Eliot was slumped back against the headrest again, eyes closed.
"You're out of Zofran," Nate shook the empty bottle.
"I gave the last of it to Sophie when we hit that patch of turbulence on the way in for the job," Eliot said dismissively, "it's fine. I'll refill it later."
Nate handed the pill and another water bottle over to Eliot, then texted Parker and asked her to get a bottle of Zofran from the pharmacy. A little thievery would do her good after 8 hours on a plane.
Eliot took the pill, and the van went comfortably quiet aside from the rest of the team's chatter in Nate's ear. It was surprisingly relaxing to listen in on them doing something as mundane as arguing over pasta sauce and gummy frog brands. They were on the comms a lot, but during jobs, there was a certain amount of tension, the constant need to be assessing and reassessing everything that happened.
Nate didn't care what kind of pasta sauce they got, and he didn't like gummy frogs, but it was nice just to sit back and listen to them be together.
There was suddenly weight against his shoulder, and Nate held still as Eliot gradually slumped more heavily against him, eyes closed and breath even. Nate waited until he was sure he was settled before shifting to get an arm around him and stop him from sliding down too far. Eliot fidgeted in his sleep for a moment, then relaxed with a soft sigh.
It wasn't that unusual for Eliot to sleep around them, but after how keyed up he had been at the airport, having him resting solid and relaxed against his side felt like winning.
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what---i-dated-a · 3 years
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You get the Leverage Crew on your zombie apocalypse team. What are you looking forward to the most from each of them?
This is probably honestly the best zombie apocalypse team ever if I’m being totally honest.
First off, this group would not be a “team” so much as a “society,” because if there’s anybody out there who can actually pull off a Walking Dead Alexandria style set up, it’s Team Leverage.
Okay so obviously I’m going to have Eliot and Parker tag-team supply runs. They’d have this shit in the bag, and they’d be able to get in and out of places that literally nobody else could manage. I know that there are people (idiots) in the world who wanna hole up in, like, a Costco, because SUPPLIES FOR DAYS, and they always forget that those places are absolutely gonna be teeming with zombies because everyone else thought the exact same thing, duh. Shortly into the apocalypse, those places are still wall to wall supplies, but nobody can get at it because it’s overrun. But Eliot and Parker can fucking do it.
They take a small crew of carefully selected and trained people with them, because obviously. Eliot teaches everybody how to fight (in case of Bad People), how to make a headshot (in case of zombies), and how to de-escalate (in case of Scared People). He still doesn’t like guns, which is good because they’re gonna run out of bullets eventually. Everybody on his crew knows how to down a zombie with a knife. Parker, meanwhile, teaches them everything they need to know to ensure this is only occasionally necessary, how to sneak and avoid detection and hide, and how to get into places no zombie is smart enough to squeeze. Her people are like ghosts; there are rumors in the area of a group of ninja-like figures that come and go on the wind, clearing out medical supplies and sometimes taking people with them. Honestly, finding new people is their favorite part of the job; they like saving people.
Hardison’s the getaway driver in that scenario for a more on-the-ground job, but when he’s not doing that, he’s basically managing infrastructure. He’s keeping the place running on a maintenance level. He has spreadsheets and files and tracks everything and everybody. He and Sophie tag team meetings with new arrivals, so she can get a read on them to determine if they’re trustworthy, and he can take notes and figure out where they fit in. He’s also the reason they’ve still got electricity, because man knows how to manage resources. No internet, but you don’t need internet if you’ve got a fucking NES, and he does. A lot of them, actually. One of the first things he did after they founded their little township was send Parker and Eliot to all the nearby vintage game and movie shops for any- and- everything that could be used as entertainment, because that’s how you keep people from going all murder-y, okay?
Sophie, meanwhile, is managing the social aspect of the place, setting up meet-and-greets for newcomers, assigning housing, keeping things running and keeping tabs on people. She’s putting her people skills to their best use, making sure that the right people are being watched and the right ones are being left alone. Nobody would know it, but the housing assignments are extremely carefully cultivated, to ensure everybody’s getting neighbors they can get along with. It won’t do them any good, after all, if unrest among the residents makes the town itself more dangerous than the dead. And if there’s a few newly formed couples, or orphans finding their perfect homes, well. She’s very good at her job.
Nate, of course, is the de facto leader. Newcomers don’t always understand it, because he’s hardly intimidating, or imposing, or even really all that impressive. He’s good at pulling the soft, easy-going act to try and make people relax. If they’ve been outside long enough, that confuses them, because why the hell is this guy in charge? This middle-aged, unassuming, quiet man doesn’t have the strength to protect, the spine to lead! But if they cause trouble, he proves them wrong pretty quick, with a few quiet comments here and there, a threat if they’re particularly dangerous. There’s trouble, of course, but Sophie usually manages it well enough, and when that fails, well, there’s always Eliot. He doesn’t like going that route, of course, but sometimes there’s no choice. He’s fair, and firm, and A Good Man, but he’s also not afraid of doing what needs to be done. A threat to his home, to his family, is not one he takes lightly. People who don’t get expelled (or worse) learn to respect him, and some of them even actually like him.
I’m shelving this for a fic idea. Dunno if I’ll ever have the spoons to write it, but for once, I don’t need plot. In a zombie apocalypse, the plot kinda writes itself.
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luninosity · 3 years
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Time for the second-to-last @whumptober2020 fic!
This one’s for theme 27 - OK, WHO HAD NATURAL DISASTERS ON THEIR 2020 BINGO CARD? for the prompt Power Outage. It’s also a present for a friend, who asked if I could write Leverage OT3 fic for her birthday-present - I’ve never written Leverage fic before, but I do love some good Eliot/Parker/Hardison, so I’ve tried!
#
They’re in the middle of watching Ratatouille, because Parker’s never seen it and Hardison likes Pixar and Eliot can quietly critique animated knife skills in his head but say nothing, when the power goes out. There’s a crash and a boom of thunder and a whip of wind, rain hammering down, and just like that, snap, it’s all dark.
 “Oh man,” Hardison says, “oh, come on, no,” and he’s sitting up and reading for a laptop or two as if that’ll do anything, dislodging their comfortable pile of lounging bodies and blankets and a popcorn bowl flawlessly balanced on Parker’s knee.
 Or he would be disrupting it all, if Eliot hadn’t expected the motion, hadn’t moved in turn, catching the bowl, shifting to redistribute weight and free a blanket. He sets the bowl down as his eyes adjust to the dark; he’s always been good at seeing in it, though of course they’re all three not bad at that. Good at improvising, adapting, new environments.
 Parker, distressed, is on her feet. Even in the dark she’s quick and feline, poised to move. “Who could—”
 “—find us here?” Hardison checks the battery on a phone, sets it down, gets up as well: catching her hands as they move, offering reassurance and being reassured in turn. “Nobody. I swear. This’s our place. I’ve got that taken care of.”
 Their place. Their home: the three of them, when they’d become a them at last. Eliot can shut his eyes and recall with perfect clarity the way Parker and Hardison had shown him around, so excited; the way he’d smiled and tried so hard to be excited for them, for their life together, the happiness they deserved, while he’d known he’d be the one leaving and walking away into the cold, leaving his heart with both of them, knowing they’d never know, and that’d be fine, he could live with that as long as they were happy, he could take anything if—
 He can recall the way they’d each taken one of his hands, and the way they’d leaned in to kiss him, easy as breathing, easy as if it could all be simple, easy if he could believe they had room to spare for him.
 This is your home too, Parker had said, eyes wide, surprised that Eliot hadn’t understood this: we found it for us. And Hardison had reached out and drawn him close, and Eliot had gone willingly, because they wanted him, because he didn’t believe it, because they wanted this here and now and he’ll always say yes even if they’ll look at him in the morning and say that was enough, curiosity satisfied, time to go. He’ll say yes to them even if it kills him.
 He’s somehow still here, three months after that.
 He gets up as well, now, in the dark. Parker’s pacing and irritated; none of her best acrobatic skills are of use here, nothing to steal or dare or leap from. Hardison’s annoyed at the power outage but coping by talking to her and checking all his backups and complaining about the timing and the lack of ability to see.
 That, at least, Eliot can do something about.
 He leaves them to find balance in each other; he has a number of various types of emergency stashes hidden in multiple places around the house, most of which Parker and Hardison know about, some they don’t. He never wants to be unprepared; he never wants to be unable to defend them. He finds candles, real and LED; he finds flashlights, and battery packs, and, after a moment’s thought, some chocolate.
 He catches them both looking at him, and then at each other, when he comes back into the living room; he says nothing—no need; he doesn’t need comfort, he’s just fine if they’re also fine—and only starts setting out candles, lighting them, turning them on if they’re artificial.
 Light blooms through the darkness. From tabletops, shelves, the fireplace, kitchen counters. In white and gold, honey and amber, warm and soft and clear and bright: shades of illumination sweep out and curve into quiet safe globes and spheres. They push back the dark, befriend it, share the night: layers of luminosity, brighter and dimmer, overlapping.
 He sets out a few battery packs in case Hardison needs them. He crosses over to them, or a few steps away, and offers the box. “Here.”
 Parker takes it. Opens it. “Magic chocolate! You found it in the dark!” The small shiny truffles beam up, bathed in candlelight.
 “When’d you buy chocolate?” Hardison takes one. His eyebrows go up. “You got the good kind, too.”
 “Made,” Eliot says, not offended but with an odd little feeling in his chest, a pang that’s not really hurt. “A while ago. Just practicing. There’s some with orange zest, some with pink pepper, some with walnut cream.”
 Hardison looks at him for a minute. Light caresses his cheekbone, the side of his face, the tilt of his head; Eliot wants to touch him. That’s just a want, though, no practical reason; no invitation, anyway.
 In defiance of the want, he says, “I can make a fire, too. If it’s gonna get cold. No telling how long it’ll be out.”
 Parker licks chocolate from a fingertip and looks up. “He didn’t mean he thought you didn’t know how to make chocolate. He meant these are really good.”
 “I know,” Eliot says.
 “Eliot,” Hardison says.
 “I can get more blankets,” Eliot says, “too.”
 “Come here,” Hardison says, and that’s somewhere between an order and a joke, the kind of flippant banter they toss back and forth without thinking; but it’s also the tone that means this is important, you need to listen, something might blow up if you don’t, so Eliot finds himself taking a step that way without thinking, because he trusts Hardison and Parker without hesitation, no matter what might explode.
 Rain drums across the world, over rooftops and streets and balconies. Eliot’s never liked fighting in rain. Too slippery. Unpredictable.
 It’s not bad, sometimes, for concealment. The noisy sheets of water can hide sound and motion, and that can be an advantage. Of course, it’s an advantage for the other side, too.
 Hardison puts an arm around him, folds him in close. The gesture’s fluid, natural, no hesitation about affection. Eliot leans into it because he can’t not, just for a second.
 He’s allowed that much. They’re all comfortable with each other; they have to be, in the field, and they relax that way as well.
 On the couch. In the bed. Because he’s somehow been invited in, touched and kissed and made to feel pleasure, because they asked.
 Someday they’ll stop asking, stop wanting. He gets that. He understands. He won’t ask for anything more than they give.
 But here and now the world’s full of mingled light and dark, and Hardison’s body’s solid and strong and firm, and so Eliot does let himself lean in, a moment like the balance of candlegleam and shadow, suspended between realities. He’s cared for them, the people he loves. He’s found them light and warmth and sugar. That’s all he needs, really. He’s good, knowing that.
 “Eliot,” Hardison says again, and sighs. He’s tipped his head to rest against Eliot’s; his breath brushes Eliot’s hair. “I can hear you thinking about what else you can do.”
 “Someone’s gotta be the competent one,” Eliot mutters. The joke’s half-hearted, and they all let it go.
 Parker slips up on his other side and puts an arm around his waist and one around Hardison’s, which means they’re all now randomly standing in the living room holding each other. Eliot should move, should go check a circuit breaker or make that fire or keep a guard on a window in case this wasn’t a random outage. He doesn’t need comforting.
 He doesn’t move.
 The rain pounds harder over glass windowpanes and roof-tiles and the wood of the balcony railing.
 “We know you love us,” Parker says, eyes all earnest, face all honest. She doesn’t hide from saying it, blunt as ever. “Why don’t you know it? About us?”
 “Because it’s tough.” It’s Hardison who answers, hand touching Eliot’s face, cupping Eliot’s cheek; and Eliot should run, should back away, should take himself out of this circle of affection before he breaks it with clumsy strength and fists and brute force…
 He still doesn’t move.
 “We love you.” Hardison uses the hand to tip Eliot’s face up, and kisses him: a kiss like security, like certainty, like commitment to a plan. The kiss tastes like chocolate and oranges, and Hardison’s mouth’s warm and commanding, not aggressive but confident in the claiming. Eliot does not tremble, because he doesn’t, but it’s so close to everything he wants, too close to fracture-points and breaking joints—
 Hardison draws back. Searches his face. “Eliot, we love you because you’re you. Because you’re the one who always has our backs—”
 “Or our fronts!” Parker adds brightly. “Or our sides, or—”
 “—and you jump in and fight for us, you take hits for us, over and over. And then you come home when we ask, and you find candles when we’re both busy complaining.” Hardison touches Eliot’s mouth, this time. “You know you don’t have to earn it, right?”
 “I’m just here,” Eliot says. “I’m just trying to make everything, y’know, good. What I do. Hit things, fix things, cook things.” Hardison’s fingertip’s distracting. It taps him on the nose, almost a scolding, then brushes his cheekbone, the spot where his eyelashes land when he blinks, the corner of his eye. He absolutely does not want to cry, to beg for more touches, to ask for more words that hold promises.
 “Sometimes, yeah. You do all those things. You do them all for us.” Hardison glances over. “Parker, help me out here.”
 She bounces up to kiss him, swift as a sparrow. Then says, “Tripods are more stable.”
 Eliot blinks. Considers this.
 “Wouldn’t work as well without you,” Hardison contributes. “All three legs. Holding us up. It’s not the two of us plus you, it’s all three of us. Otherwise we’d tip over.”
 Parker makes a gesture that Eliot guesses is meant to illustrate a loss of balance, and agrees, “Boom.”
 “So you get it,” Hardison finishes. “We love you. And you love us. Here, have one of your awesome chocolate things.”
 Eliot starts to protest. Finds himself being hand-fed a truffle, because Hardison’s still holding the box.
 It’s pretty good, he has to admit.
 “Okay,” Hardison says, “come on,” and walks them all back to the couch, and gets them arranged: Eliot squarely in the middle, lying down, being cuddled by them both. He could fight, could resist, could use physical hard-won training to remove himself from the spot.
 They drape arms and legs and body weight over and around him. It’s nice. Grounding. Tangible. His heartbeat steadies. His toes feel warm.
 He dares to wrap an arm around Parker, to hold Hardison a little closer, in turn.
 “Yeah.” Hardison sounds pleased. “Like that. We got you, okay? You don’t have to do anything. You let us do this, right now.”
 “You’re our Eliot,” Parker says, and feeds him another chocolate. This one’s got a hint of pepper, smoky and sweet, and it leaves heat and sugar in his mouth. In his gut. In his chest. A pooling glow.
 The couch is large and sturdy and doesn’t mind holding all three of them as they tangle themselves together. The rain purrs and leaps, cleansing the night. The power might be out for a while, but they’ve got candles, and back-up generators, and batteries, and blankets, and each other.
 They do have each other. Eliot has them, and Parker and Hardison have him too, and so maybe, maybe—
 This can work.
 Tripods are stable, after all.
 He has to clear his throat. “Wouldn’t, um. Wouldn’t want you to tip over. Without me.”
 Parker’s hand strokes his hair. “You won’t let us.”
 “I won’t,” Eliot tells her, tells them. “Never. I’d catch you.”
 “Yep.” Hardison slides a hand under Eliot’s shirt, resting over his stomach, skin to skin. It’s not sexual, not now, at least. Only intimate. Purely present. Feels good there. “We know you would. So let us catch you, too, all right?”
 It’s hard but it’s also simple, effortless, a choice that’s not one. This is right; this feels right. Eliot knows about instincts. And he believes—beyond any doubt—that these two, his partners, will catch him.
 So that’s the answer. It’s the only possible answer. It’s a loosening, an acceptance, sweet as adrenaline and relief. He starts to say, “Yeah,” and barely gets the first sound out before Parker kisses him, and then Hardison kisses him, and together they taste like chocolate and warmth and balance, held secure between the couch and their bodies and golden light and falling rain.
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Do the answers for Da Qing
Or ye zun. One of the side characters!
Oh thank you so much for doing this!!! I'm so excited that I'm going to do it for both of them! :D :D :D I'm sorry it took me so long to do this, but I wanted to gather my thoughts for this!
First we'll start with everyone's favorite Cat Yashou, Da Qing!
How I feel about this character
Da Qing is so important to me. He's been there through everything, but he can't remember most of it. I just want him to be cuddled and fed lots of dried fish snacks and curl up on Shen Wei's and Zhao Yunlan's laps while they tell stories and help him remember. Da Qing a the end of the drama breaks my damn heart, but I'm not gonna say more because a certain someone on here is watching with me for the first time and I don't want to spoil EVERYTHING.
All the people I ship romantically with this character
Ye Zun. There. I said it. I didn't at first, I really didn't. And THEN I started reading fanfic. And now I hella do. Oh my God they are just so freaking perfect for each other. Cat Tribe and the best personification of a cat outside of Cat Tribe. It's a match made in heaven ya'll, so long as you ignore the *redacted* and also *redacted*
My non-romantic OTP for this character
Lin Jing. Did I mention how much the end of the drama breaks my damn heart because the end of the drama breaks my damn heart. But these two as bros? Hell yes. Do I think that Da Qing would totally mess with everything Lin Jing has once he finds out he ate some of his dried fish snacks? Of course, but they're bros! It's what they do!
Also Zhu Hong though. Like these two definitely need to have a night where they both just get black out drunk after everything is over. Xiao Guo and Lin Jing would probably be there to make sure they didn't end up dying in their sleep, but they desperately need it.
My unpopular opinion about this character
Uhhhh...hmmm...I don't know that I really...have one? But I don't really know what people would consider an unpopular opinion for Da Qing? How about people send me some opinions and I'll say if I agree or disagree? That could be fun!
One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.
If we're talking drama!verse then I want him to find *redacted* and *redacted* eventually. That's only fair. He's walking down the street one day and he just finds them and it's like *running leap into arms and hugging* If we're looking at it from strictly book!verse? Uhhhh...After Shen Wei and Zhao Yunlan get back to the SID after the extra chapter I want Zhao Yunlan to hug the ever living crap out of Da Qing. 81st seed was rough man.
And now, on to my precious child and murder baby. Ye Zun!
How I feel about this character
Do you have a day? A week? A year?! Most of it would be incoherent noises and fangirl screaming into the abyss for how much I LOVE THIS CHILD. I LOVE HIM. HE IS MY BABY BOI AND I WILL DEFEND HIM TO THE DEATH. Yes I know he did terrible things, but he's so broken and manipulated and he needs lots of love, hugs, his brother's cooking, and THERAPY. Dear Lord does my murder baby need therapy. SO MUCH.
All the people I ship romantically with this character
As stated above, Da Qing. I think that there's just something so perfect about the two of them that is so hard to explain. I will say though that this is not my top pairing for him.
Lin Jing is also interesting for a romantic pairing for...obvious sorry-I-*redacted*-*redacted*-*redacted* reasons. I think that the only way this ship works is as an extremely long and painful slow burn. Like...the slowest of slow burns. Then, and only then, do I think this pairing can be properly pulled off. But again, this ain't my top pairing.
My top pairing is an OT3. Ye Zun/Guo Changcheng/Chu Shuzhi. There. I said it. I am SOOOOOOOO SAD that so few people are with me on this ship. But I get such freaking Leverage OT3 vibes from this trio that it fills every chamber of my heart full to bursting. I know that Guo Changcheng doesn't quite fit the Hardison role, but I just think back to Hardison in the second episode, The Homecoming Job, when he's like "What I did before, I didn't hurt people." Ye Zun is obviously Parker, 20 pounds of crazy in a 5 pound bag, and it's the other two and all of SID honestly who help to anchor him. Then we have Chu Shuzhi as Eliot. As i type this I'm realizing that I need more cooking Chu-ge stories. But that's another story.
My non-romantic OTP for this character
If I can take non-romantic OTP as any non-romantic relationship whatsoever then I gotta say his freaking twin brother is at the top of my list. I need these two to resolve...their problems. A really good place for them to do that is IN THERAPY. I swear to God. Zhao Yunlan needs to force them in there with Dr. Cheng and then lock the door behind them.
That does lead me to another non-romantic OTP, gotta love Ye Zun with his brother-in-law. I feel like Zhao Yunlan has to be there to help him with some part of his recovery. There are going to be things that he just can't talk about with Shen Wei because it would be too awkward or hurt too much, but they need to be discussed, and I think that Zhao Yunlan would be there to validate what needs validated and call him out on what he needs called out on because while I love this boy so much there is some really bad stuff that he did and needs to be held accountable for.
My unpopular opinion about this character
Ohhh...hard one. I personally view him as more of a victim than a villain. I feel like a lot in the fandom are kind of right on the line of as much a victim as a villain or even more a villain than a victim, but like...I'm pretty sure there was long lasting mental damage from the Rebel Chieftain that led to how he acted and what he did, and none of this would have happened if not for the Rebel Chieftain, so you know...that long dead bastard is the only TRUE villain of the series. I don't know if that counts as unpopular opinion or not.
One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.
THERAPY. ALL OF THE THERAPY.
This was a ton of fun, if you want me to expand on any of them, let me know!
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ot3tropetober · 3 years
Text
Fic: A Bushel And A Peck
AU:  Eliot runs an apple orchard. @aimlessglee  [AO3]
“What the hell is this?” Eliot asked, but he took the folder Hardison was handing him.
“Flavor,” Hardison said. “Background. Worldbuilding. Just read it, okay? I spend a lot of damn time on these aliases. You need to know who you are if we have to deploy them.”
Eliot flipped through the file. “Why is there a picture of me holding a basket of apples?”
“Just read it!” Hardison said.
Jeremiah Atherton, Jem to absolutely everyone or suffer the consequences, stood at the booth at the entrance to his family’s orchard. Momma and Pops had finally taken the plunge and bought a place down in Florida for the winter. The days were still sunlit and warm, but the nights were getting nippy, and they’d headed south a few weeks ago, promising to be back in the spring. They’d earned it, he thought. He smiled at the pretty blonde beside him - he’d known Heather since they were kids, even babysat her a few times when their parents went out and did stuff together. She made the best apple cider doughnuts in the county, and her pies were melt-in-your-mouth good. Their families had worked together a long time. It was a solid partnership, kind of part of his inheritance, and only he knew if he had a couple of soft thoughts about her every one in a while.
“Is that supposed to be Parker?” Eliot asked.
“Yes, it’s Parker,” Hardison said.
“Apple orchard, huh,” Eliot said. “Kinda…not very tough. Why can’t I run cattle?”
“Damn, Eliot, do you know the kind of effort it takes to keep a small operation running in this economy?” Hardison scowled. “Cows take care of themselves. Trees don’t. Also you can’t run cattle like that in New England.”
“Huh,” Eliot said, and went back to the file.
“Think it’s gonna be a good weekend?” Jem asked her.
Heather grinned. “It’s always a good weekend in the orchard.” She gestured around her. “Sun’s out. Nice and cool. People are gonna come pick a ton of apples and eat a bunch of doughnuts.”
“And they’ll drink cider,” Jem told her, hefting a gallon jug in each hand. “Don’t forget about the cider.”
“I never could,” Heather promised.
“It’s farm fresh,” he said.
“Honey, I know,” she said, putting her hand over his. “Why do you think I started making doughnuts? I wanted to get out of cider pressing.”
“‘Scuse me,” somebody said. They looked up to see a very tall, very handsome Black man dressed in a v-neck sweater that clung to the muscles of his chest, an expensive coat, and a scarf.
“Uh huh,” Eliot said. I see you.“
"What?” Hardison asked, all innocence.
“Hey, man, what can I do for you?” Jem said.
“I’m here to pick apples,” the guy said. “I kinda thought that was what people did here?”
“Weren’t you here last weekend?” Heather asked suddenly. She leaned her elbow on the counter and cupped her chin in her hand. “You were. You bought a dozen doughnuts and a half-gallon of cider.”
The guy smiled at her. “Good memory. I was, and I did. But you make a couple of pies and a batch of applesauce and boom, you need more apples.”
“And the weekend before that,” Heather said.
“I…like apples?” the guy said.
“We should make you a punch card or something,” Jem teased. “Tell you what.” He took one of the orchard’s business cards from a rack and scribbled on the back of it. “Come four weekends and I’ll give you a free peck the fifth time.” He held out the card, and the guy took it and looked at it fondly before he tucked it in his pocket.
“Deal,” the guy said.
“Take a doughnut,” Heather urged, wrapping one in a napkin as Jem pulled a basket off the stack and put it on the counter. “On me. You’ll need your energy.”
“Thanks,” the guy said. He smiled at them as he took the basket and the doughnut.
“Hey, man, what’s your name?” Jem called.
“Alistair,” the guy said. “Alistair Weaver.”
“What are you in this fantasy, some kind of fancy city lawyer?” Eliot asked.
“Well, yeah,” Hardison said. “That’s kind of how it works.”
Alistair did come back the next weekend, and then the weekend after that. They had a nice conversation every time Alistair showed up at the booth, which he did more and more often, coming back for a refreshing glass of cider or one of Heather’s sandwiches or a bag of cinnamon almonds. Jem found he was looking forward to seeing him. This time, Alistair was in a more casual outfit: a fleece and fitted jeans. He looked good, sophisticated in a kind of way Jem couldn’t pull off.
“Can’t resist that free peck, huh?” Jem teased.
“Not when you’ve got the best apples in the state,” Alistair said, and grinned.
“Did you know a peck can also be a quick kiss?” Heather said suddenly. “Usually on the cheek, but sometimes on the lips.” They both looked at her.
“She’s just kind of like that,” Jem told Alistair. “Says things.”
“I get it,” Alistair said.
“He owes you a peck,” Heather insisted. “Come on, Jemothy. Cough up.”
“That’s not my name,” Jem mumbled.
“Hey, if it’ll make you happy,” Alistair said. He leaned over the counter and presented his cheek to Jem.
“Uh,” Jem said.
“We’ll both do it,” Heather said. “Ready, Jem?” She pushed herself up on the counter and gave Alistair a dry little kiss on the cheek. Jem didn’t move.
“I get it,” Alistair said, winking at Jem. “You’re a big talker. You talk the talk, but you don’t peck the peck.”
“I do,” Jem insisted, and he leaned in and gave Alistair a quick kiss, barely brushing his lips over Alistair’s warm, freshly shaved skin. Alistair smelled really good, honestly. It kinda made Jem tingly inside. He wanted to press his nose against Alistair’s neck and just breathe him in.
“Now that’s customer service,” Alistair said. He took his basket and the doughnut Heather had insisted on giving him again. He grinned at them. “See you in a couple of hours.”
“A guy like that doesn’t drive out from the city every weekend just because he likes our apples,” Heather told him. “He likes you.”
“Maybe he likes you,” Jem said.
Heather shrugs. “Everybody likes me. He likes you especially. I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
Jem squinted at her. “I don’t think so.” But he was definitely waiting for Alistair to come back, he realized, as he weighed people’s baskets of apples and took their money. His heart jumped around a little when he saw Alistair approaching, or maybe that was his stomach. He’d stress-eaten a couple of doughnuts between customers. He snuck a glance at Heather, but she was busy, thank heavens. He’d had enough of her help for one day.
“Hey, man,” he said as Alistair handed the basket over.
“Hey yourself,” Alistair said, smiling sweetly. Jem ducked his face to hide the fact that he was blushing a little. Alistair leaned on the counter. “About earlier…I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable. Seemed like kind of a joke between you and Heather, you know? I was just trying to play along.”
“What, the kiss?” Jem said airily, pretending like it hadn’t meant anything to him. “Nah. Heather’s like that. She likes to meddle. Don’t ever play Truth or Dare with her. I’ll give you that one for free.”
“Oh, that was a kiss to you?” Alistair joked. “Damn, I guess it’s a good thing I never asked for your number.”
“No, it wasn’t…” Jem started and then squinted at Alistair. “I gave you my number. It’s on the business card. You could have called any time. If, uh, you wanted to call. For whatever reason.”
“I didn’t think that was your personal number,” Alistair said. “Besides, I was kind of busy this week. Had to rush to finish all the work for a big trial so I could come out here today. Then I find out if I did call you and ask you out, the kiss I’m gonna get at the end of the date is a peck on the cheek.”
“That’s not how I kiss,” Jem protested.
Alistair raised one eyebrow and smirked.
“Not on a date, anyway,” Jem mumbled. He felt half-hypnotized by the warmth in Alistair’s deep voice and dark eyes.
“Tell you what,” Alistair said. “I’ll come back next week and you can prove it. When does the orchard close?”
“Seven,” Jem said.
Alistair nodded. “I’ll make reservations for eight. Where’s good around here?”
“My place,” Jem said boldly. “Not a better cook in the county.”
“It’s a date,” Alistair said. He checked his watch. “Hey, let me pay you for those apples.” Jem startled out of his daze and started bagging them up.
“You leaving already?” Heather said, finally disentangled from her customers. She started putting doughnuts and a half-dozen hand pies into a box. “Aww, Alistair. I feel like I barely saw you.”
“Don’t you worry,” Alistair said. “I’ll see you both next weekend.” He took the apples and the bakery box and handed over some cash.
“Y'ain’t that slick, ace,” Eliot said, but he said it fondly. He reached over and patted Hardison’s knee.
“You wanna put together the aliases, be my guest,” Hardison said, tapping at his keyboard and frowning at his screen. He softened up enough to smile at Eliot.
The date went well. Really well, actually. Jem had made dessert to go with the simple bread and stew he’d prepared, but dessert had to wait while he proved to Alistair that hell yeah, he kissed better than a peck on the cheek. Alistair made it back to his AirBnB that night, but after the next couple of weekends, he stopped bothering to book one, and they started waking up cuddled together on crisp Sunday mornings. Honestly, their relationship was pretty perfect: Alistair worked in the city in the week and came out on the weekends. Sometimes he even helped in the orchard, though operations were winding down and Jem was shifting to pumpkins, the corn maze, and hay rides, motorized and unmotorized.
“It’s not like work at all,” he said, standing in the front booth with Heather while Jem tinkered around in the engine of the old farm truck they used for hay rides sometimes. “Work is all research and computers and suits and yelling. This is peaceful. There’s fresh air. People are happy to see me.”
“I’m happy to see you,” Heather told him. He put his arm around her companionably. Jem grinned at both of them. He looked down at his stomach.
“Aw, hell,” he said. “Got grease all over my t-shirt.” He shrugged off his overshirt and reached down and stripped off his t-shirt. He put his overshirt back on and started to do up the buttons.
“WAIT,” Heather yelled. She ran to the house and came back with a glass, which she filled with cider and handed to Jem. “Alistair! Do you have your phone on you? Take a picture!”
“Way ahead of you, H,” Alistair said, coming up and crouching. “Jem, baby, strike a pose on that hay bale.”
“This is dumb,” Jem said.
“It’s absolutely not,” Alistair said. “I’ve got a buddy in advertising and we’re gonna use this to make an ad campaign for the orchard. Double your business easy.”
“We’re going to sell so much cider!” Heather said excitedly, clasping her hands together.
“Now that’s too much,” Eliot said.
“You wanna see the cider ad campaign or not?” Hardison asked.
“…yeah,” Eliot said.
“Back page,” Hardison said, still staring into his screen. Eliot flipped through. He had to admit, Hardison had done a hell of a job. He didn’t remember lying half-shirtless on a hay bale at any point, but looking at the photos, maybe he’d just forgotten. Hardison asked him to do a lot of stuff that seemed foolish at the time, and Eliot tried to forget it.
“Are we gonna use this any time soon?” he asked.
“You never know,” Hardison said mysteriously.
“I know,” Parker said, coming down from the ceiling. “And I like it. So maybe.”
“Well,” Eliot said. “Could be worse.”
“I know you know how good you’ve got it,” Hardison told him.
“Really good,” Parker agreed.
“Really good,” Eliot said, nodding along. He grinned at them. “The best.”
“And don’t you forget it,” Parker told him. “Let’s go find some cider doughnuts. I need to know what those are.”
“Let’s do it,” Eliot said, and together they pried Hardison away from his computer and went to find an orchard.
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