Think about Eliot FINALLY breaking down and conceeding the annual winter argument of:
“You don’t… you just don’t take coworkers to family holidays, Hardison! That’s… That’s a couplething!”
“Uh, no, it says it right there in the title, fam-uh-ly holidays, see, family. When’s the last time you been back to your apartment to sleep, huh?”
“That’s not-”
“When’s the last time we ate a meal together you didn’t cook?”
“Because if I didn’tthen you’d never-”
“How many handknitted sweaters did Nana send over this year, Parker?”
“Three sweaters.”
“Three sweaters. One that fits Parker here just perfect, doesn’t it babe?”
“Mmnnn,snugly.”
“And this one here, doesn’t it just really bring out my, my shoulders, and my waist ‘n stuff and like-”
“Ooooh yeah, very dashing figure. For sure.”
“Except, you see this one here… It’s way too big for Parker, but the shoulders don’t quite line up the same on me, and it’s a lil short right… right here at the waist, and-”
“Comeon, man, she probably just-”
“So we’re basically all living together above in the restaurant we own, you’re cooking all our sit-down meals, and my Nana - who hasn’t even met you - is including you in our annual tradition.”
“Sure sounds like family to me!”
“Mmn. Boom. Thank you mama. Right there.”
“Damnit.Hardison.”
“Whatever, man. Talkin’ bout coworkers. What’s wrong with you. We ain’t just been "coworkers” since we chainsawed a hole through Nate’s old apartment wall. Put the damn sweater on and get in the van.“
And they’re almost a full two hours late because even tho he won’t say it Eliot is desperate for this woman to like him. To approve of him. To impress her. For reasons he can’t unpack right now.
So he’s rifling through his ENTIRE closet trying to pick out an outfit that makes him look as small and unassuming and innocent and gentle as possible while somehow still seeming approachable and well-socialized - like when he’s on the grift.
When he comes down, Parker almost says something - taking one look at him and frowning and murmuring to Hardison about how they want to take Eliot to meet Nana, not whatever character he’s apparently come up with in the 73 minutes it took him to get ready - but Hardison stops her.
"Small victories, mama,” he whispers to her and Eliot does one last perimeter check of the locks and security system before leaving for the week. “We’re just shipping him down there, so that’s fine for now. Trust me, we’ll let Nana and The Cousins do all the hard work prying him outta that shell.”
I love how he tries to argue . He’s really attached to the idea that he’s this tough guy that doesn’t worry incessantly about his family to the point it probably keeps him up at night but damn if he won’t go to his grave rather than ADMIT THIS OUT LOUD and instead choose to grouse and grump like the big angry goose that he is about all this.
Look, bud, your big sister, wife, and husband Sophie, Parker, and Hardison know damn well that you’re both TOUGH and SENSITIVE AS ALL FUCK and they love you for it so stop trying to pretend you aren’t you big grumpy marshmallow.
Okay maybe he’s making a show of it in the 2nd and 3rd gifs for Breanna and Harry because surely THEY think he’s a tough guy without the marshmallow bits.
Of course, Breanna totally knows and is making a list of extortion material for Eliot with all his soft moments that he thinks that Breanna hasn’t picked up on. She will share that list later with Alec and Alec will be so goddamned proud of his little sister for taking up the mantle of annoying Eliot when he was away.
As for Harry, he’s totally picked up on the fact that Eliot’s a bit soft for his family but to him that makes sense so he would never question it. (Also, he’s not in the habit of questioning the team hitter because, wow that would be stupid.)
Want to watch Leverage: Redemption with a fun and friendly group of fellow Leverage fans? :D The Sunday Leverage Redemption Marathon Discord server is hosting a Leverage: Redemption marathon and everyone’s invited!
We’re running multiple streaming sessions to help fans all around the world connect and bask in the glory of our favorite thieves.
Join us on Discord! Please note that to watch with us, you will need to download the Discord app to your phone or desktop as you cannot view streaming video via the web app.
From October 10th - October 17 we will be streaming a single episode per day at four different times.
8:00AM, 12 noon, 3:00PM, 8:00PM
Hopefully you can join us no matter what time zone you happen to live in!
October 10: Episode 9 | The Bucket Job October 11: Episode 10 | The Unwellness Job October 12: Episode 11 | The Jackal Job October 13: Episode 12 | The Golf Job October 14: Episode 13 | The Hurricane Job October 15: Episode 14 | The Great Train Job October 16: Episode 15 | The Muddy Waters Job October 17: Episode 16| The Harry Wilson Job
Well actually if I were doing a Leverage soulmate au I’d make it one where they’re all actually from different backgrounds so they have different ways of finding out.
Eliot would know from true love’s first kiss. He’s always wondered what if it’s someone he killed. For a decade he remembers their names, the color of their eyes, the last thing each of them said and wonders. In his better moments he hopes he doesn’t find them, because they deserve better.
Parker always wears gloves because it’s a good idea not to leave your fingerprints everywhere when you’re a thief but also because otherwise the moment she touched her soulmate she’d leave a mark on them and they’d leave a mark on her and that’s too much, that’s permanent. She’s happier not knowing. She doesn’t need some “normal person” bringing her down and caging her in and resenting her for not fitting in to their normal boring life.
Hardison sees colors for the first time the moment he meets Eliot but he loves Parker first and spends a sleepless year, sickeningly helpless in love wondering which love he could bear to give up, can you quantify this, can you write a program that tells you the pros and the cons before he finds out that actually they’re both his. And no, he doesn’t inform anyone before he finds out.
just saying, eliot goes over to hardison and parker’s to feed them something decent, and the two are in the middle of a Teach Parker The Ways Of The Geek watch of st:tos. they are on the episode with spock’s parents. there’s the part where sarek and amanda touch fingers, and hardison excitedly tells parker about The Supreme Knowledge of vulcan hand kissing like this is important, mama. eliot tuts at him being like, the fuck that ain’t no kiss, hardison. excuse you??
“i dont know, i think its sweet,” parker says, holding her fingers to hardison who immediately taps his against hers. her gloves are gone for the night because she feels safe at home, and eliot tries desperately not to find meaning that the gloves dont reappear when he enters the room anymore.
“thank you. nice to know some people got sophistication.”
“come on. they’re just” eliot mockingly copies the movement between his two hands before shrugging full body. “that ain’t nothing.”
hardison is of course OFFENDED. he pauses the stream. “and who the hell gave you the authority to decide that?”
“trust me,” eliot says in his smarmy voice he aint been using as much in the last two years, but it comes back to hide the jolt of pain at being reminded of his soul pattern. “i know a thing or two about kisses.”
parker hums, “i think vulcans have sensitive hands.”
hardison is like, “yes! theyre touch telepaths! they are totally macking telepathically.”
“fine, ill give you vulcan magic mumbo gumbo…” eliot probably sounds more like mccoy than he would ever admit. “but what is the ambassador’s wife getting out of it? shes human, right?”
hardison is not gonna let this go. he bodily stands up and stalks over to eliot. from across the island counter dividing kitchen from living room, he holds out his index and middle fingers to eliot.
“intention, eliot. intention matters.”
“im not going to - ”
“afraid im right?”
“just do it, eliot,” parker calls from the couch. “i wanna finish the episode.”
“fine!” he copies hardison’s finger positions and touches the tips against hardison’s like how spock’s parents did in the show. he lets it linger for a bit, feeling stupid, but before he can call it off… hardison presses against him a little harder. barely noticable. then hardison slips his fingers down just a little, the pads tracking down to the first knuckle, the second… before lifting back slow and deliberate back to the starting position. he goes it again, and he has the biggest shiteating grin on his face, fuck, but this time he tracing down to the folded L of where eliot’s index falls to his thumb. hardison tucks his fingers into eliot’s palm for a second before returning up up up to their start. tips against tips.
hardison knows he has won and doesnt need to rub it in anymore than he has sunk his fingers into eliot’s hand. but the moment needs some sort of punctuation, it feels… heavy in a way he doesnt quite get, so hardison says “told you” as he finally pulls back.
eliot tries not to use his training against his crew, tries to not startle them so they can forget he ain’t quite like everyone else, not no more… but it is in less than a blink of an eye that he has got hardison’s palm clutched in his hand.
“uh. eliot?”
eliot’s stomach has dropped and his knees feel like they’re gonna fold under him and there are tears welling in his eyes and… he can only clutch harder. he never… after he saw the lovesick eyes hardison gave parker and the confused but curious looks parker gave back, eliot closed up shop on ever thinking they were his in any way he could claim his love to. but…
“intention,” eliot coughs out in a laugh.
“what?”
“oh,” parker says and she is beside them, silently having tiptoed over which eliot hadnt noticed because he is losing his entire shit. she and eliot make meaningful eye contact. “true love’s first,” she names for eliot and hardison stops trying to pull away. eliot nods in confirmation, shaken, which gets a huge smile from her.
they look to hardison as he sputters out the start of a sentence. he tries again. “i saw my colors on that first job, seeing you. parker came in so quick afterward and it was so dark so, so i never could tell if it was just you, or if your colors slipped into what she gave me, or maybe i imagined seeing the blue of your eyes before she dropped in but…”
hardison turns his hand into eliot’s and holds on.
and hell fucking yes. everything’s coming together. one thing’s missing, though (two things, really).
parker carefully reaches for the wrist of the hand eliot’s got clutching hardison. she carefully removes the wristband hes got there. now with the L of her index and her thumb, she slides a hold over eliot’s wrist knowing without looking she’s spilling a wine stain where they touch. she pulls eliot away from hardison (just for this moment) and to join the him and parker on the other side of the counter.
eliot does look down at the proof of parker’s soul pattern left on them both. hardison does as well, and yeah, okay? tears? they are a'flowing.
“hey eliot,” parker teases, “wanna show me what intentions you got for me?” she wiggles her eyebrows seductively, just to make sure he gets the message.
and when eliot swoops in to press his lips against hers, he knows just what he is finding in the kiss for the first time in his life.
If you don’t, you miss gems like this where they’re talking about the fact the show is set when it is.
JOHN ROGERS: And that’s why Parker has the line, “Eliot was very concerned.” Because Eliot would have been the one in the big, giant house that they all share where he’s all like, “Man why isn’t she callin’ us, what’s going on?”
(some/all of this will be going into my current wip coming out soon but i need to riff for a sec about leverage international deciding to actually consider their hitters’ limits. significant contributions from my bud cecil.)
there won’t be another eliot spencer.
for a lot of reasons, obviously. perfection was achieved early with that hot piece of punchy hands eye candy, and it’s hard to become a boogeyman when eliot’s name is already a whisper in the night. but there won’t be another eliot spencer because leverage international does not fucking allow shit like the (un)knowing exploitation of a hitters body anymore. there won’t be another hitter spending their retirement with pains that wont go away and mornings they can’t get up and a fog in their brain that steals memories and thoughts and words with the precision of a thief, but these are stolen objects not even the best retrieval specialists could ever bring back.
there won’t be another eliot spencer, not under parker and alec’s watch.
masterminds (or whatever they decide to call their point) have to budget field time for hitters. as such, teams usually have at least two, so no one is doing consecutive jobs or working after a bad hit. hitters join a team and their masterminds must have a proposal to parker within the year of what alternative role hitters will be trained for over time. eight years is the absolute limit for hitter only assignments, four after that for mixed roles inclusive of hitter, but those twelve years total is pushing it to the very max.
theres no private hot nurses you pretend are just a hook up and are rly actual nurses. theres a league of health care professionals recruited to help. they are better trained than typical US health care orders. no “black people feel less pain/have stronger bones/extra muscles” or “women complain more/have a lower pain tolerance” bullshit in their medical network. no gender essentialism bullshit about bodies or transphobic language or practices. therapy aint mandatory but damn is it recommended hard.
the episode in 2.0 with the woman whose cop ex stalked her planted a seed. like, fuck why dont we check in. and even if there’s not an active bad guy doing shit,, getting your life together and recovering from the trauma of victimization? that is hard.
leverage international becomes an ecosystem.
social worker has a bad taste in parkers mouth, so they call it something else. people who care. people who will check in. you are part of our protection forever like let’s change the world. you guys are the good guys and can do things we can’t imagine. so we are going to make sure you can do your thing, because theres only so much of an arms race we can do with bad guys vs bad guys.
truly an arms race: if it was nate’s leverage international, they would be running fire through the world and taking down every fucker around and itll be warfare, as eliot says in the finale of 1.0. and that’s how it starts with just them three but idk they didnt have to live like that. they shouldn’t, and they teach others they shouldnt either. because how many bad guy security folks are told they have to start hitting harder & bring bigger guns, but they weren’t so sure about this job to begin with, and maybe now is a good exit time? and then they end up on leverage’s payroll instead.
nate would be disappointed about how slowly they are taking own the bad guys with so many people involved.
but nate would never have come up with this in all his plans. this kind of collaboration just wasn’t in his alphabet. because as @july-19th-clubargued so well, god love that ornery bastard but nate? nate never had that vision, you know? because this truly an extension of hardison’s love. alec is here to make the world a better shelter for those he loves.
and by bre’s time, recognition has shifted to “actually, this isn’t just the scaled up adult version of a bully on the playground. this is the system. they have a network. we need to build our own.”
the jobs are slower and paced because (1) the bad guys are spooked because the fuckis going on why cant anyone keep their money why is everyone going to actual jail; (2) their hitters are getting more ruthless; (3) leverage is like trying not to destroy their crews thru exhaustion; and (4) Plan Fucking Ms are goddamn unacceptable like the fuck nate thr fuck,,, parkers three jobs in tryna run leverage like nate and like how did you joke about that how do you have so casually in your brain like, oh yeah hardison the “”“"weak”“”“ one dies.
people are going to get hurt and die, because what they do is dangerous and you cannot account for it all and no one can replicate the magic skill/luck that was working with the OG leverage crew. but. but. if they need to scale back and slow down and have bigger teams and more training or whateverto protect their fucking family then fuck it. that’s what they will fucking do.
there won’t be another eliot spencer, but he will always be remembered. known. but the legacy of eliots work is not that he was an indestructible force. but the knowledge that every life is sacred and to be protected, not just the ppl you are putting your body in front of to defend but also yourself. and thats? thats love. thats a world truly changing and changed.
Eliot signing autographs for his adoring public for anonymous.
Haaaaa, so here are some things i have to say about this:
Look at Hardison in that second gif, aka when he is sure that Eliot is not looking at him. Look at his pleased little smile. Look at his little thumbs up. Look at his delight at Eliot’s delight, which he of course quickly conceals once Eliot turns around, because he knows Eliot will have more fun if the more Hardison pretends to be bothered about it. Look how right he is about that. Look.
Actually though this episode contains my second least-favorite Alec Hardison character beat in the series, topped only by the horrible tipping scene (which I talked about here as an addition to an amazing post that you should read anyway, regardless of my attached rant about the horrible tipping scene, because it’s incredible). But look, okay, I am sorry, but here is the thing: this is Alec ‘Hearteyes’ Hardison we’re talking about here. Alec ‘Don’t Worry About The Cloud Of Love That Extends Around Me Six Feet In Every Direction, It’s Always Like That, There’s Just Too Much Of It To Fit Inside My Body’ Hardison. Alec ‘I Canonically Spend My Weekends Making You Guys Costumes For Potential Cons’ Hardison! Alec ‘I Love Parker And Eliot So Much That Sometimes It Is Literally Painful To Watch The Way My Face Lights Up When I Look At Them,’ Hardison, okay! That is the guy we are talking about, and there is no way that guy would ever, in one million years, walk out of a baseball game that Eliot was playing and kicking ass in. SORRY CHARLIE, THAT JUST WOULD NOT HAPPEN. Alec would be glued to his seat and shoving popcorn in his mouth while nudging the complete stranger next to him and being like, “Hey, hey! Did you see that? That amazing triple? That’s my – he’s – that’s my dude out there. That is my boy.” The ONLY reason Alec could have for walking out of a baseball game in which Eliot was playing is if he was going home to get, like, his DSLR and his decent video equipment in order to record this for posterity, or possibly because he wanted throw Eliot off the trail so he wouldn’t be expecting Alec to show up at the NEXT game, with said DSLR and video equipment, to record it for posterity. POSTERITY WOULD BE INVOLVED, THOUGH. Posterity or bust.
And this is why, in my head, there is a missing scene in The Three Strikes Job where Hardison and Parker go to one of Eliot’s game in like, super ridiculous obnoxious fan clothes, Hardison with his camera basically glued to his hand and Parker with a ring of blue cotton candy sugar around her mouth because she’s eaten like 14 of the stupid things. And they sit just behind first base, and every time Eliot comes up to bat Parker leans a little too far over the railing and screams “AY BATTER BATTER BATTER,” at the top of her lungs, and Hardison has to like, do a super shitty half-assed job of hiding his camera while Eliot glares at them. But he doesn’t actually try that hard to hide it, and Eliot isn’t doing a very good job with the hiding thing either since posterity is TOTALLY going to see all those little grins Eliot can’t quite manage to suppress, and when Hardison says to the guy next to him, “That’s my dude, okay, that’s my boy,” he doesn’t both concealing his pride even though the dude looks a little uncomfortable, especially when Parker nods happily and adds, “He’s really good at hitting stuff.” And when the game ends they wait around for Eliot in the parking lot, and he pretends he’s all mad – “You’re going to blow the con,” he says, clearly not meaning it, and then “Jesus, Parker, how many cotton candies did you eat,” which he clearly means a little more – and Hardison just grins and slings his camera bag over his shoulder, laughing outright when Parker climbs onto Eliot’s back and kisses him on the cheek, because while posterity doesn’t need Eliot’s outraged squawk of “Damn it, Parker! You’re all sticky, I swear to god, I’m telling the cotton candy vendors not to fucking serve you next time,” Alec himself is really, really enjoying it.
8 year old Hardison holding a drawing: this is you. (points at the red line on the figure drawing) This is your badness level. It’s unusually high for someone your size
