#hardison
going feral about hardison this thursday morning. its about how another partner wouldve used parker’s abilities for their own profit. its about how another partner wouldve had eliot do their head busting for them. but its hardison, who gets them a headquarters. fakes some very good aliases. keeps them hidden. keeps them safe. keeps them together in boston. builds a home in portland. builds a home in new orleans. he learns from parker and eliot because he wants to. and they learn from him because they trust him so much. he wants to be parkers friend and he spends almost a third of his screen time doing thief stuff with her. he wants to be friends with eliot and the only thing he ever asks him to do for him is cook. he spends almost a third of his screen time busting heads alongside eliot. and they spend their time grifting with him and you can’t tell me they don’t learn how to be part of a team through their grifting scenes with hardison. and he never asks them to perform their abilities for his own personal gain. obviously because if he wanted a ton of money hes a competent enough thief on his own but its about the fact that parker would take anything for him if he asked and eliot. well. everyone knows how eliot feels he can’t keep it to himself. because all he asks them to do is watch star trek with him.
hardison would have waited for parker for forever, which is why he didn’t have to
A saw a post mentioning the Leverage crew alerting their teammates to trouble by calling them up and pretending to be calling their spouse, and now I want a fic where Hardison tries to pull this with Eliot (at a time Eliot has no real reason to expect him to be in any danger) and his “tip-off” completely flops. And after it’s been sorted out and Hardison rescued:
Eliot: “Next time give me a signal! How was I supposed to know you were in trouble?!”
Hardison: “…I called you up out of the blue and said ‘Hey, sugarplum. What’s up?’ How was that not a signal that something was going on?!”
Eliot:“YOU ALWAYS TALK LIKE THAT! You call me 'baby’ all the time!”
Hardison, who has been so disciplined about restraining himself from using any endearments for Eliot beyond the supposedly “universal” baby (which, despite claiming to be universal, he coincidentally never uses for, e.g., Nate) to avoid scaring him off: “YOU’RE TELLING ME 'BABY’ AND 'SUGARPLUM’ARE EQUIVALENT TO YOU?!”
BTW, this absolutely results in Hardison calling Eliot every endearment he can think of in lieu of his name for the next month, the more over-the-top the better, ostensibly to rub in just how not-usual that is. (It certainly has nothing to do with Hardison having a list of endearments he’s tempted to use for his people but is afraid would spook them. That would be weird. And ridiculous.)
Eliot reacts way less than Hardison expects. It takes multiple days of this (and a “schnookums”) to even elicit the first “OK, you’ve made your point!” grumble. He really doesn’t object (as long as it’s not threatening a con, and Hardison does use his cover names where needed), so it’s all fine…until Parker attempts to follow suit.
The first time Parker says “Sugar, can you hand me my lockpicks,” Nate groans, Sophie’s eyebrows shoot up, and Eliot doesn’t even look up from the blueprints he’s studying. A moment passes. Parker frowns.
“El, I think Parker just asked you a question.”
Eliot looks up distractedly. “Oh, sorry, darlin’. What’d you say?”
“Isaid, 'Sugar, can you hand me my lockpicks.’”
Dead silence falls again. Eliot stares at Parker, expression completely blank. His hand is frozen in midair above the table, still holding the printout he was reading. Parker’s frown deepens, and she looks at Hardison for support. “Am I doing it wrong? I know people say 'sugar’! I looked up a list!”
“Yeah, mama. You did great. Just…give him a minute.” Hardison’s desperately trying not to laugh.
It takes almost 90 seconds for Eliot’s brain to reboot enough for him to fumble for the lockpicks and stammer “S–sorry, you wanted these?”
