Have you finished your Leverage rewatch in anticipation of Redemption? ;) If so (and if not?), information of interest:
Aldis Hodge played “Raymond” (never actually named in dialogue, I think?), Samuel L. Jackson’s Zeus Carter’s li’l baby nephew in 1995’s Die Hard With a Vengeance in which uhhhh there is a conversation about 9 minutes in about things that are important to one Alec Hardison’s solo and team careers such as: you have to earn respect; return a MESSAGE when people try to use you/get you to take the fall; guys who sell drugs or have guns are bad; nobody’s gonna help us so we’re gonna help ourselves.
Most importantly: “We’re the good guys.”
Then, as we know, Leverage ran 2008-2012.
In 2013, Aldis played “Foxy” in A Good Day to Die Hard. Sure, he was in it for two minutes, but that’s more than enough for my little fannish heart. Sure, he’s randomly in a military uniform deeply embedded in some CIA black op, but, you know. He’s just gotten better since the Agent Hagen and Agent Thomas days.
Like, I have feelings about Zeus being Nana’s brother. Or maybe pre-foster-care-Alec’s uncle. But preferably Nana’s brother. Nana could totally be from Harlem, right? Uncle Zeus is good with math and electronics and stuff, and super invested in his nephews’ education. I can draw a line from that to hacking, right?
I have feelings about Nana Family Gatherings where Zeus reminisces with begrudging fondness about his Crazy White Dude McClane and Raymond Alec is finally able to compete (less begrudgingly, much more fondly) with his Crazy White Dude Eliot stories. Yeah, my Crazy White Dude does all that WITHOUT guns, who’s got the Crazier White Dude?
I have feelings about “Foxy” being a Leverage International Job Cover and Alec having to accommodate that John-McClane-ness on the fly, because yeah John McClane isn’t considered even in, like, Plan M. Nobody plans for John McClane. Even people who do plan for John McClane.
I have feelings. And no attention span to turn them into fic, woe.
They don’t have superpowers. They don’t. Or at least, they don’t have superpowers.
Sure, Nate jokes that he’s psychic. It’s a con he’s played on more than one mark, not counting the times Sophie (or, memorably, Tara) picked up the role. The rumors of precognition floated around him as an investigator no matter how much he insisted otherwise. As his reputation as a thief grew, so did the rumors. Being assumed as a seer of some kind has been a help as much as a hindrance, really, but it deters more trouble than it attracts, so Nate’s let the rumor lie.
But there are times, once in a while, when Nate pauses. His voice will get raspy. Usually it’s just a word: duck, stop, run, wait. The team has learned that you don’t argue when he uses that voice, because he’s always right, and it’s saved their lives more than once. Nate calls it a feeling, or an instinct, and then changes the subject. One time, when he was drunk and pressed, he slurred, “It didn’t save my son.” After that, they stopped asking.
Sophie isn’t actually a shapeshifter, not like in that 1970’s footage of the person changing, one face after another sliding across their body like a slideshow. They know Sophie can’t do that, because she’s a good liar but they know she cares, and if she could do that, she would have, when they were in a few tight spots where a change of face would have stopped the violence.
But there’s something just slightly too good about her performances, sometimes. Even though it’s her skills that sell it, her features never betray her. Her skin is always just enough of the right shade. Her eyes are always just close enough to the right shape. It could be written off as the mind playing tricks, except that Hardison keep having to update his facial analysis algorithms, because they keep getting Sophie wrong. People who have met her before swear they haven’t, and vice versa.
Eliot is easy to pin down, if harder to prove. It’s just not natural for anyone to take that much damage and never need a hospital. He always waves it off, insists it’s not as bad as it looks, but that doesn’t explain why he has smooth skin in places where he absolutely should have scars, given the injuries he’s acquired during their work.
One day Hardison cracks the right server and finds a photo he recognizes on a list in a military database. After that, he notices the way Eliot reacts to mentions of super soldiers and government experiments. It’s subtle. It could be mistaken for the general dislike many army grunts have of superheroes, if he didn’t know better.
Parker also has instinctive reactions, though she denies them even while tensing, just enough for her teammates to notice, around large men in lab coats when they tower over her, around needles and syringes. She doesn’t know why because she was far too young to remember anything before the endless foster homes.
When she trusts them, eventually, they get glimpses of Parker dislocating joints that shouldn’t be able to dislocate and popping them back into place without blinking or bruising. It’s a bit too much for even the most limber double-jointed acrobats. Hardison thinks of cats, who can fold their collarbones to fit through tight spaces, and deliberately does not go looking for Parker’s past.
And Hardison? Hardison doesn’t think he has anything at all above baseline. Sure, he’s always talked to his tech. He names his computers, the vans, the robots. He whispers soothing encouragements or desperate pleas off-mic. Like any good programmer, he’s irrationally superstitious, but he doesn’t really, logically, objectively think much of it, until the day when Parker thrusts her phone in his face, cracked and probably irreparably dead, and tells him to ask it to turn on for just a bit longer so they can call for help.
He does. It does. Parker seems completely unsurprised. Haridison starts being more aware of how he talks to things, starts leaning how to feel the connections that he’s been tapping into unconsciously his whole life.
They don’t have superpowers. But then again, none of them ever claimed to be normal.
sterling is so funny because the leverage crew gives him endless grief and they snark at him and he snarks back but god forbid some other department wants to jail them or something because excuse me that’s his group of bothersome thieves and no one can touch them except him
okay but white collar crossover where interpol is called into the fbi for a case of art theft in nyc and sterling IMMEDIATELY ids the thiefsome from like the two (2) very blurry images they managed to get and the harvard team is speculating the hell out of them
and sterling is just like,,, wow this is new, I’ve never seen this before *whistles*
and peter can TOTALLY tell sterling knows more than he’s letting on and is like,,, sir,,, pls tell me what you know about these thieves
and sterling just grins and says ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about’ very unconvincingly (for the meme, of course) so of course peter knows he’s lying but his voice also left no room for questioning so he’s fuming in the background because he doesn’t want an unsolved case to bring down their closure rate
meanwhile neal is super suspicious of sterling because he totally gets the vibe that he’s covering for these thieves and the sterling that chased him five years ago like a hound for a degas he stole would never do something like that so he’s like ???
eliot spencer is really out here like “well i have to eat to live so i might as well be good at cooking right? and make sure i shop locally and support farmers and small grocery stores so that i know that nobody was hurt in the process of me getting food to eat. and if im making food, might as well make it for other people, so that i know i can give them something that nourishes their body especially if i know they live on dry cereal and orange soda. uh oh. do i suddenly have a reason to live for?” and we just let him
“being ten pounds of crazy in a five pound bag burns a lot of calories, and staying in physical condition to zipline down buildings means protein and carbs, and since somebodydoesn’t eat anything except chocolate (and the occasional pretzel) when left to their own devices….”
Hardison:“You know, Fermi’s Paradox says that it’s improbable for other life forms to exist?”
Eliot:“Yeah? Well, Drake’s Equation shows that over and around the hundred billion stars in our galaxy there’s up to ten thousand planets with a technological civilization!” [Hardison stares at him. Eliot’s grin widens and he pops his eyebrows] “You never know when you’re gonna have to fight an alien.”
things I love about this line:
eliot’s little grin that starts near the end of his speech. he’s so excited he can’t even keep a straight face till the end.
hardison’sstare
eliot is so proud!!!!! nerd boyfriend, look!! look i’m flirting with you!!! i’m bickering in Nerd aren’t you surprised? aren’t you proud of me?!!!
waiting for the payoff this line about fighting aliens in the reboot. just sayin’, fighting on ice got its payoff, give me alien fights payoff too. only seems fair.
I know Eliot’s single-con “baseball career” was too short for this to actually make sense, but I have a sudden delightful mental picture of pre-season 3 Damien Moreau sitting in some expensive cushy office, studying a Roy Chappell baseball card* in utter confusion, trying to figure out 1) whether that is actually Eliot Spencer and 2) if so…why?
*The baseball card of course features a photo of “Roy” smiling mid-game, hair at maximum floof.
You say this as if Hardison did not actually design a limited edition Roy Chappell baseball card and hack the Topps website to add it to the catalog. AND as if the limited edition Roy Chappell Topps cards didn’t sell out within an hour and promptly create mass chaos at Topps’ HQ because a) no one knows who this guy is and b) where are these cards and how are they going to ship things that don’t exist and c) 5-10 business days later: HOW are we getting reviews on the website about a product we did not ship to customers because we do not have?
okay so in the same vein as this postby@deeisace (hardison is june’s nephew)
it’s post-canon for leverage and in the middle of white collar canon
so parker, hardison, and eliot are in new york city for a con and hardison is like, I want y’all to meet my aunt, she’s great! her husband was actually a conman and she taught me some skills! she’s super nice and I think you’ll really like her!
parker loves the idea of her immediately, and eliot is already planning dishes to make her in his mind, so they’re all really excited
and then they meet her and it goes swimmingly, of course! june loves parker and is impressed by her pickpocket skills and is infatuated with eliot’s country boy charm and manners
she says in passing that she’s actually housing a thief at the moment
AND THEN NEAL AND MOZZIE WALK IN AND ITS LIKE
*record scratch* *freeze frame*
eliot: neal?
neal: eliot?
parker: mozzie?
mozzie: parker?
neal: did you just say parker, like theparker?!?
hardison: aunt june ???
neal:aUNT JUNE?!?
(basically, it’s the spiderman pointing meme mixed with the shrek 2 dinner scene)
and then they all find out that everyone knew each other except hardison- of course, just his luck- although they all have heard of one another
maybe neal and mozzie don’t know that the leverage crew is actually good (think: sophie’s old partner thought they were ‘the baddest crew this side of the country’ or whatever it was lol)
neal is like ‘june, you condone this???’
june is like ‘of course, he’s my little robin hood’
mozzie is like ‘they literally rigged a court trial. they blew up a train. they rigged an election and took over a country!’
(parker: it was a small country tho
eliot: ,,,babe)
hardison is like ‘yeah, but we help people. we made sure a corrupt medical corporation paid for their misdeeds and a widow got justice for her husband. the train had an emp bomb that would take out a city. and we took down damien moreau in san lorenzo.’
neal: …you took down damien moreau???
parker: yeah, like it’s hard?
(hardison and eliot, who just watched legally blonde with her two nights ago: …)
basically it would be a super chaotic meeting ensued by crime hijinks when neal, mozzie, and june help with the con for funzies
(peter, across the city, watching neal’s anklet tracking data while his mental neal bullshit alarm going off: …nEAL)
+ bonus
neal finds out the three of them are partners both in crime and in life and is like why can’t that be me
mcsweeten being in leverage redemption and still having not a clue that parker and hardison are, in fact, not federal agents and are actually world-class criminals
or at some point between the finale and now he did find out, and then some government official gets wind of one of their heists and is jabbing their finger at a blurry image of parker and hardison mid-thievery and with a completely straight face, mcsweeten explains that guys, those are agents hagen and thomas and they are working on an undercover op and were in no way at all involved of what is inconveniencing the government now
and the government official keeps trying to explain they are criminals but mcsweeten just pulls up their dossiers and credentials and he can literally see the vein throbbing in the man’s forehead but he just smiles says that he has personally worked with agent hagen and would trust her with his life
OT3 things I would very much like in the Leverage reboot:
- Eliot begrudgingly filling up an already well stocked cupboard with even more cereal and an entirely separate fridge with orange soda. (He comes home with nothing else, despite saying he was going to go get Brewery supplies.)
- Hardison covering the other two with a blanket when they are tuckered out after a job. A sleepy Parker complaining she wants the blanket Eliot knitted her for Christmas, causing Sophie to raise an eyebrow and Eliot to blush and mutter “she gets cold”.
- Background hand-holding.
- Parker climbing into their laps during job briefings and the other two glaring when someone points out there are three other couches/chairs she could sit on. Occasionally she’ll be eating cereal and casually offers whoever she’s sitting on a spoonful. (Hardison always accepts but Eliot always looks like he’s going to cry over whatever rainbow concoction Parker has in her bowl and when her head is turned tries to sneak some vitamin C in there.)
- Hardison developed an allergy over the years - maybe to dogs or cats- but he never remembers to bring his meds with him. Eliot and Parker know this and you always see them in the background each pocketing the meds before they head out on a job.
- Sophie comes in to the Brewery and asks where Eliot is. They shrug and say “he said it was date night”. Cut to Parker throwing a screaming Hardison off a building and Eliot telling him fondly “you can pick where we go next time” when he gets to the bottom.
- COMPETENCE PORN MONTAGE.
- A flashback scene where Eliot is on a side-job with Quinn who asks “so how’s the family?” as they fight their way out of a basement and Eliot says “fine. Parker wants a dog” before punching a guy in the face.
- On a job, Parker is pretending to be a Suburban Mom or something and someone asks “will your husband be coming to the game on Friday?” Parker Does Not Like This Person - they’ve been aggressively hitting on her all day - and very deliberately replies “which one?”
- Clothes sharing. Eliot taking out his hair tie and offering it to Parker because hers snapped in the middle of a job. Hardison stealing Eliot’s jacket when he gets cold (and Eliot letting him). (Since Aldis Hodge won’t be present as often as the rest of the cast) Parker stopping in the middle of a job rundown to sniff Eliot’s t-shirt and say knowingly “I miss him too” (he’s literally only been gone three days to see Nana) before stripping and also changing into one of Alec’s shirts.
- Postcards or emails from kids they’ve taken in and helped over the years. Sometimes they send Parker, Hardison and Eliot names of people who could use their help. Like “Lacy just texted me to say three of her neighbors have been made homeless. We should check that out.” “Is she still working for that bakery?” “She’s running it now.” Eliot softly, “that’s my girl.” Alternatively, Parker: “JAMIE JUST STOLE THEIR FIRST INTERNATIONAL STATUE, I’M SO PROUD!! ELIOT SEND THEM CAKE!”
- Stolen memorabilia in the apartment from over the years and when Sophie picks up something and asks about it Parker perks up and says “that’s from our third-first anniversary!” “Third-first?” Parker gets a dreamy look in her eyes and replies “to mark the first time we stole the crown jewels together.” “The crown - wait the FIRST time?” (In the background someone says “how many anniversaries do you guys have?” and Hardision and Eliot share a long suffering look before saying “don’t ask”.)
- Hardison still trying to convince Eliot virtual-reality fishing is better and when they begin to argue there’s a cut to several flashbacks where Eliot tries to teach Hardison to fish for real and Hardison either always ends up falling into the pond/lake or manages to somehow capsize the boat when trying out “new fishing tech”. It’s just a solid three minutes of Eliot yelling “dammit, Hardison!” followed by a loud splash.
- Whenever you see Hardison in Lucille, there is a digital photo frame just far enough out of shot you know it has a permanent place there that shows pictures of the three of them on a loop. (It’s clear Hardison has a favourite photo - Eliot and Parker laughing and covered in baking flour- because it appears no less than eight times during one loop.)
