Dream melodramatic ot3 declaration of feelings scenario (that I’m thinking about post-s5, but could certainly work for Redemption) is this:
This time it’s Eliot who steps on the bomb.
They’re only meant to be doing recon, and he almost wants to laugh when he hears the click, a little past the boundary of their mark’s sprawling land. Years of precautions and paranoia and he’s about to get taken out by a fucking booby-trap like an expendable character in one of Hardison’s action movies.
Parker and Hardison are still walking up ahead, and for a second he thinks about letting them go, letting them get clear of the danger zone and then just lifting his foot. Only he swallows, watching them, lump rising fast in his throat—he hasn’t been scared of death itself for a long, long time, but the idea of never talking to them again, never looking at them again, never telling them—
Well. It’s unbearable.
Besides that, while the placement of the device suggests it’s the only one, he can’t be sure, and besides that, it doesn’t take them long to notice he’s no longer right behind them.
‘You okay?’ Hardison calls, and the look on Eliot’s face must be answer enough, because they’re both coming back to him before he can choke out a warning.
‘So yeah,’ he manages, when they’re within a few feet of him. He holds himself very, very still, even as his heart seems to hurl itself over and over at the walls of his chest. ‘Looks like our guy went to the Udall school of home security.’
‘Eliot,’ Parker whispers, eyes dropping to his feet. Her mouth sets into a firm line. ‘How do we fix this?’
‘You can’t.’
‘It’s okay; we’re gonna figure it out,’ Hardison assures him.
‘You should get out of here,’ Eliot says, through gritted teeth. There are no wires for Parker to pull this time, no clever computer resets for Hardison to try.
‘We’re not doing that,’ Hardison says immediately, dropping to a crouch to try to get a better look at the barely-buried pressure plate, and Eliot wants to scream.
‘You need—I’m serious, you both need to get as far away as possible. We don’t know if this thing’s on a timer or—’
‘Then we’d better figure it out fast,’ Parker says, squatting down next to Hardison.
Then they’re talking to each other, the two of them, but he’s not really processing what they’re saying. Instead his pulse is thundering in his ears and he’s thinking about the pie he’d planned on making later. How they’d have both picked at the raw pastry and he’d have pretended to be annoyed at them. How they’d have argued they had just as much say in how this pie came together, because Eliot had dragged them out of the city to pick the berries specially (had watched the two of them goof around—Parker smushing a ripe blackberry against Hardison’s mouth and then kissing the deep purple stains away, Hardison putting Parker up on his shoulders so she could reach high into the hedgerows—and felt the odd mix of longing and deep contentment that is sunk into his bones by now, thrumming warm and sweet through his veins, settled forever into every atom).
It would’ve been good, that pie, and it would have been even better to watch them eat it, Parker with so much ice cream she’d get brain freeze, Hardison with that awful powder mix custard, at their dinner table in their home that they built together.
‘I need to tell you something,’ Eliot says.
‘—makes sense that it’d be deactivated remotely,’ Hardison is saying.
‘I need to tell you something,’ Eliot says, louder.
It really IS like [Eliot in the shower, curtain pulls back, Hardison: “hey are we - stop screaming it’s just me - are we past your emotional and physical barriers yet?”] tho.
I want this fic. I want BOTH of these fics. I want Hardison & Parker deciding that if Eliot isn’t going to be talkative on his own, the occasional fun and festive Shower Ambush is the way to go. He’s flustered enough to shoot answers from the hip, and naked enough to not escape easily. The escalation from ‘where’s the orange soda?’ to ‘you know we know you love us, right?’ would be a thing of beauty.
Plus, who’s going to pass up that gun (…and etc.) show? (Hardison is, because he’s a gentleman whose Nana raised him right. He [mostly] doesn’t look. Parker looks. Unabashedly. And occasionally tries to poke a scar that she hasn’t seen before. At one point a slap fight may or may not happen.)
AASJSHDHSHDHHSD“flustered enough to shoot answers from the hip and naked enough to not escape easily”
I’LL TAKE PHRASES THAT WILL LIVE IN MY HEAD RENT FREE FROM NOW ON FOR 500 ALEX
…so I wrote this It turned out SLIGHTLY more intense in places than I’d anticipated, but I kept my goofy first title idea anyway… and a lot of specific lines from this thread. So thanks to @eliot-wolfgirl-spencer,@bisexualeliotspencer, and @sun-lit-roses for the inspiration!
And I hope you all enjoy my offering of Shower Thoughts: Five times Hardison and Parker interrupt Eliot’s shower and one time he gets revenge interrupts Hardison’s
i’m just obsessed with the fact that the three of them still work so many years later. from what i’ve gotten textually from the show, yes, hardison and parker are dating, but the family unit is hardison/parker/eliot.
hardison and parker are shown to be physically affectionate, but there’s an electric and stable type of connectedness between all of them showing how in each other’s lives they have been:
eliot and hardison pointing where the stolen art belong,
parker and eliot always ending up together,
parker and hardison getting excited together,
the inside jokes,
the big decision making.
parker highlights his emotional connection to this specific team and eliot brings out his sense of duty. the other couldn’t provide the emotional support the other can, but as a unit, there’s help at every corner. parker still has eliot who has been her partner in (undoing) crime for years. eliot has parker, his partner that keeps him sharp. and both of them rest easy knowing hardison is using his big heart for good.
however, while canon has established that they have thoroughly,
thoroughly,
thoroughly
been in each other’s lives, it has not been explicitly stated it’s a polyamorous thing. canon, for me, would be them saying in no uncertain terms that eliot has also lived with them, or something like that. or perhaps, they would establish it in the middle of the second half of the season.
that being said, i have an enormous amount of fun with the show, and for whatever reason we haven’t been able to get our canon ot3, i’m so happy we see them as a family first and foremost, because it would have been so easy to let that disappear between the years.
Headcanon that right after THAT scene in redemption, the next moment Hardison and Parker have on their own Hardison turns to Parker and goes “What do you mean ‘Eliot’s looking for romance’? What do you mean "It’s not the same with us?! Babe, are we- are wenot dating Eliot, somehow?” “I don’t think he thinks he is dating us. He’s just dating us… platonically.” “We said "til death do us part”.“ "Hm-hm.” “We’ve been living together for the past 8 years. We have cuddle piles. I figured he isn’t into the sexy stuff with us but more power to him and-” “Maybe we should have talked about it.” “I thought we did! I bought him a brewpub! I thought it was obvious! Who says 'til death do us part’ platonically!” “Eliot.” “… But we’re still good, right?” “Yeah, of course, all the pretzels.” “And we’re both still in love with Eliot.” “Naturally.” “Good. Okay, cool, that’s a relief, at least that.” “…” “…” “Let’s go steal us an Eliot?” “Let’s go steal us an Eliot. Properly this time.”
what she means: when parker tells eliot, “i’m scared you’ll move on from all this and i can’t do this without you,” it’s a direct parallel to the, “can you hear me, alec? i need you” scene in the grave danger job ep of the og show. that parker can express this to eliot without the pressure of a life-or-death situation is an enormous testament to her growth over the past offscreen decade, and the line also thematically establishes eliot as a part of parker’s life who is just as important as her current romantic partner. we thought these three people had sorted their shit a decade ago, but what we’re actually watching unfold is the slow coalescing of this found family, as eliot realizes he doesn’t want to deprive himself of good things and parker realizes she feels upset and threatened by eliot’s relationship without understanding why. parker’s jealousy is ALSO new and seems to have taken her by surprise, which means that as eliot is realizing he’s been repressing his desires, parker herself is realizing she has wants and needs that she’s never quite quantified before. add to all this the absolute fucking hilarity of eliot’s Viscerally Disturbed reaction to being called parker’s brother, and you have two people who are transparently in love but not quite far enough in their character arcs to be able to acknowledge it. hardison’s absence has made both eliot and parker way crazier to both their benefit and detriment. he needs to come home but all three of them are in fucking love and every arc choice happening here is amazing holy god i can’t believe i get to watch this i’m losing my fucking mind
I have come to the decision that I need to read more Leverage fics where Eliot goes on a rampage and just absolutely obliterates a bunch of people for taking/hurting Parker or Hardison. This could mean him slipping back into Murder Eliot mode, ruthless and calculating and efficient no one who gets in his way is left alive or this could mean him going off script; Nate, Sophie and Parker or hardison (whoever wasn’t taken ofc) try to make a plan and figure it out but when they finally look up to ask Eliot his input he’s just fuckin gone, and they’re all like shit fuck Eliot’s about to kill people, but Eliot only knocks everybody out and comes back in later with whoever was taken/hurt cradled in his arms and he’s just whispering reassurances and comfort to them and maybe he’s injured bc he couldn’t care less about being hurt he just had to get them back and eventually he’ll tend to himself but right now parker/hardison is the priority and besides, he’s always had worse and is well equipped to handle a “little” pain (depending on how much you like whump) and just aidbsbsndjxj
Lots of protective!Eliot and ot3 vibes
Anyway hit me up with links if ya know anything like that pls or maybe I should write smth like this myself
[id: 3 screenshots from the show leverage and leverage: redemption: Hardison as Wade Perkins from the 3 days of the hunter job, Eliot as Willie Riker from the first contact job and Parker as Dire Wrath from The Bucket Job. End id.]
bitches will be like “my ot3 ” and it’s a woman who could murder them, a guy who hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in six years, and another guy who almost got both of the other two murdered. it’s me i’m bitches
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
#idk I just want sterling to be at the ot3s wedding as a joke invite but when he’s asked if he’s going he snatches the invitation and is like #NONE OF YOUR BUISNESS and then proceeds to get a thoughtful wedding gift #or a joke one your choice
The wedding gift is the location and specs of an obscenely high-tech kitchen gadget that actually does something really useful. He doesn’t give them the item, of course–if they want it, they have to come steal it from him. Said gadget is inside multiple nested safes (some computerized, some purely mechanical), inside a secure vault, inside a building with a good security system. There are a handful of not-particularly-assiduous guards (you know, just enough for Eliot to feel like he’s needed, without him having to actually work on his honeymoon). There are elaborate gratuitous laser grids both inside and outside of the vault. Each one has a conspicuously laser-free area just large enough to hold two deck chairs and a mini-cooler of beer and orange soda.
In the innermost safe, next to the gadget, are three feedback forms and a pre-addressed, stamped envelope so they can critique the security measures at their leisure. Mr. Quinn is waiting to “catch” them on the way out to ensure Eliot gets one satisfying, low-stakes fight out of this job. (There are, again, two convenient deck chairs nearby, but this time the cooler is stocked with orange soda and chocolate milk.)
I still think it’s absolutely unconscionable to have Eliot explicitly not be in a relationship with Parker and Hardison in Redemption but I am so so into the idea bounced about in tags between @eliot-wolfgirl-spencer and myself that Eliot was not, in fact, even a little bit lonely and sad that whole time. Why would he be?
He has a nice home with his best friends, the people he loves and trusts more than anything in the world. They live together, they eat together, they bicker and laugh and cry together, they share a space; they fall asleep on the sofa together in front of one of Hardison’s favourite movies, and Parker teaches him all the things she loves to do and teaches him how to be safe, and Hardison works together with him on making a small army of vigilante food trucks, and Eliot cooks all his love for them into three meals a day, ones that pair well with orange soda and cereal, and they see one another in all states of undress and tiredness and sleeplessness and it’s safe, its domestic, its everything he needs and everything he wants, save his own hand or a fling from a bar every so often. It’s never occurred to him to be sad or lonely. He’s perfectly, completely content.
It also, unfortunately, has never occurred to him that he’s basically common-law married to Parker and Hardison.
It’s only when Hardison leaves, and new people start to live with them, new colleagues, a team, family, yeah, but it’s different - it’s only then, when everyone is telling Parker or Bre they’re sorry Hardison is gone, acknowledging you must miss him, that Eliot begins to feel that heartsick, longing, loneliness. It knocks him for six - he dates a cop, man - and he doesn’t realise, because he doesn’t have the language to articulate it and the others don’t know to offer him sympathy, that he’s not yearning for a new relationship. His loneliness isn’t because he’s not dating someone. It’s because for the first time in a decade he doesn’t have that home life. It’s not the wish for something that he never had - it’s the sudden loss of something he didn’t realise he did.
(Random concept I was suddenly compelled to share with someone my dear friends, the faceless hordes of Leverage-Tumblr. )
One of Eliot’s many friends drops by to visit unexpectedly–I’m picturing General Flores, on a well-deserved vacation from helping to run a small country. As they’re catching up, Eliot asks Hardison to pull out the brownies he was supposed to have taken out of the freezer earlier.
Hardison cheerfully heads to the kitchen. They can hear the container pop open, and then sudden silence. Eliot is, of course, deeply suspicious about this, and demands to know what Hardison did.
“Nothing!” squeaks Hardison. “Everything’s fine!”
Parker pops into the kitchen to peer over his shoulder. “Oh, right! They’re heart-shaped. Is that weird to serve to your friend?”
Eliot is flummoxed. “Hardison, what the hell? All the brownies I froze are rectangular. You know, the standard shape of brownies. What did you do?”
“Nothing!” says Hardison. “Well… uh… so, funny story. All your brownies are still in the freezer. We, uh, made some ourselves to surprise you. Man, don’t give me that look! I know what look you’re giving me! Your kitchen is fine!”
Hardison and Parker scrupulously researched a well-reviewed recipe, and they followed it faithfully. (No Hardison culinary experiments here–just a nice classic, brownie to impress their chef boyfriend.) The brownies taste great. The kitchen survived.
Said brownies are also cut into heart shapes and individually decorated with sprinkles and/or little royal icing flowers because 1) they were deliberately making a Gesture™ and wanted them to be fancy, 2) Hardison went down a Youtube rabbit hole of how to make icing flowers and spent hours obsessing over his project, and 3) Parker has the focus and nimble fingers to individually place hundreds of multicolored heart-shaped sprinkles in elaborate patterns with tweezers.
Eliot is speechless. (He is even more startled to admit, upon taking a bite, that the brownies are genuinely excellent as well as pretty.) Flores is trying his hardest not to crack up at the juxtaposition of Eliot Spencer as the targeted recipient of this assortment of elaborately flowery and/or brightly geometric-patterned heart-shaped sweets, clearly never intended for the eyes of outsiders. (He thinks it’s adorable. He is also honored when the decision is made that, yes, he may partake of the heart-shaped brownies. It is decreed, by Parker, to be Not Weird because he is a friend and that means they love him, too, just differently, so heart-shaped is fine.)
