#tumblrfic
someone tagged one of my quinn & eliot posts like “quinn/eliot was such a good ship” in the PAST TENSE listen. im. just bc my boy was in 1.2 episodes of this tv show and has not been mentioned even in passing since 2012—
Quinn: *shows up in episode 15.*
Harry:“So who is this guy?”
Parker: “Quinn. He’s our boyfriend-in-law.”
Harry:“…”
Harry: “Just to be clear, which of ‘us’ are included in ‘our’, and what’s a ‘boyfriend-in-law’?”
Parker: “Me and Hardison. He’s our boyfriend’s boyfriend, but he’s not our boyfriend, so he’s our boyfriend-in-law.”
Harry:“…”
Quinn, who technically isn’t sure who Harry is either, but is used to how Parkerish explanations progress by now: “Eliot is the boyfriend.”
Harry, even more confused: “…OK. Thank you…I think…There’s…a lot to unpack there.”
Harry’s moment of panic that by joining this team he has automatically acquired this random boyfriend/boyfriend-in-law is killing me.
(As is him, in theory, not minding it if that were the case. Quinn is an attractive man…)
Given that we only know Quinn by his surname, I’m picturing Sophie (not present for the above conversation) casually referring to “our Mr. Quinn” in some context, throwing Harry into a further existential crisis of whether he has become a designated boyfriend-in-law (and to whom???) by joining the team and this is just Sophie’s standard way of recognizing this status. From the description, he thinks he’d have to be someone’s boyfriend first, which he assumes he’d know about, but he’s not 100% sure of that. If men joining the team become Eliot’s boyfriends by default, he’s not necessarily opposed, but he would have expected to be informed.
(Oh, crap, has he been a bad boyfriend because he didn’t realize he was supposed to be? Eliot hasn’t really been acting like Harry’s boyfriend, but if Harry didn’t pick up that Eliot and Hardison were boyfriends, then maybe he just hasn’t been picking up on things. Should he apologize? Would that just make it weirder? If he asks “our Mr. Quinn” flat-out, is he likely to get a clearer answer? If he has become a default boyfriend, does that make Harry and Quinn boyfriends, too, or just boyfriends-in-law?)
Harry making a list of all the Leverage team members to try and figure out whose boyfriend he is before he makes things awkward later. The only one he is certain he can rule out from the start is Breanna, she’s way too young. Hardison hasn’t been around most of the time so it’s probably not him.
He… wants to say not Parker? But she and he have had some great bonding moments. The standard seems to be Eliot gets the boyfriend - but then again, it sounds like Eliot already has two boyfriends and a girlfriend, how many more is he gonna get? Maybe it’s Sophie. They have definitely had some moments together and he’s absolutely not opposed to that either - except she’s still mourning her husband, isn’t she? Maybe he is Quinn’s boyfriend after all… except they’re just meeting now, it seems weird to assign them as boyfriends before they even met.
Eventually he just gives up and decides to assume he’s everyone’s boyfriend until proven otherwise.
Harry gets everyone “just because” flowers (including having a bouquet sent to Hardison, of course). Sophie is complimentary of her bouquet. Breanna gives him a funny look (Harry hopes that the included note makes sufficiently clear that he isn’t trying to woo her–that would be inappropriate–it just seemed mean to leave her out). Eliot raises his eyebrows, but grunts a “thanks” before sticking his in a vase on the bar. Parker inspects her bouquet avidly at first but quickly loses interest. As Eliot tucks Parker’s flowers in among his after she fails to put them in water, he casually remarks, seemingly to the flowers, that Parker isn’t really into plants that don’t do anything.
Harry grapples with this new information for a while, carefully fitting it together with everything else he knows about Parker, before making his second attempt.
This time, the vase sitting at Parker’s spot contains several spikes of brightly colored flowers. Harry watches nervously as Parker curiously inspects the new offering. He can see Eliot smiling slightly out of the corner of his eye.
Eliot leans over Parker. “Hmm, snapdragons…”
Parker wrinkles her nose. “Snapdragons?”
With that, Eliot reaches around her to pinch the sides of one of the blossoms, making its “mouth” open.
Parker goes completely still for a moment before scooping the vase to her chest with a squeal that makes Harry jump. “They’re puppet flowers! I love them!”
Harry sinks back against the bar in relief. He is going to get a good grade in boyfriending, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve.
He keeps the flowers going.
Well, he keeps the flowers going for Sophie because the flowers make Sophie happy and he likes it when Sophie’s happy and those are the easiest boyfriend points to score.
He stops with everyone else because it was getting increasingly hard to find novel plants for Parker - though the bouquet of actual plant puppets had been a stroke of genius he’ll never surpass and he hates himself for it because talking to a felt rhododendron is Demonstrably Weird but it makes Parker so happy - Breanna kept mocking him about it, and Eliot, blessed Eliot, just asked him to stop.
Which puts him behind on his boyfriend points because now he has no idea what he should be gifting his-whatever-the-hell-he’s-landed-himself-in.
Anne gave to the fountain fundraiser (successful!) and requested: A Leverage/White Collar crossover, possibly with Eliot and Neal both doing grifting to get close to a mark who both teams are after.
Title: Handshake Across The Aisle
Rating: General
Notes: Neal definitely won the rock-paper-scissors.
Sofia gave to the successful Fountain Fundraiser and requested: When Harry met Santa (the Christmas ad from the Norwegian postal service)
Title: Magic and Science
Rating: General
Notes: I did pet the cats for you too :D Also I wrote some When Harry Met Santa AU ideas here (you can also view the video there) but I came up with a third because I’m still so bummed Santa can’t stay.
