(no subject)
when i began looking for leverage fic, i had so many ideas. there were the kind like where bucky barnes and eliot spencer are BFF and compare killing techniques over a spread of international cuisine they've just cooked, or the one where i want eliot spencer to be a hunter in the spn universe.
this tiny dialogue exceprt that can fit in a that big fic i'll never write:
“Would you STOP coming in through the WINDOWS, it scares the hell out of me every TIME!” au
"You don't look scared, though."
"What?"
"Your pulse is constant and your eyes are not wide. Your stance is ready to fight, why do you try to make me think you're afraid when you look ready to kill?"
"I- I mean. Shut up, you still need to stop coming in through the windows."
"Where am I going to come through then? "
"….. the door? Like a normal person?"
Scoff, "Boring."
- that idea that spawned from the song i want crazy by hunter hayes, because i fell in love with this song from the moment i heard it
after watching leverage i could only see this as the way eliot convinces parker to be with him, because i’ve seen the fics where the one who always pull away is eliot, and man, let me tell you, if someone was gonna pull out from a relationship, it’d totally be parker. and this here?
“But I don’t want “good” and I don’t want “good enough”/I want “can’t sleep, can’t breathe without your love”/Front porch and one more kiss, it doesn’t make sense to anybody else/Who cares if you’re all I think about, /I’ve searched the world and I know now, /It ain’t right if you ain’t lost your mind/Yeah, I don’t want easy, I want crazy/Are you with me baby? Let’s be crazy”
this would be the way for eliot to say it was ok for parker to be her with him, because he wants her and all that she is, crazy and all. not that he doesn’t tell her on the show being all patient and teaching her about feelings. well, more like recognizing what she already feels, but… i have feelings about this song and this pairing. this is their song.
have i mentioned to you all that parker/eliot is my OTP? like, i love the otp and i know hardison/parker is canon, but this is the hill i will die in.
- also tumblr tag fic like this: OP post "Eliot Spencer knows how to cook with truffles and saffron, but there’s no way he can’t also tell you the cheapest, healthiest way to make a one pot box meal for four feed a family of six and still taste good."
- or this: OP post "I love the idea of Eliot having to deal with smols in any scenario. He’d be such a scary giant until you got to know him. Then he’s just a big awkward dork"
- imagine leverage, but parker is the hitter and eliot the thief.
like, i imagine parker never went to new york and instead was in and out of the system. like she kept escaping and was brought back in every other city she moved into (this is a parker with some skills for thievery but one that never got archie to polish them off).
she has a file with a mile length full of misbehavior like arson and theft and car theft and etc. so, she’s sixteen under a fake name and age she gave to her last social worker after getting caught in some back water town in the south (idk why, don’t ask me) and the house is not horrible at first, until it is and she decides it best to blow it up with the couple still in it when she discovers *something* (i don’t know what) and the sheriff catches her so she’s processed for arson and manslaughter (the couple didn’t die. parker is disappointed) and the judge gives her the choice to do time or sign up to the army (everyone thinks she’s almost 18 anyway and i’ve seen this plot in some movies, but i don’t know).
so parker chooses the army because she thinks it’ll be harder to escape from prison, but finds that the army is not so horrible. yes they wake you up at dawn and shout orders a lot and there is a lot of exercise to do, but it also gives her life some kind of order she never had before, there is enough food for her hunger to abate (which she never had before) and a place to sleep knowing you’re safe (the others mostly leave her alone since they think she’s crazy, she has issues with people touching her when they’re not beating the shit out of each other or learning how to take down and opponent, so she’s happy to be ignored. also, people are weird) and there are a lot of fun weaponry to learn about (like bombs and guns and target practice) and she’s a crack shot so that endears her to the commanders, though her attitude with orders she deems stupid are a hard pill, but her morals are skewed and that makes her useful
she can create and dismantle any bomb put in front of her and is also a superb sniper and works a problem like a boss, so they ship her off to afganistan where she becomes a legend and helps a lot of people, but also kills a lot of people and is very good at it.
she comes into the attention of people like vance (who we know that though he has good intentions, he uses people as tools for the common good, especially people not in tune with their emotions - i mean, it’s canon that parker feels, only she doesn’t connect those feelings with normal emotional responses) and after a couple of sleazy missions gets dishonorably discharged (is that the term?) and suddenly the order she has come to expect from army life deserts her and she’s angry and hurt and alone.
enter demian moreau, with his suaveness and his charm and he would charm parker into working for him and at first is not so different from the army, there are still sleazy deals and a lot of people to hurt, and fun weaponry and men that do everything she orders and explosions and lots and lots of money. parker imprints on the money and the adrenaline of getting an impossible job done and for the first time in her life someone (demian) doesn’t think she’s crazy for being who she is, an adrenaline junkie that is proud of her job and demian would so totally treat her like a queen, listen to her advice about how to do certain jobs, concede to her knowledge, damien would also taker her under his wing and teach her about heists and cons and stuff and she would suck the knowledge up the same way she did in the army.
but the jobs would gets progressively darker and darker until it comes down to saving kids and we know parker will save kids, because she needs to save them and just when she thinks she does, but she ends up killing them (i’m thinking something with a bomb and a third world country and a hospital full of kids a la black widow)
and the guilt brings out something cold and even darker in her rage and now she looks crazy and she goes back to damien, who feels so proud and accomplished and she lets go and beats the shit out of him to the point of almost killing him while everyone watches, because all the men told damien parker was crazy and now here she is, crying and killing the boss even after chapman shot her like three times and parker’s bleeding but nothing hurts more than the betrayal but she doesn’t kill damien, she can’t kill damien, she loves damien (idk yet if want them to be lovers or have a more platonic relationship, like big brother/little sister or mentor and student, but i want damien to be the first person in her life parker feels she can be herself with and not get weird looks or get told there is something wrong with her, i want parker to feel like she *thrives and shines* under the protection of damien moreau, crime lord extraordinary), so she makes a deal.
damien never shows up her face to her ever again and parker doesn’t kill him and moreau accepts, half dead, and orders the men to let her go and the muscle parts for her like the red sea for Moses and so she begins a new life with a hate for weapons and especially bombs and finds herself once more alone and betrayed and empty and full of guilt, rage spent, but still get a lot of job offers and hey, she has all these skills she can use to get a lot of money (the only true thing in her life now. money will never betray her) and so parker, the retrieval specialist is born.
and then eliot. omg, i have such a difficult time with eliot. because he is in a dying town, seeing everyone hungry and with no jobs and the only thing he’s good for is sports and cooking, his father’s hardware store is bankrupt, his mother is sick and dying, there is no money so even dropping out of highschool to work is a moot plan, the mines dried up, the farms are dying all around, everyone is poor and getting poorer, the bills begin piling up, his father ignores him, the only good thing in his life at sixteen is aimee and he has nothing to offer her but a promise ring. he’s surprised when she accepts.
so he gets into an illegal fighting ring and begins getting money,not a lot, but enough to make things more tolerable, but also his restlessness grows until his hunger for a better simple apple pie life in his hometown transforms into a hunger for another life, far far away from this dying place that is sucking him up.
he gets an offer to follow the underground figthing circuit and he signs up, but aimee rejects to go with him (though she promises to wait) and his father practically disowns him, like ‘your mother is in the hospital dying boy, wtf are you thinking boy’ and eliot being all “well, i think i’d like to live a little before i become you” or something equally heartbreaking and for the first time in his life, eliot gets punched by his father, not the corrective a father would give a son, but the rage of a man against a stranger that just insulted you at the bar
it makes it easier for eliot to just up and leave and figth until he reaches new york. by this time he’s learned that figthing is not enough to pay the bills, even when you’re just drifting along to the next paycheck (especially since he stills sends a lot of money back home for his mother) and so begins picking up side-jobs, like being the look out for third rate thieves or the driver and just lifting wallets on a really bad day when he’s starving and there are no fights lined up for him by the fixers and bookies because he got badly injured last time and it almost landed him in hospital and made a lot of trouble for them
one day he almost lifts archie’s wallet and the man thinks he has promise (eliot’d be like 17, idk, it was a fruitful year after running away) and he learns a lot of things, not only how to be a master thief, but about art and casing people and places and he discovers he has perfect total recall (idk the word, but you have a perfect memory) and so things are *distinctive*, like the boots those security guys use from that security firm that only employs vets or those suits that are only used by the muscle working for a certain mafia boss, the kind of wounds certain weapons cause, how to be silent and invisible, because for a heist to be successful you need to leave no trace.
for the first time he doesn’t feel like he’s starving, because there is so much of the world to see and learn that he never even imagined and the places this job takes him sates this hunger not only for money, but knowledge and art and luxury, and he thinks of going back home for aimee, maybe patch up thing with his father now that things have calmed down, but when he goes back his mother is dead and his father is even more cold and angry and hurting and maybe even blames him for not being *there* and aimee tries to help, but eliot is so different now, almost a man (idk 19 or 20-isn now), but somehow more broken than before he left
one day eliot just ups and leaves again, no words and he’s stupid and hurting and taking over stupid dangerous impossible jobs that help his reputation, but land him in so much trouble, like the monkey job after promising aimee on the phone he was coming home for good, only after this job he promised to do (aimee does not know what eliot work entails, but she’s beginning to think is not entirely legal) but then he makes a stupid mistake and the north koreans get him, but he escapes, but he still has to find the monkey that he now knows is in russia and everything we see on eliot’s flashbacks about this job happens (idk what happens, but eliot gets tortured and hurt and we know he never got the monkey so the fence is not happy and try to send second rate tugs for eliot, only that eliot is very good now at escaping)
it’s almost another year before he gets back to the USA and by that time aimee is marrying someone else and so he goes back to the job, he has nothing else, no ties, archie mostly leaves him to do whatever he wants (he’s semi retired) and eliot just lives for the rush the job gives, because you can be proud if you’re the best and his time is filled with a lot of cool things to learn, like cooking from tobi and growing up your own food, and martial arts to keep in form so he can pull really awesome stunts to lift things from places people think are impossible to rob.
there are a lot of lonely feelings, though, even when all weekends are full. and then the dubenich happens and eliot gets into leverage and everything’s the same, only not, because eliot is the thief and parker the hitter and they fall in love and no, there are no pretzels, but there is a lot of “it makes us… us” and the issues parker would have with eliot telling her there is something wrong with her, and there would be a retelling of every episode with these role reversal and a lot of feelings
imagine Leverage but with The Librarians plot. In a timeline, because this is all I’ve been able to think about the last couple weeks and I got my hands into a leverage pre-series timeline made by fans.
1994 - 18 year old Eliot enlists in the army after the Gulf war, a kid with God in his heart, and a flag on his shoulder… but most importantly, clean hands. And they send him to deal with the aftermath of the Gulf war, just after the first bombing in Iraq. In the next four years he watches as his brothers are more likely to be shot and killed by friendly fire than the enemy and how an angry mob drags a dying man from his unit through the streets of a war zone. He learns after it the cruel act had been worldwide televised. After the second Iraq bombing he decides he can do this anymore and gets out.
1996 - Parker tries to lift Archie’s wallet in NY after six months in juvie.
1998 - Sophie’s been Sophie only for the last year or so, but she’s been a grifter for a long time that. After a three month chase on Moscow with an IYS investigator, trying to keep the heat off Starke after the jobs they just pulled, the allure of her profession has begun to dim, like she has reached a peak and she can’t top it anymore. When she receives a white envelope from the New York Library, she thinks it’s an invitation for one of her alias to some kind of event, but once she opens it and golden letters begin to spell her real name, she’s sufficiently enticed to go check out what it’s about and then she becomes The Librarian.
Nate is new at IYS making a name for himself by resolving impossible thefts and is sniffing after an unnamed grifter that has pulled a couple jobs impossible with only one person. He sees her for the first time just as the woman is boarding a plane to in Moscow. It’s the first job where he doesn’t get the stolen items nor the one responsible for the heists, and IYS has to fork over the insurance money. It has the potential to make him obsess about the grifter, but the birth of his son and the newness of his marriage has him focused on other things. He still opens a file with extensive alias for the grifter and spends the next three years keeping tabs on her.
Parker, 14, is flourishing under Archie’s tutelage.
Eliot gets out the army with a purple heart for staying in Iraq even after getting mortally wounded in three different occasions. He’s 22, disillusioned with the army and the people in command that stay safe state-side while young men die without reason or glory a continent away. He’s armed only with a high school diploma and not interested in pursuing college. The only job he can get with his qualifications is PMC. At first is ok, until the job passes extractions and security action and becomes wetwork. “What is one more kill? I’m damned anyway.”
1999 - Eliot’s current job begins to chip away at what was left of the naïve kid the army screwed over. The calls and visits to Aimee get more and more apart, since Eliot begins thinking he might not be the kind of man that deserves a happy ending with his high school sweetheart. In a turn of fate, and at the lowest point in his life so far, he meets Toby when reconing a restaurant in Belgium working for his second PMC, and spends the next two months learning everything about the art of food and how to use his knife to create instead of destroy. He feels in a good enough place to go back home and try to learn how to live with everything he’s done.
2000 - The newly minted Librarian falls in love with a young Lord in London in the middle of a long con to obtain one magical item property of one of the lost baroness and to consolidate her persona as Duchess Charlotte Prentice-for future use, of course. After a scandal brought forth by the magical mysteriousness of her new job and the lies by-product of being a grifter, she leaves the royalty world with a broken heart and a promise to never get that close to anyone. Especially when collecting magical items can cause almost certain death to those around her.
She still introduces herself to Nate Ford, since she’s now going semi-straight with her new job at the Library or something. She chooses a name that has nothing to do with British royalty and everything to do with her magnus opus as a grifter. Sophie Deveraux has a nice ring to it.
2000 - Eliot is spending the summer with Aimee in what feels like an idyll or a dream, when he gets called back to retrieve the Sapphire Monkey. It’s not wetwork and the offered payment is high enough to tempt a saint, let alone Eliot. He takes the job because he’s been thinking about putting an actual ring on Aimee’s hand. He ends up following the damn thing to a little village outside the Chinese border, where he’s captured and brought into North Korea to be tortured for information on the whereabouts of the item. Instead, he learns on his way out the country that a woman from the Kroy family operating on Russia and dealing with the Butcher of Kiev might have a clue where to find it. When he reaches Russia the woman is long gone with the statuette, and he ends up dealing with a very angry Butcher, who thinks Eliot’s in cahoots with the Kroy grifter that just fucked him out of a very expensive and very sought after sapphire monkey. After Eliot gets out of the warehouse burning down around him, the Butcher of Kiev’s promises of revenge still ringing in his ears-or maybe that was the bomb that lighted up in flames the warehouse and resulted in the disfigurement of the mercenary’s face-Eliot is beginning to think the job is not worth it. Gutman is not happy and refuses to fork over any money for the retrieval specialist’s ticket back home if he doesn’t deliver the monkey.
2001 - It takes Eliot another six months to get back stateside to Aimee on his own (Gutman threatened to send thugs after him, but Eliot doesn’t think the fence will waste that kind of money. Eliot’s wrong, but it’ll be another five years before Gutman begins sending the thugs his way)
Eliot has no money and no ring, not that Aimee cares a lot, since someone else put a ring on her already. Eliot is not even surprised. Maybe a little sad. Not heartbroken, though. He convinces himself is for the better.
Vance calls, says he’s putting a team together to liberate Croatia endorsed by the CIA. Eliot takes the job, thinking he’s going straight and that maybe he can right one of the wrongs done back in his stint with the army. The situation goes FUBAR from the beginning. It’s a suicide mission, because Vance forgot to tell him the team consisted of only him. Somehow Eliot turns it around and liberates the country. The price this time is a hundred more bodies and the disavowment of the operation by his own country and no way to get back home, since he’s been burned.
When Damien Moreau comes to call for him, the only condition Eliot puts up to accept the job is to not be obliged to use arms. Ever. Damien laughs. “There are worse ways to go, my friend.”
Eliot spends the next five years learning everything about all the worse ways to go there ever existed. And invents some new ones. He also learns magic exists and that sometimes mankind is worse even without it. Eliot always knew he was going to Hell before, but now…
2001 - Sophie is in Paris investigating the curse a painter put on his very famous, very expensive paintings. It came into the purview of the clippings book after some crazy thief tried to lift them and did not succeed. Problem is they are insured by IYS, so now Sophie does not only has to grift, but also walk around Nathan Ford. Nate still ends up shooting her, the wanker. No one cares that she shot at him first. Either way, her Library credentials are enough for Interpol to let her go with the paintings and an apology while Nate’s being transported to a hospital, unconscious by blood loss. The wimp.
Nate is angry. IYS is angrier. Nate can’t believe Interpol let Sophie Deveraux go with a stash of priceless paintings when he had caught her in the act, especially with a story as ridiculous as her working for a library, as if that sentence was a magical free card. In his convalescence mandated time off, he receives a weird envelope inviting him to become a Guardian of the Metropolitan Public Library in New York. Maggie tries to convince him to try it out, since she did not like her husband being shot in a foiled theft, but Nate declines. What does a Guardian even do at a Library, anyway?
Parker slips trying to lift some evil painting in Paris and ends up stuck for days on an air duct with a broken leg and scratching on the metal for someone to hear she’s trapped. She has a brief stint on a Paris’ jail where she has the best meal she’s ever tasted until her leg heals.
2005 - Eliot walks away from Damien Moreau a free man-or whatever version of that exists in the crimeworld- after defeating a room full of thugs to retrieve a baseball card, his ticket to get out from under the criminal lord’s thumb. And he doesn’t even spill his coffee.
He picks up the retrieval business again, since his life in luxury as Damien’s underdog was expensive and ate up all his money. Also, he’s somehow acquired a lot of knowledge about how to steal art (he only hopes the items are not magical, but if they are, he can always lose them en route to their new owner)
No one knows how Eliot is still alive since the only ones to step away from Damien are dead, but Gutman still has a beef to pick with him, so now that Spencer a free agent once again, he can send all the thugs necessary to make Eliot pay for the sapphire monkey’s unfinished business. Gutman figures that either the thugs will get lucky some day or the threat would be incentive enough to nudge him into stealing the dagger of Aqu’abi. It is.
Nate learns magic exists and what exactly entails that Sophie works as The Librarian. All the cons in the rashomon job happen, but in the end the one that keeps the dagger is Sophie for safekeeping. After all, the only way to trap Gutman and recuperate the previous two stolen items is to let everyone think the dagger remains stolen. And IYS is going to be reimbursed by Edgar Gladstone either way.
When Parker loses the fake dagger in the air duct, she thinks it was a sign of it being magical and she’s glad she escaped this time without any broken bones, though this job has been a series of misfortunes for her. It can only be magic. Yikes. And good riddance.
2006 - Sam Ford dies because IYS declined the insurance payment. Nate goes to New York and begs Sophie for magic to bring back to life his son. Sophie declines. Maggie leaves. Nate spends the next two years drunk off his ass.
2008 - Nate is once more called by the Library to act as the Guardian he was chosen to be. He takes the job because he has nothing else left, and maybe if he stays close he can learn if it’s possible to bring Sam back. Also, apparently a lot of magical items are insured by IYS, so…The job is dangerous, but it keeps his mind occupied. Still, no matter how much you plan, there are always risks and most of the time the ones paying for the outcome is The Librarian. Sophie gets trapped . Nate blames himself.
Hardison receives an invitation by the Library to become a Keeper. “What do you mean magic exist?!”
Eliot receives an invitation to become The Librarian. At first he thinks is code for “come steal for us” but apparently it just meant the last Librarian got stuck into a magic mirror, from where she can see everything around but not interact or communicate with this dimension. He’s not really sure why he accepts.
“A card catalogue. Really? When is this, the middle ages? I’m bringing this place into the the 20th century, bro!”
Oh, yeah, the tech support guy who has eaten nothing but orange soda and gummy frogs since he came in. Someone has to kelp feed that guy a vegetable or two since Nate is apparently on a bender.
Hardison is too busy trying to digitize everything to have easier access on the place. Also, who said tech and magic could not cohabitate? He’ll prove them so wrong. All the knowledge in the world at his disposal. Also, magic. Magic is so cool.
2009 - Dubenich approaches Nate with an offer he can’t refuse. Bring back magic into the world so he can use it to bring back his son. Sophie frowns at him from the mirror.
Parker gets an invitation to become a Guardian. “As if,” she huffs.
(Eliot is not happy. “I do not need a Guardian. I’ve been doing perfectly fine on my own. And i work better off alone. I haven’t even needed Nate since I got here.”
“Well, bro,” HArdison says,” The Library seems to think different.”
“And Parker? Really? That thief is crazy!”
“Thief is also a girl,” Nate comes in with a bottle of whiskey.
“Girl? Really?” Hardison perks up.
“Yeah, early twenties, blond, gymnast, like to fling herself from tall buildings, crazy. Girl.”
“I thought you were the Guardian,” Eliot tells Nate crossing his arms.
“I never said I was yours,” Nate grumbles drunk.)
Parker still goes to case the place to see what can be stolen, though. When she learns everything is magical she nopes out of it. She still gets entangled with The Librarian when she tries to steal a painting from the Munich museum and somehow ends up helping him do some complicated math in the middle of the Black Forest to retrieve an old crown that’s not even made of gold or has any precious jewels. Although being chased by ninjas is fun.
“There is something wrong with you,” Eliot tells her.
He stills ends up cooking for her when he learns all she’s had for breakfast are fortune cookies. It rivals the best meal she ever had in a jail in Paris. She tells herself that is the reason she follows him back to the Library.
Just in time for Dubenich to come in with with his ninjas and take the crown off their hands and, for some reason, excalibur.
“Damnit, Hardison, didn’t you just install a new impenetrable security system?”
“Impenetrable? Psssh, I only needed like five minutes to get in last time I was here.”
“Did you let them in?” Hardison freaks out.
“Why would I do that? I work alone. Also, I’m beginning to think ninjas are not so cool anymore.”
Eliot closes his eyes and rubs at his temple trying to stave off a migraine.
“Where is Nate?” He asks. “Where is Sophie’s mirror?”
“I don’t know, bra, but we need to get out of here because someone rigged the system to lockdown the library.”
“There is only one entrance and the ninjas are crowding it… Parker, how did you get in?”
Parker gets them out in the nick of time while the Library folds into itself.
They get to Portland. Hardison brags about the annex he has there. “It’s where I do some of my experiments, like the backdoor.”
“What’s a backdoor do?” Parker asks.
“Takes you anywhere in the world you want to go.”
“Does it work?”
“Should do. I haven’t worked all the kinks out yet.”
They go to London in search of the stone, but when they reach the tunnels under the palace Dubenich has already unlocked magic.
“We need a plan,” Hardison says.
“I have a plan,” Nate appears.
Eliot is angry because he already worked out Nate’s the one that betrayed the Library, but his plan is sensible and they need to get excalibur out that stone so magic stops bleeding into the world and whatever he had been before the guy is a drunk.
“What’s in it for you ?” Eliot asks.
“He used my son.”
And well, you can’t argue with that. So they execute the plan Nate comes up with and they’re good, together. Eliot fights the ninjas, gets stabbed by excalibur, Parker gets to taze people, Hardison creates fog. They foil Dubenich’s plans and get back to the annex.
Still, magic is out in the world once again.
“Oh, but not all magic. Just enough to do this,” Nate does a complicated incantation and frees Sophie from the mirror. The first thing Sophie does is slap Nate. And then she kisses him, because even if his plan to bring magic back into the world to set her free was stupid and reckless and dangerous, it was also a little romantic, and well, she’s a Librarian and her job is to keep magic out of the wrong hands, even if sometimes does hands belong to someone you love.
“You’re still going to clean up all this mess,” Sophie warns. “We need to get back the Library.”
“We can all work. Together.” Hardison says.
“Magic is evil.” Parker nods.
Eliot sighs.
- the one titled congrats! it's a girl
part 1
When Aimee signs the dotted line, she tells herself she’s done.
She’s done waiting for a miracle. Waiting for him to come back. Waiting for her father to stop looking at her like she’s making a mistake. Waiting for life to throw her a better chance.
She’s done crying and she’s also done with dreaming of the white picket fence and the 2.5 kids she’s supposed to want out of life.
She wonders if signing the life of the baby away counts as losing the 0.5 part of the kid equation.
The social worker closes the file as soon as she dots her last “i”, leaving her only clutching at the pen, before he explains to her just exactly what giving up the baby entails. Not that she’s paying attention.
Aimee’s sure they’ve gone over it before. Not that she’d been paying attention then, either.
The baby is sick and she doesn’t have the meanings to provide for her. Not without a partner and not even with her father’s help.
The baby needs for Aimee to give her up so she can live and grow up and have a chance and so Aimee does.
Even when it kills something inside of her.
When Eliot enters the bar, the only thing he’s thinking about is a cold real beer and not anything like that stupid thief juice Hardison tries to sell at the brew pub.
If Hardison knew Eliot was getting his alcohol anywhere else now that Leverage Inc. owns a pub, there’ll be hacker hell to pay, but Eliot can’t stomach one more of the hacker’s stupid creations, not until he finishes that online course in brewing he promised to take.
It’s worth it even if he gets caught in this slum of a bar, and gets some new outrageous magazine subscriptions to the apartment no one from the team is supposed to know about, but still keeps getting broken into.
Mostly by Parker, who still thinks Eliot doesn’t notice.
Eliot’s more or less resigned about it.
He still changes addresses frequently to aggravate the thief. It makes something in Eliot’s heart grow warm when he notices Parker scowling at him after he moves into a new place.
The first thing he notices, once he has a generous gulp from his first bottle, is the slip of a kid singing her heart out with an old guitar behind the galvanized wire mesh that protects the stage.
Nice voice. But that kid is so not legal. Fifteen at the most, even. The baby fat on her face is very distinctive.
He finds himself nodding to the tune of the song. He’s never heard it before, but it evocates a feeling of back home when he was young and naïve, especially the way she almost drawls her words, slow like molasses and just as sweet.
He’s not the only one that notices the pretty kid, though. And the other men are not appreciating just her voice. He sighs when a couple on the bar two stools over stand up to get closer to the stage as the girl is closing the case to her guitar and Eliot gulps the last of his beer before following.
The men reach her just as she’s walking down the stage, cutting her way off. They say something to her that makes her smile turn into a fierce scowl.
That particular scowl stops Eliot in his place and for a moment he waits for his mother’s voice to scold him for playing with the ball inside the house and how she’ll tan his hide if he breaks another vase.
He shakes himself from the memory and advances when the men begin calling the kid a bitch, his own scowl firmly planted intent on teaching some manners to those assholes. Before he even tries, the kid does a maneuver on asshole number one that brings him to his knees in pain, before she roundhouse-kicks asshole number two on the jaw and throws him over one of the closest tables, upending it and everything on it.
This triggers the bar brawl all the drunks had been waiting for.
Eliot barely has time to take the kid by the wrist and pull her off the way of an incoming projectile.
“Thanks!” she shouts over the fracas around them.
Eliot nods at her because she won’t hear if he answers. He only knows what she said by reading her lips. The brawl is all-out and the only things he can hear are things breaking and people beating each other. When he gives a look around, he notices the bartender on the phone already. Probably calling the cops, since the dispute keeps getting bigger and there’s no muscle in sight trying to control it.
Without thinking, he takes the girl’s wrist to slip her out. The kid resist at first, feet properly planted to make herself immovable. Eliot turns back curiously and a little annoyed, but stops when he notices her tense stance and the way she looks at him with controlled dread.
He winces when he tries and looks at it from her point of view. A strange angry man with a lot of muscles trying to abduct her doesn’t paint a nice picture.
He promptly lets go of her hand and with the head behind the stage, towards a neon sign with “exit” on it.
The kid looks uncertain, but a drunk colliding with her and almost crushing her to the floor makes up her mind. Eliot helps her get to her feet, keeping his touch to a minimum and letting go as soon as she’s balanced.
He muscles his way through the crowd, this time with the kid following, walking down a narrow hallway that takes them out into an alley behind the bar.
When Eliot finds no immediate danger in the premises and lets her out behind him, he begins to feel awkward after closing the door.
“Nice moves, kid.” He mumbles, clearing his throat. She really impressed him back there.
“Thanks,” she says and looks at him askance. When Eliot doesn’t say anything else, the kid retrieves a duffel bag from behind the closest dumpster.
Eliot blinks and clenches his teeth when it clicks on him that duffel probably has inside everything that the kid possesses.
“Where’d you learn them?” he asks, trying to create rapport. Eliot suddenly wishes Sophie was here.
“Places,” shrugs the kid.
Eliot nods, thinking about how to ask if she has a place to go to.
“Liz,” she introduces herself at last, maybe deciding he’s not a threat after all. “My name is Liz. If you were wondering.”
“Nice ta meet ya, Liz. My name’s Eliot,” he extends a hand and gives her one of his warmest smiles. The kind he reserves for women and kids and on special occasions for the rest of his team. It makes something uncoil in her, enough at least for her shoulders to back down from around her ears.
In the distance, sirens begin to wail, sounding closer and closer. Liz’ tenses up again. Eliot sighs.
“You should go.” He tells her.
Liz shakes her head. “No. You first.”
Eliot nods. It’s a sensible practice. It also calms something inside him, cementing the impression the kid is smart and knows how to care for herself.
She kind of reminds him of Parker actually, with her blonde hair and svelte physique, though her eyes are as blue as his.
Maybe that’s the reason why he says: “If you’re ever in trouble or need a job or some warm food, you go to the Bridgeport Brewery and ask for me, ok? Someone will help even if I’m not there.”
Liz tilts her head, frowning, and nods warily.
When he catches some red and blue lights painting the mouth of the alley, he turns to walk off. He traverses through some more dark alleys and empty streets, knowing he’s being followed.
He knows it’s the kid, because he already caught her reflection on various display windows and her steps are too loud, even when she tries to be quiet. Liz has potential, but he still tries to shake her off. He knows his enemies are not above using kids to eliminate him, though that is not the impression he got from Liz.
Also, he already gave her a way to find him.
Still…
After stringing her along for at least half an hour and getting progressively impressed that Liz can keep up with him, he ends up watching her from the roof of the Bridgeport pub, examining the careful way Liz cases the back alley trying to track him down.
Eliot wonders how long it’ll take her to notice he brought her to the pub.
His spatial awareness alerts him he’s not alone anymore.
“Who’s that?” asks Parker, balancing on the edge at his side, still wearing her harness. She must have just come back from rappelling.
“I don’t know yet,” he shrugs and smirks when the kid huffs annoyed.
They watch in silence how Liz walks up and down the alley looking for clues. Apparently the kid is stubborn.
She definitely reminds him of Parker.
And someone else, though he can’t put his finger on it; at least not yet.
The distinctive sound of chips crunching makes Eliot’s teeth clench. He doesn’t even bother wondering where she got the chips from. “Jesus, Parker, tell me that is not dinner. When was the last time you ate a vegetable?”
Parker shrugs and talks with her mouth full, sending crumbs everywhere. “I don’t know. When was the last time you cooked for the team?”
Eliot pivots with a huff towards the rooftop door, growling about irresponsible thieves and their bad habits and something that sounds like scurvy, though Parker doesn’t know what that is.
Eliot’s so easy sometimes.
“Well, aren’t you coming?” He snarls from the door, not waiting for her to follow him down the stairs.
Parker grins pleased, upending the aluminum bag to catch the last morsels of broken chips at the bottom.
When she looks back down towards the ally, he notices the girl Eliot had been scrutinizing looking up right at her.
“Uh,” she frowns when the girl turns on her heel to walk off, wondering what that had been about.
(there is actually more of this fic, i just need to find it)
edit: found part 2!
Liz loses her window to break into the public library with the night guard on his cigarette break by the time she reaches the building, and now she doesn’t have a place to stay the night. What had she been thinking? First giving out her name and then following a guy she doesn’t even know to God know where, and all just because he helped her? What is she, a damsel in distress?
Now she sure is paying for it, losing her place to sleep. She might still be able to find somewhere else to squat, but she doesn’t really know the city, having arrived just a couple days ago. She had gotten some tips from some runaways at the park the other day, but then she got lucky finding the library and then didn’t bother anymore. After all, homeless people are pretty territorial and she doesn’t want to step on anyone’s toes, even if she’s only passing through Portland while she decides where to go next. She doesn’t have enough for a motel yet and hasn’t lifted yet a driver’s license likely to pass as her to be able to get a room anyway.
Following that guy had been a huge mistake.
Worse comes to worse, tonight will be spent walking around Portland under the rain until the sun comes up or the sky gets lighter, or whatever passes for sun up in this place.
Only five more hours, yay!
She gets lucky when she finds a just foreclosed building near the Brewpub that weird guy had led her to. And that had been weird, hadn’t it? Liz is sure Eliot knew he was being followed, and that he made sure she knew where the brewpub was. He had offered her help after all, not that Liz was convinced it was a good idea to accept it.
There were some creepy weirdos out in the world.
The last thought Liz has before falling asleep-inside an empty apartment on the fourth floor, near a window with a good view of the building’s entrance-is if Eliot lives above the brewpub.
That question gets answered once she opens her eyes and looks out, directly at the apartment’s window one floor below her sight-line on the building in front of her squatting place.
It’s six in the morning and Eliot seems to be sweeping the block from his vantage point while sipping from a cup. When he begins to look up, Liz ducks down in front of the window. After waiting for five minutes to look out again, the blinds on Eliot’s apartment are already closed.
She spends the day at a park lifting wallets, taking the cash out and disposing of them in trash cans-if the owner looks able to afford it. If not, she’d give them back. Somehow. Her haul gets her just enough money for breakfast and maybe some light dinner for later. She mourns how now everything is paid with credit and debit cards.
She plays a little on some corners for tips, but cops keep doing rounds and she can’t afford to be lifted when she’s on the run from the system, having just escaped her last foster home. She wonders if she can go back to the bar from last night. The bartender might let her play again, but she’s not sure she’ll be welcomed after last night’s fiasco.
For some reason she decides not to think about too closely, she ends up having dinner at the brewpub-no sign of Eliot-and stays as long as she can before they kick her out. It’s raining. Again. Liz is beginning to think choosing Portland was a mistake.
She has a couple hours to waste before her window at the library opens again, so she decides to go back to the building she squatted in last night. She explores the empty apartment and discovers there is no water or power on the building, but it’s a dry place to sleep, though is dusty and the nights are cold.
She spends the next couple weeks keeping tabs on Eliot and notices he doesn’t really keep a schedule getting in or out of his place. Sometimes she doesn’t even see him get out, though she catches him get in, especially when he brings back company, but his lady friends don’t spend the night ever or stay for breakfast. They don’t seem disappointed though, if their silly smiles are anything to go by when he sees them out to their cars or a taxi, all southern charm. It makes Liz roll her eyes.
He seems not to sleep, because Liz catches him going out on runs at odd hours of the dawn, and he always returns before the sun is even up, just to have a shower and go out again. Presumably to the brewpub, though Liz doesn’t tail him again. She doesn’t want him to catch her, though her curiosity is killing her. The guy is totally paranoid and hyper aware of everything around him. Liz has seen him catch unawares more than one thug keeping tabs on him.
She has the suspicion Eliot feels her watching him too, because sometimes he spends long minutes at his window watching her building, though he doesn’t do anything about it. Liz wonders about that too, and lives on the edge of paranoia herself, waiting for the day he finally kicks down the falling door at what has become her place and disposes of her as easily as he disposes of the thugs that watch him.
One rainy day over the weekend, when she watches him go out with some cloth bags for shopping, Liz finally gathers enough courage to snoop around his place. The streets are empty because of the endless Portland rain and there’s a fire escape close to one of the windows in Eliot’s place-not the one from where he watches the street, but maybe a bedroom or an office-because even if Liz is a little afraid, she’s too curious to stay away.
The lock on the window is a simple one. The kind you only need a small knife to open and slide up to enter. Liz winces at the marks her knife leaves on the frame. So much for making sure Eliot wouldn’t notice her snooping.
“What are you doing?”
Liz winces, and promptly swears when she notices she cut herself with her own knife, which she dropped in the surprise. It now lives somewhere down in the alley, maybe lost forever. Liz loved that knife.
“Are you ok?” the voice is closer and when Liz looks up, there is a blond woman attired all in black, squatting with her in the firescape, though the woman wears a raincoat with a hood and looks less like the drowned rat Liz feels like.
Liz nods, feeling herself begin to tremble, though if it’s from the cold rain or the fear at getting caught is debatable. Liz recognizes the woman now, she was standing in the rooftop looking at her that night Eliot led her to the brew pub.
The blond frowns at Liz, looking her from head to toe, and then glancing at the still closed window she’d been trying to open. “What are you doing?” she asks again.
Liz clenches her jaw to stop her teeth from shattering, pursing her lips, knowing anything she says will be used against her when the police arrives. So much for not getting sent back to foster care.
When no answer comes forth, the woman stands up. “Get up,” she says and motions her with her hand to turn around.
Liz blinks, but then stands up, squaring her shoulders. The only way forward is up the stairs, so that’s where Liz goes. She knows the drill. That doesn’t stop her from looking at the side and wondering if she’ll survive the drop if she jumps. Behind her the woman scoffs, as if reading her mind. Liz clenches her jaw harder. When they get to the rooftop, the woman directs her towards a rig a few meters away from the firescape.
“Put this on,” she orders, handing Liz a harness.
Liz frowns, getting more and more scared, though she buries that feeling under anger. Is the woman going to hang her up for Eliot to find? “Why?” she asks.
“You were doing it wrong,” the woman answers absently, checking the ropes and clipping herself in.
Liz blinks at that. So no dangling the thief from the building to be found then, good to know. When the woman frowns at her for not gearing up, Liz puts on the harness and tells herself it’s out of curiosity. “What was I doing wrong?” Liz asks.
The woman checks her, tightening the straps until she’s satisfied to clip her to a second rope. “Breaking in. Most of the windows in Eliot’s place are welded shut, so the only thing you did trying to open that one was activate the silent alarm. In five minutes Eliot will be back, most likely angry.”
She motions again for Liz to turn around and when Liz does, she gets pushed off the roof for her trouble. She doesn’t even have time to shout before the rig system catches and leaves her dangling upside down in front of the kind of thin window often found in bathrooms. The woman slides down to a smooth stop next to Liz, cool as a cucumber as she begins to do something to the tiny window with a screwdriver. The teenager has the urge to scream at her if she’s out of her mind, but her stomach, along with all her blood, is rushing down to her head.
“By the way, I’m Parker. What’s your name?”
Parker opens the window and then signals for her to follow her after she slithers in. Liz can only follow, though she gets stuck halfway and Parker has to pull her in. Her favorite t-shirt-and the only one that used to have no holes-now has a big rip on her left boob, showing her bra.
“Great,” Liz mumbles, irritated.
Parker throws at her a terrycloth towel that covers her head and shoulders. It takes Liz a moment to liberate herself from the softest thing she’s ever felt, and finally notices Parker is barefooted in front of her, leaving a man’s flannel on the sink for her to change into. Her raincoat is dripping inside a shower stall on a hanger. Parker looks at her as if waiting for something.
“What?” Liz snarls, trying not to drip everywhere. Parker rolls her eyes at her, huffing.
“Your name?”
“Oh. Liz.”
Parker nods, before pivoting and getting out the bathroom, maybe to giver her privacy to change. Liz wonders if she should follow her when she hears a man’s voice say, surprised, “Parker?”
“Hello, Eliot, you were fast,” Parker answers.
Liz hadn’t even heard the door opening.
i want it to be a surprise when he comes back from the farmer's market and finds the two of them inside his apartment
Eliot decided that she's someone he's got to look out for? He's sort of like that. Her childhood was crap. She lived in a foster home after Aimee gave her up and she learned to fight to survive. She's trying to find her way and find a place to belong. I'm thinking since Sophie's thing is reading people, she gets a suspicion that this girl is somehow related to Eliot, then convinces Nate and Hardison to help her dig into past and find out who she really is, then they find out that she's his daughter by Aimee, that Aimee put her up for adoption because she couldn't handle it, she wound up leaving the foster home at 16 and struck out on her own. i don't think eliot would vouch for her as a back up, at least not as a hitter. liz would fight him every step of the way though eliot would try to make her go another way, maybe give her a job at the brew pub
somehow, liz would still get tangled in some jobs nate is not above using kids to get the job done eliot would be furious the first one to imprint on liz would be parker OMG, IMAGINE ANGRY ELIOT CONFRONTING NATE. LIKE, NATE TOTALLY THINKS SHIT ABOUT ARCHIE WHEN HE DID THE SAME WITH PARKER AND NOW NATE'S DOING THE SAME THING WITH LIZ eliot telling nate liz is broken and needs a family liz gets in between them because she's not fucking broken liz would be something of an ongoing fight between eliot and nate especially since nate is weaning the ot3 from him and sophie, stepping back and letting them think about the con instead of just telling them what to do