Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

Anonymous asked: You mentioned Parker and Sophie in your John Wick tags so can I request some Leverage for the headcanon ask?

Let’s go steal a headcanon meme.  (shut up, I’m hilarious)

A: what I think realistically

The brew pub’s microcosm, at this point, is bolstered by layers upon layers of gambling.  The old staff bets on how long new kitchen hires will last, and if you last out the first three months without quitting in a mild panic about what the fuck is happening here, you get formally inducted into the wider pool of bets.  The three top questions are:

The date of Nate and Sophie’s wedding: the pot is a handsome $700 despite the relatively small bets placed and regularly reupped (it took them two years to properly exchange names and thirteen years to sleep together, don’t tell me it wouldn’t be an ongoing question)

Who exactly is dating whom, among their three bosses: there are a scant three people who put their money on a poly triad, and they’ll be splitting the $1100 between them when someone figures Eliot and Parker and Hardison out

No, Really, What The Fuck Is Happening Here: There is one person who put their whole paycheck on “fuck it, they’re fucking criminal masterminds, they probably take down governments in their fucking free time” after seven pints of Thief Juice, and they are walking away with a cool two grand if they can ever actually prove it

B: what I think is fucking hilarious

So, the FBI thinks that Hardison and Parker are official agents.  Like, the FBI is so convinced of this, so convinced of this, that Hardison actually discovers they have valid badge numbers–they are all but being paid by the federal government as part of their Portland white collar crimes office.  Agent McSweeten and his partner have benefited handsomely from Hardison and Parker’s involvement, and they vouch for their ‘old buddies’ at every turn, to the extent that most of the feds they could run into in a number of cities (Boston, Portland, probably NYC) are like ‘yes, they’re undercover again, c’est la vie.’

Which is all well and good until Interpol shows up and has to work with the FBI on something quite unrelated, which results in Sterling tearing his hair out because “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THEY’RE NOT FEDERAL AGENTS THEY’RE CRIMINALS, OF COURSE THEY’RE CRIMINALS.”

The Feds honestly pity the poor guy.  Damn, their people are good, their undercover personalities even managed to convince Interpol, damn fine.  McSweeten tells Parker the story next time he sees her and she laughs for literally days.

C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends

Eliot believes–no, he knows–that he’s going to die for Parker and Hardison.  He’s actually pretty comfortable with this, but he knows that if he ever brings it up out loud, the pair of them are going to mutually implode.  I wrote that into a fic, actually.  Also, listen, we all know this is canon.  “Until my dying day.”  Eliot, please be a little less obviously worshipful of these people.  Some of my Eliot Spencer feelings can also be found here.

D:  what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway

I like to think that there’s a Leverage Mark II comprised of some of the kids they run into over the course of their jobs, I even wrote out like 2K words in headcanons for it.  Members include: 

Mastermind: Olivia Sterling, from The Queen’s Gambit Job

Hitter: Molly (who now identifies as Matthew), from The Carnival Job

Hacker: Trevor, from The Hot Potato Job

Grifter: Widmark (Mark), from The Fairy Godparents Job

Thief: Josie, from The Boost Job

Client: Luka, from The Stork Job, whose little sister has been kidnapped

I just really want this, okay?  I want to see them become the greatest criminals around under the tutelage of the Leverage squad and take up the torch when Eliot and Hardison and Parker decide to dial it back a bit and buy a restaurant somewhere.

(Related headcanon that Leverage habitually starts training up new generations and like in five hundred years humanity’s in space and the Leverage has an ancient oil painting hanging in their mess hall and whenever someone asks why they don’t transfer it to a hologram, the crew of the ship puffs up and declaims at length about their honored founder Harlan Leverage III and how they would never insult his memory like that!  In the afterlife, Nate S C R E A M S.)

kashinoha asked: #70. (67%) with Hardison/Parker/Eliot!

From this ancient prompt list, because I am the worst and it took me forever to get around to this.  I just want everyone to be proud of me because I almost went somewhere REALLY terrible with this prompt.  Because the last episode of Leverage fucked me all the way up and I remain vengeful about that.  That near miss will be obvious.

The con had unraveled at light speed.  Things had gone south almost as quickly as the time Leverage Incorporated had stolen the maquettes of the David, leaving Parker scrambling to adapt their plan and salvage as much as possible.  They’d managed to get the files that would prove their target responsible a fistful of deaths revolving around tainted eggs, but now Eliot’s earbud was fried.

Well. He thought it was fried—admittedly he hadn’t devoted a lot of time to checking in more detail.  Between the black eye swelling on his face (bone undamaged, bruising unlikely to occlude vision), the blood seeping into his jeans from a nasty knife cut to his thigh (missed the artery, unlikely to prove lethal, would inhibit full range of motion) and the four cracked-hopefully-not-broken ribs impeding his breathing (another hit would shatter them along the fissures) and, naturally, the fact that he was tied to a chair (efficiently, they had practice), the earbud had taken low priority.  If it was fried, he was going to murder Hardison with his bare hands, assuming he got out of this with both hands intact.  

Also assuming that the others got out of this to be murdered, of course, which was never a certainty when someone had the forethought to take their hitter out of the equation.  Eliot almost would have been reassured if the target’s hired muscle (most of them half-decent, with a small command structure of better trained mercs) was busy torturing him, because if they were occupied with him, the others would have time to get out.  Instead, they had managed to knock him out with a hard blow to the head (mild concussion, vertigo manageable for motion) and left him here alone, tied up and out of play.  But he was trying not to think about that, because if he thought too hard about the kind of disaster that could befall Hardison and Parker when he wasn’t there to take the hit for them, he got a little lightheaded (possibly the concussion, more probably a mild anxiety response).  So the dead earbud had to take a back burner to getting the fuck out of here and finding the other sixty-seven percent of Leverage International.

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lydsmartini:

i think about the fact that eliot’s counterpart for the “anti leverage” team was a woman a lot. and by eliot’s counterpart, i mean their team’s brute. their hitter. the one who beats up and attacks anyone who threatens the team’s plan. and eliot isn’t like “oh she’s a woman” even tho hardison was like “u weren’t gonna hit a girl.” and he was like “she killed a man with a mop.” he was scared of her. he respected her. he never once thought he could get the upper hand just because she was a woman.

(via renew-leverage)

Anonymous asked: *skids in wearing a fake mustache* hey moran! you and your writings are a blessing on this earth and i know that you are incredibly busy, but do you have time to talk about elliot spencer? or leverage in general? thank! *skids out again while refixing the mustache*

ELIOT SPENCER.  THE LOVE OF MY LIFE.

Okay, for those of you poor deprived souls who have NEVER HAD THE PLEASURE OF WATCHING LEVERAGE, here is my rapid-fire pitch: take a hitter, a hacker, a grifter, and a thief, add an ex-insurance agent who hunted them all at one point or another and has a guilt complex that is…well, very Catholic.  Mix with a helping-the-helpless motto, and point at the nearest righteous crusade.  It’s Robin Hood for the modern age.  It is the five-season-long, genuinely enjoyable, never grimdark but always sincere, emotionally wringing show you have looked for.  The characters are a delight, the writing is witty and soulful and real, the women are treated excellently, they have racial diversity, every episode is a whole different flavor of wonderfully wicked glee, and it’s obvious in every moment that everyone involved loved working on it.  The found family feelings spill off the screen.  Here is a pitch, here is a pitch, also here, here is MY pitch, there’s another here, here, here’s a spoilery but super detailed one, here, here, and I could find more BUT THIS IS A LOT ALREADY.  It’s on Netflix, go forth.

Eliot, my hitter darling, I love him so much.  

Okay, like, let’s talk about how devoted he is to the Leverage crew.  Eliot is one of the ones who, quite frankly, does A-OK solo.  He doesn’t need Sophie there to grift, he can do it, he can steal stuff even if he’s not as expert as Parker, having Hardison around is helpful but not mandatory, and, as we see when Nate’s taken out of play in the Zanzibar Marketplace Job, Eliot’s a good enough tactician to wing it successfully.  Like.  He’s fine on his own, maybe even more fine than Parker or Hardison, who are a little hit or miss on the others’ fields of expertise.  He’s there because these are his people and he is going to take care of them.  It’s all about taking care of his people.  And I think the thing about Eliot is that that’s always been a part of him, one he’s had to throttle into nothingness for years.  The mercenary life doesn’t lend itself to emotional connections, and for Eliot, who–even if he’s gruff and irritable about it–loves his people with his whole self, that must have been a very lonely life.  Trust no one, because they might be hired to kill you tomorrow.  Love no one, because they might sell you out to the highest bidder.  Be alone, be safe, keep everyone more than arm’s length away and watch for the glint of a knife or the press of a gun.  Touch nothing but the object of the mission, let nothing touch you.  

And then…and then he meets the Leverage crew–only, they’re not the Leverage crew yet, they’re four people hired for a job.  Four, Eliot has to admit, brilliant people, even if they’re all their own unique flavor of bonkers.  And then one of them’s holding him at gunpoint, and then a building is blowing up and he’s pushing them ahead of him out of a building, and let me ask you something.  Do you think he knew, then?  With the fire at his back and his hand in Hardison’s shirt as he dragged him to his feet?  Do you think he had a moment of clarity, running out of that building, or waking up in the hospital, where he knew that his carefully constructed walls–cold and hard and strong as diamond, be alone, be safe–were already down?  

I do.  I think he sat there, handcuffed to a chair with ink on his fingers and Nathan motherfucking Ford out cold in the bed beside him, and wondered when it happened.  Because he pushed Parker ahead of him–Parker, who had pointed a gun at him and lived anyway–and he dragged Hardison along and he made sure Nate was outside.  And it wasn’t a job, he can’t tell himself that, because he wasn’t getting paid.  He just…had a moment of weakness, he tells himself.  He never believed in collateral damage, it’s sloppy, it’s messy, so he avoided it.  He might still need them to get his paycheck from Dubenich.  It’s okay, he’s fine.

I think he might have convinced himself of that right up until they each get a check pressed into their hands by Hardison, a huge check, a go legit and buy an island check.  And then…and then they walk away and for the first time in a lot of years, Eliot thinks I don’t want to go.  And for the first time in a lot of years, he realizes that maybe he doesn’t have to go, and he comes back.  From the very beginning, he comes back, because he’s been a hitter and a hunter and a killer for so, so long, and maybe this is a chance to be a protector instead.  Maybe this is a chance to reach back in time a little and find some scrap of that kid with a flag on his shoulder, who believed in what he was doing.

Maybe this is a chance to have a family.

doctorwithafryingpan:

copperbadge:

sci-fantasy:

copperbadge:

sanerontheinside:

fireandwonder:

Somewhere in the Leverage universe, there is a conspiracy theorist trying to prove that a certain minor league baseball player, a Canadian hockey player, and an American country music singer are all the same person. They have a file with various news printouts, and keep trying to upload them to a website, but every time they do, the site mysteriously crashes, threads go missing on discussion boards, and all electronic records of this man have simply vanished.

Three years later a man comes to Portland and settles down in this brewery, cuz somebody said it wasn’t a half-bad place to get food. And then he sees the chef. 

Turns out he’s a half-decent researcher and very good at finding people who desperately need help, and he eventually gets hired as a “marketing associate” for the pub.

The order’s wrong. He gets a job offer from Leverage International, that’s why he goes to Portland in the first place.

He doesn’t understand why they picked a brewpub for the interview (and what the hell is up with the house beer? Weird name, weirder flavor, but the server just smiles and says it’s an acquired taste and he may want to start acquiring it…), until the chef is his second interview of three.

“I wasn’t even looking for a job,” Bobby said, checking to make sure his charging cords were all secure in the flap of the laptop carry-on case as they pulled up to the airport drop-off zone. “I’m still not sure it’s not a scam.”

“Lot of effort to go to for a scam,” his sister pointed out, deftly flinging the car across three lanes to try and get a good spot at the curb. 

“I mean I guess even if it is a scam they paid for my flight out to Portland. I hear it’s a nice town.”

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THIS IS FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC AND I WANT TO READ MORE!!!

(via windbladess)