I wrote something but I honestly don’t have the energy to finish it. But I also really like it. Comments, reactions and replies welcome.
heres like 1500 words of Leverage ot3 angst
cw: canon typical violence, mention of blood/bodies/injuries/nightmares but nothing too graphic:
Eliot's wrist buckled under the force of his punch and he knew it was over. He knew it immediately, in the way that you do when unforgivable words leave your mouth and that tell tale silence falls. The twist in the movement had knocked the breath out of him pulling his focus to his cracked rib. It only took him a second to recover but in that time the pain in his wrist set in. The rest of his senses dulled as shock enveloped him, dulling the pain. He had two more guys to take out before the team was done, fifteen give or take already lay groaning on the floor. Alec was trying to fight one of them off, rather pathetically if Eliot were being honest. He stopped listening, focusing on the pain for one moment. A quick glance told him his right arm was useless, the pulsing ache he could ignore but he knew from experience that if he kept pushing he’d lose control real fast. He really didn’t feel like killing anyone today. Especially when-
A scream pulled their attention to the doorway and a burly man with a buzz cut and a nasty snarl of a smile on his face entered the room, a body draped over his shoulder. Eliot couldn’t see who it was. Then it hit them like a punch right to the solar plexus. Parker. Then Eliot saw it; the blood trail following the man into the room, dripping from the ends of her blonde hair. Suddenly he thought he was going to be sick. The fuzz in his head had become overwhelming. Everyone moved in slow motion.
“Eliot!” Alec dodged the bodyguard’s right hook and he didn’t even have the wherewithal to hide the shock from his face. He threw a terrified glance at Eliot when the guy pulled out a pistol. “I need a little help here! Come on!” Eliot had clocked the gun the moment the bodyguard walked in but then he assumed it wouldn’t be a problem. The situation had clearly changed.
The anger and panic in Alec’s voice sounded far away like he was yelling from a different room. Alec turned to the man with Parker over his shoulder.
“What did you do?!” The hacker lunged at the man and before anyone could react Buzz Cut lifted his arm. Two echoing gun shots pulled Eliot back into his body. He gulped in air as time caught up with him. A fire inside him shook what was left of the shock out of his system and finally he snarled, bright eyed and furious at the two men who had just taken the people he loved most.
A loud BANG echoed off the walls. This was it. He tasted blood. With everything left in his body he lunged at the man with the gun but he didn’t make it that far. A third gunshot. But maybe it was better that way.
##
Eliot was lying on his back. His hair was damp and his breath came in short, shallow, sharp gasps. The ground became soft around him. Someone was shouting his name in his ear. It was like they were right there-
“ELIOT?”
But...how?
“Eliot, you’re safe! You’re here with us.” The ground bounced beneath him like it was soft, like there were springs. A bed. Eliot couldn’t move. His thoughts were slow, he couldn’t figure out what was happening.
This time when Alec spoke it was with trepidation. “What’s wrong with him?”
Wrong with me?
“Nightmares,” Parker spoke from experience. She looked up at Alec and motioned him to move away. “Don’t touch him, he could get violent.”
A dream. Eliot opened his eyes. Alec and Parker pulled back in sync. They were ready for the man in their bed to react with the violence they’d become accustomed to, although never directed at them. It hurt him to think that they would ever be afraid of him. That they could even for a second think he’d do anything to hurt them.
He didn’t say anything, neither of them did. He just kept breathing. Nightmares were not a new occurrence for Eliot, he’d been having them since his service. What was different is how seeing Parker’s body and Alec shot affected him. He had just shut down, gone numb, something he promised himself he wouldn’t do again. He was not a hired gun. He was a hitter and a good one. For a team that needed him. Pure anger pulsed through him as he remembered the dream. Then his chest ached.
“E- Eliot,” Alec said softly. “Can you hear me? Are you awake?”
Eliot looked at him and then at Parker. Something in his stomach dropped. These are the people he most cared about. Parker took a measured risk and put her cold hand on his cheek. Eliot leaned into it, blinking at her. Just feeling their presence.
“You were-” he didn’t want to say it.
She shook her head. “I’m right here.” When he was sure she wasn’t lying he turned his attention to Alec, eyes wide. “Hardison,” Parker growled.
Alec’s eyes were glued to Eliot’s pale face. “You were sleep fighting - which really isn’t that weird - you do that all the time. But then you started yelling our names. I thought you were mad, I thought I pulled your hair in my sleep or put pressure on your cracked rib. But then you started…” Parker took his hand, steadying him. “You were crying, man.”
Eliot wiped his face and sat up. “I gotta-” he needed air. “I have to go.” When he got up Alec reached for him but he wouldn’t be pulled back. He needed room to think. All he could do was focus on their smell, their soft warm bodies next to him. Warm. All he wanted to do was feel the blood pulsing under their skin, feel their chest rising and falling. The ultimate signal that their breaths were still coming, that they were still here. Solidify that his dream was nothing more than that. A fiction his brain had come up with to deal with….
“Eliot.” Parker called, worry deep in her voice. He didn’t look back. In fact he changed into sweats - in plain view of the bed - and went out for a run.
Confusing her like this ached deep in his stomach. He’d promised never to give her mixed signals, she explicitly asked him when she was still struggling with voicing the things she was feeling. He insisted it was just as hard for him but he knew what she meant. She’d spent too many years yearning after abusive people, family who couldn’t decipher the difference between pain and love, relationships where manipulation was top priority. She’d become hardened, faced everything with a smile but she hadn’t let anyone in for years before them. She’d come so far since then. He’d promised he wouldn’t hurt her- or either of them - you don’t get into this business without needing to hide some scars yourself.
And yet. He never thought about how losing them would hurt him.
##
The run had given him time to think but it hadn’t calmed his nerves. He was still weighed down by the contents of his dream, still jumping at every sound. This was not good, a spring loaded hitter was dangerous. Every time he closed his eyes he snapped right back to seeing them both, lying still and covered in blood. It was hard to get close to people as a Hitter. He knew that, they knew that. But somehow they’d snuck up on him.
After three hours of running his chest was burning and he was legitimately worried his legs were about to give out under him. But he didn’t want to see them. Not because he didn’t want to see them, because he did. More than anything he wanted to collapse into their arms and let them take care of him like they often did in the comfort of their shared apartment. A role reversal that took him a long time to come to terms with but now treasured above all else. But he didn’t want to be reminded that he’d acquired such a weakness. Knowing that he had to deal with that, and that knowing he’d die for them at any given moment. It killed him to think about leaving them open to threats from all sides.
It wasn’t dying he was afraid of. It was losing them, not being a part of this thing they’d built. This comfort they’d fought endlessly to achieve. He coughed and his throat burned.
Entering the seemingly empty apartment from the front door always set off alarm bells in his head. He always felt the urge to check every bedroom for intruders and tense his shoulders for a fight. Today he was too mentally and physically exhausted.
Then just like that it hit him; he more than anyone could die tomorrow, he probably would. He had to tell them what they meant to him. He listened closely, waiting to hear the soft whispers of their voices. When he didn’t he wondered if they’d gone back to sleep. But Parker wasn’t the type to fall back asleep after something like that.
"Hey, we’re thieves, man, and we’re good at what we do, but this is way, way out of our league. And you expect us to go catch some psycho with a city killer? A country killer?"
One of my favourite Leverage tropes is when some goons are threatening a member of the team and Eliot just comes out of nowhere from off screen or around a corner, sometimes even when he wasn't anywhere nearby in the previous scene, as if he was summoned like a pokemon coming out of a pokeball. Eliot I choose you.
leverage villain of the week: you thought you could play me? ME? i’m so much smarter and so much richer and so much BETTER than you. i saw you coming a MILE off. i have beautifully dismantled your stupid plan!
nate: ok :)
leverage villain of the week: wh
leverage villain of the week: what do you mean “ok :)”
nate: 👍👍👍
leverage villain of the week:
leverage villain of the week: i don’t feel safe anymore
the rashomon job was legitimately so hilarious i had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard oh my god. the whole episode was fucking gold but my favorite part had to be everybody butchering what sophie sounds like, capped off with precious parker's complete inability to hear anything she says. sophie is just full on charlie brown adult voice to her, lmaoooo.
Something about this bugged me. Other than the typical, Eliot Spencer grazing over and minimizing a tramatic event, there was a hesitation in how he described getting ‘dropped off.’ And this is definitely something that I think Christian Kane took creative license on, filling in the script where it left off. But as someone who has gone through child abuse, there was something I recognized here—and it actually wasn’t the first place that I saw it.
Oh yeah, you know where I’m going with this.
To state the obvious, recognizing and dealing with child abuse is always—always—a horrible thing, and it’s expected for someone who genuinely cares to react vicerally, as Eliot did throughout the entire episode. However, there was something more, and I always thought so, but “The Fractured Job” just sealed the deal for me. Something about how Eliot recognized what Randy was going through just by seeing his back, standing next to his dad. Obviously, Eliot shows throughout the show that he’s great at reading body language, and he is very observant, but he also phased out so many times in the episode. There was a personal element here, something that Eliot recognized in Randy off of personal experience.
We were never told how old Eliot was when he was saved from or abandoned by his biological parents, just that he was young enough to be in a picture with Billy Spencer around the age of 10 or 12.
But with how he acted in “The Order 23 Job” and “The Fractured Job”… there is nothing I can think of that would convince me his story wasn’t very similar to Randy’s.
And working off of this, however his biological parents abused him, it adds so much depth to the why of how he treats kids, treats Parker.
Which leads me to point out his conversation with Randy, and how well he handles all of it: he has brief moments of intense eye contact and facial expression, that he breaks off just as fast—engaging, but not intimidating. He always is the one who looks away first.
And when Randy comes out of his shell a bit, he doesn’t bombard him with questions—he never even asks Randy directly, ever, in this conversation, if his father is the one who broke his arm—he just shows Randy that he knows, and takes the pressure off for him to tell the truth.
Which plays back into his conversation with Randy’s dad in the stairwell...
And this one line that just guts me every time:
And when he tells Randy:
“You could go up to one… and tell them what happened to your arm."
There’s this moment, this moment:
The look on his face here, made me know something was up. Yes, absolutely, Eliot is a compassionate and highly protective person, especially when it comes to kids—he would have helped Randy either way, but there’s something else here too: personal experience.
If it wasn’t obvious enough in everything else, we have this:
Hardison jump-scares him. And Parker, in “The Studio Job,” was super surprised whenever she was able to shock him, because she—cat-burglar extrodinare, was never able to sneak up on him before. And Hardison… sorry buddy, you aren't quiet.
Eliot’s there, talking to Randy, but the whole time half his mind is somewhere else.
And now I can’t get it out of my head, so I’m putting it in yours.
I can’t stop seeing Eliot, at however young an age—young—with a broken arm and bruises he keeps explaining away, because his daddy taught him how to lie. Then a young woman seeing him at the hospital—actually seeing him—and taking him home to a place where she became his mother and Billy Spencer his father. Where he later locked himself in the woodshed to get over his claustrophobia...
I let my mom infodump to me about Leverage and she let me know that these fuckers did a storyline where it was reveled that Eliot was raised by black people. And his dad is freaking Keith David. I thought she was making it up but no. This is real.
They even dress the same. Oh my god. What the fuck does he know ? Eliot knows our secrets and ways ? Does this bitch use cocoa butter ? Does he wear a bonnet ? Is that why is hair is so healthy ? He knows too much.
