Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.

Where’s Eliot?

Is that weird that I find all of that really attractive? I thank God every day that you do.

HARDISON AND PARKER IN LEVERAGE: REDEMPTION (2021)

“At least he burned.”

-Leverage: Redemption; S1E01 “The Too Many Rembrandts Job”

Leverage: Redemption | 1x01 - The Too Many Rembrandts Job

1.04 - The Tower Job

I think I’ve deduced that you are a group of thieves who help people...

(x)

1.01 The Too Many Rembrandts Job

if you’ve never watched leverage, i would totally suggest watching it right now. the characters are delightful, every episode is a mini heist movie, and it’s optimistic about the human condition in the manner of the good place but also deeply critical of modern capitalistic society. every episode is about taking down bad people, many of these corporations, or in one case, a whole episode about how walmart fucks over workers and small towns and they destroy one, individual walmart and save the town.

it’s just really good, guys. it’s the kind of show that we all need right now.

Just a heads up, Leverage is currently streaming for free (with ads) on Tubi and Vudu. It was on PlutoTV as well, not sure if it is still there so feel free to dive right in

It’s also free with ads on imdb (USA, as of 3/22/20)

It’s a very distinctive handicraft.

It’s very telling about the kind of roles Christian Kane is cast in that I thought this was a legit subtitle for a minute and couldn’t tell if it was Leverage or The Librarians (outside chance it was Angel, honestly). 

*pokes you* Make it fic for me, Sam. If not now, then next time you’re doing a Midnight Theatre. I’m putting my order in now because I am NEVER awake when you ask for prompts. Pretty please?

Guess who’s got legal weed and a will to create! 

(Quick shout out to Dispensary 33, where 1920s facial hair meets 2020s weed edibles!)

Title: A Very Distinctive Backstitch Rating: General Summary: Parker returns home to find Eliot has discovered both pinterest and handicrafts, and Hardison has had to use the fire extinguisher again.

Parker got home three days after the boys did, on that particular mission. When they were planning it, they seemed to think this wasn’t fair, and she’d told them they were right; she felt terrible, having so much fun without them. Still, they’d just have to keep a stiff upper lip about it and she’d let them have all the fun next time.

(When she mentioned that, Alec got his “You have misunderstood my intentions” face, but she l…she lo…she loved Alec in part because even when she didn’t understand, he wasn’t ever mean or judgey. He didn’t always explain, but he always accepted. In this case, he just got her a GoPro so she could tape herself on the stunt bike course during the mission.)

Anyway, she spent three days having so much fun, and didn’t even mind the long drive back to Portland in the taquito truck. But when she finally arrived home, letting herself into the loft above the brewpub, she was met with a mystery. As she entered she found, draped over the kitchen island, a large fold of cloth, heavily embroidered in the style of the Bayeaux tapestry.

“Did you take an entire other job without me?” she demanded, as Alec walked into the kitchen carrying an empty plastic takeaway container. He shouted, flailed, and threw it at her. She caught it and tossed it into the sink. (She was all for throwing them away, but Eliot got a really pinched look when they did that, so now they washed them and saved them forever in the Sacred Take Away Container Reliquary, aka the bottom drawer on the right of the dishwasher.)

“Parker!” Alec yelped.

“What kind of job would you need the Bayeaux tapestry for, anyhow?” she asked.

“Woman,” Alec sighed, but he hugged her, and once she’d gotten used to them hugs were nice, so she enjoyed that part. “Welcome home. It’s not the Bayeax tapestry. I have some bad news.”

“If you’re getting some 7535 you might as well grab the 7110!” Eliot’s voice drifted out from the bedroom.

“Eliot’s lost his damn mind,” Hardison finished.

In theory, Parker knew that this job would be rough on Eliot. It required their hitter to take a beating. Eliot had said he was fine with it, but he’d taken more of a hit than anyone (possibly including the bad guys’ goon) had intended. In practice she’d been prepared for him to be bedridden, doped up, and cranky, but she hadn’t been prepared for cryptography.

“What’s 7535?” she asked in a whisper.

“Embroidery thread,” Hardison replied, reaching for a plastic bin on the counter. He held up a hank of wooly yarn, wrapped in a piece of paper that did indeed read 7535. “Did you know there are seven different shades of black?”

“Well, yeah,” she said, perplexed. “I mean, Venetian Black is totally different from Cherry Black, and then there’s Dark Black – oh! I found it!” she added, plucking the other color, 7110, out of the box. “What does Eliot want with red and black yarn?”

“Thread. Embroidery thread,” Alex said. “He got high and picked up a hobby.”

At that point Eliot himself, apparently impatient with Alec’s lack of speed, thumped into the kitchen on a crutch.

“It’s not a hobby, it’s a historical tradition,” he said. “Hi Parker, welcome home. Textiles have always been dismissed as crafts while paint and sculpture are arts,” he added, aggrieved.

Parker turned to Alec. He shrugged.

“He found a really compelling Pinterest right as the opiates kicked in,” he said.

“I learned how to embroider at three in the morning,” Eliot said to her proudly. He held out his next project after the fake Bayeaux tapestry. It was a cross stitch announcing All Cheese is Hubris. Parker studied it, impressed.

“He also almost burned the building down,” Alec interjected, as if he wasn’t used to both of them almost burning things down on a very regular basis. It was cute how he always acted surprised.

“It’s a long story,” Eliot said. “Anyway once I got the hang of it, I thought, I’ve never forged a textile before.”

“Ooh, me neither,” Parker said thoughtfully.

“But there’s a couple of panels from the Bayeaux missing, right?” he continued. “And like…why shouldn’t one of the missing panels have aliens in it?”

Parker checked the tapestry on the kitchen island. Among other more traditional motifs, it did indeed have two large-eyed aliens abducting a monk.

“He’s still high?” she asked.

“Another two days on the Vicodin,” Alec confirmed.

“It looks very authentic,” she said loyally. “Construction-wise, I mean.”

“Thanks,” Eliot said. He accepted the thread Alec handed him. “I’m gonna go finish this one. It’s for the kitchen.”

He hobbled off. Alec looked at her, his face a careful mask.

“Poor baby,” she said. “I got to base-jump twice and you’ve been tripsitting him through the hobby store.”

“ART STORE,” Eliot’s voice drifted out from the bedroom.

“Yeah, well, you know, it’s been rough, but I held up,” Alec said, putting on a mock-brave face. She grinned and kissed his cheek.

“Go play some video games. I’ll handle him from here. With a little nudge, he might learn to knit before we have to get him off the hard stuff,” she pointed out. She felt the benefits of knitting were self-evident, but Alec frowned.

“Why do we want Eliot to learn to knit?” he asked.

“Hello? Custom sized winter hats?” she pointed out. Hardison fell well within the one-size-fits-all range of most machine knitted hats – she’d done measurements while he slept – but she just knew if he had a tailored toque he’d feel better about wintering somewhere it rained every single day from Halloween to St. Patrick’s Day. She herself had quite an oval head and hadn’t gone back to off-the-rack hats since her first tailored ski mask.

“I’m gonna go…Goose Game,” he said.

“Be extra horrible for me!” she told him, and bounced off to initiate a subtle campaign to shift Eliot from embroidery to knitting.

It’s not just that both Eliot and Parker know exactly what the other is thinking (tho I love it because Parker is not the most sympathetic person but she always seems to know what Nate and Eliot are thinking because the three of them are the ones who more easily jump into each other’s ruthless wavelenght and know what the other is up to without having to talk about it and it’s perfect? gun, trigger and bullet.) but the fact that this OT3 works as the most perfectly intertwined unit and both Eliot and Parker know that if that doesn’t work they’re probably going to die so they just nod at each other and do what they have to do because that’s what makes them them, but they’re not who they used to be either (“we change together”) so she kisses Hardison first even if she doesn’t believe in luck, and Eliot allows himself looking at them one last time before letting Parker go and save the world (in this show the girls are the ones who ultimately save the day while the boys cover their back and are ridiculously affected by them! BEAUTIFUL) while he does his thing wich is protecting them with his life until the last moment. Is there a way to get Leverage feelings out of one’s system?

Also nothing will ever be funnier than the whole Leverage crew spending the first episode whining about how they work alone and this is a one-time thing ONLY and they DON’T work in a team EVER and then like two days later Nate tries to get rid of them and every single one of them is like “why are you trying to tear this family apart :(”