not sure what to do w this, but the thought has been bouncing around my skull for the past two days and
do u guys think that eliot had a band in high school? like, we know he can play guitar and sing and i don’t think those are skills he would have acquired in the army or during his post-army, pre-leverage days, u know???
so now i can’t stop thinking about baby eliot starting a band w his friends and they’re good but not great, but everyone from their school knows them anyway, and the football team is always at their dinky local gigs to support eliot, and they don’t think they’re going anywhere bc they’re nobodies from nowhere, but they’re still having fun
I SEE A FANFIC IDEA THIS IS GREAT
Oh this is adorable
Wait this has so much comedic potential if one of his old band mates recognizes him when he’s that mildly famous country star!!
it starts when mark’s daughter forms an obsession with this new country guy she heard on the internet. she says his name is kenneth crane and she’s in love with him. and mark is like, okay, his tweenage daughter’s latest celebrity crush will last a week before she moves on to another one. before kenneth crane it was dylan o’brien from that werewolf show, and before that it was selena gomez from wizards of waverly place, and before that it was henry cavill from superman. next it would probably the boy from that vampire show or that girl from that superhero movie.
the point is, mark generally lets his daughter obsess over these celebrities because it’s harmless and part of being young. he indulges her when she uses the computer to (safely) use message boards and listens to their music with her when she plops down next to him with her ipod and starts blasting it on full volume
except this time the voice is eerily familiar and mark can’t exactly name it but something is nagging at him in the back of him mind that he should recognize the voice from somewhere.
and then she asks to get a shirt with his face on it and he rolls his eyes but she is using those big puppy dog eyes and her birthday is just around the corner after all so maybe he’ll indulge her after all. except when he goes to order it the face that stares back at him is that of his old bandmate who he thought died overseas after enlisting for the army
so he opens up the group chat he, james and andy have on his phone and snaps a picture of the t-shirt that he was still going to buy but now kind of felt weird about with the caption ‘is it just me or does this random country singer look a lot like spencer?’
and a half hour later james replied with a slew of question marks and nothing else, which mark kind of understood because he was just as baffled about it as james seemed to be
and now that mark listens to the (admittedly good) song his daughter showed him it is definitely eliot’s voice which doesn’t make sense because eliot was supposed to be dead. they sent the folded flag to his dad and everything. so who was this guy with eliot’s face and voice getting the country equivalent of one-hit-wonder famous on the internet?
***
it would have ended there, but it didn’t.
because then andy happens to be at a hockey game in portland and this guy skates up and they call him jaques the bear (even though the team is called the otters???) and they can’t quite see the face of the man but the figure is kind of distinct familiar
and then he’s waiting to get an autograph from craig marko for his son so he waits by the exit to get it and out of the corner of his eye he sees this jack guy closer now and that definitely looks like eliot but that’s impossible because there was already a not-eliot called kenneth crane that he and the boys had a text thread about
so he discretely takes a picture of jack talking with this blonde chick from across the parking lot and sends it in the old band group chat with the caption ‘???’ and ‘possible bigfoot spencer’ followed by some more question marks because what the hell, again???
***
andy has lived with his boyfriend clarke and son teddy in boston for just over five years when he comes across the baseball card. teddy is trying to save up for some new baseball gear and was desperate enough to start selling his complete collections of team baseball cards. andy thought it was a bit of a waste because they weren’t vintage or anything but if you’re looking to sell something it’s almost guaranteed that someone wants to buy it so he helps teddy organize and package them.
he’s sifting through the cards and blinks when a familiar face stares back at him. he thinks to himself, this is getting ridiculous as he pulls out his phone to take a picture for the group chat with the caption: ‘another eliotfoot sighting ???’
***
it’s been a long, long time since mark, james or andy had seen eliot spencer. they missed him, mourned him. and then he seemed to start popping up everywhere and they didn’t know what to do about it.
and mark was going a little crazy about it. just a smidge.
he totally didn’t have a cork board in the basement like charlie kelly’s Pepe Silva Conspiracy Board from it’s always sunny, lines of red thread connecting the faces of the different not-eliots.
(his daughter absolutely did not call him out about that. she totally did not call him charlie on multiple occasions. not at all...)
he certainly didn’t start a conspiracy site about it.
***
and alec hardison certainly didn’t find the site and laugh his ass off for five minutes before shutting it down, only mildly concerned about the carefully crafted covers he’d made for eliot.
it would be fine, he told himself
(famous last words)
I present to you, The Conspiracy Job
chapter one is up now!!! stay tuned for more!!!