To Castle a King
Title: To Castle a King
Author: Magpie
Rating: pg
Genre: Hardison, implied Nate/Eliot
Verse: BlackKing!WhiteKnight!Verse
Summary: Hardison has plans, big potentially life threatening plans, but plans none the less.
Notes: The Seventh and final in the "Trust and Sobriety" arc, a series of tags for the Beantown Bailout Job I'm doing to better fix my verse to follow cannon as closely as possible. Okay, deep breath, heres the list of other parts to the arc... Queen's Gambit, Trusting Sobriety, Rule 17, What Hardison Knows, and A Hitters Work, and And Then There was Silence
One of these days I'm going to run out of chess metaphors. I think that'll be the day this verse dies but until then... *looks toward my "Things in the works" list on my journal* well it'll be a while.
On that note I'm closing up this arc and my two longfics and you guessed it starting another long fic and Two arcs. Keep an eye out for The Legacy Job (not in this verse), as well as the Shelter and the Storm arc (which happens post Fathers and after the Order 23 Job) which this story leads into, and the Two Knight Opener arc (which runs from the Nigerian job through the Snow Job and is me finally working myself up to writting how they got together).
Hardison had plans. Big Plans. Big, potentially life threatening, plans but he liked to think he knew his teammates well enough that he could predict their reactions. Even if Eliot was so prone to violence there was always a off chance he’d resort to it when he couldn’t think of a better solution Hardison was 87% certain that both he and Nate would feel too awkward to hurt him.
If he could do this without getting hurt he would risk it being a waste of time.
After all, if his plan failed they still needed a safe house for clients and such and his project would work fine for that.
So he bought the building Nate lived in and he set about remodeling. Sure, he started with Nate’s apartment. That was the obvious thing to do. He “hired” Eliot to help out (though really, he just told Eliot he would get to chainsaw a wall into submission and Eliot was all too eager). They started setting things up, restored Harlem Leverage the Third to a rightful position of prominence. It wouldn’t be too long before everything was as it should be.
Though, as the tension in the room increased after Parker was gone, and how the hell did they think they were being subtle when they kept looking at each other like that, Hardison knew it was time for him to excuse himself.
So he slipped out of the apartment with a few backward calls of Later and headed downstairs.
He made his way into the manager’s office on the ground floor, already making a list of changes to make. Yeah, he’d be doing most of his work in Nate’s apartment but he’d also been one of the few members of the team who actually had use for an office. Sometimes you just needed quiet (or Dr. Who reruns playing in the backround) to concentrate on the important stuff. And sometimes you just needed space where Eliot wasn’t around to provide commentary on your video games being unrealistic cause even if he could kick Eliot’s ass in video games it was so unfair that Eliot was more badass than any character he played.
He sat down with his laptop on the desk, reviewing and revising his plans (Codename: Castling the King, because everything having to do with Nate by rule had to come back to chess).
Step one: Complete Hacker Lair
Step two: Clear out the Mortens, the Jones, and Michel Bensen. Top floor should be clear and we do not need a cop in the same building of our operation. (Maybe offer his place to Eliot for a practice space in trade for not having to take self-defense lessons from him?)
Step three: Start remodeling, find creative ways to determine wood, color, stylistic choices. Maybe consult Allison? (Note: Did I ever get her number. Was Eliot or Nate friendly with his former landlords? Would they call Eliot or Nate if a friend of theirs called to talk to their seventeen year old daughter about their old apartment? Should probably find a different idea.)
Step four: Research kitchen fixtures. Leave this to the expert.
Step five: Do research to determine if Martha Stewart has committed any crimes Leverage Consulting and Associates could fix.
Step Six: Figure out some way to assure a person that there are no bugs in a location.
Step Seven: Determine a way to tell Eliot and Nate you not only know they were living together in the touchy sense of the phrase but you’ve also have made them an apartment to do so once more if they want. Preferably in a way that won’t result in them killing you.
He sat back in his seat. Yeah he had a plan that would probably get him killed, but he needed a little adventure in his life. Besides this was safer, for them, him and everyone else.
The people in this city knew Nathan Ford, knew he lived here, and with every job they did the chances of someone trying to get retribution increased. If Nate and Eliot were living together their king would be safely castled.
Also, if they felt strongly about keeping up appearances, Nate could continue to keep up his current apartment. Traveling back and forth in hallways without windows and security cameras would mean no one would be the wiser. Not to mention there wouldn’t be a landlord’s fifteen year old daughter blabbing to the nice man she met at four in the morning about the building’s resident gay couple.
It would also mean that there would never be the problem of “Where’s Nate and Eliot?” no questions about whose place they were at or traipsing halfway across the city because they had their phones turned off.
And there were a dozen other reason it would be better that when they do get a place together again (because really, he knew they would. He’d just had to turn the camera in the living room of Nate’s place off because they’d stopped playing chess now. He could reason that Nate was helping Eliot take off his shirt so Nate could check the bruises the explosives had left behind, Hardison was going to go with that.), they got it in this building.
Hardison didn’t really acknowledge the reason why he was doing this whole plot thing. It was there in the back of his mind, popping up every fifteen minutes like those reminders that you had to update something that were just annoying enough that you almost bothered to hack the computer to stop them. He knew why he wanted this, why he was doing this.
Somewhere in the months they’d been separated, in the time he’d been floundering around, looking for Parker and something that meant something anymore, he’d had a dream. He had a dream that they hadn’t separated after the David Jobs, that they’d taken up house in the mansion Hardison owned and they all moved in together there. In his dream they all lived together like a family should, in their own castle fortified to protect the king and all the pieces.
He knew it was just some distant fantasy, spawned from his time in Nana’s house with five other foster siblings and the chaos of a full home. He knew the others weren’t like him, didn’t get lonely sometimes, didn’t spend hours on the internet with people he’d never really meet because it was better than looking around a huge and empty apartment. They liked their space. Hell, he’d liked his space, at least he’d thought so.
It was a dream. But it was one he wanted to make true.
The night wore on. He turned on the security system in Nate’s apartment when it seemed they’d forgotten to do so (though, really, Hardison knew they didn’t need it. Eliot would be awake and fighting before the alarm went off if anyone tried to break in).
Absently Hardison checked the gps locations of Sophie and Parker’s phones, noting they were both in the hotel rooms he knew they’d rented until they could find places to stay. He clicked open the window where he’d been running the guest lists through a cross reference database of the names and all known aliases of everyone he knew they’d come in contact with before. As he suspected, no red flags. Nothing to worry about there.
With security for the night taken care of to his satisfaction (and really, if he was honest with himself, he was more satisfied with himself for that then the whole Whitehouse email thing) Hardison leaned back. He was still wide-awake, wired from caffeine and the insomnia that seemed a side effect of his brain working overtime as often as it did. He’d only been up for a little over twenty-four hours so he probably wouldn’t be getting much sleep tonight.
He could get online, play some WOW and level his rouge a little, or maybe work on the security system or updating the alias books for the team now that they were back together. He did actually have things he should probably be doing.
But he found himself pulling up the tenant roster and beginning an internet search and planning the ways best to clear out the tenants he needed to move in ways that were wins for all parties involved but didn’t raise suspicions.
He wasn’t sure when he nodded off, sinking back into the comfortable office chair and into sleep.
But when he woke a couple hours later, the laughter and chaos of a family running around a castle in the middle of Boston following him even as he woke up, he found himself staring at the computer screen. Remembering what his Nana had always told him about good methods to make sure you reached your goals he opened a new word document, typed out a few words, bolded and enlarged them, and printed it out. He thumb tacked the paper to the wall above where his computers sat and nodded to himself.
“Castle the King (and the rest of the pieces to)”
Now all he had to do was figure out how.
Previous: And Then There was Silence
Next: Knights and Kings
Author: Magpie
Rating: pg
Genre: Hardison, implied Nate/Eliot
Verse: BlackKing!WhiteKnight!Verse
Summary: Hardison has plans, big potentially life threatening plans, but plans none the less.
Notes: The Seventh and final in the "Trust and Sobriety" arc, a series of tags for the Beantown Bailout Job I'm doing to better fix my verse to follow cannon as closely as possible. Okay, deep breath, heres the list of other parts to the arc... Queen's Gambit, Trusting Sobriety, Rule 17, What Hardison Knows, and A Hitters Work, and And Then There was Silence
One of these days I'm going to run out of chess metaphors. I think that'll be the day this verse dies but until then... *looks toward my "Things in the works" list on my journal* well it'll be a while.
On that note I'm closing up this arc and my two longfics and you guessed it starting another long fic and Two arcs. Keep an eye out for The Legacy Job (not in this verse), as well as the Shelter and the Storm arc (which happens post Fathers and after the Order 23 Job) which this story leads into, and the Two Knight Opener arc (which runs from the Nigerian job through the Snow Job and is me finally working myself up to writting how they got together).
Hardison had plans. Big Plans. Big, potentially life threatening, plans but he liked to think he knew his teammates well enough that he could predict their reactions. Even if Eliot was so prone to violence there was always a off chance he’d resort to it when he couldn’t think of a better solution Hardison was 87% certain that both he and Nate would feel too awkward to hurt him.
If he could do this without getting hurt he would risk it being a waste of time.
After all, if his plan failed they still needed a safe house for clients and such and his project would work fine for that.
So he bought the building Nate lived in and he set about remodeling. Sure, he started with Nate’s apartment. That was the obvious thing to do. He “hired” Eliot to help out (though really, he just told Eliot he would get to chainsaw a wall into submission and Eliot was all too eager). They started setting things up, restored Harlem Leverage the Third to a rightful position of prominence. It wouldn’t be too long before everything was as it should be.
Though, as the tension in the room increased after Parker was gone, and how the hell did they think they were being subtle when they kept looking at each other like that, Hardison knew it was time for him to excuse himself.
So he slipped out of the apartment with a few backward calls of Later and headed downstairs.
He made his way into the manager’s office on the ground floor, already making a list of changes to make. Yeah, he’d be doing most of his work in Nate’s apartment but he’d also been one of the few members of the team who actually had use for an office. Sometimes you just needed quiet (or Dr. Who reruns playing in the backround) to concentrate on the important stuff. And sometimes you just needed space where Eliot wasn’t around to provide commentary on your video games being unrealistic cause even if he could kick Eliot’s ass in video games it was so unfair that Eliot was more badass than any character he played.
He sat down with his laptop on the desk, reviewing and revising his plans (Codename: Castling the King, because everything having to do with Nate by rule had to come back to chess).
Step one: Complete Hacker Lair
Step two: Clear out the Mortens, the Jones, and Michel Bensen. Top floor should be clear and we do not need a cop in the same building of our operation. (Maybe offer his place to Eliot for a practice space in trade for not having to take self-defense lessons from him?)
Step three: Start remodeling, find creative ways to determine wood, color, stylistic choices. Maybe consult Allison? (Note: Did I ever get her number. Was Eliot or Nate friendly with his former landlords? Would they call Eliot or Nate if a friend of theirs called to talk to their seventeen year old daughter about their old apartment? Should probably find a different idea.)
Step four: Research kitchen fixtures. Leave this to the expert.
Step five: Do research to determine if Martha Stewart has committed any crimes Leverage Consulting and Associates could fix.
Step Six: Figure out some way to assure a person that there are no bugs in a location.
Step Seven: Determine a way to tell Eliot and Nate you not only know they were living together in the touchy sense of the phrase but you’ve also have made them an apartment to do so once more if they want. Preferably in a way that won’t result in them killing you.
He sat back in his seat. Yeah he had a plan that would probably get him killed, but he needed a little adventure in his life. Besides this was safer, for them, him and everyone else.
The people in this city knew Nathan Ford, knew he lived here, and with every job they did the chances of someone trying to get retribution increased. If Nate and Eliot were living together their king would be safely castled.
Also, if they felt strongly about keeping up appearances, Nate could continue to keep up his current apartment. Traveling back and forth in hallways without windows and security cameras would mean no one would be the wiser. Not to mention there wouldn’t be a landlord’s fifteen year old daughter blabbing to the nice man she met at four in the morning about the building’s resident gay couple.
It would also mean that there would never be the problem of “Where’s Nate and Eliot?” no questions about whose place they were at or traipsing halfway across the city because they had their phones turned off.
And there were a dozen other reason it would be better that when they do get a place together again (because really, he knew they would. He’d just had to turn the camera in the living room of Nate’s place off because they’d stopped playing chess now. He could reason that Nate was helping Eliot take off his shirt so Nate could check the bruises the explosives had left behind, Hardison was going to go with that.), they got it in this building.
Hardison didn’t really acknowledge the reason why he was doing this whole plot thing. It was there in the back of his mind, popping up every fifteen minutes like those reminders that you had to update something that were just annoying enough that you almost bothered to hack the computer to stop them. He knew why he wanted this, why he was doing this.
Somewhere in the months they’d been separated, in the time he’d been floundering around, looking for Parker and something that meant something anymore, he’d had a dream. He had a dream that they hadn’t separated after the David Jobs, that they’d taken up house in the mansion Hardison owned and they all moved in together there. In his dream they all lived together like a family should, in their own castle fortified to protect the king and all the pieces.
He knew it was just some distant fantasy, spawned from his time in Nana’s house with five other foster siblings and the chaos of a full home. He knew the others weren’t like him, didn’t get lonely sometimes, didn’t spend hours on the internet with people he’d never really meet because it was better than looking around a huge and empty apartment. They liked their space. Hell, he’d liked his space, at least he’d thought so.
It was a dream. But it was one he wanted to make true.
The night wore on. He turned on the security system in Nate’s apartment when it seemed they’d forgotten to do so (though, really, Hardison knew they didn’t need it. Eliot would be awake and fighting before the alarm went off if anyone tried to break in).
Absently Hardison checked the gps locations of Sophie and Parker’s phones, noting they were both in the hotel rooms he knew they’d rented until they could find places to stay. He clicked open the window where he’d been running the guest lists through a cross reference database of the names and all known aliases of everyone he knew they’d come in contact with before. As he suspected, no red flags. Nothing to worry about there.
With security for the night taken care of to his satisfaction (and really, if he was honest with himself, he was more satisfied with himself for that then the whole Whitehouse email thing) Hardison leaned back. He was still wide-awake, wired from caffeine and the insomnia that seemed a side effect of his brain working overtime as often as it did. He’d only been up for a little over twenty-four hours so he probably wouldn’t be getting much sleep tonight.
He could get online, play some WOW and level his rouge a little, or maybe work on the security system or updating the alias books for the team now that they were back together. He did actually have things he should probably be doing.
But he found himself pulling up the tenant roster and beginning an internet search and planning the ways best to clear out the tenants he needed to move in ways that were wins for all parties involved but didn’t raise suspicions.
He wasn’t sure when he nodded off, sinking back into the comfortable office chair and into sleep.
But when he woke a couple hours later, the laughter and chaos of a family running around a castle in the middle of Boston following him even as he woke up, he found himself staring at the computer screen. Remembering what his Nana had always told him about good methods to make sure you reached your goals he opened a new word document, typed out a few words, bolded and enlarged them, and printed it out. He thumb tacked the paper to the wall above where his computers sat and nodded to himself.
“Castle the King (and the rest of the pieces to)”
Now all he had to do was figure out how.
Previous: And Then There was Silence
Next: Knights and Kings