Leverage Fic: Escapology, Parker/Eliot/Hardison

[pogrebin]

The egregiously talanted fahye spotted my Leverage icons and asked me to write her Parker/Eliot/Hardison, and there was really absolutely no way I could refuse. I've been utterly rubbish at writing not one but TWO stories that we've been brainstorming together, because I'm ridiculous and lame, but I hope this goes some way into making it up to her.

Comments

[fahye]

You are SO SNEAKY, writing this in secret and then springing it on me, I made a very high-pitched noise indeed. And! And and and! Not only is it OT3, it's one of my favourite extended metaphors. And it works beautifully -- a room is four walls built around a series of escapes -- because I think one of the truest things about these characters is their awareness of boundaries. And part of that is the fact that they've always accepted themselves as outlaws, isolated, and accepted that if they were to find intimacy they would have to change somehow. Elliot out of all of them has a willingness to compromise himself for love, but he will always resent it just a little.

Lines that were fantastic:

Parker’s always planning to be somewhere else at the time, but lit by the reflected glow of Hardison’s projector she feels suddenly solid

he dream doesn’t bleed out into real life -- I think I like the wording 'bleed out' because it gives the impression of death, of the dream dying so that reality can take over

[_medley_]

Oh, this is just gorgeous and suits them all so perfectly!

[vanitashaze]

Nrgh. It's official, you're a bastard - why do you have to write so well, and leave us all looking foolish? Maybe because it's 12AM and I've only just started to ease off my Oh-My-God-I-Just-Met-Lorrie-Moore high, but reading this is damn near to a transcendent experience. (I promise: will come back and reread when slightly more sane.) While Leverage is, by and large, not a serious show, you've taken those threads of seriousness and drawn them out, and because of it, the whole thing reads so very clear - so very honest and self-evident, as if you've stripped away the bullshit, but even that's just another layer, another con; underneath is a whole mess of writhing the characters barely skim, but those few touches are enough. Adding to the general wonderfulness is the tone, how distant it is, the irony, ambiguity, and of course, the sentences themselves, like, Weighted down and heavy, skin full of flesh, and when Hardison brushes her arm she feels for the first time truly confined by her body.

And, He’s never really liked it when other

[neifile7]

Well.

I don't know this show at all, but I had to read this just for the music of it; and now I feel as though I do.

Hardison sees more than he lets on; he sees what people leave behind and discard. Their credit card bills, their hotel stays, their bank-statements and google-searches and porn-habits and most frequent items they buy at the grocery store. There’s a kind of purity to the image that all this data sketches out for him. It deals in what people really are, not what they say or believe or want or desire. Just what they do, and the indentations it leaves on the digital universe that solidifies with a few quick presses of his fingers on a keyboard.

As pure evocation, you can't do much better than that. Hardison isn't even a face to me, an actor I know, a storyline, but I think I can guess him as a character from this.

I'd like a podcast of this on infinite repeat, please.

[charlie_d_blue]

Oh, this was just quietly searing and utterly perfect.