#mr. quinn

[jourke-rourke]

Leverage (2008) // Quinn moments [S01xE12, S04xE18]

[phantomstatistician]

Fandom: Leverage

Sample Size: 6,966 stories

Source: AO3

[my-beloved-lakes]

Leverage + text post: favorite side character addition

[scotchiegirl]

Tossing around a Leverage au where Leverage Inc. is just a little bit more... legitimate.

Hardison's good at what he does, after all. He's the best, and he regularly makes covers just a little bit too good. It takes a few months before the others realize that not only have they got unbreakable aliases, they have clean original personas. There's suddenly no illegal history attached to Eliot Spencer's name, he's a security consultant. Sophie Deveraux is an acknowledged art aficionado and collector. Parker Leverage is the granddaughter and heir of Harlan Leverage III, stepping into her own. Nathan Ford is current CEO of the consulting company after proving himself by aiding in the arrest and trial of Victor Dubenich. And Alec Hardison? Well, he's tech support. No illegal hacking required.

Nate has the luck of the devil and an angel on both shoulders, things just come up roses for him, no matter what he lays his hands on. Nine months into running Leverage Consulting, he's approached by the FBI. There's something they can't quite get at, and sources pinned Nathan Ford and his team at the home of the Mascones before their fall. Taggert and McSweeten are good at their jobs for a change and notified their handlers of the strange group of people that helped them while claiming to be FBI. Nathan Ford is offered a deal. Work with the FBI with immunity and a blind eye turned to the alternate sources of revenue coming in. Leverage Inc. will remain completely under his control, but as consultants doing occasional work for the FBI. Nathan agrees on one condition: the FBI also turns a blind eye to anything weird that happens with Blackwell at IYS. Terms are set and agreed upon.

Leverage Inc. is now legitimate thieves. Taggert and McSweeten are their liaisons in the company and join them on occasional heists. As things go on, more thieves get a taste of helping without having to be afraid of being caught. Tara joins as a consultant to the consulting company. Quinn resists but eventually calls in Eliot's favor to say he was working with Leverage to get him out of a tough legal spot. Cha0s hisses like a feral cat and refuses to go anywhere near respectability. Archie gets to tell his family about his "secret past" working with the government and Parker gets to meet her adoptive siblings. They don't understand each other but Parker teaches her nieces and nephews to pick locks and helps them sneak out of the house without being noticed.

When Nate steps down he officially passes on CEO status to Parker, as is her right as heir. There's an intern section where kids with promise get to train under mentors to make more teams for continuing the good work of helping people, one case at a time.

(It's just a thought, and it came to me while thinking about how Nate and Sophie's wedding would look as a corporate event for Leverage Inc. and just... yeah. No thoughts just vibes right now but if anyone wants to take it and run with it/write with it, just let me know. Also I do understand that this would fundamentally change Leverage as we know it, I just wanted to get this out there as a sandbox au idea. Just What If, I don't actually think this is how Leverage should have been done.)

[trivalentlinks]

back on my weird leverage AUs (this is another darker-than-canon AU)

AU where the events of the pilot episode happens three years earlier, when Eliot is still working for Moreau (but it's towards the end of this period, when he's already starting to question whether he can live with himself like this).

(Let's push up the timeline for everyone else, so Nate lost his son three years earlier, etc.)

Since Eliot isn't on the market, Dubenich hires Quinn as the hitter. Quinn does like guns, and is a little more cheerful, but a little more skittish, but mostly things are the same.

The thing is, Moreau, with Eliot by his side, is much more careful. Eliot never tells anyone about him, and neither does anyone else, so even though this Moreau is just as powerful and influential as he is in canon, hardly anybody knows who he is.

A few months in, the team accidentally end up in Moreau's crosshairs by unknowingly doing a big job against a company that Moreau secretly controls.

They had no idea what they were up against--None of them had even heard of Moreau, except Quinn (who used to work with Eliot on-and-off, before Eliot worked for Moreau), but even Quinn doesn't know anything about Moreau other than that he's Eliot's employer. (He knows that much because Eliot tried to recruit him for Moreau once several years back, but he wasn't ready for the commitment back then.)

So anyway, they really kicked the hornet's nest on this one, and now this little rag-tag team is being hunted by Moreau's private army led by Eliot fucking Spencer, uh-oh, they're all gonna fucking die

(Eliot and Quinn didn't part on bad terms, but they were never really friends, either. They trusted each other on the job and shared the occasional post-job meal or drink, but they weren't friends beyond that. They were certainly not friendly enough for Quinn to think Eliot would go easy on the team on Quinn's account when he catches up to them.)

(Also Quinn knows Eliot well enough to know that it's when, not if, Eliot catches up to them.)

I'm really just imagining a scene where Eliot closes in on Quinn and Hardison, and Quinn, injured and out of ammo (and didn't have a better than 30% chance of defeating Eliot in hand-to-hand combat even on a good day), begs Eliot to let Hardison go, like, "Please. He's nineteen--a teenager. You don't kill kids, right? Teens included?"

(Back when Eliot and Quinn worked together on-and-off, they still sometimes took jobs working against each other. One such time, Eliot didn't kill Quinn when his job would have been easier if he did, and when asked about it, cited "I don't kill kids. Teens are included in that," as his reason, much to then-19-year-old Quinn's annoyance.)

(Quinn knows that Eliot was just teasing him back then--older, armed teens like Quinn were not included in "I don't kill kids".)

(And anyway, based on the rumours, Quinn is pretty sure Eliot left the realm of "I don't kill kids" a long time ago.)

(But look, he's about to die. This annoying, brilliant teenaged hacker who managed to embarrass Damien Moreau (and, more impressively, has almost wormed his way into Quinn's non-existent heart) is about to die. Quinn is desperate.)

(Quinn certainly isn't expecting it when this last-ditch plea actually works.)

[lindseymcdonaldseyelashes]

Leverage 1x12 - "The First David Job"

[trekscribbles]

Backslide Chapter 2

Fandom: Leverage

Cross-Posted: AO3 and FF

Summary:

They stopped Damien Moreau. They put him in jail in San Lorenzo where he'd never be able to hurt anyone else, and Eliot thought he was finally, finally free.

And then Moreau escaped.

And he has one last job for Eliot: to kill his team and anyone else he's gotten close to since leaving.

Chapter 1

He started with Quinn.

A text first, to ensure Quinn would pick up the phone when Eliot called.

Need a favor.

You still owe me from the last one, came the immediate reply.

Eliot dialed. The phone rang once, and then Quinn’s voice drawled in his ear. “Am I allowed to shoot people this time?”

“Yes,” Eliot said. 

A long pause. 

“Okay. I’m listening.”

Eliot cleared his throat. “What do you know about Damien Moreau?”

“Haven’t heard much about him lately.”

“You know I used to work for him?”

Quinn’s voice was carefully bland. “I did my research when Sterling hired me to take you out. His name came up with yours.”

“You know his reputation?” Eliot asked.

“I do.”

One more breath, one more moment of peace, and then—

“He offered me a job.”

Silence. Waiting. Eliot answered its invitation.

“It’s my team.”

“What do you need?” Quinn asked.

“He gave me three days,” Eliot said. “How soon can you get here?”

“Tonight.”

Eliot let out a relieved breath. “If things go as planned, this’ll be a nice vacation for you. If not... if I can’t get to Moreau before the deadline...”

“I’m the last line of defense?”

Eliot’s throat went dry. It sounded so much worse out loud.

“What does Nate think?” Quinn asked.

“He doesn’t know.”

“You sure that’s a good idea? He seemed to have a pretty good head for things like this.”

“He’ll tell the others,” Eliot said. “They won’t understand. They’ll try to stop me.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing.”

Eliot tried to swallow, tried not to choke on his words. His voice came out raw, but even. “This is my job. Protecting them, taking care of threats. It’s my fault Moreau is after them, and I can’t... We tried it Nate’s way. We put him in jail, and he got out. He’ll keep getting out. If I don’t stop him now, my team dies. This is the only way.”

“I could go,” Quinn offered, and an unexpected surge of warmth mixed with the fear welling in Eliot’s chest. “You may have gone straight, but I still do things the easy way. If you hesitate at the wrong moment, it could go sideways fast.”

“I won’t hesitate,” Eliot said.

His voice was dark enough to end the discussion.

After that, there wasn’t much to prepare. He didn’t travel with luggage, and he didn’t need to bring his own weapons—he’d get what he needed once he found Moreau.

Then it was just the goodbyes.

He left them in his apartment, which had started to feel less like a home and more like a place he kept supplies between jobs. For Hardison, the collection of recipes and meal-and-beer pairings he’d been creating for the brewpub, typed into an email scheduled to send in four days. For Parker, a list of his bank accounts and passwords, enclosed in a small, folded note with her name on the front. For Nate, a summary of the best argument he could think of to convince Quinn to take his place on the team, and an inadequate line of thanks.

That left only one more. On a burner phone, he called a florist across town who advertised discreet deliveries. He gave them Sophie’s name for the card and dictated his final message via flower arrangement.

White bellflower. 

Gratitude.

White lily.

Farewell.

White butterfly weed.

Let me go.

[afriendshapedseal]

Every time I watch The Last Dam Job I expect Quinn to have an accent. I think it's because the actor is actually Southern and there is like the tiniest hint of it, but he mostly sounds Western US/unaccented American. He just looks like he should have a stronger accent than he does and I can't explain it better than that.

[creepyspytruck]

eliot and quinn grappling from @trivalentlinks 's when you move, i'm moved (ao3 link) b.c. they live rent free in my head

[piratefalls]

a leverage quinn/eliot thing i'll never write that’s been sitting in my drafts for a literal year so i'm just yeeting it out into the void

okay so who the hell knows if this is in any way an original thought but i think it’s sort of accepted by fandom that quinn and eliot knew each other long before they fight in the first david job. so let’s run with that. maybe when they met eliot was fresh out of the service and trying to figure out what he was going to do with his life. private security would be the obvious choice, but he still needs the adrenaline, and a break from people giving him orders. so he becomes an independent contractor, a retrieval specialist, and on a job he runs into mr. quinn. same place, same time, but different targets, and they hit it off while digging through an old storage space. and they just keep running into each other, time and time again, and eliot gains a reputation for being the best while quinn is happy to remain in the shadows. being lesser known has its own set of benefits.

and then they hang out after a heist, and things happen, and they find themselves becoming more than friends. this goes on for the next year, maybe two, and then...then they work a job together. something they’ve never done before, for some reason. and it feels off from the beginning, but it's quinn, and eliot trusts him more than anyone in the world, so he pushes those concerns aside until he can’t. the job goes so wrong so fast, and eliot finds himself taken hostage, waking up in an old warehouse, bruised and bloody and so tired. all he has to do is survive, because quinn is coming, he just has to hang on until quinn finds him. quinn will always find him. and then quinn does find him, and he looks so guilty, so fucking sad, and it hits eliot like a kick to the stomach that he’s been sold out. eliot gets free somehow and they fight their way out, and at the end of it all, a trail of bodies behind them, they stand there and look at each other. quinn is devastated, trying to find the words, and eliot just... shakes his head and walks away. he never hears quinn quiet plea for him to wait.

in the interim eliot finds his way to moreau, the awful things he does to forget, never telling anyone why he will only work alone. after a while he realizes he either needs to get out or lose himself completely, so he gets out, spends some time with toby learning to cook, and eventually goes back to working solo. then he’s hired to do a job in LA, a one and done with a team of thieves, and he does it. what a massive miscalculation on his part, because he does not want to like these people. liking people means wanting to be around them, giving them power over you even if you don’t mean to, and he just won’t do that again. but he does. and he keeps coming back, and despite the fact that hardison never shuts up, and parker loves jumping off buildings in a way that makes him deeply concerned, and nate is a ticking time bomb, and sophie is as warm as she is a terrifyingly good liar, he finds himself building a home there, working with these four people, beating up bad guys because he's helping people.

and then sophie cons the team, and the betrayal hits twice as hard this time. but before he even finds that out, he sees a face he’s done his level best to never see again. he lets quinn beat him up a bit, lets him think he’s winning, because eliot knows quinn has always been one thing above everything else, and that’s cocky. and when eliot grunts “now that rib’s broken,” he doesn't tack on like my fucking heart the way he wants to. it’s been years, and it wouldn’t have the impact he wants it to. and then the team separates and he’s never felt so adrift in his life.

in the immediate aftermath, quinn tries to reach out, and eliot keeps changing numbers, because really quinn should have gotten the fucking hint after the first five unanswered calls. eventually eliot shoots him a text, saying that quinn needed to leave him alone, and that he would reach out when he wanted to. the calls stop after that.

three years later, eliot has to go hunting for quinn because he needs a favor. and all quinn wants in return (besides the money, of course) is for eliot to just let him explain. they can go back to not talking, but he wants eliot to know the truth.

and when the job is over, when dubenich and latimer have been dealt with and the bat cave has been deserted, quinn tells him what really happened that night. how eliot wound up in that warehouse, why the job went sideways. [there’s some kind of bribery/secret that he was just desperate enough to keep quiet that he’d sell eliot out] and the price was that quinn had to turn eliot over. he tried, tried so hard to think of a way to get them all out of it alive, and they were almost home free and everything went so wrong so fast and he couldn’t think fast enough. and then eliot walked away never knowing that had the right amount of pressure not been applied to the exact right spot, quinn never would have put eliot within 100 miles of that job because even though they never said it in so many words, quinn had loved him and he knows eliot loved him too.

and so eliot takes a few days to think while everyone else scatters to parts unknown but this time with the full understanding that they’ll all eventually be reunited. eliot thinks, and thinks, and eventually texts quinn and invites him out. they can start with a beer.

[wolves-in-the-world]

Mr Quinn / the unnamed shooter from the morning after job, 2k. Rated Mature for non-explicit sex.

It's not that it's been a while. It has, but Quinn's used to that, to finding rest and recreation between jobs or not at all, to going months without touching another human except to hurt them. It's not that. It's a little bit that the hitter's warning shot grazed his ear and nothing more. There’s nothing soft about him - not his expression, not his sharp, neat nose, not the several days’ growth of stubble, not his eyes. Dark eyes. His hair, though - Quinn wouldn’t mind touching that.

Some angst in this one, and nothing dire, but this isn't as soft as my usual fics. A clip of the unnamed shooter can be found here.

This isn't a quinneliot fic except that it very much is. I'm posting it with my name attached only because I've been assured it doesn't shame my ancestors. Enjoy!

[5-minutes-2-midnight]

Help! This is killing me lol... Can anyone explain why Eliot is wearing a shoulder harness when retrieving Quinn from Kiev and in the "Batcave" for debriefing? I'll accept theories, too (god knows I have a few), but if anyone can legitimately explain the cause, I'd really appreciate it.

[taylortaylormoon]

Soul mate au

So i haven't seen many soulmate au's for leverage, or maybe i'm not looking in the right places but how interesting would it be to have eilot/quinn soulmate au where the first words your soulmate says to you are written somewhere on your body. Like how focus and dedicated both of them had to be to have that fight and focus on fighting while in the back ground their mind is going "that's your soul mate'. Eliot fighting to protect his team = his family and Quinn is fighting for his reputation. And after the fight where Eliot knocks Quinn out he throws Quinn over his shoulder (Or drags him tbh) so they can have a 'talk'.

[my-beloved-lakes]

An incomplete list of things I want from season 3 of leverage redemption:

More Parker running the cons! (Nate passed on the roll of mastermind to her for a reason, damnit!)

Eliot's hair beads and more floof please (#freethefloof2024)

Sterling!

On a similar note: Mr. Quinn, McSweeten, and Dr. Paul

Can Hardison please be in it more than he was the last two seasons! Please! I need my three soul bonded faves to be together again! (I understand why that might not be possible, but I want it🥺)

Let Eliot Spencer get more hugs!

Historical au episode centered around Eliot and Hardison. Someone suggested it be an old Western theme and now i can't stop thinking about it! (Sorry I don't remember who suggested it, but if you know, feel free to tag them or let me know so I can tag them)

A whole episode with just Eliot, Hardison, and Parker doing crime shenanigans and bonding/making up for lost time since Hardison was gone for so long.

Musical episodes!

I want Eliot to shoot a bow and arrow.

[creator-of-masks]

“Listen. I will put a case to you. A man comes to a certain place—to commit suicide, shall we say? But by chance he finds another man there, so he fails in his purpose and goes away—to live. The second man has saved the first man’s life, not by being necessary to him or prominent in his life, but just by the mere physical fact of having been in a certain place at a certain moment. You take your life today and perhaps, some five, six, seven years hence, someone will go to death or disaster simply for lack of your presence in a given spot or place. It may be a runaway horse coming down a street that swerved aside at sight of you and so fails to trample a child that is playing in the gutter. That child may live to grow up and be a great musician, or discover a cure for cancer. Or it may be less melodramatic than that. He may just grow up to ordinary everyday happiness. . . .” She stared at him. “You are a strange man. These things you say—I have never thought of them. . . .” “You say your life is your own,” went on Mr. Satterthwaite. “But can you dare to ignore the chance that you are taking part in a gigantic drama under the orders of a divine Producer? Your cue may not come till the end of the play—it may be totally unimportant, a mere walking-on part, but upon it may hang the issues of the play if you do not give the cue to another player. The whole edifice may crumple. You as you, may not matter to anyone in the world, but you as a person in a particular place may matter unimaginably.”

The Mysterious Mr Quinn by Agatha Christie

[trivalentlinks]

if you can't handle me at my worst (punching you in the face the day we met), then you don't deserve me at my best (still punching you in the face, but now we're besties <3)