#damien moreau

[tarragonthedragon]

I think every day of my life about what was going through Damien Moreau's head when he saw that puppy broadcast. he has seen that man elbow deep in the blood of innocents. he has seen that man tear human beings apart like wet tissue. right now in front of his eyes The Eliot Spencer is gently cradling an adorable little pupper and softly explaining the evils of animal cruelty. I genuinely this might have been the first time he realised what he was up against because his entire brain must have rebooted in that moment.

#leverage #meta #damien moreau #eliot spencer #the san lorenzo job

[kermit-coded]

the beginning of the hotel sequence in the big bang job is gonna haunt me forever. hardison getting more and more frantic in the elevator. eliot being super subdued and quiet, only speaking to tell hardison to stick close to him. eliot's microexpressions when moreau walks through the door. hardison glancing between eliot and moreau. the dawning horror in his eyes as he realizes that eliot knows moreau, and that he knows him pretty fucking well.

#sick i feel fucking SICK!!! #soda speaks #leverage #leverage posting #leverage ot3 #eliot spencer #alec hardison #damien moreau

[myhyperfixationisiforgot]

Moreau doesn't give Eliot orders, is the thing.

Eliot knows orders. Eliot could follow orders in his sleep, bleeding out, in languages he doesn't even recognize if he had to. Eliot knows how to give orders, knows how to take orders, knows how to step away from the part that shivers when his CO gives him his target.

That is not what Moreau does.

Once, when Eliot is twenty seven and bored and very, very good at what he does, he kills an unkillable man.

He does it quickly, and quietly, and most importantly, he does it by completely abandoning every plan Moreau's strategists have. And Damien thinks it's grand! He's delighted to see someone so competent and functional in his employ.

So he lets Eliot do his thing. Damien offers him what nobody else could - he offers Eliot his respect. Eliot's not in it because he likes killing, he's in it because he's so very good at killing, and Damien is the one who recognizes that. Damien lets Eliot make plans, he invites Eliot to critique his operation, he listens and prioritizes and trusts Eliot's skill and knowledge, and in return he gets the most dangerous man in the world at his side.

The worst thing Eliot ever does isn't something Damien needs. That's not what Eliot says. Eliot did it for Moreau, not on Moreau's orders.

Eliot is the one who picks the target, Eliot is the one who sees the bigger picture and chooses to do it himself. Eliot does the worst thing in his life because he looks and sees some objective, something that would be good for Damien operation, something that would show his power in Damien's court.

And then his hands are bloody and he doesn't even feel it anymore. There's nothing except pride in a job well done, and it scare the shit out of him, and he can't even blame it on someone else now, can he?

He leaves, and Damien lets him, encourages him, even, because what are you going to do when the deadliest man you know says he's done? The man who you've always trusted and admired because he doesn't lie or brag or bluff tells you he doesn't want to kill anymore, and Damien knows that there's not a force on Earth that could bring Eliot back when he doesn't want to.

Damien Moreau never gave Eliot orders anyway.

#eliot's complicated relationship with his past is so fascinating #eliot's entire thing is that he went into this willingly and then had to come out the other side a different man #so yeah i don't think moreau had him trapped or boxed in or anything #i think eliot did it completely willingly #and that's exactly what scares him so much #leverage #eliot spencer #damien moreau #leverage redemption

[246bce]

poll winner for favourite season: Season 3

with such hits as: The King George Job, The Rashomon Job, The Inside Job, The Scheherazad Job, The San Lorenzo Job

Bonus for fun:

#leverageedit #leverage #sophie devereaux #alec hardison #parker #archie #eliot spencer #the italian #damien moreau #we steal it back for you #the san lorenzo job #the king george job #the scheherazad job #the inside job #the rashomon job #the big bang job #the studio job

[werewolfsmile]

re: "All I’m saying is the fact that someone isn’t talking to me about Eliot Spencer every second of every day is very unfair and borderline illegal." & tags - if you want to, can you elaborate on your werewolf!eliot ideas?? i’d like to hear about it!! if not all good tho :)

Oh boy oh boy oh boy! Yes I would love to elaborate! (buckle up because i have Thoughts)

(wow this really got away from me so uhhh .... warning for 2k of ranting about Eliot as a werewolf?? list of headcanons under the cut)

From the moment I first met Eliot Spencer, I knew he was werewolf-coded. Aside from his insanely fantastic fighting abilities and the absurd amount of punishment he can take, there are many other factors that contribute to his werewolf status.

Eliot needs a pack Our boy is out here working on his own for years and look at all the good it did him! None! He carries severe trauma from his family life because he blames himself for how it all went down and doesn't think he'll be welcomed back. Plus something probably happened during his military days or early PMC days to put him off working with others. Could have been the pain of losing people all the time, could have been something more. Either way, Eliot working on his own is a defence mechanism - but a self-destructive one.

Wolves thrive in packs - like duh, they're pack animals. As my username suggests, I'm into werewolves and, by extension, wolves. I've done research for my own werewolf novels in the past, so I know that in an average wolf pack, each pack member will have physical contact with the other pack members on the regular. Like, several times an hour! (gosh if I can find the research paper this info came from I'll link it but honestly it's been years) That's a serious level of physical contact required to keep the emotional bonds of the pack healthy!

Flick back to Eliot. He loves to fight, he loves the violence and the pain, yes. He hates the killing and the blood on his hands. He actually tries to leave the assassin world behind after he meets Toby (which is before he meets Moreau, as per early dialogue in The French Connection Job). He bonds quickly with Toby. Show Eliot a little love and care and he's yours for life! He moves onto retrieval work, then somehow ends up working for Moreau.

Now, when we see Eliot and Moreau in The Big Bang Job, Moreau says, "You work alone." Which means that Eliot had that reputation when he came to Moreau. He probably only took contracts to start off with. But he accepted job after job from Moreau and was so good that he was highly respect and it's inferred he ended up as Moreau's top bodyguard/assassin. Why the hell would Eliot end up that close to a man who brings out all the worst in him? Because Eliot's a werewolf and no matter how toxic, Moreau fulfills the need for a pack bond that he's been missing all this time.

Fast forward to Eliot meeting the rest of the Leverage team. One job only - my ass. He saves Hardison's life after Hardison brought a gun to their little meeting - and we all know how Eliot feels about guns.

Wolves are designed to live and operate in packs. Eliot says it's one job only but is bonding with them all from the get-go. Werewolf trait confirmed.

Eliot needs physical touch Now, I know what you're thinking. Eliot canonically avoids physical contact with the team. He refuses hugs, especially from Hardison, growls at Parker poking his bruises (don't get me started on the growls), and shoves people (ahem Parker) out of his personal space. So why would he do all this if he needs physical touch??

Because he's one gigantic ball of angst and self-loathing and guilt.

Eliot doesn't think he deserves forgiveness or love or family, etc. That is a whole other rant, but he denies himself the physical contact he needs with others as a way of punishing himself.

However, as the series progresses, we see him become more comfortable with physical contact! He hugs Hardison several times, he doesn't move away from Parker, etc. Why? Because he's bonded with this team (ahem pack) and there's only so much he can suppress his instincts. The more time he spends with them, the more naturally the contact flows.

Eliot needs to protect others Whenever we get a scene of the team walking as a group, where is Eliot positioned 90% of the time?? That's right, at the back of the group. He lets the others walk in pairs and falls back to bring up the rear. He's keeping them all in his line of sight and constantly scanning for threats ahead, along with protecting the team from any rear attacks. It makes sense for him to do this given his military background, but it also makes sense for a werewolf to do this.

He's the only werewolf in the team. His instincts revolve around keeping the pack safe and protected, so he does that in the best way he knows how.

Not to mention how feral gets over kids!!

Wolf life is all about the pack and the family structure. Pups are integral to the pack's survival and future. Eliot doesn't have kids of his own. But that doesn't stop his instincts from blaring every time he interacts with a kid, be it on the con or off. He takes time out every time to help that kid in an attempt to calm the raging storm of instincts inside his body.

Eliot needs to feed others It's another werewolf instinct that rears its head when they're in the safety of their headquarters (ahem den). Protecting the team/pack from physical threats is just one aspect of taking care of them. Feeding them is the other major one.

None of these idiots can cook to save their lives - except Nate, but he's also drowning his liver 90% of the time, so Eliot has to compensate for that, too. The team can't operate at full capacity if they're not consuming good nutrition. So Eliot makes sure to feed them.

His humanity recognises that these are independent people - coworkers - and he can't control every meal of every day. But he can cook for them, once a week or once a job, which is just enough to satisfy his instincts that he's doing his part to care for them. Plus they love his cooking, and the praise he gets from it is an unexpected but pleasant bonus.

Eliot and team sports/kitchens This ties in with my first point about Eliot needing a pack, but all the times we see Eliot go super hard and get absorbed in the role he's playing are when he's on a team sport or he's in the kitchen. Both of these fulfill super important instincts for him - being in a team/pack and providing food for others.

Think about The Tap-Out Job. Eliot's playing a fighter but he's not pretending to be on a team. He doesn't get over-invested in the role. But what about when he's a baseball player? A hockey player? He falls into those roles hard because he's working with another team again, and this little werewolf is built for that environment. Same in The French Connection: the kitchen becomes his den, the students are his pack mates, and he goes hard at investing in them and protecting them. Never mind the personal aspect of Toby.

Same for episodes like The Fairy Godparents Job when we get a scene of Eliot teaching a bunch of girls self-defence. Team setting + protecting kids = happy werewolf instincts.

So, werewolf headcanons? I have a lot of different origin theories but the main one I like for Eliot is:

he became a werewolf either for a covert military op, or was bitten by Moreau (choose your own angst flavour)

if it was for the military, they were trying to engineer supersoldiers and he was deemed a failure; he has werewolf instincts all the time but only has enhanced strength, healing, etc on full moons

if it was bitten by Moreau, there's a psychic-style bond linking them, which is why he was so loyal to Moreau for so long, and also why he is so reluctant to go after Moreau

(wow this is too different theories already and i said this was my 'main one' whoops)

Eliot can only shift easily on the full moon; shifting outside of a full moon can only be caused by extreme stress and is ridiculously painful

he suffers an insanely high prey drive all the time and is so strict about his control because he doesn't actually wanna rip out the throat of Random Guard #3

he used to chain himself up for full moons so he didn't hurt anyone, but since the team found out about him, Hardison and Parker have taken it upon themselves to 'puppy-sit' him every full moon

this involves no chains but an obscene amount of dog chew toys. Eliot is never impressed. He also never chases or chews the toys. The video evidence Hardison has was obviously doctored.

Hardison and Parker found out the truth when a con went sideways and Eliot was trapped in a room with them during the full moon

he was terrified he was going to kill them - or worse, bite them - but his instincts recognised them as pack so instead he just tried to wrestle with them all night

Hardison had a major freak out when he discovered Eliot was a werewolf - it's one thing to be obsessed with sci-fi/fantasy, it's another thing entirely to see your best friend transform before your eyes

Parker was not even remotely phased, being all like, "pfft of course werewolves are real, I thought you knew that Hardison, you talk about your elves and orcs all the time!"

"Woman that is completely different and you know it!"

"What else do you think is fake? The tooth fairy?? Ha!"

Eliot is Done With Their Shenanigans

Parker only ever refers to Eliot as Sparky when he's in his wolf form

Sophie didn't actually know about werewolves before the reveal but she pretends that she did

Nate knew about werewolves before Eliot, he just chooses to pretend that they're Not A Thing

werewolves generally don't make good hitters, because the constant exposure to violence ramps up their hunting instincts aka they find it hard not to kill

of course, this doesn't matter if you're someone like Moreau who specifically wants killing machines and thus turns his top hitters into werewolves, to ensure loyalty and enhance his strength

the only other werewolf hitter not under Moreau's control that Eliot knows is Quinn, who most certainly did not pull his werewolf strength punches when they tousled in The First David Job

Quinn doesn't have a pack (werewolf or otherwise) and genuinely doesn't seem phased by this, which pisses off Eliot to no end

however, after they work together in The Last Dam Job, Quinn deems himself Eliot's Best Werewolf Bud and keeps popping up randomly to hang out on full moons, etc

Parker and Hardison are a bit weirded out (and a little jealous) of Quinn's attention initially, but soon get over that when they discover that two werewolves on a full moon absolutely play for hours like 6 month old puppies - especially with the tug rope

Eliot is Extremely Susceptible to belly rubs even in his human form, which is half the reason he pushes people out of his personal space a lot - his reputation would never survive anyone finding out

of course the entire team figures it out and take to ambushing him with belly rubs whenever he's being stubborn or annoying

belly rubs are also the only way he will relax enough when he's injured so they can treat his wounds

despite the incessant dog jokes, the ever-growing pile of dog toys, and the bowls labelled with "Sparky" and cartoon bone symbols ... Eliot absolutely adores the pack he's found himself in and wouldn't change them for the world

One of these days I will sit down and write a thousand fics for werewolf!Eliot! Till then, I'll just keep churning out the headcanons ;)

#eliot spencer #leverage #werewolf #werewolves #werewolf!eliot spencer #long post #alec hardison #parker leverage #nate ford #sophie devereaux #damien moreau #quinn leverage #wow #this ended up being a million times longer than i anticipated #i mean #i always have more to say about werewolf!eliot and eliot in general #but damn #if you made it to the end of this well done! #feel free to add your own headcanons and thoughts! #the werewolf au is my favourite playground #asks #my posts #leverage fantasy au

[applejuiz]

Nate “Hardison dies in Plan M” Ford for some reason creates a plan to take down Damien Moreau in San Lorenzo that requires Eliot Spencer to spend the entire time there doing side quest tasks with Parker or cuddling with puppies. For some reason.

#leverage #eliot spencer #nate ford #damien moreau #Parker #I just think that it’s interesting #I mean all things considered #Eliot has a really nice vacation #rescues his friend from prison #spends a lot of time being cute with Parker #holds some puppies #what a fun time

[lindseymcdonaldseyelashes]

Okay but what if Harry Wilson's complicated past also involved cooperating with Damien Moreau

#leverage #leverage redemption #harry wilson #noah wyle #goran visnjic #damien moreau #er #though i doubt they'd do anything with this on redemption because i guess the actors had beef

[i-have-so-many-qns]

Does anyone have any idea on why someone like Elliot Spencer would agree to work for a man like Damien Moreau?

If you see his motivation to enlist, his relationship with Aimee Martin from before he left, his behaviour towards the abused kid in The Order 23 Job, it doesn't look like he'd even get involved with much less do the kind of stuff he did for Moreau.

Money doesn't seem a likely reason. Eliot is not an idiot, no way he wasn't aware Moreau's a bad guy...

#leverage #eliot spencer #damien moreau #i have a problem #i have questions #mine #not so random thoughts

[trivalentlinks]

🔥 - i'd like to order an unpopular opinion on leverage, please!

Sorry for the very, very late answer, but to make up for it, have two unpopular opinions:

The first one's a bit of a cop-out. I think it's the less popular opinion, but probably because most don't care that much either way:

I head-canon that Damien Moreau is actually a banker/financier, ie, his primary source of income is actually derivatives investments and market prediction, and all the buying countries, arms deals and other such clandestine activities is just to give markets slight pushes in the direction he wants. (I've previous talked about this here (my last reblog addition))

This opinion seems "unpopular" in that the more common reading is that he's a mob boss who just calls himself a 'banker' to make himself sound cooler than he actually is. Which I think is a totally valid reading, consistent with what we are shown in canon! Like, he's all about image, and it's totally believable that the entire financier/banker persona is just that.

One reason I prefer the actually-a-banker reading is, as I described in the other post, because I like the parallel with team leverage and their "alternative revenue stream". This is also why I like to head-canon that when Eliot and Moreau were starting out (after Eliot met Toby and left the PMCs with his newfound conscience), before things got bad, they actually did good--only destabilizing horrible, abusive dictatorships, using their alternative revenue stream to help people. The parallels are just so compelling to me this way.

Another reason I prefer the actually-a-banker reading is that it's more relatable to me. I know people who work as financiers (hedge fund/high frequency trading/crypto firm founders or high-level quants etc).

None of them (that I know of) would actually do illegal things to manipulate prices, but it sometimes seems like if they were a little less risk-averse, a little less ethical, who knows? And when they tell me about the people they know, people they describe as "if you took a person's stats and dialled 'ethics' all the way down to zero"... These friends think anyone too stupid to see through a cryptocurrency white paper deserves to lose their life's savings. So when they say someone has ethics dialled to zero, well. You don't wanna know.

On the other hand, I don't know anyone who's anywhere close to being a mob boss.

-

Here's a more genuinely unpopular opinion, in that I think most people believe the opposite, and actually do care:

I really like Jimmy Ford. I find the character very relatable and very compelling. I feel like a lot of people in the fandom just write him off as a bad father, but I don't think that's fair.

I talked a lot about this here (skip past the "..." paragraph; above that were my old early thoughts about Moreau, before I reformulated them to be my current thoughts)

As I mentioned there, I see in Jimmy Ford every parent who didn't understand their kid, but loved them, and as Jimmy said to Nate, that's more important.

Every parent who grew up at a different time, in another country, in a harder, less forgiving world, who wants to ensure their kid can survive that old environment, without realizing that that isn't the kid's world anymore, that their kid is actually thriving in this new world, the one their parents sacrificed to raise them in

Every parent who flipped out when their son decided to major in sociology instead of computer engineering, because they could never have made a living with a degree like that

(but he's going to do more than make a living with that degree; he's going to make a difference)

Every parent who constantly monitors their daughter to ensure she waits for marriage, because in the old country she would have been shunned or worse if she didn't

(but she's not there right? her parents worked and sacrificed and bled to bring her up in this more forgiving world)

Every parent who sits next to their kid for hours a day until they get their daily hour of piano practice done (and yells at them until they do every day, disturbing their neighbour, who's just trying to focus on doing her research and grading her students' papers, not that this is personal or anything), because the parent managed to survive and to move to this country by working relentlessly at everything they did and can't imagine a world where a 7-year-old is allowed to play and to find their own interests

(but they will, maybe not then, but one day, years down the line, they may even end up liking music)

Maybe it's that I'm a kid of immigrants who knows a lot of kids of immigrants, but I think I'm more forgiving of people who raised their children in a culture different from their own and struggled to adjust to that.

#leverage #unpopular opinion #asks #damien moreau #jimmy ford

[be-gay-do-heists]

obvs eliot was terrified as hell going into the pool scene but do you ever wonder if moreau had a brief moment of fear, opening that door and seeing eliot spencer on the other side. thinking that maybe this was the day where everything karmically and violently caught up with him (feeling a lot like acteon, torn apart by his own hounds). but then he sees how coiled eliot still is around him, how subdued and pliable, and takes up the reins of control again in the time it takes for his smile to return

#by his estimation eliot still has to die of course. but he feels a little more confident that he can do that #anyways i think about it #miko speaks #leverage #damien moreau

[kermit-coded]

okay but. "you work alone" with the accusatory tone and finger point. "it takes me awhile to warm up to people." "he prefers beer." "i don't know you," intentional glance, "i do know you." like there are layers to this shit.

#soda speaks #leverage #leverage posting #damien moreau #eliot spencer

[faorism]

what if we've been wrong about eliot being the kinda guy who thinks don't shit where you eat logic of not dating your crew? eliot has consistently been shown he is willing to sleep with folks close to the con: kaye lynn (the studio job), mikel dayan, maria shipp, tabatha delavega (the low low price job), and lupe the hot "nun." he expresses attraction to tara and (obliquely in s1) arguably sophie. the only reason he stops flirting with maggie is because she's nates ex and bro code. then theres paul orozco. (shelley is a gay but they were incompatible so just a friend.) and obviously he had his toxic epic whirlwind that was life with moreau, the definition of squatting down in one's dining room.

imo a person who would use that phrase earnestly wouldn't get this close to people involved with their work (kaye lynn is a very damning example since they made out in the middle of the job). like, not to the extent of rejecting parker and hardison on just that premise? maybe you can argue that after something like moreau (and yes, yall, im not giving the option for no m/e here), that wrecked his comfort around True Crew versus the Person Of The Week

(tbh i think out of the three, if hardison had been older, maybeeeee he would have some reservations. but there's nothing canon to say that; i just think any queer person who is in a dnd group or WoW guild would learn to pause over messing with dynamics)

thoughts?

#eliot spencer #leverage #leverage ot3 #thiefsome #faorism meta #damien moreau

[qwanderer]

Thinking about the question of when Eliot stopped killing because I was going through the transcript of the San Lorenzo Job for fic purposes and realized there are at least two people he was hired to kill and didn't! (Toby and the general) So if his time with Moreau overlapped his time with the PMCs and the worst thing he ever did was before Toby, that means he was like a really well known very effective guy to send in and then suddenly he doesn't kill Toby and then he doesn't kill the general!

And then everyone is like WTF and goes to Moreau about it because he's Moreau's guy who he keeps shopping out, and Moreau is like hey Eliot WTF and they end up coming to some kind of agreement that means Eliot is no longer his guy and doesn't take those jobs because it's tanking Moreau's reputation but Moreau doesn't have Eliot killed because Eliot is able to convince him that he is still capable of killing and will take down anyone sent after him and then Moreau.

Meanwhile Eliot has already been taking more retrieval jobs and is still very effective at those, so his rep as a wetwork guy is tanking but if you're looking for a different kind of objective he's still very reliable.

So I think he did in fact stop killing before s1 but I don't think it was a principle of his yet, I think it was more of a "huh I am not sure if I will be able to make myself do this reliably so I better not take the jobs that require it" and he had some recovering to do before he could even really recognize how important that decision was.

Idk that's just the feeling I get.

#eliot meta #leverage #damien moreau #eliot spencer #meta

[werewolfsmile]

The hyperfixation is still going strong.

Heard this song, couldn't stop thinking about Eliot leaving Moreau. Enjoy!

#leverage #eliot spencer #damien moreau #cassadee pope #music video #my posts #comedy #crack #sorta #considering i used a breakup song #so yeah #have fun with this one #it was sooo much fun to create #Youtube

[leverageclips]

#leverage #my post #leverage redemption #alec hardison #eliot spencer #nathan ford #damien moreau #hurley #mr Quinn

[glassesmcfancyhair]

Hey am I the only one who’s noticed that when we see Damien Moreau around women he’s always impeccably dressed but he’s in various states of undress when he’s surrounded by men. I’m just saying this man is a gay coded villain and he’s definitely Eliot’s unhinged ex.

#leverage #damien moreau #eliot spencer #Damien definitely stalked eliot at some point