Author's Note

So, one thing about Episode 4.10 (The Queen's Gambit Job) has always bothered me:

How could Eliot Spencer – whose level of caution might be described as "paranoia" were it not for the fact that "when you've done the things [he's] done, there is no such thing as paranoia", and who absolutely hates Jim Sterling – so casually accept a cup of coffee from him, continue to drink it after noticing it tasted weird, fall for such an obvious distraction as that argument about how fast a particular rifle can be fired twice, AND then trust that Sterling was accurately translating the phone conversation he "lip read"? And, not only that, but NO-ONE then comments on any of this out-of-character behaviour?

Sorry, but no.

This is my take on how those conversation went. I hope you enjoy it!

Positional play in chess is play dominated by long-term manoeuvring for advantage rather than by short-term attacks and threats, and requiring judgment more than extensive calculation of variations, as distinguished from tactics.

Anti-positional moves or plans are therefore those not in accordance with the principles of positional play. An anti-positional move is one that is part of an incorrect plan, rather than a mistake made when trying to follow a correct plan.

Sophie waited until they were on the plane back to Boston to raise the issue. She had resisted the urge through their wait at the airport and the first hour or two of the flight, distracting herself first with the duty-free shopping opportunities and then with the magazines she had purchased for in-flight entertainment.

"So," she said as Nate settled back into the seat beside her after a trip to the bathroom at the front of the first class cabin. "Eliot."

"Last time I checked, my name was Nate," he told her, sending a smirk her way as he reached for his drink.

Sophie rolled her eyes.

"You need to talk to him," she told Nate, dropping her eyes back to the magazine in front of her as a perfectly manicured finger flipped the next glossy page.

Nate frowned, eyes wandering to where Eliot sat a few rows in front of them. There wasn't much visible from this angle: part of the back of his head, a shoulder, and the fingers of his right hand drumming on the arm rest. But Nate had just past him on the way back down the aisle, and couldn't say he had noticed anything out of the ordinary. Eliot's brows had been lowered in an introspective scowl, but he had met Nate's passing glance in acknowledgement. And, candidly, the scowl wasn't far off his usual expression.

"About...?" Nate asked.

Sophie turned an incredulous gaze on him.

"Being drugged by Sterling?" she suggested, pointedly. "Remember?"

Nate took another sip of his drink to hide the twitch of his lips. The fact that three thieves as (individually and collectively) capable of wreaking worldwide havoc as Parker, Hardison and Eliot brought out Sophie's maternal instinct seldom failed to amuse him.

"It was a mild sedative, Sophie," he said dismissively. "He's fine."

"I'm not talking physically," Sophie replied, annoyance at Nate's attitude lacing her tone. "He let Sterling drug him. That's not the Eliot we know."

Now she had his attention.

"What are you suggesting?" he asked. "That Eliot was working with Sterling behind our backs?"

"I think we would have got the memo about hell freezing over and pigs flying if that had happened," Sophie replied with a scornful huff. "No. You heard him over the comms. He took the coffee from Sterling, drank it even after noticing it tasted odd, let Sterling distract him with an argument about a rifle, and then let Sterling 'lip read' the Kazakhstanis telephone conversation instead of listening in as he originally planned."

"Hmmn," Nate said.

He wasn't dismissing Sophie's comments this time, but she could tell he wasn't getting her point. She sighed and tried again.

"Even when it's just the team around, how often do you see Eliot eat or drink anything he hasn't prepared or bought himself, Nate? Or that is at least still sealed when it's handed to him or that he watched being prepared? Because I can only think of a handful of instances over the past three years – and most of them happened in the last three or four months."

"And you don't think that change is a good thing?" Nate asked.

Sophie hesitated, her feelings on the subject torn.

"Within the team it might be..."

Heaven knew, there was a large part of her that wanted to see a little more trust in both Eliot and Parker – an acceptance that the team was watching out for them, that they didn't have to always be prepared to deal with everything by themselves. On the other hand...

"But Eliot has good reason to be wary of who might be looking for a way to get to him," Sophie continued. "If he's no longer questioning Sterling's actions, whom he hates..." she trailed off again. "It's not safe, Nate."

Nate was giving her concern serious thought now. His frown deepened as his gaze left her face to take in Parker and Hardison sitting across the aisle and one row behind them, and then to linger on the brown head up front. Sophie was fairly sure he was comparing their current travel arrangements – all seated in the same cabin on the same flight – to Eliot's early insistence on their splitting up to take different routes to and from out of town jobs. And perhaps that was nothing more than Eliot coming to trust Hardison's electronic magic to provide the necessary covers and to wipe their traces from the various surveillance systems, and perhaps it was just part of the weight that had lifted from his shoulders when they had taken down Moreau, but it was another sign of Eliot's guard dropping.

Nate sighed. He really didn't relish the idea of telling Eliot Spencer that he was getting sloppy. The alternative, though...

"I'll talk to him," he promised Sophie. "But when we get home. I don't think that's a conversation I want to have when we're stuck on a plane for another several hours."

Parker and Hardison left McRory's not long after they finished toasting what Parker insisted on renaming "The Glass-Eye Plan", which she also adamantly maintained needed to be Plan G in any given sequence of plans to ensure alphabetical symmetry. Eliot twisted in his seat, watching Hardison usher Parker through the door. Her voice drifted back to them as she exited, already planning a repeat visit to Dubai for another jump off the building that "was like eight buildings on top of each other." Eliot shook his head in despair as he turned back to the table, and Nate and Sophie exchanged smiles at the 'There's something wrong with that girl' written clearly across his face.

Silence descended over them with the younger thieves' departure. Eliot toyed with his empty glass for a moment, apparently waiting to see if conversation would pick back up. When it didn't, he tapped the glass twice on the table and pushed himself to his feet.

"Well, maybe it's time I headed out, too," he said, eyes lifting from the glass to Nate and Sophie.

Nate looked up at the younger man. He could feel Sophie's very point gaze boring into him from the left. He cleared his throat.

"Actually, Eliot, if you've got a minute, there's something I'd like to talk to you about," he said.

Eliot frowned, eyes going assessingly from Nate to Sophie and back again, but he sat back down without protest.

There was another moment's awkward silence. Sophie broke it.

"I think that's my cue to leave," she said, gathering her purse and coat, and standing. She shared a smile between Nate and Eliot as they both half-rose from their seats in response. "Good night, boys."

Even in the relative privacy her departure left them in, Nate wasn't eager to broach the topic he needed to. Eliot, on the other hand, wasn't prepared to wait forever.

"So what's this thing we need to discuss, Boss?" he asked.

Nate had to consciously suppress his eyebrows' reflexive leap for this hairline at this mode of address. Eliot hadn't called him 'Boss' in almost two years...Nate had, in fact, worked quite hard to break him of the habit, uncomfortable with the implication that Eliot, and maybe the others, were acting under his orders rather than on his plans. Given his recent conversation with Sophie and what he now needed to discuss with Eliot, Nate wasn't quite sure what to make of the title's return.

Nate leant back in his chair, trying to maintain a casual posture while simultaneously steeling himself.

"Tell me what happened with Sterling," he said.

"He drugged me," Eliot replied.

"Yes, I got that part," Nate told him, a little more bite entering his tone. "I'm more interested in the how right now."

"We got the job done, didn't we?" Eliot tried to evade. "What happened to 'take the win'?"

"We did," Nate agreed. "This is more of a general question about why you trusted Sterling."

"Trusted Sterling?" Eliot sounded offended.

"The coffee, Eliot," Nate reminded him, before Eliot could launch a full-powered objection. "And the lip reading."

"Oh."

Nate could actually see Eliot's anger dissipate as he thought about this.

Eliot shrugged.

"We were supposedly helping him out on this one," Eliot explained. "He shouldn't have had anything to gain from taking any of us out until the job was finished...Besides, you trust him."

Nate was startled. Not by the first part of Eliot's explanation – the logic of trusting someone (or at least suspending suspicion of their immediate actions) because acting against you was also against their best interests made good tactical sense. No, it was the second part that surprised him – that Eliot was choosing who to trust based on who Nate trusted. Or, rather, on whom he perceived Nate to trust...But maybe it shouldn't have been so surprising. On the very first job, Eliot had told Nate he trusted him because Nate was an honest man. As such his judgement of people apparently held weight. He drew in a careful breath and leaned forward, fixing his eyes on Eliot's to be certain the younger man saw how very serious he was about his next statement.

"I don't trust Sterling, Eliot," Nate said slowly. "To be perfectly honest, I don't trust anyone. What I do trust is my knowledge of them – and, therefore, my ability to predict their actions."

Eliot frowned, eyes dropping now to his hands. Nate could see the re-evaluations and adjustments being made inside his head to accommodate this information. Some days, watching the various members of the team think was as fascinating and satisfying as devising the plans to take down their marks. He saw Eliot apply the new parameters to what he knew of Nate's relationship with Sterling, accept them as true immediately, and move on to the other people he thought Nate trusted:

Sophie – well, okay, she was a phenomenally talented grafter. That was how you trusted her.

Eliot himself – so the trust wasn't a two-way street. But given what he knew Nate knew of his past, as well as their past interactions, it was ... acceptable. Important to remember, but...whatever. It seemed to be working.

Parker - ... The frown deepened.

Hardison - ... The eyes flickered up to Nate's again.

Maggie - ... The frown was a full scowl now, and the eyes bore into Nate's, seeking any sign of denial or contradiction.

Sam? - The scrutiny dropped abruptly as Eliot registered the boundary he was pushing past and retreated.

It wasn't necessary. If Nate minded Eliot enquiring into this aspect of his relationship with his son, he would have closed that door himself. He met the apologetic gaze Eliot turned on him with a small shake of his head and a smile. He could tell, though, that the trust thing still needed some explanation.

"Do you trust Parker?" he asked Eliot, hoping an example would help.

"I trust her to be Parker," Eliot growled, a note of warning in his voice that would have amused Nate under other circumstances.

"But..?" Nate prompted.

Eliot sighed.

"But not to be normal," he conceded.

"And Hardison?"

"I trust him to try," the same defensive note crept in.

Nate waited, giving Eliot the opportunity to complete the thought process on his own.

"I don't trust him to know when to stop," Eliot admitted reluctantly. "Or to get how the real world works always."

"Exactly," Nate said. He could have left it there. Eliot, already feeling he had intruded on Nate's private life, would never ask about Maggie or Sam. Nate could trust him on that. On the other hand...

'We are not friends, Eliot.'

They had come a long way in the years since that particular conversation, but maybe the speed with which Eliot had moved past the question of whether Nate should trust him said they hadn't come as far as Nate thought.

"And I trust Maggie to be honest and smart and fair," he reciprocated. "And to act accordingly."

Eliot nodded, but Nate could see he was sceptical of this being enough to support a marriage. And, given that Maggie and Nate's marriage had only barely survived its first decade, Nate had to concede that he might have a point.

"I did trust Sam," Nate added softly, smiling as Eliot's eyes shot back to his in surprise. "But that was because I knew everything about that boy, inside and out, and from beginning to end. There wasn't anything left to predict."

Eliot had the sense not to attempt a response to that, simply waiting for Nate to bring the conversation back to the point he was trying to make.

"So," Nate cleared his throat, "no, I don't trust Sterling, and I think you are probably safe assuming he always has some sort of hidden agenda."

Eliot nodded.

"It won't happen again, Boss," he said, making no attempt to hide the fact he was trying to bring the conversation to a close. "That everything?"

It might have been had Eliot not reintroduced that damned Boss into his lexicon.

Nate shook his head.

"Sophie is..." he started.

Eliot huffed an exasperated sigh and finished the thought for him.

"...worried this isn't a one-time thing, and that I'm going to let my guard down with someone who will use something worse than a short-acting sedative and get us all killed?"

"She talked to you already?" Nate asked, surprised.

Eliot shook his head.

"It's the kind of thing Sophie would worry about enough to get you to intervene," he explained.

"Mmmn, well, the concern she expressed was a little more specific than that, but that was the gist of it," Nate agreed.

"More specific how?" Eliot asked, the tension running through him reminiscent of the final weeks of their takedown of Moreau. Nate suspected he was already running through the list of known threats, and matching it against Sophie's likely contacts to narrow down what she might have received early warning of.

"She's worried that someone trying to collect on one of those prices on your head is going to succeed," Nate said bluntly.

Eliot froze, then blinked, and Nate realised he hadn't even been considering that possibility.

"Should she be?" Nate pushed. He felt the loose tangle of tension that had formed in his stomach when Sophie first drew his attention to this problem start to tighten into a knot when Eliot dropped his head into his hands and started kneading his forehead.

"I don't know," Eliot admitted. "Maybe."

Nate took a steadying breath as Eliot looked up at him.

"Look, Nate, so far as I know there's no more threat than usual out there, and nothing that should affect the rest of the team," he said. "But there is something I've been meaning to talk to you about."

"Okay," Nate said, eyebrows rising.

"If you don't have anything pressing on the books right now, I think it would be a good idea if I took some time to work a few solo jobs," Eliot said.

Nate frowned, considering both what the connection to working solo jobs might be and what he and Hardison had in the current client list and background research files. None of their active clients had the kind of problem where an alteration in the timeline of a few weeks would make a huge difference, and while they would ultimately need to deal with Latimer, Nate was nowhere near needing Eliot's expertise or skill for that yet. So from that perspective there was no problem with Eliot going solo for a while...unless...

'I was trying to figure out a way around this, all right? Maybe take my shot before...'

The last time Eliot had raised the question of individual action it had been in the context of protecting the team from the threat Moreau posed.

"Do any of those 'solo jobs' involve a plan related to Latimer?" Nate asked sharply.

"What?" Eliot looked genuinely confused. "No. I just think I need to brush off some of the skills I don't use on the team jobs. I'm getting rusty, man."

"What kind of skill?" Nate asked, curious now.

"Depends on the job," Eliot shrugged. "I just work differently when there's no-one to rely on but myself."

Nate thought about that, frowning. If he had stopped to think about it, he probably would have said that working with the team had broadened rather than narrowed each member's skill set...Parker, for example, had learnt to grift (sort of), and Sophie had polished Eliot's skills in that area. Sophie, in turn, had gained some additional lock picking skills from Parker and some self defence techniques from Eliot. Hardison had, at the very least, grown accustomed to being pushed off high vantage points by Parker, and had taught Eliot "that Photoshop thing". So where was Eliot getting rusty?

Eliot sighed, realising he was going to have to spell it out.

"When we do a job as a team, Hardison handles all the background research, the IDs, and creating or erasing records of where we've been and what we've done. Sophie handles the development for any roles we have to play and we just have to step into character and costume. Working with Parker means I either don't have to get into places I would if I did the job alone, or that I can at least can rely on her to find the best way in. You come up with the overall strategy, and a lot of the adaptations along the way. That all gives me the time to focus on security and back-up plans for all of us at each point, but I'm not doing the kind of planning or the clean-up I do when I work alone. And it doesn't matter as much if I miss something because either someone else will catch it or will be able to fix it."

"But that's the whole point of working as a team," Nate protested. "We're effective because we can each rely on the others to be effective in their particular areas."

"Agreed," Eliot said. "But only up to the point where that reliance makes us more effective in our own areas. This last stretch, we've gone longer than before without splitting up long enough for more than the briefest solo jobs...I'm reaching the point where the opposite is happening."

It was the note of defeat in the final sentence that swayed Nate. He didn't need Eliot losing confidence in his own skills anymore than he needed the man to revert to his lone wolf tendencies.

"Okay," he said. "How long do you need?"

"A month maybe?" Eliot suggested. He'd prefer three, but he knew Nate couldn't put all his plans on hold for that long at such short notice . "And maybe I work a little more independently on the next few team jobs after that?"

Nate nodded.

"We can make that work," he agreed.

"Thanks, Nate," Eliot said. He looked relieved, which Nate decided to count as evidence he had made the right decision rather than a reason for further tightening of the knot in his gut. Nate wasn't quite to leave it there, however.

"Three requests, Eliot," he added as Eliot stood to leave. Conditions would be a more accurate word, but sometimes diplomacy got you further than accuracy.

Eliot paused, eyebrows raised in question.

Nate looked up at him, counting his requests off on his fingers.

"One, I need a way to contact you."

"I'll email you a cell phone number," Eliot said. "But it won't be one Hardison can trace."

Nate nodded, accepting the compromise.

"Two, you don't go 'lone wolf' on us. This little hiatus is about re-honing your skills, not becoming a one-man band. When you come back, you need to be ready to work as part of the team again."

Eliot hesitated a moment, but then nodded.

"Three," Nate counted, standing and stepping into Eliot's personal space this time, "you don't take stupid risks."

Eliot opened his mouth to protest, but Nate was already shaking his head.

"No, you said yourself that you're off your game at the moment, and we need you to come back safe. So, anything you would normally double check, you triple check; and anything that feels hinky, you walk away from. And if you need help, you ask for it – either from the team or from someone you trust...after you've thought a second time about why you trust them and how far."

Nate waited for Eliot's acknowledgement, but all he was getting was scowl and a pair of crossed arms.

"I'm going to need your promise on that last one," Nate said.

"I only make promises I know I can keep, Nate," Eliot growled.

"I know," Nate told him. "That's why I need this one."

Eliot chewed on it a while longer.

"Fine," he said at last. "If you promise to either wait for me to get back before putting the team on any jobs, or hire one of the guys from that list I gave you last year."

"Deal," Nate said immediately, holding out his hand to shake on it.

Eliot took it and they shook.

"See you in a month," Nate said, clapping Eliot on the shoulder with his left hand as he released his right.

"See ya," Eliot affirmed as he picked up his jacket and left.

Nate stood, watching him go, then gathered up his own things and headed upstairs to his apartment.

Sophie was waiting for him in the bedroom.

"You hear all that?" Nate asked, pulling out his earbud.

"Mmmn-hmmn," Sophie replied, removing her own.

"I hope it was the right thing to do," Nate said, moving towards the closet to hang up his jacket and shirt.

"It was," Sophie reassured him. "And he only asked for a month. Come to bed."

It was four days short of the end of Eliot's month when Nate used the cell phone number Eliot emailed him.

*Got a job we need to move on. Client meeting on Tuesday?* Nate texted.

He waited. Half the point of texting, of course, was that an immediate response wasn't required, but Nate still found himself sitting holding the phone as if he could expect one. He was about to put the phone to one side when it beeped.

*What time?*

*10 am?* Nate proposed.

Another long pause.

*Only if Hardison has built a Beam-Me-Up-Scottie machine. I can do 3pm*

*See you at 3* Nate responded. He paused, contemplating, then opened another message. *PS. Hardison know you watch Star Trek?*

The response this time was instantaneous.

*Dammit, Nate. Keep your mouth shut.*

Nate chuckled. Apparently that Boss thing wasn't going to be a problem.

Tuesday, 3:15 pm. McRory's Bar

Nate looked over at their latest client. She was young, but she made up in anger what she lacked in years. He already knew the basics of her story: Veteran father whose body had turned up in a river and she was convinced he was the victim of a crime the police couldn't be bothered to investigate. She held a manila folder in a death grip in front of her where she perched at the end of the bar.

"I'm sure my colleague will be here soon," Nate assured her for the third time. "Are you sure you wouldn't like some coffee or something while we wait."

She gave him the same tight-lipped smile she had the previous two times, but this time accepted the offer of coffee. Nate gestured to the bartender for a refill of his coffee and cup for his client, and checked his watch for the fifth time. Where was Eliot? Their coffee arrived and Nate decided it was time to get the show in the road, with or without all the performers.

"Why don't we get started in the meantime, Miss Schaevel?" he suggested. "Is that file related to your father's death?"

The girl nodded and slid the file down the counter to Nate.

"It's a copy of the Boston PD file," she said.

He flipped it open, scanning for any information that went beyond what Hardison had already dug up. Like the watched pot that will not boil, McRory's door had remained stubbornly closed as long as Nate was waiting for it to signal Eliot's arrival. Now as his attention focused on the file in front of him, he heard the swish of it opening and closing behind him, and sure enough, when he turned around, Eliot was there. He gave Nate a businesslike nod as he passed him to take the barstool on the other side of their client, nothing in his demeanour indicating it hadn't been business as usual in the previous days.

"Sorry I'm late," he said, sitting down. "I got held up at the airport."

"Not a problem," Nate said. "We were just getting started."

He made the necessary introductions, giving Eliot a brief synopsis on why Miss Schaevel had contacted them and taking the opportunity to study the man at the same time. Eliot looked tired, like he had been travelling for more hours than he wanted to and then showered and dressed in a hurry; and he was definitely having bad hair day. But he also looked tanned, fit, and uninjured, and the trademark clarity and confidence that had been missing from their last encounter was back.

"So," Nate said, turning back to the file in front of him. "Boston PD took this as part of an investigation?"

"More like that was the investigation," the girl said scornfully.

"How do you mean?" Eliot asked, drawing her attention from Nate to himself.

"Their whole attitude was when a homeless man dies in a river, it's not a crime, it's a heart attack. I had to pay for the autopsy myself," the resentment and indignation rang loudly in her voice.

"And?" Eliot asked. Nate gave a little internal, self-satisfied smirk. This was what he needed form Eliot: don't ignore the emotion, but don't let it blind you to the facts.

"Heart attack," Miss Schaevel admitted.

Nate already knew that – and that it wasn't the whole story. But he still needed to see Eliot invested in this case. He arranged his face into a doubtful frown, closing the file again.

"Miss Schaevel," he said, "I'm-I'm sorry for your loss, but this is really not the sort of thing –"

Had he had any doubts about their client's investment in the case, her response to that would have erased them.

"They moved his body," she exclaimed, reaching for the file and opening it again. "Look. This is a call for volunteers to participate in experiments studying the sleep patterns of people with post-traumatic stress disorder."

"Your dad had PTSD?" Eliot interrupted, and Nate knew he was right about this being the perfect case to pull Eliot back into the team's work.

"You know, just a little something to remember Vietnam by," Miss Schaevel told Eliot.

She turned back to Nate, returning to her point and missing the grimace that crossed Eliot's face.

"That's where he was when he died...Look, you have to understand, these university experiments are run by undergrads. I mean, kids - literally."

Nate picked up the story, not wanting their client to wander down too many of the tangential paths of ways in which the world worked unfairly.

"Okay, so y-y-you're saying that you think your dad died, the kids panicked, they tried to hide his body."

Miss Schaevel might be willing to have her story's path guided, but as Nate suspected, she would not tolerate any soft-pedalling.

"I think that they thought that because he was homeless, nobody would notice, I mean, much less care," she corrected him. Then, apparently remembering that she was here to ask them for help and not to argue, added, "I mean, help me prove them wrong."

Nate maintained his reluctant expression. He almost felt bad when he saw Miss Schaevel's face fall as yet another hope proved false.

"I thought what you guys did was help people when nobody else would," she said, not willing to give up yet.

Nate's eyes met Eliot's, just a hint of a question in them – was this still what they did?

Eliot didn't say a word, didn't nod his head, or move a muscle. But in his gaze there was no question – just steadfast confirmation that this was indeed what they did. And that if Nate didn't think so, there would be words.

Nate gave a quick, decisive nod.

"We'll take the case," he confirmed. "Miss Schaevel, we'll be in touch."

She opened her mouth, obviously about to ask what they were going to do and probably to demand that they let her be involved. But she had smarts as well as righteous anger, and something in what she saw between them told her this was one of those situations in which "don't ask, don't tell" definitely applied.

She closed her mouth, nodded, thanked them and left.

Nate turned back to Eliot, eyebrow raised in a general inquiry about how he had spent the past month.

Eliot countered with his own eyebrow raise as he lifted his coffee cup to his lips.

Nate gave an amused huff.

"Briefing upstairs in five minutes," he said, standing up.

Eliot nodded.

"I'll be there," he said, taking another sip of coffee.

Nate lingered a moment longer, wondering if he should warn Eliot the others didn't know he was back yet.

"What?" Eliot asked when the scrutiny continued, the familiar annoyed growl riding just beneath the surface of his voice.

Nope, definitely not warning him.

"Nothing," Nate said, innocently. "Just...welcome back."

THE END

Acknowledgements and Confessions:

1) The definitions of Positional Play and Anti-positional moves at the beginning are adapted from Wikipedia's Glossary of Chess (available at en. wikipedia wiki/ Glossary_of_chess#K – just remove the spaces when you copy it into the address bar). Please don't ask me to either identify or execute positional play or an anti-positional move...Someone did teach me the basics of chess when I was about five, but I had lost interest by the time I turned six, and last pulled out my rudimentary knowledge of the game when my very small junior school desperately needed one more under-nine chess player to enter in the mini-Olympics and I was the only person who remembered how the "horsey" moved. That, the fact that there are 64 squares on the chessboard, and the story of the rice grains and chessboard constitute the limits of my knowledge!

Edited to add: Actually, my search of the Glossary of Chess for a story title expanded this knowledge just slightly – I have long know the term "taking in passing" (or "en passant" if you are either playing in French or feeling fancy), and I now know how that works!...kind of...

2) The dialogue between Nate, Eliot and Miss Schaevel taken from the early scenes of Episode 4.11 (The Experimental Job) was made possible only by the awesome work whendarknessfalls has done in Leverage Seriously! - a collection of Leverage Transcripts derived from the closed captions available online and formatted into transcript form, then validated against the aired episode (available at leverage .whendarknessfalls - again, remove the space when you paste that address in!). Much as I love that episode, I would never have the patience to watch and re-watch that scene as often as it would have taken me to get those lines even close!