lang, scott; ant-man (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} stealsomeshit) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} chances_rpg,@ 2025-06-07 07:06:00 |
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| Entry tags: | leverage: eliot spencer, marvel: scott lang (mcu) |
LOG: ELIOT & SCOTT
Who. Eliot Spencer & Scott Lang
When. pre-Parker's arrival
Where. vague office building
What. scoping the same place out
Warnings. N/A
"But you really oughta be asking yourself one thing: are you sure you're workin' for the good guys?"
When. pre-Parker's arrival
Where. vague office building
What. scoping the same place out
Warnings. N/A
Sure, they could have sent Loki. But there was something about the building and what they needed that Scott needed to check something out. And all he was doing was casing the place. He would report back and not be involved any further. That was all above-board. What the others did with the information wasn't his fault.
He leaned casually against the reception desk, waiting for the lovely woman there to finish looking something up for him. His eyes were taking in the security cameras in a practiced fashion, looking bored and letting his attention wander rather than actively trying to locate them.
"I'll be with you in just a moment," the woman said, tone both pleasant and polite. It wasn't aimed at him but Scott still turned to look, his own pleasant-and-polite smile in place. And then he faltered, blinking as he recognized the guy. Who… shouldn't have had any business in this particular building in this particular part of the city. Should he?
The only sign that anything had gone wrong was the momentary twitch in Eliot's jaw when he recognized the man who'd been standing in front of him at the desk. He'd thought that there was something familiar about him, something that had been nagging at him about the guy's posture, but when he saw his face and recognized him as a neighbor...
What the hell was this guy doing in this building anyway? There was no good reason for him to be there that Eliot could think of, and Hardison had done pretty good research on everybody.
If the guy wasn't here for any reason that Eliot could think of above board, he would likely not give Eliot away because Eliot could expose him as well. They were in a tentative sort of alliance, then... Ignoring Scott Lang for the moment, Eliot put on his most charming gosh-darn smile and his thickest country boy accent. "You just take your time, ma'am. I'm in no rush here."
"Isn't it great?" Scott asked. "That not having to rush thing?" He sounded so casual. "You plan your day out, give yourself plenty of time to adjust for the weird things. Like traffic," Scott went on and gestured in a right? sort of question toward Eliot.
He propped his chin in his hand and turned his attention toward the receptionist again. "Traffic. So unpredictable. Makes me wish I could just teleport. In and out, boom," Scott went on and then made a quick sort of flying motion with his hand and whistled like it was a zip of a movement. His own, disarmingly charming smile was in place. The woman had looked from one man to the other, pleased to be in their sights since they both seemed so polite.
"Oh, I take public transportation," she tittered.
Both of Scott's hands came up in a well there you have it gesture next. "That's amazing. Great for the environment," he told her and would have applauded if it would have been appropriate. His tone said so. "Were you able to find Mister-"
"I'm having trouble reaching Mr. Dubois," the woman said apologetically. She hesitated. "He must be on another call. You can go ahead. You said you know where his office is?"
Scott smiled. "I do. Thank you for your help, Rose. I shall miss our time together," he said as the smile grew to a grin and one of his hands pressed against his chest like he could stamp the moment on his heart. And then he was smoothly turning on his heel and heading toward the elevators without breaking stride as the woman turned her attention back toward... his neighbor. Oh, sure, maybe not his next door neighbor but the odds of the man being in that building on that day around that time were slim at best. While he considered the reasons, Scott pressed the call button for the elevators and stepped back to wait, hands folded casually in front of him.
It was dangerous, but Eliot's mind was only half on the job now. That was a masterful redirection on Lang's part, there, and he'd made his way into the office as neatly as any experienced grifter. As neatly as Eliot himself, when he delivered his story--with the window washers, just needed some measurements from the top floor, that was all, he hated to be a bother but... all with that Midwestern boy-next-door charm that was his bread and butter.
He managed to catch up with Lang before the elevator got there.
"What the hell," he hissed under his breath, though his expression remained as pleasant as ever as he stopped about a foot away from where Lang was standing.
The doors had opened with a cheerful ding just as he was joined. "Could ask you the same thing," Scott muttered as they moved into the shiny metal box. He made eye contact with Eliot and raised an eyebrow as he pressed his thumb against the button for the top floor. "Which floor did you need?" he asked politely.
Oh. He knew which floor Eliot needed. The whole thing was too coincidental. He held up a small device between his thumb and forefinger. "The camera won't catch audio. Keep your head angled," he said and turned just so. "Are you working for yourself or were you hired?" Scott asked casually.
Eliot didn't need the reminder but he followed Lang's example anyway, turning so that the camera wouldn't catch the movement of his lips. "Could ask you the same thing," he echoed, then sighed. "But that ain't gonna get us anywhere so yeah. Fine. Someone hired us, but it's not the way you think."
Because the person who'd asked them to look into this company? They weren't the one signing the paycheck. They never were; as always, Leverage Consulting worked on an alternative revenue stream. They took the bad guys down and then they made the bad guys pay their bills, and it had worked out so far for them. Back home and here, both.
"What about you, what are you doing here? Top floor," he added, realizing that he'd never actually answered that question. He was mapping out access points in case they needed an escape and even without Parker here it was just part of the routine to check the roof too.
"Uh huh," Scott replied in a non-committal tone. They didn't have long before the doors would open again so Scott grinned and pressed a few buttons just to be annoying if anyone was watching.
His gaze slid to Eliot. "I'm here to scope out a client who wants to hire my people. I don't consult for them anymore but they feel better if my hand is in it," Scott said as the elevator came to a stop and opened to an empty floor. They weren't at the top yet. When the doors closed again, Scott continued. "Private security. What better way to test and better security than to hire ex-convicts who are really good at breaking and entering?"
Scott's lips twitched as he fought a laugh as the elevator stopped just one floor up, still away from their destination. "So I wonder if X-Con Security Consultants is being hired to keep you and yours out."
"Could be." Eliot pressed his lips together tightly, looking Scott up and down. He could take him in a fight easy, he thought, as long as Scott didn't have any tricks up his sleeve. He didn't know what the man was capable of, but physically? As he was, without any superpowers? Yeah, that would be a fool's bet to think Scott could even scratch him.
That wasn't what this was though. He didn't think Scott had pushed those extra buttons to give them time to scrape in the elevator, see who came out on top before they ever got to their destination. Scott was in to scout, same as him. Awfully hard to do that if you caused a scene.
So, Eliot settled his back against the wall of the elevator, arms crossed over his chest. "But you really oughta be asking yourself one thing: are you sure you're workin' for the good guys?"
That really was the question, wasn't it? Scott tilted his head back, eyes unfocused and not really looking at anything in particular. Besides, it was an elevator. They were all designed in one of only several ways without getting into specifics. "That's exactly what I'm asking myself," Scott replied.
"Wouldn't be the first time I did the wrong thing for the right reasons," he added, his pause only for the time it took for the elevator to yet again stop on a floor, open to an empty hallway, and close again before once more ascending. "And now's the time to pull my guys out, depending on what you know and what you see."
Scott looked at Eliot and all humor was gone. Every last ounce of that sort of earnest charisma had disappeared. Whether it had been a mask or not, Scott knew when to be serious. And he was not going to do anything that put his friends in jeopardy. "Are you willing to see what you need to see and reconvene later? I'd need you to give me a head start. I actually do have an appointment with the guy. A cursory one since he hired us. Them. I don't actually work with them anymore for reasons that aren't bad. Loki does, though. At my behest and begging, honestly."
"Sure," Eliot said. As long as Scott wasn't going to stop him, he wasn't going to worry about this one. He'd get the job done and then if it became an issue? They'd figure out a Plan B. They still hadn't set this one in stone anyway. A lot of it depended on what Eliot found out today.
Then, because he really couldn't help himself, he snorted. "Be a lot faster if someone in this elevator wasn't a five-year-old at heart."
It was fine. It gave him time to figure out a backup plan for this part of the plan. Eliot wasn't the mastermind of the group by any means, that wasn't a role that he was comfortable playing, but he could still come up with backup plans on the fly. They'd all have been dead a million times over if they hadn't learned that skill.
At the snort and following commentary, Scott just gave an unashamed shrug. He knew what he was about. Besides, it did what he had wanted which was time.
"This is your floor, isn't it?" Scott asked, a small smirk appearing as he turned his head to look at Eliot right as the elevator doors opened one floor below both of their current target. But Eliot had agreed to give him a head start and Scott needed to take advantage of it. If the job really was putting his guys on the wrong side, Scott needed to be certain so he could pull them off it.
His smirk turned into a grin. "See you later," Scott said cheerfully.
Eliot grunted, then trudged his way off the elevator begrudgingly. He should have pegged that Scott Lang was going to be a giant pain in his ass on day one.
The only greeting Eliot gave Scott when they met again outside the building was a quick flash of one of Hardison's encrypted thumb drives a brusque, "Walk. We gotta get far enough away no one'll think to put us together if my team's operation isn't going to be a bust."
And then he kept walking, trusting that the other man would have the sense to give it a beat and then follow like a normal person.
He'd found everything he'd been looking for and then some, Hardison's voice in his ear the whole time giving him shit about the situation with Scott and everything. At least his partner had been decent enough to keep quiet while they were in the elevator itself, he guessed, because Eliot would have had a hard time with both of them annoying him at once.
Scott played dumb really well and, yes, it wasn't always a ploy but he had learned how to be a thief and had been rather good at it. He was hardly at the level of Eliot and Hardison but he could at least not screw something up. So at the indication, Scott simply pulled out his phone, dialed his own phone number, and left a cheerful voicemail to himself about how well the meeting went.
He paced in front of the building just long enough before setting off after Eliot that no one would have possibly suspected a thing unless he was followed. And there was no reason to have him followed.
So when Eliot gave him a chance to catch up, he hung up his phone and slipped it into his pocket with a smile. "See? That wasn't so bad," he greeted, a wider grin appearing. Someone who knew nothing about Scott Lang would truly believe he was a hapless, helpless idiot with that sort of smile and Golden Retriever energy. "Going out on a limb, I need to pull my guys off?"
"Depends," Eliot said, "on where you stand on makin' a life saving drug too expensive for the folks who need it most to ever afford it."
And if Scott was pro that, then, well... Eliot would figure out some way to deal with him and his people if he needed to, when he needed to. This was an unexpected hitch, sure, but it was hardly the worst unexpected hitch they'd ever dealt with in the course of a job.
He didn't think that the man was going to disappoint him though. He wasn't as dumb as he was playing, that was for sure, but he'd always seemed like a decent guy when Eliot had seen him around on the network, or in the building. He liked to think he could get a pretty good read on people pretty fast, and he didn't think that this guy was going to be a problem.
"Ah," Scott sighed and shifted as he folded his arms against his chest, letting himself tilt to lean against the brick column of a too-fancy fence. "Shit." He tipped his head back to squint upward and was clearly thinking though it wasn't immediately clear about just what. "That makes sense why they're aiming for security. They know someone like you is about to swoop in and make sure their bottom line isn't about to be hurt or their eventual profits cut into."
His gaze dropped back down to Eliot. "I mean, I went to prison for reasons less urgent than that," Scott said with a shrug. He had been doing the right thing then, too. He blew out a breath and frowned. "Okay. I'll pull them off this one." Scott had another thought but his phone began ringing with a far too jaunty tune and he quickly fished it out of his pocket. He didn't even blush or give any indication that he was embarrassed by it. "Hey," Scott said into the phone and his face softened immediately. "Let me call you back, just wrapping something up as a favor for the guys." A pause, a wry grin. "Yes, Ma'am." A man in love, clearly. Scott hung up and looked at Eliot again, unable to wipe the stupid grin off his face.
"Anything else I need to know so we can stay out of your way? They. So they can stay out of your way," Scott said, quickly correcting himself. He had handed the reins off to Loki for a reason. Several reasons.
"I'll have Hardison shoot you an email. Because trust me, Hardison has your email by now." Eliot didn't doubt that Hardison had the important contact information for everyone in the building by then. "Or, whoever you want it sent to. You willing to be contact?"
He got wanting to get out of the game. Hell, he'd left his old world behind when Leverage had started becoming a priority.
One more careful look over, and Eliot nodded. "We'll be in touch."
With that, he was off again, walking away from Scott without looking back.