For strongwriter who asked for: Leverage, Hardison/Eliot & Nana, Nana scares the living hell out of Eliot.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, no harm intended. Just showing my love of the show.
Insecure Cowboy
Hardison's Nana scares the living hell out of him, and in some strange way Eliot respects her for it even as he hates himself for the way his heart stutters at her sharp looks. He can count the things he's honestly afraid of on one hand and still have fingers left over. Then again, at this moment, as he shifts uncomfortably on the couch he's considering the fact that maybe Nana warrants an extra finger on that hand.
He felt it the moment the woman opened the door and welcomed Alec home with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. The look she gave Eliot was quick and appraising, and in that simple look Eliot felt as if his soul had been laid bare and he had been found lacking. Eliot remembers how each of the team returned from their first meeting with Nana. Nate, Sophie, and Parker each telling how she had greeted them as if they where her kids just as much as Hardison. Welcoming Hugs and offers of homemade cookies or cakes and insisting they address her as Nana just like Alec. There is no hug for him and although the air is heavy with the scent of fresh baked sweets no offers are made.
So he calls her Ma'am in his best southern boy manners and accepts her coldness. Eliot knows who he was, and what he has done in his lifetime, and he is not foolish enough to believe that how he is living now would ever make a difference to her. He is just happy that Nana allowed him into her home at all.
As he sits on the couch and listens to the conversation going on around him Eliot has little doubt that the only reason he hadn't had the door slammed in his face is the fact that Alec considered him a friend.
That is when it hits him, that is when he understands what it was about this tiny woman that terrifies him so. Alec always said that he never did anything that Nana told him not to do.
So Eliot sits there waiting for the moment that Nana tells Alec the truth, Eliot isn't good enough to be his friend.