A/N: Anyone who reads my fics is probably aware of how heavily influenced by music I am. Well, listening to my Iopod and driving (always a dangerously inspirational combo) today, I was hit with this idea. Basically, Eliot's life told in song. - Don't navigate away! - Haha. I know it's off the wall, but here's how it's supposed to work: I write this fic, but each scene or part is "told" by a song that I feel reflects a stage in Eliot's life. I've never seen or done anything like this before, so I'm really interested to see how it's received.
My suggestion is to listen to each song when they're mentioned, but you could also look up the lyrics, but they're good songs, so I really hope you listen. Oh, and to add another level of difficulty for me, all the songs are by Garth Brooks (I swear Country music isn't as bad as it used to be! Just look at Christian Kane!).
I don't expect to receive as many reviews as I usually do since I'm sure most people won't 'get it'. But those of you that love music, I'm sure will enjoy this and I hope you will tell me what you think. (EDIT: OMG I just read the lyrics to some of the songs I chose (Shameless, Wild as the Wind, Standing Outside the Fire, etc) SOOOO Eliot. Please do yourself a favor and look 'em up!) Enjoy! –pj
Warnings: Country music. lol. And extremely AU, maybe even OOC, though I hope not.
Disclaimer: Don't own Leverage or Garth Brooks. I don't have any money either, so please don't sue me!
The Spencer Ranch had been in Ty's family for three generations. His daddy had passed it on to him and one day he'd hoped to pass it on to his own sons.
But that was before the drought that ruined their grazing land and the plague that claimed half the herd.
After that, Ty just prayed to God he could find a way to keep food on the table and clothes on their backs.
Listen: The Cowboy Song
The drought did end one day in late July, but it was two years to late. Ty found a job with a long haul trucking company when his youngest boy, Eliot, was just ten years old.
Ty was gone more than he was home after that. And one day managed to get home in time for family dinner and found an angry young man where his bright, blue-eyed little boy once sat at the kitchen table.
Listen: The Night I Called the Old Man Out
Ty loved those boys. And he loved their momma too. Apparently, just not enough.
Listen: Papa Loved Mama
The Spencer kids split up quick after that. The oldest headed off to college on a basketball scholarship. The middle boy married his high school sweetheart and settled down three counties over working at a meat packing plant.
The youngest, Eliot, was only seventeen and scattered to the wind the day of his father's conviction. With a full duffel in his hands and a well deserved chip on his shoulder he caught the first bus he could hop, content to settle temporarily anywhere work could be found.
Listen: That Summer
Eliot learned a lot those few years he spent working his way across the plains.
But always there was a constant companion, a tickle in his throat and a burn in his belly telling him he was meant for something…else.
Listen: Standing Outside the Fire
The only thing that seemed to calm that burn, Eliot realized with an equal measure of chagrin and delight, was the adrenalin rush he got from breaking the law.
He was young and stupid and willing to do anything just for the rush of it. He was flying high on the neon lights and at breakneck speeds of the world's criminal underbelly. He saw no reason to tap the brakes.
Listen: Tearin' it Up (And Burnin' it Down)
And then Eliot discovered guns.
Before Guns he'd gotten by on wits and charm and fists and a scary thing he could do with his eyes.
But now Guns were in the picture. They were ugly and loud and, sometimes they got the job done, but sometimes they got people killed.
And those people didn't always die quick.
The first time Eliot watched someone bleed out from a lucky bullet, he'd been sick on the warehouse floor. Then he got up, walked out on the job, got in his car and drove straight back home.
And when he found his childhood home to be a desolate waste of cobwebs and memories, he ran to Aimee.
Aimee's hands were as soft as he remembered and her touch had a way of erasing all the bad things he'd done and the emptiness he was feeling.
It gave him a new kind of rush. Made him feel as young as he was.
Eliot started laughing again.
Listen: Ain't Goin' Down (Till the Sun Comes Up)
Summertime began to wane and Eliot could feel that slow burn churning in the pit of his stomach growing stronger with each day that passed.
He took his first solo job the day the first autumn leaf fell and was gone for a day. A week later he left for the weekend and came back with a black eye and a wild smile.
Once he disappeared for a whole month just before Christmas, he came back with a broken collar bone and a limp.
Aimee slapped him across the face when he met her under the mistletoe.
A year later Eliot returned and the house was decorated for a wedding. He decided now would be as good a time as any to stay gone.
He spent a few days in the bottle, drowing his sorrows and licking his wounds.
But when he pulled himself up, he raised his hand in a toast and decided to get over it and go liberate a country or something.
Listen: Friends in Low Places (with 3rd verse...hehe)
Ten years down the line found Eliot working with a team for the first time since Guns.
When he held that multi-million dollar check in his hands for the first time he didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
When they decided a few more jobs together might be something other than a waste of time and a bad idea, Eliot decided to go to his favorite bar and celebrate.
He didn't complain as much as he could have when the entire annoying lot of them followed. And he was more willing than he should have been to buy the first round.
Listen: American Honky-tonk Bar
Eliot isn't entirely sure when he went from finding Parker hugely annoying, to mildly interesting, to respecting her abilities to…this.
He didn't even figure out what 'this' was until late one night in her apartment almost a year later.
He sat whittling wood, booted feet up on her table while Parker quietly sketched him, practicing for her part in an upcoming con.
Somehow Eliot found the wood in his hands dropping to the floor and Parker straddling his lap.
He didn't stop to ask questions, but he felt like he understood what was going on a bit better when she was kissing his neck and whispering his name.
Listen: The Red Strokes
He'd been living with Parker for almost a month when he got a call from his brother.
Who said one single word that set his little cowboy heart to fluttering.
And Eliot Spencer did not 'flutter'.
He'd practically run around the apartment gathering up his things, ignoring slightly protesting ribs as he did so.
Parker watched him silently from the couch, scowling the entire time.
Listen: Rodeo
Parker cried when he came back broken and bruised like after a con gone wrong.
Not like silent, angry Parker tears. Not like 'I'm so happy you're alive' tears. But full on angry-hysterical-how-could-you-do-this-to-me chest wracking sobs.
He'd held her close, even though his whole body throbbed and ached and begged to be let alone.
He hadn't thought she'd find a tv station broadcasting the event.
When she asked him not to go again, knowing he would have promised her the world in that moment, all he could say was, 'I won't'.
Listen: Shameless
Parker was crazy. Parker made Eliot crazy.
She made him do crazy things.
Things he never intended to do, never thought he'd get the chance to do, or find the right girl to do them with.
No one was more surprised than she was when he asked her.
No one was more surprised than he when she said 'yes'.
And Eliot decided Parker looked spectacular in white.
Listen: To Make You Feel My Love
They took a job that brought them back to Texas a few years later. After it was finished Eliot dragged Parker to one of the High School football games.
"Because it's Friday Night", he'd explained, "and this is Texas."
Parker hadn't understood, but went along anyway, because where he went, she went.
He wasn't expecting them to run into her there.
Listen: Unanswered Prayers
They weren't planning on raising a family.
But then, Eliot hadn't planned a lot of things in his life.
Still, hormonal, unusually crazy and more than usually violent Parker was not his favorite thing. Even if she was just a little more adorable with every glowing, weight gaining, I-can't-see-my-stupid-feet day.
Eliot started taking solo jobs to keep himself occupied when the team went on hiatus and he had to get out of the house.
Parker had warnedbeggedordered him not to go.
When the job ran two weeks longer than expected, he knew he should have listened.
As the highway stretched out ahead of him and he knew he'd catch back up to her. And as he closed the distance between them, he also knew it would be his last job. Team or not.
Listen: Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)
He carded his hand through her graying hair as she lay beside him.
After retiring he'd suggested returning to Texas and buying the old Spencer Ranch and fixing it up for their family, both extended and blood.
Parker had not been opposed to the idea.
Now, many years later, he was glad they had moved. He wasn't sure he would have been able to breathe through watching her waste away from chemo if not for fresh air and blue skies.
Eliot wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, Parker's body molding to his easily after nearly fifty years of practice. He closed his eyes to breathe in her scent, locking it away in his steel trap memory.
Listen: If Tomorrow Never Comes
They buried her under the old Oak tree that she'd always admired at dusk on a Saturday. It sat on the tallest hill for miles, overlooking the rolling hills of the miles of countryside surrounding it.
She used to say it reminded her of sitting on a rooftop.
He stood beside her headstone and stared into the setting sun, the gentle summer breeze whipping at his long white hair.
Listen: Wild as the Wind
Eliot died at the age of eighty-seven, leaving the Spencer Ranch (Again) to his son, along with a nest egg in overseas bank accounts that would keep it going for generations to come.
He was buried beside her on the hill top, the six months he'd spent in agony without her, finally over.
Time flowed on like a river around them forever after, and Eliot Spencer was finally able to rest in peace, no longer in pieces.
Listen: The River
END
A/N2: Thanks so much for reading and (hopefully) listening and I hope you enjoyed it. There were just so many songs that reminded me of Eliot, I knew I'd be posting songfics for weeks if I didn't find another way to make this work. Well, now that this is out of my system, hopefully I can stop procrastinating and get back to 'Always Had a Reason'...