This is my first Leverage story. I wrote this for the march challege situation 1 over at the alec_eliot community. Situation 1: You show me how to use those gizmos, I'll show you how to cook. There will be a second part to this to round out the ohter half of the situation.
I do not own the show Leverage or any of it's characters.
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When Eliot had made the offer he knew the hacker wouldn't take him up on it. In Eliot's own defense it wasn't even that he wanted to know how to use computers; he'd done good in the past without them, he would do just fine in the future. Except the longer that he watched Hardison work his computer-mojo he saw that maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to maybe, just maybe learn a few things. At least learn how to check his e-mail without the whole computer shutting down on him. Also it hadn't been too bad when he had done the photoshop-thingy. So it felt perfectly natural the next time that he saw Hardison at his laptop in the conference room to join him.
"What're ya doin'?" He asked pulling the chair out next to the dark skinned man.
"Ah," Hardison looked at Eliot then looked around the room then back to Eliot. "What're you doin here?" It was late, later than Eilot would usually stay.
Eliot shrugged his shoulders, "What're you doing?" He tapped the computer and that got a small, "hey," out of Hardison.
"Nothin' just hackin'." Hardison pet the spot that Eliot had tapped, like Eliot could hurt it's feelings or something.
"What?" Eliot looked at the screen but the lines that were scrolling along made no sense to him.
It was hard to tell because of the younger mans darker skin but Eliot was positive that he was blushing, "Nothin'." Hardison hit a button on the the keyboard and the screen went blank.
"Show me how to set up an e-mail account." Eliot said suddenly because it looked like Hardison was going to get up and leave and the older man didn't want that. He come in here with an objective.
Hardison raised an eyebrow, "Seriously my gramma can set up a e-mail address."
Eliot grunted, "Just help me out."
"Fine, what server do you want your e-mail to be?" Eliot looked at Hardison like he had grown an extra head. "Oh c'mon y'know what a server is right? Yahoo, hotmail?" Eliot shrugged his shoulders, "Well lucky for you I have my own." Hardison typed something in then turned the computer so Eliot could see it better. "First off you need to pick a name, remember it's something people are going to see. Not like you're actually going to be giving it to potential employers or somethin'." Hardison rattled on for another minute, Eliot started getting lost when the younger man started reminencing about old e-mail accounts that he had once had.
Until one stuck, "Blacknight69?"
Hardison gave him a cheeky grin, "Wha?" He drawled lazily. "It was one of my first addresses. I was just a kid."
"Right, I want something simple." Eliot thought for a moment but the longer he thought about it the more stupid the names got. "What should I do?"
"I don't know." Hardison looked at the keyboard. "What's your favourite horse?"
Eliot thought for a moment, "I don't know. There are a lot of great breeds."
"Well, which one do you like the most.. Like what's the pr-prettiest or whatever." Eliot had given Hardison a sharp glare at 'prettiest' causing the man to stumble.
"Appaloosa have an interesting coat, but Andalusian are poweful and I guess pretty." The word sounded strange on Eliot's tongue. "I don't really think of horses as pretty, their powerful."
Hardison was typing away on the keyboard images of Andalusian popped up on the screen. "Wow, how do they even walk around with all the hair."
"That's just a style, most manes don't grow any longer than the neck. It has to be well kept to grow that long." Eliot said offhandly missing the amused look that Hardison gave him.
"Like your hair," Hardison gave Eliot's hair a little tug; there was no denying the blush this time.
Eliot ignored it the best he could, an overwhelming urge of walk away came over him; he went back to the subject of e-mail addresses. "How about lusian?"
"That's it? Just lusian?" Hardison had his eyes back on the computer screen and was making an effort not to look at Eliot now.
"Yeah, it's easy to remember." Eliot too was making an effort to avoid eye contact.
Hardison just nodded his head an agreement, "Alright. Then you just put your name in here... fill in some bogus stuff here... wa-la. Your e-mail is now ." Hardison did some more fast typing. "Now I will just drop you an e-mail, I made your default password, password. I'll show you where to go to cahnge it." The computer dinged. "That's saying you've got mail. Click here to cheek it," Eliot was alternating between watching the screen and watching Hardison's hands fly over the keyboard. "Now you can change your password when I'm not around. Your homepage should already be set to this in your office so all ya gotta do it click on the 'internet' icon on your desktop. That's the---"
"I know what a desk top is." Eliot cut in looking Hardison in the eye, giving him a good glare.
"Riight, my bad." Hardison went on, "Just go here and retype whatever password you."
"Is there really any point?" Eliot grinned, "If you wanted you could hack my e-mail account."
"Well yeah, but I wont." Again with the blushing. "I'm gonna get going... It's getting late." Hardison stood up, sutting his laptop and beginning to move towards the door. "See ya tomorrow."
"Bye," One part of the agreement down, even if Hardison didn't know that he was going to be learning to cook. Eliot was going to keep up his end of the deal. He was even satisfied with how nervous he had made the hacker; even if a little had rubbed off on him.
~*~