Title: Alert
Rating: PG
Summary: Eliot may be getting better at using technology but there are still some things he just doesn't understand.
Spoilers: None.

Eliot was actually pretty relaxed when he got to Nate's. They weren't in the middle of a con at the moment, he had a six pack of beer, there was a hockey game he really wanted to watch between the two toughest teams in the league and when he pushed open the door to Nate's apartment it appeared to be empty. Dropping himself onto the couch, he smiled as everything seemed to be falling into place. He could hear footsteps upstairs and yelled out to their mastermind to let him know he was there.

"Nate, I'm watching the game!" he told him.

Even with Nate so far away Eliot could swear he heard the man sigh before he answered, "You really have to buy a television, Eliot!"

"If I had a TV you'd never get any home-cooked meals," Eliot shouted back, knowing the threat of cutting off Nate's food source would end the argument quickly.

"I'm jumping in the shower," Nate called down so Eliot wouldn't expect him to join him for awhile. "Is Hardison still down there?"

Eliot looked around even though he knew the hacker wasn't there, but noticed there were still remnants of him left behind.

"Nah, he's gone, but he left his laptop," Eliot told him.

"Of course he did," Nate muttered before Eliot heard the sound of the bathroom door closing.

Cracking open his beer Eliot switched on the TV and put his feet up on the table, relaxing comfortably. Or at least he was until …

Tweet.

"What?" Eliot asked aloud, looking for the source of the random sound. He muted the television, fairly sure it hadn't come from there, and waited for it to come back.

Tweet.

When it happened again he realized it was coming from Hardison's laptop. Grumbling he hit the mousepad to turn off the screensaver to try to figure out what was doing it. He didn't immediately see anything that looked like a countdown or an application that would be running with sounds.

As he was trying to figure it out it happened twice more.

Tweet.

Tweet.

"Come on, that's just annoying," he grumbled. He quickly grew even more agitated when he realized that this was a completely different kind of laptop than the one Hardison had been teaching him things on, with a completely different desktop layout. It was so different that Eliot couldn't even find the volume control, which he realized was a pretty basic function but he had no idea where Hardison might have hidden it away.

Tweet.

Tweet.

Tweet.

"Stop it!" Eliot ordered the machine crankily, slamming his beer down next to it. He would have just turned the thing off but he recognized one of the programs that was running; it looked like Hardison was doing a hack on a major system somewhere and had left a program running to keep working at it while he was away. If Eliot turned off the computer the hacker could lose hours of work.

Tweet.

Tweet.

Eliot's eye flinched as the annoying sound continued at irregular intervals and he silently wished that Nate hadn't turned him into a good guy so he could just shut the machine off and not care that Hardison would be upset.

Tweet.

"That's it," Eliot grumbled, picking the laptop up and moving it away from his hockey game. It only took him a second to realize that he had nowhere to put it though. He would still be able to hear it on the kitchen counter, or anywhere else downstairs that he put it, and Nate had told them all very seriously that if they ever went up to his bedroom they would all have to find another headquarters.

Tweet.

Eliot resisted the urge to drop the laptop on the ground 'accidentally' and put it away in the only place he could think of. Moving back into the living room he stood, waiting to see if he could still hear it. A second later he could just make out the faintest 'tweet' but he cranked up the volume on the TV a few notches and covered it up nicely. Smiling triumphantly to himself he returned to his position on the couch and picked his beer back up.

Hardison came back twenty minutes later with a grocery store bag full of instant burritos and orange soda. Eliot resisted the urge to lecture the hacker on the benefits of real food and instead just tipped his beer to him in greeting.

"Hey."

"Hey man," Hardison answered, putting his stuff on the counter and immediately opening one of the sodas. "Hockey, huh?"

"Yeah, you didn't want to watch anything else did ya?" Eliot asked, willing to concede if he had to that Hardison had been there first. But the hacker just laughed him off.

"Nah man, I torrent all my shows, I can watch them whenever I want," Hardison told him.

Eliot didn't really know what that meant but it seemed to make Hardison happy so he nodded, "Cool."

Eliot watched as Hardison moved to sit down on the couch with him and didn't miss the wide-eyed terror on his face when he noticed the empty coffee table.

"Dude, did you move my laptop?"

"Uh yeah," Eliot replied, never turning from the hockey game. "I put it in the stove."

"You … what? You cooked my laptop!" Hardison cried in horror before racing towards the kitchen.

"The stove isn't on!" Eliot replied, rolling his eyes.

"You didn't turn it off, did you?" Hardison asked worriedly as he pulled open the oven door to find his baby sitting unharmed on a baking tray.

"If I could turn it off why would I put it in the stove?"

"I don't know why you put it in the stove in the first place. What's wrong with you?" Hardison demanded to know, inspecting the laptop closely on the outside and then typing a few things to make sure all his programs were still running.

"There's nothing wrong with me, your computer was beeping at me! Or chirping or something. I stuck it in there so I couldn't hear it. You're lucky I didn't pick the freezer," Eliot told him.

"Tweet alerts bothered you? What the hell? I only get one every five or six … oh. That is a lot of messages. What the hell's going on?" Hardison muttered curiously as he brought up all his latest tweets to see why everyone was posting at once.

Since the hacker seemed to have lost interest in being angry at him Eliot turned back to his game but his attention was quickly grabbed again when Hardison started yelling in the kitchen.

"Woo hoo! Third season renewal! Yes! Yes!" he exclaimed excitedly, pumping a fist in the air. "Hey Eliot, you're not gonna believe this, the show …"

"I don't care," Eliot assured him, still drinking his beer, assuming something very geeky was about to be said to him.

Hardison scowled briefly at the back of the hitter's head but then let it slide, "You know what, never mind, I'll tell you next year. I know exactly where you're gonna be."

"What?"

"Nothing, just be happy, okay. Things are probably gonna get a little crazy, but we're all gonna be all right for the next while, that's reason to celebrate," Hardison told him with a smile as he joined him on the couch.

"You're hanging out with Parker too much man, cause there's something wrong with you," Eliot said, shaking his head.

"Maybe, but you're stuck with all of us for at least another year."

"Whatever," Eliot brushed him off and then stood up. "I need another beer."

Passing the counter, Eliot growled. The laptop was still in the kitchen and was making its presence known as he foraged in the fridge for beer.

Tweet.

Tweet.

Tweet.

"Dammit," Eliot muttered under his breath. Whatever this show was that Hardison was talking about it had better be good.

The end.

Written in celebration of Leverage getting renewed for a third season! Woo hoo! Lots more cons and heists for us! Congratulations Leverage crew!!!