Hear me out but I really think Leverage should have made "two members of the gang have to pretend to be a couple" a running bit, AND made sure they covered every possible pairing (except Breanna and Hardison because they're siblings).
I meant for this to stay in my tags but then it got waaaay waaaay too long so:
I know in my heart that fake dating Sophie and Parker would somehow take down a small country. It was most certainly not part of the original plan. Or even related to their current job. But what are they supposed to do, not take down a dictator with the power of being gay and doing crimes??
Fake dating Eliot and Hardison would get so competitive about constructing their relationship lore and worldbuilding that the villain of the week would keep getting distracted by it and their very realistic bickering. The villain, to their detriment, just wouldn't be able to stop themselves from asking further questions. Villain of the week: "so, how did you two meet?" Eliot and Hardison, making up the same lie on the spot: "our cars got in a fender bender. We started arguing and just never stopped. We've been together for seven years. The wedding is in July". Villain: "dammit I can't believe I'm gonna miss it but next week I'm moving to [country with no extradition]... oops"
Breanna and Harry would do a sugar baby act, except Breanna would make Harry be the sugar baby, and Harry has never been more relieved (or had more fun in a job) in his life.
Sophie and Hardison where Sophie is a very rich lady and Hardison is her bimbo boytoy, and they both try to mess up the con so it will last longer because they're having so much fun with their roleplay.
Parker and Harry pretend to be fake married, except Parker unilaterally decides her character is going to be a very blatant gold-digger and so Harry has to pivot and play a very oblivious and self-absorbed guy, so the bad guys are convinced they can make Parker side with them and get her to betray her husband.
Breanna and Eliot would both want to do the "my character is gay and in denial and also hiding it from their spouse" so they would decide they'll both do it, and they still end up the most functional marriage at the couples retreat they'd infiltrated.
Sophie and Harry pretend to be a married couple with problems for a job where the villain is a couple's therapist, and they do too well of a job because as the police are taking the villain therapist away, the therapist asks for a minute so he can tell them that despite their issues he really thinks they're a very solid couple and great parents and they'll make it through. Sophie: "oh, we're not a couple". Villain: "what?? but what about your 5 kids?" Harry: "oh, the kids are real". Villain: "wait so is it platonic co-parenting? No, no, don't take me away just yet I need to knooow!"
Parker and Eliot would get in all sorts of shenanigans when they have to pretend to be married. Eliot is a soldier, Parker is his stay at home wife doing an excellent "when will my husband come back from the war" shtick that gets her invited to a friend group with other military wives. By the third time Parker has to call Eliot because the military wives are doing a bake sale and Eliot has to talk her through the whole baking process because he doesn't want her to besmirch his recipes, they both decide that if they ever have to do this again, Parker will be the soldier and Eliot the stay at home partner. Near the end the villain tells Eliot they've kidnapped his poor innocent helpless wife and that he has nine guys watching her, and Eliot simply replies with "eight", and says no more. A few seconds later Eliot says "seven". By the time Eliot makes it to zero a couple minutes later, Parker shows up with a deranged smile in her face and announces that as long as they kidnap her again at the end, she doesn't mind at all playing the helpless wife the next time.
Hardison would come up with an intricate enemies to lovers about him and Harry and how the fell in love while being opposing lawyers in a case, and Harry is too busy with the lawyering part of the job to try to reign in the very dramatic Romeo and Juliet narrative that Hardison keeps crafting. The grand finale is so moving it makes the very conservative judge they were conning change his stance on gay marriage.
Sophie and Eliot do the whole mob girlboss and her loyal right hand who also happens to be her husband. Once the job is over they both keep the charade up in those circles because it might come in handy again one day, and because Eliot really enjoys the mobwife bookclub and sharing recipes with them.
The fake couple made of Parker and Breanna goes more viral than Bonnie and Clyde back in the day (and for similar reasons), and they are just as beloved by the general public. They become cultural queer icons and end up in history books (luckily for them the photos are low quality and you can't really see their faces, either that or Breanna changes them so they won't be so easily recognized). A decade or so later someone writes a musical about them and Sophie is very mad she didn't think of it first.
Eliot pretends to be both Harry's bodyguard and his not so secret lover, but the homophobic villain keeps coming up with no homo reasons to dismiss the very obvious couple Eliot and Harry are playing. The villain is sure he can convince Eliot to betray and kill his boss, and when he sends his assistant to try to flip Eliot, his assistant betrays him because unlike the villain she has eyes, and she'd rather stay alive instead of asking Eliot to murder the man he so clearly loves.
Sophie comes up with a super detailed backstory about her college professor character and how she divorced her husband because she fell in lesbian love with her student Breanna. Except Breanna keeps chastising her because Sophie if your character has been a lesbian for three months she can't know and use that much queer British slang from the 80s! Meanwhile, Sophie is of the mind that of course her character should be able to quote Sappho from memory every two sentences, because before she had simply read Sappho, but now she is living Sappho!
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