The Rotted Dam Job

[merryghoul]

Title: The Rotted Dam Job | AO3
Author: merryghoul
Recipient: cdybedahl
Fandom: Leverage
Pairing: Parker/Tara Cole
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 1649
Disclaimer: I didn't create these characters. The story is a fictionalized account of the 2012 Kunsthal art heist and does quote a widely posted article from the Associated Press.
Warnings: no standard warnings apply
Summary: Tara gets Parker to join her on the heist of her dreams.


Sometimes, when Tara's a certain type of bored, she'll call Leverage headquarters and hope Parker's in. Usually she'll ask whoever's on the phone to pass the phone to Parker, and if it's Sophie, she'll talk with her about setting aside a date to reconnect between Leverage's jobs before asking for Parker. Regardless of what happens, Tara always wants Parker. And usually, for some Parker-eqsue reason (independent job/cereal shopping/taking care of rigs/taking care of Bunny/spending quality time with money), Parker wouldn't be in.

That is, until the day Parker actually picked up the phone at Leverage headquarters for once.

After confirming the voice on the phone was Parker, Tara asked "How would you like to go to Rotterdam?"

"Why would I go to a rotted dam?"

"No, Parker, it's Rotterdam. It's a city in the Netherlands. You know, like Amsterdam."

"A hamster dam?"

"I've got a job for money there, and I need your help."

"Ooh."

"I'll send you the ticket. No, wait, let me send Hardison the ticket, and then you get it from him. I don't know how good you are with email."

"Email?"

"That was exactly what I was thinking."


Parker flew to Rotterdam. Tara picked Parker up outside the airport in her rental car.

"What's the job?" Parker asked as soon as Tara left the airport in the car.

"We're going to steal seven paintings from the Kunsthal."

"The Kunsthal? Rotted dam, hamster dam, Kunsthal—these names are silly."

"It's Dutch for 'art gallery,' and it's the official name of the art gallery here."

Parker blew a raspberry. "Then why didn't they call it 'Art Gallery' in the first place?"

"I see you haven't changed, Parker."


Tara's client wanted seven paintings from the Kunsthal. Two Monets, two Gauguins (or a Gauguin and something that looked like a Gauguin—the client wasn't sure about the artist, but the painting was known as Autoportrait), a Picasso, a Matisse and Woman with Eyes Closed by Lucien Freud. The problem wasn't the security—the Kunsthal bragged about how state-of-the-art it was, but European galleries are the least secure when it comes to art theft. Getting in and out would be easy. Tara memorizing the seven paintings wasn't a problem. It was getting Parker to care about the paintings. When Tara showed Parker a picture of Autoportrait in her hotel suite, Parker said "Ugly man."

When Tara showed Parker a picture of Picasso's Tête d’Arlequin, Parker said "Creepy, ugly old man."

"Parker, I need you to learn these paintings before we commit the heist," Tara said.

"Everything's ugly."

"What will make you memorize these paintings?"

"I don't know."

Tara looked around her suite. She saw a box of single-serve cereal sitting on her counter. It was a box of Quaker's Cruesli Zomerzin Rood Landfruit. Tara knew this wasn't Parker's typical brand of cereal. (It wasn't even a cereal on the American market.) But it was cereal, and if cereal could help Tara make this heist happen, then cereal it was.

Tara covered the eyes in the picture of Tête d’Arlequin with some of the Cruesli.

"Is that better?"

Parker nodded.


The next order of business was obtaining a mail van to transport the paintings from the Kunsthal to, eventually, Tara's client's storage facility.

After cruising Rotterdam for an hour, Tara and Parker found a PostNL van. Unfortunately, the driver of the van was getting closer to her vehicle.

Tara opened the door of her rental. "I'm going to distract the woman. You boost the car."

"That was obvious."

Tara ran across the street and stopped the van driver.

"Excuse me, miss," Tara said in Dutch, "I'm missing a package. I should've gotten it two days ago from Game Mania. It should've been a pre-order for Assassin's Creed 3."

"I don't know what's inside my packages, miss," the van driver said. "I'm not supposed to tamper with them. Company rules."

Tara lightly touched the van driver's left arm. "Well, what can I do to find out where my package is?"

"I don't accept payment in this form."

"Company rules, I'm sure. But you wouldn't mind taking payment like this just this once."

Tara stroked the van driver's face.

Parker climbed into the van, jump started it and drove off. She circled the block, stopped the van and opened the back doors.

"Come on!"

"I don't understand why you drove off without me in the first place."

Tara climbed in the back of the van. From there it was off to the hotel to get the rigs.


It was 3 AM local time. Tara and Parker were ready to swipe the seven paintings from the Kunsthal.

Tara drove the mail van near the Kunsthal. The Kunsthal was near the Westzeedijk, a busy street in Rotterdam. It was also beside a park, the Museumpark. Because of the street, Tara and Parker scaled the Kunsthal from the Museumpark side. It was a perilous climb--the two weren't sure if they were going to fall in the museum's glass paneling by accent--but they made it onto a flat part of the roof.

"I trust you to go in and find the paintings, okay, Parker?"

"Look for the seven ugliest paintings in the museum and give them to you. Got it."

"I’m going to find a trash canister somewhere on the lower floor of the museum. I'll let you know when I've found it. Meet me there with the first picture you find in there."

"No prob, Bob."

"It's Tara."

"I know. I got it from Family Matters. Hardison's been showing me some repeats."

"There's no time for Family Matters quotes. Go go go!"

While Tara went to the lower side of the roof and slid in through the glass paneling there, Parker went to the higher side of the roof.

After Parker snuck in the Kunsthal, the first painting she stumbled upon was Matisse's La Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune. Two things surprised Parker about the painting. First, La Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune was smaller than she anticipated. Secondly, it was housed directly on the museum's walls. Parker was used to art museums putting paintings on a wall within a wall. She was ready to cut through a wall to get La Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune. She shrugged when she realized she didn't have to.

Parker yanked La Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune off the wall.

"I got the painting of the ugly woman leaning against the ugly table," Parker said through a comm link. "Where are you?"

"I found an emergency exit. I managed to disable it while we're taking the paintings out. I'm moving our van closer to it."

Tara told Parker where the emergency exit was.

"Meet me there."

Parker ran with La Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune to the exit.


An elaborate plan to sneak into the Kunsthal by rigs turned out to be an unsophisticated affair, and it was all because of the Kunsthal's extremely lax antitheft methods. Parker found all the "ugly" paintings Tara had pointed out to her in the hotel room and pulled them off the walls, one by one. Tara loaded the paintings in the van. When they were done, Parker and Tara hopped into the van, drove across the Museumpark and made their way to their client's storage facility.

The task done, the women cheered in the van.

When the van stopped at the storage facility, Tara kissed Parker.

Parker's feelings about Hardison/cereal/Bunny/money faded away in the moment.


The reports after the heist said the robbery was effective. The Associated Press was the most scornful of all the reports, calling the robbery "crude" and something unlike Ocean's 11, as if that movie was the gold standard of all heists. (Nate openly scorned it, along with other heist films such as the original Thomas Crown Affair, at Leverage team briefings. The rest of the team agreed with him for the most part.)

The Kunsthal dusted for prints and took samples of the tire prints in the Museumpark. They haven't found the thieves as of yet. Since Tara and Parker are sly, they'll never be caught, and the owner that wanted the paintings, along with anyone the owner deals with, will be busted for the crime if they get caught.

After a nap, the real thieves woke up in their clothes hours after the heist was committed. Tara bought a room with one bed, forcing Parker to sleep with her.

Tara looked at Parker's body. "You know, before Sophie came back to Leverage, I was wondering one thing about you."

Parker looked at her.

"Don't be afraid, Parker. I heard you were very flexible."

"I was taught to dodge security lasers. I am flexible. I mean, duh."

"Can you show me what you can do? I mean, other than that kiss, we haven't properly celebrated the Kunthal heist properly."

"I'd rather celebrate it with cereal."

"I've been frustrated ever since I flirted with the woman we took the van from. I'd like to celebrate it in a different way."

"And what if I don't want to show you and insist on cereal? And do they have Captain Crunch here?"

Tara rubbed Parker's stomach. "You'll show me."

Parker gasped. "How did you know?"

"Lucky guess."


Tara rubbed Parker's body all over. Piece by piece, acrobatic move by move, Tara and Parker managed to make their way to the balcony of their hotel room, which overlooked the Maas River.

It was there that, while upside down, Parker put her legs around Tara and showed her how ready she was.

As Tara put two fingers inside her, she realized that Parker—her smell, her tightness, her warmth, her taste—was worth the heist.

It wasn't Vondelpark in Amsterdam, where outdoor sex is legal. But it's better to be arrested with your fingers in a girl overlooking the Maas than being jailed for seven paintings in the Kunsthal, right?