#IS SUCH A ALEC LINE

[magnus-the-maqnificent]

All Of The Girls You've Loved Before is a malec song I said what I said

[ghostlyarchaeologist]

"Bruh, I gotta fake a masterpiece from 1633. Not only does the painting have to look identical, the materials I use have to be identical."

Leverage Redemption S01E01 The Too Many Rembrandts Job.

[lindseymcdonaldseyelashes]

Leverage 3x13 - "The Morning After Job"

[bericas]

sceo weekend 2024 (day 3) → on the road

it might not be long, but baby, I'll love you 'til the day that I die.

[libraryofgage]

The Wish Job (One)

Part of: Steve Deserves Good Parents, Actually

Debbie and Fester Addams One | Two | Three | Four | Five Rick and Evelyn O'Connell One | Two | Three Harley Quinn One | Two1 0th Doctor and Rose One | Two (on the way!) Scooby Gang (there are plans for this one lmao, so plz be patient with me orz) Jedidiah and Octavius (from Night at the Museum) One | Two Queen Clarisse Renaldi One | Two | Three Leverage Crew One (you're here!)

This fic was line jumped! If you'd like to learn more about line jumping (getting to see your favorite fics updated sooner) you can read this post

I had a lot of thoughts for this AU, actually, so I'm really glad it got line jumped so I was forced to put them down into words lol

Steve becomes one of Nana's foster kids, but he spends a majority of this series with the Leverage crew working a job (as the name of this series suggests), and they fill similarly parental role.

As always, if you see any typos, no you didn't ;P

----

After his father's arrest, everything is a blur. Steve can remember flashes, sure, but nothing concrete. Nothing more than two FBI agents in the door of his classroom, the cold steel of interrogation room chairs, an agent's ponytail with split ends, a kind smile but clammy hand on his elbow, the broken A/C of the car when he finally left the FBI office, and the slippery feel of the garbage bag he's given to pack 14 years of a life he'll never see again.

Nothing comes back into focus until he's faced with an older black woman, standing outside a two-story house. The man with a kind smile but clammy hands introduces her, but Steve doesn't actually hear the name.

"You can call me Nana," the woman says, looking at the man like she doesn't know why he's still there when his work is obviously done.

"Well, uh, Steve, feel free to call if you need anything. We'll keep in touch," the man says, nodding before half-running down the walk way.

"Never liked him," Nana says, clicking her tongue. "Too damn squirrely for my tastes. Now, Steve, come inside and we'll go over some ground rules."

Steve follows her mechanically, gripping his trash bag tightly and wondering far too late why he wasn't allowed to pack his own suitcases. The house is a cacophony of noises: feet running across wood floors, a TV blaring from the living room, shouts coming from every direction, a microwave beeping while the oven timer rings, a crash from the next room over that makes Steve wince.

Nana stands in the doorway, takes a deep breath, and then shouts at the top of her lungs, "Y'all had better stop all this racket right the fuck now before I cancel pizza night!"

The house goes silent, and Steve feels his shoulders tense even more. He hates the silence. Silence means anger, and anger means punishment. He clenches his jaw, trying to keep himself small as Nana nods and leads the way into a dining room.

A girl appears in the room shortly after, carrying a mug and a soda. She places the mug in front of Nana and the soda in front of an empty seat, gesturing for Steve to sit. "Welcome. I can take your bag, if you want," she offers, looking at the trash bag with bright eyes.

"Don't make trouble, Breanna," Nana says, dismissing her easily.

Steve watches her leave before sitting. He licks his lips, opens the soda as quietly as he can manage, and waits for Nana to take a sip from her mug before saying, "Thank you for taking me in, ma'am."

"I said to call me Nana, none of that ma'am business unless you're in trouble, and you're not in trouble," she says, waving her hand dismissively. "Now, the rules. No complaining about sharing a room. No TV remote access after seven because that's when my shows start. We all eat dinner together on Wednesday night. You go to school every day unless you're sick, and you tell me when you're feeling sick. You got all that?"

"Yes, m....Nana."

"Good. Now, I know you're used to a fancier living than this, but I expect you to adjust without too much complaint. You still get your own bed, and whatever you brought is yours to keep, but money is tight. We save where we can, and I expect you to help with that. Turn off lights, use less water, unplug things when you're not using them."

Steve nods again, inexplicably feeling a little better as Nana speaks. She's not treating him like a spoiled brat, but she's not coddling him, either. She gets another boy (an older one named Hardison) to give him a tour of the house. He shows Steve the mezzuzahs on each door and the Kaaba directional marker in each room---"We're a multi-denominational household, kid, Nana will get whatever you need if she doesn't have it already," Hardison says, grinning widely at him---and makes sure he knows which spots are good for hiding when he needs a few minutes.

He ends the tour at Steve's new room. It has two bunk-beds, three of the bunks with rumpled sheets and one bottom bunk devoid of sheets altogether. Hardison gives Steve blue sheets, welcomes him, and then leaves Steve to unpack by himself.

It's new, it's unfamiliar, it's terrifying. Steve hopes, despite himself, that it's not a temporary stop.

----

"I don't care! He can't stay!"

"We're already in London, Hardison. We can hardly send him back on a plane by himself."

"Isn't that how he got here in the first place? He's 17, not seven."

Steve moves his gaze from Hardison to Sophie to Eliot, feeling like he's watching a tennis match. He's sandwiched between Nate and Parker, a hand on his shoulder holding him back from trying to defend himself. Not that he's upset about it. Keeping everyone from turning their frustration on him sounds like a great idea.

"Yeah, and how did he get here?" Parker asks, dashing Steve's hopes right as they're forming.

He shifts uncomfortably as everyone looks at him, ducking his head and staring at the floor. A small part of him is frustrated, angrily protesting the familiar move when its usual target has long been absent.

"Hey, give him some room," Hardison says, moving forward to push Nate and Parker back a few steps. He stands at an angle to Steve, leaving him plenty of room to move away if he wants. "Nobody's angry, kid. Well, I'm a little mad, but only because you could be putting yourself in danger. So, how'd you catch up to us?"

Steve wonders for a brief moment about whose wrath he'd rather endure. In the end, he decides Breanna is scarier than Hardison, so he lies. "Nana and I overheard you on the phone with Parker at Hannukah dinner, and then Nana said she gets worried about you sometimes," he says, meeting Hardison's eyes before glancing away. He makes himself small again, but it's on purpose this time, broadcasting shame as he adds, "I still have, um, access to my savings account...from my....from them. Enough for a plane ticket and cab ride, at least."

"Aww, Nana worries about us," Parker says, smiling brightly as she nudges Eliot with her elbow. "That's sweet."

"If it weren't a lie," Sophie says, her lips pursed and her eyebrows raised slightly as she walks closer to Steve. She taps his shoulder, his temple, and his hand. "Lowered head but not as low as before. Shoulders drawn in but tense to hold them there. Fingers twitching just slightly. Impressive, I will admit, but I'm a professional, darling."

Steve sighs and lifts his head, his shoulders relaxing some as he frowns. "You didn't have to call me out on it," he mumbles.

"Breanna got you here, didn't she? Ain't no way you'd lie to protect anyone else."

"She could ruin me, Hardison."

"I can ruin you, too, did you forget about that?"

Steve considers him for a moment before shrugging.

"Well," Nate says, clapping his hands together and pulling everyone's attention to him. "Steve is here now, we might as well use him. Sophie, give him an Italian accent and some suede shoes."

"I can already speak Italian," Steve says, "and I have my own suede shoes to match a Cesare Attolini suit." He feels something like guilt twinge in his stomach when Hardison glances at him. Steve's mother may have forfeited custody of him, but she still sends gifts every now and then. Steve usually sells them, slips the cash into drawers and wallets and couch cushions so they can be discovered by Nana and his foster siblings.

The suit and shoes, though? Steve couldn't bring himself to sell them. If there was one thing he missed about life before Nana's foster home, it was the clothes. It was the way his clothes made him feel like a better version of himself, a version everyone would admire and approve of. So, yeah, he'd kept the clothes and shoes his mother sent him two months ago, and he'd packed them for this trip just because.

He'd glad they seem to be coming in handy.

After processing his words, Nate blinks, a smile growing on his face like he's discovered a treasure he won't be letting go of any time soon.

----

Tag List

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[sensitivehandsomeactionman]

Alec at the cemetery | Dark Angel 2x11

[crowlixcx]

Broadchurch | S1EP6 | Alec Hardy’s Wettest Moments (Part 22)

[dirtbagdefender]

make me choose            ↳ leverage OR teen wolf

[leverage-ot3]

you ever just think about how the leverage writers gave us a (basically) canon polyamorous relationship confirmation in the long goodbye job?

like, they didn’t have to go that hard

but they did

parker, hardison and eliot are seen as a unit, working together in sync. there are callbacks to the pilot episode multiple times that are centered around their interactions.

and then there’s the “death” scene: aka, the scene that proves just how ride or die they are for each other. they die in each other’s arms. they die holding hands. what’s even more- the two in a canon established relationship are not the ones holding hands. no- instead, it is eliot who is in the middle. eliot, their hitter, their protector, their best friend. he was the one that was in the middle, holding hands with hardison and then parker. he is the one that reaches out and grabs hardison’s hand, reassuring him one last time and referencing an inside joke. parker then makes a point to move and grab eliot’s hand in her own- her literal last act before dying. you CANNOT tell me that is anything but pure, unadulterated love. they lived together. they breathed together. they died together.

AND THEN, as if that wasn’t enough, we had this scene in the final minutes of the show:

sophie: promise me, (looks at parker and hardison) you'll keep them safe.

eliot: till my dying day.

let's take a minute to acknowledge that literally a minute after nate proposes to sophie eliot says THIS??? something reminiscent of marriage vows about parker and hardison? he will protect them until his dying day and not a second before.

and then we have this:

nate: you know, eliot, I'd say call if you need anything, but you never... never need anything.

eliot: yeah, I did. (looks at parker and hardison) and thanks to you, I don't have to search anymore.

parker never had a family, not really, but it's been established that she knows she's not alone, that she has people that care about her, that she is loved (the white rabbit job). hardison had his nana and his family, but we saw at the beginning of the show he was eager to slide into this new found family of his. he cares deeply, loves deeply. and now, at the end of eliot's arc, he admits that all that time, he was missing something. he looks at parker and hardison and states with conviction that he doesn't have to search anymore.

they all have what they were missing at the beginning of the show- each other.

[amazzyblaze]

Coloring page of Hardison and Eliot in "The Three Strikes Job" (Inspired by @lindseymcdonaldseyelashes ' gif sets)

[saturnneedsspace]

Magnus fell first. The first time he ever saw Alec, he was in love. But Alec fell so much harder. He stuttered around him, was very nervous, and lost all sense of himself.

[ghostlyarchaeologist]

“So... all those times I pushed Hardison off a building and he was all “aah!”... he wasn’t just being funny?”

Leverage S05E05 The Gimme a K Street Job.

[lindseymcdonaldseyelashes]

Leverage 3x11 - "The Rashomon Job"

[morningstarbee]

okay so

eliot has been a baseball star, a country music singer, and now a hockey player. get you a man who can do it all.

parker having a contingency plan and hardison smiling at her

omg the competency kink goes crazy

are they gonna beat him to death with hockey sticks????

[carelessflower]

magnus bane the first ever fallen victims of alec unacknowledge pretty privilege

[lurafita]

I need immortal husbands who accidentally travel back to current times from like a century or two in the future. And Alec is super relaxed because while he keeps in shadowhunter shape just in case, he has been retired from official clave business for over a century and malec are currently the owners of a small island b&b. And anyway island life Alec falls through a portal and lands in season 1 and has to tell himself to chill out.

Anyway, you are the place I send my weird fic ideas I don’t have time to write. I love reading yours when you post them!

If season 1 Alec, then immortal future Alec probably has a bit more to tell him than just to relax. A lot of fans like to forget that early Alec had some major hangups that fortunately he grew out of. But an older self coming back to this mirror of the past, and dragging him into a room and telling him exactly what a bullshit statement "Downworlders are slaves to their instincts" is, would just be *chef's kiss*. Also how there was more to life than leading an institute the way his parents and the Clave want it to be led. That adhering to tradition too stubbornly stands in the way of progress. That life is nothing but a meaningless list of tasks to complete if you aren't true to yourself. That the respect of his subordinates isn't earned by standing in his family's shadow. That loving your siblings doesn't mean that you should go along with every cockamamie idea they have. And yes, he uses words like cockamamie now. And so on. Just imagining the possible butterfly effect of change it could bring if Alec got an early start for a change of perspective, and did things differently. Especially if this meant that he and Magnus would get together quicker. And then when future Magnus steps through a portal to collect his husband (it probably took him a bit to figure out what happened and where Alec ended up), future Magnus can take a bit of a crack at past Magnus as well. Why not give him a head's up about the whole Valentine disaster? Why not deal with Iris Rouse sooner? Why not lay the groundwork to cut ties with Camille once and for all? Why not prevent Ragnor's death? Why travel back in time at all if you don't change things for the better. Magnus isn't worried that these changes would affect his and Alec's relationship. They have stood the test of time. They are rock solid. And they both believe in their love. So many lives can be saved, relationships repaired, diplomacy practiced, and so on. Two Magnuses going up against Lilith and Asmodeus? Two Alecs leading the institute to a frontal assault against Valentine, Malachi and Altertree? Hell, maybe they can even help Johnathan. At that time, he hasn't commited any atrocities yet. And then they can go back to their time and island living. With the added occasional visit from Ragnor, who is promptly tlaked into babysitting the latest kids that Malec have adopted, so that they can have an anniversary date under the stars.

Keep the fic ideas coming. I love responding to your messages. XD

Hope you are doing well, and remember to drink enough water.