Title: "Volta"
Fandom: Leverage
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Rating: Mature
Length: ~1800 words

Content notes: Let's say... disturbing content. I keep my warning policy in my AO3 profile and am always willing to answer private DW messages or emails asking for elaboration or clarification on my warnings for a particular story.

Author notes: For both the "Throw" challenge and the "Bruise" square on my bingo card. [ETA 2019.03.03: this story is now also posted to AO3.]

Summary:

Alec can roll with it, is what he's saying. Mostly.

Volta

There's not a lot, these days, that really genuinely startles him, but Alec is still knocked off balance when Eliot shows up after a ten-day off-the-clock trip for the purposes of—as far as Alec knew—going rock climbing in Yosemite, with a stocky, sullen kid lumbering up after him into the loft: "This is Chris," Eliot says, and Parker looks at him, then at Chris: taking in the height and the hair and the huge tattoo running all over Chris's right shoulder and biceps, vanishing under the edges of a ratty grey sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off; and then says, "Hi, Chris! I'm Parker."

So then Alec's just as startled by her, too, as he is by the presence of a third party. Fourth party. Whatever.

Despite the baby face, "the kid" turns out to be twenty-seven. Chris uses they/them pronouns and has been out of the Marines just long enough to grow their hair down past their collarbones; they're not super forthcoming about themselves, but please, like Alec's just going to let some perfect stranger come into the loft and eat all their bagel chips and then start joining them on jobs, what. So of course Alec did his homework. The story's not pretty, but none of it's exactly a shock: dad in prison, mom dead, grandma kept Chris with her on the reservation as long as she could, but then started to go blind: just another refugee from foster care who got smashed around for being different until they got old enough and big enough to smash back. Boring, probably; if Alec didn't know so damn well what it feels like from the inside. So, okay. Chris. Fine. Eliot's clearly adopted them, the two of them hanging out together in the bar's kitchen and going on extra gym trips while Alec and Parker stay behind and make out in the loft; having low, serious conversations about throwing knives. Parker, for her part, neatly sidesteps all of Alec's questions and looks at Chris like a complicated wall that she's evaluating for her best approach. So. So. So Alec pops an extra beer on movie night and starts buying more Sun Chips, doesn't he? He can roll with it, is what he's saying. Mostly.

Until they've got a job in Chicago—old haunts, old haunts—and Eliot stays behind.

"On your six, P," Chris says, low in Alec's ear; and Parker mutters, "I see them," and then flips herself up into an airvent while Alec's still pulling the security teams' comms down: then Chris takes a few minutes to knock eight dudes flat so that Parker can curl herself back down and pat Chris on the cheek. Eliot would've done it faster, Alec is thinking, fuming; but they get the rest of the job done. P. Honestly. Then things start to go wrong, and Alec has to go in as a pissed-off lawyer called Marcus Cole—shut up, he was pulling the whole thing together on the fly—and talk fast for twenty minutes while Chris and Parker are getting out of the low-deep-down guts of the building with the server drives, and since Alec's not on the cameras, he doesn't see three of Waverly's goons coming in behind them, and then Chris gets shoved off a loading dock while Alec gets decked in the face. Parker gets them out eventually, of course, but both Chris and Alec are a mess, and Alec hates dealing airport security when he looks like he just went five rounds with a battering ram. By the time they get off the plane in PDX, Chris is so stiff that just standing up out of the airplane seat—no treat to begin with, when you're 6'5"—takes Parker bracing her entire weight against the seat in front of them and pulling, while Alec pretends he can't remember which of the 47 identical black carry-ons is his, to give them enough room in the aisle.

Chris lives in Goose Hollow, and no one's going to make them put up with a Lyft in the state they're in, so Eliot makes a detour to their hipster apartment block on Taylor to drop them off: Chris's boyfriend—Jase Palmer; twenty-six; a Portland native who works at an edutech startup and volunteers at Bradley Angle and tends to slightly overpay his taxes—is waiting out front holding their little mop dog, who starts trying to scramble out of Jase's arms and into Chris's the second they pull up at the curb; and Alec has a moment of profound disorientation that rapidly sublimates into a migraine.

"How'd they do?" Eliot is already asking Parker, as he eases back out into traffic.

Parker shrugs. "All right," she says. "No complaints."

About an hour and a half later, Alec is sitting on the lid of the toilet with the fuzzy blue blanket wrapped around his shoulders, still slightly damp underneath from the shower, while Eliot dabs antibiotic cream on the cut on his eyebrow, which had reopened at some point and got blood all over everything: him, them, the sheets. Parker's in the other bathroom, probably on her fourth pass washing her hair: it's a good thing, Alec thinks, wincing, that this didn't happen four years ago, when that probably would've sent Parker running for the hills, not to mention having required some seriously awkward conversations that they have, since, actually had the time and the space to have. "You gotta quit stopping people's fists with your face," Eliot murmurs, warm; and Alec rests his palm on Eliot's hip. "You're gonna have a hell of a shiner."

"You should see Chris," Alec says, "they landed flat on their back on concrete": and Eliot winces, and cups Alec's chin. Bending down for a kiss.

When Eliot straightens, Alec doesn't look up. Rubbing his thumb over the skin at the edge of Eliot's belly, soft and very slightly fuzzed.

"You gonna tell me what's going on?" Alec asks, quietly. "'cause our girl, she's not dropping anything. She's got your back left, right, and center, but it's kinda leaving me out in the cold."

Eliot sighs, and straightens up. Setting the antibiotic cream aside. Looking down at Alec, so Alec lifts his chin and meets his eyes.

"Parker's birthday's next month," Eliot says, after a second. "Four-oh."

"Yeah," Alec says. "I seem to recall helping you plan the menu. There's no way you think that adding a novice to the team is a present for her. Chris is smart and fast and strong, and that face is all kinds of useful, but you know it's still gonna be, like, two solid years of work at least, getting them really up to speed. We work together, man, you don't just—"

"And I'm pushing fifty," Eliot says, quiet; and Alec.

Stops.

"You're not even forty-seven until May," Alec says, finally.

"Yeah," Eliot says, "which, let me tell you, feels an awful lot like pushing fifty," and spreads his hands.

Alec swallows.

"I'm okay now," Eliot says, quiet, "I can still do it, mostly. For now. But—I know you'll probably be taking apart cloud networks when you're in your eighties, but I just don't have ten years more in me of getting punched in the face and—and dropped off loading docks, okay? I'm not even sure I have five. And you know it, you know it, Hardison, you spent all last winter helping me hobble around the kitchens after that jackass in Tallahassee tried to take out my knee—"

"Are you leaving?" Alec asks, flat; and Eliot sighs, and bends down to kiss him again.

"I'm not leaving you, baby." Rubbing his thumb over Alec's cheek: seriously, just. Fuck him sometimes, man— "But yeah," Eliot says, "there's gonna be a point where I have to leave the team. And I don't want to leave you and Parker in the lurch, so that means you gotta find someone else to play dumb and get hit in the face a lot, okay? Because I'm not crazy about it happening to the two of you."

Alec goes to scratch at his eyebrow, and Eliot catches his wrist. "Don't, you'll open it up again," he says, quiet; and Alec drops his hand down to the corner of the blanket, pooling up in his lap.

His chest feels weirdly tight. He is, inexcusably, thirty-two. He always was the kid on the team, and it'd spent years, years driving Eliot crazy, to the point where "entitled millennial bullshit" became their own kind of domestic shorthand: for Alec wanting to rework the next con or to try Celeia hops in the new house lager or to go down on Parker even though Eliot felt—totally erroneously—that it was his turn. A joke, and yet not a joke; because Parker never plays. Parker gets it, Alec thinks, in a way that Eliot doesn't, tucked around Alec's back with her face tucked in between his shoulderblades while she mumbles, "you are good for squeezing," as she drops off to sleep. He knows Eliot's right, he—knew it'd happen, eventually, he'd expected it, even, somewhere way deep down in the back of his brain, but he hadn't expected this sudden, sharp underlining of the knowing. Not like this. Not today.

"Chris is good," Eliot says, quiet; and Alec swallows, and nods. "They're strong, and fast, and they care, which counts for a hell of a lot if I'm putting you and her in their hands"; and Alec nods again.

"Okay," Alec says, quiet; and takes a breath. They can do it, Alec saw Chris on that job, they can definitely do it—which was the point, probably. "Okay, man. I got you."

"Good," Eliot says, low, and slides his hand around to squeeze the back of Alec's neck.

"You're not leaving the team though," Alec says, after a minute. Lifting his face up. "I don't care how much you hate computers, I've needed back-up on cameras for like seven years, and you're not getting out of it that easily."

Eliot raises both eyebrows. "You want me to come watch a bunch of screens with you, in your manky-ass van?"

"Excuse me, Lucille is a lady and deserves to be referred to as such," Alec tells him; and then concedes, "but yes, if you're going to be joining me, I will spring for a deep clean of the upholstery."

"Big of you," Eliot huffs, mouth quirking. "Come on," he says, "we'd better help Parker with the sheets"; and so Alec grabs his hand, and lets Eliot pull him up to his feet.