Fic: How Things Change (and how they stay the same)
Fic: How Things Change (and how they stay the same)
Author: LMX
Fandom: Leverage
Rating: PG
Pairings: Nate/Eliot
AN: Comment fic for kruemmelmonster who prompted: (Retcon) Leverage, Nate/Eliot, Sam didn't die
Nathan Ford had never been a brilliant father. He loved and adored his son, but in Sam's opinion that had never compensated for the fact that he was completely obsessed with his work.
Sam Ford adored his mother, and would never do anything to hurt or upset her, and he couldn't help but resent his father for making them both go without.
He knew it was his father's beg-borrow-and-steal that had funded the medicine that had saved his life when he was sick. He knew that his father had made deals with people he wasn't proud to know, contacts from his work, to get him better, make him healthy again. He was reminded of that every time his mother took him for checkups; face white-pale the whole day, only smiling after they'd left with another all clear.
As he turned a teenager and started to move away from that grudging admission that he had something to be grateful to his father for, the resentment took on a life of its own. He'd tried for years to be the best the smartest, the most sporting, with the thought that for any one of those achievements his father might hear about them and hurry home to help him celebrate them.
Instead his father came home three weeks late, with a new story about who he'd been chasing and where, eyes bright and excited in a way they never were when listening to Sam describe his day.
Sam had decided, at fourteen. that he didn't care anymore. He refused to acknowledge a father who only ever acknowledged him when *he* chose to. If thieves were what caught his father's attention… well he'd just have to become a better thief.
-
Nate Ford loved and adored his son, but he knew as well as any other man that he wasn't the best father in the world. He was absent most of the time, and distant the rest, and while he tried to listen to his son telling him about his day and what he had achieved, all he could think about was the last job, and the next.
When he had first borrowed the money from his black-hat contacts for Sam's surgery, he hadn't expected to live long past it. He'd told Maggie he'd get Sam fixed, get him safe and better, and after that… well they'd deal with that when it came to it.
He hadn't expected to be dragged across the line, working with thieves and grifters and… and Eliot Spencer, as much as he was working for IYS these days. He was always careful, splitting his time so that his bosses at IYS never caught on to what he was doing, but he was slowly working off his debt.
The problem was that he was in deep now, masterminding the work these criminals were doing, pulling the people he had once chased together when an individual's skills were needed, suggesting people for jobs. And always working alongside Eliot, in his company, in his space. It was intoxicating, the rush, the adrenaline.
Chasing Sophie Deveraux had been thrilling, but she had always remained just out of reach, reminding him of his wife at every turn, turning him back home at the end of his journey. Eliot Spencer never reminded him of his wife.
At the end of the day, with the IYS job finished, Nate Ford returned home to his family and waited on tenterhooks for the next job to come in, so he had an excuse to go out again.
Author: LMX
Fandom: Leverage
Rating: PG
Pairings: Nate/Eliot
AN: Comment fic for kruemmelmonster who prompted: (Retcon) Leverage, Nate/Eliot, Sam didn't die
Nathan Ford had never been a brilliant father. He loved and adored his son, but in Sam's opinion that had never compensated for the fact that he was completely obsessed with his work.
Sam Ford adored his mother, and would never do anything to hurt or upset her, and he couldn't help but resent his father for making them both go without.
He knew it was his father's beg-borrow-and-steal that had funded the medicine that had saved his life when he was sick. He knew that his father had made deals with people he wasn't proud to know, contacts from his work, to get him better, make him healthy again. He was reminded of that every time his mother took him for checkups; face white-pale the whole day, only smiling after they'd left with another all clear.
As he turned a teenager and started to move away from that grudging admission that he had something to be grateful to his father for, the resentment took on a life of its own. He'd tried for years to be the best the smartest, the most sporting, with the thought that for any one of those achievements his father might hear about them and hurry home to help him celebrate them.
Instead his father came home three weeks late, with a new story about who he'd been chasing and where, eyes bright and excited in a way they never were when listening to Sam describe his day.
Sam had decided, at fourteen. that he didn't care anymore. He refused to acknowledge a father who only ever acknowledged him when *he* chose to. If thieves were what caught his father's attention… well he'd just have to become a better thief.
-
Nate Ford loved and adored his son, but he knew as well as any other man that he wasn't the best father in the world. He was absent most of the time, and distant the rest, and while he tried to listen to his son telling him about his day and what he had achieved, all he could think about was the last job, and the next.
When he had first borrowed the money from his black-hat contacts for Sam's surgery, he hadn't expected to live long past it. He'd told Maggie he'd get Sam fixed, get him safe and better, and after that… well they'd deal with that when it came to it.
He hadn't expected to be dragged across the line, working with thieves and grifters and… and Eliot Spencer, as much as he was working for IYS these days. He was always careful, splitting his time so that his bosses at IYS never caught on to what he was doing, but he was slowly working off his debt.
The problem was that he was in deep now, masterminding the work these criminals were doing, pulling the people he had once chased together when an individual's skills were needed, suggesting people for jobs. And always working alongside Eliot, in his company, in his space. It was intoxicating, the rush, the adrenaline.
Chasing Sophie Deveraux had been thrilling, but she had always remained just out of reach, reminding him of his wife at every turn, turning him back home at the end of his journey. Eliot Spencer never reminded him of his wife.
At the end of the day, with the IYS job finished, Nate Ford returned home to his family and waited on tenterhooks for the next job to come in, so he had an excuse to go out again.