Archive of Our Own ^beta

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He answers on the first ring. “Sophie? What’s wrong?”

Even after two hours, they haven’t made much progress in their journey home to New Orleans. Parker’s insistence on frequent stops - first for lunch, then for snacks, then for dinner, then for more snacks, and Breanna apparently remarkably tiny bladder meant they’d only moved a handful of towns further south.

Eliot had finally given in to the lure of sleeping on an actual mattress and made the executive decision to camp out in a motel for the night.

“Eliot, I’m coming home.” Sophie’s voice lacks its usual calm and control.

“Where are you? I can come get you.” He offers, because yes, even after sharing a tiny, stinking jail cell that’s done bad things to his back and running on too few hours of sleep and worrying about what the cooling temperatures can do to hot muscles…he still loves his team.

“No that’s fine, I’ve got the car.”

He explains they’ve stopped at a motel for the night and Sophie agrees to meet them there.

“Is that Sophie?”

Parker, drowsy from the food and crashing down from the high of being on a con, snuggles deeper into his chest. She reminds him of a cat sometimes, in the way that Peggy insists a cat trusting you is one of the greatest honors they can bestow.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m going to go meet her. Go stay with Breanna.” Breanna is in the adjoining room, making her favorite bots, Adam and Steve, flirt with each other on Fingle, which she’s explained is the most popular LGBT dating apps.

Parker groans and sits up, cranky at having to give up her human pillow. “Fine.”

He moves on autopilot: tugging on his boots, guiding Parker through the adjoining door, promising Breanna he’ll be back soon, and slipping out the door like a shadow. He jogs down the concrete steps to the parking lot. It’s a Sunday in the South, so the motel’s guests are few and far between. He spots her right away.

“Soph?” He calls out softly, afraid to scare her.

Sophie is seated on the hood of the car, back pressed against the windshield, and eyes closed. She could be meditating, or crying, or praying.

“Eliot!” Her tired face lights up when she sees him and she slides off the hood of the car into his arms.

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She throws her arms around him, hungry for his familiar shape.

Eliot pulls her close against his chest, and she can feel the steady beat of his heart, under his layered t-shirts and thick jacket.

His touch is warm, and Sophie idly realizes the cool night air this far south means they’re well into autumn now. She presses her nose against his neck and inhales. He smells like the grape shampoo he buys from a market in Lyon, and sweat and leather, proper leather, not the cheap plastic crap Americans go gaga over in the name of animal rights nowadays.

Eliot folds her in his arms and rocks her gently. “Did he hurt you?”

She shakes her head, not daring to meet his eyes. Not because she’s lying but because she knows those eyes will make her think of lapis lazuli and the Virgin Mary and God and womanhood and sex. And she’s tired. So, so tired.

“It was all just too much. I mean a man who reads poetry and saves kittens and is the volunteer fire chief and runs a bed and breakfast…” She sighs, pulling away and leaning back against the door of the car.

“Is one of those things a dealbreaker?” Eliot crosses his arms, and tilts his head at her, like she’s being too picky.

“No!” Sophie huffs out, frustrated. “And that’s the problem. It’s just … you start to wonder if he’s got a weird fetish or something. I mean, nobody’s that perfect.”

“Sophie,” Eliot says.

“I know, I know. Nobody’s perfect!” She huffs out. “But we - women I mean - are sold on this idea of what men should be since we’re little. It’s like he had a checklist and ran through the whole thing.”

“Sophie, I think you’re selling yourself short.”

“You’re sweet, Eliot.”

“No, I mean it. He wasn’t that great looking.”

“Looks aren’t everything,” Sophie protests, trying to be fair.

“It’s always the pretty ones who say that,” Eliot says, in a tone that could be either teasing or deadly serious. When someone lies for a living, and is good at it, it’s hard to tell sometimes.

“You think I’m pretty?” slips out of Sophie’s mouth before she can stop it. It’s too flirty, and she knows its because she’s suddenly nervous for reasons she doesn’t want to think about right now.

Eliot rolls his eyes. “Come on inside, you need some sleep.”

Sophie pouts, and again, she realizes her body is falling back on the old reliable methods. But she lets him throw his arm over her shoulder and guide her up the stairs to the motel room.

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“We only booked two rooms,” Eliot says apologetically.

“That’s alright. I’ll bunk with Breanna.” Sophie says, leaning against the door frame. She yawns.

His heckles rise a little at Sophie’s assumption that he’ll be fine sleeping in the same room as Parker. Or does she think Parker will find a convenient air vent to curl up in? Eliot wonders if it’s worth telling Sophie how he sometimes has nightmares about Parker strangling him with her thighs in her sleep and how he wonders if he should regret teaching her exactly how. And then he remembers her extensive knowledge of psychiatry and decides that’s one more secret he’s definitely taking to the grave.

But when Eliot opens the adjoining door, Breanna is curled up on her bed with her thumb tucked into her mouth, and Parker is stretched out like a starfish on the other bed. Both girls are fast asleep.

“I’m not sleeping on the floor.” Screw being a gentleman, he’s spent three nights in a jail cell, and fought off a coke dealing motorcycle gang. His back is fucked. He’s getting old.

“Fine,” Sophie says. “I’m not either.”

“Fine.” Eliot snaps back. He doesn’t expect her to.

“I’m taking a shower.”

“Go ahead,” he snaps out.

He kicks off his shoes and flops down on the bed, wondering why he’s acting like such a goddamn grump all the sudden. He hopes Sophie isn’t handsy in her sleep. Nightmares about Parker are one thing, but having actual real life Sophie Devereaux sleeping next him is uncharted territory.

He takes off his jacket and folds it up like his mama taught him. He takes off his shoes and lines them up next to the AC unit. After a moment of hesitation, he takes off his t-shirt and folds that up too, leaving him in his sleeveless undershirt and sweatpants.

He pushes back the curtain and presses his forehead against the window. This is a tired little town, with not much more than the motel and the gas station and the bar and the Italian restaurant with five tables. Sleep, drive, drink, eat. No one gives a fuck who they are. Good.

He settles onto the bed and puts on his glasses again and picks up his book.

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Eliot has to know what he’s doing. Another woman might feel her heart in her throat from the way the dim light catches red-gold highlights in his hair. Little Becky Wilson has waxed poetic about boys on Snapchat wearing those exact gray sweatpants. Tara would probably make a joke about "the right to bare arms."

But for her, for Sophie, it is the delicate silver framed glasses that are sliding down his nose as he reads.

“You could have warned me about the water,” she gripes from the doorway.

“What about it?” He asks, looking up from his book.

“Oh, just that it was bloody freezing.”

He laughs. “Get in bed, you’ll warm up soon enough.”

Get in bed. Like it’s easy lying next to a man who looks like that. “Sir yes sir,” she mocks, saluting with the wrong hand.

He rolls his eyes, and she makes a quick dash across the carpet (flat out refusing to think what kind of horrors lurk between those fibers) and burrows under the sheets. A strong chemical smell assaults her nose. Ugh. Gain. She hates that stuff.

“What are you reading?” she asks, peering over his shoulder.

He snaps the book shut. “Something Hardison recommended.”

“Oh?”

But the conversation is closed. “Okay, rules are: no groping, scratching, kicking, or spooning. Got it?”

She splutters out a handful of nonsensical vowels. As if she could spoon him.

He blinks, as if suddenly realizing who he’s talking to. “Parker,” he says by way of explanation.

“Ah.” She pauses, then scrunches her forehead in confusion. “Are you and she …?”

“No. No!” He shakes his head vehemently. “I would never do that to Hardison. It’s not like that. Parker would never do that to Hardison. She just … has trouble sleeping sometimes.”

“Well I don’t kick,” Sophie says with a lopsided smile. “But Nate always complained I took the blankets.”

“Hog the blankets all you want,” Eliot says with a smile.

Sophie rolls over and closes her eyes. “Goodnight, Eliot.”

“Goodnight, Sophie.”

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Eliot rubs his nose in irritation. “Dammit Parker,” he mutters, and pushes her away. How many times has he told her to tie up her hair if she’s going to cuddle.

“Ugh, Nate. What the hell was that for?” Sophie snaps.

Eliot’s eyes pop open. Right. Sophie Devereaux. In his bed.

Sophie sits up, raking her dark hair back with one hand. She’s wearing a silky spaghetti strapped camisole and matching shorts, and breathing hard. Her eyes are pitch black in the dark room, unreadable.

“Sorry,” he mutters, reaching out for her hand. “It’s me, Soph.”

“Oh, sorry Eliot.” She sighs and turns her back on him.

“Did I hurt you?” He asks, sitting up. Sophie can’t take the kind of friendly punches that Parker can.
“I’m fine,” she mumbles.

He knows she’s lying. He touches her shoulder. “Come on, Sophie, talk to me.”

She rolls over onto her back and stares up at him and he thinks how wrong this is, how their positions should be reversed - him lying underneath her with his wrists pinned under her hands and her silky dark hair falling onto his chest - and his breath catches in his throat.

“I think Freud would have something to say about us,” she teases.

Goddamn the bones of that little German bastard, but so would anyone else.

His necklace escapes from under his tank top, falling into the fourteen inches of space between them. He watches as the rounded point of the guitar pick makes its way towards Sophie’s face, like an arrow pointing the path to true north.

She’s probably loving the fucking symbolism of this.

Her fingers fist around the chain, and she pulls him down to her. Surprised, his forearms unlock and he falls towards her, and then catches himself, digging his fingers into the mattress.

They are so close now. Sweat is beading on his upper lip.

She raises her eyebrows at him.

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Sophie knows that Eliot’s eyes are blue, even though she can’t see their color for what it is, in the dark room. She knows his eyes are blue and she knows that Eliot is nervous. His breathing is touch faster, and Sophie knows that Eliot has always been different from every other member of the team. Not because of his role or his past or his moral compass. But because of how he treated her.

Parker and Hardison latched on to her as a surrogate mother, and touched by their trust in her, she accepted that honor. When Breanna came along, Sophie took her under her wing without a second thought.

But Eliot was less easy to categorize. It began with shared glances and snarky comments, and escalated to whistles and winks (from him) and double entendres (from her).

Sophie urged Eliot to lean into his flirtatious side while on the con, because annoyingly, he was good at it. It wasn’t because of his plain and simple American-ness - she usually found Americans, especially men, outstandingly annoying, and when she had decided she hadn’t developed a sudden cowboy fetish, shrugged her shoulders and swiped her credit card for another pair of Jimmy Choos.

But they never got further than flirting. It seemed they’d mutually agreed that there was a line that they could not cross. Would not cross. Should not cross.

Because, back then, Nate was always there. The Godfather and his Robin Hoods. His revenge would be selfish and swift and brutal and devastating. And they both knew it, Sophie was sure.

But he worried about her after Nate’s death - and she knows Eliot is champion worrier, but it was nice to be worried about when she knew, deep down, that the worry was warranted.

That year Sophie didn’t want to talk about Nate. She didn’t want to hear anyone sing his praises. She didn’t want to think about color correcting to cover bruises. About how Nate forbid her from running cons he didn’t pre-approve because he hated to see her flirting with a mark without his permission. She didn’t want to think about how sometimes she would lie awake at night thinking it was her fault for running first, for flirting, for choosing him, for marrying him.

Eliot's heart is slowly inching it's way out of his chest and towards his sleeve. Now he lets a rare compliment escape his lips and tacks on a “That’s my girl!” that makes her stomach flutter. And he voluntarily cooks her vegan portions without complaint, even though she knows he hates all the adjustments. Even though he doesn’t know its because red meat reminds her too much of Nate.

Eliot has aged beautifully (lucky sod!), and Nate is dead and buried, and she has no objections to what she knows is coming. So she lets her eyelashes flutter and turns her lips into a sultry smile, and counts down the seconds to the best kiss of her life.

Because she is Sophie Devereaux and she never stops conning. But also because she’s good at what she does, because she lets a little bit more truth slip in every time.