Fic: Were Thomas Crown To Waltz...
Fic: Were Thomas Crown To Waltz...
Author: LMX
Fandom: Leverage
'Verse: New Way Of Seeing (AU)
Pairing: Sophie/Nate/Eliot
Summary:
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: For the other two fics in the series
Warnings: AU
Notes: For sheryden as (kind of) prompted in the awesome Nate/Eliot prompt fest: When Nate and Sophie realize they both have feelings for Eliot, they make plans to seduce him properly. Because apparently I can't write 'Nate and Sophie seduce Eliot' in any way other than... not smexy and way freaking longer than it needs to be. (sorry)
Notes Mark 2: Thanks to rozabellalove, themonkeytwin and jendavis for trying to help me find my brain. Again.
Part 3, but not necessarily the third in timeline order... Read first: Part 1 (Other Options) and then: Part 2 (New Opportunities)
-
The floor was covered with files, and Sophie was beginning to get frustrated as Nate just ignored the most recent one to be thrust under his nose. While their house here in Puerto Rico was huge and airy, Sophie was about ready to storm out and find some space.
Giving up, she picked up the file they had started with - left alone on the office's one desk - and presented it to Nate with finality.
"I know you hate him," Sophie said firmly as Nate flicked to the first page and studied the photograph they'd paper-clipped there. "But Nate, you've overruled all of the others. We've been through every single one." She gestured around them at the slowly shifting carpet of files.
"We're not running the Viennese Waltz on Sterling, Sophie," Nate dismissed, not for the first time. "We still don't know if he IDed me the last time we stole from under his nose. He was hunting me for nine months, I embarrassed him."
"But he has the best access to what we want, we know he likes to boast..."
"He's a troll, Sophie," Nate repeated his dismissal, pushing the file away.
"I know you don't believe that, Nate," Sophie returned, taking the file and opening it up to another set of photos. Mr. Sterling was looking rather dashing in his suit, a sharp smile playing around his features as he was flanked by his bloodhound and local police force, storming the building she and Nate had been emptying of all valuables less than twenty minutes beforehand.
Nate couldn't hide his grin at the memory the photograph brought, but the grin turned speculative as he looked at the photo again. "What about the bloodhound he works with? The retrieval specialist."
"I thought we were focusing on the investigators?" Sophie pressed, taking another look at the photo and focusing on the other people in it for the first time. It wasn't like the man was hard on the eyes, all sharp edges, thick muscle and black and white suit.
"We've ruled out all of them. Let's widen the net a little."
-
The bar was crowded with the Christmas party hoards, but it didn't take either of them long to pick the retrieval specialist out from the crowd - hunched over the bar. "He looks tired," Sophie observed, more than a touch of concern in her voice. Nate tried not to smile, he knew this had been a good choice. Everything depended on what happened in the next couple of hours. They'd either have their way in and six months of grifting ahead of them, or Eliot Spencer would be a dead end and they'd have to start again.
"Viennese waltz?" Nate checked, meeting Sophie's smile.
"Don't keep him up too late," Sophie ordered. "His job's more dangerous than Sterling's, and he's no use to us dead in the opening act."
Nate kissed her hand gently and watched her leave the bar. Eliot still hadn't moved by the time he turned back, and Nate softened his grin to an amiable smile, walking towards the bar and his newest mark.
-
The fake apartment that they'd decorated with meaningless things from charity shops was still bare and empty in comparison to Eliot's warm home where they'd been so welcome. Sophie thought the mess of boxes they were packing the meagre belongings into were quite a good metaphor for how uncomfortable this grift was becoming, as they prepared to take all the evidence of their bland fake lives into a house that didn't need it. Asserting their influence and draining the warmth out of everything.
"Nate... God, Nate, he's just such a nice person." Sophie threw another trinket into a box carelessly. "I mean... the Viennese Waltz is one thing, but generally we're conning slimy boastful professional bastards. Eliot hates this job. The things he tells us sound more like confessions than boasts." Another tacky bit of set-dressing flew into the box and Nate flinched at the sound of ceramics breaking.
"Do you think we should call this off?" Nate asked carefully, folding a shirt carefully so that he didn't have to meet Sophie's eyes.
"God no." Sophie sighed. "We're the only respite the man has, however fake our credentials may be. I think we should be working to get him out of there."
Nate tried to hold back his sigh of relief. "Sophie... um..." He debated internally for a moment. "This thing between us. Between the three of us. Do you think it could be... real?" He was tentative because he'd never really known real. Every so often Nate even doubted that what Sophie felt for him was more than an affectation for this particular role, that she would drop the moment she got bored of this alias. Sophie stood and moved to stand beside him. Grasped his arm so that he looked at her, really looked at her, and then she kissed him ever so gently.
"It's not right now. It can't be while we're using fake names and sneaking away to fake jobs. I think it could be, if we brought him over to our side. I think he'd be worth it."
"So what do we do?" Nate pressed. "He's one of the good guys, Sophie. He's not going to turn easily."
"We'll just have to make him into one of the bad guys. He's helping us, isn't he?" Sophie wandered back to her box and randomly sorted a pile of things that she put into the box for Goodwill.
"Not knowingly," Nate added.
"They won't know that by the time we're done."
Nate thought that through to its inevitable conclusion and shook his head. "You can't isolate him from everything he knows, Sophie. That'll turn him against us. That's madness."
Sophie looked up with a smirk. "Oh Nate. This is my department now. You leave the seduction to me."
-
"I think it might be Parker." Eliot's eyes were practically shining in the light from the lamp on his office table. Of all the things they'd brought across from their fake apartment, only a few things remained still in the house - mostly the practical things like crockery and clothes. But Eliot had saved a photo frame from Sophie's aggressive periodic clearing and Sophie couldn't drag her eyes away from the falsely happy photo of her and Nate against a fake ski resort backdrop on Eliot's desk.
She shook herself to reassert her control, glanced over Eliot's shoulder at the file laid out on the desk and took in all the important information. "Is this the heist in Rome?" she asked, pressing a kiss to the side of his neck. He didn't pull back despite his tense posture, and Sophie shared a triumphant grin with Nate when he appeared in the doorway.
"It's just so elegant," Eliot continued, caught up in the excitement of it. "I don't think Sterling even understands how complex... She must be *crazy*."
"You've decided Parker's definitely a she then?" Nate asked with an absent grin.
"Never doubted it. Sterling still thinks it might be Leach, but... it's her. It's so... It's just distinctive. Her style." Eliot was still grinning when he got up and kissed Sophie and then Nate on his way out of the office.
Sophie and Nate followed him down into the kitchen and watched him start to assemble things for dinner, chuckling at his unusual enthusiasm.
"You're really wound up over this," Nate said, pulling out some pans and letting Eliot chose what he wanted. "Is what she took really worth so much?"
"It's not that..." Eliot corrected immediately. "Well, it is. She took possibly the most expensive thing we insure that's on public display - but wow, the skill involved..."
"You respect her," Sophie completed for him.
"I respect all of them. Every one that's good enough to have me and Sterling called in. What they do is greedy and lawless and sometimes when things go wrong people get hurt. But the planning... the patience... the sheer ability... These are people who could easily get by in life doing so many other things, but I can't help but respect what they do." Eliot took a deep breath and blushed deeply at his own uncharacteristic enthusiasm.
Sophie had never been more in love.
-
"Sophie..." Nate's voice was hesitant and unhappy. "It's time."
She leaned back into his body as they waved Eliot's taxi off in the snow. Nate's words added extra weight to the white blanket that swallowed up Eliot as he disappeared out to work.
He was headed to Singapore, tracking a relic a hacker had managed to displace across borders and into the hands of the original owners, though not the ones who had it insured as theirs. The techies still hadn't worked out exactly what the hacker had done to get into what was a highly defended system, so the physical retrieval and investigation had been handed to Eliot's department while others worked on the digital side of things. He was due to be gone for a week minimum.
Nate and Sophie would be days gone by the time he got back.
-
"I miss him," Sophie told her wine-glass solemnly. The wine bar was busy and bustling around them, but they were both subdued.
"I know," Nate replied on the glass' behalf. "You've got to be patient."
"I never learned patient, Nate." She growled in a good imitation of Eliot's frustration. "I take what I want, when I want it. I want him back, now. We need to get his attention."
"We've got to be delicate about this. You said it yourself, this is a seduction."
"Seduction by crime..." Sophie sighed. "I do like it." She finished her glass and stood, taking Nate's hand as they waved goodbye to their hosts. "Tell me more."
"Well, we're starting with the Viennese Waltz and turning it into... huh... I think we might have to come up with a new name for it." There was a taxi pulling up as they stepped outside, pulling their coats around themselves in Rome's February chill.
"We should rename the whole con," Sophie muttered into Nate's shoulder as the taxi pulled away.
"A con for the purpose of convincing a hunter of criminals that he would be better off joining them?" Nate went quiet, thinking.
"Maybe the Rising Sun. Or Atlas Shrugged. L.A. Confidential?" Sophie gave up, sinking deeper into Nate's side. "I really miss him, Nate," she sighed again. And they were quiet for the rest of the trip home.
-
They spread the files, each filled with covertly made copies of IYS documents or their neat notes on the same, out across the table. Sophie opened a couple and smiled at the contents.
"Alright, so we're seducing a man with our criminal exploits and taking him away from his law abiding, insurance investigator background." Nate waved a hand like this was the reveal for some big magic trick. "It's the Thomas Crown Affair."
"I like it," Sophie met Nate's satisfied grin with one of her own.
"So now we run the heists we were planning all along, but we're going to drop just a little hint into each one. Not enough to get him arrested, but enough to get his attention."
"We've got to make sure it's him that comes to find us," Sophie pressed, worrying at her bottom lip.
"That's the beauty of it. All the cases are ones that he and Sterling have investigated in the last year. It won't raise suspicion immediately, because recently stolen items are often re-targeted while the buyer-interest is still high but the attention is starting to die off."
Sophie pulled one file out from the pile and presented it to Nate. "Eliot loved this heist. He couldn't stop de-constructing it. Thinking about how elegant it was. Even after they got the merchandise back off the fence. We have to find a way to work this one in."
Nate took the file from her and replaced it with a freshly poured glass of wine. It only took a glance before he was shaking his head. "You know neither of us have the skills for that," he dismissed.
"Both of us know who *does* though," Sophie grinned behind her glass, eyes sparkling.
"Parker is crazy, Sophie. It won't be safe. The explosives she used in the heist in Belarus..."
"Yes, yes, she burned the place to the ground," Sophie waved a hand dismissively. "But it's been confirmed that over ninety percent of the supposedly lost or burned art has been retrieved or spotted on the black market. No one but her could sell that kind of proportion of a heist that size and get away with it, Nate. Most thieves wouldn't even think of selling it all in one go."
"She's very good," Nate conceded. "Possibly the best since Leach passed away. But she's not *safe*."
"For Eliot, Nate." Sophie put her glass aside and moved to hang off Nate's arm. "To get his attention... You know what they say, seduction isn't always safe."
"That's not a saying, Sophie. You just made that up."
"Humour me," she added dryly.
Nate picked up the file again and frowned at it. "Can you find her?" he asked. He was answered by Sophie's smug grin and a feeling he was going to regret this concession to Sophie's recklessness. He always did.
-
They were both out of breath, Nate's suit a little singed down one arm, and Parker had just disappeared off into the distance with more than her fair share of the proceedings from the heist. She really was as crazy as everyone had said she was. They were lucky to be alive, so Nate wasn't going to be complaining too much about the lost revenue. And besides, if that hadn't caught IYS' attention, nothing would.
The thought settled a hard rock in his gut as he considered that they were now in far too deep to be pulling back. One more step. Their new friend - the mysterious hacker who had so far not tried to assume any ridiculous codename in correspondence with them, leading Nate to give him far more respect than he'd give most hackers - was already working on their fake IDs and digital backgrounds. One more step and Eliot would either be with them or... well...
"Sophie..." She was still looking pale, this wasn't the time to have this discussion. But Nate's maybe a little more shell-shocked than he'd realised because he continued; "What do we do if Eliot doesn't want this?" This uncertainty isn't like him, but it's only Sophie watching and they've just met Parker for the first and hopefully the last time so he feels justified. "He's reliant on the stability of his job, being able to send his paycheque to his sister... If we take that all away from him and he *doesn't* want this..."
"He'll have ten times the disposable income with us, Nate," Sophie said, regaining her breath and brushing some soot off her evening dress. He hated that she could sound so calm and in control. "This was your plan, remember?"
"Sophie, I just want you to consider, for a moment, that we finally get him to stand still and listen to us and he says no." Nate was flashing on those soft blue eyes filling with sadness and regret, or worse, horror and hatred as Eliot realised what they had done. He thought it was possible he might be sick.
Sophie pulled him close to her, hiding his damaged coat with her body as they walked back towards the centre of the city, away from the blaring of fire engines and police sirens. "Nate, my whole life had been about turning no into yes," she whispered conspiratorially as they moved together.
"But if you can't?" Nate pressed, and he doesn't even know where this is coming from now. Sophie had just told him what he needed to know.
"Then either we go to jail or he kills us to keep his dirty little secret," Sophie laughed easily as another couple passed them. "Or he lets us walk away, Nate. And that would just be proof he was interested in the first place."
-
Sophie stroked soft lines across Eliot's forehead as he slept, Nate sitting as close as he dared without wanting to disturb either of them. Eliot had been quiet and subdued when he'd first woken, and feverish and incoherent the second time, but he hadn't pushed them away. Had even gone to far as to press kisses to the back of Nate's hand with fervoured 'thank you's, though that may just have been a result of his body's battle against infection. But his temperature had fallen without more intervention than water and Tylenol and now they were just waiting for him to wake up again.
There were a line of delicate stitches in his side, carefully bandaged, where the bullet had torn through the flesh, far from anything too easily damaged. Eliot was breathing easily, just sleeping now. He was everything they remembered, everything they'd felt lost without, but until he was animated again it counted for nothing. Nate shared an exasperated glance with Sophie, smirked a little as she rolled her eyes. Patience was far from either of their best virtues.
They'd done all they could, carried out their seduction as planned and wooed Eliot the best way they knew - with crime, elegance and skill. He'd consented to come with them, to join them in this at least. He was here. For everything else... they were just going to have to wait until he woke up.
Author: LMX
Fandom: Leverage
'Verse: New Way Of Seeing (AU)
Pairing: Sophie/Nate/Eliot
Summary:
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: For the other two fics in the series
Warnings: AU
Notes: For sheryden as (kind of) prompted in the awesome Nate/Eliot prompt fest: When Nate and Sophie realize they both have feelings for Eliot, they make plans to seduce him properly. Because apparently I can't write 'Nate and Sophie seduce Eliot' in any way other than... not smexy and way freaking longer than it needs to be. (sorry)
Notes Mark 2: Thanks to rozabellalove, themonkeytwin and jendavis for trying to help me find my brain. Again.
Part 3, but not necessarily the third in timeline order... Read first: Part 1 (Other Options) and then: Part 2 (New Opportunities)
-
The floor was covered with files, and Sophie was beginning to get frustrated as Nate just ignored the most recent one to be thrust under his nose. While their house here in Puerto Rico was huge and airy, Sophie was about ready to storm out and find some space.
Giving up, she picked up the file they had started with - left alone on the office's one desk - and presented it to Nate with finality.
"I know you hate him," Sophie said firmly as Nate flicked to the first page and studied the photograph they'd paper-clipped there. "But Nate, you've overruled all of the others. We've been through every single one." She gestured around them at the slowly shifting carpet of files.
"We're not running the Viennese Waltz on Sterling, Sophie," Nate dismissed, not for the first time. "We still don't know if he IDed me the last time we stole from under his nose. He was hunting me for nine months, I embarrassed him."
"But he has the best access to what we want, we know he likes to boast..."
"He's a troll, Sophie," Nate repeated his dismissal, pushing the file away.
"I know you don't believe that, Nate," Sophie returned, taking the file and opening it up to another set of photos. Mr. Sterling was looking rather dashing in his suit, a sharp smile playing around his features as he was flanked by his bloodhound and local police force, storming the building she and Nate had been emptying of all valuables less than twenty minutes beforehand.
Nate couldn't hide his grin at the memory the photograph brought, but the grin turned speculative as he looked at the photo again. "What about the bloodhound he works with? The retrieval specialist."
"I thought we were focusing on the investigators?" Sophie pressed, taking another look at the photo and focusing on the other people in it for the first time. It wasn't like the man was hard on the eyes, all sharp edges, thick muscle and black and white suit.
"We've ruled out all of them. Let's widen the net a little."
-
The bar was crowded with the Christmas party hoards, but it didn't take either of them long to pick the retrieval specialist out from the crowd - hunched over the bar. "He looks tired," Sophie observed, more than a touch of concern in her voice. Nate tried not to smile, he knew this had been a good choice. Everything depended on what happened in the next couple of hours. They'd either have their way in and six months of grifting ahead of them, or Eliot Spencer would be a dead end and they'd have to start again.
"Viennese waltz?" Nate checked, meeting Sophie's smile.
"Don't keep him up too late," Sophie ordered. "His job's more dangerous than Sterling's, and he's no use to us dead in the opening act."
Nate kissed her hand gently and watched her leave the bar. Eliot still hadn't moved by the time he turned back, and Nate softened his grin to an amiable smile, walking towards the bar and his newest mark.
-
The fake apartment that they'd decorated with meaningless things from charity shops was still bare and empty in comparison to Eliot's warm home where they'd been so welcome. Sophie thought the mess of boxes they were packing the meagre belongings into were quite a good metaphor for how uncomfortable this grift was becoming, as they prepared to take all the evidence of their bland fake lives into a house that didn't need it. Asserting their influence and draining the warmth out of everything.
"Nate... God, Nate, he's just such a nice person." Sophie threw another trinket into a box carelessly. "I mean... the Viennese Waltz is one thing, but generally we're conning slimy boastful professional bastards. Eliot hates this job. The things he tells us sound more like confessions than boasts." Another tacky bit of set-dressing flew into the box and Nate flinched at the sound of ceramics breaking.
"Do you think we should call this off?" Nate asked carefully, folding a shirt carefully so that he didn't have to meet Sophie's eyes.
"God no." Sophie sighed. "We're the only respite the man has, however fake our credentials may be. I think we should be working to get him out of there."
Nate tried to hold back his sigh of relief. "Sophie... um..." He debated internally for a moment. "This thing between us. Between the three of us. Do you think it could be... real?" He was tentative because he'd never really known real. Every so often Nate even doubted that what Sophie felt for him was more than an affectation for this particular role, that she would drop the moment she got bored of this alias. Sophie stood and moved to stand beside him. Grasped his arm so that he looked at her, really looked at her, and then she kissed him ever so gently.
"It's not right now. It can't be while we're using fake names and sneaking away to fake jobs. I think it could be, if we brought him over to our side. I think he'd be worth it."
"So what do we do?" Nate pressed. "He's one of the good guys, Sophie. He's not going to turn easily."
"We'll just have to make him into one of the bad guys. He's helping us, isn't he?" Sophie wandered back to her box and randomly sorted a pile of things that she put into the box for Goodwill.
"Not knowingly," Nate added.
"They won't know that by the time we're done."
Nate thought that through to its inevitable conclusion and shook his head. "You can't isolate him from everything he knows, Sophie. That'll turn him against us. That's madness."
Sophie looked up with a smirk. "Oh Nate. This is my department now. You leave the seduction to me."
-
"I think it might be Parker." Eliot's eyes were practically shining in the light from the lamp on his office table. Of all the things they'd brought across from their fake apartment, only a few things remained still in the house - mostly the practical things like crockery and clothes. But Eliot had saved a photo frame from Sophie's aggressive periodic clearing and Sophie couldn't drag her eyes away from the falsely happy photo of her and Nate against a fake ski resort backdrop on Eliot's desk.
She shook herself to reassert her control, glanced over Eliot's shoulder at the file laid out on the desk and took in all the important information. "Is this the heist in Rome?" she asked, pressing a kiss to the side of his neck. He didn't pull back despite his tense posture, and Sophie shared a triumphant grin with Nate when he appeared in the doorway.
"It's just so elegant," Eliot continued, caught up in the excitement of it. "I don't think Sterling even understands how complex... She must be *crazy*."
"You've decided Parker's definitely a she then?" Nate asked with an absent grin.
"Never doubted it. Sterling still thinks it might be Leach, but... it's her. It's so... It's just distinctive. Her style." Eliot was still grinning when he got up and kissed Sophie and then Nate on his way out of the office.
Sophie and Nate followed him down into the kitchen and watched him start to assemble things for dinner, chuckling at his unusual enthusiasm.
"You're really wound up over this," Nate said, pulling out some pans and letting Eliot chose what he wanted. "Is what she took really worth so much?"
"It's not that..." Eliot corrected immediately. "Well, it is. She took possibly the most expensive thing we insure that's on public display - but wow, the skill involved..."
"You respect her," Sophie completed for him.
"I respect all of them. Every one that's good enough to have me and Sterling called in. What they do is greedy and lawless and sometimes when things go wrong people get hurt. But the planning... the patience... the sheer ability... These are people who could easily get by in life doing so many other things, but I can't help but respect what they do." Eliot took a deep breath and blushed deeply at his own uncharacteristic enthusiasm.
Sophie had never been more in love.
-
"Sophie..." Nate's voice was hesitant and unhappy. "It's time."
She leaned back into his body as they waved Eliot's taxi off in the snow. Nate's words added extra weight to the white blanket that swallowed up Eliot as he disappeared out to work.
He was headed to Singapore, tracking a relic a hacker had managed to displace across borders and into the hands of the original owners, though not the ones who had it insured as theirs. The techies still hadn't worked out exactly what the hacker had done to get into what was a highly defended system, so the physical retrieval and investigation had been handed to Eliot's department while others worked on the digital side of things. He was due to be gone for a week minimum.
Nate and Sophie would be days gone by the time he got back.
-
"I miss him," Sophie told her wine-glass solemnly. The wine bar was busy and bustling around them, but they were both subdued.
"I know," Nate replied on the glass' behalf. "You've got to be patient."
"I never learned patient, Nate." She growled in a good imitation of Eliot's frustration. "I take what I want, when I want it. I want him back, now. We need to get his attention."
"We've got to be delicate about this. You said it yourself, this is a seduction."
"Seduction by crime..." Sophie sighed. "I do like it." She finished her glass and stood, taking Nate's hand as they waved goodbye to their hosts. "Tell me more."
"Well, we're starting with the Viennese Waltz and turning it into... huh... I think we might have to come up with a new name for it." There was a taxi pulling up as they stepped outside, pulling their coats around themselves in Rome's February chill.
"We should rename the whole con," Sophie muttered into Nate's shoulder as the taxi pulled away.
"A con for the purpose of convincing a hunter of criminals that he would be better off joining them?" Nate went quiet, thinking.
"Maybe the Rising Sun. Or Atlas Shrugged. L.A. Confidential?" Sophie gave up, sinking deeper into Nate's side. "I really miss him, Nate," she sighed again. And they were quiet for the rest of the trip home.
-
They spread the files, each filled with covertly made copies of IYS documents or their neat notes on the same, out across the table. Sophie opened a couple and smiled at the contents.
"Alright, so we're seducing a man with our criminal exploits and taking him away from his law abiding, insurance investigator background." Nate waved a hand like this was the reveal for some big magic trick. "It's the Thomas Crown Affair."
"I like it," Sophie met Nate's satisfied grin with one of her own.
"So now we run the heists we were planning all along, but we're going to drop just a little hint into each one. Not enough to get him arrested, but enough to get his attention."
"We've got to make sure it's him that comes to find us," Sophie pressed, worrying at her bottom lip.
"That's the beauty of it. All the cases are ones that he and Sterling have investigated in the last year. It won't raise suspicion immediately, because recently stolen items are often re-targeted while the buyer-interest is still high but the attention is starting to die off."
Sophie pulled one file out from the pile and presented it to Nate. "Eliot loved this heist. He couldn't stop de-constructing it. Thinking about how elegant it was. Even after they got the merchandise back off the fence. We have to find a way to work this one in."
Nate took the file from her and replaced it with a freshly poured glass of wine. It only took a glance before he was shaking his head. "You know neither of us have the skills for that," he dismissed.
"Both of us know who *does* though," Sophie grinned behind her glass, eyes sparkling.
"Parker is crazy, Sophie. It won't be safe. The explosives she used in the heist in Belarus..."
"Yes, yes, she burned the place to the ground," Sophie waved a hand dismissively. "But it's been confirmed that over ninety percent of the supposedly lost or burned art has been retrieved or spotted on the black market. No one but her could sell that kind of proportion of a heist that size and get away with it, Nate. Most thieves wouldn't even think of selling it all in one go."
"She's very good," Nate conceded. "Possibly the best since Leach passed away. But she's not *safe*."
"For Eliot, Nate." Sophie put her glass aside and moved to hang off Nate's arm. "To get his attention... You know what they say, seduction isn't always safe."
"That's not a saying, Sophie. You just made that up."
"Humour me," she added dryly.
Nate picked up the file again and frowned at it. "Can you find her?" he asked. He was answered by Sophie's smug grin and a feeling he was going to regret this concession to Sophie's recklessness. He always did.
-
They were both out of breath, Nate's suit a little singed down one arm, and Parker had just disappeared off into the distance with more than her fair share of the proceedings from the heist. She really was as crazy as everyone had said she was. They were lucky to be alive, so Nate wasn't going to be complaining too much about the lost revenue. And besides, if that hadn't caught IYS' attention, nothing would.
The thought settled a hard rock in his gut as he considered that they were now in far too deep to be pulling back. One more step. Their new friend - the mysterious hacker who had so far not tried to assume any ridiculous codename in correspondence with them, leading Nate to give him far more respect than he'd give most hackers - was already working on their fake IDs and digital backgrounds. One more step and Eliot would either be with them or... well...
"Sophie..." She was still looking pale, this wasn't the time to have this discussion. But Nate's maybe a little more shell-shocked than he'd realised because he continued; "What do we do if Eliot doesn't want this?" This uncertainty isn't like him, but it's only Sophie watching and they've just met Parker for the first and hopefully the last time so he feels justified. "He's reliant on the stability of his job, being able to send his paycheque to his sister... If we take that all away from him and he *doesn't* want this..."
"He'll have ten times the disposable income with us, Nate," Sophie said, regaining her breath and brushing some soot off her evening dress. He hated that she could sound so calm and in control. "This was your plan, remember?"
"Sophie, I just want you to consider, for a moment, that we finally get him to stand still and listen to us and he says no." Nate was flashing on those soft blue eyes filling with sadness and regret, or worse, horror and hatred as Eliot realised what they had done. He thought it was possible he might be sick.
Sophie pulled him close to her, hiding his damaged coat with her body as they walked back towards the centre of the city, away from the blaring of fire engines and police sirens. "Nate, my whole life had been about turning no into yes," she whispered conspiratorially as they moved together.
"But if you can't?" Nate pressed, and he doesn't even know where this is coming from now. Sophie had just told him what he needed to know.
"Then either we go to jail or he kills us to keep his dirty little secret," Sophie laughed easily as another couple passed them. "Or he lets us walk away, Nate. And that would just be proof he was interested in the first place."
-
Sophie stroked soft lines across Eliot's forehead as he slept, Nate sitting as close as he dared without wanting to disturb either of them. Eliot had been quiet and subdued when he'd first woken, and feverish and incoherent the second time, but he hadn't pushed them away. Had even gone to far as to press kisses to the back of Nate's hand with fervoured 'thank you's, though that may just have been a result of his body's battle against infection. But his temperature had fallen without more intervention than water and Tylenol and now they were just waiting for him to wake up again.
There were a line of delicate stitches in his side, carefully bandaged, where the bullet had torn through the flesh, far from anything too easily damaged. Eliot was breathing easily, just sleeping now. He was everything they remembered, everything they'd felt lost without, but until he was animated again it counted for nothing. Nate shared an exasperated glance with Sophie, smirked a little as she rolled her eyes. Patience was far from either of their best virtues.
They'd done all they could, carried out their seduction as planned and wooed Eliot the best way they knew - with crime, elegance and skill. He'd consented to come with them, to join them in this at least. He was here. For everything else... they were just going to have to wait until he woke up.