(no subject)
fandom: leverage
author: cata_clysmiic
characters: sophie, eliot, nate (nate/sophie by way of sophie/eliot)
title: distance causes only silence
rating: adult (angst, angst, angst! and fairly high levels of smuttishness)
word count: 4,816...ish
disclaimer: if I owned this series or these characters, they'd be a lot more openly fucked up on-screen (rather than only subtextily - yes it's word because I say it is - fucked up onscreen). in other words, doooo nottttt ooooown.
summary: Sophie was thinking about how sometimes you loose your identity willingly through things like whiskey and guilt and other times you loose it through names that aren’t your own. She was thinking about men like Eliot, men who are nothing but iron until someone finally takes the time to realize they’re really just soft gold.
notes: this fic's been marinating awhile, and for some reason I revisited it this week and ended up rounding it off. in my head this takes place after the scene in The Snow Job where Nate tells Eliot to go skip some rope, and Sophie, always the mother hen, steps between them - you know, to keep Eliot from tearing Nate’s face off. the Eliot/Sophie beats and friendship is a little more circa early 3rd season, but I think it works. anyway this whole thing is my take on what might have happened if Sophie hadn’t been such a nice, caring person and instead of staying and speaking kindly, had slapped Nate and stalked out like she really should have at that point, like she really deserved to (like they aaaaall deserved to.) yeah, Nate’s an effing asshole first season and I don’t know how Sophie put up with it, but I love him anyway and apparently she loves him too or else this fic wouldn’t be here.
I obviously don't think Eliot/Sophie is OTP or anything, but I do think they would have mindblowingly hot sex are very similar and have an intensely interesting dynamic. I think they have this unspoken thing between them, this thing where they’ve marked each other as equals, and I don’t think any other two of the five have quite that same sort of relationship. so I decided to fool around with it, like I do with everything else I find interesting. it’s all a little rough around the edges, not terribly polished, but hell. I guess it’s appropriate. title is from marketa irglova & glen hansard’s ‘if you want me’, which mark my words, I WILL be putting on a sophie/nate fanmix one of these days.
/longest author’s note EVER.
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He knew it was Sophie at the door by the knock: soft and slightly cautious. Hardison would have pounded loudly about eight times and Parker would have just strolled on in and plopped down too close beside him on the bed. He knew it wouldn’t be Nate, not after he’d almost punched the guy’s jaw out earlier in the evening.
When they were out of town on a job, they really should consider getting hotel suites that weren’t all fucking connected to each other. As if the comm lines weren’t (way more than) enough already.
Eliot pointed the remote towards the TV, jabbed his thumb into the down-pointing arrow to lessen the volume of cheering crowds and shouting referees, and half-grunted “Come in.” At least she had the decency to wait for his permission.
He heard the heavy thing click open and she slipped inside, closing it soundlessly behind her. Eliot’s eyes didn’t break from the screen. He felt the mattress sink lightly as she sat beside him.
“What are you watching?”
“ESPN,” he said, and took a swig from the amber bottle he held between his knees.
“Should’ve known.” There was a pause that lasted fifteen seconds, maybe twenty. “Eliot, I apologize for Nate. He’s not himself right now.”
Eliot chuckled. “Yeah, because you know him so well when he’s sober?”
“I don’t presume to know Nathan Ford any better than the next person, but we do have a history. I can usually talk him down when he gets to be this bloody asinine.”
“And how’s that going for you?” Eliot’s gaze turned from the screen now to fix on her instead. His eyebrows rose slightly.
Sophie sighed like she was admitting to something she’d rather not. “Yeah,” she replied quietly; an answer to the question his eyes were asking. “I know.”
There was something different about that voice, about that tone. Something he’d never heard come out of her before. It almost made him feel uncomfortable. “Hey.” Something cold brushed against her hand. She looked down to see Eliot nudging a bottle of some local Florida brew into it. Probably picked it up at the gas station earlier, right around the time Nate had made him storm out and nobody could find him for a good two and a half hours. “It’s not your fault you know. Shouldn’t need a babysitter, he’s a grown man.”
“I know that.” But the way she said it made it seem like she wanted to say something more. Like she wanted to vent, wanted to collapse, wanted to finally cast off that damn Nate-shaped weight she’d been carrying around all these months (years). Her fingers had begun to play idly with the label plastered to the glass, but its lid remained untouched.
“You just wish you meant enough to him that he’d stop when you ask.” Eliot finished the thought for her.
The line of her jaw tensed, and her nostrils flared just enough for Eliot to notice, but not enough for him to regret what he’d said.
She decided not to pretend it wasn’t true - no point, really. “We’ve hurt each other for years. I can handle it. It’s when he starts hurting the three of you that it becomes a little too much.”
Eliot took a pull on his own beer, gave a throaty sigh. The flashing light of the television reflected across the pale hotel walls, across his expressionless face, and Sophie watched him carefully out of the corner of her eyes. “You need to stop takin’ responsibility for him. And stop giving Hardison, Parker and I so little credit. We can take care of ourselves. The minute Nate puts us in a place or situation we don’t wanna be in, we walk. I walk.”
Sophie considered this. “I know that, as well.” As time flew by and the team cemented itself (themselves), it had started to feel like she and Nate were the guardians of a small, very dysfunctional, very bizarre, but ultimately loving family. But Eliot didn’t really fit the kid role as easily as Parker and Hardison did - first, he was older, more hardened, less likely to wear his heart on his sleeve. Second, Sophie had never assumed - couldn’t even imagine assuming - that she and Eliot were anything less than equals. They butted heads often, but it was at times like these, when Nate was off the deep end again and Parker and Hardison had slunk off to their respective metaphorical bedrooms to be alone (or maybe together), that Sophie and Eliot would exchange a knowing look. And that would be it. They understood each other, and saw the situation for what it was.
Sophie knew Eliot and didn’t know him at all at the exact same time. Eliot knew Sophie even less, but he always looked her in the eye, he always took care of her and the team, always trusted her during a con (and for a thief, that was unprecedented). If she decided to confide, or vent, or rage, she knew he’d walk the line between understanding, respectful, and brutally honest like he’d been born there (must have been a Southern thing).
In a line of work that revolved around deception and omission, being able to cut the bullshit was something Sophie valued at the end of a long night. She might have been annoyed by the fact that she couldn’t really hide many things from Eliot Spencer (or play him the way she did nearly everyone else she’d ever met) if she hadn’t been so damn relieved by it.
“So just…ignore fuckin’ Nate, all right? Right now he’s not really worth the effort. Not yours, not mine. Not the team’s.”
Sophie determinedly avoided his gaze as she asked, “And later? Is he worth it then?”
Eliot looked at her. He watched the way her hands cradled the bottle he’d given her in her lap, the way her eyes looked down at the crisp bed sheet in the sort of way that made it impossible to actually see the hurt he knew was there. Too damn dark anyway, her eyes; finding any emotion there that she didn’t want you to see was like seeking out a light switch in a blackened room.
“Dunno, Sophie. You tell me.”
She bit her lip. “Fuck if I know.”
A beat passed; Eliot cleared his throat. He set his empty bottle on the nightstand and heaved himself up off the bed, flipped the switch on the TV. Suddenly everything was quiet, and when he came back over to stand beside her, Sophie had two hands raked back deep into her hair and she looked like if he asked her what city they were in she wouldn’t be able to remember.
“Look all I know is that I’ve seen the way you’ve been lookin’ at him these past few months, and you know Sophie, sometimes he looks back at you the same way. But it ain’t nearly enough.”
She let out a broken, humorless laugh. “Caught that too, did you.” Her voice cracked, just once - one swift, blink-and-you-miss-it fracture. She smiled up at him, but it looked like it was causing her physical pain.
“Oh, c’mon.” Sophie might have thought him compassionless by the harsh tone, by the way his face hardened up like something flash-frozen, if he hadn’t sat down beside her at that same moment and took her hand, tugging on a limp arm until she curled up against his chest and let out a quiet sob. (It was almost a beautiful sound - only Sophie Devereaux could make an emotional breakdown elegant).
“Hey listen -- I know how this goes. I know what it’s like to wait for someone, someone who’s fucked up and fucked up again and still can’t get it right.”
Sophie laughed against him, a wet, disbelieving noise. “I thought that you were on the other side of that one.”
Eliot’s pause lasted a moment too long, and when he spoke, his voice wasn’t nearly as steady as they both hoped it would be. “Doesn’t mean I couldn’t see the pain in her eyes.”
There was a lengthy silence now. Sophie’s brows furrowed. She looked down between them, watched the arm that wasn’t holding her hang motionless, hand resting against his knee. She traced the veins rising along his skin with her eyes. The knowledge of what those arms and hands could do, the violence they were capable of, and knowing simultaneously what vast, surprising recesses of passion and care his heart held (evidenced in the least by the fact that they were currently wrapped - carefully, but firmly - around her) struck her now like a painful memory, made her reach out to lace his fingers with hers before her mind could think better of it.
Still, she’d learned long ago that her head was only a slave to the impulses of her heart (be that a good or a bad thing, for good or for evil), and so even after a moment’s contemplation she kept them there, her warm skin against his.
“We deserve better than this,” she murmured softly, pulling away just enough to look, for a brief moment, into his face. “You’re a good man, Eliot. We’ve all been wanderers for such a long time now, sometimes it’s hard to realize-to realize…”
But she trailed off, looked away. Eliot’s chest felt tight. “Hell, nobody’s called me that in a long time.”
“What, a good man?” Sophie’s grin was gentle.
“Well, yeah.”
“Eliot.” Her voice was firm. “You really are. It’s a bit pathetic.”
He screwed up his face into a scowl, but only because he couldn’t think of a better way to receive the compliment.
“You mustn’t do that,” she chided. Bizarrely, her hand had come up to attempt to smooth the hard line of tension between his eyes. “It’ll stay that way.”
He caught her hand mid-motion.
She wasn’t really surprised when he kissed her (or maybe she kissed him?), his mouth pulling immediately, invitingly against hers, her hands sliding quickly through his hair, body beginning to bow slowly, instinctively into his. Only one thought formed coherently in her head as the moment proceeded (though many others really should have, all warning signs with razor blade edges and cliffs to stumble off of): Sophie had kissed many men (many men) of all ages, shapes, backgrounds, professions and statuses, but this kiss was unlike any of those. It was like for just a moment he really did know her - her, not Sophie - and like he didn’t want to kiss Sophie (like all the others had), he wanted her; wouldn’t have been satisfied with anything less, anything unauthentic. It was the way he splayed two fingers beneath her chin, holding her there with him so tightly that even her mind couldn’t wander.
They broke apart in the same way they’d started: suddenly, with mutual agreement.
They didn’t laugh, like maybe they should have. One too many beats had already passed when Sophie got around to thinking that she should make a joke, smile, or toss him a tired cliché like “well that was unexpected“ so that things wouldn’t get too serious.
But it was too late, because they were already looking at each other with the sort of intensity they rarely let anyone (even themselves) see.
Sophie stood now, wrapped her sweater tightly about her frame, started glancing around like she was looking for something. Her sanity, maybe. Then, as if finally coming to a decision, she strode purposefully out of the room.
Eliot found her between the walls in the entryway a few minutes later, her arms braced with palms flat against the door (he couldn’t tell if she was about to leave or if she was just coming back), her face nearly hidden from view by a heavy curtain of dark, messy brunette.
She didn’t even have to look up to know he was there, she could just feel him and when he put his hand on her arm she couldn’t breathe and this was absurd. There had never been anything like this between them before now.
Sophie was thinking about Nate, about herself, about how sometimes you loose your identity willingly through things like whiskey and guilt and other times you loose it through names that aren’t your own. She was thinking about men like Eliot, men who are nothing but iron until someone finally takes the time to realize they’re really just soft gold.
Eliot was thinking about Nate, too - and about disappointment, about things that felt like home, things that felt like family, about strong women who don’t deserve all the hurt they bury deep inside themselves. About strong women who somehow make broken men feel whole (even if they won’t admit it, even if they hurt her every damn day because they can’t reverse the cycle).
He was looking at Sophie’s hands; how her knuckles were white from fingertips clinging to the smooth wood like she might fall sideways at any moment. He thought about how many times he’d looked at her over the past few months and knew she wasn’t ever really there, because she was always someone else. Always fleeting, like mist or smoke or vapor.
But then she looked up at him, their eyes locked, and she wasn’t someone else anymore: his hands were around her hips and in her hair and their bodies were crushing together and then crushing against the wall a moment later. She had her arms around his neck, holding on like if she let go she’d never be able to climb back up again and he held her up (easy as breathing) with one knee. There was no teasing here, just things that got straight to the point like his hands tugging her sweater up over her head, easing up her hips then slipping inside her jeans, and her long legs spreading against him, wrapping around him, pulling him in.
He cupped her from behind and used his wrists to slip the denim from her skin, trailing his hands down around her curves, discarding the fabric like a useless rag on the floor. She’d already been working on the opening of his shirt; the buttons falling away so quickly at the touch of her fingers that it felt like she’d done this many times before, and she slipped her hands inside and then pressed them against his chest. It was hot, very hot, and his heart was thrumming inside it like a small symphony.
“Eliot,” she said, and the amount of trust in her voice nearly made her breath catch. With Sophie Devereaux, it was the truths that made her stomach lurch; lies were familiar, woven into her very core.
He tensed at the sound of her voice, at the way she’d said his name. Looked quickly into her eyes. His hands halted where they were: one gripping her thigh, the other slipping a single bra strap from her shoulder. His breathing was heavy; she could feel it close against her face. He wanted this. Why, she wasn’t exactly sure, but she knew that look, could feel it in the way he was touching her.
She steeled herself, let her eyelids fall closed. She knew that Nate was next-door in the adjoining suite. (Too many feelings were on the line now.)
“Just…don’t stop,” she whispered as she pulled him closer again, fingertips of one hand curling behind his neck, the other at the back of his head.
“Yes, ma’am.” There was no smirk, not even a twitch of the lips, just a slow and serious Texan lilt and warm breath against her throat and reassurance in the form of two such impossibly studious hands slipping up beneath her shirt (across her stomach, rib cage, breasts) that it made a sharp breath hiss from between clenched teeth.
They were slashing through emotional and physical barriers right and left, so furious and so fast and so intimately that even given the sudden heat between them, they still had to force themselves to do it, to keep up with the momentum that was now spinning out of their control. Two people jumping from an airplane.
It didn’t matter though, none of that mattered, Sophie wanted to feel something, anything, feel close to something, to someone - someone she didn’t have to pretend around for once in her life, someone she didn’t have to make exhausting excuses for and dance in circles around, someone with whom she didn’t have to color inside the lines. Maybe Eliot didn’t really know her and maybe he didn’t really trust her, but he saw her and knew she was worth something - worth being respected maybe, worth being made to feel desired. And it didn’t matter anyway, it didn’t matter, because he was here and Nate - Nate was not here, he was only nearly here (always, perpetually, just nearby).
She wanted Nate to know he’d missed something so close while his hands were busy tipping the contents of a highball glass into his mouth instead of pressing into the small of her back like Eliot’s were doing now, wanted to tear down that impenetrable wall in his mind and grind the bricks that made it solid into dust, blow it away like a kiss and tell him with fire in her eyes: There now, how does it feel?
She wanted him to hear this, to feel it, the way she could melt into Eliot so easily and the way he made her moan right up against his skin until her lungs ached; she wanted him to know it, to almost taste it, because it was all for him and not for him at all. She told Eliot to lift her hips higher, to slam them back into the wall as hard as he could, as hard as he wanted to, until cracks started stinging the plaster, until her skin began to scream (make it loud, she said in a voice she hadn't used in years, knock the wind out of me, make me gasp your name, I don’t care just do it and then do it again)
And so he did, and she didn’t even have to think about or fake any of it because he was coaxing it all out of her like she had a secret he knew exactly how to find.
Her teeth grazed his shoulder now and she blazed a bright trail with her fingernails down his back, curved them up around his waist, tugged at his leather belt until it came free. He took the hint; growled way back in his throat, kissed her again, reached down deep between the rise and fall of their bodies. One fingertip, two whole fingers, and then (she spread her legs wider, bit her lip, grasped at his skin) an entire palm between her thighs, and she tipped her head back to rest breathless against the wall behind her. The wall Nate was on the other side of.
You’re really fuckin’ wet, Sophie, he murmured against her ear, and his voice was like a caress, a jolt, an assault, a revelation, all at the same time.
You’re really fucking hard, Eliot, she murmured right back, catching his gaze; holding it, eyes lidded over with lust and defiance - a combination that suited her well.
Want me to do somethin’ about it? He asked, drawing circles and long, lazy serpentine S’s through the warm, wet center of her; pausing to put agonizing pressure (but not nearly enough of it) on the places it really mattered. She was shaking, straining, her belly rapidly warming like a spreading fire; his fingers stoked a bright ache from the inside out.
Sod you, Spencer, she snapped, but at least half the syllables came out in a moan, and she tilted her hips forward, pressed them to his like she needed this, crossed her ankles behind him. There was one thud and then another as her black pumps hit the tile floor, and he was muttering incoherencies laced with hiccups and groans because one of her hands was inside his jeans and the other was flitting across his neck, her tongue was against his ear and they were pulling each other so close so tight that they were almost disappearing and he was wondering how the hell he’d never wanted her this much before. That’s right, he remembered. You weren’t sure if you trusted her. You couldn’t figure her out. She’s your teammate. A thief.
And she was already fuckin’ called for.
Eliot Spencer and Sophie Devereaux were good at sex; had been for as long as they could remember. They knew where to put their hands and how to press their bodies, where to glide their tongues, when to breathe, where to bite. They knew exactly what to say and when to say it, or murmur it, or scream it or plead it or demand it; they were adaptable, passionate, and creative. They enjoyed the rush. Sex was always there and accessible for them, a tonic, a tool - for Sophie, it was like slipping into a favorite pair of designer (probably vintage) heels - for Eliot, like kicking back with a beer and a comfortable chair at the end of a long night.
But this - this, the desperate way they were feeling each other’s skin, trying to breathe it all in like oxygen just wasn’t enough, like there was a disaster shaking them to the core and this was the only way to fix it - wasn’t like any sort of sex they’d ever known. There was no fight for dominance, which on some (not so) subconscious level vexed them both. They wanted to be inside each other and all around each other and they wanted it to be enough, enough to satiate them both, enough to make Sophie able to look in the mirror without hating what she saw, enough to make Nate a whole person again, enough to give Eliot the stability he’d always long for when all was said and done, and enough to save this completely unanticipated, unbalanced team of misfits they’d grown to love more than either of them would ever admit.
They wanted it to be enough. But it wouldn’t be, it would probably break everything they knew to pieces, and somewhere (not so) deep down they knew that. But to stop would mean surrender, and that would never do.
He’d slipped her panties off and she’d guided him inside of her; her whole body was humming, tensing with the soft rasp of his voice, with the feel of him, with sensation, and she couldn’t relax, not yet - she had to remember to breathe before she could even let him kiss her again.
And he did a moment later, slid his tongue along her mouth and then slipped it inside when she parted her lips - she moaned, out loud, into the darkened room, and this was real, the way their skin and muscles began to flex and flow against each other, everything else (the why of it all, the way if either of them stopped to examine this they’d probably suffocate under the weight) blurred into the background. Right now, this made it all go away.
She pulled him in against her, wrapped her legs more tightly around him while he laid a palm against the wall behind her for support, and everything inside and outside of her was bursting, spreading, yearning to release (the pain, the pleasure, the tension, it didn’t matter, she just ached to let go). She dragged her mouth up the length of his neck; could feel his pulse racing against her tongue, the stubble there rough, and his skin - like hers -beading slick with sweat. Her lips were doing things to him that he’d never thought they could, never even considered before; but after tonight he knew he’d always think of her (look at her) with an edge, the sort that every man Sophie Devereaux had ever conned must still feel when they look back on the elusive memory of her; that voice, those hands, this mouth.
The rhythm they found was slow and sure and insistent, and it sent her reeling, made her head spin desirably, flashing brilliant shades of red and yellow and black when she closed her eyes.
More, she whispered now, because thoughts of Nate were suddenly creeping inside her head again and she needed something stronger, something white hot to push them away, make them dissipate for just a moment so that she could know and concentrate on what someone wanting her and doing something about it felt like.
(He murmured her name, but she didn’t answer him; her body wouldn’t cooperate anymore and she had to cave in: everything Eliot did felt harder, better, more satisfying when she thought about Nate’s hands and the way they’d drum along a glass tabletop, or the way they’d sometimes brush against her back when they walked side by side down a long hallway, or the way his eyes had pierced right through her the night she found out about Sam and he’d let her hold him for hours.)
She opened her eyes, pulled away from Eliot’s neck and caught his gaze, memorizing the way his face and body changed from hard to soft, from rock to water. He let his hand fall against her cheek, and thought - in a whirlwind of heavy breaths and skin on skin - that she was so goddamn beautiful, that Nate was the worst kind of idiot, that he himself had been alone (without friends, without family, without someone like her wrapped around him like this) for entirely too long.
She let her lips fall against his throat again, wondering through the same whirlwind of heavy breaths and skin on skin if it was possible to have two men inside your head at once, and if it was the confusion and frustration that was beating out the pleasure and passion and lust or if it was the other way around.
He closed the inch or so dip between their mouths and pulled at her swollen lips with his; she tensed around him, blood rushing in to fill all the little crevices it hadn't filled before, and they were wound so tightly that it couldn’t come fast enough, that slow way their bodies began to build and arch. They grasped fistfuls of each other’s hair and let themselves burst open, let a tidal wave crash into them in an avalanche of white, let it tear through them, let it soak them up and cover them completely, leaving them heaving, throbbing, shaking in its wake.
Sophie slackened against him in the moments just after, the languid moments that were like waking from a deep sleep, the last remnants of a strange dream dissipating behind still closed eyes.
Eliot tried to catch his breath, tangled his fingers more deeply into her hair as if having her to hang onto might help steady him like nothing else could. Laid his forehead against hers. But didn’t try to kiss her again. She was grateful for that.
Later, she stepped out into the hallway, using the other door so she wouldn’t be forced into crossing Nate’s room, but found him there in front of her anyway, hovering over the ice machine. There was silence, and then more silence when she looked right at him. Didn’t blink. Set her jaw. Her hair was still a little messy, her lips wiped raw.
He turned his eyes away first. The ice machine hummed quietly and he looked back at it, reached for the lid and pulled out the glass bottle he’d obviously put there earlier. The thing closed with a thud.
She said nothing, didn’t even shake her head. If his look was anything like recognition, like anger, like sadness, like betrayal, like disappointment, she’d mirror it right back.
“What were you doing in Eliot’s room?” But she knew that wasn’t what he was really asking because even though his voice was icily calm those eyes were the blackest shade of blue she’d ever seen them, and he sounded like he wanted to cut the bullshit; miles of it, years of it.
This made her angry again, the way he dampened when he should have blown a fuse (the way he always made the wrong choice and knew it, but did it anyway, just because he wouldn’t, couldn’t stand letting her have the upper hand). Her lip curled into a half-snarl. She wanted to throw a fist into his chest and back him into the wall, trap him, force him to stop dodging the fucking point and show some passion, like he gave a damn, admit that yes, he was jealous. That yes, he’d always been jealous and right now he was so jealous that he was on fire, that he felt sick, that he wasn’t seeing anything in color anymore, not since he’d sat drunk in that room and heard them on the other side of it, no; everything was black and red and flashing at the edges like a bomb about to explode. And she didn’t care if she’d (they’d) just severed any and all precarious, lingering ties that bound these thieves, these people, this team together. She didn’t care because all she could think about right now, even though Eliot had just made her feel so safe and protected, even though he’d just made her come like a gunshot, like a slow storm of bullets, was Nate’s mouth and how it might feel against the inside of her thigh. And she hated him for that.
“I’m going to bed, Nate.” Her voice came out deflated, extinguished. Exhausted. She brushed her shoulder against his chest as she passed him - she didn’t mean to, it was just out of necessity to get where she needed to go - and for a moment, for one small moment, she felt his fingers brush hers. Like he might stop her, might swing her around and hit her, or kiss her, or both.
But then his hand dropped to his side and it was like that split-second hesitation hadn’t happened at all, didn’t matter, at least not any more than anything else between them ever had or ever would (she passed him and when she came to her door, fourth one down, she looked back to him with her hand lingering on the knob; he was busy unscrewing the bottle of cold whiskey in his hand).