Fic: You Can Dance
Title: You Can Dance
Fandom: Leverage
Characters: Sophie, Eliot, Parker
Word Count: 1,337
Rating: K+
Summary: Sophie teaches Parker how to dance and Eliot can't help but watch.
Author's Notes: Takes place after Need Another Story, sometime late in the first half of Season Two. And you know... I have an amazing beta. mackenziesmomma still hasn't seen an episode of Leverage but she managed to give me snark in her beta notes for this one and snark is really the best thing about her notes! Also I'm kind of... overwhelmed by the sheer number of hits I got for Need Another Story. I'm really not used to that anymore. But I hope they keep coming ;) (and of course that you get rewarded for making the effort of clicking ;)).
You Can Dance
“You can dance
Every dance with the guy who gives you the eye
Let him hold you tight
You can smile
Every smile for the guy who'd like to treat you right
'Neath the pale moonlight
But don't forget who's takin’ you home
And in who's arms you're gonna be
Oh, darlin' save the last dance for me.”
The Drifters, “Save The Last Dance For Me”
He wonders if they’re aware that he’s watching them. Technically they should be since he’s not lurking around the corner or something but sitting at the desk in their hotel suite in plain sight where he’s supposed to go over plans and find tactical weaknesses in the building crucial to their job while Nate and Hardison place the bait for their next mark. Well, operative word being supposed to.
Since Sophie decided it was imperative for the coup that Parker needs to dance, she’s been trying to teach Parker a few basic steps of the most important standard dances. Right now they’re at the Cha Cha, if he got that right and Parker looks just a little bit unhappy. He can see the pout forming at Sophie’s gentle but determined prodding and correcting and he’s pretty sure there’s one of Parker’s rather interesting reactions to frustration lurking just around the corner.
Right now, though, it looks like Sophie still has everything under control. Expertly, she maneuvers Parker through the small space they made themselves for dancing and distracts her by talking to her, instructing her on the tricky art of dancing small talk. She makes a little joke and that makes Parker grin. If he didn’t know better… he’d say Sophie was flirting with Parker like she would flirt with a mark to keep him or her from noticing the actions of the rest of the team.
But of course Sophie would never do that to any of them. Except of course she does whenever she sees fit to do it - they would never have gotten Nate to steal the Davids if she hadn't at least tried to do so - and he’s pretty sure she tried it on him as well. Oddly enough, he doesn’t resent her for it, like Nate always does. Then again, he doesn’t have the same kind of history with her that Nate does… and thank God for that.
Of course he finds her attractive. You would have to be dead - he’s got the feeling that being gay wouldn’t help anything against her sophisticated British elegance and lovely charm - not to find her attractive but first off she’s Nate’s girl from head to toe and you don’t lay a finger on the boss’s girl. And second… right now he finds it a lot harder to take his eyes off Parker.
He’d really like to tell himself that it has a lot to do with what Hardison told him about Parker’s little stunt when they had tried to steal the David maquette because ever since then he can’t help but wonder now and then if Parker’s as flexible as that when she’s doing other things.
But the thing is… while he covertly watches the two women moving through the room it’s not only Parker’s natural and almost innocent gracefulness that keeps him looking but also the pouts and the grins and little smiles she lets show through when she mastered another combination of steps. The pony tail that’s swishing from side to side when Sophie attempts a quickstep with her. The fingers that weave through Sophie’s when she teaches her how to hold her arms during a waltz. The naked feet that bounce around when Parker masters the groundwork of the samba.
Deliberately, he looks away to make another attempt at concentrating but there’s a half-smile on his face, just for a moment. A few months ago, before the walk away, he’d struggled with not letting Parker get under his skin and he’d been pretty successful at that. Or… well, at telling himself that.
Anyway… the point here is that… ironically, the moment he’d realized he was powerless against her had been after the walk away. He’d been deep inside Pakistan, doing ‘hinky’ stuff as Hardison had called it and had found himself thinking of that blonde pony tail and those long fingers more often than he would have liked to and at some point… he’d just realized that she was on her own now, with no one to catch her outside the windows she liked to jump out of so much.
Of course that had been an absurd thought because if there’s one person in the world perfectly capable of taking care of herself, it’s Parker, insanity and all. Still… he’d been ridiculously relieved when he’d gotten a simple message from her with a date and a theatre name, informing him of Sophie’s theatre engagement in Boston. And he’d been even more relieved when he’d actually seen her - although he never tell anyone about that - and ever since then he simply gave up fighting her and the effect she has on him. Doesn’t make it easier to live with her but it makes living with himself really less of a pain in the ass.
Aw, damn. Going over the plans in the vicinity of Sophie and Parker swishing through the room and chattering away and… and… being women was a bad idea. He just… can’t concentrate. He used to be so good at that, really, but working and practically living with those people made him soft. Really should do something about that, at least.
Determinedly, he gets up and starts to gather his plans together to take them to the room he’s sharing with Hardison and go over them in peace… but then he makes the mistake of looking up again and sees that there isn't just a little pout forming on Parker’s face again but a genuinely upset expression. Something doesn’t work the way she wants it to go and it gets to her that she just can’t conquer whichever dance Sophie is trying to teach her now. It’s not the face of a petulant child but that of a person who’s on the brink of despair because it just won’t click.
He frowns and watches a little more closely and it turns out after a few moments that after nearly two hours of working their way through every major standard dance it’s the mambo - the goddamn mambo of all dances - that Parker can’t wrap her feet and her head around. Right now, he’s infinitely grateful that Hardison isn't here because he’s pretty sure that he wouldn’t survive even one round of ‘This is my dance space. This is your dance space.’ and ‘I carried a watermelon.’ and Nate would probably kill him if he incapacitated their hacker in the middle of a con.
So he keeps on watching and feels sympathy for Parker well up. If she were learning new fighting moves… he’d absolutely offer his help - and if it were just to see her beat the crap out of Hardison again - but dancing? Not his kind of… “Oh, Parker… it’s really easy, you know. You just have to… wait. Eliot, you can dance, can’t you?”
Wha… no. No, he can’t. Okay, maybe a bit. “Only bits of square dance.” Crap, why couldn’t he just say that he has no clue about dancing and just gone off to his room? Yeah, okay, maybe… maybe because Parker looking a little forlorn always kind of gets to him, at least since he let down his guard a little. Hey, but there’s no reason for Sophie to give him that questioning look. He feels compelled to add, “What? I grew up on horse farms, not in plantation mansions.”
It doesn’t really satisfy Sophie though - when does anything ever until she gets what she wants? - and she pushes on. “Okay, okay, I get that.” Oh, maybe she will let it… “But… didn’t you once say fighting was like dancing?” What? No, no, no, he never said that. He wouldn’t ever say that about f… alright, yes, he did. Dammit. “Yes, I think you did. Now, come on, come over here. I think Parker needs someone else to lead her.”
No. No way he’s gonna lead Parker. Thankfully, Parker seems to think the same, judging by her scrunched nose but Sophie doesn’t take no for an answer. Instead she does her soft bullying thing again and simply prods and ushers them until they find themselves standing opposite each other and before he knows it, she put Parker’s hand in his and put the other hand on the small of Parker’s back and… do they really have to stand that close to each other?
Ever since that little something in the old office last year he’d taken care to always put a little corporeal distance between them, at least 20 inches - and preferably more. And suddenly all that effort just went to hell because Sophie just wouldn’t give it a rest. It’s all back; the urge to kiss her, grab her, see what she can do with those legs beside making cartwheels and crawling along poles… “Now, Parker, remember: Eliot leads, you follow.”
“Sure,” Parker just says and then adds in an absolutely casual - even a little bored - voice, “As long as he doesn’t want to stay on top in bed, I’m fine with it.” Jesusfuckingchristshedidntjustsaythat. He needs to get out of here. Really, really fast… so urgently, in fact that it’s one of the very few occasions where he actually wishes Nate and Hardison would run into some trouble… but of course now they don’t do him the favor of calling and saving him from having to be way too close to Parker and all her enticing cluelessness.
“Eliot?” Dismayed, he actually has to blink and a look at Sophie confirms him that she noticed he just was a little… distracted because she gives him a minute raise of her eyebrow… telling him she knows exactly what’s going on here. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “You do know how to lead a lady during a dance, right?”
He’s got two options now. Fight… or flight. All his instincts scream at him that this is so very much a situation where he should turn his back and get the hell out of here but then he looks at Parker and there’s this hint of a smirk on her face… challenging him. Okay. Fine. Parker wants a challenge, Parker gets a challenge. He answers her with a look that tells her that she should be careful not to bite off more than she can chew and tells Sophie, “’course I do. But the lady better behave herself.”
With that… it’s settled. And really, what can be so hard about dancing? After all, fighting is like dancing, in a certain way at least, and fighting is something he’s really good at… and he certainly won’t let Parker get the better of him. No way.
~*~
TBC in If It Happened To You.
Fandom: Leverage
Characters: Sophie, Eliot, Parker
Word Count: 1,337
Rating: K+
Summary: Sophie teaches Parker how to dance and Eliot can't help but watch.
Author's Notes: Takes place after Need Another Story, sometime late in the first half of Season Two. And you know... I have an amazing beta. mackenziesmomma still hasn't seen an episode of Leverage but she managed to give me snark in her beta notes for this one and snark is really the best thing about her notes! Also I'm kind of... overwhelmed by the sheer number of hits I got for Need Another Story. I'm really not used to that anymore. But I hope they keep coming ;) (and of course that you get rewarded for making the effort of clicking ;)).
You Can Dance
“You can dance
Every dance with the guy who gives you the eye
Let him hold you tight
You can smile
Every smile for the guy who'd like to treat you right
'Neath the pale moonlight
But don't forget who's takin’ you home
And in who's arms you're gonna be
Oh, darlin' save the last dance for me.”
The Drifters, “Save The Last Dance For Me”
He wonders if they’re aware that he’s watching them. Technically they should be since he’s not lurking around the corner or something but sitting at the desk in their hotel suite in plain sight where he’s supposed to go over plans and find tactical weaknesses in the building crucial to their job while Nate and Hardison place the bait for their next mark. Well, operative word being supposed to.
Since Sophie decided it was imperative for the coup that Parker needs to dance, she’s been trying to teach Parker a few basic steps of the most important standard dances. Right now they’re at the Cha Cha, if he got that right and Parker looks just a little bit unhappy. He can see the pout forming at Sophie’s gentle but determined prodding and correcting and he’s pretty sure there’s one of Parker’s rather interesting reactions to frustration lurking just around the corner.
Right now, though, it looks like Sophie still has everything under control. Expertly, she maneuvers Parker through the small space they made themselves for dancing and distracts her by talking to her, instructing her on the tricky art of dancing small talk. She makes a little joke and that makes Parker grin. If he didn’t know better… he’d say Sophie was flirting with Parker like she would flirt with a mark to keep him or her from noticing the actions of the rest of the team.
But of course Sophie would never do that to any of them. Except of course she does whenever she sees fit to do it - they would never have gotten Nate to steal the Davids if she hadn't at least tried to do so - and he’s pretty sure she tried it on him as well. Oddly enough, he doesn’t resent her for it, like Nate always does. Then again, he doesn’t have the same kind of history with her that Nate does… and thank God for that.
Of course he finds her attractive. You would have to be dead - he’s got the feeling that being gay wouldn’t help anything against her sophisticated British elegance and lovely charm - not to find her attractive but first off she’s Nate’s girl from head to toe and you don’t lay a finger on the boss’s girl. And second… right now he finds it a lot harder to take his eyes off Parker.
He’d really like to tell himself that it has a lot to do with what Hardison told him about Parker’s little stunt when they had tried to steal the David maquette because ever since then he can’t help but wonder now and then if Parker’s as flexible as that when she’s doing other things.
But the thing is… while he covertly watches the two women moving through the room it’s not only Parker’s natural and almost innocent gracefulness that keeps him looking but also the pouts and the grins and little smiles she lets show through when she mastered another combination of steps. The pony tail that’s swishing from side to side when Sophie attempts a quickstep with her. The fingers that weave through Sophie’s when she teaches her how to hold her arms during a waltz. The naked feet that bounce around when Parker masters the groundwork of the samba.
Deliberately, he looks away to make another attempt at concentrating but there’s a half-smile on his face, just for a moment. A few months ago, before the walk away, he’d struggled with not letting Parker get under his skin and he’d been pretty successful at that. Or… well, at telling himself that.
Anyway… the point here is that… ironically, the moment he’d realized he was powerless against her had been after the walk away. He’d been deep inside Pakistan, doing ‘hinky’ stuff as Hardison had called it and had found himself thinking of that blonde pony tail and those long fingers more often than he would have liked to and at some point… he’d just realized that she was on her own now, with no one to catch her outside the windows she liked to jump out of so much.
Of course that had been an absurd thought because if there’s one person in the world perfectly capable of taking care of herself, it’s Parker, insanity and all. Still… he’d been ridiculously relieved when he’d gotten a simple message from her with a date and a theatre name, informing him of Sophie’s theatre engagement in Boston. And he’d been even more relieved when he’d actually seen her - although he never tell anyone about that - and ever since then he simply gave up fighting her and the effect she has on him. Doesn’t make it easier to live with her but it makes living with himself really less of a pain in the ass.
Aw, damn. Going over the plans in the vicinity of Sophie and Parker swishing through the room and chattering away and… and… being women was a bad idea. He just… can’t concentrate. He used to be so good at that, really, but working and practically living with those people made him soft. Really should do something about that, at least.
Determinedly, he gets up and starts to gather his plans together to take them to the room he’s sharing with Hardison and go over them in peace… but then he makes the mistake of looking up again and sees that there isn't just a little pout forming on Parker’s face again but a genuinely upset expression. Something doesn’t work the way she wants it to go and it gets to her that she just can’t conquer whichever dance Sophie is trying to teach her now. It’s not the face of a petulant child but that of a person who’s on the brink of despair because it just won’t click.
He frowns and watches a little more closely and it turns out after a few moments that after nearly two hours of working their way through every major standard dance it’s the mambo - the goddamn mambo of all dances - that Parker can’t wrap her feet and her head around. Right now, he’s infinitely grateful that Hardison isn't here because he’s pretty sure that he wouldn’t survive even one round of ‘This is my dance space. This is your dance space.’ and ‘I carried a watermelon.’ and Nate would probably kill him if he incapacitated their hacker in the middle of a con.
So he keeps on watching and feels sympathy for Parker well up. If she were learning new fighting moves… he’d absolutely offer his help - and if it were just to see her beat the crap out of Hardison again - but dancing? Not his kind of… “Oh, Parker… it’s really easy, you know. You just have to… wait. Eliot, you can dance, can’t you?”
Wha… no. No, he can’t. Okay, maybe a bit. “Only bits of square dance.” Crap, why couldn’t he just say that he has no clue about dancing and just gone off to his room? Yeah, okay, maybe… maybe because Parker looking a little forlorn always kind of gets to him, at least since he let down his guard a little. Hey, but there’s no reason for Sophie to give him that questioning look. He feels compelled to add, “What? I grew up on horse farms, not in plantation mansions.”
It doesn’t really satisfy Sophie though - when does anything ever until she gets what she wants? - and she pushes on. “Okay, okay, I get that.” Oh, maybe she will let it… “But… didn’t you once say fighting was like dancing?” What? No, no, no, he never said that. He wouldn’t ever say that about f… alright, yes, he did. Dammit. “Yes, I think you did. Now, come on, come over here. I think Parker needs someone else to lead her.”
No. No way he’s gonna lead Parker. Thankfully, Parker seems to think the same, judging by her scrunched nose but Sophie doesn’t take no for an answer. Instead she does her soft bullying thing again and simply prods and ushers them until they find themselves standing opposite each other and before he knows it, she put Parker’s hand in his and put the other hand on the small of Parker’s back and… do they really have to stand that close to each other?
Ever since that little something in the old office last year he’d taken care to always put a little corporeal distance between them, at least 20 inches - and preferably more. And suddenly all that effort just went to hell because Sophie just wouldn’t give it a rest. It’s all back; the urge to kiss her, grab her, see what she can do with those legs beside making cartwheels and crawling along poles… “Now, Parker, remember: Eliot leads, you follow.”
“Sure,” Parker just says and then adds in an absolutely casual - even a little bored - voice, “As long as he doesn’t want to stay on top in bed, I’m fine with it.” Jesusfuckingchristshedidntjustsaythat. He needs to get out of here. Really, really fast… so urgently, in fact that it’s one of the very few occasions where he actually wishes Nate and Hardison would run into some trouble… but of course now they don’t do him the favor of calling and saving him from having to be way too close to Parker and all her enticing cluelessness.
“Eliot?” Dismayed, he actually has to blink and a look at Sophie confirms him that she noticed he just was a little… distracted because she gives him a minute raise of her eyebrow… telling him she knows exactly what’s going on here. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. “You do know how to lead a lady during a dance, right?”
He’s got two options now. Fight… or flight. All his instincts scream at him that this is so very much a situation where he should turn his back and get the hell out of here but then he looks at Parker and there’s this hint of a smirk on her face… challenging him. Okay. Fine. Parker wants a challenge, Parker gets a challenge. He answers her with a look that tells her that she should be careful not to bite off more than she can chew and tells Sophie, “’course I do. But the lady better behave herself.”
With that… it’s settled. And really, what can be so hard about dancing? After all, fighting is like dancing, in a certain way at least, and fighting is something he’s really good at… and he certainly won’t let Parker get the better of him. No way.
~*~
TBC in If It Happened To You.