Notes: This story follows A Long Way From Orion and is the Steal the Sky version of the Two Horse Job mashed up with The Burke Seven Job from White Collar with certain references to the Firefly timeline thrown in. Although it would probably be helpful to be at least familiar with White Collar it's not entierly necessary.
The Two Sons Job
Insomnia
A drink. A glass with a heavy base. The Black opening up through the skylights in the ceiling of the conference room above him opening up in darkness and light…
It was "Late", at least as far as the crew was concerned. Four in the morning. So early might have been the better term.
Other than Parker on watch in the bridge Nate was probably the only one awake on Leverage.
He took another sip and leaned back in his chair.
Time was once when there wasn't such a thing as "only one awake" on Leverage. They were once a crew of insomniacs.
No. That wasn't right.
Sophie slept a regular night like clockwork, retreating into her quarter at ten at "night" and emerging immaculate and rested nine hours later.
Dean and Sam had been used to living alone in dangerous environments where someone always needed to be aware of what their little shuttle was doing and never quite sure when one of the monsters that they hunted would invade their home. They'd spent most of their lives sleeping in shifts that came in short bursts and work aboard Leverage had done little to change that early on.
And the three former agents? A lifetime of restriction and regiments and rules had given way and early on they'd been like…
Children.
He took another drink and brushed off the thought.
Hardison had taken to what Nate eventually clocked out as a roughly thirty hour schedule. He never even saw Parker sleep until they'd been flying for a time and he caught her napping like a bat in the engine room, Dean's behavior suggesting she did that often. Eliot spent the first few weeks detoxing, his sleeping schedule chaotic at best because of it.
It all meant that early on it was as likely that there'd be a whirlwind of activity at three in the morning as there'd be at noon. At all hours of the day there'd be one or two people asleep but never even close to the majority.
But slowly things had changed.
Parker started sleeping in the crew's quarters. Eliot finished detoxing and started going to sleep at a regular time which encouraged Hardison to do so because he still had nightmares when he slept alone. Parker added sleeping at normal times to sleeping in a normal room and before long they were mostly keeping schedule with Sophie.
Sam and Dean slowly started to let their guard down, accepting on board Leverage they were as safe as they could be in the verse. Dean having Parker's help in the engine room and the entire crew taking shifts watching the bridge meant they too could eventually start to sleep through the night.
And so, a few months later, Nate found himself in the doorway to the lounge area, the ship silent but for the low hum of engines.
The others never really had insomnia. Not really. Not like him.
He took another sip and turned his gaze upwards toward the Black above.
He wasn't alone. Not really. He had booze and that Black and this calm before whatever storm was coming their way and all the things on his long list of things to brood over from the things he could to nothing about, like the death of his son (another sip, move on), to things he desperately needed to fix but had no idea how (a former agent with months before his declining health started to effect his work, another who still flinched when someone shouted, brothers who were trying to hide the fact Eliot wasn't the only one aboard the ship with powers, or major health issues, Sophie).
Sophie.
He finished the rest of his drink and went for the bottle.
It was so much harder to drink his head into silence when it was so damn quiet.
But he'd manage it, and sometime as Eliot first emerged to start his morning training while it was still quiet Nate would stumble his way down to his quarters and hope he was exhausted and drunk enough not to dream about dying children tonight.
Another drink, the burn sliding down his throat and settling in his gut and it wasn't comfort but if he spun his con just right he could convince himself it was close enough.