The second fic on Leverage! This time is totally Nate/Sophie, because I just love this two together *.* and because I don't like the fact that now or later he would call her with a different name from Sophie. It's just perfect for her. It the team's day off... but someone is still in Nate's appartment... guess who is...
Fiction and reality
«Sophie...» he called. No one answered. «Sophie?» Nate said it again. He knew she was there for sure, even if it was their day off.
She was sitting at the kitchen table, calm. She wasn't listening to music, so Nate wondered why she didn't answer him. He came closer, slowly, trying not to be seen. He reached her hear with his lips, putting his hands on the edge of the table, surprising her, even if she has heard him, before.
«Are you going to answer or not?» he questioned. She smiled, without a word. But she turned to him, making her best confused expression. She was a grifter, after all. She could say she was one of the best all over the world, if not simply the best.
«Were you calling me, perhaps?» she tried not to smile mischievously, she knew this was a way to tease him, and she suspected he knew too.
«Are you deaf, precious?» she grinned: he definetly knew she was teasing him. He was doing the same.
«Why are you here, Nate?» she asked, crossing her arm to her chest. Was he trying to play with her? Poor thing, didn't he knew that nobody should challange a grifter on her playground?
He moved away a few steps, with a little smile on his lips. «Shouldn't I make this question?» he asked, not really waiting for an answer. The woman he knew as Sophie frowned. «This is my apartment...» he explained, casually.
She made the best surprised expression of her repertoire. «Really?» she tilted her head, just to emphazise the fact that she didn't knew, which it was obviously not real. Sophie thought this was strange, he didn't really love to tease her, or being teased in general, but in particular by her. Why were they playing like that? Then she looked like she had understood everything. «Are you... maybe... here because you desperatly» she remarked on that word on purpose. «want to know my real name, mr. Ford?»
He leaned against the couch. She was totally out of the way, and for some reasons he really liked that. «I thought about it.» it was true. He really thought about her real name a lot.
«And...?» she asked, inviting him to continue. She wanted to know how many names he would say. She was sure he couldn't find out what her real name was, but she knew it was Nathan Ford who was talking about, so everything was possible, even if she was pretty sure that he couldn't know without being told by her or the others of the crew.
«I came up with a solution, in fact.» he said, like it was something to be sad about. He was joking, and he knew she had noticed. Sophie raised an eyebrow, curios. It made him smile. «I'll keep calling you Sophie.»
She was... disappointed. Really, really disappointed. She has imagined something interesting, like a challange, a bet or something like that. Instead, he... he was simply telling her he was... giving up? Was Nathan Ford, that Nathan Ford really giving up? «Are you serious?»
«Terribly.» but the smile was not faded from his face. Only Sophie seemed not to have noticed it.
«Why?» she really wanted to find out the reason. He was not the kind of person who can let something or someone defeat him, exspecially on something that catch his interest. Then... was her not in his insterests anymore?
Nathan clicked his tongue, in a theatrical gesture. «It's difficult to explain.»
«Try.» she didn't want to be that bossy, but it sounded like it.
«Well...» he began, trying not to smile again. «Almost eleven years ago, I saw a woman,» she made herself more concentrated. He was surely talking about her. «That woman, two years later, introduced herself as Sophie Deveraux.»
«And... then?» she asked, not understanding where the discussion was heading to.
«Well, you know...» he looked away, trying to find the right words. «I see her as Sophie even now, after all these years. I really can't imagine her with another name, whatever it is.» maybe it was the simpler way to make her understand. «But I wonder where she is now.» he got up, with a false worried expression on his face. «She isn't answering when I'm calling, you know?» she smiled, shaking her head in disbelief. «Do you know where she can be?»
«Maybe.» she said, laying against the edge of the table. He was not playing fair. Those could be considered as the most beautiful words he had told her in the last few months. «It depends on who is searching her and why.»
«I remember...» he began, making himself closer to her and looking straight in her eyes. «that I called her, some months ago.» he was drunk, and they both knew, but he had really ment what he had said. «Nothing's changed from there.»
Sophie shaked, moving a bit away from him. «What do you want from me, Nate?» she asked. The fact that he called her Sophie, Anne, Katherine or whatever didn't have any meaning, at that moment.
«We haven't had the chance to talk properly, in the last few months, since I have been taken away from the prison.» she knew he was right. She avoided that conversation because she didn't want to be hurt anymore. He needed time, he said so at that wedding. Sophie seriously thought she could wait for him, but she couldn't. The fact that there was something between them could not be denied, and she didn't know, even in that exact moment, if she could deal with it or not. Sometimes he seemed to come forward only to pull back again, and Sophie couldn't stand that situation anymore. It wasn't fair, for neither of them.
«Then talk.» she said. This was surely better than an undefined bond.
He caressed her cheek, with a light touch. She looked at him, confused. Nate leaned towards her, his intentions were clear: he wanted to kiss her, and she understood it in the exact moment in which his lips were on hers. Like that time on the Maltese Falcon. Sophie closed her eyes and ran a hand through his hairs, making him moan against her lips.
«I've already said it.» speaked him, just after they get separated, in needing of air.
«Then, just say it again.» she suggested, with a huge smile. He was not the romantic type, she knew him well enough to say it. But it was a good satisfaction to make him say he needed her.
But Nate smiled, even more mischievously than she has done before. Sophie didn't know what to think: had he something on mind? «Make me, then.»
Her heart began to beat faster: what did he mean? «Just stop joking.» she said, a little more nervous than she wanted to appear.
«Ok...» he came closer again, just to kiss her lips again.
«This is not an excuse not to say it.» she reminded him, in the time that he granted her to talk, before kissing her again.