Title: Even in Chaos, There is Peace
Genre: Family, hurt/comfort
Completed Fic Word Count: ~7,300 words
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Pairings: Eliot/Sophie
Warnings: None
Summary: It's Christmas time once again. The Leverage team has their own special ways of commemorating the holiday. This fic was written for spiritcrow for the 2010 Leverage Secret Santa gift exchange over on livejournal. She prompted: "A believable and in-character Eliot/Sophie fic would make my day! There just aren't enough of those out there!" This is my spin on it, with a little reminder of what the holidays are all about.
Author's Note: A huge shout out goes to Rusting_roses, once again, for her invaluable betaing.
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Even in Chaos, There is Peace – Part 1/2
"Well, this is it," Sophie murmured, looking up at the ceiling.
Eliot nodded, grabbing the cord and pulling down. There was a creaking noise as long-rusted hinges groaned in protest at being dragged into action. A set of stairs folded down from the ceiling. "When was the last time you were up here?" Eliot asked, eyeing the fine layer of dust coating each step.
A smile played across Sophie's face. She shrugged, and then replied, "I have enough closet space for most of my wardrobe. Not to mention the dirt up there," she added, shuddering at the thought. "You have any idea what dust does to fine silk?"
Eliot chuckled, running a finger through the dust and then raising it for examination before blowing it off his fingers. "A little dust never hurt anyone."
Sophie shook her head. "Tell that to the dress I almost ruined last time I went up there. I tripped on these stairs. They're a death trap, I swear. Only my miracle-worker of a dry cleaner managed to get the streak out of the outfit."
"So you send me up there in your stead?"
"Of course!" she exclaimed as if it were the most logical idea in the world. She patted Eliot on the back supportively before lightly pressing her fingertips against his back to prod him forward toward the stairs. She couldn't help but rest her fingertips there for a moment, her soft, manicured fingers contrasting against his firm, muscular back. "Well, come on, if you would be so kind. My ski clothes aren't going to retrieve themselves from the attic."
He rolled his eyes as he began mounting the stairs. He paused midstride. "Remind me again how I got roped into this?"
"That, dear, was completely your fault. What's a boyfriend for if not to be a little chivalrous once in awhile? You were the one to ask me out, remember? Don't tell me you didn't anticipate exactly what you were getting into."
He shook his head but began the climb up to the attic, uncaring of the grime. Sophie flicked a switch on the wall as he went, illuminating the dark eaves. Eliot sighed, but knew that he couldn't really complain. Hell, he had been the one to ask her out. After months of wrestling over the issue, there came the weekly team dinner when he sat across from her, admiring that demure smile, the one that hinted at the layers upon layers stacked beneath the cool, confident aura that the grifter radiated. That had been the tipping point, the moment when he had run out of ideas as to why he shouldn't jump in. He'd wondered if Nate would be a problem, but during the time that Nate had served his stint in prison, Sophie had barely spoken of the man other than her annoyance at how he'd played them and had kept all of them, his team and surrogate family, in the dark. No, Nate had burned that bridge and there hadn't been any sign that he was going to make an effort to rebuild it.
So yes, he'd been out of excuses and stalling techniques. There had come the moment where he just had to take a chance, and maybe a leap of faith, and jump in blind and see how things with Sophie went.
Two trips worth of grunting and dragging the heavy wooden boxes to the stair top later, he emerged from his thoughts. Sophie was leaning up against the wall below, watching him curiously as he worked. "You're getting dust all over your shirt," she observed.
He paused in his ministrations and shot her a glance accompanied by a raised eyebrow. "I thought that was the point. It's my clothes getting dirty instead of yours."
"That's your favorite shirt, though, isn't it?"
"It's a shirt. I got other ones," Eliot remarked flatly. Clothes were just objects in the world. He wore a hoodie when running on a crisp fall morning. He wore a leather jacket when working most of his cons if he could work it into the character he was playing. And then there the rare occasions where he took Sophie out to the sorts of restaurants where he swore they paid a fortune for food that he knew he could cook better. But it made Sophie's face sparkle in a way that complimented the jewels that she'd tie around her throat. He might not appreciate the experience in the same way that Sophie did, but he could most definitely appreciate the way she stroked the fine white linens draped over the table and the way she soaked up the ambience of the environment. So on those nights he was perfectly fine with trading in his rugged work attire for a fine suit and silk tie, taking her hand in his own, and escorting her out for the evening.
"But you like to wear that one quite a bit, don't you?" she suggested.
"Uh, sure, I suppose," he replied looking down to examine the plaid shirt. It was a remnant of the horse job they had pulled. He rubbed at a dust spot that had formed on the sleeve.
"Well, leave it down here with me then. No need to get it all dirty," she suggested.
"Sure," he agreed. A mischievous glint in his eyes, he finished his statement. "You admit that what you're really looking to get here is me doing your housework and doing it without a shirt and I'd be glad to oblige."
"Oh, Eliot! I would never be so crude,." Sophie admonished, but she glanced up at him from beneath her lashes in a way that left no doubt as to what she was thinking.
He just shrugged though, and went back to pushing one of the heavy wooden chests toward the stairs. If she wasn't going to admit it, then he wasn't going to press- Sophie always did respond better when he pretended to ignore her.
"Oh, fine! Can you blame a woman for wanting to admire a man's chiseled physique like the one you carry around?"
His neutral expression broke and he grinned. "Nope, not at all. But it doesn't hurt to hear it verbalized once in awhile."
"Ok. I've stroked your ego. Now ditch the shirt, come on," she demanded.
He chuckled, shaking his head as he began undoing the buttons. A minute later the shirt dropped from the attic and into Sophie's waiting arms. Stripped down to a worn undershirt, Eliot continued his ministrations while Sophie watched on.
Five minutes later found two boxes at the bottom of the stairs with just the last to be moved down from the upper floor. Eliot clomped up the stairs one more time and grabbed the handle on the last wooden chest, the heaviest one, which he had left for last. He strained backwards against the weight, dragging it toward the stairs. Gaining a grip on the handle on either side of the trunk, he began awkwardly moving down the stairs with it. By about half way his back was protesting the effort. He felt one of his back muscles quivering with each advance he made. He worked out, sure as hell he did, but dead weight lifts weren't something he'd practiced enough to be doing this. His combat strategies were much more reliant on quick, punchy movements. Get in, get a hit, and get out, all the while watching for the next opening.
A painful sensation pulled him from his thoughts. It made him drop the chest. "Sophie, move!" he managed to shout at her as it tumbled end over end toward where she was perched on one of the lower stairs.
He wasn't aware of whether she moved. All of his attention was focused on the spot in his back where it felt like someone had pressed a lit match against his flesh. Or under his flesh, maybe. It was a stabbing pain radiating out from along his spine and amplifying as it shuddered outward. His hands were closed into fists. He was crumpled into a sprawling mess on the stairs, biting his lip and willing his body to remain still as to avoid aggravating the pain any more than it already was.
"Sophie, you ok?" he croaked.
He forced his clenched eyes open. She was backed up against the walls, eyes open wide as she examined the trunk that had splayed open, spilling its contents across the floor.
"I'm fine. Are you?"
He shrugged and went to climb to his feet, thinking that he must have just strained his muscles a little with the weight. Pain lanced along his spine, sparks flew behind his eyes. With a grimace he dropped back into a sitting position on the stairs. "Damn it. Apparently not."
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"Watch your footing walking up to the door there, Eliot! Nate mentioned it was a bit icy and he hadn't gotten around to salting yet," Sophie shouted after the hitter as he shuffled toward the entrance to Parker's warehouse home.
He shook his head, mumbling under his breath. He didn't approve of Sophie's mollycoddling, but common sense made him put a hand against the side of the building as he navigated his way up toward the door.
Sophie had apparently finished parking the car, a few seconds later he heard the clicking of her high-heels against the pavement. She fell into step beside him, protectively hovering just a few inches away. "You ok so far? You should've just waited for me at the car and we'd have walked up together."
He growled low. "I ain't an invalid."
Sophie rolled her eyes. "I never suggested anything of the sort. But the doctor said that you pulled that muscle in your back pretty thoroughly. If you remember correctly, he said a few days of bed rest were in order." Her voice was pointed- she clearly thought he was an idiot for refusing to rely on her.
"It was a recommendation, Sophie." The words escaped through gritted teeth. His back was making it clear that it was in no condition to do anything of use.
She rolled her eyes but sped up a bit to rush ahead and grab the door for the injured hitter. "And you would know that how? You weren't even paying attention at the appointment to what he was saying. That task was left to me. So yes, forgive me if I'm going to make sure you follow his 'recommendations' to the letter."
He smirked at that as he slowly maneuvered past her and continued his old-man shuffle into the building. "You don't seem too intent to enforce the bed rest thing."
She rolled her eyes and pulled the door tight snugly behind them, cutting off the bitter wind. In truth, she had debated this back and forth. But it was Christmas. Eliot had been looking forward to this for months. He'd started putting up the Christmas lights the day after Thanksgiving. So she'd ultimately ceded to her compassion instead of her common sense that told her that Eliot should be at her apartment, in bed, relaxing. They had reached a compromise. Parker and Hardison and Nate had gone out earlier to get the tree without Eliot. If he had gone, no doubt the hitter would have insisted on helping to chop down the tree and drag it out of the woods and up it into the back of his truck and drive it home, which would have gone against just about everything the doctor had recommended for a quick recovery. So she'd borrowed Eliot's keys and passed them along to Hardison so they could bring the tree back and get it set up. Eliot would be permitted to help decorate the tree assuming the man made no attempt to lift anything heavy.
"Consider it an early Christmas present," she replied, patting him on the shoulder.
"Hey guys!" Parker's voice rang out across the warehouse.
The couple looked in the direction the voice had come from. And then they looked up. Parker was suspended from a rope tethered to the ceiling rafters, dangling about eight feet off the ground with a shiny ornament held in each hand.
"That's a big tree," Eliot commented.
Sophie couldn't argue with that. She was perhaps beginning to understand why Parker had insisted that the tree decorating take place at her place. Hers was the only one with high enough ceilings to allow for the ten-foot tree they'd selected for the evening's festivities.
Sophie shortened her stride to match Eliot's. The two of them advanced at his slow pace into the center of the warehouse where several space heaters had been set up to keep them at least marginally warmer than the crisp Christmas evening might otherwise allow for; warehouses weren't exactly known for their heating. Nate was standing at the base of the tree with a box of open ornaments; apparently having been conscripted into handing them up to the dangling Parker one at a time.
Hardison was crouched on the ground next to a tangled mess of Christmas lights, tugging vigorously on two different strands. "Man, who organized these last year? You never just throw wires into a pile and call it a day. It's called coiling!"
Eliot shook his head but moved over in that direction. Sophie pulled up a stray office chair that had been rolled into this part of the warehouse from the corner where Parker usually slept. Eliot dropped into it with a thankful nod and gently pried the strung lights from Hardison's hands. "You're just making the mess worse. A little patience can go a long way," he muttered softly as he began slowly picking at a knot in one of the lines, easing it looser before pulling the strand loose and beginning the arduous process of untangling the lights.
Hardison watched his deft hand movements before joining in at a different portion of the lights, duplicating Eliot's approach.
In the background, Parker flipped mid-air and dropped several feet lower with a cackle of glee. She snatched two more glass bulbs from Nate's outstretched hands before shimmying back up toward the top of the tree in search of a place to hang her newfound baubles.
Hardison and Eliot shook their heads, meeting one another in an amused stare. The hitter spoke. "She's crazy, you know that, right?"
Hardison shrugged, his lip curling up in a small smile. Like there was a secret hiding behind that gaze that the others weren't clued in on yet. "Would you have her any other way?"
A series of scenes flashed through Eliot's mind. Parker disappearing over the edge of a building with a Cheshire Cat Grin gracing her delicate features. The first time the thief had stripped down to almost-naked in an elevator with the hitter. Not many people made him blush, and perhaps no one more than Parker. "No, she's perfect just the way she is."
"Preaching to the choir, man," Hardison finished, sighing, as he laid down his untangled line of Christmas lights. He paused, transfixed for a few moments in observing the thief weave together a complicated series of maneuvers in her fluid, mid-air dance above.
Eliot's own gaze traced a path over to where Sophie was adorning the lower branches of the tree with Red Poinsettia arrangements. As her fingers flitted between branches, her face was fixed in a quiet determination. She wove the red clusters in amongst the tree's own foliage, accentuating the green pine with bursts of color. Trust Sophie to bring a touch of elegance to their communal celebration. It might be as simple as accessorizing an otherwise drab pants suit with a scarf to add a spark of color to an outfit during one of their cons or like now, shifting an ornament here or there to give the enormous tree the proper balance to make it really shine. Sophie instinctually could look at a scene and instantly call to mind the exact element that, when added, could make you wonder whether the moment would've ever been complete without it. "Perfect indeed," he whispered under his breath, quietly appreciating and admiring his own woman.
Parker emitted a pleased squeak as she finally succeeded in settling the snowflake-shaped ornament onto the branch she'd selected. She dove downward to snatch up another before arcing upward toward her treasured domain, the space she occupied most at ease with the world when, put in her circumstances, all the rest of them would be inwardly trembling.
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"Ok Parker, come on down," Nate called up to the thief.
There was a moment of pouting, but the thief did one more set of aerial acrobats on the way down before landing so gracefully that the others sometimes had to pause and remember that the girl did not, in fact, have magical powers. As much as it seemed like she could fly as gracefully as any bird, when they were ready to ground themselves in reality once more they need only turn an eye to the rope that gave her wings and shatter the illusion.
She unclipped herself from the rope and strode forward with a liquid motion. Sophie watched the maneuver in awe. There were times when you just knew you were watching a virtuoso in their element. Sure, take away a musician's viola and put a hammer in their hand and they may be clumsy. Take Parker off her rope and tether her to the ground to roam amongst the everyday population and the woman would be at a loss. Everyone had the things they'd never master; God knew that Sophie would never fly like Parker did. But just when you thought that the virtuoso was maybe just another human, place the instrument back in the hand of the musician, put Parker in front of a supposedly uncrackable safe or leave her standing on the precipice of forty story building. That song would pick up right where it left off; the virtuoso would abandon the corporeal plane to ascend to new heights and achieve something so much more.
"Ok, if you insist," Parker snorted, falling in line next to Nate and just a few steps from where Sophie knelt next to a still-seated Eliot. The hitter had wanted to stand for the unveiling, but Sophie's soft hand settled in on his shoulder and reminded him of the agreement he'd made to rest if Sophie had let him come tonight.
There'd been no verbal complaint or snappy comeback, simply a shadow of resignation in his eye at his sudden inability to contribute as he wanted to or experience this night the way he'd imagined.
"Ok, we set then?" Hardison asked from where he stood, holding an extension cord in each hand. There was series of murmured agreements and then Hardison connected the two ends. All attention was directed to the Christmas tree, then, as the lights flickered to life.
The hacker grinned as he quickly crossed over to his computer and entered a quick series of commands on his keyboard. An orchestral arrangement chased away the previous silence in the large space.
Eliot was shaking his head. "You didn't, Hardison," he accused the man over the music just in time to see the lights begin pulsing in and out to the beat of the music.
The hacker beamed his widest smile as he turned the volume up on his computer speakers. "Of course I did. Would it be a proper Christmas without lights tuned to the Star Wars theme song?"
Eliot snorted. "It would be a fine Christmas indeed," he muttered under his breath.
A light swat on the shoulder from Sophie suggested that the man need keep his opinion to himself.
"My turn!" Parker proclaimed as she skipped across the room to one of the walls and pressed a button on a panel there.
Sophie squinted her eyes and raised a hand to shield them against the mirrors that were now radiating light in a speckled pattern across the ground. A disco ball had descended from the ceiling and begun to slowly rotate on its axis. The grifter allowed her eyes to trail the motion of a speck of light on the floor around the room and eventually to where Parker stood. The patterns played off her face, illuminating the scene just enough to make out the unrestrained glee that resided there.
And Sophie couldn't help but let the infectious emotion wash over her. In her lifestyle, there wasn't much of a chance of having kids. For all of the times she'd seen the pure joy on a child's face that came at the holidays, a small part of her was always tinged with sadness that she would never celebrate a moment such as this with children of her own. But, then, families came in many forms.
Parker's patience had been worn out. The thief wasn't a sedentary person. She liked to move. Failing that, she needed to fiddle with something to keep her busy. And even as the rest of them stood watching the spectacle, she had begun trotting in a loop around the tree, pacing herself with the speed of the disco ball's projected patterns on the floor.
Sophie didn't have kids, and in the dangerous line of work they did, likely there never would be. But in this singular moment, with Parker prancing about without concern for social grace or expectations, she reflected on the unexpected blessing that she had received in this adopted family of hers. Hardison was drumming his fingers against his leg to the beat of the Star Wars theme song, eyes closed in reflection as he perhaps played scenes from the movie through his head. Nate stood to the side, arms crossed in quiet reflection as he watched over his flock. Eliot had ceased his quiet grumbling and now reached his hand back; groping until his grip closed around Sophie's fingers and gifted her with a quiet, reassuring squeeze.
Long ago, Sophie had resigned herself to the fact that there would never be a family unit in her life beyond the fictional ones that fleshed out her back story when grifting on a job. Yet somewhere along the way there were these individuals: Parker with her childlike wonder at the simplest things, Hardison with the geeky side he not only failed to conceal, but rather boldly flaunted to the world, Eliot with his quiet gestures that none-the-less let any opponent know he would tear them limb from limb for hurting any of the ones he cared for, and Nate, the rock that kept all of them grounded through the thickest of storms. There were these individuals that had someone snuck up behind her and enveloped her in the middle of something she didn't quite have words to describe. In that moment, though, words weren't necessary. All that mattered was the emotion that flooded through every fiber of her being, eroding any glimmer of doubt that might reside there. It whispered that blood relations weren't the only thing that made a family. She tightened grip around Eliot's own. In that moment, what they had here and now was enough.
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