Written for comment_fic on livejournal
The Prompt was Eliot, steampunk!AU, rattlesnake smile
Author's Note: There are several people writing in the steampunk Leverage AU at comment_fic on LJ. So the AU is not mine alone by any means. If you write in this AU too (and anyone can, obviously) , drop me a line - I'd love to read your work!
Spencer was a well-travelled man. He had faced down cutthroats, assassins, and wild beasts of all kinds on five continents, and so not much scared him.
But there were a few things.
The look on Mr. Ford's face when he first began to devise a plan. Calm and devious, an almost-hidden smile that belied how swiftly he would soon strike, and how helpless his victim would be against him. It reminded Eliot of nothing so much as the rattlesnakes he had almost died by in his travels to the American West.
And then there was Mr. Hardison, who managed to be charming and amiable even amidst the heat of argument. And yet, when he was about to let one of his diabolical contraptions loose -- when some mechanical arm was about to burst forth from the wall to trick some loutish false heir into thinking himself haunted, or when Scotland Yard's best thought they had cornered Miss Parker only to stare as her bicycle sprouted wings and took flight -- just as surely, a rattlesnake smile. The smile of the unapologetic predator.
Miss Devereaux had hers too, when she was about to convince someone to favor imagination over reality, a task she performed quite frequently.
And Miss Parker.... well, when Miss Parker smiled in a way that suggested she was about to strike, not one of their cohort could help but feel a jolt of the uncertain.
Miss Devereaux would sometime gently tease Eliot, saying, "Now won't a rogue adventurere such as yourself get bored among a group of prim and proper ladies and gentlemen?"
Eliot would return the comment with a tooth-sharp smile of his own and say nothing.
There was no point, after all, in explaining that in their own way, these masters of the soft touch and gilded word were the most dangerous people he had ever met.
Or that this was why he respected them so greatly, and why he desired them so ardently.
It was the the worst kind of lecherous behavior, Eliot knew, to be enamored of more than one person, to constantly imagine taking and being taken by four friends, both men and women, different appearances and ages. They would probably wretch at the vulgarity if they knew the turned and twisted dreams in Eliot's heart.
But every night, Eliot would fall asleep thinking of their wicked smiles, and he would wake up sticky, his nightshirt and cap soaked in sweat. It was a small and miserly form of contentment, Eliot knew, to maintain the facade of polite pleasantries with the objects of your lust. But Eliot could never resist the lure of a mouth that could bite back.