The first time this happened to Sophie, to his knowledge, they were on a job and she was in the midst of flawlessly executing a seduction in the middle of the night in a cheap motel room with the mark, probably about to slip out of her silk dress. They were parked near a 24-hour grocery store around the corner, Parker and Hardison sitting in the van, Nate and Eliot sitting on the rear bumper, keeping an eye on their surroundings.
"I'm so glad we have some privacy," she said to the mark, just a murmur, but the mic got it; this was the predetermined cue for them to cut out coms for ten or fifteen minutes while she did her thing, and they almost did. Well, the other three did. It was at that moment that Nate got a strange feeling. An instinct. A touch of danger. He was reaching for the on/off button, his hand nearly to his ear, when it hit him namelessly, a sensation in his gut like a gulp of spoiled milk.
He left the com on. Just for a little while longer.
For a few long moments, the sounds of slow kissing, which, although they brought the familiar dull tang of heartache, certainly did not mean danger. Then he heard the sickening sound of a slap, and the mark said: "I'm glad you'll do what you're told." Then the sounds of shuffling, maybe Sophie reeling back onto her heels on the carpet, or perhaps he had shoved her to the bed. "Wouldn't want too much of a fight. Just the right amount," the mark continued.
"Richard!?" Sophie cried out, remarkably still in character in terms of her accent—but genuinely surprised, Nate thought, from the sound of her voice. She hadn't guessed the mark would get off on this sort of thing, or she never would have gone it alone.
Her game was never about coercion like this. It wasn't something she was used to, as she rarely needed it.
Eliot, who was of course paying close attention, saw Nate's face change. Their eyes locked. Eliot was a man who had many instincts, and trusted all of them. He seemed to know what was going on already. He flicked his com back on, and listened, eyes widening.
"Stupid bitch," Richard continued, then more rustling. The sound of silk and stockings against fingernails, ripping fabric, the bed creaking distantly. Nate fought to push the image of Sophie trapped under the mark, struggling, out of his head, because he needed to think clearly.
"Do you want me to go in?" Eliot mouthed the words silently to Nate, but Nate held up his finger to make him wait. He didn't want to make things worse than they already were. Eliot did not want to wait, as his hands were already clenched into fists.
"Sophiedoyouneedhelp." Nate whispered tightly over the com, feeling increasingly sick.
"No- " she said, loudly, clearly, assertive and sharp in Nate and Eliot's ears, and both of them searched the pavement with their eyes, trying to determine, who was she talking to? Them or the mark? They heard more scuffles, Richard giving a satisfied grunt, Sophie making a strangled sound in her throat.
Again Sophie said no, weaker this time.
Nate realized that his indecision had cost them their chance. She had been talking to the mark. He reached for the handle of the door.
"Go, go, go," he started shouting, frantic, and he knew she could hear them, and Hardison and Parker jumped back on coms, and Eliot pulled him into the van and the engine came to life and Nate almost panicked, exclaiming, "Sophie, get out of there, we're coming, Eliot's coming, we're coming—"
"I'm going to break his fucking face!" There was Eliot, chiming in—but underneath everything the sound of Sophie gasping, Richard muttering obscenities at her.
"Jesus Christ!" Nate yelled in the van, to no one in particular, to the mark, to himself.
"What's happening?" Parker wanted to know. She had just gotten her com back on.
"That man attacked Sophie," Eliot replied, his face looking dark.
"What?" Hardison said. They rounded a corner, tires squealing.
In the hotel lot, Eliot was out of the van before it even stopped. Nate followed him. Eliot took the outdoor stairs two at a time, kicked in the door of the room and moments later had Richard by the throat, pulling him out onto the balcony facing the parking lot, punching him, getting him down for a kick or two to the ribs and one last punch to the face that blossomed into blood. He might have broken the mark's nose. They were blown, completely; Nate was standing in the hotel lot, his mouth open, looking both terrified and sorry. Eliot landed another kick and wiped his bloody knuckles onto his jeans.
Meanwhile, Sophie ran out the open door and down the stairs to the van, her face white. She had abandoned her shoes and her bag in the room. As she came towards the van, Nate reached out his arms and more or less lifted her off her feet in through the back door, passing her clumsily to Parker.
"Eliot, let's go, let's go," Nate shouted, and got back in behind Sophie. A few moments later Eliot was on his way down the stairs. Sophie's foot was bleeding—a broken bottle by the curb, maybe; her dress was torn all up the seam, her stockings a mess of holes. Nate pulled off his coat, covering her with it, and tried to stem the bleeding on her foot by wrapping his tie around it and making a knot. Sprawled on the floor of the van, he grasped her ankle and held her foot up, hoping it would slow the bleeding a little.
"Jesus Christ," Sophie began, still breathing hard. "I did not see that coming. I didn't—he never—I wasn't—it's not like I was resisting him—oh, oh, my dress," she said suddenly, peering under Nate's coat draped across her, noticing the ruined seam just then. Nate stared into her face, into her full eyes that she was heroically avoiding emptying then and there.
"Are you okay?" he asked. He was aware that this was perhaps the worst thing to say, but he didn't know what else to say.
"I think so. I left my bag."
"That doesn't matter," Hardison said. "You can get more bags. We can't get more Sophies."
"Nope, we can't," Parker agreed, eerily calm. "We have the only Sophie there is."
"I'm so sorry, we should have gotten there earlier," Nate added quickly, and grasped one of her arms at the elbow through his coat. "I had a hard time telling what was happening at first."
"Well, I did tell you to go off coms," Sophie said, as if to excuse him, but his shook his head.
"No, no. We look out for each other. We always look out for each other. I should have known sooner, and I should have intervened."
The rest of the team was silent, a little shocked because things like this did not happen to Sophie. They conned all kinds, but never people with sociopath minds, never sexually abusive men. If they did find someone with a violent streak, Eliot just hit first and thought later. They'd never sent Sophie in alone to deal with someone like that. This guy just hadn't shown a single sign. Until he got to the bedroom.
When they got back to the office, Eliot gently pulled the glass out of Sophie's foot with a pair of tweezers, stemmed the bleeding again, and applied a waterproof bandage. Throughout it Parker held Sophie's hand tightly in an uncharacteristic show of affection, though her face was expressionless. It was a little like watching a little sister hold her big sister's hand as she got a scary shot at the doctor's office. An act more for the comfort of the little sister. Hardison and Nate paced. Hardison turned on his computer and pressed some keys and a few minutes later declared the mark's checking account emptied and overdrawn.
"Gee, it looks he spent it all on charitable gifts to a battered women's shelter on the other side of town…" Hardison drawled, and normally he would be smiling, but this time he just looked serious. "Wonder how that happened. Let me make sure they're anonymous, so he can't even get a tax deduction out of this."
Parker chuckled. "Good one," she said. Hardison just wanted to help any way he knew how, and even Eliot wore a little smile in light of it.
Parker lent Sophie a pair of sweatpants and some flip flops, and Nate lent her a shirt, which she put on after she showered for almost forty minutes, throwing her silk dress into the kitchen trash unceremoniously. It was Marc Jacobs, that silk dress, in season and not even on sale, but into the trash it went.
Nate offered to drive her home, which was just a five-minute drive—she normally walked—and this time she didn't put up an argument at all. He parked at the edge of her block, and declared both to her and to himself, "I'll walk you up." Still, she didn't say anything. They went up to her apartment. She moved around the place quietly, closing the deadbolt, checking the window locks, tugging at the curtains, turning on a couple of lights.
Nate stood in her kitchen, observing, hands in his coat pockets. His coat smelled like her. Had it been any other time, it would be driving him nuts.
"Sophie, really, are you okay? It's okay if you aren't," he said, finally, when she stopped for minute in the middle of the living room, looking at the floor. She laid down on the couch, stared up at the ceiling. "I wouldn't be, if I were you," he added.
"I'm not…I'm mostly okay. Sometimes forget things like that can happen to me, because I can get people to do what I want," she began, "and I forget not everyone wants a woman who is excited to be with them, or who is acting like she is excited to be with them. I've made a whole career out of making men think I am excited to be with them, so I forget some are just hoping we'll resist so they can force us. I forget that some want that. That they go looking for it and get off on it."
"Has this ever happened before?" Nate carefully asked, though he was afraid to know the answer.
"Once or twice. Once I talked my way out of it before it got physical, I kind of played it off, and once I didn't. Each time, I told myself that I had learned my lesson and it would never happen again. I guess people can even surprise us," she finished, a look of disgust on her face.
"Sophie," he said, quietly, because he had no idea how to make this better for her. He went into the living room, sat at the edge of the couch. She rolled onto her stomach, grasping a pillow. He stared at her ribs visible against his shirt where it was twisted tight against her form. "I'm sorry."
"Why? It was never your fault. We scam people for a living; we're bound to run into a few scumbags along the way."
"Did he hurt you—other than your foot, that was an accident—I heard him hit you, I think," Nate said. "At the beginning." He was even angrier as he realized the mark, unknowingly, had targeted a woman whose whole self-concept revolved around being in control of everything—of other people, of herself, of entire situations.
"No, my body, no, just my pride. Just my pride and my sense of safety a little, I think. I lost control of that whole job so quickly. It's a little embarrassing."
She didn't say anything about how if she'd been running this con alone she would have had to just wait until it was over and hope he didn't leave any marks, no one to drive her home and sit with her.
"How's your foot?" Nate asked, shedding his coat onto the floor next to the couch, gently touching her ankle.
"Strangely, it feels okay. I think Eliot put something anesthetic on it? Did he? I didn't see, with all of you fussing over me. Even Parker! Not much of a gash anyway."
"It looked like it hurt. There was a lot of blood. Do you want me to stay here tonight?" Nate asked, struggling to make it sound casual. So he was contemplating what would have occurred if she ran the con alone.
"Well, I'm not going to tell you to leave," she replied, which was her way of saying, please stay, I don't want you to go. Nate knew this. They said as much with the parts they left out as with the parts they said, these days.
"If it makes you feel any better, honey, I think Eliot might have broken his nose," Nate said without thinking, just a moment later, caught up in the relief of knowing she'd let him stay. Really he just spoke his thoughts aloud, and immediately she turned her head sharply to look at him.
"What? So I have to get raped to get some affection from you? To get you to call me an endearing name?" She snapped. "Maybe I should get hurt more often."
"Sophie—no—I didn't mean it like that, I just, I was thinking aloud. I always have affection for you. You know that. For ten years I've had affection for you. Not sure what to do with it, is all. I always tell myself I will finally just—I guess I talk myself out of a lot of things. I'm quite a coward, for being a mastermind."
"Yes, you are. Just try giving. Give love out, see who gives it back," she mumbled. "Can't remember where that saying's from. I'm sorry to take all this out on you. It's been a long and terrible day. I'm exhausted, and a little confused. And we blew our con."
"Jesus, Sophie, we can find a hundred new jobs, but you're irreplaceable. And I can't stand to see you hurt."
There it was; her eyes were filling up again. She put her face down, pressed against her arms and into the pillow. Outside cars cruised by and their lights cast a flickering series of brights and shadows through the dim living room. Nate hesitantly laid his hand down on her back, shyly rubbing the heel of his hand between her shoulder blades for a few minutes, then drawing his fingertips in random patterns from her tailbone to the nape of her neck. For several minutes more they sat like that, Nate touching her constantly, as if he was a machine that would lose power without her current running through him. She felt so warm through the thin black cotton of his shirt.
Sophie pressed her forehead into the pillow and ignored the weak, wobbly feeling she got in her stomach from his touch. She was tingling from her shoulders to her knees from whatever he was doing back there. It felt intense, though the contact was minimal; so she sat up, brushed a little wetness off her face, and brazenly put her arms around him before she could think too hard about it.
"You're an insufferable jerk and you were a raging drunk and you're hung up on your ex wife and you've got an ego the size of Madagascar, Nate," she murmured into his neck, "but never let it be said that you don't care about me, or that you don't take care of me. So of course, like an idiot, I love you. So of course I imagine that listening to that happen was also horrible for you," she added, "and let me remind you again: it was not your fault."
"I know," he whispered, his mouth pressed against her temple, "but we sent you there to seduce that guy. When it happened, when you said no, just when you said no the first time, I thought you might have been talking to us—you sounded so sure, I thought you said no meaning no you didn't need us to intervene, so I hesitated and then it happened anyway and—" he was talking quickly, inarticulately.
"Shut up, Nate," Sophie interrupted, speaking seriously, her voice low and the sweetness of it conspicuously absent. "You're here now. Make the right decisions from now on. Forget what happened back there."
He tightened his grip on her for a moment, as if to agree, and smoothed her hair with one hand. "You're right."
"You left the coms on, on purpose, didn't you?" She said suddenly, pulling back to look him in the eyes.
"Just for a moment, because I had a bad feeling," he quickly told her. "I wasn't trying to be a voyeur."
"I can't imagine why you would want to be a voyeur," she replied, almost the hint of a smile in her voice, "not to watch me, anyway, after all it would just depress you."
"Mmm, I know, it always does," Nate admitted, a rich note of laughter in his voice. "I'm always jealous of the mark. Even if he doesn't know the real you. Even if he only gets a glimpse of some version of you when you're acting."
They held onto each other for a while more. Sophie pressed her cheek to Nate's shoulder. The apartment was silent save for the occasional sound of passing traffic. Nate could feel her breathing against him and wondered if he sounded nervous. He finally began to relax.
Eventually, they wordlessly shifted on the couch. The night drew on and they were getting drowsy and weary, but neither knew what to do with the other. Nate ended up sitting a bit slouched, his head thrown to the side and his eyes closed. Sophie lay with her head in his lap, stretched out. He kept a hand around her hip and another on her shoulder. They dozed on and off through the remainder of the night. Around sunrise, Sophie woke up, and tugged him to his feet.
"Take off your shoes," she mumbled, already barefoot, "and come to bed, we've been sleeping like this for hours, we'll break our necks." Exhaustion eroded boundaries and awkwardness and concern over mixed messages. It was only to sleep. She led him to her room. They fell down on top of the covers as the sun began to come into the room. Nate curled himself around her and almost immediately was back asleep.
It felt so good to rest with another person, warm and grounded. He had denied himself this simple thing for years, first in pursuit of his own misery, and now in pursuit of what seemed to be nobler goals; but he could think of nothing better than the feeling it gave him when he woke at noon at Sophie's side, the room full of light, the circles under both their eyes faded for once.
He let sleep as he explored her apartment, stealthily quiet. He found a couple of his shirts in her closet, stolen God-knew-when, plucked one out, showered, and got dressed. He made coffee for two and grilled cheese for one. It was almost two in the afternoon when she finally woke up and came into the kitchen, all bed-hair and squinting eyes and sore limbs.
"Nate," she murmured, going for the coffee. "Good morning."
"Afternoon," he corrected. "How you doing?"
"Okay," she said. "I slept well. Thanks for staying."
"I don't mind. I slept well too, I think, or maybe just for a long time." She knows he's always had trouble sleeping, even after he dried out.
"Mm," was all Sophie could manage. She peered into the fridge for something to put in her coffee.
"If you ever want a ride home again, please tell me, even if nothing bad happens first," Nate said, apropos of nothing. His mind was wired hot with caffeine and he was struggling to make this meaningful offer sounds just as tiny as possible. He was afraid of anything going wrong between them. "It's a nice trip, I like your place, apparently I sleep better on this side of town…"
"Nate," Sophie replied, practically a drawl behind a sideways smile, but so not the same kind as she uses in a con. She'd put down her coffee and moved toward him, slipping her hands around his hips and pulling him in, pressing her forehead to his collarbone so she doesn't have to look at him. She was nervous too. "Thank you."
They stood still for just a beat and then she took a deep breath and kissed him on the mouth there in her kitchen, and he made a surprised-but-pleased sound in his throat and kissed her back so thoroughly she could feel her knees wobbling. When they break apart his phone is ringing and they're both flushed and looking at each other intently, open-mouthed, indescribably turned on.
Both of them were frozen for a moment as they tried to decide what took so long to get there.
Nate reached across the counter, picking up his phone without looking and smashing at the buttons until the call goes to voicemail, and then lifted her up, depositing her gently on the counter, starting to kiss her again, this time beginning to unbutton the buttons on her borrowed shirt.
The room smelled of hazlenut and midnight sweat on Sophie's skin and soap and coffee and the afternoon light was beautiful and there was not a single thing in their way.