Eye Contact (2/2)
by Kshar
Disclaimers in Part 1.
xx
"It just doesn't make any sense," Parker's saying, shaking her head in denial. "It's called creamer, Eliot."
"It's called non-dairy creamer, Parker," he replies. "They make it in a lab. With emulsifiers, and vegetable oil."
Parker, face horrified, looks to Sophie and Hardison for confirmation.
"The wonders of modern science," Hardison says. Sophie just shrugs, and while Parker's mulling this over, she claps her hands together.
"I forgot to tell you guys," she says. "I'm auditioning for Hamlet."
Parker appears to be still thinking, but Hardison and Eliot half-turn to Sophie in unison, identical bright smiles on their faces.
"That's great!" Eliot says, at the same time as Hardison says: "Awesome!"
"Oh, thank you, guys," Sophie says, touched. "It's not exactly a sure thing. But," she spreads her hands wide in front of her, tries to envision the stage strongly enough for them to see it through her eyes. "Shakespeare!" she says excitedly, then decides her reading of the name doesn't quite sell it, and tries it again. "Shakespeare!"
When she looks back at them, their smiles have slipped a little, but then Nate comes into the room, and they all move toward him.
"People," he says, clapping his hands together. "The sooner we go through all this, the sooner we can get to work."
Oh, there's an incentive, Sophie thinks, but doesn't say. "Go, bid the soldiers shoot," she mutters, instead, and Nate shoots her a sharp look.
Parker and Eliot go to sit down, taking their coffee with them. They're drinking paper-cup-coffee in an abandoned office below the rooftop. It's empty, except for a single desk which Hardison has used to set up his laptop, and a few plastic chairs, and a disconnected phone sitting marooned in the center of the floor.
"So we get our bad guy into the vault," Hardison's saying. "And Sophie's floor plans," he points two fingers in her direction and winks at her, "Will show us exactly where to go. Now, this is our first payload. We don't get to keep this one."
"We don't get to keep any of them," Nate reminds him.
Sophie looks along the room, at the long line of windows and indented shapes on the carpet where furniture used to be. She looks at the phone again, wondering why it got left behind all alone like this. "Nate, I'm not sure you should be with him."
Eliot, who had been watching them, suddenly appears to see something outside the window that catches his attention, and goes to examine it further. Hardison refocuses his attention on his laptop, clicking on some screen and then typing furiously. Parker, sitting quietly, watches Sophie.
"We have a plan, Soph," Nate says evenly.
"I know we have a plan," she says. "I was there when you planned it, remember? I'm just saying, I think it would work better if you step back. Stay out of the first drop. Let him come to us."
Nate runs a hand through his hair; takes a few hurried steps, like he's planning to pace up and down the room, only he shortens it and turns back to her before he's walked past Parker.
He exhales, the sound sharp in the long, low room. "Where is this even-" he starts, and then stops himself. "Sophie, if I'm not with him, there's every chance he's going to try to con us. You know that."
Sophie holds his gaze. I don't care is what she wants to say, but of course she can't say that. It'll make her sound like a five-year-old.
"What's this about?" he asks.
"She's worried," Parker bursts out, speaking fast, as though she has to get the words out as quickly as she can. "Sophie's worried."
Nate looks to Parker, and then around at the rest of them. For a moment his face is expressionless, then he claps his hands again, rubbing the palms together. "Well," he says, and then more forcefully: "Well, okay, that's no problem. Worry is good. Worry keeps us alert. Let's just all keep our wits about us and stick to the plan, and it will all go according to-" his words trail off; he looks around at them, again.
"Plan," Hardison supplies.
"Yeah," Nate says. "Now, we still have a street recon to do and a run-through of the layout of the building." He separates his hands, then turns and walks out.
Sophie readjusts her skirt self-consciously and looks at the others. Parker stands up to follow Nate, and Eliot won't meet her eyes. Hardison, still partly shielding himself with his laptop, waves one hand past his own ear.
"What's that?" Eliot asks, watching him.
"The point," Hardison says. "Flying past Nate's head."
xx
She returns to her car after work and finds Parker sitting in the driver's seat. Sophie realizes she's getting used to surprises, and doesn't say a word, just moves around and lets herself in the passenger side instead, then hands Parker her keys.
"I don't need them," Parker says. "I could drive this baby to Mexico with any flat piece of metal."
"That's great, Parker," Sophie says, pulling down the sun visor.
"And most unflat pieces, too."
"Just use the key," Sophie says, shutting her eyes and leaning back in her seat.
Parker does-or Sophie assumes she does, she isn't opening her eyes-and the car rumbles into action. She can feel the late-afternoon sun on her face and see red light behind her closed eyelids.
"Also hard woods and plastics, and pieces of bone," Parker mutters.
Sophie chooses not to address it, although at the back of her mind she's a little bit concerned about whose bones Parker tested that practice on. "Are you sleeping on my couch again, then?"
"Yes," Parker says. "There's an issue with...with where I sleep right now."
It's an odd phrasing, Sophie thinks, but she doesn't press the issue. "You can stay as long as you like," she says, although Parker doesn't appear to be asking for permission.
"I promise we won't have sex," Parker says definitely. "Because we already talked about how we wouldn't."
Sophie opens her mouth to reply, then realizes she has absolutely no comeback to this. "Can we stop for chow mein?" she says, instead.
xx
Parker had picked out beer, and Sophie sips at an open bottle while simultaneously trying to loosen the chignon of hair at the base of her neck and open a Chinese food container. While she was distracted, Parker slips a hand through her arms under her elbow, extracting the moo shu pork like she was twisting through laser lines.
"I took Hardison free-climbing with me," she says conversationally. "Since Nate said you didn't really want to go."
Bless Nate, Sophie thinks. "What did he tell you about why I couldn't go?" she asks Parker, thinking of the myriad of excuses she herself could make up. Fear of heights. Inner ear imbalance. Ebola virus.
Parker looks confused. "He just said you didn't want to."
Sophie ponders. Nate always has been a terrible liar, and she's always thought it was because he doesn't take the craft seriously enough. Sometimes, though, she wonders. Maybe sometimes the truth really is easier, less hurtful, just right.
"How did Hardison enjoy it?" she asks.
"He complained a lot," Parker says.
"Of course."
"Next I'm going to show him a little more crawling through vents. We should all know more about that. It's useful."
"I don't know, Parker, I usually find doors work just as well for me."
While Parker rummages through the kitchen for extra soy sauce, Sophie's phone rings. Sophie flips the phone open with two fingers of one hand, stirring noodles with the other hand. Her hair, only partly freed, hangs around her face.
"It's Nate," Sophie says, looking at the screen and Parker gives her a I-should-care-about-this-why look, while spearing bamboo shoots with a fork.
Sophie keys the phone with one hand; slipped it between her ear and shoulder. "I entered the codes Hardison gave me," she says, without bothering to say hello. "I probably could have told you this tomorrow, but, everything went fine."
There's a pause on the other line, a scrape against the receiver that makes her wonder where he is.
"Oh," says Nate finally. "Oh, yeah, good."
"That wasn't what you called about," Sophie guesses.
"Hi, Nate," Parker says, picking up her food and going into the other room.
"Close enough," Nate says. "Was that Parker? Are you at home?"
"Yes and yes," Sophie says. "Why did you call me, then?"
There's a pause; another shuffle at the end of the line. "I-" Nate says. "The thing. I told you."
"Oh," says Sophie. "Checking whether I got access to the computers for Hardison. That was it, wasn't it?" She keeps every trace of sarcasm from her voice. The others really have no idea how good an actress she is. "Nothing else," she says, prompting him, and waits.
She's waiting a long time.
"Nothing else," he says in the end, softly. "Tell Parker I said hi. Good night, Sophie."
She stands for a moment, listening to the dial tone, then she switches off and drops the phone quickly, like she can't wait to get away from it, and follows Parker into the other room.
Parker's snuggled on the couch with the afghan, drinking from the lipstick-stained mouth of Sophie's beer in between forkfuls of noodles and meat. There's another beer on the table in front of her, but she seems to like Sophie's better.
"Give me that," Sophie says, reclaiming her drink, and sitting next to Parker. She misjudges, and ends up a little closer to Parker than she intended, and since she's seen Parker's issues with personal space expects her to move away.
But Parker doesn't move, except to keep eating. "Are you and Nate arguing?"
"No," Sophie says, and sighs. "We're not arguing. I don't think we're doing much of anything."
Parker smiles guilelessly. "That's okay then."
"Yeah," says Sophie, and pulls the corner of the afghan until it's covering her lap, too. "Yeah, I guess so."
xx
Sophie can hear Hardison in his office when she arrives at Leverage Consulting in the morning, sans Parker, who hadn't been there when she'd woken up. The conference room looks strange, in checkerboard blue light from the monitors, on but not transmitting; the overhead lights off. The other offices are closed doors and black strips underneath; Hardison's is the only one with signs of life, and she pushes the half-closed door and leans in against the jamb.
His head is bent over, and he's typing quickly into his computer, a regular rhythm, like he's writing something, not his regular hunt-and-peck single commands. Sophie wonders for a moment if she should leave him alone, but although he doesn't look up, he acknowledges her with a raised index finger, and so she waits silently.
When he finishes, he smacks what must be the enter key with satisfaction and looks up. "Hey," he says, lightheartedly for him, so early in the morning. "What's up?"
The offices don't really suit any of them, Sophie decides, except maybe Nate. There's too much dark wood in the desks, too many bookshelves and leather chairs. The modern lines of the conference room are more comfortable to her; clean, unencumbered lines and Scandinavian chairs Eliot could demolish with a kick.
"Sophie," Hardison says, clicking his fingers. "Earth to."
"Sorry," she says hurriedly, coming back into the conversation. "I entered the information in the bank manager's computer for you."
"Yeah, Nate told me."
"He did?"
"Yeah, he called me last night."
"Oh," says Sophie. "I thought-never mind."
"Problem?" Hardison asks her, his eyes focused on her. He's a kind person, she thinks, and it makes her feel worse.
"Of course not," she says. "Did you test it yet?"
Hardison looks at her for a long moment, then lets his gaze flick back to the monitor in front of him, like a mother routinely passing her gaze over a sleeping child. "All good," he says. "I have something else for today."
Sophie nods, and he opens a top drawer, rummages, and comes up with a flash drive. He leans across the table to give it to her, and she crosses the room to take it from his hand. The plastic is cool against her fingers.
"This has to go in T1," he says, before he lets go. "This is very important."
"Yes, the manager's computer," she says.
"He has two stations in his office," Hardison says firmly. "T1. Sophie, repeat after me."
"I heard you, I heard you," she says.
"Call me when you do it, I'll need you to password me in for remote access. I need a few minutes with it. Maybe five, no more, so make sure there's no-one around. Put your comm in, we'll need to stay in contact."
Sophie pouts, but finds her comm link in her purse and attaches it to her ear. "Means I have to wear my hair down," she says disapprovingly. "I look much less corporate."
"Looks real pretty," says Hardison, absently, without looking up at her. "Now what terminal were you going to use?"
"T25," Sophie says positively, and smiles when Hardison nearly knocks over his keyboard in horror. "You are such an old woman," she says.
She turns to leave, but as she does she looks again at the office, at the leather-bound books on the shelves, at the photographs framed in brass on the filing cabinet. She bends down to look closer, spends a minute looking through them.
"You know, Hardison, your fake kids are adorable."
When she looks around, he's still fixed on something on his screen, his scrolling hand beside him on the desk. "Thanks," he says. "I got them from a Gap commercial."
She fusses with her comm for a moment; hooks her hair behind her ear and then brushes it forward again. The earpieces are tiny; only very barely visible even with her hair swept back, but she doesn't like to take unnecessary chances.
"Why don't I have fake kids?" she asks, distracted.
"Too busy with your fake career," Hardison says.
Sophie sighs. "Story of my life, I suppose. Like William Shakespeare said. I am fortune's fool."
Hardison looks up at her. "That one's Romeo and Juliet," he says, and when Sophie raises an eyebrow: "What? I saw the movie." He adds, more sympathetically: "It's not so bad. You have a busy fake social life. Go out to dinner a lot with your fake friends. Have a fake cat."
Sophie considers for a moment. She's never had a cat. She's never really been any good at long-term relationships of any kind. She imagines it, for a minute, a little black-and-white ball of fluff running around her apartment, somehow miraculously bonsai-ed into permanent kittenhood. "Maybe I'll name him Horatio," she says.
Hardison sighs. "His name is Mister Kitty. He even has an account with your local veterinarian. This was all in the information packs I gave you. Didn't anyone read the information packs?"
"That's kind of a stupid name for a cat, you have to admit," Sophie says, turning to leave for real this time.
Hardison's voice floats after her. "I put a lot of work into those packs, you know."
xx
The lights are on in the conference room when she walks out, and Nate's at the desk, making notes from a thick book into a legal pad, in what she knows to be his genuinely illegible handwriting.
"'Morning," she says.
He looks up at her. There are dark circles under his eyes. She wonders if he's sleeping enough, if the surgery's left him with the kind of long-term inability to get comfortable she'd experienced herself, once upon a time.
It's different for Nate, though, not just a physical pain. He has trouble with hospitals. When she and the team had gone to see him, he'd been blasted on morphine for much of the first week, and then he'd started plotting logic puzzles on the back of his medical charts and devising reasons why he had to be discharged early and getting sharp around the edges.
The others had brought candy (mostly eaten by Hardison and Parker), balloons (Parker, it turned out, was inexplicably nervous around balloons, so Hardison had quickly re-gifted them to the children's ward) and magazines (mostly read by Eliot). And they'd hung around, trying to make Nate laugh and getting in the nurses' way (or in Eliot's case, becoming very popular with the nurses).
Sophie, mostly, had folded herself into a corner, left as soon as possible and arrived as little as possible, kept her voice low, and tried to avoid looking Nate in the eye, because of what she knew she'd see there.
"Going to work?" he says, now.
She nods, waves the flash drive before them both. "No rest for the wicked. I have to load it into...T7, I think he said," she finishes, stage-loud at the end.
"I heard that," Hardison calls from his office, and Sophie catches Nate's eye and smiles.
"Oh, by the way, do you have any cash on you? Hardison only ever has plastic."
Nate reached into his pocket. "You could try Eliot," he says, even as he takes out his wallet. "Although I think we both know what Parker's response would be if you asked her."
"Neither a borrower nor a lender be," Sophie quotes.
"I don't think she'd put it in those terms. What do you need it for?"
"Joelle's wedding shower," Sophie says. "We're all putting money in."
"Who's Joelle?"
"Teller number five," she says, and when Nate still looks blank: "My co-worker, Nate, try to keep up."
"You're getting very attached to this job," he observes, and hands her a bill, which she accepts between two fingers before looking at it.
"Five dollars? Nate, do you have any idea how much a wedding gift costs-well, I suppose you do-but come on. I am not going undercover as a cheapskate."
He goes through his pockets again, comes up with a twenty, which Sophie thinks is slightly better.
"We're not all international art thieves," he says mildly, at her look.
"Oh, I'll pay you back. Don't I always?"
"No," Nate says, the corners of his lips turning up.
Sophie hears the door open from the other room, and Parker breezes in. "Hey, Nate," she says, walking behind him and peering curiously over his shoulder at his writing pad. "Hey, roomie," she says to Sophie.
Nate blinks. "What?"
Parker slips the legal pad out from under his hand and turns away from him, leafing through it.
"Hey," Nate says, reaching around her to try and grab it back.
Hardison appears in the doorway of his office, leaning out into the hall where he can see them. "Sophie, you can not mix up-"
Then Eliot arrives, and Sophie decides it's time for a tactical withdrawal. She slips out with a mouthed goodbye to Eliot, who is already folding his arms protectively across his chest.
xx
Sophie checks her comm, tracing the shape of it in her ear, and types in the bank manager's password.
"Hardison," she says, keeping her voice low, even though she's already checked to make sure the office and lunchroom are deserted. "We're in."
"I'm in," Hardison replies, in the metallic, echoing tones she's used to hearing over the comms.
"Anything else?"
"Nah, Soph, just leave it open, I won't be long."
Sophie taps her fingernails on the desk and watches the screen. It's not interesting, and she tucks her hair behind her ear idly and sighs.
"Everything okay there?"
"Sure," Sophie says lightly. "Just a few more minutes, right?"
"That wasn't exactly what I meant," Hardison says.
"Hey, Sophie," Parker's voice comes over the comm.
"Oh, hi Parker," Sophie says. "What are you doing?"
"I'm helping Hardison," she says.
"She's very helpful," Hardison says. He's not bad at playing sarcasm straight himself, Sophie realizes.
They're silent for a long minute, apart from the faintest of scuffles that Sophie recognizes as movement, and barely audible clicks from Hardison's keyboard, and then eventually Hardison tells Sophie to extract the drive. She pockets it carefully, logs off the system and takes a long look at the desk, making sure everything's in the same place it was when she came in.
"I'll see you guys tonight?" Sophie asks.
"Yeah, you better," Hardison says.
"Hardison?" Sophie says. "Everything okay with you?"
"Nate's got updates for us," he says heavily.
Sophie pulls the door behind her, gently easing it back into the frame almost silently. "I'm not going to like it, am I?"
"I got a bad feeling about it," Hardison says.
"Hardison," Parker says, too loudly. She's never learned to regulate her volume over the comms. "You always have a bad feeling about everything."
"I'm very sensitive!" Hardison says.
"I'll see you later," Sophie says quietly, and goes back out front, waves at the tellers to show them she's back from her break, and carries on filing credit card applications, with only the slightest pang of desire every time she looks at a credit limit.
xx
"Sophie's apartment is always freezing," Parker's saying when Sophie arrives back at the office that evening.
"Optimum temperature for displaying artwork," Sophie says absently.
"You have one - cheap - painting," Parker says pointedly.
Sophie shrugs, and accepts the cup of coffee Hardison offers her. It's lukewarm, and too sweet for her: it must have been made for Nate. "Cheers."
"So," Hardison says. "How did you end up staying at Sophie's?"
"It's only temporary," Parker says.
"Yeah, what exactly is going on with your apartment, Parker?" Sophie asks. "Or your house. Or wherever it is you actually live."
"Trailer," says Parker, and then averts her eyes from both of them, as though she's said too much. "Bug problem," she goes on, looking at the floor.
"Oh," says Sophie, and then: "Oh, gross."
"Nasty," Hardison agrees. "I could get you a nice hotel room, you know."
"My apartment's nice," Sophie objects.
"Sophie's neighbors are interesting. And the air conditioning system in her apartment block is actually pretty challenging," Parker says, and looks up as Nate and Eliot enter the room. Nate's in costume for his meeting with the mark: khaki pants and a Hawaiian shirt that Sophie thinks, oddly, brings out the color of his eyes.
"You guys ready?" Nate asks quietly. "We've got work to do. Hardison, display the new schematics, please, and we can go through them."
"It's your funeral," Sophie thinks she hears Hardison say under his breath.
xx
There's silence for a long few minutes when Hardison displays additions and amendments for them, and they read over them, letting it all sink in. Sophie ticks off the changes in her mind: Parker will be breaking into the vault alone, now, while Hardison provides the distraction. Eliot's position's changed to across the street, diagonally and south, closer to the 7-Eleven where Sophie's been buying her coffee in the mornings. Nate's going to be there for the second drop.
Nate's going to be there for the second drop.
"What is this?" Sophie asks quietly, pushing back her chair and walking to the monitors, her eyes fixed on the screen. She taps the nearest one with a fingernail, a hollow tik-tik.
"Nate?"
Nate doesn't answer for a moment, just runs a hand through his hair and sighs.
Sophie feels a snap, like an electrical current of rage, at the base of her spine.
"Nate," she says again, more pointedly.
He sighs again, a long-suffering sound that makes Sophie angrier. "It makes the most sense for this con, Soph. I'll be with the mark for the second drop-"
"No-one ever stays for the second drop, Nate. It's suicide. If he starts putting it together early-"
"I'll be fine," he interrupts smoothly.
"And meanwhile I've been out of position since before the second drop! What was the point in even putting me in-"
Nate shrugs. "I don't need you for this leg, Soph."
Sophie is ridiculously, irrationally offended, but she's starting to get a clear idea of what is going on here. "Nate," she says more softly. "There's getting back on the horse, and then there's - deliberately jumping on some crazy wild mustang to punish yourself."
Nate shakes his head. "That's not what this is about!" He seems to hear himself, and lowers his voice, although Sophie notices belatedly that they're the only ones left in the room. "That's not what this is about," he says again.
"Then why am I out of the bank before he even comes in for the second drop?"
His words come stiffly, hesitantly. "It's - safer. That way."
"Are you-" she starts, and then: "Safer for-". And then she stops for a moment, takes a breath. "You could have left me, you know. I would have been fine."
Nate looks up at her then, from across the conference table. The light of the monitors is behind Sophie; his eyes are dark in the shadows cast, almost unreadable. He stares at her for a long moment, and she looks back unblinking.
"I'm not leaving you behind," he says finally. "Not there. Not here. Not ever."
He's talking about the con. She's almost certain he's talking about the con, but she's always been stupidly sentimental, and it's probably the air conditioning that's making her eyes mist. She curses under her breath, swipes fiercely at her eyes with one pinstriped sleeve.
"You have to be out before the second drop," she says, as soon as she thinks she can trust her voice. "Damn you, Nate, give me your handkerchief."
"Allergies?" he asks mildly, reaching into a pocket. "How did you know I had a handkerchief?"
"You always have a bloody handkerchief." Sophie wraps the cloth around a finger; dabs at her eye gently, so as not to displace her makeup. "I don't suppose you remember that time you had to make me a sodding pressure bandage out of one."
"You shot me first," Nate counters, and steps back.
Sophie slips around the conference table and blocks his opportunity for exit into the offices. He doesn't look like he'll run, but he's always been a slippery customer.
"Nate," she says, closes the gap between them and puts a tentative hand on his garishly shirted chest. It feels awkward all of a sudden, much too intimate, and she smiles flirtatiously to cover her nerves. "I have to tell you something absolutely deadly serious."
"Sophie," he says, breathes, almost.
"Please don't get shot any more," she says. "I'm really getting tired of it." It's supposed to be a joke, but the tone of her voice just won't co-operate, and her voice breaks on the last few words so she has to whisper to get them out at all.
"I'll take your advice," he says, leaning into her. "Don't I always?"
"No," she says, and tries to smile.
xx
Parker and Eliot come out of hiding after it's been quiet for a while, but Hardison remains gone to ground.
"You guys are finished arguing, right?" Parker asks.
"We weren't arguing," Sophie answers automatically.
"Discussing the con," Nate says. "Hashing out the details. That's all."
"Though this be madness, yet there is method in it," Sophie says, and receives blank looks. She sighs. "Let's face it," she goes on, catching Nate's eye. "We all still have a lot to learn from one another."
"Oh, yeah," Parker says enthusiastically. "I mean, that non-dairy creamer thing blew my mind."
Nate frowns. "That's not exactly-"
"Exactly," Sophie says smoothly. Proximity has made her familiar, she doesn't even raise an eyebrow, and Parker smiles delightedly. Eliot's gaze flicks from each of them to another, his face expressionless, although Sophie thinks she detects a slight relaxation in his stance.
"So, we have changes?" he asks, practically. It's different, Sophie thinks, the way Eliot addresses his question. It's for Nate, but he leaves it open; lets his gaze settle on Sophie for a long moment, too.
"Yes," says Nate, without inflection. "I'm not going on the second drop. Sophie's schedule doesn't change."
"What if what you said happens?" Parker asks, and Nate and Eliot both look confused.
Sophie translates for them: "What if the mark gets cold feet, before the second drop."
"He won't," says Nate. "We'll sell it. We're good at this."
"We are," Sophie says, and this time the smile comes easily. "We should get to work. Like the bard said: the game's afoot."
Hardison's voice floats from somewhere that seems suspiciously like the air-conditioning vent. "Sophie, you know that's Sherlock Holmes, right?"
xx
End.
xx
Feedback of any kind would be gratefully received. Thanks for reading.
Kshar
January 2013