Title: A Person of Consequence [Sophie/Eliot]
Prompt by: Leverageland
Rating: PG-13
Setting: unspecified with flashback to pre-series
Word Count: 745
It was some time after she gave up Charlotte, but before she settled on Sophie. She was young then, and perhaps a little sillier than she should have been, especially that night. She was Jenny at the time, at least it was name she thought she was using. It might have been Karen or Elizabeth, any one of her many aliases. She knew them all inside out, but which she was using at a particular time occasionally eluded her, especially when it was not a con she was trying to recall.
Late evening in a bar, she had gone in only to hide herself in a crowd. Confidence and good looks combined attracted attention, which usually worked to her advantage, but that night she had felt the need to blend, to observe perhaps, but mostly to relax whilst she had the chance.
The bright lights and busy atmosphere of the city did not fade at night. The people who lived here were built to be animated at all hours, and she loved that, loved the buzz, the excitement, the thrill of always being in the centre of things and kept on her toes.
She had not gone there looking for anyone in particular, or anyone at all. She needed no company for a good time, but could find plenty if she did, be it male or female. Of all people, she had not expected him. Her usual type was talk, dark, handsome, usually older than herself. He was different, younger, simple and charming.
Perhaps that was unfair. He was more than he seemed, more than the old jeans and scuffed boots, the long hair pulled back beneath a bandanna. He appeared as if he just tumbled straight off the ranch to land behind that bar and serve drinks, but Sophie saw more in him than rough good looks.
An old soul, that was the right phrase. In those deep blue eyes of his, the whole world waited to be discovered. He gave her the next drink on the house, with a wink that brought forth a girlish giggle she didn't have to fake. She watched him work the bar with ease, every girl smitten, every man jealous, but he was back to her before long, engaging her in conversation.
She would have had him down as only a man for action, good with his hands but perhaps not very intelligent. He proved her wrong, in fact he called her on her assumptions the first chance he got. The grifter who was not prone to bouts of embarrassment knew she had blushed under his gaze, and found the effect he could have quite strange.
It was foolish to think they would last more than one night. She would be breezing out of town tomorrow, and his plans were similar. They were both drifters in their own way, though neither revealed their true profession. She doubted he was only a bartender, and was sure he saw through her own lies somehow, though many a man had fallen for them before and would again.
Remembering that night still made Sophie shiver in the most delicious way. Rough hands on delicate skin, breathless whispers and moans of pleasure, a heat of passion she had hardly known before or since.
It was strictly one show, no encores. He warned her in those very words before it ever began, and she agreed all too easily. She never did expect to see him again.
"Sophie?" Nate's voice near her ear startled her from her daze and she came back to reality to find four pairs of eyes staring at her.
"Where'd you go?" asked Hardison curiously.
"We thought you died," said Parker, waving her hand in front of the grifter's face even now.
Sophie looked past them all to the team's muscle and then quickly glanced away, clearing her throat.
"I'm fine," she said quickly. "Sorry. Please, carry on," she urged Nate and Hardison, shifting uncomfortably in her seat until all eyes left her.
She could hardly tell them where her mind had wandered to. She knew already she was the only one to recall that night, her team-mate having blocked her out or thrown her in a box in his memory with so many other women loved and lost in the space of a night. It was different for her, as she supposed it was for all the rest. No warm-blooded woman would ever forget a night with Eliot Spencer.
