Work Text:
If he'd been in bed alone, Eliot would have been drifting in and out of sleep with this many endorphins in his system. As it was, he felt pretty damn relaxed. Even if Sophie insisted on tracing the muscles in his bare shoulder with the tip of her finger.
He smiled down at her. "You like those, huh?"
She smiled back. She had some pretty nice shoulders herself. "Well, they're a bit thrilling, aren't they?" She wriggled and laughed a little self-deprecatingly, as if it was anti-intellectual to like beefy guys. Suddenly Eliot thought about Nate (brilliant and out of shape) and wondered if Sophie was just blowing smoke up his ass.
"They're not supposed to be thrilling," he snapped. "I'm not some gym bunny. I need these for work."
She blinked, her smile fading. Now Serious Sophie was in his bed. Serious Sophie made Eliot squirm a little—on the inside, anyway. On the outside he showed no fear.
"It's all right to want attention," she said. "It doesn't make you shallow."
Inside, Eliot squirmed a lot more. "In my line of work, attention gets you killed."
"We're in the same line of work, Eliot." She sounded affronted now.
Eliot rolled away to face the wall. "You spending the night?"
She hesitated. "Can I?"
"Suit yourself."
He could feel her shrug behind him. "I'm too tired to get dressed." She curled up on her own side of the bed, tactfully not touching him. Maybe she just knew exactly how to get what she wanted, because Eliot heaved a sigh and rolled back, pulling her in to spoon.
"Mmm, strong arms," she murmured, and laughed when he made a disgusted sound.
***
"Eliot," she said a few days later, "I've been thinking, and I want to do a little private grifting training with you."
"Train Hardison or Parker," Eliot said curtly. "I haven't fucked up any jobs recently that I can remember."
"You haven't been lead grifter on any jobs recently that I can remember either."
Eliot pressed his lips together.
"You're great in certain roles," she said. "Fantastic, actually. There's no one on the team I'd rather have as backup."
What about Nate? he thought sourly...but Nate wasn't backup. Nate was a partner.
"I just think you have a lot of raw talent and I want to develop it. The first step is getting you past your fear of attracting attention."
Eliot stiffened. "Thanks, but no thanks."
"You like it," she insisted. "I know you do. The baseball con, the country singer con. You love the limelight."
He felt hot with embarrassment. "That wasn't about the limelight."
"I'll trade you for it." She leaned across the kitchen counter with a glint in her eye, low-key about it but as excited as a kid on Christmas morning to bargain with him, and all at once he could think of a lot of things he wanted from her.
"You'll let me teach you to cook."
She made a face. "Eliot...I don't cook."
He raised his eyebrows and waited.
She threw her hands up. "Fine! Deal." They shook on it. "Be at my place at eight p.m. on Friday night. Wear a suit. No, wear a tux."
Eliot groaned. What had he gotten himself into?
***
He showed up with a tux and a dozen roses. Sophie cooed, snipping the ends off to put them in water. She was still in her stocking feet, wearing a tight red dress covered with sequins, her hair curled and sprayed twice as big as normal. She grinned at him. "I've got some bling for you. We're going to a casino. Pick a character. A rich character."
He crossed his arms. "Oil millionaire."
She rolled her eyes. "All right, I'll let you stay in your comfort zone that much. But this isn't going to be your usual soft-spoken down-home boy whose mama raised him right. You're going to light up the room." Without warning, she tried to poke an earring into his ear.
"Ow! Let me do that!" He plucked the enormous diamond stud out of her hand. "Dammit, Sophie—"
"Put it on."
So he did, and the two gold rings, and the cufflinks. They all winked and caught the light and were the opposite of unobtrusive. He didn't get it. Shouldn't conning be about blending in, about passing, about people not realizing there was something off about you? Instead all she did was make everybody want to know about her. Right now she was putting on some shiny gold-and-red necklace that actually dripped down between her breasts, vanishing into her cleavage.
Then she handed him a wedding ring. "Tonight, I'm your trophy wife. Do you want to pick our name?"
He put the ring on, noticing the enormous diamond on her finger for the first time. His collar felt a little too tight.
She put on a white fur coat and waited for him to hold the door for her.
***
They paused just inside the door of the casino. "Stand up straight," she instructed him quietly, putting a hand between his shoulder blades and pushing. "Imagine you're ten feet tall. Feel yourself expanding to fill the whole room."
"It's a pretty big room."
She ignored him. "Look around and imagine yourself wrapping around everyone here, even the people who don't know we're here, who can't see us. Now walk in and pretend to laugh at something I said. Loudly."
"Look, isn't this loud flashy millionaire thing more Nate's style?"
"It doesn't have to be." She smiled fondly for a second before her eyes focused back on Eliot, promising a private joke. "Nate has a very distinctive style. You can be loud and flashy and still kind and likable."
Eliot wasn't sure he believed that, except—Sophie and Hardison were two of the most likable people he knew, so he guessed it was true.
"Just be happy," she said gently, which annoyed the shit out of Eliot, because a person could be happy without making a big show of it. "Imagine you want to share that with everyone here."
Eliot looked around at the room full of rich assholes. "I think they're doing fine without me."
She leaned in to kiss him. "Make it work," she murmured.
He thought she'd drag him into the room, but she didn't. She leaned her head on his shoulder and waited demurely.
It felt wrong, her waiting to follow his lead. He didn't like it. He didn't like everyone looking at him. Imagine you're ten feet tall indeed. The only thing a short guy got himself when he strode around like a peacock was laughed at. But he squared his shoulders and straightened. Looking out over the room, he thought, You're mine now.
And you know, it was kind of a rush. It felt nice to let himself feel special. Impressive. Pathetic, he told himself, but he stepped out into the middle of the carpet, looked at Sophie's profile, and thought about the video Hardison had shown him on YouTube yesterday. He laughed. Loudly.
Sophie joined in, pushing her fur coat off her shoulders, and suddenly everyone was looking at them. How did she do that?
He led her to the window and bought five thousand dollars in chips. "That enough for you, sweetheart?"
"Oh, you know I leave the money stuff to you, sugar," she said, suddenly a Southern girl. Eliot hid a smile.
He didn't have the attention span for poker or craps tonight, so he figured the roulette table was it. He sized up the other players. He didn't really have any desire to show off for them, but he guessed he had to if he wanted Sophie to learn to cook. Maybe if he imagined he was creating a distraction?
"Howdy, folks." Grinning big, he let his chips clatter as he set them down. "I'm feeling lucky tonight!"
Sophie gave a breathless, excited laugh and leaned over to blow on his chips.
"Of course, I'm already the luckiest man in the world." Eliot laid a hand on the small of her back, which was pretty much totally revealed by her dress. He could slip his hand right inside her dress and cup her ass. Her breasts, too, because with that back she definitely wasn't wearing a bra. Instead he curved his fingers around her waist, just an inch or two under the polyester blend.
She nestled in close. "And I'm the luckiest woman. You don't think I'd have given up my career for just any oil millionaire, do you?"
Everyone at the table was looking at them and Sophie had to announce that he made her give up her career. Several women gave him dirty looks. "I never asked you to do that," he said between gritted teeth.
"I know, sugar, you're the most understanding man in the world, but it just wouldn't feel right being with other men when I'm so crazy in love with you."
Some jaws dropped. Eliot swallowed, suddenly vividly imagining Sophie as...an escort? A porn star? "They weren't paying you what you were worth," he said a little hoarsely, because no porn star got paid what Sophie would be worth in DVD sales. Unless she acted in them like she did on stage—
"Maybe I should have just gotten a new agent," Sophie drawled pensively.
Eliot cracked up, for real, and pulled her in so close that her breasts jiggled as he laughed. She kissed his cheek, and for a second Eliot didn't even care that everyone was looking at them and he'd just lost a thousand dollars at the stupidest game in the world.
It didn't last. Sophie kept trying to get him to tell stories about his fake life—which was fine, he could do it and he did, but he didn't enjoy it the way she and Nate and Hardison always seemed to. He just...he and Parker, they didn't expand that far. Filling a room felt like stretching himself too thin.
This pretending to be married stuff was weird, too. Oh, sure, he'd taken Sophie out before plenty of times, but somehow faking it seemed like a bigger deal.
Soon his five thousand dollars was gone. Eliot was trying to decide if this was the most expensive date he'd ever been on or not when Sophie squealed, "Oh, look, sugar, karaoke!"
Eliot sighed with relief. Karaoke he could manage. They put their names on the list and waited at the bar, where she tried to get him to talk to the poor bartender who was just trying to do his job on a busy night.
Somehow the whole place got quiet for Sophie's plaintive, slightly tipsy rendition of "Both Sides Now." Eliot hid a smile, and then caught himself and grinned openly at her. Her Southern accent wasn't bad, exactly—miles better than Hardison's, that was for damn sure—but singing was different and it kept slipping.
He was next. He kind of thought the guy he was playing would do "You Shook Me All Night Along," but Eliot wanted...something different, and he thought it was also in character. He took the mic and looked right at Sophie.
She's got a way about her
Don't know what it is
But I know that I can't live without her
She's got a way of pleasin'
I don't know why it is
But there doesn't have to be a reason, anyway...
Sophie put her hands on her heart and looked weepy, which could have been an act but Sophie was a sucker for flattery so it probably wasn't all an act.
Eliot put his heart into it, really sang, and she looked pleased by that too.
When he got off stage, feeling self-conscious, she threw herself into his arms and planted one on him. "Drag me to the bathroom," she whispered in his ear, and Eliot fucking hated people who hooked up in the bathroom when other people were trying to use it, but he was pretty turned on right now and once in a lifetime, what the hell.
He picked her up and threw her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. She let out a shriek of laughter and pounded playfully on his back. Slapping her on the ass, he carried her into the women's room—avoiding eye contact with the shocked women at the sinks—and straight into the handicapped stall. Eliot also hated people who took the handicapped stall when they didn't need it, but he reminded himself, once in a lifetime, and locked the door.
Sophie went right down on her knees.
"Get up here," he growled, but she tossed her hair teasingly, still in character, and reached for his fly. Eliot, looking right down her dress, remembered with dismay that he was wearing suspenders with his damn tux. "I don't think that floor is clean."
She rolled her eyes, expertly unbuttoning his suspenders and tugging his pants down. "Who are you, Hardison?"
Eliot flashed on Hardison sucking him off in a bathroom stall and immediately went from half-hard to very, very hard.
"Be loud," she whispered, and licked right around the head of his dick. "Let them all know what we're doing."
Eliot didn't like fake noises in bed. He didn't really like fake anything in bed. "I think they all know what we're doing."
"We could be doing anything in here." Her eyes glinted with delighted mischief as she jacked him. "Planning a robbery, digging a tunnel..."
He let his head thunk back loudly against the wall, and when she swallowed him he said, louder than he'd actually meant to, "Jesus, woman, the mouth on you!"
Somehow she managed to suck him in an approving way.
"Get up here," he said again.
Pulling off, she mouthed Louder.
"Get up here!"
She stood, looking smug as Eliot fumbled in his wallet for a condom. "Don't fake it," he warned her as he rolled it on.
"I never have to with you. You're very considerate."
His mouth curved up. "Considerate, am I?" He lifted her up against the wall with his arms under her thighs, shoved her panties aside and drove into her. She gave a surprised, happy shriek and put her arms around his neck, and maybe he didn't actually care if the noise was real or not. She was plenty wet, as he'd known she would be by now. Supporting her against the wall with his body and one hand, he slipped the other hand between them to rub her clit with his thumb.
"Oh!" she said. "Oh, oh, harder!"
"Any harder and the tile will crack." But he gave it to her harder, because he understood that sometimes it felt realer when it hurt a little. "Look at me," he demanded. "Look at me."
She did, quieted right down except for a few small, helpless moans and gave him Serious Sophie in this ridiculous casino bathroom stall. Like she could see everything inside him, everything he'd done, and she really didn't care. Real or fake, he needed that. He stared right into her eyes as the pleasure built in the background until she shut her eyes and came. Burying his face in her shoulder, he let go, even enjoying the way she laughed and pushed his hair away from her mouth.
They'd cleared the bathroom, so Sophie took her time adjusting her hair in the mirror, mussing it up and then making it look like she'd tried ineptly to fix it.
Eliot redid his ponytail, half-wiped her lipstick off and waited by the door with his hands in his pockets, feeling a lot more self-conscious than after the karaoke. She waited to reapply her lipstick until she was walking through the bathroom door he held open for her, a little unsteady on her feet. Lipstick could get smudged from a lot of things, but he was pretty sure everyone guessed she'd had her mouth on his dick.
She couldn't hide the edge of a smug smile, or maybe she wasn't trying to. She liked that everyone in the entire joint was looking at her and wishing they were in Eliot's shoes.
And the thing was, Eliot didn't give a shit about attention. He knew damn well that what he craved was recognition. It wasn't any less pathetic, but it was different. He wanted...he wanted people to see something in him that was worth...something.
The smartest, sexiest woman in the place was on his arm. Everywhere she went, a million rings of love surrounded her, and she thought it was worth her time to spend an entire evening trying to make him feel good. Hell, Eliot had heard her blow off dinner with mastermind Nate Ford to be here. So yeah, he'd preen a little for that.