Work Text:
This is what Sophie remembers:
A mark pushed a little too far.
Harry’s voice, suddenly tight with anxiety: “He’s got a gun.”
A chase along the pier.
A gunshot, a spray of blood, and a loud splash in the water below.
Harry, gone.
---
It happens like this:
“Stephen Ignatius Martin Prescott the Third. Millionaire, philanthropist, all-around nice guy.”
The sarcasm in Breanna’s voice is unmistakable.
“Not a nice guy?” Harry prompts.
“No”, she says.
It turns out Stephen Ignatius Martin Prescott III is a philanthropist in name only, using his many “charitable” “donations” to hide a whole damn lot of money laundering, exploiting hundreds of employees in the process, and, to top it all off, redirecting funds away from actual charities to make himself even richer.
“Eww”, says Parker, and Harry can’t help but agree.
Five minutes and all necessary background info later, Parker, Sophie and Eliot are arguing about what con to run (“The Count of Monte Cristo!” – “Don’t we need an actual mountain for that one?” – “Ohh, it’s been a while since we’ve stolen a mountain!” – “How about the Kung Pao Chicken?” – “Can I be the chimney sweep??” – “I don’t know, Eliot, I really don’t want to risk another broken collarbone.” – “Maybe we should run the Hug the Donkey!” – “No way! Nuh uh.”). Breanna looks back and forth between the three of them like she’s the spectator at a particularly bizarre tennis match. Harry just chooses to stay out of it entirely. (He’s still not convinced they don’t make up half of these just to mess with him.)
They settle on the Michigan Menace (“Aww, Hardison is gonna be so disappointed he’s not here for this”), which to Harry sounds more like a sports team than a con, but who is he to argue with seasoned criminals?
It goes okay; not their best job, but certainly not the worst either. The mark very nearly catches Breanna sneaking out of his office, which means Sophie has to strip down to a bikini top to distract him, and if Harry thought things were awkward between them before this, well, this only makes it worse.
But they hook the guy and proceed to take him for everything he’s got and then some. Parker is still emptying out his fourth safe (Harry hasn’t seen her this excited since Sophie suggested they replace all of Fletcher Maxwell’s paintings overnight), Breanna is doing her part at HQ, and Harry is headed with Prescott to the marina where he keeps his boat (Parker had warned Harry that he better check if there’s another safe there, and had threatened bodily harm in case he missed it, but Harry thinks she was kidding... probably). Eliot and Sophie are already waiting, hidden away in another boat nearby, just in case the mark needs more incentive to hand over the last of the documents they need.
Things go exactly as planned, and Harry thinks that playing the sleezy, smarmy asshole kind of character shouldn’t come as easily to him as it does, but perhaps the many years of evil lawyering had one upside to them.
Maybe he’s feeling too sure of himself, or maybe the mark is just the tiniest bit smarter than they all gave him credit for, because he catches on, and within the space of two heartbeats, he’s gone bright red in the face and pulled a gun on Harry, and Harry starts running. Off the boat onto the pier, and forward, wherever, anywhere, as long as it’s away from this crazed former millionaire.
He knows Sophie and Eliot are close by, but as quickly as this situation has escalated, Harry isn’t sure even Eliot can get to him in time. All he can hear is the blood rushing in his ears and his own panting. He almost misses the loud ‘bang’ of the gun, feels a searing pain in his arm before the noise has fully registered.
And then he’s in the cold water, doesn’t remember the fall, but thinks how nice it is that the water’s cool because now at least his arm no longer hurts quite so much.
It’s his last coherent thought before everything goes fuzzy and dark around the edges.
---
Interlude:
Sophie Devereaux, aged 47, loses her husband. He dies of a massive heart attack caused by long-term alcohol abuse.
Annie Kroy, aged 15, loses her pot to a couple of blokes with knives, and while the crime goes unsolved, her ma makes sure the right people suffer.
Penelope Lewis, aged 37, has to put down her cat Whiskers after months of kidney disease. She’s never known loss, and no one around her understands why she’s so upset over a pet.
Lara Wright, aged 3, loses both of her parents in a mugging gone wrong and goes to live with an aunt and uncle she’s never met.
Catherine Clive, aged 28 and aged 31, loses two unborn children before she gives up trying for good. She and her husband divorce soon after.
Alessia Romano, aged 23, loses her best friend to a religious cult and never hears from her again.
Indira MacAllister, aged 26, drives the car that crashes into a tree at night, killing her older sister in the passenger seat.
Sophie Devereaux, aged 52, loses her—
---
The past:
It’s a month and two days before the moment they first come across Stephen Ignatius yadda, yadda, yadda, and Harry has just spent the day in court, stopping in at HQ on his way home to maybe catch one of his friends for a chat. (Oh, who’s he kidding? He’s not driving through half of New Orleans and back in rush-hour traffic just to spar with Eliot.)
Sophie is already sitting at the bar, as though she’s been waiting for him, and part of him likes the idea, even if it’s probably just a coincidence—likes the thought that she might enjoy sitting here with him as much as he does with her.
When she sees him, her smile lights up the room, and yeah, he knows he’s got it bad. It’s something he’s been struggling with lately—not the feeling itself, being in love with her is easy (natural, even, an inevitability from the moment they met), but with not telling her about it.
He knows, from a logical standpoint, that he should keep his mouth shut and, if anything, wait for her to come to him. But he kept his true feelings hidden for so many years that even this kind of dishonesty feels like a lie, and he really doesn’t need any more of that voice in the back of his mind telling him he’s bad, worthless, vile.
So yeah, the struggle is real, as his daughter keeps saying (he’s not entirely sure he’s using the phrase correctly, but she’s not here to mock him, so it’s fine).
Then again, he thinks as he sits down next to Sophie, can he really call it a struggle when he enjoys spending time with her this much?
Before he knows it, they’re engrossed in conversation, about anything and everything, from their daughters over Parker’s choice of outfit during the last con to the new play performing next week at the Saenger.
She’s telling him a story from her early days as a grifter, and he loves those, so much so that he knows he must be looking at her like she hung the moon. One of these days, it’s just going to slip out, how much he adores her.
Today is not that day, he thinks, for better or worse, as she wraps up her story and looks at the watch on her wrist.
“It’s getting late.”
Oh, right, he had planned on being home two hours ago. But there’s no one waiting for him, just paperwork and leftover Chinese, and for some reason he can’t put his finger on, his companion looks even more beautiful than usual tonight.
Harry gets up from his chair and reaches for the light little jacket she’s got lying on the chair next to her, and holds it out to her just like he was taught at age nine.
“Why thank you, Mr. Wilson”, she says with that musical lilt that means she’s either particularly happy or about to mock him relentlessly. (He’s fine with either, really.)
She slips into the jacket and he carefully avoids touching her skin.
While Sophie is picking up her bag, he’s leaning over the bar, intent on cleaning up a bit so Eliot doesn’t yell at him again in the morning (something something about nobody respecting his space—Harry had stopped listening because while he knows Eliot wouldn't hurt a fly (unless that fly had hurt innocent people first), it had honestly been a little scary).
So he puts the half-empty bottle back with its many comrades, and reaches to put the glasses into the sink (they’re not to touch the dishwasher, Eliot has A System and they’d just mess that up). Sophie’s one step ahead, though, already holding out the tumblers, and when he grabs for them, this time their skin does touch.
It’s like a current that runs through him, and that’s exactly why he’s been trying to avoid touching her for weeks. He doesn’t do anything as dramatic as jerk his hands away, or inhale sharply. He does linger, though, his fingers wrapped around hers wrapped around the glass, her skin soft and warm.
He isn’t quite sure, but he thinks her pupils are a little wider than usual, her breathing the slightest bit shallow, but it could just be the low light and his own wishful thinking.
She still hasn’t let go off the glasses, and maybe that’s what gives him the courage he has thus far been lacking. Slowly, slowly, he tilts forward onto the balls of his feet and leans into her. In the end, she is the one to inhale sharply, and that snaps him out of the haze he’s in.
“Harry”, she says, and the regret in her voice is louder than her little gasp was, “we shouldn’t.”
He nods and turns away, tumblers in hand, because it’s the right thing to do, though his mind is already in overdrive. “Shouldn’t”, not “can’t”—because of course they could; they’re adults without any other ties—, and both are miles and miles from “don’t want to”. So the “shouldn’t” isn’t a “won’t”, unless of course she thinks he’s in this just for one night, in which case they really shouldn’t (and wouldn’t). But she knows him too well for that, doesn’t she?
It’s too confusing to make sense of tonight, and he wants to talk about what nearly just happened, but maybe they shouldn’t do that, either. Instead, they walk to the front door in a strained sort of silence, and he hates that things are going to be awkward now. He should have just been happy with how things were, should have kept his mouth shut and his lips to himself.
At the door, she turns towards him, and her face is as closed to him as it last was the year they met, when he was still blundering from one mistake into the next.
He wants to say something, apologise or make her laugh with a bad joke, but does neither, and she whispers “good night, Harry” and walks out the door.
---
The present:
He’s gone.
“Go home”, Eliot says to her after half an hour of searching along the shore. “I’ll keep looking.”
Sophie doesn’t argue, doesn’t tell him not to bother either, despite knowing Harry isn’t coming back. She gets into the car and drives home on autopilot. Not to her apartment, but home, to where they spend nearly every evening sitting at the bar, talking more than drinking, laughing and not even pretending they want to be anywhere else. Well, used to spend nearly every evening, she thinks.
She’s tempted by the array of bottles in front of her, filled with liquids in various shades of brown. She knows they would numb at least some of the pain that hasn’t even started yet. But she doesn’t want that. She goes to her room instead, lies down on the bed without taking off so much as a shoe.
He’s gone.
She thinks back to the moment they had last month, when he almost kissed her. She had stopped him at the last second, and at the time had been so sure it was the right choice. They were colleagues, friends. They couldn’t be more, shouldn’t be more than that. They were too close for it to be casual; anything that happened between them would have been real, would have meant something, and she simply couldn’t lose her heart like that again. But maybe she’s lost it anyway, she thinks. Maybe she should have just given in, because even without that kiss, even without taking him to bed, she feels like she’s lost everything.
Twenty minutes pass, half an hour, then another ten. The building is quiet. In the back of her mind, she briefly wonders where Breanna went off to, and why Parker isn’t back yet. But it doesn’t matter.
He’s gone.
“I’ve got him”, Eliot says inside her ear. “He’s alive.”
She doesn’t believe him until they make it home.
It’s Eliot who knocks at her door, and she makes herself get up to unlock it.
He takes one look at her face and clenches his jaw before speaking.
“He’s okay. Bullet just grazed his arm, but with the fall and the current, he got knocked around a bit. Can’t believe Hardison still hasn’t made those damn earbuds waterproof.”
Sophie can feel herself start thawing at Eliot’s low grumble, but there’s still a part of her that is ice cold.
“I stitched up his arm, gave him some painkillers. Shouldn’t even leave a scar. He’s okay, Sophie.”
He’s looking at her intently, waiting for a reaction, or for her to meet his eyes. When she does, he gives a small nod.
“Parker took Breanna home, I think she was a bit shaken up. I’m gonna go, too. Call me if you need anything.”
He turns away, and Sophie finally finds her voice: “Thank you, Eliot.”
She’s still debating what she should be doing (go downstairs to talk to him? offer to drive him home? get back into bed and sleep for a week?) when he’s suddenly in front of her, alive and mostly whole. Harry.
Everything inside her comes alive all at once, flooded with relief, the kind of relief she hasn’t felt since Nate tried to fix that leaky roof and fell off the ladd— well, damn.
It’s not just relief, though, it’s anger, too. And fear and happiness and pain and love.
She hisses at him, “Don’t you ever do that to me again”, and she knows with absolute certainty that he’s about to apologise, so she takes two quick steps towards him and kisses him, all tongue and teeth.
She doesn’t know what Eliot said to him, doesn’t care—all she needs right now is to reassure herself that he really is alive, hasn’t died, hasn’t gone and left her behind.
“Harry”, she says in between kisses, just to hear herself say his name.
“Harry”, when she helps him out of his clothes, sea water and drying blood having ruined them for good.
“Harry”, when he asks her if she’s sure. She pulls his mouth back to hers in answer to his question.
“Harry”, when she licks at his throat where his pulse is pounding, one, two, threefourfive beats of his heart.
“Harry”, when he tries to take her shirt off her and winces at the tug to his injury. She bats his hands away and does it herself.
“Harry”, when she pushes him down on the bed and follows him, skin on skin, nowhere to hide.
“Harry”, when he enters her, eyes locked on hers. He’s not smiling, but she can see everything he’s feeling right there in his gaze.
Time slows, or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe they slow, maybe her heart and brain are finally catching up with each other. She knows at least some of this is simply shock, adrenaline, norepinephrine, her sympathetic nervous system all out of whack, but maybe it’s the catalyst she needed to finally be honest with herself about her feelings because this right here, with him surging inside her, feels like it was meant to be.
He’s as worked up as she is, and his hands on her hips are leaving bruises she’ll have to keep touching over and over later, when she’s alone.
Harry moans her name once, sharply, and comes, dragging her along with him over the edge.
All she wants is to collapse on top of him, sleep for a while, and then do this all over again, but she knows he must be in pain, so she slides to the side, mindful of his injury, and puts her head onto his other shoulder. His good arm slips around her back, fingers dancing lazily across her spine as he presses a kiss to her forehead.
“Harry”, she says. It’s not ‘I love you’, but his smile says he understands anyway.