Work Text:
If there’s any way to pin Sophie Devereaux down, it’s by her love of tea.
No matter what character, which skin Nate has seen her in, she’s always expressing a love for the drink when it’s available. It’s all “Oh, I’d love a cup of tea,” or “Thank you, tea would be lovely,” or when her character calls for it, “I need a goddamn cup of tea!”
It’s not that he’s ever been able to track her down based solely upon her favorite blend of tea – a white tea with rosehips – but he’s been able to make an educated guess at places she will not be staying at, once he has an idea of her target, or her general location after a particularly daring, or costly for IYS, theft.
(He doesn’t want to stereotype and say that’s what makes her British, what with that fact that if he gives her five minutes she’ll be an entirely different person, complete with an outfit change, but it’s a leading indicator to her nationality, and thus her true name.)
He finds the team a Sophie, and buys her a cup of tea at the coffee shop down the street from Hardison’s Chicago apartment, because she deserves it, for trusting the team as she has done, for trusting him as an honest man.
Initially, though, a cup or two here for nerves or late nights aside, she doesn’t drink her tea much around the team – they’re busy doing their jobs, and rarely do they bother to spend their down time with others on the team. They don’t trust each other enough for that, not initially. Their lives are one thing, the little things that make them human is another.
(It warms a part of him that he doesn’t want to acknowledge that she’s never taken the same care to hide like that from him.)
They move to Boston, and somehow Nate’s apartment becomes their new office. Pots and pans Nate never bought fill his cabinets, alongside ingredients he’s not even sure how to prepare. Cables run through the walls and under the floor, and Nate might have missed that but he was there when they were all put in, a physical reflection of a new age spider web for their resident geek. More (but not completely) visible are the various handholds and paths that Parker has used to ascend and descend more times than Nate is likely aware of, but instead of annoying him, most nights it just makes him smile.
In between the new produce and boxes of sugar covered sugar bombs and extra liters of orange soda and whisky, tea boxes pop up.
Black, breakfast, white, green. From all the pictures on the boxes, Nate is starting to feel like his cupboards are being filled in with either a bunch of overly aggressive wildflowers or it’s a map of the world Sophie has traveled.
Maybe both.
(By the time they make it to Portland, he knows it’s definitely both.)
And that's a wrap. I need to sleep so I don't fall asleep in class. Again.
Kudos, comments, and concrit welcome.
~Fins