Work Text:
It’s immediately obvious to Tara when she walks in the room behind Nate that they’ve interrupted the younger three members of the crew in the middle of something. If she were the betting sort— and let’s face it, she absolutely is— she would lay her money on a panicked phone call to Sophie, rather than the start of a threesome.
(Though wouldn’t it be interesting if that were the case? It isn’t, she’s sure from the unsubtle glances at Nate and the slightly more subtle ones at her that they were calling Sophie to get information on her, but there is something there, even if they don’t know it yet, something in the easy way Parker tosses Hardison the remote and how Eliot and his wolfdog always seem to know exactly where the other two are.)
Anyway. Knowing Sophie, she undoubtedly tried to reassure them that Tara is to be trusted, and knowing this crew, they will not trust her fully until she figures out how to get through to Nate, and that’s, well. Deimos gives her the sort of sardonic look that only a fox can give. It was never going to be easy for a fox to make friends with a bloodhound.
She seats herself on the couch next to Eliot. Deimos leaps up to settle on the cushion on her other side, while Eliot’s enormous wolfdog has not moved from her position angled on the floor where she can watch everyone in the room— and the entrance.
“Okay, run it,” Nate says, too full of frenetic energy to sit. Brigid paces at his side.
Hardison, his raccoon draped over the arm of the armchair he is sprawled in, waves the remote at the huge screen. “Gloria and Russell Pan, self-made millionaires. They built their fortune off a company that produces cheap knock-offs of the latest fashions. The bargain bin has been very good to the Pans. They got a nice car, big house in Brookline. Gloria, here, she works the factory floor. She designs all the clothes. Appropriately enough, her daemon is a big-ass peacock who spends his time hissing and pecking at the daemons of any workers who fail to meet Gloria’s heartless standards. Russell, he handles all the accounting and works with the partners in China. He’s got a Chinese cobra daemon he wears around his neck like a terrifying necktie.”
“Figures,” Tara says. “Everyone knows you never trust a snake.”
This gets her more of a reaction than she’d earned from this crew since she revealed herself at the end of the lawyer con. Parker just nods knowingly, but Eliot and Hardison both turn on her. Hardison’s easy-going raccoon even hisses.
“Now that’s just hurtful,” Hardison says at the same time as Eliot says, “There are more than three thousand species of snake in the world and the vast majority of them just want to hang out in the sun and not bother anyone, okay?”
Tara holds up her hands in surrender, aware of the twitching of Deimos’s nose. “My apologies, I should have said venomous snakes,” she amends.
“Damn right you should have,” Hardison mutters.
Eliot narrows his eyes at her. The wolfdog has had Deimos squarely in her vision since they entered the room. She does her best to look apologetic.
Nate, who cannot bear to not be the center of attention for more than a few minutes, coughs pointedly and starts questioning Hardison about Gloria Pan. Tara listens, jumps in when it seems appropriate, tries to demonstrate to Nate that she knows what she is doing, but on the cushion, Deimos watches the other daemons, and keeps thinking.
Later, as they are preparing a photo shoot, Tara turns to Hardison and says, “So, what kind of snake does your sister have?”
“Corn snake,” he answers distractedly, then turns to look at her. “How did you—”
“What about yours?” she asks Eliot. “A sister too, I’m guessing?” She looks at the angle of his shoulders, the set of his jaw. “No, wait, it’s your mother, right?”
Eliot releases a long breath out his nose, and deliberately loosens the fists he had clenched. She sees him consider ignoring her, sees his eyes flicker to Hardison’s open curiosity and to Parker frozen behind the camera. “Both, actually,” he bites out. “Emma has a water snake. And Reggie was a ribbon snake.”
Ah. Eliot’s mother is dead. He is not the only one. “I’m sorry,” Tara says, more gently than she expects. Parker’s camera clicks, and that’s the photo they use in the article about Caprina’s rags-to-riches backstory.
It was never going to be easy for a fox to make friends with a bloodhound. But Tara isn’t here to make friends, she’s here to make money. (And to finally pay back the debt she owes Sophie for helping her fake her death to escape a Syrian chemical weapons manufacturer after sabotaging his research— it wouldn’t have been nearly so convincing without the hysterical bloodstained eyewitness accurately describing her both before and after the car bomb went off. Ah, good times.)
It’s rather sweet, this Robin Hood gang and their feel-good quests. Ugh. Tara prefers spice and heat, but she can see what the appeal is to Sophie. Tara doesn’t do guilt and she doesn’t do pity and she is not going to sift through her extensive closet and wonder about the overworked underpaid exploited women sewing in an overheated factory so that Tara gets glamorous clothes cheap. She’s not.
But. It’s fun, is the thing. It’s easy to mesmerize Gloria Pan, with her fondness for buckles and overlarge feathers. (There’s definitely something psychological going on there, given her peacock daemon, but damned if Tara knows what). It’s not Tara’s first fashion week but that doesn’t make it less fun to be surrounded with luxury and beauty and underneath it all staggering amounts of money, greed, and ambition.
Nate’s a self-righteous sadist— Tara hasn’t decided yet whether she agrees that he’s righteous, the way he and Sophie clearly believe but the sheer pleasure he obviously takes in systematically destroying people he deems evil makes the sadism undisputable. She’s met worse. Parker and Hardison are adorable, and while Tara’s gotten her eyes on too many classified reports to ever classify Eliot as adorable— Deimos is never getting in range of the wolfdog’s teeth— he does have his own fierce charm. And every one of them is incredibly good at what they do. It’s hard not to appreciate such competence.
Still. She’s competent, too. She’s a goddamn professional, and if Nate Fucking Ford keeps treating her like an idiot, it doesn’t matter how much she owes Sophie, she’ll be in the wind and let him see how well he does without a grifter on his roster.
(It matters very much how much she owes Sophie. She lets Nate condescend to her, lets him take her earbud, but she won’t let him cut her out of the con, not when he can’t close it without her. For Sophie’s sake, she won’t abandon them.)
It’s when the Triad goons are coming towards her with cleavers that it all clicks for Tara. A fox, make friends with a bloodhound? Not hardly. But she can work with him. She just needs to give him a trail to follow, lead him to more intriguing prey, and then get the hell out of the way. She moves smoothly into the fight, Deimos fierce as always watching her back.
Never trust a fox is as conventional wisdom as never trust a snake, and it doesn’t take much to convince Russell Pan that she’s ready to sell out her partner to save her own skin. It unfolds beautifully from there, dominos all in a line. Five-O. Andre V’s designs— not faked, which is impressive on such short notice— and the switched USBs. The cops show up right on cue and arrest Russell Pan, AKA Nicholas Chow, on Interpol’s Most Wanted list. It really is a pleasure to be able to trust one’s coworkers to do their part in setting up the dominos so one doesn’t have to knock them all over oneself.
Nate apologizes, almost, and he gives her both the money and her earbud back, which is even better. His bloodhound sniffs and dips her pendulous head to Deimos in what could maybe be a gesture of respect.
“Thanks,” she says. “And for what it’s worth, Sophie was right. You guys are the best we’ve seen.”
Nate smirks. “We know,” he says, and she isn’t surprised when he takes the opportunity to dramatically stride away. Of course he couldn’t resist the mic-drop exit.
At her side, Deimos gives a short, almost dog-like bark. “But no one in the world is as good as he thinks they are,” he says wryly.
“No one ever,” Tara adds vehemently. “Let's be far away on the day he learns that.”
“But not so far away that we can't watch the explosions.”
“We do so love fireworks.” Tara reaches down to scratch his ruff.
“I suppose we'll have to send Sophie in with a fire extinguisher,” he says with exaggerated regret, running his head against her knee.
“Better her than us,” Tara agrees.
“They are an incredible team, though,” he says, with a hint of wistfulness. Deimos doesn't get casual with other daemons, not the way Hardison's Leia does. He only touches other daemons for seduction or violence (or, on extra fun nights, both). They don't do intimacy, not with anyone other than each other, and they don't do friendship, not beyond the web of favors owed and owing like they have with Sophie, and they certainly don’t do charity, not when they fought tooth and claw for every rung on the ladder they’ve climbed.
Still. A fox is never going to be friends with a bloodhound, but this gig should be fun while it lasts.