Disclaimer: I do not own Leverage nor am I associated with Dean Devlin, Timothy Hutton or Gina Bellman. No copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: The prompt table I will be using for this 50 prompts fic can be found at the LJ comm '50prompts'.

Tattoo

It's small, discreet. He never would have seen it if it hadn't been for the slit on that dress. Sophie had been sitting on the floor in her apartment, pouring over a blueprint before the New Year's Eve party: 2001 was coming up on them fast. Her dress, teal, half-sheer, off-the-shoulder, had a long slit most of the way up her thigh and with the way she was sitting, it fell away to her hip.

He had been leaning against the wall, curiously watching her work. Or, at least, watching her. With her hair piled on top of her head, curls trailing down her cheeks, the soft candlelight reflected in large, plate glass windows made her only that much lovelier. His eyes traced the skin exposed by her dress, up a calf, down a thigh and- Nate stopped, squinting at her.

Slowly, he pushed himself off the wall and walked over to her with his hands in his pockets. Pulling them out, he sat next to her on the carpeted floor, moving carefully so she wouldn't. He reached out, gently trailing the backs of his fingers down her thigh, earning himself a small smile. Flattening out his hand, he rubbed a thumb over the mark that had caught his eye. Sophie straightened suddenly, startled, and quickly adjusted her dress so the tattoo was hidden as usual.

"Have a nice spring break, there, Sophie?" Nate asked, eyes twinkling.

She stammered in embarrassment, flushing deeply. "Oh come on. You never did anything stupid in your twenties?"

"I went to seminary. They don't exactly have spring break for priests-in-training," Nate countered, shoulders shaking with laughter. "Just a little peek; I barely got a glimpse."

She never did give him a better look at the small design on her thigh. But every now and then, in a meeting, on a con, out to dinner with the team, he would find himself staring at the spot and he'd brush his fingers across her leg just there so she knew what he was thinking. Sophie would always simply look up and wink.

Because it was their memories, the little things they knew, that kept them together when the odds were Seabiscuit, Mine That Bird-ridiculous. Nate could never forget those times; by now they were too far beneath each other's skin, tattooed on each other's hearts.