Nate remembers the first time he met Eliot. Nothing so shocking as his first meeting with Sophie, one minute he had been holding the painting IYS had sent him to retrieve and the next there had been the sense of movement and he found himself pinned to the wall, looking into determined blue eyes.
"You need to forget me," the man ordered in a low growl. "Now."
Certain that he would be in for a world of hurt if he didn't agree, Nate had nodded and the man had smiled, had patted him on the cheek patronisingly.
After that, after the painting had been returned - not to the clients of IYS, but to the family who had pursued a suit for its return, saying that it had been stolen during the war - Nate had discreetly looked into the man.
It was with some surprise, therefore, that he found himself meeting those same blue eyes on the same side of a job. And when the job was over, he assumed that the instruction was the same, right up until Dubenich's double cross nearly got them killed.
Then, abruptly, he found Eliot continually in his space, knew that he was on occasion doing the same to Eliot, but it wasn't until after the job at the mafia wedding, after everything was settled and everyone bar he and Eliot were on cleanup duty in the kitchen that he put a voice to it.
"So," he began, meeting Eliot's heated gaze, "You still want me to forget you?"
