Notes: The first in the "Trust and Sobriety" arc, a series of tags for the Beantown Bailout Job I'm doing to better fix my verse to follow cannon as closely as possible. (though after last nights show I am strangly closer to cannon than I ever imagined I would be)

Queen's Gambit
Nate could recognize a Queens Gambit opener, even if the situation had nothing to do with chess.

They parted on good terms. That was something at least.

Okay, that was crap.

They parted on pretend good terms, both too stubborn to say what really needed to be said. To say they didn't want this to be the end, that this was the best thing either of them had going. Like the team as a whole they were still insisting they didn't need each other and so they let it end.

They parted on "good terms" because they decided it would be easier to just walk away.

After all, they hadn't said the three little words that would of made it hard, right? That was the whole point wasn't it?

So Eliot told Nate he was off to DC and then out of the country and if he wanted to start another chess by mail game his old landlord was still taking his mail for him.

And Nate had told Eliot he was thinking he'd go to Boston and if he ever was passing through look him up and they'll have a drink or something.

And they didn't say goodbye, even before the tarmac, even as they turned to walk away from each other. Because that was how they worked. Fate threw them together every five years or so and they'd take it as long as it lasted then part ways until fate or life or whatever threw them together again.

And for a few days it almost felt good. It almost didn't hurt.

Then Nate started sobering up.

He'd thought quitting drinking would be hard. He never realized quitting drinking without the job, the team, and Eliot to distract him… He thought quitting alone might be tough but he'd decided to do it.

There were just some nights he wished his cure all for missing people wasn't the very activity he was trying to give up.

In those days (weeks? Months? Short lifetimes?) loneliness, missing Eliot, grief over Sam and his divorce, mild dread for the others out there getting themselves killed (since when did he care so much and since when was it his job to keep them from getting into trouble?), they all battled with withdrawal to cause him the most misery.

But eventually, bit by bit, it got just a little easier. Moment by moment his head started to clear and his hands stopped shaking. He started to dream of things other than Sam dead, Eliot bloody and screaming at the hands of some Russian interrogator. He stopped catching himself watching the news, half expecting to see Parker smashed dead on the sidewalk from a failed harness, Hardison caught and sent to try (and fail) to survive in prison, and Sophie shot dead somewhere.

Eventually he was almost happy, maybe even more than almost.

He should have guessed that it wouldn't be more than a week after he actually started to feel decent for periods lasting for stretches of several hours at a time that the others found their way back into his life.

Somehow he'd known, from the moment he'd looked through his mail and found the invitation to the musical, he'd known that it wasn't just one night he was signing up for.

If he showed up… It seemed Sophie was the first of them to break, to try to pull them all back together. She'd put aside the pride that came with refusing to admit she needed them and now she was running a gambit to reform the team she'd been instrumental in pulling apart. Fitting, or ironic, but their black queen was coming full circle.

A small, dry grin had spread across Nate's lips at that. The Queen's Gambit. It was a daring opening move for a chess match that had drastic implications for the rest of the game weather it was "accepted" or "declined".

In the back of his head he could almost hear Eliot complaining about how everything always ended up a chess metaphor when Nate was involved.

So Nate found himself looking "down" at the metaphorical chess match this was likely to turn into. If he declined this gambit, this invitation, and kept to his life as he knew it now he would remain in control. There was some chance they'd still come looking for him but he would have made his intentions clear and they probably would leave him be in the end.

Or he could accept it, and the inevitable, and allow himself to be drawn back into this new old life.

Maybe even restart the games with Eliot.

Maybe this time they'd not feel the need to operate under the assumption it wouldn't last.

But that meant there was the risk that it wouldn't last.

When they'd first started that thing between them one of Eliot's main hesitations had always been that he knew, even without Nate saying, how close Nate was to losing it. There had always been that concern that if something happened it might drive Nate to blow his brains out and have done with it and Eliot, even with what he'd spent his life doing, wasn't comfortable with the idea he could be the reason Nate killed himself.

If Nate was honest with himself there had been times these past couple months he'd been tempted to end it.

He wasn't sure if he could do this again. He already felt like he was running on borrowed time.

"Queens gambit declined" Nate said, dropping the invitation into the garbage.

Two days later he'd find himself absently wishing for Hardison and Eliot so he could send someone else to go digging through the trash to find the invitation to get the information he needed.

They'd parted on good terms, he had a new life that would become "good" any day now, and all of that might just go to hell if he went to this show.

Eliot would say it was very catholic of him, but somehow Nate couldn't quite seem to make the smart decision.

Sophie had made her gambit and he'd make one of his own. He'd go to the show and see what happened. If nothing else his reluctance would help him keep control over the board.

Or at least as long as possible with these pieces involved.