Notes: Part two of my Trust and Sobriety arc and a tag to Beantown Bailout.

Trusting Sobriety
He could handle drunk Nate, knew to keep and eye on tipsy Nate, and took care of Hung over Nate.
It only took in ten minutes to realise he didn't trust Sober Nate.

Eliot couldn't honestly say he was surprised to see the others. He'd gone to the show with the expectation of seeing them there and that they'd likely end up together and working together and getting Nate to help them not maim eachother in the process of working together.

He would be the last of them to admit it but he went to the show not to add to the list of nights he'd really like to forget but with the desired outcome being a reunion and refounding of Leverage Consulting.

He wouldn't have admitted it, even to himself, but he missed the team, missed Nate, missed having to think in concepts of "us" and "we" and having someone to watch his back. Hell, he even missed that sort of sense of clarity he'd get on the job when the rest of the team was in danger and he was doing his job by protecting them from it.

The whole life had gotten under his skin and he just wanted it out so he could walk away and be done with it almost as much as he wanted to be right back to the way things had been.

It wasn't like he hadn't tried to move on. He'd done big jobs and found himself thinking how much easier they would have been with the team. He'd gone to Pakistan only to find the desert and heat made him think of Cairo and the little cell not to far outside of the city where he'd first met and gotten to know Nate.

He'd come back to LA, ready to come home only to realize there was no "back" to come home to.

Then there had been that excuse to go to his sisters and stay there for awhile despite the risks of his life and hers colliding that made him keep her at arms length. With the hustle and bustle of life in her house with her husband and two kids and everyday life (and the reason he was there in the first place) he came as close to forgetting the team as he'd come.

Then her kids had asked for a bedtime story and he ended up telling them about Robin

Hood and his merry men only Robin ended up being too much like Nate and Sophie was Maid Marian and Will Scarlet was Eliot himself. When he started telling a tale of how Robin Hood helped a horse trainer steal back his last surviving horse through a con involving Chinese thoroughbreds even little Marie, his niece all of eight years old, realized he wasn't talking about Robin Hood anymore.

Later he'd tell his sister about what he'd been doing all these months, faltering only a little before telling her about Nate and how their relationship had happened.

She'd only hit him for being an idiot twice, a new record for their conversations in recent years, and mostly playfully.

The first was for thinking she'd care about the gender of whoever it was that made him smile like that.

The second was for being so stubborn he lost the first good thing she'd seen him have.

When she told him he better hold on tight when they came back together again he didn't argue or ask how she knew that they would.

He'd been alarmingly glad to see the others, though judging by the look on Hardison's face he'd either managed to cover it well or the mental grimace at being so happy to see them had translated into a growl.

He hadn't been prepared to catch sight of Nate.

Over the years Eliot had perfected the art of being alone. Part of that, a large part of that, was simply not thinking about people who being without made you feel lonely. If you only thought about the people you were really glad were miles away you could be perfectly happy to have all the alone time you could possibly want.

Over the last six months he'd been reminded of the team again and again but Nate, and all the confusion and emotions he wasn't the kind of guy who dealt with very well, had been the main threat to him being happy about being alone. He'd gotten to the point where he had managed to barely even think about Nate at all, at least not think about *that* bit.

It came rushing back like a punch to the gut and it was about as hard to keep functioning as if he hadn't taken a blow.

He wished he could have said they slid back as if no time had passed. Afterall wasn't that how they always seemed to work in the past?

It really wasn't though. They'd never been good at picking up where they left off. There were always bumps and missteps as Nate remembered first that Eliot was a thief and took a little longer to remember he was more than just a thief. And there were problems aplenty as Eliot tried to remind his instincts that he did trust at least one person and that Nate was that person and any sudden movments by Nate probably weren't actually threats to life and limb.

But they managed to get along as well as the rest of the team seemed to be.

And Nate said his name when they all came together, which wasn't much in the grand scheme of things but they had always worked in little gestures so maybe just maybe it was a sign that something was still there.

Then after the show Nate had sought him out. Of all the four of them Nate had told him first that he'd quit drinking.

Eliot just wished he could have believed him as easily.

Eliot had trusted Nate more than almost anyone else for a decade. Nate was the reason he was alive in more ways than just patching up his injuries when they met back in Cairo and he was probably the reason he'd survived this long sanity in tact.

As a mentor, a friend, a leader, a lover … Eliot had trusted and followed Nate's lead as he played each role in turn.

It wasn't until he found himself questioning Nate about quitting drinking that he realized that trust that had been the rule of their relationship since the long days in Cairo had one flaw.

He'd never trusted Nate as a drunk.

And even as Nate told him he'd stopped drinking and Eliot questioned him, noting the surprise in Nate's expression at Eliot's distrust, he realized it would be a long time before he completely trusted this new sobriety.

But he pushed past that, ready to embrace this new Nate (even if he didn't trust it yet), ready to jump back on the bike of crime, ready to do something besides practice the fine art of being alone.

He wasn't prepared for the rebuke.

He'd known it wouldn't be easy to convince Nate to come back, to rejoin them. After all, it took Nate awhile to remember he (and the others) weren't just thieves.

He hadn't realized, hadn't been prepared to be shut down like that. After everything that had happened, after the conversation and signs of interest and everything that had come before…

You would of thought a man so skilled in reading and manipulating people would be able to give some kind of subtext that he was still interested, that he gave half a care. Instead he made a comment about how he'd been drunk half the time, brushed it all off.

Brushed him off.

And just fucking left.

Six months ago Eliot could have reasoned with it, picked apart Nate's behavior. He'd learned how to interpret Drunk Nate, and Hung Over Nate, and Lost in His Head Nate, and mercifully the good Nate's that came out in between.

But sober Nate? He wasn't sure he trusted this one. He didn't know this Nate.

This Nate was honest, and trying to keep to the life he knew. A good life with no room for thieves.

And no need for Eliot.

And as Eliot blundered on in the conversation, asking about whatever they hadn't told him without really caring, he had to wonder, that paranoia that kept him alive and guessing coming back with a vengeance.

If now Nate had no need for Eliot… He'd said it himself Nate was a master manipulator.

Had all of this been Nate getting what he needed?