Notes: Hey ther, been awhile? I think in my last post I said we may be coming up on the end of this little verse. However I realised that there has been something I've been promising to do and (lets be honest) wanting to do since the bad old days of "Not Going Anywhere" and "Stay". Combine that with some information I now have put together and I think, so long as the new episodes don't throw my planning off too badly, that there will be at least three more of these little fics in this story (The Paradox of a Wolf at the Door, These Seats are Better, and The Way of Our World) and one long fic who's working title is Two Knight's Closing. Since bunnies tend to procreate rapidly when I watch new episodes there may be a couple other bits thrown in there to. But, unless the unthinkable happens, the first chapter of Two Knight's Closing will be posted on February 14th. Why? Read and find out.
Also, this is a super drabble. 500 words.

Need and Compulsion
They're both damaged. That's normally half of why this works. This isn't normal.

Nate understood. Here in the dim light of not quite dawn, his fingers ghosting over bruises left on Eliot's skin by Raquel but not by any fight, he understood.

It was a need.

It was a need for things, to forget things… and Nate understood that need all too well.

Eliot's world was violent in ways Nate probably could never understand, in ways Eliot wouldn't let him understand.

Nate knew Eliot needed violence to survive in that world.

Nate knew Eliot needed control for his world to survive.

Nate understood that caused a paradox, that a part of Eliot was always leashed, always bound up. He knew having the team, having Nate, pulled that leash tight as a noose sometimes.

Nate knew Eliot needed to let that violence out, to forget about control, to forget responsibility and protecting the team and holding himself together so no one got hurt.

Nate knew that was one of a dozen reasons why hitters meeting up was as likely to end in fucking as it was in fighting.

It was a need.

In the dim morning light as Eliot stared at the ceiling next to him, guilt and relief not hiding the fact the tension always humming around Eliot body had faded, Nate told himself again. It was a need.

It was a need.

But no matter how many times he told that to himself the sight of her marks on Eliot's skin made him crave relief from this though his own old Need.

~*~

Eliot understood. Standing in the distance and watching as Nate nearly kissed Sophie, he understood.

It was like him and Amie. It was… it was a desire, a compulsion.

A compulsion to reach for something that had once been good, that had once felt right. That one thing that could have been, that Should have been.

That it was too late, far too late, to really have.

Sophie was for Nate what Amie had been to him, a last temptation, a last chance.

A last reminder of a missed opportunity.

The man who had flirted with Sophie across Europe but never cheated on his wife, the man who had almost settled down with Amie to raise horses and maybe kids…

Those good men who lived in worlds of good men and almost lives good lives.

Those men were dead and buried in the past.

But Sophie had said it right.

They were all addicted to their pasts.

Nate would always feel this compulsion, always move to kiss Sophie. He would always gravitate toward her because somewhere in his mind she would always be everything he had once had even if the reality couldn't be farther from the truth.

But Sophie pulls away from the kiss, sad smile on her face like she finally understands everything that's happened, like even as she leaves to find a self she understands she's come to understand them.

When she walks away Nate watches her go.

Eliot watches them and tells himself that he understands.